Curate of Curiosities

Previously on The Reconstruction, our guild fought the living dead on behalf of the two opposing factions governing the city of Nal, recruiting a hooker and a hitman in the process. We also reached the edge of the known world, only for some guy to throw himself off it, possibly placing us in trouble with the authorities.

Before we move on, we have one more problem to take care of in Wadassia: some guy calling himself the Cryomancer is stealing the city's water.

I actually did this quest before finishing chapter 2, though I suspect that it was intended to be tackled later.

The boss is not hard; the main threat is his special attack, which targets the backmost column first, then the column to the front of where he used it last each time he uses it.

After we defeat him, he goes on about how while he was kicked out of Fortifel for his experiments with Cold-elemental magic, "they" can do whatever they want. How interesting, given that that's exactly where we're headed.

It's the mage city that was mentioned a few times, specifically where Havan and pals were going to take their artifact to. From the glossary:

A sprawling, safe city of magic and order built on the sides and rim of a large, heat-producing mountain. The mountain is tall enough to be caked in snow in several places, but vents of heat throughout the side offer warmth for the many tall buildings located throughout the city. The contrast of heat and cold serves as a fitting backdrop for the Fortian scholars of elementalism, who toil tirelessly for new and exciting ways to harness the latent magic existing in themselves and the very ground they walk upon. Near the peak of the mountain is the Faithall Tower, which the most powerful Fortians must ascend to be granted the highest Rank available to them. The tower stands above (one might say it even towers over) most of the lower-lying districts of Fortifel, serving as a beacon for travelers (see BRIDGE OF FORYONDER) and a symbol reaching out to what lies above on behalf of all Fortians.

Oh yes, it doesn't seem like I'm gotten into any detail on the Fortians, especially given that one of our starting party members is one. They seem to be both a separate race and a culture focused on magical cultivation. I'm not sure, the glossary states that a member of any species can be integrated into Fortian society, yet also makes mention of "pure-blooded" Fortians. So it looks like we have another layer of fantasy racism to dissect.

But first, let's see if Rehm's been up to anything in this city.

Oh yes, Rehm doesn't seem to have made it there yet, but in this scene he gets a reason to.

So begins chapter 3, "Life and Debt."

Dehl freaks out over the snow falling, then we meet Alito, a Shra who's also a Fortian.

I've heard of cats being declawed, and I'm aware of the raw deal that the Shra species has gotten in this game, but although Alito here doesn't seem to actually be enslaved, the fact that he's had surgery done on him to make him less offensive to the inhabitants is just...weird. Even more so given that this is supposed to be a place that's less discriminating against them.

This is Metzino, Qualstio's friend and Alito's master. He's introduced a line of technological marvels that are apparently being used throughout Fortifel's society. I don't trust this guy. He looks like one of those guys who would flaunt their overpriced cars on TikTok. We should leave before he tries to convince us to invest in crypto.

As for more trustworthy individuals, Brenetto's here, of course, and this time, he needs Slashling quills, obsidomina ore, and one of each type of elemental core.

He doesn't explain what any of them are, but we'll at least find out what a Slashling is very soon. Because the town is about to be overrun with them.

Quest one, "Fast Food." It's yet another "kill ten monsters" quest, but the twist here is that some of them will run away if a party member gets close, so you need to have several party members box them in. Plus, you get a bonus of a sizable amount of essence if you dispatch all of them through non-body damage. For that reason, I decided to put Sirush in the active party in place of Zargos, as he is a far more versatile attacker.

It seems that everything the guild's done in this game so far has been in the interest of the authorities of whatever town it happens to be operating in, so this chapter mixes things up a bit by having Fortifel's authorities be quite openly disdainful towards one of our guild members.

But then Metzino shows up and tells them that since Qualstio's staying with him, there's nothing they can do. Okay why? I understand sacred hospitality, but Qualstio's apparently a wanted criminal over here. Should they have a warrant out for him or the equivalent?

On the one hand, the elitist rulers of this mage society (dont think I haven't been reading those glossary entries!), and on the other, a smarmy prick bragging about distributing his disruptive technology. I hope they both lose.

On to our next errand...

Yes, this is exactly the sort of thing our guild needs to help these people with! This isn't even an RPG thing, if you've seen literally any dystopian fiction before, you should be wary of the use of phrases such as "Cleansing Phase!"

Quest two, "To Sanctifel." Our goal is to escort a caravan filled with prisoners to the titular city. In terms of gameplay, it's basically a battle gauntlet, like the chapter 2 ending quest, but with each battle, you have to choose which member of your active party will stay behind and stand guard.

We face bandits, as per usual, as well as Slashlings, but this quest introduces matterfiends, animate embodiments of the six magical elements. They're not very remarkable offensively, but killing them does give us the elemental cores that Brenetto was looking for.

You have two different chances to fight more matterfiends, but ain't no one got time for that.

And so we've made it to Sanctifel.

A 'sanctuary' city located on the opposite side of the great mountain that houses Fortifel, overlooking the Spirelands to the east of the continent. Fortians relegated here are without rank, and are kept under tight watch for the safety of themselves and for Fortifel. Most of the residents are not dangerous, but perhaps expressed disagreement with the living situation in Fortifel, and so were moved to this place to be free of the laws of the high councils. Despite the lawlessness, crime is rather low, as most of the citizens are preoccupied with their own experiments in magic craft, either for their own curiosity, or to one day be allowed re-entry into the towers of Fortifel. Those who wish to labor rather than research are often tasked with menial jobs alongside members of other races seeking to earn their keep; this may include mining Actractivum ore, glass and metalworking, trade handling, and, on occasion, hunting creatures that dwell in the Illusory Coast and the Spirelands.

So it's prison. It's just a prison painted to look like a town.

As if that wasn't bad enough, some of the prisoners have wound up permanently catatonic from magic overuse, and now we're tasked with dealing with them.

Culling. That's how they phrase it. Despite any attempts to soften things up, the objective of this mission is clearly to euthanize several people. Killing bandits; fine, par for the course in RPGs, but this game does a rather poor job of explaining exactly how or why they are a threat to anyone.

It's the only optional quest in this chapter, but hey, um, more favor? As a bonus, the quest has matterfiends, where I get the last of the cores needed for Brenetto's latest science project.

That increases our rank to 15 and...

Nearly one year has passed since I was first assigned to manage Six Stars.
My contract will expire soon. Please bear this in mind as you continue your work.

Oh, it seems that Ques is about to retire. If we can't find anyone to take his place soon, we may be screwed. Sadly, it doesn't look like anyone here is suited for management.

Ha ha ha. This is a perfectly normal reaction to have to seeing a woman babbling nonsense in the middle of the street.

She's been banished for dabbling in illegal magic, and now must participate in a trial in order to win back her freedom. So like I said, this place is a prison.

Fortunately, any other magic-users are allowed to help her, even though we clearly just met her.

The gimmick behind the trial is that there are eight different rooms, each with a puzzle to solve in order to earn a Trial Stone. A few of them are deduction puzzles, one's a trivia puzzle, and there's even a block-pushing puzzle.

Only casters can take part in the quest, but the three we have prove to be more than enough.

Yes, from a legal standpoint, she's in the clear, but have you seen her? She's barely capable of taking care of herself! Obviously, the only thing to be done is to have her sign up for our mainly combat-trained guild.

So Falitza's now part of the crew. Her defenses are dreadful, and her skills are gimmicky. She has precisely one attack skill, but also an enemy scan skill and a random effect spell. I have her support Tehgonan to boost his mind stats. I guess it could be worse for her.

So on to the next story mission, "Fire With Fire." You're in this volcano, where Metzino has this sort of geothermal plant set up, and your task is to activate three valves to fix it, because this is what happens when your machinery is built over lava. There's even an obsidomina that you can kill for its ore, in case you didn't pick up from the first quest.

The very first time I did this quest was with just Dehl and Qualstio. I do not recommend doing likewise.

From the moment he first showed up, he's been radiating this vibe of the fantasy equivalent to a Silicon Valley techbro, but now he's outright admitting to wanting to upend Fortifel's, and perhaps the world's, society to stroke his own ego. This argument is straight out of an GenAI supporter's playbook.

Also, the glossary entry for magic states that it resides in "every living thing as well as many non-sentient objects and places." So I have no idea what you mean by those blessed by magic. And if we continue the AI comparison, depending on what Metzino's technology runs on, this could be like the AI data centers using up a massive amount of water to power their generation algorithms. Like I just said, he's stroking his own ego.

Qualstio, you really need better friends.

Hey, it's the Scourge Clad again, here to mug some random guy! No sign of Havan and the Blue Guard, though.

I get what this scene is trying to say about Dehl's pacifist upbringing, but it just reminds me of this one meme with some kid waving a knife around.

Looks like Vegeta needs our help. We need to gather some frozen magic essence. This clearly seems like a trap, but okay.

It's really easy, and I finish it in less than two minutes.

The first time she showed up, she rambled on about scope before pointing us in the direction of some guy who came of with the theory that killing the bug queen would stop the bugs. The next time, she said something about time working the same way as...something else, then warning us that someone from out of town would show up the next day, never mind that someone randomly showing up to town would certainly get the guild's attention. And then that led us to bringing a paranoid maniac to jump off a cliff, which is part of the reason we're here to begin with. So yeah, she's not the portent of doom that Qualstio makes her out to be, just the portent of the guild doing what we would have been doing anyway.

Then Alito runs up, like he probably would have already. Once again, what is this woman's purpose?

Looks like Metzino's run off to the tower where Fortifel's rulers reside. I guess his technology hasn't upended society fast enough for his liking.

The tower is an absolute wreck. I was right to not trust him.

Like with chapter 1, this tower is an actual dungeon, but instead of party splitting shenanigans, we have various fetch quests to earn the key card needed to access the next floor. A few of them require some form of combat (once with slashlings, and another with matterfiends) but most of them, particularly the last one, require you to go back and forth through several floors.

Remember that suspiciously easy quest from a while ago? Its purpose is to keep the guild distracted so that Vegeta can duel Metzino atop this tower. And would you like to know what they're fighting for? Something about their families being in conflict for generations. It's nice to know that you don't actually have any issue with Metzino's technology threatening to upend this magic based society.

Especially since you can just dodge his gunfire, then use magic to throw him off the roof.

There aren't many RPGs where you get to fight Vegeta while evil circus music plays.

Unlike the last two chapter bosses, there's only one of him. Yet despite this, he may be harder than the Broodmistress from chapter 1. He has three attacks, Telekinesis, with does a sizable amount of body damage with knockback, Deafening Pulse, which does mind damage to the entire party (and none of the party members have particularly strong mind stats), and one attack that does a small amount of soul damage that predictably, he only used once. Things were going pretty well on this attempt up until he used Deafening Pulse right when he was on the ropes after taking out two party members with Telekinesis.

Oh but never mind all that, we were playing into the councillords' hands this entire time, because none of them liked Metzino or Vegeta very much. All in the interest of setting a good example for the people of Fortifel. Yes, soon everyone in the city will learn that their rulers are petty morons.

...the game narrates, after Qualstio nearly reduced Vegeta's corpse to ash. But hey, the most important thing is that Metzino and (one of) the Councillords are both dead.

And then we get his backstory. His parents were carted off to Sanctifel, and he suspects that they may have become Wracked. So that means that there's a decent chance that they are among the enemies that we killed in the quest centered around them. While he was in the active party. Yeah, that's right, he's blissfully unaware that he may have helped kill his own folks.

With Metzino dead, Alito has no one to serve under. Good thing we have a traveling band of adventurers whose manager's about to retire!

So, regarding the game's blurb on RPG Maker's website, it says that the guild seeks to "rid the world of turmoil." But here's the thing, we haven't done that at all! Okay, in chapter one, we killed the bugs that were threatening Wadassia's crops, and that's clearly helping them. In chapter two, we help the Nal-Guard with their skeleton problem for a while, then after that was dealt with, we pushed some rocks, shot some birds, and watched a guy kill himself. For the most part, just minor errands by comparison. Now here, it seems that all we've done is escort a cartful of political prisoners, administer Canadian health care to victims of some magical illness, help that weirdo Metzino start building some techbro empire, and then stay out of the way while Vegeta chucks him off the roof.

Now we move on to the tagline: "Can you stake your life on a world that cannot be saved?" I can kind of see what they means by that: All of the problems that the guild has encountered so far are too deep-seated to be dealt with simply by stabbing whoever's responsible with a sword. I mean, just look at the councillord business: that light harvest business was so that we would be out of Vegeta's hair so that he could have his little duel with Keldrin. And after he bit it, we went on to kill Vegeta, which was apparently what the other councillords wanted all along. It's never a good sign when plot points in an RPG start reminding me of The Demon Rush.

But then again, that may be all part of the subversive appeal of this game. In most RPGs, whenever you come across a settlement on the way to the villain du jour, more often than not you're forced into helping them with whatever problem they have, whether or not they're related to the overarching plot. And when you do resolve said problem, the settlement is more often than not improved as a result, and the NPCs that inhabit the town will have their dialogue change to reflect this (that is, when the developer bothers to change their dialogue) Once again, in order, we improved Wadassia's well-being, made no visible change in Nal, and helped Fortifel's corrupt rulers resolve a little spat. For a group that was conceived as a band of do-gooders, this is not a very good track record.