Kerghans last thoughts

Twas the night before Christmas...
...in the VOID. <evil laughter, thunder crash and such nonsense>

Kerghan's inner dialogue:
Too good to join old Kerghan, o mighty "Living One", eh? Well now you're gonna get your ass kicked, Just watch me as I'm getting off my throne and SWEET JESUS! AW! Maybe challenging a lvl 50 brute before even TRYING to get off my chair and realise, that after 2000 years of doing nothing my body is a liiitle out of shape wasn't a good idea. Wow, I think I'm falling apart. Should have done a push-up every houndred years or so, instead of just sitting like that. I think I see my liver on the floor. Well that's just gre- Ohgodohgodohgod he's charging at me! What am I supposed to do? I can't even move. Not good. I know! I'll transform into a huge metal dragon thingy and scratch him to death! Boy am I smart.
<five seconds later>
Well that was dumb. Was was I thinking? Whateva, at least I was innovative. That was surely the last thing he expected from a necromancer. Now I'll sit in this regenerative shell for a minute or two and set Eternal Flame up his ass. Yeah, that's what I'm gonna do. Casting a spell seams to be a good idea, EVEN better then melee, with me being a mage, not a sumo fighter. Hehe, not a sumo fighter. Gotta wright that down afte- Say, isn't that the Freuhoff's device? O SHI-

And so Kerghan was seen pierced with motherfuckin' sticks from the Vendigroth Device and died in excrutiating pain. Few would find it strange, that Kerghan, when being pierced, was in his power-rangers-metal-dragon-thingy form and without his regenerative shell, even though a second earlier he was nearly dead, recovering in the shell in his human form. However, the Living one was too busy with the epicness of becoming the greatest badass in the world too notice it. Or was he? <dum-dum-dummm!>

 

:rofl: That's sick, twisted and wonderful. Mwahahahahaha!

 

I read this last night, and forgot to say something. Very nice, Muro.

 

Heh. Just killed Kerghan myself for the first time.

Found it weird that the most powerful necromancer in Arcanum (or The Void) turned himself into a big snake and spawned a corpse once in a while whilst beeing ripped to shreads by my dumb teammates.

A bit disappointing end tbh. The journey was too epic to match that final battle.

Whatever happened to Virgil for example...

 

Yeah..It was a rather disappointing end.Should've made Kerghan a tad bit more challenging,with more options to kick ass with.I mean come on,he has his own theme song playing in the void!Although there are really 3 ways to kill him,come on..That red sword,the device,and if your lucky,a glitch.
(I haven't played Arcanum in forever,I'm jarring everything from what I have left of memory here..dont judge me.)

And Virgil??
Easy.
when your about to enter the dark elf village (I cant remember the name,or spell it to save my life..) just make Virgil wait outside,and dont stay longer than a day in there.Do your business,come out,he's still there.
Everything is happy and dandy

 

Glitch you say? I either don't know about that, or menaged to forget about it. Can you put some light on the situation?

I wouldn't say the the whole end is dissapointing, just the fight. Kerghan has his theme, his vision, the end is really a philosophic debate with strong arguments on both sides. It's just a pitty that when it comes to fighting, Kerghan is completely out of character. The balancing made him extremely underpowered, while he should be "perhaps the most powerful human wizard that has ever lived".

 

Good one.

I agree, he was a bit easy to defeat. Maybe it was because if you couldn't defeat him, you couldn't go get better equipment? It's been a while since I was there, I usually stop the quest before going there because you can't go back, and I actually find it to be quite boring.

 

That's what earlier saves are for. And a reasonable player should make a big save before being banished to another dimension.
As for Kerghan, he was made weak, so that every character could finish the game, no matter how weak both the character and the player would be. It's like political correctness - an attempt to make everyone happy which results in pure dullness.

 

You know what really pushes my buttons about Kerghan. He has the demonstrable ability to nuke your fatigue, and he can do it to you while he's in the bleeding Void and you're in Arcanum! But he doesn't do it when you're right in front of him!

What the FUCK? Making him nuke your Fatigue would increase the challenge a bit without making him unkillable. Come ooooooon.

 

here comes double rationalisation!

#1
Maybe Kerghans ability to annihilate fatigue points has something to do with the flow of time, therefore are impossible to be acomplished in the Void, where time as we know it doesn't exist?
...then again, temporal spells seem to work fine.

#2
Maybe a rescued BMC dwarf opened the gateway to Arcanum seconds before the fight between Kerghan and the Living One, creating an *extreme* technological field and tech aptitude in his castle, making his powers drastically quenched?
...then again, the Living one didn't have any problems with casting spells.



Bah.

 

True, true. But maybe some people don't save all that often. Me, I save all the time, just before almost every conversation.

Maybe, as Muro's saying, the whole technological gateway being built only weakens him because he's so powerful, so even if you're a powerful mage, you're nothing compared to him. But that also means that only he is affected by it. Just like a lesser mage is able to be in a tech shop with no problems.

But I suppose it really does come down to trying to make everyone happy. I mean, you could've persuaded your way through the whole game and not be a very good fighter. Though I forgot, can you persuade him to stop his silly plan?

 

You can persuade kerghan to give up his plan,but where's the fun in that? Though it would have been nice to see his reaction when you tell him that there's no point to destroying arcanum since you did that before coming to the void. Too bad Troika left out that dialog option.

 

Troika didn't implement that line, because you can't do that, it's impossible. I know, I tried that shit. Gaylin, the ship seller and his two half ogre guards, the eyeglasses salesman and the Caladon bunnies will always return from the death, no matter how many times you kill them. Some ship captains will also cheat death, but only several times, if I recall correctly, and it depends on each one. And you will never kill any of the animals in Falcon's Ache.

But, seriously, not that is my point. My point is that Kerghan is not a barberian, but a philosopher and a redeemer. He doesn't want to slaughter every npc which can be encourtered in the game. Not to mention that there are still plenty of people that you will never encounter, it's a big world - halfling villages, orcish hordes, lonely wanderers, and such. But more importantly, Kerghan wishes to quench all life, every single plant and bug, every bacteria, and after that, destroy Arcanum, piece by piece, in such a way that the filthy abomination, which is life, will never have the chance to rise again.

 

But why male models?

I never really understood the destroy every single bit of life thing, after all he is alive, if he just took himself out he wouldn't have to worry any more and.... ohhhhhhhhh

 

Because he wants to help people, he just has a weird way of doing it. He's just one of those dictators who thinks he knows what's best, and believes that the end justify the means.

It would be kind awesome to at least tell him you already took out most of the country. Slaying entire cities should at least be worth mentioning, even if not everyone are dead.

One thing that always bothered me about the end is that you can take him out somewhat easily, but if you join him, there's no battle when he turns on you, you're just told you died.

 

Actually, it's a fate worse then death, since after Kerghan turns on you and you kill him, there's no one else around (since life has been destroyed) to kill you so you just sit and wait for death.
Correct me if i'm wrong but that's how i remember it (from the last summer).

 

That's right. You're left alone in the ruins of Arcanum. That ending is a kind of hint that you did the wrong thing, methinks.

 

But he actually does know what's best better than anyone else. He had 2000 years to study the subject, work on it it and to think about it, he most surely is the only one who has wandered fully on the other side, had the willpower and possibility to return and to analise every level of that journey. He is the most competent speaker on the subject, pretty much the only one actually.
There were of course resurrected people (Virgil's dialogue option when talking to Kerghan can be mentioned), but they seem to lose datails and clarity of their memories of the journey, plus resurrection has its time limits (propably isn't possible if the body decayed), so anyone who could be resurrected didn't have too much time to analise every aspect of the afterlife, while Kerghan had plenty of time and possibility to walk back and forth in it.
Being alone in Arcanum after killing everyone is worse than death? Nah, what's the big deal. You can do whatever you wan't, and when you get bored, suicide. Jump off a mountain, you won't feel a thing, and you won't go to Hell or anything like that 'cos you know it doesn't exist.

Why? Not everything which is the right choice must end up in chirping birds. Great choices may require great sacrifaces and result in some felling odf bad taste. It doesn't matter that the result - Arcanum slaughtered, Living One being the only living one (heh) in it - seems evil. If life is an accident, good and evil don't exist.
I believe that that ending was implemented because Troika felt that they are forced to reward the players with good endings for behaving like and angel and bad endings otherwise. It's the same moral factor which caused that in Fallout "Help Killian + kill Gizmo" resulted in the good ending for Junktown and "Help Gizmo + kill Killian" resulted in the bad ending, while originally it was planned to be in reverse. And that would be the more realistic ending, but nooo, we don't want anyone to get upset with their morality, now do we?
Keeping to the "good causes good" scheme, Troika decided, that when joining Kerghan, he would act completely stupid after everything and attack you like a retard, giving both him and the whole situation a negative overtone and making the player dissapointed with it. They should be at least make the whole situation neutral. If the situation happened in real life, than after cleaning whole Arcanum of life, Kerghan would say something about "Thank you for your help, now we have finally saved Arcanum and brought peace to the poor souls, tortured in the millenias of life. Now, let our souls achieve peace as well", and after that he would either cast a spell which would kill both him and the Living One, or actually make their souls detach from their bodies, and lead the journey to the great sea of grey mirrored glass. No attacking, no nonsensical agression, no life-stained propaganda.

 

I agree with most of that, actually. But as much knowledge as he has on the subject, he still only thinks he knows best. There will always be people who will think otherwise and can think for themselves, so it isn't really the best for them.

I agree with everything else, though. Especially the whole morality thing which shouldn't be so black and white as it is.

 

They make it look like the bad choice 'cause it is the bad choice. What gives you or that self-righteous bastard Kerghan the right to decide for everybody else if they should die? No-one is worthy of that choice. And, besides, ending all life is simply wrong for more reasons than I have the energy to list here. Kerghan is simply a silly little emo magician who thinks that, just because he was misunderstood and his life sucked, everybody elses life must suck as well. The man hasn't got any perspective at all.