Bethany Plays: RD Part 2 Endgame Preparations: Last Resort

Yeah, we're on a bit of a backfoot here.

There went Geoffrey and two of our finest knights.

...What do you mean, five? I said two and I meant two.

And Ludveck's plan is to get to Elincia.

Oh yeah, Leanne is here. Probably a good idea to do something about that. I wonder if Janaff and Ulki are being made aware of how hot the water is around Leanne. Some bird tribe reinforcements sound pretty good about now...

No Geoffrey, no Lucia, no Bastian.

Elincia's running out of people.

Welcome. To one hell of a map to follow up 2-3 on.

Fort Alpea seems pretty militarily minded. Doesn't look pretty, but it gets the job done.

Technically, Haar doesn't know Ludveck knows about Alpea, but it's best to prepare for the worst.

Thanks, but your help won't be necessary. In any other run, though, Haar is incredibly helpful.

It's time for Elincia to receive the news.

OK, the messenger is definitely dead. I wonder how the "dead reveal" worked in-universe, though- what did Ludveck do to the body to make it look alive?

Sending a lock of Lucia's hair in the mail. Well, I say "lock"...

What a noble man.

...Not technically true, but I guess they probably would've left the rest of her if they shanked her, so that's probably what they mean.

Elincia is doing her best.

This next mission will see her at the helm. We must defend ourselves from Ludveck's onslaught at all costs.

And this guy pulls a Bryce and tells Elincia she's too valuable to risk.

Elincia has a different answer- her running and hiding has gotten them into this mess, it's not going to get them out.

That's a lot more than a lock. Also, with the lighting, it looks a little more electric blue than it does on her head. I think it's the way Ludveck bundled it- it also makes it look more like a pigtail. I'm not really familiar enough with "delivering a kidnap victim's hair"- I at least think it's a recurring thing in reality and/or fiction?

Elincia does tell these two to get out of dodge. Duty and so on aside, it would be a political disaster for the winning party if Leanne got damaged in the scuffle.

Leanne insists on helping.

Despite Elincia's insistence.

This girl is made of stern stuff. She's Reyson's sister that way. I'm not sure which of them got more macho from hanging around their respective bird tribe king.

Yeah, I rather do mind, but mostly for challenge reasons. As a laguz, Nealuchi is not particularly useful to normal runs because of the whole shifter mechanic.

Stasticially, though, he isn't a slouch. He's just outclassed.

Elincia has one final preparation to make.

And by "long" slumber, she means three years, since she used it in PoR. I wonder if that appearance is supposed to be non-canon to this line?

Crimea Soldier:
女王陛下！
陛下の武具をお持ちいたしました！

Elincia:
ええ……ありがとう。
クリミア王家の宝剣アミーテ……
あの戦いが終わって……
もう二度と使うことがなければ良いと
願ってきましたが…また………

Extended script has got her covered. She mentions its use in PoR.

And now Elincia never has to worry about her Sword rank again. Amiti was literally a lighter Brave Sword in PoR. Here? It's gotten a huge Might boost (+6, up to a new total of 15 Might) and +15 Hit- although the Brave Sword got the hit buff too. It's also slightly lighter (not that RD Elincia was in danger of being weighed down by the PoR Amiti). The +3 Def/Res is untouched. It is outright locked in Elincia's inventory, which actually poses a slight issue in that trading with Elincia to change her equipped weapon is slightly more inconvenient (you're not allowed to directly edit Amiti's position at all, even if you're keeping it in Elincia's inventory), but I think it is still technically possible to perform all the Trade gambits you could want to perform.

Time to Base.

Honestly, it was a close race between the two, but Astrid was killing more often.

So what do we have in here?

This time of day, or this environment?

Well, it's clearly late in the day. Hello, Calill, don't you have a tavern to be a civilian in?

Lucia has backups on her backups like you wouldn't believe.

That woman kicks all kinds of ass for you. Some of it with a sword!

Calill has faith in her fellow woman.

There's gotta be backups in the backups somewhere.

Calill pulling out her PoR self and putting the cart before the horse.

The reward for this conversation is the addition of Calill to the party. Another woman is really helpful right about now.

Haar's been looking at the rest of the soldiers.

Lucia knows what she's doing.

"The curly blonde beard" is how you remember Bastian?

Both of them are clever little bastards that will serve Elincia well.

Which is more than Elincia feels she can say in reverse.

Haar has something to say about that.

Haar is a follower, and he has his standards about the person he follows.

Some Begnion noble or other. They all kinda blend together.

Quite possibly the worst boss ever.

Haar's had his fill of terrible bosses.

Shiharam, though? Now that is a man Haar was proud to follow. A good leader is one that you can implicitly trust. If you feel like you're going to be exploited... then you're probably not getting your best interests met.

Elincia asks about Sanaki. I really do have to wonder how much Sanaki and Elincia talked politics in the Begnion arc.

Haar knows some pegasus knights, and he's got the impression that the falcoknights of the Apostle are in his Shiharam shoes.

Haar doesn't actually know much about Sanaki, and chooses not to say anything definitive about her.

So about that item he had...

Ooh, this'll come in handy.

Haar is in Elincia's corner, as much as he might be the kind of person to act otherwise.

Freebie!

Calill was "the spare Sage" in PoR, doing a good job, but not up to the same standards you could expect of a trained Soren, Ilyana or Tormod. She's in much the same shoes this time around, although Tormod has been removed from the ranking and it's hard to recommend Ilyana. In addition to the problems with mages, Calill also doesn't get the best training opportunities and it's difficult for me to recommend dedicated Fire magic users highly for one particular reason. With that said, we'll be getting as much as we can out of Calill while we have her.

Starting with caps in her tomes is a Transfer thing, she's supposed to have one rank short in each. At least she kept her high tome rank thing from PoR. She's also forgotten how to use knives- the staff/knife choice was abandoned for RD, and when Calill promotes, she will gain staves same as everyone else.

Innate Nihil is the main thing going for Calill, although at the point of the game where Nihil matters, Capacity matters less. I can think of a few things here and there worth Nihiling, but I'm not entirely certain I want Calill to be fighting them.

Also, for some weird reason I still don't fully understand, a Steel Knife suddenly appears in the Crimean convoy between 2-3 and 2-E. The best explanation I have heard for this is that it came with Ludveck's kidnapping notice. Heather will help herself.

Today's bargains. Don't bother with the Slim Sword, the one Elincia started with was more than enough unless you really want to make sure Brom gets out of E Swords. I think I did get the Killer Lance for Nephenee, though. Recover isn't that great, RD Mag means Mend usually does the trick.

One kinda funny thing about exploring unused RD data is that RD has a basically entirely functional Slim Lance in the data. Why am I mentioning this as unused data? There is legitimately no place to get a Slim Lance. I was surprised too. Not that either weapon is one you want to buy.

I wanted an Elincia/Leanne Support! I'm not sure Supports affect Card damage output, but Leanne has the Water affinity, so she gets +Atk no matter who she's paired with.

Another one of these on the way out. I don't really want to go mad on the BEXP when Astrid and Marcia are drooling for it, but maybe I should've.

These two can come, but they better get out of dodge if need be.

Nealuchi assures Elincia that the raven tribe are very good at getting out of dodge if the situation turns against them.

I think that's about my response to a joke about ravens running away.

Why wouldn't the former be true? Elincia isn't going to throw down the gates for her rebels.

...Oh yeah, Ludveck doesn't expect Elincia to have twigged.

I wonder what Ludveck's source on this is. I think, reading between the lines, Ludveck might have prepared a trap for them to ensure this, but this may also be a geography thing.