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[A2CS] Anyone else faintly disappointed ...


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Kyass was the ruler of the Freehold of Kyass. You were given a quest to aid him by the Empire Liaison beneath Formello, and could also get a quest to investigate and ultimately assassinate him by a paranoid general in the Castle. Or you could choose to help him strengthen his rule by doing several quests for him ... which all turn out to have been shaggy dog stories, now.

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E/A2 was significantly longer and bigger than E/A1, so I'm not sure new content was as important. There are even more new small quests than there were in AEFTP... sparing but intelligent use of differently-levelled magic barriers and mountain-rocks and the athame and clearance and all that encourages a lot of back and forth, too. I've been playing this thing forever and I'm still nowhere remotely close to the end... this is a long game.

 

Kyass being written off entirely was disappointing, though, yeah.

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Yes, add me to the list of those disappointed by finding Kyass in the tower & completely underwhelmed by how his story arc ended. Given where his stronghold was located it was obvious that it wouldn't survive the empire invasion (right on the edge of where their lands/checkpoints start. However someone with such dreams as he had & enough followers to make such a decent sized stronghold/fort in A1EFtP wouldn't/shouldn't have just been bulldozed into the ground. If anything it could/should have been somewhat like the Philippines and American soldiers in WW2, many of those that weren't killed or captured right off the bat went into the hills & fought as guerrillas for the duration of the war (and thinking of it further, so did some Japanese soldiers when the US came back in '44-'45 (some fighting/surviving in the hills until the 1970s). With Kyass' location he could have very easily made it to the northern islands & fought a guerrilla war from there OR (setting Jeff up for the eventual(?) rewrite of A5) pushing north past the islands & deeper into unexplored caves. That would have given Jeff a chance to make a new town/dungeon from the original A2 (perhaps them needing help clearing out a band/town of savage slith that were blocking the river into the depths) & giving a much better closing to him than - you stumble upon this tortured mess & he melts down into some goo....but back to the story...

 

Coulda, woulda, shoulda... ah well. Why yes, I do tend to over think some things, why do you ask...

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E/A2 was significantly longer and bigger than E/A1, so I'm not sure new content was as important. There are even more new small quests than there were in AEFTP...

 

I don't think there are that many more, really. I've finished the game and my stats tell me that there are 118 completable quests in EftP, while there are 128 in CS. (Actually 127, since completing two of them permanently closes off a third.)

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The number of discretely listed quests might not be much bigger, but there are more steps to them and more travelling involved, they are spread out over more outdoor sections and more zones (And there are more outdoor sections and especially more zones.) There are also small quests that fit into multiple bigger quest lines; and steps in quest lines that don't get a formally labelled quest.

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Here's an alternate questline that, I think, uses Kyass a bit better.

 

The Almaria job board quest refers instead to Rogow, the leader of the Barghan Scimitar cell from A:EftP. (Or some other friendly character from that game.) When you get up to the Freehold, you find it surrounded and under siege by Empire troops who will stun you and cut you into pieces if you approach, like at Ft. Saffron. Further, the entire town is surrounded by barriers just like the Vahnatai created. Direct entry is impossible.

 

After scouting Harston for Lorraine, she gives you a second mission, to discover what's become of the Monastery. She comments that they were planning on fortifying the area before the invasion, and if the tide turns in the current war, might use it as a staging grounds for the counterattack on the Empire-held territories -- the origins of Ft. Monastery. Obviously, the news isn't good, but you get XP and a reputation boost again.

 

Then Lorraine gives you a third mission, which she admits will be a lot harder -- find your way into the Freehold! Ironically, it's actually fairly easy to do so -- once you have this quest, you can visit Purgatory, the Abyss Camp, and -- as long as you didn't intimidate the wandering extortionists there -- one of the refugees will (for a small donation) reveal a set of teleport codes to the Freehold.

 

Arriving via portal, you find the town in a complete siege mode, with all resources completely dedicated to maintaining the barrier. Kyass is there, and admits that the Freehold will fall in just a few more days ... but he has a plan. He will offer to ally with Avernum and share the superior barrier creation spells that his mages have developed, if the adventurers can procure a magical power source to allow the barriers to stay up indefinitely, which his spies have discovered is being studied in Pyrog's Lair ...

 

That's right. He wants a Phoenix Egg. Remember that there are two of them? This is where you can choose to use the other one. The process will also require some other components which can only be found in Bargha -- to whose concealed teleport pylon Kyass just happens to have the code! This leads to a stealth mission in occupied Bargha where the party can also acquire some of the Harston-crafted items, as well as more information about what the Empire is doing in the Abyss.

 

Unfortunately, choosing to give Kyass the Egg and the components proves a disastrous mistake. The wizards have miscalculated, and their procedure only releases Quickfire into the town while dispelling the barriers! The PCs must race to the portal before the Quickfire kills them, fighting Empire soldiers the whole way.

 

Kyass and his council die, but the Empire armies surrounding the keep are devastated by the Quickfire release before they can contain it, dealing a serious blow to the invaders. Refusing to give the Egg to Kyass, on the other hand, results in an endgame screen revealing that the Freehold's barriers fell around the time you achieved the third game-winning quest, and that many of the soldiers around the keep are still able to fight, putting Avernum in a more precarious state. It's a lose-lose situation, unhappily, but such are the fortunes of war. (However, Lorraine gives you a special reward for having successfully visited Bargha.)

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