Regarding the Soulstone, I've currently got it. Well, Ameena has. Well, same thing
. I
think there's only one piece left now - Dolo had one, which we found on Fex's corpse. Soorec had another, which Ameena yoinked in his icky altar room (right after looting the weird magic orb thingy which at the time had a fish in it, and which led her to the fragment) while he was having...er...terminal issues with his grak-graks (via Dolo). I know the largest piece (which I think is the only one left now) is with Dargat, who's either an orc or a half-orc (can't remember now) and is pretending to be Gholst in front of the Blackskulls ('cause they don't know what Gholst looks like, or something) but was previously the second-in-command. He's sort of in charge of the Blackskulls but there are two factions - his and Garax's. Garax is a follower of Dolo (a worshipper of Lolth, I believe - spider goddess known as the "Demon Queen", though she isn't a demon - in the DnD universe she's generally worshipped by the Drow, the dark elves who live deep down in the Underdark with all their nasty spiders and Drow-spider weird hybrid monster thingys, and stuff), so those two are definitely on the same side. I think they may have some kind of uneasy sort of "peace" with Dargat and his lot. I presume they know what Gholst looks like, and that Dargat isn't him. Presumably they also know about the issue with Theron too, but how much I have no idea.
Last time (in the First Run, which technically hasn't happened yet because it was in two weeks' time, but you know...
), I think the group managed to deal with all the bosses, and just had Theron/Gholst left when they finally fixed the Soulstone - the Grey Lord turned up and in the ensuing confrontation Gholst (in Theron's body) killed Theron. This kinda pissed the Grey Lord off a teeny bit and he lost control of himself and Chaos took over, thus destroying the world and stuff, but in the brief moment right before Chaos took control, the Grey Lord threw the group back in time two weeks to when they woke up in that room back at the game's start. So haha, we didn't have Aurek, Petal, Deephold, Helm, or a load of blue trolls back then
.
But yeah, that's about as much as I know regarding NPCs and stuff, and the Soulstone, etc. How to deal with Gholst/Theron, I'm not sure. Maybe we can find out how Dolo separates his spirit from himself or something and see if we can force that status onto Gholst and get rid of him that way - maybe Falkor can achieve something in the spirit world in the cloak, or maybe he can lend the cloak to someone else who might be able to do stuff - Petal with her sylvan magic, or Westy with his spiritual-type stuff. I'm not really sure what Ameena can do unless there's a chance for someone small and sneaky to maybe dart about and grab the last piece of Soulstone...but I think if we summon the Grey Lord before we've dealt with Gholst, we might just end up repeating the steps of how the First Run ended.
What's going on with Karnadee? Is she somehow being forced into being stuck in this world somehow? Can she bugger off into wherever it is the spirits of the dead are supposed to go? I mean, I presume she's dead and stuff, anyway. Or is Theron not letting her go because of brotherly love and all that? Maybe we can talk him into letting go? Or if that's not the problem, then maybe there's some other way we can assure Karnadee's safety from Gholst - I reckon she's the key. If we can guarantee aht gholst won't be able to do Nasty Horrible Things to her, I reckon Theron can relax a bit and kick some arse...and
then we can call back the Grey Lord and get him to sort things out.
As for Dolo, Garax, and Dargat...I dunno - some kind of epic battle royale? Hrmm, there must be sneakier ways around them than that. Dolo can probably be taken care of spiritually, somehow. Me and Haynuus nearly managed to bring down Garax by ourselves, so he's probably not too much of a problem unless he's levelled up a lot or got some uber loot since the last time we met him (or buffs from Dolo or something). Dargat I know nothing about except that he's an orc or half-orc and wears blue armour. Since he's the head Blackskull guy I'd presume him to be one hell of a tough sod to bring down, physically at least. Oh, and there's probably the grak-graks to worry about too, whether we take down Dolo or not. At least we know we can harm them with health potions when they take on someone else's form - pity we don't have a load of hypodermic needles
.
Hmm, so yeah...that's about all I know about the various NPCs and stuff so far. Anyone else got any other info?
Plus it seemed a nice pay off to your line of thought.
If you guys see this, I can summarise the huge posts for you so you don't have to read them!
)