Last time, a very disappointing superboss. Today, we meet the most important character in the game and I have a lot to say about him.
The guild meets the sailor outside and convinces him to bring them to Nal. They get to put on the cryptic hats for once:

Qualstio: “Sorry, that information’s classified. We’ll pay you for your trouble, but we gotta go there.”

The image of the guild just paying everyone off instead of explaining the weird stuff that happens around them is funny, but once again I have to wonder where they get the funds for all this. Originally Dehl offered to pay the sailor just to take them here, and in the cave Tehgonan complained that they better be getting paid for this, yet it seems every time the guild talks money it’s so they can run up a massive deficit. Where are they getting the money to throw around like this?

I wonder if this is related to what we’re seeing in the Dresden Files, where heroes like to pay lip service to the idea of being poor but don’t actually suffer any consequences for it. It’s a kind of underdog fetishization where you can make your hero an underdog without having to make them an actual underdog, because actual underdogs would get in the way of our power fantasy and poor people are just so icky, you know? It’s a very convenient way to have your cake and eat it too, but it’s also quite manipulative and nonrepresentative.

(Note that this does not mean you should make the entire story about being poor and scrabbling for funds if that’s not supposed to be the focus. You need only take one look at The Name of the Wind to see how badly that turns out.)

Qualstio also lies and says there was nothing in the cave, which goes unremarked upon by everyone because they are terrible people. Why does he do this? There isn’t the slightest suggestion that this is something to keep hidden, and it’s incredibly dickish when the sailor went out of his way to take them along with the expectation that they would give him some insight into what was going on. I’d guess this is an ALPHA MALE thing, where knowledge is power so Qualstio hoards his, allowing him to win a competition the other guy wasn’t even playing.

(This also makes me wonder how on Earth the rumor of the wish-granting dragon started up in The Drop. Someone must have blabbed later on, or maybe one of the guild members, fed up with Qualstio’s crap, took the sailor aside and explained everything during this fade to black transition.)

Ques: “So soon? It has been over a year since we last visited you.”

It’s unfortunate that the only foreshadowing for this twist is the kind that only makes sense in hindsight and can’t be used to predict the twist, because then it’s not so much foreshadowing so much as a reread bonus. Maybe I’m just slow (I am bad at mysteries, I will admit), but it feels like the game will point out weird stuff for us but never gives us anything that could be used to build on it and progress toward a conclusion. Heck, we never even learn about the thing we need to connect it to until the twist itself! The developer did indeed assimilate the worst aspects from Nine Hours Nine Persons Nine Doors, it seems.

They show him the crystal and he recognizes it as a spirit thingy. He says that he’s occasionally seen spirit “fragments”, whatever that means. Can people’s souls really be broken down in this universe or are they just crystallized bits of magic/memories/whatever? Regardless, they store memories that Rulian can use to recreate their body, resurrecting them. This doesn’t work well for the fragments, but this is a whole spirit, so:

He has Convenient Amnesia and can’t remember anything about himself but his name: Tezkhra. The characters take this remarkably well, though to be fair he doesn’t look anything like the descriptions so it’s easy to conclude he’s not actually Evil Lizard Jesus.

Tezkhra: “A god… yes. I am remembering correctly. I am called Tezkhra, and… I created you. […] You were born from my blood, and created in my own image.”

He is remarkably good at this for supposedly being a reclusive scientist with poor social skills. I’m now curious if “I created you” was always intended to be an outright lie or if something changed between now and the storyboarding of I Miss the Sunrise (where he provided the genetic material but the actual biogenesis was done by someone else). It’s rather incongruous with the careful half-truth of the next line.

Tezkhra believes that looking at the world (particularly the Holyland) will jog his memory, so he’s going to tag along with the guild. This of course means he’s the sixteenth recruit. Before that, though…

Qualstio: “Yeah, well, you oughta be thanking Rulian and his magic for bringing you back.”
Tezkhra: (“Hmmm… ‘magic’. Could it be some kind of latent energy? I should find out more.”)

Oh boy, more thought bubbles, and in a character who really, really should not have them! Unlike the other cryptics, Tezkhra has absolutely no excuse for being obtuse in his wording, so the way the writing has to bend over backwards to keep from revealing too much is incredibly contrived and obvious. It’s not so bad here (and in the process I think it reveals a bit too much), but it gets way worse because he essentially becomes the protagonist from here on out. Maybe I’m just biased against thought bubbles, but it seems particularly sloppy and lazy here.

Then Rulian tries to grab his totally-not-a-spacesuit clothes to get a look at them, feels a shock, and says his necromancy powers are gone. I can think of no logical reason why Tezkhra’s presence would have this effect when Mahk’s doesn’t unless the bodyhoppers have some weird effect on latent energy. Latent energy and the bodyhoppers run on plot fiat in this and IMTS so there’s no way to deduce what’s going on here, it’s just more PLAY THE SEQUEL!

Yes, he gets a special race distinction too. Because he’s special. His spirit freed and body resurrected, the Creator of the Shra people has asked to survey the known world in our company. A very, very powerful being with many unusual talents that don’t drain health like traditional magic does.

The “very, very powerful” bit is a gross overexaggeration. He has great stats, but that doesn’t count for much when none of them contribute to his one offensive skill. And while his secondary stats look workable, notice that his passives are already maxed out. He can’t boost his slower-than-molasses agility or kinda-okay regeneration any further. (He doesn’t have any support combos, either.) The only thing he can really do is tank which, as I established way back with Lani, is not terribly useful in this battle system. Overall, he’s much more of a story reward than a gameplay one, and too far on the wrong side of gimmicky vs. practical. He does have unique dialogue in a few quests if you include him, though, so as much as it pains me he’s going to replace Lani. Our days of a perfectly gender-balanced party are over.

(And… he has six horns. He had four when he died, and supposedly his self-image at the time of death is what was used to reconstruct him. I don’t even. More weirdness to be explained in the sequel, I suppose.)

Zargos: “(He’s kinda modest for a god, don’t ya think?)”
Santes: “(And he’s so shiny too! I think I’m in love!)”

If I have to read Santes’ dialogue then so do you.

At the end of the scene everyone turns to leave but Tez stops to examine Moke, thus delivering the foreshadowing that Moke’s related to his killer with all the subtlety of a sledgehammer.

I do like this scene, overall. His speech is obviously weird and out of place, as he doesn’t really talk like a god. You go along with it, of course, because this is a fantasy story, and so you don’t even entertain the obvious conclusion that the person in futuristic space clothes with an arm cannon who talks like a scientist is a cyborg astronaut and not a fantasy god. The general weirdness and fantastic nature of the Drop episode helps too. And his recruitment is well-timed, as this chapter is all about the nature of religion and divinity. Having a god on your side really adds a new dimension to the upcoming story. (Though personally I feel like it could have affected more; everyone is a bit too laid-back about the whole affair.)

Visiting areas after recruiting Tez produces special scenes. Here he learns that shra are slaves and life sucks for people in general. He is absurdly blasé about all this.

Tezkhra: “Hmm. Just making a note of the relation. It is not my right to intervene on your world.”
Qualstio: “Yeah, but, you made them! Don’t you feel at least a little bad that they’re treated like that?”
Tezkhra: “It is within their power to live otherwise, if they choose. Like the Shra in your guild do.”

So it seems Tez graduated from the Ayn Rand school of thought. This is inconsistent with his IMTS characterization where he was quite the bleeding heart, especially about the idea of creating life. Was he originally intended to stay emotionally suppressed the entire time?

He gets some exp, as he does whenever he visits any new area. Taking him on a field trip is basically his personal sidequest.

While we’re here:

Just not enough warmth or interest to actually care about their well-being.

On to Wadassia:

Tez thinks it’s very nice and apparently “Our new government has taken great strides to ensure [nothing like the civil war] happens again.” but we don’t get any information on what that new government is or how it plans to accomplish this. Given that Nal is still a pit of misery and hatred, I don’t think they’ve been doing a very good job. Tez asks about the year and apparently it’s still 2999 even though that’s what it was at the beginning of the game and we were explicitly told that a year has passed. Gah. Why didn’t the game just start at 2998? That’d make the turn-of-the-millennium significance less obvious, too. No one points out the “starts at 1000” thing which is kind of important information, but they do talk about how the Fortian calendar isn’t the beginning of time so it’s insufficient for Tez’s needs. Apparently before the Fortian calender “there was no point of reference” which I find hard to believe. Just because a society has decided on using a single standardized date system doesn’t mean there was never any form of one beforehand. Proto-Wadassia and the fih’jik culture should have some records, at the least, and there must be archaeologists investigating this stuff somewhere.

It is, however, believable that the shra were not keeping perfect time, and that’s really all that matters. Qualstio or Ques could even chime in with a “Fortian scholars hypothesize it happened at X time but it’s impossible to be certain because Y”, there you’re done, no need for all this chatter about how apparently they have no concept of alternate calender systems or before-common-era dating.

I really doubt people in Wadassia care? He supposedly looks Do’Sshan anyway. Maybe this could be explained by him being unable to comprehend the concept of apathy about the conflict due to spending so much time in the thick of it.

His grasp of the Human language is nearly perfect as well. Better than most Shra can ever hope to achieve.

But this is just nonsense. K may be interested in human customs but I don’t see a blunt, proud individual like him adapting to them this easily. And we continue to have exceptional, socially-approved sues as our only representatives of the oppressed underclass.

This is nice, though. He’s such an adorable scientist.

Fortifel:

Tez takes a keen interest in this steam vent thing and wants to know the world’s overall technology level.

Tez: (“This environment is indeed latent-sensitive… but, what was I supposed to do with it?”)

Jargon jargon mysterious cryptic waste of time why are you doing this, game. Was it really so hard to just not tell us his thoughts so we could interpret his actions ourselves? This adds nothing.

Apparently steam power is the biggest deal ever and totally means they are destined for spacefaring technology, even though if he was listening to Qualstio he would have heard that people are so content with the current tech level that they’re willing to kill people who make stuff like this. Regardless, Tez actually being afraid of something is a nice detail if you’re willing to overlook how forced it is.

Aw, Yfus just wants hugs. I used to think that his The Drop characterization came out of left field, but there are actually bases for it sprinkled around.

He doesn’t seem as concerned with his children as much as he seems intrigued. Probably not wise to question him further…

What. This comes out of nowhere and never comes up again, and I thought Lani’s voice was supposed to be gruff and coarse?

Here’s the big one. (But… why is the grass convex? It’s a crater, shouldn’t it be the other way around?)

Tezkhra: “Yes. I did this. I made this crater. I had to. This whole plot of land had to be destroyed. Something was lost here. Something that did not belong. Something not meant for you. The only way I could be sure that it was destroyed was to wipe the whole land clean.”

Huh. Guess the developer changed his mind when he showed that event in IMTS. Alternatively, you could fanwank this as Tez pulling a “I totally meant to do that.” It certainly sounds more intimidating than “I was trying to be subtle but I accidentally this crater, sorry about that.”

“That is why I came to your Surface.”

Yeah IMTS is retcontastic.

This is also where he died.

Ques: “How did it happen? What sort of event occurred that could fell a god so easily?”

Oh man this is hilarious when you know how it actually went down.

Tez goes all vague and just says it was “the Lesser” (si’shra), so that bit of terminology survived the transition to IMTS. He also confirms that he met a group of shra, which explains how his name entered the culture.

Tezkhra: “It seems I had underestimated how much they understood, despite the language difference.”

I’ll just let you stare at this for a while.

Theoretically, you could fanwank it as the scientists teaching the humans English for some reason, but that’s really stretching, especially when they didn’t bother to teach languages to any other group. Linguistic drift would render it incomprehensible by now anyway.

Shockingly, Tez displays actual emotion by expressing guilt at luring his killer (another outsider) to this world, likely creating the si’shra. I wonder how much of this is actual concern for the people instead of just his scientific integrity. Fortunately there’s no thought bubble, so I actually get to speculate! I’d like to believe he is starting to feel bad about all the lives he affected here, since that element of his character has to start somewhere and seeing the palpable impact of his actions on their society is a good way to shock him out of his aloofness. On the other hand, it seems a bit early for that when he’s still full on board the murdertrain right up until the end. Most likely, it’s a bit of both.

Tez also says he finds their world interesting and wants to watch it for a while instead of rushing to complete his objective, which sounds nice but is probably more scientifically-motivated. Then Dehl asks where he comes from and he gets extremely cagey, refusing to divulge any information at all when a simple “I come from the sky” would be both true and convincing without being suspicious. It’s possible the point is that him clamming up is supposed to be suspicious, but in his introduction he was really good at this so it feels inconsistent.

Oh. Uh. That was pretty matter-of-fact. I always assumed Fero being Kir’Sshan was supposed to be a surprise.

Anything is better than using his actual name in a place this close to the Si’Shra Holyland, even if he did actually create it.

Ah, I neglected to mention this, but the characters call him “Tez” to avoid the obvious problems. He mentions being called that by others, so combined with this it’s more foreshadowing for him not being an actual god.

And here he is in the Indigo Swamp, with a nice detail on his physiology. (Yfus is just fussing over his armor again.)

Finally I return to Do’Ssha, where the approaching Kir’Sshan army has politely waited for me to finish my world tour.

He immediately recognizes Tezkhra and calls him by his full name, which is an instant red flag that I totally ignored on my first playthrough because I am a silly person. Tez doesn’t recognize Mahk at first, but has a memory flash midway through.

Mahk: “Mmmhmm. Someone must lead these children to peace. It is not a task for the inexperienced.”

This sounds passive-aggressive to me, which seems unwarranted unless he knows how badly Tez screwed up with the si’shra, though I suppose he must at least suspect that. Maybe I just have a paranoid mindset, or maybe in the original draft Mahk was more involved in the project and had conflicting opinions about it. Anyway, Mahk agrees to give Tez a room and they leave.

Rehm: “They’re really hittin’ it off, don’tcha think?”
Dehl: “What are you insinuating?”
Rehm: “… N’aw, mate, n’aw! Not like that!”

So gay people do exist, theoretically, but only so we can laugh at the awkwardness of their existence. I guess it’s something. It’s also weird that Dehl of all people is the one to say this, considering that he’s been totally oblivious about the subject in all prior situations. (And now that I say that, I’m surprised there haven’t been any gay headcanons for him.)

In hindsight this is actually pretty meta-funny considering that Mahk is gay. I wonder if that was intended from the start or thrown in during IMTS.

Then there’s some blather about how Mahk is weird and obviously knows more than he’s letting on etc. It’s really weird how the game alternates so frequently between extreme subtlety and sledgehammers.

Dehl: “Clearly there are discrepancies that require resolution before we may assume anything.”

It’s really a shame that this is the only place where the scope theme really comes into play. This is an important message and it would have been nice to see the heroes (and the story) give it proper consideration in other details of the plot, but the sci-fi twist is the only place it’s really implemented. Bringing it up so unsubtly here just reminds me of all the other times the story failed to follow through.

And Tez doesn’t get essence from this, which is a bit weird. Were five boosts one too many?

This makes me wonder what would happen if he did make an announcement. He wouldn’t have to spill the beans on everything – he could easily just say “I’m a god and I know yours doesn’t exist” – but I doubt it’d work, seeing as he has no way to prove his divinity short of making another crater. The discrepancies with the Tezkhra story hurt his credibility as well. At best it’d fragment the Kir’Sshan opposition, but Do’Ssha would likely implode and more factionalism is the opposite of what Dehl wants anyway. However, I feel like it would be more meaningful if he was capable of easily stopping the conflict and didn’t for his own selfish reasons. It’d make him more flawed and tie things together more neatly; as-is we never see any consequences arise from his philosophy of detachment and his character is rather muddled as a result.

So that took forever, sorry. Tez invites a lot of words. Next update I’ll finally start the main quest line.

PREVIOUS | NEXT