Character

Alberic is finally talking to me again, and he immediately warns me that CONSTANT VIGILANCE is what it takes if I don’t want to be a dragon-puppet. Methinks he doesn’t need to know about the godsawful time Joceline has had recently. Mercifully, he changes the subject and asks me to help some dragoons north of Whitebrim.

I encounter one wounded dragoon, two dead ones, and a big angry lizard. The injured man stands up and thanks JoJo... I know that armor! I know that spear! Unless multiple dragoons get that exact kit. Does Winterfell have a contract with Gerolt? Anyhow, Alberic shows up with one of the soldiers who trained me earlier. She’s quite interested in my fighting style, and would like to become my student so she can handle a terrible beast named Graoully. The last woman who asked me for help ended up dead... JoJo swallows her trepidation and promises to help Ser Heustienne. Only she’s busy, being second in command, so for now she resolves to practice JoJo’s lance moves.

Bless Alberic, he acknowledges how nervous I am about this! He encourages JoJo to be a patient teacher. My new student is over at the Pike... where I have never actually gone, due to putting off Heavensward. Oops. Several days’ worth of salt and political mess later, JoJo wanders over to an icicle-covered statue of a dragoon and sees Heustienne and the corpses of three dragons. Three more are about to finish her off, so I kill the Collapse-spamming SOBs first. Since she’s been having trouble emulating JoJo, it’s time to find live bait to practice on. Even though Heustienne still hasn’t figured out what separates their fighting techniques, JoJo somehow has.

Battle Litany makes both you and a friend hit harder. In the name of solidarity, I guess, my student invites me to check out where my fellow floor tanks live. When I get there, she’s standing next to an old man. Heustienne doesn’t go home often, so her dad decided to visit her instead. (He used to tank the floor, too.) He adopted her just like Alberic adopted Estinien; speaking of Alberic, he wants to see JoJo. My student, inspired by her dad’s BAMFery, was just as good as my (least) favorite possessed dragoon. Say, that gives me an idea! I wonder how much Heustienne would learn from wailing on her ex-rival? Two witnesses did hear him praying to a dragon... Oh. Right. Alberic wants JoJo to be a good model of conviction, because only conviction lets dragoons not get brainwashed. No problem. The little dragon following me around only does so because the game won’t let me stab him.

At this point Graoully and friends start to move in. Heustienne barely has any backup, so JoJo returns to the Congregation and finds her student, her dad, another unfamiliar man, and four dudes dressed just like Estinien. For all I know, one of them is him. That’s funny because old man Montorgains says he’s happy to have the Azure Dragoon backing up his daughter. He’s here??? Oh, right, the Eye likes JoJo. I’ll do my best to not completely let y’all down. Heustienne’s dad has their butler give her a cool lance that’s been in the family for years. The leader of the Estinien-alikes is one of the other guys who helped me train earlier. Now there’s two people I’m going to feel bad about allowing to die. Montorgains asks JoJo to not let his daughter get killed in the act of trying to make her parents proud.

I pay another 5 gil and return to the Pike, where almost everyone has tanked the floor already. Graoully doesn’t show up, just some nasty friends. Wait, wait, here he is. Heustienne jumps up onto his back. JoJo watches open-mouthed at this awesomeness... but instead of killing the monster, she just stays up there as it flies off into the distance. Her dad is going to be so upset... I need to take him a piece of her armor. He and Alberic DO point out that she could have made it since nobody saw her fall off... I don’t feel like I earned it, but JoJo looks happy to get Blood of the Dragon.

Back at the Observatorium, Alberic says some guys saw a heretic carrying Heustienne’s spear. JoJo asks around and hurries to the small cave where she previously tried and failed to get into the Dravanian Hinterlands. There are two dead knights and a dragon-heretic alliance I need to stab. My student wants me to go warn everyone that the guys who mugged her are plotting to attack the city. I also have to lie to her dad and tell him his daughter is dead. She is one of their best soldiers, so she must have a reason for it... I guess my WoL is a crap actress, because Montorgains suspects JoJo is hiding something. She sticks to the story and he yells at her so hard she takes a few steps back in fear, like she did when Biggs got wounded. Well, I did my best to share the message Heustienne wanted me to, but this man has seen through me and knows she’s alive somewhere.

It’s time to jack up some more heretics! This group is called the Bloodbearers, and because they drink dragon blood, they can turn into dragons. Wherever the fake inquisitor’s supply came from, these guys sold out to Graoully and are permitted to sip his. They hang out in the chocobo forest. Let me at them! ...actually, by the time we go to hunt them down, we also find Heustienne with her lance, surrounded by like ten bodies. She is so cool. Does she really need me? More importantly, why is she insisting on faking her own death? What kind of injury has she sustained that has her clutching at her chest every so often? It turns out she can never go home again because the heretics literally made her drink the dragon-aid. I was wondering if they’d tempered her or something. This is one of those times I’m sorry I was right. Heustienne has been inspired by JoJo’s being a good dragoon even though she’s an outsider, unaffiliated with Ishgard. So I sort of made an okay mentor. When Graoully returns, she STILL intends to put him out of our misery. Alberic thinks the change forced on her will be somewhat like having the Eye powering her, but her mind will be at risk more than ever, so he and I will provide backup. After all, nobody else needs to see her.

JoJo pays for a quick flight over to the Convictory. Uh-oh, Montorgains is here. How many times do we have to break your heart, old man? He and Alberic head off in one direction to search for the bodies they say Heustienne has been stacking, and JoJo goes in another. The game literally says “trail of carnage.” I find dead dragons and dead dudes, and continue to feel proud. At the end of the trail is Heustienne, of course, and while she’s okay, she’s still trying to resist the dragon blood. And the giant lizard nearby looks like he’s ready for some murder.

I die to Graoully and his stupid icicles ONCE. Heustienne remains okay, and declares that she’s going to hunt down the rest of the dragons so their blood can’t taint anyone else. Hey, that’s a great goal! Can’t jones for dragon blood if there is no dragon blood! I wonder what her dad would say? Because here he comes. Montorgains asks his daughter to please come back; Alberic swears that we’ll keep everything quiet. Of course Heustienne isn’t going. She holds up her lance, and for a second I’m scared she’s going to succumb to the dragon blood and stab her dad, but she swears on the lance that she will purge the land and then maybe come home. JoJo has the right to look happy this time.



(While all this madness has taken place, my inner 12 year-old has been howling because Heustienne’s last name is “Truethrust.” I’m very sorry.)