Chuck and Sarah
atcDave
Member Posts: 2,447
This playthrough will be with the main characters from the TV Show “Chuck”, which ran on NBC from 2007 – 2012. The show was a spy-themed action-comedy (drama, adventure, romance). Really the balance of elements often struck me as perfect. It was funny, exciting, sweet with good heroic main characters and a number of eccentric supporting characters.
I was a pretty big fan and still love the main characters.
It is sort of a reach. Spy-themed action is different from medieval fantasy! And several skills won’t translate well into an AD&D based system. But I can see a pretty clear path for using Chuck and Sarah. Chuck was portrayed as a brilliant computer programmer/hacker, who accidently got a top secret government computer program stuck in his head. Okay, so Chuck has a natural gift for magic and is Gorion’s Ward (with a bit of Bhaal stuck in his head!).
Sarah was his handler/protector. A very talented and dangerous government agent sent to keep him safe in his intense new world (actually, there was some expectation of manipulating him there too. But Sarah fell pretty quick and hard for Chuck, which left her with a juicy conflict of interest. I will mostly ignore that part for this tale). The show gave her some significant thief skills too. Not only do I not need her as a thief, but thief skills would undermine her value as a tank/protector. So I think with AD&D rules it will be best to build her as a pure fighter.
Both are good heroic characters. I’ll call Chuck primarily a moral hero. More than anything, he wants to do right and help people. And he makes those around him better, or want to be better through example and encouragement. He’s the sort of hero who won’t seek out trouble, but will never shy away when a need emerges.
Sarah is the action hero. She will jump in where angels fear to tread. If properly motivated. She wants to do right, but is a little burned out and cynical. At least at first. I’ve thought a few times, for a villain, picking on Sarah is the second most dangerous thing they can ever do. Because she will destroy them. Picking on Chuck is the most dangerous thing a villain can do, because then Sarah gets POed. Part of Chuck the moral hero is that he completely redeems Sarah. She eventually buys into his world view entirely, and is better for it.
Baldur’s Gate starts our heroes pretty young, so Chuck and Sarah will start the game with a little less baggage than they had on the show.
Because these characters will be a different concept from what I’ve done before, that has led me to play around with a different AI art generator. Actually, I will continue using Co-Pilot for a lot of renders, and I won’t be redoing a lot of the excellent renders I already have for NPCs.
But I switched to Meta’s OpenArt for many of the portraits and solo renders involving the two main characters. OpenArt allows for building a character model from imported photos. That means I can reproduce my Chuck and Sarah characters to look *a lot* like the characters/actors from the show. And consistently. Readers surely noticed during my lengthy “Psyche and Diomedes” playthrough there was a lot of “flex” for the characters. I could describe them in basic detail, but the AI did what it would do. And no character is completely consistent in their look, because to the AI each render is an independent event. That may or may not repeat some details from a previous render.
As awesome as OpenArt sounds so far, I’ll follow up by saying I don’t like the fantasy look of OpenArt like I did Co-Pilot. It is sharp, detailed and clean. So much so it often looks unreal, like plastic. Especially on fantastical things. So its not ideal for how I see fantasy.
I may get better with it. I sure have with Co-Pilot. But at this point, I will simply prefer Co-Pilot for certain things. Don’t be surprised if you see a lot more solo renders in this playthrough though, those are amazing on OpenArt.
*****
Chuck has grown up in the great library of Candlekeep. He was raised by the mage and sage Gorion. From a young age Chuck discovered he had a gift, a passion, a natural understanding for all things magical. Gorion has always been immensely proud of “his boy”, growing up to be a chip off the old block!
Chuck learned to understand the ways of magic from a very young age. [Co-Pilot]
Yet Chuck has always known he was adopted. Apart from being told Gorion knew his mom long ago, Chuck knows nothing about his actual parents. That hasn’t been a huge thing to him. He’s well loved by his adopted father, and he has plenty of friends around Candlekeep. Especially Imoen, the only other child in Candlekeep for most of Chuck’s life. She was raised by Winthrop the innkeeper and is maybe a year younger than Chuck. Gorion goes back and forth if he thinks its great Chuck has a friend, and worrying that Imoen is a bit of a troublemaker. She’s not really bad, but she does love to prank the Monks who run the great library!
Chuck is a “good kid” in every sense. Maybe Gorion should just be happy Imoen has such a good friend?
Chuck and Imoen have grown up together, and always been as close as siblings. [Co-Pilot]
As Chuck as grown out of his teens he’s grown more serious about the study of magic. This has meant Arcane studies of the sort many travelers come to Candlekeep for, but also learning about the “Mistress of Magic”. The Goddess Mystra is the keeper of all things arcane, and this intersect of arcane and divine sorts of magic is particularly intriguing to young Chuck.
Learning has taken nearly all of Chuck’s time these last couple years. To the point it worries Gorion a little. Maybe it was a mistake to raise a child in such an isolated sort of place? Apart from that imp Imoen he’s hardly had any friends his own age, and has never shown much interest in girls. He is interested in talking with the various mages constantly coming and going, but he’s awkward with them too.
Now a concerning development. These last few days, strange men have been asking about Chuck. Gorion went to the chief of the Watchers yesterday to inquire about hiring extra protection for his son. A new sergeant had just reported for duty this morning, and she isn’t on the schedule yet. So Gorion hired Sarah to help keep an eye on Chuck.
By the next day, Gorion was even more worried. He’d heard from several friends about visitors asking about Chuck. This could not be good. It was time to relocate himself and his son. He sent a messenger to friends in the area to meet up with himself and Chuck. He told Chuck to get whatever supplies he might need, they were leaving Candlekeep that afternoon. And he told Sarah to introduce herself to Chuck and to stick very close.
Chuck
As above, Chuck has a remarkable mind for magic. He’s enjoyed his life at Candlekeep, with Gorion and a few close friends he has always felt loved and content. Imoen has long been his best friend, more like a sister really. As Chuck has gotten older and pursued his passion for magic he’s dragged Imoen along in some ways. She’s always been more of a prankster than Chuck, but she’s plenty smart and has actually learned some about magic just by following along with Chuck. But she really has always been a kid sister to him, and Chuck knows this because his heart skipped a beat and his jaw dropped to the ground when the new Watcher Sergeant, Sarah, introduced herself to him this morning.
This is also how Chuck knows his father is very worried about a number of strangers who’ve been visiting Candlekeep. First he was told to get some gear together for a long term trip away from the library. Then later this morning when he met Sarah, she informed him she’d been hired by Gorion to stick close and keep an eye on him.
Chuck chatted briefly with Imoen too, about not knowing what was up or when he’d be home. He got a look from his sister that suggested she would be right there with him. Sarah noticed too, she questioned how well Chuck knew this Imoen (!). He tried to explain what she was to him, Sarah seemed skeptical, like the idea didn’t quite register.
[OpenArt]
This will be Chuck’s portrait in the game for all of the Baldur’s Gate saga. [OpenArt]
Chuck is Neutral-Good Human male. 1st Level Mage/1st Level Cleric of Mystra
15/10/12/18/15/18
Sarah
Sarah has grown up around the Sword Coast area. She never knew her mom, and her dad was a bit of a scoundrel. She was often left with family, that she never quite believed was family (especially the Halfling couple). Dad would always come back for her after a few weeks and they’d head off on a new adventure. Finally, when she was not quite 17, a sympathetic guard woman in Waterdeep informed Sarah that her dad was in custody and wouldn’t be back for a while. Briefly at a loss on what to do, the guard suggested Sarah could get a job with the Guard. Sarah was big and fit, probably no one would question her age. So that’s what Sarah did, and she proved to be good at it. Over the next five years she took several guard positions around the Sword Coast. Most recently working as a guard in Beregost she was promoted to Sergeant for her overall competence and reliability. That was when she saw a flier looking for Guard Sergeants, Watchers, at Candlekeep. For quite a bit more money than she was making now. That seemed to good to pass up. Sarah had spent her life bouncing from place to place, so relocating again hardly bothered her.
[OpenArt]
Sarah has got along well with people wherever she wound up. But mostly in a professional sort of way. She’d been feeling a bit of an ache for something more permanent, but decided this was abnormal, unfamiliar territory. So she took the new job and moved on once again.
Sarah was just being welcomed by the Watcher Commander as a new Sergeant when an older man, a mage apparently, came by looking to hire some extra security for a few days. He had some concerns about visitors to Candlekeep, especially that they’d been asking about his son. This mage, Gorion, was well known to the commander who immediately offered since Sarah wasn’t on the schedule yet she was available for such work. Wow, bonus! Private contract while working for the Watch was a good way to up the salary.
Sarah met with the local mage Gorion who was looking to hire extra security for his son Chuck. [OpenArt]
Candlekeep seems to be a secure place. And its well known for being safe and stable. But its also an important destination for all sorts of research. Really, its all about the Great Library. Bookish types by the cartload.
When Gorion pointed out his son to her, Sarah almost laughed out loud. He was a stereotype of a bookish researcher. Awkward, but seemingly good natured.
The next day, Gorion informed her they would be traveling away from the Keep. He would appreciate the extra sword at least until they met up with friends at the nearby Friendly Arm Inn. In the meantime, he wanted her to introduce herself to Chuck and not let him out of her sight until they left.
The introduction went well! Chuck was still awkward and bookish. But he was also sweet and funny. This would not be a bad job for a couple days. She was just sorry at the end of it there would be no more Chuck at Candlekeep.
Chuck made one last run around home to gather some supplies. Sarah helped him with a list, as a mage he wouldn’t wear armor. But they got him some weapons he knew how to use, and a traveling spell book. Sarah was impressed at how all the locals knew Chuck, and how eagerly willing he was to help them all with minor chores. There was an assassination attempt when Chuck was looking for an older lady’s missing book. The assassin was comically inept, but obviously this showed Gorion’s fears were well founded. Next Sarah met Imoen, apparently a long-time friend of Chuck’s. Sarah bristled a little at noticing the younger girl was cute. And was not pleased with the suggestion that passed, that Imoen would follow along with this coming trip. She asked Chuck how well he knew this girl, and Chuck replied she was a little sister to him. Okay, she wouldn’t push it, if Chuck was okay that Imoen would likely follow along Sarah would accept this.
This will be Sarah’s portrait in the game for all of the Baldur’s Gate saga. [OpenArt]
Sarah is a Neutral-Good Human Female. 3rd Level Fighter
17/19/17/13/14/17
*****
A few changes to this build from my last run. I’ve added the “convenient NPCs” mod that let’s me decide which of the new EE NPCs will even be present in game, and if they’ll initiate contact or wait to be talked to. For the record I only left Neera and Rasaad in, both set to passive mode.
The biggest thing is adding SCS. That’s best known for adding difficulty in the form of better AI for most opponents. But it also includes a number of other adjustments, I have it replacing both “IWDification” and “Level 1 NPCs”. I currently have the improved AI at a low setting. In the past I’ve not liked such difficulty enhancers much, they often seem too meta and immersion breaking to me. But I know SCS is much improved over some earlier difficulty/tactical type mods, so I’ll give it a try.
To BG2 I’ve added “Wings”, which mostly adds story and minor quest to Aerie (expect this to be more important next time I follow her romance story). I also added Lava’s mod “Bloodied Strings of Barovia”. A quest mod involving the Ravenloft setting.
From CDTweaks, I’ve disabled the BG2 romances. Since Chuck is the lead character and Sarah is his gal, I wanted to able to (maybe) use Jaheira and Aerie without being rude to them to disable the romances!
Building characters from a TV show, especially such a different genre, involves choices. Chuck’s skills were mostly about his smarts, so its obvious his mental scores will be high. Intelligence more obviously than wisdom! He was occasionally shown as rash and foolish, usually in the context of wanting to help and trust someone. We can maybe chalk much of that up to inexperience? Certainly as the show went he became “professionally” wiser. So maxing out his Intelligence was an easy choice. I chose to also give him a high Wisdom on the grounds he had a strong sense of morals and justice. Not to mention, its more advantageous for a cleric!
His physical scores are mostly average. He’s actually a big guy (and the actor has since become quite buff, but he was still sort of wiry in 2007) and shows no significant physical strength until late in the show.
Chuck is often awkward, so I considered a more average Charisma for him. But the thing is, he always wins people over somehow. Even hardened spies seem to end up liking him. So endearingly awkward, to a high degree seems fitting.
I did consider making him a straight mage. But I just ran one of those. Then I considered a straight Cleric of Mystra. That’s *almost* a mage/cleric all on its own. But it would be lacking at the higher levels. So a multi it is! Of course that will leave him slower advancing, but with a huge variety of magic available to him. Somehow that seems right.
I think he could only be Neutral-Good, strong sense of righteousness and a balance between needs of the many/needs of the one sort of thing.
Sarah also required a little thought. Score wise she would be above average in everything. She is shown as strong (for her size), and able to take a hit. And almost supernaturally quick and agile. Intelligence and Wisdom are merely above average.
As mentioned above, she was often shown with thief skills. But she was Chuck’s protector first and foremost. And deadly warrior is her most defining trait. Since adding thief would reduce her hit points, I thought it more important to maximize her tankiness. So a single class fighter seems appropriate.
Her charisma is plainly high, in spite of the character being a bit of a loner. She gets along very well with anyone she intends to. Not quite as maxed out as Chuck is, there often is a bit of aloofness to her. But charming in most meaningful senses.
Her alignment is harder to peg. She cares about right and wrong, very much so. But (especially early on) she can be cowed with “legitimate orders”. Of course in this situation, the source of those “legitimate orders” will disappear in the opening act. So we’ll have her (mostly) happily follow Chuck’s lead on such things. Their areas of conflict will have largely to do with keeping Chuck safe vs taking action; and Chuck’s willingness to trust almost anyone. Most of those conflicts will diminish in time as they become a good functioning team, and Sarah will be happy to take on a more gentle and loving sort of world view.
Update 1
Bonus! First update comes with the introduction. There will be more comments at the end.
*****
Chuck
I am really nervous to be leaving Candlekeep for the first time in my life! Father is worried about something, Sarah said it has to do with those thugs that tried to kill me. I haven’t had much time to think about that, she killed both men so fast I wasn’t even sure what was happening. But then I saw they had knives. This was two different times! Why are thugs trying to hurt me? They paid with their lives.
Sarah helped me buy a war hammer, a medium sized shield, and a sling with some bullets. These are all the weapons I’ve been trained to use. But I was never a great student of these things, weapons make me a little nervous. And Sarah makes me a little nervous, she wears armor and carries two swords. And she has shown she knows how to use them. I guess its good if dad hired a guard, that he hired a good one.
Soon, Sarah and I head back to the library and meet with father. He affirms we’re all ready, and that’s it. We head out on the road for the Friendly Arm Inn. I’ve never been there, but I know its about a day’s hike from Candlekeep. Almost all of our visitors stay there both coming and going. We are meeting a couple friends of his there, Khalid and Jaheira. I’ve not heard those names before.
A few hours out, just at dusk, a terrifying giant of a man in plate armor appears to block our path, with a couple ogres and a couple of men in armor. He calls my father by name, and demands he hand *me* over to him! Sarah grabs my arm and pulls me behind her. My dad yells to Sarah to get me away from here, and I hear him start casting a spell. As Sarah pushes me into the woods I’m aware several spells are being cast, there’s flame, and a few voices I don’t recognize shout in pain.
We run through the woods… for hours? I don’t know, its a while before Sarah stops and I collapse on the ground. I say we need to go back, see if we can help my dad!
“I’m sorry Chuck, but Gorion hired me to protect you, not him. And I’ve never even seen some of those spells he was casting before, if he couldn’t handle it I don’t think there’s much we could have done. We’ll work our way back there in the morning.” [Co-Pilot]
I didn’t sleep much. I’ve never been so scared. Or slept on the ground. I think my life has just changed a lot. And if we can’t find dad in the morning, what will Sarah do without an employer? I’m pretty sure I would just die on my own.
As the sun comes up, I hear the familiar voice of my sister coming towards us. I’d never been so happy to see the little squirt! She’d bought some gear too before coming after us. We all set out in, what Sarah said, was the direction we’d come from. It was only about 20 minutes when we came to the clearing. My father was still there, what was left of him. It looks like most of the attackers had fallen with him. But the huge man was gone. Sarah wanted to move on quickly, but we went through Gorion’s things first. As we prepared to leave I heard a growl.
“Sarah, help!” [Co-Pilot]
“I got this Chuck!” [Co-Pilot]
But she missed. Both the wolf and thankfully, me.
Then Sarah was there, and the wolf didn’t last long. [Co-Pilot]
Among Gorion’s possessions we found a note, saying what we already knew about meeting Khalid and Jaheira at the Inn. I guess that’s the plan. I have no idea what will happen then, who we’re meeting, and if Sarah will stick around after. I hope so, so far she’s the only one who knows how to survive.
Not too much later we came across a signpost pointing the way to the Inn. A traveler, an eccentric mage in bright red robes was coming the other direction and gave us a friendly greeting. Poor guy, I sort of dumped all my worries on him. But he remained friendly and assured us we were heading in the right direction.
A little later, a goblin (a xvart maybe? I don’t remember all the types) came at us waving a sword, yelling something I couldn’t understand.
Back off buddy, this won’t end well for you. [Co-Pilot]
Wuss. I warned him. [OpenArt]
We finally made it to the Friendly Arms Inn. Its an unexpected sort of place, actually an old castle with an impressive stone keep at the center that was converted to an inn a decade or so back. I’d heard of it, and its impressive looking! Its sort of a sign of hope just now. We can maybe meet some friends and find some sort of refuge?
On the steps to the entrance a man, a mage of some sort, asked my name and where I was from. I answered as I heard Sarah yell something about telling him nothing. She was right behind me on the steps and did not look amused.
The mage started casting a spell and was looking at me, ignoring Sarah. That was his last mistake.
He was not being friendly Chuck. [OpenArt]
I cannot unsee that! [OpenArt]
He was another assassin, with a notice of a bounty… for me. Sarah helped me breath again. Imoen seemed excited by the action, and was searching his packs and pockets.
We entered the Inn, I was still a little wobbly. I don’t know how Sarah recognized who we were looking for, but we were soon sharing introductions with Khalid and Jaheira.
Jaheira quickly understood Gorion had fallen and offered her condolences. “He was a great man, he will be missed by many. I am sorry for your loss”. It seemed sincere even if blunt in delivery.
But she then explained there was no plan beyond meeting with us here. She vaguely knew who Imoen was, and assessed Sarah saying “I’m glad he got you a guard, you may need it”. She said she and her husband had been heading south to the town of Nashkel. The iron mines there were having some problems, and their output was contaminated, tainted somehow. “I don’t know what Gorion intended, but perhaps we should all head south together. We can work on a known problem and maybe take you away from trouble?”
That sounded as good to me as anything was likely to. Sarah agreed this was a good idea, and gestured for me to have a seat with her.
“Chuck I am so sorry for everything you’ve lost, and how your life has been upended. I think the most important thing right now is for you to work on improving your magic and ability to defend yourself. We’ve seen that whoever is after you is extremely dangerous, improving your skills is the most obvious way to address that. I’m glad you have a few people willing to stick by you, that is so important now. But I should mention, Khalid and Jaheira may be very green themselves, their equipment is all new and not extremely high quality. If its okay with you, I’d like to stick with you. Just to add my swords to your protection for now. This is about your life, and would hate for anything bad to happen to you that I could have prevented. But your life means its also your call, if you decide I’m not needed or wanted just say the word and I’ll go.” [OpenArt]
Sarah just helped me sort through everything. I’ve noticed she has a knack for getting to the essentials. And for keeping my head attached to my body, I can’t imagine ever wanting her to leave. Did I mention she laughs at my dumb jokes?
In the morning, we will head south.
*****
And that takes us to the start of the adventure and the core of Chuck’s team.
I don’t know what level of detail I’ll present the rest of this in. I often end up writing more than I intended to, but the game is huge and I’ll likely skip many details. Feedback may determine how deep I go.
The AI art will remain a huge part of this. I have a reasonable ability to get what I want out of the Co-Pilot AI, and am learning about OpenArt. I’m even learning a little about working with them together, getting the styles to mesh some. As I said previously, I think Co-Pilot is *much* better at setting a scene and at the whole look of fantasy. Specifically its better at rendering a range of fantasy creatures, and having characters/creatures interact. But most Chuck and Sarah renders on Co-Pilot will hide their faces, because I cannot make it look like Zachary Levi and Yvonne Strahovski.
Which leads to the biggest strength of OpenArt. I’ve built “Chuck” and “Sarah” models from photos of the characters and actors. Those character renders come out *very* nicely. But OpenArt really struggles with a fantasy context. If I say “medieval inn”, it will likely still put electric lights in the scene and men in business suits sitting behind my armored warrior. This is the sort of thing Co-Pilot is *much* better at. But then OpenArt has a much better editor. Too many wolves in the scene? Edit one out. Too many fingers on a hand? Fix it. Character was supposed to shut their eyes? Edit them shut. Its quite remarkable how flexible and powerful it is, even for editing renders from Co-Pilot. Amazing stuff.
As always when I do these things, this is an abbreviated version of the post. For all the AI Art see "Chuck and Sarah" at davesgamingblog
I was a pretty big fan and still love the main characters.
It is sort of a reach. Spy-themed action is different from medieval fantasy! And several skills won’t translate well into an AD&D based system. But I can see a pretty clear path for using Chuck and Sarah. Chuck was portrayed as a brilliant computer programmer/hacker, who accidently got a top secret government computer program stuck in his head. Okay, so Chuck has a natural gift for magic and is Gorion’s Ward (with a bit of Bhaal stuck in his head!).
Sarah was his handler/protector. A very talented and dangerous government agent sent to keep him safe in his intense new world (actually, there was some expectation of manipulating him there too. But Sarah fell pretty quick and hard for Chuck, which left her with a juicy conflict of interest. I will mostly ignore that part for this tale). The show gave her some significant thief skills too. Not only do I not need her as a thief, but thief skills would undermine her value as a tank/protector. So I think with AD&D rules it will be best to build her as a pure fighter.
Both are good heroic characters. I’ll call Chuck primarily a moral hero. More than anything, he wants to do right and help people. And he makes those around him better, or want to be better through example and encouragement. He’s the sort of hero who won’t seek out trouble, but will never shy away when a need emerges.
Sarah is the action hero. She will jump in where angels fear to tread. If properly motivated. She wants to do right, but is a little burned out and cynical. At least at first. I’ve thought a few times, for a villain, picking on Sarah is the second most dangerous thing they can ever do. Because she will destroy them. Picking on Chuck is the most dangerous thing a villain can do, because then Sarah gets POed. Part of Chuck the moral hero is that he completely redeems Sarah. She eventually buys into his world view entirely, and is better for it.
Baldur’s Gate starts our heroes pretty young, so Chuck and Sarah will start the game with a little less baggage than they had on the show.
Because these characters will be a different concept from what I’ve done before, that has led me to play around with a different AI art generator. Actually, I will continue using Co-Pilot for a lot of renders, and I won’t be redoing a lot of the excellent renders I already have for NPCs.
But I switched to Meta’s OpenArt for many of the portraits and solo renders involving the two main characters. OpenArt allows for building a character model from imported photos. That means I can reproduce my Chuck and Sarah characters to look *a lot* like the characters/actors from the show. And consistently. Readers surely noticed during my lengthy “Psyche and Diomedes” playthrough there was a lot of “flex” for the characters. I could describe them in basic detail, but the AI did what it would do. And no character is completely consistent in their look, because to the AI each render is an independent event. That may or may not repeat some details from a previous render.
As awesome as OpenArt sounds so far, I’ll follow up by saying I don’t like the fantasy look of OpenArt like I did Co-Pilot. It is sharp, detailed and clean. So much so it often looks unreal, like plastic. Especially on fantastical things. So its not ideal for how I see fantasy.
I may get better with it. I sure have with Co-Pilot. But at this point, I will simply prefer Co-Pilot for certain things. Don’t be surprised if you see a lot more solo renders in this playthrough though, those are amazing on OpenArt.
*****
Chuck has grown up in the great library of Candlekeep. He was raised by the mage and sage Gorion. From a young age Chuck discovered he had a gift, a passion, a natural understanding for all things magical. Gorion has always been immensely proud of “his boy”, growing up to be a chip off the old block!
Chuck learned to understand the ways of magic from a very young age. [Co-Pilot]
Yet Chuck has always known he was adopted. Apart from being told Gorion knew his mom long ago, Chuck knows nothing about his actual parents. That hasn’t been a huge thing to him. He’s well loved by his adopted father, and he has plenty of friends around Candlekeep. Especially Imoen, the only other child in Candlekeep for most of Chuck’s life. She was raised by Winthrop the innkeeper and is maybe a year younger than Chuck. Gorion goes back and forth if he thinks its great Chuck has a friend, and worrying that Imoen is a bit of a troublemaker. She’s not really bad, but she does love to prank the Monks who run the great library!
Chuck is a “good kid” in every sense. Maybe Gorion should just be happy Imoen has such a good friend?
Chuck and Imoen have grown up together, and always been as close as siblings. [Co-Pilot]
As Chuck as grown out of his teens he’s grown more serious about the study of magic. This has meant Arcane studies of the sort many travelers come to Candlekeep for, but also learning about the “Mistress of Magic”. The Goddess Mystra is the keeper of all things arcane, and this intersect of arcane and divine sorts of magic is particularly intriguing to young Chuck.
Learning has taken nearly all of Chuck’s time these last couple years. To the point it worries Gorion a little. Maybe it was a mistake to raise a child in such an isolated sort of place? Apart from that imp Imoen he’s hardly had any friends his own age, and has never shown much interest in girls. He is interested in talking with the various mages constantly coming and going, but he’s awkward with them too.
Now a concerning development. These last few days, strange men have been asking about Chuck. Gorion went to the chief of the Watchers yesterday to inquire about hiring extra protection for his son. A new sergeant had just reported for duty this morning, and she isn’t on the schedule yet. So Gorion hired Sarah to help keep an eye on Chuck.
By the next day, Gorion was even more worried. He’d heard from several friends about visitors asking about Chuck. This could not be good. It was time to relocate himself and his son. He sent a messenger to friends in the area to meet up with himself and Chuck. He told Chuck to get whatever supplies he might need, they were leaving Candlekeep that afternoon. And he told Sarah to introduce herself to Chuck and to stick very close.
Chuck
As above, Chuck has a remarkable mind for magic. He’s enjoyed his life at Candlekeep, with Gorion and a few close friends he has always felt loved and content. Imoen has long been his best friend, more like a sister really. As Chuck has gotten older and pursued his passion for magic he’s dragged Imoen along in some ways. She’s always been more of a prankster than Chuck, but she’s plenty smart and has actually learned some about magic just by following along with Chuck. But she really has always been a kid sister to him, and Chuck knows this because his heart skipped a beat and his jaw dropped to the ground when the new Watcher Sergeant, Sarah, introduced herself to him this morning.
This is also how Chuck knows his father is very worried about a number of strangers who’ve been visiting Candlekeep. First he was told to get some gear together for a long term trip away from the library. Then later this morning when he met Sarah, she informed him she’d been hired by Gorion to stick close and keep an eye on him.
Chuck chatted briefly with Imoen too, about not knowing what was up or when he’d be home. He got a look from his sister that suggested she would be right there with him. Sarah noticed too, she questioned how well Chuck knew this Imoen (!). He tried to explain what she was to him, Sarah seemed skeptical, like the idea didn’t quite register.
[OpenArt]
This will be Chuck’s portrait in the game for all of the Baldur’s Gate saga. [OpenArt]
Chuck is Neutral-Good Human male. 1st Level Mage/1st Level Cleric of Mystra
15/10/12/18/15/18
Sarah
Sarah has grown up around the Sword Coast area. She never knew her mom, and her dad was a bit of a scoundrel. She was often left with family, that she never quite believed was family (especially the Halfling couple). Dad would always come back for her after a few weeks and they’d head off on a new adventure. Finally, when she was not quite 17, a sympathetic guard woman in Waterdeep informed Sarah that her dad was in custody and wouldn’t be back for a while. Briefly at a loss on what to do, the guard suggested Sarah could get a job with the Guard. Sarah was big and fit, probably no one would question her age. So that’s what Sarah did, and she proved to be good at it. Over the next five years she took several guard positions around the Sword Coast. Most recently working as a guard in Beregost she was promoted to Sergeant for her overall competence and reliability. That was when she saw a flier looking for Guard Sergeants, Watchers, at Candlekeep. For quite a bit more money than she was making now. That seemed to good to pass up. Sarah had spent her life bouncing from place to place, so relocating again hardly bothered her.
[OpenArt]
Sarah has got along well with people wherever she wound up. But mostly in a professional sort of way. She’d been feeling a bit of an ache for something more permanent, but decided this was abnormal, unfamiliar territory. So she took the new job and moved on once again.
Sarah was just being welcomed by the Watcher Commander as a new Sergeant when an older man, a mage apparently, came by looking to hire some extra security for a few days. He had some concerns about visitors to Candlekeep, especially that they’d been asking about his son. This mage, Gorion, was well known to the commander who immediately offered since Sarah wasn’t on the schedule yet she was available for such work. Wow, bonus! Private contract while working for the Watch was a good way to up the salary.
Sarah met with the local mage Gorion who was looking to hire extra security for his son Chuck. [OpenArt]
Candlekeep seems to be a secure place. And its well known for being safe and stable. But its also an important destination for all sorts of research. Really, its all about the Great Library. Bookish types by the cartload.
When Gorion pointed out his son to her, Sarah almost laughed out loud. He was a stereotype of a bookish researcher. Awkward, but seemingly good natured.
The next day, Gorion informed her they would be traveling away from the Keep. He would appreciate the extra sword at least until they met up with friends at the nearby Friendly Arm Inn. In the meantime, he wanted her to introduce herself to Chuck and not let him out of her sight until they left.
The introduction went well! Chuck was still awkward and bookish. But he was also sweet and funny. This would not be a bad job for a couple days. She was just sorry at the end of it there would be no more Chuck at Candlekeep.
Chuck made one last run around home to gather some supplies. Sarah helped him with a list, as a mage he wouldn’t wear armor. But they got him some weapons he knew how to use, and a traveling spell book. Sarah was impressed at how all the locals knew Chuck, and how eagerly willing he was to help them all with minor chores. There was an assassination attempt when Chuck was looking for an older lady’s missing book. The assassin was comically inept, but obviously this showed Gorion’s fears were well founded. Next Sarah met Imoen, apparently a long-time friend of Chuck’s. Sarah bristled a little at noticing the younger girl was cute. And was not pleased with the suggestion that passed, that Imoen would follow along with this coming trip. She asked Chuck how well he knew this girl, and Chuck replied she was a little sister to him. Okay, she wouldn’t push it, if Chuck was okay that Imoen would likely follow along Sarah would accept this.
This will be Sarah’s portrait in the game for all of the Baldur’s Gate saga. [OpenArt]
Sarah is a Neutral-Good Human Female. 3rd Level Fighter
17/19/17/13/14/17
*****
A few changes to this build from my last run. I’ve added the “convenient NPCs” mod that let’s me decide which of the new EE NPCs will even be present in game, and if they’ll initiate contact or wait to be talked to. For the record I only left Neera and Rasaad in, both set to passive mode.
The biggest thing is adding SCS. That’s best known for adding difficulty in the form of better AI for most opponents. But it also includes a number of other adjustments, I have it replacing both “IWDification” and “Level 1 NPCs”. I currently have the improved AI at a low setting. In the past I’ve not liked such difficulty enhancers much, they often seem too meta and immersion breaking to me. But I know SCS is much improved over some earlier difficulty/tactical type mods, so I’ll give it a try.
To BG2 I’ve added “Wings”, which mostly adds story and minor quest to Aerie (expect this to be more important next time I follow her romance story). I also added Lava’s mod “Bloodied Strings of Barovia”. A quest mod involving the Ravenloft setting.
From CDTweaks, I’ve disabled the BG2 romances. Since Chuck is the lead character and Sarah is his gal, I wanted to able to (maybe) use Jaheira and Aerie without being rude to them to disable the romances!
Building characters from a TV show, especially such a different genre, involves choices. Chuck’s skills were mostly about his smarts, so its obvious his mental scores will be high. Intelligence more obviously than wisdom! He was occasionally shown as rash and foolish, usually in the context of wanting to help and trust someone. We can maybe chalk much of that up to inexperience? Certainly as the show went he became “professionally” wiser. So maxing out his Intelligence was an easy choice. I chose to also give him a high Wisdom on the grounds he had a strong sense of morals and justice. Not to mention, its more advantageous for a cleric!
His physical scores are mostly average. He’s actually a big guy (and the actor has since become quite buff, but he was still sort of wiry in 2007) and shows no significant physical strength until late in the show.
Chuck is often awkward, so I considered a more average Charisma for him. But the thing is, he always wins people over somehow. Even hardened spies seem to end up liking him. So endearingly awkward, to a high degree seems fitting.
I did consider making him a straight mage. But I just ran one of those. Then I considered a straight Cleric of Mystra. That’s *almost* a mage/cleric all on its own. But it would be lacking at the higher levels. So a multi it is! Of course that will leave him slower advancing, but with a huge variety of magic available to him. Somehow that seems right.
I think he could only be Neutral-Good, strong sense of righteousness and a balance between needs of the many/needs of the one sort of thing.
Sarah also required a little thought. Score wise she would be above average in everything. She is shown as strong (for her size), and able to take a hit. And almost supernaturally quick and agile. Intelligence and Wisdom are merely above average.
As mentioned above, she was often shown with thief skills. But she was Chuck’s protector first and foremost. And deadly warrior is her most defining trait. Since adding thief would reduce her hit points, I thought it more important to maximize her tankiness. So a single class fighter seems appropriate.
Her charisma is plainly high, in spite of the character being a bit of a loner. She gets along very well with anyone she intends to. Not quite as maxed out as Chuck is, there often is a bit of aloofness to her. But charming in most meaningful senses.
Her alignment is harder to peg. She cares about right and wrong, very much so. But (especially early on) she can be cowed with “legitimate orders”. Of course in this situation, the source of those “legitimate orders” will disappear in the opening act. So we’ll have her (mostly) happily follow Chuck’s lead on such things. Their areas of conflict will have largely to do with keeping Chuck safe vs taking action; and Chuck’s willingness to trust almost anyone. Most of those conflicts will diminish in time as they become a good functioning team, and Sarah will be happy to take on a more gentle and loving sort of world view.
Update 1
Bonus! First update comes with the introduction. There will be more comments at the end.
*****
Chuck
I am really nervous to be leaving Candlekeep for the first time in my life! Father is worried about something, Sarah said it has to do with those thugs that tried to kill me. I haven’t had much time to think about that, she killed both men so fast I wasn’t even sure what was happening. But then I saw they had knives. This was two different times! Why are thugs trying to hurt me? They paid with their lives.
Sarah helped me buy a war hammer, a medium sized shield, and a sling with some bullets. These are all the weapons I’ve been trained to use. But I was never a great student of these things, weapons make me a little nervous. And Sarah makes me a little nervous, she wears armor and carries two swords. And she has shown she knows how to use them. I guess its good if dad hired a guard, that he hired a good one.
Soon, Sarah and I head back to the library and meet with father. He affirms we’re all ready, and that’s it. We head out on the road for the Friendly Arm Inn. I’ve never been there, but I know its about a day’s hike from Candlekeep. Almost all of our visitors stay there both coming and going. We are meeting a couple friends of his there, Khalid and Jaheira. I’ve not heard those names before.
A few hours out, just at dusk, a terrifying giant of a man in plate armor appears to block our path, with a couple ogres and a couple of men in armor. He calls my father by name, and demands he hand *me* over to him! Sarah grabs my arm and pulls me behind her. My dad yells to Sarah to get me away from here, and I hear him start casting a spell. As Sarah pushes me into the woods I’m aware several spells are being cast, there’s flame, and a few voices I don’t recognize shout in pain.
We run through the woods… for hours? I don’t know, its a while before Sarah stops and I collapse on the ground. I say we need to go back, see if we can help my dad!
“I’m sorry Chuck, but Gorion hired me to protect you, not him. And I’ve never even seen some of those spells he was casting before, if he couldn’t handle it I don’t think there’s much we could have done. We’ll work our way back there in the morning.” [Co-Pilot]
I didn’t sleep much. I’ve never been so scared. Or slept on the ground. I think my life has just changed a lot. And if we can’t find dad in the morning, what will Sarah do without an employer? I’m pretty sure I would just die on my own.
As the sun comes up, I hear the familiar voice of my sister coming towards us. I’d never been so happy to see the little squirt! She’d bought some gear too before coming after us. We all set out in, what Sarah said, was the direction we’d come from. It was only about 20 minutes when we came to the clearing. My father was still there, what was left of him. It looks like most of the attackers had fallen with him. But the huge man was gone. Sarah wanted to move on quickly, but we went through Gorion’s things first. As we prepared to leave I heard a growl.
“Sarah, help!” [Co-Pilot]
“I got this Chuck!” [Co-Pilot]
But she missed. Both the wolf and thankfully, me.
Then Sarah was there, and the wolf didn’t last long. [Co-Pilot]
Among Gorion’s possessions we found a note, saying what we already knew about meeting Khalid and Jaheira at the Inn. I guess that’s the plan. I have no idea what will happen then, who we’re meeting, and if Sarah will stick around after. I hope so, so far she’s the only one who knows how to survive.
Not too much later we came across a signpost pointing the way to the Inn. A traveler, an eccentric mage in bright red robes was coming the other direction and gave us a friendly greeting. Poor guy, I sort of dumped all my worries on him. But he remained friendly and assured us we were heading in the right direction.
A little later, a goblin (a xvart maybe? I don’t remember all the types) came at us waving a sword, yelling something I couldn’t understand.
Back off buddy, this won’t end well for you. [Co-Pilot]
Wuss. I warned him. [OpenArt]
We finally made it to the Friendly Arms Inn. Its an unexpected sort of place, actually an old castle with an impressive stone keep at the center that was converted to an inn a decade or so back. I’d heard of it, and its impressive looking! Its sort of a sign of hope just now. We can maybe meet some friends and find some sort of refuge?
On the steps to the entrance a man, a mage of some sort, asked my name and where I was from. I answered as I heard Sarah yell something about telling him nothing. She was right behind me on the steps and did not look amused.
The mage started casting a spell and was looking at me, ignoring Sarah. That was his last mistake.
He was not being friendly Chuck. [OpenArt]
I cannot unsee that! [OpenArt]
He was another assassin, with a notice of a bounty… for me. Sarah helped me breath again. Imoen seemed excited by the action, and was searching his packs and pockets.
We entered the Inn, I was still a little wobbly. I don’t know how Sarah recognized who we were looking for, but we were soon sharing introductions with Khalid and Jaheira.
Jaheira quickly understood Gorion had fallen and offered her condolences. “He was a great man, he will be missed by many. I am sorry for your loss”. It seemed sincere even if blunt in delivery.
But she then explained there was no plan beyond meeting with us here. She vaguely knew who Imoen was, and assessed Sarah saying “I’m glad he got you a guard, you may need it”. She said she and her husband had been heading south to the town of Nashkel. The iron mines there were having some problems, and their output was contaminated, tainted somehow. “I don’t know what Gorion intended, but perhaps we should all head south together. We can work on a known problem and maybe take you away from trouble?”
That sounded as good to me as anything was likely to. Sarah agreed this was a good idea, and gestured for me to have a seat with her.
“Chuck I am so sorry for everything you’ve lost, and how your life has been upended. I think the most important thing right now is for you to work on improving your magic and ability to defend yourself. We’ve seen that whoever is after you is extremely dangerous, improving your skills is the most obvious way to address that. I’m glad you have a few people willing to stick by you, that is so important now. But I should mention, Khalid and Jaheira may be very green themselves, their equipment is all new and not extremely high quality. If its okay with you, I’d like to stick with you. Just to add my swords to your protection for now. This is about your life, and would hate for anything bad to happen to you that I could have prevented. But your life means its also your call, if you decide I’m not needed or wanted just say the word and I’ll go.” [OpenArt]
Sarah just helped me sort through everything. I’ve noticed she has a knack for getting to the essentials. And for keeping my head attached to my body, I can’t imagine ever wanting her to leave. Did I mention she laughs at my dumb jokes?
In the morning, we will head south.
*****
And that takes us to the start of the adventure and the core of Chuck’s team.
I don’t know what level of detail I’ll present the rest of this in. I often end up writing more than I intended to, but the game is huge and I’ll likely skip many details. Feedback may determine how deep I go.
The AI art will remain a huge part of this. I have a reasonable ability to get what I want out of the Co-Pilot AI, and am learning about OpenArt. I’m even learning a little about working with them together, getting the styles to mesh some. As I said previously, I think Co-Pilot is *much* better at setting a scene and at the whole look of fantasy. Specifically its better at rendering a range of fantasy creatures, and having characters/creatures interact. But most Chuck and Sarah renders on Co-Pilot will hide their faces, because I cannot make it look like Zachary Levi and Yvonne Strahovski.
Which leads to the biggest strength of OpenArt. I’ve built “Chuck” and “Sarah” models from photos of the characters and actors. Those character renders come out *very* nicely. But OpenArt really struggles with a fantasy context. If I say “medieval inn”, it will likely still put electric lights in the scene and men in business suits sitting behind my armored warrior. This is the sort of thing Co-Pilot is *much* better at. But then OpenArt has a much better editor. Too many wolves in the scene? Edit one out. Too many fingers on a hand? Fix it. Character was supposed to shut their eyes? Edit them shut. Its quite remarkable how flexible and powerful it is, even for editing renders from Co-Pilot. Amazing stuff.
As always when I do these things, this is an abbreviated version of the post. For all the AI Art see "Chuck and Sarah" at davesgamingblog
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Sarah
We set out from the Friendly Arm Inn the next morning.
With the Addition of Jaheira and Khalid I’m feeling much better about our ability to survive, in particular to keep Chuck alive, for a while.
Our newest team-mates bring us a mission of investigating a problem with the iron mines south in Nashkell. This is useful, although I admit my real goal is in seeing Chuck (and Imoen) improve their ability to fight and survive. We’d been warned an ogre was prowling the area south of the Inn.
When we did encounter the ogre, I immediately got in close so he wouldn’t notice the rest of the team.
This worked as desired, Imoen put a couple arrows in him! Chuck hit with a sling bullet. And Khalid and Jaheira were right there helping out. This felt like an important battle for us. No one panicked, and we worked well together.
We got into Beregost, my home until just a few days ago. Here we met a young mage who was running from some sort of hit team.
Neera seems to be on the run from the Red Wizards. This automatically makes her a friend in my book.
It seems to have something to do with her being a “Wild Mage”. I’m not up on all the nuance of that, but I know its different from how Chuck is learning magic. I gather it has more to do with emotion and intuition, less rigorous study. That could potentially make it dangerous to be her friend. I don’t really mean the Red Wizard part either, we dealt with a team that was hot on her heals. Its more that her magic can malfunction in very unexpected ways. Chuck insisted we would protect her. So be it.
Imoen and Neera.
The area just south of Beregost gets a little wild if you get off the trail. I led us cross coutry, I’m not sure if Jaheira realizes I’m trying to get us more combat experience or not. But she gave me quite a look over that choice.
There is a swampy area around an old house there, that is often haunted by undead. We ran into a pair of ghouls.
Chuck cast Magic Missile again. I’m glad to see him confident in his casting. His anxieties concern me a little. He’s too nice and too smart to be brought down by such silliness. But he does act when the situation demands it.
As we set camp that night he seemed thoughtful about how his life has changed and what he’s lost.
I hope he knows I’ve got him covered.
Chuck
The next morning we set off to finish our Journey to Nashkel. Sarah and Jaheira both seem so proficient at this process, getting a little meal, breaking camp, heading out. I suppose its a skill I will learn.
Just as we were getting on the road I saw about the most beautiful sight I’d ever seen.
Sarah and Imoen sharing a huge laugh over some private joke. Both women just seemed so happy for a moment, I’m so glad to see them getting along well.
For some reason when the trail curved to our left ahead, Sarah took us around a bluff into the woods at right. After walking some distance we saw and smelled a camp ahead. Before I even realized what was happening Sarah and Jaheira were giving directions for an attack.
One of the things I need to learn is how they identified and assessed the threat so quickly. It wasn’t some group of travelers or woodsmen, but goblins preying on travelers.
And how do we know how capable these different sorts are? There were six of us, three warriors. And yet Sarah knew in an instant we could easily handle eight hobgoblins. What’s the math on that?
I’m trying to pay attention and learn. We also battled a group of four human bandits and defeated them easily. I asked Sarah, she said man for man the hobgoblins and bandits were about equal. Obviously the Hobgoblins had more troops, but fewer bows. She said you can usually approximate threat level by equipment quality. Interesting.
We finally made it to Nashkel and talked with the mayor. He reports two issues, first the mines are over-run with some sort of beasties that are killing miners. And the ore itself is of poor quality. It didn’t use to be. Sarah thought the important thing was to recon the area first, then head into the mine. For now, our healers (that’s me and Jaheira!) are worn out so we call it a day.
Another Assassin attacked when we entered the Inn. We all killed the woman, she was some sort of spellcaster. Presumably a cleric since she wore armor. I explained to Imoen I’d now faced six such attempts starting back at Candlekeep. She was shocked, didn’t realize it had happened there.
In keeping with the theme of the day… learning, I spent some more time with my books tonight. I was so tired! I would have never heard the end of it if anyone knew I fell asleep right in the common room of the inn! I woke up in the wee hours and slipped up to my room.
*Sigh*
The next morning, we were preparing to leave town when we came across a Ranger. He seemed desperate, and a little confused. But he said his “witch” had been abducted by Gnolls and taken somewhere west of here. He was a foreigner, a Rashami. I’m not sure I understood the importance of what he was saying? And he seemed to be talking to a hamster.
But clearly I thought, this should take precedence over some problem with a mine! Oof. This triggered quite a debate. We all finally agreed that Jaheira and her husband would stay here and start investigations, while the rest of us went off to rescue a woman from those carnivores.
No doubt, Minsc was determined to rescue his witch! I’m not sure what the significance of the hamster was.
We spent most of the day traveling west, almost to the coast where we came across a rather decrepit suspension bridge.
Just across the bridge we found the Gnoll stronghold.
Sarah talked about going in quiet, trying to keep our small team from being overwhelmed by their numbers. So that’s what we did.
Imoen seems to be a pretty good archer!
We’d killed over 20 Gnolls when we found Minsc’s witch.
Dynaheir was pretty beat up when we found her.
She also had no gear, no weapons and no spell book. But we got her! Minsc was very happy. We secured the area, Sarah explained this was about eliminating or reducing any pursuit. When we left, we didn’t have to run.
We had to stop and set camp a little ways out, we’d never make it back to Nashkel in the dark.
We set watches during the night. Neera and I had so much fun when it was our turn. We laughed and had fun for hours. She’s kind of cute too!
In the morning Sarah complained we were too loud. It defeats the purpose of watch, she said, if the others can’t sleep. Wow is she grumpy today!
We got back to Nashkel and talked about what was next. Jaheira reported they fought Kobolds and some wolves yesterday. We had rescued Dynaheir but she was in really rough shape, so we drew lots and it was Khalid who would stay with her while the rest of us went to finish exploring the area and then get into the mines.
Sarah
Today we are planning on doing a quick sweep around the area before we plunge into the iron mines south of town. I’ve been thinking hard about this team, and getting everyone ready for the possibility of some tough action in a confined space.
Alright everyone, let’s go. Daylights wasting. [OpenArt]
We set out to the east, there was a local carnival in progress. It was not busy but a number of businesses and entertainers were getting ready for the day. Chuck thought we should ask around to see if anyone had spotted trouble in the area. Several reported an unusual number of Kobolds. I suggested a sweep of the area, this could be bad if visitors, families and children were traveling from town out this way.
Chuck was the first to see one small group of Kobolds to the side and he reacted quickly with a Sleep spell.
I told Chuck “Good job!” Its great to see him taking initiative. [OpenArt]
By noon we were all satisfied we’d scoured the area. Since we were still so close to the carnival it seemed like it would be fun to get lunch from venders there.
I had a really good time sitting with Imoen, Minsc and Jaheira. This is shaping up to be a great team! [Co-Pilot]
Then we headed south towards the mine, and did another area search.
In one place we ran into a couple of Ghouls. [Co-Pilot]
There were more Kobolds, and a strange moment with sculptor and a hostile bounty hunter. Small stuff. It was time to head into the mine. We talked to some miners who had a variety of interesting ideas about the source of their trouble! We didn’t get too far in when we encountered a group Kobolds.
A couple of the little buggers came up behind us, gave Neera a good scare. But I think our rear is pretty secure with Imoen back there. [Co-Pilot]
Sorry guys, but there will be blood… [Co-Pilot]
We faced a couple larger groups of Kobolds too.
As we continued deeper we started seeing more natural caves, the mine had been dug into a pre-existing formation. This could be a source of trouble.
A couple of Giant Spiders were dispatched. [Co-Pilot]
And we finally came to a cave that was fully decked out as an office and bed chamber. A half-orc in this cave suggested we were checking up on him. Interesting, there’s obviously another layer to this.
I informed him we were shutting him down. [OpenArt]
He called for help and a large number of Kobolds and skeletons responded. I charged the bossman while Chuck, Neera and Imoen all backed me up. Minsc and Jaheira protected the rear. We brought him (we later learned he was called Mullahey) down fairly quickly, then we all turned to clean out his small army.
Going through his papers revealed he had a mage, a contact back in Beregost. We hustled back to Nashkel for the night. We checked in with the mayor and showed all of our findings. Among them was a sample of the contaminant that was being used on the iron ore. He suggested the smith in Beregost might be able to counter its effects if we took the sample to him. We now had two reasons to head to Beregost in the morning, and decided that was what we’d do in the morning.
Then we were attacked by another assassin on our way to the inn. Right on the main street. Nervy and stupid. Especially since his bounty is for Chuck and he chose to face all six of us.
Nimbul was a spellcaster and a warrior. But he was not capable enough to go against six. [Co-Pilot]
All I can figure is he didn’t expect us all to stick together?
The next day, in Beregost, we talked with the blacksmith Taerom and gave him the contaminant samples. He was sure he could counter it. Then we went over the Feldpost’s Inn where Mulahey’s contact was staying. He was a mage named Tranzig, apparently just an intermediary. He didn’t seem to know much and quickly started trouble. Afterwards, we searched him and found a map indicating a bandit camp well north of here was where he’d been getting his orders.
As Always, the full version of this is available as "Chuck and Sarah" at davesgaming.blog
Chuck
We’re in Beregost again. I like this town, its about the same size as Candlekeep, where I grew up. But its much livelier, busier. I guess that’s no surprise, its not a library run by monks.
Its a vibrant small city with all sorts of trade, entertainment, and I imagine a source of security to those living all around [OpenArt]
I called a meeting this morning so we could talk about our plans. We were still in Feldpost’s Inn, definitely a comfortable place to spend the night!
Jaheira seemed ready to move, wherever it was. I don’t think she likes being in town much. [Co-Pilot]
Sarah is usually kind of quiet. She’s still a little down or grumpy about something? but she’s a strong presence, and the sort of person that everyone looks to, to settle every issue. [OpenArt]
But for now I seemed to have the floor. I mentioned we knew our on-going quest would seem to lead us towards a bandit camp a ways to the north. But for reasons Sarah had previously mentioned, I was uneasy about heading that way. [OpenArt]
Sarah affirmed that was a risky course. She was pleased with how we were all coming together as a team. But we still needed work. She was comfortable fighting along side Jaheira, but there was still room to improve that. And Minsc sure could hit hard, but he needed to trust the two women to block for him. “Minsc, think of us as your shield, don’t expose yourself. Strike hard as the opportunity presents. Imoen is becoming a very good archer, but keep working on hitting moving targets. Chuck and Neera have shown themselves to be brave and steady, but both have a ways to go to really maximize their magic.”
I’m pretty sure she was trying to encourage us with the “brave” part. This whole business still terrifies me.
Imoen can be such a goofball. But she’s good at this! And is paying attention to our planning. I think Neera was twiddling her thumbs and accidently started a fire again. [Co-Pilot, edited in OpenArt]
Minsc says Boo helps him understand. [Co-Pilot]
Sarah suggested the bandit problem did not seem serious as yet. And we should head south and explore the area along the border with Amn. We could still do some good work of a law and order sort, but being so close to a major kingdom the major threats should be less. A good place to develop our skills.
This sounds like a good plan to me. I wish I knew how to get Sarah’s spirits up, she’s scary enough when she’s happy. She gave me an encouraging pat on the shoulder as we were heading out. Strange.
I chatted with Neera about that random fire-starting thing. Wild magic is odd, I don’t understand how you can wield arcane magic and not quite know what you’re doing. But from her, its all amusing.
We passed through Nashkel again and started exploring west from the mine, planning on going as far as the Gnoll Fortress, on the coast, then heading back.
We were in a small stand of trees when we encountered a distraught Dryad. She was weeping, and begged us, a couple of big men were about to take axes to her tree, please stop them! [Co-Pilot]
Of course! We headed towards a large pine, that two rugged looking types were preparing to fell. I struck up conversation with them, but when I suggested they not do that they attacked us!
It wasn’t much of a fight.
Jaheira explained that the Dryad would die if her tree was killed. So I suppose we truly had no choice in the matter.
Continuing on we came across a small Xvart village. Their guards immediately attacked us! There were a lot of them! Xvarts aren’t tough, but I was intimidated by the numbers. But Sarah wasn’t. She, Jaheira and Minsc formed a solid wall that no Xvart was going to get by. I feared we’d kill the whole village, when the strangest thing happened. One, seemed to be a village elder, shouted out a prayer in the common tongue that the great bear would protect them!
We heard a fearsome roar and a great bear walked into the village! And it started attacking the Xvarts! [Co-Pilot]
We just backed away as the xvarts were occupied. We did kill a few more that came our way, but most of the trouble was over. They may need to rethink their religion…
We continued on the the coast, and set camp just north of the Gnoll Fortress. During the night, there was a terrible roar on Sarah and Imoen’s watch. I awoke to see a pretty stunning sight.
Sarah, almost single handedly took down two angry ogres that were entering our camp. Point taken, do not mess with that lady. [OpenArt]
We then worked our way back to Neshkel to enjoy a night in an Inn. Tomorrow we’ll strike out to the East.
Chuck
We left Nashkel this morning and set out for the areas east of town along the border with Amn.
As we were preparing to go, Neera mentioned she was hoping to track down an older Wild Mage she’d heard of. Adoy was an uncommon thing as a veteran Wild Mage. [OpenArt]
Neera wondered what advice and insight such a man could offer. Especially if anything could be done to lessen some of the more dire malfunctions. She’d showed me where she thought he might be on our map and I mentioned to everyone that this looked like something we could do.
Early in the afternoon we were attacked by a small group of “ogrillons”. They’re ogres mixed with something?! Smaller than most full blood ogres. Somehow, while the fighting was happening at our front one came around from behind.
I’ve not had to melee much! So I heroically called for help and braced to fight. With the ogrillon’s first swing I parried with my hammer, and the head and shaft separated. [OpenArt]
I thought I was dead. The Ogrillon swung at me a few times and I blocked with my shield, but I felt some of those hits rattle my bones.
But in an instant Sarah was running by me and crashed right into the big guy. She was attacking him furiously and and he was looking a little worried. [OpenArt]
[Co-Pilot render, description enhanced by OpenArt]
But I had been struck pretty hard, and in a moment things kind of went all fuzzy.
I don’t know what happened for a bit, but soon Sarah was helping me to my feet. She softly said “Be careful Chuck”, Jaheira cast a Cure Light Wounds on me and we were back off. [Co-Pilot]
We traveled up towards where Neera expected we’d find Adoy. We saw a barricade manned by some Goblins. To our surprise, they were friendly. A spokesman said they were guarding their chief and their god. That is, Bargrivyek, the Goblin God of Cooperation. I’ve read a lot about the deities of Faerun, but that was a new one to me! Nothing about Goblins usually has to do with “Cooperation”. I said I’d like to meet this god! The spokesmen seemed pleased, and offered to take us to him. He was a talkative guide!
A crude wooden bridge crossed a fast moving stream. The Goblins were particularly proud that they’d built it with Bargrivyek’s guidance. Jaheira was amused with this whole encounter . [Co-Pilot]
We were led to a cave and told the chief and the god were inside. Well, first thing, the cave was more what you’d expect. We were attacked by a dozen or so Goblins led by a big Hobgoblin.
We entered a small chamber to the rear of the cave and met Bargrivyek, AKA Adoy. He claimed it was all an innocent misunderstanding that led to him becoming a Goblin deity. We introduced Neera. She was soon disappointed with his pronouncement there was no such thing as controlling wild magic. I’ve read enough about such things to know that isn’t strictly true. But if the point was that there were no easy answers, I’d buy that.
Regardless, Neera was not pleased. Even more so when a couple of Red Mages and a three flunkies teleported into our midst. Adoy disappeared and we defeated the Reds. Adoy returned when it was all clear. He was all apologies, and offered Neera a Belt that could provide some nominal protection against certain common spell misfires.
Neera was not in a gracious mood! It was sort of funny as she ranted about how she’d saved his life and all she got was a belt. [Co-Pilot]
With not much to show for the detour we resumed our exploring.
“Chuck, I love you like a brother. But you’re an idiot.” [Co-Pilot]
I don’t know what that was about? Imoen’s been spending time with Sarah, maybe she would know?
The next morning, as we were breaking camp, Neera announced it was too dangerous for her to continue with me around and she would set off on her own. [OpenArt]
And, I don’t know what that was about either? I thought we were making a good team? I’m very confused by the women on this team. Maybe I need to spend more time with Minsc?
As we set off, Imoen said something I definitely DID understand. She’d been studying a spellbook we recovered a few weeks back, and it affirmed something she’d been considering for years. Back to being a study partner for me as I was learning magic. But she decided she was going to become a mage herself. This is awesome!
Sarah chimed in that we’d need a new scout, at least temporarily while Imoen was learning.
Jaheira mentioned there was a Halfling village not too far north of here. That would probably be a good place to find a decent “scout”.
“If we’re looking for scouts in a Halfling village, just be sure to keep the purse strings secure!” [OpenArt]
Late in the day we got to Gullykin, the small Halfling village. We didn’t have to ask much before we met Alora. She is from the City of Baldur’s Gate and is here visiting family. She was cagey about it, but she does have the skills we need. And she’s an archer, bonus!
Alora [Co-Pilot]
From here we were almost back to Beregost. Sarah suggested we head back there for the night, then we’ll resume exploring the area west to the coast, south of Candlekeep.
Sounds like a plan!
I helped Imoen study for a while. But I’m exhausted from our travels and wasn’t much help. [Co-Pilot]
*****
Finally, about a month into the adventure, the team is set for the rest of “Baldur’s Gate 1”. Imoen just dualled to mage so she will be less useful for a while. Alora is a good replacement for her as a thief. Chuck is very slow advancing as a multi-class, but he can cast a broad range of spells! I suppose I’d say balance-wise, this is a very conventional party.
Sarah is the dominant damage dealer (and tank) with around 40% of party kills. Next would be Minsc at around 30%. Sarah should remain dominant, at least through the first game. As a single class fighter she has some advantages in pure combat. As we get into the second game effectiveness is harder to rate.
Sarah
We spent another night together relaxing in Feldpost’s Inn before heading out the next morning. Chuck insisted we needed time getting to know our newest team member. But I think more than that, he couldn’t bear to separate Khalid and Jaheira again. they hadn’t complained! But they sure were happy to have the time together.
Everyone was in good spirits.
I think we need to head out soon. Alora and Imoen have already taken to pranking each other, and its only a matter of time until someone gets really annoyed. Or worse, they start pranking the rest of us. [Co-Pilot]
Soon enough we were exploring again.
We met a madman who had decided the skeletons and zombies around him were his family. Maybe they were? We’d seen that he was wanted back in Beregost, when informed of this violence ensued. [Co-Pilot]
Another hot and dusty day [OpenArt]
Minsc was shocked to encounter a talking Chicken. I would have expected him to have the least problem with this. I mean, uh, he’s a ranger right? [Co-Pilot]
At the small Keep of High Hedge we met the mage Thalantyr. The chicken, Melicamp, was an apprentice of his whom we returned home. Thalantyr was not extremely friendly at first. But soon Chuck had him laughing and then we were trading spells and magic items. He has an amazing gift! [OpenArt]
We traveled on towards the coast. Jaheira and Minsc both were of the opinion there were Sirens in the area. They are a sort of water spirit that can bewitch, charm people with the sound of their voice. I’d heard Men were most susceptible to them, but Jaheira didn’t think that was true.
We came across an abandoned lighthouse right on the coast. A villager from nearby asked for our help, her son was cornered by some wolves at the lighthouse.
Alora has proven to be a very good archer. [Co-Pilot]
After taking out the dogs, well we didn’t see a little boy! We went back to mother, and she was pretty sure she knew right where he was hiding and our deed was done.
A little further down the coast we encountered the Sirens! Jaheira didn’t hesitate and rushed right in. [Co-Pilot]
There was also a cave, maybe a smuggler or pirate’s hideout?
There were a number Flesh Golems guarding the site! These are fairly dangerous to deal with, and only magic can harm them. Fortunately we are all well equipped for this now. [Co-Pilot]
The cave also had several traps, so Alora earned her keep again. This was all protecting a nice little stash of loot. We couldn’t tell how long this had been here, but we made out pretty well.
Working our way north we were attacked by a number of ogres.
Jaheira is an excellent partner in any kind of melee. She is skilled and a team player. Which makes me laugh a little, she plays the curmudgeon quite well! [Co-Pilot]
This was an interesting fight, the largest number of ogres I’ve ever faced all at once. Just a few weeks ago they would have done us in. But we are becoming a good team.
That night we talked through a plan of action. I think its time we head east then north to look into the reports of bandit activity. Chuck and Imoen want to investigate an old, haunted, mage school just east of Beregost. Even more, we all had a ton of fun together. Although I had to explain a story Chuck told to Minsc a couple times, I think he believed it! [OpenArt]
So we’ll head out for the Ulcaster School next, then work our way north.
*****
Yeah I like where this team is at. They remain a little weak on Arcane magic, Chuck and Imoen will hit 5th level mage at about the same time.
I’m trying to do a little more with OpenArt, its the only way to actually show Chuck and Sarah with teammates. But wow, it is painfully limited. A big thing, if I put ANY other woman in frame with Sarah, they both become Sarah! And I had a terrible time on that last render convincing the AI that Minsc and Sarah were not being romantic. And its still not a great Minsc. At least it got Boo right!
I may have to accept that showing Chuck or Sarah with teammates will mean hiding their faces (so I can use Co-Pilot).
Chuck
We set off for the old Ulcaster Mage School the next day. I was very excited to see it. I’ve read a fair amount about it, for many years it was the premier school of the Arcane in the area. It will be a ruin now, but still a significant site to me. A lot more dry dusty country to get there, but the plateau where the school is located is lush. But ruined and inhabited now mostly by undead.
We spoke to a spirit, presumably Ulcaster himself, who was still grieving the loss of the school. We found stairs heading to the cellars. Uncertain of what we’d find, we cautiously entered.
We encountered spiders and a lot of wolves.
There was also another apparition of some sort to deal with. Apparently a former student who fell defending the site. We could not convince him his fight was long over and he attacked.
This fight was a first for us, our warriors could not hit him with any reliability. But Imoen and I could effect him with magic. So this was all on us. Fortunately this wasn’t difficult, but it was educational that we all bring different things to this team.
Most of the cellar was rot and ruin. We did find a small number of intact books that we returned to the Ghost on the surface. This seemed to give him some sort of peace.
We continued exploring to the north and came across a perverse sort of sculpture garden. Jaheira immediately warned of Basilisks in the area. Imoen knew the spell “Protection from Petrification” that she cast on Sarah, she then did a run through the area.
Basilisks are not particularly dangerous if you’re protected from their gaze.
There was also a wacko Gnome wizard here who seemed to be keeping the basilisks as pets and took some pride in “his” sculptures. Once the area was clear we inspected the sculptures and found only one, a young woman, we were able to return to a living person.
To the northeast of here we saw a an ancient ruined temple on top of a small hill, so we set out to explore that area. There were numerous oversized spiders in the area and a few Ettercaps, those vaguely humanoid spider-men. When we went up the hillside towards the temple we discovered a coven of Red Wizards were performing some sort of unholy rite.
Imoen and I unleashed Fireballs.
There wasn’t much left to clear out. I won’t loose sleep over killing Red Wizards, but it rattled me how destructive I can be at times.
“You’re a good man Chuck. I appreciate that this sort of carnage upsets you, I wish I could protect you from this whole world”.
I love this whole team. Imoen is my sister, and always good for a laugh. Jaheira is like a parent, I respect her strength and worldly wisdom. Minsc and Alora are fun and funny. But there’s a gentle strength to Sarah I am strongly drawn to. And she seems attuned to my feelings, that are still sort of topsy turvy on this epic adventure.
We continued north and started battling more groups of bandits. They were generally not too dangerous, maybe more prepared for groups of lightly protected merchants? We encountered three different groups with about as many as we had.
We also came across a stone circle, and were approached by a druid. He seemed extremely agitated, Jaheira tried to talk some sense to him. But he attacked us with a sickly glowing spear.
Jaheira was, thankfully, ready for action. But was attacked from behind by a large bear. Sarah and Minsc immediately engaged.
Another druid stepped forward and helped us with the fight. After, he said his friend had been erratic lately. We examined his spear and I detected a Curse, it caused the berserk attacking.
As we continued exploring, we encountered more bandits, including some groups that were better equipped and far more dangerous.
Finally, we came to the Bandit Camp. This all led to a really large scale battle.
I’m glad we have Alora with us, she’s pretty good with a bow!
Before long we had dozens of bandits converging on us. The bulk of them we not very skilled, but one large armored guy with a war hammer seemed to be running their defense.
He and Sarah clashed directly, Sarah was hurt in the fight but succeeded in bringing the big guy down.
“Chuck I’m okay. Chuck honey, let go. Everyone is watching.
It was just about cleaning up from here. We searched the huts and cave full of Gnolls that seemed to part of the camp. The largest tent was clearly the headquarters. We fought several better quality troops within, then it was truly over.
There was a single prisoner named Ender Sai. He had been spying on this crew when he was captured. He reports that the head man here, a warrior named Tazok, is not in camp. He had been directing an operation in the Nashkel mines to destroy the area’s iron supply. We told Ender we had shut that down, and the mine was again being run by the locals.
That pleased him. But this thing continues getting bigger. They have their own mine deep in the Cloakwood Forest, the area northwest of the Friendly Arms Inn. I guess we all know where we’re heading next.
*****
Most of this part of the game is pretty easy. Especially, with both Chuck and Imoen being 5th level mages we can start unloading a lot of Fireballs. Sarah will probably hit 7th level fighter in the Cloakwood, which is another milestone for the team.
But I recently looked at some site data, and I actually get more traffic coming to my own site from these forums than any other single site! Go figure!
So I've re-prioritized a bit, and I think the plan will be to keep this up to date whenever I do an update on my own site.
That does all mean I finished my BG1 run, and the full write up is available as "Chuck and Sarah" at davesgaming.blog
I've now launched in to BG2 with a new post. I'll post all of that here (except for some introductory notes).
*****
Chuck and Sarah: BG2 playthrough
Chuck is the nominal team leader. He has now learned he has a great and terrible legacy to either fulfil or overcome. As he has risen in power and stature over the last few months, he has gained confidence and purpose in his ability to make a difference in the world. And Chuck is a profoundly good guy, he wants to help everyone and will go to great lengths to do so.
Of course the path to power in all these sorts of games is killing things and gaining loot. So by “helping everyone” our hero becomes more capable and dangerous.
Specifically, Chuck has become a powerful spell caster. As a Mage/Cleric of Mystra he can work both Arcane and Divine sorts of magic. That will leave him a little behind where a single class caster of either sort would be, but he has a huge variety of spells of every sort available to him.
I think this matches pretty well with his TV show prototype. There he was a tech nerd and hacker of some repute. Here, he is an up and coming spell caster, making a name for himself.
His partner in this adventure is Sarah, a former city guard who has become a very dangerous swordwoman. Just like “Sarah Walker” from the TV show “Chuck”, this Sarah is a fearless force of nature. She has High Mastery with long swords (there is one more step, which she will soon gain) and uses two of them. On the show she was a master of guns and knives, which doesn’t parallel perfectly here. I chose to make her “tankier” than on the show, its just a different sort of setting and system, so I built her to be able to wade into the thick of the action.
A couple days ago I shared this link to a 1 minute clip of Sarah in action on the show. My fully armored Sarah may not do aerial summersaults in combat but she is fast, agile and can take a hit. (Although, medieval plate armor was lighter and allowed more freedom of movement than is often depicted. The uber heavy stuff that required a hoist to mount a horse was *tournament* armor, that is, sports gear. Fighting knights were typically expected to go from flat on their back, to mounted and riding in under 30 seconds with no help).
Chuck and Sarah have progressed to being the most obvious sort of partners at this point. What took until late Season Three on the show developed a little more quickly here. But this version of Chuck and Sarah are 7 or 8 years younger, with less baggage. And are forced into even closer company (with fewer outside distractions) right from the start. Really our only detour in this universe involved Chuck flirting with the wrong girl for a couple weeks.
Sadly, my attempts at actually rendering them in the same shot have all failed. At least with my photo-realistic model based renders they have. So my apologies, Chuck and Sarah together on this journey will mostly involve rear views or one character being mostly obscured.
I continue to use two different generative AIs for my illustrations. Meta’s OpenArt lets me use models derived from input photos. Which means a recognizable Chuck and Sarah in their adventuring garb. This AI however, isn’t very good at action, fantasy themes, or even additional characters in any scene. I’ve learned to get more out of it over the course of this run. But it is still greatly inferior to…
Microsoft’s Co-Pilot. Which really gives nice, atmospheric and exciting medieval-fantasy renders. Really, its better at *everything* except actually depicting Chuck and Sarah. So apart from that one thing, Co-Pilot is my go to AI for most of what you’ll see.
*****
Chuck
I woke up in the cage. In a dark, mechanical looking sort of magic lab. The “hooded man” I’d previously met revealed himself to be the arch-mage Jon Irenicus. A terrifying sight.
“Ah, the Child of Bhaal has awoken…”
Not the sort of thing you’d ever want to wake up to. Fortunately, I could see across from me.
Sarah looked a little down. But fine, biding her time.
Then there was an explosion, a lot of noise. This facility was under attack. Irenicus suddenly had business elsewhere.
Imoen slipped soundlessly into the room and picked our locks.
Minsc and Jaheira were caged up nearby. We were able to get them free. But Minsc reported he’d seen his witch, Dynaheir, murdered by our captor.
In a nearby store room we found some weapons and armor, but not ours. Just cheap basic stuff. It will do. We also found the very broken Soultaker dagger. I might be able to clear my name of murder charges with this?
Minsc
Jaheira
This lab was huge. We explored a large area and were able to find some more supplies; more weapons, some healing potions, a few other things. The Helmet Sarah had been using. That’s one piece of our gear! That was all worth a lot of money, I’ll bet Irenicus already made a few gold unloading most of it.
We met another captive.
Yoshimo thought we were maybe in the Amnish capitol of Athkatla. At least, that was the last place he knew he was prior to his capture!
We asked him to join with us for an escape and he agreed.
We had to do some fighting too! A number of Goblins and Duergar Dwarves (those are the nasty ones!) were here. Staff? In one lab room we found Khalid’s remains. We tried to shield Jahiera from our find, but were too late. She tried to keep her composure, but we could see her seething. No doubt, our captor had shown his true colors. We would take him down whatever it took.
We finally saw daylight, and made our way to the surface. We stepped into a war zone.
Irenicus had already slain many rogues, and he was finishing off the last group that seemed to be moving.
Imoen was furious and launched a magical attack, I warned her to stand down, we didn’t even know where we were and needed to get away first and foremost. Too late. A group of mages gated in, and proclaimed this was an illegal use of magic. Irenicus proceeded to slay several of the new arrivals. Finally he stood down and agreed to his arrest. They said Imoen had been involved and before we knew, they disappeared with Irenicus and Imoen.
My sister taken from before my eyes.
We’d all lost a lot. Dynaheir, Khalid, Imoen.
Not enough time had passed when I stood, “Okay, we need equipment, and that means we’ll need money. Longer term, we need to know who has taken Imoen and where to. And we’ll want to find out what Irenicus’ role in this is, and how to get him. It might be helpful to know who those thieves are who were fighting him. We also saw a vampire fighting the thieves in Irenicus’ lab, so we need to know what the factions are.” I saw mostly weepy faces, but a lot of anger too. We had work to do.
There were witnesses all around us. We quickly learned we were indeed in Athkatla. The mages who took Imoen were “Cowled Wizards”, they enforced the city’s “no magic” rules. Awareness came over Jaheira’s face, “Yes, this is Athkatla, I recognize it now. Its only Arcane magic that’s illegal, Divine should be okay. And they usually only enforce the rule in public, its tolerated in private spaces.”
Sarah pointed out the businesses all around us “we should have no problem finding a place where we can sell stuff we picked up in Irenicus’ lab. Maybe we can start buying better equipment than some of this stuff we took from the Goblins.”
As we set out we saw a large circus tent set up near us. There were guards at the entrance and a boy weeping on the ground. Minsc took immediate interest, and we heard something had gone wrong in the circus and the boy’s mom was still trapped inside. I talked to a guard and offered our services to check this out.
We entered the tent, and discovered a larger world within. A Djinn greeted us and informed us we were now in “Kalah’s domain”. Obviously some major illusion magic at play. We stepped through an ornate doorway, and were faced with an ogre, with shockingly sweet voice. She said she was in chains (which we didn’t see!) and under an illusion. We would need to battle some orcs disguised as peasants to find a key disguised as a sword. Walking across the room we met a spider, who we learned was actually the mother of the boy outside. Okay…
So we fought the orcs and found the sword. When we unchained the ogre…
We met Aerie! She was a circus worker who was trapped up in this grand illusion.
All the work of Kallah, an Illusionist Gnome. We went through a couple of other rooms until we finally came to a large ogre who claimed to be Kallah, master of this realm.
He refused to release those trapped by his game, so we fought and ended his magic. Surprise, he was indeed a gnome.
Aerie was eager to leave the circus at this point, and agreed to come with us to rescue Imoen. She is a Mage and a Cleric like me.
With the illusions gone, we stepped back outside and discussed it with the guards. Then reunited mother and son. Jaheira pointed out a place call “Adventurer’s Mart” not too far from where we stood, which seemed an excellent place to conduct the business we needed to.
I started by asking about the broken Soultaker Dagger, we learned of an elderly mage who worked nearby in the Slums district who knew a lot about such arcana. Jaheira mentioned she had some friends in that part of the city. So after finishing some business, we didn’t really have a lot of stuff to trade, we set off for the slums.
A man introduced himself to me as Gaelan Bayle.
He said he had friends who could locate my missing friend for me. We learned this help would cost us 20 thousand gold. He gave us some pointers about people who were looking to hire adventurers, and seemed sure we would be doing business.
Yoshimo told me this was undoubtedly the local Thieves’ Guild making contact. And given how much he seemed to know about us I was pretty sure this was who had been fighting Irenicus.
Jaheira now pointed us towards a massive run down heap of an inn called “The Copper Coronet”. The place is an assault on the senses as soon as you enter. We parted ways with Yoshimo, then his place was taken by a young woman who said she need help. Her family home had been over-run by monsters and she wanted adventurers to help clear them out! She offered money, which we need, but its the sort of thing I’d want to help with anyway.
Nalia needed our help with a monster problem.
The Copper Coronet was also home to every sort of vice imaginable. But when we learned there were gladiatorial games in “the back” where slaves could be pitted against each other or wild animals, well we all knew we’d be causing some trouble.
Sometimes its satisfying to cause a little revolution. We turned the keys to the inn over to the just freed slaves.
Congratulations you own a bar.
Handak was the leader and spokesman of these freed slaves. He begged our help, they had children held at another location in town. Of course we’ll help!
*****
That’s where I’ll end this start of Baldur’s Gate 2. I expect the team will be fluid for a while before I settle in on a final crew for the climax. Chuck and company already have some work lined up, and a vague plan to raise money to get Gaelan Bayle’s help.
The game usually takes me a couple months from this point. I may reduce the length of these write ups. I just did much of this with my “Psyche and Diomedes” run a little bit ago. It will probably come down to how many renders I want to do! We’ll see.
Sarah
Next we searched all the rear areas of the vast bar that was Copper Coronet until we found access to the tunnels over to the other part of the slavers' facility. We knew to move fast, and thought the tunnel might be a "rear entrance". Maybe less defended than the front door?
We came out in a warehouse. It was actually heavily guarded, but we were ready for a fight.
Nalia agreed completely this was an urgent mission. We didn’t want to put off helping her either, but this needed doing now.
Just off the warehouse was a holding cell, two children had had just been thrown in with a couple trolls.
This um, made me pretty angry. After killing the trolls, I saw there was a row of cells nearby, several children were here.
I led the way and killed a few more trolls and guards.
After, Chuck talked to the kids and did some minor healing.
He told them we would all stick together as we took them back to their families.
I uh, got something in my eye and missed some of what he was saying. I am proud of him and he’s a good guy, whatever all the idiots think.
In the morning we did a quick check around town and found Nem, the sorceress who could help us with the broken Soultaker dagger.
She was actually friendly and helpful. But she was shocked at the damaged dagger, we left it with her to study.
From there we set out for Nalia’s home. This was actually kind of comical. We had a few false starts. We were ambushed by bandits in town. Then again just outside of town. We did rescue a poisoned man, who requested we help him back into town. That led to a whole string of little chores and cost us the day.
Next day we set of for Nalia’s again, this time we made it. Nalia’s family home is actually a nice size castle. There was wooden stockade just outside the castle, Nalia pointed out she knew the guards.
The captain of the guard reported he had all the survivors with him, but the castle had been over-run by trolls. He didn’t think he had the strength to retake the castle, but he could help secure the place.
Yeah, he took his orders from Nalia. The situation was a little different than I’d expected, but okay. I guess we’re killing more trolls.
There were maybe thirty trolls in the castle. Plus some Yuan-Ti (those nasty snake men) and a few other things. We scoured it clean.
We rescued a rather unpleasant Aunt of Nalia’s who was hold up in a room with a couple guards. But Nalia’s father was dead.
This was apparently going to leave a sort of power vacuum. Nalia was the legal heir. But for some reason, as a mage, she could not hold title? I do not understand Amnish law. Then she shocked me, well all of us really. But she suggested Chuck and I (actually, I guess she just said me) could hold the title in her name. As an accomplished warrior I could hold and rule the land.
I wanted to decline. Really, less than a year ago I was promoted to Guard Sergeant. Okay, really, I know not many could stand against me in combat. But that doesn’t make me ready to rule anything. Chuck could, he has brains and a good heart. And Nalia would stay here, in her home, as an advisor. This could work, but is it necessary? Nalia seemed to think it was.
Well, this day didn’t go like I thought it would…
Soon, we were making plans for tomorrow. Back in Athkatla, we’d met a messenger who plead for help for the town of Trademeet. The town had come under attack by Druids. This alarmed Jaheira especially. And we were fairly close to that town, so we would go there next.
After we had freed the castle, I’d seen Aerie nervously approach Chuck. She was very worried to know “how she had done? And if she could stay with us for a while?”
I’m afraid I would have laughed! She is a talented caster. She’s an Elven cleric of a Gnomish deity which is a little weird. But Chuck handled her brilliantly. Let’s see, she’s a good healer, good natured and likable. And actually brave and steady in a fight. Someone did a number on her head, because she’s a blessing as a companion.
Sarah
We set out for Trademeet the next day and got there by early afternoon.
Problems were immediately obvious, wild animals attacking people in the streets.
We also met a Djinn, who admitted he was disrupting trade. He was looking for a rogue Rakshassa. He wanted proof of death, her head would do.
So the town had two major, and unrelated problems. We met with a druid, in the town’s small jail, who claimed to have been sent by his order to investigate Shadow Druids in the area. We’ve dealt with them before. He knew where their groove was, so we set out.
First thing we found was a cave full of trolls.
We met a group of Shadow druids right after killing a couple trolls. They failed to recognize how weak their position was.
From there we found an old ruin…
…That proved to inhabited by a rakshassa.
He kept her head to return to sender.
The climax wasn’t much of a climax. We met a shadow druid named Faldorn who had been directing attacks against the Trademeet area. We ended the threat, then returned to Trademeet.
They were pleased! A town in celebration is a wonderful and fun thing to behold. And we were the heroes of the day.
The next day we returned to the De’Arnise Castle. Chuck has an odd fascination with my helmet.
We discovered there had been an incident, a merchant passing through was unhappy with a bandit attack he’d suffered. There were losses, damage. I talked with Chuck and Nalia, wanting to figure out what was normal, fair, expected. And would protect this land and people.
We came up with a plan that involved paying the merchant, then hiring and training our own local guard.
We stuck around a couple days and kicked off training some new troops, our first recruits! This part of the job is well within my comfort zone!
“Okay everyone, let’s talk about grip and stance!”
Jaheira, Minsc and I all got involved. I wanted to be sure we covered discipline, conditioning and basic technique.
But this was going to take a lot more time than we had, we needed to get back to Athkatla and take care of some business.
After much discussion, and some reservations on my part, we decided Nalia would stay here to administrate, and Minsc would would help with the training. Even better, he would be a force for leading patrols and dealing with more serious trouble. I talked to the veteran guardsmen about not letting Minsc off on his own or really “leading” anything.
While I was training, Chuck was pleased to discover a significant library.
“It is beautiful here Chuck. Its nice to find a place where we can put down roots. But what’s with the hats?”
The next day we returned to the City. We went to see Nem and learned about an Arcane ritual of sorts she thought would release Skie’s soul from the broken dagger. We did it, at some physical cost to Chuck. There was more involved I don’t wish to document, but we were assured Skie’s soul was now be free to return to her body.
We also learned more about slaver operations in the City, and Aerie is particularly interested in rooting them out. She spent much of her time prior to meeting us as a slave. And we have heard her sad tale of loosing her wings, she is actually an Avarial, a winged elf. But she was mutilated by her captors and lost her wings.
So hunting slavers is a priority for her. We tracked down a certain “Lord Praxis” who was a leader of slavers in Athkatla.
I said “was” deliberately. Sweet Aerie has some fire and steel in her!
We have battled vampires a few times in the streets of the City. When we next met with Gaelan Bayle he sent us to meet with Aran Linvail, head of the Shadow Thieves. That’s the thieves guild of Athkatla.
He assured us he could help us get to Imoen, but put us to work first on identifying this new force of evil in town. To be clear, I know Aran’s reputation, he is not a “nice” man. Perhaps it was due to his own desperation? But he played straight with us. He was under attack by the vampires. And we will battle vampires, just point the way.
No surprise, this led to the Graveyard. Athkatla has a large one on the edge of town. We spent a day talking to people, mourners and exploring.
At one point we heard some muffled yelling and pounding, someone had been buried alive!
Of course we dug them out! This led to a murderous kidnapping plot and most of another day lost. But we did good and that is obviously important.
We also met a local Paladin. I’ve met such types in passing and its funny. My Dad taught me to never trust them. But going back to my time as a Guardsman I’ve always found them to be dependable and solid citizens.
Keldorn gladly joined with us. To battle vampires and rescue Imoen, he was all in.
Soon enough our exploring took us underground.
Into the deepest parts of the cemetery.
While taking a break back in the city, we were a little surprised to see a familiar face coming towards us.
I think a thousand pounds fell from Chuck’s shoulders when we saw Skie! She was determined to see us, and thank us for restoring her life.
It is funny to be so happy to see someone you barely know. But I think we all felt an important corner had been turned. Skie was clearly not entirely well yet, I can only guess her dad considers her AWOL again. We had to excuse ourselves to go kill some vampires, but left her with clear instructions on how to find De-Arnise Castle.
*****
Anyone notice, a milestone of sorts! I have successfully rendered Chuck and Sarah facing forward, together in OpenArt! Gee, what a big day. Maybe someday it will *really* happen…
Chuck
After a rest we tracked down Yoshimo, we’d missed having a rogue on the team. Back in the crypts we soon found ourselves in the area over-run by vampires.
We must have slain a dozen or so, and staked everyone we could find a coffin for. We finally encountered the leader of this lovely coven. She introduced herself as “Bhodi”, sister of Irenicus. That’s interesting. No doubt she likes playing games. But she had a pretty delusional idea of what human intelligence is, she tried to shock us with the news the thieves were not completely honest partners. Days later this was still making me chuckle. I had to tell Aran! He was amused too. So Bhodi is a vampire who likes to play games AND is a complete moron. I wonder if Irenicus will see the humor in this?
Anyway, Aran came through for us and had made arrangements to get us to “Spellhold”. A holding facility for the “magically deviant”. I don’t like the sound of this.
We met a ship at the docks. The captain seemed vaguely unreliable, perhaps the Shadow Thieves don’t really hire any other sort?
We sailed to the island of Brynlaw.
“Looks like pirates and ruffians all over town. This will be fun.”
I suggested this might be a good thing, if the town is lawless we can cause trouble without getting in trouble back in Amn. Sarah smiled at that.
It was lawless. And our ship captain turned us over to a vampire ambush as soon as we disembarked. It was an amateurish attack. We had the name of a contact, a man named Sanik knew how to get into Spellhold. No sooner did we meet him than an assassin gated in and attacked. I don’t think he expected to Sanik to have six friends! We learned he had married one of the local madam’s girls, and she had apparently taken offense. Sanik was shaken so we sat him down with a drink and set to find “Lady Galvena”. This was fairly large brothel, we were forced to slay most of the guards.
“Lady Galvena” had been about to behead Claire, Sanik’s new bride.
Sarah put an end to that quickly. We got Claire back to Sanik, and learned there was a single Cowled Wizard in town, who had access to Spellhold, which the locals called “The Asylum”.
Things seemed to be going well, but when we got to the asylum it seemed we were expected. The director gave us a tour of the facility. It seemed to warm and I was having a hard time paying attention. I saw Imoen! But I was near falling over. Crud, we’d all been poisoned.
By Yoshimo. He had been in league with Irenicus all along. When I awoke I was subjected to some sort of magical procedure. And I had an odd vision where Imoen and I battled Bhaal? Very strange thing. Irenicus boasted he’ would steal my soul, just as he had taken my sister Imoen’s soul. He said we both had special souls as Bhaalspawn. Imoen? It wasn’t really so shocking to learn she really was my sister.
But I’m not sure what Irenicus really did to us? I felt a little weak after, but I knew who I was, I loved Imoen and Sarah (um, in different ways!), missed Gorion. Was happy with my friends. I’m not sure how I was supposed to feel?
Anyway, when he was done with us we were all dumped in a large stone chamber, and taunted by Bhodi. She said she coming for us!
For a moment, I was just happy to see Imoen again!
Everyone else seemed completely fine. So we set out cautiously exploring our setting. We soon determined we were in a testing level of the asylum.
One odd room had stone masks on the walls that asked questions. Riddles. Of the basic logic sort.
Other rooms had similar sorts of things. There was also a surprising number of combat threats (trolls, golems, undead, etc). Eventually Bhodi showed up to finish us off. I felt a wrath come over me. My friends had all backed well away from me, Imoen said I’d turned into the “Slayer”. Some sort of avatar related to my odd bloodline. I guess it gave Bhodi a good scare and she ran off. Dang, I wish I’d seen that.
Finally, the spectral administrators of the asylum (how long had they all been dead? They themselves suggested it was a rare thing for anyone to actually pass all their tests) But I did, we all did. So I (we?) was declared sane and released.
We gathered a few of the other functional inmates, and stormed Irenicus’ lab. He had some interesting magical tricks up his sleeve! But finally he ran off, suggesting he had better things to do with his time. We were free for now. But we would need to find a way to follow Irenicus. We found our faithless ship captain and he offered to take us off the island. He seemed to have some idea where Irenicus was heading, he mentioned Underdark. Swell.
Leaving Spellhold sure made Imoen happy! She said it had been a month since she’d seen the sun.
Chuck
We returned to the village of Brynnlaw, and met up with Saemon again. He told us his ship had been scuttled in the harbor. I rolled my eyes guessing this was not new information. Of course, Saemon had a plan, for us to help him steal the Pirate Lord’s ship. I looked at my crew, yeah, we’ll pick a fight with a pirate.
So we did. We set sail with the now deceased pirate lord’s ship. About a day out we were attacked by some sort of aquatic creatures.
They weren’t very fearsome, Sarah slew several quickly, but they were tearing our ship apart.
And then I don’t really know what happened. I think we were all dragged under.
And we woke in an underwater city of the fish-men. Sahuagin according to Jaheira.
And we were to be tools in a civil war. The clearly bonkers “king” wanted us to slay his rival, a mad prince.
They were all mad, bloodthirsty and evil. We did not find much cause for hope, and finally chose neither side. I think we killed all the warriors, at least all that showed themselves.
The city seemed empty. We went to our only exit, a great hole that led to the Underdark.
As always, Sarah went first.
It was a long way down, but we all made it fine.
The Underdark is a world unto itself. We didn’t immediately see a lot of movement, but the signs of life, and intelligence were everywhere.
Of course the Underdark is the stuff of nightmares for everyone who grew up on the surface. This seemed to hit Aerie particularly hard, she’s a good companion but a sensitive soul.
Somewhere down here were Irenicus and Bhodi. We talked with Deep Gnomes who were friendly enough. We encountered a number of others who were less friendly and combat was frequent. We gradually concluded they must have gone to a Drow city, Ust Natha. We would need a plan to enter.
“Uh, guys? … How did I end up in front?”
The Deep Gnomes had referred us to a Silver Dragon, Adalon. She is probably the single most powerful being in this part of the Underdark. And she needed our help. Her eggs had been taken into the Drow city. She would give us a disguise as Drow to enter the city.
I think I totally rock this look.
I suggested Sarah might want to keep that look for her armor. She seemed less enthused. “Gaudy” or something.
Jaheira. She was unimpressed. She might have the easiest time playing the part! Don’t tell her I said that.
Keldorn was none too pleased either. But c’mon, he looks awesome!
Aerie will need to just be quiet. She knows this, she exudes so much sweetness she could get in trouble quickly!
Maybe its good that Imoen is still a little down. Her usual giggles would have been a problem.
*****
Funny how I’ve come to see Drow portraits as an essential part of illustrating Baldur’s Gate! Some of the characters went much better this time than on my last run.
I’ve certainly learned how to get the dark skin color. There are two key things, the first is not to use any words like “black” that are commonly used on real world ethnicities (Charcoal and Indigo were terms I used here). At least not on characters who are otherwise not of those ethnicities. The second thing is to put the skin color first in the character’s description. I got pretty proficient at this on my last IWD run (“Aias and the Aliens“). Its nice when a learned skill actually carries over!
The particular challenge this time had to do with Chuck and Sarah. No matter how hard I tried, I could not get OpenArt to do different skin colors.
I ended up building special “Drow” models for them. I did some dark skinned renders in Co-Pilot, then built the new models from a mix of their current renders and the new dark skinned renders. Then every description starts with “Charcoal skinned”. This all worked better for Chuck than Sarah, but I got several passable results. Especially if we assume Adalon’s illusion may also change features somewhat.
Sarah
Apart from locating Irenicus, our other mission was finding who had stolen Adalon’s eggs. It seems reasonable to expect these two things to be connected.
On first arriving in Ust Natha, we;; we were foreigners and treated accordingly. Obviously, we are strong enough to stand up for ourselves, but it would be best to go with the flow. For a while.
We were directed to a warrior named Soulafan, who would be our guide (babysitter?) for our time in the city. First order of business he said, was to rescue a matron’s daughter who’d been abducted by Illithids. This was outside of the city, actually near where we’d already destroyed an Illithid compound.
Fighting Illithids is always a little dangerous. But we’ve become dangerous ourselves.
Illithids all too often have Umber Hulks with them.
Mission accomplished, we rescued an ungrateful brat of a woman named Phaerie.
We’ve hardly had a chance to talk Imoen! I am so pleased to have you back with us. I missed you. And Chuck has been a wreck!
We met back in an Inn. We were told we had a couple days to explore the City before we would be needed again. Exploring a Drow city is really not a fun thing. We saw a cage match, a single Drow warrior took on five less experienced young men. I couldn’t help myself, and it seemed in character, so mocked the coward who fought children for easy kills.
His “honor” was offended, so I cut him to pieces. And his matron (? or owner?) too.
At least the rooms at the Inn were comfortable.
Chuck and I tried really hard not to laugh together, or be too loud with anything. We’re all worried about what might be “un-Drow-like”!
“I feel like I’m cheating on you, with you”.
We were sent to kill a beholder in the City. It was just a base model with none of the fancy options.
Then, of all things, they wanted us to go kill a Deep Gnome patrol. To “put a little fear in them”. Soulafan was sent with us again. I was briefly worried we’d have to kill him to protect the gnomes. Fortunately, he viewed this whole mission as so far beneath him, it was easy to convince him to go home.
The Deep Gnomes were quite alarmed at our mission! But we calmed them down and just took some “damaged” gear with us as proof of our viciousness.
Next, Phaerie wanted us to kill Soulafan. We decided to follow the same mission plan we used against the Deep Gnomes. We’re getting quite good at faking our kills.
Now things got interesting. We were tasked with assisting a Demon summoning. We were tasked with locating some special supplies, which we already had with us. The Drow would use Silver Dragon eggs as an offering. So we’ve located one of our main objectives.
Phaerie wanted us to swap the real eggs with fakes she’d had made, in hopes of getting her mother killed by the demon. Then we ran into Soulafan who also had some fake eggs, pretty sure we’d have a use for them. Its nice when a solution falls in your lap.
The real eggs were in a vault guarded by Stone and Clay Golems.
We switched the real ones with Phaerie’s fakes, then gave Soulafan’s fakes to Phaerie. Keeping the real ones in Chuck’s Bag of Holding.
Eh, the demon was not real pleased with two sets of fake eggs.
“Veldrin, what have you done to me!”
He immolated Phaerie and her mother. We ran, time to get out of the city.
Adalon was pleased, the happiest we’d seen her. Our Drow disguises were dispelled and she showed us to the surface.
It was glorious to be above ground again!
As we battled our way clear of the Underdark, we encountered an Army of refugee Elves. They were the survivors of a force that had left their home city of Suldanesslar to block the Drow. But the Drow (with Irenicus we learned) had broken past them, and managed to hide their own home city from them!
After a sometimes tense exchange of information, in the Elves were frustratingly tight lipped, we learned they need an item called the Rynn Lanthorn to find their way home. We all guessed it was with Bhodi, possibly back in her old haunt under Athkatla.
We knew where we had to go.
How much time does it take for you tinkering with the AI until the result is what we see here?
I think Microsoft Co-Pilot’s renderer is the fastest and easiest. You type in a description, no more than a couple sentences worth, and in a few seconds you get four renders to choose from.
There’s all sorts of conditions to add to that. There is absolutely a learning curve in figuring out how to talk to the AI, how to tell it to do what you want. (Zeno_42 has a bunch of tutorials and examples at his outstanding Zeno’s Ziggurat site). And there are a few levels of filtering to contend with (never ask to see blood! Really, sometimes the filters are a bear. I’ve had whole ideas I had to scrap because I could not figure out a way to get by the filter).
And quite often, you get a render, and realize you need more detail on something. I have had renders that took me an hour or so of tweaking the description and generating multiple renders to finally get right. But not often. The majority go quite quickly.
Meta’s OpenArt does have the huge advantage of letting you create models, and it has a much better editor. Of course both of those things take more time. And what you can actually DO with those models may be painfully limited (I find it does much less atmospheric renders).
I’ve really been having a ton of fun doing all of this.
Chuck
We first headed back to Nalia’s Keep. We wanted make sure all was well, and get at least one good night’s sleep before it was back into trouble.
I meant to ask Sarah what she missed most about life on the surface, I decided the question answered itself.
We took care of a little business, mostly all was well around the Castle. So we set out for Athkatla. When we got there, Keldorn decided he needed to check in at home. This led to some awkwardness, but we decided to let Keldorn take some time with family, we would check back with him later.
A few weeks back, when fighting slavers, Aerie had found a small ruby she was attracted to.
Well, it hatched. In some way she bonded with the little firebird and it became her familiar. The little thing sure makes her happy!
We ran across a man, a beggar by the name of Vittorio. He reported a mercenary named Captain Dennis owed him some money that he was unable to reclaim without some help. I thought we should help, Sarah quietly said to me this smelled like trouble. So we set out to meet Captain Dennis.
Captain Dennis told us Vittorio had stolen his mother’s gong. Apparently Vittorio had agreed to give him “gong lessons”, but had disappeared with mom’s gong. Vittorio admitted he’d been drunk and may have forgotten some details.
The upshot of this was, it was the first time I’d seen Imoen laugh *hard* since we rescued her! Dennis was considering splitting Vottorio in two, but we convinced him to wait and let us track the gong down.
This involved a lot of running around! First to a fence Vittorio knew, then to a troll out past Trademeet. From there to an Ogre Mage, who ran his own farm.
“That’s not mud!”
Yeah, the Ogre had been using the gong as a farm implement. We washed it out in a stream as best we could, and agreed Captain Dennis would not hear *all* the details of our adventure.
On the way back, we ran across an old Harper associate of Jaheira’s. Apparently he had decided she should die for choosing my side in an earlier Harper dispute.
He did receive a ferocious tongue lashing from Jaheira. He finally ordered his crew to attack us, probably to make Jaheira shut up.
But I am deeply thankful for Jaheira’s loyalty to me and my friends. It is a shame it cost several Harper’s their lives. This situation will need to be straightened out some point. We can’t have Harper’s continue to attack us!
We also met a Ranger named Valygar. He had been hiding from the Cowled Wizards. Something about his blood being needed to open a large metallic sphere that had landed in the city of Athkatla a few weeks back. It was an artifact built by a member of his family, Lavok, centuries ago. It had reappeared a few times since, and often took family members with it when it left. We talked for a bit, and decided the thing to do was investigate this sphere, and see if it was safe.
Back in the City we asked a little what was known of this large oddity. The answer seemed to be, nothing. We didn’t poke around too long before a doorway opened on its side when Valygar touched it. This thing was obviously much larger inside than out.
One of the first things we saw was a large model of Athkatla! Including the great sphere, located where it was.
Exploring this thing, we met quite a few occupants. Several had to be fought, like Sahuagen and savage halflings. Some were friendly, like a group of knights from someplace we’d never heard of.
And we met Valygar’s ancestor who had built the great sphere. He was possessed by, something. It had taken him to travel the planes in this great contraption, and it fed on the life energy of Valygar’s family. But we battled it and won. Now we had a 400 year old man dying in front of us. He explained the sphere had traveled again when we entered. He could set it to return home again, but he would need a power source. In the form of a demon’s heart. Which should be no problem since we’d traveled to the Abyss.
We got directions on how to use this power source, and went outside to go hunting.
I’m sorry mister demon, I missed your name. But uh, I’ll be needing your heart now, nothing personal.
So that was fun. Soon we had the Great Sphere powered up and it took us home.
Lavok asked to see the sun of his home world one last time before he died. The situation was odd, and I think healing for Valygar.
He’d lived so much of his life terrified of his family curse. But it wasn’t what he thought, Lavok was perhaps foolish with the device he built, but he had never intended harm for the family. I think they both found some healing sitting there in the sun.
And it left me with a little to think about, with family bloodlines and curses…
Finally we said our goodbyes to Valygar, and went to meet Keldorn.
*****
I am using the “Wings” mod for the first time. It boasts a friendship path (or expanded romance) for Aerie. Its been fun, with quite a few extra fights against slavers, and an Avarial con-artist. But significantly, Aerie ends up with a unique familiar! A sort of mini-phoenix.
Obviously this was a lot of cleaning up loose ends, no main plot progression here. I think I’ll continue this for a few days, cleaning up loosed ends before we hunt down Bhodi.
Sarah
The Cowled Wizards of all people, asked Chuck to oversee the Planar Sphere now nestled permanently in the Athkatla slums. Perhaps its because we entered successfully, neutralized it as a threat, and killed the Cowled Wizards who attacked us? Or am I the only one who thinks that?
Oh I know Chuck and Imoen agree. Chuck made a point of telling their representative that Imoen would be their contact with us.
You’re a funny looking little man. Didn’t I just kill you? No my mistake, he just kind of looked like you. And dressed like you. I’m sure Chuck will let me know if we’re doing that again.
I don’t think I really play intimidating well. But he was sweating a lot. And I do mean for them to be a little nervous in dealing with us.
They assigned a group of students for Chuck, Imoen and Aerie to tutor. I think this works wholly in our favor. Chuck is a natural teacher, and is always so winsome. I think we can have a good influence on the next generation of wizards in this city.
Imoen has actually shocked me at how good she is at this too. She’s one of the most powerful mages in this part of Realms now, and I think she’s younger than most of her students.
After a few days we decided it was time to head for the Windspear Hills, to check in on this monster hunt Lord Firkraag had asked us to perform. Chuck had just mentioned we seemed to be entering the Windspear area, when we were beset by a group of monsters, ogres mostly.
Shockingly, they turned into knights once they were down.
We were all horrified by what had just happened. What caused this illusion?
Keldorn recognized some of the men, they were members of the Radiant Heart like him.
We met a Garren Windspear, former lord of these lands, who seemed to have a good idea what had happened. He was disgraced and dismissed as Lord Windspear several years ago in a similar series of attacks. Lord Firkraag had conveniently put an end to the trouble, and was undoubtedly behind what was happening. Maybe we’d offended him in some way?
None of us had even heard of him before he hired us. Garren offered to ride to Athkatla and explain the situation to the Radiant Heart. We were to hide out in his home for a day. And protect his daughter.
Several hours later we came under attack, we fought a number of intruders in Garren’s home, and his daughter Iltha was abducted. We’ve been set-up and framed before, this is a familiar pattern. We found a note that was an “invitation” to face Firkraag personally.
Garren soon returned, we told him what had happened and we promptly set out to find Iltha and Firkraag.
There was a lot to combat in this area. Werewolves were the most dangerous, so really no drama. And we did find something special and beautiful.
“Chuck! Look who we found! Bring those acorns over here.“
We were able to reunite the dryads with those who’d been held captive in Irenicus’ Dungeon.
And then we found something very different.
“Guys, I think this what we’re looking for.”
It was. We fought a number of orcs, golems, undead. It was an extensive complex. We found Iltha in a jail cell, that we could not open. There was a large opening beyond. This is where we met Firkraag. A red dragon. Who had been injured many years ago by Chuck’s real father, Gorion. After a lengthy explanation, he said we’d bored him and we could go. We could take Iltha, as long as we killed a mage who was holding the key to her cell.
Like a cat gaming with a mouse. We set Iltha free, then we knew had a score to settle.
You will play no more games with people’s lives wyrm.
I spoke truth.
We returned first to Garren. Iltha was fine. And he assured us we in the Radiant Heart’s good graces. We still had a melancholy task ahead of returning their fallen. But we had ended a great evil in this area.
Dragon hoards are often amazing. Keldorn seemed to make out the best of any of us. He got a pretty nice suit of plate armor, and an incredible great sword called Carsomyr. You know when a sword has a name its pretty special.
We got back to Athkatla and returned the Radiant Heart’s knights to them. We were clearly forgiven, the situation was understood. But it was still bitter.
We found another bunch of slavers in the city that we cleared out. And the Radiant Heart asked to do a few tasks, that kept us busy for a few days.
There was one more item of interest from the dragon hoard.
We had a local smith named Cromwell fashion a suit of armor from its hide. Jaheira looked magnificent in it.
Of course, she said it would be a useful tool and we were fussing too much. But we should thank Lord Firkraag if we ran across him again! Did Jaheira make a joke?!
We returned to De’Arnise Castle to rest for a few days.
“Chuck, Imoen! Can you believe how powerful our warriors are getting! They didn’t need us at all, against a Dragon! That was awesome!”
*****
I remember so many years ago, in the very early months of playing D&D with my buddies, someone in the group got a “Girdle of Giant Strength”. Somehow the topic came up of “how far can you jump with that! If you’re as strong as a giant, but still only weigh around 200 pounds…” Funny.
But I guess I’ve always remembered that question. So I loved the idea of Sarah leaping onto the dragon and killing it from the head. The AI *did not* want to show my warrior up above the dragon. I finally was using a lot of text to spell it out very specifically (“leaping high into the air above the dragon … the dragon looking up at the warrior…”) It took a dozen renders, but I love what finally came out!
Chuck
A few days taking care of business at the Castle. This is by far the most fun of our ongoing chores for now.
I set up my personal chapel to Mystra in one of the basement rooms.
With a magical research lab right nearby. I’ve never had my own such space for these things before!
Of course Imoen will use the lab also, its still pending if she wants her own space here. The sphere is becoming more her hideout.
Sarah continues to get our new militia force in order.
That all seems to be going well, we’ve cut way down on bandit activity in the area. And have an interesting range of dilemmas to sort out, things I never imagined to be involved in before. Like finding space for a boisterous cleric of Tempus, or a dowry for a maid. The biggest looming thing would seem to be some trouble with our neighbors, the Roenalls are not amused by our presence. That is particularly what Sarah is working towards with her soldiers, its sort of the key to protecting the people of this land.
“Chuck do you really think we’ll need an army? Surely the Roenalls won’t actually attack us?”
I explained to her a lot of Sarah had told me, the militia is not full time. They’re all here now because we are training and getting them ready for possible trouble. But normally they will work a few days a month so about 10% of what you see now will be working on any day. We only have about a dozen full time guardsmen. But a trained militia means we can mobilize a lot of troops if we are attacked by grumpy neighbors or have something bigger to chase off.
We’ve also had to run errands into Athkatla, both the students at the Planar Sphere and the Knights of the Radiant Heart have needed some attention. After a few days, we figured it was time to head out to look into the problems around the Umar Hills again, and see what was up with the dark shadows around an abandoned old temple.
A pack of wolves had been taken over by something dark, and literally shadowy.
We entered the old temple and found it overrun by all sorts of undead.
Not one but two lichs were present.
I’ve not known such things to cooperate before. Maybe they still weren’t? They were sort of at opposite ends of the ruin.
The biggest challenge was a Shadow Dragon.
This took the whole team, both steel and magic were needed.
Beyond the dragon was a “Shade Lord”. I don’t know all the lore there. He was actually less threatening to us than the dragon and the lichs. But he was able to exert some sort of control of the dark forces. We were able to defeat him and restore the temple as a sacred site to Amunator, a god of sunlight.
We had exhausted ourselves pounding through these foes quickly. We hadn’t wanted to give them time to regroup, but it meant running at a high tempo for most of a day.
Aerie is by far the best healer among us.
By dusk we were all tired, but whole.
We’ll spend a couple nights back at the castle before we head out again.
*****
I did few other things not mentioned here, like cleaned out all the lichs in Athkatla, the Unseeing Eye Quest and the Planar Prison. All are simple little chores at this point in the game.
For my renders, I added an Imoen model to OpenArt and this is her debut at this site. But I figure if I do a few runs of BG in the near future, I may have the opportunity to use this, a more stable Imoen render. I will still likely use Co-Pilot more, my feelings about both AIs have mostly strengthened these last few weeks.
Which leads to a little test, and some results shown above. Zeno_42 (at Zeno’s Ziggurat) had recently shown how we can indeed get some bloody/hurt renders. I used Co-Pilot to test that for the Jaheira and Aerie render. I had previously had no luck at all with this sort of result. I *think* in the past I’d often used words like “beaten and battered”, which my wife suggested the AI my just automatically reject, especially for female characters. While terms like “Bleeding and Cut” will go through. Go figure. This was actually quite easy to get on Co-Pilot.
But then I tried for a similar result on OpenArt. That “Exhausted Sarah” shown was also described as “bleeding and cut”. OpenArt will not “reject” words via a filter notification (I’m not categorically sure that’s true, but I’ve not had it happen), it will simply not do what you tell it. It does limit what sorts of drama you can get.
Most of this Update will cover details of the “Call of the Lost Goddess” mod. It is a beautiful and well crafted mod, easily professional quality. But its also fairly recent. This will be written with some spoilers, so skip this update if you wish to remain unspoiled!
*****
Sarah
Imoen and Aerie spent a day at the Planar Sphere, so we stopped by there to pick them up before we went to the Temple of Waukeen.
“That thing is amazing” “Imoen, we should make sure the residents who were displaced by the Sphere get some help getting on with their lives, we can afford to be generous”.
We got to the Temple early afternoon and met with Tharundar Olehm, the High Priest of Waukeen.
Tharundar comes across as a gentle decent man. With a serious need.
Waukeen had been missing, presumed dead by many, since the time of troubles. But he took us to see a Priestess, a prophet of sorts, who had visions suggesting she was alive in the Abyss. Held captive by a powerful Demon Lord. I felt my stomach clench with a pretty good idea where this was heading.
He presented the case for making a rescue, and detailed several arrangements he had made. This was not a hare brained scheme, but obviously this would be extreme jeopardy for us. I reminded myself a few times how far we’d all come in the last year. And really just how capable we were as a team.
We would need to travel via something called The Infinite Staircase, and navigate to a doorway into the right part of the Abyss. I’m no expert on this stuff, but the staircase is Infinite, shoot the Abyss itself is infinite, we will be dependent on a lot detailed information we knew nothing about ten minutes ago. Fortunately Chuck is very smart. So are Imoen and Aerie. I’m sure they can sort this out.
“oof. Oh boy. Infinite Staircase to the Abyss. What could go wrong… Hah”
We had to travel to the city of Waterdeep, at the far north of the Sword Coast. Only Jaheira and I had been there, and this wouldn’t be a trip for sightseeing. We were teleported to our destination, and led to a door to the staircase with no delay.
Its a good thing we have good directions!
We traveled by the stairs to the Abysmal City of Samara. A demon there was being compelled to help us. I can see Keldorn’s skin crawling just being here. I’m counting steps and turns to be sure I can get my whole team back to the staircase quickly if needed.
We were told we needed to attract the attention of Maretta, a Succubus currently in charge of the city. We did this with a series of arena fights.
Soon enough were summoned to meet the boss.
I could see how tense Chuck was, I got the feeling Maretta was flattered by this.
But we were convincing enough as a band of blood thirst mercenaries looking to make some money.
We were sent on a sort of proving ourselves mission, to acquire an “Abyss Rose”. This put us through a series of tests against our baser instincts. Seriously, these were mostly easy and obvious.
“Sarah! Just don’t do anything hostile! Duck or run, but try not to cut him in half!”
We passed this and presented Maretta with a Rose. I told Chuck I did *not* expect this kind of drama for flowers!
Next we were sent to help in a battle of the eternal Blood War. Demons and Devils are continuously fighting and killing each other.
No friendly faces here!
Then Maretta wanted us to find what was killing her demons south of the city.
The countryside here is not exactly scenic!
But we did find the beast that was preying on other demons.
Throughout, we had been putting a plan together. We learned a former jailkeeper of Waukeen’s might be willing to talk to us, if we could reach him before Maretta had him killed.
We succeeded, and learned the route into the prison where the goddess was held.
The prison itself was full of wretched creatures. One, a deva, we were able to restore her hope and get her out. A couple, called to us that *they* were Waukeen. Keldorn can detect such deception with barely a thought.
We battled an overseer of some sort, who put up a fight.
Finally, we did find the Goddess herself and broke her loose. She had been stripped of her power, but she could move and keep up with us. As we neared the exit a contingent led by Maretta, with several of her top lieutenants waited for.
Stupid succubus. You should have left the fighting to your more capable flunkies.
Once Maretta fell there was little between us and escape. Stepping back onto the Staircase led to an unforgettable moment.
Briefly, we saw the goddess’ glory return to her.
We travelled home, and saw the Athkatla Temple of Waukeen in the midst of a wonderous celebration. They knew their patroness had returned without us saying anything. And they were generous in their appreciation, although we kept our role in things secret from all but their leaders.
This was a good day. We made some good friends, and left no one dangerous (alive) in our wake.
Returning home, we saw our militia performing maneuvers.
A graduation of sorts. Looking ready to defend their homes.
Most of this Update will contain material from Lava’s mod “The Bloodied Stings of Barovia”. As I’ve been doing, it is written as the adventurer’s journal and will contain some spoilers for that large mod.
*****
Chuck
We entered the graveyard the following evening to hunt down Bohdi and the Lanthorn the Elves need. As we walked by one crypt we heard the sound of dark chanting from within. I knew the sound of magic, never a good thing in a graveyard, at night. So we entered immediately.
A necromancer had opened a portal to another world.
He died, but the portal remained. We all concurred this was a dangerous thing to just leave, and we saw no way to shut it down. So we took the leap…
And found ourselves in a deep, dark forest. There was enough howling going on to tell us there was a lot of wolf activity here.
Ummm, or something like that.
We fought several werewolves that seemed enraged out of their minds by masses of bees attacking them. I think? I mean, enraged is sort of standard state for werewolves.
There were a lot of werewolves here! They weren’t all beset by bees.
We set to exploring the area, all of us ready for anything. We did come across a broken well, and then beyond it, a ruined blacksmith shop.
The blacksmith was still working his forge. He was friendly, always a pleasant surprise where such things are concerned. Aerie struck up a conversation, we were surprised he was quite aware of his situation. But he had no useful information for us. Except he was willing to do business with us!
Continued exploring brought us to a farmer under attack by swarms of bees. We helped him defend his home, and he told us about the local noble family. The Bloodjackets had a manor south of here. But for now, he offered a rope so we could check out the well we’d encountered. This led to an underground crypt.
We met a friendly vampire? He was not interested in any trouble with us, I think he was just smart enough to know we’d end him if he did.
Backtracking to the farm, we found an old campsite, that seemed just set, but empty. I sensed more ghosts in the area? Maybe this place is just making me a little bonkers?
I met the ghost of a young boy. Again he seemed well aware of his condition, he introduced me to a number of his friends. There were many ghost children here, they were all quite friendly and happy for some company. We detected no evil, and soon concluded this would be a good place to get some rest.
Sit with me Chuck, it seems we have plenty of lookouts here!
The morning was grey and drizzling. We headed back to the farm, and continued on towards the manor house.
Along the way I struck up a conversation with a tree!
It was some sort of ancient monument, it grew one red rose for every artifact of love delivered to it! A beautiful thing in this dark land.
We found the Bloodjacket Manor House a little further south.
Strange that the graves are so close to the house.
We also found several huge beehives, and were forced to kill swarms of aggressive bees. This would be hard with fewer spellcasters!
On entering the house we were attacked by a pair of Golems. Wax? Honey? Different.
The house seemed empty, filthy, abandoned. But we heard bees.
This place, is just too darn creepy…
We fought a few more golems, and some sort honey ooze?
We kept Imoen busy looking for tricks and traps...
… And she found a false front on a large barrel.
Which led to a talkative, but completely crazy woman.
She had magically created bees, that would preserve the body of her late husband with their honey.
Never mind the trouble they were causing! We put an end to her trouble, which became a pretty big deal. The Lady Bloodjacket was able to call on more bee swarms, honey ooze, waxy golems…
It was a pretty big fight. In the end, we did what we could to ensure neither the lady nor her mostly dead husband would trouble this land again.
We had early acquired a list of items needed to re-open the portal out of here. So we completed the list, returned to our entry point and were able to return home.
An interesting detour into a dark land.
*****
A brief write up of the mod! This was my first time through. It was really great fun, atmospheric for the Ravenloft setting. A few riddles/puzzles which aren’t so much my thing. Plus a number of fun fights, and some new monster types, which definitely are more my thing! Bonus, a number of beautiful new maps. As we can expect from Lava’s work, this was plainly professional quality. Check out “The Bloodied Stings of Barovia”
Sarah
Our re-entry to Bodhi’s hideout, her crypt under the City of Athkatla led to a ferocious series of combats against a large number of vampires. We had arranged a couple of alliances, the famous Drow Ranger Drizzt joined with us, as did a number of Paladins from the Order of the Radiant Heart.
Drizzt I can’t tell you how honored I am to fight by your side.
I was on point from the start.
Follow me, this place isn’t too big, they can’t be far…
They weren’t.
About a dozen total on the upper level.
I expect Bodhi to be further in the depths.
After an ugly 20 minutes or so, it was over. When Bodhi herself fell, last, Imoen visibly relaxed.
In a moment she smiled. Whatever Irenicus had taken from her came back in rush. She was fine, we were all fine. Well, nothing the healers couldn’t fix. We also found the Lanthorn that the Elves were looking for.
We thanked and parted with our allies for this battle, and set out to return to the Castle. As we neared home, we met a messenger who brought news that Roenall troops had crossed into our lands.
I’d been keeping extra militia at the castle just for such a thing, so we set out at once to meet the intruders.
We were outnumbered in pure troops, but the six of us with Minsc and Nalia meant more elite troops than the Roenalls could contend with.
Lord Roenall your troops have already bled enough. I’m giving you one chance to leave here, and renounce all claims to this land, or I’ll spit you like a pig.
I don’t think he understood the metaphor. I demonstrated it. The Roenalls now have a minor power vacuum, but that’s not my worry.
We spent a day relaxing at the castle.
Hi Chuck, thanks for joining me.
*****
My visual tour de force. That was fun.
Chuck
The morning we set out, our intention was to return the Lanthorn to the Elves. But we went a little off course, and came across a large fortified Keep.
Keldorn found it strange to see such a thing in the middle of nowhere.
We soon met a group of warriors, Helmites, tasked with guarding the site.
Odren was their leader. They were friendly, but needed our help.
The keep was meant to be sealed up tight, the prison for an unknown foe. They were charged by Helm with guarding access to the place. But they had reason to think the seals were failing? Could we enter and resecure the detention area?
Of coursed we agreed.
As we entered, Sarah said in a low voice, “there’s six of them, surely they didn’t need our help for this? Be careful everyone!”
Looks like the place doesn’t get a lot of visitors…
We finally met a caretaker of sorts who explained some things about what we needed to do.
Apparently there was a puzzle to solve to get to the lower levels.
The next level had several libraries, elemental libraries.
The libraries were each amazing.
They each had a key that led to us fighting and killing a minor demon to open the portal to the next floor.
Maybe the demon was a warning! The next “level” was a bunch of rooms connected by teleporting archways. It was very difficult to keep our bearing as we went.
And we had stepped right into the Blood War between Devils and Demons.
Numerous small fights, in almost every room.
The last room we encountered a …uh… friendly demon. I’ve heard in the vast infinity of the multi-verse, such things do occur. It certainly doesn’t happen here often!
The next couple levels were mostly notable for some brutally hard fights.
One particular fight was the sort Keldorn was made for!
Of course Sarah is made for any sort of fight.
The last level, the great seal before the prison, led to some of the toughest fights we’ve ever seen.
We’ve faced Drow before, but these were partnered with an assortment of demons and such. Just to keep things interesting.
These guys weren’t from around here, shame they wouldn’t talk about it.
This is amazing… and terrifying.
We faced Demogorgon himself. We had come to strongly suspect the watch knights knew exactly what they were watching. So the Helmites were liars, false. That didn’t make the Demon prince trustworthy!
But it did lead us to question our mission parameters. When we withdrew to confer amongst ourselves, we were met by a spectral servant of Helm himself, who confirmed we were being used in the name of their god. We were given a few options on how to proceed, now that we knew the full truth. We turned the false Helmites over to Demogoron, and resealed the Keep. Hopefully for a good long time.
The best thing about Watcher’s Keep, the view is tremendous.
*****
Funny thing, of the renders you see here, the couple at the end was the hardest to get. The AI seems to be offended by the idea of the *woman* being the one in armor! Hey I’m a pretty traditional sort of guy, but the AI makes me look modern…
This set seemed really tough to avoid repeats from the “Psyche and Diomedes” run I did a couple months back. But in the end I was pretty happy with it.
Now it should be pretty fast to the of SoA.