#if i could choke out my past self to do these assignments so i wont have to make it a problem to myself godddammm

[kosmicprlz]

doodle break but also CATHY PLUSH IS REAL...

[artminion]

My bottle returned! So here is an extremely short bit of writing about Ariadne and Nero, which is the basis for the test comic I was making. It’s filled with the probably the worst grammar you’ve ever seen, but it was just to get a few ideas down.   ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Nero is thoroughly fed up with stairs.

He'd lost count of how many flights he'd descended since he and his masked guide had started working their way to the bottom of this infernal library, but it was in the region of 'too damn many'.  

He didn’t know how many hours had passed since his arrival in the library, chasing a rumour of a place that still connected both the demon and human realms, desperate for even the slimmest chance that he could drag his newly found family from their self imposed exile in the Underworld. That he had even gotten this far was a miracle in itself.

And now he finds himself being guided into the cavernous depths, apparently towards the demonic portal at the libraries deepest floor, by one of the bizarrely masked attendants of this place; assigned to him by the library's equally bizarre Curator.  

She'd said very little so far, answering questions when prompted and little else. It was making Nero long for Nico, and the seemingly constant buzz of noise that followed her. Like tinnitus given human form, and it was still better that than this heavy silence.  

As they descend deeper soft music, almost like a choir, begins to drift up from somewhere below them. The voices are distant and singing in a language Nero has never heard before, an almost discordant melody that has dread settling uncomfortable and heavy in his stomach.

"Hey do you hear that?" he murmurs to Ariadne, a few steps ahead of him. she stops, turning her head to him. She says nothing as she tilts her head to listen, the gleam of the fire lit sconces flickering across her mask as she considers the eerie melody floating up from below.

"We must be nearing another door," she says after a moment, taking a few more steps down as she glances around the tower. "Ah, over there. See the light?" she points down and Nero sees a crack of bright light several flights below them, spilling out on to flat flagstone.

"What the hell's with the singing?" Nero asks, following as she continues down the stairs.  

"It's so we know they're near, it is a requirement of their stay within the library. I believe there were a few accidents before the rule was placed, but that was before my time here."  

"Accidents?" Nero pauses as they reach the landing, "What kind of accidents? What the hell's through that door?"

Ariadne turns to him before reaching the door, the singing is louder now and the dread in the pit of Nero's stomach deepens.

"The deadly kind," she says gravely. "The creatures behind this door emit this light and it does more than simply blind you, therefore you will need to do exactly as I say"

"Damn and here I was looking forward to a break from stairs," Nero shrugs. "What do you need me to do?"

"Nothing difficult, I will guide you through the room but you must keep your head bowed and your eyes shut and covered. The longer we are in their presence the more their song will affect you so we will need to move quickly."

"Right, simple enough. What about you though, how will you see where to go? Nero asks, glancing towards the beam of light pouring from the crack, so bright it seems to cut through the stone it lands on.

"I'll be fine," she says, turning to the door. "The masks protect us from their influence, to a degree. Now cover your eyes please."

"How comforting," Nero drawls, covering his eyes with his hand and bowing his head. "You sure they wont attack us though?" he asks, starting as he feels Ariadne take his hand. Her fingers are like ice.

"No, they have never been directly aggressive. At worst they might complain at me for something," Nero almost thinks he hears a smile in her voice as she starts to lead him to the door.

He opens his mouth to question her when Ariadne pulls the door to the rotunda open and all thought flies from his head. Now in the full glare of the light he understands his guide's warnings, even with his eyes covered all he can see is white and he instinctively knows that were they open he would have been instantly blinded. The singing is now a cacophony, too many voices piling together, weighing down on him from every direction, heavy and overbearing on his whole body.  

As Ariadne pulls him through the chamber a thick, dizzying feeling begins to spread from the base of his skull outwards to the tips of his toes. The heavy dread he had felt in the stairwell has his stomach roiling with nausea. The air is dense and clammy and he feels as if a pressure is creeping in at him from all sides, seeping into his skull.

Suddenly the pressure shifts and he feels Ariadne slow to a stop. Reflexively he grasps her hand tighter in a silent plea to keep moving, but she remains still and through the dense haze of his mind he can sense something approaching. The singing shifts slightly, like ripples through oil and one tone sings higher with intonation almost like a question, but he can't make sense of anything he hears. Nero is sure his ears are bleeding. He feels like he’s about to choke on his own tongue.

Somewhere in the dense fog of sound and pressure he thinks he hears Ariadne but all he can focus on is the pressure in his skull, which is quickly become more than he can bear. His legs feel like jelly beneath him, ready to crumble under his own weight at any moment and he has the brief clarity to curse himself for coming here when the singing pitches shrill for one nauseating second, then he loses his grip on his guide and crumbles to the floor. Blinded and lost he fights the urge to retch when the pressure finally lessens and the figure seems to recede. He feels a tight grip on his arm as Ariadne clutches him and brings him too his feet, hauling him as fast as he is able to door he knows is on the opposite side of the chamber.

Only when Ariadne releases him and closes the door with a definite thud does he allow himself to collapse to the stone landing, eyes still shut tight as he vomits onto the flagstones. The song continues, now mercifully distant and as he sits back he feels the guide push what can only be a water bottle into his hand. As he washes out his mouth and takes several gulps he slowly opens his eyes , still squinting from the light that's been burned into the back of his retinas. Ariadne is squatting in front of him, head tilted to one side, and he blearily notices blood dripping in a long trail from where her nose hides and past her lips, hitched into the most minute of smirks. Not totally unaffected then.

"What the hell was that?" Nero croaks, throat hoarse. He takes another sip. “What were those things?"

Ariadne swipes at the trickle of blood and gets to her feet, glancing around to get her bearings. "That's a good question. The Curator tells us they're a class of demon that have lived here for centuries, but many of the attendants have got this notion that they are angels."

"Angels, huh? What do you think?" he asks, squinting at her from the floor.

Ariadne turns to him; eyes, as always, unreadable beneath her mask, mouth back to its regular neutrality. "I don't believe in angels." she scoffs.

"Yeah," Nero murmurs, glancing away, "neither do I."

Nero can feel her eyes on him, but she says nothing. After a moment her footsteps tap towards where he's still sat and Nero looks up to find her arm outstretched to him. He takes the proffered hand and Ariadne hauls him to his feet, still peering at him from the inscrutable depths of her mask "Let's press on, it's still some distance to the portal."

Nero dusts himself of, taking one last swig of water. "Right, no time to waste." Tucking the bottle in his coat, he looks to his companion. "Hey, one of things came up to you in there right? What did it want?"

"Oh, nothing really. It had a complaint"

[clanmccrackengaming]

Chapter 5

In this chapter you learn that a disinherited son of a noble house has stolen a Hero’s Relic and you are tasked with getting it back.

Before setting off for the first week, Byleth hit level 10 in the previous chapter and is now ready for an Intermediate class. I’ve elected to go with Thief.

Not only did I pass, but the minimum speed stat for a thief is apparently 11, and since I had a lower speed then the minimum it automatically boosted me to the proper level, It helps to offset all those terrible level ups I’ve been getting.

Week 1: Explore

Starting off with my usual explore phase ritual, I watch all the new supports I’ve unlocked, Go around and collect all of the quests and blue items scattered around the grounds. I check the garden, Asked Petra to join me this month again, asked her to tea, did choir practice, ate a meal with Petra and Lysithea, and ate another with Hilda and Lorenz. All in all nothing spectacular, accept for one minor detail…

AHHHHHH GHOST IGNATZ!?

Well to be perfectly honest when you lose a character this early in the game they are not technically ���dead’ they just get injured and retire from combat. Apparently they still show up at the monastery, but you cant interact with them in a meaningful way. You cant give them gifts, or return their lost items. You cant invite them to meals, or observe their supports. Soooo, I’m still going to treat him as dead. This apparition is a lingering fragment of his being put here to make me feel bad for not protecting him better.

Week 2: Battle

In the second week, I chose to battle. I only have 1 action point for this phase, and I have 2 quests that need to be finished. Clearing the Way is a quests that unlocks additional merchants, and Maintaining Your Training doesn’t unlock anything meaningful. Try to guess which one I picked.

This map is the exact same map we’ve run a couple times all ready. They used it for that one fog battle. Strategy wasn’t anything special but here are the highlights

The level ups were nothing spectacular, but they were better than nothing. Byleth was the MVP

Week 3: Explore

Happy Birthyday, Leonie

Exploring again, 5 AP.

Trained Swords with Catherine, and Rhea. Choir practice then a meal with Leonie and Ingrid, and a second with Lorenz and Hilda.

  Assignment

Before starting the assignment Petra asked to join my house as a full member.

I accepted, obviously

With the assignment started, we tracked the bandits the stole the relic to an old tower in the Kingdom Territory.

This mission is unique in that there are several reinforcements that appear through out the map. Some of them will ambush you, and attack you the turn they appear. To make matters even worse, the ambushers also have Pass, meaning they can team up on your weakest members and there is generally little you can do about it. So we need to move forward with that in mind.

To help augment our forces Lady Rhea sent a knight with us. Gilbert is a Fortress Knight, and because of that carries a massive shield and axe. He is meant to be a tank of sorts.

For this I really wish I had a capture card so I could have recorded it. I’ll try to go into the strategy I used, but it is a little difficult only having screen shots.

Derp

You start off at the bottom of the map in a checker pattern. There are 3 units to the east in your immediate way: 2 to the north east and 1 on the other side of the wall in front of a treasure chest. Before you start clearing out units though, make sure you turn on the enemy danger areas. Specifically turn on the red markers for the 4 archers in the center of the map. This is important because if you (Or Gilbert) stop moving within range of one of those archers, not only will they hurt you, they will also aggro every other unit on the map to get to you. It cost me 2 Divine pulse to learn this lesson.

Do NOT stop within range of any of these archers.

My first goal was to clear out the three in front of me and bunch my self in the hallway so as to create a choke point for the first two waves of reinforcements.

By the time the first wave arrives you want to have your formation looking something like this. Put your tanks in the bottom row, pack in your mages in the second row, and your long range archers in the third row. This will make the enemies take on your tough units first instead of running though you and hitting the back rows. Strike with the achers/mages first where there is no retaliation, finish injured units off with your melee when you can kill them off without a counterattack happening. Damage the mages with high resistance units and finish them off in the same manor.

Once you move into this formation the first wave will appear and attack. If you did it quick enough, Gilbert will take the brunt of their attack. This is what you want. Sad as it may sound, you want Gilbert retreating from this battle. If he survives it he WILL aggro the archers on the hill. It’s just the way his programming works. You cant control him, and the only way to prevent him from stopping in one of those squares is to stand in them yourself, which defeats the entire purpose.

In my run Gilbert did not survive the first wave, but he did get a lucky crit and took one of them out for me.

Clearing out the initial 3 units, and the 3 remaining units of the first wave netted me the following levels

Lysithea, you are my most deadly unit, but if you keep up these levels you wont be for long.

Close up of the formation

Take the time to heal up. When you are ready, move one unit to this square to spawn the second wave

When the second wave spawns, take it the same way you took the first one. Clear out the second wave and use the key your found (or a thief) to open the chest for an Armorslayer sword. It will come in handy later.

The second wave got me these levels.

A solid level

  After clearing out the second wave I pushed forward. There was a lone mage sitting in the middle of the hallway, I baited her out with Marianne who had the best Res in the army. She was able to tank her attacks without taking a single point of damage, your mileage may vary on that. Note: The healer on top of the hill did heal this mage, and I was afraid it would agro the entire hill, but that wasn’t the case. Once we killed the mage the healer did run around the hill towards me, but he didn’t bring anyone else with him. You can start setting up for the next ambush point while you wait for him to make it to you.

Setting up in this formation is perfectly safe, the ambush will not happen until someone from the formation steps beyond this first pillar,  so watch that you don’t step past it until you are ready to engage.

Once you do engage, 2 thieves will jump out of the wall to the east and one mage will approach from the west. The mage is too far to be a threat at this point, but if you followed my formation above and moves the entire formation 1 square west to spawn the ambush then the thieves will attack your two rightmost units. In my case this was Claude and Byleth. Each thief got off one attach, ate the counter attack of both, then I was able to pick apart the ambushers. Gaining me the following:

Marianne, come on 😦

I am not sure what specifically triggered the second wave from this spot, but it involved 2 more thieves from the exact same spot without anyone having to move. At this point the mage from the west caught up to me so I had 3 units to deal with. Clearing them out got me the following levels:

Once you get past this part the rest of the level up to the boss is pretty straight forward. Just take your time, take it one mob at a time, and if you can help it do not take any damage on the player turn. Move the rest of your army forward and progress.

From this point to the boss I gained the following levels:

Not off to a great start, Petra 😦

Marianne, no.

See, this is what the rest of you should be aiming for. Good job, Leonie

Leonie took out Michlan with this shot, AND she got a superior level up

With Leonie’s arrow Michlan was defeated, but he wasn’t quite ready to let defeat claim him. He attempted to use the Hero’s Relic he has stolen, but because he didn’t possess a crest of any kind it transformed him into a giant beast.

Using the last remaining gambits, I was able to break all four of his shield plates, which rewarded me with 5 umbral steels. I also got one of his health bars down.

Byleth was able to take a second of his health bard with a crit with the Sword of the Creator

Lorenz finished the beast off with a well placed Fire Spell

46 turns? If felt like it took a lot more than that.

I went extremely slowly in this run. I basically walked around the entire arena in formation being careful of additional ambushes. I only ran into the 4 total waves, I dont know if there are others that I didn’t trigger, but even going as slow as I did I only used a bit over half of the total turns available to me.

Take it slow and you can get through this without losing anyone.

Overview

Byleth +3 Levels: +3HP, +1Str, +1Mag, +1Dex, +2Spd, +1Lck, +1Res, +2Cha

Claude +3 Levels: +2HP, +1Mag, +2Spd, +2Lck, +1Def, +3Cha

Marianne +3 Levels: +1Str, +1Dex, +3Res, +2Cha

Hilda +3 Levels: +2HP, +1Str, +1Dex, +1Spd, +1Lck, +3Cha

Lorenz +4 Levels: +1HP, +1Str, +3Mag, +4Dex, +2Spd, +2Def, +3Res, +2Cha

Lysithea +2 Levels: +1Str, +1Dex, +2Spd, +1Res, +1Cha

Leonie +3 Levels: +2HP, +2Str, +1Mag, +2Dex, +3Spd, +1Lck, +2Def, +2Cha

Raphael +2 Levels: +1HP, +1Str, +1Mag, +1Dex, +1Lck, +1Def

Petra +1 Levels: +1Spd, +1Cha

Gilbert: Retreated (Fatal)

Total number of levels gained: 70

Total number of unsatisfactory levels ( >= 2 Stat ups): 22

Total number of null levels (0 Stat ups): 0

Remembering the Fallen

    FE Golden Deer Maddening: Chapter 5 Chapter 5 In this chapter you learn that a disinherited son of a noble house has stolen a Hero's Relic and you are tasked with getting it back.