Penned by WindupAtheist
Began: June 10, 2009
Ended: N/A
Status: Unfinished
The original thread: Baldur's Gate: The Baldening
Entry 1:
So here's the score. The game is Baldur's Gate plus expansion, but it's ported over to the Baldur's Gate II engine. I'm going to play all the way through, and maybe through BG2 as well if I can ever learn to put up with the combat and magic. The thing is, listening to Xzar and Monty say the same 3 bits of bickering over and over just isn't as much fun as being able to tinker with my own complete party, so I'm running with my own gang of six player-created characters.
The rundown.
Nythrax, Human, Lawful Evil Blackguard. Our dynamic anti-hero, he's probably going to be relatively underpowered for much of the game. He doesn't get the Apply Poison ability until like level 4, and probably won't get Animate Dead until the BG1 endgame or early BG2 if I go that far. He can only spec up to two stars in weapon skills, and his low level abilities like Detect Good are nothing terribly useful. Oh, I also can't let my reputation get above 14 or else he'll lose his evil powers and become merely a gimped fighter ala a fallen paladin. It's a small price to pay for being cool. I might have put a point or two in wis/cha that didn't strictly need to go there, because I am a roleplay dork.
Korgrim, Half-Orc, Chaotic Evil Berzerker. Our dynamic anti-hero's right hand man, he has the charisma of a dead fish and will probably be a beast in combat. He's a freakin' berzerker, there was neither powergaming nor roleplay reason not to dump his charisma and bring his strength up to the racial limit of 19. I also specced him for dual wield since I can't imagine a berzerker with a shield and I already specced Nythrax for two-handed swords.
Vaere, Elf (drow), Lawful Evil Priest of Talos. I generally hate the nerdwanking associated with drow, but I liked Viconia's character concept (runaway drow who's STILL EVIL) so much that I shamelessly stole it. I dug up custom portraits for everyone and I probably like hers the most. High wis, enough in the physical stats to hang in melee as long as she lets the guys run in first.
Garrette, Human, Neutral Evil Assassin. I think if you chop the trailing E off, the guy in Thief was named this. My friend was using this for his thief characters even before the first one came out though, and that's where I got the name. Anyway, his points are all in stealth and trap detection, and his job will be to sneak around the dungeon scouting and backstabbing where possible. In open combat he'll sit back and fire away with a light crossbow. I put some points in intelligence even though they probably would have been better spent buffing his str/con further. Not enough to dual him to mage, but dammit I see him as being a cold calculating smart bastard. QUIT LAUGHING AT ME.
Alexia, Human, Neutral Evil Thief. Someone has to open locks and pick pockets, and for that matter carry a short bow to use all the fancy arrows I'll find. I used Safana's portrait, dumped a couple extra points in cha, and picked the real slutty voice for her. A skanky pickpocket type, as opposed to Gar's medieval hitman routine.
Mordak, Human, Chaotic Evil Necromancer. Well obviously I need a mage, and this was a no-brainer. I'll admit I don't really have much of a character concept behind this guy beyond EVIL WIZARD, but what the hell. Sometimes you just need someone who'll tie a girl to the railroad tracks and twirl his mustache.
Note that when I post, it'll probably be from the protagonist's point of view, but in a very not-serious kinda way. I'll probably embellish things and assign all kinds of non-existant motivations to my evil little battledrones, too. Whatever. Or maybe I'll get bored and quit after 2 posts. Who knows?
Entry 2:
(Playing via Tutu, no real bugs so far but I'm gonna save to multiple files at differing intervals just to be safe.)
So my senile foster dad says we're going on a trip. Hooray. The old goat has left me cooped up in this stupid library for the last 18 years, and now suddenly it's time for a vacation. He said I could bring my friends though, so me and the rest of the cool kids have decided we're all going to run away as soon as the geezer isn't looking. With that in mind, we scattered about Candlekeep to steal everything not nailed down, so as to fund our new lives.
I didn't really find anything good, although I did have to beat the brains out of a couple random retards who were apparently there to assassinate me. What the hell is that all about? Anyway, Alexia came out of the inn with some kinda fancy gem worth a thousand gold. I didn't ask her whose salad she had to toss to get it, but Kor did and it was pretty hilarious. Fatguts (or whatever the hell his name is) let us pawn the thing off to him without a peep, and pretty soon we were all kitted out with the best weapons Fatshit's Library Hotel had to offer. Which wasn't saying much, but at least we all had swords and armor. Except for Mordak, who was armed with nothing but a sling, two spells, and that shitty little mustache of his.
Oh, and except for Vaere, whose evil god doesn't want her to spill blood. Even though they're evil. And unless it's blood spilled by crushing someone's skull with a warhammer. That's okay, apparently. I've long since learned not to bother questioning this stuff, lest I get that "I will chop your dick off!" look.
So anyway, we went to find gramps to tell him we were ready to go, when who should run up but Imoen, the little wannabe. "HEY THAR BELLYNAPPERS, I'M PLUM RETARDED! HURF!" I don't know why the hell she talks like that. Anyway, we told her she still wasn't cool enough to hang out with us and ran her off like usual. I'm sure we'll never have to see her again.
So gramps gives me this speech about how, if we're separated, I'm supposed to go look up two idiot friends of his so they can babysit me. Yeah, THAT'S likely. I'm just nodding and smiling though, because I just want to get our asses on the road so we can sneak away. We take off, and we're tromping down the road when we're accosted by this totally awesome guy in spiky black armor and his lackeys. He starts talking some shit to gramps, but we're not listening because we've just seen our chance and lit off into the woods. Based on the crunching and screams heard behind us, it sounds like we made the right choice. Sorry gramps.
Well it's the next day and we're all ready to set out after a nice nap, when who should turn up but Imoen again, and she's just totally bent on hanging out with the cool kids. Like hell. I didn't run away from Candlekeep just to keep listening to her bullshit. Finally she was all like "MUTTON MONGERING PUFFBIBBLE TOOTYKINS!" or something, and Garrette just snapped and started stabbing her in the face until she died of being stabbed in the face, which really didn't take very long. He's usually a pretty level-headed guy, but I think he realized after the past night's action that there was no law out here, and a guy can only take so much cutesy talk. We left her corpse in the middle of the road, and I'm sure we'll never have to see her again.
Once that was behind us, Alexia had the bright idea to go back to where gramps bought it and see if there was any loot left laying around after the fight. We took a stroll up there, and sure enough there was the old goat's carcass. Credit where due, he took out a few of the lackeys too, which was great because apparently Mister Spiky didn't bother to loot anything. We rifled through everyone's pockets and found a few coins and knicknacks. Gramps had some stupid letter in his pocket, but I didn't read it.
Well we knew that the old fart had friends up at the Friendly Arm Inn who were just waiting to take over babysitting us, so we unanimously moved to go in the opposite direction. We're going to trek south to Beregost, and see how much we can steal without getting caught. Or as Kor puts it, see how many guys Alexia will blow to make some cash. I think he likes her.
Entry 3:
On our way down the road we came across a very curious looking wizard in a green robe and a rather dirty little midget. The two of them were very accomodating, offered us potions, and suggested we travel south with them to Nashkel to investigate some kind of disturbance. I was amenable to this suggestion, provided we took the time to stop in Beregost and do some robbing, but then the wizard started shrieking out of the blue for Korgrim to stop touching him. Mind you, Kor is like ten feet away, but this wizard gets right up in his face and keeps screaming "STOP TOUCHING ME!" over and over again while poor Kor stands there confused.
Well Kor has only one response to things that confuse him, and he chops this wizard's head right the fuck off in front of everyone. Now granted the guy was out of line, but we've only been out of Candlekeep for like 12 hours and we're already up to our second murder, so I'm kinda pissed off. Third murder, actually, since the midget started to freak out and reach for his knife. I somehow hit him with my sword so hard that he exploded into chunks of meat. Not sure how that works, really.
Anyway, we took the rest of their potions and such and I gave a little speech about self-control. Vaere stood next to me giving everyone this real smug "Yeah what he said!" look while Kor gave me that kicked-puppy look and Mordak grumbled. I gave him the dead wizard's scrolls and told him to shut up. We're not going to get very far in our new life of crime if these nincompoops don't learn to temper their newfound sense of freedom and refrain from stabbing everyone who annoys them.
It must have paid off, because a few minutes later when this old man in a funny red hat came up and started babbling at us, I was able to tell him to fuck off without anyone going bonkers and hacking his arms off. He told us to go to the Friendly Arm Inn, too, which only hardened our resolve to not go there.
On to Beregost, and plunder.
Entry 4:
Well, Beregost was an interesting town. A little routine burglary earned us some pocket change, and as it was raining we ducked into some dive of a tavern to spend some of it. This angry little dwarf comes stumping up to us, and announces that he's here to assassinate me. (By the way, you should hear Garrette rant about how stupid these guys are to just introduce themselves instead of murdering us in our beds or some such.) Needless to say, the dwarf's "assassination" strategy of rushing headlong into a heavily-armed band of six didn't work out very well and we hacked him to bits.
Deciding that this place was a bit too much of a dump even for our tastes, we scooted across town to someplace called Feldpost's. Nice enough joint, except for the meathead who had some kinda grudge against adventurers and challenged us to a "fair fight without all those weapons" or some such. This turned into me and Kor sinking blades into him from two directions, but other than some buddy of his who was too smart to really do anything, nobody said shit.
I think we're just going to have to get used to stepping over corpses in order to have a drink. The lot of us sat downstairs and got loaded while Alexia scampered off to pilfer upstairs. Somehow she relieved someone of their cloak (and even more surprisingly, Kor didn't make any jokes) which she insisted was magical. We gave it to Mordak to figure out what it does, and get this, it CONTROLS PEOPLE'S MINDS.
You just wear it, and sorta concentrate on someone, and suddenly they'll obey your every command. It doesn't always work, but you can just try it again if it doesn't. This is the best thing we've ever found, so naturally I insisted upon wearing it. Which Mordak didn't like. There was some grumbling, but all I had to do was point out to the girls that the necromancer would probably have both of them under his robe by the end of the night if he could cast the equivalent of Charm Person without having to talk or move. That changed the character of the conversation completely. You could tell Mordak wanted to be mad, but instead he just had this shit-eating grin on his face like "You got me man, I totally would!"
We slept off our buzz, and then set off to do some more stealing. We broke into a house that looked abandoned, planning to poke around for hidden loot, and it turned out to be full of really fucking big spiders. I mean spiders big enough to eat a cow. I don't know what the hell they were doing in there, or what they eat in there, or where the hell the guards were, but we sliced them up and ransacked the joint. Korgrim found some ugly boots that for some reason he just loves and insists on wearing, and Vaere lifted a bottle of wine, saying we'll use it to drink a toast when we make it big. Whatever. We hit a few other houses, pawned some knicknacks at Feldpost's, and found ourselves sitting on a couple thousand coin altogether. Funny how it adds up.
Apparently Beregost has some kinda hotshot blacksmith, so we went over to "Thunder Hammer Smithy" and took a look around. Holy crap. Everyone pretty much drooled over the goodies on display, none of which we could afford. We had Kor buy a new suit of splint mail to replaces his chain while we cased the joint. Later that night we broke in, but apparently they lock all the really good stuff up somewhere we couldn't find. We cleaned them out for a bunch of normal swords and one magical one, but there's no way I'm dumb enough to try to pawn them here in the same town.
By this point we had pretty much gone as far as simple burglary was going to take us, so I was quite pleased when some sniveling dipshit of a bard asked us to perform some "bodyguard" duty on behalf of his boss, this smoking hot actress. I wish Vaere would quit giving me that "Vile male scum!" look whenever I ogle some female. You weren't even raised like a real drow, you grew up in Candlekeep. Gawd.
Anyway, the broad tells us that evil Feldpost is sending thugs to kill her because she didn't perform at his tavern. Which is pretty funny, because as far as I can tell, Feldpost is a harmless fat old drunk. Supposedly we'd get 300 gold to kill the lot of them. The situation became pretty clear when the three middle aged milquetoast "thugs" walked up and innocently told her they had her delivery ready.
She immediately begins shrieking that she won't let them hurt her, in a fashion totally not convincing for an actress, and ordering us to attack. Now look, I'm a guy who basically believes in keeping his word, which is why I don't give it often. But I don't appreciate being treated like a moron, and as far as I'm concerned an agreement negotiated in bad faith doesn't count. If she wanted to hire assassins she should have hired us as assassins, not bodyguards.
We chopped up the whole lot of them. The three guys, the actress, the sniveling bard, the whole lot. The actress had 400 gold and a magical quarterstaff on her, the guys had some potions, and the bard had jack and shit. Then we split out of town before anyone could notice the huge pile of corpses. I think this is probably going to become a pattern.
I think we'll head to Nashkel. We still need to sell all these swords we stole, and it wouldn't hurt to let things in Beregost die down for a while. Plus the wizard and the midget said something about adventurers being needed down there... uh... before we chopped them up.
Entry 5:
They weren't joking when they talked about the roads being dangerous. Between Beregost and Nashkel we had to kill a couple ogrillions, a squad of hobgoblins, a few bandits, and one Flaming Fist mercenary. That last one was the interesting bit. This imbecile comes running up to us screaming "AH SURV THA FLAYMING FEEYUST!" and insisting that we're bandits who need to be arrested. I could have explained that no such thing was the case (although technically...) or even asked him how he planned to arrest all six of us on his lonesome. Instead I mentioned that "Flaming Fist" is possibly the most blatantly homosexual name anyone could ever give to anything, and explained why in graphic detail.
He's about my size. I'm wearing his fancy plate armor now. Vaere took his goofy looking helmet and put it on as a souveneir. It was shortly afterward that we encountered the actual bandits and killed them when they tried to rob us. The long and the short of it is that between that and the hobgoblins and what all, it seems me and my little band of homicidal teenage library escapees can actually fight a bit. Burglary is a nice sideline, but I think it's time we cracked more skulls in the future.
We finally reached Nashkel and immediately went to hit the tavern. Yet another idiot "assassin" barged up and announced herself, only to be skewered from six directions. These guys need to get more creative, or I think Garrette is going to try to kill me himself just to show them how it's supposed to be done. Har. Regardless, this one had a magic helmet that lets me see in the dark like a dwarf. Spiffy.
After a few drinks, we went for a little stroll to see what could be seen. This place is a bit of a stupid backwood compared to even Beregost, but what the hell. Speaking of stupid, some flabby moron of a minor functionary accosted us on our way down main street and offered us 200 gold. Apparently he took me for a bounty hunter named Greywolf, who had performed some service and was owned the money. I did not disabuse him of his misconception, and pocketed the cash.
After that, he told me of a couple bounties still up for collection. One was for a former captain of the guard who apparently went batshit, hacked up his family and some other guards, and ran off into the woods. The other was some sissy artist who stole a couple of valuable emeralds and high-tailed it out of town. The guy made a point of telling me they didn't care what happened to said artist.
Let's review. Artist with presumably no particular fighting skill, valuable gems, and nobody cares what happens to him. Yeah, we knew what our next job was going to be. The professional soldier become homicidal maniac can wait a little.
And while I'm on the topic of potential work: The mayor of this little dump explained to us how the local mines are putting out only defective ore, and how "demons" are killing the miners. He promised a "handsome reward" since the two adventurers he was expecting had never showed up. I didn't mention that I'm pretty sure we'd butchered them for their potions.
Anyway, on our way out of town we experienced an amusing reversal of situations. This time someone got mad and tried to chop US up for being annoying. We found this apparently insane bald-headed man with facial tattoos talking to his pet gerbil, or whatever. When he saw us, he ran up and started babbling about how "his witch" had been kidnapped by gnolls and taken off to the west, and we had to save her, and blah blah blah. I told the lunatic he could cram his gerbil back up his keister and solve his own problems, at which point he shrieked like a moose with a lit torch up it's nose and attacked.
I chopped him in half, and stomped his gerbil into the ground as it scurried away for good measure. Idiot. At least I learned that there's an encampment of gnolls off to the west. Perhaps we'll go and pillage them at some point. Killing and looting is a lot less of a headache when it's against victims whom it's legal to brutalize.
A search to the east, in the vicinity of the mines, turned up the artist with the stolen emeralds. Turns out the fop was madly in love with... some bitch, I don't know, I wasn't paying attention... and "needed" the emeralds to serve as eyes in the statue of her he was sculpting. What a laugh. I was about to tell him to fork over the gems or die, or maybe die and then fork over the gems, when Alexia slipped behind him.
Now you should understand, back in Candlekeep this was a little game we used to play. One of us would go up and ask one of the monks a question about some inane subject of their interest just to get them talking, while Alexia would sneak up behind them and empty their pockets. She'd always give us this little wink to let us know she'd pulled it off. (Vaere would get Imoen to try this, and then scream "THIEF!" when she went for it. Good times.) Well this artist is yammering about how this bounty hunter (the same Greywolf they mistook me for) is out to get him, and how he'd give us what little he owned to protect him while he finished his statue, when I see Alexia give me the exact same little wink. I knew we already had the gems and the rest of this was just a game. I smiled and nodded and told him we'd be happy to help.
Well sure enough Greywolf shows up, and apparently he knows I claimed his bounty and is proper pissed off about it. He goes for his fancy sword, and Vaere casts a Command spell that makes him fall asleep. We bashed his brains out where he lay. Tee hee. Then the artist makes some grand final statement about his great love, or whatever, and falls over dead for no good reason. I immediately looked at Mordak and Garrette, but neither claimed to have done anything. (Nor do they have cause to deny.) Maybe he realized the gems were gone and died of a broken heart. One can only hope.
Turns out Greywolf's sword is some sort of fancy magical artifact. I could tell Korgrim wanted it really bad, and I already had the Nythraxian Cloak of Mind Bending (as I have come to call it) plus the Nightvision Helmet, so I let him keep it. So to recap, gems ours, fancy sword ours, Greywolf dead, silly artist dead. Another flawless victory for the cool kids of Candlekeep. Especially after we got back to town and the fat little shit in charge of bounties was livid about our taking him for 200 gold. Claimed he wouldn't pay us for the bounty on the artist. So we took the emeralds across town and pawned them for 10 times the reward money. Sucker.
Things are looking up, especially since we realized I can use my fancy cloak to make people not mind being robbed. We walk into a house, I put the whammy on whoever is around, and then we ransack the joint. We pilfered the guard barracks and Alexia stole herself a little magical sword that way. Good times indeed.
I think next we'll figure out what the hell is going on in those mines, and if we don't get our "handsome reward" we'll sack that shit little town into ruins, guards or no.
(Garrette and Alexia have dinged level 2, and for the record I haven't actually lost even a single reputation point yet. Haw.)
Entry 6:
So we're getting ready to brave the depths of the Nashkel mines, to fight the demons that haunt it (okay it's probably just a couple of bugbears or something, but still), to really cut our teeth as doers of deeds, and I'm getting myself psyched up. I'm kinda jumping around with my sword, supposedly practicing my form but really imagining I'm killing some worthwhile opponents. Take that you... you... not a ninety pound actress! Eat steel, something other than an unarmed merchant! I mean we've killed a few hobgoblins and bandits here and there, but mostly it's been the six of us blitzing a single overwhelmed combatant at best. Anyway, Vaere says this whole "sword-flapping" display is the douchebaggiest thing she's ever seen. Frankly I think that I look awesome, and that she needs to ride this dick and chill out, but I'm not about to say that last part out loud.
Where was I? Yeah, I'm standing there pretending to chop up people who can fight back a little bit and thinking of filthy things to not say to Vaere when the rest of the crew runs up and starts hopping up and down like idiot children with too much sugar in them. Okay Garrette wasn't really jumping around, but the fact that he was even putting up with the others in this state meant a lot. I can't even get "What the fuck is wrong with you nimrods?" out of my mouth before they're all squealing "CARNIVAL!" Yeah, apparently the circus is in town or something. I briefly contemplated enslaving them all with the Nythraxian Cloak of Mind Bending and just making them come to the mine with me, but whatever. Fine, the carnival it is.
So we get there and it's just a nonstop cavalcade of stupidity, but everyone else is having a good time so I keep quiet. At least until the metaphorical shit hits the anachronistic gnome-constructed fan, WHICH I'M GUESSING IT WILL. Some fruity bard type comes right up to Korgrim and starts spouting some kind of poetry and I'm like, this is it, it's gonna happen, his head is coming off any second. I'm already looking for guards. But to my utter surprise, Kor just starts clapping like it's the greatest thing he's ever heard. He even had a little tear in his eye. Then Alexia called him a pillow biting poof, he made some choice comments in return about her, a halfling, a donkey, and a tub of grease that ran the bard right off, and it was back to form.
We keep tramping along, seeing what there is to see, when we get accosted by a dipshit in some kind of neon luminescent ponce's uniform. Poofy hat, silly tights, and all of it going from green to red to blue even as you look at it. He called himself Lord Binky and went out of his way to tell us how horribly he thought we were dressed. Until I bent his mind with my magic cloak, after which he thought we looked great. I had him tag along with us, intent upon doing something fun to teach him a lesson, but not entirely sure what just yet. As it turned out, I didn't need to. But I'm getting ahead of myself.
There's this mage there, hyping an act called Oopah the Exploding Ogre. Based upon the title alone, I am intrigued. So we ask to see the act. He waves his wand, and sure enough an ogre appears. And sure enough, it fucking explodes. I don't mean there was a poof of fire and smoke and it vanished, I mean it detonated into flying chunks of screaming meat right before our eyes. We're a pretty gore-hardened bunch, but 500 pounds of giblets unexpectedly blown up in your face will turn anyone off. We're all covered in ogre bits and on the verge of throwing up, except for Mordak, who has this huge grin on his face and is just like "AGAIN! AGAIN! AGAIN!" That boy ain't right.
The rest of us took a big step back, except for Binky who I had stand even closer. Maybe if his silly clothes soak up enough blood, I won't be able to see the shifting colors anymore because they're making me almost as sick as the dollops of ogre intestine stuck to my breastplate. Well sure enough, the mage waves his wand again, the ogre appears again, and there's another shower of meat chunks. If people didn't mind eating ogre you could probably feed the world with this trick.
"AGAIN! AGAIN!" from Mordak. I told Binky he should keep his mouth open for this one. So the mage waves his wand and the ogre appears, only this time it's understandably sick of exploding, pissed off, and wants revenge. The carnival mage knew enough to immediately take off running. Mordak grabbed Binky by the collar and pushed him toward the ogre, screaming "HE DID IT!" and then running toward the rest of us. Poor Binky got his head clubbed clean off his shoulders. And when I say "poor Binky" I mean that it was awesome and the best thing I saw that day.
The ogre came after us once the ponce was dead, and we got to kill a halfway credible opponent. I guess. If killing circus performers counts. After that I insisted we take a long break to wash ourselves off before we could begin to smell like a slaughterhouse floor.
I was ready to go back to town at this point, but everyone else insisted that this was the best day ever, so I relented. We picked up from where we left off with the ogre, and the very next tent we poked our heads into turned out to be set up as a gambling parlor. Roulette wheels and everything. Garrette started rubbing his hands together in a way that I knew meant trouble, so I grabbed everyone and told them to get the fuck out. I'm tolerant to an extent, but there was NO WAY that was ending well.
I was in a hurry to distract the lot of them with something, anything else, so we all piled into the very next tent I saw. Of course it couldn't just be full of jugglers or clowns or something, no. There's some crazy wizard dude in there holding some other wizard chick at spellpoint, screaming that we should stay back or he'll finish saying the magic words to kill her. I'm just like "Fuck you buddy, it's always something!" and true to his word, he said something or other and the chick dropped dead. No skin off my ass, I didn't even know her. Then he started to cast something at us, so we rushed him. Vaere maced him in the back of the head so hard his eyes flew out the front. Kor was impressed.
Then Mordak runs up and just starts stripping the guy naked while we all stare open-mouthed. Yeah, seems the guy was wearing some kinda spiffy magical wizard robe. Mordak being Mordak, he saw no reason not to just switch clothes with the corpse right in front of us. Looted the dead girl too, took all their scrolls and assorted wizard shit that nobody else would know what to do with anyway.
After that things calmed down for a little while. We did a little shopping. Also a little stealing. Some snake-oil salesman wanted to sell us some crazy potions. We love potions but hate paying, so I gave him a dose of the hypno-cloak and he wished us well as we cleaned out his goods. We went a few tents down and sold most of them, plus all the other shit we'd "acquired" lately. We're up to ten thousand gold in total, and we haven't really even done anything hard yet. I don't know why everyone says crime doesn't pay, because as far as I can tell it pays great.
Oh, there was one other incident of interest. We met this little dwarf who wanted to sell us a Stone to Flesh scroll for 500 gold, presumably to de-petrify the woman standing nearby. God knows how long she'd been standing there as a statue, but I got the impression that it was a long time and that the circus had been set up around her. I was curious to find out what the woman's story was, but like I said we hate paying. Then Alexia did that little "brush up against a guy inappropriately to unnerve him while picking his pocket" thing and gave us the "I got the loot!" wink, so I knew it was all good.
Mordak is going on about how this woman is beautiful, and how we must haul the statue away to break the spell in private so that he can "question" her, and everyone is just rolling their eyes. Then as he's taking a step forward, Garrette sticks his foot out and he goes toppling right into her. CRASH. Yeah, I don't think she's getting unpetrified as anything other than meat fragments anytime soon. Mordak was pissed, Garrette just told him it was punishment for making everyone look at his naked ass earlier. Mordak just started laughing. For a perverted necromancer he has a surprisingly good sense of humor about things.
The dwarf was looking at us, all pissed off, and I don't think he'd even realized his scroll was missing yet. I decided it was time for us to get scarce again and we beat feet. We're going to the god damned mines to get some real work done now, whether anyone likes it or not.
Oh, we still have the Stone to Flesh scroll. Korgrim used his magic sword to carve a vagina on the side of a rock and gave it to Mordak, said he could use the scroll on it so he could see what one looks like. Yeah, I think that one pissed Mordak off a little.
(Alexia's portrait changed to a more appropriate custom one, Vaere dinged level 2, still haven't lost any rep.)
Entry 7:
Well that was simpler than expected. I dragged everyone directly from the carnival to the mines, kicked the rude old foreman in the ass to have him let us in, and then we got down to work. The miners were all crying about demons and god knows what else, the pissant local soldiers were quaking in their boots nearly as badly, but it turns out that we were looking at a simple kobold infestation. Way to panic, morons. You have like 200 soldiers but some little two-foot tall goblins have managed to paralyze your entire economy. Oh well, leaves room for us to make money.
These kobolds really loved shooting people with bows though, so I used the cloak to mindfuck a couple of guards and the odd miner or two into serving as arrow magnets. That worked really well until we got in deep enough that there were no more miners. But they were still just kobolds and we sliced through them with alacrity.
There was the odd occasional ghoul, and we did come into a chamber with a bunch of those huge-ass spiders in it. We killed them all with ease and then Kor just starts staring at Vaere until she's like "WHAT?" I get what he's doing, so I start doing it too, and pretty soon the five of us are all just staring at her. Until finally she gets it and she's like "Oh fuck you guys, what I'm a drow so I'm supposed to love spiders? Kiss my ass!" Everyone laughed.
After that it was just Garrette disarming shitty kobold traps while we hacked the little bastards up, until we were so far down that we started seeing lava. This is one deep mine. IT'S CALLED MAGMA WHEN IT'S STILL UNDERGROUND, YOU OAF! --M. Oh shit that won't come off. That's what I get for leaving this out while I get up to piss. Fuck you, Mordak. If he does that again I'm going to draw a giant cock and balls on the inside cover of his spellbook while he's sleeping.
Where was I? So eventually we come to this huge rock in the middle of a small underground lake, and the rock has an opening in the side that looks like it's been traveled. So we barge in and there's this cleric standing there. Apparently he's the one in charge of all the kobolds, making them put this vile green shit on all the iron ore to ruin it. Green shit that looks exactly like an antidote potion, I might add, so I made sure to throw all the green poison shit away lest a hilarious mishap ensue at some future point.
Anyway, this cleric thinks we work for his boss, a guy named Tazok. Seems he has reason to believe his boss is pissed off at him, and is afraid we're the hit squad sent to get rid of him. He starts begging for more time, or some shit, so I just tell him I don't know who Tazok is but his ass is grass. Then suddenly he gets all cocky and calls for his guards, and the fight is on. A bunch of koblds and skeletons run up behind us, but Mordak puts the kobolds to sleep while Vaere drops the cleric with a Command spell. We dispatched the skeletons easily and then butchered everyone else where they lay.
We rooted through all his shit and came up with some magic boots, a ring, and a bunch of letters from this Tazok dude bitching this guy out for letting his kobolds stir shit up. Whatever. Apparently the boots are some kind of Talos-related relic that protect you from lightning, while the ring is one that lets clerics cast more spells. Vaere loves Talos and was all like "Mine, bitches!" and put them all on, telling us she deserves them for putting up with our silly racism. Pfft. The boots aren't important and nobody else can use the ring anyway, so nobody cared.
We found a back door exit from the mine that dropped us in the middle of nowhere, but everyone wanted to walk rather than wind our way through the caves again. One long march later and we're handing the letters over to the mayor of Nashkel and taking our 900 gold reward. Which isn't as generous as I might have hoped, but it's enough to keep me from mindfucking all the guards and sacking the city, so whatever.
So yeah, another flawless victory for the cool kids. Victory over actual armed and organized opposition, for once. We all headed over to the local pub to get trashed, when who should greet us outside but another moronic assassin. This one was a mage, but he didn't cast spells so good after Garrette sunk a crossbow bolt into his eye socket. We picked him clean and found another letter. Apparently this Tazok guy not only set out to screw over the mines, more importantly he's also the one trying to have me whacked.
There are lots of good reasons, I must admit, for someone to want me dead. But I was dealing with these idiots even before I set off on my life of crime, so I'm a bit mystified. Well one of the letters we found in the mine made reference to this Tazok having a man in Beregost by the name of Tranzig, so I think we'll track him down and beat some answers out of him. This constant stream of bumbling assassins is getting old as shit.
We'll get on that as soon as this hangover fades. We got so hammered the bartender cut us all off, then we retreated to their best rooms (which were still pretty crap) and slept it off. Korgrim puked all over the carpet and we just let it lay. Fuck it, we're famous adventurers now.
(Nythrax, Korgrim, and Mordak ding 2. Garrette and Alexia ding 3.)
Entry 8: So we got back to Beregost without incident, and the coast was clear. Not only was there no pitchfork-waving mob awaiting us, but a little girl ran up and told us that a member of the Flaming Fist wanted to meet me at the Jovial Juggler tavern. I asked her how she knew who we were and apparently we really are fucking famous now. For clearing out the mine, even, and not for robbing the town and killing half a dozen people. Korgrim high-fived me on the spot. This is how it's supposed to be.
Obviously we were suspicious about the Flaming Fags asking after us, so we went in there all careful like, with Alexia on lookout outside and Garrette scoping the place out before we went inside. Turns out this Officer Vai was there to beg for our help. Apparently the whole bandit thing is so out of control that these guys are totally cut off from getting back to Baldur's Gate. She'll pay us 50 gold for every bandit's scalp we bring her.
I rubbed her face in shit a little bit, metaphorically speaking, and she just took it which was great. I'll probably end up doing the job anyway. I don't like the Flamers any, but I love killing people and getting paid for it. Kor and Mordak want to just start scalping everyone we meet, but I managed to calm them down.
Once we were on the street again, that old dipshit in the red hat that accosted us straight out of Candlekeep turned up again. He introduced himself by name this time. Turns out he's Elminster. Yes THE Motherfucking Elminster. I'm pretty sure Mordak peed a little bit, but I wasn't impressed. The old goat congratulated us on whooping ass in Nashkel, making him as informed as that five year old who told us the Flamers were looking for us. Then he said something about how we were on a morally grey path, straddling the fence or some shit. HAW! If that's what he thinks then he clearly doesn't know what the fuck he's talking about after all.
He kept blabbering about how he used to know Gorion, but I just cut him off and told him we had to go. He made a point of telling us we should go investigate the bandits in the northeast. Dude, you're the dimension-hopping godfucker, why don't you go over there and vaporize all the bandits with a fart and save everyone else the trouble? But of course not.
Enough with the distractions, this Tranzig asshole owed us some answers, and the letter we got his name from said he was staying at Felpost's. We scoped the place out and caught up to him in his room. He was already packing to get the hell out of town, so we told him the jig was up and to spill his guts if he wanted to live. Oh but he's a MAGE, and he's going to teach us a lesson. Yawn. One vicious beating later the guy is telling us how he meets Tazok in Peldvale and Larswood to carry messages for him, but that's all he knows, and can he please go now?
We cut his throat and Mordak took his magic ring that makes you slightly harder to hit in battle. I got these boots that are supposed to make you almost impossible to hit with arrows, and Garrette got a ring that lets him see in the dark, which is pretty handy given the sneaky sorta shit we always have him doing. Or did we get some of that loot from Firebead? You kill enough wizards and it all starts to run together.
Okay, I should expalin. Firebead Elvenhair is one of gramps' old friends from Candlekeep, and unless I miss my guess at least half a pedo. He never did anything blatant that I know of, but he was the sorta guy who always wanted one of us kids to sit on his lap. Yeah. Well anyway, we were doing a little go-round of town to see if there was anything new to burgle, and sure enough there's the guy just standing there in his front room. Awkward.
Ah, but he seemed to think we knew he lived there, and had come to visit him. Whew. Yeah, he starts "consoling" us on the loss of gramps (like we care) and offers to give us "a few coins" if we bring him some book, since "it must be so hard" with him gone. Which was pretty insulting, really. Yeah right asshole, in case you haven't heard I'm a famous adventurer with enough money to buy out your entire miserable life several times over. Anyway, I think he must have been more of a pedo than I thought, because he goes to put his hand on Garrette's shoulder in a fatherly sort of way, and out of nowhere Kor bellows "BAD TOUCH! KOR WILL NEVER WEAR THE CLOWN SUIT AGAIN!" and hacks the old fart's arm right the hell off at the elbow. Garrette almost shit himself, but still had the presence of mind to jam a dagger in the geezer's throat before he could start screaming.
Mordak starts spinning around where he stands, waiting for Elminster to appear out of the ether and smite us, but nothing happened. Just like I figured. So we looted the old guy, and his house, and crammed him in a closet. Kor absolutely refused to explain himself or say much of anything at all, and Alexia was actually nice to him for once.
We stopped by Thunder Hammer, and apparently the guy never figured out who robbed him because he was friendly as ever. We bought some goodies. Nothing super great, a magic sling here, a better sword there. Between the Flaming Fist, Elminster, and the info we murdered out of Tranzig, it's pretty clear that everyone expects us to go to Peldvale and tangle with the bandits. With that in mind, we decided to head back south and plunder the gnolls that crazy asshole with the gerbil mentioned before he died. There's WAY too much going on here. Maybe things will cool off a little bit with time, and then we can track down that Tazok.
(Vaere dings level 3. Repuation falls from 10 to 6. Funny thing, I'm so good at being bad without losing rep that I actually got one of the goodguy chapter-recap dream sequences. Bullshit. I reloaded and went looking for a way to lose rep. It was just dumb luck that I found Firebead in his house. Killing him seemed much better than whacking a random peasant, so I invented a story to go with it.)
Entry 9: Nashkel really is the armpit of the Sword Coast. I swear this place gets to be more of a bumpkin shitheap everytime we pass through. We finally sat out to do some real proper burglary on the place, and let me tell you, it was slim pickings. Most of the place is a bunch of bullshit farmhouses. I could sell the deeds to these places and barely come up with enough cash to bother. There's exactly one rich-looking manor house in the entire town, so we set out to break in.
Lex picked the lock easily enough, and the household wasn't too glad to see the six of us come barging in. At least not until I exposed them to the Nythraxian Cloak of Mind Bending, after which they smiled as we helped ourselves to their valuables. Which, let me tell you, weren't very valuable. These guys might be "rich" by the standards of this hee-haw hellhole, but a few wizard scrolls for Mordak and a couple handfuls of coin aren't anything we're going to get excited about at this point.
We were tired though, so everyone sprawled out and put their feet up on the couches, and had the mindfucked homeowners bring us some snacks. I got bored pretty quick, so I decided to go check out the upstairs by myself. I come around the corner to a bedroom, and there's this girl maybe my age just standing there in the middle of the room with a look on her face like she just got caught stealing from the collection plate. She asks me what the hell I'm doing there, so I improvise.
"I know what you did, and it's time for you to die!" I scream this at her and wave my sword over my head, and the bitch zooms out of the room screaming at the top of her lungs. I was already bent over with laughter as she ran past me. I didn't really know what she was doing to have that guilty look on her face, at least not until her naked boyfriend burst out of the closet in a ridiculous boxing stance.
Oh yeah, this naked guy is gonna teach me a lesson. He's trained with the local dipshit guards for a whole two years, you see. I'll admit that two years ago I was still sneaking copies of Faerun Geographic out of the Candlekeep periodical section so I could fap at the pictures of topless wood elves, but I learned a lot more in my first three days of freedom than this retard was ever going to learn from these cowardly moron backwater guards.
Also, I had plate armor and a giant sword while he was buck naked. I chopped him in half with ease. Go figure. When I got back downstairs everyone was still laughing hysterically, because apparently this girl came running down, saw her parents serving crumpets and tea to another bunch of dirty mercenaries, and (not realizing they were mindfucked) decided they were out to get rid of her for disgracing the family with her slutty ways. She kept shrieking "I'M SORRY!" as she ran out the front door. She apparently split out of town without daring to alert the guards, too, which was nice.
As we were walking out of town, I spied a tavern I had never been in before. I waited patiently for a moment, and to my surprise no one came walking up to tell me they were assassinating me. I was puzzled, so we went inside, and STILL we weren't laid into by any super talkative hired killers. Maybe we're finally thinning their ranks.
I ordered a beer just because it seemed like a novel change to order a beer in a new tavern without having to step over any dead bodies first, and this fat neckbeard who called himself Volo came up and started his routine. "Oh isn't this such a fine rustic tavern! Oh the charm of a small town! Would you like to hear my stories?" This guy was clearly enjoying the role of Jovial Tavern Guy, and way too much so for my tastes. I told him to cram his stories up his hairless blown-out asshole.
The guy has the gall to ask ME to leave. I did, but only after bending his mind with the cloak and telling him to get the bouncer's dick in his mouth no matter what he had to do. He's either gonna get an ass-kicking or a new best friend. Haw.
So we're on our way out of town, when this mage in a red robe comes up to us and tells us he wants to hire us to kill someone. I'm all ears. The "witch" the crazy guy with the gerbil fetish wanted to rescue like weeks ago? This guy wants her dead. I'm like... what does he think those gnolls are doing with her that she'd even still be alive in the first place? But fine, if she's already dead that just means I get a reward for doing nothing. Only problem is, the guy steadfastly REFUSES to even hint as to what this job of his pays.
One might think I should just say yes anyway since I'm already going there, but I don't countenance this sort of bullshit when it comes to dealmaking. What's more, the bitch COULD still be alive, and I don't know where she's being kept. It could be a lot of work getting her out, and I'm not signing on for that just so some chucklefuck can thank me and offer me my mystery prize of two gold pieces and an old boot at the end. I told the red mage to fuck off on principle.
Hmm, what else happened before we got out of sight of town? We met a man named Noober who followed us all across the field saying the most ignorant things over and over, refusing to leave us alone. Garrette thought he reminded him of Imoen without tits, which is even worse than just plain Imoen, so he reached back behind him and shot the guy in the face with his crossbow point-blank, without even turning around. It looked pretty awesome, and you could tell he had just been waiting for a chance to do that to someone.
Off into the forest with us, to find these gnolls.
(Whose Mary Sue is Volo? The guy is invincible. I tried killing him but even crits weren't doing any damage. Bullshit.)
Entry 10:
So we're trekking through the woods and everything is going fine. The sun is shining, the birds are singing, and other than the odd kobold there's nothing to bother us. There's an old abandoned keep in the mountains to the west, and since that's probably where our gnolls are, we're headed that way. Sure enough the relative peace couldn't last.
We hear a bunch of little screams, and see a troop of little blue goblins rushing toward us. No big deal, but at the very same time some moron is trying to stick us up. He's got a friend backing him up from a distance, and he's telling us his friend is "the fastest dart thrower in the west" like that's scary or something. I'm like "Asshole, see the goblins?" but he's just going on about how great his friend is at throwing darts. Man, darts are a bitch weapon. Even Mordak laughs at darts and he can hardly stomach lifting any weapon heavier than a table knife.
So I just gave this dipshit a dose of the Nythraxian Cloak of Mind Bending and told him to go murder his retarded dart-tossing friend while me and my crew diced up the goblins. Once we finished with that simple task, we found the two would-be robbers in the middle of a bloody slugfest. The dart guy didn't seem to know what was wrong with his friend, and never found out as we fell upon them and hacked them asunder. Turns out the dart guy had some magical bracers that made him an ace with ranged weapons. Not that they helped him much. Heh. Gar and Lex did rock-paper-scissors for them and Gar won.
Oh, speaking of goblins, we had a very disturbing run-in shortly thereafter. We're trudging down the road when we see a kobold, an xvart, and a tasloi coming in the other direction like they're any plain old travelers. Weird enough that three different breeds would band together, but after we cleaved them into chunks and pilfered them, we found a little note that said "To Nythrax and friends from Larry, Darryl, and Darryl!" What the hell was that about? How did they know who I was? How did they know we'd be there? As far as we can tell they must have been assassins who were planning to track us down and kill us, and leave that note on our corpses as a calling card. Which doesn't make much sense as they were utterly trivial to kill. I guess if this Tazok is paying enough money, all sorts of idiot amateurs are going to take their shot. Yeah, that explains a lot.
It was several hours before our next run-in with anything, and when it came it was decidedly more pleasant. This half naked dryad comes running up to us out of the woods, and all the men's eyes pretty much jump out of their heads. I mean I guess she wasn't that great, but usually when someone comes running up to us they have a sword in each hand and a dog's head instead of a real head, or some shit like that, so we're easy to impress. I whistled and Vaere kicked me in the ass. I don't know what the hell her problem is.
So this dryad comes running up and the first words out of her mouth, in this little girly voice, are "Please, kind spirits, a wondrous ancient oak is in peril!" I immediately knew this was going to be some bullshit. Turns out a couple of the yokel hillbilly dipshits had decided her tree was full of treasure, and were going to chop it down. I'm not sure but I think this would kill her. I told her she had better hork up some cash if she wanted some muscle, and she was all like "I live in the forest, what the hell would I have gold for retard?" But I told her no pay means no slay and she started getting desperate.
Finally she told us that the birds had told her about a "shiny pile" hidden somewhere nearby. Rumors heard by crazy half-naked forest spirits out of the mouths of birds don't carry much weight with me, but unlike that mealy-mouthed wizard in Nashkel who wanted us to kill the witch for a totally undisclosed reward, I could see that this chick was telling us everything she could. So I told her I'd do it.
Like I said, a couple of real inbred fucks were planning on hacking the tree down because they thought it was full of gold. They invited us to join in for a cut, except this bitch lives in the forest so what the hell would she have gold for? We slaughtered them pretty easy, and the stupider of the two had a magic belt that repels blunt weapons. I let Korgrim have it. Then the dryad told us real bitchy like that the "shiny pile" was in a wolf cave a little bit to the south, then disappeared to wherever the hell she goes when she's not bothering people.
So we marched over to the cave, killed a couple of wolves, and sure enough it looked like the cave was originally a tomb. We ransacked the half-open coffin, and came out with a little gold, a few assorted knicknacks, and an enchanted halberd. Halberds really aren't my thing, but there are some creatures that can't be hurt by normal weapons and I didn't have any magical weapons yet, so I kept it. I probably won't use it unless we meet one of said creatures.
That was about it. We were attacked by a white wolf, and I remembered the shopkeeper in Nashkel saying he'd pay 500 gold for the pelt of one, so we skinned it. But we reached the old keep without further incident. Based on the shit and garbage strewn all over the place, I'm guessing the gnolls are in fact here.
Time to get in there and visit some legally unassailable havoc upon sentient beings. God I love the racism inherent in society.
(Nythrax and Korgrim ding 3. Editing a screeny of Nythrax versus the naked boyfriend into the prior post shortly. No, there has been no sign of Biff the Understudy. I haven't even played yet today. I've just been expanding last night's notes into story form here and there between other things. I'll probably play more tonight.)
Entry 11:
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.)
Entry 12:
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.)
Entry 13:
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.)
Entry 14:
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.)
Entry 15: