TW: there's a quest that mentions spiders.
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A Day in the Neighborhood
-Minfilia and I get to explore the disgustingly named settlement of Slitherbough.
-The Night’s Blessed holds Y’shtola in high regard. She saved them from the sin eater attack and has served them well after.
-I like their custom for those who traveled in the light to purify themselves with dark-blessed water.
-It hits Ququshu and Minfilia with a tingling sensation. Apparently, this is not common. Hm.
-“Allin tuta” is the old Ronkan phrase for “Good evening.” It serves as a shibboleth.
-Minfilia wonders why they don’t leave for someone where life is a bit easier. It’s because they value a humbler existence, knowing how fragile everything is in the face of the Light.
And to keep alive the legacy of those who came before them.
These words hit home for Minfilia, who knows she carries the standard of the Oracle of Light.
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Lost but Not Forgotten
-A Night’s Blessed child named Toddia was recently killed by sin eaters. Her heartstone was taken. It’s a stone given to all the Blessed at birth. They protect them in life and bear their spirits to the afterlife.
-Minfilia and I head out to find the heartstone.
-We split up. I take out one sin eater, and I find her with another dead at her feet.
MINFILIA: “I… I’m fine.” I worry for a second that she’s not just emotionally shook, that she was infected by a sin eater. But that can’t be. Minfilia is immune to that transformation iirc.
-Yeah, she’s just feeling the burden of the Oracle’s legacy. Wants to live up to her. Just be yourself as well as you can, Minfilia!
Legacy can be a rough burden. (And a blessing, too.) Got the stone.
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Saying Goodbye
-Toddia’s funeral takes place in a cave lit by ghostly blue light.
-Her name in the Light was Toddia. She’s now free to use her real name, Minnine.
-Runar, a Blessed Hrothgar, conducts a beautiful service. He then drops Minnine’s heartstone into a pool of dark-blessed water. It symbolizes the night sky, the “sunless sea of heaven.” Their afterlife.
-Lord, this is gorgeous. We see the heartstones of other fallen Blessed twinkle like stars in the pool.
-Runar calls to the Warrior of Darkness to deliver her soul to paradise.
It hits Ququshu hard. She’s the Warrior of Darkness, but uncomfortable with this role of savior. Not unlike Lightning in “Lightning Returns.” Or heck, my Inquisitor in Dragon Age: Inquisition.
-Even if I can’t bring her soul to darkness, maybe I can at least bring the night sky to Rak’tika.
-Y’shtola may have a lead. She and Urianger deciphered the tablet we brought from Lakeland.
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Stirring Up Trouble
-The tablet dates back to the end of the Ronkan Empire, written under the Emperor’s direction.
-It was a time of war, and the Ronkans were losing. This tablet is a petition sent out to allies for aid.
-It includes a method to prove oneself an ally to the Ronkans. That might help us with the Yx’Maja tribe. Y’shtola can’t decipher that part just yet; we need to access a nearby Rosetta Stone.
-A radical faction of Dark worshippers called the Children of the Everlasting Dark guard it. They believe in using murder and death to worship the dark.
-A watchman saw the Yx’Maja raising venomous spiders to attack the Night’s Blessed. Y’shtola has us grab some bees’ nests to attack the spiders and cause enough distraction to let us get to the stone.
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A Beautiful Plan
-Y’shtola chucks the hives into the spider cave. We hear the resulting chaos, but thank God we don’t see it. I’m totally okay without that image in my eyeballs.
-The distraction works. Not much to fight through to before we reach the stone.
-There’s a mural on the wall. It’s a party of five in front of purple tendrils. Those are Ardbert’s Warriors of Darkness or I’ll eat my hat.
-The mural apparently shows the knight (Ardbert) SHIELDING the party from the encroaching dark.
-Another mural shows a Ronkan ruler on a throne, with subject. A third mural shows warriors rejoicing after defeating a shadow beast.
An interesting trio for a dark-worshipping cult, but I guess these all predate the Flood.
-Ghost!Ardbert arrives. He remembers being in this cave before the Flood with a researcher.
That researcher believed the oldest mural was a tribute to ancient heroes. A Ronkan explorer discovered it, and it was so loved that Ronka commissioned the second mural commemorating their own heroes.
“’One day, you will all be here too,’ he said. ‘Heroes immortalized forever. Maybe I’ll paint you myself!’”
I guess he did.
-It’s more faded than the others. Perhaps the cult saw it as a rejection of Dark and tried scraping it off.
-So. Murals from three different eras. The “age of gods,” the Ronkan Empire, and just before the Flood.
Maybe there’ll even be a Ququshu mural here one day.
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An Unwanted Proposal
-Back to Slitherbough, where Y’shtola works to finish her translation.
-Some Blessed patrols are late. That’s a bad sign.
-I overhear Y’shtola and Urianger arguing.
Y’SHTOLA: “The blessing may spare her the fate of becoming a Lightwarden, but you cannot be blind to the nascent corruption! She is not as she was in the Source.”
Well crap. I’m not dispersing the Lightwarden’s light; I’m absorbing it. That’s why Y’shtola first mistook me for a sin eater.
-Urianger has been hiding the full effects from both me and Y’shtola. Booo hisss. Tell me and let me make the sacrifice, don’t do It via secrecy.
-That secrecy pissed Y’shtola off with the Crystal Exarch and it pisses her off now with Urianger. Right there with you.
-She asks one more (unexpected) question: the Eighth Umbral Calamity. Did Urianger really see the vision he claimed to see?
HE DOESN’T ANSWER. DOES THAT MEAN HE WAS LYING ABOUT THAT VISION? THAT’S FUCKED IF TRUE.
-A Blessed patrolman interrupts this in a panic. Eulmore’s attacking.
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Meanwhile, in Eulmore…
-The Crystal Exarch meets Lord Vauthry in his throne room. The Exarch wants to know why Vauthry’s protecting the sin eaters.
VAUTHRY: “Why? Because this ‘hope’ you cling to is nothing more than a fever dream… Even should you slay the sin eaters, the world as we know it is beyond salvation.”
He sees the world as devoid of resources, its people inclined towards foolish self-destruction unless they have his authoritarian hand to guide them. Peace through fascism.
I mean, that might work in the short term for Eulmore, at the cost of literally everyone else’s chances.
-The Exarch pushes back, of course. People thrive with compassion, hope, and overcoming challenges.
OH GOD I just noticed what looks like a sin eater baby’s head resting in Vauthry’s armpit.
Everything about the sin eaters is disturbing.
-So yeah, no movement either way this meeting. What both sides expected.
-Vauthry lobs a blast of power at the Exarch… which just dissipates the Exarch’s illusory form. LOL GET REKT. He never really came to Eulmore.
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Next time: Eulmore moves against Rak’tika.
