Though we made camp for the night, our rest was interrupted by another two ogres before we managed to set up properly.
"Seven, seven deadly ogres! Ah-ah-ah," Neera said aloud. "If I don't see another ogre for the rest of my life, it'll be too soon!"
I looked up from cooking duty, frowning, but kept silent at Neera's remark. Got to make a mental note of these little things.
We were nearing the gnoll fortress now. Having fought some gnolls before, our spell preparations were more focused on mass disables like Sleep and Web.
Once we were sitting and eating, I figured it would be a good time to have a sharing session.
"I guess I should go first," I offered.
I told them about my life at Candlekeep, together with Imoen, how my foster-father had to leave suddenly and his demise at the hands of the armored figure with the teeth face-plate.
"So you and Imoen aren't an item?" Neera asked.
"Ewww, no. We're almost brother and sister. I took after 'ol puffguts more than 'ol fiddle faddle though," Imoen responded, and I nodded along.
"Puff guts? Fiddle what-now?" Khalid asked, puzzled.
"Fiddle faddle's Gorion, puffguts is… anyway, the two of us may be inseparable cos of our shared history, but we're definitely not romantically involved. Gross," I stuck out my tongue.
Imoen stuck her tongue right back at me.
"Maybe it's time for Jaheira and Khalid to tell us about themselves? How did you two know my foster father?" I suggested.
"That's two different topics," Jaheira said. "I'll go first. Believe it or not, I have noble blood."
"Ahhhh…," all of us went, and nodded to each other. "That explains a lot actually-"
"Shush! I hail from Tetyr, but had to flee to the forests as a child due to a civil war. Druids there took me in," Jaheira explained. "As to my association with your foster father, we have worked together on many occasions. Your foster father had quite an active adventuring life at one time, you know."
"I'm beginning to suspect as much now, yes," I replied.
"He was many things. But most of all, he was a good man," Jaheira said. Her eyes grew cold. "I promise you, young man. Whoever was responsible for his death shall share an equal fate."
Khalid's turn. He looked at Jaheira, then said nervously, "I'm from Calimshan. My father was a merchant there."
He paused, fidgeted.
We waited for him to continue for a moment before realising he was done.
"Come on, tell us more than that!" Imoen lamented, in faux despair.
"I, uh, learned to fight from the city militia?" Khalid replied.
Like trying to draw water from stone. "How do you know my father?" I asked.
"Ah, we have long been friends," Khalid said. "We have many shared acquaintances. His loss will be mourned with harpsong."
Jaheira gave her husband a furtive glance, and quickly said, "Branwen, how about you go next?"
Branwen straightened out her posture, and sat upright. "You know of my unwitting association with the mercenary bandits, yes? So I'll not mention that again. I hail from Seawolf in the Norheim Isles. My people there reviled me for my desire to become a priest. The station is reserved for men. That is why I left my home."
Norheim? I'm that's Faerun's version of Norway. 'Seawolf' was pretty suggestive of Vikings too. Branwen certainly looked Scandinavian.
"Right. That's what you were saying earlier," Neera noted, "Well, you got my support! A woman can choose to do whatever they like! No man should say otherwise!"
"Hear, hear!" Jaheira and Imoen said in agreement. I and Khalid smiled and nodded our heads vigorously.
I took a swig, then said, "Neera-"
"You rang?"
I grimaced. What the heck? Later, later. "Your turn, yer baffle head."
"Oh, right!" Neera shifted in place, pumping herself up, I guess? "I'm on the run from Red Wizards-"
"We know that part already, tell us what happened before that!" Imoen interrupted.
Neera shot her a look, then continued, "Fiiiiiiiine. I come from High Forest. Born and bred in the thicket, that's me."
She shifted uncomfortably, then looked down. "Well, at least until the accident."
I think that everyone around, we all thought to ourselves, I figured as much.
"How bad was it?" I asked tentatively.
"A maiming or two, if you don't count the second-degree burns," Neera recounted, "But hey, everybody lived!"
I tried my best not to cringe at the thought. I could see everyone else was trying not to show our horror as well.
"What were you doing at the time?" Imoen asked the obvious question.
"Magical training. We were supposed to summon a sphere of fire."
Oooooh. The desire to cringe in horror at the thought was plenty strong. Khalid was holding tightly to Jaheira for comfort.
"Did your classmates forgive you?"
"Don't know. I, uh, ran away. Never got a chance to apologise," Neera admitted.
Now I couldn't help but grimace.
"Yeah… maybe I should stop here?" Neera said, suddenly self-aware at everyone's reaction.
I was hoping that as a result of this sharing, the group's cohesion and trust for each other would improve. Unfortunately, with respect to Neera, it only got worse.
Next stop, Gnoll Fortress! Which apparently was across a rather tight rope bridge above a ravine.
I took a look below, ignoring the feeling of vertigo. Pretty sheer drop to a river below. The original game didn't have falling mechanics, but I wouldn't want to try my luck with that. "Let's move quickly across, eyes peeled for trouble."
As we walked across, we spotted two humanoid shapes on the other side of the bridge.
"Not gnolls? Maybe they're friendly?" Imoen said, hopeful. From her voice, she didn't sound hopeful herself.
When we got closer, we could see that the two were ogrillons. Very tall ogrillons. Well, tall compared to us. How the heck do ogres and orcs procreate anyway?
"Stop! You go nowhere! This our bridge. You pay to walk it!" one demanded as we approached.
"Yeah, you pay, uh, 200 for all heads, or lose heads!" the other said.
…did it just pause before declaring the number? Maybe… "200 is too much! Do I look like I have that kind of money!" I shouted back.
"Why are we negotiating? We can take 'em," Imoen whispered to me.
"Cos they might cut the rope!" I whispered back.
Imoen gulped. "Negotiate away!"
"Little halfling looks poor," the first ogrillon said.
What? I grimaced. I do not! I jsut don't look rich!
The two ogrillons settled on an amount. "100 gold! Final offer, no less!"
Urggh, 100 gold? Still too much. "Thank you for your offer. I think I'll go around the other way!"
The party gave me a death stare and looked at the ogrillons nervously.
A moment passed.
"Your head so dumb you not miss it!" one ogrillon shrieked.
"Yeah! We kill you, take stuff, and get gold anyway! Dumb head!" the other shrieked, and they both charged across the bridge towards us.
…right. "This bridge is their money-maker, they wouldn't really cut it down," I said, grinning sheepishly.
Imoen punched my shoulder hard before drawing her bow.
Funnily enough, even though we were 6 vs 2 ogrillons, one of the ogrillons was actually quite troublesome to put down. It was dodging our attacks like a champion, like an ogrillon… ballerina? Something like that. It was so noticeable, immediately after the battle the party started poking at the ogrillon's stuff.
From the not-so-dodgy ogrillon we got a cold resistance potion and a potion of Hill Giant Strength, very nice. But we were more interested in the dodgy ogrillon. The only thing out of the ordinary on the dodgy ogrillon were a pair of gauntlets.
Ahhhh, I know what these are. Just what the doctor ordered, I thought to myself, eyeing Jaheira.
"Gauntlets, not bracers. So not bracers of armour," Neera said while patting her own magical bracers. "Bracers of armour don't work like that anyway. Doesn't make people very dodgy."
"Obviously they have a beneficial effect," Jaheira said, "But it could also have a bad one and be cursed."
I sighed. "I think our paranoia is working against us this time. Whatever drawback these things have, we saw what it did for the ogrillon. We'll need that dodge boost for the gnolls ahead. We can pay for a curse removal later if it comes to that."
I eyed Jaheira, then put them on myself. Then I took them off. "Not cursed! Didn't feel any different, though?"
Jaheira sighed, then stuck out her hands. I gave the bracers to her. "You can just tell me directly, you know," she said, "You want me to use these so I can stand on the front lines better next to Khalid."
"I'm glad you understand," I said, smiling.
"Jerk," Neera muttered under her breath.
Jaheira tried the bracers on, then flexed her fingers. "Oooh. That feels good. I think get why these didn't do much for you, Sonny. You're beyond these bracer's enchantment. Too shifty already."
"Ha-ha-ha. Let the rest try it too though. Give it a feel."
After letting everyone a go, we concluded it made the most difference to Jaheira. These were Gauntlets of Dexterity, which set the user's Dexterity value to 18. Jaheira's dexterity was the lowest, so she benefited the most.
With both Jaheira and Khalid now being really tanky, pushing through the gnoll fortress was pretty easy. Actually no, the main factor was that was we spammed Sleep and Web like crazy. Gnoll, gnoll slasher, gnoll elite, gnoll whatever didn't matter. Sleep, Web, rinse and repeat. The extra casts from the power-leveling with the basilisks was bearing fruit.
I was kind of expecting Neera's spell to surge, but thankfully her magic behaved itself.
Dynaheir turned out to be a pit that was so dark we had to actually go into it to see her. "'Tis certainly good to see a face possessed of fewer teeth than my captors. I am Dynaheir, and I welcome thine aid."
Dynaheir is a black, classy, self-assured woman who supposedly hailed from Rashemen, just like Minsc. Rashemen is supposed to be analogous for Slavic or Russian, so I didn't really see how she or Minsc were from there.
In the original Baldur's Gate, companions who you accept into the party then kick out would hang around where you left them for eternity. Thankfully this wasn't the case here, and Dynaheir agreed to be escorted back to Nashkel to Minsc's waiting arms.
A bit more on Dynaheir, evoker extraordinaire. As an evoker, she was better at casting evocation spells and barred from Enchantment spells. So she was better at casting Web and big-bang-boom spells like everyone's favourite spell, Fireball. However, she couldn't cast the #1 best spell at low levels, Sleep, as well as some of the best AoE disables like Confusion and Chaos later. On balance, she's okay but not my preference. I'd ignore her if not for Minsc.
Travel to Nashkel had to wait, though. Barely injured and plenty of spells left, I wanted to check the caves we had seen in the distant and didn't want to return here later. I didn't mention to the group that I knew there was a very powerful item somewhere in the caves.
The journey to the caves were littered with xvarts aplenty, which ranged fire and tanking took care of easily. The first cave had a little something extra, though.
Have you seen fly larvae before? Now imagine a humongous one that wants to eat you, with mandibles dripping with toxic venom.
"Ewwwww! Kill it! Kill it! Kill it!" Neera shrieked in disgust as the bulbous thing slithered towards us.
"Ranged fire! Don't risk melee if possible!" I ordered. "Its venom causes paralysis!"
I didn't need to tell them twice. Neera cringed and squirmed the most, but really nobody in the group fancied letting that thing slobber all over us with venom. Carrion Crawlers have a tricky AC 3, so Neera used a blind spell to make it easier to hit. Thankfully it didn't get a chance to reach us.
The next cave a bit down south (easy to miss) had a nicer surprise. Guarded by xvarts was a neat little treasure trove with:
95gp,
3 Potions of Healing,
1 Larloch's Minor Drain scroll, 1 Magic Missile scroll,
and a mysterious unidentified tome!
The last item in particular caught everyone's attention.
"Is that what I think it is?" Jaheira asked, looking at Neera.
"I have to identify it later, but I should think so," Neera said, "Not a spell book, that's for sure."
I knew what it was but pretended not to. It was exactly what they suspected, a rare and famous magical tome that provided a one-time benefit permanent increase to an attribute score. Even Imoen had an inkling what it was, that's how famous the tomes were. This one was specifically a Tome of Leadership and Influence, which gave +1 to Charisma.
Shopping was going to be sooooo good.
And with that, we were done with the gnoll stronghold. We began the long trek back to Nashkel which would take over 36 hours.
We had barely travelled 2 hours however before we realised we were being stalked.
"What animal dares hunt a party of armed adventurers?" Branwen asked. "Another bear?"
"Please, no," Neera balked.
"Bear's too big. This is a silent stalker, can hang low to the ground," I said glancing around. "Fast too. Darted out of sight before I caught a good glimpse. Canine."
"Canine? A pack of wolves?"
Imoen shook her head. "Just the one. White coat."
White coat? Didn't the Nashkel Store mention they would pay for winter wolf coats?
I glared at the pair of unidentified white boots hanging from Khalid's backpack. If only I could convince him to wear it!
True enough, a white wolf with frigid frost emanating from its mouth suddenly leapt out, and breathed out a lethal ball of rime!
Khalid brought his shield up in time, deflecting the iceball harmlessly, then charged.
"Bless, Blind and Doom, now!" I barked out. "Bring it down before it gives Khalid frostbite!"
Bless and Doom are guaranteed, and Blind succeeded in taking hold. That gave our team an effective +5 to hit it, and -6 to hit us. I could had Khalid also drink the potion of resist cold, but that proved unnecessary. Blinded and Doomed, the winter wolf couldn't fight back effectively and was cut down before it could get a lucky hit.
Speaking of luck, Khalid was well protected but he was still fortunate that initial ice ball missed him. It would do 6d4 cold damage (average damage 15) which could easily one-shot a level 1 fighter! Winter wolves were no joke.
What I had forgotten about entirely, was the Belt of Antipode that Gorion had worn. The belt would have rendered Khalid entirely immune to the Winter Wolf's cold attacks. Oh well!