DavesGaming

Escaping the Asylum took a while. Whenever it was built, it was meant as a trap for “deviant” mages. At several turns we were presented with riddles, of the logic puzzle sort. Apparently it would then trap or kill those who failed at logic. There was also a fair amount of combat; undead, minotaurs trolls and umber hulks were all present. I’m not sure how this ecosystem functions! Towards the end of the second level Bodhi came for us with a couple other vampires. What happened surprised me, I was furious at seeing her. And my wrath overcame me for a moment. I became something, some sort of beast that was an avatar of my bloodline. I won’t speak its name. I scared the daylights out of the vampires! I wish I’d had my senses about me, I’d have paid money to see that! But I scared my friends too. I want nothing to do with this taint in my blood. My friends and loved ones help me find peace, I pray I don’t loose my control ever again.

After the brief encounter with Bodhi we moved on to a final assessment phase. I just had to prove my sanity to the long dead Asylum Director. The man must have been extremely dedicated to his job to still be at it so many years after his death. Still, he was surprisingly laid back as phantasms go. Even more shocking, I was judged sane. I’ve had cause to wonder at that.

From there we were back in the main building of Spellhold. Irenicus was busy in his lab there. Imoen suggested we round up all the actual nuts and launch an all out assault on him. That we did. Irenicus launched several defenders at us, including copies of ourselves (maybe some special version of Project Image?). And we battled our old friend Yoshimo, he led the last wave of defenders. Irenicus escaped during all of this. He fled through some portal in the basement. No big surprise, we now encountered that flakey sea captain Saemon again. He suggested we could all flee the island together by boat. Our choice would seem to be follow Irenicus through a gate heading into who knows what, or sail away with sea captain we plainly don’t trust. I chose Saemon for us, it seemed better than literally stepping into an unknown void. No one argued.

This did involve the hike back into town.

The first part of our journey involved helping Saemon steal a new boat, his was now at the bottom of the harbor. I’d complain at his scamming us, but I expect no different from his sort. And I have no objections to stealing a pirate lord’s boat, that makes it fun. Fortunately the pirate lord (um, he had a name I honestly don’t recall) caught us! Pretty sure we just caused a fair amount of local political instability, but it has to be better than what they had.
This boat ride proved to be a pretty short one. We were attacked by a group I’d heard of but never seen before called Githyanki. Evil terrorists who prowl the interdimensional parts of the multiverse. We were just getting a handle on them when our whole ship was pulled under the waves by Sahuagin, those ill-tempered fish-men we’ve met before.

Saemon disappeared in all of this, but we now stood before the Sahuagin who were demanding a service from us.

Their High Priestess of Sekolah, a profoundly heartless god of sea monsters, tasked us with finding and killing a renegade prince who had divided their realm. Actually, she privately suggested her king was the real villain of the story, and it might be better to kill him instead. Oof.
We explored the city and found the means into the prince’s stronghold. We conspired with him to deceive the king and facilitate a coup. On our way back to see the king we had an interesting discussion. We thought the best course might be just kill them all. They are vicious and dangerous for all people, everywhere. Whichever side we support, I’m under no illusions we will likely have to fight our way out of here. But Diomedes mentioned the prince’s top advisor was not particularly evil. That’s interesting. And not going genocidal sounds preferable to us.
So we support the prince and destroy the king and his forces.

The prince was true to his word and let us head off after the fight. I think we’d reduced the population of those fit for combat by over 50% at this point, it might just be the prince realized the futility in betraying us. That alone qualifies him as a better ruler than his predecessor. Hopefully he’ll show good judgment in more important things in the future.

From here we traveled to a great hole. That led down into the bowels of the Underdark.

*****

A lot going on here, although I think only the fight against Irenicus is potentially very difficult. We actually forced him to flee pretty quickly, Skie perforated him with her “Arrows of Dispelling” while three mages alternated anti-magic and Flame Arrow. I think he lasted two rounds. So even if my melee unit is thin, my anti-magic is potent.
At this point Diomedes has a solid 50% of party experience. He’s well built as an effective warrior. I’m feeling pretty good about this whole party though. Three mages can really cause a lot of mayhem. My biggest concern, I have a couple of Lich fights coming up and I don’t have Keldorn (he’s my “Kill Mages Instantly” wildcard in most runs). I may be rusty on what all we can do! Diomedes does have the Mace of Disruption. But I know Breach won’t work… Hmmm, I’ll test Psyche’s tactics soon…

The renders were challenging here, mostly fun. My starting descriptor for the Sahuagin city was “photo in a dome of air in an aquatic city built of coral and seashells” and later “blue-green light”. That was most of the environment. For Sahuagin themselves I went a little different route then back in SoD, I said “eel-like fishmen with shark teeth” and “shell armor with long spears”. I tweaked that a little, but that got us most of the way there.
Then I added my team in, painlessly with one exception. The Skie/Aerie portrait was brutal! First, the AI was determined to make Skie an elf too. REALLY determined. Early on, it was eight out of eight Skie was an elf. I wound up saying Human twice and putting BOTH “human ears” and “round ears” in her description. Now I could get about 1 in 4 had her as a human. I considered giving her a helmet! But that’s never been her look. Add to that, the AI struggles with complicated gear like a BOW! Less than 1 in 4 look even remotely plausible. So we’re looking at a low percentage of renders even in the ballpark. I had finally changed her description to including the word “archer” but “wielding a short sword”. Hoping for seeing a quiver and/or a bow over her shoulder but just a sword in her hands. So that’s when we finally got to the result seen here. Aerie looks a little off to me (too old, hair too short, too buxom), but is right in most details. And Skie came out nearly perfect.
I don’t know why this one render was so problematic. The Diomedes and Jaheira one at top was pretty easy, and that has both a human and an elf. And then Psyche and Aerie at the end came painlessly, that even includes Aerie again. But dang, I trashed a lot of results for Skie and Aerie!

Anyway, I showed more results this time. At least one rendering of everyone on the team. And I loved the alien undersea city!