Baldur's Gate: The Zero Reload Saga

We still doing this? We still doing this.

When we last left our at least marginally intrepid heroes, they were in the Coronet, and had just convinced Lehtinan to allow them to partake of the exclusive entertainments offered by his seedy tavern.

The bouncer, when we approach, tells us to “Be no trouble and I won’t have to break yer head.” Little does he know. We assure him that we are absolutely certain that he will not be breaking our heads in any way and move on, leaving him to mull over the double entendre.

One thing I always make a point of doing when I first gain access to the back rooms of the CC is to go and watch the pit fight that takes place. As far as I know, doing this doesn’t have any effect on the game, but I always go nevertheless. Why? Because in spite of my better judgement and all my past experience, I sitll hold out the hope that one day, through a sheer, one-in-a-billion stroke of luck, the dwarven gladiator will actually manage to beat the troll.

Alas, not this time. Once again I must go unfulfilled until my next play-through.

We’re going to get the bear first, so we go upstairs and start barging into other people’s rooms at random until we come across the one containing the gentleman we are looking for. Of course he has nothing to say about this apparently unwarranted intrusion until we actually choose to speak to him, which gives us plenty of time to hide Jan (after a couple of failed attempts) and position him behind the thief.

Jan, with his strength of 9 and relatively low thief level isn’t much of a backstabber, of course, but this guy really isn’t a problem to kill anyway, so I’m mostly just doing it for the fun.

As it turned out, though, once we’d told him we were here to avenge the murdered child (a blatant lie: we just wanted the bear back, but since we’re here we might as well kill him and take his stuff too) and the fight started, Jan actually ended up doing most of the damage. After the backstab, he hit several more times and scored a critical, with Jaheira only landing a single, glancing blow and Korgan doing little but demolishing the door frame with throwing axes.

We killed him for the experience and because I said I’d kill everything I could, of course, but also because he has an emerald in his desk, as well as a couple of scrolls.

And hey, as long as we’re stealing stuff, we might as well go and filch the Gloves of Pickpocketing (how very apt) from the room adjacent to this one. Once again, the room’s occupant doesn’t really seem to give a damn.

We won’t have occasion to use these gloves since Jan has a pair that do exactly the same thing and more, but we can make a bit of gold off selling them.