DavesGaming

Diomedes and his fearless team just finished Pool of Radiance (PoR) and now continue into the next game of the series.

As mentioned before, role playing-wise this is the same exact crew. But for a few reasons I chose to recreate the team rather than import. The first reason, Diomedes is truly a paladin. But Pool of Radiance does not allow for paladins. So I recreated Diomedes as a paladin.
That would would put the team leader 100k experience behind the rest of the team! So I recreated them all, so they will start at the same place.
The second issue, the team had no rogue in PoR. Well, those who may remember my “Psyche and Diomedes” run of Baldur’s Gate may recall Psyche has some thieving in her back story. She was born a slave, and in her pre-teens resorted to thieving to amuse herself. She was freed as a young teen, and raised to adult-hood by an older woman. She came to regret some actions of her youth, she trained as a mage and put the past behind. But that all means, I recreated Psych as a thief then immediately dual classed her over to mage.

One thing all this means is the whole team is lower level, weaker than they were at the end of PoR. So to help with that a little, I ran them all into the sewers under Tilverton (basically the first adventure setting of the game), then I removed and saved the characters and restarted the game. I was able to train Psyche up to 3rd Level mage, and Moya to 6th level cleric.
By the time we got to the “hidden training hall” near the end of sewers, I had everyone trained up to 6th level, except Psyche was 5th level (Next level she’ll get her thief abilities back).

For the first section of this we’ll start with a recap of the team (and all new renders!)

*****

Diomedes

Diomedes is the fearless team leader. He is a Paladin of Lathander, and really the best warrior on the team. Shortly after the events of PoR he married Psyche.

18/00 – 18 – 18 – 13 – 16 – 17

He is shown here as equiped after the escape from Tilverton in plate armor with a Frost Brand Long Sword.

Garaint

Garaint is the long time best friend of Diomedes, without even giving the matter much thought he will follow his buddy anywhere. He is sweet on Moya but will never admit such a thing, even if all his friends know. He is a Fighter.

18/30 – 16 – 17 – 10 – 9 – 10

He is shown after the events in Tilverton, wearing plate armor and a Flame Tongue Long Sword.

Shuri

Shuri was abducted from a raided village by slavers for sale at a large slave market. She escaped captivity, and was found when she was lost and on her own by Diomedes and Psyche. Psyche immediately related to the younger woman, and they’ve all been good friends for over a year now. Shuri is a fighter.

15 – 17 – 16 – 11 – 15 – 15

Shuri likes blackened plate armor, that she wears with blue padding and often a blue cloak.

Moya Durbin

Moya is a highland lass. Don’t question it, she gets cranky. She met Diomedes and Garaint when they were all training together at the Temple of Lathander. She is a Cleric and forms the wisdom part of the team’s brain trust. She and Garaint are truly a couple, everyone knows it, but its agreed its a great secret.

9 – 16 – 15 – 11 – 18 – 16

Psyche

Psyche did some thieving as a child. Its something she’s repressed and buried from the world for her adult life. Only Diomedes knew her embarrassing secret until just recently. She came clean with her team, and has decided she should actually use her old skills when they can help her friends (she will unlock her skills at her next level up). But Psyche is clearly a mage, and is growing in power quickly.
She is the intelligence part of the team’s brain trust, a gifted problem and puzzle solver.

7 – 18 – 18 – 18 – 14 – 18

Diomedes and Psyche have been married several months now.

Harg

Harg grew up on a rural farmstead and honed his skill as an archer and hunter from a young age. He met the guys when they were all getting warrior training at the same time. They’ve all become tight friends. Harg is fighter, he prefers to rely on bow at *every* opportunity.

13 – 18 – 17 – 10 – 11 – 13

Harg most often wears heavier armor than this, but leather is best for hunting.

*****

This time the story starts as the team awakens in an unknown inn.

Psyche is the first to notice strange tattoos on her fore-arm. This causes some excitement, especially as the whole team discovers they all have them.

It occurs to them fairly soon, that they all have no idea where they are or how they got there. A quick step into the hallway answers most questions, they are at the Windlord’s Inn in Tilverton. They also learn they all have lost a whole month of time. They also have most of their equipment and some money. Very strange.

They set out to explore Tilverton and see what they can learn. Of course Diomedes and Garaint grew up not far from here, at a Cormyr military fort just a few hours travel down one of the roads leaving town. Last you knew, Tilverton was a free city. But there had been talks for several years about joining Cormyr, or not.
A visit to the renowned sage Filani suggested that such bonds were a tool of control. Whoever applied them could compel those so marked into a certain course of action. Worse, the bonds seemed to represent five different evil powers. Filani recognized the marks for the Fire Knives (an assassin’s guild) and the dead god Moander. What all this meant, or the nature of the control she could not say.

Down the main street in a town a large crowd was turned out. Apparently King Azuon IV of Cormyr was due for a visit.

As the King’s carriage came into town, the bonds seized control of the team and they attacked the King’s guard.
They defeated one group of guards, and were able to regain control of themselves when a next wave arrived. Diomedes directed his crew to stand down. They were jailed, and a few hours later a couple thieves entered their cell with all their gear! They followed the thieves to a meeting with their master.
The Guildmaster explained that the Tilverton thieves were in a war with the Fire Knives.
The discussion was cut short when Fire Knives burst into the room. A large melee ensued, Diomedes’ team won the fight, but many thieves were killed. Including the Guildmaster. They pursued the feeing Fire Knives…

We fought several skirmishes with Fire Knives. They had war dogs and monkeys (?) with them in small groups.

In one particular larger fight, a pair of dogs got around to our rear and threatened Psyche. She is no warrior! But Psyche is quick and quick thinking, she was able to defend herself while Harg filled them with arrows.

A little further on we faced Otyughs, repulsive creatures that often live in refuse. The more smelly and vile, the better they like it.

The sewers eventually linked up with another part of the thieves guild. The Fire Knives were in control here, except we found evidence of an attack on the Fire Knives. This eventually led us to rescue Gharri of Gond, a cleric who had attempted to elope with Princess Nacacia of Cormyr. He reported the princess had been captured and was being held by the Fire Knives.
We located the whole bunch of them, and watched amused as while the chief assassin was bragging about how he owned us, the Princess slipped her bonds and put a knife to his throat.
Chaos ensued, that resulted in a lot of dead assassins. As we wrapped up, the Princess forced the assassin to release us from our bonds. We could feel relief as one of the blue tattoos disappeared from each of our arms.
Then there was a lot of noise as the King entered the room with his guards. He was appreciative for us rescuing his daughter (I’m not sure she needed any help!). But he could not let the attempt on his life pass unnoticed, we were banished from Cormyr.

*****

A fun start to the game. It starts fast with a lot of action and the removal of your first bond. Diomedes remains clearly the team’s best warrior. Shuri seems luckier than in the last game and has been effective. Moya usually fights with the front rank, but she is not very effective. Except when fight humans (Fire Knives!), then she uses Hold Person quite often and to good effect.

Update 5

I wanted to start with notes this time. As I’ve noted before, gameplay of these games is clearly old and dated, but they are very fast and stable on DOSBox. Really, the best these games have ever played. I remember back in the day (yes, I’m old) usually having a book or magazine on my lap as I played, so I would have something to do during the many long disc loads. The Amiga was faster, I rarely had reading time during game play. But there were still numerous disc swaps. None of that here. Gameplay is fast and stable.

One thing I forgot to mention in Pool of Radiance, is the 1st level mage spell Enlarge. This was not in the later IE games at all. But it is an awesome low level buff. The recipient gains strength based on caster level. I’m don’t recall all the subtleties of it (Shuri gained a +1 for every level Psyche gained right from 1st level. She started with a 15 strength, so at 1st level Psyche gave her a 16. While the stronger guys initially gained nothing). Now that Psyche is 9th level. each recipient gains a 22 strength for the duration of a single combat. Awesome buff spell. This includes incrementally stepping up the strength to 18/01 or 18/51 at different levels (I seriously wish BG would have interpreted a +1 to an 18 as 18/01, and a +1 from there as 18/51. It is major cheese to call a +1 to 18 a 19 in the case of strength in AD&D).
Obviously this specifically mattered for Shuri with her 15 strength (no combat bonuses, except when enlarged). But by the time she was getting into exceptional bonuses with the spell in PoR, she had Gauntlets of Ogre Power. Well, in Curse we lost those at the start. So suddenly the buff matters from the start.
And now we’re to the point, Psyche can give the whole melee unit Giant Strength for every big battle. Huge bonus.

I also should add a correction here, I had suggested previously that the “Fix” command heals the party and relearns cast spells. That is actually a little misleading. It is not quite as sophisticated as the “Rest” command in the IE games. It actually only restores the healing spells cast when you “Fix”. So if your cleric had 5 Cure Light Wounds, and previously cast one. When you hit “Fix” it will cast the remaining four spells, and relearn only those four spells.
*Unless*, you manually reselect that forgotten Cure Light Wounds (and any other previously cast spells). Then it will relearn everything when you hit “Fix”. Moya now normally learns a single Cure Serious Wounds and Cure Critical Wounds also, so “Fix” heals major damage most times when it gets used.
I am not sure if this applies to the Paladin’s Lay on Hands ability, I suspect not (its a different game mechanism).

One other thing I’d forgotten, in this game engine your party will not increase in power during an adventure. You need a training hall to gain levels, and a shop to identify items. So each adventure area is a set thing. You need to use the team and items you have.

And off we go…

*****

Leaving Tilverton was a little sad. All of us except Shuri had grown up on Cormyr, now we are banished. We set off for Shadowdale initially. We had to fight Displacer Beasts in the pass through the mountains, but eventually made it to town. We badly needed a place to rest and do business. We had a lot of stuff to identify from our fight with the Fire Knives, and we all needed some new training. We actually had found some really useful gear, and I feel pretty good we’re stronger even than when we had finished in Phlan. We had a bit of information that indicated one of our Azure Bonds was tied to a mage named Dracandros with a tower near the village Hap. So off we went.

There were actually three! That was exciting.

We found the town had been occupied by Drow. Actually an Efreet commanding the Drow. We put them all down. After, we met a traveler named Akabar Bel Akash at the inn. He was immediately intrigued by our blue tattoos, he said he’d seen such before. He joined with us as we prepared to meet Dracandros.

This involved travel through underground caverns, to the wizard’s tower. And it was quickly obvious these caves were all inhabited by Drow.

A Drow woman named Silk immediatley befriended Shuri as a sister-in-arms. She identified herself as a member of a group called Swanmays, and put a brand on Shuri’s hand (Hah! We need more markings on us!) that identified her as one. This led to about half the Drow patrols we encountered waving us by.
The Swanmays did not detect as evil. Is this good news for Drow? Or just this small group?

But the last large cavern at the end of this path led to some real excitement.

The fact we were up to this challenge shows we’ve grown a lot since this all started! We’ve become a very good team, and I think we’ve more than rebounded from the setback of loosing all our gear.

After the caves, the path oddly led us to the roof of the wizard’s tower. He commanded us to attack a huge Black Dragon. Our bonds forced us to comply.
But the result was amusing. The dragon was an illusion, and a gathering of Black Dragons now revealed themself as witnesses. And they scoffed at Dracandros! They recognized the compulsion he’d placed on us! They demanded he remove the bond, to see how we really felt about dragons.

Dracandros skedaddled. I’d say we were just done with him. But we were now at the TOP of his tower and needed to work our way back down.

We also fought Salamanders, more Efreeti, wyverns… at least no monkeys this time.

Psyche had a stronger mind and sent it back his way.

We finally made it down to the courtyard, and caught up to Dracondros trying to escape with his booty.

There were actually about a dozen Efreeti, plus several Drow and Dracandros himself. In a moment of desperation we discovered Efreeti are not in fact immune to Fireballs, just a little resistent. So yeah, a lot of fighting, a lot of explosions. In the end we prevailed. Dracandros did not.

We said our goodbyes to Akabar, and set off to the nearby town of Essembra which had a good shop and training hall.

Update 6

We had determined we needed to get to Yulash or Zhentil Keep next. As the Keep would mean passing through Yulash, we decided to just see what we needed to see in Yulash first.

There was a war going on here, between Red Pumes from Hillsfar and Zhentrim troops. The Zhents are always eager to cause trouble. And many years ago, this had been the site of the main temple of Moander, the God of Rot and Decay, in all the Realms. So both parties often found themselves battling Moander cultists eager to restore their faith. Or even restore their dead god, at a (Un)Holy Site deep in the ruins.

We found stairs heading down into the darkness. Since it was well known the city had been built *over* the ruins, this seemed like an obvious start!

We continued on, and fought a few more groups of vegepygmies and shambling mounds. We also fought some trolls, and a few cult clerics. This was our first proof of the cult’s presence.

Eventually we came to what was once a great temple. Many cult clerics, vegepygmies and shamblers were also here.

As the portal opened our bonds weakened, and soon all eight of us were free to attack the cultists. We all actually destroyed the cult pretty quickly. The portal snapped closed, but something came through.

Soon enough we had destroyed all the gooey god bits.

We escaped from the underground. It seems once the cult was destroyed, the Red Plumes and Zhentarim were eager to tear into each other. So we heroically sceddadled. We said our goodbyes and thank-you-very-much to Alias and Dragonbait and all went our seperate ways.

After a rest we headed up to Zhentil Keep. One of our two remaining tattoos was a Zhent symbol. This city is a dark place, with chattel slavery, draconian laws, and gladitorial games to the death. We hoped to enter and stay incognito. But we got the feeling we were expected?

Turning down one city street we saw a familiar sight. We had seen, at a distance, a colorful halfling bard a few times back in Tilverton. Especially in the Tilverton Thieves Guild. Olive Ruskettle was well known as an entertainer in the Moonsea area, not sure if she was really a bard?

She helped us to a hidden side entrance to the Zhent Temple of Bane, and gave directions to Dimsswart’s cell.
We found the sage. Part of what he knew, we had figured out. The bonds give those who applied them control over us. By their control, or death, the bonds fade and no longer have power. So, three of our bonds are now faded and powerless. The Zhent symbol is that of High Lord Fzoul, the leader of Zhentil Keep. He must have some purpose for us?

The last symbol was a surprise. It was that of Tyranthraxus. Dimswart was surprised too, he’d heard that Tyranthraxus had just been defeated up at Phlan. There must be a Pool of Radiance in the area that he has returned to. Swell.
We had Dimswart accompany us out. But our entrance door was sealed! We poked around, until we met a hooded woman. She told us to follow her to an escape.

Yeah, no. Bad idea. She led us into a trap. We were confronted by a beholder. He introduced himself as Dexam. He said he looked forward to studying our bonds, and was sure the experience would be painful and deadly for us.
Then Lord Fzoul approached and said he had his own purposes for us and we would be leaving with him.

Well at least another bond faded away! We ran for it. We heard Dexam yell “well they’re no use to me now! Kill them!” He really had a lot of minotaurs. And trolls. We did a lot of fighting for the next half hour or so. We had teleported in so we really didn’t know the way out of these caves.
But Dexam knew well how to cut us off.

This was a fascinating and humbling fight for me. Psyche yelled “I can’t hurt a beholder! Everyone go for the beholder I’ve got everything else!”
So that’s how it went. Psyche killed the medusa and 20 or so minotaurs with fireballs. The remaining *five* of us piled on Dexam and destroyed him.
Admitedly, I’m bragging up my wife a little. At first we were all fighting the medusa and minotaurs. We might have killed two minotaurs, and almost dropped the medusa. But then Psyche’s first fireball went off and that did kill the medusa and those minotaurs right in front. That was our break, we all charged Dexam while Psyche started another fireball.
Truly, we all work for Psyche now.

After an exhausting few days and a lot of fighting, we traveled down to Shadowdale to rest.

We have one bond left. Tyranthraxus.

*****

A few thoughts. Some of these fights are really hard! The fight against the Moander cult was moderately hard, mostly because you fight a bunch of clerics and their flunkies, then immediately have to face the quite tough “bits of Moander” with no break. I did get that on the first try, but it was a close run thing. And that whole section involves many fights against clerics who love to throw around “Hold Person”. In the Gold Box engine, once you’re disabled, *any* hit will reduce you to “dying” status. Much more brutal than the IE games.
Then Zhentil Keep. Dexam, a single beholder, is a brutal fight. Of course he’s at the back of his force, so you need to carve a path to him (thank you Psyche!). In the meantime, Dexam has ten attacks per round including “Flesh to Stone”, “Slay Living” and “Disintigrate”. Sure we’re all 9th and 10th level now, so we make most saves. But each round, whomever he targets, *has to make* three critical saves… or I reload. And that is a less elegent process in these old Gold Box games (it takes a few minutes). It took me three tries to get him down without a death.

Another thing. I’m reading the novel “Curse of the Azure Bonds” for the first time. Back in the day I read many of the Dragonlance novels, but this is the first Forgotten Realms novel I’ve read. Its pretty good. Definitely a more sophisticated story than the game. Although I would say Alias’ missing memories are far more interesting in the telling than the Azure Bonds (even if there is a sideways connection). Sadly, I know the punchline (for Alias) because I’ve played the game before. The book would be better if I didn’t know.

About the art. GPT Image 1.5 has become my *go to*. Funny, I worked mostly with DALLE for a year and a half. Then SeeDream became my preferred renderer, for two months? Now its GPT Image. It does everything SeeDream did, but better. The faces look less “all alike”, that’s not a small thing! GPT is more colorful. And GPT Image *knows* D&D. I don’t know if they have the rights, or if its something more nefarious. But it will render D&D critters with only the most basic of prompts.
And that Alias and Dragonbait pic! Seriously! I put in an image of the game/book cover. Gave a basic description of the characters, the ruined temple complex, and my usual “Realistic photo.” Holy smokes that was awesome! No tweeking or fiddling with words to get what I wanted, just *BAM* there it is! Wow.

Update 7

We had a possibility on how to find Tyranthraxus. We had met a strange hooded man back at the Standing Stones north of Essembra. He said to “come see him” when we only had one bond left. Apart from the strong “trap” vibe, this seemed like a solid lead. It showed he had some awareness of our feelings towards our bonds, even when it wasn’t entirely clear how he even knew we had them.

So off we went. The hooded man was there again. He revealed himself to be, wait for it, Tyranthraxus. He said we could find him up in Myth Drannor.
That is a ruined ancient city, most recently used by elves. But it has long been a ruin. We headed out through the woods to find the old ruin of the Forest of Cormanthor. It really isn’t a hard place to find, the location of the ruined city is mapped and well known. But it is a dangerous place. Overrun by a range of foul things.

Stepping out of the Forest near the city we first found ourselves in the old Burial Glen. This was not a place of rest.

They were apparently here looting the tombs. We tried to set things right when we found damage they had done.

We approached one stately old mausoleum that seemed in better repair than most. A pair of spectral elven guards informed us their queen was waiting for us. We briefly discussed if that was a good thing or a warning?! I sensed no evil from these spirits, so we entered.

Seriously, the best sword I’ve yet seen, and a Girdle of Giant Strength we equiped Shuri with.

As we moved on it seemed we were leaving the Burial Glen and entering an old commercial part of the city. This area seemed thick with illusion and evil. We soon recognized we were facing Rakshasa, and they were the leaders of the foul dogs.

He was not happy that something more powerful than he had moved into the area. He offered to remove some of Tyranthraxus’ troops if we faced him. I got the distinct feeling he was happy to have us do his dirty work.

Not too much further on we saw a great ruined temple. We could feel movement from our last bond, we were drawing near to its master.

A friendly spirit, known to us in passing as “Nameless”, helped us to escape Tyranthraxus’ control. In frustration he fled. But we knew he was rallying his forces.

We rushed through the old temple looking for him.

Actually, Psyche said these were “Margoyles”, slightly bigger than Gargoyles. We smashed a lot of them.

None of these battles were difficult. But clearly Tyranthraxus was trying to weaken us before we found him.

This was an epic fight. Psyche started unleashing Fireballs. A lot of them. The rest of us starting smashing Margoyles. Psyche shouted that Tyranthraxus was immune to her fireballs. So Shuri and I cut a path through the beasties to put our own sort of hurt on the big guy. Garaint and Moya held back to cover Psyche and Harg.

This did not all go our way. Harg took a blast from a huge Lightning Bolt hurled by Tyranthraxus that bounced off a wall and hit him again in the back. He was down. Both Garaint and Shuri were dragged down by the Margoyles.

I cleaved Tyranthraxus with the elf queen’s sword. By that point it was just a matter of eliminating the last remaining Margoyles and Banites.

Harg was beyond immediate help. We all needed to recuperate. And Moya needed time to get a Raise Dead spell for Harg. In time, we were recovered enough to walk out. As we had entered, as a team.

With no more blue tattoos.

*****

That brings us to the end of the second Gold Box game. This has seriously been a lot of fun, and I feel better about how these games play than I did a few years ago. I will look forward to doing more of this.

But that said, I have other ideas at the moment. This game has seriously made me want to run *this same team* through Icewind Dale. I want to run them in the more developed game engine with 2E rules. And I want to try a new mod. So that will be next. Expect by the end of this week I’ll have a new Icewind Dale playthrough up at this site.
Further, I want to do another BG run. I have a new couple, a pair of seriously sub-standard paladins I want to use. These are another couple from my deep PnP folders, that I’ve used very little over the years. So, coming soon!