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| When last we saw our heroes. |
Avrilenne closed her eyes for what she thought would be the last time, as the darkness enveloped her. From out of the edge of the shadows came a figure, the form of a shapely woman with long hair, undulating in the murky waters. Her first thought was that it was an angel of her god come to take her soul away to the heavens. The woman twisted something within the locks around her body, and the chains fell away, soon she was being carried off.
"Quick, get more blankets! The're still freezing!", said a commanding voice, awakening her. Her eyes opened to see a crowd of faces looking down at her.
They were almost human, or elvish, but had a peculiar green tint to their skin and hair. After a moment she realized they were indeed elves, sea elves, and their rescuers were soon introduced to them as the Sirines of the Trackless Sea.
After awakening in the sea elves' cavern, the Heroes explain their plight. They escaped Leilon so easily because it was the enemy's plan to plant the false document all along. The sea elves surmise that it was a keen plan to have the Heroes be killed, without simply murdering them and creating martyrs. Waterdeep is too dangerous to return to, so the party must then escape through the underground caverns connected to the sea elves' caverns.
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| Stone Guardians flank the entryway to a now dead kingdom. |
The caverns below Waterdeep are one of the few "proper" dungeons encountered in the game. Also, the dungeon is relatively sparsely populated with encounters. My party found a nest of spiders with a magic sword, a prisoner, and some Zhents that were hiding out here. There was also an old-school illusionary "spinner" that makes you face a random direction, but the consequences aren't very dire in this case; you just end up walking down a hallway, at which point the compass starts working again.
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| Aaaaah! Kill it with fire. |
As illustrated above, the game adds a couple new combat mechanics with varying results. You can be attacked on all sides, which was implemented in Pools of Darkness and Dark Queen of Krynn. New to the game is reinforcements. Additional enemies (and sometimes allies) will appear in battle after a hidden number of rounds. You also don't know how many waves are coming. This is what happened in the above screenshot. I had a group of spiders in front of me, then these guys jumped down behind me. It certainly added to the challenge, or difficulty, of the game, but to me it mostly just felt unfair. This was especially true when wizards would appear and cast spells before I got a chance to wound them.
From this battle I picked up a "sword of stalking." Which illustrates another point about this game that frustrates me. I couldn't find anything special about the sword of stalking, (or is it Sword of Stalking?) even when looking it up in the clue book. As far as I can tell, a number of items got named in the game, The Seahelm for example, just for flavor, and don't do anything extra. This didn't work for me, as I kept wondering what I missing. I would have preferred that the items had flavorful text when I got them, then appeared in my inventory as regular magic items.
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| Awesome! So what the hell does it do? I even bought a pdf of an old AD&D product, FR5 The Savage Frontier, hoping these items would be in there. They weren't. |
The prisoner was in some cells to the northwest. After rescuing him, he told his tale. The local communities have turned against Waterdeep and the Lord's Alliance because they have been raided recently by men wearing the livery of Waterdeep. However, this fellow was a veteran of the past "troll wars", and it was obvious to him that these were not true soldiers of Waterdeep. The local council concluded he was a spy, and he was thrown out in the dirt. More likely the one who called for his exile was a spy, as he was immediately found by said fake soldiers, and brought here to feed the monsters.
Lastly, the heroes discovered the hideout of a Zhentil Lord who seemed to be masterminding the raids on the local farmsteads. They rejoiced as they were able to put a stop to his plans!
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| This is a little more demonstrative than I imagine my characters, but the descriptions of their actions add a little to the experience, I suppose. |
It seems a lot happened in these caverns, as I'd be remiss if I didn't mention something else added to the Gold Box engine in this game; romance. There is a mechanic where, depending on your actions, an NPC may fall in love with one of your characters. Apparently I was doing the right things, as the romance progressed steadily between my party leader, Augustar, and Siulajia.
The Heroes of Ascore were riding high as they emerged from the caverns into the sunlight. Wanting to be fully prepared for what was to come, they made camp at the top of the flimsy rope ladder that got them there. Siulajia and Augustar sat close to each other near the fire, and talked quietly. Chode told tales of their many battles within the cavern as he gestured emphatically; sloshing, and occasionally spilling the contents of his tankard.
The only one strangely quiet was Ranzo. When a moment of silence finally came, Ranzo cleared his throat than began, "Look, I've been thinking," all eyes turned to him. "I think, I'm ready to return to a quieter life. Those spiders really did it for me, I hate spiders, let alone ones as big as a tiger."
There were looks of concern around the fire as his words settled in. Aria put a hand on his shoulder, "Will you return to the sea?" She asked.
"No, I doubt it," Ranzo replied, "The truth is, I was a terrible sailor. After falling out of the rigging a number of times, I broke my leg. It fell to the captain's daughter to tend to me while I healed. Well, she 'tended' to me a little more than the captain was okay with, and I was kicked off the boat."
"That sounds like the Ranzo I know," Chode said, holding up his tankard in a toast. They all chuckled at that.
Ranzo bequeathed his armor of the glacier to his good friend, and sometimes mentor, Chode Hammer. They then agreed that they would share a meal on the morning, then see Ranzo on his way to a new path.
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| Here's a song by The Bilge Pumps recounting some of Ranzo Ray's past exploits on the high seas. |
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