Parrhesia

Excellen has a story to tell: Old Dutch band, back when nu rock was popular. Everyone agreed they could have had an audience outside of the Netherlands, but their record company was full of dicks. This and their singer's drug habit eventually killed them.

[spoiler=Update 31 - Yoana] "For fuck's sake, Yoana..." I glare behind me. It's Adele, looking studiously innocent. Great. It doesn't matter. The bangaa apprentice is here to keep us on the right path - we're looking for four malboros, even if I can only see one. I didn't think Nathala had violence in her until she proved that she had violence in her. The mission goes poorly from the start. We don't even want these tomato things! What the hell are they doing fighting us!? It's so hard to - blink the darkness out of my eyes, but I don't need to see the foe coming up from my flank. I can smell it. The first of them goes down. The blood oozes and stinks. Meanwhile I am too sluggish and blind and being hurt to be any use. I know what I need to do but my body just isn't up to the task and it is the most frustrating damn thing and it wasn't always like this. rodanu has taken his sweet fucking time Everyone else so slick and efficient... we're all limping, one way or another, but it's not helping me look up to pace. Nathala roasted a couple more malboros, so just... the law is against knockback and rodanu had a counterattack critically hit. ... there he was. Again, the smell. This time, he'll be mine! Though first, the cleanup of these goddamn tomatoes needs to go to plan. But the malboro's next up- I hate Adele. Field clear, in the end. Rodanu's injured, but he'll pull through fine. Yvet... maybe too honest. After the fight, she's similarly blunt about my performance when she thinks I can't hear her. Nathala's kinder. 'She just needs more practice.' What I need is the last three years of my life back. I get stranded with a dull job from what Wolfe with a smirk I don't trust refers to as a 'regular customer'. I should not have asked what the rewards are. Guinness got fired immediately, but there were no other takers. This happened twice. The third time was the charm. Apparently the Head Editor counted out both coins four times to make sure. We catch up with him to the Ruins of Delgantua. Everyone smirks when I make a joke. This is a good sign! Well, things escalate. Quickly. Without our input. So I suppose this is the kind of work that the Clan of Worms does. ow Still, two of the five are immediately brought down by Gren's knives and Nofilia's fire. And I'm all ready to SHIT Still! They run from us! All they can do is run! Occasionally into things! Got it right the second time, at least. Now it's like the old days, again... and this new sword is doing wonders to help. Why aren't our healers as good as this woman? ... Well, maybe not think that in earshot of Nofilia. Yet again, though, we manage to lock them down. It's efficient. I haven't seen a lot of efficient since my arrival... And I'm getting back into my groove. Discovery made in a couple turns - Wolfe gets an opportunity, hastes himself and two guys, I'm like "Oh shit-" because buffs are forbidden but we don't actually break the law! Food for thought, I guess. And despite a bit of irritation that Lawrn stole my mark, the rest were brought down easily enough. Spared, of course. They'd done nothing wrong. I like this tenet. I think I could get used to this line of work. Just... hopefully not left to carry the can the next time the Bonga Bugle comes calling, yeah? Next up on FFTA2: Let's... kick some ice.

If we're counting hacks, then Original Renair & Garath (reminder that the new scripts were released to the public! even if the hack is dead.) are definitely 2nd and 3rd behind Kelik.

elements of the fanbase

No set amounts. I just accept that restaurants are a huge money sink and Cash Will Be Spent. I've never been (probably never will) to a truly bourgeois restaurant, though.

Again, I'll stress that guys like Midir/Alec/Noish/Beo are never going to be spectacular, but the nature of FE4 means that having a B-list of mediocre cavalry is always useful. Growths are bad so it's not like the EXP needs to be shepherded to any greater cause - a normal playthrough IIRC will see most of your units promoted anyway. Jamke is insanely good.

I can guarantee that nobody will ever tell you this. Except maybe sarcastically. And yeah the trainees were a neat idea let down by poor execution. Ross was fine, but I think Amelia and Ewan just come too late to be of use as Tier 0 units.

'hopefully the vocals of this band go over well. it's kind of hard to pick a particular song out of a touche amore album, considering they're best experienced within the context of the album, but their newest album, while having the most cohesive concept overall, it's their best song-wise. ' Well, The Real Disinnocence, I'm fine with them. Sounds strangely familiar for something that's just come out.

I SWEAR TO GOD THIS HAPPENS TO LIKE EVERY SECOND SONG I POST

[spoiler=Update 30 - Torjin] Bunnies, little girls and hack journalists. Call me a traditionalist, but I think we're overqualified for this sort of work. We should be killing more Duelhorn, not fannying about with this! Witnesses have noted that I have generously offered Clan leadership to rip Templeton's head off his shoulders, and yet nobody takes me up on this. It would be a mercy. We actually have to tell him the most popular resolution, which thanks to the two Devotees is 'following hobbies'. Otherwise; "I'm mad. I'm mad at you! You... lazy good-for-nothing!" And we fail. I don't recognise most of the others (Henri sounds familiar?) but the time mage is that guy we met once, Cilawa the Gluttonous. But, fine. Fine. They would waste time on rabbits. Let us at least crush them thoroughly. I volunteered to lead the charge myself. I brought a hand-picked team, built for the long-term. Kyrie, Lawrn and Adele would kill the rabbit without a second thought, and in turn harden the delicate weakness of Nathala and Rodanu. I knew exactly what to do. I strode forward with purpose, flambe on my mind- THAT BASTARD. Fie on the unscrupulous rabbit and its unscrupulous friends, even if Rodanu did briefly earn favour with a brutal strike. It served only to throw the hateful flan at me. Death to everything! The fact that both attendant drakes also stepped on traps immediately was little consolation as neither trap was spiked. Only I, Torjin, get the spiked traps. And besides, the infernal rabbit could call on friends in high places. Friends who immediately assaulted the gentle Nathala. Bastards and treachery everywhere. Every- ! - where! Wait, what's- I come to (again) with the beast dead. Good bloody riddance. If Ursla were here she would offer to make me some sort of hat or cloak from it. Come to think of it... I decide to take the corpse on the journey back for precisely that purpose. Nathala apologises for her work. It is to her credit but she has done nothing wrong. I shake my head, ashamed that I allowed her to come to harm. Bearing harm is my job and duty. Next, we came for the girl. She played the sympathy card. Maybe it would work on others. Maybe it's why she'd not been captured yet. But I heard her out. Nobody can say I did not hear her out. And she will go back to her cell. There were no holds barred, despite the Law asking for clemency. She made her 'friends' sound so harmless and sweet, but we had no choice but to hack them down. Without the Law protecting us, we could not afford to take chances. As Rodanu slew another of her 'friends', I gave her a chance - one final chance to hand herself in. She declined. She took... so much, to bring down. The power of her convictions kept her on unsteady feet, calling down curse after curse upon us. In the end, though, when Rodanu found an opening... he did not hesitate. I apologised. I don't know why. I can respect her drive, her motives... but not her actions. Never her actions. But only after the mist had faded. The moment you feel pity for an enemy in the heat of battle... that's the moment you're finished in this line of work. Next up on FFTA2: ... wait, were crossbows originally going to be in the game?!

Black Sabbath t-shirt from what I think was Dio's last concert tour. Actually I have two of them, I guess I must've taken my father's at some point? A guy I know from a death metal band gave me a shirt for it once and I also have a couple more freebies from bands I've never heard before, shoutout to whoever the Steptones are.

Dijon Mustard thinks 'it's kinda weird that this track samples a dude going "ahh" after drinking a crisp, cool, refreshing Sprite, but what do i know' Either way this rules

[spoiler=Update 29 - Yvet] It's a two-faced job, this mercenary lark. I'm at peace with both of them. Some of it's eradicating creatures. And some of it's the chance to go flower-picking. I'm not sure if Ursla's a flower person, really. I asked Nofilia about it and she made noncommittal sounds at me. Ursla herself is training in what she refers to scornfully as 'lesser archery', tenets of disability rather than murder. But I was allotted a capable strikeforce for the job, and pleasingly allowed the leadership. Unfortunately, someone taught the werewolf how to lay traps. Fortunately, it was only Gren. Our initial assault went well and, when it did stall... Gren, the war criminal, came up with the goods. And I found a flower! But it was weak and ugly, like Rodanu. Ursla wouldn't like that. Nofi attempted an intricate deep strike but it didn't work flawlessly as she'd like. But it was the difference for us as a werewolf came in to block our path upwards. I could practically feel reality warping with the force of her blow! Though the retaliation is harsh... Still, I'm not about to be upstaged. From there, it was just mopping up. Nofi found the flower, in the end. I considered the scepticism, and picked one for myself, regardless. If they're poisonous, well, Nathala can handle it, I'm sure. We found Syrenead on the way down, trying to meet us on the way up. Syrenead fucking owns. Look at her bourgeoisie equipment. She knows one abillity and that ability is Leap. She had, however, found a friend. I decided that one of the spare kupoppies could go to the sheltered rich kid from Moorabella and hoped that her first action in battle would not be to attempt to shield-bash a wyrm to death. There were no illusions, of course. We were going to do the work here - we knew it, she knew it, the wyrm probably knew it. She probably wasn't expecting us to surround it, cripple it and murder it before she even crested the hill, though. Well, it certainly wasn't 'her first battle', barring a very charitable interpretation. We received a very curious letter from the kupoppy guy upon our return to Moorabella, but there wasn't much time to sit on it. Not just because of the rampaging Mirage Bunny, which would have to be dealt with another day... But there were troubling reports down in Delgantua. We sent a squad down to deal with it. This was Yoana's first fight, but she'd been in plenty of what she always liked to call 'tussles' before. If anything, she seemed oddly familiar with this group. I gave my support to her and Gren and the seeq while the rest of us tried to flank them. The opposition seemed capable, but ordinary. But looks can be deceptive. Still, we had Elm, and he was in fine form. Yoana... has some proving left to do. Still, Gren's knives were felling people one by one. Still, we had them in our pincers. Caul - unable to negotiate the currents - had found a way across the other side, with Elm ripping through their forces at pace. Although they did have that FUCKING ARCHER who kept trying to FUCKING SPIKE US from under the waterfall. With Elm sleeping on the job, Gren - an unlikely star of the night - resorted to throwing money at him to wake him up. Too late for Yoana, though. For all her talk of wet work, she needs sharpening. We won out in the end - no need to be bored by the details, only that we were hit with every debilitation under the sun but they lacked the firepower, with the mage slain, to do anything about it. Elm was fatalistic. Yoana... I'll need a talk with her. We'll get to the bottom of these Duelhorn cowards. Next up on FFTA2: We'll be seeing them again.

Esme reminds us all what time of year it is.

[spoiler=Update 28] Same deal as before - we're going to do all the non-gameplay missions in a block with me narrating since otherwise there's no narrator. We've had this quest for-fucking-ever but the thing is you actually need the flowers which we've not had 'til now. We'll enable this idiot again. Camoa and Graszton. Then to Moorabella... ... where we'll also run into Mack again! We need to get the stuff from him. We'll do this en route at some stage. Then we run back to Moorabella from Targ, cross over the border for these... wait, really? We don't have an ice stone? we're going to dispatch this one. These are honestly my favourite quests. They're just... helping people. That's what the game's about. And that's just so cathartic to me. fuck's sake, marnot. I PREPARED A GIF AND EVERYTHING. COME ON. Cid's theme is playing for some reason. Same thing happens. By the way, Lawrn's done a deal with Satan or something, don't worry about it. It's our mate Mack again! Guinness asks him if he made this on his own again - but you see, Mack has friends and researchers now. He gives us Clear Sap. Pretty much all significant items in this game are conveyed through loot which, as Graszton Seaways Guy found out, I sometimes accidentally turn into swords. We're going to totally annihilate whoever it is. Continuing the weird theme, Adele's theme is playing here. Also this is a Gria hunter. You will now know the real reason for using Wolfe - aesthetics. Good luck with that, love. Okay, so we actually finish this by dispatch. I ran out of time. or. we try to dispatch it, anyway. Mack's probably the second-best nu mou besides Recruitment Guy. lawrn is so hard right now. This update still feels a bit lightweight, so we've got one thing left to do. Then we'll clean out the continent. I feel as though we've picked the most obnoxiously Western team to fight them with, too. Two longbowmen launching sick bodkins, two lizard thugs, Rodanu and his giant sword and helmet, and fucking Lawrn. The Eastwatch all have Japanese names - along with the leader Zengen, the other parivirs are Jinpei and Kojiro, the ninja Gisuke and Hayate and the assassin Saki. But the ninja are garbage - basic swords and leather armour, and when three of the good units do this and let Rodanu, Wolfe and Lawrn all do their thing... I'm not having second thoughts about underestimating the ninja. Okay apparently parivirs have a skill that sometimes instantkills things. But it's fine, Torch does what Torch does and down goes Zengen. By now we've unlocked most of the elemental robes so Lawrn can now heal himself with his own destructive magic at will while also killing things. And then the ninja decides he'll try to help by bringing Lawrn to critical health. Great decision-making. Rodanu then kills the ninja and the surviving parivir kills Lawrn. Saki also has Crit: Quicken, but I trigger it when she's about to go next anyway and then she wastes it not hitting Wolfe, the guy who is notably immune to archery. And then Torch uses the 'spin around and do like double damage to everything nearby' thing he can do, the aptly-named Mow Down. It sets his Evasion to 0 for the rest of the fight, oh no. The other guy's reduced to critical, and Wolfe finishes it. And with that... Oh, right, Adele's been a ninja this whole time. They use weak-damaging occasional-statusing veils from range, they hit people with two swords in melee. Remember that katana we got from the auctions? Yeah it was the Dual Wield katana. ... but Rodanu has finally assumed his almost-final form. Parivirs are glass cannons of melee, like fighters with all the breaks off. Next Up on FFTA2: s i d e q u e s t i n g

Oh, don't worry, it's fine. I don't think that was actually epilepsy warning levels of flashy.

I think it's either 10 or 12, with four locked in. Don't put all your eggs in one basket because that basket might die. What happens if you lose a lord?

I'm not entirely sure what Knight Falchion submitted but it really can't be good for my eyes. Also, our buffer's shrunk to like 4-5 songs again.

So you're asking for a ton of free art and some dull list writing? The OP wasn't quite clear.

To be fair, we've frontloaded the story - we're like, half-done with that already.

[spoiler=Update 27] Alright, alright, I'll throw you guys a bone. God, Templeton, you are literally the last quest before I have that option. The PR is patiently waiting while morons kill each other beneath her. The geomancer - to the left - has a clear run to the PR but their AI doesn't seem too jazzed about it so really we just end up running at each other. All the enemies are named 'Jylland Free Press', by the way. There's turns that run down but I don't know why. Some of them aren't very good at fighting. The geomancer tries to throw the sun at Caul but yeah, this fight's over. oh shit. Nevermind, panic over. Green magi apparently have a Leap spell that increases Move and Jump, she had Critical: Quicken (Quicken means you take the next turn) and Sprint Shoes (+1 move equipment) and, well, she made a break for it. Geomancers look very enlightened as they murder people. This will be an increasingly rare sight as the game goes on. you fucking pillock. Damn right we are. Alright, that's quite enough gameplay. Back to LOOT This... doesn't seem right. Well, I figure maybe it's a gimmick. I conquer Fluorgis! I'm not area champion. Fuck. Apparently you need to paint the map before you can auction for it. Have an airship gif. what the fuck Quadruple A is meant to get you a raptor! turns out that needs a quest. Time to do the Instrument of Inspiration quest we forgot to do at the time! Prima Donna is a K-Pop group and one of the persistent clans. They're all adventurers. Aha, yeah... I'm sure... Mayhew, by contrast, can take care of herself - she's level 18 and has precisely 100 attack and defence. They don't have evasive AI. That would've been a useful Opportunity command! If Ursla and Wolfe weren't next to move. Still, I can't believe I deployed both Rodanu and Gren and neither died. Alright. Now we Clanmates. An- Okay see here's the thing. I've plotted out my unit selection very carefully. There are Three (3) viera in it. So if I accept Stephie I have to play Unit Thunderdome down the line and you know I'm strangely okay with that. The thing with Stephie is that assassins are an impractical pain to get to. If I wanted to make Ursla into an assassin, I'd have to take her into White Mage, get Cure and Cura, then get two Elementalist abilities as well - so like 700ish AP at least, while not actually fielding her since white mage/elementalist growths don't help her. Or I could get one from the start. ... I ditch her, though. Assassins might be one of the best classes in the game but they aren't really fun and I wouldn't be able to do any cool combos. There's plenty of cool classes that are missing out as it is, and I shouldn't favour assassins just because of something as trivial as 'they're good'. Besides, Veis was one. QED. All for this. Don't worry. Yoana will be worth it. Up Next on FFTA2: right so if each quest takes half an hour, how long will 300 quests take

That's not the class, that's the Impervious passive that is tacked on, I'm 95% sure (can doublecheck I guess lol) certain thanks to the Wiki. Impossible to say if it's attached to Nightfall since a bunch of guys in the game have impossible passive abilities ('Good Ideas' Twiegel and his Blood Magic, that one Ribbon moogle, etc)

Eclipse couldn't resist.

Only for the football, and even then four out of five A-League matches end up being illegally streamed since I don't have Foxtel lol

There's a clan privilege that adds Movement, but I'm not going to get it for a while. And I failed it with Red Spring going off correctly!