Part 8: Transcendence

Transcendence

Welcome back! Last time on Black Geyser, we underwent a terrible liberation from the constraints of such vulgar things as "consistent characterization", "a coherent plot", and of course "good prose" as the game decided we were going to work for Lord Frelsi, the man leading the rebellion that killed our father.



We're back in Deron-Guld, and our instructions are to meet up with a poorly defined "friend" of Lord Frelsi's. I go shopping offscreen instead.



People in the thread have been trying to come up with ways to fix the game and I'll be honest, I don't think you can. I was working on a "can we fix it" post myself.



There are just too many disjointed attempts at narrative threads that kind of explain what the game is going for but are scattered all over the game and compendium. For example, it's kind of clear - if you read the manual and paid attention during the Treason Meeting at the beginning - the king was a good king until he was cursed. The game has no way to convey this, so he just comes across as an irrational power-tripping dickhead who mocks you while stealing your house.



I think the reason we're supposed to be doing all of this is because Lord Frelsi told us he'd negotiate with the king if we did all of this, but the problem is that Lord Frelsi doesn't have any leverage anymore and this is treason. We could just leave. We did that last update.



Of course, the game clumsily shoehorns us into going back and doing Frelsi's nonsense because the king literally never updated after the Rauche update. Not only is it lazy, it immediately snaps the player out of the game as nothing feels real. Characters don't behave like real people, they behave like, well...


Why did we defect to Lord Frelsi? Because the writers made us do it. Why was there a Treason Meeting in front of the Royal Guard? Because the writers made them do it. Why does the king execute us, but not the nobles blatantly defying him in front of the entire court? Because the writers made him do it.



They spent a bunch of time recording voice lines for all these characters instead of cohering their narrative. Frelsi's Friend here is just as nonsensical as the rest of them.

: Have we met?

: No, but we have seen you and heard of you. Your name carries on the wind, in both dark places and light.

Now, this kind of makes sense because Inta Rume got elevated by the king and publicly sent as an emissary, but we keep having to triple-check every statement made by any one of these characters - not because they're necessarily lying, but because everything is contradictory nonsense.



: Perhaps, but how do I know I can trust you? Do you have a name?



This is about to get real stupid.

: Gabriel? (Intelligence)

: Clever, clever. Just so.



This is idiotic. Remember, Lord Frelsi didn't give us a description at all, and the only way we identify him is - you guessed it - hovering over him looking for the moniker of "Frelsi's friend".



Well, yes. Gabriel Prosser and Gabriel Lorca are two different people, but Gabriel Prosser is distinguished by the rest of the Prossers by his first name and also his 2 ton steel balls. Joking aside, that is how names work - it's a classification system! I don't understand what this dumbass is rambling about, and because nothing in this game is coherent or makes sense it's unclear what we're supposed to take this as. Is this supposed to be the insight of a master spy realizing that a name can hide anything, or is he a blundering incompetent trying to impress us and failing?

: Whatever you say. Look, do you have information for me or not?

There's also the little matter that in the city ruled by Lord Frelsi everyone claims to be Lord Frelsi's friend, because that's where the power is. Is Lord Aldnar Frelsi's friend? He could fit the description. What about, I dunno, Lady Solveig?

: We do.

: Perhaps you have heard that the mines have ceased to function? One mine has been left empty much longer than the rest. Forbidden, forgotten, it lay vacant and vagrant.



They are desperately trying to invoke someone like Varys from George RR Martin's works but it just fails. You know who this guy actually reminds me of? Jordan Peterson rambling about how women are chaos or some shit.






We could go to the mines, but I have a better idea. Does Aldnar have any special dialog for us?



I yoink this quest item in the process, because let's be real, Lord Aflark was probably a traitor and I would also like to burn all the nobles in this city.



Lord Frelsi is teaching this maid to read, which is interesting and characterizes him as someone who might almost be sympathetic to elevating the common folk, but this never comes up again.



It's not perfect, but who knows.



Shut the fuck up traitor.



That's it. That's all he has to say. It's voice acted and everything, but given the other lords were giving him tacit approval to carry out his quarrel we can't provoke him or challenge him to a duel or anything.



So i give the order to fuck him up.



Aldnar has an extremely stupid role to play in the plot, so these "Deron-Guld Elite" guards literally just teleport in in groups of three.



I'm pretty sure killing Aldnar here rendered us unable to finish the game, but we avenged Lord Espen and saved all the other morons in this city



The game then spawns what are, as far as I can tell, infinite waves of teleporting guards.



There are two warriors and a cleric. The cleric does bludgeoning damage and the warriors deal slashing damage that Inta is immune to. Thus I literally left the game running to go feed Lugosi the cat and when I got back the battle was still going.



I get that gameplay isn't going to mirror story 100%, but if you have infinity teleporting elite guards why can't you spare people to go into the mines again?



Oh wait, I forgot they put this on both the cleric and spellweavers' class spell list despite them both getting regular healing. Bleh.

Anyway, I missed a screenshot of the journal, but the game claims Frelsi's friend was unable to tell us what is in the mines. Keep this in mind.



Bjalla wants to chat about her thing. This WILL fuck us later but I do it anyway.



: Did the book tell you anything useful? What's next?



: How did the diadem come into your possession?



The achievement for completing Bjalla's quest is "The Destined".

: What does your fancy headpiece do?



: What did you find out from Trials of the White Elves?



We were literally just at the Hall of Records. The Record Keeper is your friend. Are you telling me that despite having a dwarf expert they don't have anyone on - I refuse to type that proper noun - snow elves?

: What do we need to do next?



Why a wise old woman? Why not a sage of any gender, or a young researcher traveling back from the snow elf lands, or a mystic who can comm - fuck it.

: That's all I wanted to ask for now.

: Yes, all right.




These guys are leaving because the mines aren't producing any more and they don't have any jobs. It's amazing how neither us nor Bjalla - another noble who owes her position to the King - come up with the idea of just fucking leaving and waiting the rebellion out.

Also did you notice that commoners almost never get names in this game?



This guy became undead via GREED and then attacks us and dies. We loot all his treasure.



Oh, Aldnar is responsible for leading the armies? Frelsi said he did that and that there have been no major victories. Is Frelsi lying to us? Aldnar certainly hasn't come off as a cunning man, we literally owned him as soon as we stepped into the War Council.




Having looted the undead guy we accuse this looter of murder and he attacks us, dies, and drops armor for Hamlin.



Welcome to the first dungeon of Black Geyser!



Some people might remember how Baldur's Gate 1 had a plot point where you had to go into the iron mines to stop the bad men from sabotaging it, and here we are going into the iron mines to stop the bad men from sabotaging it.



This is a dumb puzzle I'll be back to in a bit.



This guy is a friendly talking ghoul.



He wants us to kill all the necromancers and ghouls in the mine and bring him their hearts.



Well shit for a magic weapon you can have as many dead Black Geyser NPCs as you like. They'll go to a better world where basic logic works.



The mine is, of course, infested with necromancers and ghouls.



Unfortunately to open the door we need to do the melon puzzle.



: Bjalla, what should I do here?

Bjalla is our resident melon expert apparently. Get your mind out of the gutter.



You're not making it easy with that last sentence!



Symbolic like a metaphor huh.

: Hmm, what do I know about this plant? (Brewing and Drying)

I will never interact with that fucking alchemy system and you can't make me, devs!



Suddenly, a third person narrator out of nowhere!



The correct order is 6 -> 4 -> 5 -> 3 as I recall, it's supposed to mimic the seasons and I really do not care. Skipping ahead as all we're missing is "the plant is happy"





: Reach out to grab the melon.

: For a moment, it seems that the plant might close around your arm and draw you in. But instead, the fruit in its depths comes free with a gentle *pop*.



It doesn't matter what you do here.

: Eat it.

: You crack the melon open, expecting to find nothing but the sweetest, most succulent fruit of your life. To your surprise, you find a runestone nestled in its delicious depths.




We can now go through the door of evil magic and reach the lower level of the mines.



It is also filled with ghouls and traps.



There are fanatical cultists who suffer an elephant related accident and get a personal audience with their god.



These necromancers summon more ghouls to harass us. It's very annoying and they die for it.



There are a bunch of weird blood cauldrons and I don't understand why they're here other than to be spooky.



Aside from the necromancers most everyone down here is an autoattack moron.



Somehow the quest concludes despite there still being an entire boss encounter full of hearts left.



: Here, take them.

: Yessss!



: You are a vile, disgusting creature birthed from Rothgor's personal latrine. I like you.

This is the answer that gets you the reward AND dodges greed! See, you brought him all those hearts because you were friends! It's not greedy at all!

If anyone wants to see Inta go more greedy I'm happy to oblige, but I'm holding off on a vote until we get to one more incoherent plot point.



This is a hint for a future quest I believe. I skipped most of the sidequests for obvious reasons.

: Livvvve. And leave us in peacccce.




Sadly this is not a weapon and we cannot use a cool sacrificial knife to kill our enemies.



Time for PLOT!



: Next time I will try to be more quiet. So as to not... wake the dead.

: The dead are not what should have you concerned. I am. You trespass upon the goddess' sanctuary.

Lady it's a fuckin mine.



I want to remind you that this is literally a sanctuary filled with blood cauldrons of dead people. I have no idea what she's supposed to be babbling about, because so far all she's done is destruction and disruption.

: Creation, destruction, call it what you want. Are you responsible for the plague ravaging Deron-Guld?



Huh? I'm very confused now. What are her purposes? Is she targeting specific people? No. Are you with the guys who attacked us on the road? You dress the same. No.

: Are you the one who has been kidnapping citizens of the city?



Of course, we can't ask questions like "do you know anything about the plague", "why are you in this plagued city looking for sacrificial victims", "why are you here", "what does Zoria want", "can you help me avoid getting railroaded by Lord Frelsi", or "did Zoria kill the editors".

: I need you to leave this place and stop what you're doing here.

: I don't think so. I'll be staying. You will too.



But... why do you need blood? Is Zoria one of those Aztec deities who needs blood to live? I, uh, don't think so, but who knows with this game.




This fight is actually a pretty nasty wakeup call if you're not paying attention. I actually went and did some shopping before coming back here, which is why Inta is carrying the Widowmaker 2-hander instead of her usual sword and board.



The first order of business is to shit summons everywhere. There are no arbitrary limits on how many critters you can have out at a time, so we dump a bunch of wolves and spiders into the chokepoint.



The AI loves targeting summons, so here you can see that one of our little spiders has been hit by a confusion effect that would be devastating if it went off on a PC.



Bjalla drops a fireball on the losers. It does very little damage.



Siracca nails the Tattered Woman with a Mindbreak spell, confusing her. The game does not hand out a lot of area effect crowd control so we can only get the Tattered Woman, but I am reluctantly forced to concede that Siracca can be useful.

I'm still dumping her when we get the chance.



From there it's just a matter of mopping up and stabbing all the bad people.



We get this presumably holy book.





This is actually foreshadowing. We of course have absolutely no context for this and when we do get context the existence of this book will make absolutely no fucking sense whatsoever.

For what it's worth, the Goddess of Greed is named "Zornilsa" and you should absolutely not confuse the two.



Also we got the bloodfoam stone for those mutually exclusive fetch quests. If anyone cares comment, otherwise it's going to the witch.



This Zoria titan didn't aggro for reasons so we murder it.



It drops a foot we need for... you guessed it! Another fetch quest!



I've beaten the game and know the whole plot so I don't understand why they are doing this.



: The mine was filled with ghouls and necromancers. I think the necromancers were in some sort of cult. They were the ones kidnapping citizens of the town, killing them and turning them into ghouls.

That's a stretch. All she said was she was sacrificing them, does that mean turning them into ghouls?



Wait, what?



You KNEW? Also, what's this about dreams?



Wait, were you trying to get us killed by sending us in without warning us about ghouls and necromancers? Why? You realize that if the party had died down there there would be five more ghouls in the army of evil, right?



Did you tell them there was a vague threat and it turned out to be necromancers?

: Let me guess, you need me to go find your missing mercenaries?

But wait, there's more!


I thought you didn't have the soldiers to investigate this! I know at least one of the mercenaries lives in Deron-Guld, if you don't have the manpower to do this how were you able to dispatch these men? Was this before the rebellion and plague started?

: It is good of you to ask.

: But first, something for your troubles. Friends will always be rewarded. And there will be more rewards to come.

: Now. To the north of here lies a vineyard, past a clearing in the woods. The last we heard, the mercenary expedidtion fought a band of hooded scoundrels and headed towards a vineyard.



This next part of the main quest has to be seen to be believed.

: Go now. And come back alive.




The warriors level up and I decide there's only so much Black Geyser a man can tolerate in one sitting.

Next Time: Cursed weapons? In MY badly made RPG?