Huh. Either this blog is so staggeringly splendid that it has managed to shatter the language barrier, or I've had a visit from a few Japanese spambots.
Anyway. You may have noticed that, once again, the update "schedule" has gone down the toilet in no uncertain terms. This is due to the usual difficulties; real life getting hectic, Interweb blog less important than cash money, dog ate my monitor, blah blah blah. (Also I lost my saved games AGAIN because I got a new computer and shifting the contents of my old hard drive didn't go as well as I would have liked.)
However, I also realised that I haven't really been taking the right approach to this. For all my wordly wordiness, this blog is basically impenetrable to anyone who isn't intimately familiar with Baldur's Gate II. Like, you would need to go to the bathroom and literally shit Infinity Engine code in order to not get a little bit lost at some point during our adventures here; mainly because there are absolutely no screenshots.
Now, in my defence, the reason for this is that it started as a thread on a forum that didn't let you post pictures, and it just didn't occur to me to do things differently when I moved it to the blog. It was inertia. However, the problem with adding screenshots now is that the layout isn't really suited to it. They'd all have to be thumbnails, which would mean you'd have to click them all and then hit the back button or open them in a new window/tab or whatever, which would basically make the whole thing awkward and terrible to read.
NOT THAT IT ISN'T AWKWARD AND TERRIBLE TO READ ALREADY HAW HAW.
So what's the story? Is the Zero Reload Saga over? Yes and no. "Yes" in that it's certainly over in terms of this blog. Yes, that's right. There will be no further BGII-ing at this URL. Those of you who've been sitting here and hitting refresh every hour for the past five months can finally let go.
"No" in that I find myself still wanting to continue it, and now that things have settled down a bit for me, I am in a position to do so. The prospect of braving Irenicus' dungeon yet again is nothing short of soul-crushing, but when I do steel myself and manage to go through with it, the saga will (hopefully) be getting a fresh start on an actual forum where I can post as many pictures as I want and go back and edit my posts without fear of somehow making a bollocks of the chronology. That and I could get some viewer participation going, should the mood strike me.
If/when that happens, you will be the first to know about it. I will make it my top priority to post a link to the new and improved saga in all its glory. Until then, farewell, and good night to you all. You've been a wonderful audience. All three of you.
Lorph Halys, signing out.
SUMMARY FOR THE LAZY: Blog's over, restarting in a forum, will update with link when it's ready.
Gasp! Shock! Awe! Keldorn’s wife has been cheating on him! This is a horrible state of affairs indeed!
I certainly didn’t want to be reminded that old people can and do still have active sex lives, after all. I mean, if you ARE an old person and you wish to, as I believe youngsters say, “get your freak on”, then fine, more power to you. I’m not going to stop you. All I ask is that you make absolutely sure that the rest of us never, ever know about it.
EVER.
After we put all thoughts of wrinkly jollies aside, (which takes far more time than we’d like) we agree to go and speak with the dastard that dared to defile daddy’s dame; Sir William.
You may be aware that taking this path, rather than having Keldorn chop the guy’s head off for adultery, (which, apparently, is entirely legal; seems that Amn takes marriage vows pretty damn seriously) leads to the happy, feel-good outcome where Keldorn and his wife kiss and make up and he promises to retire once he’s done helping you out.
I can assure you, Vespero is not going soft. It’s just that I don’t think doing it the other way gets us any experience. I could be wrong, mind you, since it’s been a long, LONG time since I last used Keldorn, but I’m not taking any chances here. Vespero’s been without those Kensai levels for far too long. He’s starting to get jittery, and so am I.
William is to be found at the Mithrest Inn, and he’s surprisingly nonchalant about the whole thing when we confront him. Considering we could legally have him executed for his actions and that Keldorn is, due to his vows as a paladin, obligated to do just that, you’d think he’d be a little more worried.
He’s also kind enough to let slip to an enraged Keldorn that there was no chance of his wife bearing any illegitimate children since he’s basically shooting blanks at his age. Thanks, William. Thank you SO MUCH. That’s WONDERFUL. Hearing about some old geezer’s sperm count is exactly what I needed after having to scrub my brain no more than five paragraphs ago.
Why didn’t I make this easy on myself and just take this fucker to court again? Oh yeah, for a piddling amount of XP. Damn you, unintuitive and crippling dual-class system.
On our way back to the government district, we were ambushed by a huge group of Orogs along with a couple of human slavers, which was annoying given that Jaheira was still cursed at the time, but still nothing we couldn’t handle. A quick Web spell held them all neatly in place while we picked them off with missile weapons, occasionally switching back to melee to deal with the odd one that managed to break through.
Both I and Vespero are extremely thankful for this little skirmish. Blood always manages to wash away unwanted mental imagery.
Well, here we are at Ployer’s house, and if you’ve read my previous post, you can probably hazard a guess as to how this all went down. From his corpse, we loot a lock of Jaheira’s hair…which is apparently enough to undo the curse in and of itself.
I don’t really understand that. Sure, it was what was used to curse her in the first place and now we have it back, but doesn’t the curse itself still have to be removed? I mean, wouldn’t we need the mages for that?
I also find it extremely creepy that Ployer was holding on to a lock of Jaheira’s hair all this time. You might argue that he only had it for the purposes of the curse, but I don’t think that’s the case. Think about it; Ployer didn’t have any reason to hold a grudge against Jaheira until she busted him and the government seized all his assets, and the conversation they have when they meet in the bar suggests that they haven’t encountered each other since that event, and that it’s been quite a long time.
It stands to reason, then, that Ployer had the hair long before Jaheira actually crossed him, and it was just by chance that he realised he could use it to curse her afterwards. It’s OBVIOUS that he was a disgusting lech, which makes us all the more justified in having him killed. What kind of slimeball do you have to be to obsessively hold on to a lock of someone’s hair for years? Not like Vespero. He just does what any gentleman would and steals her underwear.
Anyway, that’s all sorted out now, although we do have to go and rest for a full twenty-four hours before the curse actually goes away, as if this whole affair hasn’t inconvenienced us enough. Still, we might as well sort out Keldorn’s family troubles before we do.
God help the poor man who ends up with Vespero as his marriage counsellor, is all I can say.
That, however, is for another time and another update. Tune in next time when Vespero takes on the role of Dr. Phil, mending the shattered relationships of the Firecam family with pseudo-psychological nonsense.
And magic.
This is Lorph Halys, and you’ve been reading Baldur’s Gate: The Zero Reload Saga. Thank you, and goodnight.
Ah, bugrit. I forgot that coming here would trigger Keldorn’s side-quest. We’ll get that out of the way as soon as we’re done here, although why Keldorn would want to invite a rampaging psychopath like Vespero into his household and anywhere near his loved ones, particularly his two young daughters, is beyond me. I’m starting to think that he actually doesn’t like his family all that much and that the whole “Obligations as a paladin” thing is just a convenient excuse to avoid them. Perhaps if Vespero WERE to kill them all in a wild fit of bloodlust, Keldorn would be happy to say no more about it and let us continue on our way.
…well, OK. Having experimented with this in the past, I can confirm that this isn’t actually the case. Keldorn does immediately turn hostile if you attack anyone in his house, although the line he speaks when he does so doesn’t indicate any real distress on his part. It’s basically just “Well shit, now I have to kill you.” Interestingly, though, since you have full control of Keldorn right up until he actually leaves the party, it is entirely possible to have him stroll up and carve his own little daughter into deli meat, all whilst bellowing “For right and honor!”
As DELIGHTFULLY twisted as this is, however, we do actually want to use him throughout the game, so it is with great sorrow that we must allow this wonderful opportunity to pass us by. Therefore, it’s off to the council building to talk to Corneil, who, like every Cowled Wizard in the game, is completely unhelpful.
However, doing this prompts the sudden appearance of just the man we are looking for; the man in charge of the mages, simply known as Terrece. He informs us that he’d be willing to not come to Baron Ployer’s defence when we do manage to track him down, in exchange for a suitable fee. The wheels in Vespero’s head start a-turnin’, and as always, in just a few seconds, he is able to come up with the most elegant and practical solution available for the situation at hand.
Violence.
You see, Terrece, like Lehtinan, is one of those characters that you can strike dead in broad daylight without anyone caring. What we do, therefore, is quite simple. We one-up his offer and ask him to have his group turn on Ployer directly, which he accepts, (in exchange for a higher fee) then we immediately kill him and loot the corpse, allowing us not only to earn the extra XP from the sneaky dealings, but also the XP we’d get for killing Terrece had we fought him directly, the gold we paid him, AND the magical items he was carrying. Also, because the developers didn’t take into account that you might do this, he’ll still turn up at Ployer’s house alive and well to dispatch him without you having to lift a finger.
You really couldn’t ask for a better outcome. Having the chance to indulge in a brilliantly outrageous and amoral scheme like this almost takes the sting off not being able to make Keldorn butcher his family just because the anonymous voice in his head told him to.
Almost.
When we arrive, Bernard worriedly comments that Jaheira looks “about ninety” due to the curse. The thing is, I’m not entirely sure how bad this is. She’s a half-elf, after all, so she ages a lot slower than a human does. Wouldn’t ninety to a half-elf be something like thirty to a human? What’s the big deal here?
Well, anyway. As per usual, we find out that Belgrade is, in fact, dead. Told you this was pointless. However, handing Shazzellim over definitely turns out to be worth the effort, since there’s a 3000 gold reward for it. Sweet. Who needs the scimitar? We can buy all kinds of Harper-slaying gear with that kind of money!
Of course, given that Bernard has something like three hit points, anyone who happens to be looking to get their hands on the sword now has a golden opportunity to pilfer it off the corpse of a weedy bartender, rather than first having to contend with a battle-hardened group of adventurers led by a demigod.
But hey, Jaheira, you know best, I’m sure. If some Harper-hating mercenary manages to get a hold of it and shiv you in the gut while you sleep, none of us will hold it against you.
To be fair, though, I suppose I can’t really blame you for not wanting to let someone like Vespero go around carrying a weapon that is designed to kill you, specifically. Especially not if you’re going to be travelling with him every day. He’d probably cut your head off with it just to see if it really worked or not.
With that out of the way, we’ll now be heading straight to the Government district to track down those damned mages and make them pay for crossing us, for their misdeeds in general, for being yet another group of spellcasters that the Cowled Wizards pointedly ignores in favour of descending upon us in all their fury for so much as casting Infravision, and for their awful fashion sense.
They’ve got a lot to answer for.
“WAAAHHH HOW DARE YOU LEGITIMATELY CONVICT ME FOR A CRIME OF WHICH I AM ENTIRELY GUILTY.”
Baron Ployer in a nutshell.
Seems that Jaheira and the Harpers busted this man in the past for dealing with slaves, and now he’s slumming it with the peasant population of Athkatla. Rather than using what remains of his fortune to, I don’t know, start a business or keep himself supplied while he finds an actual job, he instead decided to commission a group of mercenary mages to place a curse of death upon Jaheira out of a petty desire for vengeance.
Chalk up another notch for the “Stupid Evil” crowd.
This quest is interesting in that it’s impossible to complete easily without making use of out-of-game knowledge. As you might expect, you have to hunt down Mr. Ployer to get the curse removed, and there are certain leads you can follow to that end, but ultimately, all you end up discovering is that he’s “somewhere in the Slums”, which isn’t particularly helpful.
Luckily for you, however, if you check your map, you’ll notice that his house is quite clearly marked. Otherwise you could well end up having to spend many tedious hours trying to turn up some kind of clue only to have Jaheira shrivel up like a sultana and die, undoing all your efforts. I don’t know how long that actually takes to happen, mind you, nor do I plan on finding out. Maybe if I ever do a "Many Reload Saga" we'll give it a shot.
So, the outcome of all this is that Jaheira wants us to go to the Copper Coronet in search of a merchant named Belgrade; which, incidentally, is also the name of the capital of Serbia. Isn’t that interesting?
Normally I wouldn’t bother with this part of the quest. After all, it serves no real purpose other than to keep Jaheira happy, and what has she done for us lately? You know, aside from aiding us with invaluable buffing spells, patching up everyone’s wounds and bravely holding the front lines of battle along with Korgan. Not a damn thing, that’s what.
However, in this particular case, we need to go and see Bernard anyway since he’s the only one in town that can properly dispose of Shazzellim, so we might as well drop it off with him now. Consider yourself lucky, druid.
Aaaand there’s Jaheira’s complaint, about Shazzellim, right on cue. You can argue that you want to keep it, but ultimately, refusing to get rid of it makes her turn against you, so as satisfying as it would be to tell her to sit and spin on the damn scimitar, we’re just going to have to do what she says. Apparently if we take it to Bernard in the Copper Coronet, he should be able to use his extensive network of contacts to find someone who can destroy it for good. Fair enough.
Once we’re done looting the place, we go to talk to Meronia, and as I said earlier, we casually let slip that we’re working for Xzar. Meronia thanks us, whereupon Vespero basically says the following;
“Wait, wait! Are you guys going to kill him? Are you? Huh! I wanna help! I wanna help murder him! BLOOD!”
I’m paraphrasing there, but you get the idea.
Now, considering he was all too willing to give Xzar a hand earlier, you might be confused by this abrupt change of heart. After all, such behaviour is extremely bizarre and fickle.
If so, chances are you only just started reading, because this is pretty much par for the course for Vespero. He’s a wonderful little madman, isn’t he?
We deliver the assassin to Xzar, who proceeds to do her dirty work and then leaves us to our business. From this little jaunt, we got a nice new pair of AC bracers for Jan, and the talkative gnome also managed another level-up, this time in the Thief class. We’re going to sink those extra thieving points into Open Locks and Find Traps. As much as I’d love to boost the Set Traps skill right away, we really need to make sure that we’re ready to deal with any and all traps and locks we come across first.
There’s always the Knock spell, of course, but you don’t get XP for using that, and as I’m sure I’ve pointed out more than once, I am an obsessive XP harvester. OBSESSIVE.
Now, as long as I’m in the Docks, I’m going to go ahead and get the Baron Ployer quest out of the way, because if I don’t do it now then I’m going to forget, stumble into the inn at the wrong time and end up having to traipse all over town to get Jaheira uncursed while I’ve got other obligations. For now, however, I'm signing out. Tune in next time, whenever that may be.
This is Lorph Halys, and you’ve been reading Baldur’s Gate: The Zero Reload Saga. Thank you, and goodnight.