The note bizarrely talks about a hand not pointing in vain, the meaning of the stars not obscure anymore, the black heaven vanishing, a celestial globe, an old orbit still unchanged, and “the number of my sign”. Vivian also had a notebook with entries seemingly written by the same person who addressed the letter. Vivian also had an odd envelope in his pocket, its outside addressed in a neat hand with the letter inside looking like it was ‘written by a Persian” who learned English. How did the artist see to draw the hand on the wall? If it was the murderer’s, why didn’t he use it? Also, it was dark when Vivian was killed. There was an open knife under Vivian’s body with no blood on it. Why draw it? A “murderer is always a madman” argues Phillipps.ĭyson then brings up the inquest report which Phillipps hasn’t seen. Phillipps theorizes Vivian was mixed up with Italians and one killed him with a knife found in a museum. The “Incident of the Letter” takes place about a month later.ĭyson tells Phillips what he’s found out about Vivian’s murder.

He sketches it, and Phillipps identifies it as a hand making the sign of the evil eye. After the police come and they give their statements, Dyson and Phillipps leave with Dyson apologizing about his “infernal jesting” seeming to have raised an “evil spirit”.ĭyson mentions a mark he saw on the wall above Vivian’s body. The crowd gathering around the body identifies him as Sir Thomas Vivian.

Phillipps says it looks about 10,000 years old given its style. Nearby is a piece of flint with blood on it, a flint knife. Beneath a lamp, on the pavement, an artist has scrawled some chalk marks. Dyson’s intuitive wanderings are the closest thing he has to occult powers. Baiting him with remarks about representatives of trogolodytes, lake dwellers, and darker races to be found in London, Dyson gets Phillipps to take a walk with him.Īs usual in Machen, adventure, coincidence, and mystery follow. Besides, contrary to what Phillipps says, the fishhooks aren’t genuine artifacts and probably forgeries. Dyson tells him he can find primitive men in London if he just looks. Amateur ethnologist Phillipps is examining primitive fish-hooks. The story opens with “The Problem of the Fish-Hooks”. Years later, in “About My Books” (which can be found in The Secret Ceremonies), Machen said of this story “highly ingenious and quite inferior”. Like that novel and the first Dyson story, “ The Inmost Light”, this is an episodic tale, here in four parts. But of course there's no right or wrong way to play the game.It’s the penultimate Dyson story and Phillipps from Machen’s The Three Impostors or, The Transmutationsjoins him again. It's really just a matter of habit since I often end up doing a lot of the stuff manually anyways. Also it's a feature PoE1 really could have used since the AI is pretty dang useless there. But I've been trying to use it more recently since quite frankly I also prefer it when I don't have to micromanage too much stuff all at once. Personally I was into the Baldur's Gate games way before I played any game with customizeable AI so I often kind of just forget that the AI script stuff is even there. It's just two different approaches, but some people get sweaty af about being traditionalists But for someone coming from something like Dragon Age or FF12 it makes perfect sense that you're setting up the character's moves beforehand rather than switching to manual control mid-fight. I think that for people coming from the Infinity Engine games or even just PoE1 it might seem like you're missing out on 4/5ths of the gameplay. Hence the choice of Scout so I can just take most of the abilities from the rogue tree and mostly just passives like Marksman and Gunner from Ranger.

Poe 2 redhand