空の軌跡SC // Trails in the Sky SC ⚔ Story Club・Week 20

Week 20 19th January 2026
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Next Week Week 21
Home Threads 空の軌跡 // SC

This week’s stopping point is when you get control after seeing chapter four’s title screen.

Side Quests and Missable Content

Must complete this week, before getting on the airship.

  • キルシェ通りの手配魔獣

There will be a section where you are accompanied by some NPCs. You don’t need to worry about keeping them alive, you won’t get a game over if they die. (There’s also a boss you aren’t expected to win against.)

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 was the Joshua segment between chapters?

  5. What did you make of the airship interactions?

  6. What are your expectations for this chapter?

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
  • ケビン
  • シェラザード
  • ジン
  • ティータ
  • ユリア
  • ヨシュア
0 voters

(You shouldn’t have a choice until the end of this week.)

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

2 Likes
Blow-Up (1966)

This time the title is more actually relevant to the movie content, and you should watch Blow-Up if you haven’t! Great movie. Antonioni is amazing. Ok, anyway.

Fun week. Getting to play Joshua and the pirates was great for the novelty even if the section could’ve maybe done a little more. I definitely understand wanting to not get people stuck here since it’s a new temporary party, but the normal fights are tuned to be such a formality they felt like a waste of time. Would’ve been nice to control pirates directly, but I get it, they aren’t real party members sadly. I assume you can get the key before you go through the rest of the place if you go left first? Unfortunately I beelined the ship and running back was kind of tedious since there isn’t much going on in this place. All the same, I did enjoy my time even if Joshua remains kind of comically a shounen manga character talking about his “switch” that sets him to super (nonlethal) assassin mode.

You already know I enjoy any Dorothy appearance week; I guess she’s my favorite NPC.

I don’t know how strongly “not expected to win” I was like you said but… I won. :partying_face: I think I got kinda lucky with Evo mechanics, good turn modifiers. Like I had multiple 0 craft turns and was throwing S-crafts at him repeatedly. But truly, Joshua is really strong.

The game is getting closer and closer to wanting to tell us about Olivier which I’m totally here for. He’s obviously not malicious but playing some sort of high level information game here.

Honestly I wanted to go back to the town where it all started way more than I wanted to go to Bose so I like this development. Fog is just a little visual effect but I think this is a great thing for the game to start lightly exploring, taking the areas we’re so familiar with now and doing something to change them. I can tell next week is going to be a lot of running around the whole area, reacquainting ourselves with it as we go to those 3 edges they mentioned (plus it’s probably side quest time soon) so our story pacing is about to slow back down I’m sure, but I’m excited for this new arc right now.

5 Likes
best NPC

opens comically oversized trench coat with deep pockets

Hey you there, can I interest you in Dorothy novels? It looks like it comes in two parts and is at the same time as Sky. I’m not sure whether it spoils things or not. I’ve only read one chapter of it myself.

英雄伝説 空の軌跡 リベール王国スナップショット | L30??

I remember enjoying this section because I wanted to see more Joshua and the fights were pretty easy until that last one (this is the section with mueller , right). I don’t remember if I beat him in one try or two but the cutscene where they have battle auras is so funny to me.

5 Likes
Response

I had no idea there were tie in novels, neat. Seems there are quite a few out there actually. Thank you! I might look into that eventually, after we’re through SC at least. Could be pretty fun if they get the characterization down well.

Yep, Mueller fight. It came close but I had looked at what was posted in this thread beforehand so I was expecting a fight that was borderline unwinnable. In some ways that made it more exciting to actually beat it.

5 Likes
Week 20

That was surprisingly considerate of Nial to leave final judgement of the photo up to Estelle. Usually he’s depicted as comically reporter-brained.

Joshua’s level 72! That’s so high. Does that mean we’re not meeting him until we’re around that level? Whether we fight him (doubt) or he re-joins the team, I’d expect we’d have to be roughly the same level.

Or perhaps because of the explanation his level would come down to meet ours no matter what. Nice of the game to try to justify his cutscene powers, no matter how silly it might be :sweat_smile: I also noticed the non-lethality of it all, the writers are trying very hard to keep him sympathetic. The pirates, too. It’s convenient they feel so strongly about killing despite being bandits!

I didn’t realize you were supposed to lose this fight, it seemed very manageable. I kept agility up on Joshua so ミュラー ended up missing roughly half the time, and then it was just a matter of wearing him down while saving S-crafts for (!) and (x10) turns. ジョゼット folded pretty quickly though, so much for「サポートをしてやる」.

Olivier’s bit was definitely the most interesting of the airship scenes. He’s clearly got some important position in the empire, but I can only guess if the eventual reveal will be as anti-climactic as Kevin’s. I want drama, people!

The opener with Estelle talking to herself and the continuation with クローゼ just seemed funny. “My traumatized runaway brother/boyfriend was seen doing crimes… with another girl :pleading_face:

I’d forgotten all about this NPC sub-plot before talking to this lady on the ship. She really did it, she found a bride for rolent-general-store-owner guy. I can’t tell if the girl has actually agreed to marry her son, though. Also, she’s the tea shop girl isn’t she? The one her sister resented for having an easier/better life. I do remember her saying the sister was going on a trip when I talked to her during the last 隠れんぼ quest. It’s fun that it turned out to be connected to this other NPC story!

Hearing the Rolent town music at the end of this section felt so nostalgic. It feels like ages since the FC prologue.

6 Likes

Yes! Someone noticed! :star_struck:

4 Likes

I’m stuck at this boss:

It looks like retroarch doesn’t support disc swapping for PPSSPP? Inconvenient…

EDIT: I just did the disc change through the standalone PPSSPP and then loaded the disc2 save from retroarch…

I’m a bit surprised that we exhausted Disc 1 already. Didn’t feel like we got that much more content compared to the entirety of FC.

3 Likes

Yeah, this game is longer, but I wouldn’t have put the disc change point here. Maybe there’s more going on behind the scenes than I realise. Actually, disc 1 would be almost double what you’ve seen due to both Agate and Schera’s routes, so maybe it makes sense.

4 Likes

Isn’t that mostly just text changes? That wouldn’t account for much I think. Maybe it’s poorly optimized.

4 Likes

'tis up

2 Likes
w20

Silent Hill: Rolent.

Get rekt, bozo:


So now we have Mechas and people going super-sayan. Ok.

I’m a little bit sick so going through all of this dialogue in a row was rather exhausting, but happy to be finally back in Rolent!

Oooh, I completely forgot about that. Nice callback!

4 Likes

Disc change for PPSSPP is at menu bar Emulation >> Switch UMD, and is needed for both using Disc 1 continuing to Disc 2, and using Disc 2 loading saves from Disc 1.

Got me stumbled a little while here.

4 Likes

Yeah that’s what I ended up doing, but normally I play from RetroArch and they don’t have implemented disc-switching in the PPSSPP core…

I actually downloaded the source code to see if I could patch it in, but then decided that I couldn’t be bothered…

4 Likes