Part 50: SPINEBREAKER - Batlin, Among Others, Dies

Batlin, Among Others, Dies

"Right then. It's about time I gave Batlin what for. Shamino-"
"Yo."
"Dupre-"
"Yup?"
"And Iolo!"
"Sure whatever. You guys, with me. Boydon, take a smoke break."
"I'm glad we found that rear entrance!"



"How come we don't get a smoke break?"
"Because you're required to be present in this sequence, or Thoxa will yell at me."

Or is supposed to yell at you. See Cheater's Corner, if you dare.



"The Grand Shrine of Order is different indeed."
"I suppose that's the idea."
"Less talky, more hustly."





"Batlin! Hey! Nice seeing you again! Remember that time you were going to do something phenomenally stupid and then we killed all your friends?"
"Yes, I do remember something to that effect, hence why I'm here doing what I'm doing right now."
"Yeah, it was loads of fun. Look, uh, I'm gonna need you to stop doing this, alright?"
"What are you, high?"
"Nah, I left my stash with Boydon, I might raid it later, but don't distract me! The point here is that you must not, under any circumstances, open the Wall of Lights!"



"...you just opened the Wall of Lights while I was talking right now, didn't you?"
"Yyyyyyep."
"Alright then, I was hoping it wasn't going to come to this. Batlin... you have a problem. A world destroying problem. And as concerned mortal enemies, we're going to have to surround you and do that thing where we hit you with stuff until you stop."
"Is this an intervention?"
"Well, I wouldn't use such harsh language..."
"It's just, well, when it's the first thing you think of every time you arrive on a new world..."
"We just want to help."
"Help? HELP!? You don't understand. You don't know what it's like to live with this horrible fatness and general unattractiveness."
"Iolo does."
"I thought this was Batlin's intervention."
"I don't need to betray the Guardian and gain ultimate power in the Void to destroy worlds, alright? I can quit any time I feel like it. You guys are just really starting to piss me off."



"Fool! Thou art too late. Now I shall enter the Wall of Lights and become immortal! Then I shall return to destroy thy mortal soul!"
"Let me stop you right there and explain, in as detailed a manner as possible, how badly you just fucked everything up by doing this."
"It's true."
"She showed us the PowerPoint slides and everything."
"The Ophidian people were a race of human beings who divided into two major subcultures - Order and Chaos - and one minor - Balance - in order to form a more or less stable civilization. The Ophidian cultures utilized the Wall of Lights as a sort of Moongate, where their leaders the Hierophants would go into the Void to talk to magical space snakes. Following me so far?"
"..."
"At any rate, the Wall of Lights we're dealing with right now is not the solitary one in existence. I would surmise there are at least three, and I have personally witnessed the existence of two."
"...two?"
"Yes, two, which you might have realized if you used Ophidian texts as anything but coasters for your chocolate milk. Now where were we? Ah yes. You were clearly aware, perhaps through the Guardian's advising, of the Wall of Lights's power. Hence you knew that it would be activated, as your Black Gate was, by a blackrock artifact. From there, I'm sure, it was a simple matter of realizing that the blackrock sculpture owned by Andral in Monitor was an Ophidian relic designed to open the Wall of Lights. You were on the right track from there, I suppose."
"Are you finished?"



"Not quite. There's also the issue of these Banes of Chaos you were collecting. Now, when the Great Earth Serpent was plucked from the Void by Exodus, the Order and Chaos Serpents incited their people to war. But that wasn't the only thing. They also went to war with each other. And, as in the real world, Order defeated Chaos."
"See, this was the part I didn't catch."
"Of course you didn't, this is all a bunch of bullshit."
"Oh is it? A cosmic imbalance comes not just from the lack of a mediating force, but also the prevailing of one force over the other. When the 'Forces of Chaos' were defeated, the Chaos Serpent itself was somehow stripped of its power. The absence of the Banes of Order in the world led me to theorize that the Banes of Chaos are, in fact, the corrupted essences of the personification of Chaos itself - that is, the Chaos Serpent."
"It all adds up!"
"I know!"
"I was being sarcastic."
"Fuck you, I'm sure of it this time!"
"Yes, but what exactly does this have to do with Batlin trying-"
"Wait... No! The wall is not opening for me! This cannot be!"
"Batlin, you made the assumption that there was only one Wall of Lights, and that any old blackrock serpent would do. You're trying to open the Wall of Order with the Chaos Serpent, you fucking idiot."
"No... The banes, they have... Oh, what have I done!"
"Wait, what about the-"
"Guardian, protect me!"
"I seem to recall you were trying to betray me, so uh no, I'm not gonna do that this time."
"I have been tricked! Avatar! I beseech thee! Help me before..."



"Well, at least that gaping wound in your torso took a few pounds off."



"Whew, that mess is over."
"I must admit, your conclusion actually makes a certain degree of sense now that Batlin's plan has failed and he's incredibly dead."
"Right. The Guardian killed him at just the right-"
"I didn't kill him."
"Wait, you didn't?"
"I just failed to save him."
"...save him from what?"





"I am Anarchy! Hahaha! The world shall quail before me! Wrong shall become right! And right shall become lost! Nothing shall escape my touch!"



"Hahaha! I am the Wantonness Bane! Wherever I pass, people shall frolic and sate their wild desires! I shall drive thee to feed thy darkest hungers!"



"I -- hahaha! -- am the Insanity Bane! Hahaha! All those who fall within my shadow shall have their reason clouded and their wits addled! Their greatest love shall lie in the rubbish they once loathed! Hahaha!"



"...guys?"











"Uh..."










"...c'mon, guys..."










"Goddamnit."





"...they beat me to it!"





Boydon needs to be dismissed before the Wall of Lights sequence, or he explodes during the Banes release.



Yeah, he ain't bouncing back from this one.



If you dismiss your companions, Thoxa is supposed to show up at the double doors, insist that your companions are necessary to fulfill your destiny, and forces them back into your party.



In Exult, they'll just show up anyway. Thoxa also apparently failed to trigger, although I'm not sure why not.

See the end of the update for the real breakage, courtesy of Doug the Eagle.



How about we kill our companions instead? Again, Thoxa is supposed to come revive them, but she doesn't in Exult, and even if she did, you could just kill them after entering the Wall of Lights chamber. Origin apparently wasn't counting on you killing them yourself.



Your party members, who are dead, are not present in the scene.



The game's inability to locate them causes you and Batlin to freeze in place forever, or possibly until the Avatar starves to death. Whether that breaks the sequence I don't know.

For the final Wall of Lights sequence break trick, you need to advance up the Wall of Lights room until someone says "We must hurry!" in a popup. Then dismiss your entire party.



Unlike the dead scenario, the game somehow is able to start the sequence. Despite being "frozen in place," your allies will wander about the room during the sequence without a care in the world.



Batlin dies with your companions none the worse for it. The Banes then shoot offscreen.



Eventually, the script somehow recovers, and the Banes say their lines. After that, you're finally free.



Despite turning into the Banes offscreen about 20 seconds ago, your companions are perfectly fine, and can even be re-recruited to go battle themselves. This leads to a Highlander-like sequence later when you kill a Bane and the corresponding companion drops dead at the same moment, fusing into a single corpse. There can be only one!

But we won't be doing that, because I want those assholes out of the party for a while.