So apparently it took me around 20 days to make it back to land. Nevermind. Into the endgame we go!
- Well, first I happen to wander by a Keeper who tells me “I’ve heard some rumors about your favorite school of magic… Dangerous waters you’re treading in, be careful.”
That’s pretty rad. Like, somebody finally noticed I’ve been summoning monsters and ripping the souls out of people and stuff! Riiiight at the end. But good hustle anyway, you random Keeper.
I wonder if there are different lines for when you’re NOT mainlining Entropy magic. Like, “Oh, you seem to like fireballs. That’s cool I guess.” or “Why would you even pick Alteration magic, that was a terrible idea.”
- Anyhow, off we go to another meeting at the Big Table. It’s just down to Sha’Rim, Tealor Arantheal, Your Waifu (mine’s Jespar) and yourself. We’re not even sitting around the Big Table anymore, more clustered in a corner as we hold the briefing.
Points of interest:
1) Tealor says: ‘I suppose you already know that Vyn hasn’t always been like it is now. In the time of the Pyreans it was one big continent, which they called Pangora.’
And… no? Was I supposed to know that? That seems like a pretty huge thing to have tucked away in the cliffnotes somewhere, although to be fair you don’t often go up to people in real life and say, “So as you know, the continents used to be one big super-continent called Pangaea…”
2) The City of Floods has been found! It is, conveniently, directly under our feet, in the depths of the Undercity somewhere.
Tealor frames this as ‘It was always thought that the City of Floods was located somewhere in Qyra…’ which suggests that the Order leadership were planning to maybe charter a boat and make us travel to another continent to find the Numinos? I mean, I’d be fine, we’d probably just timeskip loading screen right to it, but that would have been super inconvenient for the characters in the story.
3) Endraleans believe that the Black Guardian is a demon that exists down in the depths of the Undercity, and you can hear his scream if you listen carefully.
Sha’Rim believes this to be wind whistling through the caverns, but how much do you want to bet I’m gonna have to kill an actual Black Guardian before this is all over?
- Tealor wants to leave immediately.
There’s this cute bit where Sha’Rim is like ‘Are you sure you don’t want to think this through-’ and Tealor just repeats, stone cold, ‘Ready your equipment. We’ll meet at the gate to the Undercity.’
- I’m sent to talk to Archmagister Lexil Merrayil like a gopher to pick up the Word of the Dead and some thing related to the Numinos. He’s not nearby where the quest marker takes me, and the novice there is like ‘Don’t worry, he’ll be back in a minute.’
And I immediately think, ‘Fuck’ and start summoning my swords. This character build is kind of weak to ambushes, and there’s basically no reason for this to happen if it’s not going to be Plot Relevant.
- The Novice seems to be a fan, and her voice is noticeably young and, well, cute.
She swiftly segues into telling her Tragic Backstory, where her parents and sister got butchered by Coarek and she arrived to watch them burn along with their house.
I feel like this would actually be more impactful if this was Elia, the named Novice from that tiny sidequest from back at the beginning. Especially since...
That’s right, crisp, fresh meat, just like Dream Dad always liked.
The High Ones proceed to speak through the poor girl, all ‘The Beacon won’t burn, it never will! Thousands have tried it before you, and they all failed!’ and ‘The Light will burn you, it will devour you until there’s nothing left!’
So I suppose all the dreams of fire and Dream Dad were a metaphor for the Light, which is apparently the Cleansing. Or possibly the High Ones.
It’s a little unclear, because the novice takes this opportunity to explode into bones and ectoplasm, the Beacon catches fire, and Lexil and I have to kill a few possessed Keepers.
Being set on fire apparently doesn't damage the Beacon significantly.
- There’s a nice feeling of uncertainty here.
Did the Sigil Stone stop protecting us, or did it never do so to begin with and we just deluded ourselves with thoughts of safety? Could the High Ones have reached out their hand and taken us at any time, refraining only from some alien amusement or sense of fair play?
Lexil is a good choice for this bit I think, above and beyond that he can check the Beacon and make sure they didn’t damage it too much. If this was Jespar he’d be taking a cavalier approach; if it was Tealor, he’d be speaking in his Reassuring Dad Voice. But Lexil is an intellectual, he seems like kind of a worrier, and he has this alto type of voice that comes across as an ‘Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear’ sort of guy. He’s never been a party member, so I have no idea if he can even throw down if he has to.
- Oh, and the Nehrimese are in the city again. Lexil runs to the outlook and you can kind of see a reddish light like firelight in the dark clouds down below; presumably, the city is on fire.
It turns out the Truchessa betrayed everyone, took the Sigil Stone and a third of the Order’s Keepers down to Coarek and let him into the city in exchange for a promise not to harm anyone.
That worked out just about as well as you would expect, and she probably got hard murdered by him. She probably should have expected that when he crucified everyone he could catch outside of the city, but desperation can give people some weird ideas.
- I
think we’re supposed to assume the Sigil Stone being gone is why the High Ones can possess us, although the way that worked was that Constantine and Lexil shattered the stone and gave us all a piece of it, so hypothetically we all still have our Sigil Stone chunks and should be safe as houses?
Maybe without the main Stone the little bits don’t work, or once Coarek got the Stone (or his High One masters did) he could somehow shut off its protection. Magical law of sympathy where something affecting the main Stone affects all the little ones, I don’t know.
Point is, anyone can get possessed at any time, probably. Lovely.
- There’s a Keeper bleeding out against the fountain who explained the whole Truchessa plot. Credit where it’s due, she is a
fantastic voice actor. Not just the lines themselves, but the slow pauses… there’s something in her tone that really feels like she’s about to start choking on her own blood.
There’s a particularly cool line where she begs Tealor to forgive her, because she doesn’t want to die Pathless. Apparently Tealor is the local Fantasy Pope, and can absolve her of sins or excommunicate her at will.
Cool sprite, too.
I just wish this was Natara rather than a nameless Keeper, trying to account for herself before death claims her. Tealor’s pain would have been delicious. Having Disapproving Order Mom axed offscreen, as this Keeper suggests Coarek did, is kind of disappointing.
- There’s a big rousing speech from Tealor, how the three-dozen or so Keepers and Arcanists here have to hold the line while we descend into the bowels of the city to find the Numinos. He says up front that there is no winning endgame that gets us out of this alive. Killing Coarek’s delusional soldiers is pointless; the High Ones are all that matter. Once we light the Beacon and burn away the High Ones, Tealor intends to surrender. Coarek will probably kill us all, but Tealor considers this death to be meaningful, to be a sign. A sign of what or to whom, I’m not sure. To other faithful, or rebels against Coarek’s mad rationalist dogma?
Whatever the case, I’m kind of hoping we get to do it that way. Killing all the High Ones and then surrendering to Coarek after his masters are dead and any hope of ‘ascension’ pointless would be pretty amazing. Maybe his blood pressure would sky-rocket and we can make him stroke out from sheer rage.
I also really appreciate the Keeper helmet you can see on the right there. Did they get a design upgrade recently? I feel like I’d have noticed if they were rocking a Roman-esque laurel leaf design with snarling great cats on their pauldrons and the top of their helmets.
- Anyway, Tealor gets a rousing cheer, and everyone (left) is down for a heroic last stand.
Apparently there’s a secret way down into the Undercity we can take, too, since the city is full of enemy soldiers.
Back during the last Undercity riots the Order dug some tunnels to pump poison gas in and end the threat that way. Yikes. Score one for ruthless paranoia, I guess.
Well, there’s our route secured.
Let’s go digging into the depths, shall we?
The Takeaway:
Overall, very dramatic and almost cinematic chain of events, even if the logic connecting events is a little shaky. Why did handing over the Sigil Stone lose us the protection of the chunks we carry? Why would the High Ones possess a couple of us and then let the rest of us go? How did she get out to meet Coarek through Sha’Rim’s entropic barrier? How did she let Coarek
in through the barrier? If there are thousands of Nehrimese like Tealor suggests and there’s no point in trying to throw them out of the city, how did we do that very thing like 3 days ago when they sailed into the harbor and started murdering everybody last time?
Possibly this will all make sense at some point. I mean, I could probably take ten minutes and come up with satisfactory (-ish) answers to all of them. Guess we’ll see!
Gonna try and get another update out shortly, since I’m off tomorrow; we’ll see how that goes, I guess.