Skyrim: Familiar ash, unfamiliar Darkness

Adventures in Skyrim - spoilers ahead! You can follow the rest of the story here!

Hey, I remember climbing that.

Apparently Solstheim island is part of Morrowind, which is cool in that you can see the ever active Red Mountain in the distance. The small town of Raven Rock is where BT and I make land fall, meet the locals (mostly dunmer as expected), and get a bunch of quests like hunting netch (flying jellyfish), clearing out ash zombies from the temple, and investigating a strange stone that seems to make people mindless zombies who want to build - something. Even BT began getting entranced by it.

BT: "It's just sooo big..."

An adventure into the local mine to find the remains of some guy's missing relative also leads to familiar looking ruins and even more familiar looking draugr. There's even a cool lazer sword inside, too bad it's kinda weak. While the enemies are no problem, the last pendulum blade hall proves too much for B.T. and she is cut to pieces half way.

At the end of it I find not only a new dragon shout, but an odd black book which warps me into the black/green/tentacled realm of Apocrypha. With walls made of books and scrolls it's easy to see why its ruler, Hermaeus Mora, is regarded as the prince of knowledge. There are some abominations lurking in there, but none really pose a challenge. Having a choice from three boons at the end of the level is a pretty good idea too.

Walls of books go well with Cthulhu.

Sunset Six: Monumental Victory

[Part of my Sunset Six story.]

At the end of a tale the final tests in each discipline become available: the building of monuments for each of the seven schools. Not only do these constructs need an obscene amount of resources, but they also require their character slots to be filled, specific to their rank in the discipline. A monument needs exactly 1 Oracle, 2 Sages, 4 Masters, 8 Scribes, 16 Journeymen, 32 Prentices and 64 Students. All up that's 127 people!

It doesn't look like much when it starts.

The monuments also hold a second purpose: they contain a player made suggestion for a future test in the next telling! Obviously there are many ideas that get put forward and after the "oracle" type players have a chat with Pharaoh Pluribus they get an idea of which ones are actually feasible to implement and from there can only pick one to go forward.

Imagine my surprise when two of my ideas made it through then: The Test of the Sculptors (Art and Music) and the Hand of Ra (Architecture)! Gotta admit, I am overjoyed that my input will potentially shape the future of the game. Those are the best types of events a player can have in an MMO right?

The Monument of Art and Music!

As my self imposed "final" quest for the telling I decided to try visit all the sites, failing only to reach the Monument of Thought in time which was the hardest to build due to lack of students in that discipline. I suppose like me, everyone was content solving puzzles instead of building them!

From top left to bottom right: Leadership, Architecture, Worship, Harmony, Thought, Body

Did I mention there are strange gods? Well there are. Just uber rare to run into them.

And so, the sun finally sets and Tale 6 comes to a close - it's time to say goodbye to my Level 54 Scribe of Two. While this is the end of my story, it is just the beginning of another chapter for Egypt and who knows, maybe next time it's you who will have A Tale in the Desert.

Thanks for reading! =)

Sunset Six: Exclusion Zone

[Part of my Sunset Six story.]

We've finally come to the last two tests of Worship which I feel are the worst from an organizational stand point. In the Test of Festivals you must again sacrifice things to gods (seven this time) to make them happy, one at a time. To work out what things exactly you need a partner to perform a quick ritual at a properly prepared altar (eg. Isis requires seven glass torches to be lit nearby while Bastet needs 21 jugs of milk). Satisfying them is a percentage based on the number of players who successfully pleased the same god in the period of one in-game hour before and one in-game hour you did. If the number is less than three you gain NOTHING.

To this end there is a player made Festivals guild in game that holds scheduled festivals every weekend, one god a day sort of thing. Unfortunately due to my timezone and unwillingness to wake up at 4:55 AM to participate, I'm kinda excluded from this but it does look pretty cool.

A festival in full swing. I'm not there. :(

The final test I haven't yet talked about is the Path of the Pilgrim. In it, you must form a troop of seven and march across the land to visit the very far apart holy pilgrim shrines and give tithes to each to gain points. Good time to mention that every time I've been mentioning a number of players for the Worship tests, they are EXACT. You cannot have less or more. It's worse in this test because you need the SAME SEVEN each time you want to gain points. Changing members results in points going back to zero. Each week, the group with the most points passes. Once again, Jeromai from Why I Game has more experience running this test so I invite you to read his post.

Awesome. Now I just need six other people.

With that concludes all the tests I have access to at the moment, and  now it's time to celebrate with a glass of milk!

Clearly KebiRoz spiked it. >.<

Sunset Six: Be like Jesus

[Part of my Sunset Six story.]

Continuing with the tests of Worship, the Test of the Messenger, a new Worship test released at the same time as Throne of Pharaoh, is similar to the Test of Beacons. In it you must sacrifice ink and paper at an altar to receive -only- one of seven parts of a ritual. You must then work out with others the full requirements, incantations and sequence and then work as a pair to perform it at the ONE correct altar. The first seven pairs that do this advance, and everyone else is out of luck - needing to wait for the start of the next cycle. Advance five times to pass.

It's good to be the backup guy.

The Test of Leavened Bread requires you to be like Jesus. In it, you need a team of five players to see visions of what needs to be done (randomized), make beer, bake bread then share the bread with others. Specific others. Probably those not in your party. You have seven days to do that before the bread goes bad. You get points for the correct people eating the bread. Yep, give it to your enemies and it's still valid for them to just chuck it out.

Hah, I had all my required guys at the table!

Also requiring five people is the Test of the Humble Priests, in which you must form a devotional group to a particular god and sacrifice something to them in an orderly, structured manner. It's worth mentioning that all these rituals are very specific in what you are supposed to do, who is supposed to do them and what you must type. Making a mistake at any point results in a fail, wasting all those items you sacrificed. As an example in this one "Priest three must do five emotes in specific order (based on his vision)".

Please all five of your randomly chosen gods (out of twelve) to pass.

Sunset Six: Looking for Group

[Part of my Sunset Six story.]

The discipline of Worship holds for me, what are hands down the hardest set of tests. While comparatively they don't need as many of the exorbitant items for constructing things they are still usually required as offerings but the real challenge is that all tests needs a group of people. Let's start with the Test of Vigil.

A favored test of pyromaniacs.

In it, you build a large fire then listen to the flames for what it wants to consume. You then have a time limit to get all the said items (which can be anything in game) and burn it. The rarity and number of items increases the longer the Vigil goes on. Failure to burn the requirements on time ends the fire. You individually gain points equal to the number of sacrifices you made multiplied by the number of sacrifices made by -other people-, meaning if you attempt to do this alone you get ZERO points. Highest scores pass the test.

If that sounds tough, you should see the Test of Beacons. Doing some random mundane activity has a chance of attracting a holy altar to spawn nearby. Once it does you have three in game minutes to anchor it to this plane of existence through meditation... by three people. Once anchored the three anchorers have thirty minutes to work out the proper ritual as it only gives each of them a fragmented piece. If you manage to do all of that seven times (including anchoring) you pass.

Anchoring fail, as we needed one more person.

Sunset Six: Initiate +3

[Part of my Sunset Six story.]

The initiation task for Art and Music is an interesting one in which you construct your own sculpture in which you can use pretty much anything in game as part of the design.

You can make odd things like I did or more commonly...

... they are used for signs. :)

Similarly, the discipline of Thought requires you construct an empty hand puzzle and let a number of other players solve and rate it, requiring a "good" or better to pass. This is tricky as making it too simple or too frustrating can lead people to giving you a low score.

I made mine pretty simple.

Lastly, the initiation of Worship is one I didn't think I'd ever pass as not only do you need a sacrifice a number of ritual components under a time limit but you also require a partner who has not yet passed that initiation. I was in luck that another new player named Sarina was keen on getting it done and with Balthazarr's help with providing supplies along with prompts for recited incantations that require perfect typing, we both passed with a double zap.

It involves jugs.