Our next destination is Bazba's Fortress.
But before we head that way, a new feature has appeared: We can actually revisit Ide's Armoury if we navigate our way over to Ide on the map.
We must select one character to do the shopping, which matters in regards to one thing later. All the stuff will be sent to the convoy anyway if the character's inventory is full.
I dump all the axes into the convoy. There's only one female character capable of using axes, and it's a perfectly valid tactic to not build her in that way. With the intention of giving her axes, I keep these ones ready. If you're using men, the list of characters who can use axes is somewhat longer- not as impressive as modern FE games, but long enough that you should probably keep these too, even if you're not planning on using Garcia or Ross themselves.
As we start this narration, we're introduced to a green unit thief running towards the fortress. In addition to him not looking like a cave troll with a five o'clock shadow, this is a clue that the man who stole the bracelet doesn't mean us harm.
We're still going to chase after him, because Seth really liked that bracelet.
Well, at least we're doing something for the people of Renais after all.
Let's ignore the fact we're only doing this for a shiny thing, this is a much better reason.
...Please tell me they have a better name for themselves than that.
The villagers know? I presume they have to find out where not to go hunting, and it also doesn't help solve the problem that all the people who might put a stop to them are... "otherwise occupied".
Eirika apparently saw enough of the kid that they have a wanted poster to show people. Metaphorically.
...
Eirika, honey, I try to give you as much credit as possible, but what do you think happened last time? I'd say this is supposed to tie in to that, but there's also that inexplicable note in Chapter 1 about Renais being ravaged.
For some reason, Fire Emblem seems to think knights go around fighting bandits in peacetime. Some of them, probably, but do you really need a full military going around doing that? Alongside mercenaries, too? The dissonance here, alongside the whole "bandits are plagues, not people" attitude towards their motives and personalities, reflects a level of naivete that fits right next to the sexism of early FE. Deconstructing this attitude is why Three Houses was so resonant.
This is a line of foreshadowing- Grado's lack of interest in ruling Renais reflects interestingly on the fact they invaded it in the first place. Why take over a place if you're going to let it fall to ruin?
Eirika's probably asking herself that question, but it would do her a lot of good if she asked someone else.
At any rate, we're still in the early game, so we still need to meet new characters regularly.
Say hello to Neimi.
Because you're armed and you're wandering around a ravaged country aimlessly.
Whatever we are, Neimi asks us for help.
Right now, most things in Renais are actually pretty dangerous.
The textboxes didn't really communicate it as clearly as possible, but Neimi was crying through most of that.
"Neimi was crying" is kind of a truism.
To be fair, it's not like she's got no cause for it. Having your hometown destroyed is a pretty depressing conversation piece.
...Eirika, we don't need exposition that badly.
Definitely the work of bandits in it for the cruelty. Even then, though, there were presumably a few women who weren't killed... well, immediately. I can only hope the grain burned down before the bandits got to eat it, though.
...
So yeah, why has Neimi asked for our help?
Colm's gone to the bandit's hideout and plans to do... something. He's one person, so presumably he's not likely to succeed at it.
Neimi and Colm are close to one another, but most of their romantic chemistry is "they join at the same time in the story and knew each other beforehand".
Which, to be fair, carries a lot of Fire Emblem romances.
Ah, that's what he's doing. It's also something he has good odds of surviving attempting.
Good odds don't mean a guarantee.
So we're going to be tasked with helping Colm out.
Eirika goes right for it.
We don't get any money from Neimi mechanically- not that I'd take it if I had the choice. She will offer other payment, however.
Eirika already said yes, Seth. It's like the game can't decide which of the two is the smart one.
Eirika decides to bait the hook by telling Seth his precious bracelet is probably there too.
And it's only become more of the right thing to do.
Eirika is rather amazing when she's allowed to be. Restoration Queen is a lovely exercise in taking off the game's limiters and treating her like the protagonist she's supposed to be.
So all right, let's actually get to this fight we fancy having.
In here.
So Neimi doesn't have anything to give us, so she decides to volunteer her labour as a means of repayment.
She's an archer, and archers in GBA Fire Emblems are... well, OK, they're better than some people tell it, but it's not exactly the position everyone wants.
Seth, please, stop embarassing yourself.
Please. It's hard enough trying to pretend you're the smart one.
And we get a moment to check in on what Bazba's thinking.
The usual. Hopefully these bandits know each other well enough that they don't axe each other. Or hopefully the reverse is true.
Right into things, then.
I gathered that. Bazba is scarier than his minions, and even comes with a way to hit at 2 range, but he's weak to all the same tricks that worked on his minions. He's standing on a throne, though, and that will certainly make our life harder.
These two bandits are holding non-droppable items that give them advantages that are completely useless to them- we have no means of inflicting Poison or landing Magic attacks. This is a gameplay clue to one of our next character's special abilities, but as such a clue, these prizes kinda suck.
There's also bandits with Keys that they do drop. Not enough of them to open all four chests on this map, though.
Vanessa and Neimi open by attacking this wall. We don't have much else to do, and we're setting up to handle the bandits once we get in range of some. We cannot fight any enemies until we either break a wall or open a door.
The boys all start running south as far as they can. The sooner that the play area is just the women, the sooner I can start thinking about "how many actions do I have left?".
Eirika decides to take down this wall and deal with this guy. It's this or do nothing this turn.
Oh hey, it's the green unit thief that stole Eirika's bracelet!
He's come to start looting Bazba. Good to know we're "on the same side".
He moves right next to the door, and then starts his turn. Not that he actually moves anywhere- he wants to open this door, because he is a Thief and Thieves can do that. To an extent.
We'll want to send Neimi up to talk to him, though.
...And he's the Colm Neimi's been looking for? Wow, two birds with one stone.
Colm's first reaction is to tell Neimi that she has no business being in a bandit's hideout. By which I mean, fair, he doesn't know she enlisted help, and archers shouldn't charge into places alone.
Tries to forget FE7 All Girls.
Neimi, of course, chooses not to follow that line of reasoning, because...
These two are supposed to be a romantic item. I shudder to imagine who actually believes that to be the case.
I agree, but not with you. Somehow.
Colm insists he can be of help in combat, which is... ambitious.
Colm is a Thief, and his job is to relieve the enemy of the contents of their pockets. GBA Thieves are pathetic when stood next to Tellius thieves- they can't Steal weapons (including staves), only items. If that wasn't bad enough, the GBA also made them dependent on the semi-rare Lockpick items in order to actually open Doors and Chests. Or rather, I think they were dependent on these in the Famicom games and Tellius finally freed them.
You can use Colm for fighting, but I'd mostly recommend doing it to level him up a bit- he still needs Speed in order to steal from faster enemies.
"She cries a lot"- sadly, this is Neimi in the plot. She's actually not as bad in her Supports, but "cries a lot" is not a particularly pleasant "one defining trait" for a female character. Neimi's poor narrative impression is compounded by her gameplay impression: look at those numbers. Those are "unimpressive enemy unit" numbers. The archer on this map probably looks pretty close to this. Archers have issues because of the way Fire Emblem works, but the people who gave out stats to the GBA Archers did not do them any favours.
I've brought up a few times that in FE7, the All Girls route requires using Rebecca, the early archer, for four-five chapters before you get melee women. Rebecca's base stats are identical to Neimi's, minus one point of Res.
At any rate, back to business. Vanessa and Eirika destroy their walls.
And Colm comes down this way. I'd rather he didn't go north and challenge that bandit trying to get the Chests.
Although Vanessa can weaken this one, Eirika is still ORKOing.
Defence, that'll come in handy. Plus, I'm hoping I can get a few bandits for Neimi to feed on.
Eirika always has access to the contents of the Convoy, so she can whip this out at any time to open that Chest next to her.
...Not sure why Colm's going down here. I think I wanted him moved, and to be fair, there's not a lot of options there.
Apparently, gambling on a miss. Gambling on your own misses is how you know you're a true micromanager.
One down, several more to go before I can call Neimi an asset rather than a liability.
Got this, though.
Eirika decides to leave the Chest to Colm and comes up this way.
Vanessa will be bait.
While Eirika handles this front.
And Neimi opens the door for Colm. Whether to use a Door Key or a Lockpick is always a weird choice for me.
And Colm opens the chest to find a Javelin inside. Most of these chests aren't the most exciting of items.
Another weaken for Neimi.
And Vanessa flies all the way down here to heal. I think she's going for the Thief.
Colm moves up, and shows off the most popular feature of the GBA Fire Emblems that's actually completely terrible: the Support system. Each character has between three and seven characters they can Support with, at C-B-A Rank (with five Support ranks total allowed). Neimi/Colm C is a freebie they throw you to tell you the system exists, but for the rest of them, you must stand adjacent to the desired Support partner for dozens of turns for one Rank.
Specifically, to get to the next rank, you need 80 Support points. Various pairs have starting amounts, but that's only good for C Rank. To get more points, you must stand two units adjacent to one another- at the end of one turn, they get between +2 and +4 points, usually. So, it could take 20, 27 or 40 turns of standing adjacent to reach the next rank. Still, beats FEs 6 and 7, where there were a lot more pairs with +1 points per turn- only one such pair exists in FE8.
Once you actually have the Supports, it's actually pretty cool, from both a character development standpoint and a mechanical standpoint. But I don't blame the devs for not thinking highly of this experiment- it wasn't until the 3DS era that they really figured out how to make the character development angle of Supports work by making them more accessible (even if it came at the cost of making the mechanical benefits near non-existent).
Oh, and to make it clear, I don't actually get the Support bonuses. I'm not using Colm for that, it would be cheating. I will be using F/F Supports mechanically later, but none of these girls can Support one another.
Eirika breaks the wall, readying herself for that bandit.
Unfortunately for me, I appear to have not thought that through.
You see, that bandit has a Hand Axe, allowing him to attack Neimi.
And, with the empty space now afforded by the wall, this archer can shoot at her too. Fortunately, Neimi survives this.
Colm goes looting and finds an Iron Lance, because that's something you stick in a chest.
This is mildly annoying. I'm not sure how I'm going to get out this one with Neimi getting EXP.
Apparently, by counting on her ability to dodge a 63%.
Good. Not great- Strength would be nice too- but the sooner she starts doubling, the better.
Ah, yeah, I can see how this helps.
This is... certainly a level.
OK, good to know, Eirika won't kill this guy if he attacks.
Sadly, this can't be said for this guy, but I don't think I can afford to feed him to someone else.
Thieves attack with some kind of secret dagger swing. It looks hilarously pathetic, and usually is.
Hand Axe! That'd be a nice prize if we were using axes.
Eirika steps forward, preparing to weaken those two bandits.
Neimi goes here, because sadly, the square closer to Eirika is in bandit range.
Vanessa volunteers to maybe take the south guy. It's good EXP.
...You double him with a Steel Sword? Yeah, he's using a Steel Axe, but... well, so much for that guy.
This guy takes a swing at Eirika with a Hand Axe. Guess I'll have to be more proactive.
Starting with... healing Neimi. I will say sending her into this corner was unnecessarily risky.
Eirika's moving up here to prepare for the boss.
While Vanessa blocks Neimi's blind spot. This is probably better off for her in the end.
Last prize was an Iron Sword, probably the least impressive of the lot, were it not for the fact I'd want a lot of these things later.
Yeah, that guy was a goner, even if he could hit Eirika. I had hopes.
Fortunately, Neimi can dodge 39% hits. The whole "turning into a blob of squares" thing is less fortunate, but it goes away, so we can let it be.
(These visual effects are called "smears" and I'm told they're a vital component of making the GBA animations as fluid and charming as they are. When playing yourself, you're never going to see them look this misshapen long enough for your brain to register them, the screenshot button just happened to hit an off frame.)
And Vanessa can even get her to secure the last kill! That's nice and convenient.
Strength! Speed! We're on our way to a Neimi who can maybe oneshot the occasional soldier.
Eirika looks up at Bazba, and is slightly annoyed that she lands a 5HKO with her Iron Sword. On the other hand, the 11% odds of being hit mean she's a pretty good cert to win.
I'm sure I am.
Because I don't think you are.
Wow, 5% crit! That's going to speed things up.
...
Dammit.
...
17% hit odds...
Vanessa, you're doing just fine.
Seize maps will continue indefinitely after all enemies have been killed until Eirika actually commits her Seize action. As a result, these are the perfect time to grind a few dozen Support points between any pairs you happen to have access to. I don't benefit from doing it for this mission.
Now that the battle is over, we're back to the Neimi/Colm standby: Treating Neimi like an invalid and Neimi not having the spine to argue against it.
No. No you couldn't. Yes, as a Thief, you weren't in much danger from the axemen, but you're also weak and 46 swings of an Iron Sword isn't that much.
She has perfectly good reason to, you're the only person left in her life.
We'll see how long that lasts in this army.
At least Neimi seems to take Colm up on that, from what I remember of her Supports.
Part of the reason Colm came here, in the off-screen part of his looting, was to retrieve one of Neimi's personal possessions.
It's a nice thing for him to do, and it certainly does a lot to raise my estimation of him, but it isn't the One Good Deed he can coast on.
It's not like opening a chest is hard.
Sadly, Colm is the only unit for a long time capable of handling lockpicks. We'll get more, though.
Because you did a good deed for her!
Yeah, these two aren't romantic couple material.
Seth gets right to work on the essentials.
...Right to work. I can only imagine what the proximity between the two is meant to portray.
Seth, with his favourite bracelet in hand, begins a moral lecture on the resident Thief.
While "don't be a thief!" is usually sound advice, I'm not entirely sure what relevance it has to Neimi's existence, especially while Renais is still in shambles and thievery is possibly one of the only ways to stay alive.
Colm seems to share my opinion.
And Seth abandons them.
...
...HOLY FUCK, SETH.
My faith in Seth was already pretty damn low, but... I had somehow completely forgotten how callous Seth is to these two. At least Gilbert admitted he was evil.
Remember this part of their backstories? Seth, you can't just abandon these kids to fend for themselves in a war-torn nation. Especially since Colm is too reckless to look after them both.
Colm suggests he lend a hand to their cause.
Now, admittedly, having more people rather than less in our army is awkward because opsec and "we're marching towards certain death", but right after the way this conversation started, I'm not inclined to judge Seth favourably here.
Colm accepts that this is going to be an Experience.
Colm's ability to pick locks is greatly appreciated.
Against her preferences, I might add.
At least we've got it back. Unless you'd like us to collect a pair of earrings you think Eirika might be more dashing in?
Fado gave his kids special bracelets that matched! Well, "special" is a word.
Seth intends this to be advice that Eirika takes as religiously as he does.
And then gives her a reason that doesn't reflect that urgency. Eirika doesn't need tangible proof of this, she doesn't have any parental abandonment issues to work out.
...I think.
Eirika, because she has a head screwed on her shoulders, realises that Seth has a Good Reason for being so defensive of her bracelet.
Seth, because he does not, stays mum about the secret he has been entrusted with.
Yes, this will come back to bite him in the ass so hard he'll get another scar, why did you ask?
Eirika. I say this with all the sincerety I can muster. You can do better. Quite frankly, at this point, I'd take Garcia over Seth.
Probably not long- bandits will probably want to use Bazba's lair and score themselves a reputation as someone to be scared of.
I think that's how it works, right?
Eirika is just starting to realise how Fire Emblem games work. We've got many more lives to take to see peace restored to Renais.
Unfortunately, this is how war is. If one side is not hesitating to use violence, the other side has to at least match them to prevent a massacre.
Not that long, Sacred Stones is only 23 missions long, making it the shortest game before Three Houses.
Go, Eirika! You show Grado!
And Ephraim, too, I guess.
At any rate, it's time we met the villains of the story. We're actually going to have a lot of introductions to make with the Grado Empire characters.
Starting with these three. Duessel is the man on the far left, and he is the oldest of the Imperial Three, the great Grado Generals. The other man is named Glen, and he's another member of the group. Selena, who we already know, is the third and newest member- her joining circumstances are new enough to come up in the narrative later.
Duessel is friendly to Renais- in fact, he actually taught Ephraim a great deal about combat.
Which makes this a rather unpleasant report.
The Imperial Three were not involved in the decision to declare war on Renais, and are not overly fond of being made to do it.
Duessel is considering just abandoning his post and doing something productive. Which is more than one can say of most grizzled veterans in high military posts.
Glen is just confused. Which, to be fair, so are Duessel and Selena.
This is a true assessment of Vigarde's character. We don't know much about Vigarde before the war, but pretty much everyone who knows the guy agrees he's out of character.
Selena's reasons for joining the military are personal in nature, and she is rather hesitant to openly question Vigarde's reasoning.
Glen also notices that Vigarde's idea of "worthy candidates for promotion" has changed too.
And, well... the new guys seem to be gearing up for this.
Good theory, but unfortunately, Glen has neither evidence nor an idea of what Vigarde is now.
Selena is very unquestioning of her line of work. This is the sort of attitude likely to get her killed later.
Glen's open to new ideas.
Sounds like a plan!
Here we are in the throne room, and these three, if you can pick them out from the carpet they're standing in front of, are the Imperial Three. Glen is the Wyvern Lord, Duessel is the Great Knight, and Selena is the Mage Knight, from left to right.
Oh boy, there's about to be sackings.
...Or maybe not. Not that this is the most encouraging alternative statement.
...That can only mean bad things.
The Imperial Three are not yet disenchanted enough with Vigarde to question him to his face.
...You're planning on conquering all of them?
...So yeah, those new promotions that've been going on... we've got people getting promoted to Imperial Three.
When we see our new classes, we see among them are a Hero and a Bishop, two of the classes one wouldn't normally associate with supervillainy. I assure you these three are some of the nastiest pieces of work to ever be called Sir.
Do you have to rub it in that these three are "better"? I'd say I challenge that assertion, but mechanically, I don't really think it's wrong.
Good to know, Vigarde can still count to six.
Although the implicit instructions are certainly hard to ignore.
This is the Bishop speaking.
He's clearly going to become the head of some evil cult eventually.
The Imperial Three all have an exchange with one of the new members. Duessel just has this one line.
This is the Hero.
Caellach is not the resident lech, despite what this line would have you believe. His lecherousness comes up once later, but Caellach's more interested in being a social climber.
Valter is the Wyvern Knight, and he's a mite more familiar. To both the player and the Three- he was, in fact, a member of the Imperial Three. He was fired for being evil and Selena eventually took his spot.
By the way, Valter is the lech of the trio.
I think "the thing Valter did to get fired" comes up somwhere in the Supports, but I forget which one. I might also have made it up myself. At any rate, Glen and Valter have personal history, which is why Glen greets Valter and not Selena.
Duessel tells him not to embarass himself by killing Valter right after he got promoted.
Selena and Caellach's job is to attack Frelia. They have a specific goal in mind, but since the player does not yet know it, Vigarde does not vocalise it.
I'm sure Selena's having the time of her life on this one.
I'm not sure what the details are on this one, but Riev will attack us later and Duessel doesn't appear to.
Both of them seem OK with just bowing and leaving.
So what are the dragons going to get up to?
...Oh, I don't like where this is going.
Now this is an order that is very easy to misinterpret without the greater context of later story reveals. Vigarde wants the siblings for a specific reason, but there are many good guesses what that reason might be, and if the siblings knew which reason Vigarde is aiming for, it would be easy to fool a Grado general.
Short version, Vigarde probably tells these two what he really wants off-screen, otherwise the twins could screw him over big time.
Glen, while not on the level of Duessel, also has personal attachments to Eirika and Ephraim to think about. Valter, of course, wants both of them carnally.
Next time, we meet best girl.
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