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Interesting reasoning, but you got it!
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Dec 24, 2021 17:43
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| # ? May 4, 2024 03:20 |
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 We had a handful of votes last update, and one of them – a rather minor one, admittedly, but good for flavour – was to have Barstan Tungs recite a poem on our true nature. That being the fact that we’re an undead skeleman.   : Recite me a poem on my… humanness. Humanity, sorry. : Interesting. I’m about as ready as I can be, I think. : He stares at you for a few torturing moments. : I feel like that’s an unfair attack coming from a non-human. We’re not all bad.: Not… not all of us.: He smiles a crooked smile, and runs a hand through his greasy hair. : While monetary riches will always have their grip on human hearts, the average human – like myself, mind you – find more value in companionship than in coin.: (At least, they ought to, after what I’ve been through.) : At their lowest, perhaps. But I’ve seen what humans can do when they’re at their best. I wouldn’t be here if I wasn’t… sought after by some of the best humans in the land. They – uh, we, can be a courageous people.: The bard hems and haws, then bellows his next words to anyone who might hear. : To all lovers of verse, I bring glorious news: I have completed another modern classic! Listen now, and bask in its resounding refrain! : …humankind establishes control. Sound the horn and shout the battlecry, ‘tis through their might that peace might multiply! Of silver, gold, and diamond, now dispose; with friends and lovers find your true repose. So journey forth and tread the proper trail and shout to all, ‘the humans must prevail!’Well, it’s not quite what we were hoping for, a poem on what it’s like to be undead. But it makes sense that Fane wouldn’t exactly be forthright with that sort of information. So we got this little ditty on how humans can be good people, too.  This next bit wasn’t a vote, but it’s one thing I wanted to test real quick. What would happen if I fed Sebille the meaty stew?   : The elf beckons you into the back room, a hungry, playful look in her eyes. She comes in close, her breath warm on your face…: … and thrusts a kitchen knife right into your heart.Well, how about that, that is another method to learning who the murderer is.  The next vote was to tell Prudence, Kniles’ mother, that he’s actually a sick gently caress that liked to take prisoners to his ‘playground’ and then turn them into golems, among other experiments.  : Yes, I knew him. I knew him to be a peculiar man with deviant interests and a disgusting misplacement in… medical sciences. : Your son was no physician. He took a perverse sort of pleasure from hurting any of the prisoners sent to him. He…: (Perhaps I should stop there.) : (Well, alright.): He operated a cave he called a ‘playground.’ It was soaked through with human blood up to my ankles and there were… I can only describe them as ‘golems’ that he crafted from the bodies of patients, and he kept them in cages. He enjoyed every scream and he ardently noted how every patient reacted to different ‘medicines’ and sutures.: Prudence takes up a clean glass and starts to polish it with her rag, rubbing at invisible water spots with zeal. : Told him the Divine’d punish him for that nonsense if her kept it up. Told him and told him and told him ‘til he couldn’t see straight. I should have told him so hard he’d never get back up.: She turns away from you and continues polishing the glass, eyes darting quickly around the bar, focusing on nothing.Prudence knew exactly what Kniles was about, and she apparently hoped that he was beyond whatever mindworms got in his head to start torturing people before he was sent off, but that’s clearly not what happened. She’s not exactly thrilled to hear that her son is, you know, an awful person, so as soon as I close this conversation window, I won’t be able to barter with her anymore. At least not with Fane. The button to barter will be removed and if I ask her what she has, she says “nothing, not for you.”  So, since we’re apparently not friends, I might as well help myself to whatever isn’t nailed down and locked shut. And even then.  The lockbox doesn’t have a whole lot to it – a crafting bible (this one teaches me how to combine a glass bottle and some water to make a water bottle. That’s some 4D chess right there), some money, and a ruby. Well, I’m the hero of this adventure, meaning I need all the money possible.  With that in mind, I help myself to every single coin Prudence is carrying – all three-thousand one-hundred sixty-three of them. These gloves that I got from that would-be dwarven pickpocket are really putting in the work.  Once I’ve stolen a bunch of money, I high-tail it to the Lady Vengeance to wait for the heat to die down a little bit. And there’s Han, having returned from my request that he go find me my next hit of the good stuff. That’s one free drudanae flower, which sell for gangbusters, and with the botanist mudpack from the Larian Gift Bag set, that’s essentially free money. Which, like I said before, I don’t want to abuse because that’d be removing the challenge from the game. Not that my money troubles are persisting all that much: Sebille’s Thievery is so high that she’s stealing all the money she can carry already. Still. I send Han off to get another drudanae flower so I can farm for cash the good, honest, base-game way.  The next thing on our list of voted tasks was to deal with Wyvlia ourselves. As forum poster BraveLittleToaster described it: putting human meat in the stew is a case-by-case thing, but Magister meat is of such a low quality that it’s not a transgression that we can forgive.  : This isn’t right. It’s just not right cutting people up and feeding them to others. Especially Magisters; they’d taste the foulest of the lot.: This can’t continue, Wyvlia.: The cook shakes her head ruefully. : You should have just forgotten about all of this… It’s a fight with Wyvlia!  Fight’s over. It’s a one-versus-five; she didn’t last one turn, and she didn’t do anything particularly interesting.  Her ghost remains where her corpse has fallen, which is going to be a somewhat recurring thing with named characters that die for one reason or another. We can, and will, interact with her as well. But first:  The ring that we found under the floorboards (the narrator says she ‘snatched’ it from us before engaging); two grenades; a raw onion; an elven foot for Sebille; and… a recipe?   Hmm… the only two names I recognize on this list are Harrick, the ghost wandering the tavern, and Carver, the one in charge at the barracks. Wyvlia was working her way to the top of the food chain, it seems. Sebille, eat that foot. : A lifeless elven child is cradled in your arms. Your vision blurs with tears – you look away…: … to a razed valley below. Tendrils of Deathfog dissipate, revealing a victorious Divine Order army advancing. Humans. Magisters. Murderers.Ifan was directly involved with that attack on elven ancestral lands with Deathfog, according to his intro story. He was used as a scapegoat for the Order and that’s why he was sent off to Fort Joy. Well, on top of being a Sourcerer.  I wonder what her ghost has to say now that we’ve, well, we killed her. : The spirit of Wyvlia glares at you with all the venom she can muster.Alright, not a lot, clearly. Makes sense: you probably wouldn’t have a lot to say to your murderer either.  Carver was the one that gave us the task of finding out what was happening with the missing Magisters, and we’ve completed that task. He believed that it was because of a tinkerer named Higba, but we know that it was the cook in the Black Bull Tavern, and we have evidence to support that. : The Magister’s jaw is tightly clenched as he stares out the window. He senses you. : I’ve discovered who is responsible for the missing Magisters. : It was the cook in the Black Bull Tavern. An elven woman; she would lure the Magisters into the back rooms before stabbing them and…: Well, what’s important is that she’s been dealt with. She forced my hand after I confronted her. : I don’t know anything about this ‘Higba’ character; all I know is that the cook is the one at fault. : She hid this bloodied Magister ring underneath the floorboards of her kitchen. A trophy, perhaps.: The Magister snatches the ring from your palm and stares at it. : This… this is a conduct award. I presented it to Magister Harrick myself… she was the second one to be taken…: The cook’s been reported dead… I thought she was another victim, but if she had this… she must have been the culprit, there’s no other explanation!: (You could also just believe the words coming out of my mouth…): He shudders in disgust.: And to think she was so near to us – to me – all this time… it seems I owe you my thanks… and a reward…: He holds out a pouch of gold. You try to take it, but he doesn’t yet relinquish his grasp. With his free hand, he wags a finger in your face.: Keep this… ugliness to yourself; I wouldn’t want it thought that we Magisters can’t solve our own problems without throwing gold about…: He lets go of the pouch and turns away. Our rewards are: 3,000 EXP; 130 coins; a Vitality potion; an Air Resist potion; and our choice between a wizard’s headpiece; a rogues set of gloves; a soldier’s set of boots; and our first medium-sized rune. The gloves offer +1 Thievery, which would have been tempting if the gloves Sebille had didn’t offer +2. The boots offer significantly more armour than the Tracks of the Tyrant, but the Tracks of the Tyrant also offer +0.25 movement, which is a big deal for someone as sluggish as Fane. And the cowl offers +1 Necromancer and +1 Summoning. I take the cowl; Prince has been rocking his soldier’s helmet since Fort Joy and this will probably offer him some better armour numbers.  It also looks pretty hilarious on him. Look at how tall it is! But would you believe that it’s actually not the funniest lizard headpiece in the game?  Finally, the last thing that we voted on was to have Lohse ‘sample’ the ‘local thick and bold flavour.’ I’m sure anyone that’s both reading this LP and has played the game before is really looking forward to this.   : Actually, I’m in the mood for something… sweet. Something that’ll ‘stick with me,’ y’know? : I’m something of a woman of the world. There are so many different flavours to ‘experience;’ life is all about finding new ways to enjoy it, right?: Persuasion Failure! Your Persuasion: 0, Needed: 1So, although Lohse’s Intelligence stat is sky high, she just doesn’t have as silver as a tongue necessary to get into bed with a lizard courtesan. But there’s more than one way to get there regardless.  : You look like you’d appreciate a good joke. Have’ya ever heard the one about the waiter, the horses, and the dog?: He searches your face for a trick. Doesn’t seem to find one. Yet. : So there’s this waiter in a tavern that’s a lot like this one, right? He serves these two horses at their table. They’re both racehorses and they had just come in from a hard race that they had ran that day. : And the waiter says ‘why the long faces?’ Right?! I love that joke.: Yes, he does use the ‘long faces’ gag. The horses tell him that they’ve never heard that one before, and they go back to what they were doing.: He was just trying to make light conversation. These horses may find their bowls of hay spat in if they’re not careful.: These horses aren’t real, Lovrik. They won’t mind.: Alright, fine. What happens next?: So there’s this dog that comes into the tavern next, and it takes a seat at the table next to the horses.: That’s presumptuous of him, but go on.: Without a word to the waiter, he points to a steak on the menu that’s got all the meat and garnishes a steak could have.: Alright, this dog doesn’t seem so bad.: So then the waiter nods, notes the order, and takes it to the kitchen. And there, he sits and watches the horses and the dog, waiting to see what happens next.: What does happen next?: These horses, right, they go back to what they were talking about, which was the race that they had earlier in the day. And the dog, he’s got good ears, so he listens in.: So the dog’s listening to the horses. Got it. What does the dog say to them?: The dog turns in his seat and he says, ‘Excuse me, I couldn’t help but overhear you talking about racing. It’s interesting, because you see, I too am a racer. I’m a greyhound, I race for the queen at the track on Fridays!’: That’s not funny.: The horses, right, they stare at the dog for a little bit before one of them turns to the other and says… : ‘Holy poo poo, a talking dog!’: A smile spreads across his face. Then fades away again. Then it returns.: I get it! A talking dog! Hahahahahahaha! It’s brilliant! I could have sworn you were going to say ‘why the long face?’ but you totally pulled it out of the fire. Say… : I don’t know who’s the best, but I doubt it’s you.: Perhaps one day I’ll get desperate enough to disabuse you of that notion. : Hmm… lizards, though? What else is on the menu?: Well, this is what’s available. Take it or leave it. And I suggest you take it. It’s better to regret something you did than something you didn’t do. Am I right? : The money vanishes into his apron. : You know what? It’s been a difficult, uh, whole existence lately. I need something ‘strong and meaty’ enough to knock me into tomorrow, y’get me?: Upstairs, on the second floor. His name is Zharat. Pleasure is his business. Enjoy the experience of a lifetime….: He gives you a mischievous grin, then dips his head in salute, and turns away.That whole sequence with the joke is necessary to get the ‘good’ ending with Lovrik for if you don’t have the persuasion necessary to skip to the end. End the joke too early and he won’t be satisfied. You’ll still be able to proceed, but it’ll cost you extra. So, now we finally have our opportunity to meet our male courtesan! We paid good money and told one of our best jokes to get there; we shouldn’t put it off any longer.  There are three floors to the Black Bull Tavern, although the third floor is reserved for the suite, which is where we’re going. Once we’re done there, the rest of the update will be focused on the second floor.  There’s a handful of things to do in the second floor, of course! But it’ll wait for a little bit.  Tucked away in one corner of the second floor is this closed door, and behind it is a set of stairs that lead upward. While, at this point, you can bring your entire party into the suite, the ‘quest’ will only progress if the person who paid Lovrik is alone. So Lohse will be going it from here by herself.    It’s a nice suite! It’s even got a second floor! Although the landing leading up to it is pretty empty and spacious. It’s got a lit hearth with a bearskin rug; a couple of nice, albeit extremely… square carpets; it’s got nice art that you’re free to lift…  Sitting on one of the nearby cupboards is a love grenade. That’s a powerful weapon that I don’t want to let just sit there; what if some other ne’er-do-well were to come along and use it against me?  Sitting at a table at the food of the master bed is our courtesan, Zharat. He’s dressed pretty nicely – although I suppose he ought to be, for someone of his profession. Could work on his posture, though. : A lizard, tall and beautiful, turns towards you. He fixes you with a sultry look, and when he speaks it’s like listening to honeyed gravel. : This is simply unacceptable, Zahrat. This is unbecoming of you. You’re normally such a good boy. : You’ve been naughty, putting those clothes on when you know you shouldn’t. You’ll need to take them off… and slowly. : But mistress, these clasps and straps, they’re so difficult for my strong and yet sensitive and playful fingers. Would you…: A mischievous glint appears in the dark of his eye as he turns his back to you. : Hold on, break character for a sec. How’d you do that eye-glint thing? Is that a lizard-only trick? A buddy of mine can do something similar and I think I’d like to learn how to do it, if I can.: He sighs. : Oooh, I’m something of a performer myself. Let’s see your moves, Zharat!: Alright darling. I’ll dance.: He closes his eyes. He’s motionless for a moment, as if listening for music that only he can hear. And then, almost imperceptibly, his hips begin to sway as he finds the rhythm of the song that only he can hear… he sways and moves, silky with power and poise, at once beguiling and raw with pure emotion… : It floods your body with light at once boiling hot and freezing cold. You feel his hands upon you, and you move together, entwined in spirit and in flesh, as one, moving to the rhythm of your hearts’ desire, two beings for a moment become one…: In your ecstasy you feel the edge of the bed against your leg, and suddenly you’re falling, both of you, laughing together as the mattress receives you both… : I’ve met a handful of lizards by now. You’re the most beautiful one yet.: He searches your face for the lie. Doesn’t find it. The compliment touches him. He smiles. Reaches for you. He takes you into his arms, into his heart, into his very being.: Your world explodes…: … in ecstasy. After a fade to black, we’re treated to the sight of Lohse and Zharat – Lohse in her underwear and Zahart butt-naked – lying on the bed, above the undisturbed covers, eyes wide open, facing away from each other. Zharat’s even curled up in the foetal position like he’s trying to recover from something. Perhaps Lohse’s demonic guest made it an unwelcome party of three? Upon banging your chosen lizard courtesan, your character is given the Lucky status effect for a whopping fifty turns, or about eight-point-three minutes. With it, her Lucky Charm stat is increased by two.  And we have a friend! A female dwarf decked head-to-toe in a full suit of armour. Maybe she knows why Zharat’s so mortified?  : Good morning, lovebirds. : Hey, how are ya? : Okay, so… what? : I’m sorry, darling. It’s a set-up. You paid for a trip to paradise, now you’re paying for the return journey. : Right, Lohar. I’ve heard that name a couple’a times now and I’ve been trying to sniff him out, but all the fish in Driftwood’s masking his scent. Any idea where I could find him? : Hey, Zharat. Remember when I said you were beautiful? Can you be my knight in no armour, too?: He gives you a pity pout.: I’m sorry, darling, but business is business. : I’ll tell you what.: I didn’t come all this way just to get mugged by some petty thieves in a backwater town.: Let’s fight. Winner take all!  : Tavern Fight Music : Love Has A PriceRemember how I said the Black Bull Tavern has some of the best music in the game? This song that plays when you fight in the tavern is considered by most players to be the best song in the whole OST. It really captures the scenario: you’re in a tavern brawl that could very well include lifeblood magic and giant beasts summoned from the ether and people being turned into chickens and others sprouting wings while their hair turns into snakes. If you don’t normally listen to the fight music when reading my transcriptions, I strongly recommend that you listen to this one – it’s just a drat good song. Personally, I am not one of the many, and I think there’s one song later in the game that’s better. But this one is still a close second.   Turn 1 This fight is currently a five-versus-one, and they’re all dwarves: an Assassin; a Pyromancer; a Markswoman; a Terramancer; and Gill Thunders, a fighter and the woman that opened the conversation with us. Zharat, our hired ‘help,’ removes himself from the fight by picking a corner as far away from the action as he can and cowering in fear. Furthermore, Lohse is naked, meaning she doesn’t have any weapons, armour, or accessories equipped, and she doesn’t have any of her consumables. Every single thing that Lohse owned is stored in a backpack at the foot of the bed, and while I could retrieve them all, it’ll cost 1 AP to equip something. The Assassin goes first and hits Lohse with Poison Dart, followed by Throwing Knives. Since Lohse doesn’t have any armour to help tank the damage, this immediately puts her down to half HP, and everyone else in the enemy team is going to go after her. It’s a sticky spot for our hero Lohse! How will she escape?  Meanwhile… : …: Do you think they would mind if I sat in to study their habits? : … What?: Their habits. Their mating habits, rather. I’ve done my studying on the modern races and how they attract mates and how they copulate, but I’ve done precious little research on how a human female like Lohse would mate with a male lizard.: It’s bound to be a valuable learning experience.: Would you listen to the absurdity coming out of your mouth? Intimacy is more than just the motions; it’s a moment shared between two individuals. And I doubt either of them would find their drive to ‘perform’ while under the study of a third party fastidiously taking notes.: … Are there emotions involved? We paid for it. This should be purely transactional. If that’s the case, then surely, they wouldn’t mind?: You’ve spent too long alone with yourself in that hole in the ground.: But, fine: let’s argue that it’s only a transaction and not a vulnerable moment between two people. What we had paid for, along with the physical act, is their privacy; a few hours in a closed room to see to each other without the world’s eyes scrutinizing their every move.: Were you to barge into their room now, you’d not only be violating that privacy – something we’ve been given precious few opportunities to enjoy since starting this whole charade – you’d be voiding the transaction. I doubt either of them would be willing to continue even after we left, and the money is as good as gone at this point.: … Sebille, what do you think? : I think you ought to leave me out of this.: … But I also think that it’d be rather entertaining. Lohse is a bard by profession; she’s the sort that’d look back on this someday, laugh, and tell it to anyone who’d listen.: No doubt we’d all tell the same story a little differently.: Excellent, it’s two to one!: That’s not –: How would you even get into their room? Lohse took the only key with her.: With this!  So now, it’s five-versus-four.  Unfortunately, summons like Secretary can’t teleport with Teleporter Pyramids, and it also can’t climb the stairs without Prince leading the way, so it’s out of the fight. I can re-summon it, but that’s going to be on a per-AP-availability case. The first and foremost concern is making sure Lohse survives. Because Fane, Sebille, and Prince entered the fight late, they’re all going to go at the end of the turn before being shuffled into the natural turn order. She has no armour and she’s down to half HP; it’s going to be tough.     She does everything in her power to give herself a leg-up on surviving the incoming onslaught. She uses Encourage to give everyone a big Constitution boost, including herself; she uses Restoration to heal a big chunk of damage and to remove the acid and poison from the dart; she uses Armour of Frost to give herself a hefty amount of magic armour; and finally, she uses Uncanny Evasion on herself, to boost her chance to dodge by 50%.   The Markswoman has the low ground, which is a nice advantage, but she still hits like a truck: she uses Ricochet on Prince, Sebille, and Fane, followed by Pin Down on Prince.   The Pyromancer goes next, and she uses an interesting new skill called Bleed Fire. It’s a Pyromancer/Polymorph hybrid skill that causes the victims to bleed fire instead of blood when they’re struck. It can be pretty useful against targets with low magic armour, such as Fane – except he doesn’t bleed. Someone didn’t tell her that, though, because she immediately uses Mosquito Swarm on him.   The Terramancer repositions onto the stairs to get line of sight on everyone, and then uses Impalement on everyone but Lohse, landing a crit on Fane. Everyone but Sebille is down to less than half HP, and Sebille isn’t that much further ahead.    Finally, Gill Thunders moves last, and she uses Fortify on the Terramancer, followed by Crippling Blow on Fane and Sebille, and Shackles of Pain on Lohse.   Finally, it’s the good guy’s turn to move! And Fane doesn’t really have a lot of positive options at his disposal. Sustaining undead characters is pretty challenging, especially since nobody knows poison attacks like Poison Dart or Contamination. The most he can do is Bless on himself, which turns the necrofire they’re all standing on into regular fire – and reapplies the fire damage, since necrofire and regular fire are technically two different statuses that are applying at two different times – before casting Mosquito Swarm on the Pyromancer right back, since she has no physical armour to defend against it.    Prince goes next, and he finishes what Fane started by casting Bless again, turning the fire into Holy Fire, which gives my whole team resistance to fire damage and will heal them if they run through it. But while that’s nice, that’s not going to keep them alive: Prince himself is down to about a tenth of his HP remaining. While I’m not going to win by nursing my wounds the whole fight, he doesn’t really have a choice other than to use the Cheerleader combo on himself, putting down a fire totem next to Lohse. At least it puts him back up to over half.  It opens fire on the Assassin. I’d have preferred it fire on Gill, but whatever, they all need to die eventually.     Because Sebille is Crippled, she can’t walk anywhere, but skills like Backlash are still available. She uses it to approach the Assassin, then, once in range, she uses Flesh Sacrifice to get one more AP, and then she uses the Ruptured Chicken combo on him. He’s going to move first next turn, so ensuring that he doesn’t hurt me any more than I already am is a priority.   Turn 2 As usual, the Assassin Chicken tries to run to the farthest corner away from the fight, dodging AoOs from Sebille and Prince and bleeding profusely as it does, putting itself down to about one half of its remaining HP.     Sebille buys me more time with Chloroform on the Markswoman, who’s going to go next. Then, and this is a bit of a risky move, she uses Adrenaline, followed by Cloak And Dagger next to the Pyromancer, and ending her turn with Gag Order, which Silences the Pyromancer for two turns. It’s a bit risky because Adrenaline removes all of her armour and Sebille is well out of position now, open to damage from everyone but the Assassin, but being able to control the Pyromancer a little bit might have been worth it. It depends on what she does next. The Markswoman takes her turn waking up.   Prince also specializes in Pyromancy, but Pyromancy is best used when enemies are cluttered together, and in wider, less congested battlefields. Neither of those conditions are satisfied, so, instead, he uses the Think Fast combo on Fane before putting down a blood totem behind the enemy Pyromancer.  Which, annoyingly, opens fire on the Terramancer… but the shot removes his Fortified status. Useful to know, but that’s not who I’m trying to focus down.   The Pyromancer takes a shot on Fane with Staff of Magus, which only requires a staff to cast, not a voice. Still, it does fire damage, and thanks to Holy Fire, Fane is strongly resistant to fire damage, so it doesn’t hurt nearly as bad as it could have.  The fire totem attacks the Assassin, who is no longer a chicken but manages to dodge anyway, which is a bummer.   The Terramancer hits Fane and Prince with Fossil Strike, which puts Fane down to critical condition, followed by Earth Shard on Prince, which doesn’t hurt nearly as bad, except now he has Petrifaction and is going to turn to stone at the end of his next turn.    I make a pretty serious blunder here. Fane’s turn is next, and he uses Blitz Attack on the Terramancer and the Pyromancer. That’s well and good. Then, he uses Time Warp on himself. That’s fine. But then he uses Living On The Edge, which is a serious miscalculation: Living On The Edge prevents Fane’s HP from falling below 1 for one turn, and now, he’s about to take a second turn immediately. Time Warp affects statuses, like Living On The Edge, meaning I essentially just wasted two AP, and Living On The Edge can only be used once per combat.    Armed with my misplaced confidence in my immortality, Fane uses Phoenix Dive between the Terramancer and the Pyromancer, Taunting them both, and then he uses Shackles Of Pain on the Terramancer. He finishes his turn with a standard attack on the Pyromancer. This would have been an excellent move if I didn’t make a pretty easy mistake like pulling Living On The Edge a turn too early.   Gill uses Shields Up to boost her armour numbers substantially for a few turns, and then wacks Prince once.    Lohse goes last, and she’s still not doing terrifically. She’s naked and wounded – and she’s Decaying. Just because she’s on Holy Fire doesn’t mean that she’s not Cursed. Still, that’s an easy fix with Bless, although it costs me one AP. And I doubt she’ll last very long even with Restoration working for her, so she uses Arcane Stitch, a Source skill she had learned recently, which fully revitalizes any target, on herself, instantly putting her back to max HP. With her last AP, she uses Soothing Cold on herself, Prince, and the fire totem, giving everyone a bit of extra padding against the elemental arts.    Turn 3 The Assassin uses Throwing Knives on Fane (dealing damage to the Terramancer as well), before running over to Prince and stabbing him twice. It’s enough to remove Prince from the fight, and now I’m down one man and two totems (and one Secretary downstairs at the bar). The Assassin was still bleeding from Ruptured Tendons, but he managed to cling to life with just a sliver of HP remaining. One swing from anyone other than Lohse ought to be enough.  Sebille is on fire, badly wounded, has no armour or AP thanks to Adrenaline, and all of her best skills are on cooldown. She has a potion, but she can’t drink it; she’s wide open to everyone that looks in her direction. So, instead, she uses Chameleon Cloak. Bye   The Markswoman takes her turn to plug Fane with a bolt – which crits, which also crits the Terramancer, which apparently counts as Fane’s crit, since he starts cackling like a madman – and then she uses Pin Down on Fane. Fane had Comeback Kid, but even with it, I’m exceedingly lucky that he didn’t die from Pinned Down. And his Holy Fire reverted back to regular fire, so he’s taking extra damage from that, too. He’s left with roughly 30 HP left to his name.   He manages to sustain himself a bit with Mosquito Swarm on the Pyromancer (another misplay – it should have been on the Assassin to take him out), followed by Whirlwind on the Pyro- and Terramancer. With his Necromancy stat, his lifesteal brings him up to roughly ¼ of his total HP – not nearly enough to survive another turn of focus fire.  Luckily, the Pyromancer dies from her Bleeding from the Mosquito Swarm, but she was also on fire. I still think the better target would have been the Assassin and to hope that either the fire would take her out, or she’d try to run and trigger Fane’s AoO. All the same, that’s one less target.  However, the Terramancer tries to reposition, and he takes an axe to the neck for it, and that takes him out as well. With the Assassin down to death-by-tickling numbers, this fight has suddenly swung in my favour, but it’s a very fragile lead.   Gill repositions near Fane, taking a kick to the back of the knees from Lohse (amounting to a whole 4 damage), before reapplying Crippled to Fane via Crippling Blow. Against all the odds, Fane’s still hanging in there!  Lohse goes last, and the Assassin is an inch from death – but he’s on Holy Fire, and I’m not confident that Winter Blast will be enough to take him out. She’s forced to reposition at the cost of one AP to hit him with Ice Fan, and hitting him with three ice missiles is enough to remove him as well. It’s down to three-versus-two in my favour, but Sebille and Fane are in bad shape, and Gill and the Markswoman are essentially fresh as daisies. So now this fight’s down to just the four remaining ladies.  Turn 4 To that end, the Markswoman shoots Fane twice, and that’s enough for him. He’s just gonna go ahead and see what’s on the floor real quick.    Sebille is down to her last tick of health and most of her best skills are on cooldown. So she tries something a little different: Spider Legs costs no AP to use. Meaning I really should be using it more often than I am. She sprouts some extra spider legs, then flings a ball of webbing at Gill, to try and keep her pinned down. Unfortunately, Gill is immune to Webbed, and the webbing ignites into Holy Fire, which touches Gill, which grants her that, which, well, bummer. I didn’t think that one all the way through. Well, Sebille still has Tentacle Lash, so, at least Gill will have to think of something else if she wants to do finish Sebille off.  It turns out, her plan is: nothing at all. She passes completely. Gill knows Fortify, but I don’t know if she knows any other non-weapon-based skills to work around Atrophied. Breaking her wrists turned out to be a good move!   Lohse only has two moves in mind: Restoration and Healing Ritual, both on Sebille. Humorously, Healing Ritual bounced all the way from Sebille back to Sir Lora, topping him off as well.   Turn 5 Sebille is hiding, thanks to her buffed Guerrilla talent, so the Markswoman opens fire on Lohse with Pin Down and one standard attack. Which is fine with me: Lohse is at max health and even without any armour, she isn’t likely to die. But then the Markswoman gets two crits, which immediately puts Lohse down to 1/3rd her total health, which, uh, is alarming. She’s not dead but she’s suddenly in trouble.    What I’d like to do is use Chloroform on Gill, since she’s about to go next… but because we’re indoors, and because the ceiling is apparently super low, ‘arced’ projectiles like the Chloroform bottle would hit the roof if she tried it, even when she’s standing right next to her. Could she just grip the bottle by the neck and smash it against her face? Whatever; she uses Chloroform on the Markswoman instead, then Sleeping Arms on Gill, which reapplies Atrophied for another two turns. It worked out last turn; hopefully it’ll work out again this turn.   It ‘works out’ in the sense that Gill can’t do any damaging attacks. She uses Fortify on herself (which normally puts out fires, but Gill isn’t on fire – she’s on Holy Fire, which is a different status), followed by Shackles of Pain on Lohse.  This’ll hurt Lohse, but it’s overall a good move: she uses Winter Blast on Gill. That removes the Holy Fire and the puddle of holy fire she’s standing in, in exchange for 81 HP. Shackles of Pain is going to end immediately, so that’s an alright trade, and now she gets to save three AP for next turn. Turn 6 The Markswoman wakes up from her Chloroform nap.   Ruptured Chicken just came off cooldown, so, gently caress Gill and her suit of rock armour; she’ll bleed just as well with Fortify up when she tries to run away.   Unfortunately, Chicken Gill runs back into the room, behind the bed, rather than down the stairs like I had hoped. The only reason this is a bit of a meh outcome for me is because she would have bled to death if she did, but now, she’s only down to 38 HP instead. Which means I need to spend AP to take her out, which is lame.      Loaded up with AP, Lohse ends the turn with Restoration on herself, since she’s still reeling from those two crits earlier, followed by Encourage for another shot to the Constitution. She has more than enough AP to align herself next to Gill and fire off Electric Discharge. Gill has very little magic armour – and Lohse is currently buffed with Cycle Of Earth And Wind – so it’s more than enough to take her out of the fight. This was a very minor misplay, though, because Gill still had Ruptured Tendons, and there was no way for her to get out of that corner without walking herself to death. It’s not a big deal, though; Lohse repositions onto the other side of the bed, walking through as much Holy Fire as she can to recover as she goes. Maple Leaf fucked around with this message at 12:14 on Jan 15, 2022 |
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Jan 8, 2022 21:54
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 Turn 7 In order for the Markswoman to put Lohse back into range, she needs to climb the stairs, which will put her in Sebille’s Tyrant’s Charm’s range. Pin Down is back off cooldown, so she shoots Lohse in the knees, but the reposition cost her too much AP to do anything else. Sebille is next, but because the Markswoman is Succumbing To Charmed, she opts to pass entirely and save her AP.    The Holy Fire expires again, so Lohse uses Bless on herself and on the fire, turning it all blue once more. Following that, she uses Healing Ritual on herself and Sir Lora, followed by Armour of Frost on herself. Not that I think the Markswoman is going to be using a lot of elemental attacks at this point.   Turn 8 Now that there’s just one enemy remaining and the fight’s gone on long enough that most of my better skills are off cooldown, I’m just going to skip to the part where I win. The Markswoman gets off Glitter Dust, which increases chance to hit and critical hit chance on targets in an area, then plugs Lohse once. After that, Sebille revives Fane and uses Venomous Aura on everyone (including the Markswoman, since she’s Charmed after this turn), and then everyone just beats up the Markswoman.  And that’s one of the most infamous fights in Divinity: Original Sin 2 wrapped up! Ultimately, the mechanics aren’t especially new or interesting that makes this fight memorable, save for the fact that one of your dudes is going to be naked; it’s more for the jaunty music that makes things fun and memorable. However, there are a number of different outcomes that you can take to resolve this fight: usually, Zharat (or Zharah, if you chose a female lizard) doesn’t participate in the fight, but, if you manage to work your way through the dialogue tree to the point where you seduce him, then not only will he join you in the fight, but he’ll also give you a unique (if slightly underleveled) dagger to defend yourself with. You can do this dialogue tree with anyone; there’s no reason why I couldn’t have done it, other than I wanted a better challenge. Alternatively, Zharat/Zharah has an undead fetish; if you go in with any undead character, such as Fane, then you don’t need to do any dialogue puzzles: they’ll just jump to your aid as soon as the jig is up. Alternatively, if you go in with Ifan, then the fight doesn’t occur at all. Gill will say “oh, it’s Ifan, wazzup” and he’ll say “nm, u?” and then you skip the whole thing. Although you won’t get any experience for it.  Upon winning the fight with Zharat still alive, you can choose to confront him for his dastardly tricks.  : Zharat, babe, I’m high on my own adrenaline right now. Let’s go again.: He thinks for a moment. Don’t want to look desperate! : Do you know, lover, I do want to go again. Come here!: You fall into each other’s arms once more. The world explodes…: … in pleasure. After that, you’re booted out of the suite, and whoever was Zharat’s lucky lover gets their 50 turn Lucky status reapplied. Unfortunately… Lohse’s bag with all of her stuff is still in the suite. And there’s still all the dead bodies that need looting. In retrospect, maybe that’s why Zharat has an undead fetish: he’s surrounded by the bodies of his former friends and colleagues. Most people wouldn’t be down to clown in a setting like that, but giving him a, uh, loving weird sexual appetite might be how the writers tried to justify that.  And the lock to the suite can’t be picked. Back to plan A, then!   And here Zharat will sleep for the rest of the game, forever Lucky.  First and foremost, like I said, there’s a backpack on the table at the foot of the bed that’s filled with all of Lohse’s possessions. When you’re faced with a chest or a bag that’s filled with contents like this, and you just want to take all of it – or maybe you’re strapped for time, like a pickpocket might be – you can either click the button at the top of the inventory grid, or press the spacebar key (by default), and you’ll pick up everything at once.  All better. It occurs to me that Lohse’s still rocking those Teleportation Gloves allllllllllll the way back from the very beginning of the game. I really ought to look into getting her something better. I also said at the beginning of the game that inventory and hotbar management is a significant mark against the game’s design, and that you could spend an inordinate amount of time just managing your consumables. Unfortunately, that’s the case once again with Lohse. It’s certainly better that I deal with her inventory than with Fane’s!  As for my other rewards: the bodies all carried your usual money/ingredients/the odd grenade or elemental arrowhead. Unfortunately, Gill Thunders wasn’t carrying a lot of interesting stuff either: just money, a useless belt… … and a new skillbook for Lohse. So it’s not all pointless.  Cryogenic Stasis: Target self or an ally; that target becomes incapacitated for one turn, but also cannot take any form of damage and heals over time. Removes Shackles Of Pain.Huh, I was wrong back: Break The Shackles isn’t the only skill that can beat Shackles of Pain. How ‘bout that.  When you head back down to the ground floor of the tavern, Lovrik goes to meet you immediately. : He gives you his mischievous grin. : Given that I still have all my things, and I got laid twice – once for free, even! – yeah, on the whole, it was a pretty good time.: That’s the spirit!: He bows his head in salute, and gets back to work.Yeah, nah, that’s not how this is ending.   Now that his crew’s been dealt with, it’ll be a bit tougher for him to recoup those costs from the ground up. Hopefully those tips he’ll get as a waiter will make up for it.  To end this update, we’re going to clear out the second floor of the Black Bull Tavern. There’s a handful of things to do, including one more fight, so this update’s a ways from ending.  There are some Magisters sitting at a table having a discussion about romantic interests. It’s not a wholly necessary conversation to interrupt, but it’s fun to gently caress with the Magisters.  : Something I doubt you’d be able to really help me with. : Okay, I don’t see why not. : Tatcher here is one of my dearest friends, but she isn’t the brightest.: Tatcher grins hello.: Our mate Borris got posted to Fort Joy for consortin’ with lizards, and Tatcher here still fancies a turn around the park with Lovrik’s lizard. I say she’d be sleeping with the enemy. What say you?There was a Magister named Borris at Fort Joy. Ifan interrogated him on getting his contract to kill Alexander from him. He was posted at the front gate to the main fortress on the ghetto’s side. He’s dead now.  : Tatcher, if you’re looking for a romantic interest, you needn’t go chasing lizards – it’s clear to anyone nearby that your friend here is madly in love with you.: Tatcher bursts out laughing. Edden goes bright red.: Get lost, before I throw you in a cell for disrespectin’ a Magister. Two Magisters. The Magisters.: Tatcher doesn’t look disrespected. Tatcher looks amused.: Disrespecting one Magister’s enough – go on, get lost.: She turns back to her drink.  Next to Edden and Tatcher is a room filled with beds – a common room for the folks that need board but can’t afford the bedrooms. It’s affectionately referred to as the ‘Captain’s Cabin’ even though it’s where the crew would sleep, logically.  At the foot of each bed is a chest that just contains spare clothes and a change of sheets for the beds – crafting ingredients, but otherwise useless. I do get a hit of Lucky Charm with one of the cabinets, though, and these numbers are a pretty big step up from the Tracks of the Tyrant. I’ll toss them in my bag for when I have a full set to swap out. If I’m not mistaken, I just need a helmet and I’ll be able to swap out.  At the end of the room is a man sound asleep, and his chest is special: it has a glowing lock on it. When I talk to either the man or the chest, it’s considered to be a quest, so, might as well get it done.   : Holy ‘poo poo,’ a talking box! : Speak. The word. The magic word. And I. Shall open.: Unclose?: No.: Maybe it’s a trick. Is the word ‘closed?’: I am. Already. Closed.: How about ‘chest?’: I am. A chest.: Reveal?: No.: Hmm… I still remember some ancient vocabulary. How about ‘Kshtmart’ch?’ It means ‘open.’Seems like a very inefficient language! : I. Did not. Understand. Do you. Want. A buffalo?: Alright, enough of this. I could stand here and guess all day.: An excellent. Choice.Maybe our sleeping friend could shed some light on the situation. : The man sleeps on. : […] : Could you tell me the magic word for the chest?: He wakes! : Thief! Mother, there’s a thief! : Shh, it’s alright. Your mother’s here now. And she needs the password to the chest, uh, son.: He snorts.: Mother, it’s so obvious. ‘Speak the word and I shall open.’: … then goes back to sleep.Given the clues, the password is probably ‘the word.’ About as secure as setting your password as ‘password123.’  : … ‘The word?’: You speak. The word. I open. For your. Safety. Please. Stand back.: The lock unlocks with the tiniest click. All of that for not a lot of money; a pillow full of feathers; and a Shackles of Pain skillbook. Well, and 3,000 EXP, which is the real reward.  Across the floor from the Captain’s Quarters is a locked room, but unlock some of the other locks in the Black Bull Tavern so far, this one isn’t so sturdy against Sebille and her lockpicks.  Upon entry, we’re given another 3,000 EXP. At a glance, this room very much isn’t a board room for guests: it’s much more ‘lived in’ than that. There’s bric-a-brac all scattered throughout the room; some of the corners and edges are a mess with spilt notes and books; and there’s rather garish decorations on top of the nearby bookshelf. There’s a chest against the far wall, under the windows; there are a number of stuffed animals strewn about that all look like they’ve had their stitching ripped out and sewn back in…  … Oh. This is Kniles’ room.  The man just… kept dead rats strewn about his room. The chest has a water balloon and nothing else, which is weird. He has a writing desk nearby, and when I search it…   That’s not as exciting as I was hoping for. It’s a flesh-ripping body-contorting pyscho’s personal journal and there’s only half a page to read. On a hunch, I reactivate Spirit Vision. Kniles had a habit of, well, murdering people in the name of medical science; maybe there’s a spirit or two left over that can shed some light on what he’s done.  Interestingly, there is a spirit, but it’s the Chronicler that we met when we went on that spiritual journey back in Meistr Siva’s basement, and he doesn’t tell us anything new. The Chronicler is a part of one of the new sidequests for unique armour, and he said that he was ‘devoured’ by the lizard queen’s chestplate after he had restored the armour’s blueprints. If his quest has something to do with Kniles, I can’t figure it out – he isn’t interested in the room or the journal in the desk. He just repeats everything we’ve already heard.  The second last room in the second floor of the Black Bull Tavern is a larger, rented room that’s currently occupied by a well-to-do man dressed in flowing robes, along with two bodyguards. Some guards they are, if they just let a full-armed party of four waltz right in. There’s also another ghost standing in the corner of the room that looks oddly similar to the well-dressed man, but we’ll get to him in a moment.  : Here now! When one’s in a small town, one must expect small town manners, I see. : Your room? Why Prudence, the innkeep, had told me that this was my room!: Ah! So it’s dear Prudence who’s responsible for our confusion! Odd. She’s usually as strict as a taxman. : I see you’re in the habit of travelling well-prepared. Or, at least, your companions are.: Of course they are: as good bodyguards should be. I’m a wealthy man, and wealthy men need protection, especially if they accompany their wealth. : And where might your travels be taking you next? : I’ve only been in Driftwood for a few hours, and the only people that dress half as lavishly as yourself are Magisters. You’re clearly passing through.: He laughs heartily.: Of all things, I wouldn’t have thought my cloak would give me away, but you’re quite right of course! : Tell me more about Lucian’s Day. I’m, uh… poorly-studied, let’s say, on the subject. Why would a merchant want to go to Arx for it?: I go because it is every citizen’s duty: our communal obligation to chant the Rites of the Return and pray for Lucian’s divine resurrection!: That said, I do have… more secular motivations as well. Arx positively overflows with pilgrims during the festival: pilgrims and their purses. : As you a merchant, surely you’d appreciate it when I ask if I can take a look at your wares.: Music to my ears! A happy accident after all, your barging into my room! If there’s anything else you need, know you’re always welcome. As a trader, Baran doesn’t specialize in any particular type of wares and offers just about everything in terms of equipment. He’s also got a handful of Resurrection scrolls, which, after that last fight, I’m going to need to resupply, so I buy two of those. He’s also got a staff called Shadows Whisperer that gives +2 Intelligence that’d be good on Prince. His current staff, Soul Of The Dragon, gives +1 Intelligence and has 14% life steal, but it’s beginning to show its age a bit with its damage numbers and Prince could stand to swap out. Although Soul Of The Dragon did poison damage, which could heal Fane, and I’m going to miss that option. Other purchases include: a new wand and a new headpiece for Lohse and a new ring for Prince that gives +1 Constitution and Summoning. There’s also a belt in there that gives +1 Thievery that’d be nutty for Sebille, but her current belt gives +1 Sneaking and +1 Constitution, so it’s a sideways upgrade and I pass. There’s also a Legendary set of mage boots…  The numbers are pretty meh, but that +0.5 Movement and that free Uncanny Evasion are both pretty attractive. If I get them, they’d go on Prince since Lohse already knows Uncanny Evasion. But no, I don’t get them.   Or, well, I don’t buy them. Before I get started on stealing everything he owns, though, I’m going to pick through his room. In particular, there are two large chests off in the corner that, presumably, contain his ‘wealth’ that he said he was travelling with.  Approaching them reveals four beartraps that are ready to detonate as soon as someone steps on them. You need a modestly high Wits stat to find them, but luckily Sebille is loaded to the teeth with Wits.   Chest 1 contains money, jewelry, some pointless armour… and three poison potions. A weird thing for a traveling merchant like himself to be carting around with him. Chest 2 contains a Fireball scroll, a ruby, and a unique ring.  Having Chicken Claw available on anyone who wears it is pretty tempting, and that 0.5+ Movement is pretty great too, but the problem is that everyone is loaded up with rings that grant bonuses that are better suited to them. And that +3 magic armour is pretty low for our level. Hmm… eh, I’ll put it on Sebille. She already knows Chicken Claw but making her movement speed even more insane is a good deal to me. That puts her up to 15.95 meters for one AP – to give you a scale of how nutty that is, Fane and Lohse are tied for second at 7.61. Anyway, let’s pickpocket Baran Levere.   Interestingly, the very first items in Baran’s pocket are items that he doesn’t have for sale. The key, presumably, goes to his treasure chests, so they’re pointless, but the unique amulet and the paper are a bit more eye-catching.  … A Lone Wolf mark? Baran Levere is a Lone Wolf? On the one hand, it’s a bummer that Ifan isn’t with us. He’s also a Lone Wolf and maybe he and Levere would have been able to talk something out; maybe we could have gotten a bit more information. But on the other, we know now that the Lone Wolves are hunting Godwoken. Which means Baran Levere is our enemy. I take the key, the amulet, and the note, as well as the legendary boots, and I have enough room left over to steal back 2,407 gold.  I fast-travel back to the beach to wait for the heat to die down a little before handing out my purchases, and my gains, and reading that note. The amulet goes really well on Sebille, given that it offers +2 Finesse.  A nice new cowl for Lohse. Her previous helmet didn’t offer much in aesthetics. Finally, let’s take a look at that note.  We know that the man in charge of the Lone Wolves here in Driftwood is a man named Roost Anlon, and he’s next on Sebille’s personal hitlist. That’s probably who R is. No idea who C might be, though.  After the heat’s died down a little bit, I return to Baran Levere’s room to speak with the apparition that haunts it. Ghosts usually have good stories to tell.  : (Given the note, it’s fair to assume that this spirit is, indeed, the real Baran Levere, but I could always use more information.) I’ve already met a man claiming to be Baran Levere. : No! An impostor is he… A Lone Wolf in my own sheep’s clothing… Bejewelled is he with a false name… Draped is his back with a false mantle… Bedecked are his cheeks with a false beard… : Lone Wolves are mercenaries. Do you know why a Lone Wolf might want to murder you?: A rival’s revenge? Another merchant’s madness? O, the fever of gold is reason’s bane… But it matters no longer what drove them to daggers, it matters who drove them into my flesh!: You who hears the laments of the dead: avenge me! Kill the false Baran… Give me back my name… Please… Avenge me…I had considered leaving this up to the thread, but, well, the fake Baran Levere is a Lone Wolf, and they’re specifically hunting us. If I leave him alive, I’d probably regret it later. So, might as well nip this little issue in the bud right here and now.  : I’m going to spare you the specifics, Mister Levere, but I’ve recently met with the specter of the man you had stolen your identity from.: Well, bugger me with a bull’s horn! Although… : Why’d you do it? Did Baran Levere had a hit out on him? : Who could possibly have the financial resources to hire an entire army of mercenaries to hunt what couldn’t amount to more than ten people in the world?: His name wouldn’t mean anything to you. He’s beyond your ken and your claws. You, however, are not beyond mine.: You’re about to make me very very rich, little mouse. Richer even than the butchered old Baran whose dead appearance I’m keeping alive.: Speaking of keeping up appearances: You men! Stand by your master! This ruffian has come to rob me!   : Tavern Fight Music: Murder Has A PriceTurn 1 This fight’s a little unique for one reason: Baran has a Vacuum Aura passively present at all times. With it up, every enemy (i.e. us) within his range are both Muted and Suffocating. Now, I have access to Undo Mute, and it’ll make me immune to Mute, but only for one turn per appliance. I need to be strategic about when I use them because if Baran is still a threat when Undo Mute wears off, I’ll be caught with my pants down. Baran has a fair amount of constitution and physical armour, but, annoyingly, not a lot of magic armour – none of my three enemies in this fight do. To start the round, Stefano, one of his bodyguards, uses a Flaming Skin scroll on himself. With it, he gains total immunity to fire and he bleeds fire, but he has lowered resistance to water. Flaming Skin scrolls can’t actually be crafted, meaning Stefano had the only one in the entire game, and I could have pickpocketed it from him if I knew that ahead of time. After that, he uses Blitz Attack on Lohse and Prince, putting him behind my party.   Most of Sebille’s best stuff, including Chloroform and all of her Polymorph skills, require her to not be Muted, so her usual tricks to control the crowd won’t work until Baran is dead. Better get started on that. She uses Backlash on Baran, and, since all her better skills are locked, she ends her turn with Corrupted Blade on him, which sharply lowers his constitution and makes him Decaying as well.  Mallic, the other bodyguard, approaches the party and uses Whirlwind, hitting everyone but Sebille.  Lohse’s entire arsenal is locked behind Mute, so she simply swings her wands at Baran. Each swing is two hits, one for each hand; the first strike misses. It had a 79% chance to hit. I could have used Undo Mute on her, but nobody’s in dire straits yet. Better to hold off until I need it.    Baran has a pretty good turn for him, which means I hate it. He takes an AoO from Sebille, and one of her daggers gives him the Acid status, which sharply lowers both of his armour numbers, which is good for me. But then he uses Chloroform on Fane, who was about to go next, which sucks. And then he uses Fortify on himself, which removes the Acid on his physical armour, which double sucks. Fane spends his turn waking up. He would have gotten the Rested status for it, but the Mute from Baran’s Vacuum Aura overrides it.   Likewise, Prince has next to nothing that he can do. He knows Battle Stomp, so he uses it on Mallic and Baran – and it whiffs on Baran. How do you sidestep a shockwave? Well, Prince’s staff does a fair amount of damage as a weapon, so he whacks Mallic with it, and, huge bonus, its Crippled chance kicks in. He’s already standing next to the party, but, hell, it helps.  Turn 2 Stefano uses All In on Lohse, and now, she needs to not be Muted. But hey! Stefano was Succumbing To Charmed when he used Blitz Attack, and now he’s on my side for a turn, so that’s nice.   Even with her voice taken away from her, Sebille still has a handful of tactics available to her. Namely, she uses Sleeping Arms and Ruptured Tendons on Baran – hopefully he doesn’t have many magic skills himself to make up for it.   Mallic uses Battering Ram on Prince, followed by a standard attack, putting him down to one quarter. Lohse needs to not be Muted now.     Luckily, it’s her turn next, so she spends her Source point to cast Undo Mute and get access back to her skills. Immediately, she uses Healing Ritual on herself, which bounces to Prince and Stefano (a little annoyingly, but he hasn’t taken much damage yet anyway). She has two AP left, so she goes for the party buff with Encourage, and she gives herself a hand with Uncanny Evasion.    Baran triggers Sebille’s AoO. Her mainhand whiffs. Then he triggers Fane’s. He whiffs. This game sometimes. He walked past them both to get to Stefano and use Chicken Claw on him. It’s perhaps a weirdly aggressive move, but I suppose Stefano was currently the biggest threat to him, given everyone else is Muted.   Fane’s strongest Warfare skills don’t require a voice, but they do require good positioning, which Fane doesn’t quite have. Rather than spend one AP to get into a better position, though, he uses Blitz Attack on Mallic and Baran, which puts him in a perfect line in front of those two, allowing him to use Battle Stomp to Snap Freeze them both in place. It also knocks down Mallic, but not Baran, since he’s still Fortified.   Prince still can’t do anything worthwhile, so he turns around – taking an AoO from Mallic for it – and he hits Baran with his staff. Baran still has no magic armour, so it does a hefty 100 damage. He still has one AP, but he holds it for now. Baran’s probably going to die next turn and then he’ll have skills and AP to burn.   Turn 3 Stefano, as a chicken, runs to the other side of the room before reverting back to a human and changing allegiances back to Baran. Hey, works for me: he’ll need to spend the AP to run back if he wants to keep fighting.  Sebille’s running out of skills with all her stuff going on cooldown. She runs up to Baran and hits him with Gag Order, so now, theoretically, he shouldn’t be able to do anything since he’s Muted and Atrophied.  Mallic chugs a hefty looking potion, from the numbers he recovered. With his feet frozen to the floor, there’s nothing else he can do.   Lohse is still immune to Mute, but only until the end of this turn. Better make it count! She uses Restoration on Prince, since he desperately needs it after that last AoO, and then Winter Blast on Baran, which turns him Frozen Solid, meaning he’ll be forced to pass his next turn. He’s down to just 69 (nice) HP – a hit from Fane’s all it’ll take now. Which comes and goes immediately after Lohse’s, thankfully.    Thankfully, because Baran is Chilled, Fane’s chance to hit is 109%. Baran goes down with one more axe swing. With his refunded AP, Fane uses Battering Ram on Mallic to get closer, and then he breaks his knees with Crippling Blow.   Now that everyone isn’t Muted anymore, Prince puts his skills to work by giving Fane the Think Fast combo immediately, followed by Fire Whip on Stefano. This is a minor misplay: Stefano still has Flaming Skin up, so he actually heals from the strike. But Fire Whip also has a 100% chance to set Blinded, so now Stefano will have a bitch of a time actually hitting someone.  Turn 4 Case in point: Stefano walks up to Prince and uses All In, but Prince easily sidesteps it.     Now that Sebille’s finally been uncaged, she starts with a bottle of Chloroform on Mallic, and then Adrenaline so she can also use Cloak And Dagger to get to Stefano so she can Chicken Claw him. In retrospect, it 100% would have been cheaper to just walk up to Stefano, but whatever. Both of the enemies are controlled for this turn. Which also begs the question: why did she need her voice to chuck a bottle of chloroform at someone’s head? Mallic spends his turn to wake up.   Fane’s got some AP to spend. He uses two of them to summon Bones McCoy next to Baran’s dead body, and then he burns the last three immediately with All In on Mallic. Everyone in this fight has much more physical armour than magic armour, so that hit doesn’t do nearly as much damage as I would prefer. The mages are going to be my better damage dealers.   Bones McCoy devours Baran’s frozen corpse and gets a massive buff for it. Remember, devouring corpses is a free action for Bones. With his new super strength, he bites Mallic twice.   Lohse uses Shocking Touch on Mallic, and then Blinding Radiance on both Mallic and Chicken Stefano. She has stronger skills she could have used, but they would have involved a lot of friendly fire, especially now that the floor is covered in liquids.  Likewise with Prince: the options are available to him, but they’d all hurt people that they, well, aren’t supposed to hurt. So, instead, he just clubs Mallic over the head twice. It’s still magic damage! Turn 5 Stefano, blinded, on fire, and a chicken, opts to do nothing at all.  Sebille’s a bit low on AP with Adrenaline, so she just uses Sleeping Arms on Stefano, in case he thinks about pulling any funny business next turn.   Like with Mallic: he tries some funny business, and he immediately gets bitten by Bones McCoy, followed by an axe across the back from Fane. Mallic was already Chilled, and the strike from Fane set him to Snap Frozen. Now that he can’t move, whatever plan he initial had is totally bunk – and he passes, accepting his fate.   His fate being, of course, another axe to the spine, which puts him down. Now that there’s only one target left in the fight – and he’s Atrophied and Blinded – I’ll do what I normally do and just rinse through the rest of it. Fane uses Mosquito Swarm; Lohse uses a standard attack and Electric Discharge, which Stuns him, further reducing his options; Prince continues to enjoy his new hobby of beating people over the head with his staff by hitting Stefano twice (and one of them Cripples him); and Bones McCoy spends two AP to approach and another two to bite him. Turn 6      I thought this whole sequence was pretty funny, culminating in Stefano threatening my party – crippled, bleeding, and with so much electricity in him that he’s involuntarily dancing, after getting stabbed, clubbed, and bitten.  Sebille puts him out of his misery with one final Backlash and one final standard attack.   As cute as Bones McCoy is, walking around with a giant spider skeleton is perhaps not the best look for a team of Sourcerers trying not to attract attention, so once the electricity in the blood fizzles out, I trade him for Salem again. : The impostor is dead… My name is mine once more… You who succours the souls of the dead: I thank you!: I am Baran Levere… In the halls I’ll be Baran Levere… And then he vanishes in a puff of Source smoke. Sucks that he’s dead – I’m sure he’d much rather not be – but at least his identity theft issue has been cleared up.  Mallic was holding gold and Stefano was holding a crafting ingredient. While fake Baran was a merchant and he was carrying a kajillion neat things that I could have used or resold, unfortunately, I don’t get to pick his entire inventory clean for game balancing purposes. I imagine it’d be really hard to do that if you just killed every merchant you saw so you could lift their entire inventory. Still, that’s not to say that what we got was bad: Baran two personal daggers; a suit of armour that requires Strength to wear but gives +1 Finesse; an amulet that gives +1 Warfare and Finesse; a crossbow and a legendary bow, but me with no bow users; and a two-handed elven sword that does more numbers than Hanal Lechet, but doesn’t give nearly as many bonuses, so that’s a hard pass. I’d like to use the amulet, but the problem is that Fane’s current amulet, the Amulet of the Deep, gives him immunity to Stunned, and it has a slot for a rune while Baran’s doesn’t. You’d think I could put it on Sebille instead, then, but her amulet, the Amulet of the Void (funnily enough), also gives +1 Finesse and also has a rune slot. Ultimately, it’s a pass. Finally, Baran’s two knives do air damage and fire damage, and have a 5% chance to set Shocked and a 10% chance to set Burning, respectively. They both have rune slots, but so do Sebille’s current knives. So Baran’s entire inventory is a pass. Which is good for cash, but it’s not very exciting. However…  That Lone Wolf Mark that I had pickpocketed from him before the fight is a much better use on Sebille than her Amulet of the Void. +2 Finesse and +1 Lucky Charm, and a slot for a rune, overall makes it a pretty big upgrade.  Before I end this update, there’s one final room to check in the Black Bull Tavern’s second floor.   A woman being haunted by a ghost with a bell, and her room is decked in piles of gold coins as well as two different treasure chests. I bet she has a story to tell. : A weathered woman in a dirty sea-captains tunic babbles breathlessly to herself. And somewhere nearby… you hear a bell ringing. : Judging by your clothing and you lamenting you misplacing your compass, you must have been a captain. But I didn’t see any large ships in the town’s port – where is your ship berthed? : The ship is in the locker. On the bottom in the rocky shallows, and all are drowned but me. : I can. And not just the sound of a ringing bell – I hear the sound of cruel laughter as well.Responding to this gets me 1,000 EXP. : I’m haunted by my crew. They ring the bell to drive me mad. Please make it stop!: She buries her head in her hands and cries.: Make it stop. Well, ghosts are incorporeal, so I can’t exactly beat him into stopping. Hopefully the restless soul of a dead seaman can be reasoned with. : A ghostly seaman stares at the captain, his lip curled in a malevolent grin, his eyes wide with hate… and all the time, he rings his bell. He registers your presence. His head swivels towards you. : I have set sail twice in recent years, and both times, ah, didn’t go well. I can’t say I enjoy sailing. : Then you won’t sail with her! She ran the ship upon the rocks, although I rang the bell. That light weren’t no lighthouse. I rang the bell in warning and she ran the ship upon the rocks!Didn’t we find a paper sometime recently saying that Driftwood didn’t have a lighthouse, and to ignore any bright lights a ship might see as they approach? It’s likely that Ablewether was a victim of this fraudulence.  : There’s nothing left for you here, seaman. It’s time you let go of your hate and move on to the Hall of Echoes. : You’ve done your duties; the captain must live with her guilt for the rest of her days. There’s no need to keep torturing you both. You’ve earned your shore leave.: Persuasion Success!: But I’m on duty here. There are rocks ahead and the cap’n must know’t!: You’ve been relieved of your duty, seaman. It’s alright.: He blinks once. Twice. A single salty tear drips from one ghostly eye. The bell falls silent. He raises a finger to his temple in salute, and fades away. I got a whopping 6,950 EXP for that. Well, the ghost of the restless seaman is gone. Let’s see how Ablewether is handling the sudden lack of tinnitus. : She babbles breathlessly on, barely aware you’re there. And nearby sounds a ringing bell… : Give it a moment. It should stop soon.: And I have you to thank for it? Then thank you I surely do. : You’ve mentioned this compass of yours before. What’s so special about it? It’s just a compass. : Alright, if you won’t answer that – then, can you tell me where the Peacemaker lies? : If I’m to find this ship, I should hope there’s more value to it than a sentimental compass. Was the Peacemaker carrying anything? Perhaps something could be salvaged.: She goes white – as white as the proverbial ghost.: You’ve got not call to go looking for no cargo. Far as anyone’s concerned we sailed with an empty hold, and if there’s anything left to salvage you leave it where it is.: Heed me. Leave the cargo of the Peacemaker alone.: She turns away. Conversation over.I’mma find that ship and I’mma loot its cargo.  Just like how I’m about to loot this room. There are three piles of gold, totaling 200 gold coins for the taking, plus some valuable cups and goblets.   Both of the chests are locked, which means nothing to Sebille. Between them, I get a fat amount of cash; a medium-sized Masterwork rune, the second medium-sized rune we’ve found recently; a mushroom, perhaps meant for recreational use; a spare change of pants; and the captain’s journal.   The Peacemaker crashed along the bluffs to the west of Driftwood, passed the Cloisterwood. Remember, we had seen a Voidwoken recently abduct and transport a Sourcerer in that direction. Something messy is going on over there. Once I’m done looting the captain’s cabin clean, I finish speaking with her–  – and I get to choose my reward. Huh. I’m getting a paltry 41 gold and a Knockdown arrow, but I also have my choice between more drugs; an Invisibility potion; and a new Summoning skillbook.  Ooh, yes please.  Dominate Mind: Charm a non-allied character into fighting on your side for two turns. Does not work on bosses.That last line is a Divinity: Unleashed exclusive ‘weakness.’ Dominate Mind works on everyone in the base game, provided you can remove their magic armour first.  That’s one more update down! In the next one, we’ll be traveling into the Black Bull Tavern’s basement. There’s a number of mysteries to this tavern yet, and there’s no other place for them to be hiding other than down there. Next time: gentle kisses, dwarven revolutionaries, and the mystery of the tavern’s Voidwoken!
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Jan 8, 2022 21:54
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Maple Leaf posted:
Hey, there's this lizard we could introduce you to...
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Jan 8, 2022 23:38
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Good for you Lohse
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Jan 9, 2022 14:50
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I didn't know Kniles had a room at the inn. Excellent update!
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Jan 20, 2022 18:55
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Apparently I missed a lot of things when I did my play through here. Glad to be following this!
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Jan 20, 2022 19:33
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That naked post-coital fight is pretty mean. How likely are you to be able to fight back if you don't know it's coming and have your teleporter prisms ready to bring your whole team in?
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Jan 20, 2022 19:34
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Schwartzcough posted:That naked post-coital fight is pretty mean. How likely are you to be able to fight back if you don't know it's coming and have your teleporter prisms ready to bring your whole team in? I think your only option at that point is to get to the bag, find the room key, put it in your inventory, and then have someone else in your party use Magic Pockets (a toggle that lets any character/player put items into, or take items out of, someone else's inventory at any time) to pull it out and use it on the door. Actually, for that matter, if the lucky character wasn't carrying one of the pyramids, then someone else could use Magic Pockets to put a pyramid into their inventory and then use the other to teleport in. Magic Pockets is very immersion-breaking, though. There's less at stake when, say, Lohse has no potions in the middle of a fight and she's halfway across the arena from someone who does, but she just uses Magic Pockets to materialize a potion from someone else's inventory. It's a useful setting to remove busywork, particularly with things like keys and shovels, but it's kinda lame for actual gameplay.
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Jan 20, 2022 20:12
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 We’ve done everything there is to do in the Black Bull Tavern except investigate the basement. We know that the dwarven insurrectionists are camping out down there (although we technically don’t know if Lohar himself is down there); there’s a woman that can make you into a better you with a kiss; and there’s a nonzero chance that there’s a Voidwoken down there, although we don’t know if it’s dead or alive. And Brahmos the Wanderer, an important person to Prince’s personal quest, is likely down there as well, since we’ve been everywhere else in this tavern. It’s time to solve all those mysteries!  The first thing we’re given upon heading down the stairs is a fat load of EXP, which is always nice. Everyone’s about halfway to their next level, with Sebille being a fair amount further ahead.  Everyone instinctively steps around a puddle of poisonous ooze that happens to be on the path between the stairs and whatever lies beyond, but Fane notices that there’s something buried beneath it.    Someone’s reserve money, it looks like. In the event that you need to make a splash and a quick getaway.  A little further onwards and we find something a little more illicit underneath the legitimate drinking establishment that is the Black Bull Tavern: what is, essentially, an opium den. The lady working the counter must be Effie. It’s weirdly specific that she says that my face is a ‘pretty little kisser.’  : Welcome be, guv’nor! Take a load off and enjoy Effie’s plunder down under! : Is that drudanae I’m smelling? It’s familiar, but there’s a certain ‘punch’ to it that I don’t recognize.: Aye, so it is! But not just any drudanae, oh no: my own special blends. Further down’s the arena, see, and the gladiators are always on the lookout for… an edge. You could say that my darling herbs flower in the flesh and blossom in the brain. : (An underground arena…?): I don’t know if I’m to be engaging in combat yet, but if I were, I’d want to stay alert and composed in the worst of things.: No problem! : Right, of course.: Effie digs all kinds of outlandish herbs from out of the depths of many pockets, and mixes them with the patience and skill of an alchemist.: Much obliged, guv’nor! And here’s your blend! Just take it to that big beauty of a pipe over there, and… have a blast.From that conversation, we purchased a big, fat bowl of herb mix that, when combined with the giant bong in the center of the room, will grant anyone who smokes it +5 Wits for 50 turns, or, about eight-point-three minutes. The other options grant different buffs, with the Ferocity mix being particularly useful for anyone…. Which is why I’m not getting it. It’ll be more challenging that way.  To the east of the emporium’s opening is a shirtless lizard. There’s one other lizard in the emporium, but she’s a ‘customer’ and is too blitzed out to really give us any useful information, if she even had any. We’re on the lookout for one lizard in particular, but this one’s name is Ghangha, not Brahmos. Still, maybe he knows something.  : My good sir! I see that you accompany no other than His Royal Majesty, the Red Prince! I have a message for him of quite vital importance. If you’d be so kind… : (I suppose it makes some sense that ‘official’ channels for information would take place underground, given the current relationship between the humans and the lizards.) By all means, the floor is yours.: Directions, milord! I was bid to send you to none other than Brahmos the Wanderer! He was waiting for you here, my prince, but… but…: He looks around the hazy room with hasted eyes.: The House of Shadows stirs! The honourable Brahmos sensed them closing in. He had no choice but to flee from Driftwood. : I know it’s not quite what you were hoping to hear, but are you satisfied for now?: Indeed I am! We will follow your directions. You have my thanks, kinsman.: Prince of princes, I am humbled and grateful!: He bows deeply before the Red Prince, as reverently as one would before a god.Okay, don’t… don’t give him too many ideas. He’s already Godwoken, he doesn’t need any more fluffing just yet.  Unsurprisingly, Prince has something else to add now that we’ve made some progress in her personal quest. : The House of Shadows stirs… : You’re normally much more defiant in the face of adversity. Remember that one assassination attempt in the Fort Joy ghettos? You barely gave the man the time of day. : ‘Desperate’ also means they’re more afraid of you than of them. If they were confident, they wouldn’t be moving at all. You’ve lit a fire under their rear end, if you ask me.: Who said anything about fear? I hardly know the meaning of the word!: But I suppose you do have a point. If they are dangerous, we will simply have to be more dangerous. And if they fear, we will prove worthy of their dread! Onward then! Let them strike when they may – we shall be ready for them.Prince has been focusing a lot more on the ‘we’ over the ‘him’ lately. It’s not ‘I shall prove worthy of their dread,’ it’s ‘we shall prove worthy.’ I don’t think I’ve worked the whole ‘lizards are made to rule and everyone else is my slave at best’ attitude out of him, but at least he sees us as equals, if he won’t say it directly. Let’s talk to him again, though. We’ll ask a bit more about Brahmos and the recent developments.  : Tell me more about this Brahmos character.: Brahmos the Wanderer? He’s a legend among lizards. : ‘Horrorsleep?’ You mean, like a nightmare?: The most inhospitable plane imaginable. A realm of insanity and death beneath a starless black. : And Brahmos has gone in there enough times, willingly, to ‘master’ it? Why in the world would he do such a thing?: Because if one braves the absolute terrors of nightmare and finds sanctuary there, one is safe even from the Void. That’s right. Horrorsleep is a realm feared by the cosmic menace that is the Void. Ideal location for a summer house.I mean, at that point, you gotta be asking yourself if the cure is worse than the disease. Escaping the Void by entering a realm so bastardly that the Void doesn’t want to enter it is exchanging– Well… I guess Horrorsleep would be the Hell that you know and the Void is the Hell that you don’t. All the same, there are no winning moves, there.    Exploring the Emporium a bit, there’s not really much here: a few baskets and boxes to rifle through and some NPCs that are so dead to the world that they don’t offer any useful information. There’s a few chests for me to steal from that hold a couple hundred coins, at least.  And there’s one dwarven woman in particular that’s… very familiar.  : … Ever found that pouch you misplaced? : Pouch? What pouch. : I didn’t think so.: I bet you did. S’why you let me get close enough to nip some gold right outta your pouch, right? : (She still hasn’t realized who the better pickpocket is, it seems.) Well, it seems you needed that gold more than I did. I wish you the best.: Sure. The very best.Unfortunately, the game doesn’t have a contingency for if you stole the gloves off of June. I would have loved to see how she would react to that: I stole what is probably her livelihood and she’d have nobody to blame but herself for being had. And, double unfortunately, since I’ve already pickpocketed June, I can’t do it a second time.  Wandering the emporium is a woman that’s dressed a bit differently from the half-naked lizards and the rags of the poor addicts lying in heaps around the place.  : Hail, darling. Call me Dorotya.: She draws you in, her lips dangerously close to where your ears once were.: Mmm. Oh yes. I have something that you want. But I only bargain with those I deem… deserving. Those who have accomplished great things. So tell me… : May I know what it is you’re offering me first? : (Effie mentioned that there’s an arena towards the back of the emporium. If that’s true, then perhaps….): The merits of the Champions of the Fort Joy Arena ought to be self-explanatory.: Indeed? Hmm. This is acceptable. You are nearer the One than most self-described heroes I’ve known. So tell me… : My ‘greatest desire’ is knowledge by-now considered ancient. There is no mortal that could grant me my wish – let alone some strumpet in a drudanae den under a tavern. : (Monsters from beyond the Veil; what remains of my people elevated to godlike status… I suppose there’s no harm in looking into this woman’s ring.): Gaze into the gem, my lovely.: She flashes her ring at you, and you stare at the luminescent stone at its centre. You are floating on a current of pure Source, surrounded by a kaleidoscope of colours and fuzzy images. I’m going to leave this to a vote, but there’s a second question I want to ask about Dorotya, so I’ll continue this conversation as normal. : Yes. I see you clearly now.: In return, I ask for one courtesy: : I don’t… particularly care for the pleasures of, uh, mortality much these days.: Dorotya sighs – a fusion of a kitten’s purr and a cockroach’s clacking.: Honey. I can see what you are, plain as day, and I know what I can give you. This isn’t about a little rough and tumble. It’s about that longing in you. The one that nags. : Alright, fine. I guess a kiss is a small price to pay to have my wishes granted.: Most delicious. Meet me around the corner. And come alone. An audience is… not required.Dorotya is the woman that promises ‘a better you,’ as Safa had put it two updates ago, and all she wants in exchange is a kiss. Seems fair enough. Just gotta get suited up!     Since the Mask of the Shapeshifter disrupts the Tyrant’s armour set, I have to swap out some other armour pieces to ensure that I don’t burn to death, and I only have until my Rested status wears out until I’m Crippled from the boots again. But it’s enough time for me to do as Dorotya asked: separate myself from my group; assume a mortal form; and then go to her and say hello. : Dorotya sees you and heaves a shuddering sigh. She bites into her lower lip with enough force that a drop of blood seeps out – blood, and something else. Something green.S-Source? Source is green. Hopefully it’s just Source. : Darling! It’s so good to see you – and in fleshly form, no less. I admit I wish we could share more… carnal pleasures. Yet I think a kiss is the height of intimacy. Now come closer, and receive your soul’s desire.: You draw closer and close your eyes, eager to feel her lips on yours… UM. Not only is Dorotya a were-spider, but judging from the markings on her abdomen, she’s a loving black widow. But on the other hand… Safa, the elf upstairs, was something like eight tankards deep into the drink, and she hadn’t passed out or, well, died, and she attributed her superhuman (or, rather, superelven) constitution to Dorotya and her gift. And do you remember way, way back at the very beginning of the game, back on the ship on our way to Fort Joy?  We actually knew from the very beginning that Dorotya was a were-spider because we were told by whoever wrote this poem. And from the way he phrased his poem, he rather enjoyed it, meaning he came away from the experience with a positive outlook as well. So that’s two-for-two in favour of receiving Dorotya’s gift in exchange for a little nibble. Here’s the wrinkle: if Dorotya bites us, it’s a permanent -2 debuff to Constitution. But in exchange, she really will give us whatever it is we saw in the gem. There are a number of considerations here. What do YOU think? What do we see in Dorotya’s gem? Do we let her kiss us? Do we let her kiss anyone else in our party? She will grant whatever buff we want of the five listed to all four of our party members, all in exchange for a smooch – and a permanent Constitution debuff.  At the southern corner of the emporium is a raised cabin with a doorman. A VIP lounge, perhaps?  : And who is in charge of this operation? : Ah, excellent. I’m here on business. : Good. Boss could use some good news. Listen up: don’t waste his time. These are… explosive times. Be respectful. It’s finally time to meet the dwarf of the hour. We’ve heard a lot about this Lohar. Inside the cabin are three dwarves surrounding a fourth, and the fourth one is tied up and sitting in a pool of her own blood. There’s quite a story to be told here. Given his position and his bearskin mantle, I’m going to guess that the one furthest from the bloody dwarf is Lohar. Interestingly, Lohar is equipped with two one-handed swords, and they glow as if they’re enchanted with something – but it’s not a typical glow that we’re used to. If a weapon does fire damage, it glows red; if it does poison damage, it glows green. These weapons are glowing black.  : … : I brought you up from girl to woman, Marla. Like you was my own. This…: He lifts his right arm, showing a white bandage beneath his ribs. A wet, red spot shows through.: … this ain’t the thanks I expected. Who sent you?: Heh, heh, heh…: The formidable dwarf slams his fist on the side table. You hear a loud crack. : (Perhaps it’s not my place to interject…): …: Bant. Cade. Get her to talk, or bleed her out. She ain’t one o’ mine anymore.: His sneer travels from the restrained dwarf to you.: And you. You better have a drat good reason for coming here. The other two dwarves get to work on interrogating Marla, but despite being tied up and bleeding out, she refuses to say anything. All she does is laugh whenever you talk to her. Mordus was the name of one of the Source Masters from that list we found in the Magister barracks. If it’s true that Marla’s been working with him, and Mordus has defected to the Magisters, then it’s not looking like a good situation for the dwarves and their rebellion. And it may explain why Marla’s acting the way she is.   Before we start talking with Lohar, we might as well rifle through his things and see what’s good. Put those thief gloves to good use.  He has a knife that’s pretty decent. It does three more damage than Twist, The Knife, and it does three-to-four Piercing damage on top of that. It also has a slot. The only thing that Twist, The Knife has over it is Twist has a 10% chance of setting Bleeding, which can help take down a target, but it’s generally a better idea to be more consistent than to rely on probabilities. Lohar also has two high-level scrolls: Epidemic of Fire and Superconductor. Superconductor doesn’t normally cost any Source, but Epidemic of Fire normally costs two points, meaning I wouldn’t be able to use it even if I learned the spell. Scrolls, however, don’t cost any Source to use – just AP. So I’ll be taking both of those. He also has a key. I wonder what it could be for…. In hindsight, I really should have taken that potion, too. I’m really hurting for those.    I pull the heist, then run and hide for a few seconds until Lohar decides that his incredibly powerful scrolls, his high-level dagger, and his personal key just aren’t worth getting upset over. Once he’s calmed down, I run back and say hello; we have quite a bit to talk about. : Brave lad, waltzing in here now. : Anything of interest happen here?: Family matter. She’s one of mine – actin’ like her brains are scrambled, though. Came after me with a knife. Lucky for me, she caught an old wound. Scar slowed down the knife.: (… Is that how that works?) : (Well, if he knows that we’re escapees, there’s no reason to be difficult.) You seem like you could use a good story right about now. Let me tell you from start to finish.: […]: Ha! I gotta say, I’m impressed. I love a good story.: Here’s one I heard lately: A group of strangers landed on the beaches outside of town. Meistr Siva’s people. : You don’t sound like you believe in their cause. You barely sound like you believe they exist.: Order’s been telling us all kind of this-and-that about Godwoken. Haven’t seen any evidence of ‘em myself. : I can hardly blame you. The Order’s been putting on a convincing show for the layman, but all they’ve been doing is rounding up and hurting innocent people. It’s not like the Voidwoken attacks have gotten any better.: We’re swirlin’ the drain. If someone doesn’t plug it, we’ll slip down, easy as you please. : You’re in informed man, Lohar. I imagine you know what I’m after already.: Reckon I do. Knowing Siva, she sent you lookin’ for Sourcerers, I bet. : You said it yourself: we’re swirling the drain. If there’s an opportunity to serve myself first and foremost to try and get ahead of the event horizon, then I’ll take it.: Persuasion Success!: An unpleasant smirk twitches around the corners of his mouth.: Right. : A bit of give-and-take. Fine; what is it you need?: He gestures to the bandage across his side.: Had a bit of family trouble lately. My girl Marla got it in her head to come after me with a shortblade. That ain’t like Marla. Ain’t like her to pull the silent treatment, either. Something’s going on. And wouldn’t you know it, that blade she used wasn’t any normal bit of steel. Belonged to another of my people.: Guy’s name is Mordus. Bit of a loner, but smart as hell.: I sent a few guys to go check on him, see if he knew what’d gotten into Marla, but no-one can find him. : Just ‘a word?’: That’ll be up to him, won’t it.: No-one’s seen him in a good few. I’ve got some people checking out his house near the tavern now, though. : I’ve reason to believe Mordus may be more than just ‘a Sourcerer.’ If he’s responsible for Marla’s current condition, I’ll need to be as prepared as I can be. Is there anything more you can tell me?: Well… like I said Mordus is a special guy. A Sourcerer, matter of fact. Maybe even one of the ones Siva’s after. If there’s something you want to find out from him… you might want to ask before I have my word with him.: Good luck. At the back of Lohar’s cabin is a locked, grated door that leads somewhere else. According to the minimap, there’s a handful of people just beyond this door. Since it’s locked, that means that as soon as I so much as open the door, let alone go past it, I’ll be making an enemy out of any of the dwarves that see me. So Sebille will be going in alone, since she’s the sneakiest.   Ah. Right. We’re in an opium den. The goods need to come from somewhere.  In the very back corner of the room is a gilded treasure chest, but there’s no way Sebille will be able to get all the way there and back undetected. She could use Chameleon Cloak and Clock And Dagger, but Invisibility only lasts for a few seconds. Well, actually, that’s exactly what I’m going to do. I just need to time my movements properly.    There are two scouts overlooking the garden; as long as neither of them turn towards me, it should be modestly clear to the chest.  Luckily, that bright purple aura from Tyrant’s Charm only seems to influence people when they’re in combat. I’m sure fluctuating red-and-blue lights is a normal occurrence in Rivellon.  One of the workers will pretty much always have their eyes cast towards the chest, though. It’s still fine: I can still loot this chest by turning Invisible and raiding it that way. I’ll only have a few seconds, but thanks to the trusty Take All button, that’s all I need.    A fistful of cash, and a… Medusa Head skillbook. This actually took a handful of quicksaves and quickloads to do, and it wasn’t worth it at all.  Although, in one of my failed runs, I came across a mound of dirt that could be dug up in between the garden patches. When I do, this ghost, one ‘Spirit of a Mob Victim,’ pops out. I didn’t manage to get a word with him, and some Googling tells me that he’s not a very well-known encounter. The most that I gathered is that he’s from some cut content. Which is neat! This being a fairly in-depth LP by this point, I thought I’d point it out even though it amounts to next to nothing.  Coming around to the back of Effie’s Emporium, I find… the Driftwood Arena. This is another Arena of the One, which officially makes that a bit of a misnomer. A quick recap: it wasn’t so long ago in the updates, but before we left Fort Joy, we went to a hidden underground arena in Griff’s kitchen that was called the Arena of the One. There are several Arenas of the Ones throughout the game – one per act, generally. I saved Fort Joy’s Arena fight for the very end for lore reasons (determining who the One might be after all my characters have gotten powered up), but it turns out that only one character can be the One, and it’s whoever the avatar is – Fane, in our case. I’ll be doing another free-for-all at the end of Act Two, but in the meantime, there’s no reason to put off doing this Arena challenge.   A quick distraction first, though: overlooking the arena – and this one is much bigger than in Fort Joy – there are two pressure plates to stand on. Having two characters stand on them–  Opens up the wall at the eastern side of the Arena. And inside this little nook…   … Perhaps previous losers of the Arena? People that, through failure of the trial, had learned that they were not the One? They were the Plural?  Some treasures to be found in this little death pocket, at least.  Standing as the Arena’s doorman is another dwarf.  : This isn’t my first excursion to the underbelly arenas of your fanatic cult. I had conquered the Arena of Fort Joy and I intend to be crowned the champion of this one as well. : Well, that just may interest our current champion, Murga. : That doesn’t sound like it matters when our weapons will be doing the talking for us.: Well, ya better start carin’. Without her approval, you’ll be stuck spectatin’. On yer way, then.Arran, despite not really looking like it, is a trader.  Likely pickups from failed challengers? It’s not like you can take them with you – and they didn’t work out very well for them to begin with. That said, there’s a handful of good stuff in here. A Legendary-level Finesse helmet (that gives Hydrosophist and Summoning, meaning it’s extremely meh for Sebille) and shield, if only any of us used a shield. But there’s one thing in particular that I’m interested in….  With this, I’ll have all the equipment I’ll need to swap off the Braccus armour set. It’s not an awful set, but it’s beginning to show its age. There’s some things in here that I wouldn’t mind having….   … but why spend the money when I can, you know, not? I steal the helmet, all of his money, and I have a bit left over to steal some Resurrection scrolls. I also misclick and accidentally steal one of his nice rings. Man, Sebille’s Thievery stat is making this kind of trivial. Maybe I should tone it down a little bit to try and maintain the challenge. But on the other hand, maybe not – Divinity: Original Sin 1 and 2 were both designed around knowing that they could be busted wide open.  While doling out my misbegotten gains, I misclick again and send the helmet I just stole to the Lady Vengeance, so, I’m forced to make a quick detour over there. Luckily, there’s a Waypoint right beside Arran regardless.  Here’s all the good stuff that I’ve been holding onto, in order to break up my better sets of armour once I manage to complete them. I can’t break up the Braccus set unless I have an entire other set of armour to replace it, for example, and with that new helmet, now I can.  It’s been a long time, but here’s the new and improved Fane, wearing an all new set of armour. Each piece can finally be freely exchanged without penalties once again. There’s the Devourer’s Claws, the gloves that we found in Braccus’ Tower with the three necromancers; the helmet I just got; a breastplate that I bought off Maeve, an elf on the Lady Vengeance that warned me not to touch the figurehead (before she died during the Dallis confrontation); and a set of pants that I forget where they came from. The ring that I accidentally stole also has +1 Pyrokinetic and +1 Summoning, which turns out to be a happy accident and goes well on Prince.  As soon as I finish with my new armour set, the Chronicler reappears.  : I’m not going to be able to solve the mystery of your death any faster with you following me, Chronicler. : I don’t have a choice! You’re the one wearing those gauntlets, dragging me around this way and that. I cannot do anything to prevent it. We are bound together.Oh, huh, that’s a bit of new information. I imagine I’ll be finding more spiritual tagalongs the more I found of the Devourer’s set. And really, I maybe should have clued in with a set of armour called ‘the Devourer.’  Let’s progress. There’s a new arena to engage with.  : Did you know our arena champion’s a bloody cheat, stranger? Murga tripped me and bit off my earlobe before the fight ‘ad even started!Luckily, I have no ears or nose for her to abuse, so, I should be safe there.   : What out for Murga, stranger; she’s a formidable fighter, our dear arena champion… and not one to suffer fools lightly…So, Murga is a ruthless fighter, not one for playing games… but she’s also dishonourable, willing to do whatever necessary for the win. Good. I hope she can put up a good fight.  : Must be one strong forcefield keeping it inside. Who in their right mind would keep a Voidwoken locked up like this. I know it’s kind of difficult to see in this screenshot, but in between the grates on the floor, you can see a Voidwoken locked up in a cage. A big, animalistic one, very similar to the Deep Dweller back on Braccus’ Island. We had one hell of a time trying to deal with that one, and I’m not looking forward to fighting a second one. Knowing what we know about the current Arena champion, Murga, perhaps she’s not in her ‘right mind’ at all, to be keeping a live Voidwoken caged up like a trophy animal. I certainly hope it’s being kept locked in place with a forcefield, and it’s not choosing to stay down there. Maybe this is what I’m going to have to deal with, if I don’t have any earlobes for Murga to bite off.  To the corner of the top-down cage is Murga, sitting by herself, enjoying a beer by candlelight. Her eyes seem inverted: white sclera, black iris, white pupils. She’s definitely an intimidating sort to look at. : In the shadows, a dwarven woman spits obscenities down upon a caged Voidwoken. She exudes a powerful air of menace… and an even more powerful odour of old sweat and dried blood. She spied you. And glowers. : More fodder for the Arena? Let Murga the Champion test how good your reflexes are… : Arm wrestling isn’t just a matter of brute strength; it’s possible to use trigonometry to give yourself as much of an advantage–: Ha! Your science won’t help you here. In the Arena, you must be willing to suffer if you want to achieve greatness.: She glimmers in and out of view, merging with the shadows. Crowing, she slams your hand down into the table, hard enough to draw blood.Draw what? I guess it could be her own if she slammed her fingertips onto it.  : … As I was saying.: There’s more to things like arm wrestling – such as combat – than just brute strength. I intend to prove that by becoming Champion of the Driftwood Arena. : For someone that values strength like yourself, you spend an awful lot of time hiding in the shadows, looking for cheap shots.: Persuasion Success!: Murga raises one surprisingly-delicate eyebrow.: Ah, go talk to The Raucous One. Tell him I sent you, and he’ll set you up for a challenge. Prove yourself worthy fighting my acolytes blindfolded. Then I’ll knock your teeth out.Blindfolded, huh. Murga is the Arena Champion; she’s in charge here, and that means she gets to make the rules. I suppose there would be nothing stopping me from making a similar ridiculous command in Fort Joy.  : There’s no rules in that arena. Murga’s used some low tricks to stay on top, if you understand me… : If you ask me, the fact that Murga caught a Voidwoken just proves she’s using dirty tricks…Sounds like the other denizens of the Arena would like nothing more than for Murga to be usurped. And I’m starting to understand why.  : I’ve spoken with Murga, your Champion, and I’m ready to fight. : Yes, I accept her ridiculous challenge. She can’t run from me forever.: A’ight. Jus’ make sure to keep the blindfold on. Ya take it off, ya lose the challenge. Real simple.  Everyone’s helmets have been replaced with blindfolds that enforce permanent blindness. With this limitation, my effective range is reduced to arm’s length – that’s spells, techniques, weapons, thrown consumables, you name it. This is one of the reasons why I was so keen to swap out the Braccus set: the blindfold would have broken the set and given me all those debuffs. Funnily enough, even though Fane is effectively maskless, the blindfold still keeps the ‘veiled undead’ status, so my enemies don’t know – or, rather, they shouldn’t know – that I’m a skeleton. For this battle, I’m going to do something different: Transcribing these fights, especially the bigger ones, takes me days to do. This LP is over a year old now and I’ve written over 300,000 words in it, and while I still enjoy doing it and I want to keep going, it’s also a massive time sink. And also, they make waiting for forum pages to load a chore, with how many images there are. So, instead, I’m going to try and do annotated videos for this fight and the next for this update. I shouldn’t be losing too much information on my plays; on the AI plays; and on my thought processes, so hopefully the transition should be swift.  There. We’ve beaten her dumb, stupid challenge. : She lifts your blindfold and nudges your nose with her own, laughing.My what? : Nice to see the cub has some claws. You drew blood, enough to know you’re alive… I’m what? : And you proved yourself against my little challenge. So now, we will fight, you and I. Come on, show me I’m alive. Talk to The Raucous One when you’re ready to fight.: She winks over her shoulder at you and then… disappears. Well, good. Murga’s a cheat and she’s flexing the system to give herself as much of an advantage as she possibly can, but at the very, very least, she isn’t a liar. She’s rather honest about her dishonesty. For this upcoming fight, we’re allowed to use our helmets again, so that’s nice. We have an opportunity to go and restock our potions, or maybe buy another bowl of koosh from Effie to help buff us up some more, but… nah. I just want to get right into it.   : I’ve overcome that insipid challenge of hers, and now Murga has agreed to fight me. : Knowing Murga, I’m not confident that she’ll play entirely by the rules for an honest one-versus-one. My companions will join me as before. It turns out, it is just Murga by herself… or, at least, that was the intent. And that still doesn’t mean that she was trying to fight honestly.  : The dwarf bounces up and down with glee, then catches himself and clears his throat. He bows before you.: Extraordinary, son, just extraordinary. The spirit of the One has yet to settle, but it hovers near. It knows yer great feat. I feel the glow.: Ain’t just praise yer earnin’ though. Givin’ you this key, too. It’s an arena champ tradition. Takes ya to treasure, it does. ‘n only the champ can survive that journey.: The dwarf bellows out to all within earshot.: I proclaim thee the Champion of the Driftwood arena! Get yer gloat on, ‘n’ take a swig of ale. Hell, take a dozen. We’ll be singin’ for years to come of the great human Void-slayer! Our reward for taking out both Merga and her pet Voidwoken is 143 coins; a medium-sized venom rune; a mage cowl that might be good on Prince, it gives +1 Intelligence and +1 Pyrokinetic; some drugs; and our choice between gloves for Fane; boots for Lohse or Prince; a helmet for Sebille; and an amulet. The Devourer’s Claws are actually quite weak in terms of numbers; I just like them because they give +1 Strength. The boots and the helmet don’t provide anything useful, and while the gloves have higher numbers than the Claws, they also don’t provide any useful bonuses. So I just take the amulet: it gives +1 Intelligence and +1 Aerothurge, and it has a slot, so it’d go really well on Sebille. And I decide to swap out Prince’s current cowl for the new one, even though his current hat gives him +1 Summoning.  Arran gave us a key that led to a treasure vault as a reward for becoming the champion of the Driftwood arena. We had the opportunity to pick it from his pockets a bit earlier, but I opted against it – to earn it fair and square.  Where Murga used to sit, on top of the Voidwoken cage, there’s a hatch in the back with an unpickable lock. This is where it goes: the Driftwood Arena’s treasure vault. Arran mentioned that ‘only the champ can survive this journey,’ though. There’s something waiting on the other side of this hatch….  On the other side of the hatch and down a ladder is a door that’s been petrified shut. It’s not locked – it’s totally immobile. The space between the doors has been calcified over and it’s impossible to move. I could bash it down, but that would take a long while, and my weapons are likely to break from the effort. Luckily, there’s more than one way to bypass a locked door.     I could have used Phoenix Dive, but that puts down fire wherever I land, and the floor is covered in oil. Pipes are strewn all about the area with open mouths pointing at various spots throughout the room. Puddles of oil cake the floors and the pipes regularly spew out some form of brownish gas that turns anything it touches to stone. In the base game, it’s prevented by magic armour and by Magic Shell, but in Divinity: Unleashed, we’ll turn to stone unless we’re casting Armour of Frost over and over. Or we just wait for it to wear off.   Fane tried, but he couldn’t quite make it.  About twelve seconds later, he’s right as rain. Climbing up the nearby ladder and turning the valve on this furnace thing will turn off the pipes and make the room safe to wander in.  Further inward is another set of doors. This pair hasn’t been turned to stone and they don’t require any lockpicking, so in we go.  And here we get what we were promised: the Driftwood Arena’s treasure. A bunch of nice paintings; some nice urns and vases; a massive pile of gold (which in actuality only holds 234 gold), and two ornate treasure chests. I haven’t checked the chests yet, but, just in case, I bring Sebille over to the treasure room, for if any of them are locked and we need her special skills.    Nope, the chests aren’t locked, which is nice. The first chest contains a bit more money; a large water rune; and… an interesting key. I’ve never seen a key with teeth like that before.  The Key of the One. Weird that Murga had it – unless she never actually managed to get this far into the vault. Its purpose isn’t clear yet, but the fact that it’s glowing green tells me that it’s very important. And possibly radioactive. I better not lose it.  The other chest, meanwhile, holds a ton of money; a new kind of beartrap called a Displacer Trap, which teleports whoever touches it to a random location; and a legendary war hammer. The hammer, called Fore!, gives +2 Strength and has a 1 in 5 chance to set both Bleeding and Atrophied, which is actually really, really good numbers, but Hanal Lechet still not only offers more stats; it somehow does more damage, despite being a level weaker.  Bonus, Sebille’s Lucky Charm kicked in when I looked through the vases, and now I have more vendor trash.  With that, we’re made the champion of the Driftwood Arena, and we’ve finally, finally finished with the mysteries of the Black Bull Tavern. We’ll likely be back for one reason or another – namely, Lohar is hiding in its basement – but there are no other mysteries left for us to solve; no more elven murderers dicing people into stew cutlets; no more Voidwoken being locked away in its basement; and… well, there’s still a dwarven uprising taking place, but at least it’s not a mystery. And yet, there’s still quite a bit left of Driftwood for us to explore and uncover. Something about a Sourcerer tinkerer? And what of Mordus, the dwarf that’s gone rogue? Next time: one or both of these mysteries! In the meantime, we have one vote: Do we let Dorotya kiss us? If so, who do we let her kiss, and which boons do they get? She can kiss any or all of our party members; she will grant whatever boon we ask for from the five listed previously, but in exchange, whoever she kisses will receive a permanent -2 debuff to Constitution. Let me know in 72 hours!
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Jan 25, 2022 15:37
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Never look a gift kiss in the fangs, I say. Accept Dorotya's kiss and say that we saw a towering oak. Oh, and get everyone else kissed by Dorotya as well but vary up the bonuses. Give Sebille the dragon, Lohse the blue butterfly, and Prince the quill. I much prefer the subtitled videos to transcribed battles, for what it's worth. It cuts down on much of the extraneous reading, even if it was amusing to read different varieties on how these characters are maiming each other!
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Jan 26, 2022 02:10
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Olive Branch posted:Never look a gift kiss in the fangs, I say. Accept Dorotya's kiss and say that we saw a towering oak. Oh, and get everyone else kissed by Dorotya as well but vary up the bonuses. Give Sebille the dragon, Lohse the blue butterfly, and Prince the quill. These votes are pretty good so Ill match them
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Jan 26, 2022 04:22
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Olive Branch posted:Never look a gift kiss in the fangs, I say. Accept Dorotya's kiss and say that we saw a towering oak. Oh, and get everyone else kissed by Dorotya as well but vary up the bonuses. Give Sebille the dragon, Lohse the blue butterfly, and Prince the quill. Sure do this one. Also too bad you didn't drug up Loose before doing the Lizard fight. I like the idea of a drugged up naked Lohse murdering multiple dwarves after banging a lizard.
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Jan 26, 2022 15:46
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I just wanted to chime in to say that I also really enjoyed the subtitled videos as well. I think that format works well. I definitely want someone to get kissed by the spider, but I don't have an opinion on who or what reward to get.
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Jan 26, 2022 16:38
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Donkringel posted:Sure do this one.
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Jan 26, 2022 16:46
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 According to the vote, everybody gets some action from Dorotya, but what everybody sees in her gem is different. There are different bonuses based on what answer you give her when you stare into her gem.  If you have the Mystic tag, you can deduce what it is you see in Dorotya’s ring to give you a better idea of what bonus you might get. Since Fane is a Mystic, we know that he sees a ‘towering oak, a symbol of strength,’ which implies that whatever bonus he gets will be strength-related.   : Her fang painlessly sinks into your neck. You still hear her words, though they sound muffled, as if filtered through a glass wall.: You desired strength, and so my venom gives it to you.  : If you’re part spider, then… what is it that you just did to me? Did you drink something from me?: Oh yes. I know my way around your veiled form. I have seen your true self, and you have seen mine. There is nothing more to know.: She kisses her forefinger, then presses it against your forehead.: Now go. The game applies whatever Dorotya did to us as a Talent: something that adjusts our stats as the Talent dictates. With the Spider’s Kiss, we get whatever it is we saw in the gem, but in exchange…   In the base game, this honestly wasn’t such a big deal, and in fact was probably a really good trade in your favour. Constitution only increases your HP – but in the base game, you also have physical armour and magical armour, both of which act as distinct health bars that can be buffed, extended, healed, and so forth, with the proper skills and spells. With an ideal setup and some smart play, you should never run out of armour, since you’ll be as on top of that as you are should be with your HP. Also, it’s much easier to increase your armour stats with better gear, especially shields, which give a frankly obscene amount of both types of armour. But in Divinity: Unleashed, HP has a much bigger focus: physical and magical armour applies reductions to damage rather than being their own health meters, and HP is something that is affected directly every time you take damage. HP is much harder to get than armour, too: for more armour, you can just swap out for better gear, but you only get a higher HP cap with level ups. All this to say, the trade-off for getting Dorotya’s gifts is a much harder sell in Divinity: Unleashed than it is in the base game. HP is much more important in the mod, and taking a -2 to Constitution is actually a hard punch to the gut. But hey! Fane got a +2 to Strength for it, so now he hits significantly harder than he did before. And I could ‘undo’ Spider’s Kiss on my next level up by putting my two points into Constitution if I really wanted. Anyway, other people need to make out with a spider, now.         Lohse is last to kiss Dorotya, but she gets something different.    : I can’t give you endless life. Instead, take this Phoenix Idol. Keep it on you. Should you die, the idol will resurrect you. You can cheat death once this way. : Far be it from me to call the kettle black, but it really goes to show you that nobody is ever as they seem.: My girl, I am exactly as I seem. You’ve seen my true self. There’s nothing more to know. We had learned of the Phoenix Idol from a script way, way back in Kniles’ gory playground. Whoever is in possession of the Glowing Idol of Rebirth will, upon death, be instantly resurrected. No need for resurrection scrolls or spending a whopping three AP or strategizing around delaying turns. However, it only works once: after that, it becomes an Ashen Idol of Rebirth. A totally useless lawn ornament that sits in your inventory. However, you can craft a new Glowing Idol of Rebirth by taking the Ashen Idol of Rebirth and mixing it with a Resurrection scroll. Bam, instant Glowing Idol of Rebirth, ready to be used once again! There was actually a fairly powerful cheese tactic in the base game with the Glowing Idol of Rebirth: casting a Resurrection scroll in combat costs three AP, right? But dying and letting the Glowing Idol of Rebirth save you costs you zero. The Idol has only one use – but you can craft things in the middle of a fight. Good for if you need a specific potion right there on the spot. The thing is, though: crafting only costs one AP. So what a player could do is, have the Idol in their inventory; die; get resurrected; spend one AP to craft a new Glowing Idol of Rebirth; perform some action that costs one or two AP; use their last AP doing something self-destructive; die; get resurrected; and repeat for as long as you have Resurrection scrolls to last you. Since you always move last at the end of a turn if you’re resurrected, this means that the turn you pull this strategy off with will never actually end, and nobody else will ever get a turn again. Divinity: Unleashed removed this strategy by, one, making it so that resurrecting characters must pass the turn they’re resurrected on, and two, making it so that Glowing Idol of Rebirths can’t be trigged twice on the same turn on the same character. But that’s not all! Check out this screenshot (not mine, taken from Google and cropped to be as spoiler-free as I can):  Remember those mercenaries that we could hire from that lizard on the Lady Vengeance? There was an exploit (not a bug, technically) in the earlier versions of the game where Dorotya could give a mercenary that you hired a kiss, and they would receive the same buffs and benefits as normal. So you could hire a thug; have them get kissed by Dorotya for a Glowing Idol of Rebirth; take it off them; and then give it to one of your other characters. Repeat this for every single mercenary you can hire – fourteen, for a maximum of eighteen idols if you use all four party members to get them too. This was patched out back in early 2019, so that exploit that I mentioned a few times whenever I brought up the mercenaries can’t be done anymore. There was even a second bug (not an exploit, technically) with the Glowing Idol of Rebirth! If you put the Idol inside a bag, and then you put that bag inside another bag, then the Glowing Idol of Rebirth wouldn’t be consumed on use, and you’d still get an Ashen Idol of Rebirth to replace it. You could get infinite idols this way. This was also patched out. But that’s not even all! There’s a third exploit (and is probably a bug, technically) that you can do with Glowing Idols of Rebirth. One that you can still do today, and in fact, I did it with this very save:  If you pickpocket Dorotya while she’s in a conversation with someone and is about to give them the Glowing Idol of Rebirth, you can actually steal it from her pockets – and she’ll still give it to whoever it is she’s speaking with.  In this screenshot, you can see that I have two Glowing Idols of Rebirth: one in Lohse’s bag and one in Sebille’s. Dorotya will give whoever sees the chrysalis in her ring the idol, so you can do this for a maximum of five idols that you can mete out to your party, and they’ll all work as intended. (I also steal the belt and the amulet. The belt has +1 Constitution and +1 Thievery, which goes really well on Sebille, and the amulet, well, it’s just worth a fair amount of money.) Although I do wind up using both Glowing Idols of Rebirth in this update, I’ll probably toss one of them in the next one. This isn’t a ‘break the game over my knee’ kind of LP and I don’t want to game the system by exploiting Rebirth idols.  Anyway! Our next mission objective is to investigate Mordus’ house, which is just next door to the Black Bull Tavern. On the way, we might as well stop by Stewert and tell him that the mission is complete.  : The tavern’s elven cook was behind the disappearances of the Magisters. She lured them into her kitchen before… well. She killed them. That’s what’s important. : The… the cook? Of course, of course! I had worked it out myself, naturally… I was just about to present my findings to the Magisters… well done, stranger… : That doesn’t matter, Stewert. What’s important is that she’ll be dealt with, and that you let the matter rest.: It matters to me! Now answer me – is the murderess alive or dead?!: That’s irrelevant. It’s not your problem to deal with; it’s the Magisters. Just let it go, man.: I am a Magister! Don’t you understand?! Even if they don’t want me in their ranks anymore, I’ll always be one of them! Now answer me!: … Fine. She’s dead. I killed her myself.: The elf’s face falls a little – the chase is over, and he remains outside the Magister ranks. : Why? : I’m sorry to say, then, that they know everything. I’ve reported my findings and I’ve collected the reward.: I… I had hoped maybe I could have been the one to solve the disappearances. Perhaps my comrades would have accepted me back into the fold then… I never would have stopped those disappearances… I’m just another bloody useless elf. The Magisters were right to get rid of my kind….Man, this is hard to watch    If we head in between the Black Bull Tavern and Mordus’ house, we find… a kitty! It’s not nearly as good looking as Salem is, of course. : The cat stares up at you. Its midnight-black pupils are too prominent for you to discern the colour of its glazed eyes. : The tainted fish down in the market are so rank and putrid that even I can smell their fecund stink. Wouldn’t you rather something fresh? : Wouldn’t say no. Fills the belly. But the other ones… so yummy. They taste like shadows and spoilt cream. : You’re going in a poor direction, cat. Those fish have been tainted by the Void. It may be trying to lure you in with its ‘black cotton,’ but take it from someone who’s been there and back: the Void is not pleasant. : Here. Not one, but two fresh fish instead.: The cat’s belly grumbles as he prepares to scarf down the fish. It isn’t likely to be a graceful sight. The cat looks up at you and gives you a groggy meow in thanks.: Maybe… *yawn*… I should stick to the good stuck for a while. But I’ll miss the shadow.: He pokes his nose at your map, leaving a wet spot.: I think you’ll find something interesting there. Found some goodies during life number six. Now, if you don’t mind… I need a bit of ‘me time’.If you feed Pox Void-tainted fish, he’ll become Diseased and he’ll die shortly after, but he’ll still mark the spot of his goodies on your map. But I don’t want to kill the poor kitty; he’s just hooked on some bad food, that’s all   Around the back of the Black Bull Tavern is a very small chicken coop with just two chickens walking around, offering nothing valuable but some fluff for discussion. But there’s also a mound right up against the wall that I can dig up.   … Wait, was Pox being literal? Is this dead cat carcass one of Pox’s past lives?  Making my way around to the rear side of the Black Bull Tavern, I find… some nails! Finally, it’s been a long time since I got some nails. Never pass up the opportunity to hoard some! Well, ‘hoard’ is perhaps the wrong word here, because I use one of these sets immediately on Prince’s Fairy Shoes. They match his level and they’re Legendary, so they’ll last me for another few levels, at the least.  Also behind the tavern are a pair of outhouses. Only two, which seems like a mistake, given that the tavern is also a place to stay, but I doubt building regulations are a thing in this world yet. One of them is occupied, as well.  : Occupied! : Are you well? ‘Movements’ normally don’t force a person to make those noises….: Do I… ungh… do I sound like I’m alright? : ‘Tainted stew?’ Is the tavern’s food poisoned? (More than it was, anyway.): Mixed a little… ungh… fish into some of my stew. Bloody mackerel must’ve been… tainted. Save me, Lucian…. From that exchange, we learned that, if you put bad food into good food, you turn the good food bad. Who would have thought? Of course, this will be relevant, which is why I transcribed it, but it can also be a nasty trick to play on someone in multiplayer, because they won’t know that the stew is tainted if you give it to them/slip it into their inventory. But eating food has always been a typically weak strategy, even in Divinity: Unleashed where the Five Star Diner perk was massively buffed, so, food shenanigans likely won’t come up often in a typical playthrough. Anyway, that’s enough beating around the bush. Time to invade Mordus’ privacy.  : This must be the place Lohar mentioned. It looks… unassuming enough.Given that there are exactly two residential houses in all of Driftwood, I sort of find that hard to believe. The front door is locked, and while Sebille could pick it very easily, there’s an alternative:  The back door is wide open. The game auto saves when I approach the back door, though. That’s not a great sign.  Mordus’ house is a single room with a table; a kitchenette area; a chest for his belongings; and… that’s it. Siva’s house wasn’t much bigger and she at least had a bed and a partition in the corner for a bathtub.  Sitting in the corner of the one-room house is a dwarf, sitting on a stool, itself sitting on a hatch leading to a cellar. Every single building we’ve been inside so far has had one, so it makes sense that Mordus had a basement, too. Lohar told us that he had people scouring Mordus’ house for clues on where he went and what he was doing – remember, Lohar’s adopted daughter went crazy and attacked him with a knife from Mordus’ personal armoury, so he’s got something skeevy going on. But these is one dwarf, sitting asleep by herself. Not much of a search party, if you ask me. One of the books is titled ‘Mordus’ Excavation Log.’ If there’s any clues as to what he might be up to, it’d be in there.   Oh, this… this doesn’t give me any tips on Mordus’ whereabouts at all. But it does update a quest that I had started way, way back in Fort Joy, just after I had defeated High Judge Orivund. This is a clue on one of those new armour sets that was added into the game. Well, it’s not progress on Mordus, but I’ll take it! New armour is always nice to have, especially if it’s as slick as Sebille’s Tyrant set. Might as well read some more while I’m here.   So, a place called the Stonegarden graveyard is crawling with undead, and one person laid to ‘rest’ there is Mangan Oxe, who booby-trapped their crypt with a mist that would petrify anyone that it touched. That’s interesting, actually; I wonder if there’s any connection between Mangan Oxe and whatever series of traps is underneath the Arena under the Black Bull Tavern.  That’s about all there is to find in the upper floor, here. If there’s anything else to learn about Mordus, it’d be in the basement. What’s interesting to me is that everything in Mordus’ house is labelled as ‘owned,’ which, like, yeah, they should be, but not only is this dwarf asleep, she really shouldn’t care if I rifle through Mordus’ stuff. Hell, Lohar wants to talk to Mordus and it’s probably going to end in Mordus’ death; it’s a mystery why a sleeping woman would give a drat if I read his excavation logs. Unless….  : (Hmm… this woman is clearly alive, but she rests like the dead. Or perhaps she’s not resting at all….): She calmly opens her left eye, then her right. : Do you normally make it a habit to sleep in other people’s homes? : I’ve spoken with Lohar. He’s given me permission to aid in the search for Mordus and I need to get into the cellar.: The dwarf unfolds her arms and shoots to her feet. : Awrite, human! Right glad Lohar ain’t left us here to wither. : You say that like you’ve been waiting here a long time. Do you know what it is they hope to find? : Can you tell me more about Mordus? Perhaps something new you’ve uncovered?: That weird priest’s been hangin’ round Lohar fer ages. Now he’s vanished. Those half-wits below’ll know more.: Alright, thank you for the information. I’ll see what I can do.: Get to it, then. But tell the lunkheads that Glenna sent you before they bash yer brains in. And with that, she moves her chair and lets me pass by. Let’s see what Mordus has got in that basement of his.  The answer, so far, is 5,000 EXP, which is nice. Right off the bat, this is pretty spacious for a cellar. Siva had an entire laboratory beneath her house, complete with a vat of liquid Source, but this is mostly empty: it’s just a hollow space with a house sitting on top of it.  He’s got some big-rear end casks of wine sitting down here, which… I guess isn’t unusual in Drfitwood? Siva had them too. You wouldn’t know it considering that the last six updates were exclusively about Driftwood, but there’s not much to do here other than distill some good wine and get wicked drunk all the time. There are no dwarves down here, but as I explore the basement, I start to hear voices.   : Ya think a crowbar would open this thing? What, ya got rocks knockin’ ‘round that noggin of yours? We’d have more luck askin’ Duna to open it for us than for it to budge by our own hands. Well, as it turns out, as I explore the basement a little bit, Fane manages to pass a Wits check. His Wits are currently 11, with a single point boost from one of his gear pieces, so it’s not a difficult pass to make. And with a throw of this lever….   Ah, our missing dwarves.  : What’s a pair of good lookin’ dwarves like yourselves doing in a dirty evil Sourcerer’s basement? : Likewise? Fair’s fair and all. : Good to see you’d rather flap yer lips than fight. We’re here lookin’ for a slippery snake called Mordus. This here’s his quarters, but ain’t no sign of him. : What a coincidence: I’m on the search for someone with that name myself. Have you learned anything from your time together in that, uh, second-basement? : What do you mean by ‘funny?’ Because I know ‘funny,’ and from the stories I’ve heard, Mordus wasn’t the type to tell jokes.: Well at first, he was just buddyin’ around with Lohar and the rest, ya know? But then he’d start lookin’ all sickly and run off for a day or two. Then some stranger tried taking ol’ Lohar down but got himself caught and tied up. Ain’t no coincidence Mordus weren’t hangin’ around then.: She taps her finger against her forehead.: A woman knows things. Nothin’s getting’ past me.: Well, let’s skip to the end: my gang and I have been sent here by Lohar, and we’ve been told to tell you that we have Glenna’s blessing. We can take over from here.: Best we head off, then. We’ve got business to attend to. And then the two dwarves run off, heading up the stairs and disappearing. Now, there’s a whole second half of the basement for us to explore. If the dwarves were any good at their jobs, there shouldn’t be anything left for me to pick through. But they also got themselves locked in, so, just in case, Lohse is going to sit out and man the lever. If I get trapped, at least she’ll be on the outside and can flip the switch.  This… still isn’t a lot. In fact, it’s mostly less than the first half of the basement. Literally, half of this room is just dirt.   There’s nothing behind this painting, and there’s not a lot to look through… no bookshelves, no barrels, nothing clickable other than the desk.  The desk has a pretty nice amulet that gives +1 to both Warfare and Geomancy that’d go well on Fane, but his current amulet gives him immunity to Stunned, and that’s not something I’m willing to give up yet, so, into the wares bin it goes.   When I head down the stairs and step onto the dirt, I trip a pressure plate that I couldn’t see, which in turn shuts the door behind me. It would have been nice if one of the dwarves had remembered to mention that. Well, I’m down here, so, might as well keep looting.  One chest holds 153 coins, which is nice; the other holds Mordus’ dirty laundry as cloth scraps, which is less nice.  The bottom crate holds nothing; the top crate holds some Pixie Dust, which, at least in Divinity: Original Sin 1, was a powerful crafting ingredient. Since crafting is nerfed across the board in 2, not so much anymore. These boxes are stacked in an unusual spot, though. I wonder if they’re trying to hide something.  Ah, a hidden bookshelf. A good place to hide something small and valuable, such as, well, forbidden knowledge, but also a key, or a switch to open the door again.  Not quite something so material as that, but that Haste scroll is nice. And there’s something else – something that’s valuable in a way that doesn’t provide cash.   : Lohar will want to know of this….Okay, so, let’s review: Mordus was a ‘priest’ that wormed his way into Lohar’s… well, not ‘good graces,’ but at least his company, but he was always kind of shady and untrustworthy. He’d hang around for a little bit, before, as Aileen put it, he ‘got all sickly’ and would disappear for a few days. On one of these disappearances, an attempt was made on Lohar’s life, but it failed. Later, Lohar’s own adopted daughter made a second attempt using a knife that Lohar recognized as Mordus’, but that attacked failed too, and now Mordus isn’t anywhere to be found. According to this letter, Mordus was acting on the orders of ‘our Lord,’ who, upon hearing of Mordus’ repeated failures, saw fit to grant Mordus something called ‘Mord’Akaim.’ Whatever Mord’Akaim is, it requires ‘excessive’ Source, which– … Which Mordus would most easily get from Sourcerers. When we first landed on Reaper’s Coast, we saw a Voidwoken attacking a Sourcerer, even though she was wearing one of the collars, and when it overpowered her, it didn’t kill her, but it abducted her and flew west. Is it possible that Mordus is controlling the Voidwoken? But he himself is a Sourcerer, according to Lohar – they’d sooner eat him than obey him. Additionally, this letter mentions that a ship called the Peacemaker was carrying weapons meant for Arx. And according to Baran Levere (or his impersonator, anyway), there’s a holiday called Lucian’s Day coming up, and there’s going to be a shitload of people in Arx, very, very soon. We met with the Peacemaker’s captain in the Black Bull Tavern; she was being haunted by the ship’s lookout and being tortured by the sound of a ringing bell. She ran aground because she believed that she was following a lighthouse’s light by Driftwood, but Driftwood does not have a lighthouse – it was a ruse set up by the dwarves to make Magister ships run aground. The captain insisted that the Peacemaker had nothing in its hold, but this letter not only says otherwise, but that those weapons need to reach Arx ‘unharmed.’ Something real big is gearing up in Arx. And Mordus has been trying obsessively to kill Lohar, and now that he has whatever Mord’Akaim is, he’s probably going to try again, and soon.  Well, one crisis at a time. We’re currently stuck inside Mordus’ basement. This isn’t an issue, given that Lohse’s is outside and could throw the lever whenever, and I can also just leave via Teleporter Pyramid or even by Waypoint travel, but even ignoring those, there’s still a solution to this puzzle.  Back up on the platform is a unique, out-of-place object: a statue of a dwarf. It looks worse for wear.   : The stone is cold against your palm. If this figure once help power, it has since been depleted.You might think that the solution is to give the figure power.   No dice, though. Source is a consumable resource, and in the base game, Bless cost one point, so the developers needed to account for the possibility that you didn’t have Source to spend (I don’t believe it’s possible to get this far without knowing Bless.) The solution is that this is actually a Wits check.  : There’s no mistaking the sound of stone chafing stone. The entrance to the chamber grinds open, filling your lungs with slightly less-stale air. Sebille was the only one witty enough to, you know, actually investigate the figure rather than just touch it. Well, that’s it for Mordus’ basement. We found a letter that implicates quite a lot about his motives and methods, and it foreshadows something really intense for the city of Arx, but we don’t know where the man himself is. Although, when I do one more pass of the basement, just to double check everything….  … Sebille’s Wits come in again, and she finds a gigantic skull decoration hanging off the wall in the far corner. It even has glowing red eyes. Why the hell does that need a Wits check, and why the hell is Sebille the only one witty enough to notice it?  Interacting with it gives me 1,000 EXP, which is enough to level up Sebille but everyone else is still a ways off, which is pretty frustrating for me and my efforts to keep everyone equal. According to Fane, this device is a lock, and one of the eyes is missing. The solution is to find the skull’s eye and slot it back into its socket to unlock the door. But, luckily, I happen to have a lockpick lawyer on my side.    It may have been an intricate lock, but it’s a pretty silly one if it can be beaten by some lockpicks. Also, Sebille has really been a bit of a superhero these past sixty seconds.  The lockpick unlocks a new, smaller room with nothing in it… except for a hatch leading deeper underground. Mordus tried to hide wherever this went with a particularly intricate-looking lock; there’s a good chance that whatever we find down there is going to tell us a lot about Mordus and his personality.  What we find… is a second door with a second lock. Except this lock is made of what appears to be Source, and therefore isn’t corporeal.  So, we’ll have to play Mordus’ little game to unlock it. Hovering in the air in front of the locked door is a four-by-four grid of symbols: wavy lines; wreathes of flame; and a sprout. And on the floor in front of the door is a four-by-four grid of pressure plates.  Standing on any plate will have that plate, and any plate directly adjacent (but not diagonal) to it, light up with the blue wavy lines.  But if someone or something else stands on a pressure plate, or an adjacent plate, that’s already lit up, it changes the symbol to fire.  And if one plate is triggered by two adjacent plates, that symbol changes again to the sprout. It doesn’t go any higher than that: triggering more plates just keeps the symbol on the sprout. It’s a variant of the basic on-off puzzle, where pressing one button turns on all the other buttons, and if a button is already on, it’s turned off. Instead of needing to turn all of the switches on, we need to recreate the password floating in the air in front of the door. The solution to this puzzle requires five button presses. We are a party of four, and while we could use a summon or Sir Lora to try and trigger the fifth plate, summons are generally disobedient when it comes to out-of-combat movement and prefer to stay as close to their summoner as they can at all times. Luckily, there are two alternatives: you could just use common items that you have in your inventory, such as weapons or amulets or most crafting ingredients. But, even better, the room is littered with broken vases that, while they generally serve no other purpose, can still be used as dead weight.    For anyone using this LP as a walkthrough, and you’re having a hard time seeing the vases in this screenshot, then, label the grid like this: ABCD EFGH IJKL MNOP Put something on C, F, H, J, and P, and that’ll open the door.  The first thing we find upon entering this new area is… a workstation, covered in blood, including an entire mug filled to the top with it. Human skulls line the table among other weird science materials, and, more importantly…  … we’re surrounded by rotten egg clusters. Huge eggs, covered in blood and giblets, and they’re moving very slightly. There are also barrels of ooze nearby, and we’re standing at the edge of a high ground, so, odds are pretty dang good that the eggs are going to hatch or something.   There’s some kind of control panel with four differently-coloured buttons on top of it, and in the center of the room is… an undead person, fastened to a metal table, still fully dressed in warlock robes. Behind it is a puddle of liquid Source, as well as an entire condensed Source Orb, ripe for the collecting. Mordus needed Source, a lot of it, to achieve whatever Mord’Akaim is. It looks like he managed to capture himself an undead Sourcerer and started leeching it dry.  : Be… wary. The urns will shatter. The bones will… rise.: The glowing corpse looks to you. The erratic rising and falling of its sternum is accompanied by melodramatic gurgles. : What a fascinating device. Do you know how to operate it? : (Yes, finally, some connection!) ‘Liberty cannot be offered to one without being offered the many.’: Its head leisurely lolls toward you in response, its glowing eyes revealing surprise at your knowledge of the tongue.: Freedom – a single touch of the second from left. My freedom. And theirs.: The creature is quiet once more, save its constant wheeze.Okay, so, this guy is saying that if I press the green button, it’ll give him freedom ‘and theirs.’ He also said ‘the urns will shatter’ and ‘the bones will rise,’ so, if I take all of this into account, Mordus has undead bodyguards hiding in the urns that will awaken as soon as I press that button. I should do some looting wherever I can first, then.    I try to pickpocket the undead guy, but it seems he’s just a touch too high off the ground for Sebille to easily reach. Well, at least I can take that Source Orb that probably belongs to him.  … You know what, let’s just get this started. This undead guy might be an Eternal, but that doesn’t mean he’s friendly. I think I’ll take my chances and fight Mordus’ personal army myself.  Five skeletal enemies all pop out of vases, surrounding the battlefield that I’m standing in. Three of them have the high ground against me. And they are all level 11; I am level 10. Divinity: Original Sin 1 and 2 are both meticulously planned out when it comes to scaling and level progression, so even a one-level difference like this is huge. I’m outnumbered, outlevelled, and surrounded. Good. They need all the help they can get. 
Maple Leaf fucked around with this message at 04:58 on Feb 8, 2022 |
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Feb 8, 2022 04:37
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: Freedom! About time, too. I can’t tell you how long Mordus has been draining me. I’m absolutely famished for Source and sinew.: The creature harumphs. : You said you’re a master? I’m actually looking for a ‘Master of the Source’ to aid me in mastering my own.: I offer you life and learning, and you’re still begging for more? You’re wasting my time. Here… just take a book. Its wisdom might do you some good.: Speaking of which, allow me to share some wisdom of my own.: The undead creature bares two rows of broken, cratered teeth.: Stay out of my way.      The lich breaks Mordus’ machine, then arduously teleports himself out of the basement, one jump at a time, while going on about being ‘whole’ again. Well, this fight ended up being pretty dicey, but like I said, that was to be expected. I had every disadvantage going into that fight. But I still came out on top, with the lich being a big help; the guy hit like a truck whenever, you know, he felt like it.   A round of resurrections and a quick nap is enough to restore us back to full. And now we’re free to loot Mordus’ morbid basement for whatever goodies it contains. Speaking of Mordus… the most that we learned about him coming down here is that he’s messing around with necromancy, and he’s apparently okay with these giant, gross, bloody eggs taking up his living space. Our opinion of the guy was already rock bottom, so none of this is really a surprise, but it also doesn’t tell us anything about, like, where he is, what he’s doing, what Mord’Akaim is, who he’s working for…. The most pertinent information that we learned down here is that Mordus invented a device that can siphon a person’s Source out of them. We’ve already seen tech like that, and it’s gross and morbid and reason enough to hunt the guy down, but it’s also nothing new. And I sort of doubt he’s working for the Magisters. Anyway, looting!  Frustratingly, the only cadavers that were carrying anything were the Hailcaller and the Falmeweaver, and they were holding money and some grenades. That was a tough fight, but our reward isn’t good loot or cash, which is a bummer.  At the northeastern corner of the room are a pair of bookshelves – rather far removed from the rest of the dungeon. It’s on the entire opposite side from Mordus’ workbench and there are no other furnishings around the shelves. Going by Mordus’ cellar one level up, and how he tried to hide that one bookshelf behind some boxes, I’d guess that Mordus was trying to hide something here. Some sort of valuable information.  Score: a brand new Aerothurge skillbook and a diary labelled ‘skill research.’ The diary doesn’t tell me anything about Mordus and what he’s doing, though: it just says, wholly transcribed, ‘This book is filled with pages of notes on necromancy, eternal life, and the dark arts. Near the end, you find a passage detailing how to inscribe this darkness on paper.’ I learn something interesting from it, though….  See that scroll? The teal one with the flame on it? Just as there are gods (and presumably angels) that have granted me the power to Bless, there are devils and demons (and presumably a hell) that can grant their followers the ability to Curse. We’ve run across a handful of them already. With these recipes from Mordus’ personal stash, we can craft scrolls that give us the power to Curse anyone or anything we’d like. Just as Bless is a powerful buffing spell that gives a ton of bonuses and can cure all kinds of ailments, Curse can be an extremely powerful status effect for our enemies. And all we need to craft such a scroll is a blank piece of paper; something that’s been touched by the Void (such as those fish that are all over the place in Driftwood); and one (1) soul of the damned, i.e. a Tormented Soul of any quality. You can just get those anywhere! We’re all a little damned. That’s a fascinating find; I’ve played through this game at least three times and I don’t recall ever finding a recipe like this. It could be a powerful option for some fights and bosses in the future.  In the second bookshelf, there’s another, unique book called a ‘grubby tome.’  ‘In void you fell, and from void you come. Reveal your truth to me!’ So, the buddy that was strapped to the table was a lich; one of the most powerful forms of undead creatures, able to command an unlimited font of Source (over time). We’ve let this one go, which, uh, was probably a mistake? It’s not like I wanted him out; I wanted to save that for a vote, but the enemy skeletons broke his table and he slipped free. Well, if we run into him again, at least we can learn his name. So, I mentioned before that one of the bookshelves has a new Aerothurge spell in it, right?  Apportation: Teleport items in an area and move them into your inventory. In Divinity: Unleashed, confiscates weapons and sets Atrophy for one turn.This skill was pretty useless in the base game, but the mod gives it a handy buff. Aerothurge is more about buffs and the only debuffs the school normally gives is Shocked/Stunned, so one skill giving it access to Atrophy gives it some unusual, but welcome, flexibility. Before I leave Mordus’ underground workstation/torture chamber, there’s a bit more looting to do.  To the room’s west wall is a quartet of sarcophagi, each of them requiring a Strength check to pass. Luckily, Fane has all the muscle that even a person with muscles could ever ask for.  Hey, not a bad start. And they require level 3 Loremaster to decipher, which means they’re probably pretty drat good! … Oh, these are Finesse boots. They have to compete with Sebille’s current boots, which are a part of the Tyrant’s set.  Armour-wise, they’re far and away better than her current boots, which isn’t surprising given that her old boots are three levels old. I can live (albeit begrudgingly) without the +2 Lucky Charm, and some extra nails will transfer the slipping immunity to the new set, but that +5% Dodge chance and that whole +1 extra movement that my current boots give me will be sorely missed. I can’t keep the Tyrant’s set forever; it’s already being overshadowed, numbers-wise, by drat near everything I pick up. But I also can’t break the set. So, I’ll hold onto these boots and put them in my pack until I have a whole set to replace for Sebille.  Let’s see what’s in tomb number two.  poo poo, what a score! The large-sized Masterwork rune (skipping medium-sized altogether) is loot enough, but you see that picture frame next to it? That’s a crafting ingredient called a Rune Frame of Power that mixes with runes; add it to any rune and that rune will grant stat buffs according to the type of rune that it’s used on. For example, if I add this frame to the large Masterwork rune, then it’ll grant +2 Strength to anything the rune is slotted into, on top of the other bonuses it gives. So, for example, if I slip this rune into this frame and then put it on Fane’s Hanel Lechet (not that I can, it has no rune slot), then he’ll do +13% extra damage thanks to the rune, and he’ll have +2 Strength on top of that, which would have him do an obscene amount of damage, at least compared to what he was doing before. But here’s the thing: I’m not going to do that. Runes are recyclable; frames are not. As soon as I mix this frame with any rune, I consume the frame forever and that rune specifically will be permanently buffed. I mentioned way, way back in Amadia’s Sanctuary, when I first talked about runes, that runes could be buffed with crafting but that the crafting ingredients were rare and did not replenish. This is what I meant. There is one level of rune above large, appropriately called ‘giant.’ I’m going to hoard every frame I find until I start getting giant runes. In the meantime, though, hell yes I’ll take that large Masterwork rune, thank you!  Lamely, there’s nothing else in the other two sarcophagi. But that’s alright: the rune and the frame are honestly reward enough.  And that’s it for Mordus’ basement. A letter; a secret lab; an immortal lich with infinite source; some powerful loot; but not the man himself. Still, I ought to report back to Lohar; he’ll want to read the letter.  … Oh. That’s… the lich would have done that. And using Spirit Vision doesn’t reveal her spirit anywhere, meaning the lich probably consumed her very Source. I, uh… maybe shouldn’t bring that up with Lohar.  Back at Lohar’s cabin underneath the tavern, it’s time to give him the… good? Bad? The news. It’s time to give him the news.  : I had investigated Mordus’ house, particularly his basement, and I found something that may interest you.: I asked you for a man, not a note.: He takes the letter from your hands and reads it quickly, face hardening with anger as he reaches the end.: Bloody godsdamned spit-sucking weasel! : I was hoping you could tell me what ‘Mord’Akaim’ might be.: Hell if I know, but it don’t sound good. Seems as though Mordus wasn’t mine after all. Trouble is, I don’t know whose he is.: Of course… that’s why I haven’t heard from the cave. Sabotage. : If it’s truly something so dangerous that it can endanger the entire realm, I’ll need to know what it is.: Look… me and mine, we move… classified cargo. Take it right off Magister ships and put it into the hands of those that’ll use it rightly. Trouble is, we came across something no-one ought to have. Not the Magisters, not my folks, not the gods themselves.: I ordered it to be destroyed. I guess Mordus – whoever he’s working for – wants it for themselves. : You’re asking me to go headfirst into this mission and you still haven’t told me what it is I’m facing.: The less you know, the better. Trust me. Stop Mordus, and I’ll take care of the rest.: My people had an operation up in the caves outside town – good access to Red ships and plenty of privacy, too. Haven’t heard from ‘em in a couple days now. I thought maybe we’d lost the messengers to Voidwoken in the hills, but now… I think it’s worse than I thought.: I’d bet my lucky left foot Mordus is in the cave. You’ve got to get to him before he gets his hands on that cargo. : I don’t appreciate you giving me such a runaround when it comes to whatever weapon that ship was carrying.: … But I can tell that you’re being sincere over its gravity. I’ll do what I can.: Finally someone with a little sense around here. Give me your map. I’ll show you where we were operating – where I think Mordus will be. I don’t want to know what’ll happen if he gets what he’s after….Lohar says that he and his group of revolutionaries intercepted a Magister ship; found something incredibly dangerous in its cargo; and he wanted it destroyed, but Mordus defected and wanted it kept for himself. At the same time, the Peacemaker was recently crashed into the bluffs by Driftwood, where everyone but the captain drowned. She insisted that the ship’s cargo hold was empty. We’ve been on two Magister ships over the course of this story. What sort of weapon would Magisters keep in the holds of their ships? A weapon so powerful, so dangerous, that even a revolutionary leader like Lohar would rather say “no, gently caress that” and order it destroyed rather than use it for himself?  There’s just one last thing left to do in Driftwood before we’ve finished with the whole town and we can start exploring elsewhere: a little loose thread that we’ve been introduced to before but we’ve yet to put much effort into concluding. A loose thread named Higba the Tinkerer. Next time: investigating the stink that looms over Driftwood! Maple Leaf fucked around with this message at 20:40 on Feb 8, 2022 |
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Feb 8, 2022 04:38
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Maple Leaf posted:Lohar says that he and his group of revolutionaries intercepted a Magister ship; found something incredibly dangerous in its cargo; and he wanted it destroyed, but Mordus defected and wanted it kept for himself. As I recall, the ship that brought us to Fort Joy had Deathfog on board. Might it be that stuff?
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Feb 8, 2022 19:55
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So did you get a skillbook from that Lich? It sounds like he offered you a choice, and when you asked about him tutoring you he just threw a random one at you?
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Feb 8, 2022 22:26
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Schwartzcough posted:So did you get a skillbook from that Lich? It sounds like he offered you a choice, and when you asked about him tutoring you he just threw a random one at you? He did; it was a Provoke skillbook for the Warfare class. Which Fane hasn't learned yet, so I guess it's a reasonable reward.
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Feb 8, 2022 22:42
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Liches in this game are kind of dickwads. "Teach me a skill!" "LOL K you didn't specify, here's a book about making people REALLY angry with you by shouting some insults."
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Feb 10, 2022 05:28
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 There’s just one thing left to do in Driftwood, and then we can move on to the rest of the second act. Act Two is a big place, and being locked in a little fishing village in the bottom corner of the map can only bring us so much entertainment. Way back, when we first entered the Magister barracks, we were told that the main suspect of the Magister disappearances was a Sourcerer tinkerer named Higba. We’ve since proved Higba’s innocence, but the Magisters are still after him because, well, he’s a Sourcerer and the Magisters aren’t exactly our friends.  Across the street from Mordus’ house is a massive building – a fishing… lodge? A… butcher’s shop for fish? What do you call those? The game calls the building a ‘factory,’ but is that really the most appropriate word? I guess they produce fish for the markets to sell, but the term ‘factory’ implies, to me, at least, that they make the fish rather than catching them, salting them, and selling them raw. Well, whatever the case. It’s a big place with all sorts of boxes, barrels, and fish piles to rifle through.  Most of them yield no real results, naturally, but that’s the Skinner’s Box of the Lucky Charm stat: you gotta keep looking, because you will eventually find something.  It’s a pooch! And it’s staring at something in particular towards the house.  : What’s caught your attention so thoroughly? : You’ll be hard-pressed to find something that doesn’t smell bad around these parts. : Not like this! This smells real bad. This smells… evil.Hmm… while I’m not going to say that whatever smells bad is Higba’s fault, it’s nonetheless a fact that Higba is a Sourcerer, and Source attracts Voidwoken. I guess I should expect some action inside this fishery.  Some of the barrels and boxes of fish have poison clouds hanging above them. They won’t poison you if you search them, but they will give you the Smelly status for ten turns whenever you do. Smelly reduces everyone’s Attitude with you by -10, but it also makes enemy assailants less likely to attack you. Good for your wizards; bad for your barterers and talkers. This ring gives +1 Necromancy and Summoning. Fane’s good with his rings right now and it’ll be a rare find to get something that can give Prince even more Summoning at this point, so it’s wares.  When we first walk into the factory, we overhear a conversation between two Magisters and the factory’s foreman over ‘pulling up every plank until [they] find him.’ Which is unfortunately cut short because I’m just too goddamn stinky for them to hold an honest conversation.  : You’re searching for the tinkerer, correct? You may call off the search – the true culprit was the chef in the Black Bull Tavern, and she’s already been… well, perhaps ‘apprehended’ is too weak a word, but she’s been dealt with. : In that case, then no. I have not seen anything that seems suspicious, nor have I seen anyone that matches that description. : A foul creature? You mean… like… a ghoul, perhaps?: The Magister looks at you, trying to understand what you’re saying. : Right, how foolish of me. Ghouls wouldn’t haunt a fishing factory so close to the sea – they’d haunt either deeper inland, or they’d haunt a ship. Perhaps a merfolk, then? They can get rather territorial. : Something even more dastardly than a merfolk on the front step of their abode? What could be worse – could it be… a golem made of fish, held together by the same foul magics that bind the Voidwoken to our realm? I once read that a charnel golem– : Will you shut up! It’s a human. A Sourcerer, dressed as a tinkerer. He’s behind the disappearance of several Magisters. : I’ve already told you that he’s not the killer, although I suppose he could still be guilty of something. Do you have any evidence of his crimes?: Why else would he run? If he had nothing to hide, he would have nothing to fear. Besides, he was seen with the effects of one of our company. I dread to think how he came about them. We chased him to this factory, but lost him on the docks.: Now, I have a patrol to complete. If you see anything, tell me. Most of the factory is just wide-open space. There’s plenty of canisters to look through, but they’re all listed as owned, meaning it’d be a crime to search them. Which, like, that hasn’t stopped me before, but the factory is also in the middle of production, and there’s eyes everywhere.  Next to the front door is what appears to be the lounge for the workers: the place is nice and clean and there’s food and drinks nearby. There’s also a chest against the wall, and every single cabinet along the walls is locked, meaning they probably have some personal belongings. There are two entrances to this lounge, and closing the doors will keep others from seeing me from the outside while I steal all their junk. But one of the Magisters will patrol right through it eventually, so I need to be quick.     Eventually, I run out of lockpicks. A quick run to Papa Thrash to buy some more, and I’m back at it.  On the way, I might as well tie up this loose end. : The spirit smiles with contentment. She raises her hand in thanks, its spectral fingers now restored. There’s a glimmer of what might be a ring on one of them. She vanishes. Well, at least she found peace after, you know, being carved up and served in the bar’s lunch. Anyway, stealing people’s lunch money:   The total haul amounts to some scrolls; a whole whack of money (you’d think it’d raise some suspicion for some stranger to come into the factory, enter the lounge, and then leave with their pockets bulging and jingling with money); some wares; and a Source-based Necromancy skillbook! It’s just Black Shroud again, so, wares.  The next few minutes is just me combing the place top to bottom in search of things for me to steal and barrels for me to look in to try and trigger Lucky Charm. The factory is a big place, but it’s mostly empty of anything of particular interest.  It also features what might be the world’s most useless machine. It’s hauling sand from the beach up to the floor inside the factory, where it just makes a pile. At first I thought it might be salt, which would be useful for shipping and storing the fish in a time before refrigeration, but no, I’m pretty sure that’s just sand.  The factory is mostly run by dwarves. This one dwarf, Grebb, has some useful information and items that we could use later. : The dwarf peers at an expertly-dissected fish, gently poking its innards with his knife. : Fascinating… most fascinating… : Cuts that clean wouldn’t come from a knife meant for gutting, nor from a hand that only knew how to gut. You’re a scholar, or a healer – you’re not meant to be a fishmonger.: With a small grin, the dwarf glances between you and his handiwork, and shrugs. : Times must be difficult if someone of your learned status must resort himself to gutting fish for his keep and to progress his studies. : What can you possibly learn from fish that smell like this? : As a scholar, you must realize that there’s no way to ‘reverse’ whatever has happened to them to make them rot from the inside like this.: I have to try – nothing ventured, nothing gained! Speaking of which… : (It’d be some miracle for any food or drink to all to have any sort of effect on me, but all the same…) You understand what it is you’re asking, of course. If I were to eat these fish… what would be in it for me? : … Fine. In the name of scholarship. : The fish instantly churns your inside… everything turns black…: A sudden, vivid sensation of floating in darkness assails you. There’s something in there with you… something… hungry and corrupt… you can’t breathe, you can’t br–Fane doesn’t have lungs, of course he can’t breathe. Performing this experiment for Grebb with any character will give them the Diseased status for four turns, which has no real effect outside of combat. : The dwarf suddenly drifts back into view, peering at you with fascination.: How do you feel…? : This may or may not come as a surprise to you, but I felt nothing at all.: Doesn’t look like you didn’t feel a thing! Which is interesting enough by itself… : Like?: The dwarf puffs up his chest and proudly gestures to the fish. : I’m all for the scientific method and everything, but sometimes, you really have to trust your common sense to come to some conclusions. Just look at these fish. Just smell their stink. Of course they’re malignant; I didn’t need to eat one to know that.: Don’t you see? If all species are affected the same, then one cure will save them all as well! Just… as soon as one is found, that is…That seems like a dangerous thought to have. I know lizards are considered to be a different race from humans, but are they biologically similar enough that a cure for humans will work on them? Will this ‘cure’ work on the fish, too, as he’s implying? : Now, as for your reward… this mightn’t be quite what you were expecting, but, well…: The fish you ate is known a crimson bream… quite a fast, viscous breed… its often used in the creation of ferocity mixtures… but those use regular specimens, not this kind…Whoever wrote for Grebb really enjoys their ellipsis. Who doesn’t enjoy a good ellipsis from time to time? : Who is to say what might happen if you brewed a ferocity mixture with a crimson bream that’s been touched by the Void itself? The effects could be quite… potent…: Seek out somewhere that peddles ferocity herb mixes, but make an addition – one of these, eh, unique breams… So now my work must continue… as soon as I’ve gutted my quota of fish, of course. Farewell, stranger!So, what speaking with Grebb does is, he gives you a Void-tainted Crimson Bream and a Ferocity herb mixture, the same kind of kush that you can get from the arena underneath the Black Bull Tavern. If you combine the two in your crafting menu…   You get the Potent Ferocity Herbmix. If you smoke it at the pipe behind her, then you get the same effects as a regular Ferocity Herbmix – a buff that increases your starting AP by 2 and your recovery AP by 2, meaning you’ll always have at least six AP to play with (before other debuffs) – but it lasts for double the duration. A regular batch lasts for 50 turns, or 5 minutes; a Potent batch lasts 100 turns, or 10 minutes. As you can guess, the herb mixes are an especially powerful buff to have, and they're in bowls that you just carry around in your inventory. The only caveat is that you need a pipe in order to smoke the mixes – you can’t just set it on fire like you can with Siva’s Weed That’s So Good That You Actually See God. Which means that these herb mixes are really only good for Act Two, and taking them deeper into the game is a waste. Which is both good and bad. Bad because I want it, but good for game balance. There would be nothing stopping a person from buying a thousand herb mixes and just carrying them to the final boss. (If you know, you know.)   You can repeat the process with other party members to learn what other Void-tainted fish can do with other herb mixes. Brown fish, the ‘umber monkfish,’ can be mixed with Intelligence mixes and yellow fish, the ‘yellow ridgeback,’ is for Wits mixes. What you see in your delusions changes the wording a bit, but the content, of you swimming through black and being chased by something, is the same. So! All those Void-tainted fish that are lying around the factory have a purpose and a reason for me to want to hoard them, at least for now.  Near Grebb is another pooch. I can’t imagine how torturous it must be to have a nose that sensitive surrounded by what smells like death. : The dog sniffs the wooden decking, like there’s something wrong. : What are you looking for, boy? : Under the floor, you say? There was another dog outside that seemed upset over something smelling bad underneath the factory as well. I’ll look into it if I can. : Be careful down there, mister. You’re not smelling what I’m smelling!And I’ll consider myself very fortunate for that.  Hidden underneath a nearby crate in the corner is a cellar hatch that leads underneath the factory, where the dogs are smelling something particularly foul. It’s locked, but that’s not going to stop me. Although, I don’t actually want to go down there just yet; I want to keep exploring the ground floor, to make sure that Higba isn’t hiding up here and that I’m not about to walk into a Sourcerer’s trap under the floorboards.  : The dwarf reaches into a barrel and pulls out a fish. His knife glides through the scales, crimson guts spilling out in its wake. : I’ve had my… fair share of encounters with death. But I’ve never encountered something smelling so intensely of it that I feel the very odour eroding my bones. : Yeh see the nose on my face, don’t you? I bloody know it smells, and I don’t care as long as it sells! And sells it does. Somehow… : Whoever bought this fish almost certainly didn’t buy them for food. Who in their right mind would purchase something so absolutely putrid?: He runs his knife through another fish and flicks the blade, sending a shower of guts to the ground.: I’d say your guess is as good as mine, ‘cept I’ve got the sense not to ask any questions. Now why don’t you march on? I ain’t bein’ paid to wag me chin. : (What passes for modern script, perhaps?): Looking at the barrel, you see that someone has scrawled ‘Black House’ on it in paint. As you cast your eyes around, you see that every barrel headed to Arx has the same inscription.: ‘ere! Leave them barrels alone! I told you to take a hike. So scram!A massive load of fish, each of them going to a ‘Black House,’ and the fish are all disgusting and on next-level rot, having been touched by the Void. One person has the funds and the inclination to want all of these disgusting fish, and that person lives in Arx. Who could that be? We learned last update that something big is going to happen in Arx soon – could these fish and Mordus’ master wanting those weapons on the Peacemaker be related somehow?    Exploring the factory some more leads me outside, with yet more piles of fish, and fish nets, and barrels of fish for me to explore and find pristine, fully-polished swords in. This one is a one-handed sword so it’s junk regardless.   Exploring around the outside eventually leads me to this storage closet, which is just filled with more gross fish and boxes. There’s nobody to talk to and nothing to steal, aside from whatever I happen to find. I still gotta open them all, though, so–  : Behind the containers, the fish in one of the barrels shift slightly. : The Magisters have been on the hunt for a certain man recently. I presume that’s to whom I’m speaking? : I don’t know what they’re talking about! I’ve nothing to do with the missing Magisters! I’m just a tinkerer – I wouldn’t hurt an imp! : The case of the missing Magisters has been solved by now, but the Magisters are still hunting you down, no matter how much I try to explain that you’re innocent. Is there a reason why they might be chasing after you?: I mean, besides the obvious–: I have no idea! I only arrived in town a few days ago. I sold a few times to Grandmaster Kemm in Arx and stopped off here on my way to Cyseal. I was just sitting in the tavern, minding my own business, and the Magisters started screaming at me! I ran and– well…: You hear a quiet sob from the fish. : Look, even Sourcerers need to display some Source proficiency in order to be outed, and even the Magisters wouldn’t accuse someone just because they’re new. You did something.: There’s a moment of silence from within the barrel. Some of the fish seem to shift uncomfortably…: I – … I may have been studying some new scrolls I’d bought. They might have been… well, they called for Source. : … We’re Sourcerers, too. We’re no friends of the Magisters. We’re alone right now. What do you need?: I just need to get out of Driftwood. I can’t risk being seen, but if you can get out of town, I can escape to Arx. : I can help, but give me a bit more time to map out the floor of the factory. We only have one shot at this, after all. : It shouldn’t take long; I’ve already mapped out most of the factory by now. I just need to go over the west wing of the floor and I’ll be right back. : W-wwwwwhat does that mean? : Alright, alright. Just… don’t do anything rash and stupid, like you mortals are prone to sometimes. Just stay there; I’ll be back for you.: Okay, but please, be quick. They’ll find me sooner or later. It’s just a matter of time.So, we’ve found our man Higba. He needs to get out of Driftwood in order to escape the Magister search, and according to himself, he’s carrying enough explosives to level this quarter of the village. We only get one chance to get him out, and he can’t be seen by anyone – if even the factory workers see him, they’ll raise the alarm. Yes, this is, in fact, an escort mission. But, thankfully, it’s very short: the fish factory sits on the very edge of Driftwood’s borders, so I essentially just need to get him out of the factory and across a river to the west.  The western wing of the factory is pretty bare, but there are three doors that lead to it, and an NPC can come out of each of them. There is also one dwarven worker patrolling the floor, and two Magisters have routes that cut through here.   That said, though, I still need to be checking every single barrel for goodies. Priorities! These pants offer +1 physical armour over my current pants, and +10% Earth resistance, as well as matching the +1 Perseverance of my current pants, so they are in every single way superior.  At the back of the western platform is a flight of stairs that goes up to the second floor of the factory, where I can hear someone barking orders down at the fish workers. This must be the foreman’s office.  As is appropriate for someone in charge of the factory, the place is properly decked out with good food and drink and ample, if perhaps inappropriately romantic, candlelit lighting. Aside from the mishmash of stuff on the table and on the desk, there’s not much to steal – but there’s still stuff inside the desk, as well as a treasure chest against the left wall. All that said, though, I’d better introduce myself. : You see a man, well-fed and wealthy – but stress has lined his face and narrowed his waist. He tries to ignore your presence. Fails. He sighs. : See here. : ‘Time is money?’ What a peculiar proverb. Time is the one thing I’ve had more than most people, and my finances aren’t any better for it. : You mentioned a shipment to Arx? I’ve been hearing quite a lot about that famous city by now. What is the cargo meant for Arx? : Yes, actually, about that – the fish in your factory are all tainted with the touch of the Void. I understand that someone in Arx is buying up all of the tainted fish by the ship-full – who could possibly want such foul fish? : Answer the question, or you’ll find your money cut very short, if you understand me.: Persuasion Success!: An excellent point, well made. The answer to your question is, unsurprisingly, a man in a house. A man in a house buys all the Void-tainted fish I can send him.I always loved that exchange. “Tell me or I’ll kill you.” “Hmm, yes, your negotiation skills are immaculate.” : That dark shadow crosses his face once more. He shivers. : Anyone that deals with anything Void-related to this degree is someone that we should all be wary of – and we should all, perhaps, not deal with them.: When you’ve been in business as long as I have, you learn not to question these things too closely. Now I’ll get back to my work and I suggest you get back to leaving. Good day.Before I end this conversation, I’m just going to go ahead and have Sebille loot the place. Surely he won’t mind.  We’ll start with him. He doesn’t need all that money. One of the keys almost certainly goes to that treasure chest against the wall, while the other… if I had to guess, it probably goes to the cellar door. I’ll take both; he can keep all his gross fish.  There’s a pamphlet here of some shipping information that might be useful….   : If I ever go to Arx I’m staying away from this black house.You’re gonna go to that black house when we inevitably get to Arx and you’re gonna like it. The more the fish weighs, the more rancid and rotten it is. And the umber monkfish, according to this, is making a noise. This order tells me three things: the house is black; it’s in the north-eastern corner of Arx; and the delivery has some rather specific instructions. I’m not too concerned about the ‘don’t ask for a signature, don’t look directly at the house’ remarks, but I am interested in that ‘leave consignment on the street outside’ bit. It just seems like an unusual demand – although I guess the massive amount of rank fish might keep people off the street and away from the house, since the guy inside clearly enjoys his privacy. The desk holds nothing in its cabinets other than… a fork, interestingly enough.  Searching through his bookshelves triggers Sebille’s Lucky Charm and gets me an amulet. Ironically, it’s called a Wolf Amulet, but it pales in comparison to Sebille’s Lone Wolf Mark.  And finally, the treasure chest just contains more money, which I guess isn’t surprising. Although it begs the question why Brayton was carrying over two-grand in his pocket when he could have kept it safer in his treasure chest.  So, I’ve mapped out the whole ground floor of the fishing factory. All I need to do is get Higba from point A to point B without getting him spotted. This is mostly an easy task, but with the dwarf on the west wing, the two Magisters on route through the area, and the other NPCs that can wander in from the inside of the building, I don’t have enough party members to keep everyone distracted. There’s going to be some timing involved in learning everyone’s patterns and taking advantage of their blind spots.  Shutting all of the doors is a big help, but it’s not foolproof – NPCs can’t see through them, but they can still open them.    The team all gets into position, with Lohse distracting one Magister and Sebille distracting the dwarf. Interestingly, though, the second Magister that normally makes her rounds around the west wing is nowhere to be found – she’s just not there. On the one hand, that makes my job easier, but on the other, I’m not a big fan of surprises in my sensitive escort missions involving anxious Sourcerers carrying a shitload of nitrate.  In any case, I’m about as ready as I can be.  : I promised you I’d be back, and here I am. It’s time to go – and we need to move quickly. The game autosaves once I have Higba in my envoy, at least. Interestingly, the game treats him like a summon: he has armour and HP and he even has a few Aerothurge skills for me to use. I guess it makes sense, mechanically speaking: summons cling to their summoner like, well, like a bad stink, so turning valuable NPCs into summons for an escort mission just seems like a natural thing to do.    Like I said, it’s not difficult. Which is a good thing: escort missions typically aren’t very well-received in any game. Although I guess you could make it difficult by cutting through Driftwood and escaping out the east, if you wanted.   : You – you were just complaining about the fish ‘oozing’ all over you! Why in the world would you – and, what, were you carrying that barrel with you while we were running?!: I can’t just saunter away, who knows what might be lurking in a place like this?Perhaps it’s for that very reason that you don’t want to look like a moving barrel and smelling like a mountain full of rotting fish.  : … How did you wind up in that fish barrel in the first place? You must have given the Magisters quite the run around, to go from the tavern into the factory’s storage closet.: I’ve been asking myself the same thing! I was just enjoying some stew in the tavern, reading over my latest acquisitions, and then I was surrounded by Magisters.: He hands you a damp scroll. In between the fish guts it seems to give details of how to cast a powerful Source spell. : The instructions laid out in this scroll are rather advanced. It must have been written by a seasoned Sourcerer. How did you come across it?: In the kitchens of the tavern, of all places. That cook had it. Offered it for a great price, too. : This is a powerful scroll and all, but I’m actually on something of a mission of my own, and I need to get in touch with anyone that can teach me how to control my own Source.: Oh – of course! I mean – I’m not much of a Sourcerer, but I have my connections.: Hannag’s a pretty powerful Source Master. Incredible control of portals – I’ve never seen anyone bend space like she can. Last I heard, she was holed up in a house out in Paradise Downs, the farms to the north. There’s more than a few Magisters around those parts, though. : The name Hannag is familiar, but now I know where to start looking. Thank you for the information.: I swear, once I get to Arx I’m going to have the bath of my life… … That’s weird. I’m pretty sure I had the Hero tag since Fort Joy, when I reunited that Magister woman, Yarrow, with her dad after he’d been hit by one of those Purging Wands. Well, now I have it again.  The brightness got really weird for this screenshot, but, my rewards are an oil flask; a mushroom; 147 coins; and my choice between a wand; a staff; a fighter’s breastplate; and a rogue’s set of pants. I take the breastplate – they both do the exact same numbers, but my current plate gives me +1 Strength and +10% Air resistance, while the new one gives me +1 Warfare and inflicts poison on contact. As we learned previously, you always want to prefer Warfare over Strength, even in the Divinity: Unleashed mod, and being able to inflict poison whenever enemies hit me is going to be a great thing to have (unless I’m fighting undead). Also, the scroll I got from him was a spell called Acid Spores: an expert-level Geomancer spell that normally requires 3 AP and 2 Source Points to cast. It fires three, well, acidic spores that, upon contact, do a huge amount of poisonous damage and set Acid on the targets. It’s not an especially powerful spell for the cost, honestly, but it’s better to have it than to not have it.  Also, with the completion of Higba’s quest, we got another level up! This puts us up to level 11. Everyone has two Attribute points to spend, and it may not come as a surprise to you when I opt to put everyone’s points into Constitution to counter Spider’s Kiss (except Lohse. She’s maxed out on skills, so she puts one point into Memory). Everyone also gets one combat point to spend. Fane puts his into Warfare, putting it up to 10 (including bonuses from gear); Lohse’s goes into Aerothurge, putting her up to 7; Sebille actually puts hers into Geomancer, so I can at least have someone cast Fortify and Poison Dart when I need it; and Prince’s goes into Pyromancy, putting it up to 6 (and Summoning at 15).  With that misadventure concluded, there’s one thing left to do with the factory: get into the cellar and find out what’s got the dogs all riled up. Because it’s a restricted area, you need to make sure nobody’s watching you when you enter it, or else they’ll get all mad. (They won’t actually stop you… unless you keep getting caught.)  Well, a couple of things of note: there’s a ton of Void-touched fish down here, along with things like craftables and knickknack junk. But what’s most immediately alarming is that, directly in front of me, a portion of the cellar’s been caged off by a large iron door.  Barrels of oil are stacked underneath a nearby table, which is also cause for alarm. Forget the nitrate that Higba had – one careless move, or even just a hot day, could blow this place up.  Directly south of me is an open door that leads deeper into a different wing of the cellar. Once I’ve had my fill of picking Void-tainted fish to mix with the good ganja, I press onward.  Seems kind of empty – like the factory had all of their goods stacked up in the first room.  Looking ahead, I can see a shelf of barrels against the far wall, and I can see that the bottom row of barrels have ornate decorations with holes in them, facing in my direction. More than a few tabletop and CRPG games have taught me that something really bad is going to happen if I approach. But there’s no much else I can do, so….   Lohse inadvertently triggers another pressure plate – what is with this town and pressure plates? – and the four barrels activate, revealing that they’re actually turrets, constantly lobbing fireballs in my direction. Moreover, a puddle of poison has spawned on the floor, so if I were to tank one of the fireballs and be set on fire, I’d ignite the poison if I tried to run through it.  Prince has the highest fire resistance out of the group, and fire does magic damage and he has the most magic armour, so he takes one for the team and charges forward to find an off switch of some sort.  But not before stumbling over some more traps, naturally.  Luckily, the switch to turn the turrets off isn’t very far away, but it doesn’t have a tooltip, so it can be easy to miss if you rely on those.  Once Fane gets deeper into the cellar, he notes that, although the place doesn’t smell fresh, there are a number of barrels with interesting designs on their sides.  What appears to be a shark’s open mouth, drawn from the front. Special cargo meant for the Black House, maybe?   Cracking open any of the barrels with the shark insignia on it causes a poison cloud to spread from the barrel’s location before the barrel itself eventually breaks. For Fane, it’s not a big deal; for everyone else, it’s a bit of a nuisance.  This particular room seems a bit messy and slapdash: piles of fish are strewn throughout the room, lying in massive vats or even in just random puddles along the floor. Some of the barrels have unusual cargo inside them as well: anything from tea leaves to exactly twelve identical paintings to fresh fruit, along the usual bad fish.  And a rare dagger among them, although it’s not anything to care about.   The last room in the cellar is much larger and emptier than any other room so far. The middle of the room is recessed slightly, and there’s netting hanging off the beams with fish clipped to them. Maybe this is where they go to dry the fish before gutting and salting them?  In the corner of the room is a small table and stool, and on the table is a security log and a key, likely to the iron door just behind the chair. The cellar isn’t a particularly large place and its layout is a circle with one dead end that I probably could have bypassed with Sebille. Still, I haven’t found anything ‘evil’ yet. The two dogs around the building were all upset that something evil was underneath the factory, and aside from being rather unclean and unkempt, and them hoarding a ton of Void-touched fish, there hasn’t been anything out of the ordinary. Let’s take a look at that security log.  Good advice!  Tucked in the corner beside the table is another treasure chest. Our reward for completing this miniature dungeon, maybe? The key to the iron door doesn’t work on the chest, so, Sebille’s turn:   Hello… The grenade is interesting in that it sets Bleeding as well as a water surface where it lands. Hybrid grenades like this one were introduced in the Definitive Edition of the game and can be useful for all kinds of situations, given their dual-uses. The arrow is useless; the staff isn’t special; the Ice Fan scroll is, well, it’s always nicer to have scrolls than it is to not have them; but that one scroll in particular, with the pentagram on it, is interesting.  A doctor is ordering all these fish? Like Grebb just upstairs? It’s not just ‘a man in a black house’ that wants all of these Void-touched mackerel; it’s a man of medicine. And it’s an interesting delivery system he’s worked out: put the fish in a barrel, then cast the scroll on the barrel. Presumably, this consumes the scroll. I may want to hold onto this. If, indeed, I make it to Arx, and I make it to the Black House, this could wind up being useful somehow.  I continue working my way around the room, opening up every barrel and crate I find…  … and I even wind up getting a little lucky for one of them. Unfortunately, they’re Finesse pants and they’re not any better than what Sebille has right now (and the Tyrant’s set doesn’t even include pants – it’s a hat, gloves, boots, and a chestpiece).  My snooping brings me to someone’s stash. A whopping six hits of drudanae, worth 1,200 gold total. Well, finder’s keepers.  My snooping eventually brings me to the back corner of the room: the last little nook for me to explore before I’m finished. And I find something that might explain why the dogs smell something ‘evil’ under the floorboards. Source tends to attract the sort of company you don’t want, and there’s a barrel that’s apparently leaking the stuff. It’s not as much as the glass vat in Siva’s basement, but it’s more than enough to attract all kinds of unwanted attention. I wonder who put this barrel here, though? The foreman didn’t seem to be in on it: he spent my entire visit telling the workers of his factory to just cooperate with the Magisters so that they can hurry up and leave. Maybe one of the dwarves working his fish factory is in on it?    I split everyone up and put them in different spots around the room, on different elevations. You know, as a precaution. Let’s crack open that barrel.   : Inside, you find not fish, but weapons. Powerful weapons. The kind of weapons the Magisters took from the Hollow Marshes.Hmm. Aside from the foreman, every single worker in the factory is a dwarf, and Lohar has eyes and ears everywhere in Driftwood. He once said that he and his crew move ‘classified cargo’ that he lifts from Magisters by crashing their ships and looting their holds. Maybe this was one such score and he has someone in the factory holding the contraband for him. Opening the barrel nets me a fat 8,000 EXP, which is always welcome.   Inside the barrel are ‘Soulforged’ weapons: a two-handed sword and a crossbow. I’m told that they’re both powerful weapons, emphasis theirs, and yet they’re kinda hot garbage. The only thing this sword has over Hanal Lechet is that it has a slot for a rune. Man, that’s kind of a let down. And there’s not even–   Oh, my bad, never mind. Roach Voidwoken aren’t especially powerful on their own, but they can be a nuisance when they all swarm you like this – especially when some of them are volatile enough to detonate once they die. An infestation like this one could get troublesome.   I should really look into methods to keep Prince’s health and self-sustain up. Or maybe I should just get good at the game. That wasn’t an especially difficult fight, but you may have noticed that all of the fire and explosions can cause things to spiral out of hand in a hurry. There were definitely some misplays in there and I could have handled the fight better overall, but only one death isn’t so bad, all told.  A quick round of post-combat healing, and we’re good to start looting.  Pictured: the loot, but approximately for every Voidwoken grub in the fight. Since there was no big baddie to focus on, there’s no major haul – no fancy weapons, no skillbooks, no equipment – and that’s a bit of a bummer.  In any case: we’re done with the cellar and we’re done with the fish factory. And with that, we’re done with everything in Driftwood, after seven, long, arduous updates. Let’s report the good news to the dogs.  : There were bad things down there but they smell dead now. : Depends on what ‘not very good’ smells like. Is it rot and decay? Because that’s normal. : There are still plenty of bad things in this world. Just because I did away with one of them, I suppose, philosophically, that may make me a bad thing, myself.: Well you smell bad. I don’t trust you. You smell like all the bad things. Go away! Go away go away go away go away go away!  : That’s some accusatory language for a dog that’s been rolling around in dead fish guts. : Well, then, the good news is that the bad things are gone. I found them under the fish factory and I… dealt with them.: You smell of bad things. Maybe you killed the bad things or maybe you are a bad thing. Go away, bad thing.: She crouches and growls low.Well, happy endings all around! They can probably smell the Soulforged weapons still on me and that’s what’s getting them all upset. So, with that, we’re done with Driftwood! Maple Leaf fucked around with this message at 16:53 on Feb 17, 2022 |
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Feb 17, 2022 16:41
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… Well, almost. There’s one last thing I want to do before closing out this update and our massive, seven-update-long foray into this fishing village. I didn’t really want to include this in this update since I thought it’d stretch it out a bit, but I couldn’t think of a better time to squeeze it in later. Well, actually, I lied: first, I’m going to do a bit of shopping.   I’m not going to spend much time perusing the equipment with Haran; I just want all of his Res scrolls. Although, I also buy one Battering Ram skillbook.   I also buy a Soothing Cold skillbook and four large healing potions from Bree.   And when I mix together those two skillbooks, I get:  Cleanse Wounds: Heal a target within arm’s length and create a puddle of water beneath them. Removes Burning, Diseased, Decaying, Poisoned, and Bleeding. In Divinity: Unleashed, the range is increased and the water it spawns is Blessed.One of the only skills that cures and heals through Decaying, Cleanse Wounds isn’t an especially powerful healing skill, but it’s incredibly useful in an emergency situation. But I’m not done just yet:  Fossil Strike, Contamination, and another Poison Dart, all for Sebille…  … and take that extra Poison Dart and mix it with Backlash…   … and I get Venom Coating. A skill that Sebille technically has access to a better version of – Venomous Aura – but this way, she can have the skill memorized and she doesn’t need a Source Orb to access it.  Venom Coating: Coat your weapon with poison, adding additional Poison damage to your total.Venom Coating is inferior to Sparking Swings in terms of total damage output, but hey, Sebille has a ton of Memory slots open and it’s nice to have more skills. And if I decide I don’t like it, I can always un-memorize it.  Heading west from Mordus’ house takes me to the western boundary of Driftwood: a drawbridge that’s currently down and it leads to a place called Reaper’s Bluffs. Being a border, you’d think it was appropriately protected and patrolled by some of Driftwood’s finest.  Well, it was, once upon a time. Two Magisters and two attack dogs, all of them bled dry and left to rot out in the sun in puddles of ooze. I, uh, may have had something to do with that, in the previous update. But I’m not the one that killed them, so, I’m probably off the hook, right?  Just beyond the bridge is a crossroads with a helpful signpost that tells me where things are, if I take one of four directions. A place called ‘Bloodmoon Island’ sounds a little intense for me, and I’m not ready to travel further west and head to Reaper’s Bluffs. What we’re actually here for is to go south, towards the beach.  You may recognize this spot as the place where we had dropped off Higba, just earlier in the update. I wanted to put revisiting this place off because I wanted the level up first.  Just up ahead is a fisherman, looking all distraught. As he should: that’s a whole-rear end beached marlin right up against the rocks, and I imagine it’s Void-touched, so it’s not any good to eat. Although it’s hardly the biggest creature we’ve ever seen evacuate the ocean in a bid to die on their own terms. : A fisherman stares at the water, muttering to himself. : I suppose it must be work-related. No fish to haul home? : Unless you’ve thrown the thing out into the open waters, you can probably just… go in there and get it back. I don’t see why you couldn’t. : The ring is infused with Source, you say? : Just a hint, nothing that’d concern a Magister. Made me feel that little bit more confident in meself. Maybe it was all in me head, but I felt like the ring made me more attractive to the women. : Perhaps you’re right, and it’s best to stay out of the water. Who knows where trouble could be swimming, even in the shallows like this.: *Sigh.* I guess I’ll have to face herself instead then. She won’t be happy. Better get fishing then. A bit o’ gold for dinner at the tavern might soften the blow. Wishin’ you had a better day than mine, stranger. Approaching the dock lets Sebille spy the ring in the water, sitting just a bit into the sand. It’s made of copper – I can’t imagine it’s a particularly pretty ring, but hey, if there’s Source in it, that’d make it valuable regardless. What are the odds that a Voidwoken is going to care if I just lean in and scoop it out with my fingers? It’s just right there. And besides, I’m a bit better equipped to handle a Voidwoken than a fisherman is. All I gotta do is–   Oh, perfect, another Deep Dweller. And he brought friends. The Deep Dweller is level 10 and each of its frog buddies is level 9. I’m level 11, but I’m also surrounded; I have the low ground; and I’m clustered together. I have the level advantage, but my positioning is awful. Still, level differences are huge in this game. So this fight probably won’t go poorly, right?   Well, that fight could have gone much better. And I continue to not really earn any points with Prince. But at least he was alive at the end (which is not to imply that he made it to the end).  One summon to replace Bones McCoy with Salem, and we’re right as rain to talk with Lagan the fisherman about his goddamn ring. : A horrified fisherman stares at the water, muttering to himself.: That was… terrifying. I need to get myself a new line of work. Something as far away from the water as I can go. Goat-herd, high on a mountain. Spice trader in the deserts. Anything but this. : I found your Gods-damned ring. : With everything that we had gone through to retrieve this ring and slay a half-dozen Voidwoken, it’s possible that you can thank us too little.: His eyes narrow. : Let me put it plainly: I want a reward.: Persuasion Success! : Enjoy your night, fisherman.: He slips the ring onto his finger, where it dangles loose.: I feel better already. Need to fatten meself up a bit so I don’t lost it a second time. Can’t be relying on mercenaries like you to dig me out! Can’t afford it!: With a new confidence in his stance, he gives you a casual salute, then turns back to his fishing. With that fight out of the way, it’s time for more looting. Hopefully the Deep Dweller was carrying something valuable on itself this time – the one in the Hollow Marshes was decked out with goodies, if I remember right.  Some gold; an elven two-handed axe that does the same amount of damage as Hanal Lechet, but it doesn’t give me nearly enough bonuses for me to care; and a Provoke skillbook. While it’s technically better than nothing, I would almost have preferred the nothing, especially after all the difficulties I went through to win the drat fight. All of the frogs just hold rubies, giblets, and one of them held some water essence.  That’s one more update wrapped up – and we’re finally, finally finished with Driftwood. For the most part, anyway; we’ll be back to touch base with Siva and the market is going to be where I’m doing most of my trading, at least until I can find wherever Gareth and Tarquin went. But we’ve combed the place from top to bottom and we’ve solved every other mystery that’s worth looking into up until this point. That said, there’s a pretty significant vote left to do:  Where do we go next? I’ve colour-coded this map with the approximate areas of particular places of interest. Yellow: Reaper’s Bluffs. When we first landed in Reaper’s Coast, we saw a large Voidwoken abduct a Sourcerer and then fly off to this direction. A traitorous dwarf and Source Master named Mordus, a key figure in Lohar’s backstory, is likely to be hiding somewhere in this area. Red: Barin’s Mother. Shortly after we witnessed the Sourcerer’s abduction, we came across a bald child named Barin that was throwing rocks across a ravine to try and get a drawbridge to lower so he could rescue his mother, who, last we checked, was being attacked by Voidwoken. With some skills and some judicious Teleporter Pyramid usage, we can cross the river now and go to her rescue, as well as explore what lies beyond the river. Green: Paradise Downs. Farmland to the north of Driftwood. We haven’t learned much about Paradise Downs other than the fact that Gareth, the leader of the Seekers, has family in the area and he last said that he was going to visit them. There’s quite a lot of area to explore, as well as a location of interest even further north than that. Blue: The Blackpits. Relevant specifically to Fane: his journal mentions that he had come across a lead that suggests that he may learn about his race, the Eternals, and their fate if he were to investigate the Blackpits. It’s a bit of a hike in that direction and we’re bound to come across more than a few other locations and peoples of interest on the way. Which way do we go? Let me know within 72 hours! Maple Leaf fucked around with this message at 16:49 on Feb 17, 2022 |
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Feb 17, 2022 16:42
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Go Red, should probably deal with that small Voidwoken attack issue now we've some spare time.
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Feb 17, 2022 18:00
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I'm feeling Green.
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Feb 17, 2022 19:01
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BraveLittleToaster posted:Go Red, should probably deal with that small Voidwoken attack issue now we've some spare time. also I'm surprised the dogs don't like our smell. Sure, we reek of rancid fish guts and crispy fried lizard, but that's the sort of smell the average dog would gleefully roll in.
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Feb 17, 2022 21:44
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BraveLittleToaster posted:Go Red, should probably deal with that small Voidwoken attack issue now we've some spare time. Agreed. She could fend for herself for *insert last few updates worth of time* but surely she can't last a minute more!
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Feb 17, 2022 23:45
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BraveLittleToaster posted:Go Red, should probably deal with that small Voidwoken attack issue now we've some spare time.
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Feb 18, 2022 02:15
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Yeah, Red sounds good, then maybe Blue.
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Feb 18, 2022 05:27
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You should go as far away from the main quest as possible, and I think that means blue.
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Feb 18, 2022 16:34
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Voting Red. Also, given that there is a [HERO] tag for doing good things, is there a [VILLIAN] tag for doing bad things? Things like taking the gold for the wedding ring, then not giving the ring back.
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Feb 19, 2022 15:41
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BraveLittleToaster posted:Go Red, should probably deal with that small Voidwoken attack issue now we've some spare time. Go get her out of a jam.
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Feb 19, 2022 20:17
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We've got to save that lady!
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Feb 19, 2022 20:26
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Negative_Earth posted:Voting Red.
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Feb 19, 2022 22:49
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Negative_Earth posted:Voting Red. Heroism and villainy usually have to do with a person's life rather than their money. Like Olive Branch said, the Lady Vengeance is a living, breathing creature, even though she's a ship - we could have enslaved her rather than offer her her freedom, and that would have made us villainous. Choosing to give Higba up to the Magisters probably would have made us villainous. We were given the Hero tag when we saved Higba and when we reunited Yarrow with her father, so, think about doing the opposite of things like that - stealing a fisherman's wedding ring and lunch money is on the scale from mischievous to assholeish, but it's not evil. The "easiest" way to get the Villain tag is to just murder three people. People, not animals. Larian's code comments say "yes, we're cruel like that." We'll have more opportunities later if we really want it.
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Feb 19, 2022 23:08
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 The general vote was to go towards the red area that I had marked on the map – to go back to the bald child Barin and rescue his mom, who’s currently being assailed by Voidwoken across a raised drawbridge. Obviously, we can’t cross the river via the bridge, but with the help of some teleportation skills and the Teleporter Pyramids, it’s possible to go there right now. Hell, it’s been possible to go there since we landed on Reaper’s Coast.  But first, I’d like to do some more shopping. Everything is expensive, but I’ve been hoarding my cash for a while, now. I’m also carrying about a hundred pounds worth of wares to sell, but I don’t want to sell them until I find one of my fences. Tarquin and Gareth can’t have gone too far. Although maybe I should just make someone in Driftwood my fence as well.    Among my shopping, I get three new skillbooks; a new stiletto for Sebille that gives +1 Finesse and +1 Dual Wielding (over Twist, The Knife, which gives +1 Finesse and +1 Single-Handed. The stiletto, called Sharp Retort, also has a rune for the Source Orb giving her Venomous Aura); a helmet for Fane that gives +1 Wits and Warfare (his old one gave +1 Strength); a new ring for Lohse that gives +1 Hydrosophist and two more magic armour over one of her older rings; and finally, some new boots for Fane that give +2 Initiative, +3% Dodging, and grants Haste (his old boots gave Movement, which I’m going to miss, but it’s a trade in my favour overall). I was hoping to find some new gloves for Lohse since she’s still rocking those Teleportation gloves all the way back from Fort Joy, but no such luck. As for those new skillbooks:  Thick Of The Fight: Gain a 10% damage boost from every nearby character or totem, including yourself, for two turns. Soul Mate: Choose a target: any healing or armour bonuses you receive is duplicated onto the target. Clears Frozen, Stunned, Knocked Down, and Petrified (from the target only). Skin Graft: Reset all cooldowns. Once per fight only. Removes Burning, Necrofire, Poisoned, and Bleeding.Soul Mate would go better on Lohse than on Prince, since she’s the healer, but it requires Summoning 2, and Lohse’s already stretched thin on Memory as it is. Still, this ought to help Prince and his summons with survivability, which has been, ah, something of an issue for him lately. Also, in the base game, Skin Graft could be crafted using a blank scroll, a Source Orb, and some animal scales. Scrolls do not have the ‘once per combat’ limitation, so you can see how this could get out of hand really quickly. You can’t craft them in Divinity: Unleashed, though.  With that shopping out of the way, it’s time to progress onward. Our journey back to Barin and his house across the river takes us through the east exit from Driftwood, back to the two guards contemplating desertion and back towards the caravan of Sourcerers bound for Fort Joy before they were liberated by dwarves, and subsequently murdered by Voidwoken. The trip back to the bridge brings us past the chicken coop, where we helped Big Marge rescue one of her eggs after the whole nest was raided by Voidwoken…  Except…  The chickens are all dead. Not eaten – their corpses are still intact. But they’re all sitting in pools of their own blood. Little Wing, Little Tiff, Little Loretta, Little Grimlet, and Big Marge – all of them grossly eviscerated and left to rot in the rain.  There is one sole survivor: a baby chick with coal-black feathers, wandering the coop and peeping at whoever will listen nearby. Upon talking with it…  : Mama? MAMA! MAMA! The baby chick sticks itself to us like glue and starts following us around, just like Sir Lora, Salem, or any other summon might behave. It occasionally peeps at us to let us know that it’s there and nearby.  : I know. I know it looks delicious, Quercus, but try to restrain yourself. … What? No! You don’t even have a stomach. It’d just be indulgent. Using Spirit Vision, we can see that all of the other chickens have already moved on to the Hall of Echoes, but the spirit of Big Marge lingers. Maybe she can spread some light on what had happened to her and the coop, and how this chick managed to survive.  : Monster! Monster! Poor little Peeper. Poor little MONSTER Peeper baby!: There’s only one way… yes, there’s only one AWK-AWK thing to do… : I’m assuming you’re referring to Peeper’s father? : Peeper started following me as soon as I stepped into the coop. He seems to think I’m his mother. : You said that Peeper is a monster, though. Given that his egg came from a clutch that had been tarnished by the Void, wouldn’t it be better to simply… be done with him now?: What?! BACAW! No! Peeper’s still just a baby! And Papa can help! Well, now we’re stuck with Peeper. Back when we first did this quest for Big Marge to try and rescue the coop’s eggs from a Voidwoken, we found that all of them had been transformed into clutches for the Void – all but one, which seemed untarnished. We brought it back to Marge and listed the quest as complete, until, well, it hatched, and here we have Peeper, a half-chicken half-Voidwoken baby. Peeper is level 8, three levels beneath the rest of us, and unlike Sir Lora, Peeper has low Constitution and zero magic armour. His AI will behave exactly like Sir Lora’s, which is to say, he’ll attempt to run as far away from conflict as possible without ‘voiding out’ and respawning back to Fane – and he’ll run straight through any environmental hazard to do it. Keeping Peeper alive will be a struggle. We can talk to him whenever we want for a quick morale boost, though: : MAMA!But only with Fane. If we talk to him with anyone else: : NOT MAMA!Knowing that Peeper is part Voidling and he’s responsible for the death of his entire coop, including his own mother, what do YOU think? Should we bring Peeper to his father? Or should we kill him now? For reference, Peeper’s father is located in Paradise Downs.  We needed to come to the chicken coop either way, because this is where we can cross the river. There’s a small tower next to the coop – given that the building behind Big Marge’s corpse is dilapidated and destroyed, this was likely a porch, or an attic. From here, we have an especially high ground – high enough that we can jump across the river, even with the nerfed range for teleportation techniques in Divinity: Unleashed.    One Phoenix Dive and one Teleportation Pyramid later, and we’re all across the river. We’re not too far away from the drawbridge that Barin was at either.   As soon as I climb the vine, the screen starts shaking (not that you can see it in these screenshots), and there’s a loud, bestial roar off in the distance. Something big – or maybe multiples of something – isn’t too far away. And the game autosaves, just in case. To the north of my landing is a walkway that leads to a solitary well; the south, a laundry line, and a house…  And a large Voidwoken slamming at the back door to a house, trying to bust it down to gain entry. : They’re at the back door now! To arms! This is just one Voidwoken, and it’s level 9, so, this was kind of a wash and I’m not going to go through the effort of making it into a video. I kill it in one turn.   The big ones splatter real good. However, the door is locked. Should be an easy fix – “Did you really kill that Voidwoken?! Just a moment… let me unlock the door…”  Oh, it looks like Barin’s mom is still alive. It took all this time, and that one Voidwoken couldn’t even bust down an old, shabby, wooden door. I wonder what the big deal is – surely Driftwood’s small troupe of Magisters could defend the place from an attack if they’re all that weak.  : The back route is safe; we can escape that way and cross the river to Driftwood. I’ve cleared the path myself. : Escape? My eye! I’ve got enough firepower to toast ‘em all to ash. : … You know what? Sure. Anything that results in less Voidwoken in the world, I’m all for.: Peep!: By the Seven, that’s what I’m talkin’ about! I got all the fixin’s here for every kind of bomb, grenade, missile, and shell you can imagine. Make what you want, and then let’s go! I got a boy to get back to.Oh. Speaking of Magisters: Barin’s mom is one. Well… we might not like the idea of rescuing a Magister, but the vote was to cross the river and ‘rescue Barin’s mom.’ We’re here now. We’ll see it through.  Outside the front door, the lawn is an absolute mess: there’s poison puddles; pools of blood; barrels full of oil; at least two corpses; and three gigantic bug Voidwoken patrolling the area. They’re all level nine, and they’re outnumbered, so this will be an easy fight… but that’s not to say it’ll be a clean one. These larger Voidwoken have a tendency to vomit acid whenever they can, and Mari is a very trigger-happy kind of woman, based on the one conversation I had with her. The place is probably going to light up like a campfire before the end of it.  To that end, Mari really wasn’t kidding: she has enough ingredients for bombs in her house to level the whole drat cliff. What is with people and carrying a shitload of gunpowder recently? While there are gameplay styles to encourage the grenadier type of gameplay, it’s not my preferred style. The best way to play as a grenadier is to have the Ambidextrous talent, which reduces the cost of grenades and scrolls by 1 AP if your offhand is free. This would best be applied to rogues like Sebille, since, while they’d lose out on their offhand damage, their offhand suffers a massive drop in damage application anyway. Although… looking up the Ambidextrous talent on the Divinity wiki, it says that two-handed weapons consider your off-hand to be free. The game doesn’t mention that at all. If that’s true, then Ambidextrous would be an excellent choice for Fane or Prince, who both use two-handed weapons. I’m currently level 11; my next Talent is at level 13. I’ll test to see if Ambidextrous really does apply for two-handed weapons, and if so, maybe I should consider Fane or Prince to start carrying all the grenades.  In the meantime, I go through Mari’s house and pick the place clean. She said I essentially have free reign of the place to craft up any weapons I want to help with the fight with the Voidwoken outside, so, I’ll take that invitation and run with it. And that means stealing the key to her cellar and picking the lock to her personal chest.  Which turned out to be a good move! More ammunition for the coming fight; some gold; some liquid courage; and a belt that gives +1 Thievery and +1 Lucky Charm, which I put on Sebille. I’m about ready to start the fight with the Voidwoken, but before I do, there are some other preparations I can make.  Prince summons and buff Secretary in a puddle of oil, which makes it Earth-based. I don’t remember if we’ve ever used an Earth-based Secretary before.  I also put Lohse and Sebille outside the house, sneaking on an awning around the eastern side. This was a slight misplay: Prince has proven to be unable to cope without some consistent healing, so I should have either moved him with the girls, or I should have swapped him with Sebille to keep him with the healer. Still, I’m not expecting huge resistance from the enemies: most of the danger is going to come from environmental hazards. I should be fine as long as people don’t explode, right? As soon as I open the door, the fight’s going to start. No time like the present!    I am, once again, awarded with the Hero tag. Or, at least, Lohse specifically was. I wonder how many times I’m going to get this message?   Peeper gets caught in the burning house and, like all dumb summons, he tries to run straight through the fire to get back to Fane. He even gets caught on the open door and just stands there in the blaze until the door eventually breaks from the fire damage. He does survive, with a whole 62 HP to his name (with a max of 427), but, you know, point is, it’s going to be tough keeping him alive.  Mari complains that she’s been got, even though she’s only lost a third of their HP. Which, like, in real life, yeah, that’d be concerning, but she’s a Magister, she’s trained to take hits like that. She doesn’t say ‘thank you’ when I cast Restoration on her. : Mari flashes a massive, horsey smile at you then winces, her left arm hanging limply at her side. : I mean… I guess it’s technically accurate that that isn’t a ‘scratch.’ That’s quite the understatement.: Ha! With an attitude like that, you oughta join up with the Order. They’re always on the lookout for fighters like you. ‘specially these days. : I am known as Fane. : I’m fine; I’ve encountered enough Voidwoken by now that they don’t even strike fear into me like they used to.: Dunno about you, but I never was afraid of bugs. : I’m on something of a… personal mission to rid of the world of Voidwoken. I was just doing what I do best. You don’t owe me anything.: A bug squasher, are you? Impressive.: Hate to cut this short, but I ought to dash off. My boy’s waiting for me. Mind lowering the bridge, though? I find myself slightly *wince* indisposed. For the moment. Near the bridge is the wheel that’ll lower it; a click is all it’ll take to connect the eastern ridge with Driftwood and give me a shortcut back here if I ever head back into town. I can fast travel there, but not back here, after all.  As soon as the bridge is lowered, Mari and Barin cross it to meet back up, mother and son reunited after X-amount of updates.   : MA!: Let me get a good look at you. You’re ok?: ‘course I am, Ma! Are you?: Fit as a fiddle and *ungh* twice the size.You mean a cello? : And the house?: She’ll be alright. And how’s my little spider monkey doing? Safe and sound?: Spider monkey? You mean DRAGON!: Come here, you. : It’s good to see you two reunited. I told you I’d help, Barin.: Mari seems oblivious to you. Her eyes are closed, her lips turned in a serene smile as she strokes Barin’s head.: My boy, my good, good boy…: Hey! Wait – one sec. Ma. MA! Look!: Thank you so much for helping my ma. All those Voidwoken! Sheesh. Thank the gods everyone is ok. : Maybe a bit of prayer isn’t so uncalled for. The gods are listening more often than you might think.: If that’s the case, let ‘em show themselves. Lucian, at the very least! All these Reds runnin’ the realm for him, and he ain’t even here! Anyhoo… : Uh… no. I helped Mari, the mother of Barin, not Mari the Magister.: Don’t I know they’re a jumpy lot these days. Voidwoken have got all of us sleepin’ with our weapons in-hand. Can’t fault ‘em for wanting to protect us.I can when ‘protection’ means ‘rounding up Sourcerers, lobotomizing them, and turning them into drones for their army.’ : Reimond’s a good sort. You’ll see.: I don’t like him. He’s mean. : Changing topic: where will you go now? Your house is surrounded by Voidwoken corpses. There may be more later – not to mention the stench. : Do you know why the Voidwoken are attracted to Driftwood? I’ve dealt with a fair amount of them in my time, but never have so many of them been in one place.: Some dwarves – locals – attacked a Magister caravan. Must’ve been Sourcerers inside. : Like I said, I’ve handled more than a few Voidwoken by now, and they’re not always going to be easy to deal with. These three were larger than most, but they weren’t the most difficult batch I’ve had to deal with.: No match for the bomber pair at the bridgeside cottage, right Barin?: As rain!: We’re off into town. Best of luck to you, mate. And come say hi if you make your way inside. We actually learned something new in that conversation: the Voidwoken that attacked the caravan were moving in formation, as a coordinated unit. I don’t believe that’s ever come up before. They’re usually pretty dumb and focus more on raw power and numbers than in tactics, so this means they’re either evolving their tactics to keep up with us beating them back, or someone or something is guiding them. Anyway, this was a quest that the game apparently assumed we’d complete before doing absolutely everything in Driftwood, so the rewards are appropriately kind of meh. An Ice Fan scroll; an Air Resistance potion; a handful of money; and our choice between a wand, a staff, some pants, and a heavy chestpiece. The equipment is all leveled to the quest, not to us, so it’s all trash. I take the pants, when, really, I should have taken the chestpiece for the money it would have brought in. Oh well.   If we head back to the barracks in Driftwood, we can find Mari and Barin staying there. Our quest with them is complete and they don’t offer any news or anything new to speak about, but it’s nice to see our heroic efforts paying off… even if it’s for a Magister. : Well, there’s a fond face! Barin and I are patchin’ up before we head home. Hope the Order folks are treatin’ ya alright. You stay outta trouble, now.: You’re the best.Aww   Back at Mari’s house: there are several dead Magister bodies and three dead, large Voidwoken to loot, but unfortunately, the only real rewards I get are arthropod legs (crafting ingredients, but they also get a fair amount of cash for how common they are) and a single hazy ruby.  However, I had lifted Mari’s basement key from her bedside table. I wonder what she’s got hidden in her cellar? Considering she had all the ingredients to craft up a battalion’s worth of explosives, maybe there’s more stuff down below that I can work with.  Fane makes an unusual quip about how large the cellar is. Maybe there’s stuff to work with down here.  Overall, it’s not too unassuming. There are boxes and barrels and bowls and baskets, but the place is mostly empty. And she has another casket of beer in the corner – what’s the point of the Black Bull Tavern if every single person in Driftwood is loving loaded with alcohol? Even Siva had enough to last her for a year and a half!  My looting finds a nice elven dagger to add to my wares collection.  In the back corner of the cellar is one subsection that’s been gated off, which is highly unusual for a civilian’s cellar. Mari’s cellar door key doesn’t work on it.   Luckily, lockpicks do, as they do on any lock.  Not much to find: some unenchanted weapons and armour, probably just meant to be a personal collection, or gallery. But there’s a big chest that’s free for the looting.   As I round the table to the chest, Fane says that he ‘found something,’ and it turns out, he found a pressure plate on the other side of the wall. Normally the game is a lot better about being able to see through walls (i.e. you can’t) than that.  And the chest doesn’t contain anything special, either. So, Mari’s cellar is really just that: a place to dry-store her food and keep all her empty storage containers, along with a personal space to hold her private collection of weapons and armour.  That said, there’s a second gate in the cellar that reaches deeper underground. This one is also locked and it’s also defeated by a single lockpick. What lies beyond this door isn’t more cellar, though: the basement is properly made with cobblestone and defined walls, while this looks like to goes deeper into a cave system.   Fane spots a second pressure plate on the other side of the door. It’s a pretty simple puzzle: just press both of the pressure plates and the door opens. From the outside. Weird to put the solution to opening your locked door that leads into your basement on the outside; it could be foiled by, I don’t know, two heavy-set rats being at the right place at the right time.  … Clever. There’s a third switch.  Okay, pressing these three switches should open the door, then. Well, all of that’s beside the point: we’ve already crossed the door into the cave. We’re not looking to try and get back in.  The cellar opens into an underground vein that’s been carved out by an underground river and waterfall. It’s also a bit ‘lived in,’ given that there are bridges made of wood and nails to cross the trenches.   There’s also a bucket on a chain that, when interacted with, will take me back aboveground, to where I had scaled the cliff after crossing the river. Mari was probably aware that her cellar was another potential point of entry, given that a person could just climb up or down the well whenever they want. Also, it’s kind of a useless place for the well’s bucket to be. It’s resting on dry land; the spring water is flowing a fair distance away from it.  Reaching the end of the cave’s vein, I come to a waterfall and a deep pool of water that I can’t wade into. For most people, this would be the end of their journey into the cave system, but….  There’s an outcropping of rock halfway up the waterfall. If I can get there, I can scale the rest of the waterfall and travel deeper in. Unfortunately, none of my teleporting skills can reach that far, not even in the base game. The outcropping is also higher than I am, so that’s a distance penalty I’ll have to work around. There are two methods to get there from here, though: the first is via Telekinesis, a Civil stat that lets a person move objects with their mind, regardless of weight, and the higher that stat is, the farther the object can be moved. It’s a pretty useless stat in casual play, though; I’ve never had a reason to put any points into it. (It’s an essential stat in speedrunning: when objects are thrown or teleported onto people or enemies, the amount of damage it does depends on how heavy the object is. So you can take any container; fill it up to be as heavy as possible; and, with Telekinesis, you can chuck it at enemies to one-shot most targets. Divinity: Unleashed removed this admittedly-cheesy tactic by making it so containers that are carrying more than their own weight can’t be thrown.) The second is doing the exact same thing with the Strength stat, which increases how far objects can be thrown the more points you put into it. In terms of moving objects, Strength is technically inferior to Telekinesis because Strength requires you to be able to walk up to the object, while Telekinesis can pull items to you from as far away as you can throw them. So, anyway: the idea is to have Fane throw his Teleporter Pyramid onto the ledge.  But even with Fane’s really-high Strength stat, he can’t quite chuck it that far. Luckily, Peace of Mind buffs all primary stats by three (and Wits by five), so Prince giving Fane that buff is just enough to put Fane over the cusp that he needs to go for the three-pointer.   Pictured: the Teleporter Pyramid gracefully arcing through the air before landing on the platform without a hitch.  Then, we just teleport to it…    And then one Phoenix Dive and another (mistimed) Teleporter Pyramid usage later, and we’ve scaled the waterfall. This was clearly supposed to be a way down, but with a bit of finagling, it’s possible to fall up this cliff.  Progressing up the underground river leads us nowhere; this is the end of the road. But there’s another shoreline we can stop on.  And there’s a big ol’ turtle (I’m pretty sure this is a tortoise but the game refers to it as a turtle)! As of this writing, March 3, 2022, being nice to turtles in videogames is something of a running theme. My previous encounter with turtles didn’t go very well, though. Hopefully this one ends a little nicer. : The turtle looks up at you. Slowly. It looks down. Slowly. It looks back to you. Slowly. : That’s always heartbreaking to hear. Are you in love with someone that doesn’t reciprocate?: She lets loose a long sigh. She inhales. She sighs again. : Rory. The rraaaaat. He’s just over there. Don’t blink or he’ll flit right past. Like a… like a rraaaaaat. He’s grace. I’m gruel. I’m toooo slowww to give him smooches. And he’s sooooooo smoochable.: If only I could keeeep up. I could groan sweeeeet things in his little ears. I could tell him I looove him. I could share my beets. : I was just exploring another person’s basement when I found you. I don’t suppose you’re someone’s pet?: Used to be the lady’s. Was there one daaaaaay and wasn’t the nexxxxxxxxxt.: Ryker now. Nice guuuuy. Gives me beeeeets. : Perhaps this Rory the Rat is amenable to your affections, and you just need to get him to slow down long enough for you to admit them. I’m lighter on my feet than you are; perhaps I could do the ground work for you by buttering him up?  : I don’t think you juice cheese, exactly.: Oh. That’s too bad. Because thennnnn you could cheese-juice him uuuuup!: She grins at her own joke. It takes a good minute for her mouth to reach full smile.Interesting; this turtle, Betty, says she belongs to a man named Ryker. That name was on the Magister list in the barracks; Ryker is one of the Source Masters that we’ll be needing to speak to eventually, and he’s nearby. Although I wonder what she meant by ‘used to be the lady’s.’ Maybe she’s talking about Mari? This cave is connected to her cellar, but Mari doesn’t seem like the type to keep a pet turtle. Anyway, this is a small sidequest that’s worth some EXP. The goal is to find Rory the Rat and convince him to listen to Betty the Turtle’s confession. But Rory is apparently lightning fast for a rat. Before you think of any alternative solutions to this sidequest:  Hasting Betty does nothing. Although I’m sure it makes her feel a little spry.   Progressing onward a bit, we come across a second cellar – Mari’s neighbour Ryker, I guess, although I didn’t see any other houses on that cliff. This cellar doesn’t look too different from Mari’s, although there’s a lot of empty cages around.  Rory the Rat is there in the middle of the room, darting back and forth across the floor. He’s not any quicker than any other rat – which is good, because rats are notoriously difficult to click on in order to speak to.  : Looking to negotiate with your stomach? I’ll see if I don’t have some food to put down for you.: The rat’s tail twists and untwists. His ears cock and uncock. : CheeseFood? FruitFood? : Although, if you took the time to slow down for a moment, you’d learn that the turtle has something she’d like to say to you.: …HungryCheeseBerry.: The rat vacuums up your scent. Its whiskers twitch.: FoodFoodFood?I don’t often pick up all the food I come across, since food in Divinity: Original Sin 2 isn’t a good option when potions exist. The Five Star Diner talent increases the effects of food by five times, and that talent was really buffed in Divinity: Unleashed, and it’s still not a great option over just chugging potions or casting spells. That said, I still have a bit of food in my pockets. Mostly from back in Fort Joy, or on the ship heading towards it – back when the game first started.  Before I get to that, though, lemme just loot the place real quick. A dog collar with a nametag that says Dot. Dot will probably want this back, I’m guessing.  Oooh, an epic-level bow and a whole-rear end, fully-cooked-and-still-steaming pizza. Rory will eat any consumable food you put down for him, but you can’t carve up the pizza for more pieces; he’ll just eat the entire pie. The bow, of course, is useless to me, but it’s worth a bit of coin.  The goal with Rory is to put down food and lure him towards Betty. He’ll home in on any food that’s nearby and he’ll travel as far as necessary to get it. He’s always hungry, so you’ll have as many tries as you have food to get him to Betty. In fact, if you’re quick, you can just put down one piece of food and move it every time Rory gets closer to kite him towards Betty. He’ll also eat food that’s in jars, such as jars of honey. This was all pertinent information to me because it took me every last bit of food I had to get Rory to Betty.  As soon as Rory and Betty are within a few meters of each other, they both become Charmed to each other, and the quest is listed as complete. And I get a fat 7,725 EXP for it. : A dream come truuuue! It’s nice to finally come out of my shellllllllllll! May the soil under your feeeeeet stay ever sssssssssssssss…: …sssssssssmooooth.: CuddlesForDays! WeMakeACuteCouple! LoveIsLoveIsLove!  Presumably, we’re underneath Ryker’s house, which means that these stairs will take us up into his home proper. I kind of hope he’s not home; that’ll be an awkward conversation to have. Alternatively, I could go back where I came, but, nah. : As you move to ascend the stairs, the skull at the top of the pile creaks around and gazes at you. Well, it seems to be gazing, but there are certainly no eyeballs in those barren sockets.  : You want the truth?: I’m Godwoken. I’m on a mission from Amadia to expand the font of my Source powers to achieve divinity. And, believe it or not, my journey has led me into your neighbour’s cellar, and from there, into yours. : A truth! So rare to hear in this world. The truth can make you many friends. Me, for example.: Head upstairs, Godwoken. We’ll speak more there.Well, alright. That conversation wasn’t as awkward as I was worried it might be.  Ryker’s MansionWe’re moved into Ryker’s house – an opulent mansion on the edge of a cliff, although it’s… not under disrepair, but it doesn’t seem as lived-in as you’d have expected, given that Ryker just spoke to us. There are cobwebs all over the cellar door, which is weird, because Betty said Ryker regularly gives her beets.  What is to be expected of a house that is currently occupied is that everything is listed as ‘owned’ and therefore, if I take them, I’d be stealing. Which, you know, isn’t exactly a barrier insomuch as it is a notice.  Standing at what is probably the front door is two doormen. They’re dressed up as one of those medieval doctors with the beak masks and the long, black gowns, although the one on our right is carrying a big ol’ broadsword. Interestingly, though, we can see their spirits. That’s… not normally how Spirit Vision works. Normally, a person’s spirit is still inside their body when a person is alive or undead. Which means that these two are… somehow neither? : The masked creature is mute, save the occasional moan.But when we speak to the spirit….  : (Perhaps, by learning of its anguish, I can ease some of it.): Your hand reaches through the spirit. Your Source is inert; you see no memories, siphon no emotions. Its face grown even more tortured. It is trapped. By what or by whom, you cannot say.Ah, so, already our friend Ryker is proving to be an upstanding sort, by extricating the spirits of living beings and then keeping them locked in limbo.  In the next room over, we see much of the same: more guards with their spirits ripped from them and forced to watch their bodies behave without their input. And it seems Ryker has a fondness for… unusual pets. : As you approach the salamander turns its head away, twisting its snout into the air. It refuses to even look in your direction. Maybe it takes a lizard to speak with a lizard? Prince, you try.  : Kin! You speak to Xiuh, hatched from the egg of Zorrah. It pleases Xiuh to speak to lizards once more.For your information: his name is pronounced ‘ke-YUHH.’ : But why does a dragonkin leave the Ancient Empire? Why does a dragonkin come to such a dark place? : I suppose it’d be accurate to say that there’s something about the dark and the taboo that I find attractive.: This place is dark as any cave. And for a kin to seek out such shadow? : The Old Tongue has been antiquated for many generations by now. How did you learn to speak it so fluently?: Xiuh’s old master taught Xiuh. Consul Zara, esteemed Lizard Consul, was the most prestigious master! Until the elf killed Consul Zara…: The lizard lets out a low, rumbling hiss. : That makes you his prisoner, then. My condolences. It’s always a wrong worth righting when you see one of your own taken against their will.: A prisoner, yes. But my master’s secrets are safe – the vile elf cannot speak our elegant tongue, and he could not break open her chest. He tried for many weeks, but its enchantments are strong.: In the elf’s rage, it was thrown into the flames of our lizard graves. Even there, it could not be destroyed. : That chest of your consul could contain tools that can help me on my own quest to bring glory to our kind. I ask, respectfully, that you tell me how to open this chest, should I find it.: The lizard’s eyes, cold, search your face for a moment.: Xiuh had hoped to keep his master’s secrets until the end of time, but it is right that a kin of your majesty should know. If you can douse the fire, good prince, sing these words. The chest will open for you like a cracked egg. : Before I bid you adieu, I ask: where are we? What sort of visitors would Ryker expect?: The lizard hisses dismissively.: All apes look alike. They dress in black, but come in all shapes. Tall humans. Stunted dwarves. Creatures that stink of death. All that is known is they arrived with gold and left with the promise that people will die.Well, that’s foreboding.   Sitting at the other end of the room is the man of the manor – Ryker the Source Master. And murderer and squatter, if I’m understanding Xiuh and Betty correctly. He has a big, fancy bow strung across his back and he looks… kind of pale. Man must not get a lot of sunlight.  : A visitor. Such a rare and exquisite pleasure. Especially from one so… unliving.: The elf tilts his head backwards, but his squinted eyes don’t stray from you. : It’s rare to find someone so aware and comfortable with the presence of the… mortally challenged.: Look around you, good sir! I live among the graves. I’d be a most unsavory neighbour if I let myself wallow in ignorance of my own community. : That’s… right. How did you know?A rare miss in Divinity’s dialogue trees – he knows because I told him not five minutes ago, but the dialogue doesn’t account for that. : So much potential, but still so naïve. It is my very business to know things, human.: I also see you are not yet… whole.: He presses a slender forefinger against his tight lips and hums. : I have every reason to believe that you may not be on the up-and-up, Ryker.: You are cautious. An admirable quality. I, too, have… difficulty with trust. However, my requirements are very simple. You go to the Blackpits, to a cavern there. In it, you’ll find a stone tablet of considerable value.: He points to the location on your map.: Bring it to me.: Dizziness. It lasts just a moment – but long enough for you to feel Amadia’s presence. You hear no words, yet understand: it’s imperative you accept Ryker’s bargain. : What about this ‘stone tablet’ of yours is so imperative?: It’s a miracle of the ancients. Priceless, really, and powerful enough to draw the Magister’s attentions. : … How can I be sure of that?: Ryker’s lips stretch and his cheeks bulge – but you couldn’t rightly call his unusual grimace a smile. : You’re clearly an accomplished Sourcerer in your own right, Ryker. You have… bodyguards… that you can animate and command as you like. Why not get it yourself? : I haven’t said ‘no’ yet, but just so there’s no confusion between us: what, precisely, am I getting out of this exchange? You get a stone tablet; what do I get?: I would think that obvious, my good fellow. You’re dying to show off those smouldering talents of yours. You just don’t know how to handle them. We’re leaving this update at this choice. Ryker is one of the Source Masters listed on the bulletin board at the Magister barracks in Driftwood. Amadia and Siva both told us to seek out people like him – and we were told up-front by Siva that Source Masters aren’t necessarily good people – and have them teach us how to master the Source within ourselves to become stronger. Ryker is a necromancer (as are we, so that shouldn’t be the no-sell) that, according to Xiuh and Betty, killed the previous groundskeeper for the Stonegarden graveyard and usurped her mansion. It’s fair to say that whatever’s happened to the bodyguards wearing the crow masks is because of something he did – which, honestly, should accurately portray just how powerful of a Sourcerer he is. He wants us to go to the Blackpits, a place we were eventually going to go anyway; retrieve a stone tablet that the Magisters want; and to bring it back to him. In exchange, he’ll teach us how to master our Source. Do we trust him and take this deal? Or do we try our luck elsewhere? We’ll need to speak with at least two Source Masters, and the Magister list had five names, excluding Ifan’s. To recap, we have two votes this time: Do we take Peeper, the half-chicken half-Voidwoken chick, to his father in Paradise Downs, or do we kill him now and be done with it? Do we trust Ryker and retrieve his stone tablet in the Blackpits? Or do we turn away and wash our hands of him? Let me know in 72 hours! Maple Leaf fucked around with this message at 21:31 on Mar 4, 2022 |
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Mar 4, 2022 17:58
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Bring Peeper to his father and carry out Ryker's bidding. Make it so.
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Mar 4, 2022 19:11
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Donkringel posted:Bring Peeper to his father and carry out Ryker's bidding. Make it so. Seconding this. I'm sure our divine hitchhiker wouldn't steer us wrong! 
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Mar 4, 2022 19:27
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This was an oddly adorable update. Demon chicken family reunion and trust the clearly untrustworthy guy. I can't see how either of these choices could possibly go wrong.
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Mar 4, 2022 22:46
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Both the matricidal void chicken and the necromancer squatter elf seem trustworthy and good. Take the chick to his papa and help this poor elf in collecting tablets.
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Mar 4, 2022 23:01
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