Trails in the Sky #16 - "It Has a Tendency to...Fireball"

RECAP: What Makes The “Dark Thingy of Impending DOOM” Tick?

After acquainting themselves with the city of Zeiss, Joshua and Estelle visit the local guild branch to

begin earning their next recommendation. Inside, they meet the diligent, calculating, and not-at-all-telepathic branch manager Kilika. She saves me the bracers everyone a lot of time by relaying that Jean already told her everything about their last job, and advises the pair to continue researching the Black Orbment by asking the factory chief for assistance. Estelle remains unconvinced that Kilika is not, in fact, a psychic, but nevertheless, the bracers backtrack up the escalator to the Zeiss factory.

The narrator is still the secret best character in the game

On the second floor of the advanced facility, the pair meet Factory Chief Murdock who looks suspiciously like Mayor Dalmore with a cheap moustache, after a quick examination, discerns that the black orbment is prototype orbment for some sort of weapon. He also notes that the orbment does not contain any seams, raising the eloquent and deeply intellectual question: “how the hell was this thing made?” Fortunately, Murdock knows someone who may be able to come up with the answer and points the Bracers towards the R&D chair Professor Russell who is also a town resident. So after exploring the factory and handling a few odd book-related jobs, the Bracers aimlessly wander around make a sharp beeline for the professor’s home.

Lampshading!

Inside, they find Dr. Wily the eccentric old man working intently at his desk. Estelle attempts to introduce the Bracers, but Professor Russell doesn’t even acknowledge her or Joshua until after (yes AFTER) ordering both of them to assist him in setting up his latest experiment…and making coffee. Apparently he figured they must’ve been particularly obedient interns or something. Tita appears, explaining that she’s the professor’s granddaughter, and attempts to help the bracers get her psycho grandpa’s attention. But alas, she too gets sucked into his tornado of insanity productivity.

Spot on

Estelle and Joshua eventually steal a moment to tell the professor about the Black Orbment. He quickly discerns that the lack of any seams means that they will have to crack it open somehow, but Tita curtails his destructive tendencies by suggesting that they first scan its orbal force so that they know what it is capable of (just so no one’s surprised if it explodes when a saw blade cuts through it).

So the group heads into the professor’s lab and begin the test. However, as soon as it begins the orbment radiates the same black and blue light that it did in the presence of Mayor Dalmore’s artifact. But, rather than merely nullifying the local machinery, the black orbment shuts down every other orbment throughout the entire town, causing a large scale blackout, widespread panic, and much dropped soap. The gang logically stops the test, despite the overgrown child’s Professor Russell’s protests.

Murdock then promptly storms in to chew out Professor Russell for causing a city-wide panic. The professor defends himself with all of the finesse of a three-year old who was caught eating glue. However, he does manage to explain that the black orbment caused the blackout and should be studied more thoroughly.

The next day, Estelle and Joshua awake in the Russell household. Tita walks in to set Estelle’s stomach at ease with news of breakfast, and invite the bracers to stop by the professor’s laboratory to continue their investigation of the orbment. The pair agrees, however, after their hearty breakfast Joshua reminds Estelle that they should report their current findings back to the guild before proceeding. After a short walk through a panic stricken town and seeing some familiar faces, the bracers return to Kilika who more or less gives them a green light to continue spreading fear throughout the city their purposeful work.

A hop, skip, and a jump later, the bracers arrive at the professor’s laboratory to find a very imposing electric saw on a table adjacent to the black orbment. Before anyone can speculate, Professor Russell explains that he can’t cut open the Dark Thingy of Impending Doom™ because the saw is powered by orbal energy; every time he turns on the saw blade and brings it near the orbment, the anti-orbment effect activates (on a much smaller scale) turning off the saw. Simply put: in order to open the orbment they need to rely on something other than orbal power.

I - have nothing more to add...

The three intelligent people in the room all hit a creative wall at this predicament, but never one for practical or sensible thinking, Estelle comes up with the perfect(-ish) idea to open it with fire. Joshua immediately points out that doing so would fry the internal contents of the orbment as well, defeating the purpose of opening it in the first place, but who cares what that negative Ned thinks Professor Russell builds on Estelle’s idea and suggests that they use a combustion engine to power the saw. As such, he ask- orders the bracers to gather some gasoline and an engine in two disparate parts of the factory.

The gang retrieves the gasoline (surprisingly) without incident, but they learn via an orbal computer that the engine is in the hands of Maintenance Chief Gustav who is out at the Zeiss airstrip. After a bit more scuttling about town, the bracers arrive at the strip and ask the concierge where the maintenance chief is. Unfortunately, he left town three days ago to work on some emergency repairs for the Royal Army near Lake Valleria, i.e. really freaking far away. But, before the teens can sell their souls to become Russell’s assistants, an airship conveniently arrives carrying none other than the maintenance chief himself.

Which is why no one in there right minds would ever
use oil as a primary energy source......wait

The bracers initially leap at their bewilderingly good fortune, however after Gustav explains that he happened to have departed specifically to pick up the combustion engine, Joshua hypothesizes that luck had nothing to do with these events. But, rather than spend time vocally speculating, the bracers return to Professor Russell with their mission accomplished. Without further delay the professor puts the saw to work on the black orbment and after a couple of minutes……………………………………the saw leaves a small scratch on the orbment.

Estelle (and everyone, really) is understandably underwhelmed. But, ever the optimist, the professor reminds her that they did make an impact on it and now know with certainty that they can open the orbment (though at the cost of several dozen saw blades and a metallurgist’s tears). Before they can ruin the next blade however, Chief Murdock waltzes in to crush everyone’s spirits to tell the professor that he needs to perform some repairs on a hotel spa since it runs on old orbal tech that the young orbal engineers couldn’t be arsed to learn about. The professor grumbles. Everyone complains.

But, little Tita saves the day by offering to perform the repairs in her grandfather’s stead so that he can continue to work on the orbment. The bracers then back her up by agreeing to escort her. With that business sorted, the gang exits through the south gate, travels across some monster-laden fields (fulfilling a few bracer contracts, for good measure), and arrives at the town of Elmo.

“Less With The Sweet and Awesome, More With the Stabby-Hurty”

And once again, the NPCs are a comedy gold mine

Just like in entry #9 it looks like a lot happened because there was no fighting in this session. I was expecting this to make for a difficult recap, but surprisingly found that I could remember damn near every detail, despite writing this several days after playing. Perhaps making this journal is simply improving my memory, but I think this rather has to do with how absurdly logical the game’s plot is. I know, this isn’t a new observation, but consciously recognizing this helped me pinpoint why this game feels like an interactive mystery novel with a few fistfuls of humor slathered across the pages.

And speaking of investigation, I suppose I’ll have to eat my words because we’ve learned a surprising amount about the black orbment well before the end of the chapter, despite our inability to open it. The anti-orbment capabilities are apparently much stronger than initially presented. In conjunction with the in-game speculation that it was probably a weapon prototype of some description, I’m assuming this is going to be deployed as some sort of EMP by an invading military force, though since we still have no idea where Cassius got the thing, I can’t say who the invaders are going to be.

Actually, I lied. That’s not the only reason why I’m unsure. One of the books I read for the bonus post was on the Hundred Days War. Inside, the author mentioned that the war between Liberl and Erebonia began under false pretenses by the Erebonians, and that the only way Liberl could repel the empire’s blitzkrieg was to deploy (at the time) extremely advanced airships (developed in Zeiss, coincidentally). So basically, the Liberl Kingdom is more technologically advanced than Erebonia, and is currently undergoing much military preparation as evidenced by Gustav’s comments and Kloe’s suspicious activity in the previous chapter. The one gaping hole in this theory is that the brightest minds of Zeiss apparently know nothing about the black orbment, which leads me to believe that this was either some sort of military concoction or some pilfered tech from the Erebonians which– OH MY GAWD IT ALL MAKES SENSE!!!

It's all a little too coincidental for my tastes

The Erebonians developed the anti-orbment technology as a countermeasure against the superior orbal tech of Liberl in order to successfully crush them in the upcoming war. The Royal Army caught wind that new tech was in development at Erebonia, so they sent Cassius to gather intelligence. He discovered the black orbment and sent it off to Professor Russell to crack its tech. However, Cassius or someone in the military must have recently learned of the overarching Erebonian plan to neutralize the orbal tech, so they’ve been trying to reverse engineer their tech to run on combustion technology which is why they needed maintenance chief Gustav and the combustion engine a few days prior to Estelle and Joshua’s arrival in Zeiss. That’s all speculation of course, but considering how logical the game’s plot is, I don’t think it’s too far off the mark. Only time will tell.

Fortunately, the reading is always dripping with character

It’s worth pointing out though that the entire theory outlined above is predicated on the optional in-game pieces of literature, once again demonstrating that reading in this game is actually pretty helpful. And speaking of reading, I did a few side quests this session and one of them concerned finding books for a lazy librarian. Naturally, I read all of the books I found. Two of them were purely for entertainment (I hope), but the third one gave me a new in-game recipe that could help me later down the road (in addition to being funny). So, not only is there a narrative incentive for reading, but occasionally a tangible incentive as well, which is again, extremely impressive for a game made for the Sega Saturn.

That’s about everything that interested me for this session, though there’s a bit more that I’m holding off on until I have more info. However, during my trek across the field I found a few treasure chests that were, and always will be, deliciously snarky.

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