Part 52: Superfun Superfund
Superfun Superfund
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Across this rocky valley to the northeast, looming above the natural stone outcroppings, you can see a huge building. It is a massive, Shaper-built structure. It looks like an entryway.
You are close to the entrance of the main research hall on Sucia Island. Surely, the answers to all your questions are here. In addition, no doubt, there is incredible power.
At first, the valley seems empty. Then, on the pathway ahead of you, you see a fast, blurry motion. It was only there for a moment. Odd.
Vogel could've used a comma rationer... and maybe someone to keep track of characters' genders. Danette is canonically female, but the dialogue refers to her with male pronouns in a number of places. She's not the only character this happens to. I try to fix the errors when they crop up. I don't blame Vogel for the mistakes; it's rough to keep up with such a large cast in a game with so much text.
You cautiously approach a sparse stand of pines. The road is hidden here and there by mounds of soft, dusty earth that the wind likes to toy with. One breeze kicks up into a dust devil and blows a fine mouthful of grit through your hood. It tastes sour.
Just past the trees is a small structure built into the hillside. It's too quiet; you brace yourself for an ambush. They strike from the second room, a team of spectral Shapers who have been bound here for who knows how long. They seem to have burst from the crystal containment vessels lining the walls.
The spectral Agents are especially powerful thanks to their mastery of diamond spray.
Eventually, though, you lay them all to rest.
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The Sholai defending this area brought several prisoners to this makeshift interrogation chamber. The result is unpleasant.
The dead serviles just prove that the outsiders don't feel any responsibility towards the creations Trajkov claims to respect.
Meltwaters from the mountains to the north course across this dead land, carrying all sorts of contaminants south towards Kazg.
Another blur flickers past you. If you squint, you can make out the strangely augmented Sholai you encountered out west. These guards aren't interested in fighting you, but they don't stop to speak with you either.
I lost the battle screenshots here to the strange bug afflicting my Greenshot setup, but it was about the same as the last spectral Shaper fight.
Another squad of spectral Guardians and Agents boils out of the room to the north. The combination of bad angles and many troublesome Agents chews away at your team, but you are able to keep them alive thanks to all the healing craft you've acquired on Sucia.
Your endurance is rewarded with another canister -- and this time it augments your ability to Shape the forbidden drayk.
You even find a spore baton in one of the storage cabinets.
The great western gate beckons, but you're not quite ready for that.
The sacks here contain a fine collection of extremely potent thorns, including reaper thorns. Your reaper baton has really served you well lately, so you carefully add your findings to your collection.
More used up canisters...
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The Sholai defending this area have had some success ambushing and dispatching intruders. Some of the bodies have been brought here.
The Sholai fixed up this side of the gatehouse, but the beds look utterly untouched. Everything is sparkling clean. Where do these Sholai sleep if not here?
Perhaps they don't, anymore.
You're surprised to find an intact Shaper tome here.
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This is an old Shaper logbook, used to record people and materials which passed through the west gate. It looks like the Sholai have been reading and rereading it, though you have no idea what they might have been looking for.
One entry, at the very end, catches your eye:
"Commander Frell was relieved of his entry baton. He was put out to not have been told where it was stored. He was informed that locations of all key access items were recorded in Kazg, and only Kazg."
When you exit, you find that the gate isn't open.
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A lone, small stone gate blocks your way into the research halls. There is no lever or other control. The door is recalcitrant in its refusal to allow entry. Nearby, you can see a small control panel. It still looks functional.
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There is a small, living control panel here, a sturdy and elegant wood, fungus and stone contraption of Shaper make. Luckily, the Sholai have not destroyed it.
You soon find that none of the switches on the panel are still functioning. They're just too old. There is a slot, however, that looks interesting. Usually, some sort of key is inserted in such a slot to activate the device.
You try to repair the switches, but despite your considerable mechanical skill, you have no luck.
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You insert the entry baton into the slot. It's a perfect fit. You hear a metallic, grinding sound coming from inside the east wall. Nothing else happens, and none of the switches on the panel become active.
You head east.
Okay, the Vats aren't the worst area objectively; it's just annoying by this stage of the game. We did nastier environmental hazard dungeons earlier on. But by this point, the Vats feel like a waste of time. Part of this is because of how I play the game: I aim to hit every area and see what I can dig up. But there's really nothing very important here. It's just an alternative route to the Geneforge. Nothing story relevant happens. You'd only take this path if you were concerned about facing off against the Sholai without the Taker amulet. This is a speedbump, and it's not even one that the Sholai set against you -- if you'll recall, Serabryakov asked Solution to get rid of the servant mind poisoning this area.
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You enter the vat region of the research halls. Shaper work always requires a large quantity of chemicals, some neutral, some noxious. Those substances need a safe place to be mixed and stored, well away from the researchers.
These tunnels were such a place. However, when Sucia Island was abandoned, the people here didn't have time to properly clean out this area. The vats have been left to fester and rot. The result is simple and unpleasant.
The air is hazy and heavy with foul substances. It's hard to see far away from you (which, at least may make it harder for enemies to see you). You have to struggle to not start choking.
In the shadows, you hear strange, alien gurgling noises and the sounds of clawed feet against stone.
You pass two rooms of protective clothing, none of it better than what you're already wearing, and much of it hopelessly corroded.
If you've somehow arrived here with bad equipment and low resistances, the vat equipment grants poison and acid resistance. It's better than nothing.
Worse awaits you in the southern access tunnel. Someone decided to protect this area with mines.
Disabling them is tedious under the best of circumstances. Disabling them while your eyes water and burn from whatever horrid fumes permeate this place is downright hellish.
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This room is full of large Shaper control panels. These specimens were the same sort of life form as the half-organic, half-stone control panels you have found elsewhere, except much larger and more complicated.
With the size and complexity, however, comes delicacy. They have much shorter lifespans. Even if they had not been seared and poisoned by the environment, they still would likely have died years ago.
They are inert and useless now.
This is one of the few reasons to bother with the Vats.
To your surprise, the canister here seems intact. The agents inside improve your command of mass restoration, which you immediately test to buffer your creations' stamina against the awful air.
Someone has also left a variety of potent thorns inside the pots left haphazardly on the floor.
Your finger slips while attempting to disarm a green box mine and an ur-glaahk pops out. Unfortunately for it, your creations fall upon it with something like glee. Maybe they needed something to vent their irritation on.
You are amazed to find that this servant mind is still alive. It was created with filtered nostrils and a thick skin, designed to protect it from the harsh atmosphere.
It looks very pleased to see a Shaper. At last, at last I can get instruction. Thank you for coming at last. I am Mind Karalta. Things have been very difficult."
At least Karalta doesn't seem obviously insane. "What difficulties have you had here?" You are so tired of insane servant minds.
"The outsiders. They came! Outsiders, intruders, picking through your secrets! There were minds placed here to deal with such intrusions. They destroyed them! Or, those that were still active, anyway... Poor me. Poor, weak me. I did all I could. I did what defending I could. But my abilities were weak."
All right, a whiny mind isn't much better than an insane one. You find that your sympathy is almost exhausted. Perhaps it's because you've been tromping around in here for what feels like hours. "What defenses did you make?"
"I turned the power spirals back on. And I heated the frozen substances, and burned them, making noxious gasses. And I made defenders, although they soon went rogue. And I made mines. I was very thorough."
"Yes, you were." You sigh. Karalta has done untold damage to Sucia Island for nothing. The outsiders already control access to the Geneforge. "Can you clean the air and shut off the power? And deactivate the mines?"
"Now that you are here, it is safe. I can turn off the spirals which are heating the chemicals." You hear a distant clang. "I will start to pump the poison gas out of the air." The hum of distant fans reaches you. "And it will take some time, but I will deactivate the mines. It will be safe for you later." You hear Karalta release some sort of control spores.
We already disarmed or detonated all the mines, but whatever.
"Can you get the rogues to stop attacking me?"
"It is beyond my power. Glaahk minds are too strong for me to control. I am sorry, Shaper. You will have to deactivate them yourself."
You'd rather not, but you can't leave rogues roaming around with nothing to keep them in check. "I don't need anything more from you, then."
"All right."
Perhaps that isn't true. Karalta eyes you hopefully when you don't immediately leave. It is lonely.
"Tell me more about these halls," you say.
The mind looks confused. "The great research halls of Sucia Island? Home of the greatest minds of your people? What can you not know?"
You shrug uncomfortably. Karalta's line of questioning won't lead anywhere good.
"Well, just east of here is the main research center. North of that is the holding cells. East of that is the quarters. And east of the holding cells and north of the quarters is the Geneforge. Be careful in the holding cells, though. I know that it is full of rogues. It's been so for years. Even the intruders couldn't clear it out."
"What is the Geneforge?" you ask. You don't expect Karalta knows more than you do, though. You've gotten so close...
"I can tell you what chemicals went into it, but I don't know what it does. All I know is that it is like a huge, more powerful version of the learning canisters we made here. Much, much more powerful. Oh, we had a time making the ingredients for it. The stories I could tell." Its eyes half-close in satisfaction.
"How might I use the Geneforge?"
"I don't know. I don't know anything about its power, or how to tap it."
"Why was this island abandoned?"
"Well, when Danette came to give me her final instructions, she said that the power here was deemed unsafe and unstable. She said that it worried the council, and it worried her. But I don't think she was talking to me. Just herself. But I still heard. She did tell me, though, that when Shapers returned, if she wasn't among them, they should see her shade."
"Who was Danette?" you ask.
"How can you not know of one of her fame and intelligence? She was the head of research here."
You're bungling this. "Her shade? Where is it?"
"She said she left it in the holding cells area, in a secured location." That's interesting. Mind Karalta looks up at you obediently. "What can I do for you now, Shaper?"
"What do you know about the outsiders?"
"Only that, when they came in here, I could kill them very quickly. They soon stopped coming."
"I see. Thank you." You mull over Karalta's fate. Serabryakov asked you to kill this servant mind, but he also surrendered the reward to you already. You don't have any particular need to see Karalta dead. He's sane and has remained loyal to the Shapers. On the other hand... "You have served my people well. You can rest now. Deactivate yourself."
"But Shaper! I am still needed! I need to control and clean up the chemicals! And I may need to restrain more Outsiders. Danette would not agree with this, and she ordered me! You must let me live."
The mind's plea tugs at you. Karalta will surely starve to death here with no one to attend to its needs and no one able to make more mind nutrients. But it clearly wishes to live, and for now is still healthy. It has performed as well as could be expected, given its long abandonment and the sudden arrival of the Sholai on these shores.
"You are right. Never mind." You're not interested in making Sholai lives much easier, anyway. They've left enough nasty traps for you to stumble over.
We can insist that Karalta deactivate itself and it will resist: "No! Danette said, and I listen! I must continue! I have stronger orders! Leave me be!"
But if you say, "Look at the mess you made. Poison everywhere. Rogues running loose. Mines. Danette would not approve. You must shut down. You are a rogue, yourself."
Mind Karalta looks miserable but, in the end, it knows it must obey. "Yes, Shaper. Though I do not wish to, I must rest. Thank you for letting me serve."
Shame is powerful.
"Thank you for letting me continue, Shaper." Karalta sags with relief.
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The power to heat and preserve the chemical goop made here runs to the vats through crystal fiber conduits running under the stone floor. The power itself comes from the chamber ahead of you.
The air is heavier and more toxic here, and extremely hot as well. Ambient magical energy starts to make you feel very ill. The room ahead is a very hostile environment.
There's no reason to enter this chamber, and it can really mess you up fast.
You turn back before the energy ahead turns on you.
The obelisk says "VAT CONTROL."
The eastern gate leads towards the Geneforge by route of the holding cells. It sounds rather unpleasant, but it can't be worse than what you've found here in the vats.
This obelisk says, "RESEARCH VATS. Do not enter without protective gear." You can see why -- all Karalta's efforts have led to vats that still bubble with ongoing reactions.
As you head towards the vats, you encounter the first of several skirmishes with Karalta's army of feral glaahks.
Does anyone else pronounce this "glock" or is it just me?
The rogues don't last long, but your creations are scratched up. Fortunately, there's a healthy essence pool in a nearby alcove.
The scale of this facility is immense. The Geneforge wasn't just a feat of research, but also of engineering and logistics.
You'd have an easier time appreciating its scale if you weren't constantly exterminating pests along the way.
Some unlucky being was caught by the glaahks. Their vat gear is still intact.
Geokinesis manages to get close enough to the core to transmit a general idea of its layout to you before the vlish is forced to back off.
Nothing seems obviously wrong. The power spires are still cooling.
It's time to head east.
This place seems familiar... You're back to the central labs, before the old Shaper quarters.
Obnoxiously enough, the crystal pylons here are still active.
You can take care of that, though.
The pylons are probably meant to protect the crystal boxes and containment vessels, but there's little left of value here.
Some Shaper clearly liked pylons too much.
You do find a ring in the last box you check...
The Shaper's boon is a nice reward for fighting the highest level pylons in the game.
Fortunately, you've run out of pylons to shatter.
The downside of trying to play through every area is that it really hecks up any kind of pacing.