Camp-Fire Vignettes (Chapter 1: The Meager)

by The Geordie Lass

A series of short-medium length snapshots of what is happening behind the scenes between battles with Ramza & co. This has elements of a novelisation, as it follows the canon story, however, it doesn't just retell it. Instead, it's an exploration of the characters and their relationships, with a little back-story thrown in. T-rated for mild swearing and passing mentions of sex.

24. Afterword

Afterword

A few months back, as I was replaying FFT, I started jotting down some scenes/sketches, purely for my own amusement, set in the days following Delita's abduction of Princess Ovelia from Orbonne. They went with what seems to be the "traditional" route with longer canon FFT fics, beginning at that point, and following Ramza, Agrias et al. Then I read them back over and decided they weren't too bad and that I might actually try "publishing" them, so I went back and tidied them up a bit, to be ready for posting. Tidying up led to me adding an extra scene, between Delita and Ovelia, to each of the first few vignettes, for the few days they are together after he kidnaps her.

Then I decided that it might be interesting, and a bit more original, to first write about Delita and his earlier relationship with Ramza, which is how I started writing the vignettes you've just finished reading. That may make what you've just read (assuming you actually had the patience to read all of my rambling little vignettes) the longest, originally unintended, "prologue" ever on this site (It's also why I hope that you'll forgive me the first few of these vignettes, which are probably not my best work. I really wasn't all that confident with exactly what I wanted to do with these, at first!)

I'm not a fan of original characters being shoehorned into fics that are sticking to canon story-lines (run for your lives, it's Mary Sue!), but Chapter 1 of the game requires Ramza to have a squad of generics, hence "the girls" had to come into being. However, Ramza has indeed "turned and walked away" from everything now, and even if the game doesn't have him leave them behind when he does that, he's not going to have them with him at any point in the future.

So now, if nothing else, I feel like I have a better feeling for who Ramza and Delita are, and what they were to each other before Tietra died. As a fringe benefit, I've also discovered who Alma is, which will help me immensely when she returns for a short while in Chapter 3. Now I just have to decide how to stop her stealing all the scenes she's in – she turned out to be surprisingly good at that!

Why I started writing this waffling afterword, was to say that I've actually written about half of the vignettes from Chapter 2 of the game (which will be published as a separate "story", like each game "Chapter", otherwise this would probably run to well over a hundred chapters, assuming I decide to include all the side quests to get the optional characters in Chapter 4 - and I like the optional characters, so that's almost certain.) So now I need to go back to those vignettes I wrote months ago and make sure that I'm happy with them and especially make sure that there are no glaring inconsistencies with this set. You can probably expect the first eight or ten vignettes from Chapter 2 to be posted in fairly rapid succession, though; since (hopefully) they really just need proof-reading and tweaking. (The first one's almost done, it should go up later today)

They're also more upbeat than the last few of these are – apart from Agrias being incredibly pissed off, (at Ramza, Ladd and life in general) until they manage to get the Princess back from Delita.

My thanks go to everyone who has already reviewed these (and anyone who adds a review in the future). I've tried to make corrections from criticism and apply any hints and tips about improving my writing style, where possible, but do keep them coming – I think I'm an semi-decent writer, but I'd never claim to be more than OK - I know I have vast room for improvement. I do respond whenever anyone reviews anything of mine (usually quickly, but I always do respond eventually).

If you've enjoyed reading these, think others would also like to as well and you think they deserve it, please don't forget to favourite it!

NB If you haven't already, the thing to do now is to go and read my one-shot, "Just Another Sellsword" (click through to my profile to find it). With Agrias, Alicia, Ladd, Lavian and Mustadio to introduce and flesh out in the second set of vignettes, it's easier on me if you read that short-story first as I used that to establish Ladd (who has an actual personality, unlike in some fanfics I've read). If you like it, you could maybe favourite it too... it's a decent short story... you'll like it... honest... no really, you will!