Part 7: Big Decisions, Part 1

Update 07: Big Decisions, Part 1

Dear diary, I've been trying to put it off, but we're coming up on a big decision, and you know how I am about those.



Um, what's Arachne talking about? What's the big choice?
It's as though you never pay attention, lizard. Arachne is burdened by a moral quandary, whether to support the noble and holy Church of the Sun or the sinister and cretinous Necromancers' Guild. Within her soul she fights a mighty struggle, as her noble nature vies against her sinister upbringing! It's enough to bring a tear to a strong-
Oh come now, Maylander, do you really believe that rubbish? I've been here before so many times. The church is always secretly evil. Plus, I've been reading her journal. She's actually trying to decide whether to support the nice necromancers or stick with her plan to upset her parents. Now, personally, I'd always vote for upsetting my parents, the gods know I've done that a lot of times, but the Church of the Sun really is a pack of utmost pricks...
Gee, I wish Thanys hadn't left us to be with Masul, then we'd have had a tiebreaker vote!
Not quite, old chap. The only vote that matters in an adventuring party is the party leader's, it's in the 9th-edition rulebook.




I'd been listening to the rest of the party while mulling things over, diary, and it made me come to a conclusion... which was that there was absolutely no way I could choose just yet. Was the necromancer's guild villainous? Was the Church of the Sun secretly evil? We'd have to explore Shadowspire and the Murmurwoods and find out for ourselves.
Oh boy, where are we going first?
From Ravenshore, Shadowspire was the nearest, so by a simple matter of being closest by, that would be our first port of call.
Gods above, grant me the strength to tolerate the heathen and the unbeliever as we journey into the heart of darkness itself.




It took us a few days to reach Shadowspire, and we were greatly disappointed by the welcoming committee.
Not to mention all this bloody ash! It's getting into my boots! I'll take a dexterity penalty!

Shadowspire is, like most areas outside of Alvar, patrolled by a lot of monsters outside the limits of its main town. The majority are Skeleton Bowmen, but there are also a few other things that can show up to proffer cheap tat and tout services to tourists.


They're pretty fragile and do very limited damage, they're mostly a challenge if this is your first destination out of Ravenshore, which isn't completely implausible, but even then I'd argue they're less scary than the pirates and dire wolves most of the time, unless they successfully manage to play keep-away with the party and whittle them down.




Having listened to Maylander's dire warnings, I was surprised to find no towering wall of skulls surrounding the town of Shadowspire. Perhaps, of course, this was all meant to drag us in, to lull us into a false sense of security... so I decided to ask a wandering townsperson how their day was.





...so, as it turned out, mostly normal.
Just wait, sooner or later their dark hearts will be revealed. For instance, that quaint-looking inn, I bet that when we enter, it'll turn out that it's really...



...a quaint looking inn with some very good serving skeletons? Why yes, I will have some more free bread.
Ooooh! They do marrow bones! My mom never lets me have marrow bones! Can I have some?
Of course, you delightful scamp, but only one or it'll spoil your appetite.
Alright, yes, so the red wine is of an exquisite vintage, but brace yourselves! Certainly the next house will be the very heart of horror!




I had to give it to Maylander, that ceiling decoration was pretty tacky... and then there was the matter of becoming a lich. I supposed that it would have its advantages, being able to adventure... to travel forever, to see everything, to collect every souvenir. Plus at this point it rather seemed like the only way to get rid of my spider tattoo. It was hard to conceive of any downsides.
Curses, she's being seduced by dark powers.
Maylander, chum, perhaps you could explain why the Church of the Sun is so opposed to lichdom.
Well, you see we... hm. Actually I'm not quite sure. But I am sure that it's extremely wicked, somehow.

Now, let's do a quick round of Shadowspire! It's actually quite large and has all the facilities you could imagine, including the only Dark magic shop in the game. That's right, the only Dark shop is in Shadowspire, the only Light shop is in Murmurwoods, the only above-basic Elemental shop is in Alvar and the only above-basic Self(Mind, Body, Spirit) shop is in Ravenshore.




Bone of Doom, Bone of Doom... it rang a bell, somewhere, at the back of my mind. I could have sworn we'd collected a particularly doomed bone in the past, but I couldn't find it in my pack anywhere.



Dish bone? *Ptooie* Oh, I thought it tasted kind of doom-y! I've been using it to calm down. It's soothing to chew on.
...let's just give the nice man the bone, we'll find you a new one.





Much like in MM7, the locals in Shadowspire aren't really particularly... villainous. They just happen to have glowing eyes and be undead. There are also a few recruitable options hanging around, though quite a few of them don't think we're cool enough yet.




Gethric is one of the worse ones, since a lot of his points have been pre-spent on utility skills that you've likely already got a permanent party member capable of handling(ID Item and Disarm Trap, at least, are so required that you couldn't get far without them. Perception, too, without a guide. Some traps and secret doors are very well hidden). He gets sent to the Adventurers' Inn to cool his heels.

Next we're coming up on some of the local shops...




Of course it's the Blood Bank.



Loving how the armory uses un-animated bones as their display dummies.



Sadly the trebuchet in the back isn't for sale...



And the training center, of course, is big into recycling when it comes to finding training dummies.





The undead also generally seem very... sanguine about their war with the Church of the Sun. Not extremely angry about it, just very "well darn, that sure is regrettable."



As the party passes through the town, they approach a towering, ashen spire in the distance, rising out of the otherwise very flat terrain.






I confess, I realized Maylander was overblown and theatrical, but I did expect Shadowspire to be worse than this.
I knew what shaped Maylander's prejudices, but I was curious about Jasp's.
Well! I'm sure you've heard of Deyja, possibly even visited it. They had a real big problem with politicking and infighting, supposedly it got bad enough that there was more sorcerous duelling than research going on, by the end of it.







There's still some of the town left to visit, since it's not just on a straight path, some of it actually being flung out on a couple of loops like a real town might be, but I decided to head straight to the castle and see if the leaders of the Necromancers' Guild were as peaceful as the people.






Oooooh, it's so spikey and pointy!




The interior of the Necromancers' Guild in Shadowspire managed at once to be gloomy and spacious, towering upwards, but providing a feeling of being cramped and crypt-like nonetheless. Normally, we would have proceeded straight ahead, assuming that to be the location of a throne room or audience hall, but were instead instructed to head "to the tower" by one of the local necromancers.
Wonderfully useless instructions, those, it's not like this place only has one tower.

Proceeding straight ahead here, unlike in literally every other M&M castle, instead proceeds into the various restricted sections of the guild, so I head forwards up the stairs and left, through winding(but somehow non-descript) corridors to one of the Guild's two towers. I, of course, pick the wrong one.






Oh, is this some sort of necromancer humour? Sending us to an empty tower?

You'd think so, I certainly did, until I noticed a lever on a nearby wall and...



There's an invisible floor surface inside the ring. It's actually kind of neat and wizardy. The only problem is that the tower is fucking tall so every ride up and down takes like two minutes, which feels even longer if, like me, you managed to send up the elevator without being on it the first time.





What's wrong, old bean?
This is scary! With nothing underneath us... I can see how high up we are...
Lizard, if you tell me that you're afraid of heights, I shall laugh. You've carried us through the skies before!
These are indoor heights! They're different!
Don't be so hard on him, Maylander, he's trying his best.
Let's just talk to the sinister villains beyond the door and get this over with.




You weren't kidding, Maylander! I can just feel the evil oozing off him, that untrustworthy face, those beady eyes...
This obviously wasn't the throne room of the Necromancers' Guild leaders, but we had stumbled upon something interesting nonetheless. Perhaps this was Maylander's twin?





No. No. No. This man can't possibly be a fellow Cleric! He must be some sort of... shapeshifter! A deceiver planted to destroy our faith in the Church of the Sun!
On the one hand it was possible that Maylander was correct, on the other hand... everyone we'd met so far in Shadowspire had been quite reasonable. Perhaps the Church was actually in the wrong?
Please, once we're done with this haven of heretics, we'll visit the mother temple in the Murmurwoods and you'll see their glory!

In any case, we can't interact with Dyson further until we pick one of the two factions to support. So it's time to head down, over and up the other tower.





Sandro is worth noting as being a semi-recurring character. He first popped up in M&M5: Darkside of Xeen, but I think that's canonically not the same Sandro who was later a Heroes of Might and Magic Necromancer commander.





And the pitch here feels a lot like the Church of the Sun initiated hostilities while the necromancers are just trying to hold their own.



Though it seems the consequences of supporting the Necromancers' Guild might be vampires being free to frolic everywhere and eat anyone they want. Eh, I'm sure everyone can just buy a mosquito net, right?



As we left the Necromancers' Guild, still un-committed to their cause, we had more questions than when we entered. Who was Dyson Leland?
And why does he look like Maylander?
Did the Church of the Sun really strike first? And did that mean they were, in fact, the bad guys?
I'm stunned you can even harbour such doubts. Clearly the Church simply identified the sinister schemes of the Necromancers' Guild ahead of time and moved to counter them.




On the way out, I check out the remainder of Shadowspire town.




Including the cool-looking Dark Magic guild.






Oooooh, a big treasure in the Ravage Roaming! ...hey, didn't we find a big treasure in the Ravage Roaming?
...I would be sorely disappointed in any pirate that simply scattered his treasure behind a hill in a bunch of easily-spotted chests. Where's the adventure? The map where X marks the spot?

Note that yes, that WAS in fact the Dread Pirate Stanley's treasure that it's entirely possible to stumble over while just casually checking out what the Ravage Roaming has to offer. I suspect it was originally intended to be better hidden.







Nathaniel here is actually recruitable at our current level! No reason to, since we already have Arachne but...



He actually starts out really strong! His only weirdness is that, much like Maylander missing Light magic when you first get him, Nathaniel is missing Fire magic. Mind, what I use most from Fire magic is casting Torchlight, but still. It has a lot of decent attack spells, fire resistance(prior to Day of Protection) and Haste(prior to Hour of Power), so it's... odd that he doesn't have it. Meanwhile Earth magic is mostly dogshit useless. At least having Master 8 Dark Magic is rad. Still, he gets to cool his heels at the inn.







Two quests dealing with Korbu and... you might notice that an earlier NPC also offered Necro promotions. That's because that NPC joins you when you complete the promotion quest, at which point Lathean here takes over the task of promoting Necromancers to Liches.

I do so enjoy some quests with a bit of moral ambiguity.
What moral ambiguity? Clearly the vampire trying to put Korbu to rest is the only sane one!

You'd think the two quests relating to Korbu would also be mutually exclusive, but they actually aren't. That's the last NPC to visit in Shadowspire, though, so I whip out the ol' Town Portal to yank the party back to Alvar so we can have a walk over to the Murmurwoods.





Shadowspire hadn't been too much of a surprise, obviously I had expected skeletons, vampires, the undead in general and some degree of darkness, but I realized I had no preconceived notions, no expectations, for the Murmurwoods, and asked Maylander what they were like.
I'm glad you're finally asking for my advice. The Murmurwoods are idyllic woodlands, looked over by the noble Church of the Sun, where all animals live in peace with one another and anyone can safely walk the woods, unlike the vicious wasteland of Shadowspire where a skeleton tries to put an arrow in your ear every two feet.




Oooooooh.
Aaaaaaah.
The Murmurwoods were certainly the lushest part of Jadama we'd visited so far. After the barren wastelands of the Ravage Roaming, the dusty Ironsands, the wastes of Shadowspire, it was nice to once again be somewhere where life flourished, where it abounded, where-
Hey, what's that glittery thing?





Maylander! What part of "idyllic" is "light itself tries to kill visitors"?
I'm sure we must have been morally compromised, otherwise the wisps would never be hostile. I'm sorry you're all so impure of mind that you're going to get us killed.


Light Elementals are now Will-o-Wisps and, thankfully, no longer fucking explode on death. They're still tough cookies, though, which escalate wildly in threat level from their weakest to their strongest types. For instance, the top tier does 20 to 80 damage per shot which, being Light damage, cannot be lessened by resistances. Worse yet, it's not represented by 4d20 which would give a somewhat even distribution, but instead by 20d4 which tends to result in a very narrow bell curve, i.e. often around 40 damage per hit. Consider in this context poor Jasp who only has about 100HP and how these things can almost one-shot him and often two-shot him. The only party member who's noticably tougher is Ithilgore. The wisps also aren't particularly fragile, so rather than being glass cannons, they're really just plain cannons.



Maylander said the Murmurwoods must be safe, so these lizards are safe, right?



Considering the chunk one of them took out of my thigh, I sadly had to inform Ithilgore that no: The lizards weren't safe. Since Jasp seemed to have a better grasp on reality than Maylander(despite getting most of his worldly knowledge from sourcebooks...), I asked him what we were dealing with.
I'm glad my expertise is being recognized! These are clearly Basilisks.


I think this is the first game or setting i can recall where basilisks have a raptorlike gait, mostly they're presented as komodo dragons(sometimes with extra limbs). Inexplicably, they're also mis-headered in the strategy guide, being under the heading "Thunder Lizards" instead of there being a Basilisk header at all. By pure stats, they're less scary than the Wisps: No ranged attack, about half the damage, roughly as many hit points. But as per the name, the tier 1 type can Paralyze you, while the tier 2 and 3 types can Stone you, and so far I've yet to luck out and score a Protection From Magic spellbook from any of the stores, so they are very much still a threat. Thankfully, lacking a ranged attack, dealing with them is much the same as dealing with Ravage Roaming gorgons: Take to the skies and laugh.



With no need to fight them, we decided to leave the pack of basilisks behind on the ground, snarling, frothing and quite frustrated at being unable to reach us.
It's clearly a warning from the heavens themselves that we're dabbling with unnatural forces and at risk of being smote.




And this strangely lifelike statue, Maylander?
Necromancer agent, restrained by the peaceful forest wildlife.
Wow, glad we don't meet the angry forest wildlife, his arm's almost come off!





I could tell Ithilgore was tiring and would need to put down, but the woods below us were teeming with basilisks.
I'm sure that won't be a problem for long. Ith, old chap, just hang on for another minute and we'll get you a break.




Unlike Gorgons, however, Basilisks are notably not fire-immune, so it's perfectly viable to fly circles until they bunch up, then hit them with Ithilgore's fire breath spell and/or some actual Fireball spells to rip them to shreds.






Oooooh, Maylander, what's this?
The remnants of a false and outmoded religion known as druidic worship. Only a few fools in Enroth and Antagarich still adhere to it, but the residents of Jadame have long since become too enlightened for it.
Really, Maylander?
Really.
...
Alright, alright! When everyone realized druids sucked, they were okay with us chasing them into the sea. Get off my back, no one sane would ever recruit a druid for their party anyway.





A few places, rock formations on the floor of the Murmurwoods form vaguely astrological symbols and stuff. Pentagrams, arrows, etc. Usually there's a shrine or well associated with them(this one just poisons you, it sucks).




Seeing the large cave, it occurred to me... hadn't the trolls of Ironsand asked us to search for their ancestral home? Hadn't one of them hinted it could be in the Murmurwoods? Once we'd talked to the priests of the Sun, we'd certainly have to give it a closer look.





Finally we're here! I'm sure this will help you understand why the Church of the Sun are the good guys.




While I didn't always agree with Maylander's assessments, I would at least agree that the Church of the Sun knew their architecture better. Not having to slog up five stairs and an elevator to get to the greeting room was a nice change.




I see where Maylander gets it from now.

So yeah, the Church of the Sun greatly contributes to the feel of "the necromancers are unfairly persecuted by these insane fusion-worshipping dickheads." Secondly, another good reason to hate them is that while Shadowspire is a nice town that even has a Town Portal fountain, the Murmurwoods settlement just kind of sucks! No trainer, no weapon or armor shops... in fact all it has is a Light Magic shop and an inn.




Ewwww, a human served my food! Isn't that unhygienic?
Indeed. Much rather have your food handled by a nice, clean skeleton. That's just common sense.





Hmph, Cauri Blackthorne.
Jasp seemed dismissive of someone we'd heard described as one of the chief heroes of the Dark Elf people. I wondered why.
Oh, don't mind me, I'm just annoyed that she gets all the attention while others of us toil in obscurity. Never appreciated for our accomplishments. Where are my action figures? Where's my limited line of collectible plates?





Finally a quest of virtue worthy of our time! Imagine the perils we must brave to battle through the legendary temple of the serpent, certainly the darkest dungeon known to man or monster, to recover the Prophecies of the Sun!
The Prophecies of the Sun... that rang a bell somewhere...
Wow, what do you think we'll find the temple?
Vast, monstrous serpents! Perhaps a hydra, a multi-serpent, if you will! Traps and puzzles! We'll be journeying through the darkness for hours, if not days, or weeks! We may have to eat Jasp to survive!
Hold on, why me? There's more meat on Ithilgore. Heck, there's more meat on you.
I missed most of the conversation as I was neck-deep in my backpack. Were they talking about eating Jasp? Why would they be talking about eating Jasp?
Not to mention the ethical and moral challenges, testing our very soul and spirit. Our worthiness to succeed.
I still want to know what's so virtuous about treating me like a buffet.
There it was! Crammed under a Lloyd's Beacon spellbook. Hopefully Stephen would appreciate it.



...wait, you had it already?
I explained to Maylander that I had fought my way through the Temple with Elsbeth back when I was still dressed in rags and carrying a wooden stick. It was no big deal. There were giant snakes, though.
...the universe is mocking me, but this is but another test.




So now Maylander(or any other Cleric of the Sun we recruit) can technically learn Grandmaster Light Magic, except the Grandmaster teacher is in the one overland zone we can't access yet.



And that's it for this town. Everyone else here is a trainer of some sort and thus has no quests or funny dialogue for us. The Murmurwoods are, in general, one of the most unfinished-feeling parts of the game as a result, especially once we take a look at the dungeons contained within because they're... an issue. First, though, lets head back to the druid circle, there were some statues scattered around and now we have some scrolls to un-statue them with!






There are five statues, and four of them are just generic pilgrims that you get no reward for saving, but you may as well, since you've got the free scrolls for it. You'd have to be kind of a dick not to.





None of them are well-hidden... except for the fifth, Cauri's, which I actually had to look up since I just could not fucking find it.





Not because she's in a super-dense part of the woods or anything... but because they placed her so her statue sprite was partially clipping into a tree sprite and hiding her. Dick move, NWC, dick move.




...alright, alright, perhaps she is rather cool. But I'm cool, too, aren't I?
I think you're cool!

So, as previously mentioned, the first consequence of this is that now we could go swap Jasp out for a 50th-level character when most of the party is still loitering in the low 20's. Secondly, Jasp is now a promoted Dark Elf which, firstly, provides a very nice buff to his health and spell points, look at that drop, and... some really boring skill boosts. He can now become a Grand Master bow-user, a weapon that's been kind of pointless in all three games. He can get GM Disarm Trap... but anything about rank 12 Master Disarm Trap is only required for one place in the game, anyway(you'd need 14 Master Disarm Trap), so it's not exactly a big deal and, lastly, it gives him GM access to Dark Elf spells... and alright, I guess the Darkfire spell could be theoretically useful in some places, but sadly not many.

Still, bragging rights!

Alright, chaps! I feel like a new elf. How about we go raid a dungeon? We can even do it virtuously, for Maylander's sake.





Thankfully we have two dungeons lying around that just so happen to be useless appendixes ready for us to poke around in.



Welcome to the Ancestral Troll Home. We've now completed this dungeon. Not even kidding, just entering and leaving again is enough to convince Volog back in Ironsands, we don't need to collect any treasures or even clear it of enemies, which is good, because the local treasure suck and the enemies are just basilisks which are a bit more nerve-wracking in close quarters where we can't cheese them.




However! There's one very unique thing about this dungeon! Something we've yet to encounter in any other...



It's the first time that the early-ish 3D of the games actually bugs out! I'm not actually out-of-bounds here, no way to fall out of the world or anything, but something about this entry hallway does briefly permit the party to gaze through the veil of reality itself and behold everything.






The weird thing is that this "Ancestral Home" is literally just a bunch of tombs. Not very, uh, home-y, thus making me wonder if it was originally intended as something else. In any case there are literally no unique items, lore entries or anything in here. We're done pretty quickly and no one gets turned to stone.




Now for the second placeholder dungeon: the druid circle.







Very nice-looking splash screen that dumps us right at the top of an elevator and, if you weren't already very suspicious of this setup, the automap(with Wizard Eye) helpfully informs you that there's a welcome party down below.



It involves you descending while a tier 3 Boulder looks at you menacingly and for a brief, perilous time you're unable to get off the elevator while it's very capable of hitting you still. This is rough.



It's also hard to see while descending, but there's a ring of traps around the elevator, too, that also hurt! So the smart thing to do is to bail off the elevator as soon as possible and run for one of the exits. First time I try this, I end up with three out of four party members dead before I even got into the nearest tunnel.




Barely manage to slip through and...




What the hell is that? It's not in any Monstrous Manual!


These guys are absolutely fucking HUGE, toughest enemies we've met so far, HP-wise(by a wide margin, too. So far enemies have mostly capped out at about 300HP for tier 3, these guys have almost 1000HP at tier 3), they've got 50 resistance to Physical damage and they hit like trucks, all variants being able to break weapons or armor. Their top-tier type does 45 to 90 damage, and of course it's physical, so we can in no way negate or resist any of it. We just have to try to not get hit. Thankfully they have two weaknesses, first, they have no ranged attack. Secondly...



Someone forgot to properly size the geometry in here and half the corridors they just get stuck in so we can slowly whittle them down from range and not give a shit. This is pretty classic Might and Magic by now, though. Happened to some enemies in 7, too.



Aside from Chargers, the main enemies in the Druid Circle are more Boulders which are, once again, surprisingly nasty for immobile enemies because of both their placement and the massive damage they do.





It's also a bit funny that just off the entry chamber, if you pick the right exit while panicking, you can find the only unique item of this dungeon, the Druid Circlet. From what I can gather, the reason it's basically a useless item(no value, not a quest item, not equippable) is that Druids were originally planned for being in MM8, and it was probably going to have been part of their promotion quest. But with Druids being removed(either because everyone remembered they kind of sucked or becaues they ran out of time), the circlet and thus the druid circle were never repurposed for anything else and just kind of get left as a hanging thread.



The remainder of this place is just brown tunnels, Chargers getting stuck on level geometry and using Ithilgore to snipe Boulders while a few confused Dark Dwarves wander around and get one-shot.






So yeah, let's get out of here before we find a hole in the geometry someone left for us to drop out of.



Since we've found the trolls' ancestral home, we may as well go tell Volog Sandwind in Ironsands about it.





I wasn't quite sure why the ancestral home in the Murmurwoods was so important to the trolls. After all, we were certainly going to sort out this "elemental apocalypse"-business, clean up the lake of fire and their village would be perfectly habitable again!
Mmmm, we were thinking of getting out of here even before the Lake of Fire showed up, we have... an issue.
We would be remiss in our duties to honour and justice if we didn't help. Tell us of this issue.
Few months back a dragon moved into the hills behind the village. It's not like he's killing us, but he and his brood keep showering us with fliers about how the one-world government is going to come in and take everyone's swords and crossbows any day now.



At this point we could choose to recruit Volog, we could get him a lot quicker, much like Cauri, simply by abusing having a Dragon capable of Flight, but at this point he's well behind us in levels. But otherwise his pre-spent skills are pretty nice and concise and spent on the things you'd pretty much always want a Troll to be capable of. Still, I'd expect a Fighter, Vampire or Dark Elf to out-damage them a lot of the time due to dual-wielding and attack speed differences.





As we headed into the hills behind the village, an uncomfortable question popped up... was Ithilgore going to be okay with this? We'd probably have to get violent with a few dragons.
You guys didn't mind when you had to kill human pirates and stuff, right? These guys are like dragon pirates!




Ilsingore's(no relation to Ithilgore) cave is one of those caves unrelated to any sort of quest or plotline. It's really just here for three reasons.




One: You wanna fight dragons for the XP. Because they are worth fat loads of XP, drop decent amounts of gold and, despite the fact that we can take them this early, have a small chance of dropping artifacts.


Unusually they have six tiers, rather than the usual three, and until the fifth tier they're actually more fragile than the big Chargers. They do a lot of damage, but unlike MM6 and MM7 dragons, none of them ever do Energy damage, and thus it can all be resisted(Maylander constantly has Day of Protection up at this point), they don't even have any Physical melee attacks or anything.




Never seen anything like it. The moment we enter the cave, they start yelling about how we're here to steal their weapons and gold and make them vote for a vampire.
Somewhat a self-fulfilling prophecy, now we will be taking their gold... as well as the unusual number of magical weapons they're carrying but not using.




Ilsingore himself is an extra-tough dragon, almost twice as much health as the biggest non-unique dragons in the cave, but otherwise isn't anything special. He does, however, prompt a lot of backpedalling while he trades shots with the party.




Due to the way resistances work AND the way the dragon damage range is calculated(16d8 for the biggest ones gives it a lot of variance), damage taken by the party is extremely variable. I cleared 3/4's of the entrance guards without even feeling like I was taking any hits, and then suddenly the party started getting badly bruised and needing patching up. A combination of Shared Life(Ithilgore is an excellent health bank), plain healing and Regeneration kept anyone from dying, but if you look at Maylander's spell points, you can see he's basically sucked completely dry by all the healing action.



Ilsingore also drops a unique bow(and, without my noticing for a while, one of the other dragons drops a unique cloak), the bow goes to Jasp since theoretically he's the best archer and he might as well suck less when we're dealing with something I don't want to get close to.




Reason two for busting into this cave is that there's a chest that always produces two artifacts. Sadly, neither of them are worth our time, but I won't know this until I get back to a store and get them ID'd.



At the very back of Ilsingore's cave, past mountains of rebellious dragon entrails and their many interesting pieces of loot, we found a deeper section and braced ourselves for what sort of angry wyrmlord was sure to rest within...




So yeah, after we blow up his doomsday prepper roommates, Flamdring, a level 15 dragon, is just perfectly happy to join us.

After all, you've just proved that this lair wasn't even proof against four adventurers. Travelling with you is clearly the safer option.
Two dragons in the party? Excellent! Ithilgore is a valued party member, Flamdring, I'm sure we'll get along excellently.