Curate of Curiosities

Previously on The Reconstruction, the guild exhausted every possible avenue to avoid a war breaking out on the Violet Sands, such as sneaking into enemy territory and talking to one guy. Everything short of just killing their head guy. Fortunately, the imminent invasion will give them the perfect opportunity to do so.

But first, let's check on that boy we just rescued.

If memory serves, you were the one worried about him getting abducted by slave traders. One of them was labeled "Smuggler" in the battle screen, and the other one is from a city that's openly involved in enslaving Shra! What did you expect us to do? Talk down the violent criminals? Seeing as how you're on speaking terms with Tezkhra, you must have been around for quite a long time and witnessed the centuries of tension between the two cities, so I'm certain that you would have learned a thing or two about the limitations of your dogma.

Fine, we don't really need you anyway.

Since we'll be actually participating in the war, a simple white robe won't cut it for Dehl.

I guess it's appropriate for someone who just got kicked out of a pacifist cult. Looks a bit uncomfortable on him though, but what are you going to do?

And now we face Zaka. Even though Dehl has shown willingness to cut down the bandits keeping Xopi captive earlier, he still tries to talk him down. Predictably, Zaka maintains that the purpose of his army is to conquer the entirety of the Violet Sands. Wait, I thought their purpose was to kill all the nonbelievers. Looks like that's it for pacifism.

The good news is, he says there's only one target for them to take down. No wait, that's a lie, he brings four other guys with him to fight you.

Here's the main gimmick of the boss fight: keep him away from the dividing line. If you don't, this happens:

The safest way to do this battle is to bring along someone with a knockback skill, and even if you haven't been paying attention to secondary effects, you should have at least one party member who has one.

Of course, there are still his minions to deal with, particularly the Savants, who managed to down Kulkumatz in one hit. Both of his attacking skills hit pretty hard as well.

Yeah, I choose to believe that he fell on that huge weapon he was waving around when we knocked him down.

Sure, he may have lied about there being only one target, but what he said about the Silver Army retreating once he's dead turned out to be true. Didn't know that it would be that easy to cause an army of religiously-motivated fanatics to resign to a fate of death by starvation.

Well, that's all the turmoil that our guild will be solving for now, and we're not the only game in town (even though we've seen precisely two other guilds so far), so we may as well see what Fell wants from us.

In this scene, the guild meets all the people it helped since its founding...or actually just two people, Yacatec and that guy from Wadassia, as well as Havan, who seems to genuinely want to know what this Watcher business was all about. But sadly, Havan did not fulfill their extremely arbitrary requirements, so he has to stay behind.

Like I just said, we're not the only game in town, and it would be a shame if this game's slight focus on it went to waste. He's already imprinted himself on the Si'Shra, and now they may need him to stop them from killing each other. And wait a minute, what about that artifact you showed us back in chapter 2? Probably turned out to be nothing, didn't it?

For now, the time has come for our guild to receive its reward: a ladder leading up to the sky.

The ladder takes us to the Watchers' chamber as seen in the prologue, which seems to be some sort of cosmic waiting room, where we wait for the gods to come and, in Fell's words, "gather [us] to the beyond." I have my suspicions, maybe this is all just an elaborate ploy to have us sacrificed to these gods.

Speaking of the gods, Tezkhra seems to be familiar with this place, and the Watchers seem to recognize him.

But there's still one person who's unaccounted for, Donz, that blond guy we haven't seen since the prologue. But nobody seems to know where he is.

This is apparently a really bad thing, as it means he's going to end the cycle by activating the pillars, and once he does the sky will burn...isn't that the same cryptic nonsense you said before we fought the Tatzylwurm?

Again it would help if you actually bothered to explain what any of that meant! But okay. Let's go stop your son from activating these pillars and...doing something with them.

As impressive as it looks, this part of the game doesn't seem to have been playtested as well as it should have. At several points in the video, you can see my characters walking over empty air. Something tells me this isn't an innate property of the gods' domain.

The goal is to cut Donz off at the pass by guiding each of the party members to the end of the path. It's more tedious than a challenge, especially with all the walking we have to do.

If this was meant to be a failsafe in case any of the Watchers went rogue like Donz did, it's a pretty weird one, especially since there are only three Watchers and six panels to activate.

You know what, when we go back to Fell, one way or another, we will make her tell us what's going on here.

And what would happen if we were to encounter Donz here? Would Dehl still try to convince him not to finish the cycle? He seemed to think that the war between Do'Ssha and Kir'Ssha could be avoided, up until it became clear that it couldn't, and even then, he seemed to believe he could talk down the enemy army's commander. But then again, he's not a Sikohlon anymore, so maybe he's abandoned--no wait, he's been indoctrinated in their teachings for who knows how long, and has only joined the outside world ten years ago.

Oh, great. Just wonderful! All the people who could have possibly given us an explanation, or even given us a way back to the surface should the gods not bother picking us up are dead.

There's one ladder that's still open. How convenient. But then, maybe it could be another failsafe, in case the gods failed to show up or if they somehow rejected the guild. Or maybe Donz took it back to the surface so he could finish the cycle, even though that's what activating the pillars was supposed to be doing. No matter how you slice it, this just doesn't make sense.

So let's head on back to the surface and see how things are. Maybe the people of Kir'Ssha have all starved to death. Maybe Yacatec finally got his slave-trading empire off the ground.

This is the beginning of chapter 6. Unlike every other chapter it doesn't have a title.

The ladder takes us very close to where we started this adventure--Wadassia. But the area looks like its seen better days. Fair enough, it might be still recovering from the bug problem from earlier. It's not long before we reach the city proper, but it's not recognizable as the city we started out in...or even a city to begin with.

Then Alito, who we had to leave behind when we ascended, shows up, along with a band of destitute, frightened survivors.

So here's the rundown: two years after the guild ascended to do the world's most tedious switch puzzle, a whole bunch of natural disasters were set off all throughout the world. And right after the dust cleared, someone calling himself the "Lord-God" showed up, leading an army of Si'Shra to oppress the survivors. It has been eight years since then, even though from the guild's perspective, it's been practically no time at all.

They really did rip off Final Fantasy VI! The nerve! And no, splitting Kefka into two separate characters can't hide this!

This was the very city that Dehl devoted himself to serving...or at least it would had he not quit his city guard job right after joining the guild. But even so, out of everyone, he seemed to be the one who most wanted to rid the world of turmoil. And all to see it reduced to rubble. What does he have left? Just one thing: a desire to see justice done.

Dehl Sikohlon, the Shra who believed that peace would prevail, is no more. In his place now is a warrior, a berserker, a zealot, whose rage can only be satiated by the death of the Lord-God at his hands. He demands from the survivors their one usable ship with which he can reach the Lord-God's lair.

Over the course of the game so far, a number of characters have undergone development (or attempts at development, as with Qualstio), resulting in slight changes to their elemental attributes, usually in the form of removing their usual elemental or physical weakness. Dehl's fury is what does it for him, removing his heat weakness, appropriately.

We have our boat, time to rid this world of its false god. As the narrative explains when the guild head's off:

Everything we once knew and loved has vanished from this world. We are the one surviving hope for reconstruction.

Oh, well it's about time we found out what the title means! And it only took around 20 hours!