#falgabard

- The Red Mage is revered in Sasune, with one NPC mentioning  that every soldier strives to be one. This is also partially why Ingus is one. The NTT Publishing guides furthers this by supposedly (if my online translator isn’t leading me astray) revealing that Red Mages used to be heirs to the throne in olden days and, while that tradition is no more, the Wightslayer is a remnant of those times. Considering that the Wightslayer is one of, like, two swords a Red Mage can equip in the original famicom game, it’s understandable.

- The guides also explain why Red Mages cannot use the higher echelon of magic that White/Black Mages can: It involves a background event known as the “Sasune-Saronia War” which caused Magic to become specialized into White Magic and Black Magic. The tiers of Magic that the Red Mage can use (1-4 in the original, 1-5 in the remake) are apparently the original tiers before Magic became specialized.

- Saronia, by contrast, has Dragoons. NPCs all around tell of how Saronia’s military forces consisted of airships and Dragoons and the backstory for Saronia involves the city being saved from Garuda’s wrath thanks to a dragoon. The Dragon Spire was also built as a result.

- - Saronia is the second kingdom to be heavily affiliated with Dragoons: The first being Deist from II and the third being Baron from IV.

- Dark Knight’s in III were a bit different compared to their later iterations: They were initially called Magic Knights, they could use up to tier 3 of White Magic and they lacked the “self-harm for power” aspects that their future iterations (starting with Cecil Harvey in IV) would have, instead overcoming one’s fear of darkness (maybe. It might just be worded differently). The remake reworks them by giving them the Souleater ability and the dialogue the job descriptor gives for the job to make them more in-line with future iterations.

In the remake of Final Fantasy III, it is revealed at the end of the Floating Continent’s arc that the four main characters are from the surface world (then known as the world of darkness). This is brought up and subsequently never followed up on. In the unused dialogue, it is slightly followed up on in the town of Falgabard as Ingus is hit with a sense of nostalgia upon entering. Whilst I briefly mentioned it in passing, the Cave of Shadows has a similar scene. What follows is a play-by-play of the two scenes:

The scene presumably takes place shortly after the Dark Knight at the cave entrance dies, after giving the party the Kotetsu. Luneth notices Ingus shaking and Ingus claims that he’s merely trembling with excitement. Refia theorizes that it may have been the Dark Knight and whether or not they were worthy of receiving the Kotetsu. Ingus notes that there is that, but he also has some sort of feeling (I’ve tried dissecting the relevant words and the best I could get is that he has a vague premonition). Arc figures that it has something to do with the Fang of Earth being hidden, but Luneth goes silent.

In the second scene, Luneth out of the blue asks Ingus if he ever went through the mountain range with the holes before their current adventure. Ingus asks why and Luneth states that he remembers seeing something. Whilst Ingus initially denies it, he does admit that he found the mountain with holes familiar and that it was a distant memory from before he went to Sasune (for reference sake, this would mean he was four at best when that happened, according to the Falgabard scenes). Luneth says that he doesn’t remember well either and all he remembers is taking a trip on a vehicle that flies through the sky.

The “mountain of holes” they’re referring to is most likely the mountain range around the Cave of Shadows. The interesting part of that looking at the surface map, the Cave of Shadows is on the other side of the map. Questions are already raised on how Ingus remembers it, even accounting for him heavily implied to be from Falgabard, but if Luneth’s memory of the airship is connected in any way, then that just raises further questions.

This one is going to be a rather brief one, touching upon one of the towns of the game. I’m not sure whether this info comes from the original famicom version that didn’t make it to the remake or some guidebook that was released in Japan or whatever (Though the page with the guidebook info I mentioned earlier seems to mention it). This is going to be a quick overview of the Knight.

Basically, in the world of FFIII, there is the ability to use the positive and negative aspects of the sword; Knights use the positive aspects and Dark Knights use the negative aspects (this is somewhat alluded to even in the remake via Hecantoncheir’s line: “Open yourself to your fear. Only then will darkness grant you its power”). The Saronian King in those days feared the power of Darkness and so exiled one of his Dark Knights. Said Dark Knight went on to study the way of the Dark Blade and founded Falgabard.

Ingus may or may not be from Falgabard.

There’s an unused scene (which can be read on The Cutting Room Floor if you know Japanese. My apologies but, for the sake of this actually appearing in search results, I cannot link it in this post.) in which Ingus express nostalgia being in the village. which leads the others to believe that it’s possible that he came from there (apparently, he started serving the king of Sasune at age 4).

There’s even a followup scene in the Cave of Shadows where he and Luneth have a discussion about what Ingus remembers (by contrast, Luneth only remembers the airship), and later when Ingus promises to return to Falgabard and make a Dark Blade.

Final Fantasy III Part 27

Now that we’re back on the Invincible, head back out from this now docile lake, and head back off of the Floating Continent and down to the surface.  Once we’re back down on the surface, go back to Saronia.  From where Southwestern Saronia is, head southwest until we find a mountain pass heading off to the west.  On the south side of the pass, head over the small pair of mountains, then follow…