D&D General Demetrios1453 Plays the Gold Box Games

[Demetrios1453]

Pool of Radiance (Part 37): The Sorcerer's Island (Part 2)

We head around that corner, and encounter a closed door.

Ah, copy protection strikes again! We break out our wheel, or the digital equivalent thereof, or read through an online guide or cheatbook, and get...

Yes.

If you get it wrong, a super-mutant lizardman appears and wipes your party immediately.

Fortunately, we got it right, and continue into the next room.

(I at first misread petcocks as "petticoats", which definitely brings up a quite different picture!)

For the moment, we move away. We'll poke around some other rooms in this area before figuring out what to do with the equipment.

(Sorry about the lack of maps in the last bit here, I was taking screenshots wrong and didn't realize it until after some time, and definitely didn't want to replay everything from that point onward - at the first teleporter on the ground floor - just to get the map on screenshots. Basically, we started at the bottom center, moved around the corridor to the left at that first intersection, then returned and explored the corridor to the right, exploring rooms through secret doors as we went along. Then we teleported to that long snaky part in the upper right. Then we teleported to the three squares in a row near the upper left, then teleported to the upper left corner itself, which led us to the equipment in the big room, and then to the room we're currently in. Anyway, back to the lizardmen...)

We parlay. They are obviously not hostile.

Again with the copy protection wheel. Following the directions there, this comes out as "savior". This will come in very handy in a surprisingly short time.

We head back to the main room, and, since we've now seen the non-combatants evacuated, it's time for a little light vandalism...

This time we choose "Destroy"

(This is why you rescue the lizardmen first, as if you start destroying immediately, you have to go through several repeated destruction attempts, which will cause an explosion that can do some serious damage if you fail even one of the attempts! Here it just lets us just skip to the last attempt right away).

After a bit of fun smashing the polluting equipment, it's time to go to through that door directly in front of us to deal with the person who has been causing this whole problem...

Eh, Bragir has knock memorized, so we'll let him have his fun.

I guess he failed to hear all the crashing and smashing we just committed just outside his door. As he seems quite unrepentant about all the things he's done, it's time to deal with him once and for all...

Yeah, no parlay here (and even doing that just leads directly to combat anyway).

Six lizardmen, even mutated ones, aren't going to be a tough fight. Yarash, though, is a magic-user, so we have to focus fire on him so he can't get any spells off.

Yeah, that didn't take long (as you can see, his square is now empty on the map, I just took the shot a moment to soon to get the "Yarash is dying" message and the skull and crossbones).

The rest of the fight goes predictably quickly...

Oh, that signals some pretty nice treasure!

Quite intriguing indeed!

Hmm. Bracers AC 4 is exactly what Buffy already has, and is the same AC as my magic-users' banded mail. So those are just getting sold once we get back to town.

I distribute the "2 potion of healings" and the potion of speed to various party members, and give the wand to Bragir.

That done, we look around the rest of the room.

Yarash apparently had a lot of pen pals, and we'll have to dig through his correspondence to see if we can find anything of interest among all this paperwork...

The Boss apparently thinks he can just... boss around everyone, apparently.

And apparently no one he sends these threatening letters to are amused by them...

So... the dude was trying to make sahaugin out of lizardmen. How did he ever think that this was going to be a viable project? And he was massively polluting the surrounding environment as a result of his ludicrous attempts at doing so. Mad scientists are going to mad science, I guess...

(Oddly enough, despite being name checked here, you can't meet/fight sahaugin in this game, or any of the other three games in the Pools series. You do actually encounter some in the third Dragonlance game, though).

Hmm... That's very intriguing. We do see a dragon cave on the GBC map not too far from here. As we won't be visiting this vicinity again, we should go up there and check it out after leaving the pyramid.

Nothing much newsworthy here. Other than he apparently tried to make sahaugin out of kobolds and hobgoblins, which is even more insane than trying it with lizardmen.

And with that, our search though his mound of paper is thankfully complete. But there is something interesting in another section of this room...

We don't want to do "Blue" yet, so we do decide to change the setting.

We'll start with "Copper" and move up through the coinage metals before we circle back around to the Blue setting. We then move to the corner of the room...

Where did the teleporter take us? Find out in the next post!

 

[Demetrios1453]

Pool of Radiance (Part 38): The Sorcerer's Island (Part 3) - Sorcerer's Island completed!

After we teleport, we apparently arrive in one of Yarash's room-sized junk drawers. We dig around to see if we can find anything of use...

Let's see if these are of much use.

+1 weapons by this point aren't terribly exciting. Let's check out the scroll.

Nothing exciting there as well, really. So we head back to Yarash's office and try a different setting on the teleporter. To go back to the office, we simply step on the square we arrived on, and we go straight back.

We choose Silver this time.

Same as before. Hopefully the loot in this room will be more exciting.

Keoghtum's ointment is a pretty rare item in this game, and especially exciting as it can not only heal, but also cure disease (although it only has five charges). So it's already better than the first room. Let's check at the new scroll and see if was any better than the previous one.

Eh, that's OK, but nothing spectacular.

Back to the office to try another setting.

Gold this time.

Yay, a magical awl pike. Just what every adventurer needs. Let's see how the other items pan out.

Well, well, that's a mighty nice looking magical longsword there! Baroness Bella will equip that immediately.

As for the scroll...

Yet again, nothing terribly exciting.

We return to the office again...

And this time choose the "Blue" setting it was originally on.

And, back down to the entry corridor at the base of the pyramid. With nothing else much to do here other than meaninglessly wandering around the maze, we head down the corridor and out of the building.

As we exit the building, we're treated to a bit of animation on the map, showing the pollution clearing - the gray area around the river transforming to green as nature heals.

Well, we've done everything we can here, so let's check out the dragon cave mentioned in one of Yarash's letters. It's not terribly far to the northwest of here.

We didn't come all this way to ignore it! In we go!

We choose the first.

And we're given an actual menu to choose from as for our intent.

Hmm, didn't we hear rumors that the Boss was a dragon of some sort, from the intelligence gathered by the thieves in Koval Mansion? Let's challenge him as the evil leader...

Gulp

It's probably for the best to apologize here (which it is - otherwise he uses his breath weapon, causing everyone to take 11d6 points of cold damage, and the party is then unceremoniously dumped outside the cave).

Oh thank you!

Oh, nice! Sir, we need to inform you that we already have...

Wait! But we already...

I guess we just have to go back in and pretend that we went all the way over to the kobold caves and back.

We definitely don't say "Yeah, you idiot, we already had it when we walked in here before", although we are seriously tempted to do so.

A useful bit of news about the leader of the undead in the graveyard, although we've already had clues that this was the case. Sounds like we have our work cut out for us when we go to the graveyard. Good thing that this efreet will undoubtedly be extremely useful in the vampire fight! (Remember this when we actually get to that fight)

And, with nothing else to do here, we head out, and back down south to Phlan.

And with actually no interesting occurrences along the way, we head into the city for our reward...

It's 16 minutes until daylight and everything opening, so we just wander about a bit until that point.

A very punctual City Clerk is already there at the crack of dawn to meet us.

Wow! That's a serious XP reward!

We split that between everyone.

She then goes through the list of current commissions, which include the lizardmen and the kidnapped heir to House Bivant. Having just completed a mission, she has a new one for us. But it's a special one...

Our "particular skills"? Bashing down doors and then killing and looting everything in sight?

We go through the door and talk to Cadorna again. I assume he never noticed that we secretly lightened his family treasure earlier, and is willing to give us a new mission.

We're not actually going to "Zhential" Keep, just an outpost, which is what he said a single sentence earlier.

And no, this isn't suspicious in the least. But we've got a couple of other commissions to complete before we take this one on.

And a lot of leveling to do! The XP from the reward made just about everyone eligible to level up:

But, as we've hit the upload limit, we'll pick up there in the next post.

 

[Demetrios1453]

Map of the Sorcerer's Island. I assume everyone agrees that avoiding wandering around the first floor maze was for the best...

 

[Andvari]

I completely overhauled the layout of the pyramid when I ran Ruins of Adventure, in which the place is also quite mazy. I kept the concept of 3 floors and using teleporters, as well as most of the signature rooms. I decided Yarash would employ a score of strange creatures to guard the place - minotaurs, cockatrices, displacer beasts and mutant lizardmen.

One memorable encounter my group had was when they attempted to rest within the minotaur lair. They had blocked the doors leading in, when a random encounter resulted in a minotaur wrangling 3 cockatrices. The minotaur broke a hole in the door, stuck in the staff to which the cockatrices were tethered, through the opening, then ran off as the monsters attacked the party.

There was also a group of rust monsters guarding the teleporter to the 1st floor. They fed them metal scraps gathered from the minotaur smithy to avoid combat, but it was a tense moment for the paladin. They were clued in on their presence by capturing a fleeing minotaur (after a hectic chase through multiple teleporters) and interrogating it.

Same paladin later had a cool moment where he intercepted and saved a lizard man slave as it was being dropped into an acid container by a minotaur. I also gave the players a few lizard man prisoners to control in combat after they busted them out of the prison.

 

[Demetrios1453]

Pool of Radiance (Part 39): The Lizardman Keep (Part 1)

Time to level up our characters!

As for my magic-users, since they both have scrolls containing multiple 3rd-level spells, I chose an important 3rd-level spell that neither has ready to scribe:

But before we go to rest and scribe, let's clear out our extra loot.

What a nice haul!

Sure. It's useless otherwise.

We sell everything else that's surplus, and here are our current funds after doing so:

Eh, not quite close enough to get a new fine longbow.

Off we go to the inn to rest, memorize, and, most importantly, scribe all those juicy 3rd-level magic user spells we have been hoarding up until now!

Oh, yeah!

New memorized spell lists:

I love the smell of fireball in the morning. It smells like... victory.

Here are the updated spellbooks for the two of them. Bragir first:

And Brin's next:

Quite respectful looking now!

So, spells memorized, and everyone rested up, it's time to look into this lizardman problem.

But first, a quick side trip to visit the river along the north side of the town.

Compare that to when we first walked by here just before our first time going into the Slums...

We head back east towards the docks:

East this time.

(I never understood why sometimes it shows the boat and sometimes it doesn't)

We leave the boat and head north.

A short distance up, we discover something interesting.

We will indeed enter the cave.

There's really not much to see in this cave. We wander vaguely north for a bit, until we find this.

(The other map in the southwestern quadrant is the minotaur/giant lizard cave we explored a while back. These random encounter caves are packed in four to a single 16 x 16 area)

And then back south and west a bit, until...

The gnolls won't be too much of a problem, but the trolls will be, if they do manage to get around and flank. Luckily my magic users with their shiny new fireballs will likely go ahead of them...

Actually not. my magic users go very late in initiative, so much so that one troll did indeed manage to get around, flank Bragir, and hit him before he could do anything. So, annoyingly, no spells for him this round.

Brin, however, does get to go, and will of course launch her newest spell...

She starts casting, which will take a short time (remember, virtually all 1e spells above 1st level aren't instant). Meanwhile, Bragir's initiative has come up, and he has to resort to using his melee weapon.

Brin's fireball goes off...

That evens the odds quite nicely, although that's still an annoying number of trolls to have to deal with.

Eventually, however, we do wear them down, although the characters end up a bit hurt - especially Brother Baltor, who was getting smacked around by the two trolls next to him.

This cave really doesn't have much more than this, other than random gnoll encounters (no exciting treasure at all to find, sadly), so we just elect to leave and rest up.

After that, we head north once more. We make it all the way to the Lizardman Keep without further interruption.

Enter it we will!

Well, that's not good. Bragir and Brin are saddened since they won't get to show off their awesome new spells for the time being. We continue further into the ruins.

I'm not sure I would trust said roof, but it's probably the driest place here. But we have little time to ponder the architecture, since we apparently have company!

We decide not to murder an old lizardman in cold blood and instead choose to parlay.

Oh, how convenient! I did say that password would come in handy pretty quickly.

Yes

So, basically we need to get rid of this Drythh to ensure that he doesn't cause the lizardmen here to join with the Boss... who for the first time is confirmed to be the Tyranthraxus we read so much about in Mendor's Library a while back.

I'll take a guess and say that this is that Drythh fellow.

Ah, a good ol' one-on-one duel! Of course we will!

So it's Baroness Bella vs Drythh! Who will win? That's for the next post!

 

[fuindordm]

Thanks again for these enjoyable posts.
This game is a lot longer than I remembered!

 

[Demetrios1453]

Pool of Radiance (Part 40): The Lizardman Keep (Part 2)

Let the duel begin!

They trade blows, but Baroness Bella definitely has the upper hand.

And so it's done.

And that's that. We could return to Phlan right now and get our reward.

But... there's treasure to be found. So, we won't be taking the old lizardman's advice and leave just quite yet...

We move around a bit, searching.

Ah, yes we do. There's a complete subterranean level here that we can explore...

Surprise lizard attack!

Granted, giant lizards, even 10 of them, aren't much of an issue for us these days.

We then move down the corridor, until we reach a deep pool blocking the corridor.

Sure, we'll check it out.

Ouch!

I mean, it was only 3 HP of damage done. It would have taken them a really long time to finish us off at that pretty pitiful rate. We move towards the pool again.

Ouch again!

Good, let's choose combat and deal with them.

There are just five lizardmen (Bant took one down before I got the screenshot), so the battle goes about how you would expect, even with a anti-magic shield in the zone.

Now let's look into that pool.

Yes again.

What sort of ridiculous question is that?

Nice. Let's see if it will be of any use to us.

Meh, just +1. We'll keep it around to sell later.

Having searched the pool, we move towards it again...

Yet another short battle with 5 lizardmen, with predictable results.

Why not?

Well, bummer. It's obviously been cleared out.

Once again, we move towards the pool...

OK, to save everyone time and keep my uploaded image count manageable, there are 50 lizardmen who can jump from pools in this zone. Once you clear all 50 of them, in groups of 5 at a time, no more will appear when you try to investigate a pool. To deal with this, I just attempt to investigate this pool 10 times until they are cleared out. This is the third time, and it goes as quickly as the previous two. There's no need to show the following seven, as they will just be more or less exactly the same as the first ones, and, at most, the party took pretty minimal damage during them.

(And yes, I have screeshots of all ten battles cluttering up my storage.)

After slaughtering all 50 lizardmen, the party can at last advance towards the pool without issue.

No, we're just trying to move through.

But apparently the pool blocks us from advancing at all. To continue to explore this area, we'll have to go back up top and find another passage down. So, up we go...

Move around a bit.

Head back down...

And explore around a bit.

Yes we do. And, yay, no lizardmen leaping out this time!

Of course!

Oooh, +2! Now that is useful! Brother Baltor will take it.

Once it's equipped, we explore around a bit more.

Of course, again.

Another shield +2! We'll give that to Bant.

Of course, his AC is now far outpacing Baroness Bella or Brother Baltor, so we'll trade the cloak of displacement to Brother Baltor since he has far fewer hit points than the other two and seems, as a flanker, to get hit a lot.

Party with updated ACs:

Since these pools have a lot of nice stuff in them (and I'm just showing the magic items - they all have had significant money/gems/jewels in them as well), we'll keep exploring around.

However, we've reached the upload limit, so we'll complete the exploration of the area in the next post!

 

[Demetrios1453]

Pool of Radiance (Part 41): The Lizardman Keep (Part 3) - Lizardman Keep completed!

We continue to move around the lower level, exploring pools.

Yes we do.

Yes we do.

No magical items this time, just money. In fact, this is the same amount of money we've gotten along with the magical items in the previous pools. Even though there's nothing else, it's nothing to sneeze at, and still provides some nice XP for each batch we find.

On to the next pool...

We do, and find...

Basically at this point, there are no further magic items to find, just the money. We'll just explore around until we've explored all the pools.

Each of them giving the same 1 gem, 1000 gp, and 1000 sp.

Except when we get to this last pool, and try to take the treasure, it won't let us take it all...

Encumbrance, our undefeatable foe!

We pretty much have to leave it, although luckily it was just some silver and this was the last pool to explore.

The real issue now is getting back to Phlan. Everyone will be reduced to 3 movement in any random encounters we may trigger, which definitely won't be to our advantage.

Having found all the pools down here and looted as much as possible, we return to the surface.

Up we go!

We rest up before we leave, even though we haven't taken much damage. It can't hurt heading back to the boat at full strength.

One quick Fix later, we head out of here.

We leave and head southward.

Ugh, not good. And when the actual combat loads, it's six wyverns! With my characters encumbered and their poison sting attacks being basically insta-death in 1e, I nope out of that quickly and re-load (so fast that I didn't even get a screenshot, sorry). We had enough trouble with just a single one a short time ago, so fighting six... well, I have no desire to deal with dragging what will likely be at least one or two incapacitated characters back to the boat and Phlan.

So, I reload to the last save (at the lizardman keep when I was resting), and start back down again.

Again, we have an encounter along the way...

Much less troublesome!

We basically wait and let them move up to us (not that I have much choice with my movement at 3 due to the encumbrance). With the logs right in front of us, it's going to be hard for them to maneuver well.

I basically have them blocked off with those logs there, so my melee can swing away while my ranged shoot them as they approach. And its' over pretty quickly...

The party took a little bit of damage, but nothing terrible.

We head onward towards the ship. But just before we can get there...

This one is going to be a bit tougher. Not as bad as six wyverns would have been, but still not a walkover...

Again, we'll let them move towards us, because being fully encumbered we really don't have much of a choice...

Bragir has a plan to deal with them quickly...

But... one of the trolls deals with that threat very quickly...

Yep, he got around and thwacked Bragir, making him lose the spell while casting. What rotten luck!

I guess we'll have to deal with them the old-fashioned way, with lots of swords and arrows...

Bragir has to switch to melee due to the troll breathing down his neck...

They're all over the place now, and it's hard to get characters around to reach them. Baroness Bella, with her 3 movement, got into that position next to the troll, but had no movement left to attack it.

We whittle then down slowly...

Bant finally takes down the last one...

But they've actually hurt the party (notably Bragir) fairly significantly. At least the XP was good...

We finally make it back to the boat.

And we head back to Phlan.

Usually, we'll head right to the City Clerk, but if we do, since we're carrying as much money as we can, we would lose any reward given to us. So we'll head to the shop first to sell our surplus items and then consolidate our coin to free up encumbrance so we can actually pick up our reward.

Again, it's just a few minutes before 00:00, so we can just walk around town until the shop opens.

Nice. After consolidating our coins, this is what our current funds look like:

Well, that's enough for us to get a new fine longbow, so off we go to the silver shop.

And Bant now has a fine longbow. Only Brother Baltor is left.

Funds after we've purchased the fine longbow:

Now it's off to the City Clerk to refill our reduced coffers!

Not bad at all.

And... shockingly, after she mentions the reward to rescue the heir to House Bivant... she doesn't have any more commissions to give us! We've gotten to the point in the game where we've basically exhausted the missions she has for us. We still have the Zhent base and the graveyard to do as well, but this shows us that we're getting close to the endgame...

We head off to the inn to rest and heal up.

Next up, the Buccaneer Base, where the heir of House Bivant is being held!

 

[Demetrios1453]

Pool of Radiance (Part 42): The Buccaneers' Base (Part 1)

All rested up, we head back to the boat dock.

This time, we're headed west.

Luckily, the base isn't too far down the shore. We reach it without any issues.

Sounds like this is going to be a pleasant location.

At least they seem friendly. I assume it's all the pointy weapons and armor keeping them cordial. We head in.

I assume their idea is that we'll stay put here. We'll be disabusing them of that notion. Let's take a look around. That big cage we passed on the way in is our first stop.

I'm assuming asking them politely to let their prisoners leave isn't going to work, nor sneaking by them or attacking, at least not without putting those locked inside in danger. We'll look around for a safer way to free the unfortunates here. We peer inside to see if the heir is among them.

I very much approve how the word "sleazy" gets bandied about here quite a bit in the text, both now and in the future. They don't sugarcoat the horrific future in store for the captives, nor shy away how disgusting their captors are.

Gross and disgusting. At least we've confirmed the heir is here. Now we have to figure out how to get him out. As for the merchant...

We gladly take that first choice.

Heh, I got the screenshot just as it was moving from mid-range to closeup.

Anyway, Mr Sleazy Merchant quite obviously didn't like a fist to the face, and now we have a fight on our hands.

Luckily, it's just six opponents with four hit points each. Looks like Mr Sleazy cheaps out on his guards.

It goes about as fast as you would think. We didn't even get to a second round.

Our little scrum has, not surprisingly, drawn some attention.

Yeah, if we're going to get the captives out safely, we'll have to not let our emotions get the best of us. We'll need to scout around a bit and come up with a plan.

We now turn to the merchant...

Bye, Mr Sleazy. I hope you die slowly in a fire somewhere.

Excitement over, we explore around the base a bit to see if we can find some way of easing any escape attempt for the captives.

That's interesting. Let's move around it a bit.

Now that's something useful we can try. A bunch of stampeding livestock would make quite the distraction indeed. However, we'll look around a bit more before we attempt this.

We move towards the southwestern area of the base.

I guess he's a half-orc like Norris the Gray, because he certainly looks like him. It's still a ridiculous face even if it's supposed to be for half-orcs.

But in any case, sure, we'll buy the pass. Meeting with the captain could be very useful indeed, for various reasons.

"Hey, wait! Weren't you supposed to, like, actually take some money for this? OK, I guess not. Thanks!"

Let's go to the captain's quarters and see if this pass is legitimate or not. We head a bit east.

That helmet is going to do you a lot of good without any other armor, buddy.

In any case, we show him the pass.

Somewhat surprisingly, the pass is actually not fake. We head into the building.

Are all the guards shirtless and one-eyed here?

The captain of the Buccaneers. He does actually look a bit like Baker Mayfield (let's see how many get that reference).

Let's talk about the heir.

He'll actually sell you the child for a hefty price. But that would be perpetuating and rewarding an utterly evil system. Time to attack and shut this place down, and then burn it to the ground once the captives are rescued.

Yikes, 110 HP and an AC -6. He's going to be a tough fight.

We'll narrow the odds a bit by having Brother Baltor cast hold person on some of his guards. And on the captain too - it can't hurt to try.

Well, well, well. Success for all three targets, including the captain! This went from something that might have been a bit tough to easy street in a single moment.

That's for all the captives you've sold into a life of misery.

Soon all the incapacitated enemies are gone...

And then they're all gone.

Oooh, nice XP. That, as well as the captain's AC, makes it seem likely we've got some nice loot here! We pop a detect magic.

Jackpot, baby! Magical plate! And a lot of other magical items as well. Let's see what all we have exactly.

Not just magical plate, but plate mail +3! And a longsword +4! He definitely had invested his ill-gotten gains.

While this is patently ridiculous for level 5 - 6 characters, we aren't complaining. We'll let Baroness Bella equip them.

Looking very nice, Baroness!

We'll trade her current longsword +2 to Bant.

(By the way, would anyone object to me changing the magical longswords Bant uses to battleaxes via the editor? It's more thematic for a dwarf fighter, and actually is a bit of a nerf due to battleaxe damage being less than longsword damage against larger creatures).

Let's check out the rest of the loot.

Nothing that we don't already have, but they'll fetch a pretty platinum at the store when we get back to Phlan

Thanks for telling us. We failed to notice that somehow.

I'm sure the commotion has drawn the attention of the guards, so we're going to have to be careful from here onward...

Uh... yes we do, but we just walked out of there.

I can only assume they are so unobservant that not only did they fail to notice we're walking back out of the captain's building, they also failed to hear the yells, screams, the clash of metal on metal, and so on that undoubtedly emanated through the presumably thin walls and door. We'll leave them to their obliviousness.

Well, we seem to have decapitated (quite literally) the leadership here, and no one is the wiser. Let's create our diversion and then attempt to rescue the child and the other captives. But we'll pick up there in the next post.

 

[Demetrios1453]

Pool of Radiance (Part 43): The Buccaneers' Base (Part 2)

Time to start our diversion.

Release the Kraken... I mean, the animals!

For the next hour of game time, every time you move, you see:

Now that our distraction is well underway, let's head back to see about rescuing the heir and the other prisoners.

No mention of the guards, so it seems they've had to go help with the stampeding animal problem.

We'll cast knock.

And into the pen we go...

We leave without him. We're going to go back to the City Hall, have them summon House Bivant, and tell them to their faces that I had their son all but rescued, but decided to let the buccaneers keep him as punishment for them contributing to an archaic and oppressive feudal system.

We re-think that for a second, grab the boy, and head out.

Smart move on their part.

We head straight ahead towards the exit. But before we can get there, some of the guards have noticed us rescuing the prisoners, and they don't seem to be very happy about it.

Even a couple of dozen or so of these 4 HP buccaneers won't be an issue. We start carving through them like a hot knife through butter. They're so low-level that my warrior-types are able to sweep, taking out whole swathes in a single turn.

(Also, it would have been amusing, but horribly frustrating, if the heir was there on the field, and we had to defend him from harm. While interesting in a theoretical way, it would have been maddening to actually do it in play)

We continue towards the gate, but apparently our first fight got the attention of others.

This one is a bit tougher, with some higher-level fighters in the mix.

But Brother Baltor has a way of (hopefully) taking some of those out.

And since we have so many low-level foes, Bragir decides to contribute with incapacitating even more, as well as shoring up our southern flank.

Brin gets in on the action as well.

Now we've incapacitated a large number of them, the battle will go much more easily and quickly.

Look at all those lovely Xs

Annoyingly, some are still filtering though the bottleneck between the stinking cloud and the wall, so Bragir has to take further action.

Now it's just a matter of clean-up.

Well, let's see if they had anything interesting...

We'll grab the plate - it should hopefully sell well.

Now we have a choice. We can go through the gates we're literally standing at... or continue for two more (progressively tougher) fights and wipe out the base entirely. Decisions, decisions...

Who are we kidding, we'll take them all down!

At this point, the fights come only after a step or two.

About the same as last time. But they are nicely bunched. So you know what Bragir is about to do...

Time to pull out the big guns.

Not the most impressive damage (and some even save and take only 7!), but by far good enough to take down the 4 HP buccaneers.

Now that's much better!

Let's see about those higher-level ones in the front...

Soon, only a few are left, and Bant has the remedy for that...

Loot time again...

And again, we take the plate.

And after another step or two...

While there are still a bunch of the 4 HP mooks, there's a substantial number of 30 HP foes which will be quite a bit tougher to take out. And they are spread out in a line instead of bunched up like last time.

But we've reached the image limit, so we'll see how this final battle plays out in the next post...