#pillars of eternity spoilers

[glamfellens]

sometimes its hard to take lodwyn seriously because i know she was killed by the watcher and their gang of idiots who say shit like this

[tarbuchyloewenthal]

you ever think about how much it fucked up the watcher to learn their past life was as an inquisitor? like imagine you're chilling, minding yourself, when out of nowhere you start reliving memories of you in the spanish inquisition. just ratcheting up the rack during interrogations or throwing a torch onto a pyre.

yeah i wouldn't sleep either.

[anderstrevelyan]

oh???

Berath. Berath, I'm a death godlike, you have to tell me more here. Berath, please

[herearedragons]

"ouhhhhhh there was no way to save Devil she was doomed to rust" THERE IS A CHAMBER IN DURGAN'S BATTERY FILLED WITH GAS THAT MAKES METAL RUST PROOF. IT HAS SUCCESSFULLY PRESERVED THE CANNONS FOR HUNDREDS OF YEARS.

[rainrein]

missing the paths of od nua I think every crpg should have a creepy dungeon experience where in the end it directly ties back to the main story (the ‘master below’ is the adra dragon, not od nua, just like how the gods are engwithian’s creations). the environment and maros’ statue is sooo beautiful and one of my favorite moments in game was actually realizing the experiments they were doing with the blights bc I had read the bestiary before hand. all of this pain and suffering just for a lost son, all of these atrocities just for the gods you created…

[morkses-awful-house]

*Spoilers for Pillars of eternity*

You know things are getting heavy when even Durance realizes he should shut the fuck up.

[5000andris]

i finished deadfire a week ago but i'm still thinking about this

[raisay]

REASONS I LOVE:

Vatnir Pillars of Eternity

• Sad backstory, but still trying to help as much as he’s able. It would be reasonable for him to give up, but he hasn’t.

• Large juxtaposition between his appearance and personality. I love characters like this, in both directions. I love a big scary character that’s quiet and soft spoken like Vatnir, and I also love the opposite.

• He actually confronts his god, even knowing that his god is terrible and powerful. He doesn’t really get the answer he wanted, but he was still brave enough to ask the “why”.

• I like that he’s not what you expected the leader of a death cult to be. I know we’ve seen characters that lead cults who aren’t what you expected, but rarely (I don’t know if I could name a single one) do you see one that isn’t still evil. Vatnir is just a guy, doing his best, even if he is a bit of an opportunist.

• He does eventually, if you take him with you, leave. Maybe it’s not the thing a truly responsible leader would do, but it’s a brave thing to leave behind the only life you’ve ever known to seek out what little happiness might be afforded to you. ESPECIALLY when he looks the way he does.

• There are some interesting quandaries in his story about duty versus personal fulfillment, and I really love things like this. If you take him with you, his replacement throws his cult into fanaticism and ruin, but if you leave him there, he turns the place into a thriving trading post. You can, in your interactions with him, discuss these things and you can decide for yourself whether you think he’s a hypocrite or coward.

Conclusion: I like that everything about him is kind of the opposite of what you were expecting. Leader of a death cult with a terrible visage? Actually pretty soft spoken and nice. Soft spoken and beaten down by life? Still has enough fight in him to face his terrible god and ask questions. Fun character and I like the different ways your Watcher can respond to him and call out his hypocrisies and the way he’s failing his people by lying to them and deserting them. The issues that he faces are way more extreme than what you might experience in your day to day, but the undercurrent of fulfillment versus duty is a theme we can all relate to in some capacity.

[couchtaro]

In the Pillars of Eternity games one of your first party members is a farmer/fighter named Edér. He is all but stated by the game to be your best friend - holds you when you have nightmares, always checking in on you and making jokes to cheer you up, adopts an (animal) son with you. Minor spoilers for the second game, but when the player character is in trouble he drops EVERYTHING to come to your aid, carries your unconscious body around until you wake up from a soul coma, and even sails off to a whole different part of the world for you. But when romance becomes a possibility in the second game he really just wants to be friends. He values your current relationship much more than anything romantic. And I love it

SOBBING what a king!!!!! We love to see it! I love a joint pet ownership bestie who carries your unconscious body around. All devotion Zero romantic expectations. That’s love babey. Thank you for sharing

[glamfellens]

so Raederic VII comes back as a deathguard (if you kill him in act 1) and claims he is Berath's champion and its they who spared him the Wheel. of course we do see later in Deadfire that Berath is absolutely willing to spare chosen individuals from the Wheel if they decide said individual can serve a purpose or if it can benefit Berath in some way. But I'm not really seeing that with Raedric? like yes it could be a reward for Raederic's zealotry and newfound devotion as he switched from worshipping Eothas to Berath, but I don't really feel like that fits with Berath's tenets exactly.... Berath encourages treating the dead and death with dispassionate dignity, which is the opposite of how Raederic has been treating the people of Gilded Vale, living or dead. Stringing people up on a giant tree in full view of the town and leaving them there to rot is not dignified. i would also think that these decisions were fuelled by emotion rather than logic (a desperation to appease Berath in order to ease the Hollowborn crisis, anger at animancers for finding no definite solutions, etc), which is another thing Berath disapproves of. tldr Raederic says he is Berath's champion but I feel like that is him making an assumption, and while his devotion and zealotry had a role in bringing him back as a deathguard, i think it makes sense that it happened independently of Berath

[tarbuchyloewenthal]

i loved it in pillars of eternity when i put this bitch in a pillar for eternity

[anderstrevelyan]

My death godlike Berath-priest Watcher gets to talk to Berath???

Would have been really embarrassing for me if I failed the Berath lore pop quizzes in this segment

[herearedragons]

okay no I am doing this. brain go brrr. applying the reproductive horror angle to my Watchers

Selene. the usual godlike fare but for her specifically, I like the interpretation that moon godlike are like. a subconscious manifestation of Ondra's guilt for killing Abydon. I like the idea that there were no moon godlike before that. you are born as walking evidence of someone else's crime. is it any wonder she wants you to disappear. also half of her Deadfire character arc is spiraling over the realization that Edér is excited about the idea of having a child, which is something he's never going to get with her. because she's not meant to be a part of the cycle of life, she's made for the cycle of grief. she's not a wife, she's a memorial, she's a tombstone. he knows, and he marries her anyway

Mae. her family tradition of swearing the oldest daughter into the Goldpact Knights, giving her the heirloom breastplate, to honor the contract that got their ancestor out of slavery. which, from an outside perspective, means that every few decades a new orlan woman will show up, same armor, same fighting skill, same determination to prove herself. they look alike. their faces blend together. your grandmother is your mother is your daughter is you. in the first year after Mae swears her oath she promises herself that she'll never have children because this way of life is lonely and dangerous and she has made a home in it but she's never want it for anyone else

Lorenzo. standard godlike fare. sold to a slave owner as a baby because his parents were going to kill him for being An Omen and then saw an easier alternative. growing up being told over and over again, every birthday, that you weren't ever supposed to make it to this age so you better be grateful and work hard to pay it back. his biological mother survived the birth but he killed every single person who had a hand in raising him, by the will of Berath, who is more parent to him than any mortal being. and Berath loves him, as much as a god can love a soul. but the thing is that Berath loves the soul, so when Lorenzo is overwhelmed and replaced by his Awakened self, Berath sees it, and Berath does not care. you are god's child and you are your parents' child and you're Bianca's boy and you're nobody's. no one will lay claim to you. no one will step in to save you

[mxanigel]

Incoming Pillars of Eternity rambles! (I tried to make my thoughts coherent. Emphasis on tried.) Now that I've reached Defiance Bay, I've been devouring the game this weekend to help me recuperate from recent life stuff, but this morning I had to pause to digest how much the events have affected Natsuki.

For context, Natsuki is a crime-solving moon godlike scientist ranger who initially leans clever, rational, stoic (except for certain things). Diplomatic tendencies partly arise from navigating her pursuit of science and clues and from being a moon godlike. Rational thinking because scientist and because that mindset helped her develop archery skills early on. Prefers honesty to lies but will bend the truth if it helps someone else. Yet becoming a Watcher and learning more than she ever wanted to know about Awakening and soul manipulation… well, that understandably changes a person. She never expected to be considered benevolent. But benevolence is understandable when you're able to read someone else's soul, isn't it?

-----

Recent Caed Nua things:

Natsuki explored more levels in the Endless Paths and got gut punched by Kana's discovery of the truth of the Tanvii ora Toha (Book of Virtues, ooooof)

Was called to court over a dispute of ownership and ended up able to keep Caed Nua because said disputer is a pathetic person

Loves her Mechanics bonus from resting at the stronghold -> she's much less likely to trigger traps now! to her companions' relief

Recent events:

Natsuki imprisoned the impostor of a drug dealer (who later escaped…) and probably meddled too much in the relationship between the real drug dealer and his ex? fiancee

She helped a kid get a fancy dagger and totally burst his bubble by revealing she'd already discovered the secret stashing spot near the amphitheater

Wandered catacombs in search of the source of a long-dead voice and accidentally moved forward a main quest by stumbling into the temple of Woedica (a moon godlike trying to wear a hood doesn't go well, haha) -> ended up taking down creepy catacombs dude and then convincing the quest-giver to destroy the amulet

Spoke at length with a talking statue and has a growing concern with how souls are treated in this world (okay maybe that's more me than Natsuki) with a side effect of starting to wonder whether pursuit of science is worth the cost

Was a bit too giddy about offering Aloth as a "volunteer" to investigate his soul duality condition (she made the two of them talk to each other like adults and was adamantly against him destroying the data gathered in the process)

Retrieved a scroll and instead of returning it, she buried it because a god(?!) asked her to

Discovered Durance's involvement with the Godhammer

Later stumbled across a piece of the Godhammer bomb

Was wholly unprepared to enter the North Ward of the Sanitarium (what. the. fuck.) and ended up killing Azo

Found a ghost who didn't realize he was a ghost playing guide at the above-ground entrance(?) to the temple of Woedica

Drooled with Kana over the bookshelves in the Hall of Revealed Mysteries but came to her senses long enough to use Grimda's key to help an animancy researcher get a text useful in their studies

Figured going to Heritage Hill wouldn't be a big deal and then got wrecked

Also now they're getting attacked by assassins in Defiance Bay

But hey, at least those events boosted Natsuki's reputation enough for Edér to access the records he's been seeking…

Okay. So the Heritage Hill thing. It was bad enough to stumble across the plight of a terrified child surviving amidst the unliving. And then find that an undead soldier was luring her compatriots to their deaths. But that damned tower. Specifically, talking to Icantha about it. The pride of hers that Natsuki felt, the pride Natsuki had to chip away from to reach a rational conclusion, the pride that resonated with Natsuki's own sense of identity. The pride that casually manipulated countless souls… for what purpose? Knowledge? Power? Control? People aren't playthings, aren't resources, aren't materials. They are people. The living shouldn't be abused by the dead.

Yet what it takes for Natsuki to chip away at that pride… is talking like she once herself did about being a scientist. About pursuing knowledge and understanding and wisdom. She convinces Icantha to give up that pride under the hope that Natsuki will carry the knowledge forward on her behalf. And then Natsuki overloads the tower so that no one else can abuse those souls. Despite knowing the souls would be destroyed, it's better than them being abused. Isn't it?

Now Natsuki has too many questions storming through her already overly-taxed mind: What does it mean to be "good"? What does it mean to pursue knowledge? Can knowledge be gained without harm or sacrifice? When is that knowledge worth the cost?

Her remaining tether is helping her companions. Who occasionally seem to notice when she's faltering. Thank the gods for Sagani and Edér and, well, everyone in her party.

[sun-marie]

.

[orcboxer]

ill have to replay deadfire now you hooked me w that souls rotting thing i completely forgor abt that

but i do remember the flow of souls before they built the wheel was chaotic and "uneven" and soul maladies like the hollowborn were not unheard of, so i got the impression eothas wants us to rebuild the wheel just w/o the gods to lord over everything

i could be wrong, but im 99% certain there were no gods on eora before the engwithan pantheon, thats what caused them to create them, iirc their animancers searched the adra for their then gods and didnt find any, so they decided to create them

I'm thinkin you may be right about that! That last bit sounds familiar. And now that you mention it, you're totally right, I do recall them mentioning there used to be hollowborn on the reg. So maybe the soul cycle has to be like, cultivated or something. That would actually be a pretty cool direction for the setting to take.

God I'm gonna end up talkin myself into playing both games again lmao. I never did finish that druid playthrough 🤔

Anyway, thanks for indulging me with this convo! I looove babblin about PoE. Outta curiosity, what kinda build do you think you'll use for your next playthrough?