Sometimes I forget about that.
I think in previous Text Plays, I've
made mention of AppleGod's Rule of Final Fantasy, which is one of
those things where he'd observed that the number and severity of
random encounters goes up when the party is going somewhere
plot-related versus just running around grinding, for example. I've
noticed too, and I think it's a law of diminishing returns sort of
thing. It's kind of why this issue played out the way it did.
Basically, what I did here was grind up
the 400 gold I needed to get one more black magic spell for Maria and
then just went for the Pub in Fynn because by the time I'd gotten the
money, quite a lot of the monsters were running away, and the ones
that weren't doing much damage or leaving much gold. That was pretty
much the motivation to just get on with it.
Getting to the Pub is a bit of a trick,
because it's a maze getting around all the black knights there. If
you talk to them, at least, they'll kill you for the trouble. I
tried to avoid getting too close to any of them, and I think I was
fairly successful at it, but no fights started if I wasn't as careful
as I thought. For a maze, it's not a terribly hard maze, but I'm not
exactly a fan of mazes.
Once the party gets to the Pub, it's
still a matter of avoiding the knights and talking to the guy behind
the counter. If you go back there with him and use the Wild Rose
password that Hilda gave us in the last issue, the dude will tell you
there's a secret room he's guarding with a critically wounded soldier
in it. Turns out, the soldier is Prince Scott, from the kingdom of
Kas'ion. He's the brother of a dude named Gordon, who's hanging out
in Altair and kind of wussing out about joining the rebellion. Scott
is also Hilda's lover. Both of these things will be important when
we get back to the rebel base in Altair.
Since he's critically injured, as
mentioned above, Scott is the first of a handfull of characters who
will die on us. Before he goes, he gives us a ring to show around at
the base, saying to tell his brother that he'll be a great leader if
he just grows a pair and that he sends his love to Hilda. He takes
that second part back because he knows he's toast, saying instead
that Hilda should find somebody else to love instead.
When we get back and show Gordon the
ring, he says he's going to take his brother's advice and man up
enough to lead his people. We'll be seeing him again later, but it's
likely to be awhile.
Hilda's kind of a different story.
She's pleased with us for getting into Fynn and coming back with the
ring and messages from Scott. Granted, she is a princess and the
leader of the rebellion and all, but one would think she'd have a
bigger reaction to hearing that her boyfriend just ate it than she
did. Instead, she just moves right along, saying that we need to
find ourselves a source of Mythril so we can be more on the level
with the empire we're fighting. Her sources say the empire gets
theirs from a mine near some place called Salamand. She's got a guy
there called Josef looking into it but hasn't heard from him in
awhile. It's going to be up to us to go there and find out what the
deal is. Mindu will be coming with us this time because we'll need
the help, and we'll need a canoe to cross a big lake between Altair
and the first town along the way.
This first town is called Paloom, and
we can hire a sailing ship to take us to the other town along our
route, a place called Poft. I'd rather just hoof it because of the
way the leveling system works in this game plus the fact that we'll
be needing the gold to get better weapons, armor, and magic before
long, and we won't be seeing monsters on the water until we get our
own sailing ship, which is still a ways out itself.
There's actually quite a few things
that will happen in Poft and Paloom over the course of the game, but
we'll get there soon enough. For now, our final destination is
Salamand, which is north and a little west of Poft. I saved there
this time so I don't forget where I'm supposed to be when we pick up
next time and go looking for this Josef guy.
Until then, stay safe, have fun, keep
gaming, and DFTBA.
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