Part 60: On the Road of Revenge (Part 2)
Part 60 - On the Road of Revenge (Part 2).jpg)

Continuing from where we left off, our journey towards the Heart of Feuerstelle proceeds much the same as it did the first time. Marta tags along with us as we get knocked out and wake up in the spirit's realm where the concept of following the hottest trends in interior design has been taken to its extreme...

...exchange pleasantries with the locals in the only language we both understand...

...and reach the Heart itself who acts all big and tough for a while and eventually tries to convince us to discard the amulet that's protecting our spirit from getting swiped. Now to recap:
Our initial plan was to kill Harrow.
Then we lied to Marta and said we'd spare Harrow.
Then Glory told Marta our plan was, in fact, to kill Harrow.
But then Glory herself suggested we should spare Harrow.
And so we agreed to spare Harrow.
Except we're of course going to kill Harrow. Because really, fuck that guy and this dessicated deer corpse too while we're at it, we have a pair of grotesquely bloated egos within needle range and walking away from here without getting to hear them pop would be criminal even by the standards of us, an actual criminal.


[Glory shoots you an uneasy glance.]



We've reversed our stance on this like three times at this point and you've pretty much just gone with it every time, either we missed our own calling as a manipulative cult leader or you're still almost concerningly easy to sway.
[Marta stares at you, wild-eyed, her mouth agape.]


Yeah sorry about lying to you repeatedly about this whole thing Marta but hey look, we've already come this far, fought side by side as comrades and all that, so let's just all agree to



[She shakes her head in shock and horror.]

...In hindsight some minor aspects of this plan might've been a little short-sighted.




Well that was a pretty unfortunate turn of events, and after all that effort trying to avoid this outcome too. We do still have a job to finish though, so nothing to it now but to push forward and get it done by ourselves.

The fight against the Heart proceeds much the same as before, though obviously not having Marta around makes it somewhat more troublesome. Still, the mechanics are the same so we're just going to skip the combat bits this time.

Harrow shows his pasty mug a turn into the fight just like before.



[The flickering silhouette spreads its arms wide.]



Sheesh, is no one here aware of the phrase "too soon"? Come on.

Some time later, Glory depletes the last of the Heart's HP...



...and then proceeds to blow it the hell up shit yeah

Okay, that's kind of cool too. Mildly disconcerting since it's probably not supposed to do that, but undeniably cool.






.jpg)








Easy to guess that first one's Harrow, and he won't be going anywhere anytime soon if Glory's claim that the spirit's destruction would cripple him is to be believed.
We just might accomplish both of our goals here, that bastard's already toast in every sense of the word so we should still be able to make it to the lounge and get those kids out if we beeline it.


What? No pretty sure we could, they're not that far and we've already kind of done it once before, there's a bit of rubble we need to clear but... what do you mean "wouldn't matter"? Glory?

As we step out of the shrine room, we find the host of the party in the flesh.

Flesh that his visibly unhappy guests are rapidly working their way through.


Okay that was cool the first time but we have several concerns about what is happening right now.





Oookay then. So it turns out you were in fact completely right in saying that this job would probably end up haunting our dreams back when we arrived, although this is not what we- hold on.

Uhhh...



Yeah no shit you lost it somewhere along the way, but it's the spirit-protecting amulet we're concerned about right now. We're currently putting some twos and twos together here and we're pretty sure these fours we're ending up with aren't supposed to be sprouting horns.








...Yeah. Harrow is most assuredly incredibly dead. On that part we are in agreement.

.jpg)

Last time it felt great returning to Berlin and leaving all the horrors of Feuerstelle behind us, but this time it somehow feels like the jury's still out on that second part.


[There is a long pause before she responds.]

Seriously?


[She shrugs.]




Okay this thing here might at first glance look like a phone book but it's in fact a list of

[She steeples her fingers, musing.]



[She shrugs again.]


Right. The toxic Adversary-corrupted spirit has somehow connected with a part of you and imparted you with magic. You, the person who literally sacrificed her own body to break her last remaining link to the Adversary, incidentally also the last time you were still able to use magic. "Good" is of course relative, but...





It's great that he got what was coming for him but the man was already doomed the moment we killed the spirit, can't shake the feeling that we gave up the lives of those kids merely for the sake of a more personal revenge.






[She looks away.]




And that is the end of that. Or so one can hope.

The reward for finishing Feuerstelle on the revenge path is a weapon upgrade for Glory. Guess it was only a matter of time until they made this particular pun, even if it took them until the re-release of the DLC.

Smacking people with what is clearly not a dried hand of a hanged man deals the same base damage as her normal claws, but the damage over time portion is upgraded from 2 bleed damage per turn to 5 mana burn damage per turn.
There does not seem to be a practical difference between the damage types which is a shame, having the ability to inflict the effect on bleed-immune enemies such as robots would've made for a neat bonus. As it is, my gut feeling is that in all its simplicity the heal from Hearthfire is likely the more desirable reward as most individual enemies simply don't last long enough for the damage difference to really do work.

And that concludes today's journey to the ~Non-Canon Zone~. We are now officially done with everyone's personal missions and alongside it all the main content added in Director's Cut. And as great as most of it has been, it'll also be nice to go back to making some actual story progress and maybe freeing the outside world from its stasis again.
Next time we begin tackling our final job before finally taking the train down the rabbit hole, one last time.