The Price of Knowledge
Is there a limit to the price a true scholar will pay in exchange for knowledge? "Of course there isn't!" exclaims the exuberant neophyte, who has just had her first taste of truth and is willing to do anything to taste it again. Suffering and hardship, fear and degradation, cruelty and betrayal — no price is too high... until the moment comes when it is time to pay up. The only person who can speak on the price of knowledge with any authority is one who has already been obliged to pay it. Someone who has walked close enough to the precipice of death — not undeath, but true, final death — to realize that there is no turning back. Someone whose sanity has been tortured enough to grasp what it would be like to lose one's mind altogether. No, the price of knowledge can sometimes be too high. Gain knowledge by any means, but do not offer yourself as payment. If you do, you will cease to exist — who then will celebrate your discoveries? Scientists and followers? Cold comfort for someone who will not live to see it! An apt illustration of this reasoning can be seen in the fate of one woman who strove for knowledge, but who never imagined how devastating the price of such knowledge would turn out to be...
Objectives
- Learn the identity of the mad half-elf womanWhen they hear the word "scientist," most people picture someone respectable, well-heeled, working in a fully equipped laboratory. But a true scientist may be like this woman — barefoot, with unkempt, prematurely graying hair, pacing around the object of her research day and night, completely oblivious to the withering of her body and mind. Who is she? And what mystery is she attempting to solve?
- Learn the fate of Miammir the ScholarMany knights of the Order of the Flaming Lance call themselves scientists and researchers. In fact, their interest in mysticism is practical rather than theoretical. Most of them yearn for knowledge only in order to find a means to wipe out the demons. But there are happy exceptions, such as the order's leader, Miammir the Scholar. She earned this epithet with a string of brilliant discoveries made not in the reverential silence of a laboratory, but on blood-soaked battlefields. What made her leave Kenabres? Where is she now? Is she working on a new project — or perhaps has she already turned her last page?
- Tell the leader of the Order of the Flaming Lance about Miammir the Scholar's locationWhat a sorry sight — and it has unfolded in a place of such harsh beauty. A brilliant mind, once capable of leading an order of scholarly knights, is now shriveled like her skin, has turned gray and disheveled like her hair, and has lost its firm grip, like her trembling, gnarled fingers. Who now would recognize Miammir the Scholar in this raving vagrant? At the very least, her fellow order members have the right to know what became of their leader.
- Follow the leader of the Order of the Flaming Lance to Miammir the ScholarA brotherhood of scientists is more an ideal than a reality. Even among the knights of a crusader order, there is fertile ground for rivalry, envy, jealousy. What will the current leader of the order say when they see their predecessor in such an unusual state? Will they weep or will they rejoice? Will they help Miammir to recover, or will they end her suffering? The Commander will not want to miss the final denouement of this story!
- Decide the fate of Miammir the ScholarThe time has come to learn the truth. Why did Miammir leave Kenabres? What knowledge has she been seeking here, by this petrified tree? And most important of all — were all the hardships she has been forced to endure worth it?
+1 objectives have no in-game text