A-EftP - Hawthorne battle is sure different from original

[Ociporus]

I won't go into specifics about it so as to spoil anything, but the battle against Hawthorne is certainly different from exile / avernum.

No extra baddies in the room. I guess it's a fresh approach.

Still used invulnerability elixirs a bit, but seemed easier finish than the originals.

[Randomizer]

The Avrenum version has similarities leading up to the final room fight, but in some ways this was easier than the originals where there more targets.

[Ociporus]

I agree that it is much easier. You don't even need to really destroy the golems. They 'heal' but then just disintegrate at a certain point.

I enjoyed the drama in (I believe it was Avernum Original) where he had a bunch of lackeys in his throne room and you had to blast everyone to get at him. But I supposed having the royal guards flooding the room as you're trying to damage the golems gives somewhat the same effect ... well, actually not.

[Superba]

The idea Hawthorne is an old and cruel oppressor whose body was made thin and weak by greed and corruption has sense to me, nevertheless I expected to find more resistance, and some secret chamber too. Emperor weakness is maybe a payback for Avadon's Redbeard strenght?

[Ceiling Durkheim]

Yeah, I think I'm with Superba on this one. It's a departure from the original, but it makes sense. Anyway, it's not like the actual fight with Hawthorne was easy, just the part at the very end when his shield finally cracks. Those four golems in tandem had very, very high damage output, and that's without considering all the other adds that come at you. I still found Grah-Hoth harder, but Hawthorne was no pushover.

[Gon]

About Hawthorne's golems, imho somehow you'd normally expect this sort of guy to be the pretty paranoid type. As a non magic user, he wouldn't trust these powerful but impersonal, brainless robots that he didn't create himself. For his closest personal protection as the highest profile but an extremely fragile target for assassination in a world dominated by strong warriors and mages he would only trust a close personal cadre of elite corps only loyal to himself. Who knows when these automatons made by others would turn on him? The only explanation I can think of is that Hawthorne had become so crazy he had lost touch with reality. However, you'd expect that golems, unthinking, dedicated, raised from magic and able to withstand lots of damage without a murmur would be just the sort of protection a mage would use, as part of an overall set of self defense mechanisms, specifically against attackers with cold weapons who got too close to himself/herself, as in the case of Thantria and the wizard in the south west near Fort Remote.

[Superba]

You maybe forget about Galazhad whatshisname possible influence on Hawthorne. Maybe he already surrounded Hawthorne with Golems he controls but couldn't yet decide to kill him because everybody know who's their master. Then you come and he could kill you in the Hall, so it is written, but he doesn't. Instead he lets you go further, judging you are as a good weapon to use for his plans. Maybe.

[Ceiling Durkheim]

@Gon: why would an automaton under the control of a loyal wizard (presumably Garzahd) be less trustworthy than the wizard in question? Yes, it could malfunction, but it couldn't plot and engage in evil chancellor antics. I mean, it could support them, but a golem servant seems more logical to me than having a powerful court wizard (who would, after all, be a valuable resource in him/herself) guard him night and day.

[Gon]

I can only imagine that non magic users like Hawthorne would traditionally view magic users with distrust at best, seeing what they could do, as was the case in Dragonlance. It should be true in any world where magic dominates and when normal mortal people have no access or at best very limited access to a plane of power mages/priests could freely move in. Even if Hawthorne was ultimately on top, politically speaking, he still wouldn't find a mage, way outside of his control, trustworthy, (the more powerful the wizard, the less an ordinary human could trust them) Erika, Patrick, for example, were in no way whatsoever beholden to the Castle or Micah. Basically, if these arch mages felt like it or if they thought he/she was useful, they might assist a lowly mortal to their own ends. Golems being robots made out of magic do not have loyalty one way or another to speak of. If Hawthorne wasn't crazy, it wasn't the Avernites/Exiles half starving, skulking around underground in rags and barely getting by on scavenged bits and pieces of Empire technology left in the underworld that he had to fear, but those closest to him, especially a powerful, ambitious, scheming wizard/chancellor like Garzhad

 

Going with Superba's line of thinking, it's easy to surmise that Garzahd obviously was holding the real power way before the events of Exile 1. Possibly Hawthorne, who may have once been powerful, but with age, senility, had gone gaga, lost his grip on power. Unpopular and hated due to his policies, paranoid at attempts on his life (couldn't have been the only time) after all the extermination policies of the Empire, he had long since lost touch with all reality, politically and personally isolated at the top of a "Royal Spire" that was actually a jail full of guards, magic users and finally golems. (Where were all his courtiers, ministers, generals and people who normally inhabit places of power?) In which case, the golems were not so much Hawthorne's bodyguards, but rather his jailers placed by Garzhad whose purpose was to maintain Hawthorne's security until Garzhad decided what to do with him. Which, as it turned out, was to use the adventurers as a tool to make an assassination attempt on Hawthorne.

 

It seems the adventurers are just pawns of these arch mages in their power struggles, (Garzahd, Erika, Rentar,....). If Erika was only banished to the underworld with the curse and not executed out right, it could have been because Garzhad was either not strong enough politically and/or magic wise to completely get rid of his magic rival(s) at the time. They had to be banished, if they couldn't be just killed, so they couldn't threaten him. Logically, the underworld, under "millions of tons of rocks" was the best place to put them.

 

But Erika's sending adventurers to kill Hawthorne provided Garzhad with a great opportunity. Of course he knew of their existence and their deeds through Empire infiltrators and secret agents like Thantria. He may even have known in advance of Erika's plan to send them to the surface if he knew they were gathering the brooches and what they could be used for. It didn't matter if the adventurers succeeded or not; whether it was old crazy Hawthorne or young Prazac, Garzahd was still fully in control. This was the perfect setup to start the Avernum/Empire War of Exile II, which no doubt the hawks (generals) in the Empire Government fully backed. In one step Garzhad could get rid of both Avernum, and many many political opponents both above ground and underground at the same time.....

 

And when Hawthorne's protective shield finally came down, it was likely Garzahd either withdrawing it's power or cutting off the power supply.

[Ceiling Durkheim]

@Gon: That's a pretty interesting interpretation, actually. I disagree with some of your points, but I think the basic argument that Garzahd was pulling Hawthorne's strings is a good one. Especially in this edition, in which Hawthorne couldn't have beaten Garzahd in a straight fight, and has to rely more on subordinates for personal protection.

 

That said, Garzahd's dialogue in the Royal Spire suggested to me that Hawthorne still had some substantial control over the Empire: he ruled in part because Garzahd allowed him to, but he still ruled, and letting him die seemed like a momentous and difficult decision for Garzahd.

 

Also, if Garzahd were really and truly in control, and this was all archmage infighting, why endanger his position by leading the invasion of the underworld personally? Even with magical communication (which the series shows to be complicated and taxing, else the Empire would just scry all over Avernum rather than having troops and people like Thantria monitor it), he couldn't be as effective a regent/power behind the throne in Avernum as he would be on the surface. Manfred Redmark in A5 had trouble with that, and he seemed to move between underworld and surface more often than Garzahd did.

[Superba]

I agree about the, say, balance of power on surface Empire. It is possible but not likely Garzhad planned the Party to act against Hawthorne before you win all the battles to reach the surface. A small evidence of this is the in game speech he makes before you crash one of the Empire communication crystals; he sounds definetely enraged, promises to kill you soon. At that point of the game the Party seems to be for him an ordinary obstacle while he tries to interfere and take control of the underworld, in presumable accordance with Hawthorne wish.

[Gon]

Somehow I don't think Garzhad, once having gained the pretext to start the war, could allow somebody else the glory of winning it, if ultimately he was hoping to make himself ruler of the Empire, chancellor to a figure head Empress Prazac. Going by Thantria's reaction when you tell her you killed Hawthorne, the old Emperor may have been hated by the Avernites but certainly had his supporters, Thantria herself seems a bit of a loyalist fanatic (is that why she was sent down to Avernum as an "envoy" but out of the way?), hence why Garzahd wasn't going to commit regicide himself. But Hawthorne assassinated by Avernites was his chance to swiftly seize power, lead an army into Avernum, wage and win a quick, popular war, popular because it was going to be successful and short. Again judging by Thantria's sneering way in which she tossed a few "trinkets" (as she put it) the way of the adventurers if they did her bidding(which to the adventurers were powerful items), the reality of the Empire's magic technology and the full extent of its resources was such that they could crush down Avernum any time they wanted. Garzhad had to lead the invasion personally and win a quick war or risk placing military power into the hands of a general who might be equally ambitious and dangerous, win the war and return as the victorious leader of an army. No matter how powerful Garzhad or Erika are as mages, they are not omnipotent, they cannot fight off hundreds and thousands of soldiers single handedly. They cannot always get their way through sheer blunt force but needs to work through subterfuge. What Garzhad didn't take into account was the Vahnatai.....

[Ceiling Durkheim]

@Gon: Five years pass between the assassination of Emperor Hawthorne and the beginning of the Empire-Avernum war, according to the Encyclopedia Ermarian*. This makes it unlikely that the war was intended as part of a power grab by either Garzahd or some ambitious general. If anything, it seems more likely that it worked the opposite way: other elements within the Empire, wishing to get Garzahd out of the way, had him assigned to the ass-end of the world so that they could serve unopposed as Prazac's regent(s). They probably didn't expect him to die, but two years is a long time for one's political opposition to be out of the way. And if winning the war made him popular...well, it's not as if the Empire is a democracy.

 

*It's possible that this is out of date with the reboot of the series, but there's no positive evidence for that claim.