Now that we finally have our first job and the duty of protecting the Crystals for some reason, we set out to find the other Crystals. But we're kinda trapped in this little sea area where we are. There's some kind of canal thing to the east, but it is impassible right now. Sailing around thanks to Syldra, we at least find a town...

This is Tule, the town that's kinda near the Wind Shrine that Lenna was headed for at the beginning of the game. When we arrive, all the pirate crew dash into the pub shouting, "Grog! Grog!" and Faris more politely excuses himself to go have a drink, too. So Faris is out of the party now. Most of the random people here don't say much of interest, just stuff like, "There are pirates in the pub!" or whatever. This one guy did tell us that another meteor fell into the mountains to the west (the one we saw was to the southeast of here) and wonders if meteors are "in season" right now.

Though the best thing anyone said came from this weird guy who said he was training to be a bard, and then shared his beautiful song with us:

Long long ago, in the canal to the east
a big ol' ugly monster was having a feast!
It ate lotsa people--53 at least--
but the good guys used the crystal
and sealed the beast! Oh yeah!

Afterward he told us that his grandfather regretted telling him the story LOL

We also got this, uh, interesting tidbit from this guy running around in the flower garden. I think this was supposed to be a kid but the 'enhanced' port doesn't have child sprites or something...? So it's just an adult running around saying spinny spinny whee while they're about to puke. But they like it!!!!

In the magic shop in town, we're able to buy some new magic spells to use. The way magic works in this game is basically you buy a spell and then it's available to the whole party permanently. But you have to have the right Job ability to use it. When you start out, only your White Mage can use the White Magic like Cure and Poisona, but as you level up your White Mage Job, you'll gain the Job Ability "White Magic" that can be equipped to your character even when they are other jobs. Though when you first learn it, you can only use "level 1" White Magic with it when you're using it as a secondary ability for another job. But keep leveling up your White Mage class and that character will be able to learn even more White Magic while using other jobs!

Since this is a mage-type-classes-only challenge, we may get a job that can use Black Magic later, like the Red Mage, so I went ahead and bought all six magic spells from the shop. Fire, Blizzard, and Thunder are Black Magic and are just basic offensive spells, each with their own elemental attribute, which enemies can be weak to or resist.

From talking to the randos in town, we gather enough to learn that Walse (the place where the Water Crystal is) is to the east, but the canal has been locked because some very dangerous monsters are playing around in there and enjoy killing people or something. When we get to the north end of town, we get a little scene with Lenna, who recognizes the house as belonging to Zok, who apparently built the Torna Canal that is locked up.

When we go inside, Zok seems pretty surprised to get a visit from Princess Lenna of Tycoon, of all people. People in games seem to usually have absolutely no problems at all with strangers barging into their house and going through their things, but a princess coming inside is quite the commotion.

After he calms down, Zok tells us again that the beasts in the canal have been multiplying rapidly since the Wind Crystal was destroyed, and in addition to that, he's lost the canal key...

Even though he's unable to help us out, he still offers us a room to rest up for the night. We take him up on the offer and go to bed.

During the night, Bartz has a dream, or perhaps just is reminiscing, about his parents. His dad (the hot mustache one LOOK) is telling his mom that Bartz is not to learn about the Crystals if anything should happen to him, because he doesn't want Bartz to carry that burden. I'm assuming that Bartz actually overheard this conversation and that's why he's remembering it (maybe it wasn't a good idea to have this convo when the person you don't want to hear it is like 7 feet away and in the same room), but even if he hadn't heard about the Crystals then, he's mixed up with them now anyway. So I guess Bartz's dad had something to do with the Crystals, too.

Bartz becomes unable to sleep and sits out at the, uh, table in the middle of the entryway, and we see that Zok is hovering over Lenna while she sleeps. Even though I've played this game multiple times, I always think something suspicious is going on here and I'm like, "Oh no! Zok tricked us so he could do something bad to Lenna!" but really he's just checking up on her, and after hearing her mumble about the Crystals in her sleep, he comes out and chats with Bartz in the entryway.

He gives Bartz the canal key and admits that he really never lost it, he just lied to try to protect the princess, but now he realizes that this is something she needs to do, even if it's dangerous.

The next day we set out again, and wander around town picking up random Phoenix Down and stuff that's just... sitting in bushes, and stealing people's money out of barrels and stuff. We talk to this like Purple Zok guy who takes us to the "Greenhorn's Club." He makes us close our eyes so we don't learn its location, but it's like... literally right behind him? Like we're staring right at it as we talk to him, and it's like, on the screen and everything???

This is one of those "tutorial house" kind of places. People say little hints about the mechanics of the game and stuff. We also learn that whoever is in the first slot in the party formation will be the character used on the map screen, which is a feature I forgot all about, so I immediately swap Galuf to the front of the party so we can gaze upon his glorious mustache at all times.

One of the people inside tip us off the fact that there are random hidden secret passages everywhere, which is nice to know. Even though we've already found a few...

Another person tells us he put a present in a treasure chest for us, but the chest contains a monster (there was a goblin in the chest lol why) and he laughs at us. But we did get some Leather Shoes out of it, at least. I think we're fully equipped in leather stuff at this point, now, though, but it will be nice for selling for a little extra Gil.

Around the rest of town, we visit the weapons and armor shops, in which Faris appears in the building and joins the party suddenly just for the shopping exchange, then runs back off to the pub. Two days straight drinking sounds kind of dangerous.

Since we're White Mages there's not much we can do. I messed around in the field fighting bees and stuff a bit and realized that attacking with punching is actually more effective than using the wooden staves, so everyone is barehanded now so they can punch bees and stuff.

But I did take the time to buy potions. A LOT of potions. While we do have four party members capable of healing with magic, our MP is still very limited since we're early in the game. And money is a much easier resource to replenish compared to MP.

*raids Faris's booty*

When we approach the front of town, Faris and his crew catch back up with us to join us again as we leave (though I wasn't actually trying to leave yet), but Faris tells the pirate gang that he's leaving them behind. They seem heartbroken about it, but Faris feels like we're in for a long and difficult journey (how does he know we're playing an RPG? XD) and he needs them to stay back at the hideout to protect the treasure cache.

After the crew wave goodbye, Faris rejoins the party. I'm not really sure where the pirates go after this because we continue to command the ship without them, and they're not in the pub anymore... There's also no way to get away from Tule except by boat, and no boats are running because both the wind has stopped and because the canal is closed, so, uh... ???

But I actually forgot to go inside the pub before this scene so I didn't get to see the pirates and Faris partying inside... oops :(

Anyway, inside the pub there are some dancers on the stage who say weird flirty stuff with you if you talk with them. The guy in the corner calls you a perv if you talk to him. After one of the dancers asks you to take a seat, you can "sit" at the stool at the front and center of the stage and the girls will like... spin around a lot and then hop on top of you and spin really fast...

They continue to spin eerily rapidly, and the screen gets colored pink, and a heart pops out of your head after someone shouts "Woo!"

...

But the main reason I activated this little scene was so we could reach the piano, which was formerly blocked by the dancers! When we interact with the piano, Galuf waves his hands around and we hear a metronome sound along with someone struggling to play a simple major scale (seriously, just... poke the keys in order... lol)

And afterward, our piano skills level up! Yes, you can learn piano in this game.

With nothing really left to do in Tule, we head back to the ship and Syldra takes us east to the canal. Before we can get there, we see another little scene of Bartz and Lenna talking on the boat. Lenna tells Bartz about how if the Crystals are destroyed, the Earth will slowly decay until it is unlivable. Galuf jumps out of nowhere and seems gung-ho on saving the Crystals. Faris appears, too, and seems adamant about helping, as well. He also says that we have to find Lenna's dad, and that he "feels it in his bones" that he's still alive out there somewhere.

Lenna finally asks Bartz if he will come along on their journey to protect the Crystals, and while he was hesitant to come along at first, now moved by everyone's enthusiasm, Bartz, too, seems eager to get the journey underway. Wow, there were a lot of commas in that sentence...

We reach the canal after all the blabbering is over, and Bartz like... walks up on the pointy front thing of the ship (I DON'T KNOW WHAT THESE THINGS ARE CALLED) and unlocks the canal with the key. Everyone is surprised he has the key, and even after they ask, Bartz doesn't reveal how he got it. And that seems to be a satisfying enough answer for everyone because they immediately stop caring.

Once inside the canal, we're still controlling the ship, but now we get into random encounters with some octopus- and squid-shaped enemies. They're pretty strong compared to our meager leather defenses at this point, and I quickly realized I'd be chugging all fifty or so potions that we bought, so I decided to try changing the formation around. Galuf and Faris became the dedicated "fighters," staying in the front row to punch stuff, while Bartz and Lenna hung out in the back row tossing potions to the others if needed, or punching if there wasn't an immediate threat.

It took... many many punches to take down the enemies, especially with Bartz and Lenna doing barely any damage at all from the back row. But we still managed to take them out and kept moving through the canal.

When we made it out through the other side, a whirlpool appeared. The rudder stopped responding and Syldra called out, causing Faris to worry about her (yeah Syldra is a girl I guess oops lol... I remember in the PS1 script Faris specifically referred to he and Syldra as "brothers" but in this version he actually said "siblings" but I said "brothers" so oooooops lol)

And, uh, anyway, we get trapped spinning around in the whirlpool.

And then a Giant Enemy Lobster jumps out from the whirlpool and into our ship! As if being caught in a whirlpool wasn't enough.

This thing is Karlabos, and it's not particularly a difficult boss, especially if you have some nice weapons and bought the Thunder spell from Tule to use with your Black Mage.

BUT UH WE'RE JUST GONNA PUNCH IT!

And holy crap did it take a ton of punches to take this thing down. Fortunately, the strategy ended up being pretty simple. Karlabos only had a few attacks. It could do a little damage and paralyze a party member, but the paralysis wore off pretty quickly. The scariest thing it would do was screw someone with its tail, which would reduce their HP to a single digit. I don't think it was capable of killing someone with the attack, but once their HP is that low, pretty much even the littles lobster jab would knock them out.

Potions restored 50 HP and the Cure magic spell restored 80 HP, so I would cast Cure as soon as someone was hit with Tail Screw, and just toss potions when anyone else's HP got below 40 or so, since the other attacks did around 20-30 damage.

After about seven thousand punches, the lobster finally cracked and turned into little squares.

After the battle, though, Syldra managed to get the ship away from the whirlpool, but she got caught up in it herself... Faris went a bit wild, wanting to jump right off the ship and go after her, but Galuf and Bartz held him back long enough so that he couldn't. Bartz said that Syldra would be all right because "she's a fighter, and you know it." So Faris essentially had to witness his sister possibly getting whirled up to her death...

After that, without the wind or Syldra to move the ship, we could do nothing but let ourselves drift to wherever the current took us. Faris seems pretty depressed over losing Syldra, but Lena tries to console him by telling him that she is certain Syldra is still alive. I never really thought about it before, but this kind of parallels how Faris told Lenna that he was sure her dad was still alive, so that's pretty neat, actually.

The ship continues to drift, lost at sea, until one night, the ship wrecks and...

We end up in... this place. Galuf wakes up first and goes around to the other three picking them each up off the floor.

Apparently we ended up in a ship graveyard, which is a nest for the undead. For some reason Lenna and Faris both know about this kind of place. I mean, I understand Faris since he's a pirate, but I guess Lenna is a pretty well-educated princess to know about something like this, especially when a well-traveled vagabond like Bartz didn't know about it, and someone with a lot of life experience like Galuf didn't know what it was either (but he also lost his memories so uh I guess that is a good enough excuse not to know lol).

Anyway, the party seems spooked and we decide to try to get out of this place. Well, I don't know why we would decide to stay or something lol.

We explore around and basically progress by walking through and over wrecked ships (or parts of them, at least). There's this one place with this rock and if we talk to it a bunch more rocks appear and we can talk to it again to automatically jump across each rock in turn. At the end of the weird rock-hop path is a treasure chest with a Flail in it.

The Flail is a very valuable find -- it's a weapon that can be equipped by White Mages, but it's actually pretty strong. Well, it's a lot better than punching, anyway. Of course, we only have the one, so Faris ends up being the one who gets it. I wanted to give it to Galuf because he's the mustache old guy and I tend to pamper those types, but the idea of him punching stuff is kinda sexy while flinging a ball on a stick is not so much. Not that I think it's unsexy or something, because Faris is also hot so it's not like a mark of unhot characters or something...

ANYWAY FLAIL FOR FARIS. ALLITERATION!

And his weapon attack is boosted from 3 (the strength of the punching attack) to 16 (!!!!)

There are a lot of creepy things down here; this should probably be a location in a SaGa game.

The enemies are a bit stronger than what we've faced before, but they have one severe weak point: undead creatures can be hurt by holy power, so we can actually cast our Cure magic on them to hurt them! The skeletons are taken out with a single cure, and the other stuff can be knocked out with a Cure and a punch or two, or a smack in the face with the Flail.

MP was still a bit of a concern, but we did find a Tent in a treasure chest, and if we really needed it, we could head back to Faris's ship (or what's left of it anyway) and go into the sleeping quarters to take a nap and revitalize the party. I don't know if I could sleep in a place like this, though...

We reach a point where there's no choice but to cross through the inside of a ship that's underwater to get to the other side. Faris seems pretty uncomfortable about getting wet, which is a strange fear for a pirate, and Bartz teases him by telling him he's not going to melt. When we do make it across, we learn that Bartz was getting very familiar with a fish.

We find a place that seems pretty dry, there's even some dry rope good enough for burning. Lenna goes into a cabin to change her clothes (exactly what clothes is she changing into though??? Did she loot a dead body or something?) and tells the guys not to peek. Bartz and Galuf start a fire and start getting naked. Faris just kind of... stands off to the side. Bartz tells him he should get undressed, too, but he just... says he'll be fine and continues to awkwardly stand away from everyone.

Galuf seems a bit more adamant about making Faris take his clothes off, to the point where he rallies Bartz and they surround him and start stripping him forcibly. Faris demands for them not to touch him...

But Galuf and Bartz seem flabbergasted after their awkward assault. Lenna is apparently changed now and comes out of the cabin asking what the commotion is. And they reveal the big secret, which you may have actually realized just by looking at the character sprites -- basically, it boils down to "Faris has tits."

Now, I want you to realize that the gang only starts referring to Faris as a woman and using feminine terms and pronouns to talk about him because they saw the shape of his body. And not because Faris ever consented or asked them to refer to him in that way. In fact, he continues to be uncomfortable with it even after the "truth" is revealed.

In fact, in part of this scene, he still refers to himself as a boy when talking about his childhood, and like I said before, in the PS1 script, he referred to himself as Syldra's "brother."My point is that Faris refers to himself as a man, even in front of his friends who know what his body looks like.

The game goes on to refer to Faris solely as a "girl" from this point forward, but I'm just... not entirely comfortable with that. My interpretation of Faris is that he's indeed a guy, but realizes that the people around him aren't going to understand his gender identity, and prefers to just avoid the subject. Every time his gender is brought up, he gets angry and quickly tries to subvert the conversation.

So, since I still believe that Faris is a trans man and identifies himself as a man, I'm going to keep referring to him with masculine pronouns and stuff throughout the rest of this play diary, even if the game stops doing so. Yeah, it does give the little "Oh, I didn't want to look like a girl in front of pirates" excuse, because we also learn that Faris was abandoned as a child and raised by pirates who never knew he was a "girl." And so it tries to explain away his identity in that he "pretended" to be a guy all this time for that reason. But especially in Japanese media, I find that trans characters always have some kind of weird "reason" for their gender expression and identity (and in bad cases, have an event that "fixes" their gender), but this narrative is told time and time again throughout all kinds of media, because so many cis people refuse to believe that trans people just exist naturally, and they have some kind of ~mental disorder~ due to some kind of trauma or whatever.

But I don't subscribe to that nonsense, and as Faris continues to refer to himself as a man, dress in men's clothing, use masculine speech, etc. even after the "reason" for his "being a man" given by the game doesn't exist anymore (his friends quickly accept him how he is, and he's not being raised by pirates anymore, so there's no need for a charade whatsoever), I can't help but interpret Faris as a guy who just doesn't want to deal with the struggle of trying to explain his gender constantly since his friends are cool with him just being however he wants anyway.

(Also, during this scene Galuf feels "relieved" because he thought Faris was hot before this event lol...)

But yeah, from this point forward the game (other than Faris himself) starts referring to Faris as a woman, but I'm not going to do that unless it is somehow relevant or necessary (like, quoting what another character said or something) unless the game gives me good reason to believe that Faris indeed identifies as a woman. The PS1 script didn't, but this is a new script, so...

Galuf is kind of the last to really come around -- the next morning, he's a bit clumsy in the morning and Faris scolds him like the pirate captain he is. Galuf gets annoyed and says if he's not going to dress like a girl, he should at least act like one. But Lenna and Bartz correct Galuf, telling him that "Faris is Faris," that's just the way he is. And there's no point in trying to change him.

Galuf seems to get the idea pretty quickly, and everyone decides to keep moving forward through the ship graveyard.

After a bit more hopping around and stuff, we end up at some kind of shore, and it looks like we're finally reaching land. But suddenly, Bartz's mom appears, of all things. She calls out for Bartz to come to her, and he does, seeming a bit entranced...

(YES DADDY)

Similarly, King Tycoon appears and calls out for Lenna. Noticing that something is up, Faris chases after Lenna when she starts gravitating toward her father, and he ends up getting sucked up in the trance, too.

Finally, a young girl appears in front of Galuf. She, too, tries to lure him, calling him "grandpa."

But Galuf is just confused -- he has no idea who this person is. He probably would know if he had his memories, but...

The three entranced party members have their souls (shown as blue fireballs) removed from their bodies and drawn over to the images of the people they knew. Galuf, however, isn't affected by the curse. A Siren appears and taunts the group, telling them to just hand over their souls nicely, but then notices that one of the four hasn't fallen for the trap. She seems a bit impressed that someone was able to escape her magic. In her admiration, she allows Galuf to go free, but he says he's not going without the others.

Siren asks why he would risk his life for these people, and Galuf responds, "Because... they're my friends!" and I love these stupid corny POWER OF FRIENDSHIP moments and like always cry at them plus it's GALUF so I looove this part hahaha.

Galuf runs to each of his friends, picking them up from the ground, and smacking them in the face. It seems to wake them up, and the images of the people they knew disappear, and their souls come floating back to them.

Of course, now Siren is pissed, and we gotta fight her. And right away the battle is pretty scary; casting Cure on Siren like we've been doing to fight off the undead on the way here doesn't work. She just... actually gets cured. Faris can deal a little bit of damage with his Flail, but she seems to shrug off punches pretty easily.

However, something great happens that I had totally forgotten about (it really has been a long time since I've played this lol) -- after quite a bit of time has passed in the battle, Siren turns into an undead! And now we're able to deal tons of damage to her with our Cure magic. So this is actually a boss battle in which our all-White-Mage party probably has the most offensive capability out of any possible party setup at this point, hahaha.

She does turn back into her "regular" self later, but it just takes some more time for her to turn back into an undead again. Since I now know that she will turn, I can spend the time she's uh... regular living... to make sure the party is healed up, tossing potions and casting Cure as much as I need.

The second time she turns undead, it only takes one Cure spell to turn her into little squares. She drops a Bronze Shield, which is completely useless to White Mages, but looking at her bestiary entry later, it seems she actually drops Bronze Armor if you defeat her while she's in her not-undead form. I think that's pretty neat. Though I don't think White Mages can equip Bronze Armor either, so it doesn't really matter. But that's good to know for future runs, I guess? Not that having a Bronze Armor is going to provide any significant advantage especially over the course of the whole game, but... it's fun to know litle things like this. Also, she seems more susceptible to physical attacks while not undead, which is scary because our punches were coming off pretty weak... It's a good think we were able to Cure her to death...

After Siren is gone and our path out of this almost-literal-hellhole draws nearer, Bartz thanks Galuf and says that he owes him his life. Galuf gets a bit flustered and blushes, which Bartz seems to find cute and points it out, but Galuf gets a bit defensive and says he's definitely not blushing. But then the others laugh at him like the ending to an episode of a family-friendly sitcom, and our adventures through the ship graveyard come to a close.

Now to just figure out where the heck we are...

---