Part 36: Cleopatra Jones and the Unwanted Trolley Ride
Cleopatra Jones and the Unwanted Trolley RideLast time on Tyranny we slogged through a poorly-written opening where we had to do mandatory quests for Jaspos and Wagstaff that showed what pieces of human garbage they were. Today we're going to do more sidequests that show that almost everyone in the Wound is a piece of human garbage.

Eisly has another quest for us.

Now that we've slogged our way through Wagstaff and Jaspos Are Bad With Women, we can finally get Eisly's unique quest. It's a doozy!



"Woundkin" are the Beastmen who live in the Wound, and boy do they get the short end of the stick.


Remember, too - as the UI helpfully points out - Eisly is part of Jaspos' faction.



TheGreatEvilKing summary posted:
: Hey Insipid Moniker is going into the teleporter with Beasts at night, it's super sus. Thanks!

The game tells you to follow Insipid Moniker, but nothing in the game engine actually lets you follow people, so in practice this means wandering around until you find the teleporter.

This triggers a cutscene where Miss Moniker teleports very suspiciously.

We follow and find this impassible flame barrier which requires Cutscene Magic to pass, which leads us back to Eisly.

I hope you're ready for pointless padding!



Agh!
Eisly posted:
: A cutscene fire barrier? Sounds like you need to waste more time talking with more NPCs.

All right.










I really dislike this setup but I'll save it for after the conversation.









Keep this in mind.













I cut the dialog where we can say we've come to a decision and it leads to the same.
TheGreatEvilKing summary posted:
: Thanks for the fishing advice! You rule! See you later, Sophia!
: A Fatebinder? Wow, I wasn't expecting someone so high up.
: How did you get tied to the column like that?
: Oh, we were retracing Cairn's journey to figure out why he went nuts when we stumbled on this place and were attacked. Argaen surrendered immediately and fucked us all over. Oh, hey, random settler!
: You sure like these people.
: Oh, yes, of course! They're great people aside from being people I'm professionally obligated to wipe out. Anyway, I'm still alive because Graven Ashe's magic keeps me alive through all this starvation and failed execution attempt, I'm just marinating in my own shit and piss! The Beastmen demanded my death, but I lived, so the joke's on them! Ha ha! Nobody wants to piss of the Beastmen, so here I am.
: I need information.
: Unfortunately, I need you to kill that Argaen dude, because he's a fucking traitor and now he just hangs around doing magic with Jaspos. Go on! We need to pad this quest out somehow! Don't worry! I have the answer you're looking for, because everyone in this settlement is an idiot and discusses their secrets in front of the apparently unnoticeable vaguely pretty blond woman who smells like shit!
This entire setup is stupid. Cleopatra is a Fatebinder whom the residents of the settlement acknowledge as having life-or-death power over them, but it never occurs to the writers that Cleopatra might be smart enough to leverage that by offering Telesophia better conditions or even just taking her down from the damn pole. We don't even try to leverage our authority or cite Kyros' laws about wasting a Fatebinder's time, we just have to suck it up and do the dumb murder.
Of course, this is overshadowed by this character making no sense at all. Telesophia lost all her fellow soldiers to these people, then they tried to execute her by starving her to death on the column, and now they're just leaving her there to stew in her own shit and injuries. Yet she's perfectly willing to carry on cordial relations with the locals despite them treating her like...this. I'm not surprised that the Wound denizens are stupid enough to discuss all their secret plans in front of her because they're all idiots.
Whatever. Let's get this quest over with.

Argaen is not a smart man.







As we know, this is not true, everyone knows about Cairn's treachery.


So it turns out you have to promise Telesophia you're going to kill the guy before you actually do it. Her response?

Lady, I'm pretty sure that's not healthy.



Yup, to make this quest longer and shittier we need to lure this dumbass outside instead of just legally executing him like we have the explicit power to do.



Due to the miracle of hobo caves, it takes us five hours to walk outside.

This takes us to the beginning of the map on the other side from the cave we exited, and I have no idea where this guy is until I check the journal and it psychically knew that he was on top of the cliffs. This DLC is really bad.


We are given two options to murder this guy, but screw it, let's try to fool Telesophia.




To recap, Argaen is directly responsible for Sophia being kept on the brink of death imprisoned in her own shit while he joins Jaspos' little incompetence cult.

Or just have him wait outside for like an hour! We can just lie and say he's dead, and then leave her in jail once we have her info - or execute her for wasting a Fatebinder's time.

Wait. Wait. Is Jaspos cheating on his wife with this dude? I can't tell, but he's talking like he married the guy and Telesophia won't shut up about magical foreplay.




Argaen attacks us and it goes about as well for him as you'd expect.

He doesn't even have the decency to drop anything good. Asshole!







Fucking finally.
TheGreatEvilKing summary posted:
: Hi, Fatebinder! Sorry, I spaced out there, I was following Jaspos' wise teachings! I believe in your authority! What a great day this is!
: How did you get here?
: Graven Ashe sent us when Cairn was totally unfairly declared a criminal! Telesophia was being a total bitch and said I was a traitor! So I betrayed them and signed onto the Wound.
: Hmm...I want to kill him, but for some reason I feel like I must tell Telesophia first. Hey, Sophia, I'm gonna kill him.
: Yes, Fatebinder, YES!
: Hey, Argaen, you want to come outside and discuss very important things?
: Hmm... you did get rid of the Scarlet Chorus, sure.
: Telesophia sent me. Please leave the Wound forever so I don't have to kill you.
: NO! I could never abandon Jaspos! Fuck Kyros! You must die!
:
: You killed him? I AM YOURS, FATEBINDER!
: Can you tell me how to proceed in this quest?
: Oh yea, I overheard them talking about a talisman hidden right near the teleporter.
Ugh. This isn't quite a trolley problem, but it's an incredibly contrived scenario to get you to kill Argaen for Telesophia so she'll let you at her sexy brain. At this point I'm willing to do it because I've completely run out of sympathy for the Wound and its inhabitants for reasons you'll see shortly. The entire thing is contrived and pointless, and as far as I know you actually have to either kill Argaen or convince him to leave to satisfy Telesophia's wacky arousal. We're supposed to feel bad for Argaen because Telesophia was mean to him over the little matter that the Earthshakers are potential traitors...but you can recruit them to the rebellion on the rebel path, and Argaen has probably repaid Telesophia over tenfold at this point. There's also the little matter that Argaen is supposed to be an experience mage and Jaspos is a stupid newbie, and yet he's fallen under Jaspos' spell and is maybe helping Jaspos cheat on his wife. Everyone in Bastard's Wound is stupid and terrible and I think any future playthroughs for this LP are just going to be me executing everyone.

Now that we have the Talisman you'd think we could go through the teleporter, but the Padding Lords have other ideas.

We have a terrible intuition that we need to go back to Eisly and waste even more time.



Don't worry, I'm sure your husband will find more sex partners soon.

Note that we don't dispose of the body and he's literally right outside. I am 99% sure nothing ever comes of this.



Fucking finally.

Guess where this is going?

Sirin is horrified. Her heart is in the right place even if she's being kinda racist here.







Oh look! There's the trolley! Clang clang! Clang clang! The trolley problem is the classic psychology question of whether it's OK to sacrifice the few to save the many. A trolley is barreling down the track, it's going to hit five people who are tied to the track, do you pull the switch to send it to only hit one person? It's also the favored morality problem of inept RPG writers.


I'm struggling to describe this scenario without implying the writers were intellectually challenged.


Sirin literally got handed over to a pedo by Kyros and was used as a weapon to enslave others, and she's horrified by this. This scene would work if we saw something like Disfavored labor camps, but as it stands things like crucifying rebels are actually common for the time period. This is literally something you would describe to slander your enemies.









Here comes the trolley! Ring ring, goes the bell!





This ends about as well as you'd expect.

None of these people have any interesting abilities or put up any noteworthy resistance. Good riddance.

Cleopatra even levels up. Good job!

We have the option to free the Beasts or kill them all for no reason. I free them.

They nope out.

We get some pretty swanky armor that's probably going on Cleo when I next boot the game.








TheGreatEvilKing summary posted:
: Hey, Fatebinder. Do you feel guilty about killing Argaen, player? Do you? Do you?
: No. I found my way into Insipid Moniker's hideout, can I progress the quest now?
: Yup.
: Why would you do this? Why?
: Drain their blood! Drain!
: What the hell is going on here?
: You weren't supposed to see this, Fatebinder. Well, apparently our master of water magic didn't figure out you can boil water to remove diseases, so we are purifying the water with blood drained from these Beastmen in an unsanitary and unnecessarily cruel scenario. We're not killing the mongrels, and this is all OK because I am very racist.
: Oh come on! This seems incredibly contrived.
: You're a Fatebinder! You've seen worse! Well, Reef-Talon used to be able to heal them with her magic, and we got willing blood donations, but now she's gone so we have to go all Joseph Mengele up in here. It's very sad, but I didn't make the rules and someone needs to get run over by the trolley. Toot toot! So what will it be? Are you going to let me torture these beasts, or are you going to sentence the Wound to death by dehydration?
: You get one chance to walk away and never do this again.
: No.
:
Hey, Eisly, I found out what Moniker was up to, she had a blood farm for draining Beasts. It was extremely messed up.
: That's horrible! I'm sure she was the only one doing horrible things like this, and I'm glad you stopped her!
This quest is awful! It's terrible from a design perspective in that you're running around doing pointless tasks and dealing with contrived limitations when you in the narrative have the tools to bypass this garbage. We could have avoided all that crap with Argaen if we'd asked Sirin to help us with Telesophia or the writers had allowed us to use the leverage we actually have. There is no reason we need to go back to Eisly after we have the Talisman save for the purpose of padding. The terrible revelation that Wagstaff was using beast blood probably needed to be shown, but the farm itself looks very mild due to engine limitations.
More importantly it shows how nothing about the Wound makes any sense. People are coming to this forbidden place where they are constantly attacked by spooky ghosts that mess with your head and that they need to keep around a bunch of human-eating beastmen to deal with, but the water's also tainted with some kind of disease that requires advanced magic to purify which can only be done by harming said beastmen you rely on for your defense. You are hiding in the Oldwalls to stay away from Kyros, but Kyros' forces have attacked the Wound multiple times. There is absolutely no reason for anyone to stay here! There aren't even guards at the gate keeping people in, the community is fractured into factions under bad and egocentric leaders to the point where the first guy willing to talk to us tells us how terrible they are. There's no reason for these people not to go and just hide in the woods where food and water are abundant and safe except for the game wanting to tell a story about bad leaders controlling people with access to limited resources and having no idea how to competently set it up in this DLC. If I was being charitable I'd describe it as a vague allusion to The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas, except Omelas is a paradise built on the suffering of the innocent and this is a shithole built on the suffering of man-eating Beastmen.
It's OK though, we're about to learn about what Team Jaspos has been doing to put them on the same moral level as Team Wagstaff.

This guy is a former noble whose intro I glossed over, but I believe the estate outside used to be his.





You might be thinking this is just a dice game or Warhammer tournament or something. Just wait.



Everyone in the Wound is terrible.

















TheGreatEvilKing summary posted:
: FAAAATEBINDER! HELLLLP! Mell is CHEATING at GAMBLING!
: Really?
: Well, I don't want to invoke a Fatebinder's ire, but we've been wagering on which Beastmen are going to die. Except Mell's cheating! We keep betting on the strongest Beastmen to survive, but they keep dying! Everyone is really mad but Jaspos and Wagstaff are too busy fighting each other to deal with our stupid morally bankrupt game! Can you deal with it? Talk to Telesophia if you haven't already.
Let's go harass Mell.




Unfortunately Kyros' law doesn't forbid gambling, and because the DLC dumbed Cleopatra down so she could play in the pool with these characters, we can't invoke the law of Sharing either.



Uh huh.
















TheGreatEvilKing summary posted:
: I hear you're running a gambling ring and cheating people?
: Kind of...but, I'm not really cheating! Rostrum is just mad because he's losing!
: Do I have to smack a bitch?
: Ok, ok! We're secretly murdering the beastmen! It's not my fault! Tonves made me do it! I just get a ton of cash as a bonus! I'm scared! Go find the victim!

It doesn't take us long to find the dead Beastman. We examine them and the death was clearly caused by blunt trauma.

At least we got a cat out of it. I give it to Sirin.

We also find this. Time to confront Tonves!













God this is stupid.









I see we've gone full Numenera now.






Then he just fucking cutscene escapes. Really. Neither Cleopatra the Fatebinder nor the party hinder him in any way.
TheGreatEvilKing summary posted:
: Confess, or I'll get...the comfy chair!
: Ok! Ok! I had to do it! Jaspos said we were all on the trolley tracks, and I could choose to run over the Beastmen, or the trolley would run over everyone in the Wound! It sucks, but what can you do? Toot! TOOOOT!
: Why did you bring Mell into this?
: He blackmailed me for money! Said I had to let him know when there was a killing so he'd make bank! Now...I must escape! Find me at the same spot! Mell spooky! CUTSCENE POWERS, ACTIVATE!!!!







Let's take a look at these options. Option one is a clear bribe, and...keep looking.

Wait, what? Why are we not given the opportunity to put this guy to death? The first law in Kyros' Empire is that you cannot kill another because their lives belong to the Overlord's. That's huge. We may not believe in the law, but we can certainly use it!



Are you fucking shitting me?


Really! That's it! We can't actually do anything to him.
TheGreatEvilKing summary posted:
: Tonves told me everything - specifically, that you conspired to have him murder specific individuals so you could rake in loads of cash.
: Oh, shit! Well, uh, I was actually motivated by selflessness. Some of the Beastmen were discussing leaving the Wound, and Reef-Talon used to keep them in line, but she's gone, so I committed targeted assassinations of dissidents because we humans couldn't possibly do this ourselves! So, what's your judgment, Fatebinder?
: By the power vested in me by Tunon the Adjudicator as vested in him by Kyros the Overlord, I find you guilty of breaking Kyros' Peace, and sentence you to dea -
: Foolish Fatebinder! The power of bad writing protects me! You can't do anything! Now please, fuck off!
Now, what I completely forgot is that you have to go find Tonves in the Oldwalls to complete this quest. You can't go back to Mell and sentence him to death now, and at this point I conclude that I've done enough stupid sidequest bullshit.

This is awful and it's just not interesting. I just want to reiterate that we as the Fatebinder have absolutely no stake in the Wound and no real reason to save it. The entire place is incompetently run, all the humans are murderous scheming assholes, we suddenly get forced into the role of a generic RPG protagonist instead of a Fatebinder (you know, the entire point of playing this game), the Wound has nothing to offer - we can't even use it to raise an army as everyone is tied down fighting the Bane.

Screw it. Let's go look for Lexeme and Reef-Talon, maybe something interesting will happen.