Guido Fawkes
Defensor Fidei
- Joined
- May 15, 2012
- Messages
- 4,825
Dos...
Special order 1390
Agent Cobweb - The activities of Spider are going beyond the purview defined in his orders. His obsession with the cult of Maal seriously jeopardises the great plan. You will now consider yourself to be our senior operative within Aeternis. You must stop him without revealing our involvement.
(Priory of Sion symbol)
Cobweb
I have been informed that Priuré agents are aboard the ships that will dock here sometime in the next few weeks.
I require you to meet them in the interview room and pass on the map of the gutrock path to the sanctum. Do not reveal your identity to them.
(signed "Spider")
Entry 19
August, Year of our Lord 1160 AD.
My careful questioning of the ghost of the well has revealed a tragic and disturbing story. She and her sister were forced into the caves as sacrifices by their tribe many centuries ago.
The most surprising piece of information revealed by these interviews is the claim that they discovered what she describes as "dwellings of the gods" in the deeper caves. This, and the well she haunts, convince me that there may have been some earlier human habitation within the caves.
I have dispatched Malik and Geffrye to search deeper. May God go with them. I fear it will be a dangerous expedition.
Entry 1501
November, Year of our Lord 1763 AD.
At last I have been able to act!
For too long that Satanic chancrous sore Malik festered within his pathetic miniature empire. His temerity even extended to laying claim to be the true commander of Aeternis. An Aeternis that thanks to him resounds to the call of loosed beasts from the lower caves.
We remaining good and true knights feel we will never sleep again after encountering the horrors of that place. The perfidy of the ressurrection of the Ancient Byzantine religion of Maal with its pagan sacrificial offerings and disgusting ceremonies should ensure his place in eternal hell.
He was extracting Grailstone and using it, and the freedom it offered, to lure more of my knights to his side. He was not only endangering my position, but the destiny of the Vision itself.
Philip came to me and offered his assistance in flooding his area with poison gas. This we did to great effect, capturing his followers without loss or injury to ourselves.
Regrettably, the arch Daemon himself escaped, using the Grailstone he had mined earlier to safely flee the Temple. Guy pursued him and has not returned. I fear he may be lost to us.
Tomorrow the questioning begins. I will purge his evil from the temple.
Entry 1020
March, Year of our Lord 1550 AD.
While we have been sealed in Aeternis, over two centuries have passed beyond. Morale is low amongst the brothers. We wonder what further effects the Grailstone will have upon us as the long years pass.
Disharmony spreads slowly, like a leprosy. Malik is ever more antagonistic and outspoken. I wonder: is he positioning himself to oppose me?
My own dark fear is the extent of Priuré treachery after the attempt on the Grail. One of the captive sailors, in his delirium, provided the names "Spider" and "Cobweb". Do we have spies within Aeternis? This could explain the near success of the attempted theft.
I can't help but get a Russian game vibe from the dialogs - they remind me very much of Pathologic, what with characters speaking with so much certainty of concepts you don't yet completely understand, and doing so in a limited fashion as to tempt you with comprehension a little bit at a time.
Or maybe all this grailstone is starting to affect me...
Entry 1313
August, Year of our Lord 1753 AD.
Aeternis has been falling prey to the forces of decay for centuries and we, in our small numbers, have had no choice but to watch the crumbling of our great dream. Today, an event foreseen with great dread came upon us - a deep barrier wall collapsed, allowing the beasts to flood into the Temple. They spread through the complex before the breach could be sealed. They are too numerous and dangerous to be removed, particularly considering the expanse of empty chambers and corridors in which they can hide. We have no choice but to accept their presence, and perhaps to find ways to use them to our advantage.
As instructed by Tobias, Malick and I set forth with ten slaves. The expedition was to last for a week.
For the first three days, we traveled through dark, tiny caves beset by the small beasts we called Eugenes.
These caves stank with the accumulated filth of Millenia. We were ever hopeful of finding more evidence of those dwellings mentioned by the ghost of the well. Dwellings of gods, as she described. We were intrigued.
On the fourth day our expedition bore fruit. A small crevice gave into a large chamber. We stood with astonishment before a great rising staircase that was an echo of the wondrous ziggurat at Urnammu. That which scholars consider the remnants of the tower of Babel itself. At that moment we realised that the gods of Niamh were in truth men. The Babylonian fathers of the great empire of Byzantium.
After rest and reflection while the ziggurat was cleared of nesting beasts, we continued on and deeper into the caves for another week. We mapped various sizeable chambers that will serve well for the temple. My mind is filling with ideas of their form.
On the fifth day, two of our retainers were taken by the creature of the waters; on the banks of a sunless stream. On the sixth, my mind darkened with the weight of our discovery. A small series of Byzantine rooms within which horrific experiments using Grailstone had occurred.
In it, with even worse horrors, three mindless children; part animal; part beast; were hung on hooks, their very bones suffused with chips of Grailstone. When we return, I intend to have them taken to the surface where their souls may be returned to God.
I confess I wished to end our explorations after our previous discoveries. The deeper we go, the more horrors we find. Malick has convinced Tobias that we should continue. I am put to shame by his courage.
Our next expedition took us again into narrow, filthy craw-ways, though a passage has now been broken through into the ziggurat chamber, making the opening stages of the journey easier.
After two days of this, we found ingress into another Bizantyne area. It seemed safe and so we allowed one of our eager retainers to scout while we made camp.
He returned shortly, shaking with delirium, with a swelling the size of his head in his side. I went on to investigate and to my shame fled when I saw the very image of the manticore before me.
We returned as quickly as possible, but too late for the slave who expired in agony.
Malik, determined as ever to penetrate the deepest secrets of our Bizantyne precursors, returned to the chamber of the mantichora with five slaves. His determination to study and learn a way to subjugate these mosnters was admirable. After three weeks, he returned with the one slave that survived the venture with news of his discovery that the monsters were passable by virtue of their savage competitive nature. A full expedition was again possible.
Malick's excitement at finding just beyond this chamber a fitting sanctum for the grail prompted Tobias to join us.
And surely, in a deep, vaulted cavern, we found ourselves beneath the light of a thousand gleaming grailstone stars, while standing on a larger, more elaborate ziggurate then the other, topped with an altar. It seemed designed to be home to the grail.
We set out again, hoping to find the homes of our predecessors.
Beyond the chamber of the mantichora, we found corridors and passages collapsed by time and weight of rock above. Finally, we found a way through to a vast cavern filled with Eugenes and stranger vegetation than ever we had seen. This means Aeternis can be self sufficient without the need for external fields.
Days later, and far deeper, we gazed in wonder on the empty ruins of an entire Byzantine town.
At the end of this vast cavern was an opening that looked out upon a great subterranean lake; the call of enormous, unkown beasts carrying across on a stale wind.
On our return we were amazed. During two weeks for us, six months passed for the others and nearly four years outside.
Despite Malick's objections, Tobias has called a halt to further exploration.
Another Codexian parallel!Aeternis has been falling prey to the forces of decay for centuries and we, in our small numbers, have had no choice but to watch the crumbling of our great dream. Today, an event foreseen with great dread came upon us - a deep barrier wall collapsed, allowing the beasts to flood into the Temple. They spread through the complex before the breach could be sealed. They are too numerous and dangerous to be removed, particularly considering the expanse of empty chambers and corridors in which they can hide. We have no choice but to accept their presence, and perhaps to find ways to use them to our advantage.
Pathologic seemed amazing but I could never get past the bad translation. Was that language patch ever finished? Maybe someone will LP it someday...
Anyways, an available complete one for the Impostress (third character) is here: http://lparchive.org/Pathologic/ Since this scenario was the one with the most horrible translation.
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Thanks bro, I will certainly check it out. Maybe I will try to play the game again, I know from reading threads about it that you take the most out of the 3rd scenario if you do the Bachelor or Haruspex first. It is a shame that they never translated Pathologic properly. Is there any translation patch avaiable I should use, even if incomplete? You seem to have played it more than once and should have some tips about how to best enjoy the game.
What is there to tell? I have seem wonders and horrors in this place. When Drog was sane, I went with him to the deeper realms of General Discussion. A time of discovery when I was very young, troll. My heart sang with the great work before me, my mind filled with visions of the future. Codexia would have become the center of the world! As you are being tested by DarkUnderlord, troll, so was I. I had to watch as all my proud dreams crumbled into dust as the world forgot us, and all we stood for. My proxies banned, my brofist privileges revoked, my posts nuked into Oblivion.
The troll... it has come to that time already then? But you will hear me. At last! Listen well, for I swear to you my innocence. Drog was the one, so insidious and convincing, he said that the Monocle was an illusion! that his "Todd" was the only truth and that he was its only prophet! That only the worship of Bethesda was right! That it lifted the oldfags to greatness out of this hell of a forum! In the stronghold he prepared for us, he had deciphered many tablets from those thatvaultdwelleth here before. Slowly, he divided us, sowing the seeds of mistrust and forcing us to work on isolated projects for him, telling us that Andhaira had sworn slow deaths by discuss!ion for us all and was constantly trying to invade the area.
Malik means King in Arabic, why the Templar bros would take a Mahomedian with them on such Holy and Important mission?