Final Fantasy VI - Day 16 (In which Mash wears the mage pants... and I'm still Lortab Land)

Alright, so when we left off there were lemurs. Lemurs EVERYWHERE! In the game though, I was wandering around confused and trying to learn magic. Let me give you a quick recap of the last ten hours or more of play... I'm not even kidding. I ran around the Vedlt and taught Gau a shit load of new rages. I wandered back to the island with the invisible monsters and taught everyone everything forever, which worked out pretty well, since the Intangirs give ten AP or LP or PP or whatever it is in this game, and no XP, so I could teach everyone everything without worrying about wasting levels where I could be giving them the boosts the magicites have. Once I accomplished this task I started wandering around not only to level, but to try to find a plot hook. In my travels, I wandered into the auction house and picked up new magicite. How did I know it was magicite? Because they plunked the rocks down on the stage. I also checked a few towns, and saw a shady guy wandering around in some trees. I talked to him and he wanted money, and at the end of my rope, I paid him in the hopes that he would fork out the plot hook. Instead he forked out a materia, which teaches things at ridiculous rate... of course I don't know WHAT it teaches until I get someone to tell me, at which point I find out it's mostly stuff I've already taught people off a much much slower materia... shit.

Anyway, since I've visited damn near everywhere else, I figure I'll go poke Narshe with a stick and see if I can recruit Mog. Why? Because I can't recruit Relm and Strago, so I might as well see if I can get SOME freaking body. I try to head into town, and I'm met by a Tuscan Raider. Let's see what happens now. If I get punted out of town (Tina's leading my party), then I'm going to go esper and fuck some shit up. Apparently I'm escprted into town for a chat with out good friend, the Cowardly Lion. You remember him, right? I had to travel down a river with him, and he got punted in the face the lat time we were here? Yeah, anya, he talks me to and then nods his head a bunch.. I don't know why. Maybe he's old and nodding off. then for no apparently reason, he feels bad:


Then either the Cowardly Lion or AMAZING FOREHEAD MAN says something, and Tina gets the feel badsies:


Look at that guy's forehead!!!! It's trying to take over the WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOORLD!!! I'm glad Cyan isn't in my party, or else they would create a forehead singularity into which all the other foreheads in the world would be sucked, and everyone's skulls would collapse!

It's still Lortab weekend, in case you were wonering.

Wait... Tina felt bad for like ten or twenty seconds and... and Mash DIDN'T pose! He didn't even MOVE! Is he... is he dead? Has he been replaced by one of the Flan goo babies? Is he a pod person? There was another pause in action and he STILL didn't pose, and then there was a fade out, and STILL no posing! My god... he really IS dead, isn't he? Noooooooooooooo! Who will make declarations and take ridiculous stances at inappropriate moments?! We will now have moment of silence for our dear departed Mash, in which we shall remember the good times...










Alright, now that that's over, let's find some better goddamn weapons up in this bitch. I'm low on tents too. I got a new weapon for Tina, and a few new hats, but that's it, really. I poke around people's houses until I see a wolfman and watch him ninja through a wall. From all of the text, i assume tht I should chase him. I do so, get lost in the mines, and then end up on Tritoch's cliff... and Tina's worried now, because the dear frozen lizard keeps having nonconsenual intercourse with her brain. Anyway, the wolfman has taken a moogle hostage, and when I try to walk up, he says something. My party backs up and I wait to see what happens, at which point the moogle wakes up, spins, and then he and the wolfman are knocked to opposite sides of the cliff.


I don't know what it says on screen, but I'm pretty sure it's telling me I can only save one... which is stupid since there are actually THREE people following me, but whatever. In this case, I believe that I'll do the right thing and save the moogle... because I can recruit either him, or at the very least one of his group later, and the wolfman can sit on it and spin for all I give a damn.

On a somewhat more interesting and less moral note:


Tritich seems to have lost the upper part of his body. Well, frostbite will do that to you I suppose. Anyway, back on topic, I grab the moogle and pull him to safety... and when he thanks me, Tina has a seizure. Apparently being an esper gaver her epilespsy. Or would that be esperlepsy?

... I'm sorry. I'll go to my room now.

Bad puns aside, the moogle flaps his arms and waves his pompom before freeze-framing:


This is not, in fact the Moogle of Exposition, but Mr. Dancey Pants himself:

... this is where the picture of his name would go if I hadn't COMPLETELY forgotten to take it. I'm sorry. I'll get a picture in a minute or so. In the meantime, the wolfman falls off the cliff, and the moogle and Tina wander over to look at the pitiful splat that lands at the base of the mountain. Nice guys. Anyway the moogle scrapers, and I sincerely hope he went somewhere useful... like the airship and not, say, back to the caves for me to play Find the One Moogle That Looks Like the Other Twenty Moogles. Back to the airship to check.

As it turns out, he IS in my airship. Who is in my airship, you might ask:



You damn right. Well now that I have a whole new character, guess what it's time for! That's right, level grinding! Mog is actually level thirty-four, which puts him about four levels higher than everyone, but I need to teach him magic, and I think I need to teach him dances too. So moogle away!

And we're back! Mog knows everything everyone else knows, expet one spell that learns at a bals slow rate, and I don't care about, Now I have to wonder, with Gau still at level twenty-eight, while everyone else, other than Mog, is level thirty, if I should make a Gau-only party and head out to level him. The answer is no, NO! What the fuck, am I STUPID?! ONE character that I can't even CONRTOL, and have NO idea what any of his moves do, and might randomly cast self-destruct? What the FUCK is wrong with me?!

I'll just take a real party out with me and get to work on it. After giving Gau another level, I hope back in my airship and fly around really low, trying to look for places that I haven't visited yet. With my amazing hamster-like memory, this means that I revisit A LOT of place I've already been, finally however, I find this tiny place:


Which I'm willing to best I haven't visited before. Time to poke it with a stick! Side note: I love how TINY the towns are compared to the character sprites. It makes me feel like I'm controlling a race of giants. I take a few steps in, and everyone unstacks and talks a bit, before jumping back in the pile. I head into a house and find... heartbreak:


Why is this heartbreak? Because I can't open the freaking door. I think I'm going to freaking cry! I wander around and try to find another way into the treasure room, but there's nothing. Goddamn it. I get through the COMPLETELY deserted town without... well anything. No battles, no treasue, no anything, I'm just spit out on the bridge behind the town. Well poop. Anyway it seems kinda one way-ish, so I guess I'll just head on forward and see what happens. A cave seems to be what happens, even though there's nothing on the map to indicate its existence. Oh well. There's also a teasure chest, so hooray on that front.

So this seems to be a cave full of undead and dark-type stuff... and Mash has dark-type claws equipped... how do I know? Because he's healing everything he hits. GodDAMN it. To make matters worse, I seems to be locked itno this event, because I can't get back out through that town, and I recently sold off all of his other claws. D'OH! Thankfully Gau and Mr. Dancey Pants seem to be cleaning house, so it's not THAT big of a deal, it seems. I just have to hope none of the enemies hit Mash... Or I could just, you know, take the Black Belt off him... Yeah... Duh.

So anyway I continue through the cave, and come to this:


Insert obligatory comment about the floor being lava here. In any event, the pathways change, which gets me dumped in the lava more times that I can count. And no, I didn't walk into an area full of empty chests, the entirety of my trial and error has been getting those so far. This cave is, like I mentioned, full of undead, and fire-type things, so I'm abusing Blizzara, or Blizzard, I'm not sure, Cure or Cura, and Mog's water dance. How do I know it's a water dance? When he doesn't fall flat on his face, the background turns to an underwater scene. Anyway, about the enemies, we have palette-swapped undead dragon, palette-swapped beefy dark ghost, palette-swapped normal ghost, palette-swapped scorpions, and then these guys:


I don't know if they're a palette swap of something I ran into earlier, but they're frightening looking.

WHAT THE FUCK?! I used my water dance and... Mog summoned a raccoon? Underwater?!


I didn't want to risk losing the picture by unpausing, but the the DICK move is that?! and yes, in case you're wondering, that raccoon popped out, and then generated a tidal wave. Whut?! It also seems to be a tidal wave that, while it hits the enemies, does nothing to them, but heals the party for over a thousand damage. I believe I love the inexplicable racoon. Also in this next area after the moving walkways, you have to switch arond bridges and shit in order to get to treasure chest... I just hope that I don't end up screwing myself here as I run about and willy nilly hit buttons.

... I pulled a switch and a thief fell down... What? He looks a bit more horrifying than his sprite though:


Well Mog wipes the floor with him, and then he says something and then disappeared. What? Well, anyway, that switch seems to be the thief switch, so I'll leave it alone for now. There's a switch over some lava that I would normally leave alone, but the bridge it's on only leads to a dead end, so time to fall into the liquid rock!

Wait... wouldn't it be magma since it's in a cave, and it's only lava when it's above the surface of the Earth? Not sure... Anyway as luck would have it, that switch does NOT dump me in liquid rock, but opens some stairs on that dead end plateau. Awesome. First though, I'm going to go into that door the switch beside the ninja switch opened. And I'm glad I did, because there's a chest and a save point in here. Rocksauce. Which... I guess WOULD be lava, when you think about it...

In any case, I'm going to call it here, because a save point is a good place to stop. Hooray we actually found some plot... probably. I can't promise how together my next posts will be since, obviously, I write this in advance, but I'll do my best! Until next week remember, using Mash primarily as a caster is the WORST possible applicaion for him EVER! See you next weekend!