Intermission 16 Page 11
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“Like… like right now? Right here?”
“i planted all the flowers i can”
“i can feel the change coming on”
“i can hold it back for a little while until i find a good place”
“but not for long”
“Paws already told me about a place”
“Paws did? Is it in a dungeon?”
“yes”
“a small one with no treasure left so nobody will go there”
“the magic will help my daughter grow”
“I’ll do whatever I can to make sure the world is a good place for her to grow up.”
“i know you will”
“…”
“Ricki”
“Yeah?”
“will you go with me”
“i don’t want to be alone”
“Yeah.”
“thank you”
Called it. Still hope it’s nearby so we can keep an eye on Botanya while she grows- and her daughter, for that matter.
On the dungeon side of things: I kinda doubt the “no treasure” thing, unless we’re primarily looking at monster drops for loot. Or some sort of “magical” feature that will benefit Ricki in some other way, i.e. some form of permanent/semi-permanent upgrade. I also still expect that we’ll get Botanya’s daughter as a party member somehow, even if it probably shouldn’t make sense with the time-scales involved in Botanya’s backstory.
Also, it’s interesting that this dungeon doesn’t seem to have a built in reason for why only Ricki is accompanying her lol. With Lara it was personal, Amadeusz and Kamau both wanted to keep things on the sly, and with Mac everyone else IS going as a distraction. But Botanya “doesn’t want to be alone”… yet is seemingly only going to take Ricki, and not any of the other people she’s been hanging out with to be there at what’s essentially her deathbed? We’ll probably get a better explanation for why this is a duo mission when we actually decide to go there, but I thought that was a bit funny.
I would have to assume it’s just because Botanya isn’t close to anyone besides Ricki. She’s not really shown emotion or been shown talking to anyone else.
Personally I was assuming that there was a lot more relationship building going on off-screen that we just didn’t see. As for what we do see on-screen…
1. Botanya adopted Lohk’s “bah” and Ricki explicitly said that Botanya was spending too much time with her after the Crypt dungeon. (Intermission 9)
2. When Lara came back as a Drider with Ricki, Botanya was seemingly hanging out with everyone else while they were eating dinner (and possibly eating dinner herself, if you keep in mind her Mulch ability…) (Intermission 10)
3. We see her playing DND with everyone. (Intermission 14)
4. Botanya at least knows enough about Kamau’s behavior to compare him to a “mom” during her heart-to-heart with Ricki. (Intermission 15)
5. Most notably of all, for me at least, we also see Botanya learning sign-language with Lara and Ix. She doesn’t NEED to learn it at all, but she does anyways. That’s no small amount of effort put forth for the sake of communicating with 2-3 people (including Ricki), tops, one of whom (Ix) is a complete newbie to the manor and is made out of Botanya’s deadly weakness half the time. (Intermission 13)
Granted with that last example Botanya is all but stated to be a savant when it comes to learning things, but it’s still her going out of her way to help teach sign-language. Someone who did that IRL would basically be considered a saint.
So overall I’d say Botanya is probably pretty good friends with most everyone at the Manor. Except for Coccyx, of course. She might be “best” friends with Ricki, but TBH Ricki is bound to be good friends with everyone due to being our main character.
(Really, now that I think about it, Ricki is just a visual novel protagonist inhabiting the body of an RPG character. Even Amadeusz has a soft spot for her. Lara just “won” the Ricki-bowl by becoming her girlfriend and we’ve essentially been in the epilogue all this time.)
To be honest, I think this is 100% personal. I wouldn’t be surprised if Ricky is the only one Botanya trusts, and heck, the event is rather important for her, right?
We gotta do this before Kamau’s, right?
I don’t think the order really matters; if it does, LSN will call it out explicitly, like he did with Amadeusz’s two suggested dungeons progressing the story into the final act. At worst we’ll get dialogue from the characters commenting on it, but no mechanical consequences.
Oh, no, sorry. I may have expressed myself poorly.
I know that right now the order in which we do the bond dungeons is meaningless. Its the urgency of the scene above that makes me want to help Botanya out first.
My priorities here are to save a baby, save a family, save a kobold community and then save the world from elemental apocalipse.
Oh, I agree then!
Personally I like the idea of doing Mac’s dungeon first to allow Kamau and Botanya time to rest and benefit from the Manor’s upgrades, and then knocking out the rest of the Bond dungeons in the order of urgency.
Botanya is imminently needing to undergo metamorphosis, Kamau is on a “time limit” for the equinox that’s coming up, and Amadeusz has a sketchy mission that only Ricki and he can go on but is otherwise seemingly fine to wait.
Was it clarified whether “everybody” going to the upper floors of the library dungeon was “just” narrative (and counts as rest time/earns those boni), or whether it counts as dungeon (preventing those boni as well as preventing bond because of Amad)?