空の軌跡SC // Trails in the Sky SC ⚔ Story Club・Week 17

Week 17 29th December 2025
Last Week Week 16
Next Week Week 18
Home Threads 空の軌跡 // SC

Minor content warning: dismembered corpses

details of content warning (contains spoilers)

After fighting some mechanical enemies, they will be blown up and the remnants of their corpses scattered around. The game treats this as seriously as if real humans had just been dismembered until the corpses are examined and discovered to be mechanical.

Experimenting with this content warning thing on something minor before it’s needed for something major, if you read this please let me know if it’s useful / could be improved.

This week’s stopping point is once you return to the city. To clarify: Once you return to the bracer guild there’ll be scenes and when you get control back you’ll be outside of the city. The week stops when you get back.

Side Quests and Missable Content

Nothing this week.

Screenshot

Vocabulary

Vocab Sheet, thank you to everyone who helps with this.

Please read the guidelines on the first page before adding any words.

Discussion Guidelines

Everybody should feel free to post and ask questions–it’s what makes book clubs fun! But please do not post until you are familiar with Spoiler Courtesy!

Spoiler Courtesy

Please follow these rules to avoid inadvertent ネタバレ. If you’re unsure whether something should have a spoiler tag, err on the side of using one.

  1. Any potential spoiler for the current week’s reading need only be covered by a spoiler tag. Predictions and conjecture made by somebody who has not read ahead still falls into this category.
  2. Any potential spoilers for external sources need to be covered by a spoiler tag and include a label (outside of the spoiler tag) of what might be spoiled. These include but are not limited to: other book club picks, other books, games, movies, anime, etc. I recommend also tagging the severity of the spoiler (for example, I may still look at minor spoilers for something that I don’t intend to read soon).
  3. Any information from later in the book than the current week’s reading (including trigger warnings that haven’t yet manifested) needs to be hidden by spoiler tags and labeled as coming from later sections.
Instructions for Spoiler Tags

Click the cog above the text box and use either the “Hide Details” or “Blur Spoiler” options. The text which says “This text will be hidden” should be replaced with what you are wishing to write. In the case of “Hide Details”, the section in the brackets that is labelled “Summary” can be replaced with whatever you like also (i.e, [details=”Chapter 1, Pg. 1”]).

Hide Details results in the dropdown box like below:

Example

This is an example of the “Hide Details” option.

The “Blur Spoiler” option will simply blur the text it surrounds.

This is an example of the “Blur Spoiler” option.

Posting Advice
  • When asking for help, please mention the page number, and check before posting that your question hasn’t already been asked. As the threads get longer, it becomes more convenient to use the Search function, which is located in the upper right corner of the forum. It is the magnifying glass which is near your profile picture! The best way to search is usually to type part of the sentence you are confused about, and select “in this topic”. This will show you all posts within the current thread which has that string of text.

  • Be sure to join the conversation! It’s fun, and it’s what keeps these book clubs lively! There’s no such thing as a stupid question! We are all learning here, and if the question has crossed your mind, there’s a very good chance it has crossed somebody else’s also! Asking and answering questions is a great learning opportunity for everyone involved, so never hesitate to do so!

If necessary, include an explanation of any discrepancies in the Ebook page numbers from physical page numbers. If there is an easy shortcut for some ebook versions to relate back to physical page numbers, it would be worth it to include it as a third bullet here, or if you want to use chapter page numbers instead of volume page numbers, as is the case with some manga. For example:
Example

For the Kindle version of this manga, the page numbers and the location number are always 3 apart. If you subtract 3 from the location, this will give you the accurate page number!

OR

Please use the chapter page numbers, instead of the volume page numbers. These are located in between the panels!

Discussion Questions

  1. What sentence/passage gave you the most difficulty? Feel free to request some help, or if you figured it out on your own break it down for the rest of us!

  2. What was your favorite new vocab word from this week’s reading?

  3. Was there any passage that you found particularly intriguing? Did it resonate with you (either positively or negatively)? Was it surprising? Offer any insight or new perspective? Was it just beautifully written?

  4. How did you feel about the hotel conversation?

  5. What are your thoughts on アネラス’s side of the investigation?

  6. Where do you think Joshua and his group are headed next?

Participation

Will you be playing along with us this week?

  • I’m playing along
  • I have finished this part
  • I’m still playing the game but I haven’t reached this part yet
  • I’m playing this game after the club has finished
  • I’m no longer playing the game
0 voters

If you’ve already played this game but are still going to join the discussion, please select “I have finished this part.”

Party Members Poll
  • アガット
  • アネラス
  • エステル
  • オリビエ
  • クローゼ
  • シェラザード
  • ジン
  • ティータ
0 voters

(You shouldn’t have a choice this week.)

Don’t forget to set this thread to Watching in order to stay abreast of discussion!

5 Likes
The Taste of Tea (2004)

The chapter title finally makes sense!

So first of all we get a lot of character moments. It’s timely, with our discussion here and elsewhere about the ages of party members, the way having Renne around is making Tita show her childish side more. I have to admit, Renne’s kinda… I mean her character is alright so far, just a little kid, but while I find Tita cute enough Renne just isn’t quite hitting that note for me. Visual design is cute but I could take or leave her. Something about her voice is odd to me too but I dunno. Can’t quite put my finger on how I feel about the character but I’m waiting til anything really happens with her. She’s not, like, annoying me, she’s just kind of around and I don’t have very strong feelings about it. But getting to hear Estelle open up about Joshua a little again was good. Also her and Tita running around the fountain in that establishing shot before Estelle and Agate give their report at the 離宮 was a pretty funny visual gag.

And we got to see a little Anelace again! I was hoping from the moment they showed up that we’d get to control her and Schera, and while I wish it was more than that one fight, I’ll take it. So they’ve made a little robot army, though those are at least as of now seemingly just a distraction? Great to see Joshua finally as well, and it’s nice to get the 3 perspectives to show various groups all working on this same issue. I really hope we get to control Joshua and his pirate gang later.

Kevin is, in his own way, chasing this group as well probably? At this stage I have to think he’s likely just a straightforwardly good guy, but I do wonder if he’s just with the church as he says? It creates a third faction of some sort operating in addition to bracers and military if he’s truly not with either.

I kept really expecting something bad to happen when Estelle and Renne went to the hotel since it was playing out those scenes longer form. We’re getting closer, but maybe it’s going to be some attack on the castle once we’ve moved Dunan公爵 there? Will he get his redemption one day now that Estelle has planted the idea? I’m a little concerned about walking around with a forced 3 person party of Agate and Tita right now. They made such a big deal out of sleeping arrangements it was all the more reason I thought something bad would happen at night…

Anyway, very curious about the 茶会, enjoyed catching back up with other characters quite a lot.

7 Likes
hotel scene

I am unironically so mad about this:

  • If you’re a writer for this game and are going to ship Estelle and Joshua, why would you have her say stuff like that all the time?

  • Why are they even discussing that? Why is it that every single time Estelle has alone time with another girl/woman the conversation immediately switches to Joshua? Joshua hasn’t been relevant to this arc at all so far. Do the writers have a personal vendetta against Alison Bechdel?

Ok so, you have one girl whose mother is dead and whose father is extremely busy and rarely home, and another girl who seems to have been functionally abandoned by her parents. I wonder what they could talk about… Oh I know, BOYZZZZ!

I don’t understand why the writers of this game go out of their way to have some random NPC in a dock somewhere have a compelling arc across multiple games but apparently Estelle is only allowed two topics of conversation: her father (S-rank btw) and her Shadow the Edgelord brother-boyfriend. She doesn’t even have anything interesting to say about them, she just stands there as other characters “oh poor girl” at her.

The longer this game goes the less Estelle seems to have a personality. At the start of FC she had this rash tomboy persona but now she’s just… there, in cryostasis, just hanging around the main plot, waiting for the moment the writers decide to Deus Ex Machina Joshua and give her a reason to exist.

Just let me play Anelace and Shera instead, seems a lot more fun.

4 Likes

Personally I don’t really need content warnings so I don’t really have an opinion. It’s hard for me to imagine what could be really traumatizing given the very unrealistic visuals of the PSP version.

3 Likes
Week 17

The big party after the report was cute, although I wonder if we’ll actually get to see one of these big nights out ever? Although I guess the developer’s time and money was better spent on those exploding robots. That was a good scene! Especially Agate trying to send アネラス away because it was too gruesome for a young girl to help clean up. The content warning is appreciated even if I thought it was really obvious that they were robots from a meta standpoint. If it was actual people exploding I’d expect 1) a bit of charring with no dismemberment, or 2) LOTS of blood.

I really enjoyed getting an update on what the bracer B team was up to, as well as the pirates and Joshua! Seems like the latter in particular is going to go for some other attack on ouroboros and leaving the mysterious tea party to Estelle & co. Maybe we won’t see them again for a while :’)

On the tea party note, there’s yet another clue pointing to stealing the new engine. The baddies have plans for their own airship, hm?

I remember being worried on picking Schera that there would be endless wine lady jokes, but surprisingly there’s been very few. She doesn’t even drink at the party! She says it’s because she has work in the morning, which is so reasonable! Tbh not what I expected for how much people rib her about it.

Ha, I admit I didn’t notice this since I have Shera around in place of Agate, women have conversations about things other than boys constantly in my playthough. On the flip side, Agate usually has some condescending “because you’re a girl” thing to say in his appearances (see: above example from the robot scene).

It is true that whenever Estelle is bunking with any other woman anywhere, they do tend to talk about Joshua. The writers don’t want the audience to forget about the relationship and how confused/sad Estelle is about it, and this seems to be the only way they know how to remind us. I’m a little more forgiving here since I think レン has ulterior motives for fishing for sensitive information, though.

I’m not that hostile towards their relationship, but this killed me :joy:

5 Likes

He literally did the “cool guys don’t look at explosions” thing afterwards while fighting the puppets. “Forgive me father (S-rank btw), I have to go all out, just this once” *teleports behind u*.

3 Likes

Next week is up!

1 Like