Minefield

Clockwork city of Goug

Mustadio’s father had something to show us, he had announced. We’d finally rounded off our last errands when we returned to find the shiny metal ball on the floor of Besrudio’s workshop as he showed it to us – but mostly to Ramza and, of course, his own son who was every bit the tinkerer as he himself was. Perhaps they could make something of it?

We all watched as a clueless Ramza paced around it, pretending to know what he was doing. He achieved in that time to deepen the furrow in Mustadio’s brow, but no more, until —

The ball whirred as Ramza came closer, the stone hidden away safely in his armor resonating with it. But as sudden as it moved, it fell still. Not even the genius engineer could explain what we all witnessed, though a closer inspection yielded to Besrudio an engraving of the sign of Aquarius…

Dragon hunting

There was nothing to do but to continue our quest to find and talk to Delita. The orb in Besrudio’s workshop mystified me during the entire trip. There had been nothing else we could do, but the engraved sign and the fact that it responded to the auracite in Ramza’s posession got me thinking: would we need the Aquarius stone to bring that ball to life?

I stopped at Gollund for a quick drink and picked up some rumours about a haunted mine. Ramza was interested without fail. People needed our help, he said, we needed to go there. It took almost every inch of my oratory skills to convince him to continue on: we had to talk to Delita first, if we would get sidetracked like this, we’d be running circles forever!

Ramza did see the reason in my words, and we pressed on to Lesalia. There, in passing the tavern, Ramza announced a sudden craving for milk. The furrow in Mustadio’s brow grew larger and started to infect some of us. Not that long ago, Ramza sat drinking ale with all of us!

I wished him luck all the same, but decided to wait out this tavern visit. We all did. Not even ten minutes later, Ramza came back out, followed by a man who looked like a templar. Beowulf, he introduced himself, and Ramza explained that he offered to help us. We’d go to Gollund and find what Beowulf said to be a fearsome dragon.

Hadn’t I just convinced him not to go follow that half-baked rumor? Damn you, Ramza…

Dance dance revolution

The dragon that haunted the mines turned out to be on our side after all, hunted down by some archaeodemon. Now that the latter was slain, Beowulf gave us the Aquarius stone. Forget about pressing on, we needed to test something!

After the long trip back to Goug, Ramza and Mustadio went back to Besrudio’s workshop. It would work, I promised Ramza, the stone would react with the orb. They stayed away for quite some time, but just as I wanted to drink from my second jug of ale, Ramza came barging in to the tavern, shouting for a phoenix down, did anyone have a phoenix down?

Greg and I decided to follow him into the workshop. There, we gazed upon a most peculiar scene. Besrudio was watching over Mustadio, who lay sprawled over the floor, and some sort of automaton was dancing around its axis. Ramza muttered that the automaton seemed to follow orders quite well…

What the hell, Ramza?! What did you order that thing to do?!

I am Bathsua, quite the unconvincing orator, and these are my memoirs.