Woo, over 40 hours into FF12 now… Spoilers:

We plundered the tomb and found the Dawn Stone, only to get captured and have to escape again. We then headed to a village way down to the south, but they weren’t much actual help and we headed off east to a mountain where we’d meet some political representatives, after beating a boss in a mine and doing some more clan hunts.

Along the way to the mountain, some barriers stopped us and we had to stop by a village in the woods populated by the bunny-ladies, who were not particularly friendly. Turns out that Fran, the Viera in my party, is an outcast among her people, we had to rescue her sister, etc… We got an item to get past the barriers, but upon arriving at the mountain we discover that the emperor is dead, war is looming, and all that.

We needed an artifact called the Sword of Kings in order to counter nethicite, the ore driving some of the politics, and had to go to a shrine way down to the south to get it. This shrine is probably the first place I’ve actually had any real difficulty, as there was a fight near the start where I’d just get torn apart. I did some grinding for cash and license points for a while, and with upgraded skills and items, it was much easier on the second attempt.

But, in the meantime, the Imperials had ransacked the mountain and killed the spiritual leader there, and we had to fight a group of judges. Next, I need to head off to Archadia, but I did a bit more hunting for the clan and gained a couple of ranks and got very good upgrades to Fran’s bow.

I’m up to level 35 now, and have a pretty good part of the license board covered with my main characters, and now I’m mainly picking stuff for future use.