Favourite Nicodemus Item? Poll!

[Callie]

I liked the reproducing bulwark, because I'd laugh for some reason when I dropped 20 bricks on the ground.

 

The blinking pants are annoying, but they can be amusing in the right situation.

 

The shooting star scroll disappointed me, since I thought it actually had some offensive capabilities.

 

Does the Wand of Many Guises actually prevent certain NPC's from attacking you?

[jlsgaladriel]

I'd forgotten the rod of attraction was a Nicodemus item. Heck, that one's actually useful!

[Jerakeen]

It was, but I had to pick the Wand of Many Guises for sheer laughs.

[Randomizer]

Zombie Bones was too useful so Jeff nerfed it. I really wish I could have seen Jeff's face when he found out the original version was immune to Zephyrine's attacks about 90% of the time.

[VCH]

Burnout Brew. Corruption doesn't affect my Blademaster and he gets 6 turns of battle frenzy, hell yeah.

[Soul of Wit]

Originally Posted By: VCH

Burnout Brew. Corruption doesn't affect my Blademaster and he gets 6 turns of battle frenzy, hell yeah.

I concur, and how did I miss the Wand of Many Guises during my first play through?

[madrigan]

Wand of Attraction, I guess. It is actually useful, especially for setting up area attacks. I had been saving the Wand of Many Guises in case I had to sneak into a place, but when I saw it mentioned in this thread I tried it out. Is that all it does? Do other characters think you are actually a wretch?

 

I had been saving the Shooting Star Scroll for a big battle, and I decided to use it while fighting my way in to Oghrym Tor (sp?). Man, I was swearing up a storm when I saw what actually did. It does enhance the drama of the battle imagery, though.

 

[Jerakeen]

Originally Posted By: madrigan

I had been saving the Shooting Star Scroll for a big battle...

The fact that it comes with 50 charges should be a clue that it's not very useful. ;-)

Same for the WoMG. If it fools anyone, I never noticed. It does seem to give you different disguises depending on where you are, though.

[madrigan]

Originally Posted By: The Turtle Moves

The fact that it comes with 50 charges should be a clue that it's not very useful. ;-)

I just figured it was environmentally friendly.

[Ceiling Durkheim]

I figured it did something useful but not very powerful (say, a firebolt-type effect). On the bright side, since it had so many charges, I wasn't shy about using it for the first time in a minor battle; thus did I save myself 5 AP in some later, more difficult battle.

[echoes]

Blinking Pants were the first Nicodemus item I actually used and I liked 'em for my Sorceress.

 

It wasn't until I received the Reproducing Bulwark that I realizes something weird was going on.

[Ceiling Durkheim]

I'm holding out for the item that generates actual unsellable trowels.

[Slawbug]

The real trick is going to be in the 2017 reremake of Nethergate:

 

Click to reveal..

Sylak's Sellable Trowel

[Ceiling Durkheim]

And then in 2026, as a bitter response to the poor sales of his recently-released Geneforge-Avadon crossover MMO, Jeff creates Sylak's Sellable Unsellable Trowel. The resulting paradox destroys most of the world's computer infrastructure, and brings humanity to the brink of extinction.

[Tcheedchee]

The Reproducing Bulwark was it for me. I kept thinking for quite a while, that there might be a quest coming, when I'd need to build a wall in a hurry. Although I kept wondering, where I should put it. It would be worse though, if the jungbag wasn't infinite.

Gee, sometimes Jeffs humor really confuses me.

I still remember being in dire need for a potted plant in Avernum 5.

[Superba]

Wand of Many Guises is my favourite, Nathalie as a Titan strolled down Castel Vebeaux fascinated by the elegance of everything.... and it was hilarious.

[A less presumptuous name.]

Originally Posted By: Tcheedchee

It would be worse though, if the jun[k]bag wasn't infinite.

The junk bag isn't actually infinite. It does have a great many pages, but it will eventually fill up. I recommend finding some peasant's home and building him a nice new wall down the middle of his kitchen, and then leaving the reproducing bulwark in a drawer in Avadon.

[Marak]

Personally I used the dresser in the main character's bedroom to store stuff that I currently wasn't using but didn't want to sell. Like the junk bag, you can cram a LOT of stuff in that dresser before it fills up.

 

As for favorite Nicodemus items, I'm going for "none of the above". I stopped bothering to check in with him once I got the reproducing bulwark and realized that all his stuff was, basically, junk.

[Goldengirl]

I haven't gotten very far, admittedly, but I am in love with the blinking pants. I gave them to Nathalie, and they definitely keep the tactics interesting. I can just imagine her studying in the library, or focusing seriously on something, when she just blips to the other end of the room unexpectedly. They make me chuckle every time.

[Student of Trinity]

Ah, trowels.

 

I'm really beginning to regret that there will be too few opportunities to dismiss someone with the crushing verdict of "Sellable Trowel", and have them realize how thoroughly damned they have been.

 

Maybe I can consider it a minor life goal, to sometime use that term, and have it get noticed.

 

For what it's worth, as a refresher (since all Spiderwebbers ought to know this):

 

An unsellable trowel is in principle the lowest form of item. Utterly useless.

 

In practice, to call someone a 'sellable trowel' is almost worse. Because nobody who was really an unsellable trowel would be able even to appreciate the insult. But 'sellable trowel' is the faintest possible form of faint praise — the uttermost minimum of redeeming features. To call someone or something a sellable trowel is to imply that, although it may not technically be worthless, its only possible value is to be sold for a fraction of a coin.

[Glassk]

Blinking Pants, battles are so unpredictable with it.

[Karacan]

The Bulwark is hilarious. "I'm still working on the speed!"

[Tcheedchee]

I left the bulwark in Moritz tower, I think.

There are a lot of ruins there. I think it won't feel abandoned there.

 

Anyway, I like Nicodemus as a Spidweb-version of 'Q'.

So who is Moneypenny?

For me it'd be Miranda…

[Skwish-E]

Loved the rod of attraction, and wish I could get another one. I used the rat tail bundle, and stood back while my pet rat fough to the death with an enemy giant rat. Once I gave it a war blessing, it got the best of the other beast. Entertainment value only, of course.

[Jerakeen]

The RoA is one of the wands you can get from the editor. I too wanted refills.

[Verbatim]

What I most love about the items is how poetic they are...always a bit of foreshadowing in every item.

 

I feel like the Reproducing Bulwark counts as political commentary, for all that Nicodemus claims to not pay attention to politics.

 

I kept thinking that if you could "win" the peace negotiation quests and create a lasting peace, they'd ask you, as a neutral party, to place something to mark the new boundary...perhaps someday.

 

Or maybe there is a way to place it 'correctly' and create a wall already, and I just haven't found it.

 

 

I still need to check whether the Rod of Attraction can change the outcome of that one side-quest... (no spoilers please)

[Shadowplay]

I hate to be so negative, but I was greatly annoyed by the useless items being so useless, apart from the Rod of Attraction, which actually does have tactical value (I wouldn't mind 50 charges of that!).

I spend a lot of time trying to find a way to Use the Reproducing Bulwark to build a bridge across Zethron's lava to his hoard. I guess what I mind is not being able to use the useless items creatively.

[Ceiling Durkheim]

For that you'd need a corresponding amount of reproducing mortar. Actually, a reproducing mortar sounds like a pretty cool weapon. Avadon 2, perhaps?

[ĐªгŦĦ Єяŋϊε]

also while this is off-topic....it is finally driving me crazy enough to ask

WHAT IS FNORD COLA?????

[Jerakeen]

Originally Posted By: Darth Ernie

also while this is off-topic....it is finally driving me crazy enough to ask
WHAT IS FNORD COLA?????

There is a cure for that kind of crazy. They call it Google. Just google fnord, not cola.

[ĐªгŦĦ Єяŋϊε]

true.

i usually do that. here for some reason i assumed that it was an in joke from previous years.

[Ceiling Durkheim]

Nope. I was on here for a year or so back around 2003 under a different username, but I don't remember many of the in-jokes from back then. Fnord is a term that originates, as far as I'm aware, in the Illuminatus! trilogy. The passage on Fnords appears below (spoiler-tagged because it's a couple pages):

 

Click to reveal..

``Very nice,'' I said. ``But why did you bring me up here?''

 

``It's time for you to see the fnords,'' he replied.

 

Then I woke up in bed and it was the next morning. I made breakfast in a pretty nasty mood, wondering if I'd seen the fnords, whatever the hell they were, in the hours he had blacked out, or if I would see them as soon as I went out into the street. I had some pretty gruesome ideas about them, I must admit. Creatures with three eyes and tentacles, survivors from Atlantis, who walked among us, invisible due to some form of mind shield, and did hideous work for the Illuminati. It was unnerving to contemplate, and I finally gave in to my fears and peeked out the window, thinking it might be better to see them from a distance first. Nothing. Just ordinary sleepy people, heading for their busses and subways. That calmed me a little, so I set out the toast and coffee and fetched the New York Times from the hallway. I turned the radio to WBAI and caught some good Vivaldi, sat down, grabbed a piece of toast and started skimming the first page.

 

Then I saw the fnords.

 

The feature story involved another of the endless squabbles between Russia and the U.S. in the UN General Assembly, and after each direct quote from the Russian delegate I read a quite distinct ``Fnord!'' The second lead was about a debate in congress on getting the troops out of costa Rica; every argument presented by Senator Bacon was followed by another ``Fnord!'' At the bottom of the page was a Times depth-type study of the growing pollution problem and the increasing use of gas masks among New Yorkers; the most distressing chemical facts were interpolated with more ``Fnords.''

 

Suddenly I saw Hagbard's eyes burning into me and heard his voice: ``Your heart will remain calm. Your adrenalin gland will remain calm. Calm, all-over calm. You will not panic. you will look at the fnord and see the it. You will not evade it or black it out. you will stay calm and face it.'' And further back, way back: my first-grade teacher writing FNORD on the blackboard, while a wheel with a spiral design turned and turned on his desk, turned and turned, and his voice droned on, IF YOU DON'T SEE THE FNORD IT CAN'T EAT YOU, DON'T SEE THE FNORD, DON'T SEE THE FNORD . . .

 

I looked back at the paper and still saw the fnords. This was one step beyond Pavlov, I realized. The first conditioned reflex was to experience the panic reaction (the activation syndrome, it's technically called) whenever encountering the word ``fnord.'' The second conditioned reflex was to black out what happened, including the word itself, and just to feel a general low-grade emergency without knowing why. And the third step, of course, was to attribute this anxiety to the news stories, which were bad enough in themselves anyway. Of course, the essence of control is fear. The fnords produced a whole population walking around in chronic low-grade emergency, tormented by ulcers, dizzy spells, nightmares, heart palpitations and all the other symptoms of too much adrenalin. All my left-wing arrogance and contempt for my countrymen melted, and I felt a genuine pity. No wonder the poor bastards believe anything they're told, walk through pollution and overcrowding without complaining, watch their son hauled off to endless wars and butchered, never protest, never fight back, never show much happiness or eroticism or curiosity or normal human emotion, live with perpetual tunnel vision, walk past a slum without seeing either the human misery it contains or the potential threat it poses to their security . . .

 

Then I got a hunch, and turned quickly to the advertisements. it was as I expected: no fnords. That was part of the gimmick, too: only in consumption, endless consumption, could they escape the amorphous threat of the invisible fnords. I kept thinking about it on my way to the office. If I pointed out a fnord to somebody who hadn't been deconditioned, as Hagbard deconditioned me, what would he or she say? They'd probably read the word before or after it. ``No this word,'' I'd say. And they would again read an adjacent word. But would their panic level rise as the threat came closer to consciousness? I preferred not to try the experiment; it might have ended with a psychotic fugue in the subject. The conditioning, after all, went back to grade school. No wonder we all hate those teachers so much: we have a dim, masked memory of what they've done to us in converting us into good and faithful servants for the Illuminati.

 

As for the cola...it's been about a decade, and at this point I'm honestly not all that certain where that came from. I think possibly there was an ad that said "Drink Fnord Cola" in an edition of the Illuminati card game by Steve Jackson Games. I wouldn't swear to that, though. It's not out of the question that I made the term up.

[AethirWeb]

I don't get what the Reproducing Bulwark is...can i discard it?

[Lilith]

Yes, unless you particularly like having rocks appear randomly in your inventory every so often.

[ĐªгŦĦ Єяŋϊε]

isn't that also a sylak item?

[Ceiling Durkheim]

The Sylak item is reproducing trash, but it amounts to the same thing.

[Slawbug]

There were multiple item-generating Sylak items.

[Earth]

Originally Posted By: Lilith

Yes, unless you particularly like having rocks appear randomly in your inventory every so often.

on me it reproduced when char carrying it got hit.

[Ceiling Durkheim]

Aww. It's trying to protect its master!

[Randomizer]

Originally Posted By: FnordCola

Aww. It's trying to protect its master!

By giving him a hernia. Oh wait, the backpack has no weight.

[AethirWeb]

Darn it, so this was just some prank....

[Earth]

yea like Avernum has Xian items (1-2 of those is somewhat useful others not).

[Thycavivor]

Ok, I am replaying avadon with a different character and noticed that when we first meet Nicodemus, he introduces himself as an Eye of Avadon.

 

Did anybody else catch that? Because when I think of words to describe Nicodemus, "observant" doesn't come to mind.

 

Maybe the befuddled old man thing is just an act and we learn more in Avadon 2.

[Earth]

Could be that at Avadon 2 Nicodemus and few others have passed away.

[Mod.]

It wouldn't surprise me at all to see him in Avd2, I really hope to also. I also hoped he would give you quests in Avd1 or at least play a somewhat larger role.

[Thycavivor]

It wouldn't surprise me at all to see him in Avd2' date=' I really hope to also. I also hoped he would give you quests in Avd1 or at least play a somewhat larger role.[/']

 

I hope he returns, too. He has some of the best dialogue in the whole game.

[Dikiyoba]

Bleh, Dikiyoba thought Nicodemus was awful. He's a clueless, one-dimensional dunce.

[Kyronea]

Originally Posted By: Dikiyoba

Bleh, Dikiyoba thought Nicodemus was awful. He's a clueless, one-dimensional dunce.

I always thought he was an obvious eXpy.

[Earth]

alternative reality's X.

[Dikiyoba]

Originally Posted By: Kyronea

Originally Posted By: Dikiyoba

Bleh, Dikiyoba thought Nicodemus was awful. He's a clueless, one-dimensional dunce.

I always thought he was an obvious eXpy.

Yeah, but X wasn't a great character either. His saving grace is that you aren't expected to interact with him much. With Nicodemus, you are expected to interact with him all the time. (Also, none of X's items attempt to outright murder the moment you step into the game, which is another plus for him.)

 

Dikiyoba.