As a minor bit of advice, I'd say training Gilliam's axe rank is one of the more rewarding things to do with him. Gilliam's biggest problem, post-promo, is he can't double much that isn't also super slow, and... well, I'd rather not say spoilers, but there's a big workaround for an axe-user with middling speed. Your Gilliam's actually super blessed, Speed-wise; normally he'd have 8 Speed at this level.
Amelia is one of those characters where I absolutely wouldn't recommend her to someone struggling with the game, but I would absolutely recommend her to someone who thinks it's really funny to promote the tiny little girl into a General. That may be almost objectively the worst thing to do with her, but it's still a thing a lot of folks do for a reason.
Personally, I've always been a bit lukewarm on the FE8 trainees as units. I get that the idea of them was that they had bad starts but could get really good thanks to their extra ten levels and fast XP gain, but then they also gave the trainees kinda-bad growths, so they're not actually that much stronger than other people in their classline in any stat except Luck. Like, your average 20/1 Franz versus your average 10/20/1 Amelia has Franz actually ahead in some stats, and Amelia's biggest leads be in stats like Luck and Resistance, and I find that kind of sad. I think if you have that kind of high-investment character, it's a lot more fun to go all-out with them--give them a custom class, or growths that let them cap every stat, or a skill, or a crazy personal weapon. Something like FE4 Leif or FE5 Mareeta or Sara, that's a lot more interesting than an extra ten points in Luck. You look at this statline, and it turns your head a lot harder than "I can be a bit better than your other two paladins!"
Character-wise, they're good fun, though. Very endearing, and who doesn't love those animations?
This map is one of the ones I was thinking of when I said "sometimes you have to break glass and use Seth." I was playing on normal and it was utter fucking agony. Even with a ludicrously strong pirate Ross who could easily go down and beat up those pirates. Difficult literally doubles the amount of them what the fuck? Worst part was I did it all perfectly, had the leeway to visit the villages and get all the side objective and then just… forgot. So I missed out on the stat boosters.
Oh normal at least I found that after clearing out the sniper Tana can beat up some soldiers and her growths popped off enough in feeding her one or two levels for me that she immediately started contributing. She was pretty fucking good the whole run tbh. The pegasus knights in sacred stones have really good defence bases in a game where half your units start with 3 whole fucking defence haha. If you get one or two lucky defence procs they can take more than you'd expect.
With Amelia I sent her into the tower and let her solo the entire first floor and I think she was just kinda blessed lmao. It was a real zero to hero moment to watch her need to be babied kills and then just striding up to the entombed and murdering the fuck out of it. She continued on to be a god unit for the entire mid game with absolutely absurd dodge tanking on top of solid defence (including her defence boost from the Franz support. She was fucking scary.
Me, originally planning to make some comments about the previous updates since I've been making comments about each one until I couldn't for various reasons: sees this:
Ahem. Excuse me. I let my squee get out of hand... ... wait what was I doing again? Ah, whatever, it's probably not important. We'll get back to this in a bit, first off...
Remember I said I had a suggestion for grinding supports? Well, as you might guess now that the Tower of Valni is open and the world map properly unlocked, you can probably just play the chapters without making everyone stay side-by-side each other so that whenever a new character comes and you wanna see their support, you can try them out in the Tower, which you can go in and out of the first floor again and again iirc, and decide which supports you wanna lock in to by the end. Of course, the downside is you have to press End Turn with nothing/litte to do more often than just building supports while you're playing through the chapters, but again, it's either that, or possibly seeing a new character joining and going "danggit i wish i waited for you but im stuck with the first one i picked". Idk if this is actually efficient, but it is just a suggestion.
As for the chapter itself... First, rejoice! It may be a brief moment, but we have seen the light that is L'Arachel yet again! It's always a delight whenever she pops up. Next... This map is the main reason why I use Ross and promote him ASAP, which McFluffles already mentioned. I send down him, as a Pirate, to deal with the pirates, since I usually like training Tana up and thus Vanessa is usually not trained up for this map, so at this point he's way more bulkier than both flyers. Especially since the land side is difficult to deal with fast for me. But after my first playthrough, I still try to be fast not only because of the houses, but because of Amelia. I know she's not really good, as others have said, but one, I didn't know that for most of my playtroughs, and two, even when I did, I'm still very fond of her, largely because I like her more than Ross as a character as opposed to mainly liking to use Ross for gameplay reasons. She is the other cavalier I use alongside Seth whenever I'm in the mood to have her as a cav, and when I'm not, she's pretty much the only Knight/General I use in the game, and also why I haven't really used Gilliam (who, by the way, I'm happy to see be used for this playthrough for that reason). Meanwhile...I'll admit, Tana isn't a favorite character-wise for me (I don't think her bad or anything, I just like other pegasus knights more than her), but I like her more than Vanessa, so I picked her as my pegasus knight once she popped up in my first playthrough, and since then Tana has been a staple pegasus knight for me...though I would admittedly have her promote to Wyvern Knight because the wyvern rider lines are my favorite class "families", because dragons. And I love me my dragons. Ahem, but I digress. I do my best to rush through the left side to get as close to Amelia before she pops up as possible, while I send Ross down through the sea on the right for the house and, iirc, the Ocean's Seal.
Now back to Natasha and Joshua...okay, admittedly, there isn't that much to say. It's just their C support. But I can't help but be very excited and happy at seeing you doing their support. As I've said, I really like their support, and C rank was enough for me to decide to see where it goes. I found it so funny that Natasha, and you, were a bit sus of Joshua was buttering her up...only to find out he was trying to get her to smile. And I just...really liked that as a kid, and I still like it now. Though speaking of supports that I'm happy you saw: Colm and Moulder! Oh my gosh. I never get them to A, because of Neimi, but I still like to think the events in his support with Moulder still happen because I like what happens at A. It's nice to see, though I won't say more than that.
Amelia's growths are weighted slightly more towards speed than they are defense (40% VS 30%), so in comparison to Gilliam if you do decide to take her the Knight->General route she usually ends up as your speedier but less tanky General. Not a niche I find particularly useful in Sacred Stones personally compared to "haha horse movement go brrr", but it's still an option.
As for ludicrously high movement... well, all movement stats are entirely tied to your class in Sacred Stones, so the only way she's going to have more than the usual 5 movement as a General is if you give her some swiftsoles, which are an extremely rare stat booster in most FE games that give +2 movement. Generally, the best advice is to slap that on someone like a dancer to help them keep up with the party or someone who already has 8 base movement like a Paladin or promoted flier for the even bigger utility of All The Movement, but tbh I don't see any issue with bringing a General up to more reasonable movement. Really, one of the biggest issues that Knights and Generals run into in the GBA games is all that bulk doesn't matter much if they can't keep up with the rest of your party due to have -1 movement compared to standard foot units let alone mounted ones, so upping it to 7 does a lot to even the playing field. I even did exactly that in a Romhack I've been playing recently (which also gives Generals access to ALL physical weapon types so Wren is now scooting around the battlefield blasting everything in sight with triangle advantage killer weapons), and haven't particularly regretted it.
Oh Amelia. I love her to bits, and she's the cutest little murder machine on the continent, but she's absolutely hot garbage. It says something that usually drafts, which don't allow map grinding or tower grinding, make an exception for Amelia to grind her up to 10/1 as soon as she's recruited if you pick her. Still though, I couldn't help but stick with her and make her a general in my playthroughs. I mean, you get a giant armored fantasy-mecha! In pastel pink! What more is there to have??
And yeah, now that the tower is unlocked, you can see one of the main reasons FE8 is considered one of the easiest entries. You can grind anyone you want up in there for basically free, and enemies occasionally drop money so they even pay for their own demise.
Though fun fact, the boss of the first floor of the tower is an entombed who doesn't move, and when killed drops a near-guarunteed 100 XP to the killer. I'm fairly certain that one guy in particular is the reason future FE games use entombed as the name of their XP piñata enemies in the various DLC packs.
I love how this is now the third contender, after red and orange, for Amelias supposed color scheme.
Clearly @Vocalist needs to load an old save and make her part of the team so she can then eventually provide the definite answer to this vital question
I love how this is now the third contender, after red and orange, for Amelias supposed color scheme.
Clearly @Vocalist needs to load an old save and make her part of the team so she can then eventually provide the definite answer to this vital question
The answer is that Amelia kind of changes colors depending on what class she's in and how you look at her. Her Knight color scheme, due to the lighting, looks like reddish-pink.
Meanwhile, her Cavalier palette, with less lighting, looks closer to vermilion.
Her General and Paladin palettes look closer to regular orange.
And her mugshot looks redder than any of the above.
There's also some cross-pollination with Gwendolyn, who is more cleanly reddish-pink in her sprite and mugshot (though even then, there's some dissonance).
And, of course, all speedy female knights who aren't very good are descended from Sheena, who really was Barbie's-Dreamhouse hot pink. (She's probably the best of them, mind, by nature of how Mystery of the Emblem works.)
Part of what's wonky about Amelia is she wasn't originally intended to be a Knight/Cavalier trainee at all -she was supposed to be a Pegasus Knight trainee (I assume her alternative option would've been a Wyvern Rider if this had actually gone through), hence why she looks pretty much like a Pegasus Knight on foot in her combat sprites -because that's literally what she was supposed to be. I've often wondered if her odd stat/growth setup was driven by this point as well, where her setup made more sense when she'd grow into a Pegasus Knight instead of a Knight or Cavalier; it's worth pointing out that her growths are actually mostly within 10 points of Tana's, for example. (Tana has 20 more Speed growth, but that's the only exception)
Mind, this also touches on a thing the series has long struggled with; that various class identities are mechanically tied up in the stats that on player units are controlled by heavily-randomized growths, which creates all kinds of potential for wonkiness in a variety of contexts. For example, Amelia turning into a Knight doesn't really expect to turn into the kind of physical tank the class is meant to be, because her bases and growths aren't set up for it... but hey, RNG can rule the day here. I spent my first half-dozen runs strongly suspecting promotions had an influence on a character's growths, partially because it would've made design sense (And indeed, that's how eg Shadow Dragon works), but partially because I had what turns out to be improbable luck -for my initial runs, every time I promoted Amelia into a Knight and then General, she happened to pass her Defense rolls often enough (And/or Gilliam failed his often enough) that she ended up with comparable-or-better Defense to Gilliam when they were at comparable levels, whereas when I promoted her into a Cavalier her Defense didn't rise nearly as high.
And this particular example was basically doomed to be wonky unless the devs were willing to, say, have promoting Amelia into a Knight give her a completely absurd amount of Defense. (Like, +10 or some such)
Part of what's wonky about Amelia is she wasn't originally intended to be a Knight/Cavalier trainee at all -she was supposed to be a Pegasus Knight trainee (I assume her alternative option would've been a Wyvern Rider if this had actually gone through), hence why she looks pretty much like a Pegasus Knight on foot in her combat sprites -because that's literally what she was supposed to be. I've often wondered if her odd stat/growth setup was driven by this point as well, where her setup made more sense when she'd grow into a Pegasus Knight instead of a Knight or Cavalier; it's worth pointing out that her growths are actually mostly within 10 points of Tana's, for example. (Tana has 20 more Speed growth, but that's the only exception)
Mind, this also touches on a thing the series has long struggled with; that various class identities are mechanically tied up in the stats that on player units are controlled by heavily-randomized growths, which creates all kinds of potential for wonkiness in a variety of contexts. For example, Amelia turning into a Knight doesn't really expect to turn into the kind of physical tank the class is meant to be, because her bases and growths aren't set up for it... but hey, RNG can rule the day here. I spent my first half-dozen runs strongly suspecting promotions had an influence on a character's growths, partially because it would've made design sense (And indeed, that's how eg Shadow Dragon works), but partially because I had what turns out to be improbable luck -for my initial runs, every time I promoted Amelia into a Knight and then General, she happened to pass her Defense rolls often enough (And/or Gilliam failed his often enough) that she ended up with comparable-or-better Defense to Gilliam when they were at comparable levels, whereas when I promoted her into a Cavalier her Defense didn't rise nearly as high.
And this particular example was basically doomed to be wonky unless the devs were willing to, say, have promoting Amelia into a Knight give her a completely absurd amount of Defense. (Like, +10 or some such)
I do think if Sacred Stones were to be remade today, it would absolutely be a good idea to adjust growths slightly depending on what class was promoted to instead of just slightly varying the promotion bonuses. At the least, it might help add that extra small push to make some of the more obvious "one option is vastly superior to the other in almost every situations" promotion... less so.
I mean, just look at Archer->Sniper VS Archer->Ranger; are you really going to go for +2 HP and +1 Strength along with Sure Shot (oh BOY one of the most accurate classes in the game can occasionally Not Miss!) VS... Horse and Sword access, +1 Skill/Defense/Resistance/Movement and +2 Con (meaning both heavier weapons don't slow you down as much, and you still get more rescue because Now Horse)?
That's one of the most extreme examples, to be fair, in most other cases I'd argue that while one option might be inferior there can be at least some utility in choosing it, like Cavalier->Great Knight getting Axe access and slightly better promo bonuses but losing out on the highest base movement range in the game or Monk->Sage getting access to a generally better magic type in Anima but losing out on Slayer for absolutely deleting monsters and a higher base Staff rank. Still, if Sniper had some +10/20% growths over Ranger it might make it feel at least somewhat more palpable, even if statistically that doesn't lead to a massive difference in averages.
As for Amelia... I could see how replacing Knight with Pegasus Knight as an option would make sense, yeah. Not like she needs to have 3 final classes that share one promotion option like Pegasus/Wyvern do, can always have two entirely separate splits for variety.
The answer is that Amelia kind of changes colors depending on what class she's in and how you look at her. Her Knight color scheme, due to the lighting, looks like reddish-pink.
Meanwhile, her Cavalier palette, with less lighting, looks closer to vermilion.
Her General and Paladin palettes look closer to regular orange.
And her mugshot looks redder than any of the above.
There's also some cross-pollination with Gwendolyn, who is more cleanly reddish-pink in her sprite and mugshot (though even then, there's some dissonance).
And, of course, all speedy female knights who aren't very good are descended from Sheena, who really was Barbie's-Dreamhouse hot pink. (She's probably the best of them, mind, by nature of how Mystery of the Emblem works.)
Officially the answer appears to be reddish orange, given fire emblem heroes which made her a reddish-orange armor unit.
Honestly, she's probably an armor unit there half because it's possible at all and half because Heroes regularly struggled with the series being overly light on armor character in general so it literally forces it a lot- a lot of holiday variants and the like are just 'they're an armor. why? because they're carrying a lot of stuff. are they armored? no, but they class as an armor and have armor stats'.
Officially the answer appears to be reddish orange, given fire emblem heroes which made her a reddish-orange armor unit.
Honestly, she's probably an armor unit there half because it's possible at all and half because Heroes regularly struggled with the series being overly light on armor character in general so it literally forces it a lot- a lot of holiday variants and the like are just 'they're an armor. why? because they're carrying a lot of stuff. are they armored? no, but they class as an armor and have armor stats'.
Welcome back to Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones, where I goof around slaying monsters while Prince Innes is desperately waiting for aid. He'll be fine, probably. He'll be very happy to see all the levels his sister's gained! Actually, wait, no, Innes sees competent people as a threat to himself. He'll be scared to see all the levels his sister's gained.
So, yeah, I went to the Tower of Valni (twice, actually – one before and once after doing chapter 9, but I'm combining all that into one post). When grinding, I find it's good to have a goal to work towards. For this session, I want to get Tana to level 9 (the same as Vanessa), unlock Lute and Vanessa C, and unlock Neimi and Artur C. I chose these supports for shipping investigation: Colm came off as such an ass in his introduction that I want to explore Neimi's other options, and as for Lute and Vanessa I saw a piece of Lute/Vanessa fanart once and I'm generally happy to see lesbians.
First of all, inventory management. Weapons are starting to break and require replacement. Staves are even worse about this – a basic Heal has 30 uses compared to an Iron Axe's 45, and the amount of exp it gives my healers per use has slowed to a trickle so I want them healing every turn to keep leveling…My money from Hayden is already down to 7000 gold. But on a nicer note, I do have an Angelic Robe, which will grant a whopping 7 HP to my frailest warrior. Technically that's Ross (only the 16 HP he started with) but I'm not using Ross so it goes to Lute instead.
Cower before her ability to take at least one hit from an axe!
Prep work done, I head into the Tower of Valni. The maps seem to have some random elements – I did the first floor twice, and while the layout (narrow defensible staircase leading into open pillared hall) and monsters (revenants and two bonewalkers) remained the same, the items they used and dropped did not.
I would have definitely remembered this sword if it appeared the first time.
Sometimes the monsters drop gold, but it's definitely not enough to cover the weapons you use to kill them. I can't grind too much because I'm worried about breaking weapons and having to spend more.
Anyway, the chokepoints on the first floor make it pretty easy to handle. I unlock Vanessa and Lute C before too long:
Vanessa introduces herself as the captain of Frelia's pegasus knights, and her pegasus as Titania. She has a name? That's interesting. The Fire Emblem games vary in how important the mounts are – not from game to game, but from character to character. Of course many units only gain mounts optionally, upon changing class, but even for characters who are "canonically" mounted, their mounts tend to only get named in supports if the writers decide that one of their character traits is how much they like their mount. This is pretty rare. There are other ways to draw attention to the mount, too – Awakening has a whole scene devoted to Sumia finding an injured pegasus in the wild, which she tames before joining as a pegasus knight in the next chapter, and Claude of Three Houses rides a unique white wyvern. Although neither of these are named in story, fans take note of their importance, and fanfiction focusing on these characters often names these mounts and gives them an important role.
There's also one example of an infantry character with a named horse: Marianne of Three Houses has a horse named Dorte that comes up frequently (because she finds it easier to interact with animals than people). This, despite the fact that she absolutely cannot change to a mounted class until level 10, and in fact I prefer to keep her as a Bishop most of the time before changing to Holy Knight near endgame. (She also makes a great Dancer, too.)
Back to Vanessa and Titania: Lute may not have seen a pegasus before, but she has read all about them and proceeds to shower Vanessa with facts, including this bizarre statement:
Lute: …And did you know that pegasi fly by kicking the air, not by flapping their wings. It's a common misconception, but wings are mainly used for gliding.
How do you fly by kicking the air? I'm imagining something like the way a duck's feet paddle furiously underwater to keep it aloft, but…in the air? Now every time I imagine a pegasus taking off, I have to remember that their legs should be a hummingbird blur.
Vanessa confirms that, yes, she did know all that, because she's a pegasus knight. Undeterred, Lute simply moves to more obscure facts:
Lute: In one legend, there was a monster who could turn anyone into stone. When the monster died, its blood seeped into the ground. There, a pegasus was born.
This is actually a Greek legend, that Pegasus (which was one singular unique horse, not a whole race of them) was born from the body of Medusa. That one's always confused me. If anyone here is a classicist and can explain what train of logic the ancient Greeks were following when they thought a winged horse should be born from the death of an earth monster, I would love to hear it.
All this symbolic stuff is actually new to Vanessa, so she thanks Lute for the lesson and says, "I'm glad we're on the same team."
Vanessa: I'm Vanessa!
In Lute's introduction, she states that she has a perfect memory. Therefore, I don't believe she messes up on Vanessa's name there. She is talking to Titania, whom she considers the most important member of this conversation.
Immediately after, I unlock Lute and Artur C, where Artur finds Lute raptly observing a beetle. This is usual for her, Artur says.
Artur: On the rare occasions you went outside, you were paralyzed with fascination.
Lute: Of course! There are so many fascinating things to be learned from nature.
Lute: There are a great many books out there, and I have read most of them, of course. But I've found that what is written can differ greatly from how things truly are.
She explains that in her Glossary of Falibrian Entomology, it states that the chemida beetle loses its wings when it reaches adulthood. But this chemida beetle she found is an adult, and "its wings still work perfectly!" She's overjoyed to have found this rare specimen, this exception to the rule.
Artur congratulates her, but asks worriedly if she's going to use it for one of her "pranks".
Lute has no idea what he means by that. Neither do I – Lute is a very funny character, but not because she's trying to be.
Artur reminds her of that time he lent her a book, and she returned it with a dried lizard tail inside that she had been using as a bookmark. Lute doesn't remember this. Okay, so it seems that Artur finds nature a bit more icky than Lute does. She annoys him by leaving her specimens lying around, but that's out of absent-mindedness, so they can't really be called pranks—
Also she filled his room with spiders once. Wait, what?
So Artur, an arachnophobe, had to deal with a room full of spiders. Yikes. Lute explains that she thought he would be able to overcome his fear – which was causing him trouble every time he had to make his rounds in the woods – if he was exposed to a lot of spiders at once.
Lute: Why, did it bother you?
Artur: YES!
Okay. So, exposure therapy is a real thing. It's a common method for treating specific phobias – when your problem is that you're afraid of a thing more than it warrants, exposing yourself to it can convince you that it's not as dangerous as you think it is, and you don't need to be so scared. Lute, however, is going about it in the wrong way.
She's intentionally placing Artur in a situation of maximum fear, without his knowledge or permission, in his bedroom which is normally the safest of spaces. Do people sometimes overcome their fears when suddenly placed in dire circumstances? Well, yes. They can also freak out and run away! Their fear can become worse! Exposure therapy, properly done by a therapist, involves exposing the patient to the fear in gradually increasing amounts, on a schedule that the patient has agreed to. It usually starts in very safe, controlled settings before moving into the 'real world'. The point of this controlled approach is to minimize the chance of the "freak out and run away" outcome and maximize the chance of the "I can do this, it's not so bad," outcome.
The informed involvement of the patient is important, not only because scary things are scarier when they surprise you, but because it maintains trust, and trust is necessary between a therapist and a patient. It's necessary between friends, too. Look at Artur – Lute's actions have clearly damaged his trust in her. He looks at her holding a beetle and thinks, "Oh no, what if she uses it against me?"
Forgive me for ranting a little, but this is a personal bête noir. I have loved not one but two people who sincerely believed that making me do things I hate/fear would make me stronger, and for all their good intentions and professed love for me, it destroyed our bonds.
So. Artur tries to downplay his anger, telling Lute not to worry about it.
Lute: If it bothered you, then it is indeed a problem I should worry about.
Artur: Well, maybe fewer…fewer creepy things, then.
These two supports paint a good picture of Lute as someone who truly loves learning and nature, a natural philosopher so to speak. She's incredibly smart and observant, but not so great at understanding people and what they want. Or, to put it another way, humans are generally less important to her than other creatures. Her primary means of communication is infodumping – we saw this from her very first appearance in Chapter 4, remember, when she was all too eager to cite everything she knew about monsters even when it made the others uncomfortable.
Some time later, I unlock Artur and Neimi C. They appear to be meeting for the first time: Neimi introduces herself and calls him 'Brother Artur'.
This line gets funnier the later you unlock it. For now, it's already amusing that they've been fighting in the same army for six chapters before they finally talk.
Artur: And please, just call me Artur. I appreciate your respect for my work, but I don't fully identify as a "Brother," so to speak.
Neimi: Oh…
…Oh.
I'd like to take a moment to work through my feelings, because they are complex. And at least part of the answer might be that I'm just…somewhat transphobic, and I need to deal with that in a clear-headed manner. I feel safe enough to do that in this thread because I only have, like, ten readers, I trust the SV moderators, and if worse comes to worst my real identity isn't connected to this account.
Why do I feel so unhappy about that line? Why am I not clapping my hands and chirping, "Yes, so valid!" What is wrong with me? Am I going to get cancelled for admitting this? Please report me if you think there's something unacceptable about my words. I realize that asking other people for moral advice is placing a burden on them, but I'm so uncertain right now and I need some clarity.
First of all, I theoretically have no problem with fanfictions and headcanons that reinterpret a character as trans or the like. "How would things be different with X small change" and "I have rewritten the work to better reflect me, personally" are two of the fundamental motivations for writing fanfiction. However, I don't read a lot of them because, in the past, I have found stories that are like, "This is a trans character's trans journey of trans self-discovery" to be pretty boring. I think of those stories as being written by trans people, for trans people, and not for me.
I…feel that adding trans characters may be out of scope with the stated intention of the Restoration Queen hack, which is a feminist re-interpretation. But the lesbian romance lies in the overlap of feminist and queer concerns, and opens the door to trans topics – lesbians aren't entirely limited to cis women. And besides, dividing the various struggles does more harm than good.
A more insoluble problem is that I thought Artur was a man this whole time! How was I supposed to learn otherwise? Artur's a man in the original Sacred Stones, but who are they here? All we learn is, "not quite a Brother". That, like the term nonbinary itself, is a negative statement, a statement of what one is not. One is not a man and not a woman, but rather drifting in some ocean of possibilities Outside the Boxes. It's a term that invites uncertainty. I hate uncertainty, or more precisely I hate being wrong. I've never understood how some people can just confidently say incorrect things and survive being subsequently corrected. I would wither into a pile of dust.
I am so firmly, comfortably, obviously a woman that I cannot imagine being otherwise. I don't understand what it is to be nonbinary. I don't understand what it is to be a man, either, but at least I feel some familiarity with the concept of masculinity. It has a shape I've observed from the outside, like how I can identify when someone is speaking Turkish even though I can't understand that language. I would love to ask an enby "Who are you? What is your relationship with gender?" but that's very personal and I've never managed to work up the courage. And I'm aware that the answer might well be, "I don't know. I'm uncertain too." Please note, if any nonbinary person reads this, I do not want to guilt-trip or manipulate or demand that you perform the emotional labor of explaining yourself to me. This is not a demand for charitable handouts or coddling. I just want people to tell me if I should be banned from this site or not.
Life is full of uncertainty, which is one of the things I hate about it. Fiction allows us to get a really deep understanding of its characters, to a depth we can reach with so few people in real life, and that's one of the things I love about it.
Now, I realize that I don't understand this character the way I thought I did. Who is Restoration Queen Artur? I don't even know what pronouns to use, damn it—
Oh. Okay? So he's…like a man…but not quite? Okay. I can handle that. I can move forward with that.
In the end…all you can do it just accept it, right? And try to move forward with what knowledge you have.
Because that was just three lines of the support conversation – the main topic is something completely different!
Now that Artur and Neimi have properly met and gotten a good look at each other, Artur lets out a gasp of surprise. Already uneasy, I was prepared for something terrible to happen.
He's just looking at her mirror.
Neimi explains that, after her mother's mirror was stolen and retrieved in Chapter 3, she worried about losing it again. So now she goes about with it tied to her belt. I feel like it might take damage in battle…but nowhere's safe in war, I guess.
Artur, intrigued by the mirror for some reason, asks to examine it, which Neimi lets him do. He tells her that this is a rare and special piece – mirrors like this are handed out as commendations to high-ranking clerics. Who was her mother?
Neimi: Yes, she was a cleric…When I was young, an illness…
However, she doesn't want to say much more. It's a pity, because I'm intrigued now – how did she earn the mirror? And how did such a high-ranking woman end up settling down in the middle of nowhere? Thinking of her mother has made Neimi sad, so Artur says some words to comfort her. He was definitely quite good at his priestly duties, back at the village he just up and left (I'm still not over that!).
Artur: Your mother was a good person, benevolent, faithful, and caring. And you are the product of her care, filled with the same light.
Neimi: Thank you…It makes me happy to hear that.
Artur: I'm delighted to have met you. We shall have to speak again.
Artur is quite smooth, isn't he? Colm is going to have to work harder to stay in Neimi's good graces. He shouldn't just assume he's winning her heart by default. Let's see what he brings to the table in their B support.
Colm pops up while Neimi is re-stringing her bow.
…Oh? I must admit, I'm surprised that he's offering her an unqualified compliment, but it seems genuine. They get to talking about Neimi's grandfather, who taught her to shoot.
Colm: I still remember how he tried to shoot me.
Neimi: That's because you were stealing fruit from our tree.
Neimi tells Colm that it was just a warning shot, and he wasn't really trying to hurt him. Colm, however, disagrees:
Colm: No, he was aiming for me. I was just too fast for him to hit me.
Neimi: He never missed a target when we went hunting.
Colm: Well then, I guess I'm just faster than wild animals.
And Neimi laughs! "You haven't changed much since then," she says, and unlike their C support where they were quarrelling, the tone this time is fond. Colm is still a braggart, and Neimi is still a crybaby. And then Colm, with surprising seriousness, admits that he still wants to protect her, but in their current circumstances that's not always possible.
Colm: I guess I just worry about you being able to stand on your own.
Neimi: Maybe I cry a lot, but I can be strong, too.
Colm: Okay…But don't think this means I'll leave you completely alone, either.
My heart…I said that Colm needs to work harder, and he delivered in spades. The difference between their C support and B support is so vast, you really get the feeling that some amount of time has passed. These kids have toughened up, matured, and they've seen death – enough to realize how stupid it is to quarrel and posture and hide their feelings, enough to realize how precious a friend is. I'm glad I didn't unlock this right away – it would have seemed silly that such a dramatic change could happen so quickly.
I've completed all of my grinding goals, but I press on to the second floor anyway. This floor consists of a pillared hall and a narrow hallway in parallel that leads to another hall.
That's a lot of centaurs. The basic centaur is called Tauros, and the promoted palette swap is called Maelduin.
Before each new floor, you get a chance to redeploy, manage the inventory, and use items. Everyone's health is healed, too – it's functionally a whole new map. I am tempted to use the Ocean Seal on Colm right now (level 13) to promote him, but…well, he's doing well in combat already, and I…
Some people like training up Amelia into a General because the sight of a girl in hulking armor, destroying her enemies, tickles them. I am coming to realize that, in the same way, I like turning Thieves into cracked combat units. So I will refrain from promoting Colm until he gains a few more levels.
So! The map. It's bigger than the last and populated by Longbow archers so I swap out my flyers with the Cav team (Seth, Franz and Forde; I don't want to raise all four so I'm benching Kyle). The first hall is dealt with easily: send in the horsies to tank, move the back-liners in next turn to mop up. Spiders from the upper hall crawl down, but they only have one range and Artur can get some safe experience by casting through the wall into the narrow hallway.
Then it's enemy phase. The spider moves out of the way and some skeletons from further up that hallway point out that they, too, can shoot through walls. In fact, with a Javelin and a Longbow, they can both shoot at Artur. Who currently has 6 HP.
The Javelin misses. The Longbow misses. They both miss! Artur lives!
My cavaliers pile into the corridor to whack those skeletons to dust, and proceed to the upper hall, while Artur catches his breath down in the lower hall and receives healing from Natasha.
Then more monsters show up! I didn't know these maps could have reinforcements! Why are there so many goddamn monsters in the Tower of Valni? The only three people remaining near the entrance are Artur, Natasha and Joshua – everyone else has moved on to the upper hall.
Oh, and one of these is a new type of monster like an evil dog – a classic British faerie. Moddey Dhoo is Manx Gaelic for "black dog," but the Englishman George Waldron spelled it as Mauthe Doog in his book, History and Description of the Isle of Man, and that mistake has been pretty influential because a lot more people read English than Manx. In the game, the dog is speedy and dodgey.
Neither Artur, Natasha, nor Joshua is what I would call a frontline combatant. Can our backliners hold on until Seth reaches them?
Well, not comfortably, but yeah. They pull through. Natasha gets hit with a Poison Axe, but poison in this game only does 1-3 damage per turn. Even Natasha can handle it, with the help of Vulneraries.
Don't worry. Joshua took vengeance for her.
And with that, it's just a matter of mopping up the centaurs in the upper hall, which my team there manages just as Seth and the others reach them. Forde also got poisoned – Natasha can heal him, but she can't heal herself.
And, as our group tallies the loot and exp, I decide to reward someone who's stolen my heart.
The assassin is very tempting, but I remain mindful of what you guys told me about stealing and make Colm a Rogue.
There we are, finally ready to march to Prince Innes's side. Will he still be alive? Will he be grateful enough to thank us? Find out next time, on Restoration Queen!
If it helps I think Artur has a similar line in the original, but I took it less as gender uncertainty and more that he doesn't see himself as a member of the clergy. I think he has other lines with the ghist of "yeah I use light magic but I'm not like a monk-monk"
This distinction would mean more if we actually knew how the church like worked mind you.
This, despite the fact that she absolutely cannot change to a mounted class until level 10, and in fact I prefer to keep her as a Bishop most of the time before changing to Holy Knight near endgame. (She also makes a great Dancer, too.)
I'd like to take a moment to work through my feelings, because they are complex. And at least part of the answer might be that I'm just…somewhat transphobic, and I need to deal with that in a clear-headed manner. I feel safe enough to do that in this thread because I only have, like, ten readers, I trust the SV moderators, and if worse comes to worst my real identity isn't connected to this account.
I didn't use Artur in RQ so it's also news to me, but I can understand a bunch of what you've said. I've read a lot of queer reimaginings of other stories, and some that were not, and I think gender is one of the most awkward to have character conversations about because it's something that you have to explicitly bring up in a way that feels incongruent to how people handle things irl in many ways where a lot of people prefer to not bring such things up. So, fiction handles everything in more ham-fisted(?) ways.
I'm trying to remember which anime it was I watched where a character was revealed to be trans very late in the running because of a combo of magic making it an "easy" change and also it being a long time since it happened, where this had to come out super explicitly or no one would ever know.
If it helps I think Artur has a similar line in the original, but I took it less as gender uncertainty and more that he doesn't see himself as a member of the clergy. I think he has other lines with the ghist of "yeah I use light magic but I'm not like a monk-monk"
This distinction would mean more if we actually knew how the church like worked mind you.
I double checked this because I remembered similar, but the conversation was more about titles being too formal and Artur wanting a more friendly relationship.
Welcome back to Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones, where I goof around slaying monsters while Prince Innes is desperately waiting for aid. He'll be fine, probably. He'll be very happy to see all the levels his sister's gained! Actually, wait, no, Innes sees competent people as a threat to himself. He'll be scared to see all the levels his sister's gained.
I kid, I kid, I'd be a hypocrite if I said "no grinding allowed never ever" for Fire Emblem when in the meanwhile I'm someone who will constantly state you can use everything and anything in Dark Souls because it's in the game, it's meant to be there and meant to be used, even if it might make it a bit difficult to judge "how good is unit" compared to other FE games when technically everyone can be great by just getting some quick grinding and promotions.
Like in particular, boss of the first floor of the tower is always an entombed, so it has some kind of stacked EXP modifiers making it so even someone like Seth can run over, bonk it, and get an instant level up. You know, in case you wanted your resident god unit to be even more ridiculous as early as chapter 9.
First of all, inventory management. Weapons are starting to break and require replacement. Staves are even worse about this – a basic Heal has 30 uses compared to an Iron Axe's 45, and the amount of exp it gives my healers per use has slowed to a trickle so I want them healing every turn to keep leveling…My money from Hayden is already down to 7000 gold. But on a nicer note, I do have an Angelic Robe, which will grant a whopping 7 HP to my frailest warrior. Technically that's Ross (only the 16 HP he started with) but I'm not using Ross so it goes to Lute instead.
I don't think there should have been any exp dropoff on healers? I know in some FE games they get less exp per heal as they level up, but in the GBA games it's determined entirely based on the staff used and whether or not the unit is promoted. So a basic Heal staff will always give you 11 exp per use, a Mend will give you 12 exp, and then most of the utility staves tend to be particularly useful for both normal exp and staff rank since they can give 20+ exp per use - in Sacred Stones in particular, spamming Torch on FoW maps, or Barrier in general is a great way to level up your staff rank for recently promoted mages to get them to actually useful things like Physic or Warp (often giving them better range than your traditional staffers, since someone like Lute is likely to have a higher magic stat than Moulder or Natasha).
As for the robes, they're generally best off on a mage or a pegasus knight in my experience, often giving them just enough of an HP buff to tank that extra hit or two they might have to deal with if you make a tactical error somewhere and leave them in a squishy situation. In other words, Lute is a great choice! Ross... probably wouldn't have been, even if you were using him, despite the low start he has a fairly decent HP growth and tends to wind up as one of your bulkier units already without the help.
Prep work done, I head into the Tower of Valni. The maps seem to have some random elements – I did the first floor twice, and while the layout (narrow defensible staircase leading into open pillared hall) and monsters (revenants and two bonewalkers) remained the same, the items they used and dropped did not.
Yep, Tower floors are randomly generated to some degree. I think they pull from a pool of enemies depending on the floor, but the actual loot you'll get is randomized.
Sometimes the monsters drop gold, but it's definitely not enough to cover the weapons you use to kill them. I can't grind too much because I'm worried about breaking weapons and having to spend more.
Now see, the real treasure here on that first floor run with a runesword? It's that sword, and not because "oh hey 1-2 range sword". Sure, it's nice to give one of your sword units the ability to attack at 2 range and drain HP... but they need A rank swords to even use it, and it only has 15 uses. On the other hand? Runeswords have a base value of 3300 gold, so you can sell it for half that as a decent cash infusion.
Lute: …And did you know that pegasi fly by kicking the air, not by flapping their wings. It's a common misconception, but wings are mainly used for gliding.
How do you fly by kicking the air? I'm imagining something like the way a duck's feet paddle furiously underwater to keep it aloft, but…in the air? Now every time I imagine a pegasus taking off, I have to remember that their legs should be a hummingbird blur.
Vanessa confirms that, yes, she did know all that, because she's a pegasus knight. Undeterred, Lute simply moves to more obscure facts:
I imagine it's some kind of magic, because Flying Horses, so those kicks are somehow generating lift while their wings are then used to glide so they aren't constantly kicking and wasting energy.
In Lute's introduction, she states that she has a perfect memory. Therefore, I don't believe she messes up on Vanessa's name there. She is talking to Titania, whom she considers the most important member of this conversation.
That is, 100%, absolutely a Lute thing to do. She's a little gremlin and we love her for it.
I mean, probably, I've also run into people who rate her as their most hated person in Sacred Stones if not the entire series, sometimes for that Artur support with the bugs. Seems a bit excessive to me, but hey, tastes vary.
This line gets funnier the later you unlock it. For now, it's already amusing that they've been fighting in the same army for six chapters before they finally talk.
I do think this makes more sense depending on how big your army is. It's a bit silly with Neimi and Artur because he joined when you were a rag-tag band of like 10 dudes so everyone would probably know everyone else at least in passing, but it makes more sense for say anyone who joins from Chapter 9 onwards where there's implications that you have additional unseen troops, or more characters joining with a "nobility" split, so to speak. Say, if there was a support between Tana and Colm, I could easily see it being the first time they ever talked because what reason would a Princess previously have to speak to the group's ragtag thief boy?
I'd like to take a moment to work through my feelings, because they are complex. And at least part of the answer might be that I'm just…somewhat transphobic, and I need to deal with that in a clear-headed manner. I feel safe enough to do that in this thread because I only have, like, ten readers, I trust the SV moderators, and if worse comes to worst my real identity isn't connected to this account.
Being honest... this is kinda along the lines of the same reason I quirked a bit of an eyebrow at the Myrrh change earlier. I'm not against changing her to be non-binary, I guess, but I thought the hack was meant to at most be addressing things like "female characters are accidentally looked down on in some dialogue" or "let's just turn the lesbian shipteasing into full ships", I guess. It's also not particularly helped by the fact that oh hey, this is a game I've played through multiple times, and back in the day manually grinded out every single support so some of this will just feel confusing for me. I'm used to playing a game where Myrrh is straight up referred to as "Lady Myrrh" by some of the cast of characters, or Young Lady, or Girl. I don't really have an issue with fanfiction changing these kind of things, it just feels... a bit beyond the scope of what the hack was billed as, and potentially more performative than anything, if that makes sense.
Before each new floor, you get a chance to redeploy, manage the inventory, and use items. Everyone's health is healed, too – it's functionally a whole new map. I am tempted to use the Ocean Seal on Colm right now (level 13) to promote him, but…well, he's doing well in combat already, and I…
Some people like training up Amelia into a General because the sight of a girl in hulking armor, destroying her enemies, tickles them. I am coming to realize that, in the same way, I like turning Thieves into cracked combat units. So I will refrain from promoting Colm until he gains a few more levels.
Thieves will pretty much never be your frontliners, on account of usually being moderately squishy and locked to swords... but that doesn't mean they can't still shank a fellow or two on the way to getting some treasure~
And hey, nothing wrong with a late promotion. It's basically working for slightly more levelups now before promotion lowers your exp gain, instead of taking the instant bonuses of more utility and automatic stat boosts that come with said promotion. My Colm actually hit level 20 before finally promoting to Rogue himself... granted that was because the Ocean Seal went to Pirate Ross, so I didn't get another chance to promote Colm until quite a bit later.
Oh, and one of these is a new type of monster like an evil dog – a classic British faerie. Moddey Dhoo is Manx Gaelic for "black dog," but the Englishman George Waldron spelled it as Mauthe Doog in his book, History and Description of the Isle of Man, and that mistake has been pretty influential because a lot more people read English than Manx. In the game, the dog is speedy and dodgey.
God, Mauthe Doogs, these guys are absolute shitters of units to deal with. It's like Myrmidons with all their speed and high hit rates, but without the downsides of "actually just weighted down by their weapons if they try to upgrade from Iron Swords" and full on cavalry-tier movement speeds. Keep your eyes on these guys whenever they show up, they're deceptively dangerous in my experience.
I don't think there should have been any exp dropoff on healers? I know in some FE games they get less exp per heal as they level up, but in the GBA games it's determined entirely based on the staff used and whether or not the unit is promoted. So a basic Heal staff will always give you 11 exp per use, a Mend will give you 12 exp, and then most of the utility staves tend to be particularly useful for both normal exp and staff rank since they can give 20+ exp per use - in Sacred Stones in particular, spamming Torch on FoW maps, or Barrier in general is a great way to level up your staff rank for recently promoted mages to get them to actually useful things like Physic or Warp (often giving them better range than your traditional staffers, since someone like Lute is likely to have a higher magic stat than Moulder or Natasha).
Sacred Stones definitely has some sort of drop off in exp gain for staves, but serenes forest doesn't document any such thing I can notice and it's been ages and I never understood the details. I just remember fine that promoted staff users would get negligible EXP from healing- 5-6 if that- and this was mostly not a big deal because, of course, all promoted staff users are also fighters and thus can get level appropriate exp that way.
Prep work done, I head into the Tower of Valni. The maps seem to have some random elements – I did the first floor twice, and while the layout (narrow defensible staircase leading into open pillared hall) and monsters (revenants and two bonewalkers) remained the same, the items they used and dropped did not.
Back to Vanessa and Titania: Lute may not have seen a pegasus before, but she has read all about them and proceeds to shower Vanessa with facts, including this bizarre statement:
Lute: …And did you know that pegasi fly by kicking the air, not by flapping their wings. It's a common misconception, but wings are mainly used for gliding.
How do you fly by kicking the air? I'm imagining something like the way a duck's feet paddle furiously underwater to keep it aloft, but…in the air? Now every time I imagine a pegasus taking off, I have to remember that their legs should be a hummingbird blur.
I love this conversation. In the first place, just slapping wings on a horse is nonsense for explaining its flight -fiction taking itself more seriously that uses the pegasus concept usually throws in the notion that Actual Magic is involved in their ability to fly anyway, at which point why not make the flight not based primarily on the wing action?
In the second place, visual pop culture tends to have pegasi pumping their legs in midair at all times; saying that this is because the leg-pumping is causing the flight is very natural for justifying what is otherwise a pointless expenditure of energy.
As it happens, Lute is in several ways basically just me if I was a spellslinging girl in Magvel, so I've always read this in what I'm pretty sure is the correct way to read it, because I've had plenty of experience with people getting angry/accusatory about my behavior on the idea that I'm being deliberately obnoxious (or whatever) and so I instantly understood this as 'Lute has done a number of things in their shared history that bothered Artur and she honestly never realized she had taken action that had stressed him and whatnot while Artur so thoughtlessly assumes intentionality he just assumes she was intentionally pranking him'.
(A probably-related point is that I've never thought to interpret Lute as comedic at all, yet you're far from the first person I've seen to present her as 'funny'. After all, I've had a fair number of moments where I'm not trying to be funny at all that people took as humorous anyway...)
I like this moment because it shows very clearly that Lute's lack of empathy really is obliviousness, not callousness. When Artur successfully makes her aware that her actions have caused him stress, she decides that okay clearly she needs to not continue the offending behavior in future -she's perfectly happy to change to be less unpleasant to deal with, she just honestly didn't realize there was a problem in the first place.
That's an odd change to make. The original version of this exact moment is:
Artur: Ah, Neimi. I'm sorry that our introduction has been so delayed. And please, just call me Artur. "Brother" is too formal. Neimi: Oh… All right, Artur it is.
So Restoration Queen changed it, but in such a manner that honestly it doesn't even look like the content is actually different? If I were playing Restoration Queen and triggered this Support, I'd maybe be going 'that wording seems a bit odd' ("I don't fully identify as"? I don't remember people talking that way back then...) but I'd have interpreted it as having the exact same meaning as the original text, just with muddier wording.
I'm also sort of... annoyed? Like oh yes of course the pretty-boy character is the one getting turned into being trans, naturally. This is one of those thought processes I was being annoyed by long before I had any idea the LGBT+ section of society even existed, where (fan)fiction would decide that a girlish-looking man must needs be a ~girly~ man and couldn't possibly just... like the way they wear their hair. (Or like wearing looser clothing, or whatever would have people reacting to them with 'not a fully cishet-normative person!')
I'd be more interested than annoyed if, say, Seth was switched to being trans by Restoration Queen. (Whether that was 'born a woman, successfully remade his life into a man years ago' or 'born a man, and is fastidiously hiding behind the Dutiful Knight Persona to avoid having people bother her about sex and marriage and shit until she figures out how to handle this whole situation') Artur as the choice just comes across to me as superficial, lazy, and like an accidental affirmation of cishet-normative thought processes when it's almost certainly meant to not be that.
So I have a lot of negativity on this poorly-handled not-at-all-obvious-it's-a-change.
It's a term that invites uncertainty. I hate uncertainty, or more precisely I hate being wrong. I've never understood how some people can just confidently say incorrect things and survive being subsequently corrected. I would wither into a pile of dust.
To be honest, if I'd been born a decade sooner, I'd have probably been an enemy of the LGBT+ scene.
Not because I give a shit about any of the relevant topics, mind, but just because I hate using incorrect terminology; as a kid I always wanted to know the genders of people as soon as possible so I could correctly label them in conversation, since natural English-language conversation is designed to relentlessly, repeatedly utilize those labels on a continuous basis throughout conversation. I think a lot of people would assume shame or embarassment would be why I'd feel so upset by an incorrect labeling, but I don't actually care about other people knowing I used the wrong label, I just baseline hate being incorrect. (It's worth pointing out here that nicknames have always baffled me; why would someone want to be incorrectly called by some butchery of their actual name?) Anyway, point being, since the norms were such that verbal correctness implicitly mandated enforcing the cishet norms as universal truths, I was basically doing that in my earliest years, not because I agreed with (Or was even aware of) the politics in question, but just because correctness is a thing I value intensely by default.
So I get you, roughly, is my point, and can see why you'd be anxious that your feelings might be not-PC. (Even if I don't share that anxiety)
(At this point in my life I'm less concerned with Correctness simply because I've come to feel that Meaningful Correctness is too dependent on defining your terms. If someone talks in terms of playing a game 'optimally', for example, you need to actually define optimal before you can start saying what's objectively optimal; there's a big difference, for example, between optimal play for a speedrun vs optimal play for a run in which your goal is minimizing expenditure of in-game resources)
I am so firmly, comfortably, obviously a woman that I cannot imagine being otherwise. I don't understand what it is to be nonbinary. I don't understand what it is to be a man, either, but at least I feel some familiarity with the concept of masculinity. It has a shape I've observed from the outside, like how I can identify when someone is speaking Turkish even though I can't understand that language. I would love to ask an enby "Who are you? What is your relationship with gender?" but that's very personal and I've never managed to work up the courage. And I'm aware that the answer might well be, "I don't know. I'm uncertain too."
If it helps, I don't identity as anything, which I'm pretty sure a lot of people would class as 'non-binary' without thought.
I have no interest in adopting that label as it seems to come with expectations/perceptions I absolutely do not share, mind, but I say it to give the context on my own answer: my relationship to gender is that I don't care. I understand that there are physical realities to be aware of vis-a-vis physical sex, but I don't really meaningfully care about the gender label the taxman demands of me for their census, and my primary emotional investment into the topic of gender is feeling that most people put waaaay too much emphasis on it.
I also don't find 'who are you?' a particularly meaningful question, but I'm not sure I can expand on that at all helpfully without it turning into a multi-paragraph screed on philosophy probably no one cares about and that I'm certainly not wanting to write at this instant. For the moment, I'll just say that, same as I think people put way too much emphasis on 'male vs female', I think people put way too much emphasis on assorted other labels. (I'm talking labels like 'artist' or 'punk', to be clear, not just gender-related labels)
You might notice their overland sprites are actually meaningfully different from each other, even though their combat sprites are indeed just palette swaps.
Tauros vs Maelduin is one of the lighter examples of this phenomenon -the Maelduin is facing the opposite direction and has a double-headed axe instead of a single-headed axe, mostly- but this crops up a fair amount with the monster sprites, where promoted versions have meaningfully different sprites overland, but the combat sprites don't reflect these differences at all.
Note that Rogue Colm's Lockpicks can be freely dumped into the convoy: the primary benefit of being a Rogue is that everything a Thief required Lockpicks to do, a Rogue does with their bare hands!
And since Stealing requires an empty inventory space, it's good policy to prefer for Thieves and Rogues to keep their inventories a little lighter than other classes.
Like in particular, boss of the first floor of the tower is always an entombed, so it has some kind of stacked EXP modifiers making it so even someone like Seth can run over, bonk it, and get an instant level up. You know, in case you wanted your resident god unit to be even more ridiculous as early as chapter 9.
Entombed give a flat +60 experience beyond baseline, with this experience being completely unaffected by stuff like level difference. Bosses do the same, except it's +40 experience instead. Between the two points, Entombed Bosses always give 100 experience to any unit that kills them, period.
It'd be more than that, except there's also a hard cap, where a unit can only gain 100 experience for a single fight, and so the regular experience formula is technically being run here but its results don't actually matter because there's already an automatic 100 experience.
So yes, boss Entombed make it effortless to get anybody an extra level-up, no matter how high level.
Sacred Stones definitely has some sort of drop off in exp gain for staves, but serenes forest doesn't document any such thing I can notice and it's been ages and I never understood the details. I just remember fine that promoted staff users would get negligible EXP from healing- 5-6 if that- and this was mostly not a big deal because, of course, all promoted staff users are also fighters and thus can get level appropriate exp that way.
Oh whoops, totally thought I went into more detail in that paragraph but I didn't - yep, staff exp is halved for promoted units (or at least, I assume it's halved since Heal/Mend give 5/6 EXP respectively when you slap them on your newly promoted mages). Otherwise, same thing, there's no exp dropoff based on level, it's just that as you say promoted units have a better way to get actual EXP instead of healing every turn because on average you can still get at least 6-10 exp per combat, often more on a kill.
In fact, Bishops are one of the classes that get bonus combat EXP, so it's actually more beneficial for them to kill things rather than use staves if you want levels. Looking it up, there's a number of classes both unpromoted and promoted that get this bonus - Soldiers (which you never get in GBA outside of mods or randomizers, granted), Troubadors, Clerics, Priests (these don't matter since they can't actually deal combat damage for EXP without a particular glitch), and thieves for unpromoted units. For promoted units, Bishops, Valkyries, Assassins and Rogues all get bonus EXP, and Assassin in particular gets more bonus EXP on a silencer kill.
For the record, the mod also made Franz and Amelia trans (Franz is AFAB, Amelia is AMAB). I say this now because it's only evident if you pay close attention to certain supports. Artur is meant to be enby leaning a bit towards male.
So from what I remember from my class on Greek mythology, the ancient Greeks considered the gods kinda hyper-fertile and didn't distinguish as much between bodily fluids, and Medusa was the mortal daughter of two gods. Thus, when her blood hit the ground, she impregnated it and it gave birth to Pegasus and Chryasor.
Another version was that Medusa was pregnant from when Poseidon raped her, and that when she was beheaded Pegasus and Chryasor sprang out like Athena springing out from Zeus' head.
Hello, everyone. Today we go to rescue Prince Innes, who has been betrayed and surrounded in the mountains of Carcino. But first, another quick peek at Grado Keep, for more delicious office politics:
Another gemstone! Sunstones are, symbolically speaking, full of vitality and passion – appropriate for Glen, who as we've seen is a bit of an outspoken hothead. And I should not fail to point out that Glen's main rival, Valter, is the Moonstone.
So Emperor Vigarde orders Glen to go to Carcino and kill Eirika. You may recall that this was already Glen's job – he and Valter were tasked with hunting the twins back in Chapter 9. I suppose it's important to inform him that Eirika was spotted in Carcino, but surely he didn't need to trek all the way back to the capital for that. They have pegasus couriers, you know.
I think the writers just like throne room scenes.
Vigarde: Eirika invaded Carcino. She massacred the citizens of Port Kiris. Glen. Go. Crush the rebels who brought ruin to Carcino.
Glen:…Understood, sire.
Yeah, no. He's not buying it. Eirika lived in the capital, remember? He probably met her, and anyone who spent any time with Eirika at all would be able to see this for a lie.
Vigarde is still speaking oddly, by the way. If Shoulderpads (still standing silently by the throne) is an evil sorcerer controlling him, then they're doing a terrible job of it. Or maybe the shape-shifting demon who used to imitate him left sometime after Chapter 3, and the replacement is a worse actor. Either way, Glen leaves the throne room and meets his brother in the hallway outside. (By the way, a wyvern rider's movement animation involves the mount actually flying, which looks very, very silly indoors.)
Glen tells his brother that he's gotten a new mission. He wants Cormag to stay in the capital rather than accompanying him, which is an interesting choice. Cormag notes that something about this mission is troubling him.
Glen: I never was able to slip anything past you, little brother. You're right. This duty falls heavily on my shoulders, more than any other.
As I thought, Glen knows Princess Eirika from happier days. He says that they only spoke once, but that one time was enough to convince him of her "great kindness." So Vigarde's claims are obvious lies, right? Well…
Glen: His majesty has never spoken a falsehood in all the time I've served him.
General Glen is caught in an impossible dilemma: two people he knows and trusts are violently opposed to each other. It's clear that one of them has gone evil, somehow, but even if he determines which one, he's not too chuffed about raising his blade to either of them.
I find it…ominous that Glen is leaving Cormag behind. I've made no secret of my suspicion that he will defect from the Empire. But, if I were about to leave my high-ranking position to defect to another country, I would make damn sure that my family came with me, for fear that my former compatriots would use them as hostages. It's possible that Glen is preparing to kill Eirika, and only wants to keep his brother from seeing him stoop so low. I would hate to kill Glen and/or Cormag…Then again, these games don't have the smartest characters. It's possible that Glen is about to defect, and then in a few chapters we'll be infiltrating a Gradoan prison to rescue his brother.
Back in the present, Glen's day is made worse by the arrival of the person he hates most: Valter strolls in, calls him a coward, then whines about how much he wishes he could be the one to kill Eirika.
Glen growls at him. They call each other names for a bit – Valter chides him for not speaking with the respect due to his equal in rank, which probably makes more sense in a language with explicit grammatical formality levels because in English, I'd say Valter and Glen have been equally rude to each other for the whole game. Then we finally get some background on why they hate each other:
Glen: You wretch. You were cast out from the army for mistreating civilians. What lies have you told to receive pardon and reinstatement at the same time?
Valter: Our beloved emperor felt my skills were needed, and his word is law.
It's kind of tragic, here, how Glen still has faith in Vigarde, in his judgment. What lies have you told – the Emperor is a good man, still, all this bad stuff is not his fault. If only he knew the true faces of these snakes surrounding him…Valter tells him the truth: Vigarde does know. Vigarde, or the forces controlling him, looked at Valter and saw a bloodthirsty killer who was still composed enough to follow orders, and said, "Yes! That guy! He's perfect!"
Valter: And then we have you three. Duessel, Selena, and you…We were brought in to plug the holes, don't you see?
At this point Cormag steps forward, warning Valter not to insult Glen any further. The Moonstone just smirks, asking if he really feels like throwing hands right outside the imperial throne room with the Emperor a few meters away. Glen pulls his brother back.
Glen: We are His Majesty's subjects. We will honor his commands.
But he has one last parting shot for Valter:
The scene changes to show three green units inside a little stone fort, surrounded by red units. It's Prince Innes, along with a burly green-haired man and the beautiful dancer we saw in Serafew. They are, as established previously, surrounded.
These two are mercenaries that Innes hired to bodyguard him on the way to Jehanna – King Hayden established that troops are dearer than gold in Frelia right now, so Innes must have figured he ought to leave the seasoned Frelian troops to Ephraim.
The green-haired man assures Innes that he would never abandon an employer – he's Gerik, leader of Gerik's Mercenaries, and the whole company relies on his reputation. So he asks Innes, who has a reputation as a tactician, what the plan is.
"Same as before," Innes replies. "We remain surrounded."
Making a run for it would be too dangerous, in Innes's judgment (I wonder how he would react if he knew how Ephraim escaped this exact situation in Chapter 5X?). A pegasus knight managed to escape, and if they can wait all the days it'll take for her to get to Frelia and back, help will come. Gerik, probing, asks if he's considered surrendering. Innes proudly replies that he doesn't know the meaning of the word.
Innes: The fate of the world rests on my shoulders, and I'll make it to Jehanna. Even if I have to crawl there to do it.
Gerik: Now, that makes me feel better.
At this point, the dancer – Tethys – speaks up.
The bad news: they have no spare weapons. I presume that they're out of other supplies, too. The worse news: The troops outside are readying themselves for an assault. Innes takes a quick moment to recalculate.
Innes: You can surrender or flee. The choice is yours. I'm the one they're after. Throw down your weapons, and you'll walk away alive. I don't need you here. You'll only be in my way.
Gerik asks the prince how the heck he plans to survive, and Innes replies that he has a cunning plan to flee, but he can't tell them, because mercenaries can't be trusted to keep secrets.
Gerik: Sound like you're trying to make sure you're the only one who dies.
Innes:…
Innes: Fool. I've no intention of dying. But there can be no false hope of reinforcements riding in to save the day.
Innes: You speak of your obligation to your employer, and to your name...Well, I have an obligation to my entire country. I am Frelia's heir, and I will do all in my power to protect her.
So. Does that convince them to go? No. It does the opposite.
Geric: Well played, milord. I've always loved the melodrama of martyrdom…There's no way I can abandon you after that fine performance. I'm staying with you. To the end.
That's right! It turns out that Gerik, hardened mercenary, is a sucker for melodrama, and all of Innes's super-extra speeches have endeared him so much that he's decided to die for him. Innes' protests are ignored, and in an even funnier move, Gerik turns to Tethys and starts telling her to leave and save herself.
Tethys tells both of them to stop being ridiculous. Innes is still fuming, so Tethys points out that, seeing as he's fired them, he doesn't have the authority to order them to leave anymore. Innes gives up, muttering about how mercenaries are supposed to be venal and disloyal, and tries to come up with a new plan. Then Tethys notices something else.
Tethys: If, by some miracle, aid were to come, from what direction would it arrive?
Innes:…From the north. But there's little or no hope of that. Even if Frelia were to send us aid, they would not arrive until…
Tethys: This may be good news…Then again, it may be more bad news.
She sees an army arriving from the north end of the pass. You all know who it is:
From his mountaintop palace, Councilor Pablo cackles to himself about his good luck. It seems he launched his coup with the goal of usurping Klimt – but as fortune had it, Innes was travelling through Carcino at the time, vulnerable to capture. Pablo thinks that presenting Innes to Grado will win him much favor with the Empire. He orders his men to flush Innes out of the mountains, and search for Klimt as well.
Indoors – the location is unspecified, but it seems that Klimt is hiding somewhere within the same city as Pablo – Klimt gets a report of Innes's plight.
We learn a bit about the politics at play. Grado may be a more powerful ally than Frelia, but Klimt believes that helping them is a devil's bargain. If the Empire's power goes unchecked, then Carcino will end up as nothing but a vassal to them. Following the advice of his aide, Klimt decides to reveal his location, to draw some of Pablo's troops away from Innes. That's the best he can do for the prince.
This map is a large one. Innes, Gerik and Tethys are holed up in a defensible fort in the middle of a mountain pass, with multiple waves of soldiers converging on them. From the mountains to the east and west, axe-wielding brigands will periodically arrive just to make things more exciting. In the north-east lies a walled city, guarded by some more soldiers, and two ballistae. There we find the boss of this chapter, Councilor Pablo. The objective is to kill him and seize the gate he holds – but, of course, I also want to save the three green units. I eagerly await Innes's reaction upon seeing his little sister, all statted up.
Ah, perhaps I'm a bit too eager. But, hey, what is up with her death quote? I haven't commented on any of the death quotes so far, but…Tana…what's had her thinking about death for so long? She's seemed so cheerful and innocent, from what I've seen. I need to dig into her supports.
I replay the first turn, attracting the first wave of troops away from Innes's crew. I keep Tana out of the range of that gods-damned Axe Fighter who took off half her HP.
So he goes after Franz instead. Who dies.
Anyway, while I have some trouble dealing with the first wave of enemies to the north, another group starts advancing from the south. And the south is where the entrance to the fort is, so Gerik leaves and starts chopping them up. And he does really well? His stats are just great. He has the Constitution to double enemies while wielding a Steel Blade, it's fun to watch.
Gerik and Innes are doing so well that they start advancing towards the enemy and I worry that they'll leave me behind. Come back! I need to talk to you to turn you blue! Otherwise you won't get exp for all those enemies you're slaying! Tana and Seth hurry over – I'm not entirely sure who to recruit these guys with, but Tana must be able to talk to her brother, right? And then I have to pause, because there's an archer standing there. Menacingly. Right next to a ballista.
Do you want to know how I solved that? Seth rode forward and stood on the ballista tile, blocking the archer from using it. Subsequently, Tana was able to reach her brother with ease.
It's at moments like these that I really wish these older games had voice acting. He's bamboozled, of course, because she's not supposed to even be in this country. Then he tries to order her to go back home, but she determinedly tells him that she's here to protect him.
With Innes now a blue unit, he turns around to talk to Gerik to recruit him, and then I use Gerik to recruit Tethys. It's a bit cumbersome, but the conversations are interesting – Innes actually says, "Thank you," to Gerik for holding out so long, and Gerik and Tethys are definitely flirting:
Gerik: Hey, Tethys. Looks like help is on the way.
Tethys: Perhaps good things do happen to good people.
Gerik: Good things? I like the sound of that. What do you suppose might come my way?
Tethys: Who knows? Depends how good you are.
Gerik has used up his turn to talk to Tethys, so he can't join the front lines against the enemies coming from the south…or can he?
Tethys, as I said, is a Dancer. That's not just her profession, that's her class. They can Dance for adjacent allied units. The ally becomes refreshed and can act again. In FE, Dancers are unique units – in the sense that you only get one of them in each game. Even in the modern style of Fire Emblem, where you can field an entire team of Swordmasters if you like, this holds true. I'm sure you see why the developers go to such pains to make sure the player only ever has one Dancer – two dancers on the same team could dance for each other, making the player phase endless, and opening the way to some game-breaking nonsense.
In the games I'm familiar with, Dancers are like Thieves, in that they have weak combat but make up for it with special utility. In this game, Tethys has no combat. She has one Strength. She doesn't have a weapon. She dances, and that's it. She gains exp for dancing, but it's almost unnecessary. So what if she gains stats on level up? Her stats don't matter because she's never going to see combat. At best, they will help her survive a hit if you mess up and leave her exposed, but Tethys is so fragile that you're better off avoiding that.
As I said earlier, a group of enemies has begun moving up from the south end of the map. One of them, Marisa, has a name and a portrait. Who is she, and what is she doing here? A cutscene answers that: one of the soldiers calls to Marisa, telling her to advance. She's a high-priced mercenary, and it's time for her to earn her pay.
Soldier: Th-that way! The Frelian troops! Don't point that blade in our direction!
She is terse, to-the-point, and her allies are all scared of her. As she zooms off to Innes's position, someone comments: "Whew…So that's Marisa, the Crimson Flash of Gerik's Mercenaries…"
Gerik's Mercenaries? Gerik is right here! Actually, in the scene where Gerik and Innes were plotting to die heroically, he tells Tethys, "Give my regards to Ewan and Marisa," so she's definitely a friend. But then why is she fighting on the enemy side?
The southern enemies approach. In addition to Marisa, they contain a high-level priest with a Sleep staff. This is my introduction to status effect staves, which are used for crowd control rather than healing. And they're not just limited to targeting adjacent units.
…Thankfully, they're not very accurate, so I don't need to find out how annoying they are just yet.
I knock out all the enemies between Gerik and Marisa, and he advances to ask her why she's wearing red.
They recognize each other across the battlefield, and Gerik figures out what happened: it's an administrative error. His mercenaries don't all deploy on the same job at once, see, and while they're not supposed to fight for opposing sides in the same conflict, sometimes their brokers don't describe the job fully. Or sometimes, the employer isn't entirely honest about what he's planning to do with his soldiers. I'm sure that, if Pablo had made posters clearly stating 'SEEKING MERCENARIES FOR CARCINOESE COUP: MUST BE WILLING TO WORK WITH GRADO IMPERIAL ARMY, BETRAY FRELIANS', Marisa would have had second thoughts about taking the job while her boss was escorting the Crown Prince of Frelia through Carcino.
Marisa: What should we do?
Gerik: Aye, well, that's a good question…As a mercenary, your loyalty should always lie with the person paying your wages. You decide. We can cross blades if you want, but I'd rather you retreat.
Their conversation is remarkably calm, for all that they might be about to kill one another. Marisa's dilemma is as follows: She could try to kill her friend and comrade, and, given the gulf in their stats, probably die. Or she could desert, and damage the reputation she needs for her livelihood. Well, she trusts Gerik:
Marisa: C'mon, Chief. What would YOU like me to do?
Gerik: Well, that's easy. I'd like you to come over and join my side.
Marisa: Right. Done.
Then she ruthlessly turns on that priest and cuts him down in cold blood. Or, at least, she tries, but misses. Yeah. I didn't inspect her stats too closely, but I definitely noticed that she has an accuracy problem. I think she looks really cool, but I'm not sure it's worth raising her when I already have Joshua.
At this point, a wave of reinforcements arrives – pegasus knights from the southwest and northwest, and cavaliers from the southeast. My army is already divided in two groups: one based around Innes to the south, and one based around Eirika to the north. Innes and company can handle the bulk of the reinforcements with archers and a narrow mountain pass, while Eirika will take Pablo's city. I feel satisfied with this strategy until I notice one thing:
There's a pegasus knight with a Talisman, all the way at the south end of the map. Colm could steal it. But Colm is with the northern group, attacking the city, because there's a Myrmidon there with a Red Gem and I've been plotting to steal it for the entire level. I agonize over the choice for a few minutes – money or resistance? I decide on the money; I'm worried about the cost of replacing weapons and staves.
Colm opens the city gates, with style. I'm loving his new Rogue animations; they even include hair flips.
In the city, there are three houses where we can stop to learn new details about the conflict in Carcino. A man explains that the Republic of Carcino has no king, and "anyone can be a leader in Carcino if they are old enough." I assume that this means that anyone above a certain age can run for election to the Council of Elders, and not that rulership is bestowed by law upon the oldest people in the country. Someone else worries that Councillor Pablo is using the army of mercenaries he hired with his massive wealth to overthrow the Council and set himself up as dictator. A third guy gossips about the war between Grado and Frelia, which has lasted much longer than the conquest of Renais. He attributes Frelia's success to Prince Innes, who, according to rumor, runs a very successful spy network.
So! That's the fun part over. Or maybe this part will be amusing for you guys, I don't know. It certainly wasn't for me. Welcome to the Two Rounds of Hell, which I had to reload three times.
Down south, my soldiers are being harassed by pegasus knights, but I have Innes and Neimi and a ballista so I'm equipped to handle them. Problem: those pegasus knights have a deceptively long range. If you can hit them with a ballista, they can probably attack you!
Neimi dies; I reload.
Up north, my units pour into a crowded plaza and clear out the enemies. Natasha comes last, to patch them up. She's safely ensconced in a cross formation. Problem: Not only can the northwest pegasus knights cross the width of the map in one swoop, they also carry javelins. A cross formation does not protect against them.
I reload. Natasha hangs back and finds one sheltered place the pegasus knights cannot reach; everyone must rely on healing items for this turn. I am getting sick of this map and tell myself that even if someone dies this time, I will not reload.
The pegasus knights go after Joshua as the next most fragile unit, but he is carrying a Lancereaver and their hit rates are reduced to single digits.
Down south, Gerik and Gilliam are blocking a chokepoint in the mountain pass. The cavaliers all go after Gerik and he fights brilliantly – too brilliantly, as they all get a chance to attack him by riding past the corpses of their fellows. One final blow from the horse archer takes him down to zero.
I do not reload. Sorry, Gerik. You seemed great.
A new round! Colm advances, steals the Red Gem. Pablo is within my reach; just his bodyguards to deal with, and a trio of Brigands about to pour into the town square. I direct Joshua to deal with them, something he should be more than capable of doing.
Problem: It turns out that, in exchange for having weapon triangle advantage against lances, a Lancereaver has disadvantage against axes.
Joshua dies. I sigh. I imagine training up Marisa to replace him. I imagine how sad DragonUnitOmega will be. I think of Gerik again. I reload.
This time, Gerik drinks a Vulnerary while he guards that chokepoint. This time, Eirika gets sent to deal with the Brigands, while Joshua's job is to be Natasha's bodyguard. As in, he will be shielding a Rescued Natasha with his body, because I haven't found a better solution to her getting Javelin'd. I can't attack them! They're two spaces away in the mountains, and Franz's Javelin just broke!
But I'm over the hump, and soon enough everything between me and Pablo is dead. Now I have to figure out how to defeat the guy. Pablo is a Sage, a promoted class that uses light magic. His Defense is good, his Resistance is cracked, and he's standing on a Gate so you know he has a decent evasion chance. What's more, he's ensconced in a wee little place such that only two people could have room to attack him in a single turn (I mean, unless I had an archer up here to equip the Longbow that just dropped, then a third person could attack him from three tiles away, but Neimi and Innes are hunting pegasus knights at the opposite edge of the map).
Since his resistance is so good, I want to use physical attackers. Eirika drinks a Pure Water to boost her resistance and dives in with a Killing Edge, but fails to seal the deal with a critical hit. Who can assist her? As previously mentioned, I don't have an archer with me and Franz's Javelin just broke. Then I have a brain wave: remember the Runesword that dropped from the Tower of Valni? It has 1-2 range! Seth reaches into the convoy and equips it.
Why is that damage so low? Why do the arrows show weapon triangle disadvantage? Does the runesword…count as dark magic? Huh. Well, I guess there is such a thing as a magic sword-user in this game. It's wonky implementation though, running off his Strength like Seth is throwing the sword at people, and Pablo's Resistance means it can't help me here. I sigh and let Eirika finish this herself on her next turn.
And then properly finish the turn after that, when she can seize the gate.
Just as the battle ends, the camera shows some wyverns perched ominously on the nearby mountains, observing the battle. Glen?
What are you doing here, you creep?! This isn't your job! Go harass Ephraim some more!
Valter: Seems you're as skilled as reports say. This is going to be fun. Yes, yes, yes. I do so love a strong adversary.
Why do I get the feeling that this dialogue was even creepier before the modders got to it? One of his knights asks if they ought to attack and he says, uh… "No, we'll pass on dessert for now."
"Dessert" implies that he already had plenty of fun just watching the battle. So Valter just, uh, leaves. He leaves; he doesn't try to capture Eirika or say anything about Glen, he just came to Carcino to watch her and then he leaves. I…think this counts as stalking? Is it possible for someone who's been hired to capture you to also be your stalker?
Anyway, Eirika and Innes are in Pablo's palace, or something, it's unclear, but Innes starts off on the right foot by apologizing for the trouble she had to go through. At this point, the man we know as Klimt bustles in, saying, "Oh, Prince Innes! Thank goodness, you're unharmed!"
Klimt: P-peace, please! I have no intention of opposing you or quarrelling with you. I, too, have been marked for death by Pablo…
Eirika steps in to calm everyone down and Klimt explains the situation: Pablo's faction of the Council wishes to ally with Grado, believing that the Empire will surely conquer Magvel anyway and they had better sign up with the winning side before they get marked as its enemies. Meanwhile, Klimt and his supporters wish to preserve the alliance with Frelia. And, as they have so rudely discovered, Pablo has gotten sick of diplomacy and bribes. The Republic of Carcino has been roughly usurped. Klimt and his compatriots fled to avoid assassination.
Klimt: Pablo has usurped rule of the council. We had no choice but to hide. You must believe me – the whole of Carcino does not believe as Pablo does.
During this scene, Klimt is acting…deferential? Defensive? Desperate? It's possible that he's merely shaken by the events of the past few days, but he seems scared of Eirika and Innes. Or, I would wager, scared of the possibility that Frelia will call off the alliance after their crown prince almost got killed. And then where would Carcino be? With no choice but to join up with Grado!
Eirika speaks to him soothingly; she's happy to hear that this was not a matter of all of Carcino being treacherous. Klimt states that he plans to travel to Frelia to explain his situation to the king – read, take shelter from assassins and ask for money and soldiers to kick out the usurper. That'll be another drain on Frelia's treasury. Man, Hayden is probably sick of ruling the only country on Magvel that currently has its shit together.
In the following scene, Gerik and Tethys approach Innes and ask – well, inform him – that they will continue to serve as his guards. Innes informs them that he's doubling their pay.
Innes: If the two of you hadn't stayed with me back there, I would not have survived. Gerik, Tethys…Thank you. You have my gratitude.
Tethys: Prince…Did you get…er…hit on the head during that last skirmish?
Innes: That's unkind. My neck is not so stiff that I cannot show gratitude.
We've seen a lot more of Innes this chapter. Like most of the characters in this game, you only get a small slice of him in each scene. It turns out that what I saw in the introduction was a bit skewed – Ephraim was there, whom he hates, and that caused him to go Maximum Prick. The rest of the time he's stiff, and cold, and prideful, but he also has a strong sense of justice and a penchant for flowery language. And he runs a spy network!
The chapter's not done yet, either. Tethys goes to pick up Ewan, the final named member of Gerik's Mercenaries. He turns out to be her tiny younger brother. He's not where he's supposed to be:
Tethys: What are you doing here? I told you to wait in the inn and behave yourself, didn't I?
Ewan: It's not fair. I want to have adventures too.
Tethys: You are such an imp…I am not out here running about having fun, you know?
Ewan proudly announces that, now that he knows some real magic, he can help her in her battles. He tries to demonstrate and she cries out not to use magic in the middle of a crowded street. Ewan persists in his desire to protect her.
Hm. While I agree that Tethys does need protection, I'm not sure a frail little mage like Ewan would be the best candidate. Somehow I doubt that he has more HP than she does.
Well, Tethys is worn down, and promises to talk to the Chief (that's Gerik) and Princess Eirika. She does not mention getting Innes's permission. He would probably be insulted if he knew that.
Seth. Poor, poor Seth. He knows they're not going to listen. He knows they're not going to return to safety. But he still has to try, and do his utmost to fulfill his duty, no matter what his charges decide.
Innes: The peril is self-evident. However, I have to reach Jehanna, and the only way is through Carcino. If I don't hurry, nations will fall, one after another, to Grado's hunger.
Eirika: Innes is right.
Eirika has decided to amend her route to Rausten. Forget about the North Sea and its ghost ship. She'll travel with Innes to Jehanna because the developers don't want to split the army for safety in numbers, and then proceed north through Jehanna to Rausten. Seth is in despair: how are they going to get this party through Carcino with not one, but two hostile armies looking for them? They can't try disguises again! Those never, ever worked!
Ewan: I know a way that leads over the mountains straight to Jehanna!
Tethys grabs her brother, chiding him in an oh-so-familiar way, but Eirika stops her from taking him away. She wants to hear more.
Ewan explains that, in the mountains of Eastern Carcino lies a village named Caer Pelyn, where his teacher lives. His teacher – not Ewan – knows everything about the mountains, and he can surely show them a secret route. Oh, and this teacher's name is Saleh, which I recognize as the name of Myrrh's travelling companion. Is Saleh a Manakete? Ewan would mention if his teacher wasn't human, right? I wait for Myrrh to react, but…
Where is Myrrh? The screen can only hold four character portraits at a time, so during group scenes people pop in and out as they speak. Even if someone isn't speaking, it doesn't mean they aren't there; Myrrh is shy. And Myrrh isn't part of the army, of course, because we don't have a Dragonstone, but…did they accompany Eirika or not? If not, where are they – back in Castle Frelia? With Ephraim? I feel like it shouldn't be this easy to lose track of a dragon!
Well, Innes also recognizes the name Saleh, from his intelligence reports. Apparently, "He's a powerful wielder of magic who has been fighting bandits and monsters." Innes gives his approval, and Eirika asks the boy Ewan to take them to Caer Pelyn.
Who is Saleh? What is Glen planning? Will Ewan's uncanny resemblance to my younger brother make me more or less willing to use him in combat? Find out next time, on Restoration Queen!
So Emperor Vigarde orders Glen to go to Carcino and kill Eirika. You may recall that this was already Glen's job – he and Valter were tasked with hunting the twins back in Chapter 9. I suppose it's important to inform him that Eirika was spotted in Carcino, but surely he didn't need to trek all the way back to the capital for that. They have pegasus couriers, you know.
Hey, at least unlike Game of Thrones it's easier to imagine all these pegasus and wyvern riders mean messages and transport can be fairly fast across the continent, instead of "No I think Varys and Littlefinger just have a timeshare on an offscreen teleporter so they can show up wherever the writers want them to". Still a bit sus, but almost believable.
General Glen is caught in an impossible dilemma: two people he knows and trusts are violently opposed to each other. It's clear that one of them has gone evil, somehow, but even if he determines which one, he's not too chuffed about raising his blade to either of them.
I find it…ominous that Glen is leaving Cormag behind. I've made no secret of my suspicion that he will defect from the Empire. But, if I were about to leave my high-ranking position to defect to another country, I would make damn sure that my family came with me, for fear that my former compatriots would use them as hostages. It's possible that Glen is preparing to kill Eirika, and only wants to keep his brother from seeing him stoop so low. I would hate to kill Glen and/or Cormag…Then again, these games don't have the smartest characters. It's possible that Glen is about to defect, and then in a few chapters we'll be infiltrating a Gradoan prison to rescue his brother.
So, if you aren't aware of the Camus archtype in the FE games: much like "starting pre-promoted unit who's better than the rest of your army but maybe falls off eventually, maybe not", Camus is an enemy general in FE1 who due to his loyalties to his country cannot be recruited or persuaded not to fight, and thus is a boss you have to kill while sad about doing so because hey he seems like a decent guy. There tends to be at least one or two of these in a lot of FE games, with all of Duessel. Selena and Glen all being potential qualifiers. We'll see how that pans out as the story goes on.
As for the defecting thing... I read this was more Glen intends to confront Erika and get to the bottom of the situation on whether or not she's really some crazy war maiden going around slaughtering civilians like rumors state, then come back and confront the Emperor with that information. So if he does defect, it would probably be while he's with Cormag back at the capital and can run alongside him. Could be wrong though, could just be "Glen has the brainrot and doesn't consider bringing family with him when going rogue".
These two are mercenaries that Innes hired to bodyguard him on the way to Jehanna – King Hayden established that troops are dearer than gold in Frelia right now, so Innes must have figured he ought to leave the seasoned Frelian troops to Ephraim.
Innes: You can surrender or flee. The choice is yours. I'm the one they're after. Throw down your weapons, and you'll walk away alive. I don't need you here. You'll only be in my way.
Gerik asks the prince how the heck he plans to survive, and Innes replies that he has a cunning plan to flee, but he can't tell them, because mercenaries can't be trusted to keep secrets.
Gerik: Sound like you're trying to make sure you're the only one who dies.
Innes:…
Innes: Fool. I've no intention of dying. But there can be no false hope of reinforcements riding in to save the day.
Innes: You speak of your obligation to your employer, and to your name...Well, I have an obligation to my entire country. I am Frelia's heir, and I will do all in my power to protect her.
As ever, I do love Innes in these scenes. He's an asshole nobility type, sure, but it's like... the good kind of asshole noble? The one who's up their own ass but also is 110% about honor and Noblesse Oblige, with how when it becomes clear the group probably isn't going to make it Innes is instantly taking any tactic he can think of to try and get Gerik and Tethys to get out safely, from cajoling them about how they should just defect being mercenaries anyways to firing them and saying "get outta here".
Following the advice of his aide, Klimt decides to reveal his location, to draw some of Pablo's troops away from Innes. That's the best he can do for the prince.
I'm curious, was there a difference in the dialogue here? Because from what Klimt says in the original script:
Man:
"Lord Klimt, Pablo's troops are moving toward the stronghold. It looks like they're planning on chasing down Prince Innes and his men."
Klimt:
"Pablo, you mad, reckless imbecile… If Prince Innes dies here, the bond between Carcino and Frelia is sundered forever. Carcino will be nothing more than a vassal paying tribute to Grado… We must find some way to aid Prince Innes."
Man:
"Wait, my lord Klimt! Pablo is after you as well. If you reveal yourself here…"
Klimt:
"Ahh… May fortune keep you safe, Prince Innes…"
Anyway, while I have some trouble dealing with the first wave of enemies to the north, another group starts advancing from the south. And the south is where the entrance to the fort is, so Gerik leaves and starts chopping them up. And he does really well? His stats are just great. He has the Constitution to double enemies while wielding a Steel Blade, it's fun to watch.
Gerik and Innes are doing so well that they start advancing towards the enemy and I worry that they'll leave me behind. Come back! I need to talk to you to turn you blue! Otherwise you won't get exp for all those enemies you're slaying! Tana and Seth hurry over – I'm not entirely sure who to recruit these guys with, but Tana must be able to talk to her brother, right? And then I have to pause, because there's an archer standing there. Menacingly. Right next to a ballista.
Gerik and Innes are both pretty cracked as units, that's for sure. Innes is locked into Sniper which is one of the more crappy classes in FE8 as an enemy-phase focused game, but even so he has some great starting stats so he's perfectly viable for "I want to delete a unit or two on player phase", or of course absolutely annihilating fliers. In particular, I'd advise having at least one bow user around just for the sake of having bow access in FE8... since there's one flying enemy type later on that you really want to be able to kill as fast as possible, and Innes is a viable option for that if you aren't training Neimi or Gerik.
Speaking of Gerik, this guy is also great - very solid starting stats, and probably counts as evidence that Fire Emblem wants you to promote units ASAP once in a while because oh look, he starts at Level 10 with a Hero Crest. Mercenary is also interesting when it comes to promotions because among the branch promotion options in FE8 it has one of the most balanced choices: Ranger gives horse access and one more move, but bows are generally not as useful of a weapon type compared to the Axes that Heroes get since those let you hit all the harder and give the coveted enemy phase 1-2 range of Handaxes.
Anyways I gave the Hero Crest to Joshua this run, better luck next time Gerik.
Tethys, as I said, is a Dancer. That's not just her profession, that's her class. They can Dance for adjacent allied units. The ally becomes refreshed and can act again. In FE, Dancers are unique units – in the sense that you only get one of them in each game. Even in the modern style of Fire Emblem, where you can field an entire team of Swordmasters if you like, this holds true. I'm sure you see why the developers go to such pains to make sure the player only ever has one Dancer – two dancers on the same team could dance for each other, making the player phase endless, and opening the way to some game-breaking nonsense.
Dancers, Dancers, Dancers... suffice to say, I used to mostly ignore them, this was a mistake. Most any tier list will put Dancers as an S tier unit, and actually using them I agree. I mean, think about it, what's more useful - training up an entire second combat unit who's splitting enemy EXP with the rest of the party, or just having a Dancer go "what if Seth, but Twice?" while also having their own EXP pool which effectively guarantees they always get 10 EXP, every single turn. Dancers also result in some hilarious rescue trains when you play with that feature since you can do things like "Seth rescues unit, runs 8 spaces, gets danced to move 8 more spaces and chuck them on a different horse that runs another 8 spaces" and suddenly you've crossed the entire map in one or two turns.
In the games I'm familiar with, Dancers are like Thieves, in that they have weak combat but make up for it with special utility. In this game, Tethys has no combat. She has one Strength. She doesn't have a weapon. She dances, and that's it. She gains exp for dancing, but it's almost unnecessary. So what if she gains stats on level up? Her stats don't matter because she's never going to see combat. At best, they will help her survive a hit if you mess up and leave her exposed, but Tethys is so fragile that you're better off avoiding that.
Dancer combat is honestly a distraction, like there's very little reason to actually hand a Dancer a sword and tell them to get into fights. They get free exp by making other units who are better at fighting fight more. As for the exp? Don't knock it, most GBA dancers have fairly absurd Speed and Luck growths which both cap at 30, and still have decent HP (and often Resistance). In some cases, chucking a dancer forward on a terrain tile like a forest gives you a unit guaranteed to draw fire because they can't retaliate, but who will just dodge everything with fancy dance steps or something.
The southern enemies approach. In addition to Marisa, they contain a high-level priest with a Sleep staff. This is my introduction to status effect staves, which are used for crowd control rather than healing. And they're not just limited to targeting adjacent units.
So in the GBA games, status staves and how effective they are depends on both the caster's magic stat, and the target's resistance stat. So this early on, with babby clerics it's not a huge deal, but some map later might go "hey what if 22 magic druid had a Berserk Staff" and suddenly if you don't have someone with a Restore staff handy to cure status effects... well, it is incredibly not fun to have one of your best combat units suddenly target your own squishies.
Then she ruthlessly turns on that priest and cuts him down in cold blood. Or, at least, she tries, but misses. Yeah. I didn't inspect her stats too closely, but I definitely noticed that she has an accuracy problem. I think she looks really cool, but I'm not sure it's worth raising her when I already have Joshua.
Ah, Marisa. Neat design, Pink Hair Myrmidon... who is up there with Amelia in terms of "downright worst unit in the game" tiers.
See, Marisa's problems aren't just joining a bit underleveled as a swordlocked unit halfway through the game, it's that Joshua exists and is just better than her. Joshua joins 5 chapters earlier at the same starting level, but with superior stats in everything except for Resistance (including C rank swords to her D rank swords), a somewhat better affinity (Wind gives Attack and Crit where Ice gives Defense and Avoid, not nearly as great for Swordmasters or Assassins), and beats her out in most growths (Marisa has 5% higher Speed and Resistance and 20% more Luck... Joshua matches or beats every other stat).
So, in general... it tends to be better to just train up Joshua, sadly. Though again, FE8, even outside of grinding pretty much anyone can be made usable if you want to invest in them.
There's a pegasus knight with a Talisman, all the way at the south end of the map. Colm could steal it. But Colm is with the northern group, attacking the city, because there's a Myrmidon there with a Red Gem and I've been plotting to steal it for the entire level. I agonize over the choice for a few minutes – money or resistance? I decide on the money; I'm worried about the cost of replacing weapons and staves.
Funny enough, if your worry was raw cash? The talisman was a better choice either way, because stat boosters sell for 4000 gold while Red Gems are only 2500. That said, Innes joins with a White Gem for 10000 gold anyways so that should aid in your money problems.
Yeah, Chapter 10 was surprisingly overwhelming for me, to the point that I think I just used Now-Berserker Ross to deal with the lower Pegasus squad down below using the power of Peak Terrain Bonuses and AXE. Lost out on the talisman, but I really didn't want a bunch of fliers crashing into my squishier army so they had to go.
Why is that damage so low? Why do the arrows show weapon triangle disadvantage? Does the runesword…count as dark magic? Huh. Well, I guess there is such a thing as a magic sword-user in this game. It's wonky implementation though, running off his Strength like Seth is throwing the sword at people, and Pablo's Resistance means it can't help me here. I sigh and let Eirika finish this herself on her next turn.
Yep, all three types of magic swords (Runesword, Light Brand, and Wind Sword) count as magical when used at range, so they get hit with the magic triangle if used that way. In addition, they all target Resistance instead of Defense, and since GBA Fire Emblem doesn't give your units both a Strength and Magic stat like a lot of other FE games, on ranged attacks they just use half of your strength.
Between that and how rare magic swords tend to be, this is why swords aren't really considered viable for 1-2 range access in sword users, where Lances and Axes can just mass-purchase Javelins and Hand Axes.
What are you doing here, you creep?! This isn't your job! Go harass Ephraim some more!
Valter: Seems you're as skilled as reports say. This is going to be fun. Yes, yes, yes. I do so love a strong adversary.
Why do I get the feeling that this dialogue was even creepier before the modders got to it? One of his knights asks if they ought to attack and he says, uh… "No, we'll pass on dessert for now."
"Dessert" implies that he already had plenty of fun just watching the battle. So Valter just, uh, leaves. He leaves; he doesn't try to capture Eirika or say anything about Glen, he just came to Carcino to watch her and then he leaves. I…think this counts as stalking? Is it possible for someone who's been hired to capture you to also be your stalker?
That said, maybe-controversial take here on the Restoration Queen changes that's been on my mind since the prologue - I'm honestly a bit torn by how even Valter has been hit with the "less casual misogyny" stick? No complaints most other places like rewording some Ephraim conversations to be less "silly Erika you are frail girl sister, you should stay behind and not fight", but Valter just strikes me as the kind of guy who's supposed to be a slimy, evil asshole who treats women like objects to be won... so you can get the eventual satisfaction of beating his face in and dumping his corpse in a ditch.
Though I suppose there's also the argument to be made of it being a weak crutch to make a villain more hateable, like how whatever generic Isekai story will go "oh mah GAWD big Villain Man keeps slaves and does lewd things to unconsenting women! Look how evil he is, don't you want to see him get killed brutally for it?"
