Hey everyone, Van Arkride from Arkride Solutions here, back again by popular demand! The folks at NIS America told me they had something big in the works, and they wanted me to whip up something about some of the newer words I've been seeing while taking care of 4SPGs. Not a bad idea, seeing as most of these words weren't even kicking around when I started out as a spriggan! I agreed to their conditions (pretty generous too, my pick of anything from Andalucía's menu!), so sit yourself down and get ready to take notes: these are the ABCs of 4SPGs!
Spriggan
Hey, who picked this photo?! Well, unlike what some people might've told you, I don't just relax in my office all day. Being a spriggan's a tough gig—always gotta be sniffing out new leads for 4SPGs!
Right, the vocab lesson. I'm what some people call a "spriggan," a fixer who takes on the jobs that bracers or the police won't even touch. Sometimes, that means working in the shadows and dealing with the seedy underbelly types you'd expect a guy in my position to be tangled up with. But you'd be surprised how often I get 4SPGs from people who're just scared of being found out for some little misdeed they did.
Oh yeah, a "4SPG" is a special request for a spriggan to help deal with a problem. In my neck of the woods, my clients'll leave them hidden on the backs of local bulletin boards for me to find. Guess you got another vocab word for free in this one, huh?
Xipha
If you've been walking around Edith any time recently, then you've probably already seen something that looks a lot like this. The "Xipha" is the newest model of combat orbment from the Verne Company, building off of their last model called "RAMDA." It's got a ton of features, can browse the orbal net, communicate long-distance… Honestly, it's such a high-tech piece of kit, even I don't know how half of the stuff in it works. (The kid holding it in the picture is Quatre, one of my part-timers. I'm sure he knows the whole thing inside-out—he's a real tech whiz like that.)
The Xipha standard was originally kept under wraps, but Verne just dropped a civilian model they're calling the "tPhone," and now it's everywhere. Still has most of the features too, just none of the stuff built for combat. Crazy how fast tech is advancing these days, huh?
Trails beyond the Horizon Limited Edition
Holo Core
Man, you guys really oughta have Quatre or Risette answer this one… Well, here goes nothing: a "holo core" is a kind of AI assistant that you can slot into your Xipha, opening up a whole load of new features. They can help you out in combat, give helpful reminders, and even warn you when a battle's starting to go south.
Whoa, how'd you manage to snap that picture? That's Mare, a holo core I got through my connections at Marduk. She's pretty unique among holo cores (and I bet she'd give me an earful if she heard me calling her just a "holo core"), but she's got all the same features as any other holo core, plus a few secrets of her own.
Oct-Geneses
Hoo boy, we're really getting into the weeds now. The "Oct-Geneses" (or just "Genesis" when you're talking about one of them) are a set of eight old prototype orbments designed by Professor C. Epstein, the great-granddaddy of both the orbal revolution and the young lady in the picture there—my first part-timer, Agnès Claudel. It's still pretty murky what most of these things even do, but they've got the habit of glowing whenever something important's going on.
Last year, Agnès gave me one doozy of a 4SPG in the form of a message left behind by her great-grandfather: "Recover the Oct-Geneses before the year 120X. Else all that we know will come to an end." We had a hell of a time tracking them all down, but we recently managed to get a hold of Genesis number eight, so we're sitting pretty for now. Guess only time will tell…
I think that just about covers it. Just thinking about the sweet reward waiting for me at the finish line gets my stomach rumbling! Hope this helps with whatever "big thing" the NIS America folks have been talking about!
(Editor's Note: Mr. Arkride unfortunately ran off to Andalucía before we could finalize the article. We would like to remind our readers that they can preorder their copy of the Limited Edition of The Legend of Heroes: Trails beyond the Horizon right now from the NIS Online Store!)
