Alright, we’re looking for an orange pavilion, orange…oh yeah, that thing!
I have to say, I’m glad that the mod actually put this part of the map to some use. It always seemed odd to me that there’d be such a (relatively) big, prominent structure here with an isolated NPC placed right in the centre of it…who doesn’t really serve any purpose. I mean, those are generally good indications of someone important that you should talk to, but she’s normally just a standard, dime-a-dozen merchant selling the same mundane crap that you can find being stocked by any of the other morbidly obese people in this city.
Why are almost all of the merchants in this game fat? I suppose all that aimless wandering that the commoners do must keep them in shape or something. The merchants never move at all. From dawn till dusk and back again, they just stand perfectly still in their designated spot. Waiting.
Interminably waiting.
Ooh, but she has large shields. Ribald doesn’t have any of those. I’ll take two.
Anyway, like I said earlier, we’re here to talk to this woman because she might know the whereabouts of this zombie’s wife; apparently she employed her for a while. As it turned out, since her husband’s died she’s been spending an awful lot of time in the Coppor Coronet’s “back rooms”, if you catch my drift.
So…her husband was murdered, and her reaction to this is to head straight for an extremely shady den of prostitution. Lovely. Obviously someone took “Till death do us part” a little too seriously. Either that or she’s been taking lessons from Jaheira.
Still, a quest is a quest, and we do not judge. Let’s go drag this woman’s sorry ass back to the graveyard and make her smush her lips on a decaying corpse. All in a day’s work for Vespero.
For people that were so easily killed, this group has some damn fine loot on them, the most notable of which is Arbane’s Sword. Chances are we’ll be keeping this around for the rest of the game. The only one proficient with it is Jan, of course, but we’re more interested in its added effect: Free Action. This will be a tremendous help in dealing with those pesky Hold Person spells.
Hold Person, of course, is just one of many spells that always seems to decimate your party when it gets cast on them, but never, ever works when you use it on anything except, say goblins. You know. Creatures that there is no point in wasting spells of any kind on.
From their names, we can deduce that the people who attacked us were slavers. I can only assume that this was their first day on the job, because otherwise they’d probably be much more savvy in their choice of targets. Oh yes, there are harmless commoners and unguarded merchants everywhere you look in this city, but no, let’s attack this armed, armoured and generally well-equipped party of adventurers that maintains a cohesive formation at all times, one of whom is walking around covered in a layer of stone and is therefore quite obviously a wizard of some kind. Hurrrrr.
It’s not like you get taken captive if they beat you, either. You die. They kill your whole party without hesitation. Generally speaking, guys, I don’t know if you realised this, but the kinds of slaves that tend to be most in demand are living ones.
Hell, I don’t know. Maybe they were just trying to expand their target market group out to the necrophile population of Athkatla.
Anyway, aside from the sword, we also get a bunch of +1 arrows that nobody can use, a Mace +1 (just the ticket, given that I forgot to pick up a melee weapon for Vic) and enchanted plate mail. We give this to Jaheira, who surrenders the Mail of the Dead to Viconia. There’s also a stack of scrolls on the mage, although none of them really have any spells I would have liked; say, for example, STONESKIN or HASTE.
Since there isn’t anything there that I couldn’t stand to lose, I just go ahead and scribe them all right away. All we end up losing is Shocking Grasp. Woe.
We’re done here, so we’ll patch Korgan up (again) and resume our trip to the promenade.
And we’re back.
The transition from forum to blog went about as smoothly as I could have hoped, though I suspect there are still a few references to “the thread” and other such inconsistencies that I might have failed to spot when I was reviewing my posts. I am sure, however, that you are very clever and won’t let such little errors confuse you.
Quick Recap: A zombie wants to get his mack on with his wife one last time, so we’re off to try and find her like the charitable XP hunters we are. Our next stop is Waukeen’s Promenade.
On our way there, though, we encounter some trouble. That’s right, ladies and gentlemen; Vespero has just had his very first ambush. Aren’t you proud of him?
The problem with these battles is that you never have any opportunity to prepare. The enemies generally aren’t that tough, but they always seem to end up positioned dangerously close to your squishiest party members when the battle starts.
Because of this, the fighters will almost invariably go for your vulnerable mages and thieves. No matter how furiously you click, of course, they’ll never bother to pay any attention to, say, a screaming, axe-wielding dwarf that is actually scoring hits on them repeatedly, so you’re basically forced to pause every second to run your fragile NPCs in circles, so that they stay out of reach of their assailants.
We take a bit of a chance here and have Vespero start casting Summon Monster I right away. The fruits of his efforts turn out to be two Kobold Commandos and a Worg, which is actually a lot more than I was hoping for; all I really wanted was something to take the focus off the party members for a while so that we could dispatch the spellcasters without impediment. But hey, if my conjured monsters can actually put up a decent fight, so much the better.
With Korgan tying up the melee fighter, the kobolds plunking away at the mage and the worg and Jaheira going toe-to-toe with the archers, this battle went down with only one hitch; we weren’t able to finish off the mage before she Lightning Bolted Korgan. Thankfully, though, a quick Magic Missile from Vespero ensured that she didn’t cause any further trouble.
By the time the cleric had finished buffing himself, everyone else was dead. We congratulated him heartily on his performance at fulfilling the “support” role, and rewarded him with his giblety demise.
And guess what? The Cowled Wizards don’t care about me casting spells out here either. At this point, though, does that really surprise anyone?
We’re in the graveyard and it’s night time, so we’re going to talk to the ghost of the murdered halfling kid…
OK, time out.
We’ve seen one kid abandoned in the street by his mother so that she could go and enjoy the circus, one kid kicked out of his village to embark on a gruelling journey into a cold, cruel city, one kid that’s been brutally murdered in his own home and cannot find peace in the afterlife because his teddy bear’s missing, and later on we’re going to encounter Neb, the child-killer, who has with him a group of tormented, weeping wraiths, spawned from the corpses of little boys and girls that have been tortured to death.
Am I the only one seeing a pattern here? What the hell does BioWare have against children?
Regardless, we agree to find this kid’s stuffed bear, twee though the whole idea might be.
(Note: I know that this quest doesn’t boost your reputation, before you tell me about it. This wasn’t the one I was talking about. Still, we might as well pick it up now while we have the opportunity. Eventually, they’ll both lead us to the same spot.)
With that side-quest taken on, we now head into the south-easternmost tomb.
Remember how I said earlier that I liked most of the content in the Quest Pack aside from the voice-acting? Here is where I have to take my headphones off.
Because there is a zombie in here. Not a hostile zombie that we need to kill, but a friendly one that needs us to do something for him. And as is the way with NPCs in this game, the first line of his dialogue is voiced.
It is not voiced well. Presumably the person doing it was trying to put on a sinister, hissing tone in order to sound more like a zombie. Fine. Good idea. But it comes out in this horrible, nasal, strangled mess that tends to conjure the image of someone with a peanut stuck in their throat as opposed to a rotting, undead monstrosity.
As for the quest itself, the short of it is that we need to find this guy’s wife. Apparently the reason he’s not at rest is that he had an argument with her and stormed away without saying goodbye, then rather unfortunately got murdered while he was out on a voyage. So now he wants to give her one last kiss in order to be at peace.
Yeah, I know. But who am I to argue with easy XP?
He’s given us our lead; a woman named Mira in Waukeen’s Promenade. Three guesses as to where we’re headed next.
OK, we’re safe. I realised what the problem was as soon as I brought the game window back up; Vespero got hit with a Silence spell.
He hadn’t taken any actual damage during the fight and the effect doesn’t last that long anyway, so I just Ctrl+R’ed it away and tried again. Sure enough, Viconia asks to join us and our reputation takes an undeserved hit. Phew.
We do a little item shuffling at this point. Korgan gets the dead fanatic’s plate mail and Viconia gets Korgan’s recently shed splint mail. Korgan also gets a medium shield while handing his small shield over to Viccy. Jaheira donates some bullets and a spare sling she’d kept just for this occasion, and we’re all set.
Of course I had the foresight to keep a spare sling around, but not a mace or a hammer. Ah well.
Does anyone else find it odd that Jan wears neon blue? It certainly doesn’t look that way on his portrait. Anyway, we’re going to head inside here so that the Cowled Wizards won’t bother us while we patch Korgan up and make the party safer with a few protection spells.
Now…this is just downright inexcusable. We’re in the council building in the Government district. There are two Cowled Wizards in here, Corneil and Tolgerias, and we’re casting spell after spell RIGHT IN FRONT OF THEIR EYES AND THEY COULDN’T CARE LESS. WHAT IS THE MATTER WITH YOU PEOPLE?
Ugh. Well, given the selective blindness of the law enforcement in this city, we’re still free to act, so we’ll want to get back to the task of doing reputation-boosting quests. There’s a perfect one to start on down in the Graveyard district, so that’s where we’ll be heading next.
I can’t help but think that the developers didn’t really do their research here.
One of the fanatics lets slip that they worship Beshaba. If you’re not a Forgotten Realms buff, Beshaba is a crazy, evil goddess of bad luck and curses; not exactly the type that you’d expect to object to the presence of a drow. Still, I suppose it could be justified with further thought. It just seems a bit odd.
What we do know, however, is that slaughtering a group of crazy evil goddess worshippers is in no way a no-no in the adventuring hero handbook, so we set Viconia free and get ready to crack some cleric skull.
Before we actually start the fight, we position Korgan and Jaheira right next to the archers so that they won’t give us any trouble when they turn hostile. We have Jan fire at the cleric while Vespero blasts him with a wand of frost.
You may feel like I’m wasting wands here, and you may well be right, but I’m fairly confident that once Vespero’s back in action, I’m really not going to need them that often. Besides, wands of frost aren’t really that great anyway, but it’s better than trying to whack someone with a magic stick.
It’s a long battle, but we eventually dispatch the fanatics. I had to pull Korgan back about halfway through, but a healing potion fixed him up enough that it was safe to send him back in. Fanatics dead, corpses looted and…Viconia won’t talk to us.
Uh-oh.
This is, of course, a bug, so it’s OK for me to reload here and try this again. I’ve got my fingers crossed that it was just some fluke glitch and it won’t happen the next time around…but if it does, we could be in trouble.
I’ll keep you all posted.
Just realised I’ve been walking around all this time without the Metaspell Influence Amulet on. Durrr.
Into the Government District, and I’m just going to go ahead and recruit Jan now as well. We’re going to want him at a decent level too since he’s our only thief, and more NPCs means more security. Better safe than sorry.
We finish the conversation and…Vespero levels up? Huh. OK. I never noticed before now that you actually got experience for doing this. Who knew that chatting could be so good for you?
I’m certainly not going to complain, in any event. He gets another proficiency point, and since the game won’t let us put any more in Daggers, it goes into Quarterstaff. I’m sure he’ll find a use for the Staff of the Magi eventually.
While we’re at it, we go ahead and talk to Delon just to add the Umar Hills to our world map.
Now this is yet another kid in seriously messed up circumstances. This boy’s been sent here all the way from Imnesvale to find someone that would be willing to investigate the murders that have been taken place there.
Look at the world map. How long is the journey from here to the Umar Hills? 20 hours. Right.
What kind of person do you have to be to send a little boy on a 20-hour journey through dangerous wilderness, all by himself, only to reach a huge, unfamiliar city where muggers and vampires run rampant and unchecked through the streets, all in the hopes of finding some random dudes to send back to your village in order to solve all its problems?
That’s friggin’ ruthless. That is straight-up stone cold.
Vespero is intrigued, and inquires as to how to go about meeting this person, and once Korgan is done complaining about it, we’ve got ourselves a shiny new map marker to visit.
And now, onward to rile up an angry mob.
