The road from the bustling city of Atlasdam to Rippletide didn’t do much for Cyrus’ academic pursuits. Granted, he discovered that fire magic in spades will indeed murder most creatures a scholarly fellow like him might chance upon. And aye, try as he might to salvage anything from the bellies of those beasts, Cyrus is well and truly bored by the time he arrives at the town.
How lucky for him when, almost immediately as he enters the coastal town of Rippletide, he comes face to face with a greatly distressed young woman by the name of Tressa. This merchant, as Cyrus soon learns, has good reason for her distress; and he, like you and me, takes on the role of member of the audience as young Tressa tells her tale.
The daughter of a family of merchants, Tressa is all too happy to follow in her parents’ footsteps(and especially her father’s). Tressa’s wanderlust is hinted at early-on, and of course is a fully realised desire by the time this first chapter of her adventure is done with.
Tressa’s usual routine of buying different merchandise for her parents’ store – – wine, fruits, any worthwhile stock she gets at a good price from the fishers, merchants and sailors in port – – comes to a screeching halt when a cacophony of screams travels through the air from the center of town. In the middle of conversation with an intriguing Captain of a merchant vessel, Tressa does not hesitate to run towards the unknown danger… A few pirates, come to rob the town blind!
An infuriated Tressa faces the pirates down, nearly coming to blows with foes that outnumber her three to one. It’s only the appearance of the Captain–name-drop still pending– that dissuades Tressa and the pirates from beating each other silly. Once they leave however, our bold merchant concocts a fine plan — offer the pirates a casket of wine as way of apology for being such an unruly young lass. Of course, the wine has been spiked with a potent enough sleeping concoction, but the pirates won’t learn the truth of this until their cove has been robbed blind… Or does robbing thieves count as liberating the booty in question?
Either way, Tressa intends to do a lot of that!
The plan goes without a hitch, until, just as Tressa gets to the treasure trove, one of the pirate leaders wakes up. Try as she may to get out of there, the pirate ain’t THAT dumb. After an exchange that looks a little something like:
Pirate: What’re you doing here?!
Merchant’s Guide to Living, Lying, Cheating — A Biography of a Merchant by Cyrus
Tressa: Heh, heh, picking up the casket…?
Yeah, Tressa and Cyrus (who at this point had joined her in the journey to the pirate cove in order to perform scholarly research about the moral fallout of robbing pirates) kicked the pirate captains’ teeth in for a good few minutes before the rest of their dastardly crew showed up! Just then, things looked dire – – you know the sort of situation I’m talking about. Our two valiant heroes with their backs against one another; the scholar calling on fire and thunder, the merchant shooting arrow after arrow into the ever tightening encirclement of enemies.
Hope is nearly extinguished – – and that’s when The Captain strikes.
Felling two of the pirates with as many strokes of his saber, he descends upon the rest, and at last introduces himself! And voilà, turns out the hero of the hour is a popular pirate himself, now retired from plundering the seas but just as deadly as ever.
He gives a rousing speech about how incapable pirates are the scum of the earth and whatnot — Tressa (and by extent I) was no longer listening as much as swooning over in the Captain’s general direction. Said swooning intensified when the Captain later invited her on his ship and, for her bravery and wit, allowed her to pick any one item from his ship. Immediately, Tressa gravitates towards a ridiculously rare and expensive painting…
… but once she discovers the diary of an adventurer, all thought of potential riches is given up for the sake of Tressa’s wanderlust. With the promise to fill the empty half of the famous adventurer’s diary with her own adventures across the world, Tressa leaves home to find her fortune!
Cyrus was happy to have her as companion, and the two made for a good team on the route to Cobbleston. Next up: Olberic, the warrior, and prime suspect for Octopath’s TRAGEDY background award!
My impressions of this chapter: I’d say Tressa’s first chapter was the most open-world friendly of all the ones I’ve so far played through. It felt every inch the typical beginning of ye olde adventure story, in all the best ways. The voice acting for Tressa and the Captain continues to uphold the high bar I’ve now come to expect after Cyrus’ first chapter.
The Grimoire Reliquary 