By Jonathan Wojcik and Rev Storm

ENTRY 03: ABNORMAL STONE CLUSTER

Also called Lookout Stones, I knew this was a (relatively. Just relatively) lighter hearted entry in the Souls series as soon as we saw these cuties; a simple chain of perfectly spherical stones with a single, cute googly eye on the end. They even tend to crawl around with the eye half-lidded, looking sleepy and a little bored. They're fairly easygoing, too; often found standing around, staring up at the sky with their eyes brightly glowing, they're reluctant to attack if you aren't aggressive first, and most of them only can attack by swinging their bodies around. The only exception are those encountered in a more clump-like than worm-like configuration, which attack by self-detonating.

Though we're never explicitly told what they are, where they came from or why they do what they do, we can infer quite a bit from where they're found: watching over ancient stone circles called evergaols. This term is pronounced the same as "ever jail," and that's exactly what it means. These circles can transport the player to a small paradimensional space where they can battle the soul of one of several possible warriors from the setting's ancient past.

Lookout Clusters are obviously the security system created for these magical prisons, but they're also one of the weaker creatures in the game and have no bearing at all on the escape of one "inmate" during one of the game's questlines. What are they even doing, then, when they're standing around skygazing, and who are their offensive behaviors meant to deter?

The impression I get, personally, is that the poor babies have steadily worn down over the centuries, or were never meant to be alone on the job to begin with. From their behavior and even design, I wouldn't be surprised if they were intended as little more than a surveillance system, but whoever or whatever they were meant to alert is now long gone. They're still sworn to fulfill their guard duty to the bitter end...no matter how hopeless that is for an abandoned, deteriorating, sentient security camera.

NAVIGATION: