Spike Growth and Other Gardening Tips for the Aspiring Adventurer

So, we got all sneaky for our rematch with Minsc. Myles sneaked into the Pipe of Frustration, crept as close as possible, went into turn-based mode, drank a potion of invisibility, and then the cutscene kicked in and it was on like Donkey Kong. [And voilà, invisibility gone]. We had a better go the second time around, managed to knock Minsc out, kill the fake Jaheira, kill the Zhentarim runner, and then, after some heated convo with Minsc, got the Emperor to shut down his tadpole so we could calm him down. He's currently in camp with Boo (miniature giant space hamster). Jaheira got all teary-eyed over us spending the time to save one person when the whole coast is at risk. Wyll's winged devil mistress popped in and we broke Wyll's contract. Then it was back to the sewers to let Nine-Fingered Keane know we dealt with the Stone Lord. Of course, when we turned up, her hired Zhentarim guards were staging a coup, so we put them down like the dogs they are, although Craig did try to take out the Thieves' Guild as well with a spike growth. Keane is now on our side, and our band of allies is growing for the inevitable fight with the Elder Brain. As we left Keane, we robbed the Thieves' Guild vault, because it was there. We went shopping, 'cos that's what you do, stopped at the bank to return the stolen gold, and for a reward, we got the key to a vault we had already looted. Zaph sweet-talked his way out of a couple of high-security areas he wasn't supposed to be in, and we won't talk about what Craig did.

We stopped at someone's art show, whilst Craig and Myles were discussing the forged art, Dave ran into Councillor Florrick in the street who tried to convince him that Wyll was rotten to the core. Luckily, history was on his side, and he convinced her that Mithara was a lying devil and not to be trusted. She gave us the story about an ancient dragon under Baldur's Gate that Wyll could awaken, in return, we informed her that Ansur (the dragon) was dead, and recently re-dead.

We stopped in at the House of Hope (hidden Church of Shar), they refused to let us into their secret area, so Zaph knocked on the door with his legendary two-handed sword, and we greased the locks with the blood of the unbelievers. After a descent into the secret temple of Shar, we faced our toughest fight yet - 4 of us, plus a couple of Craig's summons against 20 Sharrans. They kept dropping darkness on us, but luckily, half of them died walking through Craig's spike growth. Dave was downed, Craig did his owlbear impersonation, screamed with rage which scared the shite out of Zaph, who ran away straight past some Sharrans who stabbed him to death. Craig transformed back to help Dave, but was confused in the dark and ran down the stairs instead of up. Many healing potions were consumed, much blood was spilt, arrows of smoke powder fired, elementals summoned, darkness spells survived before we finally emerged triumphant into the Daylight (Craig's spell for banishing darkness).

Stay tuned as we get down to looting, baby.

(So much darkness)

The Knights Who Say 'Nee-d All the Gold': A Bank's Tale of Woe and Weasels

So last night we were off to solve some puzzles to prove ourselves true heroes worthy of awakening Ansur the legendary dragon to defend Baldurs gate.  First up - balance the scales of justice.  Look at the pictures on the walls that depict a crime (stealing an apple to feed a hungry child), then stealing a priceless artifact, plus the bribed judge sentencing the poor guy to death.   We then had to pick from - three pictures depicting death, jail time, freedom an appropriate sentence.   Jail time it was, then off to the next puzzle.  In the next puzzle we had three people from Baldurs Gates history, 2 being good , one being bad and we had to choose to kill one of them.  To make it more challenging you had to catch flying books to read about these people so you could make a decision.   The first book you can just catch, the next not so much, and apparently shooting them out of the air destroys the books, the correct move, go to turn based, snatch that sucker out of the air and throw it on the ground.   After reading (uuurrggh) we offed the correct dude.   For the third puzzle, we found a partially played chess game, and we had to take it to checkmate of the black king in two turns.  You get three attempts to solve the puzzle.   After much discussion we burnt an attempt to see how it worked, then Craig cracked that sucker.   The fourth puzzle - Zaph got to hold a torch for 4 turns, whilst a bunch of angry air and water elementals took turns punching his clock.   Phew - finally we were declared true heroes and able to go wake the dragon.

But wait plot twist, the dragon is dead, and not happy being dead, and even unhappier that the emperor (mind flayer that Myles had weird tentacle sex with)  is the one who killed him and ... plot twist ... used to be the Balduran the founder of Baldurs gate, and Ansur the dragons bestie.  It seems Balduran went a wandering, stumbled on Moonrise tower, captured by Mind flayers, infected with the parasite, rescued by Ansur, couldn't be saved, turned into a mind flayer, Anser went to put him out of his misery and Balduran beat him to the punch and killed him ... phew.    Long story short, big boss battle against an undead dragon who swatted Craig and Zaph like the annoyances they are, leaving Myles to save the day with his arrows of undead & dragon slaying.   But hey we got some cool loot, Baldurans legendary giant slaying great sword (now wielded by Zaph), and Baldurans cool legendary helmet which is a little tight, but looks cool on Dave (who may have grabbed those whilst Myles and Craig were distracted by the cut scene).

Then off to rob a bank (I mean check out the trap set for the stone lord, and see what's happening in the vault.)   We may have stopped briefly downstairs to loot the clerks office and hoover up every potion and item in sight, followed by Myles practicing his safe cracking skills on vaults 1 to 6, and safe 1 through 7 (needing a 25  to pick each lock).   Then into the vault for the main event, only slightly delayed by us having to crack the security code.   Where we watched the drap go south as Minsk (of Baldurs gate 2 fame & Jaheira's bestie) broke out of a mimic.  He and fake Jaheira escaped with the banks gold leaving us to help the bank idiots fight off a wave of assassins.   Since no-one was paying us for this work, Myles cracked high security vaults 1 through 9 (needing a 30 to pick the lock) and we took everything that wasn't nailed to the floor, only briefly delayed by a couple of invisible assassins lurking around the filing cabinets.  The banker tried to convince us we should go recover the gold and return it, so its off to the sewers (what a shitty life adventuring is) to track down the stone lord.    We spent over an hour traipsing through shit form one end of the sewer to the other until we finally stumbled on the stone lord.  Since real Jaheira wanted us to rescue Minsk, Dave set the combat to non-lethal, told Myles and Craig repeatedly (like at least 5 times) we needed to take him alive, whilst killing the squirrel dude, then promptly used a water elemental to crush that tattooed idiot (Minsk) to death ... oops.   At this point we agreed to try that again next week, and maybe not have Craig and his horde of minions be first through the tunnel blocking the passageway.