~ three

You know ... not much is really expected of the Explorer.  Fly around ... 'exploring' ... and then things happen.  'As the crow flies'.  Killer takes care of the rest. 

Truly a character made for exploration.

Because I've been there.  Late at night I don't need the hack and slash and I don't care about yet another armor chunk.  I want to see this big beautiful land they've made.  Not too fast.  Not too slow.

I want to stop because something's interesting, not because I was told to.  Certainly clearing the six of seven towers was easy enough, stumbled upon randomly each, may as well assassinate the pultiers in two seconds here and there ... watch the dragon show.

And then you know maybe go fly over there ...

But comes a time.  To be challenged ?  No.  This is the Explorer, probably a deity of some kind and if so likely an incarnation of death itself.  So no.  Comes a time for the player to see how much fun that bladed cloak-wing attack is on an army.

Upon approaching the seventh outpost the clockwork army marches from the associated temple, in seemingly endless stream.  Across the land it's seen the same from every other and from the docks into the main town it's very clear.

This land has just been conquered.

These people seek to purge it all.

Perhaps if the mayor had lived to know in any version they would have killed him anyway, he may not have called for extraction, but he did.  Which to them could only mean the experiment was over.

Like the end of any movie or game, they're the lifelessness on the screen after the credits, the janitors sweeping your popcorn off their floor after you've gone home, the things that happen in your room when you sleep.

 

Yet here they march of broad and across these lands they walk to be seen, before the view back to that of the Explorer before this well guarded town.

 

They cannot touch you and your companion is immortal.  Have fun with it.

 

Your main attack can cut through twenty and there are two thousand between you and this very necessary town.  It could be done in a minute.  An hour or a week in one by one assassinations.

Hilariously enough, none of this effects the Explorer's ability to take out the tower pultiers, at all.  You could also just watch the dragon take care of that.  Because ...

 
Explorer - "What the hell does any of this have to do with making maps."

Learner - "Everything."

They turn to the person standing behind them chewing off an unknown leg bone ... could be deer.  It was probably a deer.

Learner - "Hey."  Tears flesh from the bone and those do seem like rather sharp teeth, "Did you know that this world is completely fucked and we're here to save it ?  Also your map's not a map it's a diagram."

Explorer - Annoyed, "I know one of those two things."

Killer - "Hi."  Stupid smile and a pointless wave, "Um.  I know the other one !"

The learner tears off flesh, examining the Killer.