DavesGaming

Baldur’s Gate 2: Shadows of Amn, is the immediate follow up to Baldur’s Gate. I just finished that game and posted it as “Baldur’s Gate Playthrough: Chuck and Sarah“. It ended with Chuck, Sarah and their friends being abducted by a new and menacing villain. If BG1 ends with a powerful and capable team (mid-level and well equipped in gaming terms), BG2 starts with them in cages and all equipment missing. As will be seen, the team is not quite intact either. So BG2 starts with a sort of urgent escape and rebuild.

Chuck is the nominal team leader. He has now learned he has a great and terrible legacy to either fulfil or overcome. As he has risen in power and stature over the last few months, he has gained confidence and purpose in his ability to make a difference in the world. And Chuck is a profoundly good guy, he wants to help everyone and will go to great lengths to do so.
Of course the path to power in all these sorts of games is killing things and gaining loot. So “helping everyone” usually involves fighting things helping our hero to become more capable and dangerous.
Specifically, Chuck has become a powerful spell caster. As a Mage/Cleric of Mystra he can work both Arcane and Divine sorts of magic. That will leave him a little behind where a single class caster of either sort would be, but he has a huge variety of spells of every sort available to him.

I think this matches pretty well with his TV show prototype. There he was a tech nerd and hacker of some repute. Here, he is an up and coming spell caster, making a name for himself.

His partner in this adventure is Sarah, a former city guard who has become a very dangerous swordswoman. Just like “Sarah Walker” from the TV show “Chuck”, this Sarah is a fearless force of nature. She has High Mastery with long swords (there is one more step, which she will soon gain) and uses two of them. On the show she was a master of guns and knives, which doesn’t parallel perfectly here. I chose to make her “tankier” than on the show, its just a different sort of setting and system, so I built her to be able to wade into the thick of the action.
A couple days ago I shared this link to a 1 minute clip of Sarah in action on the show. My fully armored Sarah may not do aerial summersaults in combat but she is fast, agile and can take a hit. (Although, medieval plate armor was lighter and allowed more freedom of movement than is often depicted. The uber heavy stuff that required a hoist to mount a horse was *tournament* armor, that is, sports gear. Fighting knights were typically expected to go from flat on their back, to mounted and riding in under 30 seconds with no help).

Chuck and Sarah have progressed to being the most obvious sort of partners at this point. What took until late Season Three on the show developed a little more quickly here. But this version of Chuck and Sarah are 7 or 8 years younger, with less baggage. And are forced into even closer company (with fewer outside distractions) right from the start. Really our only detour in this universe involved Chuck flirting with the wrong girl for a couple weeks.

Sadly, my attempts at actually rendering them in the same shot have all failed. At least with my photo-realistic model based renders they have. So my apologies, Chuck and Sarah together on this journey will mostly involve rear views or one character being mostly obscured.
I continue to use two different generative AIs for my illustrations. Meta’s OpenArt lets me use models derived from input photos. Which means a recognizable Chuck and Sarah in their adventuring garb. This AI however, isn’t very good at action, fantasy themes, or even additional characters in any scene. I’ve learned to get more out of it over the course of this run. But it is still greatly inferior to…
Microsoft’s Co-Pilot. Which really gives nice, atmospheric and exciting medieval-fantasy renders. Really, its better at *everything* except actually depicting Chuck and Sarah. So apart from that one thing, Co-Pilot is my go to AI for most of what you’ll see.

*****

Chuck

I woke up in the cage. In a dark, mechanical looking sort of magic lab. The “hooded man” I’d previously met revealed himself to be the arch-mage Jon Irenicus. A terrifying sight.

Not the sort of thing you’d ever want to wake up to. Fortunately, I could see across from me.

Then there was an explosion, a lot of noise. This facility was under attack. Irenicus suddenly had business elsewhere.

Minsc and Jaheira were caged up nearby. We were able to get them free. But Minsc reported he’d seen his witch, Dynaheir, murdered by our captor.
In a nearby store room we found some weapons and armor, but not ours. Just cheap basic stuff. It will do. We also found the very broken Soultaker dagger. I might be able to clear my name of murder charges with this?

This lab was huge. We explored a large area and were able to find some more supplies; more weapons, some healing potions, a few other things. The Helmet Sarah had been using. That’s one piece of our gear! That was all worth a lot of money, I’ll bet Irenicus already made a few gold unloading most of it.

We met another captive.

We asked him to join with us for an escape and he agreed.
We had to do some fighting too! A number of Goblins and Duergar Dwarves (those are the nasty ones!) were here. Staff? In one lab room we found Khalid’s remains. We tried to shield Jahiera from our find, but were too late. She tried to keep her composure, but we could see her seething. No doubt, our captor had shown his true colors. We would take him down whatever it took.

We finally saw daylight, and made our way to the surface. We stepped into a war zone.

Imoen was furious and launched a magical attack, I warned her to stand down, we didn’t even know where we were and needed to get away first and foremost. Too late. A group of mages gated in, and proclaimed this was an illegal use of magic. Irenicus proceeded to slay several of the new arrivals. Finally he stood down and agreed to his arrest. They said Imoen had been involved and before we knew, they disappeared with Irenicus and Imoen.

Not enough time had passed when I stood, “Okay, we need equipment, and that means we’ll need money. Longer term, we need to know who has taken Imoen and where to. And we’ll want to find out what Irenicus’ role in this is, and how to get him. It might be helpful to know who those thieves are who were fighting him. We also saw a vampire fighting the thieves in Irenicus’ lab, so we need to know what the factions are.” I saw mostly weepy faces, but a lot of anger too. We had work to do.

There were witnesses all around us. We quickly learned we were indeed in Athkatla. The mages who took Imoen were “Cowled Wizards”, they enforced the city’s “no magic” rules. Awareness came over Jaheira’s face, “Yes, this is Athkatla, I recognize it now. Its only Arcane magic that’s illegal, Divine should be okay. And they usually only enforce the rule in public, its tolerated in private spaces.”

Sarah pointed out the businesses all around us “we should have no problem finding a place where we can sell stuff we picked up in Irenicus’ lab. Maybe we can start buying better equipment than some of this stuff we took from the Goblins.”

As we set out we saw a large circus tent set up near us. There were guards at the entrance and a boy weeping on the ground. Minsc took immediate interest, and we heard something had gone wrong in the circus and the boy’s mom was still trapped inside. I talked to a guard and offered our services to check this out.
We entered the tent, and discovered a larger world within. A Djinn greeted us and informed us we were now in “Kalah’s domain”. Obviously some major illusion magic at play. We stepped through an ornate doorway, and were faced with an ogre, with a shockingly sweet voice. She said she was in chains (which we didn’t see!) and under an illusion. We would need to battle some orcs disguised as peasants to find a key disguised as a sword. Walking across the room we met a spider, who we learned was actually the mother of the boy outside. Okay…
So we fought the orcs and found the sword. When we unchained the ogre…

All the work of Kallah, an Illusionist Gnome. We went through a couple of other rooms until we finally came to a large ogre who claimed to be Kallah, master of this realm.

He refused to release those trapped by his game, so we fought and ended his magic. Surprise, he was indeed a gnome.
Aerie was eager to leave the circus at this point, and agreed to come with us to rescue Imoen. She is a Mage and a Cleric like me.

With the illusions gone, we stepped back outside and discussed it with the guards. Then reunited mother and son. Jaheira pointed out a place call “Adventurer’s Mart” not too far from where we stood, which seemed an excellent place to conduct the business we needed to.
I started by asking about the broken Soultaker Dagger, we learned of an elderly mage who worked nearby in the Slums district who knew a lot about such arcana. Jaheira mentioned she had some friends in that part of the city. So after finishing some business, we didn’t really have a lot of stuff to trade, we set off for the slums.

He said he had friends who could locate my missing friend for me. We learned this help would cost us 20 thousand gold. He gave us some pointers about people who were looking to hire adventurers, and seemed sure we would be doing business.
Yoshimo told me this was undoubtedly the local Thieves’ Guild making contact. And given how much he seemed to know about us I was pretty sure this was who had been fighting Irenicus.

Jaheira now pointed us towards a massive run down heap of an inn called “The Copper Coronet”. The place is an assault on the senses as soon as you enter. We parted ways with Yoshimo, then his place was taken by a young woman who said she need help. Her family home had been over-run by monsters and she wanted adventurers to help clear them out! She offered money, which we need, but its the sort of thing I’d want to help with anyway.

The Copper Coronet was also home to every sort of vice imaginable. But when we learned there were gladiatorial games in “the back” where slaves could be pitted against each other or wild animals, well we all knew we’d be causing some trouble.
Sometimes its satisfying to cause a little revolution. We turned the keys to the inn over to the just freed slaves.

Handak was the leader and spokesman of these freed slaves. He begged our help, they had children held at another location in town. Of course we’ll help!

*****

That’s where I’ll end this start of Baldur’s Gate 2. I expect the team will be fluid for a while before I settle in on a final crew for the climax. Chuck and company already have some work lined up, and a vague plan to raise money to get Gaelan Bayle’s help.
The game usually takes me a couple months from this point. I may reduce the length of these write ups. I just did much of this with my “Psyche and Diomedes” run a little bit ago. It will probably come down to how many renders I want to do! We’ll see.

Update 21

Sarah

Next we searched all the rear areas of the vast bar that was Copper Coronet until we found access to the tunnels over to the other part of the slavers’ facility. We knew to move fast, and thought the tunnel might be a “rear entrance”. Maybe less defended than the front door?

Nalia agreed completely this was an urgent mission. We didn’t want to put off helping her either, but this needed doing now.
Just off the warehouse was a holding cell, two children had had just been thrown in with a couple trolls.

After, Chuck talked to the kids and did some minor healing.

In the morning we did a quick check around town and found Nem, the sorceress who could help us with the broken Soultaker dagger.

From there we set out for Nalia’s home. This was actually kind of comical. We had a few false starts. We were ambushed by bandits in town. Then again just outside of town. We did rescue a poisoned man, who requested we help him back into town. That led to a whole string of little chores and cost us the day.

Next day we set of for Nalia’s again, this time we made it. Nalia’s family home is actually a nice size castle. There was wooden stockade just outside the castle, Nalia pointed out she knew the guards.

Yeah, he took his orders from Nalia. The situation was a little different than I’d expected, but okay. I guess we’re killing more trolls.

We rescued a rather unpleasant Aunt of Nalia’s who was hold up in a room with a couple guards. But Nalia’s father was dead.
This was apparently going to leave a sort of power vacuum. Nalia was the legal heir. But for some reason, as a mage, she could not hold title? I do not understand Amnish law. Then she shocked me, well all of us really. But she suggested Chuck and I (actually, I guess she just said me) could hold the title in her name. As an accomplished warrior I could hold and rule the land.
I wanted to decline. Really, less than a year ago I was promoted to Guard Sergeant. Okay, really, I know not many could stand against me in combat. But that doesn’t make me ready to rule anything. Chuck could, he has brains and a good heart. And Nalia would stay here, in her home, as an advisor. This could work, but is it necessary? Nalia seemed to think it was.

Soon, we were making plans for tomorrow. Back in Athkatla, we’d met a messenger who plead for help for the town of Trademeet. The town had come under attack by Druids. This alarmed Jaheira especially. And we were fairly close to that town, so we would go there next.

I’m afraid I would have laughed! She is a talented caster. She’s an Elven cleric of a Gnomish deity which is a little weird. But Chuck handled her brilliantly. Let’s see, she’s a good healer, good natured and likable. And actually brave and steady in a fight. Someone did a number on her head, because she’s a blessing as a companion.

Update 22

Sarah

We set out for Trademeet the next day and got there by early afternoon.

So the town had two major, and unrelated problems. We met with a druid, in the town’s small jail, who claimed to have been sent by his order to investigate Shadow Druids in the area. We’ve dealt with them before. He knew where their grove was, so we set out.

From there we found an old ruin…

He kept her head to return to sender.

The climax wasn’t much of a climax. We met a shadow druid named Faldorn who had been directing attacks against the Trademeet area. We ended the threat, then returned to Trademeet.
They were pleased! A town in celebration is a wonderful and fun thing to behold. And we were the heroes of the day.

We discovered there had been an incident, a merchant passing through was unhappy with a bandit attack he’d suffered. There were losses, damage. I talked with Chuck and Nalia, wanting to figure out what was normal, fair, expected. And would protect this land and people.
We came up with a plan that involved paying the merchant, then hiring and training our own local guard.
We stuck around a couple days and kicked off training some new troops, our first recruits! This part of the job is well within my comfort zone!

Jaheira, Minsc and I all got involved. I wanted to be sure we covered discipline, conditioning and basic technique.
But this was going to take a lot more time than we had, we needed to get back to Athkatla and take care of some business.
After much discussion, and some reservations on my part, we decided Nalia would stay here to administrate, and Minsc would would help with the training. Even better, he would be a force for leading patrols and dealing with more serious trouble. I talked to the veteran guardsmen about not letting Minsc off on his own or really “leading” anything.

The next day we returned to the City. We went to see Nem and learned about an Arcane ritual of sorts she thought would release Skie’s soul from the broken dagger. We did it, at some physical cost to Chuck. There was more involved I don’t wish to document, but we were assured Skie’s soul was now be free to return to her body.
We also learned more about slaver operations in the City, and Aerie is particularly interested in rooting them out. She spent much of her time prior to meeting us as a slave. And we have heard her sad tale of loosing her wings, she is actually an Avarial, a winged elf. But she was mutilated by her captors and lost her wings.
So hunting slavers is a priority for her. We tracked down a certain “Lord Praxis” who was a leader of slavers in Athkatla.

We have battled vampires a few times in the streets of the City. When we next met with Gaelan Bayle he sent us to meet with Aran Linvail, head of the Shadow Thieves. That’s the thieves guild of Athkatla.
He assured us he could help us get to Imoen, but put us to work first on identifying this new force of evil in town. To be clear, I know Aran’s reputation, he is not a “nice” man. Perhaps it was due to his own desperation? But he played straight with us. He was under attack by the vampires. And we will battle vampires, just point the way.

No surprise, this led to the Graveyard. Athkatla has a large one on the edge of town. We spent a day talking to people, mourners and exploring.

Of course we dug them out! This led to a murderous kidnapping plot and most of another day lost. But we did good and that is obviously important.

We also met a local Paladin. I’ve met such types in passing and its funny. My Dad taught me to never trust them. But going back to my time as a Guardsman I’ve always found them to be dependable and solid citizens.

Soon enough our exploring took us underground.

While taking a break back in the city, we were a little surprised to see a familiar face coming towards us.

It is funny to be so happy to see someone you barely know. But I think we all felt an important corner had been turned. Skie was clearly not entirely well yet, I can only guess her dad considers her AWOL again. We had to excuse ourselves to go kill some vampires, but left her with clear instructions on how to find De-Arnise Castle.

*****

Anyone notice, a milestone of sorts! I have successfully rendered Chuck and Sarah facing forward, together in OpenArt! Gee, what a big day. Maybe someday it will *really* happen…

Update 23

Chuck

After a rest we tracked down Yoshimo, we’d missed having a rogue on the team. Back in the crypts we soon found ourselves in the area over-run by vampires.

We must have slain a dozen or so, and staked everyone we could find a coffin for. We finally encountered the leader of this lovely coven. She introduced herself as “Bhodi”, sister of Irenicus. That’s interesting. No doubt she likes playing games. But she had a pretty delusional idea of what human intelligence is, she tried to shock us with the news the thieves were not completely honest partners. Days later this was still making me chuckle. I had to tell Aran! He was amused too. So Bhodi is a vampire who likes to play games AND is a complete moron. I wonder if Irenicus will see the humor in this?

Anyway, Aran came through for us and had made arrangements to get us to “Spellhold”. A holding facility for the “magically deviant”. I don’t like the sound of this.

We sailed to the island of Brynlaw.

I suggested this might be a good thing, if the town is lawless we can cause trouble without getting in trouble back in Amn. Sarah smiled at that.
It was lawless. And our ship captain turned us over to a vampire ambush as soon as we disembarked. It was an amateurish attack. We had the name of a contact, a man named Sanik knew how to get into Spellhold. No sooner did we meet him than an assassin gated in and attacked. I don’t think he expected to Sanik to have six friends! We learned he had married one of the local madam’s girls, and she had apparently taken offense. Sanik was shaken so we sat him down with a drink and set off to find “Lady Galvena”. This was fairly large brothel, we were forced to slay most of the guards.

Sarah put an end to that quickly. We got Claire back to Sanik, and learned there was a single Cowled Wizard in town, who had access to Spellhold, which the locals called “The Asylum”.

Things seemed to be going well, but when we got to the asylum it seemed we were expected. The director gave us a tour of the facility. It seemed too warm and I was having a hard time paying attention. I saw Imoen! But I was near falling over. Crud, we’d all been poisoned.
By Yoshimo. He had been in league with Irenicus all along. When I awoke I was subjected to some sort of magical procedure. And I had an odd vision where Imoen and I battled Bhaal? Very strange thing. Irenicus boasted he had stolen my soul, just as he had taken my sister Imoen’s soul. He said we both had special souls as Bhaalspawn. Imoen? It wasn’t really so shocking to learn she really was my sister.
But I’m not sure what Irenicus really did to us? I felt a little weak after, but I knew who I was, I loved Imoen and Sarah (um, in different ways!), missed Gorion. Was happy with my friends. I’m not sure how I was supposed to feel?
Anyway, when he was done with us we were all dumped in a large stone chamber, and taunted by Bhodi. She said she was coming for us!

Everyone else seemed completely fine. So we set out cautiously exploring our setting. We soon determined we were in a testing level of the asylum.

Other rooms had similar sorts of things. There was also a surprising number of combat threats (trolls, golems, undead, etc). Eventually Bhodi showed up to finish us off. I felt a wrath come over me. My friends had all backed well away from me, Imoen said I’d turned into the “Slayer”. Some sort of avatar related to my odd bloodline. I guess it gave Bhodi a good scare and she ran off. Dang, I wish I’d seen that.
Finally, we met the spectral administrators of the asylum. (How long had they all been dead? They themselves suggested it was a rare thing for anyone to actually pass all their tests) But I did, we all did. So I (we?) was declared sane and released.
We gathered a few of the other functional inmates, and stormed Irenicus’ lab. He had some interesting magical tricks up his sleeve! But finally he ran off, suggesting he had better things to do with his time. We were free for now. But we would need to find a way to follow Irenicus. We found our faithless ship captain and he offered to take us off the island. He seemed to have some idea where Irenicus was heading, he mentioned Underdark. Swell.

Update 24

Chuck

We returned to the village of Brynnlaw, and met up with Saemon again. He told us his ship had been scuttled in the harbor. I rolled my eyes guessing this was not new information. Of course, Saemon had a plan, for us to help him steal the Pirate Lord’s ship. I looked at my crew, yeah, we’ll pick a fight with a pirate.

So we did. We set sail with the now deceased pirate lord’s ship. About a day out we were attacked by some sort of aquatic creatures.

And then I don’t really know what happened. I think we were all dragged under.

And we were to be tools in a civil war. The clearly bonkers “king” wanted us to slay his rival, a mad prince.
They were all mad, bloodthirsty and evil. We did not find much cause for hope, and finally chose neither side. I think we killed all the warriors, at least all that showed themselves.

The city seemed empty. We went to our only exit, a great hole that led to the Underdark.

It was a long way down, but we all made it fine.

Of course the Underdark is the stuff of nightmares for everyone who grew up on the surface. This seemed to hit Aerie particularly hard, she’s a good companion but a sensitive soul.

Somewhere down here were Irenicus and Bhodi. We talked with Deep Gnomes who were friendly enough. We encountered a number of others who were less friendly and combat was frequent. We gradually concluded they must have gone to a Drow city, Ust Natha. We would need a plan to enter.

The Deep Gnomes had referred us to a Silver Dragon, Adalon. She is probably the single most powerful being in this part of the Underdark. And she needed our help. Her eggs had been taken into the Drow city. She would give us a disguise as Drow to enter the city.

*****

Funny how I’ve come to see Drow portraits as an essential part of illustrating Baldur’s Gate! Some of the characters went much better this time than on my last run.

I’ve certainly learned how to get the dark skin color. There are two key things, the first is not to use any words like “black” that are commonly used on real world ethnicities (Charcoal and Indigo were terms I used here). At least not on characters who are otherwise not of those ethnicities. The second thing is to put the skin color first in the character’s description. I got pretty proficient at this on my last IWD run (“Aias and the Aliens“). Its nice when a learned skill actually carries over!

The particular challenge this time had to do with Chuck and Sarah. No matter how hard I tried, I could not get OpenArt to do different skin colors.
I ended up building special “Drow” models for them. I did some dark skinned renders in Co-Pilot, then built the new models from a mix of their current renders and the new dark skinned renders. Then every description starts with “Charcoal skinned”. This all worked better for Chuck than Sarah, but I got several passable results. Especially if we assume Adalon’s illusion may also change features somewhat.

Update 25

Sarah

Apart from locating Irenicus, our other mission was finding who had stolen Adalon’s eggs. It seems reasonable to expect these two things to be connected.

On first arriving in Ust Natha, we were foreigners and treated accordingly. Obviously, we are strong enough to stand up for ourselves, but it would be best to go with the flow. For a while.

We were directed to a warrior named Soulafan, who would be our guide (babysitter?) for our time in the city. First order of business he said, was to rescue a matron’s daughter who’d been abducted by Illithids. This was outside of the city, actually near where we’d already destroyed an Illithid compound.

Mission accomplished, we rescued an ungrateful brat of a woman named Phaerie.

We met back in an Inn. We were told we had a couple days to explore the City before we would be needed again. Exploring a Drow city is really not a fun thing. We saw a cage match, a single Drow warrior took on five less experienced young men. I couldn’t help myself, and it seemed in character, so mocked the coward who fought children for easy kills.

At least the rooms at the Inn were comfortable.
Chuck and I tried really hard not to laugh together, or be too loud with anything. We’re all worried about what might be “un-Drow-like”!

We were sent to kill a beholder in the City. It was just a base model with none of the fancy options.
Then, of all things, they wanted us to go kill a Deep Gnome patrol. To “put a little fear in them”. Soulafan was sent with us again. I was briefly worried we’d have to kill him to protect the gnomes. Fortunately, he viewed this whole mission as so far beneath him, it was easy to convince him to go home.

Next, Phaerie wanted us to kill Soulafan. We decided to follow the same mission plan we used against the Deep Gnomes. We’re getting quite good at faking our kills.

Now things got interesting. We were tasked with assisting a Demon summoning. We were tasked with locating some special supplies, which we already had with us. The Drow would use Silver Dragon eggs as an offering. So we’ve located one of our main objectives.
Phaerie wanted us to swap the real eggs with fakes she’d had made, in hopes of getting her mother killed by the demon. Then we ran into Soulafan who also had some fake eggs, pretty sure we’d have a use for them. Its nice when a solution falls in your lap.

We switched the real ones with Phaerie’s fakes, then gave Soulafan’s fakes to Phaerie. Keeping the real ones in Chuck’s Bag of Holding.

Eh, the demon was not real pleased with two sets of fake eggs.

He immolated Phaerie and her mother. We ran, time to get out of the city.

Adalon was pleased, the happiest we’d seen her. Our Drow disguises were dispelled and she showed us to the surface.

As we battled our way clear of the Underdark, we encountered an Army of refugee Elves. They were the survivors of a force that had left their home city of Suldanesslar to block the Drow. But the Drow (with Irenicus we learned) had broken past them, and managed to hide their own home city from them!
After a sometimes tense exchange of information, in which the Elves were frustratingly tight lipped, we learned they need an item called the Rynn Lanthorn to find their way home. We all guessed it was with Bhodi, possibly back in her old haunt under Athkatla?

We knew where we had to go.

Update 26

Chuck

We first headed back to Nalia’s Keep. We wanted make sure all was well, and get at least one good night’s sleep before it was back into trouble.

We took care of a little business, mostly all was well around the Castle. So we set out for Athkatla. When we got there, Keldorn decided he needed to check in at home. This led to some awkwardness, but we decided to let Keldorn take some time with family, we would check back with him later.
A few weeks back, when fighting slavers, Aerie had found a small ruby she was attracted to.

We ran across a man, a beggar by the name of Vittorio. He reported a mercenary named Captain Dennis owed him some money that he was unable to reclaim without some help. I thought we should help, Sarah quietly said to me this smelled like trouble. So we set out to meet Captain Dennis.

The upshot of this was, it was the first time I’d seen Imoen laugh *hard* since we rescued her! Dennis was considering splitting Vottorio in two, but we convinced him to wait and let us track the gong down.
This involved a lot of running around! First to a fence Vittorio knew, then to a troll out past Trademeet. From there to an Ogre Mage, who ran his own farm.

Yeah, the Ogre had been using the gong as a farm implement. We washed it out in a stream as best we could, and agreed Captain Dennis would not hear *all* the details of our adventure.

On the way back, we ran across an old Harper associate of Jaheira’s. Apparently he had decided she should die for choosing my side in an earlier Harper dispute.

But I am deeply thankful for Jaheira’s loyalty to me and my friends. It is a shame it cost several Harper’s their lives. This situation will need to be straightened out some point. We can’t have Harper’s continue to attack us!

We also met a Ranger named Valygar. He had been hiding from the Cowled Wizards. Something about his blood being needed to open a large metallic sphere that had landed in the city of Athkatla a few weeks back. It was an artifact built by a member of his family, Lavok, centuries ago. It had reappeared a few times since, and often took family members with it when it left. We talked for a bit, and decided the thing to do was investigate this sphere, and see if it was safe.

Back in the City we asked a little what was known of this large oddity. The answer seemed to be, nothing. We didn’t poke around too long before a doorway opened on its side when Valygar touched it. This thing was obviously much larger inside than out.

Exploring this thing, we met quite a few occupants. Several had to be fought, like Sahuagen and savage halflings. Some were friendly, like a group of knights from someplace we’d never heard of.

And we met Valygar’s ancestor who had built the great sphere. He was possessed by, something. It had taken him to travel the planes in this great contraption, and it fed on the life energy of Valygar’s family. But we battled it and won. Now we had a 400 year old man dying in front of us. He explained the sphere had traveled again when we entered. He could set it to return home again, but he would need a power source. In the form of a demon’s heart. Which should be no problem since we’d traveled to the Abyss.
We got directions on how to use this power source, and went outside to go hunting.

So that was fun. Soon we had the Great Sphere powered up and it took us home.

He’d lived so much of his life terrified of his family curse. But it wasn’t what he thought, Lavok was perhaps foolish with the device he built, but he had never intended harm for the family. I think they both found some healing sitting there in the sun.
And it left me with a little to think about, with family bloodlines and curses…

Finally we said our goodbyes to Valygar, and went to meet Keldorn.

*****

I am using the “Wings” mod for the first time. It boasts a friendship path (or expanded romance) for Aerie. Its been fun, with quite a few extra fights against slavers, and an Avarial con-artist. But significantly, Aerie ends up with a unique familiar! A sort of mini-phoenix.

Obviously this was a lot of cleaning up loose ends, no main plot progression here. I think I’ll continue this for a few days, cleaning up loosed ends before we hunt down Bhodi.

Update 27

Sarah

The Cowled Wizards of all people, asked Chuck to oversee the Planar Sphere now nestled permanently in the Athkatla slums. Perhaps its because we entered successfully, neutralized it as a threat, and killed the Cowled Wizards who attacked us? Or am I the only one who thinks that?
Oh I know Chuck and Imoen agree. Chuck made a point of telling their representative that Imoen would be their contact with us.

I don’t think I really play intimidating well. But he was sweating a lot. And I do mean for them to be a little nervous in dealing with us.
They assigned a group of students for Chuck, Imoen and Aerie to tutor. I think this works wholly in our favor. Chuck is a natural teacher, and is always so winsome. I think we can have a good influence on the next generation of wizards in this city.

After a few days we decided it was time to head for the Windspear Hills, to check in on this monster hunt Lord Firkraag had asked us to perform. Chuck had just mentioned we seemed to be entering the Windspear area, when we were beset by a group of monsters, ogres mostly.
Shockingly, they turned into knights once they were down.

We met a Garren Windspear, former lord of these lands, who seemed to have a good idea what had happened. He was disgraced and dismissed as Lord Windspear several years ago in a similar series of attacks. Lord Firkraag had conveniently put an end to the trouble, and was undoubtedly behind what was happening. Maybe we’d offended him in some way?
None of us had even heard of him before he hired us. Garren offered to ride to Athkatla and explain the situation to the Radiant Heart. We were to hide out in his home for a day. And protect his daughter.
Several hours later we came under attack, we fought a number of intruders in Garren’s home, and his daughter Iltha was abducted. We’ve been set-up and framed before, this is a familiar pattern. We found a note that was an “invitation” to face Firkraag personally.
Garren soon returned, we told him what had happened and we promptly set out to find Iltha and Firkraag.

There was a lot to combat in this area. Werewolves were the most dangerous, so really no drama. And we did find something special and beautiful.

We were able to reunite the dryads with those who’d been held captive in Irenicus’ Dungeon.

And then we found something very different.

It was. We fought a number of orcs, golems, undead. It was an extensive complex. We found Iltha in a jail cell, that we could not open. There was a large opening beyond. This is where we met Firkraag. A red dragon. Who had been injured many years ago by Chuck’s real father, Gorion. After a lengthy explanation, he said we’d bored him and we could go. We could take Iltha, as long as we killed a mage who was holding the key to her cell.
Like a cat gaming with a mouse. We set Iltha free, then we knew had a score to settle.

We returned first to Garren. Iltha was fine. And he assured us we in the Radiant Heart’s good graces. We still had a melancholy task ahead of returning their fallen. But we had ended a great evil in this area.

We got back to Athkatla and returned the Radiant Heart’s knights to them. We were clearly forgiven, the situation was understood. But it was still bitter.
We found another bunch of slavers in the city that we cleared out. And the Radiant Heart asked to do a few tasks, that kept us busy for a few days.
There was one more item of interest from the dragon hoard.

Of course, she said it would be a useful tool and we were fussing too much. But we should thank Lord Firkraag if we ran across him again! Did Jaheira make a joke?!

We returned to De’Arnise Castle to rest for a few days.

*****

I remember so many years ago, in the very early months of playing D&D with my buddies, someone in the group got a “Girdle of Giant Strength”. Somehow the topic came up of “how far can you jump with that! If you’re as strong as a giant, but still only weigh around 200 pounds…” Funny.

But I guess I’ve always remembered that question. So I loved the idea of Sarah leaping onto the dragon and killing it from the head. The AI *did not* want to show my warrior up above the dragon. I finally was using a lot of text to spell it out very specifically (“leaping high into the air above the dragon … the dragon looking up at the warrior…”) It took a dozen renders, but I love what finally came out!

Update 28

Chuck

A few days taking care of business at the Castle. This is by far the most fun of our ongoing chores for now.

Of course Imoen will use the lab also, its still pending if she wants her own space here. The sphere is becoming more her hideout.

That all seems to be going well, we’ve cut way down on bandit activity in the area. And have an interesting range of dilemmas to sort out, things I never imagined to be involved in before. Like finding space for a boisterous cleric of Tempus, or a dowry for a maid. The biggest looming thing would seem to be some trouble with our neighbors, the Roenalls are not amused by our presence. That is particularly what Sarah is working towards with her soldiers, its sort of the key to protecting the people of this land.

I explained to her a lot of Sarah had told me, the militia is not full time. They’re all here now because we are training and getting them ready for possible trouble. But normally they will work a few days a month so about 10% of what you see now will be working on any day. We only have about a dozen full time guardsmen. But a trained militia means we can mobilize a lot of troops if we are attacked by grumpy neighbors or have something bigger to chase off.

We’ve also had to run errands into Athkatla, both the students at the Planar Sphere and the Knights of the Radiant Heart have needed some attention. After a few days, we figured it was time to head out to look into the problems around the Umar Hills again, and see what was up with the dark shadows around an abandoned old temple.

We entered the old temple and found it overrun by all sorts of undead.

I’ve not known such things to cooperate before. Maybe they still weren’t? They were sort of at opposite ends of the ruin.

This took the whole team, both steel and magic were needed.
Beyond the dragon was a “Shade Lord”. I don’t know all the lore there. He was actually less threatening to us than the dragon and the lichs. But he was able to exert some sort of control of the dark forces. We were able to defeat him and restore the temple as a sacred site to Amunator, a god of sunlight.
We had exhausted ourselves pounding through these foes quickly. We hadn’t wanted to give them time to regroup, but it meant running at a high tempo for most of a day.

We’ll spend a couple nights back at the castle before we head out again.

*****

I did few other things not mentioned here, like cleaned out all the lichs in Athkatla, the Unseeing Eye Quest and the Planar Prison. All are simple little chores at this point in the game.

For my renders, I added an Imoen model to OpenArt and this is her debut at this site. But I figure if I do a few runs of BG in the near future, I may have the opportunity to use this, a more stable Imoen render. I will still likely use Co-Pilot more, my feelings about both AIs have mostly strengthened these last few weeks.

Which leads to a little test, and some results shown above. Zeno_42 (at Zeno’s Ziggurat) had recently shown how we can indeed get some bloody/hurt renders. I used Co-Pilot to test that for the Jaheira and Aerie render. I had previously had no luck at all with this sort of result. I *think* in the past I’d often used words like “beaten and battered”, which my wife suggested the AI may just automatically reject, especially for female characters. While terms like “Bleeding and Cut” will go through. Go figure. This was actually quite easy to get on Co-Pilot.
But then I tried for a similar result on OpenArt. That “Exhausted Sarah” shown was also described as “bleeding and cut”. OpenArt will not “reject” words via a filter notification (I’m not categorically sure that’s true, but I’ve not had it happen), it will simply not do what you tell it. It does limit what sorts of drama you can get.

Update 29

Most of this Update will cover details of the “Call of the Lost Goddess” mod. It is a beautiful and well crafted mod, easily professional quality. But its also fairly recent. This will be written with some spoilers, so skip this update if you wish to remain unspoiled!

*****

Sarah

Imoen and Aerie spent a day at the Planar Sphere, so we stopped by there to pick them up before we went to the Temple of Waukeen.

We got to the Temple early afternoon and met with Tharundar Olehm, the High Priest of Waukeen.

Waukeen had been missing, presumed dead by many, since the time of troubles. But he took us to see a Priestess, a prophet of sorts, who had visions suggesting she was alive in the Abyss. Held captive by a powerful Demon Lord. I felt my stomach clench with a pretty good idea where this was heading.

He presented the case for making a rescue, and detailed several arrangements he had made. This was not a hare brained scheme, but obviously this would be extreme jeopardy for us. I reminded myself a few times how far we’d all come in the last year. And really just how capable we were as a team.

We would need to travel via something called The Infinite Staircase, and navigate to a doorway into the right part of the Abyss. I’m no expert on this stuff, but the staircase is Infinite, shoot the Abyss itself is infinite, we will be dependent on a lot detailed information we knew nothing about ten minutes ago. Fortunately Chuck is very smart. So are Imoen and Aerie. I’m sure they can sort this out.

We had to travel to the city of Waterdeep, at the far north of the Sword Coast. Only Jaheira and I had been there, and this wouldn’t be a trip for sightseeing. We were teleported to our destination, and led to a door to the staircase with no delay.

We traveled by the stairs to the Abysmal City of Samara. A demon there was being compelled to help us. I can see Keldorn’s skin crawling just being here. I’m counting steps and turns to be sure I can get my whole team back to the staircase quickly if needed.
We were told we needed to attract the attention of Maretta, a Succubus currently in charge of the city. We did this with a series of arena fights.
Soon enough were summoned to meet the boss.

But we were convincing enough as a band of blood thirst mercenaries looking to make some money.
We were sent on a sort of proving ourselves mission, to acquire an “Abyss Rose”. This put us through a series of tests against our baser instincts. Seriously, these were mostly easy and obvious.

We passed this and presented Maretta with a Rose. I told Chuck I did *not* expect this kind of drama for flowers!
Next we were sent to help in a battle of the eternal Blood War. Demons and Devils are continuously fighting and killing each other.

Then Maretta wanted to find what was killing her demons south of the city.

Throughout, we had been putting a plan together. We learned a former jailkeeper of Waukeen’s might be willing to talk to us, if we could reach him before Maretta had him killed.
We succeeded, and learned the route into the prison where the goddess was held.

The prison itself was full of wretched creatures. One, a deva, we were able to restore her hope and get her out. A couple, called to us that *they* were Waukeen. Keldorn can detect such deception with barely a thought.

Finally, we did find the Goddess herself and broke her loose. She had been stripped of her power, but she could move and keep up with us. As we neared the exit a contingent led by Maretta, with several of her top lieutenants waited for.

Once Maretta fell there was little between us and escape. Stepping back onto the Staircase led to an unforgettable moment.

We travelled home, and saw the Athkatla Temple of Waukeen in the midst of a wonderous celebration. They knew their patroness had returned without us saying anything. And they were generous in their appreciation, although we kept our role in things secret from all but their leaders.
This was a good day. We made some good friends, and left no one dangerous (alive) in our wake.

Returning home, we saw our militia performing maneuvers.

Update 30

Most of this Update will contain material from Lava’s mod “The Bloodied Stings of Barovia”. As I’ve been doing, it is written as the adventurer’s journal and will contain some spoilers for that large mod.

*****

Chuck

We entered the graveyard the following evening to hunt down Bohdi and the Lanthorn the Elves need. As we walked by one crypt we heard the sound of dark chanting from within. I knew the sound of magic, never a good thing in a graveyard, at night. So we entered immediately.

He died, but the portal remained. We all concurred this was a dangerous thing to just leave, and we saw no way to shut it down. So we took the leap…

And found ourselves in a deep, dark forest. There was enough howling going on to tell us there was a lot of wolf activity here.

We fought several werewolves that seemed enraged out of their minds by masses of bees attacking them. I think? I mean, enraged is sort of standard state for werewolves.

We set to exploring the area, all of us ready for anything. We did come across a broken well, and then beyond it, a ruined blacksmith shop.

Continued exploring brought us to a farmer under attack by swarms of bees. We helped him defend his home, and he told us about the local noble family. The Bloodjackets had a manor south of here. But for now, he offered a rope so we could check out the well we’d encountered. This led to an underground crypt.

Backtracking to the farm, we found an old campsite, that seemed just set, but empty. I sensed more ghosts in the area? Maybe this place is just making me a little bonkers?

The morning was grey and drizzling. We headed back to the farm, and continued on towards the manor house.

It was some sort of ancient monument, it grew one red rose for every artifact of love delivered to it! A beautiful thing in this dark land.

We found the Bloodjacket Manor House a little further south.

We also found several huge beehives, and were forced to kill swarms of aggressive bees. This would be hard with fewer spellcasters!

The house seemed empty, filthy, abandoned. But we heard bees.

We fought a few more golems, and some sort honey ooze?

Which led to a talkative, but completely crazy woman.

Never mind the trouble they were causing! We put an end to her trouble, which became a pretty big deal. The Lady Bloodjacket was able to call on more bee swarms, honey ooze, waxy golems…
It was a pretty big fight. In the end, we did what we could to ensure neither the lady nor her mostly dead husband would trouble this land again.

We had early acquired a list of items needed to re-open the portal out of here. So we completed the list, returned to our entry point and were able to return home.
An interesting detour into a dark land.

*****

A brief write up of the mod! This was my first time through. It was really great fun, atmospheric for the Ravenloft setting. A few riddles/puzzles which aren’t so much my thing. Plus a number of fun fights, and some new monster types, which definitely are more my thing! Bonus, a number of beautiful new maps. As we can expect from Lava’s work, this was plainly professional quality. Check out “The Bloodied Stings of Barovia”

Update 31

Sarah

Our re-entry to Bodhi’s hideout, her crypt under the City of Athkatla led to a ferocious series of combats against a large number of vampires. We had arranged a couple of alliances, the famous Drow Ranger Drizzt joined with us, as did a number of Paladins from the Order of the Radiant Heart.

About a dozen total on the upper level.

In a moment she smiled. Whatever Irenicus had taken from her came back in rush. She was fine, we were all fine. Well, nothing the healers couldn’t fix. We also found the Lanthorn that the Elves were looking for.
We thanked and parted with our allies for this battle, and set out to return to the Castle. As we neared home, we met a messenger who brought news that Roenall troops had crossed into our lands.

I’d been keeping extra militia at the castle just for such a thing, so we set out at once to meet the intruders.

We were outnumbered in pure troops, but the six of us with Minsc and Nalia meant more elite troops than the Roenalls could contend with.

I don’t think he understood the metaphor. I demonstrated it. The Roenalls now have a minor power vacuum, but that’s not my worry.

We spent a day relaxing at the castle.

*****

My visual tour de force. That was fun.

Update32

Chuck

The morning we set out, our intention was to return the Lanthorn to the Elves. But we went a little off course, and came across a large fortified Keep.

We soon met a group of warriors, Helmites, tasked with guarding the site.

The keep was meant to be sealed up tight, the prison for an unknown foe. They were charged by Helm with guarding access to the place. But they had reason to think the seals were failing? Could we enter and resecure the detention area?
Of coursed we agreed.

Apparently there was a puzzle to solve to get to the lower levels.

The next level had several libraries, elemental libraries.

They each had a key that led to us fighting and killing a minor demon to open the portal to the next floor.

Maybe the demon was a warning! The next “level” was a bunch of rooms connected by teleporting archways. It was very difficult to keep our bearing as we went.

Numerous small fights, in almost every room.

The last room we encountered a …uh… friendly demon. I’ve heard in the vast infinity of the multi-verse, such things do occur. It certainly doesn’t happen here often!

The next couple levels were mostly notable for some brutally hard fights.

The last level, the great seal before the prison, led to some of the toughest fights we’ve ever seen.

We faced Demogorgon himself. We had come to strongly suspect the watch knights knew exactly what they were watching. So the Helmites were liars, false. That didn’t make the Demon prince trustworthy!
But it did lead us to question our mission parameters. When we withdrew to confer amongst ourselves, we were met by a spectral servant of Helm himself, who confirmed we were being used in the name of their god. We were given a few options on how to proceed, now that we knew the full truth. We turned the false Helmites over to Demogoron, and resealed the Keep. Hopefully for a good long time.

*****

Funny thing, of the renders you see here, the couple at the end was the hardest to get. The AI seems to be offended by the idea of the *woman* being the one in armor! Hey I’m a pretty traditional sort of guy, but the AI makes me look modern…

This set seemed really tough to avoid repeats from the “Psyche and Diomedes” run I did a couple months back. But in the end I was pretty happy with it.

Now it should be pretty fast to the of SoA.

Update 33

Sarah

We returned to Ehlan, with the Rhynn Lanthorn they needed to locate their missing city.

This all went well and quickly, and no doubt the City of Suldanesselar was a sight to behold.

We entered the city, looking to help where we could, and save who we could.

Irenicus had unloaded a lot of hate on these elves. As we learned the story, he was no outsider. He was “The Exile”.
No doubt there was a tragic story. But here and now he needed to be stopped of the evils he was committing.
Chuck seemed determined but fine. I can’t measure what Irenicus took from him, but Chuck has seemed fine to me. We’ve been happy together. Imoen assures me this is important, but thankfully Chuck does not seem to be suffering in any way.

Soon enough we found our way to the Great Tree of Suldanesselar.

We stopped him, with massive force. But when he fell we were drawn to The Abyss after him.

We killed Irenicus again. This time, whatever piece of Chuck had been taken, returned to him. Just as Imoen had been restored when we slew Bohdi. In a rush, we returned to the Elven city.

And this part of our adventure was over.

Update 34

Chuck

After resting and celebrating with the elves for a few days, we heard news of dark things happening further to the south. Several competing Bhaalspawn were in the area and armies on the march. I’d been thinking about my role as a disrupter of the Bhaalspawn who would cause such havoc.

Time to head south.

She was no more threat than the last 30 or so hunters we’ve faced.

Then things got interesting. We were somehow transferred to an alternate plane. A pocket of the Abyss.

It was a sort of pocket plane, I gather created by some connection between me and the Abyss. It was oddly peaceful and terrifying at the same time. Significantly, I was met by a Solar, a powerful agent of good divinity, that offered to prepare me, teach me as we were approaching the fulfillment of prophesy.
This didn’t frighten me as much as it might have a few months ago. I’m confident about who I am, and who by trusted companions are on this journey.
After a test of sorts, a simple if lengthy trial by combat, we were all transported to Saradush. A small city under siege by a Bhaalspawn army. I should say, an army commanded by the Bhaalspawn Yaga-Shura.

He was a giant, reputed to be invincible. Swell. We were briefed by a woman named Melissan, who claimed to be a sort of protector of Bhallspawn. There were many who’d followed her into this city before it was besieged by Yaga-Shura. The local military commander, named Gromnir, has gone completely mad and is holed up in his castle while the city burns. Melissan asked if we could get in to see Gromnir and talk some sense to him.
I’d say that’s a task I can do, except it turns out Gromnir was pretty well secured. We found an underground route through old catacombs that involved fighting a coven of vampires. Fortunately we were well up to the task.

Soon enough we stood before Gromnir. He was completely nuts, and combat ensued. So great, we left a power vacuum in a city under siege. We met with Melissan who suggested we needed to look into the source of Yaga-Shura’s invincibility, and located both the place he was raised, and his base of operations as places to investigate.

Both locations involved a lot of fighting! But we found, the witch who raised Yaga-Shura had taught him the magic of invincibility. It involved hiding his heart deep in his fortress, making him impervious until the heart was destroyed. The witch had been betrayed by Yaga-Shura, and she helped us destroy the heart.

Then it was a matter of returning to Saradush and destroying the Giant. We arrived too late to save the city, only a pitiful few refugees escaped. But we did end the giant.

Update 35

Sarah

Chuck can now travel between his “pocket plane” and this world, but with some limitations on where. Its maybe places he can concretely place in his mind? But the upshot is, we had to travel the old fashioned way from the ruins of Sarahdush, across the desert, to a sun-blasted little town called Amkethron. This would put us close to the last three of the powerful Bhaalspawn causing trouble here. At this point, we have two names, Sendai and Abazigal. If I had to guess, I’d say Melissan is the missing third name. But then, hers’ is the only other name I currently know associated with all this!

At about the half-way point we came across an oasis, we weren’t the first ones there.

The leader said he was General Jamis Tombelthen of the Tethyrian Army, and Chuck was under arrest for the destruction of Saradush. On the grounds Chuck was a Bhaalspawn and irredeemably evil there would be no trial or appeal.
Chuck was quick to suggest they do a “Detect Evil” on us. The General had the decency to be a little embarrassed to find none of us were. He asked our intentions. We told him in a nutshell, we were hunting the Bhaalspawn who’d caused so much trouble.

General Tombelthen accepted this and we soon went our separate ways.

Which led us to Amkethren.

We approached the monastery to announce ourselves, and see if we could find Melissan.

But soon enough we met Balthazar, the head of the order here and apparently a “friend”. Not friendly mind you! But he did point out the locations of the two Bhaaspawn we were looking for, neither was more than a day from here. He professed no knowledge of where Melissan was nor when she would return.

So we set off for Sendai’s Enclave. We had picked up rumors she was a Drow. We’ve faced a few of those! At the point on the map, we found a woodsman in an unnaturally ideal sort of setting.

He had rather clumsily directed us towards an ambush, err, some funny noises that was an obvious attempt at a trap. A beholder and a few Drow. We know we’re on the right track!
Sure enough, we confronted the “woodsman” and wound up in a fight against several Drow.

Further investigation led us to a cave opening, and a long series of battle that led us to Sendai. A Drow warrior/mage of same ability.

From here we went to Abazigal’s place. It was quickly obvious we were in a Dragon’s territory.

We entered a large cave and quickly concluded the only way to get to adjoining caves was through a series of connected pools.

After much back and forth between caverns we found our way in to see the big boss.

For a couple days work, we’d eliminated two powerful Bhaalspawn. During all of this, Chuck had been summoned a couple times for classes with his friendly solar. He’s learned a fair amount, some disturbing, about his heritage. How his mother meant to sacrifice him on an altar to his dark father. Horrible stuff.
Thankfully Chuck was raised by a good, decent man. I don’t think he’ll carry a burden from things he’s just now learning.

Among the things we’ve now learned, Bathazar, that unfriendly monk, is the last remaining Bhaalspawn. But apart from being unfriendly, Balthazar was not evil. Could there be a non-violent way out of this?

Update 36

Chuck

We had gotten ourselves all excited about finding a peaceful solution with Balthazar, and that all turned into a lot of frustration. The monk had convinced himself that the taint of Bhaal had to die with us.
I wish, I could have brought my friendly Solar into the discussion, there are clearly other options. And I’m simply not ready to leave Sarah and my friends that way. So it came to blows. In the end, I knew Imoen and I were the last Bhaalspawn.

We were drawn back to my pocket plain for another lessen with the Solar. We learned the Bhaalspawn crisis is over. Except. A priestess remained. The one known as Melissan the Black Hearted had kept a portion of Bhaal’s essence and was now poised to become the new “Lord of Murder”. So a final task remained, to stop Melissan.

We would travel to “The Throne of Bhaal”, where Melissan plotted to take control.

We fought, we won. I don’t feel the need to go back through it all. The fight was long and involved. But after all we’d been through, it didn’t seem too much of challenge. I feel like we left resources untapped. That’s a small thing.

A decision was required from us. From Imoen and I. Actually this was pretty easy. Imoen was allowed to simply give her portion of the taint to me. Gee thanks sis! I returned all of it to the gods, for final destruction.

The Bhaal Saga was over.

Epilogue

Chuck

We all returned to de’Arnise Keep. This was now Sarah’s and my home. The land was ours. We’d survived our great adventure, and ended up as minor nobles in the nation of Amn. We certainly had friends all across this nation, and beyond.
Our new goals involved making this a safe and prosperous home for ourselves and all of our residents. And keeping in touch with our friends and loved ones.

Jaheira would not live too close by. The confines of a castle did not suit her. And I think our friendship will always include a lot of grief for her, she lost so much. A future she once hoped for. She did visit on occasion, and we worked together a few more times. But she was never much for the pure social visits, and those remained few and brief.

Keldorn was a good man and a steady companion. We saw him whenever we were in the city. Although he did retire from the order, we always felt welcome in his home. He visited with his wife girls on occasion too. An old, dear friend.

There’s all sorts of funny stories about Aerie. I think slavers all over the area were now terrified of her name. And no doubt she stayed vigilant for any news of slavers doing business nearby, we helped her shut down several such operations over the years. But mostly, she was happy. We offered her a home as long as she wanted. Which is a funny thing for an Elf, she “visited” with us, for a little over 20 years. Until she met a man she wanted to start her own family with. She was always an agreeable part of our family, and had a particular gift for nannying our kids. I would call her the “fun Aunt” except…

All sorts of stories came up about my impish little sister. She became the sort of avenging master thief who was the bane of Thieves’ Guilds all up the Sword Coast. But, as far as I know, she rarely thieved anywhere again. She kept busy with magical research of all sorts, with a lab and quarters at our castle, where she normally was. And a research lab and mage school at the old Planar Sphere in Athkatla. No doubt, she did harass the Cowled Wizards past distraction. Even to say, she pushed them to irrelevance and extinction. They deserved it.

Sarah and I have had a wonderful life together.

And a loving wife and mother to our children. She is the great blessing of my life.

*****

This brings another BG run to an end.
I did keep SCS at a low level to the end, it added a few twists from what I’m used to on “Core” setting, but didn’t affect difficulty much.
I have some ideas for future runs, Three (!) have partly written introductions. So unless I get really bored I’m likely to finish that far in the next few months. But I think this is an end for THIS format. I’ve enjoyed the illustrated runs, but its a lot of work. So I expect, I’ll still do an Introduction and Epilogue, with maybe just a couple updates as I go. Unless I come up with something I’m just itching to do visually! So expect the next few runs to be mostly just about my characters and their team.

Coming soon, and IWD run, “Astolpho and the Replacements”!