The Blackguards will never stop pursuing someone they consider a traitor. I'm a danger to everyone around me, and not long for this world if I can't find a place to hide. This seems like a good area to build a hideout, but it's filled with monsters. Can you clear it of everything dangerous?
Curious... with the death of the last monster here, the very air itself feels different. I wouldn't use the word 'purified,' but you've definitely negated the pall over this place. I'll stay here for now and make sure nothing dangerous re-emerges.
Alright, I've taken the liberty of performing a few tests. There are a few magical modifications the Transmutia Device can make that are safe every time. Try enhancing a piece of equipment now. Let's see if my results hold.
Many of the Blackguard are still alive and scattered across Wraeclast, but the organisation has had its back broken after what happened in Oriath. I wouldn't want to run into a random knot of them, especially as they start to get hungry and desperate, but I believe their concerted search for us has ended. That'll give us some breathing room to face new problems.
I retrieved the Transmutia Device from the Chamber of Sins, and I believe I can rig it to imbue equipment with magical modifications. This may involve minor meddling with dark forces we don't understand, but we'll have to take that risk. Wraeclast is a dangerous place, and we'll never get anywhere by playing it safe.
As long as we treat the process scientifically and approach it methodically, we should be able to craft equipment to our needs.
Malachai himself gave this Transmutia Device to Maligaro. It makes me incredibly uncomfortable to think about the horrors that it helped bring into being.
But I must remind myself that science is not responsible for what happened in the Chamber of Sins. Science provides tools for mankind to manipulate the world. It is up to each of us to choose to do good or evil with the power so provided.
Maligaro was the evil responsible, and Malachai before him. Together, you and I are going to start using this Device to undo the damage they did.
While you're out there, try to remain vigilant for other possible locations for hideouts. The Blackguards never give up, and they may eventually stray close to this place. I want to have a backup location ready to go in the event we need to make a quick exit.
I was no wonder child back in Oriath, but I prided myself on what junior accomplishments I managed to put together within the strict set of allowed sciences. Archaeology was my specialty, and Dominus and his ilk had an uncommon fascination with artefacts from the past. And I... I was told I was crucial. That I was important, because I could tell whether an artefact was truly Vaal simply by running my hand along faded stone patterns.
I may have had a head slightly too big for my shoulders. When the Ebony Legion made available an archaeologist position on their expedition to Wraeclast and nobody volunteered, I thought my colleagues were all simply afraid of continental dangers.
No. They knew better. None were allowed to speak it openly, but they knew. I didn't find out what kind of society I was truly a part of until I saw Piety's aspirations. I studied the Vaal. I knew all about their downfall, or at least our Templar-twisted perception of it. Piety's ocean of slaughter... the Vaal called their hubris the Apex of Sacrifice. The Eternal Empire called theirs the Purity Rebellion. We call ours the Temple of Lunaris.
And I know nothing, exile. Nothing at all.
Save that we are doomed to repeat the mistakes of the past unless we learn the hard way.
When I first met him, I underestimated Einhar. Coming from the poorest of Ezomytes, themselves already a battered people in this region of the world, Einhar struck me as someone who could contribute brawn to our cause, but not much else.
How wrong I was. If anyone can decipher the dark design afflicting the creatures of Wraeclast, it's him. I've been looking for the source of all this, an equation or overall pattern, but he's unknowingly taken an empirical approach. By learning about and understanding every single corrupted animal - and the energies their blood contains - he's done more to advance our understanding of the problem than I could ever have done myself.
One day, he may even solve the symptoms of Corruption without ever understanding the root cause. Make no mistake, exile, that's... impressive. A humanistic brute force approach to a cosmic problem.
He's well-intentioned. That's the foremost thing I can say about him. I've never seen any trace of hostility in his actions, but his words sometimes stray from the path he set for them, and his laughter can be a little too gleeful. I fear that Voltaxic Sulphite exposure is poisoning his mind.
But despite that, he may be the most qualified person on Wraeclast when it comes to the mysteries under the earth - and under the earth is exactly where thousands of years of history have sunk over time.
With that book on Vaal blood thaumaturgy, Alva has accessed a power scholars have only dreamed of for centuries. Travelling back in time sounds both insane and absurd, yet I've seen her incursions myself.
It is both a curse and a blessing that she chooses to employ those incursions solely for personal gain. Yes, we could do so much more with the power to visit the past, but her focused interests also keep the timeline stable. I can't imagine what would happen to us here and now if, for example, we tried to go back and assassinate Malachai to prevent the Cataclysm.
Would we cease to exist? Or would we simply create a second Wraeclast, one in which the Cataclysm never happened? One could go insane thinking about it...
Jun keeps to herself. It's clear that she's not used to trusting strangers. From watching her, I think she is dealing with the loss of her akhara by pouring everything she is into her mission. That's admirable, but dangerous. Keep her safe, exile.
I heard of Zana, back in Oriath. I even experienced some of the contempt for her and people like her that Dominus wanted the "church-approved" scientific community to feel. With those lies broken, now I see that she is a woman of science like me, and utterly dedicated to her cause.
The forces she faces are orthogonal to the concerns of this life. I must worry about the real-world logistical and political concerns of Wraeclast first and foremost, but I recognize that she is protecting us in her own way.
While asleep, while dreaming, I felt I was on the verge of a brilliant revelation. In one hand, I held one of Navali's little purple orbs, and in the other, I had cut my palm for one of Alva's blood thaumaturgy incursions. In my dream, I was a scale, balancing these two forces.
No, they were one and the same, and I was caught inside their eternal vortex.
And with me in that vortex, above, was the shouting, screaming, clawing, and cawing web of life as taught to me by Einhar. Below me, quiet, magmatic, frozen, and grasping, were all the nightmares beneath the earth that Niko has revealed with his delving.
I thought I was the center of a strange balancing act, but no, exile, it was not me. For I was dreaming; Zana was there, ahead, forging the dream, the unreal. Where she was ahead, I now saw that I was behind, creating the physical, the real. I was not the center. You were.
Do you understand this dream, exile? Even if it means nothing, it's still reflective of the truth. Each of us carries one end of an impossible axis, and you unite all these forces.
The Order of the Djinn is real? You have no idea how much that means to me as an archaeologist. I was in an apprentice position, yes, but my colleagues still refused to listen to a degree I found absurd. I was convinced that there was a pattern behind the absence of artefacts of myth. My conviction reached a certainty so strong that, if a colleague told me about an expedition they had in mind, and if the sought after artefact was one of sufficient mythological renown, I would bet a month's pay that it would not be found at its supposed resting place.
I never lost those bets, and now I know I was right, even though I didn't know the name of my theorized secret organisation of relic keepers until now. The Order of the Djinn found and sequestered all of those powerful artefacts long ago, and good they did. Power like that in the hands of men like Dominus would be catastrophic.
I believe I've found another location that could make a good hideout. Once you rid the area of its current residents, we can move in. Can you take care of it with that particular skillset of yours?
I find Navali's state of existence curious. She is present, sapient, and capable of self-directed action. In a land where the dead continually rise as mindless monsters intent on nothing but destruction, Navali stands as a stark outlier. I suspect that she is trustworthy only because of some Karui essence that still remains from her life before, carrying with it honor, duty, and respect. Were it Piety or Dominus returning in such a form, the consequences would be unthinkable.