Final Fantasy XII, And so Our Journey Ends

Right down to the wire, in fitting Rhek fashion. I finished FFXII tonight. A bitter sweet feeling as I close the book on this great adventure. Let's finish it up.

Saturday I had finished up most of the story line, defeating Cid in the Pharo tower, the 100 floor dungeon. Since that time, my party has been getting summons and grinding. I got all summons, my summon roster on the status page of the character sheet filled out completely, but there was one more. A hidden summon, so evil it doesn't even get a roster spot. For this summon I knew I'd have to be of a much higher level. I grinded out levels 52 through 71 by way of setting up gambits and leaving my characters in a never ending room of spawns. Now some of you will say I cheated. I don't really care. Ninety-nine percent of this game was completed by setting up my gambits just perfectly then directing my controller into the direction of the mobs. I never had to engage, or heal, or do really anything once my gambits were set properly. So what's the difference if I stare at the screen while I grind or not in my opinion.

Anyway, it was all for naught. I stopped my characters at level 71 because the mob Zodiark is around level 67 and 71 is a prime number. Why's that matter? Well the fucker has about a zillion abilities which are level division dependent. Anyway, after getting about 20 more levels, buying TONS of gear, technicks and magick and researching the fuck out of this mob I headed in. I admit I could have been more prepared. I could have gone on a ton more hunts, spent another ten to fifteen hours on the game and gotten bubble belts for everyone, mirror mail, and the like. But since I'm kind of on a schedule here, there simply wasn't time. Now, this guy, is not just tough, GETTING to him is a bitch in itself. There's no nearby save crystal and the mobs can kill you in two to four hits, or simply KO you, confuse you, sleep, you name it. It's a LONG fucked up walk to Zodiark.

I set everything up as best as I could, studying my gambits and finessing things for like an hour. Then I traveled carefully in, died a bunch and finally made it to the secret chamber. I engaged and got him to about half health before he killed me. Let me explain how he kills me. He casts a spell called Darkja. This spell has a 50% chance of instant killing a character. There is no way on the planet to avoid it, no spell, no buff, no item, no gear, nothing. And for some reason he always gets lucky and eventually kills all three of my main characters in one shot.

I went in a second time, a third time, a fourth time. Keep in mind, it's a bitch of a walk every time. The fifth time I got him to about 10% health. But it got to the point where he was just casting Darkja once a second. I couldn't keep up. I failed.

I have been defeated, I am defeated. I give up. Zodiark will not fall to Rhek in the allotted time. My little side quest that I'd given myself to obtain every summon in 12 games is incomplete and will probably remain so. Maybe I'll go back and grind to 99 and do all the hunts and get all the other gear one day, but it's not very likely. A very bitter taste in my mouth that one left...

Very frustrated, I said fuck this and went into the Bahamut without any preparation. What followed was a series of awesome cut-scenes with all out war between the Bahamut ship and the imperial fleet against the resistance fleet as it heads to Rabanastre.

The Strahl flies into the mess and hails the Marquis capital ship, the Garland. Ashe tells him to stand down for a while, we're going in after Vayne. He does so after we use a voice changer to pretend to be Larsa, aiding us into the ship.

We head on in and within a matter of two minutes we're in a final showdown with Gabranth. My characters were still setting up their buffs when he went down. That's how over powered my guys are now.

Next in came Vayne. He went down just as fast in his first form, but then he had two more transitions. Eventually, flames consumed his body and Venat granted him the power of the Undying. He sprout wings and became godlike in true final FF villain form.

This was by no means a difficult battle, only long. Many of the bosses in this game have pallings. They differ from boss to boss and many bosses have several. Take for instance the summon Ultima. She would rotate between no use of weapons to magick to technicks to items, etc. And many times there would be a null barrier, meaning that ZERO damage will go through by means of physical or magic, depending on the barrier. So during the course of the Vayne fight I was literally standing there swinging at IMMUNE for five minutes, waiting for the barrier to finally drop. Then he'd raise it again. Annoying but not difficult.

Eventually he fell and I got treated to another series of great cut-scenes. In the final act, the Bahamut is out of control and headed toward a crash landing on Rabanastre. We try to leave on the Strahl but the engines aren't starting. Balthier and Fran head out to 'check the engines' and finally they come on and Vaan takes off.

With the Bahamut crashing, the old capital ship of the imperial fleet volunteers to ram crash into the Bahamut to stop her from hitting the city. But then we get a transmission from Balthier. Apparently when he and Fran went to check the engines, they did so off ship. They're still on the Bahamut trying to fix the drives before it hits Rabanastre. They'd kindly like the Alexander to not kill them all.

Balthier is successful in restarting the drives and re-routing the massive ship but it's too late for them. The ship is crashing into the desert. It seems to be the end of Balthier and Fran. Seems to be...

Afterward we flash to a year later, Rabanastre being rebuilt, Ashe being corronated, Basch taking care of Larsa in Archadia, Vaan and Penelo flying the Strahl... We see a whole lot of city cuts and Penelo gives a narrative of the after math and rebuilding. At the end though, the Strahl has been stolen. By it's original owners. Good times. Great game. End game stats. Game was probably more like 55 hours, but the grind really pushed it higher.

A couple of side notes:

Again, I loved the huge ships in this game being named after all the FF summons. I also liked that many of the summons were named after old FF end game bosses, like Chaos, Ultima, Zeromus, etc... Lot of really good name drops there, especially for someone who's just beaten all of them over the last three months.

The story of this one was no where near as good as previous FFs. It was okay, but there wasn't a lot of good motive and the end never resolved what happen to the Gods, or to Venat who betrayed the Gods. What was Venat's purpose? I would have expected him to be the true end game boss.

While the end credits rolled, they showed art work they'd done for the game. The clothing and style was so much more old school than the actual game and it looked gorgeous. I really liked it quite a bit. I wish they would have utilized those art concepts in the game. It would have made for a MUCH cooler feel. It's amazing how much art work has to do with the overall game experience.

Once again, we had no character naming, and in truth, while Vaan was the beginning of the game and the main character in every city, the story was more about Ashe and her fight against the empire. The split there between who you're following and who the story is really about hurt the emotional attachment or involvement of the player in the story line. And not being able to name your characters always makes it feel less like your game.

Once again everyone could do pretty much everything. I've stated before that I was always a bigger fan of designated roles but it's not a huge deal. The license board is probably one of my least favorite leveling systems. But no where near as annoying as two or five.

Awesome, beautiful cut-scenes all the way through. I really enjoyed them, but it felt like 90% of them where airships or fights of airships. No issue there, just saying...

Hate that I couldn't beat Zodiark. I've always hated the 'cheap' bosses in games where it requires more time and luck than skill of any sort.

Was a little weird playing this game in that I really didn't DO anything after I set up my gambits. I just steered my players around and watched them fight.

Loved the on screen mobs though, random encounters can get a little overwhelming. You feel more in the world when you can see all the mobs. That's all my comments on this one.

So... yeah. All done. Wow. Been quite a ride. I'm SO glad I did it, I can't tell you how much I've enjoyed it. Really. I'm glad it's done because FFXIII comes out tomorrow! But I loved it, even the lame ones like FFII. The only down side is that I felt rushed through some of the REALLY great games in there like FFVI and FFIX. I mean. I really loved those games. They were special, and I hated that I was just blowing through them because I had this deadline.

Umm.. so I guess this is my last post about a game. I think I'll do one more post later to finish up the blog to rank my favorite games in order.

Time for the next project, become an artist! Oh yeah, and umm... beat the fuck out of FFXIII. =)

FFXII - Bahamut Rising

TWO DAYS LEFT!!!

Alright, into the Pharo dungeon I went, for-e-ver. The final dungeon of FFXII consisted of about 100 levels of gameplay. Fortunately many of those levels were just stairs but there were still about a good 20 levels of mob ridden, puzzle solving madness spread over three tiers of dungeon ascension. Each ascension held it's own challenges, a fine final dungeon indeed.

Over the course of SEVERAL hours I finally burned through two more summons and reached the summit to enter the chamber with the Sun-Cryst. It was a little smaller than I'd imagined, about the size of a shield. Once there, it was time for Ashe to decide her course of action. She draws the treaty blade and steps forward. The Sun-Cryst reacts, turns on, or something, in a pretty cool cut.

As she approaches, Rasler appears before the crystal, nodding to her, urging her to continue. She finally confronts him though. She asks if he would have her cut from the Sun-Cryst, to exact revenge on all of the empire for him. He nods. She then tells the ghost that the true Rasler would never be so blood thirsty and she cuts through the apparition with the Treaty Blade. The true nature of the spirit is revealed. It has been the Gods in disguise trying to manipulate her through her love of Rasler. She will not be a tool to be used, she will not cut from the Sun-Cryst.

Gabranth appears from the shadows. He confesses to the murder of Ashe's father and Reks, he wants Ashe to cut from the Sun-Cryst. He is goading her on, though I'm not sure why. They have a lengthy discussion about revenge and how killing people doesn't bring anyone back. Blah, blah, let me kill this guy already. He deserves it. Finally when Gabranth realizes Ashe will not be swayed, he attacks. For being one of the final bosses in the last dungeon he went down quite easily.

When he hit about 1/5 health though, Cid stepped in and tossed Gabranth aside, yelling at him for not fulfilling his promise to Larsa to protect Ashe. The mad scientists continues with some long speech about becoming more than man, becoming a God. He infuses himself with a bunch of power and I engage him with Venat's aid. At about fifty percent health he also summons Famfrit whom I have to defeat first. Not too tough of a battle though, all said and done. He finally fell, and said his final farewells to his son Balthier.

After this fight, Ashe draws the Sword of Kings to destroy the Sun-Cryst. But the stone senses it's own impending doom and begins to react. It draws in Mist and pushes Ashe back. Vaan and Ashe press forward against the tide of power emanating from the crystal, but it's almost too much. They sense something is about to happen, it's time to get the fuck out. Reddas takes the sword from Ashe and makes a final charge at the Sun-Cryst. He makes it through and buries the blade through the center of the crystal. The screen goes white.

We come back to the party at the Strahl taking off from the island tower. Apparently Reddas is dead, the Sun-Cryst is gone and we got out of there. Who knows how.

Back in pirate town we find Al-Cid, the guy from Rozarrio, waiting for us. I'd forgotten that was his name. I wonder if he's supposed to be the real Cid from the series, who aids us. He tells us that the Rozarrian division of the resistance fleet went off course and attacked a city in Archadia to incite a reaction. And they were successful. The Archadian empire is now on a course to engage the resistance fleet. But we tell Al-Cid that Vayne has lost his advantage, the Dawn Shard is powerless now.

However, Al-Cid has some news of his own. In it's last moments, the Sun-Cryst gathered enough power to breathe life into Bahamut, who has now awakened. And Bahamut is under Vayne's control. That can't be good.

In fact Vayne is heading toward Rabanastre to completely wipe out the town. So the final battle is to be us vs Bahamut and Vayne. But you know what comes before that. Summons.

So off I went to get summons, but it wasn't going to be easy. Let's go through an example of just one. Before I could even think of going after my first summon, I had to get several items. To do this I had to get them from hunts. To get them from hunts I had to complete other hunts to open those hunts. After I got the items, I had to track down the people to get the other items. Once that was done, I had to get to the summon usually in some crazy far away place. Once I was there, I had to actually beat the bastard. And as stated earlier, boss battles in this game are HARD. And the higher the summon I go for, the harder it becomes. Some summons are just ridiculously difficult, locking out all magic or all attacks or just casting non-stop death or disable.

So I'd often have to go back and find some new merchant to get some ability or piece of equipment just to survive ten seconds in the battle. And that was typically in some far off different place I'd have to travel to as well. A LOT of walking around.

I got all but three of the summons. The last three look ridiculously hard and I need to do a bit of leveling before I can even attempt them. The good thing though is that once they're all defeated, the Vayne battle will look like a joke. Hopefully I can wrap things up today or tomorrow. Just in time.

FFXII - Can you defy the Gods?

Last time I was very close to being totally fucked deep inside a tough dungeon up against disease with only two remedies left in my inventory. Luckily I ran into no more malboros, and was able to continue on without much difficulty. My party continued it's trek DEEP underground where we could finally get a view of the biggest damn chunk of nethicite ever. It's like the size of a stadium, it's called the great crystal.

We keep on going, further and further until we finally reach another summon battle. After she went down, I had my third summon. I like how all the empire capital ships are named after old school FF summons, and I like that the resistance capital ship is named Garland. But I feel like the summons should be named as they've always been: what are the roots of Belias, Mateus, Zodiark. Why these names, why change it up like this? Is it because they're more akin to threats to my party rather than helpful gods in this game?

Anyway, after this I was in a crazy ass maze of platforms, teleports, magick locks and floors that would come up to meet your feet as you stepped into thin air. All cool stuff but complicated. After so many locks I had to pull up a map online to see where the fuck was going on. On a side note, I'm officially sure I've never been this far in the game, never seen this place, I continued on. This maze goes on for days and the locks are the 12 signs of the Zodiac. I believe I only have access to unlock the locks of the designated summons. So I could only unlock 3 and get so far since I only have 3 summons. I'll have to find out what's down there when I have them all.

After the small part of the maze I could navigate we came to a final teleport. We hit the trigger and the party is teleported ... somewhere. It looks like... heaven? A place of Gods.

But only Ashe arrives. She lands on a platform in a saturated white background and before her materialize beings out of three statues around her. They call themselves Occuria, the Gods of Ivalice (I like that it's called Ivalice, it's a common name in several FF games for the world, along with Gaia). The Gods speak.

Here's the gist. One of the four Gods has sorta gone rogue, the God Venat. For some reason or other, Venat has decided to help man put their fate back in their own hands by giving them the power of the Gods. Venat has been helping Cid and Vayne to create manufacted nethicite. The Gods are not pleased.

Long ago, Ivalice was in trouble, and rather than let it die the Gods decided to step in and give one man the power to bring things back to rights. That man was Raithwall, he visited them here in Giruvegan. And they bestowed upon him the Sword of Kings with which to cut three pieces of nethicite from the Sun-Cryst. A fraction of power from the great crystal. With this power he was able to bring peace back to the world and save it. He was chosen by the Gods to do just this.

Now the time has come once more when Ivalice is in trouble and the Gods have chosen Ashe to be their hand and execute their will on Ivalice. They gift her with a Treaty Blade with which to go cut from the Sun-Cryst once more some stones of power with which to defeat Vayne and Venat. Such power they are willing to give her. But, they want the entire empire of Archadia to be destroyed as well. They are vengeful Gods, they want blood. Ashe hesitates. She wants the empire out of Dalmasca and she knows that Vayne is a threat that must be put down. But to destroy an entire empire of people?

The Gods convince her to take up their charge and she finally takes the Treaty Blade. Afterward the rest of the party appears and the Gods are gone. The others heard the whole conversation. They ask her if she will really do as they ask.

Back in Archades we see a conversation with Vayne and Cid. Venat tells Cid that they've taken the bait. That the party now has the Treaty Blade. Sneaky bastard setting us up like that to get something he couldn't get himself. That's only been done in eleven other FFs... Anyway, there's some further discussion about the war and the nethicite and the Gods. They have some plan though. Venat speaks to Vayne about his 'ascension'. It seems Vayne is to become something else. God-like. Another FF staple. The main villain always attains some level of godhood.

The party heads back to the pirate port town where Reddas is. He talks to us about this place called Ridorana Cataract. A place of great Mist power, it's destroyed all his ships that try to approach. It happens to be where my party believes the Pharoh Tower is, the resting place of the Sun-Cryst. We decide we're to head out to this place. We take the Strahl, retrofitted to fly where the Mist would usually not let it.

We're heading there but our intentions are still unclear. Are we going to destroy the Sun-Cryst with the Sword of Kings rendering all nethicite in the world dead, or use the Treaty Blade to cut from it and use it against Vayne and the empire. Does Ashe want the power or a straight up fight?

Before we set out, we also buy buy buy. This is the last town on the map, and I spent gobbles of money getting the latest gear, magick, techniks, and gambits. I also stocked up on Remedies =P. Now before the LAST dungeon in the game, I'm finally given access to the entire world map. My airship can go anywhere I want. I can't just fly around the world but a map comes up and I simply pick a location I'd like to be in. Just like FFXIII by the sound of it.

I headed to a couple of other places to pick things like float and cleanse. I want Bubble but can't find it. Hope I won't need it for this final dungeon...

I hopped into the Strahl and headed over to this crazy ass tower at the edge of a water fall. Pretty stuff.

My guys are ready, it's time to tear this bitch down.

FFXII - In over my head

The days are dwindling fast, I must make haste.

I arrived in Archades to find that I needed some chops to enter into the inner city. This involved running around in a little matchmaker game for a while in the city. Sorta pointless time sink. After that I got into the Draklor Laboratories and once more I found myself someplace where there were a number of murdered imperial guards. Seems like everyone this Cid is involved in, imperial guards die.

I worked my up to the top floor through guards and puzzles to finally face Cid himself. But before that I met a pirate by the name of Reddas who had been enlisted by the Marquis to obtain the nethicite from Cid. We duke it out with Baltheir's old man for a bit then he retreats. On the way out he mentions to Ashe that he's headed to Giruvagen to obtain more nethicite, he'll see us there. Yea, he's insane.

After the battle Reddas explains his purpose there and we learn about the maneuvers of the Marquis, Halim Ondore to build the fleet of the resistance. He's actually done quite a good job amassing a fleet to match that of the Imperial army, but with the nethicite at Vayne's disposal, the forces of Archadia will surely win. They need that stone.

But at the same time, Vayne doesn't have the stone either, Cid does. So it's off to Giruvagen to get it from the madman. Some interesting notes... The capital ship of the resistance fleet is called the Garland. Also, I believe this is the first time that the character Cid has been a villain in a FF game.

Anyway, the name of the game is neutralize the nethicite Cid has to even the odds for all out war with the imperial army. To get there we have to head through Golmore Jungle, then the Feywood, then into Giruvagen itself. It's a REALLY long journey through some tough places. After a time I arrived in Giruvagen, and my party has started to delve very deep into the earth. They're starting to think this might be the birth place of nethicite. It's a pretty crazy dungeon, complete with invisible floating platforms to walk on, evil malboros and behemoth type mobs we see in typical final dungeons. The end of the game is nearing.

Right now though I'm way deep in this dungeon and the malboros keep casting disease on me. I have only two remedies left. After that I'm pretty well and fucked over. I hope the dungeon end is soon. I might be at a point where I get really really stuck. That would... suck.

FFXII - Arrival in Archades

Not much new here. My party is still on it's way to kill Vayne in Archades. It's been a long trek through many new lands and new armor sets, magick, weapons etc. No new summons, some tough boss fights but nothing too terrible. One thing of interest is that when we reached the land of Archadia officially there was a little conversation between Ashe and Baltheir that took place. In the conversation, Baltheir told Ashe that Dr. Cid, the guy running Draklor Laboratories for Vayne, is Baltheir's father. Little bit of a plot bomb. Add to that the fact that Baltheir himself used to be a Judge... Wow. That shocked me, don't remember that at all!

Speaking of remembering the game, things are definitely getting fuzzy. I'll be playing along and start thinking, okay I've never played this far because I don't really remember this. But then after a bit more I will come across something that I do remember. So I think I've still played this much. Currently I'm in the city of Archades and I think I'm about 80% through the story line. My guys are almost level 40. We'll see how much more I remember.

FFXII - Picking the Three

So, been trying to get in some time lately but it's been hard. Didn't get a whole lot done in the last two days. I headed out to the Stilshrine in Miriam and ran through that dungeon. There was a bit of puzzle solving involved which was cool and at the end I had to fight Mateus. Once he was defeated I had my second Esper who I gave to Ashe.

I knew things were a little off when the esper fight proved so difficult. The dungeon in general was a bit tough at times. My entire party of six was about level 25 at the end when I finally gained possession of the Sword. Upon receiving it, the party said that Ashe should see if it works, try to break the Dawn Shard with it since the shard no longer held any power. But as she places the shard to break it with the sword, Rasler appears once more and shakes his head. She swings and misses on purpose. The shard glows then fades away, fearing the sword but knowing the danger has passed. This time though, when she asks Vaan, he didn't see Rasler, only she did. We head on outside. And when we look up we see an entire fleet of airships on their way to Mt Bur Omisace. Wow, Vayne has balls.

We arrive to a burned out refugee camp with many people dead or beaten. The Judge (can't remember his name) came for Larsa. Larsa went willingly to avoid any blood shed but once Larsa was in hand the Judge ransacked the place anyway. We arrive and they tell us to leave at once, the Judge is still there in the temple. Of course we're not going anywhere. We continue up the road and into the temple. There we find the Judge and his victim, the dreamsage, who he's just murdered.

The Judge is crazy with power and we can see a faint shadow of a demon in him. His very body emanates with the power of the Mist from manufacted nethicite. He sees us and deems it's our time to die. I then get into a battle and he destroys me. Reset. Die again. Ok...

So when I played FFXII before, I played with my room mate. He played three characters and I played three characters. So I had no issues keeping everyone on the same level and using them during boss fights. But it's just too much now on a time table. It was time to pick my three and leave the others behind for the time being. I went back to the Stilshrine, setup and grind route and killed undead through a chain of 198 or so. This net me five levels and about 100k in gil which I needed badly for gear anyway. With my chosen three of Basch as tank, Vaan and DPS and support, and Ashe as healer and DPS I went back in and killed the Judge, not easily but he died.

I'd forgotten how merciless this game was with boss fights. With the sword in hand now, we decided that we need to kill Vayne and destroy the nethicite. We head off to Archadia. However I just want to mention some annoying shopping first. I bought a bunch of gear to fight the Judge with my 100k. After the fight, of course, new gear popped up. I bought that. Then I went back to Rabanastre, two minutes later, new gear. Gah! Bought that. Moved down to Nalbina twenty minutes later on the way to Archadia, new gear. Fuck. Now I'm broke with barely up to date gear. Annoying.

Anyway, I ventured forth and the mobs are easy but the tough mobs are hard. I think I have to grind up another five levels or so tonight. I fought a boss in the woods near the end of the night and it took me about twenty minutes to kill him. I went through elixirs and several phoenix downs and handkerchiefs. In my experience, it's never a good thing when you have to use an Elixir before the final boss fight in a FF game. Got some work to do and not much time to do it. I think I'm going to have to lock my door to get my room mate to leave me alone.

FFXII - Emperor Vayne

Alright, off to Mt Bur Omisace we went, but first we got a glimpse back at Archadia of a chat between a few judges. The topic, Vayne's ruthless nature. We got a little more background info about his two older brothers. I guess it was he who killed them because they got in his way. How did that go unpunished...?

Anyway we started out for this mountain place and passed through some plains, and entered a dark wooded area. But we could go no further after a while. The wood cut us off from our path. Fran decides it's time she went back to her sister Vierra to get this taken care of. Apparently her home is not far off. We head into Eruyt Village, a small wooded town in the trees full of nothing but Vierra. Fran stays outside and asks Vaan to go find someone called Mjrn. Guess she's not exactly welcome.

It's not too long before we don't feel too welcome either though. After about the billionth time of being told to 'Go away Hume, leave the Wood.' Eventually though we come to a Vierra who's the leader. Her name is Jote, she's not giving us any info though and eventually Fran comes in to find out that Mjrn has left the Wood as well. Run off to some Hume mines to the west.

We go to track down this Mjrn at the Henne Mines on Ozmone Plains. When we get there though, everyone is dead. Some research for the Draklor Laboratories (run by Dr. Cid for Vayne) gone awry. We head on in and at the end we come to a large dragon mob named Tiamat that we must defeat. After he goes down we find Mjrn, who'd been under some Mist spell. She recovers and tells us that she came here to find out what the Humes were up to but they caught her and locked her up with a Magicite stone. They wanted the power of the stone to absorb into her, to see the effects. Larsa starts to see that the empire is not as clean as he'd hoped.

We take Mjrn back to Eruyt Village and find out that both Mjrn and Jote are Fran's sisters. Mjrn wants to follow in Fran's steps and leave the Wood but Fran tells her she must stay. Fran has been cut off from the Wood and can no longer hears it's voice. It's isolation from her is painful but she feels that there are things she must take care of in the outside world for the Vierra. We continue on.

We finally get to Mount Bur Omisace and find that it's a refugee camp for the survivors of the wars. It is run but a being called the Gran Kiltias, a dreamsage who sees the future. Kings and emperors the world over take heed of his word and will not cross him. The mountain lies high up, among the still floating remnants of land said to be a long lost floating continent that was shattered. The forces of that continent still drain the energy of any airships that try to enter, robbing them of their buoyancy.

The dreamsage has foreseen our coming and speaks with Ashe and Larsa about their plan to reclaim Dalmasca. But we're interrupted by another friend of Larsa's, his counterpart from Rozzario, trying to stop the war. This man tells us that peace is no longer an option. While the old emperor might have given Ashe his ear and listened to her pleas, Vayne will not.

Apparently the old emperor has died of poisoning. Vayne had a senate member arrested for it but it's obvious he was behind it. Even one of the Judges accuses Vayne of doing such and he has her killed by Gabranth. Gabranth does not want to do it, because she is his friend, but she tells him he must, and to protect Larsa from Vayne for the both of them. Vayne sends another Judge to retrieve his younger brother post haste.

Back in Mt Bur Omisace, the dreamsage now tells us that if we wish to fight power with power, we must seek out the sword that can cut through nethicite. The old dynast king entrusted it to the dreamsage of his time, long ago. A weapon that could destroy him, to be kept away from his own descendants. The weapon is in the Stilshrine of Miriam. We head out to get us a magick sword.