Chapter 5: Baldur’s Gate; A Thickening Plot

I have never felt so uncomfortable as I do in Baldur’s Gate. The walled city seems to close around me, drawing, for each step, tighter. My elvish blood, or so much time spent in the – in its own way terrifying – trackless wilderness? Or something else? This feeling, that pulsing, red-black thing pushing on my spine, tingling my appendages, has grown stronger, grew stronger as we made the journey Northward to the Gate’s great bridge. Now, within, it demands my attention; thooming, bloody dreams, massive waterfalls crimson and roaring towering, spilling from somewhere beyond my sight, against a horizon of deeper, darker red, disturb my sleep. Branwen worries about me. I tell her I’m fine. A lie she sees through. My insecurities about our relationship are magnified by the stress I feel within and without.

Imoen told me she had a dream. Two nights ago. Vague and menacing. Like dripping oil in a dusty, abandoned barn. Not related to mine. Couldn’t be.

– Xelia Bloodmoon

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Baldur’s Gate city is like Baldur’s Gate the game. It’s a microcosm. It is, at first glance, overwhelming. When I first and finally reached this point as a child, my brain didn’t know how to handle it. Six entire areas, dozens of quests, hundreds of npcs, new items, everything. Like Baldur’s Gate the game, however, looks can be deceiving; what is good to remember is for each section of the city there are maybe 3-4 things to actually do, maybe a few quests max. The Enhanced Edition also adds, as it does with all other of the game’s areas, map notes; the original did not have these. There is a lot of flavour sprinkled throughout the city. You can enter essentially every house. You could spend a long time wandering around the place, digging the scene.

Baldur’s Gate 2 improves on Baldur’s Gate in virtually every way (the very, very goofy dialogue in Baldur’s Gate is, of 1998, a relic) – but it also had slightly different priorities. Baldur’s Gate 2 doesn’t, in my opinion, do wilderness like Baldur’s Gate. There is a lot of hand-drawn beauty in the first game’s expansive wilderness areas the team didn’t attempt to replicate in the second. Little nuggets. Different game and area priorities, as I said, but nevertheless notable.

The same goes for Baldur’s Gate city. There is such a vibe. It feels like a real, giant city. Baldur’s Gate 2’s Athkatla does, too, but it is much more focused; that’s better in almost every way, but there are so many little little touches that make Baldur’s Gate feel, to this day, weirdly alive and plausible. I won’t be covering the whole city, just the main mere three quests to get through it, but I will, as always, include an Appendices section.

After venturing North past the Friendly Arm Inn, our progress briefly interrupted by a farmstead overrun with chittering ankegs, we reached, at last, Baldur’s Gate. A man introducing himself as Scar met us half-way across the elephantine bridge connecting land to island city, a man of the Flaming Fist, of honourable countenance. He seemed to know us, know of our exploits, and implored us to meet him in the city’s Southwestern quadrant after investigating the Seven Suns trading company, an organization of-late behaving bizarrely, selling off valuable assets, making curious deals, asking after our aid, outsiders uncompromised as we therefore were.

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At the Seven Suns trading post, we were greeted with an air of suspicion. A merchant informed us the other members of the group had been behaving ‘oddly’. When we ascended to the top level, we found doppelgangers, misshapen, grey-skinned beasts, moaning voices and gaping mouths, their elongated hands reaching for our faces. Shar-Teel and I hacked our way through them while Imoen peppered magic missiles over our heads, shrieking balls of pure energy smashing into the groaning creatures. In the cellar, we found, stepping over the body of the doppelganger guarding him, Jhasso, head of the Seven Suns, friend of Scar. The monsters had taken the place over, infiltrated it piece by piece, person by person. To what end? Perhaps Scar would know.

On the way to the Flaming Fist compound, complete coincidence reunited us with salt-haired Aldeth Sashenaar, the jovial hunter we’d aided in Cloakwood Forest. He related to us a tale similar that we’d head earlier that day: members of the Merchant’s League have been acting oddly. He bade us follow him in and investigate. Speaking to Zorl and Irlentree, the League’s co-owners, revealed telling contradictions and falsities, but nothing concrete until we stumbled across damning doppelganger correspondence stuffed in one of the second floor’s desks. Revealed, a bloody melee ensued, our group and those guards of the League whose faces hadn’t yet been taken fighting to the League’s highest floor, cutting doppelgangers down by the dozen. Spattered grey-purple in ill, shapeshifter blood, we returned to Aldeth and the leader of the household guard, Brandilar, who rewarded us with his powerful family sword, and offered us a place to stay any time we desired. It’s good to have friends.

After informing Scar, much to his relief, of our success at the Seven Suns, he asked us to investigate a string of nighttime disappearances and murders. We had little success tracking the problem before we ran into a man suggesting the Baldur’s Gate sewers were the ‘urban man’s dungeon’, and descended accordingly. I have smelled many things, but I cannot say any have been so unpleasant as the Baldur’s Gate sewers. How shall I describe it? Like rotting eggs, oil, old fish, and horse dung were mashed into a stew, then combined with essence of pure nausea. Xan vomited repeatedly, and Shar-Teel, despite her obvious ease in and with the city, was visibly shaken by the stench. Encountering a number of oddities in the dank warrens, we at last stumbled across the kidnapping culprit, an aged ogre-mage and his carrion crawler pets.

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Scar had one last task for us: investigating the Iron Throne. This accorded directly with my own desires; everything leads back to this group, but we’ve not yet reached the kernel, the crux of the matter. He introduced us to Duke Eltan, the Flaming Fist’s commander and one of the city’s lords. Ill-will is being stoked against Amn. Eltan suggests the Iron Throne are responsible.

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Overwhelming as it is, there is beauty in Baldur’s Gate. At the docks, looking out across the sea, I am reminded of those fantasies I used to have staring in the same direction from Candlekeep’s paraphets, Imoen and I having snuck up them in the night. Those dark distances. Foreboding. Promising. Challenging my young courage.

In the city’s Western portion are situated many well-kept parks. Branwen and I have spent hours sitting together on the benches, watching people pass by, talking, making up little stories about this or that person, fabrications for our own amusement. She is always game to play along. I think she’d like Winthrop. As a group, we visited the Hall of Wonders in which are kept many bizarre machineries, fabulous devices I can’t quite wrap my head around (Imoen seems delighted by them, though, and understands immediately how they all work).

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A harried man crashed into us as we entered the Iron Throne building. He spoke of Sarevok, someone we had read about in the correspondence we’ve collected throughout our journey, how the man’s acolytes were causing a wholesale chaos. Our journey up the tower was interrupted by one Destus Gurn, a squat, misshapen homunculus who mistook us for an ‘Emissary Tar’; reaching the top level, we were confronted Zhalimar Cloudwulfe and his band, heavily armed, emanating bloodlust. My suggestion I was Emissary Tar held precisely no water, as the woman herself was, apparently, in the room with Zhalimar’s party. Not my best attempt. Luck of the draw, as Shar-Teel would say. The battle was bloody, our group barely scraping out against Cloudwulfe’s well-trained party. Xan, taking the brunt of a Flame Strike spell, nearly perished. Prevail we did, however, bloodied, burnt prevailers that we are, and learned Rieltar, the Iron Throne’s leader, would hold any incriminating information against the Throne, that he had travelled to Candlekeep. Home.

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Chapter 6: Return to Candlekeep; A Plot Unveiled

I write from the catacombs under Candlekeep, still, ancient crypts and moulded tunnels I’d not known before. Our return to Candlekeep has been a nightmare, a fever dream. -Xelia Bloodmoon

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We arrived with the book of ancient knowledge afforded us by Duke Elthan, allowing our entry, for Imoen and I re-entry, into Candlekeep’s hallowed walls. The grounds were quieter than I remembered. Emptier. Smaller. I immediately felt something off, some tingling on the back of my neck, but I couldn’t put my finger on it – how could I? A sensation, not a thought. Maybe it was nothing? Maybe I chalked it up to circumstance. For nearly four months I’d been gone. I’d changed; so, too, had my home.

We encountered several familiar faces, among them Dreppin and his cow, the former asking how things beyond the walls were, Reevor, who appeared to have lost whatever had remained of his mind, and Winthrop, who’s familiar good humour did much to put me at ease. I’d forgotten how I missed his ribald stories, the way he and Imoen and I joke together. He’s a shameless man, a glorious man. Maybe the ideal. To this day I wonder if his stories of adventures his own are true. Vaulting across the Spine of the World, ice-sheathed mercenary with his riotous company; striking southward on the trail of a band of marauding half-ogres; visiting The Severed Hand, ancient elven citadel in the north. I’ve never seen Winthrop fight, never even handle a blade, but something in his eyes, a twinkle, something sharp and quick, tells me the stories he has told hold water.

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My suspicions of ill-intent were confirmed when, owing Imoen wanting to see if something she’d stashed away before leaving Candlekeep was still in the house next to the stable, we discovered a sickly Priest of Oghma, his stature odd, oddly unbalanced – wrong, Imoen later said – dissecting a dead cat. Our questions provoked the creature, revealing itself, tearing like wet paper human flesh from its mottled, moaning grey body, as a doppelganger. The agents behind Baldur’s Gate’s market manipulation were here, too.

Within the library’s hushed halls we encountered old friends. Tutors. People of my past. Upon the third level, we found Rieltar Anchev, head of the Iron Throne, who, immediately noticing us, suggested we step away from his meeting. Something deep within me prodded me against my reason, something suggested murder. It would be so easy. So easy. Problem solved. So easy, and satisfying. Wouldn’t it be satisfying? I had had these thoughts before. Only slight things. As the dreams continued and, in their intensity, increased, the urge had become stronger. More logical. Even if it didn’t make sense it made sense. I haven’t shared these thoughts with anyone, not even Imoen. I couldn’t bear to tell Branwen. Shoving them down, however, I agreed to leave Rietlar’s meeting, and continued up the library stairwell. Perhaps there was something to be gleaned higher up?

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Upon the sixth and final floor, however, we were confronted by the Gatewarden, accused of murdering Rieltar, and arrested. Ulrant, one of Candlekeep’s head monks, accused us of being in the employ of Amn, sent to provoke war. Murderers. We were to be sent to Baldur’s Gate and sentenced to death.

But that didn’t happen.

Tethoril, my (and Imoen’s) chief tutor, arrived in the night, announced we had been framed, and teleported us into the catacombs under Candlekeep, warning us of their danger. Telling us there was no alternative route out. Suddenly free, we reequipped our armour and weapons, steeled ourselves, and plunged into the labyrinth.

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That such a place existed under Candlekeep shook me to the core. What was the purpose of such a warren? What had the agents of the seaside fortress been hiding? We fought through packs of blood-soaked ghasts, beasts yet slick from their collective feeding, heaps of bodies – those whose flesh had been assumed – piled in endless, reeking chambers; doppelgangers purporting to be the people of my oldest memories confronted us at every turn, culminating in a harrowing encounter with a trio assuming the shape of Elminster, Gorion, and Tethtoril, the man who had freed us only hours before. Battered, shaken, we at last awayed ourselves of the doppelganger dissection rooms and corpse piles, blundering almost immediately into a group of Iron Throne killers stationed in the caverns beyond. A savage battle the ride of which only turned when Shar-Teel at last penetrated Prat’s defenses, poison dagger chewing into spell-casting flesh, quickly sucking the life from him.

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Ocean wash sound carrying in from outside, light shining thankfully from a tunnel up ahead. We encountered a member of the Iron Throne, Diarmid, who mistook us for the band we’d just disposed of. We were victims of Sarevok’s deceptions. Sarevok had assumed control of Baldur’s Gate. Everything was falling into place. A war with Amn. A war on the horizon.

– Xelia Bloodmoon

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Congratulations! You’ve beaten Baldur’s Gate Chapters 5 and 6! Tune in next time for the return to Baldur’s Gate, and showdown with Sarevok!

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This was an interesting section of the game as I was down a thief and a fighter. I’d chosen to dual-class Imoen to a mage and Shar-Teel to a thief. Imoen because it’s canon, and also very handy for filling in some of the missing artillery Xan, as an Enchanter, lacks (Magic Missile, Fireball, etc.). Shar-Teel is already a glass cannon; her high dexterity means she gains some thieving skill bonuses; the main reason, however, you want to dual-class Shar to a thief is because of backstab. Once she gets her fighter levels back, she can drink strength potions (or use her base, already-high strength) and backstab for obscene numbers.

The issue this time around was I couldn’t remember when Imoen was canonically dualled – level 6 or 7. I don’t have BG2 installed, so I couldn’t check. My gut said 7, but I became less sure of that as I rounded out Baldur’s Gate city. Similarly, I dualled Shar-Teel at 7, but realized, despite thieves levelling fast, she wasn’t going to regain her fighter levels until almost the very end of the game. This strat also means putting all your thieving skill points in Move Silently and Hide in Shadows; Shar-Teel is effectively an assassin, nothing more.

I had, therefore, no way to disarm traps or reliably open locks (besides the Knock spell, which I did use on a number of occasions). This made Candlekeep’s catacombs an especially harrowing experience. Lots of carefully stepping around traps or having Xelia step into them and take the damage. Almost lost Xan and Imoen a few times due to lightning bolt traps. Word to the wise: some traps spent when you trigger them, some aren’t; the ones in Candlekeep aren’t.

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Chapters 5 and 6: The Appendices