While I wish you chose Calia, I can understand and respect your choice.
I second Ragnarok's comment about your interesting thoughts. But with a name like Ragnarok, he would.
I second Ragnarok's comment about your interesting thoughts. But with a name like Ragnarok, he would.
- 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.
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.
Word of advice. When you get deep into Thalgard, follow the trail down to the quest marker. Do NOT turn left and go up into the city.
Of course you should turn left and go up the stairs. There is some interesting loot for those who survive. What's the worst that could happen?
If you ever play Nehrim, you will see it up close and personal.
a similar ship being built in Anku, the Starling city – is made of wood and a canvas envelope
The worst that could happen? You quit the game in anger and frustration. 
Of course if one plays on an easy level, then it loses its sting, but what the fun in that? There have been quite a few people that gave up on Enderal early on because it was too hard compared to the ease of Skyrim. But as you said, it's worth the struggle because the rewards are great. Some struggles are much greater than others, though.
Of course if one plays on an easy level, then it loses its sting, but what the fun in that? There have been quite a few people that gave up on Enderal early on because it was too hard compared to the ease of Skyrim. But as you said, it's worth the struggle because the rewards are great. Some struggles are much greater than others, though.
30.04.2018 04:13dyslexicfaser wrote: He asks about my relationship status with Calia, which is presumably the decision point Zorg was talking about earlier.
07.05.2018 07:12Buccaneer wrote: The worst that could happen? You quit the game in anger and frustration.
Yeah, I did it in jest. I was powerful even playing on Iron Path and Thalgard was about the hardest thing I had ever done in a game like this.
Regarding Calia
Regarding Calia
it's worth the struggle because the rewards are great. Some struggles are much greater than others, though
Plus it's a twofer,
Sorry for the long break, y’all. Got a new job so my priorities have been elsewhere. Let’s continue with gathering supplies for our moon trip, shall we?
- First stop on the old Starling mine tour is maybe a little too easy? Feels like filler.
Work your way through a few spiders (for there are always spiders), a few Starling robots (how else could you know it’s a Starling mine?), grab up a few chunks of ominously glowing metal doo-dads, and Bob’s your uncle.
- Nearby on the other hand, is the ominously named ‘Soulbed.’ This presumably optional dungeon is a party mix of undead types, and some cool set pieces.
Every sort of undead I’ve run into so far, from basic archers to advanced magic-using ancestors, except – funnily enough, considering this is the desert – Sere Lost Ones.
That's a chest set beneath a beam of light, charred corpses reaching towards the light like it's salvation or destruction or both.
I'm a little disappointed when edging gingerly into the beam of light to click on the chest doesn't set me on fire.
Maybe that's weird? It’s probably weird to be disappointed.
The next zone inside the Soulbed is called the Open Graves, and I work my way through half a dozen middleweight undead before charging headfirst into a Lord of the Lost Ones, who chops me down with his two-hander.
Not like, one of those stubborn hardwood trees like an oak or anything. More like a soft wood, like a soft pine or something?
An inch of balsa wood, maybe.
Welp.
- So, off to Thalgard. Fairly dim and gloomy, which I suppose is only to be expected from an area supposedly steeped in toxic mist or whatever. Bright green crystal bits dot the landscape, suggesting there’s Pyrean ruins around. Towards the end of the path there’s some lighting in the form of giant… well, they kind of have the aesthetic of paper lanterns, if paper lanterns were round, larger than a man, and shod in iron instead of wood. That helps a bit with the general gloom.
I was warned that stepping off the path is only for ‘ard bastards, but the instincts of an Elder Scrolls protagonist are strong. There could be treasure in there, you know? I don’t even know what I’d spend money on, considering I’ve already bought the two houses in the game and tear all my gear from the unfeeling hands of double-killed Starling liches and stuff. I just… I just want it, okay?
Maybe I can make a Scrooge McDuckian vault and swim around in my gold pennies when I’m not out saving the world or flying to the moon.
Well, while the Destroyed Abbey doesn’t have an overabundance of treasure, it does have an abundance of are Monks. Contrary to the peaceful, pleasant title, Monks are rough customers. The base form of a Monk is one of those ghostly lightning-and-ice magic user types, like the Alchemists from the plague mushroom sidequest way back in the day. But pile on more Elementalist stats and pour a boatload of HP on top and you have the idea.
This is a pretty rad setpiece, though. The Monks walk the aisles and man the lectern of this open-air lecture hall that probably didn’t start out exposed to the elements whenever this Abbey was actually in business. The ground is coated in waist-high ferns, and the skeletons posed on their benches appear to be growing antlers or horns or something.
The inside of the Abbey is more vanilla. The main hall and sleeping quarters are do-able with a little luck (and a timestop comboing into Rocksolid to soak up 90% of a magic-user’s ability to drop serious damage on a poor old Prophetess), where the rooms contain at most a Monk or two supported by archers or mighty wisps. I pick up a fair number of skillbooks and a few spellbooks, which is kind of nice.
The library contains no less than four Monks, backed up by at least as many lesser undead archers.
Welp.
- Clustered around the Abbey – which I find the first time, regretfully, by running off a cliff while being chased by Monks – is the remnants of a small town. Well, actually a pretty big town, for Enderal. Bigger than Arp Central over on the western side of the continent or the weird town-zoo of elemental wolves around Calia’s dad’s old place.
Smaller than Ark, thank God.
Aside from the usual undead types, this place has a monster called an ‘elemental ghost.’ That’s a soil elemental that somehow became undead what.
On the sliding scale of undead threats that tops out at Lords of the Lost Ones, those giant-sized Grotesque Ones and, just below them, Monks, these guys are the next rung down on that ladder. They have tons of HP like Monks and throw lightning (natch), but they don’t tend to run as much and their magic doesn’t seem to have the same punch. Do-able.
I also run into a little door reading ‘Thalgard Crematory’, but I’m still stinging from the Abbey and would rather walk up the normal way thank you very much. With my luck the Crematory would be filled with flaming corpses that throw fireballs or something.
As something of a connoisseur of getting blown up by magic by now, I would rate fireballs as the scariest type of magic in Enderal, since suddenly you just explode and your world is a fiery hell for multiple steps in any direction. Ice meanwhile is the most annoying magic for a swordsy sort of girl, since the mages seem to be programmed to fire and run away a lot, and you can’t exactly catch up when you’re slowed by cold. Lightning hits you in your mana bar, but since I do all my summoning before the fight I could give a shit.
- So I work my way around and up a small hill, chasing the minimap point, and run into a shining white figure on the hill called the Steel Guardian. Turns out he’s one of Enderal’s five hidden monsters. There’s a book series that describes these ‘myths and legends’, that explains he once was Dal’Marak’s trusted arcanist Ibrael. Yadda yadda tried to kill his boss for straying from the path, yadda yadda too late, yadda yadda cursed to roam the land and so on and so forth.
He hits like a truck with his giant axe and has a huge HP bar, which is to be expected of something the size and general disposition of a Starling Centurion like our old buddy Horst/Pahtira. Single enemies are the easiest to bring down with timestop though, since I don’t have to waste valuable time running around. Timestop Power Attacking his face like a lumberjack with a stubborn tree does the trick, and then it’s just cleaning up a couple of his Monk buddies.
Although I have to say, for being a secret boss the loot is uninspiring. A couple of books I’ve already read and 1000 gold pennies. Why can’t I get that giant glowing white axe as large as my entire body?! Even if I can’t use it I could put it on my wall and tell stories about it to wide-eyed Ark kids.
- Just outside the ‘Starling workshop’ I’m looking for are a handful of ‘Sunborn’ which, going by their armor, appear to be Skaraggs, the local barbarian archetype.
Just squatting in a ruined house out in the ass-end of nowhere, with ruined Viking warships crashed against the shore outside. It kind of looks like they came to plunder Enderal, then spontaneously decided to give up the Viking raider life and become fishermen. Armed with axes and heavy furs.
I wonder. We know there was some unspecified disaster out here in Thalgard. Could it be in response to a Skaragg invasion? Could it have originated out on the water, driving the Skaraggs to beach themselves to avoid worse disaster? Why ‘Sunborn’?
I hope we find out.
The Takeaway:
The Thalgard region is just as tough as advertised, but fighting hard stuff for the sake of difficulty isn’t really my jam. I’m much more interested in the lore implications. I have faith that Dal’Marak didn’t just go mad and poison himself and everyone else in a vacuum, and I’m looking forward to learning just what happened here.
Enderal is a hundred stories of good intentions gone awry and foul. Of love turned to hate, of lovers turned to necromancy, of murder born from fear, of religion turned to blind zealotry and freedom-loving rebels turning to Madame Guillotine to sort out their problems. Well, there’s a few stories of greed and malice and human stupidity in there too, but that’s humans for you I guess.
- First stop on the old Starling mine tour is maybe a little too easy? Feels like filler.
Work your way through a few spiders (for there are always spiders), a few Starling robots (how else could you know it’s a Starling mine?), grab up a few chunks of ominously glowing metal doo-dads, and Bob’s your uncle.
- Nearby on the other hand, is the ominously named ‘Soulbed.’ This presumably optional dungeon is a party mix of undead types, and some cool set pieces.
Every sort of undead I’ve run into so far, from basic archers to advanced magic-using ancestors, except – funnily enough, considering this is the desert – Sere Lost Ones.
That's a chest set beneath a beam of light, charred corpses reaching towards the light like it's salvation or destruction or both.
I'm a little disappointed when edging gingerly into the beam of light to click on the chest doesn't set me on fire.
Maybe that's weird? It’s probably weird to be disappointed.
The next zone inside the Soulbed is called the Open Graves, and I work my way through half a dozen middleweight undead before charging headfirst into a Lord of the Lost Ones, who chops me down with his two-hander.
Not like, one of those stubborn hardwood trees like an oak or anything. More like a soft wood, like a soft pine or something?
An inch of balsa wood, maybe.
Welp.
- So, off to Thalgard. Fairly dim and gloomy, which I suppose is only to be expected from an area supposedly steeped in toxic mist or whatever. Bright green crystal bits dot the landscape, suggesting there’s Pyrean ruins around. Towards the end of the path there’s some lighting in the form of giant… well, they kind of have the aesthetic of paper lanterns, if paper lanterns were round, larger than a man, and shod in iron instead of wood. That helps a bit with the general gloom.
I was warned that stepping off the path is only for ‘ard bastards, but the instincts of an Elder Scrolls protagonist are strong. There could be treasure in there, you know? I don’t even know what I’d spend money on, considering I’ve already bought the two houses in the game and tear all my gear from the unfeeling hands of double-killed Starling liches and stuff. I just… I just want it, okay?
Maybe I can make a Scrooge McDuckian vault and swim around in my gold pennies when I’m not out saving the world or flying to the moon.
Well, while the Destroyed Abbey doesn’t have an overabundance of treasure, it does have an abundance of are Monks. Contrary to the peaceful, pleasant title, Monks are rough customers. The base form of a Monk is one of those ghostly lightning-and-ice magic user types, like the Alchemists from the plague mushroom sidequest way back in the day. But pile on more Elementalist stats and pour a boatload of HP on top and you have the idea.
This is a pretty rad setpiece, though. The Monks walk the aisles and man the lectern of this open-air lecture hall that probably didn’t start out exposed to the elements whenever this Abbey was actually in business. The ground is coated in waist-high ferns, and the skeletons posed on their benches appear to be growing antlers or horns or something.
The inside of the Abbey is more vanilla. The main hall and sleeping quarters are do-able with a little luck (and a timestop comboing into Rocksolid to soak up 90% of a magic-user’s ability to drop serious damage on a poor old Prophetess), where the rooms contain at most a Monk or two supported by archers or mighty wisps. I pick up a fair number of skillbooks and a few spellbooks, which is kind of nice.
The library contains no less than four Monks, backed up by at least as many lesser undead archers.
Welp.
- Clustered around the Abbey – which I find the first time, regretfully, by running off a cliff while being chased by Monks – is the remnants of a small town. Well, actually a pretty big town, for Enderal. Bigger than Arp Central over on the western side of the continent or the weird town-zoo of elemental wolves around Calia’s dad’s old place.
Smaller than Ark, thank God.
Aside from the usual undead types, this place has a monster called an ‘elemental ghost.’ That’s a soil elemental that somehow became undead what.
On the sliding scale of undead threats that tops out at Lords of the Lost Ones, those giant-sized Grotesque Ones and, just below them, Monks, these guys are the next rung down on that ladder. They have tons of HP like Monks and throw lightning (natch), but they don’t tend to run as much and their magic doesn’t seem to have the same punch. Do-able.
I also run into a little door reading ‘Thalgard Crematory’, but I’m still stinging from the Abbey and would rather walk up the normal way thank you very much. With my luck the Crematory would be filled with flaming corpses that throw fireballs or something.
As something of a connoisseur of getting blown up by magic by now, I would rate fireballs as the scariest type of magic in Enderal, since suddenly you just explode and your world is a fiery hell for multiple steps in any direction. Ice meanwhile is the most annoying magic for a swordsy sort of girl, since the mages seem to be programmed to fire and run away a lot, and you can’t exactly catch up when you’re slowed by cold. Lightning hits you in your mana bar, but since I do all my summoning before the fight I could give a shit.
- So I work my way around and up a small hill, chasing the minimap point, and run into a shining white figure on the hill called the Steel Guardian. Turns out he’s one of Enderal’s five hidden monsters. There’s a book series that describes these ‘myths and legends’, that explains he once was Dal’Marak’s trusted arcanist Ibrael. Yadda yadda tried to kill his boss for straying from the path, yadda yadda too late, yadda yadda cursed to roam the land and so on and so forth.
He hits like a truck with his giant axe and has a huge HP bar, which is to be expected of something the size and general disposition of a Starling Centurion like our old buddy Horst/Pahtira. Single enemies are the easiest to bring down with timestop though, since I don’t have to waste valuable time running around. Timestop Power Attacking his face like a lumberjack with a stubborn tree does the trick, and then it’s just cleaning up a couple of his Monk buddies.
Although I have to say, for being a secret boss the loot is uninspiring. A couple of books I’ve already read and 1000 gold pennies. Why can’t I get that giant glowing white axe as large as my entire body?! Even if I can’t use it I could put it on my wall and tell stories about it to wide-eyed Ark kids.
- Just outside the ‘Starling workshop’ I’m looking for are a handful of ‘Sunborn’ which, going by their armor, appear to be Skaraggs, the local barbarian archetype.
Just squatting in a ruined house out in the ass-end of nowhere, with ruined Viking warships crashed against the shore outside. It kind of looks like they came to plunder Enderal, then spontaneously decided to give up the Viking raider life and become fishermen. Armed with axes and heavy furs.
I wonder. We know there was some unspecified disaster out here in Thalgard. Could it be in response to a Skaragg invasion? Could it have originated out on the water, driving the Skaraggs to beach themselves to avoid worse disaster? Why ‘Sunborn’?
I hope we find out.
The Takeaway:
The Thalgard region is just as tough as advertised, but fighting hard stuff for the sake of difficulty isn’t really my jam. I’m much more interested in the lore implications. I have faith that Dal’Marak didn’t just go mad and poison himself and everyone else in a vacuum, and I’m looking forward to learning just what happened here.
Enderal is a hundred stories of good intentions gone awry and foul. Of love turned to hate, of lovers turned to necromancy, of murder born from fear, of religion turned to blind zealotry and freedom-loving rebels turning to Madame Guillotine to sort out their problems. Well, there’s a few stories of greed and malice and human stupidity in there too, but that’s humans for you I guess.
and that was the easy part of Thalgard.
Yeah, after you get the MQ stuff you came for, you might climb back up the stairs past where the Steel Guardian was, and keep going to Thalgard proper. Just out of curiosity, what is your level now?
21.06.2018 10:25badgesareus wrote: Yeah, after you get the MQ stuff you came for, you might climb back up the stairs past where the Steel Guardian was, and keep going to Thalgard proper. Just out of curiosity, what is your level now?
21.06.2018 17:16dyslexicfaser wrote:50, and I still definitely don't feel ready for the endgame!21.06.2018 10:25badgesareus wrote: Yeah, after you get the MQ stuff you came for, you might climb back up the stairs past where the Steel Guardian was, and keep going to Thalgard proper. Just out of curiosity, what is your level now?
Where were we?
Oh yes. Getting-my-ass-kicked Alley.
Actually, the starling workshop is a wet fart compared to what I had to do to get here. Difficulty-wise, I mean; it actually looks really nice.
It’s probably just the fact that Starlings in this game keep making giant robots for me to fight, but does this look a little like a giant robot to anyone else? The pipes coming off a barrel-like torso with three glowing eyes and grain silo-like legs holding the whole contraption up.
The crystals overhead filter through the Starlingstuff to throw bluish light on the walls in thick wide stripes. I do kinda wonder... where's the light coming from? It's dark as pitch outside.
A couple of starling guardians pop up as I work my way up the crazy tower, but they’re basically nothing. I do some platforming segments and snag the pyrean cube right off the top.
I do appreciate how the hums and whooshes and hisses of the tower almost make their own music.
- I believe Buccaneer suggested that up the stairs from the workshop is one of the hardest areas in the game, and I should go on up and take a peek?
Well, turns out the Sunborn aren’t just stuck on the coast; they’ve taken over Thalgard, and there’s a lot of them. This isn't a lost or stranded crew, this is looking more like a village. Or a cult. Possibly an army.
Hard to tell, exactly.
3 of the Sunborn wasn’t too bad, down on the beach. They're hardy, but not one-hit deadly, the way a Lord of the Lost is. 7-10 is a little trickier, plus they brought a freaking Oorbaya. Well, turns out summoned monsters are starting to lose their efficacy, but Entropic Blood is paying real dividends! One Sunborn suborned (heh) to my side, which then explodes once they’ve taken enough damage? A+, gold star.
I got a level up at some point, and rank III of that talent is definitely where that memory point is going.
So, after some yo-yoing (run in, Entropic Blood, stab a bit, nearly get murdered, run away; repeat), I make it close enough to touch the actual door to Thalgard, which… you know, that’s probably good enough for now, right? Go me!
Go home, me, specifically.
- Well, I also poked around and found a pretty sweet tower called the Sun Fire, which I assume Dal’Marak dropped his nuke from when whatever happened, happened.
It glows with its own inner light, and looks totally sweet after the endless dimness of the rest of Thalgard. And piles on the arcane fever, because of course.
Still glowing strong after however many years it’s been. It doesn’t really look like the Beacon, thankfully; thinner, with the chalice shape up top to catch the light rather than three nodes for the Black Stones.
- There’s also one of those unique beasties, the Crystal Widow, here. Vaguely woman-like, but covered in whorls and knots and crystal growths, like a soil elemental mixed with an Oorbaya plus lady bits.
I actually just hit her with Entropic Blood and wandered around with her as a pet for a while, but unfortunately I had to put her down eventually. Rabid, you know how it is.
A little pitiful, to be honest. Like putting down Old Yeller.
- So, job done, anyhow. I head back to Ark for a minute to gather up anything new - check up on the new spells, sell off goods, buy skill books, all that. The city is still locked up tight, of course; nobody in the Order managed to figure anything out about the invading army while I was gone.
The Soil Elemental has once more fallen out of style, and the Oorbaya is back in. Level 50, the new hotness, still viscerally terrifying. I’m pretty sure it’s not just my imagination that the aura of purple mist is thicker than the old lad back at level 30.
Presumably the fog is created from the Oorbaya, but it kind of looks like whatever fell portal he climbed through clings to him, and all hell might follow after.
Good shit.
- I also finally got around to buying the house in the noble quarter. It’s nice enough; roomy, with a crackling fire and a trophy room. If I actually could invite friends over (if my friends didn’t have a bad habit of dying ugly deaths), that long table would be really useful.
It has a forge, alchemy and enchanting table on-site, but crafting is still kind of crap so the marketplace hovel is probably ultimately preferable just for saving a loading screen between me and the merchants.
- Other things of note: the invasion is on everybody’s lips, as it probably should be. Not just marketplace peasants being all “holy shit you were with the Grandmaster killing Nehrimese bastards down at the harbor gate, did I dream that,” but I noted Nehrimese racism is on the rise. Enderaleans’ favorite pastime, hateful xenophobia, has been proven 100% accurate now that the evil foreigners have invaded, or so the locals seem to think.
“I always told them those Nehrimese are dangerous, and now this happens!” and “You dare to show your face around here after what your countrymen did?” and the town crier assuring people that Ark is safe and will be that way forever, and so on.
- Well… sucks, but morale is the Order’s job, not mine. I’m off to the Gertrude to drop off my stuff.
On the way a novice Keeper makes a point of saying the ‘Blue Islands Coalition’ sent an emissary despite the wars. The man almost admires their balls. I’m pretty sure that the Blue Islands hasn’t come up yet, but I expect we’ll meet before all this is over.
- Kurmai has a uniquely Starling-centric viewpoint about this whole ‘Ancient Fathers hanging out up on their moon while we all suffer down here’ bit. He figures, the Beacon? Maybe the Ancient Fathers made it, did you ever think of that, huh?
And anyway, with the way humans have bollocksed up the world, is it any wonder the Ancient Fathers are non-interventionist? Like some kind of environmentalist bent to his rhetoric. Or maybe they’re the Federation from Star Trek. Prime Directive, sorry humans, our hands are tied.
‘Don’t judge them before you have met them’, Kurmai insists.
That just makes me more and more certain they’re going to be dead, crazy or (/and?) murderous when I actually make it up there to meet them. But hey, maybe they’ll surprise me this once.
The Takeaway:
Bit of a short and unimportant one this time, in all honesty. Thalgrad was atmospheric, filled with danger and history, but a little too ‘ard for me to go exploring just yet. Comparatively, the Starling workshop - the actual reason I was here - was just an in-and-out fetch quest.
Ark feels… weird, right now. The NPCs acknowledge their close call, but they don’t seem especially worried for the future. It doesn’t feel like a city under siege, you know? This attitude would feel more appropriate if the city had a close call and then emerged victorious, but as far as I can tell the Nehrimese invasion barely received a bop on the nose and there’s precisely one failure point keeping the Nehrimese from invading the city again: Yusif Sha’Rim’s entropic barriers.
I can’t help but feel that guy’s days are numbered, and he’s going to find an assassin’s blade or a whipped-up mob or something waiting for him whenever it would be narratively convenient.
Anyhow, hopefully the next update will come out pretty quickly, it seems to mostly be hanging out with the Order crew and investigating the starling city.
Oh yes. Getting-my-ass-kicked Alley.
Actually, the starling workshop is a wet fart compared to what I had to do to get here. Difficulty-wise, I mean; it actually looks really nice.
It’s probably just the fact that Starlings in this game keep making giant robots for me to fight, but does this look a little like a giant robot to anyone else? The pipes coming off a barrel-like torso with three glowing eyes and grain silo-like legs holding the whole contraption up.
The crystals overhead filter through the Starlingstuff to throw bluish light on the walls in thick wide stripes. I do kinda wonder... where's the light coming from? It's dark as pitch outside.
A couple of starling guardians pop up as I work my way up the crazy tower, but they’re basically nothing. I do some platforming segments and snag the pyrean cube right off the top.
I do appreciate how the hums and whooshes and hisses of the tower almost make their own music.
- I believe Buccaneer suggested that up the stairs from the workshop is one of the hardest areas in the game, and I should go on up and take a peek?
Well, turns out the Sunborn aren’t just stuck on the coast; they’ve taken over Thalgard, and there’s a lot of them. This isn't a lost or stranded crew, this is looking more like a village. Or a cult. Possibly an army.
Hard to tell, exactly.
3 of the Sunborn wasn’t too bad, down on the beach. They're hardy, but not one-hit deadly, the way a Lord of the Lost is. 7-10 is a little trickier, plus they brought a freaking Oorbaya. Well, turns out summoned monsters are starting to lose their efficacy, but Entropic Blood is paying real dividends! One Sunborn suborned (heh) to my side, which then explodes once they’ve taken enough damage? A+, gold star.
I got a level up at some point, and rank III of that talent is definitely where that memory point is going.
So, after some yo-yoing (run in, Entropic Blood, stab a bit, nearly get murdered, run away; repeat), I make it close enough to touch the actual door to Thalgard, which… you know, that’s probably good enough for now, right? Go me!
Go home, me, specifically.
- Well, I also poked around and found a pretty sweet tower called the Sun Fire, which I assume Dal’Marak dropped his nuke from when whatever happened, happened.
It glows with its own inner light, and looks totally sweet after the endless dimness of the rest of Thalgard. And piles on the arcane fever, because of course.
Still glowing strong after however many years it’s been. It doesn’t really look like the Beacon, thankfully; thinner, with the chalice shape up top to catch the light rather than three nodes for the Black Stones.
- There’s also one of those unique beasties, the Crystal Widow, here. Vaguely woman-like, but covered in whorls and knots and crystal growths, like a soil elemental mixed with an Oorbaya plus lady bits.
I actually just hit her with Entropic Blood and wandered around with her as a pet for a while, but unfortunately I had to put her down eventually. Rabid, you know how it is.
A little pitiful, to be honest. Like putting down Old Yeller.
- So, job done, anyhow. I head back to Ark for a minute to gather up anything new - check up on the new spells, sell off goods, buy skill books, all that. The city is still locked up tight, of course; nobody in the Order managed to figure anything out about the invading army while I was gone.
The Soil Elemental has once more fallen out of style, and the Oorbaya is back in. Level 50, the new hotness, still viscerally terrifying. I’m pretty sure it’s not just my imagination that the aura of purple mist is thicker than the old lad back at level 30.
Presumably the fog is created from the Oorbaya, but it kind of looks like whatever fell portal he climbed through clings to him, and all hell might follow after.
Good shit.
- I also finally got around to buying the house in the noble quarter. It’s nice enough; roomy, with a crackling fire and a trophy room. If I actually could invite friends over (if my friends didn’t have a bad habit of dying ugly deaths), that long table would be really useful.
It has a forge, alchemy and enchanting table on-site, but crafting is still kind of crap so the marketplace hovel is probably ultimately preferable just for saving a loading screen between me and the merchants.
- Other things of note: the invasion is on everybody’s lips, as it probably should be. Not just marketplace peasants being all “holy shit you were with the Grandmaster killing Nehrimese bastards down at the harbor gate, did I dream that,” but I noted Nehrimese racism is on the rise. Enderaleans’ favorite pastime, hateful xenophobia, has been proven 100% accurate now that the evil foreigners have invaded, or so the locals seem to think.
“I always told them those Nehrimese are dangerous, and now this happens!” and “You dare to show your face around here after what your countrymen did?” and the town crier assuring people that Ark is safe and will be that way forever, and so on.
- Well… sucks, but morale is the Order’s job, not mine. I’m off to the Gertrude to drop off my stuff.
On the way a novice Keeper makes a point of saying the ‘Blue Islands Coalition’ sent an emissary despite the wars. The man almost admires their balls. I’m pretty sure that the Blue Islands hasn’t come up yet, but I expect we’ll meet before all this is over.
- Kurmai has a uniquely Starling-centric viewpoint about this whole ‘Ancient Fathers hanging out up on their moon while we all suffer down here’ bit. He figures, the Beacon? Maybe the Ancient Fathers made it, did you ever think of that, huh?
And anyway, with the way humans have bollocksed up the world, is it any wonder the Ancient Fathers are non-interventionist? Like some kind of environmentalist bent to his rhetoric. Or maybe they’re the Federation from Star Trek. Prime Directive, sorry humans, our hands are tied.
‘Don’t judge them before you have met them’, Kurmai insists.
That just makes me more and more certain they’re going to be dead, crazy or (/and?) murderous when I actually make it up there to meet them. But hey, maybe they’ll surprise me this once.
The Takeaway:
Bit of a short and unimportant one this time, in all honesty. Thalgrad was atmospheric, filled with danger and history, but a little too ‘ard for me to go exploring just yet. Comparatively, the Starling workshop - the actual reason I was here - was just an in-and-out fetch quest.
Ark feels… weird, right now. The NPCs acknowledge their close call, but they don’t seem especially worried for the future. It doesn’t feel like a city under siege, you know? This attitude would feel more appropriate if the city had a close call and then emerged victorious, but as far as I can tell the Nehrimese invasion barely received a bop on the nose and there’s precisely one failure point keeping the Nehrimese from invading the city again: Yusif Sha’Rim’s entropic barriers.
I can’t help but feel that guy’s days are numbered, and he’s going to find an assassin’s blade or a whipped-up mob or something waiting for him whenever it would be narratively convenient.
Anyhow, hopefully the next update will come out pretty quickly, it seems to mostly be hanging out with the Order crew and investigating the starling city.
Nice job in Thalgard proper, I'll have to check out Entropic Blood.
- Arantheal happens to be on board for a talk before we ship off. I find him gazing contemplatively into some sort of alien vista down below decks. A sort of purple haze, with maybe… lightning in there? It’s hard to understand what I’m looking at, here.
Now, never let it be said that I claimed that view isn’t rad as hell. But… what is it, exactly? Tealor Arantheal is, in fact, standing in front of a steering wheel.
A second steering wheel, facing the opposite direction to the one Kurmai is manning up on the deck. Is this for going backwards? Is it for, I don’t know, navigating the astral plane or something?
Is it ornamental?
- Just wondering, pay it no mind. Arantheal notes he’s having us aim for the Crystal Tower, the Ancient Fathers’ repository of knowledge. He also hands off an amulet from his son (the effect is a hefty 20% faster cooldown on talents, which considering talents are totally broken like stopping time and turning enemies into brainwashed zombies, I am all for).
Tealor plays it off like it’s no big deal. D-Don’t make a big deal about it, b-baka. Wear it or don’t, I don’t care!
Aw, that’s sweet. Tealor runs off, and it’s time to get this party started.
- Oh yeah, Kurmai throws out one last worrisome detail before takeoff in a conversation with Arantheal; he plans to stay on the moon (natch), and Arantheal quite reasonably asked if we could pilot the ship back without him.
Kurmai says yes, because it’s less ‘piloting the ship’ and more ‘inputting coordinates and the ship flies itself.’ This is sounding eerily like the ship is thinking for itself, Kurmai. We’ve had bad experiences with inanimate objects that can think for themselves, Kurmai.
Whatever, who gets to air their entirely reasonable reservations about the ship we’re on possibly being one of those Pyrean people-stuffed-into-objects that keep driving people mad? Not me, that’s who.
- We’ve got the A Team together for this one. Jespar and Calia are coming with, as well as Magistra Yaela and her apprentice, a guy named Lejam.
Lejam seems like a nice lad, saying something nice about how swell world peace would be, and I immediately peg him as our redshirt. Shame we couldn’t get Archmage Lexil in on this, he seemed really excited about this Ancient Father stuff, but I guess someone has to look after Ark while we’re away and I’ve wanted Jespar and Calia to join me on the same mission for ages, so that’s exciting.
- We take off, although how we manage to take off from inside a workshop-cave is a bit of a question.
Maybe Kurmai built gigantic bay doors into the mountain or something.
There’s a tiny timeskip involved, and then we’re 3 hours into our flight soaring over the clouds, aurora borealis all around.
- Yaela gets a tiny bit of character building, building her up as a Starling-phile despite being human. As she puts it, ‘You don’t have to be a mummy to study archeology’, so, fair enough. Plus she points out thought, Starlings have the kind of tech that would let them conquer the world if they actually cares about that sort of thing instead of building moon-ships, you’d think people would care about them more.
It’s like if Skyrim still had the Dwemer kicking around in their sunken cities, doing their thing. That’s the sort of thing you keep an eye on! If nothing else, so you know when to run when they unleash the apocalypse by digging too greedily and deep or whatever and then its Falmer all the way down.
- The game lets you talk to Calia and Jespar or turn in early and skip it, and… I mean, obviously I’m going to do that.
Calia is weirdly relaxed and even-keeled for the first time since… maybe ever? I mean, good on her, I’ve been trying to get her to relax since forever, but still. The warm tone of voice and the laughter is kind of weirding me out, coming from our resident monster-paladin.
She takes me down and shows me this super weird freaking ball of energy Kurmai has powering his ship. It’s this whole little biome in the belly of the ship, with mushrooms and ‘crystal water’ which is actually getting sucked up into the tiny purple sun. It’s wild.
I mean, we’re already riding a wooden ship with a hot air envelope to the moon, but somehow this is even more crazy.
After we hide from Kurmai who would probably shout a lot about poking around his ship when we aren’t supposed to (and listen to him berate the ship for opening doors, which is not helping my paranoia that this is going to go all HAL9000 on us), Calia…
- Honestly, I want to listen to her pour out her heart and stuff, but mostly I’m baffled that I slipped into respectable clothes off-screen. When did that happen?
I’ve been wearing skulls and heavy metal for at least the last 25 levels.
I can’t tell if those are silk jammies or what, but I like it a lot.
Anyway. Calia, you were saying?
- Calia explains that she’s climbed over an emotional hurdle off-screen. She’s trying to view her Beast as a part of herself, rather than an enemy to be defeated. The Prophetess is forced to ask a pretty dumb question (“Does that mean you’re going to let it roam free?”) but Calia says that of course she’s still wary of it, but it’s also not something she can cut out of herself.
It’s an interesting decision to have Calia come to that decision off-screen. On the one hand, it makes me feel like all my pep talks didn’t really help; but on the other, it feels like her decision. It gives her a sense of agency you don’t often find in, for example, a Bioware game where the protagonist and his party members work through their issues together.
- Calia is going to hang out and meditate for a while, she really likes this place. Makes me wonder if the Beast and the purple sun are connected somehow, and since the Beast came from resurrecting li’l Calia using a High One battery that’s fairly worrying… but that’s probably just my naturally suspicious mind at work.
Probably.
- Jespar is up on the bow of the ship. Leaning on the railing, wind in his hair, all that.
He starts laying some philosophy out again. He still feels like people live life to be happy, but he wants to talk about the nature of responsibility, and how ultimately his attempts to run from responsibility are what make him responsible for what happened to his sister and that backstory lover who he left to die by bandit raid.
Man, character growth all up in this bitch.
Last time we talked, Jespar was trying to front like he’d sell me out to Coarek in a second, and now he’s acknowledging that his dim view of heroism and responsibility are wrong, an artifact of what happened to his father and his family.
He had it backwards all along, he said. “In order to be happy, we need… connection. To a person, to a cause, to anything. If you never find that, you’ll never find yourself.”
Which, okay, is a great turn of phrase, and I’m still hoping to connect with him myself if you know what I mean, but where did this come from. I was only gone for like a day, putting the finishing touches on the Gertrude! Jespar loves him some philosophy, but he seems to have flipped his positions like a Kilean whore. Which is a way healthier attitude to have than previously, where he was convinced humans were only in it for pleasures and he in particular was shit! But him and Calia must have been soul searching all day and all night to make all these breakthroughs.
- Aaaanyhow, I’m exhausted from all these heart to hearts, so I crash (thankfully non-literally) and wake up to find we’ve reached our destination.
Which is not the moon, unless the moon is just as sunny as the planet below. And has an atmosphere.
Not to take anything away from the place, because the Star City has a solid, I dunno, Machu Picchu vibe maybe? A huge stone monolith the size of a mountain dominating a small city of stone and bronze. And dead silent. Possible emphasis on dead.
Kurmai, who doesn’t like the look of this at all, takes off down the dock like a rabbit while the rest of us are just standing around talking.
The Takeaway:
On the whole, I like this segment quite a bit.
I’m a sucker for dialogue, and Enderal’s dialogue is good when you can get it but a little thin on the ground, you know? I like quests that give you party members, so it feels like I’m not trying to carry the whole goddamn Order on my back. I appreciate the Order roster getting filled out a bit, even if it’s likely just the prelude to another cull. On the whole I like Calia and Jespar and even Arantheal having a bit of personal growth that feels like it was their own idea and ultimately little to do with me. It feels real; personal growth ultimately comes from within, after all.
You can lead the horse to water but you can’t make her make peace with her inner demons, or… something like that.
And of course something went wrong with the Star City before we got there, when does it ever not? I have my money on ‘got culled by the High Ones already’ or possibly ‘are actually the High Ones lol’, but it could also just as easily be ‘destroyed themselves in their hubris’ or ‘went mad, MAD’. Enderal has options.
Now, never let it be said that I claimed that view isn’t rad as hell. But… what is it, exactly? Tealor Arantheal is, in fact, standing in front of a steering wheel.
A second steering wheel, facing the opposite direction to the one Kurmai is manning up on the deck. Is this for going backwards? Is it for, I don’t know, navigating the astral plane or something?
Is it ornamental?
- Just wondering, pay it no mind. Arantheal notes he’s having us aim for the Crystal Tower, the Ancient Fathers’ repository of knowledge. He also hands off an amulet from his son (the effect is a hefty 20% faster cooldown on talents, which considering talents are totally broken like stopping time and turning enemies into brainwashed zombies, I am all for).
Tealor plays it off like it’s no big deal. D-Don’t make a big deal about it, b-baka. Wear it or don’t, I don’t care!
Aw, that’s sweet. Tealor runs off, and it’s time to get this party started.
- Oh yeah, Kurmai throws out one last worrisome detail before takeoff in a conversation with Arantheal; he plans to stay on the moon (natch), and Arantheal quite reasonably asked if we could pilot the ship back without him.
Kurmai says yes, because it’s less ‘piloting the ship’ and more ‘inputting coordinates and the ship flies itself.’ This is sounding eerily like the ship is thinking for itself, Kurmai. We’ve had bad experiences with inanimate objects that can think for themselves, Kurmai.
Whatever, who gets to air their entirely reasonable reservations about the ship we’re on possibly being one of those Pyrean people-stuffed-into-objects that keep driving people mad? Not me, that’s who.
- We’ve got the A Team together for this one. Jespar and Calia are coming with, as well as Magistra Yaela and her apprentice, a guy named Lejam.
Lejam seems like a nice lad, saying something nice about how swell world peace would be, and I immediately peg him as our redshirt. Shame we couldn’t get Archmage Lexil in on this, he seemed really excited about this Ancient Father stuff, but I guess someone has to look after Ark while we’re away and I’ve wanted Jespar and Calia to join me on the same mission for ages, so that’s exciting.
- We take off, although how we manage to take off from inside a workshop-cave is a bit of a question.
Maybe Kurmai built gigantic bay doors into the mountain or something.
There’s a tiny timeskip involved, and then we’re 3 hours into our flight soaring over the clouds, aurora borealis all around.
- Yaela gets a tiny bit of character building, building her up as a Starling-phile despite being human. As she puts it, ‘You don’t have to be a mummy to study archeology’, so, fair enough. Plus she points out thought, Starlings have the kind of tech that would let them conquer the world if they actually cares about that sort of thing instead of building moon-ships, you’d think people would care about them more.
It’s like if Skyrim still had the Dwemer kicking around in their sunken cities, doing their thing. That’s the sort of thing you keep an eye on! If nothing else, so you know when to run when they unleash the apocalypse by digging too greedily and deep or whatever and then its Falmer all the way down.
- The game lets you talk to Calia and Jespar or turn in early and skip it, and… I mean, obviously I’m going to do that.
Calia is weirdly relaxed and even-keeled for the first time since… maybe ever? I mean, good on her, I’ve been trying to get her to relax since forever, but still. The warm tone of voice and the laughter is kind of weirding me out, coming from our resident monster-paladin.
She takes me down and shows me this super weird freaking ball of energy Kurmai has powering his ship. It’s this whole little biome in the belly of the ship, with mushrooms and ‘crystal water’ which is actually getting sucked up into the tiny purple sun. It’s wild.
I mean, we’re already riding a wooden ship with a hot air envelope to the moon, but somehow this is even more crazy.
After we hide from Kurmai who would probably shout a lot about poking around his ship when we aren’t supposed to (and listen to him berate the ship for opening doors, which is not helping my paranoia that this is going to go all HAL9000 on us), Calia…
- Honestly, I want to listen to her pour out her heart and stuff, but mostly I’m baffled that I slipped into respectable clothes off-screen. When did that happen?
I’ve been wearing skulls and heavy metal for at least the last 25 levels.
I can’t tell if those are silk jammies or what, but I like it a lot.
Anyway. Calia, you were saying?
- Calia explains that she’s climbed over an emotional hurdle off-screen. She’s trying to view her Beast as a part of herself, rather than an enemy to be defeated. The Prophetess is forced to ask a pretty dumb question (“Does that mean you’re going to let it roam free?”) but Calia says that of course she’s still wary of it, but it’s also not something she can cut out of herself.
It’s an interesting decision to have Calia come to that decision off-screen. On the one hand, it makes me feel like all my pep talks didn’t really help; but on the other, it feels like her decision. It gives her a sense of agency you don’t often find in, for example, a Bioware game where the protagonist and his party members work through their issues together.
- Calia is going to hang out and meditate for a while, she really likes this place. Makes me wonder if the Beast and the purple sun are connected somehow, and since the Beast came from resurrecting li’l Calia using a High One battery that’s fairly worrying… but that’s probably just my naturally suspicious mind at work.
Probably.
- Jespar is up on the bow of the ship. Leaning on the railing, wind in his hair, all that.
He starts laying some philosophy out again. He still feels like people live life to be happy, but he wants to talk about the nature of responsibility, and how ultimately his attempts to run from responsibility are what make him responsible for what happened to his sister and that backstory lover who he left to die by bandit raid.
Man, character growth all up in this bitch.
Last time we talked, Jespar was trying to front like he’d sell me out to Coarek in a second, and now he’s acknowledging that his dim view of heroism and responsibility are wrong, an artifact of what happened to his father and his family.
He had it backwards all along, he said. “In order to be happy, we need… connection. To a person, to a cause, to anything. If you never find that, you’ll never find yourself.”
Which, okay, is a great turn of phrase, and I’m still hoping to connect with him myself if you know what I mean, but where did this come from. I was only gone for like a day, putting the finishing touches on the Gertrude! Jespar loves him some philosophy, but he seems to have flipped his positions like a Kilean whore. Which is a way healthier attitude to have than previously, where he was convinced humans were only in it for pleasures and he in particular was shit! But him and Calia must have been soul searching all day and all night to make all these breakthroughs.
- Aaaanyhow, I’m exhausted from all these heart to hearts, so I crash (thankfully non-literally) and wake up to find we’ve reached our destination.
Which is not the moon, unless the moon is just as sunny as the planet below. And has an atmosphere.
Not to take anything away from the place, because the Star City has a solid, I dunno, Machu Picchu vibe maybe? A huge stone monolith the size of a mountain dominating a small city of stone and bronze. And dead silent. Possible emphasis on dead.
Kurmai, who doesn’t like the look of this at all, takes off down the dock like a rabbit while the rest of us are just standing around talking.
The Takeaway:
On the whole, I like this segment quite a bit.
I’m a sucker for dialogue, and Enderal’s dialogue is good when you can get it but a little thin on the ground, you know? I like quests that give you party members, so it feels like I’m not trying to carry the whole goddamn Order on my back. I appreciate the Order roster getting filled out a bit, even if it’s likely just the prelude to another cull. On the whole I like Calia and Jespar and even Arantheal having a bit of personal growth that feels like it was their own idea and ultimately little to do with me. It feels real; personal growth ultimately comes from within, after all.
You can lead the horse to water but you can’t make her make peace with her inner demons, or… something like that.
And of course something went wrong with the Star City before we got there, when does it ever not? I have my money on ‘got culled by the High Ones already’ or possibly ‘are actually the High Ones lol’, but it could also just as easily be ‘destroyed themselves in their hubris’ or ‘went mad, MAD’. Enderal has options.
Hmm, I'm left wondering how you managed to skip the, ahem, romance scenes. Probably a series of neutral conversation branches with both?
19.07.2018 01:51Buccaneer wrote: Hmm, I'm left wondering how you managed to skip the, ahem, romance scenes. Probably a series of neutral conversation branches with both?
There was a line I could have taken in Jespar's dialogue that said something like 'Just friends?' and I picked the other one... did I seriously miss out on sexy times just for that??
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