Even though we rose early with the dawn, the hours of sleep did us all a world of good. The remnants of the temple refectory even gave us a hearth in which we could cook ourselves a hot breakfast, and much refreshed we set back out.
The temple crypts at the bottom of the secret stairway were fairly small, and had been deserted for so long that there wasn't even any mold or dampness - the still air carried only the scents of dryness and dust. The large wooden doors leading to the deepest crypt were locked, but we found the key in a nearby sarcophagus guarded only by a few elementary traps. Also in the sarcophagus was a spear made out of a strange metal, one that Gale said was clearly magical. As I already had a magical greatsword I offered it to Shadowheart, but she decided to stick with her more familiar mace-and-shield combination.
Still, though, this clearly wasn't a large enough treasure that anyone would fund even a minor expedition to come all this way and fetch it, so after unlocking the vault doors we preceded into the depths of the catacombs.
"Odd." Shadowheart said, examining one of the robed corpses littering the floor. Whoever had died in here had done it so long ago that the only thing left of their bodies were withered scraps of desiccated skin clinging to bony skeletons. "They're dressed like scribes, but they're all armed. What were they writing that was so controversial that they were prepared to die defending it?"
"More to the point, what made their enemies willing to bury them alive with it?" I thought out loud.
"You can tell that just by looking at skeletons?" Gale questioned me.
"There's no broken or even chipped bones on any of them, and their robes might be rotting away but don't show any tears or slashes." I pointed out. "So they clearly didn't die of battle-wounds." I paced over towards the large opening in the far wall that led into a small cave system nearby. "Look, running water." I pointed at the creek burbling happily away across the cave floor. "So they didn't even die of thirst, but of hunger. And starvation takes weeks to kill, not days."
"There's a ladder over here." Shadowheart said, looking up at the ceiling of the cave where a small shaft leading upwards through the cave's roof had a set of rungs sticking a short ways down out of it. "And this lever here, it must lower the ladder. These men were down here long enough to starve to death when they had an escape route right here!"
"That doesn't make any sense." I said. "The attackers might have settled for just locking that door from the outside and leaving the people trapped in here to die rather than coming in after them, if they didn't have enough men to like their odds of going head-to-head with desperate men fighting like cornered rats in a basement. But if they had enough troops to put in a full siege of this place for the weeks it took for these last few defenders to die, then they had more than enough to just come in and do it the quick way."
"I think you might be a bit narrowly focused on only the mundanely possible explanations, Sir Hawke." Gale rubbed his chin thoughtfully. "Because now that you've pointed it out, these corpses do present a distinct anomaly in their presence here. One that can't be readily explained by any conventional tactical choices."
"Ugh." Shadowheart rubbed the bridge of her nose frustratedly. "How did I not see it right away? Armed corpses left mysteriously laying around in a place they have no business laying around in means only one thing. Necromancy."
We all drew together in a defensive formation as we warily eyed the dead bodies. "So you're saying it's a trap. As soon as we touch whatever the owners of this crypt don't want touched, those corpses get back up and try to kill us."
"Very likely." Gale agreed with a sigh. "And they're almost certainly also set to go off if we start trying to destroy the bodies while they're down."
"I don't suppose you could just fill the room with magical flame or something?" I asked him, knowing that a suitably powerful wizard back home could have done just that.
"Ah, if only you'd caught me on a better day." Gale said embarassedly. "Unfortunately, ever since our illithid friends so incosiderately jammed one of their larvae into my cerebral cortex my magic's been a bit off. I can still cast the simpler spells in my repertoire, but it's going to take me a while to get back any advanced usage."
"I've noticed the same with my magic." Shadowheart agreed ruefully.
"Hrm." I mused out loud after I'd taken myself through a brief weapons drill. "I thought my timing being a bit off yesterday was just because I was exhausted, but you're right. The knowledge is all there, even most of my reflexes, but it's not coming together like it normally does. As if I'd been out of practice for months, not just days."
"Our nervous systems aren't entirely the same as they were last week." Gale analyzed. "And it only takes a very subtle shift in the activity patterns of the brain to require a significant adjustment to get back to the peak of performance."
"Well in the meanwhile, we've still got this immediate problem to solve." I rubbed my chin thoughtfully. "If you can't throw a big fireball, can you still do a little one?"
"Easily." Gale said, curling his fingers one by one over his open palm and materializing a small ball of flame within it. "I can do a cantrip this simple all day. But I'm not exactly going to take out a charging pack of undead warriors with it."
"You won't need to." I reassured him. "Not when there's an entire barrel of lamp oil still upstairs with the rest of the supplies that bandit expedition abandoned here."
And so we destroyed almost three times our number in undead warriors while barely needing to swing a sword. I simply chopped the head off of one of them while it was laying there inert, then waited until all the rest had finished rising up in response to my attack and let them follow me back out of the room and up the staircase to the upper level. And as soon as we had them all packed in tightly on the narrow staircase, Gale simply flicked his flame-bolt cantrip down the stairs and ignited the barrel of oil we'd carefully prepositioned at the chokepoint, and that took care of that. Some conjured water from one of Shadowheart's own minor spells took care of the fire hazard afterwards, and we had the entire crypt free to explore at our leisure.
"I wonder if this was the treasure those men were after?" Shadowheart said, looking at the eldritch tome we'd found locked and sealed in a room adjacent to the skeleton-trapped crypt. Nothing we'd tried had even begun to open it until she'd used her clerical powers to channel some divine magic through the lock, at which point the tome was revealed to be a high sacred artifact of Jergal. According to Shadowheart, recording the names and dates of death of the departed was a sacrament for Jergal's clergy, however commonplace or obscure the dead might have been - and the many volumes of such names we'd found in the library upstairs certainly bore that impression out. But this tome was a Book of Dead Gods - a tome in which the passing of lost divinities from Faerun's ancient past to the recent present had all had the dates and circumstances of their fading written out in a single spidery hand, by what must have been one of Jergal's highest priests or most sacred scribes.
"I can think of scholars in Waterdeep who'd pay a chest of gold for a rare find like that." Gale agreed. "Unfortunately, we're a long way from Waterdeep. So unless whatever powerful healer we hope to find likes to collect rare books-"
"There's still one more chamber to explore." I said. "Not that I've found the door to it yet, but if you look carefully at those corner walls over there you'll spot that there's some space unaccounted for behind them."
"Secret door hopefully means great treasure beyond!" Gale agreed enthusiastically, and after a brief search we found the hidden switch that opened up a small hidden chamber. Most of the chamber was filled by one giant and elaborate sarcophagus, larger even than the one we'd found the magic spear in, and a small chest in the corner with some magical potions and scrolls that we readily added to the treasure pile.
"Here lies the Guardian of Tombs. Through knowledge comes atonement." Shadowheart translated the plaque on the sarcophagus. "A 'Guardian of Tombs'? I'm not familiar with any lore pertaining to that. Gale?"
"Afraid not." he shrugged. "So, who wants to do the honors?"
I narrowed my eyes and looked at them both. "As if we don't already know who the two of you are going to make do all the heavy lifting." I grumbled at them affectionately, and then reached out to firmly grasp the lid of the sarcophagus and-
And the instant my hands touched the lid, magical green flames lit up in low braziers spaced all around the sarcophagus despite the complete absence of fuel or igniter. We all sprang back in alarm as the lid unaccountably kept moving, smoothly sliding back away from us with the slow, inexorable pace of an advancing glacier. A tall, thin figure covered in the dried gray flesh of a long-dead corpse yet wearing entirely pristine robes showing not the slightest trace of wear or rot levitated up out of the open sarcophagus, staring majestically down at us as it floated just below the ceiling.
As it floated forward and down we all backed up almost to the far wall - not that it was very far away - and hurriedly drew our weapons and set ourselves into a guard position. It made no hostile reaction and raised no weapon, despite having a long staff - of incongruously plain wood, no elaborate arcane tool - slung across its back.
My nerves were screaming at me, and only the epic embarassment I'd felt at my flashback yesterday kept me from falling into another one - except that this time it would have been nothing as harmless as mistaking goblins for genlocks. No, now my mind irresistibly kept drawing the comparision between current events and what in hindsight had been one of the very worst days of life - the day that Varric and I had inadvertently freed the ancient horror Corypheus from his imprisonment.
Like Corypheus, this lich-thing was impossibly tall, towering at least a full foot above me - and I was not a short man. Like him, it was nothing but dead, dried flesh stretched impossibly thinly over a walking skeleton. Like him, its eyes were filled with a terrible age and an inhumanly penetrating gaze-
But the closer I looked, the more I spotted the differing details. Corypheus had been an ancient darkspawn, and like all their kind brought the darkspawn taint with him wherever he walked - an offensive, corrupting musk that you could almost smell in your mind, even when it wasn't in your nostrils. This thing floated through the room as if were entirely ethereal, not even there - there was no aura, no psychic force, just a quiet smell like old dry paper. Corypheus' flesh had been twisted and corrupt, an ugly meld of the color of dried blood and rotten meat - this ancient undead's flesh was dead and dried but also smooth and symmetrical, with its gray flesh elaborately filigreed with beautiful patterns of gold inlay, even up to and covering its skull. If I hadn't seen it levitate and walk, I'd almost have thought it an elaborate work of art, a collaborate project between a master sculptor and a goldsmith-
"So he has spoken, and so thou standest before me." the ancient intoned in what was almost a chant, the cadence of its words as steady as the ticking of a clock and its tones so measured, so formal, as to bring a measure of calm to the room via sheer lack of passion alone. Which was yet another contrast from Corypheus, whose words always carried an undertone of snarling hatred even when he was pontificating most calmly. "Yet your name has been recorded for only a single day. What a curious way to awaken."
"Who's 'he'?" I grasped at the only part of that last statement that seemed to make sense.
"An arbiter of certain matters." the ancient being replied with glacial patience. "But that is not important now. I have a question for thee, Garrett Hawke. What is the worth of a single mortal's life?"
What? I blinked confusedly, hurriedly looking to both of my companions to see if they had any idea what was going on here. Because honestly, what the hell sort of question was that? It definitely said something that the part where it somehow magically knew my name was actually the least confusing part of the last several sentences.
Unfortunately, neither Shadowheart nor Gale seemed to have any more clue about what was going on here than I did. Furthermore, the intensity of the being's gaze being directed towards me made it rather plain that he was only asking one of us, so as we reluctantly lowered our weapons my thoughts raced to try and scramble for an answer-
I rapidly discarded the idea of asking this thing for clarification, or of just refusing to answer its question. It didn't seem malevolent at first glance, but it didn't seem very benevolent either, and I was almost entirely certain it was powerful enough we did not want to fight it. But I had the distinct sense that giving some obvious platitude of an answer, such as 'All life is infinitely precious' or some such, would be rejected as merely an obvious platitude. Saying that would also be rank hypocrisy on my part, because I was a warrior by profession with all that implied. Giving the opposite answer, that no life really meant anything in the face of an immense and uncaring universe, would be an even worse idea for obvious reasons. Life and its worth was far too complicated to sum up in a single sentence or phrase, or even a book, and every single mortal was living a different life under different circumstances-
"That is a question each single mortal can only answer about their own life, and only when at its end." I answered it confidently.
"Oh, if only the others had thought as such." it mused enigmatically. "Very well." it continued gently. "I am satisfied. We have met, and I know thy face. We will see each other again at the proper time and place. Fare well." it concluded dispassionately, and then turned and left the room without a single backward glance.
The silence echoed behind it for over a dozen heartbeats before I sputtered "All right, WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT?!?"
By the time we shook off our confusion and left the tomb, the ancient whatever-the-hell-it-was was long gone. Part of me couldn't help but angst over the idea that I might well have yet again let loose another primordial undead horror to go ravage the world, but my logical mind kept reminding me that this couldn't possibly be the same sort of situation as Corypheus. That monster had been sealed in the bottommost depths of an entire dwarf-built trap dungeon whose sole purpose had been to confine him for eternity, and it had taken us days worth of effort to elaborately unravel all the traps and protections - and an even more elaborate scheme on the part of Corypheus' servants to manipulate me and Varric into doing it. While this thing had simply been lying in what was a completely unguarded root cellar by comparision, with no locks or seals on its tomb at all - Gale couldn't even find any traces of residual warding magic that had ever been on that sarcophagus. By all appearances that lich-thing had simply chosen to lay down in a tomb and wait for centuries to get up and trade its strange riddle with the first person to actually touch the lid, restrained by nothing more than the honor system.
"Through Knowledge comes Atonement." Hmmm. Perhaps it was being punished? Ordered to wait - possibly by those mysterious 'others' it had mentioned disagreeing with? - until someone discovered it and showed any intent to set it free? But if it wasn't magically bound to that task then it was obedient enough to comply with such strictures without being forced to, which meant it was hopefully under enough discipline to not be an indiscriminate scourge.
It had better be, at any rate. Because I already had more than enough desperate and dangerous questing to be getting on with, just to get these damned parasites out of our heads before they turned us all into brain-eating monsters from beyond the stars. So if the world turned out to need saving from that ancient lich-thing as well then the world was just going to have to rely on somebody else for the immediate future. And whatever 'proper time and place' that thing and I were supposedly going to see each other again was hopefully a very long way off.
Unfortunately, while we'd done a fair job of finding treasure in these ruins we still hadn't found anything that would tell us where we were. So after we were done exploring we warped ourselves back to the travelstone where we'd originally met Gale and took the other turn, the one that we'd bypassed on our way to the ruins. Because even if we hadn't found a map the logic that originally compelled us to visit those ruins was still valid. If people had built a temple there then pilgrims and worshippers had to have a way to reach there, and while the nearest settlement had almost certainly not existed that far back the main road between Elturel and Baldur's Gate still had and so at least one of the paths leading away from the temple would eventually reach there. And if settlers had built a village nearby in the interim, they'd be much more likely to build it near an already-existing path than not-
"Voices up ahead." I quietly warned the rest of the party, as the distant sounds of two people conversing came to us from around a corner. We came around the path and between a pair of low rocks to see a pair of red-skinned, horned humanoids - they looked vaguely like the devil-men I'd seen on the nautiloid, only slim and of humanlike build instead of the hulking menaces there and with far less malevolent features and no aura of infernal power - dressed in leather armor and armed with hunting bows staring up at a man-trap that had been rigged over the pathway, a snare that had caught a familiar someone by her ankle and left her hanging helplessly upside down over six feet above the ground.
"Zorru was right," the male humanoid was saying to his female companion. "Face like a toad and twice as ugly."
Get me down from here! an angry mental voice sounded in my head, as the parasite in my skull twitched slightly in resonance with her own. Because the person caught in the trap was the same female githyanki warrior who'd briefly aided Shadowheart and I on the nautiloid, then taken off on her own as soon as we'd hit the ground.
Say "please". I thought back amusedly along the same mental 'circuit' she'd somehow opened between us.
NEVER! she 'screamed' indignantly.
"That thing's dangerous. Leave it here for the goblins to kill- hey, who are you?!?" the hunter's companion said, as they both turned to notice our arrival.
"Well met." I smiled at them disarmingly, as the three of us kept our hands clear of our weapons. "Catching anything?" I nodded up at the trapped githyanki.
"We found her caught in this trap." the male hunter answered. "And she's the same type of whatever-it-is as a band of them that recently attacked our friend Zorru and killed most of his patrol."
"They're called githyanki." Shadowheart offered, staring coldly up at the trapped one. "And I'm not surprised that they murdered your friends. They're too often like that." her lip curled scornfully.
Don't you dare! the githyanki mentally screamed at us. Remember what grows in your skulls! Remember that I alone know where you can find the cure!
"Is your village nearby?" I asked them. "And do you have a healer there?"
"We're refugees, friend." the male hunter corrected me. "But we're currently camping at a druid's grove just a little ways from here. The lead druid is supposed to be quite the powerful healer indeed."
"Sounds ideal!" Gale said relievedly. "Could we trouble you for an escort to your camp?"
"Well-" the female hunter trailed off, looking up at the trapped githyanki.
I shook my head. "Leaving her here for the weather to finish off is even worse than cutting her throat in cold blood, and if you were the type of people to do that then you would have done it already without stopping to debate." I sighed. "And I'm not going to do that either. So I suppose we'd better just cut her down."
"But Zorru-" the male hunter said.
I shook my head slightly at Shadowheart's wordless glare of This is a bad idea! and continued onwards. "I don't know much about her people, but are they really so much of a monolith that every single one of them is an accomplice to every crime of every other one? Men don't work that way. Elves don't. And I very much doubt your folk do either." I temporized right over the fact that I didn't properly know what the name of their race was.
"No." their leader agreed. "But how do we know she wasn't one of the individual ones that attacked our friends?"
"Because she was with us yesterday." I explained. "We were all prisoners on that nautiloid ship you might have seen crashing the other night. We got separated yesterday while exploring around." I glared up at the trapped githyanki. "But all's well that ends well, right?"
A wordless snarl of frustration was the only reply.
"Do you have many traps like this around your encampment?" Gale asked brightly in an obvious distraction.
"They're not our traps, but the goblins'." the female hunter said. "Little bastards have been scouting around for days trying to find our encampment. You're lucky you didn't run into one of their patrols."
"Actually we did." Shadowheart replied, before turning to me. "Are we really going to be bailing our rash... companion... out of the consequences of her own actions again?" she remonstrated.
The grating of githyanki teeth was clearly audible to us all even at this distance.
"If she can act with a little more discipline from now on." I stared grimly up at my captive audience. "Because rushing off on your own after we got separated was a very bad idea. You were lost in the wilderness with no idea of where you were and probably not that much experience in the Faerunian environment, and you left behind potential native guides and extra swords to proceed alone through hostile country. Without even any supplies, let alone reinforcements. Does that all begin to sound as foolish as it actually was now that I've listed it out loud?"
"Yes." she hissed through gritted teeth. "I-" she exhaled heavily. "Perhaps not all of my recent choices were... tactically optimum." she conceded like pulling teeth. "Would you cut me down now?"
I am still NOT saying it! she followed up mentally.
"Thank you." I said politely, and went to go find the other end of the rope trap keeping her up and help lower her to the ground.
"You dare set yourself up as my leader?" the githyanki fumed to me as soon as her feet touched the dirt. "You might as well suggest a wyvern bow to worms! Amongst my people authority is earned only by proven deeds!"
Maker, it's like I'm back talking to the Arishok. I grumbled in the privacy of my own thoughts. Because the uncompromising militarism and arrogance of githyanki manners was very much reminding me of the qunari at this moment.
"Then why do you offer me only words and not deeds?" I shot back, more than familiar with the rhythm of qunari negotiations by now. "I've saved your life twice already, once on the nautiloid and once right here. The very least you can do in return is help save ours from these parasites."
"You... are not entirely inaccurate." she conceded reluctantly. "Very well, we have an accord. I will fight alongside you as one of your warband for as long as we both still need each other, and lead you to my people so we may there be cured. After that much is done then we go our separate ways."
"Done." I agreed. "Come on, our new acquaintances are taking us to their settlement. There's supposed to be a druid there, a healer."
"As well as this 'Zorru', who can tell us where he encountered others of my people and thus give us a lead towards the nearest githyanki creche." she mused out loud. "Yes, this is a valid course of action."
"I'm glad you approve." Shadowheart said icily. "Just remember - you gave your word to act as one of the party from now on. Don't you dare break it."
"You dare insult my honor?" she rounded on Shadowheart angrily. "A warrior of the Gith? I should-"
"Ladies." I spoke over both of them firmly. "We're all in the same boat now, so let's not rush to toss each other overboard." I looked at Shadowheart first, because she had been going a bit out of her way to pick a fight-
"All right." Shadowheart lowered her eyes. "Allies for now." I turned my 'angry older brother' glare towards our githyanki friend before she could say anything to break the mood.
"It is as she says." the githyanki muttered. "I am Lae'zel, of Creche K'liir. Know that you have made a valuable ally this day."
After we all finished introducting ourselves - the two hunters were named Damays and Nymessa, of a people called the 'tieflings' - we fell in behind them as they led us back towards the druid's grove. I wordlessly handed Lae'zel a canteen, because she had to be thirsty as anything after hanging there for who knew how many hours, and she grabbed it and drained it without a single word of acknowledgement before handing it back. I began to wonder at how young she might be by her people's standards, because what I'd been told was a warrior race engaged in a generations-long struggle wouldn't seem to have this much room for impractical pride unless she personally had little field experience so far-
"Shouting up ahead." Damays said worriedly. "We're almost at the grove, but something's wrong-"
"Double time!" I called, and we all broke into a run. We passed another travelstone and came out into a small clearing before a stone cliff-wall about fifteen feet high and topped by a crude wooden battlement. Several more tieflings stood on top of it, looking down at a small party of human warriors shouting up at them from the ground. All of them were shaken and sweating, as if they'd just run a desperate race, and their unbandaged wounds and the goblin arrow still sticking out of one of their shields told me what they'd been running from.
"Open the gate!" the leader of the human party screamed.
"Nobody gets in!" one tiefling called down from the battlement. "Zevlor's orders!"
"That pack of goblins will be on us any second!" the man screamed back.
"But I can't risk-" the one tiefling replied.
"THEN LOWER A DAMNED ROPE!" I shouted at him as we ran up to join the other adventuring party. "We've got two of your scouts trapped out here with us, so get us in that way if you can't risk opening the gate!"
"Fetch a rope! Quickly!" someone called from up above us, as we all fell into a battle line with the others.
"Quick thinking there, friend!" the leader of the adventurers called out to me. "I'm Aradin. We get out of this alive, I'm buying you a drink!"
"Pale ale's my favorite." I said back to him cheerfully, as the yelping of some unfamiliar type of beast started sounding from the path entrance across the clearing. A pair of goblins riding two misshapen monster-wolves burst into the clearing, followed by a squad of goblin infantry running behind them.
"Dammit, not enough time!" I swore. "KEEP YOUR HEADS DOWN UP THERE, THEY'VE GOT ARCHERS!" I shouted as the goblins grinned evilly at us where we stood trapped with our backs to the wall. They lazily settled themselves into a battle line of their own and began to slowly advance across the clearing towards us, holding their fire until they got into easy bow range-
"Gale, have you got anything that blinds or flashes?" I called to him quickly. "Cast it before they turn us into archery targets against this backstop!"
"Fog Cloud!" he called out in immediate reply, and the rear line of goblins were obscured just before they had a chance to start firing at us. A few arrows still flew blindly out of the mist, but hit no one. Shadowheart took the opportunity to cast a quick spell of her own, a blessing of some kind, and we felt extra strength and steadiness of hand flow into us.
"They're off-balance! CHAAAARGE!" I called out, and took off towards the wolf-riding vanguard at a dead run. Gale hung back with the female bowman of the adventurers and the two tiefling hunters, who began to support us with cantrips and arrow fire as the rest of us hit the goblins' main force head-on.
I sprinted out ahead, making myself the vanguard and the most obvious target, and then did a powered leap directly over the heads of the two wolf-riders as they focused on me and left them skidding helplessly through our front lines to come to a halt barely fifteen feet in front of our bowmen. Out of the corner of my eye I glimpsed Gale casting a spell that bathed wolves and their riders in a cone of flame from his outstretched hands and left them stumbling backwards and screaming in painly, only to be helplessly shot down by the archers. The fog cloud dissipated as soon as Gale turned his concentration to his next spell, but it had done its job of delaying and confusing the remaining goblins just long enough for us to close the gap, and we hit them in a flying wedge.
"H'taka!" Lae'zel screamed a joyous battlecry as she gathered some type of magical energy around her and did a twenty-foot flying leap of her own to get ahead of me and engage the apparent goblin leader where he stood in the midst of his archers. I left her to the job of gutting him while I covered her vulnerable flank with a quick slash, sending another goblin reeling away, and then the rest of us caught up and piled on as the remaining infantry had to drop their now-useless bows and hurriedly grab for their clubs or axes. Shadowheart cast a spell of her own that struck the goblin's own spellcaster with a brilliant energy bolt, ruining whatever spell they were attempting in mid-cast, and then followed up with a relentless series of blows with her mace. I spun into a wide sweeping whirlwind cut, bringing another pair of goblins down, and then turned to face the furious charge of one of the wolf-things as it broke away from our archers and made a lunge at what it had hoped would be our undefended backs.
I switched to the Bulwark stance, which used properly focused internal energy and balance to make a defending warrior nigh-impossible to knock down or push against their will, and set myself to receive the enemy's charge. The wolf-thing yelped in surprise as it unaccountably failed to shift my feet so much as an inch despite being three times my mass and hitting me in a full charge, and the battering it took as it ran full-on into the flat of my blocking greatsword broke off several of its fangs and dislocated its jaw. I took advantage of its shock to split its skull from scalp to jawbone, noted that the two wolf-riders and the other wolf-thing were already dead and our rear line had taken no apparent casualties, and then returned my attention to the main battle.
"For the Gate! For the Gate!" Aradin's voice came to me with a heartfelt battle cry, a necessity in a confusing melee like this to avoid being accidentally spitted by one of your allies, and I witnessed him and his partner flanking and trapping a pair of goblins up against one of the nearby boulders with a smoothness befitting long-practiced teamwork as Lae'Zel and Shadowheart, their animosity put aside at least for the moment, did the same with almost equal smoothness against the goblins' other flank. I did a hasty head count, matching still-standing and fallen goblins against the number of them that I'd carefully made sure to note before we began our counterattack-
"Two of them got away!" I cried out. "We've got to get after them before they bring the whole damn tribe back here!" I broke into a frantic run, heading as desperately as I could for the distant figures I now glimpsed at the very other end of the clearing as it frantically ran for the same path they'd taken to reach here-
"Damnable roaches!" a stranger's voice called out, and an eldritch blast flew down to strike one of the fleeing goblins directly between its shoulder blades with a bolt of green fire and send it crashing to the ground. With a dramatic leap a dark-skinned man dressed in an elaborate red-and-black doublet and brandishing a rapier leapt almost ten feet down from the high rock he'd fired his mage-bolt from to land impossibly lightly on his feet menacing the other goblin, which had fearfully turned to face him rather than also get shot in the back. Our new ally had apparently raced along the top of rock wall on our right flank all the way down from the battlement by the gate to cut the corner on the fleeing goblins to intercept them-
"Provoke the Blade-" he proclaimed dramatically as he batted the goblin's clumsy swing aside with a flourish and a parry, only to immediate cut over into a swift riposte. "-and suffer its sting!" he finished, as his rapier drove directly in under the last goblin's breastbone and out through its spine.
"Neatly done." I complimented him as I drew to a halt nearby. "And that's the last of them, thank goodness."
"You did good work yourself." the arcane warrior nodded back to me. "If you hadn't so swiftly organized a counter-attack, the Grove would have been in the gravest danger." He finished wiping his blade clean and sheathed it, and then extended his hand to shake. "Wyll, the Blade of Frontiers."
"Hawke." I introduced myself, and we shook hands. "You live here?" I asked as we strode back towards the other.
"Just visiting, same as yourself." he replied cheerfully. "Although given all the dark and dangerous things that have been menacing these good people lately, they need all the help that they can get."
"Is that the last of them?" a new tiefling, older and dressed in full warrior's armor, called down to us from the top of the battlement.
"Looks to be, Zevlor!" Nymessa the hunter called up to him.
"Thank the Gods, that was too close." this Zevlor replied. "Open the gate! We've got to get them all inside before more goblins come!" A section of the rock wall began to slowly inch upwards as the tieflings on the battlement began hauling on a pair of windlasses - apparently these 'druids' had hid the gate to their hideaway by disguising it as part of the rock formation.
"Tempus' blade, we came through that barely by the skin of our teeth." Aradin greeted me as we drew up alongside and filed through the open gateway. "If you hadn't come along, we'd have all been in for it. You've more than earned that ale."
"What were you thinking, leading the goblins here?" Zevlor said challengingly as he hurriedly came down a nearby path to meet us just inside the gateway. "And where is Halsin? What the hell happened?"
"Ease off!" Aradin said belligerently as the two of them faced off. "Fat lot of help you and all your useless tieflings were, sitting up there just watching us almost get shot full of holes-"
"We just finished one battle, and you want to start another one?" I interrupted them firmly. "Stop letting the blood race and just breathe."
"Sorry," Zevlor said, taking a step back and exhaling heavily. "But the leader of these druids left with Aradin's expedition here and now they're coming back without him, and with a pack of goblins on their heels to boot?"
"We didn't ask him to come!" Aradin burst with frustration. "He invited himself along, damn well demanded it of us! And he wasn't the only one we lost! There was a small army of gobbos in there, not just the little band we'd been told to expect! When they hit us it was all any man could do to get himself out, and those that fell behind-" He trailed off. "There was only three of us standin' at the end, and dozens of them. What the hell were we supposed to do except run? Drop dead just for your convenience?"
"Damn." Zevlor swore. "No, not that-" he shook his head. "But without Halsin to speak for us, I'm afraid the druids won't let any of us stay here. This is all such a mess!"
"You got that much right, at least." Aradin agreed. "Look, me and my lot? We're pulling out. There's barely any of us left, and some of us are wounded besides. And our whole quest's a lost cause now, with that army of gobbos sitting right on top of the prize. So to hell with this whole mess, we're getting back to Baldur's Gate before those goblins finish cutting this place off." He turned to me, and reached into his pouch to toss me a coin. "Sorry I can't stand you that ale I owe you in person, but as soon as I can see to my people's wounds a bit we've got to get right back on the road. You and your team are welcome to come with us if you want - you're all damn good in a fight, we could use you."
"We've got a quest of our own, and we can't leave it." I explained to him. "Good fortune to you on the road."
"You too, mate." Aradin nodded at us, and he and his two remaining companions turned and left.
"I'm Zevlor," he introduced himself to our party after Aradin and his team had headed off. "I'm the leader of these refugees. Welcome to the Emerald Grove... at least for now."
"Do the druids have any healer other than this Halsin?" I asked him. "We're definitely in need of one."
"His apprentice, Nettie, should be able to see to you." Zevlor assured us. "Her workroom is in the Grove's underground chambers, you can find the entrance to them in the center courtyard across from their big sacred idol. I'd take you there, but I've got to go get a working party organized to clean up those bodies and at least try to hide some of the trail they left here so when the rest of their tribe comes looking for them, we can at least buy some time before they find us."
"It's all right, I'll show them the way." Wyll contributed obligingly, and as Zevlor went to go take charge of his people I turned and led our group deeper into the Grove.
Author's Note: Well, I got my BG3 configuration running again, but I lost all my saved games and am having to redo it from scratch. Oh well, that's what super easy god mode mods are for.
The further in we more I find myself diverting at least slightly from 'video game' logic. For example, you find Lae'zel in some elaborate suspended cage, not a trap that goblins would believably be using in the field. That's presumably so that things were easier to animate, but I don't have to worry about animation budget or physics modeling so I get to do what I want. Likewise, the tiefling hunters just tell you where the Grove is but don't lead you back there, because videogame logic has to account for 'Players who do the encounter and then go run in the opposite direction to do half a dozen sidequests or pick berries or whatnot before actually going to the next main quest location'. Likewise, there's no way in the crypt to recognize in advance that 'these bodies are totally lurking undead', although you could in theory set up your barrelmancy in advance anyways.
The 'losing power' effect of the tadpoles is BG3 canon - it's the explanation for why every party member in the game starts at level 1 and has to levelup from scratch, despite some of them having backstories as veteran adventurers. Gale in particular is explicitly an archmage in his character history, and one talented enough to have drawn the personal attention of Mystra besides, and yet he's level 1 same as the rest of you at the start of the game. So the game covered it with 'the tadpole infection basically dropped negative levels on everyone and they had to slowly work them off over the course of the game', and the same is happening here.
As for Astarion - spoiler alert, the party is not recruiting him. The in-story justification is that they simply went the other way from where you initially meet him, and he's not going to be hanging around for days until they possibly go back there. The Doylist reason is because there's simply no way Hawke wouldn't stake him as soon as he found out Astarion was a vampire. So rather than deal with that whole thing, Astarion simply gets to go off on his own just like if the party never recruited him in game. Which admittedly doesn't end very well for him in-game but, well, you can't save everyone.
