We travel Northward, to Beregost, in search of Tranzig. In battle, my companions have proven themselves time and again, but I find myself most appreciative, of the things to appreciate, of their candor beyond the ring of steel and spray of blood. Branwen and I have been spending the evenings together, talking. I find her beautiful, though I dare not say so. Her wisdom helps me more than she could ever know, more than I could tell.

Xan and Kivan have been telling me the legends of my people – our people – granola myths, romantic, flowing goddesses, spiraling cities wed to bole and trun. More than Gorion ever taught me. More than he had time to. They encourage me to harness these dream-given spells, these capabilities, though I remain reticent.

Imoen’s cantrips have become more than a dabbler’s idle time-wasting. She’s good. She is focused. She impresses not only me, but Xan, her tutor – not an easy task. I’m not sure I approve, but the way Xan teaches, the way he uses magic, is different. Responsible. I don’t know.

– Xelia Bloodmoon

–

Chapter 3: The Bandit Camp; Vengeance; Mysteries

Cutting our way through sentient slimes cluttering the mine’s exit, we emerged into welcome daylight; our thanks was, however, shortlived – another ambush awaited us. More assassins. Four of them, this time, women of cold regard and colder steel. Xan proved himself immediately, his powerful enchantments ably disrupting them, his blue-blazing moonblade taking its pound of flesh. Maudlin he is, but not ineffectual.

Our bearings uneven, we wandered, lost, about the area immediately beyond Nashkel’s mine exit, encountering gnolls, ravenous, grinning undead, and a mage whose experiments I was only too glad to end. Midday’s astonishing heat, far warmer here in the heaving Southern mountains than along the Southbound road we’d travelled, drove even Kivan to exhaustion. After resting in a crag’s lolling shadow, we managed to track a set of boots Westward, back to Nashkel, where, to Berrun Ghastkill, we reported our findings, were handsomely rewarded.

A tenacious pox, these assassins; another, a hushed man, Nimbul, waiting for us outside the inn. Alone, he was quickly dispatched. More able are those sent after us, now. I’ve shared my fears with Branwen, and she has, in her arms, and with her words, set me as best she can at ease. Nevertheless, I cannot escape the dread once minute; it consumes me. Is all around. The dreams and the feeling we are plunging deeper, deeper, deeper and dumb and inexorably into some brutal, bloody – who’s blood? – void.

–

–

After several days adventuring near the coast at Xan’s behest – a journey hunting after a magic tome – we arrived in Beregost, were almost immediately approached by the same man Imoen and I, weeks before, had met on the road to the Friend Arm Inn, now introducing himself as Elminster himself. An outlandish meeting. I’m unsure what to think of it, what it means.

A young girl, at the behest of an ‘Officer Vai’ directed us to the Jovial Juggler, the inn situated in Beregost’s Southeasterlymost quadrant. Vai, a hard-eyed, fire-haired woman, instructed us, much to Kivan’s delight, she would reward the party to the tune of fifty gold pieces every cut bandit scalp we harvested. Unpleasant work. But, as Imoen says, money makes Faerun go ’round.

–

We found Tranzig on Feldepost’s second floor, Branwen taking the lead, her reappearance obviously taking the mage by surprise. I can still hear the dull, fleshy noise her enchanted hammer made against his skull. Correspondence on the corpse revealed the Bandit Camp’s location; with Kivan anxious to pursue this line of investigation, we left Beregost immediately, Northwards past the Friendly Arm Inn.

–

Not an hour after entering Peldvale, we encountered Tazok’s men, captained by a red-dressed roustabout calling himself Raiken. Though Kivan felt his vengeance paramount, Xan and I convinced him tact would reward us; I boasted my way into a meeting with Tazok himself, a chance to join the bandits. We were taken Northwards through the forest, then onto the road to Baldur’s Gate before we bent off it again, crashing through a thicket and mixed trees, emerging into the boundary of a sprawling camp. I heard Tazok’s footfall before I saw him.

–

By the time we’d put the camp down, fought through it after him, Tazok was gone. Kivan’s vengeance is denied, but we’ve done right by him. Shar-Teel offered uncharacteristically sympathetic condolences; I don’t think I’ve seen her touch another person before she put a comforting hand on Kivan’s shoulder.

The camp thusly quieted – and, by Imoen, expressly looted – we moved toward the central, largest tent, a massive tumour nailed into the earth, a leather dome dressed in the bones of the unfortunate.

Dispensing of the quartet within, we freed a prisoner, Ender Sai. He wouldn’t say who, exactly, he was, by whom he’d been employed such that Tazok felt his imprisonment justified, but he knew much, and, before fleeing, related pertinent information. Tazok and Mulahey are puppets; the Iron Crisis is being orchestrated by someone with far greater ambitions than broken weapons and armour. – Xelia Bloodmoon

–

Chapter 4: New Beginnings; Cloakwood Forest

Cloakwood Forest, then, was our destination; a foreboding one, indeed. Gorion had told me tales of its enormous, unfriendly expanse. Shadow druids, great, dripping green spiders, talk of dragons and subterranean burrows. Kivan spoke to me of what he’d heard, the talk of fellow woodsmen and women, wilderness so thick as to be impenetrable, trees warped and iron-hard, immune to swipe of axe and burst of flame. In preparation, we visited Thalantyr and Mellicamp at High Hedge, supplying ourselves, selling off what we could of the booty stripped from the Bandit Camp. On the way, Imoen suggested a trip to the sea. One last time, Xelia! Please! As if we’d never see it again.

Who was I to say? Who was I to argue? The fresh air would do us all good.

Imoen and I appear possessed of some fortitude beyond our companions. We can walk longer, fight for longer. Why? We were raised in academic Candlekeep, not a camp of hard labour. Luck of the draw, Shar-Teel says. Luck of the draw.

Imoen has, at an alarming rate, advanced in her studies; nearly all the cantrips Xan has taught her have been mastered. Magic words flow easily, sweetly, from her lips. Naturally. There is a beauty in them I’d not heard before. – Xelia Bloodmoon

–

–

My dark dreams continue, the curious magic gifts thereof likewise. My opinions, those on magic, have changed. Xan’s use of magic, his wisdom and care handling it, my fair Branwen’s steadfast, calming council, Kivan and Xan’s talk of my – our people – elves, with magic inherently intertwined, the elves. It has been suggested I harness whatever this is, this dream magic, use it constructively. Wield it beyond the meager healing spells I’ve been innately afforded. Xan suggests using magic to combat magic used irresponsibly. Fight fire with fire. Apprehensive though I am, I realize – I’ve been reflecting how sheltered I grew up, how much I don’t understand.

–

From this point on, Xelia is an Inquisitor, a Paladin subclass. This wasn’t planned; the role-playing idea came to me as I played through the game – it made sense from a story perspective. This means she becomes slightly less effective in melee combat, but allows her to use a number of mage-disabling spells, as well as wear magic rings, gloves, belts, and necklaces, which she, as a Wizard Slayer, priorly couldn’t. She also loses her innate Wizard Slayer magic resistance and the built-in 25% chance to apply Miscast Magic when striking an enemy. Inquisitors cannot cast Cleric spells like non-kitted Paladins, cannot turn undead, and cannot Lay On Hands.

–

As a child, I feared Cloakwood, especially the notorious second section; now, I get through the whole thing in maybe 40 minutes. It’s an interesting segment in the sense of you have zero stores or temples (for emergency healing) for 5 successive maps, and it takes multiple in-game days to navigate the forest’s entirety, rendering leaving, so fraught will random, deadly between-map encounters, a risky proposition.

–

We arrived in Cloakwood at daybreak. Every step, every second breath within the rich, overgrown wood, I feel someone – something – watching me. For hours trodding through brush we encountered nothing before a band of roving tasloi ambushed us, shrieking and hurling themselves from behind bloated poplars. From then on, the forest, having evidently taken its measure of us, issued its beasties – dread wolves, slavering, tumorous spiders, and the simple, riveting, ineluctable Summer heat.

Eventually, we encountered a silver-haired hunter of rather dashing countenance, Aldeth Sashenaar, who implored us help him in a dispute with a group of druids. Despite my attempt at diplomacy, Kivan and Xan the both offering potential compromises, appealing as elves, as folk of the forest, it ended in bloodshed. It always seems to. Aldeth, evidently a man to treats well his allies, rewarded us for our aid, and invited us to visit him in Baldur’s Gate should we ever find ourselves there. Shar-Teel said she finds Aldeth disgusting, but she says that about every man. If she weren’t so able with her daggers, I might consider removing her from the group. Pragmatism over all, right?

–

Crossing a tantalizing aquamarine river, we found ourselves on great shelves of thickly-treed rock, plunging cliffs bare and brown overlooking the sea. A breath of home. Of times simpler. Gorion and Candlekeep. People and places that now feel so far away.

We found a man, Tiber, waiting on a patch of land past the waterfall spilling into the sea. Of he and his brother he informed us, asked if we might search his sibling, who had ventured into Cloakwood armed with a spider-slaying sword, intent on making his legend as a hero, out. Kivan, who had scouted ahead, confirmed giant spiders by the dozen, and ettercaps, horrible, poisonous squat humanoids, stalked the narrow brush corridors ahead. Though our destination was the mine in the wood’s deepest alcove nestled, I couldn’t deny a detour here, not if it concerned a man in peril.

Cutting through endless webbing, blades spider guts slickened, we at last reached an immense mound stuck into the one of the tiered earthen shelves, like successive eyebrows raised over the ocean’s face. Within, a massive floor of web, strands thicker than a man’s torso, a bizarre woman sat surrounded by spiders and ettercaps in the structure’s distended centre. Of all times, Winthrop’s low humour overcame me here.

–

–

The forest is beautiful. Rich, wild. Kivan says it reminds him of home. I would give much to see the forest cities my kin have built. He has talked of a visit together, if I should like, once this is over.

Between the daylights traipsing through dense underbrush and under thick canopy, I spend time with Branwen, whom Imoen has taken to calling, to her, Branwen, and – to a degree – my amusement, ‘auntie’; the security she offers, the trust, is something I’ve never known. I feel at once at ease with her, at once insecure. It is a new feeling, trusting someone like this, something I have to ease into. It’s different, Branwen and my relationship. We kissed the night I told her my last name wasn’t, of course, Bloodmoon, that Bloodmoon was a name I’d given myself as a child when Imoen and I were playing ‘adventurer’ – Imoen had chosen ‘Arsestabber’ as her own family name (naturally).

Shadow druids repeatedly confront us as we navigate North and East toward the Iron Throne’s mine. This organization has, since clearing Nashkel’s mines, come up repeatedly. What is the goal, here? The endgame? I have so little time to think. Each day is a wash of bloodshed and bloodstained boots over gnarled roots and traces of paths long-since lost.

Several hours eastward of a wyvern nest, we discovered the mine, a massive, enclosed wooden structure guarded by a group lead by a hot-mouthed mercenary, Drasus. My newfound capabilities, the capacity to cast the equivalent of a mage’s true sight spell, and my dispel magic, rendered what would have otherwise been a brutal combat trivial. The mages, casting their invisibility and mirror image spells, were baffled, smug smiles split and bloodied, when I nevertheless came straight for them, blade swinging true, taking them down in moments while Shar-Teel engaged the two fighters, fending them off, Kivan and Imoen riddling them with arrows. The day was ours, without a scratch upon a single party member. The mine awaited.

–

Descending several levels, killing our way through what might’ve been a small village of hobgoblins and Blacktalon mercenaries – this place is, for its infrastructure, terrible, portentous. It is a real operation, a place with uncouth motive, not some innocuous town ore pit. Long corridors, shrines of Cyric, personal cooks, slave pens, sleeping chambers housing, of beds, dozens. Conditions are horrid, the miners driven beyond the breaking point; men nothing more than fleshed skeletons ineffectually scraping at hard earthen walls, pickaxes limp, arms jellypink nothings. We seem to every step be confronted by some guard. Conditions are horrid, security is up. The miners willing to talk speak in hushed tones of one Davaeorn, ‘master of the mine’, of a plug and corresponding key what could flood this foul place. Of it, each level is secured by a lieutenant spellcaster, sibling mages by the look of their corpse faces. Deadly women we only barely managed, Kivan’s ever-true arrows striking both down while Shar-Teel and I hacked into the guards choking the way, to outdo. After a final, oddly plain room occupied by a group of card-playing hobgoblins, we reached the final staircase, that leading to Davaeorn’s personal chamber.

After dealing with Davaeorn’s bodyguard, we confronted the man himself. Waiting. No interest in talking, Davaeorn. I’ve almost come to prefer it that way. At his side was a Battle Horror, an abyssal, sentient armour I fought hand-to-hand, Greywolf’s enchanted sword shearing cold, hissing serpentine across the thing’s ghastly, jutting armour. Kivan and Imoen worked through Davaeorn’s illusion magic, Xan firing his own flaming arrows, Branwen channeling some muscle-engorging power of Tempus into herself, joining me against the animated platemail. It was Shar-Teel who felled the mage, her poison dagger punching deep into him the moment Kivan’s arrow dispelled the last of Davaeorn’s mirror images. The battle was won. To what end, though?

– Xelia Bloodmoon

On the road back to the Friendly Arm Inn, Imoen informed the party she wanted to take a break from ‘skullduggery’ to focus on her magic, to take Xan’s offer, become his ‘official apprentice’ (her words). I can’t deny her aptitude for magic. In her hands, it feels right. Though her thieving skills will be missed, I trust her magic will more than make up for any cutpursing what might be missed. Onward, then, to Baldur’s Gate. – Xelia Bloodmoon

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Chapters 3 and 4: The Appendices

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Congratulations, you’ve beaten Baldur’s Gate Chapters 3 and 4! Join us next time for Chapter 5!