Dungeon 10 Turn 9 Part 1
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Ricki joins Lara in the archive room just after she finishes her fight.
“Oh… you killed the drider.”
“I told you, Ricki, they’re better off dead. They’re mindless. And these ones in particular are probably in constant pain, if you hadn’t noticed.”
“I guess you’re right…”
“So, is this book what we came here for?”
“It must be important if it’s the only thing in the archives. Or the only thing that survived the fire and the dungeon transformation, at least.”
“What? No.”
“We aren’t in the archives because they’re the archives, we’re here because it’s where the fire started.”
“Lots of paper to burn, you know.”
“What IS this book, then?”
“Fireproof, apparently. It doesn’t matter.”
“THIS is what I came back for.”
“It’s Indira’s lighter. I dropped it on my way out, but…”
“I don’t know.”
“Even after what she did, I think it’s a good reminder.”
“Not necessarily of her, but of the choices I made.”
“Maybe it wasn’t worth the risk just for this…”
“No, I think it was a good idea.”
“Closure is important.”
“Lara, I really think you should tell me what this book is.”
“Please.”
*sigh*
“You remember we’re in a hurry, right?”
“That’s the record of sacrifices.”
“It has the name of everyone that was “given to the Goddess” ever since the temple was built.”
“It’s such a core tradition that they even kept doing it after the reformation.”
“Though I doubt any of the later sacrifices felt very honoured by it.”
“Indira’s name is in here.”
“That doesn’t surprise me. She was a true believer, after all.”
“She probably wrote her name in here herself.”
“I think you’re right.”
“Look.”
“…”
“I don’t…”
“Somebody wrote your name in, but then someone else crossed it out and wrote Indira’s instead.”
“Like you said, she probably wrote it herself.”
“You said that Indira chose the Goddess of Spiders over you, but…”
“I don’t think she did.”
I think we’re gonna regret not doing this sooner. Hopefully the turn 10 consequences aren’t too bad!
I forget; is using an action to gain an additional Move a thing? I vaguely recall something like that. If so I don’t think we’ll have a problem with leaving on exactly Turn 10, if we can have Lara do that. Since Ricki has two Move naturally, that should get them both back to the entrance to leave the dungeon right on time. Assuming that our goal doesn’t change at the end of Turn 9 to something like ‘recover Indira’s body’ or something.
Of course that assumes that the dungeon isn’t already over; this is the first time we’ve had a ‘Part 1’ to a Turn, but it’s not unusual for the last Turn of a dungeon to be mostly ‘cutscene’ showing the characters escaping or completing their goal. Level ups, dungeon reports, and interludes typically come after that point. So there’s definitely a pretty good chance that the dungeon will just end after this and they’ll escape during the ‘cutscene’.
An action can be used as an additional move point, but generally when we’ve had conditions in dungeons that operate on a turn timer, those things happen on the turn called out. So if we have to do anything on turn 10 we will still be around to experience the wrath, even if we were leaving.
True, but it’s possible it’s progressive wrath (Lara gaining corruption every turn, or more and more spiders spawning, etc)
Somehow the “next” button from “dungeon 10 page 8” doesn’t lead here for me
Okay, it’s fixed now
So, if Indira sacrificed herself out of love for Lara and not for the Goddess, maybe the Goddess tasted something different from fear and now She craves it…
Looks like Ardon got sacrificed to the goddess of spiders in this timeline. I wonder if we could have found a khopesh in any of the chests we didn’t get to loot?
Maybe the goddess is so sour because she ate shit :))
Maybe she’s mad because Ardon went down laughing of her dorky emo hair.
Maybe she’s mad because Ardon went down laughing of her dorky emo hair.
It’s a one-handed weapon in both the axe and heavy blade categories, so you can benefit from both proficiencies!
Speaking of which, no one has axe or spear proficiencies (though Coxxyx might on level up, what is a spear but an arrow of the bow of the body?). Maybe Amadeusz uses those weapon types, he strikes me as a golfbag fighter, using different weapons based on the situation. I suppose we’ll be finding out soon, he needs to come on the next dungeon and I expect we’ll finally see stats after locking in a dungeon choice.
Ah, it wasn’t a gift Lara intended to give to Indira, it’s a gift from Indira to Lara.
I’m guessing the lighter won’t have stats, it’s more costume than equipment. Might be symbolic of a new ability.
Or it’s background, and what we’re really here for is to learn that Indira loved Lara, not the goddess.
Unfortunately, that only solidifies my suspicion that the archive drider is what is/was left of Indira. And once Lara grows aware of that, not just her hands are going to shake.
=(
I don’t think so. All the Driders are living people, just living in horribly burned, mutated agony. Indira was very much dead when Lara borrowed her lighter, brought it up to the archives, and lit the archives on fire. If anywhere in this dungeon, Indira is in the bloody altar in Room 4.
If there is still some “life” (or undeadness or whatever keeps her going) in Indira-drider, she might have moved into the archive to get or guard the lighter.
And I think the driders we encounter here used to be dark elves (the ones worshipping the goddess) and were in various stages of getting burned by the fire, when the transformation set it, a blessing (driders have more HP, so they were able to avoid death) and a curse (some of them were already badly mutilated by the fire, yet they have to cling to life) at the same time. (I’m also assuming that anyone still capable of that left, so that’s why no dark elves/driders that were better off are around.)
It’s quite possible that Indira suffered a similar fate, only with her getting whisked away from the very clutches of death by a really small margin.
We only saw her lying face down in a vat of blood.
https://dungeoneyes.com/intermission-8-page-22/
She might still have been alive, if barely, and Lara didn’t check, because in her mind, Lara had lost Indira to the goddess even if Indira had lived.
—
Which reminds me: it would be really handy if there was some sort of indication on the archive page, where a “backstory revelation” of any of the characters begins (during the intermissions) and where it ends, additionally to which char it is, so it can be found more easily, when trying to read it again/look up details. With intermissions being 40 pages (or even longer), that’s a lot of stuff to flip through to find what you are looking for and quite honestly, pages like what the party buys/sells at Paws is not of that much interest after the according dungeon has already been finished, so it would warrant reading it over and over again.
@LSN: can you please put some kind of indicator onto the overview page of the archives page to signify where the background stories of the characters start and end? It would be very helpful to find that again more easily. Maybe tiny heads of the characters (similar to the “grit”, “mom senses” or “dauntless” trait symbol on the character page. Or some other skill symbol – like Macadamias rings or Botanyas flowers- depending on what’s available)?
Depends on what it means to be sacrificed. Indira gave her life to the Goddess, the Goddess can do whatever She wants with it.
Lol, the name before Lara’s looks like it says “Ardon.” I can’t imagine he was too pleased with that.
Indira chose the Goddess. Rather than leave and betray the cult that decided to sacrifice Lara, Indira sacrificed herself. She couldn’t both serve the Goddess and live with Lara, so she decided to serve the Goddess in death instead of betraying the Goddess to live with Lara, or serving the Goddess in life without Lara around.
But did Indira ever even realize that leaving the cult was an option? Or was it Lara that was mistaken to think they could ever escape Her?
The cult probably tracks you down if you try to run away from being the Chosen Sacrifice. The spider goddess demands a sacrifice, and probably Chose Lara. If the goddess doesn’t get a sacrifice, everyone gets punished, so if they chose to leave and hide, the entire cult would have been turned into driders. Indira didn’t want Lara to be the sacrifice but knew the goddess needed a sacrifice and nobody else was going to step up and take Lara’s place. She also knew she couldn’t tell Lara because Lara wouldn’t agree to have Indira sacrifice herself in her place. Ironically, her sacrifice ended up being in vain because Lara ended up getting everyone punished anyway. So it’s definitely bittersweet, because Indira definitely did it out of love for Lara, but the same result ended up happening to the rest of the cult anyway, so they might as well have tried to run away.