#but I really feel like something broke inside Sabina during this adventure

[sun-marie]

Pillars of Eternity: Deadfire spoilers, but I finished it the other night and I haven't been able to stop thinking about how juicy this story is for a Drifter!Watcher and I need to talk about it at least semi-coherently.

In my memory, nearly every time you talk to/about Eothas you have the option to justify your pursuit of him by the fact that he destroyed Caed Nua. Obviously sometimes this is meant to be comedic (calling the God of Rebirth a "jackass" was one of the more surreal moments of this game), but from what I could see it is pretty consistent; whether the Watcher is talking to the other gods about Eothas or talking directly to him (including the final confrontation with him), they can swing back around to the same thing; "You destroyed my castle and you need to answer for it."

And I just think this is so interesting for my Watcher, who has the "Drifter" background! Sabina wasn't one by choice, and the reason she came to The Dyrwood was to start over, away from the people who have been chasing her, and settle down. While it didn't happen the way she expected, Caed Nua gave her the one thing she always craved, which is stability. For five good years, she remains in her new castle in the Dyrwood, gains a respected place in the community as its Lady, and finally has a home to call her own.

And then a big green giant rips it away from her in an instant, and she wakes up on a boat, in the middle of the sea. Drifting.

And suddenly she's right back where she started, wandering from island to island, never fully stationary. While she grows to love her crew and the ship itself (annoyingly, being a ship captain comes very naturally to her) and finds a new kind of home in them, she never really gets over the loss of Caed Nua. It was her castle, yes, and while she enjoyed the luxuries of being a Dyrwoodan Lady, that was never really the point. It could have been a run-down shack in the middle of the woods for all she cared, what mattered was that it was her's. And even so, it was deemed acceptable collateral damage by Eothas, and that stained whatever relationship they could have, and even her relationship with the other gods. Not to mention she has precious little time to even process her grief for it, or for the people there.

It feels so petty to say that you still haven't forgiven Eothas for destroying Caed Nua in your final conversation with him, after everything else that's happened since then, and that is precisely why it's so juicy. Whatever else the Watcher may be, they are still mortal, and the damage done to them is just as lasting and as unfair as it would be with any other mortal.

And the final nail in the coffin is that once it's all finally over, Sabina leaves most of her companions in Deadfire (including her new partner Aloth) to go... home. Wherever that is now. It's not in Deadfire. And neither is it in the Dyrwood, not anymore. Until she can find it again, she'll be left, once again, drifting from place to place.