While everyone is off playing FE: Three Houses or FF XIV I feel a little weird for posting about this so much, but as long as I'm not bothering anyone, this has been the one thing to sort of help ease my mind off of some the bigger anxieties of things happening lately.

I went back to defeat the Troll Shaman in Melm before getting too far in Verdant Phenom, since it seemed like the story prompts for the Witch Petitions wouldn't progress until I did that. It took quite a bit more patient grinding and at least two different resets to get a feel for how defeat him.

Some early critical gores threw me off and having most of my team wiped by one of the spells was definitely upsetting.

I had a suspicion that the Hanako bards shouldn't be something to fight, but having them increase your karma by 3 a pop definitely made me nervous to explore Verdant Phenom courageously.

I was glad to get a bunch of story scenes in a row after reaching the bagworm prince, but was also a bit underwhelmed by how little progress there was when I finally did stack up the scenes.

I forgot how far I had to get to get to the next part that was interesting, the introduction of Baba Yaga. That she's powerful enough to make a fish storm is something. I'm wondering a bit more about whether the puppet show is actually alluding to Dronya and the other apprentices under Baba were treated since Funa already alluded that she's "not foolish enough to get out of Baba's good graces" Stealing the Tractus de Monstrum is one thing, I'm pretty sure Dronya's prosthetic leg must have been the result of something fairly dark--not to mention her apparently losing the memory of her favorite dish? 

I think I skipped the event pokoro(sp?) after wiping once, but then having to fight the Numblebee wasn't as bad as I thought. I actually still haven't gone back to the beginning of the area to see what actually happened to Nico and company. I had some suspicions they were actually tricking me to begin with "oh join us for dinner, but please go to this place where the door will lock behind you, totally fine"

I'm not super stoked to check out Umbra yet because my team seemed barely leveled enough for the Numblebee fight and I haven't had a chance to make more support characters to level in the background as I get more soul pacts with multiple attacker slots.

Might finally go back to Campanula and see how far the corner section goes? I was getting really messed up by just the slime monsters in that area, but that was also before I was in the lower levels of Melm and even dared to sneak attack the patrolling Trolls.

One last random note, I love Neldo, a lot. He's my new son, Dronya's awful for assuming the worst of him re:Luca and I hope he was actually okay after trying to ambush Baba. You'd think I'd start drawing him a lot because new fav, but why does he have to have so many damn ruffles in his coat??

Time for... modern... AU I guess...