f13.net

So here's the score. The game is Baldur's Gate plus expansion, but it's ported over to the Baldur's Gate II engine. I'm going to play all the way through, and maybe through BG2 as well if I can ever learn to put up with the combat and magic. The thing is, listening to Xzar and Monty say the same 3 bits of bickering over and over just isn't as much fun as being able to tinker with my own complete party, so I'm running with my own gang of six player-created characters.

The rundown.

Nythrax, Human, Lawful Evil Blackguard. Our dynamic anti-hero, he's probably going to be relatively underpowered for much of the game. He doesn't get the Apply Poison ability until like level 4, and probably won't get Animate Dead until the BG1 endgame or early BG2 if I go that far. He can only spec up to two stars in weapon skills, and his low level abilities like Detect Good are nothing terribly useful. Oh, I also can't let my reputation get above 14 or else he'll lose his evil powers and become merely a gimped fighter ala a fallen paladin. It's a small price to pay for being cool. I might have put a point or two in wis/cha that didn't strictly need to go there, because I am a roleplay dork.

Korgrim, Half-Orc, Chaotic Evil Berzerker. Our dynamic anti-hero's right hand man, he has the charisma of a dead fish and will probably be a beast in combat. He's a freakin' berzerker, there was neither powergaming nor roleplay reason not to dump his charisma and bring his strength up to the racial limit of 19. I also specced him for dual wield since I can't imagine a berzerker with a shield and I already specced Nythrax for two-handed swords.

Vaere, Elf (drow), Lawful Evil Priest of Talos. I generally hate the nerdwanking associated with drow, but I liked Viconia's character concept (runaway drow who's STILL EVIL) so much that I shamelessly stole it. I dug up custom portraits for everyone and I probably like hers (http://portraits.chosenofmystra.net/femaledrow/bmp/D8L.bmp) the most. High wis, enough in the physical stats to hang in melee as long as she lets the guys run in first.

Garrette, Human, Neutral Evil Assassin. I think if you chop the trailing E off, the guy in Thief was named this. My friend was using this for his thief characters even before the first one came out though, and that's where I got the name. Anyway, his points are all in stealth and trap detection, and his job will be to sneak around the dungeon scouting and backstabbing where possible. In open combat he'll sit back and fire away with a light crossbow. I put some points in intelligence even though they probably would have been better spent buffing his str/con further. Not enough to dual him to mage, but dammit I see him as being a cold calculating smart bastard. QUIT LAUGHING AT ME.

Alexia, Human, Neutral Evil Thief. Someone has to open locks and pick pockets, and for that matter carry a short bow to use all the fancy arrows I'll find. I used Safana's portrait, dumped a couple extra points in cha, and picked the real slutty voice for her. A skanky pickpocket type, as opposed to Gar's medieval hitman routine.

Mordak, Human, Chaotic Evil Necromancer. Well obviously I need a mage, and this was a no-brainer. I'll admit I don't really have much of a character concept behind this guy beyond EVIL WIZARD, but what the hell. Sometimes you just need someone who'll tie a girl to the railroad tracks and twirl his mustache.

Note that when I post, it'll probably be from the protagonist's point of view, but in a very not-serious kinda way. I'll probably embellish things and assign all kinds of non-existant motivations to my evil little battledrones, too. Whatever. Or maybe I'll get bored and quit after 2 posts. Who knows?

I'm not attempting to derail you, but can you elaborate on this?

Either TuTu or BGT.  I am curious as to precisely what you're using and whether you're experiencing any odd bugs with it, because every time I've tried to set up one of these mega-mods there's crash bugs, particularly when I inspect items in inventory.

(Playing via Tutu, no real bugs so far but I'm gonna save to multiple files at differing intervals just to be safe.)

So my senile foster dad says we're going on a trip. Hooray. The old goat has left me cooped up in this stupid library for the last 18 years, and now suddenly it's time for a vacation. He said I could bring my friends though, so me and the rest of the cool kids have decided we're all going to run away as soon as the geezer isn't looking. With that in mind, we scattered about Candlekeep to steal everything not nailed down, so as to fund our new lives.

I didn't really find anything good, although I did have to beat the brains out of a couple random retards who were apparently there to assassinate me. What the hell is that all about? Anyway, Alexia came out of the inn with some kinda fancy gem worth a thousand gold. I didn't ask her whose salad she had to toss to get it, but Kor did and it was pretty hilarious. Fatguts (or whatever the hell his name is) let us pawn the thing off to him without a peep, and pretty soon we were all kitted out with the best weapons Fatshit's Library Hotel had to offer. Which wasn't saying much, but at least we all had swords and armor. Except for Mordak, who was armed with nothing but a sling, two spells, and that shitty little mustache of his.

Oh, and except for Vaere, whose evil god doesn't want her to spill blood. Even though they're evil. And unless it's blood spilled by crushing someone's skull with a warhammer. That's okay, apparently. I've long since learned not to bother questioning this stuff, lest I get that "I will chop your dick off!" look.

So anyway, we went to find gramps to tell him we were ready to go, when who should run up but Imoen, the little wannabe. "HEY THAR BELLYNAPPERS, I'M PLUM RETARDED! HURF!" I don't know why the hell she talks like that. Anyway, we told her she still wasn't cool enough to hang out with us and ran her off like usual. I'm sure we'll never have to see her again.

So gramps gives me this speech about how, if we're separated, I'm supposed to go look up two idiot friends of his so they can babysit me. Yeah, THAT'S likely. I'm just nodding and smiling though, because I just want to get our asses on the road so we can sneak away. We take off, and we're tromping down the road when we're accosted by this totally awesome guy in spiky black armor and his lackeys. He starts talking some shit to gramps, but we're not listening because we've just seen our chance and lit off into the woods. Based on the crunching and screams heard behind us, it sounds like we made the right choice. Sorry gramps.

Well it's the next day and we're all ready to set out after a nice nap, when who should turn up but Imoen again, and she's just totally bent on hanging out with the cool kids. Like hell. I didn't run away from Candlekeep just to keep listening to her bullshit. Finally she was all like "MUTTON MONGERING PUFFBIBBLE TOOTYKINS!" or something, and Garrette just snapped and started stabbing her in the face until she died of being stabbed in the face, which really didn't take very long. He's usually a pretty level-headed guy, but I think he realized after the past night's action that there was no law out here, and a guy can only take so much cutesy talk. We left her corpse in the middle of the road, and I'm sure we'll never have to see her again.

Once that was behind us, Alexia had the bright idea to go back to where gramps bought it and see if there was any loot left laying around after the fight. We took a stroll up there, and sure enough there was the old goat's carcass. Credit where due, he took out a few of the lackeys too, which was great because apparently Mister Spiky didn't bother to loot anything. We rifled through everyone's pockets and found a few coins and knicknacks. Gramps had some stupid letter in his pocket, but I didn't read it.

Well we knew that the old fart had friends up at the Friendly Arm Inn who were just waiting to take over babysitting us, so we unanimously moved to go in the opposite direction. We're going to trek south to Beregost, and see how much we can steal without getting caught. Or as Kor puts it, see how many guys Alexia will blow to make some cash. I think he likes her.

EDIT:  Screenshot! (http://i38.photobucket.com/albums/e121/GrimDysart/bgss1.jpg)

You know, in all my playthroughs of the beginning of that game, it has never once occured to me to just stick a knife in her face.  And yet, here it is, clearly the most appropriate solution to the problem.

On our way down the road we came across a very curious looking wizard in a green robe and a rather dirty little midget. The two of them were very accomodating, offered us potions, and suggested we travel south with them to Nashkel to investigate some kind of disturbance. I was amenable to this suggestion, provided we took the time to stop in Beregost and do some robbing, but then the wizard started shrieking out of the blue for Korgrim to stop touching him. Mind you, Kor is like ten feet away, but this wizard gets right up in his face and keeps screaming "STOP TOUCHING ME!" over and over again while poor Kor stands there confused.

Well Kor has only one response to things that confuse him, and he chops this wizard's head right the fuck off in front of everyone. Now granted the guy was out of line, but we've only been out of Candlekeep for like 12 hours and we're already up to our second murder, so I'm kinda pissed off. Third murder, actually, since the midget started to freak out and reach for his knife. I somehow hit him with my sword so hard that he exploded into chunks of meat. Not sure how that works, really.

Anyway, we took the rest of their potions and such and I gave a little speech about self-control. Vaere stood next to me giving everyone this real smug "Yeah what he said!" look while Kor gave me that kicked-puppy look and Mordak grumbled. I gave him the dead wizard's scrolls and told him to shut up. We're not going to get very far in our new life of crime if these nincompoops don't learn to temper their newfound sense of freedom and refrain from stabbing everyone who annoys them.

It must have paid off, because a few minutes later when this old man in a funny red hat came up and started babbling at us, I was able to tell him to fuck off without anyone going bonkers and hacking his arms off. He told us to go to the Friendly Arm Inn, too, which only hardened our resolve to not go there.

On to Beregost, and plunder.

I think I will watch this thread.  Plz continue in your eviling.

Well, Beregost was an interesting town. A little routine burglary earned us some pocket change, and as it was raining we ducked into some dive of a tavern to spend some of it. This angry little dwarf comes stumping up to us, and announces that he's here to assassinate me. (By the way, you should hear Garrette rant about how stupid these guys are to just introduce themselves instead of murdering us in our beds or some such.) Needless to say, the dwarf's "assassination" strategy of rushing headlong into a heavily-armed band of six didn't work out very well and we hacked him to bits.

Deciding that this place was a bit too much of a dump even for our tastes, we scooted across town to someplace called Feldpost's. Nice enough joint, except for the meathead who had some kinda grudge against adventurers and challenged us to a "fair fight without all those weapons" or some such. This turned into me and Kor sinking blades into him from two directions, but other than some buddy of his who was too smart to really do anything, nobody said shit.

I think we're just going to have to get used to stepping over corpses in order to have a drink. The lot of us sat downstairs and got loaded while Alexia scampered off to pilfer upstairs. Somehow she relieved someone of their cloak (and even more surprisingly, Kor didn't make any jokes) which she insisted was magical. We gave it to Mordak to figure out what it does, and get this, it CONTROLS PEOPLE'S MINDS.

You just wear it, and sorta concentrate on someone, and suddenly they'll obey your every command. It doesn't always work, but you can just try it again if it doesn't. This is the best thing we've ever found, so naturally I insisted upon wearing it. Which Mordak didn't like. There was some grumbling, but all I had to do was point out to the girls that the necromancer would probably have both of them under his robe by the end of the night if he could cast the equivalent of Charm Person without having to talk or move. That changed the character of the conversation completely. You could tell Mordak wanted to be mad, but instead he just had this shit-eating grin on his face like "You got me man, I totally would!"

We slept off our buzz, and then set off to do some more stealing. We broke into a house that looked abandoned, planning to poke around for hidden loot, and it turned out to be full of really fucking big spiders. I mean spiders big enough to eat a cow. I don't know what the hell they were doing in there, or what they eat in there, or where the hell the guards were, but we sliced them up and ransacked the joint. Korgrim found some ugly boots that for some reason he just loves and insists on wearing, and Vaere lifted a bottle of wine, saying we'll use it to drink a toast when we make it big. Whatever. We hit a few other houses, pawned some knicknacks at Feldpost's, and found ourselves sitting on a couple thousand coin altogether. Funny how it adds up.

Apparently Beregost has some kinda hotshot blacksmith, so we went over to "Thunder Hammer Smithy" and took a look around. Holy crap. Everyone pretty much drooled over the goodies on display, none of which we could afford. We had Kor buy a new suit of splint mail to replaces his chain while we cased the joint. Later that night we broke in, but apparently they lock all the really good stuff up somewhere we couldn't find. We cleaned them out for a bunch of normal swords and one magical one, but there's no way I'm dumb enough to try to pawn them here in the same town.

By this point we had pretty much gone as far as simple burglary was going to take us, so I was quite pleased when some sniveling dipshit of a bard asked us to perform some "bodyguard" duty on behalf of his boss, this smoking hot actress. I wish Vaere would quit giving me that "Vile male scum!" look whenever I ogle some female. You weren't even raised like a real drow, you grew up in Candlekeep. Gawd.

Anyway, the broad tells us that evil Feldpost is sending thugs to kill her because she didn't perform at his tavern. Which is pretty funny, because as far as I can tell, Feldpost is a harmless fat old drunk. Supposedly we'd get 300 gold to kill the lot of them. The situation became pretty clear when the three middle aged milquetoast "thugs" walked up and innocently told her they had her delivery ready.

She immediately begins shrieking that she won't let them hurt her, in a fashion totally not convincing for an actress, and ordering us to attack. Now look, I'm a guy who basically believes in keeping his word, which is why I don't give it often. But I don't appreciate being treated like a moron, and as far as I'm concerned an agreement negotiated in bad faith doesn't count. If she wanted to hire assassins she should have hired us as assassins, not bodyguards.

We chopped up the whole lot of them. The three guys, the actress, the sniveling bard, the whole lot. The actress had 400 gold and a magical quarterstaff on her, the guys had some potions, and the bard had jack and shit. Then we split out of town before anyone could notice the huge pile of corpses. I think this is probably going to become a pattern.

I think we'll head to Nashkel. We still need to sell all these swords we stole, and it wouldn't hurt to let things in Beregost die down for a while. Plus the wizard and the midget said something about adventurers being needed down there... uh... before we chopped them up.

 :grin:

Go on...

I just wait for a little reaction before I go spamming into the void. Writing this crap has me poopsocking the game today.

---

They weren't joking when they talked about the roads being dangerous. Between Beregost and Nashkel we had to kill a couple ogrillions, a squad of hobgoblins, a few bandits, and one Flaming Fist mercenary. That last one was the interesting bit. This imbecile comes running up to us screaming "AH SURV THA FLAYMING FEEYUST!" and insisting that we're bandits who need to be arrested. I could have explained that no such thing was the case (although technically...) or even asked him how he planned to arrest all six of us on his lonesome. Instead I mentioned that "Flaming Fist" is possibly the most blatantly homosexual name anyone could ever give to anything, and explained why in graphic detail.

He's about my size. I'm wearing his fancy plate armor now. Vaere took his goofy looking helmet and put it on as a souveneir. It was shortly afterward that we encountered the actual bandits and killed them when they tried to rob us. The long and the short of it is that between that and the hobgoblins and what all, it seems me and my little band of homicidal teenage library escapees can actually fight a bit. Burglary is a nice sideline, but I think it's time we cracked more skulls in the future.

We finally reached Nashkel and immediately went to hit the tavern. Yet another idiot "assassin" barged up and announced herself, only to be skewered from six directions. These guys need to get more creative, or I think Garrette is going to try to kill me himself just to show them how it's supposed to be done. Har. Regardless, this one had a magic helmet that lets me see in the dark like a dwarf. Spiffy.

After a few drinks, we went for a little stroll to see what could be seen. This place is a bit of a stupid backwood compared to even Beregost, but what the hell. Speaking of stupid, some flabby moron of a minor functionary accosted us on our way down main street and offered us 200 gold. Apparently he took me for a bounty hunter named Greywolf, who had performed some service and was owned the money. I did not disabuse him of his misconception, and pocketed the cash.

After that, he told me of a couple bounties still up for collection. One was for a former captain of the guard who apparently went batshit, hacked up his family and some other guards, and ran off into the woods. The other was some sissy artist who stole a couple of valuable emeralds and high-tailed it out of town. The guy made a point of telling me they didn't care what happened to said artist.

Let's review. Artist with presumably no particular fighting skill, valuable gems, and nobody cares what happens to him. Yeah, we knew what our next job was going to be. The professional soldier become homicidal maniac can wait a little.

And while I'm on the topic of potential work: The mayor of this little dump explained to us how the local mines are putting out only defective ore, and how "demons" are killing the miners. He promised a "handsome reward" since the two adventurers he was expecting had never showed up. I didn't mention that I'm pretty sure we'd butchered them for their potions.

Anyway, on our way out of town we experienced an amusing reversal of situations. This time someone got mad and tried to chop US up for being annoying. We found this apparently insane bald-headed man with facial tattoos talking to his pet gerbil, or whatever. When he saw us, he ran up and started babbling about how "his witch" had been kidnapped by gnolls and taken off to the west, and we had to save her, and blah blah blah. I told the lunatic he could cram his gerbil back up his keister and solve his own problems, at which point he shrieked like a moose with a lit torch up it's nose and attacked.

I chopped him in half, and stomped his gerbil into the ground as it scurried away for good measure. Idiot. At least I learned that there's an encampment of gnolls off to the west. Perhaps we'll go and pillage them at some point. Killing and looting is a lot less of a headache when it's against victims whom it's legal to brutalize.

A search to the east, in the vicinity of the mines, turned up the artist with the stolen emeralds. Turns out the fop was madly in love with... some bitch, I don't know, I wasn't paying attention... and "needed" the emeralds to serve as eyes in the statue of her he was sculpting. What a laugh. I was about to tell him to fork over the gems or die, or maybe die and then fork over the gems, when Alexia slipped behind him.

Now you should understand, back in Candlekeep this was a little game we used to play. One of us would go up and ask one of the monks a question about some inane subject of their interest just to get them talking, while Alexia would sneak up behind them and empty their pockets. She'd always give us this little wink to let us know she'd pulled it off. (Vaere would get Imoen to try this, and then scream "THIEF!" when she went for it. Good times.) Well this artist is yammering about how this bounty hunter (the same Greywolf they mistook me for) is out to get him, and how he'd give us what little he owned to protect him while he finished his statue, when I see Alexia give me the exact same little wink. I knew we already had the gems and the rest of this was just a game. I smiled and nodded and told him we'd be happy to help.

Well sure enough Greywolf shows up, and apparently he knows I claimed his bounty and is proper pissed off about it. He goes for his fancy sword, and Vaere casts a Command spell that makes him fall asleep. We bashed his brains out where he lay. Tee hee. Then the artist makes some grand final statement about his great love, or whatever, and falls over dead for no good reason. I immediately looked at Mordak and Garrette, but neither claimed to have done anything. (Nor do they have cause to deny.) Maybe he realized the gems were gone and died of a broken heart. One can only hope.

Turns out Greywolf's sword is some sort of fancy magical artifact. I could tell Korgrim wanted it really bad, and I already had the Nythraxian Cloak of Mind Bending (as I have come to call it) plus the Nightvision Helmet, so I let him keep it. So to recap, gems ours, fancy sword ours, Greywolf dead, silly artist dead. Another flawless victory for the cool kids of Candlekeep. Especially after we got back to town and the fat little shit in charge of bounties was livid about our taking him for 200 gold. Claimed he wouldn't pay us for the bounty on the artist. So we took the emeralds across town and pawned them for 10 times the reward money. Sucker.

Things are looking up, especially since we realized I can use my fancy cloak to make people not mind being robbed. We walk into a house, I put the whammy on whoever is around, and then we ransack the joint. We pilfered the guard barracks and Alexia stole herself a little magical sword that way. Good times indeed.

I think next we'll figure out what the hell is going on in those mines, and if we don't get our "handsome reward" we'll sack that shit little town into ruins, guards or no.

(Garrette and Alexia have dinged level 2, and for the record I haven't actually lost even a single reputation point yet. Haw.)

So far I'm finding your writeup hilariously awesome.  I usually play a loner type, or with standard characters, so your custom party of sociopaths is highly amusing.

lol, what?  How is this possible with so much wanton theft and carnage?  

This is highly entertaining, nostalgic, and informative for me considering I never played evil.  I'm such a loser goody-two-shoes.  Keep up the good work.  Well, not good, exactly.   :drill:

Well party members and potential party members don't give reputation loss when killed, presumably to avoid difficulties with friendly fire. Hell, the guards won't even care if you murder them in plain sight. That's how I whacked Imoen, Xzar, and Monty without losing anything.

Fighting Marl in Feldpost's gives no rep loss by design. The guy does technically swing first. With the whole actress subquest, you don't lose rep for killing the 3 guys. You lose rep when you talk to the chick and get your reward. So if you turn around and kill her instead, you STILL don't lose any rep because refusing to attack the guys and killing her instead is supposed to be the goodguy quest path. As for all the burglary, I just make sure not to do it with any non-charmed bystanders around.

The Flaming Fist merc on the way to Nashkell swings first for no actual justified reason, and so you don't lose rep for whacking him. The whole Greywolf situation just isn't regarded as serious enough to result in rep loss no matter what you do, and anyway the game thought I was doing the good path in offering to protect the artist. It honestly didn't recognize the fact that Alexia had already pickpocketed the gems and that I was just jerking off to get Greywolf to show so I could take his sword.

A lot of metagaming, basically, but as long as I can sell it RP-wise what the heck? If/when I start gaining rep from quests I may well need to go out of my way to do some rep-losing evil, lest I lose my Blackguard status.

WUA, I disagree with you on many many things, but this shit be hilarious.  Reading this and reading your little killing Mission KOTOR screed has convinced me you could/should be writing professionally. 

Yeah, this is fun.

More pics (in spoiler tags) plz.

More.

 :heart:

So we're getting ready to brave the depths of the Nashkel mines, to fight the demons that haunt it (okay it's probably just a couple of bugbears or something, but still), to really cut our teeth as doers of deeds, and I'm getting myself psyched up. I'm kinda jumping around with my sword, supposedly practicing my form but really imagining I'm killing some worthwhile opponents. Take that you... you... not a ninety pound actress! Eat steel, something other than an unarmed merchant! I mean we've killed a few hobgoblins and bandits here and there, but mostly it's been the six of us blitzing a single overwhelmed combatant at best. Anyway, Vaere says this whole "sword-flapping" display is the douchebaggiest thing she's ever seen. Frankly I think that I look awesome, and that she needs to ride this dick and chill out, but I'm not about to say that last part out loud.

Where was I? Yeah, I'm standing there pretending to chop up people who can fight back a little bit and thinking of filthy things to not say to Vaere when the rest of the crew runs up and starts hopping up and down like idiot children with too much sugar in them. Okay Garrette wasn't really jumping around, but the fact that he was even putting up with the others in this state meant a lot. I can't even get "What the fuck is wrong with you nimrods?" out of my mouth before they're all squealing "CARNIVAL!" Yeah, apparently the circus is in town or something. I briefly contemplated enslaving them all with the Nythraxian Cloak of Mind Bending and just making them come to the mine with me, but whatever. Fine, the carnival it is.

So we get there and it's just a nonstop cavalcade of stupidity, but everyone else is having a good time so I keep quiet. At least until the metaphorical shit hits the anachronistic gnome-constructed fan, WHICH I'M GUESSING IT WILL. Some fruity bard type comes right up to Korgrim and starts spouting some kind of poetry and I'm like, this is it, it's gonna happen, his head is coming off any second. I'm already looking for guards. But to my utter surprise, Kor just starts clapping like it's the greatest thing he's ever heard. He even had a little tear in his eye. Then Alexia called him a pillow biting poof, he made some choice comments in return about her, a halfling, a donkey, and a tub of grease that ran the bard right off, and it was back to form.

We keep tramping along, seeing what there is to see, when we get accosted by a dipshit in some kind of neon luminescent ponce's uniform. Poofy hat, silly tights, and all of it going from green to red to blue even as you look at it. He called himself Lord Binky and went out of his way to tell us how horribly he thought we were dressed. Until I bent his mind with my magic cloak, after which he thought we looked great. I had him tag along with us, intent upon doing something fun to teach him a lesson, but not entirely sure what just yet. As it turned out, I didn't need to. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

There's this mage there, hyping an act called Oopah the Exploding Ogre. Based upon the title alone, I am intrigued. So we ask to see the act. He waves his wand, and sure enough an ogre appears. And sure enough, it fucking explodes. I don't mean there was a poof of fire and smoke and it vanished, I mean it detonated into flying chunks of screaming meat right before our eyes. We're a pretty gore-hardened bunch, but 500 pounds of giblets unexpectedly blown up in your face will turn anyone off. We're all covered in ogre bits and on the verge of throwing up, except for Mordak, who has this huge grin on his face and is just like "AGAIN! AGAIN! AGAIN!" That boy ain't right.

The rest of us took a big step back, except for Binky who I had stand even closer. Maybe if his silly clothes soak up enough blood, I won't be able to see the shifting colors anymore because they're making me almost as sick as the dollops of ogre intestine stuck to my breastplate. Well sure enough, the mage waves his wand again, the ogre appears again, and there's another shower of meat chunks. If people didn't mind eating ogre you could probably feed the world with this trick.

"AGAIN! AGAIN!" from Mordak. I told Binky he should keep his mouth open for this one. So the mage waves his wand and the ogre appears, only this time it's understandably sick of exploding, pissed off, and wants revenge. The carnival mage knew enough to immediately take off running. Mordak grabbed Binky by the collar and pushed him toward the ogre, screaming "HE DID IT!" and then running toward the rest of us. Poor Binky got his head clubbed clean off his shoulders. And when I say "poor Binky" I mean that it was awesome and the best thing I saw that day.

The ogre came after us once the ponce was dead, and we got to kill a halfway credible opponent. I guess. If killing circus performers counts. After that I insisted we take a long break to wash ourselves off before we could begin to smell like a slaughterhouse floor.

I was ready to go back to town at this point, but everyone else insisted that this was the best day ever, so I relented. We picked up from where we left off with the ogre, and the very next tent we poked our heads into turned out to be set up as a gambling parlor. Roulette wheels and everything. Garrette started rubbing his hands together in a way that I knew meant trouble, so I grabbed everyone and told them to get the fuck out. I'm tolerant to an extent, but there was NO WAY that was ending well.


I was in a hurry to distract the lot of them with something, anything else, so we all piled into the very next tent I saw. Of course it couldn't just be full of jugglers or clowns or something, no. There's some crazy wizard dude in there holding some other wizard chick at spellpoint, screaming that we should stay back or he'll finish saying the magic words to kill her. I'm just like "Fuck you buddy, it's always something!" and true to his word, he said something or other and the chick dropped dead. No skin off my ass, I didn't even know her. Then he started to cast something at us, so we rushed him. Vaere maced him in the back of the head so hard his eyes flew out the front. Kor was impressed.

Then Mordak runs up and just starts stripping the guy naked while we all stare open-mouthed. Yeah, seems the guy was wearing some kinda spiffy magical wizard robe. Mordak being Mordak, he saw no reason not to just switch clothes with the corpse right in front of us. Looted the dead girl too, took all their scrolls and assorted wizard shit that nobody else would know what to do with anyway.

After that things calmed down for a little while. We did a little shopping. Also a little stealing. Some snake-oil salesman wanted to sell us some crazy potions. We love potions but hate paying, so I gave him a dose of the hypno-cloak and he wished us well as we cleaned out his goods. We went a few tents down and sold most of them, plus all the other shit we'd "acquired" lately. We're up to ten thousand gold in total, and we haven't really even done anything hard yet. I don't know why everyone says crime doesn't pay, because as far as I can tell it pays great.

Oh, there was one other incident of interest. We met this little dwarf who wanted to sell us a Stone to Flesh scroll for 500 gold, presumably to de-petrify the woman standing nearby. God knows how long she'd been standing there as a statue, but I got the impression that it was a long time and that the circus had been set up around her. I was curious to find out what the woman's story was, but like I said we hate paying. Then Alexia did that little "brush up against a guy inappropriately to unnerve him while picking his pocket" thing and gave us the "I got the loot!" wink, so I knew it was all good.

Mordak is going on about how this woman is beautiful, and how we must haul the statue away to break the spell in private so that he can "question" her, and everyone is just rolling their eyes. Then as he's taking a step forward, Garrette sticks his foot out and he goes toppling right into her. CRASH. Yeah, I don't think she's getting unpetrified as anything other than meat fragments anytime soon. Mordak was pissed, Garrette just told him it was punishment for making everyone look at his naked ass earlier. Mordak just started laughing. For a perverted necromancer he has a surprisingly good sense of humor about things.

The dwarf was looking at us, all pissed off, and I don't think he'd even realized his scroll was missing yet. I decided it was time for us to get scarce again and we beat feet. We're going to the god damned mines to get some real work done now, whether anyone likes it or not.

Oh, we still have the Stone to Flesh scroll. Korgrim used his magic sword to carve a vagina on the side of a rock and gave it to Mordak, said he could use the scroll on it so he could see what one looks like. Yeah, I think that one pissed Mordak off a little.

(Alexia's portrait changed to a more appropriate custom one, Vaere dinged level 2, still haven't lost any rep.)

Well that was simpler than expected. I dragged everyone directly from the carnival to the mines, kicked the rude old foreman in the ass to have him let us in, and then we got down to work. The miners were all crying about demons and god knows what else, the pissant local soldiers were quaking in their boots nearly as badly, but it turns out that we were looking at a simple kobold infestation. Way to panic, morons. You have like 200 soldiers but some little two-foot tall goblins have managed to paralyze your entire economy. Oh well, leaves room for us to make money.

These kobolds really loved shooting people with bows though, so I used the cloak to mindfuck a couple of guards and the odd miner or two into serving as arrow magnets. That worked really well until we got in deep enough that there were no more miners. But they were still just kobolds and we sliced through them with alacrity.

There was the odd occasional ghoul, and we did come into a chamber with a bunch of those huge-ass spiders in it. We killed them all with ease and then Kor just starts staring at Vaere until she's like "WHAT?" I get what he's doing, so I start doing it too, and pretty soon the five of us are all just staring at her. Until finally she gets it and she's like "Oh fuck you guys, what I'm a drow so I'm supposed to love spiders? Kiss my ass!" Everyone laughed.

After that it was just Garrette disarming shitty kobold traps while we hacked the little bastards up, until we were so far down that we started seeing lava. This is one deep mine. IT'S CALLED MAGMA WHEN IT'S STILL UNDERGROUND, YOU OAF! --M. Oh shit that won't come off. That's what I get for leaving this out while I get up to piss. Fuck you, Mordak. If he does that again I'm going to draw a giant cock and balls on the inside cover of his spellbook while he's sleeping.

Where was I? So eventually we come to this huge rock in the middle of a small underground lake, and the rock has an opening in the side that looks like it's been traveled. So we barge in and there's this cleric standing there. Apparently he's the one in charge of all the kobolds, making them put this vile green shit on all the iron ore to ruin it. Green shit that looks exactly like an antidote potion, I might add, so I made sure to throw all the green poison shit away lest a hilarious mishap ensue at some future point.

Anyway, this cleric thinks we work for his boss, a guy named Tazok. Seems he has reason to believe his boss is pissed off at him, and is afraid we're the hit squad sent to get rid of him. He starts begging for more time, or some shit, so I just tell him I don't know who Tazok is but his ass is grass. Then suddenly he gets all cocky and calls for his guards, and the fight is on. A bunch of koblds and skeletons run up behind us, but Mordak puts the kobolds to sleep while Vaere drops the cleric with a Command spell. We dispatched the skeletons easily and then butchered everyone else where they lay.

We rooted through all his shit and came up with some magic boots, a ring, and a bunch of letters from this Tazok dude bitching this guy out for letting his kobolds stir shit up. Whatever. Apparently the boots are some kind of Talos-related relic that protect you from lightning, while the ring is one that lets clerics cast more spells. Vaere loves Talos and was all like "Mine, bitches!" and put them all on, telling us she deserves them for putting up with our silly racism. Pfft. The boots aren't important and nobody else can use the ring anyway, so nobody cared.

We found a back door exit from the mine that dropped us in the middle of nowhere, but everyone wanted to walk rather than wind our way through the caves again. One long march later and we're handing the letters over to the mayor of Nashkel and taking our 900 gold reward. Which isn't as generous as I might have hoped, but it's enough to keep me from mindfucking all the guards and sacking the city, so whatever.

So yeah, another flawless victory for the cool kids. Victory over actual armed and organized opposition, for once. We all headed over to the local pub to get trashed, when who should greet us outside but another moronic assassin. This one was a mage, but he didn't cast spells so good after Garrette sunk a crossbow bolt into his eye socket. We picked him clean and found another letter. Apparently this Tazok guy not only set out to screw over the mines, more importantly he's also the one trying to have me whacked.

There are lots of good reasons, I must admit, for someone to want me dead. But I was dealing with these idiots even before I set off on my life of crime, so I'm a bit mystified. Well one of the letters we found in the mine made reference to this Tazok having a man in Beregost by the name of Tranzig, so I think we'll track him down and beat some answers out of him. This constant stream of bumbling assassins is getting old as shit.

We'll get on that as soon as this hangover fades. We got so hammered the bartender cut us all off, then we retreated to their best rooms (which were still pretty crap) and slept it off. Korgrim puked all over the carpet and we just let it lay. Fuck it, we're famous adventurers now.

(Nythrax, Korgrim, and Mordak ding 2. Garrette and Alexia ding 3.)

I cannot wait for the endgame recap.  :grin:

One thing that annoy me most about this game is how much trash mobs are there in game, I basically loaded up every fighter with bows and just pincushion them to hell. Once I've got fireball it's much more tolerable.

So we got back to Beregost without incident, and the coast was clear. Not only was there no pitchfork-waving mob awaiting us, but a little girl ran up and told us that a member of the Flaming Fist wanted to meet me at the Jovial Juggler tavern. I asked her how she knew who we were and apparently we really are fucking famous now. For clearing out the mine, even, and not for robbing the town and killing half a dozen people. Korgrim high-fived me on the spot. This is how it's supposed to be.

Obviously we were suspicious about the Flaming Fags asking after us, so we went in there all careful like, with Alexia on lookout outside and Garrette scoping the place out before we went inside. Turns out this Officer Vai was there to beg for our help. Apparently the whole bandit thing is so out of control that these guys are totally cut off from getting back to Baldur's Gate. She'll pay us 50 gold for every bandit's scalp we bring her.

I rubbed her face in shit a little bit, metaphorically speaking, and she just took it which was great. I'll probably end up doing the job anyway. I don't like the Flamers any, but I love killing people and getting paid for it. Kor and Mordak want to just start scalping everyone we meet, but I managed to calm them down.

Once we were on the street again, that old dipshit in the red hat that accosted us straight out of Candlekeep turned up again. He introduced himself by name this time. Turns out he's Elminster. Yes THE Motherfucking Elminster. I'm pretty sure Mordak peed a little bit, but I wasn't impressed. The old goat congratulated us on whooping ass in Nashkel, making him as informed as that five year old who told us the Flamers were looking for us. Then he said something about how we were on a morally grey path, straddling the fence or some shit. HAW! If that's what he thinks then he clearly doesn't know what the fuck he's talking about after all.

He kept blabbering about how he used to know Gorion, but I just cut him off and told him we had to go. He made a point of telling us we should go investigate the bandits in the northeast. Dude, you're the dimension-hopping godfucker, why don't you go over there and vaporize all the bandits with a fart and save everyone else the trouble? But of course not.

Enough with the distractions, this Tranzig asshole owed us some answers, and the letter we got his name from said he was staying at Felpost's. We scoped the place out and caught up to him in his room. He was already packing to get the hell out of town, so we told him the jig was up and to spill his guts if he wanted to live. Oh but he's a MAGE, and he's going to teach us a lesson. Yawn. One vicious beating later the guy is telling us how he meets Tazok in Peldvale and Larswood to carry messages for him, but that's all he knows, and can he please go now?

We cut his throat and Mordak took his magic ring that makes you slightly harder to hit in battle. I got these boots that are supposed to make you almost impossible to hit with arrows, and Garrette got a ring that lets him see in the dark, which is pretty handy given the sneaky sorta shit we always have him doing. Or did we get some of that loot from Firebead? You kill enough wizards and it all starts to run together.

Okay, I should expalin. Firebead Elvenhair is one of gramps' old friends from Candlekeep, and unless I miss my guess at least half a pedo. He never did anything blatant that I know of, but he was the sorta guy who always wanted one of us kids to sit on his lap. Yeah. Well anyway, we were doing a little go-round of town to see if there was anything new to burgle, and sure enough there's the guy just standing there in his front room. Awkward.

Ah, but he seemed to think we knew he lived there, and had come to visit him. Whew. Yeah, he starts "consoling" us on the loss of gramps (like we care) and offers to give us "a few coins" if we bring him some book, since "it must be so hard" with him gone. Which was pretty insulting, really. Yeah right asshole, in case you haven't heard I'm a famous adventurer with enough money to buy out your entire miserable life several times over. Anyway, I think he must have been more of a pedo than I thought, because he goes to put his hand on Garrette's shoulder in a fatherly sort of way, and out of nowhere Kor bellows "BAD TOUCH! KOR WILL NEVER WEAR THE CLOWN SUIT AGAIN!" and hacks the old fart's arm right the hell off at the elbow. Garrette almost shit himself, but still had the presence of mind to jam a dagger in the geezer's throat before he could start screaming.

Screeny:
Mordak starts spinning around where he stands, waiting for Elminster to appear out of the ether and smite us, but nothing happened. Just like I figured. So we looted the old guy, and his house, and crammed him in a closet. Kor absolutely refused to explain himself or say much of anything at all, and Alexia was actually nice to him for once.

We stopped by Thunder Hammer, and apparently the guy never figured out who robbed him because he was friendly as ever. We bought some goodies. Nothing super great, a magic sling here, a better sword there. Between the Flaming Fist, Elminster, and the info we murdered out of Tranzig, it's pretty clear that everyone expects us to go to Peldvale and tangle with the bandits. With that in mind, we decided to head back south and plunder the gnolls that crazy asshole with the gerbil mentioned before he died. There's WAY too much going on here. Maybe things will cool off a little bit with time, and then we can track down that Tazok.

(Vaere dings level 3. Repuation falls from 10 to 6. Funny thing, I'm so good at being bad without losing rep that I actually got one of the goodguy chapter-recap dream sequences. Bullshit. I reloaded and went looking for a way to lose rep. It was just dumb luck that I found Firebead in his house. Killing him seemed much better than whacking a random peasant, so I invented a story to go with it. Edited to add screenshot.)

lol. Not too low of a rep, man. Baldur's Gate is gonna be hell with low rep later on.

Six is about as low as I'll go. Between six and nine. Remember that as a blackguard, anything above 14 will perma-cripple Nythrax. Thus I plan to avoid double digits entirely.

Yeah i know, i had a playthrough once when i got below 5 on nashkel. I had to stealth a thief around just to turn in my quest reward. Every flaming fist merc I killed is -1. But those plates are worth 500g a piece  :awesome_for_real:

Been a while since this forum had a worthwhile thread, but you just totally redeemed it.

 :heart:

Nashkel really is the armpit of the Sword Coast. I swear this place gets to be more of a bumpkin shitheap everytime we pass through. We finally sat out to do some real proper burglary on the place, and let me tell you, it was slim pickings. Most of the place is a bunch of bullshit farmhouses. I could sell the deeds to these places and barely come up with enough cash to bother. There's exactly one rich-looking manor house in the entire town, so we set out to break in.

Lex picked the lock easily enough, and the household wasn't too glad to see the six of us come barging in. At least not until I exposed them to the Nythraxian Cloak of Mind Bending, after which they smiled as we helped ourselves to their valuables. Which, let me tell you, weren't very valuable. These guys might be "rich" by the standards of this hee-haw hellhole, but a few wizard scrolls for Mordak and a couple handfuls of coin aren't anything we're going to get excited about at this point.

We were tired though, so everyone sprawled out and put their feet up on the couches, and had the mindfucked homeowners bring us some snacks. I got bored pretty quick, so I decided to go check out the upstairs by myself. I come around the corner to a bedroom, and there's this girl maybe my age just standing there in the middle of the room with a look on her face like she just got caught stealing from the collection plate. She asks me what the hell I'm doing there, so I improvise.

"I know what you did, and it's time for you to die!" I scream this at her and wave my sword over my head, and the bitch zooms out of the room screaming at the top of her lungs. I was already bent over with laughter as she ran past me. I didn't really know what she was doing to have that guilty look on her face, at least not until her naked boyfriend burst out of the closet in a ridiculous boxing stance.

Oh yeah, this naked guy is gonna teach me a lesson. He's trained with the local dipshit guards for a whole two years, you see. I'll admit that two years ago I was still sneaking copies of Faerun Geographic out of the Candlekeep periodical section so I could fap at the pictures of topless wood elves, but I learned a lot more in my first three days of freedom than this retard was ever going to learn from these cowardly moron backwater guards.

Screenshot:
Also, I had plate armor and a giant sword while he was buck naked. I chopped him in half with ease. Go figure. When I got back downstairs everyone was still laughing hysterically, because apparently this girl came running down, saw her parents serving crumpets and tea to another bunch of dirty mercenaries, and (not realizing they were mindfucked) decided they were out to get rid of her for disgracing the family with her slutty ways. She kept shrieking "I'M SORRY!" as she ran out the front door. She apparently split out of town without daring to alert the guards, too, which was nice.

As we were walking out of town, I spied a tavern I had never been in before. I waited patiently for a moment, and to my surprise no one came walking up to tell me they were assassinating me. I was puzzled, so we went inside, and STILL we weren't laid into by any super talkative hired killers. Maybe we're finally thinning their ranks.

I ordered a beer just because it seemed like a novel change to order a beer in a new tavern without having to step over any dead bodies first, and this fat neckbeard who called himself Volo came up and started his routine. "Oh isn't this such a fine rustic tavern! Oh the charm of a small town! Would you like to hear my stories?" This guy was clearly enjoying the role of Jovial Tavern Guy, and way too much so for my tastes. I told him to cram his stories up his hairless blown-out asshole.

The guy has the gall to ask ME to leave. I did, but only after bending his mind with the cloak and telling him to get the bouncer's dick in his mouth no matter what he had to do. He's either gonna get an ass-kicking or a new best friend. Haw.

So we're on our way out of town, when this mage in a red robe comes up to us and tells us he wants to hire us to kill someone. I'm all ears. The "witch" the crazy guy with the gerbil fetish wanted to rescue like weeks ago? This guy wants her dead. I'm like... what does he think those gnolls are doing with her that she'd even still be alive in the first place? But fine, if she's already dead that just means I get a reward for doing nothing. Only problem is, the guy steadfastly REFUSES to even hint as to what this job of his pays.

One might think I should just say yes anyway since I'm already going there, but I don't countenance this sort of bullshit when it comes to dealmaking. What's more, the bitch COULD still be alive, and I don't know where she's being kept. It could be a lot of work getting her out, and I'm not signing on for that just so some chucklefuck can thank me and offer me my mystery prize of two gold pieces and an old boot at the end. I told the red mage to fuck off on principle.

Hmm, what else happened before we got out of sight of town? We met a man named Noober who followed us all across the field saying the most ignorant things over and over, refusing to leave us alone. Garrette thought he reminded him of Imoen without tits, which is even worse than just plain Imoen, so he reached back behind him and shot the guy in the face with his crossbow point-blank, without even turning around. It looked pretty awesome, and you could tell he had just been waiting for a chance to do that to someone.

Off into the forest with us, to find these gnolls.

(Whose Mary Sue is Volo? The guy is invincible. I tried killing him but even crits weren't doing any damage. Bullshit.)

Volo is a traveling mage (writing down and selling his travel guides) who survived way to many things such a retard shouldn't survive up to the point that people think he might be the chosen of one of the gods. Which proves gods are indeed cruel and heartless.

He is the ingame voice that many of the Forgotten Realms sourcebooks are written in. The Baldurs Gate manual is "written" by him too, and the comments show that even Elminster hates him.

One of these days we'll see if he can survive the insta-kill meatsplosion cheat. I don't have it set up on this install, but last time it wouldn't kill Elminster, so maybe it won't work on Volo either. Meh.

Probably not as a special guest NPC.  "Volo's Guide to" X was a series using him.  Or something like that.  I mean, even when I killed that silly dark elf who was upset I didn't help against a pack of gnolls he far outleveled apparently returned.

Great read, keep it up.

Did you run into Biff the Understudy yet or did I miss it?

So we're trekking through the woods and everything is going fine. The sun is shining, the birds are singing, and other than the odd kobold there's nothing to bother us. There's an old abandoned keep in the mountains to the west, and since that's probably where our gnolls are, we're headed that way. Sure enough the relative peace couldn't last.

We hear a bunch of little screams, and see a troop of little blue goblins rushing toward us. No big deal, but at the very same time some moron is trying to stick us up. He's got a friend backing him up from a distance, and he's telling us his friend is "the fastest dart thrower in the west" like that's scary or something. I'm like "Asshole, see the goblins?" but he's just going on about how great his friend is at throwing darts. Man, darts are a bitch weapon. Even Mordak laughs at darts and he can hardly stomach lifting any weapon heavier than a table knife.

So I just gave this dipshit a dose of the Nythraxian Cloak of Mind Bending and told him to go murder his retarded dart-tossing friend while me and my crew diced up the goblins. Once we finished with that simple task, we found the two would-be robbers in the middle of a bloody slugfest. The dart guy didn't seem to know what was wrong with his friend, and never found out as we fell upon them and hacked them asunder. Turns out the dart guy had some magical bracers that made him an ace with ranged weapons. Not that they helped him much. Heh. Gar and Lex did rock-paper-scissors for them and Gar won.

Oh, speaking of goblins, we had a very disturbing run-in shortly thereafter. We're trudging down the road when we see a kobold, an xvart, and a tasloi coming in the other direction like they're any plain old travelers. Weird enough that three different breeds would band together, but after we cleaved them into chunks and pilfered them, we found a little note that said "To Nythrax and friends from Larry, Darryl, and Darryl!" What the hell was that about? How did they know who I was? How did they know we'd be there? As far as we can tell they must have been assassins who were planning to track us down and kill us, and leave that note on our corpses as a calling card. Which doesn't make much sense as they were utterly trivial to kill. I guess if this Tazok is paying enough money, all sorts of idiot amateurs are going to take their shot. Yeah, that explains a lot.

It was several hours before our next run-in with anything, and when it came it was decidedly more pleasant. This half naked dryad comes running up to us out of the woods, and all the men's eyes pretty much jump out of their heads. I mean I guess she wasn't that great, but usually when someone comes running up to us they have a sword in each hand and a dog's head instead of a real head, or some shit like that, so we're easy to impress. I whistled and Vaere kicked me in the ass. I don't know what the hell her problem is.

So this dryad comes running up and the first words out of her mouth, in this little girly voice, are "Please, kind spirits, a wondrous ancient oak is in peril!" I immediately knew this was going to be some bullshit. Turns out a couple of the yokel hillbilly dipshits had decided her tree was full of treasure, and were going to chop it down. I'm not sure but I think this would kill her. I told her she had better hork up some cash if she wanted some muscle, and she was all like "I live in the forest, what the hell would I have gold for retard?" But I told her no pay means no slay and she started getting desperate.

Finally she told us that the birds had told her about a "shiny pile" hidden somewhere nearby. Rumors heard by crazy half-naked forest spirits out of the mouths of birds don't carry much weight with me, but unlike that mealy-mouthed wizard in Nashkel who wanted us to kill the witch for a totally undisclosed reward, I could see that this chick was telling us everything she could. So I told her I'd do it.

Like I said, a couple of real inbred fucks were planning on hacking the tree down because they thought it was full of gold. They invited us to join in for a cut, except this bitch lives in the forest so what the hell would she have gold for? We slaughtered them pretty easy, and the stupider of the two had a magic belt that repels blunt weapons. I let Korgrim have it. Then the dryad told us real bitchy like that the "shiny pile" was in a wolf cave a little bit to the south, then disappeared to wherever the hell she goes when she's not bothering people.

So we marched over to the cave, killed a couple of wolves, and sure enough it looked like the cave was originally a tomb. We ransacked the half-open coffin, and came out with a little gold, a few assorted knicknacks, and an enchanted halberd. Halberds really aren't my thing, but there are some creatures that can't be hurt by normal weapons and I didn't have any magical weapons yet, so I kept it. I probably won't use it unless we meet one of said creatures.

That was about it. We were attacked by a white wolf, and I remembered the shopkeeper in Nashkel saying he'd pay 500 gold for the pelt of one, so we skinned it. But we reached the old keep without further incident. Based on the shit and garbage strewn all over the place, I'm guessing the gnolls are in fact here.

Time to get in there and visit some legally unassailable havoc upon sentient beings. God I love the racism inherent in society.

(Nythrax and Korgrim ding 3. Editing a screeny of Nythrax versus the naked boyfriend into the prior post shortly. No, there has been no sign of Biff the Understudy. I haven't even played yet today. I've just been expanding last night's notes into story form here and there between other things. I'll probably play more tonight.)

+1

If he's playing a heavily bugfixed version its unlikely he'll run into Biff unless he kills a script NPC or whatever - Biff only shows up when the character who is supposed to deliver a given line in the script is dead or otherwise can't act (in BG1).

I figured he might start killing NPCs eventually. :awesome_for_real:

Since this has been ported to the BG2 engine and BG2 never had to use an understudy, I'm not sure if Biff even exists here. I guess we'll find out when I meet someone really important who doesn't have god mode protection.

Volo is immune to insta-gib hack. Bullshit.

I expect Biff will still show up, unless someone went through all those BG1 npcs and manually edited them to have the 'no kill' protection from BG2 - 'plot immunity' is conveyed by an item in their inventory rather than by something built-in to the engine itself.

Man, that was great. This wasn't a bunch of pissant kobolds, or the odd wandering ogre, this was... Okay, I'm getting ahead of myself.

So the only way to reach this keep we're heading toward is across this rope bridge. These two idiot ogrillions (as if there were any other kind) came up and told us that it was "their" bridge and that we needed to pay them 200 gold to cross. The idea came to me that I ought to charm them with my cloak and use them as cannon fodder on our way in, but then I thought... fuck it. Enough of that shit, it was time to stomp asses. We rushed the two of them and cut them to pieces, only pausing to grab their stuff, and then we were into the stronghold itself.

A gnoll isn't a little sawed-off laughingstock like a kobold. These guys are like seven feet tall and all of them were packing halberds. There were a lot of them too, and we went through them like a fucking tornado. A tornado made out of meat giblets and screaming. We went from one end to the other and just butchered everything that moved. The few hits we took were nothing Vaere couldn't heal up on the fly, and pretty soon we had reached what was apparently the leader of these things.

He was as ugly and stupid as the rest, but dressed a little fancier and he had five or six of his guys backing him up. He started to say something in that ridiculous "I have dog teeth and can't form words" accent of theirs, but then Kor was all like "I AM THE FIST OF DEATH!" or something like that and just jumped forward with a sword in each hand and started hacking this asshole like he was butchering a cow. We all ran in alongside him, and it was over in pretty short order.

Everyone was covered in more gore than at any point since that business at the circus with the exploding ogre, and grinning from ear to ear. Then we hear this voice calling for help from the bottom of one of these big pits the gnolls were apparently using as cells. There were some logs banged into the floor to act as stairs, so we crept down ready for a trick.

Instead there's this ridiculously hot dark-skinned woman chained to the wall, and in remarkably pristine condition, especially considering that the gnolls had been holding onto her for weeks now at the least. She's all like "Oh thank you, noble adventurer!" and giving me the look. You know. Mordak shoved his way to the front to go "I helped too!" but this lady didn't give a crap. Yeah Mordak, you cast Magic Missile like twice, way to go. Like I said, this woman's giving me the look and I'm digging it.

Oh, I'm debating whether we can still get paid for killing her, and whether there's anyone around we could sell her to, but in the meantime I'm digging it. Then she puts one hand on my breastplate and tells me how she'd love to join our cause, whatever that cause may be.

All of a sudden Vaere walks up all calm and maces this woman so hard that we've both got brains all over our face. I'm all like "What the fuck yo?" obviously, and she just says "What, am I the only one not allowed to commit random murder around here?" and stomps off back up the way we came. Crazy broad. Ever since we hit the road it's like her "loony drow bitch cat fight" side has come out of hiding. Oh well, this witch chick couldn't have been very good anyway if these gnolls took her, and if that gerbil-keistering weirdo we put down a while back was supposed to be her bodyguard.

Anyway, we had taken a bunch of gems and jewelry off of all the dead gnolls, but I knew there had to be something else good around here. There had been a fair number of xvarts mixed in with the gnolls, and sure enough just to the south of the stronghold itself there were some caves full of the little buggers. We had to traipse along a bunch of miserable little goat-track paths to reach them, but once inside it was like kicking over toddlers. One of these caves even had a cache of loot.

Once we had wiped everything out, we took our rest right there in the xvart cave (which only slightly smelled like piss) and split up the goodies. Vaere got some gauntlets that magically increase your dexterity. She insists on fighting up front with me and Kor, but she can't take hits like we do, so I figure some extra quickness will let her take fewer hits in the first place. She just put them on and didn't say anything.

The other good thing we got was this magic book that's supposed to make you more charismatic if you read it. Only the spell makes it disappear once it's been read, so you can't read it ten times or have everyone you know read it, or whatever. It was called a "tome of leadership and influence" so I snapped that shit right up. I'm the leader, and I try not to be too much of a cock, but I'm not letting anyone forget it.

Except I forgot that I'm traveling with a bunch of smartasses, so after I used it I couldn't say anything without one of these chucklefucks going "Wow, that's really charismatic the way you said that!" I'd belch and someone would go "I'm totally influenced!" Hardy har har. At least Vaere lightened up. Oh, I asked Korgrim where he got that "FIST OF DEATH!" line and he sorta shrugged like he was embarrassed and said he just made it up on the fly. Said it sounded like some cool shit to say before cutting a guy to pieces. We all agreed that it was pretty awesome.

Anyway, once we got back to Nashkel and sold all the jewels, and the white wolf pelt and all the other extra shit we'd picked up, we cleared about 2500 gold. That's nearly three times what that dingleberry of a mayor paid us for killing all the shit in their stupid mine. That guy is such a dickhole anyway, always strutting up and down main street with his little bow and arrows, like he's about to put someone down at any second. Fucking poser.

We're going back to that crappy inn of theirs and staying as drunk as we want for a week. If they bitch about how Kor puked on the carpet last time, I'll have him shit on it this time and pay to watch them pick it up.

(No dings to report. I thought it would be fun to give Vaere a crush on Nythrax, but since I'm writing a game playthrough and not a goddamn romace fanfic, he's going to stay hopelessly oblivious while I milk it for jokes and an excuse for killing any female NPC I want.)

 :thumbs_up: :roffle: :thumbs_up:

I liked the brigand speech.

"SO I KICKED HIM ON DA HEAD TILL HE WAS DEAD! MWEHAHWHUEAHHAHA"

After a beer-soaked couple of days in Nashkel I decided we should swing north to finally look for this Tazok. I know I said we were going to get drunk for a week, but even with enough money to buy out the town (and the essentially unlimited booze that implies) Nashkel was just too fucking rustic and boring to put up with for that long. The nightlife is shit when it's just you, your friends, and a bunch of farmers staring at you over their mead like you've got three heads. I figured we've wasted enough time that Elminster has already gotten bored and gone off to fight demonic anteaters in another dimension or something, so it ought to be cool to proceed.

I think they were pretty glad to see us go. In fact, they all looked downright gratified. I could hear this sort of collective sigh of relief go up as we were walking out of the tavern for the last time. So as we were almost out the door, I turn around and go "I have something to say!" I let that hang in the air for a minute while everyone stared at me, and then I was like "It's better to BURN OUT than to FADE AWAY!" Then I let out this rather evil laugh (if I do say so myself) and did a little spin. The rest of my crew looked at me like I was nuts, but I thought it was cool.

Then it was just an overland slog to the Friendly Arm Inn, to rest before cutting east into Peldvale. Man that place isn't an inn, it's a fortress. Anyway we met another worthless assassin, only this one was even more worthless than usual. Garrette shot him dead even faster than the last one on our way into the inn proper. Alexia snuck off to do some pilfering, while the rest of us had a seat. Whoever gramps had been expecting to take over running our lives was apparently long gone, because no one else came up to bother us. Thankfully.

Everything was pretty quiet. Lex came back down a little while later with a collection of the usual bullshit knicknacks, and one pair of shiny golden pantaloons. I could see Korgrim's head almost explode with all the filthy jokes that crammed their way into it at Alexia coming downstairs from the bedrooms in possession of a pair of men's pants. He recited every single one of them in a row, for all that she insisted one of the fop nobles had taken her for a maid and just handed them to her for laundering.

So Lex just shakes her head, gets up out of her seat, and comes up behind him where he sits, all seductive like. Kor's hands immediately go over his pockets. But that's not what she was thinking, because instead she suddenly wraps the pantaloons around his face from behind with the crotch right in front and starts yelling "How do his balls smell Kor? HOW DO THEY SMELL?" while he gags and holds his breath and spills his drink. I almost died laughing, until I realized everyone was looking and told them both to cut the bullshit.

Anyway, on the way out some broad introduced herself as Joia and asked us to get her ring back from some local hobgoblins who stuck her up. We asked her what she'd pay to get it back and she said she didn't have anything, because the hobgoblins took it all. So... nothing, then. We told her to cram it, though we did stumble over the hobgoblins on our way into the woods. Lex is wearing her ring right now.

Oh yeah, one last thing. On our way up to the Arm we happened to kill an ogre. No big deal, except it had two magic belts. One was for helping to stop arrows, which was nice, and the other one was a cursed one that would change your gender. Yep, put this thing on and your outie becomes an innie, or vice-versa. Once it's on you can't get it off without a priest laying a Remove Curse spell on you, either. Mordak wanted to keep it, but I made him sell it for a hundred gold at the Friendly Arm. I figure either he was planning to put it on someone else in their sleep as a joke, which is not cool, or else... Well I don't want to think about the other possibillity.

On to Peldvale and slaughter. With all the hell they've been raising and raiding they've done, these bandits ought to be up to their armpits in loot.

(Just a bit of color as the next segment is bound to be mostly a lot of "We killed some bandits and then we killed some more bandits!" Yup, Nythrax will never meet Khalid and Jaheira at all. I feel like I should be doing more eeevil, but the game isn't giving me much ammunition at the moment. I could just start hacking up commoners or something, but that's a lot of headache for not much comedy. I'm skipping a lot of dumb newbie sidequests because they have zero evil/humor potential and only give like 400xp each. A bear is worth that much and Firebead the Pedo was worth 3700 by himself anyway, so I'm still ahead. Also, Kurgan FTW. Oh, and that stupid newbie assassin is the first one you're *supposed* to meet, and really did die a one-shot crit death to Garrette.)

 :heart: I really want to play BG1 again and actually go and get BG2 as well now.

We cut east into Peldvale from the Friendly Arm, and almost immediately we're getting pelted with arrows by what I took to be well-equipped mercenaries. Real armor, magic arrows, and so forth. Nothing we couldn't handle though. They kept concentrating fire on me and Kor, and between our armor and assorted magical doodads they couldn't do shit to us. We cut them down and gave their fancy arrows to Alexia for her short bow.

As we're tromping along, we hear someone yelling "Help me!" and this woman comes running up to us. Hoo boy, wonder what shit this is now, I think. Turns out the broad is a drow elf, begging for help because one of the Flaming Fisters is right behind her and bent on taking her in. Sure enough the guy turns up, as stupid and full of shit as any of them, and tells us to stand aside. I'm ambivalent about this whole display, so I just ask the guy what's going on.

He's all like "She's a dark elf, it should be obvious that she's evil!" Well Vaere steps forward and pulls her helmet off so this guy can see who he's talking to, and then she opens her mouth and out pours a torrent of invective that nearly curled my hair. This guy's intelligence, parentage, hygiene, sexuality, and preferred uses for barnyard animals were insulted all in the span of a single long-running sentence that had even Kor's eyes as big as saucers. I'd write some of it down here, but I think it was so filthy it burned itself from my mind.

Then she finishes and everyone, Flamer included, just sort of stands there stunned for a second. Then he starts spluttering in a "Why I never!" kinda way and reaching for his flail, so we tackled him and hacked his head off. Whatever, no one seems to care when these guys go missing, and this is bandit territory anyway.

Then the other drow, the one we just saved, turns to Vaere and says something in that crazy language that none of us (Vaere included) understand at all. When Vaere just stares back at her blankly, the other drow introduces herself in Common as Viconia, and asks to join our merry little band. But Vaere is giving off a really weird vibe. Not exactly a catfighty vibe, but I can tell this "real" drow makes her uncomfortable. So I told this Viconia to be glad she was rescued and shove off. She did, but not before saying something in her own language that was sounded like it was really rude.

Fucking Mordak pipes up out of nowhere after a minute. "Hey Vaere, I don't know why you were so upset that Fister said dark elves are evil. After all, you're a dark elf and you're pretty evil!" She goes to shoot him this venemous look, but we turn around and he's got the Flamer's severed head in one hand and is throwing a big thumbs up with the other like "Go evil!" with this totally ridiculous grin on his face, and everyone just starts laughing. Vaere took the head from him and punted it into the woods. Existential crisis averted.

Anyway, we're trudging through the woods in what we think is the right direction, and we're pretty sure we're going the right way because this bandit turns up with like six of his cronies and gives us the "All your money or die!" routine. Dipshit, do we look like some lost merchants? I had this great idea though, to ask to join their band so as to get them to show us where their camp is.

But then Garrette just starts counting. "Fifty, one hundred, one fifty, two hunded..." and so forth, pointing at each bandit as he goes. Right, the scalp bounty. Mordak and Korgrim got these big smiles on their faces at the reminder, and we were all over these assholes before Garrette could reach three hundred and fifty. Easy fight, and their leader's warhammer was magical. Obviously we scalped them all.

I'd like to be able to say we scouted the bandit's main camp out through superior skill and then came up with a clever plan of attack, but the fact is we sorta blundered over it. We came out of the woods right in front of the leaders tent, and about a million guys ran over to attack us. One of them, and I swear this is true, was dumb enough to say "Can't let you into the leader's tent, you'll get his important stuff!" Haw. Buncha hobgoblins too.

This was a lot harder than fighting the gnolls, or the kobolds, or anything else we've fought so far. It was just a knockdown drag-out brawl and we almost didn't win. The big guy with the full plate armor and the magic hammer took a hell of a beating to put down. But we gutted it out, and pretty soon the opposition was all dead, and Vaere had us patched up enough to keep fighting.

We barged right into the leader's tent. No Tazok, but apparently a bunch of sub-chiefs, including a hobgoblin and gnoll. And a mage. We all piled onto the mage first and hammered him into the floor, and after that the rest fell relatively easily. With that out of the way we met someone named Ender Sai, a prisoner of the bandits. He was able to tell us a lot about what was going on, but the long and the short of it is that Tazok is probably in Cloakwood, and is just a pawn of something called the Iron Throne anyway.

We rifled through the place (after Garrette disarmed a trap or two) and found a bunch of loot, plus some letters. Apparently Tazok takes orders from a guy named Davaeorn, and they're all the bitches of someone named Sarevok. Unless I miss my guess, it was probably this Sarevok who took out gramps. At least I hope so. If that was Davaeorn or someone else, and this Sarevok has LACKIES of that caliber, this is going to be a lot more difficult.

But we're still gonna do it anyway. We're gonna find Tazok and carve some answers out of his ass, and then go right up the chain until I'm pissing on this Sarevok's corpse. I've had entirely enough of being fucked with, and what's more I want to know why. I have sort of a suspicion, but I'm not writing it down yet.

Anyway, with the leadership decapitated (literally) it was easy enough to rout the rest of the bandits and loot the place clean. I won't bother cataloging everything we took, but I am not disappointed. We're richer than shit now. We're not racing straight to Cloakwood, either. If nothing else, we have to get to Beregost and sell all these fucking scalps to that Fister bitch before they start to stink too bad.

Oh, on the way back toward the Friendly Arm, Mordak wandered off and almost got eaten by a bear. We all thought it was pretty hilarious, our devious necromancer running like a rabbit with this bear right behind him. Heh.

(Everyone dings 4, except Mordak who dings 3. I didn't really do the whole bandit camp on one set of spells, but there's no decent way to write "and then we took an 8 hour nap in the middle of the raid" so I left it out.)

We dumped a few dozen bandit scalps in Vai's lap and came away a bit richer. We didn't stick around to chat though. The more I thought about it, the more I figured we should hit these Iron Throne assholes while the hitting's good. Whatever base they have in Cloakwood should be their last stronghold outside of Baldur's Gate itself. If we could crush that the way we did their Nashkel and Peldvale operations, they ought to be essentially blind. Then they can sit behind the city walls and bite their nails waiting for us to move against them at our leisure.

At least I think so. The rest of the crew seemed to think this sounded like a pretty good plan when I gave it to them. I even banged my fist into my palm when I said "crush" all dramatic-like and it seemed to get the message across. Even if it did cause Kor and Alexia to start up the "I'm so influenced!" game again. Bah. So we marched into Cloakwood and started scouting around. I've come to accept that us going out anywhere in public will entail attracting more than our share of wandering morons, but for somewhere so secluded this place was packed full of them.

First up was some rich merchant from Baldur's Gate named Aldeth and a druid named Seniyad. They were standing outside Aldeth's hunting lodge having an argument. I don't know how I get sucked into these things, but Aldeth tells me these druids are crazy and harassing him for shooting the poor innocent animals. Seniyad tells me Aldeth shot a poor innocent druid. My concern for this bullshit is, needless to say, not high. Nevertheless, I do a little mental calculation and decide that I'd rather be owed a favor by a rich merchant than some filthy badger-fucking druid.

This Seniyad had a few of his druid pals with him, but come on. We're way past the point of sweating a bunch of unarmored shits armed with nothing but sticks and their love of nature. We butchered them like hogs. This Aldeth then gave us a potion of heroism as a token of gratitude and told us to look him up in the Merchant's League if we were ever in Baldur's Gate. An ally in the city will be useful when it comes time to go there, so I figure I made the right decision.

We still robbed his hunting lodge after he left to get back to the city. Haw. He'll never know the difference. With all the shit swarming around those woods and that place unguarded, there'll be a band of tasloi living in there and wiping their asses on the rugs before the week is out. He kept a fair amount of gold and some more potions in there.

Speaking of tasloi, we waylaid a whole war party of the screamy little fucks not long afterward. Their chief had this fancy cloak that makes the wearer impossible to detect by way of magic. Garrette snapped that thing up, and given that he's our designated sneak it seemed like a good idea. The only downside is that my fucking sword broke over one of the little assholes heads. Bam, just snapped clean in two. I had to pull out that magic halberd I've been lugging around and get by with that. Like I said I'm no expert with a polearm, but it would have to do.

So we kept plugging away, hacking through the odd goblin or bear or whatever as we went, until we came to this narrow little bridge over a stream. There's this really stupid looking elf just standing there in the middle of it, wearing this ridiculous little harlequin mask. Garrette wanted to just shoot him, because who stands there blocking a bridge like that unless they're a guard? And who would guard a bridge out here besides the Iron Throne? Lord knows we've chopped people into cutlets for way less and will in the future. But he didn't look like Iron Throne, so I went up to talk to him.

Yeah, turns out the elf is some kinda ranger, and he's just standing on the bridge to admire the view. I guess. Anyway he tells us how the mayor of Beregost is offering a 2000 gold bounty for the head of a "dragon" that's been eating up traders and cattle and such out here. Except the mayor is kind of a retard and doesn't realize that it's just a wyvern, he says. Apparently he wants to team up with us to kill this thing. Well I figure me and my crew can kill a wyvern, and this guy doesn't even look that tough, so what do we need him for?

And more to the point, with 2000 gold on the table, why do we need any competition? You can guess what happened then. Thanks for the tip, dipshit, and enjoy your little trip to the bottom of the river.

We carried on across, and pretty soon we came across this wimbly little pissant who greeted us with "Please let me talk before you attack!" Hey, he must know us. Not really, but what the hell, we let him talk. He tells us his brother went off to kill Cloakwood's infestation of giant spiders. He figured he could pull this off because he had an enchanted greatsword called Spider's Bane. My ears immediately perk up, because I'm in the market for a new sword and a magical one important enough to have a name beats the hell out of anything else going. He wanted us to get his brother's body back for him, but we just slapped him around until he told us where the big spider's nest was and left him sitting there.

We knew we were getting closer when we started running into ettercaps, which are like fat little trolls with a spider fetish. They set all these little tripwires between trees that cause webbing to spray out when they're tripped. That doesn't do much harm in itself, but there are more and more big-ass spiders crawling around out here, and you really don't wanna be immobile when one of them comes up looking for lunch. Garrette's got a good eye for spotting shit like that though, and he didn't have any trouble disarming them.

Pretty soon we were up to the nest itself, which looks like this huge house-sized dome with spikes sticking out of it. I don't know what the fuck sort of spider is supposed to make a nest that looks like that, but I want my god damned sword so in we go. Inside there's this disgustingly obese woman laying in the middle of the floor with webbing stretching out all around her. I'm like, what the fuck? Are we in the right building? But she's all like "RARR! KILL THEM MY SPIDER MINIONS!" and a bunch of spiders and ettercaps and shit run out to attack. Okay, this must be the right place.

A quick Horror spell from Mordak to scatter them, a few Slow Poison spells from Vaere to deal with the odd bite, and the spiders were all done for. Then this fat bitch starts trying to squirm away from us like a fucking slug. Her legs don't work because they probably haven't been used in... ever, and also she's like 700 pounds. She was all like "We can make a deeeeeal!" until Gar and Lex filled her with arrows. I certainly wasn't about to slice a sack of pudding like that open with a blade, we'd have all washed away.

We dug around through her cache of stuff (What the hell could she have possibly wanted with gold and weapons anyway?) and sure enough there's that dipshit's asshole brother with my sword clutched in his dead hand. I had Mordak use a spell to identify it, because I'm scrupulous about that kinda thing, and it came through clear. I snatched it up and started doing my little sword-slinging display on the spot. Vaere let out this sort of nauseated groan at the sight of it. I told her to keep her moans of pleasure to herself and she got really pissed off. Whatever.

Among the other loot we found a cursed ring that makes you retarded when you put it on. Heh. I almost wish I wasn't so scrupulous about identification, but I'd have hated to have to drag Mordak's ass all the way back to a temple with him going "DERRH!" and shitting himself the whole way.

Right. Well we got back on the road after a little rest and from there on out it was pretty much wall to wall morons. First there was a guy named Eldoth with a ridiculously convoluted plan about pretending to kidnap his girlfriend so we could demand ransom from her rich father. I don't know what the hell he was doing pitching this shit to passersby out in the middle of the woods, but we listened long enough to drink all his booze and then told him to get stuffed.

After that it was a guy named Laskal, looked like a ranger, who told us he had a message for the Iron Throne. We were like "Give it to someone else then, we hate those guys!" and he was just like "Ha, I hate them too bro, I was just testing you!" and gave us directions to their fort. Fair enough, I guess.

Then it was druid after druid after druid. They'd come up and yammer at us about how we were defiling nature, we'd tell them to go fuck themselves and hack their heads off. I don't know how we were supposed to be defiling nature anyway. Except for maybe all the bears we kept killing and leaving to rot. And the giant shit Korgrim took on some kind of kooky stone shrine of theirs. I tried to explain that shitting was a perfectly natural thing, animals do it all the time, but they weren't having it and I can't really blame them. Anyway, maybe all at once they might have put up a decent fight. One at a time we were just butchering them.

One of them, a real ugly broad named Faldorn, claimed she wanted to team up with us to go after the Iron Throne camp. But after all the druids we'd already dealt with we figured it was just some kinda trick, so we killed her anyway. Fuck it. Oh, and there was the "shadow arch druid" we killed while he was standing in his kitchen. He had a house inside a big rotten tree, we broke in and he started giving us the whole "bla bla bla nature, you are doomed" speech until we asked him what a "shadow arch druid" actually is. Then he stopped to try and explain it, and we stabbed him. Haw.

Oh, and there was Peter of the North, whom we caught training a bunch of baby wyverns in a cave. He tried to pass himself off as a spelunker, but he was a terrible liar and set his pets on us when it was clear that we weren't buying it. Before he died he made reference to training them as guards for the Iron Throne camp, so at least we know what to expect.

Whew. Anyway, after all that bullshit we finally found the nest of "the" wyvern. Turns out there were like six of them in there, two adults and four babies. I wasn't sure if they were paying 2000 gold for "a" wyvern head or "each" wyvern head, so we took them all. It wasn't a particularly difficult fight. Vaere's getting good at curing poison, and my sword might be the bane of spiders, but it slices pretty much everything real well. Some of the half-eaten dead bodies still had weapons and jewelry on them too, so we even got a little loot.

By this point we were loaded down with wyvern heads and loot and assorted junk, Gar and Lex were low on ammunition, and everyone was pretty tired after all the fighting and general bullshit. We got just close enough to take sight of the Iron Throne camp, and then cut out back for Beregost. Now that we'd found it, we'll be able to get back to it easily and at full strength. I'm kinda worried they'll catch wind of us, what with all the hell we raised out in the woods, and tighten their defenses. On the other hand, with the woods so damn THICK with crazy druids and tasloi and wyverns and angry hunters and all manner of raving dipshit loonies, they probably can't keep track of anything going on outside their walls at all.

We got back to Beregost, and apparently the bounty on the wyvern was to be collected at the temple. I sent Garrette and Kor over there with one adult wyvern head each, with instructions to go in separately and try to get paid twice. Alas, the price of fame, the priest recognized them both. We got paid once only, via Garrette. I understand Kor threw his now-worthless monster head at a nun and went out with both middle fingers up. I love that guy.

We spent the reward and some of our other money gearing up at the Thunder Hammer. I won't bother elaborating on the whole order of battle, but everyone's packing magic weapons of one sort or another and good armor to boot. Those Iron Throne fuckers won't know what hit them.

(Vaere, Alexia, and Garrette ding 5. Mordak dings 4. I didn't like this update as much as some of the others, but I'm moving pretty fast and Cloakwood throws a lot of shit at you that's just noteworthy enough to include, but still not that great. Once I'm done with the Cloakwood Iron Throne base, I plan to go wrap up sidequests and smell the roses a bit.)

Very, very frontpaged: http://f13.net/index.php?itemid=815

Also: Character portraits are inline on the article if you want to connect a face to the rape of the land.

My hero.

Sweet, that came out awesome. I even got a logo and everything.

 :rock_hard: :hulk_rock: :rock_hard: :hulk_rock: :rock_hard:

I have ordered the BG compilation pack. I hope I've got time to get this played all the way through (I don't think I ever actually finished BG1 and never got BG2).

Caution: the game is a bit longer to play if you actually explore and do side quests. Also, somewhat more difficult if you actually play singleplayer and have to recruit people. Having a party of 6 to start must make things super easy.

Regardless, I'm really enjoying this whole affair.

Eh, I know where to go and can recruit my full standard-issue evil party before I hit level 2 anyway. I've never had to, say, step foot into the Nashkel mines with anything but the same line-up that would eventually kill Sarevok. A sidequest wrap-up is in order as soon as Davaeorn goes down.

I'm not expecting a play through anything like WUA's but I've been reminded that these are awesomesauce RPGs I haven't played/finished. BG1 I hope I've developed enough patience to play through all the way and knowing I could get a graphics upgrade rids me of the last hurdle. Either that or I get them and quit after a week through impatience again. :oh_i_see:

Arcanum's like that imo/  :awesome_for_real:

With no need to scout or explore this time, we got through Cloakwood and back to the edge of the Iron Throne encampment with a minimum of idiocy. The place was guarded well enough that there would be no sneaking in, but not so well that I wasn't willing to kick in the front door, so we hewed through the first few guards and barged in through the front gate. Fuck subtlety.

We were confronted by a man. A great man, and his friends.

Screenshots:
Haw indeed, my brother. In a different world, you could have been one of us. Mordak says he'll have to try that "head as a puppet" thing someday soon. Anyway, we've all been stepping up our games lately, and Vaere is now able to conjure up skeletons. A wave of them kept the leader and his fighter buddy busy, while me and Kor slipped behind to hack at the mages. Meanwhile Gar and Lex rained arrows and Mordak dropped a Horror spell on the lot of them. They bashed through the skeletons fairly quickly, but not quick enough and we made short work of everyone.

We sniffed around inside the palisade until we found some nameless guard to beat the location of the mine entrance out of. We slit his throat, dumped him, and were on our way down. Inside it was a bunch of starving ragged slaves, glomming all over us like "Oh you must be the great Nythrax here to fight the Iron Throne!" I like being worshipped as much as anyone, but we didn't have time for this bullshit. I was just like "No I'm not, get back to work fuckers!" and put the boots to them. Heh. I really need to get some slaves someday, it's sorta fun.

The guards in that area were nothing but oafs there to keep the slaves in line. One of them actually asked us "You wouldn't kill a guy with a wife and kids would you?" Bahahahahaha. Garrette was just like "Well yes." and did that shoot-without-looking thing he loves to do. We sliced our way through without real incident and headed down to the next level.

Things started to pick up. We started running into booby traps, but nothing Gar couldn't handle disarming. We'd send him ahead to sneak around and scout. Sometimes he'd dispose of a guard with a poisoned crossbow bolt or a dagger in the back. Other times he'd come back to report and Vaere would send a wave of skeletons in the direction he indicated. We crashed their mess hall that way, and the idiot mage that was in there eating with the guards fried half his own guys trying to drop a lightning bolt on the skellies. After that they were easy to finish off.

We broke into what turned out to be the slave quarters not long afterward. One of them comes up to us and gives us this whole song and dance about how if we'll only give him a hundred gold, he'll bribe one of the guards and get all the slaves out. We gave it to him with our best wishes. Har har har. Actually I was like "Get a job! Oh wait, looks like you already have one!" Then we kicked him in the ass and shoved him back into his cell.

There was a dwarf named Yeslick in there too. He explained how this mine was dug next to a river, how easily it could flood, and a bunch of other useful information. He wanted to come with us, but you could tell he was a total derpty-derp goodie type. He'd have been in our company for all of five minutes before he turned on us. Garrette was telling me there was a secret door at the back of the room, so I charmed this Yeslick with the Nythraxian Cloak of Mind Bending and let him help us by scouting out the secret passage.

Yeah, turns out it was full of ghasts. Who'd have guessed? We took them out as they were distracted fighting over the meatiest bits of dwarf. We'll never forget your sacrifice, good old... whatsyourname.

We headed down yet another level, slicing through human and hobgoblin guards without much effort. There were more slaves, but Kor just gave them a look and told them shut the fuck up and keep working. There was a barracks and a small temple on this level, and we looted them both for some potions such. Anyway, this is taking too long. We killed some guards, a mage, some more guards, an ogre mage who was disemboweling slaves for his own amusement, and some more fucking guards. Finally we went down another level.

We end up in what turned out to be the antechamber to the personal quarters of the dude running this dump. Why the hell do these guys always live at the bottom, anyway? This guard comes up to us, and asks us if we have any good reason for being there. Motherfucker, are you deaf? We've been marauding around the place slaughtering people for like the last two hours! I couldn't even muster up a snarky response to something so idiotic before chopping his head off.

Well we're not dumb enough to go marching right into the head badguy's inner sanctum. At least not first. So Vaere sent another wave of skeletons in ahead of us, and Garrette disarmed a bunch of booby traps while we listened to fireballs and such going off. Clearly a mage, and clearly this one has no more sense to pace himself than any of the others. We're just chit-chatting and listening to ZOOM, CRASH, KA-BLAM while Gar tinkers with a dart-launcher built into the wall.

Since we had time, I asked Vaere why her skeletons never seemed to set off any of these traps themselves. I mean, it would make a lot more sense to just march them in and let them soak up the darts and explosions than to screw around disarming them by hand, don't you think? She kinda scratched her forehead and then ventured that maybe they're too light to set off pressure plates. Then Gar chips in with "Yeah, except this one's a tripwire, so explain that!" She just sorta shrugged and told him to be glad, since it keeps him useful. He grumbled something back about how she could scout out where to send the skellies on her own if she didn't think that was useful in itself.

Things started to quiet down, and all the traps were neutralized, so we marched in and found a rather frazzled looking mage surrounded by skeleton bits. His hair was smoking and I think maybe he accidentally set off a fireball too close to himself. He didn't let it cramp his style though. He introduced himself as Davaeron and made some sneering comment about how we must be there to kill him because he "offends our pathetic morality" or some shit like that. Lex started laughing her ass off, and pretty soon we all joined in. The guy started getting pissed. He's all like "What the hell is so funny?"

And I'm just like "You, standing there talking while your protection spells run out!" and down he went, sans head.

Mordak squealed with glee, because the guy was apparently wearing a "robe of the evil archmagi" and we all knew to turn our heads before we had to see his ass again. We set about ransacking the place. We found some gems and scrolls, the key to the waterworks, and Davaeorn's terrified little bitch of an apprentice. The guy was shitting himself and offered to tell us anything if we'd let him go. We asked him what the point of all this shit was, and he babbled something about fixing iron prices and gaining a monopoly. Nothing that had to do with why the Iron Throne wants me dead. He started to cast a spell, to teleport away I think, and I cut him down where he stood. We finished loading up the loot (Kor carried most of it, Lex gave him a "Yah mule!" and slapped him on the ass) and started walking.

We passed the plug that led to the river on the way out. To make sure the Throne couldn't restore this place, and mostly just for shits and giggles, we opened it up with that key and ran like hell. Boy were the slaves surprised. Heh. I don't know why they were so upset, a few of them managed to make it out alive. But yeah, basically the whole place was a big pot of slave soup. Heh heh.

The march back to Beregost was pretty uneventful, until we hit town and the guards were looking at us real harsh like. Word travels absurdly fast, apparently. I don't know how, none of those half-dead slaves could have beaten us back to civilization. I'd be shocked if they didn't all get eaten by bears or goblins or whatever.

Regardless, we headed over to the temple. The priest there seemed pretty connected when we dropped by to sell the wyvern heads, so we made Kor wait outside and started throwing coins at the guy until he agreed to make this go away. Here's the thing I love about these bullshit small towns: It only cost us a 400 gold "donation" to smooth the whole thing over. Ah well, nobody gives a shit about slaves. But really, 400 is chicken feed to us these days.

I think we're going to just do our buying and selling and then disappear for a while. Give the bribe money... er... donation time to make the rounds, let the Iron Throne fume and maybe frustrate itself trying to strike back at a target that isn't there. Their entire operation outside of Baldur's Gate itself is a total loss, and would probably take years to repair if they even had the wherewithal, so I'm not worried about that.

We're gonna hit the woods, collect a few bounties, find some travelers to murder and pillage. A lot has been going on real quickly, and the crew needs to unwind with some casual plundering.

(Nythrax and Korgrim ding 5. Nythrax finally gains Poison Weapon, Kor gains Berzerk. Garrette got his Poison Weapon a level ago. Reputation dropped from 6 to 4 with the flooding of the mine, bought back up to 6 for two donations of 200 gold each at the temple one screen east of Beregost. Time to do some sidequests.)

Nice fucking work WUA, would read again.

 ;D ;D :thumbs_up: :rock: :drill:/5

Mmmm nice. With that BG2 conversion you're definitely getting more mileage from your class kits. Carrying these stuff over to BG2 will definitely make a ton of difference too.

Very good. I actually registered on this forum to be able to see the various screenshots of the Radicathlon session, and this particular one has catch my eyes. :)
Maybe should I try to write one...
I'm looking forward the continuation :)


(Sorry for my bad english. )

I love this thread, great job :rock:

thread O teh week.  +1 +1

(Writing this takes much longer than playing the game itself. It's fun to write, but I still appreciate the comments. :heart: Well maybe not MUCH longer, but yeah.)

Well we just finished coughing up another sack full of bribe money to those fine upstanding citizens who run the temple. A somewhat larger sack, given that we may have sort of exterminated an entire halfling village. Heh.

We'd been wandering around for a week or so, getting into more or less harmless trouble. We mindfucked one of the local drunks just outside Beregost and told him to go wrestle a pack of dire wolves, slaughtered another band of adventurers out in the middle of nowhere who made the mistake of talking shit, and fought what was actually a pretty respectable group of bounty hunters. Oh we still chopped them to pieces, but at least they finally had the sense to bring more than one guy. Hopefully someone in the Iron Throne is shitting themselves as all the guys they send against us just disappear.

Oh, and there was this insane gnome who had apparently somehow trained a pack of basilisks and was going around turning everyone he met into stone. Except we're not fucking stupid. When we see a bunch of "statues" of screaming adventurers and bears and shit frozen in mid-swipe, we don't think it's an abandoned art exhibit and blunder on mindlessly. We cast Protection from Petrification and raise a mob of skeletons. I would have liked to have charmed one of his pets, turned the gnome to stone, and kicked him to pieces. Sadly I didn't think of this in time, and he died a conventional screaming death.

I can't leave out the silly bitch we met shortly thereafter, either, who stood in front of us and challenged our "best male warrior" to a duel, with the prize if we won being... get this... her services as a fighter. Whoop-dee-shit. Truth be told, Kor is probably a little better than me in a "fair" fight (not that I have many of those) but I stepped forward anyway with a little "Chill guys, this is gonna be hilarious!" wink. I pull out Spider's Bane and go at it with this chick. She's okay, but not really that good, and pretty soon I've given her a nasty gash along the leg that she apparently considered decisive.

So she's all like "Well I guess you got lucky, that means... blaargh!" and drops to the ground with foam coming out of her mouth. Yeah, poisoned blade. We left her there to squirm and die. I guess it's not that hilarious on paper. You'd have to be there to see her face when she first dropped.

Where was I? So yeah, we'd been having a grand old time on the road when we came up to this little halfling village, called Gullykin according to the sign. Now the thing about halflings is that, with rare exception, they're the biggest pack of bitches in the known world. So pretty soon we're all crashed in the mayor's little hut of a house, semi-buzzed on their crappy wine while they stand there and look at us and wring their hands. All the legs broke off the little couch the moment Kor sat down on it, but he was just like "Who gives a fuck?" and stayed sprawled out there, drinking and letting Lex feel his muscles. Oy, those two. Then he just looks at her and does this ridiculous eyebrow-wiggle and says "You know, once you go greenish you never need no other peenish!" My jaw almost hit the floor.

Lex just leans forward and says real sweet-like "I don't mind filthy remarks, Kor, but for the rhyme alone you have this coming." Then she stands up, brains him with a crock of that shitty wine, and dances out the door to go pilfering while he's still sitting there spluttering. Kor is my number one brosef and all, but I have to admit this was pretty funny.

It wasn't long thereafter that the trembling little mayor came up to us and told us about the ruined halls underneath the city, how they were full of kobolds and such, and how they were probably full of riches and such as well. Some old abandoned elven crypt, or something. Well I can read between the lines, and this is basically "Since you're here why don't you assholes make yourselves useful? Whether you win or die, we're better off either way!" as spoken in Pussy.

Nevertheless, I left the others where they were and went to have a look at this passage in the bottom of their winery that supposedly led into the place. I figured we could at least give it a shot. Any evil in those halls that hadn't already devoured bitchville here couldn't be THAT dangerous. So I get back to the mayor's hut, having caught up with Lex on the way and planning on rounding up the troops, and I see that it's on fire. Uh oh.

Turns out they had demanded some entertainment of their "hosts" while I was gone, and the old mayor had his nephew come out wearing... you guessed it... a clown suit. Apparently that's what the guy did as a hobby, that and magic tricks. Korgrim's already half drunk and pissed off over getting cockblocked, so in no time the clown is short a couple of limbs.

Now it would be easy to blame this entire mess on Kor, but the fact is the rest of these nitwits never need much encouragement themselves. Kor usually sets it off, and then Mordak figures "Time to play!" and it's off to the races. Garrette (almost) never starts trouble, but once those two get fired up he has no problem jumping into the fray. Vaere is usually a voice of relative reason... usually... but the others don't really listen to her when they're excited.

Between Korgrim, Mordak, and Gar, half the village was already dead by the time I got back. I just shrugged at the girls and pulled my blade out. We were already in the shit, may as well make a clean sweep of it and try to avoid leaving witnesses. Man, it was like some kind of midget Armageddon. There were a couple of spellcasters and a retired adventurer type or two among them, but nobody who could manage to even slow us down. We looted the place clean and set a few more fires for good measure.

Turns out that halflings are worth a bit more than slaves to the local authorities. I guess that only makes sense since no one really even knew there were slaves out there in that mine at all until we drowned them, and it's easy to cover that shit up when nobody is missing the victims. But for the low price of 1600 gold we were able to fix this Gullykin debacle up such that the whole thing would be pinned on gnolls. Have I ever said how much I love the racism inherent in society? Because I do.

We never did get out into those halls underneath the village. Maybe we will next time we're out there. In the meantime the "let things cool down" clock has been reset pretty fucking hard, so I suppose more wandering is in order. I guess I should be pissed off at the guys for causing this whole mess, but whatever. Your friends are your friends, we'll probably break even once we finish fencing all the halfling's stuff, and anyway I should be used to this shit by now.

(Mordak dings 5, Vaere, Garrette, and Alexia ding 6. Nythrax and Kor on the brink of dinging 6. Party reputation falls to 1 with the killing of every NPC in Gullykin, then raised back to 6 with donations of 500, 400, 300, 200 and 200. Also, Kor pays the price for having charisma for a dump stat when it comes to the ladies. Haw.)

Holy shit you have a lot of free time.  Pretty tight though.

Yeah. The friend I was leveling through WoW is too sick to really play anymore, and logging on by myself is just depressing, so I do this instead.

I, the great and mighty Nythrax, have slain Drizzt Do'Urden in personal combat. He knelt before me and begged for his miserable life before I brought down my blade and ended his silly existence.

That's my story, and I'm sticking to it.

We sold his fancy swords at Thunder Hammer for over 9000 gold, since none of us was schooled on how to use a scimitar. What's more, one of them could only be wielded by a good person. So yeah, not much use to us. Heh. His mithril chainmail was too small for me or Kor so rather than sell it for another 5000 I gave it to Vaere. She got all weird and I think she blushed (it's hard to tell) until Mordak told her she had to change in front of all of us like he always does. Then she just started cussing him out and things were back to normal. I knew I kept that crazy little fucker around for a reason.

Anyway yeah, I told everyone at Thunder Hammer how I crushed Drizzt. With no witnesses but my own crew, and his distinctive swords in hand, who can dispute me? Garrette seems to think this is going to come back and bite us in the ass someday, but I think he worries too much.

It's been a while and we've been up to other things too, but I'll write about those next time.

(There are lots of ways to kill Drizzt without technically cheating, but they're all pretty gimpy regardless. Hence the bullshit story and ambiguity. The gold and a couple points of AC for Vaere aren't really a big deal, I'm just thinking of how he's supposed to want revenge in BG2. That's a whole update in itself, presuming that I'm still doing this by then.)

I thought he only came bitching at you in 2 if you still had his swords.

If that's so then I just got 9k gold and some free armor, so I guess it's all good. I'm sure my contact with him and his crew will be entirely peaceful in that case.  :why_so_serious:

It's been a few weeks, and we've gotten a lot done in addition to my crushing and heroic victory over that silly ponce Drizzt. For one thing, we collected a couple of bounties. One was worth a small fortune, the other was a huge rip-off even though we were going to kill the asshole either way.

The first one was for a demented cleric named Bassilius. Apparently the guy had flipped his wig, and was running around the forests butchering everyone he met and reanimating them as zombies. Garrette had heard of this guy before, from the temple when we were trying to sell wyvern heads, but we never paid it much mind. As it turns out, we came across him pretty much by accident. Some little shit kid had been spying on him, and came up to tell us about it. The dude was sitting there talking to his zombies like they were his family, and the kid thought this was utterly god damned hilarious. Cool kid, actually.

So we crept up on the schmuck, and sure enough he's sitting there in a pile of shambling corpses having a grand old time. "Oh brother Carl, tell that story again about how we burned down the chicken coop!" and shit like that, meanwhile all these skeletons and zombies and stuff are just staring at him and groaning like they do. There were a lot of undead, but as long as Gar could get a poisoned bolt into the guy to keep him from getting any cleric spells off too quickly, I knew me, Kor, and Vaere could hack through the lot of them in short order and it would all be no problem.

So I pop out into view like "What's up, corpse fucker?!" and we're about to start giving it to him, when I swear to god he looks over at me and goes "Father, it's you!" So I give everyone the hold-your-horses signal and start to improvise real fast.

I'm just like "Uh, hello son!" and suddenly this guy's babbling on about how he's gotten the family back together again, indicating his crowd of zombies. So I just cut him off with "That isn't our family, you dipshit, that's just a crowd of fucking zombies! What the hell is wrong with you? God the best part of you must have run down mom's leg and soaked into the mattress! YOU'RE SUCH A DISAPPOINTMENT!"

Sure enough the tool was all like "DADDY?! WAAH!" at which point whatever self-deluding spell he was using broke, and all the skeletons and zombies and shit collapsed and disintegrated where they stood. We chopped him up while he lay there going "Daddy nooo!" from the fetal position. Haw.

We took his holy symbol back to the Beregost temple as proof of the deed and the priest coughed up a whopping 5000 gold. Or to put it another way, that Bassilius was worth three halfling villages and half a mine full of slaves. Or two halfling villages and four and half mines of slaves. Or... but you get the point.

By now we practically had too much cash to carry, so we waddled over to Thunder Hammer and bought out everything we ever wanted. I won't bother listing everything we bought, but we're officially ready to take on anybody.

The other bounty we collected was Brage, the lunatic ex-captain of the Nashkel guards who was STILL running loose months after we heard of him. Actually we first came across his cousin, who ran up and warned us that he was ahead, and begged us to spare his life. This bitch was barking up the wrong tree, and when we said so she was stupid enough to draw on us. I'm long since tired of trying to come up with new ways of saying "And then this one suicidal person charged the six of us and was chopped to pieces!" From now on I'm just going to say Dipshit Overconfident Idiot Needed Killed, aka DOINK.

Sure enough, just ahead we found Brage rifling through the wreckage of a caravan he apparently slaughtered. He wandered up to us and recited some kind of retarded riddle, then stood there waiting for an answer. I don't even remember the riddle, but I remember answering "I don't know, intercourse with a duck?" just to piss him off. It worked, too, and he went doink.

Turns out it was his cursed sword that made him go apeshit, apparently. That kinda crap is why I'm so anal retentive about making Mordak identify all the magical shit before any of us uses it.

Anyway, we schlepped his body all the way back to Nashkel and there was a giant shitstorm when we found out that fat little fuck of a bounty manager was only going to give us 150 gold for it. Kor drops the carcass on the ground, and he and I are arguing with the little shit. Lex taps me on the shoulder and I turn around to see Mordak has his little dagger out and almost has Brage's head off. It's crazy how fast he can decapitate a corpse with that little thing.

The bounty manager sees this too and turns white. Mordak stands up, holding the head by it's hair, and is just like "Okay, who's going to punt this time?" I got that bitch right through the church window. We took our 150 gold and left at that point, vowing to never come back except to sack the place.

More to come.

(All characters now level 6, save Alexia and Garrette who are level 7. This is just one section of last night's session, but then I do tend to draw certain things things out. The entire Brage episode was like 3 minutes of gameplay total, for example. Just me killing him, running back to town, and being disappointed at the payout. I figure the long-windedness isn't out of place here as I plan to leave a lot of the more generic "Gimme your money!" side-quests out entirely.)

Fucking awesome. Keep it up!

Awesome, now I want to play this stupid game  :awesome_for_real:

I guess there are only two other things really worth recording that happened during our little walkabout. The first thing was when we stumbled over this archaeological dig.

Yeah, this old professor type and his crew of half-ass guards were out there in the middle of nowhere, camped out in front of a cave. We mosey on up and they all point their spears at us, like they're gonna take us out if we start shit. Haw. I told the professor they could all drop their weapons or we'd hew through the lot of them, and they complied. I considered hewing through the lot of them now that they had dropped their weapons, but then decided I'd rather find out what they were doing. I am, after all, a curious fellow.

They're out there looking for ancient artifacts of some prehistoric god, but they tell me they keep getting hit by bandits. The professor wants to hire our crew as guards, but he can only pay us 50 gold. That won't even get us all drunk, and the kids started to grumble, but I just told them to chill. If whatever "artifact" these guys dug up was valuable, we'd be in a position to get our hands on it. If it weren't, then we'd still be in a position to kill everyone (or whatever) if we felt like it. No need to rush.

Turns out I wasn't the only one thinking this way. The professor's second in command comes up to me in private shortly after we signed on, and tells us he'll pay us 900 gold to kill everyone once we go into the cave, and bring him the artifact. Says the professor would just put it in a museum without turning a profit off it. Fair enough, and it sounded like a decent insurance policy should the item in question turn out to be worth less than 900 to us. If it were, obviously we'd have to... renegotiate. The fact that nobody knew what the artifact actually was yet didn't seem to bother him at all.

So we get inside this musty shithole of a cave, full of old wall-paintings and pottery and crap, and the rambling old professor is going on about how old the place is, yadda yadda, bullshit bullshit as we walk. Mordak pipes up "Sure is spooky in here!" When we looked at him like he was an idiot, he just shrugged and said it seemed somehow an appropriate thing to say. Finally we get into the last chamber, and start to pry open this stone tomb. Suddenly all of the guards flip shit and are like "WE WILL PURGE THE DEFILERS!" or something like that. Woops, yeah, possessed by the tomb's curse. Figures. They all pull out their spears and point them in a decidedly unfriendly fashion.

Well this is absolutely ideal, so I give the professor a good solid shove into their midst to buy us a few seconds while the people without plate armor get behind those with, and that whole problem takes care of itself. We easily sliced through the lot of them. I snatched up the weird stone idol that was apparently the source of all this bullshit, but it didn't seem to do anything else. It didn't summon demons, didn't give me additional evil powers, didn't shoot fireballs. Nothing.

When we got back outside, there was some sort of weird guardian... spectral... thing waiting for us, screaming gibberish about the idol and trying to take it away from us. I know that sounds a little weird, but I don't really know what it was or why it met us outside instead of in the tomb itself, okay? Anyway we doinked it with utmost simplicity, gave the worthless chunk of rock to the asshole who wanted it, took our 900 gold and split.

Anyway, the other thing. This was a while later.

We're up north a ways, not really far from Baldur's Gate itself, charming the locals and feeding them to the ankhegs. A paladin, a ranger, some old farmer, whoever. It's good sport and a way to blow off steam. Oh man, the farmer. Total hillbilly salt of the earth type. He begged us to find his son, who had gone missing and was in all likelihood a pile of ankheg shit by now. You could really see it was breaking his crusty hardworking independant spirit to have to beg strangers for help. We told him we weren't doing shit without getting paid, and when he had to admit he didn't have anything to pay us with I think his soul died. It was great.

So we charmed him. Kor and Lex ransacked the guy's house, and came out with some cookware. We armed him with a serving fork and put an old soup pot on his head, and sent him off to attack the next ankheg we saw. Alas, his quest to avenge his son didn't go very well. Haw.

But that's not what this is about. No. While we were up there we happened to meet these three fishermen. Before we could even start to use them for ankheg bait, they came up and were asking to hire us. Seems a priestess of Umberlee was giving them shit for plying their trade, sending storms and such to kill them when they took their boats out. What's more, they couldn't prove to the guards that it was her behind it. So they wanted us to go cut her up, and in exchange they'd give us some gold and an unnamed magic weapon that belonged to someone's grandfather.

Now I usually hate these bullshit vague offers of payment. I like to know exactly what I'm getting. But I hate those asshole self-righteous nature types even more, so I said we'd look into it. We headed out to where they said her house was, and sure enough she was there. She was also like 12 years old.

Now understand, I don't want to be one of those assassins I always make fun of, the ones who go and introduce themselves to their intended victim. But we had to make sure this was even the right house, because I'm thinking maybe we took a wrong turn somewhere. The way these fishermen put it, I was looking for a grown woman. So we went up to the kid and asked her whose place this was.

She takes one look at us and knows why we're there, and on whose behalf. She immediately begins to explain that her mother, also a priestess of Umberlee, had gone up to these guys and demanded "her due for their use of the sea" and been killed for her trouble. After which they took her "bowl of water elemental control" and started putting it to their own use. So this kid, also a priestess, had been giving them shit in an attempt to get it back.

Which is a really cute story and all, but which didn't stop us from putting a poisoned bolt through her chest and calling it a day. I mean as far as I can tell, this kid's mother decided that her religion made her owner of the sea, and tried to extort a bunch of hardworking fishermen. Or to put it another way, fucked with some people who were just plain prepared to go further than she was. So fuck her, and fuck the kid who didn't know enough to back down from a fight she wasn't going to win.

Vaere had some choice words about how Talos is better than Umberlee anyway, and the true god of storms, and yadda yadda. It was sorta tiresome really, but I just shot her a thumbs up. She really gets into that stuff.

Anyway, we collected our fee from the fishermen. Man, were they ever happy. With her out of the way they were going to take the seas "for all they were worth" as they put it. The weapon they gave us was nothing great, but I figured it's resale value to be about a grand, so we were actually fairly pleased. We tipped our hats, and took our leave. I felt pretty good about the whole thing really. For a bunch of dipshit peons, those guys were okay.

Everyone is at the top of their game, we haven't heard a peep out of the Throne lately, and I think it's time we headed to Baldur's Gate to press the issue. So just a few routine errands to get out of the way, and then the cool kids of Candlekeep are hitting the big city.

Party status heading into Baldur's Gate, since I haven't been keeping up on that.

Nythrax, level 6, wearing full plate armor, helmet of infravision, boots of avoidance, girdle of bluntness, Algernon's Cloak Nythraxian Cloak of Mind Bending. Armed with Spider's Bane (two-handed sword +2, free action). Solid, though not the death-machine Kor has turned into.

Korgrim, level 6, wearing full plate armor, normal helmet, boots of the north, and girdle of piercing. Armed with Varscona (long sword +2, +1 cold damage, main hand) and longsword +1 (off hand). With his 19 strength and dual-wielding he's become an absolute monster in combat.

Vaere, level 6, wearing Drizzt's armor (mithril chainmail +4), normal helmet (still the one I got from that flaming fist guy as a newb), gauntlets of dexterity, boots of grounding, golden girdle, ring of holiness, cloak of protection +1, medium shield +1. Armed with Ashideena (warhammer +2, +1 electrical damage). She doesn't have the strength or hitpoints either of the warriors do, but she has a decent weapon and a god damned -6 armor class, so she does just fine in melee.

Garrette, level 7, wearing shadow armor (studded leather +3, +15% hide in shadows), bracers of archery, boots of speed, ring of infravision, cloak of non-detection. Armed with the Army Scythe (light crossbow +1, one extra attack per round) and dagger of venom (dagger +2, special per-hit poison effect of 6 damage per round up to 15 damage total). That poison effect stacks with the assassin kit's Apply Poison special, too. He can just backstab a guy and zoom away with his boots of speed while they do their work.

Alexia, level 7, wearing studded leather armor +1. Armed with the Whistling Sword (short sword +2) and short bow +1. I loaded Garrette up with all the really good thief gear, since while Alexia never fights without meatshields, Gar is frequently put out there ahead of the party to scout and backstab.

Mordak, level 6, wearing robe of the evil archmagi and ring of protection +1. Armed with sling +1 and quarterstaff +1. That robe is a godsend. It's AC is only one point worse than Garrette's super expensive shadow armor, plus it gives a little magic resistance and a 1 point bonus to saving throws.

MOTHERFUCK.  Now I guess I have to play Baldur's Gate.  I never played it. I only played BG2.  Does it run in XP or do I need to bust out some emulator-fu?  PM me any need to know deets on making this the best experience of my life.

I'll just post it here in case anyone else cares. If you want to play BG1 via the BG2 engine, you'll need full installs of both games and the mod found here (http://usoutpost31.com/easytutu/). They give pretty idiot-proof instructions and explanations. All I did was follow what's on that page, so I have no greater personal insight to offer.

And you haven't even touched the expansion stuff yet, or done all the side shit?

Anyone remember the caps for TotSC?

Oh no, I've hammered the shit outta the sidequests. It's just that I've only written about the ones I thought made for amusing stories. There were lots of mundane "fight a bandit/wizard/whatever and take his shit" encounters that I've left out completely. Though really, in the context of the entire BG+TOTSC+BG2+TOB epic-length saga, I may as well barely be out of Candlekeep anyway.

 :awesome_for_real:

As an aside, I haven't been bitching about the game's mistakes since I'm having fun, and since it's a million years old and Bioware long since learned from and evolved away from almost all of them anyway. But there are two encounters so far that have been just so screamingly ill-considered that I can't keep myself quiet and honestly wonder how they ever made it into the game.

One is Shoal the Nereid. She's standing there non-hostile in the middle of the wilderness, and if you talk to her you die. That's it. No combat, no saving throw, no matter which dialogue responses you pick she will simply insta-kill you. Since it's your main character that talks to NPCs by default, clicking on her may as well just reload your saved game for you and skip all the shit in the middle. What you're supposed to do is select one of your other party members, let her kill them, fight her a bit, and then she'll raise them and the story will progress to some bit with an ogre. But even with all the times I've played this game, I didn't learn about the ogre until I hit Google just now. I've always just reloaded my saved game and immediately hacked her to death without conversing.

The other is Phandalyn the paladin. You walk into the tavern where he's located, and if you're evil he says some bullshit and then immediately attacks. Fair enough, but he doesn't flag red when he attacks. So even though he's stabbing you in the face, you're considered the aggressor when you defend yourself, and every peasant in the bar goes red. So not only do you lose reputation when you kill the paladin, which I could handle, you have to turn off party AI before your guys slaughter the entire tavern and drop your reputation to nothing. At best, you have a bar full of perma-aggressive villagers you must remember to never enter, and at worst you end up being ganked into oblivion by the Flaming Fist while trying to run across town and make a temple donation.

I just blew the guy up via the insta-kill cheat with no consequences. Fuck it.

Yes I know it's like bitching about the uncomfortable ride in a Model T at this point. Yes I love the game despite these things. But still. God damn. Anyway, I have lots to write about for the next update tomorrow. There was this great little sidequest complete with a heist, a doublecross, and a ludicrous number of dead bodies.

awesome stories. Keep going :)

I'm going to have to play BG1 now tho! Any advice for someone who never played it?

So the only way into Baldur's Gate is this motherfucking HUGE bridge that's like a hundred yards long and wide enough to march an army across. I don't know who the hell tipped these assholes off, but we're not even past the drawbridge when the Flamer on duty is telling us to wait because he needs to get his boss. Oh shit, they recognize us. This can't be good.

The boss comes out and introduces himself as Commander Scar. I hang out with an assassin whose name is a homonym for something you strangle people with and a berzerker with the word "grim" in his name, and even I think this is a pretty stupid moniker. I wonder if he has a sister, and what she thinks about the name. Little Janey Scar.

Turns out the guy wanted to ask for our help. Fucking figures. These guys are constantly either giving me hell or begging me to clean up bullshit they can't handle. He tells me about a bunch of bullshit that's supposedly afoot within something called the Seven Suns merchant guild. He wants me to investigate this for him, because I have no connections to anyone in the city.

Well actually I'm friends with a rich merchant whose hunting expedition I saved from marauding druids. Oh and I've come to the city specifically to advance a long-standing personal war against one of it's major trading cartels, a personal war thus far so catastrophically violent as to have put my name on the lips of every commoner in every tavern the region. But sure, I'm not connected to anyone. I'm a total mystery man. Whatever, he's offering to pay.

And I figure, why not get some use out these Flamer mooks for once? So I just lay it all out for him. The Iron Throne, the Nashkel mines, the Cloakwood slave camp, the whole thing. That's the sort of shit these guys are supposed to want to deal with, right? The guy just gives me "I don't know what I can do about that, I'll look into it." Yeah, apparently I'm not the only one who knows how to pay bribes, and the Throne has deep pockets. Fucking shill, what are you going to do when this Seven Suns bullshit turns out to be their fault too?

So fine, we're in the city proper, and the kids are just running all over the place retarded, not sure what to buy or who to rob first. Garrette was composed, and Vaere at least managed not to scream "SQUEE!" like Lex, but basically we looked like a bunch of rubes who'd never seen a town bigger than Beregost. Sigh.

All we're doing for now is taking a walk around the city, getting the lay of the land, figuring out where everything is. We're walking through one of the poorer areas when this guy comes up and hands us fifty gold, and tells us it's for us to listen to a proposal on the part of his boss. This isn't the sort of neighborhood where just anyone can afford to drop fifty for a chat, so I figure maybe it's something serious. Guy gives us a password and tells us to follow him into a nearby house.

Thieves guild. Boss is a guy named Ravenscar. Lots of bullshit posturing about how incredibly deadly they all are, but I'm not really sweating this crap from a bunch of guys in leather armor and shortswords. It seems someone is soon to sell the plans and components needed to construct a "Halruaan Skyship" to the government of Baldur's Gate, and Halruaa doesn't want to see their monopoly broken. One of their mages is there in the thieves guild. So I'm supposed to bust into the house of a nobleman named Oberon and liberate these components.

I'm about to execute my sporadically-enforced "name an exact payment or piss off" clause and tell this guy to get stuffed, but then I see Alexia practically hopping up and down and giving me this look that says volumes. This isn't just some pickpocketing, or some random bullshit burglary of common homes, no. This is an actual HEIST and she REALLY wants to do it. Fine. I've violated my little "exact payment" rule often enough already and it really hasn't bitten us too hard, what's one more time?

We get there, we bust in and blow past the servants, and everything is going fine until we get upstairs. The noble's three daughters are all mages, have their bodyguards with them, and refuse to give up the skyship components without a fight. I suppose we could have let Garrette sneak up there and pinch them out from under the bitches noses, but if he slipped up he'd be cut off from us by three mages and some guards.

So fuck it, we charge in there and slaughter the lot of them. One of them got a lightning bolt off while we were dealing with her guards, but it didn't do much more than fuck up our hair, and that was pretty much the high point of the fight for them. We grabbed the shit, and killed Oberon himself on our way out for good measure.

We got back to the guild and handed the stuff over (a spellbook, a statue, a little crystal) only to have the Halruaan wizard attack us. Ostensibly this was for our lack of discretion, but I get the feeling this was the plan all along. Anyway, classic doink scenario where the mage doesn't realize casting spells is hard to do while having a longsword crammed into your spleen.

Ravenscar was long on noise about how he couldn't stop the guy, but short on payment, so I figured "Fuck it!" and gave the signal for a general sack. I sliced into the asshole and he called for the rest of his men. Except we're not god damned idiots. I had mindfucked a couple of his thieves and left them in the main chamber behind us in anticipation of SOME kinda bullshit, and they bought us plenty enough time fighting their comrades to let us finish off their boss unimpeded. Then we dealt with the rest.

Baldur's Gate doesn't really have a thieves guild anymore. We took the skyship components back off Ravenscar's bloody corpse, carried them just up the road a bit, and hocked the lot of them off to Sorcerous Sundries for like five or six hundred gold. Fuck it, it's more than anyone else was paying.

(No dings to report. Funny random thing I'll mention briefly: Alexia gets her name from a good friend of mine's WoW character. She didn't mind her alter-ego's namesake being portrayed as a slutty pickpocket, but she DID mind the "ugly" Safana pic I was using for her portrait. She went out of her way to send me the picture I eventually cut down into the current Alexia portrait. Also, advice for someone coming into the game cold as per the previous post: Diverse party with access to wizard spells, cleric spells, and thief skills. Detecting traps is the most important thief skill. Q is the quicksave button and it should be hit very very often.)

Addendum: Korgrim mooned Elminster. No I'm not kidding. He came up just as we were entering the city and started his usual "cryptic old wiseman" routine, and Kor just turned around, dropped trou, and mooned the hell out of him. There was this big pause, like he was confused. Because when you're motherfucking Elminster and you're trying to be all clever, what do you say when the response is just this big green ass?

Finally he was just like "I see how you want this to be!" and turned around and walked off. Mordak seemed to be in mortal terror there for a while, but I'm with Kor. Screw it. Whatever Elminster's interest in me may be, blasting me into dust clearly isn't it or he would have done it a few dozen innocent deaths ago. So as far as I'm concerned, he can take our shit.

To say "You Rock" would be the understatement of the year.

You have brought back so many memories of game I haven't played for what, nearly 10 years now?  This makes me want to dig up those discs again.....

Great job.

If you want to powergame it use the multiplayer trick and make your own party.

If, like me, you find that boring because you might as well be playing Icewind Dale at that point there are certain recommended NPCs depending on your playstyle.

A major trick about Imoen: Dual class her to Mage asap. She can actually be the best mage in BG1 assuming you don't grab the evil dude or make your main a mage.

Yeah, playing with a party of all your own guys is fun to do when you've been through the game numerous times over the course of a decade, but if you're just starting out you should really just make a single guy and recruit people. Otherwise you're missing out. I mean I make up a lot of dialogue and such for my soulless little battlebots, but the pre-existing recruitable guys actually DO talk upon occasion, blabbing to each other, bickering, and reacting to their environment. They do it even moreso in BG2.

Yeah some of them are pretty entertaining. Its a shame that Tiax a) sucks a lot as an actual combat character and b) shows up way late in the game.

My favorite parties, with myself as some kind of fighter type, were always...

Good: Ajantis, Minsc, Branwen, Imoen, Dynaheir
Evil: Shar-Teel, Viconia, Montaron, Safana, Xzar

Neither are actually the peak of powergaming, but each represent a fun mix of personalities and are easy to assemble in chapter one. (I can't stand Khalid or Jaheira!) I like to get a full group as soon as possible, and upon doing so I can't bear to fire anyone. Someday I should play with all the obscure people like Eldoth and Faldorn, just to hear their dialogue.

I like Jaheira in BG2. I usually use her and Khalid in BG1 instead of Dynaheir and Ajantis.

I don't play evil parties because honestly, I suck at it. I try and start feeling creepy and so I end up rerolling a goody two shoes.

That is a big problem for me too.  I really want to play a Sith in SWTOR, but I know that when I get to the first choice I won't be able to go through with it.  Maybe I'd make it a few hours or so if all my killings were of equally bad people, but the first time I have to do something really bad I am out.

Sometimes I can't believe the shit we get away with.

Entar Silvershield is one of the four "Grand Dukes" of the city, and probably the richest guy in town. We could believe it, looking at the huge mansion the guy has in the rich part of the city. It's got it's own walls to keep riffraff (like us) off the grounds, and guards up the ass. We immediately decided to rob it.

At first it was all pretty routine. I had to be quick to mindfuck the guards as soon as they saw us, before they could ask us what the hell we were doing there and sound an alarm, but it wasn't anything I couldn't handle. We started cleaning the place out, and man, it was as good as advertised. Lex started picking the locks to everything while the guards stood there drooling, and pretty soon we were stuffing our packs with gold and jewels and potions and such.

We're feeling pretty good about ourselves as we head upstairs. I use the cloak to bend the brains of Silvershield's wife, and have her stand in the corner while we help ourselves to her jewelry. No guards have come up to challenge us for a while, so I don't bother to rein the others in when they start to spread out, emptying bookshelves and such to look for more loot.

Yeah, mistake on my part.

I hear a girl's scream come from the other side of the building, so I immediately rush over there thinking Mordak or maybe Kor is up to some shit. But no, they get there right after me. Turns out the Duke's teenage daughter is screaming her head off at Garrette and Vaere. They apparently blundered into this chick's bedroom and she immediately flipped shit. There was no bullshitting this kid either. Garrette's a walking arsenal in black leather armor, and Vaere's a heavily armed drow elf. It's not like they could claim to be the new butler and maid.

I go to give her a dose of the mindfuck cloak to shut her up, but lo and behold, for once it's not working. It happens now and then, sometimes people manage to resist, especially if they're excited. Usually I can just refocus, try again, and get them under control after a little while. They don't even normally realize that I'm doing anything to them, so it's not like they turn on me or run away.

But we're standing in the bedroom of the teenage daughter of the richest and most powerful man anywhere on the Sword Coast, and the bitch just won't stop SCREAMING. Even with the guards in the immediate vicinity pacified, this shit can't go on another second. Already we'll be lucky if the gardener doesn't have the Flaming Fist waiting for us when we go to leave. So I look at Gar and tap my nose, and he puts a bolt right into her fat stupid screaming mouth.

Now we're really fucked, and we need a plan. I take a piece of parchment and scrawl "NOBODY TOUCHES THE THIEVES GUILD, NOBODY!" Then I drop it on top of her twitching carcass. We mindfucked everyone in the household on the way out, and made sure they would remember a bunch of thieves and a Halruaan mage (similar to the one we killed, but just different enough to be an associate of his) busting in through the front door.

Hopefully the Duke and the Fisters think the thieves misplaced blame for the attack on their compound onto Silvershield, and chose to retaliate by killing his daughter. It's a decent red herring, at least, and anyone who could really deny it is dead.

It's been a little while now and the law hasn't come after us, so I think we're in the clear. Like I said, I can't believe the shit we get away with sometimes.

(All characters now level 7, Lex and Gar very close to 8. Again I'm leaving out lots of mundane little sidequests, lest this either read like a dull laundry list of quests, or get ridiculously fucking long.)

Best thread ever WUA, just awesome  :awesome_for_real:

I think the phrase "filthy, badger-fucking druids" will echo through my head every time I teleport to Moonglade for ever more.

So Baldur's Gate is apparently full of crabby asshole mages.

There were these two feuding necromancers that one of the regulars at Sorcerous Sundries had me yoink a few bits of magic jewelry from for a nice bit of coin. Alexia insisted we let her lift them by way of thiefly skill instead of just chopping them up and taking the items by force. So we let her, and she pulled it off admirably. Then we chopped each of them up anyway, because nobody misses a necromancer and doinking lone mages is always a nice source of loot. Mordak gave me a dirty look when I said the line about necromancers out loud, but he's the one who got to keep all their mage stuff once they were dead, so he got over it.

Then there was this one really crazy asshole who lived in a house full of monsters. We poke our faces in, planning on a bit of routine larceny, and suddenly we're up to our collective neck in battle horrors. That was rather a bit of a fight, but we got through it okay. We find the mage in charge in back, and he's all like "Well since you guys are so useful, why don't you go get me the helm of Balduran? I sent some guys to steal it, but they all got turned into stone, so take these scrolls and unstone them and find out where it is!" I mean he used a lot more words than that, but that was the long and the short of it.

Every single one of us has the exact same thought at the exact same time. Namely, thanks for the tip gramps, but assuming we find it, why the fuck would we bring it back to you? Sure he was offering to pay, but ever since we robbed the Duke we've got more cash than we can spend. (And oh how we've tried!) Nobody even said anything, we all just rushed forward to bash the guy's brains out simultaneously.

We did find the helm. I'm wearing it right now, actually. Turns out the petrified thieves were being kept as statues by some fop of a noble. We broke in, I turned them back to normal, and the fuckers wouldn't tell us where the god damned helmet is. So we cut them all to pieces. Fuck it, let the owner of the house figure it out when he comes down in the morning and finds his art collection converted into bloody corpses. The leader had a note under his hat though, which strongly hinted that the thing was hidden at the Helm & Cloak tavern. Haw haw haw. How clever.

I'm going so fast because this story just keeps getting layers of bullshit piled onto it. Okay, so we hit the tavern and there's this other band of adventurers all sitting at the bar. We have a seat too while we just sorta case the joint, trying to figure out where the helmet is. Turns out they're a group called the Merry Fools, and they're way too fucking infatuated with their own... adventurerness. "OH HALE AND HEARTY FELLOWS, LET US SHARE TALES OF OUR EXPLOITS!" Yeah, okay, whatever. So we sit there getting loaded and swapping bullshit stories a bit. Well, we share some of our more legal stories, at least. No rousing tale of how we pillaged and burned a comfy little village of halflings, or anything.

Vaere's being weird and emo as shit, by the way. She's coming back to sit down after getting up a while ago to... I dunno, take a piss or something, and Lex gives her a bump and knocks her square into my lap. She jumps up like I just simultaneously honked her tit and shit my pants (Neither of which I did!) and then starts screaming at ME about it. I'm like "Chill the fuck out, I'm not the one who pushed you over!"

That's as far as that argument got though, because just then this pack of huge flaming douchebags walks into the bar, announces themselves as the "Maulers of Undermountain" and starts stinking the place out with their assholishness. I don't even remember who said what to who, because by now we had like fifteen heavily-armed mercenaries in various states of intoxication all crammed into one place. I think I might have called them Modelers of Undergarments and told them to go choke on a gnoll dick and die. Or something. Anyway, point is, pretty soon us and the Merry Fools guys are jumping up from our stools to go after these guys.

Except the Merry Fools guys are WAY out of their league, and the Mauler guys rip through them in the opening stages of the fight. This is one of those adventurer barfights that normal people all hate, too. I mean in a normal barfight, fists get thrown and maybe a few chairs broken. In an adventurer barfight heads get cut off and you're lucky if the building is still standing at the end. Anyway yeah, the Fools all die. I'm not making coy reference to us betraying them or something, either. They just weren't up to the challenge. But we were, and we pounded those dipshits into oblivion. We collected all their shit, too, which is one of the nice things about these giant adventurer barfights.

Nobody called the guards, either. They just started hauling the meat away like it was nothing. Oh well, that suited us more than fine, so we rented out some rooms and headed upstairs. We tore the place absofuckinglutely to pieces looking for the helmet, and eventually we found it, stashed away behind a painting. Man, it's ugly as shit, but it's a powerful artifact so I slapped it on my head. We played musical helmets for a bit, since I was already wearing a lesser magical one, and Vaere ended up with my old helmet of infravision. She's just like "The fuck do I need this for? I already have infravision!" So we put it in the pile of shit to be sold, and she's still wearing her Flaming Fist souvenir. Thank god the Flamers haven't taken note of it. It must be a common design.

All right, I'm way the hell off track. Where was I? Yeah, Baldur's Gate is full of crazy dipshit mages. There are these two named Ragefast and Ramazith who apparently hate each others guts. Ragefast, according to all the gossip, has himself a pet dryad he somehow captured and is currently fucking the living hell out of. Ramazith, on the other hand, wants to pay us a couple thousand gold to go snatch the bitch and bring her to him. Fair enough.

These guys are pretty out in the open and not terribly hard to track down, so pretty soon we're kicking in Ragefast's front door. Sure enough, he's right there on his laboratory floor just pounding the living hell outta this dryad. I won't be too graphic, but if she wanted to wipe her nose it woulda had to have been on her kneecap.

Well this guy sees us, jumps up, pulls his wizard robe back down, screams something about how he and this little dryad are "destined to be together" and engages us in the prototypical "I will take all six of you on because I have MAGI-- ow ow ow!" doink scenario. Idiot. The dryad stands up and is all like "Oh thank god, I'm rescued!"

We're just like "Yeah right bitch, you've already been bought and paid for, so come quietly!" She just moaned something about how even Ragefast was really upset at the idea of Ramazith getting hold of her, and just collapsed all spirit-broken. Which was nice because it made our job a lot easier. We threw a blanket over her and Kor picked her up with a grumble of "I get any wizard spooge on my armor, I'm dropping you on your head." Then we carted her across town like a sack of flour while people stared.

We dump her at Ramazith's feet, and he's just delighted. I figured he was just bent on stealing Ragefast's toy for himself, but no. He tells us gleefully how he's going to butcher her like a hog and make her into spell components. Mordak was all like "Oh, neat! What kind?" and they started to talk shop until I broke it up and told them we needed to go.

There were a few other things we took care of, but nothing important, and I decided it was time for us to get down to the real work. First we'd look into some of this bullshit with the trading cartels, and then we'd take a chunk out of the Iron Throne's ass.

BTW, I am now deeply regretful that I never thought to call this Baldur's Gate: Unhinged. Because a gate has hinges, you see. And unhinged can also mean insane. Fuck, it would have been PERFECT.

Your story has inspired me to start playing all over again, and I finally got things working with the BGT mega-mod, with a whole metric fuckton of added mod content (The Darkest Day, Dark Side of the Sword Coast, and a dozen others I can't recall).  I'm going to keep a journal like this too, and if it sounds half as cool as Nythrax's adventures I might post it.

And keep up the story, awesomest playthrough story I've read...like, ever.

It's done the opposite for me. I know that playing through BG could never be as awesome as reading this thing, so it would just be a dissapointment.

I might replay the BG saga for the ummm...4th time? But first I've got to finish Gothic 3 (highly playable with the community patch and quite fun if rather large) and then give Drakensang a try. Oh, and GalCiv2. Oh, and finish a couple of PS2 jrpgs (Rogue Galaxy and Ars Tonelico 2.)

By that time Dragon Age will be out, then Mass Effect 2. So, I'll let you guys know when I get around to this in mid-2010.

I'm in the process of installing tutu atm. Thanks for the party advice I guess I'm going to follow the good route.
Also wondering if you guys use the widescreen mod or do you play at old school resolution?

Yes, I too am sheeple.  I went to Amazon and got the Baldurs gate pack and the Icewind Dale pack, should be delivered today.

I never played the Icewind Dale stuff originally because everyone shit all over it at release for being all mindless hack-n-slash.  Come to find out 10 years later what I really want to play is some mindless hack-n-slash.

The widescreen mod is great. You should also try the BG1 NPC MOD here :

http://www.gibberlings3.net/bg1npc/index.php (http://www.gibberlings3.net/bg1npc/index.php)

It basically gives to the BG1 party member the same depth as the BG2 characters. Banter, chit-chat, even romance.

About the romances...I'm not really in that sort of stuff...but they added one to Dynaheir, and it's actually very well written.

BG1 spoiler ahead :

The best thing about these new dialogs, is that you can define your role-playing with a lot of different tone, for example, with Dynaheir, you can be a charming scholar, the funny guy who make her destress, the guy who gets the job done, et caetera.

The best mod for me, it really blend into the game. (Don't mind my bad english :) )

Its a nice idea in theory but unfortunately last time I checked into this a lot of the added dialogue was kinda lame in a fan-fic-y sort of way. Also it had a lot of bad spelling and grammar problems that drove me nuts. It could be that's all been fixed by now, though.

This thing made me drag my ass from beneath the stone under which I've been lurking - freaking awesome stuff WUA. I've never played BG (1 or 2) but this makes me want to try it out.

This thread warms the cockles of my heart.

I would not recommend the NPC mod.

I've registered just to tell you that you sir, are awesome. 

This is making me giggle with every post.

Baldur's Gate Unhinged :heart:

Something I've noticed about quests, if they require the return of multiple items they only register them one at a time. I thought the spider quest just had a crappy reward but it turned out I need to talk to the woman once for every item she wanted back. I've since dumped the spider bodies somewhere and so can never finish the quest which is a bit annoying. Still the game is more fun than I remembered, I'll just see if I get as stuck as I used to and give up or not in the next few days. Keep up the story though, I need to know if you get sick of anyone important enough to kill them.

(Also, being accosted by Lord Foreshadow telling me about the likelihood of adventurers being fashionable again in Neverwinter sometime in the future=awesome)

(I'll put this up front: Comments about how I'm awesome and this made you play BG for the first/third/twelfth time? I totally feed off that shit and it keeps me writing, so thanks to everyone who posts.)

So I gave it some thought, and decided that the logical place to start was by looking up our old pal Aldeth Sashenstar, the merchant we rescued from angry druids. See, everywhere we went we were hearing about the various merchant cartels mysteriously running themselves into the ground. Debts going uncollected, money being thrown away on idiotic projects, things like that. Except for the Iron Throne, they were doing great.

Clearly the Throne has something on these guys, and it must be something HUGE. I figure if we're gonna start asking questions, it may as well be of someone who owes us a favor. So we schlep over to his Merchant League's headquarters, and boy is he glad to see us. Tells us everyone seems to be losing their minds, and asks us to investigate.

So we start poking around, chatting up the employees, and behaving in a generally sane and adult fashion for once. I mean we stole everything we could carry away that wasn't guarded, sure, but fuck it. We had to rifle through everything anyway, to look for clues. But wouldn't you know, behaving like a retarded gibberling turned out to be the course of action that made the day.

Mordak is 'interviewing' this middle manager, this fat guy in a ridiculous hat, only the interview consists of nothing but Mordak saying "Fecophiliac says what?" over and over again really fast while the guy just gets more and more pissed off.

"Fecophiliacsezwut?"
"What did you say?"
"Haha, shit eater! Fecophiliacsezwut?!"
"I don't know what kind of game you're--"
"Wow you must love eating shit! Fecophiliacsezwut!"
"What sort of nonsense mammal stupidity is--"
"God you're gonna choke on all that shit! Wait, mammal what?"
"AHA, NOW YOU ARE THE ONE WHO EATS THE DROPPINGS, HUMAN! DIEEE!"

And shazam, the illusion drops and the fat shit-eating merchant is actually a motherfucking doppleganger. One bent upon clawing Mordak's face off. He starts running away, screaming in hilarious fashion, with this thing chasing him. I tackled it about a half second after Lex's arrow hit it, and we butchered it right there on the floor. I stand up and I'm about to tell the onlookers that we have this shit under control, when I see that pretty much EVERYONE IN THE MOTHER FUCKING BUILDING IS A DOPPLEGANGER.

Except these guys are really overconfident about their own fighting ability, and now that they've dropped their disguises in order to attack us, we are to put it mildly fucking their shit up hardcore. We strode all through the building, hewing through dopplegangers like scaly sacks of ground beef. Only Aldeth and his captain of the guard were still human, and after we'd exterminated everyone else, they were quite grateful. We got some loot and a spiffy magic sword for our trouble.

It was pretty much the same story over at the Seven Suns. These guys might be subtle when it comes to blending in, but they can't resist a good scrap. We charged in with weapons drawn and basically announced ourselves with "We know the score, cocksuckers, so let's do this!" and they all unmasked to come right at us. Not very clever, but it sure made our job easier. The leader of the Seven Suns was being kept alive in the basement, to be tortured for information, so we turned him loose. Not so much out of the goodness of our hearts, but out of a realization that the more friendly witnesses the better when it comes to this sort of bullshit.

We stepped over to the Flaming Fisters HQ to talk to Scar, and collect our pay for ransacking... er... investigating the Seven Suns. He coughed up five grand for our trouble, and everyone behind me starts high-fiving on the spot. (We already have more than we know what to do with, but we also know we'll figure it out sooner or later.) I just turn around and give them a look that says "Knock that shit off, morons, we don't want them to think we come cheap!" Trust me, they got the message.

So Scar makes some noises about how he'll look into this and that, blah blah blah. I think he wants to deal with this, but he's getting shit from some other quarter about it. So he's not doing much besides pointing us at the guys he doesn't like and letting nature take it's course. As long as he pays, I don't give a shit. These guys we're killing all work for the Throne, and I'd slice THEIR heads off for free.

Oh, he also had another little job for us. Seems people were disappearing in the night, and the clues led back to the sewers, and would we please look into it? Now you might think it would be a cold day in Hell before Nythrax and the cool kids go slopping around in shit on behalf of a Flamer, but let me clarify. He offered us 300 gold up front, and another 1000 once we dealt with it.

Forget the amount in itself for a moment. The guy actually SPECIFIED PAYMENT. Not only that, but he offered us an ADVANCE. After months of doing all sorts of crazy dangerous bullshit for nothing more than vague promises of "some gold" or "a magic weapon" once it was over, this was pure heaven. I immediately decided that this Scar guy was okay after all, and said yes.

The investigation itself wasn't interesting enough for me to describe at length. Ogre mage in the sewers, pack of trained carrion crawlers, Vaere bitch-bitch-bitching about the smell the entire time. We killed everything we needed to kill easily enough, washed ourselves thoroughly, and were paid in full.

After that was out of the way though, I decided it was time. We were going to march down to the huge Iron Throne headquarters at the docks, and wipe out every motherfucker in the building. We'd danced around it long enough, crippled enough of their outlying operations. It was time to invade their home turf and make them bleed where they live.

(Lex and Gar ding 8. I haven't seen Biff and haven't been able to kill anyone really important. I'm actually much further ahead in the game than the story and Duke Eltan, for example, was quite invincible. Also, general tip, don't sweat the sidequests too much. Not having that spider corpse can be made up for by killing an extra bear or whatever. Half the time I hold onto the quest items for the hell of it. Vaere is STILL toting that bottle of wine around, and Lex will only take off Joia's Flamedance ring when she finds a magic one to replace it with.)

I've been loving this whole read so far. I lost track of time for hours last night just laughing my ass off at this. It's especially grand considering I'm going through an evil playthrough of BG2 myself, though only with four people.

awesome report :)

You seriously should have sold this shit to some magazine. 

Behaving like a retarded gibberling.  *Snicker.*  And I agree, I have the same hangup as Nythrax about specified payment.  I hate quests that send you off for vague promises of vague rewards.

Sidenote: The Nythraxian Cloak of Mind-Bending is without a doubt the most powerful bloody magical item in the game.  :drill:  And I keep thinking of it by that name, too.  Heh.

I have also discovered that my attempt at making a writeup is boring.  While you have the writing ability to cut through the shit straight to the awesome, I have page after page of detailed journals talking about every fucking detail of what my characters did each day of the trip, only they're not detailed enough or well written enough to be a novel.  It really reads like somebody's boring diary that they constantly babble into.  I'm on page 10 (of Times New Roman single-spaced 12 point font) and I haven't even finished the mines yet.

I generally take notes as I play, just real brief shorthand ones like "gnome w/ basilisks, killed him" and "robbed Duke's place, killed Skie" and things like that. Then I look at the list and realize 75% of it would be about as exciting to read as a poundcake recipe. I could maybe write one or two amusing anecdotes about being stuck up by bandits in the woods and killing them all, but I couldn't write ten. So I pick 2 or 3 entries and focus on those, drawing them out with some character-based fluff. And if they're still not very interesting, or don't make much narrative sense, I hang some made up shit on them.

Like killing Firebead Elvenhair to drop 4 points of rep and avoid getting the goodguy dream sequence? Took like thirty seconds and wasn't a terribly sensible thing to do from an in-character perspective. So I made up a bunch of bullshit about him being a pedophile, and clown suits, and cramming his body in a closet, and got 4 paragraphs and a screenshot out of it.

What you want to do is make up some basic personalities for your characters. Start with their alignments, even if they're all just lawful/neutral/chaotic shades of the same basic evil (or good, if you swing that way) and go from there. You don't need to make them TOO deep, we're not writing a novel here and Bioware is obviously doing a bunch of the work for us. You just need to differentiate them in your mind, and the game will do the rest for you by throwing situations at them.

Come up with a personality for your main character, and if you come to a desirable course of action that doesn't mesh with that, pawn the decision off on one of the other party members. Like I made Nythrax relatively level headed, so whenever I want to go really fucking apeshit I just lean on Korgrim. Prime example, sacking Hobbitville. I had Nythrax get up to take a piss, basically, and come back to find the place on fire.

The whole "blitzing the Iron throne building" thing? Turned out to not be that interesting. So I'll probably gloss over it in brief and spend most of my time in the next update writing about dopplegangers in Candlekeep. Include enough plot stuff to keep the narrative coherent, but only go into something deeply if it's fun to write about.

At least that's how I do it.

So it turned out most of the Iron Throne leaders weren't even IN their huge imposing headquarters by the docks. We went in there and stomped the shit out of a bunch of pissant merchants and guards who couldn't even slow us down, one squad of half-decent mercenaries who gave us a little bit of a fight, and one terrified manager who told us that everyone important was already on their way to Candlekeep and then mysteriously died. Of being thrown down five flights of stairs.

I wish there were more to it, but that's really about it. We relieved the lot of them of some of their more valuable goods, naturally, and Lex packed up all the really classy booze from their private bar. Kor carved a big cock into the surface of a mahogany desk that looked like it cost more than the average house. But overall it was all buildup and no payoff. Oh, then we were met outside by a Flamer. Rather than attempt to arrest us for butchering like two dozen people in the heart of the city, they asked us to head back over to their HQ to meet Scar again.

Okay, fine. At this point it's pretty clear that the Flamers have decided the Throne are persona non grata and are using us to take out the garbage, so I don't suppose I have much to fear from them at the moment. Provided they haven't discovered any of our OTHER numerous and horrifying crimes. Heh. Have I mentioned that we sacked the Temple of Umberlee?

Yeah, that was all Vaere and her worship of Talos. I'm not led to believe that followers of the two are necessarily enemies most of the time, but that child priestess of Umberlee who was killing the fishermen? The one we wasted? Yeah, apparently the fishermen were followers of Talos and it's stirred the shit up around here. Whatever. She doesn't really ask for much, and lord knows we've done worse things for less reason, so we went ahead with it.

Where was I? Yeah, we get back to Flamer HQ and it's not just Scar we're meeting, it's Duke Eltan. He's one of the Grand Dukes of the city and the supreme commander of the Flaming Fist. If a guy like THIS was condescending to meet with the likes of us, I knew the Throne must be after his ass bad.

We handed him some documents we lifted from the Throne, indicating that the Throne leaders were heading to Candlekeep to meet with diplomats from Amn. Eltan just smiled and handed us a copy of History of the Nether Scrolls as a gift. Which doesn't make much sense unless you're aware that the only way to gain entry to Candlekeep is to donate a rare book to their library. So handing us the book was his way of saying "Get in there and waste the motherfuckers!" without having to say it. Fair enough, that was the plan all along.

We gained entry to Candlekeep without incident, and everyone did their best to act like they were glad to see us again. Needless to say, we did not return the favor. Fuck Candlekeep. It's all a bunch of eighty year old virgins telling each other that their pursuit of precious knooooowledge is better than power, money, or pleasure. Or for that matter, love, a family, or anyone to remember them once they're dead. I mean I'm not some kinda book-hating illiterate, but come the fuck on.

A few minutes talking and we found out that the Iron Throne guys were all in the central keep library before even having to slap it out of anyone. (We did that just for fun.) Dreppin asked us where Imoen was, since she set out after us back in the day, and Garrette just started laughing hysterically. Which, now that I think about it, is one of the few times I've heard him do so. I mean he might chuckle now and then, but anyway.

So we're marching through the library proper, on our way to where the Throne leaders are, and I notice that somewhere along the way Mordak has picked up a book. I casually ask him what it is, and he says "It's a book.. uh.. of ancient arcane knowledge, yes!" but he says it kinda nervous-like. Lex sneaks up behind him and grabs it, and it's Lord Melbert Pigglebottom's Guide to the Golden Age of Frotteurism. Which didn't mean anything to us, until we saw the pictures. Yeah, that boy has problems. And yes I can pass judgement on that and then turn around and murder someone for sneezing at me. No I don't see the contradiction. Shut up.

Someone calling themselves Koveras came up to us, and offered me a magic ring to "protect" me. I didn't take it because, well, I can spell. We were going to slice the prick open on the spot, but he ducked around a corner and somehow disappeared.

Well we got to where the Iron Throne guys were waiting on the Amn people, and everyone was there except Sarevok. He's the one I really wanted to split open, but his foster father Rieltar, top leader of the Throne, was there and that was pretty good. He knew who we were right away, too. Oh man, did he look surprised to see us. We chopped them into gory chunks right there in the library.

One of the shitty Candlekeep guards came up to give us some shit and demand we surrender. Heh. Those guys don't even carry any weapons besides a quarterstaff. We could kill every one of them ten times over.

THEN MAGICAL PLOT FAIRIES INVADED MY BRAIN AND MADE ME SURRENDER TO SOMEONE I COULD EASILY DEFEAT. I REFUSE TO ATTEMPT TO RATIONALIZE THIS BULLSHIT.

So we sat in this shitty little cell and listened to the old goat who runs the place blather on about how we've defiled their sacred halls, and Gorion would be so disappointed, and blah blah fuckity blah. Kor just stood there repeating everything the guy said, except with his eyes crossed and a stupid lisp. Finally he said we were going to be extradited to Baldur's Gate and executed, and stormed off in a huff.

Whatever, the Flaming Fist all but told me to do it. Those guys fucking love me. Nevertheless, when one of my old teachers came back to hand us back our weapons and let us out, we weren't exactly reluctant. Fuck these Candlekeep schmucks. I wanted to just storm out the front door and lay waste to the place.

THEN MAGICAL PLOT FAIRIES COMPELLED ME TO ESCAPE THROUGH THE CRYPTS. WHATEVER.

Aaahahaha! Intimidating little faeries, aren't they?

Well as it turns out, wanting to stride out of Candlekeep leaving a trail of bodies behind us would have been rather beside the point anyway. Turns out everyone (or at least most of everyone) is already dead and... you guessed it... replaced by more fucking dopplegangers. We should have seen it coming, really, but these ones were much better actors than the ones in Seven Suns and the like. Well, for the most part.

None of us realized it until we were making our escape through the crypts, and they began to try to stop us. Whereas the previous packs of dopplegangers were perhaps a bit too quick to dispense with the bullshit and just fight it out, these guys were WAY too fucking enamored with their own cleverness. They kept coming at us one at a time, in the form of this or that Candlekeep denizen.

You know, like the sight of them melting into a horrible emaciated reptillian shapeshifter would unnerve us or something. Like we'd be mindfucked by the whole thing and by having to kill them. These guys really should have known better, though I'll give them credit for putting a lot of effort into what was still ultimately a shitty plan. They would each come up saying some crazy shit meant to be relevant to us, having grown up with them, but in this really hostile "We hated you all along!" sort of way.

We were all crushed and traumatized. By which I mean we couldn't stop giggling as we sliced them up.

On the bright side, this made for a real easy series of fights. We found the bodies of the real Candlekeepers piled up in some of the side chambers like garbage. We wanted to draw straws to see who was going to root through them for loot, except we didn't have any straws, and as we were trying to come up with another method Mordak just dived in anyway.

The best thing we found, though, was in one of the old original tombs. It was another enchanted tome, one that gives you more wisdom this time. We've actually found a few books like this, I just haven't been keeping up on mentioning them. Anyway, we gave it to Vaere since she's our cleric. I spent the rest of the night going "Truly, you are wise!" and shit like that in this really overawed tone whenever she would open her mouth, but no one seemed to find it as funny as I did. Bah.

Anyway, then these dopplegangers pulled their dumbest fucking trick yet. We come up to the end of the main chamber, and standing there are Elminster, Ulraunt, and motherfucking Gorion of all people. We've already killed like twenty dopplegangers today alone, WHY THE HELL WOULD WE POSSIBLY BUY THIS SHIT? Kor was literally like "You assholes have to be fucking kidding me!" when he laid eyes on them.

These morons had the audacity to try to convinces us that we were actually insane, and had been killing the real Candlekeepers all along, and that Gorion was still alive and everything was one big hallucination or some shit. I don't know, it didn't even make sense at the time. We cut them to pieces with a laugh, and sure enough they were dopplegangers. If I really am insane and we did kill all the people in Candlekeep, well, fuck them anyway I guess. Heh.

We made it out of the crypts with only one further incident. We bushwhacked a dipshit band of mercenaries in the caves leading back to the surface, and among their stuff was this really sweet hatchet that returns to your hand after you throw it. I know how to handle a throwing axe, so I kept it as a sidearm. I guess it doesn't really bear mentioning, but it's really fucking cool. I throw it at shit just to make it come back to my hand. I haven't really had to use it in a fight yet, but every rat and bunny and treestump we've passed ever since has known my wrath.

We're heading back to Baldur's Gate to finish this shit now, only we have to be careful because we're once again outlaws and I don't think bribing the mayor of Beregost is going to help this time. We'll just have to wring Sarevok's neck and prove our... Well okay, not our innocence. We did kill the Iron Throne leaders. And the high priestess of Umberlee. And Silvershield's daughter. And lots of other people. And it was all both hilarious and profitable. We'd do it again in a heartbeat. Shit, we've already killed a couple more people during the trip and we're not even back to the city yet!

Who the fuck am I kidding? With all the bullshit we've been pulling lately, we need a scapegoat. We're going to wring Sarevok's neck and do our best to pin all our crimes on him! Once we've framed him for all our murders, we'll be free to start over with a clean slate, and get ourselves in trouble with a bunch of new murders.

(This part of the game is basically a railroaded killfest and I don't like what it's doing to my output. I'd rather spend three quarters of an update going on about how I murdered some sidequest guy for his funny accent or something, but from the Iron Throne headquarters on it's all been/will be pretty much a straight push to the final conflict.)

Please say you're going to keep it up through BG2.

I should mention, the BG enthusiasts over on the Penny Arcade forum are reading this too!

I might take a wee break to recharge my batteries between games (or I might not) but yeah, the plan is to take Nythrax and friends all the way through to the end of Throne of Bhaal. I anticipate lots of jokes about the word "Bhaalspawn" and why the hell Imoen is alive again.

So we're back in the big city, and it's pretty clear why those Candlekeep dipshits figured they could hand us over for execution. Turns out Duke Eltan, head of the Flamers, has come down with a "mysterious illness" and Scar was "coincidentally" killed by muggers and replaced with one of Sarevok's cronies. I could give a fuck about Duke Dickless, but Scar was kinda cool for a law-abiding type. He was a straightforward negotiator when it came to having people killed, and even gave partial payment in advance. That's good enough for me.

It's not all bad news though. Entar Silvershield? The Duke whose daughter we shot in the mouth when we were robbing his estate? Yeah, he's history. Smart money says Sarevok smoked him, because he's the one set to take Silvershield's place. Works for me, because now we're off the hook and it plays right into my plan. With all this subterfuge and doppleganger bullshit, it'll be child's play to make him a patsy.

It wasn't us who sacked the Temple of Umberlee, officer. Or murdered Ragefast in his tower to steal his sex slave. Or broke into one of the noble houses to slaughter everyone and lift those skyship components. No, that was all dopplegangers out to frame us. Bahahaha. Yes I just wrote out a laugh, because it's fucking hilarious. I'm getting ahead of myself though, because we'd have to discredit him by exposing all of his actual crimes before we could hope to pile ours onto him too.

The first place we hit was the Iron Throne HQ. They were still mopping up blood and gore from our last visit, and weren't terribly happy to see us again. A few of the merchants told us that Sarevok took over completely after we waxed his foster father in Candlekeep, and was basically gutting the Throne to buy his way into dukedom. We realized that really this made us all victims, and decided to band together. Heh. Banded together in giving the joint a second coat of blood and gore.

So up on the top floor we find this real skanky looking bitch just waiting for us, with a couple of ogres on hand for backup. Turns out she's one of Sarevok's sluts, one that's fallen out of favor and wants to get back into it by killing us. She came here and waited, knowing it's where we would probably turn up. Yeah, she actually stopped to explain all this.

Mordak just blurts out "Wouldn't it have been easier to just give in and let him put it in your ass?" and I swear to god one of the ogres facepalmed. The bitch turns BRIGHT RED, presumably in fury, but I half suspect Mordak hit closer to home than she would have liked. Oh but he's not done, he sees everyone looking at him and wants to defend his position. So he fucking hops up on the table, and starts to expound. I won't record it here, mostly because I'm sure no one wants to read a speech about analingus and how it's an easier task than killing six battle-hardened adventurers.

It was another one of those things where everyone just stops what they're doing because they can't believe what they're hearing. I really should coach him to say things like that on command, so as to paralyze our enemies in battle with shock and horror. Except for it to be a useful tactic we'd have to be exposed to it until we became immune, and I'm just not fucking willing to go that far.

He finishes up by rhyming "inner gland" with "merry band" and then hops down from the table with this smug grin on his face like he's just delivered the speech of the century and applause are imminent. Then the ogres rushed us, and we hacked them limb from limb.

A few broken ribs later this Cynthininia (or whatever ridiculous stripper name she had) is coughing up Sarevok's diary, that she apparently nicked and has been carrying around. Convenient, that. It's good stuff, too, laying out enough bullshit to bury the guy. Some more interesting things even than that, too, but I'll get to that in a while. Anyway, she told us that Sarevok was soon to be coronated a Grand Duke, which we knew well enough, and that we could probably beat an invitation to the ceremony out of a couple of assassins who hang in the Undercellar. We cut her throat and moved out, making sure not to linger long enough to be noticed by the Flamers.

Funny thing, the Undercellar is an infamous whorehouse and the assassins we were after were husband and wife. Kinky. I won't go into any great detail since Mordak has already rendered this account filthy enough, but the whole Kor & Lex "I'll call you a slut and you can call me an ugly moron!" Pretend-We-Hate-Each-Other show was in full nauseating swing from the first "You should ask if they're hiring!" crack.

Where was I? Yeah, apparently the husband and wife assassins were the ones who whacked Silvershield on behalf of Sarevok. We gave them a straightforward death when they had the temerity to try and take us out since, hey, they did us a favor. We took their invitation to the Duchal Palace and a rather incriminating letter from Sarevok to add to our evidence. Oh, plus a rather nifty little magic shortsword.

No dicking around, we took off right away to crash Sarevok's little party.

(If there were any doubt in the mind of some newb that I'm making up my own dialogue, I think the word "analingus" sealed it. Though the game does do a pretty good job of letting you say silly/crazy shit to people all on it's own.)

Keep it coming WUA. This shit is  :awesome_for_real:  I see you've even got a new custom title!  :drill:

Already through with the main game and debating whether to do the TOTSC stuff. On one hand I never did it, on the other hand I'm looking at stuff on Durlag's Tower and seeing a lot of puzzle-solving shit which I abhor. When someone recites a riddle at me, they may as well have a spell that opens a browser window and looks up google.


Hahahah, no.

Great read, you are doing a great job.  :thumbs_up:

Yeah, as far as I can tell there's no story in Durlag's, I can't keep the loot unless I cheat, and I already have 50k more XP than a character made fresh for BG2 would anyway. I already did the wolf island and ice island quests out of Ulgoth's Beard but they were pretty forgettable. I think I'll just write up my notes from the Sarevok showdown tonight or tomorrow and split for BG2.

Never mind, I sucked it up and did the puzzles in Durlag's Tower. Fuck it, I'm cheating. Expect the BG2 write-up to begin with Kor and the gang busting in fully-geared to run that dumb bitch Imoen off and hand Nythrax back all his stuff. I am not giving up this nice-ass loot right after getting it. Sarevok write-up later today. It's all from notes so I don't sweat waiting a little while between playing and writing.

Holy hell are you unemployed right now or something? You are blazing through the game....or at least, I remember the game taking a lot longer.


Also, I kind of agree on Durlag's Tower. I really had to debate whether I was going to do it last time I played, since it's such a grind to get through.

He is quick, inne? Good times.

If you're playing a well-rounded combat focused disaster group, you can rip through any of the Infinity Engine games. They sort of roll over for you, in awe of your power.

I guess I took my time too much back in the day.

Really interested to see what mods you use, WUA, to play BG2 and such. I'm sorely tempted to pull my save files off my old HDDs for use in that game.

Or hell, I might even just reinstall the whole damn thing and finish my other BG1 playthrough.

The first play-through eveyone takes their time, does all the side quests, reads everything.   This is WUA's, what,  7th time through I think he said.  Yeah, you just know where to go what to do and what's bullshit you can ignore.   Hacking apart half the people instead of talking to them because you don't care about whatever riddle/ piece of the story they're going to give you probably speeds things up quite a bit, too.

I won't really debate the fact that I have a lot of time on my hands lately, but Baldur's Gate isn't taking up nearly as much of it as some of you guys are thinking. One thing to remember is that it isn't WoW. If two people both do the TOTSC quest where they get teleported to the ice island to find the mage's cloak? Both of them kill the exact same enemies in the process of gaining the cloak? And one of them turns that cloak over to the mage at the end for the XP reward, while the other throws it away and kills one extra grizzly bear instead? The guy who killed the bear made more XP that day.

Side quests are usually worth doing if they're particularly amusing, if they provide a substantial amount of kill XP, or if they provide quality loot. Something like the "Perdue's short sword" quest that sends you to a different zone to fetch an item, rewards you with a whopping 50 gold and 500 XP, and doesn't advance the plot at all? Utter waste of time. Killing a sirine is worth 2000 XP by itself, and they'll spawn in your face half the time if you try to camp out in one of the shore zones. Go mash the rest button a few times in the right zone and bam, you've done the equivalent of a half dozen sidequests.

Yeah, I think I actually abused the siren thing a few times on an evil playthrough.

Before I describe our encounter with Sarevok, I really ought to point something out. I am immortal, I have inside me blood of kings. I have no rival, no man can be my equal. Or something like that.

You see, back during the Time of Troubles, Bhaal managed to die. As in Bhaal, the God of Murder. Yes, gods can die, and I guess a number of them did so back then. But Bhaal saw it coming, and so he spread his essence out amongst scores of mortal offspring. Sarevok is one of these offspring. I'm another.

I wouldn't believe such a ridiculous bullshit story, except that it explains a great deal. I haven't been recording it here, but I've been having very strange dreams every so often. Very strange, violent dreams full of messages from some voice outside myself. Which wouldn't mean anything either, normally. Maybe I'm just crazy. Except that after each of these dreams, or visitations, I seem to gain new powers.

I can terrify people, suck the life out of their bodies. I can cause dead people to get up and walk around, and I'm pretty sure that's not just in my head. Not all of the skeletons we've employed have been created by Vaere alone. Except whereas she simply channels powers granted by her god, I seem to just... have them.

Sarevok laid all this out in that diary of his. Apparently his entire plan is just a means by which to gain enough political power in Baldur's Gate to start a war with Amn. Not to win it, but to cause so much death that he undergoes some sort of apotheosis (Thanks for the word, Vaere!) and becomes the new God of Murder himself.

I'll give the guy credit, he's ambitious. It's such a beautiful plan, I'm just going to have to steal it. It's also why he's been trying to kill me. Because there can be only one.

(Not much funny here, unless you like Highlander references, but it's a plot point that needed to be put out of the way. Final showdown write-up forthcoming.)

Blood of kings would work too. :oh_i_see:

Fuck.

The single greatest writeup ever on this site.  Bravo, we are eagerly awaiting the showdown  :grin:

Realized I haven't given you props for this. I had to bust out my reading glasses because my eyes were straining from reading so much. The white on black might have done it too, but I'll give you the credit.

Thanks guys. I'm running behind and managed to lose a chunk of work by navigating away from the site (usually I type it into notepad, stupid me) so the ultimate showdown of ultimate destiny might be delayed until tomorrow, but no later. Then I'm taking an intermission and it's off to BG2.

I do have a screenshot from immediately before engaging in the final battle. If anyone ever wondered why BG2 limited you to 5 summons, well, this should explain it.

BG2 had a lot of annoying limitations for "balance" like that.  Like the fucking of grandmastery.  BG1 got it right, by the book, but they took most of the benefits of getting grandmastery in weapons out of BG2.  Summons' main function is cannon fodder to slow down the enemy from attacking you, while in BG2 they reduced the number but increased the power of the summons so whee, they couldn't really serve their purpose.

I guess the fact that you could have bags makes up for all of that though.

Huh, I'm kind of surprised that BG1 in the BG2 engine doesn't have the BG2 limitations on summoning.

The awesomeness continues.

I don't have the words to say how awesome this is so far.

I'll chime in as well.  Totally kick ass WUA.  Reading this is much better than actually playing the game.

Great thread man. Excellent read.

We flashed the invitations we lifted off the dead swingers, and blew past the guards at the Duchal Palace before they could ask us too many questions. No wonder Sarevok was able to get to Eltan and Silvershield, the security around here is bullshit.

As we barged into the ballroom, throwing elbows to make our way through the crowd, we heard a group of lesser nobles ranting angrily about the usual "Amn is out to get us!" bullshit. To their credit Belt and Liia (the two remaining dukes... er duke and duchess) didn't seem to be buying it. Meanwhile Sarevok is standing there quietly, waiting for this to die down so he can be formally inducted as a Grand Duke himself. That is until he sees the commotion we're causing and squeals "Who interrupts my coronation?!"

Just as we emerged from the crowd I shot back "Coronation, Sarevok? This is bad comedy!" and heaved his diary at Belt before the predictable "SEIZE HIM!" bullshit could really get started. Belt was pretty obviously looking for an excuse not to induct Sarevok, because not only was the authenticity of this book I just pulled out of my ass not questioned, he only read if for about fifteen seconds before ordering the guards to grab him. Oh yeah, seize YOU motherfucker.

Except at that point all of the lesser nobles... say it with me... melted into dopplegangers and the fight was on. Us, Belt, Liaa, and the Flamer guards on one side. Sarevok, his pet mage, and all the dopplegangers on the other. A giant confusing melee ensued, and even at the time I was absolutely delighted to see our little crew fighting alongside the forces of law and order. Our heroics in the face of Sarevok's treachery would make it much easier to pin all our crimes on him later. I yelled something about avenging his murder of the poor priestesses of Umberlee for good measure. It probably annoyed Vaere if she heard it, but whatever. The groundwork needed to be laid.

Pretty soon the dopplegangers were dying off, and things were looking dark for Sarevok. He screamed a few choice profanities at us, and had his pet mage teleport him away. Only apparently Belt and Liia can track where he's gone, and they want his ass dead right now. We all naturally agreed.

Apparently there's some sort of ancient ruined city lying beneath Baldur's Gate, and that's where Sarevok and his cronies are heading. You can't just teleport directly there because of... Look, I'm not a mage, and discussions of teleportation mechanics don't do much for me. Plus Kor had commandeered this huge platter of basilisk-in-a-blanket while everyone was talking, and let me tell you, those things are delicious.

So I didn't pay that much attention. Bottom line, Liia was going to teleport us to the old thieves guild and we were going to have to make our way through the cellars and chase Sarevok down into this ruined city. This we proceeded to do. The cellars were a maze, but the thieves guild traps were nothing Garrette couldn't dismantle, and the place was patrolled by nothing worse than a few oozes and battle horrors.

We did find Sarevok's old mentor lying on the floor, bleeding out. The would be godlackey had been encouraging Sarevok in this whole 'war of ascention' plan, but with it blown up in their faces the old man had apparently outlived his usefulness. So he told us as he lay there. Garrette put a bolt in him, but I think it was more out of simple habit than anything else. We certainly weren't going to try to heal him.

There was a long staircase that led down, and down, and down, until we found ourselves in an enormous cavern full of ancient buildings decayed down to nothing but crumbling stone walls. Oh, and one enormous and rather sinister-looking temple that seemed surprisingly intact. Yeah, one guess where Sarevok had holed up to hide from his enemies and lick his wounds. The question of why anyone would build all this shit down here was eclipsed by the question of why we could still see.

As we're making our way there, we're accosted by yet another band of heavily-armed dipshits we've never seen before. Turns out they're from the Iron Throne "head office" and here to do away with Sarevok for gutting their Baldur's Gate branch. Now I was willing to, if not precisely cooperate, at least let them take their shot ahead of us. (Let them soak up the spells. Heh.) But they know who we are, and our endless wanton slaughter of their associates means they hate us as much as they do him. Go figure. So we chopped them all into a fine red paste, and now our path into the temple was clear.

The place was about what you'd expect, lots of elaborate stonework and a giant skull Bhaal symbol carved into the floor. We knew Sarevok and his last remaining followers had to lay directly ahead, so we summoned everything. We raised up skeletons, we conjured up kobolds and gnolls, we built our own little army and sent it in ahead of us. It was all blown to shit by fireballs and such in short order, but those were fireballs that weren't going to hit us.

We charged in as the last of our minions were falling, to find Sarevok there with his pet mage and a couple other followers. He paused to sneer some bullshit at us, and I gave him this really cool line about how the future belong to me, not him. As per what's become our usual strategy, we ignored everyone (including Sarevok) to pile onto the wizard. Once he was dead we focused upon Sarevok. I won't recount the whole fight blow by blow, but while my demigod half-brother put up a credible fight, we hadn't come all this way just to choke.

Kor circled around behind him, and we sank blades into him from two directions at the same time. (Lex would later refer to this as "kinky" and ask if they touched in the middle. Kor had managed to kill a shitload of people while having a stomach full of basilisk and not even blink, but this almost made him hork.) Sarevok disintegrated into pixie dust and blew away, which was irksome because his armor went with him and I really wanted it. I was sorta hoping his divine essence would fly out of him and get sucked into me, but no such luck.

We barred the temple door to keep anyone else from bothering us unexpectedly, and sat down right there on the floor to rest and get our story straight. Vaere still had that bottle of wine we nicked from the spider house in Beregost when we were fresh out of Candlekeep, so she plopped down next to me and we killed that while we collectively cobbled together a story that pinned almost everything on Sarevok. Or rather, would encourage others to pin everything on him for us. As Mordak put it, we didn't want to appear to know too much. He can be pretty smart when he's not being a moron.

After that we had to decide where we were going next. Garrette suggested that we see about getting me named Grand Duke. With my "heroic" exposure of Sarevok, and the obscene amount of money we'd made adventuring, it seemed entirely feasible. But I scrapped that idea out of hand. I don't want to be a duke, I want to be a god, and it's not like I could duplicate Sarevok's plan after having exposed it.

Besides, if I became a Grand Duke, it would only be a matter of time before these chucklefucks hacked some minster's head off and blew the whole thing. I love these guys.

No, I decided we'd patch ourselves up, revel in the city's gratitude for a little while, and then hit the road. If I'm going to become a god of death someday (It's still weird to even write that!) it's not going to happen here. With Sarevok dead, the iron shortage cured, and the Throne all but obliterated, this place is probably going to be dreadfully peaceful for the forseeable future. There has to be somewhere out there that's ripe for a little hellraising.

Maybe we'll sack Nashkel on our way out. Those hillbillies have it coming, and I'm still pissed about only getting 150 gold for taking out Brage.


(And that's it for Baldur's Gate. Most of the expansion adventures are straight dungeon crawls and pretty divorced from the rest of the story, so while I did do TOTSC, I'm not going to write about it. I'd rather go out on a bottle of wine, talk of future plans, and one last crime spree than "And then we fought werewolves for some reason!" But never fear, Nythrax and the cool kids of Candlekeep shall be back for Baldur's Gate 2. I'm going to take a little time off before starting it, but it's coming. I quit recording dings a while ago, so I'll probably post a little endgame recap of everyone's level and gear at some point before that.)

Bravo. Bravo.

Loved every minute of it man. Fucking epic.

I spent the last three nights reading this instead of playing games.

Well done.


WUA gains +10 Reputation with Decepticons.

I knew someone had to get that. ^_^

Really great stuff, looking forward to BG2!

Made me lol.

Better late to the party than never. Well done and thank you. That chipped off a few hours of my boring work in an extremely entertaining way. Looking foward to BG2.

Edit: vew =/= few

Thank you.  Almost makes me want to start playing evil characters in RPGs.

This should be required reading for anyone building an RPG. 

Attention developers: "Good" doesn't mean you are an angel.  "Evil" doesn't have to be dumb.

Can't wait for the BG2 write up.   

Final party disposition. Like I said, I'm going to be a shameless whore and carry my loot into BG2, because I love loot, I earned it, and I'm not letting the game railroad me out of it. (That guy in BG2 who steals the Drizzt crew's loot if you kill them? He's getting modded out pre-emptively!) That said, I will refrain from equipping duplicate items. There will never be two helms of Balduran or two Drizzt armors in the party or anything like that. I don't want to cheesily put everyone in cloned uber gear, I just want to keep the shit I played to get.

So most of the BG1 items just plain don't exist in BG2. When I imported my characters over (after escaping the cell at the start to avoid being stripped) the only items that came with them were a few things like the helm of Balduran and Drizzt's armor. So I backed up the SoA override folder, then copied all the Tutu *.ITM files into it.

It was a shot in the dark and it... sorta worked. The items were there, made sound when moved around, appeared on the avatar, but were invisible in the inventory, had no text descriptions, and certain potions and such were causing crashes. So not really. Going to keep experimenting. They'll pry my loot from my cold dead hands.

As long as you can import your gold, just wait til you can go to the Adventurer's Mart and splurge.

Oh I can always just use a simple console command to get my gold back. I can even use the console to add back most of my gear, save for a few things. Debating whether I really want to do that now. If not, expect the entire thrust of the BG2 write-up to be getting revenge on the guy who stole my TWO HUNDRED THOUSAND MOTHER FUCKING GOLD.

That would probably be more fitting than the real story.

Oh, that could to all kinds of hilarity.  :grin:

Yeah, in addition to the ITM files you have references in those files to specific graphics (somewhere in the bifs) and to strings in the dialog file.  It is possible to extract items with Near Infinity (among others), but you'd have to go to every ITM file you want to transfer over, extract it, check the file itself for the .bam references, extract those, and copy all that shit.

And they'd still have incorrect dialog file references because the stringref to dialog.tlk would be incorrect, so if you actually wanted the descriptions, you'd further have to copy all those strings into new dialog.tlk references and renumber the reference for every item in order to match.

Yeah, not worth it. BG2 will be about getting my fucking money back from Irenicus and tracking down the undead Imoen.

"HEEEEY-YA! It's me, IMOEN!" :awesome_for_real:

I've never managed to play evil in any RPG - I always pussy out when asked to murder the puppy. The best I can manage is a kind of chaotic/neutral guy who doesn't kiss ass, but refrains from actual puppy-murdering. That said this has been an awesome read and I look forward to reading about the Cool Kids' adventures in BG2.

Thread still delivers, love it.

This is a good thread. Looking forward to your antics in BG2.

It'll be coming soon. These games are like huge pieces of chocolate cake. Awesome, but you can only consume so much before you need to put it aside for a little while.

Great stuff WUA. Made me look for my BG/II disks, but they're MIA. So I'm playing the Witcher instead and imagining your voice over.

Really good fun - keep it going.

I cant even recall how many times I have started one of these games to quit 5 hours in.

Great job!  You should SO be a writer!  Had me laughing. :heart: Gar too, in his silent way.

I tried to give Gar some of his namesake's not-talkativeness, but that conflicts with the need to... you know... have him do stuff and remind people that he exists. So I mostly had him express himself by way of shooting people in the face. Anyway, BG2: Electric Boogaloo should be underway within the next day or two.

Wow, you even got someone to register, steal the name and portrait of a character from you campaign, and POST with it, all with your playthrough commentary/journal.

Nicely Done.  :star:

Well, I might as well stop lurking for a few minutes...

Hell of a thread here man, god damn entertaining.  Like others here, I'm in the middle of a new playthrough of the series again now thanks to Nythrax and his party's adventures.

Keep it up, definitely looking forward to how Nythrax will handle some events in BGII and ToB.

Actually, the Aliexia who just posted is the original. I stole her WoW character's name, and removed a letter so I could call her Lex. When I told her about this little story, she sent me that portrait and I used it to replace the generic Safana portrait you see in the first couple screenshots.

Come to think of it, everyone in the party has at least some ancestry in the form of a UO or WoW character to one degree or another. Except for Mordak. Mostly I just used the names, though I did nick bits of personality here and there.

For future reference, via experimentation I've done, if you do the Baldur's Gate Trilogy (BGT) way of playing BG1 in the BG2 engine, rather than the TuTu one, all items from both games work in both games, as it works off of a single dialog.tlk file etc. It actually just merges all of BG1 into the BG2 directory, you can delete BG1 afterwards.

Baldur's Gate 2: Electric Boogaloo, aka Revenge of the Cool Kids

So things haven't exactly gone as I planned. Surprise.

After we sacked Nashkel and slaughtered all those useless hillbillies, we packed everything worth eating or drinking into a little donkey cart and bolted south before anyone serious could notice or come to investigate. We got away clean enough, or so I thought, and after a day's march we pulled off the road to make camp and enjoy our spoils.

Obviously we should have left a watch, but we were all feeling pretty damn invincible right about then, so we all got loaded as hell. A fucking demigod backed by major money and power had tried to take us down, and gotten a faceful of sword for his trouble, so what could possibly threaten us out in the middle of nowhere? I know, I know.

Kor threw an entire barrel of hundred-plus-proof something into the fire just to see what would happen and almost killed us. Mordak started jabbering something about attacking the darkness and started shooting magic missiles up into the night air. Yeah, it was kind of a party. Vaere landed in my lap again without even being pushed, gave me this real dirty "Guess what I'm thinking!" smile, then her eyes crossed and she threw up on the front of my armor. She always tries to keep up with me and Kor when it comes to booze, except she's like half our size. She passed out, and I just knew this was somehow going to be my fault in the morning.

Except it didn't work out that way. I'd like to say we gave our captors a hell of a fight, but the truth is I'm not sure there was a fight at all. For all I know they walked up while we were passed out and loaded us into a wagon like sacks of flour. Oops. So much for being invincible. I didn't even wake up at all until we were... wherever we are.

This really snobbish-looking schmuck of a wizard had the whole lot of us hanging from the ceiling in what amounted to giant birdcages. At first I thought this was some sort of law and order thing about killing everyone in Nashkel, but this guy clearly didn't give a damn about any of that. He kept jabbering about "unlocking my potential" and shooting me with lightning bolts and shit. So this guy knows I'm half-god and is bent on getting me to do... something. But he CAN'T be trying to bring about my apotheosis, because the first thing an angry god of murder would do is vivisect the dipshit who had spent the last week fireballing him in the name of science. I don't know, I don't claim to know anything about exactly what he wants, except that I'm not about to give him jack shit on his own terms.

So I'm hanging around in my cage trying to figure out a way to escape, when suddenly we hear a bunch of screaming and spells going off. The place is under attack. Who should choose this particular moment to suddenly turn up but... Imoen?! The first thing I think is "Oh no, not more of this doppleganger bullshit!" I'm really tired of my enemies thinking I can be mindfucked by shapeshifters turning into people I don't even like. She comes up and unlocks my cage, and starts spewing this huge nonsensical story about how the wizard in charge has been messing with my mind, and how in reality she and I have been best friends all along, and we need to escape together, and all sorts of silly shit. I answered this nonsense with a sweet left hook to the beak and she took off running.

You know, she only weighs like 90 pounds. If she were SOMEHOW on the up-and-up I should have at least decked her.

Anyway, with the undead shapeshifting Imoen momentarily fended off, I set about letting the rest of the cool kids out of their cages. Everyone was physcially all right, except then it hit me. We have no idea where our equipment is. What's even worse, we have no idea where all our loot and cash is. Let me restate this as bluntly as possible for emphasis.

THESE ASSHOLES TOOK OUR TWO. HUNDRED. THOUSAND. MOTHER. FUCKING. GOLD.

Do you have any god damned IDEA how much money that is? That's everything we'd made since we left Candlekeep. That's practically enough to buy a small kingdom. I can put up with being kidnapped. I can tolerate being tortured. But now this shit is fucking personal.

We ransacked a nearby guardroom that was mysteriously unguarded (except for a golem that wasn't even programmed to stop us) and came up with some weapons and armor. Swords, axes, daggers, splint armor, chainmail, all sorts of junk. Nothing like the arsenal of fabulous magical destruction that we WERE packing, but at least we wouldn't be left trying to punch our way out with bare fists.

As we left the guardroom we noticed two more prisoners sitting in cages. One was a rather bitchy-sounding elven woman whom we had never met before in our lives, but who knew my name and insisted we were old friends. The other was that face-painted maniac with the gerbil, the guy we put to death in Nashkel months and months ago.

Er, what the hell?

Is this supposed to be more shapeshifter crap? Because one of these people is some jackoff I killed in a streetfight and never gave a shit about, and the other is a complete fucking stranger. Whatever. We killed them both on the spot, without letting either of them out of their cages. Neither of them melted down into dopplegangers though. Hmm. This really wasn't adding up, but who has time to worry?

I'll figure this shit out another time. We're armed and ready, and it's time to slice our way out of this dump. We're going to find that ponce who locked us up, and start breaking bones until he coughs up our motherfucking 200,000 gold. I will have my revenge.

Ahhhh yeah, glad this is starting up, going to show it to some gamer friends this weekend.

Keep up the good work. It is the most entertaining thing I've read all week. Can't wait to see what you'll do in BG2.

I can't wait to see what you do when Irenicus turns your revenge-quest for money into a (major mid-game spoiler) Keep up the good work!

BG2 is being buggy as shit for me. I'm going to wipe out everything BG related except my character files, reinstall, and remod.

So the schmuck who stole our THTMFG while giving my asshole a magic missile enema every day for the last week is named Irenicus, and he has a pretty sweet pad if vaguely sewer-like dungeons are your cup of tea. The name was coughed up by the guy's dryad sex slaves before they all died, but I'll get back to that shortly.

Thus far the underground lair of a malevolent wizard is turning out to be just what you would expect. Namely lots of rooms and corridors laid out in totally idiotic and senseless fashion, protected by a random assortment of easily defeated monsters and needlessly complex magical machinery. Oh, and the guy has a huge fetish for preserving people alive in huge glass tubes full of liquid, apparently. There was a big room full of these things, but it all looked neglected and everyone in them was already dead. Except for this one sniveling dipshit, who somehow managed to gabble at us in a horrible nasal voice despite being underwater. Then somehow managed to drown after Lex yoinked the power cell from his tube because it was shiny. At least it got him to shut up.

Oh, and there was some royal twat of a genie who really wanted to be all cryptic and mysterious and knowing for the foolish mortals. Except if this guy knew the first damn thing about us, he'd know that if Elminster can't get away with that routine on our watch, what chance does he have? Kor was too crabby and pissed off to even moon him, and we told him to fuck off. He seemed quite taken aback. We'd have sliced his ass if he hadn't disappeared in a hurry.

Where was I? Dryad sex slaves, right. Well we found ourselves ransacking what was plainly this guy's bedroom. And let me ask you, who the bloody hell boobytraps their own bedroom? Their nightstand? It wasn't anything Garrette couldn't handle disarming, but I mean... really! My helmet, the erstwhile Helm of Balduran, was among the goodies we looted. Let me just tell you, I have never been this pissed off at someone without being able to kill them right away. Sarevok and his endless stream of embarassingly inept assassins never made me half as mad as this poncy douchebag making off with all our hard-stolen loot. We trashed the room out of spite, and in the cave connected to it we found...

...trees. Yeah, a cave full of trees. Okay. Why should anything around here make any damned sense at all, right? One wonders how they survive without sunlight, but there's probably a spell nobody has ever heard of that takes care of that. See, they're the magical dryad trees of these three dryads, all standing there in their wispy green bikini things. They tell us that the guy is named Irenicus, that he's keeping them there as sex slaves, and that he's apparently trying to recapture something he lost when his dear beloved wife died. Aww, isn't that sweet? Sure he's a prick, but he has a lost love. Balls! These dryads went on about how they wanted us to find some magic acorns that the dryad king can use to free them and... blah blah blah. I told them to shut the fuck up, and then asked Mordak if he wanted to make some spell components.

He just grinned, and we hewed the three of them into bloody chunks on the spot. They didn't really have any loot, except for what looked like a totally sweet bong, which Garrette snapped right up. Mordak apparently took me seriously on the "spell components" thing though. I mean I was just making a blackly humorous reference to that job we did in Baldur's Gate a while back, but sure enough he starts going through the leftovers, so to speak. Except he doesn't really know which parts are valuable, so he just starts filling a sack with random hunks of dryad. Whatever.

But get this, the very next room we walked into? His dead wife's bedroom. His dead wife's perfectly preserved bedroom. Oh man. Everything that wasn't worth stealing, we set on fire. Everything that wouldn't catch fire, we pissed on or otherwise defiled. I thought about how this Irenicus would feel when he discovered the mess we'd made of his bedroom, his sex slaves, and the little shrine to his wife, and I started to feel a bit better.

Vaere said it was a good thing, too, because she wasn't sure the healing spells given to her by Talos would cover rage-induced hemorrhoids. I know she was trying to lighten the mood, but I didn't laugh until Garrette nudged Kor and said "Hear that? You're gonna have to change your whole lifestyle!"

I threw my hands up as if to say fine, my little tantrum was over. The wife-shrine was a dead end, so we turned around and headed back into the dungeon proper.

 :drill:

So we're out. We didn't get to kill the prick in charge yet, and we certainly didn't find our loot, but we're out. It was a weird trip though.

We ran into another genie. Not the one who tried to do the two-bit Elminster routine, another one completely. This one said he had something of mine, but he couldn't give it to me or even tell me what it was until he was free. I immediately started to calculate whether we could murder a genie with our shabby stolen weapons, but then he told us that all he needed to be free was his lamp. Which, as it turns out, was the sweet bong Garrette stole from the dead sex slaves. He didn't want to give it up, not until Korgrim made a crack about weed tasting like genie ass. Then he forked it over, and hey, the genie was as good as his word. Sort of.

He coughed up Sarevok's old sword. Where he got it, or why he thought it was mine, I don't precisely know. I'm not complaining though, because it's a decent weapon and what's more it has a cool name. I'm no longer Nythrax, bearer of Spider's Bane. No, I'm Nythrax, he who wields THE SWORD OF CHAOS. I'll admit the sword probably isn't powerful enough to merit a name quite that pretentious, but I don't mind. I went into my sword-flapping routine on the spot. The genie looked at me real odd and everyone just said "Don't ask." Then he shrugged and disappeared.

After that we ran into a bounty hunter named Yoshimo, a little wise-ass from Ja-- er-- parts unknown, who seemed to think we ought to have heard of him, and who furthermore wanted to accompany us in our escape. Claimed he was a fellow kidnapping victim. We weren't about to trust anyone in this madhouse though, muchless some random armed stranger, and told him to get stuffed. Then he got all smug, and was like "Fine, I'll just follow you out anyway, after you disarm all the traps for me." Well I mean OBVIOUSLY, but I chopped his head off with THE SWORD OF CHAOS just for being the sort of dick who'd feel compelled to say that to our faces. Fucker.

Anyway yeah, we had to disarm a bunch of traps to get out. I won't go into the mechanics of exactly how we had to turn the crank and snap the plank, to boot the marble right down the chute, to turn off the hellmachine that was spewing out mephits, or whatever. Suffice it to say we made our way through traps that would have rendered the place completely non-functional as anything but a gauntlet for adventurers. Funny how that works.

Oh, it's the Shadow Thieves who were attacking this place. We had to kill a few on our way through. I have no idea why they're mad at this Irenicus, but I figure I may as well make note of it.

So we're kicking through the place, all the usual dreary tunnels and hallways, and we find a bunch more of those glass tubes. Only looking at these ones, it's plain that the schmuck is trying to clone his dear departed wife. I'm sensing a theme here. Bet you fifty gold he wanted to suck out my god powers to revive her. Well one of the clones had broken loose and was quite irate, as well as able to cast spells, so rather than attempt to explain this entire ridiculous situation while catching chromatic orbs with our faces, we just killed her. Then we smashed up all the tubes for good measure. I hope he cries big fat tears when he finds her.

We got out without further major incident, only to have the tunnel explode behind us as we came up... in the middle of a god damned bustling city. With Irenicus right out in front tearing up a bunch of Shadow Thieves while zombie/clone/whatever Imoen watched. The dude had skills, I have to admit. Well after he finished with the thieves, he and Imoen started shit-talking each other, until she zapped him with a magic missile. I didn't know she could do that.

Well instantly a bunch of guard wizards (or something) turn up screaming about the illegal use of magic. Irenicus is all like "Haha, whatever bitches!" and blows them all into chunks, but these guys just keep teleporting in to merrily shower him with their screaming giblets. Finally Irenicus decides he's had enough and tells them to take him in, but only if they bring Imoen too. Which they do, even though she's really not happy about it. I'm all like "HOLD THE HELL UP, HE OWES ME MONEY!" but nobody is listening. Five seconds later they're all teleported out and we're standing there in this crater in the middle of town by ourselves.

Fuck.

Looks like getting our money back is going to be harder than expected. Well, no reason not to take our financial woes out on the peasantry. We're apparently in the city of Athkatla in the nation of Amn, which is of no special concern to me. It's as good as anywhere else, I guess. Looks pretty prosperous. Should be plenty to steal on our way to wringing our loot out of Irenicus.

We're already set to it. Mordak was REALLY pissed off that using magic in public is illegal here, so Lex snuck off to this little open air stand selling mage scrolls and stole him a whole set while I was writing this, along with a neat little case to carry them in. That cheered him right up. One wonders how many scrolls really sell in a city where casting spells is illegal anyway.

(Vaere dings 9, Gar and Lex ding 11. For the record, I'm playing with a mod that restores the BG1 weapon proficiency system with the addition of the BG2 weapon skills like two-handed and dual-wielding. The notion of a long sword, bastard sword, katana, scimitar, and two-handed sword all being as different from one another as a crossbow is from a halberd just rubbed me wrong. For that matter, I doubt anyone would ever go "Gosh I'm a grandmaster with a mace, but this club is mystifying to me!" So yeah. Also a bunch of inventory management mods that make life a lot simpler.)

BG1 playthrough/baldening was solid as hell, and I'm glad to see that the BG2 playthrough is continuing in the trend of being awesome. Keep it up man!

 :drill:

This thread continues to deliver.

Another update coming tonight or tomorrow. I need to play a little more before I have enough material. Let me just say right now, having two single-class thief types in the party? Awesome. With Garrette having all the sneaky/trap stuff covered, Alexia can basically steal anything not nailed down. She walked up to that Shadow Thief vendor on the second floor of the "Coo!" guy's house and just blithely cleaned him out for all sorts of magic weapons and armor.

It also means you can do all kinds of wacky trap laying tricks on dragons and such (just make sure to do it out of sight of them.)

this thread is no lie

Hur hur. At least he doesn't need to stress over it, since Carsomyr would just be vendor trash.

I don't have any points in Set Traps with either of them. Gar is all Hide in Shadows, Move Silently, and Disarm Traps, so he can ninja around the dungeon without catching every trap with his face. Lex is 100 Open Locks and everything else in Pick Pockets, and even so had to chug a Master Thievery pot to clean out the Copper Coronet guy. (Stole back Gar's exact crossbow from BG1 instead of having to pay 9k for it, yay!)

I don't have any real idea how this shit works, except that 100 is all I need in Open Locks. I do have a savegame editor that I use for various purposes (Fixing weapon proficiencies when I modded the system and everyone ended up masters of "not used", etc) and no objection to using it to respec, provided I keep the same total number of skill points. So if someone has any tips that would be great, bearing in mind that Gar is an Assassin and only gets 15 points per level.

I'm thisclose to shitcanning the whole thing because of how awful BG2 combat is. I never played tabletob D&D, and there is absolutely no way any normal person would intuit that Greater Lesser Breach Dispel #487 removes Protection From Everything With A Vowel In The Name.

Rocks fall. Everyone dies. This fighting is just Not Fun.

Yeah, there are some mage fights that can get massively annoying, especially toward the beginning when you don't have top of the line gear.  I often used two mages, just so I had enough damn "peeling stuff off the mage who is currently invincible" spells. 

Yeah pretty much every combat begins and ends with Breach against Mages.

As far as tabletop combat though things can get annoying. I remember in 3rd ed druids were fucking invisible artilery platforms.

Step one: Wait until nighttime.
Step two: Shapechange into an owl.
Step three: Cast "Change Weather" until you get stormy weather.
Step four: Cast "Call Lightning" on random people, laughing as you do so.

Well damn. Not that I blame you in any way. Bummer, though. Nythrax was going places!

I did look at some guides and stuff.


At which point my brain exploded and I decided that a playthrough of BG1 was enough for one thread. I don't really want to write The Adventures of Mordak and His Five Meat Shields: A Study in Tabletop Gaming Minutiae.

The funny thing is none of that ECM/ECCM/ECCCM spell stuff is actually in the pen and paper RPG, in any version. Breach, spell thrust, all that stuff is only in BG2. As far as it ever went in the RPG was the first tier kind of stuff like globe of invulnerability and dispel magic.

That said I don't really mind it.  :grin:

Yeah, I seem to remember that when the mage-buff shenanigans started I just memorized buffing spells instead of fireballs/lightning bolts and just tore through them with melee.

I seem to remember it gets worse in throne of bhaal too - I had 2 mages, 1 was full-time debuffer.  Thats all she did, remove this, dispel that, breach the other.  Combats came down to her casting 5-6 debuffs in a row, until finally the previously-invincible mage was mortal, whereupon they would get torn to shreds by the rest of the party.

Maybe theres a user mod out there that fucks these spells right off?  Dunno - I too would miss the cool kids.

Somehow I don't remember having a bitch of a time with the spell system. Then again, I ran with 3 mages, and not just because of the spell system.

Does it really come up That often?

There's nothing that can't be solved by Haste. Lots and lots of Haste.

During BG1 I had to remind myself to stop playing and write, whereas after a couple of giant adventurer barfights that boiled down to incomprehensible mage duels I really just found myself slogging through BG2, waiting to get enough material for an update. (Which reminded me why, after starting this kick with BG2, I went back to play through BG1 again in the first place.) Hey, maybe it's just me. Maybe I'm too dumb for this game. I like the characters and loved writing in this thread, but I can't wade through the longest RPG in the universe when I'm not having fun.

Anyone have any suggestions for other party-based RPGs? If there were one that let you make up all your own guys, I'd have the kids take a left turn at Albuquerque and pillage an Ultima or something just for laughs.

There's the Icewind Dale games, but they tend to contain a lot less story stuff, so they might not lend themselves as well to this.

Whole thing eventually leads to Neverwinter but I don't remember that being a particularly deep RPG at any point despite being OMG 3D. I've not really noticed the mage combat thing so much, I've been running with Edwin and Imoen so there's been people to throw around a load of dispell stuff but I've never really bothered to work out what works on what. Mostly it's been throw random dispells at the mage while keeping everyone else alive and dealing with invis spells if they come up. In retrospect while typing this that doesn't sound like any fun but it's not really overly phased me so far except for the odd time when the mages get feared and you just need to accept that everyone's now going to die. Which sucks.

I was kind of looking forward to Nythrax getting his own demon butler though.

If it means getting more writing, I wouldn't blame WUA for just using a kill command on pointless mage battles.

NWN1 doesn't really have a party system, you pretty much just play with the main character, and maybe one henchman.

I seem to recall that was my solution, too.  My Paladin, the DE Cleric, Minsc, Imoen, Jaheria and some mage was my BG2 party and I don't recall things being unbearable.  I do recall casting a shit ton of healing spells, however.

You know, there's a Blackguard kit out there that grants the Inquisitor uber-dispel. And while the kit Nythrax was using was pretty good in late BG1, with the Animate Dead nerf it was pretty worthless in BG2 anyway. Hmm.

He hates magic anyway. Come on.... :awesome_for_real:

The other thing to remember about spell protections is that almost all of them can be defeated through the brilliant strategy of waiting until they run out.  There's very few that have a duration longer than a few rounds.  Melee protections are even easier.  There you basically deal with increases to AC and such, as well as the everpresent Stoneskins, which just mean you need to hit the enemy a bunch of times.  Tip on stoneskin: it doesn't matter how much you hit for.  Hitting for 1 HP will strip one skin.  Hitting for 200 HP will also strip one skin.  Darts, if I remember right, get three attacks per round in Baldur's Gate II, unhasted.  I think there's magical darts that increase that to 4 or 5, then haste can double it to 10, so you're basically a rapid-fire dart cannon and can strip stoneskins in a round or two.

You can be fairly evil in arcanum, semi-similar game, maybe you could do that?

Holy fucking shit. After a huge pain in the ass routine that involved copying Nythrax's file, cloning him, putting both in the same multiplayer game, transferring gear, writing down his stats and using an editor to recreate them, then moving the save file back to the single player folder (in order to skip the multiplayer character select screen) I've changed his kit from the Sword & Fist mod Blackguard to the Tactics mod Anti-Paladin. It's basically an evil version of the Inquisitor with a 'dispel magic on melee hit' ability to compensate for evil parties not being able to use the uber-sword that does the same thing.

Why would anyone EVER not have an Inquistor (or equivalent) in their party? This 'AOE dispel as if you were double your actual level' thing is ridiculous. :awesome_for_real:

Edit: Seriously, I've gone from not being able to kill some mage in a bar fight to cockslapping a lich. Now I have the Daystar sword. Ho ho ho.

Edit2: Ok, I have enough material for an update. Will probably write it tomorrow in the AM. Seriously, I dodged a bullet here. Being able to simultaneously dispel on a whole room full of guys as if I were level 16 is huge and makes life a lot simpler. I'm immensely glad some modder realized evil parties were getting cockstabbed to infinity by not having access to it. So does anyone know anything about how to distribute thief skills?

Glad to hear a solution has been found! Looking forward to the continuing adventures of the cool kids.

Sweet Baby Jesus on a raptor!  :drill:

I think Lex is enjoying our newfound poverty. With our little band in need of everything and an entire city of merchants before us, she's never been so busy. Armor, weapons, potions, scrolls, she's been stealing everything not nailed down. I'm pretty sure she pried up a few things that were nailed down and stole them too. Good thing, because it's making life a hell of a lot easier.

With Irenicus and Zombie Imoen locked up who knows where, we decided to explore the city and see what sort of trouble we could get into. We had no sooner begun to pass through the slums when we were accosted by this inbred dipshit who apparently has some sort of brain damage that compels him to start every sentence with the word "Coooooooooo!" Which isn't a word, but whatever.

I'd have diced him into giblets on the spot for being that irritating, except he knew who we were and introduced himself as a member of the Shadow Thieves. Okay, they don't like Irenicus and we're powerful adventurers who don't like Irenicus either, I can see where this is going. He wanted us to follow him back to his house, which didn't seem very wise, but then plot fairies made me do it anyway.

It went about how I expected, except that this guy seemed to think Zombie Imoen was with us and that we'd be hot to rescue her. I told him I didn't give a shit about that, I just wanted to get my hands on Irenicus. He seemed to think this was for simple revenge, and I let him go on that way, because I don't really need the thieves knowing that there's even Two Hundred Thousand Mother Fucking Gold anywhere in this picture.

Anyway, Gaelen and the thieves can apparently get us to Irenicus, who's being held prisoner by the Cowled Wizards, the guys who enforce that idiotic no-magic law. Only thing is, they want twenty thousand gold to do it. I'm not keen on that, and we don't have that much anyway, so I just tell him as much.

Oh well that's no problem, he says, since we can just make the money doing the standard adventurer bullshit. He says he'll have his nephew or whatever show us to the Copper Coronet, one of those slummy adventurer dives that are always full of people looking to have monsters and shit killed. Yeah, great, I just can't wait to start doing the usual "go into the sewers and kill poop monsters" routine on behalf of this syphilis-addled cooing moron.

We began our fundraising by stealing everything out of his house. He's a professional, he'll understand. There was even a guild fence working out of the upstairs, and Lex robbed him blind for a bunch of equipment.

Once we got outside, Kor gave Gaelen's little ragamuffin of a nephew a kick in the ass and told him to get lost. We all agreed that there was no way we were paying that asshole twenty grand, and that we were officially looking for a way to fuck him over while still getting what we want. We found our way to the Coronet ourselves, and sure enough it was just what I expected. Specifically, it's the sort of place where six heavily-armed mercenaries (namely us) will pile in, and some hapless suicidal mook will immediately decide he doesn't like their faces and that he's going to do something about it.

With the obligatory "Hey a new pub!" murder out of the way, we got down to business. Lex went up to where the barkeep was and started stealing all sorts of weapons and magic arrows. (Gee, you think all the barfight deaths have something to do with the custom of drinking establishments doubling as arms vendors?) Vaere got into some sort of religious debate with this ridiculously poncy priest of Helm, he demanded she renounce her evil ways on the spot, and I'm pretty sure she and Kor clubbed him to death with bar stools.

I wasn't sure because I was busy chatting up our would-be employer. This broad Nalia was short on details, but her entire demeanor screamed "I HAVE TOO MUCH MONEY!" almost as loudly as it screamed "I AM A NAIVE DIPSHIT!" Those are two of my favorite characteristics to find in the same person. Seems she's the filthty rich daughter of a filthy rich family, and she's one of those fools who feels guilty about being so well off while having no idea what it's actually like to be poor. She was bumbling around asking for help and not grasping why "But I've helped so many of YOUR KIND!" wasn't making her many friends.

Seems her family's keep is overrun by... something... and if I help her by killing off this something, I'll get... something else. She was kind of a moron, and I don't usually like such vague deals, but the real thrust of the situation was thus: As long as the invaders hadn't finished looting and moved out, all of the family's rich-ass stuff should still be inside their keep. If we can kill off whatever is in there, we should be able to pillage ourselves silly without anyone knowing any better. "Where's your stuff ma'am? I don't know, maybe one of the badguys snuck out the back door with it!" Haw.

She wanted to join our little crew, but I told her to go ahead and just wait for me outside the keep at a safe distance. She's frankly insufferable, and keeping her in our company would only result in someone hacking her face off prematurely.

So off we go. To kill some vague ill-defined enemies to make some loot to (hopefully avoid having to) pay the Shadow Thieves to get to Irenicus to make him tell us where our THTMFG is. Man, why is shit always so complicated?

Except it's never that easy, is it? First we get attacked by slavers while while making our way between the slums and the city gate. I have no idea why everyone thinks we look like soft targets, but we easily gave them an education to the contrary. I didn't mind that part, because they had some nice stuff.

The part I mind is where we have to double back to the promenade to sell some of the stuff we don't need, and my delusion of leading a crack squad of adventurers instead of babysitting a pack of violent children takes a boot to the crotch. Everyone was too tired and excited and covered in Cowled Wizard giblets to notice the circus tent last time we were through here, but now Mordak sees it and everyone completely loses their shit except for me and Garrette.

Mordak, Lex, and Kor take off like rockets, elbow a couple of Amnish soldiers out of the way, and are inside the tent before I can even finish screaming at them that we have fucking business to take care of. Loot related business. Vaere started dragging me toward the tent by one hand, telling me that I should just mellow out. Then Garrette told her I probably would, if she could explain to us why heavily armed government soldiers were guarding a circus tent. Ha, at least someone else around here has some sense. Of course we went in after them anyway because, well, what else were we going to do?

We get in there, and suddenly we're in another dimension. Kor, Mordak, and Lex are all standing there slackjawed looking around this... this... enormous space with a stone bridge leading up to a building that looks sort of like a giant circus tent. One larger than the tent we walked into to get here. It's a bit mind-bending. Naturally, there was no way back out to be seen.

I had to lecture. I couldn't help it. Here we are on our way to a sweet deal where we get to rob an entire keep, and these nimrods have to go "WAHAHA CIRCUS!" and get us sucked right out of the universe. It HAS to be us. This sort of shit can't POSSIBLY happen to everyone. Mordak just flapped his arms and told me to chill, everything would probably go back to normal if we killed whoever was responsible for this. Probably.

So we marched on ahead toward the building, until we were confronted by an ogre with the voice of a little girl telling us to get away, please get away. I don't know what the hell the point of THAT was, but a shower of arrows and a sword through the neck made it all moot. Then there was this asshole genie who wanted to ask us questions about math before he'd let us through, and just... yeah.

Anyway, eventually we got into the building and found it decorated like a mansion. A mansion full of shadow monsters and werewolves. (Or is it wolfweres? What sort of stupid name is that?) Yawn. Hack, slash, chop, so far this was actually pretty easy. We kicked our way through everything in front of us until we finally came up to the guy in charge, this big ape of a dude who wanted everyone to kneel before him and blah blah blah. He summoned up a bunch of his useless minions, but we ignored them and all jumped on him and started hacking him to bits.

As soon as he hit the floor, everything snapped back to reality and suddenly we were standing inside a normal circus tent. The big evil guy had turned into some helpless little gnome. Apparently he worked for the circus in some little bitch of a role that he resented, somehow was given magical power by some outside entity, and this whole caper was his idea of a good way to use it. Maybe it was supposed to be the genie?

I don't know, I didn't want to hear the exposition. I just stabbed the little fucker to finish him off, and when the circus owner started crying about how that girl-voiced ogre had been his magically transformed daughter I just told him to cram it. What a huge waste of time.

On the bright side, once we got outside, the city guards thanked us for our benevolent service. Public goodwill can be a very useful resource to burn at times.

By now it was getting late, so I figured the day was shot and we may as well waste the night too and turn in before leaving the city. I should have known that when it rains, it pours. We're sitting in some stank-ass pub near the city gates, when Garrette taps me on the shoulder, points to a nondescript section of wall in a dark corner of the room, and says "That's a door." His ability to spot a hidden door has come in handy more than once, so I know he knows what he's talking about.

So we all move to the corner table closest to the secret door. Garrette gets up for a drink, and when he gets back, leans against it as casually as possible. Nobody is even looking at us, and I'm wondering if any of them even know it's here. He pushes something on the molding with his foot until it clicks, and the section of wall slides away silently. I can hardly believe it, but none of the broken down old drunks in this dive are even looking in our direction. So fuck it, we duck through!

It has to be us. This shit can't happen to everyone.

The doorway leads into a crypt, and in the crypt is a lich. Sure, what else would there be? Alternate dimension in a circus tent, lich in a pub closet. I'm not going to be able to take a shit without worrying that the outhouse is the hidden portal to a red dragon's lair. Anyway, some would tell you that a ridiculous game ensued between us and this lich, of running in and out of the room, waiting for it's spells to wear off, hitting it with my own dispel, swatting it with a weapon to set off contingency spells, and repeating the whole schtick ad nauseum until the thing was largely defanged. I tell you that we leapt in there and heroically cleaved it in twain whilst it shat it's undead britches in terror of our awesomeness. You weren't there, so you can't say otherwise. Heh.

We gave it's ring of invisibility to Garrette for when he's out scouting, there's nowhere to hide, and he really doesn't want to be seen. Lex broke into it's chest and found a sword that Mordak identified as Daystar. Apparently it's some uber holy sword that belonged to an order of paladins, and is exceptional for killing the undead. Touching it made me feel itchy, but Kor didn't mind, so now he has that in one hand and this sword of fire that Lex stole for him in the other.

Oh, that reminds me! Just to backtrack, when we hit the Copper Coronet and Lex was pilfering the weapons? We found Garrette's old crossbow from when we killed Sarevok. Fucking barkeep wanted to sell it for like over 9000 gold. How about zero gold, bitch? Haw! Garrette was quite pleased to have it back.

Anyway, in the morning we're leaving for De'Arnisse Keep come hell or high water. Unless we fall down a sewer grate and end up on the Elemental Plane of Fire or something, which at this point wouldn't fucking surprise me.

(Nythrax ding 9, Kor just a few XP from the same.)

I have the de'Arnise thing to write up, then I'm dropping everything and going off-track to get the Lilarcor sword. A fucking talking sword that says shit like "Murder death kill! Muahaha!" with a voice actor and everything? YES PLEASE. I'd have gone for this straight out of the first dungeon if I'd known it existed.

I cannot wait for the hilarity to ensue.

Evil talking sword? That's a win. This thread continues to be the most awesome thread ever*.



*Hyperbole combined with sycophancy to feed and fuel the WUA Creative Core.

Oh god I forgot the talking sword. This is going to be delicious.  :drill:

I'm glad you decided to keep going, and can't wait for you to meet Lilarcor.

Lord Nythrax. It has a certain ring to it, don't you think? I knew that Nalia bitch was naive, but even I would have never guessed we'd get away with THIS much.

We got to de'Arnise keep around noon, and found Nalia and the remaining guards holed up in this little wooden palisade a short distance from the walls. She bitched about how long it took us to get there, but I just told her to cram it and finally explain what we were there to kill. Apparently the place had been taken over by trolls and snakemen, who had somehow tunneled into the keep from below. Irritating in that we'd need fire or acid to permanently kill the regerating trolls, but Kor was just like "Dudes I got this shit!" and started waving around that flaming sword Lex stole for him.

The drawbridge was up, so they pointed us to a secret passage hidden just outside the keep, and pretty soon we were in without anyone being the wiser. Some of the servants were still alive, so we squeezed them for information and told them to get the fuck out while the getting was good. About thirty trolls, some snakemen, and a handful of weird burrowing creatures they used to tunnel in. The lord of the keep may or may not still be alive, we were told, but what the hell did we care?

Resistance wasn't really organized, so we started looting like mad while kicking the shit out of everything we came across. One of the snake-men was a magic user, but we dispelled his bullshit and bumrushed him before his buddies could do anything about it. Oh, and one of the family guards was some sort of traitor, babbling about the power of his master as he attacked us. I suppose Nalia might have known what his deal was if we let her dumb ass tag along, but who ultimiately gives a damn? We killed him, and I took his nice full plate armor for myself.

We also freed some poor guard who had been holed up with Nalia's snobby cunt of an aunt this whole time. I'm not normally a man of great compassion, but this bitch was insufferable, ranting about peasants not knowing their place and how this whole thing was affecting her social calendar. I wanted Mordak to charm her and use her for troll-bait, but the she and the guard scampered before I could give him the signal. For an old bag she was light on her feet.

Oh well, back to pillaging.

The family chapel was... interesting. Three statues, each concealing a pile of sweet looking loot, with five animate but passive golems standing watch nearby. It didn't take a genius to figure out that grabbing the goodies would sic the golems on us. Well shit, if plundering were easy, everyone would do it.

Each statue's loot turned one or two golems loose. The adamantine golem was a bit of a fight since we only had a couple of weapons powerful enough to hurt it, but the real problem was the clay golem. You can't just cut through these things, you need to bash them with something blunt in order to hurt them. Mordak tossed me the enchanted quarterstaff he never uses, and I set to it. Kor yelled for Vaere to toss him her hammer, but she just ignored him and jumped into the fight herself.

I guess ideally she would have handed it over to him and armed herself with a spiritual hammer spell or something, but whatever. We took sort of a beating but we killed it okay. She gave Kor this real smirky "See, I can handle my shit!" look and he was just like "Bah!" but you could tell he was at least mildly impressed.

After that we lowered the drawbridge and let the guards in, so they could cover our back while we went down into the keep's dungeon to look for the enemy leader. Turns out the weird burrowing creatures we'd heard about were umber hulks. Vaere had a spell that would keep their confusion bullshit from affecting me, so I had her cast that and then took point. Once they had used that shit up on me fruitlessly, we moved in and chopped them to hell. We cut through a few more trolls, blah blah blah.

Now there was only one room left, and all my dungeon-crawling instincts told me that this was where the leader of the trolls would be found. We began to formulate a strategically brilliant plan of attack based upon our extensive combat experience.

Then Mordak ran up, threw the door open, screamed "LICK MY TAINT, HORSE FUCKERS!" at the trolls, cast a cloudkill spell into the room, and slammed the door shut again. All six of us leaned on the door to keep it closed until all the hissing and screaming died down. The couple of lackeys who were still alive after that staggered out to be easily killed. Yes it was kind of insane, but I'm not a man to argue with success.

We found Nalia's father, the lord of the keep, dead in there along with the trolls. Thankfully his head was bashed in, which saved us having to go through any subterfuge in regards to accidentally murdering him. We also found over two thousand gold and some other loot in the base of the statue they had apparently dragged him down there to point out. Score.

Oh, we also rebuilt the old guy's awesome three-headed flail out of it's component parts. Apparently he'd taken it apart and scattered the pieces around the keep because... because he was a pussy who hates good weapons, I don't know. We gave it to Vaere since her silly religious strictures keep her from using any of the good swords or axes we come across.

We went back out to the little palisade and told Nalia it was all over. The old bitch we found holed up with her guard earlier was there, and boy was she pissed. She was ranting about how we probably stole everything good from her home, which I'll admit was quite astute on her part. I just winked and she got even madder.

Then Nalia started hemming and hawing and asking if we wouldn't mind staying for a while. I told her to just fucking spit it out and tell us what she wanted. She gave us this long sob story about how she's betrothed to the idiot son of the douchebag noble next door, a guy named Lord Roenall. The short version is that she wanted me to become lord of the keep and make her my ward, so that the Roenalls couldn't force the marriage and take over her land.

Yeah, because I bet that Roenall would be a real jerk. Heh. Yeah, a real villain. Heh heh. I'm totally the more benevolent choice. Hahaha.

Naturally I agreed, and her bitchy old aunt almost had a stroke on the spot. Granted there were plenty of good reasons for her to be outraged by her niece's obvious stupidity, but her fixation on my lack of "noble blood" was sorta hilarious given who my father is. I mean obviously I didn't try to explain it. I want to keep it a secret, and watching the old bat go crazy was hilarious anyway.

As the peasants and such were streaming back in and putting things back in order, Nalia did point out that she could take away what she had given. I smiled and nodded, then once we were inside, made sure she and her aunt had an "unfortunate accident" of the fatal variety almost immediately. None of the peasants were dumb enough to make a peep over this, and our little coup was complete.

I immediately renamed the place Castle Nythrax and threw a party in my own honor. Those dipshit Roenalls won't give up on getting this place that easily, but fuck them. This place is mine, and I'll kill anyone who says otherwise. We haven't really "lived" anywhere since Candlekeep and that place sucked shit, so this is the first "home" we've had that we actually like. (And we do like it, what with being able to do whatever we want!) Not that we'll get to spend too much time here, what with our other concerns, but still.

Oh, and the best part? All these peasants, in the keep and on the surrounding farmland, pay TAXES. Taxes to their LORD. As in ME. Your old friend Nythrax is actually a figure of lawful authority. Go figure.

Shit man Mordak's cloud-kill battle shout had me rolling.  I'd forgotten about that spell, fucking awesome.

After a few days of putting things in order, alternated with a few nights of drinking ourselves stupid, we decided to get back to Athkatla. We still have Two Hundred Thousand Mother Fucking Gold to recover which, to put things in perspective, is almost two years worth of taxes there at Castle Nythrax.

No sooner had we hit town than one of the local vampire lackeys informed us that her "mistress" would like to meet with us. Yeah, vampires. Apparently they're enemies of the Shadow Thieves, as we've glimpsed them fighting in the streets at night more than once. She told us to meet her in the graveyard district after dark to discuss a deal. Obviously they were going to offer us something in order to turn us against the thieves, which was just dandy with us. Either that or eat us.

We couldn't even make it all the way to the graveyard though, before Gaelen's runt nephew was telling us that he needed to see us. I figured they had been watching us, and planned to warn us off of cooperating with the vampires. I told the kid we'd go see him, and Mordak started pitching a fit, talking about how vampires are totally awesome and way better than mere stupid thieves. Then Lex kicked him in the ass and threatened not to steal him any more scrolls, and suddenly he decided it would only be prudent to hear what Gaelen had to say. Heh.

We got in there, and I was sorta expecting some vaguely menacing threats. Which I was looking forward to, really. Nothing cheeses a guy off like making the hand-job motion as he's trying to tell you "what's good for you" in a super-serious threatening way. As it turned out, they didn't admit to knowing that we'd had any contact with the vampires at all. Instead they wanted to drop their price from 20k down to 15k, supposedly out of the goodness of their heart. Yeah.

I told Gaelen we'd think about it, and got out of there with my mind made up. Clearly we're about to be sucked into this whole vampires-versus-thieves war, and I want to be on the side that doesn't fucking reek of fear and desperation. Unless this "mistress" is totally unreasonable in her demands, we're going with the vampires. I still can't believe the Shadow Thieves, the largest criminal organization in the region, didn't even have the balls to threaten us.

So we met the leader of the vampires, this little dark-haired chick named Bodhi. Full of all the pomp and self-importance you might expect, but not particularly rude or unfriendly. Kinda cute, if you could get past the whole undead thing, which Mordak certainly could because he started drooling on the spot. She also wanted 15k to help us get at Irenicus, and wanted our help in wiping out the Shadow Thieves.

Doesn't seem like much of a deal on the surface, since it's the same gold cost plus a bunch of strife and combat with the thieves. But consider 1) anyone with a brain could tell we weren't going to get out of having to fight either one side or the other, 2) the thieves by far come off as the weaker of the two, and 3) killing the thieves probably means looting the thieves. What's more, pointless strife is part of how Sarevok planned to become a god, so it seems like the sort of thing I ought to be doing.

So yeah, we agreed, and handed over the cash. After our looting of the now-defunct de'Arnise family, we could afford it. Right away, Bodhi had us move against the thieves. Intercepting a shipment here, assassinating a member there, all good wholesome fun, and easy to boot.

Next thing she wants us to do is invade the thieves guild proper and wipe the place out, supposedly so that she can do her thing about getting us to Irenicus without their interference. That last bit was a little condescending, like we're supposed to believe she wouldn't want them wiped out anyway, but whatever.

I don't need much excuse to pillage, and I'll bet the thieves guild is full of nice loot that we'll get first crack at. I told her we'd get to it, but we'd do it in our own time. I want to check up on Castle Nythrax and a couple other things, and what's more I don't want this bitch to get too used to ordering us around.

We're helping her for our own reasons, but that doesn't mean I have to be a lapdog. If she had anyone else of our talents, she wouldn't need us. And since she needs us, she can damn well wait on us.

(Mordak dings 10. This update was a bit hasty, but all this stuff seemed to have time limits on it so I wanted to get it out of the way before going to look for my talking sword.)

I don't know how i missed this for so long but i just blew my entire weekend reading it, while desperately trying to find a good old fashioned group based rpg to play.

We hit the Coronet again. While Alexia was surreptitiously cleaning the place out for some of it's better magical weapons that had come into stock since our last visit, and Mordak and Vaere were betting on how many lizard kebabs Kor could eat without stopping, Garrette and I were keeping the owner busy with a lot of big talk about how much money we had to burn. We just wanted to distract him, but as it turned out we persuaded him to let us in on some of the Coronet's less publicized services.

Turns out the "back room" at the Copper Coronet is several times larger than the public room, and that they do a thriving business not only in whores, but in slavery and gladitorial combat.  I'm all in favor of these practices, and the weirdo who runs the joint let the bouncers know we were cool. They didn't really direct us anywhere though, they just sorta let us wander around on our own. That's cool and all, but we didn't really know where we were going, and ended up getting split up.

Gar and Lex were with me, but the others were nowhere to be seen. I figured Vaere was probably behaving herself, but Kor and Mordak, plus booze, plus whores, plus slaves and gladiators and who knows what else? In my mind I instantly saw the two of them riding through the streets naked on the backs of headless zombie prostitutes, while my balls ached in dread at the sort of bribe it would take to make that go away. I mean on his own Kor isn't likely to get into any trouble worse than a barfight, while Mordak might get tossed out for trying to do something unnatural to a whore. But if the two of them are left alone together, they fucking magnify each other's insanity.

We found Vaere getting her feet rubbed by a couple of male prostitutes while throwing gold coins at a third who was standing on top of a table and... well never mind what he was doing up there. Suffice it to say I was totally cool with all this, because I'm a laid back guy, and anyway, what do I care what Vaere does? Sure I yanked the table out from under the one, and used it to bludgeon the other two manwhores into fleeing, but... screw it, since when do I need an excuse? I just didn't like their faces, okay? Fuck you.

I don't know what the hell she was so smug about.

We didn't see any sign of Mordak, but then we didn't get to look for very long before we were attracted by the sound of an argument. Kor was over by the animal pens, with the joint's beast master yelling at him to get out because his scent was getting the guy's giant pet panther riled up. Kor's just like "How's your pussy like this smell?" and wham, lets one rip. Probably the lizard kebabs, any sort of reptile meat is always the material component in Kor's own personal Stinking Cloud spell.

I mean it just went on, and on, and then Kor got this look on his face and it was pretty apparent that it had gone on a little too long. That's right, Korgrim the berzerker, bane of our foes, wielder of Daystar, had just shit his drawers in the back room of the city's largest brothel. The beast master was just like "Fuck it, that's all I can take!" and hit a lever that opened up every cage at once. You'd think this would result in general chaos, what with half a dozen tigers and bears and shit all running loose at the same time. But no, every one of them came straight for us.

Not that it mattered. I mean we've faced a LOT worse things than a pack of bullshit animals, and Kor wasn't going to let a pantsload slow him down in a fight. We hewed through everything in no time and took down the trainer. Only the bouncers aren't taking too kindly to all this, and now we're fighting them too.

Which was Mordak's cue to come strolling by with a whore on each arm, calling out ahead of him that he needs to borrow five hundred gold to compensate these girls for being such good sports about something he called "two wenches, one goblet". Then he sees us slugging it out with the staff and goes "Sweet, never mind!" and sets them both on fire with a snap of his fingers. With the cool kids all back together, we easily fended off all the guards.

We needed a cover story though, a red herring, anything to make this story into something besides "Nythrax and friends sack whorehouse", so we ran over to the slave pens and released all the gladiators. Boy were they ever delighted to be free. They all took up weapons and went after the remaining bouncers, fighting their way towards the front while screeching about freedom and revenge. Yeah, that'd do.

We were going to join them, but Kor was like "Fuck no, man!" There was just no way he was going out in front of the tavern crowd with pants full of shit, and no amount of logic about how nobody would notice amidst the chaos would persuade him. I wasn't about to have us sit around and wait for the city guards, so instead we escaped into the sewers.

(I took more license than usual here, but failing to leave after the beast master bitched about the smell disturbing his pet WAS what set the fight off and convinced me to free the slaves I otherwise didn't give a damn about. Kor just had to shit his pants so I'd have a better excuse to go into the sewers than "walkthrough says a neat sword is in there".)

 :drill: Thanks for continuing to deliver.

Two wenches, one goblet.  Excellent!

I have more fun writing this than I do playing the game, now that the whole exercise isn't just me beating my face against a bunch of incomprehensible spell bullshit. I've already decided that if I run into a bunch of "uber dispel won't work becuase they have spell immunity abjuration and have stacked protection from magic weapons with protection from missiles and have a spell shield in place to stop my first attempt at breaching them" bullshit, I'm just going to blow them up with a cheat and not tell anyone. Haw.

1) Uber dispel
2) Haste the good guys
3) Bum rush to victory

Please continue with the  :drill:

Kangaxx and the Twisted Rune should go down fairly quickly, then  :awesome_for_real:

Pretty sure I can just put a scroll of Undead Protection on Kor and have him blow Kangaxx out of his socks with Daystar. The Twisted Rune fight, I can Daystar the vampire, and throw a dispel to make their own pit fiend attack them.

I do read a lot of guides.  :oh_i_see:

I don't mind screwing around a bunch to kill bosses that are probably worth uber XP. I just may or may not do so on behalf of every random barfight mage if what I consider to be bullcrap becomes really common.

Unless you install one of the available AI-"improving" make-the-game-harder mods, you're basically never, ever going to see a mage buff himself with spell immunity. And since (I think) dispel is one of the things that ignores magic resistance, your Inquisitor-style dispel is going to be a win button for pretty much the whole game. Enjoy. :awesome_for_real:

So there we are trudging through the sewers, and Kor may as well have a force field with a six-foot radius around him, because nobody is going anywhere near him. He's just like "Oh fuck you guys, we're in a sewer, you can't even smell me!" But we totally could. Lex started in with some cracks about how he always smells, until he threatened to give her a hug in his present condition.

We had to kill a few of the usual sewer-dwelling monsters and even disarm a trap or two along the way, but it wasn't anything we couldn't handle. Along the way we found a magical sword which had been hidden down there for some reason, protected by a really nonsensical and arbitrary riddle that had to do with stuffing random bits of junk into particular pipes in a specific order. I'm not going to go into it, because frankly it was pretty stupid and isn't important anyway.

The important thing is, it's the first two-hander we've come across that's better than Sarevok's old sword. Everyone else has been getting awesome new weapons left and right (thanks mostly to Alexia's pilfering) but I hadn't gotten shit lately, so this one was mine. And get this, IT TALKS. A talking fucking magical sword. And all it talks about is killing.

I picked it up and it immediately wanted to know when we were going to kill something. It also said it's name was Lilarcor, and I knew we were going to be best pals, especially after I went into my sword-flapping routine and it kept screaming "WHEE!" as I swarked it around the room. Everyone else sorta facepalmed, but I swear sometimes those guys don't know what fun is.

Anyway, there was only one exit from the sewer that would accomodate us, and it just happened to lead... right into the headquarters of a bunch of slavers. They didn't look very happy to see us, and I was debating the best way to explain that I actually approve of the institution of slavery and that this was all a misunderstanding. Then Lilarcor piped up with "Kill them, kill them, I want to see what's inside!" and that pretty much made up everyone's mind that this wasn't going to be a friendly encounter.

I knew this sword would fit right in with our little gang.

So we wasted everyone in the place while my sword kept up a running commentary on what body parts it had managed to sever. Nobody in there even managed to slow us down, and we looted the place bare for good measure. Kor thankfully excused himself to their washroom to clean the shit out of his drawers, and while we were waiting Lex turned all the child-slaves loose. I felt a bit dirty doing a good deed, but what the hell? At least it furthers the deception that we're slavery-fighting do-gooders, as opposed to degenerates who can't visit a brothel without killing half of everyone in it. That can only help us if the massacre at the Copper Coronet comes up in the future.

Speaking of which, we stopped by the Coronet to see what was up. The place had calmed down, and apparently one of the former slaves had managed to take over ownership of the place after gutting his ex-master, the previous owner. I don't know how THAT works legally, but whatever. The guy was so grateful to be free that he extended us a permanent discount, so I'm not complaining. We sold some loot and caught a night's rest.

After that I decided it was time to check up on Castle Nythrax. If nothing else, the taxes should have come due by now.

(Vaere dings 10, Gar and Lex ding 12.)

 ;D Awesome! Such a good read that keeps me busy throughout my boring work days. Thanks for all the hard work!

That quote was only mildly doctored. Here's a list of actual quotes:

'Come on let's kill something NOW!'
'mmmm.... now?'
'What about now?'
'Now!  Now!  Kill something now!! Yeah!'
'Murder!  Death!!  KILL!!!'
'Wouldn't it be cool if you could dual-wield me?'
'YOINK!  Got yer nose!'
'Let's see what's inside this one! Yeah!'
'Muwahahaha-ha-ha!!'

Like I said, as soon as I read about it I knew I needed to have it.

Lilarcor is the single most awesome weapon anyone has put into a game ever. The lore story for it is pretty :awesome_for_real: too.

Also I've just finished Throne of Baal and Edwin's epilogue is  :awesome_for_real: beyond words.

Thanks for a great write-up WUA, been a while since I laughed this hard at a forum thread...

Thanks all for the comments.  :heart:

More to come soon, as Nythrax is called upon to actually govern his little estate. It's been my goal for a long time to make this the most viewed thread on the forum. Only about 1600 to go before I catch the original Dwarf Fortress thread, and that's been here since January.

  :drill:

I'm glad you managed to get around your (to me, mind-boggling) dislike for BG2's combat and mage stuff, cause this keeps getting better.

You need to write more. This is what gets me through the day.

I agree, I'm like a fucking junky coming back to this thread.  This is a 100 times better than the game ever was for me.

We got back to Castle Nythrax just in time for the majordomo to tell us that someone was there to see me. Some merchant, pissed off about something or other. Since this would be the first time someone outside the household had called upon me as lord, I decided that I needed to make the right impression.

The first thing I did was tell Kor, Lex, and Mordak that they didn't have to hang around for the boring merchant talk. I don't want to make this guy feel too important by having the whole crew there, and those three are the ones most likely to try to pick the guy's pockets or saw his head off, or something similarly impolitic. Needless to say, they seemed pretty relieved.

Vaere sat down next to me, looking real pleased at playing lady of the keep, which is how most of the staff treats her. I can only imagine they see the fact that she's been toting the old lord's magic flail around ever since we recovered it as a symbol of her status in my eyes. Clearly the local peasantry isn't up on the logistics of magic weapon dispensation among adventurers. Not that I don't respect her, I mean. She's a big part of the team, I just mean... fuck. Whatever. Shut up.

Anyway, Garrette went and stood in a far corner, where he'd be able to see the entire room and would presumably spend the entire time with his eyes on the visitor's back. Then he put on his "I am stone cold and will totally just shoot a guy!" face. I greatly approved. Any one of us could singlehandedly wipe the floor with anyone likely to visit, sure, but to have Gar looming in the corner is a nice way to remind them of it.

I told the majordomo to send the guy in. Turns out the merchant is this fat little red-faced guy, irate as hell about one of his caravans getting bushwhacked by bandits within my territory. I was about to tell him to calm down, when Lilarcor piped up from inside the scabbard with "Who's that? He sounds mad! Can we kill him?!" I don't think I'm really used to having a talking sword yet.

Goddamn it, if I wanted a running commentary of insanity I'd have made Mordak stick around. The merchant is just looking at me with this "What the fuck?" look on his face. A brief argument then ensued between myself and the sword over the merits of slicing open visitors to see what's inside them, which only ended when I threatened to grind it down into a letter opener if it didn't shut the hell up.

So much for making the right impression. On the bright side, the merchant's anger seemed to have been dissipated by the sheer weirdness of the situation. He calmly described how the caravan had been sacked within my territory, and how he needed me to make this right, with only a few instances of "C'mon!" and "I bet he's squishy!" coming from Lilarcor, which we both ignored through a sort of unspoken mutual agreement.

Guy wanted a thousand gold for his losses. I rolled my eyes, and he made some noises about foreclosing on a bunch of farmsteads on my land that he owned the deeds to. Garrette gave me the "Should I shoot him?" look, but I just gave him the negative signal in return. I told the guy I wasn't paying him for his little caravan, but that I was going to buy the farm deeds off of him instead.

Garrette coughed once from the corner to remind the guy of his presence, and of the fact that refusing to sell probably wasn't a good option.

We did the deal on the spot. As it turns out, the farmsteads were also worth about a thousand, and the merchant wisely decided to act as if this were just as good as being paid a thousand for his losses. Needless to say there's a bit of a difference between handing out free money as compensation versus purchasing valuable property, but whatever. If this guy wanted to keep it friendly, I'd oblige him. I even told him I'd spend another five hundred hiring mercenaries to clear out the bandits, which seemed to genuinely please him.

After we saw him off, Vaere and Garrette both expressed surprise that the guy got out alive and with money in his pocket. I simply explained that trade was important to my little fiefdom, and that I didn't want to be lord of an impoverished shithole. Also, buying those farm deeds tightens my grip on the land, and my power over the people. That's never a bad thing, and anyway a thousand gold isn't that much for us anymore.

(The merchant really does act like selling his land for 1k is just as good as being compensated 1k for his losses, which is rather silly. Thus I figured it made sense to write in some threats.)

Played some more tonight, more writing to come tomorrow. This is going a bit slower than BG1. I had that game down pat and could virtually speedrun it, but not so here.

Sounds good. This is a great thread so far with BG2.

Great thread, keep it up.

If you still need thief skill pointers, find traps, set traps, open locks and detect illusions all have their cutoff point at 100. The toughest pickpocket mark is Bernard in the Copper Coronet, you need about 230 for him. Other merchants go from 120 to 190. Remember, you can always buff up with potions beforehand. Hide in shadows and move silently are basically the same skill. 200 in one and 0 in the other is just as good as an even 100/100 spread. 120-150 in each are about right for sneaking about even in daylight. Just don't go over 255 in a single skill, because beyond that, the points roll over.

As for their utility, you want the cloak of non-detection for serious stealth, otherwise True Seeing will reveal you. Potions and rings are handy for multiple backstabs each combat. Open Locks and Detect Traps are pretty much required, max them ASAP. I'd also consider having find traps on both your characters, eventually. That way one can keep searching new areas the while the other one disarms them. Detect Illusions is basically a free True Seeing whenever you need it. Use Find Traps to activate it. It triggers once per round, similar to turn undead and find traps. It's very handy against thieves and mages casting Shadow Door or Mislead, except I don't know if you'll actually need it with your Dispel Magic ability. Pickpocketing (or killing, considering your playstyle) random soldiers will occasionally yield high-level magic scrolls. You can occasionally pickpocket quest rewards from NPCs, but not always. If you don't use the fixpack, this can occasionally multiply items. The only notable item I remember that you might not normally get is the Efreeti Bottle from one of the djinns in Trademeet.

Set Traps is very, very powerful, bordering on exploitastic. Almost(?) nothing is immune to trap damage, so if you can prepare your field of battle before enemies appear (or turn hostile), you'll either one-shot or seriously cripple them. Luring regular enemies back into prepared traps is usually more of a hassle than it's worth, however. But it'll give you the edge you need if you find a combat too difficult. Using them on dragons is a bit too cheesy for me (I'd rather turn them into squirrels), but very little is more satisfying than letting those annoying Cowled Wizards teleport smack into the middle of a deathtrap when they come to arrest you for using magic openly. If you kill enough of them, they'll eventually stop bothering you.

Hope it helps.

Thanks, that's EXACTLY the sort of info I was looking for!

Hmm.. I wonder what Nythrax 's next order of business might be...

It's a tough set of fights, but interesting and fun in some ways.  I did it once as a solo mage, killed enough wizards to make them leave me alone.  It's also rather profitable because a ton of guards appear with them eventually, if I remember correctly, dropping loads of plate armor and halberds.  Also, the high level wizards that appear in the last few rounds before they decide to leave you alone often drop very high level scrolls.  If I remember right you can get 9th level spells off them (which, in original BG2 were very rare and could never be memorized due to the exp cap putting even single-class mages at 17th level).

With the business of governance out of the way, I decided we should get back to Athkatla and crush the Shadow Thieves already. Bodhi told us a while back that if we wanted to get at the leadership, we'd have to get a special key from our old pal Gaelen Bayle, mushmouthed incomprehensible dipshit.

No subtlety on this, we marched right into his house and killed him dead. Mordak wanted to reanimate the corpse and use it as cover to help us sneak into the guild, which was actually a pretty rational idea for him. Once he cast the spell though, it started going "COOO!" even before standing up, so I hacked it's head off on the spot. Mordak stomped his foot and insisted that he made it do that as a joke and I had just overreacted, but whatever. Then he took the still-animate head and put it in his backpack. Weirdo.

Look, I'm not averse to subtlety on a philosophical level (though the company I keep isn't normally conducive to employing it) but this was a time for brute force. I'm not about to try to compete with the enemy on their own sneaky terms. I'm going to turn this little scuffle into the sort of brawl which they, with their leather armor and their little short swords, aren't prepared to handle.

After we had the key, we headed down to the docks, marched through the front door of the Shadow Thieves guild, and started killing everything in sight. They had a few wizards and such on hand as additional security, but it was a pretty straightforward romp on the whole.

I mean yeah there were traps here and there that Garrette had to pick out and dismantle, but he's an old hand at that sort of shit. And there was a bit of wankery with a door that required both a key and a button to open, the button behing behind a bunch of silly machinery and the key being held by yet another wizard. But we busted one of Bodhi's guys out of his cell, and he explained it all to us right quick.

The wizard was named Kaz or Haz or something like that, and had a few guards with him. A volley of arrows and bolts (and one severed but still-biting thief head) disrupted his initial spellcasting though, and it was off to the races. The priest with him got off a spell or two, but nothing I couldn't dispel the effects of. We killed them all in short order.

By the way, I had sorta wondered if Lex would be annoyed at the fact that she was never going to get membership in a thieving guild at this rate, what with us seeming to slaughter every such organization we come across. I should have known better, because if the logic of "killing thieves means we get to loot thieves" was going to sway anyone, it would be her. She picked every lock in the building as we went along, and started loading us up like mules when she had more loot than she could carry.

Eventually we came to the leader of the Shadow Thieves. I can't remember his name, to be honest. I mean you kill enough people and it all starts to run together. Anyway, we caught up to him and he clearly thought he was ready for us. He had a mage, and a priest, and a couple of fighter and archer types with him.

But like I said, the order of the day was "Fuck subtlety!" and we laid into them. The mage was a powerful one and summoned some sort of demon against us, but we just plain beat it into the floor. I dispelled all their silly magical defenses, and then forced them into a straight slugfest, the results of which were predictable.

Man they had a lot of nice stuff. Even the bits we can't use should sell at the Coronet, and we can always steal them back from there if we need them. Haw. We should probably let Bodhi know the job is done at some point, too. Doubtless she already knows, but I'm curious as to what she'll have to say.

(Nythrax and Korgrim ding 10. Butchering the forces of law and order into abject submission is definitely on my things-to-do list, but probably as a later-game thing.)

So anyway, thieves.

Gar (assassin) is all stealth and disarm traps. With his piddly 15 skill points per level, branching out into any useful amount of trap setting isn't going to be an option until many levels from now.

Lex is all pickpocket and lockpicking. Both of these are at their meaningful limits and she needs to start putting points elsewhere. But I'll confess that trap setting doesn't really suit the character, and I'm enough of a dork that such things matter to me.

When do you get High Level Abilities? And do you need points in trap setting to choose the spike trap HLA?

Fuck it anyway, I'll put Lex's extra points in detect illusion for now and just use Shadow Keeper to respec if I think I fucked up. With uber dispel having eliminated a lot of the mage-related bullshit, I can't complain about the combat anyway. I don't need to totally cheese it by setting 35983498 traps under a dragon or something.

You get HLAs on levelup once you're past BG2's old XP cap of 2 950 000. For thieves, that's level 24. And yeah, you need the skill for HLA traps.

Btw, there's a limit of 7 active traps per area, so you can't cheese quite so much.

MOAR

I'll get back to this, but I have to admit that my interest is flagging after more than a month of playing the BG series hardcore. It's a long-ass game, and I can only write so many "chopped his head off" jokes before the whole thing wears a bit thin. I won't forget about it, but I need to do something else for a while. Right now I'm plugging away at a 'box office roundup' to bump my old thread with.

Take a break by all means, just make sure you do come back and finish it!

My Monday just got worse :heartbreak:

I won't forget. My ego finds the positive comments (and the people who register just to post that I am awesome) far too delicious for me to forget. I just need to recharge a little or the quality is going to decline since I'm not feeling it.

I registered JUST to post that this is awesome. 

A few months back I went nuts and bought the BG/BGII/IWD/IWDII series, with all updates/expansions/etc, in some sad effort to reclaim my late-teens youth.  Combining that with being alone in a new part of the country, I started blogging about the run-through of the game - mainly so I wouldn't put it down for 6 months and then totally start over, again, for the millionth time, having wasted endless hours only to start over.  Somewhere along the line of these Black Isle games, nothing was ever as fun as the very start - character creation, the first few chapters, etc, when every Ogre was deadly. 

One day while looking for other interesting BG run-thrus and bloggishness, I found this.  O happy day. 

Thank you WUA.

I just registered to say that this entire thread is drenched in awesome sauce.

I've never seen evil characters played so well.

 :Love_Letters:

Take as long a break as you need, we'll be waiting.

 :inluv:

I registered to say that this thread is pure awesome. I love the BG series. Thanks for the very entertaining read!

Schild clearly needs to make this thread viewable to subscribers only with the first few posts available on a trial basis :awesome_for_real:

Ok, I apparently conjured up 3 newbs in a row. I can't NOT do an update this weekend now.

Hah! You are now the 4th google hit for: Baldur's gate playthrough!

Up to 3rd place now!  :drill: :drillf:

I signed up for the ability to see spoilers.  Although this thread is a good read as well.  The Dwarf Fortress "BBQ Dwarfs" thread is also a winner.

It's almost like I can hear WUA's head swelling from here. Like a giant balloon.

After we killed the leader of the Shadow Thieves, we went a little further down through the district and visited their other guild hall, one operated by someone named Mae'var. We started tearing the place up, and thankfully it was a lot smaller than the main guild hall.

For the most part it didn't have much good loot either, until we got down there and kicked over this Mae'var himself. Turns out he was wearing the Shadow Armor that Garrette lost when Irenicus nabbed us. Either that or one EXACTLY like it. He put it back on and seemed pretty happy about it.

When we got out it was raining, so we ducked into a nearby pub. The Salty Seaman or something, I don't know. We're sitting in there chilling when Gar turns to me and tells me that, yep, there's a secret door concealed in the back of this pub too. Oh boy. Last time it was a fucking lich, this time it was...

...a broom closet. No actually it was full of pirates. Seriously. They were mad that we had stumbled into their secret hideout and naturally decided to attack us. I'd bitch about what a stupid place for a hideout this was, but it still makes more sense than finding a lich crypt back there so I'll quit while I'm ahead. We killed them easily and yoinked the treasure they were hiding.

I'm half-tempted to just go around banging on the walls of every pub in the city looking for fights and loot. I'll bet one of them has a dragon in it.

Anyway.

We let Bodhi know that the thieves were all dead. Well, Mordak let her know while going out of the way to overstate his own contribution to the effort and blatantly trying to mack on the vampire bitch. We let him go ahead with this display because it was pretty hilarious, especially when she made a point of telling him what a minor task it really was and you could practically see his dick fall off. She also explained that Irenicus is her brother, and that she wants to get her hands on him before we're through.

Whatever. She was ready to send us to Spellhold, but after killing off the entire organized crime apparatus in a major city and being told it was no big deal, I decided to make the twat wait some more. We told her we'd be back when we were good and ready and decided to head for Castle Nythrax and see what was up.

It was an uneventful trip, and there was a thousand gold worth of tax money waiting for us, which was nice. The majordomo got hold of me and let me know that one of the guards had been arrested for petty theft. I had him brought before me for judgement. Oh man, I love having lawful authority. Lilarcor started screaming "KILL HIM! EXECUTE HIM! DIE, DIE, DIE!" as soon as the captain brought the guy into the room. I've decided that I don't really mind such behavior, as it seems to unnerve people.

So it turns out that the guy's wife is sick with some bizzare disease that the clerics can't cure. It takes special exorbitantly expensive medicine to cure her, without which she'll certainly die. This guard knew he was never going to make that much money legitimately, so he resorted to theft. There wasn't any way he was going to make enough money that way, but he said he had to do something besides sit there impotently and watch his wife wither up and croak because he's poor.

I paid the five hundred gold for his wife's medicine and let him off the hook.

No, there's no punchline. I don't mean that I hung his carcass by a hook, or that I held him off a balcony by a hook and then dropped him, I just mean I paid for his wife's treatment and let him go without punishment. Every jaw in the room dropped simultaneously. Even Lilarcor was like "Yeah, kill hi-- wait, what the fuck?"

Look, first off, I'm the fucking Lord around here and I'll do whatever I damned well please, okay? Secondly, any man who WOULDN'T resort to crime under those circumstances is a pussy whom I wouldn't stomach having around anyway. This guy's only mistakes were getting caught, and not thinking big enough. Thirdly, fuck you.

Vaere looked like she got it. Everyone else sort of grumbled, shrugged, or sighed in relief depending upon their role in the situation. Whatever. If I were incapable of looking upon certain people as "my people" and treating them decently even when they're technically out of line, I'd have chopped Mordak's head off years ago.

After we rested up and stashed some weapons we no longer needed (but which were too hot to pawn off) we decided to head out to the Windspear Hills. The lord of that place was offering sweet money to clear out some ogres and trolls last time I heard, and I wanted to see if such were still the case. Kor grumbled that he hoped I wouldn't spend ALL of the reward money on blankets for orphans or some shit like that, and Lex kicked him in the ass. Heh.

When we got there, sure enough we were confronted by a bunch of ogres and shit with oddly human accents. I kinda wanted to pause and ask them what the fuck was up with that before killing them, but they were bent on fighting first and asking questions never. We chopped them up with ease, but as each one fell dead they turned into a human knight. Hrmm.

Just then this guy comes running up and tells us that he saw ogres fighting ogres, with the fallen turning into humans before his eyes. Right, okay, so it's some kinda spell designed to get us to kill each other. Jeez, if this Firkraag wanted us to kill some knights he should have just said so. I wonder if he'll still pay us.

Well the kook who witnessed all of this was all like "Oh no man, the Temple of Helm and the Radiant Heart will totally be after you now! Follow me to my cabin and we'll find a way to make it right!" Yeah, okay.

Instead we turned right the fuck around on the spot and headed for the temple district in Athkatla. Visions of paladins cut to pieces trying to arrest us and other hilarity danced in my head, but alas. When we got there, nobody fucking noticed us at all. Hell, one of the priests of Helm asked us for HELP. Seems there's this cult going around claiming the gods are all fake and luring commoners into the sewers. We caught one of their idiotic speeches on our way to being ignored at the Radiant Heart compound. This priest wanted to know what was up.

It was another "likely way more complicated than it sounds for unspecified reward" job, so I mentally threw it on the pile of shit to do only when there's nothing else better going on. In the meantime, it's back to Windspear to find out what's up with this Firkraag bullshit and get paid for murdering those paladins.

Well, count me another new face signed up to tell you how much you rock, WUA. Your style of writing is exceedingly funny, and the depth you add to the various encounters is a delight. The Baldur's Gate games are easily my favorite videogames ever, with upward of a dozen replays each. And, thanks to this thread, another one coming down the pipe.

One thing, though. I intend to mimic your playstyle in a number of ways, including working an anti-paladin, with that delightful dispel ability, into the party. Do you (or anyone else) know where to get a copy of the Tactics mod? Its home site appears to be down, and I haven't been able to find a mirror.

Working now.

http://www.weidu.org/tactics.html

The download link is item 8 on the installation checklist toward the bottom of the page. Thanks again to all who posted and/or registered just to tell me you appreciate the story. I totally thrive upon it.

(Only about 300 views to go before I've beaten the old Dwarf Fortress thread from January! Woo!)

Wow, thanks for the super-speedy reply! Actually, after a good bit of dithering and some light swearing, I figured out that the site was taking personal exception to my IP. I suspect it went through a messy breakup with Comcast. Anywho, a proxy server did the trick, and the mod is mine. Let the pillaging commence!

Good times, glad you got it worked out. I'll try to do another update within the next day. It should prove in epic and unequivocal fashion that the cool kids will go out of their way to pick a fight with absolutely anyone.

Ok, now that we've been summoned do you want us to attack anyone or should we just walk up & down the halls looking for pressure plates or trip wires?      :drill:




Also, thanks for the update.    :woot:



I won't even look at the Dwarf Fortress Thread until you out score it.

Bear in mind that I mean the old DF thread at the bottom of the forum that hasn't been touched since March, not the one Rasix is doing.

It also just sort of ends when I get bored and frustrated with dealing with too many dwarves so don't get your hopes up.

Funny, I'm going through the same shit with Morrowind.  Either BG really is this good or WUA has a lot more staying power and/or vanity than either of us.

Man, sometimes it hurts being as awesome as I am.

We got back to Windspear Hills and started scoping around. The first thing we came across was a group of warriors cutting down some gnolls and making chatter amongst themselves that made it blatantly obvious that they were actually werewolves. I was just like "Sup bitches?" They didn't appreciate the joke.

Once they were all dead, we approached the keep without meeting anything worse than a few random orcs. The place appeared to be a wreck, and I smelled the opportunity to do some looting. Just then Garren Windspear, ex-lord of this dump and the same guy who came upon us after we killed the paladins, ran up screaming for us. Apparently this Firkraag had his lackies kidnap the guy's daughter from their cabin, and left a note.

I got a look at the note and it was all "Now Nythrax we will play a little game to see who is the better, this shall be our battleground, bla bla bla!" and shit like that. Oy. Apparently I have enough of a rep now to attract a whole new level of douchebag looking to prove something. This isn't just some slob in a bar, this guy has land and minions and shit.

Well fine, I say, if this guy wants to have an Evil Overlord dick-measuring contest then I'll teach him not to fuck with Lord Nythrax. Then Mordak is like "Yeah well I'll bet this Evil Overlord doesn't buy medicine for his servants sick wives! Ha!" while Kor stands next to him with his hands clasped in mock-adoration, going "Oh thank you my lord, you're just the sweetest lord ever!" in this silly voice. Dicks.

We ducked inside and at first it was just the usual bunch of hobgoblins and shit. Nothing we couldn't slice our way through in short order. Then it was some kook wizard and his pet kobolds, except he had somehow enchanted the kobolds to run up to us and explode. That was sort of annoying, but not nearly enough to take us out, and after the wizard was dead we found a nice fire resistance ring on him.

The layout started getting a little more complex as we advanced, so we were methodical and made sure to leave no stone unturned. Not even the kitchen. As we burst into the room, the troll cook casually told us to go ahead and hop up onto the grill and kept right on chopping meat. I admired his chutzpah, so instead we sat there and talked shop for a few minutes.

He was quite well-spoken for a troll. Turns out his mother sent him to live with the hobgoblins, since apparently they're the high-class folk of the monster world. They were an okay bunch, he said, except for the chief who sometimes cut his fingers off. This is only a minor nuisnace for a troll, since they regenerate.

Once the conversation wound down, I was just like "So yeah, we're not about to jump onto the grill, you know?" He shrugged and yelled for the guards. The whole thing went predictably. We're at the point where rabble like this just isn't playing in our league in anything less than ludicrous numbers.

We killed an otyugh they kept in the back room for trash disposal after blundering in on it, then had to turn around since this was a dead end. We sent Garrette ahead to scout, and after a few minutes he came back and told us there were three or four vampires in the chamber up ahead.

We had Mordak conjure up an earth elemental, Vaere raise a couple of skeletons, and sent them in ahead as fodder while we rushed in behind them. They put up a decent fight, all things considered, but remember that Kor is still packing that Daystar sword. It's absolute death against vampires and we killed their physical bodies, causing them to turn into vapor and flee. Whatever. Lex picked the lock on the chest they were all standing around, and we finally scored some loot out of this deal.

More poking around. I know this sounds disjoined. That's because it was. We were just wandering through this wreck of a keep, methodically opening every door, killing every monster, and turning over every nook and cranny looking for anything worth keeping or selling.

As we made our way through, we opened up a door and had a human woman in plate armor almost fall into our lap. She introduced herself as Samia, and almost immediately launched into this huge spiel about how she was an academic here to study the tomb of the great king whats-his-face, but she couldn't get in because she's a descendant of said king and this magical ward is keeping her out, but it wouldn't keep us out and yadda yadda yadda.

My eyes started glazing over and all I could think about was why the hobgoblins hadn't eaten her. The short version is that she needed us to go explore this tomb for her. Lex crept up from behind, put her arms around this chick, and invited her to do some "exploration" of a different kind at her earliest convenience. Kor rolled his eyes and Mordak got this really silly look on his face, but we all knew what was up. A red-faced Samia disengaged herself from Lex as politely as possible, and we decided to save this tomb thing for after we'd dealt with Firkraag.

Once we were out of sight Lex showed us the contents of Samia's pockets. She didn't have anything but a handful of coins, but sometimes Lex steals just to amuse herself and/or the rest of us. Then Kor and Mordak pipe up.

"Hey Lex, do you really dig girls?"
"No, but hanging around you apes all the time is bound to turn me off men eventually."

Mordak was just like "Sweet!" and turned to Korgrim for the high-five, but Kor left him hanging to scowl at Lex instead. Anyway I'll leave off here for now. I didn't get to the totally awesome part yet, but it's a long walk back to Castle Nythrax and we're all feeling a bit tired and singed.


All of the above?  :awesome_for_real:

 :x



Please tell me that you'll rip Kor & Mordak's testicles off, grind them into paste & then serve them up to them on a savory cracker.

Y' know.

Once their usefulness ends.

 :rock:

Again WUA - this shit is fucking gold. Best of what I thought this kind of Radicalthon could have inspired.


GOLD.

Thanks. :)

I'll try to tap out the rest of my notes into story form tonight. I'm just horsing around on the puter for a little while while I wait to pick someone up from the hospital right now.

If you're impatient waiting for WUA here (http://www.baldurdash.org/journal.html) is a munchkinish solo mage account of a trip through BG2 both SoA and ToB.

So we left that Samia broad behind and carried on looking for Firkraag. We stomped our way through some orogs and werewolves, the sort of fighting that's more a formality than any sort of challenge anymore. Then we ran into another one of those situations that's too elaborate to be accidental but still doesn't make any god damned sense.

We fought our way across this bridge over a deep circular pit. Hanging off the bridge and into the pit was a rope and bucket like you'd find in a well. I was curious what the point of this was, so I had Kor hoist up the bucket. Inside the bucket was a magic helmet, and also an air elemental, apparently. Okay. I think Firkraag must assemble his traps by way of Mad Libs. Inside (device) is (useful item) as well as (monster)!

The elemental swirled up in front of us to attack, and fortunately our enchanted weapons were able to hurt it. We destroyed it with ease, and gave the helmet to Vaere. It was crafted with dragonscales, and Mordak said it was supposed to provide resistance to elemental attacks. Having complained long and loud in the past about being stuck with a helmet of infravision despite already having infravision, Vaere plunked the new helm onto her head immediately and chucked the old one into the pit.

For the lair of a devious overlord bent on testing my mettle, so far this place was pretty lame and insulting. Speaking of which...

In the next chamber we found a group of "adventurers" who were eager to ask for our help, telling us that their companions were wounded and needed a healer. Before I can even open my mouth to say it myself, Garrette is pointing out what a ridiculous fucking story this is, given the entire squad of werewolves that had just been sitting on the opposite side of an unlocked door from them.

The leader spluttered something about having made a deal, then when he realized that this sounded idiotic even to him, just went "Oh fuck it anyway!" and they all exploded into werewolves themselves. Shocking. We butchered them like hogs.

Man am I ever sick of shapeshifters. Whether they're dopplegangers or werewolves, they all think they're the cleverest thing in the world. Never mind the fact that you can pretty much always spot them by the stupid smug looks on their faces and the dumb shit they always say. Yeah asshole, I got to where I am today by being the sort of moron who hears something like "Hello my fellow hairless ape, allow me to join your pack!" and thinks, hey, this dude sounds pretty legit!

Creeping along, we overheard another werewolf yelling at a few little trolls about how they did a terrible job of cleaning the "master's" golems. One of the trolls piped up with "Please doggie, don't hit us!" which for some reason made Mordak giggle like a little girl. But doggie did hit them, and then we walked out there and hit everyone to death.

We rushed on ahead and, sure enough, there were some golems. An adamantine golem among them, no less. Finally a halfway decent fight. Lex switched to acid arrows and Gar to his better magical ones, while Mordak started casting everything in the book. I didn't have time to pay attention to precisely what good they were or weren't doing though, since me, Kor, and Vaere were going toe-to-toe with it and a couple of stone golems.

The three of us all had weapons powerful enough to hurt them, but it was still pretty slow going knocking chips and chunks off them. Eventually the adamantine one crumbled though, and the other two fell pretty quickly after that. Kor did his whole "I AM THE FIST OF DEATH BLARGRGHRGHR!" routine, but caught a couple of head-sized stone fists with his face and finished the fight with little birdies flying circles around his head. It was nothing Vaere couldn't fix right away though.

Behind the golems was a cache of loot. It was good times, and some nice stuff. Except for the artifact longbow we found, Heartseeker. I mean don't get me wrong, it's an awesome weapon. It's just that for one reason or another nobody wants to actually use it. Me and Kor have never used bows and are at the front of every fight anyway. Lex and Gar are our experiened archers, but neither of them can even draw the string on the damn thing. Whatever, someone will buy it.

By now we had pretty thoroughly explored the place, and I was getting the feeling that things were going to come to a head soon. Sure enough, a couple of kicked-in doors later and we were staring at the hobgoblin chieftan and a bunch of his lackeys. Mordak was all like "Cloudkill time, biznatchios!" and started running forward to cut loose, but then stopped short when this big oaf in silly-looking armor jumped out in front of us with a cry of "Aha, it's ME!"

All the bad guys are just looking at us expectantly.

Meanwhile the dude in the armor is still talking. "Bahaha, you defeated me once, but my new master has raised me back from Hell for revenge, to show you his mind-boggling power! This time you will pay! Muahaha!" and all like that. I look at Kor and he's scratching his head. I look at Vaere and she just shrugs.

So I'm like "Uh, hold on, are we supposed to know you?"

The dude starts getting indignant. "It's me, your mortal enemy, Tazok!" None of us have any idea what the fuck he's talking about.

We go into a huddle for a minute. Vaere pokes her head up. "Were you that guy we killed in the bottom of the Nashkel mine, back in the day?"

"No, that was Mulahey! He worked for me!"

Huddle huddle huddle while we try to remember this guy. Lex looks over. "Wait, were you the wizard in the bottom of the Cloakwood dungeon?"

"Goddamn it no, do I look like a wizard? That was Daveorn! I'm Tazok, TAZOK!"

Finally after like ten minutes of this we figure out that he was the guy to Sarevok's left during the big battle beneath Baldur's Gate, but not the wizard or the Flaming Fist guy. He seemed pretty disappointed that it took us that long to remember him. Then Garrette goes "Oh yeah, now I totally remember you! Vividly!"

Tazok brightens up. "Really?"

"Yeah, my aim was knocked low and you squealed like a girl when I did this." And then he shoots him in the dick. We rushed them. Half the hobgoblins were sitting down playing cards or something by this point, so we were all over them before they were ready and it was an easy fight.

If there's one thing I'm more tired of than shapeshifters, it's people coming back from the dead.

We found Windspear's daughter locked up in a cell afterwards and sprung her. The hobgoblins had already relieved her of all her loot and we weren't about to walk her out, so we just put a boot in her ass and told her to keep making right turns until she found the exit. She might even make it out alive if we didn't miss anything along the way.

Well there's only one way left to go, now. We descend the staircase these guys were apparently guarding, and find ourselves in this big natural cavern. And sitting in the middle of said cavern is a giant motherfucking red dragon.

No, I'm not kidding. No, I don't know how he managed to get down here in the first place. Anyway, it's not immediately attacking us, so I figure maybe it's waiting for us to talk. So I just start sauntering forward. Red dragons are basically huge assholes, as I understand it, and you can't let people... reptiles... whatever... like that think you sweat dealing with them.

So I'm just like "Sup bitch? What the fuck?" Apparently my friends aren't fans of my negotiating style, because they're all standing behind me trying to whisper at me to shut the fuck up and be more polite. Whatever, like we're walking out of here without a fight?

Well Firkraag goes into this big spiel about how he'd heard of us, and knew I was the spawn of Bhaal, and wanted to test us to see what we're made of because he was so incredibly bored. You know, the old "Pitiful humans, this has just been a game for me!" routine. Only now he says he's SO bored that he's not even going to bother killing us. Yes, he'll mercifully spare us so that we can go out and become stronger, and perhaps when we're more interesting he'll challenge us again.

I can feel everyone relax behind me, but bullshit, I'm not doing all this fucking nonsense all over again two months from now when this giant scaly fop decides he's EVER SO BORED again. So I start sniffing the air theatrically until he raises a brow, then I'm like "Oh man, I haven't been anywhere that smelled this much like pussy since the brothel in the back of the Coronet!"

Mordak peed a little, I think. I heard him squeak. Kor was just like "Uh, dude..." but I wasn't listening. Oh but don't be silly, Firkraag says. There's no way we could fight him. If we want a challenge, we can battle his lackey. Yes, that would be amusing, he says. Sure enough he has some kind of... I don't even know what it was except that it was humanoid, and he wanted us to fight it.

By now I'm getting tired of this condescending bullshit, so I whip out Lilarcor. It gets one look at Firkraag and immediately yells "Oh god, a dragon?! I need to be inside you!" Which actually sounded even more disturbing than it seems on paper.

And this fucking dragon is STILL giving me the "SERIOUSLY YOU'RE NOT SUPPOSED TO FIGHT ME YET!" routine.

But I'm just like "FUCK YOU PUSSY, GIVE ME YOUR LOOT!" and rush right at him, because I am the motherfucking son of the God of Murder and you do not give me this sort of condescending bullshit. Credit where it's due, after no more than a second or two making sure they weren't hallucinating, the others all took up the fight.

Which is a good thing, because I'm sure as shit not up to killing a dragon all by myself. At least not yet. We all got kicked around a good lot, and sort of set on fire, and it was casting spells all over the place too. But I could dispel it's magic, and for all that dragons get mythologized, they're still just made of meat you know? Fighting in an enclosed little cave gave us a huge advantage too. It couldn't fly, or even maneuver all that well in there.

I sank Lilarcor into Firkraag's chest up to the hilt. The little moan the sword let out as it went in was, frankly, the most disgusting thing I'd heard that day. I'm going to have to have a talk with it. Firkraag let out this wall-shaking bellow, and then fell dead. Right on top of me. Enchanted full plate is difficult to crush though, so it was cool once they dug me out from under him.

Lex was dancing around in the obligatory giant pile of gold by then. I looked at Kor and asked if anyone else wanted to call me a pussy for buying that guy's wife some medicine. He gave me the "Dude I was just playing!" look so I was cool.

Then Mordak comes running up like "Fucking never mind that, look at this!" holding this huge sword. Apparently this was Carsomyr, the incredibly powerful ancient holy sword... that can only be wielded by a paladin. Fucking hell.

Well someone will buy it. Lilarcor just sniffed "Good, what the hell do we need that for anyway?" Heh.

I kinda want to go slap a reward out of Windspear for rescuing his stupid daughter, assuming she survived, but the ex-Lord is basically just a filthy old hermit anymore so I doubt he has much. We're tired and beat up and it feels like we're still smoking, so fuck it, we're going right back to Castle Nythrax for some rest, and then the city to sell all this loot.

(Gar and Lex ding 13, Mordak and Vaere ding 11. Just writing from some week-plus old notes. A solid six or seven weeks of BG1 & 2 being my main/only gaming have really burned me out. I'll come back to it, but it really is going to be a while this time.)

Take your time man, that was a really awesome update. Firkaag is indeed an asshole of tremendous proportions and Lilacor is even more awesome than in the game!

The view count, it's...

(http://www.doodstormer.zoomshare.com/files/over9000ry4.jpg)

I win the forum.  :awesome_for_real:

The huddle was pretty fucking hilarious. I've done an internal version of that in a few RPGs myself. "Now... who was this formerly insignificant asshole again?"

I thought you'd lost your touch, but then we got to the nut shot.  While always a hilarious comedy device, that one was just awesomely executed.  Kudos again.

Magic helmet..

(http://i26.tinypic.com/5mgunc.jpg)

 ;D

The universe can only deal with one weapon as evil as Lilarcor.

 :ye_gods:

Promise us you'll kill Mordak if he gets any of those maternal crafting urges.

Attempting to top your current weapon would plane shattering.     :cthulu:

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>


Update when you feel like it.  We'll wait.

Welp, this post doesn't make sense without the book stuff. Thanks for splitting it off though.

I dunno as I'd call the inside flaps bonus content. Anyway, I actually played some BG2 tonight. Update forthcoming tomorrow, in all likelihood. Nythrax demands respect for his authoritah, the cool kids meet some people almost as cool as themselves (and then kill them), and some benevolent servants of nature get butchered.

Book Talk Split off here: http://forums.f13.net/index.php?topic=17635.0

Quoting WUA for new page:

We got back to Castle Nythrax without serious incident. The majordomo wanted to talk about something, but we were all beyond beat so I brushed him off and we piled into our beds. Half a day later we were rested up and ready to listen to whatever new bullshit was presenting itself.

Seems there's this wild-haired priest of Tempus named Bolumir, who's turned up looking for a job. Word has gotten around that we're lacking any manner of clergy, and apparently this dude had been wandering for a long time after being run out of his old church over some undisclosed drama. I was just like "You weren't fiddling with the kiddies were you?" but the dude just laughed and told us how he clubbed the local mayor over the head with a beer mug after he was caught banging said mayor's wife. Seemed like a pretty cool guy.

Now Tempus wouldn't really be my first choice of a deity for my people to worship, but as a crazy-assed (and more-or-less morally neutral) war god, he's not that bad of a choice either. I doubt a real proper evil deity would fly around here anyway. So overall, I was inclined to give the dude a shot.

But no, Vaere is about ready to completely flip shit. Tempus nothing, she figures our peons should follow her own god, Talos. I'm just like yeah, what, are you gonna sit here in the castle and preach while the rest of us are out fighting? Then she tells me how the temple of Talos in Athkatla would certainly send someone out if we asked.

Bullshit, I tell her. Talos is the god of storms and REBELLION. I'm not leaving one of his clerics here unsupervised in my castle for weeks at a time, so they can get up to who-knows-what while we're gone. Naturally that started her going "What if it was me? What, you don't trust me? Bla bla bla!" and having a complete fucking conniption in general. Then Mordak makes some smartass comment about medicine again and Kor snorts.

Look, I'm patient with my friends, you know? But I've taken just about enough shit from people lately. "SHUT. THE FUCK. UP." I bellow, as I whip out my sword to swark the table in half. Everyone freezes. Not even Lilarcor moaning and bitching about being used like a common axe broke the tableau.

"You!" I point my sword at the new cleric. "You're hired, go find the chapel!"

"You!" I point at Vaere next. "Won't say shit about it! Nobody here worships Talos but you!"

"And you!" I wheel around to point at Kor and Mordak. "I will buy any sort of medicine and anything else I want for anyone I want. I will paint this place mother fucking pastel pink and donate all the money to orphans if I decide that's just what I fucking feel like doing, and you will either suck that shit up and like it or just plain leave. Quietly."

Then one last turn to take in the entire room. "All of you will respect my god damned authority, or you'll get the hell off my land before sunset." Nobody moved. Garrette looked bored. Lex looked amused. Kor gave me the "Damn bro!" look but nobody said anything. Mordak looked like a kicked puppy and Vaere was trying not to cry. The new cleric had already made himself scarce and the majordomo was pointedly studying some parchments.

I kinda felt bad for blowing my stack at Vaere. Really she's the most dependable of the lot, it's just that she happened to be the straw that broke the camel's back. But I was stoic. She should have known better than to give me shit like that in front of the help.

Anyway, I told them all to pack up their shit, because we were heading out to Athkatla to sell Firkraag's loot. Once that's done, I might take us back to Windspear Hills to try and find the tomb that Samia broad told us about. After that, it'll probably be time to break into Spellhold and catch Irenicus in his cell for a little one-on-one quality time. I haven't forgotten about my Two Hundred Thousand Mother Fucking Gold, not by a long shot.

---

Well for once we got in and out of Athkatla without anything stupid happening. We unloaded the fancy bow, and the paladin sword, and all that other shit at the Coronet, our very favorite tavern/pawnbroker. (Mostly because Alexia can steal back anything we decide we want.) We even stopped for a couple drinks without any random assassins or retarded patrons trying to attack us. I think we've built up enough of a rep that people know better.

Everyone was still kinda quiet too, and I was just taking in the overall air of sanity for once. Then Kor kills his beer in one long swill, looks somberly around the table, and suddenly starts belch-talking. "Ny-- thrax-- yelled-- at-- me-- I'm-- so-- sad-- and-- my-- name-- is-- raaaalph!" Garrette just did the one-raised-eyebrow thing, but Mordak started laughing uproariously. Lex squealed, grabbed Vaere, and they ran off to a table of their own.

The next morning we started the long-ass trudge back out to Windspear Hills. Only I think we took a wrong turn at the last minute, because while we were in the right general area, we were staring at this big rough stone pedestal thing built into a pool of water. Garrette tells us he thinks this is where those dryads, the ones Irenicus kept as sex slaves, wanted us to take their acorns. He has a better memory for that sort of shit than me.

Mind you the acorns are sitting in a drawer in my bedroom at Castle Nythrax, so I'm debating whether we should turn all the way back to get them and try to run some sort of scam. But then it's all made moot when the... the... pixie queen or what the fuck ever comes roaring up to us screaming "You killed them! It's bad enough he fucked them but you killed them! Rargh!" So much for that idea.

She starts casting spells, a couple of sirines poof out of nowhere to start shooting arrows, some giant bears run out of the woods to join in, and suddenly it's a giant 'cool kids versus nature' all-out brawl. Except nature never wins these little scuffles, does it? How many druids and dryads and whatever else have we sliced up since we left Candlekeep?

This one doesn't go any differently. Lilarcor goes "Woo! Toss a coin in that fountain!" as the pixie queen's head goes flying off, and I can hear a bear screaming as it's filled with poison bolts and spells going off behind me. Kor hit this one sirine so hard it split from one shoulder to the opposite hip.

We pilfered some gems and the pixie queen's magic dagger made from an iron golem, but on the whole they didn't have much loot. Whatever. Stomping assholes like this is it's own reward. Now I can toss those acorns in the fire when we get home.

We sorted out our location and got ourselves to Firkraag's fortress without having to fight anything worse than a few orcs, and delved back inside. There were still some hobgoblins scattered around with enough spirit left to fight, but by and large the defenses were just as broken as we left them.

We got up to where Samia wanted us to explore the tomb, but we didn't see any sign of her. Not that we cared. There were only two ways to go, and one was the way we had went last time, so figuring out where the tomb was didn't require much thought.

There were a lot of false doors with boobytraps on them, but Gar's gotten so good at this sort of shit that he can spot them from a mile away. The halls themselves were devoid of monsters, but man did we have to kill a lot of genies.

See, getting into the actual burial chamber requires you to have the old king's funeral mask. Except the mask was broken up into like six pieces and scattered about the tomb. Why they did that instead of, you know, burying him in it is beyond me.

Anyway yeah, each of these pieces is protected by a guardian. Dungeoneering 101 stuff. You're not going to find the six widgets that form the macguffin just lying around. These guardians consisted of five genies and a beholder. Which sounds tough, but since the pieces were scattered we were only fighting them one at a time. People who whoop a red dragon's ass in it's own lair do not sweat a beholder or a genie. We chopped them down easily enough.

So with all six pieces in hand Mordak manages to cobble the complete mask back together. Then he sneaks up behind Garrette, who's keeping watch, like he's going to drop it over his head. Gar is just like "Bad idea." without even turning around. So Mordak shrugs and drops it on his own head, and starts marching toward the center chamber like he owns the place.

Then starts hopping around like a god damned idiot, because apparently he's being attacked by something invisible that the mask allows him to see. Mind you, the rest of us can't see shit. Whatever invisibility this thing has can't even be dispelled.

So me and Kor just sort of piled forward and tackled the air in front of him, and beat the shit out of something invisible until it quit moving. All the while Mordak is dancing around in that idiotic mask yelling directions. "No, left! You're punching it in the ass! Look out for it's foot!"

With that out of the way, we got ourselves into the burial chamber, opened up the crypt itself, and found... a magical sword.

A magical sword that helps you kill dragons.

Gee, that might have come in handy a couple days ago. I think we did something in the wrong order here. Oh well, fuck it. I had Kor pack it away in case we come across another dragon someday. We also found an enchanted dragonscale shield that we gave to Vaere, since she's the only one who uses a shield.

Better than nothing, but the best was yet to come.

We turn to leave, and there's Samia. And her five best friends. With their weapons drawn. She's just like "Academics my ass, I just wanted you suckers to take the beating for us! Now hand over the shit!"

You have to understand, after fucking so many people over it's always sorta cute when someone else tries to do it to us. Oh it's a lot less amusing when they actually succeed (Irenicus! Two Hundred Thousand Mother Fucking Gold! RAR!) but it's fun watching people try.

I saluted her for being a real doublecrossing bitch, a woman after my own heart. Then we rushed them. By now I don't even need to call out any orders, everyone knows what's expected. Gar and Lex keep the spellcasters too full of arrows to get any spells off, Mordak casts things like Confusion and Emotion to fuck with their cohesiveness, followed by direct damage spells, and me, Kor, and Vaere go for the leader.

They put up an okay fight, but nothing amazing, and we murdered the shit out of them. Sadly their equipment was all worse than our own, but we threw it on the pile of shit to be sold. Everyone was feeling pretty chipper about it.

It's time for another Castle-to-Athkatla run to catch up on the news and sell loot, I think. Then it's time to go after Irenicus. I wouldn't have dawdled this long, but it was some pretty fucking productive dawdling. We've made like sixty grand, replaced all our stolen gear with better shit, and oh yeah, claimed our own castle.

Pure Awesome :drill:

Thanky. ^_^

More soon. I look forward to having some actual plot to parse instead of a collage of sidequests.

Great stuff. This so much deserves to become an audiobook read by Vin Diesel with the voice of Riddick. :drill:

Man, the game gets lame from this point.

Before or after the Underdark?

After multiple chapters of hype about how super-hard it is to get to Spellhold, I get spirited to the island by midnight ship and discover... a thriving port city?! I paid 15k gold for passage to a place that's open to the public?! At least I have a reason (fraud) to want to kill Bodhi now.

Oh but getting to the village isn't the same as getting into Spellhold. No, breaking into Spellhold must be the epic part. I plucked aimlessly at the edges of sidequests about rescuing poor downtrodden whores and pickpockets, then had some guy with the key to the front door pretty much run up and impale himself on my sword.

With that entire block of content rendered moot, I killed a few quest characters for laughs and marched up to the front door of Spellhold and started kicking the shit out of stuff. But I gotta tell you, after the whole Firkraag thing I am just not feeling like another two-day long dungeon crawl.

This is WAY more on rails than BG1, with a lot more tedium. I've never played through BG2 before, and I gotta tell you, BG1 was lots better.

The whole Spellhold bit sucks, the Underdark makes it cool again and it turns crap when you escape the Underdark again.

I had forgotten how bloody big BG2 actually was.

Are you going to be continuing on into the Throne of Baal? Will we possibly see Nythrax ascending to take his rightful place in the pantheon of Evil gods? The only problem being that while it would be an appropriately awesome ending ToB does continue the downward spiral of story telling.

Oh I'll keep plugging away.

Good post!

"Meandering plot exposition dialogue!"

1) GENERIC RESPONSE
2) REPHRASING OF #1
3) MARGE WHERE IS THE ANY KEY?

Taking another break from this. Don't know how long. BG2 isn't a very fun game. Thank you to everyone who has been reading and leaving me comments. I appreciate them more than is healthy.

 :-o

I am loath to say this, but harsh words & a smashed table may not be enough to quell the stupidity lurking in your goons' pointy little heads.


Moving right along, I've been putting some more thought into Kor & Mor's eventual fates:

My plan is to suspend them upside down in giant glass vats of alchemically refined lamp oil.    First inject Kor & Mor's stomachs with potions of water breathing via tubes surgically implanted in their abdomens.   Fasten glass goldfish bowls over their heads.   (Piranhas and/or electric eels are optional)     Drive jagged hooks on chains through their ankles.    Haul your mouthy servitors up over the transparent vats by the chains.     Slowly lower them into the oil.     Stop once their feet are six inches above the surface of the oil line.     Ignite the oil.    Once the flames burn away their worthless hides, slowly raise them out of the oil.    That way, you can control how quickly their flesh is crisped off.     BTW, if Mordak looks like he's about to expire, just pump some potions of extra healing into his gut.    Heck, with enough potions we can let them linger for as long as you like.

 :evil:

You don't have to kill them, but you should both make an example of them & tamp out any lingering questions over how  Castle Nythrax is ruled.


Lastly if you need a war wizard, I can perform spell duty as well as supply all the potions, glassware, hoists, chains, & various other sundries needed to keep order.

  ;D


BTW in all seriousness I wish more CRPGs  gave players more nuanced ways to play evil characters than just  snarky dialogue & mindlessly kill stuff.      Your path to domination is pretty cool.     

We look forward to more when the stars are right.     :cthulu:

If Nythrax didn't really like his friends he wouldn't have kept them around for this long. Almost everyone is more trouble than they're worth, they just muddle through and succeed despite themselves by virtue of being the craziest assholes in a world almost entirely made up of crazy assholes.

Anyway, I took another poke and the meandering endless dungeon full of "Don't be stupid, look me up on the internet!" puzzles chased me off again. I have an idea for something else, something a bit more lightweight but possibly still fun.

Heh, I find it bizarre how you can write all this truly awesome story and yet get chased away by puzzles that are actually damned easy to solve.  Most everyone I know who likes one of those likes the other.

Once you get through spellhold (pretty easy really) you're railroaded through the Sahuagin city and then you get the freedom to bounce around and do the Underdark areas in whatever order you want.

I also just realized Nythrax and Co. never visited the Five Flagons in Athkatla's bridge district, and never solved the skinner murders.  Not sure if you didn't play those, or just didn't find them interesting enough to mention, but when you get back to Athkatla try to find time to do them if you haven't, I think they might be quite amusing with your party of crazies.  Oh yeah, and the Twisted Rune and Temple sewers.  Twisted Rune is one of those things you don't get any hints to (partially removed quest line, there's several places where there are hints but they're disjointed and disconnected).  Keep a rogue stone in your inventory and check all doors, Mordak will thank you for it.   :grin:

Just in case there was any doubt, this thread/story/fanfic/whatever rules hard and is totally awesome. Dude.

Screenshots from Fable of people getting punched in the dick are not awesome.

Just saying, is all.

I've been thinking about this since you posted it.

The puzzles are simple enough, but I don't care about them. They're completely arbitrary and divorced from the rest of the game, so I'd rather just spoiler my way through than even bother seriously reading and thinking about them. The entire dungeon is completely arbitrary and divorced from the rest of the game. All of the dungeons are. I blame the game's pen-and-paper roots, because it's like a guy comes out and says "Pardon me while I murder any sense of narrative urgency, because it's time to do an Official Dungeons & Dragons(tm) Brand Dungeon!"

So I wander around, I fight some vampire guy for some reason, but I need a wooden stake to finish him off. I can't kill him any other way ever. But I don't have a stake or any clue as to where I should go to get one. I don't even know why I should particularly care about finishing this random vampire except that this is an Official Dungeons & Dragons(tm) Brand Dungeon so I know I had better do it if I know what's good for me. Otherwise three hours from now I'll probably find out that I didn't get the Widget of Door Opening that you get for killing him (or whatever) and I need to backtrack.

Then I come into another room and there's a statue that wants to ask me riddles. No special reason for it to be there. It just is. I have no reason to even bother with it, except again I know they bothered to put it there so I'm supposed to want to solve it. Then I find some crazy insta-death trap that I have to figure out how to defeat. Then bla bla bla bla bla.

It's all a bunch of dreadfully tedious horsecrap that I have to muddle through in order to be allowed to get back to the real game. Except as time goes by, I realize that this pretty much IS the game, and the stuff I like is just fluff to keep me moving between Official Dungeons & Dragons(tm) Brand Dungeons.

It's something that Bioware and the genre as a whole have long since left behind for the most part, but that doesn't help me as I'm playing it.

Well the point of the dungeon beneath Spellhold is to prove that you are sane and therefore don't belong in Spellhold anymore.  Hence the riddles and whatnot.  Should pick up a lot once you get through the place and into the next major area.

I think the point of the dungeon beneath spellhold is simply to kill people.  If I remember right some of the automated thingies even stated that specifically, one of them saying he doesn't think the point was to cure people at all.

And I see your point about those things feeling mostly separate from the rest of the game.  I would probably like them as-is, and I remember even back then commenting that they should be harder, because I liked them for being puzzles and such.  But thinking about it, why I liked them didn't have anything to do with the rest of the game at all.  Like the huge bunch of kobolds or whatever around the big glowy stone, and so on.  Just kind of a big 'huh?' thing.  Kinda makes me think about why I liked certain parts of those games.

I find it interesting that you don't like BG2 so much.  I thought it was much better in every way than the first game.  I thought BG1 was an awesome game as well, just thought they did even better with BG2.

Baldur's Gate 1 felt very much like you were playing through the story while 2 (while a richer game itself) felt much more like you got shifted from plot exposition to plot exposition via puzzle dungeons. The decision to make the second chapter effectively "Go do side quests for a while, main storyline will wait," was what started that feeling for me. Could be a totally different reason to WUA but that's why I'd agree with him on it.

You are sorely missed.

I think it is definitely fair to say that BG2 is a less fun game to play a fully-created-by-you party in than BG1. A lot of the value for me is tied up in the NPCs and the stuff that goes on with them, and really that is where they took the biggest steps forward from BG1 in terms of gaming "tech".

This is now my favorite write up of a "Let's Play". My previous favorite was a hilarious version of Neverwinter Nights 2 that I found at the Order of the Stick forums: http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=88169

I'll probably get a copy of the book as well. Well done, sir.