Betrayal at Krondor: Going in Circles

The game tries, but 1993 graphics aren't quite "there" yet.

          

This session begins with my three characters--Locklear, Owyn, and Gorath--on the road outside LaMut. Locklear and Gorath are bringing word to Krondor about some new devilry with the Moredhel (dark elves), and Owyn is a local boy they swept up in the journey. We've already killed several Moredhel assassins and completed a side quest that involved killing a beast that had taken over the dwarven mines of Mac Mordain Cadal.

    

Encouraged by many commenters not to take the urgency of the main quest too literally, I start this session by announcing (I imagine Locklear saying this) that to avoid being too obvious, and thus falling into an ambush, we're going to take a circuitous route to Krondor, beginning by heading north from our current location. From there, a modest loop will take us to Yabon and Tyr-Sog before heading south to Loriel, Hawk's Hollow, Tanneurs, and finally Krondor--or I could cross west north of Tanneurs and hit Questor's View and Sarth before Krondor.

         

I made a map with everything labeled so you could follow this narrative. Click to enlarge.

     

A more generous path would continue going west from Tyr-Sog through Eldpoint to Highcastle. I can't quite tell from the in-game map whether it's possible to cut south from there, through what in the books is the Dimwood, to Sethanon. If not, it would have to take me through Wolfram, Kenting Rush, Romney, Sliden, and the other cities on the eastern clockwise circuit.

    

Finally, the ridiculous path would take me north from Tyr-Sog through Harlech, Sar-Sargoth, and Raglam before intersecting the previous option north of Kenting Rush. I don't have a strong opinion which path I'll take at this point. I figure I'll evaluate when I get to Tyr-Sog.

         

At this crossroads, a decision will need to be made.

        

The game has taken some liberties with geography, I should add. The shortest of these paths, according to a Midkemia world map that I found online, is about 1,000 miles.

    

After passing a confused Squire Phillip, we come to the city of Yabon, where Owyn advises caution: "I left a wedding party here not too long ago, and it might raise unpleasant questions if I were seen here again." Yabon is a non-menu town, so we have to click on the doors individually, none of which give any indication what they are from the outside (i.e., there are no shingles outside shops). There are a couple of empty houses. Owyn alerts us to his aunt's house: "As much as I would enjoy an opportunity to explain why I'm traveling with a Moredhel, I think we should leave."

         

I need a fantasy version of Guess Who's Coming to Dinner?

        

A shop called the Crossroads sells weapons, armor, and related supplies. I don't have enough money for the weapons and armor that are better than what we already have, but I do buy an armorer's hammer with 30 uses for 26 gold. This will allow me to repair my armor, the same way that whetstones allow me to "repair" my swords and Aventurine lets me "repair" my bows. We try to haggle for it, but the mechanic just pisses off the shopkeeper, and we have to leave and return before the hammer becomes available again.

    

An abandoned building gives us an opportunity to experiment again with lockpicking. When you choose to lockpick, you get an interface that shows all your keys and picks. You drag the one you want to try over to the lock. I guess this world has a lot of generic locks that open to generic keys (e.g., peasant's key, guilder's passkey). If you fail, the key or pick breaks. The game automatically selects the character with the highest skill to try; you can manually select the others if you want to try to build their skill. Locklear gets it on a couple of tries. It turns out to be a laundry shop that's gone out of business, but we find a set of standard kingdom armor.

        

The lockpicking interface.

       

Across the street, we knock on the door. A man answers and tells us that he's been trying to get into the closed laundry shop across the street, as the shopkeeper never returned his armor before it abruptly closed. "If you can get in there, it's all yours," he says, and shuts the door before we can tell him that we already have it.

    

After Yabon, for a while we have nothing but small encounters:

       

• A Moredhel box: "In all the world, none can compare / To this tiny weaver, his deadly cloth so silky and fair." I suspect that like me, you won't even need to spin the tumblers to figure out the six-letter answer (SPIDER). It has a suit of standard armor, 46 silver royals, 4 lockpicks, and a shell. 

• Two pairs of Moredhel assassins. We have no problems dispatching them. They have standard armor and broadswords. Armor takes up so much space that I have to stop collecting it, and drop what I have, before reaching the next shop.

   

Dealing with assassins.

       

• An isolated house occupied by a balding man. We never get his name. He appears to be a researcher/scribe. "Currently, I have accepted a commission on behalf of a traveling merchant to do a survey of all the mercantile boxes in the area," he says. He offers a valuable book if we find out what's in the box just to the west of Hawk's Hollow. 

      

An unnamed scribe gives us a side quest.

       

• We find some minor treasures in holes dug in the ground. They are very easy to miss.

• A Moredhel mage attacks us east of the house. This battle is odd. At the beginning of it, the mage does something that causes pillars to rise out of the ground with a white line connecting them. Crossing the line causes a character to take massive damage (I reload when this happens the first time and try again). Arrows shot over the line act as if they've hit a force field. His spell ensures that only one of my characters can engage him at a time. We still manage to kill him. He has a valuable Moredhel brooch on him.

         

What is going on here?

       

• Another Moredhel box (I'm going to have to devise a keyboard shortcut for "Moredhel"): "Silently he stalks me, running as I run, creeping as I creep / Dressed in black, he disappears at night, only to return with the sun." Again, I found this one easy enough without having to play with the tumblers (SHADOW). Among other treasures, it has a new spell, "Eye of Ishap." This is not one of the spells described in the manual. Owyn memorizes it. There's also a note informing other Moredhel that "Gorath of the Ardanien" may be "accompanied by a seigneur of the Krondorian Court" and may be heading for Krondor.

        

There aren't enough letters for "this really weird dude who lives next door."

        

• And another box! "He gets short when he gets old / He goes out then it gets cold." Clearly, this is referring to some kind of flame, but nothing that I can think of has six letters. I have to study the possible letters on the dial before the answer comes to me (CANDLE), and I think it's a bit unfair. It goes with the first line okay, but is anyone really using one for warmth? Anyway, this one has two new spells: "Flamecast" (an area-damage spell) and "Stardusk" (lights up the night).

      

We found the Death Star plans.

         

• There's a note in this latest chest to any "Nighthawks" in the region. Nighthawks are introduced in Silverthorn. They're a guild of assassins. I don't think they're exclusively Moredhel, but they have Moredhel among them. The note warns these assassins that the magical traps they're carrying may be defective and that the guild is testing new models to the south of Zun and to the west of Tyr-Sog. The new design was "engineered by the Six." The previous note also mentioned "the Six" as the source of intelligence about Gorath. I'm not sure who they are--some kind of Moredhel ruling body?

          

I just noticed that "advised" is oddly emphasized. Is there a clue there?

        

As we continue west to Tyr-Sog, I'm wary about the possibility of a trap, but I don't stumble into one or find anything. We cross a bridge and find a cemetery on the outskirts of the city. Graves are to:

     

• Pul Dudding. "No one knew when he came or when he went."
• Ceilia deBuellen. "Water took her to the deeps."
• Aglus Soggin. "Another helping put him six feet under."
• Iruna. "In the wilds was the Hadati woman."
• David Bouli. "Buried without a word."

           

Just now, looking at that screenshot, I realized there's a chest there. I don't think I got that one.

       

None of these seem to refer to any characters in the books, and none seem to refer to any members of the creative team. The first one sounds a bit like an in-joke, but no one in the credits has a name anything like that.

     

We decline to dig up any of the graves, but in town, we meet an undertaker who tells us that he was talking to the gravedigger in LaMut, and he mentioned that someone surreptitiously dug a new, unmarked grave. Maybe we should have dug that one up to see what was up.

        

Entering Tyr-Sog.

     

Tyr-Sog is another non-menu town, again with several houses where nobody comes to the door. There's a shop that sells Rings of Prandur (light sources, I think; I have two but haven't tried them yet), keys, lockpicks, repair items, a shovel, and a lute. It occurs to me that if I had said "yes" to digging up graves, the game probably would have told me that I need a shovel. Just in case, I buy one, along with a lute. Again, haggling fails.

      

When a humble bard / graced a ride along / with Locklear of Krondor / Along came this song . . .

       

There's a tavern in the town (in the town), but it's not a full tavern. All we can do is buy drinks and food. There's no option to try our barding skills with the new lute.

   

We leave the town headed north, for the very long route, just to see if the game will let us. It does not. We've only gone a few paces when horns blow and a bunch of guards block the way, led by Finn. Locklear clearly came through this pass just before the game began, as Finn is surprised to see him. He says that not far to the north, a snowstorm buried the pass "under five feet of snow." There will be no going that way.

    

I was looking forward to spending the night at the Pontipee house.

     

My inclination is to go south and take a shorter route to Krondor--all this dallying is fun, but I can't do it forever--but I decide to go east a little distance and see if I'm similarly blocked. I am, but not quite in the same way. Instead, we encounter an ambush on the road with six Moredhel. We try, but we're unable to defeat all of them.

     

Owyn gets to try out his new spell.

     

Thus, we head south, although still wondering how far we could have gone if we had defeated the half-dozen assassins. There are assassins on this route, too, but they attack in packs of two.

    

More small encounters:

    

• Nearly hidden around a hill, we come across a Temple of Ishap. The head priest tells us of an oracle statue to the east of Malac's Cross. The priests will bless items, including weapons, but for a high fee that we decline to pay. It also appears that we can fast travel between Temples of Ishap, again for a fee, but we must visit a temple before we can fast travel to it. This is the first one we've seen.

 

I'm trying to figure out what the map is on the back wall. I don't think it's any place in Midkemia.

          

• The city of Loriel is another non-menu town. We offload some items at Kingdom Goods, which among other things offers a book for sale called Strategies of Trading. At first, I think it must be a book that improves a skill, but then I see that it has 100 "uses." I'm not sure what to make of it. It's a little too expensive for us right now.

• There's a gem seller in Loriel named Keifer Alescook. We ask him about the ruby that the Grey Warriors stole from LaMut. He's offended at the idea that he would buy stolen merchandise, and he suggests we talk to someone named Isaac north of Hawk's Hollow.

• A resident of Loriel tells us to beware Michele the Healer. She thinks Michele and this other guy named Orno the Pale have a deal where Orno gives people a disease and Michele heals them with "phony medicine." We find Orno living in an isolated house south of Loriel, but rather than give us his infection, he warns us about it. Nonetheless, the moment we leave the house, we all fall sick. We rush back north to the temple, where they want 20-25 sovereigns per person to cure us. We try Michele the Healer (who didn't come to the door previously) in Loriel, and she cures us all for a single 25-sovereign payment. The cure seems to be authentic. I don't know what to make of the episode or whether I missed any step I could have taken to stop the scam--if there was a scam.

      

The temple's curing options.

      

• More groups of Moredhel assassins. We come across another one with those "electric fences." This time I have Owyn cast "Invitation" to pull the enemy out of his chosen square and into a location where we can all gang up on him.

      

I think I'll be using this a lot with mages.

       

South of Loriel and east of Hawk's Hollow, the map really opens up, and we miss the southeastern road that would take us towards Krondor via Eggley or Tanneurs. Instead, we find ourselves curving west towards Zun, via Hawk's Hollow, and the very real risk of ending this session almost exactly where we started.

This risk is exacerbated when we run into Isaac, whom the gemseller told us about. Locklear clearly knows him; apparently, he used to live in Krondor and was something of a rogue (I don't remember him from the books). He warns us to avoid the road from Eggley to Tanneurs, as there's a festival going on there. Locklear suggests that someone psychic is telling the Moredhel where we are, and Isaac suggests a candidate named Devon in Eggley, who's preternaturally good at gambling.

        

Dialogue options with Isaac.

        

When we ask about "Stolen Gems," he agrees that he bought a ruby from Keifer Alescook, but he didn't know it was stolen. He needs it to pay an armorer, who only deals in gems, to fix his sword. Locklear says, "What if we can repair your sword for you?" I don't think much of Locklear's repair skills, but I decide to give it a try, and it works. Isaac gives us the ruby and heads out.

           

Miscellaneous notes:

    

• I'm not certain of the extent to which the enemies I encounter are fixed or randomly-generated. So far, areas that I've cleared seem to stay clear, although I haven't done that much backtracking. I don't know if there are any random encounters in the game at all.

• The portraits end up not bothering me as much as I expected. I mostly just ignore them. 

• Sound effects are sparse, but relatively high quality.

• Thank you to the commenters who warned me about spoiled rations. Apparently, there are some seriously negative consequences if you eat them. Dumping them freed up some inventory space.

      

I should have questioned why the game shows 13 rations of one type and 4 of another.

       

We sleep shortly after leaving Isaac, and for the first time since probably the game's first battle, we're all at 100% health. I use this opportunity to compare our real attribute gains since the beginning:

• Locklear has gone up 2% in "Defense," 3% in "Melee Accuracy," 1% in "Weaponcraft," 2% in "Barding," 5% in "Lockpick," and 1% in "Stealth." His strength has increased by 2.

• Owyn has gone up 1% in "Defense," 1% in "Melee Accuracy," 2% in "Barding," 5% in "Lockpick," and 1% in "Stealth." I'm surprised his casting accuracy hasn't increased.

• Gorath has increased 1% in "Defense," 2% in "Melee Accuracy," 1% in "Weaponcraft," 2% in "Barding," 5% in "Lockpick," and 31% in "Stealth," although 30% of that is because of some magic shoes.

      

I have to end here, again not having made much progress on the official quest. These first three entries have given me a solid exposure to the game and its conventions. I probably won't literally start over when I return, but I'll be entering a second chapter in which I do things a bit more quickly, I think, and cover more territory with a single entry.

   

Alas, that entry may be some time from now, as I'm about to face the busiest month of my year. I'm not only starting new classes as a professor but also as a student, plus I have a couple of major writing and database projects that I have to finish. Since the beginning of the year, I've kept to a consistent schedule of posting every 2.5 days, which I'm proud of, but I'm afraid September is going to be a little more erratic. Hopefully I'll be stable again by October.

    

Time so far: 8 hours