Thoughts from the Otherworld

I and Kii Kalira have made our way to Bastok. It has been some time since we last were here, with all this running around between this beach and that, and even the mysterious visit to the past. Nevertheless, here we are now, and I took advantage of the fact to find some more information about this Kriegstanz. I never knew it had such a long and morbid history! I had heard of dancers on the battlefield before, but they were barely more than mere mentions, details to me were left in the dark. Turns out that the popularity of the Kriegstanz - and indeed, the people who invented it - were mountain people from the region of Gustaberg, brought to the city of Bastok the curb the dangerous custom of animating the dead and dancing with them in reckless abandon. This being called the Totentanz. I can barely imagine what it would have been like, knowing that a deadly disease was making its rounds, in despair descending on the streets during the warm nights of Bastok, to dance with the living and the dead in harmony... the mere vision chills my bones.
I wonder how Kriegstanz and other styles of battle dances faded out so thoroughly after the Great War. I wasn't even aware there were that many schools of dance applicable in battle, let alone that somewhere there were still practicioners of it. I suppose the latter makes much sense - after all, it has been a mere twenty years. Not all practicioners could have died out in this brief period of time.

Since we were in Bastok already and I had the spare time for a change, I took it upon myself to try more goldsmithing synthesis. It was a good way to get a little time away from the books while I looked into the history of the various schools of dance, and I ended up making some progress in my skills. As a result, I was finally acknowledged as a recruit of the official Bastokan goldsmithing guild. It is a small step, but even a small step is progress.