The Once and Future Champion (Baldur's Gate 3/Dragon Age) (Complete)

[TyricGaias]

*injects pure story crack in my veins.
If this is offensive to some people I sincerely apologize but this is most effective analogy I could think of.

 

[themisticShroud]

Gale you mad bastard I can't help but respect your sheer dedication and love to prove yourself to your chosen Goddess takes more then guts to go that far! Also love the clear dialogue and proper cooperation Hawke is getting with Voss that was really cool.

 

[Quinn Porthos]

Too bad they didn't get the Gith egg. Hawke and Lae'zel could've co-parented a psychic baby frog-spawn.

Also, they blew up all the booze.

 

[BigBad]

Neatly done. I was wondering how they'd navigate the creche given that the fic thus far has tried to avoid the party roflstomping absurd numbers of enemies at once.

I am a bit confused by the references to Andraste as a goddess. She is revered but not worshipped by the Chantry, sort of like the Virgin Mary in the Catholic Church. Andraste was a normal mortal woman born among the Alamarri in what would later be known as Ferelden. The Maker was drawn to her pure heart and song and loved her. When she was betrayed by her mortal husband Maferath and executed by the Tevinter Archon Hessarian, her soul was gathered to the Maker's side but not granted any sort of divinity. At least, according to the teachings of the Chantry.

 

[DIT_grue]

"And I cannot help you travel faster, lest Vlaakith' gaze possibly find you again." Voss said. "Very well, are we agreed?"

Click to shrink...

Vlaakith's

 

[Kalesin]

She wishes to be one

Click to shrink...

I see what you did here.

Thanks for the update.

 

[cliffc999]

I am a bit confused by the references to Andraste as a goddess. She is revered but not worshipped by the Chantry, sort of like the Virgin Mary in the Catholic Church.

Click to shrink...

She's not the Virgin Mary, she's Jesus.

 

[BigBad]

As far as her prominence and iconography go, aye. But theologically, no. She's still not divine and not worshipped. The Chantry worships the Maker alone. They revere Andraste and hold her as the example of what they must strive to be like because she was a mere mortal who earned the Maker's love.

But honestly, it's just a quibble and almost certainly not important to this story. I'll let it lie rather than further derail. My bad.

 

[Yacov]

Sammaster was able to wound Lathander's avatar and draw several drops of his blood. Lathander's faithful treasured those drops forever after as a most sacred artifact of their faith, preserving them in a piece of amber." He nodded up towards the glowing mace on the top of the dias. "That piece, right there."

Click to shrink...

This church has the calcified blood shed from their god. Still not the craziest thing to have in the reliquary. The Shrine of Milk Grotto for example.

We spent the next quarter of an hour learning that whatever enchanter had helped create the defenses around the artifact may have been a superb arcane engineer, but they did not know much about trap design. Some of the magical force fields blocking the corridor had the arcane crystals serving as their power sources located on our side of the barrier. The rest could be bypassed by simply climbing up and around through large cracks that unaccountably existed in the stone walls surrounding the passage leading to the artifact chamber. I was beginning to lose some respect for the priests of Lathander - their devotion, their vast resources, and the skills of their enchanters couldn't be questioned, but their ability to think in proper defensive terms was so lacking that half the cutpurses in Kirkwall could have easily made it through the gaps in the coverage down here.

Click to shrink...

Even warrior Hawke has picked up some Roguish tendencies from his time in Kirkwall.

-and a golden energy barrier, similar to the ones we'd bypassed to get here, leapt into existence all around the base of the dais - cutting me off from the rest of the party. While it didn't go all the way to the ceiling it was at least a dozen feet high - no way I could jump over it, or climb a force-field-

"Somebody get him out of there!" Shadowheart yelled frantically.

"Go!" I yelled at them, seeing the now-active portal behind them. They had a clear escape route and the Astral Prism - I'd done the best I could. "Go now!"

A keening whine was building up all around us, fit to shake loose the teeth from our jaws. The ground rumbled, and the four battery-pillars were glowing white-hot and pulsing unevenly, unstably. And none of those idiots were moving-

Click to shrink...

Hawke attempts self-sacrifice. It's not very effective.

A hastily-cast Feather Fall allowed us to leave the roof by the simple expedient of jumping directly over the side, and we went three stories down to a magically-cushioned landing directly outside the main gate. With frantic relief we felt our connection to the travelstone network reform now that we were finally far enough away from planar wards or over-charging magical energy weapon emplacements-

-and we all materialized next to the nearest travelstone, the one we'd found on the pathway a couple hundred yards away from Rosymorn Monastery, just in time to look back and see the entire building explode in a giant magical fireball.

When the spots cleared from our eyes we saw that the only thing left standing were scattered section of the four exterior walls. The roof was gone, the magical cannon on the roof was definitely gone, the interior was gone, and smoke was roiling up from a giant sinkhole in the ground that, when we drew near enough to look down into it, still had dully-glowing magma at the bottom. Rosymorn Monastery barely had enough rubble left up on top to show where a giant building had once stood, and all the sublevels - including the entire githyanki creche and everyone inside of it - were utterly obliterated.

Click to shrink...

Hawke really is the most self centered of the three DA protagonists. Not selfish, just self centered on protecting me and mine. Therefore is more willing to nuke another faction for primarily self preservation.

The Warden has to assemble an army to stop the Blight and the Inquisitor has to deal with the Veil opening, disgorging all the horrors from the Fade. Hawke is mainly focused on protecting his family, friends, and city from all the hot nonsense Thedas continually throws at it

 

[cliffc999]

Even warrior Hawke has picked up some Roguish tendencies from his time in Kirkwall.

Click to shrink...

The DA2 Legacy DLC alone would give anybody a lifetime's education in trap design. How many trap dungeons has Hawke had to crawl through by now? *g*

Hawke attempts self-sacrifice. It's not very effective.

Click to shrink...

Did anyone notice how Hawke's plan just happened to put Shadowheart first in line to get to safety, while giving her a valid enough reason she'd hopefully actually accept that?

Hawke really is the most self centered of the three DA protagonists. Not selfish, just self centered on protecting me and mine. Therefore is more willing to nuke another faction for primarily self preservation.

Click to shrink...

To be fair, he didn't even start looking for a way to drop the hammer until after literally everybody in that base was trying to kill him.

 

[cliffc999]

"If we keep meeting this way, people are going to talk." Shadowheart said to me humorously.

After the departure of Kith'rak Voss we'd headed back to the Emerald Grove and brought the druids up to date on everything that had happened recently. Halsin had been disappointed to find out that the githyanki had never truly had a cure, angry to find out the depths of Vlaakith's betrayal, and downright alarmed to find out about the 'Guardian'. Him, Shadowheart, and Gale had then spent several hours doing their best to make sure that Voss's spells on the Astral Prism really were successful in keeping our tentacled stalker penned up in there and unable to spy on us. And while they couldn't be absolutely certain Voss had succeeded, strange githyanki magics and suchlike not exactly being their specialty, they were confident that whatever shielding spell he'd cast on the Astral Prism had somehow embedded itself with the Prism's own defensive enchantments, and would thus be able to persist for a lengthy period of time as opposed to fading away in several hours like the average shielding spell would.

We had of course taken the opportunity to replenish our supplies, get fully healed of any lingering injuries, and take a brief rest, but the plan was to head back out in the afternoon. Halsin had tied up his remaining affairs in the Grove and gotten everything ready to hand over to his replacement, and had also had an opportunity to use his own extensive magic and Nettie's assistance to further his recovery from the lingering injuries the goblins had inflicted upon him. He still wasn't a hundred percent yet, but he felt confident that he'd be able to keep up with us at least reasonably well on the journey and hopefully be back to full strength by the time we arrived at Moonrise Towers.

And so as the others were busy taking care of the final details and finishing their packing, Shadowheart and I both found ourselves back out on what we had come to think of as "our" private beach.

"We need to talk." I replied to her, the tone of my voice wiping the smile away from her face and replacing it with concern.

"Is something wrong?" she asked me worriedly.

"Yes." I answered frankly. "There's no immediate danger or pending disaster, but..." I sighed. "Remember when you said that because my initiation into paladinhood was largely instinctive, that I should trust my instincts if they told me that I was about to betray myself?"

"I do." Shadowheart nodded briskly. "So... something you don't want to do, that you feel your Oath compels you to do anyway... and that involves me." she reasoned. "Damn. I had hoped we could postpone this conversation. Indefinitely."

"We were both standing right here when I promised that I wouldn't do anything for you that I wouldn't do with you." I said. "So I can't sneak up on you with this, even if I could think of several ways-" I stopped dithering. "I've been starting to suspect that your memory wipe was not as voluntary as you were led to believe. I'm afraid that the church of Shar is forcing things upon you that you might not have willingly chosen."

Shadowheart drew back from me slightly, her expression puzzled. "That... wasn't quite what I was expecting."

"What, were you afraid I was going to condemn you as a servant of darkness or suchlike? Shadowheart, if you're an evil person at heart then I'm queen of the githyanki." I scoffed. "Every time I see you - the real you, unforced, reacting naturally in the moment - I see someone... amazing." I finished awkwardly. "Empathetic, compassionate... remember when you told me how surprised you were at how good saving the refugees felt? Or how your first instinct when Lae'zel's world fell apart around her was to help her back to her feet and tell her you understood her pain?" I looked Shadowheart directly in the eyes. "And then every time you reaffirm your catechism, every time you act in the role of a priestess of Shar, every time you try to meet your Mother Superior's expectations, you're someone very different."

"Which proves nothing." Shadowheart shot back. "Many - even most - devotees of a religious faith are not people to whom proper devotion comes instinctively, but who require ongoing self-discipline and re-affirmation. Philosophers still debate whether it's better to be innately virtuous or to overcome an unvirtuous nature through effort."

"And that's all I would have thought was happening," I agreed. "If you hadn't told me that your memories had been altered." I held up my hands in a wordless request for peace. "I'm accusing people you have known as your own family of taking advantage of you in an unconscionable way, and there's really no way for me to do that without upsetting you. I just hope-"

"Stop." she said, holding up her hands. "I- I know why you're seeing what you're seeing." She turned away, downcast. "I do feel like I'm torn in two sometimes. But not because of anything they've done to my memories, but because I already know that I'm doing what I shouldn't." She turned back to me, looking plaintively up into my eyes. "My goddess brings the comfort of emptiness to soothe the pain of loss. The strength to openly withstand cruelty rather than the weakness of false hope. I'm not supposed to get attached to anyone!" she exclaimed plaintively. She reached out and grabbed me by the shoulders, and succeeded only in shaking herself rather than me. "But I can't stop."

"Shar doesn't allow her faithful to have relationships with those outside the church?" I half-questioned.

"She doesn't allow them inside the church. Not the kind of relationship we're falling into, at least." Shadowheart said. "Lust? A matter of no concern. Seduction? Often useful. Corruption? Laudable." She looked up into my eyes. "If I were allowing this- this bond between us because it was helping lead you down into the darkness with me, then Lady Shar would cheer me on. But I'm not doing that. I couldn't even if I tried, not with as strong and as honorable as you are." Her eyes turned frightened. "I don't even want to." she admitted.

I drew her gently into a comforting hug. "If I said that I was sorry for what's happening between us-"

"-then I'd kick you somewhere very unpleasant." she muttered against my chest. "I'm a grown woman and I make my own choices. If I didn't want this, I wouldn't be tolerating it." She looked back up into my eyes. "But I do want this, even though I know it can end only in loss and sorrow for me- for both of us." She sighed despondently. "I suppose Lady Shar is at least pleased by that."

"You also told Lae'zel that one thing you had in common was that you both feared your goddess as much as you worshipped her." I remembered. "What happens to someone who tries to turn away - to worship elsewhere?"

Shadowheart looked at me knowingly, her face pale and taut. "Something that makes githyanki childrearing practices look like a petting zoo."

"And nothing I could possibly protect you from, even if I gave it every effort I possibly could." I asked.

"I'm entirely confident you would. But no, you couldn't. That would take a miracle... and I'm a servant of the Nightsinger. All gods have already forsaken me but one." Shadowheart said softly.

"Well, I want to try anyway." I admitted.

"And I want you to see-" Shadowheart hesitated. "I want to share something with you. The earliest memory that I have. The reason why I owe everything to Mother Superior, and Shar's church. Use the tadpole - the connection." she urged me. "Come into my mind."

I concentrated on reaching out, and met her own intent coming towards me halfway. The world began to shiver around us, and our minds filled with a vision-

"I don't remember how it started." Shadowheart said. "Only how it ended. I was fleeing-"

I saw through the eyes of a young girl, kneeling in the dirt in a forest. A reflection of her in a nearby puddle showed me a young girl, perhaps eight or ten, with her hair done up in double buns. The face was that of a much younger Shadowheart. I concentrated hard on trying to note every detail I could - the scratch on one cheek, her small pale hands clenched tightly in fear, the bright moonlight shining down from above-

The point of view suddenly shifted as a fearsome growling filled the air. The biggest wolf I'd ever seen, it's fur silver-white in the moonlight, stood about fifteen feet away from Shadowheart with its great fangs bared. It's gaze fixed on Shadowheart with a terrible intensity, a glaring hatred-

-no, not on her, but behind her. I saw through her eyes as her head frantically turned around. Several women in dark hoods and cloaks, their faces covered by elaborate masks, had come up silently behind Shadowheart. Three of them were holding spears - they stepped past the kneeling Shadowheart to confront the wolf, surrounding it with spear-points levelled. The fourth woman came around and stood in front of Shadowheart, blocking her view of the others as they dealt with the wolf. A yelp of pain echoed in her ears as the woman reached down and grasped Shadowheart's hand, pulling her up on her feet. She then reached up with both of her hands to start pulling back her hood and removing her mask- and the memory-vision ended.

"That was Mother Superior." Shadowheart continued narrating. "She asked me my name, but I can't remember what I answered. I can't remember anything before those woods. All I know is that she saved my life, and gave me a new home. With Lady Shar." She looked at me, begging me to understand. "I owe her everything. I can't just-"

"Shadowheart." I held up a hand, asking for silence. "You said that's the first thing you can remember, yes?"

"Absolutely." she agreed.

"Then where did you learn to pick locks?" I asked her.

"Well I practiced in the temple-" she began.

"No." I gently interrupted. "You told Mol that you'd grown up rough, on the streets of Baldur's Gate. But if you don't remember anything before the temple, how do you know that?"

"That's- that's what they told me." Shadowheart said, puzzled. "That as far back as they could trace me I'd been an orphan on the streets, who'd wandered into the woods nearby Baldur's Gate trying to gather food and had gotten lost and almost killed by that damned wolf."

I breathed deeply and invited her to sit down with me on a nearby rock, trying to make this as unconfrontational as possible. "I know you shared that with me - one of the most deeply personal memories you still have - to try and convince me of how deeply your sense of duty runs and why. But I'm afraid all I've done is get even more suspicions." I held up my hand again, begging for forbearance as I saw heated words begin to leap to my lips. "Come into my mind, please. Let me show you."

We fell into the vision again, and I replayed the memory that I had just seen - showing Shadowheart how it had looked through my eyes when I was watching it. I paused the memory at a particular moment. "There. Look at your reflection. What do you see?"

"Myself, of course, as a young girl." Shadowheart said. "What am I supposed to see?"

"Look at your hair." I pointed. "How long do you think it would take to do up those buns everyday?"

"At least-" she stopped, her eyes widening.

"Yes. It's not exactly the most elaborate hairstyle in the world, but it's still something that requires maintenance. I had a younger sister, remember, I'm entirely aware of how long it takes a young lady to do up her hair formally. And we saw a bunch of orphaned urchins just the other day, remember? Mol and her crew? Did any of them remotely have the time or the knowledge to maintain a hairstyle like that?"

"But-" she started to protest, and I ruthlessly drove right over her.

I shifted the memory again and replayed another segment. "Now look at your younger self's hands. They've got some dirt on them - you've been running lost through the woods, after all - but they don't have that sort of thick, built-up grime that gets deeply ingrained. And you've barely got any callouses, and your fingernails are even and neatly trimmed." I shook my head. "I grew up in a farming village and then lived in the worst slum in Kirkwall for almost a year before Bartrand's expedition gave our family enough wealth to buy our way out. I know what someone's hands look like when they're doing manual labor or living on the streets." I shifted the mental point of view again. "Those clothes you're wearing are dirty from having been out in the woods, but they're still very nice clothes. No old stains, no patches or tears, very little signs of wear... and they fit you. You didn't scavenge that outfit or steal it somewhere, it was something you owned."

The memory-vision faded around us and we were back sitting on the beach. "You weren't necessarily a noblewoman but wherever your younger self was from, it was not the streets. Your clothes, your hair, your hygiene - you had someone who took care of you. Who could afford to dress you decently and give you regular baths, who didn't need you to do heavy labor as a child just to help feed the household. You were no orphan. You weren't even a peasant." I finished adamantly.

"How do you- you're reading things into the details that aren't there!" Shadowheart said desperately.

"One of my best friends was the captain of the city guards, another was a pirate and thief, and a third one ran a smuggling cartel... and also wrote detective novels that he forced me to help edit." I said. "Add in that there were years where I swore that every gold piece I owned had three people trying to cheat me out of it-" My voice turned mournful. "And how my mother died at least partly because I didn't solve a murder mystery in time. So after that, I spent time learning how to notice and interpret clues, from people on both sides of the law. Believe you me, I learned."

"That- even if you're right, that still doesn't mean they lied to me. They were speculating - guessing. And we all guessed wrong." Shadowheart denied. She shook her head. "Stop confusing me, please!"

"All right." I backed off. "No more confusing, not today, I promise. And I did have a more immediate matter I needed to bring up anyway... it was just that I couldn't do that without either breaking my promise or telling you what I just did." I reached down to my belt where the Blood of Lathander hung, and drew the mace gently forth from the retaining loop and held it out to her. "I want you to take this."

Shadowheart looked down at it, and back up to me. "Well at least you're not asking me to hold Selune's spear." she said with a brief attempt at recovering her sense of humor. "But for all that the Morninglord and the Dark Lady have opposing domains, I doubt very much that this would do anything to protect me."

"Would using it do anything to harm you?" I asked.

"No." she shook her head, visibly glad to have a practical problem to analyze as opposed to the knotty personal doubts we'd just been wrestling with. "It's historical record that the Church of Shar made one almost-successful attempt to take it before, and it didn't lash out at any of our priests who were carrying it until after they made the mistake of trying to destroy it and not just hold it. But for all that the Blood is a divine miracle, I very much doubt that it would act as the one you're hoping for."

"There was actually a much more practical concern than that." I admitted. "Specifically, that I've never used a mace before. This thing would do me as much good as a kitchen ladle if I tried to fight with it. You, on the other hand, are practically an artist with one of these."

"Oh." Shadowheart briefly facepalmed, both amused and chagrined. "That's... also true. But you couldn't try to hand me the sacred weapon of a deity opposed to mine while simultaneously pretending that you weren't secretly wishing I worshipped my deity less, because that would be a degree of manipulation you'd promised not to use."

"There's nothing secret about that wish now." I admitted. "And I've seen enough to start believing that Shar doesn't deserve your service anymore than Vlaakith does Lae'zel's - if not for identical reasons."

"I should by all rights be outraged by a statement that blasphemous." Shadowheart muttered. "But it's a measure of how horrible a distraction you are that I'm not. Dark Lady help me, part of me even wants to take it as a compliment."

"You should, because it was certainly intended as one." I eased off. "Sorry, I promised not to push further right now. But... I had to let you know."

"You did." she agreed, taking a calming breath. "And no matter how far off base I hope you are... thank you. For caring about me." She tentatively reached up and grasped the handle of the outstretched Blood of Lathander, then tightened her grip when nothing immediately happened to her upon touching it.

"Look at that." I said encouragingly.

"All right, then." she agreed, lifting the sacred mace out of my hands and holding it upright to catch the afternoon sun. "Let's see what happens."

---

My heart was in my throat as I climbed down the ladder. It had been almost ten years since my first and only expedition into the Deep Roads - or the 'Underdark' as they called it here - but the memories were still as sharp as a wire garrotte. Bartrand's betrayal, the discovery of the red lyrium statue that ultimately destroyed Kirkwall... Bethany...

I'd never liked being underground after that.

The goblin lair had been built in a ruined temple of Selune, and as it turned out Priestess Gut had claimed the old high priest's quarters. Adjacent to them was a great hall that had an elaborate design of interlocking circles on the floor - a design that would open a nearby secret panel if the circles were turned to the right pattern. Halsin and Shadowheart were able to deduce that the key was making sure that the dark moon representing Shar were on the bottom of the design, and the silver moons representing Selune were on the top, and behind the passage was a mine shaft leading deep into the bowels of Toril.

But instead of the claustrophobic underground passages or excavated dwarf-halls I'd expected to see at the bottom, my eyes were instead greeted by a vista of beauty that I'd never expected. The cavern was enormous, a giant hollow space over a hundred feet high and stretching out horizontaly for miles. The bottom of the shaft was also a chapel of Selune - one that had been built without a roof, as there was no need for one - and a gate-and-portcullis led from the front of the chapel out across a bridge and onto the cavern floor. And although the brilliance of the Blood of Lathander was like a tiny piece of the sun brought to lands that had never seen it before, we didn't actually need it. Phosphorescent mosses, fluroescent orange mushrooms, glowing violet crystals embedded in great stalagmites and stalactites-

"Incredible." Halsin said, breathing deeply. "I can feel the rhythms of nature here - it's not a familiar pattern, but it's still life. This is a fully functional ecosystem, a little world of its own."

"I know, right?" Karlach said cheerfully. "I've been on several planes and never seen anything remotely like this. To think it was just under our feet all the while!"

"But not everyone thrived here." Gale said sadly, looking around at the Selunite outpost. There were several skeletons laying scattered around the inside of the gates, ones still dressed in rags that had been Selunite priestly robes long ago. And there was a brilliant magical energy barrier across the gate, one that promised destruction to anyone who drew too near the outside of it. The corpse of a giant bull-headed biped - a 'minotaur', as Halsin named it - lay just outside the portcullis as testament to how powerful that barrier had been.

"Sealed off by the priests of Selune, when they were overwhelmed." Halsin noted. "They didn't want whatever calamity had overtaken them to come back up through the entryway and attack the surface."

"The barrier is being sustained by that great gem there." Shadowheart said, pointing up. "The one resting in the palms of that large statue of- the moon goddess." she quickly substituted.

"But why are most of the skeletons on the outside of the gate?" Wyll asked, pointing at the far more numerous casualties in the clearing just outside the gate. "If they were able to seal off the entryway, why not just all retreat back up to the temple on the surface?"

"Here." Gale said, spotting a leather-bound journal resting nearby on a railing. "One of the priests was keeping note of events-"

The tale of the Selunite garrison here was a sad one. The Underdark entrance had not been built by the priests of Selune but had been a part of the surface structure, an ancient site that they'd rebuilt and repurposed as their chapel. When High Initiate Jarrus had discovered the passage he'd attempted to simultaneously extend the reach of their church into the Underdark as well as the community they were founding or expanding above us. Despite entreaties by his superiors to pull back and abandon the effort he'd persisted, and they had become overextended. His initial successes had been crushed by a strong response from a community of enemies they'd discovered a moderate distance away from here - dark elves, apparently. The last entry in his journal was sobering in the extreme.

It always felt vainglorious, to think my deeds worthy of a personal journal. But as I watch the drow mass outside our gate, I realise my arrogance is already of a far costlier sort. I see no harm in tipping the scales a little further.

Not for me, but for those who followed me down into the dark. They deserve to be remembered.

- Initiate Norn Remys, lost in the deep tunnels as we fell back from the drow.

- Initiate Thulk of the Northern Wastes, grazed by an arrow and succumbed to poison.

- Initiate Bree Brekka, who stood against a drider with only her mason's hammer.

And Initiates they are, the entire company - for they have seen and suffered too much to be called novices.

We've collapsed the tunnel behind, and have made ready to open the gate. Perhaps we can carve a path through.

And if not, I enclose a list of names - let the annals show that whatever their end, the cause was the same: one High Initiate Jarrus wished to stamp his name in the history of his Church. He sought to forge a path through the darkness, not realising there are some places the light was never meant to touch.

He was a fool.

Shadowheart looked away from us back out the gate at the skeletons we could see littering the ground outside, her face grave. "They didn't even make it a quarter mile outside the gate. Their last few survivors must have fallen back to here and erected the barrier to defend the passage back to the temple on the surface... and then died here because they couldn't get out." Her expression firmed. "Noble fools indeed, as their own High Initiate said."

"The tunnel wasn't collapsed when we came through it." Wyll noted. "Minthara probably had it excavated when the forces of the Absolute took over the ruins above. A direct route to the Underdark would have been convenient for her."

"Selune bless and keep their souls." I closed the journal and handed it to Halsin.

"I'll make sure this is sent on to a temple of the Moonmaiden, when I can." he acknowledged. "They deserve to know how their fellow devotees died."

"Hang on, what's this?" Gale broke in. "'A Search for the Nightsong'." He held up the slim book he'd found in what had remained of the outpost's tiny library, which had of course been the first place he'd searched. "Convenient!" The volume was short, and revealed largely that the artifact known as 'the Nightsong' was not merely the recent interest of the patron in Baldur's Gate who'd hired Aradin's mercenaries but had been the dream of treasure hunters on this part of the Sword Coast for at least the past two generations. The common rumor had apparently been that it had been buried in a lost temple of Selune on the north bank of the Chionthar - the same temple the goblins had set up their camp in and that we'd recently cleared - but the writer of this adventurer's journal had apparently turned up an eyewitness who'd claimed that that actual location of the Nightsong was in the remains of an old underground temple of Shar adjacent to Moonrise Towers.

"That confirms the suspicion I've held for a long time." Halsin said thoughtfully. "Not about the Nightsong, mind - I have no interest in that. But I'd long since come to guess that there had been a hidden temple complex of Shar in the vicinity of Moonrise, an Underdark fortress with a nearby surface exit. It would explain how Ketheric Thorm had been able to raise his force of Dark Justicars in such secrecy and unleash them upon Moonrise so suddenly without anyone seeing them approach, or how they were all able to vanish so mysteriously immediately before the Shadow Curse descended." He smiled. "And that means my surmise was correct - the Underdark will give us a direct route to Moonrise without having to actually traverse the Shadow-Cursed Lands."

"And here we went to all that effort anyway." Shadowheart joked, with a playful swing of her new mace. "So, an ancient hidden fortress once held by Shar's Dark Justicars. Fascinating."

"It would be, wouldn't it?" he said to her meaningfully, his face held in a neutral mask.

I looked back at him and shrugged back with a knowing nod. Yeah, I know. We'll talk about this later.

"All right." Halsin nodded, acknowledging the group consensus even if I was certain he'd keep a wary eye on Shadowheart privately. So long as that was all he did, that would be fine. "Does anyone have any ideas on how to lower that barrier so we can get out of here?"

"Probably just a matter of 'remove the gem from the statue'." Gale said. "A Mage Hand cantrip will manage that easily enough."

"Before we lower the defenses, we should search the rest of the outpost first." I said. "Hopefully the Selunite expedition here mapped at least some of the local area, because otherwise we're going to have to explore blindly to even figure out which way Moonrise is. My compass doesn't work down here." Compasses, or 'trailfinders' as Faerunians called them, had been well-known on Thedas for centuries. The Faerun models were cruder but still worked. In the Underdark, however, all the needle did was spin helplessly - according to Gale, the local magical radiation of the Underdark, called the faerzress, was interfering.

A search of the outpost produced the revelation that there was a travelstone down here - a sight we greeted with relief, because with travelstones at both top and bottom we would never have to use that damned endless ladder again - and several minor magic items, including a magic breastplate that glowed softly with luminance. The group agreed that I should have it, and I agreed because the only other person it would fit was Wyll, whose combat style didn't like anything heavier than leather. Unfortunately, we didn't find any maps.

"Nothing for it to but to explore, then." I agreed. "If nothing else, we can just warp back here any time we get lost." A Mage Hand cantrip was all it took to lift the sacred gem out of the statue's clasped hands, and the magic barrier faded away.

We came to the end of the bridge leading out the main gate and to an intersection of paths. Since we had no idea of which way to go, we decided to take the right one.

"Torchstalk." Halsin said, pointing at a mushroom that glowed orange. "It also grows underground, near the surface - we have a problem keeping it out of the deeper caves in the Grove. Movement too close nearby can detonate it in a small fiery explosion. Be very careful of several torchstalks growing together."

"How does a plant that self-destructive not rapidly go extinct?" I asked him.

"The explosion is what scatters the spores farther, enabling it to spread and thrive. It doesn't become able to detonate until it's already at the end of a growth cycle." Halsin said. "Between that and how its habit of combusting helps discourage anything else from eating it, it's actually a survival mechanism. The welfare of any individual torchstalk is irrelevant, the species as a whole will survive and prosper. One of the earliest lessons we have to teach young druids is to not anthropomorphize nature - what is better for men is often worse for plants, or animals, and vice versa. Everything is a balancing act."

"There's a clump of torchstalk blocking that passage." Wyll said. "Any advice for getting past it?"

"Trigger the detonation from a safe distance, with a cantrip or an arrow." he replied matter-of-factly. "We just discussed how detonating it doesn't actually hurt the species."

A single eldritch bolt from Wyll's warlock powers took care of that and we moved on.

"What are those?" Shadowheart asked, pointing at a cluster of much differently-colored mushrooms growing profusely in a small round clearing below the path we were traveling on - great round dark ones with phosphorescent blue streaks.

"Timmask, I believe." Halsin said. "I've never seen them before, but read about them. They release spores that cause animal life to be disoriented and intoxicated, while also slowly poisoning them to death while they're unable to notice. If you have to get past a cluster of timmask then use fire - the spores are also flammable."

"There's torchstalk mixed in all with the timmask down there." I said. "Deadly trap - the timmask confuses you and as you're stumbling around you set off the torchstalk, which ignites the timmask spores. And then you're drugged, poisoned, and on fire. Wyll?" Another eldritch bolt hurtled down into one of the torchstalks and we waited a couple of minutes for the chain reaction of explosions and fire that set off to dissipate.

-more are coming- a deep voice whispered in our minds.

"Close up." I ordered, and we all looked warily around. "Anybody know what that was?"

"A telepathic communication of some kind." Gale deduced. "But not psionics, either githyanki or illithid. Not via our tadpoles, either."

Halsin nodded. "Certainly not via your tadpoles - I heard it too." He raised his voice and called out. "Hail, friend! We come in peace!"

-They are coming. You are coming.- the voice rumbled in our minds, and then silence.

"Creepy." Karlach shook her head.

"More than a bit!" I agreed, and then broke off as the earth shook heavily beneath our feet. The ground didn't just tremble but outright heaved, as if an earthquake had started, and we all staggered and almost fell.

"Half-circle formation. Put our backs to that wall!" I ordered, and we shifted position and readied ourselves for attack. One minute passed, then several-

"Nothing." Shadowheart said.

"Resume the march." I decided. "But stay alert. I doubt that earthquake was coincidental."

"I don't think that was an earthquake." Halsin said. "But I'm not sure what it was."

We progressed further along the path, turning right again at the next intersection. 'Follow the right-hand wall' was the usual advise for traversing strange mazes, after all. A couple more clumps of torchstalk tried to block our progress, but we readily enough dealt with them.

"A rope ladder?" Wyll pointed at a long rectangular section of netting dangling down from a ledge perhaps sixty feet above us. "Someone's here?"

"Drow outpost? Smuggler's cave?" Halsin wondered.

"Not the way to Moonrise." I decided. "Ignore it and move on."

The path dead-ended here, so we headed back to the last intersection and took another route. That one led us back down into the clearing we'd seen from above earlier, the one with the torchstalk and timmask concentrations we'd remotely detonated.

"Here it comes again!" Shadowheart cried as the earth began heaving beneath our feet, worse than before. I shifted into the Bulwark stance just in time to magically root myself and became impossible to knock over, as the tremors worsened to the point virtually nobody else was on their feet-

-and then the ground tore open beneath us and with a terrible roar that echoed off the distant cavern walls, a monstrosity breached the surface like a maddened whale. It was an enormous beast, with an armored carapace like a turtle's perched on top of four thick, stubby legs. Fully twice the height of a man and longer than an oxcart from snout to tail, the head was no turtle's but a thick heavy snout, containing a giant maw full of more teeth than a shark's. With an agility belying its tremendous size it spun end-for-end in an eyeblink and charged the one member of the group still on their feet - me.

"Smite!" I cried, focusing a tithe of my internal power into a single devastating strike while remaining rooted in the Bulwark stance. The monster crashed into me and halted dead, my stance keeping me rooted to the ground as I became temporarily invulnerable to physical force for just the briefest instant of contact. My greatsword blow, augmented by the arcane power I'd channelled through my smite and again by the sheer force of the monster's own impact into me, actually broke through the diamond-hard carapace and drew deeply of its blood. However, that left me practically face-to-snout with the damnable thing and while it was wounded, it was nowhere close to dead.

"Shit!" I swore, abandoning my stance and frantically leaping back and rolling away. I got clear just in time to avoid a savage lunge by the beast, combined with a snap of its great jaws that would have bitten off an arm. I waved my greatsword at it in threatening slashes, not even trying to close to contact but just distracting its attention- everybody else would need a chance to get up-

A great roar announced Halsin's entrance to the fight as a brown bear, looking uncharacteristically small in comparision to this monster, leapt on its back and took a savage bite at the back of the beast's neck where the carapace didn't cover. Halsin drew blood, then was thrown off its back as the damn thing heaved forward and down, cleaving through the earth like it was water and going back underground.

"Spread out - get on top of something!" I cried frantically to the rest of the group. Shadowheart had made it back to her feet and had leapt to the top of a nearby mushroom. Lae'zel was busy helping Gale to his feet - Karlach had her own greatsword out, blazing with anger as she looked hurriedly around for any indicator where the beast was going -

- and Wyll screamed in agony as the monster erupted from the earth directly underneath him, its great jaws biting off both his legs like a man chewing through a breadstick. What was left of him hit the ground, a few terrible great spurts gushing forth from the severed stumps of his thighs before falling terribly silent. We hadn't been fighting this thing for ten seconds and we were already one down-

"You bastard!" Karlach shrieked, and her infernal engine revved to full power as she caught ablaze. She threw herself straight at the burrowing monster howling like a banshee, the Everburning Blade I'd gifted her with slashing it again and again across the face. I came in as quickly as I could to support her, but I hadn't reached them before the cunning beast simply turned its head, lowered its shoulder, and charged her so hard that she flew ten feet back and bounced off a nearby wall.

Stone spikes erupted from the floor beneath the monster, ripping into its less-armored belly, as Halsin shifted back to human form and unleashed his druidic magic. A whirlwind of daggers, each made out of pure arcane force, sprang into existence in a cloud around the creature as Gale cast his own spell. The monster roared in rage and agony, spinning about in confusion. It couldn't burrow down through the spikes, but the cloud of daggers moved with it as it tried to flee on the surface, Gale's face drawn up in concentration-

"Over here, you bastard!" I snarled and did a great leaping strike at its tail, hoping to cleave the whole damned thing off and kill it via blood loss the same way it had just killed Wyll. I didn't succeed in amputating it, but I did cleave down hard all the way to and partly through the bone. Another invocation of the Bulwark stance let me damage the creature even more as it spun around and tried to ram into me the same way it had Karlach, but my stamina was almost depleted just from warding off both those blows and the smite - I doubted I could do this one again, and for all the blood we'd drawn from this thing it was still clearly in the fight with at least half its vitality left-

-and then everything was washed out in a blaze of light as a giant golden blast of energy smashed into the side of the monster and cored right through its carapace like a crossbow bolt through a block of cheese. All our eyes turned to Shadowheart as she stood there, the Blood of Lathander blazing like a miniature sun in her hands, as the full strength of both her arms was barely able to wrestle the artifact into position and keep the giant blazing sunbeam erupting forth from its macehead like a torrent of water from a downspout in a thunderstorm on position until the damned monster was finally stone cold dead.

Shadowheart looked down confusedly at the holy weapon in her hands, now shining slightly dimmer as if it had temporarily exhausted itself. "By the gods..."

"To hell with the gods, what about Wyll?" Karlach moaned. We all went over to examine him but it was too late for any of Shadowheart's healing spells - he was dead. "Damn it, we'd barely gotten started!" she sobbed. "And now he's down there roasting forever-"

"Withers!" I shouted ferociously. "If you're anywhere near here at all, then we need you!"

"Thou hast called, and I have come." the impossibly dry voice rang out, and sure enough he was standing right over there as if he'd been there all along. "But pay the price, and it shall be done."

"But Mizora-" Karlach said, looking up from where she was cradling Wyll's bloody corpse in her arms. "She's got his soul now. You can't get him back from that!"

"That is my problem to deal with." Withers said glacially. I rummaged through the cash pouch and dug out two hundred gold coins - the price that Withers had said would be his 'standard fee' for performing his 'services'.

Withers accepted the cash with a simple nod, and then materialized his great book again in his hands."By doom and dusk, I strike thy name from the archives! Rise!" he intoned once more, and Wyll's bloodied and dismembered corpse vanished from Karlach's arms to appear right beside us entirely intact. Even his clothes were spotless, as if he'd never exerted himself today.

"What- oh, that's marvelous!" Karlach cried, hugging Wyll enthusiastically - her flames damped down, thank goodness. "But how'd you get your feet back? Last I saw they were going down that thing's gullet!"

"To restore a lost appendage or two is trivially easy compared to restoring a lost life." Withers said patronizingly. "As for Mizora, she may collect her due only after I am done."

"If you can push the pact like that, can you break it?" Wyll immediately asked.

"No." Withers said immediately. "It is not my place to do such things. Once death is final, then the devil may claim her due as her pact allows. I merely take advantage of a certain... ambiguity as to precisely when a mortal's death is final."

"Well... thank you anyway." I said to him. Because for all that he was enigmatic, annoying, and downright creepy, it couldn't be denied that he'd saved the life of one of our friends.

"I but provide my services for proper compensation, as I have agreed to do. There is little need for 'thanks', and even less desire." Withers noted, and in-between one eyeblink and the next he was gone.

---

Author's Note: Halsin insisted on being made a temporary party member after all, seeing as how he's traveling with the group at least as far as the Shadow Curse quest in Act Two and I don't have game engine limits forcing him to sit in camp and do nothing except repeat the same dialogue lines over and over. But a temporary party member is all he'll be, even if it's going to be a nontrivial chunk of time before we get that far into Act Two.

And so the Underdark section begins, and of course the first thing they run into is the bulette - one of the most painful damn boss fights in the entire game. Seeing as how the thing is not only a godawful tank and hits like a truck, but it can spam all the knockdowns constantly. Fortunately Hawke has DA hax powers, and even more fortunately the Blood of Lathander has a 1/day Sunbeam spell that hits like a wave motion gun. I was being nice in only killing one person here - a great many BG3 runs have wiped the entire party on the bulette fight.

Shadowheart's canon romance path continues to drift even further off-script as my characters keep insisting that I write them with their full brains. Then again, this is endemic of my writing style - I get started, then my characters all start talking to me and the next thing I know things are going in directions I never anticipated.

And now you finally find out why I've been writing Hawke as such an adept spotter of clues when that's not what he's most famous for in the canon. Answer: it's precisely because of how often DA2 forced him to not spot the clue (particularly in Act Two) so that tragedy could descend later, his mother's death hardly being the least of those tragedies. It's in reaction to that that he's spent the intervening years forcing himself to train hard at picking up clues. And between Aveline, Isabella, and Varric, that's a lot of things you can potentially learn.

 

[Matrix Dragon]

Shadowheart's canon romance path continues to drift even further off-script as my characters keep insisting that I write them with their full brains. Who the heck knows where this is going to end up, but I am a seat-of-the-pants writer anyway so this is not an unprecedented experience for me.

Click to shrink...

Jonathan and Amy all over again

 

[cliffc999]

To be fair I very much like the canon Tav/Shadowheart romance, it's adorable. It's just, it's videogame writing, and so everything has to be put on hold until you advance the main quest far enough no matter how sensible it would be for people to just talk earlier.

Since I'm not doing that last one, I have to think of something else. Or in my case, improvise something else.

In addition, Hawke made a promise not to try any stealth redemptions before he entirely knew what he was getting into, and now he's bound by it, so that also drives the pace.

As is, Shadowheart's canon backsliding in Act 2 is almost entirely OOC for her now... so I'll have to think of another motivation entirely for at least some of the same plot beats to happen, as a couple of them are load-bearing.

 

[wellis]

I'm really enjoying how thoroughly Hawke is able to poke holes in the various memories and such that have been implanted in Shadowheart. It's interesting seeing the changes to her potentially happening much earlier than in the game.

As for Wyll, geez. Thank god for Withers. Impressive how resurrection even grew Wyll's legs back!

 

[cliffc999]

I'm really enjoying how thoroughly Hawke is able to poke holes in the various memories and such that have been implanted in Shadowheart.

Click to shrink...

Every clue I had Hawke point out is actually visible in Shadowheart's wolf memory cutscene - she's just too neat and clean to be an orphaned waif, likewise her hairdo. Even if she is visibly distressed from having been lost in the woods at night. And that's not an engine limitation, because BG3 entirely has characters able to get dirty and grimey in the graphics.

TBF to the game, she doesn't have the (claimed) street urchin background - she did have that background in Early Access (and in this fic), but not in the production version. So her vision isn't quite as jarring in-game as it is here, even if all the same clues exist visually.

If you're curious as to what Shadowheart's background really is, well, the game's been out for almost a year and a half at this point so spoilers are readily available. I'm just not spoiling them here because the theoretical possibility exists I might actually have a reader who can still be surprised, and I don't I'm not popping my own bubble there.

 

[DIT_grue]

I'm just not spoiling them here because the theoretical possibility exists I might actually have a reader who can still be surprised, and I don't I'm not popping my own bubble there.

Click to shrink...

Not theoretical at all! I'm one.

Spoiler: Suggestions

"And I want you to see-" Shadowheart hesitated. "I want to share something with you. The earliest memory that I have. The reason why I owe everything to Mother Superior, and Shar's church. Use the tadpole - the connection." she urged me. 'Come into my mind."

Click to shrink...

The quotation marks on this last bit don't match.

I saw through the eyes of a young girl, kneeling in the dirt in a forest. A reflection of her in a nearby puddle showed me a young girl, perhaps eight or ten, with her hair done up in double buns. The face was that of a much younger Shadowheart. I concentrated hard on trying to note every detail I could - the scratch on one cheek, her small pale hands clenched rightly in fear, the bright moonlight shining down from above-

Click to shrink...

tightly

"All right." I backed off. "No more confusing, not today, I promise. And I did have a more immediate matter I needed to bring up anyway... it was just that I couldn't bring up without either breaking my promise or telling you what I just did." I reached down to my belt where the Blood of Lathander hung, and drew the mace gently forth from the retaining loop and held it out to her. "I want you to take this."

Click to shrink...

bring it up (Although, it seems an easy rephrase to avoid any repetition by saying raise it instead?)

But instead of the claustrophobic underground passages or excavated dwarf-halls I'd expected to see at the bottom, my eyes were instead greeted by a vista of beauty that I'd never expected. The cavern was enormous, a giant hollow space over a hundred feet high and stretching out horizontaly for miles. The bottom of the shaft was also a chapel of Selune - one that had been built without a roof, as there was no need for one - and a gate-and-porticullis lead from the front of the chapel out across a bridge and onto the cavern floor. And although the brilliance of the Blood of Lathander was like a tiny piece of the sun brought to lands that had never seen it before, we didn't actually need it. Phosphorescent mosses, fluroescent orange mushrooms, glowing violate crystals embedded in great stalagmites and stalactites-

Click to shrink...

portcullis
led
violet

"But not everyone thrived here." Gale said sadly, looking around at the Selunite outpost. There were several skeletons laying scattered around the inside of the gates, ones still dressed in rags that had been Selunite priestly robes longs ago. And there was a brlliant magical energy barrier across the gate, one that promised destruction to anyone who drew too near the outside of it. The corpse of a giant bull-headed biped - a 'minotaur', as Halsin named it - lay just outside the porticullus as testament to how powerful that barrier had been.

Click to shrink...

long
brilliant
portcullus

"But why are most of the skeletons on the outside of the gate?" Wyll asked. "If they were able to seal off the entryway, why not just retreat back up to the temple?"

Click to shrink...

inside

-and then the ground tore open beneath us and with a terrible roar that echoed off the distant cavern walls, a monstrosity breached the surface like a maddened whale. It was an enormous beast, with an armored carapace like a turtle's perched on top of four thick, stubby legs. Fully twice the height of a man and longer than an oxcort from snout to tail, the head was no turtle's but a thick heavy snout, containing a giant maw full of more teeth than a shark's. With an agility belying its tremendous size it spun end-for-end in an eyeblink and charged the one member of the group still on their feet - me.

Click to shrink...

oxcart

"Smite!" I cried, focusing a tithe of my internal power into a single devastating strike while remaining rooted in the Bulwark stance. The monster crashed into me and halted dead, my stance keeping me rooted to the ground as I became temporarily invulnerable to physical force for just the briefest instant of contact. My greatsword blow, augmented by the arcane power I'd channelled throug my smite and again by the sheer force of the monster's own impact into me, actually broke through the diamond-hard carapace and drew deeply of its blood. However, that left me practically face-to-snout with the damnable thing and while it was wounded, it was nowhere close to dead.

Click to shrink...

through

- and Wyll screamed in agony as the monster erupted from the earth directly underneath him, its great jaws biting off both his legs like a man chewing through a breadstick. What was left him hit the ground, a few terrible great spurts gashing forth from the severed stumps of his thighs before falling terribly silent. We hadn't been fighting this thing for ten seconds and we were already one down-

Click to shrink...

left of him
gushing

"Well... thank you anyway." I said to him. Because for all that he was enigmatic, annoying, and downright creepy, it couldn't be denied that he'd saved one of our friend's lives.

Click to shrink...

friends'
Also the phrasing here keeps rubbing me wrong - it ought to be a singular life, but that also reads oddly. Maybe reorder the back end of the sentence? saved the life of one of our friends.

 

[Yacov]

"How do you- you're reading things into the details that aren't there!" Shadowheart said desperately.

"One of my best friends was the captain of the city guards, another was a pirate and thief, and a third one ran a smuggling cartel... and also wrote detective novels that he forced me to help edit." I said. "Add in that there were years where I swore that every gold piece I owned had three people trying to cheat me out of it-" My voice turned mournful. "And how my mother died at least partly because I didn't solve a murder mystery in time. So after that, I spent time learning how to notice and interpret clues, from people on both sides of the law. Believe you me, I learned."

Click to shrink...

Darn it, Hawke does really fit the Hard-Boiled Detective style. Just dropped into a dark fantasy world. Now I can only imagine him in a fedora and trench coat patrolling the mean streets of Kirkwall, and punching out some guards on the take.

"No." Withers said immediately. "It is not my place to do such things. Once death is final, then the devil may claim her due as her pact allows. I merely take advantage of a certain... ambiguity as to precisely when a mortal's death is final."

Click to shrink...

Hawke gets his first taste of how immutable fate and death is in Faerun. Most of the people in Hawke's life tended to stay murked once fate catched up with them.

 

[Lazurman]

If I'm not mistaken, that particular bullette is implied to have eaten Lenore, the mage who owned that wizard's tower down there. She got lonely after her dog died, and tried taming it, see.

 

[TheChairIsAgainstTheWall]

longer than an oxcort from snout to tail

Click to shrink...

Oxcart.

Withers is the goat, as always.

 

[BigBad]

The Underdark is such a great section of the game. Just big enough to contain lots of interesting things but not so big that it starts to drag on.

 

[Mizu]

Withers!" I shouted ferociously. "If you're anywhere near here at all, then we need you!"

"Thou hast called, and I have come." the impossibly dry voice rang out, and sure enough he was standing right over there as if he'd been there all along. "But pay the price, and it shall be done."

"But Mizora-" Karlach said, looking up from where she was cradling Wyll's bloody corpse in her arms. "She's got his soul now. You can't get him back from that!"

"That is my problem to deal with." Withers said glacially.

Click to shrink...

Oh right, Wyll would normally go straight to the nine hells if he died. Never occurred to me that's kinda odd from a plot perspective while playing the game, as Withers was a blatant videogame revival mechanic - just in-setting vs pure game mechanics.

Seems handy having Helsin around to point out interesting flora to the group. Otherwise the first time they'd find out what Torchstalk and Timmask do is after they walked into some.

 

[cliffc999]

Well, Withers is literally Jergal, the god of Death, so he certainly has the power to say 'That soul does not reach its final destination unless I choose to take it there'. There's even a valid reason for him to be bothering with the party in-game... they're fighting people he has a serious grudge with but isn't allowed to mess with himself. Larian's writing with him was fairly good.

 

[BigBad]

According to data-mined information,

Spoiler

he's under orders by the god Helm (the arbiter he mentioned) to help clean up his mess.

 

[cliffc999]

Ugh, made a goof. I forgot to have Voss give the party the psionic detector he gives you in the post-creche encounter. Chapter 13 has been minorly edited to patch that.

Man, I need to replay this game a bit more before writing, I'm forgetting shit.

 

[TyricGaias]

Wait, so no Scratch? No owlbear cub? Awww….

 

[LordofBones]

Hawke gets his first taste of how immutable fate and death is in Faerun. Most of the people in Hawke's life tended to stay murked once fate catched up with them.

Click to shrink...

Oh, it actually depends on the god in charge. Myrkul was surprisingly strict about resurrections during his rule, while Kelemvor allows them on the basis of whether the recipient was genuinely needed or not.

Well, Withers is literally Jergal, the god of Death, so he certainly has the power to say 'That soul does not reach its final destination unless I choose to take it there'. There's even a valid reason for him to be bothering with the party in-game... they're fighting people he has a serious grudge with but isn't allowed to mess with himself. Larian's writing with him was fairly good.

Click to shrink...

Larian's writing about Big J is kind of odd. He never had issues with Myrkul in life, or Bane, or Bhaal. His only real beef was with Cyric (and Velsharoon, but that was more of clashing dogmas than any personal dislike of the Lich-Lord). I guess Larian forgot that he approved of the Dead Three precisely because they were assholes.

Then again, WotC's handling of the Three has been awful in general. Myrkul specifically enjoyed being free of godhood and his niche as a malevolent necromancer was already taken by Velsharoon, Bane for some reason traded away greater godhood to drop down to quasipower status and skulk around on the Prime, and only Bhaal makes any amount of sense.

 

[cliffc999]

Larian's writing about Big J is kind of odd. He never had issues with Myrkul in life, or Bane, or Bhaal.

Click to shrink...

[snip arguing the point, because I can't do that and ask people to step out immediately after]

Suffice it to say, I don't agree with your premise... but this is not the place to discuss it because is not the 'bitch about BG3 or Larian' thread, that's over in Videogame Rants.

So stop bringing it here. This is the second time I've had to ask people not to derail. I really don't want to have to start asking for moderation, nobody wins when that happens.

 

[cliffc999]

"Mushroom people?!?" I shouted discordantly.

I knew I was being more than a little ridiculous but I still couldn't stop myself. I thought I'd seen any number of odd things - on more than one world, to boot - but I simply drew the line at mushroom people. Talking mushroom people, even if the 'talking' was done by having them puff spores in your face and then listening to them through some type of fungoid mental link.

The mysterious voice we'd heard earlier had been that of 'Sovereign Spew', the leader of this colony of "myconids". Apparently, telepathic talking mushroom people was just a thing in Faerun and I had clearly been underestimating just how weird Faerun could get. 'Spew' had laid several clouds of his telepathic spores in an outer perimeter around the myconid colony, which is apparently what we'd been heading right towards.

I didn't mind that they were acting very wary of strangers - the corpses I could see laying around confirmed what the Sovereign had already told us, that his people had recently experienced attack by humanoids. The attackers had left behind several of their own dead - strange, gray-skinned dwarves that my fellow party members told me were called "duergar". Apparently they bore roughly the same relation to surface dwarves that drow bore to surface elves. It took a bit of effort to explain our particular plight to Sovereign regarding the Cult of the Absolute, the tadpoles, and our need for a cure or a path to Moonrise Tower, but we finally managed to confirm that there had been no tadpoles in the brains of the killed duergar.

Although Spew entirely wanted to hire our group to go kill the rest of the duergar, who were apparently occupying an abandoned village down on the shore of an underground lake a couple miles away. A wounded 'deep gnome' named Thulla, who'd apparently been poisoned during a fight with duergar, told us something much more useful after Shadowheart cured her poison with one of her Lesser Restoration spells - that an expedition of her people had been captured by duergar and taken as slaves for a major excavation they were doing in an abandoned underground complex on the far side of the lake. She'd made a run for it, with a group of duergar slave-hunters in pursuit, and gotten this far before collapsing - it was the slave-hunters that the myconids had fought, and that Spew wanted us to kill. She also rewarded us for her cure with a pair of magical boots she'd stolen from the duergar before fleeing, that would give a brief burst of supernatural speed to the wearer if you clicked the heels.

Halsin assured us that myconids were nonaggressive unless attacked first, and after the fight we'd just had with that "bulette" monster we entirely needed to heal up and replenish our spells, so we settled in and made camp. After discussing our options we decided that as risky as these 'duergar' sounded the underground ruins she described were our best option, as the myconids only knew of one other exit from the Underdark anywhere remotely near their village besides the one we'd used to get down here. And that one was apparently right above the little outpost we'd bypassed earlier, which according to Spew had humans using it - not dark elves or goblins - and certainly wasn't any major underground temple complex of Shar. So by the process of elimination the path to Moonrise was likely on the other side of the underground lake.

"Are you feeling all right?" I asked Wyll after we'd settled down.

"No." he answered honestly, his voice a little shaken. "I mean, Withers restored me to full health, yes, but..." he trailed off. "We all fear death, but at least you don't have to fear what comes afterward." He looked downcast. "When I first made this pact it seemed so simple - all the lives I could save, as balanced against my own. Plus the overconfidence of youth... after all, the tales were full of clever heroes cheating their way free of devil pacts. Why shouldn't I be one of them?" He laughed bitterly. "Mizora had been doing this for centuries. She must have seen a thousand like me - how could she not be one step ahead?"

"Don't think like that." Karlach said encouragingly. "That's how they get you. I got sold downstairs before I was eighteen, and Zariel spent that whole time trying to beat into my head how helpless I was. How it wasn't worth even trying to run. But look at me, here I am!" she thumped her chest vigorously with one clenched fist.

"Did you sign a pact?" Wyll asked her.

"Didn't sign anything." Karlach shrugged. "I'm still not sure exactly how it happened, except maybe it was one of those tricky situations like what happened to the Elturans in the Descent."

"Well, don't stop there." Gale said encouragingly, as I noticed the others had drawn near to our conversation.

"Story hour? All right." Karlach chuckled. "Even back when I was still a girl I was big for my age - or any age, eheh - and even before I got training, I was naturally good in a fight. So there I was, a wild kid growing up on the streets of the Outer City and brawling my way through every alley in Baldur's Gate. I didn't take coin for doing anything too awful, but I didn't stop to ponder the fine points of the law when I needed to fill my belly either, you get me?"

Having spent most of my first year in Kirkwall doing largely the same thing, I just nodded.

"Right, so one day a friend of a friend puts me onto a job. Bodyguard work for this moneyed type with more than a few enemies, so I went in and asked about it. He took one look at me and said I was a perfect fit - first time in my life anyone had ever said anything like that to me." She trailed off wistfully. "So I stayed with him, and pretty soon it wasn't just a job for coin."

"Who was he?" Wyll asked. "Anybody I might have known?"

"No idea if you'd have known him or not. Remember, this was more than ten years ago, and he was younger then than you are now." she pointed out. "His name was Gortash - Enver Gortash. He was an inventor, and a merchant of several kinds as well - if not always the sort of merchanting you did above the table. He was starting to get into politics too, towards the end of my time with him. One of those wheeler-dealer types always with his fingers in a dozen pies simultaneously, but he was the shrewdest bastard I'd ever met in my life. No matter what kind of deal it was or how complicated all the juggling got, he always came out ahead." She shook her head. "And he could charm the birds down out of the trees, too, and not with druid magic either. Sort of like you, Hawke, except in a completely opposite way - if that makes any sense."

"And then one day he introduced you to a devil?" I asked.

"Introduced my flaming arse." Karlach snorted. "Sold me off without so much as a by-your-leave! One day I'm a trusted member of the household, and next thing I know I'm waking up in Avernus with a slave collar on my neck! Zariel herself smirked at me that she'd paid Gortash very well for sending her a 'curiosity' like me, and-" Karlach shook her head angrily. "I trusted him, I liked him, I'd have bloody died for him at one point, and he still didn't hesitate a minute to sell me down the damn pits as soon as he could turn a profit on me!" She slammed a fist down onto the boulder she was sitting on. "FUCK!" She exhaled heavily and looked at me. "Telling you up front right now - if I'm still with you when we get to Baldur's Gate, I'm going to kill him. Going to ask around town until I find out where he's living now and then I'll get in there and chop him in half, swear to the gods."

"Understandable." I nodded. "But please don't if it's suicidal, or going to ruin everything we've got going on trying to stop the Absolute."

"So he didn't sell your soul, just your body." Wyll changed the subject. "Well, at least your afterlife is clear."

"Yeah, and a good thing too." she admitted frankly. "But you're right. As bad as it was - and it was downright horrible - you've still got the worse end of it."

"You talked like you knew Mizora?" Wyll inquired.

"Eugh." Karlach eyerolled. "Zariel's an archdevil, which means like any ruler anywhere she's got a whole court full of rump-kissers who've got nothing better to do than stand around all day waiting to run errands and snipe at each other competing for her attention, or power, or whatever." She hawked and spat. "I had to stand around and watch that - I was her favorite toy, her little mortal attack dog that still killed demons better than a lot of her devils could. Got showed off like a prize poodle. But all the other ones crowding around her, the cambions and the devils, they wanted to be there. And Mizora was one of the ones most dedicated to trying to suck up to Zariel. Drove her spare that little mongrel tiefling me actually got more of Zariel's attention than she did sometimes, and made her doubly pissed off that I was so upfront about not wanting to have it. Something she'd have given her eyeteeth to get, and there I was having it handed to me for free and tossing it all on the floor." She laughed. "No wonder she hired you to come down to Avernus and try to kill me. If I got wasted by some devil-hunting hero then clearly it wasn't Mizora who was responsible for it, right? Not like Zariel double-checks on the name of every mortal she's ever pacted."

"A logical explanation." Lae'zel nodded to Karlach.

I noticed Shadowheart moving dejectedly away from the group, and I left the discussion to follow her. She looked up, saw me coming, and gave a thin smile before turning away again and meandering slowly down the path in thought. I answered her unspoken invitation and fell into step alongside her.

"Care to talk about it?" I asked after a polite pause.

"No. Yes. I-" she shook her head irritably. "It's just-"

"They're all swapping backstories, and you're uncertain of yours?" I suddenly realized.

"Yes." she said passionately. "There Karlach was telling us her life story, just like Gale did the other night, just like you did the first night, just like basically everyone has - and suddenly it just hit me that I couldn't do that even if I tried. I don't really know what my own life story is!" she cried. "And ever since you showed how even some of the memories I do have have inconsistencies in them-" She shuddered. "You said that you liked me because you were impressed by the person I was. But how do I even know that person is real? What if my memories are unsealed and it turns out I was actually the most sadistic torturer in the church and this- this niceness you admire in me was all false, just part of my mission?" She looked at me. "I spent most of the time Karlach was talking racking my brains and trying to remember anything about my identity - likes, dislikes, passions, hobbies, anything - and do you know what I came up with?" She sighed. "That I like night orchids, and that I don't know how to swim. That was it."

I drew her into the comforting hug she desperately needed. "You don't want platitudes right now, so I'm not sharing any with you."

"Would you even have any to share?" she weakly joked.

"My best friend collected them." I said. "I could torture you with some for an hour if I wanted to."

"Absolutely not!" she giggled momentarily, before her expression fell again. "Thank you. I just-" she shook her head. "Lady Shar wants me to be someone. Mother Superior wants me to be someone. You want me to be someone." she said insightfully. "And I can't be all of those people."

"You don't have to be any of those people if you don't want." I told her. "Not even that last one, as convenient at it might be for me otherwise."

"It's hard to be certain of what you want, if you're not certain of who you are." Shadowheart replied matter-of-factly.

"Just... don't give up on ever finding a way through that." I realized. "Like Karlach just told us, that's how they get you." I paused briefly. "Even more so, that's how they keep you."

"I suppose- yes?" Shadowheart broke off, as a strange dwarven woman came up to us.

"Excuse me, but have you seen my husband?" she asked us worriedly.

"We haven't seen any dwarves at all." I replied to her politely.

"Damn!" she swore. "I sent him off hours ago to go gather- and now he's lost out there." She pointed down the lower path leading out of the myconid village. "All he had to do was go down to one of the caves and pick some mushrooms, and-" She broke off. "Could you go and look for him, in case he's stuck somewhere? It'll be supper time soon, and he's been gone half the day."

"All right." I agreed. "Could you go up to our camp there and tell them where we've gone and why, so they can come looking for us if we take too long? And what's your husband look like?"

"Thank you." the lady dwarf said. "I'm Derryth, his name is Baelen. He's a dwarf, bald, wearing a blue shirt and pants."

We reassured her we'd find her husband and left the village to go down the path she'd indicated. It took a bit of climbing downwards, but about ten minutes later we saw a dwarf in a blue shirt dimly off in the distance, standing in the middle of a field of bulbous glowing green mushrooms, so tall that they came up above a human's knees.

"Stop!" he cried desperately as we drew near. "B-bibberbang!" he husked out, his face clenched in terror.

'Bibber-what?' I tried to puzzle out.

"I think Halsin mentioned them during his plant lecture." Shadowheart said. "They- oh dear." Her face paled. "Worse than timmask or torchstalks. Get near one and it puffs out a giant cloud of poisonous fumes... that's also extremely flammable." She pointed at a discarded backpack laying about thirty feet away from Baelen the dwarf... with a lit torch lying next to it.

"Oh Maker." I facepalmed. "If any one of those mushrooms pops, that torch will ignite the gas cloud-" I looked out over the entire field of green mushrooms. "And the chain reaction vaporizes everything in the cave." I called out to the dwarf. "How did you even get in there? Those things are dangerous!"

"I! Know! That!" Baelen shouted in frustration. "I just-" he shook his head dazedly. "Scroll of escape! In my pack! If I could just... reach it..."

"If I jumped up on that ledge on the left, I could get around to where his backpack is without having to go through the mushroom field." I thought out loud. "And then I could toss him the pack. But then how do I get out?"

"Extinguish the torch and you don't have to worry about explosions, just about prolonged exposure to the fumes." Shadowheart said practically. "And you've got those magical speed boots now." She rubbed her chin. "But just to make sure, I'll use my Create Water spell to douse out that torch from here. I wouldn't want you to explode now, I'm just barely starting to get you broken in."

"And who'd want you to have to go through all that work again with someone else." I agreed humorously. "All right, let's do that."

Although there was a tense moment when the bibberbang almost popped on me when I had to reach past it to get Baelen's backpack, Shadowheart had already snuffed out the torch with her water-spell so at least I managed to avoid immolation. As soon as the backpack landed near Baelen he got a scroll out of it, then put the backpack on and read the scroll - one that let him cast the Misty Escape spell, blinking him harmlessly out of the mushroom field. Once he was far enough away to not get caught in the gas cloud I just held my breath, then clicked my heels and used the speed boost to run all the way back across the bibberbang to Shadowheart and Baelen before I had to breathe any in. The chain reaction of popping mushrooms behind me filled almost the entire cavern with a poisonous green haze that slowly dissipated in the Underdark air, but we were all safe just outside the cave mouth.

"Damn!" Baelen swore. "Didn't get it!" The more we talked to him, the more we realized that he was either senile or simple-minded.

"Get what?" I asked him kindly.

"Noblestalk." he said, pointing at where a glowing blue mushroom had been dimly visible on one side of the cave before the gas cloud had obscured it. "Special mushroom. Needed it for the shop - in Baldur's Gate."

Something about what he said fixed Shadowheart's attention on the noblestalk. I noted that out of the corner of my eye and kept talking.

"Well, it's almost dinner time." I diverted him. "And your wife was worried about you. Do you want to wait until it's safe to pick it, or go back now?"

"Dinner first." he decided. "Didn't have lunch. Very hungry!"

"Can you make it back by yourself?" Shadowheart asked him.

"Shouldn't be a problem." Baelen said. "Thanks. Bye!"

"Noblestalk?" I asked Shadowheart when he was gone.

"A magical healing herb." she said. "Very powerful and rare. It's said to be a cure for several otherwise incurable conditions. No wonder Derryth wanted it - bringing any of that back to Baldur's Gate would set a shopkeeper up for... well, not life, but it would certainly be months' worth of profit all by itself." She paused, and continued more diffidently. "And one of the conditions it's said to be able to cure is... memory loss."

"Ah." I nodded knowingly, and then said nothing more. We settled down to wait for the gas to clear.

"I'd have thought you'd have more of an opinion on the topic than that." Shadowheart ventured after a short while.

"I do." I admitted frankly. "But I promised not to push you." I exhaled. "Also, if you're already leaning towards taking it then I'm certainly not going to try and change your mind."

"No." she replied amusedly. "I somehow doubted you would."

Eventually the gas dissipated and we walked over to where the noblestalk grew. There was only one of the mushrooms present - we couldn't tell if the rest had been picked clean earlier, or if only one had grown here in the first place. Shadowheart reached down and gently pulled it free of the ground, and held it in her palm looking at it wonderingly. She began to raise her hand to her mouth- and then stopped.

"What do you think I should do?" she asked me. "Because I- hells, I'm not even sure if this will work!"

"It might not be a complete cure." I agreed with her. "Probably won't be, in fact, not if the magic they used on your mind was that powerful. But any recovered memories would help clear things up at this juncture."

"Would they really?" she asked me, still staring down at the mushroom in her hand. "Or would they just raise more questions?" She chewed her lip pensively. "We've already got so much to do- we don't need more distractions..." She paused in an agony of indecision.

"I want you to be happy, and not tormented by doubts about who you are." I finally said to her softly. "But I don't know if taking that mushroom will help you towards that or hinder you. Only you do."

"You're right." she agreed, her shoulders firming with resolution. "I do."

And then she turned and handed the noblestalk to me.

---

Derryth paid us a fair amount of coin for the noblestalk we recovered, and asked us to look her up in her shop in Baldur's Gate if we ever got there. I was mildly uncomfortable with seeing how she mistreated her husband, and even less comfortable with her explanation that he'd been abusive of her back when he was still in his right mind, but- I sighed, and admitted to myself that sometimes you just couldn't fix everyone or everything. Even if that disappointed.

The next morning we set out for the abandoned village by the lake. Gale had read about duergar in his studies, so he cautioned us about their cruelty, their melee prowess - not that I expected any different, dwarves being dwarves - and the ability of more experienced duergar to turn invisible with an act of will. And I'll admit that that last one had surprised me. But not anywhere near as much as the surprise we got when an extremely large myconid confronted us shortly after we'd left their village.

'I am Glut- it spoke to us in our minds. 'Sovereign of a colony that is no more. The gray ones ended them. You now travel to end the gray ones. You will take me with you. The vengeance of Glut must fall upon the gray ones!'-

"Agreed." I said immediately. After defeating the duergar in the village we'd still have a lot of exploring to do on the other side of the lake, as we couldn't afford to spend too many days camping out with the myconids.

"There is a possibility here." Halsin contributed. "A myconid sovereign has the power to temporarily re-animate a dead body with its spores."

"Necromancy?" I replied immediately. "No thanks."

"Not necromantic magic." he shook his head. "Nature magic. The corpse would be... puppeted, by the myconid hivemind. There wouldn't be any actual negative energy or necromantic spirit."

"How many corpses can you animate at once?" Shadowheart asked Glut.

-One.- it replied. -But size matters little.-

"We're actually doing this?" I asked my team plaintively. "Traveling with a vengeance-obsessed mushroom to animate a corpse to attack invisible dwarves with?"

"What are you thinking?" Lae'zel asked me.

"That we know the location of the recently-killed corpse of a very large and dangerous beast that hunted its prey by tracking the vibrations of their footsteps through the ground." I said reluctantly.

And so, with the fungi-animated corpse of a bulette in tow we found the duergar slave-hunters in the village and smashed them handily. Glut's control of the bulette meant it wasn't even a fight - the one of them that turned invisible was handily hunted down by the bulette's senses, which Glut proved able to use through his mental control of the bulette's body.

"Thank you for your help." I said to Glut politely. "You made things immensely easier for us, and your people are now avenged."

-No- Glut surprise us. -One life remains to take.-

"We missed one?" Gale asked innocently.

-Spew.- Glut's response chilled our blood. -We asked for his help when the gray ones came. He refused us. His people remained safe while mine died. Spew must pay for his crimes. Glut will rule the colony now. And the age of Glut will be glorious!-

"We have a very urgent errand of our own to be getting on with." I said. "So-"

-You will aid me.- Glut threatened. -Or I will destroy you.-

We all involuntarily looked over at the undead bulette, which had only a few moments ago been a very comforting juggernaut that had been on our side and was now an impending harbinger of doom. Wyll nervously rubbed his palms on his thighs as he winced with phantom pain. Personally, while Glut had half of a point regarding Spew's refusal to come to his colony's aid earlier, he was forfeiting it entirely with how high-handed he was being... as well as the distinct mental impression I was getting that his motivation here was not so much just retribution as naked powerlust.

"Why didn't I see this coming?" I criticized myself. "All right." I shrugged. "We're really not being left much choice, are we?"

"Why not just send your new friend up to chew Spew in half and not involve us at all?" Gale asked Glut.

-Spew has spores with which to counteract mine. You do not.- Glut said ruthlessly. -Now we shall go to the colony, and you shall kill the false Sovereign for me.-

"Shadowheart?" I sighed regretfully. "Would you please find out if this is the kind of mushroom that can grow in sunlight or not?"

The Blood of Lathander's sunbeam smashed into Glut and took him entirely off guard, the shock of its incineration keeping him from ordering the bulette to attack us for just long enough. By the time Glut could even begin to mentally recover we'd all rushed him and hacked him into pieces, and as soon as he was pulp the bulette's corpse quietly collapsed.

Spew fulfilled his promise and rewarded us by giving us all the treasure they'd collected from fallen travelers recently - most of it having come from a dead drow whose corpse was still tossed in with the rest of the treasure. The Amulet of Lost Voices produced the knowledge that this drow was not a servant of the Absolute - which is what we'd expected to find - but a member of a party of dark elven treasure hunters who'd been seeking something called 'the Adamantine Forge'. The book on his corpse had been a guide as to how to use the Forge - another member of his party had been carrying the directions of how to get there, but apparently they'd all fallen out and betrayed each other.

However, the book he'd been carrying had turned up a very valuable clue for us indeed, once we'd dispelled the illusion that had made it look like a silly tome about 'flumph mating rituals', whatever a flumph was. The true title of the book was "The Great Furnace of Grymforge", and one of its passages entirely riveted our attention.

Among the Sharrans dwelled the gnome Silouv Yali, whose talents for wizardry were known from Candlekeep to Sorcere. Under his tutelage, the Sharrans built the Great Forge, which could heat mithral with such vigour as to turn it to adamantine. With this astonishing metal, they could mould the finest blades and armour.

Yet the jewel of Yali's eye was not the forge itself, but the protector he conjured from the magma to guard it - a construct said to be so mighty that no blade could fell it, and no spell could pierce it.

"Sharrans!" Halsin said. "This Adamantine Forge and the underground temple complex we've been looking for - they're the same thing!"

"Now we have to go track down this other drow's corpse." I said. "The map he was carrying might save us weeks of stumbling around. Where did he say this fight had happened?"

"Just something about a 'spectator'." Wyll said. "And since I don't think he was referring to a bystander..."

"The monster." Gale said. "The spectator, a cousin to the beholder. A giant spherical floating aberration with multiple magical eyes that shoot deadly rays."

"One of the beholder's magical eyes can cause petrifaction." Lae'zel suddenly contributed. "Does this spectator have a similar quality?"

"They can. Why?" Gale replied.

"In the Selunite outpost where we originally entered the Underdark, I glimpsed a curious sight outside one of the windows." Lae'zel said. "A field of statues, incongruously located in an otherwise bare patch of the Underdark. At the time I paid it no mind; we were not down here to explore curiosities."

"But you're thinking those statues were actually people turned to stone - possibly by a spectator." Wyll said.

"There's a travelstone at the outpost, just as there's one near the myconid colony." I agreed. "So we don't lose much time if we go back to check."

"And here I've already used up it's one charge for the day." Shadowheart said ruefully, looking at the Blood of Lathander. "Nothing for it, though - we have to find this temple, and we can't really afford to wait another day and night first."

We warped back to the Selunite outpost, and found that reaching the field of statues Lae'zel had spotted was easily done simply by climbing out one of the side windows, then travelling along a stone ledge to scramble up near the statues. Drawing closer we saw that the statues were so finely-detailed and caught in such positions of fright and distress that they were almost certainly magically petrified creatures and not merely statues - a suspicion Gale confirmed with a cantrip for detecting magic.

"Which one of these dark elves was the leader?" I stated. "Because if we can find and free him before the spectator comes back-" A sudden breeze flickered our torches. "Oh hells, the damn thing is right behind us isn't it?"

A hideous roar filled our hearing as a magical eyebeam flicked past us to unpetrify one of the dark elves, who immediately turned to attack us.

"Wyll, take the elf!" I called, as we all turned around to face the spectator. Which was bar none the ugliest thing I'd ever seen in my life, and I'd been looking at an undead fungus-infested bulette just yesterday. "Nothing fancy, just kill it!" I barked, and called on my templar-paladin powers to drop a temporarily nullification of magic on the creature. Its eyestalk barrage that it had been preparing to bombard us with fizzled and died, and I followed up with a side sweeping cut that took one of its four eyestalks clean off.

"H'taka!" Lae'zel yelled, readily following my example and decapitating another eyestalk. Karlach went for blinding the big central eye in the middle with a mighty two-handed slash, and Gale seared off the last two eyestalks with his Scorching Ray spell as Shadowheart battered the damned thing's braincase with her mace. The spectator still drew blood, as blinded as it was, by lunging forward with its horrible fanged maw and catching the nearest of us - who happened to be Lae'zel - in its jaws and biting down until it hit bone. Lae'zel powered right through the pain and used her wounded arm - which was still jammed inside the damned thing's mouth - to grab the spectator's tongue and then squeeze down as crushingly as she could. The spectator shrieked in pain but with Lae'zel anchoring it in place by its tongue, it couldn't dodge our rain of blows.

"Halsin, patch her up before she bleeds out!" I called out, then turned to see how Wyll was doing. He was unscathed, his opponent dead from several thrusts right through the chest. Halsin did as directed, his druidic magic more than up to the job of doing precisely that, managed to staunch the worst of Lae'zel's wounds even if she'd still be walking off some of that damage for the next day or two.

A search of the dead drow's belongings told us that he wasn't the one with the map, but a post-mortem interrogation got the corpse to tell us which one was the one with the map. Unfortunately, the map - like everything else on the drow in question - was solid stone.

"How do we unpetrify that?" I asked.

"Basilisk oil." Halsin replied.

"And where do we get that?" I shrugged.

"There's a small supply of it at the Grove." Halsin replied readily. "I'll go fetch some."

"What, just like that-?" I began to ask, before I realized. "Wait, you can reach the travelstone by the Grove even from down here? Just like that?"

"Easily." he replied. "And the one in the Outpost is barely a minute's walk from here, so the return trip will be simple."

"I'm still getting used to the potential of some of this magic." I said wonderingly as Halsin faded out. "The sheer convenience of being able to instantaneously step from one to another-" I shook my head in realization. "Now I'm really beginning to understand why Merrill wanted to reactivate the eluvian so badly. Anybody who could bring similar transport mechanisms to Thedas could name their own price. For anything."

"I'm just happy the travelstones here are still working." Gale said. "It's going to be very inconvenient when the astrological conjunctions shift again and the network fades out."

"Tell me that's a matter for weeks from now, not days from now." I asked him.

"Hopefully." he agreed. "Ah, and here comes Halsin now."

Halsin finished walking back towards us from the Selunite outpost and held up the flask of basilisk oil. "All right, this should unpetrify him no problem. But we're not going to just kill him and take it off his corpse, are we?"

"That would only be justified if he attacked us." I agreed. "But if he's smart enough not to, but still doesn't want to give it to us..."

"I have an idea." Shadowheart said, and then cast her Disguise Self spell... and shifted into the appearance of a female dark elf. "All right, now do it."

Halsin poured the basilisk oil on the dark elf, and the stony gray faded away to be replaced by the darker tones of drow flesh. "Paagh!" he spat. "Dust! On. My. Tongue!" he complained querulously. "I offer to parley, and then he ruins my ambush by summoning a spectator? Unforgivable!" he ranted arrogantly.

"Silence, male!" Shadowheart barked at him imperiously, doing her best to pitch her voice with a similar accent to another dark elf we'd met recently, and the drow wizard we'd just freed turned to her and flinched back with an expression of shock.

"Mistress- my apologies, please!" he begged. "I am still coming back to my senses a-after my long imprisonment- I am Dhourn, third son of House Ba'tul, first rank evoker, and initiate of Gravenhollow's-"

"I am Minthara of House Baenre." Shadowheart glared at him, and Dhourn cringed at that last word. "These surfacers are of no import - hirelings only."

"Mistress." Dhourn bowed before her, barely able to keep from shivering in terror. "I- what would you wish of me?"

"The Adamantine Forge." she said icily. "Your expedition has failed. Mine will succeed. Hand over your map, then leave here at once."

"But-" he began.

"But?" She smiled at him cruelly. I shifted my hand so that it touched my sword-hilt, and the rest of the party suitably flexed up and looked intimidating.

"I can serve you, Mistress, if you would-" he began, only to be cut off by her curt nod.

"No. I have seen how you 'served' the fellow members of your expedition already." Shadowheart sneered. "Not that your pathetic treacheries could ever threaten me, but I have no time for such trivial nonsense. It is thanks to me that you are no longer a statue - you will repay me the debt you owe for your life with the location of the Adamantine Forge."

"A-as you demand, Mistress." Dhourn replied, reaching into his pack and coming out with a magical crystal. "This memory shard holds all the knowledge you seek."

Shadowheart took it, her expression as impassive as ice, and nodded. "Now leave us. If ever we see you again, your life is forfeit."

"Yes, Mistress!" Dhourn flinched away, and then ran down the path like his ass was on fire. As soon as he was safely gone Shadowheart dropped the spell and resumed her true appearance, then giggled.

"You had way too much fun doing that." I chided her amusedly. "But what was your plan if he'd ever seen Minthara before? I got the impression she was quite prominent in drow society."

"Well, then he'd have attacked us, and then we could fight him." Shadowheart said practically. "So either way, it worked out."

---

Author's Note: Yes, Hawke, mushroom people. Faerun has all the weird shit. *g*

You actually can auto-win the Dhourn conversation check by using the disguise of a female drow or actually being one, but story logic as opposed to game logic also let me have Shadowheart borrow Minthara's name in addition. That was fun. (Also, as House Baenre is the ruling house of the city of Menzoberranzan, Shadowheart was unknowingly impersonating what was essentially dark elven royalty - there is a reason Dhourn almost shit his pants.)

And yes, the fast travel system really does let you go back from the depths of the Underdark to a trading post and then back again in like five minutes if you're near a fast travel point both ways. Hawke is only starting to get clued in as to how truly bullshit Faerun can get in certain aspects.

I was also amused that they could basically auto-win the duergar fight by bringing Glut + undead bulette... and then have a huge problem when Glut turned on them, with the bulette. Fortunately they also have a powerful magical artifact, and some mushrooms don't like the sun.

Regarding the Baelen encounter, it's really messed up that the happiest you can make Derryth in later life is to have the guy die there, but there's no way my Hawke can deliberately murder the dude without metaknowledge. Otherwise, yeah, their relationship is a mess.

And yes, I skipped Omeluum the mind flayer (because he only shows up in the myconid colony if you deliberately investigate the bugbear trader and tell him all about your tadpoles, and they didn't do either) and the wizard's tower, because (Watsonian) they're on an urgent quest and try not to chase irrelevant sidequests too often and (Doylist) because I have to prune this fic for length somewhere.

 

[Blaflaix]

would give a brief burst of supernatural speed to the wearer if you clicked the heels.

Click to shrink...

"So you're running from the orcs, is there anything else you want to do?"

"Wait, I have the boots of speed! I'll use those!"

"Right, make a DC 25 jump check."

"What the hell? I'm not jumping, and why is it so high?"

"You activate the boots by clicking the heels together. You are currently sprinting across rough terrain. I assume you're going to jump up and hit them together in the air, then land it while suddenly being magically faster."

 

[Mizu]

And yes, I skipped Omeluum the mind flayer (because he only shows up in the myconid colony if you deliberately investigate the bugbear trader and tell him all about your tadpoles, and they didn't do eithe

Click to shrink...

I can't imagine the group would react well to meeting another mind flayer regardless, even if that one didn't mean them harm. They'd have a bit of a negative view of them after almost being used as a breeding ground for baby mind flayers.

Still used as, really, until the tadpoles are gone.