Este sitio hace uso intenso de JavaScript.
Por favor habilita JavaScript en tu navegador.
Moderna
RPP
11.0.2
RPP
11.0.5
Beta
A Full Story Walkthrough of Nerub'ar Palace w/ Cinematic Analysis
Moderna
Publicado
hace 4 días
por
Portergauge
Leading up to the fight against Queen Ansurek, players must first fight their way through the bosses of Nerub'ar Palace. Here, we break down the full story of the raid to highlight interesting story and potential future plot threads for players who are unable to experience the full raid in Story Mode.
WARNING: Spoilers for The War Within!
Ulgrax and the Front Gates
While we enter the palace with the intent of not alerting the guards, we quickly exit the threshold to find Queen Ansurek already waiting for us, with an entourage of all her royal guards and advisors. Thanking us for sparing her the trouble of seeking us out, she unleashes Ulgrax upon us with the intent of quickly wiping us out.
Similar to the experiments she did upon her own mother Neferess, Queen Ansurek has transformed Ulgrax into a hulking monstrosity bereft of typical nerubian intelligence. Despite his immense power, players are able to outmaneuver him, and sensing that her easy victory would not be at hand, she orders another of her monstrosities to destroy the webbing keeping the fight platform afloat.
As we defeat Ulgrax, the last of the support webs fail, and players are sent flying off the platform to their demise -- or so Ansurek surmises.
The Bloodbound Horror and Silkran
As the players come to, they find themselves in a familiar location -- the oozing flesh pits of Azj-Kahet. Initially encountered with Orweyna during leveling, players may recognize this particular location as landscape view from the terrace from the end of the dungeon Ara-Kara, City of Echoes.
Like with the dungeon, the enemies at hand are nerubians in the midst of harvesting the mysterious Black Blood, but while we successfully thwart them in the dungeon, we are forced to content with a living blood monstrosity this time around. Similar to those encountered alongside Orweyna, this Bloodbound Horror periodically pulls us into the realm known as 'the Unseeming', which allows us to see Faceless Ones and other void horrors.
After swiftly dispatching it, we join the Weaver's forces in continuing our infiltration attempts, starting with eliminating the palace guards. After some commotion, we come fast to face with their captain, Sureki, and as players do, quickly eliminate him as well. It is then that our true siege of the palace begins.
Rasha'nan, a Familiar Face
As we return to our central assault on the palace, we are once again greeted by Ansurek, but unlike last time, she has no cheap tricks to dissuade us from continuing. Instead, she siccs the beast who destroyed the platform on us, an Ascended nerubian named Rasha'nan.
If that name sounds familiar, that's because she is initially encountered by players as the final boss of the Dawnbreaker dungeon, where she stands as the main contingency for Ansurek in the event that the Order of Night fail in their alliance. While we fight Rasha'nan on the Dawnbreaker and throughout Mereldar, the fight in the dungeon ends at 60%, which is the same health she can be found at during her fight in Nerub'ar Palace, but unlike the last time, she is unable to flee.
Ovi'nax and the Black Blood
As we enter the heart of the palace, Ansurek closes off the entrance to her inner chambers, but on the recommendation of our ally in her court, Executor Nizrek, we begin to dispatch any nerubians we can find to draw the Queen's ire and gain access to her innermost sanctum.
The first major threat we encounter is Broodtwister Ovi'nax, a massive Ascended barely resembling a nerubian at all, who does experiments not on their kin, but on the various fauna of Azj-Kahet. From worms to larvae to spiders, Ovi'nax attempts to unleash their canisters of Black Blood on the raid as well as their own nestling test subjects, but we quickly dispatch the Broodtwister and prevent any more experimentation from Ansurek's underlings -- at least from hands other than her own.
Nexus-Princess Ky'veza: Future Ethereal Patch Content?
Perhaps the most intriguing encounter of the raid comes not from one of Ansurek's nerubian underlings, but one of her courtly guests, an ethereal by the name of Nexus-Princess Ky'veza. We come across her in the middle of a mysterious transmission through a void portal, one we are clearly not meant to overhear, for which Ky'veza intents to kill us.
In a fight very similar to Artificer Xy'mox from Castle Nathria (in more ways than one), Ky'veza uses portals, illusions, and rifts to attempt to dispatch us, but we ultimately 'defeat' her. Once she lies dispersed, however, the true Ky'veza reveals herself. Rather than continue the fight, she instead leaves the bounty of the Queen's life in our hands, as we just capably proved worthy of the task.
Like with Xy'mox, Ky'veza departs to live another day, with a clear intent of meeting us later. Unlike Xy'mox, however, her connections to future stories are much clearer, and offer much more tantalizing questions. Whoever the mysterious patron she is initially seen speaking to, they are clearly of the void like Ky'veza herself, and given the prominence of Ethereals in the Dark Heart patch prior to the expansion and now this appearance, it is likely that we are being teased on future Ethereal content.
Whether that content ends up as a patch for The War Within or a greater plot thread in Midnight remains a mystery, but given the notable role that the Ethereals play in the backstory of Dimensius, the Void Lord patron of Xal'atath, it would be a safe bet to assume this story will continue beyond this expansion into the greater Worldsoul Saga. Hopefully Ky'veza will play a more significant role than Xy'mox ultimately did, with such a tantalizing tease.
The Silken Court
After not only dispatching the inhabitants of her palace but exposing traitors in her midst, Ansurek opens her inner sanctum, revealing to us two more people to bar our path on the way to the Queen. Both Anub'arash and Skeinspinner Takazj suspect the
other
of treachery, and even amidst the threat of our raid entourage, the two accuse each other of betraying their beloved Queen.
In truth, however, the traitor was not either of these two, but our ally Executor Nizrek, along with the Widow Arak'nai and General Anub'azal, who have been guiding us throughout the inner sanctum to get us in the Queen's midst all along. With all truth of betrayal exposed and Ansurek in sight, the final fight for the nerubian's future begins.
Queen Ansurek's Final Stand
More paranoid than ever, Ansurek begins to order her last remaining guards to slaughter the nerubians in her midst, believing them unworthy of Ascension.
Now alone in her Court and confronted directly by the raid, our battle against the Queen leads her to pull in the last of her loyal Ascended, giving them one last chance to prove their worth to her. After we dispatch them, Ansurek falls wholly into her paranoia, believing the whole generation she had cultivated to now be unworthy, and only of use to fuel one person -- herself.
Despite her bluster and her power, however, we fell her like all the mad tyrants we have in expansion's past, but before she meets her final end, she is given a final truth by her patron Xal'atath.
Ansurek had been driven by a desire to elevate her people beyond the stagnation they had found themselves under her mother Neferess' rule, but as more and more of her people turned against her, the strength she promised them began to twist inward, existing more and more to serve Ansurek first and foremost.
In this raid, they acted as her shield, giving their lives time and again to protect her, and when the last of them had failed her, they became fuel for Ansurek's power alone. What Xal'atath reveals, in the end, is that the very same cycle of power was one in which Ansurek was another victim of.
Just as Ansurek ultimately used her people as fuel for her own strength, Xal'atath used Ansurek for her own ends, a tool of bait and distraction more than anything significant. Just as Ansurek saw her people as weak and unworthy of the power she offered, Xal'atath sees Ansurek as unworthy even of pity now that the Queen has failed her.
As Xal'atath says, the Void is ultimately not centered around loyalties, promises, or even bargains; it is centered around strength. Those who are the strongest under its embrace are those deemed worthy enough to survive, and it seems her status as the ultimate survivor is a trait Xal'atath boasts above all else.
What Next?
With Ansurek dead, the three leaders of the Severed Threads gather around her corpse to contemplate their future. While Ansurek's threat is ended, the full dangers of Ascension are far from over, and it will likely take time to fully root out the corruption from their city before their conspiracy can be revealed (a story that conveniently allows players to continue questing in the open world zone without narrative dissonance).
As the Widow Arak'nai surmises, however, the part they played in greater schemes remains to be seen. While the ambitions of Ansurek herself have been foiled, it is clear that she played her role to perfection in Xal'atath's plans. Even if her attempts to claim Beledar's power ultimately failed, the distraction that the nerubians caused seems to have been the only reason she enacted such a vast scheme of corruption in the first place, and with those plans in the past, her needs for the nerubians is as well.
Based on the role of Orweyna and the Haranir in the open world zone, the still-unsolved mystery of the Black Blood's origins, and how it all relates to the mysterious 'Unseeming' realm, Xal'atath's plans for Khaz Algar are far from over, and we will have to wait and see exactly what those plans are in the patches ahead.
In the immediate present, however, the threat that drove us into Azeroth's depths from the very start of the expansion has been quelled, and one of the perpetrators of Dalaran's destruction has been brought to justice. While more remains to be seen with Xal'atath, the narrative of the nerubians of Azj-Kahet and their path of evolution has been resolved, for now.
Obtiene Wowhead
Premium
USD $2
Un mes
Disfruta de una experiencia libre de publicidad, desbloquea características premium y dale tu soporte al sitio!
Mostrar 0 comentarios
Ocultar 0 comentarios
Inicia sesión para publicar un comentario
Comentarios en Inglés (16)
Escribir un Comentario
No has iniciado sesión. Por favor
entra a tu cuenta
o
registra una cuenta
para añadir tu comentario.
Publicación anterior
Publicación siguiente
