Part 19: Only a Sibling Elegy

Chapter 18 – Only A Sibling Elegy

Where we last left off, we were sent on yet another diversion to get a plot coupon from Jinga that would let us actually go to Drokonia properly. We also picked up Sile-I mean, Ayne, our 5th party member, one of the giants of Jinga.

We are now finally set to go to Drokonia and get our hands on the sacred stone we’ve been seeking 7 chapters ago.

….but you know what we must do first.

First, let’s talk about Jinga.




As mentioned by Chief West Wind last update, Jinga runs on a barter economy and you have to trade items to get items. It’s all very much worth it, of course, because the stuff you get in Jinga is some of the best in the game. From Summer Sunlight here, you can get “Monster Meat”, which is the rarest ingredient needed to make the Atomic Heat dish. As I’ve mentioned, Atomic Heat is the absolute best cooking recipe in the game that can let you trivialise even the worst parts of the game. The kicker is we need items that won’t be found until the final dungeon to trade for it.

Jinga is also home to this game’s most simple and profitable money cheat. We’ve discussed some of those in thread already, but Jinga’s one is easy to pull off and makes a lot of money at a time money starts being more useful. However, we can’t do that either yet because the necessary item is held in a secret shop we won’t see until later.

Jinga itself is not actually home to a lot of content, and thankfully so because it’s stupid large and hard to navigate. But we will return later for this and that.

For now, we shall leave Jinga and seek content elsewhere. I’ll show off some camp chats first.

Good Fortune

(This takes place if you camp on Phorchoon, naturally)

“What a great place! Gorgeous! Full of life! The perfect place for a girl like me!”

“We’re not here to have a good time, you know. You DO know that, don’t you?”

“Come on, don’t be so stuffy! You’re having a pretty good time at the arena, yourself!”

“What, that? That’s just…you know! To gain fighting knowledge and experience!”



Cocky Lang loves having fun.

“Of course! The auction! The arena! The casino! I can’t get enough!”

“That’s just how I feel! Let’s stay here and have fun to our hearts content!”



Absolute Unit

“Ho! Ayne…You are HUGE…!”



“That’s for sure! One of your hands is about as big as…Maya’s head!”

“Um…Make sure you don’t crush it, OK…?”

“Don’t worry. I’m always very careful when I sit.”

…wait what?

Ayne’s Mark

“Anyway, Ayne. Is that mark on your shoulder the birthmark?”

I think he means his Mystic mark.

“It’s a tribal emblem proving I’m a warrior. It’s not the birthmark.”

“Hee hee! Now I get it! You…You’re too embarrassed to talk about your Origin! Aha! Your Origin must be a squid or something!”

“A ‘Squid’ Origin…? What’s that?”

“A weird, wriggling creature with ten tentacles!”

“There’s no such thing!”

I think he’s denying that he has a squid Origin more than he’s saying there’s no such thing as a squid.

“Don’t you worry! We’re all friends! You don’t have to hide your true self!”

“I said there’s no such thing.”



Just so it’s clear, Ayne is actually not a Mystic, and his tattoo is just that. He doesn’t have an Origin, and instead has a different ability you will see this chapter.

Now that we’re done chatting, let’s take Ayne into Phorchoon, shall we?



This dialogue plays every time we talk to Ayne here, but for some reason the game will treat it like a scene every time, giving us this unique shot of the arena.

But Ayne’s not the only one watching the arena.



“By the way, Lang, I tried the Seafood Pizza a while ago. Crispy baked squid and shrimp….delectable seafood goodness! I’ll cook one up for you one of these days.”

And of course Kazan learns the Seafood Pizza recipe.

We’re done with Phorchoon, so let’s go to, I dunno, Nohl?




Elukk: “I wanna go next. Me! Please?!”

“Kids are so…innocent.”

Ayne gets the “Mr. Giant” nickname. Guess he left his xenophobic douchebag attitude behind on Jinga.



Also new in Nohl is this guy, Monjiro. As you can guess, he’s related to Kenjiro, and serves as a peddler. As you can tell from his dialogue, his services are not yet available. Why they bothered having him show up before he can do anything is beyond me, but here he is. He will also give us the location of something special when he does open up.

To the best of my knowledge, this is where content ends for Nohl. I never got Nancy or Galvan to say anything unique again, they just comment on Monjiro showing up until the end of the game.

Let’s go somewhere with more content. Darakin, this time.



In case you’re wondering how standing pans out…


The niceness caveat of Cocky Lang still applies to Ayne, even if he was a bit of a dick on Jinga.

“Ah. You sit on it….But maybe it’d be tough for you, Ayne.”

“I guess so….I’ll stay like this for now.”

If we go to Darakin’s snobby clothes store…









Lang nods.

“Hmm, something for Lang…Let’s see…How about this? This would look good!”

“No, no. This one would look best on Lang! No question about it!”

“That one’s too gaudy for Lang! He’d look awful in it!”

“What do you know? That boring thing you’ve got wouldn’t bring out Lang’s charm!”

“That’s not true! This one is the best one, I tell you!”

“No way! I’m telling you, this one is perfect!”




We don’t even see what they’ve supposedly picked out for Lang, so it’s just a choice of favouring one character over the other or dithering to avoid offence. We’re going with Sharon, since she’s the better character in every way, and that scene is the most interesting of the three.

“Huh? Me…?! Um…I like the one Sharon picked out.”



“How…could you…?”



Just look at Lang, being intimidated by how much Sharon revels in this victory.

There’s more scenes to experience after going out and in again.




Nils: “Let’s go that way now! I want to see the castle!”

“Ahh children, such fun…”



Joe: “Nothing wrong with my life! I’ve always been this way, I don’t need anything, and nothing ties me down. I can’t change the way I am now…It’s too late for that.”

“Ya can’t jush spend your whole like like….some kind of stray dog! There mush be some kinda better work for ya than thish!”

Joe: “What kind of work is there for me? In a world like this…?”

“I know! We could be pirates! Hic! Man, that’d be fun…You and me an’ our henchmen…having lots of fun every day…!”



Joe: “I wonder just how serious she was about that…”

”Well she made me the same offer while sober…”

Joe: “Oh, hi, Lang….Hey, this wasn’t what you think…She’s out of it, and wanted to pick a fight. There isn’t any special meaning to it…Hey, Sharon, wake up!”

“*groan* Hey, where’s tha’ thing I ordered….? *snore*”

We’re done with Darakin. Let’s hit up Kravia.



“What is it, Ayne?”

“I need some money.”

“What’s up, all of a sudden?”

“In Jinga, we don’t need money. I wanted to see what it was like to actually use it.”

We get a choice. Not giving him money ends things here and isn’t very interesting, so we fork up 10000 for Ayne.

“OK, sure. Let’s see….Is 10000 G enough?”

“I don’t really know how much that is…But thank you.”

We give Ayne the money and he vanishes, presumably to go shop around. We don’t see him again until….




“I want to give this back to you.”

Ayne returns our 10000.

“Didn’t you go shopping?”

“Yes. I looked at the stuff, and took out the money. But they said I didn’t have to pay.”



You can see why Ayne would scare people, but Cocky Lang has killed bigger things than him single handedly.



“Really? That’s good!”

The scene ends and we exit Kravia. Let’s head to Tanza.



We advise Ayne to just give it a try.

“Haven’t you tried it, Ayne? Why don’t you try it. You’ll see why.”

“Um…But…There’s people in there. I don’t feel comfortable getting naked in front of them.”

“You’re worried about that? I didn’t expect that from you, Ayne. Don’t worry, I’ll be with you.”

“Thanks…”



“Something nice?”

“A cool looking accessory! I thought it would suit you. Go on, try it on!”

The screen fades to black, but nothing visibly changes about Lang.

“Okay, how do I look?”

“I knew it! A perfect match! By the way, the previous owner was some guy lying in the dirt. I was thinking to sell it, but then I thought it’d be perfect for you, so…”

We get a choice. Rebuke her for stealing, take it with gratitude, or politely refuse. We choose to take it.

“Really? Are you sure, Sharon? It looks pretty valuable.”

“What?! Y-y-you really think so? Um…Hey, Lang? Can I have it back? I’ll give you something else, okay? Please?”

“Huh…?”

We get nothing out of this, implying Sharon took it back.

Tanza is done, so we go to Darek’s Haunt.



The ship’s here to hide, so…

“Because it’s a pirate ship. If it were out in the open, it would draw too much attention and that would be bad.”

“Really…”

Ayne gives the same one word response no matter what you say. Very uninteresting.

We are finally done with all the side content, so let’s finally, finally, FINALLY go to Drokonia.

Before we go in, we of course cook. Checking the camp chat at this point yields…



No point being a dick about it.

“Ayne, you can cook? Sure! It sounds great! What do you cook?”

(Dummy! What are you saying? Don’t tell him that!)

(What’s the matter, Sharon?)

(Well, just LOOK at him! Who knows what kinds of things he eats!)

(Get real! You make Ayne sound like some kind of monster! He’s our friend, isn’t he?)

(I’m only thinking of you! Would I give you bad advice? Now I’m telling you, you’ve gotta nip this in the bud!)

“What is it, Sharon? Can’t wait to try my cooking, huh?”

“*gasp* I wasn’t saying anything, Ayne!”

“Don’t worry. I’ll make plenty, so you can have second helpings.”

(Lang! This is all YOUR fault! You’ve gotta take responsibility and eat it all now!)

(Oh calm the fuck down, Sharon.)

Now to actually genuinely really go into Drokonia.





We’re in.



“You’re joking, right?! How are we ever gonna move that?”






“Whoa…”

“Hey, you’re pretty useful to have around!”

“We should hurry.”

As you can gather, Ayne’s shtick is he’s very very strong, and if there’s a puzzle that requires shoving things or picking up heavy shit, Ayne’s your man.

But now that we’re in a dungeon, we should actually learn about how Ayne works as a battle character.

The first time I cleared this game, I forewent Ayne in favour of keeping Kazan, both because I was comfortable with him and because Kazan has an Origin, giving him at least two distinct advantages over Ayne. Both for the sake of showing him off for this LP and because he can hit some ridiculous levels of damage output, I bench Kazan for him.

Click here for an Art Exhibition. Haven’t had one of those for a while, have we?

(And yes, the Spirit part is taken from an end game save because I forgot to use Spirit on Drokonia)

Ayne fights with big weapons: big axes, big hammers. His main advantage is that he hits stupid hard, being able to do more damage than any other character with little extra effort. When we give him some new skills and stuff, he’ll be hitting even harder. The catch is he’s stupid slow, fitting in with his big lumbering giant shtick. Ayne will, at the very least, always act last out of any characters you have fighting, if not last out of all combatants.

As I mentioned earlier, Ayne does not have an Origin, but this does not mean he doesn’t have special abilities. Ayne has “Spirit” instead, which involves calling on spirits of various types to give buffs. I’ve never been much of a buffing guy, always preferring to just keep attacking, but Ayne’s buffs are only used on him too so they’re not very useful outside of special situations. It also means he has no multi-hit attacks like Kazan gets via Deva.

He’ll be serviceable, at any rate. This game will never be so difficult that one of the other characters is necessary to overcome the challenges.

Now let’s talk about Drokonia.



Pallet swaps.



More pallet swaps.






And even more pallet swaps. I think there’s a single enemy that’s unique on Drokonia and we won’t see it until after a boss encounter.

As for puzzles, as you might expect, it’s all about introducing Ayne and his strength, so…



You push blocks to make a path forward.



And you push these crystals to activate teleporters to move forward.



This one is optional, but it takes a bit more thought than any of the others. You just have to move those big grey blocks around so you can push the crystals onto the red squares. The game tricks you into thinking each crystal corresponds with a specific square, but the solution involves moving one of the side ones onto the middle red square first.



From there you use that crystal to manoeuvre the leftover crystal into the final slot and bam, you’re done.

The treasures we get from this one are an accessory I never use and a “Life Syringe” that gives you the ability to avoid being KO’d for a turn (recovering full health if something does kill you). However, it also prevents you from acting for a turn, so it’s not as useful as it sounds. Not really worth the effort put into that puzzle, honestly.



This campsite (awkwardly camouflaged against the tan patch of ground) indicates a boss is up ahead. Who could it be?




Now Playing – Eri and Mari

Oh brother. We all know what this means, don’t we?

It has been a long time since these two were so much as mentioned, and longer still since they were on screen. It would be easy to forget they were even part of this game.




“We’ve heard rumours about you in every town we passed through. You’ve been busy. First you steal the Sacred Azure Stone from Bishop Doplin, now you’re after the Sacred Burning Stone! Your greed will be the death of you! I don’t think I can forgive you now!”



“I really hoped that we could become friends, you and I…It’s such a shame.”

“Give it up, big brother….People of our status shouldn’t befriend scum like him! He might have been a subordinate…No, a slave…No! More like a pet! Or a toy for our amusement!”






”OH BANDERAS I CAN SEE HER WHOLE UNDERCARRIAGE!”



”In all my years, I’ve never seen something so obscene…”

”That just ain’t right!”

”To think outsiders could be this profane…”



“Ooh…My head hurts…That bold lady just said something…Something awful about us.”



“Oh-ho, you’re gonna swim with the sharks for that remark!”

“What? I didn’t say old lady…”

“Not another word, pretty boy, not another word!”

“Marienne! She’s scaring me!”





“What did you think you’d be able to do with it anyway? You’ve seen the black sun. The black sun is going to erase the filthy past and anything else we don’t like…Won’t it be wonderful?! It’ll only be a short time before our perfect world is born…”

“Why don’t you just hand over the Sacred Azure Stone? Tell you what. We’ll even let you live. For the short amount of time you’ll have left on this miserable world! Ha ha ha ha ha!”

We get a choice, but it’s a “pick your flavour of refusal” choice. Either don’t do it or “fight if they try to stop you”. Cocky Lang’s a fighter.





“I know, Marienne. You have them one last chance. They were just too stupid to take it.”

“I grow tired of this chatter, my brother. Let’s just kill them!”






This is basically the same fight as last time, only they have a few new attacks, and we aren’t being railroaded into losing. In fact, this fight is a complete cake walk and they do basically nothing to us in terms of damage.

With a single Variable Art, we shave off half the health of our target of choice. We start with Marienne.




“Marienne…”

“I will not go back to living in the shadows, cowering because I am a Mystic!”



“Even our own parents abandoned us!”




“…He was the first one to treat us with kindness…And for his sake as well…”




“Enough of this! No more games!”



Despite Marienne’s bravado, she dies after Lang combos her.





”Haha, oh wow, is this your mighty vengeance being wreaked upon me!?”

”S-shut up! I’ll kill you!”

Annoyingly, Marienne’s corpse persists upon the battlefield, which makes it difficult to take screenshots that don’t require censorship.

The fight goes on for another round, mostly to build up AP to unleash another Variable Art on Elliott.



But once we unleash, the fight is over, and the siblings go down without even having unleashed a single Hyper Art.

Last time we fought the siblings, I didn’t give you a video due to too much little girl underwear. This time, you’re getting one! Heavily censored, mind you, but you’ll be able to see and appreciate the cut scenes with minimal loss. I’ve also included the ones for when you target Elliott first.

Click the image below to see Elliott and Marienne literally die.






“Marienne!”




“Marienne! Don’t you die on me! It’s almost here…Our perfect little world is almost…”

“My….dearest…brother…I don’t want to leave your side…”

“Marienne! Marinenne! *SNIFF* Don’t…Don’t leave me alone!”







Did you perhaps think I meant “knocked out” or some other such non-consequence? No, Elliott and Marienne very much die here. And they’re never seen again….or are they?



So, uh, Lang’s Gang just kind of stood there watching the sibling’s dying moments.

“I didn’t think they’d fight to the death.”

“We could have reached an agreement…We could have all lived together…”

Maya didn’t seem to consider she could have tried healing them as they lay there having a heartfelt moment.



“Their own family…A place to live….It might have been pride…I don’t know what, but they had something. And they fought for it with their lives! The same as you! You’re fighting for something that you’re willing to die for…It’s not your fault they’re dead. Two sides, both willing to die for their cause…Somebody had to win.”



“No…I was just surprised to hear such a philosophical interpretation…”

“I wasn’t trying to be philosophical…That’s just how I see it….Nothing more.”

“We’re fighting to protect something…important…”

“That’s right. We’re protecting something that’s even more important than our own lives, right?”

“Absolutely…We can’t stop here. We can’t quit. If we do, it’ll bring sadness to a lot more people than this.”



”Should we do something about their bodies?”

”Eh, kick ‘em in the lava.”

”Kicking ‘em in the lava!”

”Wait, no!”

By the way, did you notice something about the whole last segment? Something missing, maybe?

No? Well I don’t blame you, because as forgettable as Ayne is, who would notice he didn’t have a single line of dialogue here? And this will be a running theme going on.

But we won’t be going on just yet, as the chapter shall end here.

Join me next time, where we finish the last segment of Drokonia, face down Bishop Doplin and find the Sacred Burning Stone.