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xyzzysqrlLast time on Tales of Vesperia, seppuku was commited. I'm not gonna crack a joke about that. Let's just keep rolling.
[Note: I edited this post to add a fair bit to the end. It now covers the trip to Mt. Temza. If you read it before then, might wanna skim for changes.]
Karol was pretty broken up about the fact that one of his lifelong idols killed himself in town square and his best friend and co-guild leader helped. Let's go see if we can deal with that! Karol is just kinda... collapsed against the side of a building, sadding it up. He doesn't know what to do. When Yuri tries to talk to him, he goes on for a while about how he couldn't do anything and he doesn't know if he wants to keep going, then folds up into a fetal ball. Genuinely can't blame the kid.
Yuri can, though. He picks up Karol and shakes a bit. Is this all guild honor means to him? What about Brave Vesperia? It still needs a strong leader. Karol had DREAMS, damnit, what are they worth if he gives up on them? Karol retorts that Yuri can't understand because he's tough, like the Don was. Karol just... isn't. The guild is OVER.
Yuri declares right back that it isn't. They need to find Judy and help her. Even if Karol doesn't, Brave Vesperia WILL go on. The guild is more than one person's hopes and dreams. Karol is left crying, and trying to decide if he wants to run away or not. All Yuri can do is walk away. Estelle is waiting just down the road... She's not sure if Karol will come back to the Guild, but Yuri's completely sure he will.
Just then, Yeager shows up with his assassin-girl duo. Yuri and Yeager snark at each other a while, then Yeager abruptly produces a bouquet of flowers from behind his ear... wait, what the fuck ... and admits that he too is mourning the Don. Yes, business will be easier without the Don around, but he's still in mourning for a great man. Yuri thinks about this, then turns his back and looks away. He'll pretend he didn't see Yeager. Yeager nods and goes off to pay his respects at the grave.
"There's a difference between guilds and individuals. Maybe the Don and Leviathan's Claw had issues, but things were different for Yeager on a personal level. There's Yeager the boss, and Yeager the person."
Estelle can only agree. ... Well. They're meeting Rita by the gate. Time to leave to find Judith. Estelle is eager to help out Judith, but Rita is... a little less eager. Yuri points out that even if Rita doesn't want to help Judith, it's important to consider this a fact-gathering mission. What does she know? What DOESN'T she know?
Rita: "And if we might end up saving her along the way..."
Estelle: "You two are impossible."
Rita: "What?! I said WE MIGHT. THAT'S all."
Yes, Rita, you are fooling everyone.
The mountain is up north of the Desier desert. Boat awaaaay. Just as we're pulling out of the dock, Karol hurls himself on board, panting. He ran the whole way. He doesn't really understand what meaning the Don was trying to express... but he's not going to abandon another guild, or abandon his friends. Yuri just laughs. "Well sure. You're the boss of this outfit."
That's the other thing. Karol doesn't want to be called "boss" anymore. He wants Yuri to take over the position. Until Karol's genuinely earned the right to be called "Boss", he just wants to be "Karol", member of Brave Vesperia. A perfectly reasonable plan, Raven declares! ... Which scares the shit out of Rita, because he wasn't supposed to be on board and now he is right behind her. Raven found all the mourning way too sad, it was making him cry. So he slipped out to join the group.
Off we go, across the ocean! There will be a long pause while I get completely lost. I open my FAQ, peer at it a while, then do a drama-busting 180 turn straight back to Dahngrest. Why? Because SIDEQUESTS. First we stop by the Inn, to get a scene of... Yuri and Karol, sharing a bed.
*throw controller, walk out*
Okay it's not like that actually. Poor Karol is flopped in the classic four-limbed sprawl while Yuri drowses away. Karol can't sleep, he's been having nightmares, so he tells Yuri all about them. In Karol's dreams, everyone he knows is dying and he tries to run and save them, but he can't get any closer no matter how fast he runs. (By contrast, my last nightmare involved pickle-powered laser beams.) Yuri agrees that it was pretty obvious. Karol's been talking in his sleep an awful lot.
Poor kid. Karol's really too young for all this. He's gonna walk away with PTSD if this keeps up.
We also manage to find an injured man in a tavern, whom Estelle heals. Then outside, Drake shows up and grouses at her about it. Sometimes the best course of action... is no action! Rumors are starting to spread about "The Princess of Redemption" ... because Estelle didn't have enough nicknames. She'll only let people down if this continues! He hands her the Imperial Crest and tells her to look at it and think about what she's doing a little harder.
Drake, with all due respect, you can fucking lick me.
Also, we swing by the Shaikos Ruins, back where Rita took us way back when. We find some guys from Ruin's Gate, exploring the ruins. The party remembers Regaey, then gets sidetracked into arguing with each other about whether Regaey was a different person and Yeager was just disguising himself as that guy, or if Regaey was Yeager all the time, or what.
Then the Ruin's Gate guys start talking about how they found a precious artifact and how they should write their names on it with a marker to prove it was them who found it, and Rita has to smack the crap out of them and give them a lecture on proper archeological technique. By the end they're calling her "Ma'am" and begging her forgiveness.
Ruin's Gate Digger: "I... I've never heard so many big words come out of such a little person..."
Rita implies that she will write a STRONGLY WORDED LETTER to Ruin's Gate about all this later. With that done, we've exhausted the optional scenes around the world and can now return to the plot! Off to Mount Temza! There will another twenty minute pause while I get lost. Fucking BOAT. How does it work?
Entering Mt. Temza, Raven makes like a game show host and introduces us to the LOOOVELY landscape... which is dry and dead and rocky. Yaaay.
Karol stops and kneels in the dirt. Lots and lots of footprints... could be either the Hunting Blades or the Knights. Either way, a lot of someones got here before us. The party stops to chat briefly about apatheia, but Karol ducks on ahead up a nearby hill. He shouts for the group to come look at the view, and for a moment I don't get what they're looking at. The landscape is flat and cratered... it's not until Karol points it out that I realize there IS NO MOUNTAIN HERE anymore. There is a PIT. We are looking at Pit Temza. Holy hell what happened?
Let's just, uh, descend into the ... former mountain and find out. Up ahead, Rita hears someone screaming. It's the Freak! Maybe! Er, Judith! Off we go to see what's what. Raven explains that the ex-mountain is like this because of the Great War. It was used as a battleground and... well. Estelle is fascinated, because even in the official government documents she's read, there's next-to-no info about the war between humans and Entelexeia. There's a bit of back-and-forth over this... but we're here to look for Judy. Not stand around discussing history.
Rita: "Beating up the Dragon Freak is MY JOB! I'm not gonna let them beat me to it!"
Besides, the Great War is long over. This will never have anything to do with us, right? (Ow. My foreshadowing sense... TINGLING...)
Further up the mountain, Yuri is putting two and two together. Judith always said her dragon-mount "saved her in the war". Probably the Great War. And only someone who was actually -in- the great war would know so much about this mountain. Raven probably fought in it as well, didn't he? Raven fesses up. He thought he was gonna die back then. Maybe he should have. He never saw Ba'ul or Judith, but then... he wasn't looking for ten year old girls.
Karol asks what the war was like. ... Raven might talk about it when Karol's older.
Once we manage to work through the huge crater and climb up to where there's some mountain left, we find the remains of a Krytian city. Maybe Judith was feeling homesick? This place is a wreck though... and then some Hunting Blades get hurled in from the side of the screen. Judith is casually knocking the crap out of them. The Hunting Blades try to recruit Brave Vesperia for help, only for Rita to start charging a fireball at them. They retreat in a hurry.
With Judith here and safe, the group starts grilling her for answers. Yuri is very clear that her answers will determine her fate. In answer, she asks that they follow her for a while. ...Karol doesn't like the sound of "determine your fate", though, but Yuri explains:
Yuri: "The Don's actions showed me I've been too soft. If a part of you is infected, you cut it off. Even if it's a comrade, or a friend."
Yeah, uh... Yuri, that sounds like a bad progression. I wonder if he's going villain at some point of this game.
Judith leads us up to the mountaintop, explaining that this is where the Great War was fought (or one of the places). The Great War was sparked, as she explains, by a particular type of blastia. The Hermes blastia. Constructed on this mountaintop, it was incredibly effective at converting aer to energy. The thing is, Hermes-type blastia sucked in enormous amounts of aer. In response, aer krenes began making enormous, abnormal amounts of aer to compensate. The output caused monsters to mutate, plant life to deform...
The Entelexeia realized this was a problem before the humans did, and moved to destroy them in response. Thus, the Great War. Fought over environmental control issues! The thing is, even though Temza fell, there are still Hermes-formula blastia in operation. They leaked out and have been installed around the world. The ones she's been destroying were all...
This entire time. Rita's been hunched up thinking, fists of rage quivering, and she finally explodes. "YOU COULD'VE MENTIONED THAT! Were you gonna save the world all by yourself? ARE YOU STUPID?"
We are spared the answer to this question as Nan attacks, although with Tison (another Hunting Blade). Judith gives no damns, she pulls her spear and prepares to lay waste. Even Karol whips out his axe at this intrusion.
Rita: "We were having a CONVERSATION here. Butt out."
Tison: "Nobody who associates with monsters can rightly call themselves a person!"
Well screw YOU assholes too. Boss fight! ...actually WE nearly get our asses kicked. I am approaching the part where I cease being any good at the battle system and just spam items all fight to survive. Oh god I am terrible.
Inside the cave though, we get a look at Ba'ul glowing and sparkling. He's trying to evolve and it hurts. (What, he's a pokemon now? ... AWESOME.) Estelle runs over to heal him, and Judith nearly throws her back across the cave again in a panic. Estelle, happily, GETS it after a moment and stops trying that. Rita rolls her eyes and imitates Belius for a moment, reminding Estelle that "compassion for others" is her power. So be compassionate, but don't drop healing on the Entelexeia, OKAY?
Long story short, Ba'ul evolves from a skinny flying dragon to a BIG-ASS flying feathered whale-thing. The party clambers up on his back and fly back to the ship, where they... use all the rigging to STRING THEIR BOAT UNDER BA'UL'S STOMACH and turn him into a makeshift airship. HOLY BALLS THAT IS AWESOME.
Then Judith passes out from exhaustion. Which is -less- awesome. The party offers various opinions on why this may be, from "She was watching over Ba'ul the whole time he was trying to evolve" to "She was fending off the Hunting Blades" to "She was emotionally exhausted" to "She's stupid and doesn't know when to quit." I'll let you guess who slung those around. Yuri muses that she caused the guild a HUGE headache, working on her own. It'll still have to be settled. But not right now.
Right now, rest time.
[Note: I edited this post to add a fair bit to the end. It now covers the trip to Mt. Temza. If you read it before then, might wanna skim for changes.]
Karol was pretty broken up about the fact that one of his lifelong idols killed himself in town square and his best friend and co-guild leader helped. Let's go see if we can deal with that! Karol is just kinda... collapsed against the side of a building, sadding it up. He doesn't know what to do. When Yuri tries to talk to him, he goes on for a while about how he couldn't do anything and he doesn't know if he wants to keep going, then folds up into a fetal ball. Genuinely can't blame the kid.
Yuri can, though. He picks up Karol and shakes a bit. Is this all guild honor means to him? What about Brave Vesperia? It still needs a strong leader. Karol had DREAMS, damnit, what are they worth if he gives up on them? Karol retorts that Yuri can't understand because he's tough, like the Don was. Karol just... isn't. The guild is OVER.
Yuri declares right back that it isn't. They need to find Judy and help her. Even if Karol doesn't, Brave Vesperia WILL go on. The guild is more than one person's hopes and dreams. Karol is left crying, and trying to decide if he wants to run away or not. All Yuri can do is walk away. Estelle is waiting just down the road... She's not sure if Karol will come back to the Guild, but Yuri's completely sure he will.
Just then, Yeager shows up with his assassin-girl duo. Yuri and Yeager snark at each other a while, then Yeager abruptly produces a bouquet of flowers from behind his ear... wait, what the fuck ... and admits that he too is mourning the Don. Yes, business will be easier without the Don around, but he's still in mourning for a great man. Yuri thinks about this, then turns his back and looks away. He'll pretend he didn't see Yeager. Yeager nods and goes off to pay his respects at the grave.
"There's a difference between guilds and individuals. Maybe the Don and Leviathan's Claw had issues, but things were different for Yeager on a personal level. There's Yeager the boss, and Yeager the person."
Estelle can only agree. ... Well. They're meeting Rita by the gate. Time to leave to find Judith. Estelle is eager to help out Judith, but Rita is... a little less eager. Yuri points out that even if Rita doesn't want to help Judith, it's important to consider this a fact-gathering mission. What does she know? What DOESN'T she know?
Rita: "And if we might end up saving her along the way..."
Estelle: "You two are impossible."
Rita: "What?! I said WE MIGHT. THAT'S all."
Yes, Rita, you are fooling everyone.
The mountain is up north of the Desier desert. Boat awaaaay. Just as we're pulling out of the dock, Karol hurls himself on board, panting. He ran the whole way. He doesn't really understand what meaning the Don was trying to express... but he's not going to abandon another guild, or abandon his friends. Yuri just laughs. "Well sure. You're the boss of this outfit."
That's the other thing. Karol doesn't want to be called "boss" anymore. He wants Yuri to take over the position. Until Karol's genuinely earned the right to be called "Boss", he just wants to be "Karol", member of Brave Vesperia. A perfectly reasonable plan, Raven declares! ... Which scares the shit out of Rita, because he wasn't supposed to be on board and now he is right behind her. Raven found all the mourning way too sad, it was making him cry. So he slipped out to join the group.
Off we go, across the ocean! There will be a long pause while I get completely lost. I open my FAQ, peer at it a while, then do a drama-busting 180 turn straight back to Dahngrest. Why? Because SIDEQUESTS. First we stop by the Inn, to get a scene of... Yuri and Karol, sharing a bed.
*throw controller, walk out*
Okay it's not like that actually. Poor Karol is flopped in the classic four-limbed sprawl while Yuri drowses away. Karol can't sleep, he's been having nightmares, so he tells Yuri all about them. In Karol's dreams, everyone he knows is dying and he tries to run and save them, but he can't get any closer no matter how fast he runs. (By contrast, my last nightmare involved pickle-powered laser beams.) Yuri agrees that it was pretty obvious. Karol's been talking in his sleep an awful lot.
Poor kid. Karol's really too young for all this. He's gonna walk away with PTSD if this keeps up.
We also manage to find an injured man in a tavern, whom Estelle heals. Then outside, Drake shows up and grouses at her about it. Sometimes the best course of action... is no action! Rumors are starting to spread about "The Princess of Redemption" ... because Estelle didn't have enough nicknames. She'll only let people down if this continues! He hands her the Imperial Crest and tells her to look at it and think about what she's doing a little harder.
Drake, with all due respect, you can fucking lick me.
Also, we swing by the Shaikos Ruins, back where Rita took us way back when. We find some guys from Ruin's Gate, exploring the ruins. The party remembers Regaey, then gets sidetracked into arguing with each other about whether Regaey was a different person and Yeager was just disguising himself as that guy, or if Regaey was Yeager all the time, or what.
Then the Ruin's Gate guys start talking about how they found a precious artifact and how they should write their names on it with a marker to prove it was them who found it, and Rita has to smack the crap out of them and give them a lecture on proper archeological technique. By the end they're calling her "Ma'am" and begging her forgiveness.
Ruin's Gate Digger: "I... I've never heard so many big words come out of such a little person..."
Rita implies that she will write a STRONGLY WORDED LETTER to Ruin's Gate about all this later. With that done, we've exhausted the optional scenes around the world and can now return to the plot! Off to Mount Temza! There will another twenty minute pause while I get lost. Fucking BOAT. How does it work?
Entering Mt. Temza, Raven makes like a game show host and introduces us to the LOOOVELY landscape... which is dry and dead and rocky. Yaaay.
Karol stops and kneels in the dirt. Lots and lots of footprints... could be either the Hunting Blades or the Knights. Either way, a lot of someones got here before us. The party stops to chat briefly about apatheia, but Karol ducks on ahead up a nearby hill. He shouts for the group to come look at the view, and for a moment I don't get what they're looking at. The landscape is flat and cratered... it's not until Karol points it out that I realize there IS NO MOUNTAIN HERE anymore. There is a PIT. We are looking at Pit Temza. Holy hell what happened?
Let's just, uh, descend into the ... former mountain and find out. Up ahead, Rita hears someone screaming. It's the Freak! Maybe! Er, Judith! Off we go to see what's what. Raven explains that the ex-mountain is like this because of the Great War. It was used as a battleground and... well. Estelle is fascinated, because even in the official government documents she's read, there's next-to-no info about the war between humans and Entelexeia. There's a bit of back-and-forth over this... but we're here to look for Judy. Not stand around discussing history.
Rita: "Beating up the Dragon Freak is MY JOB! I'm not gonna let them beat me to it!"
Besides, the Great War is long over. This will never have anything to do with us, right? (Ow. My foreshadowing sense... TINGLING...)
Further up the mountain, Yuri is putting two and two together. Judith always said her dragon-mount "saved her in the war". Probably the Great War. And only someone who was actually -in- the great war would know so much about this mountain. Raven probably fought in it as well, didn't he? Raven fesses up. He thought he was gonna die back then. Maybe he should have. He never saw Ba'ul or Judith, but then... he wasn't looking for ten year old girls.
Karol asks what the war was like. ... Raven might talk about it when Karol's older.
Once we manage to work through the huge crater and climb up to where there's some mountain left, we find the remains of a Krytian city. Maybe Judith was feeling homesick? This place is a wreck though... and then some Hunting Blades get hurled in from the side of the screen. Judith is casually knocking the crap out of them. The Hunting Blades try to recruit Brave Vesperia for help, only for Rita to start charging a fireball at them. They retreat in a hurry.
With Judith here and safe, the group starts grilling her for answers. Yuri is very clear that her answers will determine her fate. In answer, she asks that they follow her for a while. ...Karol doesn't like the sound of "determine your fate", though, but Yuri explains:
Yuri: "The Don's actions showed me I've been too soft. If a part of you is infected, you cut it off. Even if it's a comrade, or a friend."
Yeah, uh... Yuri, that sounds like a bad progression. I wonder if he's going villain at some point of this game.
Judith leads us up to the mountaintop, explaining that this is where the Great War was fought (or one of the places). The Great War was sparked, as she explains, by a particular type of blastia. The Hermes blastia. Constructed on this mountaintop, it was incredibly effective at converting aer to energy. The thing is, Hermes-type blastia sucked in enormous amounts of aer. In response, aer krenes began making enormous, abnormal amounts of aer to compensate. The output caused monsters to mutate, plant life to deform...
The Entelexeia realized this was a problem before the humans did, and moved to destroy them in response. Thus, the Great War. Fought over environmental control issues! The thing is, even though Temza fell, there are still Hermes-formula blastia in operation. They leaked out and have been installed around the world. The ones she's been destroying were all...
This entire time. Rita's been hunched up thinking, fists of rage quivering, and she finally explodes. "YOU COULD'VE MENTIONED THAT! Were you gonna save the world all by yourself? ARE YOU STUPID?"
We are spared the answer to this question as Nan attacks, although with Tison (another Hunting Blade). Judith gives no damns, she pulls her spear and prepares to lay waste. Even Karol whips out his axe at this intrusion.
Rita: "We were having a CONVERSATION here. Butt out."
Tison: "Nobody who associates with monsters can rightly call themselves a person!"
Well screw YOU assholes too. Boss fight! ...actually WE nearly get our asses kicked. I am approaching the part where I cease being any good at the battle system and just spam items all fight to survive. Oh god I am terrible.
Inside the cave though, we get a look at Ba'ul glowing and sparkling. He's trying to evolve and it hurts. (What, he's a pokemon now? ... AWESOME.) Estelle runs over to heal him, and Judith nearly throws her back across the cave again in a panic. Estelle, happily, GETS it after a moment and stops trying that. Rita rolls her eyes and imitates Belius for a moment, reminding Estelle that "compassion for others" is her power. So be compassionate, but don't drop healing on the Entelexeia, OKAY?
Long story short, Ba'ul evolves from a skinny flying dragon to a BIG-ASS flying feathered whale-thing. The party clambers up on his back and fly back to the ship, where they... use all the rigging to STRING THEIR BOAT UNDER BA'UL'S STOMACH and turn him into a makeshift airship. HOLY BALLS THAT IS AWESOME.
Then Judith passes out from exhaustion. Which is -less- awesome. The party offers various opinions on why this may be, from "She was watching over Ba'ul the whole time he was trying to evolve" to "She was fending off the Hunting Blades" to "She was emotionally exhausted" to "She's stupid and doesn't know when to quit." I'll let you guess who slung those around. Yuri muses that she caused the guild a HUGE headache, working on her own. It'll still have to be settled. But not right now.
Right now, rest time.
