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The game already takes great pains to show you that Kyros' law is bullshit. Also, the dlc takes place in an Oldwall. The case is over and everyone is guilty.
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Feb 14, 2021 20:23
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bewilderment posted:I didn't check the credits but I feel reasonably sure this DLC wasn't written by the original game writers considering the overall weirdness of it. It's like the people involved had a setting bible but weren't given the overall 'reasoning' of it. Maybe they let Patreon backers write it
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Feb 14, 2021 23:10
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Hypocrisy posted:Also, the dlc takes place in an Oldwall. The case is over and everyone is guilty. It's usually best to come up with a violation that you aren't also guilty of. Not actually required, sure. But it makes things easier on Tunon's side. Not that it would be hard in this case. The only named person even remotely innocent is maybe that one Disfavored they've got strung up.
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Feb 15, 2021 01:20
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Stroth posted:It's usually best to come up with a violation that you aren't also guilty of. Not actually required, sure. But it makes things easier on Tunon's side. "laws for thee but not for me" is already well established precedent for the powerful in Kyros' empire, no reason to care about that now.
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Feb 15, 2021 04:44
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Scaramouche posted:Maybe they let Patreon backers write it 
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Feb 15, 2021 05:37
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I still wish we got more DLC though.
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Feb 15, 2021 05:37
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Looks like we're promoting Reef-Talon and curing the Sleepless! I'll get the next update up soon, but tomorrow is pretty busy. Wednesday night at the latest!
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Feb 15, 2021 06:28
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TheGreatEvilKing posted:Looks like we're dumping this poo poo on Reef-Talon and ending our own suffering I, too, look forward to the update. Will there be an attempt at analysis, or just filing it under 'F' for "Fart, Wet"?
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Feb 16, 2021 03:02
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Cleopatra Jones and the Poorly Thought Out Ending Last time on Tyranny, we had a choice between a competent leader and two identical clowns. The thread voted that we should support the Beastwoman Archon Reef-Talon over the two clowns Jaspos and Wagstaff. Today we'll be seeing how the great clown battle plays out.  So I mentioned this in the thread, but there's actually a sidequest I missed. Unfortunately, you have to do it before triggering the judgement here, and there is no way I am reloading to do anything in the trash mob hell dungeon again. The sidequest takes place on the farm - one of the characters thinks that the farm's water supply is being sabotaged, and asks the Fatebinder to investigate. Fair enough, we are the local law enforcement, we look into it. It turns out that BOTH Wagstaff and Jaspos sent guys to sabotage the farm, and we can report this to the quest giver and get both the patsies shanked. This, of course, falls into the question of "why the gently caress do we have both Wagstaff and Jaspos if they're the exact same person," and the answer, I suspect, involves cocaine.  I guess you can confront them about it at this trial, but literally nothing here actually matters. Mell is the self-appointed court reporter despite conspiring to commit political assassinations to preserve an illegal settlement, and despite this being our judgement we can't do anything about it.  : Reef-Talon will lead Bastard's Wound.There was one vote for Cleo to take it herself and then everyone else voted for Reef-Talon. As far as I can tell there is absolutely no reason for the player to support Jaspos or Wagstaff. They don't even offer to do anything like craft you overpowered equipment or teach you secret magics or even just give you money. It's pathetic.  : The Beastwoman steps forward hesitatingly. Is Fatebinder certain? Many human kith do not accept Reef-Talon as Prima. Wagstaff and Jaspos do not accept. Beastwoman only wants to help Wound tribe. Does not desire fighting amongst pack mates.There's a vaguely running theme through this whole thing where the game wants to emphasize that the people who don't want power are the best leaders, which the game already shot in the foot with Bleden Mark and Tunon. Neither one of them sought power for power's sake, but are forced by Kyros or deluded into doing abhorrent things.  : I sure hope this is a wise decision. If we return to a den of Sleepless, chances are we screwed up.It's kind of odd to me that Lantry seems skeptical, as he's not really an appreciator of cruelty and both Jaspos and Wagstaff have proven themselves amoral and cruel. Hell, Lexeme was Sleepless and she seemed fine! Yes, the text assured us that she had a bunch of delusions, but she was able to function on a decently high intellectual level when Lantry was around.  Was this really written by the same writer who wrote Sirin sobbing in horror at the sight of the blood farm?  : I daresay, she's probably the best hope for this place.Oof! Remember, Eb is classist and racist against Beastmen. She doesn't mean to be, but despite her prejudices she's the only one of the party members we brought with us who can see this situation clearly. She knows Wagstaff well enough to unmask him as soon as we meet him, and she seems smart enough to realize that Jaspos is a big, worthless fuckup. The other thing is that both Wagstaff and Jaspos tried to kill Eb, Sirin, and Lantry too, but the game doesn't seem to recognize this or have them think to ask us if maybe we can execute them for the crime of attempted murder of a Fatebinder.  Mell you're a fuckin murderer man. : Reef-Talon, you've gained control over your powers. There's no reason to be apprehensive anymore.: Fatebinder's words are right. Reef-Talon HAS tamed mystic-strength. Wound tribe will grow strong with mending-rites! Scourge-beasts and outside tribes cannot harm Wound warriors with Beastwoman as Prima.Good thing Bleden Mark took the day off, because eliminating rogue Archons and their followers is exactly the sort of thing he is supposed to do.  It's extremely weird that no one suggests actually punishing Jaspos and Wagstaff for their many, many crimes. Now, by doing this we have made most of the merchants inaccessible (as they're Jaspos and Wagstaff cultists) but we don't actually care because we got everything we wanted from the Wound merchants and we're never coming back to this shithole.  : Fatebinder... I hope I've shown the Court that I'm a reasonable man, but I must protest this decision! I find it difficult to understand how you can advocate on behalf of this deserter of a Beast! She abandoned us, and now we are to view her as a leader?Again: this stupid dumbass put a hit out on a Fatebinder, and we have no option to call him out on it! This isn't even a super oppressive evil Kyros law, this is the basic law in any society! If you try to kill a United States federal judge, you are going to jail for a very long time! Yet here he goes rambling on about his respect for the Court.  The problem with having two identical clowns is that there's just not that much to discuss. Wagstaff, you ran an operation where you kidnapped people and drained their blood because you were too loving stupid to boil water. Now, we do have the [Attack] option, but the wiki says that if you don't use Athletics they fight you. I want them provoked into attacking Cleo so she can kill them in self-defense without pissing off Reef-Talon, will this work? : This decision is not open to discussion. I'm sorry, what? Both of these men tried to assassinate Reef-Talon and Cleopatra. They brought a bunch of followers, and everything we've seen of their followers is that this is basically a cult where the followers provide sexual favors, sabotage the food supply, and kidnap and murder Wound citizens. Why are they backing down now? We are in an isolated area where they could try to kill Reef-Talon and Cleopatra with absolutely no repercussions, and they have shown no respect for Cleopatra's ability or station. : With a pained expression, Jaspos bows his head and speaks with an uncharacteristically restrained voice. I'll abide by the Fatebinder's judgment. Your word is law.Are you making GBS threads me???? Look, I could see this if Wagstaff and Jaspos were clearly outmatched by force here, or if the trial had been anything more than us telling Jaspos and Wagstaff they were bad men while they yelled "la la la I can't hear you". If somehow we were actually able to prove to the clowns that they were inept clowns, I could see them doing this. However, because nothing in this DLC makes sense, they meekly submit to the judgment of the women they tried to assassinate.  Isn't your entire system of magic and school of magic about commanding the se- gently caress it. Wagstaff has the problem where he could also launch a coup but doesn't, or even do a temporary team-up with Jaspos against Cleopatra and Reef-Talon.  : The gathered crowd seems to finally released their collective breath. Shoulders slacken, as do the grips held upon various hilts and handles. Mell slowly lowers the scroll held up to his face with the look of a stunned battlefield survivor. So... the matter has been settled. Thank you all for remaining calm during these trying times. Folks, please return to your homes and give yourselves time to accept the steps we must now take for the Wound's future.: And Fatebinder, thank you for bringing this matter to an end. This settlement's prosperity will rest upon the wisdom of your decision. A small smirk appears on his face. Kyros... help us all. The crowd slowly breaks apart, returning to the settlement with nervous talk of the events that just unfolded. Soon, the crumbling overlook is bereft of commotion, and the tranquil sound of waterfalls fill the area. The game fades to black and all the crowd leaves. It's kind of insane that despite being on edge and ready for a fight, none of these people actually do anything during these arguments. No one steps up to curse Reef-Talon for driving their loved ones sleepless, no one asks for proof that Reef-Talon is better, no one steps up to defend Wagstaff or Jaspos...it's just an incoherent mess all around. : Am ready to be Prima once again. Fatebinder has helped Reef-Talon find purpose, clarity - will always be grateful.Now this sounds like something we could actually use. Reef-Talon did give us an artifact knife and that probably paid for all the time we wasted here, but Reef-Talon is also a secret Archon no one knows about. We have two powerful Archons as enemies, maybe we could enlist Reef-Talon as our ace in the hole? Maybe we could ask her to requisition some of those extremely powerful sorcerer mercenaries to use their forbidden arcane knowledge on our behalf? That would make this entire waste of time worth our while. : Must apologize, have little time to discuss. Best warriors die hunting Reef-Talon. Best mystics no longer motivated by chase to make many-many things. Beastwoman teach-show new pack, and loom over lazy humans until chores done.This is fair, but maybe we could borrow some of your warriors in the future? We could really use some warriors trained personally by an Archon...no? Could we maybe copy your sigil for new spells at least? No?  Dammit. TheGreatEvilKing summary posted:
Now, you might be thinking that because we're done with the DLC, we can go find Jaspos and Wagstaff and levy a sentence against them for their numerous crimes.   Nope! They won't even talk to us, and that means we can't attack them! Now, there are limits on a Fatebinder's power (and we're going to have a bonus update soon on this) but none of them apply here! We HAVE plenty of crimes for these assholes! We are under no obligation to actually leave because they tell us to, and we have the legal authority to interrogate anyone in the Tiers for whatever reason! This is not a valid excuse!  The game won't even let me open up with a stealth icicle spike spell. Let's just go talk to Lexeme and leave.  The DLC is about to make it abundantly clear that the DLC writers didn't understand what the main game wrote. : I have the texts you wanted me to gather. : Thank you, Fatebinder. She bows deeply, her face turning red as she looks toward Lantry.: Lies! And the worst kind, too! Falsities strewn about a bed of facts! Grains of poison in the rice!I've kind of hinted at this, but this is an extremely anachronistic response for a Bronze Age historian! Herodotus famously made up all his own dialog. Ramses II made everyone pretend he totally destroyed the Hittites at the Battle of Kadesh when it was at best a draw and as far as our records indicate, no one cared. Hell, let's check Johannes Fried's excellent book about Charlemagne: Fried posted:We are thus confronted with an alien world, and with people whose social and technical knowledge is utterly strange to us, who spoke a wholly unfamiliar language, and whose entire mode of speech and thought and logic is far removed from our own. We do not share their emotions, we no longer have their skills at our fingertips, their aspirations and plans appear backward to us, and to us modern citizens of the world who are still grappling with the onset of globalization and its consequences, their values and ethics are utterly meaningless. For instance, no one in the age of Charlemagne wrote or drew cariacatures, instead, both the common people and the ruling elites were in the habit of demonizing all opponents, heretics, or anyone who thought differently. Nor was irony common intellectual currency in this period. One notable feature of the time was the king's claim to exclusive sovereignty over the past. This "authoritative memory" was evident throughout society and yielded to different perceptions and interpretations only in the rarest of cases. This is the Middle Ages, and not the Bronze Age - but the principle applies! We can go back to Ramses and his totally successful conquest of the Hittites - he at least got a princess out of it - or Herodotus' made up dialog, or Thucydides explaining that the guy who beat him was totally the best general ever, but historians of the period were generally not running around trying to present an unbiased perspective! This is a modern morality being once again thrust into the Bronze Age! Just wait, it's about to get exponentially worse.  : [Glare silently.]Sometimes, when you don't know what to say, glaring silently at the idiot is the best course of action. : So... so you're justifying your lies now? This is not how proper Sages behave! Tell the whole story - the good parts and the bad - is that not our way?: Our way ended with Kyros. Our School is gone, I'm but a pale shade of what I used to be. All that we can do with our 'record' is maybe, just maybe, save some lives.This is a terrible instrument for that and Lantry should have different lines here. More on that after this dialog.  Ahahahah!  This is a stupid waste of everyone's time. : [Remain silent.] Can you spot the flaw in her reasoning? Loyalty to Kyros means nothing! Graven Ashe was Kyros' "most loyal general" and Kyros is still trying to kill him. Ashe literally gave his son for Kyros, and Kyros passed the Edict of Execution on him anyway! Nerat has dedicated his life to leading armies and spying for Kyros, and Kyros is planning to dispose of him because he's no longer useful. Lexeme is not some random dumbass, she's supposed to be a professional historian and the intellectual equal of Lantry. We can't even blame her curse for this, she conceived of this plan before turning sleepless and running into the Oldwalls. : You spent all this time building credibility. That credibility can be used in Tunon's Court to help your fellow Tiersmen.No. It can't. On the rebel path, Tunon advises you to dispose of all the Tiersmen who help you after they swear loyalty to Kyros. Yes, the Vendrien Guard are oathbreaking rebels, but they never actually try to betray you in the rebel path unless you betray them first and they act as your loyal personal army throughout, maintaining the laws of Kyros.  We've also talked about how the false Chronicle ties the Tiersmen to Ashe and Nerat, and we know that those aren't winners you want to associate with. Kyros wants them AND their followers both dead, and we know this because she sent us to do it. By tying Ashe and Nerat to the Tiersmen, you involve the Tiersmen in Kyrosian internal politics and if Nerat goes down, all the people listed as celebrating the stupid Nerat Festival get hauled before Tunon and interrogated. Good luck defending yourself from this "impartial" record.  This part is even dumber and out of character for Lantry. Let's finish this conversation before I rant more.  : Your sentence is to keep living, and learn more of your 'Sleepless' condition. Perhaps you could help others.: I am sworn to the Fatebinder's side but... I will endeavor to return to you if and when I can.: Forgive me, I had been readying myself for the end but, if my punishment is to live to help the other Sleepless... well, I shall not defy such a merciful ruling. Thank you, Cleopatra Jones, for everything. You know how Lantry has his quill knives he throws at people when you wish he would cast spells instead? Circular Reason is one of those, but it's an artifact. This retroactively justifies this whole quest, and adds more to the legend of Cleopatra, including when we give it to Lantry to drive home the narrative that we can grant legitimacy like a powerful feudal lord.  TheGreatEvilKing summary posted:
It's kind of amazing that this is part one of Lantry's personal quest, because it shits all over Lantry and makes him look like an idiot. Lexeme is convincing him with the premise that we can use this fake history to make Tunon and Kyros think the Tiers was loyal the entire time and convince them to be less harsh. Lantry should know this entire setup is nonsense. Let's go way back, to the very beginning of the game, when we first met Lantry.  Lantry is being tortured in the Scarlet Chorus camp. At the time, he told us that he was a "hired quill" for the rebellion and running messages and whatnot. As we know now, that's not true:  Lantry worked for Nerat for thirty years, and his reward was to be tortured and executed. This isn't a game that Fifth Eye and Lantry are playing to insert him as a double agent in your party, either - if you don't help Lantry, Nerat eats him. The game is quite clear that being devoured by Nerat is a fate worse than death and that Nerat is a completely irredeemable monster. Lantry should not be smiling and nodding when Lexeme is babbling about saving lives by proving some Tiersmen are loyal to Kyros, Lantry's character arc is all about how his loyalty to Kyros and Nerat hosed him over at every turn. He's not even alone in this. Barik's quest is all about how Barik gave his loyalty and everything he loved in the service of an overlord and a general who repaid his loyalty by killing all his friends with lightning, making him unable to have romantic relationships with the people he loved, and entombing him in iron to trap him with his own poo poo. Tunon further repaid his loyalty to the overlord by forbidding him from receiving help on the grounds that the myth of infallibility was more important than not punishing Barik for his service. The game is absolutely clear that real or professed loyalty to Kyros is no protection from the whims of the Overlord or being a bad politician, and the game is going to continue to be crystal clear that you can be loyal to Kyros and the Overlord will show no loyalty to you. Graven Ashe is the self-proclaimed true disciple of Kyros, and Kyros wants to kill him anyway and just lets Nerat murder his son. Nerat has served Kyros much longer than Graven Ashe and instead of being rewarded for his service, he's put into direct competition with Ashe for rulership of the Tiers. I cannot stress this enough. The reward for loyalty to Kyros is being screwed over by Kyros, and we will see even more examples of this by the end of the game. Lexeme is supposed to be a genius professional historian. The game tells us she's Lantry's intellectual equal and has Lantry wax less-than-eloquently about how he enjoyed loving her because she was very smart, yet she does not seem to understand this basic tenet of authoritarianism. This isn't unique to the Kyrosian regime, dictators of every stripe including Stalin and Hitler viciously disposed of loyalists they had no use for in events like the Moscow Show Trials or the Night of the Long Knives. It's not even a twentieth century thing, witness the fate of Thomas Cromwell. This is not new! Are we to assume no tyrannical king in the Tiers did anything similar? We know the Sages had contacts with the Kyrosians, because they were attending Forge-Bound lectures and mediating between the Disfavored and the Chorus. Yet suddenly Lantry and Cleopatra get railroaded into accepting this justification about how this fictitious history will encourage Kyros to spare the Tiers, despite professions of loyalty never swaying Kyros or Tunon in the past. This entire DLC is terrible and poorly thought out.  Cool artifact, I guess. Whatever! Let's see if the next trial at Tunon's triggered yet.  Nope! It's a shame! If I can't get it to trigger this playthrough, I do have another save where I will show off that trial in a bonus update. It's kind of important, as the accused is a Fatebinder. I also owe you a DLC postmortem, but that is getting written tomorrow as it's 3am over here. Next time: We actually go to the Stone Sea like we told Bleden Mark we would.
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Feb 16, 2021 09:58
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: BAWWWWW!!!!!
: Hmm...Brie Larson or Aubrey Plaza? They're both pretty hot. Good thing I'm busy daydreaming about hot women instead of paying attention to this boring rear end trial I'm sure has no bearing on my life.
: I will imply this wasn't the greatest decision despite being visibly horrified by the results of Wagstaff's leadership.
: Oh poo poo, was something happening? We've come to a consensus, and we're all Morena Baccarin fans now. The Jennifer Lawrence faction had some good arguments, though.
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This entire dlc can be summed up with:TheGreatEvilKing posted:This is a stupid waste of everyone's time. I can't imagine somehow playing through this mess, let's playing it must have been painful. 
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Feb 16, 2021 11:27
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Once again I am so sorry I voted for this trash fire. Always what the gently caress Reef-Talon?! You don't have control over your powers yet! You have a good lead on how to control your powers! You had a good plan on learning how to control your powers! Use them on the terminally ill and then work your way up! Saying you have control in front of everyone when what you have is a pep talk and instructions written on a napkin is beyond stupid. Honestly adding in the lie that she could probably fix the waters wouldn't have hurt at that point. Sage Lexeme. Thanks for the cool dagger, gently caress-off weird your weird freeman on the tiersland bullshit. Seriously, your peppered historical notes will save lives? These are day to day record-keeping that have had their titles changed, not the tiers bible. Can you imagine some poor rear end in a top hat brought up in front of a fatebinder to prove their loyalty? Imagine trying to point out "Oh dude I am totally loyal to Kyros, because a giant pile of papers showed that my town had a yearly festival of Nerat ball gargling and I'm from that town, therefore I deserve free passage, and you are talking to the PERSON Cedric Meggory, but the trial is for the Landed Gentleman CEDRIC MEGGORY who am I not he." Just holy poo poo.
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Feb 16, 2021 15:44
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Didn't we also vote to kill those two assholes? Because it looks like we had the option and didn't kill those two assholes. 
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Feb 16, 2021 17:40
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It looks like the DLC made your actual choice irrelevant as GEK was trying to kill them by provoking them.... and GEK said nope. So in terms of companion quests, Barik's quest was good, Verse is judgement pending (nothing that happens strictly contradicts the game yet, but the coding was awful), and Lantry's was awful. That's.... a mixed spread, but it's better than the Wound's track record :/.
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Feb 16, 2021 21:10
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I would argue that it's fine for Lantry to have the more modern view because Scribes aren't really analogous to premodern historians at all. Premodern historians were hired to produce works of state propaganda or were seeking to impart moral lessons or just flatter a patron. They didn't and couldn't exist apart from their elite audience. The School of Ink and Quill most definitely did (somehow). Their main audience seems to be other scribes, and they operate like a militarized university. It's not unreasonable (I won't say "likely" because it's fantasy) for such a group to value what they perceive as whole and unbiased records of events.
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Feb 16, 2021 21:34
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I always assumed they were a powerful guild of scribes who also had access to a lot of magic.
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Feb 16, 2021 22:05
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Keldulas posted:It looks like the DLC made your actual choice irrelevant as GEK was trying to kill them by provoking them.... and GEK said nope. In my defense, the strat worked on Argaen. I don't know why there's a available skill check and an autopass skill-less dialogue option. Maybe because we pointed out they're both murderous liars???
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Feb 16, 2021 22:14
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Well. That was a bit disappointing. Thanks for the update though, I do enjoy your let's play GEK! Your analysis is really spot on.
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Feb 16, 2021 22:37
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Donkringel posted:Sage Lexeme. Thanks for the cool dagger, gently caress-off weird your weird freeman on the tiersland bullshit. Seriously, your peppered historical notes will save lives? These are day to day record-keeping that have had their titles changed, not the tiers bible. Can you imagine some poor rear end in a top hat brought up in front of a fatebinder to prove their loyalty? Imagine trying to point out "Oh dude I am totally loyal to Kyros, because a giant pile of papers showed that my town had a yearly festival of Nerat ball gargling and I'm from that town, therefore I deserve free passage, and you are talking to the PERSON Cedric Meggory, but the trial is for the Landed Gentleman CEDRIC MEGGORY who am I not he." Yeah, this was my biggest problem. I can see no conceivable way that this slightly edited history would save lives. Even if Kyros did value loyalty, which Gek shows she does not, this would not exonerate anyone. Let's go further, even if the fake history gave specific names and somehow convinced the world that this individual was loyal to Kyros that was in the past. It's like if my defense for a crime I committed today was yeah well, I didn't commit it yesterday though. So am I free to go or what? Besides, it seems to be established that Kyros is often content to let people surrender, and not punish them for having fought in the past (unless they then rebel). There doesn't really seem to be a purge of the common folk going on, unless I'm mistaken.
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Feb 16, 2021 23:18
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Bastard's Wound Postmortem: Why Are We Here? It's tempting to just skip this postmortem and reiterate what was already said in the updates. Nothing makes sense, the Fatebinder has no reason to get involved, characters are dull and uninteresting, the Oldwalls dungeon is a terrible slog, et cetera. There's some things, however, that we haven't completely addressed - and sadly, some things we will have to leave for later as they clash with unseen parts of the game. I promised you a postmortem, and a postmortem you shall get, though feel free to skip the parts that seem redundant. What's New? Tyranny's Narrative Designer posted:“It’s easy to write empathetic sociopaths, as the really good sociopaths are charismatic, engaging folk,” [Matt] MacLean says. If we take a look at the Steam description of the Bastard's Wound DLC, the marketing copy sells the Wound as "a refuge from Kyros". Indeed, Kyros, Tunon, Graven Ashe, Nerat, and the rest of our Archons and Overlord are absent from the narrative, replaced with the relative unknowns of Wagstaff, Jaspos, Mell, Reef-Talon, and their followers. One might think these characters would be meaningfully different, or perhaps express themselves in opposition to the Kyrosian regime. You would expect factions, sure, but perhaps different factions based on things like country of origin or whether or not the Vendrien line should continue to rule after their defeat by Kyros. Maybe someone sets up some kind of weird experimental government like a commune, who knows? The writers decided to create ANOTHER power struggle between two factions of assholes. Now, this isn't inherently a horrible choice. The idea that the offshoot of Kyrosian civilization would also be a horrible autocracy riven by infighting among the powerful actually makes a lot of sense! This is the Bronze Age, the culture of the Tiers already speaks Kyros' language, uses his currency, and exchanges legends of the Northern Empire. People don't suddenly overthrow tyrants and begin building ballot boxes. George Washington putting down power and not making himself god-king of the United States is the exception, not the norm, and Terratus doesn't have the traditions of the Athenian democracy or Roman republic to fall back upon because Kyros wiped all that from history. The problem is twofold. The base game heavily features factional struggle, for one thing, and the factions are different and have multiple reasons to join them. Graven Ashe has a well-disciplined army, but they're all inept racists. The Voices of Nerat is a crazy monster, but he has powerful mages, hordes of troops, and a precedent set in place for you to betray him and steal his army. The Vendrien Guard are the old nobility of the Tiers, you can resent them for starting the rebellion that put your life at risk, join their rebellion to get back at Kyros for drafting you, or use them as a personal army. Maybe you hate Ashe's racism and like Nerat's egalitarianism, maybe you think Ashe is more trustworthy. Maybe you just want the Scarlet Chorus to hook you up with sweet magic sigils. These are different factions with different means seeking the same goal (sucking the Overlord's teat to gain rulership over the Tiers), they all have things to offer, and you can make a moral case for or against all of them. The game also ensures that you are the kingmaker player with a vested interest in resolving this crap because your life is on the line, and if you fail Kyros can and will kill all of you. The factional content of Bastard's Wound is significantly less interesting, and it all comes down to the fact that Wagstaff and Jaspos are bad characters. I quoted Matt MacLean up there for a reason - he's wrong. It's really hard to write characters who are able to charm the reader into forgetting that they're complete monsters. The best example I can think of is Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita, where idiots describe it as a love story despite Humbert Humbert being very clear that he molests sexually abused children and marries a woman so he can kill her and rape her daughter. Now, sociopaths can be very charming. The classic example that comes to mind when I think of it is the American soldiers who Saddam Hussein befriended, but these kinds of characters are very hard to write because you have to be able to bamboozle the reader into accepting that the Kurds needed to be gassed and that's a fine line to walk. What does this have to do with Jaspos and Wagstaff?  We are supposed to buy that Jaspos and Wagstaff are so charming and attractive that they are able to attract hordes of horny apprentices and fanatically violent followers who will perform acts of torture and murder. It sounds insane at first glance, but this is the textbook definition of a cult. A charismatic sociopath goes after people with low self-esteem and convinces them to do whatever he wants them to do. The easiest pop culture example of this is Tiger King. Joe Exotic is a piece of poo poo who demands his employees keep working after tigers rip off their arms and keeps young men in sexual thrall by supplying them with meth, and yet there is a non-significant percentage of the internet who thinks the president should have pardoned him for his failed assassination attempt. An even better example is "Doc" Anthe and his weird tiger sex cult. The producers of Tiger King had the advantage that Exotic and Anthe were doing what they usually did and they didn't have to script them to be sympathetic, but writing a fictional character like this who can charm a player in a videogame is a legitimately difficult if not impossible task. Cleopatra is not a character who is suffering from low self-esteem and will yield her body for a few compliments, she is a powerful agent of the state who can legally execute people on the spot. She's no mere functionary, to get to this point in the game you need to single-handedly take command of the Kyrosian forces and put down an insurrection. Such people are not easy targets for cult leaders! Now, in defense of Obsidian, it seems extremely clear that the Fatebinder is not to side with Wagstaff and Jaspos because of their personal charm or ability to open our chakras or divine right to bang all the women because Jesus said so, but because of that wonderful crutch for lazy genre writers, the Trolley Problem. Wagstaff and Jaspos have a means to purify the toxic water the illegal settlement needs to survive, and by not immediately sentencing the settlement to death the game deduces that for some reason we care about the settlers. Do we know anyone here? No. Do they have anything we want? No, but we obviously want to save this settlement of terrible people per Bad RPG Writer Logic, so now that that's arbitrarily established Wagstaff and Jaspos are the key to purifying the settlement's water and it comes at a terrible price. Are we hard enough to make the hard choices? The Cold Equations... of Incompetence The science fiction and fantasy genre is obsessed with the Trolley Problem, and the earliest and most influential example I can find is Tom Godwin's 1954 short story, "The Cold Equations". It's not mandatory reading for this essay, but it would certainly help. I'll give a brief summary here. A rescue ship carrying medicine to a colony planet has only enough fuel to transport the pilot and medicine. The pilot discovers there's a stowaway on board, and prepares to kill the stowaway as is the law - the ship doesn't carry enough fuel to decelerate two people, so the stowaway must die. Horror of horrors, the stowaway isn't an evil criminal badman, but a teenage girl hitching a ride to visit her brother! The story continues with the pilot calling everyone he can think of, but due to Godwin's arbitrary rules of space travel, no one can come rescue poor Marilyn Lee Cross, so she is sadly thrown into space after Godwin uses every trick in the book to explain the horror of young ladies being thrown into space. The story has gathered a lot of criticism, mostly of the variety of people questioning why the engineers who built the ships included no tolerances and other people pointing out that the scenario is completely contrived via incompetence (if the rescue ship's sensors can detect Marilyn, why was it launched with her on board?) while Godwin assures us that nothing could be done and the laws of nature must be respected in the same story where we are expected to believe in faster-than-light travel. I bring this up because it's exactly what the Bastard's Wounds writers are going for. Godwin posted:He leaned back in the pilot’s chair and drew a deep, slow breath, considering what he would have to do. He was an EDS pilot, inured to the sight of death, long since accustomed to it and to viewing the dying of another man with an objective lack of emotion, and he had no choice in what he must do. There could be no alternative —but it required a few moments of conditioning for even an EDS pilot to prepare himself to walk across the room and coldly, deliberately, take the life of a man he had yet to meet. Does this seem familiar? The Bastard's Wound settlers are driven to the harsh Oldwalls, where one mistake can mean death by Bane, and the waters are poison. Much like the EDS is carrying medicine for six feverish men who will die if Marilyn Lee Cross isn't immediately thrown into space, Jaspos and Wagstaff will assure you that their blood farms and secret murders are totally necessary to purify the water from the Withering Rot and protect the Wound from outsiders.  The same problems immediately rear their head. Why did the rescue ship launch with so little fuel if the sensors detected a stowaway on board? If Earth has "fast, black patrol ships" that can fly out to rescue attractive ladies, why isn't one stationed on the frontier in case something goes wrong? Why is only one star cruiser in the area to save all these colonies? What if the star cruiser crashes or the engines break down? I've read at least one sci-fi anthology that describes the story as a complete failure of engineering. The same goes for this illegal Oldwalls settlement. Why didn't you block off the teleporter with the Bane? Why can't you set up a rainwater collector on the roof? Why can't you try to grow food on the manor grounds? The entire settlement comes off as a contrived scenario designed to enable "hard choices" and for Wagstaff and Jaspos to use the tough life as an excuse to gather followers and justify atrocities, but there is absolutely no reason for anyone to stay here. You can build your settlement literally anywhere else. Just leave! Godwin goes TOOOOOOOT! posted:It was a full minute before she spoke, and as she considered his words, the expression of numbness left her eyes. “Is that it?” she asked at last. “Just that the ship doesn’t have enough fuel?” “Yes.” “I can go alone or I can take seven others with me —is that the way it is?” “That’s the way it is.” “And nobody wants me to have to die?” “Nobody.” Now, Bastard's Wound is a bit more clear that Wagstaff and Jaspos are cynically abusing the water scarcity to gain power and the real conflict between them is that they're two identical assholes who supported the same scam. Why do we need BOTH Wagstaff and Jaspos? Wagstaff and Jaspos are basically the same person. They're both magic users who use their magic to filter the water and leverage that to gain political power and cultish followers. They're both narcissistic assholes who believe themselves superior to everyone else, sleep with their apprentices, and send hit squads after the Fatebinder. They have extremely similar quests involving murdering their old allies to steal their tools, and they both want you to go down and murder Reef-Talon so they can loot her body for their lovely water filtration systems. The other alternative is Reef-Talon, who is a competent leader and budding Archon who offers us an artifact for free while all Wagstaff and Jaspos offer are pointless fetch quests with no reward and oodles of contempt. I get that RPG writers want to have a good path and an evil path and all those choices that supposedly matter, but the choice between Wagstaff and Jaspos actively doesn't matter, and Reef-Talon is the obvious choice no matter what your end goal is. If you're trying to help the people of the Wound, she's the only competent leader, if you're trying to cynically exploit the people of the Wound, she's the only person who brings anything worth having to the table. We don't need Jaspos' crafting skills because they're garbage and we're on a first-name basis with actual Forge Bound masters. We don't need Wagstaff's Tidecasting because we have Eb. Neither one of them actually offers us anything worth having except vague promises. They have no leverage over us, and our interactions with them literally start with them acknowledging we have the legal authority to kill them all and they have to beg us for their lives. Now, combining Wagstaff and Jaspos still leaves a lot of problems. Wagpos still has nothing to offer us and still looks like a massive rear end in a top hat with no redeeming features. You need to come up with a plausible reason the player would back Wagpos, and "can purify water" really doesn't cut it when the only reason the settlement is short on water is because they're contrived idiots - but it would cut out 50% of this DLC's redundant quests and tedious dialog. A Fake History...of Dumb! The last running theme in the DLC I want to address is the theme of false history. It appears both in our attempts to "interpret" the ancient murals to tell Reef-Talon what she wants to hear, and Lexeme's fake history that could maybe save Tiersmen lives through an extremely dubious thought process. I am going to stop kicking Lexeme, as I think we've covered why her plan is doomed to failure and extremely idiotic, and talk about the Reef-Talon section some more. The goal in the Reef-Talon section is to interpret these vague murals and convince Reef-Talon that her Archon powers are actually cool and good so she stops hiding in a cave while Wagpos runs rampant spewing bad ideas and incompetence. The problem is that as soon as Reef-Talon returns she's convinced her powers make her, and the Wound invincible, and this is probably just as dangerous for the Wound as having a leader with no confidence is. Remember, both the Disfavored and the Scarlet Chorus are sniffing around the area at the beginning of the DLC, and Cleopatra doesn't bother to tell anyone that the Wound is totally legal because they're "below" the Oldwalls or whatever stupid crap Mell came up with. We know what happens when leaders get overconfident and think they can take on Kyros because we saw Raetommon do it and that didn't end well for him. Now, this particular fake history deal has the side effect that Reef-Talon can pacify the Bane with her powers, and the intent seems to be that we invest Reef-Talon with a fake historical record to calm the cognitive dissonance caused by the human-Beast interracial society. It's pretty clear the only person who can come up with any kind of narrative to hold the Wound together is Reef-Talon, as we see with the Sleepless and the Bane coexisting in the dark, and Reef-Talon is also the only person who can heal the Beasts to allow Wagpos' trolley filters to work. The more we examine this narrative the less sense any of this makes. Let's take a look! Per the narrative we interpreted from the Wound's murals, Reef-Talon is rightful heir to her Archon powers and the Wound because her ancestors were the only survivors, her powers are meant to fight Bane, the Bane changed the Beastmen into awesome superweapons, and Reef-Talon is needed because she's the ultimate Bane hunter. The process of discovering this narrative comes across as extremely cynical and manipulative because it's Cleopatra making poo poo up after staring at some vague ancient artwork for a few minutes. This convinces Reef-Talon to go right back and lead the Wound exactly the same way, because now she has a right to her power, and we sweep all the secret murders, assassination attempts, and Beastmen body part harvesting under the rug for the narrative that Reef-Talon's granted powers drawn from antiquity grant her the right to lead. It's actually very similar to what Cleopatra is trying to do, but the game doesn't want to acknowledge this. The end result of all this manipulation is to restore the old status quo, which sucked! Yes, people die less from patrols against the Bane (because they're too loving stupid to just block the entrance point), but the Beasts are still having to go through the pain of constantly donating blood and bone for water purification they might not actually need - remember, Reef-Talon can swim in the water with no ill effects! It raises the question of just what either humans or Beastmen are gaining from this alliance. The humans certainly aren't sacrificing anything for the Beastmen! If anything, our newly discovered narrative mandates that the Beastmen sacrifice more, because we have established that Beastmen's purpose is to fight Bane. The humans so show little concern for Beastmen lives that they cynically bet on which Beasts will die! I really don't know what the writers are trying to say here. Is this supposed to be commentary on real-world racism? I certainly hope not, it reads like the Mississippi articles of secession where the white people whine that it's too hot outside to work and they need black people to do it. Reef-Talon certainly doesn't seem to have any interest in punishing Wagpos, or even trying to recruit somebody competent to do the water filtration. There are a ton of Sages running around! Maybe one of them could do something with this! Unfortunately, the DLC is too focused on examining the ethics of throwing poor Marilyn out of the metaphorical window and actual quality with it. So What Did We Accomplish? It's very hard for me to see this DLC as an enhancement to Tyranny's story, as thematically it's a rehash of stuff we've seen before. Visually it's all an Oldwalls dungeon with generic human and Bane enemies, and thematically it's all the same. Fake history as a means of control came up in our chats with the lovely Fatebinder Calio. Community-destroying factionalism appeared in the conquest of the Tiers. Artificial scarcity as a means of control showed up with Kyros' laws of quota and sharing. Even the cruel trolley-problem choices came up every time we were asked to adjudicate a case based on Kyros' laws - do we sentence the rebel commander to death, or conscript him into the Scarlet Chorus? The DLC doesn't add anything new to these discussions, it doesn't add any fun items that make the combat better or new sigils that do anything except "bigger numbers". There are no new or interesting fights. The DLC is marketed as a refuge from Kyros, but we don't actually get a different perspective on anything! We don't gain allies who can help us in our power struggle, we don't discover any insight that helps us understand the world or anything useful. Yes, I suppose we can surmise that the Beastmen built the Oldwalls and are related to the Bane, but how does that help us? How does that advance the story of our rise to power under Kyros? What is the point other than cynically milking Tyranny fans who were desperate for more content after the end of the game? TheGreatEvilKing fucked around with this message at 16:26 on Feb 17, 2021 |
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Feb 17, 2021 04:48
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To add onto the trolley problem, we never actually see a trolley squish orphans in this dlc. The worst stuff we see is the very limp beastmen scenes. But what do those scenes give us? We just saw a bloodletting operation and what was the payoff? Do we see a family suddenly no longer on the brink of death because their water rations have been increased? Is there a reliable beastman merchant that disappears after Tonves slices into them? There is none of this. The maximum impact you have on the wound is the people you put to death and the people who no longer give you dialogue trees. Beyond that everything is the same. There is no one likeable to come back to. No fond memories. The person I am most interested in all of this is Thesepholia, simply to see if the crucified wonder has anything new to say about the changes.
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Feb 17, 2021 06:05
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The DLC seems pretty rotten through and through. It's hard to be sympathetic to any of the theoretical ideas that the Bastard Wound may possibly provoke with an execution this bad. Are we going to see any more of Sirin's quest?
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Feb 17, 2021 06:27
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That DLC actively makes the rest of the game feel weird to me now. I think Im going to treat it as lovely fanfic
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Feb 17, 2021 07:13
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TheGreatEvilKing posted:when leaders get overcompetent and think they can take on Kyros because we saw Raetommon do it and that didn't end well for him. Do you mean overconfident here? Because I don't remember Raetommon being competent, much less overcompetent  TheGreatEvilKing posted:The game is absolutely clear that real or professed loyalty to Kyros is no protection from the whims of the Overlord or being a bad politician, and the game is going to continue to be crystal clear that you can be loyal to Kyros and the Overlord will show no loyalty to you. You say that, but remember that post-release patch and the new endings 
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Feb 17, 2021 11:26
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Xarn posted:Do you mean overconfident here? Because I don't remember Raetommon being competent, much less overcompetent Fixed, ty! And let me just say, I have...opinions on the new endings
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Feb 17, 2021 16:28
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This might seem like a strange pull, but I'm getting big Psycho-Pass 2 vibes from this DLC.
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Feb 18, 2021 02:49
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despite the DLC being not great I still wish we got more DLC for Tyranny...
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Feb 18, 2021 04:06
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TheGreatEvilKing posted:Fixed, ty! And let me just say, I have...opinions on the new endings Is the ending going to retroactiely ruin the game ala Mass Effect 3?
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Feb 18, 2021 04:50
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Bastard's Wound is probably the worst part of the DLC in terms of sheer volume and the amount of time you spend there, but the single worst specific addition is yet to come.
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Feb 18, 2021 10:41
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Veloxyll posted:Is the ending going to retroactiely ruin the game ala Mass Effect 3? No, but it's clearly put there to satisfy people who were annoyed it was missing because they didn't quite get certain themes of the game. That said, given that Tyranny is aimed at the RPG audience willing to read a lot of words, I will say that part of this was some of the marketing being misleading, as well as that certain points the game was making really need to be explicitly hammered in. I know you're meant to show, not tell, but sometimes people just need telling, especially in a game like this where you can't control pacing as well as not being able to control in which order the player visits certain areas or does quests. Note that if you look up the Steam page for the DLC it will tell you exactly what the ending is for, and it'll also spoil the resolution to one of the companion quests.
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Feb 18, 2021 12:34
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bewilderment posted:No, but it's clearly put there to satisfy people who were annoyed it was missing because they didn't quite get certain themes of the game. drat this thread loves to huff it's own farts sometimes.
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Feb 18, 2021 17:13
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Victis posted:drat this thread loves to huff it's own farts sometimes. I think even the devs don't really understand their own game. I'd heave to go heavily into spoiler territory to lay out my point, but in short, there's too many places where you're hard railroaded into antagonizing people without the option to de-escalate the situation. It literally doesn't seem to have occurred to the devs that you can just lie to people to avoid having to pointlessly fight literally everyone you're not completely sucking up to.
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Feb 18, 2021 18:16
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rastilin posted:I think even the devs don't really understand their own game. I'd heave to go heavily into spoiler territory to lay out my point, but in short, there's too many places where you're hard railroaded into antagonizing people without the option to de-escalate the situation. It literally doesn't seem to have occurred to the devs that you can just lie to people to avoid having to pointlessly fight literally everyone you're not completely sucking up to. We just saw a whole lovely DLC where the option to kill all of the idiots was never on the table (and it sucked). Normally if there's an option to needlessly antagonize it's a stupid option that no one would pick. Having said that, I don't see what that has to do with the new endings, but we'll get there when we get there.
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Feb 18, 2021 18:53
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I've really been enjoying the analysis and postmortems throughout this LP. It gives a critical lens that I wish I'd applied more thoroughly when I played
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Feb 19, 2021 02:08
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GrayDorian posted:I've really been enjoying the analysis and postmortems throughout this LP. It gives a critical lens that I wish I'd applied more thoroughly when I played Seconded. Appreciate the analytical efforts being put in, GEK. It's one of the reasons I have a softspot for SSLPs over VLPs too because I much prefer to read analyses like these versus listening to them.
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Feb 19, 2021 02:40
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Cleopatra Jones and the Last Survivor of the Shadowhunter Tribe Last time on Tyranny, we completed the DLC dungeon which can only be described accurately via lots of profanity. Now that that's over with, we can get back to the main game and pretending the Bastard's Wound never existed.  So it turns out I completely forgot to have a vote for our party for the Stone Sea, but in the meantime, Kills-in-Shadow is kind of the only party member we haven't done much with. We're chatting her up today to see what her deal is. : So there are still some Beastmen living in the Stone Sea... I'd heard your kind was nearly extinct. I don't know how the hell we even take option 1 after that fuckawful trash tier DLC where we established that, yes, they kind of are. : [Lore 32] You're not a Stonestalker, right? So why were you leading a pack of Beastmen from that tribe?  : After tribe was slain, Kills-in-Shadow loped to Stone-lands, stalking on long hunt for Disfavored. But soon became needed by weak whelps. By Stonestalkers who had been slaves and had not learned how best to fight. : [Growl and bare your teeth.]: Her top lip peels back in snarl. [sic] : Look, I'll try, but it'll be difficult if the settlers are out for blood. I'll speak to them and see what options we have.: A massive, calloused palm cups the back of your neck as the Beastwoman drags you forward. Her sweaty forehead presses to your own, and her pungent breath assaults your nose. I distinctly remember her calling us a Prima with her as Alpha. Huh.  : What can you tell me about Left-Claw?: Left-Claw is good whelp. Hunts iron-clads for Kills-in-Shadow. Hunts for revenge. : If you're going to follow me, I'd like to know more about you.: Kills-in-Shadow puffs her hairy, naked teats out. Yes, Tyranny writers, we know it's a boast. : Am last of tribe - tribe who killed King-Vipers, Alerion, and Thornstags extinct. Am Alpha. Broodmother. Can smell earth-blood like mystic.Huh. For someone complaining about the Disfavored massacring her entire tribe, it's rather unusual that her boast is of the three tribes the Shadowhunters exterminated.  : Kills-in-Shadow - that's an... interesting name.Lady, you were named by internet voting. You can cast NO stones here, you were nearly named after a Stygian protagonist.  : How did you end up with the Stonestalkers?You actually do get some more context here! : Am not Stonestalker, the Beastwoman snarls. She bristles, flexing her back and shoulders before settling back on her haunches.: Lost tribe. Left Haven-lands. Migrated. East. Was alone long time. Hunted many humans. Kill-kill-killed. Raged. Like undying fire. Then found pack of stone whelps - Caitiffs, outcasts of tribe, who needed Alpha. Dammit Barik! We've been away from the Disfavored for a while (with the exception of Telesophia, who behaves nothing like your typical Disfavored) but as Barik is happy to remind us, they're a pack of obnoxious racists.  I took the first option. It repeats dialog we saw earlier. Moving on!  : Don't take this the wrong way, but you seem like a born killer.... : I'd like to know more about your tribe. I'm not sure if we need high rep with the Stonestalkers or we need to push our Disfavored reputation into the pit. Oh well! Back up the tree!  : Had any good hunts, lately?: Good, yep. And many more-than-five.: The Beastwoman flexes and curls her claws in the air, the pitch blackness of them suddenly striking - a stark reminder of their power, their ability to kill. We'll come back to this.  : I want your opinion on something. : Fatebinder's smell weakens, dims as strength dies. Bolverk is a beast tribe's second in command. The word itself is an alias used by Odin to trick people. I am ninety-nine percent sure it was chosen because of "cool word", as the pop up references that the Bolverk's role is to keep people in line on behalf of the leader, while Odin's role was to lie to giants and steal their poo poo. : How would you assess our progress?: On stealing territory of Beastwomen lands - lands humans call realms of Tiersmen? Know Fatebinder claimed territory of Vendrien's Well for self. Is good for pack. Should Kills-in-Shadow care outside of that?: She crouches down and scratches the lower curve of her back.: Fatebinder claimed horizon-rock called Mountain Spire at Vendrien's Well. Should claim more. Take power as own. Become stronger and stronger. Kills-in-Shadow is the character with most diverse perspective and quite frankly it's great to keep her around because of stuff like this. None of the other characters have any reason to believe it's possible, but without the baggage of Kyros or second-hand Kyrosian culture, Killsy has no reason to believe we cannot do it. The standard Kyrosian orthodoxy is that only Kyros can do this. Can Cleopatra learn to create Edicts? Keep reading to find out! Back up the tree!  : Fatebinder wants you to bathe.  : Don't simply drag your fetid tongue over another matted patch of fur. Stand under a waterfall or kneel in a stream. The crying statue in Edgering Ruins comes to mind.This is actually a bit of foreshadowing for the remains of Barik's quest. It also seems like Barik is just being an rear end in a top hat here, but you have to remember he'd love to be able to take off his armor and clean his own poo poo off himself. I would also bet real money Barik smells worse than Kills.  Killsy is also able to trivially dunk on Barik like it's nothing.  : Let's play a game.: Immediately, the Beastwoman perks up, back straightening as her red eyes rove you with interest. You read that right, we're dragging the party into gently caress-marry-kill. : I'm always down for a game. Unless it involves throwing and catching...in which case... eh....: Is easy. Packmate chooses one for each - rut, mate, slaughter. If prey is chosen, pack joins ensuing hunt. If packmate is chosen, and both agree to game, then pack gets to watch.Uh.....  We haven't had Verse in the party, so I was unable to turn off her hat. Sorry! : Oh I get it! Ok, I'd rut Barik since Kyros' forces need a little pillage and rape in return, I'd mate with Verse, mostly to take half of whatever lands she's going to someday conquer. Obviously, I'd kill Lantry. Who wouldn't?I don't even know how that's supposed to work with Barik. : What? I'm old enough to be everyone's father! This is disgusting. Hoo boy. : Barik looks at you and simply shakes his head in horror and disbelief. I'm not even sure how to respond to this, save with gratitude that we don't get to pick an answer. : [Kills-in-Shadow Loyalty 1] I'd like to spar with you.: Beastwoman gets to play-fight with Alpha?: She immediately perks up, salivating and snarling happily as she rises on hind legs and swipes several practice swings to limber up. She splays her dark claws wide and pins you with an eager, blood-thrilling stare.: Come! Well, we need to assert dominance and I don't want to stab her. : [Lore 32] [Blast her off of you] poo poo. I'm pretty sure you're supposed to head-butt her here for loyalty, but I'll be honest, I usually go with either all mages or all mages and Barik.  On the plus side, 5 free Lore points is nothing to sneeze at. Not pictured: I try to ask about her tribe again and get rebuffed. : Never mind.TheGreatEvilKing summary posted:
There's quite a bit going on here. Despite claiming not to respect the Stonestalkers at all, it's pretty clear Kills-in-Shadow cares for them enough to risk threatening Cleopatra - a woman whom Kills describes as tearing fire from the sky - into going to rescue her friend Left-claw. This conversation is a lot more awkward and disjointed than the other companions for the simple reason that the Beastmen tribes are the only culture remaining that isn't directly twisted by Kyros. As Cleopatra pointed out earlier, the Tiers use the same language and currency as Kyros and swear by his name. We're stuck with such awkward questions as "did you have a good hunt" and "let's play a game" because our Fatebinder has no real frame of reference for interacting with Beastmen at all! It's highly likely that before Kills-in-Shadow accosted us on the road our Fatebinder had never met any Beastmen, and all we seem to know of them is that they're nearly extinct. Eb seems to believe that they're treated terribly in the North (we'll get into that in a few updates - they are!) and everyone else Cleopatra has met is basically indoctrinated into Kyrosianism. The Tiersmen think she's bad and don't want her to be in charge, but they do cleave to the tenets of swearing in Kyros' name and believing him nigh-omnipotent. Thus we get awkward dialog options like "let's play a game", which is something we don't offer to Sirin (a literal child), Lantry (who would probably have some word puzzles or something) or Verse and Barik who could probably compete with us in an athletic event. We have something to talk about with the rest of the party members, but here Cleopatra flounders like a fish out of water. We also learn a lot about Kills-in-Shadow and she's definitely one of the more intelligent and dangerous party members. Now, she's not educated either by human standards or as a human mystic, but she's very good at solving problems and thinking outside the box. Go back to her story about dragging the Disfavored into the water. At first glance the intent is to show that she's a scary lady who does a lot of murder, and that's true - but look at her tactics! She doesn't simply overpower the Disfavored with raw strength, she picks them off one by one and uses one of their greatest strengths against them! Even if she's making this up, we know this tactic works well against the Disfavored because it's simply a variant of what Eb did with the Matani river! Kills is not going to solve your geometry problems and won't get your joke about the tangent, but if you ask her to solve something practical like "how are we going to attack this fortress" or "how should we deal with Graven Ashe" you will get an intelligent and useful reply. Despite coming across as a violent brute who only respects brute strength, she is actually loyal to people like Left-Claw despite Left-Claw being "the pack runt", and feels protective of the Stonestalkers rather than treating them as a bunch of useless idiots who deserve to die. I also suspect she's using the view people have of her as a primitive imbecile to get away with shocking people like Lantry and Sirin. We might not know Beastmen, but Kills-in-Shadow knows humans. Lastly we should discuss the Shadowhunters. It's a very blink-and-you'll-miss-it line, but Kills-in-Shadow introduces them as the tribe who "killed King-Vipers, Alerion, and Thornstags extinct". The wiki makes the assumption these are Beast tribes, but it's not really clear, and Terratus doesn't have a whole lot of animal life. There aren't horses, we don't get attacked by roaming wolf packs, we don't seem to hunt any wild game, and there's an encounter where people talk about antelopes existing in a mythic past. It's a perfectly valid assumption to say that the Shadowhunters hunted so hard that they wiped out all the King-Vipers, because those were giant poisonous snakes that nobody liked and they tell everyone to remind them that they should be thankful there are no more giant poisonous snakes. Alerion refers to a heraldric bird, and Thornstags are presumably some kind of deer, so it's a plausible interpretation. If we go with the interpretation these are Beast tribes then we end up with a weird shades of grey deal. The Shadowhunters exterminated three other tribes and are now outraged that the Disfavored are paying them back in kind. Does this justify the Disfavored's actions? No, but it does address the uncomfortable reality that the world is not divided into oppressed saints and evil oppressors. We've seen with Eb and the rebels that the Tiersmen elite's problem is not that masters exist, but that they are not the masters, and a similar sentiment exists with Kills-in-Shadow here. When the Shadowhunters hunt their enemies to extinction, it is a laudable act worthy of song. When their enemies pay them back in kind, Kills-in-Shadow merely adds them to the list of people to be exterminated. Unlike Eb and Tarkis Arri, Kills-in-Shadow doesn't spout rhetoric about freedom or vengeance or how Kyros' forces deserve to be pillaged, she just adds them to her enemies list and exterminates them. This is where the weirdness begins. The game obviously wants to talk about the colonial expansionism portion of authoritarianism and resorts to the tired old fantasy trope where <fantastical humanlike species> is a standin for gays/black people/whoever and they are being oppressed by the bad people. Fantasy authors tend to fall into one of two traps while doing this: the oppressed minority has some kind of dangerous uncontrollable superpower that makes a solid case for killing them all (Dragon Age mages, Broken Earth orogenes, X-Men) or they make the minority stand-ins something weird like Beastmen or something. The Beastmen seem to be a Native American stand-in as far as I can tell. The developers cite "American exceptionalism" as an influence, and the extermination of the Beastmen tribes via Kyros' iron-clad armies is roughly analogous to the US Cavalry displacing Native Americans with industrial weaponry. A lot of people will argue over whether it's a tale of a peaceful people being displaced by invaders or the now less common view of exterminating "merciless Indian Savages" (Thomas Jefferson's words) but the truth is that both sides did pretty hosed up things to each other! The Disfavored are racist assholes in the service of a tyrant. We've spent pages discussing how awful they were. Their opposition here is... a woman who gleefully threatens to rip her allies guts out slowly and painfully as a game and describes herself as "Hunted many humans. Kill-kill-killed." Thus it's completely unsurprising that Kills-in-Shadow is attracted to Eb. They are extremely similar - sure, Kills-in-Shadow is more open about it, but we can see the parallels from one conversation. Both Eb and Killsy choose mates based around who they think will wield the most power - Eb Verse for her conquering ways, Killsy the Fatebinder for obvious reasons. Both Eb and Killsy begin by fighting Kyros' conquest, only to swear allegiance to the player character because they want to be on the winning side. Both women were at the apex of their respective societies, with Eb as a noble and a Tidecaster and Killsy as her tribe's Alpha (minor spoilers) only to lose it all to the new Kyrosian world order. Both women are perfectly willing to resort to violence to get their way, and even both joke about violence against Barik! Eb picks him as her "rut" choice to give "a little pillage and rape in return". They have extremely different cultural perspectives but think very similarly. Anyway, I promised a party vote and here it is. Decisions Lie Before Us! By LPer prerogative, Kills in Shadow is going to be in our party for the Stone Sea. Pick two more of Verse, Lantry, Sirin, Barik, and Eb. Choose wisely!
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Feb 21, 2021 06:02
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: Oh yea! I'm gonna nominate one guy for all three: Fine rear end! He used to be my old gang boss, we had sex, were a thing, and then I killed him. Those were the days! Did I mention I am very hard core?
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Take Eb
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Feb 21, 2021 06:23
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Sirin and Eb
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Feb 21, 2021 06:24
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Verse and Barik because I want to run an experiment and see if suffering builds character.
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Feb 21, 2021 06:40
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Lantry, Eb Also the good hunt dialogue has many different answers, and IIRC each of them gives you a little loyalty with killsy, so you can spam them to unlock the hidden dialogue branches.
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Feb 21, 2021 07:54
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| # ? Jun 8, 2024 14:39 |
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Verse and Barik
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Feb 21, 2021 07:58
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