DavesGaming

This will be an alternate recreation of a team I created a couple months ago to play through the old Gold Box games. This team has already been through Pool of Radiance and Curse of the Azure Bonds, and I hope to continue their adventures into Secret of the Silver Blades and Pools of Darkness.

But for now, I really wanted to run them through IWD. This is partly for the more modern rule set (2e!) and partly for the more modern game play. Yes, the Gold Box games are really old! In PoR you only have the four core character classes to choose from. Curse adds Paladin and Ranger. But none of them ever add kits or simple things, like weapon proficiencies! So yeah, I really want to play with the more sophisticated rules/mechanics.
Not to mention the pure aesthetics of it. Its almost funny how after a couple months off, playing these older games, IWD suddenly looks so vibrantly new to me!

I will dive into this with a short “How They Met” story, then a run down of the characters (including a little about their gaming history/development). Finally I’ll launch into a Prologue that takes them into Easthaven.

*****

Diomedes and Garaint grew up together in Neverwinter. Diomedes was the son of clergy from the Temple of Lathander, Garaint was the son of a knight. Diomedes was always the more reflective and intellectual. Garaint was more high energy and competitive. They brought out the best in each other. Garaint challenged and dared Diomedes into action and achievement, while Diomedes pushed Garaint to actually thinking about what he was doing.
In his mid-teens, Diomedes met Psyche. They became a couple almost as soon as they met. At this time Psyche was being raised by an older woman, a mage. Psyche was already learning what would be her profession. Psyche had a background that Diomedes only learned of slowly. She had been born into slavery. It was not a terrible or abusive situation, but it was not a good life for a curious and intelligent young girl. Out of frustration and boredom young Psyche turned to thieving. At 12, Psyche’s older sister found her and bought her out of slavery. She left Psyche with the old mage to raise her up right. By the time Diomedes and Psyche met, Psyche had turned her back on her thieving ways and was determined to become a mage and a champion of the oppressed.

In their late teens Diomedes and Garaint had started training as warriors. Of course Diomedes was actually training as a Paladin, which meant he was heavily involved with his parent’s temple. As such, he introduced Garaint (and Psyche!) to a Cleric in training. Moya Durbin was a fierce and fiesty highland lass. Or so she said, don’t argue with her about it! She and Garaint bonded, like brother and sister (?). Which is seriously how it always looked. Except every now and then… well Psyche was the first to be sure, but there was defintely something other than just “brother and sister” going on between Garaint and Moya.

In the course of their martial training, Diomedes and Garaint also befriended a young Ranger. Harg had grown up on an isolated farmstead and had developed hunting and general outdoors skills all his life. Now he was training mainly to add melee/self-defense type training, and more general Ranger skills. They all bonded over the desire to make things right and safe in Faerun, and became good friends.
Then one afternoon Diomedes and Psyche were out enjoying a ride, when they encountered an exhausted woman. A refugee of sorts. It took some time to learn her story because she did not speak the local Common Tongue. But months before, her home village had been sacked and destroyed by raiders. She was taken captive, to be sold in a wealthier slave market she was told. (Psyche’s blood boiled on hearing this!) But Shuri was relentless and clever, and managed an escape from her captors in the dead of night. But now she’d been wandering for some weeks, and did not know where she was. Diomedes and Psyche provided the help they could. And when it was learned Shuri had been training in her village militia, it was arranged to get her proper warrior training along with the guys.

And that will be the team of six.

*****

Diomedes has always wanted to be a Paladin. A hero and champion to make Faerun safe for those who want to live in peace.

18/00 – 18 – 18 – 13 – 16 – 17
LG 1st level Paladin-Cavalier

Diomedes is literally the oldest D&D character I still have a sheet for. I believe I started him in 1978. I played him for a long time, from 1st to 29th level. Which is a much bigger deal in most PnP games than in CRPGs.
In Gold Box, there was no “Paladin” initially so he was created as a Fighter. In the second game I was able to recreate him as a Paladin. There also are no weapon proficiencies and no dual wielding. In IWD he is specialized in Long Sword and Dual Wielding.

Psyche shares similar motives to her husband, to do right and make Faerun a better and safer place. Long ago she renounced her thieving, but as she adventures she will find cause and reason to dust off those skills and use them as needed. So yes, she will be a LG thief.

7 – 18 – 18 – 18 – 14 – 18
LG 4th level Thief/1st level Mage

Psyche is just as literally the second oldest character I have a sheet for. She was created within a few weeks of Diomedes, and quickly became his partner and wife.
In Gold Box there was no Dual-Classing in the first game so Psyche was a single class mage initially. For the second game I recreated her as a thief, dualed to mage. But sadly, she had to remain NG to do that. Sad from an RP perspective, it diminished an interesting quirk of the character.

Garaint is a little more of the dumb jock than his buddy Diomedes. He revels in action and competition. He still wants to do right by everyone, but he’s no deep thinker about it. He will always be steady and faithful to his friends.

18/30 – 16 – 17 – 10 – 9 – 10
NG 1st level Fighter

Garaint is from a short duration sort of PnP game. It was always going be a game of six or so game sessions. Which makes him a character I’ve not dug out for many CRPGs.
In Gold Box there is never much to say other than “Fighter”. For IWD I’ll mention he is specialized in Bastard Sword, and will build that to Grand Mastery as fast as he can. He is a Sword and Board type fighter.

Moya Durbin is a spunky and sassy sort. Her personality may seem at odds with her calling to the clergy. But make no mistake, she is devout and serious in her faith in Lathander.

9 – 16 – 15 – 11 – 18 – 16
LG 1st level Cleric of Lathander

Moya was first created for Seige of Dragonspear, for Psyche and Diomedes’ run through. I noticed when the party scatters early in that game, we had no cleric. She has the quirk of a great disparity between her appearence and her reality. She is *Human* thoroughly. No Infravision, no funny sleeping habits, she’s only 22 years old. And she’s never been to Kara-Tur, nor have her parents. She has green eyes just like her daddy!

Harg is a quieter sort than most of his companions. But he is driven by the same sort of desire to protect. He is from a more rural upbringing than the others, which will provide some help in the adventure ahead.

13 – 18 – 17 – 10 – 11 – 13
NG 1st level Ranger-Archer

Harg is another character who goes way back into PnP days. He was first created as a Barbarian, with a completely unofficial *class* in a 1E game. That game was ended well before 2E came along, although at some point I did redo his sheet for 2E as a Fighter with the Wilderness Warrior kit (sort of a low-rent Ranger). But the thing is, the whole time, he was always an archer first and foremost. Regardless of the names and titles he used. So it seems fitting to recreate him as a Ranger-Archer. And don’t think of him as “weak”, he is short and fit. He is also a Short Bow specialist and relies on Quarter Staff for melee.

Shuri was from a small, remote village. She would register as a Southerner and a foreigner to most people around Neverwinter. After a year in the area she speaks local common passably. She is very tight with her new friends, practically we could say they are her new tribe. Especially Psyche, who has bonded with the young woman over her brush with slavery.

15 – 17 – 16 – 11 – 15 – 15
LG 1st level Fighter

Shuri is from my own PnP game, one of the later original characters I ever designed for it. She was an NPC from an adventure into an Ancient Egyptian setting. She was an orphaned young woman taken in by the adventuring party.
A thing worth mentioning here is that historically a spear is a *one-handed* weapon used with shield. Seriously, this is how most ancient armies fought. So in PnP I had her using a shield and specialized in spear. She was *very tanky*. Didn’t really hit so hard, but a good armor class and lots of hit points. We loose some of that in IWD, because she can’t use a shield. We’ll call that a vague reflection of having learned an obsolete weapon (just that she won’t be as effective as she could be). Further, I have her started with specilization in spear, proficient in quarter staff and two-handed weapon style. In theory, she would continued to Grand Mastery in Spear as a priority. But in IWD? I think it will depend on what weapon she is currently using (she is more likely to find a good quarter staff than a spear I think?).

*****

Diomedes and his friends were all approaching completion of their training within a few weeks of each other. They started looking out for, and asking around about any opportunities to try their newly formed skills.
But more importantly, they started planning a grand party. A graduation bash of sorts to celebrate their entry into adulthood. Then Diomedes and Psyche got to talking, they decided they had something even more important they wanted to celebrate with their friends.

The party was barely over when one of the clerics at the Temple of Lathander summoned Diomedes and his friends to a meeting. He had a vision, in a dream. A devout and stout warrior from far off Easthaven, in the ten towns of Icewind Dale, would soon be summoning heros to deal with an ancient evil. Hrothgar did not even know this himself yet. But the cleric’s vision was clear, Diomedes and his friends were called to Icewind Dale.

The journey took a few weeks. And finally mountains, the Spine of the World Mountains had to be crossed!

Well, everything but the coin purse. And thankfully, it was just stuff. But ALL their stuff except what was on their backs.

*****

A couple comments about the build. This is mostly as it has been with Tweaks Anthology providing a lot of little things, mostly convienence oriented. SCS is at Improved. I have several Lava adventure mods installed, including the newest “The War of Bloom and Rot”. That last is apparently the biggest of the bunch, and is the only one I’ve not played.

My instinct is that this is a strong party. No Undead Hunters this time! But I still think this is a strong crew.

Update 1

We entered the small frozen town and discussed where to head, it seemed a rustic tavern had some activity. It might be a good place to get some information and see where we could find this “Hrothgar.”

Hrothgar affirmed we was putting together a band of heroes for an expedition. He invited us to drop by his home a little later to talk more in depth about it. The villagers were friendly, and we met a dwarven warrior who was also here to join the expedition of heroes. Apparently a messenger from the (not so) nearby village of Kuldahar had delivered a message a few days ago that help was needed. The messenger died of exhaustion after delivering word. This had obviously generated some buzz and excitement.

There was a general goods store nearby, and we knew we needed some new gear. So that was our next order of business.

On entry, we saw the shop keeper was a severe looking southerner. Psyche suggested Shuri might want to talk with a fellow southerner. She groaned and said she didn’t think *HE* would see it that way!

After our business was complete, we had new weapons and armor to replace what we’d lost. Shuri said to Psyche “You know there is more than one nation to the south! And it wouldn’t have mattered, I’m pretty sure he thought he was better than any of us.”

The best armor in town was scale mail, definitely not the quality of what we’d lost. But it was better than being unarmored. We headed over towards an inn, and saw a young boy in a panic over a basket of fish some goblins had stolen from him, we pointed towards, well we could see the goblins making off.

I’d say this was our first fight. I’m not really sure if a small band of goblins counts as a real fight, but these guys could have seriously hurt some of the townspeople. We returned the boy’s fish.

We got our room at the inn, after stashing some of what we’d just bought we set out for Hrothgar’s place. Along the way, we encountered a fisherman who seemed lost in daydreams. After we got his attention we found he’d been having dreams of a beautiful singing lady. Garaint found this amusing (“well, who hasn’t!”). Psyche looked over at the large lake that provided this town’s livelyhood, and suggested that could be something interesting. We should take a look along the shore.

We played go between, and got the broken remains of a fine old sword back to Jhonen. We had a few other little side adventures in town, but finally made our way to Hrothgar’s home. We learned a little more. The arch-Druid of Kuldahar had sent the request for help. He was a friend of Hrothgar’s and not a man prone to needless panic. But nothing more was really known about the nature of the trouble.
Heroes and adventurers were still gathering for the expedition, that was planned to depart in two days. Hrothgar asked us to look into an overdue supply wagon. He showed us the route it *should* have followed into town.

We set off to find the wagon the next morning. We found it not too far outside of town, smashed near a mountainside cave. An orc was still pilfering gear from the wagon, when he saw us he ran off towards the cave.
We followed, but not too rashly. Anything could be in there.

This really led to the toughest fighting we’d seen yet.

This was a pretty large cave complex, and we explored through several connected cave chambers. We fought a few more orcs and another cleric.

He had a number of other orcs with him, this demanded everything we had left in us. We prevailed. At least we’ll have a little real world experience now before we head off on the expedition tomorrow.

We trekked back to Easthaven, and nursed our wounds at the inn.

As magic weapons go this was a pretty low power item. And sadly, none of us primarily use a dagger. But we’ll hang on to it for now. Psyche is at least trained in small blades, and you never know when such a thing might be needed.

Tomorrow, we join the small expedition marching out.

*****

After the several little quests in Easthaven, and the bigger adventure in the orc caves, Most of the team is now 2nd level. Moya is already 3rd. That makes them all far more capable.

Update 2

An exciting moment as we marched out with the expedition. Hrothgar seemed to be a good leader, no doubt energetic and commited to helping a neighboring town. We had not only seen most of the expedition members around town the last couple days, but obviously many of them were old friends.

Which made the tragedy of it so bitter. An avalanche started up high as we walked through a valley. My team was right near the front talking with Hrothgar when we saw something (someone?) up a slope, and snow just sort of broke loose in their wake. Hrothgar yelled at everyone to hurry, hurry! He held fast yelling to his companions. I first stood back with him yelling and gesturing towards the others. As Psyche ran by me, Hrothgar gave me a shove and said “get your team out of here!”

We soon made it to the last pass, Kuldahar Pass.

We battled several different groups of the little guys. And a group of orcs had laid claim to a Mill. We saw evidence of the slaughtered owners, and routed out the orcs. And some more goblins.

From here it was about an eight hour hike into Kuldahar.

He thought the source of trouble might be a tribe of yeti, and restless undead in the nearby Vale of Shadows. An old burial ground. We agreed to check it out in the morning.
For now, it was late afternoon and we were tired. It seemed prudent to explore around the small town with what remained of the day.

After eating, we set out for the Inn to get some sleep.

The next day we set out towards the Vale of Shadows.

We continued into the Vale, and had a few more yeti to fight.

There were four smaller tombs, before we found a single much larger one at the far end of the Vale.

He denied knowledge, and refused us entry to investigate. Naturally this came to blows. We destroyed Mytos and a number of undead guardians he had with him. The evil was plainly detectable here, but we were finding no clear connection to the problems of Kuldahar.
We explored deeper into the tomb, at least two levels down.

This was unexpected. Auril, the Frostmaiden is a frightening goddess of unrelenting winter. Such could explain some of the troubles besetting Kuldahar. Psyche mentioned a yeti cave we cleared several hours ago had shown some signs of human usage. So we trekked back to it to see what we could find.

We put an end to her reign of terror, apparently she really had put a curse on this valley. It had made many of the dead restless, several ghostly images appeared and thanked us for their return to peace. We reported back to Kresselack and he was appreciative. But the information he gave was a bit underwhelming. He claimed to only know that nothing in this valley was the true source of evil facing Kuldahar.
Garaint grumbled that he’d just taken advantage of us to remove *his* problem. No doubt, there was a shred of truth to that. But I reminded him Lysan brought trouble too, and we would have needed to deal with her anyway.

We headed back to town with only a minor piece of information. Arundel suggested we head off to a forgotten old temple, that had split from the druids of Kuldahar a generation ago. They may know more of what was going on.

In the morning we’ll head off to the Forgotten Temple.

*****

I sort of liked how Psyche unlocking her thief abilities worked so well in this case. If we figure she hadn’t practiced thieving since she was 12, it makes sense it might take a while for her to remember what she once knew. And it clearly justifies a different look for her!

A few of these renders are moments from Lava’s “Rediscovery of Kuldahar” mod. A lot of little encounters and mini-adventures. I really like how it brings the little town to life more. What some gamers may not like is it is enough of a boost in experience that you will likely set out for the Vale of Shadows with your whole team at 3rd level. That does make everything before Kresselack’s Tomb a bit of a walkover. We entered that tomb at 5th level, and were all 6th level by the time we were done (Psyche is still only 5th) which I think is more on target (the experience boost in Kuldahar is *small* in an absolute sense).

Update 3

Our run up to the Forgotten Temple proved to be mostly frustrating.

A lot of destruction left behind. We found oursives fighting both the original temple priests and guards, and some of the attackers. These were Yuan-Ti, large and vicious snake men.
Basically we stepped into a war zone and were not recognized by either side.

The only good to come of it was that in facing the Yuan-Ti, Arundel guessed this trouble might be coming from an old cave complex known as Dragon’s Eye.
In considering our next move, we decided to look into a couple detours along the way to Dragon’s Eye.

First was a lake that had once been a minor Holy Site, something involving dreams and romance. But recently things had taken a bitter turn.

The shaman suggested we could try to make an offering (some sort of fish was prefered!) and see if that helped. So we did that. Then we explored another cavern nearer the lake, and found the Guardian spirit.

Apparently her grief was tinged with wrath, which had something to do with the suicides. We rushed back to Kuldahar and consulted with a couple of the local magic types. The gnome Oswald came up with an idea for purifying the water. I think Psyche and Moya both understood this whole conversation better than I did! Soon we were rushing back to the lake and introduced some uh, “ghost filtered” something or other…

It seemed to help! The spirit was able to quit weeping. The Shaman thought she might be able to recover more naturally now. It did feel like a dark cloud had lifted.

Next we set out for a small patch of forest. A mage we met in Kuldahar had asked us to track down a beast known as the “Skineater”. Yeah, lovely name. The forest was thick and hard to navigate. But we eventually found a large cave, a lair.

It completely regenerated itself a couple times. After we had slain it three times it stayed dead.

As near as we could tell he had created the monster with the help of his brother, the mage who had sent us on this little mission. Apparently we were to feed the creature. Oops! We returned to the mage and ended his monster making business.

Finally we made it down to Dragon’s Eye. We fought some trolls outside the entrance.

He admitted to abducting villagers, for food. Yeah, we killed a lot of lizard men.

The problem was, these caves still went deeper. A lot deeper we suspected. These chambers seemed to be secure now, and since it was a solid 8 hours back to Kuldahar we requested that the villagers hold tight. We would be back for them, and accompany them home.

Bombardier Beetles, the sort who attack with a loud *BOOM* and a spray of caustic acid. They’re not really very big, and wouldn’t be a challenge except the noise and the acid are often incapacitating for a brief period. It seemed every fight led to one or two of us being helpless for a period. Fortunately with three of us up front, we were never *all* down.

But I really hate bugs.

Trolls are nasty, they are strong and always want to kill. And you need fire or acid to really put them down. Fortunately we have flame arrows for Harg, and Psyche knows a few spells. But seriously I lost count. I think we killed 20 trolls.

That was an exciting fight. Psyche’s Fireballs and Moya’s Holy Smiting carried the day.

After, we found the missing priestess for Kuldahar. And another bunch of villagers. We moved them up to the previous group, and continued deeper into the cave.

From here we faced a number of undead, lead by an evil lady mage… I forget her name but I think Psyche was taking notes.

Deeper in things seemed to change a lot, we had walked into an artificial chamber. Something constructed, not natural. It first *felt* like a quiet, peaceful place. A man in robes came forward speaking words of friendship.

When I plainly saw through him he actually seemed relieved. This was a large enclave of Yuan-Ti. And we had a large running battle for most of the next hour.

The Yuan-Ti did her bidding, it was obvious she was no human child. We slew many more snake men. We were able to free a few more captives, but as we drew nearer to the heart of this beast the surviving slaves were fewer and in rougher shape.

She was some old demon named Yux something or other. Psyche did not note this one down, she said she didn’t feel like digging into the pack again.

And we found she did have the Heartstone Gem!
Garaint and I felt some of the earlier battles in these caves were tougher. Shuri mentioned the fight back at the Ziggurat was really brutal. Yeah, we were feeling pretty good just now.

Moya said she hated to break up the party but we had a lot of villagers we needed to get out of here. And many of them would need help getting back to Kuldahar.
No doubt, she is the wise one amongst us…

The trip back took more than the whole next day. We had a large crowd who weren’t all in good shape for travel. And we didn’t have nearly enough cloaks and blankets, this was not fun for many of them.

There were maybe a dozen of them causing trouble in town. This wasn’t a huge problem for us, but it was very concerning. Troubles for Kuldahar were getting worse. After slaying the Orogs we rushed to find Arundel.

I wanted to sleep for a week. But we would be ready to head out in the morning.

Update 4

We set off for the ancient Elven fortress Arundel had told us about. Along the way we stopped by a Halfling village, known as Snowytoes Hamlet.

The residents were a friendly and cheerful bunch, as one often expects from Halflings.

We slew many undead. On entering the pyramid we encountered an alien, evil force. It fed off of, was strengthened by grief and fear. So the Halfling headwoman had been vulnerable to it. We were able to end it. Although in an attempt to upset us? Or something, it threatened that a greater, darker evil than it was growing in strength in this area.

We returned to the village with the news the trouble had been ended, they should be able to sleep without fear.

This was definitely a more agreeable chore than battling undead and alien entities, we happily agreed to help.

We eventually made it down to the Elven fortress.

We knew the story, the specters of the elves and orcs who battled here ages ago, still battled in the ruins without pause. And we needed to find an ancient elven mage named Larrel.

Finally we reached a floor that seemed quiet. There were a few shadows of elves here, but they seemed more like living elves. They were friendly to us, but seemed to have no knowledge of their actual status.

This was the top floor of the main Keep. Each of the five towers continued up from here. And this would get strange.

Oh boy. The first lucid elf spirit we meet, and she wants us to kill the others. Do you kill spirits? Moya suggested there was no easy answer to this, but the lady seems to think destroying the shadowed spirits will give them peace. So that must be the right way to proceed.

We worked our way through all five towers, even finding a way into the floating remains of the shattered tower. This whole time, Psyche had been finding parts of ancient equipment. Things that looked both magical and well engineered. She had been keeping much of this machinery. That proved fortunate.

Atop the ruined tower was a giant astrolabe. Two figures moved about. One was dressed as a regal arch-mage. He was speaking non-sense, he had lost his mind.

Seriously, if you ever want to make the remains of an ancient elven engineer giddy with joy, hand him the parts and tools he is missing.

We all watched fascinated as the engineer restored the great machine. (Okay, really, Psyche was fascinated, Garaint and I tried to remember which pack had the playing cards).
After just a few short hours the machine shrieked, sparked, steamed and groaned to life. The engineer was very happy. And the ancient arch-mage seemed to find his senses.

He discerned that we need to search the ancient Dwarven fortress of Dorn’s Deep to find our answers to the source of evil. He was not surprised that evil would be found with the Dwarves. There was deep and ancient antipathy between these elves and the dwarves.

He offered to send us directly there. But we had need of supplies in Kuldahar first, so at a word he transported us there. Serious magical power there…

*****

I’m still very pleased with how this team is doing. They can unleash a lot of damage quickly. Only minor shortcoming is no real “emergency” fighter for the back rank. Moya is the best option. With decent hit points and good armor class, she can hold off attackers while Psyche and Harg do their thing. In the one battle with all the shadowed orcs and goblins, I did have Psyche draw her dagger and step into melee too. She is *really* not much good at it. But Harg is a devestating archer. The rear rank can defend itself even without a melee type handy.

Update 5

The next morning we set off for a place known as Lower Dorn’s Deep. This being a series of caves providing access to an ancient Dwarven city.

We found the caves easy enough. It seems we also found the source of the Neo Orogs that had been attacking Kuldahar. Fortunately, even a tribe of big orcs is a lesser challenge now. We cleared the brutes out pretty quickly.

Fortunately they were not numerous or clever enough to hit us while we gathered ourselves.

Ettins may look odd, but essentially they’re just another sort of giant. Big and strong, but not particularly intelligent.
Then we came to a bridge that seemed an entrance to the actual dwarven citadel.

But it wasn’t dwarves living there now!

Mainly thanks to Psyche clearing out the “ambush” part of things (while five of us dealt with the distraction!), we quickly turned the tide of the battle and shattered their assault.

Before long, we had the main floor of the fortress cleared out. To the back of one chamber was a great hole in the wall, a more natural looking cavern extended back into darkness.

This one was willing to talk. He claimed to have been a mage until fairly recently. He’d been cursed and knew he would soon loose his mind. He told us a bit about the nature of our foe. At least that there were several captains, leading different parts of an army. We would need all six of their badges to find the true villain.

Sounds like a silly game to me. Fortunately Psyche and Moya were a little more willing to play along. We found the badge of “Krilag”, who had been leading the fortress defenders we just eliminated.

The one path we still had to follow was a room for a large mechanism. A puzzle or a trap?

The solution seemed to be some unexplained glyphs in an outer chamber, could be matched to glyphs in the puzzle room. This led to a stairway down being revealed. This spiraled down, wrapping around the machinery for the room above. At the bottom we entered a darkened ceremonial forge.

Of course we agreed to put an end to this!

We battled the Lich once, he ran off to the Hall of Heroes. He did not seem very frightening as lichs go.

That should have cleared out his summonings, but not bothered him much. It seemed to hurt the lich some, so we got off to a very good start.

We’d been told he had a phylactery somewhere in this hall, so we searched and found it before he put himself back together. This brought peace back to the Dwarven dead.

Next we followed a long tunnel through the mountain, that let out on a glacier.

And yeti. A lot of fighting for a few minutes. As we cleared this off we had three points of interest. There was a chasm with a very fragile looking bridge across to a large cave. A trail and a mountain pass that looked to provide access back to Kuldahar. And a large stone-block building, dwarven construction of course. It looked to be some sort of ancient municiple building? We could see tracks and movement to the main doors, but the celler doors looked unused. So we chose to enter down low.

The said they had been slaves, and were now trapped. The cellar was warm, so the *Frost Salamanders* upstairs wouldn’t come down here. But there was nowhere they could go! They couldn’t last long trapped with no supplies.
We put them at ease, we’d already cleared off the outside. And we would go upstairs and deal with the salamanders. We suggested they hang tight until we secured the area and could get everyone out.

The upstairs was immediately odd. The dwarves had built a public aquarium in the mountains?

That worked well for us! It brought us to the leadership. I wasn’t in much of a mood to bargain with such elemental evil, so we eliminated the leadership first. Then pacified the whole building.

A lot more fighting for a few minutes!

Once all was quiet we returned to the slaves downstairs. They said there were more captives in the cave across the chasm. They were being held by Frost Giants. Okay, we’ll get the whole group back together before we head back to Kuldahar.

Psyche directed the rest of us in making repairs to the bridge. We moved quickly to act before we were noticed.

And winter wolves, snow trolls, yeti… the usual. It would seem these Frost Giants triggered the avalanche that destroyed the expedition we set out with. That had killed so many of the area’s best heroes. As best we could, we were setting things right.

We had also found an access to more dwarven ruins in the mountain. We would need to get back to that.

But for now, we had a lot of refugees to get back to safety.

Update 6

As we were preparing to set out again for Dorn’s Deep, a barbarian shaman presented himself to us. He needed our help.

Lonelywood is the newest of the ten towns, it is also small and remote. The tribes were united under the banner of a chieftain named Wylfdene, who had died. And recently returned claiming he’d been united with the spirit of Jerrod to lead the tribes.
None of this sat right with Hjollder, he sensed something was wrong and evil. And he’d had a vision that *WE* would help him sort this out.
Of course we agreed to help.

Looking around us, well it was a small town. We decided it would be easy enough to talk to most folks in a short time and see what all they knew.

Yeah, scammed by a child. Hailee Dunn seemed to think this was great fun to give passers by a heart attack. After a mad dash to her family home, we discovered she had no brother. The talk we had with her father was illuminating. We learned some about tensions with the gathering barbarians. And a little about his business making barrels (!).
We walked back out to Hailee and convinced her we were here to help the town, but she needed to stay safe with her father.

He confirmed the presence of the gathering barbarian tribes, but knew little about their motives.

He was friendly, in a greasy salesman sort of way. He confirmed a Ten Towns representative had recently gone to investigate the barbarian encampment, but had not returned. That sounded ominous. We got a good location of the camp here, a good eight hour hike. We would set out in the morning.

Next up, The Whistling Gallows Inn was the largest building in town. And the only inn. This figured to be a good source of information, and our final stop for the night.

Fortunately, Psyche quickly took pity on the poor *drunk* woman. We learned she was Ambere Dunn, the mother of young Hailee we just met a little bit ago. Ambere is not the first person we’ve met who does not seem to enjoy life in the frozen north. Psyche is amazing! In five minutes she had the woman agree to run back home to stay with her husband.
She forgave me *for doing nothing wrong* just as quickly!

He entertained us all with the tragic story of how he’d talked himself into exile, seeking a perfect ice rose.
We also talked with a dwarven warrior who had an ugly encounter with some barbarians. They do seem to be looking for trouble.

The next morning we set off for the barbarian camp.

We convinced them soon enough to give us an audience with Wylfdene.

Hjollder was there, he spoke up about his vision that we were needed here. But his lack of clarity on “how” got him banished. We were dismissed.

Just outside the guards surrounded us. I’m pretty sure slaughtering a dozen of their warriors was not our best option. We convinced them to give us a chance to track down Hjollder and see if we could learn more about what was going on.

We learned Hjollder had been sent to “Burial Island”, which for us would be accessable by boat from Lonelywood.

We helped him secure the boat. Then Moya seemed to have some luck calming his nerves, with a promise we would quickly return.

Actually he demanded we leave. Unfortunately we needed to learn more about the defilement and find Hjollder!
The barbarian dead on the island were really not happy with us being here.

We found Hjollder. Perhaps more importantly we found Wyldene’s tomb. It had been desecrated by some sort of large beast. Hjollder guessed this was the source of corruption, and it did NOT seem Jerrod’s spirit was involved. Something darker.
He directed us to the Gloomfrost Mountains to seek out a Seer.

That’s further north.

It was a long and frozen journey.

But not today.

Deep in the caves we met a dwarven smith. That is clearly not an expected find! The man was blind, and an absolute master of his craft. A smith of ice.

And we found the Seer. She suggested we give a mirror of ice to Wylfdene. I’ve rarely seen the whole lot of us quiet before. But this was an odd command. After a moment, I think we all knew we’d been given our answer.

Wylfdene was not greatly amused by the gift of a mirror. He made some rude comments about the sort of man who would use a mirror. I looked in it first, and I must admit I had little confidence in this game.

Or not Wylfdene. He said something about it diminishing his majesty?

Some of the barbarians, appropriately the Tribe of the Wyrm, knew exactly what “Wylfdene” had been. The other tribes joined with us in destroying the wicked traitors.
This became a large battle across much of the Barbarian encampment and took us quite some time.
Hjollder presented himself at the camp, and said he had learned the dragon was Icasaract. A great wyrm that had terrorized these lands long ago. The barbarians would assemble their ships and head to the island where the dragon had lived. We needed to get back to Lonelywood, and we would return.

We drove it off, but we learned this was Emmerich the woodsman. This was the source of his troubled dreams. A mage in town, the innkeeper Kieran, had an amulet that could suppress the changes. Not a cure, but a treatment for Emmerich. Much better than having to kill the man!

If his tale is true, he can return home and marry his beloved. That’s the ending to his story we’ll believe.

Finally, we got a good night’s sleep in the warm room. The best rooms. We earned it!

In the morning, exiting the inn, we had an unpleasent encounter.

I could plainly sense his evil. And I didn’t like him at all! I told him there were no mages in this town and he should leave.

And she had our back. He had a team in hiding. I’ll take my team any day. We eliminated the troublemankers.
Checking back in the inn, yeah they were after Kieran. I don’t need to know his whole history, he’d done good by us and good by Emmerich. And for now he was safe.

Unfortunately that left our spellcasters a little spent. So we decided to spend another night at the inn.

He came across as a troublemaker. And he wanted to talk to us.

*****

Its funny to me that the single largest experience/quest reward of the entire game (I think its even bigger than any one reward in the BG Saga too!), is the reward for giving the ice rose to Murdaugh. As soon as I did I had six (!) level ups to do for my team.

Another curiousity. Hobart is alternately called a dwarf and a halfling. I sort of split the difference, I did him as a soft pleasure loving dwarf.

Update 7

Whatever Hobart did, we found ourselves transported in a flash to a sun-blasted and ruined old castle in a sweltering heat. We had jumped from one extreme uncomfortable climate to its opposite. But we hardly had a moment to ponder…

The fight was only difficult because of the utter suddeness of it. We prevailed, but Garaint was a gibbering idiot for a few minutes. Something about the effect of the Harpies’ shriek. We explored the grounds of the castle and had a few more fights against Harpies and Wyverns, the two types seemed to be battling for control of this ruin.

We found Hobart and learned we were now at a ruin in Anauroch, the Great Desert. We would have to solve the riddle of the Luremaster to escape. Swell.

If we understood correctly. Psyche is our best puzzle solver, and at least she wasn’t being broiled alive like the rest of us. But solving this is of some urgency. We have a white dragon to hunt down, and I don’t think this change in climate is doing any of us any good.

There was a tall tower at each of the castle’s four towers. In one, we fought another band of adventurers led by a Banite cleric. We also found Harpies and Wyverns had each taken a tower for a nest.

In clearing the four towers we earned four poems, that told the first part of the tragedy that struck here. Four watch knights had died defeating a dragon that attacked this castle. Their Lord, Fallon Maluradek, abandoned them from fear and cowardice. Learning this part of the story also gave us access to the crypts under the old Chapel of Helm.

That also gave us access to the main castle. Here we fought many spectral guards, who could only do their master’s bidding. We avoided harming the numerous spectral residents and courtiers.

But defeating him still did not end our entrapment. The deranged Lord had banashed the bard, the Luremaster into the castle dungeons. And when the bard continued singing the tale, he had his tongue cut out. So we would need to enter the dungeons and find the bard.

This was a lot of fighting! There were all sorts of beasts and undead in those dungeons.

The last act of this tale led us back upstairs to the throne room, where the bard himself now held court.

We did so, and were finally rewarded with a trip back to the inn in Lonelywood.

The next morning, it was back to the barbarian camp for transport to Icasaracht’s Island. There were snow and ice trolls on the island, and a single large cave guarded by two Ice Golems. Our way was obvious.

We battled more trolls and undead within.

We learned this was once the mate of Icasaracht. He’d been slain by her over some dispute about their offspring. Aparently she had “hatched” a scheme to restore her own life by possessing the bodies of her children.
If there was ever any doubt she was evil…

We put her down, and a tribe of Sahuagen that were supporting her.

And we were ported back to Kuldahar. Didn’t even get to say our goodbyes!

*****

At this point the four warriors are all about equal in their combat stats. Diomedes slightly leads, Garaint slightly lags.
Shuri has been shockingly effective. I think there are two main things that keep her ahead of Garaint in effectiveness. The first is on me, because she is the weakest of the warriors, I pass all the Strength related potions on to her. So she is often fighting with Giant Strength. Second, is the way “2-handed weapon fighting style” works. It doubles the odds of scoring a critical hit. And I don’t know exactly how the math of it works, but the inspiration for the image of Shuri scewering a harpy came from her destroying one with over 60 points from a single hit. Obviously this is more than “double damage”. Maybe triple? That’s possible. She now has an 18/00 strength (Gauntlets of Ogre Power since just before the start of this Update), Grand Mastery in spear and a +3 spear. So that’s a maximum of 20 points from a normal hit. I don’t know the mathmatical formula IE uses for extra damage on criticals, but Shuri is seeing a large number that must be over double damage (I know the formula I used in my own PnP game, this is far more often than that!)

Update 8

The first part of this covers the new Lava mod “The War of Bloom and Rot.” I will keep it brief and low spoiler. But it is a new mod, so for those who wish to remain completely spoiler free skip to the second line of asterix after the 5th render.

*****

After a night of good sleep we were ready for the next challenge. We were packing up to head back to the glacier when Psyche reminded me of the journal we had found referencing a dragon cave right nearby here, a little past the Vale of Shadows. We should probably check that out quickly first.

After falling and tumbling for a while we came to a stop in an abandoned campsite. A little poking around led us to another cave.

They had been in a War with followers of Zuggtmoy and begged our aid. Obviously this could have bearing on our surface world too. Agreeing to help was not a hard decision. We battled a number of different and exciting foes. This has been a unique and slightly mind bending adventure. I look forward to fresh air again.

After an epic clash we finally returned back to where we started, and still had to finish off the homocidal Brown Dragon.

It was very satisfying to return back to Kuldahar and get clean.

*****

Obviously I chose to go very light on the write up here. This really is new. There are a number of long drawn out melees against multiple foes, largely new types I’ve not seen before. This was fun, almost every screen was a lot of eye-opening color and wierdness. Very fun. Lava advises for difficulty it should be played after clearing the glacier. I went a little longer and did Heart of Winter and Trial of the Luremaster, so my team was a little overpowered. Only the last two battles were a little hard and that was partly because I only had long term buffs up heading into the first boss fight. I did buff more completely for the rematch with the dragon, but did not rest (so some buffs were not available to me). But yeah, next time I play I’ll likely do this a little earlier in the game.

Regardless, it is beautiful and full of new renders. And a lot of fun.

*****

The next morning we set out for Lower Dorn’s Deep.

This priest has come up several times in our investigations. We are all quite certain he is no force for good. And talking with our poor paladin friend only strengthened that impression. Poquelin seems to be right at the root of the evil we’ve been hunting.
We battled the paladin and he fell, out of the fight. But his battered suit of armor was still humming with magical energy, it seems likely he will face us again.

We cleared most of the main floor, at the far end was an old well. We could hear voices at the bottom, so we quickly decided to decend and check it out.

Leaving the oubliette we came up along a different side of this vast cavern, and saw a watch tower that seemed to be manned. As we cautiously approached, a young gname slave-girl was approaching with a basket of fruit.

We gave those slavers a good working over, they won’t be cutting out any more tongues. We had learned there was a palace not far from here, a thug named Marketh “ruled” over the slave work crews and should be in residence. We set out for the palace right away. There was a “garden” area we had to pass through first, it was inhabited by a number of unfriendly Myconids.
Then we entered the palace. It was obviously a sort of thieve’s hangout. We were attacked at every turn and from every shadow. In theory. Moya cast True Seeing after the first ambush. She assures me seeing a thief hiding in a shadow she can see right into is sort of amusing.
We entered an opulent bed chamber on the lower level, its only occupent a battered Drow woman. I called Psyche forward, again.

Her name was Ginafae and she confessed quite quickly she’d been beaten by Marketh for the crime of speaking Drow in his presence. Psyche calmly and wisely gave the woman a gentle hug, Shuri siggested she could stick her spear up his…
Gina begged for his life! What the heck. She offered information if we agreed not to kill him. We agreed, with a fair amount of grumbling. The worst of it all was that she was under a Geas cast by her brother that bound her to this place on pain of death. We will see what we can do for her.

Sadly, he surrended all his possessions and all his claims of leadership here in exchange for his life. On my word, we had to let him go. Knowing full well he would not have done the same if roles were reversed. I truly hope to meet him again in the future.

When we left the palace we loaded up as much food as we could carry and headed back to the oubliette.

The gnomes were deeply appreciative (and surprised!) when we returned with food. They pointed us towards a small, hidden gnomish settlement nearby.
Living in the shadow of so much evil, these gnomes lived a dangerous life. We talked about what the greatest threats were. We had to put down a pack of Umber Hulks just to enter the town! And a priest of their’s had been taken as a slave by Salamanders. So we would look for their Priest!

He pretty shamelessly boasted of being the arms dealer who supplied the War between the Elves of the Severed Hand and Dwarves of Dorn’s Deep… and was behind the “betrayal” that each side blamed on the other. He won’t ever do such a thing again.

The obvious thing from here was to storm the lab of Malavon, the mad mage.

He was the most plainly insane of the foes we had faced. Fortunately he was too much of a loose cannon to have any allies. WE put him down fairly easily. And we found a potion that would release Ginafae from the Geas spell. After a quick stop by the palace to release Gina we set off for a mining site where we believed a Gnomish priest was being held.
The working area was mostly Gnomish slaves over seen by Salamanders. This was a pretty straight forward sort of free the slaves mission. We did find the missing priest, and sent the bunch of them back to their settlement.

Meanwhile we explored deeper, into the old Dwarvish forge. We had to fight through many Elementals, and then Fire Giants.

As near as we could tell, the only threat remaining here was an old Temple of Ilmater, being led by Brother Poquelin? Odd to storm a temple of a good and gentle deity, but it had clearly been corrupted.

We fought our way towards one of the priests, who confessed to serving evil, which immediately freed the cursed paladin. Then we just had to battle a room full of undead. Towards the rear of this large chamber we found a sort of evil idol, which was apparently sustaining the evil here.
We destroyed it and things grew quite. The remaining undead fell to pieces. The priests were all confused. They had been badly violated, aware of their own voices and bodies serving the malevolant force. And the one name at the head of it all was Poquelin.

The priests said a magically sealed staircase at the back of the temple would lead us to the corrupt priest. We needed the seals of all of his leading minions, which we now had.

This led to a more natural sort of cave, where Poquelin held court with a number of ordinary animals. Psyche warned this was all heavy with illusion. The critters all transformed into beasts; minotaur, salamander and others. Poquelin fled in the battle, but we were able to follow through a portal.

And we were back in Easthaven. Now a shattered and ruined town.

We rendered aid where we could and offered food. The old Priest of Tempus was here, Everard advised Poquelin had been eager to get to the artifact, Jerrod’s Stone in the cellar beneath the Temple of Tempus. We took off in pursuit.

And we found the corrupt priest right where Everard said. Poquelin laughed and chortled in true villain fashion, and opened the portal of Jerrod’s Stone! Two demons stepped through into our world!
Everard entered the room behind us and leapt to the portal making his own sacrifice to seal it closed. Wow. Everard had struggled with accepting a hero had been unable to find a better way of sealing the gate than throughing himself into the breach. But now, Everard had made the same sacrifice Jerrod had so many years ago. No doubt he had been a great man.

But that still left us facing Poquelin, two demons, and two Iron Golems?

The new demon introduced himself and bragged about his coming domination and destruction of Faerun…
Honestly I wasn’t listening. We killed his demons and iron golems.

We saved him for last. Because with all his bragging and boasting he was clearly the lesser threat.

Epilogue

Peace had returned to Icewind Dale. We were all fine. And back in Easthaven.

So many had lost so much. Livelihoods had been destroyed. Every family had lost someone. And much of the local power base, or *protection* had been wiped out. We found ourselves the most powerful force remaining in the north. And after an epic couple of months we had amassed a lot of wealth.

It was an easy decision to stay and help rebuild. Restoring homes and businesses. We bought food from friends in Neverwinter and had it shipped up to avoid famine.

We had always expected to return home at some point. To return to our own friends and familiies as great heroes! But that no longer was what any of us wanted. We had made friends here, and felt their pain. So we all decided to make this our new home. We would replace the safety net they had lost.

Moya built a new Temple of Lathander at the other side of town. Garaint stayed on to lead a small group of Temple Guards.

We all did travel, explored much Faerun. But Easthaven was home. Kuldahar and Lonelywood were special in their own ways. The warmth of the north was in the friends and families we all built there.