Tigranes

The last is Fear, and I have awakened him with... the gong? So you can see the four represent the various aspects of Durlag Trollkiller, and we have understood something of him through this trial. Sorophyx: Yeah. He's a big, huge, gigantic arse. Two things, then. The showdown begins as soon as we complete the four tasks; you can see Love comes pre-buffed with a globe of invulnerability. We immediatley position ourselves a fair way away from them. ...and here's why. Avarice immediately cloaks himself, and now has chosen to backstab a skeleton for some reason - and he's already injured from a trap Sorophyx set. Avarice goes down quickly, but now Fear joins the fray. We treat him to some fireworks, and are able to get him down without engaging in melee combat. But now Love approaches. Deraldin's dispel magic takes too long, and doesn't hit him; we summon some Gnolls to replace the skeletons, but as you can see, these dwarfs are really hard hitting. I think Deraldin and Greylord have only been hit once each. We employ the time-honoured tactic of everyone running away while Greylord shoots, and Love is down before it can get off some kind of spell. Some of you may have noticed that was only three. For some reason, Pride decided to sit back and do nothing, even though the Cloudkill spell from his own allies have now injured him badly. I think we could have finished him off right here, but Sorophyx misses. Again. Pride seems to be permanently hasted and starts chasing Sorophyx and chopping him down. We expend another valuable charge in a wand of paralysing to finally destroy the four dwarves. Three deaths in the first level, and 3(4?) more to go. For anyone except Sorophyx, the next death... shall be their last. Sorophyx: Spoooooooky.

Our struggles have paid dividends; we finally have access to level 4 priest spells.. ...and even better, level 4 wizard spells. Most of us are now at level 7 or so, and near the XP cap of the original Baldur's Gate. Again, a little underlevelled for where we are, but hey, at least we aren't carrying along any Level 1 guys... yet. And now we can begin to unravel the mysteries of this level. We've picked up several odd objects along the way. First, we use the anvil to combine two parts of a gong mallet; Then strike a random gong elsewhere. We use the switch we picked up earlier to turn on what looks like a miniature steam train... ...and use the power to press some wine, from grapes we found in a chest somewhere. Sorophyx: The unbeatable taste of fermented fungi, am I right? Finally, we rest, buff up the party (LEVEL 4 SPELLS TO THE MAX), and get ready for the showdown. You see, four dwarf-construct-thingies guard the entrance to the second level. Each recite a poem that gives a clue about what we need to do. The first is Avarice, and we present him with a large gem we found in a treasure pile. The second is Pride, and we have appeased him by reading of his deeds. The third is Love, and I have given him the Fungi Wine.

Unfortunately, the other side is populated by phase spiders, skeletons, flesh golems, and two more skeleton warriors. One particularly persistent skeleton warrior claws Nepenthe to the afterlife - I could have run away, but might have died from the trap anyway. Strike 2. Nepenthe: You can't do this to me! Oh, to fall in battle having never known a lady's bosom! Sorry. Maybe we'll meet some dwarf ladies before you die again. I mean, uh, you might not die at all! We might all make it out of Durlag's Tower. Really. We're nearly done exploring the first level. Having revived Nepenthe, we take on three greater dopplegangers in the library with a bit more planning. Sorophyx lobs a potion of explosion to start us off. Greater dopplegangers tend to haste and mirror image themselves; while the skeletons get in their way the plan is to cast Slow... Tale: ABRA-CADABRA! INDELIBLE PUMPERNICKEL! IGUANA ON A STICK! ...I'm starting to figure out why you haven't managed to make a single contribution to the party yet. (Just so you know, the Silence didn't even work.) The skeletons fall extra-fast with the hasted dopplegangers, and we move up our fighters. Greylord has bad line of sight, so when I tell him to attack he walks up too, and immediately gets a few swings to the face. Greylord: I gotta get out of here! Come on, get out of the way! Nepenthe: TRUE WARRIORS STAND AND FIGHT! Greylord: I'm an archer! I'm going to die! Get out! Nepenthe: STAND AND DELIVER- If this were an Advanced RPG like Neverwinter Nights, Greylord might have magically glided past his compatriots to safety. Alas, the magic of 3D model clipping has not yet been invented, and Greylord falls for the second time. But the battle still rages on. Two dopplegangers eat away at HP fast, and even with Deraldin free-firing from his wand of heavens we aren't doing enough damage. Eventually Tale risks death to get in there and cast a vampiric touch. She gets a hit to the face that nearly kills her, but we make it with no other losses.

10. We At Durlag's, Part One So we begin the greatest dungeon of them all, Durlag's Tower. It is not for the faint-hearted, and in my usual playthroughs, well, whenever I try to go through it quickly, we get party wipes. Every doorway, every chest, every random tile - if it can be trapped, it will be trapped; if it is trapped, it will deal enough damage to kill you. Enemies also pack a lot of punch here - not quite as bad as the werewolves, but combined with the traps, every room is a menace. For reference, remember that we will stick with our party members until 3 deaths - then, go to the next in line, which I believe is TrueNeutral with a Shapeshifter, then Walsingham with I-can't-remember-what. Currently, Oner and Deraldin have died twice; Greylord and Nepenthe have died once; and Sorophyx has, for some reason, never seen the afterlife. Sorophyx: I'm too beautiful to die, that's why. Alright. On the ground floor, we find little of note, already picked apart by adventurers once the first few had disabled the traps (mainly, through noble sacrifice). Ike has clearly done this schtick before. He offers to sell us a MAGIC RUNESTONE for the lower floors, where GREAT TREASURES lie, but we decline. Tale: Trust this guy to draw a few lines on a pebble and sell it for 300 gold. Sorophyx: Hush, I'm taking notes. Sadly, this is to be Ike's last business trip. A demon knight decides to crash the party, and fireball everyone to crisp - except us. How convenient. We can't have that, and decide to venture into the lower floors in pursuit of the evil demon knight. You can see that right from the get-go, there's a fireball trap; as you skip over the wires, you will see a beautiful, faux-medieval dining room area, decorated with a beautiful piece of abstract art on your right. Yes, there on the wall. I believe it's called "Flame Grilled Chicken", a masterpiece from a long forgotten age. Sorophyx: Is it a RICH demonknight? Nepenthe: Maybe we should just leave it alone. I mean, it doesn't seem to hurt anyone that doesn't enter the Tower... Sorophyx: I thought you Paladins were all about SMITING EVIL, man. Where's your sense of, what do you call it, justice? Deraldin: Nep is at his most self-righteous when there's a maiden involved, really. Sorophyx: Well, maybe some of the dwarf-women down there are still serviceable. Yes, but maybe Nep isn't their type. The plan is to have Sorophyx drug up on potions of perception, and go around untrapping and looting everything. Of course, it doesn't always happen in that order. Sorophyx: Woo. It doesn't take long until the inevitable happens. You can't see because he's died and the fog of war has set in, but I tried to disarm a chest and Sorophyx set it off instead - a lightning bolt which, uh, rebounded off the tiny room and hit him about four times before I could pause. That's count one for Sorophyx. After a brief (read: annoying) trip, we're back and Sorophyx continues exploring the first level. He finds some interesting lore on Durlag. Something about an EXTREMELY POWERFUL DEMON TRAPPED IN A DAGGER. Oner: Sounds like somebody's doing some foreshadowing. That's what a fine arts degree gets you. We are informed that the pride of a dead dwarf has been suitably appeased by our readership. This will have consequences soon enough. One of the more powerful challenges on level 1 are skeleton warriors - essentially akin to Icharyd outside the Ulcaster ruins. They wield +1 Two Handed Swords, have a fair bit of HP, are immune to normal weapons and have a fair bit of spell resistance. It generally takes the whole party ganging up on one, with front liners retiring to heal up, to get them down. More traps. ...in fact, a recurring trap. Sorophyx can't see this one, so we're now stuck on the other side until we find another route, or something.

German adverts. Interesting. The visuals are still awful, or rather, really strange mixes of colours and styles, but we do get a bit better look at the combat. It's not promising how slow, stupid and braindead the enemies are in that boss fight - though it could be the tutorial + easy difficulty, or something. Perhaps. At least your character seems quite responsive. The skills/abilities look nice.

Interesting. Graphics: Looks completely and utterly boring. Bloomy and blurry, your typical functional but in no way cool or good-looking UI (complete with Outer Glows around questgivers), art style too is, well, there's nothing to say about that. Looks like a weird mix of a simple, rather uninteresting, kill-crap-pound-through-crap-story ARPG, but then with a surprising amount of various skills, abilities and options underneath the hood. Depending on how good the latter works the game might well be worth playing. In other words, it might turn out to have a lot of stuff a la Divine Divinity, or just be a Fable. Hard to tell yet, really. The combat itself looked fairly boring, your standard dodge around jump around shoot/smash stuff quick, but again that depends on how the combo system works and whether there's some interesting magics to be had. I don't think they've shown enough meat here yet.

No, I agree. 1 in 10 seems to be the way of the world, often enough. Maybe that just means I need to make more pitches.

Not a good day. Two applications I've put in for workshops/conferences this summer have died. I have about 8-9 various things in the works for the next 6 months and I'm hoping half of them will live, but you never know. Based on my short life the rule seems to be that you'll never get quite as many things as you want.

Yeah, Salvatore doing the writing = I have zero hopes for writing. It's hard enough for a non-gaming writer to get into writing for a game. And oh wow, that video shows the game looks worse than it's ever looked. It's like the kiddy cartoony of Guild Wars, but without the art direction of Guild Wars (which was sometimes awful but sometimes impressive). And those faces, it's like the latest Pixar-Disney! Once again, the combat might be fun/different enough to justify playing this for any length of time, but...

This update begins on the previous page. Tale's not particularly pleased about the business and manages to get a magic missile in his face, but the mage teleports away anyway. I wonder what would have happened if we got a poisoned arrow there or something - would he die off-screen? Alright. Now it's time for what we're really here for. THE GREAT TOUR OF IKE CASCADION VENDAR! Deraldin: This guy's really good! Really? You think so? Deraldin: Yeah, he's got the hook, line and sinker deal all set to go, and all you gotta do is cough up the cash. He's centuries ahead of his time, this fellow. Well, it must be true, because we signed up, too. Before we go, we stop by the Ulgoth's Beard inn, one of the 2 new stores in the expansion. We can't quite afford the Invisibility Ring (mainly because Tale tried wild magic in the Ice Island and it made half our gold disappear), but the Cloak of Displacement is useful, as are some high level spell scrolls we can't cast yet. Ominous. And in front of Durlag's Tower is the other salesman. We invest in many potions of healing, antidotes, and potions of perception; Sorophyx will be the only thing stopping the Tower from blowing everyone into nasty little chunky bits. The tower shows it means business even from the exterior; two battle horrors. If you remember, they wiped out Deraldin (and Oner? I think?) at the Cloakwood Mines. Sorophyx can't hit them. Again. But this time, we're bigger, stronger, and... Deraldin: EAT FIRE, BIT- No swearing. Deraldin: EAT FIRE, BREECHES! Indeed. Even while spamming the wand of heavens, they are alive for long enough to do serious damage. Eventually, Tale manages to paralyze one of them with a wand, and that gives us enough time to beat them down. And we are here. Roughly at level 6, still without level 4/5 spells. Who will live? And who will die? Because somebody will die. Next time, a blow-by-blow look through Durlag's Tower.

The monsters are all low level, and we manage to create a pile of flesh and blood before long. More problematic are the wizards; our only real option is to charge them head-on, now. Which we do, with great effect. The place is filled with traps, and for some reason the enemy mage didn't set it off. Mage 1 falls as Sorophyx finally gets it right. But the other mage seems to be the one with the wand, as he summons more critters to annoy us. He has shield, mirror image, globe of invulnerability, and protection from normal missiles, making him pretty invulnerable at the moment. In fact, after about ten turns, we've yet to make a dent on him, and now he's starting to run out of spells, he's firing all the low level ones. Tale is in hiding after taking an acid arrow to the face; it deals more than half of her entire HP each turn in acid damage, so she's pretty much overdosing on healing potions to stay alive. Sorophyx is in a similar situation. And now Greylord, too. We're going to run out of potions soon. Thankfully, he ran out of spells before anybody died, and eventually, his protections ran out - I think it took us 30 turns or so to get him down. That's what happens without 4th/5th level spells, kids. I was all puffed up for the grand finale against the Ogre Mage, but I forgot - Unfinished Business restores a second level to the Ice Island. It's kind of disappointing, actually. The last level of the Candlekeep catacombs is reskinned, and the Ogre Mage is nowhere to be found - instead is this guy, who packs a lot of high level spells and controls some bears. It's just a pity he doesn't have a lot of health. Shandalar is ever so grateful for getting his cloak back. It's what gets all the ladies' knickers in a twist, you know. Deraldin: It's flamin' pink. Hey, what do you know about fashion?

The first level of the catacombs decides to do some loot balancing by providing various trapped tombs with goodies. Tale finally reads a tome of strength so taht she can carry more than 15 pounds, and also learns some fourth level spells she can't even cast yet. Dopplegangers appear to be the main asset for the Iron Throne's seedier parts. They try to tell us that Gorion didn't really die, he was just magically poisoned into pretend-dead, and nobody told us because they didn't want us to cry. It's frightening to think that just a few years later, this kind of stuff actually becomes the main storyline... The Greater Doppleganger in particular is powerful; while he has a mirror image up he can damage us, and cast spells like hold person and confusion. Still, by this point we are pretty well equipped. Greylord relives the first moment of his Badassery with a spare potion of mirrored eyes. Greylord: This is how it all began. Me, Potion, and XP. *sniff* And thus we make a rather uneventful escape from Candlekeep. We're meant to be ambushed by 4 ogre magi, but they never turned up - I think that's a SCS component we didn't get. Before returning to Baldur's Gate, though, it's time for us to begin the Tales of the Sword Coast content. We're terribly underleveled for some reason (~50k XP, ~45 for Deraldin & Nepenthe), perhaps because we missed a few things, but we sport enough phat loot to handle the challenge... I think. First, we are confronted by Shandalar, whose home Sorophyx had robbed totally without anyone noticing. Sorophyx: Exactly, so how does he know we stole his crap? We're all on rails, my friend. He uses his terrifying magic to send us to the Ice Island, instead of, I don't know, destroying us all. Our mission is to find his cloak, because they had a party here last week and he left most of his clothes behind. *wink wink* The place is full of trapped and insane wizards. We have the metagaming foresight to send only Greylord (in the corridor, hardly visible) ahead to trigger conversation, with Sorophyx invisible behind the Green mage. This should be quick.. Or not. I think Sorophyx hit a mirror image (the pause-lag means I couldn't stab immediately), and the 1 damage was only the extra ice damage, or something. Doesn't make much sense to me, either. With the initial move not working out, we retreat and summon some undead. Unfortunately, someone there has a wand of summon monsters, too... ...and he's not afraid to use it, clearly. Deraldin fires a dispel magic to try and neutralize wizards' buffs but can't get to any of them.

9. In This Chapter, Stuff Happens Our former home demands a Great Bribe for re-entry. It's a sound policy, in that each visitor allows them to accrue more and more books, and thus forego sending out scholars of their own. Oner: It's fascism, that's what it is. The bourgeoisie just want to keep the common folk from the wisdom of the ancients! That's.... not what fascism is, man. Oner: Oh, I know. They're communist, too. Bastards. I blame the education system, really. The inside of candlekeep is probably one of the best looking interiors in the game. Good light sources, and some objects even cast preset shadows (like the bench by the entrance)! Everyone we talk to tell us something fishy is going on with the Iron Throne visitors, however. A good man called Koveras sees fit to warn us about the dangers ahead. Tale: Did he actually expect us not to notice? I mean, he still talks in that DEEP BOOMING VOICE. Sorophyx: Villain Soundpack #2. Tale: What's #1? Sorophyx: One day, I'll laugh just like him. *swoon* Now, the real reason for our visiting Candlekeep - an audience with the leaders of the Iron Throne, including Rieltar, the head honcho. I've actually never understood this part of the plot; OK, so you find some fishy documents in the Iron Throne HQ about their involvement in the iron crisis, you know Sarevok is somehow involved with them and after you. But, uh, obviously we don't have enough evidence to formally convict them (or we could do that without coming here), and there seems to be no mechanism for us to try and FIND any incriminating evidence, say, by eavesdropping on their meetings. In fact, why they're even here is unclear - Sarevok is clearly looking up texts by Alaundo on the Bhaalspawn, but that's probably him making the best of the trip. In any case, we really only have two options; kill them in our QUEST FOR GREAT JUSTICE and get thrown in jail, or ignore them in our Lawful Goodness, get falsely accused and get thrown in jail anyway. Since Tale is technically Lawful Good, we'll just make do with a terrifying parting remark. Tale: I'll be back! Yeah, that. Sorophyx:Wait, you're saying we have some bags of phat loot here that will die no matter what we do, and we'll go to jail no matter what we do, and we're NOT looting them? Tale: We can't kill them, we don't even have an arrest warrant. Sorophyx: Dude, screw this. You can't tell me what to do, you have less HP than a ripe banana. Sorophyx: FOR XP! Oner: FOR XP! Oh, uh.. these guys are a bit tougher than I expected. That's No.2 for you, Sorophyx. Sorophyx: But.... my XP! Sorry. More for the rest of us, I guess. No matter how sneakily we kill them, we're soon found out and apprehended by the Watchers. I mean, how sneakily can you slaughter five people in a library, anyway? Ulraunt vents the frustration of not having a single line until now by pronouncing the most horrifying of judgments: Ulraunt: YOUR TRANSGRESSIONS WILL BE PUNISHED IN THE MOST SEVERE FORM! I'm guessing that means no dessert AND an early bedtime. Seconds after Ulraunt leaves, Tethtoril comes and teleports us to the Candlekeep catacombs. If this were an Advanced RPG we would be left with a single lockpick to sneak our way out, but no, we'll just kill some undead. :decline:

I stick with Tutu, as last time I tried, Trilogy introduced terrible slowdowns halfway through SOA. My new comp might be OK, but Tutu works well enough, as these days I'm pretty set on the 30-40 mods I use. And in this case, I'll use as little as possible. But yes, if you want the big phat experience, BGT or even BGT+BP is the way to go.

Apologies, hope to have an update tomorrowish re. Candlekeep. I will likely forego all remaining BG sidequests (there aren't that many), and instead try and cover some of the TOTSC stuff. Certainly, we will hit Durlag's Tower.

Everything I've heard about it thus far has sounded like a typical B-grade mediocre ARPG, but the combat looks potentially fun and fresh. If they get it right.

Not having played previous XCOMs, that sounds pretty cool. I'm usually not a fan of building multiple bases in quasi-strategy games. Lack of ammo sounds a bit silly though.

60's not the biggest these days but it represents a sizable investment, and I'd say it's the clearest indication that this is a full fledged title with heavy investment.

We open with a quick shot from Greylord to disrupt a spell, and position Tale out of harm's way. We can see several high level enemies emerge from the fog of war. (I'll note that with full SCS, this battle is well nigh impossible without cheese. The assassin can chunk party members with 50+ damage backstabs, and does so repeatedly using potions of invisibility; not to mention mages casting dire charms, Aasim using wand of heavens, and all that.) Here, we have a fighting chance. Tale gets off a nice fireball, Deraldin silence. The melee fighters, Zhalimar in particular, do a lot of damage, but by this point we've saved up a few potions of extra healing and Oner can stay in the front lines. We again use wand of paralysis to good effect; Nepenthe holds the front on the other side of the staircase, leaving Deraldin free to cast various spells in peace. In the end, everyone survives. We're pretty powerful now, the party reaching Level 6 at this point, and perhaps, will be able to stay intact all the way to Sarevok. If not, whoever comes in at Level 1 should be in for a wild ride... We stop to do some extra shopping. Having bought most of what we need, we can indulge in an arrow of slaying, which, if it hits, instantly kills an Ogre Mage, and also ten arrows of detonation. And finally, we're back where it all started. Candlekeep. Here we shall find the Iron Throne's leaders, and also engage in some delightful area recycling! Tale: Oh boy!

And finally, it's time for the Plot . We've been asked by the Flaming Fist to look into suspicious activities at the Seven Suns. Sorophyx: Leave this to me, guys. Tale: What? Why? Sorophyx: Investigations call for discretion, not for six adventurers lumbering around. This requires the delicate touch of THE- Oner: Okay, okay, stop with the screaming. Go and get yourself killed by liches or something, I'm going to go have a panini. Nepenthe: Ham for me. Unfortunately, Sorophyx's first efforts at diplomacy fall flat. Sorophyx: No tour? But in the basement, we find a doppleganger! Only greater dopplegangers cast spells in BG1, so we're okay. Sorophyx made a little joke, and now Jhasso won't talk to us anymore, and it broke the quest - we tried killing all the merchants but we still didn't get all the clues. I eventually had to reload and make Sorophyx play nice. Sorophyx: We could have tortured him for real to get the information, you know. I told you before. Blue circles beneath their feet = no touchy. Unless they have big shinies. I feel obligated to report the sighting of the greatest Heroe of the Land, Tiax. Bioware will never be able to top this. Top notch writing. There is wit, there is pathos, there is... *sob* Tale: The Seven Suns turned out to be full of dopplegangers. Scar: You have done very well! Now, I have another job you may be interested in... Tale: Actually, can we get on with the Iron Throne business? If we do any more sidequests today we're going to go nuts. Scar: Oh, alright then. Meet me outside the Flaming Fist barracks. Tale: But... this is the Flaming Fist barracks. Scar: Yes. Meet me outside. Tale: The door's right there. Why do we have to go outside? Scar: Meet. Me. Outside. Tale: Okay, we're outside. Can we talk now? Scar: Of course. Duke Eltan himself wishes to speak to you about this. Will you come with me? Tale: What... okay, fine. Where is Duke Eltan? Scar: Inside the Flaming FIst barracks. Just follow me. It turns out that Duke Eltan just wanted to tell us to go infiltrate the Iron Throne compound. THANKS, BUREAUCRAT. Like the Seven Suns, this will require all the tricks up our sleeves not to be exposed... Oner: Hey, dude. Here's 200 gold pieces, how about you just let us in? Guard: Let's see that gold. Oner: Here ya go. Guard: Good. Now. We don't take bribes! Get out of here before we thrash you. Oner: But you just took the bribe! Guard: No, no I didn't. *smirk* Oner went into barbarian rage, killed the guard and took back the gold. Oner: NONE SHALL TOY WITH ONER, THE BARBARIAN! Deraldin: More freaking larpers. Beyond several more challenges by inquisitive guards, we reach the top floor of the Iron Throne headquarters. Zhalimar: Fear my wrath, for it is great indeed! Who dares intrude upon our negotiations? Deraldin: Another freaking larper. Seriously, who says that? What if I was jsut a servant bringing cookies? Zhalimar: Yeah, that's happened a few times. Embarrassing.

A second later, Greylord pops up from the staircase and fires an arrow in his face. (Actually, given that damage, he could have one-shotted Ramazith all on his own.) Greylord: Nerf me, nerf me now, ooh yeah. We stop by an inn for some rest, but are accosted by perhaps the strangest NPC in Baldur's Gate. Are they based on some P&P lore? The Maulers of the Undermountain, no longer able to stomach their crazy talk, decides to attack us too. These guys are actually pretty powerful, and we can't take chances even with Hind and the Merry Fools on our side. We open with a Silence, though it doesn't hit the mage in the middle. Someone scrapes Tale on the toe as they run past, so she has to take cover to avoid being chunked or something. Deraldin too retreats to quaff some potions. Luckily, Tale is able to use the wand of paralysis to good effect on the two melee fighters in the cneter of the screen. Tale: Come on, man. My toe really hurts! Taking tavern brawls to a whole new level. The mage proves troublesome, taking 4 of our party out from the fight with a single spell. Feeling the heat, we decide to use another wand... Death by wild dogs. But the real reason for visiting the inn; the Helm of Balduran, hidden in the recesses of a painting! We will also retrieve the Cloak in due time.

Oh, nutbunnies. Who traps their valuable stash of gems and jewelry?! The sound rouses the merchant, but THE THIEF is once again quick to defuse a potentially fatal situation with intelligence and charm. A rogue stone nets us a tidy profit for THE THIEF tonight. We'll round up by reporting our success at Shandalar's to the locals... Resar: I offer my sorrows, but you must die! Oh, come on. What are you, the Godfather? Luckily, our previous heists with Narlen has made us a chum, and chums don't let other chums get bummed by other chums of said chum. The heroics of the mysterious THE THIEF behind us, we engage in some more sidequestery during the daytime. The mage Ramazith commissions us to recover a certain nymph from a rival mage, hopelessly in love. We all know you're just in it for her hot, smokin' body, Ragefast. Deraldin: Hubbah hubbah. Come on, Tale. We should just keep her! On a leash. Nepenthe: We can't do that! That's cruel! Deraldin: Is it, Nep? Is it? What could be more cruel than to deny our natural needs, to deny ourselves as men, to deny what our souls cry out for every moment of our lives? Nepenthe: Um... actually, I'm not that desperate, man. I think I'm alright. Deraldin: Oh. But... Nepenthe: You might need some help, though. Ramazith isn't particularly pleased we lost his hubba bubba. We climb his tower, each level full of rather annoying monsters like kobold commandos and slimes. Soon, Sorophyx spies Ramazith. He's got his back to the wall to ward off possible backstabs, but we can still... Sorophyx: SIDESTAB, BABY.

8. City Life In a city, you are never alone. In a city, someone is always watching. And if you are the watcher, rather than the watched, there is no shortage of opportunities, and no shortage of victims. I am a creature of the night. I am silent and deadly, and also handsome and like a fox. I. am. THIEF. Sorophyx: A creature of the night, silent and deadly. I. AM. THIEF! Deraldin: Never took him for a bloody larper, but there's one in every party. I rendezvous with my local contact, the first step to spreading the terror of Sorophyx down the Sword Coast. While lacking in thiefish good looks and charm in comparison, he will serve as a useful source of jobs. Narlen: You'll spy the road while Rededge an I plunder within. Be on yer cautions, and yell the warnin' if ye see the soldierman! Wait, what? Disgraceful! How dare they reduce me to mere watchdog! Don't they realize that I AM THIEF? Flaming Fist: It's awful late to be out and about citizen. Why are you not at rest? Sorophyx: I, uh... I... Flaming Fist: You best answer me now, short one, before I take you in for loitering! Sorophyx: THE JIG IS UP! MAKE FER THE DARK! Flaming Fist: Wha- hey! STOP THIEF! Hmph. Although the local cads did not recognize my unmatchable talent, they owe their lives this night to my extraordinary wit and fleet of foot. Now, I can work alone on the real jobs without being weighed down by incompetence. The home of Shandalar shall serve as my first real prey. Who's the thief? Who's the thief? THATS RIGHT. BOO YA. I mean, OK, they had no guards, locks or traps here, but hey, not everyone can rob a completely undefended mansion! But why stop there, huh? Why not burgle the hall of wonders, too? Why not- Alora: HEYA! Sorophyx: Dude! Alora: Aww nutbunnies, caught again! Hey wait, you're not a guard! HEY, YOU'RE A THIEF TOO! IM HERE TO STEAL STUFF AS WELL, YOU WANNA BE FRIENDS? Sorophyx: No, I- Alora: Oh, never mind, you look kind of clumsy, and if I'm caught again they'll have me clean out noblemen's latrines for another year. BUT HEY IT WAS GOOD KNOWING YA HOPE YOU DON'T GET CAUGHT BYE! Sorophyx: ... OK, alright. Alright. This won't do. My reputation as THE THIEF is at stake. I need to pull off something big here, something really challenging. And the only job truly worth the time of THE THIEF is the biggest of them all; the mansion of Duke Entar Silvershield. Oh, nutbunnies. Sorophyx: Who saw me, anyway? Cook: I SEE YOU, THIEF, STEALING SOMETHING IN THE OTHER ROOM! Sorophyx: That's ridiculous! There's a five feet thick wall between us! Cook: Someone doesn't know his fog of war rules. Don't you know that light bounces at a perpendicular angle in tight spaces? Sorophyx: That's ridiculous! Cook: Fine. In that case, I have infra-red vision. Sorophyx: But... Cook: GUARDS! I don't believe this. Alright, alright. That didn't go so well. But at least some of the jobs worked out, right? It's time for THE THIEF to collect his dirty money, baby! Narlen: 'ere there, good fortune ye return to us! We've 300 gold to divvy. Sorophyx: No way. THE THIEF HUNGERS FOR TRUE LOOT. Narlen: Dude, don't weird out on me now. Alright, we could go for another heist. A gem merchant. Should be a bit more profitable. Fortune smiles on THE THIEF tonight, indeed.

Hey, i never saw the actual movie. I noticed that Hareishan is the name of one of Bohdi's vampires, as well, and it is worth considering. Irenicus and Bohdi were clearly monitoring the Bhaalspawn & Sarevok during the events of BG1, and it's not too outlandish to suggest Bohdi did some corpse shopping. It's a nice little trivia.

Love this guy.We don't even know why he wants the telescope; seems like he just wants to do it for the lulz. In fact, he bears all the hallmarks of the original... http://www.platformnation.com/wp-content/u...ogy-525x393.jpg It all began with medieval telescope thievery. We also check out the Thieves' guild. Note the fifth option for the entry password. There, we are approached by one Narlen Darkwalk, who can't quite figure out whether he's a thief or a pirate. Nevertheless, we arrange to rendezvous at night for some good ol' thievery. Finally, we'll also accept a task to infiltrate Shandolar's mansion and steal some magical thingamagickies. Next time, shenanigans in Baldur's Gate!