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A deeper evil runs through this conflict... but we've got more pressing things to worry about.
The Great Verdane Forest.
We're forced to trudge through this 2-3 tiles at a time, and then fight through a narrow choke-point guarded by an enemy that can kill anyone of our units within 1 round of combat.
It's bad.
The choke-point. Our units cannot travel over the broccoli looking tiles (though the enemy Brigands can).
We could brute force our way through easily, but we won't because of-
Jamka. He's the unit that poses a significant threat to us.
Equipped with a Killer Bow- a very lightweight, accurate Bow that grants the Critical Skill to the wielder- and he has the stats to use it.
He also has the Pursuit, Continue, and Charge skills, meaning he could take out any one of our units with just a little luck.
We must tread carefully.
I have Ethlin use the Return Staff on Ardan after our units are mostly healed up.
Then I have Aideen Warp Ethlin to Evans.
There, Ethlin will spam the Return Staff on Ardan, gaining 30EXP each turn until the end of the chapter.
I move Cuan to the entrance of the choke-point to bait the enemy into attacking. If we don't do this they just cluster around their end and wait. He is within range of Jamka but the Brigands should clog the path and stop him from attacking.
We use indirect attacks as much as we are able to try and weaken the Brigands.
The enemy gets lucky with dodges this turn. Javelins, Hand Axes, and arrows all fail us here.
We fall back a bit to try and allow more Brigands out of the choke-point. I want them to damage themselves as much as possible on the enemy phase.
I'm not using Sigurd as the Brigands will refuse to attack him due to his high Evade. He sold his Silver Sword to Aira after capturing Marpha, and I'm hoping I get a lucky string of Meteor Sword activations here to speed things along.
We don't get any lucky Meteor Sword activations, and the enemy doesn't really come out of the choke-point.
We retreat even further back out of Jamka's range.
Alec gets an unlucky hit on the enemy phase.
Aira finishes off a Brigand who had already been damaged.
With most of the Brigands dead or out in front, Jamka comes forward. If we don't deal with him now he'll chase us out of the forest.
I use Aira to kill this Brigand. I was going to use Fin and Cuan with Javelins but Fin missed his attack. This means that Aira will be within Jamka's range and may be killed. There is no way to get through this part safely (or I haven't figured it out, at least.) Everything hinges on RNG, very bad.
Alec kills this Brigand and takes his position.
He has the best chance of surviving an attack from Jamka out of all our units. He can take two attacks, Critical won't work on him due to Nihil, and his Speed is higher than Jamka's so Pursuit won't activate against him meaning Jamka needs both a Continue and Charge activation for the kill.
We'll hope Jamka attacks him instead of Aira.
Aideen moves up to heal Alec. Jamka won't target her. A hint that the player should try and get the two to talk?
The rest of our units move out of Jamka's range.
I've been moving Azel to this secluded little village to the West of Marpha for a while now and he's finally arrived.
Th’ legend goes that Saint Myra was exiled by his fellow Lopt clansmen for allying with us humans. That village is where all of Myra's descendants holed up t’avoid persecution.
While I was there, a beautiful girl named Sigyn was living under th’ village’s custody. That was due t’her bein’ th’ last remaining descendant of th’ Lopt prince. But Sigyn grew tired of th’ forest life. She up and left thus breaking village law. She returned several years later expectin’ a child. She gave birth to a little girl, but tragically didn’t survive.
Apparently, the village fortune-teller took after raising the child. I wonder where the child is now… If she’s livin’ she’d be around 17 or 18 I imagine.
Back to our little war.
Jamka chooses to attack Alec. I don't really understand how the AI makes some of these target selections.
RNG doesn't betray us, and so we're pretty much through the most dangerous part of the chapter.
Not going to pull up Jamka's character sheet again. He has good stats and skills, but I never use him for anything. In fact I kind of resent him for slowing us down so much here and then being such a lousy addition to our army. We are going to strip him of his awesome Killer Bow, give it to the much better unit Midir, and then forget about him.
He will play a large role in finishing off the remaining enemies though. I will give him that.
We're just struggling through the woods now.
When I move Sigurd through the center of the forest a woman appears.
Deidre joins us, and she and Sigurd fall in love.
it says so on the stat screen.
Deidre is a... set piece unit? She has one single purpose and that is to use her Silence staff against the boss of this chapter. After that we don't need her. She is a poor combatant due to her heavy magic tome, and with 5 movement she won't be going anywhere fast. Her Circlet regenerates her HP 5-10 points per turn and gives her the Prayer skill.
We won't look at the rest of her Character sheet, but she has the Nihil skill.
Do you have any loved ones?
I move Aira next to Cuan and they have a conversation.
this plays. supposed to give an idea of Aira's homeland.
After some turns, the first of our units begin to exit the forest.
We need to move Deidre up and into Sandima's range if we want to safely take Verdane. Until that's done we'll have to keep our distance.
Jamka moves here, where he will lure out the enemy defenders.
A few more units are able to exit the forest.
I'm going to try and have Jamka take on the bulk of the enemy alone.
He's the only unit that will be able to deal significant damage on the enemy phase.
Cuan finishes off this Axefighter and most of our units retreat to allow the enemy to focus on Jamka.
Deidre moves within range of Sandima and targets him with Silence.
For the next five turns Sandima will be unable to cast any magic, allowing us to approach Verdane without being blasted from afar.
Jamka kills most of the Hunters that attack him with Continue and Charge activations.
He makes it through mostly unscathed
And that's pretty much it. The enemy can not offer any meaningful resistance, the rest of the the chapter will be spent preparing for the next one.
Sigurd gives gold to Deidre.
Aideen starts warping units that haven't cleared the arena back to Evans.
And with a little luck I manage to set Dew up to kill Sandima.
By turn 28 the enemy is completely wiped out. Since Dew ended his turn on the entrance to Verdane we can't seize.
This doesn't slow us down as I needed the extra turn to trigger a secret event with Lex.
Hero weapons effectively double the number of attacks a unit would make, so this axe allows Lex to put out significantly more damage. The Hero Axe is also much lighter than other Axes.
On turn 29 we seize Verdane and put the Spirit Forest behind us.
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