Treachery, Dishonor, and Conflicting Goals Within the Crusade (Spoilers within)
Drachyench
Member Posts: 4
Caelar Argent has built both herself and her crusade around what she believes to be a noble cause. However, if to be expected, not everyone in her chain of command shares either the same enthusiasm or - in some cases - a similar agenda. An unfortunate - but predictable - lot for everyone involved. In most games I would barely spend the lore a second thought, or if I did leave it purely to the realm of modders and fan fiction.
If you think you're sensing a but here, you aren't wrong.
But throughout the game, you find various - verifiable - documents that point to these hidden agendas, nefarious activities / goals, and so-on during your travels. Hand-written plans for rituals to create an enormous undead host. Enslaved souls and diabolic pacts. Annotated documents - likely sharing the same hand-writing as some of the aforementioned plans - implicating unchivalrous ruses. Again, I would normally leave this to the realm of enthusiastic modders and fan fiction writers to flesh out in earnest, keep it in the back of my mind as a pleasant "What if" otherwise.
But many of these documents are acquired when you find people who have a direct connection to Caelar Argent or some of her chivalrous officers. A renown commander of honor encountered at a besieged crossing. A spy sending information directly to the leaders of the Crusade. Officers who are high enough in the chain of command to recognize and question an official crest bearing Caelar's emblem. Heck, you can even befriend a Rashemi warrior with something between his ears and - depending on how you resolve their quest - a direct line to either Caelar herself or someone who could approach her.
Changing the overall plot of the game would be a titanic task in and of itself, and as such that is not my final goal. What is my final goal is to see if perhaps some sort of nod can be given in-universe to these sort of things. The option to hand such documents over to a Crusader NPC in more civil / peaceful situations, with some of the random NPC dialogue later on implicating either general misfortune or an "unfortunate accident" to have befallen the messengers / caravans along their way. For an example: A dialogue option is added to Ladle in the Underground River area allowing you to provide him with the Undead Ritual scroll. While likely skeptical - and for good reason - he accepts the sheet from you, and promises to send it upriver as part of his next report so that someone might verify it. If you stall for time and come back a few days later, he regrets to inform you that a suspiciously deep-infiltrating group of Flaming Fist spies / scouts (surprise: They weren't FF) intercepted the group, and that - while driven off - your document was among the other reports stolen / damaged / lost. Or so-on, or so-on.
As seen above, the changes required would be minor with maybe a page or two worth of text (and possibly no dialogue at all). But - minor as they may be - they'd add to the sense of a peacebroking Protagonist trying to reach a non-violent solution to either end the Crusade or the worst of its excesses perpetrated. Pad the number of options for a more pragmatic protagonist to attempt and drive a wedge into cracks within Caelar Argent's coalition. Give some otherwise unremarkable NPCs just a tiny bit more content to write home about.
Feel free to use this thread to either lend support or criticize to the idea, talk about mods that are already working on implementing something along these lines, discuss some of the more implicative findings people have seen throughout their adventures, or so-on.
If you think you're sensing a but here, you aren't wrong.
But throughout the game, you find various - verifiable - documents that point to these hidden agendas, nefarious activities / goals, and so-on during your travels. Hand-written plans for rituals to create an enormous undead host. Enslaved souls and diabolic pacts. Annotated documents - likely sharing the same hand-writing as some of the aforementioned plans - implicating unchivalrous ruses. Again, I would normally leave this to the realm of enthusiastic modders and fan fiction writers to flesh out in earnest, keep it in the back of my mind as a pleasant "What if" otherwise.
But many of these documents are acquired when you find people who have a direct connection to Caelar Argent or some of her chivalrous officers. A renown commander of honor encountered at a besieged crossing. A spy sending information directly to the leaders of the Crusade. Officers who are high enough in the chain of command to recognize and question an official crest bearing Caelar's emblem. Heck, you can even befriend a Rashemi warrior with something between his ears and - depending on how you resolve their quest - a direct line to either Caelar herself or someone who could approach her.
Changing the overall plot of the game would be a titanic task in and of itself, and as such that is not my final goal. What is my final goal is to see if perhaps some sort of nod can be given in-universe to these sort of things. The option to hand such documents over to a Crusader NPC in more civil / peaceful situations, with some of the random NPC dialogue later on implicating either general misfortune or an "unfortunate accident" to have befallen the messengers / caravans along their way. For an example: A dialogue option is added to Ladle in the Underground River area allowing you to provide him with the Undead Ritual scroll. While likely skeptical - and for good reason - he accepts the sheet from you, and promises to send it upriver as part of his next report so that someone might verify it. If you stall for time and come back a few days later, he regrets to inform you that a suspiciously deep-infiltrating group of Flaming Fist spies / scouts (surprise: They weren't FF) intercepted the group, and that - while driven off - your document was among the other reports stolen / damaged / lost. Or so-on, or so-on.
As seen above, the changes required would be minor with maybe a page or two worth of text (and possibly no dialogue at all). But - minor as they may be - they'd add to the sense of a peacebroking Protagonist trying to reach a non-violent solution to either end the Crusade or the worst of its excesses perpetrated. Pad the number of options for a more pragmatic protagonist to attempt and drive a wedge into cracks within Caelar Argent's coalition. Give some otherwise unremarkable NPCs just a tiny bit more content to write home about.
Feel free to use this thread to either lend support or criticize to the idea, talk about mods that are already working on implementing something along these lines, discuss some of the more implicative findings people have seen throughout their adventures, or so-on.
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