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[JoshuaFH]

Did I somehow miss the post where Deirdre got killed?

Nope, it was just revealed. Julius killed her because he wanted to eliminate Julia from the picture, but Deirdre stopped him and teleported Julia out of the castle walls with her last ounce of strength before dying. It's outside the castle walls where she would then be found and looked after by Levin until he handed her over to us. The reason she had amnesia at that time is because she was traumatized at the sight of her mother being killed, and was repressing the memories as hard as she could.

Man, I forget to include all this stuff in my updates, and only really remember it when pressed for the specific details.

[Mephansteras]

Eh, it's cool. Your posts are pretty impressive as-is, so I wouldn't stress about it. We can just pester you when we get confused.

[Creamcorn]

Did I somehow miss the post where Deirdre got killed?

Nope, it was just revealed. Julius killed her because he wanted to eliminate Julia from the picture, but Deirdre stopped him and teleported Julia out of the castle walls with her last ounce of strength before dying. It's outside the castle walls where she would then be found and looked after by Levin until he handed her over to us. The reason she had amnesia at that time is because she was traumatized at the sight of her mother being killed, and was repressing the memories as hard as she could.

Man, I forget to include all this stuff in my updates, and only really remember it when pressed for the specific details.

Is there anything else we missed? Interesting we missed

[JoshuaFH]

I don't think so, pretty sure I got everything. The conversations that are coming up though are the most interesting, and I'll be sure to include every detail.

[Creamcorn]

I don't think so, pretty sure I got everything. The conversations that are coming up though are the most interesting, and I'll be sure to include every detail.

Incest?

[JoshuaFH]

I don't think so, pretty sure I got everything. The conversations that are coming up though are the most interesting, and I'll be sure to include every detail.

Incest?

Yes and no.

ONWARD!

Alright, we have a new bridge, and a MESSLOAD of armours and such in our way.

Fortunately, our characters are finally hitting the point where nameless redshirts are more of an annoyance than a real threat. Feel free to just plant Shanan on the mouth of the bridge, and watch him turn into a human meat grinder as all the armours plow straight into him and die.

Also, have Fee travel straight over the undefended waters, enroute to help Palmar.

Yeah, that guy. He's quivering in that corner over their so bad you can't believe it.

After all the enemy units have expended their lives for very little gain, feel free to bullrush the remaining group of mages that insist on just loitering about.

These guys though pose a semi-serious problem. All those magi have Meteo, and they sure as hell aren't afraid to use it all on one person and kill them outright. You can tackle them right now with Aless, Shanan, or anyone else with really high speed/Magic Defense (like I did) or you can wait a second and the problem will solve itself. You'll see.

They won't be moving from their defensive positions, feel free to have Celice move along the border of their attack radius.

Let's take a quick look at Alvis while we're at it:

Holy hell man, those are some excellent stats! Near perfect even with all those 30's. Really absurdly low luck though for some reason.

Alvis is the only enemy in the game with a 70 power attack, meaning he can outright one-shot alot of your guys. For instance, my Shanan won't be combating him, because he can kill him in one hit. Very bad. You can figure out for yourself though if Alvis can one-shot a guy, the formula isn't complex: just take Alvis' 70 attack power, subtract the unit's magic defense, and the number remaining is how much damage Alvis can do. Feel free to run these numbers in your head before attacking with anyone. Just be glad that he can't attack repeatedly like his son can.

Alvis is a tough bastard with 40 defense and magic defense, 30 speed, 80 hp, nihil, and great guard. I am willing to bet anything that more than half of all attacks against him will be dodged or guarded. Alvis is absurdly difficult to kill with how much he can just outright negate your attacks combined with his ability to absorb them.

Also, it goes without saying that Alvis is the only unit in the game with the Emperor class. He has a mighty awesome sprite too, which'll be coming up in a bit.

Hopefully, Fee has been solving your Black Magi problem. Fee in my case has some respectable Magic Defense and a Life ring, but they're still powerful enough that some praying that Fee doesn't get killed should be involved. You could also have Altenna join her, but she has notably less Magic Defense. Hit and run tactics are necessary, but you only need to distract them long enough for the cavalry to arrive.

Have Celice talk to Palmar, and he'll give Celice the holy Tyrfing! Yes! Celice asks where he got it, but he says he made a solemn oath to never speak where.

Celice's usefulness just increased ten-fold, I can't even tell you man.

If you've been playing badly thus far, and have had alot of your units killed off, you can breath easy now because Celice is a goddamn monster with that sword. While the boosts to skill and speed are nice, it's the +20 boost to magic resistance that truly makes this weapon. You know how most of our most troublesome enemies lately have been magic users? Celice is now the one-man answer to those troublesome enemies.

If you haven't already, feel free to have Celice gallivant straight up to those meteo-using magi guarding Chalphy and lop their heads off, because they officially can't defend themselves anymore.

Time to take Chalphy! Oh yeah, I've been meaning to mention, in the first chapter, where we first began the game, our first home castle was Chalphy. Really cool how the game circled around like that.

OH man, this fight is actually pretty cool, because orchestral music starts playing just as the fight starts. Makes it so epic! The sprite for the Emperor class is the coolest in the game, bar none. Polished silver instead of bland steel, and is much more detailed and ornate than any other sprite.

Because Alvis is so tough, feel free to round up all your high-power units that can take a punch, like Faval, Aless, Sety (if he has Holsety), and Altenna, and all gang up on him. Celice can't deal enough damage by himself to bring him down, so it's pretty much necessary. Just be sure to keep everyone healed up.

And he's dead! Finally! So now we can seize the castle, right?

WRONG!

AFTER killing Alvis... Have Celice ignore the castle, and instead travel southward, and move to this one specific square of the beach.

Motherfucking zombie Sigurd and Deirdre man! Well, not really, more like their ghosts that have finally come back to get to meet their fully grown son, and congratulate him. They are sure to tell him that he should not let this victory get to his head, and that the only reason he succeeded at all was because he had such wonderful friends at his side. Sigurd especially lectures him on how he needs to consider the feelings of the people he's fighting for, because they're always the ones that suffer the most in times of war.

After saying they love him and give their parting farewells, they disappear and leave Celice a free life ring!

Most excellent man!

I wonder though, at the start of the conversation, he initially recognizes his mother's voice and face, but I wonder how when she was separated from him when he was only 6 months old? That's just pedantry on my part though.

NOW feel free to seize the castle. That's one hell of a secret man, I had to look that shit up in a walkthrough that was so obscure. There's literally nothing to point you to that secret, just like the Hero Axe, the pursuit ring, and the defense sword before it, it's just a crazy random secret. This one had a lot of sentimental significance though, so it's especially good to get it.

The townspeople are SO happy, but it seems that the townspeople saw Manfloy taking off with Julia to Barhara! We were heading there anyway, but it's nice to know.

Oh yeah baby! The REAL holy war is just starting up!

Next time: The FINAL chapter! The greatest warriors in the world, Scorpio, Burian, Hilda, Ishtar, Arion, and the 12 Enigmatic Dark Warlords have assembled to give us the greatest battle in the history of Jugdral!

[JoshuaFH]

Alright, the final chapter is upon us...

but first, I want to do something.

I worked really hard on this LP, and I want to thank everyone that took the time to read it and follow along. The picture above is the castle-menu of Chalphy Castle in the last chapter, showing all my end-game characters. I have a backup savestate of the very beginning of this chapter. If anyone's interested, I'll be glad to zip this savestate and email it to anyone interested, where it can then be used if you use Zsnes to emulate Fire Emblem 4 as well.

If there's enough interest, I might even set up a MegaUpload or something.

Here's the status screens of all my characters, just so you know what's in store:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

For anyone wondering, Leen has the elite ring because I take GREAT PRIDE in having a level 30 dancer.

Also, if you take notice, you'll see that Lakche and Johan are in an incestuous relationship between first cousins. I am not proud of this, as Johan should not be allowed to reproduce at all, let alone with his cousin.

Shanan and Patty are as well, but they're distant enough to not matter. They're a real cute couple too.

[Creamcorn]

What's with Leen's relationship thingy?

[JoshuaFH]

What about it? She's not in a relationship.

[JoshuaFH]

The final chapter:

Julius quickly accepts his father's death, with Manfloying saying that the Crusader Fala's ways ran far too deep in him and he would have turned on Julius eventually anyhow.

Julius then calls in Julia, and they have a short reunion. Julius asks if she remembers him, but she says no, because even though he has the shape of her brother, the day he acquired the Dark Lopt Tome, her brother disappeared, and the only thing left remaining was this powerful, demonic child in his place. She practically raises her voice at him, telling him that whoever he his, that he deprived her of her brother and mother.

Julius then tells her that because she's inherited the power of Narga, that she's his mortal enemy, and therefore must die! Manfloy steps in though, saying that he has one final use for her, and assures him that he'll finish her off later. He agrees, and the scene ends.

At Chalphy Castle:

Levin tells Celice that the final holy war is just starting, and that Julius must be stopped here at all costs. Celice is a little peeved at all of Levin's know-how, and wants to know everything.

Levin then tells us the story of how Bishop Galle, the original incarnation of Loputousu, traveled the world looking for the legendary Ancient Dragon Tribe, for it was told that a mere sip from the blood of one of it's members would grant unimaginable powers. While no record of his journey exists to this day, what's certain is that he did come back from his journey with amazing and incredible powers. Using these powers, he influenced the young minds of his generation, and created the Lopt Sect. The other 12 Holy Crusaders, rather than sipping the blood of a dragon, were holed up in Darna Castle, ready to be stormed and killed by the Lopt Sect's forces. Then, from on high, 12 gods descended from heaven and granted unbelievable powers and the 12 divine weapons to the crusaders, who then went on to defeat Bishop Galle.

This is the most bizarre conversation in the whole game, because while the miracle at Darna Fortress was elaborated on earlier, Bishop Galle's trip around the world to find a never-before-foreshadowed Dragon Tribe just comes out of nowhere. I would have really appreciated a bigger, more detailed explanation that was more involved with the story. I guess the Loputousu lineage had to come from somewhere though...

Alright, now the chapter starts, let's take a look at the map:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

The map had more unusual dimensions than the ones before it, so there's more dark lines and general stitchiness. At the bottom is Chalphy, to the right is Edda, and in the center, the big fancy, kickass castle is Barhara. That's all we really need to know right now.

Surrounding our home castle are eight long range mages, brandishing an equal mix of Fenrirs and Silence staff, threatening our low magic defense guys, and magic users the same. For the purposes of the silence staff, a magic user is anyone that can use a staff or a tome. Things like the return ring don't count.

The advance force, made up of all types of mounted units, is headed by robert, a fairly strong and fast loser with a hero sword. The defense force is made up of Boyce and Rodan, with the largest collection of magic users yet with a few swordfighters and bowfighters thrown into the mix.

Have your ranged and flying units make short work of the mages, and have all your strong speedy units go over to make mincemeat out of robert and his flunkies.

This battle isn't that hard, just be sure to get the first strike and send someone reasonably tough to fight Robert, as he can take out weaker characters.

This is just a warm-up though for the things to come.

Now, Edda Castle is both the hardest Castle and the easiest castle. Why? Find out next time.

[Creamcorn]

What about it? She's not in a relationship.

Doesn't the guy with the misslewhatever, like her?

[JoshuaFH]

What about it? She's not in a relationship.

Doesn't the guy with the misslewhatever, like her?

Canonically, yes, but as far as the gameplay mechanics are concerned, they're not in a relationship.

You see, canon is a fickle thing. There's only a few canon relationships: Levin!Fury, Fin!Lechesis, Lakche!Shanan, Leaf!Nanna, and some others I'm forgetting. Now, none of these are required in-game, but as far as some of the official family trees, and the story in Thracia 776 are concerned, these are canon.

[JoshuaFH]

Alright, to EDDA!

So, now why is Edda the hardest and easiest castle?

Because if you try to tackle it normally, your guys will get ripped to shreds by huge crowd of magic users, meteo users, and sleep staff users. However, if you have Celice go in alone, he will meet practically no resistance. Because he magic defense is so high, the AI won't attack him because they'd wouldn't deal enough damage for it to matter, so he's free to lop off their heads at his leisure. Also, all the sleeps staffs they have won't effect him because in order for that to work at all the enemy has to overcome the opponents magic defense with their magic stat, so Celice is plenty safe.

The only really difficult guy is Boyce, but you can lure him away from the pack and have someone like Faval take care of him.

If by any chance you had anyone walk in a tile too far and wind up sleeped and trapped within the enemy's attack radius, then use a RESCUE staff that one of your staff holder's should've bought. It will teleport them from their current location to a tile that is adjacent to the staff holder.

Like, I'm not even kidding when I say they put up no resistance. They'll just stand there and let Celice hack them to pieces. They won't move, they won't attack, just stand there. Even when they retaliate in combat, they can only deal 1 or 2 points of damage with his 34 magic defense, and any damage he does take is fixed up at the start of my turn thanks to the life ring he has. I have Celice kill them all before tackling the castle, because I seriously have money to spare and I want some more kills on the Tyrfing.

All named characters are peons before Celice!

SILLY TRANSLATORS!... I really should hunt around for a more complete translation someday.

Directly north of Chalphy, at Dozel Castle:

Burian, the man with the most rancorously out of control eye brows in existence, finally launches his Grauen Ritter, Axe Squad basically, and plans to attack both Edda and Chalphy!

Burian himself is part of the team heading towards Chalphy, and he has the Swanchika!

IIRC, Burian is the son of King Dannan (remember that loser?) and brother to Johan and Johalva. He's a tough dude, with an amazing 47 defense and 80 hp. Also very dangerous, seeing as how the Swanchika can be thrown like a throwing axe, AND he has pursuit, which isn't that dangerous actually due to the Swanchika weighing in at a hefty 20 units.

Roughly half of his force are eviscerated by Patty who had been just-so-conveniently waiting nearby. She kills alotta dudes and makes ALOT of money ever so easily due to her high speed making the enemies have a 0% chance to hit, except for Burian himself who goes after Shanan instead, hitting him once and then backing off.

Goddamn Burian and his verbosity!

Burian's super fucking tough though, I had Patty attack him, who could take out one of his lesser lackey's with 2 criticals easily, and she put down FOUR CONSECUTIVE criticals in a single combat, and he still had 8 hp left. Absolutely ridiculous.

Anyway, remember how we had some guys heading towards Edda? Well, just repair up Celice's sword at Edda's blacksmith with whatever money he has, and then go over their to take them on! Like, seriously, he'll have no problem whatsoever, and the Tyrfing needs more death.

Even though he was healed up by one of his portable healers, Burian then gets taken out by Patty with a powerful Moonlight sword + Critical combination, dealing 66 defense ignoring damage. Absolutely love that girl.

While cleaning up the remaining guys, I finally get a screenshot of a LOVE BONUS. Relationships aren't just for making kids, when you have them stand next to eachother, and one of'em attacks somebody, there's a chance that they'll get a LOVE BONUS, where a unit is guaranteed to get a critical, and I believe that they're stats are temporarily boosted. There's a similar SIBLING LOVE BONUS, but that isn't as flashy. Pictured above is a love bonus for Shanan, from Patty.

While they were doing that, I had Celice circle around and tackle the undefended castle by himself. Well, it was defended by some twerp named Daggon, but the game is running a little low on named characters, and so are just using random dark bishops to defend castles at this point.

Now, prepare yourself for another trippy conversation:

Yep, darn that Langbart and his posthumously dragging his grandson into this entire conflict!

Blood rites, Levin?

Wowie! The very foundation for the closest thing I have to a religions is an entire lie! There are no gods, just meddling fucking magic dragon people that popped out of nowhere to spite the guy that the Dragon Tribesman Loputousu gave his power to.

So, basically: Bishop Galle and the original 12 crusaders got their powers from various members of the Ancient Dragon Tribe. The names of the dragons were of those in the lineage menu, Loputousu, Odo, Ulir, etc. They appeared at Darna Fortress, and gave their power and ultimate weapons to them under the guise of gods, and everyone's been fighting over the power ever since.

Exactly WHY they do this is beyond me, seeing as their culture is so far removed from human civilization as for it to not matter at all what happens to them. The only reason I can think of is that they didn't want to be one-upped by Loputousu, so they went out of their way to destroy his handiwork. This is pretty much all the info we get, I really wish that this facet of the story were explained and explored in greater detail.

Levin then goes on to elaborate that Bishop Galle was so goddamn powerful that even the combined efforts of the 11 other crusaders would not be enough without the power of Narga, who was the only other Dragon Tribesman with powers that could match Loputousu. Levin finally gets around to telling Celice that Julia is his sister, and that she's the sole inheritor of Narga's power, and that saving her is ESSENTIAL to defeat Julius.

Wow Levin, thanks for waiting until now to tell me all this. It's not like all this might've come in handy earlier.

Alright, well anyway, Burian's down, but the hard stuff is just around the corner.

My current position:

Till next time!

[Creamcorn]

Clearly his power lies in his eyebrows and not the Swanchik. In fact, it's obvious that the eyebrows are actually a form of parasite that are in a symbiotic existence with its host. Over time, this parasite, known as frutex mente endows its host with supreme abilities of the mind and body. Unfortunately the immune system in the body, specifically the blood barrier of the brain, will begin to attack certain aspects of the frutex mente. The frutex mente will eventually become weaker and thus less prominent in the body, only appearing on the face. That organic compounds that specifically target the brain of the host are of a mostly unknown composition. It is speculated that the compounds contain aluminum.

[Akura]

So, Galle came over to chase the dragon? And here I thought you were never supposed to actually catch the dragon, only constantly chase it through a magical forest.

I think "grauen ritter" translates to "axe knights" in German. Can't confirm on account of Google Translate being the pile of crap that it is.