The Hands of a Child
When the San d'orian quest line began, we were introduced to a group of children who shared names with (some) familiar faces from our own time. While the focus has definitely been on Excenmille and occasionally Rahal, we've seen all the Young Griffons mature and take steps towards becoming the pivotal characters in San d'oria's history. This final sequence bridges the gap of time, giving players the chance to see the man Excenmille becomes, beyond a simple Ballista NPC.
In the last set of Sandy quests, Excenmille’s journey to adulthood reached its pinnacle as he grasped the reins of the Cardinal Stags following his father’s passing. Not only that, but the amassed armies managed to bury the bodies of Kingslayer Doggvdegg and his brood under the snows of Xarcabard. Things seemingly had reached their conclusion, but the question remained, with the final sequence of nation quests remaining, how would the journey of the Sandy youth wrap up?
Upon arriving in Sandy and speaking with Rongelouts, my concerns began to take form as word reached the capital that a ghost bearing a striking resemblance to the recently deceased Count Aurchiat had been seen amidst the snowstorms of Xarcabard. Rather than letting fear grasp the populace, we’re sent off to discover the truth behind these rumors. After zoning into Xarcabard (S), we were greeted by Bistillot who has somehow managed to get lost wandering about inside the Orcish Warmachine. After running across the zone, we met up with the Cardinal Stags who had rather absurdly set up their camp beneath the shadow of Castle Zvahl. Of course, none of them had a problem with this, ignoring the fact that during the last set of WotG missions, the Shadow Lord had been out for a ginger stroll in these very parts amidst the corpses of Operation Snowstorm -- but I digress... With numerous men lost in the current storm, searching for the truth behind the purported specter, Excenmille enlists our aid to track down his subordinates. After running around Xarc a bit and collecting CSs, we pursued Excenmille to Batallia Downs (S) as he followed the clues left behind after seeing the apparition. Upon arriving, Zogbog revealed himself to be the mastermind behind the charlatan which turned out to be a mannequin controlled by an Orcish puppet-master (not a Pup mind you). Outraged at the sordid use of his father’s likeness, Excenmille charged the Orcish atrocity. This fight is against Menechme, a polearm wielding mannequin. Excenmille helps in the fight, and from what I hear, can super-tank the NM if you need to solo it. When we did it though, we had Inui (Pld), Geki (Mnk), Neri (Rdm), and me (Sch) who all needed the clear, so it was an easy fight. As I was healing, I didn’t focus much on what Excenmille was doing, but with Inui and Geki tanking, I believe we more or less left him to his own devices. With our large numbers, the fight wasn’t really an issue, and Mp only became a problem after 50% when Neri and I started nuking instead of focusing on cures. I don’t recall any 2hr animation, and like I said above, this NM has been reportedly soloed, so it shouldn’t be a problem with adequate preparation.
Unlike us, Zogbog was apparently not gifted with a Pure White Feather, so he’s unable to freely travel between the different eras. His motivation in manipulating Excenmille was to appropriate our feather to remedy this deficit. By taking Excenmille hostage (by using stun -- another NPC using a real spell... something weird is going on here), Zogbog forces us to expose the magical feather. Before he can grasp it in his hands, Rahal appears to interrupt his plans. Excenmille takes the bedlam as a cue to strike back, Shoryuken-ing Zogbog into the maw. However, as it has been a while, the Cavernous Maw decides it’d be a good time to remind us how much it enjoys randomly eating us, and we’re whisked forward in time along with Excenmille and Rahal. Upon awakening, we’re greeted by an Elvaan engineer, Bostillette (who is Bistillot from the past -- how has the fact that there's a girl in the Young Griffons never come up?), who directs us to Jugner Forest to meet up with the remainder of her unit in preparation for an operation against Zogbog. As we cross the forest, Excenmille fills us in on the story of his past and his motivation for fighting the Orcish Horde. His reminiscence is cut short as a figure resembling his father appears to scold him. At the time I didn’t really think about this, but now I find it odd that they reused the same idea twice in concurrent quests... Bostillette returns and reveals that this character is actually her commanding officer Maxcimille. As you’d expect, this is actually the Excenmille of our time who serves the role of supervising Ballista responsibilities in San d’Oria. Ignoring Doc. Brown’s advice, he takes this moment to abduct his younger self for a personal training regime. Eventually we worked our way to Ghelsba Outpost to meet up with the two and discovered that an Elvaan spy had observed a youth with a familiar red sword held captive in Zogbog’s camp. Immediately realizing it must be Rahal, the Excenmilles head deeper into the outpost to confront Zogbog.
When his knowledge of the future failed him, Zogbog planned to return to the present, secure an army of Orcish statues (akin to their Dynamis counterparts), and use technology to crush the San d’Orian army. Our arrival however is before they can be properly tested, and similar to so many Saturday-morning villains, Zogbog orders his developer to deploy them anyway. This BC occurs in Everbloom Hollow. Now, let’s think for a moment... Why would you put a new BC in a zone that limits the number of players that can be present at any one time and is shared with a popular leveling option in the same update that raises the level cap after over five years? Let me put it in more concrete terms. We spent an hour and a half the first night trying to enter the BC. That’s more time than the entire quest sequence prior to that had taken us... Eventually we just called it quits and returned at a later date in hopes that the leveling binge would have decreased a bit -- which it did. Anywhoo, this BC is against the Fangmonger Colossus, one of the larger statue types, and a number of Tombstones. Similar to the Tenzen BC of ole, Zogbog fulfills the role of annoying NPC you can’t attack who randomly spouts out nonsense. He also randomly summons more Tombstones, but is otherwise less of an annoyance than the Taru Trio. Both Excenmille and Maxcimille aid in this fight, and eventually Bostillette shows up in a familiar Orcish Warmachine to aid in the fight. I wasn’t paying enough attention to know if it was based on time or percent, but she’ll randomly show up at some point. This fight has also been reportedly soloed, so enough preparation should make this an easy obstacle to overcome. We used the same setup as the previous quest. Inui was supposed to grab the Tombstones to kite while Geki tanked the Colossus that the NPCs would focus on, but they had other ideas and decided to plow through Inui’s train before going after the Colossus. I dunno if this was because Inui ‘activated’ the mobs, or if they randomly pick a target, but that’s just something to keep in mind. Other than that, it wasn’t too difficult a fight. The Colossus has two major moves, Numbing Glare which gives a weak paralysis (Geki’s para didn’t proc too much as we were too busy with cures at points to deal with it), and Seismostomp. I’m not sure if it’s because I forgot to buff Excenmille and Maxcimille till partway through the BC, and thus we were curing more, or if it resets hate, but when we’d cure following Seismostomp, Neri and I both had trouble managing hate. If it was just me, I’d be more willing to attribute it to incompetence, but Neri knows how to manage hate, so I lean more towards it resetting hate. In any case, even with our difficulty managing hate and Neri and I both kiting Tombstones near the end, we didn’t struggle too much with this BC and even managed to throw out a few nukes to try to steal the kill.
With Zogbog defeated and Rahal rescued, we returned to the Cavernous Maw to return the misplaced youths to their own time. Arriving at the maw, Bostillette rewards us with the Griffon Ring before we reopen the passage to the past. Back in the past, our trio is reunited with the Cardinal Stags who had been left behind, and Excenmille and Rahal reaffirm their friendship. Zogbog, who had managed to escape the destruction of his army, had pursued us to the Cavernous Maw, but the adult Excenmille is there to meet him and finally slays our inept adversary. With this chapter complete, Excenmille swears to launch an offensive against the Orcish homeland to prevent villains like Zogbog from ever returning. Now, I poised this question on BG, but during one of the earlier Sandy CSs, didn’t Zogbog claim that he came to the past to exact revenge on Excenmille for killing his mother? Excenmille blamed Zogbog for killing his own mother, but if that first assumption is correct, then isn’t it Excenmille’s fault that this whole sequence of events is set in motion? An interesting thing to consider as their story draws to a close.
In the closing cutscene, SE provides a glimpse into how the members of the Young Griffons managed to grow into their roles in the present. I’ll admit, at first I was not a fan of the Young Griffons or the Sandy story. Early on, it felt far too much like we were babysitting a group of kids who didn’t truly understand the war around them. However, as the story progressed, they definitely grew on me, and it was nice seeing them mature. That said, I wish there had been more focus on some of the other characters. Almost the entire group plays important roles in various quests around Sandy, so it would have been nice to delve further into those developments rather than focusing so much on Excenmille and then resorting to simple one-line explanations during the final CS. Also, I still feel this final sequence was anticlimactic and only served a purpose of expanding Excenmille’s character in the present. As Sandy is the only nation that really focused on characters who were young during the war (Ajido-Marujido nearly completely disappeared from the Windy quests), a part of me can’t help feeling that in some ways, SE squandered the opportunity with this storyline. Still, it was fun, and provided a good challenge at times, so I can’t complain too much. Two down, one more to go~
“The day the child realizes that all adults are imperfect, he becomes an adolescent; the day he forgives them, he becomes an adult; the day he forgives himself, he becomes wise”