Part 20: The Tides Matter, We Swear!

The TIdes Matter, We Swear

Last time we talked a guy out of stalking a purple haired anime girl with his necromantic horny powers. In this update we're picking up a new companion, and maybe even progressing the main quest.



Sorry Tybir, but fourth quarter profits are down and we have to let you go.



Unfortunately the same people who cursed us with the Sorrow have decreed we can only have four people in our party. Sure, Baldur's Gate had six, but shut up. We can pick him up later.

For this quest we need to go back to the Changing God's hideout with the probability engine, and look at the central mirror.



: Study the lenses and mirrors.



: Reach for the shivering lens.

: You raise your hand. The tiny lense bends towards it then flinches away with a soft bwong...but not before you catch a glimpse of something small and shapeless moving inside.

How do you all feel about onomatopoeia?



Callistege is into it.



: Are you afraid of me?

: The lens goes quite still, then tips toward you, ever so slightly, like a child peering over a cliff.

: And inside the glass...tendrils of thick liquid stream from the corners of the lens, coiling thread by thread into a perfect, vibrating sphere.

: In seeing it, it sees you, and smashes itself against the glass, turning it utterly black.



The writers were so proud of their imagery they had Callistege comment on it.





THANK YOU RHIN.





The way to proceed is to interact with the suicide mirror shown above and die so you go back to the Labyrinth.



Cheaper than jenkem I guess.





: The creature - "Oom," your mind whispers - stares up at you with eyes like radiant, unfurling flowers.



No, the weird blob shapeshifter thing doesn't speak. Why would we want a nonhuman perspective in a game supposedly about the fantastical?

: You've traded one prison for another. That isn't fair.



: It isn't quite clear if you are understanding the intention of those sounds, or are making potentially dangerous assumptions.

: Oom's eyes focus on you, folding and unfolding. You hear a curious sound in the hidden reaches of the darkness above...

: The rasp of turning pages. Memories flash through your mind, tinged with your insatiable curiosity.

: Oom's wide eyes momentarily flicker blue.



: What was that sound I heard when you looked at me before? Why did your eyes change color?



: Let it touch you.



: What kind of creature are you, anyway?

: For a while, Oom doesn't say anything at all. It merely looks at you. Just when you think it isn't going to respond at all, a bubble appears at the center of its shifting body, then divides into two. They merge again, split, and become three. They merge, become four. Merge, and five.

Soft light wells from within each of the bubbles until they are the colors of the Tides.



: Can't you tell me anything else about what you are?



: You aren't a reflection, are you? Can you leave my mind with me?



So now we have a goopy thing that is...escaping the labyrinth where we keep the Doom Pepe meme contained. Great.





So yes, Oom is a dog, but a magical nanomachines Tides dog.

: ::sirf:: Oom says, quietly. Shyly.

: You seem friendly. I don't know why I feel that way, but I don't think I'm wrong.

: You feel Oom's weight edging into your side, nervous about all this attention.





: Yes. For now, anyway.

: The light from Oom's eyes bathes the side of your face. Grimacing, you push yourself off the ground.



Thanks, Cal.


Anyway, Oom has two abilities right now.



He can turn himself into weird armor that gives you a bullshit bonus to every might and speed task you undertake, making it even clearer Nano is the One True Class.



He also does this. You know how randomly in conversations we'll get boosts to our Tides, like if we tell Tranquility we want to help that Omahdon creep get his dick wet it boosts the Tide associated with selflessness and compassion? If and only if we have Oom in the party, we can see how the tides change based on our dialog.

Oom has dialog with our other party members too.



: ::sssrrrsss::

: Come now, I wasn't planning to hurt you.

Ok, whatever. As our characters leave the Changing God's hideout (we will be back later before ending Part I), we can take the opportunity to formally discuss the tides.

Let's ask the developers, shall we?



According to the rest of the thread, there's a bunch of reactivity that happens if your Tides legacy is different but no one can give a concrete example. They did mention asking Tybir about "Sn'erf's orgy" and I uh, really don't want to know more about that.

Anyway, based on your Tides choices in dialog you get a legacy. We are blue-gold.



Now, let's ignore the fact that avengers are not known for compassion and empathy (hunting someone down to the ends of the earth is not exactly a compassionate act) because incoherence is par for the course for this game thus far. There are 16 legacies in the game, one for each combination of tides, one for each of the five tides, and one for having all five tides in balance.


So why are we discussing this now? Oom is not a companion from the original game, he was part of a big post-launch release where InExile tried to add some of the stretch goals they cut. Thus while the internet is full of people trying to figure out what the hell these things do, Oom will actively shapeshift based on the Tides you're aligned to. If you're blue tide, his attack gets bonuses to hit, if silver, he gains mind control powers, and so on. It falls into the classic D&D inspired alignment trap where if you want the mind control powers you're going to click the button that tells everyone about how well endowed you are.

There is a final component to the Tides, but we will get into that when we get to this game's wet fart of an ending.



Anyway, we ask our sticha "egg friend" to take us to Matkina's hideout. We can do that because we did the quest for that wacky mapper guy.



On this exciting cliffhanger, we end this update, because we have an amazing amount of words ahead and I'm done transcribing this shit for tonight.