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Author Topic: Baldur's Gate: The Baldening  (Read 148098 times)
schild
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Reply #35 on: June 12, 2009, 02:25:43 PM

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

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
WindupAtheist
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Reply #36 on: June 12, 2009, 02:32:50 PM

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.
« Last Edit: June 12, 2009, 02:37:12 PM by WindupAtheist »

"You're just a dick who quotes himself in his sig."  --  Schild
"Yeah, it's pretty awesome."  --  Me
Ingmar
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Reply #37 on: June 12, 2009, 02:34:33 PM

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.

The Transcendent One: AH... THE ROGUE CONSTRUCT.
Nordom: Sense of closure: imminent.
WindupAtheist
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Reply #38 on: June 12, 2009, 07:43:53 PM

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.)

"You're just a dick who quotes himself in his sig."  --  Schild
"Yeah, it's pretty awesome."  --  Me
Azazel
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Reply #39 on: June 12, 2009, 09:18:05 PM

 Thumbs up! Rofl Waffle Thumbs up!

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rk47
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Reply #40 on: June 12, 2009, 10:13:46 PM

I liked the brigand speech.

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


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WindupAtheist
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Badicalthon


Reply #41 on: June 13, 2009, 09:48:27 AM

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.)

"You're just a dick who quotes himself in his sig."  --  Schild
"Yeah, it's pretty awesome."  --  Me
NowhereMan
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Reply #42 on: June 13, 2009, 12:10:45 PM

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

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WindupAtheist
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Reply #43 on: June 13, 2009, 12:28:10 PM

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.)

"You're just a dick who quotes himself in his sig."  --  Schild
"Yeah, it's pretty awesome."  --  Me
WindupAtheist
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Badicalthon


Reply #44 on: June 14, 2009, 12:04:36 AM

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.)
« Last Edit: June 14, 2009, 12:08:42 AM by WindupAtheist »

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Reply #45 on: June 14, 2009, 01:32:32 AM

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.
« Last Edit: June 14, 2009, 01:35:02 AM by schild »
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No lie.


Reply #46 on: June 14, 2009, 07:43:04 AM

My hero.
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Reply #47 on: June 14, 2009, 08:56:14 AM

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

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Reply #48 on: June 14, 2009, 10:21:54 AM

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).

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Reply #49 on: June 14, 2009, 10:35:52 AM

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.

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Reply #50 on: June 14, 2009, 11:03:14 AM

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.

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Reply #51 on: June 14, 2009, 11:48:38 AM

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. Ohhhhh, I see.

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Reply #52 on: June 14, 2009, 04:49:53 PM

Arcanum's like that imo/  awesome, for real

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Reply #53 on: June 14, 2009, 07:33:47 PM

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.)

"You're just a dick who quotes himself in his sig."  --  Schild
"Yeah, it's pretty awesome."  --  Me
Hoax
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Reply #54 on: June 14, 2009, 10:40:33 PM

Nice fucking work WUA, would read again.

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« Last Edit: June 14, 2009, 10:42:33 PM by Hoax »

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Reply #55 on: June 15, 2009, 09:00:57 AM

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.

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Reply #56 on: June 15, 2009, 03:14:18 PM

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. )
« Last Edit: June 15, 2009, 03:29:26 PM by Salizar »
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Reply #57 on: June 15, 2009, 03:27:34 PM

I love this thread, great job Rock Out
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Reply #58 on: June 15, 2009, 04:24:29 PM

thread O teh week.  +1 +1
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Reply #59 on: June 15, 2009, 04:29:20 PM

(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.)
« Last Edit: June 15, 2009, 04:53:32 PM by WindupAtheist »

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Reply #60 on: June 15, 2009, 04:55:46 PM

Holy shit you have a lot of free time.  Pretty tight though.
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Reply #61 on: June 15, 2009, 05:08:34 PM

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.

"You're just a dick who quotes himself in his sig."  --  Schild
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Reply #62 on: June 15, 2009, 09:52:42 PM

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.)
« Last Edit: June 15, 2009, 10:09:47 PM by WindupAtheist »

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Reply #63 on: June 15, 2009, 10:17:00 PM

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

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Reply #64 on: June 15, 2009, 10:34:41 PM

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?

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Reply #65 on: June 16, 2009, 12:47:19 PM

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.)

"You're just a dick who quotes himself in his sig."  --  Schild
"Yeah, it's pretty awesome."  --  Me
Brogarn
Terracotta Army
Posts: 1372


Reply #66 on: June 16, 2009, 02:00:49 PM

Fucking awesome. Keep it up!
Dion
Terracotta Army
Posts: 139


Reply #67 on: June 16, 2009, 04:29:07 PM

Awesome, now I want to play this stupid game  awesome, for real
WindupAtheist
Army of One
Posts: 7028

Badicalthon


Reply #68 on: June 16, 2009, 05:20:46 PM

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.

"You're just a dick who quotes himself in his sig."  --  Schild
"Yeah, it's pretty awesome."  --  Me
WindupAtheist
Army of One
Posts: 7028

Badicalthon


Reply #69 on: June 16, 2009, 05:46:28 PM

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.

"You're just a dick who quotes himself in his sig."  --  Schild
"Yeah, it's pretty awesome."  --  Me
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