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33: Lady Lyndies
We have our next objective,
and a rather infamous map.
Well shit. You could have saved the whole world a whole lot of trouble, you know!
well i wouldn't go quite that far but
i'm just saying.
This man. This man will suffer.
Poor Lyn.
And here are we, a bunch of idiots with no clue what the hell just happened.
As we start out, we have only a single enemy visible, as well as three green units.
The first and immediate concern being this one.
Weighed down well into the negatives by her tome, Lyn manages to be worse than even vanilla Nino - a character in the single-digit levels joining a handful of maps from endgame.
And yeah, as you've no doubt surmised from the chapter name... she is going to die.
Because on the very first turn, long before we can really do anything about it, this guy comes running out of the darkness and
doubles her with his hammers.
She does have a decent chance of dodging one of his attacks (as well as an about equal chance of just critting him on the counter and not having to worry about the second attack at all!), but even should she live through the Hammertime,
there's this guy just outside who'll finish her.
Yes. Yes, you are.
We've seen Renault before, but we didn't have a chance to look at his stats. They're not bad! Especially with that Thunder boost. He also comes with an elixir in case he starts actually taking damage, and a door/chest key as well since he's originally a (promoted) thief.
Somehow, however, stunningly, he spawns with no staff rank at all.
Zephiel, currently out cold, is looking... frankly more like a usable unit than some of the people I've actually recruited. 
He has a very, very sharp, very shiny toy to defend himself with.
I think I can say with confidence that nothing else before this has had me banging my head against it quite so hard.
First of all, we need to light up this area so we know what the hell's in here.
That Eliwood is not terrible, and the rapier is a really nice piece of gear. However, he pales in comparison to
19 mag Luna druid out of fucking nowhere!
Still, we can't do much about him right now. On his first move, Dorcas has to run as far as he can and torch this area. Has to.
If he can't reach this specific tile, it won't reveal the hammer pirate.
And then I have to use my three bards to get Heath close enough to dance for Dorcas
so he can get to this door and unlock it
and then I have to continue the bard chain until they can dance for Dorcas again
which just barely lets him run forward far enough to bolting the ever loving fuck out of this guy!
You have no idea how fucking good it feels to finally have a strategy that works.
...that said, it is still somewhat luck reliant. I have put a lot of squishy bards in harm's way, after all!
(Dorcas, meanwhile, is in no danger at all.)
Then we get yanked across the map to watch Renault just kind of evaporate some myrm.
This guy wasn't meant to reach Zephiel on the first turn. He attacks, and Zephiel's sprite disappears during the counter animation! ...better than it crashing the game.
and then Kent got killed by a 4% Luna crit are you shitting me
well as said, the strategy for saving Lyn works. (In fact, it works so suspiciously well for the characters I have, it could have been purposely crafted for it!) The only way it fails is if I actually fuck it up by fumbling a dance command or something. So I just need to do it over again and hope the other bits doesn't go as poorly.
In considerably less danger for the moment, Sain is going left and this time I gave him a torch so he can light the place up.
This isn't good, but it could certainly be worse.
Oh,
and there's this guy too! Oh, and look, more 20+ crit rates...
Anyway, Kent finally dodged that Luna. As you see, the hit rate isn't really that high. (And to be honest, I could have done a lot to lessen the risk of that too, but at this point I was just like fuck it we're doing this now.)
Renault is in no danger whatsoever.
And even the shaman who would have attacked Nino now goes for Dorcas instead because he cannot retaliate.
the rapier is a fucking brave weapon why
i mean "why can I not have one"
"and someone who can use it"
I sure don't have any Eliwood lords, promoted or unpromoted
It's fine, Kent lives on 2 hp.
With his support and high luck, Guy manages to negate the Luna crit rate. You know, in case he didn't oneshot. Which he does, because he's one hell of a Guy.
I will take this. The druid also dropped a lockpick for some reason? I'll take that, too.
Now we can start to work on this clusterfuck of enemies.
Revvin' that horse!
Still in no danger.
Lit another torch and hey! You!!
...sadly I'm not fast enough to catch him. He has +1 move on even Sain.
Lighting another torch on the other side because I know that
Ursula hangs in this corner!
She is considerably less of a threat than a bolting valkyrie would be. I mean, I could just bolting duel her forever, that is a thing I could do, but still.
(And a damn good thing, too. Siege tomes and darkness are not a fun combination even when the siege tomes aren't unbreakable.)
Nino killed a guy in the pile around Dorcas.
Infinite bolting is still hilarious! When I have it!
Pally drops a poison lance. It's weak, but still a brave weapon.
Another one?!
And a soldier in Zephiel's room.
But he can't kill, and I have physics if I need them.
Fucking thieves!
We'll deal with this guy instead, and I can javelin through the wall when the thief reaches the chests. I don't mind losing the lockpicks; I have a ton by now.
...fucking hell!
"I feel some kind of strange connection with you..."
Anyway Lyn gets painted blue and I scope out the area. This guy has a steel sword and Needs To Go. He could easily oneshot Zephiel (and maybe some people who matter, too).
Fortunately, we have ways of making it so.
One of Ursula's retinue.
Zeph handles himself fine.
Buddy, you are more than welcome to that!
oh and then Renault kills him and deletes the axe from existence anyway.
We want no more like that, so you die too.
Fine.
Florina will camp by these stairs and delete anything dumb enough to emerge from them.
Scouting ahead some more. Nothing too threatening in the immediate vicinity.
Spoke too soon-
oh it was just a longbow.
Hey, that's a sage!
...not that you can tell by the stats...
Ninian got started on the treasures. Huh, I can probably find a use for another one of these!
Dorcas torch staffed.
Didn't uncover anything too important, but these two both have steel swords and will need to be handled with a little bit of care.
The thunder tome's obnoxious on enemies. It makes it hard to double even these no-name scrubs.
well okay I guess you can just crit and oneshot, that's fine too!
...and then a myrm and archer ran out of the darkness and nearly ruined Sain's shit.
Fortunately, this guy is harmless!
Sain learned something today.
Can't see it, but something moved here.
Thanks.
Ursula does not move, that's her range right here.
So it's safe to start on her minions properly.
Sain's on single-digit health but he can still open chests.
Another?!
Lyn needs to talk to Renault, I'm pretty sure, so I'm blocking off a path for her. Seven points of movement! It's pretty good.
Dart planed so much music.
There!
Now get the hell over here!
Nino actually does not utterly wreck Ursula, which is a... "welcome?" change.
I mean I guess kinda but not especially in this context. The generic with the hammer was a bigger problem.
More sages.
More levels! Lucius has S bows now.
And a myrm.
Stairs still spitting out dudes, too.
Nice.
Oh yes it can!
Anything that leads to you getting doubled less is good!
Oh hey, they have a super robot too!
i take it back that's just a regular robot
I was just going to do this to show off Lyn's palette but she decided to crit this guy.
Barding! And here I thought we were done with these levels.
Boltinging more things.
Since I've lit up the area and there's nothing else here, maybe we can get Lyn another kill.
...I'd say you're making a strong case for yourself, if you weren't even worse than vanilla Nino to begin with...
And after that, we just pass turns a few more times.
And wait for the lights to come back on.
I'm glad, too! We actually survived this time!
Now now, don't ruin this for me.
She was worth a nice chunk of exp, too.
"Ordering me to start wearing progressively larger collars every time he sees me...? Has he gone completely insane?"
Hawkeye taking Pent's place is beautiful. He just walks around shirtless all the time and no one calls attention to it. It's called being eccentric when nobles do stuff like that.
And that's why we like you!
well one of the reasons
Behold: a sealed copy of Radiant Dawn!
"I... I opened the plastic..."
But fortunately Hellene just wanted to play the damn thing, not hoard it for red gems.
No one spoil how this ends 
And it's useless!
I'm going to guess it's going to be another map, but what do I know?
Next on Ninian's Bizarre Randomizer...
We quest sidingly. Do not miss it.