"Surprise! Everyone here is sinning and they didn't even know it! Glad to be of assistance!"
I don't think it takes much conviction for that sort of thing. Certainly a lot of strength to get this far, but not a lot once she's actually there.
This is confirmation that the lie Valtome used is something the senate worked together on.
The "Sanaki is a fake" rhetoric goes further than "that person is not actually Sanaki"- they're trying to pass Apostle Sanaki off as a false apostle. The, uh, other kind.
This is, like, one of the only lines in the English version that mentions the Senate having the same "blessed by the goddess" status in Tellius that Sanaki does. This is a critically important part of the story that explains why there's even a problem to begin with.
Somehow. Somehow this works. I have no idea- actually, wait, I have plenty of idea.
I can't even say they don't have good reason. Real people have fallen for stupider.
I don't think we have comparative sizes, but we'll be on team Apostle. Of course.
How do we feel about getting this conflict solved quickly?
This title is almost definitely referring to a literal just cause. With that said, though, there's an old joke in the Tellius community that this title has a second meaning, using a very slangy interpretation of this phrase.
退けぬ理由
I'm going to assume this pun was not preserved in Japanese, but I don't actually know what the Japanese equivalent to "just 'cause" is and how closely this matches. The intended meaning is not "Just Cause", though.
You know... I never gave it much thought before, but at no point in the ending of the previous chapter or the narration before this one was it mentioned that Sanaki's first order of business with half the Central Army is to go talk to the Laguz Alliance, but it's hardly a surprise.
OK, we not only have the Laguz Alliance, but we have Elinica, too? I... I think this is technically a parley. We have two hostile armies discussing peaceful terms in the presence of a neutral party.
Shame about the blink frame.
Elincia offers her hand to Sanaki, same as she did in PoR.
Sanaki starts off by dropping an exposition bomb of what's been going on in Begnion since they got the messenger from the Laguz Alliance.
サナキ殿… 堅苦しい挨拶はよい。
我らラグズは形式には囚われぬ。
それより、事前に書面にて
打診のあった件について……
早急に話をまとめたいと思うのだが。
Caineghis has appeared here because in the extended script, he tells Sanaki the laguz do not stand on ceremony and she should get started on the questions everyone is dying to hear answered. There is no equivalent line in INT, but Caineghis is still switched in anyway.
Sanaki read the message and decided, using her usual methods, to go check up on what the Senate's shenanigans are and how to put a stop to them.
The Senate got sick of her doing that and unleashed their secret weapon: The fact they are grown men and she is a thirteen-year-old girl.
"Major rifts". Also known as "the Senate are the worst kind of bastards known to man and I'm the only thing between them and the complete destruction of everyone but Begnion's nobility". You know, the usual.
There's one thing I'd really like to talk about with Three Houses here. Edelgard's decision to not destroy the Agarthans immediately. This decision really seems to annoy people, for some reason. Both Edelgard and Sanaki are underage Empresses with a lot of power, but not ultimate authority, and the next-highest man on the totem pole is someone who needs to be removed at the earliest opportunity. Edelgard stayed on their good side and laid low until she was sure she had enough cards to remove them. Sanaki actively defied them every chance she got while trusting her position would shield her. She was wrong. Frankly, she's lucky the Senate didn't kill her immediately.
Tibarn was fairly sure on most of this. He says. I reserve the right to challenge this opinion.
If nothing else, they haven't actually properly usurped her power. She is still the Empress of Begnion, insomuch as this title has any meaning.
When you think about it long enough, titles have no actual meaning whatsoever other than what everyone agrees on. As long as people say Sanaki is Empress, she has all the benefits thereof.
Sanaki will not sit idly by and let Lekain win. She will claw her way back by any means necessary.
She requests the help of the laguz.
When Elincia asked for help from Begnion, Sanaki made her women do her dirty work. When Sanaki asks for help, the laguz just tell her to turn Begnion into a laguz-friendly place. All in all, could've been a lot worse.
Let's be honest, Sanaki was going to do all three of these things regardless.
……サナキ殿が皇帝の地位を取り戻し
ベグニオン帝国の意思が
完全に１つのものとなれば――
その時、その同盟は
深い意味を持つものに変わるだろう。
ラグズ奴隷の完全解放。
種族差別を乗り越えた国交……
それはまさに……
わしとクリミア先王が夢見たものだ………
I could be wrong on this one (it's the sort of tonal different machines can do wrong), but I think Caineghis is less demanding these repatritions and moreso commenting that, if Sanaki gets the Senate out of her hair, these things will be possible and meaningful.
And Elincia would gladly jump in and join for the chance for laguz-beorc unity. There's no real reason she has to, other than the meta argument of "now the Greil Mercenaries can play with the Crimean Knights".
Come on, Tibarn, at least let her agree to Caineghis and Elincia's demands!
With the Senate on its way out with this war, this is a promise that Sanaki can make and expect to keep. No such promise was made in PoR because Sanaki knew Lekain was going to rain on it.
Have all four of you been in the same room yet? I think when Rafiel first delivered the news worked...
Tibarn was down for the "rip out the senators hearts and feed them to different senators" plan from the outset. Getting an actual political contract out of it is just a bonus. Honestly, I don't think anyone at this table was expecting to have to request any of these actions to occur. Everyone already wanted to do everything. Except Crimea.
The Laguz Alliance has become the Apostle's Army.
It's a heck of a lot better here in Tellius than it is in Fodlan, but we're not getting peace "back".
We stand as one.
Ike is happy to hear it. He wasn't in the meeting because why would he be, he doesn't belong there.
Sanaki knows talk is cheap. Unless we can actually win this war, everything that just happened is meaningless.
So we must come out strong and make an impact.
Ike is happy to offer his services for the job.
あんたの依頼があったから…
俺の傭兵団も、ラグズ連合との契約を
いったん終わりにしてもらった。
たいしたことはできんだろうが、
国を取り戻すのに力を貸そう。
He points out that, since his contract with the Laguz Alliance is terminated, he is both able to do this and not sure if he can. Honestly, it really depends on whether Sanaki's willing to give him a new one.
...Jet promotion. Then again, the Apostle's Army hasn't been established long, we're in the "handing titles out" phase and not the "promoting new people" phase.
Ike points out that hey, Zelgius could probably do the job, he has actual... experience?
Zelgius, because he's Zelgius, can do this job. I think it's implied he's acting alone right now- ie, not even a token force.
...Although we have no idea where Levail is right now, maybe Zelgius did bring Levail and some flunkies.
Our army is: The Laguz Alliance, the Crimean Royal Knights, and half the Central Army.
And let's be honest: Ike probably has Zelgius beat when it comes to this criterion. Especially the hawks. The hawks hate Zelgius right now.
Well, anyone could've done it, but now that Ike's started it, he's in the best position to keep it going. It's easier to trust someone you already know rather than establish a new bond.
Ike, for his part, knows that much, and will take the mantle, even if he would very much like to be literally anywhere else right now.
Time for the pleasantries.
- Ranulf:
- ガリア王国から
大将スクリミル率いる獣牙兵三千、
ただいま到着しました。
- Geoffrey:
- 神使様！
クリミア王国軍より、精鋭五千…
準備完了しております。
Those sound like numbers to me. Apparently, three thousand Beast Fang warriors and five thousand Crimeans. These numbers totally won't bite us in the butt later.
Ike hates the pleasantries. At least this actually leads in to the Base.
Mist MVP, again. I wasn't keeping track, did Mist get any MVPs in PoR?
Three Base conversations today.
Sanaki has something to give Ike.
Also a quick exchange at the start to continue to joke about Ike's RBF.
Sanaki really doesn't get a lot of goofy scenes in RD.
Now then, this conversation, in the INT version, at least, is honestly a massive bait-and-switch for people who've played RD already and have forgotten about this minor conversation.
This conversation is about something Ike has never seen before...
...Excuse me, game, Ike got one of these in 3-3 (and in the JP version, 3-5). Our Ike has seen one used on Ilyana! That's a much better blink frame.
It doesn't work on Ike, so he must've just forgotten about it, same way most people do about Satori Signs.
This line is a little weirder. Every beorc in this party except Ike and Mist can use it. Perhaps she means "there won't be enough of these for everyone you meet". I think both situations are grammatically consistent with this sentence.
I believe there are a total of 36 characters in the game who can use a Master Crown to promote into third tier- which, hilariously enough, is exactly half the cast. This is both more than I expected and less than I expected.
I'm told you get two more of these for free at this point in the story in JP. We'll be struggling to use the ones we have.
Sigrun is thanking us for enlisting in the Apostle's Army.
Although Ike was very much not expecting and not appreciating this.
Never let it be said that Sanaki isn't cunning to the last.
No, I am not skipping any lines of dialogue here. Sigrun legitimately does dive right in to this thought instead.
I think this army of characters could beat my PoR team already, not the least because it has just expanded significantly.
Same paycheck we got out of Caineghis for escorting Elincia in PoR. I wonder who's footing this bill.
Now for the fluff conversation. It's time for the Red and Green Knights to interact.
Not that Oscar wasn't happy to not be in Kieran's company thus far.
For one thing, he could use his time more effectively.
I wonder how many attempts he gave, and how vigourously he did so, before deciding to just wait on it.
This line is iconic, if perhaps a little underappreciated. If you're having a conversation, it's usually a good idea to have a full understanding of what has been discussed rather than zeroing in on the last line uttered. Following Kieran's example of responding only to the last thing said leads to you contradicting yourself. Repeatedly.
Dimitri.
Presumably, Oscar mumbled that last one.
Oscar is just going to move on.
This is like the most passive-aggressive "please don't kill yourself" ever uttered without coming off as talking about suicide. Kieran is not suicidal in the mental health sense, as far as I can tell, but if he doesn't screw his head on tighter, he's going to lose it.
So special, that this is the only Scroll we get in the game! Well, ignoring Fiona coming with a copy of the skill equipped as an innate. Also the Black Knight has a copy.
...See? You're wearing something the Black Knight thought was good!
Because he doesn't want you to die, hint hint.
Oscar isn't able to come up with a witty retort. Or even a witted retort.
Kieran refuses, owing to his pride.
Because how else can this game be humourous?
"We are equals" followed by "run along now" does not seem accurate.
...I thought you were done.
Oscar figures out how to get Kieran to take his medicine.
That got him singing a different tune.
Oscar, you were this close.
Kieran manages to find a way to weasel out of admitting defeat to Oscar.
Oscar is clearly too exasperated by this man. One has to wonder if the reason he hangs out with the mercenaries instead of the Knights is to avoid this man.
That time did not appear to be mumbled. Oscar is much more adept at escaping defeat.
Kieran is happy to be called Sir Simpleton now. Wonder if he'll insist anyone else call him that. Probably in addition to his fifty titles he already claimed.
Well you can't deny that.
Hilariously enough, Boyd and Rolf have a slower Support speed with Kieran, and I'm not sure whether that's Kieran being jealous of people taking up Oscar's time or the brothers finding him too stupid for Oscar. Kieran does like talking about how Oscar shouldn't have left the Knights despite this being how the brothers survived.
Now Kieran hands that over to the women. Kieran starts with 6 Magic and has a 15% growth- honestly, while not terrible on him, I really would put it on other people in a run that chooses to use him too. Kieran gets 4 Magic for promoting to Gold Knight, but he also gets Sol for healing his injuries.
Ilyana and Heather finish this bond. +2 Atk/Def and +15 Hit, could be better, probably could be worse.
A nifty little demonstration while I'm working, but the Greil Mercenaries and Crimean Royal Knights have now fully combined. In addition to (some of) their units, they have also pooled their money, BEXP and convoy space.
To be specific about which Crimean Royal Knight characters we have, we have Kieran, Marcia, Makalov, Astrid, Danved, and Calill. Elincia and the Delbray twins are not in our party, and we only get recursive explanations for all three. Well, two. I know why Geoffrey didn't join us and I have a good guess why we didn't get Elincia, but Lucia has no in-game explanation other than "she wanted to follow Elincia around". For those who aren't diligently tracking which Part 2 characters we've re-encountered in Part 3, the only ones we're missing are Leanne and Nealuchi.
Calill gets a round of BEXP and decides to cap her Strength. If she was allowed one more BEXP level, she would full cap her stats.
Well, I said we needed to use these things.
The white cloak is very sharp, but the see-through skirt doesn't really strike me as Calill's brand of alluring. She still has some lower half modesty in her flappy things, though.
It'll be some time until she catches up and one can truly say the two are identical, but Ilyana and Calill have more or less the same potential. "Arch Sage, Fire" and "Arch Sage, Thunder" are two separate classes with separate traits- Calill has higher caps in HP and Spd while Ilyana has higher caps in Skill and Def, and they can each only get SS rank in their specialty magic- but apart from that, Calill brings the same things to the table as Ilyana- Staves and Flare.
Proof of concept, Imbue cannot be applied to magical units and Mist is considered a magical unit. Curiously, "Queen Crimea" is not a magical unit and when we get Elincia back, she can use Imbue. These two are the only edge cases, though- it should be pretty obvious who else counts as a "magical unit".
When halfshifted, capped stats are not green and glowing, but they properly function as such regardless. Here we can see Lyre's capped Speed. Quite honestly, I feel proud of having gotten her this far. I'm not going to stop using her, though.
If you looked at the Blossom Skill and the Paragon Skill and thought "...what if you used both", the game does allow that. But, with a total Capacity cost of 35 (15 for Paragon and 20 for Blossom), the only units who can use it are Geoffrey, Astrid (who have Paragon innately), and level 30+ laguz (who have 70 Capacity before Shove/Canto). Royal Laguz have even more Capacity and level 15+ royals can handle Parablossom, and we will get some of those- Skrimir is one such character. As far as this run (and most people) are concerned, though, Astrid is the only character who can make effective use of the combo. Although I might wind up showing it off on one of the cats for one mission in particular...
I'm literally throwing stuff at the wall and seeing what sticks. Defence is Defence, Heaven sucks as an affinity, and so on.
We're not done with Base, we just have to do the story stuff first.
Oh, don't tell me we have to do Part 3 over again!
The answer to that question is no...
Because the starting arguments are flawed.
Ike is not using that as an excuse to slack off, though.
And besides, as a mercenary, Ike gets the last laugh.
Sanaki knows exactly what she's getting for her money. And she has another item for Ike. People replaying the game probably expect this to come in the Base conversation with Sanaki, until Ike mentions never having seen one before.
Ike's iconic weapon. Although for most people, this isn't much of a prize. Ike starts at level 11 and hasn't plot promoted yet- if you're "using" Ike, he's probably level 20 and you're treating him the same way I am for this stretch of the game.
This is why Ike didn't hold onto it. Ragnell and Alondite have massive historical significance to the history of Begnion. Although, if you think about it for longer than five seconds, this does raise the question of how the Black Knight got his hands on them for PoR.
Ragnell and Alondite are Altina's twin weapons. Remember how the Black Knight said the two weapons are rivals? Historically, they are the opposite.
Ike, honestly, mostly sees a sword he's used before and liked.
Locked into Ike's inventory, and is basically identical to Alondite- same stats as PoR, just missing the innate crit nullification.
Geoffrey? What are you doing in this lineup?
And probably more importantly, what is this urgent news that is going on right now?
Well, we're not going to Begnion the same way we did at the start of the Part. We'll be making our way through Daein instead.
This time, though, we didn't get a perspective shift to Micaiah and Pelleas as warning for the player.
There's something kind of curious about the narrative behind the scenes right now. We haven't seen any of the pieces in play yet (well, not overtly, but we have seen plenty of foreshadowing), but there's a possibility Sanaki can guess what's going on in Daein right now.
She chooses an odd way to phrase this line if that is her train of thought, though. With the benefit of hindsight, I think there's pretty good odds Sanaki doesn't actually have the answers right now. It is true that we must go through Daein and not Flaguerre now, and let's focus on that rather than off-screen events.
Daein could do quite a lot of things if allowed to act unchecked. Just entering Crimea is one of them.
And to enter Daein, we must...
...
Oh. Yeah. Right. Just when you thought playing an older Fire Emblem game means no map recycling...
Sanaki, despite her earlier remark, is attempting to negotiate.
It is not working, though. Sigrun, too, is aware of the possibility of senatorial meddling. This whole foreshadowing knot is giving me ideas.
We've just gotta deal with this first, though.
Sanaki's keeping at the negotiating trick, and gets carried away on pegasusback.
I'm not really sure what the narrative or mechanical purpose of this line is.
I guess the game is trying to stay aware of the fact that we are not yet allowed Skrimir as a playable character. If you stop and think it through, every single map in Part 3 thus far has actively given a reason why Skrimir is not a member of Ike's army, and this one is just the least coherent.
12 spaces, and... hey, Sigrun and Tanith, what's the holdup?
Also, good thing I needed to come back here, almost missed this huge item in the Bargains! Thoron is the S Rank Thunder tome and I'm going to want this badly later.
Sigrun starts with capped weapon ranks and one level short of promotion (which is... a choice when you remember the whole "no natural promotion" of the JP version). As a character, though... Sigrun just races to the bottom pick when it comes to the worst of the pegasus knights. With that said, Sigrun is far from a terrible character overall, and we can use her without worrying about how. Just... don't expect her to do what everyone else is doing.
Just look at the relative stability of Tanith between PoR and RD. PoR Tanith, as you might recall, had some mild Strength issues but was otherwise servicable. Honestly, this isn't a half bad chance to see how a PoR character handles themselves in RD's stat-inflated mid-game. Well, until Tanith gets powerful.
She doesn't usually start with S Lances, we got that from Transfers. While we're on the topic of PoR Tanith, the Reinforce Skill does not exist in this game. Honestly, I don't think a single map Tanith can participate can be justified to include Reinforce narratively.
Skill assignments for the newbies. Imbue Sigrun is kinda necessary for her to handle herself considering her general... Sigrun-ness, while Paragon Tanith is here to propel her to the heights that Marcia has reached in her absence.
Also gave Nephenee one of these, since she had 66 EXP.
Lethe stole her Smite Skill.
I also finally took these off Mia. Although perhaps Mist wasn't the best choice.
Calill gets Adept back. Which is weird, considering I'm trying to do Discipline, but might as well.
Today's deployment roster. We must bench three people, and I decided on Titania, Mia and Nephenee. Titania and Mia were gimme picks, while Nephenee is just generally overlevelled. If I brought Nephenee, I would've benched Mist.
Now then... recycled map time. Just 'cause.
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