Angelique: Six Knights of Dark Love playthrough part 1: Get ready! I'm comin' to get ya!

[indigozeal]

This Maren no Rokukishi update is brought to you by backpacks.



First, a word of apology here: I didn't know how I was going to format this when I started playing, and I failed to get screenshots in a few places where they would have been useful to illustrate events. I'll try to do better next time.

Anyhow, to start: Teresa (the redhead on the right above) is an average girl who lives in a small farm village and socializes with friends with questionable sartorial choices.



Yeah, get used to that copyright watermark; apparently, we're in 1998 and disseminating screenshots is still an illicit practice that requires strict corporate supervision. I know there's a way to take PSP screenshots using the firmware itself, but every description of the process warns that it might Brick the System, Holy Hannah! so I've never bothered to fool around with it.

According to our friend - whose name is Sophie - we live in a town that has nothing but grocers and, er, shoe stores? Cobblers, rather. That still seems like a strange economy. There's also some talk about the oppressive local tax increases to serve as foreshadowing.

Anyhow, Teresa lives with her foster brother Renaud. Teresa has a sort of psychic link to Renaud: she has a magical sixth sense that alerts her when he is near, which is useful for finding him during sessions of hide-and-seek after school and for other plot-related purposes later.



"I, I wonder how it can fly through the sky? Ships float in the ocean, don't they? I saw it in a picture book about pirates!"

Thank you, "Tamashii no Kokuhaku" Dyne.



"If it can fly so high, I--I wonder if could even go to God's kingdom, where my brother is...?"

Renaud has been traumatized by the death of his older brother. Renaud won't go into detail about it, but his brother apparently died saving his life. He spends his days offering prayers to his "brother in heaven" and wishing that he could go there, too.
I really felt for him in this intro; he's a sweet little guy, and yet he wants to die like no game character since James Sunderland - and he's only 13.

Sophie brings up the talk of the town: two girls in a row have been abducted from the village, only to be returned unharmed a day later. Sophie advises Teresa to stay safe; Renaud volunteers to be her guard dog.



"Grr! Ruff, ruff!"

Uh-huh.

Anyhow, just as you would expect, Teresa becomes the next abductee. She's returned unharmed the next morning, but she's so overcome by shock that she has no choice but to miss a week of school.

Uh-huh.

The day that Teresa's scheduled to go back to class, though, Renaud goes missing. His disappearance is unusual: not only does he not fit the usual victim profile, but he's not returned the next day. Or week. Or at all. Also, Renaud was making unusually long visits to the local church before his disappearance, and Teresa had a vision during one of those absences where she psychically "saw" him wandering about a strange section of town close to the city limits. This weirds her out at the time; apparently, her Renaud Sense has gotten a big boost in reception since her abduction, for some unknown reason.

Teresa ditches class to spend her days searching for Renaud. She chats up local shopkeepers across the city, but aside from the fact that he was last seen walking to church, she turns up no leads. Her investigation takes a month. Apparently, truant officers are very lax under Emperor Maximiliath's reign.

I was wrong before about one thing: Renaud's mother is alive in the game. Teresa's parents ~disappeared under mysterious circumstances~ when she was very young, so she was taken in by an older couple who were friends of the family. Then they bit it, and so Teresa went to live with their daughter, Renaud's mom. Tellingly, Renaud's mom doesn't get a single pic. She's a single mother with a job that requires her to travel, and the morning she departs on another business trip, she leaves a letter behind for Teresa with shocking instructions: Stop looking for Renaud. Ever since Renaud's brother died, she's had the feeling that she would eventually lose Renaud, too. She tells Teresa that's come to terms with the loss and can only wish for Renaud to be happy with his new family, whomever they may be.

What, woman? Do you know what happens to most kidnapped kids?!



In despair, Teresa goes to the local church and offers a prayer to Renaud's brother for help. Suddenly, she gets one of her premonitions as to Renaud's whereabouts, which takes her to a road leading into a nearby forest.

To follow her premonition, she confronts one of the apparently numerous local shoe merchants and commandeers his carriage, becoming the first Angelique heroine to initiate a vehicular chase. Baller. Careening down the forest path, she eventually happens upon...



...the abandoned fortress from the novel. It looks like a fairytale castle from afar (this is Angelique after all), and Teresa wonders if she's going to be rescuing Renaud from an evil witch. She ventures closer...



...and leaves her ride behind to enter the fortress on foot. Before she can step foot onto the premises proper, she happens across one of its current inhabitants: Eugene.

Eugene wants to kill you! Wait, I didn't get a screenshot of this. Hold on.

...OK, never mind; I can't find the one I want without risking spoilers. Here, I'll just use this illustration from the novel.



Same general idea! Eugene wants to kill you! Big freaking surprise to anyone even passingly familiar with him! Anyhow, sword at her neck, Teresa pulls the second rabbit out of her hat: in the best tradition of Jennifer Simpson and Helen Maxwell, Teresa throws her shawl at Eugene to ensnare his blade and runs like hell. Fuck your shit, Eugene!

Having passed her panic event, Teresa runs into the fortress and comes across the training grounds - without alerting any of the rank-and-files to her presence. She does, however, run straight into Giovanni & Gerhard, occupied with one of their usual card games. They're more personable than Eugene, at least, and offer a few curious questions. Gerhard, however, forgets to use his inside voice (though they're technically outside, with the open-air training yard, but still) and is all WHO ARE YOU WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE, so out goes Teresa again, giving another pair of battle-tested warriors the slip. Finding refuge in the forest, Teresa pauses for a few moments to weigh her options - should she go back to town and get the local militia? She's interrupted, however, by the discovery of Sionna, having a lovely forest walk and studying the local frogs and snakes for their poisonous properties. This being Sionna, "studying" the animals means "Look at how expertly I severed their jugulars!".



"Pierce their vitals with this knife, and death comes easily. See?...It's simple!"

The scariest thing is that he's making an honest effort to be friendly.

This is finally too much for Teresa, and she faints. Not her fault, really. She'd hit the Panic button three times. Her life meter was expended.

When she comes to, Giovanni and Gerhard are tending to her. Gerhard apologizes for his earlier outburst, and Giovanni scolds Sionna for freaking out intruders by shoving dead animals in their faces.

Giovanni, by the way, really plays up the Italian pronunciation of his name. Jyo-BAN'ni.

Meanwhile, Eugene and his stupid pearl bib wander up and initiate a less blade-centric but no less threatening conversation:



"Renaud isn't going home. He's joined us."

There is some real Scissorman music playing during this, by the way. (The music hasn't been bad in this game so far, incidentally.)

Anyhow, Teresa's not impressed by someone she took out with a swath of granny fabric, so she's not backing down. We're at an impasse. Who can settle things?



Oh, yes, Kiefer. Clearly, your input is needed in this situation. I'm going to need more stamina to deal with the Marquis de Sade here, so that's it for now.

.