Chương 45: 2.5 The Pretender - Foo Fighters (4:30)

THREAD: How the hell do you trigger the Corva body-jump? USER: PatchNotesOrDidntHappen PatchNotesOrDidntHappen (Original Poster) I'm pretty close to throwing in the towel on this one. I just spent the past three hours wandering all over The MIZ in Frontiers, trying everything I could think of to trigger Corva body-jacking my character, and I've got nothing. I'm posting this as a proper field report so nobody else wastes their entire weekend trying to do all the same stupid shit I just did.

Everything I did was on a clean save with no mods, not even the UI tweaks or the QoL improvements. I figured if there was some hidden quest trigger or a conditional flag, mods might interfere with it in a way I wouldn't notice. I reinstalled the game, verified the files, and then ran it straight vanilla. I also tried mirroring Zeke as close as possible, which meant running the whole thing classless.

I started up the game, took the default loadout, declined all the class unlocks I earned, slogged through the intro and then made a beeline straight for The MIZ. I didn't touch any other quests except for the introductory and tutorial ones the game forces on you. Once I found Corva, I exhausted all his dialogue options. This was obviously a different Corva from the one that shows up in Z3ke's fanfic. He's youngish and missing an eye. Completely opposite from the one in Zeke's story.

At this point I was running two saves at the same time. With my first save I took all the polite and cooperative dialogue options. On my second save I tried all the aggressive and confrontational ones. Neither led to anything interesting. Once you exhaust his dialogue tree, he just starts recycling lines. So I pivoted. I focused everything I had on pickpocket and pushed it up to 6 as fast as I could. I figured that would be way past the threshold that an NPC would catch me every time I stole from them.

But it didn't matter. Every attempt I made on Corva failed instantly. His detection radius is ridiculous. It's gotta be coded in the game that you can't steal from the man unless you got a 10 in pickpocket. I will say that there was one time I almost got away with it. His inventory screen popped up for a split second before he caught me. Luckily, I was recording everything and slowed the footage down later and got a single-frame glimpse of what he had on him. AND IT WAS NOTHING.

Dood didn't have any ankhs or relics or unique quest items. All he had was the standard NPC junk in his inventory. There was nothing that looked suspicious or like it would trigger a quest. At this point, I don't really see a point going forward in Frontiers. Either Zeke is just fucking with us, or maybe we're all wrong that he's trying to get us to take a closer look at Corva. I don't know. I'm frustrated enough right now that I'm thinking about stepping back and just letting someone else solve this mystery…

if there's anything to solve in the first place. Peppercorny Yea, I did all that but in Emberveil. It's a very different Corva there. He's a drunk, and not the cool, fun kind that I turn into on weekends. The guy is half-feral and exhausted, like he hasn't slept properly in years. He doesn't give any quests in Emberveil. Corva just sits around and functions kind of like a living rumor mill. You can ask him about places and factions, and he points you in the right direction, but that's basically it.

I exhausted all his dialogue options, but he doesn't do anything after that. I tried a bunch of other stuff, like coming back to him at different times of the day or visiting him after major story beats. I got drunk next to him, tried pissing him off, used all the different emotes on him. Hell, I even let my character idle next to him for a good thirty minutes. Dood didn't do shit. If the Emberveil Corva is capable of body swapping, he sure as shit isn't advertising it. Dood just feels stuck and… depreseed.

It's like he's the version of himself who's lost all his forward momentum. I'm thinking that Emberveil is a dead end for forcing him into anything. DeathIndex Anyone else get anything different? I'm thinking that we've missed something. Before we all give up, let's strip this down and start at the beginning. Frontiers - appears early on in the game. Missing an eye. Early 20s. Reactive. Gives minor quests and seems genuinely eager to help out your character. Emberveil - stationary and drunk.

Solely used as an informational NPC with no quest authority. Kinda gave up on life. Null Protocol - he's a late-game character. Old and scarred. Comes off as manipulative when he talks with the PC. I always felt that he knew more than he was letting on. Tech Reign - everyone's favorite Corva. Grizzled and active. Gives a bunch of quests. Frequently doing BAMF things in the background that helps out your character. Syndicate's Wake - final appearance. Paranoid and in hiding. Dies in the last raid.

Shards of Time - doesn't appear, thankfully. Otherwise we'd all have to play that bosheet game. Here's what I'm thinking. Corva never initiates a major quest. Sure, he can give you a couple quests in the games, and he helps out with the last raid in Syndicate's, but it feels like the guy is almost passive in a lot of the games. It's like things happen around him. He's not really the main driver of the story.

Instead of asking ourselves how to make Corva jump into a different body, we should be asking ourselves which conditions would force him to abandon the one he's in. If he's always reactive, we gotta push him into something he doesn't want to do. PatchNotesOrDidntHappen (Original Poster) Good luck with that. In most of the games, Corva won't even leave the safe areas. He's only in The MIZ in Frontiers. You can't recruit him or drag him into danger. He doesn't head out on quests with you.

You can't hire him as a merc. Syndicate's is basically the only time that the average player sees him fight. Tech Reign is the only exception, where he's a gunslinging badass. Otherwise, he just sits around. Y_Draig_Gogh If the problem with Corva is that he won't leave safe places in games that aren't Syndicate's, can't you just bring the danger to him? Like kite hostile mobs all the way to him, maybe even a roving world boss? PatchNotesOrDidntHappen (Original Poster) Tried it. I even spawned enemies on top of him.

Frontiers Corva is definitely tougher than he looks, but I still managed to bombard him with mobs. But when he dies, nothing happens. He doesn't drop any ankhs, and nearby NPCs don't just disappear. That last part is what's pissing me off. If Z3ke is right and he just hands out those ankhs, you'd expect him to body swap with a nearby NPC and then just act like nothing happened. But I strolled through The MIZ afterwards and couldn't find any NPC that suddenly went missing.

If Corva is body hopping, he's not taking any of the NPCs that exist in the game. Skulk-fossil Maybe in Syndicate's, the game Corva died in, a different NPC went missing. Folkenvest ^ skulk. I mean, it's theoretically possible, but good luck testing it. The servers are all dead. And if Z3ke's lore hinges on Syndicate's only data, and we've got no way to confirm it, then that's just fucked up. Plus, it would be almost impossible to tell if that actually happened.

If Corva was body hopping in Syndicate's, the only way to figure it out would be to track down every NPC across all the zones to see if one of them disappeared. That's way too much work for a single person. SpicyShoyu Man… why couldn't Zeke have been "isekai'd" back when the Syndicate's servers were still around. FopperyandWhim Oh dayum… so many Corva threads popping up all of a sudden. What did I miss? PatchNotesOrDidntHappen (Original Poster) We're trying to prove the Corva lore that Z3ke dropped on everyone.

Most of this thread is filled with people thinking that Zeke is trying to give clues about lore that we all missed. So we're all trying to figure out how Corva is body hopping. Well… everyone else is trying to figure out how that happens. I'm bitching and moaning and flirting with the idea of quitting entirely. FarFieldVanishes Hey Foppery, did you ever pick up Frontiers? How far along are you? You getting close to doing a Zeke-run yet? FopperyandWhim Oh. No.

I was chatting with my buddy and told him that I was going to pick up Frontiers so I could better follow along with Z3ke's story. He said that it was a good next option in the games for me. In fact, he said any game would be good. But then he told me not to try and play Shards of Time. I told him he's not my mother and he doesn't get to tell me what to do. Then he rolled his eyes and was like "you know what. Go ahead and play Shards. You'll love it." But that reverse psychology stuff doesn't work on me!

So now I'm stuck playing Shards. MonKEYsee HAAAAAA If you stumble upon this tale on Amazon, it's taken without the author's consent. Report it. NutrinoBaBoom ROFL FarFieldVanishes OH… Foppery. You fool. How is it? FopperyandWhim Uh. Pass. Unowenfanfictionacct Hey PatchNotes, maybe Corva just isn't desperate enough. Maybe he isn't interested in handing out ankhs willy-nilly.

He's pretty healthy and well-off in each game, meaning he's probably not desperate enough to hand just any random classless loser one of his ankhs. NutrinoBaBoom That's true. Corva didn't know anything about the dimensional storage space when he was first talking with Zeke. But after seeing that Zeke could hold an entire expedition's worth of gear, he probably thought to himself I want that.

Then, after he fought that bone kaiju thing in the Valley and got himself hurt, he probably went after Zeke because he was already dying AND Zeke had the dimensional storage space. Did you try visiting the House of Seasons before heading to The MIZ to meet up with him? Maybe if you've got something that Corva wants, he'd be willing to give you an ankh. PatchNotesOrDidntHappen (Original Poster) Nope. Just wandered my way into The MIZ.

Do you know how difficult it is to pick your way through the Deadlands and get to the House of Seasons without a class? The place won't even let you in unless you've got one of the gilders or some other trade good, and you're not getting one of those unless you grind your way through half the game. I. F. Ister What about being unanchored? Zeke was when he first got into the House. I bet if you're unanchored, the House of Seasons lets you in for free.

Unanchored means that you're all decaying with regards to time/space and the Blooming Witch is all about that sort of shenaniganary. PatchNotesOrDidntHappen (Original Poster) Yea, that's a problem because the unanchored tag doesn't even exist in Frontiers. It's all a moot point. DatCameraMON I'm just going to say what we're all thinking. This sort of feels like a stealth marketing campaign.

It's either that or Zeke is a former dev under a pseudonym revealing all the story work the team did that players never managed to put together. I can see it, once we figure out the Corva thing, a bunch of users are going to flood into his thread begging Zeke to break character and confirm or deny various theories we've come up with through the years. VeneratedWitchHunter | This sort of feels like a stealth marketing campaign. | Binary and I tried to warn you. But as for the Zeke being a former dev? No.

Absolutely not. Jesus, are all of you that bored? Look, I'll admit that I underestimated him. The guy clearly knows the fandom better than I originally gave him credit for. But jumping straight to the conclusion that he's some kind of dev from the games, spoon-feeding us small bits of lore in the hopes that we'd look at the games a little closer, that's just batshit insane. Novalis I don't know.

These secrets had not been discovered for a decade and suddenly someone just waltzes in and knows everything about it and the lore, would it not be plausible to think that Zeke might have actually worked as a developer or writer for the series? MangoChutney OOO. I got a version that is way funnier. What if Zeke was the dev responsible for writing all of Corva's storyline, and he's just been sitting there in his apartment for ten years, absolutely furious that we never figured out the lore.

Imagine pouring your soul into this morally horrifying, body-hopping NPC, hiding it all behind breadcrumbs scattered across the entire series. And then the fandom just shrugs and is like I like his missing eye. He finally snapped and made an account here and went all Thanos on us by being like "fine, I'll do it myself." PlaceHolder Are you implying that Z3ke is the reason why Corva isn't in Shards? Now I'm glad that Crush is the next primary and he's having Zeke go after the Reclaimer.

I don't care that Corva was an evil body-hopper; he's Corva. Tenset Putting the dev idea aside for a second, I'm curious about the story with Corva. He was just left there by Z3ke and the others. Say a random scavenger comes across two identical bodies in the desert, one burnt and the other whole. He finds some burnt ash on the one body, and an unblemished wooden knife on the other. What happens when this scavenger decides to stab their next problem with the wooden knife? Just a thought experiment.

DeadIndex ^ Tenset. Corva 2: Electric Boogaloo. MapHackJunkie Can we try and get this thread back on track? We're not here to talk about Zeke secretly being a dev, or whether his fic is good or bad. If you want to do that, there's plenty of other threads on this forum you can go and argue it. This is a thread meant to prove the lore that Zeke is dropping. If Corva can body-hop, then there's got to be some kind of reproducible condition across the game.

Speculation about Corva is fine, but let's keep it pointed towards testing the ideas. Does anyone have anything new to add? Any new direction that you're heading in with the games? Anything that we can all test? Sinnohan | Well… the merchant eventually left and I stayed put." He smiled, but it was a tired-looking smile. Almost bitter. | That was from when Corva was telling Zeke about getting the Drifter class around the campfire. I imagine this is how Corva found out about his resurrection ability.

Perhaps he and the merchant became good friends and both of them settled down in that town. Then Corva does a bunch of odd jobs to get by and eventually gets himself killed during one of them. Suddenly, he wakes back up in that merchant's office. Accidentally killing his best friend with the gift he gave them must have broken Corva all over again. MapHackJunkie Jesus. I'm done. PatchNotesOrDidntHappen (Original Poster) Yea. Me too. I'll check back in if anyone's got any ideas of how to get Corva to hop bodies.

Maybe the Zeke-run people can figure something out.

SoftLocked Where's Zeke? It's been three days, his soft ban should have been over by now. How come he hasn't popped back onto the forum? Or did he pop back on and then he cursed out Crush for his idea and Gravemind banned him again? StoryLeech Ha. Nope. He's been silent so far. We're all just waiting to hear back from him. Bob1350 I do hope Z3ke's first reaction is actually giving some thought about this plan instead of bitching about it for several posts. It sounds risky, but at the same time doable.

And if Z3ke does want to go home as soon as possible, this is his best bet. So, hopefully, the two days will be enough to cool him down and make him locked in. InnerMarrow ^ Bob. At the same time, I kinda get it. The guy is going for a gritty realistic character and Crush, Mushroom and 7 are trying to send him into the Under-MIZ. He's shown that he knows more about the lore and the canon then he's letting on. It's understandable that he's wary of trying to write a big action set piece for his slowburn fanfic.

Z3ke (Original Poster) Or he took an extra day after the ban ended so he wouldn't log back in here and start screaming at everyone. Yea, that's right, I'm back. And yea, my ban technically ended yesterday and I could have popped in here to talk to you all. But I wasn't in the right headspace for that. I was angry and it wouldn't have been productive if I came back here and tried to tell Crush that I wasn't going to do what he wanted. And I would have probably been banned again.

Let me just say that there's a valid reason that I'm angry here and I'm hoping you all recognize it. It feels like whenever I tell you all that I'm not interested in combat or that this world is dangerous and I don't want to die, you all just brush it aside. Or maybe you all decide to just reframe it as some kind of challenge or something. That just… fucking pisses me all the way off. It reminds me of a friend I had growing up.

Whenever I'd tell him that I didn't want to do something, he would turn it into a massive thing and try to wear down my resistance until I went along with whatever he wanted. It was a fucking pain in the ass. I'd tell him no and he'd say okay and promise to drop it, and then he'd spend the rest of the day whining and pushing at me until I finally just gave in to make it all stop. It took years before I finally realized he wasn't a friend and I could save myself some sanity by just cutting him out of my life.

He never cared about what I wanted, he was just in it for himself. A lot of the time, you all remind me of that. It's a toxic ass relationship. So between that and all the people screaming to me about Corva and how him trying to kill me somehow ruined their favorite NPC… yea I needed a break. I was expecting to come back on the forum and tell you all to suck a dick, but something happened this morning that made me reevaluate everything. Over the past three days I've mostly just been doing task rabbit nonsense.

Half my time has been spent doing odd-jobs around town (taking sealed crates from one end of the city to the next) and the rest of my time has been spent playing this tiny little wood flute that I found in a thrift shop. I've got my Instrument Mastery up to 2 after just three days of playing. That's so much quicker than what I've managed with any of my other skills. When I first got to The MIZ, someone here suggested that I should just grind low-level jobs and earn some money. I should have listened to that advice.

I wouldn't have been chased by echoes or almost killed by Corva. Instead, I would have built myself a nice little nest egg and then maybe gotten a class that way. Anyway, I was acting as a courier for the last few days. It's all pretty easy as long as you've got dimensional storage. Walk into a business, talk to the owner, take the package and stash it away, head across town to another business and pull out the package, then get paid. It's easy as shit. Sure, the pay sucks, but it's not all that dangerous.

I've had to cut through some rough neighborhoods here in The MIZ, but nothing too bad. And while I was doing all these easy courier jobs, I was letting my mind wander. I was thinking about this forum and asking myself whether or not I wanted to keep talking with you all. I get that you're all enjoying my "fanfic" and you're interested in giving me advice and hints about what I should be doing here.

But it feels like none of you are listening to what I want to do and are instead trying to turn this into the games that you all love so much. You want me fighting and killing, and being treated like a controllable piece on a board isn't making me excited to continue. This morning I got a delivery and while walking across town I was mentally drafting the post where I'd come on here and tell Crush that I wasn't going anywhere near the Under-MIZ.

I was trying to figure out how to write it without pissing everyone off and burning ALL my bridges. In the middle of that thought, I turned the corner and got punched right in the goddamn face. Looking back at it now, I should have seen it coming. I'd clocked the guy twice earlier in the day. I should have known that the little shit was going to cause me problems. When I first got into the shipping depot that had hired me that morning, the guy was there hanging around.

Then I spotted him at the factory over in the North Coil when I was picking up my first shipment. He was just standing on the street, pretending to be reading a newspaper. My thought at the time was it's just a coincidence he's here, right? It was a big city and people moved around a lot. No. I was wrong. I was a few blocks from the delivery address when he was on me. He smashed my face and I was on the ground before I knew what was happening.

Then he was there, kicking and stomping and just beating the shit out of me. I tried to curl up, I tried to crawl away, I tried to scramble off to the side, but everything I did just earned me another kick. While he was stomping me I tried figuring out what to do. There was a small crowd around us, just standing around. They clearly saw that I was getting beat, but when I looked their way I just saw them avert their eyes. It was obvious that they wouldn't help.

They were doing exactly what all city people do when met with violence on the street: look away and decide that it's not worth getting involved in. It was the same thing back in New York. You see someone getting mugged? No you didn't. You just put your head down and walk on past, safe in the knowledge that whatever was happening didn't concern you. No one was coming to help me out. No one was going to step in and break up the fight for fear that they'd get stomped into the ground too.

The guy screamed something at me. I think it was about "respecting your betters" or something, but I was too busy covering my head and trying to curl up to really hear him. He kept stomping and stomping and I knew I needed to do something to defend myself. My mind jumped back to the fight with the Jackal Runners and I remembered that I had a weapon now. I was rank 2 in my melee skills. I should be able to defend myself. I reached into my dimensional storage space and pulled out the hand-axe I'd looted from Corva.

For a second I thought that would be enough to stop the guy. He'd see the weapon in my hands and figure that he got in a few kicks and could now just back away. But no, it didn't work like that. He kicked out and pain flared in my hand and the axe fell from my grip. He leaned in close until I could smell him, then he snarled something about this being a lesson as he stomped on my leg. I felt something shift and I screamed out in pain. My options were collapsing down to nothing.

I didn't have a weapon and no one would step in. This guy was just going to keep beating on me until I was a bloody mess. I reached into my dimensional storage again and grabbed the only thing left that even remotely counted as a weapon. I grabbed the flare gun. It was a cheap, plastic thing and I only had the one round left. I waved it at the guy, threatening him with it, hoping that he'd understand and back away. But he just sneered at me and made to kick out at my hand again.

I pulled the trigger and there was a dull thumpf. I don't know if was the sound of the round leaving the barrel or the sound it made when it smashed into his eye. The guy's head jerked back. There was a second here where nothing happened. Shock took over. Then the flare ignited and fire bloomed out of his face. A scream tore through the street. I want to say it came from one of the bystanders who had seen the fight. I want to say the guy was already dead right after I fired the flare gun. But I honestly don't know.

Everything was happening too fast for me to know what the hell was going on. The flare ignited, I scrambled back, his body hit the ground and… I'm not going to talk about all that happened next. I don't want to try and describe how the flare burned him and people screamed and shouted and scattered. I got out of the way and stood and felt like I was about to vomit everywhere. My hands were shaking and my legs felt like jelly and I had that sour, watery taste in the back of my mouth that told me I was about to puke.

Out of the corner of my eye I could see the bystanders staring in horror. The looks they were giving me was… I actually don't know. I can't describe it. Was it fear? Anger? Concern? They didn't show any emotion when someone was getting their ass beat, but what would they do after seeing someone get killed? What did these people want? What thoughts were racing through their heads? Were they about to chase me down? Were they going to try and hold me until the authorities got there?

I couldn't figure out the looks they were giving me, except that I knew I couldn't show weakness at that point. All I wanted to do was vomit everywhere, but I needed to calm myself. I needed to slow down. I took a deep breath and stood up straight. I brushed myself down and glanced down at the body of the man who'd just been attacking me, knowing that one wrong move on my part could end up with the crowd of bystanders chasing after me. I couldn't let that happen.

Just pretend that this was another ugly city incident and definitely not the worst thing that's ever happened to me. Don't show weakness. Don't run. Don't cry. Don't beg. Save it all up for later. Just get somewhere safe and away from here. I walked away. Inside, everything was threatening to come apart. I was freaking out and wanting to cry and wanting to vomit and wanting to run far away. But on the outside, I made myself look like this was no big deal. Just another day in The MIZ.

I knew with absolute certainty that if I showed weakness I was done for. So I made my way to my delivery destination and dropped off the shipment. I got a signature from the shop attendant, checked it over and made sure it looked good, and then made my way out of the Guts and found a quiet corner of the city where I could finally break down and have a freak out. Thirty minutes later, when that was over and I had calmed myself and got something of a grip, I noticed a small flashing notice in the corner of my vision.

Persona - Rank 1 You have learned to suppress visible signs of fear, pain, or hesitation. Your posture, expression, and body language present as controlled and intentional. I must have earned it right after flaring the guy to death. It explained how I was able to keep myself from vomiting everywhere and how I was able to walk away like nothing had happened.

It explained how my face hadn't betrayed me by showing the fear and uncertainty I was feeling, and how the crowd hadn't looked at me and decided that I was a soft target. Had that skill made me brave? Or had it made me convincing? I didn't know. I just kept walking as I mulled everything over. My earlier thoughts of coming onto this forum and screaming at all of you seemed… childish now. My thoughts had cleared and I'd come to a realization.

I thought that by taking courier jobs and making deliveries and keeping my head down, maybe all the danger in this world would just leave me alone. But that illusion was gone now. I'd been targeted, and this time it wasn't because I'd put myself in any sort of dangerous situation. I could handle getting attacked by the Jackal Runners and the echoes and Corva, because in some way I figured that I deserved it. I had put myself in the situation where I could get attacked by those things.

But here was a guy who had just targeted me out of the blue and tried to beat me. If I wanted to survive this world, I needed to get stronger. I needed to trust that you guys wouldn't lead me into a stupidly dangerous situation. I needed to get stronger, and I couldn't get that strength by just running errands. I needed to push things a little. So, that's why I'm here. That's why I've decided to do what Crush suggested and kill this Reclaimer thing. And I swear to god this plan better work.

Mushroom, Crush, and 7, promise me that you're not just sending me to my death. Promise me that I can actually kill this thing and get stronger.