Fuck yeah, it lives!
As we left off, our army of epic-level travellers had just defeated Okku's dreaded army of spirits. The protagonist also used his new-found spirit eating ability to devour Okku's soul and render him as nothing more than an empty husk. For the first time, we are able to witness the true power of the spirit eater in action. Now that's all fine and dandy, but the big revelation here, gameplay-wise, is the introduction of the Spirit Metre. As the curse manifests itself as an unstoppable hunger that must be fed, the Spirit Metre translated this into gameplay terms as a time limit that you can increase by devouring more and more spirits or by suppressing the hunger for a short time. There's also a meter underneath that represents craving: the more you devour, the more you need to devour to maintain your energy. The more you suppress, the less you need to devour.
Your spirit energy drops at a very slow rate, getting faster or slower depending on your craving level. When it drops below certain thresholds, you get stat penalties that can't be cured by normal means. Below even lower thresholds, you get constant damage. Close to the bottom, the damage is so large that you'll be dead in less than a minute. If it reaches 0, you die.
From this point on we have a couple of new feats that relate to this mechanic. The most basic is Devour Spirit, which you can use on spirits (basically any ethereal entity in the game, including telthors, elementals and ghosts) to regain some spirit energy. If the target spirit is at 25% health or under, you get a bonus amount of spirit energy equal to the spirit's remaining hit points and also kill the spirit. If you devour more than one spirit per day (in game terms, more than once in between resting) it raises your craving, and you can't use this ability more than ten times per day.
Suppress does just that, suppresses your hunger and restores a small amount of spirit energy wherever you are. If you have spirits around you that could potentially be devoured, but you suppress instead, you get small bonuses to spirit energy. Suppressing reduces craving by a bit. You can't use Suppress on the same day as Devour, and vice versa.
Satiate is a last-ditch ability to use if your spirit energy is very low. It drains a chunk of your experience, potentially lowering your level, in exchange for filling up your metre. You can only use it when you're below a certain threshold.
Outside the usual gameplay, the curse can work in different ways. There are more abilities to unlock through different quests and plot events, and the abilities you have can appear as conversation options in certain situations with interesting results. Our future encounter with the god of the dead can end very differently if I have Eternal Rest or not.
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Now let's continue with our story. The town population is scared shitless of your curse and this merchant here has a line acknowledging it.
Now, if you might remember, we had a deal with the witches and their side of the bargain was to release Magda after the spirit army was dealt with.
I hate Kazimika. Vadoi is another slavic name, and as someone suggested earlier, this might be because Rashemen is the Eastern Europe of Forgotten Realms - the lesser-developed equivalent of the West.
Looks like the PC has some wit about her.
Brutishness also counts as wit.
Mow Shadow Plane exposition. You already know what's being said here, so yeah...
I won the 64$ question!
The reason Lienna was never seen in Mulsantir is that, you guessed it, she frequented the Shadow Realm all day. If she needed to travel, she could use the portals in the Shadow Veil that we'll come across soon.
Back to the Veil.
That was my blood!
Told ya.
Looks like there's some unresolved sexual tension between these two.
Now we can unlock that door that we couldn't open before.
This room contains 4 portals, Incoming, Outgoing, Storage and Disposal. The first two are for quick-travel because with your curse, every second wasted is a bit of spirit energy lost. You can revisit most locations with the portal.
The Golem here is the operator, but he's not functioning.
By interacting with the Golem, you get a new spirit ability: Mold Spirit. IIRC, this only has two uses in any quests, but its main use is enchanting items with spirit essences.
Now here's how it's done:
---Accessing primary IDE drive--- Welcome to Golem OS!
Three gargoyles appear from the portal behind us. Obviously, they can shed some light as to my predicament here.
This line sets the tone for this whole conversation. Igor's got nothing on this guy.
Then I'd have gutted you like Mike Tyson.
Those guys from NWN2 are dead? This game just keeps getting better and better.
Until the sozzy sequel, of course.
The fearsome one? Could it be...?
The second line here is golden.
After they became gargoyles, they had extensive accent induction classes to sound the part.
More hags? I thought Gann was enough hag for one game...
No comment...
[Perception] Why is the numbering all fucked up in this box?
[Charisma] I chose a wrong line earlier and I realised it only now, because it eliminates this outcome:
Seems they'll give XP to anybody these days...
TO BE CONTINUED!
Really didn't notice it.