Part 83: Denouement in the Dark
Part 83 - Denouement in the Dark

Alright, time for one last walk through these familiar streets to see who's up for trading some final words with us.

It's actually not that many all in all Majiit, Samuel, Zaak, Ezkibel, Gunari and Lucky Strike are all busy with their own stuff but Laine continues to be almost disconcertingly chatty for an old and grumpy Finnish man.






[The old troll claps you on the shoulder and then steps back.]


This is the closest thing we have to a home right now and we don't have any immediate plans to abandon it, but you can't do this kinda work in this kinda town without a certain degree of flexibility in your long-term plans.


Kim's up next.






Good on you kid, it's pretty damn understandable wanting an escape from this reality considering how many times its already clawed at your throat, but maybe a chance to look around with clear eyes will reveal some new roads to better places, yeah?



Any chance of us conveniently forgetting to go see Abby & Al are trashed when we find them waiting for us right outside the cafe.





If you two ever get married, please never invite us to the wedding.






[Aljernon purses his lips, annoyed.]

Tsk tsk, "bad" is a children's term, Aljernon. What happened to you man, you used to be so *nuanced*.



...There's something superbly irritating about him seeing the need to specify which continent Machu Picchu is located on. Like really, not even "in Peru" but "in South America"?




What?



Good lord, we can count ourselves lucky that we only ever had to deal with those two separately in the past or all the brain matter we'd have lost through our ears would've left us pretty ill-equipped to deal with the whole Feuerchswinge crisis.

Help us Altuğ, please talk to us about something normal and comprehensible.




Well, why not? We've been too busy dealing with Vauclair to think about this stuff, but we undeniably need a Fixer and can't really think of anyone as competent and trustworthy as him.




And we are indeed finished here. We did tell Dietrich we weren't going to think about work today, but this is just how things go sometimes. No rest for the wicked and all that.

One thing we're definitely looking forward to is the return of peaceful train rides, started feeling like we deserve a discount for how often stops seemed to come with someone looking to put a bullet in our head.

Looks like we're not the only one here. That's nice, at least we have company if this train gets hijacked or something dramatic like that. Although...


...something about this guy seems awfully familiar.







This guy definitely knows more than we're really comfortable with. Doesn't seem like there's much point in feigning ignorance here.


Alternatively:
quote:
I dont give a crap about dragons, Hans.
[He inclines his head, and the corner of his mouth curls into a bit of a smile.]
Of course not. You have your own important business to consider. Who to rob, who to kill, where to get your next packet of soy-jerky. That sort of thing.
You are no more interested in the dealings of the Great Dragons than a moth is interested in your bank account. Yet one day, that moth might be squashed under your foot without your even noticing.


Great, seems we've ended up on the same train car with the biggest dragon fetishist in Berlin. But we did take a brief astral ride with Feuerschwinge, if that counts.

[Brackhaus studies your face closely.]









These are some heavy questions for a job interview. Would we have genocided the dragons if we could've done it without harming humanity, huh?

Like most people, we don't have a very positive impression of Great Dragons and everything they've done, but we've learned enough during these last couple of weeks to say that this shit's clearly all one big tangled up mess and we're a little uncomfortable with the idea of trying to unravel it by simply taking a sword to it and hoping for the best. That's just not how we operate even on the field.





Yeah, we kind of figured as much considering the nature of these topics being brought up. But you know, there's this one saying in our business circles, perhaps you have heard of it.


Hold on, is he implying that the big bad Lofwyr actually knew about this whole thing from the start? And still risked the literal extinction of his own species?


[His eyes twinkle with mirth.]



Well... yeah okay, that is how things turned out in the end, sure, but surely that still meant him placing an unreasonable amount of confidence in the abilities and decisions of us and our team. Realistically speaking we could've died a dozen times over just during the Harfeld assault alone, or maybe even figured Vauclair had the right idea and let him go forward with Panacea voluntarily. No way was it all just part of some big plan when there was this much luck and chance involved. Nuh-uh!




Dragons and their machinations, always playing some game of eight-dimensional chess... Man, we've so had enough of this already. Maybe this all really is just one big game board for them and all we are expected to do is humbly play the role of the pawns, but if they want us to dance to their tune then at the very least we need to choose our own steps, not just give up and surrender to the puppeteer's strings. Plus we made a promise to Eiger and we intend to keep it.
But how do we communicate this with the tact the situation calls for...






Just like in the previous game, the ending proper is one conscise screenful of text. Nothing fancy like ending videos until the next one.
Undoubtedly the main thing of note here is that this story has actually taken place during the last days of the Flux State and the great anarchist experiment, before corporate might begins crushing it to dust the following year (justified by, amongst other things, the large-scale operation against the Universal Brotherhood and the insect spirits). Whether this is a foregone conclusion you knew from the start or a major last-second twist of course depends entirely on your prior familiarity with the setting.
Past 2060, most of west Berlin would be divided into corporate-controlled districts, while the anarchist remnants in the east would remain under what might be considered a permanent state of siege. This divide would, in turn, come to an end 12 years later after a nanoweapon attack by a sprawl guerrilla cell in 2072 would prove to be the last straw for corporate forces to move in and at last put the final nail in the coffin for anarchist-controlled Berlin, re-re-unifying the city once more.
The Firewing for her part has never been seen again. Guess she was a wyrm of her word, in the end.

And with that, we have reached the conclusion of the main part of this LP. Thank you very much for reading, and once again I'm truly grateful to all the people who have been posting in the thread and somehow making it even more amazing than the last one, even through some real bad stretches that caused this to take way longer than it was ever supposed to. The amount of people and encouragement in the thread has way surpassed all my expectations, and I'm glad we could see this dumb thing through together. Eventually.
Obviously big thanks to Harebrained Schemes for making such a great game as well, they really knocked it out of the park with Dragonfall and especially the standalone Director's Cut, and its status amongst modern CRPG classics is certainly well-deserved. And it's not even the last one of these! Can you believe that they actually made one more and it's really good as well? Pretty wild.
Now all that said we're not actually quite done here yet, so do stick around for the alternate ending showcase if you're curious how things would've ended up had we made some different decisions along the way.