Off to Lumina, one way or another...
In this case, I'm going in after I did
the mines. The Firefly Lamp gives us the city of Lumina, where we
find several old friends. On the city's main map scene, there's an
eatery to the left and some back alleys to the right. In the
eatery, we see that the place is full of Dudbears. And lo and
behold, we run into Diddle and Capella there, too, though we don't
have anything to do with them at this point. There's also a weird
looking dude who doesn't say his name, as I noticed, who will
eventually teach us the Dudbear language, but that's for later.
In the back alleys, we come across our
good buddy Niccolo, too. Given the way the previous quests he's done
with us, I'm kinda glad we don't have to go with him when we run into
him in one of the shops. Deeper in the maze of alleys, which really
reminds me of an M. C. Escher painting, to be honest, there's a
lampmaker's shop run by a woman named Monique. She says she's gonna
go broke and starve if she stays in Lumina. A centaur guy named
Gilbert comes in and says he's got a big, raging boner for her and
will be crushed if she leaves. So, they make a deal where Gilbert
has to sell six lamps for Monique if he wants her to stay. Gilbert
pretty much drags the hero out of the shop and says he'll buy half
the lamps himself but is too lazy to sell the rest and forces you to
do it for him. So, it's off to learn Dudbear from that one guy from
before.
Essentially, the Dudbears speak what
seems like a form of baby talk, though I'm sure there's a more
correct, technical term that I've not got time to look up right now.
I can't quite wrap my head around how exactly it's supposed to work,
which is a little odd, considering what my choice of careers was
going to be when I got out of high school so many years ago. At any
rate, I'm only proficient enough in it to barely navigate my way
through this quest, and it still takes me multiple attempts to get
some of the lamps sold, even after as many times as I've done this
one.
At any rate, once the lamps are sold,
it's time to go back to Gilbert and tell him the good news. He
rushes off to tell Monique and make her his girlfriend. This
relationship lasts all of one half-hour date, spent stargazing. It
turns out that Monique is happy kludging together lamps out of the
crap she finds around town, but Gilbert wants to be the lovey-dovey
Harlequin romance type, so he breaks it off like it's nothing and
runs off in search of another heart to break, which I'm sure we'll
get to see at some point. Monique, on the other hand, seemed to get
attached rather quickly and is all down about it until the Dudbears
come along and tell her how great they think her lamps are. I'm not
quite sure how that works, because Gilbert's a worse lover than I am.
I don't get the concept very well, to be honest, but at least I'm
not a dickweed about it, or at least I don't think I am, anyway.
Once the Dudbears cheer Monique up, she
decides to stay because seeing the Dudbears happy with her work is
all she really needs as long as her bills are paid. As a way of
thanking the hero for helping her see that Gilbert was as much a
douchebag as he was nice, she gives us an artifact called the
Trembling Spoon, which starts us on the game's Dragoon Arc. But
that's going to be for another time, and it may very well be awhile
yet before I get to that. All I'll say for now is that it involves a
top contender for my all-time favorite female video game character,
Sierra. But
more on the situation when the time comes. I'm probably going to at
least do a little running around in the game before I get to that.
There's a little prep work that could potentially make its own issue
to do before then.
So, until next time, stay safe, have
fun, keep gaming, and DFTBA.
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