Part 74: Governor Boris and the Betrayal of Tunon

Governor Boris and the Betrayal of Tunon

Welcome back! Last time on Tyranny we threw a rock at Raetommon to begin that whole questline. Today we are going to see what happens when you take Raetommon alive. It's... it's not pretty.



Anyway, we had a Lethian's Crossing sidequest we haven't seen before as it's Chorus exclusive, so let's get to it.



Unfortunately to leave the town we have to go through more of Raetommon's Clown Hour as well as talking with Eldian, who is very distraught the magic hat is stolen because it ruins his Elmer Fudd impression.



Tier Smasher is made and wanders off to stab things, Harchiand has a special assignment for us as an agent of the Chorus, and Eldian wants us to do some sidequests and help out. I'm omitting a lot of Eldian's dialog as we saw most of it last run.



Let's go talk to Mr. Bronze.





: You said you wanted to see me?

: Yes! This is simply unacceptable! I've sent notice to Nerat regarding the theft and kidnapping. While I await a response, you should search for the Forge-Bound Master. If we can recover her, Nerat is bound to be more forgiving!

In other words, we need to cover our own asses to appease Nerat.

: Speaking as someone who has dealt with Nerat for some time, I recommend you sort out this mess immediately. And after you do, you might want to think about an offering or two to appease the boss.



: If you're so worried about how Nerat will respond, why did you tell him?



: 'Least' amount of death? Why does there have to be death at all?



Kyros' Peace, ladies and gentlemen! We can't really argue over whether it's illegal for him to do so, as the Archons are empowered to act as Kyros would over those who displeased him. Sure, Tunon got pissy over Nerat killing Ashe's son, but Brennix Ashe was sworn to a different Archon and not subject to Nerat.

Really, you shouldn't even need to ask Bronze this because we've seen Nerat in action already.

: Where would I even look for the Forge-Bound Master?



: What can you tell me about Deserter's March?




So naturally we fuck off and do an adjudication instead.



: Let me get this straight - you want me to help you have sex?

: If you want to be crass, then yes. That's exactly what I am asking you to do. The two Chorus members let out a low snicker and Gravin turns on them. Oh, shut up! This is all so terribly amusing to you, but I know you're doing it on purpose!





: You'll get yours, just wait and see! This adjudication will show that I'm in the right here!



: I will adjudicate this issue, but if you ask for my decision, you must all agree to abide by it.

: Of course I do! I know I have right on my side and so I will be vindicated.

: I will obey your demands.



: [Lore 26] [To Rip Throat] Technically, your statement did not sufficiently fulfill the requirements of my request.



: Say you'll abide by his decision, fool!



Are you sure we shouldn't be adjudicating poor for Rip Throat here?



Nah! Remember, the Kyrosian state is heavily steeped in cruelty, so this barely even registers. It registers to us, the player, because we live in a society that is not steeped in tyranny and the sort of cruelty we see out of the Chorus. Let's get Solomon Northup out again.


While this is pretty obviously supposed to be a comedic slapstick adjudication of one idiot suing two idiots over a prostitute (although, notably, said prostitute does not get a say in this) it's an interesting commentary on how banal cruelty is that it never even occurs to the Fatebinder to get Droop Eye to stop abusing Rip Throat.

: [To Gravin] State your case.



: [To Gravin] Did you just tell me how to rule?



: [To Droop Eye] What do you have to say in your defense?



: [To Droop Eye] Are you specifically targeting Gravin?





This is still a massive waste of Boris' time.



: [To Gravin] They have a point. They aren't actually doing anything illegal.

It also occurs to me that there's a bunch of shit Gravin could do, like offering to pay a premium to reserve time and that it's not entirely implausible said prostitute does not enjoy Gravin's, erm, specific way to relax and prefers these two.



: I am ready to decide. Do any of you have anything final you'd like to say?





: Droop Eye and Rip Throat are doing nothing wrong. If you're not fast enough to hire him, Gravin, that's your fault, not theirs.

: Thank you, Fatebinder. We are done here. Come on, Rip Throat - we have some entertainment to partake in!


I don't think having the guy hitting the woman for slapstick works all that well, but maybe I'm nuts. Moving on! We grab Gino's quest (the brother framing him for the Disfavored murders) because that gets us evidence against Ashe, we tell Deya to fuck herself, and I find a new quest we haven't done before.







: Of course, I'll see what I can find out.

: She means the world to me, and I'm sick with worry. His expression falls again, but this time there's a distant shadow of hope.


Anyway, we go do the five bear asses quest but with Disfavored instead.



The twist is that you can offer the Bronze Brotherhood members medical aid in exchange for conscripting them into the Chorus.



You have to pass a skill check, but really, it's dull work.



There are also a pile of Disfavored you can engage in Tyranny combat with. That's the quest! It's not very interesting! We kill all the Disfavored and recruit all the Brotherhood members offscreen.



We do the whole song and dance with these morons. A quick recap: Locke is the smart guy who wants to abandon Raetommon, Myrek is the dumb guy with the illegal Oldwalls artifact Raetommon used to get into the Oldwalls, we are unable to convince Myrek (though it is possible) and thus we kill him again.



It pisses off the Brotherhood so hard we get their wrath ability.



: Your brother wasn't kidding when he said you were strong-willed.



The reason we're now getting this quest is because we didn't leave the Brotherhood in control of the crossing.

: He mentioned you have a knack for getting yourself into trouble.

: Kallion isn't one to judge what's trouble from what isn't. He wouldn't leave Lethian's Crossing unless something was chasing him.



: What are you doing out here in Deserter's March anyway?

Of note is that while Kalea is convinced her brother is an idiot, she's basically signing her own death warrant by trying to sign on with the mercenary group opposing Kyros. Yes, Kyros is deliberately sabotaging her own state to remain in power, but the challenge of an armed insurrection against the state is something these kind of systems are very, very good at suppressing.

: I'm doing my part is what I'm doing. I've come to Deserter's March to join the Bronze Brotherhood.

She's actually not that far from when the Bronze Brotherhood members literally started killing each other, but I'm getting the impression she's not very bright. She's pretty obviously written as a teenager.



: I'm guessing you didn't see what the Brotherhood leader did in Lethian's Crossing?



: Raetommon is not what you think he is.



: Raetommon is a coward, a thief, and a murderer.

There's a certain amount of irony in our Fatebinder saying this, as we've definitely killed and stolen out of fear of the Kyrosian regime.



: Wait were you and Raetommon...

: What? No, ew! Raetommon and I were never a... thing, item, whatever you want to call it. He was friends with my brother a long time ago.

: My brother was much happier when Raetommon was around. Back then, he didn't spend so much time worrying about me and how I try to live my life. I just want Kallion to have that happiness again.



: You're joining the Brotherhood so you can repair the friendship between your brother and Raetommon?

: Essentially, yes. I want to make Kallion happy so that I can be happy. When he's happy, he doesn't scrutinize every little thing I do.



This is a teenager's idea of freedom. It's also a terrible idea because the Tiers currently feature such exciting things as civil war, Disfavored sex slavers, Scarlet Chorus conscription, mob justice, and more!

: [Lore 48] The Raetommon you knew is gone, you must realize that by now.

If you can't convince her not to join you have to go through a bunch of hoops to clear out Bane so her dumb ass doesn't get killed. We're doing this the smart way.



: Talk to Kallion. Tell him that you are old enough to make your own choices.

: I'm not sure it'll work, but I'll try. Thank you, Boris. I will return to Lethian's Crossing to talk to my brother.

We never told her our name...but we are the military governor of the area - or were - so I think I can let that slide.




We get the kidnapped nobles as prostitutes encounter and let them go.



We've seen all this stuff before. It's one of the problems with these multiple route games, a lot of them have a ton of redundant content that just make me not want to replay it. It's great that Fire Emblem Three Houses has four routes, but playing through the monastery four times with maybe a few snippets of information makes me less inclined to play it. (I still haven't done Silver Snow. Fuck Rhea).



The important thing here is that we find evidence Graven Ashe struck first in the civil war, which we can present to Tunon later.



If we tell Ferris we killed Myrek and took the keystone, he strings together this incoherent insult (how are we both the son of a whore AND motherless) and attacks. I'm just going to fast forward through this dungeon. We've seen it before, it's full of Bane and keystone "puzzles" and it's just boring. I showed off the spell runes I believe, so you can imagine us getting them, and we can proceed on our merry way.



As an aside, if the Brotherhood hates you enough during this fight you have to kill them AND the Bane. It's still Tyranny combat on easy baby difficulty. Yawn.



This guy being here gives us evidence against Nerat (because the garrison let him in). We'll see if we use this!



Raetommon is still a moron. Despite what Welby says, I'm pretty sure you can't skip this fight.



Yeah, whatever, shut up. We beat him up and things finally go somewhat differently.



Nerat is looking for interesting people, if you'll recall.

: I don't want to kill you, but you must agree to something if I let you live.



: You will go speak to the Voices of Nerat in Cacophony.

: How can I refuse? I no longer have a home. I will find my place with the Scarlet Chorus. Extend the bridge and I will go there now.

: He holds out his hands, several objects in them. Take these. Perhaps they will be of better use to you.


Then we fight Big Bane. It's easy Tyranny combat. Skip!



We are given the option to free or kill Zdenya. Killing Zdenya puts us back on the Anarchist path, and pisses off Tunon. Let's free her.



Ah, the infamous Tyranny railroad moment. As the Phantom of the Opera would say, this is the point of no return. Before we've sent a lot of people to Nerat and gotten them impaled on spikes, sure, but these were all enemies of Kyros and people who the regime wouldn't miss. Now we have to send Zdenya to Nerat. We have some cover for this, as Tunon told us to go undercover.


: Of course, Master Zdenya. But I have come on behalf of the Voices of Nerat. They want to meet you.

We don't really have a choice! Our options are to betray Nerat, ruining our investigation that Tunon asked us to do, or betray Tunon and prove our loyalty to Nerat. It's a very clever play by Nerat getting us to transgress against our real boss here, as he gains leverage over us and alienates us from the one person who could protect us from him.

It's also entirely plausible in character to believe that the Anarchist path doesn't exist, as the Anarchist path is basically us profiting from Bleden Mark's protection in an allegory for, at best, allying with the secret police over the military. There's no real reason to expect this if you haven't played the game before, and it would be quite honestly completely fair under the narrative to give you a game over screen with the Fatebinder being executed due to lack of allies. We need Nerat's favor to survive right now, and Tunon can and will throw Fatebinders under the bus. There is one bonus trial I haven't been able to trigger on this save, but I will try to show off as a bonus update. It's about a Fatebinder on trial for protecting a Tierswoman from being raped by Scarlet Chorus members, and the "proper" ruling is to ignore the rape victim - they didn't swear allegiance to Kyros! - and kill the Fatebinder for violating Kyros' Peace.



We don't have a choice here. If we don't take Zdenya Nerat abandons us, and we lose all the power we've been painstakingly building with the Scarlet Chorus, which we need to stay alive because otherwise Graven Ashe will kill us. It's what the game's been trying to tell us all along, tyranny doesn't work for anybody. It doesn't create a stable powerbase for Kyros, it doesn't make the Archons happy because they have to constantly engage in power struggles just to survive, the toll on the common man is obvious, and even the most kindly Fatebinder has to do vile deeds just to survive Tunon.

: I just saved your life, Zdenya. Do this for me.



Incidentally, the bio for the Lawbreaker Fatebinder implies someone coming into the system with a lot more cynicism about Tunon and their legal misadventures.





Oh, and the Forge-Bound despise us forever now for sending Zdenya off. Time to go.



Raetommon tries to make a break for it and is captured.



: Escort him to Nerat - undamaged.

It's not clear if the Archon will be angry at us for damaging his toys, but we are in full cover our own ass mode. Remember Harchiand Bronze telling us this exact thing, of how we had to throw Zdenya, Raetommon, and maybe Eldian under the bus so he wouldn't kill us? Welcome to tyranny.






There's not really a reason to keep the Magebane Helm, it doesn't do anything cool and it's not its fault.



We give it back. I'm not transcribing all this, we lose Wrath with the crossing and Eldian is super happy.



Unfortunately we have to progress Barik's quest a bit before we can turn in the lost apprentice and missing iron quests here. I'm pretty sure we've seen both of these, and i'm not finishing the companion quests this playthrough as we'll get different endings. I'm not sorry.



We do get the magic weapon sigil, which I was going to combine with Eb's Terratus sigil for life-draining melee weapons to make Boris the One Tank to rule them all, but whatever.



Kallion apologizes for preventing his idiot sister from getting herself killed.



I get it, he was being controlling, but this is a terrible dream to be having right now. If someone in my family said "I want to go and explore Syria, an active civil war zone that has ISIS", I would do everything in my power to get them to not do that.

: [Subterfuge 53] It was a lot of work finding her, you know. Maybe you could add a few more to that pile.

This does not prevent me from shaking him down for more money.




We finish up the Gino and Alagan slander quest offscreen.



Eb wants to know why we joined the Chorus, and we tell her it's to destroy the Disfavored. She's pretty happy with that answer. She still won't teach us her magic, but we replace Killsy with her to make combat even faster.

We go to Cacophony, and I cut out a random encounter fight with a bunch of Bane.



We turn in Splinter's quest, and he gives us some cash and points us to another lady who needs help.



He also provides us with more context on just how terrified the Chorus is of Nerat.



This lady needed help, apparently.



We have to kill a bunch of Disfavored to avenge her Fury sisters. We agree. I hope you don't mind me abbreviating these conversations, she's just stitching herself up and it's not that interesting.



To the surprise of absolutely no one, Raetommon is on a spike.



Also on a spike is Crysantha, the lady we sentenced to a beheading "tomorrow" and then immediately left for Nerat to do whatever he wanted before the deadline.



This is, uh, rather unpleasant.



At least Zdenya died fighting. You can see Nerat is kneeling down over there instead of just relaxing and musing on slaughtering the Chorus.



: Fatebinder! Come join us as we contemplate the vastness of infinity. There are wondrous things to be learned within the primal, unfettered self.



: I'm ready to report on my activities.

: Your success at Lethian's Crossing was a work of brilliance. The Forge-Bound Master is in our hands, and the secret of her craft within reach. Soon, our howling masses will shirk their bronze sticks and take up unforgiving iron.

My assumption is that the Forge-Bound use magic to produce actual steel instead of regular iron weapons, as iron is on par with bronze but easier to find.





: So what became of Zdenya?



: [Lore 55] Wouldn't the Forge-Bound master have been more useful if she were alive?



: [Subterfuge 50] Is that your way of saying she flatly refused to serve you in life and mocked you with her last words?



: Then why is she on a spike?

: We can't fathom your meaning, Fatebinder. Of what spike do you speak? Why would we ever...

: Oh. Oh, you mean that spike.



: Tell me how she met her end.

: We engaged the Forge-Bound Master in discourse for some time, learning what we could about the secret of iron in the most amiable terms.

: Ever the artist, she grew withdrawn and taciturn. We were forced to adopt more aggressive measures to wrest the knowledge from her swirling matter. To our greatest delight, she proved amenable to sharing herself with us, laying her every secret bare for scrutiny.

Do you have to describe this with sexual innuendo?



Nerat's not dumb enough to admit to anything we could incriminate him with, and we can't afford to piss him off now.

: Forget I asked. Let's discuss what's next.

: The time has come to handle matters in our home region. As you have no doubt noticed, the Edict of Stone has wreaked havoc on these once-fertile lands. Our Scarlet Chorus recruits return from the war, hungry for provisions, but we have none to offer while the lands are thus blighted.

: The Archon Cairn lies in the Stone Sea, clinging to life with both of his petrified claws. If he would simply allow death to take him, the Edict would be resolved and our troubles at an end.

: Kill the incompetent fossil however you can. He is flanked by adoring Earthshaker mages, but they should prove no challenge to the likes of you.



: How is Cairn able to endure the Edict of Stone?



: Cairn is hardly the deadliest Archon ever to walk Terratus, but he's certainly one of the toughest. His refusal to die even in the face of Kyros' magic is an impressive display of defiance... but an utterly futile one.

It does, however, prove that Kyros is not omnipotent despite all the shit Tunon says.



: Tell me about the Edict of Stone.

: Kyros brought down the Edict to execute the rebellious, misguided Archon. It would seem Cairn is just tough enough to endure the torment of the Edict... but only barely, and while the Archon persists in surviving, the Edict ruins the land.



: Tell me about the Stone Sea.

: Our wretched little home was once the bread basket of the realm. These days, it is a pitted and treacherous catastrophe waiting to happen. An improvement, we think, but hardly a convenient one.



: What tribe of Beastmen?



: Have I sent you anyone who didn't end up on a pike or missing?



That's not a denial, buddy. He does make a very good point about not pissing off the volatile madman surrounded by bodies on spikes.

: [Leave] I'll head deeper into the Stone Sea.

: Don't forget to bring us a souvenir of your travels. Cacophony has its charm, but we are always seeking outside amusements.


We are two thirds of the way through Act 2. In Sentinel Stand Boris basically threw away his reputation on behalf of the Voices of Nerat, who used Boris to present a softer and fuzzier seeming Scarlet Chorus so he could stick a spike up Mattias' ass. Now we've thrown away our standing with Tunon to glue ourselves even more tightly to a ship run by a madman who will have no compunction about putting us on a spike once we've solved every single problem he has. The game is doing everything short of having the developers personally address the player while playing air raid sirens to show just what a bad idea this all is.



Oh. Oh crap.



What are we going to tell him, no?



Oh. Well, maybe we can salvage this after all.

Next time: Trying to blame Graven Ashe for everything.