Baldur's Gate: The Zero Reload Saga

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.

Well, Keldorn still managed to get his slow ass clobbered by the golem even without being paralysed, but we have enough healing spells available to patch him up.

We were able to loot some nifty scrolls from the bodies and the containers in the house; Invisible Stalker and Summon Fire Elemental among them; which Vespero and Jan were thankfully able to scribe without incident. Also, thanks to a component of one of the mods we installed, we also came across the evil scimitar known as Shazzellim.

This sword is specifically designed to kill Harpers. Seriously. Its ability is “any Harper hit by this sword must make a saving throw or die.” I don’t know why you’d need something like that, given that their absurdly roundabout way of accomplishing tasks basically means that they'll never be able to get their act together quickly enough to threaten you, but whatever. We’re not going to be holding on to it for long anyway, since Jaheira’s going to start bitching that we need to destroy it pretty soon, being a Harper herself.

It does make me wonder exactly how strictly it differentiates between Harpers and non-Harpers, though. I mean, presumably, if you were a Harper and you noticed someone coming at you with this sword, you could say "I quit" really quickly and then it wouldn't be any better than all the other scimitars in the world. Or you could just make sure that all Harpers fill in a form of resignation and keep it on their person at all times. Or, hell, just change the name of the organisation. "Oh no, Shazzellim, I'm with the Larpers. The Harpers disbanded a little while ago. Sorry."

Heh. LARPers.

Anyway, this quest is smooth sailing from here; even more so now that we have the Quest Pack installed, because it gives you the option to just tell the lady at the entrance that you’re working for Xzar and she’ll give you the assassin-bird right away.

Of course we’re still going to rob the entire stronghold blind since nobody lifts a finger to stop us, so that doesn’t make a huge difference.

OK, my previous post probably gave the impression that the Harpers were psychotic villains in addition to being stupid. I can assure you, they’re just stupid. The people we’re going to kill are eeeevil wizards in the service of Xzar, you see, which makes it totally OK.

…actually, now that I think about it, I’m not entirely sure about that. They don’t really seem that evil when you confront them. I’d say more “confused”. After all, even though you basically just break into their house and wave weapons in their faces, they seem perfectly willing to converse with you and give you a chance to explain yourself. Right up until they start thinking that Xzar’s going to come back and pull out their toenails if they don't blast you to oblivion, anyway.

BUT THERE’S A FLESH GOLEM AND SOME GHASTS IN THERE WITH THEM THEY MUST BE EVIL.

Anyway, the two mages here aren’t really an issue. Because of the layout, you can pretty much poke your head through the door, wait until they start casting a spell, then leave again so that they lose their target and the spell gets wasted. Rinse and repeat until their arsenal is exhausted and they have to resort to melee attacks. A cheap strategy, I grant you, but these two are sufficiently unhinged that I think it might actually work even without the game engine’s limitations.

No, the real problem in here is the presence of the Ghasts and the Flesh Golem. The golem’s a hard hitter and the Ghasts have a chance to paralyse you if they land a hit (which basically means they will paralyse you if they land a hit because I swear to god this game fudges the dice rolls in its favour so hard). When you’re paralysed, every attack aimed at you hits automatically. And, to reiterate, that golem hits hard. You see the problem.

No big deal, though. Viconia has Remove Paralysis memorised (I like to keep that one handy) and Ghasts don't have a whole lot of hit points, so we should be alright as long as we send our tanks in first.

We now enter into what is possibly the most needlessly elaborate assassination mission ever.

Let me just give you the rundown here. Xzar, whom we spoke to earlier, is a necromancer working with the criminal organisation known as the Zhentarim, making him an enemy of the Harpers. Recently, he’s been manufacturing freakish, undead monstrosities such as flesh golems and ghasts, which he then sells off as bodyguards (I presume) to the highest bidder. The Harpers don’t want that shit going down in Athkatla, so they’ve planned to kill Xzar to put a stop to it.

Simple enough so far, right?

Well, here’s apparently how they planned to do it. You'd think that they could just sneak up on him and plant a poisoned knife in his back, given that he's just standing there in the street with no accomplices and no protection. But oh no. That's not how the Harpers work, you see. They're clever and subtle.

Therefore, what they intend to do is to lure me into their stronghold (possibly by getting one of their friends poisoned and leaving them for me to find) and wait for me to break into the room that they expressly tell me not to enter on numerous occasions because it's too dangerous. Once I'm up there, the plan relies on me going into their aviary for no reason, stuffing some random bird into my pack just because it decides to settle in my hand, going back outside and bringing the bird to Xzar just on the off chance that it happens to be a polymorphed halfling thief. Xzar is then supposed to dispel the magic and turn the bird back into a person, except that instead of Montaron, it turns out to be an assassin who kills him, essentially meaning that after all that trouble, they just ended up falling back on the tried and tested routine of sneaking up on him and stabbing him.

What. The. Fuck.

It’s no wonder the Harpers never actually get anything worthwhile done in this game with schemes like that. This is to plotting as Rube Goldberg machines are to engineering.

“Guys, we need to make a grocery run. Here’s what we’re gonna do. You go and plant some gold on one of the peasants around here. Then, lure him out into a dark alleyway in the docks so that the Shadow Thieves mug him and take the gold. Then, we infiltrate the Shadow Thieves guild, posing as one of the big wigs, and order the thief that stole the gold we gave to the peasant to go and pick up the groceries we need. Then, we just need to get one of our agents to break in, steal the groceries and bring them back. It’s foolproof!”

Just the thought that Jaheira actually associates with these people makes me sick.

Before we can embark on this helter-skelter of stupidity, though, the Harpers want us to go to someone’s house and kill everything inside before they’ll let us in the building.

Sounds fair to me. MURDERIN’ TIME.

Here we come across an interesting little instance of idiocy. In the top right room here, the slavers have got a Maximum Security Chest; that is, one that’s both locked and trapped. Said chest contains fourteen gold coins and a minor magical scroll. Fair enough. However, right next to that, there are over three hundred gold coins, some magic arrows, a healing potion and another magical scroll, all of which are just lying on a table.

Do excuse my presumption, dear fellows, but I think it's distinctly possible that you might have got that backwards. Unless you just really like scrolls of Protection from Evil; but I don’t see how they would do you much good considering you’re the evil ones. Maybe slavery is just a dangerously competitive business.

Anyway. Before we fight the second group of slavers here, we have Jan cast "Invisibility 10’ Radius", rendering everyone in the party, as you might have guessed, invisible. By doing this, we can move our hard-hitters in close to the enemy wizards without being noticed, allowing us to murder the hell out of them before they can fire off a single spell. With them gone, the feeble fighters and archers are easily dealt with.

No particularly noteworthy loot from this battle; just a Cloak of Protection +1, which is going to Jan since Vespero already has a Ring +1.

When we return to the Coronet, Hendak demonstrates his telepathic talents by determining that we have wiped out the slavers before we even open our mouths, and rewards us with a nice sum of gold and “Kondar”, the bastard sword that acts as a +3 weapon against shape-shifters.

I cannot emphasise enough how useless this weapon is to us. Not only is nobody in the party proficient with bastard swords to begin with, but there are…what, maybe two shape-shifters in the entire game? That's a generous estimate, because I certainly can't think of any off the top of my head. Even then, by the time you come across them, you’ll probably have several weapons that are +3 against everything and have additional useful effects to boot.

Still, at least it’s worth a decent amount.

Even better, though, thanks to that sweet, sweet Quest XP, Vespero is now a level 9 mage. Only one more to go before he can regain his Kensai abilities. Oh god, it’s so close now. I can taste it. It tastes like awesome.

In other news, we just hit the 15000 gold mark, which means that both the Shadow Thieves and the vampires are now clamouring for our attention. We basically tell Valen to take a hike when she approaches us with her offer, though. We won’t be siding with the vampires, since Keldorn will run off in a huff if we do. Besides, storming the Shadow Thief stronghold is a friggin’ nightmare.

Immediately after that, though, we get approached by another shady, hooded woman who demands that we hand over all our money or die. Really, lady? Really? You want to try and mug all six of us with our armour and weapons equipped, ready and plainly visible?

OK. Your funeral.

Just kidding. You’re not getting a funeral. Your corpse is going to lie there and rot in the street, because THAT’S HOW WE ROLL IN AMN.

Where to next? I think we shall return to the Docks district to tangle with Xzar and those crazy Harpers for another hefty helping of easily obtained XP and some nifty magical gear. But that, loyal readers, is for another update.

This is Lorph Halys, and you’ve been reading Baldur’s Gate: The Zero Reload Saga. Thank you, and goodnight.

We’re still at that early stage of the game where a combination of Web and Stinking Cloud is pretty lethal. With a Greater Malison thrown into the mix, this group of slavers doesn’t stand a chance; if they’re not ensnared by sticky filaments then they’re knocked out cold by noxious fumes. I think Korgan and Keldorn maybe got hit once, but that was it.

Now we just have to deal with the trolls in the adjoining room.

You know what I hate about trolls? They’re bugged. Seriously. Whenever you knock them down to one hit point, they’re supposed to collapse so that you can finish them off with acid or fire…which seriously tries one’s patience in and of itself. It just means you have to keep stopping to switch someone’s ammunition to the fire arrows that are always conveniently strewn around when there are trolls in the area, then switch it back so that you don’t waste them on other enemies.

What’s really a problem, though, is that trolls seem to forget the “collapse at one hit point” behaviour all too easily. It takes the troll a while to actually realise that it’s supposed to fall down, and if you happen to hit it during that short space of time, it’ll forget to do so again. And again. And again. Therefore, unless you intentionally let up for a while or just miss a lot of blows in a row, you will be pounding on them FOREVER.

The thing is, I didn’t realise this at first, which made trolls into absurdly difficult enemies for the measly amount of experience you get for killing them. Normally they’d be “glass cannon” monsters; hard-hitting, but easy to take down. With this bug effectively making them invincible, though, the “glass” part rather gets omitted, and they just become unstoppable Game Over dispensers. You have no idea how much I hated going through the de’Arnise keep until I figured this out.

A question, though; what were a pair of trolls doing in here with a little girl?

Actually, scratch that. I don’t care what they were doing; I just want to know why the hell they hadn’t eaten her yet. I mean, they completely ignore this easy meal in favour of some well-equipped adventurers by whom they are outnumbered three-to-one. Why? I know trolls aren’t exactly the sharpest knives in the drawer, but they’re not THAT stupid.

Well, whatever. Here, we rescue the girl and…

…*sigh*. And give her 100 gold coins out of the goodness of our hearts.

Keldorn made us do it. That’s my excuse and I’m sticking to it.

Once Korgan is done complaining about it (I know how he feels, but we need the reputation boost), we head on up to clean this place out.

Nah, not yet. Like I said, we’re only doing this to get Keldorn, since we’re REALLY not up to taking on beholders yet. (I.e. We do not have the Shield of Balduran.)

On our way to the sewers, we came across that lady who tries to convince the priest of Talos into thinking that he got drunk one night and knocked her up, so that she can scam cash out of him.

For those who do not know, Talos is the god of storms. He’s a violent, foul-tempered son of a bitch, and so is everyone in his clergy. With that in mind, this woman is extremely lucky that she and her daughter didn’t get taken into the temple and have their skulls caved in with a hammer. I mean, there are priests of Lathander (the happy love god of light) just up the street and you target the worshippers of the BATSHIT GOD OF LIGHTNING AND WANTON DESTRUCTION?

And of course she’ll try and pull exactly the same thing on Vespero if he decides to talk to her. We all remember Vespero’s portrait, I trust?












Good lord. We‘d be performing a public service by ridding the world of this child-exploiting bitch, but of course attacking her turns the whole district hostile, so we’ll have to stay our blades. But by god if it isn’t under protest.

Anyway. After a quick dip into the sewers to recruit Keldorn, we now move back to the Slums to take a quick dip into the other sewers so that we can retrieve Lilarcor, the talking sword. Why the temple district needs its own separate set of sewers, I don’t know. Maybe they don’t want the holy crap being mixed in with the common crap or something.

Speaking of holy crap; holy crap! Korgan and Viconia just levelled up. Viconia now has level 5 Cleric spells to play with, and Korgan earned himself another proficiency point.

So hey, now that I think about it, why don’t we go and finish off those nasty slavers while we’re down here? Apparently a reputation of 14 isn’t good enough for Lathander’s clergy, and we can pump it up twice by finishing this quest. Let’s kick some butt. For goodness.

Off to the Temple district to drag a noble and stalwart paladin into our sociopathic shenanigans. Unfortunately, there’s no way to access the sewers without stumbling across the blind prophet Gaal and the idiots he’s preaching to.

And they ARE idiots. I mean, yeah, Gaal’s argument that the gods don’t really do much for anyone unless their character sheet says “Cleric” on it isn’t a bad one, and any religious cult that claims to offer better might at least be worth looking into, but all of this should be mitigated by the fact that you have to GET YOUR GODDAMNED EYES TORN OUT FIRST. “Oh, hey, that’s cool. I don’t mind being blinded for the rest of my life, as I have full confidence that you will follow up on all your vague and unsubstantiated promises!”

It’s not as if he isn’t up front about it either. He actually says “Yeah, if you want in, you’re going to have to lose the eyes. It’s just our thing,” during his pitch. Or something like that, anyway. I’ve seen this scene so many times that I don’t even bother to read the text anymore. I just click until it’s over.

Now, as those of you who have actually played the game will no doubt know, you’ll normally be approached after this incident by a priest of Helm, who basically DEMANDS that you get your ass over to the temple right this second because Helm wants you to do something for him. But you know what? No. If that is how Helm asks for favours then I would like to cordially invite Helm to suck my quarterstaff. You guys are high level clerics, so fix your own damn problems.

However, since we have the multi-stronghold mod installed (and since Vespero is good-aligned) we are instead graced with the presence of a priest of Lathander, who’s a little more polite in his request. We’ll need to talk to him before we can pick up Keldorn anyway, so we might as well go and see him now.

When we talk to him, he mentions that our reputation is “far from clear.” Excuse me? My reputation happens to be 14 out of 20, jerk. Granted, I’m not quite the messiah yet, but that’s still better than average.

Of course, he might be going by how Vespero’s actually been behaving rather than what the “reputation” value on his character sheet says, but…well, screw you if that’s the case. What’s on my sheet is gold to you, you pompous ass. You’re a lowly NPC. You don’t know jack. I AM THE PROTAGONIST, YOU HEAR?

Anyway, we have a chat with him, which essentially boils down to this;

“How do I know this isn’t an actual god they’re worshipping and you guys aren‘t just being insecure cocks?”

“It isn’t. We aren’t. Also, there‘s a reward.”

Well, that’s all Vespero needs to hear! Let’s massacre those damn dirty cultists!

One thing I like about reporting your findings to Aegisfield is that the issue of all the flayed corpses lying around in Rejiek’s basement is the one your character mentions last. As if it’s not important.

“How do I know he was the murderer? Well, this old, senile guy told me that he found this leather on the murder scene, and a prostitute said she smelled something funny. Oh, and there was a fuckload of dead people in his cellar, plus this tunic made of human flesh. Dunno if that helps at all, though.”

And of course he immediately rewards us with a hefty sum of gold without so much as going to check if a single word we said is actually true, let alone launching an actual investigation. Is it really any surprise that this city is so utterly rife with criminals?

Anyway. We're not going to be putting together the proper, magical Human Flesh Armour, so there's no point in holding on to this icky tunic. Therefore, we’re just going to go ahead and ditch it. Even if I wasn’t concerned that my more moral party members (Jaheira) would object to me killing Adalon for the dragon‘s blood component, and if doing so didn’t break a quest, there isn’t anyone in the party that it’d be worth giving the completed Human Flesh +6 to anyway. The only people we have that can wear it are Korgan and Viconia, and there are better suits of armour available for both of them.

We’re going to get creative, though. Rather than just dropping it in the street like with any other item we don't want and can't sell, we’re going to break into the house of some innocent civilians and plant it in their wardrobe. That’ll be a nice surprise for the kids. Vespero’s behaving like a veritable goddamned Santa Claus, and it‘s not even close to Christmas. I think he deserves a reputation boost for that act of charity.

No?

Fine then. Go ahead and stifle me with your phoney morality system. See if I care.

Where are we going to head to after we’ve rested? Good question. I don’t think there’s an awful lot more we can do right now that won’t result in Quest XP, so I think it’s high time we stop tentatively licking at this game's chocolate exterior and delve right into its gooey, caramel centre. In the next update, we'll be recruiting Keldorn and starting on a mission to rake in some real experience. Don't miss it. Even if it means waiting another year.

This is Lorph Halys, and you’ve been reading Baldur’s Gate: The Zero Reload Saga. Thank you, and goodnight.

On the way to the tanner’s we get a nice little banter. Viconia asks Korgan if he’s ever interacted with her Drow house, and he responds that yes, he burned it to the ground and urinated on the ashes.

I suppose that’s about the best you can expect from someone with a Charisma score of 7.

Into the establishment of Rejiek Hidesman, the man behind the gruesome murders that have been taking place in this district. Once again we find ourselves deprived of the clever option (subduing him immediately, taking him to the garrison and then presenting the evidence we found) and simply have to proclaim “WE KNOW IT WAS YOU WHAT DONE IT!”, thereby giving his plot armour ample time to activate and allowing him to escape.

Yes, plot armour. You know what I’m talking about. That inexplicable invincibility that certain NPCs mysteriously develop whenever the game decides you aren’t allowed to kill them yet. There is a rather sneaky way around this involving the use of Time Stop and Shapechange, but sadly, we’re not even close the level we’d need to be at in order to use those spells.

We follow Rejiek into the basement, taking care to disable Party AI so that nobody goes chasing after him and blundering into the traps strewn around here. Good news, though; the experience we got from disarming said traps was enough to push Vespero up another level, bringing him ever closer to release from dual-class related suckage.

Also, Viconia blurts out “I swim in memories in a place such as this”. In this murky, dilapidated basement filled with flies and flayed corpses. That pretty much sums up everything you need to know about Drow culture, right there.

We’re in for a fight when we head downstairs, so we take the opportunity to buff up beforehand. Vespero’s going to stay upstairs for the moment, because as squishy as he is right now, the last thing we need is him getting backstabbed by the assassins down here.

By the way, have I mentioned yet that enemies being able to BACKSTAB YOU FROM THE FRONT is a load of festering bullshit? Because it is.

We have Jan enter stealth mode (surprisingly, he gets it on his first attempt) and head downstairs, where he is accosted by a mage in Rejiek’s service in spite of the fact that he isn’t supposed to be visible. The fact that he openly converses with someone in the room sure doesn’t tip any of the other enemies off about his presence, however, giving him plenty of time to launch a Bruiser Mate at the assassin to stun him.

Which doesn’t work. Damn.

Jan hightails it back upstairs. The Ghasts follow us, but the assassin seems to stay put, which works in our favour. Korgan and Jaheira score a couple of solid criticals and the Ghasts go down without much trouble.

Now to deal with the assassin. Jebus, but this guy’s a lot tougher than I remember him being. Almost as soon as I get downstairs, he backstabs Korgan before I can do anything about it, then proceeds to slice Jaheira RIGHT the hell up, leaving her in critical condition. I mean, damn. The woman’s AC is at -3, for god’s sake. THIEVES ARE SUPPOSED TO HAVE TERRIBLE THAC0.

Anyway, we still managed to off him without losing anyone, so now it’s time to loot those crates and get out of here. As always, we get the first component of the mighty bow of Gesen down here, as well as some useless Hide amour, scrolls of Monster Summoning, Improved Invisibility, Project Image…

…wait, what? Project Image? AWESOME. This is one of the most overpowered spells in the game, and I’ve never got this scroll down here before. In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever found this scroll at all; I’ve always had to buy it from a store. What a stroke of luck. This is going straight into Vespero’s spell book. Not that he can use it yet, but still.

Time to go. We’ll make a quick trip to report our findings to Aegisfield, then head to the Five Flagons for some rest. Need to keep those spell slots filled.

...would still smell like guril berries.

On the way to interview our second witness, I decided, on a whim, to speak to one of the unnamed children on the street here. Here’s what she had to say:

“MY MOTHER SAYS THAT DARK ELVES SHOULD BE HANGED UNLESS THEY’RE NAMED DRIZZT!”

And I didn’t paraphrase that at all. That’s a word-for-word quotation. No joke.

…I got nothing. I mean, damn. Even Vespero is satisfied by this and resolves to make a point of NOT killing her when he gets his Kensai powers back. Godspeed, kid. You’re going places.

Anyway. We're now going to see the harlot known as Rose Bouquet, who claims to have smelled something unusual at the scene of the murder.

I get the feeling that this young lady has taken a leaf out of old Rampah’s book, because she’s charging us 20 gold just to talk to her. Not quite as steep, granted, but still. If that’s her going rate for brief chit-chats then I’d hate to think how damage we'd have to inflict on our wallets to actually get her out of her obnoxiously bright clothes.

That said, this price is completely non-negotiable, and since there’s no option available to take the “piñata” approach, (that is, tying her to the ceiling and hitting her with sticks until she breaks and spills information) we’re just going to have to swallow our cheapskate nature and pay her fee.

Basically, our task here is to go to the nearby merchant and bring back things to sniff that might be what she smelled at the murder scene; guril berries. Now, obviously there’s the berries themselves and the tannin the merchant gives us, but I don’t think we’re really given the opportunity to take advantage of this. For example, what if I happen to think that Jaheira’s slender, athletic thighs smell like guril berries? You’d better give those a sniff. No? Are you sure? Try her neck, then. Oh, well, how about Viconia’s tunic? Maybe you should take it off her so that you can get a really good whiff. Take your time, there’s no hurry.



...hey, look, I paid twenty gold for this, alright? I just want to get my money’s worth.

Anyway, she reckons it was the tannin, which means the tanner did it, which means that we’re dealing with the most incompetent murderer ever.

Seriously, what were you playing at, Mr. Hidesman? Were you even trying? As if leaving flayed corpses in the middle of the street for the guards to find wasn’t bad enough, you apparently think it’s a good idea to sprinkle a bunch of tannin around the murder scene, thereby implicating everyone in your line of work. (And you're the ONLY person in your line of work in the whole city.)

On top of that, you somehow manage to louse up completely and leave an ENTIRE ELEPHANT HIDE lying near the victim. Just…what? God only knows how you managed to drop something like that and not notice, but forget that. The more pertinent question is "Why did you bring it with you in the first place?" What possible purpose could it have served? “OK, going out to murder a hobo, better make sure I’ve got everything I need…knife, gloves, dark clothes, ELEPHANT HIDE, yep, all set.”

Honestly, at this point, I don’t know who’s worse; the murderer himself for leaving such an obvious trail of clues or the city guard for somehow missing it all and needing us to clean up the mess. I’m half-tempted to abandon this side-quest out of sheer contempt for everyone involved, but the lure of XP is too strong to resist.

Let’s just go.

Remember when I said I was going to be winding down the update schedule?

Well, I wasn’t kidding.

Seriously though. Has it really been almost a year since I updated this thing? How time flies when you forget about inconsequential Internet journals and start busying yourself with things that might actually have some bearing on your future.

So, what’s the story here? Are we back or are we not back?

Well, for now, the answer is yes. I can’t confirm that we’ll be returning to regular updates on a long-term basis since I’m going to be running my own business in a few weeks, and as you can imagine, that’s going to take up a hefty chunk of my time, particularly in the beginning stages. Once things get settled down a bit, we’ll see what kind of schedule I’ll be operating on; with any luck, I should at least be able to cough up a few updates during weekends.

Let’s not focus too much on the future, though. Live for the moment. For now, this blog is back in action. I hope your shrivelled, black hearts can forgive my extended absence, or at least grudgingly put up with it enough to become faithful readers once again.

With that out of the way, let’s look back at the game.

Unfortunately, due to circumstances beyond my control, my old saved games are no longer usable. As such, I’ve had to try and retrace my steps from a new game, using Shadowkeeper to tweak everything to be as close to the way it was as possible. Bear in mind that I’ve probably missed a few things, however, so if you, being the eagle-eyed supermen that you are, happen to spot any inconsistencies, at least you’ll know the reason for it.

Now. Where were we?