Looks like there’s another quest for me.

Lani and Fero come walking in his direction. He asks to speak with them, but Lani doesn’t give a crap and tells Fero to ignore him. The guard identifies them as Ilganyag, and Lani asks what he wants.

Lani: “We ain’t breakin’ any laws here!”
Nal-Guard: “Calm your rage, Lady.

What.

Anyway, now that Ilganyag is helping the officers as well, there’s a bit of a power struggle over who can commandeer them first. The officers have their hands full with the bandits, leaving the Nal-guard to deal with the skeletons.

Fero: “The Guardsmen answer to the Officers now? I feel I was misinformed.”

That’s surprisingly snarky for Fero, especially since he didn’t even know who the Nal-guard were a few quests ago.

The guard ominously proclaims that the unstable equilibrium can’t remain forever, and one side will be crushed by the other some day. For now, though, he’s concerned with the skeletons. He believes they’ve found the source – due to the drought, a once-impassible river has receded, and thousands of bone fragments were found along the banks.

Lani: “So why don’tcha send a patrol to check it out? If ya think it’s so important, anyway.”

Time for our Guard Incompetence Excuse of the Day™!

Nal-Guard: “We are understaffed presently. Our Third and Fourth ranks are away on holiday. The First rank, to which I report, must remain to guard the borders of Nal. That leaves only the Second rank, which is only summoned for an inner-city crisis.”

Like with the Wadassian guards’ incompetence, I feel this is a bit contrived. Two whole ranks, the only ones that can deal with missions outside of the city, are on vacation at the same time? They should have contingencies for this kind of thing. They can’t just take a small division of the first or second ranks on a routine scouting mission? Why don’t they just summon an alert for the guys on vacation to come back? Is this supposed to show that the Nal-Guard have become completely ineffectual and are essentially a skeleton crew? It’s good that the game is putting more thought and justification into these contrived circumstances than most RPGs, but it’s still a stretch in some places.

I will give it credit for addressing one point, though: they can’t just wait for the vacationers to return, because this is a narrow window of opportunity. If the rains return, the river will flood again and they’ll never be able to find out what’s up with it (unless they have divers but I guess those don’t exist?).

Fero: “Immediate investigation of the area, yes? And, you trust such a matter to a guild?”
[pause]
Nal-Guard: “I’ve always envied Wadassians. Maybe of us do. But I am not bitter enough to deny it.”

That’s sad. Our America parallels continue.

I accept the quest.

Nal-Guard: “Your findings will benefit all of Nal, and all of Humankind, living and otherwise.”

Wait, that brings up an interesting point. Do they believe the burial rites have some impact on the departed spirits? Do they even have a concept of a soul or afterlife, actually? Glossary?

Human Religion
While Humans will often acknowledge and occasionally pray to a non-specific ‘force’, most Human religion focuses on worship of their readily accessible natural resources (farmlands, water springs, surrounding forests) in hopes of bountiful harvests, either for their own continued well-being or for a profitable season and future. Other races tend to dismiss or frown upon this as materialistic and misguided, citing that worship should be reserved for forces and resources that are not readily controlled or harvestable; Humans maintain that, without any sort of divine intervention, their harvests would likely fail no matter the amount of care used in cultivation.

…That’s interesting, but doesn’t answer my question. Hm. I guess I’ll have to take the guard’s offhand comment as a yes, then.

Unlike with most quests, we start with a cutscene. A Fortian comes in from the north.

The geologist explains that there’s some weird stuff going on in this riverbed. The amount of decayed organic matter is so great that it causes some of the mud to float rather than sink. I have no idea how physically plausible any of this is, but, you know, fantasy. The only way to travel safely is one at a time because the game loves to force the multiple-groups mechanic. Stepping on a floating patch is fine because the liquid beneath is compressed enough that the mud doesn’t break (???), but the moment someone step off it’ll explode and the next person will need to wait for the mud to reform. Wouldn’t that release the gases as well, though? Thousands of years of built-up methane can’t be replaced in the span of a few minutes.

Ques says he’ll cross first to establish a rally point.

Ques: “Avoid conflict if possible.”

Advice I should have taken! I got almost everyone across without angering any boneswirls, and for the last character I decided to fight one for the essence. That was…a bad idea.

He begins to walk north, then turns back to face the group.

Ques: “Such an appropriate day to wear my favorite shoes.”

Amusing, but I have to wonder why he’s wearing his good clothes in a place like Nal anyway.

He walks off and I’m given control.

GASP people are actually following the advice of experts instead of dismissing them and going with gut instincts what is this bizarre mirror world I have wandered into.

The Nal-guard says “I heard the situation. What a mess. No way you’re getting me out into that mire.” Uh, don’t they work in the swamps regularly? They should be used to this.

The path is very branchy. There are multiple paths you can take, so you can still advance immediately after destroying one path. The floaty spots will usually regenerate in the time it takes you to get two people across, so you can easily get everyone across with time to spare just by alternating between the left and right paths.

There are quite a few boneswirls here. Since characters are alone, they can actually be quite dangerous. The narrowness of the path means it’s easy to run into them; there are even a few cases where you can walk yourself into a corner and have to fight one to progress. Overall, though, getting everyone across isn’t very difficult.

“The others are being escorted as we speak. But, for now… The soil ahead glistens with bone. We must continue our advance as soon as possible.”

They stop. Ques feels that something is amiss. There’s a long pause, then…

Here is this chapter’s mini-boss battle, akin to the battle against the firefiend in Wadassia. Six boneswirls is nothing to sneeze at. This is where looking for trouble comes back to bite me: you’ll notice that Lani, my tank, is in critical health.

And here’s why. Shrapnel is incredibly powerful, has an area of effect, and the boneswirls love to spam it. If all six use it at once, you’re finished. To make matters worse, two of my characters have medium armor – Qualstio got oneshotted and Fero was knocked to critical health. Even Santes’ normally-impenetrable defense was punched through like it was nothing. Lani’s hurting too.

Characters with light armor are resistant, but you can’t tank with them because the boneswirls’ regular attack is slashing – quite a devious setup. I fall victim to it here, and before I know it Lani’s the only one left standing. She almost makes it.

And I actually got a game over, wow. Usually I find this game pretty easy.

The game’s slightly forgiving about it, fortunately. But though this seems like an okay balance at first, it can lead to issues. If you’re doing poorly enough that you’re failing, not getting a bunch of essence from a boss encounter will just leave you even further behind. I never experienced this runaway effect, but I’m worried it might be a possibility. Although, to be honest, I think the real power progression lies in skill upgrades, and I don’t think skill points get reset here.

I try again, and do much better. I also get pretty lucky with the elemental affinities – five of them have easily-exploitable weaknesses, and I’m able to oneshot most of them. For some reason the game lagged a lot after the battle restarted – I guess there were issues with clearing the game memory or something?

Ques: “Let us hurry, before any more of those creations feel the need to stir. There, over the next bank. It appears to be a cave. Let us regroup and rest there.”

Ques: “Ilganyag, of Rank 10. Twice the digits; twice the excitement on my behalf.”

There’s a lengthy cutscene after this, so I’ll cut it here.

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