Today is the first time no one died for real. I've explored the sanitarium. Most would think that this is the place were delicious cereals and grains are made, but this could not be further from the truth. The Sanitarium is a place where crazy, crazy people go, or in Pillars of Eternity, those with troubled souls.
I'm learning more about being a Watcher, an awakened soul with each play session. I'm also learning that its dangerous to try and screw over animancers. I explore the sanitarium in earnest, talking to people, and the statue whom runs the place. He had his soul transposed into the stone when he was about to die. Interesting. Maybe thats how the lady at my stronghold became the throne, too.
There's one particular animancer down stairs in the sanitarium who I should be asking questions of, I find, after snooping on his bookshelves and consulting with the stone-man again.
I enter, and there's some people wandering around, and some suspicious 'flesh constructs', in the terrible, terrifying 'Northern Ward'. I think to myself "probably going to have to fight these later", but continue with my exploration. Eventually, I find the one patient that matters, and enter his soul, learning of the torture he has experienced and witnessed. It directs me to the patient at the end of the hall. Its always at the end of the hall. Never 'the bloke you went past, three cells before mine,'
I proceed, and enter this maimed soul's perception of the world. What do I see? That the soul is malignant. After some seriously long exposition, there's a fight, and I nearly perish. I don't. I survive; just. Those flesh constructs are now all hostile, so its time to spread out, and ensure that I use Aloth's wizardry spells to do damage, and do it quickly.
As I'm leaving, I go talk to the animancer who did all of this stuff; and he's only interested at yelling at me, and not fighting me. I wander off, and remember that one of the animancers had a chest with a massive lock on it. I couldn't open it before; so I might try now. There's no dialogue regarding the chest, so I decide to kill the man instead. This is possibly not a great idea, as I ascend the stairs, all the guards upstairs want to kill me.
I fight through them, leaving a bloody trail, and am disappointed when I speak with stone-statue man. He suggests I leave. I do. As I emerge, I get a message that a Lady Webb wishes to speak to me. She probably wants to put me to the sword for everything that I've just done, and the heinous murders I've completed.
Very well. I arrive at her palace, and proceed to start stealing things. Its the sort of person I am. I must get rich, in this game, by any means! I wander upstairs to have a chat with lady; and we end up talking about the Leaden Key, and that it all leads to one man, that I must find. She suggests (and really, commands) that I help her, even when I express a reluctance to do so. There's some new leads scrawled into my journal, and I'm free to go.
I ignore those leads... and go to the next place that looks interesting on the map. Immediately, upon entering the building, I'm greeted by a servant or page, or some sort of slave owned by the master of the place. We chat about a letter in my possession, and I meet the master of the house. What happens next is a ploy that I enter his employ and steal for him what would have been stolen by those ruffians I dispatched a few buildings ago.
I wander upstairs after chatting with him, and proceed to steal things, in my classic style. One of the guards notice, and decides to attack me. Great. I fight off the first 3, or 4, and then continue exploring and helping myself to the items upstairs. There's a named character of the family, and I lose my priest. Properly lose him. As in, the character portrait disappears. He's dead. He's gone for good. Aloth's next. Gone for good. I finish the fight, pick up the loot in denial, and reload my game to a happier time, to be continued at a later date.
Perhaps I shouldn't be as murderous as I have been lately.