Humongous thanks to literally everyone who helped me put this together, especially
@Andmeuths in helping me with the imagery and thematics. Now, I know a lot of people have had an eye on the idea of a Gazulite True Killing sword as our second weapon, and I was one of them. But two things caught my attention:
1. The Expurgation Combo/Purifcation can be casted via Talisman, so it doesn't necessarily have to be on a weapon.
2. A Gazulite sword doesn't really fit into the thematics and probably can't be slid into our The World That Was equipment set, which has the theme of the primordial world of when the planet was still being formed.
So, here's my idea--we make an Expurgation Gazulite talisman that doesn't go into The World That Was set (and since we can equip infinite numbers of talismans, that should be okay), and we make a weapon that fits in with our equipment set. But what kind of weapon? We already have a lot of mass damage and supreme regeneration/endurance capability. After bouncing ideas off a lot of folks in the Discord, I've come to the conclusion that what we really need...
Is a
debuff-centric weapon.
So here's the idea...
Power Flows
From void and emptiness, you were cleaved from the Stars...
…
A great shape in the void of space falls through the firmament, colliding with the earth below in a titanic explosion.
Will guides it
The meteor cools, the taint of its contaminant corroding its very soul, marring pure Silver.
Meteors are one thing, but do you know what space object also often collides with planets, especially at the beginning of a planet's life cycle?
Freezing comets that eventually melt down into water that helps form the basic hydrosphere of a world.
The Primordial Reservoir: From the depths of space, from void and emptiness, this weapon sings of the origin from which almost all water on the planet can claim to originate from. Calling to a time before time when heavenly bodies full of ice struck the ground and left craters of earth temporarily numb from the depth of sheer cold that could only be found from space, so too does this weapon (in whatever form it takes) render an enemy and its surroundings brittle, easily shattered, and utterly numb with cold from every impact.
-
Master Rune of Everfrost ("Strikes absorb the heat energy from what it strikes, chilling and embrittling armour and flesh") - Embrittling is the main debuff effect that I was looking at here, because making our opponents' gear (and heck, the opponents themselves) brittle and more vulnerable to breakage goes extremely well with the rest of our extremely destructive kit. I would also like to note that suddenly freezing something before suddenly heating something (or the other way around?) tends to break a lot of different objects very quickly, so it'll go really well together. Now, we
technically don't have this rune yet, but hey:
Karstah:
- +7 Progress to Chillhammer, new totals: [Cost: (12 -10) = 2 actions]
Apparently, we're on the verge of getting it! So no problem, just got to wait a little more and Karstah will grab it for us.
-
Rune of Lethargy ("Strikes drain stamina from enemy") - So it turns out that the Rune of Exhaustion idea that I had
did already exist. Really sorry about that, Soulcake. Either way, this debuff rune thematically goes well with cold, since extreme cold sapping away at heat like as described in the Master Rune of Everfrost's description can then also sap away at energy.
We also already know this rune, so great!
-
Rune of Meteorfall ("Strikes from this weapon hit like an object from the void striking the earth, an explosion of energy that expresses itself through heat, air and fire aimed solely at the enemy.") - Okay. Here's the problem. You probably recognize Meteorfall as the combination we used to make Trollslayer way back near the beginning of this quest. To put it bluntly, it will take 7 AP to compress this combination into a master rune, and then 2 AP to simplify it into a normal rune for
a total of 9 AP to get the Rune of Meteorfall.
...which is an issue.
I understand that last qualifier is a bit of a problem since this takes a lot of AP to pull off, but I'm hoping there's a way to steadily progress at it. Who knows, maybe we'll pick up a Weapon specialty at some point to make it easier...? But I have my doubts. It's a huge shame Karstah can't compress Meteorfall for us either since it'd only take her 5 AP.
But that's my pitch for a debuff weapon that hopefully still slots into The World That Was. What does everybody think?
EDIT: An alternative to a Rune of Meteorfall for the sake of getting around the whole 9 AP issue would be to pivot to full-on Ice Age thematics. The thing is, I'm not sure what kind of rune (especially what kind of rune that
isn't a master rune) would accomplish that in place of Meteorfall. My guess is something that gives off avalanche vibes, but I don't think anything stood out on the rune list in terms of giving me that sort of imagery.
EDIT 2: I found an alternative that I'm satisfied with, and it no longer takes an extra 9 AP! See
this post.
