Burrowowl

Vasyr continues his journal on the long, cold road to Falconbridge.

Day broke on 14th day of our journey, we had hunkered down after
circling the wagons and covering the horses with all extra blankets.
The Glacier Wolf (Klar) began to lead us through morning, with the rest
of us riding comfortably in the carriages. This lasted until midday
when the horses started to succumb to the cold. We stopped and set up
camp and did our best to warm the horses. At least we have crested the
pass.

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Another entry from the journal of Vasyr Zietsev, a Kossite Ranger that has recently found gainful employment. Again, the text is Vasyr’s not my own. Perhaps he can shed some light as to what a “liege of Winterguard” consists of? “A bit of frostbite” may be an understatement, as one member of his party was brought to unconciousness by the Khador’s winter on the first day of the blizzard. More entries will be posted as they are made available to me.

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I’ve been following another scanslated manga while waiting from Tenjo Tenge volume 10 to hit the streets (which is has now). School Rumble is its name, and though you wouldn’t know it by the title, it is not a high school fighting manga at all.

It follows a young high school student’s crush on one of her classmates, and another classmate who has a crush on her. It is reminiscent of Azumanga Daioh in its silly slice-of-life comedic style, but with a heavy romantic-interest approach to things. It is being translated by the uninterestingly-named Manga Inc, which describes this work as “Just some sloppy scanlated manga.” Their translation is rife with minor grammatical and spelling errors, but this title is a gem in the rough. In the interest of not encouraging usenet binaries spamming, I have placed a temporary http archive of this title in my webspace. Please do not be alarmed when I remove it in the near future: I like this title a lot, but am not in the business of fansub distribution.

Life in Vanadiel has been going pretty smoothly. I’ve left behind my Bastokan warrior to join an old coworker and friend on a server he’s sharing with some of his friends up in Portland. A little readjustment was necessary, as Windurst has a much different feel than Bastok. Lots of tarutaru, a lot less Quadav.

As expected, the year this game spent in the Japanese market has made for an extremely smooth US/Canada release. Luckily, the Japanese players have been living up to their national reputation for courtesy. The autotranslation dictionary is going to take me some getting used to, but I’m getting a lot of use out of some key phrases I know off the top of my head. Nihonjin desu ka? Wakarimasu. Sumimasen.

Numerous fansites and resources are available online, including Stratics, Allakhazam, and Warcry. I’ve found these to be handy with the crafting aspects of the game, but the mission and quest system has been quite well-crafted. Almost every interaction with an NPC that wants you to do something gives you at least a very strong hint as to what you need to do. My main problem has been the number of “Harutoto Ruins” you can go to in the Sarutabaruta Region, which was rather confusing while I was trying to complete my first mission for my country.

From the diary of Vasyr Zietsev, Khadoran Ranger:

Klar, Alric, and I are hanging out Ohk looking for work, nothing found
- but I did get a letter from Fyodor. I haven’t seen that brainiac
freak since he left our village for Unie. He arrived by train on his
way to Falconbridge to set up some sort of study of fury woodland
creatures’ mating habits, or some such.

Fyodor found a way to piss of some sort of Khard barbarian stepping off
the train. I gave almost as good as got, but dam that vinegar smelling
son of a Caspian hit hard. When I awoke we were on the way to then bar
on Fyodor’s jink.
It turned out that Fyodor was not much better off than us, he was
waiting on a grant for some jink, and he had to get his camp set up and
send back some results to the Unie before he would see a horn of the
grant.

After a tip or two good fortune found us, “M” be praised. Volden a
local alchemist found himself needing some day labor to get his goods
ready for an over land to Falconbridge, and found himself also needing
some caravan guards and the use of a good scout.

We loaded up a cart and a couple makeshift coaches with all of
Volden’s goods for the trip. Good thing we got his goods out of that
warehouse, the rats were huge and had built a small city in the stored
crates there. They weren’t much of an issue for a bunch o’ lads just
out of the Winterguard though.

After getting the carts loaded we waited for Volden Mirsk to show and
lead us to a place to stay in town, before taking off at dawn. I
caught a Caspian swine lifting Fyodor’s purse. That joker had a bundle
of jink in that purse – idiot savant I guess. I tracked down the rogue
and gave him a bit of what for, after Klar slowed him down with a bit
of a long-range bowshot. The dirty Caspian gave me back the purse
after he realized the beating that was about to be finished off on him
- Fyodor had come to help, but managed to fall down a hole before
combat.

We spent the night at Volden’s old flat with his delightful daughter
Tatyana. We look forward to leaving in the morning.

All misspellings are Vasyr’s, not my own. I will be posting future entries as they are made available to me. Everything here is completely player-knowledge, and does not necessarily reflect what is really going on. The pickpocke, for example, was a Midlunder. But what’s the difference to a backwoods Kossite like Vasyr, eh?