And so we headed back along the road to the Friendly Arms Inn. With Ajantis requiring support, our pace was markedly slowed. Nevertheless, with only a little prodding, he regaled us with stories from his past. His dark eyes twinkled as he told of the day Keldorn Firecam, one of the most revered paladins of the Order of the Most Radiant Heart had selected him to serve as his squire. Keldorn had tasked him with eradicating the bandit menace that plagued the Sword Coast, and Ajantis had sworn to undertake the labor. Before departing Waterdeep, though, Ajantis had sharpened his swordplay under Myrmth Splendon, a legendary captain-at-arms in Waterdeep, the seat of Ajantis’ noble house - the line of Ilvastarr. Splendon, Ajantis recalled wistfully, could fend off a greatsword with a dagger in one hand and a teacup in the other. Imoen was entranced. As boring as she had thought a knight would be, his tales of foreign climes seemed to fascinate her endlessly. By now, the daylight had begun to fade.
“Perhaps when you are fully recovered, we can spar,” I offered, “and I can see just how well a student of this Splendon meets the bladedance of the Tel-quessir.”
Ajantis tried to laugh but winced at the pain, “You are a fiery one, Ausar! Is your father a mighty warrior, then, to have given you such spirit?” Imoen, who had been following our conversation with her eyes, quickly glanced away. I had told Ajantis nothing of Gorion or of the circumstances of our departure from Candlekeep, or even that Imoen and I were both foster-children. I had not wanted to burden our acquaintance with such weighty matters so early on. My throat felt tight again and I looked down at the road as I spoke.
“My father was just a scholar with a bag of magic-tricks, much good they did him.” I felt Imeon jab my side, but I refused to acknowledge her. What I said was true, in a way. If he had been a Myrmth of the magical arts, if he had been more like one of the fourscore other luminaries that no doubt peopled Ajantis’ high-and-mighty life in Waterdeep, then Gorion would still be here, walking by my side, just as he always had. Instead, he had lost the one battle that mattered most.
“Ah,” Ajantis replied. He knew he had misspoken somehow, but was not sure how to continue. I was not about to help him figure it out. We shuffled along in silence for a few moments, before Imoen piped up again, her spirits apparently recovered.
“Ajantis,” Imoen said, “tell me a story about the royal court. Was there as much drama as they say in the storybooks? Were there special jewels and tiaras for Lady Ilver-aster to wear?”
“Ilvastarr is the name of my house,” Ajantis corrected her, “but Aster is actually the name of another paladin Order in Waterdeep, consecrated to the Lord of the Morning. True, the Dawnlord is compassionate, but in matters of duty, Helm . . .” Imoen eyes started to glaze over as Ajantis puffed out his chest to pontificate on the virtues of service to the Watcher. I myself paid no attention. Trapped in the memory of Gorion’s failure, my thoughts curdled like sour milk.
By the time we reached the Friendly Arms Inn, the sun had set under a gentle rain. As the raindrops clinked against my chainmail, dampening my undershirt, the weariness of a hard day’s work crept into my bones.
The rain had done something, at least, do dissipate the stench of the insectoid “scalp” I was lugging behind me. When we entered the Inn’s outer courtyard, Imoen tugged Ajantis and I over to Joia’s home, a wooden shanty constructed flush against the yard’s western wall. She rapped excitedly on the door, and when it opened, an older woman greeted us at the threshold. She held herself with the stoop of a woman who had spent long years toiling over either cookpots or laundry washtubs. Based on her wrinkled, leathery skin and the way her blond hair was fading into white, I guessed the latter.
“Hey-ya, we got your ring back for ya,” Imoen said, holding it out between her thumb and index finger. Flashing in the lantern light from inside, Joia’s “flamedance” ring earned its name. Joia held out her hand to receive it.
“I thank you. This ring was a gift when I set out on my own. Couldn’t bear the thought of some smelly old hobgoblin having it,” Joia said, curling her fingers around the ring.
“This is my brother, Ausar - he helped,” Imoen said, “a little.”
Joia smiled, craning her neck to take the full measure of me, “You are all a good sort, and I’ll say so to anyone that asks.”
“Be safe,” I said, but Joia was already closing the door.
“To do your duty and ask no recompense,” Ajantis said, “is a mark of true honor. Verily, my heart rejoices to have met you this day.” His words lit a candle in my heart. I looked at him, a knight bruised and bloodied for rushing to my aid, and let my anger at his ill-chosen words on the road wash away with the rain.
When the three of us strode into the main hall, a wave of murmurs rose to greet us. My display of the monstrous insect “scalp” seemed to be having its intended effect, as men and women in the common room gestured at us in astonishment. Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed a massively-built half-orc shiver - a strange reaction, but one upon which I had no time to dwell. I had hardly taken a breath of the Inn’s dry air before Jaheira had rushed over, herding all three of us over to her table in the back corner.
“What is wrong with you, child?” she tore the scalp out of my hands. Khalid squirmed an inch or two away as it passed closer to him. “You vanish for the entire day without a word. And of all things to do, you ran off hunting ankhegs?” Emphasizing that last word, Jaheira threw the scalp down on the floor.
“We-” I started to explain, but Jaheira had no intention of stopping there.
“And who is this behind you? This, this, this,” she threw up her hands, “man, who you have dragged in here looking halfway to death. Did you do this to him?”
“I-”
“Not now, child,” she said, pushing past me, “this man needs healing immediately.” Without any hesitation, she stretched out her hands toward Ajantis. Before she succeeded in touching him, though, Ajantis shot out his own hand, grabbing Jaheira’s wrist so as to hold her hand fixed between them.
“By what power do you heal, woman?” Ajantis’ voice was pure steel.
“I am a druid. My power is from the earth,” Jaheira replied in equal measure. Ajantis did not relax his grip.
“Well then, does the moon wax or does it wane?” Ajantis spoke no less seriously here, but the import of his bizarre question eluded me completely. Jaheira’s eyes widened for a moment before she answered.
“It wanes.” Now Ajantis finally relaxed, releasing his grip on Jaheira’s wrist.
“A thousand apologies,” Ajantis pledged, “if I handled you roughly, m’lady. My name is Ajantis Ilvastarr, and I am paladin-squire to Lord Helm the All-Seeing”
“And your service to him will end with one more hard blow unless you accept my healing. Hold still.”
“Thank you, m’lady. The Order of the Most Radiant Heart shall hear of your kindness.”
“Do not speak.”
Ajantis did as he was bid, and Jaheira, pressing one hand against his side and another upon his heart, intoned her healing words twice over. Color flooded back into Ajantis’ face; every bruise and cut was mended. I even thought I heard the sound of bones snapping back together. Now Ajantis stood up straight, rising a full head taller than when he had entered, slouched over in pain.
“Praise Helm,” Ajantis whispered to himself, stretching his arms.
Despite the sternness in Jaheira’s voice I did not worry overmuch. As soon as she had heard of our heroic deeds, all her worries would be proven groundless and her resistance would dissolve into a paen. I told her of my consent to fulfill the promise Imoen had made to Joia on my behalf. But her face remained stony and unmoved. No matter, I thought to myself. I told her of how Imoen and I, proceeding with the utmost caution, had exterminated the band of hobgoblins that had been waylaying innocent travelers, and how we had retrieved Joia’s ring. But her face remained stony and unmoved. Confusion stirred in me, with a trace of anger. Was that deed not noble enough? So, I waxed poetic about the joys of rediscovering my freedom in nature. Surely, as a druid, her heart would melt at this account. But her face remained stony and unmoved. What was her problem? I described our meeting with Ajantis, who had allied with all four of us in common cause, and who had stood mightily beside me in battle against a gigantic ankheg, which Imoen had shot dead through the eye. Even the most hard-minded would appreciate an ally recruited to her cause. But her face remained stony and unmoved. What thanklessness was this, to be censored for winning the sword-pledge of a paladin? Unbelievable! Now, though, I spoke of Joia’s thanksgiving, the gratitude of an old woman reunited with one of her most precious possessions, a kink in the warp and woof of justice made straight. I could see Ajantis positively radiating pride. But Jaheira’s face remained stony and unmoved. Silence. Enough! “What do you want from me, Jaheira!” I barked.
“What do I want?” Jaheira snapped back, “Someone with a sense of responsibility! First, you rush out into the open to smack at a few hobgoblins with your sword, so distracted you were practically begging any hired killer to put an arrow in your back - all for what, some old woman’s bauble? Then you go prancing around in the flowers like a billygoat kid whose horns have just started to grow in. Phau! But that wasn’t enough. You actually ran toward an ankheg, like a crazy person - they are extremely territorial but they never pursue far from their nest. Did you have any idea? Of course not - because you charged straight at it! A ten-foot long, acid-spitting insect!”
This tirade flummoxed me utterly. I looked to Ajantis to say some word in my defense. But now pensiveness had replaced his pride: “Those hobgoblins richly deserved the death you brought them, Ausar, I am sure, but did our battle against the ankheg not teach us that discretion can sometimes be the better part of valor?” he asked, rubbing the spot where the ankheg had gouged him deepest.
Khalid bobbed his head up and down profusely, “The better p-part of valor. Quite right, quite right!”
So they were all against me!
“This? After everything I’ve done today? Morons, all of you!” I shouted at them. With that, I stomped back up to my room. Slamming the door shut, I sat on the floor with my back to my bed frame. I had done everything right! Could that pissant Khalid have felled an entire pack of hobgoblins, or even just one, without Jaheira holding his hand? Did Jaheira care at all for women like Joia, or would she only lift a finger for trees and - here I thought of Khalid’s face - cattle? How was I supposed to know that ankheg wouldn’t have pursued us all the way back to the Inn? My face burned with shame. So much for Ajantis - for a paladin of Helm he sure had been quick to switch sides! Nothing, I realized, had really changed from when I had been cooped up in Candlekeep. Nothing I could do would ever satisfy; no matter what good I tried to do, I would always be belittled by those who thought they knew better. I pounded a fist against the floor. Then the thought struck me with an anvil’s weight, I would leave.
I cast my eyes about the room, noticing that there was precious little worth taking with me. But I would prepare as best I could, which meant returning to my spellbook. As I had done so many times before, often on the nights before sparring practice at Candlekeep, I channeled my entire mental energy into the contours of the Armor spell, striving to commit them to memory. The repetition of this abstract act smoothed the edges on my rage: dimensive line, into leyline, into accretia, into dimensive line, into leyline, ad infinitum. Usually, once I could hold every line fixed in my mind, I felt a sort of psychic fastening, like the firmness of a tightly-laced boot. Tonight, however, that familiar sensation did not present itself. And yet comparing what I had memorized to the markings in my spellbook did not reveal any discrepancies. I turned two pages into my spellbook, where I had scribed Burning Hands. I gazed at the spell for a while, as though examining some curious crystal under a microscope, and I suppressed a rising feeling of anticipation. Whenever I had previously attempted to memorize a second spell, the lines were simply ungraspable, like sand passing through a sieve. It was a basic limitation that no amount of concentration or resolve had ever allowed me to penetrate. As I examined the lines of the spell now though, they began to stick in my mind. With scarcely another breath, I set about the task of memorization, thinking no other thought until Burning Hands too was entirely at my mental command. Somehow I had increased in power. But how? Gorion had counseled patience to me so often, teaching me that development of the peculiar capacities required to use, rather than merely understand, magic could not be rushed, and often ripened only over the course of years of diligent practice. Before I could speculate much, however, a hesitant footstep, followed by a creaking at the door, unsettled my meditation.
NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR
Thank you all for reading! Because of some life changes, I may not be able to update this thread according to my hitherto relatively standardized schedule for the foreseeable future. Going forward, the days I post new installments should remain the same, but the times of day they drop may vary more dramatically than they have up until now. Thanks for your understanding, and I hope you are continuing to enjoy this tale.
@dukdukgoos - You binged ~50 entries in one day?? Color me *very* flattered! Thank you so much for taking the time to post to let me know you are enjoying it. It is posts like yours (and the likes, etc.) that give me the motivation to continue writing and posting publicly. So glad to see you on the thread!
Thank you all for reading! Because of some life changes, I may not be able to update this thread according to my hitherto relatively standardized schedule for the foreseeable future. Going forward, the days I post new installments should remain the same, but the times of day they drop may vary more dramatically than they have up until now. Thanks for your understanding, and I hope you are continuing to enjoy this tale.
I'm amazed that you've been able to keep up such a regular schedule for so long! I hope the life changes are positive (or at least neutral) Do whatever is easiest for you, I say! I'll be reading along, regardless.
Are you writing as you go along, or do you have a backlog of chapters? With the level of detail you're going into, I imagine in-game progress has been slow. I'd be itching to play a little further, were I in your shoes (only because I tend to get sucked into the game when I play and nearly always play for bouts of an hour, at least).
Also, regarding the latest chapters:
1) I like that even Ajantis can recognise that there is a time and place for heroic acts of bravery. I can't remember his in-game stats, but I remember that he's not a fool. It's nice to be reminded that paladins don't necessarily rush to fall on their swords in battle at the drop of a hat.
2) You mentioned before that you have something in the works regarding the length of elven aging and Ausar's maturity, but certainly his actions in the past few chapters show that he is quite immature and young (wanting to impress the cool paladin, having a bit of a tantrum after being scolded, running away). I'm interested to see if he gets caught sneaking out or if he'll tell Imoen (considering she's only outside of Candlekeep because of him). I really love your characterisation of her, so I hope so!
3) I really love this line: "Then you go prancing around in the flowers like a billygoat kid whose horns have just started to grow in." If only she could have seen them playing with the seeds!
Keep up the great work and thanks for all your effort so far!
@energisedcamel - Thank you so much! The life changes are, on the whole, *very* good, but when I have free time may be subject to change.
There is a certain "buffer" between where I am in my write-up and what I post on these boards. I keep the buffer in place mainly for two reasons: (1) because it gives me time to go back to check for internal consistency / make last minute content edits; and (2) because it gives me some breathing room if a busy period prevents me from writing.
I also usually like to play for a least an hour at a time, but this has definitely been a whole new experience. If I play too far ahead of where I am writing, I find myself losing touch with my characters, so I try and keep it reined in a bit. I enjoy the writing a lot, and the new way it is helping me enjoy the game, so I don't feel to much of a loss, even though in-game progress is slow.
Thanks for your thoughtful comments on the recent installments Ausar is pretty immature, isn't he? haha On the maturity score, he does, unfortunately, have a lot working against him (young elf, WIS = 9, severely limited "real world" experiences, etc.). I do have some explanations planned, at least re him being an elf. As for the rest, only time will tell whether / how his adventures may force him to shed or reconsider some of those attitudes. Stay tuned!
Oh, and yes, Jaheira definitely seems like a no-nonsense woman when it comes to Ausar haha
Imoen had cracked the door open an inch or two, and stood with her cheek flush against the doorframe, peering in through the narrow opening she had made for herself. I gestured for her to come in. She opened the door just wide enough to slip in, and then jumped up on my bed.
“You’re not thinking of leaving are you?” Imoen asked.
I was shocked. “What- how did you know?”
“I may not know all the stories in those dusty tomes you used to read,” Imoen replied, “but I do know you, Ausar.”
“That’s not an explanation,” I quipped. Imoen just shrugged her shoulders.
“Well,” I carried on, “why not? You should come with me. We don’t have any friends here.”
“Like I told ya that first day we met outside Candlekeep, I’m sticking with you no matter what. You were my only friend at Candlekeep, and now I reckon you must be my only friend in the whole wide world. But . . .” I raised my eyebrows.
“What you just said ain’t true,” she continued. “You do have friends down there, or at least folks who want to help you.”
“Come on, Imoen. You heard them down there. No one appreciated anything we did today. You fought those hobgoblins with me; you saw how well we did. But Jaheira yelled at me like I was the hobgoblin. I’m tired of being looked down at, of being under the thumb of people who think they know better. Aren’t you? That was our whole life at Candlekeep.”
“You tommy-wallow - that’s not what they want. And you’d ‘ave known it if you had stayed instead of marching up here all of the sudden.”
“What do you mean?”
Now she paused for a moment, as though trying to remember something. “Jaheira can be a demanding woman, but she only has our best interests at heart. She scolded you after a long day of worrying that she had failed Gorion before her charge had even truly begun. She was only angry because she cared, and wasn’t thinking about how difficult these last few days must have been for you. Let her make peace with you tomorrow morning.” Now she paused briefly. That did not sound at all like Imoen.
“Or at least,” Imoen picked up, “that’s what Kha-Kha-Khalid said to tell you,” she giggled, imitating his stutter. I chuckled too, despite myself. Imeon’s laughter was simply contagious.
“But for whate’er it’s worth,” she said, now much more herself, “I think he was tellin’ the truth. But even if he was stretchin’ it a bit - here’s what I think. They were the last gifts Gorion gave you; he wanted you three to be together. You should trust him, Ausar. I don’t know about that gobbledygook you were shooting Ajantis about Gorion having his head stuffed in some “bag of tricks,” but I saw the two of you together too much to think anything other than that he cared about you. So much. You should stay with them because it’s what Gorion would have wanted.”
“I - I’m not going to admit Jaheira was right,” I said.
Imoen shrugged her shoulders again, “So don’t, just give the five of us another chance and,” here she wrinkled her nose at me, “find a washtub if you can. Those Ant Hag guts must’ve gotten all o’er you.” With that Imoen darted out of the room, leaving my prior course of action upturned in her wake.
At first I was surprised when I noticed that after 41 "episodes", the characters were still roaming around FAI in Chapter 1, but after reading the indepth character development and world building, I'm sure glad you took your time !
And despite what might look like a slow-paced storytelling, there is no filler, boring stuff or whatever, each chapter adds to the experience and feels important.
Today this thread reached its 100th reply! I just wanted to seize the moment to express my gratitude to all of you for your patient attention to this story and for your support. Without your interest, warmth, and community, I am sure this tale would have withered long ago. Even now, I am amazed to have made it this far. So, thank you all, so much!!
Also, welcome back @monico - you were there at the very beginning, and I am very glad to see you back here now.
I settled onto my bed. Gorion. I blinked back tears, whether of sorrow, anger, or confusion, it was impossible to say. I remembered the feeling of his hand resting lightly on my shoulder, as he spoke to me of a warrior’s responsibilities the day I first picked up a sword. A warrior, he had said, must always have something to protect. The day he raises his sword for any other reason, that is the day he must throw his sword away. I had told him I raised my sword to protect the memory of my mother. Gorion squeezed my shoulder and said nothing other than to remember his words. I remember weeping tears of frustration into his robe later that evening, when I had returned from my first sparring practice, a long afternoon of being beaten down mercilessly, over and over again. Already Gorion had begun to feel frail in my arms, but his embrace held a different kind of strength. I pushed my face into my pillow, sobbing now. Where have you gone, Gorion? Why didn’t you let me fight to protect you?
When my sobbing ebbed, I felt drained. But a few wheels in my head kept on spinning slowly, like windmills after the breeze has passed. Gorion’s teaching on that day had its holes - my thoughts rounded now fiercely on the Hakar - but I tried to look at it on the sides where it was solid. Would I be strong enough to protect Imoen by myself? My eyelids felt heavy. She was the one I wanted to protect, so joyful, so innocent. Needed to be kept safe. A strong hand to protect her. Against the world. The levy broke and sleep flooded in, sweeping away consciousness like a toy boat. My hand. Ankhegs. My last thought was of the discomfort of the ruby ring, which I had forgotten to remove.
The next morning burst across my face, cold and wet. My eyes shot open to see Imeon grinning at me from behind the lip of a water bucket. “Wake up you lazy-lubber! Time to wake up!” Imeon jumped on my bed until I pulled myself out of it. It was hardly dawn. “See you downstairs!” Imoen said. A moment later I could hear the old wooden steps groaning as she raced down them. I tugged off the ruby ring, so I could wash my hands and face in whatever was left of the bucket Imoen had brought with her. The moment I did so, I felt a sudden stroke of forgetfulness. I realized that I had completely forgotten the Burning Hands spell. When I slid the ring back on, however, memory of the spell, in all its comprehensive detail, immediately resurfaced. So that was your secret, I thought to myself, tapping the ruby. My thoughts turned to Jaheira. She would not press any admission of guilt out of me, but I also didn’t want to leave her and Khalid behind. It was not, after all, what Gorion would have wanted.
Downstairs, Jaheira, Khalid, Ajantis, and Imoen were all seated around the same table at the back of the common room. The air seemed to thicken as I sat down, and all eyes turned to Jaheira. Her own eyes, dark and deep, were cast down.
“Ausar,” she said, “I think we both were a little overhasty last night.” The barrier of the first words broken, Jaheira looked up, into my eyes. I saw her determination. “I said many words I regret, child. But you need to understand why I said them.” I felt myself tensing, as though bracing for impact. “Gorion did not speak to us of the troubles that hound you, but fearing for you deeply, he entrusted us with your care, should any evil befall him. And now it has. For his sake, we would not so soon have failed in our charge.”
I glanced over to Ajantis, who looked sympathetic, but not surprised. Perhaps they had told him last night.
“And yet,” Jaheira continued, “your deeds prove you are no child.” A whisper of pride stirred within me. “So if we proceed, we must proceed in fellowship, as wolves do.”
“Wolves?” I asked.
“A pack lives off the land together, hunts together, faces danger together. Cut off from the pack, a wolf’s ferocity is peerless, but it is the ferocity of desperation. The lone wolf dies, while the pack survives. Each one of us must be guardian to the other. So next time you feel like you need to right the balance,” Jaheira chided, in a tone feather-light compared to last night, “let the rest of us know first. When it comes to hobgoblins, we can set out a feast for crows as well as you.”
I laughed, “For Gorion, then!”
“For Gorion,” Jaheira repeated.
“F-for Gorion,” Khalid echoed.
“And Ajantis,” I asked, “will you still join with us?”
“I shall. We shall pull the bandit menace out by its roots, and return the order of Helm to this land.”
“Sure, but how about some stories along the way? Maybe a few that aren’t about Helm?” Imoen interjected.
And so in high spirits and the first rays of dawn, we left the Friendly Arms behind us, and journeyed south. Our plan, which won the fellowship’s unanimous assent, would be to rest for the night in the town of Beregost, before pushing on to Nashkel early the next morning. No vagrants harried us as we walked along the main thoroughfare, but all except me wore their armor in case of an ambush. I had instead opted to cast Armor on myself; it was an excellent opportunity to practice and to avoid armor chafe at the same time. Ajantis, however, seemed dissatisfied.
“You are confident that your magic will allow you to turn a blade with nothing but air? Would you rather not trust in a sturdy coat of ring-mail than the fickleness of a conjurer's breeze?” Ajantis asked.
Although invisible, my Weave-woven armor was far from insubstantial. A form-fitting current of air held together by a weak magical charge, it hung weightlessly about me, pulsing with a low-power pressure that was the echo of a vibration. Its presence was impossible for me to forget, even if it left me entirely unencumbered. “Test it yourself,” I challenged him, “press against it with the point of your sword.”
Ajantis unsheathed his sword and extended its point forward delicately, obviously skeptical. Once the point passed within a few inches of me, though, the magical armor emitted a brief, low-pitched buzz, and the blade hopped backward.
“Ah,” Ajantis said in surprise, “but can it deflect a forceful blow?”
“Try me.” I clenched my teeth. The magical armor was supposed to emulate chainmail, not full plate. But I refused to show even the slightest hesitation.
Ajantis sheathed his sword, though, and I frowned. “I am not about to kill you on a dare,” Ajantis said. But before I could reply he had swept his gauntleted hand high, and thrown his entire weight into a back-handed slap at my shoulder. The magical armor buzzed again, redirecting the force in Ajantis’ hand so that he spun backward. I hooted with delight.
“What’s going on back there?” Jaheira called over her shoulder.
“I was merely confirming the integrity of Ausar’s . . . unconventional choice of armor,” Ajantis called back.
“And how did you find it?” I called back loudly, knowing he could not lie.
“Adequate,” he pronounced. I grinned, hoping our chance to spar would come soon.
As we reached a westward bend in the road, Jaheira led us off it, claiming to know of a shortcut through the wilderness. Khalid and Ajantis, whose metal armor gleamed in the sun, seemed incongruous in such a naturalistic setting, but Jaheira seemed to take no offense, even though she rejected such armor for herself. Gorion had taught me that much about the druidic oaths, at least, and now I found myself wondering whether he had learned what he knew of them from Jaheira herself. Just as I was about to quicken my pace to reach her, Imoen cried out.
In a flash, a wolf leaped out at Ajantis from cover, its gums pulled back in a sharp-toothed snarl. Its impact against Ajantis’ shield pushed him back a step, but we skewered it on our swords before Jaheira had a chance to react. I could feel my heart beating with the surprise of the sudden attack. Jaheira ran toward the wolf’s carcass, and lay her hand upon its head, whispering a few words I could not understand.
“Something here has disturbed this creature greatly. Let us all be on our guard, lest whatever it was still lingers in these parts,” Jaheira cautioned. And then, as she passed me, in a low voice she said, “the lone wolf, Ausar.” I could see a tinge of sorrow in her dark eyes.
The monotony of our long walk so abruptly broken, we condensed our formation, stepping through the lightly wooded plains with our weapons at the ready. It was not long, however, before we found the ugly explanation of that lone wolf’s furor. It rose eight feet tall, an ogre with a face only slightly more human than a hobgoblin’s. Whatever an orc was to an elf, an ogre was to an orc. The primitive creature before us whacked at the trees around it with a giant morningstar, for no discernible purpose. Perhaps just by chance, it turned in our direction almost immediately. Leaves shook as the monstrous ogre roared.
“Ogre!” shouted Jaheira.
She raised both her arms in the air and began to chant rhythmically but urgently. The rest of us wasted no time watching her. Khalid and Ajantis pushed forward to block the ogre’s charge at a narrow passage between two trees. I meanwhile was rushing to circle around one of the far trees, to outflank the ogre on its right side. Imoen shot an arrow, piercing the ogre’s shoulder; she shot again, piercing its chest. But the ogre was by now brimming with adrenaline, and these wounds only goaded it into an even deeper rage. Jaheira ended her chant with one final cry to the earth, and suddenly the ground exploded in a mass of writhing vines.
Yet all for naught. The ogre’s powerful legs simply tore through the encircling vines, as it threw its massive weight into Khalid and Ajantis’ shield wall. With one hand, the ogre wrenched away Khalid’s shield; with the other, it swung its tremendous morning star. Still circling the tree, I saw Khalid try to backpedal to evade the blow, but one of the vines had snaked around his leg and held him fast. He had just enough time to contort his face into a look of pure terror before the morningstar smashed into him, dead-center. The force ripped Khalid’s body from the vine and sent it sliding backward in the dirt.
“Khalid!” Jaheira screamed.
Ajantis thrust his blade into the ogre’s calf. The ogre stumbled, bellowing. Finally, I had my chance. From the ogre’s right flank, I swung my sword with all my might. The ogre’s bellow fell abruptly silent. Its head landed face-up next to Khalid’s.
NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR
As with the clash between Ausar and the ankheg, I am temporarily withholding a few pictures, so as not to diffuse prematurely the suspense of this terrible blow against Khalid. Stay tuned for Friday's installment!
Well, first, I must say, Imoen's luck with attack rolls is really uncanny.
Second, given that Khalid has 13 HP, and that the Ogre with its 18/00 STR (+6 dmg) is wielding a morningstar (2-8 dmg), there is about 28,5% chances of Khalid being one-shot by that Ogre (if my damage calculations are accurate, I don't think the ogres have mastery of their weapons, do they ?).
And given the description, the Ogre might even have landed a critical hit, leaving no chance of survival for our poor stuttering harper.
Last note: please, in the future, refrain from such cliffhangers, my heart is not armed for this (EDIT : just kidding of course, it's actually fun as a reader to crunch numbers and try and guess what will happen)
Wow, that's a bold choice to roleplay Jaheira as not being willing to wear heavy armor, which we all know she can in the game. You don't even have her in a helmet! Couldn't she make one out of the skull of a dead animal or something like that? What about the ankheg plate? Will she be able to wear that since it comes from a natural source?
If you decide to stick with keeping Jaheira in leather armor and no helmet for story purposes, she will be pretty much useless for any melee combat. I guess slings, darts, and throwing daggers as her modus operandi might make for a cool version of Jaheira.
As a note of trivia, in the original BG1, Entangle wasn't as useless as in its BG2 version. It targeted one enemy, almost always worked, was party friendly, and completely immobilized the target, meaning it couldn't cast spells or fire ranged weapons. It functioned as a druidic version of Hold Person against a single target. I guess the original devs must have decided it was overpowered as a first level spell, so they nerfed it to be much weaker than the original version.
It was exciting to use in your story, though. But I think it made Jaheira look a bit more noobish with her druid spells than she should be, lorewise.
Entangle could be effective against the ogre if you got some distance between it and your party, first, and it failed its save. Entangle has such a wide AoE and is so devastatingly party unfriendly, it would be really tricky to pull it off, though. I never even bother with it, having long ago dismissed it as a useless at best and suicidal at worst kind of a spell.
Maybe I shouldn't comment so much on game play mechanics and technique. You might be doing some things gameplay wise that are dangerous, on purpose, to make a better story.
When it comes to Jaheira's armor - remember that all druids can wear helmets, and unkitted single-class druids can wear ankheg plate. I expect she'll pick up decent protection at some point. I usually have her swap armor with Khalid, but then I also usually spec Khalid as an archer. With him primarily using longswords, of course he should keep his splint mail.
Getting a helmet? Bentley doesn't sell them; the only way you can pick up a helmet around the Friendly Arm is to salvage one from a hobgoblin. And if you didn't plan ahead ... well, then she'll just have to do without until reaching Beregost.
On the chances involved in this update's cliffhanger...
Second, given that Khalid has 13 HP, and that the Ogre with its 18/00 STR (+6 dmg) is wielding a morningstar (2-8 dmg), there is about 28,5% chances of Khalid being one-shot by that Ogre (if my damage calculations are accurate, I don't think the ogres have mastery of their weapons, do they ?).
First, there's a difference between 2d4 and 1d7+1; the former clusters more in the center. The chances of being one-shot from 13 HP with an attack that deals 2d4+6 damage are 3/16, or about 18.4%.
... But that relies on another unwarranted assumption. You see, the actual ogre attack isn't the morningstar they carry in their inventory; it's a special "OGRE1" item. Their "weapon" deals 1d10+strength damage and hits as +1. It is classified as a morning star, at least.
Proficiency? No proficiency in morning stars, 3 in "spiked weapons". I'm not sure whether that means they get no proficiency bonus or that they get +3 to attack and +3 to damage.
So then, on a non-critical hit, it's either 40% or 70% to one-shot a 13-HP character, depending on whether that old "spiked weapon" mastery works. There's a reason I stick to ranged attacks if I go ogre-hunting at level 1.
Level 1 characters may also have protection from one-hit kills, but only if you allow the difficulty slider to affect damage taken.
All this number-crunching prognostication is a pretty funny side-effect of the dual video-game / narrative structure. It will probably be more difficult as HP values increase, but for now it's great fun. I can't wait to update you all on Friday!
@BelgarathMTH - You are correct to note that Jaheira is currently not wearing or wielding anything metal, and also correct to note that it does compromise her melee capacity. I have given some thought to the druidic oaths regarding the use of metal, as well as to Jaheira's character and personal history. As I keep promising @energisedcamel re Ausar's elven age / maturity, there will also be (in the fullness of time) an exploration of the oath, how Jaheira relates to it, and how that may change over time. And so, I am loath to lay out my reasoning full here and now. The bottom line at present, though, is that RP is definitely leading (for now!) over effectiveness (but from an effectiveness standpoint, it helps that that Ajantis, Khalid, and Ausar make a perfectly adequate front-line for this stage of the game).
As for entangle and my play-style lol - when my technique was more polished, I did not have *too* much trouble with precision aiming. If a slower playthrough doesn't get me back to some adequate level of competency, I might need to reevaluate my spell selections. That having been said, even if entangle hits your front row, it usually isn't too calamitous - combatants engaged in melee don't typically need to move much anyway, and if it delays melee reinforcements from the back of the enemy group, it's usually worth some collateral friendly entanglement (provided, of course, you have a back-line).
As for entangle and the Jaheira RP, I am not too worried. Some possible ways of thinking about it off-the-cuff: (1) conjuring a writhing mass of vines from the earth isn't a precision move - nature is alive and intrinsically hard to control, even for druids with some experience under their belts; (2) lore-wise, it is true that Jaheira has been through a lot, but it is not clear how much of her experience prior to her adventure with Gorion's Ward has been combat-centric; she does start the game with a fair bit of experience, but late-level-1 is still miles off from mastery; etc. Am I fabricating excuses for sloppy play? Definitely. Are they plausible excuses? I think so haha
Cool bit of trivia about how entangle used to work - I had no idea.
As a note of trivia, in the original BG1, Entangle wasn't as useless as in its BG2 version. It targeted one enemy, almost always worked, was party friendly, and completely immobilized the target, meaning it couldn't cast spells or fire ranged weapons. It functioned as a druidic version of Hold Person against a single target. I guess the original devs must have decided it was overpowered as a first level spell, so they nerfed it to be much weaker than the original version.
Wow, I did not remember that (granted, I haven't played vanilla BG1 in ages). So, basically, Entangle back in BG1 was a single-target Web spell ?
@jmerry : thanks for the insightful number crunching ! I felt my calculations were a bit too "primitive", but couldn't quite put my finger on the problem (well, apparently, there were several, but the most obvious one was considering 2d8 as a 1d7+1 roll)
Our battle, however, had drawn some unwanted attention. From a point just south, a perverse chorus of gibberling screeching swelled, rapidly drawing closer to our position. The four of us still standing ran to catch a glimpse of this latest threat. Three gibberlings were barreling toward us in a maniac frenzy.
“Hold them off!” Jaheira cried, fleeing back to Khalid, who still lay motionless on the ground. Imoen peppered the pack with arrows, striking one of the three but not stopping it.
“Ajantis,” I shouted, “do not step between me and the first of these beasts!” So he stood by me, as I concentrated on the first gibberling that would reach us, outpacing the two others by far. Dirt caked its mane; its eyes smouldered with dumb rage. I held out my hands, fanning out my fingers so that only my thumbs were touching. The gibberling sped closer and closer. I yelled out the arcane syllables of the Burning Hands spell. Everything locked into place. My own hands burst into flame, spewing a jet of fire straight at the gibberling’s face. The gibberling’s filthy mane became a mad halo of fire. I could smell its burning hair. Yet it continued to fly forward, screeching at an even higher, yet more horrible pitch than before, propelled onward by its own momentum. Ajantis bashed it to the ground with his shield, and finished its miserable life with his sword. We cut down the next two without trouble.
“To Jaheira! To Khalid!” Ajantis urged. We did not stop to clean our blades on the grass.
We spun around, and ran. But the sight before us set our hearts, finally, at ease. Khalid and Jaheira stood enfolded in each other’s embrace. She had restored him completely, mending even the smallest scratch. When she turned to face me, she smiled. A tear was sliding down her cheek.
AUTHOR'S NOTE
Here are the remaining pictures from the fight with the ogre:
So it looks like the grand prize goes to @dukdukgoos! Sorry the prize is only my congratulations, but funding for the Ausar the Riven (TM) Sweepstakes has been low these last few months. Again, this playthrough is on core and I never tinker around with the other sliders, so I was definitely very puzzled by the huge amount of damage reduction that saved Khalid from death here. But I guess (as @dukdukgoos explained) there is a sort of "mercy rule" for level one characters. This is definitely a miraculous survival on Khalid's part, and I can only say I am glad he is still with us. As the writer / player, I am going to accept Khalid's inexplicable survival as a gift; if, though, @dukdukgoos or @jmerry could kindly tell me how to disable the mercy rule (if possible w/o much trouble), I would appreciate it. It's a mechanic that I know I would be very tempted to exploit, and could lead to even more reckless / sloppy play.
And here are the pictures of the fight with those pesky, intermeddling gibberlings:
I know that in the second picture Jaheira is not where the narrative says she is, but she did not inflict or soak any damage, so cut your author some slack and just roll with the artistic liberty here Not pictured above, Jaheira using 2x cure light wounds to restore Khalid to full health.
Before we journeyed on, we returned to the body of the ogre I had beheaded. The sight of its severed head on the ground imparted me - to my surprise - with some semblance of peace. It was, I imagined, rather fitting for such a horrible creature to die in an equally horrible way; and all the better, that I had been the one to accomplish it. Returning to my purpose, I searched the body for clues pertaining to the Hakar, on the chance that this ogre was part of a reserve he had marshalled in this area on contingency. Though I found nothing, Imoen and I both noticed something especially curious: the ogre had clumsily tied two human-sized belts together around its waist. Imoen’s nimble fingers darted to the knot, dissolving it with only one or two well-placed tugs. Imoen picked one up, marveling at its highly unusual ornamentality. The belt itself was an entirely standard length of smoothed leather, but the buckle appeared to be silver inlaid with a gold design, a depiction of what appeared to be a serpent nestled in the petals of a lotus flower. Just as she was about to cinch the girdle around her waist, Jaheira slapped it to the ground.
“Hey! What was that for?” Imoen protested.
“Don’t be foolish, child,” Jaheira retorted, but then, observing the genuine confusion in Imoen’s eyes, continued in a gentler tone, “There are as many kinds of things out there, as there are kinds of men, Imoen. Some men look like what they are: brutish, or cowardly, or wise. But some are truly opposite their appearance, and so it is with the things they make. When out adventuring” - and here she sighed at the term, as though using it as a concession - “in the field, you should never put anything on if you do not know exactly what it does.”
Imoen rolled her eyes at the lecture, but placed the girdle in Jaheira’s outstretched hand. When Imoen’s back was turned to pick up the second one, though, I spied her twisting her ring, so that the amethyst-side faced her palm. Evidently, she was not keen to allow Jaheira's confiscatory mood to claim any further spoils.
“We’ll decide what to do with them once we know what they are,” Jaheira promised.
The mercy rule? Setting the option to not use difficulty-based damage changes disables it ... I think. If you're playing on core difficulty, that's the only change the option imposes.
Incidentally, the numbers revealed in the picture answer the mechanical question I had. Ogres have their weapon mastered.
Thanks, @jmerry - hopefully I'll never know (this playthrough, at least) whether it worked or not
CHAPTER 1, Part XLVII
We pressed southward. A rumble in the sky above was followed shortly by a spring rain, refreshing, rather than biting, in the warmth of the sun. This simple pleasure evaporated like a dream, though, in the scorching cruelty of the scene that followed.
“G-god’s beneath!” The curse burst from Khalid’s mouth in a tortured wheeze, almost of its own volition.
None had the presence of mind even to look askance at his language. In the wreck of an overturned merchant’s caravan, its wheels busted and its canvas canopies shredded, lay the bodies of a mother, a father, and their young child. The mother had been stabbed multiple times; the child’s throat had been slit. The wounds were not fresh. The rain had turned the ground beneath this hellish scene into mud, and everything was sinking into the muck.
Imoen covered her face, and then buried her head in Jaheira’s bosom. Jaheira wrapped an arm around her. I simply stood there, numbed. But Ajantis ran forward into the mire, collapsing onto his knees in front of the bodies of the woman and child. He balled his hands into fists, and bowed his head. His voice quavered as he prayed.
“All-Seeing Eye, open wide thy servant’s eyes!
Oh Vigilant One, steel this weak-willed heart of flesh,
That for all the world’s sin I might not weep,
But keep thy Watch with eyes unlensed by grief.”
And then, almost under his breath, added words not written down in any psalmody:
“Next time, Helm, let me guard their lives, not avenge them!”
Although I was no Helmite, I found myself mentally repeating each line of the prayer after Ajantis. Its words possessed solidity and purpose, a sanctuary against the senseless slaughter. Had this butchery been the work of the ogre we had just slain, or had it been the handiwork of the Hakar himself? The father's body was closest to me, his sword lying useless in a hand opened by death.
Jaheira and Khalid recovered their composure rapidly; they looked saddened but their shock had passed them almost immediately after the initial sighting. My heart sunk even lower to think that they must have encountered such scenes many times before. Together, they rummaged through inside of the upturned caravan, the compartments of which - I could see through the tremendous holes in the canvas canopies - had been thrown into disarray. I shambled over to the father’s body listlessly, on the chance it might provide some clue as to what had transpired here. He had been armed and armored, undoubtedly felled defending the caravan from attack. This man might have been a mere guard rather than the head of the household, but a wife and her child traveling by themselves to sell grain at market would have been, even I knew, highly unusual in these parts. I glanced back at the mother’s face, framed with dark hair, beginning to slacken just the slightest bit with age. An anomaly had disclosed itself: the man before me was significantly younger, too young to be her husband. A son, perhaps? But his features were more delicate and his hair a wispy blond. I found nothing remarkable on his person, except a patch sewn onto his leather armor displaying a sigil I could not place, a black bird-claw set against a red background. Perhaps this man really was just a mercenary guard, and the father had, after all, been detained on more important business at home or elsewhere abroad.
@Rao : IIRC, it is the second time already that you describe sigils/emblems. Do those emblems actually exist in BG lore or do you improvise them ?
If it is the former, could you provide a link to a depiction ? I'd love to see what they look like.
@monico , I thought it was Entar Silvershield's son's emblem. That caravan is where you find it with NPC Project installed. Of course, NPC Project also puts a very dangerous troop of bandit archers there at the caravan, and those weren't in the story, so I'm not quite sure what is going on in the last chapter.
You don't need the NPC project for that bit; the EE also places that particular identifying object at the caravan, and allows you to return it to the family later on.
The NPC project adds the bandits, and does a bit more with Kagain's dialogue around the incident if you recruit him.
Jaheira and Khalid emerged from the caravan talking in low whispers, looking befuddled. They said that the caravan had been upended, but that its contents showed no sign of pillage. Certain crates had been cracked or burst open, consistent with the caravan cars being overturned, but none appeared to have been rifled through, and some were entirely untouched. Most of the crates seemed to hold grain, but one or two contained farming implements that could have been resold or melted down for their iron. Stranger still than the raiders’ abandonment of iron in the middle of a regional shortage was the lack of bodies, specifically the lack of male bodies. There was no sign of the driver, the father, or the small retinue of guards that would have usually protected a caravan of this size. It was as though in a raid brutal enough to result in the slaughter of a woman and a child, every man, except for the one, had either fled or vanished without loss of life on either side.
When I reported what I had observed of the dead man to Jaheira and Khalid, their confusion only deepened. The crest, they explained to me, was the symbol of the Blacktalons, a vicious group of bandits that had ramped up the scale of their raiding operations in an attempt to exploit the so-called “iron crisis” to the fullest. But if this were a Blacktalon raid, then they never would have left so much iron behind. Not only had the raiders left iron untouched in the caravan, they had even left the fallen Blacktalon’s sword in the mud. Such indifference to the easy profits of iron was, Jaheira and Khalid insisted, entirely inconsistent with the way the Blacktalons had been known to operate. But if this raid was not executed by the Blacktalons, then what was a Blacktalon body doing next to the bodies of the innocent woman and her child? None of us could make sense of the tangle of incongruous information; sullen in the shadow of this tragedy and our own ignorance, we could do nothing but continue our march further south.
But before we departed, Jaheira stooped over the mother’s body. Ajantis, who had a better view of what she was doing than I, cried out.
“Stop! Cease this at once! We are no graverobbers, to despoil the dead.”
“Trinkets and baubles will do them no good now,” Jaheira replied, not even stopping to face Ajantis.
“It is about decency, woman!” Khalid walked over to step between Ajantis and his wife.
“Mother Nature wastes nothing, and neither should we. She uses even every bone that falls to the earth, and so should we make use of everything we can.”
“This is the act of a common villain and nothing more,” Ajantis protested.
“I am no villain, squire,” Jaheira, far from being cowed, became even bolder, “You would have these entombed in the ground, or else easy pickings for the next bandit to saunter this way. How does that honor the memory of this woman or her child? We will sell these for supplies; we will use these supplies to get to the bottom of the iron crisis, which has already led to so many deaths like these. That is what this woman would have wanted.” Ajantis grumbled but made no further reply.
We all walked along in silence for the better part of an hour. Imoen was, unsurprisingly, the first to recover her spirits. She began telling tales of the antics she had variously orchestrated or stumbled into at Candlekeep, such as the time she had “accidentally” substituted a potion from an unwary sage’s personal chest for a similar-looking bottle in the kitchen larder. Both, of course, had been locked, but Imoen had been nursing a skill for what she called “lock-knocking” and what her foster-father Winthrop referred to simply as “pokin’ ‘er nose where it did nae belong.” The bizarre effect of this substitution? For the entire week, every dish served in the Great Hall made laughing sounds while being eaten. Needless to say, many of the paunchier sages thinned remarkably during this time. It also ignited a fiery debate among scholars of the mind as to whether said dishes had become sentient and endowed with a penchant for dark humor, or whether the sounds were altogether lacking in reason, and only coincidentally resembled laughter. Once Candlekeep’s resident diviners had identified a lock of Imoen’s hair in the kitchen, though, the sages spoke univocally: she had to be punished. Ulruant, steely and humorless as always, insisted on a flogging, but a majority were able to prevail upon him to embrace a more poetic justice. Imoen’s punishment was nothing more or less than this - to eat all of the food left over from the last batch of food cooked with the substituted reagent. This labor of expiation lasted several weeks, and Imoen claimed that, as an enduring consequence, hearing others laugh would, now and again, cause her to salivate. Khalid was the first to laugh, and when Imoen responded with a heavy drool, he laughed even more. After a while of telling such tales, many of which I knew were grossly exaggerated, even Ajantis was smiling.
When Imoen had finished spinning her yarns, we were all grateful for the opportunity to distract our minds from a repetitive road and from feet sore in their boots. But by then, our trek from the Inn was already reaching its end. Wilderness and woodland were giving way to farms and cattle pastures. We crossed the town line into Beregost around an hour before sunset.
Comments
And so we headed back along the road to the Friendly Arms Inn. With Ajantis requiring support, our pace was markedly slowed. Nevertheless, with only a little prodding, he regaled us with stories from his past. His dark eyes twinkled as he told of the day Keldorn Firecam, one of the most revered paladins of the Order of the Most Radiant Heart had selected him to serve as his squire. Keldorn had tasked him with eradicating the bandit menace that plagued the Sword Coast, and Ajantis had sworn to undertake the labor. Before departing Waterdeep, though, Ajantis had sharpened his swordplay under Myrmth Splendon, a legendary captain-at-arms in Waterdeep, the seat of Ajantis’ noble house - the line of Ilvastarr. Splendon, Ajantis recalled wistfully, could fend off a greatsword with a dagger in one hand and a teacup in the other. Imoen was entranced. As boring as she had thought a knight would be, his tales of foreign climes seemed to fascinate her endlessly. By now, the daylight had begun to fade.
“Perhaps when you are fully recovered, we can spar,” I offered, “and I can see just how well a student of this Splendon meets the bladedance of the Tel-quessir.”
Ajantis tried to laugh but winced at the pain, “You are a fiery one, Ausar! Is your father a mighty warrior, then, to have given you such spirit?” Imoen, who had been following our conversation with her eyes, quickly glanced away. I had told Ajantis nothing of Gorion or of the circumstances of our departure from Candlekeep, or even that Imoen and I were both foster-children. I had not wanted to burden our acquaintance with such weighty matters so early on. My throat felt tight again and I looked down at the road as I spoke.
“My father was just a scholar with a bag of magic-tricks, much good they did him.” I felt Imeon jab my side, but I refused to acknowledge her. What I said was true, in a way. If he had been a Myrmth of the magical arts, if he had been more like one of the fourscore other luminaries that no doubt peopled Ajantis’ high-and-mighty life in Waterdeep, then Gorion would still be here, walking by my side, just as he always had. Instead, he had lost the one battle that mattered most.
“Ah,” Ajantis replied. He knew he had misspoken somehow, but was not sure how to continue. I was not about to help him figure it out. We shuffled along in silence for a few moments, before Imoen piped up again, her spirits apparently recovered.
“Ajantis,” Imoen said, “tell me a story about the royal court. Was there as much drama as they say in the storybooks? Were there special jewels and tiaras for Lady Ilver-aster to wear?”
“Ilvastarr is the name of my house,” Ajantis corrected her, “but Aster is actually the name of another paladin Order in Waterdeep, consecrated to the Lord of the Morning. True, the Dawnlord is compassionate, but in matters of duty, Helm . . .” Imoen eyes started to glaze over as Ajantis puffed out his chest to pontificate on the virtues of service to the Watcher. I myself paid no attention. Trapped in the memory of Gorion’s failure, my thoughts curdled like sour milk.
By the time we reached the Friendly Arms Inn, the sun had set under a gentle rain. As the raindrops clinked against my chainmail, dampening my undershirt, the weariness of a hard day’s work crept into my bones.
The rain had done something, at least, do dissipate the stench of the insectoid “scalp” I was lugging behind me. When we entered the Inn’s outer courtyard, Imoen tugged Ajantis and I over to Joia’s home, a wooden shanty constructed flush against the yard’s western wall. She rapped excitedly on the door, and when it opened, an older woman greeted us at the threshold. She held herself with the stoop of a woman who had spent long years toiling over either cookpots or laundry washtubs. Based on her wrinkled, leathery skin and the way her blond hair was fading into white, I guessed the latter.
“Hey-ya, we got your ring back for ya,” Imoen said, holding it out between her thumb and index finger. Flashing in the lantern light from inside, Joia’s “flamedance” ring earned its name. Joia held out her hand to receive it.
“I thank you. This ring was a gift when I set out on my own. Couldn’t bear the thought of some smelly old hobgoblin having it,” Joia said, curling her fingers around the ring.
“This is my brother, Ausar - he helped,” Imoen said, “a little.”
Joia smiled, craning her neck to take the full measure of me, “You are all a good sort, and I’ll say so to anyone that asks.”
“Be safe,” I said, but Joia was already closing the door.
“To do your duty and ask no recompense,” Ajantis said, “is a mark of true honor. Verily, my heart rejoices to have met you this day.” His words lit a candle in my heart. I looked at him, a knight bruised and bloodied for rushing to my aid, and let my anger at his ill-chosen words on the road wash away with the rain.
When the three of us strode into the main hall, a wave of murmurs rose to greet us. My display of the monstrous insect “scalp” seemed to be having its intended effect, as men and women in the common room gestured at us in astonishment. Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed a massively-built half-orc shiver - a strange reaction, but one upon which I had no time to dwell. I had hardly taken a breath of the Inn’s dry air before Jaheira had rushed over, herding all three of us over to her table in the back corner.
“What is wrong with you, child?” she tore the scalp out of my hands. Khalid squirmed an inch or two away as it passed closer to him. “You vanish for the entire day without a word. And of all things to do, you ran off hunting ankhegs?” Emphasizing that last word, Jaheira threw the scalp down on the floor.
“We-” I started to explain, but Jaheira had no intention of stopping there.
“And who is this behind you? This, this, this,” she threw up her hands, “man, who you have dragged in here looking halfway to death. Did you do this to him?”
“I-”
“Not now, child,” she said, pushing past me, “this man needs healing immediately.” Without any hesitation, she stretched out her hands toward Ajantis. Before she succeeded in touching him, though, Ajantis shot out his own hand, grabbing Jaheira’s wrist so as to hold her hand fixed between them.
“By what power do you heal, woman?” Ajantis’ voice was pure steel.
“I am a druid. My power is from the earth,” Jaheira replied in equal measure. Ajantis did not relax his grip.
“Well then, does the moon wax or does it wane?” Ajantis spoke no less seriously here, but the import of his bizarre question eluded me completely. Jaheira’s eyes widened for a moment before she answered.
“It wanes.” Now Ajantis finally relaxed, releasing his grip on Jaheira’s wrist.
“A thousand apologies,” Ajantis pledged, “if I handled you roughly, m’lady. My name is Ajantis Ilvastarr, and I am paladin-squire to Lord Helm the All-Seeing”
“And your service to him will end with one more hard blow unless you accept my healing. Hold still.”
“Thank you, m’lady. The Order of the Most Radiant Heart shall hear of your kindness.”
“Do not speak.”
Ajantis did as he was bid, and Jaheira, pressing one hand against his side and another upon his heart, intoned her healing words twice over. Color flooded back into Ajantis’ face; every bruise and cut was mended. I even thought I heard the sound of bones snapping back together. Now Ajantis stood up straight, rising a full head taller than when he had entered, slouched over in pain.
“Praise Helm,” Ajantis whispered to himself, stretching his arms.
“Now you,” Jaheira said, turning immediately back toward me, “start talking.”
Despite the sternness in Jaheira’s voice I did not worry overmuch. As soon as she had heard of our heroic deeds, all her worries would be proven groundless and her resistance would dissolve into a paen. I told her of my consent to fulfill the promise Imoen had made to Joia on my behalf. But her face remained stony and unmoved. No matter, I thought to myself. I told her of how Imoen and I, proceeding with the utmost caution, had exterminated the band of hobgoblins that had been waylaying innocent travelers, and how we had retrieved Joia’s ring. But her face remained stony and unmoved. Confusion stirred in me, with a trace of anger. Was that deed not noble enough? So, I waxed poetic about the joys of rediscovering my freedom in nature. Surely, as a druid, her heart would melt at this account. But her face remained stony and unmoved. What was her problem? I described our meeting with Ajantis, who had allied with all four of us in common cause, and who had stood mightily beside me in battle against a gigantic ankheg, which Imoen had shot dead through the eye. Even the most hard-minded would appreciate an ally recruited to her cause. But her face remained stony and unmoved. What thanklessness was this, to be censored for winning the sword-pledge of a paladin? Unbelievable! Now, though, I spoke of Joia’s thanksgiving, the gratitude of an old woman reunited with one of her most precious possessions, a kink in the warp and woof of justice made straight. I could see Ajantis positively radiating pride. But Jaheira’s face remained stony and unmoved. Silence. Enough! “What do you want from me, Jaheira!” I barked.
“What do I want?” Jaheira snapped back, “Someone with a sense of responsibility! First, you rush out into the open to smack at a few hobgoblins with your sword, so distracted you were practically begging any hired killer to put an arrow in your back - all for what, some old woman’s bauble? Then you go prancing around in the flowers like a billygoat kid whose horns have just started to grow in. Phau! But that wasn’t enough. You actually ran toward an ankheg, like a crazy person - they are extremely territorial but they never pursue far from their nest. Did you have any idea? Of course not - because you charged straight at it! A ten-foot long, acid-spitting insect!”
This tirade flummoxed me utterly. I looked to Ajantis to say some word in my defense. But now pensiveness had replaced his pride: “Those hobgoblins richly deserved the death you brought them, Ausar, I am sure, but did our battle against the ankheg not teach us that discretion can sometimes be the better part of valor?” he asked, rubbing the spot where the ankheg had gouged him deepest.
Khalid bobbed his head up and down profusely, “The better p-part of valor. Quite right, quite right!”
So they were all against me!
“This? After everything I’ve done today? Morons, all of you!” I shouted at them. With that, I stomped back up to my room. Slamming the door shut, I sat on the floor with my back to my bed frame. I had done everything right! Could that pissant Khalid have felled an entire pack of hobgoblins, or even just one, without Jaheira holding his hand? Did Jaheira care at all for women like Joia, or would she only lift a finger for trees and - here I thought of Khalid’s face - cattle? How was I supposed to know that ankheg wouldn’t have pursued us all the way back to the Inn? My face burned with shame. So much for Ajantis - for a paladin of Helm he sure had been quick to switch sides! Nothing, I realized, had really changed from when I had been cooped up in Candlekeep. Nothing I could do would ever satisfy; no matter what good I tried to do, I would always be belittled by those who thought they knew better. I pounded a fist against the floor. Then the thought struck me with an anvil’s weight, I would leave.
I cast my eyes about the room, noticing that there was precious little worth taking with me. But I would prepare as best I could, which meant returning to my spellbook. As I had done so many times before, often on the nights before sparring practice at Candlekeep, I channeled my entire mental energy into the contours of the Armor spell, striving to commit them to memory. The repetition of this abstract act smoothed the edges on my rage: dimensive line, into leyline, into accretia, into dimensive line, into leyline, ad infinitum. Usually, once I could hold every line fixed in my mind, I felt a sort of psychic fastening, like the firmness of a tightly-laced boot. Tonight, however, that familiar sensation did not present itself. And yet comparing what I had memorized to the markings in my spellbook did not reveal any discrepancies. I turned two pages into my spellbook, where I had scribed Burning Hands. I gazed at the spell for a while, as though examining some curious crystal under a microscope, and I suppressed a rising feeling of anticipation. Whenever I had previously attempted to memorize a second spell, the lines were simply ungraspable, like sand passing through a sieve. It was a basic limitation that no amount of concentration or resolve had ever allowed me to penetrate. As I examined the lines of the spell now though, they began to stick in my mind. With scarcely another breath, I set about the task of memorization, thinking no other thought until Burning Hands too was entirely at my mental command. Somehow I had increased in power. But how? Gorion had counseled patience to me so often, teaching me that development of the peculiar capacities required to use, rather than merely understand, magic could not be rushed, and often ripened only over the course of years of diligent practice. Before I could speculate much, however, a hesitant footstep, followed by a creaking at the door, unsettled my meditation.
NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR
Thank you all for reading! Because of some life changes, I may not be able to update this thread according to my hitherto relatively standardized schedule for the foreseeable future. Going forward, the days I post new installments should remain the same, but the times of day they drop may vary more dramatically than they have up until now. Thanks for your understanding, and I hope you are continuing to enjoy this tale.
I'm amazed that you've been able to keep up such a regular schedule for so long! I hope the life changes are positive (or at least neutral)
Are you writing as you go along, or do you have a backlog of chapters? With the level of detail you're going into, I imagine in-game progress has been slow. I'd be itching to play a little further, were I in your shoes (only because I tend to get sucked into the game when I play and nearly always play for bouts of an hour, at least).
Also, regarding the latest chapters:
1) I like that even Ajantis can recognise that there is a time and place for heroic acts of bravery. I can't remember his in-game stats, but I remember that he's not a fool. It's nice to be reminded that paladins don't necessarily rush to fall on their swords in battle at the drop of a hat.
2) You mentioned before that you have something in the works regarding the length of elven aging and Ausar's maturity, but certainly his actions in the past few chapters show that he is quite immature and young (wanting to impress the cool paladin, having a bit of a tantrum after being scolded, running away). I'm interested to see if he gets caught sneaking out or if he'll tell Imoen (considering she's only outside of Candlekeep because of him). I really love your characterisation of her, so I hope so!
3) I really love this line: "Then you go prancing around in the flowers like a billygoat kid whose horns have just started to grow in." If only she could have seen them playing with the seeds!
Keep up the great work and thanks for all your effort so far!
There is a certain "buffer" between where I am in my write-up and what I post on these boards. I keep the buffer in place mainly for two reasons: (1) because it gives me time to go back to check for internal consistency / make last minute content edits; and (2) because it gives me some breathing room if a busy period prevents me from writing.
I also usually like to play for a least an hour at a time, but this has definitely been a whole new experience. If I play too far ahead of where I am writing, I find myself losing touch with my characters, so I try and keep it reined in a bit. I enjoy the writing a lot, and the new way it is helping me enjoy the game, so I don't feel to much of a loss, even though in-game progress is slow.
Thanks for your thoughtful comments on the recent installments
Oh, and yes, Jaheira definitely seems like a no-nonsense woman when it comes to Ausar haha
Imoen had cracked the door open an inch or two, and stood with her cheek flush against the doorframe, peering in through the narrow opening she had made for herself. I gestured for her to come in. She opened the door just wide enough to slip in, and then jumped up on my bed.
“You’re not thinking of leaving are you?” Imoen asked.
I was shocked. “What- how did you know?”
“I may not know all the stories in those dusty tomes you used to read,” Imoen replied, “but I do know you, Ausar.”
“That’s not an explanation,” I quipped. Imoen just shrugged her shoulders.
“Well,” I carried on, “why not? You should come with me. We don’t have any friends here.”
“Like I told ya that first day we met outside Candlekeep, I’m sticking with you no matter what. You were my only friend at Candlekeep, and now I reckon you must be my only friend in the whole wide world. But . . .” I raised my eyebrows.
“What you just said ain’t true,” she continued. “You do have friends down there, or at least folks who want to help you.”
“Come on, Imoen. You heard them down there. No one appreciated anything we did today. You fought those hobgoblins with me; you saw how well we did. But Jaheira yelled at me like I was the hobgoblin. I’m tired of being looked down at, of being under the thumb of people who think they know better. Aren’t you? That was our whole life at Candlekeep.”
“You tommy-wallow - that’s not what they want. And you’d ‘ave known it if you had stayed instead of marching up here all of the sudden.”
“What do you mean?”
Now she paused for a moment, as though trying to remember something. “Jaheira can be a demanding woman, but she only has our best interests at heart. She scolded you after a long day of worrying that she had failed Gorion before her charge had even truly begun. She was only angry because she cared, and wasn’t thinking about how difficult these last few days must have been for you. Let her make peace with you tomorrow morning.” Now she paused briefly. That did not sound at all like Imoen.
“Or at least,” Imoen picked up, “that’s what Kha-Kha-Khalid said to tell you,” she giggled, imitating his stutter. I chuckled too, despite myself. Imeon’s laughter was simply contagious.
“But for whate’er it’s worth,” she said, now much more herself, “I think he was tellin’ the truth. But even if he was stretchin’ it a bit - here’s what I think. They were the last gifts Gorion gave you; he wanted you three to be together. You should trust him, Ausar. I don’t know about that gobbledygook you were shooting Ajantis about Gorion having his head stuffed in some “bag of tricks,” but I saw the two of you together too much to think anything other than that he cared about you. So much. You should stay with them because it’s what Gorion would have wanted.”
“I - I’m not going to admit Jaheira was right,” I said.
Imoen shrugged her shoulders again, “So don’t, just give the five of us another chance and,” here she wrinkled her nose at me, “find a washtub if you can. Those Ant Hag guts must’ve gotten all o’er you.” With that Imoen darted out of the room, leaving my prior course of action upturned in her wake.
At first I was surprised when I noticed that after 41 "episodes", the characters were still roaming around FAI in Chapter 1, but after reading the indepth character development and world building, I'm sure glad you took your time !
And despite what might look like a slow-paced storytelling, there is no filler, boring stuff or whatever, each chapter adds to the experience and feels important.
Today this thread reached its 100th reply! I just wanted to seize the moment to express my gratitude to all of you for your patient attention to this story and for your support. Without your interest, warmth, and community, I am sure this tale would have withered long ago. Even now, I am amazed to have made it this far. So, thank you all, so much!!
Also, welcome back @monico - you were there at the very beginning, and I am very glad to see you back here now.
I settled onto my bed. Gorion. I blinked back tears, whether of sorrow, anger, or confusion, it was impossible to say. I remembered the feeling of his hand resting lightly on my shoulder, as he spoke to me of a warrior’s responsibilities the day I first picked up a sword. A warrior, he had said, must always have something to protect. The day he raises his sword for any other reason, that is the day he must throw his sword away. I had told him I raised my sword to protect the memory of my mother. Gorion squeezed my shoulder and said nothing other than to remember his words. I remember weeping tears of frustration into his robe later that evening, when I had returned from my first sparring practice, a long afternoon of being beaten down mercilessly, over and over again. Already Gorion had begun to feel frail in my arms, but his embrace held a different kind of strength. I pushed my face into my pillow, sobbing now. Where have you gone, Gorion? Why didn’t you let me fight to protect you?
When my sobbing ebbed, I felt drained. But a few wheels in my head kept on spinning slowly, like windmills after the breeze has passed. Gorion’s teaching on that day had its holes - my thoughts rounded now fiercely on the Hakar - but I tried to look at it on the sides where it was solid. Would I be strong enough to protect Imoen by myself? My eyelids felt heavy. She was the one I wanted to protect, so joyful, so innocent. Needed to be kept safe. A strong hand to protect her. Against the world. The levy broke and sleep flooded in, sweeping away consciousness like a toy boat. My hand. Ankhegs. My last thought was of the discomfort of the ruby ring, which I had forgotten to remove.
The next morning burst across my face, cold and wet. My eyes shot open to see Imeon grinning at me from behind the lip of a water bucket. “Wake up you lazy-lubber! Time to wake up!” Imeon jumped on my bed until I pulled myself out of it. It was hardly dawn. “See you downstairs!” Imoen said. A moment later I could hear the old wooden steps groaning as she raced down them. I tugged off the ruby ring, so I could wash my hands and face in whatever was left of the bucket Imoen had brought with her. The moment I did so, I felt a sudden stroke of forgetfulness. I realized that I had completely forgotten the Burning Hands spell. When I slid the ring back on, however, memory of the spell, in all its comprehensive detail, immediately resurfaced. So that was your secret, I thought to myself, tapping the ruby. My thoughts turned to Jaheira. She would not press any admission of guilt out of me, but I also didn’t want to leave her and Khalid behind. It was not, after all, what Gorion would have wanted.
Downstairs, Jaheira, Khalid, Ajantis, and Imoen were all seated around the same table at the back of the common room. The air seemed to thicken as I sat down, and all eyes turned to Jaheira. Her own eyes, dark and deep, were cast down.
“Ausar,” she said, “I think we both were a little overhasty last night.” The barrier of the first words broken, Jaheira looked up, into my eyes. I saw her determination. “I said many words I regret, child. But you need to understand why I said them.” I felt myself tensing, as though bracing for impact. “Gorion did not speak to us of the troubles that hound you, but fearing for you deeply, he entrusted us with your care, should any evil befall him. And now it has. For his sake, we would not so soon have failed in our charge.”
I glanced over to Ajantis, who looked sympathetic, but not surprised. Perhaps they had told him last night.
“And yet,” Jaheira continued, “your deeds prove you are no child.” A whisper of pride stirred within me. “So if we proceed, we must proceed in fellowship, as wolves do.”
“Wolves?” I asked.
“A pack lives off the land together, hunts together, faces danger together. Cut off from the pack, a wolf’s ferocity is peerless, but it is the ferocity of desperation. The lone wolf dies, while the pack survives. Each one of us must be guardian to the other. So next time you feel like you need to right the balance,” Jaheira chided, in a tone feather-light compared to last night, “let the rest of us know first. When it comes to hobgoblins, we can set out a feast for crows as well as you.”
I laughed, “For Gorion, then!”
“For Gorion,” Jaheira repeated.
“F-for Gorion,” Khalid echoed.
“And Ajantis,” I asked, “will you still join with us?”
“I shall. We shall pull the bandit menace out by its roots, and return the order of Helm to this land.”
“Sure, but how about some stories along the way? Maybe a few that aren’t about Helm?” Imoen interjected.
And so in high spirits and the first rays of dawn, we left the Friendly Arms behind us, and journeyed south. Our plan, which won the fellowship’s unanimous assent, would be to rest for the night in the town of Beregost, before pushing on to Nashkel early the next morning. No vagrants harried us as we walked along the main thoroughfare, but all except me wore their armor in case of an ambush. I had instead opted to cast Armor on myself; it was an excellent opportunity to practice and to avoid armor chafe at the same time. Ajantis, however, seemed dissatisfied.
“You are confident that your magic will allow you to turn a blade with nothing but air? Would you rather not trust in a sturdy coat of ring-mail than the fickleness of a conjurer's breeze?” Ajantis asked.
Although invisible, my Weave-woven armor was far from insubstantial. A form-fitting current of air held together by a weak magical charge, it hung weightlessly about me, pulsing with a low-power pressure that was the echo of a vibration. Its presence was impossible for me to forget, even if it left me entirely unencumbered. “Test it yourself,” I challenged him, “press against it with the point of your sword.”
Ajantis unsheathed his sword and extended its point forward delicately, obviously skeptical. Once the point passed within a few inches of me, though, the magical armor emitted a brief, low-pitched buzz, and the blade hopped backward.
“Ah,” Ajantis said in surprise, “but can it deflect a forceful blow?”
“Try me.” I clenched my teeth. The magical armor was supposed to emulate chainmail, not full plate. But I refused to show even the slightest hesitation.
Ajantis sheathed his sword, though, and I frowned. “I am not about to kill you on a dare,” Ajantis said. But before I could reply he had swept his gauntleted hand high, and thrown his entire weight into a back-handed slap at my shoulder. The magical armor buzzed again, redirecting the force in Ajantis’ hand so that he spun backward. I hooted with delight.
“What’s going on back there?” Jaheira called over her shoulder.
“I was merely confirming the integrity of Ausar’s . . . unconventional choice of armor,” Ajantis called back.
“And how did you find it?” I called back loudly, knowing he could not lie.
“Adequate,” he pronounced. I grinned, hoping our chance to spar would come soon.
As we reached a westward bend in the road, Jaheira led us off it, claiming to know of a shortcut through the wilderness. Khalid and Ajantis, whose metal armor gleamed in the sun, seemed incongruous in such a naturalistic setting, but Jaheira seemed to take no offense, even though she rejected such armor for herself. Gorion had taught me that much about the druidic oaths, at least, and now I found myself wondering whether he had learned what he knew of them from Jaheira herself. Just as I was about to quicken my pace to reach her, Imoen cried out.
In a flash, a wolf leaped out at Ajantis from cover, its gums pulled back in a sharp-toothed snarl. Its impact against Ajantis’ shield pushed him back a step, but we skewered it on our swords before Jaheira had a chance to react. I could feel my heart beating with the surprise of the sudden attack. Jaheira ran toward the wolf’s carcass, and lay her hand upon its head, whispering a few words I could not understand.
“Something here has disturbed this creature greatly. Let us all be on our guard, lest whatever it was still lingers in these parts,” Jaheira cautioned. And then, as she passed me, in a low voice she said, “the lone wolf, Ausar.” I could see a tinge of sorrow in her dark eyes.
The monotony of our long walk so abruptly broken, we condensed our formation, stepping through the lightly wooded plains with our weapons at the ready. It was not long, however, before we found the ugly explanation of that lone wolf’s furor. It rose eight feet tall, an ogre with a face only slightly more human than a hobgoblin’s. Whatever an orc was to an elf, an ogre was to an orc. The primitive creature before us whacked at the trees around it with a giant morningstar, for no discernible purpose. Perhaps just by chance, it turned in our direction almost immediately. Leaves shook as the monstrous ogre roared.
“Ogre!” shouted Jaheira.
She raised both her arms in the air and began to chant rhythmically but urgently. The rest of us wasted no time watching her. Khalid and Ajantis pushed forward to block the ogre’s charge at a narrow passage between two trees. I meanwhile was rushing to circle around one of the far trees, to outflank the ogre on its right side. Imoen shot an arrow, piercing the ogre’s shoulder; she shot again, piercing its chest. But the ogre was by now brimming with adrenaline, and these wounds only goaded it into an even deeper rage. Jaheira ended her chant with one final cry to the earth, and suddenly the ground exploded in a mass of writhing vines.
Yet all for naught. The ogre’s powerful legs simply tore through the encircling vines, as it threw its massive weight into Khalid and Ajantis’ shield wall. With one hand, the ogre wrenched away Khalid’s shield; with the other, it swung its tremendous morning star. Still circling the tree, I saw Khalid try to backpedal to evade the blow, but one of the vines had snaked around his leg and held him fast. He had just enough time to contort his face into a look of pure terror before the morningstar smashed into him, dead-center. The force ripped Khalid’s body from the vine and sent it sliding backward in the dirt.
“Khalid!” Jaheira screamed.
Ajantis thrust his blade into the ogre’s calf. The ogre stumbled, bellowing. Finally, I had my chance. From the ogre’s right flank, I swung my sword with all my might. The ogre’s bellow fell abruptly silent. Its head landed face-up next to Khalid’s.
NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR
As with the clash between Ausar and the ankheg, I am temporarily withholding a few pictures, so as not to diffuse prematurely the suspense of this terrible blow against Khalid. Stay tuned for Friday's installment!
Well, first, I must say, Imoen's luck with attack rolls is really uncanny.
Second, given that Khalid has 13 HP, and that the Ogre with its 18/00 STR (+6 dmg) is wielding a morningstar (2-8 dmg), there is about 28,5% chances of Khalid being one-shot by that Ogre (if my damage calculations are accurate, I don't think the ogres have mastery of their weapons, do they ?).
And given the description, the Ogre might even have landed a critical hit, leaving no chance of survival for our poor stuttering harper.
Last note: please, in the future, refrain from such cliffhangers, my heart is not armed for this
If you decide to stick with keeping Jaheira in leather armor and no helmet for story purposes, she will be pretty much useless for any melee combat. I guess slings, darts, and throwing daggers as her modus operandi might make for a cool version of Jaheira.
As a note of trivia, in the original BG1, Entangle wasn't as useless as in its BG2 version. It targeted one enemy, almost always worked, was party friendly, and completely immobilized the target, meaning it couldn't cast spells or fire ranged weapons. It functioned as a druidic version of Hold Person against a single target. I guess the original devs must have decided it was overpowered as a first level spell, so they nerfed it to be much weaker than the original version.
It was exciting to use in your story, though. But I think it made Jaheira look a bit more noobish with her druid spells than she should be, lorewise.
Entangle could be effective against the ogre if you got some distance between it and your party, first, and it failed its save. Entangle has such a wide AoE and is so devastatingly party unfriendly, it would be really tricky to pull it off, though. I never even bother with it, having long ago dismissed it as a useless at best and suicidal at worst kind of a spell.
Maybe I shouldn't comment so much on game play mechanics and technique. You might be doing some things gameplay wise that are dangerous, on purpose, to make a better story.
Getting a helmet? Bentley doesn't sell them; the only way you can pick up a helmet around the Friendly Arm is to salvage one from a hobgoblin. And if you didn't plan ahead ... well, then she'll just have to do without until reaching Beregost.
On the chances involved in this update's cliffhanger...
... But that relies on another unwarranted assumption. You see, the actual ogre attack isn't the morningstar they carry in their inventory; it's a special "OGRE1" item. Their "weapon" deals 1d10+strength damage and hits as +1. It is classified as a morning star, at least.
Proficiency? No proficiency in morning stars, 3 in "spiked weapons". I'm not sure whether that means they get no proficiency bonus or that they get +3 to attack and +3 to damage.
So then, on a non-critical hit, it's either 40% or 70% to one-shot a 13-HP character, depending on whether that old "spiked weapon" mastery works. There's a reason I stick to ranged attacks if I go ogre-hunting at level 1.
Level 1 characters may also have protection from one-hit kills, but only if you allow the difficulty slider to affect damage taken.
@BelgarathMTH - You are correct to note that Jaheira is currently not wearing or wielding anything metal, and also correct to note that it does compromise her melee capacity. I have given some thought to the druidic oaths regarding the use of metal, as well as to Jaheira's character and personal history. As I keep promising @energisedcamel re Ausar's elven age / maturity, there will also be (in the fullness of time) an exploration of the oath, how Jaheira relates to it, and how that may change over time. And so, I am loath to lay out my reasoning full here and now. The bottom line at present, though, is that RP is definitely leading (for now!) over effectiveness (but from an effectiveness standpoint, it helps that that Ajantis, Khalid, and Ausar make a perfectly adequate front-line for this stage of the game).
As for entangle and my play-style lol - when my technique was more polished, I did not have *too* much trouble with precision aiming. If a slower playthrough doesn't get me back to some adequate level of competency, I might need to reevaluate my spell selections. That having been said, even if entangle hits your front row, it usually isn't too calamitous - combatants engaged in melee don't typically need to move much anyway, and if it delays melee reinforcements from the back of the enemy group, it's usually worth some collateral friendly entanglement (provided, of course, you have a back-line).
As for entangle and the Jaheira RP, I am not too worried. Some possible ways of thinking about it off-the-cuff: (1) conjuring a writhing mass of vines from the earth isn't a precision move - nature is alive and intrinsically hard to control, even for druids with some experience under their belts; (2) lore-wise, it is true that Jaheira has been through a lot, but it is not clear how much of her experience prior to her adventure with Gorion's Ward has been combat-centric; she does start the game with a fair bit of experience, but late-level-1 is still miles off from mastery; etc. Am I fabricating excuses for sloppy play? Definitely. Are they plausible excuses? I think so
Cool bit of trivia about how entangle used to work - I had no idea.
Wow, I did not remember that (granted, I haven't played vanilla BG1 in ages). So, basically, Entangle back in BG1 was a single-target Web spell ?
@jmerry : thanks for the insightful number crunching ! I felt my calculations were a bit too "primitive", but couldn't quite put my finger on the problem (well, apparently, there were several, but the most obvious one was considering 2d8 as a 1d7+1 roll)
Our battle, however, had drawn some unwanted attention. From a point just south, a perverse chorus of gibberling screeching swelled, rapidly drawing closer to our position. The four of us still standing ran to catch a glimpse of this latest threat. Three gibberlings were barreling toward us in a maniac frenzy.
“Hold them off!” Jaheira cried, fleeing back to Khalid, who still lay motionless on the ground. Imoen peppered the pack with arrows, striking one of the three but not stopping it.
“Ajantis,” I shouted, “do not step between me and the first of these beasts!” So he stood by me, as I concentrated on the first gibberling that would reach us, outpacing the two others by far. Dirt caked its mane; its eyes smouldered with dumb rage. I held out my hands, fanning out my fingers so that only my thumbs were touching. The gibberling sped closer and closer. I yelled out the arcane syllables of the Burning Hands spell. Everything locked into place. My own hands burst into flame, spewing a jet of fire straight at the gibberling’s face. The gibberling’s filthy mane became a mad halo of fire. I could smell its burning hair. Yet it continued to fly forward, screeching at an even higher, yet more horrible pitch than before, propelled onward by its own momentum. Ajantis bashed it to the ground with his shield, and finished its miserable life with his sword. We cut down the next two without trouble.
“To Jaheira! To Khalid!” Ajantis urged. We did not stop to clean our blades on the grass.
We spun around, and ran. But the sight before us set our hearts, finally, at ease. Khalid and Jaheira stood enfolded in each other’s embrace. She had restored him completely, mending even the smallest scratch. When she turned to face me, she smiled. A tear was sliding down her cheek.
AUTHOR'S NOTE
Here are the remaining pictures from the fight with the ogre:
So it looks like the grand prize goes to @dukdukgoos! Sorry the prize is only my congratulations, but funding for the Ausar the Riven (TM) Sweepstakes has been low these last few months. Again, this playthrough is on core and I never tinker around with the other sliders, so I was definitely very puzzled by the huge amount of damage reduction that saved Khalid from death here. But I guess (as @dukdukgoos explained) there is a sort of "mercy rule" for level one characters. This is definitely a miraculous survival on Khalid's part, and I can only say I am glad he is still with us. As the writer / player, I am going to accept Khalid's inexplicable survival as a gift; if, though, @dukdukgoos or @jmerry could kindly tell me how to disable the mercy rule (if possible w/o much trouble), I would appreciate it. It's a mechanic that I know I would be very tempted to exploit, and could lead to even more reckless / sloppy play.
And here are the pictures of the fight with those pesky, intermeddling gibberlings:
I know that in the second picture Jaheira is not where the narrative says she is, but she did not inflict or soak any damage, so cut your author some slack and just roll with the artistic liberty here
Before we journeyed on, we returned to the body of the ogre I had beheaded. The sight of its severed head on the ground imparted me - to my surprise - with some semblance of peace. It was, I imagined, rather fitting for such a horrible creature to die in an equally horrible way; and all the better, that I had been the one to accomplish it. Returning to my purpose, I searched the body for clues pertaining to the Hakar, on the chance that this ogre was part of a reserve he had marshalled in this area on contingency. Though I found nothing, Imoen and I both noticed something especially curious: the ogre had clumsily tied two human-sized belts together around its waist. Imoen’s nimble fingers darted to the knot, dissolving it with only one or two well-placed tugs. Imoen picked one up, marveling at its highly unusual ornamentality. The belt itself was an entirely standard length of smoothed leather, but the buckle appeared to be silver inlaid with a gold design, a depiction of what appeared to be a serpent nestled in the petals of a lotus flower. Just as she was about to cinch the girdle around her waist, Jaheira slapped it to the ground.
“Hey! What was that for?” Imoen protested.
“Don’t be foolish, child,” Jaheira retorted, but then, observing the genuine confusion in Imoen’s eyes, continued in a gentler tone, “There are as many kinds of things out there, as there are kinds of men, Imoen. Some men look like what they are: brutish, or cowardly, or wise. But some are truly opposite their appearance, and so it is with the things they make. When out adventuring” - and here she sighed at the term, as though using it as a concession - “in the field, you should never put anything on if you do not know exactly what it does.”
Imoen rolled her eyes at the lecture, but placed the girdle in Jaheira’s outstretched hand. When Imoen’s back was turned to pick up the second one, though, I spied her twisting her ring, so that the amethyst-side faced her palm. Evidently, she was not keen to allow Jaheira's confiscatory mood to claim any further spoils.
“We’ll decide what to do with them once we know what they are,” Jaheira promised.
“Yeah, yeah, alright, mom.”
Incidentally, the numbers revealed in the picture answer the mechanical question I had. Ogres have their weapon mastered.
CHAPTER 1, Part XLVII
We pressed southward. A rumble in the sky above was followed shortly by a spring rain, refreshing, rather than biting, in the warmth of the sun. This simple pleasure evaporated like a dream, though, in the scorching cruelty of the scene that followed.
“G-god’s beneath!” The curse burst from Khalid’s mouth in a tortured wheeze, almost of its own volition.
None had the presence of mind even to look askance at his language. In the wreck of an overturned merchant’s caravan, its wheels busted and its canvas canopies shredded, lay the bodies of a mother, a father, and their young child. The mother had been stabbed multiple times; the child’s throat had been slit. The wounds were not fresh. The rain had turned the ground beneath this hellish scene into mud, and everything was sinking into the muck.
Imoen covered her face, and then buried her head in Jaheira’s bosom. Jaheira wrapped an arm around her. I simply stood there, numbed. But Ajantis ran forward into the mire, collapsing onto his knees in front of the bodies of the woman and child. He balled his hands into fists, and bowed his head. His voice quavered as he prayed.
“All-Seeing Eye, open wide thy servant’s eyes!
Oh Vigilant One, steel this weak-willed heart of flesh,
That for all the world’s sin I might not weep,
But keep thy Watch with eyes unlensed by grief.”
And then, almost under his breath, added words not written down in any psalmody:
“Next time, Helm, let me guard their lives, not avenge them!”
Although I was no Helmite, I found myself mentally repeating each line of the prayer after Ajantis. Its words possessed solidity and purpose, a sanctuary against the senseless slaughter. Had this butchery been the work of the ogre we had just slain, or had it been the handiwork of the Hakar himself? The father's body was closest to me, his sword lying useless in a hand opened by death.
Jaheira and Khalid recovered their composure rapidly; they looked saddened but their shock had passed them almost immediately after the initial sighting. My heart sunk even lower to think that they must have encountered such scenes many times before. Together, they rummaged through inside of the upturned caravan, the compartments of which - I could see through the tremendous holes in the canvas canopies - had been thrown into disarray. I shambled over to the father’s body listlessly, on the chance it might provide some clue as to what had transpired here. He had been armed and armored, undoubtedly felled defending the caravan from attack. This man might have been a mere guard rather than the head of the household, but a wife and her child traveling by themselves to sell grain at market would have been, even I knew, highly unusual in these parts. I glanced back at the mother’s face, framed with dark hair, beginning to slacken just the slightest bit with age. An anomaly had disclosed itself: the man before me was significantly younger, too young to be her husband. A son, perhaps? But his features were more delicate and his hair a wispy blond. I found nothing remarkable on his person, except a patch sewn onto his leather armor displaying a sigil I could not place, a black bird-claw set against a red background. Perhaps this man really was just a mercenary guard, and the father had, after all, been detained on more important business at home or elsewhere abroad.
If it is the former, could you provide a link to a depiction ? I'd love to see what they look like.
P.S.: spoiler alert, you revealed the identity of the victim
The NPC project adds the bandits, and does a bit more with Kagain's dialogue around the incident if you recruit him.
Jaheira and Khalid emerged from the caravan talking in low whispers, looking befuddled. They said that the caravan had been upended, but that its contents showed no sign of pillage. Certain crates had been cracked or burst open, consistent with the caravan cars being overturned, but none appeared to have been rifled through, and some were entirely untouched. Most of the crates seemed to hold grain, but one or two contained farming implements that could have been resold or melted down for their iron. Stranger still than the raiders’ abandonment of iron in the middle of a regional shortage was the lack of bodies, specifically the lack of male bodies. There was no sign of the driver, the father, or the small retinue of guards that would have usually protected a caravan of this size. It was as though in a raid brutal enough to result in the slaughter of a woman and a child, every man, except for the one, had either fled or vanished without loss of life on either side.
When I reported what I had observed of the dead man to Jaheira and Khalid, their confusion only deepened. The crest, they explained to me, was the symbol of the Blacktalons, a vicious group of bandits that had ramped up the scale of their raiding operations in an attempt to exploit the so-called “iron crisis” to the fullest. But if this were a Blacktalon raid, then they never would have left so much iron behind. Not only had the raiders left iron untouched in the caravan, they had even left the fallen Blacktalon’s sword in the mud. Such indifference to the easy profits of iron was, Jaheira and Khalid insisted, entirely inconsistent with the way the Blacktalons had been known to operate. But if this raid was not executed by the Blacktalons, then what was a Blacktalon body doing next to the bodies of the innocent woman and her child? None of us could make sense of the tangle of incongruous information; sullen in the shadow of this tragedy and our own ignorance, we could do nothing but continue our march further south.
But before we departed, Jaheira stooped over the mother’s body. Ajantis, who had a better view of what she was doing than I, cried out.
“Stop! Cease this at once! We are no graverobbers, to despoil the dead.”
“Trinkets and baubles will do them no good now,” Jaheira replied, not even stopping to face Ajantis.
“It is about decency, woman!” Khalid walked over to step between Ajantis and his wife.
“Mother Nature wastes nothing, and neither should we. She uses even every bone that falls to the earth, and so should we make use of everything we can.”
“This is the act of a common villain and nothing more,” Ajantis protested.
“I am no villain, squire,” Jaheira, far from being cowed, became even bolder, “You would have these entombed in the ground, or else easy pickings for the next bandit to saunter this way. How does that honor the memory of this woman or her child? We will sell these for supplies; we will use these supplies to get to the bottom of the iron crisis, which has already led to so many deaths like these. That is what this woman would have wanted.” Ajantis grumbled but made no further reply.
We all walked along in silence for the better part of an hour. Imoen was, unsurprisingly, the first to recover her spirits. She began telling tales of the antics she had variously orchestrated or stumbled into at Candlekeep, such as the time she had “accidentally” substituted a potion from an unwary sage’s personal chest for a similar-looking bottle in the kitchen larder. Both, of course, had been locked, but Imoen had been nursing a skill for what she called “lock-knocking” and what her foster-father Winthrop referred to simply as “pokin’ ‘er nose where it did nae belong.” The bizarre effect of this substitution? For the entire week, every dish served in the Great Hall made laughing sounds while being eaten. Needless to say, many of the paunchier sages thinned remarkably during this time. It also ignited a fiery debate among scholars of the mind as to whether said dishes had become sentient and endowed with a penchant for dark humor, or whether the sounds were altogether lacking in reason, and only coincidentally resembled laughter. Once Candlekeep’s resident diviners had identified a lock of Imoen’s hair in the kitchen, though, the sages spoke univocally: she had to be punished. Ulruant, steely and humorless as always, insisted on a flogging, but a majority were able to prevail upon him to embrace a more poetic justice. Imoen’s punishment was nothing more or less than this - to eat all of the food left over from the last batch of food cooked with the substituted reagent. This labor of expiation lasted several weeks, and Imoen claimed that, as an enduring consequence, hearing others laugh would, now and again, cause her to salivate. Khalid was the first to laugh, and when Imoen responded with a heavy drool, he laughed even more. After a while of telling such tales, many of which I knew were grossly exaggerated, even Ajantis was smiling.
When Imoen had finished spinning her yarns, we were all grateful for the opportunity to distract our minds from a repetitive road and from feet sore in their boots. But by then, our trek from the Inn was already reaching its end. Wilderness and woodland were giving way to farms and cattle pastures. We crossed the town line into Beregost around an hour before sunset.
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EDIT: Minor revision in the last paragraph.