Part 50: Chapter 21x: The Detention Center

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Those captured from our army are probably being held here as well. We must hurry, or everything will be lost...
What do you mean?
I received a report earlier that a large Lopto army is approaching us...
The Schwarze Rosen...! You're right, we should rescue the captives as quickly as we can.

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(Player Phase)

(Enemy Phase)

Here's today's map. It's another fairly interesting one, we start next to escape points, but if we want to save our captured units we need to fight our way through the map to the prisoner cells. Ralph is currently in the center of the northwest cell. Although the map looks fairly straightforward, there's a lot of shit going on to make things harder. First off, we have a 30 turn time limit, or else 10 Dark Mages with Fenrir will show up around the perimeter of the map, and murder the crap out of anyone left inside.



Not only does Zaom have Blizzard, but he also has a warp staff he'll use to warp Mercenary reinforcements (as well as the one's already present) to block our advance through the corridors. The two Bishops near him also have Warp saves, as well as Bolting tomes to pelt us with.

Furthermore, the three priestess, locked in with the mages? They all have Warp staves as well, and will warp the mages and mage reinforcements all over the map. The mages all have Tron, and so are fairly dangerous.

Of course, that's if we do things their way. We're not going to do things their way.

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Our units deployment goes like so: We have Seram, Leaf, Fin and Carion on the left, and Sara, Safy, Tina and Lara on the right.





Tina gets to stealing Warp staves from the priestess. Afterwards, Lara dances for Safy and...



We put Zaom to sleep.





Carion is then warped by Seram to the center chamber, and Sara rewarps herself.



We try and capture one of the Bishops, but we get unlucky and miss on a 93%, so we huddle in the corner instead.



Leaf and a dismounted Fin advance.



Next turn, the enemies in the center attack us. The Mercenaries have hand-axes, and so can attack from afar. One of the Bishops used bolting on Ralph, the other on Leaf. Two mages were also warped to the center, but were both killed by Sara.



Carion captures one Bishop, and Sara loots his inventory and drops him.



Soldiers will show up in this staircase, as well as an identical staircase on the other side, for 20 turns. They're not strong at all, but they clog up the corridors slowing you down.





[Fin: Lv. 19, Hp: 35, Str: 12, Mgc: 3, Skl: 8, Spd: 14, Luk: 10, Def: 9, Bld: 9]



Tina steals Warp staves from both of the remaining priestesses in the center. Later, she'll steal Blizzard and Warp from Zaom.



To abbreviate some levels, she looks like this post stealing spree. She also has a C in staves now.



We get attacked by some random enemies. Not much of note happens, although Fin does take a giant bolt of lightining to the face.





Carion kills a Mercenary to free him and Sara from being boxed in the corner, giving Sara a chance to kill the sniper.







The left group fights their way through some armors. Unfortunately, Fin can't kill the armors without a critical.



The armors have hand-axes, so they don't hit us, but we don't kill them either.



And he misses.



Carion procs a movement star after capturing the bishop, letting him loot it's inventory himself.



So Sara rewarps to the right side of the map, because I don't think our dancer could fight her way through multiple armors. With Sara helping, Lara can open the door.



Leaf and Fin fight some armors, and Seram uses a door key to get into the center of the map. They called me mad when I spent all my money on door keys.





Sara punches a hole in some armors with some help from her movement star, letting Lara run past her.



More armors find themselves short a life here, and Seram heads towards the treasure chest. What wonders await us within? _{A vulnerary. Cool.}



Leaf's got the moves.



Seram is slightly better at using thunder then the Freege mages. He kills a couple of the ones in the southern chamber.



Fin's relying on crits to kill the armors here, and Fin doesn't have much in the way of PCC, so the armor survives. This is the first time in a while that armor has actually helped anyone in this game.



Carion dismounted last turn, and this turn he kills this sniper. I dismounted him so he can block the reinforcements from the stairs if need be, because stairs are considered to be inside even if they're in the middle of a courtyard. He gets an empty level for his troubles.



Lara and Sara move toward the center. We'll free you one day Ralph, never despair.



Tina and Safy are done stealing things (we had to burn a repair staff use on Tina's thief staff), so they leave the map.



Lara dodges the evil ball of thunder, while Seram gets hit by the evil ball of thunder but retaliates with one of his own.







We make the kill this time.

[Fin: Lv. 20, Hp: 36, Str: 12, Mgc: 3, Skl: 8, Spd: 14, Luk: 11, Def: 10, Bld: 9]



Leaf is going to head down to the room with the priestess to steal their psychic staffs. Sweet, sweet, psychic staffs.



Here come the mercenary reinforcements. This one decided not to attack Carion, so Carion kills him.





[Seram: Lv. 6, Hp: 37, Str: 2, Mgc: 20, Skl: 17, Spd: 20, Luk: 8, Def: 11, Bld: 6]



Lara both dances for Seram and heads down to open the door for Leaf. Multitasking





I remember how Sara was supposed to be frail. Now the enemy needs 7 more attack to legitimately damage her.



Some mercenaries throw some hand-axes at Carion. They all miss. He gets an empty level. Excitement all around.

On the other part of the map, Seram kills a soldier. I feel bad for these soldiers, they've been trash mobs since the beginning. They just want to help but they can't



Leaf is doing things. And he's not doing them poorly. This is new for me. This LP has gone strange places.



Rewarp is fun.



That's fun too.



Fun all around





Leaf getting badly hurt. That's the Leaf I know!

Sara kills some of the nearby mages, and Carion kills a mercenary who attacked him.



This'll block any more mages from coming as well, although we've pretty much reached the point where they stop spawning.







On the enemy phase, Leaf and Lara dodge more Trons, and Seram kills a javelin. Meanwhile, Carion keeps dodging hand-axes. Good thing too, they might do one damage to him .





Lara gets a movement star, so she goes to block off another staircase while Sara kills more mages.



Fin got tired of fighting random soldiers, and so decided to make his way up the corridor. He attracts the attention of this Armor here.





Sara kills the last mage in the area, while Leaf and Lara go about their business. Let's get back to freeing Ralph. We haven't forgot about him again.







This Armor has a vulnerary, which is going to make capturing him troublesome.



Fin gets healed. A random mercenary has decided that he's gunning for Fin, and so he's taking a little damage.



We capture two priestess, while Lara makes for Ralph.



We keep whittling away at the armor.



On the enemy phase, another Mercenary reinforcement shows up, and goes for Seram. His loss.

[Seram: Lv. 7, Hp: 38, Str: 2, Mgc: 20, Skl: 17, Spd: 20, Luk: 9, Def: 11, Bld: 6]



The Armor healed, but it's not enough to keep him safe from Seram. Of course, his weapon is almost broken, but I'll cross that bridge when I come to it.



Fin decides to take on the group, since he did so well against the individual.







Leaf loots the psychic staffs.



On the enemy phase, Seram kills some more Soldiers, and Fin starts his uphill battle with the Armors.







And here's the last priestess.





Carion springs himself out of jail, so that he can help Fin fight the armors. Seram's weapon is broken, so he's no help anymore.



Opening the door made the Mercenaries position themselves such that Carion could block them off, so I have him do that. For his troubles, he gets himself a point of Hp, and caps his dismounted defense. With that capped, Carion's only stat penalty for dismounting is his move.



Since Carion can't help Fin anymore, I have Sara rewarp to take his place.



We then ferry the vulnerary we got from the first chest up to Fin. And I thought it wouldn't be useful. And I'm pretty sure the moral of the LP so far is that anything I think won't be useful is. Maybe I should equip everyone with broken weapons.



Looks like it's Seram's turn for the Vulnerary.









Since Seram can't fight with his broken tome (unlike broken weapons, broken tomes aren't even a weapon), Sara's going to hold off the soldiers, and give him a new weapon.

She also got a movement star, so after Seram moves and heals, Sara kills the mercenary.



That's a lot of soldiers.





You're free now Ralph. It's okay.



It's time to start bailing. Sara takes some chest keys so that she can loot the treasure chests, we're almost out of time. She has the best chance of surviving when the Schwarz Rosen show up, can escape quickly because of movement stars, or can rewarp herself out if she really needs to.





Case in point.





Empty



Moving on out, moving on out.



Oh shit we forgot Ralph.







Another movement star and another Bolting tome.







Seram and Lara are about ready to start escaping.











And we're done, let's move out.



There's no time, we have to leave him behind!

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...I'm sorry.
It isn't your fault... But I won't let you go to Conort. I need you, Ishtar.
Yes... But where are we to go?
Miletos. Hilda has been getting on my case...
My mother...? Why?
She wants me to look at her work so far with the child hunting. She seems to be quite happy that I left Miletos in her hands.
...Mother...
Miletos would be a perfect place to stay. Let's see... Ah, I'll buy you a beautiful silken dress. And...a ruby tiara to go with it. I'm sure Hilda will throw a splendid party for us. And I'm going to show you beautifully dressed up and surprise everyone there. Doesn't that sound wonderful, Ishtar? Ishtar, my love...
Yurius...
Oh, Ishtar. Don't let that Rinehart come near us any more.
Rinehart!? But he has been my personal guard since I was a child. I need him.
I don't care about that. I don't like him... I don't like the way he looks at you. If he appears in front of me again, I'll kill him!
! ...Very well... I will send Rinehart back to the castle. So please don't...
Hmph, that's right. Now come, Ishtar. Let us be off!

Man, I feel bad for Ishtar, that's some abusive shit right there . Even her and her goddamn Thorhammer that I despise so much aren't enough to make this any better..

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Current Resets: 45 46 (First time around, I had even less weapons to go around to make room for all my captured items. Literally everyone ended up running out of weapons, it was a nightmare.)

Next Time on Thracia 776: Fucking Cyas.