This time, we go from one end of the
former Serpent Trench to the other, and just a little bit beyond.
When we left off, I'd taken Sabin and
Celes to the town of Moblitz, on the eastern end of the Serpent
Trench. When we first enter, some dogs bark at us, alerting a child
to our presence, who scurries into one of the few remaining
buildings. The town really got the shit kicked out of it when the
world ended. There's a cave in the basement, where the town's
survivors are hiding out. It's mostly kids, with David and Katarin,
two lovers we'd seen there earlier, are the oldest of the survivors.
With them is Terra, who found herself
there after the airship broke up during the escape from the Floating
Continent. She explains that the very day of the disaster, Kefka
fried the town with his magic beam, and most of the adults died
protecting the kids. When she saw all this, Terra somehow came to
the conclusion that she needed to be there for the kids as a mother
figure of some sort. As she tried to figure out why that was, she
lost her will to fight. This is only made worse by the fact that
Phunbaba, the ancient demon somebody mentioned in Albrook, has been
terrorizing the town.
Hard as Sabin and Celes try to convince
Terra to come with them to fight Kefka, she says no because she has
this need to stay for the children, so the pair goes on their way
without her. Shortly thereafter, Phunbaba attacks. Terra tries to
fight him, but can't do a damn thing to him. Fortunately, Celes and
Sabin aren't too far off and come back to chase the monster away.
Back in the children's hiding place, we
see that Terra really got her ass handed to her. She says that this
is just further proof that she should stay behind and take care of
the kids. As Celes and Sabin depart for the second time, one of the
kids hands over the Magicite for the Esper Fenrir. With all that out
of the way, the only thing left to do is move on and search for other
friends, which means going to the other end of the Serpent Trench and
the town of Nikkea.
In Nikkea, everybody's on edge, afraid
of getting hit by Kefka's Light of Judgment, because it seems it
hasn't yet. There's also news that Castle Figaro hit a snag in the
desert after it dove to avoid destruction, and the prisoners escaped
the jail through a damaged wall that lead into Figaro Cave near South
Figaro. The band of thieves is hanging out in the cafe', discussing
their plan to sneak into the castle and jack all the treasure hidden
in the store room. Once they've all spilled the beans, they head to
the ship docked at the port. Before the boat leaves, though, there's
one more person that needs to be found. There's this guy called
Gerad hiding behind some crates out back of the cafe'. He's supposed
to be the real leader of the thieves. Talking to him basically makes
Celes question him on being King Edgar of Figaro. He'll deny it, of
course, because he's using the criminals to get back into his own
castle and reclaim the place.
Celes and Sabin sneak onto the boat and
follow the thieves to South Figaro, with Edgar keeping the Gerad
persona going there, too. When we talk to him in his room at the
Inn, he acts all miffed at us for continuing to follow him, and when
one of the thieves comes in to say that everything's ready, they head
off to the cave.
When Celes and Sabin go into the cave
after Edgar, they run into Siegfried, who says he's going to wipe out
the monsters for them. His real motive is to get into a part of the
cave we haven't had access to before and hork the treasure before the
party can. He does a pretty good job of it, until the party catches
him in a side tunnel just before the part that goes into the castle.
Something tells me this is one of those things that changes something
later in the game depending on if you catch him or not. I usually go
see what he's doing, just out of habit.
When the party gets into the castle,
it's officially revealed that Gerad actually is Edgar, as he tries to
help a wounded guard. We need to get into the engine room of the
castle, which is across the main entry foyer of the castle. The guy
who used to flip the switch to move the castle lets us through now,
whereas he didn't before. There are monsters in these two new
sub-basements, and some of them can be nasty if you're unlucky or
unprepared. The worst part is the boss fight in the main engine room
itself. Edgar, as Gerad, sends in his thieves to get the treasure,
and then joins the party to fight a four-tentacled monster that's
jamming up the engine. This is one of quite a lot of bosses in this
half of the game that can be a real bitch and a half to take out. I
had thought I was going about it right, because I took out one of the
four tentacles easily enough, but then it all went to crap on me and
I wound up getting everybody killed, so it was time to call it a
night.
So, with that in mind, I'll pick the
next issue up with the boss fight again and go from there. See you
then, folks.
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