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Continuing...
Then the team sets foot on Gebergheim for the first time. They are officially in Bandore territory now.
A new part of the world means a new part of the map. The road to Bandore is straightforward although not as straightforward as the manual would have the player believe. Still, the kingdom appears to be a vast wilderness with only Bandore itself as its sole settlement. Just like with Marion and Zalagoon we just have to smile, nod, and remember the Law of Conservation of Detail.
As the crow flies Bandore itself isn't far from Marion but since the team is traveling by land they have to take the long way around.
It doesn't take long for trouble to show up.
More priests.
Don't forget the ghost being all ghosty.
Gebergheim is living up to its name with lots of rough terrain with splinters of flat plains around the edges.
Doesn't anybody live out here?
Not in towns or villages, Finn.
Why is that?
Draws too much attention. 
But why doesn't Bandore do something about all the dangerous wildlife?
I'm not really sure.
Maybe they just like it this way. Keeps things interesting!
Keeps a lot of people dead I bet.
Good for us right now.
You don't mind all the deadly critters trying to claw your eyes out, Finn? I'm not thrilled about it but as long as its not soldiers it just feels... I don't know, less personal I guess.
Monsters are gonna do monster stuff. Humans'll actually think it over and decide to be evil.
Yeah that's one way to put it, sis.
Moments later the team's trek through the rocky hills comes to a halt when a golem and a red dog approach.
Golems have pets?
Jealous?
I don't need pets. I need loyal minions.
The next day Finn has a question for Edward right in the middle of another battle.
Edward I've been wondering. How do you manage to set ghosts on fire?
I could ask you how you manage to slash ghosts with your sword, Finn.
The answer is magic?
Do you really think my brother is capable of such magic, Tont?
It could be Arawn's doing. It's not magic. I just hit things. I guess ghosts are unstable or something.
The question finds no answer but the team does find a bridge that connects Gebergheim to Aridia. Of course bridges are not exactly happy things to see in jrpgs as anyone who has played Dragon Quest can attest to. It's not a border crossing so this bridge is in truth just a simple bridge and there's no map change and no garrison to worry about.
Heading southeast they see a large river flowing towards the sea.
Hey we heard about this back in Marion.
It's actually rather beautiful. Does anybody live by this river though?
As if to answer Tont an Evil Summoner approaches with a Clay Golem.
Does a mage and their pet count, Tont? A golem is not a pet. Is it a minion then?
My minions need to be able to think for themselves so no. That way they can rebel against you when they get tired of your treatment of them?
Wouldn't have it any other way.
Evil Summoners can and will heal themselves with Heal 2 but that only delays the inevitable.
Hey Finn don't you know that spell? *grumbles something inaudible under his breath*
Tont attempts a critical attack because using his MP on two enemies like this would be a waste.
Don't worry! I'll take care of it!
It doesn't work.
Aww, shucks!
Unfortunately Heal 2 is useless against a giant of a man with enough attack power to cut right through that healing and then some.
Leave this to the professionals.
Clay Golems are professionals too, apparently, as this 21 damage critical hit to Annie demonstrates.
Ow!
Sis!
I'm okay. It just caught me off guard, that's all.
Meanwhile in the back of the party Edward suddenly connects some dots in his training and figures out how to cast Fire 3.
I don't like it when you get all quiet like that, Edward. What nefarious scheme are you cooking up now?
Nothing. I've just been thinking some things over, practicing incantations, that sort of thing.
Oh. Getting a new spell down pat?
Yes.
I suppose there's no point in knowing healing spells if they're never used.
Feeling better?
Like a breath of fresh air through my lungs.
Heading south around the river the team finds that the forest is alive and kicking with dead things that they take by surprise.
Ghosts, ghosts, and more ghosts. We are there so many roaming around out here?
There are a lot of restless dead it seems. Rather alarming, really.
The souls of the damned doomed to forever roam the earth until put to rest?
*shivers* Didn't that Domino guy mention something about his village being destroyed or something?
I think that was his friend talking about Domino.
There was still death and destruction and people dying. Ugh. What if some of these ghosts we've been fighting were once just normal people who got killed by monsters.
It would still mean we'd have to put them out of their misery.
Can't we send them to the great beyond or something?
We can't let them just roam around. No matter how innocent they were in life they're attacking people now.
They're already dead though. How much damage can we really do to them when they're in this state?
It gets them to stop attacking us which is all we can really ask for right now.
This is one problem I'm glad Marion doesn't have. Bandore can keep its ghosts.
In those same forests that cover the southern reaches of Bandore there are also hordes of golems because we clearly haven't run across enough of them as-is.
Prraar. If you ever get tired of the dead there are also magical abominations to keep you company, Finn.
Another problem Bandore can keep to itself.
Where are all these things coming from? Did someone abandon them out here?
Waste of a good golem if you ask me. We're actually not far from Barbaros aren't we, Sir Samson? It should be south of us but there's no way we could cross those mountains even if we wanted to.
Oh so that explains it. Barbaros just dumps all its unwanted golems across the border.
Barbaros is really... not that kind of country, Tont.
What do you mean?
It doesn't matter. Let's just keep going.
Further to the east is a second river. Once again the team must turn south and go around it because there's no way to cross. Is this just a blatant way to force the player to walk farther to reach Bandore? You bet it is.
That means more chances to trigger random encounters and the landscape isn't slouching in that department.
More ghosts. This time with a human.
You know I'm starting to suspect the reason no one lives out here is because every human is in cahoots with the monsters.
I don't understand. Don't these people need homes to eventually go back to? Surely they don't spend all their time roaming the countryside. Maybe they just like sleeping under the stars every night.
Maybe Bandore tolerates them because they keep visitors out. Yeah. Doesn't Bandore go everywhere by sea anyway?
Anywhere outside their own borders.
So that means they'll be twice as surprised when we show up!
Fortunately these particular enemies decided to all attack for scratch damage rather than use their free round to do things like pelt the team with thunder magic. When the team's turns roll around Edward queues up his shiny new spell.
The result: Edward is once again competitive with Tont in group-wide fire damage. Fire 3 costs more than Firedrake (8 versus 6 MP) and usually does about the same amount of damage against enemies that aren't weak to fire but does hit every enemy on the field.
It's also still cheaper than Ice 2. (I am never going to let Ice 2 live down its ridiculous 9 MP cost.).
Forging on in their journey south the team meets a rather large group of enemies.
Ghosts, a golem, and big dogs all working together to attack us. It's official. Everything really is out to get us.
And they're working together it seems. I can't think of any other reason animals would choose to remain with the undead. Does everyone else who travels through this country have to deal with this stuff or is it just us?
Tont queues up a spell he's had for awhile but had no reason to cast.
Aww. Don't let it get you down, Finn. I've got something for just this sort of occasion.
Water spirits?
Yup. At least, I think so.
The Undhine (a bad romanization of Undine) spell summons 7 water spirits to surround the enemy. Each goes through an animation where they change into what I guess is a whirpool or something and that deals damage.
Rather powerful spirits. It's... it's so beautiful!
The spirits or the damage they're causing?
Why do I have to choose?
Undine does extra damage to critters weak to water element. It might share an element with the ice line of spells but for obvious, previously-mentioned reasons I don't use ice spells. At 12 MP per cast Undine ain't cheap but it will kill or severely injure anything we run into at this point in the game. It's also way better than that laughable Titan spell Tont has. This cast dealt a total of 197 damage which comes out to 16 damage per mana point spent (with some remainder) which is about as good as it gets in Beyond the Beyond. Tont just has to be careful to only cast it when there are 4 or more targets to hit because he definitely does not have the MP to keep casting it over and over again.
One Raise survived the spirit onslaught but Samson takes care of it. This is why I don't mind having a heavy hitter at the end of my rotation. If I set Samson to attack something that dies outright to the big nuke he automatically changes targets to whatever's still standing. On a side note the Raise killed by Tont blocked an attack from Annie and Edward. I knew Undine was coming so there wasn't any point in having Edward cast a spell. It still would have taken Finn, Annie, and Edward to kill that Raise (because Edward acts between the siblings and he and Annie don't do enough damage) so there was no way Tont's spell could kill every enemy.
On the other hand Tont and Edward can't always go whole hog with their magic. This formation with two Raises and our first run-in with a Fire Giant will show what can happen when the team doesn't get nuke-happy. (If that enemy sprite seems familiar its because Ramue summoned two Ogres back in episode 52.)
What is that thing? It's hairy and smelly.
We must be getting close to Bandore.
There's a lot of heat coming off of its body whatever it is.
The Raises can cast Thunder so I have the team (except for Samson) concentrate on them. Finn tried to finish one off but his attack fails. The Fire Giant then pummels Annie but the attempt at a one-round groggy is thwarted by her guarding the second attack. Blocks, blocks everywhere!
Look, whatever you are I don't want to dance so bugger off already!
Our attempts to avoid a Thunder 1 spell fail but we would have been hit by this spell even if Finn's attack had succeeded because the Raise no one attacked cast this.
Instead the lucky Raise groggies Annie as the last action of the round. In the next round the Fire Giant then attacks Finn and hits for exactly enough damage to groggy him.
Annie recovers that round as the team kills the Fire Giant. The Raise attacked Edward who blocked. Still we don't want to finish the battle with Finn groggied. He won't get experience for the battle and you can't use the APS to reduce the LP cost of recovering from groggy status if its an end of encounter auto-recover. Instead the rest of the team defends and waits.
The Raise uses another Thunder 1 spell but because everyone is defending each only suffers 6 damage from it. The last thing to happen in the round is Finn recovering which is fine because it means he doesn't instantly take even more damage when there's nothing he can do about it. The downside of recording everything however is that it makes the game lag which makes the APS harder to use. Despite button mashing I still missed the recovery and Finn spent 10 LP to recover 40 VP which he can't really afford to keep up for long.
Thus is one of the primary conundrums of Beyond the Beyond. Either you spend a lot of MP nuking hard to kill things before they can attack or you spend a lot of MP healing up after they tear into your party. There's not a tremendous amount of buffer space between those poles. It's okay to do this stuff on the overworld though because you're never so far from town that you can't absorb the LP losses.
With that out of the way the team finally rounds the second river.
How much farther is it until Bandore?
I don't know. It can't be that far. We've been hiking for two weeks now.
I knew Bandore loved its sea power but this... this is much more than I expected. There's just so much pristine wilderness here. No roads, no farms. We've barely seen any hunters even. Why is Bandore so hungry for land when it doesn't even use the land it already has? *grumbles something inaudible* Bragging rights.
Why build your own infrastructure when you can just take what your neighbor's built I guess.
Or take what your neighbor has to destroy it.
Whatever the reason Bandore is bloody ridiculous. Lots of room for an evil lair though.
Yeah. That's true.
But it would leave you right next to Bandore.
I'm not seeing a downside to this.
One unintended side effect of spamming Fire 3 is that it causes one Dark Bishop to respond with Healing Rain. I knew there was a reason I usually target them first.
After so much hard travel the kids spot towers in the distance.
Is that... Bandore?
It must be. We can see the smoke plumes from the volcanoes. Who builds a city right next to active volcanoes?
Whoever founded Bandore of course.
Everyone living in this city should go back in time and punch that guy in the face.
Next time on Beyond the Beyond - Bandore!
