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sidewaysI fired up the first Pillars of Eternity game on a new save with the vague idea that maybe if I re-familiarised myself with the mechanics I'd be able to get back into Deadfire, and instead I've kind of just… kept playing >> So I guess this is happening, for however long 'this' lasts! I did at least sheepishly tack on the White March DLCs so there's some fresh content waiting for me.
"New save file, new character?" Haha, of course not. There's always something fun about a first replay, though; taking all the character development and worldbuilding knowledge garnered over the course of the story, rolling it back to the beginning, and going oh, so this would have all landed way differently had I not been in the role of a blank slate blindly hoovering up knowledge.
'Ware spoilers for both PoE and PoE: Deadfire below!
I don't know that I ever really settled on why Neus was with the caravan on the first run - I think I set her in-game background fairly vague as a 'drifter' and just sort of rolled with the hopeful colonist thing. Of course, this time around I knew there was no way an Eothasian priest would be walking into the Dyrwood at all without bloody good reason, let alone looking to make a home out of Gilded Vale.
Fortunately there are other convenient plot hooks on hand! Thank goodness for that early stage Temple of Eothas quest, because it fits in perfectly, and also loads a priest-player up with rather a lot of useful lore and loot. The notion is therefore that while in Ixamitl, Neus met a family in a small devout settlement who had lost contact with relatives working there about a year after the Saint’s War. They assumed their loved ones killed in the Purges, and had reconciled themselves to that loss, but it was still a hard thing, and they still wistfully wished for a way to know for sure what had happened.
The Dyrwood has long been a source of curiosity for Neus, and she had heard the destruction of the great temple of the Vale spoken of with deep regret by many Eothasians; a magnificent place, full of so much knowledge, so many relics, doubtless all looted or lost somewhere in the rubble now. On top of that, Lord Raedric might be openly hostile towards Eothasians, but he is equally known as a most pious Berathian - and here she is, marked by Berath! Her presence would attract fewer questions, for once; she could never outright lie about her beliefs, but if people made assumptions on their own… well, it's for a good cause. And if it turns out there are captives, perhaps he would be more open to negotiating with someone like her. How uncommonly fortuitous! Clearly it's meant to be!
(Nice things about Act I Neus: she’s so chirpy and optimistic. Unfortunate things about Act I Neus: she’s so chirpy and optimistic. Xoti gives her epic anxiety in Deadfire for a reason. Tfw the kid's just like you were fr, and that worries you.)
The self-appointed quest is pretty much how she befriends Edér. Aloth, of course, contrives to attach himself to the fledgling Watcher the moment he realises what she’s talking about re: mysterious cults doing strange things with strange soul machines in strange ruins, but while Edér is friendly enough to a weird wanderer, their mutual interest is greatly sharpened once they realise they have more in common than an unhealthy fascination with corpses in a tree. He offers her and Aloth room on his farm overnight, they get through the awkwardness of him being a Saint’s War veteran and her having been raised by Saint’s War zealots from the other side, and the three of them venture into the temple to uncover the terrible truth of what had happened to those who had stayed until the last.
The experience reignites something in Edér, flavoured by the memories of himself and Woden running about these floors when they still gleamed gold under the candlelight. The notion of how much time he’s spent numbly hanging around this village like a flea refusing to desert a dying dog, maybe. It had felt good to do something more meaningful than spiting Raedric’s thugs by breathing; felt good to bring closure to folks. Maybe it was time to see if he could find something like it for himself.
And thus begins the start of some beautiful and long-lasting friendships with Matt Mercer squared. And they are long-lasting, darn it; I do not accept Deadfire's premise that these people barely kept in touch during the five year gap. Aloth has work to do in dismantling the Leaden Key, fair enough, but he can at least write the occasional letter; and Edér is still right there in the Dyrwood! Caed Nua is absolutely a home away from home for him. The reason Vela didn't get soul-sucked along with everyone else when Eothas popped out of the cursed basement is she was off with her favourite rustic uncle visiting a festival in the Vale he'd long promised he'd take her to, and I won't hear a word otherwise.
Meanwhile, Neus' pre-game backstory remains largely the same - canon never did come in swinging with hard contradictions, and I'm still happy enough with the general flow of it.
I have nailed down a few extra planks of detail here and there over the years, though, so here's an official recording of all that:
• The murder of Neus' parents wasn't about her, at the end of a cold day. Her father was mes Guissante - a son of one of the Old Vailian families fighting bitterly for relevancy in a crumbling nation. A favoured son, in fact, spoiled and rowdy, until they sent him to sea at 17 to learn good sense and responsibility, and barely a year later he proceeded to not only knock up some common Deadfire wench but insist it was a relationship of equal feeling. This was not the sort of responsibility the family had been looking for.
• A clear omen, then, when the babe turned out to gods-cursed on top of everything else: everyone knew Berath only marked the souls of those with grievous debts still owed from their past life*, and the best a respectable Vailian could do (quickly and without the neighbours noticing) was send it to a temple of the Twinned God, where it could pay its penance in righteous service under Berath's watchful eye. It wasn't like they were asking he send it straight to Berath's side, as some cruder cultures insisted was the right way to go about these things. But for the gods' sake. It wasn't even a viable heir.
• (*Citation needed. That said, unless Deadfire undercuts me on this, it's funny imagining Berath observing the soul of Thaos' former pet heading back out into the living world, glancing at all the brewing godly conspiracies that are clearly about to come to a head, and going… hm. Dibs. Just in case.)
• Veltigo might have given his daughter away - he'd been raised in that tradition! - but Saba wouldn't hear of it. And for all he didn't yet love the child, he did love her, and so that was that.
• Favoured son no longer, the arguments hit a frosty peak within three years, and he was well estranged from the core Guissantes for the next five. He and Saba did alright for themselves though, mostly working under an older second-cousin of his who mixed sympathy with opportunism and needed someone to run a trading vessel. Might as well be family. Especially family who owed you for it.
• Saba had no great mercantile legacy to lean on, coming from a small island that mostly spawned net-fishers and pearl-divers, but she was an excellent sailor and an adventurous soul, and together they ran a decent ship. Neus had a happy childhood on the Guillemot, for all its little lonelinesses. Saba loved her from the start, and Veltigo loved her by the end, and the steady crew treated her well enough.
• Unfortunately, despite the bitter feuding Veltigo's favour wasn't exhausted, and he had never been outright disowned - an infuriating reality for some family members jostling for status, and an alarming one once there started to be signs of the patriarch's anger thawing as the years passed. Mutterings abounded that the Guissantes’ fortunes might be unstable enough for some social transgressions to be pardoned, with tentative letters being exchanged again between father and son. And the godlike whelp might be a dead end, but if he suddenly threw a normal child with the islander woman, or he came to his senses and took a proper wife…
• It took a little while to lay it all together: sabotage and rumour and carefully planted dissent, all boiling over into violent mutiny at the Republic docks. Oh, what a terrible tragedy. Truly, this is why giving death godlikes away is the done thing; how could common sailors be expected to stand up to the haze of superstition around such a creature? And indeed, could it be said for certain the child hadn't drawn this misfortune down by its very nature?
• Not a word, of course, about what seal stamped the missive that had drawn them to the port that day, or about there being twice as many 'sailors' involved in the mutiny as were actually hired on the Guillemot. No, those parts were clearly rumour and nonsense.
• Because it wasn't really about Neus, she lived. A loyal sailor ushered her into the city on Saba's urging just before the fighting broke out, leaving the child to find a hiding place as the sailor went back for her people; she never returned. Neus wasn't a witness and she wasn't a priority to those funding the mutiny, so that a little godlike corpse wasn't for certain sighted among the carnage sort of got swept under the rug. She was presumed killed with the rest, and that was the end of Veltigo's mess.
• A few weeks after her parents died, 9 year old Neus was picked up by her small Eothasian priesthood. They were seven in number: five priests under the Aedryan Hygwen, and two soldiers, including Barasse, who took majority ownership of the little tasks and caring that came with raising a child. She was accepted as a full initiate within a year, and the group spent most of their time travelling between the Republic and Readceras.
• Hygwen died when Neus was 19, and she initially went to Aedyr with Barasse and most of the others to bring their head priest back to her homeland. From there she decided to travel to Old Vailia to see if she could pick up the trail of her lost birth family, however.
• It took her two years to unpick the story of what had happened, and it wasn't very enjoyable and she didn't get any family she wanted to keep out of the experience. All the bloodshed hadn't even paid off for the Guissantes; they no longer existed as an independent house or business, subsumed by other names in the endless, ruthless rat race.
• Neus travelled to Readceras next, but was barely there for five months - the place had never quite sat right, for all that it was a shining pillar of the faith, and frankly her least favourite members of her coterie called the place home - before striking out for Ixamitl where she spent the next 2.5 years wandering around various villages and farming country and having a wonderful time. Wouldn't it be nice if it lasted forever.
• Unfortunately, She Is A Protagonist.
"New save file, new character?" Haha, of course not. There's always something fun about a first replay, though; taking all the character development and worldbuilding knowledge garnered over the course of the story, rolling it back to the beginning, and going oh, so this would have all landed way differently had I not been in the role of a blank slate blindly hoovering up knowledge.
'Ware spoilers for both PoE and PoE: Deadfire below!
I don't know that I ever really settled on why Neus was with the caravan on the first run - I think I set her in-game background fairly vague as a 'drifter' and just sort of rolled with the hopeful colonist thing. Of course, this time around I knew there was no way an Eothasian priest would be walking into the Dyrwood at all without bloody good reason, let alone looking to make a home out of Gilded Vale.
Fortunately there are other convenient plot hooks on hand! Thank goodness for that early stage Temple of Eothas quest, because it fits in perfectly, and also loads a priest-player up with rather a lot of useful lore and loot. The notion is therefore that while in Ixamitl, Neus met a family in a small devout settlement who had lost contact with relatives working there about a year after the Saint’s War. They assumed their loved ones killed in the Purges, and had reconciled themselves to that loss, but it was still a hard thing, and they still wistfully wished for a way to know for sure what had happened.
The Dyrwood has long been a source of curiosity for Neus, and she had heard the destruction of the great temple of the Vale spoken of with deep regret by many Eothasians; a magnificent place, full of so much knowledge, so many relics, doubtless all looted or lost somewhere in the rubble now. On top of that, Lord Raedric might be openly hostile towards Eothasians, but he is equally known as a most pious Berathian - and here she is, marked by Berath! Her presence would attract fewer questions, for once; she could never outright lie about her beliefs, but if people made assumptions on their own… well, it's for a good cause. And if it turns out there are captives, perhaps he would be more open to negotiating with someone like her. How uncommonly fortuitous! Clearly it's meant to be!
(Nice things about Act I Neus: she’s so chirpy and optimistic. Unfortunate things about Act I Neus: she’s so chirpy and optimistic. Xoti gives her epic anxiety in Deadfire for a reason. Tfw the kid's just like you were fr, and that worries you.)
The self-appointed quest is pretty much how she befriends Edér. Aloth, of course, contrives to attach himself to the fledgling Watcher the moment he realises what she’s talking about re: mysterious cults doing strange things with strange soul machines in strange ruins, but while Edér is friendly enough to a weird wanderer, their mutual interest is greatly sharpened once they realise they have more in common than an unhealthy fascination with corpses in a tree. He offers her and Aloth room on his farm overnight, they get through the awkwardness of him being a Saint’s War veteran and her having been raised by Saint’s War zealots from the other side, and the three of them venture into the temple to uncover the terrible truth of what had happened to those who had stayed until the last.
The experience reignites something in Edér, flavoured by the memories of himself and Woden running about these floors when they still gleamed gold under the candlelight. The notion of how much time he’s spent numbly hanging around this village like a flea refusing to desert a dying dog, maybe. It had felt good to do something more meaningful than spiting Raedric’s thugs by breathing; felt good to bring closure to folks. Maybe it was time to see if he could find something like it for himself.
And thus begins the start of some beautiful and long-lasting friendships with Matt Mercer squared. And they are long-lasting, darn it; I do not accept Deadfire's premise that these people barely kept in touch during the five year gap. Aloth has work to do in dismantling the Leaden Key, fair enough, but he can at least write the occasional letter; and Edér is still right there in the Dyrwood! Caed Nua is absolutely a home away from home for him. The reason Vela didn't get soul-sucked along with everyone else when Eothas popped out of the cursed basement is she was off with her favourite rustic uncle visiting a festival in the Vale he'd long promised he'd take her to, and I won't hear a word otherwise.
Meanwhile, Neus' pre-game backstory remains largely the same - canon never did come in swinging with hard contradictions, and I'm still happy enough with the general flow of it.
I have nailed down a few extra planks of detail here and there over the years, though, so here's an official recording of all that:
• The murder of Neus' parents wasn't about her, at the end of a cold day. Her father was mes Guissante - a son of one of the Old Vailian families fighting bitterly for relevancy in a crumbling nation. A favoured son, in fact, spoiled and rowdy, until they sent him to sea at 17 to learn good sense and responsibility, and barely a year later he proceeded to not only knock up some common Deadfire wench but insist it was a relationship of equal feeling. This was not the sort of responsibility the family had been looking for.
• A clear omen, then, when the babe turned out to gods-cursed on top of everything else: everyone knew Berath only marked the souls of those with grievous debts still owed from their past life*, and the best a respectable Vailian could do (quickly and without the neighbours noticing) was send it to a temple of the Twinned God, where it could pay its penance in righteous service under Berath's watchful eye. It wasn't like they were asking he send it straight to Berath's side, as some cruder cultures insisted was the right way to go about these things. But for the gods' sake. It wasn't even a viable heir.
• (*Citation needed. That said, unless Deadfire undercuts me on this, it's funny imagining Berath observing the soul of Thaos' former pet heading back out into the living world, glancing at all the brewing godly conspiracies that are clearly about to come to a head, and going… hm. Dibs. Just in case.)
• Veltigo might have given his daughter away - he'd been raised in that tradition! - but Saba wouldn't hear of it. And for all he didn't yet love the child, he did love her, and so that was that.
• Favoured son no longer, the arguments hit a frosty peak within three years, and he was well estranged from the core Guissantes for the next five. He and Saba did alright for themselves though, mostly working under an older second-cousin of his who mixed sympathy with opportunism and needed someone to run a trading vessel. Might as well be family. Especially family who owed you for it.
• Saba had no great mercantile legacy to lean on, coming from a small island that mostly spawned net-fishers and pearl-divers, but she was an excellent sailor and an adventurous soul, and together they ran a decent ship. Neus had a happy childhood on the Guillemot, for all its little lonelinesses. Saba loved her from the start, and Veltigo loved her by the end, and the steady crew treated her well enough.
• Unfortunately, despite the bitter feuding Veltigo's favour wasn't exhausted, and he had never been outright disowned - an infuriating reality for some family members jostling for status, and an alarming one once there started to be signs of the patriarch's anger thawing as the years passed. Mutterings abounded that the Guissantes’ fortunes might be unstable enough for some social transgressions to be pardoned, with tentative letters being exchanged again between father and son. And the godlike whelp might be a dead end, but if he suddenly threw a normal child with the islander woman, or he came to his senses and took a proper wife…
• It took a little while to lay it all together: sabotage and rumour and carefully planted dissent, all boiling over into violent mutiny at the Republic docks. Oh, what a terrible tragedy. Truly, this is why giving death godlikes away is the done thing; how could common sailors be expected to stand up to the haze of superstition around such a creature? And indeed, could it be said for certain the child hadn't drawn this misfortune down by its very nature?
• Not a word, of course, about what seal stamped the missive that had drawn them to the port that day, or about there being twice as many 'sailors' involved in the mutiny as were actually hired on the Guillemot. No, those parts were clearly rumour and nonsense.
• Because it wasn't really about Neus, she lived. A loyal sailor ushered her into the city on Saba's urging just before the fighting broke out, leaving the child to find a hiding place as the sailor went back for her people; she never returned. Neus wasn't a witness and she wasn't a priority to those funding the mutiny, so that a little godlike corpse wasn't for certain sighted among the carnage sort of got swept under the rug. She was presumed killed with the rest, and that was the end of Veltigo's mess.
• A few weeks after her parents died, 9 year old Neus was picked up by her small Eothasian priesthood. They were seven in number: five priests under the Aedryan Hygwen, and two soldiers, including Barasse, who took majority ownership of the little tasks and caring that came with raising a child. She was accepted as a full initiate within a year, and the group spent most of their time travelling between the Republic and Readceras.
• Hygwen died when Neus was 19, and she initially went to Aedyr with Barasse and most of the others to bring their head priest back to her homeland. From there she decided to travel to Old Vailia to see if she could pick up the trail of her lost birth family, however.
• It took her two years to unpick the story of what had happened, and it wasn't very enjoyable and she didn't get any family she wanted to keep out of the experience. All the bloodshed hadn't even paid off for the Guissantes; they no longer existed as an independent house or business, subsumed by other names in the endless, ruthless rat race.
• Neus travelled to Readceras next, but was barely there for five months - the place had never quite sat right, for all that it was a shining pillar of the faith, and frankly her least favourite members of her coterie called the place home - before striking out for Ixamitl where she spent the next 2.5 years wandering around various villages and farming country and having a wonderful time. Wouldn't it be nice if it lasted forever.
• Unfortunately, She Is A Protagonist.
no subject
Date: 2023-07-15 07:49 am (UTC)Priest class is so much fun! Especially when the priest companion is a bit of a wretch
Absolutely true!
Thanks for asking! My Watcher is a glamfellen elf that had been reincarnated into the same area for many many years until he finally gets chosen by Wael and leaves to "follow his calling". He's called Woytef O'Bháin, which are just names he picked up on his travels not his real name. He's charming, eccentric, and confusedly philosophical.
I tend to do the different choices-different character thing until I find the one character I love, but with PoE it happened to be my first character. I picked Wael just based off the blurb in character creation, but ended up getting real into roleplaying even going out of my way to steal all the books in game because I thought it fit perfectly (I think I mentioned this to you before lol).
It was actually a tough choice for me at the ending because I wanted something done with the souls, but ofc I HAD to go with Wael's ending right? So, yeah I went with Wael's ending just for the sake of it. Augh, it was tough and that's what I love about roleplaying games. I don't think the choice I made about Thaos fit too well with my priests beliefs though, but then again, Wael is unpredictable lol.
Hmm for Deadfire I think for me it was the feeling of too many quests right off the bat and I think the second? or first city (the tiered one) just felt so big to me and I didn't particularly want to explore it. The factions - I remember not particularly liking any of them so that made me also not care about the stakes. The new characters ranged from meh to annoying and the old ones felt different; I think them feeling different can be attributed to the approval system. "He wouldn't have gotten mad at me about that in PoE 1..."
I feel like I could like Deadfire if I gave it another chance.
Oh! And you said got the White March DLCs. One of my favorite companions is in that DLC and there's another one with a real good personal quest. I love the writing in PoE a lot, it has such interesting stuff.
no subject
Date: 2023-07-15 09:00 am (UTC)I sometimes experience regret that as an Eothasian priest I can't really steal OR lie. Roleplaying integrity and all that. Get those books!
Choosing what to do with Thaos is so hard! I think Neus diverged a bit from her priestly doctrines on that one too, but in fairness a) she'd just learned what the gods actually were, and b) the soul ancestor probably had some opinions about the whole thing too. Screw you, Thaos >:(
Yeah that's fair, I can agree on Deadfire hitting a bod with quest and map bloat. I don't mind the the new companions, but I agree on the old ones feeling a bit off sometimes. I get what they were going for, and I like approval systems in Dragon Age etc, but it IS weird when your fast friends from the first game are suddenly hitting you with like, the Sims negative social feelings symbol for having an opinion T-T Ma'am you know my feelings on this, we spent months together.
I've heard good things about the White March companions, I'm excited to meet them!