Part 38: Cleopatra Jones and the Triumph of Incoherence

Cleopatra Jones and the Triumph of Incoherence

Last time on Tyranny, we went through an odious dungeon of trash mobs looking for a worthless fake history and a maybe Beastwoman Archon who could restore the Wound to...who knows. Nothing makes sense, I'm out fourteen dollars, and it's retroactively crapping on the rest of the game. Oh well! Back to the pit!



Anyway, we have a keystone that enables the button to open the doors to go see Reef-Talon.



I go the wrong way and we meet this Havoc Bane, who is cool chilling out and not attacking us. I think the idea is supposed to be that a diverse society doesn't fear new ideas nearly as much as a society that requires ideological conformance and lip service a la Kyros, but everything in this DLC is so ineptly handled that I doubt this was the intent.



The supernatural mystery is the least compelling part of this game.



Reef-Talon is attended by several Sorcerer Savants. We ran into them earlier and they could use magic, so what's the deal with this Sleepless - argh! I'm sure this is supposed to be a compelling mystery box, but I don't actually care at this point.



I have no idea why her eyes are described as having "murderous" intensity when she's the only Wound leader who's explicitly gone out of her way not to hurt people. Jaspos and Wagstaff are actual murderers, yet the lady who asked her hunters to leave before she had to hurt them is murderous.

: Stalkers and hunters, Bane and mystics - all come to spill Reef-Talon's lifeblood. Beastwoman must climb deep-deep, paw where lights do not follow. She watches you intently, her ice-blue eyes piercing the chamber's shadow.



This continues to make no sense. Were the elite mercenary death squads contracted out, or are they the "hard men" Mell mentioned earlier who are Wound denizens? Why are none of them standing around the Wound?

: I'm here to help you. We can bring an end to the Sleepless.

: Human is arrogant. Speaks of Sleepless like rival clan, as if simple blood rite can tame dreamless wanderers. Does Fatebinder not realize that poison within Reef-Talon gives birth to Sleepless?



: Why flee the Wound? You could have simply stopped using your magic.



: Can you be sure that your powers won't manifest in a new way that harms the settlers, even from here?



Nah, trust us, that's not an issue.

: What do you hope to gain from hiding here?



: So you are content to let Jaspos and Wagstaff lead your tribe?



: Let me ask you something else.



Reef-Talon is feeling pretty chatty.

: How did you come to find the Wound?



: What was your life as a Mantaborn like?

: Mantaborn are warriors of land and ocean. More free than land-trapped beastmen! Island-kith are not quarrelsome like Tiers tribes. Not always leading packs to rend-rake-kill rivals over parched land. Island warriors respect tribe boundaries where sand meets water.

: Beastwoman has no need to fight other tribes. Mother ocean provides great-maws and deep-lurkers to test warriors and mystics. To keep Mantaborn strong. Reef-Talon's mouth stretches with a knowing smile. Has Fatebinder wrestled with black-eyed great-maw with head and tail of spears? Or killed clear-skin lurker with glowing fangs and snakes for limbs? Has human ever heard deadly song of stinging-cloud and stayed awake? Mantaborn does not need tribal war to stay fierce. Hunt. Bleed. Feed pack-mates. She bobs her head at the fond memory. Was good life.



Wait, what? I mentioned this in the thread, but despite these waters having "the Withering" apparently Reef-Talon can just...swim in them. I don't know if we're supposed to believe that any Beast can do it or if it's Reef-Talon's weird powers, but it just adds more confusion as to how the Wound is supposed to work.

: Tell me about your time in slavery.

: Was less-than-seven years ago. Reef-Talon awoke to nest beset with humans. Human tribe answering to Prima Straydus overwhelmed Reef-Talon and kin. Likely survived only because humans desired captive muscle, not roasted beast.

Straydus is a Tiersman political leader we will meet in the Stone Sea.





: So you learned your magic from Mantaborn mystics?



: How did you come to lead the Wound, even if briefly?

: Did not come to Wound to be Prima, but once arrived, Reef-Talon was only proper answer. Was best at hunting new prey. Showed kin and kith how to slink through deep-dark, how to hold ground against Scourge-beasts. All Beasts bowed to Reef-Talon.



Back up the dialog tree! Unlike the last update, there's a lot of dialogue in this one.

: I want to know more about your healing abilities.



: How did these powers awaken in you?

: Beastwoman cannot... say for sure. Her hands gesticulate wildly for a time, no words come out. Ever since coming to this place, Reef-Talon feels hum of magic but.. did not FEEL it until it already happened.



: Why do you think the healed become Sleepless?

: Can describe sensation of healing-power but not meaning. She pauses to think, listlessly tracing a painted symbol on her chest with a claw. When human lies on ground with lifeblood pouring from wounds, Reef-Talon can sense blood-rage inside dying creature, and when Beastwoman touches paw to human, Reef-Talon can... stoke blood-rage to live longer? To DEMAND blood keep pumping? Am not explaining right, no-no. Can't.



: Do you think being in the Oldwalls give[sic] you these powers?



Back up the tree!

: Tell me of the Sleepless.



: Do you know how they were created?



: Why are they down here?

: After mending-rites, dreamless kith smell like spent flame. Hearts do not beat with purpose or desire to live. Dreamless always call out to Reef-Talon, beg-mewling for answers... Reef-Talon has none.



: Any idea why the Bane ignore the Sleepless?



This confirms that the random sorcerers we encountered with the Bane can, in fact, use their magic.

: I've seen only human Sleepless. Are there no Sleepless beasts?



: Do you know of any way to cure them?

Of course not, do you think she'd be down here otherwise?



Back up the tree!

: It's time for you to return to the Wound, in one form or another.



: Lexeme believes you can learn to control your powers, maybe with some help.

: Why does Fatebinder trust chirping of human-mystic that roams deep-dark halls? Reef-Talon has watched Lexeme speak with own shadow. Or sit on damp-cold floor to sing to ancient stone.



: What do you know of the murals in these Oldwalls?



: How did these powers awaken in you?



Literally the same dialogue as above, twice. Sloppy!



: What's the alternative? Learn to tame your powers and become more, or you wither away in these Oldwalls.

: The Beastwoman snorts defiantly but averts her gaze. Slowly, she bobs her head in agreement. Fatebinder is correct. Reef-Talon should not hide or run from strange power, like cowardly pack whelp not fit for breeding. Must learn to dominate mystic-strength, just as Alpha controls unruly pack.



There's an animation for her walking in and everything.

: [Glare silently.]



We have gone through this at least twice now. We get it. We're gonna have to go through the entire dungeon and look at all the murals. Hooray!

: Already, this place has changed Reef-Talon... made Beastwoman's touch heal for a moment, but sicken forever. With a violent lurch, she slaps herself across the face. Must swim in ancient magics until strong enough to understand or drowned and no longer a threat. Will go now. Meet Fatebinder through quick-leap pad, to east.



YES WE GET IT JESUS CHRIST



This sounds lame and shitty but is low-key the most help anyone's provided in this DLC toward achieving Cleopatra's ultimate goals. Penumbra is an artifact dagger which can mark targets to take increased damage. It goes right on Cleopatra to both increase her combat power and add another paragraph to the legend of Cleopatra Jones, Rightful Ruler of the Unified Tiers.




Some of the Sleepless are more lucid than others, and if you're getting the idea Sleeplessness is akin to Sirin's cult, well, you're on the right track.



Don't forget to grab this sigil before going through the teleporter.



So, yes... the next stage of the quest is to track down four murals through the dungeon. What the game doesn't tell you is that to get the good ending, you need to turn them into a narrative to boost Reef-Talon's confidence. I'm going to abridge this because there are a ton of words and just showing the fucking murals would be "too hard".



See?



I know this is a crazy concept, but what if you showed us the mural in a pop-up or something?



: The Beast is roaring before onlookers, is this a warning or a display of victory?

: No Beastwoman would rip open guts to please crowd! Foolishness - is warning! Reef-Talon slams her firsts[sic] to the ground to punctuate her point.

We don't need all of these fucking stage directions! This is a long enough slog as it is!





We wouldn't have to go through all these conditional dialogue trees if we'd been given the picture, but we weren't, so here we are.

: [Examine the Beastwoman.]

: The colorful twirls pouring from the Beastwoman's wound seem a bit too stylized to be simply blood and viscera, and details such as eyes and talons on the twirls suggest the spirals of color are Bane. Whether the Beastwoman is ripping herself open or the Bane are exploding out from within her seems open to interpretation.

So the game is preempting me here but we are going to slam into the limits of the medium hard.



The developers make a desperate attempt to make this work.



: Perhaps this is more akin to a display, like the Beastman is showing something.



Have you figured out the problem with this sequence?

: [Examine the crouching figures.]

: Several Beastmen have been arranged in a line, heads bent at a downward angle, crouched low on all fours. Compared to the Beastwomen featured prominently in the painting, the remaining figures have been drawn in far less detail - their facial features have been left entirely blank, complicating their interpretation.

Yes, the imagery of this historical painting is dull and uninteresting, but that's pretty standard for modern fantasy to take the fantastical and exotic and reduce it to mundanity via prose.



: [Lore 52] Look at how they're drawn. The Beastmen aren't showing their fangs or claws. They aren't being aggressive.



The problem is that we're doing art interpretation via dialogue tree. It's not going to work for both the reason we don't actually see the art in question AND the fact that we are going to be stuck picking off a menu of options.

: Hmm, I can't say this image recalls anything I've seen of the Woundkin or any records I've come across on the subject. Beastmen do tend to go down fighting - self destruction is deeply frowned upon in their kind.

I cannot tell if the developers intend Lexeme to come across as authoritative or ignorant here. We know that the Mantaborn culture is different than the land-bound Beastmen as Reef-Talon just told us that. Oh well.

: [Examine the Bane.]

: You brush a layer of accumulated dust from the wall to better observe this section. The creatures emerging from the Beastwoman's ribcage appear to be flying out and away, in a range of directions. Streaks of purple, blue, and red paint have been used to form wispy tendrils, with hints of claws embedded in the amorphous shapes. Upon closer examination, the claws appear to be broken.



: [Lore 52] Look, the claws and teeth appear broken. This could suggest that the Bane have lost their power somehow.



It doesn't help that our Lore skill lets us pick the "obviously" right answers.



Now, our ultimate goal is to make Reef-Talon feel confident in her abilities, not to actually interact with the art.



We might need to do a better job.

: The image isn't reassuring, true, but let's not make any definitive conclusions just yet. Humor me, and pretend I'm right, and these murals are like scrolls - symbols that teach. Being here in the Wound unlocked something in you, what if it's just the start of your power?

Kill-in-Shadow understood the concept of writing when she introduced herself. Is Lexeme supposed to be a white savior, or is she just badly written? Place your bets!



: [Lore 67] There's also the possibility she's an Archon. No one taught her this magic... by strictest definition, she's manifesting an innate power.






: It's not... impossible. I mean I've heard the Archon of Serpents is a giant talking snake, but I've also heard he just changes into one. Sage Quillborne speculated there have been Beastmen with the 'exarch's' gift, as it were, of having the potential to be Archons, but brutal competition and lack of training kept them from making it into the Chronicle.



Sirin has probably the most interesting and valuable take here.

: That COULD be what's going on here... some sort of latent talent coming to life. I find it an odd coincidence that here is where such powers come to light. If that's true, all the more reason we need to understand this.

: Enough! Reef-Talon tires of being discussed like meal. If humans think Reef-Talon so powerful, Reef-Talon will listen, but will prove humans wrong in the end.



Arrrgh!


Yup. I talked about the art interpretation before, but to illustrate my point a little better I'm going to provide an example. This isn't safe for work, but it's recognized as art, not porn, so you can probably get away with looking at it at your workplace provided you keep your clothes on.



What does this mean? I'll wait.

Actual academics write papers on this stuff. Granted, Bosch is probably an extreme example, but I think I've made my point clear. We could spend entire threads arguing about how to interpret the right side alone, much less the central panel or the work as a whole. However, because this is an isometric RPG and we're locked to a dialog tree, it's not going to have any kind of interesting critical thought or anything other than banally selecting whatever sweet "insight" the game developers pre-provided for us. Numenera ran into the same problem, where Colin McComb was proudly trumpeting how the game was going to let players come up with their own answer to the question of "What does one life matter," and instead the game proudly served up a big dialogue menu of pre-selected choices so that the presumed idiot in front of the screen wouldn't have to do any thinking at all.

Matters are not helped by the descriptions that read like this:



Naturally, as soon as we go back into the dungeon we are beset by trash mobs. I hate this place.



I'm going to abridge the shit out of these. You click through all the dialog and then you pick what the image means to you like it's Ms. Simmons' third grade art museum field trip.



I, of course, am picking the answers off the wiki that are supposed to unlock the good end (it's the highlighted one).

We continue on, through the land of trash mobs and boredom.



This is Sirin's sidequest-like thing.

: [Show it to her.] It is weird. Care to see?



: She takes the paper, cradling it carefully in her thin fingers. Wow. It's pretty, almost like poetry. Very repetitive poetry - see how these symbols get repeated constantly?

: She shrugs, passing the parchment back. It feels familiar, but I can't tell you why. Maybe you should find someone more accustomed to reading crusty old papers to study it.



That proofreading though.


What the dialogue doesn't tell you is that we need a Library Spire. The journal does. There's a recurring theme in this DLC where people say "oh we gotta meet up", they don't tell you where, and the journal fills it in.



I'm running out of things to say about these encounters.



That scroll in the corner, however, is one of Lexeme's "totally useful" history scrolls.



: Festivities of the Tiers, subtitle: a Survey of Social Days! I don't know about you, but I'm excited already!

: Drafting of the Fields stories... some rather ribald Marriage Bed anecdotes... a study of regional variations in Tidal Retreat celebrations... and more tournament reports than one might ever wish to read.



: Maybe it's worth reading a bit more.

: Hmm? Yes, well... With a hoarse grumble, Lantry flips back to earlier in the tome and begins paging through in a more measured pace.

: The old man scours the pages, his eyes darting about the texts with zeal.



: May I take a look?

: But of course! He hands you the heavy tome, and you begin to flip through the pages, your eyes scanning along page after page of flowing text, most of it in changing inks and handwriting styles.

: The tome is as Lantry described, filled to the brim with stories of feasts and festivals, including such details as guests in attendance and wines served.



: [Lore 52] I'm weak on my Tiersman scripts, but this passage says 'Festival of Nerat'. Odd, right?





This is an extremely bad fake history for reasons we'll get into after the summary.

: Well, what does it say about this 'Festival of Nerat'?

: Let's see... group melees, feats of strength, a drunken feast...if you ask me, if sounds like Midsummer as the Apex folk celebrate it, only with... Chorus details? Things Nerat would like? Or the subset of things he'd like that won't permanently scare children.



: A festival to Nerat ten years before the Conquest? Seems unlikely...

: Unlikely! Pardon my Ardent-speak, but it's fucking absurd!



: Also, it seems like the more someone knows of Nerat, the more likely they can resist my suggestions to join its army. Part of why my 'recruitment' efforts were so successful early on is that few knew I was... forcing them to follow a true monster.



: I think the 'why' is obvious. This creates a pretense that Tiersman have been worshiping or loyal to the Archon of Secrets, voluntarily, before the war.



: Seems obvious that Lexeme wanted me to find a record of the Sages and Tiersmen accepting the Chorus and by extension, Kyros.

: There might be... some truth to that. Lantry's gaze falls to the ground, and a soft sigh escapes his lips.

: I have a feeling there's even more errors hiding in these texts. He tucks the parchment into his bandoleer with a sigh. But I can peruse these pages another time.

: No doubt there is still more to be found down here. Lead the way.


So it's clear Lexeme's strategy is to write a pro-Kyros history so that Kyros and Tunon accept the modified Sage's chronicle as their modified history.

This is a TERRIBLE fake history.

At first glance, it seems appealing. Look, the Tiersmen wanted to be conquered so much that they had a Tiers-wide celebration of Nerat! This falls apart when we see that the Tiersmen are honoring Nerat and not Kyros! By this point it's probably common knowledge that Kyros isn't happy with Nerat right now, as we opened the game literally bearing a writ of execution for both Graven Ashe and Nerat. This fake history links the Tiersmen to, not Kyros, but Nerat. The game is never quite clear about whether Kyros unpersons people a la Stalin, but if we look at Ancient Rome I can think of two clear examples. The first is Caesar's Commentaries on the Gallic War. It's a good example for our purposes, as it's literally propaganda written by Caesar to justify his conquest of Gaul to earn fat stacks of cash and the hoped-for respect of his peers. Caesar's subcommanders appear rarely in the Commentaries - everything is "Caesar did this. Caesar did that. Caesar lead his troops to totally destroy the bad men." This is because the goal is to glorify Caesar, not his centurions. Why do I bring this up? Lexeme stated that her goal with this history was to glorify Kyros. You glorify Kyros by talking about Kyros, NOT by attempting to glorify Nerat! The other example is Augustus Caesar. In the Roman Republic, successful generals got a cool parade called a triumph through the streets of Rome. It was an extremely high honor and everyone wanted one. Augustus, having won the Civil War and made himself emperor, banned triumphs dedicated to anyone other than himself to drive home the message that you did not challenge the emperor. As a historian, Lexeme should know better!

Oh well. On with the trash mobs.



Here's another mural. It shows a bunch of diverse people living in a maze, some of whom have animal features. The bottom is full of skulls.



We go with this one.



Sirin levels up in our wanderings and learns to revive people.



Here's the third mural, a bunch of Beast handprints.



We conclude it's a memorial of fallen heroes and press on.



By this point we have cleared out most of the dungeon and are just backtracking...said backtracking does trigger the trash mobs.



This really isn't compelling.



Because we didn't have the purple key when we came to this junction, we have to unlock it now and thus we can fight even more uninspired trash mobs.



We eventually track down part 3 of the terrible fake history.

: Almanac of Azure 420 through 422. If grain yields turn you on, I have some steamy reading for you! Minutes from the Ardent Peace Accords of 419... a snore even by my standards... what else?



: Something not right?

: My memory, it seems. But this is the very reason we write the Chronicle - parchment, cared for properly, outlives recollection.

: Hmm... this seems... wrong. Read here. Lantry tilts the tome toward you, pointing to a passage of text that has his attention.







: So two tribes of Tiersman have a fight and they... invoke Graven Ashe's name before the fight? That seems in error.

: Exactly! That feud happened by many accounts, but the way it's described here? Nonsense!



: [Lore 54] Can you tell when this was written? Was it penned 'back then' or was it more recent?





: You could correct the record.

: I could and... and I will I just... I'll make a note to return to this. Until I know why this was edited as such, I'd just assume not tamper further.[sic]




A bit more wandering finds the last pixel hunt scroll.



: Ledgers. Oh so many ledgers. Did you know there was a threefold increase in mead expenditures at the Citadel in 424? No wonder I don't recall that year.

: Let's see here... syllabus? Syllabi! Plural. I suppose lesson plans are part of the historical record, my painful memories aside. Oh look, multiplication tables, the triangle proof, all three... four of them?







: [Lore 59] Oh I know that one. Imperial champion day one, three top consorts the next day, then the nine conquered heirs, than three nights of nine concubines each night, then nine nights of nine slaves each night. Simple.

What do all these people have in common?



: Wait wait... this is a learning thing? Just when I thought this was getting good.

: For the purposes of the exercise, Kyros will not mix and match types of lovers in bed, and the Overlord must be served an equal or increasing number of lovers each day. The solution involves a schedule that satisfies all stipulations.

: They teach it east of the Northern Empire as a thought problem for census takes and seneschals to learn geometric progression - the scandalous content is intended to keep the student rigidly focused on the puzzle.



: While it's true we were connoissuers of any treatise, never in all my years did I use many of these exercises in my actual lesson plans.

That might be because the entire thing is a rape joke.



Now, it does make a certain amount of sense when we consider the banality of evil. Kyros is the tyrannical overlord. We know from Sirin that she's not an ascetic, he likes to show off his toys and has no qualms compelling people to entertain her. The effect isn't just to teach clerks math, it's to desensitize people to performing horrific bureaucratic crimes. It's my understanding that "east of the Northern Empire" is still controlled by Kyros, so the entire thing is just an exercise in desensitizing students to killing a bunch of people at a penstroke.

The game seems to be playing the entire thing for laughs. I don't know either.

: You could correct the record.

: I'm starting to think that's maybe for the best given what we've been been seeing. Lantry reaches for a quill before thinking twice.

: But not here... maybe when we're back at the Spire.

: With the various scrolls tucked about his bandoleer, Lantry feigns collapse under the burden, then steadies his balance with a smile.

: We could continue scrounging the area, but considering the small mountain of parchment I'm carrying, I think we've found all we're going to find. Lantry runs his hand across one of the numerous Chronicle volumes found in your search.



: And what are you hoping to hear from her?



: I think I can tell you what she'll say.



None of these, are, alas "she's trying to buy her way into immortality by helping write Kyros' bullshit texts".

: Her missive asked for a Fatebinder to find these texts. She didn't intend to involve you, nor the whole Chronicle.



: You are right, this was a ploy to fool the Court, not me. I don't have to approve of it, but I can... almost appreciate her thinking.

: Whatever her reasons, I disagree with how she has tampered with history. Though I doubt my dissent matters to her at this point.

This is a reminder that actual ancient historians like Herodotus did stuff like making up their own dialogue.

: Now were were we? Ah yes, ever onward.


Conveniently Lexeme and Reef-Talon are still sitting staring at the wall, instead of coming with us or something useful.

Next time: The conclusion of the Worst Power Struggle!