Joy of joys, the western end of Nanza Pass is filled with still more NPCs who tell me that Kyle is the bee’s knees for playing Robin Hood in between binge drinking sessions and tonsil boxing. (Sorry.) In fact, it seems the only people who don’t like Kyle are the dirty peddlers of stolen goods who’ve been shut down by the Nanza Mafia. Gams succinctly sums it up: “Kyle and his men have a bad reputation, but they do good deeds…” Thanks for clearing that up, honey. What would I do without you?

I breathe a sigh of relief as Alex emerges on the world map on the other side of the mountains. Of course, I manage to get the party lost as I take a wrong turn west and end up walking the wrong way for nearly two minutes. Hey, what do you expect me to do, follow the clearly marked road?

Eventually,the party reaches Lann, which seems to be a perfectly nice little fishing village. Unlike in Saith, here Squeak doesn’t feel the need to deafen the party with gluttonous cries of wanting to sample the local seafood. And there are fish everywhere–in buckets, strung up on poles–so I’m going to consider this a small miracle.

The closest wooden shack to the edge of town houses Lann’s songstress; apparently, there is some kind of law on Lunar that states every town must have a girl with Pippi Longstocking braids who sings the same damn song on command. She does so for our heroes, and although it is literally exactly the same as the Meribia girl’s song, Squeak is totally wowed and says she’s just fabulously talented. I guess my hearing isn’t refined enough to hear the subtle differences in their unique MIDI voices. I’ll have to work on that. Anyway, the girl is using her “unique” gift in order to cheer up the people in Lann, given the hell they’re currently going through. What? The town blessed with the birth of a Dragonmaster is having problems? I so did not see this coming.

Further investigation reveals that the trouble with this town is–dun dun DUN–the Dragonmaster himself. He’s taken to living on a nearby island and zapping magic spells at passing fishermen. This has, in effect, destroyed Lann’s economy, because Lann is a fishing village. And of course, the yokels here in “Hicksville”–tm Nash–are afraid to do anything about it because he is the almighty Dragonmastah and shit. Besmirching the name of Dragonmaster and hurting innocent people? Alex is going to disembowel that bitch with prejudice. For Dyne. But when Nash promises a little girl that he personally will whup that jerk good, the girl snittily replies, “There’s no way you kids can defeat the Dragonmaster! We need Althena to strike him down!” Normally I’d get all bent out of shape about the “kids” comment, but here it’s funny because she, a little kid herself, said it to Nash, and probably made him feel all tiny and unmasculine. Hee.

I’m already depressed after spending five minutes in Pity Party City, but in a refreshing twist, I find someone who isn’t at all sad about this economic tragedy. Other than the composer, who couldn’t be bothered to compose a temporary Woe Is Us track for the town, so the music is all bouncy and inappropriate. I love it. Anyway, a little girl on the dock is all, “Hey, is it true that we can’t go fishing any more? YAAAY!!!” When Squeak asks her why she’s happy when everyone else is not, she responds that she is not a fish person and therefore couldn’t care less if they never catch another fish again. Obviously, this gets Gams’s wannabe motherly panties in a wad, and she feels the urge to lecture the girl about not being such an ungrateful picky eater. Whatever. I like fish now, but if I had to live in that town I’d go insane in about a week and start screaming for some fucking beef. Not like that.

The last stop in Lann is the mayor’s house. A guy standing outside helpfully tells us that there’s a meeting involving the “Dragonmaster” going on, and that he just saw “a very pretty girl go into the chief’s house.” She apparently came from Nanza. Total stranger, I’m sure.

Inside the mayor’s domicile, a girl in white robes is standing on top of a table surrounded by a bunch of old guys. Strangely, she is not dancing to “Tequila,” nor is she stripping down to a white G-string. She’s chewing them out for their inaction on this whole Dragonmaster problem. “You have to be reasonable!” she shouts, unaware that they’re just waiting patiently for her to shut up and get naked. “The Dragonmaster causing problems must be an impostor! The true guardian of Althena would never bring harm to you!” As a sign of good faith–and an apology for the lack of stripping–she promises to go get the rundown on this Dragonmaster guy personally. Cue anime!

The girl–let’s be clear, it’s Jessica de Alkirk–is still glaring down from the table at the old guys, but suddenly she notices Alex and the others standing there. As with Mia’s introduction, the whole thing is first-person from Alex’s perspective, for that realistic whack-off fantasy feel. Jessica cheerily greets the gang, smiling with her fanged canines. And the furries come flooding to the Lunar fandom. Wonderful. She assumes that they’re here for the same reason she is–to smack up this obvious fake Dragonmaster. “In fact,” she sighs melodramatically, “I bet he’s an even bigger phony than my former boyfriend.” We haven’t even seen Jessica and Kyle in the same room together yet, and already the “They’re Lovers But They Fight Constantly” Mallet is in full swing. Ow. Jessica further suggests that “a good fight is just the ticket to get over that rat.” Yes, take out your aggressions toward your man on some stranger. O-kay.

Jessica, like her boyfriend, enjoys hittin’ the bottle.

Following the anime, introductions are exchanged and everyone pleasantly agrees to investigating the Dragonmaster together. But that’s just too easy and painless. So Jessica has to blurt out, “Hey, I know you!” Naturally, she is referring to Gams. “I swear I’ve seen you before!” she says. They both figure they would remember if they’d met before, and Jessica sighs and says, “When I remember where I’ve seen you, I’ll let you know…” Okay, let’s all march out to the statue of Althena to jog the girl’s memory. Chop chop! (Gams Recognition Count: 4)

Instead of listening to me, the party goes to the pier to “borrow” a boat to take to Lann Island. The only guy with a boat–I’m serious, this whole damn fishing village only has one boat–is not exactly willing to hand it over to a bunch of horny teenagers and their flying monkey. When Nash’s sad intimidation tactics predictably fail, Gams is all ready to bat her eyelashes just so and maybe show a little thigh, but Jessica beats her to the punch, taking the other girl tack and screaming at the guy until he agrees to their demands. The fisherman wets himself and whimpers that they can have his boat. “Hey, thanks!” Jessica says, her demeanor totally changing. “Sorry about yelling like that…I have a bit of a temper. Got it from my dad!” So just to review: when people said that this side of Jessica is more like her dead mom and that side is more like her crazy dad, they weren’t kidding. She’s fucking schizo.

The teens and Squeak jump in the boat, and Jessica offers to steer because her daddy was a pirate and navigation abilities are genetic, duh. And by the way, when I said they exchanged introductions before, I meant it in a figurative sense–as far as I can tell, Jessica never tells them who she is, much less tells them her background. So at this point, Jessica is assuming that they know who she is and know that she’s a famous guy’s daughter. I mean, they do know, but still. I don’t even think she ever tells them her name.

On the world map the tiny rowboat–the sprite of which is almost bigger than the town of Lann on the map–arrives at nearby Lann Island. Once they make landfall, Nash exclaims pompously that he’s already convinced the Dragonmaster is a big ol’ faker. While he mostly just repeats what we already know, he does make one good point: “So why would [the real Dragonmaster] be living in a fetid swamp? It’s absolutely ludicrous!” Because this place is one hell of a fetid swamp. But we all know that Nash has a bit of the Foot in Mouth Disease, and thus goes on, “It’s only because of ignorant hicks that the rumor spread as far as [Vein]…” Jessica’s Moral Authority Siren goes off, probably rightly so, because Nash is being kind of a dick to these people who were attacked for no reason. They argue about nothing until Peacemaker Gams breaks it up, leaving Alex free to explore this hellhole and root out that impostor son of a bitch. I’m pretty sure in this entire recap Alex himself doesn’t have one single spoken line of dialogue, but that’s probably because he’s quietly seething over the idea of someone other than himself inheriting Dyne’s legacy. That’s his Koolaid.

Everyone laugh at Nash.

Onto dealing with Lann Island itself. I will admit my bias now: I fucking loathe this dungeon. The music is extremely irritating: it sounds like the performance of a tone deaf kid who bumbled into the starring role in a high school production of Phantom of the Opera. The enemy set is not so much difficult as it is annoying, with near-constant use of abilities like poison and HP-sucking. Also, while this is a swamp full of water/swamp monsters, not everything is weak to lightning as it probably should be. It’s as if the game designers are trying to make me resent Nash. (It’s working.)

Then there are the traps.

Lann Island is one large continuous screen full of monsters, path-blocking swamp plants, poisonous water, and treasure chests. The water saps HP from all party members as Alex walks through it. Avoid the water, you say? But then there is the matter of the trick treasure chests. Certain treasure chests, when opened, cast a Drunken Moron spell on Alex, so moving up makes him move, say, left, going right makes him go down, and so on. Of course, I do have a strategy guide, which does plainly label all the chests which make Alex go wonky. Unfortunately, as I said before, this is one big island with not a lot in the way of geographic markers. So sometimes I’m unable to figure out where the hell I am on the map and, subsequently, whether the chest in front of me contains delicious booty or major ouchies. If you like, you can chalk this up to me being stupid and not knowing how to read a map. I don’t chalk it up to anything–the guide and I are both doing our best. I just hate this goddamn place.