In Progress [LP] Fear and Hunger

[Egosphere]

Part 7: We have liftoff

Having succumbed to the horrors of Maharbe, I took up the dark priest class hoping that the unholy arts would prove a great boon to our progress. Unfortunately, I was mistaken.

Spoiler

I ended up beating my head against the wall with 5 consecutive attempts, none of which could even get past the mines. The choice between taking up necromancy and dash kills any perks the dark priest may bring, turning you either into a lethargic waste of skin that has to slog his way through the dungeons to find a skeleton to protect himself, or forego your best skill to become an inferior version of the merc.

But here are some highlights of the fiasco, and some extra lore.

Please tell me we won. Please tell me..

You lost to a girl lol

Well, she won fair and square so I guess we'll humbly accept defeat?

We become bugman

We burn down the fiends who threw us down the well.

Nice.

I dont remember what I picked exactly. May have been Gro, for variety's sake.

Small reveals to the nature of LeGarde here, I presume

Then ShareX decides to go haywire

We do learn dash though, but no necromancy. I went to the wiki. Lo and behold, we had to stab our sister to learn necromancy.

I wont be going over these runs in any great detail. We've seen everything here, for the most part, and I'm quite sick of doing the same run over and over.
Unfortunately the priest class proved far too vulnerable to unfavourable RNG.

I found a scroll of the dark mage, which I later learned could only be used at the ritual circles. I figured that Mastery over insects allowed to yeet enemies with swarms of locusts, or some other such cool spell. But no, apparently its for talking to bugs, or something.

Anyhow, we do the usual. Talk to ghouls, cut off arms of the guards, etc. Surprised there's no treasure chest in this room this time around.

We find and read Anathomia, which regales us with the various status effects in the game. Handy.

Hoping we'll never have to experience that last one.

And we also find a book of poetry, written by Chambara, who became one of the new in Maharbe. The tormented one.

I attacked the buttefly guy in the courtyard, but didnt go through with killing him. He's one of the few guys here who doesn't want me dead.

But having found an explosive vial, the 2 dogs in the next room put my run to an end.
Back to character creation we go. This time we pick necromancy.

Obviously we avoided being thrown down the well.
But this dash-less run, christ..
We're so slow that every enemy catches us without breaking sweat. It's awful.

We dont need the purifying token for the hexen room door. Our countermagic works right out of the box.

But then we bump into the elite guard in the next room, and our sclerotic pace is not conducive to an escape. Ends with us crawling around in a cell as the elite runs back and forth and plays popamole with our skull.

Then there was run 3, which ended when the yellow mage blew both of our arms off when I lost my resolve at the sight of the crow appearing to the north.

I did talk to the mage for a bit though, just to see what he'd say.

Gro goroth then?

I did kill him, and I did escape the crow, but the next corridor had a phantom knight appear and destroy me anyways.

In another run I saved the merc, hoping that going the other way towards the elevator would not lead to his betrayal. But no, he disappears once again.

I don't remember what it was that killed me here. But something ended the run in the village. Maybe one of the blue guys.

Another run was once again ended with an early spawn of the elite guard in the opening dungeons. By that point I was so fed up with the game that I said 'fuck it' let's move on, and so I went back to try the Barbarian.
Turned out it was the game's easy mode.

Bow and arrows

Cannibalism!

America

Dont touch anything, and gtfo. I don't know if there's potential for a positive outcome in this choice, but I do know this can screw over your whole run before it's even started.

We dont bother collecting resources.

Devour and dash are nice. One removes the nuisance that is the hunger mechanic, whilst the dash lets us whiz around the levels. Couple all that with a class that is physically strongest, and in many an encounter luck will favour you.

Once again, I wont be spending too much time going over things we've seen. I find a cursed mace in a crate and save the girl.

We find 3 explosive vials early on in the game, letting us explore the caved in tunnels.

We find the scroll of the long sword, which slashes both legs at the same time and can expose a guard's head on the first turn, if you have several party members.
But I think it needs a sword. Mace doesn't work for me.

The guards get obliterated by the barbarian.

We give her the knife.

But having collapsed down a floor level, and been infected, I'm forced to saw off one of the girl's arms to get rid of the infection.

In the mines, we square off against a new enemy - the mother of all those flying little golems.

Cawing as she lands, her design proves misleading. I half expected the run to end right here, but the barbarian's attacks against her torso literally ended her in one turn.

And she .. flies off? I thought the wings were gone.

But no matter, because once we traverse the walkway she reappears for round 2 and rushes us.

Another 1 attack = 1 victory from the barbarian. A blow from the cursed mace to the torso blows her head clean off, somehow. Woooo.

I'm starting to like Raziel and his unwavering commitment to cleaning up these dungeons with such efficient brutality.

We kick down a door in the mines to discover a new area - an underground pool of water with something shiny right by the water. Too many dead here for me to fall for that trick. We'll come back here at some point.

In the mines themselves we encounter more phantom knights. Not sure if the cursed mace will work against them. So we dodge him and run onwards.

And there's a new scene in the village, where Casca is getting beaten up.

You're scared raziel? Of this thing? Come on..

With the trash out of the way, we talk.

Groyped?

Groyped

So you came here and started killing them when they were performing their rites? You go the darwin award you deserved.

Who are you?

Which god do you serve?

Now, for the important question, do you wish to travel together?

Ok, cool. We do a clean sweep over the village, which attacks us on sight since they don't like Darce. We get a ritual spear from one the blues, which I give to Casca. She seems quite handy with it.

We take the detour to collect the mysterious cube near that dying orangutan face, and then proceed to look for the rope.
We do encounter this thing in the mines:

But I'm not falling for that either. I remember the words about the structure being flimsy, and ready to cave in at any moment.

After a little bit of travelling, we're on level 7. The path ahead will bring us back to level 3 - the prison cells, where we can save the game. This is what we did when playing as Casca. But I'm not going to waste the time. We're a party of 3 (well, 2.5 really) - strong armoured, strongly armed. Who dares, wins.

And in the next room we find a book of enlightenment which allows us to save the game right here lol
With the power of an .rpgsave file on our side, we proceed without fear.

The girl undergoes a disturbing experience here at the ritual circle

Is something wrong?

Don't worry..

Between us and Legarde stand two enemies with whom we've already made acquaintance. First up is the Night Lurcher, the dirty little turd.

I obliterate the bastard in 2 turns, or maybe even just the one. Ritual spear + Cursed Mace combo works like a charm.

We steal his lurch money.

And last but not least - this thing. The elite guard. We've encountered him many times before, and i dont recall ever besting him in battle. Survival alone was an achievement. But he stands between us and our goal. We cannot run away.

We lose an arm. We bleed. We have our HP reduced to 1 point, but in the end the enemy collapses to the floor, missing both arms and his head.

I chew on what little herbs I have left, passing around ale and opium to the party to regather their marbles. Time for the moment of truth.

He's alive.

Let him live for now.

Very interesting piece of lore.

Great..

Yes. For now at least.
And with that, we're a party of four. We give legarde D'arce's sword and what crappy gear we could spare.

I decide to head straight to Maharbe, but unfortunately I did NOT pick up the magic cube in the village. The game has an annoying tendency to require a lot of button presses to get through the world interactions. So I probably picked the wrong option without paying much attention.
Retracing our steps, we make our way back to the stairwell that will take us to level 3.

The guard tries to a stop us. By now this enemy is a joke.

And Le'Garde stares at the doorway to Maharbe behind us.

We need to get out of here.

Back in the cells, we flip two coins at the bed. Phew, our progress has once again been saved.

Till next time.

 

[Egosphere]

In other news I realized that it takes only 5 lines of code to detag a string of imgbox links and properly format the file. So goodbye chatgpt, i will no longer have to spend 2 minutes clicking on 'continue generating' and hoping the thing doesnt crap out half way through.

 

[NecroLord]

Shame you lost an arm.
Looks like you have put together a nice team (and refrained from killing Legarde).
The Girl is useless, as always...

 

[Egosphere]

Shame you lost an arm.
Looks like you have put together a nice team (and refrained from killing Legarde).
The Girl is useless, as always...

She needs the skeleton arm.

Unfortunately I didn't think of reloading from before the nightlurch, but that would be cheating I guess.

 

[Lord of Riva]

Very good, this time you seem to be a on a roll, may be a winning run.

 

[Lord of Riva]

Shame you lost an arm.
Looks like you have put together a nice team (and refrained from killing Legarde).
The Girl is useless, as always...

She needs spells and is quite valuable after that, cursing the knife also ups her damage quite nicely and should be considered. I think to remember you can do that at the Hexen. You also might be able to kill the crow and get a really nice sword on ... uhh level one? there was a locked door, Miasma on Le'Garde is pretty strong.

 

[Egosphere]

Shame you lost an arm.
Looks like you have put together a nice team (and refrained from killing Legarde).
The Girl is useless, as always...

She needs spells and is quite valuable after that, cursing the knife also ups her damage quite nicely and should be considered. I think to remember you can do that at the Hexen. You also might be able to kill the crow and get a really nice sword on ... uhh level one? there was a locked door, Miasma on Le'Garde is pretty strong.

She can cast spells? Interesting.
I do know about Miasma but I figured it's going to be a pain always paying attention to sanity. Also, there's the sword stuck in the stone, which we can pick up if/when we find the Passage to Maharbe book.
The crow is too risky a fight, even now, imo. When everyone in the party has a unique weapon we can give it a shot.

This will be the run that I stick with from now on, for better or worse.

 

[Lord of Riva]

Legarde does not trigger any negative event on equipping Miasma afaik. Which is the reason I suggested it. In my run he definitely used it.
(Shark tooth on Enki (main), cursed Dagger on girl (but she has spells and a sorcerors stone making her a good caster), Miasma on Legarde, Cursed Bone shears on Knightgirl) Just to highlight what I had in the end.

Not gonna lie here about it, I just reloaded if i got fucked over.

 

[Egosphere]

Legarde does not trigger any negative event on equipping Miasma afaik. Which is the reason I suggested it. In my run he definitely used it.
(Shark tooth on Enki (main), cursed Dagger on girl (but she has spells and a sorcerors stone making her a good caster), Miasma on Legarde, Cursed Bone shears on Knightgirl) Just to highlight what I had in the end.

Not gonna lie here about it, I just reloaded if i got fucked over.

Do I need a sword to pull of the special attack that targets both legs?

Edit: apparently so, according to the wiki. Hmm. I guess i might give raziel the sword and legarde the cursed mace for now. One strike to hack off the legs and then have two characters go for the head.

 

[Egosphere]

Part 7.1 Trundling into Maharbe
In order to get into Maharbe, we'll have to return to the village and find the cube. As of now, the only way to do that seems to be to backtrack through the mines, so let's get going.

Spoiler

But instead of ascending back up to the blood hall with the elevator, I take a wrong turn and end up in the cellars with Iron Shakespeare. Given that we've just saved, I try and have a go.

He kills the girl with one hammer blow, but his focus on her acts as his demise, as the other 3 poke him to death.

He has a key. For a cell? That's shockingly poor loot. This game is already burdened with a lack of xp or character progression beyond loot and unlockable skills, so making the drops mundane kills any last vestigial desire to fight the enemies, rather than just outrun them.

We proceed without the girl back outside, but instead of diving back into the main dungeon, I decide to see what happens if I go to the fog.

Spoiler

And what happens if we leave?

Lo and behold

ENDING E

In the end, it was akin to a very traumatic visit to a grocery store. We stumble away from the dungeons of F&H with loaves of bread, cheese, ale, blueberries, salami and dried mushrooms.

Yeah, but we have porcini

She went down in one hit.

And roll credits

Well, one's in the bag, but the game makes sure to let you know that there's more to uncover in the darkness of the dungeons. Fine, fine. Reload.

This time we loop back around the correct way, foregoing the meeting with shakespeare. However, now there's a nightlurch around, and he has the speed of a leopard.

Somewhat amusingly, I kill the nightlurch, but the last attack he gets off kills me .. but not quite. My health is 0, yet I live.

I have no items on me to heal - no blue vials, no blue herbs. Damn. We can walk around fine, but every combat encounter has us lying down. I wonder if we get just the one turn to win a fight now?

He gets back up once Legarde kicks the door in lol

Wolf party?

A journal in the corner mentions Alllmer. Cannibalism.
But were there any survivors? And what exactly happened to them? Who are the wolf mask revellers, or the villagers for that matter?

Claw marks. Maybe he was killed with the shark teeth weapon we found in the next room over. But then that doesn't explain the lack of blood. Seems that he died long before whatever events transpired here recently. These are, I presume, the original party sent in by the kingdom of Rondon. Seymour and Buckman might be the only survivors.

I try and go south, but that doesn't work.

And as we run around the tunnels, we stumble into a ghost. Our weapons don't damage it, and after the passage of the first round, Raziel's death does finally trigger properly. Game over.

I'm somewhat reluctant to go through the mines again. They now have the crow, and the phantom knights + ghosts seem much more active than before. Throw in a nightlurch on meth and it's a troubling development. We can get down to level 7 through the giant tree past the butterfly guy, and from there we can backtrack to the wolf party, climb the rope and nab the cube. Doable? Maybe. We'll see.

But the map isn't all too clear in my head and again I wind up in the shakespeare room. Whilst we're here we comb over the boxes.

I also get a full plate armour and helmet for Raziel in the Seymour room.

After milling about some more, I find the whispering door again. Still no key, but maybe we can knock it down?

Yes we can. Thank you Legarde.

Sure. You'd fit right in.

And we promptly hand off the weapon to Legarde. Bolstered by the find, we ascend back to the sunlight. This guy again. I can see his nose from here!

Unfortunately we can't kill him, so we leave. There's a new character on the block, surrounded by a trail of blood.

Who are you?

We might meet again in the future

A foreigner

The price is steep, but if there's possibility of treasure at the end..
He seems menacing enough that I don't want to haggle. He might decide not to sell anything to me if I push him.
Fine. Take the silver, give me the maps.

Well, anyways.. We go all the way back into the mines and blow up some tunnel near the entrance with our newly acquired Explosive Vial.
There we stumble out into a new room, which turns out to be a shortcut to the same level as the wolf reveller party. We find a journal in the opening room.

The cube? The chronology of the events is quite murky in my mind, especially with the gaps between the play sessions.
I presume Legarde was caught, and the cube was confiscated from him as he was brought to the dungeon. So Rudimer was the one overseeing the imprisonment, but once things started to go south his men, for whatever reason, did not escape and simply awaited help from above. It was sent in the form of Buckman's and Seymour's party, which was shattered before they reached these depths. Whilst all this was happening, Rudimer used the cube as a trade item for supplies to hold out.

Aaaaah, that would be the Crow origin then.

Past the wolves is the rope which we can climb, and from there the cube is a stone's throw away.

Now that we have, for real this time, we must choose whether to press onwards, or return to the cells and descend to level 7 directly via the spiral stairwell. I choose the latter, but have to kill some time before the path becomes free.

Back in the mines, D'arce starts having second thoughts about this whole mess.

The timing couldn't be more perfect. As D'arce whines about muh darkness, we get a visitor from the exit right beside us.

The game is paused during the conversations, but there are very short gaps in which the time runs between the text-boxes.

"You know D'arce, normally I'd agree with you. But I think in this case, sitting down for a while is, quite literally, suicide."

And the time starts running again in the middle of the conversation..

My finger hurts pressing spacebar.

But my worries are misplaced. The end of the conversation teleports the Crow a little to the left, so we have enough time to gtfo.

And breathe..

Back up the elevator, I end up going the wrong way (again) and run into Trotrur, whom apparently I've failed to slay in this playthrough yet. We rectify this oversight with extreme prejudice.

Buckman is here too. Will be migrating into the cellar after this.

Unfortunately a ghoul gets one attack off after I fail to choose the correct thing to say to him.

Given that we've found so many supplies, and Miasma, I chance a save in the cell. Success.

And after a short trip we're back in Maharbe.

Wtf is this shit. Some four armed goon wearing a hunting hat shoots little poison darts at us in a nearby room. I can't shoot back with my bow because I cant aim diagonally.

Also, he hit me once but everyone is afflicted? What?

I figure this run is screwed and we'll be reloading, so I decide to not pay much heed to deaths or afflictions and just press on to see what content we can uncover.

Legarde is thunderstruck at the sight of Maharbe. He is, after all, somehow a chosen one. That one guy inhabiting the mines said as much when we ran into him.

We continue forwards, lighting the giant braziers just like last time. There's some sort of giant, clay statue with no legs blocking our way into the building opposite. It talks, too.

Sounds like something that was cocked up in order to dissuade others from pursuing whatever's inside.

I ask him what he means by all that, and where should I start, but:

Nearby is another sci fi contraption.

Alright, lets do it. Guide us to the next world.

Night vision!
No, it was but a moment.

And now we're in the next world, one apparently much brighter than the current iteration.

The shadows walk all about us, but they can't be interacted with. We decide to pop into the house nearby. The door stands open and inviting.

Inside is whatever the hell this thing is.

What? Oh, there's a uterus in it. I see. We can also target it from the get go. Hmm.. Might be important. But for now I decide for everyone to go after the torso.

Doesn't do jack, and I get swiped for my trouble. Legarde gets infected too.
The next couple of turns are hard as my party tries to attack everything it can to see if there are weak spots. I feared that the uterus might require killing before the host, but no, she does eventually go down after enough damage to the torso

Moving swiftly on

Lots of statutes. Are these the new gods?

After some time we get back outside. The layout is disorienting, and many buildings lack distinguishable marks.

There's also this thing. I just hide behind the corner and let it pass.

Hmm, the statue does look a bit similar to what we saw on the map. Although the map had a drawing of one eyed statue, and its pose was different.

Onwards, we find the library.

This place is also long abandoned, it seems, with tiles coming loose from the floors.

A pair of those uterus things are devouring what appears to be their mother in another room. I have no idea what is happening here. Who are these things? Why are they golden? Why are their mothers biomechanical?

To pour more fuel onto the fire, there appears to be another puzzle right here. I dont know if the map has anything to do with it. There were 3 figures on map #1, and 4 figures on map #2, but there were also + signs. I'll take a look some other time.

The library does give us an interesting find - Chapter 2 of the Fellowship story, which is marked as 'genuine'. So what we read before was a forgery? Apparently so. This one has a few juicy details that were omitted in the one we found in the past.

So the old gods resorted to a bluff to try and dissuade the fellowship? How and why were the fellowship so strong?

Are those two the same thing? Four were, off the top of my head without checking the wiki, Nilvain, Chambara, Francis and the fourth one wearing the turban. So the fifth one is the forgotten one? Wasn't one of the old gods also forgotten? The Я one.

Anyhow, here's more from Pocketcat. Chapter 2 becomes a CYAO for whatever reason.

I skipped one screen here. Willem isn't too enthusiastic, so:

Well fed is probably what was intended

"There were also many people Willem had never seen before. Especially one gay gentleman with a constant grin on his face caught Willem's attention."

So if it's a cat, why howl at the moon?

I wont say a thing, you can trust me!

Interesting. He's lamenting that which the old Gods tried to tell the new Gods, what is now interpreted as a lie. But what if it wasn't a lie? And the moon - that is also a deity. Я?

Afraid not.

Piss off

But as I try to leave the library, Im reminded of why I should have reloaded.

This wasnt from the poison dart, but from the uterus/mother attack. Oh well. We'll be restarting from the previous save next time.

​

 

[vazha]

Great lp, this!

 

[lightbane]

Finally caught up to this. I like how some of your pics are randomly censored by your image host webpage. This game promises, but it's so hilariously unfair and shaemessly obscure with the mechanics, that it reminds me of Rainworld. Unlike that one though, this one is slightly better as you can actually fight back. Either way, the lore is way more interesting than playing this game... Just like RW, again.

 

[Egosphere]

Finally caught up to this. I like how some of your pics are randomly censored by your image host webpage. This game promises, but it's so hilariously unfair and shaemessly obscure with the mechanics, that it reminds me of Rainworld. Unlike that one though, this one is slightly better as you can actually fight back. Either way, the lore is way more interesting than playing this game... Just like RW, again.

Wait, really? Are they blurred out? I list them as 'adult' when uploading, simply because of nudity and potential gore.

I will also be continuing this some point soon. I've had 3 attempts at Maharbe so far after gearing up and allocating the skill-souls at the hex, but unfortunately I failed to reach a save point. Having glanced at the guide I now know that the lighthouse tower thing can be used to save progress when you're not in the past. Will take a good 40mins of gameplay for me to get back to what I had though.

 

[Egosphere]

Also, it must be said that Rudimer/Crow Mauler is one of the most aggravating enemies I've encountered. Even with a party of 3 people, well armed, well protected, his appearance is a guaranteed game over.

 

[lightbane]

Wait, really? Are they blurred out? I list them as 'adult' when uploading, simply because of nudity and potential gore.

Some pics were deleted, but perhaps that's a bug from my PC.

Rudimer/Crow Mauler is one of the most aggravating enemies I've encountered.

If you DO manage to defeat him though (by targeting his head with specific weapons IIRC), then all beds become reusable as you no longer have to worry about him.

 

[Egosphere]

Part 7.2 Back to the future


We awaken from our prolonged nap in a dingy cell. Wakey wakey, we've got a whole city to explore.

Spoiler

But before we do that, we need to allocate our soulstones on the hex table. And in order to do that, we have to backtrack all the way from the cells, through the meat tunnel, through the 2nd big building on ground level, and all the way back close to the start. Since that's where the hex table spawned in the current run.

(ShareX fucked up and will keep fucking up later as well. As you can see, 'Mahabre walkthrough' has already been preemptively googled and strategically positioned right behind the game window)

The walk is a chore, accompanied by the creepy music as a not-so unexpected visitor keeps popping up.

But we reach the table in good order.
First thing first - blood portal. This will allow us to open up portals at the ritual circles and teleport ourselves between different levels of the game. Life saver (literally).

Aaaand.... loving whispers, I guess. A healing spell that heals everyone in the party for a +20 ( I think ). Not great, but relieves the stress of finding blue herbs.

That will take us 30 mind to do. So we've substituted having to give out 4 blue vials for a bottle of whiskey and a smoke.

We also go to the kitchen. As we wait for the meat to cook, Raziel squeezes two loaves of spoiled bread across D'arce's head and screams "I am an idiot sandwich", before laughing maniacally and turning back to the oven. Our sanity is indeed falling rapidly.

Now we start doing the rounds to find the ritual circle. We do eventually find it and open up our first (hopefully of many) blood portal.

But on our way back to the stairs disaster strikes

Caw caw to you too, motherfucker

I try to go for the leg sweep

Which works, but a couple of the others miss at this critical moment

Legarde launches a frag at the bird, but its no use

He just tanks it. Even with his knees slashed, he's sturdy enough to start dishing out the damage. And it hurts.

The attacks just keep on stacking, and in Raziel folds in one turn

Well that was fun. We start over. Again, our path is the same - go up to ground level, find the hex table, cook the meat, return to the cells, go to Maharbe.

We encounter the snakeman this time around. He goes down in one turn.

Legarde ends up being poisoned though, I'm not sure how.

Our journey up above goes ok. We get our skills and manage to make it back to the cells without much trouble. I fumble with the keys though when skipping text and end up keeping the doll we find here for myself.

Nothing free in this world, kid. Apart from the dagger.

As we use the cube to open the gates to Maharbe, I wind up running into one of the ghouls that crawl around the mausoleum

The game pulls a nasty surprise here. Having been conditioned to believe that the ghouls can be talked down from fighting, I try and do that, without bothering to order the others to cut off both of its hands.
I should have paid more attention to the art. These are different ghouls, and they will not listen to your whining.

As my guys fumble their attacks, the ghoul uses its one remaining arm to swipe at us and infect Legarde and the girl. Well fuck.
We put the ghoul down with extreme prejudice, but now we're in a dilemma. I have only the one herb to cure the infection. Legarde is obviously the more important of the two, so I do that.

But if I leave the girl untreated, she'll succumb sometime in the future. Afraid I've only the one option remaining..

The girl now hops on one leg (the art doesn't show this). One more accident, and she'll either have no weapons, or be forced to crawl.

Shaken by the mausoleum, we finally make our way to the library and use the cube to go back to the past (light) version of Maharbe.

There are plenty of crates and vases to loot here.

Instead of going to the houses or the library, both of which are infested with those biomech mothers, we stride east in search of adventure.

The layout is tricky. I can't atually go north here, even though it looks like it's just a small step up from where I'm standing.

As I go into the building..

Eeer... didn't we saw off the infected limb? What happened? Probably a bug, but we'll chalk it off to the infection spreading before our intervention. F.

The city is almost pleasant, although its accompanied by a strange track somewhat reminiscent of majula's from DS2.
We circle around for a little while, taking in the sights. Someone's left graffiti of a lion with a dick on his head on a nearby wall. What a shame.

The crates are all empty, looted before we could get our hands on the stuff.

At the end of the road we find a tower. The views of the cityscape are pretty cool, but we didnt come here to just gawk at rooftops. Let's climb the tower and see what's up there.

Tower of Endless. Endless what?

Inside is only the one bed.
Well, alright. let's save our game.

First we tear ourselves a cloth fragment..

And then..

We awaken somewhere entirely different.

Very bloodborne-esque. Love it.

Guys in hats and fukced up masks patrol the streets, but do not attack us. I try and bump into one to see if combat would start, but no, we get ejected straight out of the dream

We turn around and dive back in

Rondon is plastered with posters, all giving the same message

Well, I have my suspicions, but no leads. Sorry.
We start exploring the town. A big building with an open door catches my eye and we slip inside.

And carnal moaning

A whorehouse

And is that..

...

Ahem

Sorry Celeste. Don't think he's coming back. Last I saw him he was messed up, sitting in the cells nursing his backside.

They disappear, telling us that this too was a vision.

So, to put this into perspective, we've gone from the present into the very distant past, then fell asleep in that past which brought us back into the present, and we're now seeing visions of the very recent past..

We explore some more and find a tucked away path leading to what I presume are supposed to be the sewers.

The game freezes up and doesn't let us move. A kid comes crawling out of the shadows.

But something quickly drags him away into the darkness, followed by a solitary meow.

Sorry kiddo, always carry a cursed knife on yourself for such occasions.

We go back outside and start looting the barrels.

I chug down some alcohol and take a smoke break. Back to normal.

We explore around some more until we run into the lamp cultists. These guys are also familiar. Did they nail another person to a statue?

Enki.. the whorehouse is over there. I think what you're doing right now counts as indecent exposure.

...

And then there's a sound, and something seems to flash around us. Not sure what it was.

And the vision disappears once more.

I spent some time walking around the city, but unfortunately this session comes to an unfortunate end as I simply don't have the time to continue, and fail to find a save point.

Unfortunate. But it couldn't be helped.

With the game ending, we're reset back to our last savepoint, which is the cell, minus the skills which we learned at the hex table and the meat that we cooked in the kitchen.
Very unfortunate. But hey, at least the girl is alive once again.

I realized a little later that I completely failed to use the hex table properly, since you can actually scroll through the weapons to curse, meaning that we could have given the girl a cursed knife and ourselves a cursed longsword before delving here. We'll make sure to do that in our next attempt.

It's also chagrining to realize that the savepoint we were meant to find is the very bed that lanched us into Rondon. We just have to interact with it in the present, and we can avail of unlimited saves.

 

[lightbane]

Mahabre walkthrough' has already been preemptively googled and strategically positioned right behind the game window)

I see this ain't a blind run, but I get you.
I like how the fears of your characters are so... Random.

Eeer... didn't we saw off the infected limb? What happened? Probably a bug, but we'll chalk it off to the infection spreading before our intervention. F.

"It was the other leg!"

orry Celeste. Don't think he's coming back. Last I saw him he was messed up, sitting in the cells nursing his backside.

Poor mercenary. He has a death flag by default from this dialogue alone (unless you control him, that is).

 

[Egosphere]

Mahabre walkthrough' has already been preemptively googled and strategically positioned right behind the game window)

I see this ain't a blind run, but I get you.
I like how the fears of your characters are so... Random.

Eeer... didn't we saw off the infected limb? What happened? Probably a bug, but we'll chalk it off to the infection spreading before our intervention. F.

"It was the other leg!"

orry Celeste. Don't think he's coming back. Last I saw him he was messed up, sitting in the cells nursing his backside.

Poor mercenary. He has a death flag by default from this dialogue alone (unless you control him, that is).

It's not entirely blind, but I'm not really following a walkthrough either. The one crutch I needed was to know where I could save the game - since if I don't find the place I'll end up restarting from the cells every time. Haven't looked up as to how to fight any of the new enemies or where to go. If I did, the ghoul wouldn't have been such a nasty fight, nor the poison dart scarecrow. I don't remember what I wanted to know about Maharbe on the day (the pics are a few days old by now), but whatever it was - it hasn't given me much insight, since I'm still none the wiser as to what to do beyond scouring Rondon

edit: remembered. Wanted to know where in the game I'm at. GameFAQs first result says the halfway point.

 

[NecroLord]

That is one deadly bird...

 

[Egosphere]

That is one deadly bird...

Yeah, in a league of his own.
Wonder what the analogue in the sequel will be.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

Barbarian seems to be better at this shit than the others

 

[Egosphere]

Barbarian seems to be better at this shit than the others

There's a very uneven difficulty curve to this game depending on what class you pick. Knight and Barbarian start off with better attack, and the knight with better gear, so the early game is more manageable. The dark priest and the merc otoh are too squishy to make the early game comfortable, and require good knowledge of all the game mechanics to bring them up to speed. But if you manage to power through, then they catch up and converge by mid-game.

 

[Egosphere]

Part 7.3 Irrevocable losses

So we restart from the cells. Again. Alright, pre-armed with the knowledge of what we have to reach, we set off on the journey once again.

Spoiler

I step on a pressure plate to set off an arrow trap in the hallway.

The arrow goes through 3 of my characters. Because of course. I only have the one rag. Because of course. Restart.

This time we take extra care to walk around the troublesome pressure plate. Enki is still in the library - I don't believe I ever even talked to him in this run.

Yeah well I hope you die to a night lurker friend

After snaking our way through another round of narrow hallways, we get to the hex table

I didnt spot the arrow pointing up here the last time. There are much more weapons we can curse. I should have cursed the girls knife, but by that point I had expended both soulstones onto skills.

Just like last time - blood portal and healing whispers

Or loving whispers, whatever. This one just heals us. The other one would be able to heal everyone in the party. Pretty much a necessity I feel.

I remember that Darce is low on health so we give her blue vials.

I also comb over some of the gear I have. There are better weapons in the inventory, but only the sword lets me slice both legs off an enemy in one go.

And the longsword needs two souls to curse for whatever reason.

We go back around, around these guys once more. I did think of fighting them. Id probably beat them handily with my current party, but why risk it? They're minding their own business, I'll mind mine.

But I did pay the hydra a visit.

Joke of a fight since it doesnt fight back. You just cut the heads off one by one.

To leave this mess behind. I feel nothing.

The snake goober notices us far too late to catch up with us, try as he might. Its for his own good, really. We'd wreck him.

And as we make the long journey down to level 7, we stop over at the ritual circle to put our skills to use - opening a blood portal. So far, much the same as the last run.

And here's the door. I wonder how exactly is the gate to the city placed so far beneath the ground when we get to see the sky in there? Magic?

More ghey sculptures

And after knocking down a couple of doors, we're back in Maharbe. Here I remember that I forgot to cook the meat, and I have 9 pieces of the stuff raw in my backpack. No, I'm not going back up. Screw it, we press on.

I think one of the maps that we bought from the man in the mask might be pointing us in the direction of the scarecrow-poison-darter, but I really don't want to fight him when I dont have the leaves to cure poison.

We light up the fires, as we usually do.

And depart for the distant past. The shadows shuffle into the small building on our left. We'll explore that later - we need to save the game.

So we go east, retracing our steps to the lighthouse of dreams

But before delving inside, we use the cube pillar thingie to go back to the present. Hello darkness.

The tower of endless has, surprisingly, a ritual circle drawn on the floor in the middle of the room, which we use. So now we can jump back to level 7. Not bad.

And here we find the unique bed that allows us to save the game as much as we want without coin tosses. Its like finding water in a desert. Genuine relief and appreciation for something so insignificant after all the bullshit the game has pulled so far.

Unfortunately, climbing up and down the tower of endless wipes the grin off my face quite quickly. The path is jagged, since we cant walk diagonally, so we awkwardly steer our PC up-down-left-right in short steps to get back down. We use the magic cube once again and we're back in the past.

Up we go again..

And we're back in the dream world.

We'll speed it up here since the last time we've seen pretty much everything that I can find - the brothel, the kid getting wasted by pocketcat, enki seeing visions, and the sick by the gate.

I dont remember if I interacted with the journal here the last time

Rondon has two flags apparently, or maybe the city has a different flag from the kingdom.

But I accidentally bump into one of the denizens and wake up. Alright, we dive back in.

I tried capturing what it is that Enki is seeing in the vision, but I can't make it out. The silhouette is just north east of him in the pic below. Looks like ... D'arce? Or maybe that's a turban, and not hair? That would mean it's Valtiel. Whatever it is, it doesn't look like Alllmer.

I didnt interact with these guys too much the last time, but the interactions are unique for each one.

There's an interesting parallel with the dungeon proper in this town. We have pocketcat, memories of some of the characters, the patrolling 'guards' and now an avatar of the crow mauler.

You worship the new gods, don't you? There's your answer.

Spoiler

As we go through the gate, we're thrown into some other faraway place. In fact, we arrive home - Oldegard being the nation from which we hail.
And we see ourselves in front of us, inspecting a dead or dying man on the ground.

The 2nd, past, iteration of us is the one to speak.

Ragnvaldr being the default name of the character, I presume this is just oversight. Read Ragnvaldr as Raziel.

After a long bout of coughing..

And the past me dashes north and off screen, presumably to find out the fate of his wife and son.
There's blood everywhere. Must give credit to the mercs - they're made of tough stuff if they put down the barbarians without incurring serious losses. I'm also reminded that two of the people responsible for this massacre are now in my party, and have better gear than I do.

We try and test the limits of the map. Invisible wall only a few steps away. Then the barking starts, and I don't feel like mucking about with the map anymore. We start after our past self, following the blood.

And soon we come upon a house. Our house? Apparently so. The game freezes us in place.

We see ourselves exit the house, reliving that terrible day.

Raziel collapses to the ground in despair.

And with a sharp note, he's gone. Legarde and D'arce make no comment of what they witness. In grim silence, we enter the hut.

I'm surprised that I don't see the corpses of my wife and son, but instead a solitary old lady sitting alone in the dark.

And combat begins before we can approach her.

"Skin granny"
Yeah.. Everyone, attack without mercy.

We deal about 1000 damage in total on the first turn, and that is when she reveals her true power.
This mannequin thing reminds me a little bit of the biomech mother enemies, though I fail to see how they could be connected.
There's also the arm coming out of the head, reminiscent of that graffiti in the city.

Now what? Well, there are 3 arms, and we have 3 swords worth a damn. Let's go.

But she goes first! And her two attacks go straight after the girl, wiping off half of her health and dealing some other effect on top of bleeding.

Our response is equally brutal, hacking off two of her arms. But Raziel misses, and we pay dearly.

Once again she goes after the girl, stacking another two attacks. The first takes her health to 1. The next one kills her.
We don't have the time to mourn.

I cast loving whispers seeing as my health is enough to withstand only a couple of shots, whilst Legarde hacks off the third arm for good. D'arce pokers at her ribs for 500 damage, but no effect.

But without her arms, the skin granny seems to be quite useless. Perhaps there's a coin attack coming, but for now she's content simply staring at us with her maniacal rictus.

We all target the torso. Fortunately, another 1k+ of damage proves enough to expunge this creature and extricate ourselves from this nightmare.

Our victory is met with another segue, this time of another memory. Legarde's.

D'arce and he spend time together in the highlands.

I'm gonna start cutting the screen out to take up less space for the dialogue. The background doesn't change in the back and forth.

Careful..

Darce disappears from the memory momentarily. We're seeing Legarde's thoughts.

And D'arce reappears, the conversation continuing

The conversation ends. So this is the reason why Legarde attacked our town. He needed whatever it was that we brought back to Olgierd from Vinland. And after stealing it, he was captured, tortured, lost all of his memory, and now tags along with the man whose family he murdered. But what was the item? Was it the mysterious cube that opened the door to Maharbe?

After witnessing the memories we are confronted with another encounter.
We stand alone amidst dazzling light when one of the new Gods descends to us

Them? The old gods?

Her..

I agree to do so..

And with that our adventure in the dream ends. Having slain the macabre memory of our dead family, we are given the soul of the Endless after promising Nilvan that we will take her daughter to the heart of darkness. The heart of darkness, I presume, is somewhere below level 7.

There's only the one problem with this whole plan. She didn't give us the daughter, and she didn't tell us where to find her. And if she is who I suspect she is, then.. well.. she died literally 5 minutes ago

The girl has been an interesting character up to this point - nameless, silent, almost .. inhuman. Being the daughter of a new god would be a fitting explanation. And winding up sitting in a cage would be Nilvan's doing as well, then. Waiting for the right person to come along to task us with the job of giving her safe passage to the abyss.

Anyhow, that's all moot. Unless we can revive her (and I'm not looking at a guide on how to do that), she's going to stay dead, and Nilvan's wishes are going to stay shattered.

Four of us climbed the tower, but only 3 return. Appropriate. Much like the merry band of adventurers that went on to become the new Gods suffered a loss in their quest.

We go back to the present, climb back up, save the game, climb back down, and go back to the past.. Phew.
Back in the main square

Storming the main building is a big task, so I decide to revisit the destination of all these shuffling shadows to our west

Lucky coin toss

Shit reward

We bob and weave amidst the biomech mothers, which the game calls mannequins.
Dont want to fight those things.

But eventually we are cornered and fight them we must.

D'arce's gear proves valuable as both hits do a puny 6 damage and do not infect her.
We delete the enemy and her spawn on the very next turn.

Raziel tries to, ahem, eat the mannequin. There's sound of clanking metal, which I guess are his molars caressing the brass surface of this machine. The game explains to us that these things are inedible. Damn. We'll have to make do with bread, cheese and wine.

Down we go

Another one

This one loses her arms and her head. She's useless without the arms as it turns out, but still very much a threat without the head.

Takes a little longer than last time, but eventually it's another L for the mannequins.

down here in a little storage room in the cellar we encounter another merchant - this time it appears to be a clay sculpture come to life. Actually, he seems to be made of the same stuff as the guardian of the gate to the main building in the present. Are they made of stone then?

Bug eyed figurine addresses us

How are you a wizard then?

And then he shows us his wares

Hmm, well.. I dunno really. Soul devour necklace sounds fancy. Let's take that.

Protects against otherworldly powers. As in ghosts? Do they not damage us anymore? Who knows.. The game certainly wont explain any of it.
We leave him to his own devices and backtrack upstairs.

There's a hole in the wall, but we can't enter it.

I'm getting scared for some reason, so I use the pipe to smoke some opium. Mind goes straight to 100.

Another mannequin manages to get the jump onto us, but we prevail without much trouble.

Now all we have to do is go back and save the game and holy shit I've just bumped into one of these things

The thing giggles and whistles, giving us a warm smile. We attack this creepy mofo viciously. For now, he's not fighting back.

One arm gone, second arm gone, but it's not enough. Coin toss.

Tails? Tails! We dodge his attempted hug as his stumps flail through empty air.

Seeing this as a sign from the gods, we cut the thing down in the next turn, stacking another 1k of damage onto the torso. For a spindly twig, the monstrosity can tank a lot of damage.

We leave the body behind, I don't dare attempt satiating hunger with whatever passes for the thing's 'flesh'

After saving the game, we return to the gates. We've been inside before, but still, makes for an appropriate dramatic ending for this part.

We open the doors and step inside.

That's all for now. Shame about the girl, especially if she really is the key to the questline. Shame that the game doesn't pick up on it either, but I guess there's enough C&C for a solo dev to handle as it is.

 

[NecroLord]

Part 7.3 Irrevocable losses

So we restart from the cells. Again. Alright, pre-armed with the knowledge of what we have to reach, we set off on the journey once again.

Spoiler

I step on a pressure plate to set off an arrow trap in the hallway.

The arrow goes through 3 of my characters. Because of course. I only have the one rag. Because of course. Restart.

This time we take extra care to walk around the troublesome pressure plate. Enki is still in the library - I don't believe I ever even talked to him in this run.

Yeah well I hope you die to a night lurker friend

After snaking our way through another round of narrow hallways, we get to the hex table

I didnt spot the arrow pointing up here the last time. There are much more weapons we can curse. I should have cursed the girls knife, but by that point I had expended both soulstones onto skills.

Just like last time - blood portal and healing whispers

Or loving whispers, whatever. This one just heals us. The other one would be able to heal everyone in the party. Pretty much a necessity I feel.

I remember that Darce is low on health so we give her blue vials.

I also comb over some of the gear I have. There are better weapons in the inventory, but only the sword lets me slice both legs off an enemy in one go.

And the longsword needs two souls to curse for whatever reason.

We go back around, around these guys once more. I did think of fighting them. Id probably beat them handily with my current party, but why risk it? They're minding their own business, I'll mind mine.

But I did pay the hydra a visit.

Joke of a fight since it doesnt fight back. You just cut the heads off one by one.

To leave this mess behind. I feel nothing.

The snake goober notices us far too late to catch up with us, try as he might. Its for his own good, really. We'd wreck him.

And as we make the long journey down to level 7, we stop over at the ritual circle to put our skills to use - opening a blood portal. So far, much the same as the last run.

And here's the door. I wonder how exactly is the gate to the city placed so far beneath the ground when we get to see the sky in there? Magic?

More ghey sculptures

And after knocking down a couple of doors, we're back in Maharbe. Here I remember that I forgot to cook the meat, and I have 9 pieces of the stuff raw in my backpack. No, I'm not going back up. Screw it, we press on.

I think one of the maps that we bought from the man in the mask might be pointing us in the direction of the scarecrow-poison-darter, but I really don't want to fight him when I dont have the leaves to cure poison.

We light up the fires, as we usually do.

And depart for the distant past. The shadows shuffle into the small building on our left. We'll explore that later - we need to save the game.

So we go east, retracing our steps to the lighthouse of dreams

But before delving inside, we use the cube pillar thingie to go back to the present. Hello darkness.

The tower of endless has, surprisingly, a ritual circle drawn on the floor in the middle of the room, which we use. So now we can jump back to level 7. Not bad.

And here we find the unique bed that allows us to save the game as much as we want without coin tosses. Its like finding water in a desert. Genuine relief and appreciation for something so insignificant after all the bullshit the game has pulled so far.

Unfortunately, climbing up and down the tower of endless wipes the grin off my face quite quickly. The path is jagged, since we cant walk diagonally, so we awkwardly steer our PC up-down-left-right in short steps to get back down. We use the magic cube once again and we're back in the past.

Up we go again..

And we're back in the dream world.

We'll speed it up here since the last time we've seen pretty much everything that I can find - the brothel, the kid getting wasted by pocketcat, enki seeing visions, and the sick by the gate.

I dont remember if I interacted with the journal here the last time

Rondon has two flags apparently, or maybe the city has a different flag from the kingdom.

But I accidentally bump into one of the denizens and wake up. Alright, we dive back in.

I tried capturing what it is that Enki is seeing in the vision, but I can't make it out. The silhouette is just north east of him in the pic below. Looks like ... D'arce? Or maybe that's a turban, and not hair? That would mean it's Valtiel. Whatever it is, it doesn't look like Alllmer.

I didnt interact with these guys too much the last time, but the interactions are unique for each one.

There's an interesting parallel with the dungeon proper in this town. We have pocketcat, memories of some of the characters, the patrolling 'guards' and now an avatar of the crow mauler.

You worship the new gods, don't you? There's your answer.

Spoiler

As we go through the gate, we're thrown into some other faraway place. In fact, we arrive home - Oldegard being the nation from which we hail.
And we see ourselves in front of us, inspecting a dead or dying man on the ground.

The 2nd, past, iteration of us is the one to speak.

Ragnvaldr being the default name of the character, I presume this is just oversight. Read Ragnvaldr as Raziel.

After a long bout of coughing..

And the past me dashes north and off screen, presumably to find out the fate of his wife and son.
There's blood everywhere. Must give credit to the mercs - they're made of tough stuff if they put down the barbarians without incurring serious losses. I'm also reminded that two of the people responsible for this massacre are now in my party, and have better gear than I do.

We try and test the limits of the map. Invisible wall only a few steps away. Then the barking starts, and I don't feel like mucking about with the map anymore. We start after our past self, following the blood.

And soon we come upon a house. Our house? Apparently so. The game freezes us in place.

We see ourselves exit the house, reliving that terrible day.

Raziel collapses to the ground in despair.

And with a sharp note, he's gone. Legarde and D'arce make no comment of what they witness. In grim silence, we enter the hut.

I'm surprised that I don't see the corpses of my wife and son, but instead a solitary old lady sitting alone in the dark.

And combat begins before we can approach her.

"Skin granny"
Yeah.. Everyone, attack without mercy.

We deal about 1000 damage in total on the first turn, and that is when she reveals her true power.
This mannequin thing reminds me a little bit of the biomech mother enemies, though I fail to see how they could be connected.
There's also the arm coming out of the head, reminiscent of that graffiti in the city.

Now what? Well, there are 3 arms, and we have 3 swords worth a damn. Let's go.

But she goes first! And her two attacks go straight after the girl, wiping off half of her health and dealing some other effect on top of bleeding.

Our response is equally brutal, hacking off two of her arms. But Raziel misses, and we pay dearly.

Once again she goes after the girl, stacking another two attacks. The first takes her health to 1. The next one kills her.
We don't have the time to mourn.

I cast loving whispers seeing as my health is enough to withstand only a couple of shots, whilst Legarde hacks off the third arm for good. D'arce pokers at her ribs for 500 damage, but no effect.

But without her arms, the skin granny seems to be quite useless. Perhaps there's a coin attack coming, but for now she's content simply staring at us with her maniacal rictus.

We all target the torso. Fortunately, another 1k+ of damage proves enough to expunge this creature and extricate ourselves from this nightmare.

Our victory is met with another segue, this time of another memory. Legarde's.

D'arce and he spend time together in the highlands.

I'm gonna start cutting the screen out to take up less space for the dialogue. The background doesn't change in the back and forth.

Careful..

Darce disappears from the memory momentarily. We're seeing Legarde's thoughts.

And D'arce reappears, the conversation continuing

The conversation ends. So this is the reason why Legarde attacked our town. He needed whatever it was that we brought back to Olgierd from Vinland. And after stealing it, he was captured, tortured, lost all of his memory, and now tags along with the man whose family he murdered. But what was the item? Was it the mysterious cube that opened the door to Maharbe?

After witnessing the memories we are confronted with another encounter.
We stand alone amidst dazzling light when one of the new Gods descends to us

Them? The old gods?

Her..

I agree to do so..

And with that our adventure in the dream ends. Having slain the macabre memory of our dead family, we are given the soul of the Endless after promising Nilvan that we will take her daughter to the heart of darkness. The heart of darkness, I presume, is somewhere below level 7.

There's only the one problem with this whole plan. She didn't give us the daughter, and she didn't tell us where to find her. And if she is who I suspect she is, then.. well.. she died literally 5 minutes ago

The girl has been an interesting character up to this point - nameless, silent, almost .. inhuman. Being the daughter of a new god would be a fitting explanation. And winding up sitting in a cage would be Nilvan's doing as well, then. Waiting for the right person to come along to task us with the job of giving her safe passage to the abyss.

Anyhow, that's all moot. Unless we can revive her (and I'm not looking at a guide on how to do that), she's going to stay dead, and Nilvan's wishes are going to stay shattered.

Four of us climbed the tower, but only 3 return. Appropriate. Much like the merry band of adventurers that went on to become the new Gods suffered a loss in their quest.

We go back to the present, climb back up, save the game, climb back down, and go back to the past.. Phew.
Back in the main square

Storming the main building is a big task, so I decide to revisit the destination of all these shuffling shadows to our west

Lucky coin toss

Shit reward

We bob and weave amidst the biomech mothers, which the game calls mannequins.
Dont want to fight those things.

But eventually we are cornered and fight them we must.

D'arce's gear proves valuable as both hits do a puny 6 damage and do not infect her.
We delete the enemy and her spawn on the very next turn.

Raziel tries to, ahem, eat the mannequin. There's sound of clanking metal, which I guess are his molars caressing the brass surface of this machine. The game explains to us that these things are inedible. Damn. We'll have to make do with bread, cheese and wine.

Down we go

Another one

This one loses her arms and her head. She's useless without the arms as it turns out, but still very much a threat without the head.

Takes a little longer than last time, but eventually it's another L for the mannequins.

down here in a little storage room in the cellar we encounter another merchant - this time it appears to be a clay sculpture come to life. Actually, he seems to be made of the same stuff as the guardian of the gate to the main building in the present. Are they made of stone then?

Bug eyed figurine addresses us

How are you a wizard then?

And then he shows us his wares

Hmm, well.. I dunno really. Soul devour necklace sounds fancy. Let's take that.

Protects against otherworldly powers. As in ghosts? Do they not damage us anymore? Who knows.. The game certainly wont explain any of it.
We leave him to his own devices and backtrack upstairs.

There's a hole in the wall, but we can't enter it.

I'm getting scared for some reason, so I use the pipe to smoke some opium. Mind goes straight to 100.

Another mannequin manages to get the jump onto us, but we prevail without much trouble.

Now all we have to do is go back and save the game and holy shit I've just bumped into one of these things

The thing giggles and whistles, giving us a warm smile. We attack this creepy mofo viciously. For now, he's not fighting back.

One arm gone, second arm gone, but it's not enough. Coin toss.

Tails? Tails! We dodge his attempted hug as his stumps flail through empty air.

Seeing this as a sign from the gods, we cut the thing down in the next turn, stacking another 1k of damage onto the torso. For a spindly twig, the monstrosity can tank a lot of damage.

We leave the body behind, I don't dare attempt satiating hunger with whatever passes for the thing's 'flesh'

After saving the game, we return to the gates. We've been inside before, but still, makes for an appropriate dramatic ending for this part.

We open the doors and step inside.

That's all for now. Shame about the girl, especially if she really is the key to the questline. Shame that the game doesn't pick up on it either, but I guess there's enough C&C for a solo dev to handle as it is.

Will you take revenge on Legarde for the massacre? Or just press on with him in your party?
Since you have a free companion slot, now that the Girl is dead (R.I.P.), why not get Enki?

 

[lightbane]

Can you kill Legarde and not-Ciasca since they're in the party to begin with? I suppose one way is to kick them out of the party, search where they're waiting at, then attack them.
The game is truly offbrand Berserk.
Shame it's so unfun to play.
These mannequins seem something out of Blame!, or Endless Legend, rather than grimdark dungeon central.