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

[DIT_grue]

"Noblestalk" I asked Shadowheart when he was gone.

Click to shrink...

"Noblestalk?"

 

[Larekko12]

Is shadow heart gonna end up getting mind blasted in a temple of Selune or lathander? That seems the easiest way to get in mindraped by Shar and convert cleric levels.

 

[TheChairIsAgainstTheWall]

Shadowheart dropped the spell and resumed her true appearance, then giggled.

Click to shrink...

Too many perspectives (heck, the devs) seem to forget that Shart's a Trickster Cleric. I'm glad you managed to find a way to make it feel like the correct subclass.

 

[cliffc999]

We'd had a fairly tiring day, so we just went back to the Selunite outpost and made camp before moving on. The next morning we gathered together and planned our next moves.

Dhourn had called the crystal he'd given us a 'memory shard', and I didn't have the faintest idea how to use one. Shadowheart couldn't ask him how either - the drow matriarch she'd been impersonating had been expected to already know. Fortunately, Gale was able to get it going after a brief period of magical experimentation, and the magically stored memories within the crystal flowed into our minds and filled them with vision. We saw a sprawling underground complex, the lower layer of which was built over a pool of bubbling magma. A vast open chamber, surmounted by a platform ringed with arcane machinery, was at the center of this lower layer. Above the platform was suspended a giant metallic cylinder, mounted inside an even larger cylindrical sleeve in a position where it could vertically slam down into the center of the platform with immense force - a hammer to the platform's anvil, a forge fit for a mythical titan to use. This was the Grymforge, which had been built adjacent to an even older temple complex of Shar nearby. The images faded away to a view of an Underdark map with a path clearly marked across an underground lake, and then brief images of various landmarks on the lake to help follow the path with.

We blinked away the phantom sights and sounds as the crystal faded. "Damn. That's very useful indeed." I said. "Without this map we might have been sailing around on that underground lake for days."

"I saw a boat moored at the docks of the village where we fought the duergar." Wyll contributed. "That must have been the one the slave-hunters took to get here."

"Well they're not around to complain if we borrow it, now are they?" Karlach tossed in.

There was apparently some type of magical engine on this boat, so after we figured out which lever to pull all we had to do was get on the rudder and steer. Which was good for us, because otherwise it would have been a very long way to row. We'd been underway for almost an hour, sailing down the long and narrow underground lake and tacking occasionally as we reached one of the landmarks the map had shown us, when we spotted the running lanterns of another boat like ours approaching us across the water.

"You there, hoon!" the elderly duergar in command shouted to us as their boat maneuvered alongside ours. "What the hell are you doing in that boat?"

"We found it at some abandoned docks on the other side of the lake." I answered truthfully.

"That boat belonged to us! Where's the crew?!?" he demanded belligerently, as the crew of his boat muttered and readied their weapons.

"Those must have been the dead duergar we found in the village, then." I said calmly. "There wasn't much left of them. Looked like a bulette had torn them to shreds."

"So you just figured 'what the hell, leave 'em to rot and steal their boat?'" the lead duergar glowered at me. His eyes narrowed, and I felt a brief push against my thoughts. "Eurgh!" he cursed. "You're another one of those damned True Souls, aren't you?"

I 'pushed' back with my thoughts and was surprised to not feel the little shiver that I'd learned had meant I was talking to another tadpole bearer - apparently this was one of the duergar who had innate psionics of their own. "Yes." I leaned into his misapprehension. "We came down the Underdark entrance from an outpost of ours on the Chionthar, and we're bound for Moonrise via the Grymforge route. We took the boat because it was there and it was a hell of a long way to swim."

"Hrmph." he snorted. "It's still our boat, but at least you're saving us the trouble of bringing it back." His eyes narrowed suspiciously. "I'm heading across the lake to bury what's left of 'em. I see anything there that makes your story sound like bullshit, you're dead meat when we get back. You try buggering off up the elevator before we get back, we'll send word to Moonrise about what you've done and then what your boss will do to you will make you wish we'd killed you."

"Then we've got nothing to worry about." I shrugged, and with another glower from the duergar captain their boat peeled away and headed back the way we'd came.

"Those 'duergar' don't sound like people who are as easily as hoodwinked as goblins are." I thought out loud. "I wonder why they're working with the Cult of the Absolute, if they're not tadpoled themselves?"

"Especially considering that duergar hate surfacers." Halsin agreed.

"Probably 'cause they're bein' paid to." Karlach shrugged. "Saw a lot of that with Gortash - all different types of folks who normally wouldn't so much as say hello to each other without a knife, all workin' side by side without a hitch because enough coin was on the table for everybody. And it worked... until someone missed a payday."

"Sounds just like Kirkwall." I said amusedly.

"Sounds like every large city I've ever heard of." Halsin agreed. "There's a reason I live in the wilderness."

Several hours later we spotted points of light in the distance, that expanded into two large beacons of flame as we drew nearer. The lake narrowed into a channel, and that channel passed underneath a series of giant arches of black stone, the outermost arch surmounted by the beacons. The support columns of the arches were carved into the forbidding obsidian shapes of robed women - the same woman for each pillar, tall and severe and wearing a mask familiar to me from Shadowheart's wolf memory-

"Images of Lady Shar." Shadowheart whispered reverently at the large stone idols holding up the arches we were sailing under. "We've- ah!" she winced and clutched her hand.

"Let me-" I reached out for her, and she shook her head rapidly.

"No- save your strength." she asked me. "We're about to sail into trouble, you can't waste your energy." She closed her eyes and breathed heavily, stoically powering through the pain on her own. I growled lightly in frustration but yielded to her reasoning, and concentrated on guiding the boat to shore.

Several duergar ran to the pier as soon as they saw us approaching and met us on the dock. "Identify yourselves!" their leader growled.

"True Soul Edowin and party, bound for Moonrise Towers." I answered, giving the name of the dead True Soul we'd met outside the druid grove. Minthara might have sent a message back about 'True Soul Anthor' before we'd departed the temple of Selune so I didn't want to be using that name, but since I'd sent Edowin's siblings back to Baldur's Gate and told them I'd take care of reporting in myself it was vastly unlikely that the Cult of the Absolute knew he was dead yet.

"You're bound for nowhere until either you or your fellow Twat Soul settles up!" the lead duergar snarled back. "Your temple promised us a load of coin when this expedition succeeded, but we haven't found shit after weeks of digging and now that idiot Nere has gone and buried himself alive! So like hell you're getting out of here until after we get paid!"

I gave a mental nod to Karlach for hitting the nail right on the head. "Who's in charge here?" I asked. Arguing with this guard wouldn't change anything, and would only risk things escalating into a fight.

"Sergeant Thrinn, and she's up that way." he pointed. "Trying to get your idiot comrade out from under that pile of rocks before he chokes to death."

The Grymforge complex we'd landed in was built on an epic scale. This wasn't merely a series of underground passages, not even an underground building, but a giant vaulting cavern filled with black stone structures worthy of a cathedral. Although everything was coated in dust and there were more than a few places where the stone had collapsed there were still multiple staircases, walkways, battlements, and vistas, all spanning deep chasms and islands of unworked stone. It was downright awe-inspiring, in a blood-chilling and intimidating fashion.

"Glory to the Nightsinger." Shadowheart prayed under her breath as she looked around at the architecture of this long-fallen temple complex of Shar. I whistled inwardly at the sheer expense it must have taken to build this place - whatever the church of Shar was, it was no mere cult. The Chantry would have hesitated at funding this elaborate a construction, unless the site in question had been very holy to it indeed-

"You there! Surfacers!" an elderly duergar who was busy examining the collapse called to us. "Come over here and have a look at this!"

"We need to see your commander." I called back.

"Come on, it'll only take a minute!" he insisted. "I just want a fresh pair of eyes on this, I can't figure it out!"

"Might as well." Wyll suggested. "Maybe if we indulge him, we can draw him out a little on what's going on around here."

We trooped over and looked more closely at the collapsed section he was pointing at, which had sealed off a side corridor.

"They want me to work out a plan to clear this, but I can't do that until I figure out what caused the collapse." the duergar engineer muttered to himself. "But there's something here I'm missing. You know anything about siegecraft?"

"Just the basics." I admitted.

"Field engineering was part of githyanki military training." Lae'zel said. "And..." her eyes narrowed as she took a closer look at the rubble. "These stones... they are not worn, they are split. This was no crumbling away due to erosion or age. Something shattered this wall."

"I got that much already." our engineer acquaintance muttered. "But I can't figure out what caused this! Smokepowder leaves a different pattern of destruction entirely-"

"What the literally hell?" Karlach suddenly swore out loud, and bent over to very closely examine some of the stones. My eyebrows raised as she incongrously took a sniff, as if she were a bloodhound. "Look at these yellow traces here, see that?" She pointed at where the edges of some of the split stone blocks had a faint yellow dusting. "I've seen this before!"

"You have? What is it?" the duergar asked. "It's not any explosives residue I'm familiar with."

"It's brimstone." Karlach said flatly. "Infernal brimstone, not just the mundane sulfur you've got up here on the Prime. I spent longer than I want to remember with this shit stinking in my nostrils, no way I could miss the smell." She looked around warily at the walls. "Something from the Nine Hells smashed this section up. Something big."

"You've got to be shitting me." the engineer swore. "That's why this place was a ruin full of long-dead corpses when we got here? Devils running amok? What the fuck were these Sharrans summoning?"

"Fortunately, whatever it was would have departed long since." Gale said. "If our historical data is correct the Sharrans haven't used this ruin for at least a century, and no summoning would last remotely that long."

"Yeah, that's about how old the skeletons we've been findin' are." the engineer shrugged. "But the good news is, if whatever did this has already been gone for decades then I don't have to worry about it." He drew out a scroll from his pouch and started jotting down some notes. "All right, this section's clear to excavate.... when we can finally get around to it." he muttered. "Thanks for the help."

"The Church of Shar doesn't summon devils." Shadowheart muttered after we were out of earshot from the old engineer. "They're not our allies at all."

"Well, you got any enemies who summon things then?" Karlach asked practically.

"Should I start with the 'A's'?" Shadowheart replied with bitter amusement.

We came out into a large round chamber whose floor was a large round metal platform - a grated one, through which we could see lava distantly below. Clearly we were drawing near the central forge chamber of the Grymforge, the one we'd seen in the memory shard-

Our attention was immediately drawn by the party of deep gnome slaves who were laboriously clearing away a small mountain of rubble blocking the passage at the far end of the chamber. A duergar overseer was mercilessly whipping them even as they hauled rock.

"Faster, you lazy sots!" he was shouting. "I don't care how long it takes, you're not stopping until it's done!"

"We're running out of time, Dunnol!" a female duergar called to him. "The air's going bad in there! If the True Soul dies-"

"It's not my fault these weaklings can't dig!" he shrugged back helplessly. "A mere twelve hours and they're already about to drop!"

"Then go heat up some rocks!" she barked back at him. "Let's see how much these lazy buggers want to lollygag when we strap fire to their legs-"

I gritted my teeth and focused very much on playing the role I'd assumed, when my hand was twitching with the desire to just start beheading duergar right now. Which would have been a very stupid idea seeing how outnumbered we were.

"Sergeant Thrinn? True Soul Edowin." I let my commander's voice speak for me, and followed it up with a brief mental push of my tadpole as identification. "What's the situation?"

"Another True Soul?" the scarred duergar woman turned to me. "Useless rakkah of a lookout could've told me." she muttered. "It's pretty bad, sir. The whole entranceway collapsed when we missed a trap the Sharrans left behind, and now True Soul Nere's trapped in there." she angrily shook her head. "Worse yet, his air's turning foul - he's only got hours left, and it's both our heads if we let him die."

"Haven't you got any smokepowder you can use to blast through that obstruction?" I asked.

"No." she swore viciously. "Half the slaves died in the initial cave-in, but a couple of them used the confusion to make a break for it - and one of them took the damn explosives with her when she ran, the little thief!" She cursed. "I've got some men searching for her but there's entire sections of this old ruin we haven't cleared yet, and you could hide a small army in those."

"What were you looking for in there?" I asked.

"Entrance to the deeper temple complex." Thrinn replied. "General's orders. True Soul Nere would know more."

"Right." I said, thinking furiously. The longer we stayed here the more chance we had of getting caught out, but whatever these Absolute cultists were looking for was probably something we didn't want them to find. On the other hand, that suspicious guard had said we wouldn't be allowed to leave if- wait.

"The guards you had at the docks said something about 'being paid', and also referred to True Soul Nere in pretty rough terms." I said. "But you're a loyal follower of the Absolute-?" I inquired.

"Damn straight I am, sir, and so are all my men." she said proudly. "The problem is that at least half of us down here aren't my men - they're mercenaries we hired when it turned out this excavation was going to be a bigger project than the General could spare enough Underdark veterans for. Greedy bastards won't lift a finger unless we pay them for every step they take, and with True Soul Nere trapped and out of action-" she trailed off knowingly.

"They said something about not being cheated out of their pay." I agreed. "But surely you'd have the authority to keep the contract going until True Soul Nere's replacement got here, if he passed away?"

"Assuming that Moonrise didn't just cancel the entire project." she corrected me. "The General's been getting frustrated with our lack of progress so far as is, and things are heating up topside anyway. And if they pulled the plug, then Brithwin and his men are afraid they won't get paid at all."

"Then I'll have to go talk to Brithwin." I reassured her. "The good news is, one of my people is a druid - we should be able to track down your missing explosives thief without much difficulty."

"Thank the Absolute." Thrinn said relievedly. "All right sir, I'll hold things together here until you can get back. But, uh, respectfully sir? Don't drag your feet - we don't have much time left."

As we turned to leave, I noticed one of the deep gnome slaves gave us an absolutely livid and hateful look... and my eyebrows raised when I recognized him as Barcus, the same deep gnome we'd rescued from the goblin patrol in Moonhaven. Well, he'd said he was coming down to the Underdark to look for his missing friend, but...

"You, gnome. Over here." I ordered him, and then led our party off out of the chamber. Thrinn looked up curiously at my taking one of the slaves with me, but then shrugged and decided it was none of her business - 'True Soul Edowin' outranked her, after all.

"You." Barcus spat hatefully at us as soon as we were out of earshot. "Did you think it was funny, freeing me knowing all along your friends would recapture me when I got down here?"

"We're infiltrating." I reassured him. "The way True Souls identify each other mentally - we can counterfeit it. Sort of." I didn't-quite-lie. "But now we're stuck in this mess, and we need to get out. To get all of you out." I said.

"Why should I trust you?" Barcus said darkly.

"Fine, don't trust us." Shadowheart said flatly. "And then you get to just go back there and wait with Thrinn and her cheerful friends while we go around doing who-knows-what... knowing that you'll be the first person she questions with a flensing knife and a bucket of rock salt if we fail, because she saw you speaking to us. Or you can answer our questions and give us that much better a chance of not getting caught."

"No promises." Barcus said firmly. "But ask your questions."

"First question - is it true that half the duergar down here are about ready to kill the other half if they think they're being swindled?" I asked him.

"Oh yes." Barcus nodded. "We've all been hoping for that to happen - it'd be our only chance of getting out of here! Unfortunately, neither the cultist duergar or the mercenaries want to hear their slaves say anything, so we haven't been able to do anything to help push them over the edge."

"Leave that to me." I reassured him. "Second question - we need the explosives your runaway stole, but if we just walk up to her she's got even less reason to cooperate with us than you do. Is there anything we can say that would make her less suspicious?"

"How do I know you're not just trying to trick me into giving her up?" Barcus glared at us again.

"Would you please shapeshift into something with an excellent tracker's nose?" I asked Halsin. "That isn't a wolf." I hurriedly added.

Halsin grinned and then turned into a large brown bear. I hadn't even been aware that bears could track by scent but- well, I wasn't a druid.

"See? We don't need your help to find her." I told Barcus. "We just need your help to talk her down after we find her. If we were genuinely Absolute cultists, we'd just kill her."

"Her name was Philomeen." Barcus reluctantly gave up. "Tell her Laridda sends her regards. The overseers might know her name, but wouldn't know who she was friends with."

"Last question. Which one is Brithwin?" I inquired, and after Barcus pointed him out we sent him back to Thrinn with a reassurance that he had been cooperative enough.

"Elder Brithwin?" I asked the grim gray-haired duergar who'd been standing and quietly discussing things with several of his troops.

"Unless the next words out of your mouth are 'I've got the money', Twat Soul, I've got nothing to say to you." Brithwin glared.

"I've got good news and bad news." I told him. "Which one do you want first?"

"Are you jokin'?" he narrowed his eyes at me hatefully. "Bad."

"They're very likely to close out the whole project and you won't get paid a coin from Moonrise." I admitted to him frankly.

"Ruttin' sonofa-" he snarled, one hand going to the hilt of his axe as his compatriots did likewise. "Are you playin' with us?!?" he snarled.

"And the good news is, there's a party of infiltrators who are working against the Cult of the Absolute and are perfecty willing to help you kill Nere, Thrinn, and their loyalists so you can take everything they've got and vanish back into the Underdark." I said cheerfully.

"Oh yeah? And just where would this oh-so-convenient party of infil-" he scoffed, before he stopped and looked at us. "Do you think I'm an idiot? We've got mind powers of our own, Twat Soul. We can feel you." His mind briefly pushed against mine. "See? You smell like a mind flayer took a shit in your skull! There's no way you're working against the Absolute."

I pointed at Halsin. "Test him."

"Hey, wait a minute-" he began, his eyebrows raising in puzzlement. "How come he isn't-?"

"Here's the plan." I interrupted him. "We'll track down the runaway and get the smokepowder, use it to blow open the rubble and let Nere out. Thrinn will call all her people together - because I tell her to - and be very distracted by her boss' safe return. If you had all of your people in position..." I trailed off meaningfully.

"Boy, don't tell me how to plan a decent ambush, I've seen more battles then you've crapped in diapers." Brithwin boasted. "But there's no fucking way I'm going to risk my neck just because you're spinning me some kind of bullshit loyalty test. You're gonna have to prove yourself first."

"I'm listening." I said.

"Nere has one of those damn arcane eye things patrolling around - have you seen it yet?" he asked us, and I shook my head. "Well, it's fuckin' creepy... and it never sleeps, and it sees everything. Relays it all straight to Moonrise Towers, too, or at least he said it does. We don't have any chance of pulling off a mutiny and getting away clean so long as that thing is still up and around." He grinned wickedly at us. "You want me to believe you're really not with the Absolute? Smash the eye."

"Do you know what it's weaknesses are?" I asked him.

"It can see in the dark, and it can see the invisible." he said. "I had people try sneaking up on it that way - no dice. On the other hand, it can't see all the way around - its cone of vision looks to be only the front half of the sphere. It also doesn't move very fast. On the downside... it doesn't sleep, and if you move near it, it knows. I had several of my best scouts try making a 'game' of 'playing' with it, until Nere threw a tantrum and told us to stop, and they never got close."

"You said that you had your scouts try sneaking up on it. Did they ever try leading it anywhere?" I asked.

"Yeah, but even with one baiting it, nobody else ever successfully got behind it." he said.

"Right." I saw a plan coming together. "I'll need you to recommend an isolated upper gallery where nobody else will see or hear what's going on and I'll need you to introduce my spellcaster friend-" I nodded at Shadowheart. "To one of your scouts so she can borrow his face. I think that should be sufficient."

"... heh." Brithwin chuckled. "I like surfacers who think they're clever. If they're right, I learn something useful... and if they're wrong, I see something hilarious." he grinned cruelly. "All right, you get one chance."

Brithwin gave us an ideal location for the ambush, and Shadowheart - disguised as one of the duergar scouts - lured it up there by simply acting suspicious enough to follow, but not suspicious enough to cause a hue and cry. But we'd had Halsin shapeshift into a small bird first... and as soon as the orb was around the corner and well away from anyone else, he simply shapeshifted into the form of a bear... in mid-air, directly above and behind the orb where it had no field of vision. And when half a ton of shapeshifted druid landed directly on top of the crystalline orb it was immediately smashed into dust, and then we simply swept the dust off a ledge and into a convenient chasm. No evidence, and nothing remotely visible on the orb that looked like any of us.

Halsin remained in bear form, and with his nose we tracked down the escaped Philomeen within fifteen minutes. There was a very tense moment where she almost committed suicide by igniting the entire barrel of smokepowder she'd stolen rather than be recaptured, but using her name and her best friend's name managed to convince her that we were actually sent by the gnomes to help her escape and not by the cultists to drag her back. It was rather suspicious in my mind how she was much more focused on getting the smokepowder - no, runepowder, as it was apparently some augmented formula - barrel away than she was on helping free her fellow slaves, but all we could get out of her was she had a 'more important mission'. Something odd going on there, but we didn't have time for that now. We did at least get her to give us a small charge of the runepowder to help blow through the cave-in with.

Our destroying the orb had Brithwin convinced we were willing to help him betray the Absolute cultists, and my authority as a false True Soul was sufficient to get Thrinn to have all her people concentrated and out in the center of the chamber when we cleared the cave-in. Nere turned out to be a dark elf, and a raving egomaniac and psychotic one as that, but we really didn't have much of a chance to talk to him as I simply drew my sword and killed him while he was still in mid-rant. The moment of shock from Thrinn and her loyalists was all we needed - our entire party was right down there and drew their attention just long enough for Brithwin's mercenaries to unleash a devastating crossfire from where they'd carefully prepositioned themselves all around the rim of the chamber, and it took only a minute or two of hard fighting to mop them all up. We took a few wounds, but a short rest and a minor healing spell or two cleared that up.

Brithwin held to his end of the deal - he could take all the loot, but we'd keep the deep gnomes. I don't know if he thought we were abolitionists or just wanted to resell them as slaves ourselves, but he didn't care - not having to feed them on his journey back to the deep Underdark was enough reason for him to abandon them here. With the arcane eye destroyed with no clues as to who'd done it and the Absolute cultists all dead before they could send any messages, it would be so long before Moonrise Towers knew what had happened here that Brithwin's duergar would have more than enough time to make a clean break and getaway. So, outside of the fact that we had to let half of a ruthless band of slaving scum go so that we could kill the other half without committing suicide, it all worked out.

We gave the deep gnomes what food we could spare and directions back to the Underdark entrance we'd used - Brithwin had no use for the boats, so the deep gnomes could use those. And so, the Grymforge having finally been cleared of all hostile forces, we were ready to move on...

... but I'd had another idea.

"You really think we need the Adamantine Forge ourselves?" Wyll asked.

"We were badly outnumbered here, just like we were with the goblins." I said. "And just like there, we used our tadpoles to infiltrate, ambush, and eventually destroy." I shook my head. "We can't keep using the same plan forever and expecting it to work forever, because we'll be up shit creek if it doesn't. This forge was supposed to be able to create powerful magic weapons and armor - if we could make even one of those for ourselves here, it would be a valuable force multiplier. And unlike the duergar, we have access not only to a set of directions on how to use the forge-" I held up the book we'd recovered from the dead drow in the myconid village. "But we also know where the central chamber is thanks to the memory crystal, while the duergar were exploring blindly." I pointed at where we'd recently cleared away the cave-in. "They weren't even digging in the right direction to be looking for the Adamantine Forge, so-"

"-where were they going?" Gale followed my thought as we looked down the passage. "Because the Sharrans put a rather substantial trap on this passage - that's what caused the collapse in the first place."

"Well, let's have a look." Shadowheart said, and we cautiously went down the passage - clearing away the rubble had restored ventilation in here, thank goodness, so at least we could breathe the air - and after progressing a short way our jaws dropped as we came out and saw the most spectacular view we'd never imagined.

"By the Maker." I said. The passage had led to the stubby end of where a large stone bridge had been - a bridge that something had shattered almost end to end. A cavern so large that it defied all geological logic stretched out around us and beneath us, and visible in the distance below us was a majestic black cathedral of Shar, one so large and elaborate that it made what we'd been standing in look like an annex. An annex, I realized, that had been built to house the Adamantine Forge - something adjacent to the true underground fortress of the Dark Justicars that we'd been searching for, not actually part of it.

"This bridge led across this... this gulf, over and down to that temple." Shadowheart said. "And something destroyed it. Deliberately."

"More brimstone." Karlach said, looking at the end of the shattered bridge we were standing on. "What the fuck did they summon? Even in the Blood War you didn't see this kind of damage every day."

"If that's the main temple, then isn't that the way to Moonrise?" I complained. "The one that would let us bypass the Shadow-Cursed Lands? The way that's blocked?"

"The one duergar did mention the surface elevator in the Grymforge." Wyll contributed. "So we can still reach the surface relatively close to Moonrise Towers. Just not immediately under it."

"Oh, wonderful." I sighed. "Thank the gods we went and found the Blood of Lathander - if we have to cross even a short section of the Shadow-Cursed Lands, then we'll need it."

"If this is the scale on which our enemies could build, then I agree we should seek the Adamantine Forge before we move on." Lae'zel agreed. "Any advantage is better than none."

"Well, if I remember the crystal correctly..." I began, and we eventually managed to find the forge chamber after a vigorous explanation of the proper side passages, clearing away a small rockfall that had blocked one, and a precarious journey back across the sections of the Grymforge we'd already explored using a maintenance walkway almost a hundred feet above the cave floor, one that let us bypass an otherwise impassable barrier we'd have needed a full mining crew to get past. Using the forge would be a simple matter of placing some mithral ore in the melting chambers, bringing the forge to full heat, and then placing the proper mold in the central forge chamber and using the giant hydraulic drop hammer on the molten adamantine when it hit the mold.

"Right, we found enough mithral scraps and molds to make one suit of heavy armor and one weapon." I said. "On the plus side, the armor will be much tougher than anything we currently own, and the weapon will cut practically anything." I thought. "So, who gets which?"

Lae'zel shook her head. "I have the githyanki silver sword we took from the dead inquisitor - I need no lesser blade."

"I'm carrying a divine artifact for my weapon." Shadowheart said. "A bit hard to top that."

Karlach sighed. "I'd love the armor... except we don't have quite enough metal to make it in my size. They got enough there to make an axe for me?"

"We don't have an axe mould." I looked through what we had been able to scrounge up. "Got any use for a longsword?"

"Sure, if it'll cut like that." Karlach agreed. "So, do you or Lae'zel get the armor? Wyll's not a heavy armor type."

"Hawke." Shadowheart said immediately. "Is there a fight we've had yet that he hasn't taken the vanguard in?"

"Agreed." Lae'zel said.

"All right." I nodded. "Let's get started."

We slotted the first load of mithril ingots we've found into the proper chambers, then lowered the central platform down to operating level while we stood on the elevated outer ring. We turned the valves as the manual directed to start the flood of lava across the lowered platform that would help melt the mithril down into the malleable components that the forge would then compress together to turn into adamantine. The steam pressure built in the cylinders to fuel the drop hammer, and we waited for the process to reach full power.

The floor trembled.

"Don't tell me this thing is out of order!" I complained, and Gale peered at the control panel gauges and tried to make sense of them.

"I can't quite read these, but none of the needles seem to have wildly jumped from where they were when we started. So if there's no excessive pressure build-up, then what's causing it?" Gale analyzed.

The floor trembled harder, much harder, and we all staggered.

"That's not- something is coming!" Halsin cried in alarm.

A motion out of the corner of my eye drew my attention, and my blood turned to ice as I turned my head and beheld the most terrifying sight I'd seen since the Nightmare demon. A giant adamantine golem, at least three times the size of anything ever built in Orzammar, was rising up out of the lava pool that surrounded the Forge platform. The walls shook from its deafening mechanical roar as it looked from one to the other of us - we'd all been scattered around, not expecting trouble, and out of position-

"Sunbeam!" Shadowheart cried, and the mystic light leapt forth from the Blood of Lathander... and the massive golem soaked the hit. The adamantine metal of the golem, still glowing dully from its superheated lava bath, absorbed the mystic solar blast that had wrecked both the bulette and Glut as if she were shining a Light cantrip on a stone wall. The golem charged Shadowheart where she stood on the catwalk, surrounded by lava and with nowhere to retreat-

"No!" I shouted, but I was all the way across on the other side of the outer ring and couldn't possibly get there in time. Spells and eldritch blasts erupted from Gale and Wyll, but the golem contemptuously ignored them just as it was ignoring the Blood of Lathander. Arrows from Lae'zel's bow and my own joined the futile parade of missiles as Shadowheart bravely kept the Blood of Lathander squarely focused on the adamantine titan right up to the moment it's horrible, inexorable advance reached her-

-and it hammered her flat into the platform with a single cruel blow of its fist. The light of the Blood of Lathander guttered out and faded away as the holy mace rolled across the catwalk and lay still, and when the golem raised its fist and turned to us the only thing left of her was a sticky red mass on its hand and a shapeless mass of pulp laying horribly on the steel floor plates-

I didn't recognize the primal howl of rage filling my ears as my own voice until after I burned myself on the lava as I too-hastily ran towards the golem. Wyll abandoned his eldritch blasts and tried casting a warlock hex on the golem, hoping to make it miss or stumble, but there was no effect. Karlach managed to physically reach the thing first, ignoring the terrible heat as she climbed up on its back looking for a crevice or a seam where she could jam her sword... until the monstrosity reached up behind its own neck to pull her off, and she had to frantically let go and roll away. She barely avoided being stomped into the deckplates herself as this thing revealed more sophistication in its combat programming than I'd given it credit for-

I bared my teeth and pumped everything I had into the largest magic-disrupting smite I could fuel, hoping to nullify whatever the hell was animating this animated lump of nigh-invincible supermetal. I just about busted a gut overcharging my powers, and I actually managed to make the thing momentarily pause... and then it shook my efforts off like I wasn't even there. But I did manage to make it prioritize me as the greatest threat on the battlefield, as I was the only person here who'd damaged it at all. Now if I could only repeat what I'd done about fifty more times, and somehow manage to play keep-away with it long enough to do that, as well as spontaneously grow the limitless stamina I'd need to fuel that many smites, then-

The golem turned to face me as I stared at it from almost entirely across the platform, on the far side of the circle catwalk ringing the lowered center chamber. Its decision made, its targeting priorities set, it then turned away from the prone Karlach and started towards me. It's stride was as ponderous as a glacier, but just as impossible to stop. It would take maybe fifteen seconds for it to finish walking across the platform, but once it reached me nothing on Toril could stop it from crushing me as readily as it had Shadowheart, and any attempt on my part to run to either right or left would only help close the circle and let it reach me even faster.

It was odd how distracted your mind could get when you realized you were doomed. My intent combat-focus faded away. Even my rage at Shadowheart's death drained into despair. I focused on little, irrelevant details - the taste of sweat in my mouth, the eerie beauty of the reflected orange light from the lava, the shimmer of the heat haze around the superheated golem-

-and then my brain stuttered and connections randomly formed in my memory. The adamantine forging process as described in the manual. The purpose of the lava being to superheat the mithral blanks and make them soft enough to alloy. The molds into which the molten proto-adamantine would be poured-

-and then compressed-

I looked at the golem, which was almost halfway across the platform to me by now. I looked at the exact geometrical center of the platform, as carefully marked by the low elevated casing that held the moulding chamber.

And then I looked directly above the moulding chamber at the giant hydraulic piston... the one that was fully charged with steam pressure and waiting to compress the adamantine mould with nigh-irresistible force.

"Gale!" I shouted to where he still stood at the controls. "DROP THE HAMMER!"

The entire earth shook and a deafening clang filled our ears as more tons of hydraulic pressure than I even wanted to think about rammed a solid metal cylinder almost as thick and fully three times as tall as the golem straight down on top of its head. The adamantine metal, softened by the superheated lava that the golem had been waiding through this entire time, deformed underneath the impossible pressure we'd just subjected it to. The golem smashed flat to the ground, pinned underneath the drop hammer like a bug stuck to a corkboard. Gears turned, relief valves hissed, and the lava drained from the moulding platform as it began to raise back to the idle position. The drop hammer was hoisted back to its original position-

-and the fucking thing got back up.

The adamantine golem was visibly crushed on one side, limping, its motions now erratic and jerky, but it still wasn't fucking dead. Worse yet, I could see where the metal had cooled - and cold adamantine was effectively invulnerable to physical force.

"Reset the process! Reset it!" I shouted. "We've got to hit it again!"

And then I leapt down off the catwalk and ran directly towards the golem. It raised its fist high, just like it had for Shadowheart, and brought it crashing down- but I wasn't there. The damage it had taken had ruined its timing and balance, and so I had just enough of a window to roll clear. I clicked my magic speed boots and literally ran a half-circle around the damned thing, confusing it even more as it spun in place trying to track me. The valves hissed as the chamber lowered again-

"Get out of there!" Wyll yelled. "The lava's coming in! Get out of there!"

I tossed my sword at Karlach and used my now-free hands to start playing mountain climber on the golem just like she had. I just barely made it above the level of the lava as it rose, and the golem stood up to its knees in the molten slag. Burning agony flooded both my hands as the metal monstrosity I was holding onto began to superheat yet again, and unlike Karlach I wasn't effectively immune to non-magical flame. But I had to hang on and keep the golem focused on me, not letting it move out of the danger zone... I had to hang on just long enough...

"Gale, get ready to drop it!" I shouted at him from where I just barely hung on to the now red-hot golem, with an immediate crispy death waiting for me if I let go and no way to possibly jump clear in time.

"But that'll kill-" he began, before remembering Withers. "All right! Say when!"

"On three... two... ONE!" I shouted-

-and triggered the Amulet of Misty Step Gale had given me in the githyanki creche, and which I hadn't taken off since.

I materialized alongside him on the platform just in time to see the drop hammer come down again and crumple the already-crippled golem like a sheet of paper. The process cycled again, the lava drained, the cylinder raised...

... and the golem stayed down.

I sagged with relief, not even feeling the pain of the burns over a good portion of my body. We'd won.

"Withers?" I coughed weakly, and looked up to see him standing over me. "Would you please-"

"Of course." he reassured me, and then Shadowheart was there.

---

Author's Note: The Grymforge guardian is an almost guaranteed TPK if you don't know the trick about heating him in the lava and then dropping the hammer on him, and a two-hit fight if you do. And nope, sorry, no owlbear from the top rope. Although I did pay homage to the meme by having that be how the party killed the Arcane Eye.

The party needs to stop having people die in fights, yes. Although be fair, Grym is the other 'one of the toughest bosses in the entire damn game'. It is literally immune to all damage types unless it's superheated by the lava first, and that superheated debuff doesn't last very long.

 

[TyricGaias]

It's a Christmas miracle!

 

[rmrehfeldt]

Ironically I've never used the Hammer. I usually kite it with Ranged Attacks and an Open Hand Monk Berzerker Karachi.

 

[Simonbob]

Well.

Now they have a bunch of adamantine to make stuff from! That makes some pretty hardcore magic stuff.

 

[Yacov]

A giant adamantine golem, at least three times the size of anything ever built in Orzammar, was rising up out of the lava pool that surrounded the Forge platform. The walls shook from its deafening mechanical roar as it looked from one to the other of us - we'd all been scattered around, not expecting trouble, and out of position-

Click to shrink...

Huh, so I assume the Anvil of the Void wasn't destroyed by the Warden in this Hawke's timeline. That's the only way I can see Hawke knowing about golems from Orzammar.

Wonder if Hawke knows the "power source" of Thedas golems? That might color his perception of golems in Faerun.

 

[cliffc999]

Huh, so I assume the Anvil of the Void wasn't destroyed by the Warden in this Hawke's timeline. That's the only way I can see Hawke knowing about golems from Orzammar.

Click to shrink...

The tale of the Hero of Ferelden has had years to become a universally-known song and legend by the time Hawke left Thedas, and even in the other route there's a minimum of two golems in it - Shale and Caridin. So, I don't have to commit myself either way.

 

[Karmic Acumen]

Huh, so I assume the Anvil of the Void wasn't destroyed by the Warden in this Hawke's timeline. That's the only way I can see Hawke knowing about golems from Orzammar.

Wonder if Hawke knows the "power source" of Thedas golems? That might color his perception of golems in Faerun.

Click to shrink...

Not true? Almost all of Orzammar knows about it, Branka left specifically to find it, everyone knows who Caridin is down there (and the surface dwarfs too, that's the whole point of Paragons), and the Shaperate still has the 'Legion of Steel' under lock and key for when things are apocalyptic and they need the extra muscle of the last golems they have against the eternal blight. Yes, the Shaperate has a sub-division whose whole role is to manage the last golems Orzammar has. We don't know how many they are, but they exist.

Now, if Hawke had ever been to Orzammar, he wouldn't be so impressed with this cavern. That place is HUGE, and it's just a border town at the end of the day. There are much bigger Thaigs in the Deep Roads, Kal Sharok itself probably dwarfs the Sharran citadel complex entirely (and Orzammar too, for that matter, who does that already).

 

[cliffc999]

"Don't hover!" Shadowheart said stridently, before her stoic expression collapsed. "I'm sorry. I just-" She took a deep breath and visibly tried to collect herself. "It's... very kind.. that you care about me so much. But we're-" Her voice momentarily broke before it firmed up again into strictly professional tones. "The danger ahead of us is going to be much worse than what we've faced already. I'm certain of it. We have to all stay focused, or we'll never survive." She looked up at me briefly from where she sat, then her eyes flickered away again. "And... you promised me, that you wouldn't pressure me." she finished resolutely.

"All right." I agreed, immediately backing away with an inward wince. Perhaps I had been - okay, I definitely had been sticking to Shadowheart a little too closely ever since her death and resurrection, but apparently I hadn't been as subtle as I thought. Solicitude on this level was apparently something she wasn't comfortable with receiving, so if she needed a little professional distance to help her get past the shock instead then I could give her that. In fact, given that she'd clearly laid out her boundaries just now, I didn't have much choice.

We spent the rest of the day using the adamantine forge to make a suit of armor for me and a sword for Karlach, as we'd agreed. The remains of the golem were useless for our purposes - once the mithral alloy had been smelted and compressed into adamantine it was basically impossible to work with from then on. Superheating the golem in the lava and then hitting it with the full force of the compression hammer had just barely been enough to break it - the already-smelted and hardened metal wasn't useful for precision forging.

My new suit of armor was truly remarkable - it couldn't be cut or pierced by anything we knew of, unless they were lucky enough to slip the point through a joint or a seam. I wasn't invulnerable when wearing it, because the human on the inside of the armor was still vulnerable to impact forces and the armor could only absorb so much impact before transmitting the rest of the kinetic force to the squishy human underneath. After all, a suit of armor obviously needed to be flexible enough for a person to move in, so it was impossible to make absolutely rigid. But I was still much better defended than I had been before. In addition the armor had a useful quality of causing weapons that struck it to rebound, thus interfering with an opponent's accuracy after the first swing. Karlach's new sword was likewise a marvel, with an impossibly tough razor's edge that could cut through basically anything non-magical and still never need sharpening. I mildly regretted not having spent as much time cross-training with longswords and broadswords in addition to greatswords and reach weapons as she had, but I suppose it would have been greedy of me anyway to want both the adamantine armor and the weapon.

I tried to draw Shadowheart out a little more when we made camp that night, but she politely asked me for some time alone so that she could catch up on her meditations. By all appearances she wasn't at all shocky or traumatized from her near-permanent-death experience, unlike Wyll... but I had recently gotten a reminder that she was a talented actress. Still, she'd made her wishes plain so all I could do for now was give her the best support I could as a quiet, nearby presence and hope that if it did get to be too much then she'd open up to me about it.

The next day we took the surface elevator up from the Grymforge, to arrive in a small blackstone antechamber decorated with subtle Sharran iconography. The chamber was clean and free of debris - clearly it had been seeing regular use. A set of stairs led up to the surface, the elevator's upper terminus still being apparently at cellar level. A cold breeze wafting down the stairs told us that whatever entrance was up there, it was open to the outside.

The thing demanding our immediate attention, however, was the elderly wizard standing calmly at the foot of the stairs. He was a tall man, matching my height, and dressed in an elaborate but well-worn dusty red robe surmounted by an ornamented blue baldric. He had a tall pointy red hat, long messy gray hair and an equally disheveled thick gray beard, and a magical staff slung on his back.

"Ho there, wanderer." he greeted us in a cheerfully dotty voice. "Wouldst thou stay thy course a moment, to indulge an old man?"

"Elminster?" Gale greeted him with a voice of astonished delight.

"The very same, Gale." Elminster chuffed back in a more querulous tone of voice. "And a fair bit miffed he is too, finding himself forced to expose his best pair of boots to so many miles of cursed road on your behalf."

"Everyone, be known to my respected colleague and old teacher Elminster Aumar of Shadowdale, the single most renowned and accomplished archmage in Faerun." Gale said cheerfully. "Elminster, these are my friends." and he introduced us by name.

"Well met, sir archmage." I said politely. "What urgent errand brings you to us?"

"Straight to business, hey?" the old man looked knowingly at me. "Not even going to indulge me through a round or two of my 'daft old bugger' routine first? I do quite like that one when I'm out and about, you know."

"Don't encourage him." Gale teased.

"Your friend is correct." Elminster said to Gale more soberly. "As much as I'd love the comfort of a good jest or two first, I was bid to spare neither time nor my own self to find you. She sent me, Gale. You know of whom I speak."

"Your goddess?" I realized.

"Mystra." Gale said, his face going pale.

We settled down and broke out some food for a second breakfast, because Elminster hadn't had his first one yet and hospitality was important. After we'd shared a meal, during which Elminster had indeed entertained himself by affecting the mannerisms of a dotty old eccentric who wasn't quite all there, he continued on with his tidings.

"Gale, my boy." Elminster said soberly. "I've come to address a most pressing matter, so I'll speak as plainly as I can and forswear the accustomed frills that normally decorate my speech. As your friend Hawke surmised, I am here on behalf of Mystra. The message and the charge I bring you are hers, not mine."

"Mystra actually speaks to archmages?" I asked him, awestruck. Because yes, I already knew that Gale had claimed to have known her personally, and I'd even believed him, but there was believing and then there was finding out-!

"Elminster is first among Mystra's Chosen, the very very few wizards that She has honored by taking them into Her personal service. I daresay Elminster's received more sendings from the goddess than the actual high priest of Her religion. Then again, he's had more than several centuries to accumulate them." Gale explained.

"All true." Elminster nodded, and then sighed. "We both know where you erred, Gale. We needn't rake you over those coals again. The matter of import is thus; Mystra has said that you're to be given a chance at redemption."

"Mystra would consider... forgiveness?" Gale asked, awestruck.

"She would consider what She considers to be forgiveness." Elminster replied, his features briefly downcast before he schooled his expression into a firm mask. "Mystra is aware of the misadventures that have befallen your party. She knows of your strife with the Absolute, that most insidious of evils."

"Blunt truth? We could really use some divine intervention right now." I broke in.

"That is the very purpose of my visit." Elminster sighed gently. "If not in the way you would hope." He turned to Gale, his expression grave. "You must know that the Absolute is more dangerous than you could possibly have imagined. Today it is merely poised to devastate the immediate region... but if left unchecked it will spread like a wildfire, beyond any possible control. It would threaten all who live, and even those who are undying. Ultimately it would risk casting down the gods... the Weave... the very fabric of the universe itself." Elminster chilled the air.

"How?" our voices rang out in a ragged chorus.

"I wish I could tell you." Elminster said simply. "But I have come here not to help you destroy it, but to charge Gale with its destruction. It is Her belief that only he stands a chance."

"Even if I were at my full power, it still would barely be half of yours! How could I possibly-?" Gale burst out, shocked, before his own expression turned as grave as a man facing the executioner. "Oh. The orb."

"Precisely." Elminster nodded. "Mystra has granted me the power to stop the orb's rush to consume you unwillingly... to put it in abeyance. For a time. Until you unleash its lethal combustion by a deliberate act of will." We all gasped as Elminster continued. "Mystra desires that you find the heart of the Absolute, wherever that may be... and then to use yourself as the catalyst that will burn it from this world."

"You want Gale to kill himself." I spat.

"I don't want anything, young man." Elminster said to me firmly. "This was the message I was commanded to bring him, and naught more." He looked at Gale. "She has promised that if you destroy the Absolute you will be forgiven, and your soul welcomed into Dweomerheart to exist forevermore alongside her with the blessed departed." Elminster shook his head. "I'm sorry, Gale. I know I bring you bitter tidings indeed. But at least this is a cleaner death than the one you were otherwise condemned to."

"Hold on a minute." I held up my hand. "I've heard Gale's version of how he ended up with that orb stuck in his chest, and it starts with him not wanting to do anything but return a missing piece of his goddess to herself as a gift. Have you heard a different one?"

"No." Elminster said to me, his lip quirking briefly with approval. "I am pleased that my friend has at least one other friend who would defend him." He sighed. "I made the same case to Her in your defense that Hawke just made to me, Gale. But She would not give me her ear. The folly of Karsus was the single greatest blasphemy committed against the Weave in the history of the world, surpassing even the creation of the Shadow Weave. Her wrath against anything that would even tangentially touch upon that old sin is fit to shake the very heavens."

"So I have very painfully learned." Gale sighed. "But It still means a great deal to me that you tried, old friend." Gale continued gently.

"Aye." Elminster nodded. "I would help you more, if I could - but I am forbidden to aid you in any way beyond fulfilling Her command to bring you this message, and to seal the orb so that its threat be held in abeyance until the proper time."

"If she could give you a spell to dampen the orb, she could also have given you one to safely remove it - if she'd wanted to?" I pressed, and Elminster's sorrowful nod was his only reply. My anger ebbed as I realized that however proud and eccentric he was, this Elminster was as helpless to defy the direct command of a goddess - even a less than entirely just one - as any other mortal would be. And that even if his poker face was far too practiced to show more than a bit of it, he was already grieving for his friend's and former apprentice's loss.

Shadowheart opened her mouth to give Gale some comforting words, and visibly failed to find any. "I'm sorry, Gale. In her own way, your goddess seems as strict as mine." She reached out and gently squeezed his hand in reassurance, and then settled back with her expression downcast. The rest of us felt the same way.

Elminster conducted a brief ritual over the orb in Gale's chest, removing his need to consume magic items to keep it stable - and giving Gale the key to manually detonating it with the force of a city-vaporizing eruption. "And that brings me to the end of my allowed interventions." Elminster finally told him.

"So this is it, then." Gale said, his face held as stiff as a mask. "Please... look after Tara when I'm gone, would you?"

"If need be, I will." Elminster drew back slightly, and then stared him manfully in the eye. "Gale... the goddess has commanded that this be your fate. But I have seen the Time of Troubles and the Second Sundering both with my own two eyes." He tapped his nose with one finger, once on both sides. "And I am not the only one for whom the death of gods is still in living memory. Or who has seen dead gods be reborn anew, if not the same as they once were. Even the inexorable tides of fate have broken repeatedly, on the shores of mortal will." He clasped Gale's shoulder earnestly. "The Absolute must be destroyed, or else all is lost. But while I know not how you can avoid your doom..." He trailed off, unable to say what he wished to out loud. "There is nothing about magic that She does not know, but there is more to life than just magic. And while any of my true friends remain alive, I would hope that they live."

"I- I hope I see you again." Gale barely managed to speak.

"And I as well." With a final embrace, the two men parted. Elminster made his farewells to us, and I took him aside for a quiet word or two of my own. And then he was gone.

---

"Behold the glory of Shar." Halsin said venomously as we stared out of the doorway at the blighted landscape.

The Shadow-Cursed Lands were everything you'd imagine from the name, and far more. I'd once been in the Fade, in the very lair of a giant nightmare demon, and this place still felt worse. Everything was barren soil and exposed rocks as far as the eye could see, interspersed with scattered bushes and trees - all of them dead and petrified. There were no animals, no sounds of nature, nothing but constant flickering movements at the edge of visibility. The sky was almost entirely pitch black - no stars, and only the faintest diffuse and directionless light to hint at where there could possibly be a moon. Everything beyond the radius of the light cast by the Blood of Lathander was hard to see, as if viewed through a distorting lens or a black fog.

"There's power here." Shadowheart's voice quavered nervously. "Familiar power." She squared her shoulders and took a deep breath, before continuing in a more normal tone of voice. "Hold this." She handed the Blood to me and then stepped forward towards the edge of the light radius. "I need to..."

"Be careful!" I called, and she ignored me and continued to the edge anyway, sticking her hand out of the protective bubble of light and into the shadows.

Her shoulders slumped as she withdrew her hand. "I was right. The Shadow Curse is filled with necrotic energy. If you leave the light, it will drain your life force. The deeper in the shadows you are, the faster it will kill you."

"Are you all right?" I demanded. "You actually touched that-"

"I'll be fine." she turned to me, her expression grave. "It was a very brief contact. But we'll have to stick close together, so we can all be protected by this." She stepped up to me and reclaimed the Blood of Lathander from me. I insisted on having Halsin examine her hand, but Shadowheart was correct - she hadn't been in contact with the Shadow Curse long enough to actually receive any damage.

Our spellcasters used a few Light cantrips on several party members to give us some supplementary illumination, and some more experimenting produced the result that while the protection seemed less comprehensive than that given by the divine light of Lathander, the Shadow Curse still didn't damage people who were brightly lit enough that no part of their body was actually in shadow. But stepping outside the radius of the Blood's protection still felt wrong - the very air seemed full of a chill, an active and hungry malice that lusted to drain away a man's vitality and warmth and leave him a restless, empty husk.

"How we do navigate through this?" Lae'zel swore. "No stars, no moon, this accursed fog reducing visibility to spear-throwing range or less... only those already familiar with each rock and branch of the trail could possibly know the route!"

"And while the Shadow Curse doesn't reach inside the building we just left, that's the only safe shelter we know of. Even with the Blood's protection, I wouldn't dare to actually camp out here." Gale agreed. "So we can't just wander around blind."

"If Moonrise Towers really is located on top of that underground temple we saw, then it can't be more than five or ten miles away from here." I said. "That's well within a day's march if we push it. So if we can figure out which one is the proper path, we can make it in one go."

Halsin briefly took his bear form again, then immediately resumed his human shape. "Oakfather preserve me-" he shook his head rapidly, as if trying to shake something off. "You don't want to smell what's out there! It's like an ocean of carrion! I can't hope to follow a trail through this." His shoulders slumped and for the first time since I'd met him, he looked terribly old. "The lands around Moonrise used to be my home. Before the Shadow Curse came I lived here, as a boy..." His voice faded away. "And now I cannot even recognize the shape of the land anymore."

"Oh, shit." Karlach laid a reassuring hand on his shoulder. "I- gods damn, no wonder you wanted to get back here so bad."

"Then there's nothing for it to pick a path and try exploring down it, and then turning back after several hours to return here and camp." I said decisively. "And then we try again, and again, until we find something." I consulted my trailfinder, which was working again now that we'd left the Underdark, and compared it to my memory of how the path towards the main Sharran temple had been oriented in relation to the bottom of the elevator... "Hopefully, Moonrise is that way."

"Hopefully." Shadowheart agreed, and we drew into a protective ring around the Blood of Lathander and its safeguarding light as we set cautiously off. Our footsteps made little sound on the dry rock and soil, without even dead leaves to step on. We trudged along in silence, the oppressive atmosphere of the Shadow-Cursed Lands weighing down heavily on us all. Even with Lathander's protection we did not feel safe, feeling as if our sentence of death had merely been suspended, not commuted-

"Lights up ahead." I suddenly realized, as several dim flickers that I'd thought were mere artifacts of vision in the murky shadow-fog began to grow brighter. Someone else was travelling through these blighted lands, a party of people risking death out here with nothing but simple torches to hold back the devouring shadows-

"Torches? Minthara said that the forces of the Absolute used magical 'moonlanterns' for safe passage." Wyll realized. "Whoever those people are, they aren't with the cult."

We picked up the pace, hurrying ahead to try and intercept these strangers before they moved away and got lost in the fog. The path wound through a low stand of dead and bare trees, and as we drew close we saw three people - two women with a torch and a sword in each hand, each flanking a man with a crossbow. All of them were dressed in well-worn armor without any livery, and wielded their weapons with the practiced ease of veterans.

"Close up." the blond woman ordered authoritatively. "Stay in the light!"

"Contact left!" the woman with a long dark ponytail suddenly called, and her party immediately moved off the trail and took up what cover they could behind trees, moving in well-drilled unison. And since we'd been on their left flank as we closed-

"Stop! Who's there?" the blonde woman, their apparent squad leader, barked out. Apparently the Blood of Lathander was bright enough that they couldn't see us clearly through the glare, while we could see them.

"Adventurers!" I replied. "We come in peace!"

"A likely story, love!" she called back suspiciously. "Advance one of your party to be recognized!"

"You want me to leave the radius of our light source? In this?" I called back reasonably.

"I don't know what the hell you're carrying, but it's shining like a damned lighthouse!" she yelled back. "I'm sure you'll be-"

"Don't move!" I suddenly yelled, having noticed that their crossbowman had stepped almost too far away from his torchbearer in an attempt to get a better angle on me for a shot. "You're leaving the light!"

"Yonas, you damned idiot!" the other woman yelled at him, and hurriedly stepped over to get him within close radius of her torch again. "The hell is wrong with you? You know what happens if you do that when we're out this deep!"

The leader of their party turned back to face me, having almost reflexively turned around to look back at the near-miss that had just happened. "Thank you." she said, in a less hostile manner. "Now who are you, really?"

"Who are you?" I challenged back, as the rest of our party slowly moved forward. Their faces fell as they realized that we outnumbered them over two to one, but they didn't do more than tense up slightly as we all carefully kept our hands clear of our weapons.

"Harpers?" Halsin said suddenly, looking at the silver pin of a harp each of them were wearing on their collars. "Well met, then! I am Halsin, druid of the Emerald Grove."

"Aye." their leader said, relaxing. "Harper Lissandra and party, scouting out these damned blighted lands. What business do you have here?"

I risked a brief 'push' with my tadpole, and relaxed when I picked up no sense of either a tadpole or the Absolute's brand on any of these three. "Fighting the Cult of the Absolute, who we seek at Moonrise Towers."

"Hah!" Lissandra barked amusedly. "Us too, but we don't remotely have enough men to just walk in there. So I admire your guts, if not your sense-" She broke off as a sudden chill washed down our spines.

"Oh shit!" Yonas swore. "Mists tide! They're coming!"

"Form a circle!" Lissandra ordered. "You lot too, get in here with us! Shadows coming!"

Our two groups merged into a defensive formation and set up where we had a clear field of fire in all directions - which of course meant that we were exposed in all directions, but the undead monsters called 'shadows' apparently didn't have ranged attacks. But they were virtually impossible to see in the darkness, so sticking to flat open ground with multiple light sources was the best way to not get hit from behind-

And with an eerie silence they emerged from the fog. Almost a dozen of them, they were man-sized silouhettes with long grasping arms, glowing green eyes, and more shadowy fog where legs should be. They made no speech, gave no war cry, had no formation - they just came.

"What is that thing?" Lissandra asked as the shadows all flinched as soon as they entered the radius of the Blood of Lathander's light. They still advanced, driven on by their terrible hunger, but their movements were now slower, jerkier. As if they were staggering against an invisible headwind, or blinded staring into the noonday sun-

"Long story!" Shadowheart said with a thin flash of her usual humor, as the shadows closed to melee range and we began killing. They seemed invulnerable to blows from normal weapons, but the only one of us who wasn't bearing an enchanted one were Wyll - whose warlock powers were energizing his rapier, thus letting it cleave the unlife from the shadows anyway - and Gale, who wasn't fighting with his staff but his spells. The Harpers seemed to have enchanted weapons of their own, and my Sword of Justice and Karlach's adamantine blade cleaved through the undead as if they were made of cotton candy. Our spellcasters didn't need to expend any more effort than casting several cantrips, and Shadowheart in particular practically exploded the shadows she struck with every swing of the Blood of Lathander. Soon enough, the business was done, and with no casualties and few wounds on our side. The power of the Blood had made all the difference - most of the shadows had been blinded by its radiance, and so their fighting abiltiy had been greatly diminished. Then again, undead made out of living darkness couldn't face anything more devastating than the sun-

"Unbelievable!" Harper Yonas gushed. "What on Toril is that artifact? It saved all our lives!"

"The Blood of Lathander." I said proudly.

"What? The Blood of Lathander?" Harper Lissandra said, astonished. "The holiest artifact of the Morninglord? The church of Lathander has sent an expedition?" She bowed to Shadowheart. "The Harpers thank you, Dawnbringer. Your aid is most appreciated, and our commander would love to speak with you."

Shadowheart blushed in epic embarassment. "I... am not a priestess of the Morninglord, good Harper. We found this artifact in the ruins of Rosymorn Monastery, which fell to a githyanki attack weeks past. We brought it with us both to spare it from the githyanki and because we knew we would need its light against the shadows."

Upon hearing the words 'githyanki attack' Harper Lissandra immediately turned to look suspiciously at Lae'zel. Lae'zel shrugged knowingly and replied with a simple "I am outcast."

"And she helped guide us to avenge the fall of Rosymorn." Wyll contributed.

"Freelancers or not, your aid is still most welcome." Lissandra replied. "Come with us. We have a refuge nearby, where you will be safe at least temporarily from the Shadow Curse. And our commander would still wish to speak to you."

"Beats wandering around out here without the slightest clue where anything is." I proposed, and our party agreed with that consensus. "Lead on."

I'd heard of 'Harpers' several times before in conversation with Halsin and the others, but I hadn't had time to read up on what exactly they were. Fortunately, Harper Lissandra was relatively easy to draw out in conversation as we marched, so I got an earful.

The Harpers, or 'Those Who Harp', had been founded centuries ago from an alliance of the priesthoods of several good gods, several bardic colleges, several renowned archmages - I was surprised to hear that Gale's old mentor Elminster had apparently been one of the original founding Harpers, how old was that man? - and independent adventurers of all sorts. They were a semi-secret society, sometimes acting openly and sometimes in the shadows, highly respected in most lands but with official authority in few, and loyal only to their own creed and cause with no fealty sworn to either king or clan. Few interfered with their passing, but opinions about them varied from hailing them as heroes to cursing them as impractical, needless meddlers. Their avowed goals were the preservation of lore, maintaining the balance between nature and civilization, and defending innocent folk from evil forces beyond the ability of conventional guardsmen and soldiers to withstand. Outside of their more general focus as opposed to a crusade against a single implacable threat they sounded very much like the Grey Wardens, and the mannerisms of Lissandra and her squad reminded me a lot of Wardens that I had known.

The unrelieved gloom of the shadows and fog started to give way up ahead to a bright, silvery light cutting through the gloom at a considerable distance. We marveled at what could possibly be causing it, given that it was entirely the wrong color to be open flame and that with the Shadow Curse making torches and lanterns as dim and oppressed as they were you'd need an outright forest fire to shine that brightly through all this-

And then our breaths caught in awe as we caught a clear sight of the 'refuge' we'd been promised. It was a perfectly prosaic-looking country inn, if a large one, built on the end of a peninsula jutting into a large lake. The inn and a large campgrounds around it were surrounded by water on three sides and reachable by a stone bridge erected over a deeply-dug trench. This place had clearly been built as a caravan stop intended for use on a trade route well away from any other outpost of civilization, a defensible strongpoint that could hold out against bandits or monsters until relief could arrive down the trade road.

But the most marvelous thing about it was the giant half-globe of silvery light surrounding almost the entire peninsula, a defensive field inside of which the Shadow Curse simply didn't exist. The lanterns and campfires surrounding the inn shone normally, without any sign of the dimming effect that the Shadow Curse tried to enforce on even the brightest of lights. The people moving around inside strode unconcernedly from one illuminated area to another, as opposed to frantically trying to minimize even their most momentary contact with any patch of shadow or darkness.

"Last Light Inn." Lissandra said proudly. "They've called it that since before Moonrise Towers was even built, when it was the last stop on the Risen Road for several days' ride. Prophetic name, hmm?"

I looked back down at the Blood of Lathander and the relatively small area it was shielding for us, and then back up at that. "How are you even sustaining that? It must be covering several acres!"

"It was a working cast by High Initiate Isobel." Lissandra said reverently. "A priestess of Selune, who was already here searching for an end to the Shadow Curse when our expeditionary force originally arrived. It takes much of her power to sustain that barrier, but she's been reinforcing it daily for weeks."

"Oh." Shadowheart said faintly. "She must be very powerful indeed."

"She stands highly in the favor of the Moonmaiden." Lissandra agreed. "Come. We're almost there."

Our party advanced down the bridge and towards the entryway to the inn yard, which had a group of grim-looking Harpers standing guard. Lissandra called out to them and exchanged the proper passwords, and they drew aside to let us enter.

"Someone tell Jaheira we have visitors to see her!" Lissandra ordered as we drew close to the entryway.

"I am here." an authoritative voice rang out, the voice of a woman long accustomed to command. I looked over to see Jaheira approaching - she was a tall elf or half-elf, with well-weathered skin the color of rich leather and long gray hair in braids. A pair of exotic-looking shortswords were slung across her back, and despite her obvious age she moved with the easy, ranging stride of a much younger woman. If the Harpers were an analogue to Grey Wardens then she was clearly the Warden-Commander - I'd briefly met Clarel, Commander of the Grey herself, during the Inquisition's ill-fated trip to Adamant Fortress and Jaheira's own air of command could have matched hers any day of the week. "All of you, step back."

"Well met. I am-" I began, only for Jaheira's eyes to flash green with eldritch power as she unleashed a spell with a curt gesture. Plants and vines suddenly burst forth from the bare rock and soil beneath us, helplessly pinning our feet to the ground. A druidic spell, like the ones I'd seen used in the Moonhaven ambush-

"Just this once, I wish someone would simply say hello!" I said aggrievedly.

"Hello." Jaheira replied, her brief smile edged with knives as she stalked nearer. Every Harper in sight who had a bow now had arrows nocked and aimed at us, and their compatriots formed a battle line with their swords drawn.

"We saved your people from an ambush, and this is the thanks we get?" Wyll fumed.

"Kindness is too often a decoy." Jaheira said flatly, as she reached one hand into a pocket and withdrew a corked flash - a flask inside of which a mind flayer parasite was wrigging. "This is why we're here, you see. It is a curious creature, that hides all manner of secrets. But if there's one thing we know-" She drew up short just out of weapons range of us and held up the flash, and the parasite began to thrash more and more wildly as it drew nearer to me. I could feel the tadpole in my own head start tingling in sympathetic response. "-it's that these creatures know their own." Jaheira put the flash back in her pocket and grimly drew forth both her swords, her face an executioner's mask. "You should never have come here, True Soul." she spat.

"Jaheira!" Halsin called out to her. "I am Halsin, of the Emerald Grove! It's been decades since we met, but do you remember me? We fought together against the first rise of Moonrise Towers, long ago!"

"I remember the man you used to be." she said to him gravely. "But if you are here like this, then he is already dead. Harpers-!" she began to command.

"WAIT!" a familiar and entirely unexpected voice broke in. "Don't hurt them! That's Hawke and his friends! They're the ones who saved us!"

"Alfira?" I turned to her in shock... because it was indeed the very same lovely tiefling bard who'd propositioned me at the victory celebration after the defeat of the goblins, the one who'd been in charge of helping supervise the children in Zevlor's camp. "What in the Maker's name are you doing here?"

"These are the ones who protected the Emerald Grove?" Jaheira said, at least as shocked as I was. "But- hold your fire!" she ordered, and all the Harpers lowered their weapons but stayed at the ready. She turned back to us, sheathing her own swords and looking at me as if trying to see through my skull. "A True Soul with a mind of his own? How is that possible?"

"Because of this." I answered her, drawing forth the Astral Prism from my belt pouch. The runes on it glowed dull orange as I brought it into the light, and Jaheira hurriedly withdrew the flask from her pocket to marvel at the parasite frantically thrashing about in it with frenzied effort before going limp, as if dead or comatose.

"What in the hells is that thing?" Jaheira demanded.

"The Astral Prism. A githyanki artifact built to neutralize the powers of mind flayers." I explained, and then went on briefly about how exactly we'd gotten it.

"Congratulations. You've earned yourselves the benefit of the doubt. Harpers - All Clear, Stand At Ease!" she ordered, and the guards resumed their posts while the other reacting Harpers scattered back to their original duties. Jaheira's eyes flashed again, and the vines holding our feet pinned faded away. "I won't even pretend to know what that thing is, but I'm too old to reject a sliver of hope when I see it shining to me through the dark. Why have you come here?"

"To destroy the Absolute." I acknowledged her.

"Then we have a great deal to talk about. Come on in, and I'll pour you a drink." Jaheira offered, and then led us all into the inn.

---

Author's Note: Man, if I thought Act One was tough to plot, Act Two is gonna be a bear. I got tons of shit to get through, even with ruthless sidequest pruning, and since I haven't replayed Act Two nearly as often as I have Act One (when you test mod configs, you see Act One over and over and over) I'm gonna need to replay some more to make sure I don't miss anything. Plus, the further off the canon rails things go, the more I need to research deep background.

Still, things are progressing nicely so far, and I love the creative freedom to fill in background texture that the games never touched. Forex, the game never says what exactly the relationship between Elminster and Gale is except that they obviously know each other, so I went 'Well, somebody had to be Gale's original magic teacher, he didn't exactly spring forth from the brow of a goddess fully an archmage at birth' and rolled with that. In fact, I'm surprised the Elminster scene wrote itself with that much dignity; my normal opinion of Elminster is decidedly otherwise but hey, the muse and the story are the muse and the story, and you're here to see me craft a narrative that works, not to soapbox.

And yes, I know that Mol is the one who speaks out for the party at the entrance to Last Light, not Alfira. But I shortchanged someone of her camera time during the Grove sequence, so here we are. *g*

And pour one out for the poor Harper who mistook Shadowheart for a high priestess of Lathander... even if it's an entirely understandable mistake when a strange cleric rolls up on you wielding one of the most sacred artifacts in their entire religion. Even Shadowheart's youthful appearance isn't an obstacle to that - she's a half-elf, which means she'll continue looking like a twenty-something well into her eighties. (In fact, Shadowheart is canonically in her forties, even if she's mentally younger due to memory erasure.)

 

[Cosmic Dream]

Huh. Reasonable Jaheira.

In my (so far only) play I had to reload after she sicced her Harpers on me and to their death. That was pretty annoying.

 

[Toad]

I liked the Elminster scene, him mentioning that Gale sacrificing himself would earn him a good afterlife was a nice touch, I can't remember if that came up in the game but it makes Mystra seem somewhat more reasonable.

 

[cliffc999]

Huh. Reasonable Jaheira.

Click to shrink...

When Jaheira brought out the bottled parasite and revealed that the Harpers had figured out how to use them as True Soul detectors, that's when I knew the writing on this game was next level. Makes you wonder how the one tadpoled infiltrator did get in, but I guess Jaheira has to sleep sometime.

And yeah, you can canonically get through that encounter pretty easily if you saved the tieflings and pick nonhostile dialogue options, then come clean about the artifact when given the chance.

I liked the Elminster scene, him mentioning that Gale sacrificing himself would earn him a good afterlife was a nice touch, I can't remember if that came up in the game but it makes Mystra seem somewhat more reasonable.

Click to shrink...

I personally think Mystra was being rather unreasonable, and the fic isn't shy about saying so, but Mystra offering Gale redemption through death is canonical to the game.

 

[Jarrik32]

Huh. Reasonable Jaheira.

In my (so far only) play I had to reload after she sicced her Harpers on me and to their death. That was pretty annoying.

Click to shrink...

Huh. That's never happened to me. What do you have to do to get that to happen?

 

[TyricGaias]

Huh. Reasonable Jaheira.

In my (so far only) play I had to reload after she sicced her Harpers on me and to their death. That was pretty annoying.

Click to shrink...

Git gud scrub! Jkjk

 

[TyricGaias]

In fact, I'm surprised the Elminster scene wrote itself with that much dignity; my normal opinion of Elminster is decidedly otherwise but hey, the muse and the story are the muse and the story, and you're here to see me craft a narrative that works, not to soapbox.

Click to shrink...

What did you mean by that? I only know him from the game, is he not as cool in the lore?

 

[cliffc999]

What did you mean by that? I only know him from the game, is he not as cool in the lore?

Click to shrink...

Let's just say that Ed Greenwood had fetishes, which he used his author-avatar NPCs to indulge in perhaps a little too much for mainstream tabletop RPG'ing. Because while Elminster is still the most accomplished archmage in Faerun and everything else in the lore, he's also a skeevy perv. So yeah, I never anticipated that the one time I put Elminster in a fanfic I'd actually not bash on the dude... because he's honestly one of my least favorite NPCs in the canon.

 

[Karmic Acumen]

Huh. That's never happened to me. What do you have to do to get that to happen?

Click to shrink...

Probably failed the dice roll.

 

[Karmic Acumen]

Because while Elminster is still the most accomplished archmage in Faerun and everything else in the lore, he's also a skeevy perv.

Click to shrink...

Is he? Or is he just a womaniser? The word 'fetish' is used a bit too lightly nowadays, its meaning is closer to 'kink' than 'enjoys sex.' Also 'pervert' is overused even more than fetish. Far as I know, Elminster sticks to beautiful women, everyone is fully consenting every time, and he's careful not to impregnate them too.

I do recall one scene where he flirted with the ghost of a pretty woman, and haven't actually read any of the books to speak with much authority about this, but I doubt he was as bad as all that.

 

[cliffc999]

Is he? Or is he just a womaniser

Click to shrink...

Whatever he was, it was annoying to me.

I doubt he was as bad as all that.

Click to shrink...

Do not speak to me of the deep magics, I was there when GenCon was still being held in Kenosha.

 

[Karmic Acumen]

Whatever he was, it was annoying to me.

Click to shrink...

I'm glad you chose not to let that color your portrayal of him then.

 

[Jarrik32]

I personally think Mystra was being rather unreasonable, and the fic isn't shy about saying so, but Mystra offering Gale redemption through death is canonical to the game.

Click to shrink...

At the risk of spoilers (even after this much time)

Spoiler

Mystra isn't that pissed off with Gale for his ultimately selfish and egocentric act or that heartless to demand he die for redemption*. The real issue is the orb itself. Unlike everyone else he isn't crippled because of the parasite (or at least not entirely) but because of the orb itself. It literally ripped the weave out of him and consumed it, an experience he barely survived. Then it promptly started demanding more and more and more. The 'spell' used to control it isn't actually fixing anything just feeding it small chunks of the weave to appease it. Which as you might imagine isn't sustainable and the consequences would likely get worse and worse over time.

So Mystra is stuck between a rock and a hard place. A mystical nuke is literally eating her (she is the weave) and she doesn't have a lot of good options for dealing with one of Karsus' going away presents. Sending Gale to 'deal' with the Absolute is ultimately something of a one stone two birds action. It deals with the ongoing issue of Karsus weave as well as the upcoming threat of the absolute. It just sucks for Gale. As the poor sod is very much a deconstruction of high intelligence, low wisdom builds.

As like it or lump it she really does have very good reason to be very, very angry. As "I didn't mean to nuke half of Faerun" doesn't really change what happened.

*It's telling that it's not that hard to convince her to accept a third option. All it really requires is an appropriate display of humility and doing something constructive.

 

[Karmic Acumen]

Do not speak to me of the deep magics, I was there when GenCon was still being held in Kenosha.

Click to shrink...

This has exactly zero meaning to me, sorry.

Either way, in the end, 'guy has game' is hardly a crime.

 

[cliffc999]

This has exactly zero meaning to me, sorry.

Click to shrink...

It means I've been in the fandom for over forty years, because GenCon moved out of the Kenosha location in 1984. So yeah, I know the old Realms.

Either way, in the end, 'guy has game' is hardly a crime.

Click to shrink...

Jesus wept, I deliberately hold back on even the slightest bad portrayal of the dude and the only response I get is for his fans to climb my frame even more because I admitted to not liking him even in the privacy of my thoughts? Stop making me regret that I gave you an inch, and deffo stop demanding a mile.

 

[Cosmic Dream]

Huh. That's never happened to me. What do you have to do to get that to happen?

Click to shrink...

Have a prickly, prideful wizard for a PC who pushed back against what they perceived as unacceptable "my way or the highway" attitude. Might have been a failed roll involved too, I don't recall.

Which, you know, centuries old Harper agent in eminently hostile territory. On the other hand, telling her about the only thing keeping you from being subverted or putting yourself at their questionable mercy? Unacceptable.

 

[Karmic Acumen]

Jesus wept, I deliberately hold back on even the slightest bad portrayal of the dude and the only response I get is for his fans to climb my frame even more because I admitted to not liking him even in the privacy of my thoughts? Stop making me regret that I gave you an inch, and deffo stop demanding a mile.

Click to shrink...

Jesus wept, I did no such thing, I expressed praise for your choice of portrayal, but here you are biting my head off anyway. Since confirmation bias is the rule of the day, I'll be leaving.

Acting like this was some great favor, no, sacrifice, are you serious?

 

[cliffc999]

Which, you know, centuries old Harper agent in eminently hostile territory. On the other hand, telling her about the only thing keeping you from being subverted or putting yourself at their questionable mercy? Unacceptable.

Click to shrink...

To be fair, it's easier for Hawke to talk about it when he knows that the only way it can be taken from him is off his corpse and trying to avoid being shot in the face is exactly why he's confessing. Bound artifacts are convenient that way.

(add) It also helps that he knows who is willing to murder him for it - Vlaakith - who the Harpers aren't working with.

Jesus wept, I did no such thing,

Click to shrink...

You strawmanned me twice as not liking Elminster 'simply because he had game', when that wasn't remotely true, and I literally had decades more experience with the lore than you did and you kept insisting that you knew better anyway. Furthermore, you kept insisting on arguing the point even when I tried not to. If that's not an attitude problem then I'm queen of the githyanki.

Since confirmation bias is the rule of the day, I'll be leaving.

Click to shrink...

Bye.