DavesGaming

The first part of this is from Lava’s “Skie: Cost of One Girl’s Soul” mod. This is an excellent resolution to the tragedy at the end of Baldur’s Gate: Siege of Dragonspear. If you’ve played this before, just know the main action element of the story has been expanded. Really in a clever and well done way. It should be satisfying for most of us who were a bit annoyed with the end of SoD *that provided no resolution!*

This write-up is NOT spoiler free.

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We walked over toward the Copper Coronet and quickly found Nem. She did have something to report for us. She thought it possible to send us into the dagger to make a rescue. But there were some “buts”. I was a little squeemish over all this. But I was driven by knowing Skie was an innocent caught up in *my* drama. If this goes well, one day I will need to talk with Skie about *so many* people who sacrificed in different ways to get her back. I myself will carry a minor but permanent scar from this.

We were ready, and Nem gated us into the dagger. We quickly knew we were in the right place. The small pocket dimension felt like the inside of the dagger, don’t ask me to explain that!

Soon we found the pocket dimension had its own pockets.

I would need to know Skie better to know what all we fought for her. But after a different battle for each little pocket, we sensed Skie’s own soul approach. I reached out to touch, and willingly transfered a spark of myself to restore her wholeness.
We found ourselves transported back home.
We talked to Nem, and she thought if Skie had received any form of Raise Dead since she was slain (I know she had, before we ever left Dragonspear Castle) she should return to life. Nothing else needed doing. I’m sure Entar Silvershield will be thrilled and shocked to see his daughter return to him! I would have liked to see that.

We just heard from a young messenger, the nearby town of Trademeet has fallen under attack by Druids. There was a plea for help and promise of reward, that hardly mattered. Jaheira already decided we needed to head out at once. I wasn’t arguing with her!

The town of Trademeet is further east than De’Arnise Castle, so it was a longer hike.

They seemed like a well enough equipped force, but they were overwhelmed and taking casualties.

He was certain druids were behind their trouble. He knew because they had one, Cernd, in custody. The townsfolk wanted him lynched, but the mayor was sure Cernd had nothing to do with their problems, he held him for his own protection. We were granted immediate access to talk with the druid. He said, a group of shadow druids were behind the problems. And he had been sent to investigate. We had permission to escort Cernd out of town, he pointed out the location of an old druid grove he thought had been claimed by the shadow druids.
Before leaving town, we also learned trade was being restricted by a group of Dao Djinn. They were hunting a Rakshasa somewhere in the area, and would not let trade resume until they had the monster… or her head.

So Trademeet had two pressing problems. We would see what we could do.

As we approached the area of the druid grove, we were warned by another druid that these lands had been taken over. And he could not garuntee our safety if we continued. Well, safety isn’t really our business.

We found quite a few trolls nearby! Another group almost as big as the group we had routed out of De’Arnise. That was an exhausting start.
Then we came across some shadow druids.

By the time Amyntor put a stop to that I needed a “Heal” spell, my ears were ringing and I had a splitting headache.
But we removed a group of four druids. We were not even done healing up when four more shadow druids came along. This fight went quicker and better for us. For me.

We crossed a large stone bridge and there was a stone farmhouse. Not what we’d expected see out here, between troll and druid lands.
The barn was open so we entered for a look around, we saw one woman near the door. I started to ask if she knew where the shadow druids might be…

A rakshasa is immediately more intimidating than say, a werewolf. They are big and fierce, resistant to a lot of magic, and feast on human flesh. And this one had two other partners with her. Seriously this was a harder fight than the eight druids we just faced, although I had less of a headache after.

We took a break and rested up after this, we were pretty well drained from a series of tough fights. Fortunately no one came hunting for us during our rest.
The next day we made our way towards the druid grove, it wasn’t far from here at all. There was a holy site of standing stones, and a cave entrance beyond. Three shadow druids challenged us at the stones. This was maybe a leadership cadre? They seemed dangerous and well equipped. Then we entered the cave.

She seemed more radical and hateful than before. No doubt! She was trying to destroy Trademeet. Jaheira stepped forward to face this herself. She scolded Faldorn for loosing sight of the “old ways”, and challenged her under their druidic rules for leadership of this grove.
Jaheira has become such a fearsome warrior, Faldorn was in completely over her head and was destroyed quickly.

But this led to another great sadness for me. Jaheira felt a strong calling to stay and restore this grove. I wouldn’t argue with her about it. I knew she still grieved on a deep level. And chasing me all over Faerun would not lead to her finding peace. She wouldn’t find it at De’Arnise Castle, or in Athkatla.

I will miss my friend. Now the good news is, she won’t be far. We will see each other again. But Jaheira was never extremely “social”. Her strong and steady presence has long been a blessing for me, I will miss that daily. But she won’t drop by for a chat. Hopefully she will if she needs me.

We returned to Trademeet. The Djinn got the rakshasa head they wanted. And the Druid attacks had ended. We were all proclaimed heroes of the town, we were rewarded and feted. It is a beautiful thing to feel appreciated! And I didn’t hear the word “Bhaalspawn” once.

After a well earned rest in a fine inn, we returned to our castle. Our home. We got there just in time to deal with an angry merchant. He reported bandits had destroyed a convoy of his on our lands. He demanded either restitution for his lost goods or he would call in all the debts and mortgages he held in De’Arnise lands!
Huh. I’ve never been in such a situation before! I didn’t much like his “or else”, and I had seen no proof this happened on De’Arnise lands.
We negotiated and agreed we would buy out all the debts he currently held in this land. We had also determined our major domo knew of a couple mercenary companies in the area. So we would hire one of them to suppress bandit activity.
I find it a little embarassing for us to be hiring mercenaries. This led to a long discussion once the merchant had been sent on his way, satisfied.

Yeah that was not good, and we had seen the need for troops both here and over in Trademeet. Nalia said her father used to employ closer to thirty, full time and permanent.
We talked for hours about finding and equipping more troops, and raising a militia. I think this so important to give the citizens some “buy in” on the safety of their homes. They should also feel safer if they are trained to help with their own security.
For starters, Amyntor and I committed that our “share” of the taxes would be 100% folded into the local defense budget.
Obviously a lot for us to work through. And right now we are pulled in so many directions. We have information about slavers in Athkatla we should act on before it goes stale. Tomorrow…

*****

Obviously a little bit of “head canon” is at play here. The game doesn’t actually allow for such a friendly parting of ways with Jaheira. But I think that’s nuts. Leaving her to restore the Druid Grove near Trademeet is such an obvious thing for her to do. And I don’t normally do it! I like having Jaheira with me to the end. But I have some other ideas for this run. So Brad’s *dear friend* Jaheira will stay nearby on druid business.

I also wanted to mention a little about the rakshasa video. There were two reference images going into it, one I often use for Brad, and a new one for the rakshasa itself. I used the old monster manual description of a rakshasa, then modified it a little for being a she-cat. Funny, I got three that were actually quite racy. But there was this one, a tiger lady in psuedo-arabian dress with fur and stripes all over. WOW! One complaint, her hands were plainly just human hands. So I fed the image back into GPT 2.0 and said “make the hands more paw-like. No other changes.” Perfect, just perfect.
Then I did a complete verbal desciption of the scene with just those two images as reference. It wasn’t quite what I expected. In my mind’s eye, Brad and the “peasant woman” faced each other. Then she changed into her natural form. The renderer had its own ideas. But dang, I think this is the best video render I’ve had yet. Just awesome stuff.