Been a while, yeah? Let’s do this thing.
- So when we last left our stalwart heroes, Calia was traumatized again and spending some time alone in her room. I had to fight my way across the Great White North again and complete a physics puzzle, but I got a nice cloak out of it and also a plot macguffin so that’s fine.
After dropping by Ark again to sell off some stuff and picking up Summon Bow V and Summon Mud Elemental II, I headed out on the next leg of the quest, entitled <All The Dead Souls>.
Now historically, ghosts in this game have been of the terrifying and/or exploding varieties. But on the upside, all three ‘clues’ are really close to Ark so that’s handy.
- The mud elemental is so tiny and adorable! And when he’s bored he sits on his tiny haunches like a dog or an internet meme about Slavs.
But buggy. Or … possibly working as intended? Half the time the spell just… fizzles unless I’m on solid land. Bridges and crypt floors seem to be right out. But I mean, he is a mud elemental. So maybe that’s how it works?
In which case I would applaud SureAI for attention to detail but then never use the little guy again since Ice Elementals can be summoned anywhere and the only downside with him is trying to train him not to block doorways.
- It’s been a while since I’ve just wandered around the Ark countryside, and it’s something of a palate cleanser after trying to chop snow bears and undead monsters to death/re-death up North. The area around Ark is always summer, with plentiful greenery and lakes and misty mountains in the distance. Ark itself looks like a hive of industry with its little waterwheels and mills and the stables and farms everywhere.
And actually pretty defensible, now that I’m looking at it from the angle of Calia’s doom-and-gloom about the Nehrimese sieging the place.
The three entrances are over bridges with multiple watchtowers. Every entrance into the city is set into a heavily fortified gate.
Fingers crossed for a siege section, it would be a shame to have this well-designed city and not put it to the test don't you think?
Mind you, the bridges and watchtowers could mostly be bypassed by just sailing into the harbor where all the sailors and fishermen hang out, and the Nehrimese
came to Enderal by boat.
But even then every district
inside has sturdy doors and mortared walls, and the Sun Temple is on top of a goddamn mountain up about a hundred feet of defensible climb to the very top of the city (carved to look like… well, it kind of looks like some poor slave is having to hold up the temple, but maybe I’m just having Kirkwall flashbacks to Dragon Age 2).
- Anyway. Ark: still beautiful. Moving on.
The first ‘clue’ (read: minimap marker) takes me to a little cove just south of Ark. Something like an underground river with its own moored boat.
Thank god for the minimap, is all I’ll say. Because if finding the macguffin relied on
my ability to decode a treasure map...
Well, ‘treasure’ is being overly generous, turns out.
That eerie glow is some poor bastard kicking back and taking an acid bath.
Not real sure if he was tied down or if he jumped into the bath of his own free will, as yet.
There’s something like a suicide note, giving his name and explaining his crimes. Trafficking nearly a thousand souls into and out of Enderal, probably right here in this cove.
He remembers exact numbers, but he does not remember their names.
There’s this line about the ‘Bonejudge’ judging him for his crimes, and I wonder… is this some just god measuring crime and punishment on the scale of a life, like Ma’at?
Presumably this will become clear later, along with the cipher given at the end of the note.
- The next ‘clue’ is in Ark itself, leading me to a sewer cover I’ve walked past a couple times.
Inside, well. The first real set piece for the area is:
Really sets the tone, you know?
I’m starting to think the Bonejudge is less ‘keeper of the afterlife’ and more some mortal authority helping things along. Where the guy in the acid bath was all by his lonesome in a hidden alcove that yeah, maybe nobody ever found before me, this fellow is definitely not lonely.
Ghostly guardians patrol the rooms, and corpses are shackled to walls or left hanging out.
I’m thinking… old prison, probably.
A cart full of skulls, meticulously stacked.
Whole skeletons carpet the floor of a nook at the base of a staircase.
There’s
this bit, which… I don’t even know what I’m looking at, here:
Somebody’s favorite torture chair?
- At the end is a lonely cage, with food set all around. Good lighting.
The woman in the cage also has a note penned in her own hand. She was a murderess for hire called the ‘black widow’. For her crimes, she will place herself in this cage with no food or drink and starve to death. Which she obviously did.
Is this place hers, then? Because there’s at least sixty dead men scattered about in here, if you count up the skulls and skeletons, and … if she were a hitwoman, and this hideaway contains evidence of her work, then she was the Stephen King of the fantasy murderer’s scene.
- I’m starting to feel like I’m learning less about this quest as I complete it, not more.
Is this suicide, or murder? Is it divine revelation, mortal mind control, did the Bonejudge force this woman into a little cage and spread food all around just to twist the knife a little?
Is this the Bonejudge’s hideout, or the Black Widow’s? The human trafficker was left in a place that I think was intended to evoke his crimes, that little underground grotto with the boat...
What does this have to do with Jespar? Because I’m going to be honest, if it turns out Jespar is pulling night shifts as a murderous vigilante of Justice, I think I’m going to have to withdraw all the come ons I’ve been sending his way. Killing people is kind of my raison d’etre, but sticking them in a cage and starving them to death is a bit much, you know?
- Actually, I’ve been feeling like the ‘Bonejudge’ is kind of familiar somehow, but I’m not sure where…
Oh yyyeah. My skill tree.
Now, I’d like to say with certainty that I am definitely probably not the Bonejudge. 65% certain at least.
But you know… you never can be sure in this game.
If it turns out I’m blacking out and sadistically torturing murderers in my free time, I will definitely take back all the stuff I said about Jespar. And request immediate cuddles.
- Well enough existential dread, I still have one more clue to track down!
This isn’t the first time I’ve plugged the music in this game, but that was the original bard songs. This is just the background music as I’m riding through the local farmlands, a little thing of piano and woodwind… wow, though. It just makes you want to forget the looming apocalypse and just ride on, you know?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vN7xwt9iT9Y
- And then from all that auditory beauty right to the murder site in some nondescript farm. It’s like Enderal is saying, ‘Isn’t this place a beauty? But scratch a layer off the surface and it’s pain and misery all the way down.’
It fits. I love Enderal but this game is dark as a chasm straight into the center of the earth compared to Skyrim’s ‘save the world from dragons lol’ main quest.
- I remember the endless Vatyr of old Haystacks, so I am kind of terrified when my minimap leads me to the Ark farms and a place called Old Granary.
It’s actually pretty low-key, though. Just a bunch of giant rats.
The corpse’s note is penned in a shaky hand, and it’s clear the writer is under duress.
This cellar is where he kidnapped children from the Undercity, and so it is the site where he will be eaten by rats while still alive.
- It’s pretty clear by now that the Bonejudge is tracking down these people and sadistically murdering them in the places most connected to their own crimes. I was wondering if these were one of those ‘ironic punishment’ deals, but no. Merely a brutal one.
The slave trafficker, dipped in acid.
The hitwoman, starved to death.
The kidnapper and child abuser, eaten by rats.
And if you put the cipher at the end of each letter together, it’s reads: “For my brothers in arms: ‘Knock knock, who’s there? Come in alone, if you dare.’”
- Now, atmospheric, I grant you!
But I’m not actually too sure how the Prophetess put together a location from the cipher. Were the letters printed on the backs of maps, or…?
Also, it seems a little unlikely for anyone to actually find all three of these murder sites and put together the code without
someone (naming no names, just in case the Enderalean post office is onto me) intercepting Jespar’s mail. So this is starting to seem like something of a taunt directed at possibly me but probably Jespar specifically.
A ‘come find me, if you dare.’
Well, all right then.
The Takeaway:
I appreciate the story-driven nature of this quest, it’s just a little weird how mechanically easy it is after Calia’s. Like, an hour ago I was battling killing Nehrimese war parties so I could kill bandit wizards so I could kill a village full of elemental wolves and giant spiders for the privilege of battling my way through an abandoned keep full of reanimated corpses.
Now I’m fighting large-ish rats. Which, yeah, they gave me a disease, but a trip to the doctor will clear that right up.
Actually I’m noticing a lot of minimap markers that I haven’t investigated yet, so I think I’ll take a brief sidetrip before continuing on my quest to track down Enderalean Batman.