After the last interlude, we skip to the guild at Wadassia, where Ques is signing off. He says that he actually came to enjoy being in the guild and will miss them, which is a nice and believable bit of character development. If only the other minor characters got the same basic consideration.
Then the registrar reveals that because Wadassia is a bureaucratic nightmare, they’ll have to wait half a year to get a new manager, oh no! Everyone is shocked by this because basic research is for plebs, and apparently Ques never told them this would be a problem despite making such a fuss about it it.

Registrar: “Your guild is free to continue working; however, no official records may be made.”
Qualstio: “Hah, screw that. We’re not doin’ nothing if we’re not getting any attention for it.”

Our hero, everyone.

Ques does a dramatic farewell thing, and Dehl tells him to join the party because that’s the solution to everything in RPGs. The registrar pops their bubble by saying they need a manager to do recruitment, and Alito volunteers for the position.

Dehl: “Alito, you need never ask for permission to speak your mind in our company. Go ahead.”

I wonder, is this a sentiment he genuinely believes, or is he just going through the motions because he feels it’s expected of him? He seems to have a lot of internalized racism, like when he blithely accepted the slavery in Nal. And he is rather pushy toward Moke. It could be that he simply places the law above his own ethics, and since Alito currently has no master Dehl doesn’t see the need to enforce the servant mentality. This still seems a little out of place for him, regardless.

Anyway the registrar is a racist jerk blah blah Alito takes the test.

…That’s the exact same format the timeskips took in interlude 3. Wonder if it’s a tongue-in-cheek thing or if the developer just reused assets.

For some reason most of the guild has disappeared, even though everyone was present in the last scene. Can you tell what great friends these people are, slinking away during important, life-changing events? Such camaraderie.

Registrar: “I’ve just… never seen results scored this highly. I… I am impressed.”

This hamhanded writing reminds me of a certain Unoriginality chapter lampooning misery sues; there, Farla presumed the writers’ motive was that if the narration didn’t point out they were secretly awesome and all the mean people were wrong, you might think the bullies were right and that’s terrible. Something similar may be at play here: we need to know that Alito is perfectly capable because racism is bad you guys, and the format doesn’t leave room to show instead of tell so the writer decides to demonstrate this through the registrar’s dialogue… but unfortunately he goes overboard, resulting in this absurdity.

This becomes an even bigger problem if you’re tying it to larger issues like we see here. By making Alito a supergenius, he is no longer representative of his race in general. Sure, things work out great for him, but what about all the other shra who aren’t blessed with his outstanding intelligence? What about the ones who can’t get an education at all? How would things turn out for them if they were in Alito’s shoes right now? It raises the unfortunate implication that if Alito hadn’t aced the test, her prejudices would be totally justified – and so, for the many shra who can’t ace the test, well, are they just not worth caring about then?

Just because this one guy does well enough to challenge this one racist’s presuppositions doesn’t mean it solves anything. We like our heroes to be idealized because they are fantasies of triumph and escapism, but it’s important to recognize that not everyone is at the top end of the bell curve. When our only racial representatives are the pinnacle of human achievement, it puts them on a pedestal. We don’t need to worry about all the people who are less well-off; their problems never come up, because our main character never suffers the same indignities. This sort of thing is well-meaning, but it can still be toxic. And it’s just poor writing, besides.

Ques joins the guild to an audience of three people because the rest of them couldn’t be bothered. He’s a “tactician”. A straightlaced, bookish old Fih’jik man who conceals surprising skill in combat. He desires to continue seeing the world. Proficient at dealing Soul type damage, as well as abilities that affect many allies or enemies at once, though these are tiring.

I’ve never used Ques much in the past – I’ll have to rectify that in this playthrough. When it says his abilities are “tiring”, the game means they inflict the disable status on him, like Fero’s arrowstorm attack. This means you can’t spam his skills and have to use them, well, tactically. To be honest they aren’t actually that useful, since they’re spread out but weak. Area-of-effect attacks are especially iffy in this combat system where not every enemy is weak to the same type of damage. (For instance, unless I’m planning to take down every enemy through Soul damage, Vocal Threat is at least partially wasted.) Special Tending is very nice though; it heals whatever health value is lowest, so it’s pretty versatile. Victory Lunge is a decent attack move that deals a different type of damage depending on the current chain link (red is body, blue is mind, green is soul). It’s kind of cool, too, and may make me actually pay attention to the chain.

The real problem with him, I think, is that so few of his skills are influenced by his stats. Only Vocal Threat is; everything else relies solely on skill rank. This makes him very weak out of the box, and he’s harder to use than other characters who can fall back on their good stats. Maybe if he started with more skill points, but I only have enough to boost, like, two of his skills (this at a point in the game where everyone else has rank III skills)

“There. Ilganyag, you have my name, and my life. See to it that neither is sullied.”

And he’s back to snobbish jerk mode because consistency is hard. That or it’s supposed to be joking, I don’t know?

Hiu (the professor from chapter 1) happens to be nearby and tells them about the next plot hook: the Berylbrine outpost is opening up again, providing people with an opportunity to explore the native lands of the shra. Dehl immediately realizes this must be fueling the slave trade.

Qualstio: “Actually, last I heard, there were Shra who were cooperating with the settlers.”

how do you know that

So apparently Qualstio knew about this already… but he kept it to himself even though it’s the obvious place for them to go next and is kind of a big deal in general, because [not found]. If the game would just stop making Qualstio the center of the universe for five seconds Hiu could have said this line and this wouldn’t be a problem in the first place, but no, Qualstio is the bestest most wonderfullest and he will be shoehorned into every scene whether you like it or not.

This game.

Oh, and he continues with “It’s real interesting to see. Maybe we should hop a ship over and help them rebuild.” Yes! Natives cooperating with foreign slave traders, definitely completely voluntarily! How quaint! Perhaps we could snap some pictures and offer some good old American Wadassian assistance for the little dears! Die in a fire.

Ques: “The land is rich in history, teeming with life, and steeped with culture.”

You don’t say??? I wonder, will we actually see this history and culture or will it be kept infuriatingly out of sight just like the last three times you said that? (Sorry, I’m still bitter about Fortifel.)

Hiu mentions other guilds are visiting Berylbrine, which calls attention to the elephant in the room that is the lack of guilds so far. They’re supposedly common, yet we’ve seen all of one. (The Scourge Clad isn’t one, by Skint’s own admission.) It would have been nice to see minor ones just hanging around; if nothing else, it might have breathed some life into some of the more boring quests.

Hiu also mentions that Havan left his quest unfinished. So, what, he just up and left the moment he found the emitter? That’s bizarre. Everyone knows you don’t leave the dungeon until you’ve checked every nook and cranny! There could be tons of other cool stuff still in there for all he knows. I’d also think Wadassia would have some way of punishing him, but you know, given what we’ve seen so far, it probably doesn’t.

So, Alito is now the new manager. He’s one of the few non-snarky personalities in the cast (that will be rectified in The Drop) so I am pretty okay with him getting a larger role. I think it’s a clever twist as well – in my experience, video game characters tend to stay fixed in their roles, so the mission control becoming a playable character is novel and surprising. It is rather convenient that the guild gets a suitable replacement immediately, but, eh, you know they’d have to get a new manager eventually so there wouldn’t be much point to the suspense. Although a period where they’re free of guild obligations would be good for building the Watcher plot…

The help text goes on to helpfully inform me that it’s sidequest time. It says Since time has passed, new NPCs in the cities you have visited may appear even though I’m pretty sure that only happens in Wadassia and only, like, once. Artifact of design ideas that didn’t pan out? The real draw is that some of the guild members will now offer their own quests, which will plug one of their weaknesses. They’re kind of boring though. One’s already unlocked and I’ll show it off in a bit.

Something cool that happens here is that the characters’ ages actually increase in their status screens. It’s not perfect though; Qualstio is still 26 (perhaps he bathes in the blood of the innocent), and Fero is HN 22 despite fih’jik aging twice as fast as humans (so he should be 23). Dehl’s still HN 22, which is a shame because if he aged up here we would know his real age exactly. For now he exists in the nebulous 111-114 range.

Oh, and I’ve gotten new party members since we were last here. You know what that means!!!!!!!!

Kidra what are you doing he is twelve get away from him

For some reason I forgot to do this when I first got Lani and oh what the crap it’s unusual for females but not males? So she’s not supposed to be an empowering female character, she’s just a ~special exception~. Ugh. At least The Drop retconned this to hold true for both genders.

Urgh I’m thinking about the possibility of her lucidity not being planned and now I can’t stop picturing this as creepy Ophelia objectification. Seriously, this sounds like it’s describing an animal in a nature documentary. Why does she care so much about Dehl anyway? She should be off on her own, exploring.

I think it’s finally time to remove Qualstio from the lineup. He’s useful, but he’s such a horrible person. Chapter 3 was his time to shine anyway. It’s Ques’ turn now.

And this is yet another reason why Fero breaks the game in half. Many of his support combinations provide agility boosts, which makes sense if you view it as him teaching them the ways of being a speed demon. However, support combos work both ways, so if I junction Ques to Fero it makes his agility go off the charts, even though that doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. For now, though, I’ve dropped Fero, so I can use him the way he was intended to be used (or so I assume).

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