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

- Before we get anywhere, I just now noticed the Soil Elemental has a face, and wanted to share that with you all. It looks so tortured.

Spoiler: Its life is suffering

- That done...
Traveling up the Farmer's Coast is not for the faint of heart. First thing I run into is a big muscle-y lion and a cave troll living in harmony, just like my old buddies Spider and Vatyr from the Riverwood bee farm. I almost died (I went in maybe a little overly cocky for a fight involving two creatures that outweighed me by a hundred pounds each) but pull out the win in the end.

- The dirt trail takes me to... a new biome, actually.

Spoiler: Pretty lovely, actually

The sunlight looks vaguely yellower. It looks like it's autumn, and the trees are all afire (with, thankfully, metaphorical and not literal fire).
There's a giant statue of – I'm going out on a limb here, Arantheal? A Light-born maybe? It looks like Arantheal. Basically there are these huge, realistically-carved statues out on the roadside in the middle of nowhere, with little donations or obeisances or whatever placed in front of them. Herbs, coins, weapons, books.
I swipe it all, of course. Victimless crimes. Unless they're offerings to the gods, in which case... they're still victimless crimes, because the gods are dead! Excuse prepared but still half-expecting to get struck by lightning, I grab it all and run.

- ... Into a cemetery with a glowing banshee type called a Living Ancestor and her equally glowing skeleton pal, wielding... is that a shovel? What the hell.

Spoiler: I am not feeling very threatened for some reason

Once I kill them (harder than it sounds: the Ancestor is an ice mage type), I get the dubious pleasure of digging up a Suspicious Mound for treasure. Apparently they were digging up their own graves? That's weird.
Maybe they wanted a keepsake before taking off on a cross-country roadtrip, Thelma and Louise style.
And I ruined it. I ruin everything.

- My Bound Sword III superiority didn't last very long; even the wolves around here are meaty enough to eat 3 or 4 swings of the thing, and they come in packs of at least 4.

- The beached longships (and there's a lot of them, wow, it's like an invasion force) all contain groups of hardened killers. The second they spot me, out come the axes of course; nobody wants to talk to the weirdo in the mask.
They're the usual bandit type, but their groups are more Marauder with the occasional Vagrant than groups of lesser bandits led by one Marauder, these days. Rune weaponry is common, and rune bows are apparently enough to even make bandit archers a little dangerous.
Well, there's also the occasional longship of undead. A newer, doughier type with the look of that old midboss Belosh the Searcher.

Spoiler: This guy tho? Looks like he eats babies for breakfast.

Less terrifying out in the light of day than in a dank cave lit by flickering torchlight, but still a great look. I should look into the Reanimation line of entropy summons sometime, see what I pull out.

- I don't even make it to the 'pirate cave' I was warned about. The longship groups are dangerous, sticky affairs that involve as much luck as skill; misplacing one marauder with a rune axe in the melee is a good way to end up with an axe in your spine and down half your health bar.

- And then I run into wild mages. Like, enough wild mages to form a local sportball team.
See, what happens is there's a ramshackle house right in the middle of the dirt path I've been following that has a pair of mages living there; one shoots icicles, and the other lightning bolts. I kill them without much trouble, but they're linked to another two mages, one of which throws Guile-destroying fireballs. I can't even get close; there's no ducking out of the way like you might for a thrown icicle. So I have to man up, hide in the house and periodically throw Soil Elementals, and listen to the gentle patter of fireballs and lightning blasts against the inviolable walls of this ramshackle wood hut until it all falls silent.
Of course, then there's two more wild mages at a nearby lighthouse that are linked to this bunch, and they come out just enough to start throwing their own fireballs.
It's brutal, and my eventual win (some five reloads later) owes more to spite than anything.
That, I think, is quite enough of that.

- A quick trip back through Ark later, I'm thinking maybe I'll go look for a nearer – and hopefully easier – dungeon, like that cemetery. On the way I run into one of these:

Spoiler: I'd own one, sure

Where the Myrad is a horrifying chimera whose only saving grace is the fact that if I stabbed it through the brain during a ride I would fall to my death and know it, this thing manages to look extremely cute. Some kind of... dog-bull? Bulldog? Bulldog.

- Also, I finally run into a drunk who has been faithfully standing in the middle of the Foreign Quarter shouting slurred epithets at passers-by every time I come through Ark. He seems to believe I made a pass at his girl – or possibly him – and demands I fist-fight him right now, to protect his honor and/or virtue.
Immediately, I am terrified.
See, in Skyrim, they have this brawl mechanic too. But it's so buggy that punching the other brawler invariably ends up with me owing the local guards bribe money or time in jail for crimes. Every time. Enderal proves they've ironed out whatever crazy bug Bethesda is still grappling with, though, because I freely beat this poor man's face in and nobody says a thing.
And sure, that's fun, but I have stuff to do, I can't stay here and beat this beggar man into paste forever.


The Takeaway:
Not a terribly interesting episode, just killing time until the main quest starts back up. I had originally planned to work my way up the Farmer's Coast and around to the western side of the continent where I had some quests, but that was beyond me. I did happen to find this place called 'The Crypt' in the Ark Cemetery zone, which I mistook for the actual cemetery dungeon. I think I'll check that out next...

 

- I make it about 15 paces into the crypt before I hear a groan and shuffle, and swiftly pull out my sword and soil elemental. Of course the crypt has a bad case of the restless dead. Of course. Why aren’t there guards at the door to tell me these things? Why are these things not coming up at night and eating people, or… whatever the Lost Ones do?
A small handful of skeletons greet me shortly, from iron bar doors on either side of the path. Fleshless Lost Ones: the lowest of the low among hideous undead monsters. I make short work of them, but this is still kind of a bad sign.
It’s not like all the dead are hungry for my tender flesh; there’s still corpses done up like Incan mummy bundles resting peacefully in alcoves, lit by ever-burning candelabras and sometimes strewn about with art and grave goods.
There’s actually a named skeleton in here: not one of the undead, but a regular, unmoving skeleton. Hopefully that’s not part of a quest or something, because during the rumble I accidentally exploded it into every corner of the room.
Oops.

- There are pathways deeper into the earth; one path branches into three, all with the rough texture of hewn stone. But hey, I have teleport scrolls, what’s the worst that can happen?
Well, obviously the deeper you go, the more dangerous the monsters, that’s Adventuring 101. So I hack my way through a few of the next level of Lost One, an armored zombie type, and then it’s back to wandering. I settle into a rhythm.
Passageway, small room, kill undead, passageway, small room, kill undead.

- Sometimes there’s loose change to snag, or boxes or barrels to plunder for grave goods.
There are some stories buried in the mechanics. This barrel of grave goods contains woodworking tools; that chest, a steel sword and helmet; scattered around this mummy are books and chunks of semi-precious stone. Like that.

- Occasionally there’s a hallway with one of the ghostly Ancestors as a sort of mid-boss. Each of these contains more grave goods (and of higher quality) around a central dias, with mummies nodding upright from their wrappings in alcoves along the wall, or skeletons posed hilariously in chairs.

Spoiler: Who poses these skeletons everywhere, seriously

One of the crypt keepers back in the day had a pretty awesome sense of humor.

- There’s a room with a brazier, and another three arches to choose from. And a few rats, but those are naught but a speed bump at this point.
There’s nothing to differentiate the arches. I pick one at random and go through.

- I think I’ve uncovered something like a timeline of this crypt, without a word spoken aloud.
There are the wrapped mummies kept in cubby holes carved into the rock; dignified, quiet. None of these have ever risen; you never find empty wrappings the way you might empty tables or coffins.
There are the skeletons and zombies; Lost Ones and Awakened Lost Ones. There are scattered bones and bloody smears. There were crypt keepers here, once, to place and catalogue and honor the dead. Until the dead started turning unquiet in their graves.
Is that one crypt keeper with the wicked sense of humor among the quiet slumbering mummies, I wonder? Or was he one of the hordes of nameless, faceless undead I cut through on my way?
At the end, there is… this.

Spoiler: Let's just throw the corpses down there, Bill. Nothing bad'll ever come of that.

Corpses are thrown in from holes above, to lay in ugly piles of bloody flesh. The ground is thick with the dead, and the area is thick with Awakened Lost Ones. Were they drawn to the dark and the fresh meat? To the light, filtering down from above? Perhaps the unhonored dead, tossed down here to rot, rise more than any other?

- The tunnels blend together. Every 90 seconds, like a metronome, I have to put away my offhand torch to reapply my soil elemental and bound sword. ‘Q’, the favorites menu, is my friend. The constant repetition is lulling, in its own way. Like a ritual to ward off the endless dead things that share the dark with me.
I enter something like a fugue state.
…
Day 3.
I write this by torch and lantern-light with a firm hand. It has been days since I have seen the sun. The lantern lights burn unaided, their caretakers long gone. I am the only creature down here that requires light. At first, I studied each alcove and art piece with the air of an archeologist. Now, art means nothing; the only thing I pay attention to is space. Hallways are safe, unless they have doors.
The undead cannot work doors, but their arrows and swords and axes can reach through the bars. What madman designed such gates?
What madman designed this place?

Day 4.
The map is useless. For a time I tried to go straight only, reasoning that eventually I would reach whatever end may come this way, or at least return straight. But the side passages beckoned at every turn, and once when I left the path to investigate a statue of some angel or Lightborn, the undead came again and I was turned around.
There is no return. There is only forward.

Day 5.
In one of the halls of Ancestors, I found a note along a long table strung with objets d’art. A brother informing his sister of their father’s last will and testament; to come to him, but he will only accept her when he is dead.
Something… something like that.
There are some worthless trinkets atop the table, and a strange scroll. I place it into my bags and move on. It holds no meaning for now.
Later.

Day 6.
I have ceased checking corpses or urns for secret treasures. Money holds no value here.
Some of the doors have locks. My lockpicks break in my hands, but I have more. Didn’t I used to be better at this? No matter.
Behind the doors are more undead. One is a conjured being of light in the shape of a skeleton. Some guardian or other, perhaps.
It falls like all the others.

Day 7.
I ran out of endralean crusty bread today. Now there is only to fall upon the very corpses which I fight, and devour the worn souls that hold their aged flesh to this realm.
Their spirit is a delight, and I drink them like wine until I am full, full. When it is done I can only regret the lack. There will be more, ahead. There is always more.

Day 8.
Found a large room. Tables heaped with corpses. Pits of bloody water that presumably serve… some purpose. The workplace of an embalmer; he sounds… unsettled. The dead were rising, and Ark was not sending help.
He did not have a good day. Might be a better day than this one, though.

Day 9.
Starting to doubt memories of the World Above. My only succor is my hideous companion. It ranges far and wide, but always returns. The twisted grimace of its lumpy face is as irreplaceable to me as my left hand from which it spawns.
Aside from it, there is only the flicker of movement in the torchlight, and the hacking and stabbing all creatures large and small, living and dead.
And the occasional stop to… feed.

Day 10.
There are grates, and inside the grates are a new thing. Set deeper into the earth, stone plinths interspersed with a skim of water. I follow, drawn like lodestone.
There are fellow wanderers in the halls, but they fall still and silent as I pass.
There is a door that claims to lead to the outside, but I pass it by. There is no Outside. There are things that crawl and slither in the darkness; I am one of them now.
Through a black curtain I am greeted warmly (fire) by a corpse draped in ragged robes upon a throne, empty wine glasses arranged in a constellation around it. Beyond it is a downward slope. Soon, I promise the new thing.
Soon.
Soon.
Soon.

Day 11.
An ancient King in Purple, crowned, resplendent.

Spoiler: ...

I offer salutations in the words of those that came Before pitiful man. Iä! Iä! Darkhand fhtagn!
And then we fight. Words are between equals. It has none for me.
And in the end, I have none for it.
Its death leaves me calm and cold. The World Below feels empty. There is nothing for me here.
I return to the door, and step through.

Day 11, cont.
There are people on the other side of the door. I greet them in the manner I am accustomed to.

Spoiler: ...

Their desperate screams are vaguely unsettling. No matter.
More come, armed and armored. I slay them as well, but… what manner of monster is this?

Spoiler: ...

I strike them down again and again, but they rise again unharmed. They chitter and squawk and hiss demands, but the World Below recognizes only the strong.
It recognizes only Guile!


The Takeaway:

Spoiler: Why do things that should only happen to bad people happen to me

Um.

Spoiler: It's cool, I know a guy. I'm sure Arantheal will be by aaaaany minute now.

... Guard? Hello? I seem to have... I seem to have misplaced my clothes. And my everything else.
... Been a while since I wore the old potato sack. That boat ride seems so long ago...

 

- Enderal jail is rather dreadfully boring, which I suppose may be the point.
In Skyrim jail you can usually find hidden escape tunnels or sewer grates, or inattentive guards to pickpocket, or lockpicks to escape your jail cell and stealth through the jail to freedom. There are usually a bunch of NPCs with their own stories that hang around in jail that you can talk to.
If I’m remembering my Oblivion correctly, you actually get recruited into the Thieves Guild from jail.
In comparison, you’re stuck in the Enderal jail cell with a lockpick but a key-locked door, and a guard much too far away for any shenanigans except for shooting him with a bow, an action that rouses every guard in the jail.
I assume this is a consequence of Enderal having a particular story it wants to tell, and civilian-murdering/thieving Prophets don’t really play a part in that narrative. Nothing gets a gamer to not do something like making it boring, and Enderal jail is indeed quite boring.

- Sleeping on the straw mat will fast-forward you to the end of your jail term and cost you a couple of skill points in your top skills. Makes sense; there’s no skill in Enderal for ‘having nothing to do but work out and get swole.’ Enderal skills are all techniques that require tools or finesse.

- Freedom! It tastes so sweet after so long behind bars. After those three minutes or so I spent clicking on everything in that jail cell I’ve come out a changed woman, probably. I’m not sure how I’m going to make it on the outside anymore.

- Tealor Arantheal is still waiting patiently for that debrief, it seems. I like how whenever I show up they’re dealing with matters of state and non-High One related business. Like, right now there’s discussion about a Nehrimese guy (that's where Constantine and his green-robed buddies come from, by the by, which automatically predisposes me to like it) who came out on top of a civil war in one of the other countries, and how he’s maybe pretty upset with Enderal. I'm sure that won't come up again later.
I also like how I can listen in from the balcony, and then when I drop down onto the table Tealor Arantheal is just like, ‘Oh, there you are. Commander, explain to the Prophetess what’s going on.’

Spoiler: Hold my beer

I like to imagine the Prophetess does stuff like this all the time, and Arantheal is just used to it.

- It would seem that we’re headed to Fogville; Constantine, Jespar and me. This promises to be a fun roadtrip.
Basically, Arantheal’s kid (that guy who offed the Lightborn) made the crazy civil war guy a companion, and the guy took exactly the wrong lesson home about killin’ Gods. He’s some kind of anti-religion terrorist type, now. And he’s landed an invasion fleet on our western shores. This is totally different from the northeastern Farmer’s Coast area that’s also covered in Viking-esque longships, by the way!
Yeah.
I’m starting to hate Arantheal’s kid, now. It feels like all kinds of problems from his time are coming home to roost in mine, and it’s a pain in the butt.

- While I’m in town, I buy the cheap house in the market square, primarily so I have someplace to crash that isn’t the Fat Loron. 1000 gold pennies isn’t too much to me at this point, and it’s centrally located to a bunch of merchants and a smelter.
There’s also a kind of minigame where you can buy blueprints for rugs and furniture and art to make stuff for your house, but honestly that seems like kind of a pain.
I also spend 100 gold pennies on a Winter Cloak spell that deals pretty solid damage to everything around me. Pro-tip: Don’t try and combine a summoned critter with the winter cloak spell. It does not end well.

Spoiler: I am your creator, and you will-!

- The area around Fogville is pretty interesting. It’s got tons of metal dragon-headed battering rams scattered all over the countryside in various states of disrepair, like there was a huge war on and nobody bothered to pick up their toys, after.

Spoiler: My little siege weaponry can't be this cute

Good background storytelling.

- The area’s pretty dangerous, also. Wild Mages, Marauder bandits, and a new thing called Arps. Like, the German vampire Alp, I guess? They look pretty awesome, actually, with wrinkled skin in off-human shades and dreadlocks. Very grunge. Punk rock. I can dig it.
As long as you don’t look at their faces.

Spoiler: The one on the right kind of hits 'adorably ugly', though

- And my map marker is showing Constantine and Jespar (and therefore, Fogville) right in Arp central. Of course it is. I was kind of hoping for a Seven Samurai-esque beleaguered village to save from foreign bandits, you know?
Something tells me the Arps aren't going to play along, though.
Oh, but just for funsies:

Spoiler: What a good sport

Now, I know it looks like we're enacting a fun bit of street performance (working title: "Bound By Chains"), but I'm actually stabbing him through the heart with an invisible Bound Sword.


The Takeaway:
I actually got so weighed down with steel and rune armors at this point that I had to set a Mark spell and burn a scroll to get back to Ark to dispose of it all, so now seems like a good enough spot to end this one. Kudos to SureAI on the Arp, they’re easily as cool as the Vatyr. I am sad that there’s all these cool monsters and I haven’t yet met one that doesn’t want to tear off my face and wear it like a fashion accessory, though. I was also kind of bummed out that Jespar and Constantine didn’t meet me at the Myrad for a proper roadtrip type adventure, but they’re around here somewhere. I’m looking forward to it.

 

- Fogville was really only half as filled with Arps as I thought it was. After clearing out half a dozen, the place is empty as my character’s birthday party after the house went up like a bonfire.
The only sticky bit is in the town hall where an Arp shaman apparently hooked a common soul gem up to some kind of lightning trap and you have to shoot the crystal with an arrow if you don’t want to be fried.
Actually, the place is mostly noteworthy for how incredibly clean it seems for a ruin- usually there’s a bunch of clutter and dressers and stuff in the smashed up houses, but not here. Presumably the guard looted this place down to the bone when they left, for all the trouble the Fogvillagers caused.

- I have to call out the background music team here; Fogville has a woodwind sort of sound to it, maybe some flute? I don’t know, I’m not a music guy. It’s not so much menacing as it is completely uncaring of your shit. Like after the villagers all died and the army left their toys and went home, Fogville is still here on this lonely mountaintop. As before Man, so after; Fogville remains.
Constantine is his usual cantankerous self, but Jespar takes the time to lay some history on me. Fogville apparently is one of those places where the inhabitants all went mad and started sacrificing travelers to strange gods. Enderal has enough of these that I don’t even blink, now.
The siege weaponry I’ve been seeing left out in the elements was apparently from when the army came in and did them proper.

- Jespar cites the Whisperwood as a possible cause, something about how everyone knows the spores drive you mad?
Excuse you Jespar, what? Why did no one tell me about the madness spores? Was that the forest where I took my initiate test?
What the hell, Arantheal.

- Actually, if some random book I found in the town hall is to be believed, a hooded bloke came in and warned them that magic was going screwy nearby thanks to wild mages, and they needed to flee to avoid a terrible fate. But the elders didn’t want to leave their homes, wah wah I’m old etcetera. Well, you know what that gets you in this game: chanting strange names in elder tongues long forgotten by Man.
Jespar also mentioned the Butcher of Ark, although I forget his name. I’ve been finding volumes of his autobiography for a while, which increment a 12 counter. I’m kind of assuming when I find all 12 I’ll wake up with old Jack of Smiles at the foot of my bed and have to fight him to the death or something.

- Anyway, the next step is to follow after Constantine to the ‘Living Temple’, which sounds totally ominous. Sure would be nice to have Jespar explain that one.
Maybe it’s got lots of trees and flowers and is really nice?
Probably not, though.

- Speaking of really nice, heading north towards the temple crossed over into a different biome: a little strip of beauty between the Skyrim-normal rocky coast and what looks like a snowy forest ahead.

Spoiler: The prettiest 5 minutes of the last three hours

- There’s also one of the Myrad stations and an actual stop on the road called Frostcliff Tavern. These things are rare as hen’s teeth out in the wild; I think this is the first roadside tavern I’ve found so far that didn’t involve bandits or something.
Very warm interior, and the tavern minstrel sings very prettily (a named lady NPC is actually the one singing, the minstrel is getting a beer in the back).

Spoiler: Come in out of the cold. We have beds, and drinks, and music. No quests, though

Unfortunately, though there’s a few named NPCs inside, nobody really has much to say. Maybe they’re recipients of quests from elsewhere?

- The tavern owner can buy and sell anything, which is convenient, and also I bought a spell to summon this thing!

Spoiler: You can almost heard the *splorch. splip. spwatch.* of it breathing

Like the soil elemental's super-depressed old man face, the mud elemental subscribes to the ‘ugly cute’ paradigm. I know I wouldn't want to fight it, because fighting it would by necessity involve touching it. It's fight sound effects are probably disgusting. I suspect it's not going to be stronger than the lightning-blasting soil elemental (it's only level 10: I'm 24), but who knows?


The Takeaway:
Not much going on here. A little pit stop on the way to the actual meat of the quest. Some backstory, a few hints dropped, some nice scenery. Oh well; onward to the probably horrors of the Living Temple!

 

Sorry for the long wait, y'all. Updates may or may not continue to be spotty between real life issues, commission work and playing Dominions 4 instead of Enderal with what time I have. Anyway, onward!

---

- The Crystal Forest is absolutely gorgeous, like a snowscape mixed with cherry blossom trees (and cherry blossom shrubs. And clusters of pink glowing crystals).
It would be even nicer without all the monsters, but one can’t have everything.

Spoiler: This isn't going to give me magical cancer or something, is it?

It houses ‘mighty wisps’ (whose charge attacks would be problematic if I didn’t have Swamp Thing and Jespar to hide behind), giant pink crystal elementals (which soak up tons of damage), and some kind of floating ghost snake (which zooms around enough I need to switch back to the soil elemental, so he can bolt them on the run).
The wisps and elementals are legitimately dangerous, although blocking giant crystal fists is what I have Jespar for. The ghost snakes are mostly just annoying, leading to me flailing away wildly with my sword while it does curves and loop the loops.

- On the way, Jespar decides to drop some more information on me about the Living Temple. Thank you.
Specifically, that it is totally conscious and – Constantine adds later – is probably mad as a hatter since it’s been around since the Pyreans died off and the High Ones destroyed the world.
Now, this is a cool concept, but more importantly Constantine informs me that the Pyreans had a habit of sticking human (well, Pyrean) souls into objects. Rarely, but it happened. This temple is one of those.
So there probably are millennia-old talking swords in this setting.
Why they thought this was a good idea is lost to time, unfortunately.

- I got distracted from the main quest by wandering into a Pyrean ruin called Old Miskamuhr at this point. Some of these ruins are basically one large room with a couple of monsters and some goodies, and some of them are full-blown dungeons, and you can’t really be sure which is which until you dive in. I have a quest from some starling trader group in Ark to check on these whenever I find them and bring them back artifacts in exchange for gold pennies or magic equipment.
Miskamuhr, it turns out, is a full-bore dungeon. It’s pretty hardcore, actually. It’s peopled by ice golems, frost trolls and some of the harder forms of undead (ancestors, and a new type of faintly glowing skeleton called Decaying undead, which sounds like it should be the easiest type of Lost One, not the hardest), plus the occasional wandering ghost snake, and they tend to come in packs of 3-4.

Spoiler: Can you hear the UNTZ UNTZ UNTZ UNTZ or is that the brain damage from that ice elemental in the other room?

Nice lighting in Miskamuhr, too, if a little rave-y for my tastes.

- Since I got that Bound Bow III spell, I’ve been branching out into archery, and that helps a lot here. So the way stealth works in this game is you crouch down, and there’s a little icon in the middle of your screen that starts as a horizontal line (unseen) and gradually opens into a full eye to indicate you’ve been spotted.
So I shoot way down the hallway and peg something (bow sneak attacks are x1.5 damage), which gets it charging towards me. But, and here’s the important part, the eye is usually only half open. So even though they know where the glowing arrows are coming from, they don’t see me, which means I can rack up 3 or 4 sneak attacks to the face to thin the herd out before they actually get to me. And by then my elemental has positioned itself in front of me, which is a nuisance for aiming but very good for not dying.
It feels good. Since I’ve started picking up bow talents (I’ve already gotten to the top of the entropy (summoning) and heavy armor trees, though I could go back and backfill in talents there or go into one handed weapons if I wanted), I’m hoping there’s one that lets me sneak while moving at normal speed.
But if I get antsy and tired of sneaking around I can still just switch spells and stab things with a sword for a while, so it works out.

- So I get to the end eventually, after a puzzle that involves stripping down to my underpants and running really fast before sawblades pop up and turn me into giblets. Being an adventurer actually involves a lot more strategic nudity than I was anticipating, going into things, but never mind. So I run the gauntlet and I meet… a guy named Miskamuhr.
Old Miskamuhr isn’t the name of the ruin, it’s the name of its master. And he is not happy with me for killing all his trolls and ice elementals. Are these tamed trolls I've been killing? This guy is hanging out in the last room behind a pop-up Pyrean slasher trap, maybe he's been hiding out in here for who knows how long.

Spoiler: And that's why my clothes had to come off

I’m guessing that this guy is actually some kind of undead Pyrean, which is weird because we’re looking for something exactly like this but my only option is to shoot him in the face until he dies. Actually, I have a talent from entropy called Entropic Blood that can turn enemies into my obedient slaves. I’ve mostly been using it to make Arps fight to the death in comical bum fights before one of them explodes (if the slave dies, he explodes, it’s pretty great).
So hypothetically I could mind-control this guy and march him all the way from the Crystal Forest back to Ark. I’m not sure what I’d tell Tealor Arantheal when I got there, but presumably ‘hey here’s a Pyrean lich, have fun’ would distract him from my totally bad (also, rad), no-good use of forbidden magicks.
I’m actually not that sad I don’t have the option, because having to walk this guy back to Ark while recasting Entropic Blood every 30 seconds would be a nightmare.

- So I kill this priceless repository of ancient lore by stabbing him in the face, and find he’s wearing three pairs of shoes in addition to his sword and bow. I’m not even sure how that works, but I take all of them. And start wearing one, since these steel boots have been old and busted since level 10 and without the Handicrafts skill I’m totally at the mercy of whatever I can dig out of random ruins.

- That accomplished, I head on to the Living Temple, which looks great. And then it looks even better once I put the thing in the thing.

Spoiler: What would have worked just as well as finding the MacGuffin in Fogville? Chopping down a cherry tree to make a bridge

Wait, we're looking for what? Undertrain?? I thought we were here to stop the invasion or something! Which... wouldn't require us to visit the Temple of Doom, I guess. Huh. Well, it'll all turn out fine in the end, probably.

- Constantine monologues at me for a bit about how the Living Temple is basically Castle Heterodyne and going to kill us, but I forgive him because that’s pretty cool.
Jespar also has a bout of self-consciousness and asks why Constantine keeps paying his exorbitant fees. Constantine reassures him in his own inimical way.

Spoiler: Easy on the praise there, Constantine, he'll get a big head

Love that guy.

- There’s also an exchange where Constantine says that he’d run naked through the streets before trusting these Order guys with saving the world, and Jespar says he wouldn’t mind seeing that. And Constantine replies, ‘I bet you would.’
Woah, what? Jespar, buddy. I know it’s been a while for you, but still. Between this and that 'What do you want, a love song?' comment from earlier, I'm wondering if I'm being a little third wheel-y right now. Should I leave you kids alone? I mean, I love Constantine, but I still don’t want to see his old man bits flopping about, y’know?


The Takeaway:
Well, the distractions are over and I'm finally entering the Temple of Doom! Well, following Constantine to make sure the glowy moat is safe to cross, but there is definite forward momentum going on here. Maybe in the next update I'll actually manage to finish this quest! Fingers crossed.

Spoiler: Right behind you, friend

 

- Once we step inside the door to the Living Temple, we’re greeted by this loading screen.

Spoiler: It was meeeeee

Well that’s fucking ominous.

- The first room in the Temple is a huge, wide-open space. Vaulted ceilings, all that. Also swarming with Lost Ones, although ‘swarming’ isn’t really the right term. ‘Ambling’, maybe. There’s probably a dozen of them, including a ‘Grotesque Lost One’ that looks like Enderal’s version of a Skyrim giant (possibly I should have expected this when I saw the mammoth parked outside), but the room is so huge we’re basically fighting them one by one.
Constantine and Jespar just walk right on down and start fighting. I replayed this bit in case I missed some dialogue, but apparently they didn’t have anything to say. Felt a little weird.

- We do that thing we do, and move on once everything is dead.
We learn that Pyrean interior decorating leaves something to be desired.

Spoiler: Scowling moai heads everywhere

So we need to split up to get the three portcullises to different paths open. Now, I want to make a joke about what a good thing it is that we happened to bring exactly the right number of guys, but mostly I just want to know why. Why would you design your temple this way? Did everyone who wanted to make the pilgrimage to the Living Temple have to come in groups of three?
I don’t know, maybe in better times the Living Temple kept all the portcullises open and you could pick your path instead of having to jump through these hoops.

- So there’s wisps and fire elementals to work through, and what’s basically Enderal’s version of platform puzzles!

Spoiler: 'first person jumping puzzles' are not words that go together

I kind of applaud them for trying, anyway.

- On the one hand, I really wish this ancient ruin was better lit. I can’t wield a bow and a torch at the same time, so I have to sword-and-torch in some places.

Spoiler: A song of... you get the idea

Ask and ye shall receive, I guess.
Why would you build your temple this way.

- There’s this bit where you need to pop open a portcullis to proceed, except the lever is guarded by two of those lightning traps like the one from Fogville, where you have to knock the crystal off its pedestal to disarm it, but these ones are set far out of reach. Also, they only start zapping you when you’re almost to the lever, so you have to try and run back down the passageway to get out of the range, but it never works, and you die. So you have to shoot a ton of arrows and hope you knocked over the crystal, but you can’t be sure because if you get close enough to tell if it’s knocked over it’ll probably lightning bolt you if it isn’t.
I guess my point is, fuck lightning traps.

- I had a trapper-keeper just like this in high school, except there was also a sweet unicorn on it.

Spoiler: whales in space are for girls, this is where it's at

At first I thought the Pyreans just liked decorating with glowing crystal, but the random placement suggests this stuff just… grew here.

- So me and Jespar meet up, and we discover Constantine chanting in strange tongues and making obeisances before a Giant Statue™ that all the Pyrean temples seem to come equipped with.

Spoiler: god damn it

Now on the one hand, that statue looks great. Less overtly menacing than our old pal Kor or the fertility goddess type statues I’ve seen here and there. Staff in one hand, book in the other, good traditional God of Wisdom motif.
On the other hand, don’t you do it, SureAI. Don’t you dare.

- Oh, they did it, all right.

Spoiler: you monsters

Extremely strong performance by Constantine’s voice actor, here (barring, possibly, the one line that sounded like Andy Serkis voicing Gollum). I mean, it’s overacted, but that’s kind of the point: Constantine is in the midst of a full-blown breakdown/religious mania here.

- So the way this shakes out, the Living Temple got into his head and showed him what drove it mad, back in the day. The Cleansing. Burnt flesh everywhere, Light™, etcetera. Ragnarok stuff.
Constantine has some lines like ‘the sin is US’ which are presumably going to be prophetic at some point, like we brought the High Ones on ourselves or something. More importantly, he recognizes that killing us all won’t fix anything, but maybe it will make the Giant Statue feel better, so that’s what he’s gonna do.
So I holster my sword and meet my death just on the off-chance this is some kind of test, but after dying and reloading, Jespar and I put the old man down like a dog.
After burying him where he fell (nice touch), and bouncing my sword off the statue’s head a few times to express my feelings (bitch), Jespar and I move on.

- Some strong art direction in this part, and a much-needed cooldown from the Constantine thing.

Spoiler: 'nature reclaimers' would make a good band name

Spoiler: their first hit single would be titled 'Undertrain'

It’s never explained exactly what this is, but I’d hypothesize that these were living quarters for the temple staff and either had some sluice gate or dam that failed over the eons, or the water level rose during the last Cleansing.

- In the little house, Jespar recognizes a smell and goes to investigate.
Bloated, water-logged corpse is apparently a smell he’s familiar with. (Jespar, why do you recognize that smell).
He comes right back out in a minute and asks me for a pass-code, something he and I shared together: that thing with Yero.
Because inside the house, washed up on shore after who knows how long at sea, is our old buddy Sirius.
Also, my own corpse. Still pristine and undamaged by the seawater, presumably so I can be sure to recognize myself.

What the fuck, SureAI.


The Takeaway:
Aixon, all the way back in that dream sequence for Something Momentous II, was apparently right: I’m something dreamed into existence while my body died, strapped to a rock and a dead friend. I am post-living, bought the farm, shuffled off the mortal coil, dearly departed, etcetera. Just like all those sadsack skeletons I’ve been putting down for the last dozen hours.
If I ever see Aixon again I’m going to punch him in the mouth twice as hard for being right.
All this and I haven’t even found the Undertrain yet! This is a long one.

 

- So there we are, down a man (or two, depending on how you’re counting my corpse), still trying to find Arantheal’s damn Undertrain.
You might be forgiven for thinking the hard part is behind us now; you would be mistaken.
The hard part is this next bit here, where you have to fight two Grotesque Lost Ones (basically giants, remember) in close quarters.
Well after those last reveals, I’m in the mood to vent my spleen on some undead, so I pull out my sword and dive in- and then watch my broken corpse pinwheel through the air, killed in one swing of a giant’s hammer.
Frankly, I don’t know how this segment would be possible without Entropic Blood. But since I’m a no-good dirty necromancer, I turn one to my side and watch the giants whang each other with mallets while I pepper one of their backsides with arrows.

- I failed to get a good shot of that, though, so have one of me using Entropic Blood on one of the bits that come after: you can see the Undertrain in the background of the shot. The green smoke is, of course, a crucial part of the technique. Probably.

Spoiler: Also, Jespar was there

- The Undertrain looks like a old-timey locomotive in the style of Bioshock which then had some tron lines stapled all over it.
There’s some lever pulling and a few waves of undead, but nothing that causes me to break a sweat, and then I get to pull up a bench while Jespar figures out how to drive an eons-old thing of steam and fell magicks long lost to humankind.

- No worries, apparently! He probably just whispered some sweet nothings into its ear to get the ancient beast purring away.
In fact, he doesn’t even need to steer the blasted thing!

Spoiler: Jespar, are you magic

Jespar, are you sure these things are automated? Going to stop on its own when it gets to its destination? Yes? Okay, just checking.

- So apparently it’s story time. Nothing like crawling through the belly of a sentient murder-temple to get you to spill out your soul to your companions.
I learn that Jespar has a very rosy and/or sarcastic view of what we just spent an hour doing. In Jespar’s view, I wonder if I’m the Lara Croft to his Indiana Jones, or the Robin to his Batman?

Spoiler: Two friends~ Off on adventure~ One's a noble rogue, the other's a corpse~

The Prophetess tells the story of how she lost her family (by fade to black, what the heck, I want to know this story too), and then Jespar reciprocates.
If you’ve been in his company for any length of time (and we have), you can tell Jespar has a chip on his shoulder about ‘noble, righteous’ types. Well, that’s because in his backstory his dad was an incorruptible judge, and it ended up getting him and his family killed (bar a sister, I’m sure that won’t come up again, right lads).

- Now, I’d like to make it clear: I think this is a really good vocal performance by Jespar’s voice actor. When Jespar says ‘I’m not angry,’ but with his voice tight and snappy, it’s understood loud and clear that this is Jespar trying to convince us – or himself – that he’s being clear and logical when he’s really not. And I think the Tragic Backstory is fine, though I get the feeling I was supposed to know Jespar was a noble already? Maybe because his last name is so fancy: Dal’Varek.
It’s just Jespar who I think is being wrong-headed about this. People die for standing up for their beliefs, and that’s tragic, but the world wouldn’t be better if nobody did!
Hopefully Jespar’s character arc has more distance to go, yet.
And on that cheerful note, Jespar and I go to sleep on the underground doomtrain hurtling from one Pyrean ruin full of undead to another.

- As a side note, the lighting in the Undertrain is totally sweet: the ‘candles’ in the chandelier are green and glowing, with a hint of violet. Very ghost light-y.

- I’m a little disappointed that we didn’t wake up to find ourselves tossed into the air as the Doomtrain slammed into the next ruin, to be honest.
We’re met by a welcoming party of a dozen or two skeletons in the dim light, but it’s basically filler murder. And then we’re out in the open air.

Spoiler: Not pictured: the panthers descending on us

Not exactly a tropical island paradise, but close. Lush greenery that kind of puts me in mind of the very earliest section of the game, the dream sequence. The island seems to be mostly populated by little harmless ducks and giant angry panthers.
Actually, Jespar is beset by two the second we walk out the door.

- So Jespar and I make our way around the island and he finally explains (again?) that we’re here to sneak into the invaders’ camp and plant listening devices.
Now, I remember receiving the silver plate listening devices, so apparently I was there when Arantheal told us what we were doing the first time, but I could not have told you the plot of this quest until now if you’d held a gun to my head.

- On the way I run into a lookout mage who has some great lines to his soldier buddy that I listen in on. He says stuff like, ‘No idolizer is ever innocent. Religions are ideologies, and an ideology is a decision… Subjects who don’t rebel against their tyrants are just as guilty as the tyrants themselves.’
Rhetoric like this is how you make the jump from rebelling against your tyrant god-king to murdering swathes of the population for no crime except believing what their Lightborn and their rulers tells them. This is how you radicalize.
It gives you a pretty good idea of what Nehrim is like these days without anyone having to info dump anything.

- Well, the fort we’re supposed to get into is locked up tight, so rather than try and figure that out I keep going into the other nearby ruin. And I see… this.

Spoiler: Who is doing sacrifices to their heathen gods out here?

I just get a sense, you know? This next part is going to suck.

- High Ones. Just hanging out, doing High One things. I suspect these are the eccentric ones they sent to the Moonshine Isles to get them out of the way, since these jokers insist on talking to us in the form of a bear, a wolf and a giant spider. Now, maybe this is some kind of commentary on how they see humans… but I’m more inclined to think these are High One furries.
But who am I to judge? Apparently it’s a good thing Jespar has been resistant to my charms, or the poor man would be guilty of necrophilia.

- This is kind of like that bit where you get to talk with Sovereign in Mass Effect, except Sir Bearington here is more of a jocular fellow. You can just tell he’s having a good time talking down to the lower life form. You can hear it in his spooky echo voice.
Struggle, futile, we are Gods, you are ants, yadda yadda. He confirms that the Beacon is a weapon that can kill them, congrats! But if you consider the dozens or hundreds of nations that have found the thing, and the fact that the High Ones are still around…
Basically, Bearington doesn’t give a shit. The Prophetess being around just makes this slightly interesting for him.

- Actually, Bearington makes a point that although Coarek (that’s invasion dude) thinks he’s an Emissary (probably the Rebel or the Liberator or some name like that), and Arantheal thinks he’s the Ruler, they’re wrong. He has a good line about it, here:

Spoiler: Note the wolf's head not being included in their particle effect

But I’m pretty bummed out that it seems like the Dragonborn situation all over again. You, and only you, can save the world. That kind of thing.
On the other hand, if Bearington is claiming that they never appeared to anyone except me… why did Arantheal have the dream about the smoke monsters? When I got back and went ‘Holy shit man, smoke monsters’, he was all ‘I know! What the fuck’
But, you know, in a more genteel ruler-y sort of way.
Maybe Bearington is just a liar. He claims he’s not, which is just what a liar would say.

- And then talky time is over, and the Animal Ones vanish into thin air.
And I get coshed in the back of the goddamn head. Pow, facedown on the ground.
It’s another cutscene defeat, only this time there’s no Calia to handily pop up and go shadow monster on some jerk for picking on me.


The Takeaway:
I hate cutscene defeats. I hate them so, so much. This one’s even worse than normal, considering Bearington was just hyping me up as the only significant player in the game.
I sure don’t feel very significant right now.
If I’m really lucky, Jespar is going to stage a daring rescue, but considering he went east and I went west to plant the silver plates, and I’m not even in the freakin’ fort I’m supposed to be infiltrating, I’m not holding out hope.