I’m not sure I have ever played an RPG with such a strong theme of exhaustion in it. It’s just one damned thing after another.
After discovering regaining the Sovran-ship in Verdum won’t go quite as smoothly as we thought, we headed to the capital city of Battahl, the neighbor nation of people with cat heads who sometimes go to war with the human nation. They are now in an uneasy peace that could all be shattered because the queen regent, who is supporting the pretender Sovran only until she can put her son on the throne as a puppet, seems to be in some sort of illicit relationship with a Bestran military commander?
We were shadowing this commander from the Battahl border toward the capital when a griffin attacked and completely destroyed his caravan. With the help of Phaedrus’ guards, we managed to kill the beast. I’m not sure what happened to Phaedrus; he wasn’t among the wreckage.
Fighting builds exhaustion. Dying an reloading from last save builds even more. Usually all that’s needed is a hot meal and a good night’s sleep, but we were just not finding any campsites along the main road. We were finding a lot of knackers, and bandits, and undead, and saurians who now could poison and debilitate you, and a cyclops that we died to, and a huge glowing golem that came with a half dozen poison saurians that we died to, and it was just one thing after another.
When we finally did get to Battahl and stagger our way to the inn, they were charging ruinous amounts for a night’s stay — 9999 gold. We don’t have 9999 gold. We had to pay 20,000 for the rent-to-own in Verdum, and I’d just had my pawn switch to thief after getting a few cool skills from the Thief-Maister after spending fifteen minutes dancing across see-saws for… reasons.
Anyway, exhausted but unable to rest in the city, we headed back out in the dead of night. Naturally we were attacked, several times, but all we wanted to do was sleep. I stopped by a riftstone to get new pawns because the ones I had were on their very last thread. I did take the opportunity to see how the pawns I’d hired in the past were doing, see if any were interested in coming back. Not quite yet, though — either they were way over my level, way under it, or were locked to roles I already was covering (I’m archer now, my main pawn is thief, but I expect that to change now that I have unlocked Trickster).
We did finally find a campsite, after defeating a few skeletons and maybe a knacker or two for the privilege, and now we just have to make it back to the capital. We’re short on money, the monsters are deadlier than ever, but fate isn’t going to wait for us and so we continue.
We’re exhausted.
Oh yeah, my character is wearing a bestral mask to try and blend in. Not sure it’s working. Also, they hate pawns in the capital, so maybe that’s why the innkeeper and merchants are so snotty.
