When we last left our awkward gang of heroes, they had been blasted away by the barrier around Exdeath's castle and sent to who-knows-where, separating Galuf from his Granddaughter, Krile, once again.

And so today we shall pick up where we were dropped off, both figuratively and literally.

We land on another weird little plateau that looks exactly like all the others that we've landed on or beside each time we get blasted away, which is oddly a common occurrence on this journey.

Despite the fact that we've landed at Nondescript Blast Zone #429, Galuf seems to know exactly where we are, describing the place we're lost in as the "back of beyond," whatever that is supposed to mean.

There is a lot of swampland surrounding us, making the whole "crawling with monsters" thing a non-issue, as Gaia's Bottomless Bog instantly kills all enemies in battle when in swamps.

After a little bit of traveling, we end up at the frontier town of Regole. Why the frontiersmen would decide that a forest by the swamp laden with monsters in the "back of beyond" is a good place to settle is beyond me, but here they are. It's a pretty generic town with all the basic amenities, so we buy the latest in armor and weapons and everything like usual, finding a "piano" in the back of the pub that we have to walk through a wall to find.

Importantly, though, the magic shop here has three new Time Magic spells for us to learn: Comet, Slowga, and Return. Return just resets the battle to the beginning as if it never happened; I'm not really sure what the use of this is, but I guess it could save you from a bind if you get unlucky in a battle and are about to die and haven't saved in a while. The real treasures here are the other two spells, though. Comet summons space junk to fall upon the enemy, damaging them pretty heavily, at least by our party's damage standards. It will become our best source of standard damage for quite a while (other than shattering Rods, but those are costly if we use them too much). The other spell, Slowga, is like the Slow spell, but it casts Slow on the entire enemy party all at once. Extremely convenient, especially because less enemy attacks means less time waiting for the ATB gauges to unpause.

Some of the people in Regole tell us that the Sealed Castle of Kuza is to the south, so we head there next. It's here that all twelve of the Legendary Weapons are held, but they are all sealed off, so we don't get to play with them. We at least can walk around and look at each one and see its name, though, making them all the more enticing. Of course, they wouldn't put them here if they weren't going to let us nab some later in the game, right?

While wandering around in here, sometimes we'll bump into ridiculously strong monsters that we're no match for at all, like the Shield Dragon. Luckily the flee rate seems to be pretty good against them, so we can just run, but... it's a bit of an annoyance at the least. Especially when they get a hit in before we run and knock out a party member...

There's not anything else to do here, so we just keep heading south. We don't really have an explicit goal at this point, but I guess it would probably be good to catch back up with Krile and everything, right? It's not like we're going to get married and stay in Regole forever. But I'll marry Galuf if that's what the game wants me to do...

A couple of people in Regole also mentioned seeing a Moogle, but there wasn't really any more to the rumors than that, so there's no real hint on what to do about it.

After a little more traveling, we arrive at a little forest surrounded by mountains, and there's no choice but to walk through the center of it in order to continue, which takes us into this close-up forest area where we see a Moogle walking around. Well... that was easy.

But after it walks for a few steps, it falls into a hole.

We approach the hole and instead of offering to help it or anything, suddenly enter a conversation about Moogles. Bartz, like any true RPG player character, is ignorant about almost everything in the world around him despite being a well-traveled adventurer, so he doesn't know what a Moogle is, and asks Galuf, who of course knows, so now we, the players of the game, can know what one is, too. Unless you've played, like, any other Final Fantasy title, in which you should already know what one is. Actually, I'm not entirely sure which title they debuted in -- maybe the 3rd or 4th installment? It's been so long since I've played Final Fantasy IV that I can't even remember if there were Moogles in it.

Anyway, Galuf ever-so-knowledgeably tells us that Moogles are creatures from the forest, because that was not something we could have inferred from context. Thanks, Galuf.

But Lenna suddenly interrupts our educational conversation by shouting, "Let's help it!" so we decide to blindly jump into this mysterious hole in a forest that formed out of nowhere despite having no idea where we are or where it leads. Because we're RPG heroes and that's what we do.

Under the ground, we find ourselves in a cave that's not much more than a few little patches of land and mostly a rushing river. And like the good RPG heroes that we are, we figure that after getting oursleves into this mess, the next best thing to do would to be hop into the flowing waters that whisk us away quickly and beyond our control, even though we have no idea where we are or where the Moogle is or... well, you get it. We do stuff that makes no sense because the Game Must Go On.

While being swept along in the current, we're unable to control the lead character at all, so we have to just go where the water takes us. While this is happening, though, we get into battles with a few aquatic monsters. It's no big deal, though, because a cave stream means Gaia rolls Whirlpool (instant death to enemies) or Cave-In (massive damage to enemies, which is pretty much the same thing) for almost every usage. Just equip all four characters with Gaia as their ability and we're set to blast through. When we wash up on the patches of land, we do regain control of the party for a bit, so we can use that moment to go into the menu to heal up with magic or potions or whatever while we need to. But our only possible route is to jump into the water again and again.

We finally reach a much larger landmass where we find a treasure chest containing nothing more than a Phoenix Down, and the Moogle we saw earlier (well, presumably; they all look the same in this game). The Moogle is confronted with an undead dinosaur, so we use Cave-In once to destroy it.

Afterward, Lenna talks to the scared Moogle to get it to calm down and trust her. The Moogle runs around and somehow Lenna knows this means we're supposed to follow it. We cut to the world map, where the Moogle runs around for quite some time, eventually disappearing into another forest. We appear on the other side of the hole that we jumped into before (despite all that traveling we did, we somehow came out of the same hole?!) and are now able to exit the weird forest on the opposite side we entered, taking us to a maze of land where we can try to find where the Moogle went.

A lot of the maze area is desert, where we run into this monster called Sandcrawler. It can use Maelstrom, an attack that reduces the entire party's HP to single-digit numbers. It can miss sometimes, but usually at least one or two members will be knocked down when it uses it. With Gaia and Comet dishing out thousands of damage, it still takes forever to take this thing down. After fighting it, we check the bestiary to find it has 15,000 HP; most enemies we're fighting now have less than 1,000 HP.

We finally arrive at the forest the Moogle ran off to, and it's called "Moogle Village." We see many Moogles, but they run away as soon as they spot us. But eventually we run into the one that we helped out before, who brings us into a tree full of treasures. In the six chests, we get some regular items, some money, and a weapon called Dancing Dagger that is really weird. Basically in battle it will sometimes randomly make your character do these dances instead of attacking, which can be useful, though unpredictable and unreliable.

After that, we find a Moogle costume in another one of the trees. I have no idea why this thing is here, but we put it on, and now the Moogles are not afraid of us. Actually, I think they stopped being afraid after we ran into the friendly Moogle we saved before. Nevertheless, one of them even gets turned on by the costume and shows us to another treasure chest! This one has another Elven Mantle in it, which is awesome. If you've forgotten, the Elven Mantle is the accessory that allows us to randomly completely avoid attacks; we first wore one when we were climbing the tower to find Shiva.

After we explore the village a little and rob the Moogles of all their valuables, one of them starts freaking out and jumps up into a tree. The scene cuts to Krile, who has a pet Moogle, and it starts talking to her. Apparently Krile can speak Moogle language, and Moogles all communicate with one another telepathically. Maybe the Moogles are like the Borg.

Krile's Moogle friend tells her that we are in the Moogle Village. Her Wind Drake is too tired to fly, but she talks to it (she can also speak Wind Drake language) and it tells her that it can make the flight, but only once.

So Krile sets off on the Wind Drake to find Moogle Village. Back at the Village, all the Moogles do a dance and touch their noses, confusing the crap out of Bartz and company. But apparently that was their way of communicating to Krile's Moogle that they need to look for the "nose" to find the entrance to the village. I don't know why they had to do all of the dancing and stuff just to convey that one message, when they were able to communicate that Krile's grandfather and his three friends arrived in the Moogle village after saving one of the tribe from a revived dinosaur fossil, but... just go with it.

The big forest where we had to walk around until we bumped into the village now for some reason has a bunch of trees missing making the shape of a Moogle head with the clearing. Krile goes to the nose of the Moogle and lands her Wind Drake, right in the middle of Moogle Village.

We all hop onto the Wind Drake and fly back to the castle, where soldiers rush out greet Galuf as "King Galuf," and then they have a little strategy meeting with Galuf on the throne. Bartz is completely floored by the fact that Galuf is a king and not just "some crazy old man."

We head back to meet up with Krile, who is staying with the Wind Drake at his roost. But it seems that the Wind Drake is dying now, because it flew them all around the world with an injury instead of resting up and healing. Lenna says that they need Dragon Grass, which for some reason Krile doesn't know about despite the fact that she can canonically speak in the language of all these animals and has her own Wind Drake.

BUT YOU KNOW, GO WITH IT.

So Krile has no idea where any Dragon Grass would be since she knows nothing about it, and the rest of us have never even been to this world before, so we don't know either. Faris suggests that Wind Drakes always roost near Dragon Grass, so there must be some nearby. Though this one is like... a pet of the castle or whatever so it's not like it's making its natural home here. It's here because it's living with Krile. But you know, go with it.

Galuf says our best bet for finding Dragon Grass is in Drakenvale, which is to the north, past the werewolf village of Quelb. We head off while Krile stays to watch over the Wind Drake. We grab some treasures from the castle and talk to the various people around, learning a few cool things: Firstly, Krile actually speaks to animals in the same manner humans speak with one another, so she's not just 'feeling' what they're saying or whatever, she's like... actually speaking animal languages. Secondly, we learn that Krile's parents (which would be Galuf's child and their spouse, I guess) died when they went to rescue a Wind Drake in the desert. So I wonder if the Wind Drake that we're helping right now is that rescue?

We head out of the castle after arguing with the guards (Exdeath's monsters are rampant, so they're worried about the King's safety and don't want to let him leave), but after an executive order, they open the gates. Before heading north to Quelb so we can get to Drakenvale, we head to the east to find a place called Gil Cave. Sounds like it will be a place full of treasures, right?

Well, this place is ridiculously difficult. Most of the monsters here can kill the entire party in one or two attacks, and they often show up in hoards and get frequent Back Attacks, so we die pretty much as soon as we step in. Even Cave-In doesn't help, as it can't take these things out in one go. Reloading a save game and trying a few more times, we finally get past a single battle by getting lucky with Slowga and Stop and lots of Cave-In and Comet, but the second battle we run into kills us right away.

This is a great place to grab treasures, but you have to remember to come back to it later in the game when you're strong enough to take it on.

So, we travel back toward the castle to head to Quelb, like we're supposed to. Along the way, though, Faris gets enough ABP to level up the Chemist Job to learn the Mix ability! This is where Chemist really shines.

There are a group of items available in the game, such as Potion, Ether, and Phoenix Down, that are able to be "mixed," and every combination of two of these items put together creates a special new item which are unique to the Mix ability. For example, mixing an Antidote and a Potion together creates an item called Neutralizer, which both cures poison and restores HP to the target. This one is a bit more intuitive, but many of the combinations create things you wouldn't expect, and you can't know the outcome until you Mix them. And you can't prepare the items in advance and see their description, you Mix them on the spot in battle and they are immediately used. And since there are some Mixed items that cause negative effects or deal damage, it can be risky trying out new combinations in important battles. There's a reason the achievement for mastering the class on Steam is called "Trial and Error."

There are even a few items in the game such as Dragon Fang and Turtle Shell that are used for nothing other than the Mix ability. It's a lot of fun to play around with and there are quite a few combinations. And as I learned over the course of the playthrough, Mix can be a huge game-changer. The Job quickly became one of my favorites, if not my top favorite, Job in the entire game by the time I was finished with this challenge.

After playing around with mixing a bit, we continue into Quelb. Entering one of the werewolves' houses, we find that Galuf knows one of them! This is the one that talked to him earlier when his memory was still missing. We find out this is Kelger, one of the four Dawn Warriors who sealed Exdeath in Bartz's world.

Galuf tries to introduce the crew to his buddy, but Kelger misinterprets him, thinking that we are friends of Exdeath who purposely destroyed the Crystals and unsealed him. Even after Galuf tries to explain, Kelger says he has to challenge Bartz to a duel to test his worth or something, and when Lenna and Faris ready themselves for the upcoming battle, Bartz tells them to stand back because he "has to settle this man-to-man." Because fighting some rando he doesn't even know after an inconvenient misunderstanding with someone else is the most personal and important fight of his life!!!!!!!!

You know. Just go with it.

Kelger decides to use his "Lupine Attack" which is basically that cliché ninja move where you go so fast it looks like you have clones of yourself (like Double Team from Pokémon or that Naruto shadow clone thing) but Bartz is easily able to find out where he is by doing the other cliché thing where you concentrate so hard and then just suddenly attack the "real" one...

This, like, completely incapacitates Kelger, which is kind of funny, and now he's suddenly bedridden. Kelger praises Bartz for being able to stop the attack, but Bartz shrugs it off as just a trick he picked up from his dad. Kelger asks about his father, and when Bartz says his name is Dorgann, Galuf and Kelger start freaking out.

Turns out that Bartz's dad was another of the four Dawn Warriors. We get a little flashback scene, where we learn that Dorgann felt guilty about sealing up Exdeath in another world, even though they had no choice, so he decides not to return to their world, and instead settle in the other world to keep watch over Exdeath. So that's how Dorgann ended up with Stella and fathering Bartz.

So, not only does Bartz have a hot mustache dad, but he has a hot mustache dad who travelled around with another hot mustache dad, a beardly bear dude, and a wolf furry. Automatically qualifies as undefeatable OT4, honestly. I'm not even kidding, the Dawn Warriors are like... one of my favorite ships lol...

Once that whole ordeal is out of the way, though, Kelger (who is like the... mayor or whatever of Quelb) commands his people to let us through the gate to the north, so we can get to Drakenvale. And that is where we will head off to next time!

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