juggling-responsibilities

[juggling-responsibilities]

Act 1, Part 5 - As the World Falls Down

The Shield Maze, as previously discussed, is a part of the ruins beneath Kenabres that connects to the surface. Neather legend states that when the maze falls, the children of the first crusaders will be able to rise to join the rest of Mendev to join the final assault on the Worldwound.

At least, that's what we've been led to believe. When Wenduag takes us there in the dead of night, it's... not exactly what I was expecting. The way they described it, it's crumbling ruins and deserted buildings.

Well, they did say it was a maze...

Turns out this is a whole-ass temple to the demons. And spoiler warning: I think this might have something to do with how Deskari was able to attack the city.

The Shield Maze, as it turns out, is a temple to Baphomet, the Lord of the Labyrinth. Or rather, it appears to have originally been a temple to Iomedae that was abandoned and taken over by the cultists of Baphomet. It's a bit hard to tell - the demonic iconography is still being built, or rather was being built up until extremely recently, when the fucking ground was rent asunder by a mountain-sized scythe. The lower levels were under construction, and we come across the recently-killed bodies of the miners and masons who were still in the process of building and expanding. There is also flooding in the lower levels, but that looks to be aqueducts from Kenabres up above being shattered and emptying out into the caverns below.

What I'm saying is that these ruins don't really look all that ruinous. I mean, they do now, but they wouldn't have if we came here, say, a week ago.

The earthquakes have also brought up some angry elementals, which we manage to pacify. Well, by pacify, I mean "beat the shit out of until they stop being angry". We don't have a stoned transporter chief to teleport Gorignak into the peaceful void of space, after all, so Mendevian girls make do.

Of course, it's not just irritated elementals and Baphomet cultists that are in here.

There are mongrels in here, and a lot more than the ones Wenduag said got lost. Like, a lot more.

🕷: "Some unlucky fools who thought the Shield Maze was a good place to go for a stroll. The Maze drove them insane. If they weren't insane to begin with, that is. But this isn't the first time I've been attacked by people I know in here. Lost friends of mine would sometimes reappear... like that. They didn't recognize anyone anymore. Trying to talk to them was a waste of time. Ending their suffering was the only option." She snorts derisively, but it seems forced. "Weaklings. Serves them right." 🪓: "You never told me this Maze of yours was crawling with cultists." 🕷: "I didn't because there weren't any. Looks like they got here the same way you did - the fell from the surface."

If we want to take a quick dip into an alternate universe for a moment, one where we didn't call Lann a liar in front of his village elder and leader, we can get a different response to that question.

Where Wenduag is dismissive, Lann is sorrowful. She calls them weaklings for losing their path, both literally and figuratively. Meanwhile, Lann mourns his lost friends, and takes his indignation not in the fact that they fell, but that they were in this position in the first place.

But we're not in that universe. Let's go back to Quintessa and her spiderkitten who thinks of nothing but murder all day.

A... well, it's not a passive Perception check since there actually was a roll involved, but passive in gameplay terms. Because I know TTRPG terms are sometimes at odds with terminology from the videoed games, I will default to the gameplay terms when necessary.

So: A successful passive Perception check gives me another dialogue option at this point.

🪓: "The Maze doesn't look like the mysterious place you've made it out to be. Looks more like a cultists' den to me, and a well-established one at that."

So, in essence, we've learned two important things about Wenduag here.

She's lying to us. Flat-out, bald-faced lying. I'd be more offended if I wasn't so interested in why.

She's touchy.

There's one more main difference in this section between Wenduag and Lann, of course. While Lann gives you more insight into the actual motivations of the mongrels and the tragedy of them losing themselves in the Maze, Wenduag's interactions are a bit more practical. By which I mean she can bypass a particularly difficult locked door in the basement, one that you can maybe make the roll on with Camellia, but a failure jams the lock and renders the treasure behind it unreachable. Wenduag, in her many excursions through the Maze, stole the key and just unlocks it for you.

The majority of this dungeon is fairly standard tutorial dungeon fare - notes on a few cultists hint at how to unlock secret rooms (you have to look for torches you can interact with), there are a few tougher fights with some higher level elementals that are a little bit of a player skill check - they're made completely trivial if you're not just autoattacking and actually using your spells or abilities, depending on your class features, but otherwise can completely wreck an unprepared party. Throughout there is just a masterful amount of environmental storytelling, which serves three purposes in one:

It sets the mood of the game absolutely wonderfully - this is a tutorial dungeon and it's just absolutely filled with corpses, fountains of blood, and the incomplete masonry of workers interrupted in their duties of expanding their base and making it more demonic.

It teaches you mechanics, as well as how this game differs mechanically from their previous one, Kingmaker. For example, the very first trap you come across has a lootable pile of charred bones in front of it, indicating that someone else has run afoul of the trap, and urging you to take a closer look at how the trap has a separate trigger panel needed to disarm it, instead of disarming it at the base of the trap itself.

It also just encourages you to slow down and just look at the details, read the notes. The notes that tell you where secret rooms, are, for example, but also the ones that give you more indication of the story. Specifically, that Wenduag has been lying to you even more - these cultists have been here for a while, not just recently.

Also importantly for a tutorial dungeon, the Shield Maze also has some more fun surprises for us. Hidden away behind a color puzzle, we find a lost relic of the first crusade.

Which basically tells us that the Tower of Estrod, whatever that is, is also compromised. Considering there's this whole-ass cultist base directly under Kenabres, that does seem to be the theme here.

Whatever Deskari was able to do, it wasn't the first strike. This was planned, and it was done from inside the city.

...I'm feeling really good about leaving the circus for this, y'all.

In any case, Camellia is a lot less impressed by a rusted sword, and Seelah, instead of getting defensive about it, just wonders at the same thing I am - how did it get here from the Tower?

🪓: "What's so special about it?" 🛡: "Now... nothing, I guess. But this sword was legendary in its day! People say that when Yaniel held it, the blade would glow, striking demons left and right. Soldiers would see Radiance's light from afar and take heart, rushing into the fray and winning. But I don't know what's wrong with it now, or how to restore its power. All I can sense is that they made a mockery of it." 🩸: "You're empathizing with an object? Extraordinary. Are all paladins so tender-hearted and sensitive?"

Seelah goes on to explain who Yaniel was, how important she was to the crusade, and how she died covering the escape from Drezen. The sword means a lot to Seelah not only as a relic, but as a reminder of why she does what she does.

🛡: "I have this weird feeling, like I'm rescuing a fellow warrior from a dungeon. We can't just abandon it, even if it's no use to us. It's no use to anyone down here. But what if it could be repaired?"

Even without the quest marker popping up in my journal, I would have known this was important. Not only are we going to find a way to restore this sword, we're going to find out more about what happened to Yaniel. Narrative flags don't lie, and these are more like narrative anvils.

It's actually an upgrade for Seelah, anyway. Replacing her normal longsword with this, a Cold Iron longsword. I know some popular builds give Seelah other weapons, and I'm sure paladins could make use of a lot of different ones, but not only does this mean a lot to her, she's also a follower of Iomedae, whose favored weapon is a longsword. No, this thing is staying with Seelah, and we'll make sure she keeps using it.

The rest of the dungeon goes about how you'd expect.

Eventually we reach stairs up to a new, rather ornate chamber, where several mongrels are huddled behind a crusader, potentially another one who fell from the Day of the City up above. They're being confronted by a cultist and a rather large demon.

These are the missing youths from Neathholm, as it turns out. The cultist, Hosilla, has rounded them up to either kill or convert them, and she doesn't particularly care which. She demonstrates as one of the mongrels protests, declaring that they are children of the crusaders - which she ignores as she calmly walks over and kills them.

The other mongrels, who clearly don't want to die, rush over to the fallen crusader and start eating, glowing with demonic power as they do so.

Oh, yes. This is the tone this game is setting.

But then...

That's when the narration kicks in.

Inside me are two warring instincts. I have a demon of rage, urging me to kill - and I have an angel, ushering me to defy this instinct and rise above it.

That. That doesn't seem normal. But I am too swept up in the emotions to care. Kill the interloper, or show them the light of justice?

I tamp down the demon, but the narration tells me that this is a supreme act of self-control.

The mysterious wound, the one the silver dragon Terendelev could not heal, the one that I sustained just prior to the events of the game...

To use a technical term for it, it's fuckin' weird as shit.

Something caused this wound, and it's reacting to massive emotions and enormous power, and it allows me to choose how I direct it. I could, in the narration's terms, succumb to the rage and wield monstrous demonic power, or control it with the light of the gods.

Savamelekh doesn't much like it, at least. He screeches in pain and nopes out, leaving us to fight Hosilla on her own - or, on her own plus some lesser demons who stuck around.

🕷: "I no longer serve you, you bitch! Not you, or your flying monkey! I always fight with the strongest side."

Implications of this are concerning, but we don't really have time to process that just yet. It's a rough fight, but we're also not alone - Lann has followed us and joins in.

Thanks, Lann. You're so awesome, Lann.

Boss fight: Hosilla

She's tough, but not impossible to take down, especially once Lann joins in.

Although Lann's not terribly happy with us, either.

This is not going to be pleasant.

[juggling-responsibilities]

Act 1, Part 4 - Village People

With cursory introductions out of the way, my new guides have brought me to their village. It is a village of nothing but neathers, mongrel descendants of the first crusaders, which as I understand it was roughly a hundred years ago? Maybe less? The Worldwound is surprisingly not that old, all things considered, but it's had a massive impact here in Mendev. And mongrels don't live very long, either, so there have been several generations since.

With the reception Lann and Wenduag gave me, of course, that would mean we'd be welcomed, right? Or at the very least, not killed and eaten.

Frankly, I wouldn't blame them for killing and eating us. The surface folk haven't really treated them as anything other than monsters and tales to scare their children with.

Interestingly enough, the dialogue box pops open not for dialogue, but rather for internal, second-person narration.

Your first impression of the mongrel village is of a squalid dump, with the odors to match. Unblinking, glowing eyes watch you from the gloom, and deformed shadows slope between the huts. You see some mongrels gutting white, eyeless fish, while others are repairing fishing nets - all the signs of normal village life, but tense expectation hangs in the air.

It's a fascinating glimpse of this, a lake-side fishing village, but rather than being lit by the setting sun, there are the purples, blues, and greens of the bioluminescent cave fungi, and the torches and campfires that likely must remain lit around the clock. It is at once dreary and hopeful, the bonfire against the darkness, of community huddled together, taking what they have available to them and patchworking it together into something that might look unpleasant, but absolutely works. Just like those that live there.

Welcome to Neathholm.

Upon our arrival, we are taken directly to Chief Sull, the elderly and ratlike leader of the village.

He opines that if uplanders are down here, the End Times must be upon them at last - the End Times either meaning their doom, or the prophecy of the mongrels returning to the Mendevian Crusades against the Worldwound. Either way would mean the destruction of their society as they know it, and he is naturally wary of all of this.

Lann, of course, wastes no time.

🦎: "Chief Sull! We found the angel's sword! And we found the one who can wield it." Lann points at you. "She had a vision and now the angel's sword, together with the Light of Heaven, are somehow... inside her. Gather the tribe! Anyone who can hold a weapon. The young ones are still alive, we can go save them!"

This is what I was dreading. There's a dialogue option that delays this confrontation, and I'm going to mash my mouse cursor into it as hard as I can.

🪓: "Is there someone else from the surface here?" 🐀: "There he ish. Hale and hearty and prim as a peacock. Jusht like me. Sh'not good. Too many uplanders - sh'not good, sh'not right. What are you up to here? You're not one of us, we're not your kind. When the time comes, we'll come to you. Not you to ush."

And that's also true - the stories passed down say that the walls in the Shield Maze will fall and the mongrels will be able to rise to the surface, not that the surface will fall to them.

There are three options left. One is to deny to the chief that any magical sword will even help them, but that feels too mean to me. Another is the one I usually take, the Lawful coded option to [Reveal the Light of Heaven] and show that Lann speaks the truth.

But the poll was the poll. And while you can still be nice to Lann here and still choose Wenduag later, I feel like it would go against the spirit to do that just to save Lann's feelings. Besides, Wenduag's not entirely wrong here - it would be a lot easier for a small group to slip in unnoticed than to arm the entire village and storm the Shield Maze, potentially endangering even more lives. Wenduag is the only one who's been through the Shield Maze and made it back alive, after all, so when she says she can get us through and rescue the kids the sneaky way, it isn't necessarily a bad plan. On paper, at least, and assuming she isn't lying to us.

But... then I would have to be mean to Lann. And I really don't want to be mean to Lann.

Fuck. The internet has spoken, and they want me to take the spiderkitten who thinks of nothing but murder all day. Might as well go all-in.

🪓: (Chaotic) "Lann is mistaken. We didn't find the sword."

🦎: "Why are you doing this?" 🕷: "Doing what? Telling the truth?" 🪓: "I don't want the blood of gullible mongrels on my hands." 🦎: "So now instead, we'll both have the blood of young mongrels on our hands - kids waiting for help that'll never come. Everybody around me said that they didn't want to go anywhere or save anyone, but I didn't believe them. I always have to take things further than anybody else, isn't that right, Chief?"

And there it is. You can see the moment his heart rips in two, Lisa. We've crushed not only his hopes that not only could he use a symbol of the crusade to rescue his clanmates, but that I was someone he could trust. But now I've called him a liar and shown him to be a fool in front of his chief, and though he falls silent to watch us carefully, he won't forget what we did.

🕷: "You made the right choice. It was the lesser of two evils. And now - rest, so we can be at our best when we go into the maze. I promised to lead you to the surface, and I will."

Sticking around a bit to chat with Chief Sull, I learn some more about the mongrels and their role with the crusades. Turns out it's not just Lann - the mongrels really do believe that there will be a sign to rise to the surface to join the fight, when the Shield Maze falls and the way to the surface opens, but that it's not something they should seek out; it will happen when it happens.

Of course, it may not be a commonly-held belief that they should wait until the walls fall to try to make their way through. Lann and Wenduag both agree on that point, even if they differ on both the means and the intent - Lann thinks it's their duty to be crusaders now, and Wenduag wants to go to the surface for her own purposes.

Chief Sull also gives us some interesting information about Lann and Wenduag. Namely that Lann used to live up on the surface, which is why he feels like he doesn't belong underground with the rest of his clan. And that Wenduag is a role model whether she wants to be or not - all the other mongrels look up to her and listen to her.

🪓: "I'm going to enter the Maze with Wenduag."

The implication here, of course, being that Chief Sull is Wenduag's father, or at least someone who considers himself to be a father figure. I know I said I'm going to avoid looking up the original Adventure Path, as this game should be self-contained with all the explanation needed to fully enjoy it without any outside knowledge (and I will be judging it as such) but I did look it up and while Wenduag is his daughter there, she might not be here? Something I look forward to exploring later when we go through her companion quests.

Though I will say that I'm going to impose another rule on myself now, which is not to look up anything else from the Adventure Path at all, until the eventual point I decide to change my mind about it later.

That said, let's go for Level 2. Y'all are horny for numbers so let's talk about my build. As I said earlier, I'm cannibalizing a throwing axe build usually made for Wenduag, but making some tweaks to account for the fact that I A: will probably be going for 40 levels due to taking the Legend mythic path (more on that later) and B: wanted to take a pet because fuck it, I like having a pet in these games. So with that in mind, my second level is in Rogue (Thug).

I know the portrait looks nothing like me. There was nothing in the default and I didn't want to use one of the portrait packs on the Nexus because there's no guarantee they won't be A: stolen or B: AI stolen, which normally wouldn't matter for playing by myself (right-click save for your personal games, who gives a shit) but ethically is not a good idea for something I'm sharing. Even if I'm not making money off this, it's not a good idea to use some artist's work for something I'm writing for other people without their consent.

In any case, Chief Sull lets us know there's a tent we can rest at before we head out to the Shield Maze, so we make our way through the village. On the way we meet back up with Anevia, who has found the other uplander that fell down and managed to find shelter at Neathholm.

To be entirely honest, I don't know if life could do anything to this man worse than being named Horgus Gwerm.

I'll spare you the subsequent bluster. Teal dear, he's the richest man in Kenabres. Woe is him, he funded the festival and now he's down here, et cetera. Though he does seem to be a bit less up his own ass than I would expect of a wealthy merchant.

💰: "But they turned out to be decent chaps. Frightening to look at, but able to keep a bargain." 🪓: "You don't speak very kindly of the mongrels, even though they saved your life!" 💰: "Pah. Kind words are for people with hours to fritter away on pleasantries. Horgus Gwerm speaks his mind - and he pays for services rendered not with kind words but with hard coin. I gave my mongrels my dagger in exchange for their help - its handle is worth more than their whole village."

Slightly less up his own ass than I was expecting. Only slightly.

He seems to have some connection to Camellia, sneaking glances at her, and she's quick to back him when he asks to hire us out to guide him back to the city. Especially since he's offering a thousand gold pieces upon successful arrival back to the surface, which a quick successful Diplomacy check bumps up to two thousand. Cash on delivery, of course - we need to get him to his funds first before he can make a withdrawal.

What? Don't look at me like that. He just said that he'd rather give someone money than platitudes. I'm taking him at his word.

With that he goes over to a table near the closest campfire and starts bickering with Anevia.

💰: "This tragedy may not have happened if you'd spent less time surveilling honest citizens and more time tracking the real spies and demon worshippers!" 🕵️‍♀️: "Brilliant idea. How come I didn't think of it? Now if only the cultists would tell us they were cultists... Then we wouldn't have to waste time investigating honest citizens who decide to go all cloak and dagger right under our noses!"

Gwerm despairs that the city might already be flattened, while Anevia points out that Nerosyan is not terribly far - there's an entire army ready to march if Deskari decides to stick around longer.

The real interesting part is how they reacted to the mongrels - Anevia says that if she'd known they were down here, she'd have tried to bring them up to the city long ago - the descendants of the first crusaders should be honored, not forgotten. Gwerm points out that Prelate Hulrun would have had them all executed, which is definitely further proof that Hulrun is a lot harsher than he probably needs to be.

Level-ups completed, gear sold and updated at the mongrel shopkeep (who has a throwing axe, but only one, so I won't be dual-wielding those any time soon), we settle down for the night. It's not long before Wenduag wakes me up - she wants to head out in the dead of night, leave Lann behind, and try to push through without leaving a trace.

🪓: "Are we still going to save the missing mongrels?" 🕷: "What? Oh, them... they're probably dead already, but if we meet anyone on the way, we won't just walk on by. At the end of the day, they are of the tribe."

Definitely reinforcing my decision to go with you and not get the kids killed, Wenduag. Certainly not suspicious at all.

I'm not entirely certain how much of what she's telling me is something she actually believes. Not being able to meet my eyes when she speaks is definitely a narrative flag of lying, or at least of internal struggles with the truth. And yes, I know that's an extremely neurotypical and allistic read of the situation, but narrative conventions are made from neurotypical and allistic standpoints and I'm going off those out of sheer probability. They're flagging for Wenduag definitely not being the good choice (on the good vs evil axis), and mechanically she's chaotic evil to Lann's lawful good, but also she didn't have to say this.

Is she saying it because it's what she thinks I want to hear, or is it because it's something she actually believes? Time will tell.

Next time: The Shield Maze!

[juggling-responsibilities]

Act 1, Part 3 - Underground Temple, Underground Monk

Sometimes, in video games and other narratives, they provide you with a character who is the epitome of the softboy with the edge of steel. Someone who cares about family, about community, about doing what's right even though that often means doing what's hard. Someone who likes to ease tension with a joke and follows it up with a casual mention of something so viscerally tragic that it causes your brain to skip a gear while you process all the shit this kind man has gone through.

Your Alistairs, for example. Your Carrot Ironfounderssons, your Peter Parkers and Kaidan Alenkos. You treasure these characters when you find them, you respect their pain and their carefully protected hope for the future.

And sometimes tumblr makes you send them away because they voted for the monster girl.

dead dove do not eat dot gif

I mean, while I had figured Wenduag would win out on tumblr, the "god forbid monster women do anything" website, I had at least thought Lann would be trailing by a lot less, since he would be the classic tumblr sexyman.

Then I remembered that while Wrath of the Righteous does in fact have a tumblr sexyman, it is not Lann. But we'll get to him later.

Our travels through the caves beneath Kenabres have brought us to a section of collapsed building that, strangely, did not appear to have fallen down from up above. Instead we find ourselves inside what appears to be a ruined temple, fallen into disrepair. There are piles of rubble everywhere, but they don't seem to have been caused by the attack. No, this appears to be something much older.

We are also not alone.

This is Lann and Wenduag, and as it turns out, they live down here:

🕷: "We are the underground crusaders, the children of the crusade's finest." 🦎: "Sadly, 'underground crusaders' is a bit of a mouthful, so people usually just call us 'mongrels'." 🕷: "You just love repeating that, don't you, Lann? 'Mongrels' - that's what the uplanders call us. But we call ourselves 'neathers'."

(Pronunciation note: neathers as in beneath)

As they tell it, some of the first Mendevian crusaders were corrupted by the presence of so much demonic energy that they started to mutate. Their descendants continued to live underground, always remembering the glory of their ancestors and their battles against the demons pouring out of the Worldwound, but they stayed underground, away from the rest of the world topside.

Of course, things aren't always as simple as all that. Seelah points out that Kenabres thinks of them as monsters who come out at night and eat children. Or at least that's what people say - Seelah thought they were just made up. Kind of puts a damper on the whole "they will welcome us with open arms" theory, but what're you gonna do?

As far as what they're doing here?

🦎: "This is the hall where we remember the glory of our forebears. Sorry about the mess - it doesn't usually look like this, trust me. Sometimes we even wipe the dust off the exhibits." 🕷: "This is where the relics of the first crusaders are displayed. Our lives are short, our glories are quickly forgotten... but this place helps us to remember that we are just as worthy as anyone else, and that our lives are not lived in vain."

About seventy years ago (or fifty thousand gongs in neather time) the tribe found the remains of an angel in the temple, surrounded by his fallen compatriots. They buried them with as much dignity as they could, but the angel's flaming sword could not be removed from the rock it was embedded in - it burned anyone who tried. So the angel and the sword were both buried in rubble, as they did the best they could.

Lann, of course, wants to find the sword. Apparently some kids got up into one of the ruins that are connected to the surface, the Shield Maze - named such because it shields the neathers from taking rash actions. The Maze is said to be the signal to rise to the surface and join the crusade - if the walls fall, that means it's time to leave the underground. Wenduag says she's the only one who's ever navigated through it, but some kids decided it was their chance to make a break for it.

Lann accuses Wenduag of putting the idea in their heads, since she's been mapping the route and clearing it of danger. Wenduag deflects this, as she says she's always told them to wait until she was finished.

We offer to help, although Wenduag sees it as merely a means for us to make it back to the surface. Which, she's not wrong - it's the best lead we have, but if we can help them rescue their lost youth in the process, that's also worth it.

Some scouring of the rubble later and...

It's not just a flaming sword. It's a sword made of flames. Hilt and all. Which, honestly, you gotta love a sword made of pure fire. I don't really blame Lann for this - if I went back to my family and said "hey we need to break our policy of not going into the creepy labyrinth" and I said it while holding a sword made of flames then I'd fully expect to get my way, too.

Of course, the sword itself seems to have its own opinions, and we move into the first of what the previous game, Kingmaker, referred to as "book choices".

These sequences in Kingmaker were narrated by Linzi, who is telling us the story of the game we are playing - a narrative device that allows for some fantastic rapid-fire decision-making and cinematic sequences that are told best in narration and brief illustration. Here, the narrative structure seems to be a journal, though as it refers to me in the third person, I doubt it's my journal. We may or may not find out the story behind this narrative device later - while it would be neat for this to be similarly diegetic, I haven't actually played far enough to find out the answer to this.

The journal sequence continues with the vision - I passed the Will save - and I watch as Deskari (or at least a smaller version of him) moves to finish the angel off, taunting it the entire way. As the vision ends, I am given another opportunity to shape Lariel's response, who claims that another will take up the flaming sword and use it to either punish the wicked or protect the innocent.

The weird demonic wound in my chest, which opened at the start of the vision, heals over once more, leaving me with the sword in my hand. I raise it aloft, and my RGB keyboard and mouse flash in response - a neat interaction. And with that, the sword disappears again, with the note that all I have to do is summon it.

My comrades are astonished at the display:

🕵️‍♀️: "Hey, Quintessa! Are you all right? You were kinda... glowing just now!" 🦎: "That... that was it! The Light of Heaven! But how..." 🕷: "What did you do with it? Where did it go?"

Seelah simply kneels down and prays.

Lann asks me to whip it out again.

Lann is thrilled at the prospects of this. Wenduag, not so much. Lann, worryingly, says that I'm better than them because I'm not a mongrel and Lann, sweetie, if I was allowed to take you along I'd see if I could do something about your self-esteem because oh boy is it in a deep underground pit below the city. Despite this, though, he definitely believes in the power I now hold, and is thrilled to be able to convince Chief Sull to go into the Maze and rescue those poor kids.

With that, our party has gone from three to five. Well, five plus Anevia, who's still plugging away at critters with her bow.

With our new local guides to show us the way, we head off. The way to the Shield Maze is through their village, so we have to make our way through there anyway.

Before we get to the village, however, Wenduag pulls me aside - she wants to have a private word. Essentially, she has a proposal for me: don't show Chief Sull the Light.

🪓: "Lann is sure that the Light should be shown to the mongrels." 🕷: "Lann... He wants to play the hero. His first idea, if you remember, was to grab the sword and run headlong into the Maze. Does that sound like a plan to you? To me it sounds like suicide. The worst part is that the tribe might actually take his words to heart and follow where he leads." 🪓: "I thought you considered the mongrels to be great warriors."

🕷: "Don't show the Chief the Light, and I'll lead you through the Maze to the surface. I swear it."

Well, fuck.

[juggling-responsibilities]

Act 1, Part 2 - Neath Dark Borders

Prologue segments in video games inspired by and adapted from tabletop games are rough. You have yourself in what appears to be a normal celebration, then bad things happen. I'm not saying there's anything wrong with the trope - I'm just pointing out that if you ever get isekai'd into a medieval fantasy world that's about to have a harvest festival, run.

Where were we? Ah, yes. We've fallen and we cannot get back up.

Let's Recap:

Deskari, the Lord of Locusts and the prime asshole that attacked during the Day of the City in Kenabres, sundered the market square after almost effortlessly murdering the silver dragon Terendelev that defended it. He did this because I used a random if distinctively voiced guard's crossbow to shoot him in the shoulder with a Perfectly Normal Crossbow Bolt, which appeared to actively hurt him and brought his attention directly onto me. I am certain this will not come up later.

That brings us to the cave system we now find ourselves in. Gorgeously lit by phosphorescent crystals and bioluminescent flora, the caves are also littered by the bodies of the fallen, sections of cobblestone and brick from the streets and buildings that fell, and the skittering of cave creatures, likely disturbed by the ruckus and defensive of their warrens.

I also still do not have my confiscated armor and weapons, whatever they may have been. But my leopard, Maple, is here - I think I'll be okay as long as she's around.

That's part of the character background I put together, by the way. I am a circus performer, as I've mentioned - an axe thrower to be specific, although I am now currently without any of my axes. This crossbow is nice but not ideal. But for whatever reason, I have a circus leopard with me. Maybe I rescued her. (Maybe she rescued me.)

It doesn't take me long before I stumble upon another pair of survivors. One of them, a young woman in a sheer mountain of armor, calls my attention over to assist the other, a woman trapped under some rubble.

It is in fact two of the people we saw up above, which is reasonable because we were all in the same place when the demons attacked.

(I'm not going to explain all the tabletop mechanics, since chances are if you're reading this, you already know what the game is.)

Hilariously enough, when I was building Quintessa, I didn't put any points into either of these skills that would help, and I'm not going for an evil playthrough even though I did put points into Diplomacy. That said, 12 might be hard to get on a straight untrained roll, but not impossible, so I rolled the dice (har) and gave Athletics a shot.

Thankfully, my circus training helped in this endeavor, and between the two of us, Seelah and I managed to get the rubble off the other woman.

(Because this is still technically tutorial mode, even if you fail the checks, Seelah is able to handle it on her own. It won't be until later that failed skill checks have more of an impact on what happens.)

Newly rescued but still massively injured from the fall and from having her leg crushed by half a building, the woman introduces herself as Anevia Tirabade, a member of the Eagle Watch and part of the festival security. She states that she was actually trying to keep an eye on potential demonic worshippers, and while she doesn't explicitly say so right now, she's basically Spymaster General.

Meanwhile, Seelah is a paladin of Iomedae - the same god that Deskari was railing against - and is in town specifically to join the fight against the demons and the Worldwound. Good news, Seelah! You found some.

And with that, we have our first party member.

Anevia also technically joins the party, but she's not controllable, so I'm not counting her. She does follow along and shoot things with her bow, though, which for someone with a broken leg is pretty good.

Anevia's good people. I like her a lot.

🕵️‍♀️: "Yeah, things are lookin' grim enough, but don't lose heart. Wardstone or no, dragon or no, Kenabres will never give in - simple as. Well, we've introduced ourselves, what about you? 🪓: "I'm a traveler, and I just wound up here by chance." 🕵️‍♀️: "Call me superstitious if you want, or maybe cynical, but I just don't believe in chance or coincidences." 🛡: "How many stories 'round the tavern table have started with those very words..." 🕵️‍♀️: "Right enough. I have this habit, see: any time somebody starts yakking about blind chance, it always turns out that the thing was as far from a quirk of fate as you could want. Sorry, don't take it personal, like. Now then, I'll hobble my way outta here somehow. The city ain't far, only thirty paces or so... that's if you're going straight up, of course. I'm afraid we're gonna have to go the long way 'round." 🛡: "To summarize: there are three of us, with five working legs, three pairs of decent hands, two clear heads and one made of wood - that's mine."

And with that, we're off to try to find a way back topside.

I kind of want to take a moment and focus on that last conversation, though, because I feel like it perfectly encapsulates who they are, or at least who we're supposed to think of them as. Narrative structure states that any introduction to a character should give us everything we need to know about them in their first appearance, with everything after that either reinforcing or subverting this conception as necessary. It's not exclusive to this game by any stretch - it's a very fundamental concept and is probably one of the first taught in any creative writing class. But it's more the execution that matters, because as basic of a concept as it is, it's also very easy to fuck up if you don't know what you're doing.

Anevia was introduced to us earlier in the day, asking questions while being friendly. Here, she's still being friendly, but letting us know a bit more directly that she's keeping an eye on us.

Seelah, on the other hand, is bold, boisterous, and self-effacing - personality traits that don't usually go together for anyone who isn't Vash the Stampede. She puts herself down while also pushing the image of herself as pretty darn great, and just like the Humanoid Typhoon it's a fantastic way to deflect attention, to let you focus on the image she projects so that you don't poke too closely.

It's interesting how this is something that both she and Anevia are doing, but from two completely different angles. The fact that they put these two characters together is just absolutely exquisite, in my opinion.

Some ransacking of a weapons cache that fell down occurs - Seelah says it's Prelate Hulrun's confiscated weapons but I don't see my throwing axes in there so I bet he kept the good shit for himself - and we also find some glowing silver scales - some physical remains of Terendelev. I take them - they are an on-use consumable to revive fallen companions, but I've got the "Dead companions rise after combat is over" option selected from the game settings and thus I will not be using them. Instead, I will keep them as a sad reminder of a silver dragon who I did not get to know very well.

Of course, there's no time for quiet reflection - we have to get back up to the city. So, as always, we press on.

It doesn't take us long until we find another person - a woman, hunched over something else in the dark. She is dressed like a noble, but she's covered in blood and dirt. Understandable, of course - she fell the same way we did. The body at her feet, however...

🩸: "I don't know. He must have been in the square when disaster struck. I tried to revive him, but he was already dead, sadly." 🛡: "He didn't get these wounds from the fall... Be on your guard. Whatever killed him likely hasn't gone far."

This is Camellia. She probably didn't stab that guy. And since she's joining our party...

I've got a good feeling about her.

But yeah, that guy? Unfortunately, that's Aravashnial. The guy who apparently is a questgiver in the original tabletop Adventure Path. Camellia, who is an original character to this adaptation, was properly introduced standing over his corpse, which is definitely not as notable for people who didn't play the Adventure Path but for those who do know: This is the tone we're setting for the game. We are off the fucking rails from word one.

And honestly? Best way to do it. And since I am one of those people who didn't know that, I get to experience this completely fresh.

With that, we are on our way.

[juggling-responsibilities]

Act 1, Part 1 - Tempting Fête

My wife drew my character and I love it so much it's headlining my first proper post.

I will preface this by saying that I've actually not played much Pathfinder proper - in that I would be familiar with the home setting, at least. I learned tabletop gaming on 3.5e, which is what Pathfinder was built from, so I've got the mechanics down fairly well, but as far as the setting - Golarion, Sarkoris, the Worldwound, etc. - all of what I know about it is from this game, as well as Kingmaker, which I have also never finished. (Currently on a playthrough of that and just finished Act 3, though.)

That's fine, though - when an adventure path like this is converted to a video game, it should be self-contained. Everything I need to know about Golarion, etc. should be explained within the course of the game itself.

I said in the last post that this is not a completely unspoiled playthrough for me, since I've gotten through at least Act 2 in other save files, and I feel confident in saying that everything I need to know is in fact self-contained. What needs to be explained is, what stands evident without needing explanation does, and most everything else is covered by pop-cultural osmosis and educated guesses can be made. So we'll be starting this with that in mind.

That said, let's get started at what we are led to believe is the very beginning - I have been dealt a mortal blow and am dying.

You know. The logical beginning.

*record scratch* Well, you're probably wondering how I got here.

The game opens with a festival, as these games so often do. Drinks are poured, event booths have been constructed, there's a band up on stage and everything. Into the midst of all of this, a woman is brought in on a stretcher, the guard leading the way calling for help.

The woman, as it turns out, is me. We're going full in medias res with this. Definitely a good way to hook me in, that's for sure. Why am I mortally wounded? Why did they bring me directly to the middle of the festivities?

This city, I will find out later, is Kenabres. It is a city built upon the precipice of the Worldwound, a physical tear in the ground that metaphysically opens up into the Abyss. A hellmouth, if you will. Just to jump a bit ahead, because I do so love worldbuilding, the reason this city exists is because it is one of the main staging areas for soldiers and mercenaries in the defense against the demons pouring out of said Worldwound. It also holds one of the Wardstones, a divine relic used to hold back the demonic corruption.

Because soldiers need support, the city exists surrounding the fortress, providing food and resources. Because such things cannot exist in a vacuum, the city exists to support the lines of support - families, shopkeepers, everything that needs to be in place to maintain the fortress.

Today is the Day of the City, a celebration in which the city can rest and relax without being 100% on guard against the demonic forces. It would really suck if something happened when this celebration was going on, huh?

Something like, I don't know, someone being carted in on a stretcher with a strange mortal wound.

Several people pile around to see what the fuss is about - people with voiced lines, names, and even portraits to show that they'll be coming up later.

Such as this asshole. He's not wrong, though.

A soldier comes up and starts interrogating me, asking who I am and what I'm doing here. Prelate Hulrun, with a portrait to let me know he's important. The guard who brought me in says that I was found just outside the city walls, the victim of a demon attack. Whatever weapons may or may not have been found on my person are confiscated, as this is - as we've said - the middle of the festival grounds and we are surrounded by civilians, so that seems more than reasonable to me.

They did, however, leave me with my leopard, who is hovering just beside my stretcher. Good old Maple, who I took with me from the circus.

As I said in character creation, I'm going with a particular character background - I am an entertainer with a traveling troupe of performers. More specifically, I am an axe thrower - I do trick shots and wow the crowd with my precision and daring. Of course, I am at the city because of the festival, and were it not for that suspiciously close and convenient demon attack, I might be performing already.

The Prelate casts a Restoration spell on me, which heals me enough that I can answer his questions, but not nearly enough to heal whatever this wound is, so he calls for Terendelev, the protector of the city, to assist.

Terendelev is, of course, a dragon. A silver dragon, at that, polymorphed into human guise - she is wearing silver armor and bears a silver shield.

I've always liked silver dragons in D&D. Pathfinder diverges a bit from their original source material, but silver dragons are fairly similar there, as well. They are Lawful Good, can breathe cold, and prefer to live near or amongst mortal populations. The 3.5e Draconomicon described how they love to travel to various cities and villages just to sample food, and that is absolutely delightful, so while I haven't seen anything similar for Pathfinder's silver dragons, I'm going to just pretend that's the same. Do not tell me if it's not.

Terendelev casts Greater Restoration on me, which gets me on my feet, but apparently is still not enough to properly take care of this weird wound.

🪓: "What happened to me?" 🐉: "I do not know yet - and that troubles me. I am not entirely sure what the demons did to you. This wound is no ordinary injury, and it was inflicted by no ordinary weapon. I have rid you of your pain and restored your strength, but only time will allow you to heal fully."

So a fucking dragon doesn't know what's wrong with me.

Yeah, I'm feeling absolutely great about this. But hey, I'm on my feet, I've got Maple with me, and it's the Day of the City, so let's go get our party on.

My quest log has been updated with my very first quest:

Sample the special festival drink

Throw the dart at the target

Hit the mannequin

Throw the dart at the target

Interesting fact here, if you don't do these three things right away (in fact, don't do two of them because no matter what order you do them in, you are interrupted after the second) you can explore the town square and chat with some of the named people. Some of them just have a quick aside when you select them, but there are a few neat interactions.

First, there's a person in a robe and a mask who says either "I am the answer, but what is the question?" or "The absence of an answer, is an answer too." and then walks away. Those people pop up a lot and we'll get to them later, but I didn't realize until this playthrough that they're this early too.

Secondly, if you find and click on Daeran, he'll throw a snit about how this part isn't cool enough and he will also leave. We'll find out what happened to him later.

Thirdly, there's a guy who's moping, saying that he has a bad feeling about this. This guy's name is Aravashnial, and I am led to believe he's a pretty big presence in the beginning of the original adventure path this game was adapted from. He has a... somewhat smaller presence here. More on that later.

Really, though, this prologue bit is kind of a Who's Who of faces you'll see later. Some party members we'll pick up eventually, some side characters related to mythic paths or companion questlines, lots of little fun details that reward multiple playthroughs.

Alas, this was not meant to last. Right after we do the second activity on our fairground quest list, there's a massive earthquake.

The city is under attack.

Terendelev is here! ...Terendelev is dead. Brutally decapitated by the Lord of Locusts.

Friends, this is going to be the tone of the game from here on out.

In the chaos, I find myself hiding behind a destroyed table. The guard who brought me into the city to begin with - a halfling with no portrait but a distinctive voice - offers to give me a protection spell scroll to let me escape.

I could take that option, or I could ask him for his weapon to help me fight my way out.

"Here, take this. Best crossbow I've got! The person who made it said it could pierce the hide of a demon lord, even!"

Of course I take that option, which puts me into another cutscene - Deskari towering over the fairgrounds, gloating at his kill, when a strangely red and smoking crossbow bolt strikes him in the shoulder.

That's some fucking crossbow, that a random guard seems to just be carrying.

Of course, it doesn't do much more than make him angry enough to split the ground under my feet, and I fall to my doom.

Thus ends the prologue.

[juggling-responsibilities]

A Written Let's Play? Plus: Creation!

Welcome, friends! I've decided to do something fun with my spare time, which is by writing a book report as I play through a videoed game. You know, like a normal person.

It's actually something I used to do here and there, just for fun. Some description of the scene, some screencaps, a nice interlude while I wax unpoetic about musical themes or narrative devices. It's something I miss doing, so I'm doing it. And, because I put it on a sideblog, you're only along for the ride if you choose to be. Which you have, so thank you.

So, before I start, a little bit of housekeeping under the cut - and, just for fun, I've started character creation a bit early. Those polls over on my main haven't quite finished yet, but they're wrapping up and there's a clear winner, so I've gone ahead and just done it.

Let's get a few things out of the way first, though.

What this will be:

A little bit of everything. I'm going to take the opportunity to just luxuriate in the space. Describe the story as I go? Absolutely. Take some opportunity to write from the perspective of my main character? Done and done. Play around with the Enhanced Edition's Photo Mode? Don't mind if I do.

Fun. I'm doing this for me, after all, so I'm going to make sure to amuse myself while doing it. Hopefully that also means I'll be amusing the rest of y'all in the process.

The chance for me to actually finish this game. I've started this several times and the farthest I've gotten is somewhere towards the end of Act 2? I think? It's a very big game, with lots of options, and I've been a bit spoiled for choice. Locking it down into a fun writing project will help me focus.

What this won't be:

An unspoiled run. As I mentioned above, I've played this before - albeit not completely. So I do know some of the story beats that are coming, and have seen further ahead in the game than I've actually played, so this won't be fresh reactions.

Spoiler-free. To that same point, since I'm writing about the game as I play it, I'm not going to hide things as they come up. I'm also not tagging for spoilers - this is a sideblog specifically for this, which means you have to actually follow and click through to see it, and at that point that's on you. I will put it behind a cut for reblogs, but that's about it.

Regularly-scheduled. Each post will be done when it's done, and I'm not setting a release schedule that I inevitably will fail to follow. Instead, to keep this fun, I'm just going to do it as and when I do it. We'll see how frequent that ends up being.

And now, with that out of the way: let's get to the real meat of the matter. Character creation.

Because I left the polls vague - choosing party roles, rather than classes - I left it open to choose something weird and fun for my playthrough. I also did not provide options for all the mythic paths, but rather the ones that I felt had some of the best story potential. Granted, they all have stories, but some of them are a bit wild and out there, and while fun to play, probably less fun trying to organize for a writing project - especially for a first playthrough. Aeon and Trickster are probably best for second or third times through the game, for example, since they both play with the actual medium of the storytelling as much as (if not moreso than) the base story of the game.

The choices being what they were, the poll resulted in a Ranged build, following the Legend path.

I have an archer on another save - going Slayer (Deliverer) full class route on an Angel path - so I didn't want to just copy that. I wanted to do something fun and new, so I looked up some other options - a lot of guides recommend a weird and fun ranged build for Wenduag, a potential party member, which focuses on throwing axes instead of a longbow, so I decided to cannibalize that. I also wanted to make it easier on myself and start with a pet - Wrath of the Righteous does some really great stuff with pets. Ranger gets a pet eventually, but there's one of the hybrid classes that starts with a pet at level 1, and that's Hunter.

Throwing axes, with an animal. Something weird and fun.

Maybe it was the fact that I've been looking through some second edition materials and had Extinction Curse on the brain, but that sounded like circus performer to me.

With a selection of a leopard companion (because circus), all that was left was to choose a name.

...fuck. I'm terrible at names. I usually ask my wife to give me good names for my character, she's very good at names. But I wanted to do this one for myself. Something that was true to the origins of the character, something that reflected the medium upon which this was posted.

What do you name a character who was built from a tumblr poll?

Perfect. Absolutely perfect.

I'll post her stats elsewhere - I know y'all are horny for numbers - but for now I think that's where I'll leave this.