SureAI

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...

just wait 'til you see the Ice Elemental's face

and the statue should be Malphas (the Lightborn who was "responsible" for the continent, among other stuff) -
you'll see those a lot, everywhere

Yeah, doesn't surprise me. I've been everywhere on Enderal (where there are places) and I think the Firerock coastal area of Goldenforest is among the toughest stretches anywhere in the game. Even when I was fairly strong playing on the hardest level. it took me a looong time to get through the gauntlet of the towers, longships, house and cemetery. As a patient sneak archer with conjuration, I was hiding most of the time, popping out whenever I could and hoping I wouldn't get hit from three directions! And when I finally got through all of that, I was rewarded with that pirate cave which was intense.

I hope, later, you'll get back through that area.

- I make it about 15 paces into the crypt before I hear a groan and shuffle, and swiftly pull out my sword and soil elemental. Of course the crypt has a bad case of the restless dead. Of course. Why aren’t there guards at the door to tell me these things? Why are these things not coming up at night and eating people, or… whatever the Lost Ones do?
A small handful of skeletons greet me shortly, from iron bar doors on either side of the path. Fleshless Lost Ones: the lowest of the low among hideous undead monsters. I make short work of them, but this is still kind of a bad sign.
It’s not like all the dead are hungry for my tender flesh; there’s still corpses done up like Incan mummy bundles resting peacefully in alcoves, lit by ever-burning candelabras and sometimes strewn about with art and grave goods.
There’s actually a named skeleton in here: not one of the undead, but a regular, unmoving skeleton. Hopefully that’s not part of a quest or something, because during the rumble I accidentally exploded it into every corner of the room.
Oops.

- There are pathways deeper into the earth; one path branches into three, all with the rough texture of hewn stone. But hey, I have teleport scrolls, what’s the worst that can happen?
Well, obviously the deeper you go, the more dangerous the monsters, that’s Adventuring 101. So I hack my way through a few of the next level of Lost One, an armored zombie type, and then it’s back to wandering. I settle into a rhythm.
Passageway, small room, kill undead, passageway, small room, kill undead.

- Sometimes there’s loose change to snag, or boxes or barrels to plunder for grave goods.
There are some stories buried in the mechanics. This barrel of grave goods contains woodworking tools; that chest, a steel sword and helmet; scattered around this mummy are books and chunks of semi-precious stone. Like that.

- Occasionally there’s a hallway with one of the ghostly Ancestors as a sort of mid-boss. Each of these contains more grave goods (and of higher quality) around a central dias, with mummies nodding upright from their wrappings in alcoves along the wall, or skeletons posed hilariously in chairs.



One of the crypt keepers back in the day had a pretty awesome sense of humor.

- There’s a room with a brazier, and another three arches to choose from. And a few rats, but those are naught but a speed bump at this point.
There’s nothing to differentiate the arches. I pick one at random and go through.

- I think I’ve uncovered something like a timeline of this crypt, without a word spoken aloud.
There are the wrapped mummies kept in cubby holes carved into the rock; dignified, quiet. None of these have ever risen; you never find empty wrappings the way you might empty tables or coffins.
There are the skeletons and zombies; Lost Ones and Awakened Lost Ones. There are scattered bones and bloody smears. There were crypt keepers here, once, to place and catalogue and honor the dead. Until the dead started turning unquiet in their graves.
Is that one crypt keeper with the wicked sense of humor among the quiet slumbering mummies, I wonder? Or was he one of the hordes of nameless, faceless undead I cut through on my way?
At the end, there is… this.



Corpses are thrown in from holes above, to lay in ugly piles of bloody flesh. The ground is thick with the dead, and the area is thick with Awakened Lost Ones. Were they drawn to the dark and the fresh meat? To the light, filtering down from above? Perhaps the unhonored dead, tossed down here to rot, rise more than any other?

- The tunnels blend together. Every 90 seconds, like a metronome, I have to put away my offhand torch to reapply my soil elemental and bound sword. ‘Q’, the favorites menu, is my friend. The constant repetition is lulling, in its own way. Like a ritual to ward off the endless dead things that share the dark with me.
I enter something like a fugue state.

…

Day 3.
I write this by torch and lantern-light with a firm hand. It has been days since I have seen the sun. The lantern lights burn unaided, their caretakers long gone. I am the only creature down here that requires light. At first, I studied each alcove and art piece with the air of an archeologist. Now, art means nothing; the only thing I pay attention to is space. Hallways are safe, unless they have doors.
The undead cannot work doors, but their arrows and swords and axes can reach through the bars. What madman designed such gates?
What madman designed this place?

Day 4.
The map is useless. For a time I tried to go straight only, reasoning that eventually I would reach whatever end may come this way, or at least return straight. But the side passages beckoned at every turn, and once when I left the path to investigate a statue of some angel or Lightborn, the undead came again and I was turned around.
There is no return. There is only forward.

Day 5.
In one of the halls of Ancestors, I found a note along a long table strung with objets d’art. A brother informing his sister of their father’s last will and testament; to come to him, but he will only accept her when he is dead.
Something… something like that.
There are some worthless trinkets atop the table, and a strange scroll. I place it into my bags and move on. It holds no meaning for now.
Later.

Day 6.
I have ceased checking corpses or urns for secret treasures. Money holds no value here.
Some of the doors have locks. My lockpicks break in my hands, but I have more. Didn’t I used to be better at this? No matter.
Behind the doors are more undead. One is a conjured being of light in the shape of a skeleton. Some guardian or other, perhaps.
It falls like all the others.

Day 7.
I ran out of endralean crusty bread today. Now there is only to fall upon the very corpses which I fight, and devour the worn souls that hold their aged flesh to this realm.
Their spirit is a delight, and I drink them like wine until I am full, full. When it is done I can only regret the lack. There will be more, ahead. There is always more.

Day 8.
Found a large room. Tables heaped with corpses. Pits of bloody water that presumably serve… some purpose. The workplace of an embalmer; he sounds… unsettled. The dead were rising, and Ark was not sending help.
He did not have a good day. Might be a better day than this one, though.

Day 9.
Starting to doubt memories of the World Above. My only succor is my hideous companion. It ranges far and wide, but always returns. The twisted grimace of its lumpy face is as irreplaceable to me as my left hand from which it spawns.
Aside from it, there is only the flicker of movement in the torchlight, and the hacking and stabbing all creatures large and small, living and dead.
And the occasional stop to… feed.

Day 10.
There are grates, and inside the grates are a new thing. Set deeper into the earth, stone plinths interspersed with a skim of water. I follow, drawn like lodestone.
There are fellow wanderers in the halls, but they fall still and silent as I pass.
There is a door that claims to lead to the outside, but I pass it by. There is no Outside. There are things that crawl and slither in the darkness; I am one of them now.
Through a black curtain I am greeted warmly (fire) by a corpse draped in ragged robes upon a throne, empty wine glasses arranged in a constellation around it. Beyond it is a downward slope. Soon, I promise the new thing.
Soon.
Soon.
Soon.

Day 11.
An ancient King in Purple, crowned, resplendent.



I offer salutations in the words of those that came Before pitiful man. Iä! Iä! Darkhand fhtagn!
And then we fight. Words are between equals. It has none for me.
And in the end, I have none for it.
Its death leaves me calm and cold. The World Below feels empty. There is nothing for me here.
I return to the door, and step through.

Day 11, cont.
There are people on the other side of the door. I greet them in the manner I am accustomed to.



Their desperate screams are vaguely unsettling. No matter.
More come, armed and armored. I slay them as well, but… what manner of monster is this?



I strike them down again and again, but they rise again unharmed. They chitter and squawk and hiss demands, but the World Below recognizes only the strong.
It recognizes only dyslexicfaser!

The Takeaway:



Um.



... Guard? Hello? I seem to have... I seem to have misplaced my clothes. And my everything else.
... Been a while since I wore the old potato sack. That boat ride seems so long ago...

What were you drinking down in the crypt? To attack honest, humble citizens and, OMG, even guards! You're gonna pay for that. Hope you didn't have any stolen items on you, they're GONE -- HA HA HA HA!

Oh, what's a little bout of madness and homicide between friends? We're saving the world, here!

I'm sure Arantheal will be down to let me out any minute. Aaaany minute now.

That is what a real teenage mutant ninja turtle looks like.

- Enderal jail is rather dreadfully boring, which I suppose may be the point.
In Skyrim jail you can usually find hidden escape tunnels or sewer grates, or inattentive guards to pickpocket, or lockpicks to escape your jail cell and stealth through the jail to freedom. There are usually a bunch of NPCs with their own stories that hang around in jail that you can talk to.
If I’m remembering my Oblivion correctly, you actually get recruited into the Thieves Guild from jail.
In comparison, you’re stuck in the Enderal jail cell with a lockpick but a key-locked door, and a guard much too far away for any shenanigans except for shooting him with a bow, an action that rouses every guard in the jail.
I assume this is a consequence of Enderal having a particular story it wants to tell, and civilian-murdering/thieving Prophets don’t really play a part in that narrative. Nothing gets a gamer to not do something like making it boring, and Enderal jail is indeed quite boring.

- Sleeping on the straw mat will fast-forward you to the end of your jail term and cost you a couple of skill points in your top skills. Makes sense; there’s no skill in Enderal for ‘having nothing to do but work out and get swole.’ Enderal skills are all techniques that require tools or finesse.

- Freedom! It tastes so sweet after so long behind bars. After those three minutes or so I spent clicking on everything in that jail cell I’ve come out a changed woman, probably. I’m not sure how I’m going to make it on the outside anymore.

- Tealor Arantheal is still waiting patiently for that debrief, it seems. I like how whenever I show up they’re dealing with matters of state and non-High One related business. Like, right now there’s discussion about a Nehrimese guy (that's where Constantine and his green-robed buddies come from, by the by, which automatically predisposes me to like it) who came out on top of a civil war in one of the other countries, and how he’s maybe pretty upset with Enderal. I'm sure that won't come up again later.
I also like how I can listen in from the balcony, and then when I drop down onto the table Tealor Arantheal is just like, ‘Oh, there you are. Commander, explain to the Prophetess what’s going on.’



I like to imagine the Prophetess does stuff like this all the time, and Arantheal is just used to it.

- It would seem that we’re headed to Fogville; Constantine, Jespar and me. This promises to be a fun roadtrip.
Basically, Arantheal’s kid (that guy who offed the Lightborn) made the crazy civil war guy a companion, and the guy took exactly the wrong lesson home about killin’ Gods. He’s some kind of anti-religion terrorist type, now. And he’s landed an invasion fleet on our western shores. This is totally different from the northeastern Farmer’s Coast area that’s also covered in Viking-esque longships, by the way!
Yeah.
I’m starting to hate Arantheal’s kid, now. It feels like all kinds of problems from his time are coming home to roost in mine, and it’s a pain in the butt.

- While I’m in town, I buy the cheap house in the market square, primarily so I have someplace to crash that isn’t the Fat Loron. 1000 gold pennies isn’t too much to me at this point, and it’s centrally located to a bunch of merchants and a smelter.
There’s also a kind of minigame where you can buy blueprints for rugs and furniture and art to make stuff for your house, but honestly that seems like kind of a pain.
I also spend 100 gold pennies on a Winter Cloak spell that deals pretty solid damage to everything around me. Pro-tip: Don’t try and combine a summoned critter with the winter cloak spell. It does not end well.



- The area around Fogville is pretty interesting. It’s got tons of metal dragon-headed battering rams scattered all over the countryside in various states of disrepair, like there was a huge war on and nobody bothered to pick up their toys, after.



Good background storytelling.

- The area’s pretty dangerous, also. Wild Mages, Marauder bandits, and a new thing called Arps. Like, the German vampire Alp, I guess? They look pretty awesome, actually, with wrinkled skin in off-human shades and dreadlocks. Very grunge. Punk rock. I can dig it.
As long as you don’t look at their faces.



- And my map marker is showing Constantine and Jespar (and therefore, Fogville) right in Arp central. Of course it is. I was kind of hoping for a Seven Samurai-esque beleaguered village to save from foreign bandits, you know?
Something tells me the Arps aren't going to play along, though.
Oh, but just for funsies:



Now, I know it looks like we're enacting a fun bit of street performance (working title: "Bound By Chains"), but I'm actually stabbing him through the heart with an invisible Bound Sword.


The Takeaway:
I actually got so weighed down with steel and rune armors at this point that I had to set a Mark spell and burn a scroll to get back to Ark to dispose of it all, so now seems like a good enough spot to end this one. Kudos to SureAI on the Arp, they’re easily as cool as the Vatyr. I am sad that there’s all these cool monsters and I haven’t yet met one that doesn’t want to tear off my face and wear it like a fashion accessory, though. I was also kind of bummed out that Jespar and Constantine didn’t meet me at the Myrad for a proper roadtrip type adventure, but they’re around here somewhere. I’m looking forward to it.

It will be something to look forward to. Where the three of you end up will forever change how you perceive the world.

Or maybe like a Falmer? [just a note, there were Arps in Arktwend, but I don't know if these Arps are different from those Arps. We need to find an Arpologist.]

- Fogville was really only half as filled with Arps as I thought it was. After clearing out half a dozen, the place is empty as my character’s birthday party after the house went up like a bonfire.
The only sticky bit is in the town hall where an Arp shaman apparently hooked a common soul gem up to some kind of lightning trap and you have to shoot the crystal with an arrow if you don’t want to be fried.
Actually, the place is mostly noteworthy for how incredibly clean it seems for a ruin- usually there’s a bunch of clutter and dressers and stuff in the smashed up houses, but not here. Presumably the guard looted this place down to the bone when they left, for all the trouble the Fogvillagers caused.

- I have to call out the background music team here; Fogville has a woodwind sort of sound to it, maybe some flute? I don’t know, I’m not a music guy. It’s not so much menacing as it is completely uncaring of your shit. Like after the villagers all died and the army left their toys and went home, Fogville is still here on this lonely mountaintop. As before Man, so after; Fogville remains.
Constantine is his usual cantankerous self, but Jespar takes the time to lay some history on me. Fogville apparently is one of those places where the inhabitants all went mad and started sacrificing travelers to strange gods. Enderal has enough of these that I don’t even blink, now.
The siege weaponry I’ve been seeing left out in the elements was apparently from when the army came in and did them proper.

- Jespar cites the Whisperwood as a possible cause, something about how everyone knows the spores drive you mad?
Excuse you Jespar, what? Why did no one tell me about the madness spores? Was that the forest where I took my initiate test?
What the hell, Arantheal.

- Actually, if some random book I found in the town hall is to be believed, a hooded bloke came in and warned them that magic was going screwy nearby thanks to wild mages, and they needed to flee to avoid a terrible fate. But the elders didn’t want to leave their homes, wah wah I’m old etcetera. Well, you know what that gets you in this game: chanting strange names in elder tongues long forgotten by Man.
Jespar also mentioned the Butcher of Ark, although I forget his name. I’ve been finding volumes of his autobiography for a while, which increment a 12 counter. I’m kind of assuming when I find all 12 I’ll wake up with old Jack of Smiles at the foot of my bed and have to fight him to the death or something.

- Anyway, the next step is to follow after Constantine to the ‘Living Temple’, which sounds totally ominous. Sure would be nice to have Jespar explain that one.
Maybe it’s got lots of trees and flowers and is really nice?
Probably not, though.

- Speaking of really nice, heading north towards the temple crossed over into a different biome: a little strip of beauty between the Skyrim-normal rocky coast and what looks like a snowy forest ahead.





- There’s also one of the Myrad stations and an actual stop on the road called Frostcliff Tavern. These things are rare as hen’s teeth out in the wild; I think this is the first roadside tavern I’ve found so far that didn’t involve bandits or something.
Very warm interior, and the tavern minstrel sings very prettily (a named lady NPC is actually the one singing, the minstrel is getting a beer in the back).



Unfortunately, though there’s a few named NPCs inside, nobody really has much to say. Maybe they’re recipients of quests from elsewhere?

- The tavern owner can buy and sell anything, which is convenient, and also I bought a spell to summon this thing!



Like the soil elemental's super-depressed old man face, the mud elemental subscribes to the ‘ugly cute’ paradigm. I know I wouldn't want to fight it, because fighting it would by necessity involve touching it. It's fight sound effects are probably disgusting. I suspect it's not going to be stronger than the lightning-blasting soil elemental (it's only level 10: I'm 24), but who knows?


The Takeaway:
Not much going on here. A little pit stop on the way to the actual meat of the quest. Some backstory, a few hints dropped, some nice scenery. Oh well; onward to the probably horrors of the Living Temple!