SPOILER - What We Learned From A Grave Mistake (my Thoughts) (2024)

Quest Spoilers Ahead!!!

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So before I begin I would like to say I have not technically completed the quest. I have finished the ending cutscene, but the stupid dude refuses to give me my XP reward... ugh...

Anyway, many people do not understand A Grave Mistake. I want to explain to the best of my ability what I personally believe happened.

Firstly, backstory. Some of you may not understand what's going on because you don't know who Mael is. He is one of the four twain brothers, and all his abilities involve communicating with spirits. While many who died in battle could not move on due to their violent nature, Mael was able to help these harmful spirits go to the next world.

Secondly, the environment. What appears to be a graveyard initially seems to be a small town (3 or 4 houses only) with a cathedral surrounded by graves and a crypt. Or it could be a graveyard and those houses belong to the gravekeepers. I am more for the first option, but it's never made clear.

The surrounding mountains are topped with black rock. Considering that's the area Dern is hypothesized to be, and the fact that other Dernic references involve black rock, I am going to put that down as solid for now.

Being behind the house of twain also poses interning questions. Why would the Twains have such a large graveyard if only they lived in the House of Twain?

Anyway, given what we know about Mael, lets look at the scenes we come across (no, not the cutscenes, I will get to them later). A lot of people dead, but even more so, people who killed themselves. It is stated spirits can not move on because of the violent nature of their deaths OR practitioners of the Dark Arts can not move on due to the darkness in their spirit (once again, I am enforcing the spirit not soul rule).

Something happened and people started to kill themselves. This seems to be one of the worst ways you can die, and binds your vengeful spirit on earth. Mael, being in the business of helping spirits, was the only one who could help them move on.

Also, it seems to be the graveyard of a battle. What armies were fighting who, I don't know. But many of the graves state that the buried person was a great warrior, and I did see several graves with the same name.

Many of the mini-scenes show either people killing themselves or ghosts throwing books or footsteps. THe number of hanging people that just appear, I can not count.

This leads us into the cutscenes. I am going to talk about them in the order I witnessed them, but there is really no order.

Firstly, the cathedral. We see a bunch of cultist people summoning an Eye Monster (I freaking swear... One more Eye reference...). Anyway, this does not seem to be related to The Eye, nor the beast being summoned. What is does seem to be about is the cultists. Remember how I said Dark Magic (as stated in the twain lore) binds the spirits to earth? Well, it seems here that people started using Dark Magic, which is one of the reasons Mael had so many spirits to deal with.

The second cutscene I did was The Attic. It showed a black spirit with red eyes come up to the player. What does this mean? Well, in the cathedral we see the same black figure with giant wings. In one of the houses we see it starting at the ground in the same room as a white spirit. I believe this black figure is some sort of over-arching dark spirit that is forcing people to kill them selves and what not. It has been haunting this town (or whatever), and Mael could not directly combat it, only clean up the mess it has been making. The question here was HOW the spirit came to be here.

The third cutscene I did was the skeleton tomb. This house in particular had a lot of ghostlike activity, from flying books to footsteps. The skeletons resurrecting is definitely a mark of necromancery, a dark magic, but other than that I can't really say anything for sure. Just seems like a repeat of the cathedral.

Lastly was the wither skull. It seemed that it was showing a normal skull coming back to life in spirit form. The skull was all old and rotted, but when it came alive, it looked like the Howling Spirits that are found around the Twain Area. I dont really know what else to say.

The text seen during the cutscenes was simple "Once there was a man, who helped spirits pass on, however he was still moral". The man is obviously Mael. The quote IMPLIES that Mael died (I will talk about that later), which is why that evil black spirit is still haunting the area.

The final cutscene is important. It shows a man, Mael, who lived in the mansion. Spirits wandered the graveyard/town and Mael fought them and sent them to the next life (as seen in the cathedral scene). BUT at some point, something happened. We see the spirits he was fighting overlooking his tomb. We then see the town/thing slowly fall to ruin without Mael's guidance.

Then we see his ghost.

• Mael: Do you understand now?
• Mael: Now leave, and forget the horrors you have witnessed here today...
• Mael: They are safer here.

What does this mean? SPECIFICLY, the last line. "They are safer here". I can not figure out who are safer. The spirits of the dead? Wouldn't Mael be worried about the world being safe from them, not them being safe from something?

More importantly, what are they being saved from?

The ending remark regards what happened to Mael. Firstly, this confirmed that the Phantom Twain in the House of Twain quest is Marius (which the only way you could know that was looking on the forums) because Mael's spirit is here.

But more importantly, we never see him die. That's because he did not.

Remember the Headless Hunt quest? We learn that bodies without their spirits are still capable of basic actions, such as knowing where their soul is, pointing, walking around, stuff like that. Mael never died. His spirit somehow was separated from his body.

But then where is his body? Well, thats the easy part. What's the name of the NPC outside of the graveyard. Alem. Rearrange the letters, will you? Alem = Mael. And to drive this home, they both have the exact same skin. Red/Gold outfit with big grey mustache, just as we see in the cutscenes. And the mustache is also clearly on Mael's spirit.

Mael is not dead. I just wish we could find a way to return his spirit to his body.

So yeah. Thats all my thoughts and findings from the quest. Tell me if I missed anything or if you disagree!

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Edit: Yes! Tanti-like!