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Lets rejoin our REAL hero, Julius, in Maadoran. Hey, Julius may be a thief, but at least he doesn't kill half the people he meets. More like maybe an acceptable 5-10%



Maadoran's intro scene explicitly mentions Maadoran's minarets and sandstone domed temples to make sure you aren't missing out that this isn't your great great great great etc grand pappy's Rome.





You can also see the ominous crater where something or someone blew out a chunk of the city during the war that destroyed everything. That area is now called the Abyss. As mentioned by Feng over in Brutus' story, it's a messed up place where people get sick and die if they take a wrong step.







Levir is the boss of the whole 40 Thieves, and Bassar is his right hand man. Julius doesn't know if he likes Bassar showing up and bossing the Teron boys around and taking their gold.



Here's Julius is with the gates to the city behind him, still in his Commercium robes (which I just noticed are black, a color thieves wear but none of the Commercium people do, nice). You get 15 free skill points just for showing up.

Up ahead you can see the front of the stereotypical Roman coliseum with statues of stereotypical Roman gladiators reinforcing the weird mix of Roman and Islamic architecture that's never explained. Julius isn't a fighter so he's not going to even bother, so watch out for future LEGEND OF BRUTUS to see the coliseum fights and associated quests.



Ahh, much better.

Julius heads into the nearby inn and runs into a story teller doing his thing:



















Sounds like a lot of nonsense to me, especially this First Magi having a psychic duel with a demon. Interesting to learn that the Abyss used to be a center of research though, might be some good artifacts to loot there.



You can find this blue steel-clad guy in the inn. Blue steel used to be a lot more common, then the devs realized they were inflating equipment quality too fast and cut down on it. Eventually they added this guy, who players can challenge to a coliseum fight and take all his blue steel shit frim if they win. He's a fucker though, about the same tier as the arena champion, who is a mega fucker even hardcore combat characters need to watch out for. If you can take on Kadmos, then you'll get his unique spear and shield (that you can build your entire character around) and his blue steel armor that you can melt down and forge into something else.



Anyway Julius' true reason for entering the inn is to steal everything he can from it. At this point his thief skills are showing their lack of improvement since Teron, but he's still capable of robbing some of the rooms/guests.



You get this unskipable scene as you walk through the main street.











Ahhh, feel good to be a 40 Thief. #brand





AoD has unique weapons, like any good CRPG. The Arbiter is one of the best ones. It's a steel dagger that is unremarkable except for it insane flat bonus to melee accuracy. Dagger focused combat characters will eventually want to make their own dagger out of a better material and with crafting bonuses, but for social characters (... or, arbiters) with no combat skill investment you can't ask for a better weapon.



Antidas wanted Julius to follow up with someone on Maadoran about the map. That person is in this completely nondescript house it once took me like ten minutes to find.



















You idiots had one job.













This conversation serves as confirmation that, while it's still unclear whether the specific temple that Antidas wants to find actually exists (what they found is Hellgate, not the Temple of Tor-Agoth), there's still plenty of other messed up old shit out there.





If you're really hardcore you can tell these guys to fuck off. If you're really, really hardcore you can actually kill them when they attack you for it. Your reward for doing so is a game over screen when every Aurelian in the city converges on you. Hey, there's a limit to how far player agency and reactivity can go.





Julius perceives Gaelius to radiate a stately aura that Antidas simply lacked. Maybe it's the laurel wreath.





It physically pains me to pick option one, but for the sake of completion for the lp I will.







Can't say he doesn't have a point.









Maybe it's that beautiful laurel wreath, but star-struck Julius doesn't even hesitate to offer his services. Working for Gaelius would surely be better than struggling in the mud, trying to survive working for the 40 Thieves from job to job.



tfw rejected Guess Julius is stuck working for 40 Thieves for now.



The guards used to dump you outside the palace, but I guess at some point in development the devs decided to dump you back outside Domitius' house so you could resume exploring where you left off.



This is another unskippable event that happens as you walk around Domitius' house.







Julius remembers the faithful Meru preacher in Teron and decides to help. Their religion is a little wacky but they seem like a harmless bunch.









You can, of course, side with the mob if you want to. There's even a cheevo related to it.



Julius wants to head into 40 thieves territory in the slums, but this kid is in the way.







Hey, that lawless place where life is worth nothing is my home.





... The materials to a bomb. That's what you want me to deliver. And you're afraid to go yourself. Why do I see where this is heading?





Whatever Julius never says no to an adventure.



When the Imperial Guard, who spend their time fighting raiders out in the wastelands, think a place is an unsalvageable dump you know it's real bad.





As always, when someone walks up to you and offers you something in AoD, you tell them to fuck off.



Next update: exploring the slums!