DavesGaming

Chuck

The trip from the Boareskyr Bridge to the Coalition Camp took over a week. The strange incident on the Bridge had an impact on the troops with us. I was pleased my own team remained close, Sarah stayed very close and supportive in every way. Khalid and Jaheira stayed with us the whole time. Even Neera was friendly and spent a couple nights near our camp. But many of the soldiers were disturbed to learn of my Bhaal connection.

Even so, I was not made to feel unwanted. This army seems well motivated and optimistic about finishing things off quickly.
At the main camp I was immediately summoned to a meeting of the leaders. I offered what I knew of Caelar and her purpose. This seemed to be news to some of them, and in spite of saying it plainly I think they missed the significance of Caelar wanting my blood. Naturally, they had a plan that involved my team locating and entering the secret caverns under the castle. oof.

So true. In the morning we set out reconnoitering the area.

In another part of the woods we battled a lot of wyverns. Or at least Sarah did! We came around a bend and a couple of adult wyverns charged right at us, presumably to protect their young that were also with them.

She had killed all except one of the little ones by the time we all caught up to her.

Soon we came to a depression, a small stone canyon, with a fortified gate built at the mouth. We found something interesting!
Checking the area we found some Druids entangled by a berserk tree, and a small group of ogres in a heated political debate. Just normal stuff.
We didn’t find any alternate way past the gate, so we’d need to take it by storm.

There were several human guards behind the giant who also attacked. It was quite a big fight for a few minutes.

Surprisingly no one had heard anything. Nor did they pay us much attention! We walked to the rear of the cavern where there was an underground river, a network of caves and paths branched in a few directions. We needed to find our way to the castle. It seemed we’d be exploring a lot of caves.

We finally came to a guarded gate allowing access to the basement of Dragonspear Castle. The guards here were quite relaxed, and bluffing our way passed them was easy. We entered a large cavern, full of Crusaders, soldiers training. Again, no one paid us much attention.

There was a rather frightening looking ogre-powered elevator. This seemed to be the only way on from here, so we rode the contraption.

Finally we were in the cellar of the Castle! We needed to see what we could learn about the Crusade. Fortunately for us, this seemed to be the domain of Hephernaan. Caelar’s top adviser, we had learned in our exploring of the caves he was up to some sort of powerful *evil* magical research.

Whatever it was, it sensed our presence. Our sneaking was over.

That sounds awfully tidy for something that means everyone was fighting. Sarah always takes point and hits everything first. Of course that means she takes hits first too. I was casting every spell I had, but I was terrified out of my mind that I’d loose Sarah today. Never mind, if she fell we’d all fall.

Amazingly, we cleared the castle basement, and got back to the ogre powered elevator. We tugged the rope as they’d earlier directed and we were lowed back down. They asked about the noise up above. I told them I’d been clumsy and knocked some stuff off a shelf. The ogres believed it!

But we needed to move! And we did. We cleared the main cavern and got back to the path along the river when someone sounded the alarm. There was a lot of noise and confusion, suddenly the Crusaders all seemed to notice that none of them knew us. More “general” sort of fighting as we made for the exit.
After what seemed like hours we saw the big warehouse cavern and daylight beyond that.

I know Sarah and Minsc both were downing a lot of Healing Potions the whole time. I normally keep the box for those, and I think we used over 30 during our escape.

We got some distance away before we stopped for a rest.

*****

A couple comments, I think there will be only one more update for the expansion. Then I’ll do a new post to kick off Baldur’s Gate 2.

The first render here of Chuck, was done sort of as a test. I’ve been a little annoyed at how little reaction I can coax out his model sometimes. But I thought this came out well enough! It may partly be a problem of choosing and prioritizing the right descriptors, the AI is sensitive to the order you present things. It remains true that its easier to get expression and reaction from the Sarah model, but maybe Chuck isn’t hopeless?

The scene with the Wyverns was inspired by a sloppy moment on my part. I was retracing a long area I’d previously covered, and just zoomed out to do a large area movement. As I indicated in the caption, Sarah has the boots that get her anywhere fast, so she was well ahead of the team when she saw the Wyverns. The statement is true, she pretty much slew them all single handed.
For fans of the show Chuck this seems fitting! Quick and deadly.

The last render was a little frustrating though. I made sure to include several training pictures when I built my “Sarah” model, of Sarah beat up and battered. We saw cut, bruised and bloody Sarah many times on the show. She can take a hit, but she’s not impervious. And this was exactly the sort of occasion I did that for, Sarah was crunched hard several times during all that fighting and expended A LOT of healing magic on her. But OpenArt just won’t do much of that. Seriously, this is one of the few with any blood showing at all. I think this is one of the things they need to do better with. Some sensitivities are silly by their extreme.