I'm a pretty pretty Princess! Let's Play Long Live the Queen

Learn about Poison and Reflexes so we can survive the next snake.

So I can't help but notice that our divination powers didn't warn us about the snake at all.

So I'm gonna conduct my own divination.

Hey, "spirits", what skill should we learn to prevent the next horrible disaster?

(in a spooky voice): daaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaance

More like learn about poison and MEDICINE LIKE I'VE BEEN SAYING THIS WHOLE TIME.

Oh wait, Medicine is a broader skillset which includes Poison. Cool! I have no further requests then.

Lore and...sure, Dance.

The spirits have spoken.

Dance magic Dance magic

I agree. Also, I don't even think there's such a thing as a milk viper. This all seems fishy to me. Something is rotten in Denmark Nova.

Voting for a second round of Divination and Lore. I'm just not feeling the Agility skills, even with my short infatuation with Reflexes.

Lore and Dance.

Hopefully that gets us Wiznaibus.

Dance and Accounting

No point in being a Ninja CPA if you can't win a break dancing competition.

Nah, I think you'd need Wield Magic over Lore. Except we can't take that class yet.

If Mogri allows it.

It looks like we're up for a double dose of dancing this week:



I hope we learn to riverdance!





I really have no idea how you practice closely held while not touching.



Elodie: The castle seems quieter with Charlotte and Emry and Zahra and their parents gone. It's certainly not empty, though. It seems like we get more servants every day. I was so worried about Charlotte, after that snake bit her...





Aah, the bliss of ignorance. If you pass that poison check, Elodie will remark that milk viper bites are often fatal and gets depressed.

Anyway, since King Dad won't just give us our source of mystical power, it's time for plan B.







Julianna: This world is filled with dangers, and you will need the powers of a Lumen to fight them. You can't begin training until you have bonded with your crystal.

Elodie: Well, what else am I supposed to do about it?

Julianna: They crystal is probably held under guard in the Royal Treasury. You are the princess; you should be able to find a way inside. Otherwise we might have to take drastic action.



This choice is just a mood trigger. All three options lead right back to us having to go get the crystal. The first option just gives you +1 Yielding, the second +1 Willful and the third does nothing. Since none of the options will change our overall mood at the moment, let's ask the obvious question.

Elodie: What do you mean by drastic action?

Julianna: Let's hope it doesn't come to that. Try to reach the crystal. If you can't, come and talk to me again.

And with that we've survived another week.



What should we train this week? I don't see a breaking and entering skill anywhere.

If Julianna wants that crystal so bad, she can go get it herself.

But if we're really training to be a burglar, climbing sounds helpful.

Reflexes and divination why not.

I'm just going to keep telling you to train Medicine-related skills until you do.

Meditation and Reflexes. Become one with everything, then kick its ass.

I haven't found any checks for Meditation except the weird conversations with Julia it triggers at high level.

Since we're already past that Poison check, let's go with Herbs and Battlefield Medicine.

Gee, who would just be the best at sneaking into a treasury? Oh yeah, a fricken Ninja CPA! Accounting and Reflexes.

Gotta count! Accounting!

Gotta dance! Dance!

Climbing and Lore sound good, I guess.

What is this mess? Why are we not yet sending Falcons on sneaking missions to destroy secret weapons of great Intrigue that our enemies obviously posses?

Well okay that -1 modifier on all things Intrigue kinda sucks. Boo. Fine. Climbing for now, so we can fetch some Falcons to foster into ferocious freedom fighters.

Thanks to Oathbreaker, um, breaking a weird 4-way tie, we have our training regimen for the week:



Climbing and reflexes, go!





And as an added bonus, we learned how to play tennis.



Playing few sets of tennis for the weekend gives us +1 Angry and if we have any points on the Lonely end of the scale, it will give us -1 Lonely until we're neutral again.

One of the maids approaches for your attention.

Yes, Jeeves?



Meet Alice, our personal chambermaid and face of the staff as far we're concerned.





Welp, that's what we get for ignoring all that boring foreign nonsense; even the servants know more about foreign affairs than we do.

Also, I never noticed before, but Alice here actually rated high enough to get a few different expressions from the art department. A lot of the characters only have one face.

Alice: They have brought you a letter, and a gift.

Elodie: 'Condolences on the death of', 'deeply regret', 'best wishes'... Oh! What a beautiful necklace!



Nothing wrong with accepting jewelry from strange noblemen, right?



That necklace sparked Elodie's desire for more sparkly things. Let's see if we can head down to the treasury and find a few more.



Unfortunately, King Dad got to them first, and they won't let us near any of the gems, magical or otherwise.

The events of the week have caused us to develop something of a big head:





Damn skippy!

Meaning the skills we need to get into the vault and get our magical mcguffin, Presence and Accounting,



are also the ones that have massive penalties to training time right now. So much so that it's not even worth making the attempt until we change Elodie's mood.

This is the point in the game where the mood system really starts to come into play. We could ignore the magical powers sitting right under our nose - it's entirely possible to win the game without them - but if we want them in any kind of reasonable time-frame, we need to use weekend activities to shift to a desirable mood. A lot of people mentioned charting which moods give which skills bonus points, but I went ahead and cheated a bit and just looked it up on the internet. As part of the econ tree, Accounting has no positive modifier, but as long as we aren't willful or pressured, we can learn it just fine. If we want to go the presence route, we'll need a more narrow mood range - aiming for yielding since that gives a bonus, but cheerful or pressured will do in a pinch.

Two questions for you talking time: what should we train this week since we can't train the skills that get us magic, and since I'm assuming we want magical powers sooner rather than later, what path should we take to get there - knowledge or sheer force of will? You decide!

Which one of those is medicine? Because medicine.

Also good job noticing your pal is dead from a missed assassination attempt.

Train anything in Medicine, and Strategy.

Intrigue and Intrigue. Gotta get our spies on.

Yielding is really easy to build up by attending court (or whatever the throne icon is) so let's go for that.

Meditate and Dance

And I second attending court. That snootiness spike will probably fuck us over if we ever need a strategic mood swing.

We should go the Economics route to magic. What's better: a sorceress who can wither you with a single glance or an enchantress who can balance the royal budget?

It's totally the second one, no matter what anyone tells you.

I second these. If this helps get us to the Magic, yay.

Medicine and Intrigue carried the day this week.



Since nobody had any preferences on specifics, I went with Foreign Intelligence based on our abysmal knowledge of the surrounding kingdoms from last week and Herbs just for the heck of it.



We learn how to make generic Tylenol,



and some more stuff about the dude that sent us the necklace.

We take a stroll in the gardens after classes to clear our head.

As you are walking, you spot a familiar figure in the palace gardens.



Then you notice that seated beside her is a woman in the robes of a priestess. They are very close together, their hands gently touching as they speak.

Elodie: (Looks like she's busy!)

Yes. Busy.

You turn and walk in a different direction, so as not to disturb them. At that moment, you notice something unusual. I looks like someone just left the palace grounds by going over the hedge. Was that a servant? A thief? Or... an assassin?

Ezio?



The first choice here is a climbing check we don't have the skill to pass, the second is +1 Angry and the third is +1 Afraid. Since we can't go after whoever was skulking around the garden, I'm going to take the opportunity to do a little meta gaming and get our mood back in order.



However, by the time the response is organized and directed to the area beyond the palace, there's no sign of any intruder. You wonder if you were only imagining it.

Check that guy in the white hood sitting on the bench you morons!

As far as the weekend goes, the consensus was that we wanted to switch our mood to Yielding in order to go the presence route to magic, so let's see what's going on in the throne room.





Nothing enjoyable from the looks of it.



And with that, our mood has stabilized somewhat, although we're back to being depressed and still a ways off from yielding.



So what's on our plate this week? Spy falcons? Learning how to be the prettiest pretty princess? Something else? I'm going to keep moving our mood towards yielding in the coming updates so we can actually learn presence but it'll be another week or two yet. I leave the intervening time up to you fine people.