It's been awhile since I've done this,
hasn't it?
There've been a few things keeping me
busy since last time. I guess it's only been a couple weeks, but it
feels a lot longer than that. Maybe it's because of the holidays, or
that there hasn't been much sun lately.
At any rate, I'm back, at least for
now. This time around, we're paying a visit to a place called the
Shumi Village. The people there are... kind of hard to describe,
really. They're tall, skinny folks with weird faces and big hands.
They can also literally (ding!) change into other creatures as they
get older. Most of the time, they turn into something called
Moombas, which were those funny little creatures that helped us in
the D-District prison. There are times when they don't change at
all, which I guess means they're elders or something.
But we're here for a couple items that
could be at least a little bit useful, I guess. There's one that
will make one of the Guardian Forces learn the ability to junction
four spells to Status Defense. The Stat Guard, I think it's called.
There's quite a bit of work to get it, but at least we get another
item along the way called the Phoenix Pinion. My understanding is
that it'll bring back multiple K-Oed party members, and also make a
non-standard Guardian Force show up from time to time, called
Phoenix, not surprisingly.
The story surrounding all of this is
that the Shumi are building a statue to Laguna because I guess he
made a decent impression on them when he somehow just showed up in
their village after his little adventure in Eshtar. And this was
after being all busted up, too. Could have sworn he'd been in
Winhill the whole time between then and when Kiros showed up a year
later. The timeline in this game is a bit weird, though, so I could
be wrong about that.
The first thing we gotta do is find the
head sculptor on the project the various kinds of stone he says he
wants to work with. The first one he says he wants, he already has
in the studio with him. There's four more he wants to use, too.
Three of them are where you'd think they'd be, based on their names,
the fourth's not too hard to find. Granted, they do try to throw you
with it a bit, but all you've gotta do to find it is go into the
house next to the sculptor's studio and look in the guy's sink full
of dishes instead of the lake. Not sure if you've gotta look in the
lake out front first, but it's one of those quests where, yeah, we've
gotta deliver each one of these things individually and talk to the
same group of people about fifty-three times to pull it off. Once
you do, though, the Elder shows you his empty hands as a reward. The
party members who aren't Squall step out, but the Elder calls Squall
aside and gives him the Phoenix Pinion to make up for the cheap-ass
reward he gave the party as a whole. Outside, Squall explains it to
the others while the Elder makes his assistant go help the sculptor
with the statue.
The assistant gets all pissy about it
because I guess he wants to go be like Laguna or something. I guess
there are worse role models.
In order to continue this side quest,
we have to get back to the map screen from the town, which is
something of a chore, especially since this part really does involve
a lot of running around. The assistant says he doesn't want to work
on the statue, which is something the party has to tell the village
elder. The elder has us send in a Moomba to tell the assistant he's
cool and stuff. The elder doesn't want to do it himself because
it'll all be orders somehow if he gets involved.
With that taken care of, the sculptor
says he needs one more person to help him. The good news is that the
guy who lives in the house next to the studio is an artisan with
friends who live in the outside world. They'll come in handy in a
bit, but first we've gotta go tell the elder about how the artisan
will join the team but is a bit hesitant.
This is one of those frustrating points
in the game that players are not going to miss something that I
almost always seem to, and just somehow know where to go to finish
this thing. See, one of the artisan's friends is a mechanic in
Fisherman's Horizon. I guess we could have talked to him when we
were there before, but it's something I didn't do, in part because I
tend to be a lazy bastard. Of course, at the time, I'd forgotten
that the house I was supposed to go to was even there to begin with.
So, I guess it's a good thing I still have the strategy guide that
came with the game one of the times I bought it, otherwise I would
never have known.
The mechanic gives up this robotic
Moomba doll that the artisan made for him, using it as a means of
sending in an inspirational message for the artisan. That's enough
to convince him to go help with the statue, and even decide that he
wants to turn into a human and go visit the outside world when he
changes. When the party tells the village elder about this, he says
he's happy it worked out and everybody's working hard on the statue,
so he rewards us with the item he was going to give the artisan if we
hadn't come along: the Status Guard.
And that's where I think I'll wrap this
issue up. I'm not really sure where I'll go next. I might actually
try to go on with the main story now, but there's also a couple
really good G.Fs along the way that I might try to pick up, too.
We'll see, though. And hopefully, it won't take two weeks, this
time.
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