DavesGaming

Brademante has always known she was adopted by Gorion, and she’s always known she was well loved. As he says, he *chose* to adopt her. And since it was just the two of them as family, they’ve always been very close.  In Candlekeep, the Great Library, many of the monks were like extended family. Even some regular visitors became well known to her, Brademante has always felt loved and valued by those in her orbit.
Except, there were a number of monks who were more icy towards her. She never quite understood. But a small number, who have always been around her, are still almost strangers to her after her whole lifetime. Strange?

And Gorion was a loving parent. He taught her the importance of treating others with kindness and courtesy. He taught “doing the right thing” even if it was hard, or required some sacrifice. And Brademante embraced this as her own credo.
Even when it led to some surprising life choices. Gorion had hoped she would become a mage like him. And she tried, she really did. But from a fairly young age it was clear she could not wrap her mind around some of the concepts. Not so much the easy stuff, she could get the magical ABCs things. But magical physics were another matter. She was more comfortable with morality, being an encouragement to others and even metaphysics. Which led to some expectation she would be a cleric. Gorion could understand that.

Years ago, a big event for young Brademante occurred at age 5. That’s when a new family arrived in Candlekeep. An old friend of Gorion’s, Winthrop, bought the Candlekeep Inn. He brought his adopted children, Imoen and Amyntor. Brademante was thrilled to have other kids to play with. She and Imoen teased each other, and played all around the Keep, even sneaking in where they didn’t belong sometimes! But once they were caught, Brademante was shamed by being grounded. Do you know what it is to be grounded when you already live INSIDE Candlekeep!? Oof. She loved Imoen, but she was a wild one! 

Amyntor was Imoen’s older brother. Not by much, they were all within a couple years of each other. And Amyntor and Imoen weren’t really brother and sister. He was the son of some other friends of Gorion and Winthrop. His parents had died while he was very young and Winthrop adopted him, about the same time he adopted an abandoned infant, Imoen. So they all three had that in common. But Brademante felt something different and special with Amyntor. They became much closer as they grew older. And they both dreamed of helping make Faerun right and safe. It seemed every new visitor to the Keep and Inn brought stories of scary and dangerous things in the outside world. Brademante and Amyntor talked of how they’d love to set things right. To make it so people didn’t have to be afraid.

By their mid-teens Brademante and Amyntor had hatched a plan to be Paladins together. They would be the great heroes people seemed to need! What could go wrong with such a well considered plan? 
Well, apart from mentioning they were both pretty small. At 18 Amyntor was full grown at 5’5”. And he was a fair bit bigger and stronger than Brademante.  They were both slim and graceful types. Generally athletic, but not prototypical warriors!

They were fit and strong for their size, and they were able to qualify for Paladin training, both of them. They threw themselves into it with a passion. They pushed and challenged each other. They did not finish in record time or anything, but they both plainly passed all their training and their lessons.  Gorion always tried to be supportive, although truly his daughter becoming a warrior had shocked him.

This all wouldn’t be complete without emphasizing how close the three children of Candlekeep were. Amyntor and Imoen were truly brother and sister. Brademante loved Imoen as her impish little sister.  Brademante and Amyntor loved each other in a different way.  By the time they started training together Brademante and Amyntor knew when they started their adventure together they would be husband and wife.
When she mentioned this to Gorion he grew thoughtful. He said “let’s be sure you really know all about each other first.”  But he wouldn’t be more helpful about what *that* meant. He had just recently told Brademante he was pleased with what a good pair she and Amyntor were. But there were some things they would need to talk about before they made things “official”.

Then things got kind of nuts. There were several strangers visiting Candlekeep, who were apparently asking questions about Brademante! Seriously! How did anyone even care about the little girl who grew up in the library!  Then Gorion said they would have to leave Candlekeep, today!  With her head spinning, Brademante ran off to gather supplies for a journey. Armor, weapons, what else? She had just finished her training, she should be ready for this! She told Amyntor and Imoen so they should follow along.

*****

Brademante and Amyntor are another pair of characters from my old PnP folders. They were created for a game I played in College. Actually, it was the first game I played in apart from my old gaming buddies I’d known through High School.  As it turned out, I really didn’t like the DM. So I only played for about a month, before I found a DM and players more my speed.  Which left these two at 3^rd level “forever”!
As you’ll see, they are really nothing special. I used them once as part of a Gold Box team, but neither has a strength bonus so they are really marginal in those games. And I *think* that’s the only time I’ve used them since what, 1981? It has been a while…

Brademante

Human Female LG      unkitted Paladin
12 – 16 – 13 – 14 – 14 – 18
short sword specialist, flail, weapon and shield style

Amyntor

Human Male LG     unkitted Paladin
13 – 17 – 15 – 12 – 16 – 17
long sword specialist, two-weapon style specialist

Both characters only ever adventured in 1E, as such they will be unkitted. But, I will take advantage of weapon specialization!
Neither character will be a mighty warrior, until they amass some levels and better gear. I figure they are about equally tanky (or NOT tanky!). Brademante, as Gorion’s Ward and having the better charisma will be on point.  I expect having few native bonuses, but slightly different fighting styles they will vary over the course of the game who is more effective.

Their names are from when I was on a big mythology thing. Amyntor is among the Greek kings who sailed for Troy.  I don’t recall his adventures, I’m sure I could search the Iliad and find him…
Brademante is maybe better known? In Carolingian mythology she was the “White Knight”. The only woman Paladin whose signature look involved a white shield and helmet plume (I find white a little boring, this won’t be her game look!). She has a different fate in different tales. She was either killed with most of the other Paladins at the Battle of Roncesvalles in 778 AD. Or she had left the team to marry Ruggiero (Roger) and raise kids…  (such is the way of mythology, every tragedy has a “not tragedy” version. Of course the tragedies usually became the operas or epic poems).

Update 1

Bonus update! The first part of the story unfolds.

*****

The small party traveled several hours from Candlekeep. Gorion had told Brademante they were heading for the Friendly Arm Inn. Brademante knew of this place, it was a small castle converted to an inn. About a day’s travel from Candlekeep, the majority of travelers to The Great Library had come by way of the Friendly Arm Inn.
Further, Gorion told her they would meet with two old friends of his at the inn, Khalid and Jaheira. Brademante did not know these names.

Brademante was still stewing over why this sudden flight, what was Gorion worried about? And did this relate to why she had literally spent her entire life at Candlekeep and never traveled at all before?
It also seemed a little odd that Gorion did not seem entirely pleased that Amyntor and Imoen had followed along. Did he seriously think she ever would have left without her friend and her future? No, he presumably knew that. That’s why he was only a little unhappy and had resisted saying anything.

As she pondered, Gorion had taken them clear of the road and they were now walking through thin woodlands.

“Quickly child, go back to your friends and get to the Friendly Arm Inn”
Brademante obeyed without question. She heard a booming voice command that “I only want your ward” and something stuck hard in her shoulder as she ran. Why would anyone want her?

She heard a couple of explosions behind her, and she soon ran headlong into Amyntor and Imoen. She was in a panic for a moment, not thinking straight. Her friends helped her to calm down, and she related what happened. What little she had seen. They heard another loud noise in the distance. Gorion was using powerful magic like they’d never seen before. They checked Brademante’s shoulder, it was not a deep wound. They decided to make their way back and help Gorion, but everything was quiet now. Imoen was very worried if someone was hunting them. So they moved back that way carefully, looking as best they knew how to avoid an ambush.
Brademante was encouraged by her friends. Amyntor’s steady confidence, and Imoen’s cautious alertness disquised by her bold bravado.

Retracing her steps took far longer than she had expected, they had all gotten more spread out than she would have guessed. But she could see that clearing ahead.

In time, Brademante was able to think at what was here. And she noted the large warrior was no where to be seen. Brademante looked through Gorion’s things, she found a letter advising him to leave Candlekeep promptly. And the writer seemed concerned that the one entrusted to Gorion had perhaps been too sheltered. (Obviously herself?) The writer also suggested Gorion should meet up their old friends Khalid and Jaheiera at the Friendly Arm Inn. It was signed “E”.
Helpful and mysterious all at once. At least the first course of action seemed obvious, off to the Inn.
Imoen suggested they should move out.

I’ve read such beasts rarely attack humans? Maybe it knew we were all young and dumb. No other wolves turned up, just the one. But it was a tough fight for us. It was quick and strong! It bit Amyntor very painfully. After we killed it we both exhausted our “Lay on Hands” restoring his wounds. But we can only do that once a day.

Not too much further on, the path was becoming wider and was cobbled. We met a traveler heading the other way. I struggled to remember if there were any particular courtesies for encountering someone who might be someone you’ve heard of?

The gentleman gave us directions and distance to the Friendly Arm Inn. Of course there was a marker right near the road with the same information. But I think I got directions from Elminster? Funny he didn’t give a name. But he spoke in a kind tone that was strangely calming, I felt better for the exchange.

And we were getting close to the Inn now, just a couple hours left.

The guards were friendly, just reminded us of the rule, keep your fights outside.

As we approached the entrance to the old keep, a mage in green was coming the other way. I detected evil in abundance!

He started casting a spell and we attacked to disrupt his casting. Two guards jumped in alongside us to help. And soon we all had him down. On searching his body we found a bounty notice, a reward was offered for me! By name. Obviously this wasn’t going away.

Feeling a little shaky now, I led us up the stairs into the Inn.

There was a large and busy common room filling the first floor. We saw the innkeeper had a counter, a desk across the room and we started heading that way.

“Yes?”
“Gorion is not with you? I can only assume this is not good.”

We had met Khalid and Jaheira. I felt a certain relief. Although casual conversation revealed these old friends of my father’s were off on their own first adventure. They were husband and wife, and were obviously a little older than us. Being elves, they were likely a lot older. But they were not quite what I was expecting.

We had a seat together. That was a relief and I was about ready to fall over from exhaustion. We talked a little about Gorion, and they mourned with us. We shared what all we knew and they were very concerned. They said they had received a message through friends to head here and meet with us. But there was no grand plan beyond that. They were concerned at anyone who could have slain Gorion. They must be very powerful, beyond the abilities of any of us to face. Which is certainly why Gorion sent me away when he saw them. I felt a little guilt drop away as Jaheira spoke, I could not have helped my father. I wolf almost killed the three of us!
Amyntor suggested we should stick together. Obviously five would be much stronger than three.
Jaheira agreed and said she was Druid, she could provide whatever healing we might need.
I mentioned Gorion had taught me a team always needs a mage of some sort too, we were currently short on that count. But this was a good start.
Jaheira said they had been investigating an “iron crisis”. Much recently forged metal was proving brittle. We should all carry extra weapons on that account. And they were heading south to Nashkel. A small town just over the border with Amn. But there was an iron mine there that had been producing much of the corrupt output. They meant to look into that. It might be good for us to head away from here for a while, and spend some time training and working together.
That sounded like an excellent plan to me.

The next day we set out to the south.

I hate to hope for trouble. But we need to gain some experience together before we end up in a big fight.

*****

We’ll call this the first version of the team. Obviously still missing a mage. This is an interesting crew, none of these characters are *bad*. But its not an extremely strong crew either.
Khalid and Jaheira are tied for the best physical strength, both have a 15. So not a Strength bonus in sight!
Yet every single character has a Dexterity bonus. Imoen is tops with an 18, Brademante and Khalid both have 16s. They are the *least* agile, so this is a quick sort of team.
For intelligence, Imoen is significantly the smart one with a 17. Of course she’s a little rash and cocky.
The wisest team member is Amyntor with a 16. Although Brademante and Jaheira would both qualify as wise.
Brademante leads for charm. With an 18 charisma she will take the lead in every plot or business related talk. Being Gorion’s Ward, this is also convenient from a story perspective.
It seems funny to have a crew of five with a total of *two* 18s; Imoen’s dexterity and Brademante’s charisma. On the other hand, Imoen’s Strength and Khalid’s Charisma are 9, the only scores below 10. So this is a very above average team, just not with optimal scores.

I will be making a few changes ahead, although I think four of these characters are here to the end.

Update 2

I’d been taught adventurer’s have to “look for” a certain amount of trouble. Not that fighting is ever a good thing, and it comes with a certain degree of risk. But to be effective, you need to learn. To improve your own fighting skills and the team-work within your crew. We were all on the same page about not causing any undue harm, no bullying anyone, no stealing or robbing. Some of this is what I was taught just as a paladin, we’re there to provide aid. To step into the breach where others fear to go. Amyntor and I had talked all through this, we need to take on some risk to do good and right.
Still, setting out on the road to the south felt like another big step for us. This sure wasn’t the way we ever expected to set out into the World. But we trained for this, and now the time had been chosen for us.
We had heard a couple of things as we set out towards Nashkel. First, there was ogre just south of the Inn, east of the road. He had been robbing people and stealing their belts. Odd. I felt butterflies in my stomach as we came to the crossroad, west back to Candlekeep… or south. We turned south. Then started exploring a little east of the road.

Of course I wasn’t really alone.

As soon as she ran past us she twisted around and fired an arrow towards the ogre. Dang! Immy is quick!
The rest of us formed a line of sorts to give the ogre an impossible choice on who to attack. Amyntor and Khalid went straight at him, while Jaheira and I closed from opposite flanks. I gave a shout and made my hardest slash at the monster. Has my sword always been so short?
By now we had all closed to striking range. Of course I kept an eye on the ogre’s huge spiked club, pretty sure he would crunch any of us who got struck.

All things considered he actually went down pretty quickly. We laughed a little. I think all of us were just happy to be alive at the moment. We’ve seen a few clashes now. Starting with the wolf. Then a couple hobgoblins near the Inn. And of course that nasty mage. This was plainly our biggest fight yet. It felt like a big win. We had taken down a bully and a robber who’d been preying on travelers heading south.

Not too much further we saw a small ruined caravan. A couple of overturned wagons, one burning still. Dead horses. And dead travelers.
We spread out to approach, Imoen holding back with an arrow nocked, looking for movement where there shouldn’t be any.

She moved to attack us while shouting to a couple of men in hiding to shoot us. Amyntor and Khalid rushed the hidden archers while Imoen shot at what she could see. Jaheira and I fought the bandit leader.
The presence of a couple archers made me a little nervous, but this proved to be an easier fight than the ogre.

This was an eventful first day of travel! We had arrived at Beregost, a small city almost halfway to our destination. It was not quite dusk yet, but we were all a little wired from the day’s excitement and all knew we should stop here for the night.

Well of course! She didn’t mention it was a group led by red wizards! It was actually a hunting group specifically after her.

Funny, we needed a mage anyway. I heard Jaheira groan. Yeah, I remember Gorion talking about the risks of wild magic. He considered it lazy and sloppy. Apparently some, few individuals can learn the tricks of the magic business without really understanding what they’re doing. They can accomplish amazing things. We had just seen Neera cause the leader of that hunting party vanish into thin air. But they can also make the wrong thing explode, or unexpectedly turn themselves into a squirrel.
But for now, Neera is a frightened young woman who we can protect.

We had gathered a few better quality weapons we had picked up during our travel. And Imoen had a bag of gems she’d… huh, wow she had really found a lot of gems?
Combining what we had with what we just sold, we had a couple thousand gold pieces. The most obvious thing we were still lacking was any sort of magic weapons, so we bought a few low powered things. Some arrows and sling bullets with minor enchantment. And a sling and short sword. It made me blush when everyone decided to buy the sword, that’s my weapon of choice. Of course, it was also much cheaper than the long swords Amyntor and Khalid favor. And there wasn’t a magic club for Jaheira. So I guess it was logical.

Now we’re feeling a little broke again.

Stupid, I should have done a Detect Evil on her! Bards, it didn’t occur to me a bard could be evil. She pretty much just wanted us to kill her trading partners and go home with all the loot. We told her she was crazy, we didn’t kill on command! Yeah, so we wound up having to fight an evil bard.

Not too long after this we met a frantic woman, Alanna, saying her neighbor had just turned into slime! The neighbor, Eltoth, was supposed to be giving her a botany lesson. But when she stopped by his home he was just slime.

But as near as we could tell, Eltoth had taken some sort of um, “enhancement” serum. And now he was slime. We had to track down the vender and fetch an antidote. In the end, Eltoth was restored. I’m pretty sure when we left there he wouldn’t be playing around with anymore such things.

At the south edge of town was a run down looking house. A lodger back at the Friendly Arm Inn (Unshy by name) had asked us to stop by her house and clean out a spider infestation she had fled from.

So even after arriving in Beregost our day was interesting. We got a restful night at an inn, and continued south on the road to Nashkel in the morning.

They are bigger than me, but not very skilled. Still, it was a long fight.

We also found remains of their victims, and some stashed loot.

We fought another small group of bandits after. No doubt, this route has been hazardous. That is not considered normal for this area! We’ve learned a lot about our teamwork, and have learned a lot about trusting and depending on each other.

As we entered Nashkel I saw a bundle of something wrapped and partly under a rock. There was a suit of Ankheg Plate Armor!

The guys all agreed since I was the smallest, and on point, I should wear it. I agreed only under the condition if we found a claim on this armor in town I would surrender it promptly. It is beautiful.

We were talking about how best to proceed, when we came across a confused looking warrior.

When he saw us he quickly asked for help. A group of gnolls had taken his witch! (witch?) After affirming she was not a hamster we agreed this sounded dire. Gnolls are not the sort of carnivores that would be expected to keep a captive long.

But now we had some conflicting objectives. Jaheira wanted to get to the mine, Amyntor and I thought the captured woman sounded more pressing. We stopped by an outfitter as we talked.

As we talked, it seemed Neera found all this talk of “who needed the most help” to be tiresome. Apparently she wasn’t so scared anymore, and she decided to head off on her own. I was hoping we had found a mage, but no such luck.
We also decided Khalid would stay here in town poking around about the Iron Mines, while the rest of us headed out west to track down Minsc’s “witch” Dynaheir. The trail took us almost to the Sword Coast!

Well, not so much anymore.

We returned to Nashkel at a more comfortable pace. Dynaheir was in rough shape. We learned she and Minsc were foreigners, well actually, any conversation revealed that. But she was a Wychlaran, which (!) she and Minsc had decided best translated as “witch”. But she was a mage, and he was her bodyguard. She was exploring and learning Faerun.

We asked them to accompany us, and they agreed! We had a mage.

*****

So here is the team now.

I think Khalid is essentially administrative personel. He’ll be following the crew along maintaining base camp for us. Neera, well she’s a friend. But a flake. We know we’ll cross paths again!

This will be the final form of the team through BG. I will miss having a real cleric, we’ll fix that by SoD.

Update 3

In the morning we set out to explore the area and head towards the mine. There was a carnival visiting just east of town so we made that our first stop.

I’m not sure how much threat they actually posed? But certainly an unarmed villager, or a family with kids could be at serious risk. Its dangerous to have such pests close to a gathering of people.
All told we found maybe 20 kobolds in three different groups. We cleared out the ones we could find.
The carnival itself was a fun diversion. Many venders and good food. A large gambling tent for those inclined.

There was much fun nonsense around. Playwrights, poets and artists showing their wares. They were set up for a grand joust too, but we missed it.

From here we traveled south southwest to the mines, still reconoitering the environs.

Minsc was right beside her, Imoen quickly regained her footing and we were all on the beast. Seemed a shame to have to kill such beautiful animal. But I think this has to have been the most dangerous creature we’ve seen yet, certainly the biggest and baddest wolf!

Jaheira recognized the name as being an elven queen with a forest realm to the south. The poor artist was smitten, obsessed and near collapse. Then a bounty hunter showed up to take Prism. We tried to talk patience, at least let the man finish his grand masterpiece! So we came to blows with a thug. For his trouble, we gained a fine long sword for Amyntor.

We finally found ourselves at the entrance to the Nashkell mine.

We meant to look in to both of these things. He happily agreed to letting us in.

They had wild rumors of everything from ghosts, to dragons infesting these caves. One said he’d seen “yipping demons”. Kobolds, that would fit.

We also found several of them had some sort of yellow liquid in glass vials. Was this the contaminent?

The third level down was getting a lot rougher. It looked as though the mines had broken into a sort of natural cave system. There were more kobolds, plus a Ghoul and a couple of large spiders.

I barely got my shield up in time! We defeated the ambush but all of our warriors were injured. We took a few minutes patching our hurts. It might be worth mentioning here I had an odd dream last night, that I could heal more with my touch. Like an extra use of my “Lay on Hands” power that I trained long and hard to learn. Amyntor does not have a similar “bonus”. The imagery of the dream seemed dark somehow. Very strange.
But we exhausted most of our healing before continuing. We still have some potions of healing, so we decided to continue on. Deeper.

We crossed an underground river and came to a sort of furnished area of the cave. And it was not empty.

Apparently he works for someone named “Tazok”, a name we’ve not encountered before.
It soon became clear this would end in blows. I was forced to melee with Mulahey while Dyna and Imoen backed me up with missile fire.

We actually slew the big guy pretty quickly and all of us cleared the caves soon after.

We had learned much interesting. The “iron crisis” and a general increase in local bandit activity are not coincidental. Mulahey was getting his orders from Tazok, a bandit chieftain operating somewhere north of here. And his go-between was a mage named Tranzig who had a room at Feldpost’s Inn, back in Beregost. Obviously this would demand our attention.
But first thing, we returned to Nashkel to let the Mayor know what all we had learned. He did not know what to do about the contaminent we had found. But he suggested Taerom Fuiruim, the blacksmith back in Beregost might have some thoughts. It seems all paths lead to Beregost.

On our way up towards the Nashkel Inn a man dressed in dark clothes moved towards us. He boasted he was the bounty hunter who would collect on me!

Fortunately Dyna just learned that one, so I’d at least talked with her about it. All things considered I think it was a poor tactical choice. Dyna cast Magic Missile, Imoen started firing arrows, several of the local guards fired their own arrows towards the foolish mage who had initiated hostilities in their town (!) and four of us rushed at the man! What a dope.
All of the attacks at him made it plain which of the images was actually “him” and we settled things quickly.

After a good night’s sleep we set out for Beregost in the morning. First order of business was to visit the blacksmith.

Then we walked over the Feldpost’s Inn.

One mage against a team of six is bad odds. Err, well, I don’t mean to get cocky. I know there are powerful mages who could handle all of us. We just had another brief encounter with Elminster. He is genial and friendly, and a living reminder we are not the top of the food chain.
On his body, Tranzig had a map indicating the location of Tazok’s bandit camp.

We spent the night at Feldpost’s Inn, and talked over how to proceed.

*****

Brademante is right not to get a swelled head! Minsc and Dyna just gained 3rd level during the period of this write-up. Jaheira is still 2nd level. The team has grown a great deal, but is far from “powerful”!

I tried a couple of new things with renders here. For one, I wanted to show a proper (Balearic) sling! It is funny to me how even in D&D it is sometimes depicted as a slingshot (like the D&D movie “Honor Among Thieves”). The ancient weapon “sling” is a bit different (and far more dangerous). Watch the first season of the Amazon series “House of David”, a sling as it ought to be!
But how to render? I thought of finding images on-line, to add to a render of Dyna (my only sling user). The problem still is, a sling has little distinctive “structure” to it. It is just a couple straps of leather with pouch or patch for the bullet. But the depiction of Dyna launching a bullet right at the viewer is the best result I could get. Maybe some future effort (or a smarter AI!) will yield a better result.

My second new thing was “Mirror Image”. That was fun! It actually came out quite easily. I used GPT Image (as I did for all renders here) and then said he had cast Mirror Image (which gave him “several identical copies of himself, adjacent”). That came out easier and faster than I expected.

Update 4

We had some discussion about where to head next. The next good lead we had, a bandit chieftain was somehow behind the Iron Crisis, would take us a ways to the north, closer to Baldur’s Gate. But then Amyntor said we would be better off exploring the wilderness area along Amn’s northern border to work on our teamwork and coordination… and really just our overall experience and readiness. I think we all knew he spoke truth. Raiding a bandit encampment seemed way beyond where we were at.
Jaheira spoke up to agree with Amyntor and observed much of the land around the Sword Coast, from Nashkel all the way north to Friendly Arm Inn was essentially wilderness beyond a short distance from the main road. Beautiful country. But there was a lot dangerous and unsettled. We were sure to be attacked by xvarts, gibberlings, hobgoblins, gnolls and ogres. Not to mention bandits and robbers. These were places normal people feared to tread. We could do some good as we learned.

This seemed like an easy agreement. We decided to start by searching more thoroughly along the route we had taken to rescue Dyna a few days back.

They will no longer be making that stupid threat.

Nearby we found a small boy looking for his lost dog. This was concerning, what was a child doing out here? I guess I’m quite naive, I immediately led us off in a quest for a dog. We found a dog that responded to the chew toy the child had given us. Quite a large black wolf. Well if this was the child’s dog it seemed likely he would need its protection. I was curious to see how this would go (knowing we could protect the child if the wolf was dangerous).

I believe a dryad will die if her tree is felled? We agreed to help. I tried to talk them down, but they were convinced this great tree must hide a great treasure. They attacked us thinking we would steal the treasure if they didn’t. Killing the stupid never feels as righteous as slaying evil.

When we reached the coast we traveled north a ways.

It is surprising to see ordinary folk out in this wilderness, but there were a few.

It seemed harmless, and we could pass a few coins her way for the reading. But it was odd, she looked at my palm for a moment, and gave a very accurate recital of my childhood, but then seemed to get very nervous. She said something about “not wanting any money from me” and ran off. Strange.

Fortunately I had a helmet on that protected me from such attacks, but Amyntor was briefly bewitched. That was terrifying, we all ran from him for a few minutes. It didn’t really last very long, but the fear of being skewered by my life’s partner is terrifying beyond words.
It was sad to have to fight the sirens, they made no effort to tell us what we’d done wrong. But I believe Sirens, and many of the spirit beings are often unpredictable in this way.

Our trip back towards civilization was less dramatic.

We finaly made it back to Beregost. We did some business with the many goods we had found. I feel good that we are learning and improving as we work together. A lot gained from just a few day’s travel. I’m feeling good that another trip or two like this and we’ll be ready to face bandits on their home turf.

*****

I still struggle to rate this group in some ways. We could argue Brademante is even weaker than Jill (from my mediocre run). They both have the same (lack of) combat bonuses, but as a single-class fighter Jill could get up to Grand Mastery in her weapons. Does Brademante’s marginal spell use make up for being capped at Specialization? For now I’d say no, except that Brademante is far smarter and wiser. That makes this narrative more cogent, even if its less fun in some ways!

They are all around 5th level now except Jaheira will be at 4th/4th for a while yet. Dyna will hit 5th very soon and Imoen will hit 6th soon after.

Minsc is by far the deadliest, although Brademante is very functional on point.

Imoen just got new armor! Dyna will take a huge leap with her next level, which is just around the corner…

*****

I am crazy busy this next week. I will try to have another post up by next Monday, but that is the soonest I might have something. I like this point in the team development, they are just getting more potent. But with this team a lot hinges on resource management and preparation. It pains me to have to slow down a little for a few days!

Update 5

We continued our exploring of the wilderness areas west of the main road to the Sword Coast.

We saw a large group of gnolls attacking a single traveler, and rushed to help.

Even hard pressed he was civil and polite in asking for aid.

I strongly suspect he did not need our aid to deal with a dozen gnolls. But he was gracious about receiving it nonetheless. He even helped us retrieve Dyna’s missing journal. I think I will never forget this encounter.

These were men who had lost their livelihood due to this current iron crisis. Now they fished, while taunting each other for their total ignorance of what they were doing. It is oddly encouraging to see folk making light of a less than ideal circumstance.

The next day found us traveling north, several hours west of the main road. We saw a sort of gathering at Standing Stones a little ahead.

We tried to suggest we could get him aid in nearby Beregost. He wasn’t having it, and we soon had a fight on our hands.

The only trick was keeping the cleric from casting spells. I really wish we could have gotten him some sort of help, but we had to kill him.

Nearby, we met Melicamp.

Minsc seemed most surprised that we could all talk to the chicken. After all, only he can understand Boo.
Melicamp claimed to be an apprentice of the mage Thalantyr, who has a small keep not too far from here.

And Thalantyr was not too pleased about it! He was a little annoyed at Melicamp getting into things he shouldn’t have. And I get the feeling Thalantyr is a cranky sort!
But he is an accomplished mage, and he was willing to do business with us. We sold off many items we had gathered, and purchased a number of scrolls and potions. And some magical arrows for Imoen.

These provide a fair bit of protection. Of course a mage cannot wear armor and cast spells, so fairly expensive magical protection is often in demand for them. This was a nice thing for us to be able to afford!

From here we went west all the way to the coast again. We saw a group of ogres (maybe ten?) about the same time they saw us. We must have looked like easy prey to them, they came at us hard. I drank a Potion of Giant Strength we had just bought.

Against so many ogres Jaheira stayed close to Minsc and healed him a few times.

We were all pretty sore and exhausted when we finished this fight. An itinerant cleric approached us and offered to help. He identified himself as “the Surgeon”. We asked him about himself, it seems he explores the Realms offering healing to make up for the wickedness of his brother Davaeorn. He was surely a blessing to us!

We explored back towards the road by another route, then crossed the road to the south near Nashkel, to explore the east side.

There clearly seems to be more bandit activity on the east side. We’ve battled a couple groups.

We also found a number of restless dead around some crypts.

And none of us are knowledgable enough about such things to know if this is normal. But we slew some ghouls and ghasts, more powerful sorts of undead.

And then we met a fairly bonkers mage.

We decided it was time to get a good rest at an inn and stopped for a night in Nashkel. An exciting few days, wow almost a week! Some good food and comfy beds were much appreciated.

*****

This remains a favorite part of the adventure to me. A fairly long period of exploration to build experience and treasure. Even though gaining levels has slowed way down, the crew is now better equiped and is becoming a good team.

Update 6

Game-wise, this is a much bigger update than the last couple. We covered more ground, to the end of a chapter. And significantly, every member of the party has grown. They have ALL gained levels AND some important equipment.

While the narrative will continue to focus on the story, I will try to weave in important details about how the team has improved, with an end-note to hit the major changes.

*****

We continued exploring along the east side of the main road. We were approaching the ruins of the old Ulcaster magic school. We routed out many hobgoblins. One band of them, the “Chill” seem to be wrapped up in the greater bandit problem. And of course, many others seem to be opportunistic. It seems chaos begets chaos. We have become more capable of restoring order as we go.

We decided to dig in a little deeper and see if there was anything left worth finding.

And more dangerous types like Dread Wolves and Vampiric Wolves. We did find a number of interesting books and scrolls. And a great tome, a big history of the school itself.
On leaving, I offered this to the ghost of Ulcaster. It seemed to bring him some peace? I hope.

We then traveled up to Gullykin Village, a halfling community just north of the ruined Firewine Bridge. There had apparently been much Kobold raiding in the area, this is particularly loathsome for halflings. The two groups do not care for each other. Minsc saw signs of kobold activity near one village hut. We entered to ask the owner about this, and he was pretty maniacle about his new partnership. There were steps heading down into the dark behind an old book case.

And just through an archway we heard the sound of another spellcaster invoking something dire.

But he didn’t go down. We warriors went for his bodyguards (and a host of kobold archers!) while Dyna and Imoen dueled with the mage.

When it was over, we could hear the sound of “yip! yip!” further back in the caves. When we left we told a village leader what we had found. We *think* we had slain the leadership, but there still may be a kobold colony in those tunnels. They would need to either route them out or seal it up.

Traveling out from Gullykin I happened to overhear Imoen talking to Dyna. I have no idea what brought it on, but Imoen was telling a “tale” she used to tell when we were kids… that I have a long blue and purple tail. Dyna sounded so confused! (NPC Project mod).

As we traveled on we saw an elaborate scupture gardin decaying in the woods. Jaheira and Minsc reacted immediately, warning this means basalisks are in the area. We decided the smart thing was for Dyna to cast “Protection from Petrification” and “Strength” on Amyntor.

This all left half of us helpless to intervene. But in the end, we had removed a serious menace.

Later, trouble found us again in the form of Red Wizards of Thay. When we last met some they were eager to kill poor Neera. It seems they had similar violent desire where Dyna was concerned. These guys just don’t play well with other mages. But I guess that isn’t exactly breaking news.

I’ve hardly mentioned the large number of bandits we’ve faced these last few days. Their numbers are increasing as we explore north, towards where our maps say the main bandit camp is located.

That means the fighting is getting tougher as we get nearer the camp.

And then we saw it in a clearing ahead. A number of huts, and a large number of humans and Chill hobgoblins.

Of course archers are more dangerous en masse than swordsman (mainly the ability to concentrate fire and change targets quickly). And we faced at least two leaders, an armored warrior with a warhammer and a very skilled archer with a magic long bow. This left the six of us very sore and tired!

The chieftain’s tent was mostly empty, a couple Lieutenants were no great challenge. We rescued a prisoner who advised this group was also commanding an operation in the Nashkel Mines… we told him we’d already ended that.
He also suggested they were getting orders from elsewhere. We found several scrolls from Davaeorn. The brother of the Surgeon! He had an uncorrupted mine deep in the Cloakwood forest. Well, we knew where we were heading next.

*****

A lot of what I mention here is drawn from mods. One I love and hate at the same time, Tweaks mod allows for armor and helmets being broken like weapons during the iron crisis. Armor even better, can be damaged once (reducing its effectiveness) and is destroyed by a second break. Well yeah, so here Minsc’s plate armor was damaged almost as soon as we sold Amyntor’s. After the bandit camp we bought him a nice suit of new Full Plate Armor. And that is now post-crisis armor so it won’t be prone to breakage.
The good news is, everyone now has the improved armor or magic armor (which also won’t break) except Jaheira, but we should fix that soon.
On a related note, all team weapons are magic. This is especially a big deal because of the iron crisis. Amyntor wields the two named swords Varscona and Harrower.
It does seem like I’m spending a fortune on potions! Between healing and improving various combat bonuses, this team needs all the help they can get! But I do find it fun to wring so much out of them.

Dyna will normally cast “Strength” on Brad, it gives her an 18/50 strength for 6 hours. This is still a long ways from the *strongest* team I’ve run, but with good spell use and magic items they can be effective.
I’ve mentioned Minsc as top damage dealer. I’ll add Brademante is the least effective. That may change with her getting daily “Strength” spells? But its not a huge thing, she is tanky (-6 AC is the best on the team). And I enjoy using her as the narrator and leader. Being smart, wise and charismatic she a natural as team lead.

Update 7

Jaheira knew a little about the Forest. The Cloakwood Forest is large and difficult to navigate in places. Naturally Minsc knows about life in the forest, but he’s not local enough to know much about the Cloakwood. So we would be following Jaheira’s lead. She could take us from the almost civilized woods as they come right up to the Friendly Arm Inn, to the deepest most remote extremes… or as far as we needed to go at any rate. We knew a greedy and dangerous mage named Davaeorn had established an iron mine somewhere deep within. Presumably some attempt to profit from the local iron crisis? Or maybe, hopefully, this would have something to do with who was behind the iron crisis.

We agreed to see how we could help, but I noticed Jaheira was being silent.

These were druids, they claimed our new friend was hunting beyond his needs and he had killed one of their friends. They intended to put him and his friends to death. Aldeth insisted he’d been attacked first.
Neither party detected as “evil”, I suspect there was some truth in both sets of claims. We negotiated a compromise. Seniyad and his druids would withold their death sentence, and Aldeth and his crew would decamp and head home to Baldur’s Gate.
That all went about as well as could be expected! Seniyad told us a group of “Shadow Druids” were operating more deeply into the Forest. And an old friend of Jaheira’s had disappeared while investigating them. We will be sure to see what we can find!

We found the path deeper into the Forest was not easy.

And we used a lot of anti-poison magic.
We did make it (mostly) clear of the spiders. And ran in to some of the Shadow Druids.

He apparently had a girlfriend being held for the same purpose.

Some of them were dangerous casters. In the end, we had freed both of their prisoners.

But we still had not found a working iron mine.

After more than a week of travel and fighting, we saw a small wooden fort that was set up as a mining operation.

A big guy with a mace, an archer and two mages. This was a challenging fight, especially the two warriors. Dyna and Imoen took out the two mages with Fireballs and arrows. While the rest of us fought a fierce melee, the big guy was a challenge. Amyntor and I fought him while Jaheira and Minsc went after the archer. I was able to hold the big guy’s interest by getting in his face. He seemed to regard me as a small pest, but I was far quicker. In the end, Amyntor and I wore him down.

We took some time to catch our breath, and sort through their gear.

And I claimed a pair of boots that help me run faster. Since so much of our tactics involve me closing in first to draw attacks, it makes sense for me to move the fastest. We also found several scrolls that Dyna scribed.

After a time we entered the mine. The first level was just a mine, worked mostly by slaves with a few guards.

The next layer down seemed to be more of a barracks for the many guards working this site. We encountered a few standing watch.

Worse than the guards, some of their leadership was present.

But in the end they finished up before we did against the bulk of the guards. We were all sore and tired by the end, but the good news was there weren’t so many guards left after.

Just the guy we needed to find! We directed him to start gathering the slaves to escape.

Down the next flight of steps the whole character of the facility changed. It felt like we’d stepped into a noble’s quarters. After dispatching a guard we open a door and saw a long, poorly lit corridor.
Imoen immediately saw traps.

After disarming several traps, we heard the sound of a mage casting, chanting out a spell. Imoen hit the deck.

Davaeorn was doing some sort of teleporting around (Shadow Door? Blink? I can’t keep track, Dyna knows) which had us chasing him around his lab and living quarters. We may have tripped a few other traps, and he had an apprentice cowering under a desk in the library that we ran by a couple times…

We let him be terrified for a few minutes. We learned they worked for a trade syndicate known as “The Iron Throne”. They were behind the iron crisis to drive up the price on the uncorrupted ore they were providing from here. Their orders came from the Iron Throne in Baldur’s Gate. Once we had exhausted what he seemed to know, we told him to git. We were flooding the mine.

Actually, first we searched the quarters for information, and any valuable loot.

This proved to be a long and exhausting expedition. But we now know the source of all this is in the city of Baldur’s Gate. So we head north next.
First, we will take several days to get back to the Friendly Arm Inn. Where we will spend a couple nights recuperating. It feels like a well deserved rest.

Update 8

In the morning we set out for Baldur’s Gate. We had talked this through, and I was pleased we had Jaheira with us. She was somewhat familiar with the city. Not that she was a fan. But due to recent events, and an abundance of caution, we decided today we would walk north to the city, and go past the great bridge and city gate. This way we would walk the length of it on the far side of the river, and see the size of the walls. Jaheira wanted to impress on us the size of the place. Then we would stop at the village of Ulgoth’s Beard for the night. And return to actually enter the city the next day.

I’m not sure all this was necessary? But the idea of doing a little recon before we dove in seemed reasonable.

So we followed the main road from the Inn north. This was all gentle hills and a few farms.
Then, well, we encountered our first Ankheg. I’m not sure words can really prepare you for the first time you encounter such a beast.

We learned this was Ankheg mating season, and they were highly active in this area. We battled and slew a dozen? A farmer reported his son was missing, we searched the area and found his remains in an Ankheg tunnel. I don’t know what precautions locals must learn to take? But sadly this ended poorly for this family.

Nearby we also met a group of fishermen who had a serious problem… we were led to believe.

I heard Jaheira snort at this. The goddess Umberlee has some unpleasent epithets. She is a goddess of the water and water storms. Sort of, everything dark and scary about the deeps. My initial reaction was Umberlee = bad. But you know, its always wise to proceed carefully where the gods and their clergy are concerned.
We determined the attitude of “looking into things” was the safest way to proceed.

We learned from her these men had been over-fishing, and had stolen a Summoning Bowl that belonged to her late mother. I was chilled at the thought those men wanted us to kill a child.
We returned to them and demanded they return the bowl they had stolen. We took it and I suggested they work harder at finding a way to make amends to Umberlee.
We returned the bowl to the child. I was uncertain about leaving her in a derilict house, but she was right across the river from Baldur’s Gate. We would ask when we entered the city tomorrow if anything could be done for her? Maybe at a greater temple of Umberlee?

Speaking of the City, we’ve been looking at it for the last couple hours.

As we discussed, we continued north to Ulgoth’s Beard. This was a small town, smaller even than Nashkel. But it did have one very nice inn and a high end merchant who carried a nice stock of minor magic items. We expended a *lot* of our accumlated wealth in this little town. We also picked up a few side missions. An old dwarf at the inn told us a family heirloom, the “Soultaker Dagger” was rumored to be lost in Durlag’s Tower. A great old ruin to the south of here.
We met Therella, a woman grieving her missing son. He had run off with some adventurer friends to loot Durlag’s Tower. Why do I have a feeling we’ll be ending up at the Tower at some point?
A foreigner (none of us could place his accent) named Mendes reported with excitement that a merchant had recently sighted an old shipwreck that bore the colors of Balduran’s old ship. Yeah, the guy who founded Baldur’s Gate. He has been missing almost 300 years. He desperately wanted sea charts to find that wreck and begged our help. I agreed with the stipulation we will not be *stealing* those charts from anyone!

Also a funny thing, a powerful mage, Shandalar calls this little village home. He asked us to retrieve his cloak (?). Okay? He teleported us off to a frozen rock in the middle of the ocean!
It was apparently a sort of mage trap (the reason Shandalar wouldn’t go himself?).

We had to battle through the caves, the tunnels, and defeat a number of demented mages.

We finally located the cloak, and teleported right back to Shandalar. That was an eccentric adventure.

The next day, Baldur’s Gate!

Since Elminster himself sold Boo to Minsc, does that mean Boo really is…
Elminster would neither confirm nor deny.

We soon came across a proper Temple of Lathander. Amyntor and I had promised each other something years ago. And the rush of these last weeks made it impossible to do things right. We ran right into that temple and found a priest.

*****

This update covers much less ground than the previous one did, and yet the team grew significantly in several ways. Brademante and Amyntor each made 7th level Paladin. That’s a big level for warriors, they can now land two effective attacks per round. Minsc is only a couple hundred experience away from 7th level Ranger, expect that to come very early in the next update.
Jaheira gained two levels (!), actually one in each class. So she is now a 6tth level Fighter and a 7th level Druid. A good Druid level that unlocks 4th level spells.
Dynaheir bought or found a few good 4th level spells; Emotion-Hope, Stoneskin and Vitriolic Sphere.
And Imoen made 8th level Thief.

Then there was a lot of stuff we bought. Between the merchent in Ulgoth’s Beard and Sorcerous Sundries, that’s a lot of good stuff suddenly available. I mentioned a few scrolls for Dyna, plus many potions and a lot of ammunition. Bigger items being the Cloak of Displacement (for Brad) and the Greenstone Amulet (for Amyntor).

Expect it will be a few days before I post again, maybe I’ll be done with the whole City by then?

Update 9

Oh I skipped a little detail last time, at the main gate to the city we were introduced to Scar. He is second in command of the Flaming Fist, the professional military and guard force for Baldur’s Gate.

We told him what all we had learned, and that apparently the Iron Throne was behind the trouble. He was concerned if not surprised by this news. They are a wealthy and multi-national trade consortium. He would do some investigating on his end, and asked if in the meantime, we would look into the smaller (and local) Seven Suns trade group. It was co-owned by a friend of his, but they had made a number of odd business decisions recently.

*****

As I mentioned before, Amyntor and I fulfilled a long ago promise to each other almost first thing in town. After this, we set up a base of operations at the Three Kegs Inn, a nicer and larger sort of establishment near the center of town. We decided we would spend some time relaxing, and exploring the city at our leisure for a few days. We eventually spent three nights at the Inn. That time will always be special to me.

*****

We spent a lot of time sorting through our inventory and theirs to figure what we could sell and what we needed to have. I feel like this stop boosted our capabilities by a lot.

Interesting.

We did that and Lothander was good to his word. He then told us how to find Marek, and his half of the antidote.

Crisis averted.

Yeah, we found Ragefast and Abela. It was actually a sad story, the old mage was smitten with the fair nymph. But Abela was wasting away in the city. We persuaded him of the error of his ways. Gently this time! He was heartbroken to see the truth. But he did, and he let Abela go.
We used a more forceful sort of persuasion on Ramazith. He won’t be harvesting Abela or any other nymphs.

We explored the city at a relaxed pace, mostly. There were other brief moments of drama and peril. Only one other event rose to a BIG issue.

Of course we would help!

This led us around town, ultimately into the sewers.

But most importantly, it led into a deeper layer of trouble.

That ancient god of Rot and Decay may be dead in the Realms, but his followers are always looking to bring him back. And destroying books and learning is right up their alley.

This all opened the way to an even darker threat.

We saw the threat, and had some limited defenses against them. A single scroll of “Chaotic Commands” and a Greenstone Amulet. That could protect two of us from the sort of telepathic assault that comes from illithids. Since Amyntor and I were on point, we received the protection.
We found a gathering of three illithids and a few ogre thralls.

But we fought fiercely and slew the monsters before permanent damage was done. This area was being set up as part of some conspiracy involving an Elder Brain. There’s always conspiracies where illithids are concerned. For now we shut it all down. And prevented any more books from being destroyed! I never felt more like a child of Candlekeep.

We needed a quiet night te rest up from all this! In the morning we set out for the Seven Suns.

The building had been over run by dopplegangers. We slew many, and found Scar’s friend in chains in the basement.
We reported this to Scar at the Flaming Fist garrison. He was shocked at such trouble in the city, but was pleased we’d dealt with it. He asked us to look into a couple of high profile citizen disappearences.
This again, led us into the sewers.

Obviously not as big a thing as the illithids! But it could still be trouble for the unwary.

When we reported back to Scar this time, he said he agreed with us that the Iron Throne was up to no good. But he needed proof, and suggested we head over there and look into it.

Exploring into the building things calmed a little, but there was obviously unrest here. Some sort of meeting was taking place upstairs.
We found a group of thugs who attacked us.

Obviously not much of a business approach. But apparently the actual leaders were away for a real meeting… at Candlekeep.

Looks like we’re going home.

Update 10

I had really mixed feelings about returning to Candlekeep. Until three months ago it was my only home, the only *place* I’d ever known. Now, I don’t think it would ever be home without Gorion. Handing over the cost of admission, the book given us by Duke Eltan, sort of put an exclamation point on the whole thing. Its not home if they charge me to enter.
Much of my unease settled as soon as we entered.

I didn’t say much more than it was good to see her again, and she seemed to remember all at once how long I’d been gone. And that Gorion would not be returning. And she was crying worse than I.

The Candlekeep Inn alone made the whole visit a good thing. Winthrop treated us to quite a feast, he was thrilled to meet our new friends. When I told him Amyntor and I finally got hitched, he grinned ear to ear, and grasped us both in a huge hug.
It was a long trek back to Candlekeep, the Inn felt like we’d come home. For tonight we were all laughing and having a grand time.

In the morning, we set out for the keep itself. The library. It started on an interesting note.

Up a couple of floors we found some of what we came for.

He was here with his staff, the other leaders; plus those of uh, some other trade group. They all seemed ready to just attack us on sight. But I’m not sure how that would serve our interest? So we exchanged unpleasentries, and didn’t seem to get anywhere. We still have no proof of the Iron Throne being up to anything criminal.
I’m thinking we should ask around more and see what might be going on here. One frightening tidbit, we’ve encountered and slain a couple of dopplegangers here. And a man named Koveras, unknown to me, was very eager to chat about nothing. He detected as evil. I mean, so do a lot of people. That doesn’t mean he’s dangerous. But its a little odd just now to encounter an apparently psychotic scholar using the library.

It occured to me, while we were here it might be interesting to learn anything about our dramatic flight a few months back. We chatted with a few monks and librarians I’d known.
A dear old friend, Piato, said Gorion had left some things behind for me in his room. Well that was unexpected. What would he have left that he chose not to take along that fateful afternoon? Going into Gorion’s simple room was haunting. There were some minor baubles, some gemstones and some spare change. I suppose those were all mine now. Then I found the scroll. It was addressed to me in my father’s hand. Gorion had really never said much about my actual parents, apart from mentioning he’d known my mom. I wish I’d never found that scroll.

As I came back to my senses…

I tried to get a conversation going.
“So what does this actually change?”
Apparently nothing for the six of us.
“What have we learned so far?”
Rieltar is a jerk, but we still can’t pin anything on him. Some, few dopplegangers are here at Candlekeep.
The only “plan” I could come up with right off, was to talk to Tethtoril. He’s the head monk, the leader of Candlekeep. He was a friend to Gorion and always kind to me. Maybe he will know something, or know who does?

Well it turned out, during the time of my dramatic discovery, someone had slain the Iron Throne leaders in their conference room.
Guess who was blamed?

Candlekeep’s chief librarian, Ulraunt stopped by. He was never a friend to me. More than once I’d heard him and my father exchange words about my “disruptive influence” among the monks. He is convinced this was inevitable given my heritage. Swell. I’ve known my heritage for barely an hour, and apparently some have hated me my whole life for it. He did say that “Koveras” had seen me fleeing the scene of the crime. I’ve got five witnesses that I was in my father’s old room crying my eyes out at the time, but nevermind…
Shortly after Ulraunt left, Tethtoril stopped by to see us. Tethtoril would be Ulraunt’s boss, and he IS a good friend to me and my father. That is my REAL father Gorion, not my sire. But I’ve always known Gorion was not that. Tethtoril apologized for the bars. I asked him if he knew the name “Koveras”. He said no, but it was Sarevok in reverse. Sarevok had studied here before.
That was alarming, we’d heard that name before. When we visited the Iron Throne headquarters in Baldur’s Gate we had heard he was trying to take over the organization.
Tethtoril observed that was an unlikely coinicidence. Officially, we were to be held until Flaming Fists could arrive to transport me back to the city for trial. But he mentioned there were catecombs beneath this building. He could teleport us there, and we could make our way out.
“Do be careful Brad. You have some powerful enemies. But there are many who love you too, you will be in our prayers.”

The catecombs were not an easy way out. And we quickly learned this was where the dopplegangers had infiltrated.

There were no dopplegangers left when we finished. But there was a mercenary group guarding the exit.

That worked. Spellcasters tend to be more fragile sorts, and both of them were already wounded. So I gambled we were all still more whole than they were. There are multiple meanings for “friendly fire!”

We were all pretty quiet as we walked back to the Friendly Arm Inn.

We all talked about where things now stood. Sarevok had framed us for killing his own bosses (actually we learned Rieltar was his father, so add “patricide” to his crimes). We would be wanted criminals in Baldur’s Gate. Saravok was now in charge of the Iron Throne, and apparently was soon to be a new Duke of Baldur’s Gate.
At some point we would need to address that. But we all agreed, for now things were just too hot. We had something we could do, that would keep us away from the city, possibly for quite some time. An old dwarf wanted us to find a missing dagger at the ruin of Durlag’s Tower.

We’ll head out in the morning.

*****

An emotionally charged chapter for much of the party, especially hard on Gorion’s Ward. But its a short one in terms of elapsed time and combat. So only two levels were gained, Jaheira hit 8th level Druid almost first thing. And then Jaheira again, hit 7th level Fighter in that last big battle.

I made a funny, stupid mistake when I started doing renders this time. I must have accidently selected the “Nano Banana Pro” renderer instead of my prefered “GPT Image 1.5”. I was soon pulling my hair out in frustration. Everything was looking overly bright and vivid, images were poorly composed, and many looked more like paintings than photos. Its funny it took me so long to figure it out! Seriously, Nano Banana Pro *costs* almost twice as much as GPT Image. And it is simply NOT a good choice for photographic style. Honestly it looks childish to me, but perhaps it works well for something I’m NOT doing?
For your viewing pleasure, the first two images in this post are from that first half hour or so. They are noticably brighter than what I prefer, but otherwise looked okay. Maybe suitable for the brighter early mood of this chapter.

Update 11

We had no idea when we set out for Durlag’s Tower it would prove to be such a huge thing. Honestly, searching a great old ruin for a dagger seemed a little silly. It proved to be a good thing we did it.

The ruins are over a day’s travel from any town. When we arrived it was a grey drizzly sort of afternoon. The ruin seemed almost inviting.

In the end, the clan was destroyed. The tower stands haunted and trapped. Neither is hyperbole. We entered the ground floor, a small tour group was forming up.

Minsc has to be a fun audience for Ike. Imoen maybe less so?
We learned this “tour” would only cover the ground floor and one above it. There were two more floors above that Ike did not reckon were “safe”. Plus a cellar, and hidden floors below that… all “not safe”.

Later, I was chatting with Ike about the need for specific rune stones to get past many doorways.
When a demon knight teleported in amongst us. He was not amused by tours of his home. He started casting and I yelled for everyone to take cover.

I told the survivors to leave or STAY PUT. While we set out to explore the ancient tower. We came here to find a dagger, and no psychotic demon will stand in our way! Silly, right?

From the center of the tower there were stairs heading up and down. We decided to work our way up first, then if need be, we would head down. The first couple floors were mostly deserted. We encountered a thief poking around, looking at old chests that might need opening.

On the next floor we encountered an old mage, he seemed to think I was Durlag?

We battled with his shade… or ghost? Something.

The top floor seemed cleaner? More lived in. I heard a woman humming and the splashing of water. I directed the men and Dyna to stay put! While Jaheira, Imoen and I took a look.

She was furious at being discovered by *women*. We fought, she lost. Unfortunately, I think slaying the demon freed her of this imprisonment.

A couple of tricky fights, but that seemed to have cleared the upper levels. We had little choice now but to head down. At first it seemed downstairs was just a celler. There were some undead, ghasts. Nothing we haven’t fought before. After destroying the undead we found a thief hiding among some old crates. By his age and gear he looked veteren enough, but he was rattled, shaking.

He said there were traps all over, like the traps were trapped. And the tower is not dead, there is life or unlife all over.
We learned some of his friends still lived down below. But not for long. He was sure they would all be dead soon. I asked if Dalton from Ulgoth’s Beard was among them, he said yes. Maybe if we hurry his mother will no longer mourn.

It is hard to explain what all we found as we explored deeper. But Durlag’s Tower was just the top of a residential community, dug into the ground as Dwarves do. The next two floors in particular looked finished, civilized. But there were indeed traps at every turn. Imoen worked harder than any of us. There were also a few fights. Dopplegangers again, impersonating Durlag’s late family. And large spiders. Undead.
In dining halls and libraries, bedrooms, storerooms.

In one bedroom was a real boon to us.

As I’m still on point it was agreed I would wear it. I passed the Ankheg plate armor to Jaheira. We also found a highly enchanted sling, that Dyna would use.

Moving on to lower levels required solving puzzle traps, this was a whole team effort. More than just the mechanical traps Imoen excells at removing.

The next sub-level down was more unusual. We couldn’t even be sure what it might have once been meant for. But to us, it was more traps and more fighting.

By the next level down it seemed we were reaching an end of some sort.

My guess is no. But such spirits are weird, and this place is very weird.
We fought a lot more undead. Parts of this level we covered in acidic slime. And we needed to answer riddles about Durlag’s family tragedy here. Finally, we came to the evil at the heart of this place.

We slew the fiend. We found the lost Dalton and one other member of his expedition still alive and hiding out down here. We also found the demon knight had the Soultaker dagger we had set out to find.

We left this haunted place, happy to see the sun as we got clear. We stopped by the Friendly Arm Inn before heading up to Ulgoth’s Beard, and enjoyed a night to rest up. It was about a full day’s travel up to Ulgoth’s Beard from here. We would be happy to return that cursed dagger.

I had just taken out the dagger out when we were attacked. One of the attackers swiped the dagger from my hands and teleported away. A half dozen of them remained behind and kept us busy for a few minutes.

We rushed over to the inn where Hurgon Stoneblade was staying. We reported what had just happened, he said the dagger held an imprisoned demon. We needed to find it before he could be freed.
As we discussed what to do we walked over to Dalton’s mother’s house to let her know her son still lived. We delivered the news, and noticed a nearby house had a posted guard, wearing the same colors as those that attacked us. Well that was easy…

Except it wasn’t. We had to battle a number of cultists just to enter the large home, and another large number of them inside. Then we could hear a dark summoning ritual of some sort coming from the basement.

We were just too late, the fiend was out.

But our teamwork was effective. We were always able to cover when one of us needed to pull back. And we wore the fiend down. Finally, all was quiet.

We dragged ourselves back over to the inn.

---

*****

That last big fight in Ulgoth’s Beard is one I’ve long considered the most difficult in the game. For the level the team is at, it may be the hardest fight in any IE game. So I always count it as a big win getting past it. Bonus, this team won it on their first try.

I feel good about where this team is currently at. Very effective.

Durlag’s Tower brought the last levels for the main campaign. Brademante and Amyntor are now 8th Level Paladins. Minsc is an 8th level Ranger. Jaheira is a 7th level Fighter and 9th level Druid. Dyna is a 9th level Mage and Imoen is a 10th level Thief.
They are now solidly a mid-level team with good equipment. Very effective as a local power. Now they will have to prove it.

New armor is always a funny thing to me, the way it is abstracted to one degree or another in most CRPGs. In PnP, as a DM I always ruled that within some broad categories armor could be traded between individuals with a trip to an armorer to make adjustments. The broad categories were about SIZE. So generally armor was listed by race, gender and strength. Then could be modified cheaply if you matched all three, or more expensively the farther you strayed.
But magic armor was different. It could generally size itself to fit individuals who were already similar sized, but would also need help if they were further apart.
Eh, to me it made the world feel more real.
I’ve never seen a computer game fuss with any of this.

Update 12

After resting up from yesturday’s big battles, we headed over to see our friend Mendes.

We took the radical approach of talking to the Merchant League about their findings and their charts. They agreed, in spite of our ethical concerns about Mendes, that they would also like to know what’s on that island and encouraged us to take the commission and check it out. I strongly suspect they expected it to be a costly and risky undertaking, and were less concerned about *our* safety. Hey, its what we do.

And as it turned out, Mendes had a small chartered cog ready to take us to the island.

We were told the trip would be long, several weeks each way. Khalid had warned us we were still considered *hot* in Baldur’s Gate, so the idea of disappearing for over a month was appealing.
As it turned out, I didn’t get seasickness! Hah! Amyntor did! And Imoen. But we all adjusted. Until we neared our destination.

We were about near the right location, when the boat started to come apart.

We all made it ashore in various states.

All our gear needed some cleaning. We did too, but that was lower priority.

When the storm passed we decided to head up the coast and see what there was to see.

Looked like maybe a castaway fishing village?
The people were a little odd. Surely they didn’t get many outsiders. Although we did meet one other shipwrecked sailer who’d been here many years.

We agreed to check this out, after a rest!
We spent a little time talking to villagers. They still had an oddly detached manner. We tried to befriend them by offering our help. They were very skeptical we could do much to fix anything. Although we did build quite a list of missing things they needed recovered, starting with a baby boy! Add in a sacred cloak (?), a toy doll, a fisherman’s body.
They have apparently grown used to not venturing out, at all.
Amyntor and I had noticed a greater than expected amount of evil among these villagers. Certainly not all, not even most. But quite a few of the older adults, like the leader and her soldiers. And not strongly evil like the demon we just fought! Maybe it was just more of a “me first” sort of survivalism? Whatever it was, we were wary of what we had found ourselves in.

In the morning we set out.

We avoided a small group of black bears, and fought a pack of wolves. Then we found a Sirine who had the body of the missing fisherman. She said he had tried to force himself on her. I sure wasn’t going to argue with that! But we begged the return of his body, and it was granted.

Minsc and Jaheira were sure that meant werewolves of some sort.

We fought several groups of werewolves on the island. They were not a major threat to us. Jaheira mentioned some elder or greater types might be impervious to most of our weapons, perhaps only Amyntor’s Flame Tongue (and some of Dyna’s spells) could hurt the big, bad wolves.
We came across a small rustic cabin. It was inhabited by an old elven mage. His name was Dradeel and he’d been shipwrecked here for hundreds of years. He was on Balduran’s crew. He seemed to teeter on the brink of madness. But he was not evil. He warned the wolves were everywhere. Their home was the old ruin of Balduran’s ship. He offered us an amulet that would help us in fighting “bad doggies”, and a dagger that was uniquely capable against the most dangerous sorts. In exchange, he wanted his spell book, which should be locked up near the ship’s main cabin.

We drank potions, and Dyna cast some preparitory spells. This looked to be some intense, close quarters fighting.
We entered through a large breach in the hull. We were immediately set upon by a werewolf leading a large pack of wolves.

It smelled like a kennel. And we could hear the shuffling of more feet and paws, and growls. More lay ahead. We would need to clear each deck, and expected to be met at every hatch or ladder.

That is not to their best strength! But we have learned how to protect each other. And apart from a few scary moments this all went pretty well.

This whole crew was intensly evil. Casting Detect Evil caused a painful flare, like a headache. There was no doubt how this would end. I would be fighting with the dagger Dradeel had given us, it was our only weapon apart from one of Amyntor’s swords that was sure to work here.
They still had a half dozen werewolves with them, so we had our hands full for a time.

But not as long as you might think. They were unused to fighting well-equiped and well trained opponents. Minsc and Jaheira tore into the pack, while the rest of us targeted the leaders.
In the end, we had found all the missing items the villagers wanted. Including a baby boy and Dradeel’s spell book. We quickly returned the book, and left Dradeel to relearn his Teleport spell.
Then we set out for the village. Jaheira said she could tell, we’d all been infected with lycanthropy. That had likely been the village leader’s goal all along. She offered that the cure was simple, we would have to kill the top of the bloodline within a month. Kaishas? This would all explain much of the odd vibe we got from the village. But they were not all as irredeemably evil as this northern pack had been.
So we need to assume our escape from this island cannot include the villagers. Sad. Only a few of them deserve to be trapped, but it would not be good to mix them with a general population.
Our first order of business was to return all the missing items, especially the baby boy!

Then we owed Kaishas a courtesy call.

Yeah, Jaheira was POed. Kaishas fled. We pursued her to a hidden cove, with a small boat ready for a trip.

But Jaheira thought the taint in our blood was still there. Dyna suggested the scholar Mendes had the same accent as the islanders. Well that made a lot of sense! We were likely meant to facilitate getting his pack off the island. We would need to have a long talk with Mendes.

He was most upset, we had killed his wife.
Killing Mendes did cure us of the taint.

We knew we had some tough problems to deal with next. But for tonight, we all felt glad to be together, and alive.

*****

I always like the Balduran’s Island quest. I know its not broadly well regarded. But for me, its usually the last thing I do before the end game chapter. Which means a party at the peak of its power. And the arogant werewolves are not remotely up to their boasts (“he will eat the marrow from your bones…”). They fall quickly.
These fights CAN be very difficult if you proceed to the island too early in the game. Or if you’ve failed to keep any weapons that can actually hurt the Greater Wolfweres. Although even then, the dagger is available *right outside* of the shipwreck. Brad was not even proficient in dagger, but between the Gauntlets of Ogre Power, the plus of the dagger, and a few other prep spells; she was able to inflict A LOT of damage. Between her and Amyntor (only his Flame Tongue sword could hurt the beast) they shredded the mighty Karoug, and Kaishas, and Mendes quite quickly.
It amuses me how often I’ve seen this fight considered too hard or unfair in some way. You literally know you’re facing lycanthropes well in advance.

The next update will take us to the end of the base game of BG1. I will likely do two posts for SoD, then on to BG2!

Update 13

After our return from Balduran’s Island we knew the time had come for a return to the city. Khalid suggested we were still considered wanted criminals.

I figured that meant we had to do something now. Imoen suggested we had a bunch of Potions of Invisibility. We could get into the city unnoticed, and decide on a course of action from there.

I offered my deep thanks to Khalid for keeping us in the loop, and the rest of us set out. We actually had a lot of Invisibility available. Apart from a dozen potions, Imoen had her own Ring of Invisibility. Dyna even had a couple versions of the spell, but I suggested she stay loaded for bear. Because I think we’d soon be poking one…

We all went invisible as we approached the bridge entrance to the city. We heard a lot of the buzz on the streets, Sarevok would indeed be a Duke soon. Our friend Scar with the Flaming Fist had been slain. And Duke Eltan poisoned, currently in the care of a healer at the Flaming Fist garrison.
Then, as we walked by Sorcerous Sundries, I saw a familar face. Someone who had been present when my father was cut down. We all agreed I would need to go visible to have a chat with her. I took an extra Potion of Invisibility with me and carefully looked around to make sure no one was paying particular attention.

She said she feared Sarevok was on a path to destruction. And she would help us because she was sure we could help her. Sarevok would be crowned as a Duke this afternoon. But first thing, Duke Eltan was in the care of a doppleganger who would kill him. We needed to stop that.

I downed another potion of Invisibility and we set off for the garrison.

I faced him alone as I figured we would need to go invisible together again. The doppleganger was not much of a threat. The hardest trick was keeping the fight *private*, a Flaming Fist guard was posted outside the Duke’s room!
That done, I checked on the Duke. He was very pleased to see me (and I was pleased he was pleased! At least someone didn’t think I was homocidal). He wanted to get to a friend of his, the harbor master had an office just a little to the east of here. He would help him to really get better.
Thanks to the Gauntlets of Ogre Power I’m wearing I was able to lift the Duke easily. Then I drank another Invisibility Potion and we both disappeared.
We ran into Tamoko again on our way to drop off Duke Eltan. She reported another associate of Sarevok named Cythandria had orders for the various assassins, and all the incriminating evidence we could ever want against Sarevok. Cythandria could be found on the top floor of the Iron Throne headquarters. She also revealed, she had been Sarevok’s lover. She still loved him, and asked if possible, that we spare his life.
That was a big ask! I promised we would try if there was any possibility.

We dropped Duke Eltan by the Harbor Master’s office, and then over to the Iron Throne headquarters. Up on the top floor we met a furiously angry woman mage. She recognized us at once and demanded how we knew where she would be. She answered her own question, Tamoko.

Fortunately we had her overwhelmed. We warriors took care of the ogres while Imoen and Dyna took care of the mage.
Tamoko was not kidding, we had found the motherlode of incriminating evidence. Plus a helpful note, two assassins had been hired to kill Duke Belt and Duke Jannath. They had been given invitations to the coronation to do so. Helpfully, we also found a reference that they were held up in the Underceller.
We’d heard of this place, and knew it was under the Blushing Mermaid Inn. And we knew from our previous explorations, how to get there from here *via the sewers*. There should be no Flaming Fist patrols down there!

They were a husband and wife team, he came at us with a sword as she started casting spells. Actually, they put up a better fight than the previous one. But lost all the same.

At this point, we hardly needed more. From upstairs of the Blushing Mermaid we could see the Ducal Palace. No patrols were evident, apparently all security was now around the event itself. So this time, Imoen and Amyntor stayed visible while the rest of us followed closely behind.

Once past the guards we dropped our charade. Dyna quickly cast a couple buffing spells she had for us. And I walked right up to Liia Jannath to introduce myself. Just then, several dopplegangers revealed themselves among the guests! We joined with the guards to put them down.

His answer was to attack us. Typical.

We had obviously ruined whatever his plans were for now. He teleported out of the room. Duke Jannath divined he had fled to the Thieves Guild, and she teleported me and my crew to pursue.

The thieves were in an uproar. “Big armored guy, where’d he go?!” About six people pointed downstairs. We were off.

Right into a maze. Presumably some sort of thieving training ground. It was all narrow hallways. And traps. The going would be slow, but there was no other way. There were also some slimes and oozes to fight. Never my favorite thing! Down one long hall, we could make out some sort of guards in the distance? But Imoen quickly noted the path to them was trapped.

When she finished, she crept back to us. And we all made a very visible, and much louder approach! There were a total of four such guards in this maze. That we saw. And destroyed.

Finally, the maze opened out into a cavernous ruin. An ancient undercity. Or at least the cemetary. We saw a Temple of Bhaal ahead, that seemed the logical place to go.

She sadly said she had lost. And she would not let us harm Sarevok. I begged her not to throw her life away. If she fought us she would surely loose. She admitted Sarevok had become a monster. But she could not live with that, and she could not live with him knowing she had betrayed him.
So we fought. It broke my heart to kill her. She retained something noble at her core, even if it was all twisted up by her misplaced loyalties and affection.

We entered the unholy temple. Sarevok stood at the front. With some, few of his lieutenants. We briefly talked. I had thought his goal was to restore my dead sire. I was mistaken in a few things. First, Sarevok was no mere acolyte or worshipper of the dead power. He was offspring like me. Ugh. He was my half-brother. And he was truly deserving of the name bastard.
Second, he did not wish to revive Bhaal, but to usurp his power. To become the new Lord of Murder. Oh man I need to talk to a cleric about this stuff! But I *think*, he can’t do that as long as I live? That may be why he wanted to kill me months ago. And that was why he attacked me now. And why he would not stop until one of us was dead.

He outran his support and came at me fast. That gave us an opportunity, for all six of us to concentrate our power against HIM before his support arrived.

We hurt him seriously before his mage arrived to started casting at us. I ran my brother right through the chest, the heart, as a Fireball exploded in our midst.
His crew was pretty dangerous, but there was little doubt how this would end almost from the first exchange where Sarevok went down. All four of us warriors were injured, Jaheira and Minsc seriously. But we won the day. Sarevok had been destroyed.

*****

A good run, a powerful team built from another mediocre main character. To me, its a lot of fun that way.

This update also marks the debut of GPT Image 2.0 for me. Also a whole new sort of workspace from OpenArt. It seems to have pretty good potential. I’m sure I’ll learn a lot more in the next months. As things are now going I expect more rapid changes ahead. But Image 2.0 seems to do everything Image 1.5 did, better. The ability to blend existing images and create a new action, or background is amazing. This really makes things I was playing around with just a couple years ago look silly. And this is why this Brademante and Amyntor run will be, by far, my longest illustrated write-up to date. It is just so much fun!

I should have my first SoD post up in a few days. I am not currently sure how many chapters that may be.

Update 14

The Dukes were deeply appreciative of us stopping Sarevok before he gained real power within the city. They dubbed me “The Hero of Baldur’s Gate”. It is funny how these things go. I mentioned a few times it was a whole team effort, I would have gotten nowhere without support, Minsc and Jaheira suffered the worst injuries in the final confrontation… To no avail. I was told a hero was needed. As the face of the team, it would be me. I have heard before this is how recognition often works for armies and such groups. As the smallest member of the team I find it all too much. But I do appreciate being in the good graces of the ruling Dukes.

Although Duke’s Eltan and Belt would also be counted among our friends.
Duke Silvershield is tougher to figure. He is polite and “correct”, but I get the feeling he does not like me. We’ve had a few minor dealings with him, we had previously delivered the unpleasent news to his home that we’d found evidence of his only son being slain by bandits. And we’ve met his daughter Skie a couple times, she seems bored and spoiled. I think overprotected? In need of a purpose in life? But its not my place to say anything.

Duke Jannath told me privately that Imoen is gifted, and she has learned a great deal from our friend Dyna. But she has a few misconceptions she needs to get around. Liia is sure she can help Imoen get where she needs to be, with time and study. She thinks our time adventuring had too much built in distraction for Imoen to learn clearly.

While Imoen and the Duke (amusing that in Baldur’s Gate they don’t use the feminine of the title? I find that a little offensive!) are working on studies, we learned a follower of Sarevok was still held up in a part of the catecombs. Her name was Korlasz, and she was building a new “army”. So far, apparently just a small gang for unknown purpose. But Duke Eltan suggested my team was better suited than his Flaming Fists to routing out trouble makers like this.
I was happy to have something to do. He would send along a squad of soldiers to make things all “official”. But Imoen was officially *not* working as a scout for us. *No Distractions* Duke Liia proclaimed!

It was good we accepted Safana’s aid, exploring into an abandoned tomb chasing an outlaw gang led by a mage. We fought a lot of undead, a few groups of mercenaries in Korlasz’ employ.

Seriously though, I want to get that woman a nice heavy coat.

I’m really regretting that the art of Backstab was not a part of the Paladin curriculum. Although I’m pretty sure I can take her without it.

Dyna launched a Fireball into her backfield while the rest of us hit Korlasz herself, she actually yielded quickly. I was much relieved, this all involved a lot less bloodshed than most such adventures.

A distraction for an afternoon was nice, but It was nice to be done. I told Imoen it was not the same without her, I don’t want to do that again.
Back to the palace to continue with our earned rest.
It is also worth mentioning a number of refugees have been pouring into Baldur’s Gate. A crusade of sorts is forming to the north of here. Led by a warrior named Caelar Argent, known as “The Shining Lady”. She is drawing many allies to her cause, whatever it is? It is causing much upheaval and destruction, which had led to the influx of displaced people. It is starting to strain the systems and infrastructure of this great city.

We’ve actually shared a few laughs. I still think her core values most involve women’s fashion. But she told me an interesting secret, she has joined the Army. The Flaming Fists. Huh. The vapid young woman joined the army at a time of crisis, and is likely to be sent out soon. And she’s in a better mood because of it. There may be more to her than I thought. And we are NOT to tell her father. Oh this could be funny.

We have been at the Ducal Palace for almost a month. Amyntor and I have much enjoyed some time to ourselves. Imoen continues to study and learn. Jaheira and Khalid went off to get some time to themselves, I don’t think either of them enjoyed down time at the Palace! And Dyna says her exploration of these lands must continue, so she and Minsc took their leave to plan their next adventure.
Its starting to feel a little lonely around here.

Until one night, Imoen came into our room and said she’d heard some noises. Like footsteps in the hallway?

There were three attackers, we slew them quickly while yelling for help. Soon Duke Jannath came up the stairs, I begged her help for Imoen. We heard sounds of more fighting downstairs now.

We restored calm soon enough. They wore markings of Caelar’s Crusade. We were mostly lucky on casualties, only one person was seriously hurt.

They pretty quickly had her stable. The worst of it was cured. But it would take time for the poison to be clear out of her system. For now she would remain unconscious.

Oh yeah, we’re going. But for now my team is my husband and I. I asked if anyone knew where all my crew was. Minsc and Dynaheir were still in town at the Three Kegs Inn. Corwin said Safana was at the Elfsong Tavern. No one else I really knew was around.
Minsc and Dyna would be a huge help. Safana would not be my choice for a scout, and we would need to replace Jaheira, our healer.

The number of refugees around the city was painfully obvious now. A lot of people, but we weren’t sure how to find what we needed. The crowd at Three Kegs didn’t seem to present any good candidates. Dyna suggested we head to Sorcerous Sundries and Elfsong, both are right next to each other and are known adventuring hang outs. I bit my tongue about Safana, I sure hope a better option presents itself.

Elfsong was very crowded. At least the ground floor was. I saw Safana to one side, but I also noticed among one group of refugees a woman wearing the symbol of Tymora. The Goddess of Good Fortune.

I offered to help get them funded for some help, but told her of our need for a cleric to head out against the Crusade. She eagerly volunteered that she was a Cleric of Tymora, and would love to join us. Terrific! Any chance she knew a trustworthy scout? Erato said she had done scouting for the guard back home. Perfect! We were set.

Erato was exhausted, and out of all resources and supplies. We got equipment for her at Sorcerous Sundries, then back to the Palace to get a good night’s sleep before we head out in the morning.

She also had a pleasent nature and was an eager helper. This could not have worked out better.
I stopped by Imoen’s room to see how she was doing.

I love my sister and I love her spirit. But I told her please no. I want her to study and learn from Liia. I want her to rejoin us as a mage.
Now I was a bit alarmed to find we were being spied on by a mage hiding back in the shadows. He came forward at this point, apparently just to say I was being watched. He gave me a profoundly unsettled feeling. He would be a feature of my nightmares in the weeks ahead.
Starting that evening. I dreamt the twisted old mage was trying to goad me into fighting my loved ones. He “showed me” that Amyntor was really a monster, like an avatar of murder. Creepy stuff.

We needed to end the Crusade. One way or another.
We set camp for the night at Coast Way Crossing. The obvious river crossing we’ll need to make on our way north. My team set out to reconnoiter the area before we called it a night.

Apparently she learned her lessons as a Flaming Fist! But the idea of a Duke’s daughter out here exploring for the fun of it made me very nervous. I suggested she head back to camp and report in. Did she roll her eyes at me? Am I sounding like mom? I think she’s older than me?

We had a few other little encounters with wildlife, and a poorly concieved attempt at pit fighting! The biggest thing would prove to be a small mineshaft opening.

We helped clear the area. They mentioned a member of their group had disappeared deeper in, but they were all banged up now. So we set off to find a wayward dwarf.

A dwarven lich? At least he was a rookie monster! I’m not sure we would have prevailed otherwise.

This was hard news for the other dwarves, they had all once been close. They agreed to join our march north, so we all returned to camp together.

In the morning, we led the way up to the bridge.

We were barely to our feet when the survivors attacked us. We battled, and had gained the upper hand, when a loud voice bellowed from across the river and demanded we stand down, to parley.

Apparently her “Crusade” goal is to storm the Abyss and return the fallen from two wars at Dragonspear Castle. And she insists we are not enemies, we should be on the same side.

I think her head needs a Heal spell worse than Minsc’s head. The woman is bonkers. How can so many people buy into such lunacy?

For now, we’re faced with a long detour. We can’t take an army this way. Its up to the huge Boarskyre Bridge. That has a very unfortunate association with my heritage.

*****

I am still having a lot of fun GPT Image 2.0!
One setting, lets you choose “how much” (how smart?) you want the AI to be. It gets expensive fast, and much slower at higher settings. So I mostly use the fastest/cheapest/stupidest setting. And mostly that works fine. Although I did turn it up to medium for three renders that were problematic on first swipe. The first was the army marching out. No doubt there was a lot going on there, and the written description was quite long. But the final result here was gorgeous. So okay, I’m sold on the smarter AI *when it’s needed.*
Next was the render with Minsc and Erato battling ghouls. That was moderately complex with a lot of parties involved, and it had a high failure rate presumably because it was a little graphic. And I did tweak the description too. I wanted to show Erato firing past Minsc into the ghouls. The smarter AI apparently settled by having her clearly fire away from Minsc. That was close enough!
The last was the meeting at the broken bridge. What a tough render! Every AI I’ve used struggles with understanding what a bridge is. And this did not want broken pieces to line up, or women on opposite sides, or anything looking like rubble and debris. I wound up layering it all together in five steps (?). One of those used the smarter AI. And when that last one finally came up I was ecstatic!

So now, this SoD run looks like it might be very detailed.

Update 15

A shorter update this time, I will try to do a few short ones coming up.

I wanted to include a brief introduction of sorts for my “NPC” Erato. I have used her on several runs now, so regular readers will recognize her. As cleric and thief are both classes I will often feel a need for running into SoD, I created Erato to fill that gap. With A7’s “NPC Generator” mod, I have installed her as always waiting for me at Elfsong Tavern in SoD. She is level 6 in both classes, and has absolutely no equipment. Hence my “head canon” that she is a refugee eager to stop the Crusade. She is proficient in short bow, quarter staff and two-handed weapon style. She is potentially a strong character, but starts lower level than the team, and being multi-class will not advance too far. We will simply call her solid and useful. I use the “AoN: Elyse” voice set for her, so head canon again, I see her as upbeat and good natured. Erato made 7th level in both her classes during the period of the previous update.

*****

We scouted ahead of the army as we all made for the Troll Claw Woods. This would be our camp. Its just a couple hours hike from the Boareskyre Bridge. While camp was being set, my team explored the surrounding area.
We routed out a small group of orcs, and some bandits who broke and ran when they recognized us. The most persistent problem in the Troll Claw Woods is, wait for it, trolls. We battled several, and a larger group was established in a cave not far from our camp. None of the trolls were willing to talk, so we eliminated those we found.

She reported the Bridgefort at Boareskyre was under seige by the Crusade. Her husband Khalid had taken charge of the Bridgefort garrison. But for now they were cut off.
There was however a magic circle hidden in the nearby woods that allowed transport into the fort. The bad news was, the ward stone for activating it had disappeared. She was pretty sure it had disappeared with a Cleric of Cyric into a temple somewhere in the nearby Forest of Wyrms.

Well that was all a lot! I asked Jaheira to rejoin with us, which she happily did! We stopped back by the camp, and determined with Captain Corwin and Bence Duncan we would set out in the morning. First for the Forest of Wyrms, then on to the Bridgefort.

We really didn’t have a lot of information about *where* this hidden temple might be.

Giants are obviously big and strong, but this guy was not a very skilled warrior. The fight did not take long. We also battled a few Displacer Beasts and found a cave full of spiders (yeah, yuck). The cave was at the base of a good sized rocky hill, and there was a rugged path heading up.

They came at us in two groups of less than a dozen, it was not a huge challenge. Except to note their uncanny ability to just disappear into the background. I don’t think its magic per se, just an unsettling talent they have. Eventually they move and you can see them.
Near the top of the hill was a good size cave entrance. Um, it was dark in there! We cast a few preperation types of spells, and entered.

Suffice to say this was a big challenge. At one point Minsc and I were both wing buffeted into a cavern wall (ouch!). And the dragon belched a cloud of chlorine gas on us all, every one of us warriors were coughing and badly reduced by that. But the six of us ultimately were too much for the big gal. This seriously felt like an important win for us. A dragon.

There were more smaller caves behind the dragon’s cave. These were home to the whole tribe of bugbears. The chieftain briefly agreed to parlay with us, I shouldn’t have gotten my hopes up. As soon as I said we just wanted to find the temple, they attacked. After our bloody trip through the bugbear caves, we found an entrance to a very old temple. Almost first thing in we saw the cages.

Obviously they wanted to be free. We learned they were Crusaders. Regardless, I would not let these men rot here, or worse. We will find a way to set them free and hope for the best.

It became obvious this had once been a Temple of Bhaal. What’s more, a derainged old priestess was locked in another cell nearby. She was telling stories about this place. Of interest, she claimed that years ago Harpers had come here and killed all their children. I felt a chill. I’m pretty sure that’s not true, I suspect I could be one of those children. Clearly the woman was a lunatic, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t some truth in her words. Her tale might mesh with Gorion and his friends coming here and rescuing some of us.
But this was no longer a Temple of Bhaal, Cyric was now worshipped here. Fitting. The Mad God had slain Bhaal, then his clergy claimed his old temple.

We battled several small groups of guards and priests.

She was dragon-born of some sort. I’d not seen anything like her before. But we’d already cut through her troops. As bad and fearsome as she was, she stood alone. We overwhelmed her. I believe she was sister to the guardian dragon we slew at the entrance?
We found an interesting journal in her room. Ziatar had noted the high priestess seemed to be having headaches, and was possibly loosing her mind. Really, a priestess of the Mad God was going bonkers. Who’d have thunk. Ziatar also had a couple keys on her. The first let us release the Crusaders. I let them think they’d convinced us to join up with them at the seige works around the Bridgefort. It might be useful to be able to enter, and reconnoiter the site.

Another key Ziatar had, unlocked a sturdy door heading into the actual Temple part of the complex. We entered a large audience chamber. A few Cyric cultists were battling, something.

Given what a nightmare illithids are we were not happy to see this beast. But it only seemed to cast spells? We slew it, cut it all up. Like a huge vile earthworm…

Nearby we found the priestess, she was standing in a corner arguing with the wall. But she attacked when she saw us. She had the ward stone we’d been looking for. The smart move would be to get ourselves over to the Bridgfort.
But the Neothelid, and the priestess’ insanity, had me a little worried about what else was down here. If Illithids have moved in we need to put a stop to that. Oh listen to me, so brave. I’m feeling a little sick to my stomach with what we’ve seen in the last few minutes.

We cautiously decided to explore just a little deeper.

I don’t know what they were up to, but we stopped it for now.

And it was time to clear out of this place. It was late in the day, and we decided it was a good time to set camp. We would continue on to the Bridgefort tomorrow.

For attacks its not any better than the sword I’ve been using; but defensively it will sometimes, while we’re fighting, put a Mirror Image effect on me. That’s a nice spell! Dyna doesn’t think I can control it, but an occasional random extra layer of defense could be handy!

A god, murdered another god (my sire. And no, I will never call him my father. That will only be Gorion.) there. That sort of thing can leave a mark. Like apparently the water that flows under the bridge has been toxic for almost twenty years, it just turned clear recently. What else might linger? I should approach that place with care and reverence. Even an evil god commands respect. And it could effect me in a number of ways, few of the possibilities are good.

Swell.

Update 16

We were now near enough to Boareskyre Bridge we could see the Bridgefort standing above the trees just to the right of the road, and a large Crusader war camp set up in the open ground between the causeway to the fort and the ramp up to the Bridge itself. The Bridge was huge, on about the same scale as the Bridge entrance into Baldur’s Gate. The fort was impressive in its own right, not on the scale of a proper castle but a solid stone ediface that was built to withstand such a seige.
We had secured an “in” for us at the Crusader camp. So we approached, and introduced ourselves as friends of Keherrem. The young dwarven warrior we had rescued. We were welcomed in and introduced to his uncle Kharm. Kharm was apparently one of the commanders of the seige forces. He was appreciative we’d rescued his nephew, tossed a small reward our way, and went off on army business. We chatted with Keherrem for a time, small talk. Like we were mercenaries considering signing up.
This was a loose enough operation we were able to explore and chat. We learned the camp had patrols out looking for the Wardstone, to activate the back door into the Bridgefort. We also learned a tough old soldier known as “The Barghest” was in overall command. Jaheira knew that name, I’ve encountered it in my learnings of history back in Candlekeep. We all agreed we wanted to stear clear of his command tents. If the assassins who penetrated the Ducal Palace in Baldur’s Gate had a copy of my likeness, it seems likely the top commander here would know of me too.
Along the south edge of the camp we saw a Red Wizard concentrating on some vile magic. Dyna thought it was some sort of curse directed at the Bridgefort. We could see it was just him and a bodyguard, no one else in plain sight here. Eh, I don’t really like covert ops! I asked Erato if she could sneak in and pilfer any of his things? She was embarrassed and said she hadn’t really worked much on sneaking and skullduggery. I had to chuckle, me either.
Well, I suppose the thing to do is see if I can just swipe his books. Sure I’m wearing plate armor, but that doesn’t stand out so much in a military camp. And if I’m noticed, I’m sure we can deal with it.
Yeah, we dealt with it. We got his books, the curse spell he was working on, some miscellaneous gear. And the Crusade is now minus one Red Wizard and his body guard. Stealth is not what I’m built for. [Okay seriously, Brademante is small and quick. She IS built for that, but its not what she is trained or equipped for!]
We decided to high tail it out.

Back down the road, then we took a small trail (a game trail?) to the north. This would take us up closer to the Bridgefort and away from the camp.

I’d heard they liked to ride the big wolves, but we’d never seen that before!

Things have changed a lot in six months. Even a fairly large group of goblins are easily dispatched. We have grown a lot as a team.

We found another patrol of goblins, and a large number of them in a cave. We cleared out the area.
Jaheira led us to a magic stone ring, in plain sight of the Bridgefort.

I went first.

Khalid seems to have grown a lot as a leader. He is knowledgable about this sort of business, and he had done a good job leading the defense of this fort. As long as it held, the Crusade would not have free access to the bridge. Of course, he was pleased we had an army with us.
He asked us to do a quick assessment of the fort to see if it could hold as long as we needed to bring up the troops.

He seemed on the verge of breaking down, and our distraction allowed some sort of magical attack to come through. We all immediately felt weakened by the breach. Fortunately, a solution was found in the documentation we had found on the Red Wizard in the Crusader’s camp. We all felt relief as quickly as we’d felt woozy.

Although the sutuation was obviously growing serious, we felt they could hold out for 12 hours or so while we ran back to the Flaming Fist camp and brought the whole army in. When they heard us at the gates, they would open Bridgefort’s own gate and charge out. The pinscher should route them completely… In total, the Crusader force didn’t seem that big, just bigger than what the defenders had here.

We broke camp and set out. This would be the largest scale battle any of us had participated in. I was a little worried about how we would fit into the battle.
When we arrived at the seige camp we let a company of Flaming Fist heavy infantry lead the way, then I led my team around a flank.

The scope of this fight was so large, it was a challenge to see and identify such foes. And of course Erato and Dyna weren’t alone, the Fists had several archers and a few spell casters of their own to help.
After several minutes the tide clearly turned, the Crusader’s front was broken and we had freedom to penetrate into the camp itself.

He was a fearsome foe! One of the better warriors we’ve ever faced. But from the start he was fighting alone, his forces were being shattered. We brought him down fairly quickly.
As the fighting around the camp quieted down, I saw our friend Keherrem among the fallen. What a stupid Crusade for a stupid cause! Insanity. I looked for our own leaders and found Bence Duncan.

It felt good to be a part of something so important to these troops.

But something happened as I crossed. The Boareskyre Bridge was indeed cursed against me. Some alien force tried to penetrate into my soul.

I truly don’t know how to describe what all happened. After a time I felt I’d won. I was still myself, and the alien force had been restrained.
I think the hooded man who haunted my dreams paid me a visit as I was still sorting my senses. He continues to mock me about not learning the right lessons, and being too soft. He is obviously some manifestation of evil, he fails to grasp what he calls weakness IS my strength. Whether he and the Bhaal force are connected I’m not sure.

I saw a Bhaal symbol had been left on the Bridge. My friends were all around me now, but I heard the soldiers behind talking nervously about what I was. Soon I was able to stand. I could tell my whole body and soul had been through some trauma. I felt tired. But fine.
Capt Corwin and Duncan were furious, like I’d done something wrong. They have no idea what I’m fighting against. No doubt most of the soldiers were unsettled. We were told we were heading out, it would be many day’s march to get to our coalition camp currently beseiging the Crusade at Dragonspear Castle.

During our long march, the troops all avoided me and my team. My taint seemed to carry over to my friends.

*****

As other runs have shown me, a substandard character never needs to stay substandard. The way AD&D works, and ought to work, skill (experience) and carefully accumulated items/magic matter far more to how capable a character (or party) is in the long run, than the scores do. It is fun for me to play a team that needs to be managed carefully to be at their best. And it plays well when your protagonist is intelligent and wise about how they approach their team and adventure. Which is all to say, Brademante is a fun protagonist for me. And she has worked her way up to having the most kills of anyone on the team (around 30%).

I’ll also mention, as I have before, I love a few of the *bigger* battles in SoD. It is fun to have your character and team be a part of something so obviously important.
Now that said, there are problems with this execution as battles. Like much of D&D and the IE games, they are too *individual* and chaotic. Ideally there should be some role for group/army type tactics. Like a line of armored soldiers with shields could get a hefty combat bonus as long as they stay unbroken (in ancient and medieval battles, casualties were often quite low as long as a unit stayed intact, and total massacres occured when a unit broke, leading to more very one-sided battles than we usually see in this modern age). Of course, in the grand scheme of things, the battles here are still quite small. But I like wargaming and army maneuvers. It would be fun I think if there was some mechanism to better reflect some of this. And for the record, there was a D&D mass combat set called “Battle System” for exactly this purpose. I ran a few such games back in the ’80s and 90s. Just something different and fun. I’m not shocked that they didn’t add a mass combat system to SoD, and what they did is truly a lot of fun to me. I’m just rambling…
But I do want to mention this does all effect how I wrote up this chapter. That is, I tried to present it as a more proper military type of operation than what the game actually portrays. Brademante is essentially a special forces commander. She has no place in the main line of battle, but her elite unit can take on some specific, key challenges.

I will likely continue at this slow pace through SoD. I’m having much fun with the renders and narration. I *think* three more posts for this? We’ll see.

Update 17

It was a long walk to the Coalition Encampment beseiging Dragonspear Castle. We’ve known for some time that castle is the main base of operations for Caelar Argent’s Crusade. A while back we learned the *point* of the Crusade was to storm Avernus (Hell) to return the dead from the two Dragonspear Wars fought in the last couple decades. Each of those wars involved masses of devils let loose in Faerun. They were epic tragedies.
To many of us, it was obvious from the start this Crusade was madness. As we’ve learned more, the madness runs deeper. Apparently there is a sealed gate, direct to Avernus, somewhere under Dragonspear Castle. It can only be opened with divine blood. Caelar assumes I count for that.
Whatever her motives, the bottom line is Caelar wants to reopen the gate to Avernus with *my* blood. How does such madness acquire such a following?

We all had some talks about this on our long walk. Obviously we need to end this thing. But should I even be anywhere near this place? On the other hand, we don’t really know how many Bhaalspawn there are in Faerun. Is it possible (likely?) Caelar could just find another Bhaalspawn to accomplish the same end?
We will need to be sure the Coalition leaders know everything we know about all this.

Right after clearing the sergeant at the gate we were met by Marshal Nederlok, the site commander of the Flaming Fists. We were nominally attached to him, but he was hardly happy to see us. The incident back on Boareskyre Bridge had already been brought to his attention, and he regarded me as more trouble than I was worth. Nonetheless, the three main commanders would be meeting at the command tent later. Our attendence was mandatory.
Gee, a warm welcome.

We set out to get familiar with camp, and located a few familiar faces. Much of the crew that set out with from Baldur’s Gate was already here. We ran across survivors from Bridgefort, Brother Deepvein and his dwarves were here, and more from the long march continue to come in.

We also met a sergeant from Daggerford working with some new recruits. We helped with training for a time. I think the sergeant just appreciated the break.

Jaheira seems to be more of the “tough love” sort…

But the sergeant thought we had made a difference.

We also found an illness had broken out and a camp infirmery had far too many patients for having fought no battles yet.

By then it was time to head off for our meeting. Apart from Marshal Nederlok we met General Stonehand leading the forces from Daggerford. And the somewhat problematic Torsin de Lancie from Waterdeep. I quickly decided our own Marshal Nederlok was the voice of reason on this crew. I told them all that we knew about Caelar’s objectives, and why she wanted *me*.

de Lancie wanted us to find an entrance to an underground river, that was bypassing his seige with access to the castle. Further, he wanted us to explore it and see what more we could learn about the workings of the Crusade itself. I insisted this was bonkers. Caelar wants nothing more than to get me to Dragonspear Castle, and now that’s precisely where de Lancie wants me to go. Nederlok backed me on the foolishness of this, initially. But soon all three commanders had decided that this was the best thing for my “very special” team to undertake. This seemed utterly idiotic to me. But for now, it was the only thing all three “leaders” would agree on. Swell.
de Lancie wanted us to meet with a gnome for some special equipment.

de Lancie also had a poison for us to introduce to the food and water supplies. I was uneasy about this, but it would apparently cause more nausea than death. I like the idea of a less lethal confrontation with the Crusade, so agreed if the situation allowed.

I let him know we would reconnoiter the area first, I want to know the approaches and see what the Castle looks like before we go looking for caves.
As we were setting out, I ran across Bence Duncan at the front gate. He reported Skie Silvershield had gone missing again. She would have done better with us than joining the army…

As we continued up towards Dragonspear we encountered a number of refugees streaming south. We gave aid and directions as best we could. There were more dangerous things out here too, orcs, hobgoblins, spiders.

And she was now beset by angry Crusaders… Oh boy.

They almost bought it. But they soon decided we were not with them, and we had a fight on our hands. Not a hard fight, but we needed to keep it all quiet and away from the gate. I do NOT want to be seen and trigger a greater battle.
Soon enough we had them all down.

I congratulated Skie on some good actionable intelligence. And told her to report back to Bence Duncan. Then stay put in camp, we would catch up with her in a bit.
Skie seemed pleased, she gushed at the compliment. Maybe she’ll stay put for now?

We returned to exploring the area and found several old and abandoned structures. The most exciting was a cellar under a ruined farm house.

We found a journal that told the whole tragedy of it, a young man had slain his own mother as the vampirism overtook him.
A few other fights were not as dramatic.

Jaheira knew how to harvest what we needed, so we ran it back to the camp. Capt Corwin wasn’t too thrilled to see us there. “Don’t you have a mission?!” Yeah, yeah.
At least the Cleric of Illmater was happy to see us.

We set out again without delay. Didn’t want to be seen helping the sick when we have a stupid mission to fulfil. I may not be ideal for army life…

Update 18

We didn’t have to explore long around where we thought the entrance to the underground river might be, to know we’d found it. A narrow canyon in a hillside led to a wooden palisade with guards. Okay.
Naturally we would start with a quick reconoiter of the area, to avoid any nasty surprises sneaking up on us when we tried to breach the gate.

We dug out two druids, who had been betrayed and abanded by a renegade member of their order. Korrusk had become obsessed with mutating nature, and had done something to the large tree right nearby. They gave is directions, and a pure seed we should place in the root system of this tree, deep underground.

We also battled a group of orcs, and bluffed our way past another group. A lot of activity around here!

Next we came across a noxious fungus garden of some sort.

Apparently this was some sort of Myconid graveyard, and we managed to offend another small group of them. Myconid’s are generally considered gentle, but they seemed to be angry and quick to take offense. Its a shame since we meant them no harm.

As we journeyed on we heard a loud arguement coming from another small cleft in the hillside. A group of ogres were having some disagreement about their leadership.

I guess I volunteered to stand in as her champion. That wasn’t quite what I meant, but okay. Two ogre males were giving her a hard time. Ultimately I supported Murs by killing them both. Hey, girls got to stick together!
But we had some good come of this. We learned Murs’ mate Slug had been taken by the Crusade, along with several other members of the tribe. If we could free their friends, they would join with us in our fight against the Crusade.

So our back was clear to approach the gate.

There were also some archers, and we could tell by the volume of traffic this road had seen there were likely more inside.
The Cyclops really had little imagination, and just wanted to smash us. He was big and strong and being smashed by him would have been bad! Fortunately, he was also fairly clumsy and not a skilled warrior, we brought him down quickly.
The defenders made our job easy, by opening the gate to send out reenforcements. We battled a lot of them both outside and inside the gate. Soon enough, all was quiet.

We all made our introductions, and it was amusing. They were Rigah and his witch Julann. But they were a little different from Minsc and Dyna. Rigah seem stolid and level headed, Julann was a dingbat. Thoroughly. She was seriously considering joining Caelar’s Crusade, and nothing we could say made much impression. Maybe they’ll get lost looking for the castle…

There was cave into the hillside here that the crude fort was protecting. Presumably access to the the underground river. We entered cautiously.

The gnome casually asked what all the fuss outside was. I told him a couple volunteers were arguing over who was most devoted to Caelar. He only said “Again?” Hah! Apparently the Crusade is as big a mess as our own army. Ladle wasn’t worried about much other than monitoring his inventory. We were free to explore the surrounding cave system.

We met the druid we were after, but a number of sick Crusaders were right near his cave. We got his help concocting a cure. He did help, but it was obvious he had taken leave of his senses. Among his ramblings we heard something about Caelar’s lieutenant Hephernaan running a group of Necromancers down here (Interesting?) I thought maybe it could help him if we could get the pure seed into the sick tree roots…

We healed the Crusaders, hopefully they’ll still on sick call when fighting breaks out.

Across the underground river a couple of Sahuagin were holding up the Crusades’ supply lines. They seemed unwilling to let us pass either, unless we paid a toll. They wanted a story!

In the end we had free access. I think (hope!) the Crusade is still bottlenecked.

A few little things we found down here, some ghosts trapped in a cave of negative energy, some corrupted young dragons, and a group of Drow looking for a young couple that had run off together. I even had an encounter with my dreaded hooded visitor from my nightmares. This time, he wanted to mock me for crawling around underground when my army is preparing for glory. I’m not sure what he hopes to accomplish, his taunts rouse nothing in me.

We did find something significant.

Fortunately the dragon delighted in perverting her master’s orders, she considered saying “don’t go in there” as fulfilling his commands.
We entered a city, long abandoned by the dwarves who built it. Now necromancers called it home.

Fighting this was an easy choice, we all rushed in to end this evil. We found notes, journals with orders and directives in Hephernaan’s name. He wanted the undead. And we had proof of darkness at the heart of the Crusade.

When we slew the leader of this group we also freed the dragon’s soul, she could continue into the next world.

Exploring further, we reached a gateway into a large Crusader encampment. We were apparently now deep beneath Dragonspear Castle. Like the warehouse earlier, the number of soldiers drilling and training paid us no notice. To one far side we found ogres in cages, Slug was among them. We released them from the cages, and let Slug know his wife eagerly awaited his return. We seem to have made friends with the ogres.

We saw two more working a large lift near the center of this Crusade hide out.

It was. The architecture changed as we entered the structure of the castle. Almost as soon as we stepped off the lift we were challenged by a guard. We put down all five of them, then the basement seemed quiet. No one noticed. We were in a wide finished corridor, towards the far end were single doorways to either side. To the right, we heard the clear sounds of an army barracks. To the left, seemed more ominous. We approached the opening to the left. I could see two golems at the end of the hall.

Entering the doorway we heard a conversation. A deep, dark voice was commanding someone to find, me.

We had interupted a dark commune. Something had been issuing orders to Hephernaan. Given the history of this place, I’ll guess it was a voice from Avernus. Now we had a fight on our hands. The three of us against three mages. We were well equiped for this, Dyna has a few anti-magic spells, and Erato has a stash of anti-magic arrows (a couple of different sorts). And I’m just stupid about fighting clear evil. So we joined battle. I could hear fighting start out in the hallway too.

This fight went well, but I fear it came with a warning. The two younger mages fell pretty quickly. Hephernaan is tough. He put up a number of defenses in an instant, and everytime we brought them down he seemed to bring them back up. We finally got the upper hand, and Hephernaan teleported out. But warned he would be back.
Well okay, we’re *leaving*.
If he returns with more capable back-up we could easily be overmatched.

We ran out to the hallway where we could hear fighting still taking place.

Slowly, we fought our back towards the exit. We stayed as tight and together as we could, and were clearly winning. But we are in the belly of the beast, I do not want to stick around we could end up with the entire Crusade on top of us.
We got through the heavy iron gate near the lift, and slammed it shut. Then made our hurried exit. The training area beneath the castle still seamed isolated, they knew nothing of our fight upstairs. We hurried out before that changed. We had seen an ideal place to hide the explosive Phoosey had made for us, so we placed it…
And then the gig was up. One guard pointed and yelled “its the hero of Baldur’s Gate!”.

We had to fight our way back to the storeroom, and out. There is evil in this Crusade, and we now have the proof with us. But most of the Crusaders are not motivated by darkness. They follow Caelar’s foolish dream of freeing the dead from two wars. And we just killed a lot of them making our escape.

We hurried back to the Coallition Camp with all that we had learned. We learned our leaders were currently meeting with Caelar. We had a lot of interesting information to share. The result was an end of discussion, Caelar launched her forces at our camp, and our army had marched out to meet them. I was directed to lead the defense of the camp, with its infirmery and all of our supplies. And was given about 30 soldiers to help. Some small groups of Crusaders got through the front lines and had to be cleared out. I counted four breaches. Only the last was real trouble.

We were well up to the challenge.

Both inside and outside the camp. The Crusade seemed broken now. We would storm Dragonspear Castle, and finish off this thing in the morning.

*****

So a single day of gameplay, and almost a week working on renders. This was my most expensive update yet, almost 10000 credits spent at OpenArt. The attack on the Necromancers took some 15 renders/tweaks/edits to get what I wanted. The hardest by far was the video. Nine attempts, changing a lot of details and parameters as I went. Those are expensive and slow! It took a while. The result is not *perfect*, but it is beautiful. I’m very happy with how this came out.
I did feel I could blow a lot of points on this, because the newer engines are broadly more efficient. They are powerful and cheap if you’re doing fairly simple still image renders. And a couple of my updates have been just that. But with more tools, things can get more expensive in a hurry. It is fun though!

Update 19

The next morning we set out on the short march to Dragonspear Castle. As the walls came into sight we all downed a number of preparitory potions. We were ready for a big day.

That made the statement we were here to put an end to this. The army streamed in through the breach. We entered right after the heavy infantry and moved as a team off to the left. We would look for trouble, casters or archers holding back, or any counter attacking force forming up. After a couple of little skirmishes we were confronted by one of Caelar’s top lieutenants. Ashatiel wanted to duel me personally. For some reason, this is all fiercely personal to her.

The avarial would have none of it. I believe she was a fighter/mage? Maybe a fighter/mage/cleric? She certainly had a number of tricks up her sleeve. But she was too light of a warrior, and I inevitably wore her down.

Fortunately, Ashatiel’s death took a lot of energy out of the defenders. They started to surrender in large groups. Coraling all of the former Crusaders was a big headache for our army, but for us we still needed to enter the keep. Caelar was held up inside.

The army’s assault troops had entered the Keep when we got there. The top floor had been cleared, Coalition forces were searching the whole structure. But they left it to us to head into the cellar. I could guess we were heading back into Hephernaan’s dark domain. A room that was locked off on our previous visit was now open. Caelar, Hephernaan and a small body of troops awaited our arrival.

Hah! Joke was on me. Hephernaan cast some sort of mass hold spell. My team, plus Caelar and all of her team, were held fast. Hephernaan chortled like a classic villain as he walked up to me and poked me in the cheek with a dagger. He got the blood he needed. And he gleefully announced he would be opening the portal to Avernus and the devils would spew out, his real master would be invading Faerun.

As the portal opened he was gone. Caelar was furious. Apparently this really was a betrayal to her. A fool to the end, as the hold spell expired Caelar led her remaining troops through the portal into hell.

Dyna was sure the only way to close it was from the other side. Okay, here we go. Amyntor and Minsc, then Jaheira and Erato.

Yeah, it was Hell. First we saw a group of Crusaders battling Devils. We rescued them, and told them to go BACK through the portal. We would fix this!

We could see Caelar and a few troops not too far ahead now. But we had to fight more groups of devils. Just enough that Caelar kept getting further ahead. And we had to answer a riddle to get by a large devil guarding a door. When we went through, Caelar was nowhere to be seen, but there was a large lift. We all stepped onto it. Erato saw how to activate it, but we had a long way to go up. That was just as well. We took a moment to renew some of our preparations, and we all downed Fire Protection potions. There seemed to be plenty of flames here!
When the lift came to a stop, we were in some sort of infernal throne room atop a black tower.

We heard some of the usual sort of boasting, you know, mighty Devil, master of this realm, looking to invade and destroy ours. Blaah, blaah, blaah.
I was quite sure Caelar had never wanted this outcome (or expected it, she is a fool). So I gave her another chance. “Join with us, we can destroy this evil”. Seriously, this fight will be easier for us if she switches sides. And I reckon impossible for Belhifet if she does so.
Oh yeah, Caelar was horrified. And oddly unrepentant? Still a fool. But she would join with us.

While the rest of us went against his master. No doubt he was a tough fight. Very big. Resistant or immune to a lot of things we might try (like fire!). Dyna hit him with a “Lower Magic Resistence” Spell, that opened up a few more possibilities.

Soon the others had finished with Hephernaan and joined with us. I could feel the seven of us would prevail, even as he called in a few lesser devils for help. Still, the end came quicker than I would have expected. Minsc delivered a vicious slash across his side. [a 60 point critical hit].

I think I actually slew him? Isn’t that how this works? Slay a devil in their own domain? Well, regardless he won’t bother us for a while.

We all hustled back towards the portal. Dyna thought the mechanics of it would require a blood sacrifice on this side to close it. Caelar volunteered herself to do this. I couldn’t object. If she returned home with us, our own justice would send her back to Hell soon enough anyway.
We saw a small number of Crusade survivors gathered waiting for us. We all returned home together, and I saw the portal snap closed as we exited.
The portal closing marked the end of this whole tragic episode. It will be recorded as The Third Dragonspear War, or the Siege of Dragonspear. I’ll always call it the Fool’s Crusade.

It was good to be home. Well, home at a ruined castle anyway.

We knew she had given up much to be away from the family and friends she had first lead into Baldur’s Gate a few weeks ago. The Crusade was over, but her home was still in ruins. So we gave her the Bag of Holding with the bulk of our team finances. This was for her to rebuild her home and replace what she and her’s had lost.

Later that evening, exhausted and well fed soldiers were claiming whatever space they could find to bed down. In the morning we would start the trek home.
I had another nightmare. The Hooded Man paid me yet another visit. He had tried to show me how all my friends and loved ones were somehow monsters.

I do not understand the point of these dreams. I don’t fear any of these people. I think Skie is an eccentric but good friend. Quite predictably she turned into a monster in the nightmare.
When I awoke in the morning…

She had bled out during the night. The bloody knife I held was not even my own. As I remembered the nightmare, I knew the Hooded Man himself had knifed her. But I was holding the bloody blade. Bence Duncan was first on the scene, he had been one of my harshest critics since Boareskyr Bridge.

The long march home was awful. I was not quite under arrest. But I was under guard. That was okay. I knew I was completely framed. Nothing I could say would excuse the situation I’d been found in.
But I thought, I expected we would find a way to make this right. The clerics had already tried a Raise Dead spell on Skie, that apparently did not work. Of course the bigger temples in the city could do a much more powerful Resurrection spell. A faster wagon with Skie’s body had raced ahead home.

Amyntor and I were formally arrested when we reached the city. We were put up for a puplic hearing almost right away.

He clearly *wanted* to believe I was not at fault. So did I! We learned no Resurrection would work on Skie, the priests reported her soul was not accessable. She had been slain by an artifact called the Soultaker Dagger. We had that blade for a while! But now it was nowhere to be seen. It was NOT the blade I’d been holding. That was about the full extent of good news for me. But the fact we had been in possession of it a few months ago was not good news for me.
Duke Silvershield was destroyed with grief, he plainly wanted me hung. Bence Duncan gave a correct accounting of events through out the march, most of which were in my favor. Even Boareskyr Bridge, Duke Belt plainly said was no proof of anything. All the other events and character related testimony were in my favor. Except for the scene of the crime…
Popular sentiment was completely split. Amyntor and I could only anxiously wonder how this might resolve.

In the middle of the night, guards came to our cell. We would be released. But banashed. Duke Belt was still of the opinion I was a great hero. But the circumstances were unbearable. And my presence in the area could only cause trouble. Our gear was returned, and we were led through the sewers to an outlet from the city. Several guards mentioned how appreciated we were.

We set off to the south. All discussing where we should head next.

*****

Those familiar with the game will recognize many plot points were omitted or touched on only briefly. The game and the story of the game are massive! So I tried to stitch together a narrative that addressed the major plot points and made sense of things. Like the character of Caelar’s uncle, Aun Argent, plays a key role in Caelar’s motives…
But you know this all flows fine without him. I try to avoid getting too wordy (believe it or not!), and I want pictures to tell a lot of the story. That last is perhaps because *visualizing* my characters and team are a huge part of why I’m doing this. But that does mean a lot of tangents and details are skipped.

I’ll also mention this is third video render I’ve done with the latest generation of renderers, and I remain extremely happy with the look. Talk about bringing my characters to life! Holy smokes! But they are tricky. I’ve yet to have a completely *perfect* render. This last one, I had a reference image of the city of Baldur’s Gate that I *wanted* to pop up when we see Brad look back. Such a little thing is so hard! My first several attempts insisted on having them walk TOWARDS the city! Well that completely doesn’t work for the story! I finally got the right movement for Brad and Amyntor, but then the cut to the city wasn’t working. These videos are just too expensive to keep trying. I hope I filled in the missing detail well enough with the text.

Obviously this post has grown huge! Brademante and Amyntor’s adventure continues in a new post for Baldur’s Gate II! I don’t know how long that could be. The main story isn’t too terribly long, but so many tangents! AND I’ve added nine (!) adventure mods, each with their own story.