Jason recaps the events from Agents of Edgewatch S2|19: Friends in Low Places.
First, I’d like to start this week with an apology. I know I don’t really HAVE to – it’s not like you guys are going to stop listening to the show(s) or form a torch-wielding mob because the companion column comes out a day later than it should – but it’s wired into my own internal sense of ethics to do so. In this case, I was helping someone move this past weekend, and that screwed me up into Monday and I just hit a wall getting the column done.
I also wanted to start this week with a gaming-but-not-RFC-related aside, because it struck me as funny. I recently picked up Pathfinder: Kingmaker on the Steam Summer Sale. I’m not going to do a full review of a 3-4-year-old game, but basically, it’s half Neverwinter/Baldur’s Gate-style hack-and-slash with the Pathfinder ruleset; half nation-building sim like a Civilization game (part of the effort is building settlements to protect your lands). The real reason I mention it is this was my first exposure to First Edition Pathfinder in almost four years, and MY GOD I was not prepared for how lost I was. I tried to build out a magus… just a simple little rinky-dink Level 1 magus… and I might as well have been trying to translate markings on an alien obelisk. WHERE’S MY ABC SYSTEM? WHERE’S MY FREE ARCHETYPE? I GOT NO FIRE, KORBEN DALLAS!
On to this week’s episode, where we meet the kindly (as far as we know) cultist Dannicus. I have to admit at first glance, I’m more than a little skeptical about his supposed regret about joining the cult… I mean, what did you THINK a group called the Skinsaw Cult does? Boardgame night… “drop by for the Pictionary, stay for the disembowelings”?
I’m feeling (in-character and out) like you don’t get in with these guys in the first place if you aren’t a certain level of evil. Remember when we had to infiltrate the Copper Hand, right? We were all hand-wringy about how they might ask us to kill someone to prove our level of commitment, right? With the Skinsaw Cult, wouldn’t killing someone (heck… MULTIPLE someones) be right at the TOP of their initiation checklist? (See also: the recruitment scene from Blazing Saddles.) So when Dannicus talks about being disillusioned because the cable feed at the Skinsaw clubhouse doesn’t get out-of-market NHL games, I’m having a tough time buying that.
On the other hand, you can question the motives but not the results. The dude gives us a TREASURE TROVE of information. Almost cheat-code level stuff. We have full maps… not just a couple of rooms, but pretty much the whole complex. We have a sense of which entrances are guarded heavily and which we could sneak in without attracting much attention. We know – sometimes roughly, sometimes exactly – where all the bosses and sub-bosses hang out. We even get a hint on where the missing Greycloaks are: the Skinsaws fought them and they retreated in the direction of an area where garbage is disposed of. I mean, this is almost like buying the Prima Guide for the dungeon. (Prima Guide… anyone remember those, or did I just out myself as an Old Person again?)
To be serious for a second, you RARELY get this level of information going into a dungeon, and in fact, you USUALLY have to indulge in a little bit of borderline meta-gaming to get CLOSE to this level of clarity. “I know there’s only 2 or 3 rooms left because it’s a pre-drawn map grid and the remaining unexplored area is only 20 squares or so.” “I know there’s only one big fight left because that’s what the story cues tell me or because we’re pretty close to leveling.” But here, it’s all being handed to us on a plate, legitimately and in-game. As long as this guy’s not a plant leading us into a trap, this is quite the haul.
And we also pick up an additional side quest, as Dannicus’ friend Gubs is down there somewhere, and is equally disenchanted with the cult. The difficulty here is we don’t know whether he’s a prisoner or feigning loyalty to keep his head attached to his shoulders. Therefore there’s a chance we’re going to have to try to ID him in the middle of a fight, so we can mark him as a friendly and not accidentally kill him. It’s certainly realistic… cops have to do this in real life where they will be doing a raid, and an informant or undercover officer will be mixed in amongst the bad guys… but it’s going to complicate things just a little bit.
(Let me also just say right now that if we don’t get to use LOOKING FOR GUBS IN ALL THE WRONG PLACES as an episode title before this is all over, I’m going to cry.)
I did just want to mention by way of a reminder that our encounter with Dannicus came at the end of a full day of exploration. So even though this is a short episode, it makes sense that it’s time to retreat and regroup after talking to him. The good news is that the catacombs level we’re currently on is ALMOST completely cleared – we really only have that large portcullis (the one where the key/lever was inside the ooze) and the collapsed rubble path to the east of it, and we’re ready to go down into the cultist lair. Or maybe now that we have our map, we’ll just get right to it, though… as a group, we tend to hate leaving fires in the rear (especially if there’s any chance there’s loot involved).
So next week, we re-enter the catacombs, refreshed and armed with a much better map, and hopefully start taking the fight directly to the Skinsaw Cult! As always, feel free to drop by our Discord channel or other social media outlets and let us know what you think of the show. Thanks for listening and we’ll see you next week.