Yallam

Yallam (ヤラム村 Yallam Village) is a town located in the northeastern area of the continent of Osenia and functions as one of the most important towns in Golden Sun: The Lost Age gameplaywise. While there is no actual plot development here, you will return to this town many times to make use of both Forgeable items and Rusty items found throughout the game.

Description
Yallam, entered from the south end, is a contained town that is for all intents and purposes optional, but it provides an extremely useful service. When entered from the south, it features two residential houses to your immediate left, an Inn to the left of the north entrance, a sanctum just left of the inn, weapon, armor, and item vendors to the town's lower left area, and the blacksmith to the upper left area. A separate screen which is the children's meadow lies to the east exit.

When you enter, head to the town's northwest end to find a two-sectioned stone house with a smokestack. Sunshine the blacksmith is inside. If you have either a forgeable item or a rusty item in your inventory, you can give it to Sunshine and he will get to work on reforging it for you. Then you can either leave town and enter back, enter the sanctum and come out, or spend the night at the inn (which charges 64 coins). When you return, Sunshine will be lying back down on the mattress, and talk to the wife to get the item Sunshine made. You will automatically spend the coins for the item equivalent to how much that item would cost if you were buying it as an artifact from a normal vendor. You can repeat this process as many times as you like, depending on the forgeable items you can find.

In the field with the children and stones, you can partake in the song and dance if you like, but most players can find their way through the Sea of Time without it regardless. Some may attest that it takes more effort to match the instructions here to the Sea of Time appropriately than to actually make your way through the Sea.

Just left of the smithy, you will find an odd-looking tree, with a treasure chest visible on the ground at the lower left of the screen. This is where using even a Bronze level password is extremely useful and practical, for after the reunion late in the game, you will gain the Orb of Force (provided you found it in the previous Golden Sun). Use its Force Psynergy to knock down the stump, then use both Cyclone and Scoop in the grass-grown area beyond to access a ladder that leads to the chest. It contains the Masamune, one of the game's high-tier weapons.

Vendors
The town has an inn service which is provided at 16 coins per Adept.

Collectibles
Antidote: Found by using Cyclone on the pair of leaves to the right of the bridge that leads to the smithy.  Elixir: Found in the wooden boxes to the upper left of the inside of the inn.  Masamune: Found in a treasure chest in a visible secret area in the town's west area, use Force (only found in a password-enhanced game), Cyclone, and Scoop to get to it.  Nut: Found by using Cyclone on the leaves to the right of the south town entrance.  Oil Drop: Found in the rightmost barrel inside the smithy.  16 coins: Found in the jar to the left of the inn.

Background and story
Yallam started out as a small settlement. Among its residents was the master boatsman Yepp, and he was able to sail through the Sea of Time with utter ease. He found a huge bed of pearls on one of his expeditions in the Sea of Time area, and after showing them to Yallam's townsfolk, he sold them in another town and bought all kinds of things Yallam needed. Yallam then turned pearl diving into a business, with many of the townsfolk becoming pearl divers, and that is what caused Yallam to become a thriving community, with Yepp constantly bringing in work and news of the outside world.

Yepp in addition was a songwriter, and he created a sort of song and dance ritual accompanied by a specific layout of stones and tree stumps in the field just east of town. This was a cryptic way of recording the sequence of sailing manuevers that could be used to sail through the Sea of Time to reach Lemuria itself. Yepp wanted the children of Yallam to learn this ritual in hopes that somebody someday may use these instructions to find the lost land for themselves.

Yepp died later on, and Yallam was devestated in all respects, morally and economically. There were now no boatsmen to find pearls or work and the pearl diving business disappeared as the populace became depressed. Yallam would now become merely a low-key settlement that would get by strictly on fishing for Yallam mountain fish at the nearby Taopo Swamp.

In the current day and age, Yallam is a highly downbeat town laden with abject poverty and despair. Its only remaining relative claim to fame is the town's resident blacksmith, Sunshine, whose wife describes as handling the best forge in all of Weyard. He is extremely talented in taking raw materials and crafting weapons and armor from them. However, he is slightly eccentric, working only when he feels like it (and he proclaims that's only when it's raining) and disappearing at Taopo Swamp for days at a time to find such materials.

With the eruption of Mt.Aleph, the lighting of the Mercury and Venus Lighthouses, and the return of Poseidon and the consequent warming of the oceans, much of Weyard's climate is out of balance. For Yallam, a lengthy drought ensues which dries up Taopo Swamp halfway, and Yallam mountain fish are now unavailable, so it enters its toughest time ever. Felix's party, the ones who pretty much caused all of the above by raiding Mt.Aleph and activating the Lighthouses, enters the town and encounters Sunshine. If Felix has either a piece of forgeable material or a rusty item, Sunshine suddenly gets his spirit back and gets to work on reforging the item, and Felix comes back later to claim the new item with due payment. Felix can also partake in Yepp's song and dance ritual with the children, and he gains a general understanding of how he can navigate the Sea of Time and make it through to Lemuria on the other side.

Trivia

 * Yallam spelled backwards is Mallay, which is possibly derived from the Malay, an ethnic group living on the Malay Peninsula. The peninsula is located in southeastern Asia, placing it relatively near Australia, the real-world equivalent of Osenia.