Kurldehv

The mountain of Yoltrund

**Kurldehv** (*curl-dev*) is the primary feature of Yoltrund and is the mountain that forms Yoltrund. It is a solitary peak with ruins of stairs spiraling around the mountain. Within lies The Prison of Keldakan and the House of Judgement.

## About

Kurldehv is the largest of the scenes so far implemented in Yoltrund and the only scene that has multiple parts, being the Prison and the House of Judgement and features an extra minigame as the test players of The Lost must face. Kurldehv is also the first scene where the Punishment System will respawn characters that the player lost.

## Journal Entry

### On Awake

*"As the ferry traversed along the water, my heart continued to cry out, just as the cries now echoing through the tunnel may do so. The sound chilled my blood as it fled from my face, yet my Master looked on, seeming to relish in the shrieks of the Damned. As the cries intensified, so did the light on the far end of the tunnel; in such a way that a gypsy may dance in the cold, moonlit night, singing praise to the Moon-so did this light dance.

I pray to my Master, "who are these now who cry? Why art their cries much more pitiful and have such an effect on my spleen?" and He breathed to me "be still, for you shall soon see the terror that ails these wretches so. Harden your heart, for beyond this cave begins the true torment."

The words He spoke were true, for the light enveloped my sight and the lamentations were all that I could hear. Once my eyes adjusted to the sudden punishment of light, a new punishment tormented my sight. Hark, as I tell none but truth as I dictate what I saw before me. I saw nothing but fire licking every of anything I could see and the flames licked the sides of a massive mountain with a staircase going up to the peak as if a stairway to the heavens. I could see these sinners climbing these stairs, lamenting and cursing as they climbed the mountain that seemed too tall to scale. As we approached the mountain, I beheld its true view, for the peak seemed to be none in sight.

My Master lifted me from the ferry onto the burnt and hard ground at the foot of the stairs where sinners lined up by the dozens to scale its craggy peak. As I looked up the path, I could see a sinner higher up lose his footing and come tumbling down those hard steps, and many other sinners were compelled to join, for they could not move in time. I count about six sinners came down, should memory keep her promise.

The sinners tore at their skin and hair and shrieked in horror and anger as five of the company turned onto the last who was one who fell first. They tore at his flesh and lashed and flayed at his shriveled body and threw his mangled self into the waters as he screamed whilst his body was torn asunder by the sorrowful waters. With satisfaction, the other sinners began to scale the peak again.

I turned to my Master and spoke to Him with pity in my eyes, "Master, who are these, so overcome by pain? What causes them to wail as so?" and He to me "once carried over the waters, the sinners must climb the Kurldehv, the Steps of Judgement. They have chosen away from the True Path and must now feel the pain that the path they chose inflicts." I spoke to my Master, sorrow within me, "will these souls find no release?" and He responded "should they climb the peak, they await their judgment by King Navareh, Judge of the Damned, who determines by their sin and casts the damned into the Abyss. There is no release, for once in the Abyss, eternity they serve for Reality drives them out and Inferno does not take them, so here they remain long after the Trumpets sound and the Horsemen ride. Pity them not for they have chosen this willingly, and therefore must willingly suffer.""*

## Kurldehv Layout

The layout of Kurldehv is simple compared to the other scenes the player faces and the player must simply continue climbing up towards the peak. The scene comes in 3 areas and then two inner scenes built in.

The green path is the first area.

The yellow path is the second area leading to the Prison.

The white path leads to some extra content.

The blue path leads around the mountain and to the House of Judgement.

## The Prison of Keldakan

The Prison of Keldakan is a small section of Kurldehv as one goes from the yellow path to the blue path. It is a cave in the Kurldehv mountainside that imprisons Keldakan.

## The House of Judgement

The House of Judgement is a temple at the peak of Kurldehv where the Judge King Navareh judges sinners and tosses them into their appropriate Realm. This area is straightforward and the only challenge comes from talking to Navareh.

### Important

**If you confessed to being Lost or Branded**, then you **MUST** accept the challenge he gives you. Rejecting will result in death and loss of your save. He is not giving you a choice in the matter.

**If you confessed to any other sin**, you do not have to accept his challenge and you can move on, as Navareh will state that you are not with his time.

## Navareh's Challenge

Upon accepting his challenge, you will be taken to a maze. The maze is instanced and randomly generated based on a recursive tree algorithm and will result in a maze that has only one true path. Paths don't branch off of the path and often are generated around the main path. The challenge is also timed and the timer is randomly generated from **5 minutes to 20 minutes** and will return any amount of time as the time is generated by seconds. The challenge has a minimap that will show the maze.

As each maze is randomly generated, there is no guide to the exact paths, but there is a method.

### Method

The mazes are randomly generated and the minimap will only show once you start the timer. Once starting the timer, **do not move**. Read the minimap and figure out a best path. The longest path will be the correct path. Get your path sorted out before moving as moving will confuse you with how the path is generated.

### Things to remember.

1. The mazes are instanced. If you save and close the game, the maze and timer will not be the same when you load back in. This can be helpful if you end up with a "bad spawn".
2. You cannot pause and look at the map as the pause menu obscures the map, restricting your use of a cursor. One exploit is to alt+tab out which pauses the game without the pause menu and frees up your cursor, although using this is recommended if you have more than 1 monitor as 1 monitor will put the focus back into the game, taking back the cursor and unpausing the game. Another method is to screenshot or take a picture of the map beforehand and then pause the game and look at the picture and figure out your path.
3. The timer reaching 0 will result in a "death". If you are guilty of being **Lost or Branded**, your save will be lost. Any other sin will result in normal death and having to reload.
4. Remember, **do not move** unless you have your path sorted out. If you get lost or go off the path, figuring out the path again may make you backtrack and suddenly the 8 minute not so bad timer can turn into an ultimate threat.
5. Once in the maze, the only way out is to get to the goal. You may exit and reload to your last save, but if you saved when entering the maze, you must get out by solving it.
6. The goal is **ALWAYS** in the centre of the maze and the player is **ALWAYS** in the bottom left corner of the maze. That knowledge may be helpful to you in solving the maze.
7. Because there's only one path, when figuring out your route, **START FROM THE PLAYER**. This is important because there are multiple paths from the goal that will lead to it, but only one path from the player. To save time, start from the player and work forwards.

### Good instances vs bad instances.

Since both the layout and the timer are randomly generated, you might end up with a short maze with a long timer, or a long maze with the timer, or medium on both. You could also get a short maze with a short timer and a long maze with a long timer. Other than reloading, there's no way to change the instance so plan for the worst when completing this challenge.

Upon completing the challenge or skipping if able to, the player will be allowed past Navareh and into Parforiah.

## Trivia

* Kurldehv is first scene so far to use a full 3D level, including the maze and the House of Judgement.
* The maze is still in the area "Kurldehv" suggesting that it is somewhere in or on the mountain top. A lot of the House of Judgement is cut off so it is possible that it is in that area somewhere.
* The player can encounter a soul named "Rocket" who offers the player his "gently used orange". While out of place in the context of Yoltrund, this encounter was added as a joke based on a bit of dialogue from Animal Crossing.
* The shouting heard in Kurldehv is the sound of Navareh judging souls. He shouts one of the sins of Yoltrund every few seconds.
* The randomly generated mazes come from a prototype from the studio known as "*Reyz*", where the player must navigate a randomly generated maze. There is a day/night cycle and at night, a demon will come out and hunt down the player. During the day, the demon is hidden and the player is free to roam. This prototype was available to play on the website of Templarius Studios' old subsidary called "Harbingers of Creation". Since the organization's disbandment in February 2018, the website has been unreachable and the prototype has not surfaced since. It is visible still on the studio's old OneGameAMonth page, although the link takes the user to the old Harbingers website, which is unreachable. The studio also has not mentioned any future plans for the prototype nor any announcement to continue development of the prototype.
* Originally, the maze challenge was not supposed to have a map, hence why the end point has a chime sound effect. However, due to the complexity of the mazes without a map and how they twist and turn and how the wrong path could result in having to redo the entire maze, the minimap was added to ease the difficulty.
* When traveling through Kurldehv and if the white path is taken on the mountain, the player will encounter a valley of Spikes with an NPC saying not to take that path and that someone tried and that person is now impaled in the valley. When the player travels up and on the blue path, when he nears the valley, a body impaled by a spike can be seen.
* The common theme about Kurldehv is just how large the ruins and spikes are. This is attributed to the fact that Yoltrund was not designed for Humans, but for gods and other races.
* The three crosses in area 2 are the largest in the entire scene and are hinted as being used for torments. The Player adds to that, asking that if that's true, what were the three crosses used for. From their position, they may be a reference to the Crucifixion of Jesus and how Jesus and two thieves were crucified. It may also be a reference to Dante's *Inferno,* a heavy influence for the story of Yoltrund, and how in Canto 34, Dante tells that Lucifer has three mouths and in each mouth, he chews on Judas Iscariot who betrayed Christ and with him Brutus and Cassius who murdered Julius Caesar.
* When the player asks if this is Hell, he is told that it is a Hell, but not Inferno. And the Master says that he knew "Luciferous", a reference to the Christian Hell. Luciferous may be the Templarian name for Lucifer/Satan.