It is a hard act to follow the main plot of Deadfire, which I find to be probably the greatest fantasy RPG I've ever played and struggle to figure out quite how I'm going to put it into words. As side content, it's pretty great. On it's own, it doesn't strictly make all that much sense. Within the context of both the first game and Deadfire, it's allowed to do something truly great but highly niche with its overall theme and story. It does a great job of enhancing and building more context for the central problem of the main games: How are we supposed to feel about the gods and their domains? Truly. It does so through an ever expanding island which will one day consume the whole world in frost, or so says the Glamfellen cult of Rymrgand, it's strange leader Vatnir who dubbed you the Duskspeaker, and Rymrgand himself; indifferently speaking of doom as if it was some rash or passing moment.

The Glamfellen are an ethnicity, snow elves who live all the way in the frozen wasteland of The White That Wends. A cruel place where no plant life grows and all of the animals are carnivorous predators. The people of the White That Wends, especially many pale elves tend to have some kind of reverence for Rymrgand, known as the Beast of Winter, a god who represents entropy, sickness, inevitable death and endings. Pilgrims made their way into the Deadfire for this island said to eventually bring an icy doom to the world, welcoming, awaiting their own deaths with open arms hoping to be freed not just from life, but eventually from the wheel of reincarnation.

Ironically, the player is the Herald of Berath, a different god who also represents death of a different kind, Berath is the turning of the wheel, death but also life, a change and vast capacity for change in peoples souls. The entire purpose of their journey is to ensure the cycle of life and death can stay alive as it should, without spoiling too much of the base game. The people of the island are happy for you reign death and entropy on them, but others on the island are aware, our reputations precedes us. Vatnir knows, and says as much, wherever we go, it's followed by chaos. This leader of the Rymrgand cult is something of a fraud and knowingly courts you so you could save these people from themselves. Rymrgand is also fully aware of just how dangerous you can be and takes heed in his own way against you, aware you might disrupt his power.

But enough about all this setup, I want to talk about my character. It means quite a lot to me that I get this experience, because my character herself, Neia, is a pale elf from the White That Wends. A mystic who decided to walk away from her own people to find a new path in the Dyrwood, hoping to gain new insight about life and death out of the grips of her harsh cult like environment. So unhappy with her ability to read the minds of others, before she was given the powers of the Watcher, which allows her to read people's souls. It was far too much for her to handle, and when she was finally killed between Pillars 1 and 2, she had hesitations about being brought back to life.

Berath made her herald, to return to life so she could hunt down a rogue god and preserve the Wheel, the mechanism of life and death. She only agreed to the conditions that she could be free of some of the burden that plagued her early life, struggling with her unstable cipher powers. To which Berath let her completely reshape herself into a mostly the same, but different enough in a meaningful way, version of herself, more at peace with her own mind. While she unraveled many of the mysteries of the gods in the first game and holds a particular hatred towards some of their actions and relationships with humans, she feels a particular debt to Berath and Hylea whom she pledged herself to, but an animosity towards most of the others, including Rymrgand. For her, she takes the preservation of life deeply seriously and even if somewhat unwillingly, has fully taken up the mantle of being Berath's Champion, which is a bad thing for Rymrgand.

Along with all of the companions she has in the base game, she also brought along Ydwin, a character who has very little importance and development in the base game but expanded dialogue and characterization just for this DLC. She's glamfellen just the same as my PC, and from the White That Wends. An animancer (student of the manipulation of souls) so savvy, that she managed to find some kind of peace of her own similar to Neia, though through her own ingenuity alone, without the help of gods. She managed to separate herself from the turn of the wheel and effectively lives forever as her undisturbed self, though a vampire. A cipher quite like her, but who made a different sort of drastic sacrifice with much more complicated consequences. I love her cold rationality, and a sense of passion that it all comes from. She is the ideal woman to me. Intellectual, passionate, elegant, pursues knowledge at severe cost, a great sense of style. I swoon for Ydwin. I love that they expanded on her in this DLC.

Then there's Vatnir. Well. I wouldn't know what it's like to have him as a companion because with Serafen in my party, he greatly urges us not to force him to come along even if I found him responsible for putting us in the fucked up situation of the plot. Since Serafen says nobody should be forced to do anything they don't want to do if rational people could help it. Otherwise it's looking a bit like slavery, no? Serafen is a straight shooter, a passionate guy, a scumfuck pirate, and a serial adulterer, and he's never steered me wrong, so I left this charlatan priest back at the village. This guy. He doesn't even wish for an eternal death and sickness and disease or any of that. He's lying to his people and actually cares about them, can you believe this phony? Well. I wish I forced him to get away from this island for his own good because they didn't take it well when I came back and cleaned up the loose ends of the story here. Sorry buddy but you sort of made this bed.

So what exactly is the story? I went into a little bit of detail before. It's an ever expanding island of ice and frost which will one day consume the world. That's because it has a portal linking directly to Rymrgand's realm. Every so often, a Dracolich rips from the jaws of the Beast of Winter, rains down fiery death and plague upon the congregation of glamfellen, to their deathrattles and cheers, and is pulled back into the white frozen void of death. Each time, the cold winds of apocalypse blow and make that island just ever so more big. So we do what all murderhobos would do in our situation and put down the dracolich, to which we're booed by the glamfellen. They said what the fuck we could've been dead by now, well tough shit. Only the strangest thing, the dragon is reanimated and pulled back into the icy maw of Rymrgand. We can't truly put it to rest until we...

Yeah... Enter into a realm where all souls are trapped and meant to be crushed and eroded into rime, frost, snow. So we do a little talking to Rymrgand on our way there and he alleges that it might be okay well who knows. Neia could hardly care what he actually said, she called him a douchebag and said she's Berath's Herald so she can do what she wants, more or less. And so.. she enters into the void of entropy itself to speak with this dracolich and get down to business about how to resolve this conflict once and for all. And this is where I want to cut any more plot details off before it constitutes a real spoiler.

What I can say about the rest of the story is that it sheds a lot more light on the history of the setting, and also a lot of the metaphysics. It's good enough that I get to have more arguments with gods, but I also love seeing the kinds of people who would end up in a void, partially digested by entropy itself. There are a few genuinely beautiful moments that touch on historical context that pertains to the collective trauma of the Dyrwoodians we don't exactly get to see in the first game which I am deeply grateful for. It's absolutely work getting if you were interested at all in the lore or story of the game and want more than just a bunch of dungeons and fights.

That being said, it was basically two big dungeons that I got to explore, and two gigantic and engaging boss fights. It really felt rewarding to fight the dracolich, and the spoiler final boss of the DLC. It was very rewarding to explore and stealth, looting everything and really taking my time to solve the dungeon puzzles. It's a lot more than just a combat DLC but I would say it's on the lighter side when it comes to the actual roleplaying parts. Short isn't necessarily a bad thing, given one of the other DLCs is literally you just doing fight after fight for Galawain, god of the hunt. Sounds far less appealing to be doing that then facing the culture my PC grew up with and getting to shit talk the center of which her estranged culture built everything around. Overall, I loved it. You get to smack talk and lie to a god. Also my WIFE Ydwin is there.