Previously, on Panthera Plays Fire Emblem:
Enemies died
And now the exciting conclusion!
Chapter 9 continued
Dudes move places! Specifically, a lot of dudes go sit in the home castle, either because their work is done or because they'll be warped later. This includes Julia getting inside to sell her warp staff and also several other things (it's almost like I know she won't be playable for a while after this) so Lana can warp her south. She can talk to Celice to give him some magic defense, which is always appreciated. Not that he needs it too badly since he'll be getting Tyrfing at the end of next chapter, but hey, it might help somewhere before then.
So eventually Corple makes his way over to talk to Hannibal, which triggers the gateway to the next castle to open. It's guarded by Judah, a dark mage who takes his name from one of the main antagonists of FE2. This also triggers a big group of promoted mounted units to show up in the north, lead by the powerful Musar, who I believe is the last Harold of the game. He's got Tornado, which means he's quite fast, which means he's rather threatening. More threatening than Judah and his ballista dudes at least. They die very, very quickly and Altenna gets recruited at the last turn before I would have seized, so no delay caused by her after all.
Leaf is awesome and he tanks the hell out of Musar's squad, taking only one hit and wiping out about half of them. Fee takes another, and we're left with pretty easy clean up on the rest since the female Paladins can be left alive (they only have Relive staffs, not exactly an offensive threat, that). Leaf kills him so he can claim the Tornado tome for himself, and though he takes some damage in the process, it quickly ceases to matter when you remember that seizing Judah's castle not only kills Altenna if she's still an enemy, but also kills of Musar's squad. The remnants disappear before they could have ever posed a threat. Altenna takes the opportunity to hit the arena and easily clears it, needing the Gae Bolg only once. She picks up a Steel Sword too just to give her a weapon that doesn't weigh ten tons. Julia talks to Celice and he only gets +2 MDef instead of +3 because he was already at 16 and his class caps at 18. Yeah, even without Tyrfing he's looking pretty invulnerable to magic now.
And now Arion sends out legions of dragon knights to retake the castles! Good thing I have people in place to defend all of them. Altenna intercepts one squad and handles them fairly easily. Then I clear a path for Sety to nuke Arion, because he's a tad too dangerous to leave loose to fly around. Then Julius shows up to save him. Hmm, that guy sure is getting in the way a lot and seeming all mysterious and important. With Arion gone, the remaining dragon knights are fairly easily handled, although one manages to put Lester to sleep. That's kind of lame, but...actually I don't even care, with Sylvia factored in I have roughly double the firepower I need to finish them off. I could have been done this chapter in a very respectable 17 turns but I realized I screwed up on some item swapping and had to scramble to get it all sorted. Still did it in only 20, which is pretty nice. This is a very fun chapter to speed through, lots of decision making on who to send where and when.
Up next: The tenth chapter, and the long, LONG awaited showdown with none other than Emperor Alvis himself
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We clasped our hands, our hands in praise of a conquerors right to tyranny