Favourite NPCs?

Geoffrey Tarrellond-Ashe is absolutely hilarious. I became evil just so I could have him in my team. I like listening to his comments in every different city. I especially like his snobby outrage when you take him to Shrouded Hills.

 

Welcome back Xiao...

 

Franklin Payne, without question.

(http://duguayster.com/sites/hosting/ras/Franklin_Payne_Radio_Drama.mp3)

 

Right country, wrong coast.

 

I know, it was just a very Xiao answer to the question.

I used to hate Virgil till I played with a dumb character, now he is my favourite.

 

What a coincidence, I cannot either decide who is my favorite: Geoffrey or Franklin.

I think I'll have to settle with Mr. Ashe - he features voiced dialogue in the game itself, and plenty of GOOD voiced dialogue.

 

Favourite NPC: Kerghan. "The Terrible"? More like "the Enlightened". Truly a man with a noble self-given mission of destroying the one true evil in existence.

Favourite follower: What? No one mentioned Garfield Thelonius Remington the Third yet? Gar is a gentleman with a voice as brilliantly victorian as Geoffrey's and Franklin's, while at the same time being the only man from the three who doesn't deserve a decent kick in the family jewels for having such a cocksure tone.

 

I'm with you on this one. Playing a stupid character and having Virgil along is fabulous.

 

Ah, damnit. I can't believe I forgot Gar. Perhaps such is his fate. I immediately change my previous response. Gar, NOW without question.

Chaos? I don't know Muro. Kerghan to the studied philosophist is like the siren is to the sailor. Loose not your way in such disguised rhetoric. The peace Kerghan proposes is counter productive to the acquisition of knowledge, let alone the ebbed transition of sentience into biological life. Resetting the playing field is not the answer....nor is it really a solution.

Although I disagree with his methods and mission, I agree that he certainly is enlightened. I suppose he had quite a bit of time to think, exposed to the quiet silence of the void.

 

Not chaos. Life. Or to be more precise - suffering.

Generally, a definition of an evil act would be such an act which makes someone suffer (physically or mentally) and/or kills him. Judging from Kerghan's relation, death leads to a state of peace and enlightenment, so in the world of Arcanum, killing someone actually counts as a good act.

If killing isn't evil, the only bad left is suffering. Suffering only occurs in life. Get rid of life, get rid of the suffering, get rid of the evil, welcome eternal fulfilment.

"And do you know what I found there? There, among the silent and battered shells of the innumerable? Peace. Enlightenment. Truth."

It depends on interpretation, but the way I see it, all we can learn in life is but a drop in the ocean of knowledge, while in the endless sea of grey mirrored glass, one's mind has access to everything there is to know. Yes, no one learns anything new, but that is so because there is simply nothing more to learn.

The question is, is sentience an objectively good thing, and at that a thing worth the suffering and lack of infinite knowledge and peace of the afterlife?

Who is most competent to answer that question? Those who know and remember both the state of life and death. The Dead do. And what's their take on this?

"Have you ever spoken with the dead? Called to them from this side? Called them from their silent rest? Do you know what it is that they feel? Pain. Pain, when torn into this wakefulness, this reminder of the chaos from which they had escaped. Pain... for having to live."

Conjured spirits usually talk about suffering and beg to be released. They don't seem to like it here. Who would be right if they weren't?

 

Exceptionally good points, sir. You are thoroughly researched in your opinions.

On the point about knowledge as a result of death: Kerghan is alive. He is still anchored in reality. He may have communicated with the dead, but he is not of them. Therefore he is not representative of proof that, upon death, you attain knowledge. I would argue that only whilst you are alive can you actively retain/trade/gather information. You argue that, upon death, one has access to the sea of combined information. I say they do not.


Kerghan has used his position as a living biological organism to attain from varying individual souls their knowledge one at a time (and against their wills, perhaps). While he seems to present his gathered information as if it came from a public collection of information, I would present conjecture that this is not the case.


I do not have any direct evidence for my position, but present speculation: It appears to me that the varying souls of the dead throughout the world of Arcanum never hint that they know anything about any of the other dead souls or what those souls knew. I do not think that, through in-game dialog, there is evidence of omniscient....they only seem to still yet be limited by the knowledge they had when alive.

The Lady Of Grey in Quintarra is alive. Perhaps she has some insights into the future and what is, but certainly these are not a result of being in contact with death so much as a quality or benefit of being alive and able to use the mind to reach out. The benefit of being alive is being able to move and be manueverable rather than still...theoretically both in mind and body. At least, as it is presented in the game for both Kerghan and the Lady Of Grey.

To speculate: I would say that the fact that life itself exists answers the former question. For some reason, the universe permits life to condense into a biological life form...or perhaps the biological life form condenses against the normal stillness of life. Perhaps this is proof that the self-benefits of productivity and reproductivity outweigh the pleasures of idleness and the unfortunate emotion of suffering. But this is, of course, blind conjecture. Very blind.


A secondary supposition: Natural selection of sorts applied to abstract organizations of molecules, minerals, etc. Organization of molecules into more complex forms affords them power or other preferable traits which result in the acquiescence of potential and ability. A lack of entropy means power. Control. Independence. Freedom of movement.

Indeed, there are no better witnesses. But is the demographic an accurate representation? What about the souls that Kerghan mentions in the cutscene which cling on to life?

To present speculative evidence: Bessie Toone did not go on to death because, I suspect, she wanted to correct her mistakes. If death is so universally preferable to the suffering of life (according to the dead) why does (at least) Bessie wish to fix things in life before dying? Or perhaps it's simply revenge...either way, if death is truly preferable, why bother attempting to haunt reality to fix it or make it better (provided one was not trapped by a spell, as is the ghost in the cave at the Crash Site)?




Kerghan is pursuing death for biological life against the individual organism's wishes. Is this an acceptable action, even in the face of the pursuit of absolution? (Provided that Kerghan's opinions are as close to absolute truth as can be for any living organism)



Finally: What Kerghan fails to realize is that there may be life WITH peace (for humanity). That there may be life with order and organization. Death affords these, but not by choice. Life allows for these lubricating dynamics. Life and peace together far outweigh death and peace. One is harder to achieve than the other, and as a result, lags behind sometimes....but that does not mean it is inferior. Given time and evolution, perhaps it would achieve such idealism...but it is a better idealism....a step above, forward.

 

My favorite follower is Sebastian. So it always bums me out that he shows up so late in the game.

If you're playing as a mage, but your MA doesn't keep you from buying components from inventors Sebastian becomes really handy. He can help solve any cash flow problems you might be experiencing. Using guns and grenades creates some balance in a party that probably has a lot of melee guys and a couple of magic users who don't use their ranged attack spells often enough in turn-based combat. And charged rings are always welcome for Magnus and anybody else who might be able to use them.

Going through the sewers of Caladon hoping to find some good magical loot suddenly gets easier. Especially since he starts with some cool gear that was probably meant to intrigue people who had only played neutral or magic using characters up to that point.

If you play as a gunslinger, he's less awesome because you probably can already make charged rings and Molotov cocktails. But still... He has a charged axe and it can be nice to let him do some sniping for you with one of your spare pistols.

It's fun to take Franklin Payne as a companion at least once because of his voiced dialogue, but from a purely pragmatic standpoint Sebastian is a much better follower.

 

Indeed, he is alive, but he did more than communicate with the death. He wandered the same path a soul wanders after it leaves its dead body, even lowered himself within the endless sea of grey mirrored glass, but eventually decided to return and managed to do so. Therefore he is a living being who has experienced the state of being dead and got to know the peace, enlightenment and truth the afterlife has to offer.

I disagree, but both our opinions on the matter are based on speculation rather than confirmed information, so it's a moot point then.

If you would ask me, the knowledge he gained from conjured soul is but an addition to what Kerghan has learned from his journey in the lands of the dead, or maybe even something which initialize the said journey.

I would say that the point of mentioning conjured spirits in his speech was not telling that they were the source of Kerghan's knowledge, but pointing out some proof confirming his words which the Living One had a great chance to encounter while still in Arcanum, especially (but not necessarily) if he was a black necromancer.

Pelonious Schuyler says something among the lines "Light a candle for these words for they are not mine" before sharing some of his knowledge. This is one of the things that make me think knowledge flows from soul to soul in Arcanum's afterlife.

The Silver Lady is an intriguing figure which speaks in a way similar to Pelonious Schuyler and just like himself experiences the past, present and future at the same time. The state of the latter comes from being long in the Grey Sea, while - the way I see it - the Lady experiences this because her magic is so incredibly powerful, it makes her mind partially transcend reality and touch the afterlife.

The fact that life comes into existence is a natural process in the universe, true. It's how things work. But it doesn't mean that it's how things should work. It's not like the universe was necessarily created for good. I once theorised that it's quite the opposite - that the world was created by the gods to entertain themselves at the cost of the suffering of souls which are being pulled from the Grey Sea, their natural "habitat" (if you are interested, I posted the fuller theory here, in the second paragraph).

Those are souls which have already left their bodies but haven't wandered to the Grey Sea yet, because their attachment to life make it impossible for them for now. They already know that they have died, but are not yet aware that the Grey Sea is waiting for them. They cling to life because it is the only thing they know and they think that if they will forget about it, all that will await them will be non-existence.

Because of her attachment to life, she didn't get to experience the Grey Sea and therefore isn't aware of its glory.

You encounter a suffering whimpering dog, severely wounded by a bear trap. You want to take it to the vet and help it (or painlessly kill it to put an end to its torment), but the dog - while not having enough strength to defend itself - growls at you, not wanting your intervention. It does so because it isn't aware that you are offering help. Is providing help against the dog's will an acceptable action?

Assuming a life without any suffering is even possibly - which I doubt - why wait centuries to achieve something that can be achieved right now, by sending any and all to the Grey Sea? Kerghan doesn't see anything that is better in life than in the afterlife. At best, in life we can achieve something not better but simply as good as what is waiting for us after our death. Why even bother then?

Also, as you pointed out, it would be achieved only for the sentient races, which are but a fraction of all that live in Arcanum. Even if the sentient races created a world without any pain for themselves, millions of species will continue to hunt, kill, hide, fear and die in pain. it would be an utopia of sentient races at the cost of the suffering of all wild life. What Kerghan proposes is better because it is a similar utopia but for every soul possessing being.

 

As soon as someone mentions Kerghan these threads always go off topic.

 

I suppose that's my fault this time. I couldn't help but engage Muro in debate about this topic. Perhaps some of the most intelligent gamers I've ever had the chance to encounter appear to amass here.


To those ends, I yield to you, sir. Your counter-arguments, in their entirety, are deftly superior with solid evidence. It certainly has given me something to ponder. I'll have to mill over this for awhile.



Although, I do wish to add this: In reference to the dog, if it does not wish to die I will not kill it. If it does wish to die, I will do as it desires. The same would go for any sentient. This is, of course, provided there are no alternatives. To live or die is not mine to decide. It is, as it should be, left up to the individual biological entity and given the freedom to decide for itself.

 

My favorite is a vorpal bunny.