| thief2x: the grand hotel |
[03 Nov 2008|01:58am] |
big, big, big mission, reminiscent of a couple of missions in thief 2.
zaya returns from her trip to volari's and informs malak of what she's discovered about kedar. we know that he was held by the free traders for a while before being handed over to truart, but then he was turned into a mechanist servant somehow. malak leads her to the overgrown garden behind his mansion, and uses the old fountain to show her what happened to kedar: kedar was dragged into a room where he was essentially lobotomized had some kind of device bolted to his forehead, and finally the golden mask was placed over his face.
malak wants to get rid of truart for truart's crackdown on pagans and their sympathisers, but zaya doesn't care- she just wants to save kedar. truart can come later.
truart's diary mentions that he had passed kedar on to the grand hotel, preferring to let the manager, finkle, deal with kedar's incessant crying. the book that malak had zaya steal weeks before had a blueprint of the hotel; the hotel itself is very old, though it's been renovated with lots of extra security measures and continues to be a prime hotspot for the city's elite, truart included. zaya needs to get in, find kedar, and get out.
she manages to break in through a side door, and evades the guards, the watcher masks (mask-like security "cameras") and the gigantic steam bots as she looks for clues as to kedar's whereabouts. a conversation between the guard captain and a lesser guard reveal that anyone who steals from the hotel loses a couple of toes, and incidentally finkle has been acting extremely nervous around the captain. notes scattered around the place reveal that finkle keeps shutting off the watchers in the lobby at night, and has demanded the accounting office to be kept under guard at all times.
zaya figures finkle would know where kedar is, so she needs to approach him- and blackmail him. first she manages to shut off the watchers (and knock out the desk clerk who comes to turn them back on), sneaks into the lobby and gets the key to finkle's office; then she goes to the accounting office and finds evidence that finkle has been stealing money from the hotel to finance his gambling habits- and he's one shitty fucking gambler. threatening finkle in his office with the tip of a sword and the blackmail evidence, he reveals that though he didn't know any of the mechanist servants had names, one kept mumbling "sayer" or "sire" or some nonsense, and it bugged him so much he put it to work in the basement; he gives her the key to the basement and promptly dies of a heart attack.
pussy.
zaya heads to the basement and finds kedar- reuniting with him after over a year. but it's like that scene in one flew over the cuckoo's nest, where jack nicholson comes back after his lobotomy; he's just not the same. zaya puts him to sleep with a gas arrow, and then finds a secret passage in back of the wine cellar that allows her to get kedar out into the streets. mission complete.
next up: the cure.
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| thief2x: the cure |
[03 Nov 2008|05:25am] |
also known as SPOOKY CLAVO SHIT
there's been a lot of horror FMs but this is the only one i know of that actually takes you back to the closed sector made so famous in thief 1/G. none of the later games ever did, and no FM or campaign besides T2X to my knowledge ever did.
malak tells zaya that there is a cure for kedar- the so-called scales of amaris. the scales were used by a group of healers who worshipped a deity called amaris. they operated a hospital in the old quarter before the cataclysm, and now lies behind the barricades. the scales are reputed to have fantastic healing properties- even reportedly bringing the dead back to life.
zaya's mission is to climb over the barricades, find the old hospital, get the scales and get out.
simple, right?
it never fucking is.
let me tell you something: there is some NEFARIOUS SHIT going on here. the buildings in the closed sector are like the rest of the old quarter- small, cramped, and very old. i nearly filled my pants when i walked down a hall and saw the ghost of a little girl, turning around to face me, and then she ran at lightning speed through me as evil, ghostly laughter filled the air.
from a couple of diaries she finds in a bar and a small inn, it's clear that at the hammerites, suspicious of the healers and their religion, had placed one of their men to stay in the inn across the street from the hospital to keep watch; the hammers eventually come to suspect the healers of necromancy, and prepared to stage a raid.
when zaya approaches the gates she sees a ghostly scene: the hammers charging the gates, only to be blown back in an explosion.
the front courtyard of the hospital is roamed by zombies, and zaya espies the statue of amaris, resembling her own deity, linjala. she ponders if they're one and the same- and then runs to get away from a puking zombie.
out by the inner gate zaya finds the diary of the high priestess alinya, who tells of the healers' arrival on the shores of the city; they convinced the hammers they're not out to proselytize, only heal; the hammers left, suspicious but willing to tolerate the healers. after several weeks the healers found a large, mostly abandoned building in the old quarter, and alinya bemoans the squalid conditions of the district, which is basically a slum, half-abandoned, in disrepair, and very poor. she blames the hammerites for this- they have the power to help but they don't. another problem is that the hammers have condemned linjala as pagan heresy- and of course they have a tendency to hammer smash face anything they don't like. fortunately they're ignorant of a lesser deity, amaris, and so the statues of linjala went up under the name of amaris. several of the healers were apprehensive about the location that was chosen; the old building had apparently been used by what appeared to be the pagans, but the etchings on the wall of what was presumed to be the trickster were quite sinister and frightening. they were removed and replaced by symbols of linjala. alinya purports the original etchings might be older renditions of the trickster, as the trickster as he was portrayed in later eras was that of a simple demi-god with a passion for nature (heh), but i have a suspicion that they were of chtulhu or perhaps some other elder god.
in addition to zombies, there are apparitions, ghostly characters resembling rotted versions of the healers; however by getting the drop on them they're as easily dispatched as always, fortunately.
that's not the worst part though. the worst undead of them all are soul elementals, smoking green skulls that fly about poisoning the air; zaya discovers that they have a unique ability: they possess a corpse and create a shuffling, groaning zombie. fortunately, as zombies they're easily disarmed- literally. unfortunately this seems to be the only way to get rid of the soul elementals; they're impervious to anything else, even the ultrabright flare arrows.
zaya sneaks through the place, avoiding undead (or destroying them where possible), and eventually comes to piece things together. the hospital proper had begun operation, but they were still digging out the old pagan temple in back; one of the diggers, sendor, injured himself with his pick, but in the same move accidentally uncovered the scales, which immediately began to glow- and sendor's hand was healed. assuming the scales to be a gift from linjala, the healers used them as a healing tool, which proved quite useful as a disease (possibly smallpox) seemed to be gripping the city- more bodies every day, to the point where they didn't even have enough time to consecrate them properly in the temple. the hammers attempted to storm the place but alinya seemed to be possessed by the scales and forced them back; they dusted themselves off and declared they would return. they never did, though- the zombie rampage broke out, and all those bodies piling up in the hospital got up and started to chase after the living; the survivors locked themselves upstairs, but no help was coming for them any time soon- at this point they'd even have accepted the hammers' help, but the hammers had their own problems. and that was the end of the hospital and its healers, sealed up behind thick stone walls meant to contain a plague of undead.
as zaya explores the hospital she repeatedly sees the ghost of a woman, with facial tattoos similar to zaya's, appearing and raising the dead to attack zaya; could this be alinya? it comes to a head when zaya gets into the temple proper, and takes the scales- the ghostly woman seals the exit and two scimitar-wielding skeletons step forth. they're easily dispatched, though- using the elemental crystals, she uses ice arrows to freeze them, then fire arrows to blow them apart. escaping the temple, she makes her way to the gates, and goes back to where she started. mission complete. jesus christ.
next up: betrayal.
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| thief2x: betrayal |
[03 Nov 2008|08:21pm] |
this is it. the final mission of T2X. there's quite a bit of arguing over some elements in this particular mission, mostly having to do with the timeline as relates to the main game, but it also fills in a majour, majour blank as to the death of truart, which was not really gone into in the main game. (you'll see as i get to that point.) as final missions go this one is closer to the end of thief 1/G than thief 2, partly because a lot of people didn't like the end of thief 2. (i'll go into detail when i get to that point, as well.)
zaya returns to malak's ramshackle, run down, haunted old mansion with the scales in hand. malak has her use the scales, but all they do is blow kedar apart, shattering like glass.
it's clear now that malak had been manipulating zaya for his own ends, and his words accusing truart of this travesty don't ring true. he uses the scales to summon a demon, with whom he disappears into a portal.
zaya seeks revenge.
stepping through the portal, she finds herself on the balcony of truart's mansion, the demon jumping over the railing, its mission accomplished; she chases after it past a hole in the far wall of truart's estate. the wall seals up behind her, and at this point it's no longer certain which reality she's in; however, a dying pagan sits, waiting for her, assuming her to be a servant of malak's. she denies it, explaining that she was used, and the pagan informs her that malak is not quite sane- a danger to himself, to the pagan's leader viktoria (remember her? guess she took over after constantine's death), and to the city. the pagan was supposed to kill truart and then malak, but it seems malak's beaten him to the score, and he and his demon must be destroyed. he hands zaya a letter and croaks.
the letter, from viktoria to the pagan, reveal some background on malak- he was apparently a very capable member of the pagans, but grew too ambitious in his lust for power and his advocation of open warfare against the hammers and anyone else who dare oppose the woodsie lord, and was cast out; he'd never forgiven the pagans for it, intending to use the scales to gain control and march to war.
zaya works her way through a fog-enshrouded forest, evading the ratmen and bugbeasts that malak had summoned to patrol, and as she picks up his writings they corraborate what viktoria's letter stated; that, and that he'd been using zaya all this time to get at the scales. finally she reaches an old building, overgrown now, and in that building there is a sealed hole in the floor; using a key she finds in malak's room, she opens up the hole and slides down, finding herself in the spot where malak and his demon have holed up; she kills malak first, freezing him with an ice arrow then shattering him to pieces; she then grabs the scales and tosses them into a nearby pool of lava, destroying them- and by association the demon.
mission complete.
in the final cutscene, it's dawn, and zaya is preparing her ship to leave the city- for good. a pair of keepers watch over her from a distance, and discuss the possibility of inducting her into their fold. the older of the two decides she has suffered enough, and their plans revolve around "the one" (aka garrett), responding to the younger's argument that the glyphs can be interpreted differently with a non answer regarding zaya and garrett's stories interweaving. the younger asks if the glyphs foretold this, and the reply is, "all is as it was written." (standard answer.) the glyphs haven't changed, they're only just beginning to make sense.
the end.
next up: equilibrium.
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