Part 19: Intro to the Savage Frontier: Part 2

One adventure ends, and another begins. In this case it's time for:



The second part of the Savage Frontier series, whose title screen features a woman with a costume out of an 80's action flick and hair to match. We're going to be taking our party back out to play Treasures of the Savage Frontier, a sequel to Gateway to the Savage Frontier that was released in 1992.



As one of the last games in the Gold Box collection, Treasures of the Savage Frontier incorporates a lot of improvements that we last saw in Dark Queen of Krynn. It's a much prettier game, and the style's going to look very familiar to those of you who followed that LP. Just like in that case, however, you're a bit better off importing your old characters. So, with no further ado:




"Hey guys, remember how awesome we were a few weeks ago?"

"It's kind of hard to forget… although I'm not sure awesome is the word for it."




"Oh Gods no! This must be our punishment for nearly apocalypsing the world!"

"Huh, you'd think that they'd have been a bit quicker about delivering it."



"Nope, turns out it's just Amanitas."

"I think I might have preferred divine punishment."

"Once, while fighting owlbears I summoned 2 white rabbits, 3 vials of 'Sensuous Silverymoon' perfume, and a stuffed fish on a plague inscribed 'To Old Boggy from the boys.'"

"Umm… well, I don't want to alarm you, but it looks like you did forget my new armor… and our ioun stones…"

"And my new sword! Dammit Amanitas, what is all this about?"



To summarize two pages of text that I'm definitely not posting a screenshot of: All of the battered Zhentarim soldiers had to go somewhere and some of them ended up back in Llorkh where the downtrodden dwarves had decided that it was time take back their city. Unfortunately for them, a Zhentarim douchebag by the name of Geildarr didn't send his forces to the party at Ascore and is holding on to the city. Amanitas also thinks there's other shenanigans afoot but he'll tell us about that after we finish kicking ass here.




"Wait… that's it? Where are the Zhentarim at? How many of them are there? What kind of monsters are we talking about here?"

"Well, it looks like this is another fine mess Amanitas has gotten us into.

And with that, we're ready to begin. But before we go much further we must discuss...

Romance!

Treasures of the Savage Frontier actually has a romance subplot that is somewhat under control of the player. When your party goes into the actual assault on Geildarr's keep the lead character will be wooed by one of two people depending on their gender. This person will be impressed if the character is brave in battle, doesn't show cruelty to helpless people, and generally pursues Good aligned choices. There are gameplay benefits for the character who is selected, and there may be plot events added into the narrative. What I need your help for is to decide who we should go with. Our options are:



Siulajia, who might very well be the woman from the intro screen, is the daughter of a wilderness guide from the High Forest who was kidnapped by ruffians and brought back as a gift for Geildarr.



She's a very accomplished fighter, with some great all around stats and some serious muscle that isn't immediately obvious.



Jarbarkas is a villager from the Sword Coast, who came here as a resistance fighter after his village was destroyed by people from Luskan. His resistance group was defeated almost immediately, and he was taken prisoner by Geildarr for interrogation.



Overall his stats are a bit worse than Siulajia's, but he's still a prime character for tabletop D&D. He also kind of looks like a neanderthal.

So, who shall we romance and who should the romancee be?