SPOILER culpit liveblogs fruma (complete)

Party support beat the Queen. A Paladin got her health down at an excellent clip. I don't know why I, specifically, do so little damage to the point where the bosses are unplayably frustrating. It's obviously a build issue, but what about the build is improper? Is it because I'm using Morph? Is it because I'm a Lightbender and they're designed as raid help exclusively? Why didn't the Lament build work, even when I used Stardew as intended?

When the Queen gets angry, she starts to look more Corrupted. She's a thing of War, in the end, and that nature manifests when her peace fails. When her "shell" is wounded, the Corruption leaks through more fiercely. I suppose she's about to toss us into the RoW and show us her true form.

Who is the "damned girl" who didn't do their job? Two is the obvious answer, but the Queen seems to imply that something about her body was already damaged, and wasn't repaired. If that's the case, then she calls herself a "burning broken spark". Odd. Two would make more sense if the broken thing is Fruma on the whole; in that case, the Queen seems to now believe that it is entirely unsaveable. To some degree it is, but it's still possible, theoretically, for her to win. All of her Sovereigns are dead and her reputation is destroyed, but she can wipe the slate and start again. Assuming, of course, that she does not die.

Progressing the dialogue, she's indeed talking about herself. The Weave is beyond her reach - what does that mean? How did we cause that? Presumably it means she can no longer use magic, but she was still throwing us around and making portals.

The Queen thinks our rebellion won't solve anything. She's nobody to say anything on the matter - but it's true that rebellion doesn't always work out even if it successfully overturns the authority, and it can't fix everything - at best, a few glaring issues, and a better foundation for the rest. She's crying blood, but it seems like it's cuts under her eyes. I've just now noticed her absurdly thin waist - justifiable in some sense by this body being artificial and not needing to worry about things like ribs and organs.

Her Majesty seemingly has another trick to try and kill us. Won't work. Of course it won't. But if we ignore the mechanical necessity, it's still futile. Two thinks that, even if we die, things will work out "favorably" - and she's enigmatic, sure, amoral, but ultimately on the side of balance, of purity. If she thinks something's fortuitous by her standards, I'm inclined to believe it is by ours.

Her Majesty, in the last line of her dialogue, starts to gloat that she will enjoy causing us pain. In this we see that we have hit her very deep - down to the core. We have overturned her ability to resist the hatred of the Realm of War! She is succumbing to the Corruption!

Now pan back to Rex. Tasim is, apparently, still alive, but also falling for the same tricks again. Rex tells herself to focus, another hint to Sharpshooter, but also talks about a grappling arrow, which is Trapper.

Rex has been slain. I wasn't really expecting that, but in retrospect it checks out. A close friend dying in the climax is fairly standard, and the setup made sense. Her death portrait looks cool.

The Queen is still alive even after a heroic-sacrifice shot, but she also has a new dying portrait, which means she is totally KO. Her eyes have gone dark.

She has burst from her shell! She is a moth, not a butterfly! And she has summoned Corrupted storms to destroy the whole province and start over! The Queen is an intriguing antagonist because she almost has a point. Her goal is reasonable. She is, however, entirely uncaring about the cruelty she uses to create her perfect, pure world, and when she's threatened with losing control, she goes wild. That's the big flaw that makes her a villain. She does not need to be the Queen for Fruma to be good. She doesn't need to be in control. But she feels she has to be. She must not trust others to do the job - and if she succeeds here, she especially won't, because all of her Sovereigns failed her. Hence, next go round, there won't be any - and all the worse for the Fruman people.

Tasim has given up. He recognises that he just killed someone who was probably as important to us as Aledar was to him (although we weren't dating Rex in any capacity). He recognises that staying by the Queen was a bad call. He failed. And he won't resist when we kill him, as inevitably we must. (I'm upset that I have to see this dialogue with his updated portrait.) Obviously, since he's not going to resist, we probably aren't going to kill him. We don't want to. It ultimately doesn't really matter, but since there's no benefit to killing him, we ought not to bother. He isn't a threat anymore, and he's unlikely to be one in the future. He's not the one currently throwing storms around the province; of all the Sovereigns, he's the most guiltless, because he didn't rule anyone, and barely did anything at all. The scale of his crimes is ultimately one kill, and being on the wrong side. It's... fine. We don't have to kill him.

He's still mourning Aledar. He wants to be with Aledar. That's not a sensible statement. Tasim's soul isn't wrecked; he's got an afterlife. But Aledar was completely destroyed. He wouldn't be with Aledar, even in oblivion, if he died. He... surely knows this?

Four dialogue options as to why we won't kill him. The first two are "man, I'm sorry I killed Aledar, I didn't want to". The third is "there's still hope for you", which is the substance of my prior paragraphs. The fourth is "it hurts more for you if you're alive". I'll pick the third. Again, it fits my analysis.

I don't like the use of prose to indicate the dam's collapse. We should have had a short cutscene of explosion effects running down its length.

Finally back to Sui. Poor girl's been holding the water back for ages. She's probably about to have a total limit break.

Tasim has just realised he can redeem himself. What's he going to do? His blessing is implied by death text to be related to the butterfly wings, but we've never been told what it is. He is bestowing a different kind of wings on Sui... strengthening her? What's the theme here? Power amplifiers are always strong.

Zhiraok and Soosu! Finally! You came a bit late, but Soosu's obviously the person to fix this problem. Sui held it long enough for Tasim to switch sides and hold it a little longer and now we have the matter manipulator to patch it.

Zhiraok is surprised that a Cursed is helping. Did he buy the propaganda? He says something in Latin - 'purification not consumption'? What does that mean?

Sui has lost another friend... but here's Zhiraok, completely chill. Zhiraok, the guy who has reversed himself from death twice. Zhiraok, the guy who singlehandedly evacuated everyone in the Auburn Forest using time manipulation. I'm going to assume that Zhiraok is going to break his resurrection charm saving Rex, because as we all know being immortal is evil and nobody can have it.

...Oh, huh, it wasn't broken. It just didn't fix her arm. Why... not? If time's reversed to just before her lethal wound - her not having died yet - why wouldn't she get her arm back? She lost it in the same moment.

Zhiraok's gone comatose. This is because he's a workaholic. That is a problem, because, as he would say, he was factored out, while the Queen is trying to destroy Fruma. In fact he's also dying. We are trading lives like Dwarven curios. Tasim is now going to have to expend all of his energy and get to a near-death state just to fix the charm enough to fix Zhiraok, so it probably will break after all. Soosu and Sui chip in, but everyone, for various contrivances, is out of magic.

...Oh. Oh. We're getting lore on the player, in the final quest. That... oh. I see. Of course.

Reach into our weapon? The focus we're told is needed for everyone who isn't Cursed? Or reach into our bottomless well?

Back to our reflection. Emptiness. The void. We're the player. We're hollow. We don't have a personality. We don't have a self-image. We do what we must. We talk, a lot. But we aren't a person in the same way as everyone else. I wonder what the level 102 quest in SE looks like right now. It also talked about our reflection, but portrayed it as existing.

There was something here. Now it's not. We've seen it before - that's the 102 quest I just mentioned. I'm a master of pausing during dialogue, asking a question, then having it immediately answered.

What is this we're pulling on? What's this hole? It's vast and deep and goes somewhere that's colorful. We're angry that we lost it. Someone else is angry, and we feel them too. We used to be someone else. And their melody is a power, now, and with it we'll end this chain. Everybody lives.

And, yup, the charm did explode. Just as I predicted. We saw runes, and... a stone like the one in the Resonance Weaver, which is still a loaded gun.

Misplaced Aelumia run. This is supposed to be our introduction into Aelumia to some degree, but it's not, really. Especially since the whole thing is superfluous as you can skip immediately to the safe zone at the gates.

Twelve injured, five "casualties" - dead, although "casualty" really means "can't fight" - and one person maddened by Corruption.

Rex won't use her bow again. I observed this but didn't comment on it. It makes sense. She has to suffer some penalty for having died and been resurrected.

The Resonance Weaver resonates with the elements to weave reality. Checks out. It's physically omnipotent, but presumably can't do anything that couldn't already be done within the framework of magic.

Two's talking cryptic and I'm in a rush. Queen seems to be Anathema. She seems to call Tasim a Scion - is she implying that the Sovereign brands are Scionesque?

And scene! The questline is over! I have finished all Fruma content except for its raid.

Two is hopeful. Two will be seeing us again. Things are uncertain now, but they're not doomed, and we might yet surprise her. A pseudoScion, a "manaweaver" (so Sui is something special, because Tasim is also Cursed and wasn't called a manaweaver), which was something lost with the "old world". And Zeph. And us. Fruma could be destroyed, now - but it could also be saved. Ciao.

 

There is that one secret discovery that mentions how "classes" aren't properly a thing in Fruma

That "damned girl" is Soosu, refusing to repair/rebuild Anathema's human shell

 

It’s morph Lightbender, yeah. I told you to switch to Riftwalker for a reason; lightbender deals jack shit for damage even at the best of times and morph is not the best of times

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Like one of the things I’ve noticed about your overall play through is that you tend to be building far, far too hard into sustain with the logic of outlasting the bosses, but the problem is the bosses in Fruma are designed to be able to account for the player having, like, health pot levels of sustain available at all times, and thus they’re able to kill the player even if they have lots of sustain if they make too many misplays, which they will sooner or later if they spend too long in the fight.
The solution isn’t to build more into sustain -every build already has decent sustain due to the existence of health potions, and mage especially has heal, so building even more for sustain just means you’ll be in the fight for longer and there’s more opportunities to make a fatal misplay. Instead, you need to be building more damage to get out of the fight faster.

 

That's Wartorn Palace done. A Lightbender hardcarried everywhere, especially on Anathema herself.

She instinctively returned to the Realm of War, but apparently she has purified certain parts of it... somehow. Her "semblance of a claim" deterred the Beasts... hers, or War's? Is she the Beast of War? She's fallen far from Queen's Recruit.

Their connections have weakened. I suspect I'll need multiple runs to get all of Anathema's dialogue. Someone, once, bound the Beasts. Couldn't purge their influences entirely, but could mostly stop their war. Who? Anathema doesn't say. Could we replicate it? They aren't impossible to defeat, just hard.

Oh, Anathema is definitely the Beast of War. Or the semblance of it. She's... god, she's not awful. She was a tyrant, but she's sympathetic aside from that.

Her recruit program was her suddenly roused to action by realising that Corruption was overtaking Wynn. They exist to provide hope, and to achieve the metamorphosis that she desires. She isn't a butterfly, but she wants to be one. Tasim became one. Perhaps we did too.

And she is dead.

I'm going to use the Wiki to get all of her alt dialogue so I can analyse it in one go.

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There's... nobody to talk to here. It's over, and we don't even get a denoument. Anathema, the Queen of Fruma, is dead, and... nobody is here to talk about it. The storm is just... over. Like that.

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Need to remember to reset my build. I don't think I'll stick with the one I got given that didn't work against Tasim - I don't like negative HPR, bad walk speed, and low mana regen. But I'm willing to give Lament a shot. My ideal niche is immortal healer, which I'm... not particularly, right now.

 

Not exactly about WTP, but there is someone to sort of talk to if you go back to the Leaves of the Wind hideout.

 

Okay, looking at the Wiki, and I notice: the buffs and curses are themed after the Sovereigns. Fun! NoL's are themed after angels (or the Antichrist), but I don't know about the other three. We gather from this Two's flaw, which is that she's isolated. That checks out.

I saw one of the Annihilation silhouettes, but I didn't have the time to watch it in detail. I wonder how Anathema thinks about that. She's the Realm Beast, but doesn't seem to have any control - tbh her status is weird. She separates herself from the Realm of War, describing it as all the hate and suffering, but she's its Beast, its rightful ruler. How does she make that separation?

...Ach, dammit, the full text isn't up yet. I guess that's to be expected given how aggressively it branches.

 

NotG tends to be earth/life-y stuff (bioluminescent, pestilent, bedrock). admittedly palisade, beserker, and lightbearer are ill-fit, but they're generic enough buff names and it's the first raid
TCC all ties into the raid, one way or another (Giant, TCC is a giant, Elder for the Elders, Cirrus, you're in the clouds, Stonewalker and Boulderbreaker are fairly obvious, and well Intrepid is more general I suppose)
TNA are all negative things, except Sojourner

looking at WTP's buffs in-depth, that's actually kind of fascinating. very good raid buff names

 

Looking at what text remains: Anathema thinks that the Realm Beasts could be dissolved like she was. I don't think that would work? Without a thinking mind, they might get less aggressive... they'd probably still spread. She cherished Bak'al, for being the first living thing she ever found, and he was her Scion, but then he, ran off. And now he's on Dern's side.

The Resonance Weaver was a device to repair her body. That's why she was so mad at Soosu for losing it. It could have also done, something, to the Realms. Bak'al made the stone at its heart, which was itself based on the Rune and Weave magic of the Old Frumans. (So I was right, partially... I never would have guessed the Bak'al connection at the time.) It seems that it went somewhat unresolved in the Fruma quests because it'll be more important in the Dern quests. Her body needed constant fixing, and the Weaver was starting to fail; Soosu was upgrading it to fix it, and potentially even allow the Queen to attack the Realms directly. Seems that Two will be starting us on the Dern quests. How much longer now...?

One dangling bit: the Wellspring of Eternity. What was its deal? It never got a quest. It was hinted to be behind the Sovereign immortality, but none of them ever referenced it again. They could just as easily be inherently immortal.

Now looking on to Fruman civilisation lore. Seems people have translated it to some degree. There was a cave with some in the Roughworks that I missed, apparently. Or... did I? I think I might have seen that, if it's on the ledge where Elise finally remembers Syndra. And... these people were concurrent with the Desert Empire. Deeply weird. I really like how it's tied into modern Fruma, though! The presence of derived figures in modern mythology is fun. Although, what are the Runes even. The Frumans can't have been involved in Gavel, and that's where the Az and Nii Guardians are mainly located, along with the Forgery and the Colossi (although Uth Guardians are found in Corkus). Anathema calls them 'true names' - of the elements? They all appear in the Fruman gods' names, although the Az god doesn't have the 'z'. There's still lore we can't unpick yet; how many updates? Dern, Wynn, another for Gavel? When will ocean rework?

I suspect the Rune Guardians will be revealed to be an atomic priesthood. It seems like the sort of thing Wynn would do.

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Overall... I want to see the answers. But I don't want to pursue them too hard myself. I'm a lazy boi and I'm probably going to set Wynn aside now. I don't have much left to do in it, and the ending of the Fruma questline felt kind of... unfulfilling. Mainly because every character vanished without explanation. I might run Fruma all over again on my Warrior, which'd be a good way to test the bosses against a non-sustain build.

 

Apparently the translator comes from Gale in the Hive after finding her diary. Makes sense.

Now that I look at it, Gavel is definitely still on the docket for rewrites. It's gotten a bunch of new stuff, but it's still patchy in places - I'm not sure how many didn't get rebuilt and redone in 1.20 and 2.0, but I know the Hive's on that list. I wonder what that'll look like? Qira's someone who would know things - she's preparing for some sort of massive war, almost certainly the War of the Realms. Shouldn't she have something to say about the melodious, bleached power at the bottom of our empty soul that, when discovered by Anathema, causes her to die laughing about how Orphion and Saphanis are totally screwed for overlooking it?