Thancred vs The Evil League of Evil

It’s been FOREVER, and I know it! So long that I just remember the highlights of what we did on our last “story night” before we ran out of main story quest and moved into the side stories of the level 60 content.
But clearly, I had to mention the Warriors of Darkness. We stumbled across them while following rumors of a well-dressed mysterious stranger who was performing feats of derring-do for the residents of the Dravinian Forelands. The rumors led us instead to a monochromatically coordinated adventuring group making short work of Ravanna. A sudden Echo flashback showed them confronting an Ascian who seemed to be about to deflect their attack with an idea for better work they could be doing. Naturally, we have seen the leader of the Ascians conspiring with creepy-elf Urianger on some means to restore the balance, now that we, the Warriors of Light, have had our connection with Hydaelen restored and her power once again at our command. So clearly they have been turned.
And, clearly, we still don’t know what game Urianger is playing. We’ve only seen the scenes of his betrayal as players; our characters haven’t seen his betrayal in an Echo (yet). We all await that happy day. But, we wait without the Evil League of Evil, who all ported away as they joined Yet Another Alexander Run. Or so I imagine. I couldn’t think of any other queue that would have room for a warrior, a paladin, a white mage, a black mage, and a bard.
With Thancred finally again found, and Yda and Papalymo (we find in OOC cutscenes) making do in hiding, only Minfilia is still entirely unaccounted for.
With Ravanna out of the way (though not by any of our doing), our pact with the dragon Vidofnir was fulfilled. The primal danger to the local Dravanians had been removed. She promised to take our offer of alliance with the Eorzean compact nations to her father, and get back to us well within a normal mortal lifetime, probably.
Satisfied, we returned to Ishgard.
There, we found that the Holy See was pushing back a little on Ser Aymeric’s grand plan of reunification with the rest of Eorzea. Sure, the Archbishop and his elite Heaven’s Ward turned out to be frauds (and also now: dead), but that was no reason to burn down the entire Church. Everyone else needs THEIR chance at gaining superpowers too, after all, and who really wants to grind levels when you can just hitch a ride on the uncritical worship train and gain power from the prayers of the faithful?
Pushing back with a knife, as Aymeric was stabbed by an agent of the Church. Stabbed, but not killed. Other Church agents had been sent to burn the homes of any who would follow Aymeric, as well as some small charring at sites near the Church in order to draw away suspicion. But such evil cannot hide, and soon the bishop responsible was pinned within the Vault with several hostages. Aymeric, even in his wounded condition, took on the bishop and his lieutenants while I and the Fortemps boys freed the hostages, then joined Aymeric in a final battle against the bishop.
The bishop escaped at the last moment, and took a final hostage, a young girl, with him to the parapet and dangled her off the side of the wall, daring us to try and take him.

The bishop was so busy monologuing that he forgot what he held, and dropped the girl into the air, where she fell, and fell, and fell, and fell onto Vidofnir’s back. The dragon had been flying to Ishgard to tell us of Hraesvelgr’s decision to consider an alliance, when she saw an opportunity to show the true nature of the good dragons.
Her other news, however, was not so great. The reincarnated Nidhogg had gathered together the remains of the Dravinian Horde and taken off. Whether or not Estinien can ever become separated from Nidhogg… is unknown even to the dragons.
And that’s where the main story quest as of patch 3.1 ended. Next week, Kasul and I start on the 3.2 story. Between now and then, I’ll be reposting some of my daily logs as posted to Google+.
See you in Eorzea!