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Paladin Robin, as suggested by Guest. Paladin as in the conceptual idea of a paladin, not the class. Think DnD.
Bone crunches under metal as an armored fist meets a Risen's face. The monster hisses, more annoyed than truly injured, but injury wasn't the point. The Risen dropped its spear, and the owner of the armored fist snaps it up and buries the point in the monster a moment later. Its claws scramble against her shield and armor, but no damage is done before it dissolves into a purple mist.
"Hold!" The armored woman barks, reaching over the din of combat and the shrieks of untrained villagers to reach their ears. "Just keep those pitchforks in front of you! They're almost done with!"
With her reassurance, the villagers maintain the line of bristling farm tools. Risen- dumb, mindless monsters that they usually are- literally run themself onto the points of the pitchforks. It matters little that a pitchfork is unwieldy when used as a spear when your foe runs headlong into the prongs.
With her new spear (shoddy, old, rusted, but a spear) the woman expertly strikes the remaining Risen around her until they dissolve into purple smoke, and then steps out from the line to exterminate the rest of the Risen.
Within a minute, the battle (if you can even call it a battle) has drawn to a close. A ragged cheer rises from the villagers, and the armored woman good-naturedly accepts the pats on the shoulder and excessive thanks the grateful men and women push her way.
It's a monumental victory for the village and surrounding area. No longer are they threatened by the Risen pack. There's talk of a celebration, and how normalcy can return and the countryside will no longer be a land of red eyes in the forest and death loping out from behind a tree or over a hill, and the armored woman says nothing to dissuade that thought.
It's a naive thought, born of ignorance that is no fault of the villagers. It is only a matter of time before another pack assembles itself through stray Risen wandering in from other areas and new reanimations within, and the armored woman will warn them of such, but for now the villagers have earned some joy.
"We cannot thank you enough Miss Robin!" One of the men, the mayor, says to her. "We can rest easy with this menace gone."
"For now." Robin agrees. Her smile is genuine, but small. This is a small, routine job. There's only so much satisfaction to be gained from it. "Don't forget my instructions, and you shall remain safe."
"Of course, of course." The mayor says with a smile. Though Robin has a feeling he won't, in fact, remember her instructions. Too overjoyed and eager to forget, he and all the other villagers will forget this attack like a bad dream… only for the next inevitable Risen pack to make them return to the nightmare with the horrifying knowledge that they could have avoided the second tragedy.
Robin knows this too well. It's happened far too many times. She can only hope that she'll be pleasantly proven wrong in her prediction.
She stays in the village for the night, getting a new spear from the blacksmith in the process, but leaves as soon as dawn breaks. Her horse- a pack horse, not a war horse- dutifully plods along as Robin keeps an eye on the nearby forest for any Risen stragglers while mentally reviewing her path.
Deep Ylisse is experiencing a surge in Risen packs, coordinated and otherwise, and Robin has made it her business to purge the new Risen menace. She's noticed they seem to be concentrated around Hamstol and has been making her way there.
Risen might be a relatively recent threat, but Robin has been fighting them right since the start. She knows all the different types, how they fight, how they think, how they "spawn" (as the nobles like to put it). She can deal with this, but she's been waylaid by a new Risen pack every half a dozen villages on her way to the city.
The farms and plains around the village fade into forest after a few hours of travel. Robin keeps her eyes fixed on the trees, scanning for the telltale red eyes of Risen within. Forests are dangerous when battling Risen with anything less than a full squad of trained soldiers. The monsters could be hiding in any bush, behind any tree, sometimes up in a tree if the Risen is unusually intelligent. Sure, the forest can be useful in outrunning basic Risen due to how clumsy they are, but getting ambushed tends to outweigh that benefit.
A villager should avoid forests if they know Risen are around. At least on roads and plains you can see Risen coming.
Robin notices a small path winding into the woods in front of her. Robin tugs her horse to a stop and pulls out her map. She doesn't remember seeing this path, and indeed it's not shown anywhere on the parchment.
Robin turns her horse about, and marches him into the forest. This looks like a path to a bandit camp. The path is probably supposed to be hidden, being marked by bark shaved off small sections of trees. It could pass as a hunter's trail… except no hunter would start their path from the middle of a road like this. They'd start from the woods nearest their village.
She pulls her spear from her back and hops off her horse to lead him on foot. She'll be surprised if none of the bandits notice her coming, and doesn't want to be on horseback when they do. She never learned horseback combat.
To Robin's surprise, the forest remains silent aside from her breath, the clank of her armor, and the hoofbeats of her horse. There's no yelling bandits, no rustling bushes… and no chirping birds and no buzzing insects.
Robin again tugs her horse to a stop. She carefully cranes her head, scanning the darkness and listening carefully to her surroundings.
No animals could be excused by a recent human presence disturbing them. Hearing no insects is a sign of Risen.
Unknown to most people, the smokey purple breath of Risen is not merely aesthetic or a random burst of dark magic. It's an insecticide and fungicide meant to protect the Risen against things too small to hit that would otherwise love to take root in their semi-decomposed body. It's also the cause of so-called "Risen blights" where a recent Risen attack causes crops to fail due to the beneficial insects having been killed by close proximity to those Risen.
It's actually her horse that alerts her to danger before her own senses. The horse pauses, and pulls against his reins while his ears flick forward, clearly having heard something. Robin takes that as her cue to tie him to a tree, pull out her shield, and proceed on her own.
She sees the Risen before they see her. The Risen are clearly recent, with skin that's not quite as taut as most Risen and still retains some of its normal colour, and clearly bandits based on their tattered clothes and the axes they lug around. A few of them have injuries, likely their cause of death, but several of them don't. Risen regenerate slowly, (strictly speaking they use dark magic to repair their body over time, and there are a few different ways they can get that dark magic based on their creation and current circumstances) so it's possible that those injuries have simply healed, but Robin doubts it. These Risen are all of similar age (meaning they all died and were revived around the same time); there's got to be a reason some of these Risen are injured and some not.
More important than that though, the Risen have to die. They seem to be the usual, unintelligent sort based on how they're milling around without a noticeable chief… and the fact that Robin doubts a sorcerer would waste adding intelligence and coordination to former brigands while they're not in active use.
Combat training is actually remembered from a Risen's former identity, so Sorcerers spend time making dark magic infused gems to keep certain Risen intelligent. It's much more useful if your elite troops can seek-and-destroy villages and small groups of Ylissian soldiers rather than bumbling around a forest using their awesome combat prowess to kill rabbits when you're not directly commanding them.
The battle is hardly worth mentioning. The Risen's crude axes are functional, woodcutting axes actually, and could conceivably punch through her armor if the Risen could actually hit her. Actual brigands are more dangerous than the simplest Risen simply because they have better control of their limbs and might have some idea of basic tactics.
They run at her, Robin stabs them, and they die. That's really all there is to it. She has to backpedal a bit to avoid fighting more than one of them at a time, but she's in little danger.
With the Risen dealt with, Robin investigates the area. She quickly finds the brigand camp the Risen came from, and it's not what she expected. The tents are as expected, but there are also a number of bedrolls out in the open, and some very noticable blood and vomit stains on said bedrolls (as well as the tents for that matter).
Robin also locates some upturned graves around the back of the camp, probably where some of the Risen come from, and she thinks she knows the story of this place.
The vomit stains are self-explanatory. Some of the brigands were sick, and violently so. The bedrolls were out of the tents so the sick brigands could be kept an eye on (oddly considerate for brigands). They were sick enough to die, hence the graves.
Then the corpses got turned into Risen, rose out of the graves, and attacked their former companions. That would explain why only some of the Risen had injuries to start with. Some of them died of sickness, not injury.
"An unfortunate end for unfortunate people." Robin decides. Searching the tents reveals nothing of use, so Robin snags the coin pouches the Risen had on them (it barely amounts to two gold) and goes on her way.
###
The first thing Robin does upon arriving in the village is inspect the graveyard. She notes the lack of walls and guards, which is standard, but also leaves the village at risk of a Risen attack. If a single Risen were to wander through this area, it might spread thanatophages to the corpses buried here and summon an entire squad of new Risen.
The villagers are not happy about her suggestion to burn the bodies. It's the only way to ensure they don't become Risen, but as expected they don't want to disturb the bodies of their family and ancestors, as well as their general distaste for a "Plegian ritual" like cremation.
Ignoring, of course, that only certain nomadic desert-dwelling tribes in Plegia actually practice cremation and such a thing is not representative of Plegia as a whole… and certain parts of Ferox do it too, so it's not even solely Plegian.
Beyond the villagers being near suicidal by being unwilling to prevent two dozen Risen from rising a mere mile away from their village, they also don't seem to like her very much in general. Her status as a paladin of Naga doesn't outweigh her clearly Plegian features in their eyes.
In most of their eyes, at least. One of the young men, named Donnel, seems far more reasonable than everyone else. Whereas everyone else has been tight-lipped with her, Donnel is more than willing to share local news.
"Ta be honest Miss Robin, there's been a lot o' fright around here for a while. Bandits was plaugin' the roads for a long time, so we been stuck without trade for a while. No merchants are comin' through, not even Annas." Donnel says. "We got enough food an' all, but we's worried that Duke Albenion ain't doing nothin' to clear the roads."
Robin doesn't have the heart to tell him that Duke Albenion is just about the most worthless duke she's ever seen. "I cleared a bandit camp on the way here. They had been turned into Risen after a sickness wiped most of them out, and then turned the dead on their former comrades."
"Ya did? Thank you kindly Miss Robin." Donnel says. "Hopefully we can get a merchant comin' through soon then."
"Perhaps." Robin says. It's a dangerous time to be a merchant after all. Robin has even met some usually mobile Annas that are temporarily remaining in cities until the Risen plague no longer threatens Ylisse. "More useful will be the cleared road when I make my way to Hamstol."
"Yer goin' to Hamstol? That's a dangerous road." Donnel frets. "Apparently there's some mighty nasty Risen prowlin' the roads 'round the city. Hard to get in or out. At least, that's what the last Anna claimed."
"I see." Robin frowns. That's a problem. If those nasty Risen are in a band, she might be outmatched. She's only one woman after all. She could take one or two elite Risen in a fight, but not multiple at the same time. It's times like these she wishes her order weren't spread so thin. She could use backup. "Thank you for the warning Donnel. I'll keep it in mind."
Robin spends the night in a room in the tavern. Rather than making a line for Hamstol, knowing how dangerous it is, she makes the choice to venture to the other surrounding villages in hopes to recruit help in clearing a path to Hamstol. She knows there's bound to be some monks in the area as there is through all of Ylisse, and perhaps she can beg their temporary assistance for a good cause. Hunters, guards stranded away form the city, mercenaries, and military veterans (if any) might also be able to lend a hand.
"I know there's some monks to the east. They're set up near the ruined temple." Donnel offers as she's setting off. "Uh, do you know-?"
"I'm familiar." Robin interrupts. "The Temple of Naga. The first one, anyways."
"Oh. Didn't realize it had the same name!"
"That temple has a long history, and fell out of favor once upon a time." Robin murmurs. "It was abandoned, decried, and then eventually 'rediscovered' once religious opinions changed and serves as a pilgrimage site."
"Mighty fascinatin'." Donnel says. "Uh, but aside from them, I don't know where to point ya. I ain't too familiar with the other villages."
"You've helped more than most, Donnel." Robin reassures as she saddles up her horse. "Keep an eye on the graveyard, and alert everyone if you see a Risen pass through. You'll have more Risen rising up within the week."
"Understood." He nods vigorously. "Best o' luck to ya."
###
Robin is not having much luck, and by "not much" she means "none".
The surrounding villages are home to very few hunters, no veterans, and no mercenaries. It's not that people in these parts don't take that profession, but the hunters and veterans have mostly died to Risen, and the mercenaries have moved to more profitable locations because of Duke Albenion's unwillingness to spend money on the Risen issue.
That leaves Robin with just the monks to go to for assistance, but…
"What do you mean you have other things to do?" Robin asks. Her voice is terse, annoyed, and straining to remain polite. "You're sitting around an old temple doing prayers. With all due respect, Naga can go a few days without prayer if it means taking action for the greater good."
"And who are you to say what counts as the greater good? If we should leave, who will protect the temple?" The head monk responds quietly as he looks down his nose at Robin. "Who's to say clearing the road will grant a benefit? The roads will be infested once more after we leave, rendering our work worthless. Why risk our lives on a temporary benefit?"
"Because I can make it a more permanent benefit." Robin says. "Elite Risen don't come out of nowhere. For them to be patrolling the roads like that, they must be under the control of a Sorcerer, likely one inside Hamstol which is why that city in particular is being guarded by them in the first place. I plan to locate and eliminate him, making Risen removal in the area much more permanent without him specifically reanimating new hordes."
"So you say. Yet how can one woman find and fight a sorcerer?" The monk asks. "What's to stop another sorcerer from continuing their work even if we do eliminate them?"
Robin grits her teeth. "Yes, another could move in, but that's the case when dealing with any foe in a city. Defeating a thieves guild doesn't stop another from sprouting up, but that doesn't make defeating the first worthless. Besides, Sorcerers are not like thieves. They take a large amount of training, and there are only so many of them. Eliminate enough sorcerers and the Risen will eventually be without any leaders."
"And how would you know about how many sorcerers Plegia has?" The monk asks. "Ylisse knows very little about dark mage training-"
"Out of choice, not impossibility." Robin thinks silently.
"-so for you to apparently know so much is… suspicious."
Robin is confused for a second, then offended. "I'm sorry, are you implying I'm untrustworthy because I know about sorcerers?" She asks loudly, not bothering to be polite anymore. "I'm a paladin of Naga thank you very much! I might come from Plegia, but that does not mean I'm in league with undead-summoning, village-slaughtering sorcerers!"
The monk raises an eyebrow, and a derisive sneer briefly flashes across his mouth. "I never claimed any such thing, merely that your knowledge is worrisome for being someone supposedly of the faith."
Robin is starting to regret coming here. "Are you going to help me or not?"
"No." The monk says bluntly. "Your request is unreasonable. Please leave if you're going to shout more."
Robin's fist clenches and unclenches. How can these indifferent assholes call themselves worshippers of Naga? Still, she retains her composure, turns on her heel, and marches out of the monastery.
Furious, and just a little worried about how she's going to get to Hamstol, Robin hops on her horse and rides back to the nearest village. She's gotten precisely zero help despite nearly two weeks of searching.
Stopping at the tavern for the night, as she usually does, Robin listens morosely to the people talking around her… and hears something alarming.
"I hear… I heard theres was some o' them monsters out east." A burly and very drunk man slurs to the slimmer man next to him. "Came walkin' outo Whitefield; a whole hoard o' them! Went north thankfully, but I don feel safe with those things so close."
"Whitefield…" Robin thinks, frowning. "Whitefield is Donnel's village, isn't it?"
Either Donnel didn't keep an eye on the graveyard, didn't see the Risen, or everyone ignored his warning. Robin resigns herself to going back to Whitefield tomorrow. She has idiots to save apparently.
Rushing to Whitefield the next day, Robin is greeted with an ugly sight: simple houses with doors and windows smashed in, fences ruined, the corpses of animals lying in fields… and the corpses of humans suspiciously absent.
Robin steers her skittish horse over towards the graveyard. She's not surprised to see the fences around it completely destroyed, nor every single grave upturned. She warned them, and they didn't listen. That doesn't make her any less sad that this tragedy happened though.
There are no Risen visible in the village, which has Robin more worried than if there was. That means all the Risen have moved on, and that only tends to happen if they're being directly commanded, or if they're chasing something.
Robin would bet goold on them chasing something. Namely, the villagers. She needs to find them, and quickly.
Remembering the drunk's words, Robin kicks her horse into a run, heading north. She finds a trail almost instantly. Someone had the questionable idea to book it into the forest, and apparently everyone else followed, so there's a path of broken branches and kicked dirt for her to follow.
The destruction is (probably) mostly from the Risen in Robin's experience. Their lurching gaits lend them to knocking into everything and anything in their path. At least it makes them easy to track.
Robin pushes her horse as hard as she can without injuring him. The forest isn't exactly conducive terrain for a horse, so that doesn't end up being as quick as she might like. She also has no idea how far away the villagers and the Risen might be. Hours? Days? Maybe a week? How long did it take word to travel to other villages? How did word travel? Did the villagers manage to flee to another village? Are they still in the forest?
Pushing through some bushes, Robin comes across a strange sight: there's a large pit in the ground, and two Risen within. The walls of the pit are lined with sharpened sticks, preventing either from climbing out. It's a devious trap, and it's also directly on the path the villagers were walking. Someone had the smart idea to lead the Risen towards an animal trap.
Robin takes a moment to execute the two Risen with her spear. No sense in letting them stick around and maybe find a way to escape.
That isn't the only evidence of trapped Risen Robin finds. Some of the traps are broken, likely only having temporarily detained their target, but it's an impressive array of traps despite that. There's leg snare traps, tripwire traps, whip traps, more pit traps, and even a deadfall trap involving a large rock. The sheer variety of traps is remarkable, as is the number. They're all set up along the path the villagers fled along, like a deliberately constructed escape route.
Maybe someone did heed her warning to some extent after all.
After one day of travel she hasn't found the villagers, and she's no longer finding any traps. The path continues on into the forest, and Robin grimly realises that the villagers must have walked through the night with Risen following them.
Robin forces herself to stop and camp when the sun goes down. She wants to keep pushing, but stumbling upon Risen in the dark could be the death of her, even with the protection of her armor.
###
When Robin finally finds the villagers, they're neck-deep in Risen… and thankfully, she's not the only help they've managed to gather. Robin can see three cavaliers, two pegasus knights, and a couple mages and healers, and several footmen with varying weapons.
It really simplifies things to have the other soldiers protecting the villagers so she can focus on taking out the Risen. Her spear meets numerous purple faces, joining in the purge started by the other soldiers.
The battle, as most with basic Risen battles, is trivial.
"Miss Robin!" Donnel's voice calls out when the battle is over. He runs over to her, smiling widely. "I told everyone you'd be back! You were right 'bout the graveyard by the way. I made a bunch o' traps in case a Risen came through, an' he did, so we had a little protection when we had to run. Woulda been easier if everyone had listened to me when I first saw the Risen, but… well we're safe now at least."
"I saw the traps." Robin nods. "Good thinking Donnel. You did well. In fact, I'd love to learn some of those traps if you wouldn't mind teaching me."
"Oh, yes! Sure!" Donnel say cheerfully. "I'd be happy to Miss Robin! In fact, these people here, Shepherds they call 'emselves, was heading to Hamstol just like you, and I'm goin' with 'em, so I could always teach you along the way!"
"Donnel, for the last time, you are not going with the Shepherds!" The boy's mother hisses. She looks to a blue-haired man with a sword and says. "Do pardon him Milord, he's had delusions of grandeur for a while now-"
"Aww, c'mon Ma!" Donnel protests. "They said they could use any able hands, and I'm certainly that! 'sides, I'm an adult! Eighteenth was two months ago! I should be able to make mah own choices by now!"
Donnel's mother looks conflicted, and Chrom puts a hand on her shoulder. "For what it's worth, we'd be more than happy to have him. We can offer some of the best training possible, so he'd be in the best hands possible for a military career."
The older woman sighs deeply. There's really nothing she can say against that, nothing that would sound reasonable at least. The only reason Donnel could be convinced to stay in the first place is because he respects her. As an adult, there's technically nothing stopping him from going off to do whatever he wants anyhow. "All right then. But you come back alive, you hear me Donny? I don't need two dead men on my conscience."
"I'll do you proud Ma."
"I have no doubt o' that. I'm worried about your life, not your skill, fool boy."
Robin watches this silently. On one hand, good for Donnel. On the other… if there's another Risen attack, his village is in big trouble if they insist on being stubborn morons.
Well, there's only so much she can do. As long as she can kill that sorcerer, they'll be fairly safe anyhow.
With Donnel joining the Shepherds, and the Shepherds heading in the same direction as herself, Robin's life has been made much easier. She quickly manages to get their assistance in finding the sorcerer, as the Shepeherds' leader, Chrom, is just as interested in protecting people as she is.
Robin could honestly see herself joining such a group if she didn't have other loyalties. In another life, perhaps.
I call this "Paladin" Robin, but she's only a paladin in a very loose sense of being a protector of the weak and all that. There just wasn't something better I could think to call her.
Half-beastdragonsoul2013: I'll take your word for it. All those names mean nothing to me. Your idea is noted.
XenoEmblem4TW: Faith is such a weird thing in Fire Emblem. There's so much to unpack with the implications of deities actually physically interacting with the world, not to mention magic.
HarmonyDST05: I don't think there was. I'll note it down.
Guest: Noted.
Cyberchao X: :D
ScorinVoidseeker: Now how could I not respond? I rarely get reviews this detailed!
(24) Not true! The blade does not always remain the same. Look at the wiki page. If you look at the gallery you can see that Falchion's blade has changed between games, not to mention that there are technically TWO Falchions in the world. Besides, it's not that Chrom couldn't write on the hilt, it's that he doesn't want to. Just because the hilt is replaceable doesn't mean it's replaced often, and it doesn't mean it isn't an heirloom that cutting your name into would still be seen as defacing a royal and religious artifact. You are right in saying it's feasible though.
God I forgot about Communication. I love that so much. Got the idea from a DnD stream where a character had a pair of electrically-charged gauntlets called "Diplomacy", and a sniper musket called "Bad News".
A bit much in the sense that it was unnecessary, or in that it actively detracted from story?
The duel didn't fit, huh? What would you consider the "theme" of the story then? I was going for a pirate theme, and a duel fit perfectly in my mind.
(25) I remember having trouble with this chapter. Can't write suave characters to save my life, and it shows because I immediately backed out of that and made Robin mildly nervous.
Mmm, that's a fair point. I was more trying to articulate that Robin was offering information that wasn't too important anyways, after all if Emmeryn knows nothing Robin could share basic info that any Plegian noble would know anyways, so he wouldn't be giving away sensitive information exactly, but in retrospect that really didn't come through in the writing.
Honestly, I keep forgetting that Gaius is Ylissian. Something about him just screams "Plegia!" to me, and it always slips my mind that it isn't the case.
(26) I had so much fun with that chapter. One of my favourites to go and re-read, actually. I don't have much to say beyond that.