Part 70: The Planet's Memory
Last time, Van returned to the land of the living, and while he got away we managed to finish off another God-General. Luke went to use the Jewel to stop the Planet Storm and... what exactly happened?The Planet's Memory
: I see... so Master Van took Lorelei inside himself here...
: ”...I didn't expect to see you here, Commandant...”: ”What's going on? How come I'm seeing this?”
: ”...Am I merging with the Planet Storm because I've started to disappear?”
: ”Out of my way!”: ”Van hasn't fully recovered. And you have the Key. It may lack the Jewel, but it's still a threat. Hand it over.”
: ”Asch!”
It's a little hard to tell because of all the color swirl in the background, but Asch has the same effect around him that Luke does when Asch uses his telepathy to contact him.
: ”I'll take the Jewel and join you! We'll set Lorelei free! Just hold out until I get there!”
: “Was that a dream...? What happened to the Gate?!”
: “The fonic glyph reacted to the Jewel and appears to have lost its effect.”
: “In other words, it worked. You did it!”
: “Great! Then we can close the Radiation Gate the same way.”
: “I wonder what Van and the others are doing...”: “That's right! Asch is in danger! We have to go after him!”Mercifully, we don't have to traverse the entire dungeon again, and get teleported straight there.
: “Asch, where's Master Van?!”
: “Outside. He's watching Mohs make Ion's replica read the Score on the Seventh Fonstone.”
: “Let's go!”Skit: Van Returns
: “So Van is alive after all... and he's made Lorelei a part of himself...”: “Master Van's incredibly strong. Even without Lorelei, I was shaking at the thought of fighting him.”: “Yes... and now we'll have to fight him again.”: “Maybe if he'd listen to us, we might not have to...”: “That won't happen. His ideals are too different from ours...”
: “I wonder if we can beat him...”
: “...We have to. Right?”: “But are you really okay with that?”
: …The Score She Saw
: “This is the end of Auldrant.”
: “Hah hah hah hah hah hah! Lies! Vaaaan! Izzz this ffragment really ffrom the Seventh Fonstone?!”
: “Of course.”
: “Stop this!”
: “Stop it!”
It's hard to show because of his position, but Luke took a swing at Mohs.
: “Wwhat's ggoing onn?! Mmy mmind izz...”
: "The Score... the Score... hah hah hah hah! S-stop! Aagh, uagh?!"
: “Hyperresonance?! But I can't see how that would-”: “No, that's not it. Lorelei inside me grew restless for a moment.”
: “...The Jewel of Lorelei?!”
: “Van!”: “Commandant, your body...”: “Uaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaagh!!!”
: “Lorelei... Van was unable to contain Lorelei's power within his body...”: “Commandant! What happened to Lorelei...?!”: “There's no cause for concern. I've... suppressed it.”: “But we should return to Eldrant, for the sake of your health!”
: “Step across the sea of corpses and make your way to me... Asch... and Luke.”
: “Van, wait!”: “Mystearica... the next time we meet, I will show no mercy. Even to you.”
: “Now they know where the Key of Lorelei is. Be careful. Van will be coming in full force to steal it from you.”
: “If we release Lorelei into the fon belt, Van will lose his chance to destroy Lorelei. The Seventh Fonon, the Score, and the planet's memory will all remain.”: “Exactly. I'll come see you once you stop the Planet Storm. Don't let them take the Jewel.”
: “You think so?”
: “But... he seemed sad for some reason.”
: “I don't think he has anywhere else to go...”: “Good idea. Okay, let's get him to Daath.”Well damn, that was eventful. Okay, quick pitstop to Daath.
Skit: Mohs' Fate
: “That's some shape Mohs got himself into.”
: “Could he even understand us talking to him anymore?”
: “He's suffering from severe neural contamination. I doubt he's still sane.”: “I wonder if he'll live out the rest of his life as a monster like that...”: “More likely, all his atoms and fonons will separate soon, and he will die.”Keep this in mind, please.
: “He's so stupid... why couldn't he have taken a more open view of the Score?”: “No, Anise... in other circumstances, we might have ended up the same way. Believing strongly in something can require great sacrifice at times.”: “...Yeah, we should be careful.”...You know, I'd be up for sympathizing with Mohs given his situation but... oh yeah, he murdered Ion you idiots!
Innocent One
: “I believe Yulia City already sent a report, but this is a replica of Fon Master Ion.”: “...I thought it would be best if Daath took him in.”
: “I see. We'll take good care of him.”
: “...You aren't staying... Anise?”: “No. I have something I need to do.”: “Don't worry. Anise will be back once it's all over. I'm sure she'll come see you. And I will too, of course.”: “By the way, what should we call him? 'Ion' would be a bit...”: “Hmm...”: “Why don't you name him, Anise? He has grown attached to you, after all.”
: “Florian?”: “It means innocent one.”Ancient Ispanian grammar must be a fucking nightmare.
: “Florian, I'll come back to see you later, okay?”
: “Anise. Let's go.”Next stop, Radiation Gate. Before that though, I wonder if any of these replicas around the chapel have anything interesting to say?
Hey, fuck you buddy! I liked Zelos!
I'm mad now. I'll take it out on some enemies at the Radiation Gate.
"Resistance"
Not pictured: Anti-Aircraft fire that's apparently pinning us down.
: “I'll force our way through!”: “Right!”Not pictured: forcing our way through.
Not pictu- okay okay, the joke's dead.
: “Hang in there, Mieu.”: “That was some amazing flying, Noelle. We owe you.”: “No... I think my brother could have done it better. I'm still so new.”I don't get why Ginji gets so hyped up as an amazing pilot when his one flying experience we know of is him misreading ambient wind conditions and getting smashed into a cliffside.
: “No way! Don't say that! We never could have made it by ourselves.”: “Enemies may attack from Eldrant. If it looks dangerous, get out of here.”: “Thank you. Please, be careful.”Music: The Farthest Place (Glint)
The Radiation Gate is exponentially creepier than the Absorption Gate. It's kind of a cool concept art direction-wise. The idea that such a massive number of fonons are constantly blasting out of the gate that it's ripped up both the surrounding landscape and the gate itself. It also helps to drive home that the Planet Storm is not in any way something natural.
Also running counter to it's counterpart, the Radiation Gate is very short. It's basically just a linear path and 3 rooms.
Two Sides
: “Of course. We had planned to come here, you know.”
: “...This is where Asch helped us.”: “Yeah... seems like I can't do anything without his help.”: “Of course.”: “Huh?”: “The two of you managed to lower all of the Outer Lands together.” : “Asch might not have been able to do it by himself, either.”
: “Yeah. A single person doesn't really have much power.”
: “Colonel!”: “Both are true. There are two sides to the power people hold. That power cannot be used properly until one recognizes them both.”: “...Yeah. I know what you mean. My power is just like that...”: “You know both the horror and importance of power. Don't fear it, but don't let it go to your head.”: “...Yeah.”
Oh hey, healing save circle. I wonder if there's a boss ahead?
Impending Doom
A strange sound is heard.
: “I've got a bad feeling here. Let's hurry up and get this done.”A little further down.
: “Damn it! Is it an enemy?! We've got to get this Gate closed, fast...”
: “Hurry! Hurry! We're not going to make it in time!”
We manage to close the gate, but...
: “He still has his mind...”: “Hah hah hah hah. Aagh?! As a watcher... I will lead the worldd to pprosperity... hah hah!”
I don't!
: “Fon Master... no, Grand Maestro Mohs! Please! Return to your senses...!”
: “...Tttraitorrrr! Uohh.... I wwon't llet the world bbe dddestroyyed...”: “Let's end it. Even he doesn't deserve this!”Yes he does! Stop sympathizing with him!
: “Dieeeeeee! Haaaah hah hah hah hah!”Boss Battle: Mohs
Right, so we finally get to throw down with Mohs. As you'd expect, he's a complete asshole. His fat ass floats above the ground high enough that a lot of normal combos will miss him, and he absolutely refuses to stagger unless you overlimit in his face. Since he refuses to stagger, he'll just float there jiggling like a madman, casting high level dark artes at you over and over.
His defense, however, is crap. Wailing on him with physical attacks is the way to go here.
Seriously, he never stops casting. Right now he's surrounded by three party members who were wailing on him, and he just sits there casting.
He's weak to light (which makes no sense because he absorbed Seventh Fonons, not First. But whatever.)
The thing about Mohs though is that he's not particularly hard, given all the bullshit. See Luke here? This was the one death I had the whole battle. He just kind of sits there casting, but doesn't have any tricks of mystic artes. He can't really do much besides sit their and spam casting while you wail on him.
He had a lot of health, but finally he goes down.
The most satisfying beat down in the game. Also look at that fucking Gald. Mohs was loaded, and I think both Jade and Anise are holding items that give x1.5 and x2.0 gald respectively.
Fate of an Asshole
Uh... okay. Maybe I feel a little sorry for him now.
Yeah you should be feeling sick right now, Luke. Remember what Jade said in that earlier skit? Mohs died from his fonons separating. So that? That is what's going to happen to Luke.
: “It's horrible...”: “Mohs clung to the Score to the very end... Even after becoming a monster, it was all about the Score...” : “He truly believed that as long as we had Yulia's Score, the world would be saved. He was trying to save the world in his own way...”I'd agree, but honestly that all went out the window the moment he heard the Score clearly foretell the end of the world – not just in this update but also when Ion read it in Mt. Zaleho – and completely ignored it.
: “That was what protecting the Score meant to him...”Stop. Fucking. Sympathizing. With him!
: “Luke...”: “If Master Van completes his replica world, this will all have been for nothing. Let's prove that Mohs' way was wrong... no, let's stop Master Van and free Lorelei so we can build our own future.”: “If we're going to Eldrant, we'll have to pass through their anti-aircraft fire. Let's look into the matter at the military headquarters in Grand Chokmah.”: “Right. Good idea.”Skit: The Grand Maestro
: "Grand Maestro Mohs...please forgive me...": "Tear...": "...I'm being silly, aren't I? I know that Mohs let many die in order to fulfill the Score. But that's just the way the Order of Lorelei was until now.": "Yeah...all this stuff recently has really shaken the Order. But if Mohs had been Grand Maestro in the past, history might have seen him as an admirable clergyman.": "Yes... I can't forgive him, but it's hard to hate him, too. All of us in the Oracle Knights are equally at fault." 
Look, I get it. I really do. Mohs is supposed to be a tragic villain because he only had humanity's best interests at heart, and honestly believed that following the Score would save the world. The thing is though, he was a huge fucking dick about it, up to and including being fully okay with the murder of countless innocents in the name of some future prosperity. Moreover he had a direct hand in killing off Ion, who's been a major party member for most of the game. I realize he's still deserving of some sympathy for his fate, but it's just jarring to me that he gets so much of it. Compare to Largo, who is a tragic villain in the same sense and is - on the whole - a much better person who's more respected by the party. He basically got nothing besides "Natalia get up, we've got stuff to do."
So yeah, this whole train of sympathy for Mohs gets on my tits a little.
Next Time: We have a lot of sidequesting to catch up on. So much so, that we visit an entire city devoted to sidequests. That you can only access by completing sidequests. Did I mention sidequests?
Synopsis:
The instant I used the Jewel of Lorelei to close the Absorption Gate, I
felt myself being sucked down into the core. I don't know exactly what
happened, but I must have been caught in the flow of the Planet Storm. With
my body's fonons separating, I guess it's becoming easier for me to merge
with things like that.
I saw things in the core that I shouldn't have been able to see--like
Master Van trapping Lorelei in his body, and reviving Sync. Maybe this is the
planet's memory... Finally I saw Asch fighting with Sync, and when I told
Asch that I'd go to help him, I suddenly found myself back at the Absorption
Gate.
It turns out that the Absorption Gate had been successfully closed after
all. Okay, let's hurry back and help Asch--he's in danger, just like the
planet's memory showed me.
Just as we reached Asch, Sync ran off, apparently sensing that he was at a
disadvantage.
We asked Asch about what had happened, and he said that Mohs was just
outside the Absorption Gate, making the Ion replica read the Score, and
Master Van was watching. Okay, let's go.
The Score that the Ion replica read was exactly the same from the Planet
Score before. Mohs refused to believe it, and attacked the Ion replica. I
moved to protect him, and all of a sudden, maybe because of the Jewel of
Lorelei I was holding, Mohs' neural contamination advanced, and he flew off
into the sky.
Then--maybe it was the Jewel again--Lorelei started to awaken inside
Master Van's body, but Master Van managed to suppress it, and left for
Eldrant with Legretta. Asch then said he would come to meet us again when the
Planet Storm had been stopped, and he left as well.
The Ion replica had been left behind, so we decided to take him to Daath.
We can't go on calling the Ion replica a replica, so Anise named him
Florian. We left Florian with Maestro Tritheim, and headed for the Radiation
Gate to stop the Planet Storm.
As we approached the Radiation Gate, we were shot at by Eldrant, perhaps
to prevent us from stopping the Planet Storm. Noelle dodged the fire and
managed to land us safely at the Radiation Gate. Okay, let's head for the
bottom.
Just as I closed the Radiation Gate, Mohs flew down and attacked us. With
the advancing neural contamination, he barely seemed to have any sanity left
at all, but he still said nothing but "the Score, the Score!" It was too
horrible to watch... Since he won't last long anyway, we decided to end
things for him.
Mohs may have thought differently than we did, but in his own way he was
trying to save the world.
That made me afraid...afraid that we were, like Mohs, following the wrong
path.
To be honest, thinking about saving the world or anything like that is
probably way overdone. Even without doing anything like that, people will
probably manage somehow or other. But I want to live as long as I can. Even
more so, now that I know that I don't have much longer.
We've taken care of stopping the Planet Storm, so Eldrant has lost its
armor. Now we just need to do something about its anti-aircraft fire. At
Jade's suggestion, we decided to head for the Grand Chokmah military
headquarters.