What to do with Maerwald

[justicar347]

I am playing my way through with a fire godlike cipher with an anti-social temper. So after defeating Maerwald I decided to go with option three, take the threads for knowledge. I am wondering about the other two options though, particularly the "morality" of repairing vs severing his soul rope for my next play through. The big question is does it come across as enslaving him if you bind him to the keep? I'm wanting to play a good guy ranger and that seems a bit off from what he would want to do. Cutting the rope to set him free seems like it is meant to be the "good guy" option. I'd like any thoughts from people that have chosen to bind Maerwald to the keep or set his soul free from the world.

[dirigible]

I played a Monk, and one of my character's beliefs was "it's better to let go of the past and accept what has happened than to seek revenge or absolution". Another was "Power comes from enduring hardship and rising above it".

 

So I let Maerwald go. I didn't want to chain him to eternal anything, and I didn't feel it was right to try to consume him for personal gain.

[gkathellar]

For what it's worth, freeing him gets you +2 Prestige, and binding him gets you +2 Security. Take that as you will.

[falchen]

The knowledge option gives you access to an otherwise unaccessible treasury in endless paths.

[eLPuSHeR]

Is that treasury worth it?

[Luckmann]

I am playing my way through with a fire godlike cipher with an anti-social temper. So after defeating Maerwald I decided to go with option three, take the threads for knowledge. I am wondering about the other two options though, particularly the "morality" of repairing vs severing his soul rope for my next play through. The big question is does it come across as enslaving him if you bind him to the keep? I'm wanting to play a good guy ranger and that seems a bit off from what he would want to do. Cutting the rope to set him free seems like it is meant to be the "good guy" option. I'd like any thoughts from people that have chosen to bind Maerwald to the keep or set his soul free from the world.

 

My suggestion will always be "go with what fits your character", but I'll be honest in that when it came to that choice, I had no idea how to interpret the binding/repairing the rope, either. After all, the Steward is tied to the Stronghold, and she's doing fine. If he's tied to the Stronghold, he will also not be reborn anytime soon, which could be a blessing to someone like him. But it could also be sentencing him to eternal torment and servitude, never-ending madness, chained to a rock while experiencing your previous lives over and over.

 

Letting him go seems like a pretty neutral or good-ish thing to do, but the other two are pretty questioanble, morally, as to whether they're good or evil or whatever. It's very unclear how it happens or what the effects actually are.

[justicar347]

 

I am playing my way through with a fire godlike cipher with an anti-social temper. So after defeating Maerwald I decided to go with option three, take the threads for knowledge. I am wondering about the other two options though, particularly the "morality" of repairing vs severing his soul rope for my next play through. The big question is does it come across as enslaving him if you bind him to the keep? I'm wanting to play a good guy ranger and that seems a bit off from what he would want to do. Cutting the rope to set him free seems like it is meant to be the "good guy" option. I'd like any thoughts from people that have chosen to bind Maerwald to the keep or set his soul free from the world.

 

My suggestion will always be "go with what fits your character", but I'll be honest in that when it came to that choice, I had no idea how to interpret the binding/repairing the rope, either. After all, the Steward is tied to the Stronghold, and she's doing fine. If he's tied to the Stronghold, he will also not be reborn anytime soon, which could be a blessing to someone like him. But it could also be sentencing him to eternal torment and servitude, never-ending madness, chained to a rock while experiencing your previous lives over and over.

 

Letting him go seems like a pretty neutral or good-ish thing to do, but the other two are pretty questioanble, morally, as to whether they're good or evil or whatever. It's very unclear how it happens or what the effects actually are.

 

That is pretty much exactly what my thoughts were. I was hoping someone that chose the other options might know if it describes what happens in a way that makes the morality of it more clear. Heck, even the knowledge one is kind of vague. I mean I dont know if I've absorbed his soul completely or just made use of it then sent it off to the next life.

[dukefx]

That "otherwise unaccessible treasury" is accessible, you just need good enough mechanics. that large, round switch is blue by default if you absorb him, pink if you discover it with mechanics. So, absorbing him is by far the worst choice.

[draek]

I think they should have had fun with it.

If you bind him to the castle - you should get one of those Paper Dialog options going

 

"You wake up to a deep somber moan in the room, as your eyes dart across the shadows you see not a soul in sight. Yet the moan echos throughout your head. Sweat rolls down your forehead as you hide under the sheets. Peeking above the covers to make sure no ghost roams your room. Just as you are about to go back to sleep you hear a deep rumbling voice.

[ Name ] - I am the ghost or Eír Glanfath's Christmas past!."

Edited April 9, 2015 by draek

[Exyll]

speaking of unaccesible treasure, there is a level with a statue of Yesen...it looks like it wants the sword I looted from the main level but that sword had no blue glow around it so I sold it off as a regular weapon...Im guessing he wants that sword back to open that passage?

[Rosveen]

speaking of unaccesible treasure, there is a level with a statue of Yesen...it looks like it wants the sword I looted from the main level but that sword had no blue glow around it so I sold it off as a regular weapon...Im guessing he wants that sword back to open that passage?

Yep. You need a sabre called Resolution.

[DeviantX]

If you sever his soul then check your biography (Journal,) it says, "you freed his soul from the keep, allowing it to procede onward to the next life." Which as I'm sure most would agree would be bad? Not necessarily MORALLY bad, but his soul has a quite the history of uh, violence, so the outcome COULD be negative.. Just my thoughts.

 

Also if you were to bind his soul as the "vigilant guardian" of his beloved keep, would his soul be just as tainted (LOCO) as his living Watcher mind? Your thoughts?

[.niamh.]

I realize it's a month late, but since I'm slow at playing through PoE and haven't found these answers when I was searching here it goes>>

 

(will not list rewards, coz it's been already stated in this thread but only choices, consequences and my interpretation)

 

 

 

after you kill Maerwald:

 

There is a change in the air of the keep. What was thick and suffocating feels to you somehow more breathable, as though yielding to a conquering invader.

Maerwald's body lays inert. You can feel his soul lingering there, uncertain.

There is something unique about this soul in this place. A bond formed in decades of inhabitance and lordship that feels somehow palpable to you, as though even in death the keep knows its former master, and the former master remembers the keep.

In your mind's eye, the bond seems to you as a frayed rope, ghostly and alive, it's frayed ends writhing like tidepool anemones, and you find that if you concentrate on it, you have the ability to manipulate its strands.

1. [Repair the rope, binding Maerwald's soul here as an eternal warden]

The frayed pieces twist and fuse, and as the bond strengthens, the fibers become metal and the rope becomes a chain.

You watch as Maerwald's soul recedes into the floor, melding with it, spreading thin across it until it is one with the entire place, a silent guardian.
 

imho>> this option enslaves him, like committing him to a eternal sanitarium of madness and despair with no chance to escape.

 

2. [sever the rope, allowing Maerwald to pass from this world]

Strand by strand, the connections fly apart like the overstressed strings of some etheral instrument. With the tearing of the final string, the rope becomes liquid and dissolves from your awareness.

Maerwald's soul hovers near you, a vortex of strife and discord, but there is something else there beneath it - something like relief. His soul passes through one of the walls and is gone.

 

imho>> this option releases him from his anguish allowing him to pass on and eventually not remember in the next life (at least not in the beginning).

3. [Draw upon the energy of the rope itself, siphoning knowledge from the connection]

You turn both ends of the rope towards you, bringing them into contact with your essence, and as you do the fibers turn to copper, and through them the energy is conducted into your being.

You are traveling downward now, beneath the place you stand, seeing places dank and cobwebbed and malignant, like some untendend garden overgrown with flora and overrun with vermin. Below everything, at the very bottom, you glimpse for and instant some being you can't quite make out, presiding over it all with brilliant and terrifying power.

One image remains in your perception. A circular room with a stone table that resembles the sun, in an area guarded by suits of armor that move of their own volition. It is deep, not far from the very bottom. There is a door in that room, invisible to all but the most fastidious of eyes, and beyond it, something shimmering, something powerful...

As the image fades, you find yourself in Caed Nua once more. Maerwald's soul is nowhere to be seen.
 

imho>> you absorb his soul or merge it with your own.

 

In all 3 casses Steward says: "I felt Maerwalds passing. You slew him?" / The steward is silent a moment. The air seems to chill. / "It saddens me to hear it. But part of me is grateful to no longer have to wait and worry in darkness."

 

 

[.niamh.]

oh yeah, one more thing - i don't think maerwald is inherently evil or violent, he was just sooo unfortunate as to -

 

 

 

 

- bear the same soul for two opposing sides in a war and to remember it. to be a villain and a (partial) victim turned instrument of vengeance for the crime he committed // it's war, nobody expects unicorns and rainbows. -

 

Maerwald's previous lives were marked by violence and brutality. He was first a Glanfathan marauder of the Nine Claws clan in the Broken Stone War, whose rape of an Aedyr settler woman conceived a child that would continue to bear his soul. Told by his mother that his father had been killed by Glanfathan raiders, this child grew up to become an Aedyr soldier in the War of the Black Trees who oversaw the burning down of a village in an attempt to avenge his supposed father's memory. Maerwald's memories of these atrocities were triggered by watching the fire burn in his hearth, and the two competing personalities came to overwhelm him.

 from PoE gamepedia.

 

 

[abaris]

That "otherwise unaccessible treasury" is accessible, you just need good enough mechanics. that large, round switch is blue by default if you absorb him, pink if you discover it with mechanics. So, absorbing him is by far the worst choice.

 

I was down there with ten or eleven mechanics. It didn't show. So how much would be sufficient?

[Crucis]

 

That "otherwise unaccessible treasury" is accessible, you just need good enough mechanics. that large, round switch is blue by default if you absorb him, pink if you discover it with mechanics. So, absorbing him is by far the worst choice.

 

I was down there with ten or eleven mechanics. It didn't show. So how much would be sufficient?

 

 

I don't think that any amount of Mechanics is enough to find that hidden room.  What you need is the knowledge you get from Maerwald, rather than letting his soul go or binding to the keep.

 

I tried finding that room with a Rogue who had 12 Mechanics and couldn't do it.  It's all about Maerwald's knowledge.

[Narla]

I had a save close to the room so i just went and found out. Cheating a character to mechanics 35 is not enough to find the hidden room so I don't think it's possible without drinking the dudes soul.

[Mahumia]

I actually chose to merge him with the keep, due to the "There is something unique about this soul in this place. A bond formed in decades of inhabitance and lordship that feels somehow palpable to you, as though even in death the keep knows its former master, and the former master remembers the keep." 

 

I felt that keeping the bond was more kind to bring Maerwald peace, than to have the soul go through another reincarnation with suffering from previous lives. The whole chain-thing got me regret the decision though... 

[AnorZaken]

I know this is really late, but I just wanted to add something I feel is relevant that wasn't mentioned about the chaining option, and why I strongly believe there is nothing evil about it:

 

We are told in other parts of the lore that a soul remembers all its past lives, but when reincarnated there is normally something there blocking those memories - meaning before reincarnation the soul already remembers all of that which in life, his bodily form, drove Maerwald mad.

 

Now this tells us something very important about souls in their pre-born state, namely that they do not suffer or are driven mad by this knowledge in the way that humans are. We can deduct this through the reasoning that otherwise most souls would be constantly tormented and sorrowful, perhaps even go mad, remembering in full every sin and all suffering they have ever committed or caused.*

 

Now perhaps it is so and all of existence is eternal torment and suffering... but it seems highly unlikely for the world to be shaped that way - a hell were no sin is ever forgiven.

 

This leads me to the point about binding Maerwalds soul to the keep. Since he is already freed from the shackles of his body, I'm convinced that his suffering and madness has already passed. In his soul form he is naturally gifted with the capacity to accept all the deeds of his previous incarnations in some way that he could not in life. Thus binding him to the keep seems not a matter of torture, but simply a way to end his soul's tale of misfortunate lives. Whether this is a good or bad act in the grander scheme of souls, gods, or the circle of life is hard to know, but like the stewardess there should hardly be the case that there is any suffering for Maerwald, neither for his sins nor for the eternal bond restraining them both to that place.

 

So basically the choice of freeing him or binding him is to me the choice of restarting the cycle, or stopping it and granting his soul eternal rest as a spirit infused into the earth and stones of this land.

 

(*If this special capacity that souls have is because they have something that humans lack, some insight or deeper understanding perhaps, or opposite because they lack some aspect of life required to turn those memories into an experience of pain... that is to my knowledge unknown.)

 

Oh, and for the record I suspect the third option isn't evil either, since you supposedly absorbs his soul into yours, and we are told that souls splitting and merging occurs naturally in the cycle of life anyway. Of course there is a difference between merging and siphoning - should it be the latter then it is probably a very evil thing to do...

[why]

Yep.  You're doing him a favor by chaining his ass to the stronghold forever.  In fact, it's your burden to help him by giving his soul purpose.  You shouldn't feel guilty about these things.  You should feel obliged.  I convinced myself that I was actually helping people avoid their bodily suffering by murdering them in their sleep and taking their money.  After all, a bodiless soul is a happy soul in my book.

 

Just having a little fun with you.  As a logical argument, it makes sense on some level I'm sure, but it just. doesn't. feel right.

[DreamWayfarer]

I disagree. By binding his soul, you could be in a way preserving him from the chaos of the Wheel and the chance of awakening again to his suffering. I do not think he would still suffer, if only because a insane guardian is a very poor one, and in part because I got a sense of serenity and purpose from his decaying bond to the keep.

 

I also don't think the "chain" means he is a slave. Yes, he cannot choose to leave, but he couldn't choose to stay if you sent him to the Wheel, and a chain can hold you down but it can also keep you from falling. In a way, I see his destiny as becoming something like the Steward, but more silent and hidden.

 

While it is a moraly ambiguous option compared to the "clean" option of returning him to the circle, I believe a well meaning Watcher could reasonably choose it without feeling guilty.

Edited February 9, 2016 by DreamWayfarer

[why]

In all seriousness, I think players should do what they want. So I might joke about stuff, but I don't really mean anything.

 

As far as this argument goes, it's got that 'angels dancing on the head of a pin' feel to it. If you genuinely think it's the right thing, cool. Just don't extrapolate it all the way or you'll end up with a self serving nihilistic device to justify all manner of wickedness.

[DreamWayfarer]

If you genuinely think it's the right thing, cool. Just don't extrapolate it all the way or you'll end up with a self serving nihilistic device to justify all manner of wickedness.

Now, that seems uncalled for. I mean, that is a criticism that could be applied to any argument one disagrees with, by seeing a lack of morality where there is just a different moral point of view.

 

Maerwald has no choice either way, reencarnating or staying in the Keep, and there is no evidence either way for which would cause more suffering. We only know being released gave immediate peace to him, not how he feels about becoming an eternal guardian, so I don't think it is out of question for the Watcher to feel turning the rope into a chain is not a bad thing.

 

Plus, it does not sound more nihilistic than sending him to the Wheel.

Edited February 9, 2016 by DreamWayfarer

[why]

Dude, I think you're reading my post with an angrier ear than I'm typing it. You think I'm wrong? Cool. I have no real stake in what you do with Maerwald. I already recognized some logical merit to the argument. I just think it falls into bit of a darker grey area for my tastes. I'm just discussing the issue, but I assure you without rancor.

[DreamWayfarer]

Dude, I think you're reading my post with an angrier ear than I'm typing it.

Maybe the words "self serving nihilistic device to justify all manner of wickedness" rubbed me the wrong way. If you mean no offense, don't write such things, especialy when discussing something as deeply personal as morality.

 

And I don't think I ever said that I am a dude. Or that I am not. I am curious if you assumed I was male for some specific reason.

 

I just think it falls into bit of a darker grey area for my tastes.

It is in a gray area, which means that the morality of it is up to how you interpretate the facts given, make assumptions from them and assign priorities to certain moral goals. That is why there is discussion about it.

 

It makes sense that people have diverging views on the situation, but your last posts seen to imply that you believe that those who think that chaining Maerwald's soul to the Keep can be seen as moraly good under the right light are in pratice a few steps above being completely amoral.

 

I am not saying you really think that way, but you could try to soften your words, to not give such impression.

Edited February 9, 2016 by DreamWayfarer