Curate of Curiosities

Previously on The Reconstruction, some idiot techbro tried to shoot Vegeta with some kind of steampunk gun. Wait a minute, magic versus steampunk? Was this whole thing a reference to Final Fantasy VI?

We can't have a new chapter without another interlude featuring our favorite seafarer. Where we left him last he was about to cart off Padrinio, a rather creepy-looking fortian to Fortifel on the WS Vigil, mainly as an excuse to avoid getting hurled back in chains in Nal.

On the way there, the ship is suddenly attacked; a flying figure bolts toward it. It's...someone named Cindato, another fortian who apparently is engaged in a blood feud with Padrinio. What, are blood feuds as much a part of fortian culture as magic studies? Lesson to be learned, the reason the fortians think they're better than anyone else at magic is because theirs allows them to fly.

Remember Vasra, the woman in the battle bikini that accompanied Rehm for his first mission? I probably should have explained it, but she is one of Rehm's closest companions, and often serves as the voice of reason. This scene is no exception, as she screams at Rehm to get below deck rather than try to face the flying fortian himself. But sadly, both of them manage to fall victim to Cindato's telekinesis. Yes, the same thing that Vegeta had. While Rehm gets knocked against the ship's mast, which, shra or not, you'd think would result in severe blunt force trauma, Vasra is thrown into the ocean, never to return.

Yes, this plot managed to kill someone who isn't a crackpot conspiracy theorist or an irritating techbro.

But this doesn't mean that Cindato wins, as Private Clap, who he seems to have ignored, gets a lucky shot in with a trident and kills him.

At the port in Fortifel, after dropping off Padrinio, Private Clap begs Rehm to take them on more adventures, but Rehm is too broken up by Vasra's death to even think of doing so. At this, the private flips out, cursing both him and the entire shra race. I knew that we'd encounter more fantasy racism, but this is a bit ridiculous. Rehm's no coward just because he's sad about someone he cared about dying, but then again, there doesn't seem to be any rationality behind this prejudice, or behind his apparent callousness towards Vasra, so...

He boards the Vigil one more time and sets off to die of starvation in the middle of the sea.

Such is the fate of Rehm Sikohlon. Or at least, it would be if it weren't for that healing factor thing. But wait, if he wanted to die so much, couldn't he just stab himself like he did to that si'shra back in the prologue?

After several years of rotting on the inside (!?), the Vigil is chanced upon by the Nal officers, the same people he was trying to get away from in the first place. And that's the end of Rehm's adventures.

Meanwhile, back at Wadassia, the guild is finalizing Ques's retirement as manager. While this does mean he can get signed on as a guild member, until we find a new manager, we won't be able to earn favor. This seems to be the part of the situation that Qualstio is most concerned about, which is weird to say after his big moment of calming his inner fire by launching it at some guy's corpse.

How convenient, the guy who we just took in after his master died just happens to be qualified for the exact same position that our manager is vacating.

Even more convenient, he aces the aptitude test for prospective guild managers!

And more convenient still, the guy from chapter one who told us to go kill the bug queen is here to tell us that there's yet another settlement that might need our help. Well, we don't have much going on at the moment, so why not?

Chapter 4, Sky and Sea. Well, we start this chapter on a boat, so we've already seen both.

Unlike the first three chapters, which were set in well-developed settlements, this chapter is set in the Berylbrine Outpost, on the very edge of the mostly untamed shra homeland.

Just as soon as we get there, we find someone in danger once again.

This is Moke. We've met him once at the end of chapter 1, where he was awfully excited to see Dehl. As if to further remind us of that chapter, he's being harassed by bugs, and not even his magic can hold them off.

We deal with them pretty easily, and then he joins the party. Moke specializes in dealing Noxious elemental damage, with no less than three of his five skills dedicated to this, each targeting a different health bar. This game has already taken great pains to establish that shra stink; this guy might be the first one to think to weaponize it!

Now that we've reached the outpost, we can explore deeper into the jungle. We won't be doing that just yet, though.

Instead, we'll be taking on this new quest that just popped up in Wadassia. Looks like we've got a ghost ship situation on our hands.

It's pretty amazing that this ship hasn't sunk. I don't think even the fortians have submersible technology, but if they did, I'm sure they wouldn't be all that likely to implode under immense oceanic pression.

Anyways, our goal is to reach the bottom level of the ship, but on the way, we can pick up some slips of paper that show the horrible things leading to the ship's abandonment. But paper's not the sort of medium that tends to be legible when left unsupervised and exposed to ocean air. But then again, maybe there was this stock RPG Maker asset that Space Lizard really wanted to put to use.

This has nothing to do at all with any greater narrative. Or so we think; in the following cutscene, we meet the one who was supposed to take up the request, none other than Rehm Sikohlon.

And now we can see what he's been up to in the nearly half-century since he last sailed with his crew: getting hammered and enslaved! It's like I've been saying, shra get a raw deal.

The next day, Rehm runs up to the party and asks him to do something, anything to free him from the other officers. Moved by his plight, the guild (or rather, six of the dozen that have joined so far) nobly decides to...turn him away!

I'm sorry, I thought your whole thing was helping people? And here we have this guy who is begging for you to kill him if it means his captors will cease their abuse, and you turn him down? Why? Is this still about Desmon? If you're worried that the Nal-Guard will be on your ass for that, I'm sure they've got more problems to deal with some guy jumping off a cliff.

And you'd think that after what went down in Fortifel, you'd be a bit less willing to defer to town authorities on issues such as this!

But whatever. Having been rejected by the guild, Rehm is left with just one recourse: killing every last one of the officers.

But we don't want him doing anything too reckless, do we? He seems to think so too, as he's changed his plans from killing all the officers, to just killing Asarik, their head honcho. Moke seems to have had a change of heart as well, and is now willing to help him by applying a tranquilizing solution to his dagger.

It's another stealth mission, just like the one at the start of chapter 2. But this time, the goal is not merely to attempt to avoid getting caught--you will run into several officers on the way through. However, most of them will give Rehm the opportunity to sweet-talk his way out of trouble, and when that fails, he can always just jab them with his poison knife. In the meantime, he's both drunk enough to consider fighting them and too drunk to be any good at it.

Its at the top floor that you really have to be stealthy. There's one room where the guard will notice you if you step off the carpeted floor, which I thought was a nice touch.

Now, I get wanting this to be a solo mission for Rehm, but I'm sure there are better ways you could go about this besides having the guild blow him off the way they did. Maybe this is one of the game's subversive elements, showing the party aren't as heroic as you'd think by having them turn someone down in their time of need.

And the rest of the guild, or rather, just five of them, finally show up to back up his drunk ass!

Asarik isn't so much hard as luck-based. The only actually difficult part of the battle is the party it forces upon you, consisting of Rehm, Moke, Dehl, Tehgonan, Fero, and Qualstio. The officers beside him are of no importance at all. Asarik himself has only three attacks, a basic attack that does soul damage, Cut Down, which does body damage and stuns, and Torment, which does massive soul damage to the whole party. The only strategy that I can give you is to put someone with good defense at the front and if he uses Torment, reset.

See, Qualstio, this is what "quelling one's inner fire" actually looks like. Not killing some guy and setting his corpse on fire.

Asarik claims that he put Rehm through all of this as part of an experiment to break him out of his depression. Really? Is this some kind of joke?

We get a pretty shocking line from Tehgonan here, too:

What!? Hell to the NO, I'm not getting busted! Know what happens to prisoners my age?

Back at Nal, Dehl's gotten ahold of another robe like his one, marking its wearer as a member of the Sikohlon clan. Since he says that he got it from a tailor in town, this raises the question of whether someone would pretend to be a member of the clan for the perks, and how far they would go before being found out.

And with that, Rehm Sikohlon, swashbuckler, slayer of that one si'shra, master of stealth, and hopeless drunk, has finally joined the crew. But, sadly, he makes no mention of his former crewmates, not the cabin boy who saved him, nor the woman he loved who met her end all those years ago, having drunk them both out of his memory.