Part 3: ARC I: Part 3: War Heroes.

ARC I: Part 3: War Heroes.


Let's do it!!!!!!!!!

....


He'll show, don't worry.

Maybe we're giving him too much credit. After all, how would he find out some shopkeeper's daughter is having a party?

He has his ways. I think he can smell young blood.
There's a long pause.

Hmm, maybe I was giving him too much cred--





Gah.... I'm not sure. Some kind of blind spell, probably.
Where are you, Andau?! Get out here and fight us face to face!





Come on!


They jump down and Shroud uses his wind magic to blow open the door.



Right! This better work.....
There's the sound of glass vials... flasks... bottles... whatever, smashing on Andau and he whirls around.



Shit! Looks like we haven't quite perfected that holy spring yet.
What kind of superhero swears in front of little girls?

TORTIA: Help us please!

Forget it! We don't need it to deal with him!!





Andau's mastered the art of turning into a bat and flying out windows.

We gotta find him! Let's get outta here!

BLONDE GIRL: Can we come out?

Sure, he won't be back. We'll take care of him.

You bet he's not coming back.
Our heroic duo go to leave but...


Excuse me sir, we've got a vampire to catch.
Shroud, if this was modern day Earth, you wouldn't believe how bad a look 'costumed, masked man fleeing a little girls birthday slumber party' is.

So move it!
... and I struggle to imagine what the media would make of the skeleton and the vampire story.





lol. That name's some 'Yakuza With Honor And Humanity' shit.

TORTIA: Daddy... who were those guys?

I don't know... I don't know who the heck they even are. But they seem familiar.

...








In the last two screenshots you can just see Andau in bat form flying towards the steeple.



I saw it. Let's go!
Stoic points out Shroud must be out of breath after running all the way from the Port so the nearby fairy should be spoken to for help.



The fairy doesn't have clearance to talk about boss fights though.

Let's approach the church then. This area actually has no music for the time being. We get the sound of of a strong wind, and there's a nice constant fall of leaves being blown around.




That's because it's not. This is definitely Gallian.

Oh yeah... You always were better with history than me. This has something to do with the Gallia-Relle wars, right?

Indeed. Before your time.
About fifty years ago, Gallia finally got arrogant enough to try and sack the elven kingdom for good.
The first attack demolished the capitol city, Rellenia. After that all the elves could do was mount smaller attacks, and try to take the place back.

... And that must have provoked Gallia to send more troops down here.

Yep. This church was probably built so soldiers could worship while they were stationed here.

So now I'd say it makes for a good hideout for our slippery friend.

Hmmph, I say we burn this place soon as we're done with Andau.
The main entry is locked, so...



Didn't work.

It must be protected by dark magic. We'll have to find a different way in.



Thankfully, there's an open mausoleum.



It's dead silent in here.





There's six rooms like this.







This room's also devoid of anything.


"There seems to be some kind of barrier on this door."

This isn't Andau's doing. Whoever it is does not want to see us continue.

Then we better find the source. If the barrier is this strong they can't be far.
A knocking sound beguns to echo throughout the mausoleum.

You hear that?

Sounds like we might not be alone down here.

That noise seemed to come from upstairs. If we follow it we may find our source.

I think it wants to be found.
And so I head upstairs looking for the source.





"Hmm... I wonder what it all means."


Then the dungeon theme kicks in which is labelled as Mausoleum by Michiru Yamane but I couldn't find a matching song by her anywhere.



Ah hell, the encounter bar.


There's also a lot of ghosts wandering around now.



My mask may be silly, but at least I'm not wandering around in a smelly old tomb.

GHOST: What? Tomb? This is a church!

It was... Like fifty years ago.

GHOST: What are you, some kind of heretic? I'll take care of you now!


So yeah, there's five ghosts in particular that we have to fight. They can take a few turns of punishment too, so they're not complete push overs.



Also, the swordsmen we fight as random encounters are only a little less durable than the lancers and have a holy attack they're smart enough to target Stoic with. I had it insta-KO him once too so it must have a low chance of that.


YES IT SURE DOES SEEM STRANGE THAT A PEACE LOVING NATION IS ALWAYS AT WAR


Ahhh. Lysander. I'm going to have to write words about him eventually. He's not even in this game. Long dead. But, see, the Galia-Relle war was the focus of Clean Slate, a RPGMaker 2k game that Volrath finished when he was a teenager but never released. He did do a commentary on it in a VLP though. It's really... not great.



Oh really? What makes you say that?

GHOST: You know! How they made him Lord and General so young, and a bunch of the other nobles did nothing but whine? I'd be mad too, but it's not worth this!
It's fine if you want to prove yoruself, but why get people killed?

Why indeed...


You might expect a game by a teenager to make someone like Lysander a comically evil at all times character, but he did some some nuance to him.
The usual loving husband and father kind of deal... up until one of his own allies, the necromancer Ariel, (iirc) murdered his wife because she wanted him for herself.
At the end, defeated by the efforts of many, but especially Arius Sherron, who we'll also be hearing about a fair bit, he admitted his vision of Arcadius' will might well be wrong.

I might make posts going over the events of that game a bit more as we go on.

Anyway, a lancer says he as a report for Lysander.


GHOST: Lies! Lies! Die, foul beast!
We fight another lancer and win.



It should be. He was once the most dangerous human in the world!

No kidding? I wish I could have had a chance to learn things like that...
Moving on from Shrouds angst over his lack of education...



Minion? I'm nobody's minion, and you better remember that!

GHOST: What! How dare you set foot in this sacred place!
This is the lead in for the third lancer fight, so we crush him.



"I was just on patrol one day, and four of them jumped me. I wonder how the occupation is going..."




... and even the soldiers are victims of bigotry in their own way, whether they realise it or not.





Though, some will never, ever deserve your sympathy or even pity.

You don't even know what you're talking about! You're not even worth talking to, you deluded fool!

GHOST: Arrgh! You filthy elf-lover! Die!!
And this is the fourth lancer...



"I thought I was headed for great things... but this life isn't so bad, I suppose.
It's peaceful, and I never realized how beautiful the elven land really was..."
...



GHOST: I was buried here...

Gallians actually buried you here? That can't be...

GHOST: Only one knew that it was me under the dirt... the one I fell in love with.

Whoa!

... I'm shocked and amazed.

GHOST: I know how crazy it must sound... we were all brought up to see the Gallians as our enemies... and vice versa.
My father was in the army that led our last attack on Gallia's walls. All we managed to accomplish was to turn that monster Lysander into some kind of hero!
They made him a general, and he took revenge on us. Then I met Trelok.

What do you mean met? Did you just walk into a Gallian bar and pick him up or something?

GHOST: He found my hiding spot after I fled from Rellenia... our eyes locked and he couldn't bear to kill me.
We kept seeing each other.
We both knew it was wrong, but at the same time we couldn't fight it.

Nobody ever caught you?

GHOST: One night we were to meet... and I saw him walking towards where I was hiding... but another officer came out and talked to him.
I don't know what they were talking about, but he couldn't look in my direction or I might have been given way. So they talked and before I knew it, other soldiers had found me. That was how it ended.

That's horrible...

It was pretty common in those days. They killed elves on sight, it didn't matter if they were dangerous or not, or how old they were.

GHOST: He buried me here... It was a very big risk. If they knew what he was doing, he might have been killed as well. Nobody ever suspected it, though.
Many of the others aren't aware that they're dead... but I'm all too sure. I only hope somehow I could see Trelok again...

...





Shroud learns a magic attack and Stoic, a hit all attack.



The random encounters also feature these guys who are tanks. These fights take an annoying bit of time.







Bring it on!
This is the last lancer...





Sorry to disturb you... but we're in pursuit of a dangerous vampire. If we don't stop him, he'll continue to make victims out of young girls!

Young human girls.

????: I see... and who are you?

I'm called Shroud.

And I am Stoic.

????: I am Gren. To your left is Sloger and to your right is Sophie.

GREN: We were once members of an elite squad of lancers.

SOPHIE: We were specially trained in a way few other Gallian soldiers were. We labored for years to master our lances and fought in many battles for Gallia.

SLOGER: The Elven Wars were our first real mission. We did well.... at first.

This is all very interesting, but we really must hurry. Will you please open up the path to the church?

GREN: We have made it our mission to protect this church. I'm afraid that I can't allow you to go inside and do battle. It would dishonor Arcadius.

A vampire in there isn't a dishonor to him?

SOPHIE: As long as he doesn't damage the place, he does no harm.

Maybe no harm to the church, but as long as he's loose, he's a threat to everyone in Port Arianna!

SLOGER: Port Arianna? Where is that?

The same place it has always been.

GREN: Wait... do you mean Port Vincent?!

Oh yeah... I think it was once called that.

SLOGER: What?! They renamed our city to honor that miserable elven wench!?

SOPHIE: Forgive him... but Queen Arianna was actually the one who slew all of us.

She took on all of you?!

She was indeed mighty.

GREN: The world moves on, I suppose.

SLOGER: I'm glad I didn't live to see that.

SOPHIE: We can not abandon our mission.

GREN: Perhaps if you truly wish to save your people in Port... Port Ari... Arianna... you can prove it.
We have not had a chance to test our skills for years and years. Prove yourself in combat against us, and perhaps we will let you pass.

We accept...

SOPHIE: Have at you!


Sloger, in the middle, is a tank. You want to take down Sophie since she's fast but fragile. One of them can also lower our accuracy. Grens a bit of a middle ground, so you're best off taking him out second.
Guess what I did, like an idiot? Sloger, Sophie, Gren. I used up all my SP that way and had to start using potions. My only excuse is uhhh.... that I was smart enough to do it the best way every other time I've played this!



I like to think so.

SOPHIE: Shall we let them pass, Gren?

GREN: We fulfilled our mission. They can pass, although I hope they don't make a mess of the place.

So much for burning...

GREN: What?!

Oh no! He was... he was just talking before about how he wanted to camp out here. You know, sit by the fire, have a drink, tell stories.

SLOGER: Huh?

We won't trash the place, but we shouldn't delay any longer.

GREN: I understand... Farewell, then.

SLOGER: Fight well.

SOPHIE: May Arcadius watch over you.


And we move on to the second half of the dungeon... next update.


the end