DavesGaming

We made it to our first camp just short of the Coast Way Crossing. My team set out to explore the area, south of the camp…

This really made me laugh. I would have called her a vaguely annoying spoiled brat a week ago. Then I found out she’d annonymously joined Flaming Fist as they were gearing up to march out. I guess I should qualify that a little, *everyone* seems to know exactly who she is. And she does still act like a princess who expects everything to be entertaining. But seriously, she joined the army on the eve of War and has apparently learned some lessens already. So huh, there’s that.
Still, we suggested she get back to camp before Corporal Duncan develops an ulcer.

As we continued reconnoitering the area we found a Dwarven expedition working in some old mine? They’d been pretty beat up by a mass of undead and reported one of their leaders was missing. We offered to head in for a look around. One of the mineshafts transitioned into a library, with a larger installation beyond.

The missing Dwarf had become a Lich. My first thought was that was a bit beyond us. We reported back to the other dwarves, they had a potent anti-magic device we could use against their fallen comrade. Which we did.
So we killed a Lich, with some major help.

The next day we approached the Coast Way Bridge to see if we could deal with a small force of Crusaders present. They panicked on seeing us and blew up the bridge. Wow!

The ruined bridge meant we’d need to detour up river to the large Boareskyr Bridge. This has an ugly connection to my bloodline, and the trip came with some forboding. We had heard the bridgefort was under seige by the Crusade. Our friend Jaheira had joined up with the army at this point, she reported her husband was inside with the defenders. But she thought that there was a magical way in, that involved a rune stone that had been taken to an old temple nearby.

We were then able to get into the Bridge Fort and coordinated a break out with us bringing in the Flaming Fist.

We destroyed the Crusaders and brought both groups of soldiers together.

Things took a bad turn when I was given the honor of leading us across the bridge. I was attacked by … something? Maybe an echo from the past? But I felt it descend on me, it wanted to tear me apart. I fear it almost succeeded. But I held this storm of wrathful energy inside myself. I am convinced this protected everyone around, of course those I love most were nearest to me.

And this all caused some uproar in the army.

I’ve considered removing her from the team, but I hope to show her the error of her thinking. I’ve met honorable half-orcs, friendly kobolds. Even werewolves. She seriously needs to get over this. Lathander trusts me, who is she to doubt?

We had a long trek to the coalition camp laying seige to Dragonspear. Word of what had happened at the bridge proceeded me. We set out to explore the area again, to stay out of camp.
The toughest part of it was penetrating a river cavern that the Crusade was using to keep supply and communication going past the seige. We learned a fair amount here, especially the pure darkness at the heart of the Crusade. Caelar may be an idealistic nitwit, but her chief lieutenant is a monster. And ultimately this could result in demons being unleashed into Faerun. So we have to cut this evil out.

We had no sooner returned from our exploring than to find the Crusade was launching an all out attack on our camp. A lot of fighting. The end result could only be good for us, bad for them.
This led to our direct assault on the castle, and my own team chasing Caelar and her lieutenant Hephernaan into the Abyss itself.

We were all heroes for a few minutes. Then… Skie was murdered, I saw it in a dream, and I awoke next to her body.

*****

A few notes. I still enjoy the fights in SoD. But I think I really dislike all of the new NPCs. I may not even recruite Corwin again. She may be powerful but she ticks me off! Its funny, I like the writing on the older characters, Dynaheir talks in a garbled old English, and gets herself confused easily. Minsc has some funny new quips. I’ve liked Jaheira when I’ve used her. Neera is a hoot whether you recruit her or not. Maybe next run I’ll take Jaheira again instead of Corwin.

These last few updates I’ve been working on armor. Last time I talked about Gabby with the Ankheg plate. So towards the end here she get’s Deros’ plate, that improves her armor class another spot and gives her 50% fire resistence. I just switched the description from Green to red. It seems to interpret it all a little differently just with the change of color. Maybe a little darker and less sunny and happy? But I like it well enough.
Bull has been wearing “The Practical Defense” since Durlag’s Tower. I’ve been describing it as “Silver plate armor with gold filagree”. The icon in the game looks more ornate than many of the renders here give me, but if you read the description a slightly more subtle ornamentation is fitting.
Then Erato went from “Blue leather armor with silver embroidered Lion Rampant motif” (the “celestial lion” is a symbol of Tymora) to the green dragon scale. I chose to render that as “green leather scale armor with silver lion rampant motif”.
I considered if Gabby and Erato’s armors should retain their devices when they switched armors. Or if I should change them up? Style wise I wanted to keep the symbols similar for the characters. But how to justify it? Well, it occurs to me there are Cantrip level spells that could probably do this. So if say Gabby arranges to have a few sunburst style devices made up by an armorer or jeweler, a mage (1st level or better!) could stick them in place, as desired, more or less permanently. Maybe they all have to be reattached everytime they get hit by a Dispel! But I like this. Its a simple solution available to any party with a mage. I can imagine it being a thing where adventurers all have devices, maybe holy symbols, political/national affiliation even team logos; that they attach to armor or clothing.

I am stupid busy coming up, so expect this to be the last update for a couple weeks. I’ll be back then with the start of Shadows of Amn.