Suikoden Part #12 - Elf Troubles

Part 12: Elf Troubles

Back on the first floor of our HQ, it appears Varkas and Sydonia have shown up.

Varkas: We heard some rumors about you, so we figured it would be a good chance to return the favor we owe you. We'd like to join the Liberation Army.

Heh.

Varkas: Oh, by the way, I'd like to say hi to Lady Odessa.

Gremio: O-Odessa's...

Someone's gonna spill the beans about this soon, you know it.

Mathiu: Master Miles is our leader while she is away.

Varkas: North? Hmm? Oh well... in any case, congratulations, Miles. Leader, eh? Very impressive.

Mathiu: Commander Miles, how about holding a banquet to welcome Lepant, Varkas, and Sydonia, and all our new friends?

fuck yeah, I'm hungry

Lepant: This is a fine crew, Commander Miles. I'm glad I came.

Tai Ho: Miles, the moon is beautiful tonight.

Sydonia: Heh.

Varkas: Yo, Master Miles! Let's crush those Imperials right away.

Someone's drunk.

Cleo: Pahn! Can't you be more quiet while you eat?

Mathiu: I myself prefer to drink quietly.

well this was all very enlightening, let's go outside

JUST THEN, AN ASSASSIN

This dude's easy, there's no way you can die here.

unfortunately, Deadly Fingertips does not work here.

After about 170 HP, the assassin flees.

Ha ha! The Liberation Army indeed. Do you really think you can defeat the Imperial forces? Fools.

Oh, so that bitch is the reason this happened. Figures.

Afterward, both Pahn and Gremio fight over who should protect me. How cute.

After some sleep, Gremio strolls over like usual to talk to us about the weather. Thanks.

What a fucking pig. Wait... Boar Rune... constantly eating... HA I GET IT

Let's explore the bath while we're free to do so.

The bath is separated, in usual Japanese/Western fashion, by sexes. This is how you'd know Gremio is a dude. Antiques you collect in the game can be placed here, and we (may) explore what they do for the bath area. Every Suikoden game tends to have something like this in the main headquarters.

Let's talk about our new battle characters. We already know what Pahn and Luc are like, but we have a few more. Eileen is one of the better mages in the game, getting tons of MP and having a great Magic stat. She suffers from having low HP, however. Her and Lepant have a Unite attack, as well.

Lepant is what you'd call an incredibly average fighter. He's solid, but not great, and he suffers from being slow but without the massive PWR stat Viktor has.

Krin is another stupendously terrible character. He makes up for this by being the second-fastest, if not the fastest, character in the game. He also comes with an infinite-use Escape talisman unique to him and one other character. Now you know why they gave Krin such incredible Speed.

Juppo is also very, very terrible. His Trick Rune is incredibly gimmicky and most of the time does jack shit to the enemy. We'll be using him now, actually, as we need him to acquire Meg.

Sydonia is pretty fast, but he is ridiculously average as well. He might get use in this LP, as there are only so many truly terrible characters and a wide swath of average ones. He can participate in a very, very strong Unite with Varkas, however.

Varkas is a meaty tank, akin to Viktor but not quite as great. He's a solid fighter, by far, so we'll never use him.

Maas opens up his blacksmith shop on the first floor, and Rock's vault is there as well.

Here we can drop items from our current character's inventory, withdraw from the vault, as well as take off any items from any battle character we have recruited (the “Detach” option).

Not to spoil anything, but Juppo's final tier of weapon is the Metal Gear.

Yes.

Our castle is expanding quite a bit, though this rock bridge is always here. We now have a reason to go over it, though.

Lepant, Eileen, and Giovanni take up residence in the house across the way, but they're not interesting so let's leave the HQ.

Ruh roh

Gremio: You're soaking wet. Don't tell me you swam all the way here. Let's take you inside.

Mathiu: There must be some reason.

Kirkis: I heard through the wind... and came... please tell me this is the Liberation Army...

Gremio: Yes, this is the headquarters of the Liberation Army, Odessa Castle.

Kirkis: Thank god. I have a request. I must speak to your leader, Odessa.

Mathiu: You cannot see Odessa right now. Our present leader is Commander Miles.

Kirkis: Please. Please lend us the Liberation Army's power.

I don't like the sound of genocide, no sir.

Mathiu: Even with the old Liberation Army's survivors and Varkas' bandits, we only amount to a few hundred men. It's not a good idea to mobilize our forces just yet.

Gremio: But that means the elves will die.

Mathiu: Of course, we can't allow that to happen. Our only strength is the hope people see in us. That we must never betray. Therefore, I suggest above all else, a small reconnaissance team be sent out to gather intelligence. Our next step can wait.

Kirkis, therefore, shoves his way into our party.

For reasons that will be explained much later, I'm taking Pahn. If I don't, I somehow find a way to lose him later on, so I'm doing that now despite the fact that I should only be taking terrible characters.

Krin will round out our party, which currently has no good Rune users since Cleo has stopped forcing her way in. This will be... fun.

Kirkis is actually not too bad. He gets filed under a long-range magician but his magic stat isn't particularly impressive.

SAUSAGE FEST, MY FAVORITE KIND

Meg: Hee hee, I was hoping to learn some tricks from you. I didn't know you were a member of the Liberation Army. I'll join too!

Meg has a Unite with Juppo that is just as gimmicky as his own personal Rune, and I've never used her.

For some reason the people get all excited that Kirkis in our party back in Forest Village.

by the way there is nothing in the upstairs room of the item shop in Forest Village.

The only way to get through the Great Forest is having an elf in your party, and this holds true for the whole game in case you felt the need to come back here later.

One thing that will help this party temporarily is having Gremio and Pahn's Unite, which makes up for the complete lack of anything else.

Juppo is slow as fucking shit, by the way.

Fuck do I hate the Trick Rune.

Our castle has expanded! This is only viewable by boat. I only came back here to exchange Camille's Water Rune and put it on Kirkis.

We now have FIVE floors. Awesome. Many characters move upstairs when the castle expands. Luc and Mathiu, for example, are now on the third floor instead of the second. Rock, the bath, and Maas have also moved to the second floor while all the shops remain on the first.

Let's fuck up the denizens of the forest.

Here we bumble into constantly ditzy magician Viki.

Viki: Say, where are we? The Empire? Which one? My goodness, almost the other side. My name's Viki. I'm a poor soul with nowhere to go. Won't you protect me?

Saying no here doesn't do anything, you kind of NEED her service. Viki has a Blinking Rune, which is not a True Rune, but in her hands there's a possibility that the writers were thinking about making it such and then scrapped the idea. The mystery behind Viki only grows larger as the series goes on.

Then I remembered I can go get Gaspar now that I have a level 2 castle. He'll join simply if you win 5,000 bits from him.

And he gets snake eyes on the first roll, so I get 15,000 bits from him.

Gaspar opens up the ability to make infinite bits, which I will exploit right now, because it makes this LP much easier.

He sets up on the first floor, and remains there the whole game.

The best part about Gaspar's Chinchirorin is that it tends to sway in your favor, and the bet can climb to obscene amounts provided you keep winning.

He also begs you to keep putting all your winnings up front, so it just climbs and climbs...

and climbs

UNTIL IT'S JUST CRAZY

and then it's not even necessary, Gaspar fucked up so much that I did this without even trying.

Viki allows us to teleport anywhere we've previously been to. So let's get through the forest finally, even though I realized I skipped another character recruit who I will get later.

Holly Boys are weaksauce enemies that prefer to run past you rather than attack.

Strange, that... we have been slaughtering their brethren en masse throughout the forest, though.

Meet Kuromimi, the most adorable kobold ever. Kirkis tells us maybe the elves know why the kobolds are sick, and that the Village of the Elves is east of here.