After the initial wave of cannon fire she sends in the black mages to clean up any resistance in the city.
And after all that, just for kicks she summons another eidolon to suck up and break apart most of the rest of the city... Evil bitch!
Rhek and a devastated Cysra are forced to watch the city be destroyed from the plains just outside, but when the fighting is finally over, they head inside and go right to the palace to find Cid. They find him still in charge having surrendered to the Queen under two conditions. He must give her his Falcon Pendant with the magic stone and his super airship that doesn't run on Mist, but rather steam.
We make a plan to cut this snake off at it's head - Kuja. The only thing that Cid knows is that Kuja is from the outer continent. So we must somehow get there, and Cid knows a way. We must head north and into a deep excavation site. There we might find a tunnel rumored to run under the ocean all the way to the outer continent. Cid helps us break out of Lindblum which is now under Alexandrian control. But before I go, I make a stop at the weapon and synth shops to get some nice upgrades.
On our way to the excavation site, we run into Qu who somehow got out of the completely annihilated Cleyra and survived. He rejoins Rhek, Cysra and Vivi. We head on down and navigate our way through quite a bit of tunnels. Near the end, the bounty hunter Lani catches up with us and tries to kill Cysra. After I beat the crap out of her, we get to continue on our way and emerge in the new continent.
The first place we arrive at is a Dwarven town where everyone always says Rally-Ho! We wander a bit around there and learn of their 'Sanctuary' which no one is allowed into and we learn about a local thief they can't ever seem to catch. While there we also spot a Black Mage, one that looks just like one of the Queen's dolls, but he bolts before we can talk to him. The dwarves tell us of an entire village of black mages to the south east in a mysterious forest. We decide to set out the next day.
After some world map navigation and some maze solving, we come upon the village of black mages at the heart of an invisible forest. At first they're terrified of humans and run, but eventually they believe that we're not bad people and they talk to us. Vivi talks to what seems like their elder and finds out that these particular black mages used to be in the Queen's army but one day they just 'woke up'. They all the sudden became conscious of themselves and found themselves in the middle of a battle or whatever and ran away. They gathered and came to this continent, far away from the Queen, to make their own home. We also find out that some of the black mages have just stopped working after a year. Vivi questions his own origins even more now and wonders if he'll just die one day for no reason like the others...
After doing some more weapon and synth shopping, we spend the night and chat a bit with different party members about life and coping, etc. In the morning, the black mage elder tells us that if we're looking for Kuja, we may find him in 'Sanctuary', which is guarded in that village by the dwarves. We head on back.
It turns out that the dwarves will only let people who've just been married into Sanctuary, so of course, Rhek and Cysra have no choice but to get married to each other. And of course, Rhek is a nervous wreck and Cysra plays it off as an insignificant event which means nothing. Anyway, just as we're about to go into Sanctuary, the thief strikes again and runs off into Sanctuary herself. The guards can not follow but must go report another theft. My whole party is free to enter un-inhibited. Guess we didn't have to get married after all.
We track down the little girl, who's all of six years old, and rescue her from being stuck over a cliff. She joins our party and, given that she's a feisty, short, cute, little girl with attitude and power, I called her Akelray. No, I'm not gonna explain.
Akelray leads Rhek and his party to her home, which apparently is an old abandoned destroyed ruin of an ancient city. Her only companions are several moogles who are her family now. She is the last of the village of Summoners... She explains that ten years ago, four years before she was born, a great catastrophe befell their city, killing most of the inhabitants. Only a few people survived, her mother and father among them. Her parents died when she was still an infant and she was raised by her grandfather who died a year ago. Poor little kid.
You know what she has though? Fenrir... =)
Even though he takes over a third of her MP to cast, I just had to pop him out against some goblins to say hi to my old favorite summon. We hang out in her deserted town for a while, learning some summon history, and all the while Cysra begins to feel a bit... weird. We learn about the foundation of the town 500 years ago founded to learn more about the planet and the planet's guardians, the eidolons. We learn about the devastation of the city ten years ago and about an old tree which is protected by a summon, called the Iifa Tree. The party determines that if Kuja is here, that's his origin.
We head on out to the tree, now with Akelray in place of Qu. When we arrive, Akelray uses her power to lower the invisible defense wall surrounding the tree and obtains the Ruby for her efforts (Carbuncle). It's also worth noting at this time that the Phoenix Pinion can be equipped by Akelray as well to learn the Phoenix summon. We continue toward the great tree and delve deep below the surface.
Down and down we got into a deeper and thicker Mist. So much Mist that we begin to suspect that this place might be the origin of all Mist for the planet and it routes itself deep under the earth to other continents. Once we hit bottom we are confronted by some undead entity which confirms our suspicions in some telepathic dialogue. He basically states that he emits the Mist to the world to increase the animosity and greed and fighting nature of humans. To breed war and destruction. He explains that Kuja does the same thing, but uses the Mist in his own fashion to accomplish this. Suffice it to say our party doesn't like this guy too much and we kill him. As he dies, the source of Mist for the planet ceases to exist and the veil lifts.
After this we head out of the tree and wait for Kuja to come find out what happen. While waiting, Akelray gets word from town that someone has stolen her family's keepsake. She rushes back to find her magical stone missing and runs off. We hear screams and track them down the the Wall of Eidolons where Lani has taken Akelray hostage. She forces Rhek to hand over Cysra's pendant or lose Akelray's life. He complies and it seems like Lani is going to get away when the Red-Headed man steps in, takes the pendant, frees Akelray and tells Lani to get lost. He doesn't like her using children as shields. He asks Rhek for a one on one duel and I gladly oblige, easily defeating him with my new synth'd weapon and almost 2k health.
Afterward he pleads with Rhek to finish the job in typical noble bad guy fashion, but Rhek won't do him the favor. Instead he asks him to join us, and for his own reason (to figure out why he lost to Rhek mostly), he joins us for the time, I name him Ichorid. We get some break time and it's here that Rhek finds Cysra who's wandered off to a small boat down below Akelray's house. She's singing that song from earlier in the game again, the one no one else has heard of. She finally remembers her childhood. She was born in this town of Summoners. She was raised here until she was six years old. Then, ten years ago, that catastrophe stuck and she and her real mother just happen to be on a boat out at sea when it hit. They watched as their home burn.
This is the cut scene of the two people on the boat in the savage storm from the beginning of the game. But Cysra's mother died on that boat before it reached the shores of Alexandria and when the King and Queen took her in, she soon forgot her past. After Akelray finds out, she welcomes Cysra home and now they both feel not so alone in the world. After some reunion time, it's time to head back to the Iifa Tree and wait for Kuja.
When we get there, it's not long before Kuja actually shows up on his white drake. But it's also not long before the greedy Queen shows up with a gigantic sea fleet. Somehow this is all part of Kuja's plan. He sits there and waits as the party tries to talk him out of fighting and questions why he's doing what he's doing. He gives some usual bad guy answers and then flies off to face the Queen's armada.
The Queen fights against the monsters of the Mist which Kuja summons and then finally calls upon the King of Eidolons to finish Kuja... Bahamut.
Bahamut does her bidding at first, even wounding Kuja a little bit. But this is what Kuja had been waiting for. He triggers some event and the clouds break from above revealing some weird alien eye from above which radiates purple beams of light onto everything below. When the light finally fades, Bahamut is there, facing the Queens fleet. He is no longer under her control and he wreaks havoc on the entire armada in one breath, then leaves.
Kuja flies off into the distance, claiming he's now ready to face his nemesis from ten years ago. What's with this ten year time frame? What the hell happened?
Anyway, after the scene, we find the Queen's escape pod on a beach nearby and Cysra sits with her mother as she dies and passes on the throne to Cysra, apologizing for her actions. Thank god she's dead. We head back to Alexandria to crown Cysra as the new Queen and start rebuilding...
But how long before we have to deal with Kuja and Bahamut once more? End Disc 2.
No comments:
Post a Comment