Part 14: Grave Mistakes, Part 3

Update 14: Grave Mistakes, Part 3







While we're travelling, a fun fact: The Temple of Ishap in Malac's Cross is the only place you should go if you ever want to get gear blessed, it has the absolutely cheapest Tier 3 blesses in the entire game.

Oh, and, if you head off-road here you can find another moredhel chest.





CHEST

Once again this one messes a bit with the formula, like the BLADE chest we encountered previously.

The only really worthwhile thing in this one is snagging the shovel inside if you don't already have one. Most graves are not high-value targets, but a few are, and predictably we need a shovel to finish up this chapter's highlight sidequest anyway.




East of Malac's Cross are two locations of note, the Temple of Lims-Kragma and... something special we'll check out after we're done annoying a bunch of death cultists.



Here, we can actually bother the high priestess for some exposition.


Lims-Kragma is a goddess of death in the same sense as Morr is in Warhammer Fantasy, that is to say, death as a part of the natural cycle of things. There aren't exactly a lot of undead marching around Midkemia, skeletons, vampires and zombies aren't generic enemies(at least not for a couple of books yet), which leaves the Temple a bit redundant compared to similar faiths in other settings, until the Black Slayers show up. The one thing that makes the Nighthawks in Silverthorn and Sethanon(as well as a contingent of Moredhel who have sworn the same oaths), somewhat scary, is that the Black Slayers among them refuse to die unless their hearts are cut out and burned, or magic cuts their puppet strings permanently. Until then, they literally recover in a few minutes from any sort of damage done to them, and can be remotely puppeteered(and made even more scary by), the dark masters who empower them. The Temple of Lims-Kragma helps out mostly by offering final rest to a repentant Slayer in exchange for intelligence on Murmandamus' doings.

It's a good thing we've yet to meet anything that scary.




I know this part of the Kingdom well enough to know that this is neither the road to Sethanon or the road to Romney.
I just wanted to check up on something down this way...





The party visiting this statue is entirely canon. Let's have Owyn touch it.

This seems like a terrible idea.

Good thing Owyn doesn't get a vote in this party.





While your body is lying, safe, still and silent in a cove near Malac's Cross, your mind has journeyed elsewhere...here... Your arrival has been expected. I am pleased to have you as my honored guest, Owyn Beleforte of Tiburn.

Me?

At journey's end you shall not be as you are nor may you turn back the way you have come. The times ahead of you will be filled with hardship and many times you will believe yourself far less significant than you truly are. In the days to come, you may stand at a critical juncture between Rythar and Mythar and if that comes to pass you should know this: A time comes for all things to die...

What does that mean? Who are Rythar and Mythar?

I can explain in no measure more as you yet understand your world. In years and in wisdom you will come to me again and a great destiny will be upon you by then. You will be ready for the fullness of truth on that distant day. Until such time, you may consult me on other matters.

Tales say that dragons know their own destinies, but I had not heard that they knew the destinies of others.

I am no dragon though I wear a dragon's skin. I am the Oracle of the Aal and I am the last of my race. I am ancient, older than dwarf or elf, older than dragons and older than the Valheru who were their masters. Stars that at my birth flamed with violent power have long grown cold, expired. All these things I have seen and farther yet I see into the things that might be.

You can see the future?

I can glimpse things that may be. Such was the gift given to all those of my race.

[GORATH]

A moredhel travels with us named Gorath. Is he what he says he is? Can we trust him?

He is not what he names himself to be, though even he may not know the lie of his heart. He will be a strong ally unto you and I believe he may even be a champion to the kin who now curse his name. A great destiny awaits him should he have the courage to renounce his pain.

[DELEKHAN]

Gorath has told us of a moredhel leader, Delekhan. Will he cross the Teeth of the World and attack the Kingdom?

Delekhan will never cross the boundary between the Kingdom and the Northlands, but through treachery he will strike a blow against both the Kingdom and his own Nations of the North.

Can't you be more specific? Where is he going to strike? What is the nature of this treachery?

I do not see futures as you imagine, but futures as they perhaps can be. I know only that Delekhan engineers a deceit with six magicians and that it concerns the fate of the Kingdom.

It feels like the Oracle may originally have been intended as a sort of hint station for players who got lost, and she does actually have useful hints for a couple of the less obvious sidequests(like, for instance, the goddamn one we're headed to Sethanon to get involved in shortly), but otherwise she doesn't have an awful lot to say. In the book she mostly just shares her thoughts on Gorath after Owyn asks if Gorath is about to stab them all while they sleep, and then Owyn wakes up.

She is, in fact, a hint that something very important is going on, something you'd only know about at this point if you have read Darkness At Sethanon, as the Oracle is very closely related to an Important Metaplot Thing. Since this is also one of the bigger reveals towards the end of the story, I'll be leaving this one out for now.

Owyn! Are you alright?
Yes... yes, I'm fine. A dragon just told me you were our friend.
...
No, he isn't high, the oracle is real, the oracle is also a dragon, and I'm somewhat happy to hear she thinks well of you.




The Oracle's roughly halfway between Malac's Cross and Lyton, and as we're on our way northwards I manage to bungle my way into a trap because I figure I can take a shortcut back to the main road.




I wish they'd made more of these traps more challenging, perhaps mixing in some more enemies and such, since it's usually blatantly obvious where the various crystals have got to go to disable the lightning rods or block the fireball throwers.




As usual, it's protecting a chest.

NOTHING




Coming back to the road we also encounter a novelty: a chest that isn't hidden away in the ass end of a thicket of brambles and bushes.



KNOCKER

This one actually has something interesting and gives me an excuse to talk about one of the worst mechanics of the game.



Keys. So, every non-code lock in the game can have one of four states: Unlockable only with lockpicks, unlockable only with a special key, unlockable with lockpicks OR a generic key, not unlockable(there are a few of these, like the "fake" ways up from the Krondor sewers). Now, the problem is that being openable by a key does not immediately make a lock harder to pick, in fact, of the locks openable both with non-generic keys and lockpicks, James can open 7 of them at the start of chapter 2, 15 if we hand him the Amulet of the Upright Man(of course we did). How many are there across the entire game? 23. There's also nothing in the game that really hints, to you, the player, whether a given lock can be opened by a key or not., and all these statistics are also hidden from the average game player, so you never know if you want to grab some keys from a store or not.

On top of this, keys are also not expendable. If used right, they never break, if used wrong they sometimes randomly break(assuming they aren't special unique keys).

This is a case where less obfuscated mechanics would've worked better. If the player always knew if a non-generic key opened a given lock, and the lockpicking requirement, and keys were always expended when used, it would turn it into a tactical decision of whether to spend limited resources(keys, and thus by extension money) or bypass a chest that they were unable to pick. Oh and if keys were actually usable for more than a fraction of the game's chests. By far the majority of them are Moredhel wordlocks.





Rant aside, as we travel the road between Malac's Cross and Lyton(devoid of combat encounters, nicely enough), we come across a lone house with a well. This house and the associated well are related to a very important bug. Let's have a talk with the owner, oh and poke at the well, of course.


So at first glance, this well is a ripoff unless the party is severely beat. Resting on the road will bring you up to 80% max health for a pittance in rations, and the remaining 20% can be covered by about 10 gold worth of resting at an inn. This well jumps the entire party straight to full health for 25 gold.

Or it would.

Except that someone fat-fingered the code and Flarr never takes any actual payment for it. So any time you can be bothered to trek here, the party can get a 100% heal for free. It's pretty handy and I make use of it a few times while dealing with this area since... the party takes a few nicks and scratches.




Looks like we're coming up to the main road between Sethanon and Lyton.
To Sethanon, then?
...alright, yes, but only because anyone mucking around up there might be a matter of national security.




The area south of Sethanon proper actually has a number of small farms and homes scattered around, some of which are relevant to us. Let's go see if the farmers here know about any corpse-snatching weirdos in the region.




This first house just spawns an ambush of four quegans, which isn't really a threat to this party but could be a nasty surprise to someone who doesn't see it coming.



They do drop a two-handed broadsword that would be a useful upgrade for someone coming here early.



This is also one of the few fields that has a scarecrow which, if interacted with, the party will inscrutably attempt to yank out of the ground. Don't ask me why.





The area contains a number of worthwhile little caches to either side of the road, including an untrapped chest with a 47% Ruby, which is a pretty great score in terms of money if you find the right store to sell it at(some stores have higher buying and selling prices than others, so if you really want to min/max, you're going to be doing a lot of travelling. It's not really necessary, though, without doing any exploits, simply by going north and through the Dimwood early, this party is probably set for gold for the rest of the game), but soon we arrive at the second farm of the area.



These guys being RPG protagonists, they obviously break into the guy's barn before doing anything else. Also because I couldn't remember if there was anything useful there.



Odd things to have in a barn, what are these?


Oh, I recognize these. They're seals for the Glazer's Guild in Romney... don't ask me how they ended up in a barn this far away from Romney, however.
Clear some space in your packs for them, since we're headed to Romney anyway... you never know what might come in handy.

With that bit of theft done, the owner isn't in his house, but if we march into the field past the house...



Quite a nice little stead you have here...



Probably wouldn't, but this seems like such a nice lot to give up. Why would you want to?

Everybody knows that something evil happened at the Battle of Sethanon, definitely unnatural. Me myself, I used to live in the center of town before King Lyam offered up the money that I should leave. I didn't think much of leaving, but I thought that the evil would stay there.

And it hasn't? It's creeping down the road from Sethanon?

Listen boy, I don't care for your attitude. You may be all educated, but it don't mean you know nothing about the world. If you're wise, you'll stay away from Sethanon and take anybody else that'll go with you. There's something evil here abouts and I don't want to be about when at last it gets here...

So, how much do you want for your land?

I...uh...what?

If this evil is so imminent and you're anxious to be away from it, I'd be interested in buying this little lot of yours. I'm not afraid of ghosts. What will you sell it to me for?

Well I haven't actually decided to make the move as yet... Don't want to get the cart before the horse you know... It'll likely be a while before I sell, see... Don't want to rush it...

Do you know anything about the land that adjoins yours by any chance? Is it for sale?

Uh, no. Not anymore. I bought it when old widow Petrumh moved out.

Bought it? I thought you said you wished to move?

I do and... Look, I haven't time to stand about talking all day. If you're interested in the land go ahead and look a round - just stay clear of my stead. Now, I got things to do. Good day.

Good day to you, sir.

James' first instinct on interacting with people in this game often seems to be to give them a hard time for no obvious reason except that something about them basically offends him. Still, I'm sure Max here is completely unrelated to what's going on.

Like hell he is. But we're going to need some sort of evidence or blackmail if we want to wring him dry.





And thus we reach the unnamed town south of Sethanon. New Sethanon, possibly? It's not very large, but it holds probably the most convoluted sidequest in the game except for the grain one. First, let's knock on a few doors and harass the locals, then we'll go to the tavern.


Now, for the inn.



It has the usual options of barding, drinking, fooding, sleeping and listening to rumours, and I actually get a relevant one this time.


Like the Temple of Lims-Kragma, it's an extremely heavy-handed hint that there's a spell for making Black Slayers go to eternal naptime. Now, let's harass the tavern owner.

Hello there, may I buy...



I was offering, miss, to buy you a drink...

Oh...oh, sorry. I was thinking you were stopping in to buy something from my goods store across the road. Since my father's death I've had the run of these two places, the tavern here and the goods store across the way. You know, I've had folks in here, four a week by last count, all offering money for a sword made by a hermit up North. Fool that I am, I sent the word out, but that was before things started happening in my store. I've since closed up things for a bit.

Closed your store? Why? What sorts of things were going on in there?

You'll think I'm foolish...I think I'm foolish...

Tell me and I'll listen. If I laugh once, even once, you may upend a cask of ale over my head.

You'll pay for the cask if I do... All right then. I'll tell you. In the past few weeks, I've seen a man prowling about in my shop.

That's easy enough. Between companions and myself, we can get rid of your prowler by dinnertime tomorrow.

Can you now? You run through ghosts as easy as that, poleax poltergeists in your spare time?

Ghosts? This prowler of yours is a ghost?

Told you that you wouldn't believe me. I'll put it to you though. If you can find a way to put the ghost in my shop to rest, then I'll reopen my shop and give you the Galon Griefmaker that I bought from the hermit. Simple as that.

That offer is nearly as attractive as the woman delivering it. Thank you, fair lady.

The offer of a sword upgrade is nice in itself, but especially when you know what sword she's offering. It's a really good elf-specialized sword, compared to the Keshian Tapir it loses a tiny bit of strength in exchange for being much more accurate, and hard-hitting swings are worth nothing if they all miss. This is absolutely worth going for, especially as, as long as you can get here in the first place, you can actually complete this entire quest without getting into any fights. It doesn't trigger until chapter 2, though, so no speedrunning down here from LaMut to snag it.



Time to investigate, any proper haunting starts with a dead person, so let's go check out the local graves.



Most of the graves contain nothing, but one is one we need to poke at.


So now we suspect, confirmed by rumours from Nivek and Lysle, that this haunting is because someone defiled Jared's grave and stole his hand. However, at this point it's a bit unclear where you should go next, especially since the next triggers need to actually be done in the right order(not that you can softlock, they'll just not trigger at all until you've done the preceding ones, the only excepting is meeting Lysle). Mind, I don't even think I got the order right since at one point I had one of the triggers refuse to fire and re-talked to multiple NPC's to make it do so. And that was AFTER I pulled up a FAQ to figure out which step I screwed up. Now imagine someone trying to figure this out without a FAQ on their first playthrough.

In any case, we now need to go back to Hershel...


Something which really reveals nothing new, but is apparently still important! Also after leaving Hershel's house I get turned around and blunder into the trees where I find some more chests.




WIND

Spare change and a low-quality crossbow.



BLOOD

This one contains some more money and a new spell, "Thoughts Like Clouds." It's a spell that prevents enemy mages from casting spells(though not from moving and attacking physically), this is theoretically a very good spell except that for the same cost you can prevent them from casting by popping a Rusalki next to them, which will also shoot at enemies or simply hit them with Grief of 1000 Nights which will ALSO prevent them from moving or fighting. Still, it goes towards completionism.




Now, while messing with those chests I REALLY got turned around and ended up heading west when I thought I was heading east, until I looked at the compass. By this point I realized I had almost reached the turn-off north towards old Sethanon at the southern edge of the Dimwood and I thought, hey, why not? I remembered the path as not being very scary...




After all, look at this! A single shade? I will banish this effortlessly. EFFORTLESSLY.

Of course, there are five battles on the road to Sethanon, featuring, respectively: 1, 2, 4, 5 and 5 shades. Which ones I bungle into is somewhat randomized by stealth rolls, but after banishing this one and taking another few steps...



Alright, so, with these fights being ambush fights, the Shades always win initiative. They have ranged attacks that MAY be able to miss, but I've never seen them miss, and each shot does ~25 damage. This means that if they focus their attacks, they can huck ~125 damage at each party member per round, and our least beefy character is Owyn, who can take barely 130 damage before going down, while the most beefy, Gorath, clocks in at around 170(combined Stamina and Health, so once the first half is down, they're in trouble anyway). Secondly, the Shades seem to take halved damage from most sources, with Gorath's usually-formidable swings doing barely 20 damage to them, and each shade has between 60 and 90 total damage needed to put them back in the grave.



The first round scraps half of Gorath's health and puts Owyn under threat so he can't summon rusalki, forcing him to resort to dogs instead. This, on the bright side, gives me two per use, but expends limited Horn uses, plus there's a hard cap of four dogs summonable per battle, not on the field at once, but summonable at all. I can ALSO summon four rusalki alongside that, but it would require a ghost to not be currently subjecting Owyn to its terrible grave breath.



Sadly, in the grand battle of dogs vs ghosts... ghosts win. Also note that at this point I have still yet to kill a single Shade.



By the time James and Owyn end up on the ground, Gorath has managed to flatten two Shades and is now in a three-on-one fight with enemies that can hack off half his health per round, and pausing to consume Restoratives eats up his entire turn.



It ends predictably. So let's, uh, reload, shall we?



After reloading things are already off to a better start as I'm now hitting the four-shade battle rather than one of the five-shade battles. That's a significant reduction in the volume of murder headed the party's way every round. Additionally, I've used an Alfathain's Icer that I picked up from a dead Nighthawk earlier on James and Gorath's swords. Normally it would be a +50% damage boost against enemies, in this case it's barely a 25% boost, but I still desperately need it since it may in edge cases cause a Shade to go down in one hit less.



Secondly, while I have no great insight into exactly how the AI makes decisions, Shades seem to shoot from afar about 2 out of 3 times, and the remaining 1 out of 3 times they rush in for a melee attack that does basically the same thing as their ranged attack. This time, they all stood off at range, allowing Owyn to get started on pumping out rusalki. The rusalki last about two or three attacks each, and seem to be priority targets for the shades, thus providing a significant amount of ablative armor for the party.



James still eats shit because he's a fragile little babyman, though.




Owyn cuts it close with the rusalki and starts switching to dogs, as the shades start losing some of their number, they kill one of the dogs and something... odd happens.




????????????
What the hell was in those rations we ate last night?

It starts flickering through multiple overworld sprites, mostly gravestones and, once, even a campfire.






I'm not even sure where the brick/stone sprite/texture is from.

I vote that we throw the horn in a river when this fight is over. This is absolutely too strange.
I no longer want to be a wizard.



Weirdness aside, the battle actually ends up going in our favour. Afterwards, Owyn and Gorath forcefeed James a liter or so of restoratives and they start the trip back towards Sethanon, this time thankfully uninterrupted.



The dog turned into what?
A campfire, a gravestone and some bricks.
I'm starting to regret taking this route, and this adventure, but now we're here... let's have a closer look.



It's around this point that Gorath pops in with a somewhat belated message. You could have maybe pointed that out half an hour ago, I would've still ignored you, but it would've been more fitting.




Despite claiming that Sethanon is somehow important to Midkemian history, it's literally never mentioned in the books until A Darkness At Sethanon where it exists for roughly five minutes before getting annihilated by a magical apocalypse at the climax of the book, ending the Moredhel invasion under the False Murmandamus and giving everyone for miles extremely weird and trippy visions. The government then pays everyone to fuck off from Sethanon and its environs and never come back, which seems like a totally non-suspicious thing to do.

Predictably this also means that, despite the town screen, Sethanon has no amenities to offer. But it DOES have an old storeroom to loot...



As expected, the rations are all spoiled, but everything else is good, including the spells, which are...

Dragon's Breath: Creates a fog bank which lessens the aggro radius of enemies both visible and ambush, potentially allowing you to simply walk past them. Useful if there's a fight in a given area that keeps kicking your ass, but otherwise not super noteworthy.

Dannon's Delusion: Creates a fake double of a party member that lasts for a given number of rounds before expiring and which should have equal targeting priority to the real party member. Slightly cheaper than a rusalki, but can't attack like a rusalki. May not have an upper limit, though.

And Grief we already have, as one of the game's MVP spells.

Now... let's get the fuck out of here and back to our other side trip. No having side trips inside side trips. We currently need to head back to harass Max Feeber again.



This time, we're breaking into his house before talking to him(for some reason, the previous stages of the quest trigger this as being a good idea to Owyn).




In true videogame fashion, anything with a skull on it is important. Let's go interrogate Max about why he's got grave goods lying around his house.



What do you mean?

I mean, the three of us found a burial cloth and we think you have something to do with all this evil that is going on around here. You've been desecrating graves haven't you?

You broke into my house! I'll tell the constable for this!

If he were still living in town I might feel threatened, but I rather imagine you've already managed to scare him off. Now talk, or I'm going to have a cozy little chat with a friend of mine named Nivek - Prince Arutha's tax collector - nice fellow. I think the two of you will get along marvelously...

One grave! One grave only, I dug up. I don't remember the fellow's name now, but he used to own the Six Toe Tavern before Nia took over the shop. I thought that maybe I could scare her into moving out and selling to me but she's too darn stubborn.

What did you do with the corpse?

No corpse about him! He was down to his skeleton. I tried to rebury him but I never found one of his hands. It's bound to be near the graveyard. I think I may have dropped it when I was near old Hershel's house.

What else?

That's it. That's all I know! Honest. Dug him up and then I reburied him.

We'll need to find that hand then and bury it. No thanks to you. Good bye sir and I would advise that you stay away from the Six Toe Tavern from now on. I doubt you will be warmly greeted.

This absolute prick dug up Nia's father's corpse to try and scare her out of her property, like a fucking Scooby Doo villain. What an absolute twat. I'm sad there's no option to stab him in the brain and be done with it.

Once we've talked to Max, we need to head further east to Lyton.




Lyton...



Is patrolled by tax collectors who'll hassle you unless you pay, now, we could pay them, but...

That's my money! I earned it fair and square by throwing fireballs at elves and looting their corpses!

We could also tell them to fuck off, at which point trying to continue down the road triggers a battle. Alternately we could just hug the mountains south or north of Lyton as that bypasses the tax collectors. But let's say we fight them like a bunch of savage libertarians who hear the word "taxes."



This triggers a battle with five Quegans(or east of Lyton, four quegans), who are ostensibly tax collectors despite being dressed like pirates.

See, killing the tax collectors was the right thing to do. They're obviously just a bunch of corrupt scoundrels masquerading as tax officials.

They're of unexceptional strength, but unique in two ways: Firstly, they leave no corpses behind, and thus are only good for training. Secondly, 36 in-game hours later, their encounter respawns at full strength. You could theoretically use it to grind up combat skills, but there's no great need for it. You can also turn off the tax collectors by bringing a number of suits of high-quality kingdom armor to the local "Lord" Lyton, but that's an awful lot of effort since our inventories are full of meth, steroids, food, quarrels and looted valuables.



Good luck taxing my army of ghosts!




Lyton is unremarkable UNLESS we've talked to Lysle, talked to Nia, inspected the grave, and then talked to Hershel to get his second dialogue, then, upon going to the inn...




This allows us to actually talk to Glover, the guy who bought the hand, otherwise he just ignores us when we interact with his house. There's also another bit of Chapter 2-only dialogue from one of the random people in the inn.


Now, we go outside and interact with Glover's house...




This might seem like an awful lot to pay for...



This. But it leads us to a Griefmaker, which literally no shops in the game carry, and is thus quite a good purchase(if it WAS in a shop, the base price would be 350 gold anyway, so still a good price). Now to go put Jared's soul to rest.








Now we just need to tell Nia that we saved the day and get our reward...




I don't know how you've done it, but bless you. I've not heard a knock or a bump coming from my shop for hours! First time in weeks! After I do a little dusting, I should be able to reopen it for business. And seeing that you've held up your end of the bargain, I'll hold up mine. As requested, you can have the Galon Griefmaker I told you about. Thank you again and please come by the shop across the street any time. I promise I'll give you the best bargains you'll find!

Thank you, fine lady. It was our pleasure to serve you.

As a side effect, this also opens Nia's shop(previously there'd just be a "CLOSED FOR BUSINESS" sign in the window), and while it's somewhat out of the way and doesn't really sell anything unique, another shop is always useful. Guides say it's supposed to be an extra-cheap shop that buys almost anything, but from what I can tell from the actual FAQ site and in-game experience, it's neither.