Brademante and Amyntor, Part Deux

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• atcDave Member Posts: 2,987

  August 13

  Update 21
  
  No, you did not miss Update 20! Just the way I’ve been filing my renders, the introductory BG2 playthrough post is filed as “Update 20”.
  
  On with the adventure!
  
  *****
  
  We would quickly learn this place is huge! Our captor, the hooded man from my nightmares, has a significant underground complex. As we exited the area of our cells, our cages, we saw signs of a recent fight. Several fallen men, looked to be thieves. We carefully walked down a short coridor to a small room. There was some sort of magical contraption in the middle of the room summoning mephits? Little imp-like elemental trouble makers. We killed one and shut down the machine. Right next door was a large cavern. A djinn seemed eager to speak to me.
  
  
  He had a riddle for me, a moral quandry if I would sacrifice myself to save my sister. I could only say yes.
  
  He said my answer had consequences.
  
  
  And an ogre appeared, to do battle with me.
  
  We dispatched the ogre and the djinn reappeared. He gave a friendly warning that our escape would soon be noticed. And that seemed to be it. He disappeared.
  
  There were two corridors heading off in different directions, one just ended in a sealed door we couldn’t open. But both corridors resulted in skirmishes with goblins.
  
  
  Even poorly equiped as we are, goblins are not a serious threat.
  
  We found a large magical lab of some sort, full of various creature remains floating in glass tanks. It was all quite revolting. Then we came to another store room, larger than the one near our cells. A large golem stood in the room. He spoke, but only to say he awaited a command. We searched the room and the golem seemed uninterested, so he wasn’t security!
  
  
  Amyntor was thrilled, on one of the tables he found the sword Varscona. His main sword these last several months.
  
  That was the first piece of *our* gear to turn up in this place. Even better for Amyntor, there was another fine, mildly magical long sword right next to it. So he was the first of us to re-equip with magic weapons.
  
  
  We also found two nice scimitars for Jaheira, not magic though. Imoen found a short bow. And there were a few Healing Potions about.
  
  Small wins, but we are growing more capable. A little.
  
  We continued to face, and fight small groups of goblins. Usually less than a dozen. They were not a serious threat, but obviously if they escaped us we had officially been noticed! In another smaller store room we found a sort of magical command stone, Imoen thought it might go with the golem in the other room. When we handed it to him, he asked if we would like him to unlock the doors? Hah! Yeah that would be nice if we were going to escape this place!
  
  While the golem ran off on his chore we resumed exploring. We cleared some goblins out of a library. Then we came to a large room, like a barracks and store room? It was the abode of several Duergar Dwarves. These guys could be a bit more dangerous than goblins!
  
  
  I tried to play nice. I see no need to pick a fight with these guys. Duergar don’t have the nicest reputation, but if I can avoid killing six of them I will.
  
  No luck. I said I had no quarrel with them, but apparently they had one with me. So we fought. They had a spellcaster that Imoen went right to work on while the rest of us cleared out the warriors. It wasn’t a hard fight. In the end, we found they had a nice suit of Chain Mail Armor, “Mail of the Dead”! That was the armor Amyntor had worn for several weeks a while back. Funny, we could call that recovering more of our gear, but we hadn’t owned it for quite some time. Well, its back on Amyntor for now.
  
  From here we soon found we’d reached a dead end. So we doubled back looking for doors the golem may have opened. That first corridor near the djinn’s cave now had an open door so we went through. A dirty storeroom. But another hallway led to a nice bed room. Searching here we found two magic helms that had been ours. One, the very nice Helm of Balduran I had worn for the last few weeks. So I reclaimed that. The other, known as “The Eyes of Truth” just helps with the wearer’s night vision. It had been in one of our packs but no one regularly wore it anymore. Now we would! We still had a shortage of helms, so we put it on Minsc.
  Right through a large archway we saw what looked like a forest. It was!
  
  
  It was a large cavern lit by some sort of magical sun light, overgrown with trees! And there were three dryads.
  
  They begged our help, they were prisoners. Concubines of Irenicus. Jaheira gasped. I know that name! He is a renowned powerful, and extremely evil mage. He is my hooded man! This huge complex seems fitting for such a meglomaniac. There is *no way* we are currently up to facing such a man. It added urgency to our need to *escape*. The dryads said Irenicus had their acorns somewhere and they could not leave here without them. Imoen produced a small bag of acorns we had found back with the Duergar. The dryads were very pleased, they asked we take them to their home grove and replant them. They gave us a place name I didn’t know, but we would find it when we were out of here.
  
  Across the forest cavern we could see a smaller doorway. This led into another nice bedroom.
  
  
  It looked beautiful, but Imoen reported it held many traps. She set to disarming them. We found a few baubles of note and worth, some scrolls. Nothing really telling.
  
  But it was a woman’s bed chamber. An elven woman. None of us knew what elf would be associated with Irenicus. And it was trapped? A bad memory maybe?
  
  Among the items we had found was a magical keystone, that should open a particular magical locked door. We knew of one we’d previously passed and still wasn’t open. So we backtracked again. Opening this door was surprising. It seemed to lead to an alternate dimension of some sort, like a pocket plane of the elemental plane of air? There was a huge wooden walkway floating above a swirling dark void. We walked in a ways, and fought a few more mephits. Annoying things. A little way in we saw a platform. There was a table on the platform, with an oil lamp.
  
  
  Well hello!
  
  Another djinn. He seemed friendly, an offered that he had something of mine. Well, he sensed a connection to me anyway. But he really wanted out of here. If we could help him escape he would return it to me. He needed his own lamp, not the trapped one he’d been forced into by Irenicus (!). He didn’t know where it might be.
  The dryads came to mind as the only ones who would actually talk to us, so we ran back to them. Indeed, they actually had the item. They happily gave it to us, and we returned it to the djinn.
  He gave me a two-handed sword. Huh. We’d never owned it, but I recognized it. It was the sword used by Sarevok when we faced him. And gee, my buddy Minsc uses a great sword. So we now have another good magic weapon for the team.
  
  We weren’t sure exactly were to go from here, but we had a few other magic items on us now than we did an hour ago. So we checked out some oddities. Like a transport portal in a storeroom, now seemed ready to respond… to something we were carrying. We stepped through, into another store room.
  
  
  And met Yoshimo.
  
  He was looking through crates. He reported, like us, he had been a captive until just recently. Now he wanted to escape Irenicus. But he was frustrated because the next room had several devices that kept summoning mephits. Good to know! There were apparently four of them. So we set three of us to battle mephits, while the other three would shut down or destroy the summoning devices.
  
  That was an easy enough fight, but the room held a horror.
  
  
  We had found Khalid.
  
  Our missing friend, and Jaheira’s husband, lay butchered on a large table. He was long dead. We had obviously been here many weeks. My friend Jaheira, she plays stoic. But I can see her trembling. I tried to offer support but she swatted me away. Very well, we will talk when she is ready.
  We still had a ways to go, but things started to blur together. Another magic research room, this one seemed to be devoted to cloning a particular young elven woman. Was this related to the trapped bed room? It seems Irenicus has an obsession. We found a large trapped audience chamber of sorts. A foundry being worked by more duergar dwarves. A library holding a trapped doppleganger.
  
  
  In one room was a fight between a vampire and a group of thieves.
  
  The thieves were dressed like the slain intruders we’d seen elsewhere in here. We helped take down the vampire. Thinking, hoping we could talk with the thieves. But no, as soon as Amyntor skewered the vampire the thieves turned on us.
  
  But then we finally found a way out! A ramp leading up. We could see sunlight ahead, and hear some fighting.
  
  
  As we stepped into the sun we saw Irenicus was battling thieves.
  
  Battling may be an exageration. He destroyed them. Imoen fired off a Magic Missile his way, but soon a group of mages teleported in. They boldly yelled Irenicus was under arrest! And Irenicus slew them all quite quickly. Another group teleported in. After killing a couple, Irenicus said he would only be arrested if they took Imoen too. She had also used magic!
  What?! More mages were coming in. A couple grabbed at Irenicus and teleported away.
  
  
  Another grabbed Imoen and they teleported off.
  
  
  In a couple hours I’d lost Dyna, Khalid and Imoen.
  
  Obviously this is all my fault. I’m a horrible leader. None of these people should be here with me. How many more of them will die?
  We don’t have time for self pity.
  
  Jaheira said we were in Athkatla, the City of Coin. The capital of Amn. And a city where public magic use is illegal.
  What have they done with Imoen?
  Jaheira didn’t know, but she had friends here. People we could ask.
  Casual conversation with some witnesses confirmed all of what Jaheira said. None of them knew where “magical deviants” were held.
  First thing, we need some better gear. And probably some rest. Jaheira knew a shop nearby.
  
  
  Walking by a circus tent I saw a sobbing child. He said his mommy had taken him to the circus, but now she was still in the tent and the guard wasn’t letting anyone in.
  
  Oh really? I walked over to talk with this guard. He said something had gone horribly wrong inside, some dark magic. I told him we could take care of ourselves. Let us in, we’ll fix it.
  Entering was like stepping into another world. It was huge! There was a bridge over to a palatial circus tent. A djinn stood guard with a riddle. It was a stupid math story, Imoen could have answered it in her sleep. So I did instead, with a little more thinking than Imoen would have needed.
  
  We entered the inner tent.
  
  
  An ogre spoke to us in the voice of a young woman. And warned us to go back, this was all a dangerous illusion.
  
  Wait, no. I’m not afraid of illusions. She (?) said she was chained and needed to be free. I didn’t see any chains. Illusions. We looked around a little.
  
  
  As Amyntor assured a spider that her son was waiting outside, I thought two peasants were moving with odd aggresion towards us.
  
  Indeed! They were armed orcs! They seemed to disolve when slain. Except for a magic sword left behind. We walked back towards the ogre, who excitedly said “that’s the key! give it to me!” I had detected no evil on her so I did.
  
  
  The ogre turned into Aerie. She said a gnome circus performer had gone mad and created this realm of illusion. Her uncle was among his captives, she begged our help to find him.
  
  We all advanced up a grand staircase into a plush sort of classical temple. And we were attacked by shadows and werewolves. This should have been an easy fight, if we were properly equiped. But only Amyntor and Minsc have magic weapons. We found Jaheira and I could dispatch illusionary monsters, but there were some real ones too. They needed magic. So the fight was harder than it should have been. But we prevailed.
  
  The djinn from the bridge stood at the next staircase, and warned us we were entering the domain of Kalah, master illusionist. I guess that’s what we’re looking for!
  
  
  The ogre laughed and announced he was Kalah.
  
  Aerie muttered “the gnome”. There were more werewolves and shadows, but we focused in on the ogre. He fell with a shriek, and the whole illusion quickly disolved. A gnome lay dying in the dirt of a small circus tent.
  
  Aerie saw a puddle of slime in one corner had turned back into her uncle… an older gnome? We would learn Aerie had spent many years as a slave in this circus, and had been mostly raised by the overseer. The kindly gnome. We also found the woman who was seperated from her son and sent her back outside.
  It started with that I think. I’m feeling much steadier now. I’m ready to face some things.
  
  
  Aerie was free now. With the death of Kalah the circus passed to Aerie’s Uncle Quail. And he released her.
  
  Aerie wanted to see the world, and eagerly asked if she could accompany us. Careful what you ask for girl…
  Aerie is a cleric of a gnomish deity (!) and a mage. Well we can use both of those! “Okay. Just know Aerie you catch us at a low ebb. We’ve lost several dear friends, and most of our gear. If you join with us I will fight for and protect you as best I can. But we live a dangerous life and there are no gauruntees. And we may be at odds with the Athkatla authorities. At least to say, my first priority is releasing my sister from their custody.”
  “You fought to save me, my Uncle, and reunite that woman with her son.”
  “We fight to make things right. Its not always easy, or even clear. But we do our best.”
  
  Aerie was one of us now. She has led an oddly sheltered sort of life so far. So she is not very different from myself.
  From here, we could see the outfitter Jaheira had mentioned.
  
  
  So tell me sir, are you in the habit of letting folks as scruffy looking as me into this shop?
  
  Hah! If they serve adventurers they do! And they did.
  We have amassed some coin, and a small pile of valuables in the last couple hours. So we went inside to see what all we could sell and what we could buy.
  We did alright. For now, we will leave Amyntor in his magic chain mail. Minsc, Jaheira and myself all got non-magical plate armor. We bought a mildly magical short sword for me, and a newer shield. Aerie had never traveled, so we needed to get her a traveling spell book. Obviously that meant she had NO spells for it. We spent as much as we could on spells for her new book. A handful of 1st – 3rd level spells. She can cast 4th level too, but we couldn’t afford anymore for now.
  I also asked about the damaged Soul Taker Dagger we had, if the proprietor had any idea who could help us get someone out of it! He looked amazed, that is not an easy artifact to damage! No, he decided. He knew no one who could help.
  
  As we left the shop, the dwarf out front said he had over heard some of our converstaion. And he suggested a mage and sage named Nem, who worked around the Slums District, might be able to help. I felt very pleased to hear that, an actual lead on this thing.
  
  We checked into an inn to get some sleep, before some of us started falling over.
  
  
  We all felt clean and refreshed the next morning! Ready to face some new challenges.
  
  I will continue to keep an eye on Jaheira. I wish she could share her grief better. But at least she is still with us. Aerie is full of questions. I answer all as best I can. I think she will be a good addition to the team. Yoshimo is quiet, watching closely. I’m less sure about him fitting in.
  
  *****
  
  A few notes, things about my own head canon on things.
  “Traveling Spell Books” were a thing in Unearthed Acana originally, I think. For 2E maybe in the Mage’s Supplement/Handbook? But the IE games don’t really mention them, except for the use of a “spellbook” tab to access an arcane caster’s spells. Since SCS wipes out any spellbook on a new spellcaster, it fits nicely into the idea of a physical notebook that an arcane caster carries. Both Imoen and Aerie start here with no actual book, so they build from scratch. It makes perfect sense. Less sense for when I recruit Nalia next, but that’s fine. Its a little tight for now while we are broke (!). But this situation will improve quickly.
  
  I had hoped you would see Brad’s distinctive yellow shield in that last render. But I got a render I Ioved, with no real place to put the shield! I’ve mentioned before my thought on such devices. I think Cantrip Magic makes it pretty easy for any mage to alter the look of adventuring gear. I can easily imagine adventurers adopting their own symbols for family, homeland, faith, or just things they think are cool! So yeah, Brad will carry her traditional shield, at least until she switches over to dual wielding later in the game.

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• atcDave Member Posts: 2,987

  August 18 edited August 22

  Update 22
  
  We set out to find some old contacts of Jaheira’s likely to be found in or about a dive of a bar called the Copper Coronet. I rambled off some tidbits I thought I recalled reading about Athkatla, the city where we currently found ourselves. It is a little bigger than Baldur’s Gate. But while Baldur’s Gate is a free city, Athkatla is the capital city of Amn. Amn is a nation in the ethnic, cultural and political sense. And is prosperous in business and resources. It is currently ruled by the Coucil of Six, formed from the the leading merchant families in the land. Jaheira offered no correction, I assume I’m mostly correct.
  
  Jaheira led us towards a scruffier part of town, a man approached wanting to talk.
  
  
  The man introduced himself as Gaelan Bayle. He said he could help us find Imoen.
  
  Well that was an interesting introduction! He suggested it would be difficult and expensive, but he worked for an association that could make it happen. We would need 40000 gold pieces (!) to get things going. He explained that crossing the Cowled Wizards, who had arrested Imoen, was not a thing to be undertaken lightly. Frustrating, not so long ago I could have come up with that kind of money on demand. At the moment, it would be more complicated. I don’t think the six of us together were worth more than a couple thousand.
  I suggested the difficulty of this. He chuckled. Said I looked like the sort who likely had such funds before, and could do so again. Okay. That was hard to argue with. I asked if he knew of anyone looking for a troop of adventurers…
  He pointed us towards the Copper Coronet. Funny that.
  Yoshimo affirmed what I already suspected, this was the local Thieves’ Guild, the Shadow Thieves, making contact. He had some less than pleasent dealings with them.
  Given what I currently think of the local authorities, I’m not sure the thieves would be any worse.
  
  As we continued walking that way, I saw a woman who matched the description of Nem, the mage we had been told to seek out for help with our broken dagger. Nem opened with saying she could cut a good deal on a salve for a magical rash. Shoot, do I look like I need that? I thought we’d all cleaned up pretty good this morning!
  
  
  We explained our problem, Nem was surprised it was even possible to damage an artifact like the Soul Taker in this way.
  
  I explained we had lost a friend into the blade, and needed her out. Nem would need a few days, with the dagger, to do some research and see what could be done. I was a little worried to let it go, but none of us knew quite what to do with the thing. Nem said she should have our answers in about three days.
  That was apparently as far as we could take that for now.
  
  Approaching the Copper Coronet, it is a huge ramshackle mess of a building. Easily the size of a major warehouse, I think there’s a lot more to this place than “bar”. As we entered I suggested to Yoshimo we part ways for now, I would let him know if we needed his skills again. He seemed hesitant to go, but I’m hesitant to completely trust him. So for now he goes.
  The Copper Coronet is an assault on the senses. It is huge and loud. I could see a large grill cooking up a variety of meats. A huge mass of people, all sorts of people socializing and doing business. A sleezy money lender was right near the door. Several venders had booths set up for business.
  
  
  A woman introduced herself as Nalia. She was frantic, looking for help to free her family home of “monsters”.
  
  Well that sounded right up our alley. Especially since I’m currently thinking we need to make some money. I invited Nalia to join with us and we would make our way to her family home.
  Not two minutes later we met a nobleman, a Lord Jierdan Firkraag, was offering 10000 gold to help free his land of ogres and trolls. Sounds like a couple of similar jobs, of the sort we can do.
  Nalia cautioned Lord Firkraag had a reputationn as a hard man, don’t assume we’ll easily get what he just promised.
  Swell. From here we were near to what looked to be a main business part. I stepped forward to introduce myself to a man who seemed to want to be noticed.
  
  
  Lehtinan said he was the owner of this establishment. He had “all sorts” of entertainment to appeal to every taste and vice.
  
  Oh that doesn’t sound so good. I looked to Jaheira, ‘what are we doing here?’
  
  Well, that wasn’t who she wanted to talk to. A business manager of sorts was nearby.
  
  
  Bernard apologized, Lehtinan was the biggest snake he’d worked for.
  
  He was the one Jaheira had known for many years. He seemed to think the Fire Knives were the best option for going against the Cowled Wizards.
  Now at this point I was a little curious. I don’t mean to look for trouble, really. But it bothered me. What exactly did Lehtinan have going on in his back rooms? Especially since it was clear from the outside, the “back rooms” were expansive. It sounded like gambling at least… if that’s all it is I could walk away. But there was such a moral stench to the man, even apart from the fact he detected as thoroughly evil. Since we had “permission” to check out his den of vice, we would.
  
  It was as bad as anything I’d ever seen.
  
  
  Is this legal here? I mean, its morally repugnant. Is it illegal too?!
  
  It was clear the poor halfling man did not want to fight the troll. I fear I really put Nalia on the defensive for a moment. I think I meant to shut this place down on my own authority either way. But if its illegal, I won’t even have to apologize to anyone for it.
  Nalia was horrified. She clarified, slave pit fights are illegal. Its a little murky if they’re pros, but slavery is illegal in the city. I could feel Aerie’s discomfort and anger growing too.
  Allright, we’re ending this. I led my crew down to the floor to the back of the pits where there were cages for slaves. I met Hendak, a gladiator locked in a cell. Um, we may have killed six guards to talk to him. He was a tribal leader of sorts, there were a dozen of his people locked up with him. Including children. I asked who had the keys. He told me. “We’ll be back.”
  
  
  “I’ll ask nicely once for the keys. Any answer other than ‘here they are ma’am’ will prove fatal.”
  
  He called on a large minotaur and a menagerie of beasts to fight us. But I was right, it was fatal for him.
  We rushed back to the cells and released Hendak and his people. This led to an all out conflict with the various guards in the place.
  The fighting continued out to the front, and Hendak slew Lehtinan.
  I gave the keys to Hendak.
  
  
  Congratulations, I think you own a bar.
  
  Hendak said they held most of thier children at another place in town. He thought there was a tunnel from here to where they were.
  We looked around and found a hidden passage down into the sewers.
  
  
  We found, and battled a couple patrols of hobgoblins. That seemed to indicate we were on the right path.
  
  It lead us to a guarded warehouse.
  
  
  The guards seemed indignent. They were paying protection money to the city guard!
  
  So far, the corruption in this city is easing my conscience about dealing with the thieves to find Imoen.
  There was a holding cell right behind the warehouse, a child had just been thrown in the cell with a troll! We killed the troll, and found a few more cells. We found a total of four kids!
  
  
  I need you guys to wait here just a minute, we will make sure its safe for all of us to get out of here.
  
  It was really hard to hold the kids attention with Minsc standing there.
  But they listened. We cleared out more guards, and a couple mages. Soon we had the building all quiet. We took the kids all back over to the Copper Coronet, to their families.
  We had earned a lifetime discount on all goods and services at the inn. Hey, we can use that! Starting with a good meal and a relaxing evening. I wondered if any city officials or guards (or army) would come looking for us, but they never did.
  In the morning, we set out with Nalia for her family home.
  
  
  We hadn’t even made it out of the city when we were attacked by, bandits?
  
  They had a spellcaster, and a couple of moderately skilled warriors. Higher class bandits than we fought around Baldur’s Gate last year! And they were on us fast. Aerie and Nalia had to scramble to get out of the way. Thankfully they did, and we were all alright.
  
  Continuing on our way, we weren’t too far out of town when we came across a gang of some sort with a captive. They weren’t the talkative sorts, and they attacked us. In the end, it was just us and the captive.
  
  
  But he was not looking too good! Aerie thought he’d been poisoned, but none of her curatives were working for him. He said something about a guarded building back at the docks in Athkatla.
  
  So we weren’t getting out of town yet!
  
  
  We came to the guarded building. The guard named Rylock knew our poisoned man!
  
  Rylock was sure his people could find a treatment, so we left our patient with him.
  
  By this point our day was about shot, so we stopped by an inn for the night.
  
  
  And stepped right into an ambush on Jaheira!
  
  A man, Baron Ployer, claimed Jaheira had ruined him and his family. Now he had his revenge. She had been cursed, and she would waste away. Nothing could save her, he boasted. He teleported out with a great villain’s cackle.
  But I’d noticed, the actual cursing was done by a group of mages. Hired thugs? Nalia suggested we visit the Cowled Wizards office, if the mages were licensed in this city we should be able to find them.
  “Licensed in this city?” This gets more convoluted all the time.
  We set off for the government offices. And were intercepted by a cleric of Waukeen. The goddess of good business had been missing since the Time of Troubles (when I was conceived). But she still has a following. And clergy. They said they had a business offer for a willing group of adventures.
  So far this city seems full of opportunities! We will look into this later.
  At the city hall, we found the representative of the Cowled Wizards. They denied all knowledge of the mages we sought. They were also very unhelpful about where Imoen might be. Well, I won’t tell them we have another source for this information! Funny, they did sell licenses for magic use! I bought one for my team. I won’t have Aerie or Nalia arrested! Even if it galls me to give any money to these toads.
  
  When leaving the city hall, a mage called to us from the shadows. He was wearing the colors of the mages who cursed Jaheira! A talk with him was most illuminating. He suggested the curse could be broken by taking back a locket of Jaheira’s hair currently in Baron Ployer’s possession. He casually mentioned they were under contract to protect Baron Ployer until all his vendetta targets were dead. But for a nominal fee, he could promise they would be busy when Ployer summoned.
  As we concluded our business, he mentioned Ployer had a home in the Slums District. That’s where the Copper Coronet is, so we would check with Jaheira’s friend there to see where he could be found.
  Along the way I asked Jaheira what she had done to the man. He was a commercial slaver. Such is illegal in Athkatla. So she and some friends exposed his business. He was ruined.
  We found Bernard and asked about this man. Jaheira learned she was the last of her old friends still living. Bernard had some thoughts about where Ployer might be found, and we set after him.
  
  
  I am not the vindictave type. But it did give some pleasure to have Ployer at a complete disadvantage.
  
  Especially amusing when his summoned help did not materialize. I think I had convinced him the smart move was to surrender? But Jaheira ended him. I won’t criticize her for that, she chose justice over mercy which I believe was her right. And we found the locket, Jaheira was free.
  
  Now we really did need a rest. We stayed the night at the Copper Coronet. And set out, again, for Nalia’s home in the morning.
  
  
  You failed to mention your family home was a pretty good sized castle. What exactly are we facing here?
  
  Trolls. And Yuan-Ti? Those always ill tempered snake men? We’ve not faced those before.
  There was a stockade off to the side. The survivors of the castle garrison, maybe a dozen troops, were held up here. They reported the trolls had kept inside the last few days, but they were all that was left of the garrison.
  Nalia lead us to a sally port, so we could enter the castle covertly.
  
  
  We entered into a store room. A troll was trying to get a servant.
  
  We killed the troll, but not before it killed the servant. Of course Nalia knows her staff. This was particularly horrifying to her.
  We pushed through the ground floor, and killed eight trolls? They killed another servant before our eyes. But one older man was kept safe. We worked our way out to the gatehouse, to let the surviving troops back in. They could help secure spaces as we cleared them.
  
  
  Minsc and Amyntor opened the drawbridge while I waved the troops in.
  
  After meeting them at the entrance, I was sure we had the first floor cleared. The second floor of the keep had all the residences.
  
  
  It also had more trolls and yuan-ti.
  
  We were able to rescue a couple of isolated guards, and an unpleasant (!) aunt of Nalia’s. But really, we’ve found very few signs of survivors. And not a whole lot of attackers? Nalia thought they had to be in the cellers.
  
  Oh yes they were! We battled quite a few. Especially more trolls.
  
  
  Their main holdout seemed to be the old family chapel, where we battled the huge troll chieftain.
  
  This was a tough fight! Trolls are fearsome anyway, the monsterous chieftain required a lot from all of us. Plus he had a couple of giant trolls with him.
  
  We won. But the damage done was horrible. There were many dead in this room, including Nalia’s father. Her grief was undisguised and we cleared her out as quickly as we could after. This was also where the soldiers and much of the household staff we hadn’t seen yet lay dead. This fortress, this home had been ruined.
  
  
  I sat with Nalia for a long time after. Nothing was said. The surviving soldiers set to work clearing out wreckage. And they were so careful to keep the worst sights away from Nalia.
  
  I appreciated what a thoughtful and engaged crew Nalia’s father had recruited and trained here.
  After a while, maybe an hour, Nalia’s first action was to hand the agreed payment to me. And she thanked me for helping her.
  I asked what more we could do? This land and the people had suffered a horrible loss, and now they were exposed to a dangerous world. Nalia smiled, sadly! “Oh I have a thought, its a big ask.”
  “Know that I will help however I can.”
  “Well, under Amnian law I am betrothed to a spoiled brat of a nobleman whom I loathe.”
  “You know I’m married.”
  “HAH! Oh that would go over well. No I uh, have no real rights where the marriage is concerned. And as a mage I can’t rule in my father’s stead. [Odd law, I’d never heard of that before.] But I am his executor. I can bequeath the castle and its lands… to you.”
  “What?!”
  “Yeah, well, you’d be a steward of sorts. You’d rule in the De’Arnise family name. Brad you’re one of the finest, noblest people I’ve ever met. I would be honored to have you and your husband take the position.”
  “Give me some time. We’ll talk about this more tomorrow. Amyntor and I should talk, and you and I will need to talk more. For now, let’s help your guys move some stuff around.”
  
  And we did. It was an exhausting afternoon. We cleared out broken stuff from all over the castle. Jaheira volunteered to lead a team to remove bodies for burial. I thanked her for taking on such an awful, thankless job.
  And the next day, Nalia and I talked more. I was obviously much concerned about finding Imoen, and Skie for that matter. And I would probably need to ensure Irenicus could no longer cause us grief. And I told her of the need my husband and I both felt to make things right wherever we saw evil and injustice. Finally, I told her I was a Bhaalspawn. That surprised her! But it didn’t seem to bother her.
  
  
  Later that day, Nalia introduced Amyntor and I as the new Stewards of De’Arnise Castle and its lands.
  
  Wow. That was a big thing! I looked over the dozen remaining soldiers, a few surviving Castle staff. Nalia’s aunt huffed and said I was no better than the trolls, she stormed off. Can’t please ’em all!
  
  
  We spent a few more hours that afternoon going over what all we would need to do, what our role would be.
  
  The next day we had business to see to in Athkatla. I had a beautiful, and very effective Flail that would be my new primary weapon. But honestly, I’m not strong enough to use it ordinarily; I need to cast Draw Upon Holy Might, or drink a Giant Strength Potion or something. We actually amassed a lot of stuff in all these fights the last couple days, arms, armor and miscellaneous magic *stuff* are all worth money. We need to save money to get to Imoen, we also need money to be a more effective team, and now we need money to repair a Castle and all that comes with it.
  Fortunately there seems to be a lot of work available just now. Nem should have a report for us on the Soul Taker Dagger. We fought a small group of Slavers and have some leads on more of them who need rooting out. We met with a man who wanted us to help look into some uncurable poisons that have been used in town (like the guy we returned to the docks.) There’s a few other things that have come up. And now we will need to check back in at the Castle periodically. Fortunately it is only a few hours from Athkatla.
  It could be easy to feel overwhelmed. there is so much to see to in the immediate future. Well, Amyntor and I wanted to set things right in Faerun.
  
  *****
  
  This is such a huge Update for the team. The only levels gained were Aerie hit 11th level Mage and Nalia hit 12th level Mage. Neither is a huge thing.
  
  But we got stuff… Amyntor bought the mace Mauler’s Arm. That will give him an 18 Strength. That’s not hugely strong, but it does give him a constant Strength bonus. He will wield it with the sword Varscona for now. He also got +1 plate mail, an improvement over the chain mail. Both of these changes should show up in his future renders.
  Brad is specialized in Flail, even though she can’t use one without a little boost. We now have the Flail of Ages, probably the best weapon available this early in the game. So Brad bought a Girdle of Hill Giant Strength. That and the Flail are a huge boost to her melee effectiveness. The Flail should also appear in her next renders.
  
  The next couple updates will focus on a number of side missions in the area. Including I think, the expanded “Cost of a Girl’s Soul” mod and the all new “Poisoned Pathways” mod. This should be fun!

  Post edited by atcDave on August 22

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• atcDave Member Posts: 2,987

  August 21 edited August 21

  Update 23
  
  The first part of this is from Lava’s “Skie: Cost of One Girl’s Soul” mod. This is an excellent resolution to the tragedy at the end of Baldur’s Gate: Siege of Dragonspear. If you’ve played this before, just know the main action element of the story has been expanded. Really in a clever and well done way. It should be satisfying for most of us who were a bit annoyed with the end of SoD *that provided no resolution!*
  
  This write-up is NOT spoiler free.
  
  *****
  
  We walked over toward the Copper Coronet and quickly found Nem. She did have something to report for us. She thought it possible to send us into the dagger to make a rescue. But there were some “buts”. I was a little squeemish over all this. But I was driven by knowing Skie was an innocent caught up in *my* drama. If this goes well, one day I will need to talk with Skie about *so many* people who sacrificed in different ways to get her back. I myself will carry a minor but permanent scar from this.
  
  We were ready, and Nem gated us into the dagger. We quickly knew we were in the right place. The small pocket dimension felt like the inside of the dagger, don’t ask me to explain that!
  
  
  And we saw images, phantasms? Something. We saw Skie standing in several locations. Like she was omnipresent here.
  
  Soon we found the pocket dimension had its own pockets.
  
  
  We entered each in turn, seven total, and fought more phantasms from Skie’s own life, drama, conflicts.
  
  I would need to know Skie better to know what all we fought for her. But after a different battle for each little pocket, we sensed Skie’s own soul approach. I reached out to touch, and willingly transfered a spark of myself to restore her wholeness.
  We found ourselves transported back home.
  We talked to Nem, and she thought if Skie had received any form of Raise Dead since she was slain (I know she had, before we ever left Dragonspear Castle) she should return to life. Nothing else needed doing. I’m sure Entar Silvershield will be thrilled and shocked to see his daughter return to him! I would have liked to see that.
  
  We just heard from a young messenger, the nearby town of Trademeet has fallen under attack by Druids. There was a plea for help and promise of reward, that hardly mattered. Jaheira already decided we needed to head out at once. I wasn’t arguing with her!
  
  The town of Trademeet is further east than De’Arnise Castle, so it was a longer hike.
  
  
  We arrived just as wild animals were tearing into the Trademeet guard.
  
  They seemed like a well enough equipped force, but they were overwhelmed and taking casualties.
  
  
  We met with High Merchant Logan Coprith, the title and name of the mayor of Trademeet.
  
  He was certain druids were behind their trouble. He knew because they had one, Cernd, in custody. The townsfolk wanted him lynched, but the mayor was sure Cernd had nothing to do with their problems, he held him for his own protection. We were granted immediate access to talk with the druid. He said, a group of shadow druids were behind the problems. And he had been sent to investigate. We had permission to escort Cernd out of town, he pointed out the location of an old druid grove he thought had been claimed by the shadow druids.
  Before leaving town, we also learned trade was being restricted by a group of Dao Djinn. They were hunting a Rakshasa somewhere in the area, and would not let trade resume until they had the monster… or her head.
  
  So Trademeet had two pressing problems. We would see what we could do.
  
  As we approached the area of the druid grove, we were warned by another druid that these lands had been taken over. And he could not garuntee our safety if we continued. Well, safety isn’t really our business.
  
  We found quite a few trolls nearby! Another group almost as big as the group we had routed out of De’Arnise. That was an exhausting start.
  Then we came across some shadow druids.
  
  
  Hah, yeah, well… actually I was “Held” first thing. A shadow druid whacked me in the head with a club a couple of times.
  
  By the time Amyntor put a stop to that I needed a “Heal” spell, my ears were ringing and I had a splitting headache.
  But we removed a group of four druids. We were not even done healing up when four more shadow druids came along. This fight went quicker and better for us. For me.
  
  We crossed a large stone bridge and there was a stone farmhouse. Not what we’d expected see out here, between troll and druid lands.
  The barn was open so we entered for a look around, we saw one woman near the door. I started to ask if she knew where the shadow druids might be…
  
  
  “I smell Dao Djinn on you!” [this is a place holder for a video render!]
  
  A rakshasa is immediately more intimidating than say, a werewolf. They are big and fierce, resistant to a lot of magic, and feast on human flesh. And this one had two other partners with her. Seriously this was a harder fight than the eight druids we just faced, although I had less of a headache after.
  
  We took a break and rested up after this, we were pretty well drained from a series of tough fights. Fortunately no one came hunting for us during our rest.
  The next day we made our way towards the druid grove, it wasn’t far from here at all. There was a holy site of standing stones, and a cave entrance beyond. Three shadow druids challenged us at the stones. This was maybe a leadership cadre? They seemed dangerous and well equipped. Then we entered the cave.
  
  
  I recognized Faldorn. She was with the shadow druids we had met back in the Cloakwood Forest. Although she had stood back from the fighting that time.
  
  She seemed more radical and hateful than before. No doubt! She was trying to destroy Trademeet. Jaheira stepped forward to face this herself. She scolded Faldorn for loosing sight of the “old ways”, and challenged her under their druidic rules for leadership of this grove.
  Jaheira has become such a fearsome warrior, Faldorn was in completely over her head and was destroyed quickly.
  
  But this led to another great sadness for me. Jaheira felt a strong calling to stay and restore this grove. I wouldn’t argue with her about it. I knew she still grieved on a deep level. And chasing me all over Faerun would not lead to her finding peace. She wouldn’t find it at De’Arnise Castle, or in Athkatla.
  
  
  Jaheira and I handle goodbyes differently.
  
  I will miss my friend. Now the good news is, she won’t be far. We will see each other again. But Jaheira was never extremely “social”. Her strong and steady presence has long been a blessing for me, I will miss that daily. But she won’t drop by for a chat. Hopefully she will if she needs me.
  
  We returned to Trademeet. The Djinn got the rakshasa head they wanted. And the Druid attacks had ended. We were all proclaimed heroes of the town, we were rewarded and feted. It is a beautiful thing to feel appreciated! And I didn’t hear the word “Bhaalspawn” once.
  
  After a well earned rest in a fine inn, we returned to our castle. Our home. We got there just in time to deal with an angry merchant. He reported bandits had destroyed a convoy of his on our lands. He demanded either restitution for his lost goods or he would call in all the debts and mortgages he held in De’Arnise lands!
  Huh. I’ve never been in such a situation before! I didn’t much like his “or else”, and I had seen no proof this happened on De’Arnise lands.
  We negotiated and agreed we would buy out all the debts he currently held in this land. We had also determined our major domo knew of a couple mercenary companies in the area. So we would hire one of them to suppress bandit activity.
  I find it a little embarassing for us to be hiring mercenaries. This led to a long discussion once the merchant had been sent on his way, satisfied.
  
  
  “So as of now we have a total of less than a dozen soldiers in our employ?”
  
  Yeah that was not good, and we had seen the need for troops both here and over in Trademeet. Nalia said her father used to employ closer to thirty, full time and permanent.
  We talked for hours about finding and equipping more troops, and raising a militia. I think this so important to give the citizens some “buy in” on the safety of their homes. They should also feel safer if they are trained to help with their own security.
  For starters, Amyntor and I committed that our “share” of the taxes would be 100% folded into the local defense budget.
  Obviously a lot for us to work through. And right now we are pulled in so many directions. We have information about slavers in Athkatla we should act on before it goes stale. Tomorrow…
  
  *****
  
  Obviously a little bit of “head canon” is at play here. The game doesn’t actually allow for such a friendly parting of ways with Jaheira. But I think that’s nuts. Leaving her to restore the Druid Grove near Trademeet is such an obvious thing for her to do. And I don’t normally do it! I like having Jaheira with me to the end. But I have some other ideas for this run. So Brad’s *dear friend* Jaheira will stay nearby on druid business.
  
  I also wanted to mention a little about the rakshasa video. There were two reference images going into it, one I often use for Brad, and a new one for the rakshasa itself. I used the old monster manual description of a rakshasa, then modified it a little for being a she-cat. Funny, I got three that were actually quite racy. But there was this one, a tiger lady in psuedo-arabian dress with fur and stripes all over. WOW! One complaint, her hands were plainly just human hands. So I fed the image back into GPT 2.0 and said “make the hands more paw-like. No other changes.” Perfect, just perfect.
  Then I did a complete verbal desciption of the scene with just those two images as reference. It wasn’t quite what I expected. In my mind’s eye, Brad and the “peasant woman” faced each other. Then she changed into her natural form. The renderer had its own ideas. But dang, I think this is the best video render I’ve had yet. Just awesome stuff.
  
  There are two (!) video renders in this update! Check out the update with videos here, or catch up on the whole thing.

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• atcDave Member Posts: 2,987

  August 24

  Update 24
  
  We set out to get back to the city the next morning. We had slavers to hunt, this would be of particular importance to our new friend Aerie.
  She spent the early part of the walk this morning chatting with Minsc, that was a bit of a surprise.
  
  
  I’m not sure what all they talked about, but at one point Minsc loudly proclaimed he had a new witch!
  
  It is great to see our friends all getting along, and I think this was a big deal for Minsc to have a new purpose in life. A big deal for Aerie too, she has quickly become a dear friend.
  
  
  As we continued on Aerie shared the emotional story of how she became a slave.
  
  
  Aerie is an Avariel, a winged elf. She loved the freedom and beauty of flying. But one day, while flying among the clouds, she saw something awful down below. A caravan was under attack.
  
  She saw a young child break away, and try to run off, but an attacking archer had seen him!
  
  
  She intervened to let the child get away. She was shot for her trouble.
  
  These attackers were slavers. Aerie was taken, and sold to a circus. There, she never received proper treatment for her injuries. And eventually, as her wings attrophied, they grew infected and had to be sawn from her body.
  Aerie still has scars on her body and mind. She carries much pain and grief.
  But she is a beautiful soul, and somehow still puts others first. She is never slow to provide aid, and she is a wonderful team-mate.
  
  When we got back to Athkatla we found a group of slavers in the act of murdering some City Guardsmen. They were the guards responsible for protecting the slaver operation we undid a few days ago. We interrupted their executions, and met Laravyl, apparently second in command of the local slavers. And it was she who had shot Aerie all those years back. We slew most of them, but Laravyl escaped.
  This also led to meeting a man named Trent, who has been actively fighting slavery in Athkatla. A city where it is *supposed to be* illegal. He asked our help in routing out this particularly noxious and well entrenched gang. He sent us to talk with a merchant named Arben, who was in possession of an item wanted by the slavers.
  Arben was wary of who we were, and asked us if first we would find an item held by some slaver leaders at the Five Flagons Inn.
  
  
  That was an exciting little fight.
  
  They outnumbered us. And I felt the absence of Jaheira up front. But we soon had them down.
  These two fights left us in need of a night at an inn! Which led to an unexpected interuption…
  
  
  “Hi Brad! Miss me?”
  “Skie? Um yes, but can we continue this in the morning?”
  
  How did she find us? Anyway, big surprise, Skie said she was eager to do some shopping at Waukeen’s Promenade. We agreed to meet there in the morning.
  
  
  It was great to see Skie looking so… not dead.
  
  And she really was most excited about the shopping opportunities in The City of Coin. I asked if she would join with us for a while, for more than shopping. She was horrified to learn of Imoen’s disappearence, and actually seemed eager to help us with that.
  I find Skie a curiousity. In conversation she often seems vapid, and she does not seem much interested in the life of adventuring or righting wrongs. But she is always ready to come along and help. A committed party girl who is helpful in spite of herself?
  I admit, I am hugely relieved not to have the cloud of “murderer” hanging over me anymore. Skie will tell anyone I didn’t kill her! I just hope traveling together is a good idea.
  
  From here we met with Arben whose booth was in Waukeen’s Promenade. He suggested a meet by the Copper Coronet, away from prying eyes.
  That was a mess. The slavers intercepted our meeting, they killed Arben and ran off with the magic item.
  We reported all this back to Trent. As an aside, he revealed he was the boy Aerie had once intervened to save. I think, that helped Aerie find some peace for how her time as a slave had been. She was staring right at the fruits of her labor.
  But now Trent needed us to stop the slavers whom he thought were after an artifact in the City Graveyard.
  
  
  Another exciting little spat.
  
  These slavers have proven to be a tough challenge. Their tactical training is better than most such gangs we’ve seen.
  My biggest concern at the moment is that Skie seems poorly equipped for her role on the team. She has mastery of the Short Bow, and is specialized in Short Sword. So first and foremost she is an archer. Ideally, she should be an emergency rearguard to protect Aerie and Nalia. But she is not very muscular, tall but lighter build than I. That may limit what armor she can wear. But we need her in something better than the leather armor she has been wearing. Its just too light for when she is forced to melee.
  So we stopped back by the Promenade.
  
  
  We bought her some magical Splint Armor.
  
  This is a less common sort of armor, maybe most like Scale Mail but with bigger metal plates sewn onto leather padding. With chain protecting the joints. Its sort of a compromise armor, lighter than plate armor but better protection (especially against arrows!) than chain mail. Yeah, we’re getting Skie ready for the long haul.
  
  Now we needed to get back to Trent. We shouldn’t have dallied! We found a large force of slavers at his Inn, and he was already gone. Another large fight, over a dozen of them this time!
  But one, a mage, was a leader of sorts and he had correspondence on him he should not have. I’d knock the guy for poor operational security, but he already paid with his life. We learned exactly where “Lord Paxis” had ordered Trent taken to. It was THE main base of operations back in the slums district.
  Our resources are still not as deep as they had once been, but we had a few potions, and a few prep spells we could cast. We got as ready as we could before storming the compound.
  
  
  This was a huge and difficult fight.
  
  Lord Praxis himself was there, and he was a tough warrior. Laravyl was also present, she is a wicked dangerous archer. One of the items we’d been trying to retrieve was a Wand of Paralysis that Lord Praxis used against us. Shortly after battle was joined he took Aerie and Nalia completely out of the fight.
  The rest of us had an epic brawl. We used *a lot* of Healing potions. In the end we won, and we rescued Trent. That really made Aerie happy!
  But there were some down sides, apart from the pure cost of resources. Laravyl escaped again. She bragged about being the chief of this operation now, but I think that was an empty boast. Trent thinks *this* operation has been destroyed.
  And we needed to make a run to the Temple District. Minsc needed help we could not provide. We had the Temple of Lathander cast a Raise Dead on him. He will be fine. But I can see the fatigue in his eyes.
  Don’t get me wrong, Minsc is not the introspective sort. He’ll be fine. But he’s lost so much in my service. I think I will ask something else of him soon, something that will let *me* sleep better at night.
  
  As we were concluding business at the Temple we received a messenger. Nalia’s father was being interred, and a funeral would be held the next morning at the cemetary.
  
  We decided to spend the night at the Copper Coronet, which was near our friend Gaelan Bayle’s residence. We stopped by to offer the payment the thief had required to do business. We now have been given contact information for Aran Linvail, the Guildmaster of the Shadow Thieves. This should be interesting.
  
  The next morning, it was off to the cemetary. We were a little underdressed. Especially Nalia! But I think she was proud of that.
  
  
  Nalia had a tense discussion with Isaea Roenall, her fiance.
  
  And one of the most unpleasant sorts I’ve ever met. He takes her rejection as a personal insult, although somehow I think his frustration has more to do with prestige and power. He is plainly up to trouble.
  
  Yeah, trouble. After leaving the funeral he had Nalia arrested. I’m not sure what all the legal grounds were, but I think it hardly mattered. I gather he carries considerable authority in Athkatla, and can parse the charges any which way he chooses. One of his men covertly named an associate of Isaea’s we might want to look into. Funny, betrayed by one of his own men. His high handed behavior almost garuntees that sort of outcome.
  Anyway, we tugged on a few loose threads of Isaea’s life and soon had evidence of his involvement in smuggling, piracy AND slavery.
  
  So a quick march over to Government Offices in Athkatla, and I was able to corner Isaea’s boss for a word.
  That had a desired outcome.
  
  
  “The mighty Isaea Roenall. Mess with me and mine *punk* and you will lose every time.”
  
  Did I talk smack correctly? Isaea’s boss was seriously not amused by his crimes. I don’t think he will cause us anymore trouble. We had Nalia back with us before she had even seen the inside of a cell.
  
  When we were over by the Temples yesterday we had been asked to look into a new cult that had sprung up in town. We will, not yet. But we knew a paladin was to help us with that task. I have learned he is a capable and respected man in these parts. So I wanted to talk with him before we returned to De’Arnise tonight.
  
  
  So we tracked down Keldorn. He is an older and accomplished Paladin of Torm.
  
  Our meeting was agreeable and he will join with our team, with the understanding we WILL look into that cult!
  
  We bought some horses to make these trips to and from the Castle go a little quicker. We have more business in town, but we also need to stay on top of the needs of De’Arnise. These people are in dire need, and we don’t have nearly the money to fix all that is wrong yet.
  We have tasked the Captain of the Guard with bringing in new recruits.
  
  
  And we asked Minsc to oversee training and conditioning of the guard. And for now, we are so understaffed, I wanted him to take point if the urgent need arises.
  
  Oh I hope we won’t regret that! Minsc was surprisingly agreeable to this. We’ve seen so much together. And he has the right to see things through with Irenicus. Maybe I’m still just a little disturbed by seeing so many arrows sticking out of him. But I do expect us all to have a future together as friends too. Its frustrating to be pulled in different directions.
  
  Its back to the City in the morning.
  
  *****
  
  Funny how you can do a small amount of game and have so much story involved. And this time, only Nalia’s little story is a part of game canon.
  The whole extended slaver story is from the “Wings” mod, its all Aerie’s story. There are a number of fights with the slavers that are a little tricky. Most are not “hard”, except the last one is a doozy! And its mostly just excellent encounter design. You face mixed parties that are well deployed with warriors, archers and spellcasters. Not a whole lot of experience or treasure. But you will need to pay attention to your tactics. Especially that fight against Praxis!
  And of course the return of Skie is from “Skie: The Cost of One Girl’s Soul”. I complicated that a little by recreating her as a Fighter. As I’ve said before, I’ll say she was never a thief. She never was when I knew her! My first awareness of her is as the Flaming Fist’s most unlikely recruit. They would have trained her as a warrior. So my Skie is a little different from canon, starting with not being dead.
  
  Having the team buy horses is another head canon thing. Of course horses are not implimented in the game. But it occured to me as I did that render of the whole team walking back to Athkatla. That travel time between De’Arnise Castle and the City is listed as Four hours. How stupid is it to be walking that all the time! So *we* will all know, my team rides. Seriously, why would you not buy horses for the Castle? That should halve most travel times.
  As I’ve mentioned before, there also a few little things, minor quests getting done that are not mentioned in the narrative. We amassed the required fee for the thieves fairly quickly. Now Brad is going to build her team’s strength. Buying more key items including more scrolls, potions, ammunition. Wise things for any adventuring band to keep with them. The next few updates will involve four adventure mods before we set off to rescue Imoen.

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• atcDave Member Posts: 2,987

  August 30

  Update 25
  
  This will be an update with all mod content. The team is now partnered with the Shadow Thieves to find Imoen. But since I had the cost of cooperation turned up a little it cost a lot! So now Brad is focused on earning some coin so they can equip themselves better for their ongoing adventures.
  
  The team is also nearing its final form now. Last time they added two new team mates.
  
  
  Skie and Keldorn have joined the team.
  
  Skie comes by way of Lava’s “Cost of One Girl’s Soul” mod to finish the story from SoD. I have re-imagined her as a single class Fighter… her only actual training and experience comes from her time with the Flaming Fists. She will primarily be an archer, but can also be the rear guard’s emergency defender.
  Of course Keldorn is a classic character. A wise and good natured veteran paladin. He primarily uses the two-handed sword Lilacor for now. But I just know he’ll have a better sword than that!
  
  
  The team ready to go from De’Arnise.
  
  *****
  
  The next morning we met up with the mage Thalass down by the docks. He had a cog ready to take us out to the isle where the light house stood. It had gone dark, and the small rocky isle was a navagation hazard with no light. So we will see what’s going on.
  
  
  First thing off the boat we were attacked by Scrags, sea trolls.
  
  It seems they were bewitched by a siren who we also had to fight. We followed a trail around the edge of the isle, that gradually sloped upwards. We could see the dark tower was up higher yet. We fought another small group of scrags commanded by a siren. Are sirens behind whatever has happened here?
  We came to a split in the trail, to the right would take us up to the light house. But a cave loomed ahead. I decided we would first check the cave.
  
  This was home to several more sirens.
  
  
  A siren queen and her court awaited us.
  
  The leader stood on a large crab shaped platform. There were several other sirens in the cave, and more scrags under their control.
  At this point most of the team is resistent or immune to the type of Charm the sirens have, so the scrags were the bigger threat. That is, this was not a big threat.
  
  We traveled up towards the darkened light house. Here we fought a hag and some more scrags. A mage way up at the top of the lighthouse offered taunts. It took a few minutes, but we succeeded in clearing things away.
  
  
  The door at the base of the tower was wholly crusted over in barnacles!
  
  Nalia had discoved an odd magical crab claw back in the siren cave, and now she was figuring out its purpose. The Identify spell had told her “digging”, and now she had a good idea of *what*. The magical claw cleared out the doorway pretty quickly.
  Inside, we faced a mage, a guardian. Fortunately he had several scrolls on his person that let us figure out what was happening here. Some dark cult was planning to sacrifice the light house’s light element to open a permanent portal to the shadow world. We would need to get there to stop them!
  The interior of the tower was heavily trapped, Nalia was working hard for us today! We found exactly where the tower light was supposed to be, its mount was empty. Back on the ground floor there had been a locked, sealed trap door on the floor. We found a special key where the mage had been staying, that let us through the trap door. This was plainly a place of dark magic, some twisted process. Aerie discerned that we needed to replicate a brick of pure shadow here.
  
  
  This brick of shadow matter let us find a gateway into a shadow realm.
  
  The world we stepped into looked exactly like the isle we had left, except it was all in dark shadow. We explored slowly, it was dark! And found our way back to the curving path back down to the dock.
  
  
  We fought what seemed like dark shadows of what we had fought before, sirens and scrags.
  
  Siren’s and scrags wholly turned to darkness.
  As we neared the dock, we could dimly see a great temple raising where our ship had been.
  
  
  It was guarded by shadows and shadow beasts.
  
  Atop the main platform, a cult was summoning a being of pure evil and anarchy, Tharizdun! Oh I’ve read that name before. An ancient evil. His true agenda is unknown, at least in the works I’d read. But we could all feel his evil.
  
  
  We battled a fragment, or a sending (?) of the demi-god.
  
  It was a brutal and exhausting fight. In the end, we had destroyed the cult and the fragment of Tharizdun. And we found, wrapped on an altar, the light for the light house.
  
  We rushed back to the tower and back to our own world. We were able to disable the access to the shadow realm. For how long? We don’t know. We took the light back up to the top of the tower.
  
  
  Things just seemed right as we restored the beacon.
  
  It was good to get back to Athkatla after this trip into the dark.
  We are still a little light on funds. I suggested some exploring around town the next day. We can maybe pick up a few little chores, which will mean more resources.
  Our first stop the next day was near one of the gates out of the city. This time to the south, where a small community had sprung up around the gate. This lead to a few little errands we could do, we found a couple of merchents with some useful gear. The main thing here came to be an adventure around a cursed book! As a child of Candlekeep, you just know I had to investigate a cursed book!
  
  
  You’re funny Brad, I thought every book was cursed. But this turned out to be a big thing!
  
  Yeah it was. We stopped a spirit that fed off people’s darker impulses.
  
  Then Nalia was eager to show us Oak Isle. Its an older community, once seperate from Athkatla that has now been absorbed into the greater city. It was a quiet but scenic little part of town. But their tree was sick! Guess what! It was another big deal! A sort of undeath was seaping into the tree. It was a domestic tragedy, a murder that is the business of that small community. But we helped solve it, and had to put an ancient dragon spirit back to rest.
  
  
  Sometimes these adventures take some very odd turns.
  
  But its nice when not everything involves bashing heads.
  
  We did some shopping back at the Promenade after. Aerie came out the best, we have her in a pretty old but powerful robe worn by an ancient mage… andI think I won’t mention his name here…
  
  
  Because mages can’t wear armor when they cast, they are often the must vulnerable part of any team. Aerie’s new robe will provide some protection for her, and actually helps speed up some of her spellcasting.
  
  I don’t begin to understand how all that works! But then, that’s why I couldn’t follow my father’s footsteps. Dang it! This was about Aerie’s new dress then I get all weepy…
  
  *****
  
  It amuses me that a team with Skie on it will involve periodic fashion shows.

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• atcDave Member Posts: 2,987

  September 4

  Update 26
  
  The bulk of this update will be a brief runthrough of Acifer’s latest mod, Poisoned Pathways. I don’t set out to either be spoiler free or spill the beans on everything. This is an adventurer’s journal. So just be warned, if you wish to be spoiler-free, this may reveal some secrets. If you’re looking for spoilers, I will make no effort to provide them. I’m sure I can disappoint both sorts!
  
  *****
  
  Several days back, after we had returned the poisoned Renfeld to his home base in the docks of Athkatla, we had a brief discussion with a man named Merethan. He was a priest of Eldath, the Goddess of Peace and Tranquility. He was greatly concerned that someone was selling a poison that could not be treated through magic or herbalism. A perfectly deadly toxin. He had provided us with a name of a shady merchant who he was sure had sold some of this poison. He wanted to know the source, but he himself was too well known in these parts to do such a thing.
  So it fell on the outsider to do some spy work. Through this, uh, thoroughly distasteful merchant we arranged a meeting to buy this super poison. We took this information to Merethan.
  
  
  He asked that we accompany him to Toadstool Hollow for the meeting we had set up.
  
  Yeah, I can’t blame him for not wanting to poke into this alone. Toadstool Hollow was an ambush. We defeated it, but not before Merethan was struck by an incurably poisoned arrow. We found one other such arrow with the poison, and wrapped it carefully for someone more knowledgable than us to take a look at it.
  But it was too late for Merethan. As the poison took him he gave us directions to Duskwood Dell, an Eldathan sanctuary. There the Fallskeeper Alatoasz Berendim would know what to do about the poison.
  
  
  None of us had ever seen such a place before!
  
  Duskwood Dell is beautiful. I wish… I wish life was this simple. In this hidden glen the Eldathans do live an idyllic sort of life. They reject all violence. At least in this one case they will be helpful too. Fallskeeper Berendim was able to identify the poison. Sort of. He was sure its origin had something to do with Elven magic. There are several failed or failing Mythals in this area. That is, the magic that protects elven settlements. He thinks our answers will lie in one of them. We helped him track down some research matierial, specifically an ancient book held at the Temple of Oghma in Athkatla.
  And he narrowed down the possibilities. He tasked us to seek out a flower known as Groveglove from the ruins of Myth Unnohyr. Sound like fun…
  
  
  No doubt entering an elven ruin is eerie.
  
  The magics that once protected, and hid the place had been corrupted and fouled. As near as we could tell, the city would be a wild magic zone by day and dead magic by night.
  
  
  And the Tree-Ents that once stood guard are now undead monstrosities.
  
  
  Will-o’-wisps are a particularly odd thing to battle.
  
  They are apparently just balls of shimmering light. But they can kill with their magical energies. And they never appear singly, on several occasions we were faced with six or more of them at once.
  
  We had several encounters related to the deceased former residents and guardians. We found some useful magic items. And we were able to craft an amulet that would let *one of us* cast spells in spite of the Mythal’s wild/dead properties. We gave that to Aerie, since she can cast both arcane and divine spells. We also discovered that some of the abandoned homes provided protection from the magical energies outside. This came in handy as we did need to recooperate a couple times during our exploring.
  We also encountered patrols of Yuan-ti, those vicious snake-men. There had been a couple of them at the ambush that claimed Merethan. We took that to mean we were on the right trail. We did find a tower with an entrance blocked by toxic vapors gushing forth. Some more exploring and we found a ward, an item that would let us pass the vapors.
  
  Inside, we found a Groveglove plant. Obviously we would need that! But we heard someone working on the next floor.
  
  
  He was at the ambush! He killed Merethan!
  
  He was a priest of Talona, the Lady of Poison. Fitting. He bragged about his deadly concoction, and promised to kill us.
  He started casting dark magic, and somehow gated in a number of Chasme, giant demon bugs. Because of the wild magic outside we’d been unable to do much prep before hand. And the nature of this setting led to us being somewhat cut off from each other.
  
  
  What a mess.
  
  We won, although we fought in pairs or singly. It was very hard to support each other until the very end.
  And this place was putrid and vile. We grabbed the Groveglove, a few trinkets and some notes we’d taken.
  And hurried back to Alatoasz in Duskwood Dell.
  
  We stayed to help with errands and chores in getting an antidote for this stuff. We needed blessings from two different priests back in Athkatla, and some sacred water from right here in the Dell.
  
  
  We have spent a lot of time on the trail these last several days. Amyntor, Aerie and I have little riding experience. We’re all getting sore in new places!
  
  Finally the last step had to be completed back in the original lab in Myth Unnohyr. We did that too.
  In the end we all knew we had done something good and important. But we were tired! It was good to head back to De’Arnise for a couple days.
  
  We had a good time there, together. But we did have one unwanted visitor.
  
  
  Lord Roenall stopped by to lay his claim, that this land was HIS because of the non-marriage between Nalia and his son.
  
  What a blow hard. I wonder if he’s ever even swung that pretty sword of his. We handled his son and we can handle him.
  After, I talked with Minsc and Captain Cernak. They report training and recruiting are coming along well. Good. Hopefully, with a ready army Lord Roenall will decide this is more trouble than he wants. So far, he’s very hung up the idea since Amyntor and I aren’t nobles we can’t lead.
  
  Now, I think its time to hunt some vampires for Aran Linvail.
  
  *****
  
  The Fighter Stronghold missions are funny, they have a notoriously buggy timer. Most playthroughs I’ve done since I started running more mods have been a bust. Typically nothing after Episode Three (the priest of Tempus) ever launches at all. I think maybe two of my last six runs have had any Stronghold Episodes after that. So I was pleased when this came up! I did speed up the timer (via Tweaks mod) figuring I would know sooner if it would work or not. And there it is! I think this is the first time I’ve ever had Lord Roenall visit before heading after Imoen. Of course I’ve dawdled a little on this run, Poisoned Pathways was a time consuming adventure with all that running around.
  
  And I would add, Poisoned Pathways is fun adventure. Its the same extremely high quality we’ve come to expect from Acifer. It is far shorter than Throne of the Mad God or Call of the Lost Goddess. The core of it is a little longer than Dark Tidings, but then there is a lot of running around. Errands and chores to finish things up. That was sort of fun too, it feels like you’re a part of something big.

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• atcDave Member Posts: 2,987

  September 9

  Update 27
  
  Vampires. Vampires have come to be a major part of our story. When we first awoke in Irenicus’ lab in Athkatla we came across a vampire battling a group of thieves. This would be more important than we knew at the time.
  
  The local thieves’ guild, the Shadow Thieves, were in a desperate struggle with a coven of vampires. That struggle played out in the streets of Athkatla. Innocent people got caught up in that conflict.
  I shouldn’t have to explain why we chose a side in this fight before we even knew all the details. But I’ve heard people say some amazing and ridiculous things, so here it is; vampires are a pure and utter evil. They see the living, every single one of us, as prey. As food. They aren’t stupid, they can be tempting or even seductive. But make no mistake, they are evil. I will fight a vampire on almost any occasion. Even when it means I’m protecting thieves.
  And that became an issue to us from before we even escaped from Irenicus’ lab.
  
  
  Literally our first night in the city we came across a vampire taunting a pair of hapless thieves. Like a cat with two cornered mice.
  
  Me and mine aren’t mice. We faced and slew vampires on a few occasions. And we heard through rumors and gossip that there was a guild war going on between the Shadow Thieves and some new interlopers. Well, we figured the newcomers were vampires long before it seemed to be common knowledge. Those first couple weeks our only contact with the Shadow Thieves was through our “friend” Gaelan Bayle, he offered that his friends could help us find Imoen but we would need to pay a fee.
  We knew the score right away, who Gaelan’s friends were and that this would not be strictly “legal”. But since an agency of Athkatla arrested Imoen for *nothing*, I was willing to go against the local state in this case. I would not have cause to regret this. I know what the thieves are, we’ll never all be best buddies. But they played straight with us in ways the government did not.
  
  When we had amassed enough wealth to pay the Shadow Thieves’ fee, we learned some more specific sorts of things. For starters, we were to meet with Aran Linvail, the head man of the guild.
  
  
  It became obvious Aran was desperate for our help. He was slick and professional, and didn’t show as desperate. But when a master thief is friendly, forthcoming and generous, you can know desperation is involved.
  
  The first time we met with him he offered the help we wanted to find Imoen, explained some of his difficulties and apologized for some delays. And he offered us some valuable magic items in exchange for our help in the interim. One of the items, the “Amulet of Power”, is pretty much ideal for facing vampires as it confers complete resistance (to the wearer only) to a vampire’s most dangerous attacks. Even though Aran didn’t quite come out and say the nature of the threat… we knew.
  He asked us join with a friend of his known as Mook, who was guarding a dock and reported being surveiled by persons unknown.
  
  
  Of course it proved to be another vampire. A powerful one, he slew Mook before we drove him off.
  
  We had other business all through this, but we battled vampires, protected thieves on a couple occasions. Some thieves had in fact switched sides, vampires can be dangerously tempting.
  Aran next asked us to attend a meeting. He had information a couple of thieves were looking to defect to the other team, and he wanted us to learn what we could.
  
  
  We intercepted a man, a living human man, who instructed us “new recruits” we would be getting more information at the graveyard.
  
  That was all we needed. We reported back to Aran, and he asked us to go to the graveyard. There were crypts and catecombs down below, he had become sure that was where the vampires were.
  
  
  There was more than just vampires under the graveyard. We fought a lot of spiders!
  
  
  There were a lot of undead in the southern tombs.
  
  
  Including some very dangerous sorts. But only a couple of vampires, not a dangerous pack of them.
  
  As we ventured into the northern tombs things changed considerably. We found ouselves facing many vampires, with ghasts and a golem.
  In one chamber was a large vat full of… blood? It smelled vile, I saw a mace down in the liquid. I was inclined to ingnore it, but Aerie said she detected strong magic on the mace.
  
  
  Yuck.
  
  Aerie identified it as a Mace of Disruption. A weapon made for destroying undead. Did the vampires think no one would touch that thing if it was covered in red goo? Well we did. Amyntor is well trained in mace.
  
  
  And soon enough we faced a room full of undead.
  
  This many vampires is a serious challenge. For now, I’m well protected for fighting them, and Aerie blessed Amyntor and Keldorn with resistence to Negative Energy. That’s a shorter lasting defense, but it works when needed. And we really had a lot of vampires to fight, close to twenty in several locations in the tomb.
  
  Things had fallen quiet and we took time to stake all the vampires we could find. As we finished up we were joined by a new threat.
  She introduced herself as Bodhi, Irenicus’ sister. She taunted us, threatened our destruction. And she offered the shocking revelation that the thieves were not completely honest.
  
  
  I really tried to keep a straight face. Bodhi meant to shock me by exposing that the thieves were not honest?
  “Can I assume Miss Bodhi that your brother got the brains in the family?”
  
  We fought. She was not much danger to the six of us. Of course the trick with vampires is once you defeat them, you need to track them to their coffin and stake them. We could find no trace of Bodhi after she disappeared in a puff of smoke.
  
  We reported back to Aran again. He confessed pretty quickly that he knew what we were up against all along. Which was funny, because we knew and we knew he knew. Silly game.
  Aran offered all was in place for us to journey to Imoen. The Cowled Mages kept their prisoners at a place called Spellhold, an assylum for magical deviants. It was on an island out on the fringes of Amn. He had a ship available, ready to depart at our leisure.
  
  I felt relieved. We would need to run back to De’Arnise for the night, then leave in the morning. Aran was agreeable to that. He actually repaid us most of the “fee” we had paid to him. He knew he was loosing his war, and we had just won it for him. I’m not under any illusions about Aran being a nice man, or the Shadow Thieves being a force for good. But they are far better for Athkatla than the alternative they almost faced, and they’ve done right by us.
  
  
  We would leave Nalia here, as *our* steward.
  
  That seems backwards! Amn has some odd laws. But clearly there is no one better suited to rule in our stead, in the De’Arnise family name, than Nalia De’Arnise! We will return.
  
  
  Minsc is still working for us at the Keep! I won’t say it to him, but he seems to be more relaxed and at peace. And I like how he is training the new recruits.
  
  And Minsc doesn’t need to know what a good fit Keldorn is in his old role.
  
  
  Aerie and Skie are so different, and their backgrounds are so different.
  
  But they get along fine. Aerie is gentle and good-natured, and I think Skie is legitimately impressed by her complex skills (mage, and a priestess of gnomish deity). Although even as they laugh together I can see how they do not quite understand each other.
  
  So in the morning we’ll ride back to Athkatla, and catch a ship for Spellhold. Amyntor and I will take Keldorn, Aerie and Skie. We’ll see if Yoshimo is still in town, if he wants to come along (we could use a scout!).
  
  *****
  
  Once again I have a video associated with this update you can see here. You can also read the whole write-up with videos, or just the BG2 part of it.

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• atcDave Member Posts: 2,987

  September 12

  Update 28
  
  Very little gametime has elapsed since the last update. But it struck as an emotional high point for Brademante, so I thought I would do a short update for an important moment. Fourteen images and a Video later, I have a “short” update.
  
  *****
  
  Arriving back in Athkatla we stopped by the Copper Coronet, and quickly located Yoshimo. He was willing to join with us for the upcoming trip, I had no idea what to tell him for how long this might take or what the risks might be. Is it ever any different with this life? But Yoshimo is no novice, he was ready to join the next step of our adventure.
  
  We then ran over to see Aran, and let him know we were ready to depart. We were introduced to Saemon Havareon, a boisterous sort of sea captain. He had an unremarkable looking cog ready for a voyage.
  
  
  Aerie has sharp eyes! She pointed out a couple times she thought another ship was hanging on the horizen tracking us.
  
  But that seemed to come to nothing. We arrived at the small harbor town of Brynnlaw. Spellhold is just across the small island from Brynnlaw. As we entered harbor, wow it looked like a rough town. I mentioned to Amyntor ours might be the only non-pirate ship in the harbor. He said “I think there are no non-pirate ships in this harbor”. This could be a rough place.
  
  Funny, coming off the ship, Saemon “apologized” for delivering us into a vampire ambush.
  
  https://davesgaming.blog/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/update28.02.png
  Not the first vampires we’ve faced.
  
  I meant to tell Saemon he owed his apologies to the vampires, but he was nowhere to be seen.
  
  We knew we had a contact in town, a man named Sanik at a bar called “The Vulgar Monkey”.
  
  
  “Kind of makes you want to give the place a good shaking out… now I sound like Minsc!”
  
  We found the bar. But the first familiar face was a bit of a surprise.
  
  
  “Eldoth you dirt bag!”
  
  Funny the people you run into, an ex of Skie’s. Dirt bag was a good description, I’m not sure which of them I protected more by pulling her away.
  
  Soon we found Sanik. He was frantic to get out of town, and was nervous that his wife was late meeting him here.
  
  
  An assassin teleported into the room and said something about having a message for Sanik “from Lady Galvena”
  
  We got Sanik out of the line of fire and eliminated the assassin. Fortunately, the barkeeper was furious that Lady Galvena had done such a thing at his place. Apparently Lady Galvena was a local madam, not much of a “lady”. Sanik had fallen for, married, one of her girls without permission (I imagine that means he did not pay for her!). He thought it seemed likely Claire would be killed by the vindictive Lady Galvena. No problem, we’ll find her.
  
  First thing out the door we were ambushed by Eldoth and a group of pirates. I’m not sure what reward he thought he could collect on me this time? Or would he be kidnapping Skie again? No matter, none of his plans will ever come to fruition. Ever.
  
  The brothel was not a hard place to find, between the trollops standing outside and the large sign! We entered, security was light.
  
  
  “Lady Galvena” was preparing to put Claire to the sword.
  
  We were faster. But Claire had slipped off during the brief fight.
  
  
  “Sanik is fine Claire, he sent us for you. We can take you back to him right now.“
  
  
  “Claire you are always beautiful to me.”
  
  Bonus, Sanik waived his fee for information on how to enter Spellhold. There was a representative of the Cowled Wizards right here in town, he would have a wardstone to take us through Spellhold’s landward defenses.
  
  
  On our way we came across Ginia. The disrespect leveled at the young women in this town is horrible.
  
  She and her little brother were considered property of a trafficker. She was expected to earn money nightly or she and her brother would be punished.
  We settled another family drama in this town, and arranged for Ginia and her brother to be smuggled back to the mainland. In a way this makes things easier for us. What we’re up to is presumably not completely “legal” under Amnish law. But this town is lawless and I feel no qualms about stirring up our own sort of trouble here.
  
  We finally made it to see the Cowled Wizard, Perth by name. He seemed to be under some sort of mind control magic? Whatever it was, he attacked us and we killed him. We now have the wardstone for entry into Spellhold.
  
  We followed a simple footpath across the small island, a bridge continued on towards Spellhold, with an energy shield of some sort across it. But the shield went down as we approached with the wardstone.
  
  We fought a small group of lizard men, and an air elemental guardian before the door. Apparently there were more defenses we hadn’t known of! But neither was a big deal. As we approached, the door opened, we were expected.
  
  
  I felt ill, or dizzy as I saw the hooded man. This seemed right out of one of my nightmares.
  
  He knew us by name and welcomed us, offered a tour of his facility.
  
  Is this place a little warm? I felt more detached as we toured. We came to a last room, a lounge of some sort? I saw Imoen, but why was the floor getting closer?
  
  
  Imoen seemed vacant. Our host lowered his hood, Irenicus! Yoshimo chuckled, and everything went fuzzy.
  
  As I looked around I saw my whole team except Yoshimo was on the floor. Betrayed.
  
  I awoke in a glass prison. Irenicus taunted he would be performing another experiment on me. He would steal my life energy, my soul or something? He said he’d already done the same to my sister Imoen. Did he call Imoen my sister? He claimed by way of Bhaal, we were siblings. Funny that was surprising and not all the same.
  
  
  And then there was so much pain. I could feel something being torn from my inmost being.
  
  And I was back at Candlekeep. Or a dark parallel. Just inside the doors stood Imoen. She said Bhaal was here, but we could beat him together. If I brought him to her, the two of us together could destroy Bhaal.
  So I did that. I found him near the outer wall of the fortress. He said he would destroy me! I ran back to my sister. Bhaal followed, and I faced him.
  
  
  We battled him together and destroyed the Avatar? Splinter? Nightmare?
  
  Whatever it was, I knew we had won something.
  
  I awoke this time, on a cold stone floor. In a large room in a dark dungeon. Bodhi was somewhere up above, taunting again. Oh goodie, more from the talky moron vampire. She promised she would be hunting us.
  I stood shakily, and saw my husband was right there. And our friends. And Imoen!
  
  
  Something good came of this!
  
  Sure, we were deep in an unknown dungeon, with a powerful vampire after us, and something vital had been taken from my sister (!) and I. But my family was all together. And my dear friends! Imoen was surprised to notice Skie was not dead. I assured her Jaheira and Minsc were both fine, just not here. Amyntor and I have new responsibilities now with our Castle and all…
  We had a fun and joyous reunion. It was good to surprise Imoen, and see her laugh.
  
  *****
  
  The longest “short” update you’re likely to see! In theory I like the idea of doing more, smaller updates. But somehow I keep coming up with more things I *have to* show. Seriously, I could have easily added another half dozen images to this.
  
  I should mention a couple of obvious variations from the canon game flow, are of course due to mods.
  First, bumping into Eldoth in Brynnlaw is from "Skie: Cost of One Girl's Soul". This only happens if Skie is in your party. It is an amusing distraction.
  Then of course, saving Sanik. That is from SimDing0's QuestPack. That adds a number of interesting little tweaks to the canon story-line.
  
  Once again, there is a Video render included in this update at davesgaming.blog.

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• atcDave Member Posts: 2,987

  September 15

  Update 29
  
  We had been keeping some equipment just for Imoen, I’ve *expected* to be reunited with my sister for quite some time!
  
  Now we were in some sort of ancient dungeon/maze/test, something. We would need to sort out what we needed to do here to escape. Bodhi’s earlier taunts were the source of some amusement for the team. We were wondering whose weapons she would impale herself on this time.
  
  
  I had so much to update Imoen on! From Minsc proclaiming Aerie as his new witch, to Amnish inheritance rights that let a noble mage woman bequeathe her family estate to Amyntor and I, but not rule herself!
  
  Imoen actually seems more like herself than she did back when we were all together last. She is tired and a little run down (I’m a little tired too!), but happy to laugh and banter with her friends.
  [Note that Imoen now carries Tansheron’s Bow, a magic item that creates its own arrows. So Imoen will no longer be depicted with a quiver and arrows, just a bow! Skie gets all the ammo.]
  
  
  As we poked around it became clear this place was a giant test, for a clear mind.
  
  Every room seemed to present a new set of elementary riddles.
  
  
  My favorite was the room where I had to stick my hand in a statue’s MOUTH so it would ask me a question (ummm, sculpture? bas-relief? I’m just glad art styles wasn’t a part of the testing…)
  
  We’ve also found some minor treasures scattered around. Like several scrolls, useful for Imoen who ONCE AGAIN has no spell book!
  
  
  I think Imoen likes finding traps and picking locks just to remind herself she still knows how.
  
  In addition to the puzzles were a number of monsters to battle. Somehow they had to be a sort of illusion? Or summonings? There is no ecosystem down here for them!
  
  
  One clever trap briefly seperated Amyntor and I from everyone else, with four Umber Hulks!
  
  Well that was exciting.
  
  There was also a vampire who did not seem a part of Bodhi’s crew. Plus some gibberlings and kobolds! A whole range of things!
  
  
  Obviously minotaurs were a little more exciting.
  
  
  And yuan-ti!
  
  In an oddly much brighter room. I was also able to find a pair of Boots of Speed. I’d missed having this since Irenicus swiped mine. The only thing I missed as much as my sister…
  
  But something really scary happened. I think it had to be related to whatever Irenicus had really taken from me, soul energy? There has been a voice, a dark part of me I’ve always been successful at keeping walled off from my higher functions. I have not lived my life as an angry person. And even these last couple hours I’ve been content, happy in this dark stinking dungeon. Because my husband, my sister and my friends are right here with me. I know we’ll be fine, because we all look out for each other.
  But at one point I was walking fast, because I can with my boots on! When I came around a corner and that trashy vampire blocked my way. I was briefly furious.
  
  
  And that wee dark voice took over.
  
  I swear in all my life I’ve never felt so lost to that darkness before. I don’t know what happened for the next few minutes.
  
  
  When I came back to myself I was weeping on the floor. My whole team was right there. They saw what had happened. Imoen in particular had some clue what that was. A part of Bhaal inside me.
  
  
  “You should have seen Bodhi sis! She freaked out!”
  
  Hah, I’d have given a front tooth to see that. My sweet friend Aerie said “please don’t do that again Brad.” I’ll try, I really will. But I think I need to find that loose piece of me to hold it down!
  Enough of this, let’s get out of here!
  
  We resumed exploring this dank pit. We had a few more fights, and a bunch more of the silly riddles.
  
  
  Finally I faced the final judgement. From a Coordinater who has been dead for decades. (centuries?).
  
  The fool judged me sane! Well who am I to argue? After clearing the ruins of the judgement hall we came to a door back into the upper floors of Spellhold. Now, to find Irenicus. He was apparently back in the same lab where he removed, whatever he removed from me. We could just rush him. But I had an idea.
  This building holds a dozen mages of some power. Sure they’ve all been ruled crazy. But I was ruled sane, so what does the judge know?
  
  
  “I will rule over all! And only YOU stand in my way!”
  “Irenicus! Only Irenicus stands in your way!”
  
  Two of these crazy mages we’ve met before. The gnome Tiax was last seen ranting in the streets of Baldur’s Gate, and we’d helped the elven mage Dradeel escape from his cabin, where he was hiding from warring packs of lycanthropes. And there were more, including a bard and a shapechanging girl. Yeah, they were all head cases. But they all hated Irenicus.
  It wasn’t hard to convince them we could all rush the arch-mage together. Wannev, whom I don’t know, had the power to teleport us at once into Irenicus’ lab.
  
  
  We hit Irenicus hard and fast. The man’s power is staggering.
  
  But we overwhelmed him. Quickly, we brought quite a crew! Irenicus teleported away. I think he’d slain most of our crazy friends before he left, but the fight wasn’t over. Yoshimo showed up leading a large group of thieves. We defeated him, but in the end it was just the six of us standing.
  Maybe bringing the crazies was a mistake?
  
  Now to figure where he would have gone? We were discussing this, and heading towards the exit when a sort of unexpected answer showed up.
  
  
  Our questionable ship captain Saeman Havarian claimed to know where Irenicus had gone, and he could aid our pursuit.
  
  It had to be the elven city Suldanessellar.
  I’ve heard that name, its a small but incredibly ancient elven city. And none of us had any idea how to get there. Except, apparently, Saeman. It seems we are once again at his mercy.
  Funny, its almost exciting wondering what new trouble Saeman will bring to us. We will meet up back at the Vulgar Monkey.
  
  
  As we all walked back to Brynnlaw I once again wondered why all these people were following me. Literally. I don’t know what I’m doing.
  
  They are all dear friends. Starting with my husband. And my sister. I know we are all in this together. I am blessed to have such a faithful team.
  
  We found Saemon at the Vulgar Monkey. He was “grieved” to tell us his ship had been sunk. But wait! He had a plan to get a new one. All WE had to do was…
  He had me at duping a pirate lord. I’d go against a pirate lord just for the fun of it.
  
  We got a room to get some rest, we all badly needed it.
  
  
  As we settled in I was overwhelmed by a feeling of peace. I knew I could control the monster within me, it would never get out again. Gorion taught me how to live my life *right*. Lathander blesses me with powers beyond anything I could do myself. My friends all believe in me, and have my back. And my husband will never leave. He’s the best person I’ve ever known, and he thinks I’m the best person he’s ever known.
  
  Laying there, relaxing, I felt the peace flow through me. WE could do this. And no little Bhaal bits will catch me off guard again.
  
  *****
  
  Once again I've added a video render to this set. You can check it out with the Update at davesgaming.blog.

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• atcDave Member Posts: 2,987

  September 19 edited September 19

  Update 30
  
  That night, we started our mission with Imoen sneaking into the home of Cayia, the girlfriend of the local pirate lord. She swiped a shell horn that was in the house. This is just a signalling horn used for the comings and goings of the pirate lord’s ship.
  Some drama ensued, a couple of little melees getting out of town. We met Saemon at the pirate lord’s ship. But Desharik, the pirate lord, arrived just after we did.
  
  He slew Cayia as we watched.
  
  
  You’re a lunatic Desharik. We were just going to take your ship. But I think we’ll be taking far more from you that that. [Yes, Brad talks articulate smack. I’m sure Desharik would have chuckled darkly, except his head was being caved in at the moment.]
  
  Desharik and his band of thugs were not a serious challenge. Here’s a pointer for any other aspiring pirates out there, when you see a short skinny woman wearing plate armor that’s well tailored to her size and looks well used… think very carefully before you start something you can’t finish.
  
  We set sail from Brynnlaw with no further trouble. But we hadn’t traveled far when we were attacked by someone else. A larger ship with a crew of Githyanki!
  
  
  Githyanki are a much harder fight than a few pirate thugs!
  
  Much of Saemon’s crew were killed, but I think we were getting the upper hand against the Gith. When we were boarded by Sahuagen. They boiled up over the sides of the ship, killing sailors and Gith alike. And they were doing something under that water. We could feel our ship slowing and being dragged lower in the water.
  
  We were netted by the Sahuagen and pulled under.
  
  I was next able to breath again in a completely alien setting.
  
  
  All six of us stood before a Sahuagen priestess in a temple to their dark god Sekolah.
  
  She was Senityili. She demanded to know if we were the ones promised by prophecy. Huh. I don’t honestly know, but all things considered “yes” seemed to be the correct answer. She told us of their great tragedy, their population was in critical decline and they needed a deliverer.
  To be clear, Sahuagen are a great evil. Well, a bit on the stupid side. So maybe a mediocre evil. Their population being in critical decline is what most of us would call good news. But we would need a way out of here, so I reckoned playing along was the best path for the time being.
  
  After some discussion we were given an audience with their King.
  
  
  I think King Ixilthetocal was the product of too much inbreading.
  
  He casually ordered several executions while we were present. And he wants the heart of some rebel Prince. We agreed to look into it.
  Keldorn is uncharacteristicly peevish about this whole business. I’m a paladin like him, I can detect evil all over these monsters. I have no intent of *helping* them in any way. But I need to know where we are, and where we can go from here before we start burning all our bridges.
  After meeting with the mad King we went back to the slightly less bonkers priestess. She declared her King was a hopeless mess, and asked that we help the rebel Prince and kill their King.
  Okay, helping the Prince sounds like a really bad plan…
  
  But we agreed to go have a talk with him. First we would need to track down some sort orb to gain access to the Prince. One was stashed off in a neglected corner of this undersea settlement.
  
  
  And it was guarded by a beholder!
  
  Fortunately a friendly beholder. I think its called a Spectator Beholder? He was wise-cracking and funny. We all finally found a loophole to his guardianship that gave us access to the chest. No bloodshed involved!
  
  
  But the same could hardly be said for the rest of our visit!
  
  We were attacked by patrols of Sahuagen at every turn. I *think* these were all rebel patrols? But it hardly mattered. These guys are dangerous predators and as likely to attack as talk. Maybe moreso. And every patrol we defeated was one less to fight later.
  That is what it came down to. The Prince was fully as evil as the King, and not as crazy. And we had now found an exit, a great shaft down from the rebel base. So it came down to a brawl against all of them.
  Some, few of the really big ones (like the King and Prince) are fearsome cambatants. But most of them are no tougher than an average trained soldier. But this made for a sprawling sort of fight apart from a bigger one at the Royal Court. We battled all across the settlement.
  
  
  Our team on Overwatch is a huge force multiplier for me and the boys. Aerie blesses and heals us, and she can unload massive damage when needed since she’s a mage too. Skie is a highly effective archer, perhaps the best non-Ranger archer I’ve ever met. And Imoen is easily our most powerful mage, and a decent archer when she isn’t blasting away with magic. All three are a huge help to us.
  
  When the Sahuagen town was finally all quiet, well, I think we killed the entire warrior population here.
  
  
  “Brad I am sorry for being annoyed with you. I know how much death and carnage Sahuagen cause for sailors, fishermen, and in our coastal towns. I tend to only see one solution for their kind. I should have trusted you would arrive at a good conclusion.”
  
  Well, I had hoped we could find a more peaceful way of dealing with them. But murder and deceipt, violence above all seems a core part of what they are. Allowing them to continue, would have meant more innocent lives lost. I strongly suspect Keldorn’s discomfort had a lot to do with what he saw from me back in Spellhold. He doubted if I was still the paladin he thought I was.
  
  Unfortunately, since we couldn’t swim up from the bottom of the ocean (!), our only way out from here seemed to be descending into the Underdark. That will be harder for some of us than others.
  
  
  “Oh Brad I really don’t think I can do this. Its dark, and a long way down, and its the Underdark! I’m an Elf! I can’t do this!”
  “Sure you can Aerie. We’ll all be together, and we look out for each other. You will not be alone.”
  “WOW! That’s a long way down! Let’s attach that rope, I go first!”
  
  *****
  
  I always love how distinctive the Sahuagen city is. Its also sort of a breather, no really hard battles, before we head to the Underdark. Where there will be a few harder battles!

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• atcDave Member Posts: 2,987

  September 23

  Update 31
  
  The Underdark is a bit overwhelming for a crew of surfacers like us. It is teaming with alien life, and its not at all quiet. We would all stick close and watch each other’s backs.
  
  
  Fortunately, one of our first encounters was with a small group of Deep Gnome merchants.
  
  They were friendly. Of course that’s partly the nature of merchants, they want your business. But whatever the motives, we were happy to have a familiar sort of moment. They had some potions and scrolls we bought. I was particularly glad to see Aerie had something else to think about for a time.
  
  We had a few combat encounters after this, things that were within our capabilities. We slew a small group of Illithids, rescued an imprisoned mage, fought a Drow patrol, a few others.
  
  
  In a larger open area were several Spore Colonies we needed to get by. They summoned in hostile Myconids to block our way.
  
  That was not a hard battle, but the toxins raised by the Spore Colonies briefly caused Amyntor and Imoen to be dangerously confused. That is one of my least favorite things to encounter, and several types of foes can cause it. But when those dearest to you can suddenly not tell friend from foe… the rest of us just ducked and hid, hoping Amyntor and Imoen wouldn’t suddenly decide they were deadly enemies.
  In a minute or so all was well.
  
  
  We explored one grouping of caves that had been built out as a home for Kua-Toan, those mentally unstable fishmen.
  
  They are both evil and insane, which at least makes their response to us predictable.
  
  From here, we moved up towards the Deep Gnome village. It was mostly empty, except for a few patrols. They directed us to thier leader, Goldandor Blackenrock, who explained the empty village. They had recently dug too deep and awoken something they did not want to.
  
  
  “Please say ‘Cave Bear’, I’m sure he means a cave bear.
  
  I’m pretty sure a village of Deep Gnomes could have figured out how to deal with a cave bear. We all knew it would be something more dire. Indeed, something demonic had been disturbed.
  
  
  That was an exciting battle.
  
  This was a more powerful sort of demon, that needed more powerful sorts of magic to harm it. My flail, the Flail of Ages was effective, and Keldorn’s sword Lilarcor could hurt it. But otherwise only one of Amyntor’s maces, and the magical arrows from Imoen’s bow were effictive. Skie had nothing to help with. Aerie took a more involved method and cast “Lower Magic Resistance” then Magic Missile. But we had the beast almost down by then. It served as a reminder we are still less in some ways than when we fought Belhifet a couple months ago.
  The Gnomes were deeply appreciative of our help. Funny, part of our reward was a valuable mace that Amyntor could have used in the fight. They also had a “Light Gem”, that would help us find our way to Adalon, some “beautiful being of great power”. The knowledge attached to this was even more important. Irenicus and Bodhi were thought to be in the nearby Drow city of Ust Natha. Adalon could possibly help us enter the Drow city.
  They had also found a spellbook belonging to the mage we had rescued earlier. He was deep in some sort of elemental interdimensional research, and we had agreed to try and find his book. So here it was.
  
  
  We tracked him down again not too far from the gnome village and returned his book.
  
  We helped him more for a little while, battling elementals as he made some brief extra-planar trips. It was actually pretty mundane on our end.
  
  From here we also found and cleared out a large cave of beholders, and one of Illithids. Both of these could count as bigger fights, and challenging in their own ways. But truly, they were diversions. We are here for Irenicus.
  Continuing on again, we came to a narrow foot bridge crossing a great chasm.
  
  
  If that sounds like a place for an ambush you are exactly right. A patrol of six drow attacked us.
  
  Such groups could be dangerous if we weren’t expecting trouble around every corner. Just across the bridge was a cave of impenetrable darkness. We pulled the Light Gem from a sack, and we could see our way forward.
  
  
  Adalon, a being of great power and beauty.
  
  No doubt. And sort of funny. Such metalic dragons are good, but like all dragons they are proud. Which makes all such encounters a little challenging. Adalon was not “friendly”, although there may have been a special reason. We learned her eggs had recently been stolen. She knew they were in the city of Ust Natha, and she had already been threatened with their destruction if she entered or interfered within the city in any way. She would task us with their retrieval. Utmost care was called for, the Drow could not know we were there for the eggs until we had secured them.
  This was agreeable to us. The abduction of the eggs was obviously an evil and inexcusable act. We would rescue them.
  Adalon would help us with some powerful dragon magic. We would be to all appearances, Drow. We were given a backstory, I would be Veldrin.
  
  
  Brademante as Veldrin.
  
  
  Amyntor.
  
  
  Keldorn.
  
  
  Imoen.
  
  
  Aerie.
  
  
  Skie.
  
  We were ready for Ust Natha.
  
  *****
  
  I haven’t done the whole team in Drow renders for the last few runs. But now, thanks again to a more powerful renderer, it was fun to take another run at it. The next update will be the Drow adventure!

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