[NSFW] Final Fantasy RPGcast – Part 3: The Lost Chapter

Story Navigation: | Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 |

Following a combat-heavy excursion across the continent, Michael “PANC the Fighter” Ridgaway, Michael “ALPH the Red Mage” Gray, Joseph “JOEV the White Mage” Martin, and Anna “LITA the Black Mage” Bryniarski arrive at the Temple of Fiends, where their princess is definitely being held hostage, assuming Garland is a total fool and didn’t move her to somewhere less obvious.

Here’s what you can expect to hear in this part of the adventure:

• Nothing

That’s right! We had a critical error with the podcast audio and accidentally recorded two glorious hours of silence. Fortunately, nothing important happened. Still, that’s a sizable chunk of your life that you were planning to dedicate to us…it’d be a shame to let that go to waste so you can go do homework or something. That’s why we’ve prepared a special treat for you.

What follows is a series of excerpts that capture the essence of this lost chapter of the adventurers’ quest for a complimentary pancake brunch.

From the “Temple of Fiends” entry in the Conerian Guide to Places You’ll Never Want to Visit, Second-Person Edition:

A flight of stairs takes you down into a small, rectangular vestibule with a pair of tall white marble pillars marking the entryway into the main part of the temple. The interior of the temple seems to have held up much better than the exterior, almost as though someone has been actively restoring and redecorating everything for the last few hundred—if not thousand—years. It’s not in perfect shape—the pillars are chipped and cracked in several places; the gray tile underfoot is well-worn; the ceiling is crumbling in places and occasionally showers you lightly with stone powder; and the ornate stonework of the walls is occasionally marked by signs of possibly ancient battles (blast marks and bloodstains, specifically)—but it still looks better than anybody’s house back in Melmond.

Stepping out of the vestibule through the space between the pillars, you find yourselves at an intersection. A narrow hallway proceeds to the east and west, curving slightly to the south and out of sight after a few paces. Two more pairs of pillars form a sort of path to the north, ending in a set of pale stone double doors with some sort of abstract carvings decorating them. It looks like there are wide, open rooms on either side of the doors, beyond the pillars that form the pathway to the doors.

From the notebook of LITA the Black Mage:

After staying at the inn in Coneria, our small group walked back to the Temple of Fiends…or Friends…whatever. When we entered the temple we found another group of dead adventurers, one of whom was a black mage. That made me a tad nervous, but we pressed on. As we explored the eastern part of the temple, we were attacked by dancing Zombies. They seemed to just want to dance, but I guess we had interrupted them and they were angry. We didn’t even hear them coming, so I don’t think there was a reason to attack us.

[Historian’s note: Dancing Zombies are by no means a rarity in this part of the world. When reanimated with the proper magic, the undead can be quite graceful, opting to glide and whirl across the ground to maximize the whooshy effect of the tattered clothes they wear.]

After we defeated the dancing Zombies, we went ahead a little further to find a treasure room. PANC walked in ahead to get to the treasure first. All of a sudden Gargoyles came from the ceiling to attack us. We all decided to take one each and attack it. The battle took much longer than it should have, but we defeated them. The treasure was a Rune Sword, which was given to PANC. I received his Silver Knife, which allowed me to do more than two damage per turn.

[Historian’s note: Evidence suggests that the treasure room referenced here was once locked by the mysterious KEY, yet the door was left unlocked and slighly ajar when the adventurers arrived, not unlike the doors to the treasury in Coneria. A few bartenders who’ve heard this story firsthand corroborate an additional detail, that the Gargoyles eventually resorted to lifting the treasure chest off the ground and swinging it at the adventurers when they grew tired of merely clawing and biting their opponents.]

Deciding we needed to heal again in Coneria we left the Temple of Maybe Good or Bad Beings. We came across two Bones before we left, and they went down much quicker than the Gargoyles. We ran through the forest back to Coneria. We stayed at the inn again and went shopping the next morning. PANC was approached by a small boy while we decided where to go. The boy told him that he was from Pravoka—our Fighter’s place of origin. PANC somehow became convinced that this child was a spy.

[Historian’s note: Eyewitnesses confirm that the boy announced to PANC that his home was Pravoka, a beautiful port city far east of there, which was promptly met with suspicion. “What part of Pravoka?” inquired PANC. “The…um…Pravokan part,” responded the boy. This answer was apparently unsatisfactory to PANC, as an argument ensued about there being distinctly different parts of Pravoka, such as the upper right corner. Accusations of espionage were promptly leveled at the boy.]

I lost track of the entire conversation, but saw him throw the child into the well. We got a guard to lower a rope down into the well and pulled out the boy…along with several others who looked just like him. It was very strange. After that whole incident, we went shopping. ALPH finally got a few spells, JOEV learned FOG, and I learned the FIRE spell.

From the diary of ALPH, the Red Mage:

Last night, I dreamed about going to high school here in Coneria. It wasn’t a very large class; four or five students, at most. Sally Mae was the prettiest girl in the class, and after two weeks of mental preparation, I asked her to go to prom with me.

She said no.

She went to prom with a man named JOEV, instead. It’s not the same JOEV that I’m adventuring with, but I still give him a hard time. The truth is, I don’t hate him. I’m actually secretly jealous of him. His cool haircut, the way he saunters into battle without any decent armor, the way he yodels when he thinks no one else is listening…

We spent the day fighting enemies in the Temple of Fiends, then we returned to my hometown of Corneria. I purchased a CURE spell, so I could heal people just like JOEV does. I thought maybe, just maybe, if I used healing magic, some of JOEV’s greatness would rub off on me.

It’s been years since high school. Sally Mae grew up to be the Princess of Coneria, and now I’m on a mission to save her. I hope the mission is successful, but I can’t help but wonder…

… When all is said and done, will I finally be the Princess’ hero, or will she once again ignore me for a man named JOEV?

From the journal of JOEV the White Mage:

You know, being on an adventure, one would think that one would feel particularly adventurous. Yet I still seem like an outcast among the group. I felt I really shared something with these guys at first in our love of pancakes, but it seems my outshined skills in the field of battle are separating me from the group. PANC routinely sets me up to get hurt, like when we found that door that led to the Gargoyle chamber. Nevermind that HE could probably take on anything himself, but he seems to get some sick pleasure from almost killing me. Heck, when he doesn’t pay attention in battles he’ll often lunge toward me like he thinks I’m an enemy or like he forgot to think about what he was going to attack and just went for it.

ALPH doesn’t say much, but he’s always giving me these glares, like he blames me for something.

But yeah, in battle, things haven’t been going so well. Those Gargoyles I mentioned earlier? Everyone kept attacking different ones instead of focusing on one. And of course I can’t even do enough damage to make a difference so it barely even matters if I hit anything. Perhaps we would have been more successful if ALPH hadn’t spent half the time glaring at me, muttering about some grill or something.

Of course we ran into Zombies and Bones along the way and we had to head back to town since I had spent all my magic healing these haphazard blokes. But of course, the next morning after sleeping in the inn, we can’t buy anything because PANC convinced himself that this kid was a spy because he doesn’t remember what part of Pravoka he lived in. The kid was like 5! He probably was too young to remember. Never mind that, though, let’s just throw the kid down a well. Because that won’t just get us kicked out of the town. We’re lucky we managed to run into a guard who didn’t notice that we had just thrown a child down a well, nor suspect us of throwing down the other children that were already in there. (Don’t even ask, I just roll with it at this point.) After that, LITA helped me drag PANC back to the magic shops so we could get equipped with some better spells, but I didn’t like the way PANC kept glancing back at the well and the people around town.

Hoping he doesn’t get killed before the next entry,

-JOEV

From the personal Twitter account of PANC the Fighter:

“Diaries are for chumps and mages.” – PANC the Fighter

… BUT WAIT!!! THERE’S MORE!!!

fOR THE LOW, LOW—WHoa, caps lock.  ::ahem::  For the low, low price of scrolling down the page a bit more, you’ll find one more surprise: leftover audio from a session that was never intended to go public! Only the best for our listeners.

Actually, the session in question is a completely improvised one-shot campaign to give Joseph “JOEV the White Mage” Martin a little bit of practice with live roleplaying before jumping into the official adventure. Unlike the rest of the RPGcast, the audio from this session has only undergone minimal editing, cinching up overly long pauses and leaving in all of the behind-the-scenes technical discussions that aren’t really meant for an audience. I think I might even burp once.

That adventure begins and concludes here!