Last time, the guild got killed by a bunch of floating bone pieces. They got better.
Santes: “Those things sure didn’t like us steppin’ on them, ya know?”
Qualstio: “Well, it’s not like we did it on purpose. There’s pieces of bone everywhere outside!”
Of course Qualstio is the one to make excuses. Of course he is.
A Voice: “Hey! Who’s out there?”
Everyone turns to the north, and a man walks towards them. Dehl wonders what he’s doing here, Ques asks if he followed them in.
He lives here, and says his name is Rulian. He asks who they are again.
Ques: “We are of a Wadassian guild called Ilganyag, presently serving Nal.”
[pause]
Ques: “Was…that a skeleton to your side?”
Even this early on, you can see the emitter. Guess that was something plotted out long in advance. I wonder when Tez’s role in all this was finalized?
Rulian: “Oh, yeah. It’s one of mine.”
The screen scrolls back.
Rulian: “What is ‘Wa-da-shya’?”
Dehl: “It is our home, Rulian. You have not heard of it? The city of order?”
City of order? Why does Wadassia have a monopoly on order?
Rulian: “Whoa, a talkin’ lizard. Now I’ve seen it all.”
…? He must have seen shra at some point, they were there from the start. It’s possible they never emigrated from the lowlands until the slavers came, though (and even if he did see one, it probably didn’t speak his language).
Anyway, he doesn’t recognize the name. Ques asks if he’s responsible for the “skeleton menace”.
Rulian: “Menace? Well I built them, yeah, but there’s no one living anywhere near here. Is there…?”
Kidra: “Ummm, where have you been? Nal ain’t even a day’s walk from here!”
Rulian: “Oh. I’ve been down here for a while, I guess.”
Gee, ya think? Guess the radiation liquified his brains to make him so out of it…wait, actually, that’s pretty good foreshadowing for Purity Point. I guess the “treatment” people receive is some kind of built-up tolerance to the radiation so only extremely large amounts cause this sort of thing? Actually, could that be why the emitters stop working eventually? Eventually the body builds up a tolerance, like a drug? It’s never explained how the emitters work (magic science!) so I suppose it could be anything.
“What year is it, anyway?”
Qualstio: “Uhm, but the Fortian calendar, it’s 2999.”
That’s an interesting date. Wonder if there are any apocalypse predictions?
“How… old are you anyway?”
Rulian: “Oh. Huh. I’m not really sure, if you put it like that.”
Qualstio: “O…kay. So wait, all the skeletons and stuff are your doing?”
Rulian explains that one day while he was down here, there was a powerful rainstorm, and a whole bunch of bones flooded into the cavern.
Rulian: “Thing is, some of them kinda started twitching when I got near them. And, some of them had this… glow around them. I could feel it. I found out if I pieced them together right, sometimes they’d get up and start walkin’. Other times they’d just fall apart into a pile and start swarming around each other.”
Qualstio: “That’s kinda messed up, you know that?”
Oh get stuffed. Yeah it’s kind of creepy, but at least he was only experimenting on dead people, unlike whatever the cryomancer did to get expelled.
Rulian explains he just did it to occupy himself; he didn’t realize they were attacking people. Come to think of it, why do they attack people, anyway? They should just be mindless automatons, like robots. Does the magic imbue them with something like an AI that tells them to attack people?
Zargos and Santes ask how he got here, where his parents are, doesn’t he need to eat, etc., but “I don’t remember. I really can’t remember any time passing at all. Only bits and pieces.”
Ques decides they’ve fulfilled their task of locating the source, and asks Rulian to kindly stop doing whatever he’s doing. Dehl extends an offer to join the guild, but Rulian declines.
Rulian: “No, I can’t leave. I’ll stop lifting the dead for you, but I want to stay down here.”
…Huh. Why does he feel this so strongly? Does he intuitively know that he needs to stay close to the emitter, somehow? Is the radiation like an addictive drug?
Tehgonan: “Hey, waitaminute. What kinda magic would let you do somethin’ like this, anyway?”
I was wondering this myself, actually. Just what is so special about Rulian? Why has only one individual in the entire world manifested this power? The game plays fairly fast-and-loose with the magic mechanics – most individuals seem to have unique spells and powers, but nobody comments on this even though there seem to be standardized spells as well. The Drop just muddles things further. I Miss the Sunrise implies that latent energy has a unique effect depending on the organism it adheres to, so possibly Rulian just has some kind of one-in-a-million-chance mutation. The presence of emitter radiation might have caused some weirdness, too.
Qualstio: “What, like which Element?”
Tehgonan: “Yeah! Magic’s always gotta have an Element, don’t it?”
Uh, no? Tehgonan himself has a non-elemental spell! Where is this coming from? Rulian doesn’t know what he’s talking about, though.
Qualstio: “There’s six of them. Three pairs of two. Been that way for…hundreds of years.”
Only hundreds? Haven’t Fortians been around for millennia? They only discovered such a basic classification system in the past few centuries, really? How were they researching magic before then?
“Scholars thought there might be other classifications, but no one’s found any.”
This actually makes me wonder where the element system fits in with the idea of latent energy in the first place. Magic can do some pretty weird stuff that doesn’t wholly fit into the classifications, like Tehgonan’s spells for instance. Does the energy purposefully divide itself into or get imbued with the eight elements, somehow? Where does that leave stuff like Rulian’s and Tehgonan’s magic? Does that utilize “pure” energy that hasn’t chosen an element? And why are two elements hiding in the Drop? How does that even make sense??? aaaaaaaaaaa
The magic mechanics in this universe are just so weird. I really hope How Far sheds some light on this because the more I think about it the more tangled it gets.
Santes: “Well it’s not Divine! When we heal people, they’re, like, not already dead!”
Why is divine the go-to healing element anyway? It’s just purification, right? That’d help for sterilizing wounds but spontaneous regeneration is kind of the opposite of stability and purity. It’d make more sense for there to be some kind of combo spell, where you use divine magic to sterilize the wound while using noxious magic (which I presume governs change and biological processes) to induce rapid regeneration at the same time. But then The Drop retcons this to give every element a healing spell anyway so I don’t even know.
Anyway, there’s an awkward silence, then a guardsman shouts from outside.
Guardsman’s Voice: “Are you all still in there? We need to leave soon. Rain approaches. We’ll be trapped.”
Everyone turns to face the entrance.
Dehl: “Rain? T’was not a cloud in the sky when we arrived. How long have we been here?”
Okay so this looks like clever foreshadowing at first but in actuality it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.
This isn’t like that scene at the end of the game where they sit on their thumbs doing nothing. They were active and engaged in sensory stimulation. Obviously they’re more susceptible to the side-effects, but how would they not notice time passing when they’re engaged in conversation? Are their brains just slowed down instead of suspended? That doesn’t seem to match with I Miss the Sunrise‘s description of trancing, but I suppose it could be a unique side-effect for untreated organisms… Still, every single one of them would have to be slowed down by the exact same amount. And the skeletons are mobile, they should have seen them suddenly speed up if that happened.
Anyway, Rulian reiterates that he wants to stay down here, but he promises he won’t let any more skeletons escape.
Rulian: “If you find death, please come to me so I can try to help you. I’ll still be here.”
Creepy! Rulian has the best casually unsettling lines.
They leave.
Rulian: “You guys attacked people? You’ve never attacked me before…”
Hmm. If their aggression is part of the reanimation itself, a “magic is evil” plot is looking more and more likely.
Santes asks if people think Rulian’s for real. Well, actually she asks if he’s for reeeeeal because her dialogue has to be as insufferable as possible.
Qualstio: “Ehhh, I dunno. Didn’t ya notice his bloodshot eyes and really slow manner of speech? I’d say he’s just some dumb teenager
I’m taking this as confirmation that their social development is at a twentieth century level, then. That’s pretty recent for a fantasy game, but they’ve had at least 1999 years of development (according to the glossary the Fortian calendar starts at the year 1000 for reasons I don’t want to get into here) so that does make sense.
who’s boiled out of his gourd on Dreamweed.”
[…]
Santes: “Well annnyway, we can’t tell the guards about him! They’ll try and arrest him!”
Which would be bad because…? He’s a threat to the area and doesn’t seem entirely sane. They only have his word that he’ll stop releasing the skeletons, if he’s actually capable of containing them at all.
Qualstio: “I guess we’ll see what happens. Either way, we scouted the area. Our job’s done.”
Qualstio is lazy. Why did he even want to form a guild in the first place if he has such a dismissive attitude?
Dehl: “I’ve had my fill of skeletons, surely. I am even beginning to mistrust my own.”
[pause]
Lani: “Wow, Dehl, was that a… joke we heard comin’ out of you?”
Dehl: “Perhaps it is something in the rain. Savor it.”
Aw, Dehl’s feeling happy for once! You know what that means.
And yep, suddenly the Scourge Clad’s theme music starts playing!
Qualstio: “(Oh great, not HIM again.)”
Oh quit whining, he’s a better person than you. (Why does Qualstio get his own thought snippet here, anyway? Or is this he supposed to be muttering under his breath?)
There is an awkward pause as Skint stops in front of the guild.
Scourgelord Skint: “Still clogging these streets, Wadassians?”
Qualstio: “Nice to see you too. We’ve been busting our asses for your little city here, ya know.”
Wait what? “Your” city? How is Nal Skint’s city? He hates the place!
Scourgelord Skint: “I know.”
Hm, maybe that’s the reason why he hates the guild so much.
Dehl extends his cooperation offer again; Skint rejects it.
Scourgelord Skint: “Save your speeches, whelpling. My business will be in another city soon.”
Dehl: “Which city? Wadassia?”
Scourgelord Skint: “Not of your concern! Enough. You are of no use to us, Wadassians.”
Why does he go to Fortifel, anyway? I don’t think that’s ever explained.
He walks off.
Santes: “I really hate that guy.”
A Familiar Voice: “Don’t let his sort scare you, friends!”
Oh gods that is beautiful.
The person who has the gall to actually criticize the guild and give them a taste of reality is hated on sight. He finally leaves them alone, the guild cursing his back, and immediately after the guild’s happy smiley friends swoop in. It feels like the good guys’ allies are appearing to cheer everyone up, but in actuality it’s the reverse. They hate the mean grouchy guy who actually has good points while completely ignoring the hints that the boisterous hero who’s always so nice to them is the one they need to be watching.
Kidra: “(Well, hell-O there good lookin’!)”
o_O
This brings up a point that I’d like to comment on, actually. In the prologue I mentioned that the ensign’s thought snippet infodumping was particularly awkward because it was done through thoughts. How to handle thoughts is a controversial topic in media, but personally I think it works best if used sparsely and judiciously. I think it really comes down to show don’t tell – without a window into a character’s innermost thoughts and motivations spelling everything out for us, we’re forced to piece characters together based on concrete, physical details, and I believe that makes for a richer narrative experience. The characters become expressive enough that you don’t explicitly need their thoughts to understand what they’re thinking.
You are probably getting tired of me singing Unsounded‘s praises, but I believe it’s a good example of this. There are almost no thought bubbles in Unsounded, except for two sort-of examples that were intentionally kept vague. However, this does not diminish the characters in any way – everything that would normally be conveyed through thoughts is shown through actions, body language, and facial expressions. Look at this page, or this one, or even one of those few times a character’s thoughts are actually shown. Those are all scenes where thought bubbles would normally be used, but because the author chose to convery what the information she wanted through other means, they aren’t necessary, and the characters and story are stronger for it.
It’s especially weird here, where we have a character whose thoughts and motives are in such doubt. Qualstio’s reaction to the sleeksteel shows there could be more to Kidra than meets the eye – there’s ambiguity there. But then the narrative just straight-up shows us her thoughts and welp, looks like she’s exactly as she appears. You’d have to be crazy to guess she’s actually a secret agent at this point. If it weren’t for that random, superfluous thought snippet, there could still be ambiguity over whether Kidra was acting to keep up the facade, genuinely enamored with Havan, or some mix of both. This issue gets exponentially worse when applied to a character introduced in the next chapter, but I’ll comment on that when it comes up.
Also, this is more of a personal thing, but I find third-person omniscient (thought bubbles for everyone) to be particularly jarring. I don’t know why exactly, but I feel like if you’re going to strip away the mysteries of someone’s thoughts, it should be limited to the viewpoint character.
That said, there are some things you can only convey through thoughts, especially when graphical limitations are a consideration. However, I still feel that, like witty banter, they’re something The Reconstruction tends to overuse. Fortunately, like so many other things, this is corrected in the prequel!
But back to the game. Havan reveals that his expedition is complete, and he successfully recovered “A relic! A thing of true beauty. It is a favor to all of Wadassia to be blessed with it.” He shouts over his shoulder for Cort to hurry up.
Cort sloooowly lugs it forward. Poor guy. Dehl steps forward and says he should help.
Havan: “Don’t touch it!”
Mm. So he’s already a materialistic scumbag by this point?
Why is he so concerned about them not touching it, though? He can’t possibly know what it does yet. I guess he’s just really possessive of his treasures by default, and this is his mask slipping?
Qualstio: “It sure is somethin’, all right.”
Zargos: “Ehh, what is it? Some kinda statue?”
Santes: “What does it do?”
Havan: “Nothing! That’s the beauty of it! Well, nothing of which we know, at least.”
Ques: “And why bring such an artifact to Nal?”
Havan: Ah hah, astute as always. We are on our way to Fortifel presently, you see. I intend to have its function discovered by the Councillords themselves! Splendid.”
Qualstio: “Oooh, big time Fortian scholars, huh? Uh, why didn’t you just take a ship?”
Havan: “Oh no, we couldn’t do that. I’d never run the risk of having it sink into the sea.”
Qualstio: “So you’re just gonna have your friend here lug it the whole way? Well, whatever.”
Havan turns around to look at the artifact.
Havan: “Beautiful. The kind of relic a man would build a tower beneath in order to protect.”
I wonder if this is a jab at the prevalence of tower dungeons housing MacGuffins in RPGs?
Dehl: “Yes, it’s very nice.”
Havan: “It is time we travel onward! Friends of Ilganyag… until next time!”
They part to allow them to pass. I watch poor Cort lug the thing behind them, very slowly.
Qualstio: “This city has more and more weirdos in it every single day, I swear.”
For all of Qualstio’s faults, it look like he’s at least astute enough to realize something’s up with Havan. Takes one to know one, I suppose?
Dehl: “He mentioned travel to the city of Fortifel. That is your home, is it not, Qualstio?”
Qualstio: “Well, used to be, yeah.”
Dehl: “What is it like? Is it worth visiting?”
They’ve been friends for years and Dehl’s never thought to ask this before now?
Qualstio: “Ehh, you’d hate it. It’s cold and the people there are all jerks. Even moreso than me.”
That does indeed sound terrifying. But Qualstio manages to be a special kind of jerk even so because they’re not very misogynistic as far as I can tell.
Dehl: “Hmmmm…”
Kidra: “Y’all good friends with him?”
Dehl: “Sometime acquaintances. Why?”
Kidra: “Oh, nooooo reason. Hehehehee. Can’t wait to see him again!”
…And on that lovely note, the scene ends.