Half-Ogre Island Mod Question

Is there one? I hadn't done this quest the first time through many years ago. Now I'm playing through a second time, did this quest, and I find myself having had a nightmare about it last night. If I'm not able to do something about this enslavement, rape and kidnapping, I'm quite literally going to be unable to continue playing... which would be sad, but the conclusion to this quest made me quite nauseous, and is threatening to seriously depress me if I continue the game.

So, hoping there is something that fixes this, though pessimistically expecting not.

Thanks for information, either way.

 

Do not take offence, but I'd say strong reactions such as your own show how very good (where good = original, climatic and intense) that quest and its conclusion really is.

As for a mod - rroyo's A:WIP introduces a lot of new items, quest, locations and possibilities to the game, a mean to solve the whole Half Ogre Island quest among them. I doubt saves taken from vanilla would work in vanilla + A:WIP though, so it would just be an information that a solution is somewhere out there and that if you decide to play one of your future games with A:WIP, it will be available for you.

I haven't heard of a separate mod giving the possibility of solving that quest, not to mention one working when installed in the middle of the game, I'm afraid.

Players react in various ways to the conclusion of this quest:

• Some stop playing, be it because of some kind of a protest or demotivation;
  
  some try to forget about the whole thing and continue playing as if nothing ever happened;
  
  some move on but kill every gnome they ever see again for good measure;
  
  and some - myself included - consider the quest a lesson of distrust (teaching that evil can be found where it's least expected) and humility (teaching that no matter how powerful you become, there are problems in this world that even you may not be able solve). Some games have unkillable NPCs, Arcanum has the Half Ogre Island sidequest.

 

No offense taken, certainly. Given your definition, I have no choice but to agree on the point of "good". As far as "enjoyable", however, I will have to say not.

Thank you very much for that; I'll definitely consider it if I'm ever interested in another playthrough.

If I'm able to settle my stomach, I may eventually try a variant on this. Not so much pretend that it never happened, but rather pretend that I took options, such as discussing it with various powerful people, that the game artificially prevents you from having, and thus was able to expose it.

I did kill the one who told me the news, but the quest gives no reason to think every gnome in Arcanum is involved in the conspiracy. Killing every gnome would involve the killing of innocents, and it's far worse to kill an innocent than to let a guilty go.

I can't see this at all, because the limitation is entirely artificial, as said. It's not "you're unable to solve this issue", it's "we're not going to let you solve this issue, arbitrarily". The game only lets you talk to a very small number of people about the issue *shrug*.

Thank you very much indeed for taking the time to respond to my query, in any case.

 

Who would you want to talk about it, though? Who would be powerful enough to be able to do something and yet willing enough to actually want to? It's no small nor safe task we're talking about here, it's attacking the government of the most powerful nation in the known world.

Yet let's say *you* find the will to do so and do the first logical thing: talk with a very opinion-forming man, namely Victor Wright, the editor of the Tarantian, who is all for your mission and redirects you to the Caladonian branch of the press company.

You then give your evidence ("Evidence"? It's but a simple journal. Who is to say you didn't write it yourself?) to a journalist, satisfied with your fight for justice and awaiting the exposure of the conspiracy.

Yet when you return the next day, you discover that the journalist no longer works there - what's more, no one even recalls seeing him. When you return to Wright in Tarant, he acts as if he never met you.

What can you do now? What evidence do you have?

You do not give up just yet, oh no, you will not be stopped so easily. You return to the Half Ogre Island in hope of finding some more proof, something that will allow you to reveal the conspiracy despite the difficulties. And what do you find there?

A completely empty warehouse. No logs, no furniture, no machines, no equipment, no nothing.

You are a man with a crazy story and no proof whatsoever. Who in their right mind would believe you? Do even *you* believe yourself? How can you be sure you didn't make all of this up? There is no evidence to the contrary, after all. You travel from one end of the world to the other, pursued by assassins all the time, searching for some mythic dark elves and whatnot, it's not that strange for someone like you to become a bit delusional after all of this.

Yes, you actually think that last thing, such is the power of that quest.

 

Before any newsman, I'd try to talk to Bates, as he's going to have a lot of connections to the industrial council. He may not care much about half-ogres, being the "white man's burden" type that he is, but he'd certainly care about the kidnapping of humans, and their forced enslavement.

But, actually what I'd do is cast Conjure Spirit on the corpse of the first gnome who mocked me with the conspiracy, and not let his spirit go until he told me what I wanted to know: connections, information, etc., with the threat to conjure him again if his information proved to be false. Much to my disappointment, upon casting conjure spirit, you don't get any dialogue options.

 

What makes you think he would? I have never seen Bates do anything for a greater good myself. He has a dirty secret himself, with no intent of revealing it to the public (what's more, he's ready to send assassins to deal with whoever would ever dare to do so, showing how he's made of the same stuff as the gnomes), why would he consider revealing the dirty secrets of others the right thing to do?

All he seems to care about is clearing his own conscience. Most importantly, he as a businessman would of all people know how influential and dangerous a whole industrial council of such people like himself is. He is the single most influential man alive, yes, but he is one and the gnomes are many. Their collective power is greater, they rule Tarant, they *are* Tarant.

He has the chance to spend at least his remaining years in peace and for what would he choose to exchange that? Not for easing anyone's suffering - the gnome in Tyron's house said there is no more kidnapping since there are already enough half ogres of both sexes to sustain a steady supply of bodyguards. No humans are being harmed anymore. A great evil was done in the past, but the only possibly evil happening at the moment is the enslavement of Half Ogres. Would Bates, a man who - despite his claims - virtually allows enslavement of Orcs and Half Orcs in his factories care about that?

If you were a member of the industrial council, would you - in a world possessing torture, magickal and technological mind control and spirit conjuring - send a gnome who would have any connections or information for the task? I sure wouldn't. I'd say they knew that the massager can very well end up being tortured and forced to talk, so they sent someone who knew nothing except for what he was willingly intended to share with the Living One.

 

It's quite possible that you're correct about Bates; he would still be the first person I'd try, but I wouldn't be surprised if it didn't pan out.

As for this, if this did prove to be the case, it's a simple matter of Dominate Will and "meetings" with the gnomish council members. *shrug* If you can cast Dominate Will, and order people to tell you what they know about something, it's not really possible to say that this is not something that can be resolved. My character can cast invisibility, teleport, dominate will. There's really no way to hide information from that.

Even if I couldn't prove it, my character, and myself, would be much more interested in uncovering the guilty parties, killing them all, and freeing the enslaved half-ogres.

 

Is there evidence in the game that you have access to the information possessed by a mind controlled being rather than Dominate Will being a "knows nothing, does everything ordered" spell?

Also, they could have taken all of that into account and placed a sniper waiting to take down the gnome the moment he leaves the house, no matter if alive or undead, concious or mind controlled.

What I'm saying here is that the council didn't have to send the gnome to Tyron's house to wait for you. Since they did, I'm sure they made sure that fact wouldn't endanger them in any way.

You're not the only one who knows those things. Those powers would be unique in our world, but not in Arcanum. Of course, the council doesn't deal in magick, but has access to some of the most advance technology existing and is prepared for the likes of your character. You have invisibility, they have perception boosting potions. You have powerful magicks, they have machine guns and willpower lowering concoctions. You are one and they are many. And a single bullet is enough to kill you, mage or not.

What I'm suggesting is to not be overconfident about your skills. If a single mage would be enough to take down the most powerful and dangerous technological player in the world, magick wouldn't be hiding and dying in Arcanum. And yet that is pretty much its current deteriorating state.

That is, of course, fully understandable. I don't know yet how rroyo dealt with this matter, but perhaps it was done just the way you described it.

 

what if the Living One is a gnome? does that make any difference?...

 

I would say that the "tell me about yourself" option is sufficient evidence of that. The person is able to communicate what skills they know, what spells they know, what technological disciplines that they know. I see no reason to think they wouldn't be able to communicate other things that they know.

 

Nope, no difference at all.

Can't argue with that point. It's a shame we're not given the possibility to complete a quest or two by acquiring information from mind controlled NPCs then.