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  1. - Top - End - #31
    Barbarian in the Playground
     
    Khay's Avatar

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    Jun 2013

    Default Re: Let's Read and also Play Baldur's Gate: Bhaal must be stopped!

    Quote Originally Posted by russdm View Post
    Is it possible to actually make it through the game, if you play as terribly stupid as Abdel is? (I think Abdel must have a serious penalty to intelligence, like having a 5 or 6 at most. Such a stupid guy.
    It's difficult to follow Abdel's choices, at least in part because the narrative keeps handing him victory on a silver platter. Doing what Abdel does tends to make things needlessly difficult. I'm trying to sort of follow his path by making the same plot choices (whenever possible) and staying relatively close to the book-canon party (to some extent) but it'll become increasingly difficult as the game goes on.

    Also, this is neither here nor there but according to Dragon Magazine #262, Abdel's mental stats are meant to be on the bad side of average (INT 10, WIS 9, CHA 7). Personally, I'd probably put WIS and INT both in the 7-8 range and CHA around 10.

  2. - Top - End - #32
    Orc in the Playground
     
    AssassinGuy

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    Default Re: Let's Read and also Play Baldur's Gate: Bhaal must be stopped!

    While reading through your update, I was mentally preparing a comment about an old article I read in an old issue of Dragon Magazine about how one DM just terrorized his players with kobolds, so I was pretty surprised that you actually linked to it in the commentary section. Great essay that really made me think about how to set up encounters as a DM, and how to think things through as a character. Definitely required reading for anyone playing D&D.

    I also want to note that I am really enjoying the Read/Play-through. I had heard bad things about the novel but never realized how bad it really was, so I really appreciate your dissection of the writing, and the fun way you're contrasting it to the game.

  3. - Top - End - #33
    Barbarian in the Playground
     
    Khay's Avatar

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    Default Re: Let's Read and also Play Baldur's Gate: Bhaal must be stopped!

    Quote Originally Posted by monomer View Post
    While reading through your update, I was mentally preparing a comment about an old article I read in an old issue of Dragon Magazine about how one DM just terrorized his players with kobolds, so I was pretty surprised that you actually linked to it in the commentary section. Great essay that really made me think about how to set up encounters as a DM, and how to think things through as a character. Definitely required reading for anyone playing D&D.

    I also want to note that I am really enjoying the Read/Play-through. I had heard bad things about the novel but never realized how bad it really was, so I really appreciate your dissection of the writing, and the fun way you're contrasting it to the game.
    Thank you! Knowing that people are enjoying the dissection makes the novels much more bearable. And yeah, Tucker's Kobolds are a classic for a reason. It's still one of my favourite articles about encounter design, and the level designers responsible for the Nashkel Mines must've been thinking along similar lines.

    ---

    So, chapter eight! This is another short one, but something noteworthy does happen: Jaheira finally casts a spell. We'll discuss that monumental occasion at length.

    Spoiler: The game
    Show

    Good news: I finally fixed the compression issue about halfway through this update. Turns out ActivePresenter has an option to not make everything terrible, which I somehow missed until now. Oops. The first few screenshots still look terrible but after that things should improve.


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    Mulahey's dead and the mine is back in business! Of course, it'll take weeks if not months to get production up and running again, and the trading caravans will still have trouble getting through thanks to the bandits.

    Oh well, we'll deal with that another time. For now, we'll loot the place clean.


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    The chest in Mulahey's throne room contains a ton of money, as well as some useful spell scrolls. The real prize here is Mulahey's Ring of Holiness, which goes to Jaheira.


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    There are also some letters in the chest, which explain what happened here (somewhat) and confirm that Mulahey wasn't the mastermind behind this scheme. It also provides us with our next set of objectives: Find Tranzig to get to Tazok, then find Tazok to get to his superiors. Having found a loose thread, we shall now continue to pull on it until the whole conspiracy unravels.


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    We part ways with Montaron and Xzar. Not because I want to, but because we're trying to follow the book. (Spoiler alert: We won't see them again.) At least we won't be without a mage for long...


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    ... because there's a prisoner in a cave to the north, waiting to be freed.


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    Xan is a weird character. He has excellent mental stats and is a specialist mage, but Enchanter is probably the worst specialisation as it locks him out of Invocation/Evocation. He is, however, good with debuffs and crowd control because his targets take a penalty on their saving throws. I've never actually used Xan before, so this'll be exciting.

    With the high DEX and STR he'd be a great ranged support character, but his proficiency dot is in small blades. The reason for this is this:


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    Ahh, the Moonblade. As a +3 shortsword with a pile of other boni, it's one of the best weapons in the game - but it sees close to zero use since it can only be used by a mage with a Constitution penalty. I feel like Xan really wanted to be a Thief/Mage, but that's neither here nor there.


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    We're done with Mulahey's throne room, so it's time to leave. We could backtrack through the mines, but there's a shortcut up here.


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    There are two Gray Oozes near the exit, but they're not too threatening. They have a ranged attack that deals a fair amount of damage if it hits, but it's pretty slow.


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    Ahh, fresh air. At last, the mine and its dangers are behind us. Now we just have to head back to Nashkel for our victory parade. Should be smooth sailing.

    Wait, who's this?


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    It's the next assassination attempt! This is the first time we're facing a full party of enemies, consisting of Lamalha, Zeela, Telka and Maneira. The first two are Clerics, the last two are Fighter/Thieves.

    They are... let's just say they're pretty effective.


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    Two of them fall victim to Xan's Sleep spell, but the other two make their saving throws...


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    ... fire a combination of spells and magic arrows at us...


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    ... and achieve a total party wipe. Oops.


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    This is probably the most difficult encounter in the game so far, not counting Tarnesh. This fight is particularly difficult due to the fact that our party is underlevelled and understaffed because I was a very silly person and tried to keep things close to the novel.

    The main problem, I think, are the ranged fighters with their fire arrows. These are deadly enough in the hands (paws?) of kobold commandos, but when used by someone with an actual THAC0... yeah, ouch. Giving Abdel a million potions to chug and rushing them could work, but didn't really work out for me.


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    So let's try something else. Due to the way the characters are placed, you can pull some of them away from the party without alerting the rest.


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    Like so! This is a serious problem with the AI in the games, which lets you cheese some encounters.


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    After some trial and error, we succeed in killing Maneira and Zeela (the latter off-screen) without too many bad things happening.


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    Xan takes Telka out of the battle, leaving the rest of the party free to take on Lamalha.


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    She puts up quite a fight, evening the odds with a Hold Person spell before we can reach her. (This is where I wish Xan had access to Magic Missile.)


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    I wasn't kidding: Lamalha is tough. I put Xan on Telka duty and bring Branwen into the main battle.


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    That works a little better.


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    Lamalha gets a few more good swings in, but ultimately dies before killing anyone. Whew. Branwen also hits level three, giving us access to second-rank Cleric spells until we rotate her out for a different guest star.

    The encounter is technically optional since you can just not take the shortcut, but the loot is worthwhile. Plate mail, magic leather armor, Oil of Fiery Burning, Darts of Wounding, a whole bunch of potions and fire arrows - good stuff.

    I think we'll call it a day here. There is plenty of looting to be done in this area, but we'll leave that for next time.


    Spoiler: The book
    Show

    We rejoin Abdel on the outside of a stout oaken jail door.

    “Open it!” Jaheira almost shrieked. Her voice was quavering with panic and so many other conflicting emotions that Abdel was almost overwhelmed by the sound.
    Strong! Female! Character!

    Abdel judges the door as being too sturdy for him to force and starts to look for a key instead.

    “There’s no key,” [Abdel] said. “What about Mulahey?” the elf asked.
    “Who?”
    “The jailer,” Jaheira said, “the half-orc, where is he?”
    “I killed that reeking bastard,” Abdel reported.
    Jaheira reminds Abdel that he should probably search Mulahey's body, or that Montaron could probably pick the lock. Abdel objects that he probably couldn't find his way back, has no idea where Montaron is and is unaware of any backup keys because... well.

    When you questioned the half-orc,” Jaheira said impatiently, “what did he tell you?”
    “I didn’t question that evil gasbag,” Abdel told her.
    (...)
    “Sounds like you’ve mastered the situation here,” the elf said dryly, interrupting Abdel’s thoughts.
    Have I yet mentioned that I find Abdel very tiresome? Because I find Abdel very tiresome. A clueless protagonist can work in a comedy, a fish-out-of-water story or a starting point for a character arc. This, of course, is none of the above (as our hero is allegedly a seasoned mercenary.)

    Abdel checks his inventory for likely items, and eventually retrieves the keyring he took from that corpse back in chapter 6. One of them works.

    Jaheira pushed the door open and came out of the cell quickly, her legs stiff and tight. Abdel had seen children run away from spiders like that.
    Jaheira and the elf (who introduces himself as Xan) have been disarmed and roughed up, but are otherwise fine. Jaheira demands to be taken to Khalid. Abdel momentarily manages to feel bad about killing her husband before resuming his stunning incompetence.

    “Which way?” Abdel picked one tunnel at random and said, “This one, I think.”
    “Where did this comrade of yours fall?” Xan asked.
    Abdel and Jaheira tried their best to describe the mine entrance, and Xan nodded as he listened, then gestured to a passage on the other side of the chamber from the one Abdel had guessed.
    Must be that elven stonecunning at work. It takes the group about an hour to find their way back to Khalid's location. The kobolds avoid them now that Mulahey is dead, and they apparently haven't finished off Khalid either as the group find him alive but dying. Jaheira rushes to his side. Abdel manages to feel vaguely bad (but not so bad he'd stop lusting after Jaheira).

    “Khalid,” the woman said, her voice a contradiction of hope, fear, and surprise, “Khalid?”
    She ran to him and fell over him, and Khalid moved. (...) The sellsword jumped when Jaheira touched his chest to push him away and said, “My darling...”
    Abdel thought she was saying that to him at first, then blushed when he realized she was talking to Khalid.
    How romantic.

    Abdel gives Jaheira one of the vials he bought from the merchant in chapter 5, who feeds the contents to Khalid (after some discussion about whether it might be poison.) Khalid stops bleeding and falls into a healing sleep.

    “Can we move him?” Xan asked Abdel.
    The sellsword shrugged and said, “I guess he’ll need to sleep it off, but I can carry him. He’s not bleeding anymore.” Still looking around for his missing weapon he said, “Looks like that crazy wizard stole my dagger... as if I needed another reason to kill him.”
    “Let’s go,” Jaheira said. “Let’s go back to Nashkel and get Khalid into a real bed.”
    And so they do! They take the same route they did earlier, but Xan stops them as they arrive at the field of wildflowers.

    “I’m not sure how you survived that, exactly,” Xan said, “but it’s death to walk through that patch of flowers. Those are black lotus flowers—powerful poison planted here by the Zhentarim.”
    (...)
    “They planted those flowers there to block the path to the mine,” Xan explained. “They tried to charge a toll for passing through or around them, but it didn’t take long for the mining bosses to hire some... I believe they called themselves ‘adventurers’... to drive the Zhentarim off. That took care of the tolls, but no one’s been able to get rid of those damnable black flowers.”
    This, of course, was what the "lucky ale" business was about. This isn't the strangest evil scheme to appear in this book, but it probably ranks near the top. The route blocked by the field of flowers is explicitly an odd shortcut, far off the main road, so the Zhentarim were trying to blockade a route nobody was taking anyway? And they chose an area denial approach to do so, but also had people present to do... something? And they did this rather than pretend they weren't

    I don't know. I also don't know why they haven't hired a druid to deal with the flowers, but that's neither here nor there.

    Anyway, this would normally mean backtracking and taking a different route for Team Abdel, but Jaheira finally remembers she's a druid.

    Abdel looked at Jaheira when she started to babble what was apparently a string of meaningless syllables. She was holding her hands in front of her face, fingertips touching, palm-to-palm, and her eyes were tightly closed.
    (...)
    “[S]tay within two paces of me, and the flowers will not harm you.”
    (...)
    “You serve... ?” Xan asked Jaheira, ignoring Abdel. “Mielikki,” she answered simply.
    I don't think Jaheira mentions worshipping anyone in particular in the videogames, but Mielikki is a plausible choice, being the Neutral Good goddess of autumn, druids, dryads, forests, forest creatures, and rangers.

    They pass through the flowers unharmed, and I'm about to say some words about magic.


    Spoiler: Comparison and commentary
    Show

    So, magic. Jaheira casts her first spell* in this chapter, confirming that she is, in fact, a druid and didn't have her class changed. However, it's odd that this is the only spell she casts in this chapter. She does not, for example, heal Khalid. Jaheira has still been depowered - she just didn't have her magic powers taken away entirely.

    Xan, for his part, shows no indication of knowing magic and doesn't seem to have the Moonblade either - in the upcoming chapters, he'll act more like a rogue than anything else.

    This all fits into the pattern of seriously toning down . I think it's time to take a more in-depth look at the phenomenon.

    Athans has given a few interviews, since he is actually something of a real author. He understandably tries not to talk about the Baldur's Gate novels, but the topic does come up in some of the older interviews. This one contains the following statement:


    Screenshot

    I wonder if this might be the explanation. Perhaps Athans just really wanted to write a Conan novel - or, given a ludicrous two-month deadline, he had to fall back on what he knew best, and that happened to be pulpy, low-fantasy heroic fiction. Of course, it's impossible to write a good novel in two freaking months, and that's how we ended up in thud and blunder territory.

    That would also explain why Xzar of all characters wasn't changed - he'd fit perfectly into into a Conan story. Conanverse magic is rare and always comes from extraplanar entities who are always evil. At best you're a deluded fool who is playing around with things Man Was Not Meant To Know; more likely, you're a twisted power-hungry jackass looking for a shortcut to power. Gorion on the other hand is a wise and gentle scholar, and thus cannot be a mage under Conan logic. Xan is smart and crafty, so he has to be a rogue. That sort of thing. It's a square peg, round hole situation - and if you go in expecting a high fantasy novel, you'll be disappointed.

    (The Conan novels also treat magic with suspicion because it's an intellectual pursuit in a world where the narrative is all about physical power, but that's neither here nor there.)

    That aside, this chapter is somewhat inoffensive. The narrative does continue to bend itself into a pretzel to cover for Abdel's shortcomings, but it's no worse here than it was in the previous chapter. Abdel already having the key to the door makes a small degree of sense. Montaron presumably planted it on the corpse for Abdel to find; as we'll see in the next chapter, this is all according to Sarevok's needlessly convoluted plan.

    I'll be talking about Jaheira's awful characterisation in more depth in a later update, so let's leave that aside for the moment. But don't worry, there are many words about that in the pipeline.

    * I don't think it's meant to be any specific spell, though I guess Zone of Sweet Air could do it. Poison pollen seems it should count as a Cloudkill-like effect.

  4. - Top - End - #34
    Titan in the Playground
     
    Spore's Avatar

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    Default Re: Let's Read and also Play Baldur's Gate: Bhaal must be stopped!

    Great, now I am intrigued enough to start my Berserker all over again just to try out Xan. My Half-Orcish variant of Abdel just tries to solve problems as bloody as he can. Spare the agents of the Iron Throne in Candlekeep? No way, jose. The fun part is: Neither do you loose reputation nor do your good party members complain about you tapping into your inner beast. And the ingame dialogue feels like the character is enjoying himself and brings up valid reasons to actually just murder people based on his or her current state of knowledge.

    The fact that I don't allow those 'villains' to explain themselves is really just tertiary. And I think it might be entirely possible for Daelan to become chaotic evil by the end of Shadows of Amn.

    Must be that elven stonecunning at work.
    Well, they did receive automatic "see hidden doors" in 3.5 for whatever reason:

    +2 racial bonus on Listen, Search, and Spot checks. An elf who merely passes within 5 feet of a secret or concealed door is entitled to a Search check to notice it as if she were actively looking for it.

  5. - Top - End - #35
    Barbarian in the Playground
     
    Khay's Avatar

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    Default Re: Let's Read and also Play Baldur's Gate: Bhaal must be stopped!

    Quote Originally Posted by Sporeegg View Post
    Great, now I am intrigued enough to start my Berserker all over again just to try out Xan. My Half-Orcish variant of Abdel just tries to solve problems as bloody as he can. Spare the agents of the Iron Throne in Candlekeep? No way, jose. The fun part is: Neither do you loose reputation nor do your good party members complain about you tapping into your inner beast. And the ingame dialogue feels like the character is enjoying himself and brings up valid reasons to actually just murder people based on his or her current state of knowledge.

    The fact that I don't allow those 'villains' to explain themselves is really just tertiary. And I think it might be entirely possible for Daelan to become chaotic evil by the end of Shadows of Amn.
    Let us know how it goes! I'm still learning how to use Xan effectively since he can't be a blaster mage. I think I figure it out towards the end of this chapter, but it's entirely possible I'm missing something critical.

    Sounds like you're doing a good job roleplaying Abdel. As we'll see, Abdel goes far out of his way to avoid making a good decision.

    ---

    On to chapter nine! Yes, we're almost a third of the way through the book (by chapter count) and we still haven't made it to the bandit's camp... and the pace slows down from here. This update and the next two will consist mostly of faffing about, but that's really for the best - we need to get some sidequesting in.

    Spoiler: The game
    Show

    Now that Mulahey has been defeated and we survived the assassination attempt, it's time for us to do some sidequests. We're terribly underleveled, so it'll be good to get some XP. As I mentioned, there are a few things we can do on this map. First of all, there's a would-be graverobber begging us for help:


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    The dagger in question is the Heart of the Golem +2. That's actually pretty good by the standards of this game, but it's still just a dagger.


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    So we turn it in for XP. You can kill the Revenant and keep the dagger, or just walk off with it, but let's be nice and actually help Hentold.

    Now, that was nice and all, but there's a much more important encounter on the map:


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    Narcillicus Harwilliger Neen (presumably named using the Slartibartfast method) is an experimental mage. This encounter changes depending on how you talk to him. Express doubt, and Neen's spell will fail, creating four hostile Green Slimes, which are horribly dangerous and don't even give much XP. Ask for a copy of the spell instead, and he'll create two Mustard Jellies instead and attack you alongside them.


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    The Mustard Jellies are still dangerous, mind, having a ranged attack that poisons and slows. So we fall back on our time-tested approach of pulling one away from the main party and whacking it like an XP piñata.


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    Neen and the other jelly are too close together for that to work, so we'll have to fight them together. Neen always opens combat by casting Improved Invisibility, which, in this game, means you can't see or target him at all until the spell wears off, even after he throws a Lightning Bolt at you. That's obviously rather problematic.


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    Unfortunately, we don't manage to interrupt him and he turns invisible...


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    ... but BG's weird invisibility mechanics work out in our favour as Khalid gets a lucky hit in.


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    The remaining jelly puts up a good fight but succumbs eventually. XP for everyone!


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    Also, spell scrolls and a robe. All the low-level mage robes are sort of interchangeable or situational, but they sell for good money so I won't complain.


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    A few more random encounters later, Jaheira also hits her next level and we gain access to Slow Poison and Find Traps, which will come in handy.


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    We head back to Beregost for some R&R. This is also where the main quest wants us to go next (more specifically: Feldepost's Inn), but we'll shelve that for a while.

    On our way to the Smithy, we encounter an old friend:


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    The fact that this is Elminster stalking you provides a somewhat unsubtle hint that the iron crisis is being monitored by some major players in the Realms. He isn't particularly helpful, but he does point you towards the Bandit Camp in case you somehow missed Mulahey's letters.

    Speaking of unsubtle pointers in the right direction:


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    We'll check in with Officer Vai in a short while, but there's something else we need to do first (and probably should've done before visiting the mines).


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    High Hedge is a small map to the west of Beregost, consisting of the High Hedge estate proper and a small forested area surrounding it. It's entirely optional and entirely missable, but exploration is rewarded.

    First of all, there's a certain ranger hanging out here:


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    As we're also looking for Tazok, we join forces with Kivan.


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    Kivan is a very straightforward character. He has great STR and DEX scores and two proficiency dots in Bows, making him the second-best ranged fighter in the game. His WIS is the Ranger minimum, but Ranger spellcasting doesn't actually use WIS in this game, so that's okay. He's also incredibly boring and everyone forgets he exists because Coran outclasses him to an extreme degree, but hey.


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    Let's check out the High Hedge estate while we're here.


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    The estate is home to Thalantyr and two flesh golems. As a retired adventurer and 11th-level mage, Thalantyr will be our main source for potions and scrolls until we can access Baldur's Gate itself (the city, not the game). He also sells some high-end gear including the Horn of Kazgaroth (repeatable buffs at the cost of 10 HP per activation) and the Claw of Kazgaroth (ring that gives you -2 CON in exchange for a permanent displacement effect). Notably, the Horn and Claw are two of a mere nine items that can be carried over into the second game. Thalantyr also sells a Robe of the Neutral Archmagi. We can't afford that yet, but we can pick up some new spells for Xan:


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    Xan can't learn Magic Missile, so we'll have to use Minor Drain to interrupt spellcasters. Sleep is gradually becoming less useful as it doesn't work against creatures with 5+ HD, but it's well worth keeping around.


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    Horror is an extremely useful crowd control spell and one we'll use heavily throughout the rest of the game. Invisibility is always nice to have - it goes away if the invisible character actually does anything and it's not particularly useful in combat but it has many useful applications.


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    Finally, Flame Arrow and Skull Trap are some of the better damage spells Xan has access to (once he can cast third-level spells, anyway). Hold Person is more of a Cleric thing but additional copies can't hurt.


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    We stop in Beregost for another sleepover. We still need to talk to Officer Vai, so let's do that along the way.


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    Vai provides some expedition as well as a sidequest: She'll buy bounty items like bandit scalps and wyvern skulls off you until the situation is resolved. I love the incidental bit of exposition here, too. Baldur's Gate is technically just a city-state, but it's still the biggest power in the region, and Beregost would be considered de-facto Baldurian territory. Not only is Baldur's Gate on lockdown, the situation has gotten so bad that the outlying areas are essentially being abandoned. With entire contingents of soldiers getting cut off and presumably going unpaid... well, that's trouble. I guess what I'm saying here is that I want to see more fanfic about Warlord Jessa Vai.

    Anyway, we stay the night.


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    Once again, there are two different versions of this dream. If your reputation is above the threshold, you find the mines deserted except for the not-quite-dead Mulahey. You reject your inner killer and deny Bhaal's essence. This, I think, is an early hit at how CHARNAME is able to survive without in the second game; CHARNAME's soul may be tethered to Bhaal, but they have something inside them that allows you to resist.

    The "evil" dream again starts out subtly different, in that the mines are full of dead bodies, then diverges towards the end. You do kill Mulahey, but not with the bone dagger, causing the voice of Bhaal to rebuke you. It's important to note that an evil CHARNAME doesn't give in to the taint either, using Bhaal's power for their own purposes instead of rejecting it.

    Speaking of power: I'm sure you're as sick as I am of being underlevelled and underpowered. Having to cheese our way through random encounters? That's not how things are supposed to go.


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    So let's go on a little field trip.

    You see, this is where- hey, who's this?


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    ... welcome to the party, I guess!

    Actually, Korax is very useful. Since he's not technically part of your party, he doesn't provide map visibility, so you can't just send him exploring on his own. However, there's nothing stopping you from, say, casting Invisibility on Khalid going exploring.


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    The area is full of more-or-less subtle hints about the local dangers, but Tamah here is a pretty blatant one. You can revive her with a scroll of Stone to Flesh.


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    Not demanding a reward gives you a little XP and a Reputation bonus. Insisting on payment gives you -1 Reputation and some prime seafront estate.

    So yeah, the area is crawling with basilisks. They are extremely dangerous opponents as they have a save-or-die Petrification gaze attack. There are ways to protect yourself (such as a Potion of Mirrored Eyes, for sale at High Hedge) but if you're unprepared, a single basilisk can wipe out a mid-level party. That's why we're sending Korax and Khalid to scout ahead.

    Exploring a little further, we find the source of the basilisks:


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    Mutamin is accompanied by a basilisk and a greater basilisk, and is a high-level mage himself. It's a very dangerous encounter, and you'll have to spend a lot of time buffing your party and spend a fortune on protective measures.

    ... or you could just use Korax. As a rotting corpse, Korax has a paralyzing attack and is immune to petrification.


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    Riveting.

    The greater basilisk does actually have an attack other than the petrifying touch, and Korax eventually dies, but not before signifiantly softening up the lizards. We have Khalid chug a potion of Mirrored Eyes and finish the job.


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    If you've been keeping count, Mutamin's party is worth a whopping 9,600 points of experience. Even split six ways, that's a lot, and you can theoretically do this the moment the tutorial ends. Mutamin also carries the usual lackluster loot in the form of a mage robe and a few scrolls. Stinking Cloud would be a great addition to our arsenal if it wasn't an Evocation spell.

    There's one more thing I want to do in this area. Unfortunately, I, uh, didn't bring quite as many Mirrored Eyes potions as I perhaps should have, so we do kind of run into trouble along the way.


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    Oops.


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    Xan saves us, though.


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    Luckily, we did bring a few spare scrolls of Stone to Flesh. Fun fact: This is one of the "legitimate" ways to split up paired characters, as seen with Jaheira and Khalid here.

    Right. With the remaining basilisks out of the way, I think it's time to test our mettle against a group of real opponents. Everyone has gained at least one level since the beginning of this update, and we finally have access to some real spells. As luck would have it, there's a snobbish group of adventurers from Waterdeep in the area, and they're itching for a fight.


    Screenshot

    Let's see if your saving throws are as good as your sense of style, shall we?


    Screenshot

    Nnnnnnope.


    Screenshot

    We make short work of our opponents.


    Screenshot

    This worked well. Yes, I'm much happier with our party now.

    That'll do it for this update, I think. We have a lot more of faffing about to do; let's leave some sidequests for next week.


    Spoiler: The book
    Show

    Since we haven't seen them in a while, we should probably check in with Xzar and Montaron.

    Montaron flinched at the first drop of blood that hit his face, and the second, but realized after the third that there’d be more so he managed to steady himself. The girl was surprisingly strong, and though Montaron had resisted her hold on him he’d been unable to break it.
    Ah.

    Somehow, perhaps through abduction, the two Zhentarim ended up in Sarevok's private chamber. Xzar is already dead, with his dismembered corpse is hanging from the ceiling. Montaron is wrestling with Tamoko while Sarevok is getting in some much-needed banter practice.

    “Congratulations on a job well done my stubby friend.”
    “Sarevok,” Montaron said, his voice cheerful in a terrified sort of way. “Th-thank ye, uh, sire.” (...)
    “I was being ironic,” Sarevok said, and Tamoko kicked Montaron’s legs out from under him.
    "I was being ironic." See, if you have to say you're being sarcastic, you're doing it wrong. And besides, Montaron did what was apparently asked of him, so that actually is a job done well, isn't it? I have no idea where Sarevok was going with this one. Anyway, Montaron doesn't make it.

    ‘E ‘as the keys,” Montaron whimpered.” ‘E ‘as the keys, an’ I set ‘im in the—in the direction of Mul-Mulahey. ‘E was goin’ the right way, si—“
    The rest of that word comprised Montaron’s last, gurgling breath on this plane of existence.
    Sarevok plays with Abdel's dagger for a while, then we cut back to Team Abdel. I'll have Words to say about Sarevok's behavior but leave them for the commentary section below.

    “We should rest,” Jaheira said. Abdel and Xan needed no further encouragement. The sellsword leaned the unconscious half-elf against a tree on the side of the path and stretched. Whatever protection Mielikki had sent through Jaheira’s prayer had gotten them through the field of poisonous black flowers no worse for wear.
    Our heroes rest for a moment. Jaheira and Xan briefly discuss the issue of the Iron Throne, with Jaheira suggesting it might be a splinter group of the Zhentarim. Xan shrugs, noting that it's sort of an odd plot. The discussion doesn't really go anywhere; suddenly, Xan's keen elven senses kick in.

    The elf stood slowly, silently, and whispered, “We’re being tracked.” (...) Xan stepped over the sleeping half-elf and began to climb the tree. (...) Abdel jumped at the loud swish of brush and put both hands on his sword. The sound startled Xan, and Jaheira gasped when he fell from the tree. (...) A figure came out of the bushes and caught him, holding Xan like a baby and maybe saving his life. The elf's savior was immediately followed by a wave of reeking stench. Jaheira put a hand to her mouth and succumbed to a rather unladylike gag. Her chin tucked itself into her neck, and her spine seemed to pop out of her back and shimmy.
    Xan is dropped off and proceeds to vomit in the bushes. We are not informed of whether it's a gentlemanly sort of hurl. His knight in shining armour turns out to be... well... uhm. Here, I'll just continue the quote:

    “Gods,” Abdel said, keeping his sword in a defensive posture, “that’s worse than the half-orc.”
    “Korak,” the creature said. “My name is Korak. Do I look that different?”
    “Korak?” Abdel asked, his voice seeming to spin in time with his head. He knew this... man. “By all the gods, I was at your funeral.”
    “Didn’t quite take,” the creature replied, grinning to show gums crawling with maggots.
    It's Korak! I bet you were wondering why I chose to visit the area east of the Temple, weren't you? (Assuming you already read the game section.) Korak, known as Korax in the game, is another of these exceedingly minor characters Athans latched onto for some reason. Abdel and Jaheira spend some time alternating between trying to convince Korak to leave, retching, and outright threatening the ghoul. It doesn't really work.

    “I help you,” Korak persisted, taking a step forward, “like when we were kids.”
    Xan flinched and stood up straight, taking a step in with his sword out.
    Note: No mention of a moonblade. Xan is using Khalid's sword here.

    “I help—“ Abdel burst forward, and the ghoul fell backward, then scrabbled into the tall brush.
    “Stay in there, Korak,” Abdel said. “You can’t go where we’re going.”
    “We’ll kill you if you follow us,” Xan added, his voice shaking from fear and exhaustion.
    The ghoul backed away, but not too far.
    What a strange chapter.


    Spoiler: Comparison and commentary
    Show

    So not much actually happens in this chapter, but I should probably talk about the bit with the ghoul. Baldur's Gate, in particular the first one, has a lot of little oddities that don't fit in with anything, and Korax is one of them. I dug through the game's dialogue file with an asset explorer because I never could make sense of the guy. Here's what I found:

    * He is technically a human but that's because Baldur's Gate has a strange way to set up its NPCs.
    * He is wearing an invisible ring that makes him immune to Panic, Poison, Sleep, Fatigue, Petrification, Confusion, Berserk, Hold and Slay.
    * He has a STR of 18/10, a CHA of 4 and a 9 in all other stats.
    * Korax will turn hostile after a while due to the hunger for flesh overwhelming him. That's on a global timer.
    * He has a bunch of random interjections noting that he's hungry or calling himself a "good dog."
    * There is no non-Korax dialogue that references him in any way, shape or form.
    * Like many one-off characters, Korax the Ghoul has voice acting. And not generic lines either.

    If there's any explanation for what Korax... is, then I couldn't find it. You can and should use him to get through the basilisks in the area and that seems to be it. If you don't make a beeline for Mutamin, Korax and a stealthed character can clean out most of the area on their own. I do dimly remember that my friends and I really loved Korax back when we first played this game in high school; he may have been something of a proto-meme. Needless to say, his role in the novel is rather larger than his role in the game.

    That aside, the brief cut to Team Evil actually does tell us a lot about Sarevok. He's taking a very active role in events, engineering events such as Mulahey's downfall. As the previous cut to Team Evil made clear, he wanted Abdel to survive the assassination attempt and to discover the Iron Throne operation in the Nashkel mines. He also had Tamoko abduct Xzar and Montaron, bringing them to his secret lair; presumably, he could've had her do the same thing with Abdel but chose not to. Sarevok is also a bad boss and kills his underlings for little reason. Seriously, I have no idea why he has the two murdered other than to be eeeeeevil.

    This is neither here nor there, but nature of the Iron Throne in the novels (Novel Throne) is very different from the nature of the Iron Throne in the games (Game Thorne). We'll see a lot more of that once the plot arrives in Baldur's Gate, but this chapter contains the earliest hints to that effect. We see Jaheira speculate about ties to the Zhents, which'll turn out to be true for the Novel Throne but isn't at all the case in for the Game Throne. In fact, the Game Throne is setting the Zhentarim up as scapegoats. The bit about messing with the iron trade is something the Zhents would do, but they know perfectly well it wasn't them in this case, and that is why Xzar and Montaron were sent to investigate the mines in the first place. I love the metatextual implication that the author of the novelisation fell for that deception.

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    Default Re: Let's Read and also Play Baldur's Gate: Bhaal must be stopped!

    Quote Originally Posted by Khay View Post
    Since he's not technically , but there's nothing stopping you from, say, casting Invisibility on Khalid going exploring.
    I think something got left out there.

    I generally use skeletons against the basilisks--they're as immune to petrification as Korax and don't turn hostile. Of course, that only works when I go there later in the game than this. Xan can use Wands of Fire.

    You finally did something Abdel would have done (referring to fighting the other adventuring party).

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    Default Re: Let's Read and also Play Baldur's Gate: Bhaal must be stopped!

    Quote Originally Posted by Kish View Post
    I think something got left out there.

    I generally use skeletons against the basilisks--they're as immune to petrification as Korax and don't turn hostile. Of course, that only works when I go there later in the game than this. Xan can use Wands of Fire.

    You finally did something Abdel would have done (referring to fighting the other adventuring party).
    Oops, you're right. I meant to point out that Korax isn't technically a party member, so you can't send him off into unexplored areas. Skeletons do work fine and I generally prefer leaving the area for later, but I felt like our party needed the experience boost. (And I needed an excuse to show off Korax, because he is very much going to keep showing up.)

    Abdel definitely would've fought the other adventuring party, yeah. Even the dialogue fits him.

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    Default Re: Let's Read and also Play Baldur's Gate: Bhaal must be stopped!

    Huh. The Zhent guys being murdered wasn't something I would expect from someone explicitly working with the Zhents. I mean, both agents are highly unstable but why would you make them agents in the first place then? Weeeeeird. But Book Sarevok suffers the "classical" villains tropes of killing of minions to just show how eeeeevil he is.

    Also Game Thrones is an incredibly subtle reference.

    Quote Originally Posted by Khay View Post
    Sounds like you're doing a good job roleplaying Abdel. As we'll see, Abdel goes far out of his way to avoid making a good decision.
    Uhh.....yeah, roleplaying and all that. Definitely not just being myself in a computer game an' all...

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    Default Re: Let's Read and also Play Baldur's Gate: Bhaal must be stopped!

    Quote Originally Posted by Sporeegg View Post
    But Book Sarevok suffers the "classical" villains tropes of killing of minions to just show how eeeeevil he is.
    He really does. Obviously, since he's manipulating Abdel from behind the scenes and all, we'll eventually get a scene where his plan goes off the rails. The way this happens is... uh. Let me just say you won't see it coming.

    ---

    So this week's update is going to be a little bit early, since I have to work this weekend (yay ). There won't be a game section this time, sorry! The plot doesn't progress much in this chapter, and there's an event in the novel that... well. This is going to be a short update, but this little cluster of chapters (10-13) is where things start to go seriously off the rails. Don't worry, we'll get back to faffing around next time.

    Spoiler: The book
    Show
    Once again, we open in media res - the book doesn't really do transitions. This time, we rejoin Abdel as he is punching (say it with me) an overweight commoner.

    The man was too short to really head-butt Abdel properly, so the sellsword took it on the chin. The mason’s skull was hard, and his neck was strong, so it hurt. Abdel spat a curse and punched the bricklayer across the jaw. There was a resounding smack[.] (...) He had to dodge the stool that someone threw at his head. He took a step forward, planting a foot on the fallen mason’s stomach and grabbed for the man who’d thrown the stool. The little, chubby commoner thought he could get away, was so confident, in fact, that he was smiling as he turned to bolt.
    You know the drill by now, so I'll snip out most of the bar brawl. Abdel punches the mason in the throat for this offense, then looks around for Jaheira.

    He looked up to see Jaheira knee one of the barroom toughs between the legs. The man’s breath shot out of him, and he identified Jaheira as a female dog as he crumpled to the floor in a most undignified fashion.
    Okay, so, awkwardly circumscribing an insult is a well-worn comedy trope, but it relies on a straight-faced delivery. The narration in this novel is far too crude for that to work. In fact, the word Athans is dancing around here actually does appear in the book, so what's the point? (I blurred out the rest of the page because of spoilers.)

    For an example of how to do this sort of comedy correctly, let me point at A Mordell–Weil Group of Rank 8, and a Subgroup of Finite Index (Schwartz, C., 1984). A lot of scientific writing is like that. It's serious literature for a serious purpose; you can include a little dry humor, but your delivery has to be absolutely straight-faced. That's the sort of environment where the expospeak gag thrives. Lemony Snicket could make the "female dog" euphemism work. A narrator who just discovered swearwords and is perfectly happy to call someone a fat stinky doodoohead, not so much. You can't just switch to a different narrative voice and expect it to work.

    Anyway, this still gets points for letting Jaheira do something. Abdel gets another stool thrown at him (by a young guy this time) and moves on to the next opponent.

    The kid tried to punch him, but Abdel grabbed the younger man’s fist. The young blond man screamed in a decidedly girlish fashion as Abdel crushed the bones in his hand. (...) The fear Abdel wanted to see flashed brightly in the kid’s eyes. Jaheira called, “Don’t kill him, Abdel, we don’t have anyone to plant evidence on this one.”
    Jaheira did not, in fact, miss what happened at the Inn. Nice. Jaheira and Abdel go through a brief good cop/bad cop routine (well, threatening cop/murderous cop) until the ruffian decides he wants to answer Abdel's off-screen questions about Tazok.

    The young tough began to cry and said, “He hires s-sell-swords — sellswords for the Iron Throne.” (...) “T-Tazok,” the young man answered. Abdel still had a tight hold of his hand, and the kid whimpered through another short series of distinct cracking sounds. “He hires humanoids too — orcs and the gods only know what else. He doesn’t care who — who w-works for him.”
    “Where do we find this man?” Jaheira asked, stepping over the man she’d recently emasculated. “Beregost,” the boy whimpered. “Tazok’s a — a— he’s an ogre — works out of Beregost...”
    The group then retires to a local inn where Xan and Khalid have been resting. Xan is still stiff and malnourished, having been imprisoned underground for a long time, but looks a little less pale. Khalid has healed nicely thanks to the magic potion; Abdel thinks about apologising to him but doesn't. Our two Harpers decide this is a good opportunity to act really suspiciously.

    “My father knew something, didn’t he?” Abdel asked Jaheira. “He was meeting you...”
    “Yes,” Jaheira said, “but we don’t know what it was. He had someone—or something—who could—that could... help us.”

    She was lying. Abdel had been around lying enough to see that. These two had their own secrets, just like Montaron and Xzar.

    “Who are you working for?” Xan asked again. Khalid and Jaheira avoided the question skillfully enough that the elf finally let them keep their secret.
    You can't just tell us someone avoids a question. Telling rather than showing is a recurring problem with these novels, but this is especially ridiculous. If you want us to be suspicious of a character, just give us the evasive dialogue and let us think "Wow, they're totally evading the question." Have some faith in your readers. Sure, they picked up the Baldur's Gate novel, but that doesn't mean they're stupid. Just that they make bad life decisions.

    Anyway. Those quibbles aside, this has actually been a relatively decent chapter. The process of tracking down Tazok involves actual detective work on part of our protagonists, which is a change I quite like. There are some decent character moments as well - Abdel's violent tendencies are always a little too close to the surface, he always uses a little too much force and he always derives a little too much pleasure from crushing his opponents. There's a mention that Jaheira lectured Abdel about "something she called “interrogation,” which was some kind of new practice of asking questions of an enemy before killing him." That actually made me smile.

    But.

    But.

    The chapter doesn't actually end here.

    Instead... there's this.

    The inn in Nashkel was old and smelled bad, but it was good enough for Abdel, who’d slept in worse. He couldn’t remember the name of it—the Bloody Hen, or the Bloody Mess. The Bloody something. Among the many amenities it lacked were well oiled hinges. This failure in basic maintenance was something Abdel actually appreciated, since the long creaking of the door was enough to wake him. Someone was coming into his room.
    Abdel remains perfectly still and considers his options. The footsteps are light, making him think that someone is a professional assassin or thief, which makes him think of Montaron. His broadsword is under the bed, but reaching for it would let the intruder know he's awake and possibly give them time to stab him. Eventually, Abdel decides to just take a surprise swing at the intruder.

    The punch connected with skin that was surprisingly soft. There was no scrape of stubble, and Abdel realized he’d hit a woman. (...) His eyes were starting to adjust to the light, and he could see the outline of the intruder’s face. Her jaw was strong, and her face wide and her nose— it was Jaheira. “Abdel,” she whispered huskily, “don’t.”
    Jaheira has apparently decided to pay Abdel a nighttime visit because... well.

    “What are you doing here?”
    She met his eyes then and looked at him as if she thought he ought to know the answer to that question.

    “Khalid and I—“ she started to say, then turned back to the door and mumbled, “I’m sorry. Go back to sleep.”
    He watched her body slide under the silk nightgown, and the sight of it almost made him gasp. She slipped out the door, and he let her go. He blew out the lamp and went back to bed, but didn’t sleep.
    Well.


    Spoiler: Commentary
    Show
    Well.

    This last bit about Jaheira trying to cheat on her husband was the breaking point for me, the first time I read the book. Until now, we've seen plenty of character bending (including class changes) but nobody has acted terribly out-of-character. This is where all of that goes out the window. It isn't the worst example of character defilement in the books, as we haven't met Minsc yet, but it ranks up there.

    To be perfectly fair to Athans: Jaheira and Khalid were relatively shallow characters in the original Baldur's Gate, like most NPCs. Even a lot of "fan canon" lore about them is barely in the original game. The reason this section is so off-putting is because of retroactive character building in BG 2, which obviously didn't exist when this novel was written, and it isn't fair to Athans to hold him responsible for not predicting future character development.

    So I dug through the game's assets to see what this game says about the relationship. There isn't much. They have a lot of dialogue as they're introduced and a few interactions later on. Some NPCs acknowledge their existence, which elevates them above the true throwaway characters. When you remove Khalid from the party he takes Jaheira with him (calling her "d-darling") and vice versa (as they are "inseperable"). Jaheira does tease Khalid now and then ("Khalid, my dear, 'twould take a sailor to untie that tongue"), but it's the old-married-couple sort of teasing (and Jaheira acknowledges she is "insufferable").

    The closest thing we get to an independent discussion of their relationship is a minor lategame NPC. Here's what Entillis Fulsom of the Harpers has to say if you talk to him with a positive reputation and Khalid but not Jaheira in your party:

    Khalid, old friend! You have cared well for your ward but where is Jahei-- Oh Khalid, I am sorry... I trust she died as she lived: in beauty and in defiance... <CHARNAME>, I am Entillis Fulsom of the Harpers, a friend of your friends and of your stepfather, Gorion.
    There is similar dialogue for the opposite case, and when you bid him farewell, he asks you to care for Khalid/Jaheira in his/her grieving.

    The point I'm trying to make is that there is zero textual evidence to suggest the marriage is anything other than harmonious. Quite the opposite, in fact. Khalid and Jaheira weren't added at the last second as Imoen was, so this has to have been in the early version of the script Athans received. So this is all Athans all the way, and he's getting exactly zero leeway on this one. It's easy to conclude that Athans saw a Henpecked Husband and a Bossy Wife, concluded that a weak man and a strong woman obviously couldn't be a happy marriage, and everything else kinda followed from that one. Athans will go to rather elaborate lengths to press the characters into these molds, and... well... let's talk about this in the chapters to come. You'll see. Oh, will you ever see.

    (Also, Abdel canonically has 7 CHA, it should be noted. Just throwing that out there. Him lusting after Jaheira makes sense, I guess, but implying the reverse also happened... well... no accounting for taste, I suppose.)

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    Default Re: Let's Read and also Play Baldur's Gate: Bhaal must be stopped!

    Honestly, I don't see your criticism in Jaheira's unfaithfulness justified (your reasons in that, your criticism is fine). Abdel is a ruffian, and uncharismatic at that but Cha 7 doesn't mean ugly. It means he lacks proper etiquette - and willpower to defend himself in discussions which might be up Jaheira's alley anyhow. Other reasons are far more glaring. Why now? You can't just show a seductive moment out of the blue without leading up to it. The book isn't written as from Abdel's view so you could have made subtle hints throughout the chapters to show Jaheira's affection for Abdel. But I guess subtle isn't in the novels capabilities. The writer decides that this book needs sex, so he tries to make it happen, and even his character is against it, resulting in this pointless scene (pointless if it isn't picked up again later, even with the heavy hands Athans writes).

    e: I thought this through during an especially dull morning shift and I think you are still right.
    Last edited by Spore; 2017-04-01 at 07:40 AM.

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    Default Re: Let's Read and also Play Baldur's Gate: Bhaal must be stopped!

    Other reasons are far more glaring. Why now? You can't just show a seductive moment out of the blue without leading up to it.
    This is definitely a problem with the way the romance(?) is written, and something I probably could've discussed in more depth. Although we have finished a full third of the book, there has been relatively little on-page interaction between Abdel and Jaheira. There is plenty of Abdel lusting after Jaheira, but I don't think that really counts. I went through the book again, trying to see if there's anything that could suggest interest on Jaheira's part. Here's what I came up with:

    When her eyes caught his, he saw rather than heard her gasp. Abdel sat without looking at the
    chair. He couldn’t pull his eyes away from hers, and she did nothing to discourage him.
    “Gods!” Montaron exclaimed and drew up short. The others stopped. Jaheira actually bumped into Abdel’s back, and he flinched away from the contact. When he looked back to say something to the woman, he met her husband’s eyes instead. Khalid smirked, then looked away, and Abdel flushed again.
    “Open it!” Jaheira almost shrieked. Her voice was quavering with panic and so many other conflicting emotions that Abdel was almost overwhelmed by the sound.
    The sellsword jumped when Jaheira touched his chest to push him away and said, “My darling...”
    Abdel thought she was saying that to him at first, then blushed when he realized she was talking to Khalid.
    “Live,” she said, “whatever’s come between us, I want you to live.”
    And... that's it. There are two sections where Jaheira doesn't actively react to Abdel's shows of interest; one where she greets Abdel with "conflicting emotions" (which may well just be a mix of fear and relief); and a throwaway line hinting that the marriage isn't all sunshine and chocolate chip cookies. I should also note that the book's narrator is third person limited, and that the first quote - which is the closest Jaheira ever comes to even passively encouraging Abdel - is wholly from Abdel's perspective. Drunk Abdel's perspective.

    So... yeah.

    I was going to wait until the second game to contrast the way the CHARNAME/Jaheira romance works to the way the Abdel/Jaheira romance(?) does, but I'm starting to think I might have to pull some of that discussion to an earlier point in time. Thoughts?

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    Default Re: Let's Read and also Play Baldur's Gate: Bhaal must be stopped!

    This is a great thread, thanks for doing this Khay. I recently picked up the EE game on a steam sale and while I haven't finished it yet(was a little too young to play it when it first came out and now life has been busy). I know the general details about the story and where it's going but I had never heard about the book. Now I want to finish the game so I won't get left behind!
    Last edited by Brance_a_Lot; 2017-04-02 at 01:11 PM.

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    Default Re: Let's Read and also Play Baldur's Gate: Bhaal must be stopped!

    Maybe Athans was told final plans for the NPCs that never got into the game? I mean we don't really know why Khalid stutters or why he is so uncertain and why he does stutter. Or why Jaheira is/was attracted to him in the first place.

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    Default Re: Let's Read and also Play Baldur's Gate: Bhaal must be stopped!

    Quote Originally Posted by Khay View Post
    This last bit about Jaheira trying to cheat on her husband was the breaking point for me, the first time I read the book. Until now, we've seen plenty of character bending (including class changes) but nobody has acted terribly out-of-character. This is where all of that goes out the window. It isn't the worst example of character defilement in the books, as we haven't met Minsc yet, but it ranks up there.
    On the other hand, there were numerous times when I was playing, where I would get an unexpected "You must gather your party before venturing forth" message that turned out to be because Charname and Jaheira were hiding together behind a tree halfway across the map.

    So maybe there was something going on between them.

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    Default Re: Let's Read and also Play Baldur's Gate: Bhaal must be stopped!

    In my games it's generally Imoen and Dynaheir who wander off behind the bushes together.

    Then again, I don't usually take Khalid and Jaheira all the way through (I can't remember if I ever have).

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    Default Re: Let's Read and also Play Baldur's Gate: Bhaal must be stopped!

    Quote Originally Posted by Kish View Post
    Then again, I don't usually take Khalid and Jaheira all the way through (I can't remember if I ever have).
    If you're going off of who dies first, then Khalid seems very eager in my games to run into enemy fire to escape his wife. No really, I think he has died the most out of any party member. Which is weird because he has great Con, usually wears the best gear and has the best AC.

    I guess he really is devoted to save his love.

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    Default Re: Let's Read and also Play Baldur's Gate: Bhaal must be stopped!

    This is a rather good read you got going here. I mean, yeah the book is atrocious and I'm surprised that you endure. The moment Jaheira considers cheating on Khalid I would've thrown the book in the trash, burned the trash, doused the ashes in holy water and then buried the ash mixture in a swamp. Then I'd spend about two hours in the shower to wash off the stench.

    Overwrought hyperbole aside, your commentary is clever and interesting, and you do a good job comparing and contrasting the game and the book. It's been very enjoyable to catch up on this thread.

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    Default Re: Let's Read and also Play Baldur's Gate: Bhaal must be stopped!

    Quote Originally Posted by Maryring View Post
    This is a rather good read you got going here. I mean, yeah the book is atrocious and I'm surprised that you endure. The moment Jaheira considers cheating on Khalid I would've thrown the book in the trash, burned the trash, doused the ashes in holy water and then buried the ash mixture in a swamp. Then I'd spend about two hours in the shower to wash off the stench.

    Overwrought hyperbole aside, your commentary is clever and interesting, and you do a good job comparing and contrasting the game and the book. It's been very enjoyable to catch up on this thread.
    I'm not sure I could have got that far.

    Changing "Charname is attacked by the BBEG and barely escapes with his life, while his protector and foster-father is slaughtered as easily as he himself took out a squad of ogres and other enemies" to "Some random thugs attacked Abdel but he pwned them. Unfortunately, one managed to kill Gorion first" is such a change in tone that I would probably have stopped there.

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    Default Re: Let's Read and also Play Baldur's Gate: Bhaal must be stopped!

    Why WOULDN'T you want to read a bad fanfic of Baldur's Gate complete with unnecessary material to ... 'clear out your account'.

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    Default Re: Let's Read and also Play Baldur's Gate: Bhaal must be stopped!

    New headcanon : the Harpers instructed Khalid and Jaheira to pull a Draketooth (produce offspring, abduct & endoctrinate child as part of secret order, justified here with divine blood) on the Bhaalspawn, and Jaheira changed her mind on that plan after meeting Abdel. But apparently still has to do it.
    What? It makes more sense than someone trying to romance that guy.
    Yes, I am slightly egomaniac. Why didn't you ask?

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    Also this isn’t D&D, flaming the troll doesn’t help either.

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    Default Re: Let's Read and also Play Baldur's Gate: Bhaal must be stopped!

    Quote Originally Posted by Cazero View Post
    New headcanon : the Harpers instructed Khalid and Jaheira to pull a Draketooth (produce offspring, abduct & endoctrinate child as part of secret order, justified here with divine blood) on the Bhaalspawn, and Jaheira changed her mind on that plan after meeting Abdel. But apparently still has to do it.
    What? It makes more sense than someone trying to romance that guy.
    I mean....booze could make you feel things. Now if Charisma were a factor in (demi)human breeding I think the median would not be 10 by now so....:D

    Khay, I await your continuation eagerly.

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    Default Re: Let's Read and also Play Baldur's Gate: Bhaal must be stopped!

    Quote Originally Posted by Sporeegg View Post
    Maybe Athans was told final plans for the NPCs that never got into the game? I mean we don't really know why Khalid stutters or why he is so uncertain and why he does stutter. Or why Jaheira is/was attracted to him in the first place.
    That's a possibility, sure. Most NPCs in the first game have threadbare writing at best, but Khalid and Jaheira are two of the more fleshed-out characters. It's possible there was more material that didn't make it into the finished game. If there was, though, it was scrapped at a very early stage, early enough to be beyond the scope of the venerable Unfinished Business mod. There's certainly nothing left in the assets that can be found with an asset explorer.

    Quote Originally Posted by Brance_a_Lot View Post
    This is a great thread, thanks for doing this Khay. I recently picked up the EE game on a steam sale and while I haven't finished it yet(was a little too young to play it when it first came out and now life has been busy). I know the general details about the story and where it's going but I had never heard about the book. Now I want to finish the game so I won't get left behind!
    Quote Originally Posted by Maryring View Post
    This is a rather good read you got going here. I mean, yeah the book is atrocious and I'm surprised that you endure. The moment Jaheira considers cheating on Khalid I would've thrown the book in the trash, burned the trash, doused the ashes in holy water and then buried the ash mixture in a swamp. Then I'd spend about two hours in the shower to wash off the stench.

    Overwrought hyperbole aside, your commentary is clever and interesting, and you do a good job comparing and contrasting the game and the book. It's been very enjoyable to catch up on this thread.
    Haha, thank you! This really helps me retain the motivation to do these. If you have any feedback on what I could be doing better (or what I should be doing more or less of), I'd love to hear it. If you're playing along, by the way, try to reach the Bandit Camp in the next two weeks. The pace of the novel will accelerate after that.

    Quote Originally Posted by Wardog View Post
    I'm not sure I could have got that far.

    Changing "Charname is attacked by the BBEG and barely escapes with his life, while his protector and foster-father is slaughtered as easily as he himself took out a squad of ogres and other enemies" to "Some random thugs attacked Abdel but he pwned them. Unfortunately, one managed to kill Gorion first" is such a change in tone that I would probably have stopped there.
    Yeah. I've been trying not to rag on the novels for being different from the games just because they're different, but that's something we need to talk about at a later date. This is a novel adaptation that fails both at being a novel and at being an adaptation of the source material.

    Quote Originally Posted by Cazero View Post
    New headcanon : the Harpers instructed Khalid and Jaheira to pull a Draketooth (produce offspring, abduct & endoctrinate child as part of secret order, justified here with divine blood) on the Bhaalspawn, and Jaheira changed her mind on that plan after meeting Abdel. But apparently still has to do it.
    What? It makes more sense than someone trying to romance that guy.
    Well... we'll learn something about how Jaheira regards Abdel in the next chapter, but... let's just say I like your version better. It's more dignified for Jaheira too.

    ---

    Anyway, here's the promised continuation! I managed to misplace the USB stick I keep the work-in-progress critiques on, so I had the... pleasure... of working through this chapter twice.

    This stretch of chapters is rather awkward in that not much that happens in the novel also happens in the game, and vice versa. That makes comparing and contrasting a bit awkward. For now, when the novel just spins its wheels, I generally just do sidequests. My excuse is that it's incidental worldbuilding. As a result, the commentary section in this one is mostly just an extended rant about Phoenix Downs.

    Either way: On we go to Chapter Eleven.

    Spoiler: The book
    Show

    Morning came damp and gray to the slowly dying town of Nashkel.
    Credit where credit is due: This is a good way to open a chapter. Concise yet evocative. I like it.

    This chapter opens on a rather downbeat note, contrasting the introduction. The mines may have been cleared out, but the damage to the local economy has already been done. It'll take a while for them to become productive again, even disregarding the bandit problem (that doesn't really seem to exist in the novels). As a result, there is a steady stream of refugees seeking greener pastures in Amn/Tethyr/Calimshan or Beregost/Baldur's Gate/Waterdeep. The prose is nothing to write home about, but all in all... I actually like this section. Huh.

    Abdel tries and fails to round up an affordable set of horses. Xan has recovered nicely, give or take a comma splice. ("He saw Xan first, the elf was still limping a bit but was otherwise fit for the road.") Jaheira, not so much:

    Abdel turned and there, both clad once more in their well-worn armor, were Khalid and Jaheira. The woman’s beautiful round face was marred by a purplish bruise, and there was a decided swelling to her otherwise strong nose.
    It's always interesting to see how heroic fiction handles minor or ongoing injuries. Normally, issues like encumbrance, fatigue or recovering from combat are disregarded unless they're plot-relevant. That's generally an accepted break from reality. We don't need to read about the Fellowship's sleeping arrangements every time, just when they're assaulted on the Weathertop. Abdel's minor cuts have vanished and Xan was able to recover from weeks of imprisonment. The bruises Jaheira suffered at the hands of Mulahey have faded completely, but the one inflicted by Abdel lingers.

    Xan sighed and said to Abdel, “I cannot ride with a man who beats his woman.”
    Abdel flushed, wondering how Xan could have known, then he was ashamed.
    “Xan, no,” Jaheira said, her voice sounded as embarrassed as Abdel felt. “It’s not—“
    “It is,” Xan said, his leaden gaze shifting to Khalid, “what it is. Isn’t that right, breed?”
    Abdel shook his head and held up a hand. He’d heard half-elves called “breed” before and a fight always followed—always.
    Khalid, though, actually smiled. “Easy, my friend, you’ve made a mistake.”
    ... more specifically, the bruise lingers so that we can get a Wacky Misunderstanding involving domestic violence. Apparently, the author felt this whole series of events hadn't yet been handled badly enough.

    Xan and Khalid argue for a while. Jaheira insists that the state of her nose is her own business and that Khalid had nothing to do with it, and Xan finally drops the issue. Abdel confesses that he couldn't find any horses, and they set out on foot.

    “Don’t tell me you care!” Jaheira shouted at Khalid, loudly, and practically ran ahead. Khalid paused, letting her go. The half-elf didn’t turn around, but the back of his neck blushed. When she’d passed him by a dozen paces or so he continued on behind her.
    “Well,” Xan muttered so only Abdel could hear, “this is going to be an even longer walk than I thought.”
    * * * * *
    “Beregost,” Abdel said, nine days later, as they crossed into the dusty, crowded, vile-smelling town. “What a hole.”
    I didn't cut anything out there. The five asterisks represent a mid-chapter cut, and they show up like that in the printed version as well. This jump strikes me as a little... questionable. Maybe you can't come up with anything interesting to fill nine days of walking, which is fair enough, but why call attention to travel arrangements if you're going to end up skipping the journey anyway? Jaheira's and Khalid's relationship appears to be fracturing. Maybe you want to talk about that? Have tense conversations that devolve into shouting matches? Describe long days of trying to avoid each other without really having the room to do so? Show them having pointedly normal conversations around the campfire while avoiding each others' eyes? Perhaps delve into Abdel's conflicting emotions and his attempt to sort them out despite lacking the mental tools to do so? No? Alright.

    We remain in Beregost for exactly nine sentences. Xan is eager to start searching for Tazok, as are the Harpers. Abdel has business of his own to attend to, and the group agrees to meet again in two days.

    Abdel heads north by himself, returning to the site of Gorion's death.

    He’d come to Gorion’s grave to finally return the corpse to Candlekeep where breath would once again be breathed into his father by the grace of Oghma, or where the old monk would lie in peace forever. (...) He’d expected to find Gorion’s holy symbol gone, even cursed himself for being so rash — so distraught — that he’d left it there in the first place.
    This, for the record, is our first hint that Raise Dead exists in the universe of these books. I already mentioned this issue back in chapter three; there'll be a lengthy discussion in the commentary section below.

    ... I should note this is all academic, because two ghouls ate Gorion's body. Sorry, should've mentioned that first. Abdel flips out and jumps down into the pit.

    One of the ghouls let out a little girl’s shriek at the sight of this completely dedicated young man, nearly seven feet tall and rippling with muscle, practically flying at them with a huge broadsword swinging back then up and down then in.
    Jumping down into an enclosed space containing two inhuman monsters with access to paralysis attacks. What could possibly go wrong? Nothing, apparently - Abdel swords one ghoul in half. The other one gets a bite in, then flees.

    Abdel followed but each step was harder to place than the last and he stumbled twice, following still, working his cramping legs as best he could. Still blinded with rage he didn’t stop to ponder his sudden paralysis. He kept after the fleeing ghoul one painful step at time. He staggered again, stumbled, and fell, his chin hitting the coarse, wet grass hard.
    Abdel lies face-down in the mud for a while, a "paralyzed mass of white-hot indignation." Eventually, he... uh. Hang on. I... really need to quote this section in its entirety.

    A child in Candlekeep started to cry, and his parents didn’t know why. A whale swimming past the rocky edge of the Sword Coast took note of the sound and formed a rumbling response that gave the sahuagin communities pause. A god, then another glanced down, but it was by sheer force of will that Abdel made himself stand.
    This is the sort of ridiculous overwrought pose you'd expect from a parody, not an actual novel. You could drop this, verbatim, into the Eye of Argon and nobody would notice. It ends up undercutting Abdel's emotional anguish by making it seem laughable. I have no idea which tone Athans was going for in this scene, and I'm pretty sure Athans didn't either.

    Anyway, screaming at a frequency that upsets a whale lets Abdel make his saving throw. He stumbles towards a nearby clump of trees, sword held in his cramping hand.

    He doubted he could fight, but he might be able to kill, and the way he was feeling now, might be was good enough.
    This makes no sense at all. What, exactly, is Abdel going to do if he catches up to the ghoul? To be fair, this is the sort of poor reasoning that actually makes sense given Abdel's emotional state. But Abdel is, as always, protected from the consequences of his poor decisions:

    He tripped over something wet and heavy that smelled so bad he actually started to vomit before his face hit the ground. He made himself roll, and it took long enough that some of the meal he’d eaten that morning splashed back into his face.

    He grunted in anger and disgust, but not at himself. He’d tripped over the ghoul, and a wave of disappointment washed over him. The thing was already dead.
    “I told them,” a strangely familiar, inhuman voice came from above. “I told them not to eat that one — not that one.”
    “Korak,” Abdel grunted more than spoke the ghoul’s name
    Korak, yes, that's him, killing Abdel's enemies. Korak explains that he doesn't quite remember Gorion's name, but is aware that Gorion was his old teacher and Abdel's foster father. So no eating that one.

    I have no idea how Korak knows who is buried in that grave, since it's presumably unmarked, but hey. The ghoul is clearly stalking Abdel, so maybe he's been around since Chapter 1 and actually watched Gorion die. I don't know.

    “Come with you, yes?” Korak babbled. “You go to Cloak Wood. I know Cloak Wood.”
    “I’m not going into the Cloak Wood.”
    (...)
    “Just eating,” Korak tried to explain, “that’s what we do, like you and cows, you and pigs. We eat.”
    Abdel wanted to laugh at that, thought he might cry, but did neither.
    “If you follow me,” he said again, “I’ll kill you.”
    Korak sat in the tree for a while and watched Abdel go. The big sellsword didn’t turn around, and when Korak thought it was safe he reached around to the other side of the tree and brought out the arm he was saving. He bit into the rotting flesh, and the taste made him smile.
    “Just eating,” he mumbled as Abdel disappeared from sight. The ghoul’s grin widened as he munched on Gorion’s rotting arm.
    I have no idea why Korak of all people is the one who gets to have depth. He really tries to be helpful while struggling with his undead nature, and he somehow knows in advance where Abdel is going to show up, implying he's somehow entangled with the Iron Throne's plot. For some reason, the throwaway joke Korax ended up being one of the book's more interesting characters.

    This time, the chapter actually does end. If Abdel has any further thoughts about Korak, he's keeping them to himself.


    Spoiler: The game
    Show
    Last time, we went on a little field trip, hunting basilisks and chatting with ghouls. Today, it's time to get back to the plot at last! (Briefly. We'll be back to faffing about momentarily.) Let's head back to the Nashkel mines and pretend we left through the main exit.


    Screenshot

    Most of the locals don't have any new dialogue, but this soldier does.


    Screenshot

    And so does Emerson! That's kind of it, though. This whole area is skippable and, I think, intended to be skipped. The shortcut places you on a different map entirely and there's no reason to ever go back to the mines. It's nice to get some praise for our heroic deeds, though.

    You can also skip Nashkel and go directly to Beregost, but there actually is a good reason to go back.


    Screenshot

    That reason is we were technically hired by Berrun Ghastkill:


    Screenshot


    Screenshot

    He rewards us with 900 gold, 1000 EXP and a point of Reputation for clearing out the mines. This is well worth picking up. There's no event flag blocking you from moving past this, though, and the game pushes you hard in the direction of Tranzig. This leads some people to miss it during their first playthroughs. I miss '90s game design sometimes.


    Screenshot

    While we're here, let's turn in Prism's emeralds. 300 gold is kind of a pitiful reward, as you can get more money from just selling the gems, but hey. Let's not tarnish our fine profession of handing out extrajudical punishments at the whim of the moneyed class with petty fraud.


    Screenshot

    On our way out of town, we encounter the next miniboss assassin: Nimbul! He has a line of voice acting, speaks in third person and is a Mage/Thief. He's using the standard early game Mage strategy of casting Mirror Image into Horror into a billion Magic Missiles.


    Screenshot

    It's a fine strategy, but loses a lot when you fail your saving throw vs. Hold Person.


    Screenshot

    I should also note there are five neutral Amnian soldiers patrolling Nashkel, who can and will target Nimbul. His Mirror Image doesn't tend to last.

    Nimbul carries a Short Sword +1 (nice to have), a Ring of Infravision (eh), and the Boots of Avoidance. They grant a massive bonus to AC vs. missiles and are easily the second-best set of boots in the game, given how deadly ranged weapons are.


    Screenshot

    Nimbul also carries a bespoke bounty notice, reminding us that Tranzig and Tazok are our next objectives.

    All that's left to do for now is to head on to Beregost.


    Screenshot

    I'm going to take a small detour, though, to uncover more of the map for later.


    Screenshot

    There are plenty of random encounters on the way, most of them involving bandits or wild dogs. The bandit ones can actually be sort of dangerous - the bandits aren't too strong individually, but they carry bows and there are a lot of them. They also have gibberlings to serve as meat shields.


    Screenshot

    Well, they would serve as meat shields, but this is why we keep Xan and his save-or-die spells around.

    The wilderness maps are nothing worth covering in depth, but there is a noteworthy encounter:


    Screenshot

    You actually can give Zargal (and his companions Malkax and Geltik) all your money and leave peacefully, but where's the fun in that? It's a relatively easy combat, and they carry the Whistling Sword +2 with them, which is a good weapon, can be sold for a lot of money and has a really sad backstory.

    That's not the reason we came here, though. Down in the bottom right corner of the map, there is a... rather odd group of undead.


    Screenshot

    For starters, they aren't hostile and they just sort of wander around. Moving closer to the centre of the stone circle, we find the reason for this strange gathering:


    Screenshot

    It's Bassilus! Had we visited the Temple near Beregost, we would've learned that he's a murderer who raises his victims as undead. There's also a child named Footy in the area who considers the whole arrangement rather funny.


    Screenshot

    Bassilus identifies random people as members of his family, and reacts very poorly to attempts to deny this.


    Screenshot

    Any path through this conversation tree leads to him turning hostile, but if you force him to confront reality for a moment, his army of undead falls apart.


    Screenshot

    Bassilus is still a relatively tough fight on his own, being a mid-level Cleric, but we're kind of beyond the point where that's threatening to our party.

    Fun fact: A lot of enemies in the game have special dialogue if you Charm them! That's actually why I picked up the Cloak a few weeks ago.


    Screenshot

    I think Bassilus' backstory is an extended reference to the siege on Zhentil Keep, one of Cyric's bigger whoopsies. Bassilus is, presumably, one of the deserters. After saying his piece, he turns hostile again.


    Screenshot

    Poor guy. I mean, also a murderer and in fact a worshipper of the Chaotic Evil god of murder, but also poor guy. He carries some Gauntlets of Fumbling (which provide a great lesson about putting on unidentified magical items) and Ashideena +2, an excellent war hammer.


    Screenshot

    On to Beregost! Most of the areas on the map are unnamed, but many have fan nicknames. We'll probably check out the lighthouse area after we're done with the bandit camp, because there are some interesting things in the southwest. Before that, though, let's turn in Bassilus' holy symbol.


    Screenshot


    Screenshot

    Five thousand GP. This is a quest well worth doing as soon as your party is capable of taking on Bassilus. Between this and the loot, we're mostly good on money for the time being.

    We'll call it a day here, leaving our confrontation with Tranzig for the next update. I don't want to run too far ahead of the novel, after all.


    Spoiler: Comparison and commentary
    Show
    So this is the section that confirms Raise Dead exists in the Athansverse, and that Abdel has reason to believe someone in Candlekeep is capable of casting the appropriate spell. Given that this is Abdel we're talking about, he probably wouldn't have come to that conclusion unless he actually watched someone being raised from the dead, then had a priest turn to him and say "Abdel, we just raised this person from the dead."

    This is a problem. Resurrection magic is kind of like time travel: Once you introduce it, there's no going back, and unless you establish strict rules and keep to them, it introduces a lot of potential plot holes. If violent death isn't always permanent, that changes everything. Most critically, it cheapens death, because the audience is always going to wonder why a character isn't just raised from the dead. Yes, you can sidestep that by having plot-critical deaths occur in a way that doesn't leave an intact body. This comes with its own problems - it can strain disbelief that, somehow, every important death just happens to be one that can't be undone. ("Oh, every week there's a canal. Or an inlet. Or a fjord.") It's better than the alternative, though.

    The ghouls, here, are exactly that: An attempt to adress the issue of raising Gorion. If there's no body left, Gorion can't be raised - simple as that. This introduces a new plot hole, though. Why exactly did Abdel wait this long to come back for the body? The Abdel of the books wasn't in any immediate danger following Gorion's death - Abdel easily killed the random thugs that ambushed him and had no reason to believe there would be more of them. Unlike CHARNAME, he didn't need to flee to safety. Yes, Candlekeep is three days away and Abdel had no easy means to transport the corpse back then, but it's not like he brought a cart the second time.

    Waiting to raise Gorion is an actively terrible idea because corpses... you know... decay. We don't have a great sense of the passage of time in this novel, but we do know something about distances. Going from the crossroads to the Friendly Arm takes three days; going in the opposite direction, it takes ten days to reach Nashkel. Add a day each to clear out the Mines and to rest in Nashkel, and Gorion's death was somewhere between four weeks and a month ago. Even disregarding the fact that Raise Dead is supposed to only work on the recently dead (one day per caster level), that corpse is hardly going to be minty fresh. The novels don't follow AD&D magic rules too closely, but the rule that Raise Dead requires an intact body appears to still be in place. Otherwise, the ghouls wouldn't have been as much of an issue. (There's "part of a ribcage" left, which I'm pretty sure counts as "part of the body.")

    Abdel isn't supposed to be a particularly smart character, but I'm still counting this as an issue with the writing. You can't just wallpaper over the issue by having the narrator mumble something about Abdel being "rash and distraught" whenever a plot hole comes up. Abdel isn't a sheltered kid unfamiliar with the world at large - he's a seasoned mercenary who should be intimately familiar with violent death and the ways in which it can be undone. Did Abdel never work as a bodyguard or talk to a colleague who worked as a bodyguard? Has Abdel not heard any stories of nobles murdering their rivals but neglecting to destroy the body? If nothing else, Jaheira and Khalid definitely should've thought of Raise Dead when they learned about Gorion's death, because they are supposed to be capable of reasoned action.

    To be perfectly fair to Athans, this kind of plot hole exists in the games as well. The issue of raising NPCs simply never comes up (with one confusing exception in the third part). Resurrection magic is ubiquitous - every single temple in the game offers Raise Dead as a service for a few hundred gold pieces - but nobody ever floats the idea of trying to bring Gorion back. The original Baldur's Gate doesn't show the body being destroyed or going missing either. You can at any point go back and stare at it, but that's it. (Some of the more revisionist versions, like the Enhanced Edition, do have the corpse be missing or destroyed.)

    The reason the games (kinda) get away with this is that the easy access to Raise Dead is probably meant to be a gameplay abstraction, not something that actually exists in the world. Consider one of the questions that troubled the ancient Greek philosophers: Why couldn't Cloud use a Phoenix Down to revive Aerith? There's no in-universe reason, but the out-of-universe reason is that the Phoenix Down is a gameplay abstraction. It exists because permadeath isn't fun and the plot ceases to work if important characters die (or die too early). The Phoenix Down can't undo a plot-death because plot-deaths are real in a sense that gameplay-deaths aren't.

    A novel, of course, has no gameplay and thus no need of gameplay abstractions. So this leaves us with a question: Why in the Nine Hells would you bring this up in the first place? The author clearly didn't feel obliged to represent game mechanics too closely - Jaheira never even comes close to casting Cure Light Wounds or Slow Poison. The novel very clearly runs on drama and convenience, not AD&D rules. You know how you avoid the plot holes created by Raise Dead? By not including Raise Dead in your plot for no reason. Raise Dead seems to be mentioned only so it can be a plot hole. I don't get it. Just snip out the sixteen words about the grace of Oghma and you sidestep the problem. This is something I'd have hoped an editor would've caught.

    ... oh, and the Sword Coast is strangely bereft of bandits (these refugees leaving individually or in small groups don't seem to be worried about getting picked off) and domestic abuse is an absolutely awful setup for a Wacky Misunderstanding. Don't worry, we'll be talking about that in chapters 12 and 13 as the plot proceeds.

  23. - Top - End - #53
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    Default Re: Let's Read and also Play Baldur's Gate: Bhaal must be stopped!

    I am confused. Even a novice writer would have caught such glaring plotholes and missed tones. Heck, English is my second language and by my average grades in writing and literature - albeit in my mother language but skills like that transfer partially - and I could've caught that. But hey, it's his first novel (I think?).

    So here's how I would've covered the plot hole up.

    1) Abdel has a strong belief in fate which makes him bury Gorion rather than bringing him back to revive him. (I mean, which poor excuse for an adventurer doesn't bring a shovel).

    2) Abdel is travelling for a few weeks. Jaheira enforces his belief that the circle of life should not be disrupted. Gorion shall remain dead. Meanwhile, some minor informant for the Harpers gives Abdel reason to believe Gorion knows more about the Iron Crisis, maybe even in Beregost.

    3) Abdel rushes back to Gorion's grave site, only to run into an ambush set up by Sarevok and dies. Novel ends. Yay Iron Throne.


























    4) ... Well, okay, he escapes barely with his life. After being rescued by Jaheira (cue the Slow Poison spell!) and Khalid, Abdel learns he can't go back trying to undo past mistakes. And neither can he solve any problem with violence.

    Stuff like that makes me wonder if I could be an author as well...
    Last edited by Spore; 2017-04-09 at 08:43 AM.

  24. - Top - End - #54
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    Default Re: Let's Read and also Play Baldur's Gate: Bhaal must be stopped!

    Quote Originally Posted by Khay View Post
    ... more specifically, the bruise lingers so that we can get a Wacky Misunderstanding involving domestic violence. Apparently, the author felt this whole series of events hadn't yet been handled badly enough.
    *facepalm*


    Okay, in other circumstances, this might be understandable. Several of the girls in my martial arts groups have talked about times someone has discretely slipped them information about women's shelters and the like after seeing and misinterpreting their bruises. (And I once overheard a woman at a viking re-enactment complaining that her boyfriend was sulking because she accidently broke hs riib and now no-one will spar with her).

    But these characters are all adventurers and warriors. Bruises and worse should be trivial for them. If they're anything like the martial artists and squadies I know, they'll probably be boasting about who has the most impressive / nastiest looking injury. At the very least, why would Jaheira be embarrased about getting hit in the dark due to a "friendly fire"? Far more likely (given both her personality in the game, and the personalities of real martial types I've known, she would be continually taking the piss out of Abdel for his mistake).

    Also, "breed"? What sort of insult is that? It doesn't even make sense. Surely "half-breed" would be more appropriate.

    Also,
    there was a decided swelling to her otherwise strong nose.
    What the hell is a "strong nose"? Is Jaheira wearing a +1 Nose-Ring of Strength?

  25. - Top - End - #55
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    Default Re: Let's Read and also Play Baldur's Gate: Bhaal must be stopped!

    Quote Originally Posted by Sporeegg View Post
    I am confused. Even a novice writer would have caught such glaring plotholes and missed tones. Heck, English is my second language and by my average grades in writing and literature - albeit in my mother language but skills like that transfer partially - and I could've caught that. But hey, it's his first novel (I think?).
    Athans has a blog listing a relatively complete bibliography. Baldur's Gate was his first published novel, but he has a few writing credits before then, mostly in alternative literature 'zines. This includes “Gone to the Carnival” (Nightmares of Reason #2, 1987); “Room for Just One More?” (Life of Crime #1, April 1987); “Hooked it, Hooked it With my Thumbnail” (Lost & Found Times 21-22, December 1987); “Baalzebuhl “A” Prime” (MaLLife #16, Winter 1988); “Video Bolo Two’s Muji Bastard” (Starshore, Summer 1990); “Animal Story #1” (Oak Square, Winter 1990); “Piece Music” (Aberrations #18, March 1994); “The Lady and the Shadow” (Forgotten Realms: Realms of the Arcane, November 1997); and “Greven’s Tale” (Magic: The Gathering: Rath & Storm, July 1998).

    Most of them seem to have been lost to the sands of time. I did find a copy of Hooked It, if you're interested. (Thanks, Ohio State University!) Reviews for the works are all but nonexistent. There's one Amazon review that liked The Lady. Greven's Tale has been covered on Multiverse in Review, earned glowing praise such as just an extended fight scene and especially dull. Video Bolo probably deserves being covered separately.

    TL;DR: Athans was at this point a rookie author, and perhaps a little overeager to earn a 'real' publication credit, but he could (and perhaps should) have known better. On the other hand, this seems to have helped him get a foot in the door.

    Quote Originally Posted by Sporeegg View Post
    Stuff like that makes me wonder if I could be an author as well...
    Why not? If you have an idea, go for it. Writing ability is, in a very real sense, a muscle that just needs exercise to improve.

    Quote Originally Posted by Wardog View Post
    Okay, in other circumstances, this might be understandable. Several of the girls in my martial arts groups have talked about times someone has discretely slipped them information about women's shelters and the like after seeing and misinterpreting their bruises. (And I once overheard a woman at a viking re-enactment complaining that her boyfriend was sulking because she accidently broke hs riib and now no-one will spar with her).

    But these characters are all adventurers and warriors. Bruises and worse should be trivial for them. If they're anything like the martial artists and squadies I know, they'll probably be boasting about who has the most impressive / nastiest looking injury. At the very least, why would Jaheira be embarrased about getting hit in the dark due to a "friendly fire"? Far more likely (given both her personality in the game, and the personalities of real martial types I've known, she would be continually taking the piss out of Abdel for his mistake).
    Yeahhhh. Don't get me wrong, this is a serious issue and one that could be covered. Jaheira being (intended to be) a very strong character would open up an opportunity to talk about how getting help doesn't mean you're weak... but this isn't the right novel or the right context for it, and Athans definitely isn't the right author. (Or 1998!Athans wasn't - he probably improved since then.) I don't know any viking re-enactors myself, so the bit about your friends was quite interesting to read. I do imagine fantasy mercenaries would be similar, heh.

    And yes, a lot of attention is being paid to Jaheira's nose and I'm kinkshaming Abdel for that.

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    Default Re: Let's Read and also Play Baldur's Gate: Bhaal must be stopped!

    Also, "breed"? What sort of insult is that? It doesn't even make sense. Surely "half-breed" would be more appropriate.
    I figure 'breed is just short for half-breed. But it is weird seeing Xan, the Nihilist, point out racial origins. If 'we're all doomed' why does it matter that Jaheira is a half-breed? It's a half-assed try to explain to the audience that half-elves can be looked down upon. Because it wasn't an issue until now. (Or was it?)

    Anyhow, I feel Athans is trying to cram way too much stuff into the novel and leaves out half of the fricking game by doing that.

    What the hell is a "strong nose"? Is Jaheira wearing a +1 Nose-Ring of Strength?
    I think he had a nose in mind that was broken several times and has enough cartilage to protect the surrounding area. Then again I am not willing to imagine a grazeful half-elf with a crooked boxer's nose.

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    Default Re: Let's Read and also Play Baldur's Gate: Bhaal must be stopped!

    Wait, why can't she just heal her nose, do cure spells not heal bruises?

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    Default Re: Let's Read and also Play Baldur's Gate: Bhaal must be stopped!

    As the same post that mentions her bruise says, Jaheira has no apparent healing magic in the book.

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    Default Re: Let's Read and also Play Baldur's Gate: Bhaal must be stopped!

    Just wanted to say I'm enjoying your playthrough/read! And congratulations on making it farther into the book than any previous attempt on these boards (to my knowledge).
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    Default Re: Let's Read and also Play Baldur's Gate: Bhaal must be stopped!

    Quote Originally Posted by Squark View Post
    Just wanted to say I'm enjoying your playthrough/read! And congratulations on making it farther into the book than any previous attempt on these boards (to my knowledge).
    Thanks! Most long-reads of this book do fail around this point, which is a shame because we're approaching a tipping point of sorts.

    On we march to Chapter Twelve. After a small divergence, book and game are starting to sync up again, though we won't be fully synchronized until chapter fourteen. At least we are no longer covering fully unrelated events.

    As a quick reminder: Both CHARNAME and Abdel are still trying to track down Mulahey's boss, Tazok.

    Spoiler: The game
    Show
    Our business at the Temple is concluded for now. It's time to get this investigation back on track! We could start searching the woods in hopes of stumbling over the bandit camp, but it's too much ground to cover. Instead, we'll try talking to some of Tazok's associates. That specifically means Tranzig, who runs errands for Tazok and thus presumably knows where to find him.


    Screenshot

    Time to head back to Beregost.

    Oh look, it's that weird old man again! (This technically happened during an earlier visit but I couldn't fit it into the narrative then so I'm splicing it in now.)


    Screenshot

    Elminster is a Very Big Deal in the Forgotten Realms as a whole. CHARNAME's initial reaction is thus along the lines of "uh, hi??" with a later journal entry that notes how strange it is that their local concerns "are worth his attention."


    Screenshot

    Elminster just reminds us that we need to deal with the bandits next, then wanders off.

    Right. We know that Tranzig is staying in Feldepost's Inn, so that's our next stop.


    Screenshot

    Navigation is a little bit annoying without map markers (which didn't get added until the second game.) You have to sort of memorize where everything is. And also babysit your party along the way because pathfinding is awful in this game.

    At least most important places have signs outside. That helps.


    Screenshot

    Nothing new down here. We'll eventually buy an Amulet of Protection +1 and perhaps the Bracers of Defense A.C. 8 from the bartender, but it's not a high priority.


    Screenshot

    Tranzig's room is right upstairs. And he has voice acting! Slightly dodgy voice acting, with a weird volume, but voice acting.


    Screenshot

    There are several possible paths through this dialogue tree. You can provoke Tranzig and trigger combat, or you can back down and... well, nothing happens. You can charm Tranzig, and get some general directions out of him that way, but it doesn't resolve the quest.

    Combat it is! Tranzig is just another mid-level mage. His protection spell of choice is Ghost Armor, but other than that, he's nothing special. He's still dangerous, but we have the tools to deal with his sort.


    Screenshot

    For example: We may not have access to Magic Missile, but Kivan's arrows also work thanks to Kivan's excellent THAC0.


    Screenshot

    Tranzig surrenders once you inflict enough damage - be careful not to kill him. He's still a squishy mage.


    Screenshot

    The map update is the important part - we now know to go to Peldvale or Larswood, which is much better than "somewhere in the woods I guess." I don't think it makes a difference whether you kill Tranzig or let him go. He does carry a Ring of Protection +1 and a Wand of Magic Missiles, so if it's loot you're after, you know what to do.


    Screenshot

    You can also find a letter on him, which also completes the quest. Useful if you kill him by accident.

    That'll do it for today's update. Enjoy this chance to catch your breath - we'll have plenty of ground to cover starting with the next few updates.


    Spoiler: The book
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    You know what, it's been a while. Let's check in on Team Evil. Sarevok is currently indulging in some torture porn.

    The fact that Tazok actually struggled amused Sarevok to no end. The ogre huffed and wriggled and squirmed in the leather restraints and even tried to slide around the descending blades. It took Sarevok several hours to kill the ogre, and Tazok felt every stab and slice.
    I usually snip out the details, but rest assured that there's a page dedicated to describing which bones are broken in what way.

    He wasn’t interrogating the ogre, he was committing murder, pure zealous murder in the name of Sarevok’s father and in the cause of the Iron Throne.
    I'm not entirely certain about the language here. "Pure zealous murder" shouldn't take hours if you know what you're doing - Sarevok is clearly drawing this out for fun, which means it isn't pure. Also, there's something of a reason behind the murdering: Sarevok is killing people to replace them with shapeshifters.

    The other Tazok smiled, then seemed to blur. Sarevok didn’t feel the need to blink[.]
    Of course I'm not quite sure why he's doing this. Tazok and Tranzig are among his victims, but both of them worked for Sarevok already. This would make sense if Sarevok was double-crossing the Iron Throne (as in the games) but the opening paragraph makes it quite clear that this is for the cause of the Iron Throne, so... eh. You figure it out.

    Sarevok then turns around to speak to those minions he hasn't yet killed.

    “You have done well,” the son of Bhaal said, “Beregost is turning. I will not require so many of you there now. You will have new missions, all of you, new... selves to take on, closer to home this time. Go now, revel in the city for a night, then come back here[.]”
    Sarevok's subversion of Beregost might be more chilling had we spent more than about ten sentences there. Just saying. The doppelgangers head out to party, but Sarevok has one of them - Tranzig's double - stay behind.

    The man smiled, showing crooked yellow teeth and a malevolent glint in his dark brown eyes. Red stubble covered his otherwise smooth head. “Extraordinary,” Sarevok breathed in admiration. “Tamoko.”
    Tamoko, who serves as our viewpoint character for this chapter, coalesces from the shadows. The fake Tranzig jumps, not having noticed her at all. Sarevok makes sure that the shapeshifter is well aware that Tamoko could've gone for the kill at any time, then calls for the real Tranzig to be brought in so he can also be tortured to death.

    As exciting as this was, it's time to move on to the real meat of this chapter: Relationship drama!

    “If it’s over, it’s over,” Khalid said, “but I won’t be made a cuckold while — “
    “Stop it, Khalid,” Jaheira interrupted. “There’s nothing... Abdel...”
    “Spare me, Jaheira,” the half-elf countered, “you’ve made your feelings plain to us all.”
    (...)
    “Do you love him?”
    “Did you love Charessa?” she spat. Khalid sighed, closed his eyes, and shook his head.
    “That was a long time ago.”
    “That was three months ago, Khalid,” Jaheira argued, “and more before that.”
    Yes, that's the ticket.

    So! This is a lot to take in. For starters, the timeline here is interesting. As we established last time, the events of this novel have taken place over roughly a month. That means the affair with Charessa was roughly two months before Abdel met Khalid and Jaheira. We haven't seen any signs of bitterness on Jaheira's part, or any shame out of Khalid. Either Jaheira has grown completely numb to the whole thing, or the two are very good actors. Sure, Abdel wouldn't have picked up on the signs, but Montaron might have. I can't imagine the halfling would've missed an opportunity to needle Jaheira.

    Orrrr perhaps Athans was looking for a way to break up the marriage, and didn't bother going back to edit in some foreshadowing. But let's be charitable here.

    “Can I blame the Harpers?” he asked. Jaheira shook her head in response. “We were happy before we joined.”
    “We were happy when you were faithful,” Jaheira said simply, then looked him in the eye again.
    Note that Khalid has apparently been cheating on Jaheira for a long time, but it's Jaheira's attempt at doing the same that causes a relationship crisis. It's clear that Khalid has mentally checked out of the marriage a long time ago. He still insists he won't be cheated on, but Jaheira doesn't get to voice the same complaint - at least not on-page.

    The conversation then turns to Abdel, and the two wonder if they're doing the right thing keeping him in the dark.

    “He has that right [to know], doesn’t he?” she asked, really wanting an answer.
    “Yes,” Khalid said, “and no. I ask again: Would it help him any? Has it helped any of the children of Bhaal?”
    “I don’t know about any of the others,” Jaheira replied, “but Abdel has good in him. Maybe it was his mother — whoever she was — or Gorion — certainly Gorion — but there’s a... a struggle in him. He kills easily, yes... the man in the Friendly Arms... but he trusts easily too. How else would we have been able to manipulate him—“
    She stopped to sob, then quickly pulled herself together. She sniffed and looked away.
    This is decent characterisation and fits what we've seen Abdel actually do, so I'm awarding a small writing kudos to this section. That said, I'm not sure how the Harpers have been manipulating Abdel. They haven't really been pushing him to do anything Abdel wasn't already about to do. They took Abdel to the Nashkel mines, yes, but Abdel was planning to go there anyway. He did briefly consider staying at the Friendly Arms instead, but he ruined that for himself.

    Anyway, we're not done with this section yet. Here's the real treat:

    “We should have had children,” Khalid said, “you and I. It would have changed things. You would be a good mother. You have been — to Abdel.”
    This is the paragraph that broke me. This is where I put the PDF down in disbelief and went out to buy a paper copy, just to make sure I hadn't just fallen victim to an elaborate troll-fic. Even holding it in my hands - worn and yellowed, a stamp from the Luella High School Media Center on the inside cover - I can't quite believe this is real.

    In the meantime, Xan is chumming it up with the locals.

    Xan rubbed his aching forearm. Letting the orc beat him at arm wrestling was as painful as it had been productive. He was in the process of buying the orc a drink, but the ugly creature who called himself Forik was already talking.
    (...)
    “I ‘ate elves,” Forik repeated, then smiled and added, “but yer awright.”
    “For my sake,” Xan said, returning the creature’s ugly grin, “I hope you’re dropping the ‘h’ off the front of’hate.’ “
    This made the orc laugh. “Yeah, yer awright.”
    Forik, in his lovingly transcribed accent, explains that Tazok is a punk who owes him seventeen copper pieces. Tazok is never in town, but 'e’s gotta guy named Tranzing, er Tazing, er somethin’, at the Red Sheaf Inn.

    (This, for the record, is where we learn the significance of the earlier cut to Team Evil and who Tranzig is. It's decent writing, though I think I'd have preferred it if the two scenes were a little further apart. That's nitpicking, though.)

    Xan joins up with Khalid and Jaheira to share his findings. A small crowd has been gathered by a local demagogue, and they watch for a while.

    “How long are we going to just sit back,” the burly old miner shouted to the slowly assembling crowd in the center of Beregost’s quiet marketplace, “and let Amn do as she pleases with us? How long are we going to watch our brothers be thrown out of work—our mines spoiled, our livelihoods destroyed? I’m not moving to Waterdeep! Waterdeep has nothing for me! This is my home—I mine iron—and Amn isn’t going take that away from me, or my sons! (...) If I have to take my pick to an Amnian head before I take it to a vein of good iron—so be it!” (...) “Are we going to let Amn strangle us?” the miner shrieked, and the crowd, now over a hundred strong, roared back. Fists flew up into the air.
    I'm guessing that this is part of the 'turning' mentioned above, and that this burly old miner is either a doppelganger or a useful patsy. It's a good scene, but this might have been more impactful had we seen Beregost before. Is this at all different from normal Beregost, or is this the sort of town that's always half an hour away from forming an angry mob? Is this burly old miner normally a friendly sort, or is he always like this? We will never know.

    Xan fills the Harpers in on his findings, and Jaheira confirms that Tazok has worked out of the Red Sheaf before. They return to "the inn" (not the Red Sheaf, the one where they were staying) to pick up Abdel. The two men wait outside.

    A soft green silk blouse and a simple cotton skirt made her look less like the warrior he knew her to be. He didn’t want to look at Jaheira the woman— Jaheira the wife. She moved toward him slowly but didn’t come too close. “We have some... we know more,” she said quietly. “Are you all right?”
    The narrative notes that Abdel obviously isn't alright. He's spent the last hours trying to scrub the stench of the ghouls off, but still feels unclean. Jaheira drops the topic, instead filling Abdel in on their progress tracking down Tranzig.

    Abdel nodded, though he’d only barely heard what she had to say. “I’m...” he said.
    She stepped closer in response. He reached out a hand and touched the soft fabric of her skirt, felt the firm warmth of her thigh beneath it. She stepped into him, and without consciously willing himself to do so he began to kiss her taut stomach through the silk of her blouse. His skin tingled, and he drew in a sharp breath and heard Jaheira do the same thing. There was something about the feel of her that was just perfect — and perfectly wrong.
    Jaheira has no objections to Abdel making out with her stomach, but Abdel pulls away after a moment.

    “I can feel...”Abdel said quietly. He stopped to clear his throat and continued, “There are two voices to my thoughts, I think. One that wants to kill, that loves to kill, and another that wants... I don’t know what it wants, I hear it so infrequently. The voice that wants to kill also wants you.”
    For the record, if your significant other ever says this, that's your cue to exit the relationship immediately. Jaheira, instead, places a hand on Abdel's head, touching his hair. Abdel leaves it there for a moment before drawing away. Aww.


    Spoiler: Comparison and commentary
    Show
    So there are two things I really need to talk about with this chapter. One is the... relationship... and the other is the obvious retconning taking place in this chapter. Let's get the last one out of the way first.

    We briefly discussed Khalid's retroactive cheating above. There's also the issue of Jaheira and Khalid 'lying' to Abdel about his true nature and 'manipulating' him, which does not match the actual events of the narrative. Yes, Abdel's still in the dark, but remember that Jaheira already tried to tell Abdel in Chapter Four:

    Jaheira was sincerely confused by his last statement, but when she turned a questioning gaze on her husband, Abdel knew she was asking something else, something more important and more frightening to her. Khalid nodded, and Jaheira turned back to Abdel. “This is different,” she said, her voice even quieter, and Abdel had to strain to hear her. “This is your bro—“
    This was interrupted by a flung bottle and then a bar brawl. Later, in chapter eight, Jaheira gave Abdel a clear opening for a follow-up question:

    “Poison?” Jaheira asked, though she regretted saying it right away. “I’m sorry. You cannot help your nature.” Abdel had no idea what she meant by that.
    The issue here is that the narrative has been twisting itself into knots to ensure the Harpers can't tell Abdel the truth, and that Abdel is almost aggressively incurious. At this point, they could hire a skywriter to put the letters "ABDEL IS A BHAALSPAWN" in the clouds, and Abdel would spontaneously forget how to read. On the other hand, the Harpers have avoided questions about their motivations, so they have occasionally been sneaky.

    This sort of thing just doesn't work outside of a comedy. Have the Harpers systematically lie to Abdel if you must - they aren't above using underhanded methods if need be. Have Jaheira frown during this if you want to show her dissent. But don't do things halfway like this - the flip-flopping makes the Harpers look silly and indecisive, and Abdel just looks dull because he never picks up on any of it.

    This ties back in with the "manipulation" the Harpers have allegedly been engaging in. They've conspired to drag Abdel into conflicts which he was heading into anyway.

    Alright? Alright.

    On to the relationship thing. This whole thing about Jaheira trying to sleep with the guy to whom she has apparently been "a good mother" is uncomfortably Oedipal, but... let's... not dwell on that. I'm pretty sure it wasn't intentional, which ties it back in with the book's lack of editing.

    However: When exactly has Jaheira been mothering towards Abdel? The mother archetype, according to Carl Jung, is defined by "maternal solicitude and sympathy; the magic authority of the female; the wisdom and spiritual exaltation that transcend reason; any helpful instinct or impulse; all that is benign, all that cherishes and sustains, that fosters growth and fertility." Translating that back into literary tropes, a 'great mother' figure would be expected to be wise, supportive, calm, tolerant and nourishing - a care-giver and defender. That sort of thing. Toriel from Undertale.

    That isn't how the relationship between Jaheira and the rest of the group has worked at all. She has been confrontational (especially towards Montaron) and has made no attempt to be the "Team Mom" or act as the group's better conscience. She hasn't saved or protected Abdel from anything. She certainly hasn't been sacrificing herself to shield him from harm. Before this scene, she hasn't even been particularly sentimental. The only time she showed an emotion other than anger or fear was when Khalid was almost killed. In that scene, it wasn't even Jaheira who healed Khalid - Abdel provided the potion. (Jaheira has no access to healing magic in this book. That's another of these things.) There are a few scenes where Jaheira tries to get Abdel to see why war on the Sword Coast is a bad thing, which could be constructed as "nurturing," but it never goes anywhere.

    Why am I spending so much time ragging on this line? Because this is part of a larger pattern. Jaheira gets hit with just about every female character stereotype over the course of these books. It's like Athans has a list of standard personalities to include in the book, but not enough characters to spread them over, so they all get thrown at Jaheira.

    To wit: Jaheira has previously served as the Damsel in Distress, getting imprisoned by Mulahey so Abdel can save her. She is occasionally talked up to be a Strong Female Character, although that's really just when it's needed to make Abdel look even more impressive. As the bit about Abdel's two inner voices hints, Jaheira will eventually turn out to be an Innocent Maiden whose Pure Love saves the Misunderstood Loner from His Inner Darkness, just with swords instead of vampire baseball. Just about the only role she will be spared is The Villain's Girlfriend shown The Light by Our Hero's Innate Goodness (we have Tamoko for that one).

    Jaheira's personality and motivations change wildly from scene to scene, depending on which role she needs to act out at any given time. This is true for many characters, but it's especially notable with Jaheira, in part because she's the non-Abdel character with the most screen time.

    ... this post ended up kind of a mess. I should probably end the commentary section before it grows any longer. I hope this made sense at all.

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