Curse of the Azure Bonds: Factions

Chaos is sown in their passage.

The overriding theme of Curse of the Azure Bonds is the party's relationship with various factions at work amidst the chaos of the Dalelands. The game manual gives a very good overview of these "power groups," but it's tough to get a full handle on things until you start playing. The key groups and their points of conflict are:

• The Fire Knives hate King Azoun of Cormyr because he kicked them out of Cormyr. They've used their bonding technology to try to assassinate him twice, first with Alias (the heroine of the Azure Bonds novel) and then with my party.

• The Zhentarim, a mercenary group in charge of Zhentil Keep, wants to take over the Dalelands and to that end has invaded the city of Teshwave, has allied with the city of Voonlar, is threatening Dagger Falls, and is fighting with the armies of Hillsfar (called the Red Plumes) in the ruins of Yulash.

• Yulash, meanwhile, is also inhabited by the Cult of Moander,  the god of rot and corruption. Though he was banished to another realm by elves some time ago, his fanatical cultists have tried several times to restore him to Faerûn. Alias and her party were among their (failed) pawns, and my bonds are part of yet another attempt.

• Elminster the Sage protects Shadowdale and has numerous enemies. The Zhentarim have designs on the city, and their Voonlar allies have attacked it several times. Dracandros, a Red Wizard of Thay, seems to be jealous of Elminster, going so far as to duplicate his sigil. Elminster is affiliated with the Harpers, a group of mostly good-aligned agents that oppose evil groups like the Zhentarim.

• There is also a schism within the Zhentarim between the regular troops and mages, and the clerics led by Fzoul, a priest of Bane.

• The Knights of Myth Drannor patrol the ruins of the ancient, powerful elven city, stopping anyone from getting in and anything from getting out. I encountered one of them fighting the Fire Knives for an unknown reason.

It is into this boiling cauldron that my party has been thrown, bonded to four of the five evil groups listed above plus Tyranthraxus, whose particular goals are unknown but who, like many of them, has an allegiance to Bane, the god of fear, hatred, and tyranny. Each of them wants to use me for their own purposes, but their alliance otherwise seems unstable and temporary. As I travel throughout the overland area, I see the evidence of the factions at work with and against each other. My Zhentarim sigil got me ill treatment in several towns (Red Plumes from Hillsfar overturned my drinks and attacked me), and I was barred from several inns. But in others, I was treated like royalty. Armies on the road are marching from one city to another.

How hard would it have been to wrap some cloth around our arms?

Unfortunately, I can't really role-play the factions. Since the primary motivation of the game is revenge against those who have bonded me, I am by default against those five groups and in favor of whomever opposes them. That works out okay for my good-aligned party, but some stronger faction-joining options would have made a more interesting game. The only role-playing option I've encountered so far is a phalanx of soldiers heading from Voonlar to Teshwave, intending to invade. Going with "the enemy of my enemy's allies is my friend," I attacked and routed them.

This was a good role-playing choice since I had no idea how large the "army" was. (It turned out to be about 12 guys.)

As I started to note at the end of the last posting, the outdoor area consists of a dozen visitable areas with multiple routes among them. You don't actually move the party between them but rather specify a destination and a method of travel. In between any two areas, on any route, there's a chance of a fixed encounter. For instance, between Teshwave and Zhentil Keep by boat, you'll be attacked by river pirates (unless you've already fought them off once). Between Tilverton and Dagger Falls by wilderness, you encounter a group of displacer beasts who have recently eaten the mage in charge of training them.

The destinations themselves consist of three types:

• "Menu cities" in which you can visit stores, inns, bars, training halls, and temples, but only by menu.

• Full cities containing one or more 16 x 16 maps that you can explore, all as part of the main quest

• Menu cities with ruins nearby that you can explore via the "Search Area" command. These ruins are largely generic areas with random encounters and not important to the main plot.

Phlan, the setting of the last game, is much reduced in this one.

I was delighted to see that I could travel as far as Phlan, but it turned out to be a menu city. The option to explore the ruins took me to a set of generic ruins and not the same maps as in the original game. Still, there was a fun set of "tavern tales" in the Phlan bar, including the city clerk's depression with no new commissions to hand out. I was also pleased to see that the buccaneer base and the Zhent outpost to the west of Phlan were still in ruins.

Since I left Tilverton, I've been keeping a spreadsheet with every combination of starting point, destination, and route. There are almost 100 total, and I intend to travel every one to make sure I don't miss something important.

In terms of progressing on the main plot, there's an area called the "Standing Stone" (a monument commemorating an elven-human peace accord) where I encounter a mysterious robed man. Apparently, he gives hints as to the best faction to tackle next. But I was late finding the Standing Stone and I made an independent decision to take on the Zhentarim after the Fire Knives. My rationale is that fighters are easier than mages (like the Red Wizard of Thay) or clerics (like the cultists of Moander). Little did I know that the Zhentarim has plenty of mages and clerics--as well as gryphons, manticores, minotaurs, a medusa, and a beholder--in its employ.

Zhentil Keep was a powder keg from the moment I entered. Citizens scurried away from me on the street, whispering about a halfling who had been spreading rumors about me. Groups of mages, clerics, and fighters attacked me openly in the street. Several times, my bonds compelled me to attack them, but as they were priests of the evil god Bane, I didn't mind. I'm still a little unclear why the priest leader of the Zhentarim was compelling me to kill his own people, but it probably had something to do with the previously-mentioned schism.

Nothing like compelling me to do something I would have done anyway.

Pressing forward, I eventually encountered the halfling, Olive Rustkettle (another of Alias's companions from the book), who led me into the base of the Fzoul, the Zhent leader, who had captured the sage Dimswart. I'm not entirely sure why she was going through the city ahead of my arrival, telling everyone about me.

When I rescued the sage, he told me a lot more about my bonds (as he did for Alias in the book), including the identity of the high priestess of Moander (Mogion) and the Red Wizard. He suggested that Fzoul had me bonded so that he could make use of a cache of good-aligned weapons (how this works if I chose evil characters is unexplained). Most important, he told me that to defeat Tyranthraxus, I would need three magical artifacts: the Amulet of Lathander, the Helm of Dragons, and the Gauntlet of Moander.

I've played too many CRPGs to trust women in hooded cloaks, but the game left me with no choice.

I found that the base was sealed shut, but a mysterious hooded woman kept showing up and offering to lead me out, and finally I had to accept. She led me to a series of caverns and to her master, a beholder named Dexam, part of a faction of priests and beholders that serve Bane. Although technically allied with Fzoul and the Zhentarim, when Fzoul showed up and demanded that the beholder release me, the beholder blasted him with a disintegration ray and my Zhent bonds disappeared.

The enemy of my enemy did not, in this case, turn out to be my friend.

Dexam left me to his minions, whom I defeated and began looking for a way out. What I was beginning to grasp in the city itself became very clear in the caverns: I was here way too soon. My exploration of the caverns was a long series of deaths and reloads, with no way to escape until after the final battle (even one level-up would have helped). Every enemy I encountered had at least one cleric or priest, and battles with them are like quick-draw gunfights in the Old West, but with "Hold Person" spells instead of guns. If they got the drop on me, I'd have two or three characters frozen instantly, with almost no way to recover at that point. Winning even the random combats was a furious process of "Hold Person" and "Fireball." Some of the battles featured Drow warriors (no idea what they were doing here) with -7 armor class and high magic resistance, and thus virtually undamageable. I'd slay their minions in a couple of minutes and then spend the next 10 desperately trying to deal any damage to them as they took down my party members one by one.

Manticores can shoot their barbs and get about 8 attacks per round. When I had finally dealt with them (with fireballs, mostly), all the while fending off "Hold Person" from the priest, I still had to deal with the Drow. This battle took me about seven tries to win.

The random encounters seemed near-endless, and for a while I worried that they were. The only thing keeping me alive was finding a corner to rest and re-memorize in after every battle or two, and these rest periods carried a high risk of another random combat. Eventually, though, they did end. The whole experience served to remind me that some of the most angst-filled moments I have in CRPGs are when I'm stuck in areas and I don't know when I'll next be able to level up, identify my equipment, and otherwise reach a "stable" position. The expedition-and-return model is so common to CRPGs that it's jarring when games break it by making it unclear when you'll be able to "return" or simply not featuring returns at all (e.g., the entire roguelike sub-genre).

One of 20-25 identical battles in the caves. I don't know where I'd be without "Fireball."

The caves culminated in a major battle against Dexam the Beholder, his hooded assistant--who turned out to be a medusa--and a pack of minotaurs. Since medusas have the ability to gaze my characters to stone, and beholders have death rays and disintegration rays, the battle was essentially a question of whether my saving throws would keep me alive long enough for my fireballs (including a necklace of fireballs that I gave to a cleric) to clear out the minotaurs so that my fighters could reach the beholder and medusa. Even with "Haste," "Bless," "Prayer," and "Protection from Evil" active, it was nearly impossible, and the video below shows how my lower-level party was really out of their league in this battle. (It also illustrates a little about combat, sound, and graphics in the game.)

Nonetheless, perseverance and luck did the trick, and I killed the enemy and got the Amulet of Lathander from the beholder's corpse.

When I emerged from the caverns, Olive took Dimswart away, and I caught yet another glimpse of Princess Nacacia eloping with Gharri of Gond.

Zhentil Keep had descended into full chaos, and I was unable to re-enter the city to finish mapping the unexplored areas. Also, I keep getting attacked by random parties of Zhentarim on the road. But I no longer have drinks spilled on me in pubs, so there's an improvement.

The Zhents weren't happy that I turned their city into 1990s Sarajevo.

A few notes:

• I've had to get used to the idea that large experience rewards are normal and don't mean that I'm going to level up on my next visit to the training hall. Every time I see a 4,000 or 5,000 experience reward, I assume that someone must have leveled up, but no, it takes a dozen of these now.

• The economy is as bad as in Pool of Radiance, and already I'm not bothering to loot enemies after combat. The one good thing is that the game offered a magic shop in Zhentil Keep that sold absurdly expensive gear, like wands of magic missiles for 15,000 gold or potions of speed for 2,000. They also had magic arrows and Darts of the Hornet's Nest. But then again, every random battle with mages on the street produced Bracers of AC 6 that sold for 9,000 gold. And it seems like the shop is inaccessible now anyway. Gold encumbers, so I try to keep every character with just enough to pay for his next level-up and nothing more.

This was briefly cool.

• Hillsfar, a visitable menu town in Curse, was the subject of its own single-character game, Hillsfar, released the same year. I guess it technically came before Curse, since you can import characters from it, so I should have probably played it first.

• I have two major complaints about the interface: the game remembers neither memorized spells nor targeted enemies. This makes re-memorizing cast spells and combat (especially ranged combat) more annoying than it needs to be. I wonder if this is ever corrected.

• I really dislike wilderness combats, mostly because the game starts the party about 17 miles from the enemy, and you have to waste a few rounds just getting into position.

• The game has a funny reaction if you order milk in a bar.

Octavianus has reached Level 8 as a cleric and essentially serves all my cleric-based needs now. Cesario is on the cusp of reaching Level 9--one more combat should do it. When he does, I'm going to flip him to a mage. When Octavianus hits Level 9, he'll get his fighter abilities back and will be considerably more useful. Goldeneye, the ranger, just got her first druid spells. I'll experiment with "Entangle," "Faerie Fire," and "Invisibility to Animals" eventually, but right now I'm happy to take "Detect Magic" duties off Viola's hands so Viola can memorize another "Magic Missile" instead.

None of these sound like they'd make better use of a combat round than simply having Goldeneye attack.

Next, I'm going to finish exploring the overland travel routes and then decide whether I want to take on the Red Wizard next or the Cult of Moander. The game suggests the wizard would make the most sense, but I hear he has dragons.