#fictional games

Update on the Amnesia ita bag

Alright. As promised, I will finally go into trying to fully construct how to play Wicked Grace. I spent this week overthinking this game and annoying pretty much everyone I know with my ramblings about this game. I went so far mainly about what the full deck looks like, and about the card values within it. And let me quickly update the list of cards, as I changed around some of the card names to fit better with the established lore.

So, let me quickly for once list up the cards. In my analysis the Wicked Grace card game is a card game with a deck of 4 suits, each of them featuring 15 cards, making the deck 60 cards in total. The suits are Serpents (also called Drakes), Angels (also called Spirits), Knights (also called Blades) and Songs.

Other than with a Poker Deck, the cards are not mainly the same in every suite, but unique to every suite, as rather than focusing on numbers, they are focusing on mythological and magical themes. The cards are:

Serpents:

Serpent of Temerity

Serpent of Mercy

Serpent of Avarice

Serpent of Empathy

Serpent of Deceit

Serpent of Insight

Serpent of Insight

Serpent of Sadness

Serpent of Loyality

Serpent of Decay

Serpent of Night

Serpent of Snummer

Serpent-Entwined Dagger

Serpent of the Forgotten

Serpent of Judgement

Serpent of the Lotus

Angels:

Angel of Temerity

Angel of Mercy

Angel of Cupidity

Angel of Charity

Angel of Treachery

Angel of Truth

Angel of Pride

Angel of Fortitude

Angel of Death

Angel of Day

Angel of Spring

Angel-Drawn Bow

Angel of the Fade

Angel of Declarations

Angel of Hearts

Knights:

Knight of Temerity

Knight of Mercy

Knight of Greed

Knight of Compassion

Knight of Duplicity

Knight of Wisdom

Knight of Anger

Knight of Bravery

Knight of Life

Knight of the Dawn

Knight of Winter

Knight-Wielded Shield

Knight of Ages

Knight of Sacrifice

Knight of Roses

Songs:

Song of Temerity

Song of Mercy

Song of Gluttony

Song of Relief

Song of Lies

Song of Sincerity

Song of Dispair

Song of Hope

Song of Rebirth

Song of Twilight

Song of Autumn

Song-Praised Staff

Song of Fires

Song of Ascension

Song of Lilies

Other than suits, the cards have themes. I am going to assume that primarily the cards usually are considered to have three different themes: Emotions/Spirits, Cycles of Nature, and Higher Powers. I am going to assume the Flower Cards are going to be considered Jokers, and can be counted to each theme as wanted.

However, within each theme, there is also always cards that are very closely related in the Cycles of Nature and the Higher Powers, while among the Emotion themes at least the positive and negative emotions can be grouped together. Just keep that in mind, as I go into the further rules! 😊

I reckon that the game given that it seems to have 60 cards could be played with up to 12 people, though in that case I am going to assume the rules would need to be adjusted given that you definitely can swap out cards. It might however be – we see that in the scenes – that in those cases there might just be a way of exchanging cards between the players.

How to Play

However, assuming we have six or less players, I do reckon that the game usually goes like this:

The deck is shuffled.

Everyone receives five cards.

Every player can switch cards, putting cards from their own hand onto the table and either drawing from the deck, or taking cards from the pile of cards discarded by other players before. (I am going to assume, that the cards are always face down and that playing them face up, as you can see it some people do in the game, is considered cheating.)

Every player gets a chance to switch out cards in the same order (probably clockwise or counter clockwise).

Once a person places a bet, everyone else can either go along or forfeit.

After the bet is placed, everyone has one chance to swap cards one more time – after that last swap deciding on whether to hold the bet or not.

After everyone has either gone in or dropped out, the cards of everyone in are compared and the person with the highest rated hand gets to take the betted money (or whatever everyone is betting on).

I am assuming this will then be repeated until nobody has anything left to bet with. As it often is with such gambling!

Now, the final question is: Who wins?

Winning Hands

Firstly, the table I am using above can be found in GoogleDocs. You can use it, if you want to.

Now, it does seem reasonable to assume, that generally speaking some of the rules of Poker apply. We know that much from the dialogue. To be exact we know:

Having two of the same suit is a pair, and gives points.

Having three of the same is a triple and gives points.

From this I am going to assume that having four or five of the same suit also gives points.

If two people have the same number of cards o the same suit, the person who manages to get cards not just of a suit, but also of the same “theme” will win a tie.

It also seems to be reasonable to assume that each card has an individual point value, so the higher valued cards will with a tie also win out over lower valued cards.

Additionally, the dialogues in Inquisition imply heavily, that the suits also have different values – however, we have no idea how those values go. My personal hunch would be Serpents < Knights < Angels < Songs, just based on mythology, but it is just a hunch.

We also know, that there have to be some sort of combinations like in Hanafuda, where certain combinations of three or more cards have also their own values.

So, generally I will assume that the following combinations will give you points:

Five cards of the same suit will have the highest value.

Followed by four cards of the same suit.

Followed by a triplet and a pair.

Followed by just a triplet.

Followed by two pairs.

Followed by one pair.

Again: you will get more points, if they are from the same theme.

Also, I am going to assume that if you collect:

All four seasons

All four cycles of life

All four times of day

All four aspects of Rule

All four weapons

All four concepts

That is going to be also worth some sort of points. However, I am not fully sure whether those are worth more than five of the same suit. Mathematically they should be (it is a lot harder to get four specific cards out of 60 than any five out of twelve from the same set of 60), but we also know that not always to gambling rules follow math.

However, we also know that there are special combinations (again, like Hanafuda) that have specific point values). The one we know is this hand from Isabela:

“I have three angels: fortitude, truth, and charity, and the knight of dawn. I win!”

So, I am going to call this combination “The Brave Knight at Dawn”, because those kinds of combinations usually are going to have some sort of name. I am also going to assume that it needs the knight of dawn and the angel of fortitude, but will do with any other two positive emotion angels.

I am also going to assume one other thing: I am thinking that these combinations might actually differ depending on where in Thedas you are. Because in games where there are more storytelling heavy combinations, this is a thing that happens a lot in real life: There are combinations that makes sense in a very specific context, but not in others. And if you really wanna have fun, given that in most DA games the characters come from different backgrounds, you totally could write a story of a fun game of Wicked Grace, that ends up being a big ass argument about which combinations are legal and which are not. I would find that hilarious!

Some ideas about combinations:

The Coronation: The Knight of Roses, the Song of Ascension, and the Angels of Day and of Hearts

The Last Betrayal: The Serpent-Entwined Dagger, the Serpent of Judgement, the Angel of Treachery and the Song of Twilight

The First Day of Spring: Angels of Day and Spring, Songs of Lilies and Hopes

Execution of the Innocent: Serpent of Judgement, Angel of Death, Angel-Drawn Bow, and Song of Dispair

The Age of Dragons: The Serpent of the Forgotten, the Song of Fires, the Angel of Pride, and the Knight of Rage

I hope you get what I am trying to get at. As I said, technically we just know that some sort of those combinations exist. And given we only know one of them that exists in canon, we can pretty much come up with whatever. :P

But yeah, I am going to assume these are generally speaking the rules of how this game is played.

And I am also going to assume that there are at least five other games played with the same sort of deck. I might at some point think about those as well – but not today. For today, I will just leave it at this, and hope I helped someone to clear this out for some sort of fanfic.

You will excuse me? I definitely have to write a fic about how Spite learns to play this game xD

Jumanji (board game) This screen-accurate Jumanji board is carved from wood, has accurate pawns, and plays drums when it senses you’ve picked it up. A screen works as the display through the magic green middle lens.

In addition, there's the World’s First Self-Moving Jumanji board. Its tokens respond to the exact dice roll of the player and move by themselves. The game also keeps track of who is trapped in the jungle, how many lives a player has left, and if a 5 or 8 is rolled to release a player from the jungle.

Lastly, I wanted to list this one from Infinity Collection Studios. This board, made to replicate the one seen in the movie (like all of these), also displays riddles through the middle lens.

Now, the old Jumanji movie had a sequel, Zathura, about a board game called Zathura. Here’s a kickstarter for a functional Zathura game with moving parts. Inside, the board has a mechanism for moving the tokens on chains like in the movie. It also has random number generation, card ejection, a speaker to emit the game’s sounds, and a turning key and button. 

Effingo is a fictional action-adventure game in 3rd person and an open world. Representing a pure nanopunk with its problems, the game reveals such topics as the concept of life, the role of technology, the preservation of culture and information, the further existence of civilization, and the relationship of people in critical situations. Honestly, Death Stranding has inspired me to create this concept.

The Lore:

It all started in 2028. Thanks to the sudden boom of nanorobots (called nanites) in medicine, the largest corporations had seen the potential in this technology and decided to invest in it their own funds. Subsequently, nanites were used in construction and military operations, and Nanovative, the main developer and supplier of nanites, became a true monopolist in its field. After some terrorist acts with a destruction of monuments, the company launched the Effingo programme that implied the preservation of masterpieces of culture and art, based on their copies made by nanites. The program had to work through a software analysis of shapes, interiors, and materials of architectural creations, which data were loaded into nanites. Nanovative announced the creation of a "Museum", an artificial archipelago in the Pacific Ocean that included continuous tours. The nanites themselves were able to maintain the monuments in a perfect condition, restore them in case of damage, and with the embedded program would save copies even after the destruction of the originals. At the same time, the percentage of income from excursions would depart to countries whose monuments have already been "saved", and thus all the parties would remain in the black. This caused, in the main, a positive reaction in the society, but the forecasters, namely the union of scientists who founded the International Archive of Mankind (IAM), declared the inexpediency of this idea. In their opinion, behind this were purely economic motives, and the "plan for the preservation of culture" did not make any sense, because with the same success it could be possible to convert those computer models into virtual reality, where they would have existed forever. Effingo was called the "world-wide tourist trap", but this provoked a flurry of criticism in the media, and many scientists dubbed IAM "the unfortunate echo of an escapist generation", complaining that nanites are the future of mankind. In 2030, the first colony was founded on Mars. Despite all the suggestions of Nanovative to use their product for faster construction of the base, NASA refused it, giving priority to modular homes. By 2033, the contract for architectural copying with Nanovative was signed by most countries, including Egypt, Great Britain, Japan, and the EU. The first sight was the Great Sphinx of Giza. Nevertheless, there were rumors that the corporation illegally buys "models" from non-interested countries and tests them at their landfills. At one such test in Colorado, nanites deviated from the program for the first time, creating a perfect sphere with a diameter of 10 meters. The scientists tried to understand the reason, but could not find anything out. After about a year the nanites ceased to respond to any commands and began to create their own structures, going beyond a site. The company destroyed a significant part of them, but after a while found out that the nanites learned to copy themselves. This incident was hushed up until 2032, when the nanites began to "devour" the town of Sugar City, Colorado. The information was leaked to the media, and the nanites were recognized as a national threat. Anticipating a global catastrophe, the IAM moved its base from Norway to Antarctica, including the Alexandria project, the largest repository of all the information accumulated by mankind and encoded in DNA. Nanites all around the globe had also "challenged" humanity, starting simultaneously and continuously evolving. The real chaos began, during which the population of continents hurriedly moved to the islands. The Japanese researchers invented special repeaters capable of "deactivating" nanites, but nanorobots adapted to it as well. After a while, the movement of nanites changed from a chaotic one to understandable aspiration to the south. At the dawn of a global threat, the UN began to cooperate with NATO and the armies of individual countries in order to control the territories that were subjected to the "attack" of nanites. As they were evolving, nanorobots were acquiring new features, going from copying inorganic materials and self-copying to manipulation with gases and liquids. Mastering the new levels of matter changing, quadrillion of nanites headed to Antarctica, and by 2046 occupied some part of it. As the scientists expected, nanites somehow learned about the IAM, and therefore they tried to get there. The organization could not get help from the UN for a long time, and only an Australian private company NovaSec illegally provided a material support, and even delivered the Osprey O rocket for the emergency launch of the IAM to space, which got stuck in the ice during transportation. Meanwhile, the colony on Mars was growing: NASA carefully considered the possible problem of the disappearance of mankind and concentrated on adapting the life outside Earth. 2046. At the south pole, there was a catastrophe on the Noah Base. Between the researchers, a conflict arose on the basis of the hypothetical seizure of the area by nanites, during which the scientist Michael Jepsen organized a riot and attempted to kill all the personnel. A team of five people was sent from Hooverville Station to find out the reason and resolve the conflict. The detachment did not return surprisingly, therefore, because of the shortage of people, it was customary to gather researchers from adjacent IAM branches. Among them were Paul Vernon (a rescuer), Kate Crosser (a doctor), Vince Rego (a meteorologist), Thomas Callahan (an engineer who earlier worked on nanorobots), and Greg Wing (a NovaSec employee, and a programmer). A station warden Lenny Crimons, who asked for help, became the team's "brain".

The game begins with the arrival of a new personnel at the Hooverville Station that serves as a hub and main base in the game. The player takes control of Paul Vernon who has become the unofficial leader of the crew, which is not approved by some team members. After acquaintance, the player is free to either study the world, or follow the story missions. At the same time you can take up to two team-mates with you (in the main quests the whole team participates). The main mission is simple: to find Osprey O, deliver it to the station, and then get to the South Pole, and save the Alexandria project. At the same time, the player will have to study other stations and zones occupied by nanites, as well as to simply survive, following the level of cold and air condition. The game has not so much action because the main enemies here are nanorobots. Paul can either use special weapons to "repel" them or completely avoid nanites.

The game world covers the real territory of the northern part of the Transantarctic Mountains (that are located in the south of the game map) and parts of the Polar Plateau. Approximately in the center of the map there is the Noah Base (the coordinates are 87°12'12.0"S 120°08'04.9"E), in the southwest is the Hooverville station (87°12'12.0"S 120°08'04.9"E). The Osprey O rocket which got stuck in the ice is located in the north-west, almost in the corner of the map. In the center, in the north and west, there are several large zones occupied by nanites. Usually in these places the player can find artificial mountains and lakes, as well as "man-made" structures like Moai from the Easter Island, a half-buried statue of freedom, the Great Sphinx of Giza with an ideal sphere instead of a head, and many other "works" of nanites. Closer to the center, the climate becomes milder, there is no snow at all (or rather, the snow is "buried" under the layer of artificial earth), and some kind of weird trees is also presented. Artificial lakes and swamps of slime are inhabited by long worms and smaller organisms; in the air webbed beings-balloons that resemble jellyfish and emit light slowly fly, and the lifeless surface is full of coral-like outgrowths of flesh. In the atmosphere, the content of external gases is high, somewhere even methane predominates. In the very center there is the Noah Base with the Alexandria project.

In-game Story:

When the team gets to Osprey O, they detect an artificial glacier in the middle of the plain. Getting inside, the characters observe that their goal is in some kind of frozen slime, and all the NovaSec workers who delivered the goods were killed and turned into growths of flesh. After the successful rescue of the rocket, opinions about the further operation are divided. If earlier the characters simply expressed theories based on their point of view, since that moment everyone starts to follow them. Kate and Lenny believe that they must save Alexandria and all of humanity, Vince is convinced of his nihilism, and Thomas wonders what will happen if they help nanites to realize the goal of capturing the base. Only Greg does not have his own opinion, and therefore everyone will try to recruit him. Paul (the player) first adheres to the same views as Kate and Lenny, but he can take any point of view. The ending depends on to whom Paul will join. The player has to control the degree of tension in the team and try to convince as many mates as possible. In the course of studying the terrain, researchers are convinced that nanites absorb any information and thus evolve. Judging by the attempts to create life, they can already transform DNA, and if they get to Alexandria, they will "absorb" it and take possession of all the knowledge of mankind. Thomas suggests that their real goal is to become a meta-organism, a God who can change reality on all quantum levels at once. In the final mission, the characters penetrate the Noah base, around which the nanites form a dome of slime. Checking the records in the base computers, they find out that the last team that was supposed to come to the rescue, had a traitor who decided to destroy the project and has erased two backups of Alexandria. The team spent about a month there, but the nanites that penetrated the base killed all the researchers. Delivering the rocket and getting to the central computer of Alexandria, every character tries to take control in their own hands.

Endings:

1) Salvation (Paul, Kate, Lenny ± Greg): Paul with his adherents, contrary to warnings and threats from the others, moves the Alexandria vat with the encoded information, a decoder and a laptop to the rocket and launches it to Mars. In the process, the player kills the so-called "radicals", namely Thomas, Vince ± Greg (unless he was recruited by Paul). However, Greg and Lenny can also die by the recklessness of the player. Alexandria is sent to the Martian colony, and nanites without any sources of information will need much more time to further development. Despite the positive context of the ending, only the knowledge of humanity, and not humanity itself, has been saved. Nanorobots will seek to get to Mars, and the fate of the species depends on other people. Nevertheless, the survived members of the crew successfully escape the base and return to the Hooverville Station.

2) Salvation+ (Paul, Kate, Lenny ± Greg): if during the map study the team stumbled upon an old American Missouri Station and found there a nuclear warhead (which is strictly contrary to the Antarctic Treaty System), they can take it and use the missile in the final mission. In this case, all the characters will perish, but some of the nanites will be destroyed. Otherwise, this ending does not differ from an ordinary salvation.

3) Birth (Paul, Thomas ± Greg): the Thomas' idea has been realized. All the objectionable members of the team were killed, and the vat with Alexandria was opened. The nanites successfully absorb information and move to a new stage of development, becoming a God. The characters observe the formation of a single organism that grows into a huge and mighty tree and changes gravity on the base, absorbing all the survivors. The nanites achieve their goal, and a new era in the history of the universe begin.

4) Nihilism (Paul, Vince ± Greg): the nihilists erase the Alexandria project, and all the survivors, including Paul and Vince, commit suicide. Some nanites are destroyed, and therefore, no longer have a goal.

5) Nihilism+ (Paul, Vince ± Greg): if a nuclear warhead is discovered at the Missouri Station, nihilists can apply it in the last mission, destroying not only themselves but the base and a part of the nanites.

Defictionalized Video Games:

Sugar Rush (Wreck-It Ralph): Sugar Rush Superraceway on itch.io  (It also appeared as a flash game on the Disney website, though that did not include Vanellope, for some reason.)

In addition to Vanellope's arcade game, Sugar Rush, a playable version of Hero's Duty was actually available as a flash game on Disney's website.

Jonasthena and Scyllalizard (scroll down) made real full-size arcade cabinets for the defictionalized game Fix-It Felix Jr. (Officially, you could buy your own fully functional Fix-It Felix cabinet…this big.)

Scyllalizard is also making a real Turbo Time cabinet (same link, don't scroll down.) I can't be sure that it will have a functional game, but the other one did, so I think so.

(Rules of Gungi)

Renaissance: The Dark Cult is a fictional action-adventure videogame. The main feature of the game world is that alchemy is a real chemical science. In this case, magic does not exist at all, and all the principles of the work of alchemy are explained by the characteristics of the biochemical structure of Earth.

The Plot and Gameplay:

Rome, Papal States, 1521. The Four Years' War is about to break out, golems are fighting in the Colosseum, alchemists are trying to find the philosopher's stone, and High Renaissance artists are working on their masterpieces. The protagonist Santi De'nilzo graduates from the Medical Faculty of the University of Sapienza and moves to the outskirts of Rome to his elder brother Gilberto. He is a sly artisan-alchemist with great relations to artists, inventors, and some scammers. Shortly before the events of the game, he was receiving threats from strange people who, he believes, belong to the same organization. Meanwhile, there are kidnappings and ritual killings in the city, which gives rise to rumors about some kind of "dark cult". Together with his friends, Gilberto begins an independent investigation into which he draws the protagonist.

In the sewage system of Cloaca Maxima, Hemera, a society of non-conformists, thieves and scammers who rejected the emerging manufacturing work and organized their own society of independent creators and artisans, resides. Most of them are poor, but prideful. The church treats alchemy with caution, considering alchemists to be sorcerers, but at the same time secretly uses their developments. Some alchemists, however, deny magic and rely on a scientific approach, but many of them use the esoteric picture of the world for simplified systematization. The scientifical difference between the game world and ours is the presence of aether, one of the forms of dark matter, which began to stand out after the Big Bang and has been reacting with matter at the subatomic level, allowing the plastic change of matter, including organic one. Thus, the creation of artificial life has become one of the most promising discoveries of the Middle Ages. Arabs have made golems, and soon they were imported to Europe. Despite the fact that these creatures did not possess self-awareness, they were easily trained as dogs. In 1520, the famous alchemist and iatrochemist Paracelsus went to Rome, where he was able to grow the first homunculus, making a real breakthrough in alchemy.

From the point of gameplay, the game is a third-person adventure with elements of interactive cinema and a free camera, something resembling games by Telltale. The player has to solve riddles, use stealth, alchemy skills, and fight both in close and in long-range combat. Hemera plays a role of the hub with the tasks given by its inhabitants. Nearly all missions take place in open spaces, where in addition to the main goal, which can be achieved in various ways, there are NPCs that give "quests in the quest", as well as secret passages. The system of such "micro-tasks" allows the player to study the game world more thoroughly, find more information about the cult and learn the secrets of alchemy. After each successful micro-task, the player is given some experience points, which accumulate into leveling points. These points can be spent on 3 branches of the skill tree: Oratory, Alchemical Knowledge, and Military Skill. The level of each branch depends on the playstyle. For example, in a stressful situation, the player can either literally "talk the enemy to death”, make a special alchemical mix and blind them, or simply knock them out. There is a separate parameter called Deduction, which is filled after the successful execution of a deductive (usually secret) micro-task on the level. The higher the deduction level of the character, the faster Santi will find a cult. Thus, it allows the player to skip some parts of the plot and achieve the necessary ending. Another important aspect is Hemera's attitude to the player. If they pass all side quests, their reputation rises, if they ignore them — the attitude quickly falls, and Hemerans want to have less and less to do with the protagonist.

During his adventures, Santi will visit the Colosseum, return the blind alchemist who has allegedly been to another world, his healing treatise, solve the mystery of the dark cult, and much more. The game is divided into acts (chapters): "Arrival", "Falling" and "The Cult". The first chapter begins with the reunification of Santi, "Falling" with the abduction of Gilberto, and "The Cult" with the burning of Hemera by the priests. After a tipping point in "Falling", the player can become the new leader of Hemera, if they have reached the required level of respect, as well as Oratory. The same thing happens in chapter 3: it depends on the reputation of the player whether Santi's comrades will help him solve the last mission. Following the footsteps of his brother, the protagonist finds the base of the cult, located under the church. Bypassing the guards, in the dungeon he sees exhausted Gilberto who reports that the leader of the cult, using a special machine, pumps out all the liquids from him and a couple of other prisoners. Studying the lab, Santi finally meets the antagonist. He turns out to be a man named Velimir, a Russian alchemist who almost 200 years ago brought out the elixir of life and gained longevity with the side effect of rotting alive. Earlier Velimir had lived somewhere in the vicinity of Novgorod, and after meeting with some Arab merchant he became interested in alchemy. Subsequently, he became a skinny, charred, literally black creature with a naked skull, and therefore served as a real prototype of the character of the Slavic folklore Koschei, horrifying brave adventurers who often visited his hut to kill him and become a hero. These heroes were sent by his wife, who ran away from him because she thought that his mind had been captured by evil. The brain of Velimir continued to function, but he seemed to be burning from the inside, receiving incredible pain all the time. The alchemist had set a goal to get rid of the suffering and left his native land. All these 200 years he was travelling and learning the secrets of alchemy of various nations, gathering cults and burning cities, collecting wisdom and knowledge bit by bit. He visited the Great Ming Empire, Tibet, India (Kashmir), Persia and the Ottoman Empire, developing his own ideas of alchemy and philosophy. It was he who pursued Paracelsus, trying to elicit from him the secrets of homunculi growing. In Rome he met the European alchemy. Gaining wisdom from the best monks, Velimir eventually developed his own concept of gaining immortality: in order to achieve that it was necessary to create an aetheric apparatus that works on primary and secondary fuels. The device consists of three fuel tanks (with three sub tanks) and one central and sealed capsule with water for immersion. Water evaporates and turns into aether which soaks the body and is inhaled by a scientist, after which he becomes a new form of life. The primary fuel was salt, mercury and sulfur, the secondary one was the elixir of life, the homunculus and the philosopher's stone. After entering the main hall, the protagonist starts a conversation with Velimir, during which the game checks the player’s perks. If Santi has developed Oratory, this can lead to the first ending. If he has developed Oratory and Alchemical Knowledge — to the 2nd, and so on.

Endings:

1) Oratory. The player reveals all the secrets of Velimit and convinces him that his ideas are worthless, and the people whom he killed or sacrificed to his experiments were lost in vain. In fact, all this time he was trying to get rid of the pain by inflicting pain on others. If successful, Velimir agrees in his inconsistency and adequately accepts death by the hands of the protagonist, dissolving the cult before this.

2) Oratory + Alchemical Knowledge. If Santi has these two branches well developed, he can convince Velimir that his machine cannot exist, understanding that, in theory, it would cause great harm to the city and the reality itself. He insists on some miscalculations and, winning his confidence, says that for Gilberto’s release he will help him. "Repairing" the machine, Santi breaks it, and Velimir gasps in poisonous vapors. The protagonist frees Gilberto and escapes from Rome.

3) Alchemical Knowledge. Seeing Santi's extraordinary knowledge of alchemy, Velimir offers the protagonist either to help him with the machine in exchange for the release of Gilberto, or die. When choosing the first option, the character is forced to help the antagonist, and when choosing the second one, the battle will begin. However, the cultist deceives the character and pumps out all the fluids from him, starts the machine and ascends to the aetherial state. In the final scene, it is shown how the half-dead Gilberto lies on the ruins of the city and sees in the sky a greenish flash which blinds him.

4) Battle. With necessary level of Military Skill, the player enters an open battle with Velimir. In order to win, Santi needs to deal with two golems and four cultists. Successfully defeating enemies and killing Velimir, the protagonist destroys the machine and frees Gilberto who is planning to rebuild Hemera in the future.