Two Worlds Pacifist Run - City of Ashos Quests (Part I)

Now for the pacifist run sub-quests you can complete in the city of Ashos:

Riding through the night streets of the city of Ashos

The first Ashos resident you'll probably meet as you ride up to the impressive circular gateway is a courteous soldier named Yorun Togawa, who will ask you why you're visiting Ashos, and warn you that most residents aren't especially receptive toward outsiders. He'll also give you a quest:
"Find Hoko's Sister"

Yorun Togawa asks for your help aiding Hoko Sayuri

Togawa wants you to find a woman he cares about named Hoko Sayuri, and help her with a problem.
You'll actually only be able to solve all these quests after a fairly complicated set of twists through other partially-related side quests from other characters, but you'll find Hoko Sayuri a short distance away in her house southwest of the main gates.

Hoko Sayuri discusses the disturbing disappearance of her sister...

She'll reveal that her sister has disappeared, and suggest you ask after her by talking to an Ashos blacksmith who may have forged a second key to the Yatholen Temple so you can sneak in there and look for her sister.  While we will eventually have to enter the Temple for other reasons, the Temple turns out actually not to be involved in the sister's disappearance.
The blacksmith also isn't actually directly useful to solve this quest, but there is a sequential set of steps you'll need to set to get other NPCs to appear to eventually solve the mystery, so we'll look at his quest later on, starting with "Uchinao & Hidee Sakamoto: Feuding Sibling & "The Blacksmith's Will."

Uchinao & Hidee Sakamoto: Feuding Siblings & "The Blacksmith's Will"
Uchinao Sakamoto (found in southwest Ashos) is the Blacksmith that Hoko Sayuri thought might have a second key to the Temple, but he'll initially deny this. However, after you indicate that you might be willing to help him save his smithy from his allegedly greedy sister (who Uchinao claims is trying to cheat him out of inheriting the blacksmith his father wanted him to have), he'll indicate that he actually could give you a second key if you help him first. This will trigger the dubious-sounding quest "Get Rid of the Greedy Sister."

Blacksmith's daughter Hidee Sakamoto tells a very different story than her brother...

However, visiting Hidee Sakamoto will reveal a starkly different side of the story: Hidee is not as ignorant about smithing as her brother claimed, and also seems to have a Blacksmith's Will written by her father, confirming that he actually did mean for her to inherit the smithy. However, the Will still needs to be formally legalized by the Mayor, Masakore Murata. Hidee is afraid to take it to the Mayor herself since her brother is "a dangerous man," and will ask the protagonist to do it for her. (Note: We lost track of the exact sequence of quest-flags that must be set to get Murata to show up, but this conversation with Hidee Sakamoto might be required to make the Mayor show up at his house in northwestern Ashos. If you've reached this point, he should now be there even if he wasn't before.)
As for the dispute between siblings, two choices are theoretically presented to you at this point: Help Uchinao the brother, or Hidee the sister. For a pacifist challenger, though, it seems you can't make Uchinao change his mind by showing him his father's Blacksmith's Will, and we weren't interested in testing out any other ways to "get rid" of his sister for him— so we chose to help her instead of him:
Bringing Hidees' father's Will to the Mayor at his house will complete the quest to legalize the document, after which you can talk to Hidee again at her house to be rewarded with some gold and experience points. (As for getting a key to the Temple of Yatholen, you won't need the Blacksmith for this, since there's another much easier and more virtuous way covered in the next post on Ashos, by just talking to the Mage Kano Mizoguchi who has a different quest for you inside the Temple.)
At this point, you'll have access to the Mayor's quest sequence, which (if we're not mistaken) will be required in order to finish the investigation for Hoko Sayuri and Yorun Togawa:

The Manor of Ashos Mayor Masakore Murata:

Mayor Masakore Murata appears in his manor after you get the quest to bring him the Blacksmith family's will...

Masakore Murata seems very courteous, but with a slightly unsettling edge despite his good manners. After he appears at his house (which will enable you to give him Hidee Sakamoto's will to solve her quest without any violence), he'll also ask you to do something for him: Visit a healer woman who lives in the bamboo forest outside the city, and get a package of herbal medicine for him.

Approaching the hut of the healer woman in the bamboo forests outside Ashos...

The healer woman's name is Yaida Masae, but to finish this quest she'll unfortunately demand that you get rid of some of the dangerous Trachidis insect creatures that are stamping around in a nearby grove. You could choose not to do that, but we tested it out by casting Chaos Rage on the hostile creatures to make them attack each other, so we could find out what else this quest unlocked...

The healer woman reveals the mayor's secret reason for his dependence on her medicines...

Talking to Masae again after this will cause her to hand over the medicine, but also to tell you the Mayor's secret: He is actually a werewolf who requires regular doses of the medicine to avoid transforming and committing murders. If you take the Mayor back his medicine he'll reward you with gold and experience, but at this point you'll make a disturbing discovery: Hoko's missing sister's red dress is found in the rear room of his house, indicating she was probably one of the mayor's victims when he transformed.

Receiving quest rewards for bringing the Mayor his preventative herbal medicine...

Conclusion for Yorun Togawa & Hoko Sayuri:
At this point, you can solve the quests Yorun Togawa and Hoko Sayuri gave to you earlier: If you go and give Hoko the dress and tell her you found it at the Mayor's house, she'll despair and ask to be alone.

This is the red dress you'll need to find inside the Mayor's manor to complete your investigation into the sister's disappearance...

However, you'll learn shortly afterward from talking again to Yorun Togawa that Hoko apparently went to the Mayor's house shortly afterward and killed him to avenge her sister's death, and probably also to prevent him from killing anyone else.

Hoko is now a fugitive as a result of this, but you can help her and Togawa bring about as happy an ending as can be managed by helping Togawa arrange for her to escape the region later (without having to arouse suspicion by leaving his guard post during his normal shift):

All you'll need to do to arrange this is to leave the city and find Hoko near the teleporter on the main road east of Ashos, tell her that Togawa will soon meet her to help her escape safely, and then go back to Togawa once more to receive his thanks and be rewarded with more experience points.

The protagonist brings about a happy ending for Sayuri and Togawaa...

Merchant Guild

Now that we've brought about a happy ending for two virtuous souls in distress, let's go and rake in more cash and experience points with the help of our old friends' the Merchant's Guild: 

If you were already on the Merchant Guild mission from Garrid Swan in Quidnar (see the separate Merchants guide for full details) to deliver the final package of Guild documents to Takashi Misuke, you'll find him in the Merchant Guild Hall of Ashos just northwest of the main gates.

The Ashos merchant guild

When you give Takashi Misuke the Guild documents, he'll reward you and reveal that the documents were largely a test concocted by Guild leader Talor Ravinard, who wanted to test your loyalty. (Our interpretation was that this meant the Merchants never actually put compromising information in the documents to begin with, since they expected you to give them to the Giriza all along— but either way: The Merchants either don't know or don't care if you already showed the documents to the Giriza's spy Zatagi in Quidnar, so now you can cash in on the reward of even more nonviolent experience points, gold, and reputation with the Guild.

Takashi Misuke will give you your final pacifist-run friendly round of rewards for the Merchant Guild quests...

Takashi Misuke also refers you to Ravinar at the Cathalon Guild, saying that their leader is ready to give you an important mission: 

Talor Ravinard, Merchant Guild Leader in Cathalon

Unfortunately, if you go there you'll learn that the special mission is just to go bump off Ravinard's arch-rival, the Giriza's head-honcho Aki Hosuno. (And if you already talked to Hosuno in Quidnar before turning him hostile by "liberating" his stolen goods, Hosuno will also have tried to hire you for the same price of 30,000 gold pieces to go and assassinate Ravinard instead. The good news for the pacifist challenger: Just ignore both murder requests from these two big-shots, and you'll still be able to go on enjoying your high status and improved profit margins with the Merchants Guild without any negative consequences. (As usual, you never need to give the "kill such-and-such" quest-givers a direct answer about what you really intend to do about their assassination requests, even if the quest shows up in your questbook.)

You can still get these large rewards just for delivering the final package of documents, even if you never carry out the assassinations request from Guile leader Talor Ravinard.

The above are only about half the good pacifist run quests to be found in Ashos. We'll cover the rest of the ones we found in the next post....

Two Worlds Pacifist Run - The Death & Resurrection of Ashos

You'll find the seaside city of Ashos on the coast southwest of Quidnar, after a substantial journey. It's the last major city you'll find in Two Worlds (not counting the orc-infested citadel of Gor Grammar near the volcano in the far south), and one with some of the most surprising twists and turns in a pacifist challenge run.

Approaching the gates of Ashos, flanked by stone statues of Yatholen's serpent people...

We'll give the details about all the pacifist run quests we found in Ashos in the next post, but here's a key warning to be aware of in advance (including major plot spoilers, as usual): If you take the Relic Water Stone found in Yatholen's Temple, it can trigger the automatic failure of every profitable nonviolent sub-quest in the entire city, since it will cause a disastrous orc invasion of the city to take place. This disaster is scripted into the plot and is not avoidable in any other way we know of, but fortunately there is a way to rectify the situation later and bring about a surprise happy ending for Ashos and all its citizens...

The picturesque city of Ashos is not as hopelessly doomed as it might appear after the orc invasion takes place...

The Death & Resurrection of Ashos:
In order to complete the main storyline of Two Worlds, you'll eventually have to sneak into the Temple of Yatholen near the far western oceanside wall of Ashos in order to reclaim the Relic Water Stone. (You may remember Yatholen as the same irascible sea deity who was sending the scapulari squid people to menace the villagers of Clovelly, if you visited that village earlier.)

Approaching the fateful temple of Yatholen...

According to many of the citizens of Ashos, the orc invaders in the surrounding countryside can't capture Ashos since the city is under Yatholen's supernatural protection. This is facilitated by a magical  relic called the "Eye of Yatholen," which the deity uses to keep watch over the city and all who would threaten it. (The details on how to actually get to this stone are covered in the next section on Ashos.)

The Eye of Yatholen, also known as the "Relic Water Stone", in the heart of the Temple...

The bad news is that the "Eye of Yatholen" is none other than the Relic Water Stone you must acquire in order to complete the main quest to re-assemble the relic. Taking the Eye of Yatholen will result in the unavoidable disaster scripted into the game's plot: As soon as you take the Relic Water Stone, you'll emerge from the Temple to discover that orc invaders have sacked the city and massacred every single citizen of Ashos...

Uh-oh... Orc invaders have breached the Gates and slain everyone in Ashos. But don't worry: it's reversible.

But there's some surprising good news: With the level 15 Air magic spell "Resurrection," you can actually revive every single slain citizen in the entire city of Ashos and literally bring the entire city population back to life again. (This still works even if there's a long gap between the disaster taking place, and your acquiring the Resurrection spell later on in the game.)

The hero (wearing orc Camouflage) finishes resurrecting  four Ashos soldiers whose corpses were lying in the street... 

When this is done, everyone will again be alive and well again, and go back to their usual business in the city with the exact same personalities and daily routines that they had before the orcs sacked the city.

Resurrecting the mage Kano Mizoguchi, who was slain by the orc invaders in his home...

The significant interim problem, of course, is that Ashos is still full of hostile orc invaders lumbering around the city after you exit the temple, which will cause a little bit of temporary "tension" between the people of Ashos and the orc invaders, and require the player to choose how to deal with the situation...

Resurrected Ashos citizens and soldiers, allied with resurrected orcs, brawl with orc invaders in the streets...

Pacifist-Run Resurrection Spree:
The only "non-interventionist" choice we know of at this point would have been to just let the orc invaders slay all (and then flee the city), but we decided this wasn't palatable for various reasons, including that our mandatory quest to remove the Eye of Yatholen had already facilitated the orcs' successful breach of the city's supernatural defenses...

The hero observes several Chaos-Raged orc invaders battling each other...

Our compromise approach: We wanted to bring all the citizens of Ashos back to life and reverse their deaths, but every being that gets resurrected can only be brought back to life once. To deal with this without letting the orcs murder any resurrected citizens a second time, we chose "indirect" tactics by casting Chaos Rage on the orcs to make them fight each other for a bit first, then resurrected the fallen orcs to tip the balance in our side's favor...

The gold-armored Ashos soldiers are the best match against orcs, but mettlesome citizens like these are also keen to do their part...

Then we began resurrecting several clusters of Ashos soldiers and tough citizens who were more than a match for the orcs when fighting in a group. As the Ashos soldiers and citizens gradually defeat the orcs, you can immediately also resurrect any fallen orcs, who will jump up and join the defending side (remaining friendly and non-hostile after the battle ends).

Resurrected orcs dispatched by Ashos soldiers and citizens are added to the defending side's ranks...

Caveat: Assuming you want to preserve the lives of the good people of Ashos, make sure not to be too hasty in resurrecting any of the less formidable civilians too early, because if they or any other resurrected entity gets bumped off a second time, you won't be able to bring them back to life again.

Resurrecting some of the more vulnerable citizens, after the majority of orcs are resurrected and fighting on our side...

A theoretic alternative approach with a net-zero death toll:
Players who aren't shy about combat could theoretically dispatch all the orcs in the city first, then go on an even more extensive resurrection spree and bring every single dead orc and Ashos citizen back to life, without a single being on either side of the conflict remaining permanently dead...

Chaos-raged orcs express their cultural passion for martial conquest against each other rather than the people of Ashos...

We didn't try this, since being improperly rewarded with a huge harvest of experience points for any "kills" or combat solutions to problems isn't a very sporting thing for our own pacifist challengers to do. However, Two Worlds admittedly provides so much nonviolent quest experience that many players won't care about this, so if you want to make the net "death toll" comes out a wash without a single Ashos citizen or a single orc remaining permanently dead, this is one other contrarian option.

The hero contemplates the moon over Ashos, while patiently waiting for some chaos-raged orcs to finish their brawl...

Either way, once the hostile orc invaders have all been dealt with, all the resurrected orcs will be on their best behavior: As soon as they're resurrected and have finished fighting with any of the original orc invaders, the orcs will become docile and peacefully coexist alongside the natives of Ashos. We even found some of them quietly volunteering to sweep the city streets with brooms:

Resurrected orcs dutifully sweep the streets of Ashos after the battle ends...

Just one final caveat, on a lighter note: The citizens of Antaloor aren't especially keen on orcish visitors to their cities, and Ashos is obviously no exception— so if you're wearing the Orc Camouflage armor in order to avoid being attacked by the orcs, you'll also have to watch out for being accosted by resurrected guards. Otherwise they are likely to falsely accuse you of stealing (or worse) even if you haven't done anything, and demand large bribes.

A guard resurrected by the hero several moments earlier makes accusations and demands bribes...

If this does happen, you can usually buy them off for 30% of the amount of gold they demanded as a bribe. (You can also promise to leave the city, but if they see you again after a fairly short period of time passes, they might attack, making the already complex task of resurrecting the entire city of Ashos even more challenging.)

Now that you've been warned about the Doom of Ashos—and how to solve it if you've gotten the lv15 Air Spell Resurrection—it's finally time to go enjoy the many profitable sub-quests found all over Ashos, described in the next post...