oceanes

It's implied that the Drypeak mountains are very remote, as in half a year on foot or so. In fact, if, as a Barzite, you evict Elissia from the Upper Research Hall, she attempts to return to the Council and bring them down on the whole valley. Your character thinks that she will almost certainly die trying to get back, and even if she doesn't, by the time she warns them, it will be far too late. Macnulty and that group are in similar straits; if they obtain enough supplies to set out, they leave the factions, especially Barzahl, unimpeded for long enough that the news won't matter. Zakary, on the other hand, wants the mess cleaned up by him before he tells the council and falls on his sword. You, on the other hand, are young, made the trip already recently, and only leave after everything is done, and so can afford to take your time, rather than hurry with urgent news.

Agree with most of the above. I'd also like to note, that it's kind of odd how few people in G2 on the other side of the tunnel seem to get that what they're doing is against Shaper law. Humans, that is. The serviles get it mostly. The commons, though, really have little idea of what is forbidden or not. The Shapers seem like a very hands off, but opaque government. Even people like Carnelian don't seem as nervous as I would expect, given that the Shapers and mages with the Awakened must know the Council's likely response. It makes you wonder just how much latitude local Shapers have to bend policy, and how well an argument of "The Shaper I was serving under gave me the order to do X." holds up in broader Shaper courts. It certainly seems to work for Zakary's people. In fact, I wonder if most "Shaper law" boils down to "the judgement of a Shaper in a given time and place, as precedented by the conventions of previous Shapers". It would explain a lot.

Well, Emily wasn't exactly a normal human by the time we meet her. It might depend on how she was altered, and what was used as a template for the modifications.

Thank you, I'm glad google works for this. I didn't try that because I was under the impression that the Geneforge wiki was incomplete/dead, but I guess not. That makes the detail work for this a lot easier.

You could be right, though I could have sworn Lord Rahul's wife was one of the primary loyalist trainers in GF3. I'm not in a position to really check though.

Doesn't Lord Rahul in GF3 have a Shaper wife? I thought it was marriage to a common that was looked down on, as with Taygen, for info-sec reasons.

You know, this is something of a lore anachronism, but given the new lore concerning Sholai oath-magic in G2I, one could hypothesize that Trajikov's behavior is being moderated by the terms of certain oaths he took before his expedition. One would expect his superiors would want to hold him to certain rules of behavior, assuming the geas described can be used in that way.

I wonder if that is because they are creations? After all, it is possible to upgrade your own creations after making them without apparent ill-effect. Perhaps beings fashioned from essence are more adaptable, less likely to lose themselves? It depends on just how Sucia-tech and its process differs from traditional Shaping. Also, drakons are born with the ability to manipulate essence. I wonder if in humans, that runs in families, or if it is a purely learned skill?

Trajikov is one of the key examples of someone handling Geneforge tech remarkably well, better than any other subject, in fact. Of course, from a Doylist perspective, this has to do with the fact that the exact effects of self-Shaping developed over the course of the series, but given that Jeff saw fit not to change the endings for the remake (with one exception, in the loyalist ending), it points to the exact mental effects of the Geneforge depending on one's starting point, physically and mentally. In fact GF4 reinforces this, with the protagonist not being mad despite using a Geneforge, albeit a reduced one, from the beginning. Given this, I have to chalk it up to Trajikov not being a Shaper, either technically or culturally, and thus having a different mindset, just as the GF4 PC was a commoner beforehand. There is something about Shaper training, and its worldview that mixes poorly with whatever heightened mental and physical state the Geneforge and canisters produce. Relatedly, there is also evidence from GF2 that the negative effects of canister use can be ameliorated up to a point by spacing out use, and giving the subject time to acclimate.

True. I wonder if we have a Kim Dynasty situation here. Do you think Tyallea would kill him if he tried to evacuate to Medab and merge with the Awakened? Would Drypeak revolt if he did have sympathies and showed them? Not that he does, by the time we meet him, but a calculus like that may have influenced what side he fell on and subsequently convinced himself of. Zackary is also the sort to view any sort of conflict with the Shapers as hopeless, even more than Pinner, and unlike her, has the option of not resisting. If Zackary dies, he knows most under him like Nora will be spared, as long as he preaches loyalism.

You know, I can forgive him for treating them like commons, because the Awakened explicitly state that that's what they want to be considered as legally in their own writings. That stance is the reason they refuse to Shape. To learn to do so would undermine their argument to the Shapers, not that that argument has much of a chance of working, at least on its own merits. I could see a future where the Awakened have prosecuted most of a war against the council, only for an Astoria figure to publicly concede to the Awakened's terms as a sort of face-saving measure to end the war before war fatigue causes internal civil unrest and ends their regime. The Shapers involved wouldn't really believe it of course, but having a new sort of common is less of a blow to their narrative than free Shaping drayks and drakons like the Takers.

There's a couple of different ways to take Zackary, almost none of them good, even from a Shaper standpoint. His few virtues seem to be that he doesn't delude himself, and that, for a Shaper, he is not cruel. He responds favorably when you speak of allowing Emily to live, and that he had hoped you would be kind to her, that that was important to him. It was an odd piece of dialogue, that I didn't expect from him. There is also a very timid servile in Medab who mentions that Zackary was the only Shaper who was ever kind to him, that he treated him gently. I think Zackary has a soft spot for children, or those he thinks of as children. He's also very blunt about his failures as a Shaper and general mediocrity, if a bit bitter about it. Barzahl regards him as being a coward who lost his nerve, which I think is probably fair, given he went as far as he did under the nose of the council, only to balk at actually making war, which you have to admit is probably the logical next step from the initial idea, even if Zackary might have wished otherwise. Zackary of course frames this as an attack of conscience after Barzahl got power-drunk, which is also fair, but only up to a point. It's easy enough to also say that he just got scared of Barzahl, or squeamish at the potential cost of war, but he doesn't really attempt to flee his death either, and is always upfront about being doomed, but gaining dignity cleaning up his mess anyway. Most in his position wouldn't do that, and the council doesn't seem to care either. I do wonder why he never seemed to use any canisters before the split. As the more mediocre of the two, they should have been more attractive to him than even Barzahl. Has anyone played the Servant path to know if he ever mentions why?

The alchemist in Drypeak, as well as a few other people, complain of Zackary being deceptive in describing the settlement and the place's growth potential, and now most of Drypeak's population are stuck there, faced with either sneaking away to join Barzahl, like Ajax the miner did, or trying to make the journey back to Shaper lands with no supplies, assuming Zackary would let them, for fear of news getting out. Remember, Drypeak was explicitly set up to be a front to fool the council, and the majority of Drypeak's population know that, but now that the factions are at war, they aren't getting any of the benefit, while having been suckered into being accomplices to a major breach of Shaper law.

Yes, I'm afraid so. The addition of this quest kind of incentivizes you to go west first rather than north, if you are using canisters or the purifying blade.

Relevant song for the Awakened/Taker debate: Leslie Fish's "The Sun Is Also A Warrior" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SiEAz1TDm1c