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Oookay folks, so then I toss you this: could the personalities that wield the power in the world of Avernum ever put their own fights aside and unite against the Shapers and the Pact? This is a question for all 3 game worlds, of course.

I'm sorry. I didn't want to say this. Truly, I didn't. But you've forced my hand with your relentless logic, and I needs must reveal all, politics be damned... There is no Vahnatai mage beyond Rentar. There never was. Oth-Ihrno is just a lackey; he talks a good game, but he doesn’t walk the walk. NO ONE is beyond Rentar, and when she learns what I've done, she will scream for my head. I fear it, yet I must speak... Last night, you see, I couldn’t sleep. And finally I couldn’t take it anymore. I had to know the truth. I teleported to Vahnatai lands and made a mad dash to each of the caves, awakening the sleeping Vahnatai mages whether they were ready or not. Risky? Oh yes. But if you want truth, you gotta put some skin in the game. Once each mage was awake and had had some coffee, I sat them down and showed them The Matrix. And then I asked each of them a simple question: “Is Rentar The One? Or are YOU The One?” Vahnatai, as you know, cannot lie about something of such import as this. And each mage, although they tried to make their case – and I heard each of them with steel-minded impartiality – finally gave it up: none of them can match Rentar’s magical prowess, her ideological fervor, her hot-blooded and chilling passion, entwined with her self-proclaimed destiny to lead her race into a new era. Once I had transcribed their reports, I went directly to the council at Olgai, confronted them with the evidence. You would not BELIEVE how they tried to hedge, tried to sit on their hands, tried to refer me to this or that fine point of Vahnatai jurisprudence. But my resolve never wavered: I HAD TO HEAR THEM SAY IT! And finally, they did. It was very enlightening to see how deeply Rentar is distrusted, even hated by those she claims to place beyond all moral considerations. The council begged me to keep my findings private. Glantris-Bok tried to bribe me, but when I showed him that I already had 30,000 gold, he knew it was pointless. Prossis-Bok – I admit it! – she nearly got me. She got down on her knees and wept. She wept tears of crystalline black that sparkled in a thousand colors as they fell, splashing on the ground and dividing each into four separate smaller crystalline tears, all of which were Hasted, and they surrounded me, dozens of them, jabbing me with their disturbing, symbolic logic, its edge as jagged and ruthless as any waveblade. Those that could not squeeze in simply waited beyond the ring, hitting the space bar each time their turn arrived… Methought then I saw a distant madness on the edge of my vision, and felt the tug of echoing unreason their crystal-souled kin had suffered in Garzahd’s the Noob’s far-off fortress… …but then I came back to myself. I am stronger than that, I said, silently: I am of the Black Fortress! Gripping my scarab tight, its claws embedded so deeply within my skin that we might have been lovers in another life, I uttered a prayer to those twin, clashing forces that guide my lifeblood: the Gods of nature and of the Hunt… …My eyes cleared, and I looked about me quickly. The Olgai council, white-knuckled gripping the walls, stared at me as at some Infernal they had struck with their mightiest weapon, only to see it inflict naught but one single point of damage. Prossis-Bok lay prostate on the floor, sobbing helplessly: the sound, I tell you, bespoke a misery which would have rent any human heart asunder… and there was melody in the misery, too; a stately, musical march which would have turned Beethoven seven shades of purple with envy. It was a sound we were never meant to hear, my friends. But I'd dived deep within, and prevailed, and been granted immunity to her keen wails for twelve, nay, fifteen rounds… I stood tall, and faced them. “Our peoples cannot live together in this world,” said I, “with such misdirection as this in the midst. My people must know whom they face. You may not trust me today… but your children will thank me. And please know that I do this not for myself, for your children’s children will ne’er even know my name, because in the sequel everyone will have forgotten it because come on, we can’t name the previous game’s PC; that would be totally unfair to everyone who ponied up their 20 bucks for Jeff instead of illegally downloading it for free.” As they puzzled over my strange words, I seized the moment, leapt into the portal, and arrived here and now, escaped only and alone to tell the tale…

Yes, he disagrees. Sure, there might be a bigger shark than Rentar somewhere out there in the wide, wide world. But this cannot be proven. Your reading of that single line is understood, I think, by all. Might I suggest that it would be more fun if you took your point for granted and proceeded to tell us about this mystery mage and how they might take part in an Avadon-Pact-Shaper war?

Ah. That makes sense, and it also puts Oth-Ihrno's statement we've been discussing into context.

That quote contradicts itself? "I am only the strongest around here / I am probably the strongest of all." What's with the weird placement of "only"? Anyway, I don't think the Rentar question is really hugely interesting vis-a-vis the overall question of who wins the game-world war. Which to my mind, the only way to really resolve would be for someone to write a good fanfic.

This is probably not something Jeff thought about in any depth. I guess he could read this thread and answer the question for us in the A3 remake.

Fine, there's no evidence either way. There *might* be someone more powerful than Rentar. There might not be. I suppose if we wanna apply Occam's Razor - "all else being equal, the simplest explanation is likely true" - the simplest explanation would be that Oth-Ihrno means that some unawakened mage is more powerful than her. If all else were equal, that would be the answer. But the value of what Oth-Ihrno says and doesn't say vs. what Rentar says and doesn't say is totally subjective. In the end, my gut feeling is that I don't buy it that there's someone above her. Subjective impression.

This thread is about an intergame war. We can't use someone we don't know about in that war. And I don't see Oth-Ihrno's single line as evidence. There's no conversation option to ask him what he means when he says that, so there's no implication beyond the bald statement. "I can build weapons greater than hydrogen bombs." Okay? If I say that and never elaborate in the slightest, you have no reason to give what I said any credence.

Oth-Ihrno's line gives me pause. However I would expect Rentar to mention any rivals she has among the Vahnatai mages, and for a simple reason: she's the kind of committed zealot who believes that everything she does is for the good of her people; all the destruction she causes in the later Avernum games is all for the greater good of the Vahnatai no matter how many corpses it takes to get there. And she clearly has that attitude already in A2 (the remake is what's fresh in my mind, I played the originals like 10 years ago but I recall her dialogue being much the same). She's entitled to her massive arrogance because only she can do what's needed. If someone else could do it, she would have to acknowledge them and say so. In any case: although the other Ihrno's line can be seen that way, it doesn't change the fact that there's no Vahnatai mage greater than Rentar who plays any role in any Avernum game. So she is, de facto, their greatest mage. If someone wanted to write fanfic where someone out there is the One Vahnatai To Rule Them All, that would be cool, but it isn't germane to the question of who would win a war between the 3 game worlds. In the game world that Jeff wrote, there's no one beyond Rentar. And there doesn't need to be, does there? Rentar is plenty powerful on her own and could do plenty of damage to the Shapers and the Pact without someone behind her to play Sauron to her Melisandre, if you will.

I didn't read that interview or whatever it was, got a link to it?

I'm a more casual player than many on this Forum; I'm unlikely to play any game more than once or twice. I have no problem with unlimited cheat codes; having unlimited money makes the game more interesting as I don't have to lug sundry/pointless items around through every dungeon and sell them to merchants. The level up and retrain cheat codes let me experiment with the full range of my PCs powers whenever I want. I wouldn't want them to be reduced at all.

Hmmm. Maybe, but he doesn't seem to be putting on a show in the dialogue there, does he? He seems slow and tired, and when you say "I could've handled this myself" he simply says "yes, you could have. But it's my prerogative to do this." (I'm paraphrasing.)

People should threaten to replace him as Keeper more often. Seems to be the only thing that really turns him on.

I read the dialogue when I played the game. I don't have the dialogue in front of me right now, cuz I ain't playing it. I don't agree. As I said, her words, as I recall, are quite factual. The impression I received was she's merely giving you the current state of affairs with no illuminating context beyond. One could of course say that the Vahnatai don't want you to know anything they don't tell you, and so we could speculate that there's someone greater than Rentar out there. But there is no evidence for any such person. And if there WERE such an arch-mage, Rentar would know it. And Rentar doesn't, or she wouldn't so casually and Muhammad Ali-like tell you that she's the greatest.

So, Chabon escapes from his captors. You see him escape. Mamora says a noob like you is never gonna be able to deal with him; come back later. You come back later and blow up all his turrets and kill all the raving prisoners. Mamora says you ain't yet got the skills to take on that bad boy himself; come back later. You come back MUCH later. Mamora says yeah, you might even survive, go dice him up. You go down and fight Chabon. Redbeard intervenes and tells you that when the chamber of the tombs of the Keepers is violated, honor DEMANDS that he deal with the perpetrator himself. Chabon was down in that chamber for like 2 months before you showed up to fight him there. Did Redbeard have a lot of toe lice to clean out?

I see that in the free-for-all, Shapers vs. Empire vs. Pact, I am the only person that voted for the Pact. I think the Pact stands a better chance in that kind of free-for-all than it does against a single major enemy (which after all is what Dheless represents, and A3: Warborn is gonna be all about that struggle). Avadon is used to fending off multiple foes; that's what Avadon thrives on. Roust 'em out, lock 'em up, invade their minds and send 'em home broken forever. Honestly who in the Empire or in Shaper lands is scarier or more righteous than that Eye in the Avadon dungeon who oversees the torture sessions? She's like a medieval inquisitor. And suppose they get some captured Shapers into the dungeon and learn Shaping secrets? The whole war could turn on that.

Oh yeah... but there's nothing in what he says that implies that someone else can top Rentar. There's no subtext that the uber-duper arch mage is gonna wake up later. He's just conveying info because it's his job. Rentar is powerful; Rentar is awake.

I don't recall who says that, but having recently played through the remake of Avernum 2, I can say that Rentar herself certainly doesn't buy it. She sees herself as obviously the most powerful mage alive and maybe the most powerful who's ever lived.

I would love to see a fanfic, though I'm probably not gonna write it myself, unless someone wanted to collaborate.

I just went through the point in Avadon 2 where you can betray the Pact and side with Konstantina's rebels. Before I left the cave with Odil and his soliders, on a whim I punched up one of my favorite techno-trance albums, Drink the Sea by Glitch Mob. It made amazing background music for the betrayal and subsequent chaos of hunting down Odil to slay him. Give it a whirl:

...I don't keep older saves, so I can't do a screenshot with it there right now, but I'll take one without and and see if it shows up again. Hmm... I was playing last night, I noticed that Nicodemus' item hadn't shown up, posted here, kept playing, later noticed that it had shown up. Went to sleep... when I looked at my game this morning, it was gone again. I was at the point in the game just before you go with Odil to fight Konstantina.

...now I don't know what the hell's going on. The item vanished again. I guess it's some glitch in my copy of the game that's just specific to this item? I haven't had any such glitches with anything else. If I delete my whole copy of A2 and re-download it, I'll lose my game in progress, right?

All I can tell you is what happened... I'm 99% sure that it didn't show up at first... the item you give Nicodemus and the item he makes for you are similar visually but NOT identical-looking, and the item I have now simply was not there at first. And if my inventory was full it wouldn't have shown up in another character's inventory (which it didn't anyway, it showed up in my primary character's inventory after the fact), I would have instead seen the "you don't have room for this item, it falls to the floor" text, which I certainly didn't see. Nope, don't have that save anymore. I'm too impatient and when it didn't originally show up I just continued without it.

Nah, it wasn't there when I first had him make it. Yeah the item has the same name or almost, and it definitely wasn't there. Like I said, I went back to autosave to see what the item you give him looks like, had him do it again, same result. My inventory wasn't full, I left space for it.

Another suggestion -- For Avadon 3, please consider making all spells and spell-like abilities (monsters breathing fire, etc) a second or 2 shorter in duration. The length that each spell takes to cast while you watch the effect onscreen feels, to me, *very* long and makes for a constant thumb-twiddling feeling, fights feel tedious rather than exciting, and overall it makes it needlessly difficult to enjoy the game.