Help Crafting a Custom Backstory (AKA, I'm Lacking Context for Pretty Much All of These Decisions)

[Cyrus_Blackfeather]

Hey guys!

 

So, it's been a while since I played Pillars 1, but when I went into Deadfire I decided I wanted to try to make a custom backstory rather than just picking one of the pre-generated options. Of course, considering that I've started and discarded like, twenty of the things I'm beginning to wonder if I should just pick the "Survival of the Fittest" backstory and have done with it. 

 

I'm trying to make a backstory that offers a decent amount of personal power while at the same time not being too "video gamey" (I.E., I want decisions to be as internally consistent as possible. It doesn't make sense to be a murderhobo in general, but tell the DoC not to kill Harmke just so her Breastplate is an option*). 

 

*Does anyone know if, past 1.1, sacrificing the DoC to the Blood Pool still makes her Breastplate available? 

 

In particular, for people who have PoE1 fresher in their minds. 

 

1. Does supporting animancy = Aloth dismantling the Leaden Key? 

 

I've always been a fan of supporting animancy in PoE1 as I feel like the animancers, honestly, have a lot of the right ideas in mind regarding developments in soul science, especially when one considers how harmful things like Awakening to a past life can be for someone. Of course, animancy also runs the risk of exposing the secrets of the gods to the world at large, which doesn't seem like a terribly good idea. 

 

"Hey everyone. All of the religious beliefs that you've structured your society on are all lies!" 

 

It's also important to note that even if the gods ARE fake, they still exert a tremendous amount of power on the world. So threatening the position that they feel entitled to doesn't seem like the best way to go about things. We don't need Woedica dropping a moon on the planet and exterminating all life (If that's something she can even do on her own). 

 

More to the point. I was wondering if it was possible to take something of a middle of the road approach regarding animancy. Legalize it, but also have Aloth work to reform the Leaden Key so that, instead of being all about the witch burnings and ripping the tongues from the mouths of heretics, they just focus on gentler acts of subterfuge to ensure that knowledge of the gods' true natures stays out of the hands of those who would misuse it. Or is Aloth's new Leaden Key centered around the animancy issue moreso than just the "Keeping the gods' secrets" issue? 

 

This is definitely the biggest question plaguing character creation for me, as it informs a lot of decisions regarding companions - like whether or not to strengthen Eder's faith, whether Aloth should reform the Leaden Key or not. And that's why context is important here. 

 

Is Aloth totally against animancy in general when he reforms the Leaden Key, or does he just want to protect the gods' secret to prevent the panic that would surely result from that? 

 

2. Thoughts on murderhoboing:

 

I do genuinely want to get the Devil of Caroc breasplate from my personal story. Unfortunately, doing this requires making a choice that seems, in context, not to really fit the sort of character I'm going for. I know the particulars will never come up again, but is there a way to justify not killing Harmke that moreso reflects the fact that to kill him, you'd have to kill all of his friends who had nothing to do with what she's after in the first place and that that would just cause more problems for you, the Watcher, in the long term? Or would that be a conclusion that could easily be drawn from the dialogue presented?

 

I'm wanting to play a Neutral Evil character who still has some scruples - one of which being he tries to keep collateral damage to a minimum where possible. Killing a bunch of bystanders who have nothing to do with the conflict in the first place just creates further problems. 

 

Another point of contention regarding this is the Blood Pool. Durance is always my go-to victim for Papa Skaen's Wild and Wacky Fun-time Tour because he's honestly the companion that offers the least incentive for keeping him around aside from Priest magic (And I think he's one of the few companions who actually has a somewhat well optimized build. He's certainly a better Priest than Xoti, mechanically speaking). Is it possible to do the Blood Pool thing with just the companion you want to sacrifice so that the rest are none the wiser? 

 

Apologies for getting long-winded. What I'm looking for here is proper context behind some of the big reaching decisions from PoE1 so that I can better decide what best makes sense from a roleplaying perspective. 

[omgFIREBALLS]

I do genuinely want to get the Devil of Caroc breasplate from my personal story. Unfortunately, doing this requires making a choice that seems, in context, not to really fit the sort of character I'm going for. I know the particulars will never come up again, but is there a way to justify not killing Harmke that moreso reflects the fact that to kill him, you'd have to kill all of his friends who had nothing to do with what she's after in the first place and that that would just cause more problems for you, the Watcher, in the long term? Or would that be a conclusion that could easily be drawn from the dialogue presented?

On all my characters I take a liking to Stalwart and want it to prosper as an against-all-odds thing. So it certainly feels ****ty to kill a dozen of its number in that event, but it's obviously also weird that a bunch of lumberjacks think they can take you on.

 

I think it wouldn't be so hard to justify not killing Harmke right there and then, so let's say you told DoC whatever you deemed necessary to restrain her for the moment, intending to mete out justice with more subtlety and discretion at a later point. Harmke however realized what was going on and fled before you could slit his throat in the night, and you felt it was too much effort to track him down. You then convinced DoC of the impracticalities of continuing her vendetta and had her give up on chasing Harmke, assuring her he probably froze to death in the wilds anyway.