Continuing on from: Let's Play Pillars of Eternity, part three... 🙂
In the last post, Ellu'kha Kael discovered that she was a Watcher. All the visions and strange colours she had been seeing were not related to a possible concussion but were instead snippets of the past and of the dead. A man named Eder joined her little group and together, with Aloth and her trusty wolf, dealt with the man-eating bear she had been warned of. In the bear's cave she discovered that a man had been betrayed and his ghost filled her with likeminded rage as she sought vengeance for him. Once vengeance had been dealt, she then helped a miller and his family before turning in for the night.
This Watcher business was allowing her to do good work!
Ellu'kha was going to start wandering off out-of-town, as she had been told of another Watcher several miles away and seeing as she had discovered that she, too, was a Watcher, she wanted to gain his insights. However, as she and her group prepared to leave the Gilded Vale, a strange noise came out of the old, burned down temple to a forbidden god: Eothas.
Inside they found a man, broken and bloodied, who had been trying to explore the old temple.
Apparently he was no looter or treasure hunter, but someone who wanted to retrieve the bones of the old priests and bury them. A noble cause. Ellu'kha and her group immediately offered to help.
Within moments of leaving the man and entering a side-chamber, the group was beset upon by web-flinging, venom-spitting spiders.
Xander and Eder rushed on to take the spiders head on while Ellu'kha and Aloth stood in the doorway and shot arrows and flung magic. Soon, the spiders were dead.
Investigating the room, they found some old, crumpled notes written by old acolytes and temple initiates, books of the gods, and even hidden stashes of gems and jewelry. Ellu'kha wasn't there to loot, but she'd happily take these gifts! No one else was going to use them.
They explored countless chambers and cleared out all of the spiders that lurked inside the cold, grey stone. There were a lot of them. The temple had been empty for years and years, of course the creatures had settled in after all this time.
In another chamber they came across skuldr. Those creatures were unexpected after the hordes of spiders. Ellu'kha clutched her bow tightly. Perhaps this little excursion to retrieve the dead would be dangerous after all.
At last they came across a giant locked door, some bells situated beside it. Perhaps the priests bodies were behind it, Ellu'ka thought.
A few of the aging notes that they had picked up and read made mention of these bells. From what Ellu'kha could gather from the hasty scribblings, the large bell should not be rung first but second, and the right bell should be rung first and last. There was no mention of the left bell.
Using her Watcher-given intuition, she rang Right, Large, Left, Right and stood back, crossing her fingers. The door unlocked itself and stairs greeted them instead of the skeletons they sought. It was time to go further down into the depths of the temple.
An eerie chill embraced her as she slowly walked down the stairs.
It was soon evident why.
As they rounded a corner and entered a side chamber, the group was beset upon by black ghosts that emanated pure and utter despair. These must be the remnants of the initiates and acolytes who had been murdered, so many years ago.
They had no choice, they had to dispatch the spirits if they were going to find the long gone remains of the temple priests. Luckily the ghosts were attackable with both physical and magical weaponry and soon lay in pools of ectoplasm, and hopefully their souls retreated to another place to never harass them again.
Wave after wave of ghosts attacked and the group had to rest several times to recuperate, but soon, the last ghost had been felled and with the twist of a secret lever... a door opened, revealing a blood stained chamber.
"What's that... oh, my..." Eder murmured.
They had found the remains of the priests.
Surrounded by the dead, a familiar flickering touched Ellu'kha's peripheral vision. Ghostly men swayed back and forth and then, in a flash of purple, Ellu'kha witnessed the past.
The man, bloodied and broken at the entrance to the temple, the one who had asked them to retrieve the bones of the priests, he was there, with the priests. Suddenly, a ruckus broke out and the man shoved the priests into the room and pulled the hidden lever, entrapping the priests inside.
"I'll come back for you!" he shouted... but the priests never heard from him again. Together, they perished in the cold, dank room, trapped forever.
This time, Ellu'kha did not feel an all consuming rage. The dead did not feel as such. They only felt sadness and despair. She would question that man at the temple entrance and find out just what the hell had happened here and why he had locked them in that room.
As they rose up from the bowels of the broken temple, they were greeted by a chamber full of lit candles. It wasn't possible that someone had lit them recently, and yet... they must've been burning for years. The wax didn't drip from them, neither did their flames sputter... they were truly magical.
Eder was pleased. As a secret worshipper of the forbidden God Eothas, the lit candles renewed a hope within him.
That same pleased hope emanated through Ellu'kha and when she at last confronted the man who had sent them on this quest about his role in the priest's demise, she discovered that he had been trying to save them. He was going to return for them once the danger had passed. But it was too late.
She handed the priest's remains to him and allowed him to bury them. They would see peace once more.
With that settled, it was time to go forth and find their way to Caed Nua — home of the Watcher Ellu'ka so desperately wanted to meet.
The group briefly stepped into the Esternwood but after finding some old, dilapidated signs they quickly realised they were going the wrong way. Eder should've known better and should've informed Ellu'kha, but apparently he was a jokester who was easily amused by her mistakes, even mistakes that took then eight hours of travelling time. After returning to the Vale, after another eight hours, they followed the southern road to Magran's Fork... the correct direction this time.
Ellu'kha hoped that the journey through the forest would be a pleasant one, but her intuition told her otherwise. Only time would tell.
Until next time! :)
Posted from Kaelci Games with Exxp : https://kaelci.games/2022/07/27/lets-play-pillars-of-eternity-part-four/