Observed behaviour: on entering the Aec'Letec cult's basement, Tracea Carol and her minions were already hostile and she was already within melee range, so I just charged straight into combat, expecting to see combat interrupted (as usual) by Tracea Carol's dialogue which concludes with the summoning of Aec'Letec. However, I got a lucky strike and killed her so fast (a fraction of a second) that she was already dead before she had time to speak, and I then completed the fight with her minions. Aec'Letec never appeared, but the Soultaker wasn't on Tracea Carol's corpse, so then I was stuck with no way to complete Hurgan's quest.
Expected behaviour: Tracea Carol shouldn't die until after she has made her speech and summoned the demon.
Commentary: this is clearly rare, I haven't previously heard of anyone killing her so fast that she had no time for her dialogue to trigger, I didn't know it could be done. Since I've played before, I knew this wasn't the intended outcome, so I reloaded from a save made (fortunately) just before storming the basement, and the next time she didn't die so fast and had time to speak and summon as normal, enabling the quest to be completed. HOWEVER, there was nothing in what happened (the first time) which would have given a new player any obvious clue that it was meant to happen some other way, so a newbie could be left scratching his head at an insoluble (and fairly major) quest with no idea where he had gone wrong, when it fact it was the game which had gone wrong.
Expected behaviour: Tracea Carol shouldn't die until after she has made her speech and summoned the demon.
Commentary: this is clearly rare, I haven't previously heard of anyone killing her so fast that she had no time for her dialogue to trigger, I didn't know it could be done. Since I've played before, I knew this wasn't the intended outcome, so I reloaded from a save made (fortunately) just before storming the basement, and the next time she didn't die so fast and had time to speak and summon as normal, enabling the quest to be completed. HOWEVER, there was nothing in what happened (the first time) which would have given a new player any obvious clue that it was meant to happen some other way, so a newbie could be left scratching his head at an insoluble (and fairly major) quest with no idea where he had gone wrong, when it fact it was the game which had gone wrong.