Part 33: The Scars of Time
Because I’d rather be playing Chrono Cross right now.
CUTSCENE: Sinca Village At Last
CUTSCENE MUSIC: “Sinca Village” (Disc 2, Track 14)
At long last, the party has made it to Sinca Village, the arbitrary destination Setti chose as the place where he’d reveal everything he knew about the Knights, the Dogma Era, and the Final Awakening. …Because he couldn’t just tell us all this anywhere at any point along the road and maybe use Sinca as the proof of his story. Nope, we gotta risk constant death by trekking all the way here before the bastard will tell us anything else about what’s going on.
Setti is dumb / a colossal dick.
God, this place looks absolutely wrecked. Maybe Sinca is a suburb of Detroit?
Leonard: This is it?
Orren: I can’t believe you sound disappointed.
Setti: Yes. Sinca Village at last.
Setti: This is the place where it all began.
Caesar: Wow. Not much to look at, is it?
Yulie: We’re here. But that’s strange… It feels familiar…
Setti: Let’s make camp here. Then I can explain everything.
CUTSCENE: The History of the World (Part Two)
The party gathers around the campfire waiting for Setti to get done pissing on the charred ruins of some dead schmuck’s house or something.
Meanwhile, old Grumpypus is standing off to the side in your stereotypical aloof “I’m too cool/badass/interesting to be near this group” pose, despite being neither cool, badass, interesting, or even aloof.
Goddammit White Knight Chronicles! Stop making me proxy-insult Charles Shaughnessy! It hurts me when I have to do that.
We see Setti, standing ominously in the bushes auditioning for the role of “Killer in Every 80’s Slasher Film Ever.”
Setti: Okay. Wig check. Good. Alright. Let’s do thi—
Setti: Oh shit, I’m having a
Setti: STROKE!A big dramatic stab chord kicks in to let you know that Bad Things are happening to poor Setti.
Yeah, that’s an “Oh shit, I’m dying” face if I’ve ever seen one.
Way to go, dickhead. You waited too long to explain anything and now fate’s come to collect its due from you not dying back in Balandor.
He starts coughing and wheezing for breath like he’s Joffrey at the Purple Wedding about to die a whimpering pathetic death.
What’s more, this is in the direct line of sight of both Yulie and Orren. Hell, Yulie is LOOKING RIGHT AT HIM KEELING OVER in this shot.
Well, here’s some more empirical evidence that Yulie just doesn’t give a shit about anything anymore. Orren’s probably watching it out of the corner of his eye so as not to alert Goofus or Gallant and just snickering all the while.
Orren: See you in hell, loser. Give Belcitane my regards.
The camera shakes about and then suddenly pulls back stable and we get another ominous WOM WOM WOM sound effect.
Setti lets out a long, eerily calm breath.
He slowly, purposefully rears upright again, like nothing even happened.
Jesus, do I need to start playing the Sephiroth theme or something?
Yeah, I probably need to start playing the Sephiroth theme.
He opens his eyes again. They’re looking a little paler blue than they were a minute ago, aren’t they?
Caesar: Hey. So you ready to start explaining now?
Setti: Yes, of course. Sorry. I was just collecting my thoughts.Wow, and I thought Eldore was a shitty liar.
Setti: So, you want to know the truth. I will tell you about the Knight’s greatest secret.
CUTSCENE MUSIC: “Sinca’s Children” (Disc 2, Track 15)
Setti: Seventeen years ago, a massive earthquake struck, tearing the land asunder. The great gash it left in its wake came to be known as the Dogma Rift. Now, as it happens, many ancient artifacts were recovered from this rift… among them the armour and Ark of the White Knight.
Setti: However, amongst the artifacts, they found something far more incredible…
Caesar: Than the Knights? Like what?Brace yourselves, the Big Reveal of the game is coming up in the next image.
Setti: Living children.
Whut?
Leonard: Are you kidding? At the bottom of a giant hole in the ground?
Setti: It was a miracle. Perhaps some frighteningly powerful magic had locked time or frozen their bodies. In any case, it was as if time had stood still for them. The palace at the bottom of the Dogma Rift stood as clean and new as the day it had been built.Also, one curious thing to mention: the insignia in the lower right of the image, that seven-pronged fork that sort of resembles deer antlers—that’s the Farian insignia, or at least something incredibly close to it. I don’t know why it’s there, I have a theory, but it’s more likely a case of me putting way to much thought into things again.
It’s not said one way or the other if the Dogma Rift temple is Yshrenian or Athwani. My guess is it’s actually an Athwani temple because Yshrenian Dogma Era architecture doesn’t look anything like this and it’s in the wrong place geographically. The Dogma Era political maps I’ve seen from the PSP prequel have Yshrenia holding the eastern half of the world (ie: where Balandor, Nordia, Albana, Greede and Frass Chasm are today), while Athwan is up the north west corner of the map, which we see in game 2 is a vast stretch of uninhabited frozen wasteland now.
What’s more, Faria, or a nationstate that eventually became the Archduchy of Faria, was around during the Dogma Era and was allied with Athwan, most likely as a vassal state to Mureas’s Happy Fun Time Global Domination Partytown in Athwan proper. And this place is right on the Farian border, so maybe there actually is a reason for there to be Farian iconography all over the temple and—I’m sorry my brain is trying to escape my skull by crashing through my forehead.
Setti: Four infants were found inside, along with one youth. They were raised right here in Sinca Village. Leonard: A youth? Setti: I just said that.
Setti: Yes. With the babies, there was a young boy, five years of age.Oh you’re not even trying to be subtle anymore!
Setti: When the people of Sinca Village found the children, they chose to look after them themselves, believing they were a blessing, a gift from the gods. Caesar: Hmm. I think I see where this is going.
Setti: But those children represented a terrible secret. Caesar: They were Pactmakers of the Knights, right?I love how you can see the shadow-outline of an Incorruptus in, hell, let’s call it what it is, Kid Setti’s eyes.
Setti: Yes. Indeed, they were the five who gave their souls to the Knights in the Dogma Wars.
Setti: When the Sinca Village headman learned the truth, he knew the five children could not be allowed to stay together for long.
Setti: So, he set out to find foster parents for each of them.
Caesar: Wait! Are you saying that the headman was— Setti: Medius.
Setti: Yes, it was my father.
Caesar: Which means, me and Leonard… and Kara—!
Caesar: We’re the babies that were found down in those ruins? Setti: That is correct.Which means, we can now officially add “The Entire Population of Sinca Village” to the People Who Died Because Leonard Showed Up Somewhere kill count. It’s a Late April Un-Miracle!
Caesar: That’s some coincidence for all of us to meet.
Setti: It was no coincidence.
Setti: All of you have been brought together deliberately.
Setti: Someone wanted it that way. Orren: I’ll see your “all of you” and I’ll raise you a “what about me, huh?” Setti: Wait—who are you again? Orren: Okay, fuck this. I’m go see if one of these burnt down houses has any booze laying around inside still. The things you’ve been saying recently have made my brain hurt… more than unusual.
Leonard: Deliberately?
Leonard: No way. Me going into the castle, finding the vault, seeing the Knight…
Leonard: That was all just a fluke!
Setti: Do you really think so? What if someone had set it up to happen?OH MY GOD! It was Cisna after all! That manipulative, evil bitch! SHE PLANNED THIS WHOLE THING AND HAS BEEN WORKING EVERYONE OVER FROM HER “PRISON CELL”! She’s not being “held captive,” it’s just a ruse pulled on the audience. She’s the puppet master pulling the strings. She’s the power behind Grazel!
I’ve been screaming it from day one and it’s finally happening!
Setti: Someone has led you to where you are now.
Setti: Someone wants the power of the Knights to come together.
Setti: Someone has been controlling you…
Setti: This entire time!
See, I told you it was Cisna.
LOL, no it was actually Eldore.
Leonard: No! It can’t be!
Eldore: Wait. What were we talking about? I fell asleep somewhere around “seventeen years ago…”
Caesar: It was you, Eldore. Wasn’t it?
IT’S ME 
Caesar: And the King of Balandor? Was that you too?
Caesar’s about to stomp a mudhole in the old man’s ass and walk it dry.
Eldore: Urgh…
Setti: You’re one of the Ancients, aren’t you?Wait. WHAT?!
Setti: Somehow you managed to cheat time, and travel to this age.
Setti: Am I right?
Eldore: It is as you say…
Eldore: I come from the era of the Dogma Wars.
Setti: Humph. I knew it. Caesar: That explains a lot. No wonder you could escape my dragonsight.
Eldore: Still, I was not the one who killed the King of Balandor.So the mystery of Dragias the First persists.
Caesar: No more of your lies, old man!
Leonard’s single brain cell has finally processed the revelation and he’s stepped up to involve himself in the matter. Maybe he’ll finally do something this chapter other than thoughtlessly parrot back things Setti has said to him.
Leonard: Eldore… I trusted you. Leonard: [INEFFECTUAL PANTYWAIST MOAN]
Leonard: Grrr!
Oh, I’m just floored by your badassery there kid. Then again, maybe Leonard has finally found a fair match for him: a sexagenarian with chronic stamina problems and possible early-onset Alzheimer’s, given how he constantly forgets to mention crucial details when he has inside knowledge of them to his fellow party members. Eldore is probably the only member of the cast outside of maybe Raus that’s not capable of outwitting Leonard.
Eldore looks around for a way out, and then sighs in defeat.
Eldore: Uuuuuuhhh…
Eldore: Peace out, bitches.
Eldore: Mmmmrah!
SCHWING!
…That’s literally the sound effect the game uses. Check the video. I’m not making it up.
Okay, I was wrong. We do see Eldore pull off a few actual spells between now and the end of the game.
Our
Great, now we’ve lost TWO party members heading into the final dungeon. Granted, I never really used Kara or Eldore all that much, and they don’t have (useable) Incorrupti to help out anyway, so it’s not THAT big of a loss. But it’s just the principle of the matter. I’m OCD as fuck, and it bugs the hell out of me to have missing party members.
I spent the last four hours of Xenogears with my left eye randomly twitching because the game jacked Elly on me at the last minute…
Caesar: He got away. Orren: [SLOW CLAPPING SOUND] Yulie: Eldore… No…
Leonard: Why would he do this?!
Leonard: [INEFFECTUAL PANTYWAIST MOAN]
Setti: Heh.Nice rapist-smile there, Crispin. Even Albedo is going, “dude, tone it the fuck down.”
Setti: When all the Knights come together, it is said that the Final Awakening will being.
Everyone turns around, kind of weirded out that Setti would just keep expositing like the last two minutes just didn’t even happen.
Setti: And with it, the power to rule the entire world. He must know that as well as anyone.
Leonard: So Eldore was trying to conquer the world?
Cisna: Hey! Get in line, asshole! I saw it first.HOW THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING THAT?!
Leonard: I bet him and Grazel, they were working together!
Setti: Not nessecarily.
Setti: It could be that each of them had their own separate agenda.
Caesar: Urgh. This is getting complicated.
Caesar: So, what’s the plan now?
Setti: We go to the Dogma Rift. Leonard: The hole that opened up seventeen years ago?Why would you ask such a stupid and obvious question?
Setti stands up, probably to smack Leonard upside the head for being a moron.
Setti: Yes. One Knight still remains inside.
Setti: They say it is the greatest and most powerful Knight of them all.
Caesar: I see.
Setti: Adolmaea, ruler of daylight. Known in the Dogma Age as the “Sun King.” No matter what else happens, we mustn’t allow Grazel to get his hands on it. Caesar: But even if he did find it… there’s nothing he can do without the Pactmaker, right?
Setti: …No. He himself will be able to use the power of that Knight.
Leonard: What?! Setti: Grazel is the chosen Pactmaker of the Sun King. He was the five-year-old boy who was discovered in the ruins.
Leonard: Grazel, a Pactmaker? Caesar: He gets his hands on that power, we’ll be in big trouble.
Setti: Then let us hurry. We must head west, to the Dogma Rift.
Setti: In it lie the greatest ruins of the Dogma Age.Except for Redhorn Isle Fortress and The Act of God and The Garmatha, and Vellgander and Guido’s Hollow. But, you know, you’re close… kind of.
Caesar: Alright! Ready for this?
Leonard: Yeah.
Yulie: Eldore… Orren: Let it go, Yulie. Just let it go.Yeah, don’t make me start another counter.
Orren: Seriously, screw the old fart.
Orren: Wait, where the hell’s my fur collar gone?
Once again some late-chapter gameplay. You can see the Dogma Rift Temple on the other side of the valley just outside of Sinca, which was a nice touch I didn’t pick up on the first time I played through this game.
There’s nothing more to Sicna than just the town itself, which is barely half the size of Parma, and then the path up from the Van Haven Waste on one side and the path down to the Dogma Rift on the other.
For this part of the game only, there’s a merchant here on the hillside, Johann. He’s essentially the last shop you will have available to you before you head down into the Rift for the end run of the game. Johann sells essentially the best equipment you can buy in game 1, or at the very least most of it.
Though by this point, if you’ve been doing any of the online quests and grinding your Guild Rank and Binding Ranks like the soulless slave to this game you are, you should be able to bind better weapons and armour than what’s for sale here… assuming you’ve farmed enough of the right materials and have met the 50 bajillion other interlocking requirements needed to create and then equip the game’ elusive online goodies.
Okay, let’s get this over with.
Next stop: the beginning of the end.
We’re approaching the light at the end of the tunnel that is White Knight Chronicles, wherein that light is a brief glimpse of a beautiful world beyond this game before it plunges right back into the tunnel for White Knight Chronicles II.
I should have been celebrating. The old fart was out of my hair at long last, and we had a vague idea about what this Final Awakening really was now. All we had to do was get to the ruins before Grazel did, and smash the crap out of the Sun King with Talion before he claimed it…
All we had to do…
SINCA VILLAGE
