- The first step in getting to Kurmai’s workshop is taking a teleport scroll out to Duneville in the Powder Desert. How did Kurmai travel to and from Ark and his workshop halfway across the continent? The man must pay a fortune in teleport scrolls.
The Nehrimese are also invading Duneville, but just a little. You know, just enough so one passing adventurer can tip the scales and assist in murdering all the invaders. More of aLuckily they don’t bring the boats they used to invade Ark, since Duneville is built half on stilts over the water of their little cavern grotto.
It
is a smuggler town, so possibly it’s really hard to find their hidden cove from the sea?
- Wandering up the coast in search of the workshop, I run into:
1) That little building called the Hollow Hand from ages ago, with the crucified corpses out front to discourage visitors. It turns out to contain two wizards and half a dozen marauders. It appears to be half tavern, half brewery, and half… hookah den?
They’d probably do better business if they didn’t attack everyone who comes in the door and nail their corpses up outside as a warning to the others, but who am I to oppress the local small business owner?
2) A ship come aground with, for once, non-aggro people in it. They don’t have much to say, but apparently this is Duneville’s Fruit Corporation. I assume this is a polite way of saying ‘smugglers of same’, but who knows? All I really know is that they’re a little confused about how the logging profession works.
3) Of course, a little further down the coast is the DFC’s warehouse, which
will try to murder you on sight. Getting a lot of mixed messages here, guys.
I am digging the jungle biome with dirt brick house motif, though. Looks like it's not just the giant apes that like that building style, everybody's doing it!
4) A cool little grotto call Kynea Grotto, equal parts shallow water (I appreciate the ripples as I move about), glowing crystal, rudimentary buildings and scaffolding taking advantage of the crystal, and the occasional vein of shadowsteel ore. Also, fire and soil elementals, and a mage hobo.
After killing the crazed mage, I get to read a tattered diary that sheds some light on things. It seems that all these hidden caves with crystal growing everywhere I’ve been finding are also Pyrean ruins.
If the statue the man has been worshipping can be trusted to be a factual historian, anyway. It’s been telling him stories of the Pyreans, and he keeps the tales tucked away so that he might someday ‘fulfill her wish’...
There’s probably
something to it, anyway, since after killing the mage an Oorbaya manifests itself and tries to punch my face in with its hideous hand-fist.
Was that the spirit in the statue, trying too late to save its only worshipper?
Was it like, his ghost or something? I seem to recall mages who reach too far (arcane fever 100%, perhaps?) turn into Oorbayas.
Or… I think in Silvergrove when things came to a head there with Ryneus, an Oorbaya showed up like a mini-boss, do these things come from the High Ones?
- Actually, thinking about it, I’m wondering if all these spooky-ass Lovecraftian statues tempting men’s souls – this one, Kor from that side quest in the tropics, the one that got Constantine, etc. – aren’t just small heathen gods in Enderal’s fucked-up cosmology, but rather
Pyreans. I’m suddenly reminded of the temple where Constantine went full cultist, and the old goat telling us how the Pyreans could stick their souls into objects, and how crazy such a being would likely be after thousands of years…
- Kurmai’s workshop is located in a cave amongst pumpkin-shaped cacti grown to huge sizes, and the occasional Red Madness’d individual. I appreciate that they have unique soundbites that make them sound fucking nuts (‘Bring him back!’ and the one who’s just counting prime numbers or something), and how they run the gamut from a level 1 unarmed peasant-woman to possessed bandits with rune armor and axes.
I’m much less enthused about the Myrad sitting on the nearby cliff. I mean, after a while in this game the sight of those creepy cow-bird-insect things is synonymous with safe travel and the bank boxes that let you store loot. I figure, ‘Oh, new fast-travel point!’ and walk right up to it.
This, of course, is a
wildMyrad, and it turns out they’re kind of like fluffy black-eyed dragons. They fly around and have a glowing green breath weapon and… well, it’s been a while since the game murdered me, you know? You almost start to miss it, after a while…
- Aaaanyway, Kurmai’s workshop!
There’s a nice little ledge from which you can see the mighty vessel moored, which… appears to be an honest to god steampunk airship. This is what we’re going to be flying into space in?
The Agnod, that beast of a sidequest crash-landed in the frozen north, was a flying saucer of 100% ancient metal. This one – and to hear one mage underling tell it, a similar ship being built in Anku, the Starling city – is made of wood and a canvas envelope.
We Spelljammer now, lads.
- The Order beat me here and have sent mages and laborers. It’s pretty busy with people down here actually. I’m not entirely sure what the Order folks are doing, because I’m quick to learn that most of the actual work is being done by those little Starling machine critters that look like spiders and are filled with cogs and meat.
They’re underfoot in the walkways, poking around here and there, doing their thing.
I actually meet Kurmai in the middle of an argument with one.
Cute, right? Any entropy mage that had to brave Agnod is also probably pretty fond of them. As the only beastie in that junker that could be controlled by Entropic Blood, they were extremely crucial in me managing to brute force my way through that horrid place.
- Kurmai needs materials for ‘Gertrude’ (all ships are girls you know), and apparently I’m the only one around here who can go dungeon diving for him. I was kind of hoping it would just be like, shadowsteel or something. But no, there are some very specific old Starling mines and camps I’ll need to hit up.
Most notably, Thalgard, which appears to be the local name for ‘hubris’ and ‘overreach.’ Also, ‘toxic mist.’
The Takeaway:
Questions about why Kurmai built his workshop across an entire mountain range aside (maybe Duneville smugglers have dynamo cores on the cheap or something), I’m liking the quest so far. The possessed people and Nehrimese attacks sprinkled throughout familiar old locations do what they can to ratchet up tension, we knew about his material issues from minute one so the fetch quest follows logically, and ‘sail a wooden ship to the moon’ is at least interesting.
I’m already assuming I’m going to have to do battle with the undead ghost of Dal’Marak in the toxic ruins of Thalgard over that stupid drive core, but I’ve been hearing about Dal’Marak in loading screens and in the hushed voices of tavern-goers for a while so I’m kind of looking forward to the forced side quest rather than dreading it.
I do feel like these nested quest chains can really bog a story down if the links are too tenuous (“So I need the drive core to finish the ship to get me to the moon in the hopes of finding the Ancient Fathers who might know about the Numinos which will let me aim the Beacon to destroy the High Ones? Got it!”), hopefully that won’t be the case here.