Part 45: The Siege of Paranor

Welcome back everyone! Thank you for your patience during the last few weeks.



When we last left off, we'd finally killed Murzhor (good), but also discovered that Paranor is under siege by Urok, last of Mephistocles' Dreadlords (bad).



This is of course an urgent matter, but the best way to handle a siege is with a good night's sleep.



When we wake in the morning, the skies have cleared, so clearly everything must have sorted itself out.



(No of course not. But the bug in the overlay is amusing.)



Hopping in our trusty airship, we head for Paranor.




Yeah, this is pretty bad.




It looks like we got here just in time.




Luckily, despite having overrun the city, Urok's troops haven't taken the walls, so we can get inside pretty easily.




There are some random battles in Paranor, but the encounter rate isn't especially high. Urok's elite absorb magic damage and are immune to other magical effects, while myrdraals are reasonably fast and strong, but don't have any special gimmicks.



Finally, we arrive at the entrance to the Gurus' base.



Like the rest of the city, it's a wreck. Luckily, the corpses all seem to be soldiers and not, say, the Child of Light.




Hidden at the back of the auditorium, we find Alistair, Pablo, Lady Kip, and the Child of Light herself.







Honestly, this all seems pretty straightforward. You just know it isn't going to be that easy.



I had a joke ready here about how presumptuous it is to name a child (even one destined to save humanity) after your deity, but then I remembered that we do that in the real world too, so I guess the joke's on me.



As we exit the prep room, our hero runs to the podium and the camera pans south to reveal...



I mean, yeah, who else would it be?




Here we have our last multi-party area. We're charged with protecting the Child of Light from waves of incoming monsters.



Our strategy is simple: Set up three of our teams to try and block the way to the Child of Light as much as possible while using the fourth to slay as many of those monsters as we can. Since Akira's team is by far the strongest and there's no reason not to feed them as much XP as possible before the end of the game, they get that job.





Besides the myrdraals we fought outside, we have a slew of new enemies to kill here. Trexes, rhinorajahs, and kawakos are all basic fighter that pose little threat (though the last are immune to magic). Brainhunters seem scary but are similarly unthreatening, and as a bonus they're undead. Shadowfiends are easily the worst foes here, since they can use both Numbing Thorns and Slasher, and are incorporeal. They are, however, undead, so between Blessaga and Spirit Skean they go down fairly quickly.

There are also black dragons running around, but... I kind fucked up my recording and failed to get footage. I also missed quite a few level ups, though none of them were really noteworthy.



See that guy in the space northwest of Akira? He runs back and forth in front of Urok and I somehow failed to hit him despite my best efforts. This was not one of my better sessions. Anyway, what's that, Urok?





So here we are, facing Urok, last of the four Dreadlords. As Mephistocles' greatest general and one of the last bosses in the game, you'd expect him to be extremely nasty.

It turns out he's a total pushover.





To be fair, Urok ins't entirely helpless. He can slow down the party with Slowall, and his special attack, Savage Claws, hits pretty hard. As a bonus, he also absorbs fire damage.



The thing is, he's still vulnerable to debuffs. With Inept inflicted and our party buffed with Heroic, he's basically no threat at all. Also, he sometimes wastes turns using Observe Battle. At no point in this fight did I ever feel genuinely threatened. Part of this is just how incredible this team is, but even with regular classes we could still hit him with enough debuffs to effectively neuter him.



He goes down like a chump and drops an obviously cursed ring.







I don't even know where that is, but I guess we're about to find out. The screen fades out, then fades in on a new scene.



Heck yeah we did.









We get these little animations of the Child of Light receiving the relics in preparation for the final battle, which is a nice touch.







We've got our last mission, but of course we need to have a look around first.




On the shelves next to Pablo's chair we find the Reaver, Holdana's ultimate weapon. It's two-handed but very powerful. A bit boring, but we'll take it.




When your clairvoyant has an ominous feeling, something bad is probably going to happen.





This green ajah gives us some extra info on our final target.







Meanwhile, this brown ajah reminds us of how we killed all the Dreadlords.





There's quite a bit of good stuff to be found in Hawksnest. This room alone has three pieces of protagonist-exclusive gear.




The fort's well has an Earthwall, a shield that can cast Upperself. We don't really need it, but thanks anyway.




A trip around the walls shows us two more chests, both accessible from the north exit.




To the east, we have the Jingu Bang, named for the Ruyi Jingu Bang, the size-changing staff wielded by Sun Wukong. It's Raj Ahtan's ultimate weapon, taking both hands but giving him three strikes. It's kinda lame for an ultimate weapon (I think a pair of dragon claws would be stronger), but as with the Reaver, we'll take it.

From what I can tell, Akira's ultimate weapon is found elsewhere (I may know where but I'm not positive), while Zefiryn doesn't get one at all, which is lame.



On the other side is a second hero shield.




Finally, there's a shop here selling all-new, powerful gear. We'll stock up before heading out.



A guard at the north exit warns us that we're about to face some nasty opposition, as we'd expect as the game's finale.



But that's for next time.

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