It was only after more of his men died that the Baron met with Geralt, putting an end to the fighting. It just so happened he needed the witcher's services, and was willing to pay via information about Ciri who he clearly had met.
In exchange Geralt was to find his missing wife and daughter who both fled due to the Baron's love for booze. To complicate matters, his wife had fallen into the service of powerful, child eating swamp crones. It was not a happy reunion.
Despite the result, the baron kept his word and explained he helped a wounded Ciri heal up and even gave her a horse and supplies to get to the free city of Novigrad. He then ended his tale the only way he knew how.
Hmm. That's a strong rope.
Insight: It pays to check the bestiary to find the weaknesses of whatever you are fighting. You can apply sword oil mid-combat as necessary.
Since I've collected enough of these heart shaped wakestones (revive item) I am now able to open an even stranger portal in the Everfall which leads me (alone) into a strange plane where the floor is water, and it is only decorated by a single throne which a dude in a white robe sits on. This god "Seneschal" turns out to be Savan - and he is behind the whole mess that brought me here in the first place!
Apparently he is bored of being god, and the only way to step down is to get an arisen to kill you and take your place. The only way to make an arisen is to summon/create a dragon into the world, and just like me - he killed his dragon a long, long time ago. This ultimate showdown is a bit lack luster, even when he summons his man at arms as well as Rose for a 2 vs 2 fight. He is easily defeated, and asks that I kill him. I oblige and become the new god.
Savan prefers to talk than fight.
I can tell right away why this is boring though - at this point you can only visit Cassardis or Gran Soren as a ghost figure and can't interact with anyone, apart from attacking or throwing them around. I do think of a way to break this cycle though. I need an arisen to end my loop? Well, I am an arisen right? Seppuku time! Yes, the game makes you kill yourself. It works - and the watery floor gives way to clouds as Rose and I fall into the sea...
Rose eventually washes up at Cassardis beach, inexplicably wearing my armor. Was I just a figment of her imagination this whole time? Madeline helps her up and assures her that the two of them will manage brilliantly. At this point I have the option of starting New Game+, but then I wouldn't really be breaking the loop would I? :P
The unremarkable cave gave way to an unremarkable tomb, one guarded by an ancient skeletal guardian who liked summoning infinite minions. Between two dragonborn they were easy. Past them was a mage of some skill with explosive magic and teleportation, hopping from platform to platform in a large open chamber. The idiot didn't know when -not- to teleport though, as it became predictable when he was porting to the point that I'd swing into air and he'd teleport into it. I'm sure that's some form of suicide.
Guess he couldn't see well with that mask.
The next foe was more interesting. The teleporty mage was guarding a floating sword, "the spellblade", and upon touching it Perdida and I were thrown into a non descript cube with an invisible opponent, who was actually dealing decent damage. Fortunately Perdida managed to aggro the spirit and effectively tank it, while I backstabbed it to death. I do that a lot in this game.
Cool!
A few more ghosts and an atronarch lab later, we find ourselves descending into a huge dark cavern. A dragon's lair! This dragon summons undead instead of using breath attacks though - which is a good change of pace. After slaying all the guardians the beast itself lands and... shapeshifts into a guy? What? Said guy has some strange ability but since he's focused on Perdida, it's easy for me to take advantage of his human sized form and end him swiftly.
With him out of the way, we are free to loot his small hoard and leave the cave, with the spell blade safely tucked away in my pack.
Braga's training continued as we hunted more master vampires and bandit bosses together. At Falkreath we received a strange request via courier: a local hunter wanted us to hunt down a monster in town. I let Braga take the lead on the investigation, which led us to finding the body of one female victim and ultimately into the "hunters'" house.
The price of guilt.
Turns out he was the monster too, but ultimately we didn't have to fight him since he took himself out with a dagger. After that slightly depressing mission we finally got word from Njada about the source of "the Kraken" from last time - Summerset Isle, home of the Thalmor. She had already arranged a fleet and loyalist troops to go and eliminate all the scum there. I was only too happy to join.
No place to run, assassin!
During the voyage I was attacked by a left over bounty hunter who had snuck aboard, but Braga and the nearby soldiers took care of him. Soon enough we reached the shores of the Thalmor controlled island, and charged onto the beach under enemy fire. The elf scum were waiting.
Fortunately there was a deep enough pool to catch me at the base of the drop, and there didn't seem to be a way back up in the dark chamber I found myself in so I headed out the large double doors and found myself in a MASSIVE and almost pitch black cavern. It was a small city! A small, dead city inhabited only by a handful of skeevers feasting on the many charred corpses littering the streets and the spooky palace that had pressure plate activated lights that only illuminated the section you were in.
Why are empty halls scarier than ones with monsters...
Honestly this sort of unnerved me a bit. I was expecting Thalmor, or dwarven animuculi, not... nothing. It wasn't hard to find Cassia's brother. He was hanging by the neck from a dead tree in the center of town, a suicide note in his hand. He also looked ... old.
The note was one of regret, saying that "no matter what he tried, he couldn't help them - nor find a way out". He also advised that anyone reading it should also save themselves the trouble and just follow suit and kill themselves for there was no escape. Oh, and he mentioned to NEVER EVER GO NEAR THE LAKEHOUSE.
That's sort of the queue to "go to the lakehouse right?"
Inside the small shack that is "the lakehouse" is another note, this one written by Jarl Metellus. Apparently something went very wrong which caused a cataclysmic event. He tasks whoever is reading it to find out what happened and save them. With the last of his magic power and life force, Jarl Metellus had turned the Lake House into a portal back in time.
Not my intended entry for today but I decided to go with it thanks to Bel's "Be Stronger than Me" post on Aggronaut. Unlike him, I've been lucky on the "not having people in my immediate circles commit suicide" front. This doesn't mean I remain unaffected.
This is Laura, a pretty, 17 year old student with decent musical talent. In December 2012, she jumped in front of a train near where I lived.
I didn't know her. I didn't know her family or friends, but I saw them holding vigil on the railway bridge. I saw them leaving flowers day after day. I saw them cry. I saw their pain. It's not my business, but for some reason I kept thinking what could have been done to prevent it? What could -I- have done to prevent it? Probably nothing right? I'm a stranger.
On the last Ultima Online shard I played, I was equally dismayed when one day I learned that one of the players also killed himself. It was a small shard so while you may not have befriended everyone, you certainly knew who was who. Especially as a GM (Game Master) - like I was, invisibly watching the ones who would just play, even in the slowly emptying world as the population dwindled, raging against all the monster spawns alone as if they were actually seeking death. Perhaps I should have paid more attention?
It's unlikely we can do much for strangers but we can at least help, even just a little bit, the people we know.
How? Just talk to them! I'm not sure if the "Are you Ok?" thing is world wide but regardless, its just a phone call or text message for you. It's worth visiting their site too. Especially with social media these days it should be easy for you to find people that you care about and haven't been in contact with for a bit. It's also important to spread the word, which is kind of the point of this post. That way you might actually inspire someone else to do it and so on.
Australian readers seeking support and information about suicide prevention can contact Lifeline on 13 11 14 or the Suicide Call Back Service on 1300 659 467. If you are feeling keen on offing yourself, then you certainly have nothing to lose by calling those numbers first.
I'm very surprised (to put it politely) at the way ArenaNet is handling their official comms. I, like many others I'm guessing, would expect to see their updates and messages to players on their main site and again within the forums but this is not the case. Instead they broadcast out to gw2wiki, reddit, twitter, facebook, youtube and the like. I don't have a problem with them doing that, but for them to then NOT POST A LINK on their OWN PAGE screams out that something is broken in their way of thinking.
Even the recent AMA (which I had to ask another forum poster what the hell it was, because the staff/mods didn't bother to reply to such a simple question) was on reddit, a site I don't really find to be user friendly at all. It's like they are trying to spread their PR and at the same time attempting to hide it from their actual consumer base.
At least they aren't trolling like some Aussie DJs recently did, which seems to have resulted in a fatality. Who is laughing now?
