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We rejoin Julius on the brink of the Abyss (mostly literally and not metaphorically).
After thinking about it a few moments, he decides he'd rather live in another day than venture into the chaos zone.
You can have a chat with one of the locals about the Abyss. He doesn't reveal anything not already shown elsewhere between Julius and Brutus' stories.
But he does have this freakin sweet rock.
Definitely worth 20 imperial funbux. Really ties together the whole outfit.
Fun fact: the old man used to talk about selling the necklace but you couldn't buy it. "Buying worthless pebble" functionality was only added in one of the last few post-release patches. Thanks for remembering the important things, devs!
Lets venture out into the world. Specifically, to the Library the loremaster revealed. Other factions have timed stories that will progress without you if you wander around the world map, but the 40 Thieves are a pretty laid back bunch.
Add "guys who built a library in the middle of nowhere and expected it not to be immediately raided" to the list of people who didn't know what game they were in
You can't always be paranoid. Sometimes... you have to trust.
GODDAMNIT
GOD FUCKING DAMNIT
EVERY TIME
Anyway "luckily" Julius bought antidotes before venturing out. You never know when you'll be tricked into drinking poisoned coffee.
Rome had coffee, right?
This is pretty straightforward, he hits hard with his poison axe and if you drank his poison you start at lower hp (with less hp if you didn't have an antidote on you, it isn't an instant death), but he has no defenses to speak of so a noncombat character with the Arbiter can hack him to death.
The prospector has some pretty interesting stuff on him.
There's not a whole lot going on in the upper level, but some weird fire man pole thingy lets you go down into the basement.
Turns out it wasn't a fire man pole but the remains of some sort of elevator.
It's dark down here, but Julius can still read the surviving scrolls. Thanks to having a working knowledge of "ancient shit" from his adventures, Julius is able to piece together 3 locations from some scrolls (1 location is on both scrolls): Inferiae, the Arch, and the Tower of Zamedi.
Julius finds an ancient gas-powered backup generator, but it's broken. He doesn't really see any reason to fix it...
... until he finds a hidden switch that requires power to work. Julius immediately runs back to see if he can fix the generator
It requires a bigger investment in crafting than I'm willing to make right now to use the super option, so lets think about where to find the last remaining part.
... Didn't that Maadoran loremaster say he was here before?
tfw no charisma 
Well, that's not ominous at all.
Julius gets healed up, then talks to the healer again. This is why you want to come to her when you get hurt, she gives you a quest and new map location, the Monastery.
Back here again.
The area gets bathed in a nice soft blue light with the power back on.
Uh
What the fuck were the magi up to? What is this "human experimentation" shit?
I level up lore Julius spends time examining the tablets and comparing the writings with library scrolls he can understand until he basically deciphers the tablets.
Looks like the magi were messing with some sort of otherworldly entities... but I thought they summoned angels to battle invading Qantari demons? It doesn't sound like they were fighting the Qantari until after they summoned whatever they summoned. What the fuck is going on?
A new resolve fills Julius. There's more to this world than meets the eye. And besides, what better chance for a thief than to be the first person to pick over the remains of the unexplored past?
Inferiae is the first destination Julius picks among the ones revealed by the library scrolls. You may actually remember it, Aemolas mentioned it as an example of a village that has somehow survived out in the wastes.
You don't get far into the village before someone is already leading you around.
This conversation started great.
The old Julius would have picked the fortune option, but now he's fired up by a quest. A quest... for knowledge! (fortune is nice too if it's on the way)
tfw no charisma
This conversation serves as your first confirmation that the Temple Antidas is looking for is in fact real and physically reachable. It's also your first confirmation that it's not what Antidas thinks it is and there's something that should probably be left alone there, but that's not surprising anyway since Antidas is an idiot.
Fun fact: fail to impress Azra and this bunch dumps you into a hole in the ground.
Specifically this hole, the one that looks like the top of a pyramid.
Julius' curiosity of a thief gets the better of him and he gets dumped into the hole anyway. 
Remember Aemolas' story of a village that protected itself by dumping strangers into a sacrificial pit?
... Nevermind the Temple, there's some spooky shit right in here!
Fortunately Julius' thief skills haven't rusted too bad yet.
The lower level features one of the Magi's incomprehensible wall doors.
... And also this "control panel."
I leveled up lore Julius' time learning in the library gives him the tools to approach this console.
Oh fuck I don't wanna die activate "defense mode!"
... I may have made a huge mistake.
Julius finds pieces of some sort of "stone guard" upstairs, presumably the strange creature he hid from. ... Why does it have two daggers and two swords? Also nice, free demon core, this exploring the past shit is already paying off.
Julius now has a better time to look at the corpses he landed on. What the fuck was that village's problem?
This is the only check in the hole game you can fail and just keep repeating until you succeed. The devs aren't so cruel as to leave you trapped in a hole with no recourse.
"I would have thought twice before activating 'defense mode' if I knew it would kill your whole village, Azra" Julius says mournfully as he loots Azra's corpse and then moves on to looting the other corpses.
We're not done yet, though. Lets see if anything changed down there with the power back on.
... That wall door wasn't blue before.
There's no way walking into a random portal backfires.
It... didn't backfire. Weird. Game must be bugged.
Well, "the magi had teleportation magic:" confirmed. Somehow we're back in Maadoran. One of the minarets, specifically.
This looks better in game, btw.
There's a skeletal corpse inside with a weird metal glove. More free shit!
There's also this ominous message. Balzaar?....
Julius was going to go back when he noticed something. Where else has he seen one of these doorways before? That magic lamp, too?
Julius definitely remembers. Do you remember?
Yup, that thing in the underwater chamber was a magic Magi teleport door as well. Just needed a power up.
Another weird place. Lets see what's interesting here.
... What the fuck?
The door is completely impregnable. Who knows what's beyond it.
So the thing in the tank is... a god?
The vats have some sort of Magi super meds, but they're expired. Might as well take one for the road, never know when it will be useful.
Another ancient strong box, another picked lock. What is that magic jar used for?
Oh, that's what it's used for.
And there it is, the only way to permanently increase a stat after character creation in the whole game. I picked dex because there's still more combat coming and extra ap/attack rating/defense rating is always helpful.
Lets head back, there's nothing left to do here.
I actually forgot I found this guy's gem and go give it to him before I keep forgetting. I use the money to buy an extra power tube from a merchant.
The extra tube activates the Ghost Hand. Ghost Hand? What does it do? We'll find out!
That's it for this update. I haven't done everything optional in the wastes, but I decided I want to save some of that stuff for later. Next update we return to the faction stories.