Now that I can hunt, there’s a sidequest I can pursue.
Hmm. He walked away.
This guy is really annoying. He only appears when it isn’t raining (which is determined randomly), and when he does appear, he’s tucked away in this corner, making him hard to spot. To make matters worse, you have to talk to him three times before anything interesting happens. I don’t know how the developer expected anyone to find him without looking at a guide.
He becomes slightly more talkative the second and third times, saying I’m “interfering” and “intruding” on…something.
The third time, there’s also a cutscene afterwards.
Fero looks around and says he’s lost him. Tehgonan asks why they care so much this guy. Dehl says he looks kinda crazy – that, and he’s been loitering suspiciously outside their inn. Dehl’s worried he might be dangerous, and wanted to know more about him.
Suddenly, a woman approaches from the left.
She identifies the man as Sirush and says she’s his wife. She explains that he has, in fact, gone crazy – he wanders aimlessly, disappears, and later reappears in the wilderness around the city.
“He needs… he needs help! It’s my fault. It always has been! I wished none of this had ever happened…”
She refuses to elaborate on this point. Sirush’s plotline is particularly weird and vague – there’s some stuff that’s just flat-out never explained. I don’t remember if it’s ever clarified why she considers it her fault, exactly.
Dehl wants to help, naturally. The woman sputters some more vague weirdness about him making a “mistake” and that she can’t do anything, for some reason, and she reiterates that it’s her fault he’s gone crazy.
“But, I am a lost cause.”
??? Just what happened to her, exactly? That’s definitely never clarified. She seems to imply that something happened to her, too (and Sirush seems to think something really bad happened, so maybe she nearly died or something), but what that something is never comes up. She seems more stable than Sirush, regardless, so I don’t see why she considers herself lost as well.
She finally says that if they meet Sirush again, they should tell him to “come home”. It’s a pacify button for him apparently. Dehl promises to do so, and the woman leaves.
Qualstio says that if they want to find him, it might be best to check outside the city, since that’s where the woman said he goes. He’s cautious, however, since Sirush might be involved in some shady illegal business that they want no part in. Dehl brushes off his concerns, saying, “Perhaps we shall know when we find him.”
To continue this I need to go hunting.
This is that guy we saw in Nal! His wife said he’d been acting strangely. He appears disoriented at the moment. It doesn’t seem like he’s interested in conversation right now. Maybe we should go some place safe first.
I return to Nal with him.
Sirush makes unintelligible grumbling and muttering noises. Apparently he’s been like that ever since he came back to the city. Lani helpfully reminds everyone that they were supposed to tell him something. Dehl goes “oh, right”.
“Sirush. Your lover wishes for you to come home, as soon as possible.”
Ooh that can’t have been a good idea. There’s no way for them to know he has issues about his wife, though. It does get him to say actual words – he starts rambling about his wife and how, three years ago, she was “taken” somehow for “meddling”. Unfortunately, he can’t remember the details, just that he considers it his fault. So…hm. Both of them blame themselves for whatever went down. Just what did happen?
Sirush looks around in confusion and starts freaking out. Apparently he didn’t consciously perceive anything on the trip here and is only just now noticing he’s somewhere else. Dehl tries to calm him down, but makes the mistake of asking to him to see his home. This triggers another outburst: “Home?! No home, I have! No more!” Qualstio decides this isn’t going to get them anywhere, and proposes that they should keep him with them.
Dehl: “Would that be wise? He is far too unstable. He may be dangerous.”
Cutscenes have usually been good about characters turning to face who they’re talking to, but here, Dehl is still staring Sirush in the face as he says this. Perhaps this contributes to Sirush immediately pushing him back and yelling “Hyah! Silence! Perfect, I am, in body and mind! PERFECT! FLAWLESS!” Okay, whatever you say, crazy guy.
He then reveals that he is actually in support of tagging along with them. Lani makes the mistake of asking why, which causes him to run over and invade her personal space. He says that they’re at risk for associating with him, and claims that “they” will come for everyone, just like what happened to his wife. Qualstio tries to ask who “they” are, but Sirush doesn’t answer.
Ques takes this moment to speak up, apparently to assess the possibility of Sirush joining the guild. He asks if he’s trained in combat.
Sirush: “Affirmative. Ten years physique and close quarter combat training. Self employment in dispatchment and intimidation services upon request.”
Oh dear that does not sound good. Qualstio picks up on this and wonders aloud if they can trust an assassin. Sirush does not take kindly to this, shoving Ques aside and running up to Qualstio with enough force to make him start backpedaling. He emphatically states that he’s never betrayed a “client” since that would be “imperfect”. Qualstio relents, but asks what the cost will be. Sirush says that, for now at least, he’ll work for free as payment for bringing him back to the city safely.
Qualstio: “All right, I guess you can run with us. How-EVER. Try talking like a normal person?”
Sirush: “…Affirmative.”
Yeah it doesn’t look like you’re going to get anywhere on that front, Qualstio. He’s not that talkative to begin with, though, so it probably won’t be too much of a problem. And honestly they’re a pretty weird bunch to begin with, I doubt most people will bat an eye at him.
With that over with, Sirush finally signs and joins. He doesn’t list a last name, which Ques finds problematic, but Sirush just tells him to deal with it.
His class is “professional”. Okay.
A cold, unflinching individual with a meticulous attention to detail. He despises error of any sort. Also a snappy dresser. Specializes in costly but highly damaging and accurate short range attacks, preferring to depend only on himself.
Yeah I never really understood that. Video games will often have the aloof loner types have risky or highly specialized moves with extreme drawbacks and justify it as them having an “independent” mindset or whatever, even though that makes no sense. People who have to depend only on themselves are jacks-of-all-trades, not hyperspecialist glass cannons. Specialists only work in teams where other members can compensate for your own drawbacks, especially ones with risky, self-destructive fighting styles like Sirush.
Sirush: “Enjoy being kept waiting, I do not. My knives seek the spines of the wicked.”
The “wicked”? That’s an oddly moral qualifier for a hitman. Does he see himself as some sort of vigilante? The guild doesn’t inquire further, however, and he walks out. Dehl is worried at the possibility they’ve just recruited a murderer. If that was such a big concern you might have wanted to investigate Zargos’ background a bit more thoroughly, Dehl.
Qualstio: “Hey, folks willing to fight the good fight aren’t exactly fallin’ out of the sky. I say we take what we can get.”
Qualstio, of course, is in favor of murderers. Honestly though, they’re all pretty violent by virtue of being RPG player characters.
I really like Sirush’s body language in this scene, and it’s a pity it doesn’t come across very well in text. He has no sense of personal space, and frequently goes right up to people when he talks to them. Normally characters tend to have at least one tile of personal space, but he violates that norm effortlessly. He’s more mobile than most characters, too (which as you may have noticed, tend to move very little if at all during cutscenes).
Despite my rant earlier, I will concede that Sirush does have a potent self-healing skill. It also causes him to retreat, though, which is pretty meaningless if he’s alone. He’s still a glass cannon who burns himself out too quickly, and often needs other characters to protect or heal him.
His glassiness isn’t enforced by his stat layout, which I can freely customize, but by his skills. All of them except Withdraw are powerful offensive skills, but none of them extend past melee range, meaning he’ll be on the front lines most of the time. His abilities are also quite costly, a contrast to the rather insignificant costs of other characters’ skills. His damage output really is incredible, though, and since the best defense is a good offensive, that counts for a lot.
I replace Zargos with him.
Doublestrike is useless, so I grab “Never Miss” and improve his stats a bit. Later characters do get a generous helping of essence and skill points to help them catch up with everyone else; Lani’s an odd exception to this.
Since Zargos is off my active team, I can use him for support combinations. No points for guessing that this is one of them.
Sirush has also been added to the quest map, providing us with more delicious flavor text. The narrator really likes his fashion sense, it seems.
Now that Sirush is on my team, I’ll cover Nal’s hunting grounds in its entirety.
Dock Guard: “The river raft we took down here won’t be back for a while, yet. So have fun. And, don’t let the Nalian Officers know, but there’s a bit of a bandit problem here. Well, not HERE. They know better than to come to one of our patrol sites. Just watch your backs out there. Don’t trust anybody you meet out in the mud.”
For the first time (not counting the prologue), I have the opportunity to fight actual people. Mr. Pacifist is just as blasé about this as when he was fighting bugs. I guess we’ll have to assume combats aren’t lethal.
I can examine a basin of vegetables to the south of the dock. There is a tub full of waterpods here. They float in the marshes around this are and are picked for food by those who can swim. So Nal does have some native food sources at least. Are they capitalizing on this? If they’re so barren otherwise they should really be throwing all their resources at mass-producing this stuff. They might even be able to turn it into a commodity if it’s unique to the area.
Over on the right is a Disillusioned-Looking Guard. That’s an awfully complex and specific adjective to discern just from a glance. “Not my idea of a nice place for a walk, but, you guys asked for it, I guess. The skeletons won’t attack until provoked, so you can just ignore them if you want. Watch out for the broken swarms though. They get mad when you step on ’em.” So like the tchiitra hatchlings, the skeletons are pretty courteous.
This area always struck me as a bit weird. It’s a dead end, but it doesn’t feel like one because the trees are so spaced out. The path just sort of…peters out. I wonder if the developer was originally intending for there to be something here, or ended up mapping the area differently than he originally planned?
Ooh, shiny.
Something is glittering in the mud here. It looks like particles of something, and they’re all over the place. What luck! This is a rare phenomena not normally seen outside of the Fortifel area. Mana dew. Magic condensed out of the air. Sounds like something out of fiction, I know. What? The energy coming from the spot can be absorbed through the skin very quickly.
This gives me 300 mana points, divided between everyone. Odd that that’s less than the vial from Wadassia, but on second thought it does make sense that a refined and processed substance would be more concentrated than the naturally-occurring version.
This looks important.
It’s a hot spring of some sort. Would be relaxing, except it’s way too hot and also smells absolutely terrible. The [porous stone] Brenetto gave us to be “calibrated” may react to this particular heat source.
The developer sure had a lot of fun with these prompts. I never really understood these kinds of unnecessary prompts in RPGs – there’s no reason not to do it because it’s obviously what you need to do to continue to the quest. At least there’s some life to them here; I was sometimes tempted to pick the “decline” option just because of how amusingly it was phrased.
Freaky standing stone place? It looks different from the surrounding area, but there’s nothing to do here. Awful lot of boneswirls, though.
…Except some of them are inert? Not sure what’s up with this.
A lone beam of sunlight seems drawn to the top of this flat rock. Well, you’ve seen sunlight do stranger things than this before.
???
Anyway, I can calibrate another stone here. (Alternatively, the game gives me the option to Run far away)
The store has taken on a lustrous hue. You swipe it from its spot in the sun before it can get overcooked, or something. Quality science work, there.
Going to the right, I can find my way onto this little peninsula. The path forward becomes extremely narrow, and this skeleton tends to get in the way.
It’s a sack! In fine video game tradition, you can see this from an earlier part of the area, tantalizing you until you can find a way to get to it.
There’s a sack here, although it’s a rather strange place to leave one’s belongings.
…
What the…! It’s a big bag full of pieces of bones! Who the hell would collect a bunch of Human bones in a bag? Clearly, the only solution is to bury them, like Human society dictates.
Oh, Dehl. I don’t think it’s ever explained what this is doing here, though.
Putting the bones to rest instills you with a feeling of righteousness. Your members gain 3000 Piety Essence, divided. There’s a little animation of the sack being buried, too.
Hi, bandits! Though they’re far away from the starting area by land, they’re pretty close as the crow flies. That seems a bit odd, considering that the guard said they’re smart enough to keep their distance. The shallow swamp water won’t present much of a barrier to the guards.
I do the guards’ jobs for them and fight the bandits. When I go back to the walkaround map, they’ve just…disappeared. Isn’t that usually video game shorthand for death?
I can examine their tent to get the message The inside of this tent is pretty grubby looking. Maybe the occupants should have taken their shoes off before entering.
There’s a sack here, probably something stolen by the bandits in the area. Might be something useful inside.
[pause]
Interesting. It’s some dried, bound bundles of herbs used quite liberally by some of the more adventurous Fortian scholars. Taking them will grant a total of 2400 Clarity Essence to all members currently present.
I can Take them now or Just say “No”. Sure, let’s take the suspicious drugs we found in the possession of criminals. What’s the worst that could happen?
…Nothing, apparently. Guess the game is still pulling its punches. Later on, taking suspicious drugs for essence will have consequences.
Further north, there’s a bandit ambush! The woman is a spellcaster, naturally.
It looks like I should be able to explore this peninsula, but I can’t. Pity.
There’s a sack here, probably something stored by the bandits in the area. Might be something useful inside.
[pause]
It appears to be several sealed packets of muscle-enhancing balm. Potent stuff, and its legality is questionable in some places. Using it will grant a total of 3000 Health Essence to all members currently present.
Oddly, there’s no snarky “decline” option this time. Well, whatever, more illegal drugs, sure, take them, you paragons of justice and order.