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I'll have to try to remember to address the musing about Zenos's opinions on Fordola once we're at a place where my memory isn't just fuzzy enough to drop accidental spoilers. I'm fairly certain nothing coming up changes it, but I wouldn't want to put money on that, y'know? As for the dungeon, yeah as someone with no emotional attachment to FFVI I found this dungeon to be a snoozefest when I played through the first time myself.
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Mar 7, 2023 00:32
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Sanguinia posted:
AOE-markers-as-Echo is one of those ideas that goes several ways in discussion. As you've likely noticed in solo duties and particularly any Duty Support you've tried, non-Echo-user NPCs are perfectly able to avoid attack markers. One could put that down to concessions between gameplay and fiction, but then we're right back where we started, eh? Usually, though, any particularly direct callouts like "look out, she's going to drop a meteor on us!" is accompanied by plenty more signs than an orange circle. One can presume, then, that other combatants are just pretty good at reading other signs of danger, we just have an easier time. And, hey, often enough we need to pay more attention than that if a boss decides to be tricky. On the one hand, a game UI being an in-fiction power is something of a trite idea, particularly in the recent glut of video game isekai fiction. As such, some will dismiss such a thing out of hand. I still like the idea, though, personally. The Echo is a pretty wonky thing most of the time, with any viewing of the past being effectively random, at best guess triggered by strong emotional resonance or somesuch. There's other more subtle manifestations, too, such as our ability to understand languages, or Krile's hazy sixth sense. (I don't think we have a lot of detail on that) As such, it's nice to think that of these abilities, there's at least a few bits that are a bit more reliable, and give us a leg up on of some of the more dangerous parts of the job.
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Mar 7, 2023 00:33
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Mordiceius posted:Back when 4.0 first launched, Castrum Abania was a motherfucker of a dungeon. The final boss hit goddamn hard. Was this during the cross class/limited role skills era because I remember doing that final boss with healers that did not have esuna for that bleed
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Mar 7, 2023 00:37
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Zomborgon posted:Echo-as UI thoughts Like Clockwork fucked around with this message at 00:41 on Mar 7, 2023 |
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Mar 7, 2023 00:39
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Yeah, Abania is my least favorite dungeon from Stormblood.
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Mar 7, 2023 00:41
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ZenMasterBullshit posted:Was this during the cross class/limited role skills era because I remember doing that final boss with healers that did not have esuna for that bleed I think it might have been. I was playing AST at the time and the class was a bit undertuned back at 4.0 and that dungeon was incredibly unfun - especially since a lot of tanks were incredibly undergeared. That boss could easily two-shot a tank in seconds.
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Mar 7, 2023 00:49
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ZenMasterBullshit posted:Was this during the cross class/limited role skills era because I remember doing that final boss with healers that did not have esuna for that bleed Role Actions were implemented in Stormblood, but if memory serves me correctly you could only still have a certain amount of them, so it wouldn't surprise me if Healers who aren't used to having Esuna didn't slot it in favor of Swiftcast/Surecast/Lucid Dreaming. e: Oh right, also Protect, and possibly the last gasps of Cleric Stance. Monathin fucked around with this message at 00:51 on Mar 7, 2023 |
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Mar 7, 2023 00:49
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Sanguinia posted:
Fordola is basically going through her Sasuke Uchiha arc at the moment, from a katana wielding baddie in all black telling her that she needs more hatred to become strong to developing a magical red eye power that lets her predict people's movements. I don't think that's on purpose, but the similarities are striking.
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Mar 7, 2023 00:49
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Blueberry Pancakes posted:Fordola is basically going through her Sasuke Uchiha arc at the moment, from a katana wielding baddie in all black telling her that she needs more hatred to become strong to developing a magical red eye power that lets her predict people's movements. We already had a Naruto ripoff in this game with Ninja 30-50 gosh darn it!
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Mar 7, 2023 01:05
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I don't think Doma was completely inconsequential to Zenos, but it was a beaten people and he doesn't relish the meek who have lost hope of rebellion. He was pretty notably pleased that the ragtag group of farmers was out for a fight despite clearly being outmatched - his uncomfortable pressure on Yotsuyu afterwards was to stoke the flames, not because he actually wanted to quash them. Even if the Warrior of Light is his most promising quarry, he still wants to encourage that spirit in others for the possibility of producing someone with the fervor and hunger to challenge him through adversity. That AND/or temper his chosen prey - he's a real multitasker, this Zenos. For the dungeon, some of the pulls in themselves could be a right threat (remembering healing the tank who tried a wall pull on the first week with everything I had and still having to rez them, though we did limp through without a wipe), and yeah, not only are the bosses FFVI references, Number XXIV is based off of Magic Master, whose gimmick was changing which elemental damage he was weak to with every attack (assuming you didn't just Berserk him).  The bleed could be pretty heavy on Inferno early on, as well. Like, actual "might wanna do something about it" at the time. As for the gear, more Tactics Ogre references: Fending is Lanselot Hamilton (the "hair" on the hood being his, naturally), though without the cape.    Maiming is the Rune Fencer generic - the female Valkyrie variant isn't used here.   Striking/Scouting and Aiming are an interesting bit - they're all based on the Archer generic, but Striking/Scouting gets the female variant and Aiming gets the male variant.     Casting/Healing gets Catiua's unique Dark Priest appearance.   
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Mar 7, 2023 01:09
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The good dps means you also missed an entire phase of Inferno: The evil scientist in the intercom says it’s time to restock the machine or something, so the boss goes to the machine and two magitek claws spawn carrying tubes. You need to kill the claws before they reach the machine, or else the boss gets BOTH arms all roided up and the mechanics get a lot tougher to dodge. That’s the other thing of the fight. The patterns that show up are left arm/right arm attacks, and those attacks change depending on if that arm is big or not. For example, the tank buster normally is just a slap, but also applies a bleed if the tank busting arm is all muscley.
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Mar 7, 2023 01:13
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Like Clockwork posted:As for the dungeon, yeah as someone with no emotional attachment to FFVI I found this dungeon to be a snoozefest when I played through the first time myself. fwiw as someone WITH an enormous emotional attachment to ff6 I found castrum abania equally a snoozefest. Even the fanservice is boring fanservice.
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Mar 7, 2023 01:14
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I really enjoyed the FF6 references my first time through, but didn't wind up loving the place nearly as much as I thought I was going to.
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Mar 7, 2023 01:44
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I mostly like Castrum Abania for having more Tactics Ogre gear. That's about it, honestly.
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Mar 7, 2023 02:39
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Yeah Castrum Abania is probably the most forgettable post ARR story dungeon for sure, and I'm a big FF6 fan. I actually forgot it was a duty and queued into it by surprise once. I appreciated all the old magitek bosses though.
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Mar 7, 2023 02:44
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I was expecting to meet someone named Jack Russel when I was sent to Radiata. Kinda sad that didn't happen.
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Mar 7, 2023 02:48
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Sanguinea posted:The description is raw enough that M'Naago seems a bit ashamed of herself. I doubt she ever considered the problems those who live this close to the Empire's centers of power endure. Her war has been in the countryside, evading patrols, disrupting couriers, and helping the settlements being bled dry for the Empire's profits stay alive. This is something new, and she will see much more before the war ends. It's no surprise that she stays silent for the rest of the cutscene, nor that her next words are about how much she dwells on regret every time she kills an Ala Mhigan. I like what they do with Ala Ghiri and Radiata quite a bit. The guys who wrote Stormblood really do seem intent on shining a spotlight on every dark corner of war. The Skulls weren't enough; they're warriors and soldiers, fighting their battles and lording it over the other Ala Mhigans. You need to show the civilian collaborators, just going along with everything. And on the inside: just as terrified of displeasing their Garlean masters as anyone else in the Peaks, willing to turn on anyone if it will let them live another day. Because that's also something occupation does to people. But despite everything on display here, here and there, they let individual Garleans be... okay. Every now and then they let a Doman conscript remember his past or a Garlean be willing to stop fighting, to remind you it's humans under those masks. quote:But to Fordola, freedom can come only through power. To be free, she must have authority over those that would threaten her, the ability to take and spare life at her whim.
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Mar 7, 2023 02:58
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Sanguinia posted:We already had a Naruto ripoff in this game with Ninja 30-50 gosh darn it! I don't think Fordola and Karasu would get along at all.
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Mar 7, 2023 03:15
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dyslexicfaser posted:I suppose a good Revolution needs both the open hand and the clenched fist; the trick being, as ever, to know when to use each. 
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Mar 7, 2023 03:22
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Bruceski posted:I really enjoyed the FF6 references my first time through, but didn't wind up loving the place nearly as much as I thought I was going to. This is my thoughts on this place too. The only fun memory I have of this place other than my first run was during Endwalker prelaunch. I grabbed the new healer and immediately jumped into Leveling Roulette. I was matched with two people who had grabbed the new DPS and a tank who had been on a long hiatus. We all looked at each other, realized that none of us truly knew how to play our jobs, then realized that none of us remembered the dungeon, and proceeded to charge through with all the finesse of four button-mashing newbie kids at a fighting game tourney.
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Mar 7, 2023 05:07
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i think i remember running Abania like twice, total, ever once for msq and then once during like.... shadowbringers, and i very much went "i have no memory of this place..."
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Mar 7, 2023 05:13
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Thundarr posted:Castrum Abania is full of FFVI references, and like you noted all three bosses were bosses in that game. Part of why it is so easily stomped now is that, as a level 69 dungeon, players get synched to level 70, when most jobs get a significant capstone ability on top of tomestone gear that is wildly stronger than StB leveling gear. It was a pretty rough dungeon once, honest!
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Mar 7, 2023 06:13
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The dungeon gear is pretty slick though
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Mar 7, 2023 07:16
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If you run Mentor Roulette as a tank you get lots of leveling dungeons, and so I've seen all the SB dungeons a whole bunch. Bardam's has the hardest trash pulls, but the last boss of Castrum, as has already been mentioned, hits really drat hard. In particular his tank busters both have really short castbars, so you have to really be looking for them to pop cooldowns in time, and apply a quite nasty bleed, so you're gambling on having a healer who actually knows where their Esuna button is. If both tank and healer are level 69 it's a scary fight.
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Mar 7, 2023 08:59
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Hogama posted:Number XXIV is based off of Magic Master, whose gimmick was changing which elemental damage he was weak to with every attack (assuming you didn't just Berserk him). Technically that's correct, as Magic Master does share a design. However, the aforementioned Magitek Laboratory does have a boss named Number 024, which is the more direct inspiration.
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Mar 7, 2023 09:28
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Blueberry Pancakes posted:Technically that's correct, as Magic Master does share a design. However, the aforementioned Magitek Laboratory does have a boss named Number 024, which is the more direct inspiration. I guess if it's any consolation to myself, the concept art was for Magic Master.
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Mar 7, 2023 10:26
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Magic Master was an optional boss atop a really tall magic tower that cast ultima on you after you beat him -- he was guarding the doublecast trinket. But he was just a reskin of a boss either in the dungeon everyone was talking about or in kefkas tower
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Mar 7, 2023 15:01
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Magic Master a reskin of No. 024 from the magitek research facility.
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Mar 7, 2023 15:29
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My follow-up was only meant to say that the Amano design is for an enemy called Magic Master. That Squaresoft used the art for No. 024 as well and put it earlier in the game is just like drawing a Malboro and it being used first in the game earlier as a lower level enemy called a Morbol. As a different aside, Number 128, the "proper" Magitek Research Facility variant of Inferno (who was in the final dungeon of FFVI instead), was already a name used in FFXIV multiple times - the fate "I'm a Rock, Not a Number" in Outer La Noscea uses it for a rock golem, but the enemy first appeared even further back in 1.0's twilight. 
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Mar 7, 2023 15:58
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I've been reading a lot of the posts here thinking to myself "Aww, but I like Lyse." So I'm glad the OP sees the good in her arc. On a basic level I agree she's a bit hurt by the shift to Doma and could have used more buildup to becoming the Leader. And in my own experience, I liked the funny doofus Yda, and was a bit sad that developing the character had to mean shedding that completely- but I never felt like it was a pure Mary Sue thing. She's not instantly competent and smart after taking off the mask, she's very explicitly in over her head for much of this and that's good, that gives her a challenge to overcome. You could well ask why she has to be the leader and not Mnaago or whoever but that's not really the point. So like a lot of things in Stormblood, I see Lyse's arc being rushed as a flaw but not a fatal one. And I never found her unsympathetic. She's trying her best.
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Mar 7, 2023 20:39
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I barely remember Castrum Abania outside of the bosses. I guess the main problem is that it doesn't stand out compared to most of the other Castrums.
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Mar 7, 2023 20:57
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To me the amusing thing is that this the only time we actually see the historical Raubahn that Ilberd eulogized at the banquet, before he had "gone soft", aaaaaaaaand it turns out that Raubahn has always been suspicious of visionaries suggesting he put his life on the line for a cause. (Which is probably a talent that served him well on the syndicate.) And of course, Ilberd himself was hooked from the get-go as soon as the firery speeches began. EDIT: Honestly, I found Fordola's speech to be about war being complicated and full of hard choices and sacrifices, and Lyse's screaming rebuttal felt like she is still sees everything as this two dimensional black/white perspective that she's been privileged to hold because she hasn't seen anything that's been going on inside Ala Mhigo all these years. But look, I'm a Deep Space Nine fan, so my expectations for "terrorists turned resistance leader" stories is maybe a little higher than what can be delivered in an FFXIV campaign, because Lyse is no Major Kira, or at least not yet. A part of me hopes though that the Lyse eventually gets to have her "Duet", an great episode in DS9's otherwise awful first season wherein Kira meets a Cardassian with a mysterious past who eventually turns out to be a defector publicly identifying himself as a fascist instigator of genocide, so he can be put to death for the war crimes, believing it's the only wake up call that will bring his people to get over their hurt egos and old bigotries. Though it was a bottle episode written without any idea where DS9's overall narrative was going, that character wound up being something of a prophet as the Cardassians turned themselves into a regional fighting force, something like the Skulls, for a far more vast totalitarian space empire as the show went on. Craptacular! fucked around with this message at 22:26 on Mar 7, 2023 |
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Mar 7, 2023 21:58
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Ilberd clearly internalized a maximalist view of the speech, and proceeded to spend the rest of his life resenting anybody who didn't throw themselves into the cause with the same level of zeal he felt. What he says in the flashback doesn't really contradict what he says at the banquet, at least from his own perspective as a violent ideologue. In his head the only way for Raubahn to have not gone soft was if he'd become just as ruthless as Ilberd.
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Mar 7, 2023 22:28
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Craptacular! posted:EDIT: I mean, sure not everything is black and white but collaborating with the oppressor to murder your own allies is pretty much wrong no matter what. Fordola's passed the point of no return here- she's got everything invested in this idea that this is the only way and if she admits it's wrong then everything else she did was wrong too.
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Mar 7, 2023 22:46
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Craptacular! posted:EDIT: Whether there's any validation of Fordola's world-view, well... we'll have to see if the purpose she sacrificed them for – to get a seat at the Garlean table – works out for her. I suspect it's not and it won't. Although I'd also be here for her to turn into a Zenos-type tyrant making them accept her. dyslexicfaser fucked around with this message at 23:03 on Mar 7, 2023 |
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Mar 7, 2023 22:49
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Maxwell Lord posted:I mean, sure not everything is black and white but collaborating with the oppressor to murder your own allies is pretty much wrong no matter what. Fordola's passed the point of no return here- she's got everything invested in this idea that this is the only way and if she admits it's wrong then everything else she did was wrong too. I should note: Fordola's one of my least favorite characters because she comes across as a true believer. I'll talk more about that in the future when we get to a later scene. But here she's sacrificing allies, yes, but it's a sacrifice that she herself would be willing to take. She herself is just the one tasked pushing the button because she's Special now, and if anything she seems to regret that she's the one that's going to survive here.
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Mar 7, 2023 23:04
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As a big FFVI fan, I enjoyed seeing the Castrum Abania bosses, but it's a shame they didn't try to include a remix of the Magitek Factory music. That theme kicked rear end.
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Mar 7, 2023 23:17
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Craptacular! posted:I should note: Fordola's one of my least favorite characters because she comes across as a true believer. I'll talk more about that in the future when we get to a later scene. But here she's sacrificing allies, yes, but it's a sacrifice that she herself would be willing to take. She herself is just the one tasked pushing the button because she's Special now, and if anything she seems to regret that she's the one that's going to survive here. someone willing to do whatever she has to do, fight whatever she has to fight, so she and hers can finally be free, eh
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Mar 7, 2023 23:34
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Fordola's already shown herself to be the kind of woman who would make this choice even before she pushed the button. This isn't a super-shocking turn for her, so much as the inevitable escalation of her worldview given enough desperation and a boss who encourages her worst responses. Incidentally, external sources put her age at 19 years old, same as Arenvald (spoilered just because I don't think specific ages ever come up in-game? It's never actually important, though). She's one of the few major characters on the Garlean side younger than Zenos.
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Mar 8, 2023 00:17
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| # ? Jun 11, 2024 20:39 |
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I think another thing to consider is as much that Zenos doesn't really care about people, he is surprisingly good at reading them. And he is first and foremost only concerned with a fight. He doesn't want a lasting victory. He elevated Yotsuyu to power because she would drive the Domans to the brink of desperation, out of hopes that they would rise up. Who's to say he's not doing the same with Fordola here? She's a reasonably highly-placed, highly capable warrior who had a devoted following previously and remains an influential officer. Forcing her to kill her friends - those she very closely values - while simultaneously granting her the Echo sure feels like a "Well, if Kheris disappoints me, I'll have a backup murderdate on my dance card."
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Mar 8, 2023 00:32
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