The Burdens We Bear

Quest giver: Slowfix
Location: Idyllshire (X:7.5, Y:6.5)
Quest line: Tales of the Dragonsong War
Level: 60

Experience: 0
Gil: 1,583
Previous quest: The Triumphs We Share
Patch: 3.3
Links: EDB GT

“

Slowfix is a goblin beset by troubles great and small.

— In-game description

Rewards

Unlocks

Walkthrough

For the final objective of this quest, you will receive no guidance from the journal or the duty list. You will need to read the text carefully and decipher the clues to determine your next course of action.

You can get a clue by speaking with Corentiaux, or

Steps

Speak with Matoya.
Visit Helix in Azys Lla.
Search the airship landing.
Visit Tiamat.
Visit the Aetherochemical Research Facility.
Pay respects to a friend.

Journal

Slowfix is a goblin beset by troubles great and small.

"To ye who ask of things to come:

Give thought to what is past and gone.“

With the long-dead poet king's words still ringing in your ears, you continue your pilgrimage, retracing the steps you took in the days following your exile.

Having made peace with the goblins, the travelers returned to their original purpose. The reclusive Master Matoya waited somewhere beyond, and with her a means to breach the barrier shielding Azys Lla...

She was the sum of everything that had come before. Triumphs, failures─all essential, all indispensable. Had things unfolded differently, so too would she. What use, then, to mourn the Matoya who never was? There was only this time, this place, this choice...

The battleship loomed before them, a gargantuan mass of steel, bristling with cannons, each trained on the Enterprise Excelsior. Cid's knuckles were white as he gripped the controls, straining to steer the tiny vessel through the storm of ordnance. They fell about as the deck lurched hither and yon, each explosion inviting a cry of protest from the battered ship...

A thousand thousand fires blossomed around Ysayle as she fell towards the battleship. A crimson starshower midst the impassive clouds. Then came the azure light, faint at first, soon blinding, then shattering, casting motes of diamond to the four winds...

Perhaps there was hope for them. Perhaps, this time, they would learn and remember. But Tiamat's part in the tale had ended long ago. Within this monument to hubris would she remain until the end of days...beyond redemption...

The undying ones were defiant, disbelieving, even as death embraced them. Then the knights too succumbed, loyal to the last to a cause long lost. His body growing light, the archbishop looked upon the arbiter of his fate, and knew not what he saw. And then it was over. Over save for the eyes. Thinking to bear them away from the covetous hands of men, Estinien took the accursed baubles in his own and was duly bent to their will...if only for a time.

At a friend's behest had they embarked upon their journey, and so, after their triumphant homecoming and all the inevitable pomp and circumstance, there was but one way it could end...

The shield still rests against the marker, and below it, fresh lilies. Closing your eyes, you kneel, and breathe deep of the cold northern wind. There you remain for no more than a moment, before rising to take in the view. The city still stands, and so do you.

Dialogue

System: For the final objective of this quest, you will receive no guidance from the journal or the duty list. You will need to read the text carefully and decipher the clues to determine your next course of action.

Slowfix: Pshkohhh... And now, Slowfix bids uplander fulfill civic duty as citizen of Idyllshire with hand-lending of great import!
Slowfix: In cave south of settlement lives old crone─wielder of powerful magicks used to crafty-make frogmen that chase away curious gobbies.
Slowfix: Uplander has made many busydeals with old crone, yes? Then uplander can appeal to crone's better nature and make her call off frogman harriers!
Slowfix: Gobbieflock does not go looking for trouble! Trouble comes looking for gobbieflock! ...Honest!

Matoya: Well, this is a pleasant surprise. I'm well aware that you're only here because you want something, but at least you didn't bring your little friends. So─out with it.
Matoya: ...Oh, is that what the goblins told you? That my servants were attacking their poor, defenseless scouts without the slightest provocation? Hah!
Matoya: The little buggers were trying to eat them! They're lucky I didn't have my poroggos return the favor! But you can tell them from me that if they try it again, I will personally feed them to my servants one limb at a time.
Matoya: I do hope you didn't come all this way just to play errand boy/girl for those dirty little scroungers.
Matoya: ...Aren't you a bit young to be going on grand journeys of reflection? You haven't lived long enough to have so many regrets.
Matoya: The same goes for that boy, complaining that things hadn't unfolded as he dreamed they would. It makes no difference what “should have” happened to Minfilia. What matters is what did happen. The past is the past, and no amount of wishing you'd done things differently will make it so.
Matoya: You make your choices, and you do what needs to be done. That's it. That's the attitude you came here with the first time, when you wanted to find a way to get to Azys Lla, and you would do well to remember it.
Matoya: Right, then. I think you've wasted quite enough of my time. It's bad enough that I have to suffer Shtola's unannounced visits─I don't need you making a habit of it too!

System: ...She was the sum of everything that had come before. Triumphs, failures─all essential, all indispensable. Had things unfolded differently, so too would she. What use, then, to mourn the woman who never was? There was only this time, this place, this choice...

Matoya: Mayhap if I hung a sign around their necks saying “GOBLIN EATER” in big red letters, they'd think twice...

System: You spy something on the ground at the landing's edge...
System: A bouquet of fresh Nymeia lilies lies at your feet. An offering for the departed...
System: ...A thousand thousand fires blossomed around her as she fell towards the battleship. A crimson starshower midst the impassive clouds.
System: Then came the azure light, faint at first, soon blinding, then shattering, casting motes of diamond to the four winds...
System: ...For those we have lost.

(-Tiamat-): Child of man, chosen of Hydaelyn...naught remaineth for thee here save the delusions of the condemned. In my madness did I spy my departed brood-brother in yonder skies, though I know it cannot be so.
(-Tiamat-): ...What sayest thou? My senses are yet mine own...? Then...he whom I saw was but my dead brother's rancor clad in mortal flesh?
(-Tiamat-): ...And thou didst deliver him unto death's cold embrace.
(-Tiamat-): I bear thee no ill will, child. 'Tis beyond me. All my hatreds are bound up in moments ephemeral and eternal. My beloved's passing...and his resurrection.
(-Tiamat-): I am no better than Nidhogg. Consumed by love, twisted by rage, I too sought vengeance without end.

Midgardsormr: Yet thou hast since renounced it, hast thou not?

(-Tiamat-): Through millennia have I watched as time did that which I could not. As the men of Allag perished and their works fell to ruin, leaving me to think on mine own sins in solitude.
(-Tiamat-): What folly to despise man his base desires, when hatred's hand so effortlessly drove me to take Ascian rede.

Midgardsormr: Then look thou on him again with eyes unclouded, and mark how he laboreth to rise above his nature─how he and Hraesvelgr's brood now raise their voices in a shared song of peace.
Midgardsormr: 'Tis my dearest hope that it shall prove the founding stone for a bulwark against the Dark.

(-Tiamat-): As time delivered Allag unto its reward, so too will it prove this peace true or fleeting...as I remain here, apart, and watch.
(-Tiamat-): Chosen of Hydaelyn─it is well that thou camest unto me in contemplation. But the road stretcheth ever on, and thy battle is not yet won.

System: ...Perhaps there was hope for them. Perhaps, this time, they would learn and remember. But her part in the tale had ended long ago. Within this monument to hubris would she remain until the end of days...beyond redemption...
System: ...The undying ones were defiant, disbelieving, even as death embraced them. Then the knights too succumbed, loyal to the last to a cause long lost. His body growing light, the archbishop looked upon the arbiter of his fate, and knew not what he saw. And then it was over.
System: Naught remained save the eyes. Thinking to bear them away from the covetous hands of men, Estinien took the accursed baubles in his own and was duly bent to their will...if only for a time.
System: At a friend's behest had they embarked upon their journey, and so, after their triumphant homecoming and all the pomp and circumstance, there was but one way it could end...
System: You have learned the emote [Haurchefant]!