Sure enough, one of the tree stiffs is glowing. We go up to her and touch her bloated, dangling corpse, though it must be said not with our bare hands, yucky. Rather, we extend an aspect of ourselves that has no worldly dimension. 

The writing here is very evocative, and enjoyable to read despite the macabre subject matter. 

Anyway, it seems as though the previous glimpse of Perly’s demise is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the sensory experience we get from a bona fide storyline NPC.

Her spectral form questions us about if we’re here for her, or just lost, and guesses that it’s actually both.

We explain that we survived a bîaŵac, and ask her how it’s possible that we managed to do so. 

Corpsey explains that sufficiently strong souls can stand against the pressure of a spirit storm; doing so gives us a glimpse past the Shroud, if only for an instant.

We have become a Watcher, whatever that means. Sounds marginally better than a Toucher, at least.

Even ol’ deadbones here doesn’t actually seem to know what a watcher is, but tells us that there is a period before a soul passes of from the world where they linger, roaming the world still before passing through the adra stones and into the beyond, before being reborn again into new vessels.

These souls can be seen (and evidently spoken to) by people who know how. Watchers can see these souls, and even see the history of the souls from ages past, which explains why we’re able to get visions of people that are still alive as well as the dead - we’re seeing their soul’s experiences from previous lives.

She tells us of someone she used to know, an old watcher called Maerwald, who might be able to tell us more. 

Finally, we have a direction! Out past the Black Meadow, to Caed Nua.

We chat a little more with She’s Dead Dave, and get some more information about the way that souls are reborn. All souls are subject to soul entropy, breaking apart and decaying over time. A souls that is reborn is never complete, but made up of fragments of other souls that are combined, but never as complete as before…

The implication here is that the world as a whole is heading inexorably towards being Hollowborn, and it turns out that Skelebob was an Animancer performing research on how souls act and how they might be saved.

No wonder everyone here is scared, they’re all on a surefire path to being lifeless husks.

After the conversation, we are granted the Crucible of the Soul, but the game refuses to elaborate what this is just yet.

Right next to the corpse tree is a chap named Edér, who somehow knows that we’ve been speaking with a stiff. 

Turns out that he was just watching us, waiting for anyone else to notice that we were in some sort of stupor during our vision.

Chatting a bit more reveals that even the word ‘Watcher’ is somewhat anathema around these parts, Raedric hating anyone who has anything to do with the dead, or Hollowborn.

Edér himself sees the whole town against him, with the only person that stood up for him being already swinging on a branch in the tree for supposed treason, according to Raedric. He himself worships a different deity to the rest of the town, and is sure they want him dead because of it. There used to be a temple to his god, Eothas, here in GIlded Vale, but it was all but torn down by the locals on Raedric’s orders.

A person claiming to be the mortal manifestation of Eothas caught a lot of people up in their movement; Edér and his brother didn’t believe this and enlisted in the army against the fake godbody, but his brother didn’t make it home. After the war, a lot of people started hating hard on anyone that worshiped Eothas, and claimed that Edér’s brother was actually on the wrong side, so now Edér thinks his time is nigh based on the current mood of Gilded Vale. 

Given all of this, we offer Edér a spot with us adventuring, figuring he won’t really want to hang around. The more miscreants in our merry troupe, the better!

Edér’s motive for coming with us is clear when we mention that we’re off to see an old Watcher - he wants some answers of his own, answers that only someone in communion with the dead might be able to answer. 

Edér is a fighter, whose skills are geared towards being a tank. He has  nice high Constitution and Might scores, can wear heavy armour, can force enemies to focus on him, and to top it all off has a health pool that is as much as Sylvina and Aloth combined.

We take one final rest at the inn to top off our HP and Endurance before heading south, on to Caed Nua.

The area south of GIlded Vale is called Magran’s Fork, a small simple area to explore.

Points of interest: 

1. A big old lump of Adra

2. Chap called Foelmar

3. A Forest Troll

4. A statue, and a raggedy bloke called Durance

The big chunk of adra (1) is pretty but not much else, there’s a corpse here with a fine greatsword, but at the moment we don’t have a use for that. Soon after checking it out we’re attacked by a bunch of wild boar, but they group up quite a bit when attacking, allowing Aloth to make good use of his AoE spells.

Foelmar (2), is a traveling merchant who seems super skittish. Perhaps he’s actually just perceptive because immediately after saying “do you hear something?” we’re attacked by a lone wolf. We dispatch it, and Foelmar gives us not only his thanks, but also 3 potions of Minot Endurance, before pussing out to Gilded Vale.

The Forest Troll (3) sounds like a dangerous foe, but he’s actually more of a damage sponge than anything else. He deals a grand total of 11 damage to Edér, while soaking up 226 damage in return.

Sylvina does great damage as expected, dealing more than 53% of the total, even with Aloth spellcasting for most of the fight!

The Troll is guarding a corpse with Fulvano’s Amulet. If that name sounds familiar, it’s because it's the same moniker of the gloves we got from up the scalable wall in Valewood. Don’t know who Fulvano is, but he seems to have lost a bunch of his stuff around the place…

The amulet gives a bonus to reflex saves, and a pretty whopping +25% healing received. This gets given to Edér as our tank, now all we need is a dedicated healer to round out our party. 

This chap called Durance is super disheveled and smells faintly of burning chemicals.

As we talk to him, he sets a statue on fire. He sets a statue on fire.

He mostly talks crap and calls the statue a whore, so I assume he’s been smashing the bottle harder than most around here. He then calls me Watcher completely unprompted. Huh. Perhaps it was the Tequila? Especially if it had a worm in…

He’s pretty sure that the whole nation is diseased, but at least thinks I’m a “crack that shines light from another place”. He goes on to claim that he was meant to travel with us because he saw my soul in the flames? Nutter. I quite Like him.

Durance is a Priest of Magran, for all he calls her a whore.

He has incredible Resolve as well as decent Might and Constitution scores.

He’s built for buffing and debuffing, with a plethora of spells for blessing various party members with various stat bonuses, and some spells to make enemies Stuck or Terrified.

He seems like he’ll be worthwhile as company for the time being, though I’m interested to see if we can get a more focused healer.