TNO Chooses His Path

Gather round, children. A few days have passed since my last entry, and much has transpired for TNO and his two sidekicks. When I left off last time, TNO had cleared the disturbance in the Mausoleum, and in the process, I had found myself growing more and more familiar with the game. It’s been a battle, but I can feel the game gradually growing on me. 

So with this newfound knowledge and comfort in the world of PS:T, I had a desire to revisit every area I’d visited earlier in my clueless state. No better place to start with than the Mortuary, right? One of the characters I had come across much earlier was Pox, a collector who seemed all too familiar with TNO and was perfectly willing to smuggle him back inside. With a little dialogue, TNO is able to convince Pox to do just that, pretending to be dead in the process. This convincing acting job is worth 500 points, and puts me back in the same spot where the game first began. Bad memories.

TNO returns to The Mortuary... on purpose. Pay no attention to the low health levels; that was on purpose, too.

 But I’m determined to do a better job of searching out my surroundings this time around, and a full exploration of every level yields an interesting discovery: a character that I’m not sure how I missed the first go-round. The character is, of course, Deionarra, who was apparently TNO’s lover in a previous life (or many previous lives). The two share a deep conversation in which she reveals that TNO is both blessed and cursed; one who dies many deaths, and whose memory is growing weaker with each one. I also discover that TNO has the ability to raise the dead, which could prove useful at some point. After some more poignant dialogue with Deionarra in which she reveals cryptic clues to the future, TNO vows to find some means to save or join her and then departs. 

After this conversation, I get a note about an alignment change. It could be that this has always been there and I just missed it before, but after some investigation, I discover that TNO is currently Neutral Good, which means I believe in a balance between law and chaos, but prefer good actions over evil ones. That seems fair to me. Slowly, I’m learning who my version of TNO is, and as that happens, I find myself becoming more interested in what becomes of him.

It's TNO's old flame, Deionarra. Cool name.

Outside The Mortuary again, I decide it’s time to move the story forward and seek out Pharod. Since I’ve searched all over The Hive for the guy and talked to many people, I’m convinced my next destination should be to Ragpicker’s Square. Our trio sets off for the previously unexplored area, and then does a quick scouting job to fill in the black spaces on the map. I quickly determine there is a portal that I don’t have the necessary means to access just yet, and assume it’s likely got something to do with how Pharod is hiding. 

With that location ruled out and few other areas to visit on this map, I decide to pay a visit to the house marked as “the midwife’s hut” which takes me intoa  small room with an old lady named Mebbeth. TNO has a lengthy conversation with her in which she provides much-needed healing, offers her place for rest, and informs me that Pharod is in fact hiding underneath Ragpicker Square, although she isn’t the one to ask for exact directions. While talking to her, I also decide to part with some copper in exchange for identifying a few of the items I’ve been carrying in my inventory for a while. 

Lastly, I make a big step (I presume it’s a pivotal point in the game) and ask Mebbeth to teach me about the art of magic. She agrees, but only if I do some chores for her first (big surprise there). My first task is to take a peculiar seed to a fruit merchant for herbs. The trip should have been quick enough, except I took the time to talk to every merchant before finding the correct one, and in fact was certain the merchant must have been in a different area at first, so I got a little off track and wandered some more.

Old Mebbeth has some good old fashioned quests that need completing before she'll teach me the art of magic.

In my travels, I return to the Alley of Dangerous Angles and take out both Rotten William and Krystall for Blackrose, who fist ordered me to kill for good and then for evil to balance things out. Once I succeed (after several deaths in which I persistently walked my way out of The Mortuary and returned to battle without racing to reload), Blackrose attempts to lure TNO into combat with him as well, but after informing the creature I am in fact immortal, he backs down, and I get more experience points. The area doesn’t seem particularly important, but I thought it worth mentioning since it resulted in several thousand experience points. 

Additionally, I had found Craddock wandering around the merchant area, and delivered the message Baen the Sender had asked me for help with. In turn, Craddock wants me to go find one of his workers near the Smoldering Corpse Bar. In the course of my travels still searching out the merchant, I come across Jhelai, Craddock’s worker, only to discover he doesn’t think much of Craddock and won’t be returning to work. By this time, I’ve explored enough areas that I’m ready to give the marketplace area another try, and I return, immediately seeking out Craddock and passing on the message from Jhelai. Although this doesn’t sit well with Craddock, I offer to fill in for Jhelai in exchange for a day’s pay, thus fulfilling the quest in my journal.

Somewhere shortly after this point of play, I finally stumble across the merchant I’ve been looking for all this time. As it turns out, even the correct merchant has very little information about the seed, although TNO does get the idea to visit Mourns-for-Trees at the end of the conversation, so it wasn’t a complete waste. 

Mourns-for-Trees, as it turns out, is much more helpful. While he doesn’t have any more knowledge of the seed than the merchant did, he is able to enlighten me on an important lesson of Sigil: simple belief can turn something imagined into reality. By willing the seed to grow, it does, and suddenly TNO has the sample he needs for Mebbeth. Before leaving, I ask Dak’kon to join in the effort of caring for the trees, and he agrees. Furthermore, asking if there have been any changes in the trees results in a positive answer from M-f-T, which nets me 500 points to boot. Now, back to Mebbeth for our regularly scheduled programming.

Oh, look, Mourns-for-Trees has a purpose after all! Well, how about that?

Back in Mebbeth’s hut, I’m again reminded that if I want something to happen, simply thinking of it is sometimes all it takes. With that, the growth on TNO’s arm from the plant releases itself, and is then turned into a picture frame, all via thought (telekinesis?). With the first task taken care of, Mebbeth has another, and another, and another. But why am I describing this in such detail like no one’s played this before? Everyone knowns damn well that I had a few more quests to complete for the old hag; I retrieve some rags, hunt down a woman who squeezes ink out of a fish into a tankard I had to obtain from a different merchant (seriously, I think I talked to about a dozen different people for three tasks, but complaining would make me look like a console tard, and no one wants that, no one). Point is, I did the bitch’s quests, went back, and at long last, became a mage, which is apparently this TNO’s destiny. This is a very satisfying process to play, but not as much to write about, so forgive my hurried tempo. 

I was actually quite pleased to get some answers about all these spells I had been carrying around. Mebbeth explains that I simply copy them individually into my spell book, memorize them, and then cast them when necessary. In the story of TNO, this is a big development, as it fills in a big blank in regards to just who the hell he is. This TNO, my TNO as it were, is a sorcerer, and almost certainly destined to be one of the best sorcerers in the history of the Planes. 

And so a big part of TNO’s identity has been decided; it’s been a very revealing entry, all, one filled with long-lost loves, magical spells, epic battles in alleys, and the continued search for Pharod and the elusive journal. We’ll pick up here next time. I do believe the next play session will be one I’m actually not dreading, and for this game, that’s quite an accomplishment. As I’ve repeatedly said over and over again, there’s still hope to be found yet.