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Gerold: Update 8

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atcDave

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As expected, the challenge related to erasing all my experience had exhausted itself by the time we escaped from Irenicus’ dungeon. Louisa was 7th level, Gerold and Minsc were 6th and leveled up shortly. So really, from that point they were not significantly weaker than any other party. The team was rattled by the deaths of Khalid and Dynaheir. Its funny, both are characters I don’t normally use much. But having kept Dynaheir all the way through the first game, including SoD, left *me* feeling the loss more than I usually do.
Followed by Imoen’s arrest, Gerold is an angry paladin.

Gerold is ready for the numerous vampires he’ll face in this part of his adventure.
Louisa is still the party’s healer, a single class cleric of Lathander.
Imoen, as the only character not drained of levels, played a large role in their escape from the opening dungeon. Always Gerold’s sister and buddy, her unexpected abduction put a serious damper on the team’s mood.
Minsc is crazy as ever, and a powerful warrior. A valuable member of the team through the opening part of the story.
Jaheira is Gerold’s *other* maternal figure. Having lost her husband, she will struggle some with appropriate boundaries for a while. But Gerold and Louisa will want her on the team for the long haul.
Yoshimo is a capable rogue. He helped with the teams escape from Irenicus’ Dungeon. But parted ways shortly after, he has stayed in touch and may rejoin later.
Gerold and his team were still grieving when they rescued Aerie from a circus gone berserk. As both a mage and cleric her spell casting is powerful and versatile, she will be an important part of the party for the long term. And Gerold took an immediate liking to her gentle sweetness.
Gerold needed to raise money to facilitate Imoen’s release. And Nalia needed adventurers to free her family home from trolls and Yuan-ti. Sadly the castle was thoroughly vandalized.

I won’t rehash all the BG2 story here, I’ve done that a few times already! To summarize, they rescued Aerie, and made contact with the Shadow Thieves. Then bumped into Nem who was able to get started into researching the Soultaker Dagger and how to secure Skie’s release.
Gerold is happy to work with the Shadow Thieves for now, he does not trust any authorities in Athkatla. And regards the Cowled Wizards as an oppressive terrorist organization.
They made contact with Nalia and recruited her. After several tries (!) they made it out of the city and removed the trolls from her home/castle. She then gave the Castle to Gerold, under odd Amnish Law she could not rule herself. But Gerold was clear he needed her help to run the place, so Nalia would stick around. Surviving guardsmen and staff were paid extra for leading the Castle’s clean-up.

Gerold then led the team to Trademeet, a small town nearby with a couple of problems. After killing a Rakshasa and routing out a group of Shadow Druids, they were considered local heroes. Its good to be on good terms with the neighbors! Well some of them.

There will be a few more staffing changes ahead, but going to war with vampires seems to be next on the agenda…

6 responses to “Gerold: Update 8”

  1. Zeno Avatar
    Zeno

    Its still inconsistent with Louisa’s age. I’ve always had that trouble myself. Its so hard to get anything between 30 and 60 for women. It *really* wants to push toward one end or the other. She definitely looks older here than in previous installments. Perhaps Irenicus was hard on her too.

    Nalia and Imoen look particularly good in this set. Minsc looks perhaps a bit too serious… but he just lost Dynaheir. He’s allowed to be a bit darker than usual. Gerold has a very “young Lancelot” sort of look.

    Aerie looks… more human somehow than in previous runs? The ears? The eyes? Not sure. It’ll be interesting to see if that look stays consistent later.

    Yoshi has an appropriate “used-car-salesman” look. I really flip-flop a lot on how I feel about him. Expanded mods add a lot to explain why he does what he does, but in the end he’s still the guy who stabs you in the back while pretending to be a friend. Not as aggravating as Saemon Havarean. But still hard to engage with him once you know how its going to turn out.

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    1. atcDave Avatar
      atcDave

      Yeah Louisa is tricky, although I think this isn’t the oldest looking render I’ve had of her? I played a little calling her hair “red with grey” vs “grey with red”, not too shocking the latter makes her look much older. So I’ve been sticking with the first one, and “age 40”. Of course I’m thinking 40 isn’t so old, it often over does it.
      I was very happy with both Imoen and Nalia! I wanted a scruffy Nalia, after the loss of her father and her home. And it really got it nicely.
      Minsc is in a bit of a rage! I’ll miss the big guy, but I have already swapped him for Keldorn.
      Gerold is also all worked up. He is awesome against all these vampires.
      Aerie, yeah, she really came across as life-like here. I’ve been saying “wide blue eyes” for her for a while, no “elf” anywhere. “Short pointed ears” I learned from you. I dislike the more current *huge* ears that stand out 6 inches from the head, I like a more Vulcan or Lord of Rings look. I sure can’t guarantee that look will stick! But I’ll see what I can do…
      I will swap Yoshimo back for Nalia before we leave, but yeah, I don’t care for him much!

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  2. Zeno Avatar
    Zeno

    It funny sometimes remembering what it was like to go through these games the first time. Particulaty in the days before massive day-one online spoilers. Imoen getting kidnapped. Yoshi turning traitor. It all hits different when you don’t know it’s coming.

    Even in my current Solasta mod run I just discovered the dryad wasn’t actually intended to be a permanent companion. I just played three quarters of the game before accidentally stumbling upon what was supposed to happen with her (covered in the latest episode). I inadvertently made her a much bigger part of the company than was intended. Which is the kind of thing that tends not to happen on subsequent play-throughs. Doing it as an intentional challenge doesn’t feel quite the same.

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    1. atcDave Avatar
      atcDave

      That is awesome!

      Yeah, I remember those first plays. I remember getting so frustrated in BG1, because my healers (Jaheira and Branwen) kept complaining about my “Heroic” reputation. I had to figure out how to make my own good-aligned cleric to make it stop. I’m not really a computer guy, and that was before on-line helps and forums (at least for me, I wasn’t even on Amazon yet!). So I had to *painfully* figure it out myself.
      And I was so pleased with myself when I figured out I could dual class Imoen. Then BG2 came along and spoiled it.

      A lot of things I didn’t really figure out until years later when I got active on the Beamdog forums (2012? Wasn’t that the year the World ended?).

      But we had already figured out how to beat the game our own way!

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      1. Zeno Avatar
        Zeno

        I really wonder what my first playthrough of BG1 (or BG2) actually looked like. Its been too long, and there’ve been too many playthroughs over the years, for me to really remember. I vaguely remember a half-elf Fighter/Mage raised by Gnomes that ended up romancing Jaheira in BG2. But no idea if that was the first.

        I remember Firewine being extremely frustrating. And taking a while to get the hang of the real-time-with-pause engine. Particularly getting AOE to work effectively. I always change Jaheira from TN to NG when I play. Nothing about her and the way she reacts to things in dialog makes any sense at all as TN. But that complaining certainly made her harder to warm up to at first.

        Got my work cut out for me now. I thought the demon lieutenants I did for the “Tying up Loose Ends” installment were tricky. Some of the ones in the Spire make them seem easy. The Possessor’s daughter looked like something Lovecraft dreamed up! Not sure how I’m going to coax *that* out of Copilot….

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      2. atcDave Avatar
        atcDave

        hah! Your half-elf sounds like a match for Aerie. I think that first play was the only time I tried to do all of Firewine. What a beast. These days, I just slip in through the back door…

        I was very unhappy with “Real Time with Pause” at first. I really don’t do real time well. But I remembered a friend liking auto-pause, so I figured that out. Made a huge difference, I’ve loved it ever since. Although yeah, AoE is much less elegant than in the Gold Box games.

        And Jaheira, oh yeah. CDTweaks makes that allowance, you and I are obviously not the only ones who feel that way about her. Her dialogue just screams NG.

        You sure have me curious for your next set. Horrify me!

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