A3 Easter Egg Dungeon

[Orifushi Mafuyu]

Spoiler warning blah blah, etc.

 

This place was mildly amusing. Pursuant to the Adventurers' Code (specifically, the section which says thou shalt slayeth anything that hath a hp bar) I took a swing at Jeff. Oops, surprisingly fragile

 

Reloading, I grabbed something marked 'NY' to provoke hostilities. Then I soul copied Jeff (lol) and ran out the portal back to Rentar's Keep. Unfortunately summoning Jeff does nothing to distract Rentar. I think I'll omit how summoning Jeff does nothing to dissuade the other vahnatai either, and they seem to take a sadistic pleasure in skewering him with their wavy blades or poking holes in him with their throwing discs.

 

Then I noticed that my simulacra were regular townspeople (albeit looking like Jeff). Agent Smith scene flashbacks notwithstanding, I suppose that - like Chuck Norris - Jeff's essence is too awesome to be contained in a mere soul crystal.

 

Sigh.

[The Knight Who Said Ni]

Huh? I have played it through and done most side quests but never saw a Jeff NPC or an Adventurer code. This is spoiler heavy but tell me where this all is?

 

Ni

[Ishad Nha]

IIRC, I think you have to place a pair of pants on a rune in the SW part of Rentar's Fortress.

[The Almighty Doer of Stuff]

Yes, there's a hidden dungeon followed by a hidden town in E/A3, found by placing an ordinary pair of pants on a rune in Rentar's fortress at the end of the game. Also, the "Adventurer's Code" isn't something in the games. It's just a player's observation that once you have nothing left to do in a town in a Spidweb game, you may as well kill everyone because it usually doesn't have any effect in-game except giving you experience and making you richer. I don't do that, personally, but a lot of people do.

[Orifushi Mafuyu]

Naa, I don't raze the towns. I'm from the goody-goody two shoes school of adventuring

 

I just finished A3 btw.

 

Click to reveal..

It was sad, how Erika finally died. Having played E1-E3 and A1-A3, I always felt she was a benevolent figure, albeit driven by anger.

 

As I stormed Rentar's Keep I had Lufia 2's "The Savior of those on Earth" playing, but for the final battle I switched to this rendition of Lufia 2's "Fortress of Doom" (

). It felt appropriate.

 

Rentar's projection in Empress Prazac's throne room was pretty ballsy. I'd have thought the Empire mages would be able to track her down if she did that though, given that they manage to remote-teleport our party out of a deathtrap.

 

I really, really want Rentar dead. Does she ever get her just desserts? (I never played A4-A5, but I don't mind spoilers).

[Randomizer]

On Rentar's fate

 

Click to reveal..

Avernum 4 has multiple endings so you get to choose Rentar's fate from killing her to letting her go back to the Vahnatai or plague the Empire.

[Orifushi Mafuyu]

So, multiple endings eh. How are they explained in A5 then? Is she simply taken out of the picture, no longer mentioned?

 

Edit:

Click to reveal..

Then again, if we don't take Erika's amulets in A3, we don't see her death at Rentar's hands either, and from what I've read on the forums Erika simply isn't mentioned anymore in A4-A5.

[Randomizer]

Avernum 5 is played as Empire soldiers with only slight mention of Rentar's Vahnatai group, Mostly to avoid that group of Vahnatai getting slaughtered.

[Dikiyoba]

Dikiyoba thought there was a line in A5 that indicated that Rentar was dead, but Dikiyoba could be totally misremembering.

[The Almighty Doer of Stuff]

I haven't played A5, so I don't know whether there's a line about Rentar's fate, but I know that

Click to reveal..

Jeff himself said, after A4, something along the lines of "Rentar is DEAD. DEAD, DEAD, DEAD, DEAD, DEAD, DEAD, DEAD."

[Lilith]

Basically, the assumption is that you weren't a complete idiot who let Rentar go free, so she's either dead or sealed away forever by the Vahnatai.

[Alorael at Large]

Rentar is gone. What particular form of gone she is doesn't really matter, does it?

 

—Alorael, who wonders if it is possible to revive a dead crystal soul and, if so, what form it takes. Or do you just get a vahnavoi or one of the insubstantial undead types from it? Can you even have an undead, rotting rock?

[Slawbug]

I also seem to remember a line in A5 that specifies she is dead.

[Dikiyoba]

Yep, Clodeca in Thalants says it.

 

Quote:

question = "Rentar-Ihrno? You mean that Rentar-Ihrno?";

text1 = "_The one who razed your lands? The one who went mad, transformed herself into a crystal soul, and attempted to destroy Avernum? Yes, that one._";

text2 = "_She is dead now. At last, she has peace._";

Dikiyoba.

[Marak]

From what I remember reading,

 

Click to reveal..

There are multiple endings to A4 (as was said), but the official/cannon one appears to be that the Famed Adventurers from A4 didn't take the merciful approach with Rentar when they meet up with her in NW Avernum.

 

Also, in A5 Lark talks a little bit about Erika, telling you that she was killed years ago (during A3 obviously) and that Lark is using some of Erika's research to "fuel" the stuff she makes for you when you complete her quests.

[Orifushi Mafuyu]

Originally Posted By: Truth as a Matter of Persistence

Rentar is gone. What particular form of gone she is doesn't really matter, does it?

It's a matter of correctness. Thanks for the quote though Dikiyoba, that piece of dialogue really clears it up.

Click to reveal..

I didn't know vahnatai could transform themselves into a Crystal Soul - or perhaps the story meant that other vahnatai helped her do so. I did try to take a look at Avernum 4, but god help me, I can't stand the interface, even though the basics are the same as A1-A3.

Still, consider that the life restoration spell at level 3 can essentially bring back even dusted characters. Now why didn't that work for Erika? We RPG veterans know dying cures you of all other status ailments (classic example: poison), so the nasty curses responsible for killing her would've gone away after they served their purpose. After that it's just a simple matter of breaking out a dustpan and then casting that spell.

[Slawbug]

Except that there's actually evidence within Avernum games of curses that outlast death even on PCs -- dread curses. Erika's curse was even bigger business than one of those, clearly.

 

The whole matter of death and revival is an irritating point of obvious-fakeness in nearly every CRPG these days. Characters who die in battle can be revived no matter what killed them and no matter how long you drag around their lifeless corpse before restoring them. But characters who die of comparable ailments in the course of the storyline are apparently impossible to save.

[Orifushi Mafuyu]

Ah, didn't realize that about Dread Curses, namely because on the rare occasions I contracted it, I either reloaded or managed to get cured without dying along the way.

[Callie]

Originally Posted By: Orifushi Mafuyu

Ah, didn't realize that about Dread Curses, namely because on the rare occasions I contracted it, I either reloaded or managed to get cured without dying along the way.

I thought dread curses merely lowered your stats. Or am I thinking of something else?

[Alorael at Large]

That's basically what they do, yes.

 

—Alorael, who agrees with reloading purely for convenience. There's only one person who can cure them, and getting to that one person can be a pain. Having to get to that one person in A3 can be impossible if you don't play nice with the Anama.

[The Mystic]

Originally Posted By: Orifushi Mafuyu

Still, consider that the life restoration spell at level 3 can essentially bring back even dusted characters. Now why didn't that work for Erika?

When Erika was sent to the underworld, some rival Empire mages cursed her so that sunlight would kill her instantly if it touched her. It's possible that the curse was so strong that it would counter any attempt to restore or revive her.

Then again, think about it: Do you really want a vengeful Erika to be resurrected, especially if the act removes her sunlight curse?

[Marak]

Quote:

The whole matter of death and revival is an irritating point of obvious-fakeness in nearly every CRPG these days.

Heh, this reminds me something I read in a review of an old CRPG (I'm paraphrasing here):

Yes, my friends, this cut-scene shows us a true horror, the ONLY thing that can kill someone in an RPG...
...THE PLOT!

Sad, but true.

[Slawbug]

And if you want more evidence -- I forgot about this -- one of the prisoners in the Tower of Elderan in X2 discusses the curse/ward/tattoo things Elderan places on them, which are apparently impossible or almost impossible to remove.

[Orifushi Mafuyu]

Originally Posted By: The Mystic

Then again, think about it: Do you really want a vengeful Erika to be resurrected, especially if the act removes her sunlight curse?

She may be driven by anger but there's no evidence of her willing to involve innocents in her thirst for revenge. She might slay a bunch of high ranking Empire wizards who were on Garzahd's side, but that's about it. I don't see her flooding the Empire with monster plagues like Rentar and the vahnatai did.

Click to reveal..

Especially since she's seen the backlash: towards the end of A3 it's basically open season on the vahnatai. Erika may want specific people dead but I doubt genocide and another war are on the menu.

It'll just cause more trouble for her, and given her superior attitude it's more plausible she just wants revenge on those immediately responsible for her plight - anything more will be seen as unnecessary bother.

[Marak]

And unless she's lying through her teeth (and very convincingly), remember that she soundly denounces the Plagues as a Way of Revenge when you broach the subject with her in her tower early on in A3.

[Toby-Linn]

Yeah, because the plagues hurt both Avernum and the Empire by making the surface unlivable. The Avernites wouldn't be able to move back up.

 

I think Erika's style of revenge is to sweep into her victim's house and kill them all with a flashy spell. Plus she wouldn't be shy about it. If the plagues were her work she would have bragged about it to your characters because she would've been proud of it.

[The Mystic]

And due to the fact that she's a very powerful spellcaster (I think one game called her an arch-incantatrix or something), I wouldn't want to be caught on the receiving end of whatever spell she threw in my direction. That was more or less the point I was trying to make at the end of my previous post.