Triumph

442. Draugr Queen - Master of undead illusion, maybe

A drag queen is man who dresses up like a woman (creating an illusion). A draugr is a kind of undead. A draugr queen, then, is someone who appears to be a master of undead but isn't really (i.e. illusion).

6/6

440. Good Looks and Grace and Quiet Dignity - Epitomized by tigers

Calvin and Hobbes said so.

5/6

450. Rough Breathing Helium - Essential part of speaking Greek.

The rough breathing mark is the diacritical mark that indicates an H sound in ancient Greek words.

4/6

425. Youse Yōkai - Address for spirits

Youse is (thankfully rarely) used as a second personal plural pronoun in English, and yokai are Japanese spirits; the phrase itself addresses spirits.

3/6

444. Abriel - Master of undead illusion, maybe

Guessing this is a reference to Sabriel the Abhorsen, a master of the undead.

413. Hermeneutikos - Of or for interpreting

It's an adjectival modification of hermeneutics.

I think that was your best character analysis yet. Or at least the one that caused me to laugh the most.

Woah! I knew Yong-Mi from her early appearances, but didn't realize she had such a strange turn in A4. I feel like I should have given her a lower rating.

Does that quote come from after you betray Odil and join the rebels? At one point I planned to go back and help Konstina instead of Odil, but forgot and never went back to help her. Does aiding Konstina reveal much more about her (or the Wyldrylm in general) than you see in a pro-Avadon game?

Luck has nothing to do with item drops in Geneforge games. You may rarely get crafting items as drops from creatures, but the vast majority of crafting items are things you find, either lying on the ground or in containers, rather than coming from creatures you kill. So don't worry, just do lots of exploring and you'll be fine!

Rahul really was an even bigger waste than Akhari, I think. You meet him way earlier in the game than you do Akhari, and with more characterization he could have become a face for the Shaper cause as a whole that either repelled you and inadvertently pushed PCs toward the rebels or a compelling, charismatic leader that highlighted the best of the Shapers and drew PCs to his side. Instead he's just kind there, durdling around and contributing nothing. (Well, I guess he trained Khyryk, so maybe he gets some sort of coolness by association?)

Aha, yes, that definitely confirms the Nephils got it firsthand, rather than poaching it from someone else. Interesting. Did every civilization in the world know about Avernum except the Empire? LOL. #conspiracytheory

We're explicitly told that both humans and nephils were native to the surface, and that both were banished to the caves by the Empire. I know the dragons came down from the surface, but, well, they're dragons, they can do stuff normal folks can't. It seems like a much bigger leap to me to assume some Nephils independently discovered the caves, without the massive resources we know are necessary to construct a teleporter, and voluntarily migrated there, than to just assume some of the Empire-banished Nephils came along later and took a piece of the sword from of Avernum's native menaces.

Right, the problem isn't Nephils getting exiled before humans, but Nephils getting exiled before the First Expedition even took place. "...some believe the Nepharim took it." - does this require that the Nepharim took it FROM the First Expedition? Or could we read it to indicate only that at some later point, after the Empire starting dumping Nephils into the caves, the Nepharim acquired it, presumably seizing it from one of the parties that wiped out the First Expedition? That seems like a preferable reading to one that requires a mysterious Nephilim presence to predate the First Expedition. (Unless, obviously, there is other more explicit evidence of the Nephilim and F.E. interacting?)

First Expedition explores Caves and is split up and defeated by Grah-Hoth, Drath, Pyrog, Motrax, slithzerikai, nephilim, and various other monsters

I thought the Nephils were native to the surface and didn't appear in the caves until the Empire started using Avernum as a prison? Is it explicitly stated that some helped kill off the First Expedition and / or that some Nephils were native to Avernum? I know the Nephils in X1 have some artifacts of the First Expedition, but I assumed that was from scavenging / taking from cave natives, rather than having acquired them directly.

Erika claims that she created the light-emitting mushrooms and the food mushrooms, but I'm pretty sure someone somewhere else says that she didn't really — the impression that I got was that it was credit-claiming and ego.

IIRC, Solberg credits Erika with making all the useful plants EXCEPT the luminous fungus, which he says predated even the First Expedition.

Hahahaha. This is almost as bad as Litalia's backstory! At least with her, one can imagine the character is deliberately spinning her own tale. As Alorael says, though, maybe the dragons are also deliberately obfuscating.

It will be interesting to see if the dragons say anything in the A3-remake that would clarify whether the A2CS age was a mistake or a deliberate retcon (i.e. will Jeff double down on the short lifespan or revert to original numbers?).

I can’t speak for E1 or A1, but I looked at the Tower dialogue for AEFTP and here’s what I came up with:

Results: Zanthia is afraid to talk to you, though no reason is given. Throndell is afraid to talk to you and specifically mentions that Linda can kick him out. Imprisoned Hew-mon opposed the summoning but was forced to go along, only to be locked up afterward. Kelner is afraid there are spies eavesdropping on him. Ambrin is afraid of Linda if she learns he spoke out of turn. It’s too bad Jeff didn’t connect the dots a little more, but I do think there are enough hints for us to get the sense that Linda is an authoritarian who has turned the Tower into her private fiefdom, using spies to keep tabs on its residents and threatening to lock up or expel them unless they cooperate with her demands. At least, that was how I imagined it when playing AEFTP, and looking at the script leaves me feeling justified, especially since after reading Slarty’s comments I wondered if I’d imagined it all. I’m not saying Linda deserves a high rating (she doesn’t), but at least in AEFTP her role in the story is fleshed out marginally better than Slarty suggests (i.e. "Not only are people not terrified of Linda, no one mentions her at all.").

I'm not sure specifically why I recall this, but my impression was that pretty much everyone was terrified of Linda in X1, basically cowed into going along with her or at least keeping quiet, and that consequently only Kelner and Solberg made even minimal efforts to actually oppose her. What was unclear was WHY exactly Linda was so intimidating - she didn't seem to wield especially immense magical power, and nothing was said that implied she had major political influence, either. I mean, I feel like a line somewhere about how she had lots of political clout and was pals with several mayors or something would have been a great way to indirectly explain why no was able to stand up to her. In X3...well, the really bizarre thing is how she got back into the Tower. The demon summoning I can accept as taking place in her secret lab (though that raises the question of how anyone has a secret lab in the Tower). Even her return to the Triad could maybe have been explained by a reference to how she assiduously courted political favor. I don't think it would have taken all that much to help her story make more sense (as well as depth to the character as someone capable of being extremely charming and ingratiating in order to pursue a long-term goal). Oh well.

The countdown is based on the average deviation, right? So, basically, the further we get in the countdown, the more starkly polarized or divided respondents were? For Tarkus, then, who is in the top 3, and has a range from 4 to 9, there are opposing camps that see him as either "meh" or really really fantastic. In contrast, for Lankan (1 to 7), Nathalie (2 to 9), Ghaldring (1 to 7), and Alwan (3 to 10), opinions are apparently less clearly grouped around two points on the scale, although the overall range of disagreement (with some feeling vehement dislike and others great fondness) is wider. Tarkus would seem to be viewed more like Solberg (4-9) and Cheeseball (5-10) as a figure who is merely average to some but beloved by others, just with people more consistently lining up as either "He's average" or "He's great!"

You know all this already, I'm sure. I only just noticed it though and found it interesting to ponder.

Only "a bit stubborn?" He refuses to go back when you bring an offer of conciliation and minimal punishment. He refuses to go back when a Shaper (the PC) has done exactly what he wanted and destroyed the source of the rogues on the island. He refuses to go back when you reveal how Litalia had manipulated him and she was behind the rogue problem. By the end, he's a rebel without cause (and a "rebel without a clue" as well), hanging out in the swamps, and selfishly keeping his homesick followers out there, for absolutely no reason except that he's too proud and stubborn to admit he made a mistake.

Disclaimer: I may have given Lankan a poor rating.

I mean, the dispute over the Beraza Woods (Kellem/Holklandan) feels a lot more like the Israel-Palestine conflict than, say, the nationalist wars between European nations like France and Germany.

It's funny you would say that, because the Franco-German conflict over Alsace-Lorraine was exactly what the Beraza Woods dispute reminded me of. LOL.

I would agree with Kel - those comments read to me more as nationalist than outright racist (nationalism can very much be linked to racism, but there is a difference). It's an unpleasant feature of the character, but not, I think, a very unique behavior amid the many international rivalries that come up in Avadon.

comes off rather like a drakon Gowron

OH WOW. You are so right. Okay, I think Ghaldring just gained coolness solely because of this comparison.

New argument! Who is your favorite character not included on the list?

Oh, lots of very minor characters in Jeff's games are interesting; despite having no real gameplay or plot significance, there's some little hook that makes me curious to know about their lives. The first one that comes to mind is the shaper working with the Awakened in G2...Carnelian, I'm pretty sure her name was (I remember because after meeting her I thought "Oh! So those gloves belong to YOU!"). She's not a plot figure like Tuldaric, but still a real shaper who decided to defect and aid the Awakened. How did she come to make that decision? And so on, from Pentil to Formello to Shadow Valley Fort.

What does the "Disagreement" number mean?

Edit: also, good to know Tyran has been lying all these years about liking Nethergate.

#SlartyDoesBuzzfeed