SureAI

- Jespar's midnight tower tryst is nice, but marred somewhat by bugginess. There are points where Jespar just stands there staring, and if you autosave and reload in the middle it can bork the chain and he wanders off back towards Ark without another word.
He's a pretty good host if you ignore that. He offers you wine or a smoke, and asks about the trial and something about your past. In exchange he opens up some about a past... conquest? It sounded more like the lady conquered him for a few years until she started getting a little too intense for him and he bailed.
Turns out he's sticking around, and it sounds like Constantine likes the fact that he's not entirely a blithering idiot, so he's probably still got a job.

- Unfortunately, the time still isn't right, so I have to go wandering again. I have a quest taking me out past Farmer's Coast on the trail of someone named Max Niceblood, so I figure, what the hell. I already tracked him to a barn outside Ark but he slipped the net, so now I have to go hiking up into the mountains after him.
About 15 steps past the Myrad post, though, I get shaken down for coin. Bandits, man, they're everywhere in this country. Now, if he'd come up with some sob story about fleshmaggots, sure, but this guy is being way too smug for me to give him 200 pennies.
I reflect that this may have been a mistake when the vagrant sneaking up behind me buries a steel battleaxe in my spine.

- I die an additional two times in various permutations as I work out how the fight goes. The two bandits in front use sword and shield, and naturally draw the eye, while there's an archer off to the side. But honestly, I wish every bandit in the world was an archer, because as long as you keep moving they don't really hurt. It's the battleaxe guy doing all the damage. As long as he dies, the fight is doable.

- Flush with victory and not having any intrusive bits of metal in me, I wander into this cave. It's got more bandits in it of course, but at this point I expect bandit attacks like spring rains. More importantly, there's this glowing crystal sprinkled everywhere, including this pillar of the stuff here. There's also some old ruin-y bits around, carved faces and the like, like this was some old Pyrean worship site or something.



But sadly, nothing hinting at the history of the place as I'm going through the bandits' personal things after the murder. I know they're bandits, not archeologists, but still. Really inconvenient, guys.

- After that is a distillery with actual non-murdery human people (but no extensive dialogues or quests or anything), and there's also like a barn or something. I wonder what it's-



Oh, nohohohoooope. If it's anything like Lower Haystacks, I want no part of it.

- I go up into the mountains a bit and - after fighting more bandits - find another note from Max. He congratulates me on getting him to run away, and notes the jewelry chest near the note is from him, in honor of my achievement. Also, the one who sent me after him is mad because he refused her bed, he wanted me to be clear on that.
He might as well have signed the note, 'See you in the next game, sucker!' but if he wants to give me a few shiny baubles when he was clearly ahead of me every step of the way, sure, I can play along.
I go home, deposit my money in the bank (did I mention? There's a bank in Ark, and it accrues something like 2% interest daily) and sleep it off until Arantheal is ready to see me, which is pretty quickly.

- I am welcomed with the bon homie I've come to expect of the Order.



- Arantheal has a speech about tradition and togetherness and living on after the death of the gods and stuff like that. Calia and I do some light chanting. I don't think the dried up old bag of dicks that is the Order's Fourth Sigils are buying what he's selling, but it's a good speech.
And just like that, I'm raised to the First Sigil, something like the sixth highest rank in the land. I make the rounds of the little church, but nobody wants to hear my acceptance speech.

- My old buddy Sigil Leader Jorek from the trial is here, front row center. He's in fine, sarcastic form, too; he has a way of dragging out his vowels (and the 's' on Prophetess') that really makes me feel his disdain, it's kind of great. He wanted to let me know that he likes Calia better. I figured, but thanks for coming out, Jorek.
I also get some backstory on him; he's old initiate-buddies with Tealor Arentheal and the 'Tuchessa', which I guess is a rank like Grandmaster? But he didn't fight in the war like they did and changed the subject really quick on me. So he's stuck at 'Sigil Leader' rank, whatever that may be.
I wonder if this is setting him up for a jealousy character arc, and if imma have to kill him later.

- Some other named Sigil lady in the second row also chews my ass like Kilean tobacco. Do I know the history of the order (no), do I know the hundredth verse of the Chant the initiates need to do every morning (hell no), do I know why only x-y-zed people can enter the chapel (gimme a break, lady), do I know what some moldy war hero said to another after suppressing a riot (lady, I can't even remember the names you just finished telling me. Hell, I can't remember your name!). And so on, and so forth. My boots defile the chapel by standing here, etcetera.
Well... I have Future Vision powers? So... so there. Yeah.
Between Jorek and this lady it's like my disapproving parents are here in person even after I murdered them, it's sweet.

- The armory informs me that even if I'm Arantheal's special boy, I'm still paying normal prices. Swell.
I also get a free set of Keeper armor. It's bog-standard steel stuff but (as far as I can tell) can't be improved at the workbench, and therefore I will never use it.
I wonder if the temple armory would be weird about it if I tried to sell it.


The Takeaway:
Boy I sure am glad I get to be in your secret club, Arantheal. I kind of want to go find those occasional unusually racist Endraleans who give me that line about 'my thousand husbands' and call me 'coalwoman', put on my Keeper gear, and see if anything changes.
Regardless, the wait is over and I can get back on the main quest stuff, now. I can either go see a man about a corpse that will somehow or other lead me to a rite that would protect the Order and the Guard from the Red Madness. That 'Sigil Stone' stuff that got namedropped a few quests back. Or I could go do.. something, about a discovery in the Heartland woods? That Sigil Stone stuff seems more immediately pressing, so I decide to go for that first.

- So, next step on the road to saving the world: diving into the mind of Enderal's version of a Dwemer to steal his secrets. Sounds legit. How we gonna do it, Archmage?



This is the Archmage, by the way. Very snazzy dresser. Nor Jespar, we've met Jespar before. The other guy.
Apparently I was confused all this time, thinking Tealor Arantheal was also a peerless mage.

- Archmage Lexil explains that the 'Word of the Dead' is a macguffin in the possession of a recluse called the Aged Man. Me and my old pal Jespar here are going to become guests under his roof, sneak out to borrow his ancient artifact in the dead of night, use it on the caveman- I mean, Pyrean in order to pilfer his thoughts and find the magic words, and then pretend none of that ever happened.
I immediately assume I'm going to end up having to murder the guy, but Arantheal insists that if we're made we should flee immediately. At no point should this come to blows.
The Aged Man is apparently someone even the Lightborn - the old, dead mage-gods of the setting - didn't want to cross. I'm sure this will just go... swimmingly.

- The protagonist wonders what's up with this 'magic words' business, since all the other magic in the setting is chantless. Lexil explains this isn't your garden variety spell, natch, and it has more in common with illegal Entropy.
Like, say, the magic I've been using for ten levels to summon ghost wolves and elementals and stuff? The Entropy magic that has always been chantless, like everything else.
Whatever, I'm not an Archmage, I'm sure he knows what he's talking about.

- Lexil also mentions that the Word of the Dead - or possibly the 'magic words' for the spell, I'm not entirely clear - would take the form of a fancy scroll.
... Is this the local version of an Elder Scroll? If this quest drives me mad, I'm gonna be annoyed with you, Lexil.

- So anyway, I swing by the magic shop and buy a Soil Elemental (my old nemesis) summoning spell from the apothecarius for 200 gold pennies. Score. I do kind of wonder why Frost Elementals and Soil Elementals are basically rocks stacked atop one another, while the Flame Elemental is in the shape of a hot chick. Just Magic Things, I guess.
Then it's off to the Western Cliffs by Myrad.
The whole penninsula is pretty barren, not much of interest except for something marked with a dragon's head atop the nearest sheer mountain cliff face. I assume this means 'dragon', and resolve to not come back for like 20 levels. If I can't manage large-ish spiders, I'm not ready for dragons.

- And speaking of things that are terrible, rain starts up as I get closer to the Aged Man's mansion.
Oh, I think, the game just switched over to the Horror genre with an audible clunk, didn't it?
But it may turn out it was just these little bastards, called Wisps.



Now unfortunately I didn't get a very good screenshot of them, because as you may notice I'm at least 9/10ths dead and the screen gets all fuzzy when that happens.
Wisps are little glowy things about the size of a cannonball, which is apropros since they like to fly into you faster than the speed of a running man and smash you to death. I pull out a win after only one death and respawn, by going into the fight with my life absorption spell ready.
They do huge damage but aren't especially hearty, although they're also really hard to hit with a sword.

- In any case, on the way Jespar also reminds me that the Aged Man really likes his puppets, when we meet a pair.



Look at these sad sacks. They're basically like wooden mannequins, only kinda creepy given the expressiveness of their poses.
I'm wondering if there's such a thing as a wood-medusa. I suspect I shall find out shortly.

- Upon reaching the mansion, Jespar suggests we wait until nightfall to angle for spending the night. Unfortunately he can't hear my quiet moan of "Nooooo", and the Prophet agrees.

- After handing over a fancy necklace we 'got off a Keeper' (that being Arantheal himself) to the manservant who was suspiciously quick to arrive (Jespar's words), we're shown inside.
The Aged Man can't come talk because he's doing his music thing right now.



The giant leering gargoyles in particular are a nice touch; so are the long rows of quietly bowed servant-like puppets. They probably aren't going to leap down and murder me at all.

- The servant (and the Aged Man's) love of music and talk of how it transcends barriers and brings out the demons inside us reminds me of the connotations some of Lovecraft's stories had with music. Soon after, the music changes to a piano piece which is the Aged Man's playing. I like it a lot.
Jespar suggests we don't eat the 'slightly charred, but still pretty good' meat, which sounds pretty genre savvy. I also immediately said to myself, 'Don't eat that suspicious meat.'



- The Aged Man's mansion is absolutely stunning. Great use of directed lighting in this segment, whether it's outside in the spotty illumination of rusalla mushrooms, inside the guest bedroom, or down in the hidden crypt.

Did I mention the hidden crypt? There's a hidden crypt. Actually, there's two. For all we know, it's hidden crypts all the way down.

- After a little puzzle involving tugging on books that I'm embarrassed to admit I had to look up on the wiki, I get to visit the first crypt.
A woman is hanging on the wall, trapped in water that constantly cries droplets down the wall like a bug in amber. She's actually pretty okay with it though, and is obviously an old friend or lover of the Aged Man's, kept alive within the watery magic. She can't see me, but she knows I'm there, and we have a nice little chat where she apologizes for being such a bother. Granted, lady.
I feel a lot of similarity in this to Yero's old subplot, where he dug up his old girlfriend and put her on display, and was researching entropy magic. But where Yero was just a Keeper, the Aged Man obviously has orders of magnitude more resources to pursue his goals. Whatever they may be.



- After that we go even deeper, to some sort of old fertility goddess type statue. Where the woman in the water had a lot of pale blue illumination, this thing is more menacing; its dark stone is highlighted red.
Not sure what's up with the statue, but the ritual with the Pyrean goes off without a hitch; cast spell, BAMF, Pyrean appears complete with ice block.

- I read some words and get all up inside him.
I flashback to ancient... Pyrea? Pyre? Whatever it is, it's a nice enough rural area. Farms and such. Turns out everybody is flipping the fuck out in the last days of the Cleansing, and ice-man over there plans to take his sister and/or wife (plus their kid) and leg it to the North. His brother thinks he should stay and fight (and die) like a man, but ice-man is having none of that.
This sequence is a little buggy, particularly if you try to interact with the sleeping girl. There's a line that plays if you try to caress her forehead, but it zips by too quickly for me to read it.
Well anyway, everything changes when Jakal – some human general turncoat – forces attacks. Multiple waves of human warriors, a few archers, and one asshole mage that sneaks around and gets up on a rock where he can zap you with lightning with impunity. The warriors die pretty easily, but the fact that in the later waves you have to kill like 10 of them at once gets dicey.

- Poor lad gets himself killed. No hiding out in a cabin in the great snowy north while the world ends for him and his fam.

- Then I wake up and have a chat with the Aged Man. Who was the servant all along, because for an immortal he's fond of the personal touch. He's a bit of an asshole in a Star Trek kind of way (prime directive, y'know), but he does have the best mutton chops I've ever seen on a man so I guess I forgive him.



He does leave the Word of the Dead behind when he waves his hand and disappears his mansion with me inside it.

- Jespar just wants to get paid and go get a drink, and I can't blame him for that.
Tealor Arantheal reckons that having a name – the High Ones – to put to our enemy is a good job done, plus I did get the words for the Sigil Stone thing. He tells me to trot over and see how the archmages are doing with that.
Lexil and Constantine (mostly Constantine) are a treat, as always. To hear Constantine, you'd think Lexil was reciting from his book of high school poetry instead of words of ancient power.



Constantine literally takes the scroll away from him and reads it himself. Speaking the words causes the macguffin they're hovering over to explode, which appears to be the intention all along! Everybody gets a chunk of glowing purple stone that protects them from Red Madness. Aces.


The Takeaway:
Word of the Dead is a solid little quest. Excellent art direction, and an interesting character whose deal I would like to know. I do wish Pyrea was a little more.. unique, asset-wise? Like, I wish the flashback had been in the city, rather than out in the countryside. Also, did the Aged Man run off with our Pyrean? Can we summon him back? Can we get him out of the eternal ice? Or did he just disappear from the story, never to be heard from again?

I started a new job, so it's anyone's guess how much this project will slow down, beyond the tentative guess of 'some'? Anyway, next time, I wander around the Noble District for the first time, looking for somebody to buy this fancy jewelry that's been sitting in the bottom of my bag for ages, and probably get sent out on that other errand Tealor Arantheal has planned.

dyslexicfaser, good luck on your new job but I do hope that you will be able to continue this awesome first impressions to the end. It so much reminds me of my first playthrough and I love re-living those memories through your experience.

I have been playing PC games since the 1980s, with some being action/adventure/rpg games, but Enderal was among my greatest gaming experiences ever. I played it back-to-back last winter and like you, my first time primarily focused on the Main Quests (and getting my butt kicked constantly even at the easier levels). I then replayed it after I studied and learned how to play/choose better and was able to play nearly the whole game on Iron Path level.

But what I did the second time was to ignore the Main Quests (by leaving Jespar in Riverville) and go to the hundreds of places that I missed the first time. Focusing on the Main Quests touches each of the regions but I was shocked to find (using the Interactive Map) how many places there are in each region (like Western Cliff which you had just went to). I think it would be cool, if you have the time, to explore even more (you will have more experiences like Lower Haystacks ).

To me, one of the keys in doing well (and how I was able to jump all the way up to Iron Path) was something you have already discovered - conjuring creatures. It doesn't matter if you are a stabber or shooter (like me), you need to a meat shield. Continue with that but keep checking the spell shop in the Nobles Quarters constantly for better conjuring books. Plus, get as much as gold as you can because buying skill books in 2-3 areas will be critical.

Good gaming.

All right, let's try picking this thing back up. Even an update a week is better than nothing, right?


- So I'm digging around the Noble quarter, looking for someone to buy the random magical jewelry that has been accumulating in the bottom of my backpack for the last ten hours of game. Spoiler: turns out to sell jewelry, you have to find a tailor type merchant. Go figure.
More importantly, the Noble quarter is pretty great! Noble merchants are by and large more interesting than their Marketplace counterparts, and that place has a blacksmith with the unlikely name of 'Pud Duncan' who has open copies of Enderal's version of 'Baby's First Magic Book' of the forbidden Psionics and Entropy disciplines at the foot of his bed.

- Posters for the 'Perpetuum Theater' are plastered everywhere. Even the Undercity, although I don't think the beggars, ne'er-do-wells and fleshmaggot sufferers take in a lot of theatre. Unfortunately the place is closed. The actress sweeping up out front (starving artists have it rough no matter the world) is just one of those gormless types who ask you about your birthplace. 'Oh, Qyra, I hear they have big ol' baby communes over there.' No information on the theater itself. Maybe it's a night only thing.

- So, first off, I happen to run into a guy out taking the air who is notable only because his name is the greatest name ever: Jerrel Edgepunch. Does Enderal have marriage? He's bald and sporting an unfortunate handlebar moustache, but I'm big-hearted, I can forgive a lot. Can I take his name when we marry? We shall have a small service by the sea, and I will wear a pretty dress, and it will be lovely.

- After that, the theater may be closed down but there's a poet (to use the term loosely) reciting vaguely pornographic poetry out in the open air. His name is Prince Adreyu of Mith. Is Mith a real place, or is this a stage name? You know, Mith. Myth. A poet. I can't gauge his level of serious. Can I call him Prince? These are the important questions.

There's a cute little bit where you can spout some nonsense, and he reacts with 100% seriousness as he tries to analyze it like this is English 101. Also he's of the opinion that some local bard sold out to The Man by writing things that all the peasants love. Enderal's first and greatest hipster, Adreyu, first of his name. And you can play along with his nonsense, it's great.

- Right next door to his little podium is the local tavern. Another one. It's called... the Fat Loran? There should be a story behind that, but the bartender isn't talking.
Really, the best part about this place is the bard, a kid named Gerril. It's been a while since I actually stopped in a game, parked myself in front of a minstrel and just listened., but whatever song he was singing when I strolled in was really good. I'm not sure if it's the voice actor or the material, but I'm a little bit transported.

- The local version of The Crazy Herb Woman from Riverville (I guess every city is mandated to have one) speaks in rhyme. Unfortunately she doesn't dispense quests to put funny things on my head in exchange for Learning Points.

- There's also another merchant who is verbally abusing some poor guard when I walk in. Quest started, to go check up on her boy who joined a crazy cult and moved out to some rock in the middle of the ocean. Sounds like a pretty inoffensive hippy commune, but what are the odds I get there to find everyone dead and demons summoned or something like that?

- A bulletin stuck to a pillar directs me to a guy near the bathhouse who has some work he needs done. Well, first, turns out there's a bathhouse. It's pretty cool, although there's nothing actually going on inside.

It looks like you should be able to deliver a pretty righteous cannonball into the pool, but alas not. Pathing issues.

- Next door, the guy I'm here to meet is working on a giant fucking robot. Two stories tall, at least. I stand in awe for approximately 1.5 seconds before the thing shoots lightning bolts from its eyes as the tinkerer takes cover. I'm not sure if I should be less impressed or more, honestly.
He wants me to go find his apprentice, explaining that this sort of thing suits 'my rough hands' better than his. You know, man, I... okay, it's been a hard couple of weeks, I'm not exactly moisturizing. But still. That is pretty mild as far as Endralean racism goes, though; maybe that was the local version of a pick up line?
Also, he's just missing some kind of steering gewgaw before he plans to abandon his frail flesh and transfer his soul into the giant robot. I should probably stay on the good side of the guy planning something like that, just in case.

I will say that his workshop is really cool, even aside from mecha-Starling. One corner is covered with busted up mecha-spiders, and the other has one of those dwarven spheres from Skyrim, you know, where the ancient dwarf-elfs thought it was a good idea to give their robot guardians a giant ball to roll around on instead of legs.
Also, this guy is clearly a slumming nobleman or something. His personal room is huge, and covered in art, and then he has something called his Workshop which is a separate zone/room cut deep into some kind of cavern beneath the city. It hisses and gyrates with strange machines and something sized for a man that could be a portal or some Starling torture device.

This is going to be a good quest, I can feel it.

- Back on track, Tealor Arantheal sends me out after a machine the Pyreans made (reconstructed) to try and save themselves from the Cleansing. I'm still getting Mass Effect flashbacks, but no matter. I'm going dungeon diving with my buddy from the trial, Callia. The quest is named Deus Ex Machina; the scenario writer seems to be poking fun. Maybe it'll be double fun and there's actually a not-Daedra or something trapped inside it.
Calia tells me to meet her at the North Heartlands Myrad. Well, I hop on a giant crime against nature, and one quick flight later...
Um.

This doesn't seem like the right place.


The Takeaway:
The main cities in these games are usually bursting with things to see and to do, and I'm happy to say that Ark is no different. I'd definitely place it over Skyrim's Whiterun in the sheer number of things you accidentally stumble into the middle of just walking around. As for being deposited on a tiny piece of island instead of where I'm supposed to be going...clearly either the Myrad Keeper is confused about my order, or I am. I hope I didn't pay for this flight, because your service sucks, man.

... Did I manage to bork all my old pictures? Geez, it was probably deleting my old screenshots from steam that did it.

Mirella arranged for the Myrad jockey to drop you off near the quest island (you should have the Brotherhood of Kor quest in your log). So when you hopped a myrad to do the quest with Calia, that's what happened. It is a *** quest and you can only leave with a teleport scroll or a very long swim.
Yerai actually gives a 2-part quest, part 1 is *** and part 2 is ****. It is a good quest, but I'd give part 2 ***** ! nuf sed.

all of the (absolutely awesome) bard songs are up on youtube
and you can download the full soundtrack (bards included) via launcher

Nifty. I THINK it was this one that hooked me at the Fat Loran?

https://youtu.be/26DDafV3GCY That's definitely what happened. I should pay more attention to conversation trees before clicking on 'em, I guess.

Not that I mind, it was a pretty okay quest. Even if I'm pretty sure that one of the cabins housing freaking Shelob is SureAI's way of fucking with us.

Like badgesus said, it looks like I’m headed in for the Brotherhood of Kor quest.

- As he left, the Myrad Keeper said, ‘Watch out for bonerippers!’ What even is–



Oh. Well, that answers that. … Sort of? I mean, are they an animal, or a person, or…? Given they aren’t howling about how that other guy was their friend and they’ll kill me, you bastard, the way the bandits tend to do, I’m going to go ahead and assume animal.
What they are is about seven feet of meanness, scales and claws that walks like a man. Like a man-sized t-rex.
Strangely, while the 2-3 that greet me on the pier are doable, there’s one bone-ripper out on the beach around the side that rips through my armor – and my squishy bits – like knife meeting butter. The second go round works better, when I make sure to drop a soil elemental between us. But it's still a much harder fight for no discernible reason.

- So obviously things went topsy turvy on the poor cultists. It’s just a question of if the bone-rippers got them or if something else did first.

- I like the design of the island, by the way. It feels tropical. There are fish drying (rotting) in lattice traps, there are banana trees. The cultists kept chickens until they all got slaughtered in the main square: the coop stands empty, and buzzes with flies.
Of note, my character can apparently differentiate chickens murdered by human hands from anything else: these were killed by the cultists themselves, she says. I didn’t realize she was such a connoisseur of chicken-murder.

- So I go around looting huts, you know, like you do. Ostensibly to find the ‘letters of Kor’ that (optionally) advance the quest, but I think we all know why I’m doing this.
Most of them are empty except for the occasional goodie; most contain a strongbox, most strongboxes contain a piece of magical jewelry. I find one that boosts one handed weapons by 7%, which I replace my lockpicking one with. As all know, RPG characters are only allowed to wear one or, at most, two magical rings; anything else would be gaudy.
And- wait. Wait a fucking minute.



You mean to tell me that Prince Atreyu of Mith is published. And one of these cultists was a big, big fan. I don't even.
I know there was that whole thing with the Cleansing and the High Ones and whatever, but this? This throws my whole world into question.

- Most of the huts also contain a couple of ‘desert rats’ which are poor, pitiful cousins of the Mad Rats that gave me trouble earlier. Or possibly I transitioned into a rat-slaying badass when I wasn’t looking.
I do wonder why ‘desert rats’, a bit. Did ‘island rats’ sound too festive?

- Another thing to mention is that this place is kinda buggy.
For one, after half an hour of wandering around killing rats, I ding three times all at once. I suspect one of the rats dispenses a truly ridiculous amount of exp on death.
For another, upon entering one of the huts I tripped and fell through the world. Enderal righted itself five seconds later, but from thereafter whenever I jumped I began floating instead. It fixed itself upon restarting the game, but I want you to imagine the rest of this entry with me gently floating hither and yon.



- This is a bug of the more traditional kind. One of the huts contains a ‘Desert Queen Spider’, and I, her loyal subject, can only bow in supplication.



And then reload trapped in a very small hut with a very large arachnid, whereupon I turn around and leg it for the sandy shores. She deigns not to follow. She is quite frankly a stupidly large fish in the shallow pond that is this quest and there is no way I’m bringing her down, particularly since my soil elemental doesn’t like to follow me into huts in this area.
Perhaps my loyal rock monster is a staunch atheist, and the religious paraphernalia in the huts offends it.

- In order to get into the main lodge thingy, I have to go find two AWOL cultists. Women who tried to run when things started getting weird with the rest of the cult. The notes I’ve been finding are mostly theirs.
For some reason, they’re basically Skyrim draugr; glowing eyes, armored, and wielding rune axes. How tough must their abusive husbands be, I ask myself as I furiously stab away at their leathery flesh.
I fully expect to find a coven of cave trolls or vatyr or something inside that lodge.

- There’s a fancy feast inside, primarily roast horse. Why did they even have those things? The island takes about a minute to cross on foot.
This quest isn’t over yet, though! You have to go down into the cellar of the lodge, and then dive into the murky water found there. Then – if you’re like me, anyway – you have to spend roughly ten minutes (the water breathing potion nearby only lasts for 5, so this involved a reload) floating around among the fish and corpses until you find the tunnel leading ever deeper down, and then up, into a Lovecraftian sunken temple.
Where is your god now, cultists!



I’m just kidding, he’s right there. I’m getting a few flashbacks to the thing stashed in the depths of the Aged Man’s mansion, but that’s probably just the similar lighting. This fellow looks like some pagan sea god, leg jauntily crossed in repose, with the corpses of its tricked faithful strewn about.

- I score a ‘sword of Kor’ that is fancy-looking but honestly not any better than my fiery rune sword, and a teleport scroll to get me back to Ark.
I am totally going to lie to that poor kid’s mom when I get back, too. It’s nice the game gives me the option when I discover something this deeply fucked up, to just make up some nonsense about how he ‘got on a ship and traveled across the ocean.’ And she's all, 'Oh no, such a poor fool, I'll pray for him.' Lady, you don't know the half of it.


The Takeaway:
I’m probably with badgesus on this one: I’d give this sidequest three stars out of five. The plot is fairly interesting and the location a little different from the usual (tropical), but it was dragged down by bugs, my occasional inability to figure out where the heck I was going, and the complete absence of another living soul. Like, how cool would it have been if you got down there and ‘Kor’ spoke down to the little ant that you are like Sovereign from Mass Effect? He was around before the pitiful ‘gods’ of mankind, and he would be there after its end. Etcetera. What if you could try to enlist his aid or blessing to deal with the Cleansing, like the local version of one of Skyrim’s Daedric Princes?
Anyway, it was fine but I’m eager to get back to the main quest again.

Hey Dyslexicfaser,

I just wanted to let you know that I greatly appreciate your impressions! They are both very entertaining and highly insightful from a writer's point of view.

just to let you know, the stars rating badgesareus referred to could also be the difficulty.
if you take a look in your log you'll see that some quests are rated with stars,
with one being easiest, five stars being late game.

I'm obviously not saying he definately meant that, just that there's this rating as well

Thanks for dropping by to let me know, then! Can't ask for more than that when doing a run through of a game. I can honestly say I never noticed, but then, I don't actually read my journal much. Huh. Good to know.

I think they had the meat flown in by myrad. I'd be more interested to know where the bonerippers and spider queen came from. Spidey reminds me of your earlier remarks concerning the pet (?) pus beetle in the Undercity.

I never really thought about the religious affiliation of elementals. Maybe it's just simple arachnophobia. Maybe you go barging in through locked doors with no idea what's on the other side, but hey, that elemental is thinking "I wasn't born yesterday." He probably read your bear's diary.

Very nice write-up, such a treat to read, esp. for a quest that I did not do.

First off, bug report time. Darius Floorhammer's second line of dialogue is in german, in the captions. Okay? Okay, moving on.


- So funny story. Before I got on with the main quest I dropped by the Ark bank. Some of these sidequests (including the last one) give you keys to bank vaults and I've been slacking on picking up my rewards, so I decide to pick them up all in one swoop.
Two of them are just a bunch of random books and potions and a few spare coins, but one of them has over 6000 gold! Holy shit! I snag that and go on a shopping spree. I buy, like, enough Adept skill books for skill points I've accumulated over the last 6 levels, and a new Bound Sword (III) spell.
Then I decide to put the remainder into the bank to gather interest, only to find... my bank account was empty. I'd taken all that money from myself.

- Antics aside, it's time to go spelunking some old ruins. The walk to Old Dothulgrad is very mild. A few wolves, an overgrown church ruin full of Lost Ones, a mine I already wandered into earlier and cleared out. No big deal.
Know what is a big deal, though? Bound Sword (III). Entropy continues to blow raspberries in the face of every other magic in this game. See, I have that talent that makes Bound weapons do 40% more damage. This makes the one hander summoned by Bound Sword III clock in at a whopping 68 damage.
68 damage looks... something like this.



By contrast, the 'sword of Kor' I found on my last sidequest? 29 damage. I haven't found anything worthy of my blade, but at least the wolves and spiders I've been working my way through are dying in one swing. I'm considering phasing out life-tapping and even my soil elemental just so I can swing two of these babies at once. I'm almost sad there isn't Bound Shields and Bound Armor, but there probably is such a thing as too much winning.
I'll have to try out this 'winning' thing and get back to you.

- Anyway, so me and Calia head down into Dothulgrad and run into Indiana Jones Mage from a few main quests back, Lishari. Apparently this is the 'Peghast' they were referring to. Look, SureAI guys, I like the cadence of a guy like Tealor Arentheal calling one of his subordinates by her last name, but you’re asking a lot of us to remember two names for everyone. I think I can currently only name like 4 guys on the main council of the Sun Temple, and I’m one of them now.
We meet up just in time to listen to Lishari prove that having a long acquaintance with Constantine Firespark means that when it's time to tear strips off somebody, her tongue is deadly for more than just spitting fireballs. She is not pleased with her hirelings' progress; I think I'd almost rather get sloppily murdered by bandits rather than face a tongue lashing like that, and apparently some of her hirelings agreed already. Which is what she's taking issue with, so maybe that's not much of a fix to the problem...
Apparently some bandits ran into the deeper bits of the ruins and turned on a deactivated fire trap, making the hallway impassible.
Lashari, I don't want to trouble you, but... didn't something like this happen last time we were in a ruin here? There's only two common denominators for those events, and I don't think I'm the bad luck charm...? I mean, I only got here afterwards, so I don’t think I should be blamed for this…

- Calia throws a few barbs out herself when Lishari points out the 'bad drug trip' ritual is kind of dodgy. Which, you know, gotta go with Lishari on this one, that was a right dick move on the Order's part.



These ladies do not like each other. And I'm stuck in the middle. It's just like high school, if high school was held in a decaying crypt filled with traps and bandits.
So, probably better than high school, altogether.

- There's a bell puzzle that, in the stories I'll tell Jespar later, will not involve me whanging randomly on the four bells in every conceivable order before lucking into the right combination.
I do wonder how good Calia is at bell puzzles that she can correct me for hitting them out of tune, and why she can't take a turn with the giant hammer instead of me.
I also wish I’d picked up all the hammers before the floor dropped out from under us, because these things must be solid Metal of an Ancient Nation to be worth this much money.



I do have to wonder what the point of setting up a bell puzzle that drops people into a giant underground lake is. Is this how Pyreans greet visitors? Which ancient Pyrean architect designed that little feature? I think I'm going to punch the next Pyrean I meet in the face, just in case he's the one who set that up.

- Anyway, I work my way through some bandits and a couple of traps. Thanks to my new sword, the bandits present no problem. Unfortunately, flame traps do not succumb to sword stabs very easily, and there’s a few reloads over the course of the dungeon dive.
After going through a particular archway, I take a header into the ground, limbs flashing with electricity. I kind of assume I set off one of the traps, until some guy named Karek shows up and starts gloating. Cutscene defeats, how I did not miss you.
He doesn't get very far before Calia arrives on scene, and... well.
This takes place over the course of about three seconds.




Have you ever played Left For Dead? This is basically a textbook example of ‘startling the Witch.’ Calia turns into a being of shadows trapped in the vague impression of a female form and horrible red glowing eyes before bodychecking the bandit to the ground and redecorating the dungeon with his insides.

- The rest of the adventure is pretty much a cakewalk. I imagine all the bandits and traps picked up and ran rather than face my traveling companion, La Nosferatu.
We do run into four heaping bags of gold coins (of which I promptly lighten by 20 pennies each).
Also, a poor sod who was apparently the mastermind of the bandits. The mastermind is a gormless farmer in over his head who just wanted money so his farm wouldn’t be repossessed.
Buut he also robbed the Undercity Food Bank and killed three guards, so I decide clemency isn’t a good idea. ‘Send him away to the tribune!’ I declare, pockets bulging with misappropriated Food Bank pennies.

- After discovering a gigantic Pyrean magical construct that had better not be called the Conduit, Lishari decides Calia’s pretty okay after all.
Aww, group hug! Group hug? No? Maybe a firm handshake? Okay then.
Also, Lishari can take one look at the plans we found and deduce that this thing is more of a prototype than the finished device, but a win’s a win.

- Once we make it back to the Sun Temple to bask in our accolades (Lishari is presumably dealing with breaking down and moving the two-story tall Pyrean gewgaw back to Ark, and she’s welcome to it), we see that Tealor Arantheal has circled the wagons and called in all the chiefs of the Sun Temple.



I can name, at best, 2.5 of the 5 (not counting Arantheal himself, at the head of the table): There’s Constantine Firespark of course, and one of his subordinates in the green robes. The Qyranian one that’ll run you through the magic schools for Knowledge checks if you ask. There’s Signet Leader Jorek leaning against a cabinet way in the back, looking vaguely pissy like always. There’s this lady I don’t recognize but who might be the woman who was talking shit about me in the second row during my initiation; I’m going to go ahead and assume this is the Tuchessa.
There’s also the Archmage, whose name I am currently blanking on (Laxus? Lexis?) but who in my heart I call ‘Luscious’, for his fabulous dress sense and devotion to fine foreign perfumes.

- Some of the Keepers present aren’t really down with sticking a giant Pyrean gyroscope on top of their Sun Temple, thinks it would look bad to the plebs and lay-folk.
Tealor Arantheal is of the opinion that if it saves us all from the High Ones then the townsfolk can keep quibbling all they want but he’s still going to stick the silly thing up there.
I’m with the Grandmaster on this one, of course, but this is the second or third time that ‘the lay-folk won’t like it’ has come up, and I’m seeing a potentially dangerous trend with Tealor Arantheal’s choices.
Also, in my head, Jorek looks and sounds a little like Alan Rickman, so hopefully Arantheal isn’t going to get Dumbledored later. I hope not; I like the old guy, and not just because he’s always happy to sing my praises when I bring back another Pyrean whatsit.

- There's another break while they get that Pyrean dealie hooked up to the Sun Temple, giving me more time to wander around and get into trouble. Before I get on my donkey Whirlwind and pick a direction, though, there's a quest that has just popped up closer to home:
Ask Calia what the fuck. Oh yeah. That happened, right.

- Calia doesn't want to talk about it out in public, which I get, honest. But the place she takes me to is a little...



Dear, you know I support your life choices, right? There's no need to kill me and pretend I exploded by accident, honest!
What even is this place, seriously. It looks like an alchemy lab exploded and killed half a dozen people, and the Keepers didn't even clean up afterwards. Maybe this is the place Yero exploded, but... seriously, guys. I know I've seen brooms around. Mops have been invented in Enderal, right?

- Oh, but Calia's talking again, so I turn back around.
Turns out she prooobably did maybe murder that town by accident. Her witch form sounds a lot like being a Skyrim werewolf, or being possessed. If she gets upset enough, or put in danger, poof! Demon Calia up ins.
Her reasoning for 'why be a militant Keeper when this keeps happening' is pretty much, 'What, would I rather be a clerk copying books all day?'
She's like if Tealor Arantheal was a small, cute 20-something.
Well, I'm down to be besties with the part-time demon paladin if she is, but then I'm probably protected by the narrative and vague prophecy powers. I'm a little more worried for any other NPCs that might join our plucky band.


The Takeaway:
It's an okay quest, I feel like maybe I just got spoiled by some of this mod's previous main scenario content? Like, I feel like it didn't make the most of the NPCs it gave me.
Calia and Lishari vanished on me from the drop into the lake until the end bit with the moral choice.
The moral choice itself was a little weak, too; I don't know this guy or the corrupt landlord, I couldn't point out his farm if you gave me a map and three tries. The closest thing to a stake I have here is that I recognize that robbing the Food Bank is probably a huge dick move, since Undercity is such a shithole to begin with, and I only know that because a sidequest took me down there.
Well, no matter. Time to give this new summoned sword a test run by wandering up the Farmer's Coast.

Good luck going up more along the Farmer's Coast. I hope your Elemental is good against mages and that you are able to find rocks to hide behind. Also, if you finally get to a certain piratical cave, be very weary.

Noted! No cave found just yet, but these beached boats are providing enough of a challenge. Doing over twice the damage I used to do per swing still means Marauders and these newer, doughier Lost Ones take 3-5 swings each to go down, which can be a problem when there's like 4 of them and one of me (plus rock monster).

Can you please write this into the bugtracker (registration is not necessary there)?

- Before we get anywhere, I just now noticed the Soil Elemental has a face, and wanted to share that with you all. It looks so tortured.



- That done...
Traveling up the Farmer's Coast is not for the faint of heart. First thing I run into is a big muscle-y lion and a cave troll living in harmony, just like my old buddies Spider and Vatyr from the Riverwood bee farm. I almost died (I went in maybe a little overly cocky for a fight involving two creatures that outweighed me by a hundred pounds each) but pull out the win in the end.

- The dirt trail takes me to... a new biome, actually.




The sunlight looks vaguely yellower. It looks like it's autumn, and the trees are all afire (with, thankfully, metaphorical and not literal fire).
There's a giant statue of – I'm going out on a limb here, Arantheal? A Light-born maybe? It looks like Arantheal. Basically there are these huge, realistically-carved statues out on the roadside in the middle of nowhere, with little donations or obeisances or whatever placed in front of them. Herbs, coins, weapons, books.
I swipe it all, of course. Victimless crimes. Unless they're offerings to the gods, in which case... they're still victimless crimes, because the gods are dead! Excuse prepared but still half-expecting to get struck by lightning, I grab it all and run.

- ... Into a cemetery with a glowing banshee type called a Living Ancestor and her equally glowing skeleton pal, wielding... is that a shovel? What the hell.



Once I kill them (harder than it sounds: the Ancestor is an ice mage type), I get the dubious pleasure of digging up a Suspicious Mound for treasure. Apparently they were digging up their own graves? That's weird.
Maybe they wanted a keepsake before taking off on a cross-country roadtrip, Thelma and Louise style.
And I ruined it. I ruin everything.

- My Bound Sword III superiority didn't last very long; even the wolves around here are meaty enough to eat 3 or 4 swings of the thing, and they come in packs of at least 4.

- The beached longships (and there's a lot of them, wow, it's like an invasion force) all contain groups of hardened killers. The second they spot me, out come the axes of course; nobody wants to talk to the weirdo in the mask.
They're the usual bandit type, but their groups are more Marauder with the occasional Vagrant than groups of lesser bandits led by one Marauder, these days. Rune weaponry is common, and rune bows are apparently enough to even make bandit archers a little dangerous.
Well, there's also the occasional longship of undead. A newer, doughier type with the look of that old midboss Belosh the Searcher.



Less terrifying out in the light of day than in a dank cave lit by flickering torchlight, but still a great look. I should look into the Reanimation line of entropy summons sometime, see what I pull out.

- I don't even make it to the 'pirate cave' I was warned about. The longship groups are dangerous, sticky affairs that involve as much luck as skill; misplacing one marauder with a rune axe in the melee is a good way to end up with an axe in your spine and down half your health bar.

- And then I run into wild mages. Like, enough wild mages to form a local sportball team.
See, what happens is there's a ramshackle house right in the middle of the dirt path I've been following that has a pair of mages living there; one shoots icicles, and the other lightning bolts. I kill them without much trouble, but they're linked to another two mages, one of which throws dyslexicfaser-destroying fireballs. I can't even get close; there's no ducking out of the way like you might for a thrown icicle. So I have to man up, hide in the house and periodically throw Soil Elementals, and listen to the gentle patter of fireballs and lightning blasts against the inviolable walls of this ramshackle wood hut until it all falls silent.
Of course, then there's two more wild mages at a nearby lighthouse that are linked to this bunch, and they come out just enough to start throwing their own fireballs.
It's brutal, and my eventual win (some five reloads later) owes more to spite than anything.
That, I think, is quite enough of that.

- A quick trip back through Ark later, I'm thinking maybe I'll go look for a nearer – and hopefully easier – dungeon, like that cemetery. On the way I run into one of these:



Where the Myrad is a horrifying chimera whose only saving grace is the fact that if I stabbed it through the brain during a ride I would fall to my death and know it, this thing manages to look extremely cute. Some kind of... dog-bull? Bulldog? Bulldog.

- Also, I finally run into a drunk who has been faithfully standing in the middle of the Foreign Quarter shouting slurred epithets at passers-by every time I come through Ark. He seems to believe I made a pass at his girl – or possibly him – and demands I fist-fight him right now, to protect his honor and/or virtue.
Immediately, I am terrified.
See, in Skyrim, they have this brawl mechanic too. But it's so buggy that punching the other brawler invariably ends up with me owing the local guards bribe money or time in jail for crimes. Every time. Enderal proves they've ironed out whatever crazy bug Bethesda is still grappling with, though, because I freely beat this poor man's face in and nobody says a thing.
And sure, that's fun, but I have stuff to do, I can't stay here and beat this beggar man into paste forever.


The Takeaway:
Not a terribly interesting episode, just killing time until the main quest starts back up. I had originally planned to work my way up the Farmer's Coast and around to the western side of the continent where I had some quests, but that was beyond me. I did happen to find this place called 'The Crypt' in the Ark Cemetery zone, which I mistook for the actual cemetery dungeon. I think I'll check that out next...