pillars of eternity: liveblog masterpost
Mar. 18th, 2017 03:19 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sidewaysA cross-posting of Pillars of Eternity I liveblog posts from Tumblr. 'Ware spoilers.
Well, I’ve had Pillars of Eternity on my wishlist for yonks after seeing @hathran recommend it, and then @eyeb0t and a well-timed sale finally tipped me over the edge. I was going to wait until the semester was finished to actually play but…shush.
I dithered over a lot of potential builds (came this close to choosing ranger solely because I wanted an antelope friend) but I figured that when you know you’re going to be the main character you might as well go hardball straight for the plot, so: presenting Neus, death godlike and priest of Eothas.
Backstory is hazy until I know more about the world, but there are a few things I’m musing on. Born to Calbandran parents in Old Vailia, mercantile sailors both who were quite protective of their daughter. Something happened though, politics or the like, and Neus ended up orphaned either literally or figuratively. A little while after that, she was taken up by members of the priesthood who perhaps saw something resonant between a death godlike and a supposedly dead god; though she eventually parted ways with them for reasons I have yet to invent, she found enough sustenance in their beliefs to hold to them as she proceeded to wander across the lands, dodging the prejudiced, preaching moral messages that might be slightly made up, and determinedly Doing Good.
Personality-wise, she’s friendly, curious, and hopelessly creepy despite her very best attempts. There’s a :D face under the horrifying necrotic growths, she swears. (Perhaps the greatest cause of Mach 10 Wibbling is the fact that she adores children, but children are rarely so keen on her in return.) The priests gave her a solid education and she’s good with her words; she’s also quite adept at bonking you with a polearm. Naivety isn’t a problem, but stubborn optimism sometimes is - how are people supposed to make the right choices if you don’t let them try?
*
The adventures of Neus in the land of Oh Gods Why Does Everything Happen So Much.
Several days of running around has netted Neus a highly positive reputation in the Gilded Vale, a stronghold co-managed by a talking chair, four friends, a pet spider, and some mild concern she might take a flying leap off the sanity plank in the future if she doesn’t do something about this Watcher biz.
She actually wasn’t too perturbed by the spirit sight before the meeting with Maerwald. Outside the broad guideline of Do Good Things, Neus views as it her priestly duty to offer consult and comfort: not to grant forgiveness, necessarily, but to give advice or aid where able, and simply listen where there is nothing that can be done. The wandering therapist of Eora, if you will. Seeing spirits, then, seemed almost a blessing - both instrument and expanded ministry!
After Maerwald…”Well,” Neus says, staring down at the man’s gaunt frame. “Perhaps I was once a succession of fat and boring bakers?” The silence stretches too long before Edér clears his throat over-loudly and says, “Sure, can’t rule it out,” and elbows Aloth to prompt the muttered addition of something that is either agreement or the sudden onset of dust allergies.
Anxiety is low - she genuinely doesn’t think it likely her past lives would be as dramatically bad as Maerwald’s, and she still finds the Watcher perks useful - but her own life has been quite enough to deal with without shouldering all the ones that came before it as well, and the restless sleeping is a bit of a trial, so it’s off to find the Leaden Key and see if the peculiar downsides of Watcherdom can’t be negated somehow.
In the meantime: friends! Neus and Edér hit it off pretty quickly in a “s-same god?” “same god!” sort of way; she’s delighted to find his feelings about Eothas align so closely with her own, while he’s frankly just flabbergasted to find an actual Eothian priest wandering around the Dyrwood. Delving into the sad story of the Gilded Vale’s temple was a somber moment for the both of them, and his involvement in the Saint’s War is not a contentious point as yet, but it’ll be interesting to see where that story goes.
Aloth is the first travelling companion Neus picked upwho didn’t die shortly afterwards and she’s…patiently curious about the fact there is so obviously something up with him. It’s not exactly difficult to draw lines of comparison between his occasional strange outbursts and Maerwald’s cycling personalities, but she’s willing to respect his right to tell his story if and when he wishes, so long as he isn’t setting them on fire in their sleep. In the meantime, they both have that good old high Lore attribute so I assume there’s chatter about books and history going on.
Durance and Kana are comparatively new acquaintances (which isn’t saying much since everyone’s newly come together - she likes what she knows of Edér and Aloth, but that’s all of about a week's worth of knowing) so opinions are still very broad. Durance is a crotchety and cryptic old bastard, but as a fellow priest with some knowledge of Watchers, she treats him with respect for now. Kana she likes for his cheer and honest nature, and she finds it very interesting to watch a chanter at work. Their powers combined, there is so much buffing going on in these dungeons you would not believe.
Acquiring ownership of a cursed keep was unexpected to say the least, and given how many unexpected events have piled on her this last week - she’s not quite calling it divine manipulation, yet, but it’s definitely in the realms of The Very Unsubtle Signs Of The Universe Suggest I Might As Well Make The Best Of It. If nothing else it’s ridiculously ironic to have been hitching a ride with ill-fated settlers only to end up with a larger chunk of land than they likely could have hoped for. The steward seems nice.
Lastly: I already know I’m going to spend the game excitedly shoving every single pet into my pockets, but Neus is particularly :D! about the pocket spider, which is building up to a fantastic aesthetic and I couldn’t be happier.
*
Raedric: Say, do you want to work with me in the struggle against the Eothasian scum?
Neus, literal Eothasian priest, wearing Cloak of Eothasian Priest and carrying Gaun’s Share flail:
*
Neus, looping arms around Aloth and Kana: NERD CLUB.
Neus, highfiving Edér with both hands: EOTHAS CLUB.
Neus, triumphantly hoisting Sagani over her head: ANIMAL CLUB.
Neus, lunging at Durance with arms open wide: PRIEST CLU-
Neus: [frantically pats out smouldering robes]
*
Aloth: I have something to tell you.
Neus: [clasps hand to cheek in the most unconvincing pantomime of surprise seen this side of Eora] Well do go on.
#i'm convinced the entire party had worked out what was going on with iselmyr #and were all just politely waiting for him to come out with it
*
So the gang has now been together for nearly two months in-game, and a lot of adventures have happened in Defiance Bay. It’s been [voice cracks] awesome.
Spoiler alert: it has not been awesome.
Good things that have happened:
Less good things that have happened:
(”I didn’t even mean to own a castle,” Neus says, facedown on a table at the Goose & Fox. Edér pats her shoulder sympathetically. “Does he know it has a giant cursed basement? What if I just told him about the giant cursed basement. Nobody wants a giant cursed basement.” Kana opens his mouth, lips clearly moving to form an ‘actually’, and Sagani thwaps him.)
And on top of all that Neus is starting to glumly suspect that “sedentary baker who did nothing exciting and definitely wasn’t part of a mysterious murder cult” was aiming too high as far as hopes for her past lives went. She may need to have words with her past life. Words like “what”, “why”, and “am I actually cursed with bad luck as penance for whatever the heck you did because it took me a long time to move past that fear and in truth I’m still a little bit insecure about it and this isn’t helping”.
All in all, Neus is holding up well enough but some strain is starting to show. Discovering she had been plunged into an unwanted feud with a stuffy warmongering noble was probably one of the first moments where the team got to see her less than composed, because she wasn’t looking to become a landowner in the first place and now she has to raise an army to defend it? No! Why! Damn it, Jim, she’s a priest, not a general!
The Leaden Key and Watcher business is also starting to wear on her more as more visions of her past life appear and the restless sleeping continues. No one can see your eyebags when you’re a Death Godlike, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t there.
Still, they’ve done some good, and she’s bloody grateful for the people who’ve long since moved from friendly allies to actual friends. There was definitely a talk at some point about how they all came together for their own reasons so she completely understands if they wish to leave and go pursue those personal goals since things are getting increasingly complicated on her end and they technically didn’t sign on to deal with feuds and cults, and not a single one of them has taken the out. She is very sincerely touched.
*
Well, I finished Act II of PoE and the dominant mood is Neus spinning around in circles going “no no no no nO NO NO NO NO”.
Before everything went to fucking hell in a fiery handbasket, the gang made a stop at Dyrwood Village and subsequently picked up the last two companions! This was mostly awesome but slightly terrible because now I definitely have too many companions and it’s so hard to work out which ones to leave behind. …except Durance, who I haven’t touched for a really long time now, whoops. Hiravias is crass but chirpy, and Neus quite likes Grieving Mother even if she’s unsettling company by most people’s standards.
Dyrwood adventures included negotiating with an ogre, stealing a dragon egg, and busting up a Skaen cult (y i k e s) before finally hoofing it up to some creepy ruins to discover a significant secret about the Leaden Key: they are probably responsible for the Hollowborn plague. Neus was…a tiny bit relieved there was a reason that wasn’t the gods being a massive bag of dicks, tbh.
I’ve also now completed Eder and Kana’s personal quests, which were a tad underwhelming? Just in the sense that both quests were “I’m looking for something” and both resolutions were “welp, guess I’ll never find it”. Neus tried to offer some emotional closure at least, but, well, it’s mostly up to them how they deal with it.
With a decent number of pieces assembled, Neus used her good standing with the Knights to gain entry to the duc’s hearing on animancy, and traded heavily on her reputation for honesty (4 honest, 4 benevolence motherduckers my priestly aura is mighty) in arguing that the Leaden Key were behind many of the crimes being laid at the animancer’s feet. She did, however, argue that animancy could use more regulation; Pallegina didn’t approve but…c’mon man…so many hell zombies. If you’re gonna muck around with people’s souls there should be some basic rules.
Of course it all turned out to be GODDAMN IRRELEVANT ANYWAY because Thaos “bodysnatcher” I-forget-his-surname crashed the hearing in signature style, framed the animancers for the murder of the duc, and kickstarted a riot that saw Defiance Bay go up in flames and SO MANY NPCS GET MURDERED, INCLUDING LADY WEBB, WHY.
I am upset. Neus is distraught. Triggered visions are not making her feel any less like fistfighting her past self in a mudpit.
And then - and then! - while still reeling from the disaster, Aloth burst out with the confession of a secret he had kept much more deftly than Iselmyr: he was an agent of the Leaden Key, albeit one who had not realised how far the organisation had gone until travelling with Neus and the gang. Given the timing of everything, Neus had to walk a few paces off to do some deep breathing, but ultimately forgave him; he’d been a good friend, and she more than most understood the workings of the Leaden Key and how most members were kept in the dark. (Sidenote: Eder sticking up for Aloth was adorable. Also I love all the travelling party banter and every moment a companion leans in to whisper extra info to you and how they’re all so concerned by your Watcher fits. FRIENDS.)
From here, it seems they much wend their way to Twin Elms, and whatever Thaos has planned next. Dun dun dun. In the meantime I still haven’t done the Battle of Yenwood Fields, whoops, because I triggered it out of curiosity and the result was so horrifying I reloaded. Unfortunately I think that…may just be the result I have to live with, since I did a surreptitious Google and I can’t get the best ending without the White March DLCs which is kinda rude. I just, uh, hope there are still Crucible Knights left to aid me, otherwise double whoops.
*
Neus: Well, things have been rough lately, but we’re making progress, and I have faith that in the end we’ll-
NPC: Raedric’s back from the dead and specifically after you. Maybe also on fire a little. It’s complicated.
Neus, shaking her past self by their lapels: WHAT SIN COULD YOU POSSIBLY HAVE COMMITTED THAT THIS IS MY LIFE.
*
NPC: Someone beloved to me is missing :((
Neus, Act I: Don’t worry, I’m sure they’re fine. I’ll bring them home.
Neus, Act III: WELP, they’re definitely dead. I’ll bring you back something nice to remember them by.
*
The conclusion of Neus’ story! In which I’m starting to think it’s impossible to put a character through an Obsidian game and have them come out happier for it.
Okay, straight up: why is it that every time I decide to create a religious character for the sake of exploring what it’s like to live in a fantasy world with tangible magical and divine influences, the story smugly pulls a “the gods aren’t real” twist on me. I’m not trying to relive my own passage to atheism, damn you all!
I did like that this twist was more nuanced than some of the others - that it wasn’t just overly skilled magicians on a power trip pulling strings from behind their Great Wizard of Oz curtain, yet again. The gods of Eora were designed to be what their creators believed gods should be, and their powers are present and undeniable. The issue is therefore not whether there are beings capable of bestowing blessings and curses and miracles, but what it truly means to be divine; that part of the faith granted to gods is the faith there is some great, grand purpose to the trials of life and the demands they make of their followers, which is immediately undermined by the truth of them being entities constructed by kith. The whole question of “what does it mean to live in a world without assurance?” struck me deep. I might not have been looking to re-walk my personal journey, but at least they correctly identified one of the hardest things about it.
It flopped a little in the sense that…there was remarkably little fallout? The gods aren’t real and nobody fucking cares, I guess? Hiravias is still all about Wael and somehow this actually made Eder feel better about what happened with Eothas. I’m sure the sequel will explore things further, though, and there’s arguably an implication that your Watcher’s “long journey” they commence on at the end involves them wandering around to spread the word that the gods are technically real but maybe don’t blindly trust they know best just by token of being gods because, well, they’re more our children than the other way around.
The good news is that, having already been horribly burned by DA:I, I deliberately crafted Neus’ faith with a measure of…robustness, so to speak. Eothas went dark well before she fell in with the priesthood, after all, so the bulk of her faith has always been in the message she believes he represents and not reliant on direct communion with the big sun kahuna himself. It’s a shock to the system and she doesn’t take it with so easy a shrug and a grin as Hiravias, but it doesn’t crunch her beliefs into dust then and there. Which is good. Because the boss-fight against Thaos would have been really hard if the healer was shit outta magic thanks to an ill-timed crisis of faith. (She probably wasn’t at the top of her game, though.)
Act III was still a hellishly hard slog for Neus, mostly because of her soul ancestor crawling steadily out from the dark nethers of the hindbrain to become so present that by endgame they were just about duel-wielding the body. And Neus’ soul ancestor…was not a good person. Kohva, as I’m becoming inclined to call her (because if you’re going to steal one word for snow, might as well stick with the theme), basically ended up shaping herself as a deceitful coward: was in no small part drawn to Thaos’ cause through the promise of forgiveness of all past and future wrongs and the comforting protection of Divine Approval, and walked a very thin line between respect and fear of Thaos himself. She lied when he asked whether she knew the Creitum heretic, mostly out of fear he’d judge her for the association but also as a feeble, reflexive shying away from where that association might lead; tragically this probably makes this the bravest thing she’s ever done. When Thaos confronted her again on the subject, however, she crumbled, and ended up giving her baby sister over to the Inquisition’s less than tender mercies - but not before realising Iovara’s “heresies” may have actually been truths.
No gods, no redemption. A mentor who had lied to her, and who made no bones about the fact he’d just as quickly tie her to the pyre if she strayed from his path. I don’t think she lived all that much longer after Iovara’s passing, utterly despairing of a way forward and terrified of torture, and she died knowing there’d been no reason for any of what she’d done.
So! Being the sort-of-reincarnation of Kohva ix Ensios is not the most delightful of past-times. During the earlier months of the awakening Neus only had to put up with a fearful, cringing presence that ebbed and waned depending on the stimulus, but as the memories kept unravelling a real person began to take shape and it was no one Neus wanted to know. Kohva didn’t tend to yank control of the body away for long speeches, at least, but she was a flighty impulse at the best of times, and a frustratingly unreliable backseat driver at worst. Kohva didn’t remember exactly what she’d done - and she didn’t particularly want to. It was like dragging a squalling anchor around inside her head.
The powerful urge to reach back through time and throttle her own soul did not prevent Neus from making progress in Twin Elms, however - namely, running errands for the gods in order to gain enough favour to breach spooky hell island and pin Thaos down to throttle him instead.
Neus was sympathetic to Pallegina’s raging at Hylea, but didn’t really have similar issues when speaking with Berath. Partly due to being quite satisfied with the mother and father she was born to, and partly due to Berath’s general nature - they’re not exactly known to be the chatty sort - she’d never looked on the god of cycles as any kind of a parental figure. She had plenty of mixed feelings about being a death godlike, yes, but not that many quibbles about Berath’s part in it. As it was, she actually ended up striking her bargain with her benefactor, as returning the stolen souls of the Hollowborn to the reincarnation cycle seemed the safest, stablest way of handling the crisis.
(She did find Wael’s offer to just loose the souls to find their own paths tempting, down in Court…but a promise is a promise, and Neus traded too heavily on her honesty to renege at the last moment on a cranky whim. Going by the ending slides, it’s a damn good thing she stuck with it. These guys are rather spiteful when jilted, yow.)
The reunion with Iovara’s soul in the Court was about as emotional as you’d expect. Just as with Maerwald, Neus’ mind was coming apart under the strain of Kohva’s awakening and hallucinated memories, and in many ways it was neither individual who lead the conversation but a confused blending of both: Kohva’s anguish and Neus’ forthright honesty finally leading to closure between the sister souls.
The blending carried through to the final confrontation with Thaos, both personas reaching rare agreement in wanting him to maybe just fuck right off already - and once defeated, Neus held his soul in her palm for a long moment, trying to decide what to do with him. She knew, rather well, how being forced to live with your mistakes was a keen punishment…but there was too much spite in that action for it to be comfortable, and as doggedly and relentlessly as he had pursued his goals she just wasn’t sure it was safe to loose him back into the cycle. She tore the soul apart: quickly and mercifully, as he had never taught Kohva how.
And then she gave Skaen and Woedica an emphatic middle finger, whipped the souls back into the reincarnation vortex, and promptly keeled over for an extremely overdue nap.
And lo, all was well in Dyrwood! Kohva didn’t disappear entirely, but she quietened down so as to be little more than the occasional flicker like a distant echo of emotion, easily disregarded if desired. Most of the companions did alright for themselves, though Pallegina got banished for trying to do the right thing boo, and Durance apparently burned himself alive because I neglected to do his sidequest, RIP that guy. Sagani would become a respected elder, Kana went a-sailing, Eder would hook up with the Eothasian underground, and Hiravias happily romped around as the Autumn Druid. Aloth began dismantling the Leaden Key. Grieving Mother went back to midwifery.
And Neus sat down on a rock to ponder on what to do with all she’d learned. The entities they called gods were real and powerful and capable of inspiring people to great things: she had no issue with that. They needed to be understood for what they were, though. It went against all she believed it to let the world keep turning on a lie.
But hey, she mused, watching her spider spin a web between her hands. Plenty of time to get to it. Surely the world had had enough crises for one cycle.
[cue Deadfire]
Well, I’ve had Pillars of Eternity on my wishlist for yonks after seeing @hathran recommend it, and then @eyeb0t and a well-timed sale finally tipped me over the edge. I was going to wait until the semester was finished to actually play but…shush.
I dithered over a lot of potential builds (came this close to choosing ranger solely because I wanted an antelope friend) but I figured that when you know you’re going to be the main character you might as well go hardball straight for the plot, so: presenting Neus, death godlike and priest of Eothas.
Backstory is hazy until I know more about the world, but there are a few things I’m musing on. Born to Calbandran parents in Old Vailia, mercantile sailors both who were quite protective of their daughter. Something happened though, politics or the like, and Neus ended up orphaned either literally or figuratively. A little while after that, she was taken up by members of the priesthood who perhaps saw something resonant between a death godlike and a supposedly dead god; though she eventually parted ways with them for reasons I have yet to invent, she found enough sustenance in their beliefs to hold to them as she proceeded to wander across the lands, dodging the prejudiced, preaching moral messages that might be slightly made up, and determinedly Doing Good.
Personality-wise, she’s friendly, curious, and hopelessly creepy despite her very best attempts. There’s a :D face under the horrifying necrotic growths, she swears. (Perhaps the greatest cause of Mach 10 Wibbling is the fact that she adores children, but children are rarely so keen on her in return.) The priests gave her a solid education and she’s good with her words; she’s also quite adept at bonking you with a polearm. Naivety isn’t a problem, but stubborn optimism sometimes is - how are people supposed to make the right choices if you don’t let them try?
*
The adventures of Neus in the land of Oh Gods Why Does Everything Happen So Much.
Several days of running around has netted Neus a highly positive reputation in the Gilded Vale, a stronghold co-managed by a talking chair, four friends, a pet spider, and some mild concern she might take a flying leap off the sanity plank in the future if she doesn’t do something about this Watcher biz.
She actually wasn’t too perturbed by the spirit sight before the meeting with Maerwald. Outside the broad guideline of Do Good Things, Neus views as it her priestly duty to offer consult and comfort: not to grant forgiveness, necessarily, but to give advice or aid where able, and simply listen where there is nothing that can be done. The wandering therapist of Eora, if you will. Seeing spirits, then, seemed almost a blessing - both instrument and expanded ministry!
After Maerwald…”Well,” Neus says, staring down at the man’s gaunt frame. “Perhaps I was once a succession of fat and boring bakers?” The silence stretches too long before Edér clears his throat over-loudly and says, “Sure, can’t rule it out,” and elbows Aloth to prompt the muttered addition of something that is either agreement or the sudden onset of dust allergies.
Anxiety is low - she genuinely doesn’t think it likely her past lives would be as dramatically bad as Maerwald’s, and she still finds the Watcher perks useful - but her own life has been quite enough to deal with without shouldering all the ones that came before it as well, and the restless sleeping is a bit of a trial, so it’s off to find the Leaden Key and see if the peculiar downsides of Watcherdom can’t be negated somehow.
In the meantime: friends! Neus and Edér hit it off pretty quickly in a “s-same god?” “same god!” sort of way; she’s delighted to find his feelings about Eothas align so closely with her own, while he’s frankly just flabbergasted to find an actual Eothian priest wandering around the Dyrwood. Delving into the sad story of the Gilded Vale’s temple was a somber moment for the both of them, and his involvement in the Saint’s War is not a contentious point as yet, but it’ll be interesting to see where that story goes.
Aloth is the first travelling companion Neus picked up
Durance and Kana are comparatively new acquaintances (which isn’t saying much since everyone’s newly come together - she likes what she knows of Edér and Aloth, but that’s all of about a week's worth of knowing) so opinions are still very broad. Durance is a crotchety and cryptic old bastard, but as a fellow priest with some knowledge of Watchers, she treats him with respect for now. Kana she likes for his cheer and honest nature, and she finds it very interesting to watch a chanter at work. Their powers combined, there is so much buffing going on in these dungeons you would not believe.
Acquiring ownership of a cursed keep was unexpected to say the least, and given how many unexpected events have piled on her this last week - she’s not quite calling it divine manipulation, yet, but it’s definitely in the realms of The Very Unsubtle Signs Of The Universe Suggest I Might As Well Make The Best Of It. If nothing else it’s ridiculously ironic to have been hitching a ride with ill-fated settlers only to end up with a larger chunk of land than they likely could have hoped for. The steward seems nice.
Lastly: I already know I’m going to spend the game excitedly shoving every single pet into my pockets, but Neus is particularly :D! about the pocket spider, which is building up to a fantastic aesthetic and I couldn’t be happier.
*
Raedric: Say, do you want to work with me in the struggle against the Eothasian scum?
Neus, literal Eothasian priest, wearing Cloak of Eothasian Priest and carrying Gaun’s Share flail:
*
Neus, looping arms around Aloth and Kana: NERD CLUB.
Neus, highfiving Edér with both hands: EOTHAS CLUB.
Neus, triumphantly hoisting Sagani over her head: ANIMAL CLUB.
Neus, lunging at Durance with arms open wide: PRIEST CLU-
Neus: [frantically pats out smouldering robes]
*
Aloth: I have something to tell you.
Neus: [clasps hand to cheek in the most unconvincing pantomime of surprise seen this side of Eora] Well do go on.
#i'm convinced the entire party had worked out what was going on with iselmyr #and were all just politely waiting for him to come out with it
*
So the gang has now been together for nearly two months in-game, and a lot of adventures have happened in Defiance Bay. It’s been [voice cracks] awesome.
Spoiler alert: it has not been awesome.
Good things that have happened:
- Helped some people, and have consequently started getting in good with high-falutin' folks like the Knights and Lady Webb;
- Lots of nice nostalgia inherent in Ondra’s Gift;
- New friend!! Pallegina and Neus have kind of a hilarious amount in common as Vailian Calbandran Godlikes and oh lord it is just so nice to have another meatshield;
- Aloth finally coughed up the deets on his situation, which was a lovely bonding moment for everybody, and some progress was made on working out what happened to Edér’s brother;
- Rescued a cat.
Less good things that have happened:
- Do you know where the cat was rescued from? HELL ZOMBIE PRECINCT;
- Do you know where assistance was found for Aloth? HELL ZOMBIE SANITARIUM;
- (Neus did not have a particularly strong opinion on animancy either way before this, but it is starting to slide into the realms of Could You Maybe Just Not thanks to this unsettling trend of hell zombies);
- Do you know how Pallegina was acquired as a friend? ACCIDENTALLY PICKED FIGHT WITH MASSIVE HOUSE OF CRIMINALS (admittedly that was something of a tangential occurrence but still);
- Helping people is nice, but you know what’s less nice? CONSTANTLY DELIVERING BAD NEWS TO DEAD PEOPLE’S LOVED ONES oh my god why is there so much murder happening in this city please just let her get there in time for once;
- Some pissy noble came out of nowhere and effectively declared war over ownership rights to Caed Nua, what the hell, why would you ever;
(”I didn’t even mean to own a castle,” Neus says, facedown on a table at the Goose & Fox. Edér pats her shoulder sympathetically. “Does he know it has a giant cursed basement? What if I just told him about the giant cursed basement. Nobody wants a giant cursed basement.” Kana opens his mouth, lips clearly moving to form an ‘actually’, and Sagani thwaps him.)
And on top of all that Neus is starting to glumly suspect that “sedentary baker who did nothing exciting and definitely wasn’t part of a mysterious murder cult” was aiming too high as far as hopes for her past lives went. She may need to have words with her past life. Words like “what”, “why”, and “am I actually cursed with bad luck as penance for whatever the heck you did because it took me a long time to move past that fear and in truth I’m still a little bit insecure about it and this isn’t helping”.
All in all, Neus is holding up well enough but some strain is starting to show. Discovering she had been plunged into an unwanted feud with a stuffy warmongering noble was probably one of the first moments where the team got to see her less than composed, because she wasn’t looking to become a landowner in the first place and now she has to raise an army to defend it? No! Why! Damn it, Jim, she’s a priest, not a general!
The Leaden Key and Watcher business is also starting to wear on her more as more visions of her past life appear and the restless sleeping continues. No one can see your eyebags when you’re a Death Godlike, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t there.
Still, they’ve done some good, and she’s bloody grateful for the people who’ve long since moved from friendly allies to actual friends. There was definitely a talk at some point about how they all came together for their own reasons so she completely understands if they wish to leave and go pursue those personal goals since things are getting increasingly complicated on her end and they technically didn’t sign on to deal with feuds and cults, and not a single one of them has taken the out. She is very sincerely touched.
*
Well, I finished Act II of PoE and the dominant mood is Neus spinning around in circles going “no no no no nO NO NO NO NO”.
Before everything went to fucking hell in a fiery handbasket, the gang made a stop at Dyrwood Village and subsequently picked up the last two companions! This was mostly awesome but slightly terrible because now I definitely have too many companions and it’s so hard to work out which ones to leave behind. …except Durance, who I haven’t touched for a really long time now, whoops. Hiravias is crass but chirpy, and Neus quite likes Grieving Mother even if she’s unsettling company by most people’s standards.
Dyrwood adventures included negotiating with an ogre, stealing a dragon egg, and busting up a Skaen cult (y i k e s) before finally hoofing it up to some creepy ruins to discover a significant secret about the Leaden Key: they are probably responsible for the Hollowborn plague. Neus was…a tiny bit relieved there was a reason that wasn’t the gods being a massive bag of dicks, tbh.
I’ve also now completed Eder and Kana’s personal quests, which were a tad underwhelming? Just in the sense that both quests were “I’m looking for something” and both resolutions were “welp, guess I’ll never find it”. Neus tried to offer some emotional closure at least, but, well, it’s mostly up to them how they deal with it.
With a decent number of pieces assembled, Neus used her good standing with the Knights to gain entry to the duc’s hearing on animancy, and traded heavily on her reputation for honesty (4 honest, 4 benevolence motherduckers my priestly aura is mighty) in arguing that the Leaden Key were behind many of the crimes being laid at the animancer’s feet. She did, however, argue that animancy could use more regulation; Pallegina didn’t approve but…c’mon man…so many hell zombies. If you’re gonna muck around with people’s souls there should be some basic rules.
Of course it all turned out to be GODDAMN IRRELEVANT ANYWAY because Thaos “bodysnatcher” I-forget-his-surname crashed the hearing in signature style, framed the animancers for the murder of the duc, and kickstarted a riot that saw Defiance Bay go up in flames and SO MANY NPCS GET MURDERED, INCLUDING LADY WEBB, WHY.
I am upset. Neus is distraught. Triggered visions are not making her feel any less like fistfighting her past self in a mudpit.
And then - and then! - while still reeling from the disaster, Aloth burst out with the confession of a secret he had kept much more deftly than Iselmyr: he was an agent of the Leaden Key, albeit one who had not realised how far the organisation had gone until travelling with Neus and the gang. Given the timing of everything, Neus had to walk a few paces off to do some deep breathing, but ultimately forgave him; he’d been a good friend, and she more than most understood the workings of the Leaden Key and how most members were kept in the dark. (Sidenote: Eder sticking up for Aloth was adorable. Also I love all the travelling party banter and every moment a companion leans in to whisper extra info to you and how they’re all so concerned by your Watcher fits. FRIENDS.)
From here, it seems they much wend their way to Twin Elms, and whatever Thaos has planned next. Dun dun dun. In the meantime I still haven’t done the Battle of Yenwood Fields, whoops, because I triggered it out of curiosity and the result was so horrifying I reloaded. Unfortunately I think that…may just be the result I have to live with, since I did a surreptitious Google and I can’t get the best ending without the White March DLCs which is kinda rude. I just, uh, hope there are still Crucible Knights left to aid me, otherwise double whoops.
*
Neus: Well, things have been rough lately, but we’re making progress, and I have faith that in the end we’ll-
NPC: Raedric’s back from the dead and specifically after you. Maybe also on fire a little. It’s complicated.
Neus, shaking her past self by their lapels: WHAT SIN COULD YOU POSSIBLY HAVE COMMITTED THAT THIS IS MY LIFE.
*
NPC: Someone beloved to me is missing :((
Neus, Act I: Don’t worry, I’m sure they’re fine. I’ll bring them home.
Neus, Act III: WELP, they’re definitely dead. I’ll bring you back something nice to remember them by.
*
The conclusion of Neus’ story! In which I’m starting to think it’s impossible to put a character through an Obsidian game and have them come out happier for it.
Okay, straight up: why is it that every time I decide to create a religious character for the sake of exploring what it’s like to live in a fantasy world with tangible magical and divine influences, the story smugly pulls a “the gods aren’t real” twist on me. I’m not trying to relive my own passage to atheism, damn you all!
I did like that this twist was more nuanced than some of the others - that it wasn’t just overly skilled magicians on a power trip pulling strings from behind their Great Wizard of Oz curtain, yet again. The gods of Eora were designed to be what their creators believed gods should be, and their powers are present and undeniable. The issue is therefore not whether there are beings capable of bestowing blessings and curses and miracles, but what it truly means to be divine; that part of the faith granted to gods is the faith there is some great, grand purpose to the trials of life and the demands they make of their followers, which is immediately undermined by the truth of them being entities constructed by kith. The whole question of “what does it mean to live in a world without assurance?” struck me deep. I might not have been looking to re-walk my personal journey, but at least they correctly identified one of the hardest things about it.
It flopped a little in the sense that…there was remarkably little fallout? The gods aren’t real and nobody fucking cares, I guess? Hiravias is still all about Wael and somehow this actually made Eder feel better about what happened with Eothas. I’m sure the sequel will explore things further, though, and there’s arguably an implication that your Watcher’s “long journey” they commence on at the end involves them wandering around to spread the word that the gods are technically real but maybe don’t blindly trust they know best just by token of being gods because, well, they’re more our children than the other way around.
The good news is that, having already been horribly burned by DA:I, I deliberately crafted Neus’ faith with a measure of…robustness, so to speak. Eothas went dark well before she fell in with the priesthood, after all, so the bulk of her faith has always been in the message she believes he represents and not reliant on direct communion with the big sun kahuna himself. It’s a shock to the system and she doesn’t take it with so easy a shrug and a grin as Hiravias, but it doesn’t crunch her beliefs into dust then and there. Which is good. Because the boss-fight against Thaos would have been really hard if the healer was shit outta magic thanks to an ill-timed crisis of faith. (She probably wasn’t at the top of her game, though.)
Act III was still a hellishly hard slog for Neus, mostly because of her soul ancestor crawling steadily out from the dark nethers of the hindbrain to become so present that by endgame they were just about duel-wielding the body. And Neus’ soul ancestor…was not a good person. Kohva, as I’m becoming inclined to call her (because if you’re going to steal one word for snow, might as well stick with the theme), basically ended up shaping herself as a deceitful coward: was in no small part drawn to Thaos’ cause through the promise of forgiveness of all past and future wrongs and the comforting protection of Divine Approval, and walked a very thin line between respect and fear of Thaos himself. She lied when he asked whether she knew the Creitum heretic, mostly out of fear he’d judge her for the association but also as a feeble, reflexive shying away from where that association might lead; tragically this probably makes this the bravest thing she’s ever done. When Thaos confronted her again on the subject, however, she crumbled, and ended up giving her baby sister over to the Inquisition’s less than tender mercies - but not before realising Iovara’s “heresies” may have actually been truths.
No gods, no redemption. A mentor who had lied to her, and who made no bones about the fact he’d just as quickly tie her to the pyre if she strayed from his path. I don’t think she lived all that much longer after Iovara’s passing, utterly despairing of a way forward and terrified of torture, and she died knowing there’d been no reason for any of what she’d done.
So! Being the sort-of-reincarnation of Kohva ix Ensios is not the most delightful of past-times. During the earlier months of the awakening Neus only had to put up with a fearful, cringing presence that ebbed and waned depending on the stimulus, but as the memories kept unravelling a real person began to take shape and it was no one Neus wanted to know. Kohva didn’t tend to yank control of the body away for long speeches, at least, but she was a flighty impulse at the best of times, and a frustratingly unreliable backseat driver at worst. Kohva didn’t remember exactly what she’d done - and she didn’t particularly want to. It was like dragging a squalling anchor around inside her head.
The powerful urge to reach back through time and throttle her own soul did not prevent Neus from making progress in Twin Elms, however - namely, running errands for the gods in order to gain enough favour to breach spooky hell island and pin Thaos down to throttle him instead.
Neus was sympathetic to Pallegina’s raging at Hylea, but didn’t really have similar issues when speaking with Berath. Partly due to being quite satisfied with the mother and father she was born to, and partly due to Berath’s general nature - they’re not exactly known to be the chatty sort - she’d never looked on the god of cycles as any kind of a parental figure. She had plenty of mixed feelings about being a death godlike, yes, but not that many quibbles about Berath’s part in it. As it was, she actually ended up striking her bargain with her benefactor, as returning the stolen souls of the Hollowborn to the reincarnation cycle seemed the safest, stablest way of handling the crisis.
(She did find Wael’s offer to just loose the souls to find their own paths tempting, down in Court…but a promise is a promise, and Neus traded too heavily on her honesty to renege at the last moment on a cranky whim. Going by the ending slides, it’s a damn good thing she stuck with it. These guys are rather spiteful when jilted, yow.)
The reunion with Iovara’s soul in the Court was about as emotional as you’d expect. Just as with Maerwald, Neus’ mind was coming apart under the strain of Kohva’s awakening and hallucinated memories, and in many ways it was neither individual who lead the conversation but a confused blending of both: Kohva’s anguish and Neus’ forthright honesty finally leading to closure between the sister souls.
The blending carried through to the final confrontation with Thaos, both personas reaching rare agreement in wanting him to maybe just fuck right off already - and once defeated, Neus held his soul in her palm for a long moment, trying to decide what to do with him. She knew, rather well, how being forced to live with your mistakes was a keen punishment…but there was too much spite in that action for it to be comfortable, and as doggedly and relentlessly as he had pursued his goals she just wasn’t sure it was safe to loose him back into the cycle. She tore the soul apart: quickly and mercifully, as he had never taught Kohva how.
And then she gave Skaen and Woedica an emphatic middle finger, whipped the souls back into the reincarnation vortex, and promptly keeled over for an extremely overdue nap.
And lo, all was well in Dyrwood! Kohva didn’t disappear entirely, but she quietened down so as to be little more than the occasional flicker like a distant echo of emotion, easily disregarded if desired. Most of the companions did alright for themselves, though Pallegina got banished for trying to do the right thing boo, and Durance apparently burned himself alive because I neglected to do his sidequest, RIP that guy. Sagani would become a respected elder, Kana went a-sailing, Eder would hook up with the Eothasian underground, and Hiravias happily romped around as the Autumn Druid. Aloth began dismantling the Leaden Key. Grieving Mother went back to midwifery.
And Neus sat down on a rock to ponder on what to do with all she’d learned. The entities they called gods were real and powerful and capable of inspiring people to great things: she had no issue with that. They needed to be understood for what they were, though. It went against all she believed it to let the world keep turning on a lie.
But hey, she mused, watching her spider spin a web between her hands. Plenty of time to get to it. Surely the world had had enough crises for one cycle.
[cue Deadfire]
