It's been awhile since I did any Fire Emblem, but I am very close to the end! Let's see if I can finish it off...
Chapter 23: Dark Pontifex
Marth and friends travel half the continent north from Macedon to arrive at the Temple of Thabes with the help of Gotoh's powerful Warp magic. (My characters can only use Warp on a single map, why hasn't Gotoh just won this whole thing already? Or is he only good at Warp?)
"Thabes was once an advanced civilization, but only its decay advanced now." Well I guess that's entropy for you?
Somewhere within the temple at the heart of the lifeless streets, Gharnef awaits, and it is up to Marth (and his friends game, come on give Abel some credit) to wrest the magical sword Falchion and his sister Elice from the fiend's grip. Although maybe Elice will pull a Princess Leia and strangle Gharnef before we get there? I can dream I suppose, but I'm not holding out hope.
Alright, I glanced at a walkthrough, and I'm going to need Starlight, so Linde is coming to get her vengeance with the powerful spell we spent so much effort retrieving. The rest of my army is going to be Marth, Cain and Abel, Barst, Caeda, Julian, Athena, Est, Catria, Wolf and Lena. The others are either level 20 and unprompted (and thus an XP drain until I can get the Master's Crests to promote them) or falling behind and just not the core army I've been using all game. Or dead, right... sorry all the dead people.
There are also treasure chests for Julian, and I think there's a Secret Shop so Julian gets the VIP card as well. The other thing this map throws at me is three Gharnefs. All three have Imhulu, and all three have the Falchion... but only one of them is real, and only one Falchion is real. I can do a cheap method of determining the real Gharnef, using the Geosphere item I picked up a while back, which damages every enemy on the map except the real Gharnef. But honestly, I have Linde, and Starlight, so I think I'll try this straight before I resort to that... Saving the game first of course.
Fight!
Gharnef starts off by taunting Marth, saying he's been waiting for Marth to collect powerful weapons and kill off Gharnef's competition.
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| "It was I who allowed the League to know the location of the Legendary Weapons!" |
Gharnef says Marth will do one last favor, and die, but Marth is having none of that.
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| "This is not going to go the way you think!" |
I start off by sending Julian up north along with Caeda for the treasure chests. Caeda will be there in case enemy reinforcements spawn, so Julian doesn't get cut off alone. Everyone else will head straight west towards the first group of enemies including a possible Gharnef. If this is the real Gharnef it will be handy, because the second and third Gharnefs are in the same room at the top of the temple... but I'll leave them for later if I can.
The first trouble I run into is an enemy mage with Swarm, the ten-square range spell, but Cain dodges the attack fortunately.
Malledus interrupts after the first turn to inform Marth that they located the apparatus that gives Gharnef a lot of his power. If we seize the Tower of Thabes atop the temple, we can seal off a lot of Gharnef's power... or we could kill him? Let's go with that. Gharnef is the main villain I've dealt with this game, I want some closure here. Malledus warns we need to defeat Gharnef if we want Falchion back, and I do. But it's interesting that the game allows me to go on without getting the Ultimate Weapon macguffin.
Marth claims first blood for the map, killing an enemy thief on the stairs leading to the Tower of Thabes, and levels up to 22, gaining HP, Strength, Luck and Defense (a solid level for Marth). Catria rushes forward and kills the Swarm mage with her javelin, staying out of Gharnef(?)'s range. Abel kills a second thief.
An enemy mage approaches and attempts to hit Catria with the powerful Bolganone spell, but misses. Catria's javelins kill the mage in response, and Catria achieves level 6, gaining HP and Strength. Another mage attempts to Blizzard Catria, but misses and dies, and a third mage tries Elfire, but again fails to burn my dracoknight, and the javelins see him dead.
Est rushes up the stairs to the tower and eliminates an enemy sniper, and Barst takes out an enemy healer on the same stairs. Linde and Catria prepare to attack Gharnef(?) on my next turn, but Linde does not have the movement to reach him yet. I send the rest of my army up stairs.
Linde is going to have to weather a round of attacks from Gharnef(?) and the remaining mage, because she's ONE MOVEMENT POINT SHY of getting the first strike. Oh well, I think she can survive, she's got a really large Resistance statistic, though not as good as Lena's. In the north, another enemy Swarm Mage moves up to attack my people as they approach the final room. I opt to move everyone out of the Swarm Mage's range except Lena, whose massive 22 Resistance will mean the Swarm Mage's attacks are pointless, until they have no more Swarm spell charges to use...
Gharnef(?) attacks Linde and misses, and turns out to be NOT!Gharnef when her Fire Spell damages him. Linde does take some harm from the Bolganone mage, but Catria avenges the scratch with murder. Linde hits NOT!Gharnef with Starlight anyway, because I have 13 charges of it, but it doesn't finish the imposter. Julian loots a Talisman and Bullion front he chests and begins moving back to the main group. Catria finishes the NOT!Gharnef and goes to level 7, gaining HP, Skill and Defense.
I decide to try and rush my faster units past the Swarm Mage, and a second Swarm Mage reveals themself. One of them hits Wolf for 11 of his 33 HP, but Lena has a Mend Staff to keep him topped up. Enemy reinforcements show up in the form of three mages and a bishop by the tower entrance, and they begin moving towards me. Set reaches the top and kills one of the reinforcements with a javelin.
The swarm mages decide they hate Barst and work on him as I move up, but Lena keeps him alive. The second reinforcement mage attacks Est, misses, and dies to her javelins. Est reaches level 5, gaining HP, Strength, Skill, Speed and Luck. But I forgot there was a sniper, who kills Est. Hmm. Let's restart? I refuse to lose my favorite character in the game.
Also, I think I'm being impatient rushing up so early. I'm not on a time limit, I need to wait for Linde to be there so I can immediately start attacking the Gharnef(?) at the top of the stairs... I also use some of my stat boost items I've been hoarding, raising stats on some of my favorites. I also use the Boots to bump Linde's movement from 6 to 8. I think she's going to be my main mage at this point (Merric is great with his green hair but I feel Linde has more motivation in all this...)
Fight Take Two!
Marth again kills the thief and gets to level 22, gaining HP, Strength, Speed and Defense. I think that's better than last time even...
The battle goes largely the same, although I take more damage, and the first Swarm Mage in the final room moves towards me, which I noticed this time so I try to lure him out so I can murder him before he causes too much harm. Linde feels up to 6 killing NOT!Gharnef, gaining Skill and Luck. Luring the Swarm Mage into range allows Catria to rush in and kill him, leveling to 6 and gaining HP, Skill and Luck.
I plow through the first wave of reinforcements, and the second Swarm Mage in the last room has a terrible time trying to hit Bars on my approach. A second wave of reinforcements teleports in, but they're the same mages and bishops I already dealt with, so I'm not concerned. Especially when they throw themselves against Linde and are summarily slaughtered.
Abel levels up to 6 as we climb the tower, gaining HP, Strength, Skill and Speed. Cain levels up to 6 killing the sniper that got Est last attempt, and gains HP and Strength.
The second Gharnef(?) turns out to be the real one, which I realize when Linde attacks him and gets a dialogue screen.
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| I've heard this before... |
The only thing that could go wrong is if Linde gets killed by one of the physical attackers, or a lucky swarm hit plus Imhulu kills Barst. Which is what happens. Damn. I used a save point this time at least. I wish I could lure that swarm mage out... maybe if I activate him he'll come for me?
Fight Take Two and a Half!
So I'm very patient this time around. I attempt to lure the remaining Swarm Mage down the stairs but no go, so I have to wait for him to use up all 25 castings of Swarm. Which takes awhile because if Barst dodges, the charge is not used up. Linde sits next to Barst and heals him, and we eliminate the reinforcement waves in short order. Since the swarm mage hates Barst so much, I'm able to move everybody else up the stairs, but because I'm using Linde to heal (it's improving her staff rank so she can use better staves as well as being a spectacular damage dealer) I kill the sniper with Cain and then wait until the swarm mage is exhausted. Then Linde lures Gharnef closer to me, so that she hits him with a counterattack before finishing him off on my turn (so he doesn't walk past her and murder Barst again). I can be taught! Maybe, we'll see if this carries over to next game.
So Gharnef dies.
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| "Who would have thought a small amount of liquid would ever fall on meeeee?" |
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| Medeus is a fully armed and operational Dark Dragon Lord! |
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| This makes me question the Fire Emblem cosmology |
Gharnef is defeated at last! And a random soldier tells Marth they found Princess Elice in the Tower of Thabes.
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| Where were the faceless soldiers when I needed them? |
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| I do like these art splashes. |
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| Yay, Marth showing emotion again! |
Elice explains that Gharnef spared her life, and then asks if Marth has heard of the Staff of Aum.
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| Oh, yeah I've totally heard of that! Yes, definitely not hearing about it for the first time right now, certainly. |
Gharnef found it in the Resurrectory (I guess that's where you'd put it...) which apparently is a temple in Dohlr.
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| Lucky for us no women of royal blood have ever been evil or coerced into doing evil things in all the history of Fire Emblem! |
And that's chapter 23! Two chapters to go...
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