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Confusion Over The Plot Of Avernum 3 *unmarked Spoilers*


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So, I'm confused by the plot. By that I mean, why would Rentar-Irhno bother with the weaker plagues at all?

 

Why not just send the Alien Beasts after everyone in Valorim? The things were powerful enough to require the outright sealing off of Footracer Province, yet all Rentar had to do to sneak the Alien Beasts past would be a small amount of teleportation magic--a cinch for her, particularly since she's obviously able to gain access to where both the Troglodytes and the Giants are to mess with them, has access to the Golem Factory if nothing else to allow her into the rest of Valorim via the Crystal Soul hanging out there, and so on and so forth...so why bother with such weaklings as the slimes in Krizsan at all? (The roaches I can understand, because disease is nasty and not easy to excise even if the roaches are removed, but the slimes were so weak that a bunch of morons from Avernum could clean them up inside of a few hours!)

 

I mean, granted, this is all so you have a sorting algorithm of tougher and tougher plagues to deal with as adventurers, but whether it's Exile III or Avernum 3, it doesn't make sense to me to do it the way she did it. Vahnatai patience aside, sending the Alien Beasts everywhere would have just made more sense to me.

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Originally Posted By: Kyronea
So, I'm confused by the plot. By that I mean, why would Rentar-Irhno bother with the weaker plagues at all?


Thrift. The backstory is, Rentar had some slime coupons she wanted to use, and it was 2-for-1 on cockroaches. She sensibly had them delivered to the weaker, southern part of the continent where the soldiers weren't so tough, so they would have maximum effect.
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Then why have such telling signs in the Golem Factory or with the barrier separating the Giants and the Troglodytes?

 

I'm thinking that the clue pointing to Erika early on (and the dragon scales in the roach factory, whilst we're on the subject of false clues) were only planted after she saw that Avernum was exploring the surface. I don't see much of a reason to do it prior to that because the Empire wasn't bothering to investigate--it was just quarantining. Which means I just answered my own question: she thought the trogs, giants, and golems were too powerful for the Avernites to deal with.

 

Which given her prior experience with the heroes of Avernum II/Exile II seems fairly silly to me, since they dealt with Garzhad and so on.

 

It still confuses me. Practically the only reason the towns in Krizsan had trouble dealing with the slimes, it seems to me, were simply lack of resources--had they the resources of Blackcrag Fortress, they probably could have tracked down and dealt with the slime pit very easily. The Roach factory is more doubtable but I think they could have dealt with that one too fairly easily.

 

And lack of control doesn't seem like a good enough reason to me to not just release them on the continent anyway. It's not as if the Vahnatai can live on the surface, so why should they care if its rendered uninhabitable by the alien beasts?

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The barrier was added later after it was determined that the Giants and Trogolytes were spending their time killing each other instead of the Empire.

 

When you finally see the room where the Vahnatai were planning the plagues it becomes obvious that Rentar was using a focus group to determine what to do. Instead of picking a single plague, the focus group split and you got multiple plague types.

 

This is what happens when you use a committee.

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Originally Posted By: Randomizer
The barrier was added later after it was determined that the Giants and Trogolytes were spending their time killing each other instead of the Empire.

 

When you finally see the room where the Vahnatai were planning the plagues it becomes obvious that Rentar was using a focus group to determine what to do. Instead of picking a single plague, the focus group split and you got multiple plague types.

 

This is what happens when you use a committee.

Heh. It would certainly fit Jeff's sense of humor for that to be the case.
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Originally Posted By: Randomizer
When you finally see the room where the Vahnatai were planning the plagues it becomes obvious that Rentar was using a focus group to determine what to do. Instead of picking a single plague, the focus group split and you got multiple plague types.

This is what happens when you use a committee.


Seriously??? That would be amazingly hilarious.
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Originally Posted By: Kyronea
Then why have such telling signs in the Golem Factory or with the barrier separating the Giants and the Troglodytes?
Very good question. Apparently because she's powerful but bad at details. A4 supports this hypothesis.

Quote:
I'm thinking that the clue pointing to Erika early on (and the dragon scales in the roach factory, whilst we're on the subject of false clues) were only planted after she saw that Avernum was exploring the surface. I don't see much of a reason to do it prior to that because the Empire wasn't bothering to investigate--it was just quarantining.
Hmm. Maybe, except she had plenty of time to place the clues. Upper Avernum existed for over a year before X3 happens, and Ghikra was around for a chunk of that time, too. Also, we know she used Ghikra to spy on Avernum. Surely she realized at some point that the Avernites were not _only_ going to investigate the slimes and roaches?

Besides resources, I can think of one other reason she didn't just put alien beasts and golems everywhere. Patience. The Empire was clearly having problems dealing with just the plagues she had already unleashed. This did not show any sign of changing. If Erika and the Surface Explorers hadn't shut down her stuff, she'd have had plenty of time to relish the destruction of Valorim, tossing out a few more critters at a time.

Also, maybe she wanted to save some resources for the other continents -- we know they were more populated and presumably better defended, so it would take more to deal with them. Some of the plagues might have just been test runs.
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Maybe the plague distribution had something to do with the ease of setting up complicated magic far from the vahnatai base of operations. The alien beasts were released in the backyard of the vahnatai lands, and the slimes are the most distant. It's possible that magical logistics dictated the complexity and threat level of the plagues released.

 

It's also possible that Rentar-Ihrno couldn't predict which plagues would be most effective. It's conceivable that the Empire's armies would have fought off the alien beasts, who are powerful but simple, but been brought down by the superior magic and tactics of the troglodytes. Or the insidious menace of plague-bearing roaches could have been the hardest to root out; if not for the accidental friendly roaches, their friendship with the fortunately located GIFTS, and the GIFTS' friendliness towards Avernite adventurers, the roaches would have been impossible to find and halt.

 

Perhaps the plagues were varied because Rentar suspected that a monolithic threat would receive more urgent, concentrated, and effective aid from the rest of the Empire. Leaving the provinces fractured under the weight of their separate threats was effective, after all. And perhaps the slimes' lack of power was a simple design flaw; all the other plagues seem, in their various ways, to be deadly enough to cripple a province.

 

—Alorael, who could even see the plagues serving different purposes. The slimes and roaches may have been decoy plagues created only so Avernum would find the planted evidence and destroy the potential foes Rentar saw as real threats: Erika and the dragons. After all, Rentar knows the power of adventurers herself. Her mistake may have been in thinking that those plagues and the subsequent fights against powerful enemies would delay Avernum longer. (Also consider how much tougher the endgame is without Erika's help. If Rentar thinks she's unstoppable once Erika is gone, she's very nearly right.)

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Alorael, I keep looking for a loupe hole in your reasoning, but I can't see one. The argument for causing suspicion to fall elsewhere, and causing the Avernites to attack other enemies of Rentar makes too much sense to ignore.

 

By the way, I appreciate the change of my title. Thank you to whomever did that.

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Originally Posted By: Chuck Norris. No Im just kidding,Alorael
The alien beasts were released in the backyard of the vahnatai lands, and the slimes are the most distant.

 

Where was the cave that you meet the two vahnatai in a cave? wasnt it somewhere near footracer province? If it was then it was obvius. But Alorael your saying that the vahnatai lands are that far away?

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The defiled crypt is geographically near Footracer, but there's a mountain range in the way. I'm also not sure of the relevance; I'm not sure that Bohen and Abra ever showed signs of being loyal to Rentar-Ihrno rather than being explorers sent by the rest of the Olgai tribe. And yes, the slimes are most of a continent away from Footracer. Depending on the arbitrary rules of magic in the Avernum universe, that could be a problem.

 

—Alorael, who has trained his eye on the finest details of the plagues and the pun. The plagues are inscrutable, but the pun passes muster.

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That's what I thought, but I couldn't come up with any concrete memories from A3 to back it up.

 

—Alorael, who isn't exactly sure what that would say, either. If they were sent by Bon-Ihrno they might very well have come from vahnatai lands. But since he hasn't grasped the significance of the crypt to the plagues, he can't be bothered to delve into text dumps and scripts.

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"I am being pleased to see you. I am named Bohen-Ihrno."

"We were having much pleasure in our allies returning to the surface. In fact, it was Avernum spies who were detecting this site and reporting it to us so we could visit."

 

"I am Abra."

"I and Bohen do missions for our people. At times, we go where it makes us weak."

"For many years, she and I have been going from place to place, reviving sleeping vahnatai, killing hydras, and such. But this mission has been being the worst."

 

Okay, no specific loyalty to Bon-Ihrno, but they are clearly working for the Council or the community in general, not Rentar, just as in X2. And unless they are way better at lying than Rentar-Ihrno, they are clearly pro-Exile, as well. That makes sense, since Exiles saved them from what Abra claimed was certain death in X2.

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Still, it's not entirely clear how close Olgai and Rentar were. Bon-Ihrno was living in Rentar's loyalists' staging area, after all. Trying to promote peace, sure, but why couldn't Bon-Ihrno just choose discretion as the better part of valor and come running to Avernum with a warning?

 

—Alorael, who gets the sense that the vahnatai were torn and that many decided not to help Rentar or Avernum, in effect staying neutral out of dislike for her plans but loyalty to one of their luminaries over weird pink aliens. It's not very well borne out in the games, but he prefers it over having the vahnatai be gormless, incompetent, or just obviously opportunistically traitorous.

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Perhaps she had mercenaries from other tribes. Gaddika and company were certainly opportunistically traitorous.

 

But let's look at Vahantai attitudes in X2. In general, they are not a particularly suspicious and untrusting people. However, they were uniformly furious towards the abductors of the Crystal Souls. The only real difference of opinion was whether it was OK for them to treat Exile as a different tribe from the Empire, or if all humans were bad. Even in X2, the majority of Vahnatai seemed to agree with Glantris and Elohi, and not Prossis, and were reluctant to give the party a chance until they proved themselves.

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Upper exile Is dirrectly over exile wasnt it? and the vahnattai lands going down that river took up about the length of the tunnel from formello to the tunnel to the tower of magi I would guess. And It kept going slightly west. I still dont see how an entire continet would seperate the two places if the under ground was much closer

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Originally Posted By: Trenton Uchiha, rebel servile.
Upper exile Is dirrectly over exile wasnt it? and the vahnattai lands going down that river took up about the length of the tunnel from formello to the tunnel to the tower of magi I would guess. And It kept going slightly west. I still dont see how an entire continet would seperate the two places if the under ground was much closer


There's no indication that Upper Exile is anywhere close to the rest of Exile. In fact, based on the extent of magic they had to utilize to get the portal to function, it's very reasonable that it's rather far away. Upper Exile is just a large cave system in the mountains.

As for the Vahnatai Lands, they have improvised a base in northern Valorim through which they made the Plagues. The lands of the Olgai Clan, in Lower Exile, however are even further deeper than the rest of Exile; hence the establishment by the Vahnatai of Ghikra in Upper Exile.
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Originally Posted By: CRISIS on INFINITE SLARTIES
Perhaps she had mercenaries from other tribes. Gaddika and company were certainly opportunistically traitorous.

But let's look at Vahantai attitudes in X2. In general, they are not a particularly suspicious and untrusting people. However, they were uniformly furious towards the abductors of the Crystal Souls. The only real difference of opinion was whether it was OK for them to treat Exile as a different tribe from the Empire, or if all humans were bad.

I have forgotten many details of the quests, but I don't remember that anyone in E2/A2 made a big deal of the traitorous Vahnatai. No one suggested that the Vahnatai should all go kill themselves for belonging to the same species as Gaddika. Double standards FTW!

I wouldn't be too surprised if Rentar actually played a part the abduction, or at least was pleased to have an excuse to wage war on the humans. The brief alliance with Exile/Avernum could be seen as part of a divide-and-conquer strategy.
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I'm almost certain that Avernum itself was underneath Pralgad or one of the other continents, and NOT underneath Valorim, given that the exit to the surface is protected by the Empire in the first Exile/Avernum game, and that there is absolutely no hint of it being anywhere in Valorim in either Exile III or Avernum III. This is additionally supported by the fact that the Empire took over the Abyss and other such lands in the vicinity of that area of Avernum in Exile II/Avernum II, and that to even reach Garzhad's Fortress, located on the ruins of Grah-Hoth's fortress, you have to teleport.

 

The caves we see occupied by the Vahnatai in Footracer seem to just be another set of caves just like Upper Avernum.

 

Incidentally, I'm completely forgetting what relevance to the plot the Vahnatai crypts on the surface in Valorim had...did they really have any beyond adding more mystery as to the origins of the Vahnatai? I'm replaying Exile III at the moment but I'm only up to the roaches and haven't even set foot near Sharimik, let alone get near Footracer. (Mostly because my party is rather fragile...it's been a long time since I played an Exile version of the games and the difficulty difference is actually quite large, at least in the beginning...although part of that is due to being so used to certain mechanics in the Avernum games that I forgot that, among other things, more Intelligence doesn't mean more SP in the Exile versions.)

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While the Empire probably came back down through the Final Gauntlet and set up base, including the Great Portal, I'm not really sure that shows much except that they also figured out that it exists. The Empire controls all of the surface at the time of A1, and it could easily be guarding the exit. In fact, given the known existence of an exit tunnel, Upper Avernum and Fort Emergence may have been created just so that there would be an exit the Empire didn't know about and have heavily guarded.

 

The lack of any evidence for an exit in Valorim is telling, except given the fact that nobody in the Empire knew of that way into or out of Avernum means that any base would be secret, and all of the soldiers there would probably be good at keeping their mouths shut. In that, I could see them being stationed in Valorim, which is least densely settled and most likely to have wilderness where a bunch of soldiers can go unremarked.

 

We may never know.

 

—Alorael, who doesn't think the vahnatai crypt ever got any explanation. Bohen and Abra show up confused about why there are crypts on the surface, and then they disappear and no answer is ever offered.

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The exit to the surface was destroyed. The games have pretty much zero references to Exile/Avernum being underneath any of the 4 continents. However, there is literally one reference to the 4 continents listed together, plus Prazac has titles relating to Pralgad and Vantanas. Other than those two references they are never mentioned. So it's hard to say anything about them at all.

 

So, we really have no idea. Valorim is probably the best bet, however, given that:

1) Upper Exile is below Valorim, and "above" and "below" are the words used to describe where Upper Exile is relative to Exile. Given a spherical planet that could mean anything, but this doesn't help the case for continents that are far away from Upper Exile.

2) Valorim once upon a time had lots of nephilim, and one of the Empire's strategies for dealing with nephilim was to teleport them to Exile.

3) If you're picking the location for a prison colony, why put it under a heavily populated continent when you can just put it under a half-uninhabited (as Valorim was when Exile was created) one?

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From Exile 1, there were 4 exits to the surface from Avernum and 3 were destroyed with the last one guarded by the Empire. There is no mention where these exits lead to in the Empire except the description of what you see when you reach the surface.

 

The portals can allow for any distance in traveling so unless power consumption dramatically increases with distance, it would be using a surface point that could be easily controlled and useful for gathering supplies.

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It is extremely well documented in the first trilogy that the further away a portal is, the harder it is to create and maintain and the more power is needed. Every time extreme long-range teleportation has occured, it's involved either massive Empire apparatuses, Vahnatai crystals, or a collection of other magical artifacts (the brooches).

 

Even Ernest, who did not have to deal with solid rock being in the way, said that the portals to the further cities were less stable and reliable.

 

And even long-range scrying, which presumably is easier than teleportation, was very difficult. Exile-to-surface scrying was successfully practiced only by a tiny handful: the dragons (Khoth and Athron), the strongest archmages (Erika and Rentar-Ihrno), and a few divination specialists (Aydin and Aimee).

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With the logic listed by Slarty, the exit could just as easily have been into Vantanas, as, if the information on the Encylopedia Emarian is at all trustworthy, it is almost more unsettled than Valorim.

 

And even though the exits to the surface were destroyed, you would think there would be some sort of remnants somewhere, if nothing other than a collapsed cave entrance with ruins of a fort nearby...this could have easily existed in Valorim without a problem in game, yet it wasn't, unless its located where the Third Empire Army is stationed.

 

In any case, my argument was only that the exit couldn't have lead to Valorim because we saw no evidence of any sort of such exit. And although, yes, in the dialog there were references to Upper Avernum being "above" the rest of Avernum, etc...I kinda figured that was more just a lingo thing, so to speak. The caves of Avernum are far underneath the surface with only very few exits to the surface anyway, so they'd just be below.

 

A good example of what I mean in real life would be how people living in the mountains of Colorado refer to their location relative to, say, Denver, by referring to the elevation. I live at 8400 feet, over 3000 feet higher than Denver, and routinely refer to my location as being above Denver, and when I go to Denver, I say things like "going down to Denver." The references to Upper Avernum and Avernum could work the same way.

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The information about Vantanas on EE is made up. It was made up collectively by a community of people consisting of many BoE scenario makers back when there was a real community about that, but it is nonetheless not canonical. Literally all the info on Vantanas in the game is the 2 references in X3 I mentioned.

 

Also, only the last sentence of my post had anything to do with populatedness.

 

Originally Posted By: Kyronea
In any case, my argument was only that the exit couldn't have lead to Valorim because we saw no evidence of any sort of such exit.
First of all, about 15 years have gone by between X1 and X3, so that's plenty of time for the exit to be destroyed after the Empire finds out that the people who assassinated their emperor used it. Second of all, "if it's not on the game map it can't exist" doesn't make any sense at all. That might apply to a major city that you can't miss, but not to hidden things that the PCs just don't stumble upon.

 

Quote:
I live at 8400 feet, over 3000 feet higher than Denver, and routinely refer to my location as being above Denver, and when I go to Denver, I say things like "going down to Denver." The references to Upper Avernum and Avernum could work the same way.
Correct, if Exile is near Upper Exile. If Exile is actually below Pralgad (for example) then the analogy would be you saying you're "going down to New York" despite the fact that most of your travel would be horizontal and not vertical.
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The backstory to X1 also implies that Exile was discovered within living memory of the events of the game, which suggests that any entrances to it from the surface are likely on a relatively newly-settled continent -- otherwise, they'd most probably have been discovered earlier.

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Alright then. I suppose that makes sense.

 

I think the thing that was getting to me was that, it seems to me like finding the ruins of the former exit to the surface from Exile I would have been a neat little easter egg in Exile III, and not having it almost seems like a missed opportunity.

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Why? Yes, there are a lot of interchangeable towns, but there isn't a lack of meaningful nifty little places to find.

 

—Alorael, who somehow thought that Exile/Avernum was discovered magically and explored by teleportation. That doesn't actually make much sense; how would they have found the exits when the First Expedition was busy dying? But he also doesn't think the timeframe works for Valorim being settled in living memory. It doesn't seem at all like a frontier in X3, and it's settled from end to end with large cities, small hamlets, and, critically, no new settlements under construction.

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They weren't frontier when there were large, walled stone cities, bustling ports, and a full road system. The feel of the province is very off for being a new settlement. Is that 30 year figure in the game anywhere?

 

—Alorael, who has a bigger problem with the time of naming. Underground Silvar is supposed to be named after surface Silvar, a fairly small town in Krizsan Province. Underground Silvar is one of the oldest cities, and that would make it at least as old as its surface counterpart. Even if surface Silvar is slightly older, who would feel that kind of nostalgia for a place they'd lived in for such a short time, most of it spent on the labor of trying to make it a town at all?

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The 30 year figure actually is in the game, I think in multiple places. I remember the Silvar naming thing; it's an unfortunate blip. OTOH, there is no evidence one really was named after the other, only speculation on the part of the PCs in a single dialogue pop-up, so it's entirely possible that, say, they were both named after some third thing, or Silvar is just a common name on the surface, something the Exile-born X3 heroes would not know.

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Yes and yes.

 

—Alorael, who assumes the Empire came through the Final Gauntlet. Its strongholds are concentrated there, and generally in the western parts of Avernum. He can't actually remember if the game says they came through there (or, for that matter, if he's wrong and there's proof that they started out by coming in through the Great Portal).

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I think the intro to Exile II said that they sealed the exit after Hawthorne was assassinated.

 

Also, the Empire's Portal Fortress is in pretty much the same spot as the apparently-Empire-created teleportation area Erika used to send X1's heroes to Hawthorne. So that seems like a likely point of entry.

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