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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Demetrios1453" data-source="post: 9582395" data-attributes="member: 6801060">Curse of the Azure Bonds (Part 30): The Pit of Moander (Part 1)Sorry about the missed weeks - a combination of being busy, then getting hit with a nasty bout of the flu! But we're back, and about to meet some new friends![ATTACH=full]395907[/ATTACH]Well, into the Pit we go![ATTACH=full]395908[/ATTACH][ATTACH=full]395909[/ATTACH]It's never good when crazed cultists declare you to be the Chosen Ones.[ATTACH=full]395910[/ATTACH]Hey! Unfair!(This game in particular likes to block you from going back to many areas. In this case, we won't be able to enter Yûlash by any means or route again.)[ATTACH=full]395911[/ATTACH]Convenient. Cliched. And annoying.[ATTACH=full]395912[/ATTACH]Hmm, odd place for a bakery. I do hope they have cookies, though![ATTACH=full]395913[/ATTACH]Hmm, I guess we'll investigate through that doorway.[ATTACH=full]395914[/ATTACH]I do hope they have a nice selection of cookies. Chocolate chip would be really nice! We continue south through the rooms.[ATTACH=full]395915[/ATTACH]As we've never met vegepygmies before, how do we know what their squeals sound like? Maybe a monster impressionist visited Phlan at some point? Or maybe the Realms has kids' toys for this? "The cow goes 'Moooooo'. The vegepygmy goes 'Squeaaaal'."[ATTACH=full]395916[/ATTACH]This is just making my party hungry at this point. They better have cookies, and they better be good![ATTACH=full]395917[/ATTACH]Well, that's impressive.[ATTACH=full]395918[/ATTACH]Tar?!?! Who puts tar in baked goods? This seems like we're being set up for disappointment.[ATTACH=full]395919[/ATTACH]Oooookay. That's worrying. We go into the room beyond, where the fighting was occurring, to discover just what exactly is happening here.[ATTACH=full]395920[/ATTACH]Interesting. And why are we getting barraged by weird smells?[ATTACH=full]395921[/ATTACH]Oh, they recognize our bonds! That's a little bit worrying. But, they definitely don't seem to be friends of the cultists, so we decide to Parlay.[ATTACH=full]395922[/ATTACH]We tell her our story.[ATTACH=full]395923[/ATTACH][ATTACH=full]395924[/ATTACH]Journal Entry 3 is a long one, and, SPOILER ALERT, it's basically a quick synopsis of the novel Azure Bonds.[ATTACH=full]395925[/ATTACH][ATTACH=full]395926[/ATTACH][ATTACH=full]395927[/ATTACH]Technically, Dragonbait is a saurial, but I'm assuming that was just a typo. Also, all the strange smells are part of how saurials communicate, indicating moods. The baking bread was Dragonbait being angry (how disappointing for our stomachs), the tar was him feeling triumphant, and the violets, brimstone, and honeysuckle was him being afraid, confused, and concerned in quick order as we entered the room.[ATTACH=full]395931[/ATTACH]Sure, a couple of extra warriors is always nice![ATTACH=full]395932[/ATTACH]And treasure is always nice too!Our new party:[ATTACH=full]395933[/ATTACH]They've got some weird buffs there, although I'm not complaining.Alias' character sheet:[ATTACH=full]395934[/ATTACH]She has pretty decent stats, but is only 6 years old! This is because, as she said in her story, she was originally just a construct that attained actual real life during her creation. Only her HP total is a bit low, but overall, she's much better than what we got with Akabar!Dragonbait's character sheet:[ATTACH=full]395935[/ATTACH]He's not quite as good as Alias, but it's not too bad. He has good HP, but his AC isn't all that great, due to his poor DEX. Also, his XP is weirdly low.The good news is that they do have passable HP, so they can take some damage, all while putting out damage of their own. So, unlike Akabar, they should be reasonably useful in combat.  The one real annoyance is that they're actually useful but only will be with us for a pretty short time, unlike pretty useless Akabar, who hung out with us for what seemed like forever.We'll keep them in the back, as they will guard our back flanks, and not be hit quickly with their somewhat poor ACs, as they would have done if they were in the front line. This pushes Buffy back up front again, but I'll move the order around so she's in the middle of the front ranks and not out on the flank getting hit a lot.(This is one of the very few times in the Gold Box games where you'll have a full compliment of 8 characters, which is the maximum allowed by the engine)With our new NPC friends in the group, we head out the south door of the room we were in previously.[ATTACH=full]395936[/ATTACH][ATTACH=full]395938[/ATTACH]I'm getting a bit tired of dying cultists exulting triumphantly with their last breaths. Time to ruin their afterlives for them, I guess.[ATTACH=full]395939[/ATTACH]I point to the dead cultists on the floor. "They could."We circle back north and head through some doors. Buffy gets some practice picking locks on them.[ATTACH=full]395940[/ATTACH]At this point, you can either elect combat or let the monsters go. Shambling mounds are a pain, even with our nifty wand of defoliation, so we wait and this group leaves us alone.We go through the door and enter another north-south corridor.[ATTACH=full]395941[/ATTACH]As good a guess as any.We enter another room, and are again confronted by plant monsters:[ATTACH=full]395942[/ATTACH]While shambling mounds are annoying, vegepygmies aren't a real threat at our level. And we do want to have practice with our new wand. So we decide on combat this time.[ATTACH=full]395945[/ATTACH][ATTACH=full]395946[/ATTACH]They come in two sizes, regular, and large, the latter of which have twice the hit points.Brin gets the wand out and ready...[ATTACH=full]395949[/ATTACH]And fires upon the vegepygmies. She can use this wand even with Buffy in the way, as non-plant creatures are completely unharmed by the wand's, magic. Unfortunately, the wand's range is only three square cone, so no way of getting a lot of them in the AoE. But it does do some pretty significant damage![ATTACH=full]395950[/ATTACH]The others just attack normally while Brin moves around to fire on the vegepygmies...[ATTACH=full]395951[/ATTACH]Until the last one goes down...[ATTACH=full]395952[/ATTACH]Since they're pretty low-level creatures, we don't get much in the way of XP for them, and they have no treasure whatsoever.We leave the room and head back to the previous north-south corridor. As we reach a bend in the corridor, Alias and Dragonbait notice something interesting...[ATTACH=full]395953[/ATTACH]At least we know which way to come when we want to leave, since the cultists rather inconveniently decided to collapse the main entrance.(Lemon means Dragonbait is happy).We head left (east) and continue to another junction, where we turn south.[ATTACH=full]395954[/ATTACH][ATTACH=full]395955[/ATTACH]That is a bit worrying. Surely they can't all be waiting ahead as part of trap, right?[ATTACH=full]395956[/ATTACH]Having explored most places of interest on the first level (other than the exit, which we'll get to in the future as we leave), we stand at the entrance to the lower level. We'll pick things back up here in the next post!</blockquote>

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