Part 11: Words, Words, Words Part 2

Update 11: Words, Words, Words Part 2



Just outside of Tanneurs, there's yet another trap. It almost feels like the area has more of them than standard combat encounters.



The perspective here hides the pillar behind the solid crystal, but the solution is simple once you figure it out. Circle around the triangle of death, nudge the transparent crystal upwards to blast the top pillar, then shuffle the solid crystal in the path of one of the two cannons so you can walk between the crystal and the pillar to escape unscathed.




Tanneurs doesn't have a lot of interesting text, but it does have an abandoned house containing a nice prize.




The Horn of Algon-Kokoon summons a big angry war dog on to the battlefield and, being a melee attacker, it's excellent for pissing off enemy mages as, unlike Rusalki, it'll keep chasing them around. It's a decent backup item for those times when some dickhead moredhel runs up to Owyn on round one and prevents him from focusing on his nerdy wizardry.




Now, the Collector is supposed to be here, but being the sneaky prick that he is, he isn't any of the characters on the main screen. Instead, to meet him, we have to talk to the local gambler(who's in no mood for gambling while the Collector is around) and then rent a room for the night.


This is enough to satisfy the priests of Silban, but this tavern has a very, VERY important bug, present in all chapters. Now that we can gamble, do so. Lowest bet, do it until you lose. Then bard. Now gamble again, until we lose. Then bard again. For some reason, every time you lose to the gambler, your flag for having barded or not in this inn, in a given chapter, is reset. It's probably the lowest-effort way to earn infinite money, as long as you have the barding skill to satisfy the minimum barding requirements for the inn(helpfully, the otherwise-lousy Tanneurs store actually sells a practice lute).

I do it a few times just to confirm that it works, but I don't use it any more than that. The game generally provides you with enough money to progress without too much pain.




We've got two reasons for heading back north now. Firstly, the reward from the Temple, and secondly because we now know that Isaac knows more about the local Moredhel than he's been letting on.




That's... more metal than probably most of us expected. I definitely did not expect that to happen. The reward is nice, though, several full stacks of green potions and some herbal pouches.

Are all your human sects so... vengeful?
Kahooli's faithful, probably.
I never even knew it was possible to piss off the temple of Silban. Remind me never to do it myself.

With our rightful reward collected and dickheads punished, we head back up to Hawk's Hollow to deal with another dickhead...





Alright, when you spot Isaac, fan out. Despite that limp of his, he can move at a fair clip if he senses danger.
I could probably hit him with a crossbow bolt the moment we see him, then he won't be running anywhere.
Tempting, but for old times' sake I should probably give him a chance to explain himself.



Now that we've visited Devon and talked to him, we have a number of new topics to grill Isaac about...

[HIS SPYING]

We met your pokiir playing friend in Eggley and he told us a bit about the match he played with you. He told us about the elven friends that came along with you, but as you pointed out before, elves rarely come out of Elvandar and would be very unlikely to be travelling from town to town playing pokiir. Talk, Isaac. Why are you working with the moredhel, Isaac? What are they doing in the Kingdom?

I don't seem to be the only one keeping company with them, seigneur...

I'm not in a mood to be trifled with, Isaac. Talk!

Seeing as how they've seen fit to dismiss me, I can't see it will hurt matters. They're operating out of a barn near Yellow Mule. I found an old farmer there who wasn't particular about who rented his land and harbored loyalty to neither his lord nor to the Prince. A moredhel named Nago moved in there and has been using it as a base of operations to hire Quegian mercenaries.

Makes sense. Mercenaries would be able to move in the Kingdom without being noticed. What are they planning?

I made it a policy not to know. Knowledge has a tendency to shorten your life, especially when you're working with lunatics. Think what you like, but this was purely a business transaction. They paid me and I made the pick-ups and drop-offs to the moredhel lockchests. That was all I did for them.

[NAGO]

You said this Nago fellow was using a barn as a base of operations. What could we expect if we run across him?

Trouble. He's a magician, well armed, and was carrying enough gold in sovereigns to hire several dozen Quegian Mercenaries for months. Rowe nearly fainted when Nago handed over a pouch with four hundred golden sovereigns.

Rowe?

The old man who owns the barn. If Nago is half as ruthless as I suspect, he may have hired the old fellow to work for him, but I couldn't be certain.

[LAST ORDERS]

What were your last orders before Nago released you?

I released myself. I had the feeling I was coming to the end of my usefulness to the moredhel and I made my plans accordingly. When they asked me to pick up a ruby from Keifer Alescook and deliver it to a specific moredhel lockchest, I realized they were planning to take care of two problems at the same time. The moredhel courier would an assassin. They had planned to kill me and, at the same time, erase any evidence to whom the ruby had been delivered.

[GOODBYE]

It's time we were going. I would tell you to take care of yourself Isaac, but you were always quite good at doing that...

You never allow your grudges to die, do you?

Grudges have nothing to do with this. I simply know to trust my bump of trouble when someone is trying to fool me. Goodbye, Isaac. I have a suspicion we may meet again.

There's also a dialogue I couldn't get to trigger, and which the Krondor archive site says may be bugged wherein Locklear interrogates Isaac about the local moredhel lockchests, wringing five passwords out of him so that if you get stuck on some of the local chests, you can try those and see if any of them work.

We can now also compare the game to the book a bit. In the book, the party skips from LaMut to Loriel to Hawk's Hollow(getting badly injured on the way, they're basically all dead on their feet and only saved by a passing priest in Hawk's Hollow), where they confront Isaac about working with the Moredhel. Book Locklear is a lot less forgiving, though, and orders Isaac to leave behind a note to the Moredhel to give them false information, which Isaac complains will mark him for death. Locklear proceeds to not give a fuck and tells Isaac that if they don't get his full cooperation, he'll make sure the authorities are after him to see him hung as a traitor. Afterwards, they head south and use a non-game path across the mountains to reach Nago's hideout, arriving just before frostbite sets in(in the book, the start of the story is practically in the dead of winter). There's a good bit more characterization for Gorath in the book, too, as he allows the others to be healed by the priest before him(despite being at least as badly, if not worse, hurt) and is the one who knows of the hidden path across the mountains from his time near the Bitter Sea as a boy. He clearly considers himself responsible for the two younger humans despite not wanting to care about them. It also sees the beginning of Gorath learning things about humans that he considers to not be entirely awful, like Locklear's sense of honour about letting Isaac go because he's an old friend.

Since we can't use that path, though, we have to head back to Questor's View and continue down the coastal road...




I don't understand why you let him go, it would have been easy to kill him ourselves or hand him over to the guards.
That's not how we do things, Gorath.
I've seen enough humans to know that's not true.
Fine, then it's not how I do things.
Probably only because Isaac wasn't carrying any valuables.
Heh.



Someone's on the road up ahead.
Not more Quegans, is it?




Tempest?

Surely you have heard. The learned monks of Sarth have predicted a terrible storm is coming this way and I would hate to think of anyone caught out in it. Why a man could catch his death of the fevers. If you would like, you may ride it out in my barn.

And what profit would you turn in this enterprise?

Five golden sovereigns, a reasonable sum, and the guard over my cows. You can sleep in the hay loft of my barn but my wife and I don't take in elves.

Seven gold pieces, the elf stays with us and we each get a hard roll for breakfast.

Ten gold and the lot of you milk cows the next morning. That's the offer. Take it or leave it.

A moment while I talk this over with my friends.

This is the guy! The one Isaac told us about, it's clearly an ambush!
I can take him out in one swing, it'll be painless... for us.
Tempting, but no. If he doesn't report back, Nago will know something's up, we have to play along for now.

[YES]

Deal. Where is this barn of yours?

Keep heading south - you should pass the Abbaye of Ishap at Sarth. You'll know you're right close to it when you've passed up the Temple of Sung. From there it's just around Yellow Mule mountain. When you find the barn, just go knock on the door and my wife will fix you up.

Thank you, farmer. Your hospitality will be remembered.

In the book, the party never meets Rowe, but here it's notable for how meeting Rowe doesn't trigger any response in-game, despite the game otherwise being pretty well-written with regards to staying aware of the party having taken actions or gained knowledge that would make the conversation they're having be jarring and weird.





At least now I suppose we have an advantage in that they think to catch us entirely by surprise, but we'll be prepared for them.
Ha ha, I'm sure I heard that wrong, I'm sure you meant to say: "We'll pretend Yellow Mule doesn't exist and head down to Krondor."
Not a chance in hell. That son of a bitch Nago is going to pay dearly for all those ambushes.




I bump into a few small Moredhel patrols that are trivial to clear out, before arriving at the path to Sarth. One thing that always puzzled me is that Rowe is running around like two days' travel north of his own farm, as the side path to Yellow Mule is well south of Sarth.

Oh well, gives us a chance to poke our heads in and see what the monks are up to.




Sarth has a good deal of backstory to it! It's an old robber baron fortress converted into an Ishapian chapel dedicated to knowledge, where they're transcribing, cataloguing and storing texts of all kinds. It mostly features in Silverthorn, where, while travelling north, Arutha and his gang are harried by Nighthawks and a weird, demonic abomination that attempts to hunt them from the skies. Taking refuge at Sarth, the monks give them magical cover and the lead priest uses a magical amulet to enchant Arutha's rapier, turning it into a potent artifact that can do damage to even demonic creatures. It's also noteworthy, to me, for being the worst-written part of that entire book, it feels so clunky.

To us, however, Sarth is "merely" an Ishapian chapel(oddly enough with no teleporter mandala), a very, very nice shop and an entrance to a dungeon area where we can't do anything at the moment.




Now, about that store...




In addition to containing a lot of misc. magical stuff like enchanted quarrels, this place also sells spell scrolls(mostly ones Owyn already has, though, and others that I'd rather find for free) and also buys them. For instance, here we can sell that Flamecast scroll for a nice, fat 130 gold. I don't care about those things, though, what I care about is that staff.

In addition to being a nice boost, damage-and-accuracy wise, for Owyn, it also has charges. Those charges are all free casts of Skyfire, the lightning spell those goddamn Witch Hags hit us with in the Dimwood. It works on any enemy outdoors that's carrying metal(i.e. armor or a sword), and will hit them without fail, doing 40 damage. This means it only does 2/3rds of the damage of a Flamecast, but there's no potential friendly fire or missing with it, so it's a very reliable way to hit enemies and I always used it as my primary damage spell as a kid.

Owyn gets this one, I have the money, so I may as well use some of it, as these staves are quite rare. Unlike swords, which are all over the place, there are only two non-shop locations in the entire game to get a hold of one of these.

Leaving Sarth, there's a corn field next to the entrance road which is easy to miss because you can't interact meaningfully with corn in the game, it's always unripe, and unlike other fields in the game, there are no houses or barns(which may be looted) to draw you closer. This one matters, though, because we can scam a priest.






I hope we aren't disturbing you.

No, no. I was about to leave the garden anyway. Busy hands set the mind to work you know. On your way to Sarth?

Perhaps, brother...?

Brother Marc of Sarth. Glad to meet you. We don't get many illirati here. Books don't seem to interest the commoners as much as gold or wenching. But we have scholars enough, all going blind from reading worm eaten books and a dozen boys scribbling away their youth in our vaults. It is an unusual place.

I've a friend who visited here once. He told me that you worship the god of Knowledge.

They do say that, yes, and I suppose after a fashion it is true. If there is a question that can be answered in no other place, your best hope is to look in our vaults.

Looks like we found the perfect mark in... Marc. Someone who walks around complaining about how the common rubes only care about fun, rather than books, is someone we won't feel too bad about defrauding a little.

[CASTING]

Do you know anything about spell casting?

I know a little of it, though Brother Dominic knows more about it than I. As soon as he finishes his studies on Quegian civil codes, I'm certain he would be more than happy to sit down and talk to you about it. He should be only another two or three months at it I would think.

I'm afraid we don't have two or three months to wait. Why don't we leave the brother alone, nephew?

Tsk, tsk, tsk! Now don't discourage the boy from asking questions or he'll become afraid to question anything. I think I might have some time to teach him a bit about focusing if you can spare a few sovereigns, say fifty. Is that acceptable to everyone?

[YES]

More than acceptable. Where do we start?

Ah, an enthusiastic student! Delightful. This will be a pleasure to teach.


This training A) show us that Owyn is a Jedi who can throw people around with the Force and B) improves Owyn's Casting Accuracy by 10 points, which will help make some of the projectile spells a lot more useful.

[SPELLS]

Now that I know a little more about spell casting, perhaps there's a simple spell you could teach me?

Owyn...

Just something simple, so we can defend ourselves in case we run in to anyone hostile on the road.

I don't know what you imagine is waiting out there for you, but I believe I have just the thing. I will have to run up to the Vaults to search for it, but it is a little spell called Flamecast. Of course, there will be the matter of a fee, say 30 sovereigns. I know precisely where it is if you want me to run and get it. Shall I?

[YES]

You can be quick about it?

I won't be a moment. I will return as quickly as my little feet can move me.


We've just paid 30 gold for a spell scroll that we can now turn around and sell for 130 gold. It should be obvious to everyone that this is definitely the virtuous choice.

[ROAD SOUTH]

Are there any hazards on the road south from here to Krondor? We are in something of a hurry and I would hate to run into any unexpected delays.

I haven't heard any complaints from the travellers that have been through here in the past few weeks. I don't think the mercenaries that stopped by to speak to Brother Dominic said anything of it.

Mercenaries? They're not in Quegian press gangs, are they?

Not to my knowledge, no. These lot landed just south of Questor's View on a ship called the Foamspinner. As much as they've been up and down the road, I assumed they were in on a shore leave.

Were there many of them?

Many of them? If you laid them head to foot, I imagine you could walk across the Straits of Darkness without getting your feet wet. It seems one of those Quegian galleys can carry a small village from one place to an other!

[INNS]

Do you know of any good inns in the area? I think I might sleep a little better if I could bed down on something other than cold ground tonight.

There are a few. You might try Babon's Hostel in Questor's View or the old Bywater Inn. If it weren't for my duties here, I would be half inclined to join you. Some acolyte somewhere has been trying his hand at dream sendings and I've not had a good night's sleep in weeks.

Dream sendings?

It's a way to send messages over long distances. Only certain magicians have the talent for it. Whoever it is, they can't be too far away because his images are fairly strong.

What do they seem to be trying to say?

I'm not certain. The images are too disjointed, though now I think of it, I thought I had seen your elf friend's face before. Now I know why. His face was in the sendings.

Most of these questions don't have any prerequisites from other places, so if you didn't pick up the hint from Isaac on the first visit, or interrogated him on the second visit, you might suddenly have an idea how the Moredhel somehow keep finding the party and attacking them. Obviously someone is sending and receiving psychic spy reports.

[BAD WEATHER]

So when is the storm going to hit? We're a little concerned about finding a place to stay so we don't get soaked.

Storm? It is the first I have heard of such a meteorological disturbance. Brother Gierom didn't mention it to me before I left the abbey this morning.

That's strange. We met a gentleman named Rowe who said a storm had been predicted by the brothers at the Abbey.

I wonder why he would tell you such a thing. Of course, he has been acting peculiarly since his wife died. Terrible tragedy, and striking at such a time when he had to give up his farm. I really must feel for the poor old soul

And this gives you a hint that Rowe might not be on the up and up and that you should be careful when approaching his farm. This is one point, in my mind, where the game suffers a bit from its lack of fidelity. A few weather effects, a crusty thunder.mid and some rain effects would work well to make the player feel like they should be seeking shelter(even if it had no mechanical effects) and thus perhaps make them miss some of the clues from Rowe. Maybe if resting in barns was as good as resting in inns and allowed 100% health recovery, rather than the 80% of wilderness resting, then his offer might seem a lot more tempting to a party that had gotten badly dinged up. But as it is, taking him up on his barn offer and accepting the bait(either knowingly or not) is kind of a roleplaying choice more than anything else.

[GOODBYE]

Seems we at least have a few things to think about. Thank you, Brother Marc.

Always a pleasure to help. Come back and visit me again.

Perhaps we will. Goodbye!

It's worth revisiting Marc next chapter even though he'll be somewhat out of the way, as he will have some interesting things to share.





We're drawing close to Yellow Mule... I look forward to getting my hands around Nago's neck.
As much as I look forward to the revenge, I wonder if we're biting off more than we can chew.
Nago is a powerful spellweaver, but if he thought he could handle us himself, he would have. He hides and throws assassins at us from afar because he fears us.
Still... there's a Temple of Sung in the area, a bit of divine favour would make me feel better about this.





This isn't just fluff talk, by the way, at the moment this Temple can't cure anyone because the priests are asleep on their feet. Thankfully, though, the encounters north of the Temple of Sung are light, the trip from it and all the way back up to Questor's View are, in fact, almost as lightly populated as the reach between Highcastle and Northwarden in Chapter 1.






A couple of Quegans serve as warm-up exercises as the party approach the ominous barn...

I'm shaking like a leaf, let's get this over with!




You always lose initiative coming into this battle, and it resultingly has the potential to go quite poorly as Nago has a big assortment of spells. Flamecast, Skyfire, Hocho's Haven and Mind Melt we all know, but in addition to that he also knows Fetters of Rime(like a non-explosive Flamecast that ALSO applies paralysis like Grief of 1000 Nights) and Strength Drain(reduces the target's Strength stat by up to 20 for the remainder of the battle and increases the caster's strength by half that, also for the remainder).




He starts off with what I feared most, nailing Owyn with Fetters of Rime and taking him out of the fight. This means that my #1 priority now is to prevent this asshole from casting another spell before the fight ends.




Thankfully the rest of the moredhel are mostly busy chasing Gorath and Locklear, rather than beating down the defenseless Owyn who, thanks to his Grey Tower Plate and the defense training from Devon, they almost can't hit, and once Nago goes down, the rest of the fight is no longer a great challenge.




Gorath even nails this perfect crossbow shot right between Owyn and Locklear to drop the last Moredhel fighter before he can get any ideas about running away.

Now... time to paw through their corpses for anything interesting.



Predictably, only Nago yields anything worth talking about.



Normally he'd also be the first real meaningful sword upgrade on the most direct route, there's also an ice wand(Alfathain's Icer) which applies a frost modifier to a weapon for one battle, a +50% damage boost, and a note full of exposition:


Shame for Nago that we found none of these chests(yet) and thus aren't fooled. Also, as a funny thing, a bug in version 1.01 was that this note was also placed on another character, much later in the game, thus probably leading to a lot of confusion, especially since it also replaced an actual clue for that chapter that said character was meant to be carrying instead.

This fight also canonical and, in fact, spookily so, since in the book Owyn gets grazed by a Fetters of Rime spell that almost loses them the fight, but since it only partially paralyzes him, he manages to prevent Nago from casting any spells for long enough that Locklear and Gorath can put down his guards, then chop him in half. Instead of a note ABOUT the fake evidence, however, in the book, they find the notes themselves on Nago's desk in the barn, ready for planting all sorts of places, each of them implying some sort of slightly plausible location for an attack from Delekhan to mislead Kingdom troops.



Revenge is sweet. Cutting that spellweaver in half was worth those ten sovereigns to Rowe.
A settled debt long in the coming, but I'd never thought I'd actually get to do so.
Do all you Moredhel have a feud or a blood debt out for each other?
Not all, I probably wouldn't start sparring with my ex-wives if I met them.

Before we continue back south, we pop back to the Temple of Sung to see how they're doing now the annoying Dream Sender in the neighbourhood is gone...


This teaches Owyn Hocho's Haven for free, I'm not sure if there's some alternate text if you already know, but the BaK site doesn't indicate any, so I would assume not. Now, however, we're practically right on top of Krondor, so let's finish this road trip.





A last few Quegans attempt to get in our way, but we sweep them aside effortlessly.



That'll teach them to get in our way.





The answer is obviously yes, as we can do nothing else, though in the book the party waits for a patrol to pass by(while Gorath makes uncharitable comments about humanity's cities), then slip into the city alongside them. However, once they do, they have the same problems that the party's about to have.



Krondor! It's got the amenities you'd normally want from a big city, though one of them(the temple), we can't currently access. Two shops, even, and of course an inn as well. I quickly sell what spare gear the party has and then head for the palace, but...


Let's not even think about the fact that we are, at the moment, dealing with a fortress that has literally only one entrance, and that being a big dramatic portcullis at the front. Let's just accept it as it's how the game is going to chase us into the only required dungeon of chapter 1...




Can't we just go back to letting moredhel shoot arrows at us? I liked that part more.



Welcome to the sewers of Krondor which is... honestly? Probably the most re-occurring location within the city across the books, and also an area that I got lost in so many times as a kid. Next time, we'll actually get into the palace, for sure, probably!