We had been keeping some equipment just for Imoen, I’ve *expected* to be reunited with my sister for quite some time!

Now we were in some sort of ancient dungeon/maze/test, something. We would need to sort out what we needed to do here to escape. Bodhi’s earlier taunts were the source of some amusement for the team. We were wondering whose weapons she would impale herself on this time.

I had so much to update Imoen on! From Minsc proclaiming Aerie as his new witch, to Amnish inheritance rights that let a noble mage woman bequeathe her family estate to Amyntor and I, but not rule herself!

Imoen actually seems more like herself than she did back when we were all together last. She is tired and a little run down (I’m a little tired too!), but happy to laugh and banter with her friends.
[Note that Imoen now carries Tansheron’s Bow, a magic item that creates its own arrows. So Imoen will no longer be depicted with a quiver and arrows, just a bow! Skie gets all the ammo.]

As we poked around it became clear this place was a giant test, for a clear mind.

Every room seemed to present a new set of elementary riddles.

My favorite was the room where I had to stick my hand in a statue’s MOUTH so it would ask me a question (ummm, sculpture? bas-relief? I’m just glad art styles wasn’t a part of the testing…)

We’ve also found some minor treasures scattered around. Like several scrolls, useful for Imoen who ONCE AGAIN has no spell book!

I think Imoen likes finding traps and picking locks just to remind herself she still knows how.

In addition to the puzzles were a number of monsters to battle. Somehow they had to be a sort of illusion? Or summonings? There is no ecosystem down here for them!

One clever trap briefly seperated Amyntor and I from everyone else, with four Umber Hulks!

Well that was exciting.

There was also a vampire who did not seem a part of Bodhi’s crew. Plus some gibberlings and kobolds! A whole range of things!

Obviously minotaurs were a little more exciting.
And yuan-ti!

In an oddly much brighter room. I was also able to find a pair of Boots of Speed. I’d missed having this since Irenicus swiped mine. The only thing I missed as much as my sister…

But something really scary happened. I think it had to be related to whatever Irenicus had really taken from me, soul energy? There has been a voice, a dark part of me I’ve always been successful at keeping walled off from my higher functions. I have not lived my life as an angry person. And even these last couple hours I’ve been content, happy in this dark stinking dungeon. Because my husband, my sister and my friends are right here with me. I know we’ll be fine, because we all look out for each other.
But at one point I was walking fast, because I can with my boots on! When I came around a corner and that trashy vampire blocked my way. I was briefly furious.

And that wee dark voice took over.

I swear in all my life I’ve never felt so lost to that darkness before. I don’t know what happened for the next few minutes.

When I came back to myself I was weeping on the floor. My whole team was right there. They saw what had happened. Imoen in particular had some clue what that was. A part of Bhaal inside me.
“You should have seen Bodhi sis! She freaked out!”

Hah, I’d have given a front tooth to see that. My sweet friend Aerie said “please don’t do that again Brad.” I’ll try, I really will. But I think I need to find that loose piece of me to hold it down!
Enough of this, let’s get out of here!

We resumed exploring this dank pit. We had a few more fights, and a bunch more of the silly riddles.

Finally I faced the final judgement. From a Coordinater who has been dead for decades. (centuries?).

The fool judged me sane! Well who am I to argue? After clearing the ruins of the judgement hall we came to a door back into the upper floors of Spellhold. Now, to find Irenicus. He was apparently back in the same lab where he removed, whatever he removed from me. We could just rush him. But I had an idea.
This building holds a dozen mages of some power. Sure they’ve all been ruled crazy. But I was ruled sane, so what does the judge know?

“I will rule over all! And only YOU stand in my way!”
“Irenicus! Only Irenicus stands in your way!”

Two of these crazy mages we’ve met before. The gnome Tiax was last seen ranting in the streets of Baldur’s Gate, and we’d helped the elven mage Dradeel escape from his cabin, where he was hiding from warring packs of lycanthropes. And there were more, including a bard and a shapechanging girl. Yeah, they were all head cases. But they all hated Irenicus.
It wasn’t hard to convince them we could all rush the arch-mage together. Wannev, whom I don’t know, had the power to teleport us at once into Irenicus’ lab.

We hit Irenicus hard and fast. The man’s power is staggering.

But we overwhelmed him. Quickly, we brought quite a crew! Irenicus teleported away. I think he’d slain most of our crazy friends before he left, but the fight wasn’t over. Yoshimo showed up leading a large group of thieves. We defeated him, but in the end it was just the six of us standing.
Maybe bringing the crazies was a mistake?

Now to figure where he would have gone? We were discussing this, and heading towards the exit when a sort of unexpected answer showed up.

Our questionable ship captain Saeman Havarian claimed to know where Irenicus had gone, and he could aid our pursuit.

It had to be the elven city Suldanessellar.
I’ve heard that name, its a small but incredibly ancient elven city. And none of us had any idea how to get there. Except, apparently, Saeman. It seems we are once again at his mercy.
Funny, its almost exciting wondering what new trouble Saeman will bring to us. We will meet up back at the Vulgar Monkey.

As we all walked back to Brynnlaw I once again wondered why all these people were following me. Literally. I don’t know what I’m doing.

They are all dear friends. Starting with my husband. And my sister. I know we are all in this together. I am blessed to have such a faithful team.

We found Saemon at the Vulgar Monkey. He was “grieved” to tell us his ship had been sunk. But wait! He had a plan to get a new one. All WE had to do was…
He had me at duping a pirate lord. I’d go against a pirate lord just for the fun of it.

We got a room to get some rest, we all badly needed it.

As we settled in I was overwhelmed by a feeling of peace. I knew I could control the monster within me, it would never get out again. Gorion taught me how to live my life *right*. Lathander blesses me with powers beyond anything I could do myself. My friends all believe in me, and have my back. And my husband will never leave. He’s the best person I’ve ever known, and he thinks I’m the best person he’s ever known.

Laying there, relaxing, I felt the peace flow through me. WE could do this. And no little Bhaal bits will catch me off guard again.

4 responses to “Brademante: Update 29”

  1. Zeno Avatar

    Man I’ve never even considered trying a full party movie. And that’s even just with a typical party of four lately – not six! I will definitely have to give that a go. What Movie AI did you use?

    The Yuan Ti look fantastic. As does the “dark voice comes forth” and the ghostly coordinator. And the Umber Hulks. Man were those a pain the last time I tried to render them..

    Its amazing how much things have improved. Not just since we started playing with this but even just since Christmas! Think about how hard that story-board pair of images with Brad coming-to would’ve been a year ago… or with DALL-E…

    Liked by 1 person

    1. atcDave Avatar
      atcDave

      The video was Seedance 2.5. I tried Kling 3.0 Omni (it is much cheaper), but that was a more cartoony sort of look. This got really involved, I did a static image of the six of them first. Then I switched over to video using the group shot as a reference (not a start), I put in six character models for the whole team, and a screen cap of Spellhold for the background. I spelled out where all six characters were placed and what their expressions should be. Then it took two renders, in the first one Brad seemed too detached and a little angry. I wanted “stewing” not angry! So I tweeked it a little and got what you see! I was very satisfied.

      All the beasties combine a monster manual image with a physical description (often lifted from the Forgotten Realms Wiki, which reads like it was lifted from some edition of Monster Manual). Sometimes I tweak things around, there are interpretation differences between editions and I do look for my version of correct. As you know, I haven’t always been thrilled with the results. But the current renderers keep getting better at matching my own vision. That is, interpreting my descriptions as I intended. It helps that we get a lot fewer rejects for content these days, it is easier to describe action.

      Yeah I agree completely with how fast and how much things have changed. When I first played with SeeDream this January it seemed revolutionary. Now we’re a few generations past that.
      That storyboarding is such an excellent example. It is so easy to take an image you like, and just tell it how to change an action or reaction to tell the next part of the story.

      Just amazing things going on. I worry a little about where all this is going. Sky Net seems increasingly plausible. Never mind the revolution in jobs and economy.
      You remember the original Star Trek pilot (The Cage/Menagerie)? There was the comment about how as the alien’s ability to realize their dreams increased their abilities to keep their physical institutions/infrastructure working collapsed. I worry about how prescient that may be.

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      1. Zeno Avatar
        Zeno

        I’ve actually started in my professional capacity investigating AIs built to recognize AI imagery. There’s a whole category of AIs that get trained in pairs – one trying to generate photo-realistic images and the other trying to tell if they’re real or fake. And the whole training process is the two of them competing against each other in a feedback loop. Then you get into AI team free-for-all a doing the same thing…. It’s pretty wild.

        When I started 35 years ago neural nets could already learn bizarre things you didn’t intend. Prototypical example was a net trained to look for tanks hidden in trees. Did fantastic in the training data, failed miserably in the field: It turned out the training data was a bunch of tanks out on a test range, then they drove them away and took pics the same area without the tanks. So the AI just learned “morning = tank”, “afternoon = no tank”. And that was with humans training it. With AIs training each other…. Who knows?

        Liked by 1 person

      2. atcDave Avatar
        atcDave

        It does seem the obvious thing with having them paired like that is it may be very good for getting better imagery, but ultimately bad for being able to recognize it.

        A friend of mine works with medical AIs, and he’s talked about “stamping” things that come from an AI. Just so the source is easily identifiable. But it seems like that’s only good as long as there are no dishonest actors involved. Obviously it could work well in a professional sort of context. But we’re already seeing criminal and state players behaving fraudulantly.

        We do live in amazing times!

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