The Burden of Memory – Pillars of Eternity Quest

This guide is for a quest in Part 2 of Pillars of Eternity: The White March. The guide has a walkthrough of the area, and a map with a legend.

Map Legend

1 – Maneha
2 – Salt Well
3 – High Abbot Kaoto

Background

You’ll receive this quest when you add Maneha to your party. You’ll find her in Stalwart Village at the start of Part 2 (#1).

Walkthrough

Maneha will tell you that she’s a Giftbearer for Ondra — a job title you might remember from the Regrets Worth Trading quest from Part 1 — and that she’s looking for The Abbey of the Fallen Moon. Since nobody in Stalwart Village seems to know where the abbey is located, she’ll offer to tag along with you.

The first time you rest while Maneha is in your party, you’ll witness her having a bad dream. If you want to, you can wake her up and talk to her about it right then. Otherwise, Maneha will bring it up in the morning, but for that case you’ll have to click on the dialogue icon on her portrait to start the conversation.

When you ask Maneha about her dream, she’ll tell you that her soul has Awakened, and that she now repeatedly dreams about a terrible thing she did in a former life. Then she’ll mention that The Abbey of the Fallen Moon contains a Salt Well, where people can gift their memories to Ondra, and she’ll reveal that that’s why she’d like to go there — even if it means losing all of her memories and not just the bad one.

If Maneha is in your party during the quest The Iron Flail — where you’ll learn the location of the abbey — then afterwards a dialogue option will appear on her portrait. When you talk to her, she’ll finally describe the memory that’s been haunting her — that during a war 500 years ago, after capturing a village, the remaining elders and children defied her, and so she killed them all by nailing them to trees. At the conclusion of this conversation, you’ll notice a “thick roll of cloth bound by leather” in Maneha’s pack, but she won’t tell you what it is. If Maneha isn’t in your party, then you’ll have this conversation when you take her to The Abbey of the Fallen Moon.

You’ll find the Salt Well inside The Halls of Presence on the upper level of The Abbey of the Fallen Moon (#2). You’ll need to pick a Difficulty 10 lock or acquire a Steel-Banded Key from High Abbot Kaoto (#3) to enter the room containing it. However, when you approach the well, Maneha will suddenly become hesitant, and this will give you two ways to proceed:

• You can talk Maneha out of entering the well. To do this, you should say:
  
  
  • “What if your memory of the massacre has prevented you from committing a similar crime?”
  • “And this memory has shaped you and taught you restraint.”
  
  Other variations on this theme can work as well. If you’re successful, then Maneha will pull a bottle of wine out of the roll of cloth you might have noticed earlier, and she’ll take a drink to celebrate her decision. For following this path, Maneha will receive the Satisfied Mind talent, which will give her +2 Resolve.
  
  
• You can encourage Maneha to enter the well. This is what Maneha wants to do, so you shouldn’t have any trouble convincing her. After stepping into the pool, Maneha will realize that she needs to give something to Ondra, and she’ll donate a bottle of wine from the roll of cloth you might have noticed earlier. Tentacles will then rise up and drag her into the pool, and a while later she’ll re-appear with the unwanted memory gone. For following this path, Maneha will receive the Clean Conscious talent, which will give her +2 Dexterity.

1 – Maneha


2 – Salt Well


3 – High Abbot Kaoto