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The situation is grave

FrdNwsmFrdNwsm Member Posts: 1,069
A minor digression first, easily taken recounted. We headed to the Bridge District to investigate the fallen paladins for the boys at the Radiant Heart. This neighborhood seems to attract various lowlifes, even more so than the slums. Anyway, we came upon a battle royal between two rival gangs, the Pallies and the Smugs. I could tell that Korgan wanted to just kill everybody involved (he had been ecstatic over the prospect of killing some paladins, even fallen ones), but the rest of us were amused by sitting back and placing bets. Also we had been told to "infiltrate and evaluate", not "exterminate". The Pallies won out, and were apparently so impressed by the fact that we didn't attack them outright that they invited us to come along and meet their head honcho.

This turned out to be a guy named something like Anrag, who immediately blew our cover, saying that he still had friends in the Radiant heart, who had warned him of our mission. Well, needless to say, the infiltration mission went South and we ended up killing them all in a relatively easy battle.

We went back to report our success; I was rather thinking there would be more to the mission ... like finding out who had spilled the beans maybe? ... but no such thing happened. The whole mission seemed a bit pointless. I mean, the fallen paladins were actually doing the neighborhood a service by clamping down on smuggler activity. Why upset the applecart? But, we got some nifty gloves out of it, and none of our bunch was particularly upset by bloodshed, so what the heck.

So, with extra healing power in reserve, we "pulled up stakes" and headed off to the cemetery to hunt vampires.

Comments

  • lunarlunar Member Posts: 3,460
    That's one of the most pointless and bad-designed quests IMHO. It requires you to travel back and forth between areas, the battle is not challenging or interesting, and reward is forgetable. Only for the dire completionists, this.
    JuliusBorisov
  • elminsterelminster Member, Developer Posts: 16,315
    edited April 2015
    I think the unfinished business mod may add to it. Looking at the dialogue files in Near Infinity it seems like there may have been more meant for the quest. There isn't any missing text, I'm just getting this of off how the dialogue tree was organized.
    lunar
  • JarrakulJarrakul Member Posts: 2,029
    Wasn't there a way to actually infiltrate? You have to get a chalice for them, or something? Am I thinking of the wrong quest?
    abacuslunar
  • FrdNwsmFrdNwsm Member Posts: 1,069
    edited April 2015
    Heading off the the cemetery, we had a sudden change of mission priorities. Apparently Hexxat had received a crypt-o-gram from L, and the mission to retrieve the magic dingus from China was finally on!
    Well, what the heck; one undead extermination mission is the same as another, right? So we made a left turn and Hexxat crypt walked us to the locale.

    There we encountered the spirits of some spectral monks, who were trapped there; they offered us encouragement and occasional snippets of advice. Thanks guys, for such outstanding support. So we went along, disarming the occasional trap and plundering the occasional tomb; Lara Croft would have been proud. By this time, Hexxat had progressed significantly in her thief home correspondence course, so traps and locks were no problem.

    Finally the helpful spirits came through with something useful. They warned us about some invaders from the underworld who had broken into one area of the complex. Not being fools, we had Jaheira call up one of her ever useful fire elementals. Good thing we did; it was promptly confused by an Umber Hulk, and then had its brains (such as they were) eaten by a mindflayer!

    OK, these guys were pretty much the last thing I had expected; I mean, there was nothing down here (except us!!) that had brains they could snack on. Maybe they were here to plunder the tomb? Well, their motivation was irrelevant. We'd bested these freaks before, and had the means to do so again. (I now have Viconia packing around 5 animate dead; it's probably her most useful spell aside from raise dead and restoration). So, we summoned up our own crew of undead, hasted them all and sent them off to war. Also, from the last encounter with them, we knew that mindflayers were a bit nearsighted, so Kagorn and myself grabbed missile weapons (I had given him the returning throwing axe and I had Heartseeker) and started potting the Umber Hulks from long distance, since these were the main threat to our skeleton crew.

    The tactic worked; the skeletons were mostly trashed, but Jaheira tossed in her remaining elemental, Hexxat called up an air elemental (she has the staff of summoning), and Edwin summoned up some monsters and an invisible stalker, which pretty much iced the cake for us. We were totally out of summonings, however, and wisely decided to go back to the entry point and rest up. Brave and foolhardy are two different things; all my daddy's stupid children died young.

    (To be continued)

    Post edited by FrdNwsm on
    lunarJuliusBorisov
  • abacusabacus Member Posts: 1,307
    Jarrakul said:

    Wasn't there a way to actually infiltrate? You have to get a chalice for them, or something? Am I thinking of the wrong quest?

    That's correct, but if you have Keldorn (and maybe Anomen) in your posse, they get recognised and you get busted... but even with the chalice part, it's essentially a FedEx job with a minor scrap at the end.
    JuliusBorisov
  • FrdNwsmFrdNwsm Member Posts: 1,069
    edited April 2015
    Rising fresh the next day, we went back to the mind flayer's resting place; there the ever helpful spirits warned us to "take nothing from this point onward". Yeah, riiight. Get real, you idiots! This is a snatch and grab operation. Oh look! Loot! ::drool::

    So we started grabbing stuff, but apparently somebody called Security. The ground opened up and a bunch of greater mummies started crawling out. We offered to put the stuff back, but they had their handcuffs out and weren't hearing it. So we duked it out with them. A bit of a tussle, but by this point everybody had good weapons. I had Hexxat put her cloak back on, and then fired off Daystar. WHAM! Then we finished them off fairly rapidly. Still, we took some damage, and even after they were down, we had some more damage from disease (Who thinks to pack a cure disease? We had been planning to go after vampires, not mummies). But one thing we weren't lacking was health restoring spells, so, no real harm done. I did resolve to pay more attention to arcane warnings in the future, however.

    Pressing on, we found yet another door that needed a special key. Damn, I am getting sick of these paranoiacs who don't trust normal locks. Although, considering that one of our useful finds over at Aran's place was a ring of lockpicking, maybe they're right. In another room we found a guy named Nanking Charlie, who offered to provide the key we needed if we "took care of" some thugs who had been bothering him. I tried to bluff him by claiming we had already done so, but he wasn't buying it. Hexxat wanted to just trash him and grab the key, but I figured he couldn't be THAT stupid, and agreed to his terms.

    Going back a ways, we found a room with what looked like 6 stone slabs set into the ground. I hadn't paid much attention to them at first, but now I noticed that they could apparently be pried up from the ground. Having learned from the last encounter, Viconia summoned up her usual platoon; we carefully stationed one of them at each of the 5 slabs that we weren't adjacent to. They would be the first ones to get munched on when the obvious occurred.

    Casting the usual buff spells, we pried up the nearest slab. Yup, you guessed it. All 6 graves opened up and various uglies started crawling out. I sort of lost track of what exactly happened, but we basically trashed them one at a time, while our valiant skeletal warriors took the fall as they kept the foes further away from us occupied. We did all take some damage, even so, and somehow Viconia managed to get herself killed. I have no clue how they accomplished that; she has the best AC (-8) of all of us as well as MR that's been pumped up to 75%, but I guess a lucky shot took her out. One more charge off the rod of resurrection; down to 6 now.

    We went back to Nanking Charlie to report our success. I was SURE the guy would try to backstab us; that's pretty much SOP for this sort of operation, but, amazingly enough, our prowess had so impressed him, he not only gave us the key outright, but was extremely polite about it. He then ran off into the distance, never to be seen again.

    On to the last door room. Here we were faced by one last lone dude, who tried to sass us. After all this, we were in no mood to be bothered. [OK, I lied; this is the real Nanking Charlie; I couldn't remember the first guys name so I used an alias; sue me] We were out of summonings, but we had healed up and had a haste left, so we told the guy where he could go ... and then we sent him there ... on standby. First class was too good for him; what an idiot! He couldn't see that he was totally outclassed.

    image

    We picked option 3, naturally. After a brief fuss, down he went; we grabbed the doohickey, and crypt walked back to town, where we waited for "L" to show up and give us our props. And waited. And waited. What the heck? Where the 'ell is "L"? Is Hexxat's quest actually over, or will the mystery letter show up in a week or so? I have no idea.
    JuliusBorisov
  • FrdNwsmFrdNwsm Member Posts: 1,069
    elminster said:

    I think the unfinished business mod may add to it. Looking at the dialogue files in Near Infinity it seems like there may have been more meant for the quest. There isn't any missing text, I'm just getting this of off how the dialogue tree was organized.


    Right; you go back, get a cup from Sir Whazzizname, and return, and then they're all friendly-like. Still doesn't help, since the boss Pallie is onto you. And you have to go back and return the cup afterward.
  • lunarlunar Member Posts: 3,460
    There is one more tomb job like this left for Hexxat to do for L in SoA. You need to spend a lot of time for it to trigger, though.
    JuliusBorisov
  • FrdNwsmFrdNwsm Member Posts: 1,069
    Huh, OK. So, we need to hang onto that useless rod or whatever the black leopard claw is? "L" does finally show up to grab it?
  • lunarlunar Member Posts: 3,460
    edited April 2015
    He does not personally show up until ToB, AFAIK. He is THE 'L' after all. (cue dramatic music.)
    JuliusBorisov
  • ArunsunArunsun Member Posts: 1,592
    Indeed he appears in ToB, his identity is revealed only then.
    lunar
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