culpit liveblogs fruma

Even doing all the secret discoveries and caves isn't enough... maybe world events can get you there but those can be difficult to solo. Chances are, you'll have to do more grinding.

 

Okay, finally starting first Mistwoods quest. I like how Sui and Yusanu are both being unnecessarily mean out of stress. Neither of them are saying these divisive things out of legitimacy. They're just very, very upset. It's good! We've hit our darkest hour; there's probably only one other left in the quest. Up! Up! Get on with it, you sorry things!

Ambushed by the Clans immediately. I'm already somewhat familiar with them. Sui and Yusanu got cloned as helpers and neither of them did a damn thing. Blue names are useless. I'm surprised that we apparently knock them down nonlethally here given that other times killing quest enemies is treated as killing.

Rurie! You look fun. I wonder how the Clans overall have reorganised since their likely revolutionary twist - did Azael incite that? Changelings don't seem to be powerful in society.

I like the three options we're given to respond to Rurie's first query. This is a good choice to hand us! Especially since we have one Auburnite, one Timascan, and one Wynnic. Do I place myself first? Syndra's cell first? Or Quinn's? I'll say we're from Timasca - it's closest, and it has the best claim to actually having done stuff.

Rurie's smug. They crow, despite being an Owl. They're initially antagonistic, but they're going to be our ally once we sort out what's going on with them. The "do random errands to earn my trust" thing is good for gameplay, but kind of questionable narrative. Pointing us specifically at military bases, however, makes sense; the Crown would hesitate to attack itself, and even if its attack on itself was fake, it would cost it a lot to make that fake convincing (without some sort of advanced illusion magic).

It's interesting how Sui has a new set of 'wretched' dialogue portraits, but Yusanu doesn't. She certainly isn't the sweet pretty girl from Auburn anymore. She's blotchy, for one, from crying. The new faces are very good.

Intriguing that Rurie pinned us as not Fruman. Nobody else has noticed except our allies. And, Zhiraok, the Spymaster, the Queen, and Majin, of course.

I like the book! Elegant! And Rurie's voice in it is great. Odd that the watchtower has Owl models in it. Interesting lore on Sui - I'm guessing her 'ocean' is the ambient Water in the world, which is basically everywhere. This would frame true Curses, the ones the Twains had, as an innate powerful connection to a single element - meaning that Sui and Theorick could each replicate the other's skillset with time. This is fun! Being able to compare people like this is fun! Attacking a water pump is a bit strange, though; that's civilian infrastructure, and the Roughworks already has very low-quality water. (Annoyed that I couldn't pull out the knife for the drill...)

Rurie is reneging on the deal. All that talk of trust, and they immediately break their word. Now they're asking us to kidnap someone. That's really weird considering that Aldwell is presumably under the Canopy's protection! What's going on here? Are you really Rurie? (It's strange that Sui is not surprised at all by Aldwell existing here.)

I hope talking to this Abramod guy isn't another quest. He is describing a medallion system for identifying people and especially changelings, in a forest with a lot of shapeshifters. Trust, trust... our trust will be broken significantly during this chapter at some point. ("Rurie" is probably a shapeshifter.)
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Ah, yep, another quest. Well, I'll do this for Adasaurs.

I like the tree puzzle. I'm going to guess that "Abramod" is not the real Abramod and is using us to try to impersonate the real Abramod.

Wow. Okay. Burning Bonds is kind of mid. Nothing really happens in it! You just get fooled by a changeling who you then kill. Why do I have this medallion?
~
The hint on getting to Nisen is straight up incorrect. There are no northwest ziplines.

Okay, Nisen's a changeling of... a Roughworks guy? God, is everyone a changeling here? It would fit the theme of trust...

Blindfolding us before bringing us to the Canopy is odd because I've already found it. Rurie, if you want your hiding palce to be secret, you need to keep it off the main map. Vantablock quest-locked passage into a tree?

Oh ho! Azael is leading this band! So they're probably quite full of changelings since Azael is one himself. That means we'll see Gikyo soon. I really like the portraits of the masked captains! (Fuhue is cute...)

They do paperwork?

It seems they believe in the efficacy of torture despite the fact that they just said they kill the person after they torture them. You guys know tortured people don't provide reliable information, right?

Are Fuhue's 'deerlings' just Deer Clan types or are they changelings whose true forms are deer? That Abramod guy I think ended as a Kivaraptor.

The prominence of ziplines in the Mistwoods is interesting, especially given that these ones seemingly defy gravity, unlike the glitchy one at the Auburn Festival.

The scale of resistances seems to be growing. This supposedly deserted district is really full of people, it seems. They've got assassins, skirmishers, and strategists all up in here... they could do with a propagandist wing, but obviously there's nobody to propagandise to. In its home territory, it's probably impossible to uproot the Canopy; their manpower would be very useful in final confrontations later, but they'd be out of their element when not in the Mistwoods, and they probably don't want to leave either. (It's interesting that both of our prior resistances are completely gone at this point. I should check on the Leaves and Feather bases.)

...Changelings are Crown spies?? That can't be right. He's lying! Azael is a changeling, I know this, he admitted to it before me! Okay, that was long in the past, but still.

And that's an abrupt wrap! Good thing I grinded that XP. 'Creed Catalyst'... weird. I don't know what that's about...

 

do The First Wicker's Spark secret discovery

 

Dehaj is the inescapable prison. It's definitely escapable, but it'd take a quest or two to do that - which we, bizarrely, won't be getting? Probably? Since the zone doesn't exist yet?

Oh, nevermind, the PC immediately decides to attack Deraj and grab everyone! That party split sure isn't going to last long. This will probably be a complicated affair with many wrong turns, but we'll probably succeed; too much time was spent building up everyone else's characters.

Hi Tasim!!! Is this bridge real?!??!? Was I lied to with those barriers and that message on the trains?!?!

Aha! Here's his motive! He wants to be an internal reformer. Narratives... Tasim, the narrative doesn't treat that well. And given the scale of the problem, you won't be able to fix it in this position! With centuries, you might moderate it, make it slightly better... but everyone else is still here, and the Queen, and centuries of propaganda. It needs to be torn down, and if you're trying to be moderate with the Crown of Fruma you're going to be very hard to radicalise.

Tasim's... weird. I don't think he's under mind control. But he's weird. I don't know what his deal is, especially since it's been ages since his characterisation in the early questline, and we've never heard his philosophical thoughts, which are what got him to this situation. Now the Queen wants to chat. Given the apparent 'trust' theming of the chapter, that's a lie. She'll kill us.

Hm. Queen lore. Like us - Cursed. That's fairly obvious. Forced into a position... maybe in her backstory, but being the Queen is something she undoubtedly wants nowadays. Made into something by others - nobody in Fruma could do that now. If this is her talking about the present day, she's lying. But, it seems like this is the distant backstory to her... breaking away from her captors and... somehow conquering the whole province and establishing an empire on its soil? And Tasim's been swayed to her side because 'she understands'. She's personable. She knows the power the Cursed can draw. If there's anyone she's similar to, though... it's us. We have these strange abilities, the knowledge of Light and Dark, the unknown depths to our eyes, the rainbow-feathered wings and blades of power. But unlike her, we never broke away from being someone else's weapon. Our hilt changes hands, but always and forever we are not a king but a knight. (Monarch butterfly, god damnit, I just realised.)

Now we're getting somewhere. The Queen is concerned about keeping the balance in the War; we can't come close to defeating these cosmic deities, which Deusphage OOU has framed as absolutely indestructible, so she wants to minimise the damage by keeping either side from getting an upper hand. This is why Orphion was mad at her for 'feeding this senseless war' in NoL. Curiously, the Fruman butterfly is actually tipping the scales in this update's title card, not balancing them. And she threw the Tournament because she needed an outsider to help with that. (How the hell is she managing to balance the whole world when she and almost everyone in her power is trapped in Fruma?)

Gikyo is the Sovereign of the Mistwoods?! What?!

I've just remembered the archer who was learning to speak in Fort Hegea. Now that we know most changelings are Crown-affiliated, she was probably an animal turned human.

Accidentally found Light and Shadow. Well, I ran into the first two masks quickly, hunted the third, then randomly guessed the order and was right first try. Alas, the raw, unrefined revelation that Azael is a changeling is unremarkable. Gikyo is his brother, which makes sense; now we're told they took 'different paths', so Gikyo is definitely unambiguously a Crown-loyal sovereign. 'The first group of changelings'... well, the Clans certainly didn't like the changelings spying. "Redwood Changeling Unit". They disagreed on... weapon versus bulwark? Azael never wrote to Gikyo in the end. (Changeling identity is going to be quite confusing.)

They are very ready to dehumanise this 'little lizard'. God, these people are... not great. Practicing item magic... makes sense. (Oh, you know, Gikyo's gangly model makes sense now. That'll be his Sovereign model. Hence the epaulettes. All Sovereigns have had weird, disproportioned models thus far.)

...they're using runes?!

Now that we've had a little time, I can say I like Fuhue. A complete lunatic, very coolly violent. They find savagery unremarkable - almost entertaining. Torture is an interest they treat like any other. (Perhaps even an autistic interest, if we're meant to overread their reliance on paper and planning as another autistic trait.) And what an excellent face! A marvellous face...

I like how the camp is immediately spun to life as everyone is moving and escaping. Such an expansive build, lost immediately! They're at least handling the punches much better than the other two groups; neither was able to accomodate any big hits. These guys are smart. They're better than Quill and Syndra by far. Syndra was ineffectual, and Quill was ultimately complacent; reliant on his supposedly-secure location, he missed the intrigues underlying his operations, which ultimately got his cell and presumably reputation completely destroyed. These guys are organised, trained, and ready to move at the drop of a hat - without even confirming with anyone else that the location was found!

...Rurie was a changeling. That makes sense. Is he actually Gikyo? Properly? That would explain how they were constantly infiltrated.

And we are in the prison that is supposedly inescapable! Great! This'll work out well from here - since we've already had a plot, there's less chance of complications.

Real Rurie! That's nice! Hi! How long have you been in here! And it seems it was Real Rurie earlier, Gikyo only switched right when we reached the nest. (The landing might have been intended to weaken and confuse us?)

Inescapable prison and they don't strip their inmates. What the hell. Party's splitting now, Rurie's going to figure out the device or something. The gameplay-story segregation is noticeable. I have not one but two weapons on me, plus a horse and a ton of ingredients.

Majin was going to take us personally. Odd. That'll be relevant. I'm preening at being labeled "very dangerous". Yes, you're exactly correct! I am a god of violence! I am the sword of a thousand kings! I will be the end to your sorry empire, just as I was the end to so many tyrants and terrors before! By my own hands, whole provinces have been set right in their course! You are no exception!

Interesting that everyone else is just subject #### while we three are named properly.

Ah, no, this is Fort Hegea, not the inescapable prison. Weird. I accidentally skipped the dialogue options upon "finding" my weapons in a chest.

'Mystery stew' for most meals. It's either people or drugs.

Five hours of sleep. Horrifying. Seems changelings have strictly defined forms...? Or is that just the ones they know how to imitate? Gikyo seems to be able to imitate anyone. Only one facechanging super-spy is probably good for plot.

...they butchered someone from the Steel Feather?!

Project Hallowground. "Polymorph supplies", "emergence", "wastes"... presumably a changeling is made of polymorph. Oh, yep, next line. There's some... underground oil well full of changeling protoplasm?? Something mysterious and evil in the caves. Gikyo's blessing gives him (them?) a "limited understanding" of the "primordial life" of changelings - or is this Selium, as they're the project head? Ah, it is. I suspect we won't hear much about Selium's blessing, as they're dead and haven't been signaled as important in the Zhiraok-focused chapters. There's some Big Beastie, fractured, that changelings break off from. Yet the "vessels" are "mad" due to being raised from "unlife". The Spymaster wants to bring in an... external scientist... familiar with... madness.

I'll be frank. I wasn't expecting Sohso being in Fruma to actually be a thing.

Hallowground failed eventually. Whatever the hell the thing underground was, it attacked the facility. Deserved. This is the mysterious Selium-killing incident. I wonder if he was somehow absorbed by the Polymorph Beast.

Gikyo killed Mora. So I guess my suspicion was correct after all. He wouldn't talk, wouldn't betray his comrades, and was tortured to death. Man, I was hoping Gikyo was cool. No, he's a total monster. He's been torturing the others too. (Mora's corpse here could be a changeling, but probably not.)

Immediate bossfight against Gikyo! I miss dialogue, but it's okay, because I die halfway through the second phase of six. Why are Fruma bosses so long?? I appreciate being given a choice of where to respawn.

The idiot regenerated inside a wall... I'll write a bit.

Gikyo drops a lot of lore in blink-and-you'll-miss-it mid-fight dialogue. I try to screenshot some of it. (Cannot believe his language.) I like his fake-Rex portrait. He says Rex wouldn't take "gifts" from "land-world-giver of life", presumably the Polymorph Beast or the Earth.

...God, okay, that fight sucked bad. Even by the standards of Fruma quests that is irresponsibly long. Each phase should have had 800k health, max. That took over half an hour to fight.

Gikyo implies near the end that Mora is still alive, just bleeding out. Yet Sui thinks he's dead and doesn't seem to have healed him successfully. Seems like he has in fact died. She's getting dangerous now; she'll probably be a case study in why the Cursed might actually be quite dangerous, even if the propaganda is exaggerated. (I mean, we already have the case of Theorick.)

Hollow One/Hallow One... really strange. Gikyo seems to have ultimately been kind of, like, a bit role. The guy was introduced in the same quest he died... maybe he's not dead? Purple Emerald memes aren't a reliable source of Fruma spoilers, though...

Oh, dear, her portrait is freezing over. Yeah, this girl's definitely got exactly the same thing Theorick had. I bet her using her magic for water vs. ice is going to be a key signifier of her mental state.

And quest done!

...I'm still upset that Aldwell does not receive an introduction. It just, exists. We don't care about it. This district is supposed to be deserted, right?! Right...? Or was that just Penitence...? Anyway, that's all for today, for me. I do not have the time for more gaming.

Sui's arc is heading towards a nadir. She's probably going to have one more really bad turn of events that makes her go totally bonkers. She will be savage.

________________________________

Yeah, I did that before I finished the Roughworks chapter.

 

Then you should already know that Azael isn't lying

 

He said the changelings were spies but I don't remember him saying they were serving the Crown. I read them as kind of just there. Trying to live in peace, Crown watching both them and the clans.

 

Festival of the Wicker... huh. We don't continue the festival theme for Mistwoods, but there's still a festival, left in a sidequest...?

Finally! That medallion I got is used!

I like the jokes in the food. But this quest is kind of abrupt. I don't think it has sufficient setup of the Festival. You get in too easily. I think part of the issue is that festivals are really best as cathartic emotional wind-downs after long sequences of energy beforehand; this isn't narratively connected to the Fruma questline, so it can't very easily hook onto the line's currents and achieve that effect.

Took a break to hunt the Stags. I should've started this mini-quest the moment I had access to it. It's interesting seeing the system casually demonstrate that it can directly measure how many of a normal mob you've killed, and so the earlier mini-quests to hunt for resources didn't need to ask you for those resources. The mini-quests are very well-designed in Fruma; I never would have noticed stags always spawning with a Banshee, or the Liff piles, if not for them. (I also just ran into an Aldwell Citizen who'd wandered oddly far, before discovering that they were actually a changeling with a Fear and Hunger mouth.)

The dialogue isn't the best here. I'm going to guess this is another first quest from someone on the team; strong premise, weak execution. Another detective quest, but the writing is a bit painful to read. And do we really need two, in adjacent zones? And the quest is straight-up unfinished, there's a game stall that you can't interact with because the QD didn't finish the games. I hesitate to say I could do better; I'm not really good with big projects, and if my first quest got into the game it'd probably look not particularly great either. But I'm sure I could do better dialogue.

The medallion thing is weird. It makes sense considering the changeling premise, but... they don't seem to actually verify medallions. You can just, make one, without anyone knowing (well, one person knew, then you butchered them repeatedly into base polymorph), and everyone accepts it. A medallion system really ought to have a central authority making the medallions, marking them as unique, remembering which ones they've made, then doing rigorous verification checks on anyone who wants a medallion if they're suspicious (IE: not a newborn child), and only then giving a medallion. It ought to be an ingroup affair; if you aren't already known in the community, nobody will trust you to not be a changeling, therefore you won't get a medallion and you'll be shut out. With some shuffling of the existing quests, you could spin this into a whole plot; you play the role of the outsider trying to convince Aldwell to accept them, building the theme of trust and paranoia in this region, while also achieving that Aldwell introduction quest that I kept complaining about not existing. That would be... a lot of work, though. You'd have to go into the guts of the Mistwoods chapter and alter and reorder quite a few quests, although XP balance wouldn't be a concern because there's plenty of room for another quest-sized XP dose in the Mistwoods.

I accidentally missed an opportunity to ask further questions about Arris. You only get one chance, apparently. I'm not too concerned because of my protective layer of disdain. The ambient festival NPCs make more sense with this in mind, but they still ought to have had more dialogue before the investigation.

...I do have to admit that, compared to the sidequests in Auburn, this is definitely better. It has a rocky opening, but it could definitely be very good if that was rewritten. Not that it will be, for at least half an update cycle.

It seems like separate clans do actually issue medallions, so there is verification after all... except for the fact that we're able to get in with a forged one a random changeling made. These paranoid tribals are not paranoid enough.

I do notice some shoddy programming - mixed-up sentences (ex: you don't correctly ask B how he became clanless, you instead say the question for the tea; the "thief" lead on C is mistakenly labeled "tea trader" after it's disproven), mainly. The ability to speak to the interrogation manager and the three suspects is also not disengaged after you name your culprit.

I bet that none of these people set the wicker man on fire, and it was actually the guy who told us to interrogate them. Their stories seem solid. But I'm not given the opportunity to accuse the interrogator. A is the most suspicious; C is the most disconnected from the Mistwoods, and claims to be ex-military, though. That would ordinarily pin her as not a changeling... except that they are all created and controlled by the Crown. Therefore, I'll accuse C.

...No denoument, she's just burned alive. Just like in First Wicker's Spark. I'll never know if any of them really did do it. (No rhymes... sad. FWS had rhymes.)

________________________________

...Oh, wot? I'm going to Hyloch immediately...? That's. Euh. I don't like that. That makes the Mistwoods feel like filler. We got tossed into it, navigated a bit of clan drama, killed the Sovereign, and left. That's weird, that's weird. I don't like that. I should finish the SD with the flowers.

 

I quite like the Estalis Gallery. Creative idea for a cave, good boss.

 

Hyloch is... definitely what's expected. It's rich, so it's beautiful. Beauty is good, but does it come at a cost for everywhere else? Do these people deserve to lose their luxuries because others don't have them? They're kind, but what does that kindness mean when they're so high above the problems of the other districts?

I'm offered a chance to throw 2 LE at a random tourist to prevent them sleeping on the street and probably getting kicked out. I can't imagine this is mechanically a good idea, but I am lavishly rich and won't notice the loss.

Majin has been single for 120 years but magazines are run about his love life. That's odd. Is he ace, or does he just have impossibly high standards? Is he secretly in a polycule situationship (bile and rose petals flow from my mouth) with the other Sovereigns?

"There is no risk of revolution! Today's weather: rising tensions and thunder!"

The new fashion trend is Morph. Unbelievable. I'll fit right in, as long as they're able to see under the foxfur.

...an ambient two-star locked chest? Creative, but silly. Two-stars are worthless. (I'm doing White Lilies quest.)

Roaming Highlands, have discovered that they apparently drowned a village with the Dam. Why does it exist?

The White Lilies mini-quest ought to be a great way to get us exploring the Highlands, but there's just too many ambient enemies. It's not fun. Every single one of the 16 lilies is a brutal battle against a dozen soldiers or badgers or whatnot.

I like the house theming of a lot of the caves. It's a very good way to subtly name some houses! Free worldbuilding! And you can even get an impression of the narrative of these houses. The Gallery's house is an artistic family; the Manor's house is studious. And both patronise students.

Buying the clothes bugged out. I think I lost 32 EB. Sucky.

Found a dye-trading market. Must be for a quest. Lot of money charges here. I have the money, but I don't like spending it.

Sui paid for the room. The price was never mentioned to us, but this hotel has been said to be the most expensive in town. Where did she get the money? She seems to have a history here; she doesn't act unfamiliar with Hyloch. Have I forgotten something about her backstory?

No pets and no weapons. Oops.

Hyloch thus far has been interesting. Its track is titled "Ignorance is Bliss", and we've seen how rough the rest of the province has it. But these people are nice! And they're friendly to tourists, even despite the massive class disparity. One of the guys in the hotel calls it a 'date' with a visiting Esprenite.

Jukebox for canon acknowledgement of certain track names! Only... I already have a jukebox?? Due to a rank?? That I bought with my quite frankly staggering money stash?

It seems like Roughworks workmen can actually afford to visit Hyloch... rarely. That's nice?? They're portrayed as paid badly and with long, brutal hours, but I guess they somehow can get time off anyway and go on vacation (and blow all of their savings... dude, why were you considering spending a year's wages on fancy clothes). One good thing for workers doesn't really outweigh all the rest of the labor crimes going on in the Roughworks, though.

Oh ho! This is the Auburnite I bought a room for! Oh, that's fun! I like the acknowledgement here that it's weird and strange that we barge in everywhere. All the vantablocked rooms... Fruma has a lot of places where interiors are blacked out, including, glaringly, the entire Fruma entrance area, which is covered in windows and doors, none of which go anywhere. I complained about that before the update even fully dropped. It's also observable that Room 7's door opens directly into our bathroom.

Of course the press is involved in the upper-class revolution. (The trigger for Sui's dialogue on exiting the shop should be set at the door, not the stairs. I missed it walking out and had to reenter.)

Pfffh. If I ask Sui about Mora in the bedroom I get literally nothing, she immediately returns me to the question selection.

...Wow, okay. These people are not good. They're practicing pseudonyms, they're collecting information, but they seem kind of... vapid, and ill-informed. We could personally fill them in on everything. (Soosu almost certainly wasn't executed. The Queen specifically said she wouldn't let Soosu off that easily. There's some worse fate than death for her, with execution the cover story.) And I've just realised we haven't gotten Sovereign POV at the end of the last few quests.

Pff. I love how Sui's name is crossed out and replaced with "Water Grass".

Majin was expecting us. Of course. He's space-warping. Of course, the Cosmic. The Queen is here. Obviously. Queen, I am your equal and your enemy. We could be gods of war together, the old master and the young rebel, but that's not how it will be.

...Oh, no, the Spymaster! And she's a girl! That's fun. I did not think about Spymaster's gender but if I'd had to guess I'd have said doesn't have one.

Majin seemingly is the only person in Fruma other than the Queen who can order executions. He believes they're useful for maintaining order. They're not, really. His blessing is cosmic manipulation, which is obvious, but boring. It makes his spells volatile, which'll be relevant, and addictive, which'll also be relevant. (The addictive nature of Cosmic magic has appeared before.) Seems he used to be a rainbow mage, which is extraordinary. Cursed? He claims he 'discovered' the elements, Thunder first. He's very honest about his overwhelming hunger for power and seemingly also wants a Worthy Opponent. Only a fool would demand worthy opponents.

Tasim's blessing is 'intention'. Majin thinks it's cringe, which probably means it's subtle. I imagine that we'd come out with a very adjacent blessing - I'd call it 'will', because we happen to already have the power of accomplishing anything we set ourselves to. Tasim is also 'transient', signing up for a 'mission' which will get him I guess either killed or dismissed to outside-of-Fruma.

The Spymaster is 'Two'. Who's One? Majin? They (she) might be just making him feel good. Maybe she thinks she's One. Or maybe One is the Queen.

Two knows basically everything we've done. She presumably has some form of omniscience, given that she knows that we entered the Eldritch Outlook, consigning Aledar to oblivion in the process, and killed the Eye. But she can't see into the Realm of Light. She thinks we're 'flawed' in some way that makes Tasim better, but she also knows we're somehow related to the Decay's end and Lari's disappearance. (Sad that I couldn't dialogue-farm Two on 'why'.)

Bak'al is the Scion of War (went rogue), Lari the Scion of Light. The Scion of Dark is an obvious missing link here; the Eye is a piece of Saphaniel(?) and therefore probably isn't the Scion. Lari was lost to the "Dark's Claim", but Two calls Light and Dark "Dawn" and "Dusk" respectively...? And apparently Two has some agent in Dern who might ally with Lari if Lari could be found.

Two tells the tale of the War. Light and Dark were twins in the void, and opposite, although both were overwhelming/suffocating - from the start, they drowned out everything that wasn't them. They hated the other for being the most not them that anything could be, but they couldn't escape each other, due to being mirror images. They couldn't accomplish anything on their own, being locked in their void, fighting over nothing... then they discovered our plane. And the line where each reflected the other broke and became War. A lesser Realm, but a Realm nevertheless, and one of only the hate they held for each other. Something sealed the connection of the Beasts to the world, eventually (leaving their influence behind, as you'll recall, but preventing it from spreading further), and then, without being clouded by the hate, War realised the world and formed its own connection when those damn idiot elves reopened the connection.

...and the Queen is War.

What?

What does that even mean?

War found a desperation to live that overrode its domain. It "dreamed" of that desperation. And the Queen was the dream... trying to maintain something antithetical to herself? Or her origin, at least? And she really wants to keep the War of the Realms from consuming the entire world. This frames... what, four Realms? War, Anti-War, Light, and Dark. War's lesser than Light and Dark, Anti-War's lesser than War. And the Queen is, like, the least Beast.

I feel like this is probably correct but it's really really weird.

We're now told to leave. The Sovereigns won't stop us, but their troops will. Nonsensical. We'll meet Two again soon.

Why is the Queen after us? She has her info now on what happened in the Realm of Light. What's so unique about us that makes Tasim a better candidate for Sovereign but us still important? Does she somehow know we're the player character?

Now we're returning to the Hotel, where we're going to meet Sui. Given the quest's name is 'Overture to Despair', she probably won't be here. That, or she'll be here and mourning Rex and Zeph.

Wha?

She did it?

...Huh.

Zeph is joking about some alteration that took place while he was in prison. I don't know if that's significant, but Gikyo briefly alluded to Zeph accepting some "gift" that Rex rejected. Now he calls it a 'poet'/'shadow'...?

And Tasim knows that we're here and is going to Talk To Us Again.

Rex got away from the Mysterious Prison Events by dissociating hard. Zeph was unable to do this. Whatever he experienced was brutal, and he refuses to talk about it, aside from being very happy Gikyo got killed. (I'm still slightly disappointed about the Mistwoods. It's not really filler, but it's substantially less substantial than the other areas. The Roughworks is currently my favorite chapter.)

Tasim has finally found out that Aledar is dead. I accidentally skipped the first dialogue option in this conversation. (I accidentally skip a lot of dialogue options because if you're trying to make the text load faster it does that.) He's mad that we did not tell him. This is kind of on us. We repeatedly had the option and did not give it. Is this the same mission that Majin alluded to as making Tasim 'transient'? This has hit Tasim hard because he blames us (never mind that Aledar volunteered himself, and we'd have to have died if he didn't), and Aledar was really his only friend because the roaming warrior lifestyle just doesn't build many connections. Skill issue, I'm doing great. Still sad about missing that wedding but god you would not believe what I've been up to while you were just... drifting! I'm the Hero, you aren't! Suck it!

And there's a bridge burnt. We're going to have to kill Tasim too. Sad! (I missed more dialogue cues... and there's a lot of other players roaming behind this cutscene.)

"What is Fruma to you?" And the Queen responds by ignoring the question and instead ranting about how much the Realm of War, the battlefield, sucked. Made wholly of pain and hate and fighting over nothing! The "cage" that's been alluded to seems to be the Realm of Influence on the whole. But who's the one who put it there to rot? The Twins, or some other power? Light and Dark have to have come from somewhere... they're vast, but they're not the only things in the world. There's other worlds, other stars...

War is sad. War is angry. War is spreading its influence. But War is desperate for peace, and the Queen is that desperation. (I'm getting some real Wolf-Divided vibes from this, says man who played a video game a year and a half back and was never the same again.) The Queen's usage of Capitalised Pronouns makes it a bit hard to distinguish everything she's talking about. The "cage" is an It, but so's War...? Are they one and the same? She was caged by War, but War was caged by... Influence? Lowercase war? And she really does love Fruma. She's a tyrant, but Fruma is beautiful. Fruma is what War dreams could be, if only War didn't exist. And because she has something to lose, she has something to fight for. The fact that the end raid is called Wartorn Palace is... sad. It's sad, knowing this. All the Queen wants is peace. That's why she kills all the Cursed. That's why she crushes rebellion after rebellion. That's why she exiled everyone from the Mistwoods. That's why she built an inescapable prison doing god knows what to its prisoners. All she wants is a home that is peaceful and safe and serene, and as long as she doesn't see the blood it's built on, that's what she has. And she'll lose it. She can't escape the inevitable. She's a piece of War, and War will come to her. She's between Light and Dark, and that makes Corruption.

Someone shot off a scroll next to me. I think we're going to fight Tasim here.

Our reward is 'Concord Protocol'. Concordance is peace, of a sort; agreement. Between enemies, sometimes.

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Sidequest. The Strong Survive. I need to cut it here, I have other things to do today. Also I need to eat lunch. We're being roped in as the mentor to an unprepared heir enlisting.

Ah, nevermind. Hook exchanged for another hook. Switcheroo time.

Ooh, we're going to be Challenged by Joining The Fruman Military! This will surely be difficult!

I have named myself Torannicide. I could not think of a funny name. Tyrannicide+Torann because Yeah I Did That.

My eyelid is beginning to twitch. This Arnol guy is kind of obnoxious. We aren't introduced to him in a way that makes me actually like him.

Yeah I'm bored. Leaving.

 

If they emptied your inventory, there would have been a great many item losses. Suspend your freaking disbelief and be glad it didn't swallow your build.

I mean... Project Hallowground

Potentially Parasite or TNA. But who knows?

 

Huh. "Moonscorched Amulet". Shows you a "twisted version" of yourself that "amplifies your deepest shortcomings". I wonder what that could possibly mean.

 

Supposedly 'Tasim x Aledar' is canon. Unsurprising. Is this a spoiler?

 

Not in a major way, there are hints before hand, and it isn't ever explicitly confirmed, although you'd have to be pretty dense to not see it by the end.

 

The Strong Survive is... weird. I'm emotionally checked out, so I can't provide an honest review of its quality, but the premise is strange. Fruma is our enemy. We are fighting the military. So why do we go along with joining it? What's our real motive here? Why should we care about the opinions of these people when we aren't intending to stay here?

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Wow, okay, that ranking board just. Doesn't work. That didn't get anything written for it. Was Fruma really ready to release?

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Too much hand-holding here.

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...what? There isn't even a wiki page for this quest? Well, now I can't review any text I skipped over in haste. Oh well.

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Oh, odd. Their recruits have been getting worse? Why would that be?

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The puzzle-platforming element is just grating. Without the ability to see which platforms are tricks easily, it just takes forever.

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And God help you if you miss the last jump.

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Typo. 'Farse' should be 'farce'.

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Yeah, the dialogue here isn't good.

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__ N___ __ _I___

_Y ___ __ ___E_

__ _A__ I_ _____

M_ ____ __ __R__

__ __M_ __ N___N

MY NAM_ I_ NIREN

...huh. Am I missing one?

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This guy has figured out we're spying and also knows about the Wynn exile program. Strange.

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Hooray, it's done. Now I have to... agh, SD hunt...

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I like the cave design here. I've found another Coiled Stone; I'm missing #2, but Y is the least important coordinate. -1541, -1231.

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Huh. That's the sunken temple I couldn't access. I wonder which of the caves I didn't get a Stone from. Prolly Estalis. Maybe I need all 3 to access the site?

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Yep, found it.

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...whuh? Huh? I found a way into Wynn? One of those is just right next to House Nasin? (I've gotten super sidetracked by miniquests and SDs.) Wynn was a Fruman colony... well that makes sense. Old names, old names. How long ago did this happen? It must have been... before the Queen.

 

Buried Records. Okay. The five runes. What's going on here.

Old scroll depicting... seemingly, the creation of Fruma. A ton of text in a cipher I cannot read. (I don't want to put in the very long amount of time to reference the cipher off the inevitable cipher book, so I'll refer to the Wiki.)

I couldn't fiogure out how to access the Nasin library, but luckily it's trivial to bypass the locked doors and get booted into the library.

Well, all that's worked out. A House Divided. Gale left; I already knew this because someone spoiled it, I'd otherwise forgotten her last name was Nasin. She brought her family crest with her to Gavel, did experiments, died, stayed around as a ghost. House Nasin was dishonored by her departure. She became interested in leaving Fruma via that very same passage I found; she saw Ragni, and realised that the Outside existed. Majin knew her. (Thalas and Nasin houses are right next to each other...) Nasins are snakes, Thalases peacocks. Majin was flirting with Gale in a psycho way. Strange, strange. She could've been a Sovereign. But she escaped through the passage. She found her way through Wynn... somehow to Gavel.

...Good job, Gale.

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Looks like Sunken Monument was indeed a "nuh uh, nothing will happen here unless you get here CORRECTLY" affair. The Queen was lying about Fruma being savage uncivilisation before; obviously.

 

Not a cipher, it's a full conlang. There is a book, but all it does is tell you what each letter would be in the Latin alphabet