Baldening: The Lost Episodes

[WindupAtheist]

At some point I will probably edit the old thread and remove everything taking place after the end of the book, altering and re-using some of it it in a brand new attempt at a BG2 playthrough/story. If I do so, I probably won't post until it's complete or at least until I have a substantial chunk finished. Zeus only knows when that will be, so don't hold your breath. In the meantime, I thought I'd do the Tales of the Sword Coast stuff just for the hell of it and to liven up this sadly dead-ass corner of f13.
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Ulgoth's Beard, where you go when Nashkel is just too cosmopolitan. Sarevok is dead, the Sword Coast has predictably slid into utter dullness, and there we were on our way to what was commonly known as the most boring part of it. To tell the truth I didn't really mind.

There had been a few weird rumors circulating about the place leading up to our big confrontation with my now-deceased brother, vague rumors that we couldn't spare the effort to pursue at the time. Noises about weird cultists, and the usual "adventurers needed to perform ill-defined task for unspecified reward" crap.

I figured we could check this out and, even if it was nothing, I could at least spend a few days facedown in bed catching up on my sleep. Odds are the rest of the cool kids would have burned down most of the town by the time I woke up, but I've almost gotten used to that sort of thing.

We hit up the inn, and man, what a dump. Fucking place has like two tables, two beds, and NO GOD DAMN BOOZE. Yeah, you read that right, not a single drop of alcohol. You should have seen Korgrim and the "B-b-but where's the fun?!" look on his face, like he just opened his winter solstice presents and found nothing but socks. Lex thought it was cute and pinched his cheeks, right before he turned around and upended the inn's banquet table with one arm.

Really, they have a banquet table but no booze. In a small town inn. Go fucking figure.

Anyway, as we were storming out, this little dwarf comes stumping up to us and introduces himself as Hurgan Stoneblade. Asks if we want to earn ourselves a nice reward. Obviously we do, so I tell him to explain himself while the staff struggles to right the table and shoots us dirty looks.

To make a long story slightly less long, apparently there was a famous dwarf adventurer named Durlag, who had acquired all sorts of fabulous wealth and built himself a massive tower so he could retire there with his clan. Then some dopplegangers moved in and attacked them, or some shit like that, the dude went crazy, and the tower ended up as your stereotypical boobytrapped hellhole full of monsters and loot.

Our ears are already perked up, because we're the cool kids of Candlekeep, we love loot and shit in the mouth of danger. Turns out all the dwarf in front of us wanted, though, was a magical dagger called Soultaker that had supposedly belonged to his grandfather. Told us he'd give us some sort of fancy magical item in exchange for it.

God I hate bullshit like this. Clearly whatever you're going to give us must not be as good as the dagger, or else why make the trade? Schmuck. Lex taps Mordak on the elbow and whispers something to him, glancing toward the inn staff still cleaning up the overturned banquet. Sure enough, he turns around and casts Animate Dead at the food, and Lex relieves this Hurgan of his mystery prize as everyone is distracted by squirming chicken legs and a writhing undead pot roast.

Once we get outside we determine that it's a dwarven warhammer enchanted specifically to slay giants. Whoop-dee-shit. I guess we can always sell it. In any event, I'm about ready to give Vaere the Nythraxian Cloak of Mind Bending and have her go brainfuck the town looking for booze while I pass out in the next bed I see, but alas even this modest goal wasn't to be.

Okay, remember back when we first hit Baldur's Gate, and the Thieves Guild had us rob a nobleman named Oberon, to steal the components to a Halruaan Skyship? The items we needed to get our hands on were guarded by three female mages, whom we quite naturally butchered like hogs. At the time I was under the impression that they were the three daughters of Oberon. I mean I knew they were the daughters of some wizard, and Oberon was a wizard, and I guess I just wasn't paying that much attention. Because they weren't the daughters of Oberon, they were the daughters of Shandalar.

Shandalar, the unfathomably powerful wizard, who was standing right in front of us looking quite unhappy with us. Fuck.

Of course he first had to explain who the hell he was since, like I said, I hadn't even been paying any real attention to whose daughters we were murdering. The fact that we didn't give enough of a damn to remember seemed to piss him off even more. I gave him some shit about how he shouldn't have employed his offspring as guards if he couldn't stand to see them get whacked, which unsurprisingly failed to move him. He started going on about how we were going on a little "vacation" and needed to find a "souveneir" in the form of a cloak, and then started to cast some kinda spell. I'm just like, "Whatever you retard, prepare to become overconfident solo wizard chopped into giblets number 847!" and gave the signal to attack.

At which point, we suddenly weren't there anymore. We were on some tiny ice-encrusted island in the middle of the fucking ocean.

Shit.

[Segoris]

we're the cool kids of Candlekeep, we love loot and shit in the mouth of danger

This just made my day seeing you continue this. I don't think you skipped a beat and kept the same level of awesome the first one had as well. Nicely done sir.

[NowhereMan]

Holy fuck I even remember who everyone is just from their names. That hardly ever happens.

[WindupAtheist]

Hey, thanks. I go out of my way to give each character something to do every once in a while, even if I have to totally pull it out of my ass, so I'm pleased that they're distinct. Just in case though, I'll link the intro to the original frontpage article with the character portraits and descriptions. Here's the next chunk. I did what I could, but I really don't like this quest. It has no real depth and is disconnected from everything.

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Well that was easier to get out of than I had anticipated. Turns out that there's a tunnel on that island leading to the stereotypical aimless unfurnished maze of no discernable purpose except to confound adventurers. Somewhere inside is the magic cloak that Shandalar wants us to find, and it'll teleport us back to where we came from if it's united with this magic wardstone that was in my hands when we landed.

Mordak explained all this when I handed him the stone and asked him what the hell it was and where it came from. Despite being a first-rate lunatic, the guy has come to know his shit.

Anyway, where was I? Yeah, typical winding empty labyrinth that sorta gives you the impression that someone said "Hey fuck it, we need a maze here!" I mean it was an impressive feat of engineering to carve the whole thing out of the ground on some godforsaken frozen island in the middle of nowhere, but it still felt somehow... lazy. Really fucking lazy.

I sent Garrette ahead to scout things out, and pretty soon I could hear the faint but distinct squick-thud that told me he'd found someone unfriendly looking and introduced their back to his sword unseen. I figured he had it under control, so we set about building a driftwood fire and relaxed.

When he got back, he dumped a huge pile of scrolls and Shandalar's cloak on the ground in a heap and sat down to have some Fried Bat de la Vaere without comment. Mordak dived in and started looking for scrolls of spells he didn't know yet. Not all of the scrolls were spells, though, and by looking them over I pieced out the story of what this place was.

Apparently it's all a big mage trap. This maze just sits here in the middle of the ocean and sucks up powerful wizards who are trying to teleport across the sea. Once they're here, most of their magic works fine, but they can't teleport out again. So they just sit here eating seal meat, and shitting in the dirt, and writing their crazy diaries while they go slowly insane.

They also kill each other, from what I read, because each is convinced that they can break free and teleport away if only they can steal enough magic items from the others. So this place was apparently home to years and years of bitter mage rivalry, until Garrette came along and killed them all in like half an hour.

Seriously, from the pile of shit he dropped in our laps, he must have singlehandedly slit the throats of at least half a dozen different powerful wizards before he found our cloak. The dude probably wouldn't last thirty seconds in a stand-up fight against me or Kor, but that's about as relevant to Garrette as how we'd do against him at checkers. Looking at him, I don't think any of them got a spell off.

Well with all that shit out of the way, it was time to leave. Mordak said the magic stone wouldn't send us home unless we were outdoors, so we piled back out onto the beach. Just as I was about to ask him what the fuck we actually do with the stone and the cloak to make it work, we suddenly found ourselves standing back in Ulgoth's Beard right in front of Shandalar.

We were all kinda surprised, but it still took less than two seconds for me to go "Attack!" and we all rushed him. That idiot should have enchanted his magic rock to teleport the cloak home and leave us, because there was no way we were going to take this lying down.

I'll give the guy this, he's pretty powerful and did a hell of a lot better than the average solo mage. Mordak beaned him in the face with some magic missiles, but after that he put up some kinda shield spell and it was hard to even touch him. Spells bounced off it, and only a really perfect blow from a sword would push far enough through to touch him. He unloaded a bunch of spells without doing us serious harm then, beginning to look a bit bloodied in spite of his protection, flipped us the bird and teleported away.

I was disappointed that the dude escaped, but he was the one who fled, and we still had his precious cloak. So fuck it, I'm calling this another victory for the cool kids.

Incidentally, Mordak pored over the cloak for a couple of hours, but as far as he could tell it did absolutely nothing magical at all. We couldn't even sell it for anything. So we set it on fire and pissed on the ashes. What a load of shit.

(I really did solo the place with backstabs from Garrette. I guess having two single-classed thieves isn't really standard powergaming doctrine, but I love it. Gar can solo whole dungeons ninja-style while Lex can steal anything stealable. I wanted to kill Shandalar, but doing so requires either a very magic-heavy party and/or breaking his script, and is way cheezier than killing... say... Drizzt.)

[Cyrrex]

I'll admit to never having read any of your other stuff, but that was pretty hilarious.

[NowhereMan]

Read the original thread, it is more than worth it. Then buy the book

[WindupAtheist]

Probably going to be a double today.

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I've come to the conclusion that Ulgoth's Beard is some sort of interdimensional nexus for stupid shit. Yeah a lot of weirdness went down in Baldur's Gate, but that's a thriving metropolis. This place has like six buildings. Anyway, I'm getting ahead of myself.

So I finally got to catch up on my sleep a little bit, and to my everlasting surprise nobody had comitted any murders while I was crashed. Once we were ready to roll out, we were approached by a guy who introduced himself as Mendas. Weird dude. Spoke with this accent that we absolutely could not place.

Seriously, he's all like "Hello, my name-a Mendas, am hiring swords for what make glorious adventure! Wawa-wee-wah!" I was just going to stab him on general principle, but then he mentioned he was paying two thousand gold. We're rich as fuck these days, but two grand is still two grand, so I let him talk.

Okay, so Baldur's Gate is named after the famous explorer and adventurer Balduran. He's the guy whose famous helmet I'm wearing, and he was lost at sea like 300 years ago. Apparently a merchant ship that was blown off course was able to spot what is believed the be the wreckage of Balduran's ship strewn across the shore of an uncharted island, just a few weeks ago. They didn't have time to land and investigate, though.

Mendas is apparently some sort of historian, and needs us to go secure the wreckage and any relics to be found within, before the greedy merchant guilds get their hands all over it. I nodded and assured him of our great respect for matters of history, while inwardly giggling at being paid to have first crack at what could be a legendary adventurer's final stash of loot.

There's always a catch though. In this case, the fact that the sea charts required to find this island were secured in the Baldur's Gate Counting House. Still, for two grand and potential dibs on Balduran's loot... After assuring Mendas that none of us wanted to wrestle (weird bastard) we set out for the big city one more time.

We slipped back into Baldur's Gate that night without incident, and soon found ourselves in front of the Counting House. Now Alexia could have easily snuck into the building and pilfered the charts. Garrette could probably stab whoever was guarding them and make off with them unseen as well. But look, maybe it's the whole "son of the god of murder" thing talking, but I just didn't feel like playing it that way.

The building only had one door, no one would be slipping out the back. So we charged in, and bodies started hitting the floor before anyone could even get out a "Hey what are you doing in here?" There were guards as well as a fair number of armed sailors hanging around, but they were nothing to us. We exterminated every living thing in the building so as to leave no witnesses, and pried the charts we needed from the dead hands of a merchant sea captain. Naturally we cleaned out everything else of value in the building as well, but for being a counting house there really wasn't much.

We high-tailed it back to Ulgoth's Beard and Mendas paid us the two grand on the spot. The guy already had a ship and crew waiting for us, and I figured we should get going right away. You know, just in case someone managed to link us to the slaughter.

[WindupAtheist]

Yep, double tonight. In contrast to that boring Shandalar thing, this quest is full of material.

________________________________

Fuck the ocean.

I've never been to sea before. None of us had. Let me tell you, it's total fucking bullshit. Korgrim couldn't stop vomiting, and I wasn't far behind him. This only got worse when a storm started to brew up and Vaere got completely insufferable.

Mind you, she's a cleric of Talos, and Talos is primarily a god of storms. So the ship starts rocking, Kor starts spewing again because the dumb prick won't stop trying to eat whenever he briefly starts to feel a little better, and Vaere won't quit running out onto the deck and then coming back down to tell us how majestic it all is and try to get us to come out there with her. Fucking woman, I'd have gone out there and pushed her over the side if I wasn't too sick.

Then it started to get REALLY bad, and you could hear the sailors screaming at each other even over the storm. Then one of the masts broke off, and I knew we were in deep shit. I don't exactly remember everything that happened after that.

All I know is that when I finally woke up, we were strewn all over the beach along with the wreckage of our ship. All of us were fine, but none of the crew had made it. This prompted Vaere to start right back in about the blessings of Talos, as we collected our gear from the wreck. Oy. Based on how far from land we were, this could only be the island we were headed to in the first place.

Just then a little girl, maybe six or seven years old, walks up and starts talking to us. The first thing I notice is that she's got the same crazy accent as Mendas. The second thing I notice is that she just said we "smell different". We got her to tell us about her village, which was supposed to be nearby, then shooed her away.

We immediately knew some bullshit was up. As soon as she mentioned our smell I knew there was something wrong about her, and probably the rest of her people. We figured they probably weren't human. Look maybe this sounds really paranoid to you, what with it being based on just a few odd words from a small child who talks funny to begin with. In which case fuck you, you've never had a cabal of reptilian dopplegangers wage a campaign of deceit and murder against you. We have. Let me tell you, it teaches one to notice details.

So we get up off the beach, and see a small walled compound surrounded by outlying huts. Under other circumstances we might have just sacked the place to see what sort of monsters these guys were, but with our ship trashed we're stuck here for the time being. May as well play it cool.

Sure enough the people are just weird. Nothing overt, nobody climbing the walls or anything, but a lot of strange glances and head-scratching comments. Yeah I know it sounds like nothing, but take my word for it. We've spent time among a population of shapeshifters masquerading as human beings, and you can just tell when something isn't right.

Korgrim floated a theory that they were all vampires. Vaere pointed out that they were all openly walking around in the sunlight, and Mordak started in on some bizzare theory about reverse vampires. Then Kor's like "Reverse, yeah! I bet they have fangs in their assholes!" and I just had to tell everyone to shut the fuck up.

The natives were weird, and the one thing they kept telling us is that we should go see their leader, someone by the name of Kaishas Gan. Well we get into the compound, up into one of the really large huts, and there she is. She's polite enough, though still weird as hell, and she explains that her people are the descendants of Balduran's crew who survived the shipwreck. They've been here for the last 300 years, their own isolated little colony.

So I'm like yeah, where's the wreck? She tells us it's on the other side of the island, but nobody can get to it because of "beasts". She's a little unclear on what sort of beasts she's talking about, but I figure anything that hasn't eaten this little village is something we can handle. So I tell her we're going to go kill these things, and she's like, that's great. Because apparently they've been building a boat to escape with, but the only place they can launch it from is the side of the island that's full of monsters.

So we come to a little agreement. We'll kill the beasts, have our way with Balduran's wreck, and in exchange for getting rid of the monsters we can join them on their boat when they leave the island. I don't relish a long sea voyage on a ship full of reverse vampires, or whatever the hell these people really are, but we'll cross that bridge when we get to it. I dunno, maybe we can hijack the boat or something.

We leave the hut to be on our way, and the villagers start in with the expected "Hey since you're going out there anyway..." stuff. First up was a hysterical woman telling us that the monsters had kidnapped her baby. Kaishas had apparently told her that they had probably already eaten the little squirt and so there wouldn't be any attempted rescue. Sounded pretty logical. But again, since we're going out there anyway... I just smiled and nodded and shooed her along.

Next was this smoking hot little chick named Delainy. Right away I can tell that, whatever she is, she's digging me. Who can blame her? Apparently the big storm that wrecked our ship also blew away the 300 year old cloak they'd had strung up over the village as sort of a flag or banner. I guess it holds some sort of symbolic importance to these people... or whatever they are.

So I start turning on the charm, taking her little hand and telling her we'll be delighted to help her. Immediately I can feel Vaere giving me the drow bitch death glare from behind. Usually I'm content to ignore her weird little complex where getting together with me is unthinkable, but I'm not allowed to pay attention to anyone else without her getting stabby. Nor did I really want to score with this weird-talking reverse vampire (or whatever) bitch. But after her antics on the boat I wasn't above pulling Vaere's strings for my own amusement.

After that, we set off out of the village and into the woods. On the way out Mordak said something to the effect of "Do her in the butt and tell us if she has fangs!" and Korgrim high-fived him while everyone started laughing. Everyone except Vaere. Haw.

[ezrast]

Badass.

[Ragnoros]

All hail the return of the Baldening! :insert-appropriate-smiley:

[Azazel]

 

[WindupAtheist]

So we're schlepping through the woods, and the island isn't really that big so we sort of know generally where we're going. We're barely out of the village when some guy dressed as a hunter runs up to us going "Help, help, people up ahead are being eaten by monsters!"

I guess if we saved them we could get a reward, but since I doubt these monsters eat gold, why rush? Mordak's just like "I hope they're tasty!" and we tell the guy to fuck off. Then the dude just goes "Very well, my brothers and I shall dine right here!" and suddenly explodes into werewolf form as two or three more werewolves run out from the bushes. Finally, we know what sort of monsters we're dealing with.

Fur and claws are no match for armor and swords though, so we pretty much hacked them to bits without difficulty. They can't be hurt by non-magical weapons, but since we're all decked out in magical gear anyway the only difference was that Gar and Lex had to switch from normal arrows to the good ones they save for special occasions.

Then like five minutes later some woman comes running up to us going "Help, help, the monsters killed my Jondal!" I don't know who Jondal is, but we never got to find out.

Lex is just like "Aha, we're not falling for this shit again, wolfbitch!" and shoots her through the eye socket. The woman hits the ground and... just lays there. No shapeshift, no werewolves running at us from the forest, nothing. Oops. We all turned around and gave her this look, and she was just like "Oh fuck you guys, like any of you have room to talk!"

So we keep on walking, and I'm a little annoyed because we've done some killing but have zero loot to shot for it. We come up to this little shack of a house sitting in a clearing. Like I said, werewolves don't eat gold, so maybe there's something good in there.

We bust in, and find out that the place is still inhabited. Namely by an old-ass wizard named Dradeel, and boy did he have a lot to say. He tells us he was Balduran's guide 500 years ago, and that the ship wrecked here with the crew already infected with lycanthropy. Except I've been told Balduran went missing 300 years ago. Hmm.

He also says he's been holed up in this shack ever since, occasionally blasting werewolves with his magic when they think they can come in here and eat him. Then like two minutes later he's telling us that he left his spellbook in the shipwreck, and that he only keeps the wolves at bay with "a few wards" obtained by praying to Selune. The dude was plainly cracked, if not outright duplicitous, so we chopped his head off and ransacked his house.

We found a little loot, some potions, and the cloak Delainy wanted us to recover for the village. It wasn't magical or anything so I just packed it away. We had to kill a couple more "Herf derf I'm a normal person RAWR GET HIM!" werewolves after we left, but before long we found ourselves in front of the shipwreck. Based on the amount of shit and bones strewn around, the wolves were indeed living in it.

So we got in there and started beating ass. There are no archer werewolves or magic-using werewolves, they're all straight tooth-and-claw fighters, so really it was pretty easy fucking them up. We rummaged around for loot as we went, but it wasn't that great.

The first three or four decks of the ship were all like that. We'd have Garrette sneak ahead, then either shoot an arrow or chuck an exploding potion and run away. They'd all come chasing after him and run headlong into our swords.

Now we're coming up on the last deck, and if I know anything about how this sort of shit works, the werewolf leader will be up there. Garrette sneaks up there as well, and apparently one of them is in human form and looks like a mage. So he shanks her to death in one shot, and the leader is all "RARGH WHO DARES?!" but without magic backing him up, he runs into our swords and dies all the same.

So the ship is ours, and finally we find some good loot. Among it Balduran's logbook, which Mendas wants, and Balduran's magical golden sword. It's not really that great in general terms, but apparently it's enchanted specifically to kill lycanthropes. Handy, that. Kinda wish we'd found that sooner, but I have a feeling it will see use soon nonetheless. We found that dead Dradeel guy's spellbook, but it was written in some sort of insane gibberish Mordak couldn't understand, so we left it.

Oh, and we found the baby that woman back at the village wanted us to rescue. Turns out they didn't eat it after all. It started to cry, so I stuffed it in my bag of holding. I don't really know if that's safe or not, but whatever.

Now back to the village to see what happens. You don't need to be a genius to guess that the villagers are probably all werewolves too.

[Vaiti]

This keeps getting better. More.

[fatboy]

Oh, and we found the baby that woman back at the village wanted us to rescue. Turns out they didn't eat it after all. It started to cry, so I stuffed it in my bag of holding. I don't really know if that's safe or not, but whatever.

That is so wrong......but Jesus is that funny....is it bad I laughed?   

[Sheepherder]

I'm doing BG2 right now.

They really should have just saved you the trouble and programmed half the traps to just reload your last saved game for you.

[WindupAtheist]

Don't you just fucking hate that? Although with two single-class thieves in the party they never gave me too much trouble. I need to get back to this, I just kinda left it hanging. I've sunk soooo much time (relatively speaking) into BG/BG2 over the last year or whatever though, it's hard to stay motivated.

[NiX]

Don't you just fucking hate that? Although with two single-class thieves in the party they never gave me too much trouble. I need to get back to this, I just kinda left it hanging. I've sunk soooo much time (relatively speaking) into BG/BG2 over the last year or whatever though, it's hard to stay motivated.

Do it for the fans.

[Segoris]

Don't you just fucking hate that? Although with two single-class thieves in the party they never gave me too much trouble. I need to get back to this, I just kinda left it hanging. I've sunk soooo much time (relatively speaking) into BG/BG2 over the last year or whatever though, it's hard to stay motivated.

Do it for the fans.

^

[WoopeeTuralyon]

Where's the end?! And no, this is NOT my first post. I just forgot my info because I hadn't logged in in so long... I had to create a new account.

[WindupAtheist]

Only a year late!  
                                         

The thing about being an adventurer is that no one ever wants to deal with you straight. You're lucky if you can secure a promise of reward more specific than "some gold" and nothing is ever as easy as they make it sound. Today, for once, I finally had the pleasure of watching one of these guys get needlessly fucked in the ass by their own bullshit attempt to exploit the stupid mercenaries. Let me explain.

So we got back to the village, and it was painfully obvious that everyone there was werewolves too. As we marched in victoriously, the gate guard was all like "Oh wow, I didn't believe in you at first, but now I know you'll make great additions to the pac... uh... village!" Hoo boy, I could tell this was going to be fun.

We headed off to see Kaishas, report our success, and get to the bottom of this shit. Along the way we bumped into that Delainey chick again, the one who had asked us to find the ratty old cloak the village used as a flag, the one I was macking on to piss off Vaere. As much as I love tweaking my uptight drow companion's sublimated hunger for my bone, we didn't have time for this crap. I flipped the cloak at her without breaking stride and told her over my shoulder that I'd give her 2 gold coins if she could sniff out which of us wiped our ass on it.

We got to Kaishas Gan's hut, or cabin, whatever. I had Korgrim dig out Balduran's gold sword, the one made to kill lycanthropes, and put it in his sheath. We found it too late to use on the last pack, but I had a feeling it was about to come in handy. Anyway, I told her that we had stomped holes in the "beasts" out there like she wanted. She seemed happy and started going on in that weird accent of theirs about how we would be "one" with them and "know peace" and a bunch of other nonsese. The long and the short of it was that after our brawl with the other pack of werewolves, we were all infected with lycanthropy.

Woops. That wasn't part of the plan. Everyone was a little taken aback, except Kor who thought it was awesome. Alexia seemed mildly annoyed at the idea of spending time as an "ugly ass werewolf" until Mordak told her she might grow eight nipples like a dog. Then she and Vaere went utterly apeshit. Garrette, I don't even know what he thought. Nothing even raises the dude's eyebrow.

I was sort of in Korgrim's camp on this one. I didn't really want to spend part of each month as some yiffy bag of fleas, but lycanthropes can't even be touched by any weapon that isn't silver or magical, which meant that 99% of all the town guards in the world wouldn't be able to scratch me. I could get used to that.

Then suddenly Gan's right-hand lackey, this dude named Tailas, starts going on about how we aren't "pure" because we weren't born lycanthropes and got it from a bite. Kaishas starts shooting back about how he's being a jerk, and we saved them, and we'd make great additions to the pack. I'm just like whoa, whoa, whoa, werewolves or not, we're not staying on this fucking island with you rubes.

But they're not even listening. Tailas is going on about how he's talked to everyone in the village and turned them against us and they're totally going to kill us. Kaishas just looks at us and basically goes "Welp, do what you gotta do! I'll be on the boat waiting!" and absconds with the sea charts, which seemed pretty cold. Damn lady, these are your people, you coulda argued a little harder before telling me to go butcher them. I mean we were going to butcher them anyway, but you didn't know that.

So Tailas wolfs out and we splatter him, then we march out of the cabin and just start wading into these fuckers while they sprout fangs and claws and run at us. They aren't nearly as tough as the "bad" werewolves out in the woods were, though, and we're just fucking them up left and right.

We march across town, killing as we go, until we come to a little underground passage in the back of the hut closest to the sea. We duck in and find ourselves in a little cave system. We haven't actually seen any ship since we got here, so I figure it's on the other end of this passage somewhere. It was full of more werewolves, but whatever. I didn't even have Lex and Gar break out the good ammunition since Kor and I could hew them all into chunks easily enough on our own.

Eventually we came to a little enclosed grotto that let out into the sea, and sure enough there was the boat, and Kaishas Gan waiting right there for us. Good times. Except now she's all like "I must kill you, for you know too much! You'll bring other adventurers back here!" Bitch make up your mind, a few minutes ago we were best pals. Whatever, she was a bit tougher than the others, but not much, so we hacked her to bits and took the sea charts from what was left of her. None of us really knew how to sail a boat, but it beat sticking around, so we unmoored the boat and took off.

Oh man, none of us knew what the hell we were doing. Mordak dried out Kaishas Gan's stank carcass and made leather eyepatches and a really hairy pirate hat out of her, and he, Kor, and Lex spent the entire fucking trip running around the deck going "Yar matey, I'll plunder yer booty!" and shit like that. It just took forever since we kept trying to stop at islands that turned out to be flecks of brains and stuff on the map. Eventually though, we somehow managed to pull up at the dock at Ulgoth's Beard.

We're barely ashore when that Mendas guy's lackey comes up and says his boss wants to know if his wife, Kaishas Gan, is with us. Well shit. I'm just like "Well that was the plan, but she nutted up at the last minute and decided to attack us for some random ass reason!" The dude told us how we were dooomed and went off to tell Mendas. Whatever, we decided to visit the guy and see what happened.

We get to his house where he's talking with his lackey, and he's all "Is this true? You keel my wife?!" and Mordak just goes "YAR! SHE BE ME HAT, MATEY!" and things went downhill really fast. I guess he didn't care about Balduran or his loot at all, and just sent us there to kill the enemy werewolves and then... I don't know what, really.

This is what the motherfucker gets for not dealing with us straight. If he had just said "Go to this island, kill some bad werewolves, and bring my werewolves back with you!" we'd have done it, assuming the money was right. Shit, we're not picky about who we work with. But no, instead he had to try to outsmart the dumb adventurers, and now his wife was a pirate hat.

Naturally a fight broke out, and while these two were probably the toughest of all the werewolves we'd killed lately, they ended up chopped into giblets nonetheless. Not only that, but as Mendas went flying into chunks, there was a change in the air, and Vaere exclaimed that we had been cured of lycanthropy. I guess that's how it works, kill the head werewolf and you get cured.

Does that mean any werewolves left on the island just turned back into humans? I don't know, fuck it. Lex high-fived Vaere the way Korgrim usually does me, and Kor looked sad. Mordak said something about "Yar, nary but two teats on these wenches!" and I made him throw that fucking hat away.  Me, I'm ambivalent about the whole thing. Anyone without magic weapons isn't really a threat to me anyway, so fuck being a werewolf and shitting in the woods every full moon.

With all that out of the way, I think it's probably time we look into Durlag's Tower and all the fabulous loot it's supposed to contain. Right after we stop at Baldur's Gate and leave this baby werewolf on the front step of the Temple of Helm. Yep, he survived in my bag of holding. Nope, we didn't remember to give him back before the shit hit the fan. Fuck it, let them figure it out.

[WindupAtheist]

This reminded me why I didn't write up TOTSC the first time. It's a lot of puzzle-solving and combat without any substance to hang my embellishments and bullshit on.

________________________________________

Well Durlag's Tower turned out to be as good as advertised. The loot was a little heavy on cash, gems, and mediocre magic items good for nothing but resale, but we did pull a few really nice pieces out.

I'm not going to go into a lot of detail, though. Push this, pull that, disarm this, unlock that secret door. I could go on for hours about the stupid shit we had to do to break into where the really good stuff was kept, but who cares?

Apparently Durlag was this rich-as-shit dwarf who built a big tower for his whole clan to live in, until some dopplegangers showed up and ate everyone, or something like that. Durlag survived, I guess? And went turd-biting mad and spent half his money turning the place into wall-to-wall traps. So many fucking traps. Mordak almost blew his dick off with a boobytrapped chamber pot. Vaere said she'd heal him if he did, but she'd only give him back a two-incher.

Anyway yeah, the other half of Durlag's money was down in his tower, which was covered in traps and inhabited by great bloody loads of monsters and shit, none of whom seemed to mind all the traps. So we fucked around solving all the idiot puzzles required to really get in there.

Gar and Lex seemed to really be in their element though, disarming traps and scooping up heaps of gold and shit. Korgrim mostly looked bored. The monsters were mostly ghasts and shit he could kill with his pinky, a couple wyverns, stuff like that.

I got an awesome new sword from some giant animated chess pieces that fought us on a giant board, and Kor got some sweet enchanted plate to finally replace that silly-looking ankheg armor he's been wearing since like two weeks out of Candlekeep.

Oh and Mordak got a scroll of Cloudkill, and made everyone stop on the spot while he copied it into his spellbook. Then he started singing the Cloudkill Song (which you really don't want to know about) and tried to cast Cloudkill every time we got into a scuffle with anything. We're lucky he didn't kill the whole fucking lot of us.

It didn't really get interesting until the very bottom, when we met a wounded adventurer whose name I forget, and she told us how up ahead there was a DEMON KNIGHT who killed all her friends. Dun dun dun. A fucking demon knight. Which I guess is supposed to be serious shit. She told us about some cockamamie plan to kill it with a magic mirror it kept in it's chamber, but I wasn't paying attention to that shit.

We marched in and oh man did this thing ever start talking shit. Blabbering on about how we were unworthy, and living forever, and how it was going to reanimate us into it's undead slaves forever, and blah blah blah. I'd had Mordak cast Haste on us before we went in and was already wearing boots of speed, so I pretty much zoomed up and chopped it's head off before it knew what the hell was happening. It didn't have any real loot, but it did have the funky dagger that dwarf in Ulgoth's Beard wanted.

Oh shit, I forgot to mention. Vaere went through some ratty old books while we were there, and she was pretty sure that the dagger contained the soul of some kind of hot shit demon lord, one that this demon knight was just the lackey of. I figured fuck that dwarf, I'm keeping this shit until I can come up with a use for it.

Well we headed back to Ulgoth's Beard, looking to ruin the local economy with our loot. No sooner do we show up than some crazy cult motherfuckers are confronting us and demanding my dagger. I told them to tenderly smooch my taint, and their leader somehow teleported the dagger away from me. Fucker, that's cheating.

Anyway then he had his minions attack us while he slipped away. They were all like "Your souls shall be FODDAH!" in these silly accents until we chopped the shit out of them.

The leader got away, but what the hell? There are only like five buildings in this whole pissant town, and only one of them has yet another cult asshole wearing the exact same armor standing guard outside. Fucking geniuses, these.

We whirled our way through the building in a tornado of giblets and screams and found a little underground passage in the back. Vaere stopped us at this point to explain just what she thought was going to happen.

Assuming the cult assholes in the basement had already let the demon out of the dagger, we had to make sure to waste them all before killing the demon itself, otherwise it would just possess one of them and we'd be right back where we started.

Also, this sort of demon can kill you just by looking at you. This seemed like sort of a problem until Vaere pulled half a dozen potions of mirror-eyes out of her little potion sack and told us all to drink one. Apparently this would protect us.

So we hit the basement, and while the demon wasn't out yet, it was like just about to happen. It was about what you would expect, bunch of weird dudes in robes in a circle, etcetera. The crazy wench who was running the show was all like "You are too late, mortals, your doom is at hand!" and all the usual shit.

I was going to say something cool back, but Lex was just like "Whatever bitch, do you have any loot?" and we were off to the races.

Shazam, this giant stinking sort of blood-and-shit colored demon appears, all gangly arms and claws and horns and such. Sure enough it started giving us the stink-eye hardcore, but thanks to the potions nothing happened. It looked sort of surprised.

Kor ran up and started chopping bits off of it while the rest of us killed everyone else in the room, then we all turned on the demon and pounded it into mush.

I dunno, after the whole kerfluffle in Baldur's Gate with Sarevok, this just seemed sort of anti-climactic. This uber ultimate demon lord didn't even come into the world with any sweet treasure.

Oh well, fuck it, we're richer than shit now and the Sword Coast is officially played out. It's time for the cool kids of Candlekeep to look for greener pastures. Really I'm feeling pretty sanguine about things. I've got my friends, I've got my money, and together we're going to go out and kill so many people that I turn into the literal God of Murder. What's not to feel cheerful about? Maybe I'll think up a really classy way to tell Vaere that I know she yearns for my sausage.

All is right with the world.

[Sheepherder]

This reminde me why I didn't write up TOTSC the first time. It's a lot of puzzle-solving and combat without any substance to hang my embellishments and bullshit on.

It's pretty apparent.

All is right with the world.

Then BG2 happens and every fight is a shitty wizard fight where you run your double hasted Inquisitor in, find out that dispel magic doesn't touch the motherfucker, start tossing Breach and any other dispelling shit you can think of, then hit him with the Inquisitor dispel, and find out that you're still not doing damage because at some point something you threw at him triggered a contingency which tossed up a Stoneskin or some shit and you have no goddamn clue what any of the flashing colours around the fucker mean and all the while the bastard is tossing out spells that freeze time and then one-shotting your PC would you like to reload now or quit?

Oh, and fuck vampires and mind flayers.  Especially vampires, because Evil Turn Undead could make running around a ruin with a swarm of vampires goddamn awesome, but it's so fucking buggy that it fears the motherfucking vampires that you've already mind controlled.

[Strazos]

Weird, I didn't have many problems with the fights.

[WindupAtheist]

Then BG2 happens and every fight is a shitty wizard fight where you run your double hasted Inquisitor in, find out that dispel magic doesn't touch the motherfucker, start tossing Breach and any other dispelling shit you can think of, then hit him with the Inquisitor dispel, and find out that you're still not doing damage because at some point something you threw at him triggered a contingency which tossed up a Stoneskin or some shit and you have no goddamn clue what any of the flashing colours around the fucker mean and all the while the bastard is tossing out spells that freeze time and then one-shotting your PC would you like to reload now or quit?

I so totally agree. No sane human could be expected to learn their million different defensive spells and the million different types of dispels needed to pierce each of them. I downloaded the BG2 Tactics mod for no other reason than to snag the Anti-Paladin class kit. It's the evil equivalent of the Inquisitor, but since it still can't use Carsomyr they give it dispel-on-hit as a class ability. It makes that sort of shit a LOT easier. When I was still playing with the Blackguard kit I used in BG1, I was getting reamed.

Anyway I was reasonably pleased with how the werewolf shit came out, but yeah, Durlag's tower I was probably right to skip the first time around. I'm just on my yearly BG kick and figured I'd finish this up since it was 90% done and I still had the save. I can already tell I don't have the motivation to fuck around for the next couple months turning BG2 into a novel for no good reason.

[Sheepherder]

Weird, I didn't have many problems with the fights.

It's like a stabbing pain in the dick.

Seriously, the moment you need a table to succinctly describe dispel mechanics I'm installing the Antipaladin kit.  Which still fails on occasion because RNG dispel is best dispel, or because whatever chucklefuck you're beating on has Spell Immunity: Abjuration and so Dispel just doesn't work, or because he's got a contingency that regenerates something annoying.

[Strazos]

/shrug

I realize it can be complex. I wish I knew what I did to make it easy. My party was:

PC - Cavalier with maxed-out Carsomyr
Minsk
Jahiera
Imoen
Nala
Aerie

So, effectively, 3 fighters, 3 mages, 2 clerics, and a thief all in the same party.

Between 3 mages and my Paladin I remember mostly just burning through stuff. If I ever find the time I'd like to play through again. I had a healthy amount of anti-magic spells such as Breach or whatever.

Also, serious question, but is the boss in ToB hard? I know the final sequence was a bitch with a ton of big fights with no chance to rest and refresh spells, but I mean Melissan herself. Jahiera somehow dropped Harm on her as the first shot, so she never had much of a chance to do anything.

[WindupAtheist]

Thoughtful use of a properly-specced and geared thief (or better yet assassin) can also negate a lot of the mage bullshit. You either backstab the mage into giblets before he knows you're there, or if that's not feasible you use your assassin as a spotter and send in some animated dead or whatever while the party chills out half a block away. The AI has no concept of pacing itself and is usually happy to unload it's best spells on a couple of dumbass skeleton warriors.

If I were playing through without the custom party, my PC would definitely be an assassin. Every other job can be covered by one joinable NPC or another, but there's no real dedicated mage-ganking ninja out there.

I lurrrve BG2 thieves. Most players are content to have one split-class thief around to disarm traps, but I run with two full-class thieves and it's awesome. One gibs mages and the other can walk into the Copper Coronet on day one and steal every fucking thing they have for sale.

[Merusk]

It's been ages since I did ToB, but I seem to remember I just handled a lot of mages by running around until their protections dropped.   When I wasn't dropping stinking clouds, fireballs and whatever else on them, that is.  I ran with magic-heavy groups. Jahira, Minsc, Yoshi, Viconia, Aerie and the PC was a Ranger (carried over from BG1, where rangers & bows were GODS)

[Strazos]

I lurrrve BG2 thieves. Most players are content to have one split-class thief around to disarm traps, but I run with two full-class thieves and it's awesome. One gibs mages and the other can walk into the Copper Coronet on day one and steal every fucking thing they have for sale.

Heh, ok that's pretty neat.

[WindupAtheist]

For real. If you have a thief with upwards of 200 pickpocket skill (which I had by the start of BG2) and know where the fences who buy stolen goods are, then the game's economy ceases to exist and you can have every crazy magic item in the city plus any arbitrary amount of gold you want, straight out of the intro dungeon. Hell I saw triple-digit damage on one of my assassin's backstab crits before BG1 was even over.

[Sheepherder]

In singleplayer BG2 there are no good thieves for mage slaying duties unless you make them yourself.  Yoshimo is all traps, has slow thief skills advancement, and fucks off after Spellhold.  Jan is multiclassed so he levels very slowly.  Lastly, Nalia and Imoen are gimped by being dual-classed to mage with only a few levels in thief.

[WindupAtheist]

If you make your protagonist a mage-stabber and don't care about breaking the economy, then you can spec him Hide, Move Silently, and maybe Find Traps so he's not always getting blown up while creeping around solo. Even an Assassin with only 15 points per level can cover these three adequately. Everything else can be covered by Imoen/whoever with skill-boosting items or by just having a mage waste a few spell slots on Knock and True Sight.

If you really do want to break the economy, just get someone's Pick Pockets over 200, preferably up to 250. Jan could probably do it eventually if he's only focusing on a couple of skills. But really it's not like you won't be swimming in gold eventually anyway, so you may not feel like bothering.

Just remember that the following skills need never go over 100: Open Locks, Detect Illusions, Set Traps.
The following benefit from going higher: Hide in Shadows, Move Silently, Pick Pockets.

Even after this many years I can't find a consensus on whether Find Traps benefits from going over 100 or not, but since there aren't a decade-plus worth of posts about "I stopped at 100 and now I can't find any fucking traps!" it's probably okay to leave it there. Just never take anything over 250 (I suspect 255 but let's play it safe) otherwise it wraps back around to zero when the skill is checked.

[Ashamanchill]

I lurrrve BG2 thieves.

I just finished soloing the game as a Swashbuckler/Fighter class. Use any Item, and the epic set trap spell are just too good.

[Sheepherder]

If you make your protagonist a mage-stabber and don't care about breaking the economy, then you can spec him Hide, Move Silently, and maybe Find Traps so he's not always getting blown up while creeping around solo.

I usually mod out traps completely.  Partially because I noticed that all of my thief options for a non-multiplayer game were shit, but also because I think the level design guys needs to be scourged in the literal sense.

[WindupAtheist]

NPC selection in BG2 is shit. I mean it's cute that they talk to each other and occasionally burp up a quest, but come on. Only three evil party members in all of SOA? I could assemble my full six-man evil party in BG1 before the first chapter was over. No single-class thieves at all? BG1 had four of them.

Man my preference is an evil party with two thieves, what the hell am I supposed to do with that? I'm not playing zookeeper to a mixed-alignment pack of dipshits cleverly scripted to fight amongst themselves and make my life miserable no matter how much they want me to. Custom party for the win.