Vox Solaris – An Intro Quest to Fortuna and the Orb Vallis

Yes, I stayed up until the update hit. For me, it arrived at around 11pm, and you bet your ass that I stayed up and waited for 4gb of data to download on my slow-as-heck internet connection. It was one of the longest waits I’ve had in a while, but it was also reasonably short. And of course, the first thing I do is go to Fortuna!

Just like Plains of Eidolon, Fortuna has an opening cut scene you only ever see the first time you go there. Unlike Plains of Eidolon, I couldn’t help but sing along. Also unlike Plains of Eidolon, Fortuna and the Orb Vallis have a proper introductory quest before you can do anything special. That quest is Vox Solaris.

Spoilers ahead!

Vox Solaris starts with a beaten down Eudico, the Konzu (i.e. bounty giver and main character) of Fortuna, just trying to do her job and stop people from dying or being killed or worse, repossessed. Because for the people living in Fortuna and other Corpus areas, life is a never-ending struggle to repay debt. And if you can’t pay debt, they take your mechanical augments. Or worse, they take your brain.

Something happened with Eudico. Something she doesn’t want to talk about. Us Tenno offer help and she says to speak to Thursby, a young, orphan who inherited his parents’ debt. Because there’s no such thing as debt forgiveness. He can’t even work off his debt because he can’t buy any augments so he doesn’t freeze to death. If we buy something from Thursby, he’ll be able to pay off that week’s debt.

Thursby has other ideas though. He wants us to go get him some new merchandise to sell. Thus starts our first trek into the Orb Vallis. Doing a cache-finding quest almost identical to the ones on the Plains of Eidolon.

Of course, Eudico interrupts. Because we’re chatting on an insecure channel. She doesn’t want Thursby getting hurt and orders you to come back before you do anything stupid.

The Business though, a bloke who now works in preserving local wildlife, he catches wind of what happened between Thursby, Eudico and us Tenno. He talks to us, explaining that after the tragedy of Deck 12, Eudico basically gave up on the whole rebellion against the Corpus. The Business wants to strike back and wants to drag Eudico back into the action. In the mean time, Eudico is just trying to appease Nef Anyo and stop people from dying.

In the process, you save some hostages and do a miniature spy mission, introductory missions for bounties to come.

Unfortunately, things don’t really go right. The Corpus find out what is going on and they… Well, they repossess Thursby’s limbs. His organic ones. As well as a ton of other body parts.

But even worse than that, Nef Anyo wants a coolant tower to be activated when it’s really not ready yet. When the coolant tower doesn’t work, he blames the workers of Solaris and forces Eudico to pick 50 workers to be brain shelved – their bodies repossessed and their brains kept in storage forever. Eudico realizes that trying to keep Nef Anyo happy isn’t working any more and finally agrees to do something.

So Eudico sends you outside with a bomb she borrowed off the Business. You help kill a fuckton of Corpus, so Nef Anyo gets his fucking massive, Hydralyst-sized spider bot to shoot at you. To be honest it wasn’t that scary for me because Volt’s Electric Shield is stronger than the robot’s missiles, but you have to retreat back inside Fortuna briefly.

After setting you up with a K-Drive belonging to a Vent Kid, Eudico tells you to K-Drive past the fricking massive spider and towards the coolant tower from earlier. Basically, with Eudico’s help, we take control and turn the tower on, causing it to become unstable and threatening Nef Anyo’s investments. Using a voice changer, she mocks Nef Anyo and forces him to forgive the debt, in exchange for not blowing up the cooling tower.

Nef Anyo relents and buggers off for a bit. Eudico is happy, the Business is happy, everyone’s happy. The rebellion is starting up again, and Eudico asks for you to help her out with bounties. Fortuna and its merchants are now fully available to you.

What do you get for finishing the quest? Access to the main merchants in Fortuna and a fricking K-Drive! And a blueprint for Garuda, sent via your inbox. But more importantly, a K-Drive!

Time to go hoverboarding!

Oh, wait. We forgot about Thursby.

He’s alive. Just about. He only has legs now though. But he’s got enough money to set up his own business, selling MOA parts and is making headway when it comes to paying off debts, so it’s not all bad.

Anyway, back to hoverboarding.