Sanctifel may not have much plot happening in it, but it’s a new area so it’s time to look at some flavor text! You’re all breathless with excitement, I’m sure.

Metsueno is here, because Sanctifel needed a storyline quest to justify its existence. More on this later.

Naturally, he is testing this theory by standing in the middle of the road, in plain sight. He’d be a good Dauntless.

…Uh, really? Fortians seem to respect the necessity of non-magical talents, what with all the not being terrible to shra. Even Sanctifel has guards, but maybe these ones are mostly there for show and don’t really do anything. Might explain why she’s chatting with one.

Yes okay we get it, being shra is suffering.

“Hot climate”? THEY HAVE APPLES AND TEMPERATE FORESTS. Why didn’t the developer just make Wadassia tropical if the lack of snowfall was so important?

Yeah, not buying it, game. Sadists who laugh about turning floors to glass aren’t really scared softies beneath it all.

(It’s almost like the game is transparently running through a checklist because he’s a shallow archetype instead of a well-rounded character.)

“Tourist”? He’s an ambassador! What the heck, game? That excuse works perfectly well, you just had to change one word! One word! First using “hot” to mean “temperate”, now this. There’s some weird vocabulary confusion in this game.

(“One” direction? Shouldn’t he still need to watch three?) I guess even creepy perfectionist assassins have to be pragmatic sometimes. (Although I wonder if he’s just trying to get some shelter from the cold and doesn’t want to admit it.)

Something sounds petty about this that I can’t quite place. She’s standing near the warm area, why would she be frozen? Her Nal description was sneery too. It’s because she’s a prostitute, isn’t it? Or maybe it’s because she’s an assertive woman, those have to be mocked relentlessly as we all know. Ugh. Don’t we get enough of that in the YA books here? (And she isn’t even actually a prostitute so…what is the game even trying to say here?)

“Discomfort”? Don’t cold-blooded creatures like warmth since they need all the heat they can get? He should have been miserable the whole way here and happy now that he finally has a heater. The developer has pet lizards, he should know this!

Yay foreshadowing and stuff. Though it’s odd that this is only coming up now (he isn’t bothered by the cold at all in his Fortifel description).

With that out of the way, onto the main event. Tucked away in the far right corner is a “trial keeper” talking to a young woman.

Qualstio walks out of the building (what was he doing there?), and is grabbed by the woman.

Ah, Falitza. She was one of my favorite characters when I first played (and she’s awesome in The Drop), though I’ve soured on her somewhat after mulling over some later reveals. All of her lines are pretty fun to analyze regardless. I don’t think this one has any real significance – she probably just came up with some nonsense off the top of her head to get Qualstio to pay attention. The stutter at the start seems pretty telling.

Qualstio is understandably confused and tries to walk away, but Falitza won’t let him.

Qualstio: “She’s a clingy one, huh?”

…I don’t know if I’m being unfair because Qualstio’s been such a dick, but this sounds kinda skeevy to me.

The trial keeper starts going on about how it’s such a shame she went crazy so young, she had so much promise etc. Lani then materializes out of nowhere due to what I presume is a graphical oversight and we get an “am I interrupting something LOL” bit because that’s such a good idea when the girl is clinically insane. They go on for a bit about how she’s nuts. Qualstio mentions that they helped with the caravans, and I suppose world travels really fast in creepy insane asylum town because the trial keeper immediately recognizes them as Ilganyag.

Falitza: “The winds! Voices from above! They beckon to you… to us all…!”

Wait what how does she know about the Watchers? That’s the only way I can interpret this. Mind reading can only explain so much, game! Guess she got some kind of clairvoyance too?

Actually, that would be pretty interesting. What if she did see something she wasn’t supposed to: the truth about their world? The magic system runs on plot and had only a passing familiarity with consistency in this game, so it’d be possible. That would explain why she locked herself up; she really was shaken by the truth and needed a quiet place to ruminate on it. Or even better: she didn’t want to get locked up, but when she tried to explain what she saw, Fortifel thought she was insane and shipped her off. That’d tie into the theme of people making poor decisions about things outside the scope of their understanding, even!

(And why does she even say this in the first place? It comes out of nowhere and nobody comments on it. She gains nothing from it. Honestly, it feels like the developer just wanted some more crazy Falitza dialogue in this scene and awkwardly shoved it in here.)

The trial keeper explains that Falitza has an “inquisition trial” coming up, and if she passes, she’ll be deemed mentally sound and can return to Fortifel. So Sanctifel isn’t even a life sentence, they have a method for reintegrating people! Fortifel seems more and more not terrible the more we learn about it.

Trial Keeper: “She is allowed assistance from other magic wielding participants, at her request.”

…Pity it also seems more and more insane. What this means is that she can literally stand in one place the entire trial and have her “assistants” do all the work. Somehow the overseers interpret this to mean she’s sane enough to do the trials herself, because Fortifel runs on nonsensolium. That or I was wrong and they hate Sanctifellians and look for any excuse to get them out of their hair. I don’t know.

Dehl: “I must express my ignorance. What sort of trial is this? What crime has she committed?”

I’m pretty sure they mean more the “ordeal” definition, I thought that was pretty obvious-

Trial Keeper: “A most dreadful deed, indeed. Evoking magic, without control. A crime in Fortifel.”

Oh never mind it really is a legal trial because Fortifel is nuts. Is this how they handle theft and murder, too?

And huh. So they do see Sanctifellians as criminals. Why do they even pay lip service to the idea of humane treatment, then? No one’s going to object if this mentality is so pervasive. Why do they keep them alive at all, come to think of it? Fortians have a pseudo-religious view toward magic, so this is tantamount to heresy. Maybe they did once, but have since moved toward Sanctifel as the result of a progressive movement? Perhaps the Wracked rehabilitation experiments are similarly controversial.

Qualstio: “Did she hurt anybody when it went down? She’s so young, I don’t see the need for Trial.”

This just confuses me more. So uncontrolled magic use is inherently a crime, but there’s only supposed to be an actual trial if there was collateral damage? What do they do when the person doesn’t harm anyone?

Trial Keeper: “Oh, no, her loss has only harmed herself.”

…They do trial anyway? Then what was Qualstio even talking about? What’s the legal precedent for this? Why does Fortifel make no sense?!

(I’m getting tempted to start a counter like Act did for FioS.)

Qualstio doesn’t object further even though this doesn’t address his concern, so that exchange was pointless.

“Peer into her eyes. She does not peer back.”
Ques: “She is blind, then?”
Trial Keeper: “No, she is not blind. Her vision is hollow. She is unresponsive without great coaxing.”

I have no idea what this is doing here other than to make Ques look like an overly-literal weirdo. He was obviously speaking figuratively. I’m just going to leave this here so you can boggle at it with me.

Dehl finally asks how she went insane. She was a child prodigy and the pride of the Falitzo household because even in fantasy stories patriarchy is inescapable. She became a rebellious teenager because those would totally be a thing in such a rigid, autocratic society like this. Shouldn’t they have weeded that out by now? Surely they can do the magic equivalent of the standard dystopia complacency pill, or, failing that, good old indoctrination? She then proceeded to demonstrate another reason why rebellious teens should have died out by now by performing dangerous experiments that eventually broke her mind.

Tehgonan: “That’s wild! Now I know what I wanna do when I get back home!”

Tehgonan wants to die.

Trial Keeper: The explanation we were given upon finding her was that she ‘peered into the unknown’.”

Uh, yeah, about that. Who provided this “explanation”? He goes on to say she left no notes, so nobody knows exactly what happened. Did her parents know what she was doing and just left her to her own devices because LOL, kids these days?

(Also, seriously, just look at that. It totally sounds like she discovered the big secret.)

Dehl: “If it was a victimless crime, then, what is the purpose of this trial?”

This was addressed like five minutes ago. Try to keep up, Dehl.

Qualstio: “Eh, it’s not that kinda trial, Dehl. It’s more like a test, or a challenge or something.”

…

Trial Keeper: “A most dreadful deed, indeed. Evoking magic, without control. A crime in Fortifel.“

I was going to be charitable and assume Qualstio’s been out of touch with Fortifel so long he forgot how this worked, but he literally just heard this. Does he have selective deafness? Aggghh. I can’t. I can’t make sense of this.

OH WAIT we still have more nonsense coming up because my suffering can’t end yet:

Trial Keeper: “She would very likely not succeed in the trial on her own. Very few do.”

So they’re openly admitting it doesn’t actually test the subject’s own competence, it’s just a test of how many people they can rope into doing it for them. Don’t worry, this will make even less sense later on!

Qualstio earns a Good Person Point™ by expressing sympathy for Falitza out of nowhere. Given his past behavior, this just make him look like a sociopath who tries to look like a good guy at opportune moments. In a better, more consistent game, this would be foreshadowing for his backstory, but because Qualstio always just says whatever the plot needs him to say, this becomes meaningless.

And it’s time for an awkward intersection of gameplay and story elements! The Trial Keeper explains that only spellcasters are allowed to assist, no “high-weapon battlers” because that would totally be a real classification. Why is this necessary, even? Why exclude non-casters?

Going on my headcanon of Fortifel being elitist dicks who monopolized magic use until recently, I’ll come up with a crazy theory to preserve my sanity: The warding spell was originally intended to only permit Fortians, but was shoddily “coded” if you will and only used baseline magical affinity/exposure as its criteria. After the secret of learning magic got leaked to the rest of the world, foreign casters managed to get recognized by the spell as well and… I suppose they just never changed it for some reason? Maybe they lost the war or whatever and wanted to play nice. I don’t know, Fortifel doesn’t make a lot of sense okay?

Well, whatever. It doesn’t make story sense but in gameplay terms it’s pretty clear, I can only use casters. Now let’s just-

Dehl: “Oh, but

DEHL WHY DO YOU PROLONG MY SUFFERING

I can wield magic, to a degree. How will I know if I am barred entry?”

Shra can’t use magic. I want to make sure you remember that. Dehl has just dropped a bombshell that could potentially turn Fortifel’s entire belief system on its head.

Guess what the trial keeper’s response is. Guess.

Trial Keeper: “You’ll know right away. Well, it’s about time. Follow me into the main chamber.”

…

He doesn’t immediately drag Dehl off for experiments. He doesn’t ask Dehl any follow-up questions. He doesn’t have any reaction at all. If Dehl’s telling the truth he could get all the awards, all of them for being the first to study such a curiosity, but eh, can’t be bothered. This is obviously here to explain a gameplay mechanic and not tell me about the world, and the scene is weakened by it.

The worst part is, Dehl’s question didn’t even need to be there! There is no ambiguity about who is and is not allowed, characters are cleanly divided into fighters and casters and the game explicitly spells this out to you in the help text anyway. Even if it was for some reason absolutely necessary, there’s a response that could actually fit into the story: Moke and Dehl can’t be the first shra to make these claims, yet presumably they were all examined and labeled as frauds. This would be nothing new, then; the keeper could just roll his eyes at yet another pretender and the scene could move on while still telling us something about Fortifel deals with this. Plus it’d add some tension to Moke’s subplot, and maybe provide an explanation for what happened “last time”. But no, let’s just wrap up the cutscene, writing is too hard.

(Oh, and your best answer is “I dunno, we’ll see?” Really? This can’t be the first time someone’s asked that question, he should have a real answer. Don’t point out your own plot holes, game.)

Falitza’s trial is really long so I’m cutting it here. Next time: puzzles!

PREVIOUS | NEXT