Enderal: Explosive Finale

[Part of the Cursed story line]

After explaining the situation to Calia we decide to hedge our bets on the best way to save the world. Two of the less damaged Arps, who aren't goblins at all but puppets, are re-awoken using the soul gems of Pahtira (who has been listening to everything from my pack the whole time) and Goliath, both happy to be mobile again.

I tell them that they will be the ones using the escape pods to fly up to Starcity as that is where their knowledge of machines will be best served. Meanwhile Calia will take a shortcut to the Myrad towers to fly across the sea to warn the other countries and give them all the knowledge we gained.

As for me, I would need to destroy the Beacon. After a tearful farewell with Calia, I returned to the Sun Temple with the two Arps following behind. Taranor's forces had broken in, but he along with everyone else who wasn't already dead lay twitching and burning from inside. The Arps get to the escape pods and fly off while I walk up to the Beacon, finding Tealor lying on top of it, still believing he did something good.

There is only one thing to do now...

I wait as long as I can to give Calia time to flee before using the Blind Miner's axe to destroy the Beacon's power source and causing a continent sized explosion. Hah. Dying to save the entire world. If only the matron mother at Ust Natha could see me n... *KABOOM!*

Insight: What a cool game! I've obviously skipped a bunch of stuff and changed a few things to condense the story so I highly recommend experiencing Enderal for yourself! Maybe you'll make different choices than I did? I also didn't even touch a number of their custom skill trees nor did I visit every location on the map.

Enderal: Numinos

[Part of the Cursed story line]

The wisps and specters in the vault tunnels are easily navigated to reach the Undercity which is in chaos. People infected by red madness, looters and a contingent of tough Nehrimise all have to be dealt with before we reach a collapsed tunnel that Yuslan reopens.

This leads deep down into the lost city we are looking for and it is full of stairs, corpses burned from within and lost ones, including a ghost dragon who collapses the ceiling and separating Calia from the group. Tealor, Yuslan and I push on and at an ancient Beacon, find the Numinos. Doesn't the fact that we found it here means it didn't work?

It's the perfect place for a knife in the back.

It doesn't matter because Yuslan gets to it first and reveals that he too is a traitor, and is the one that let the Nehrimise into the city the first time - all because Tealor killed his family long ago. He also admits to killing Lishari as she was too close to the truth before using himself as a human bomb to destroy the Numinos, a final act of revenge.

I take the brunt of the blaze as Tealor uses me as a human shield. With no way to stop the cycle now, the grand master is resolute in activating the Beacon as is - which is just going to be one huge explosion to take down the Nehrimise with everyone else. I try to grab his leg to stop him but he just stomps me down through the wooden floor.

Insight: The Nehrimise and the Lost Ones at the temple stairs are strong and in big numbers. Hanging back and sniping from the shadows works well provided you brought enough ammo with you.

Enderal: Loyalties

[Part of the Cursed story line]

Warping back to Ark, Calia and I report to Tealor and then share an enjoyable evening while we still can. The following day I am tasked with helping Yuslan to decode the map and finds that it points to the last place a Beacon was used, centuries ago. In the city deep beneath Ark itself!

This revelation is interrupted when a bunch of Keepers attempt to sabotage the current Beacon and while they are stopped, their other traitorous compatriots have let the Nehrimise army into Ark in exchange for a truce, one Taranor is unlikely to keep for long.

The end times are a bloody business.

With the temple being the final stronghold, Tealor assembles a squad composed of Calia, Yuslan and myself to use the tunnels of the old vault to descend into the Undercity and beyond to find the Numinos. Everyone else just has to hold position. As there is no beating the Nehrimise now, it is his hope we can still use the Beacon to end the Cycle before they can get through. All Calia and I can think of is finding a way to escape the madness while we are down there.

Insight: There's a handy "point of no return" message, so get everything you need done before accepting.

Enderal: Mile High

[Part of the Cursed story line]

Kurmai's flying boat is short a few materials so Tealor's advisor Yuslan and I are sent to retrieve said components - myrading out to Duneville and making our way up to the ravaged lands of Thalgard to do so. Thalgard is home to particularly nasty enemies, having been exposed to a huge magical explosion from an experiment gone wrong ages ago.

Our mission is a success, and after a few more hours of installation a crew is assembled to go with Kurmai to the Starcity which includes both Jespar and Calia while Tealor and Yuslan see us off. During the long flight Calia finally gives into my charms and I let her experience all I learned from the lust chambers at Ust Natha. I knew those would come in handy!

The need to defy gravity is so strong in this place.

Refreshed, we arrive at the spectacular floating city but find it abandoned which rattles Kurmai a fair deal as he believed his people were waiting for him here. Jespar and some of the crew remain to guard the ship while a small away team including Calia and myself follow Kurmai to search for any mention of a Numinos.

Insight: Thalgard is the Chernobyl of Enderal and has some high radiation of arcane fever, especially if you go to the original blast site called the Sunfire. Bring potions of ambrosia.

Enderal: Ark Siege

[Part of the Cursed story line]

Once Calia is being tended to, I hand in the stones which start to power up the Beacon. Alas at that very moment the Nehrimise decide to attack the city so I go with Grandmaster Tealor himself to fight through the infiltrators and push back their regular infantry to retake the outer gate. During this, Tealor also executes the traitor Squad Leader Jorek, who helped the Nehrimise gain entry.

With the city re-secured, we quickly head back to the Beacon but learn that activating it now will just end up killing everyone. It needs one more part, a "Numinos" to work safetly and the lead to find it comes in a most surprising form: crazy Kurmai the egg collector!

During the siege he was caught trying to steal material from the Keeper's headquarters to complete his flying ship to reach the Star City, which according to the researchers would be the best repository of knowledge to find a Numinos. I would have said it was far fetched, had I not already been inside a crashed star ship previously. At his workshop we find that his air ship is almost complete!

All these people wanting to be birds is absurd.

Insight: Tealor is ubertough and can kill all the enemies by himself if you prefer to just afk in a corner somewhere. Also, massive plot hole in that you'd think the Nehrimese would just get a bunch of "teleport to Ark" scrolls and open the gates again. :P

Enderal: Wishbreaker

[Part of the Cursed story line]

Jespar and I return to Ark to meet up with Grandmaster Tealor who is facing many critics upon the coming war, most vocally from Squad Leader Jorek, but Tealor refuses to surrender the Beacon. Instead he tasks us with finding three black stones to power it. To help in this endeavor, Tealor commands the guards to lift the kill on sight command previously on me and after paying an exorbitant fee I'm free of the law men again. It also helps that Mael, the instigator of that command, has left the city, presumably to pursue Dijaam across the sea.

The first of the black stones actually belongs to Jespar's family, most likely with his estranged sister since he doesn't have it. Our search for her reveals that she is also the vigilante known as the Bone Judge. When we finally catch up to her, we find the stone is what gives her her power and since Jespar can't talk her into surrendering I end up killing her. Jespar hates me for this, and spirals into a dark place full of powdered drugs, alcohol and whores. 

Sorry kid, the greater good is always better than a single person's happiness.

I track the next stone to a village near Duneville where everyone seems pretty happy. The owner of this artifact is a little boy whose only hope is to find someone to play with and using the power to create a "reality" where people like him and refuse to leave. I have no choice but to take the stone from him by force and kill the deformed child. As a result the people in the town die too, since they haven't eaten anything real for years and were just being sustained through the boy's wish.

Insight: Not sure why I couldn't pay my fine earlier, I guess I needed to wait long enough for the NPCs to respawn without aggro?

Enderal: The Cycle

[Part of the Cursed story line]

Getting caught turns out to be the fastest way to meet the Nehrimise commander, Taranor, who finds and uses the magic plate to contact Tealor. Apparently there's significant evidence about of a cycle here in Enderal, one nearing its end in which all life simply vanishes.

The Keepers have been trying hard to stop it but the atheistic Nehrimise don't want that. They believe the cycle ends with evolving into something else, something greater. Hence they have come to wage war to stop the Keepers plans, unless Tealor agrees to stop constructing the device Lishari's team recovered from the dig site which they call "the Beacon".

Tealor flatly refuses, so the war is on. Being a good sport, Taranor decides against simply executing Jespar and I there and then - instead putting us on a raft  to let chance decide our fate. Fortune favors us as a passing fishing vessel picks us up after a few hours and takes us to Duneville.

They also didn't take any of our gear, that's convenient!

Here I find Esme once again, who lets all her feelings off her chest. With nothing left for her here, I urge her to find passage elsewhere before she gets caught up in the coming war. Or the end of the cycle. Whatever comes first.

Insight: This is unrelated to the current post but don't try attack any of the Rhalata in their main base (or do it off a save). The result is clever, humorous and fatal.

Enderal: Meeting Sneaking

[Part of the Cursed story line]

Being wanted really makes it challenging to attend the next meeting in the Keeper's base. It takes a bit of the time stop perk and a number of invisibility potions to reach it without being massacred by all the guards and soldiers on the way in.

Grandmaster Tealor himself is not impressed by my tardiness or by my current status which he refuses to override. Instead he assigns me a task suitable for my skill set, and my being expendable. The Nehrimise army has sailed across the sea in what is the start of an invasion and I am to plant magical plates in their base to spy on them.

Since Jespar is just a greedy merc, he too is sent with me and our first task is to meet up with Firespark at an ancient temple which has the transportation means to reach the Nehrimise camp undetected. To avoid the local guards we teleport out of there to the Frostcliff Tavern, but the patrons there are also on the look out for me just proving the reach of Mael's pockets!

Sort of like this, but with everyone after Jespar and I.

A mass brawl erupts in which we kill a few people before managing to break free and flee towards the mission objective.

Insight: There are a surprising number of NPCs that can't be killed in safe zones, so don't expect to win fights by being the last one standing there. You won't be.

Enderal: You're F-Hired!

[Part of the Cursed story line]

Returning from Duneville I manage to wrap up a number of lose ends at Ark - completing a relic collection for the SHOES guild, an egg collection for crazy Kurmai who wants to start an aviary in his floating "Star City", and the ingredients to reproduce the poison Mael was interested in - but not before first warning his rival Dijaam that she's under suspicion. Since she confronts Mael directly about it, I promptly get fired from the Golden Sickle.

Just as well as right after Calia and I get promoted into the Keeper guild, and Grandmaster Tealor puts us to work immediately - sending us to assist a nearby dig crew to retrieve an ancient artifact. Turns out this crew is led by Lishari, and her progress into the site is being held up by trap savvy bandits who have made a home of this place.

I happen to stumble into one - a giant pit but luckily land deep water. From there I can work my way back up, assassinating the entrenched bandits as I go. Only their leader gets the drop on me but Calia, who also fell into the pit but managed to hang onto something to find a different exit, shows up just in time to save me - using her menacing "shadow form"? She later explains that she has some other being in her that comes out to kill people from time to time.

More than just a pretty face.

Insight: Even without her shadow form, Calia is a decent tank and does good damage with her two handed sword so let her take point in combat. Comparatively Tharael does more damage with his twin swords but can't take many hits.