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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Demetrios1453" data-source="post: 9383364" data-attributes="member: 6801060">Curse of the Azure Bonds (Part 2): Tilverton (Part 1)[ATTACH=full]368842[/ATTACH][ATTACH=full]368843[/ATTACH]The eponymous "azure bonds". And yeah, the game pulled off the well-worn "You wake up mysteriously in a room with all of your gear gone" twist. As I said in the last post, this is probably not a good idea to attempt in a real-life game, not unless you want a player rebellion on your hands.Journal Entry 1 (which is separate from the other entries in the journal book at its start and is obviously meant to be read immediately at the start of the game) covers a bit of the backstory and has an illustration of the strange sigils:[ATTACH=full]368896[/ATTACH](Nacacia is actually her second name - she's better known by her first name, Alusair, in most FR products)Well, as the journal entry says, at least we can memorize spells. All of my spellcasters are significantly more powerful now, so they have quite a long list of spells they can memorize, and more slots to cast them with!Here are Brother Baltor's new 4th level spells available for him to memorize:[ATTACH=full]368845[/ATTACH]And which spells he'll actually memorize.[ATTACH=full]368846[/ATTACH]Bragir's list of memorized spells:[ATTACH=full]368847[/ATTACH]And Brin's:[ATTACH=full]368848[/ATTACH]Time to rest up. This many spells take quite a bit of time to memorize! (But just wait until the rest lengths towards the end of Pools of Darkness!)[ATTACH=full]368849[/ATTACH]And adjust the speed. This game goes significantly faster than PoR![ATTACH=full]368851[/ATTACH]And, having done everything we can, we leave the room we found ourselves in.Immediately upon exiting, we meet a pleasant woman with much to tell us:[ATTACH=full]368852[/ATTACH]Definitely scowls![ATTACH=full]368853[/ATTACH][ATTACH=full]368854[/ATTACH]Well, not much help, but it's hardly her fault. She could have just taken the money and dumped us in an alley, after all. So, there's nothing left to do other than to go to the weapons shop and then see this sage.Now that I've actually had to attempt to screenshot text, the speed is still too quick![ATTACH=full]368855[/ATTACH]And out of the inn we go.[ATTACH=full]368856[/ATTACH]We head west to the weapons shop.[ATTACH=full]368857[/ATTACH][ATTACH=full]368858[/ATTACH]Yes we certainly are! Let's see how much money we've been left with after being knocked out and left at an inn.[ATTACH=full]368859[/ATTACH]Hmm, well that was unexpected! Again, to her credit, the innkeep could have robbed us of that and we would have been none the wiser. Then again, she might have skimmed off the top of that amount for all we know. But even then, it's still a pretty substantial sum and will cover our re-equipping quite nicely.Again, we're confronted with the full Gygaxian 1e equipment list, dozens of polearm types and all...[ATTACH=full]368860[/ATTACH]I'll take 8 glaive-guisarmes, 14 fauchard-forks, 27 Lucern hammers, and, just for fun, a military fork.Nah, let's go to the actual useful stuff.[ATTACH=full]368861[/ATTACH]Remember from the first game, non-magical plate is a trap, unless you want to be slow as molasses on the battlefield. So its banded mail for everyone who can use it.(By the way, all the prices are in gold pieces, so that 1800 platinum will go far, even with the 1e 5 gp = 1 pp exchange rate)Baroness Bella quickly purchases her equipment and equips it:[ATTACH=full]368862[/ATTACH](I am getting bows for everyone this time since we can easily afford it)[ATTACH=full]368863[/ATTACH]That looks quite a bit better!So how much did that cost us?[ATTACH=full]368864[/ATTACH]Barely anything at all!I switch things up a bit for Bant for flavor reasons:[ATTACH=full]368865[/ATTACH](There's actually a point in this game where crossbows are very useful, and I'll probably purchase some just before that point for the others, although I don't want to get them now since they'll just be taking up precious equipment slots in the meantime).[ATTACH=full]368866[/ATTACH]Looking good fully equipped![ATTACH=full]368867[/ATTACH][ATTACH=full]368868[/ATTACH]As are Brother Baltor and Buffy. Granted, Buffy can't wear anything beyond leather if she wants to use her thief skills, so she's stuck with it, and its poor AC, for the moment.My two elf magic-users, since they are multi-classed, can still wear banded mail, and they get a different melee weapons for ease of switching out if they need to.[ATTACH=full]368869[/ATTACH]And soon they are all equipped nicely as well:[ATTACH=full]368870[/ATTACH][ATTACH=full]368871[/ATTACH]And with plenty of money to spare![ATTACH=full]368872[/ATTACH]With that, we leave the weapons shop.[ATTACH=full]368875[/ATTACH]We head north from the shop.[ATTACH=full]368877[/ATTACH]Hmm, maybe the priests here can help with the strange tattoos?[ATTACH=full]368878[/ATTACH]Let's go visit this high priest[ATTACH=full]368880[/ATTACH]We tell him the story and show him the tattoos.[ATTACH=full]368881[/ATTACH][ATTACH=full]368882[/ATTACH]Well, it was worth a try.[ATTACH=full]368883[/ATTACH][ATTACH=full]368884[/ATTACH][ATTACH=full]368885[/ATTACH]The story here is that Tilverton was, until shortly before the time the game is set in, a free, strategically placed city-state between the kingdom of Cormyr to the west and the small independent towns of Dalelands to the east. But recently Cormyr moved in, put Tilverton under its "protection", and shortly afterwards outright annexed it.  As you can tell, a lot of the population of the town aren't particularly happy about it.(The Dalelands, Tilverton, and Cormyr are all to the southwest of Phlan, but not terribly far. In fact, Phlan will appear on the overland map once we get a point where we can see it).With not much more to do in the temple, we head out and continue exploring to the north.[ATTACH=full]368886[/ATTACH]We take a peek in here.[ATTACH=full]368887[/ATTACH][ATTACH=full]368888[/ATTACH]Meh, nothing exciting. Certainly nothing like our beloved fine composite longbows! Which we won't be seeing again for a long time, sadly.We head out and continue to explore the town.[ATTACH=full]368889[/ATTACH]We have GBC for that, thank you very much!Periodically, we'll overhear things like this from people passing by.[ATTACH=full]368890[/ATTACH]A bit further south, and we have found our sage![ATTACH=full]368891[/ATTACH][ATTACH=full]368892[/ATTACH]I assume the innkeeper told her to expect us? Or she's just that good of a diviner.[ATTACH=full]368893[/ATTACH]Half of our funds?!?! Well, we do have a lot to spare, and we do need as much info on these tattoos as we can get, so we, begrudgingly, hand it over.[ATTACH=full]368894[/ATTACH][ATTACH=full]368895[/ATTACH](She's worried about that last marking because it resembles the personal sigil of Elminster. She shouldn't have been worried - Elminster is unhappy about the attempted plagiarism himself, as we shall see much later).This sets us up with the basic plot - we need to find the five people/groups whose symbols now grace our arms and find out what exactly their nefarious plots are that involve us and the tattoos.She has nothing more to tell us, so we head out and continue exploring south back towards the inn.But I've reached the upload limit, so we'll pick back up as we reach the town's tavern next time.</blockquote>

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