All In, Enderal [Travelogue of Skyrim Total Conversion Mod, Enderal]

[KinKrow]

They trot it out every time they want their villain to monologue and get away clean, it feels like.

Not SureAI: tons of game companies do it. They don't seem to realize that what works fine in a TV show or book is infuriating when you're actually playing the game.

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RIGHT?

Like, if you're going to make us lose, at least start off with a boss fight that's obviously set against us.

We'll still be salty, but we'll be more prepared than, "LOL, CUTSCENE! GIT DUNKED ON, FUKBOI!"

Poor Aerith cutscence killed characters, they never had a chance.

 

[SolipsistSerpent]

Sir Bearington is a gentleman and a scholar!I honestly think given the timing, and your point about Sir Bearington having possibly lied go hand in hand. Maybe you're being punked by a few higher being assholes setting up the apocanope.

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Makes sense. If you didn't matter, you wouldn't be worth capturing.

I was so fucking salty when my character got baseball batted to the back of the skull in Vampire the Masquerade. It's like, "Yeah, thanks for saving my ass Nines, but I'm Crazy Insight Bitch With Literal Supernatural Extra-Sensory Powers. I should have seen Baseball Bat Asshole coming from miles away."

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A fellow Malk, I see. I felt like that scene would have worked fine... if it had come a few hours earlier in the game when you were more of a fresh-faced tinhorn vampire. After I'd fought and won vs guys with guns (admittedly they were dangerous in groups) and stopped a major Sabbat plan, it felt weird to lose to baseball bats.

Cutscene defeats work if you obey two rules: Make the character lose in a way that fits/make the loss interesting, and don't overuse it. Ideally, don't use it more than once a game.

 

[KinKrow]

A fellow Malk, I see.

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Tell me the secret to beating the Kanker. He leaves me sore.

 

[Guile]

I don't remember Kanker, but I do remember eventually just turning on god-mode during that fight with the Hunter towards the end. Fuck 'em.

 

[KinKrow]

I don't remember Kanker, but I do remember eventually just turning on god-mode during that fight with the Hunter towards the end. Fuck 'em.

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How do I do that thing that you just said?

 

[Guile]

How do I do that thing that you just said?

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It's been a while, but I think you can just hit the tilde key (~) and type god into the console.

 

[Snakers]

Damn you cliff hanger! Watched.

 

[SolipsistSerpent]

Tell me the secret to beating the Kanker. He leaves me sore.

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I don't remember Kanker, but I do remember eventually just turning on god-mode during that fight with the Hunter towards the end. Fuck 'em.

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Now it's been a while, so my memory isn't entirely clear but I'm pretty sure that I stabbed them in the face while repeatedly turning invisible. Make sure you've got lots of points in Defense, Wits, and Melee. Also, remember that high levels of Obfuscate are damage multipliers against targets that can't see you. Triple damage helps a lot and many areas have alcoves or pillars you can use for cover to turn invisible again. You're a crazy vampire murder ninja, not a knight, fair fights are for suckers.

The only boss fights that gave me trouble were the Chiroptean Maruader (because I was playing a melee character) and the Asian vampire lady because it took me a while to figure out the trick with her duplicates.

 

[Guile]

- I wake to… is that background music Spanish guitar? Nice.

- I come to with an extremely posh accent in my ears. The guys who just got done kicking my ass are Coarek's guys. To be more specific, they're Coarek himself, a guy in a hood who loves him some facial tattoos, and a lady in leather. Armor, not fetishwear. Full coverage. Sometimes you have to specify, in the fantasy genre.
Coarek himself is done up as a Spanish conquistador with a big ol' phoenix coat of arms on his chest.
Also, he has minions. Guard minions, not these lieutenants with names and unique assets. The guards wear these super cute floppy hats.

- And he's captured Jespar, too! Apparently. I don't actually get to see him, but how would Coarek know to throw that at me if he didn't have the guy? Jespar may be even worse at this than I am, if he managed to get captured in the 5 minutes since I left and got into a conversation with the ghostly trio.

- Coarek warns me not to lie to him because he'll just compare it to Jespar's testimony and find out my lies. So of course, I immediately lie to him like it's going out of style. This will come back to bite me in approximately 30 seconds. But until then:
I am Lyra Summerstone, treasure hunter! Or 'scrounger', whatever you like to call it.
Coarek even seems to believe me. Odd place for a treasure hunter, he says. So why did you cosh me on the back of the head, friend?
This isn't Nehrimese land or anything. Nobody's even using these ruins except the ghost animals. Maybe this is just how he likes to meet new people? Tied up and at his mercy? Blindfolded and with a light concussion?
Hey, it's okay Coarek, we all have fetishes. Our weird, unspeakable fetishes. My lips are sealed, really.

- Then his rogue-looking lady who was apparently going through my things – rude – shows him the silver plate. Coarek immediately recognizes the chunk of ancient Pyrean tech and correctly deduces I'm a spy, because why should he only get one freebie from the cutscene gods?
Then he says a line about the stupid lamb lying to the wolf's face, and has Tattoo Dude eat my soul or something. Seriously; Samael starts muttering, magic happens, and then I'm dead.
Now, on the one hand, that's kind of neat. No idle threats, no plot armor, say the wrong thing and you're dead.
On the other hand, I'm reeaally wishing SureAI would let me turn this chump into a mindless puppet with my mind right about now. I can do that, you know. I'm not just a pretty face and a half-competent swordswoman.

- Whatever. Do-over.
Now this is interesting – rather than activate the Silver Plate himself, Coarek asks Samael if he knows how to do it. Is Hoodsy over there a Pyrean expert? Evil vizier type, filling Coarek's head with visions? He's got 'evil cultist' written all over him, whatever he is.

- So Coarek uses the Silver Plate to talk to Arantheal.

Spoiler: I like how sassy they look

They posture about a bit, but the next interesting bit is when Coarek explains his take on the whole 'Cleansing' thing:
He calls it ascendence. The Pyreans are gone, not dead. Perhaps they were like the Ancients from Star Gate, and just turned into floating balls of energy, hm? Did Arantheal ever think of that?
Coarek says he's been getting dreams of it ever since the Light Born died, and it's glorious. Arantheal considers this to be ridiculous, because his dreams of the Cleansing are horrible, and also I guess we have precedent on our side, some kind of chronicle of the Cleansing?
I assume it reads 'Help us, help us, the Light, it is burning us, the Light, it's all our fault, the sin is us' or something like that.
They go back and forth. Arantheal counters with the countless dead rising from their graves, the Red Madness, the general feeling of 'End Times' we've had going on here for weeks.
Coarek considers the Red Madness guys to be those afflicted with 'religiosity', people unwilling to open their minds to Science and Reason. Friend, if you had actually seen the bloody-mouthed, glowing-eyed ghoul motif going on with the Red Madness afflicted, you would know that is some evil shit. Gonna have to go with Arantheal on this one.
Coarek demands Arantheal tell the Enderaleans that their Gods are dead and to stop building the Beacon, or it shall be war.
Arantheal hangs up the phone.

- So it's war, I guess.
Coarek decides he's going to put us (Jespar and I) on a raft and see what Fate has in store for us, rather than kill us. He says he's a man of his word.
Now, statistically I have had very poor luck with boats, but in fairness I might actually be immortal now, some kind of fleshy ghost?
Maybe that's 1-1, so to speak. One for, one against on the whole boat thing.

- So this is interesting, because Bearington said I was the only one they'd appeared to. But Coarek and Arantheal have both been having Cleansing dreams.
So… are the dreams courtesy of someone else? Some Pyrean trying to get the word out, or Coarek's Mystery Pal Samael?
Also he said I was 'the only player of significance', and I'm about to be knocked out and set out at sea on a raft, while Coarek and Arantheal are leading armies and countries and about to have a war to decide the fate of the world.
I have come to the conclusion that Sir Bearington is a liar. Again. Still.

- I wake up on the back of a wagon, but not one bound for the coast with Jespar beside me cracking wise. It's empty, and the place looks a little… familiar. I suspect I'm going to meet Dad again, and historically that has also not ended well for me in the past.
Time to pull up my big girl britches and see what's up back at the old homestead, I guess.


The Takeaway:
Short one this time, I'll try and run through the dream sequence and keep going next time.
I'm pretty ambivalent about this whole segment, really. Coarek has got some good motivation; he really thinks he's doing the right thing and trying to save humanity from us ol' backwards religious folk. That's how I like my evil; cloaked in the mask of good, thank you very much.
I still don't like the way they're building Coarek up at the expense of, well… me, though. For this segment of the adventure I've already apparently forgotten I know Entropic Blood, and I suspect if I'm going to be rafting back home I'll have to forget I know the Recall spell.
Maybe there'll be some fun story time on the raft. Fingers crossed.

 

[SolipsistSerpent]

Also he said I was 'the only player of significance', and I'm about to be knocked out and set out at sea on a raft, while Coarek and Arantheal are leading armies and countries and about to have a war to decide the fate of the world. I have come to the conclusion that Sir Bearington is a liar. Again. Still.

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Alternately, Sir Bearingon doesn't think that armies matter. Whether or not he's right and whether or not the game executes this believably remains to be seen.

 

[Guile]

Alternately, Sir Bearingon doesn't think that armies matter. Whether or not he's right and whether or not the game executes this believably remains to be seen.

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Well put. What does a higher being that spends his time pretending to be a bear care for nations and armies? He's got other things going on.

 

[Guile]

- The path is familiar by now, and it's that familiarity that helps me get into my character's head. How many times has she walked down this path in her dreams, past the statue of the hooded woman, watched the beautiful sunset, knowing that Ghost Dad is at the end with some new horror?
Along the way are two handsome horses milling about outside a burned out cottage with blood and char speckling the floor. Was this here the last time I went through this dream? I can't remember.
Ghost Dad is in the same place as always, chopping wood outside the family house. His flesh is burned; hairless, scarred. Not as bad as a Bethesda Fallout ghoul, but he won't be winning any beauty contests, that's for sure. He tells me he has a surprise to show me and leads me into the house, giggling like he just told the world's best dad joke. As I go in, I see that the sun has moved. The brilliant sunset has become more of a bloody scarlet. Still beautiful, but… yeah. Symbolism, hurrah.

- On the way in, I note the medical diagram of the human body set above a table piled high with what I'm pretty sure are human bits, given the reference chart. Plus… a garlic clove? Pretty sure I would have noticed if that was there last time.

At the table I see Ghost Dad's surprise.

Spoiler: if this were me, this is when I would flip the table and go for the window

Fuck you, Ghost Dad. Nothing good ever comes from you.
'Mommy' and 'Sis' (that's what the game calls them) parrot fragments of Ghost Dad's speech. 'Play with us, play with us', 'Stay with us, stay with us,' like that. I notice that each of them has a bloody patch on their clothes in the general vicinity of their hearts.
I should probably be grateful for the burlap sacks over their heads.
And then everything catches on fire, because of course. Probably all that hot fire Dad was spitting; the resemblance to Sigil Leader Jorek's disappointment and cynicism is uncanny. Dad, Mommy and Sis go up like torches.
Dad is dreadfully disappointed in me refusing to stay dead like them, and sounding maybe a little jealous?
And then they show me that, no, there's fire, and then there's fire.

Spoiler: lookin' kinda High One-y, Ghost Dad

- I like how Mommy and Sis's 'Stay with us, stay with us' chant segues into Jespar's 'Come on, stay with me' comment upon waking, though I think instead of calmly waking up it would have been more entertaining if my character woke up swinging.
Nevermind. So it looks like my character was out long enough to miss the raft ride entirely! And I was so looking forward to spending torturous days playing 'I Spy' with Jespar…
We were picked up by a Fisherwoman, and we're on our way to a place called Duneville. This feels like it would be a good place to fit in a new NPC. Duneville is on the southwest end of the continent, way beyond anywhere I've ever traveled, and apparently is going to be one of the first to get hit by Nehrim's invasion force.
But nope; her name is Fisherwoman.

- Anyway, we pull into Duneville, Jespar throws a sop to those of us wondering why we couldn't just teleport home (apparently, the teleport runes are just now close enough), and scroll-ports to Ark. He plans to collect his pay, since we didn't die after all. I'm not sure who he's going to collect from, mind you, since his boss is buried back in the Living Temple.
Not me, though. I need to check this place out first!

- Duneville's a pretty great locale. An inlet hidden inside a cave, with a ramshackle palisade built right on the water two, three, four stories high in places, connected by trap doors and ladders and plank bridges. Protected from the elements and anybody looking for them would have to look pretty damn hard. It's got a certain aesthetic of… look, these guys are probably pirates, right? Smugglers? Something like that?
It's just got that feel.
Possibly it might be the hookahs perched everywhere, or how the trio having a loud argument as I step off the boat basically out themselves as treasure hunters, which is apparently a banned occupation in Enderal. Respect for the dead, etcetera.
It's a good bit of quiet worldbuilding that there's tons of chests and barrels stacked everywhere, but all the goods inside are crap. A few gold pennies, iron, miscellaneous clutter. It makes it feel like Duneville is… not a very prosperous place.

- Now this is cute.

Spoiler: adorably retarded dude-bro humor

Some barely-literate scoundrel marked up the warning signs that are common in places like Ark with comments like 'Beware living dead tits' and 'Death by drowning from behind'. It's exactly the kind of retarded humor the people who live here would find hilarious.

- There's some merchants, an inn of sorts, a minstrel. A quest starts up after I wander into somebody's house and read their mail, telling me (not actually me, but imma do it anyway) to head for Old Solsteim (probably misspelling that) before the Order get there. Going by the name, probably another ruin. Well hell, I'm not tired of those already, off to Solsteim it is!
Arantheal probably isn't waiting for a debrief, he probably thinks we're dead! So what's the harm?

- On the way out I run into one of the many 'Watchdogs' who serve the function of guardsmen around here, and he had this to say:

Spoiler: what a great tough guy lean

I still don't know who the heck the Tuchessa (Truchessa?) is or was, but since we know she was/is part of the Order, that suggests Duneville's town of miners, scoundrels, ne'er-do-wells and probably mafia leanings was sanctioned by the Order. Or at least given a hands-off approach. He even references 'who rules this place,' another question I'd like to know the answer to.
What a great throwaway line from an NPC who doesn't even rate a name, to get me wondering about Enderal's history.

- Anyway. Outside Duneville is a wasteland of sand, mysterious towers, rocky cliffs, sand-blasted wood wreckage, and more sand. There's a constant background whistling as wind makes its way through the cliffs.
… Duneville, I get it!
Riding my donkey through the large, mostly-empty desert feels pretty good. Like a spaghetti western hero.

- I appreciate that the first thing I run into is a Nehrimese invasion ship run aground with a bunch of murdered Nehrimese soldiers and a couple of new undead (Sere Lost Ones, with pretty sweet looking armor on) sprawled out across the beach.
It's like Coarek didn't realize what a shitshow the Enderal countryside is. They came expecting to stomp some clerics and instead are learning the kind of pain I've felt for two dozen hours. I kind of imagine this is happening all across Enderal right now, and I love it.
Also, the Duneville area is home to Enderal's version of slaughterfish, some kind of armored red sea serpent thing. Still just as annoying as in Skyrim.

- I also happen to run into a place called the Hidden Hand, a little hole in the wall whose landscaping looks like this.

Spoiler: I know there's only two crosses and they're occupied, by why take the chance?

Nope! I tip my hat and move along.

- A priest's tower has a desert spider outside, like the little guy is standing guard. Now where have I heard… aha. Haha. Hahaha!
I enter the tower, kill a few of the little guys, and then my old nemesis from the Kor quest, the Desert Spider Queen, shows up. It looks like the priest was digging out a cellar and happened upon the nest, or the spiders broke through and found him.
I snipe the Queen from across the room, and it turns out she's actually too big to fit through the tunnel. I can only shrug and fire another three arrows into her general head region until she folds like a cheap card table. I'll take it.
I also take a dozen books, to add to the collection I've got going in the storage room back home.

- Along the way to Solsteim (or whatever that ruin is called), I find ANOTHER ruin, called Old Lyguria. Well, one Pyrean ruin is as good as another, right?
Wrong.
I have some small initial success, although the dead adventurer bodies stacked knee deep is a little worrying.
Dead fire elementals look totally sweet, by the way, and the soil elemental decided on a victory lap of sorts.

Spoiler: I'm the best~ around~

Look at how happy he seems to have killed that frost elemental! He holds that pose for a good ten seconds as he roams the area.
Considering his curmudgeonly old man face and his just-proven elemental elitism, I think my soil elemental is the equivalent of an Enderalean.
Anyway, all goes well until it turns out a lot of these elementals are linked encounters. Four elementals at once is a bit much, turns out.

Spoiler: break for yoga

It's been a while since I've done the ol' corpse pose. So… back to the main quest?
Back to the main quest.


The Takeaway:
The nightmare is actually getting better with repetition, in the sense that when I see that lovely vista I think 'Oh god, this again', but with something closer to dread than annoyance. I think I've said this before, but SureAI's nightmare game is strong.
Duneville's pretty great too, at least in small doses. The town's architecture is inventive without the cave feeling claustrophobic like Undercity (high ceilings), and does a lot with like, 6 named characters with something to say. The desert is empty but that's kind of the point of a desert biome, right? It's pleasant to ride through, and I was serious about the spaghetti western vibe I was getting. SureAI really is trying to make sure every biome is represented somewhere in this game.
The monsters range from pushovers (some kind of armored deer called a Crusher), to slightly dangerous but mostly gross (so this is where the pus monster centipedes come from! The mystery of the pus creature in that one Undercity house deepens), to still pretty dangerous (Desert Spider Queen, last of her name), to 'holy shit that's a lot of X what did I do to deserve this SureAI.' I'll probably come back at some point.

 

[iamnuff]

It's like Coarek didn't realize what a shitshow the Enderal countryside is. They came expecting to stomp some clerics and instead are learning the kind of pain I've felt for two dozen hours. I kind of imagine this is happening all across Enderal right now, and I love it.

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I love those moments. Where the enemy-force shows up and just isn't fucking prepared for the local dangers.

''Suprise motherfucker, look what I've been dealing with for my entire fucking life.''

Reminds me of a Discworld book where an army tries to occupy Ankh-Morpork and ends up losing a bunch of their people in a bad part of town called The Shades.
One of the officers calls it enemy action, but another (who grew up locally) replies ''Yes Clive, but you were born in Quirm. Getting murdered in alleyways is just a part of life in the big city.''

 

[SolipsistSerpent]

Nice world building with that sign.

And now we know why that Desert Spider Queen was in the house earlier: Foreshadowing!

I love watching NPC vs wildlife or wildlife vs wildlife fights, I remember how amazed I was the first time I saw that stuff in Oblivion, where I'm like: Oh, hey, these guys aren't all one happy family- they're acting the way the fluff says they should. As opposed to say, WoW, where everyone will ignore each other to murder you. That kind of thing really adds verisimilitude to world and really there's a special joy from knowing that no matter who wins, an enemy loses.

The town's architecture is inventive without the cave feeling claustrophobic like Undercity (high ceilings),

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I love Undercity. Back when I played WoW, I used to sometimes log in and just wander around, swim in the green goo and bask in the ambience.

 

[Guile]

I love Undercity. Back when I played WoW, I used to sometimes log in and just wander around, swim in the green goo and bask in the ambience.

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I love almost all of WoW's areas, particularly Horde side. So much variety. I'd just travel around, watching desert transform into forest, and the jungle inside that forest thanks to weird old Titan tech, or green hills into stark mountains, or the Blighted areas of Eastern Kingdoms. I think I still have a burned CD of the music in the game that I'd listen to on repeat for hours. Got the achievements for unlocking every section of the maps and doing every quest in vanilla WoW. I was really into it, for years.

But actually, I meant this game's Undercity, which is literally the place Ark sticks its undesirables in caverns beneath the city. Like so:

 

[Guile]

- I swing by and pick up the new summons at the Sun Temple magic shop - 'elemental wolf' and 'revive corpse III', those should be fun - before checking in with the rest of the Order.
My first stop is actually the Chroniclum (or however you say that), the digs of the Nehrimese mages and the Order's chroniclers and archivists. I'm a little disappointed none of the NPCs have anything to say about Constantine being gone. Maybe news hasn't trickled down the ranks yet?
On the other hand, Novice Elia (she's part of a super short quest I did earlier, where you have to track her down in the cemetery district) seems to have moved into Constantine's room to keep an eye on things (that is, to keep me from stealing all the shit in that room).
Lexil the Archmage has some interesting (read: depressing) backstory now that I'm actually talking to him outside of quest events. Basically, his life was so shitty (Nehrimese noble says: You and your mom are my slaves now!) that eventually it wrapped around to being awesome, when he was sold to a new master who died of fleshmaggots when they came to Enderal (yeah, gotta watch out for… basically everything, on this fuggin' continent). Since his master was a Sublime (that's the Enderalean noble caste. Do Enderaleans get to own slaves? Why haven't I seen slaves around here?), he basically got shuffled into the Order, distinguished himself, yadda yadda now he's the Archmage. Also his old master probably got killed in the civil war, although his mom went MIA and he'd like to go look for her someday.

- Does anyone have a happy backstory in this game? I'm legitimately trying to think of one.
Maybe the ones with happy backstories don't feel the need to parade them around within 5 minutes of me asking what their deal is.

- Anyway, on to the council room. Looks like Arantheal is keeping the faith, but the others are none too happy about … anything, really. Us going missing for what was apparently a week. Us returning after a week without a word. The invasion. The price of grain, probably.
The Truchessa (it was Disapproving Order Mom after all! Apparently she was the leader of Enderal while Arantheal was in prison for years, bet that won't be a problem ever) is angry about Arantheal diverting resources to the Beacon.
Lishari is furious to the point of drawing her sword over Constantine and shouts threats at the Truchessa, who is coldly furious right back, and Arantheal has to bust out his Disappointed Dad voice to get them to back down.
I wasn't aware she liked Constantine so much, her voice actress is really emoting here; Constantine meanwhile could never even remember her name. In fact, I can't remember her name, because Constantine kept mispronouncing it on me.
I am watching this alliance disintegrate in front of me, and it's kind of amazing in a trainwreck sort of way.
Also, hey. Speaking of being none too happy, I just noticed. Why are Jespar and I at the foot of the table?

Spoiler: Constantine's sacrifice will be remembered- with a better seat at the table

Literally the entire table is closer to Arantheal than we are. I've got a Capital Letter Name too, shouldn't I be up closer to the front?

- Anyway, there's some optional ally maintenance you can do before moving on to the next step (Lishari has some ideas and wants to meet at the Dancing Nymph).
Arantheal will tell you some cool backstory about Qyra: land of intellectuals, mages, colleges and constant - goddamn constant - civil wars. I guess when no thought or philosophy is forbidden, you get some radical ideologies.
So basically, the Truchessa was throwing Arantheal's past mistakes back in his face, y'know, like friends do, and how he accidentally caused one of Qyra's civil wars to blow up. Manipulated into killing a village of enraged, scared farmers that came at them with pitchforks, basically. Arantheal has since sworn that he would never allow fear of his own death get in the way of his decisions again. What a boss.

Spoiler: oh hey, we rebuilt the Beacon over here in Ark, that's cool

Although I have to wonder… shadowsteel swords? Why didn't I get a shadowsteel sword signing bonus? I just got some shitty steel armor. I've never even seen a shadowsteel sword before, is Arantheal holding out on me?

- Arantheal also posits that if Coarek is the Messias (presumably that should be 'Messiah'), then some of the Emissaries will be fighting on the High Ones' side, and whatever is granting us our powers isn't an enemy of the High Ones, but some neutral party. Possibly that mystery woman that stopped time to talk some cryptic nonsense right before I got tied to a rock and drowned near the start of the game.
I have the option to tell him that the Highbear said he wasn't a real Emissary, but I decide not to do that. It just seems like it wouldn't help, you know? Call it paranoia over the time Coarek had me murdered for mouthing off.

- Calia also wants to complain about the state of the world and stuff.
And hey, since Jespar has been dodging my attempts to nail him down on the 'him and me' angle, when given the option I figure… why not? And start sending some compliments Calia's way. To her credit, she picks up on it immediately, and I'm given the choice of playing it off as a joke, admitting I like her, or pull some dodge about me being a woman. Girls can't love girls, you know.
Although since she literally turns into a shadowy demon when in the grip of strong emotion she's kiiiind of not looking for anything right now.
Which, y'know, that's fair. She asks me to respect those boundaries, and I do! I totally do. I watched her kill a man until he was dead and then mutilate the corpse for a good 7 seconds afterwards. I don't want to see Demon Calia again if I forget an anniversary, either.

- And Jespar has a new story about being hired to steal a tribal idol, making the poor decision to accept the advances of a pair of Amazonian native sisters, and waking up sans idol, money and clothes.
He actually appreciates it if I laugh at him about it, the masochist.
I'm kind of surprised he didn't have a quest for me, considering he mentioned his sister the noble-turned-Apothecary went MIA and he wants to search for her.

- Well, now it's time to head up to her room at the Dancing Nymph to see what Lishari has to say. She's pretty sharp, and-

Spoiler: not the kind of woman waiting in bed for me that I prefer

Ooh boy. So that's Lishari, in bed, as naked as Skyrim ladies ever get. The sword that presumably killed her is stabbed through the mattress, and the blood is everywhere.
I'm not sure which answer would be more unsettling, so I'm not even going to ask 'Was she stripped down to her underpants before she died, or after?'
And then Yuslan Sha'rim, Nehrimese of the same Order, expert mage and possibly some kind of ghost-whisperer (he spends at least half of every conversation talking to someone named Naea, and plays coy when you ask who Naea is), walks in the door behind me. Because fucking of course.

Yuslan gets way more pissed than when he heard Constantine died (I get the feeling they were an item at some point, he and Lishari), and throws some accusations around. I throw accusations back about his convenient timing, and then claim I was there for a lesbian rendezvous. I panicked, okay?
He seems to buy it, anyway.
So we dig around the room a bit and come up with a bottle of drugs that honestly seems like pretty weak evidence to me, but Yuslan latches onto it.
I also carefully do not point out that Lishari was probably murdered by someone in the Order (she said she had some evidence she wanted me to take a look at), because at this point, with two of the three heads of the Nehrimese mages coming down with a bad case of dead, I'm kind of worried Yuslan would murder somebody and/or leave if I did. And I like them a lot more than the Order, who still only barely (and snidely) tolerate me.
I'll just have to burn some midnight oil and figure things out solo, like a proper protagonist!

- Before heading back to tell Arantheal the news, I decide head out to Fortress Fogwatch to give my new summons a shakedown run. I have a quest from way back when I first got to Ark, you see: an alchemist named Bal had a grandfather who fucked up and bred some plague mushrooms (just what Enderal needed, more evil mushrooms!), and Bal needs his notes and mushroom samples to try and figure out a cure and redeem the family name.
So yes, this guy wants me to grab a bunch of plague mushrooms, put them in my bag, and bring them back to him in Ark. Whatever, money's money, and I'm already dead, so I'm probably fine!

- On the way I run into a pretty neat little village full of entropy mages (that's the evil forbidden magics, remember) and 'runaway convicts' being kept chopping wood at all hours. Not sure what's up with all the wood chopping, to be honest, but the village is basically like the mages just came in and took over some little shithole village in the name of religious/magical freedom and made the villagers their slaves, which is a pretty cool narrative.
They planted explosive runes everywhere around the village, and I learn this by riding right over one and exploding. But it only knocks about half off my health bar, so who cares?
Revive III works pretty well, but not quite well enough: kill a mage and use it on the corpse, and she revives into a kinda-sparkly blue mage-wight and runs off to go blast the shit out of the rest of the town for me. The problem is that after being revived once, the NPC turns into a cloud of dust that can't be revived again.
Compare this to my new wolf – made entirely of flame – who can be resummoned eternally and who can, I learn shortly, take on three ghost-mages solo. Just doesn't quite measure up, you know?

- So anyway, I work my way up to Fortress Fogwatch through an extremely evil-looking forest (this looks familiar; did I take my trial here? You know, the crazy dream sequence one. All these evil mushroom forests start to blur together after a while), and then kill roughly 50 undead, including a lot of ghost alchemists who hit hard with their silver swords and also throw magic in a pinch.
Here's a neat thing, by the way:
Is this Mary Seacole, do you think? The legendary Jamaican herb woman, hotel owner and war nurse?

Spoiler: Enderal's got some pretty good art pieces

What with it being put up in an alchemist's laboratory and all.

- I settle into a plan of attack I like to call 'Aggro room of monsters, run away while wolfie deals with them', since 3-4 of these alchemists kick my ass but my wolfbro must have an enormous health bar because he's totally fine.
If I didn't have the wolf, I'd be doomed. The difficulty of this quest is not in any way worth the 150 gold pennies the alchemist will give me for completing it, although these piles of silver swords being worth around 75 pennies apiece makes up for it.
I decide to turn in the mushroom samples to the Apothecarius in Sun Temple instead of the guy who hired me, partly because the last thing Undercity needs is another plague, and partly to punish Bal for making me do this and then paying me a pittance for it.


The Takeaway:
I wonder if we're shifting into the endgame here? There's a war on, and narratively important NPCs are suddenly dropping like flies. I would say I'm less invested in Lishari's death than Constantine's (or my own!), or if, say, Jespar bought the farm, but she's still a solid secondary NPC who got killed offscreen just to raise the stakes. And I'm at least half convinced that Jorek or the Truchessa will turn out to be the hand holding the knife.
I also appreciate the game giving me the choice of whether to go the inflammatory route or not. Sure it's probably not going to matter either way, but it feels like I have the choice to hold back some information for the sake of politics or hurt feelings, or just throw caution to the wind and go full disclosure, and that's a good feeling.
Fogwatch Fortress turned out to be a fairly mediocre quest. One man's quest to redeem his family name isn't a bad narrative, but it's not as visceral as say, Kor's priesthood purging their undesirables. Where the letters prime us to care about the wives who didn't make it, which in turn keeps us going until we find the sunken temple and the rest of the bodies. Having more journals from the researchers might have done the trick here, but all we got was the grandfather's regrets which was a little insufficient and late.

 

[useless101]

Ooh boy. So that's Lishari, in bed, as naked as Skyrim ladies ever get.

Click to shrink...

Aha, a clue! Using it I have managed to deduce who the murderer was.

She was killed by every Elder Scrolls protagonist I've ever played as.

Oh, no, wait, were there other people alive in the building, or corpses that hadn't been stripped of even the least valuable clothes they're wearing? Because that would actually prove it wasn't any of my Skyrim characters.

 

[Guile]

Aha, a clue! Using it I have managed to deduce who the murderer was.

She was killed by every Elder Scrolls protagonist I've ever played as.

Oh, no, wait, were there other people alive in the building, or corpses that hadn't been stripped of even the least valuable clothes they're wearing? Because that would actually prove it wasn't any of my Skyrim characters.

Click to shrink...

Hm, I have left any number of bandit camps in a similar state of deshabille, it's true.

Did I do it? Am I the murderer?!

 

[SolipsistSerpent]

when he was sold to a new master who died of fleshmaggots when they came to Enderal (yeah, gotta watch out for… basically everything, on this fuggin' continent).

Click to shrink...

I'm really digging how 'outsiders are not prepared for how crazy dangerous Enderal is' has become a recurring theme of the game.

Yuslan gets way more pissed than when he heard Constantine died (I get the feeling they were an item at some point, he and Lishari), and throws some accusations around. I throw accusations back about his convenient timing, and then claim I was there for a lesbian rendezvous. I panicked, okay?

Click to shrink...

Aha, all that flirting with Callia served a purpose then! She can testify that you're definitely the type to try to arrange a lesbian rendezvous.

Aha, a clue! Using it I have managed to deduce who the murderer was.She was killed by every Elder Scrolls protagonist I've ever played as.Oh, no, wait, were there other people alive in the building, or corpses that hadn't been stripped of even the least valuable clothes they're wearing? Because that would actually prove it wasn't any of my Skyrim characters.

Click to shrink...

It wouldn't rule out mine. My Oblivion Character was literally a kleptomaniac (had to justify being arrested at the start somehow) who somehow managed to become both head of the Mages' guild and secret head of the Thieves' Guild and also collected all the bones and skulls lying around various crypts and ruins to decorate her mage tower (hey, if you're a necromancer, you gotta look the part and decorative bone patterns punctuated with skulls are a must) but my Skyrim character only took things that had a high value to weight ratio. If all that was missing were potions, elven goods, and expensive food, then you'd know it was the Dragonborn.

Hm, I have left any number of bandit camps in a similar state of deshabille, it's true.Did I do it? Am I the murderer?!

Click to shrink...

You joke, but Guile, you're some kind of undead that keeps having hallucinations of your father berating you. You may have murder-blackouts, is what I'm saying.

 

[Guile]

I'm really digging how 'outsiders are not prepared for how crazy dangerous Enderal is' has become a recurring theme of the game.

Click to shrink...

Why should I be the only one to suffer?

You joke, but Guile, you're some kind of undead that keeps having hallucinations of your father berating you. You may have murder-blackouts, is what I'm saying.

Click to shrink...

Man, if I turn out to be the villain all along... that would be pretty cool, actually.

 

[Guile]

- It's a little odd, but according to my map marker I'm supposed to report Lishari's death to Lexil the Archmage. He's posed pretty fabulously when I find him, leafing through an ancient tome. #JustArchmageThings.

He has a few kind words for Lishari, but honestly the whole thing feels weirdly understated. They're kicking the investigation over to 'Commander Eren', who I don't think I've ever met or heard of. Not exactly bringing their A-game to the investigation, is what I'm saying.
Lexil and Tealor Arantheal have much more to say about the Beacon than about their ally found stabbed to death in her room. See, it's got three spots for power to be plugged in. I just knew I was going to have to Legend of Zelda this shit up at some point. I could feel it.
Hey Prophetess, you ever heard of the 'black stones'?

Spoiler: "Go find three Hope Diamonds, Guile"

What kind of undesirable side-effects? Wait, don't tell me, I can guess.

Spoiler: I could dance like that if I wanted to

I said I can guess!
Always, it comes back to insanity and death.
On the upside, good thematic callback to me burning my house down and murdering the fam in a fit of insanity. If I have to go back to my home in Nehrim to get one of your Beacon gizmos, Lexil …
Well honestly, that would be pretty cool. Yeah. I'm down. Who wouldn't want to sift through the destroyed remnants of their childhood home looking for a shiny ball that'll probably drive them mad with power, and might have done once already?

- Also:

Spoiler: interrupting NPC says what?

Elia. Elia, can I … help you?
… No? Not gonna say a word. Just gonna … chill? Okay, cool. You do you, girl.

- Unfortunately, I prooobably shouldn't have put this meeting off to do Fortress Fogwatch, because Lexil tells me he's got some things to get together, and to come back tomorrow. So I'm stuck cooling my heels.

- Well, I've got a quest from the 'A GOD AM I' inventor guy, to go find his wayward apprentice, anyway. So I'm off to a new area called 'Wellwatch'.

Spoiler: pretty

Why is this game so beautiful, holy shit. I mean, I'm not sure how the seasons work in Enderal, but SureAI sure can make some evocative scenery.

- On the way to the campsite where what's-her-face was dragged off, I run into a bandit camp-slash-quarry that got murdered but good by some… wood elementals or something? Spriggans? Very large dryad type things surrounded by a cloud of stinging flies, named <Goldenforst Matriarchs>.
Whatever, they're not 'ard enough to deal with flame-wolf. Bit of a mismatch, there. Right? Fire, meet tree. You already have so much in common; like being on fire.
… Is that supposed to be 'Goldenforest', by the way? Just asking.
More importantly, I wander into an innocuous cave attached to the quarry called 'Cliff Diving Grotto', and run into a new type of undead. Lost Ones, clad in black and silver armor and wielding bows of similar make.
This is gonna be one of those dungeons.

- Or it would be, except the pathing is REALLY bad, in here. As long as I cower behind this rock and fire about 50 arrows downrange, the two Lost Ones at the entrance just run back and forth and I can take my time and bring them down like one of those carnival shooting gallery games with the cork guns.
The next, a batch of four, are likewise not much of a challenge. I'm not sure if it's the speed they run at or more bad pathing, but none of them even get close. My wolf doesn't even deploy, just hangs around doing his best to foul my shots.
Down, then up, and then… Markul Darkhand, kin to my friend from the Madness Time beneath Ark. This one has a pretty nasty fire and ice combination attack: an AOE freezing mist that keeps the enemy from moving at more than a crawl, and then a fireball as a finisher.
That just means my wolf runs in ahead of me as I cower like the coward I am, and tears the poor lich open like a turkey.
This wolf, man. Somebody was talking earlier about who I might be romancing, Jespar or Calia? I'm mostly wondering at this point just how restrictive the local laws are. I mean, what a hero and her elemental wolf get up to behind closed doors is nobody's business but theirs, right?

- There's a few more Lost Ones between me and the exit, but I sail right on through to find this guy:

Spoiler: sup

Am I weird for finding him adorable? With his little lantern and sword and skeleton grin?
Just me? Okay then.

- Off to find Pathira, then. There's a mysterious blood splatter at her camp, so… I'm guessing she's not off picking flowers. The minimap marker clicks off; it's time to do some detective work.
Except we appear to be close enough to aggro a Goldenforst Matriarch. No sweat, right? Except during the fight, something goes wrong.
Something about the mob (charm spells?), or a bug, or something... I am beset by base treachery.

Spoiler: Et tu, wulfae

]

Elemental wolf bites hurt a lot.

- That happens twice, actually, and I just barely manage to kill the Matriarch and wolfie with a sliver of health left on the second go-round. I see how it is.
Well, y'know what, wolfie? I don't even NEED you! I have this hideous thing!

Spoiler: behold the Oorbaya

I can barely stand to look at it, but it's level 30 to your 26, and it's probably got like, magic and shit. I'm gonna take it on magical adventures in the Goldenforst, and learn valuable lessons and maybe doom all humanity to living under the mighty bootheel of a new Centurion God-king! And it'll be awesome!
So there. *sniff*


The Takeaway:
I have to say, the Order's response to Constantine and Lishari's death is not comforting in the least. After all, I'm a suspicious foreigner, too, y'know? If I died on one of these little jaunts (y'know, for real) (like, permanently) I wonder if the Keepers clustered around that table in the Sun Temple would shake their heads and murmur 'sad' before moving on to other business?
Luckily, they can't get rid of me that easily.

 

[Snakers]

It just wants a hug no need to call it hideous, you can tell by the way it wears it's heart on it's sleeve.

butsrslywtf...

 

[SolipsistSerpent]

-This wolf, man. Somebody was talking earlier about who I might be romancing, Jespar or Calia? I'm mostly wondering at this point just how restrictive the local laws are. I mean, what a hero and her elemental wolf get up to behind closed doors is nobody's business but theirs, right?

Click to shrink...

Isn't that wolf on fire? (checks picture). Yep. Probably just as well things didn't work out, with the betrayal and all. You'd be dealing with some very awkward burns.

Spoiler: sup

Am I weird for finding him adorable? With his little lantern and sword and skeleton grin? Just me? Okay then.

Click to shrink...

No, that guy is great. 10/10, I'd try to haul his corpse back to my mage tower.

Well, that's a very unique... Undead? Demon? Mutant? At the end there. A lot less boring than some of the summons.

 

[Guile]

No, that guy is great. 10/10, I'd try to haul his corpse back to my mage tower.

Click to shrink...

I swear they must have somebody on staff that just does cute skeleton placement.

Maybe it's the same guy Bethesda had for Fallout 3.

Well, that's a very unique... Undead? Demon? Mutant? At the end there. A lot less boring than some of the summons.

Click to shrink...

It's a very weird creature.

If the elemental wolf's charm point is being able to go through an enemy like a fiery knife through soft cheese, then this guy is a tank that periodically explodes. The italics is necessary to describe just how explosion-y it is.

 

[SolipsistSerpent]

I swear they must have somebody on staff that just does cute skeleton placement.Maybe it's the same guy Bethesda had for Fallout 3.

Click to shrink...

Fallout 3 was an excellent game and one of the reasons for that was the incredible verisimilitude. Instead of everything being confusing dungeon complexes that seemed to serve no purpose, you could almost always figure out what you were looking at, even if it was tragic, amusing, or bizarre.

 

[DeltaCortis]

… Is that supposed to be 'Goldenforest', by the way? Just asking.

Click to shrink...

Yeah. Things like that get overlooked when one has to translate a huge Mod like Enderal from German into English.

 

[Guile]

- So there we are, following a blood trail for a couple hundred feet that obviously contains more blood than anybody should have inside them.
I'm thinking to myself there's no way this lady is still alive.
The trail takes us up some wooden palisade type structure, with cannons on it. With bandits in it, of course! I hope the bandits will resist the invading Nehrimese for us, since they control all of Enderal's mines and quarries and, apparently, our defensive structures too.
Well, maybe they would have if I hadn't just filled them full of magic arrows.

Spoiler: hey man, you've got a little something right- eh, you're fine

- I'm not sure why entering some dungeons alerts everyone in the first room, leading to my swift beatdown when my summoned critter doesn't come through the door with me, and sometimes lets me get the drop on them instead. Maybe that's intentional?
This is one of the former, so I immediately run outside and begin a fighting retreat back down the structure until the bandits are dead. The first room is actually a huge cavern-type room built into what must be the mountain, with bedrolls and tables filled with clutter and huge kegs of what I assume are alcohol. Aside from a watchtower type structure inside the cavern which doesn't make any goddamn sense, it's pretty homey. At least up here, anyway; downstairs is a supply room, and a whole lotta jail cells and bear traps everywhere.

- The Oorbaya does a pitiful fraction of the physical damage my wolf does (which is odd given it's like 8 feet tall with arms like bloody tree trunks), but it's pretty sturdy and periodically explodes in a huge purple wave of energy that looks like it hits the entire room. Including myself, although thankfully there's no damage to go along with the nausea-inducing energy backwash.
It also sounds like a cannon going off, which turns out to be a downside when it aggros every bandit in the place down on our heads.
I'm probably going to be forgiving the elemental wolf pretty quickly if the alternative is 'fight the entire dungeon simultaneously.'

- Also, the starling lady I came here to find, Pahtira, is actually fine! In a cage, but fine.
She tells me she's hurt, but she's not, you know, covered in blood or anything.
It sure is convenient that the blood trail which didn't actually come from my quarry still led me right to her, but whatever. Maybe the bandits regularly drag prey (human or animal) back to the fort…? I don't know.

- Pahtira sends me on another fetch quest to get that steering unit to complete the Centurion. It's apparently located inside yet another old fortress for some reason (that's been taken over by bandits, of course). Are these bandits raiding Pyrean ruins and making off with the goods?
… It would be pretty cool to see a bandit faction in Dwemer-type gear.

- There are three Vatyr roaming around outside the fort. Been a while since I met any of those, but I definitely don't remember them moving this quick! It takes these guys about two or three seconds to run from bow range into face-stabbing range.
Then I reload and make sure to put my minion between us properly this time.
I found the Vatyr to be much more dangerous than the bandits inside the fort, leading me to assume that the bandits have been trapped in there for days while the Vatyr prowl around below.
I mean, this guy had his own name, so presumably he was supposed to be some kind of bandit king...

Spoiler: this works much better when I'm not the one on fire

But mostly I'm just impressed with how prettily he burns.

- So I grab the macguffin and head back to Ark, where of course I find the 'heavily injured' Pahtira beat me home. I bet she just didn't want to assault a fortress manned by bandits after wading through Vatyr, the wimp.
I'm not sure what's going on between Pahtira and Yerai (that's the inventor guy), except that Yerai is his passive-aggressive self while Pahtira is coming off very snippy. They do not have a good working relationship, these two.

Spoiler: oh no you din't

Look at how sassy she looks! It's all hands-on-hips and crossed-arms, with her.
I also really like her outfit, with the big stompy Dwemer-type boots and gauntlets. This feels like a lady who does a lot of tromping around and sticking her hands into dangerous places, and needs protection to make sure she's not pulling back a bloody stump.

- Speaking of dangerous things likely to result in dismemberment, they want me to go a starling spaceship that apparently crash landed here in Enderal, in a glacier. Now that the robot's chassis is finished they still need a power source to run it.
Pahtira's tagging along to help with… something or other, but she mentions casually that there's likely to be an array of traps to turn intruders into dust, bones, or puddles of flesh.
Starling traps apparently come in 'death', 'vaporization' and 'Raiders of the Lost Ark' varieties.


The Takeaway:
Now, that's pretty cool (spaceship!), but at this point I kind of want to apotheosize into the golden robot if they're gonna make me save their lives, finish the chassis and find a power core.
Well, the main quest has ticked over to a new day now, but I figure I might as well finish up this quest line first.
Onward to Agnod!

 

[SolipsistSerpent]

- So there we are, follow a blood trail for a couple hundred feet that obviously contains more blood than anybody should have inside them.

Click to shrink...

Eh, you'd be amazed. People have quite a bit of blood in them (about a gallon and a half) and it can spread thinly over a wide area and still be visible, since it's got a lot of color to it. Admittedly, I didn't see this blood trail, but just imagine how much area you can paint with a gallon and a half of paint. A lot, right?

I'm thinking to myself there's no way this lady is still alive.

Click to shrink...

On the other hand, you're probably right on that account. People can only lose about 30 percent of their blood before the pressure drops too low and they can't circulate it properly, requiring quick medical attention or they'll die. If they lose 40 percent or more, it's pretty much impossible to save them.

She tells me she's hurt, but she's not, you know, covered in blood or anything. It sure is convenient that the blood trail which didn't actually come from my quarry still led me right to her, but whatever. Maybe the bandits regularly drag prey (human or animal) back to the fort…? I don't know.

Click to shrink...

That seems suspicious. If this was a pen and paper RPG, I'd be screaming "Trap!" right now, but it could just be video game limits.

Are these bandits raiding Pyrean ruins and making off with the goods?

Click to shrink...

Well, why should they wait for adventurers to snap up all the loot? If you've got ruins with valuables inside, you get tomb-robbers.

Look at how sassy she looks! It's all hands-on-hips and crossed-arms, with her.I also really like her outfit, with the big stompy Dwemer-type boots and gauntlets. This feels like a lady who does a lot of tromping around and sticking her hands into dangerous places, and needs protection to make sure she's not pulling back a bloody stump.

Click to shrink...

It really is a great outfit. But she also beat you back to town... Hm... You know, are we sure she wasn't working with the bandits?

 

[Guile]

Eh, you'd be amazed. People have quite a bit of blood in them (about a gallon and a half) and it can spread thinly over a wide area and still be visible, since it's got a lot of color to it. Admittedly, I didn't see this blood trail, but just imagine how much area you can paint with a gallon and a half of paint. A lot, right?

Click to shrink...

Hard to say.

About five spatters like these?

It feels like a lot, but for all I know there's bandit blood contributing here.

That seems suspicious. If this was a pen and paper RPG, I'd be screaming "Trap!" right now, but it could just be video game limits.
...
It really is a great outfit. But she also beat you back to town... Hm... You know, are we sure she wasn't working with the bandits?

Click to shrink...

Right? It feels suspicious, but I can't think of any reason she'd want to be locked in a cage out in the arse end of nowhere, and not even in the fortress with the macguffin gizmo. If she was working with the bandits, it feels like she should be carrying around the steering unit in her pocket, and she'd make up some tale about how she just happened to grab it before, oh no, the bandits caught her...

 

[SolipsistSerpent]

Hard to say.About five spatters like these?
It feels like a lot, but for all I know there's bandit blood contributing here.

Click to shrink...

You're right, there might be bandit blood mixed in, too. Even if there isn't, that could supplied by one person (depends on how much got absorbed into the ground). However, if there's 5 of those areas from one person, even with minimal seepage, they'd be dead. There's a surprising amount of blood in people, but that sounds like a lot more than the third of it or so you could lose and maybe survive.

Disclaimer, I do not actually have much experience with large amounts of spilled human blood, but I did some research for a murder mystery and reputable sources largely agree.

Right? It feels suspicious, but I can't think of any reason she'd want to be locked in a cage out in the arse end of nowhere, and not even in the fortress with the macguffin gizmo. If she was working with the bandits, it feels like she should be carrying around the steering unit in her pocket, and she'd make up some tale about how she just happened to grab it before, oh no, the bandits caught her...

Click to shrink...

She... Faked her death to negotiate with the bandits for access to the gizmo, in exchange for magical services and you interrupted before the negotiations were concluded? That would pass the logic test, if shakily, but it wouldn't be as dramatic as her either being a captive or working with them all along, so it seems unlikely.