FFX - A Summoner is born

So when we left off, a distraught Rhek was traveling with a few Ah-Bhed members on a ship in the middle of the dark ocean. It's not long before Sin shows up and knocks Rhek off the ship, into the ocean. He spirals into the abyss and wakes up in a tropical paradise. We meet a new character Wakka playing Blitzball on the beach and get introduced to his home town. Once more we have to pretend we've had a lapse in memory to cover the fact that we know nothing of this new world. We learn that everyone praises some god called Yevon, that there's a high summoner, and a summoner in each village, and that Sin actually has been attacking cities all over the world repeatedly for the last 1000yrs. Wakka talks about when Sin first appeared, when there used to be many advanced cities that use "Machina" to do their work for them (Rhek's world). Now everyone is back in the stone age, making houses out of bamboo and leaves, yet we saw a ship in the ocean and scattered about is a computer terminal here and there, so they're not TOO far back...

In Wakka's village of Besaid, we're talked into joining their Blitzball team, then I'm told to go see the local summoner. I go meet with him and learn that there's an apprentice summoner currently undergoing her final trials in the temple. No one is allowed to enter but she's been in there over a day, people are starting to worry. I head on in with no respect for their traditions to check up on the new summoner and find Yuna with her two guardians Lulu (the black mage chick) and Kimahri (a dragoon/blue mage beastman).

Yuna finally completes her trials and comes out, a fledgling summoner.

Her first summon is Valfort, a rainbow colored eagleman type beast. After this it's time for Yuna to go on her pilgrimage around the world to other temples to take part in other trials and gain new summons. There's a party in the village the night before she leaves and it's decided that Rhek will join Yuna, Wakka, Lulu, and Kimahri on their journey to Luca, where they believe someone might recognize Rhek who they think has amnesia. Well everyone except Yuna thinks so anyway. When we go to chat with her we find out that she completely believes that Rhek is from Zanarkand. In fact her father's (the high summoner) guardian was a man from Zanarkand who they met 10 years ago named Jecht. Well, that's funny cuz Rhek's father, Jecht, disappeared 10 years ago... Jecht practically raised Yuna and told her many stories of him home land.

Anyway, we disembark and as we go, we're introduced to black mage, dragoon, blue mage, white mage, and summoning abilities in the battle system. Summons are cool because everyone except Yuna and her Aeon (summon) leave the screen. The Aeon fights in their stead, able to cast it's own set of unique abiities. Once it's HP hits zero, it disappears, and you can no longer summon it for a time while it regains it's strength. I also learned that for any battle, I can swap my characters in and out of the three man party on the fly. I can start with two strikers and a black mage, cast some stuff, then swap in Yuna for some healing then swap in someone else for more damage, etc. It's a pretty cool system, and it allows for me to keep getting everyone that participates more exp as we fight. I'm still not sure if the exp splits up more, with more people, it probably does.

Eventually we reach the dock after all the new tutorials and we set sail for Luca. We have a few more conversations with out new friends but eventually Sin shows up and attacks us again. We fend it off as best as we can, and it continues on toward our first destination Kilika. It arrives before we do, and proceeds to destroy the entire town in a cool cut.

We arrive to a few survivors and the ruins of a small town. We try to help people where we can and Yuna offers to do the 'Sending' for the village as they have no local summoner. I guess part of a summoner's job is to do this Sending ritual for the deceased. If the ritual is not done, the soul of the dead person becomes envious of the living, then resentful and hateful. Eventually the soul will take the form of a fiend, forgetting it's former life and attacking people. In order to stop this from happening a summoner must send off the souls to the Farplane to rest in peace. Yuna does the ritual in another cool cut.

After this is done, she heads in with her three guardians to obtain the next Aeon, Ifrit. We have some drama with another local summoner who tosses Rhek down there with the rest of the party, trying to get Yuna excommunicated. Bitch.

Nothing goes awry though and Yuna gets her next summon, we move on. While on the boat again heading toward Luca, we find out that Yuna wants Rhek to become one of her guardians. At this point Rhek has pretty much given up hope of ever seeing his home again (it's been like three days..) and is seriously considering taking the position. But it might be more because he's got the hots for her than anything else.

Hopefully I get in some more time tonight, got a long ways to go and not much time. Go Go Go Rhek!