Betrayal at Krondor: The Real Betrayal

 

The party learns how to automate things in Excel.

       

This session starts in Chapter V: "When Rivers Run Blood." The Moredhel attack on Northwarden is imminent. James and Locklear have teamed up with Patrus, Baron Gabot's magician, to run a bunch of missions prior to the battle. As this session opens, the three of them are attempting to convince the baron's minstrel, Tamney, to return to the court and help boost morale. Tamney is afraid of death, but he says he'll do it if we recover some Geomancy Stones from the nearby dungeon called Diviner's Halls.

    

This turns out to be the same dungeon that James, Owyn, and Gorath partly explored in Chapter III. It's not very big, and the battles don't seem like they should be very hard, but the game keeps starting Patrus by himself on the right side of the screen. The other two have trouble reaching him to defend him, and Patrus can only move two squares at a time. The consequence is that enemies are constantly moving into Patrus's periphery, preventing him from casting. Because of this, the battles (Moredhel, hounds, ogres) are tougher than they should be, leaving characters constantly wounded and sometimes near death. Fortunately, I bought a ton of herb packs and restoratives during the last session.

         

A battle rages with some "ogres."

     

Perhaps one of the reasons that the enemies seem extra difficult is that they all have buffs on their weapons. I keep finding blessed, poisoned, and otherwise treated weapons on their corpses. I try to load up on them for resale, but I can only carry so much.

    

I encounter the same fairy chests that I wrote about a few weeks ago, but this time I have all the passwords. One of the chests has the Geomancy Stones. 

            

This game is definitely getting a couple of extra points for these item descriptions.

       

We return the stones to Tamney, who in turn says he'll return to Northwarden. "I think [the baron] will be rather more relieved than you might imagine," he says. He goes on to explain that before he fled, he tricked a treasury guard into leaving his post, then slipped into the treasury and snatched a pouch. He just wanted some gold for the road. After he left, he opened the pouch and found that it held precious diamonds worth hundreds of sovereigns each. "I became terrified of going back." Now, Tamney is worried about getting both himself and the treasury guard in trouble. He plans to use the Geomancy Stones to make a wedding band for the guard to give to his sweetheart, and he wants us to return the stones to Gabot without explaining where we got them.

   

We have bigger fish to fry in the meantime. After a quick run to Northwarden to sell our extra gear, replenish our supplies, and buy some Silverthorn Extract to cure poison, we return to Duke Martin. He tells us about the goblins stationed in the pass to the north of Northwarden. He wants us to find their battle plans, but we have to do it without seizing or killing their leader, because if we do that, the enemy will just change the plans. "No, what I need is the big plan and I'll be willing to bet that it's still in Raglam," a Moredhel city just beyond the border. 

    

This is not a million light years from what James actually does.

       

There's no way through the pass without walking right through the goblin horde. As we do, their leader, Gulla, approaches. He offers to not only let us pass but also to switch sides and fight the upcoming battle on behalf of Baron Gabot if we give him 2,000 sovereigns. 

   

In retrospect, the diamonds are clearly meant to supply us with the means to raise that much cash, but I don't like the idea of breaking our promise to return them, so I try to raise the money (I already have about half of it) by looting enemy corpses first. And what do you know—in contrast to every other moment in the game, the enemies I've slain along the road suddenly have no items. I can't even find any dead enemies when I return to Diviner's Halls. Thus, I'm forced to sell the diamonds, although I wonder what happens if you just refuse and attack the goblins. Someone please enlighten me if you know.

       

It also feels like we should have been able to just requisition the funds from Gabot.

       

Gulla tells us to use his name to pass any other goblin patrols. "We will fight for your Baron."

     

We move to a small northern map with an east-west road passing through the Moredhel city of Raglam. There are some battles on the road with Moredhel and giants, plus a few tents and chests to loot. Outside Raglam, we find an abandoned, broken catapult, curiously loaded and pointed at the city. James theorizes that it was left that way by some rogue Moredhel. 

    

Either way, we'll use it.

       

James has the party brazenly waltz into Raglam, pretending to be mercenaries working for Delekhan. No one really questions this. We check out the tavern, sell some crossbows at a shop, and have a weird encounter with a resident who thinks we were sent by "Eron the Minstrel" to play music for him. (Patrus doesn't have Owyn's skill, and we get thrown out of the house.) We cannot get into the residence occupied by the Moredhel leader, Captain Kroldech.

         

Moredhel don't seem like the types to use "ain't."

       

West of the city, we find some chests, one of which has a gear needed to repair the broken catapult. We return to the device and launch a few stones at the city. We then head back to the city and find Kroldech's residence destroyed, Kroldech dead on the floor, the battle plans on his desk. He also has the Sword of Lims-Kragma, which judging by its statistics is the best sword in the game, at least so far.

    

Plans in hand, we return to Martin, who gives us another mission to find six Moredhel illusionists who slipped through our lines and are hiding somewhere in the area. It takes us a while to find them in an abandoned house southeast of Dencamp. They make the mistake of not crowding Patrus during the first round, and Patrus manages to get out a full-strength "Evil Seek," which kills four of them immediately. The other two quickly fall to swords. On their bodies, they have a couple of spell scrolls that go into Patrus's book, plus a device called an Infinity Pool. I'm not sure what it does.

      

Mission accomplished.

       

Duke Martin sends us back to Northwarden, where things are grim. Baron Gabot and three of his captains have been assassinated by Nighthawks (guess we won't be needing to return that last diamond!), and the Moredhel attack is upon us. James takes command of the defense. A series of chapter-ending title cards explains how the defenders fight to the point of exhaustion. All hope seems lost. James is just about to be slain by an enemy warrior . . .

         

Serves you right for that mustache.

     

. . . when the Moredhel takes an arrow to the throat. It was fired by Prince Arutha, who has arrived at the last second, with his army, to save the day.

    

Arutha apologizes for taking so long, explaining how Owyn and Gorath were delayed in bringing him the message. Arutha further relates that while four of six Moredhel companies attacked Northwarden, another two marched southwest towards Highcastle. Half of Arutha's army has gone there, and he intends to march there as soon as the battle for Northwarden is finished.

        

Hey, there was no point at which we "nearly didn't win ourselves free."

        

Thus ends the chapter. Chapter VI, "Betrayal," starts immediately. I can't believe I've managed to avoid spoilers this long. I can't wait to see what the betrayal is.

        

But where is it going to happen?!

       

The chapter opens with the longest title card sequence so far. It begins with Pug in Krondor, using his magic to take some of the strength out of a supernaturally-strong storm that has been beating at the coast.

    

A rift suddenly opens in Pug's tower and the Tsurani Mage, Makala, steps through. A lot of the subsequent dialogue is hard to penetrate if you haven't read the books. Pug, you may recall, is a main character in the original Riftwar trilogy. He starts off as an apprentice mage in Duke Borric's (Arutha's and Martin's father's) court, gets kidnapped and brought to Kelewan as a slave, and accidentally manifests his magical ability. On Kelewan, magicians are called Great Ones, revered and immune to most laws. Pug is trained as a Great One, adopts the name Milamber, and becomes a servant of the Tsurani Empire. But he becomes disgusted at the barbarity of some gladiatorial games, goes nuts, unleashes catastrophic magic on the imperial court, and flees back to Midkemia, leaving the Tsurani Empire in ruin. These actions ultimately lead to the fall of the empire and peace between Midkemia and Kelewan. In Silverthorn, Pug returns to Kelewan and, after some misadventures, establishes an uneasy peace with the new emperor.

         

"Yeah, when you destroyed my capital" -- Makala's actual response.

         

Makala has come to chastise Pug for his neglect of his duties to the Tsurani Empire, and in particular Pug's fostering of magical abilities in his adopted daughter, Gamina. In the Empire, women cannot be magicians, and women with magical abilities are killed. Makala worries that the Empire will be further destabilized if one of their most famous Great Ones openly flaunts convention in this way. "I have acted on your behalf," Makala concludes, "and placed [Gamina] in exile until such a time as we can agree upon her ultimate fate." Pug naturally rails at this betrayal—oh, please tell me that this isn't the betrayal—and demands his daughter, but Makala warns that "your further interference will likely ensure that the Assembly will carry out its order of death."

 

(Makala seems to have been created for this game; I can't find his name in any of the pre-game books. This is slightly confusing because there are any number of canonical Great Ones who could have served in this role.) 

    

I'm not sure this was worth the suspense.

      

Makala heads back to Kelewan. Pug rants for a bit and then disappears, leaving words written in fire on the wall of his room: "THE BOOK OF MACROS." His wife, Katala, later discovers the message and relays it to Owyn and Gorath, Macros refers to an ancient mage who helps Pug's journey in the trilogy and closes the rift that led to the Riftwar in the first place. Pug inherits his island and library at the conclusion of the books. I might be getting some stuff wrong. I honestly can't remember whether Macros is alive or dead. All Katala will say is: "Macros left Midkemia long ago and all he left behind were his writings." She doesn't know which of those books might be the Book of Macros.
    

Katala says that she'll head to Pug's academy at Stardock and look for the book there. But she mentions an odd episode recently in which Pug paused at a sewer grate in Krondor and said, "Not all of the sheep are in our fold." Based on this cryptic clue, Gorath and Owyn decide to search the sewers.

     

You'd hardly know Gorath was a Moredhel anymore.

      

The game finally lets us play for the first time in like half an hour. Owyn and Gorath are this chapter's dynamic duo again, I guess. They begin with all of their equipment from Chapter IV.

      

I explored the sewers at the end of Chapter I, and the automap remains filled in here. Although some enemies have been restocked, the chests remain looted. Accordingly, the sewers do not give us a great reward for the effort, at least not the first level. It's a good five minutes of wandering rooms and hallways before I find anything to do—a battle with four rogues. We surprise them and make quick work of them. 

   

We run into Limm, a member of the Guild of Thieves, who says that the recent storm flooded the sewers, killed a lot of thieves, and destroyed their headquarters. To make it worse, the thieves are dealing with a rival guild, led by someone named the Crawler, who seems to have actually killed the Upright Man, the former leader of the Thieves' Guild and probably James's father. This is a major character, and any fan of the books would be surprised to find him killed off in the game. It adds to the game's gravitas as part of the Riftwar canon. Anyway, Limm offers that "some of the Crawler's men are magic types," and that they're occupying a lower level of the sewer, which became accessible when "a portion of the seawall collapsed."

      

I'm surprised the Upright Man died off-screen.

        

For 100 gold, he sells us some things he took from one of the Crawler's men: some torches, 24 restoratives, and a note from the Crawler that chastises the recipient for not dealing with the Guild of Thieves yet: "You are to locate the Amulet of the Upright Man and the Idol of Lassur and load them aboard the Night Crawler immediately! We have pressing business with our serpentine clients in the Sunset Isles." Limm has heard of the Idol of Lassur: "About a whizit or other what gives you the power over the Goddess of Death or some such silliness."

   

In the southeast corner of the sewers, we run into a woman named Kat who asks if we're disciples of Pug. We say no. It develops that she's an agent of the Crawler, searching the sewers for the Idol of Lassur. She agrees to tell us "anything we want to know" if we bring her the idol. I don't know. While talking to Limm, I immediately started thinking of the Crawler as our enemy, but I guess there's no particular reason that he should be. Still, I don't like the idea of giving a powerful magical artifact to an unknown entity.

           

Nothing says "medieval" like a track suit and a headband.

       

The entrance to the lower level is in the middle of the dungeon, and not on a route that you would find if you just followed one wall, so it takes me a while to locate it. There are a couple of insultingly easy battles with rouges (I honestly don't know whether they're Mockers or the Crawler's men) in the meantime. 

   

The lower level has a lot more action. In order, we find:

    

• A battle with two rogues and a rogue mage. Owyn hits the mage with "Fetters of Rime" in the first round and everything after that is mop-up. They're guarding a chest with a Sword of Lims-Kragma and the Idol of Lassur. I honestly didn't expect to find it in the first room. I'm not sure what it does—it has 8 "uses"—but having it in his inventory lowers all of Gorath's skills by 20 points. So any reservations I have about giving it to Kat are out the window. I don't go back right away, though, so the rest of these encounters are faced with Gorath's reduced statistics.

• A dead body at the end of a corridor with 11 gold and 4 rations.

• A locked door that none of our keys or picks would open.

• A post that says that "transport through these sewers is strictly prohibited," signed by "Swordmaster Corby." 

       

Is this an ancient sign or did Swordmaster Corby erect it after the storm?

       

• Two rogues, two rogue mages.

• Two rogue mages, two Quegian pirates. This one goes poorly. I try to take out both mages with "Flamecast" the first round, and I end up killing neither of them. They get off some powerful spells, and one leaves Owyn so weak that he gets knocked out by a pirate. I have to use up a lot of restoratives to get rid of his "near death" status.

• A locked door that opens to one of the keys we have. Inside the room is just a dead body with some armor and a shell.

• A Quegian pirate with three rogues. No mages, fortunately. What should be an easy battle is rendered moderately difficult by Gorath's diminished abilities. I guess I could just drop the idol during battle. I'll try that next time. Owyn is poisoned but has some anti-venom.

      

This should have been a cakewalk.

       

• At the end of a corridor, a body with three vials of Flame Root Oil (protects armor from frost weapons).

• Across a pit (we have plenty of rope) and behind a locked door, a battle with two Quegian pirates, two rogues, and a rogue mage. Owyn kills the mage and damages the others with a full-powered "Flamecast." They're guarding a locked chest that none of our keys or picks will open. Dropping the idol doesn't help. I hate to leave it because it seems like it's significant.

• Behind a final locked door, a chest with 28 gold pieces and a shell. This is an oddly large room to have so little in it.

   

So unless I missed something behind one locked door or in that locked chest, most of the level was superfluous.

    

I stop by Limm before returning to Kat, but he has nothing new to say. With no other leads, we take the idol to Kat, although Owyn is cautious: "Aren't you concerned that the Crawler will abuse the Idol? With it he might kill hundreds of people, the Prince, or maybe even the King." Kat replies that she's counting on him using it, since what he doesn't know is that anyone who possesses the Idol will die within a month. Apparently, she's only pretending to work for the Crawler: "I intend to put his plans to ruin."

    

Owyn questions her further. She believes the head of the Crawler's magicians is Abbot Graves in Malac's Cross, who Pug kicked out of the Stardock academy. The implication is that he might know something of the Book of Macros. 

        

What did he discover was happening?

       

We exit the sewers and head back to Krondor for supplies. Gorath gets his new sword blessed at the Shrine of Astalon; I'm really not sure how to determine what different temple blessings do.

     

We hit the road for Malac's Cross, which is not far to the east of Krondor. Almost immediately, we find a dead body on the road with a  new type of key called Nivek's Key. I'm tempted to turn around and try it in the sewers, but I decide I can always do it later. 

        

Finally outdoors. I like the mountains in the distance.

         

On the way to Malac's Cross, Owyn makes 62 sovereigns playing the lute at Darkmoor's Rest. East of Darkmoor, we run into an old woman named Petrumh, who alerts us: "You're not thinking of going into Malac's Cross are you?!" She continues that Abbot Graves has betrayed his students and the town is besieged by "snakemen." She's heading to Darkmoor to drink until the problem goes away, but she laments that she left her ale behind in Malac's Cross and wants us to get it for her, as if Darkmoor's Rest doesn't have any ale.

   

We're attacked by two Pantathians (serpent men) just outside the city. They immediately nail us both with "Fetters of Rime" and then spend two rounds dismembering us. The only way to survive this is to get a jump on them, which takes us a couple of reloads and still leaves Owyn in bad shape. And then we have the exact same problem with a group of three. I don't know what the problem is—"Stealth" for both characters is at around 80%—but I fail to surprise them just about every time. 

           

The Pantathians have managed to "Fetter" us both. It's only a matter of time.

       

Finally, on about my fifth reload, I surprise the group—which hardly helps, since they have about 120 hit points. It takes three full-strength "Evil Seek" spells to destroy them, leaving Owyn exhausted and Gorath near-death from the Pantathians' spells. And guess what's beyond them? A battle with five of the bastards. Naturally, we don't make it even one round.

        

Which they do.

       

Miscellaneous notes:

    

• Games and movies really need to learn what "sewers" are. 

     

Not "sewers."

       

• I was challenged for inventory space throughout this session. I left a lot of valuable equipment on rotting corpses. 

• Gorath has plenty of things to apply to his weapons. After just about every battle, I reapplied Silverthorn, Naphtha, or Killian's Root Oil.

     

Gorath's inventory as Chapter 5 began.

       

• While casting a different spell, I happened to notice "Dragon's Breath" in Owyn's spellbook. I acquired it a couple chapters ago and never cast it. It's not an offensive spell. Rather, it creates a fog throughout the area. I assume this is used for sneaking past encounters on the road. It didn't help at all with the Pantathians, though.

       

And it's as annoying to the party as it is to the enemy.

         

• "Evil Seek" failed on me a few times this session. I'm not sure why. I still got a lot of mileage out of "Fetters of Rime."

• A lot of the game text seems to suggest that Owyn is leading the pair.

    

Owyn is "barking" orders to Gorath?

       

• Even this late in the game, it insists on some tortured narration every time we go to loot a dead body.

      

Get over it.

      

I don't like to leave the game with a tough battle unresolved, but I'm going to have to come back to it later with better strategy or some new assets. 

I don't know if Makala's betrayal of Pug is THE betrayal, but let's address what I think is the real betrayal: that in 12 years of commenters telling me how awesome this game was, none of them mentioned that I should set aside time to read the Riftwar books first. Thank the gods I came to that conclusion on my own, or most of this game would be utterly incomprehensible, even with the summaries in the manual. If Makala's actions are the "betrayal," you'd never know it as a player unversed in the intricacies of Pug's history with the Tsurani Empire. Much of the Moredhel story would be pretty impenetrable, too. It's odd to find a game so deeply embedded in the canon of a book series that it could leave players thoroughly confused; the only other examples that come to mind are Circuit's Edge (1990) and The Witcher 3 (2015), although I'm sure commenters will tell me of many more. Commenters will also tell me that they played Betrayal at Krondor without reading the books and didn't have any problem, but I suspect they just have a higher tolerance for being confused than I do.

     

At least Gorath didn't turn out to be a double agent. This entry would have been a lot of swearing and a hasty GIMLET.

     

Time so far: 53 hours