Part 5: Hamlin Fucks Us Over

Hamlin Fucks Us Over

Welcome back! Last time on Black Geyser we did some of the most tedious and unimaginative side quests known to man. Today we're going to be continuing the main plot, which is to find Inta's birth certificate and present it at the Hall of Records to prove that we're actually Lady Espen.



We are now closer to our goal of getting 100% physical resistances thanks to the gloves Hamlin "liberated" for us last update.





The Espen Estate is infested with blue scorpions of large size.



They are easily handled by ordering the party to autoattack. The only thing to worry about is one of the non-fighters drawing aggro, and even then these things are jokes.



Is Eddie Murphy in this game????



Anyway, this starts Hamlin's quest chain.

: What... what happened here?



I have this selected because it's just a really weird line. The game pointed out already that Aldnar can't inherit the estate because he's a traitor to the crown. Thus everything in here - once our identity is proven - is legally ours. Who exactly is going to give a shit if we take our own property?

: Undoubtedly. I suppose the wrong people heard the estate was abandoned and looted it.



: Do you think whoever did this might still be inside?



: All right. Remember we're after anything that looks like official documents.

: Got it.




The treason room is totally smashed. It is also full of scorpions.



There's nothing here, but I want to point out that the AI, instead of going after Inta, had the scorpions circle to the right.



The scorpion appeared behind the front line, but had absolutely no problem just wailing on the fighters it could barely hurt instead of Bjalla's low HP ass.



This feels like it should have some kind of emotional significance to our character, but the game's writers have so far managed to make nothing have any impact whatsoever. This is our father's house that we grew up in, and it's treated the same as every other boring CRPG dungeon.



There's a magic portal in this room with a manticore!



I order Bjalla to use a damage spell for once. The manticore is stupid easy and gets beaten to death.



The reward is this amulet that lets us cast a stun spell 2/day and makes us immune to illusions. It's apparently fluffed as that stupid labyrinth from Tides of Numenera.



Beline the not-Imoen has a sidequest for us. We are absolutely doing this because it's inadvertently hilarious.

: What happened here? The damage seems excessive, even for bandit raiders.

: It was all down to Aldnar and his... his terrible soldiers. I was already on my knees. I had thought I would be taken prisoner, and when they saw I would earn them no ransom perhaps they would release me. Or they would sell me for a slave, but at least I would keep my life. But they simply cut me down, with less fuss than a scullery maid breaking a chicken's neck. Then they held a great feast over the still-warm bodies. Even when his brigands had had their fill of mayhem, Aldnar egged them on. He wanted to see everything destroyed.

I just want to point out we haven't seen a slave or seen any references to slavery at all. I don't have any quarrel with Aldnar hating Lord Espen so much he wanted to burn down the estate - it honestly seems kind of reasonable because Espen was kind of a piece of shit.



See all the monsters are in the house not because it was wrecked and abandoned but because Aldnar did it! Or something.

: What is it that keeps you tied to this awful ruin?

: It was Winona. I linger here because of my sister Winona. Since my killer didn't have the courtesy to give me an easy end, my thoughts lingered on her, when we last spoke in our home in Deron-Guld, as my belly bled into the straw. We had had a fight, you see, a terrible row, before I came here to work for Lord Espen. I thought I should hate her forever for what she'd done.



From what I remember of this quest the writers are not nearly clever enough to tie this to greed for expensive jewelry.

: Very well, Beline, I will find the golden conch for you.

: You will? Thank you, Inta Rume, and please hurry! The pain of wandering through this shambles does not lessen; it stings just as badly as the day I was murdered. The family home was in Deron-Guld Center, on the east side of the Guild Hall. That is where you will find it.




The house is full of boring ass scorpions, but they were summoned by Aldnar the Turbo Bad Man, a fact that does not make fighting them any more interesting.



I guess when they were trying to ruin the house no one thought to burn it, and no one searched this particular fallen bookcase either, even though you've been given strict instructions by your commander to loot and destroy the place.




"Harvestend". I'm sorry, this is nearly as bad as Dark Deity's VigorSun (and before you ask, that is somewhere in the LP queue).

Let's talk about this a little more, because ultimately the birth certificate is wasted potential. Lord Espen raised us not as a noble daughter but as a weird servant girl reduced to menial tasks like serving drinks and being ordered around by maids. The game is strange about class - almost every noble is portrayed as an elitist foppish asshole misusing aristocratic privilege to be rude to our hero and order them to run minor errands. Yet instead of actually having anything to say about hereditary aristocracy, they are not wrong to be rude to Inta because it's deplorable behavior but because Inta was secretly one of them all along, and indeed Inta can turn around and act snobbish toward the commoners. The game goes to great lengths to explain to us that Espen kept Inta as a servant to protect her from the Satanists or whatever the gods were afraid of, but he also conspicuously hired her the same expensive tutors and sword masters he hired for Aldnar and doesn't seem to have bothered to try to keep it a secret.



Ultimately the writing is just incoherent and doesn't have anything to say. Class seems like a theme - the rebellion in Deron-Guild is supposedly led by a council of nobles striving against the king - but the game awkwardly erases most of the common folk and doesn't have anything to say. At best it's just wish fulfillment - wouldn't it be cool if you were a hereditary noble?



Oh I guess it's a cutscene.



: Who could have done this?



Naturally the game developers didn't change the dialog even though Hamlin presumably heard Beline's spiel.

: They're not here now. Whatever they were after, I hope they didn't get it.



Again, Beline explained who they were. I don't know... you know what, fuck it.

: The damage to the structure is extensive, and definitely not the work of thieves. Look at what's been left behind.



: Something catch your eye there, Hamlin?



It's a bit of subtle characterization where presumably Aldnar ordered his soldiers to leave his mother's portrait alone. This raises the question of why he just left Lady Espen's portrait behind if he cares enough to spare her, or if he actually cared why he just had random scorpions wandering around and shit - you know what, fuck it, I've put in more thought then the devs did.

: You - you're thinking how to steal that portrait, aren't you?



: But what in Yerengal are you going to do with it?



: Come, Hamlin. Stop lying to me.



: Not good enough.



Alright thread, we have a decision to make! Are we letting Hamlin steal the portrait of our dead stepmother?

Choose wisely!