The Tiamat Sacrament

• Main
• YMMV
• Wikipedia
• All Subpages
• Create New

The Tiamat Sacrament is a game made in RPG Maker 2003 by Drakonais.

In the past, the Evil Overlord Ry'jin annihilated all dragons after using their DNA to create an army of Super Soldiers. He then used this incredible power to rule the world with an iron fist. A rebel group has formed to stop him, but they are too little in number to make much progress. However, they have hope: one dragon survived Ry'jin's extermination, Az'uar. He hatches during the game's opening, his egg disguised as an ordinary rock. As a newborn, Az'uar is very confused and has little knowledge of the world around him. Fortunately, he is able to draw on the wisdom of his ancestors through the dragons' "Blood Memory" (a sort of collective Hive Mind of all dragons who have every lived), but it is clouded due to the near-extinction of the dragons. With the help of the rebels, he tries to seek out the seven dragon sages who formed the ruling body of dragon society in the past. He hopes that with their knowledge, he will be able to gain the power to combat Ry'jin's forces. However, he soon learns that not all of them are as helpful as he believes, and that his survival may cause more harm than good...

...Okay, yes, it's a bit of a Cliché Storm. There are a few unique twists however, and the characters are well-defined. Most of the dialogue reads a bit like an epic poem: it can sound rather archaic or stilted at times, but still conveys a deep story.

Tropes used in The Tiamat Sacrament include:

• Absurdly High Level Cap: Averted, actually. The level cap is 60, which you're unlikely to hit through normal progression, but is very easy to reach if you do the optional sidequests.
• Art Initiates Life: Inverted with Xandra, whose art seals creatures into runes.
• Awesome but Impractical: Breath Weapons tend to fall into this very quickly, since their ammunition is very limited at the beginning, they take far too long to set up, and the whole thing fails if an enemy so much as coughs on Az'uar.
• Becoming the Mask: Kelburn was supposed to be The Mole, but grew to honestly believe in the rebels' ideas.
• Big Bad: Ry'jin, natch.
• Blue Mage: Xandra, to the extreme. She starts with no skills, but ends the game with the largest repertoire of skills.
• Breath Weapon: It's actually pretty limited in this portrayal; dragons require runes (which are pretty rare) to power it.
• Charged Attack: Breath Weapons function like this. However, this tends to make them Awesome but Impractical; see above.
  • Az'uar can learn an ability that allows him to inhale three runes at once if you complete the Collection Sidequest, but by that point, it's really too little, too late.
• Climax Boss: Gyle.
• Collection Sidequest: The Dragon Shards. You are very unlikely to find them all before completing the game, though you do get an item that can help you find them upon doing so.
  • Deconstructed harshly. The friendly merchant who was enticing you to find the shards? Well, it turns out that they're the pieces of Saphira's stone, and he was manipulating you into finding them for him so he could harness her power for himself.
• Contractual Boss Immunity: Subverted; bosses do have a higher resistance to status effects than normal, but they are still susceptible. None of them can be sealed by Xandra, however.
• Counter Attack: A Counter Attack to a Counter Attack, no less! Gyle will use a One-Hit Kill attack on Xandra if she uses Lung Crusher on him.

Gyle: That's a nice trick, [Xandra]. Let's see you try it when you're dead.

• Defend Command: Focus, which restores MP as well. Xandra's Observe command also functions this way.
• Defrosting Ice Queen: Xandra.
• Doing In the Wizard: Kind of. Abruptly, towards the end of the game, it is revealed that Ry'jin is using extremely sophisticated technology to achieve his goals, and is experimenting with dragon DNA. Yes, DNA. In a Medieval European Fantasy. Why the inhabitants don't so much as bat an eye at this when they're still in the Dark Ages is never explained.
• The Dragon: Gyle.
• Elemental Powers: Fire, Water, Earth, and Wind. Each of the dragon sages specializes in a certain element, as well.
  • Illisrei: Light'Em Up
  • Knoas: Dishing Out Dirt
  • Unoquil: Making a Splash
  • Xetoa: Blow You Away
  • Tamanir: Playing with Fire
  • Kadelej: Casting a Shadow (which is functionally Non-Elemental)
  • Saphira: Non-Elemental
• Enemy Scan: Xandra's Observe command. She also learns enemy skills this way.
• Evil All Along: The leader of the resistance turns out to have been Ry'jin in disguise.
  • The man who gives the Collection Sidequest is actually just using you to get the Dragon Shards.
• Evil Overlord: Ry'jin. To the T.
• Exponential Potential: Oh, yes...
• Fridge Logic: In the ending, Az'uar says that the dragon hatchlings imprinted on Xandra as their mother, because she was the first female they saw. But she isn't a dragon, so it makes no sense why they would imprint on her in the first place. May overlap with Artistic License: Biology.
  • Pretty much the entire world is a Medieval European Fantasy. However, Ry'jin is apparently using incredibly high-level technology to perform his experiments, as his fortress is very futuristic, and he makes frequent references to DNA. That's bizarre enough as-is, but even more confusing is the fact that no one so much as bats an eye at this, despite being in the Dark Ages technology-wise.
• Heroic Sacrifice: Most of your troops during the Strategy Board battles have to do this due to the way damage is calculated. Particularly against Gyle, who is invincible the first time you fight him, and the second time, he requires no less than five full squadrons to fight to their deaths in order to bring him to his knees.
• King Incognito: Xandra is the rightful heir to the throne.
• Luck-Based Mission: Rune sealing. Xandra is the only one who can perform it, in the first place, and the chance of the technique succeeding is random. To make matters worse, the chances of it succeeding are incredibly low during the early to mid-game, and the spell takes a fixed percentage of Xandra's Mana.
• Magic Knight: Kelburn.
• Magikarp Power: Xandra, as one might expect from her method of learning skills, though perhaps not quite to the extreme that is the reality. By the endgame, Xandra can cure any ailment, fully heal the entire party, and cast the most devastating offensive spells in the game.
• The Mole: Kelburn started as this, but makes a Heel Face Turn by The Reveal.
• One-Hit Kill: Gyle's Counter Attack to Lung Crusher.
• One Stat to Rule Them All: As in most RM2k3 games, Agility.
• One-Winged Angel: After fighting Ry'jin normally, he absorbs Az'uar's powers...somehow...and turns into a monster from Final Fantasy VI before trying to kill you again.
• Our Dragons Are Different
• Playable Epilogue: The reward for achieving One Hundred Percent Completion.
• Punctuation Shaker: Both The Hero and the Big Bad.
• Random Encounters
• Schizophrenic Difficulty: More like "inverse difficulty", but the difficulty curve is still pretty weird. The hardest part of the game is the beginning, when you have few abilities or items. However, due to the fact that most of your party members are highly dependent on their skills and how fast they start learning them, the game soon becomes a cakewalk as your omnipotent goddess Xandra lays waste to all who dare cross your path and Az'uar buffs everyone to godhood.
• Squishy Wizard: Xandra. She doesn't even have an "attack" command.
• Status Buff: Az'uar learns a lot of these, though Xandra can learn a few as well.
• Weapon of Choice:
  • Az'uar: Natural Weapon (though he can use glove-like weapons to strengthen them...that or he can rip out his claws and replace them with new ones)
  • Xandra: None, technically (though she can use a Simple Staff late in the game)
  • Kelburn: Cool Sword / Katanas Are Just Better