Ok, here we go...
Feel... Hear... Think...
What is it?
This is the cliffhanger from Futures Perfect. Simply put, we don't know and the Sharlayans (Thancred, Y'shtola, Papalymo & Yda) are still trying to find out after ten years of searching. However, it is suspected that this voice comes from whoever or whatever gave you the echo. The most prominent theories to date regarding this entity's identity are:
- The primal, Siren (Ferne likes to troll us on this subject);
- The Twelve, or at least one of them, possibly Althyk as master of spacetime;
- Some other entity yet to be introduced in any capacity;
- The Lodestone itself, also known as the Mother Crystal.
Your guess from here on out is as good as mine. Personally, I think it is the Lodestone. A lot of others are hell-bent on the Siren theory.
Musketeer Firing Stances
What the hell is going on?
The trick to understanding this is understanding how the echo works, which the player is not expected to understand when they witness these scenes for the first time.
You start by being tested in the current day guild and are lent a firearm. As you pose, the Guildmaster and Commodore of the Knights of the Barracuda, Reyner, recognizes your chosen firing stance as that of Rostenstahl, a Roegadyn formally known as Stahlmann who has fallen from grace.
This triggers an echo-induced memory where you travel back in time to when Stahlmann was himself Guildmaster. In your interactions with the memory, you are recognized simply as a bystander, one who has no reason to be holding a pistol. Sergeant Mannskoen confiscates it accordingly.
When you leave the echo, you no longer have the pistol with you, hence the fuss about what happened to it - you left it behind in history, although you won't recognize it as history till much much later (Fade to White). You claimed to have "handed it back to the Sergeant". You mean Sergeant Mannskoen, but they assume a different Sergeant. After all, Mannskoen is dead in the present day. Everyone gets confused and no one finds the firearm.
Nasty business, all that. At least you made it out in one piece.
Path Companions
I miss the poor lass.
Path companions will not have a role to play initially in the reborn realm, but time and plot advances may change that. Watch this space.