Some real winners Marvy has recruited.
A Black Screen of Merriment and Drunken Humping later–fucking censors–Marvy and the pirates are sprawled out in Elenor’s courtyard, dishes and teapots scattered around them. The camera is uncomfortably close to Dario’s crotch, as if to say, “Here, this is what you wanted, isn’t it?” Sigh. Elenor, a middle-aged woman with auburn hair, dark clothing, and a permanent scowl, walks up behind Agnes, who is watching their sleeping charges disdainfully, and congratulates her apprentice in a gravelly voice that has seen the effects of decades of scotch and cigarettes. “They were such simple people,” Agnes replies, “so it was easy.” Hee. Elenor chuckles too, and replies, “I’ve always said… People are better when they’re simple.” I can tell she’s going to bring a cheery, positive energy to Marvy’s army.
Elenor walks among the unconscious bodies, poking them each in turn with her empty liquor bottle, wondering what they wanted “with Elenor.” Yes, she refers to herself in the third person, like Rickey Henderson. Hervey mutters something about fighting the Kooluk, which is not what Elenor wants to hear. “Oh, more talk of war,” she seethes. “You can fight it out amongst yourselves. I’ve had enough.” But Dario conveniently mentions Cray Trading Company between snores, and apparently Graham Cray is a name with meaning to Elenor. Finally, she looks over at Marvy, slumped against the wall of the house. She bonks him directly on the head with her bottle, and realizes that he isn’t in dreamland with his stupid friends. “Looks like Elenor’s special drug isn’t very effective on you. I’m impressed,” she tells him. By the way, this whole time Elenor has been labeled in the text bubbles as “???” Which makes me wonder if Elenor is speaking in the third person in some sad attempt to obfuscate her identity. I choose to believe that’s just how Elenor rolls. Speaking of how Elenor rolls, she gestures to her bottle and asks Marvy, “How about you and I have another round inside?” It’s 9:30 in the morning, lady!
If I didn’t know better I’d say this was Marvy’s seduction pose.
Agnes pours for the two of them inside the house, her expression indicating that she knows she can look forward to another afternoon of whispering and tiptoeing to keep mommy’s headache from getting worse. Marvy hesitates, but Elenor tells him, “Go ahead, drink. Don’t worry. There’s nothing weird in that one. It’ll clear your head, so gulp it down.” She may as well tell him it really takes the edge off. Lady’s got it bad. After Marvy’s slammed his drink, Elenor, just so we know that she is up on current events, exposits about the Kooluk-Cray connection, and asks what Marvy wants her to do about it. Marvy asks her to fight with him, because his other option is “I can’t believe you drugged everyone!” He can absolutely believe it.
Elenor sighs deeply. “Listen here. The tactician Elenor Silverberg died a long, long time ago. But if you plan to bring her back from the dead, you’d better be prepared to pay for it.” Don’t worry, he has like seven cases of Lagavulin back on the ship. They’re locked up with the mermaids so nobody will go near them. But Elenor specifically wants Marvy to go to a cave behind her house and bring her the contents of a box inside. She waves her bottle around a lot as she explains this task. It’s pretty much a part of her arm.
Marvy’s companions are still sleeping it off, so he is left to run this errand alone. Thankfully, nothing on the island is really that scary–at one point he literally fights a field of grass. He waddle-runs a short distance to the cave, but as he’s about to enter, a large, granite-gray demon with a pointy head and ripped pecs leaps from the ridge above and thumps the ground in front of Marvy. I don’t think we ever find out if Elenor knew this thing was living on her island, but without its presence, her prerequisite fetch quest for joining Marvy’s army is a total joke.
So clearly somebody around here has a wind rune.
The box, surprise of surprises, contains a green bottle, and also a crest of some kind. It’s only surprising in that Elenor lets any bottle get that far away from her. Of course, it turns out that the bottle contains a hangover cure Elenor has Agnes administer to the dumbasses outside. Elenor also demands the crest, which Marvy digs out with his right hand and I expect to just be one big excuse for Elenor to gasp about the Rune of Punishment when she sees it, but nothing of the sort happens. “I didn’t expect you to actually do it,” Elenor says of the world’s easiest fetch quest. “Very well then. I’ve seen how truly determined you are.” Whatever. She asks again if Marvy is super duper sure about taking on Kooluk and Cray, and then pledges to help the cause. I’m rolling my eyes until she redeems the whole scene by adding, “But let me drink a little more… When I’m ready, I’ll join you on your ship.” Mommy needs her medicine, go wait in the car!
Agnes tells Marvy that his companions sobered up and returned to the ship without him. Assholes. She goes on, “You guys are terrible for taking Lady Elenor away. She rarely trusts people. I’ll be joining her if you don’t mind.” It’s like having the Suikoden version of Apple all over again, but Agnes made fun of the pirates for being simple so she can stay. Marvy loots a copper hammer, an earth rune, and a treasure map from the courtyard and then heads back to the ship himself.
Once Marvy is back in his bedroom, nursing a hangover with the help of a naked Dr. Yueh, we briefly swap perspectives to King Lido, as he approaches Elenor’s house alone. We don’t get to see just yet what the two of them talk about, but I hope he gets the roofie treatment first like everybody else. It’s only fair. Back at the ship, Marvy takes care of business, giving Adrienne her new hammer, spending money on his useless hot pirates, and fussing with mushroom cultivation. And playing Ritapon, it should go without saying. Just assume that for every hour of footage I have of this game, there are also 20 minutes of Ritapon.
When he’s emotionally ready to deal with all the blabbermouth morons on his ship, Marvy enters the war room. The usual suspects are in there, creating a low chattering murmur, and Dario and Chiepoo briefly square off over the right to annoy Marvy first. I have no idea. Lido enters after Marvy and apologizes for keeping them all waiting, like anyone in here was actually waiting for Lido. Nope. Elenor enters right after him, faintly praising the ship and demanding a steady supply of booze, like you do. She then proposes, glaring at Lido for a moment, that they get down to business. For which they will need more booze, obviously.
This is literally the first order she gives as the army strategist.
Elenor paces the room as various useless people, and Marvy, watch her. “To even stand a chance against Kooluk,” she says, “we’ll have to unify the small forces on the islands around here. In order to do that, we have to have one strong leader…” She puts the emphasis on the one, and then even as everyone basically stares at Marvy (even Kika!), Elenor says, “Marvy, let’s see if you’re a real leader. There are probably many here who would rather follow the king.” A murmur fills the room, and Chiepoo immediately blurts out, “Are there?” and makes me laugh out loud. No, Chiepoo. No, there are not. If anyone is a threat to Marvy’s leadership, it’s Kika, but nobody points this out. Because leaders can’t have vaginas! What if they bleed all over the naval charts?!
If Elenor would only take a moment to read the room, she would realize that this exercise in power consolidation she’s about to carry out is totally unnecessary, as no one present takes Lido at all seriously, including Lido himself. In fact, the only person thus far who has even raised the issue is Dario, and that should say it all. But Elenor nonetheless decides that the two of them must duel. It’s crystal clear that this is what Lido and Elenor discussed off-screen back at her house, but he plays out his part and says he also thinks one leader would be best. Marvy, for his part, has no issue with beating up on this old hippie.
Look out, we got a badass over here.
The duel with Lido is laughably easy, and also seems to take place in a completely empty room roughly 10 times larger than the ship’s war room. There’s not even a chalkboard! Whatever again. Lido defends once, gets his ass handed to him by failed special attacks twice, and then graciously allows Marvy to end the duel with his own flashy special attack, so nobody in the room doubts that he is the leader. Which no one did in the first place.
Thoroughly embarrassed, Lido says he gives up, and then raises his voice so everyone in the tiny room can hear. “Everyone, listen up!” he shouts needlessly. “As of now, the current King of Obel will temporarily abdicate the throne!” Okay, that seems a little extreme, massive foreshadowing about him and Marvy aside. He goes on, looking to Marvy, “You are our new leader. I, the former King of Obel, acknowledge you. This is proof of your kingship. Use it wisely.” And he plants in Marvy’s hand, I assume, the crest he fetched for Elenor from the cave, now labeled the Golden Seal. I’m sure Flarey Sue is going to be thrilled that her dad robbed her of her birthright just so the likes of Chiepoo and Rat Boy wouldn’t respect him too much.
Also, am I to believe that the one thing holding Marvy back from earning the respect and admiration of his companions was that he was not King of Obel? Because no. Just no.
With that taken care of, Elenor asks Marvy to get down to the real business: “Now, Marvy, we need to give this ship a proper name,” she says. “What will you call it?” It has indeed been driving me nuts to keep referring to it as “the ship” or “fucking brokedick piece of garbage” this whole time. Chiepoo wants to call it the “Chicken,” because haha, get it, he’s a cat, while Tov throws out the laughable name the “Dauntless.” Since he built it, that makes Dauntless the default name, but there is no fucking way Marvy is going with that. The problem is, even though he has this powerful, phallic ship at his command, parting the waves like so many buttcheeks, I don’t have the heart to give it some fun homoerotic name like I usually would, because I have yelled at this broken shopping cart of a fucking ship so much already, and there is more yelling yet to come. So much more. So I take a cue from Tov, and alter his suggestion just a hair, to reflect both Marvy’s view of his ship and his mission in general.
“Rudderless, huh…” Elenor wonders. “Well, that’s a pretty classy name.” I agree! She also points out the need for the army to have a name, as it’s both absurd and harmful to their mission to refer to themselves as the Obel navy. More suggestions from the unwashed masses! Desmond suggests the “Rush,” like Marvy is the coach of a WNBA team, and Akaghi doesn’t skip the opportunity to kiss ass and suggests the “Marvy Army.” Surprise, those are both horrible ideas. Perhaps lazily, I end up using my backup name for the boat as the army’s name, stealing shamelessly both from Arrested Development and Jeanne’s Animal Crossing town. All hail the Seaward Army! I mean, we do have Elenor. And soon, Katarina!
Already super happy with my choice.
Marvy orders the launch of the Rudderless, and some exciting music plays as the ship, with Kika’s close behind, sails off to nowhere in particular. That night, though, Lido and Elenor meet in her cabin, just so nothing about that previous scene is left ambiguous. Elenor asks, “Were you satisfied with my performance?” No, they are not in bed, smoking cigarettes, thank Christ. Lido replies, “Sorry, it was an unfriendly role, but it wasn’t enough to just make him leader on this ship. Everyone would still end up deferring to me, the king. I had to give him more authority.” Motherfucker is delusional, you guys.
“Besides,” Lido says, “I would always put the kingdom first. Right now, we can’t have that.” Except he just made Marvy the king. Doesn’t that imply that Marvy should also put the kingdom first? Why not just step down, secretly abdicate to Flarey Sue, and declare Marvy the army’s leader, but not the king? This isn’t brain surgery, Lido. Elenor manages not to roll her eyes at all this. She does say, “It’s probably a better idea for you to keep a rather low profile, wouldn’t you agree?” Lido doesn’t even get to answer before she laughs and realizes nobody would think he was a king anyway from looking at him. Lido can only laugh, because this is true. Even though he no longer has the official capacity to do so, he formally welcomes Lady Tactician Elenor aboard the ship. She replies, “Quit it. You’re making me blush. I’ve just got a little history with Cray… That’s all.” I wonder if Elenor’s suggestion for Lido to keep a low profile was just so she could keep him in her cabin as her man-in-waiting. She’s been alone on that island for a long time, and I don’t want to think about her going there with Agnes. That is inappropriate.
And with Marvy’s official installation as leader, we are done for now! I don’t know about you but I couldn’t possibly handle any more excitement. Join me in part 8 as Marvy waves around his Golden Seal, and his dick, to sway more allies to the cause of the Seawards. Until then!