Right. Onward.
R2: Is that a scouting party from the Order of the Southern Sky?
Deserter: We're through fighting! You will not force us to return! We're going home! Better to live in the streets than to die in them! We've had our fill of blood and death!
R2: We do not pursue you! Pray heed my words! It is not our wish to fight!
Deserter: Aye, that much I'll believe. Better to strike us down cleanly when our backs are turned! Do not think us so green as to fall for your tricks! We've seen our share of those as well!
Deserter Squire: What of it?
Deserter Chemist: It's him - the heretic! I'm certain of it! If we returned with him, might they not pardon our desertion?
Deserter Squire: You'd return to camp?
Deserter Chemist: Consider it! The capture of a heretic is near as grand a feat as the capture of an enemy commander! If we delivered them his head, do you not think they would reward us with leave to return home?
Deserter Squire: The men who captured that general -were- dismissed honorably...
Deserter Chemist: If we are to return to our homes, let us do so with our heads held
high! Were we to return now, it would be to a life of skulking in the shadows.
Deserter Squire: You speak true. Let us return with him! Or at least with his head. It's not long for those shoulders anyway. He is a heretic, after all! Come, let this be our final battle! Our freedom is bought with this godless man's blood!
Yep. This battle is a slog with two Squires, two Chemists, a Thief, and an Archer. With such low-level classes it should be a cinch! The Squire in the back is equipped with a broadsword, for Ajora's sake, and we outgrew those twenty-five levels ago!
No better position to Feral Spin, really.
"Hey, isn't he the heretic? We can kill him and go home! ...And by that I mean I'm going to help him."
Two Squires and a Chemist down, one Chemist a turncoat. The Traitor makes a damned inviting target for the enemy party, and they spend a couple turns knocking him out.
So I turn around and do the same thing to their Thief.
nom
The enemies' gear is pretty poor or shop-standard, so I don't keep either the Chemist or the Thief I Enticed. Made good decoys, though.
Hey, it's...
If we were still in the same faction we were when we started the game, he'd be our enemy. Come to think of it, the Northern Sky, Southern Sky, and Church are all R2's enemy at this point...
Orran: I am. And it would seem we have you to thank for dealing with our deserters. Ha! I must admit, I'd never thought I'd see the day a Beoulve lent his aid to -our- order.
R2: The fight was not of my choosing.
Orran: I know. You do not wish to shed blood, but it cannot always be avoided. We're no different. Do you think we hunt these men down out of enmity? Craven they may be, but they've not wronged us.
R2: You knew who I was all along, didn't you?
Orran: I did. I'd seen your name and face upon a bill. Inexpiable heresy, was it not? My mind reels at the thought of what you must have done!
Killed a hero to the people and upstanding cleric of the church, is all.
R2: Have you a mind to turn me in?
Orran: Why would I do that? Our orders are to capture deserters. They say nothing of heretics already hunted mercilessly by their own. If I were one of those, I think I'd get moving before the lions at my heels thought to feast upon me as well.
R2: If the White Lion lowered his claws, the Black would follow suit?
Orran: No, I do not think it like he would.
R2: Could you deliver a message to Count Orlandeau, if you should chance to meet him? There are men behind the curtain who goad the dukes for their own gain. We are all but puppets, dancing as they pull our strings. It is those men we ought be fighting.
Orran: I can deliver the message. But why to the count?
R2: My father once told me Count Orlandeau was the only man he could truly
call friend.
Fun fact: Barbaneth Beoulve and Cidolfas Orlandeau were pretty much the other's equal in the Fifty Year War, back when the Northern and Southern Orders were on the same side fighting against an outside threat.
Orran: I am the count's adopted son. I will tell him what you've told me.
R2: Then you believe me?
Orran: I do not know the reason these men seek the Zodiac Stones. If it is for the benefit of the people, I see no reason to raise protest. But if they seek to use the legend for their own gain, I can assure you my stepfather will not sit idly by. It was not for quiet complacence he was given the name "Thunder God."
R2: You know of the High Confessor's plot?
Orran: Of it, yes. But we have no hard evidence. Our spies are working tirelessly, but I suspect you know more than they.
R2: If you did have evidence of the plot, would you then be willing to lay down your swords?
Orran: Such evidence exists?
R2: The Scriptures -- no, it matters not. I simply wish to know.
Orran: Whether or not it would the end of this conflict, I cannot say. But my father, for one, would surely sheathe his blade.
Considering the presence of your father is enough to move an entire company of troops
around an area rather than
through it, that's no small victory for the Northern Sky.
Why bother? I just killed the men you were hunting.
Orran: You -do- have friends - friends who would gladly lay down their lives fighting beside you! And I count myself among them!