Part 3: Episode 1: Part 3: Asskicking The Third.

Episode 1: Part 3: Asskicking The Third.



We suddenly appear in a well furnished tent! Our saviour is half-way through walking out the tent.



(Seems like a good man though. He helped carry Wes and Dana here after all.)
I best be going now.



Who else is passing through?

WOMAN: I think he's in our makeshift drinking "house" right now. He will be the judge of tomorrow's rabbit race.

Hmm... I think I'll go meet him.
If you're curious, we can't interact with Wes or Dana. One of the women here comments such attacks as what injured them are uncommon in "the backcountry" of The Way. Whatever that means when you're talking about a land that stretches forever as people walk it their whole lives. Maybe they mean they're reaaally far behind the average wanderer? We'll see in the time to come a few settlements that have been around a while despite everything. Anyway, I leave the tent.



This 'settlement' is just a collection of four furnished tents. One tent we can't enter, one just has some sleeping kids and the last one is a bar.



We actually get some useful information from two of the patrons here.

MAN: A person must be in good condition to be able to correctly judge the contest. Especially because tight finishes aren't uncommon.
Rhue asks if there's a back up judge and the guy said it would have to be someone not participating in the contest and they'd have to be deemed trustworthy. He notes Rhue might qualify.

His friend has an even more interesting bit of information.



Well, well.

Hmmm...
(If I could somehow set myself up as a judge I could "steal" my Red Swiftfoot back.)

We go speak to the judge himself next.


Nice to meet you. I am Rhue of the...
Rhue nearly makes his naive mistake here again.


No need to be so formal!
It's good to meet you Rhue!



Drink for self doesn't make Rhue say anything but a drink for Belson...

I guess having a little won't hurt anything.



Refreshing!



Then comes a sequence where you have to choose the correct answers to progress. There's no penalty for a wrong answer, Belson just says nah and you try another option. There's no bonus for getting it all right in a certain number of attempts either, so it's just a harmless little time waster.
The wrong answers aren't worth showing either. Not really funny or interesting.

A toast? To what?



Yes, you and I both have brown hair don't we? I'll toast to that!
*gulp gulp*

Ey Rhue, did ya know dey havn't named dis settlement yet? What do you dink a good name would be?
Even Belson has three facesets just to show how drunk he is in his single appearance.



That first option gets me every time I play.


I'll drink to dat. A describtive name wit a naz ring to it.
*gulp gulp*

Ya've beerly tuched yur glaz Rhuuue. Led's hab annuder toast.

(Well, this is happening quickly... just a little more should do him in.)



Wut ah gret tuost! Ere, ere!
*gulp gulp*





And then the scene cuts to Rhue going to bed and tossing and turning in his sleep...



He dreams of a heavy storm over a forest.





Two small figures flee through the woods, the howling of wolves right behind them.





GIRL: Do you think... *huff* *huff* ...that we are going to die?

BOY: ... No. I'll protect you.

GIRL: Aren't you scared? I'm scared.

BOY: ... I... I won't let you die.

GIRL: I can't run much longer.

BOY: I know. We just need to reach the river, it isn't much farther.
There's an abrupt shift...



The boy draws something. Given what we find out later, it's probably meant to be a stick or perhaps a toy sword.

GIRL: They already killed the others! What are you doing!?

BOY: Just stay where you are...

The two... wolves(?) approach.

BOY: Stay back!!!



A third wolf appears from the north.



It lunges up at the girl. There's a red flash as she flies into the river. A poorly timed lightning flash fucked up this screen.



Serena is very quickly washed away to the north.



And while the boy is distracted, he gets attacked.



And attacked again...



Rhue wakes up to this guy.

MAN: Belson has gone missing. Someone said he looked drunk when they saw him last. No doubt that fool forgot about his duties as judge for today's race.
Do you think you could manage that duty? We know you're a trustworthy man, helping those two other wanderers like you did.


I guess he means helping carry Wes and Dana to safety. Rhue agrees to do the job and is told to go to the east side of town. Say goodbye to Wes and Dana because this is the last time we'll see them. And I can now tell you whats so odd about the bloodlife stuff. It's odd because it and mending get built up so much in that one conversation as something rare, useful and even unheard of to lots of people, but they never ever come up ever again. Between episodes it was often theorised how it would come into play since it seemed to be... there for some reason. But nope. Completely irrelevant! Just another oddity of the early episodes, when I suspect Lun only had the barest draft of the plot ready, if anything at all. There's a few other things to come that support my idea that he only solidified everything sometime during or after episode 3.



Leaving the tent, music starts playing and we see two different people moving towards each other.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZblCtcDTy84



This line launched a theory (that others and myself don't agree with) about something we don't even see until Episode 5. I think it's merely subtle foreshadowing for something in Episode 2.




You must excuse me, I have a rabbit race to win.
Our saviour gives a doubtful hmm, but lets Strata go and departs to the north himself.



Now it's my turn.





Minigame time. We just have to pick the rabbit that comes first five times.



It's dead easy, even the fifth one which tries to fool you by having the first rabbit onscreen pause and let another win. If you get all five correct, you get a prize. Zilch if even one is wrong.



Gahaha

Uh... thanks.

MAN: Aren't you going to eat it?

Um... sure... here we go...
Rhue eats and pukes AGAIN



Wow, last time we doubled our crit chance and now we increased it by 50%!! We're really making it somewhere!

MAN: Heheheh... Don't worry. Everyone loses their lunch after eating one of those suckers.
Some say that a person's body absorbs the good before it rejects the rest of the Kritar Snail.

I hope so... there's no reason to eat them otherwise
Anyway, the man asks Rhue one last time if Rhue is clear on his duty and Rhue says No problem, so that's that.

(I've got to grab the rabbit and make a run for it as soon as it crosses the finish line.)

MAN: BEGIN THE RACE!!!







You might notice the sprites are changing position, thats because in addition to the sound of cheering, they're all jumping or running around excitedly.

(Here they come... no more time to think about it..)



Our target is across the finish line before the second rabbit even appears.



The two white ones show up shamefully late.





Rhue automatically begins to abscond to the right.


Uh... I'm going to get the prize.

MAN: What do you mean? You're not supposed to have the prize!

Uh... (lands of misery... this is it...)



(It's that spikey haired bandit! I can't hesitate any longer...)



Rhue draws his sword and... I'll quote the walk-through here.

quote:

You can kill the guys by hitting the ACTION KEY and attacking them with your sword, but I'd advise against it. If you
kill the two civilian guys (the three guys with spiky blue hair don't actually count), you'll
lose a RHUE POINT for each one you kill. Rhue Points are a gauge of how much Rhue likes himself
or maybe how evil he is.

Not that you have any need to kill them. They make Rhue flash red if they bump into him and I have no idea what that does if anything. There's no HP bar for this particular event. It's easy to just walk around them too like this.


The game the tells us 'An hour later...'



"The wind is gusting through here. It's pretty erratic. I'll have to be careful to jump between gusts."



So, yeah. Another minigame! This one is easy and has no penalty for failure besides starting over. You get the stat up just for making it across.

For some reason I fail this the requisite seven times it takes for the game to ask if I'm sure I don't want to skip the minigame. That's never happened before.




I make it on the eighth attempt though.


That was quite an ordeal. Nothing I couldn't handle though.
The guy over there is just sleeping and is unharmed according to Rhue, so he moves on without bothering him.



On the next screen Rhue automatically approaches this post. Then he begins to head right. Which is south.



Huh?

MAN: Draw your sword. I want to see what you've got!


Another bandit?

MAN: I'm no bandit, I just want to have some fun! So come on, let's do this!

I'm still a beginner. I only know the bare essentials. Hardly worth your time.

MAN: Really? I'd hate to defeat someone who doesn't even realize why they were defeated.
I guess there's only one thing to do then.

Call off the challenge?

MAN: No! I'm going to give you a little lesson before we get started.


Wonderful...
Each of those periods take like half a second each to appear just to get across how unhappy Rhue is with this.

MAN: Let's talk about the 5 attributes which are involved in the Plunge.
Oddly enough the first skill is called Plunge.
Your Plunge attribute determines the base damage for your attack.
The higher it is the better.
(check roll charts in Guide Book)
Hahahah FUCK YOU

The Critical Hit% attribute reflects the odds of inflicting a critical blow to your opponent. It's pretty simple.
However, the extra damage that is added because of a critical hit is determined by your Critical Strength attribute.
When a critical hit is landed your Critical Strength works much the same as your Plunge attribute (they both use the same roll table)
Check the Wanderer's Guide Book(WGB) for more info.
Ah yes, I'll just open my copy of the mythical guidebook.

Damage Threshold is another important attribute.
Every time you take damage during a plunge there is a chance that you may receive a mild to fatal injury.
This occurs if the damage dealt to you exceeds your Damage Threshold.
For example by 1, your Critical Hit% will decrease by one. This is a 1st degree injury..
Step 1 injuries barely fucking matter. Fine.

All in all there are four different degrees of injuries.
The following is a listing of the penalties imposed by injuries...
1st Degree- CritHit% -1
2ndDegree- CritHit% -1, Plunge -1
3rd Degree- CritHit%-1, Plunge -1, DmgThrsh -2
If your Dmg. Threshold is exceeded by 20 you will recieve a 4th degree injury and will instantly be defeated.

Note that he doesn't tell us how much excess damage is needed for the 2nd and 3rd Degrees. I don't even remember, myself.

In the course of battle you may recieve many injuries of the same degree. The effects are cumulative.

Yeah, its -possible- but unlikely, to defeat an enemy/be defeated by reaching 0 PL or DT iirc.

What this means is: If you received 3 1st degree injuries, your Critical Hit% would have dropped by 3.
However. a 4th degree injury is very uncommon between equally matched opponents
HAHAHAAAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAAHAHAHAHAHAAH

In most cases you will probably meet defeat when your Hit Points(HP) have dropped to 0.



"Now that you understand things a bit better I suggest we get on with this."





Oof. Rhue does manage 5 damage with the riskattack when though.



(Lands... I hate getting beat...)
I told you I'm new at this...

MAN: Believe me, I can tell.

...



On the second pass... this, step 2 injury as well. Rhue deals 4 damage. Just over half Rhue's HP is gone in two passes. This guy's WAAAAAY better than Thelin and the Headhunter.


(This is hopeless...)



MAN: What!? We've only done two passes!
I'm a little disappointed... but it takes quite a man to swallow his pride and know when he's beat.


HAHAHA THREE UNWINNABLE PLUNGES IN A ROW! AND THIS IS THE LAST ONE OF THIS EPISODE! What a stunning and frankly confusing way to introduce the Plunge. Christ!



Surprise! It's our deuteragonist! He is a good person with a cool face.


Rhue.

Pleased to meet you.

It would be great to have someone like you along with me.
Want to join up for a while?

... All right. Two is better than one after all. Let's go.
Rhue starts to head off on the right/south path.

Hold on! It would be better to go left.

Left? Why? The Way Post says there is treacherous terrain that way. A cavern of some type.

Don't worry, I've got a glow rock to light the way.
Besides, the caverns around here often hold some very nice things.

What do you mean by "nice" things?

Come along and you'll see.

I'm not sure I like this.
Lol. Didn't take Rhue long to regret this.

Scared of the dark?

Not at all... Lead on. (Besides, this will make it harder for my pursuers to catch me.)





...

Something wrong?

... No.

Traziun walks pretty quickly into the cave, while Rhue approaches much more slowly, but still enters.




Anyway, a few things. Traziun is a very popular character. Probably THE most popular character of the series. While I prefer some other characters more, he's definitely likable and cool. I wonder if he was as influential as I suspect he may have been. But I'd have to revisit a lot of older RPGMaker games to confirm that. And I haven't really played many newer ones, which I should rectify sometime. I do know the first Legionwood game had a reference to both Rhue and Traziun in the first towns graveyard, where you can examine graves to see, rather bizarrely, the names Rhue and Traziun being used as names of months people died. The later Legionwood games are on Steam and I haven't played them.

The other thing is that these three updates all up are about 15-20 minutes of game time. The dungeon we're entering isn't too long, and then after a long scene past it, that's the end of Episode 1 and that might just all fit in the next update. Episode 1 is probably a bit less than a hour long all up.The following episodes are much longer. In that you'd consider a 2-3 hour episode being twice/thrice as long as this one much longer. They don't really start getting to a decent length until Episode 4.


the end