#and. anyways. rhea doesn't wear much jewelries

[bronzebtch]

i think sometimes rhea forgets she is married or have a very legitimate and intimate tie-in with the taargaryens, up until she realises that there's a chest somewhere filled with jewelries which were given to her upon her wedding (all, in some sort of way, ornated with jewels which would only come from the capitol, with some made from valyrian steel, and ofc a few embed with the insignia of the house), a taargaryen cloak from the ceremony (which were placed upon her shoulders by her husband as per the faith of the seven), her own massive dowry, and maybe a few things she keeps which were gifted to her by aemma.

[fayesdiary]

Faye's Fòdlan Journal: Season 1 - Episode 3: A Mystery Crest and a Mysterier Roster

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Had to cut it short on the last episode, so let's just get to the point.

No promises, Rhea.

By the way, I appreciate the color of the border changing to the one of the house you've chosen to teach. Really nice touch.

Shortly after making our choice, Seteth's younger sister Flayn enters the room. Say hi to her.

She seems nice and well-mannered. I swear though, her in-game hair looks like a piece of candy.

After being dismissed, Byleth goes to meet their new class, who are obviously surprised to learn they're the new professor.

Byleth, interestingly enough, asks to be treated as a friend instead of their professor. Something that really makes me think my idea they really are uncomfortable with their new position at this point. Or at the very least in being in a place of authority. Makes sense, from what we know they've been at Jeralt's side the whole time, so the idea of leading is completely new to them.

The Lions are reluctant to accept their request but eventually relent, since they speak to Dimitri in pretty informal terms and he's their future king. All except Ingrid, who still doesn't feel she could manage not paying the respect she feels owes her superiors. Luckily, Byleth is fine with it.

With Felix proposing a mock battle with Byleth in the future and most of the other students joining in, we bid them farewell for now.

Understatement of the century, buddy.

Two days pass, and we recieve a pitiful sum of 1000 gold for funding our monthly activities. So we have 1500 gold in total.

Granted, we started the game on 4/20 (yes, really) and we're at 4/26 at this point such a low budget for barely a week of teaching is a bit more forgivable but still, there's a good chance the Officers Academy is underfunded on top of being understaffed.

Also, we heard nothing about a salary. Is Byleth even getting paid for this?

Because if not, no wonder Rhea can't find any teachers.

Her management issues aside, today we're meeting with Hanneman, who really wants to see if Byleth has a Crest using a mysterious device we never see on screen. But since Byleth doesn't know about Crests, Hanneman is more than happy to infodump before that.

I mention they're this world's Holy Blood, and they do work pretty similarly to Jugdral: Really powerful, granted by a goddess, passed down through bloodlines.

Hanneman claims Crests have a power beyond mortal understanding, but given I have checked and do things like minor situational boosts that are neat but not that impressive (such as Dimitri's Crest occasionally doubling his weapon's Might)... yeah, I'm afraid I am going to need a citation for that.

If they are super powerful in the narrative, then they are doing a poor job at showing it. Which is weird because between the Holy Blood and the Emblems, this series usually does a good job at demonstrating superhuman powers in gameplay.

The reason Crest Detectors exist at all is because unlike Holy Blood, children of a Crest Bearer are not guaranteed to bear it themselves. Crests can in fact, stay dormant for generations only to reawaken in a random descendant.

Anyway, he believes Byleth has a Crest. We of course know that's the case, because we checked the Status Screen. And given it's listed as a Mystery Crest, this makes his next reaction very understandable.

True to its name, Byleth's Crest is one that has never been seen before, something that immediately sparks Hanneman's curiosity as he begins to investigate straight away.

But no matter what he finds out, it's pretty much a guarantee their Crest will turn out to be the strongest of them all. We're already beginning to see where the story is going with Byleth and it's not promising.

Hell, their Crest is also identical to the effige Sothis wears so, you know. (I am not even going to try and guess what that jewelry is called)

Another thing not promising at all is the ingame cutscenes.

This is my biggest criticism of Engage as well: instead of doing anything interesting with them, they consist of all the characters in it standing around talking and having a few stock animations with the same camera movements every time. And if there are any objects, they will at best be shown with a sprite, which is not even the case for Hanneman's device. As of know, I have no idea what it looks like.

I am a bit more forgiving towards Three Houses is only for its much, much larger scope, but given that most of 3H's criticism I see online has to do with poor pacing and padding, reused content and inconsistent characterization... you kinda have to wonder if having such a big scope was even worth it.

In Engage the ingame cutscenes were saved only due to the voice acting and music. I hope I'll be able to say the same for this game.

These criticisms aside, we leave Hanneman to nerd out over Byleth's Crest.

The next day Rhea introduces us to the Calendar, the defining feature of this game which... looks really daunting. Not gonna lie, my head is starting to spin already.

Luckily for me, we are not going to engage with it this episode. I have a few things I still have to discuss from last episode, after all.

Let me introduce you to the Roster. It's an option on the Monastery Menu which, contrary to its 3DS incarnation, gives us a LOT of insight on every character, even those not from the house you chose.

On top of the gameplay relevant information like stats, items, skills, classes mastered, Combat Arts and Abilities, you also learn some fun extra information such as their personal history, their height and their age.

This is true for every character... except for one.

You see, Byleth's age is missing.

As far as I looked, they are the only character for which this happens.

And if other characters claim them to be a child or around the same age of the students who are around 17 but they're actually not... well, there's only one explanation in this series.

Granted Byleth doesn't have pointy years, but I'm pretty sure not counting Alear who came after Byleth, there may be a few other examples of dragons having regular ears? Half-dragons, at least.

Speculations about Byleth's true nature aside, one thing's for sure: the fact the year of their birth as the child of Jeralt is listed as unkown kinda makes me doubt the claims they're his biological child. Because if that was the case, surely he'd know the year they were born, right?

The other thing that caught my eye was reading Dimitri's personal history.

The Tragedy of Duscur.

We haven't heard this event mentioned in the game proper yet, but the fact Dimitri is listed as the sole survivor and I couldn't find Duscur anywhere on the Fòdlan map (I even checked again)... makes me assume the worst.

It also happened four years before the game's start. Which is also the year Dedue, the only character we know comes from Duscur, swore loyalty to him. At least something good came out of it....?

Oh, and it also means Dimitri got horribly traumatized when he was thirteen. Dear Sothis, no wonder he doesn't want to talk about his past.

Also I'd be very, very suprised if this doesn't come up later during his slippery slope into... whatever his deal in the timeskip is.

In any case, I'm gonna end this short episode here. Next time, we will start our first proper day on the job.

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