09 - Fill in the Blank

Quest 9 - Fill in the Blank

Rewards:

1,000 experience points

Harlon Waits Lesson

To begin the next quest, head to the Seaside Inn and Suites. If you talk to the clerk at the front desk, he will ask you to help him find a map he’s misplaced.

1. Find and return Harlon’s map.

Harlon suggests looking in room 201. The westernmost staircase leads up to room 201 where a conspicuous treasure chest awaits. Inside is the MacGuffin, Map of Collosum, that Harlon is looking for.

New Character!

Harlon Waits

Job:

Hobby:

Phobia:

Creator Commentary:

Hotel Clerk

Cartography

Giants

Harlon Waits is based on Steve Buscemi. His fear of giants comes from an inferiority complex that keeps him locked into his job at the expense of his passion for mapmaking.

The party rightfully notes that the map was suspiciously unhidden. Take the map back to Harlon to advance the quest and learn a bit more about him.

Easter Egg: It’s possible to start this quest by finding the map first. By barging into the room without permission (in defiance of Foucault’s panopticism) you can actually just open the chest and steal the map. John chastises Ardus’ curiosity and Ardus vows to find who it belongs to and apologize for rifling through their things.

2. Enter the Mindscape through Harlon's room, 201.

Harlon Waits turns out to be a hobbyist cartographer who has been having trouble in the Mindscape recently. Head back to room 201 and enter the Mindscape. Harlon will be waiting and explain that he has run into giants inside the Mindscape. The next objective is to find and talk to all of the giants.

3. Interview all eight of the giants (x/8).

In order to figure out what is going on in the Mindscape you’ll need to talk to all 8 giants. Each giant has a clue that will point to the answer of what’s really going on.

Giant 1

Immediately after exiting the Seaside Inn and Suites in the Mindscape, the party will encounter their first giant. This giant repeats everything the party says, but cannot tell a lie.

Walking out of the area with the first giant will put you on a world map of Collosum, just like Harlon said he liked to envision when dreaming. Using the Map of Collosum as reference, let’s see where the points of interest on the map are located.

Giant 2

The second giant can be found walking around point A. She says that the carpenter’s secret is found inside the crown.

Giant 3

The third giant is walking around point B. This is the Carpenter. He says he won’t build anything new until someone tells him how many steps he built into the Nostos Lighthouse. A prompt comes up asking for a 4 digit answer to the Carpenter’s question. We don’t have enough clues to answer him yet, but we’ll be back shortly.

If you step into New Cadence at exit 2 on the map, you’ll enter a small area with an inaccessible giant on a high ridge. We’ll come back to visit her later.

Giant 4

The fourth giant is walking near point D. He wants to know the combined experience of the three guardians less the lie, and then asks for a 3 digit number. We don’t the answer to this riddle yet either, so we’ll come back later.

Giant 5

The fifth giant is walking among the trees near point E. She says the Reineros guardian is shy but will show up if you hide from the sun beneath the Reineros sigil and hit a switch there.

Giant 6

The sixth giant is watching the ocean at point F. He says the Nostos Lighthouse has 780 steps to the top. How convenient.

If you return to the Carpenter and tell him 780, he says it’s incorrect. Of course it wouldn’t be that easy!

Giant 7

Go into the Reineros sigil at exit 3 to enter Harlon’s tiny version of Reineros.

There’s nothing here at first, unless we remember what giant number 5 said about the shy giant. Stand at point A in the shadow of the Reineros sigil and examine the post. The ground will shake and the seventh giant will pop into existence! Talk to her to learn that she has been the guardian of Reineros for 7 years.

We only have one more giant to interview, but she is currently on an inaccessible cliff. We know that the Nostos Lighthouse had 780 steps, but that’s not the answer the Carpenter wants. Remember that giant number 2 said the Carpenter’s secret was found inside the crown.

Walk over to point C on the map. On the ground is written: Chasaduin’s Crown. Examine the ground where the word “crown” is located to get a note that says the last twelve steps were built by someone else. So, the Carpenter’s secret is that he built all but 12 steps. 780 minus 12 is 768. Go back to the Carpenter and tell him the news. He will build a staircase in New Cadence.

Giant 8

To interview the final giant, return to New Cadence at exit 2. Use the newly built staircase to get on the top level. She says that she has been the guardian for New Cadence for 13 years, 2 less than the guardian of Ordolus. She also says that the Reineros guardian is a liar and to talk to the Ordolus guardian again for clarification.

Putting it all together

Return to the first giant. Ardus will have a novel idea to get the truth out of the Reineros guardian. Since the Ordolus guardian doesn’t lie, you learn that the Reineros guardian has been around for 5 years and not 7.

Creator Commentary: The exchange between the giant and John about not “deserving this kind of treatment” is a reference to Moe’s lie detector test in the Simpson’s episode, Who Shot Mr. Burns? (Part 2).

Now we know the amount of years each guardian has been around: 13, 15 and 5. Giant 4 is still waiting on an answer to his riddle. The combined experience of the guardians is 33 (13+15+5) and if we take off the “lie” (7) we get the number 26. After answering the giant correctly, a purple haze will cover the map.

4. Search for anything different on the world map.

Now that the Mindscape’s purple fog has emerged, enemies appear on Harlon’s world map.

New Enemy!

Compass Rose

Willpower (WP):

Persuasion:

Elocution:

Experience:

AP:

3,500

200

Erudition (EP):

Confidence:

Resistance:

Gold:

Level:

260

Drop Rates:

AI Behaviors:

Creator Commentary:

At the end of every turn the Compass Rose(s) will shift their elemental state to logos, pathos or ethos. This affects other enemies in the same battle too.

In each state they have a specific attack skill, Doublespeak (if logos), Morality Play (if ethos) and Accusation (if pathos).

The Compass Rose is based on a compass rose. Like on a map. Nothing too deep about this one.

New Enemy!

Guideline

Willpower (WP):

Persuasion:

Elocution:

Experience:

AP:

2,000

250

120

100

Erudition (EP):

Confidence:

Resistance:

Gold:

Level:

900

100

Drop Rates:

AI Behaviors:

Creator Commentary:

Guidelines are not very complicated, though they can use the Guarded skill to triple their RES stat.

Like the compass rose, Guidelines are themed after maps and mapmaking.

Head to the location of Hornberg (remember the World Map you got from Harlon) to see a suspicious sparkle on the ground. Walking into the shining anomaly will deposit the party inside the literal paper town of Hornberg. Ardus asks Harlon about Decimus Zastari again with the new assumption that the famous cartographer may have been a logomancer in life.

5. Explore Hornberg.

Hornberg is not very large and we only need to visit one location at the moment, but there is one treasure chest we can pick up in the middle of the town that contains a Convincing Smile. There are two buildings we can enter. The one in the center of town is the Origami House which is covered in the Origami House side quest. Enter the westernmost house and examine the floating orange book.

After a lengthy philosophical conversation with the sentient book, Harlon thanks Ardus for bringing him to Hornberg and promises a reward for the effort back at the front desk of the Seaside Inn and Suites.

If you have Cynthia in your party, which is likely but not guaranteed, then she will have some telling insights into the nature of the Mindscape when the party gets back to Room 201 after meeting the floating book in Hornberg. There is mention of ancient sorcerers, Forstatian logomancy, immortality, and godhood.

6. Talk to Harlon at the Seaside Inn and Suites.

Harlon asks Ardus to go back to Hornberg and talk to Will (as he is calling the floating book) about ancient logomancers and gives the party a map of Hornberg that he made. He also offers lessons in drafting which can be used by Cynthia!

Choropleth Survey is a ridiculously useful skill (that halves an enemy’s WP), so remember to use it on enemies that seem to have way too much WP.

Creator Commentary: A choropleth map is a map that has different shaded regions representing the relative densities of specific data. I used it here as a skill that does proportional damage like gravity attacks (Demi and so forth) in the Final Fantasy games, with the idea that the proportional damage was like mapping the relative density of an enemy’s WP. Maybe not an airtight comparison, but it turns out it’s difficult (but still fun) to make cartographically themed skills that are analogs for traditional JRPG spells.

Before we move on to another quest, we can go back and visit “Will” in Hornberg. Simply go through the bed in Room 201 and walk back up to Hornberg. After talking to Will again, the party can learn lessons from him. Will does not show up in the menu as a “lesson” but as a “book” (in case you don’t find him right away after receiving access to his knowledge). Also, we are going to refrain from talking to Will again until later since one more conversation with him will start a cinematic that is part of another quest.

Creator Commentary: Decimus Zastari, the mute cartographer is a reference to two different games. First, the idea of a silent cartographer comes from the name of the fourth level of the first Halo. Zastari’s last name is a reference to the doomed mapmaker from King’s Field and the Ancient City, a From Software RPG for the PS2. In that game, Zastari’s map is invaluable to getting around the eponymous Ancient City.

Creator Commentary: L’esprit de l’escalier is a French phrase the means the “spirit of the staircase”. It is the phenomenon where you think of the perfect response or comeback to something when it’s too late - i.e. on the stairs on your way out. To simulate that effect, the l’escalier bonus (10 times damage) only applies to the first skill of the next battle.

If you have been following along with the guide up to this point, then the party should be around level 20 or 21 and all of the major quests in the game are now completed! Congratulations! There are a number of side quests to dip into and now would be a good time to do those if you are so inclined. Exiting through the north exit of Camp Courtesy will have the party leave for New Cadence and start the full good ending. After the ending is done playing, you will be returned to Ordolus with all of the items and stats you had before leaving with one new addition: an item called The End.

As you can see from the description on the MacGuffin, this is the item you get for beating the game without activating the Seams of Reality quest. In order to get the true ending, we’re going to need to dig a little deeper into the mysteries of Ordolus and the Mindscape.

“What if you are nothing but a complex series of predetermined responses written in advance to specific stimuli?” - John Marrow

The previous part of the walkthrough was The Soldier's Heirloom, the next part is The Seams of Reality

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