Betrayal at Krondor: Promises to Keep

My explorations this session. See the final paragraph for an explanation of the map.

      

As this session opens, Gorath and Owyn are on the other side of the mountains from where the game began. We are on the edge of the great wood known as Elvandar, where the Eledhel—the good elves—live. We've come all this way looking for Tomas, who might know something about the Book of Macros, which might in some way help Pug find his abducted daughter, Gamina. What the abduction has to do with the game's primary threat—the invasion of the Kingdom of the Isles by the Moredhel (bad elves)—is not currently clear. It's a long way to come on such a nebulous hint. There's also the possibility that Gorath, a renegade Moredhel, will be killed the moment he encounters one of his Eledhel relatives.

    

I apparently saved last time right in front of a shop called Split Tree Goods. They sell Grey Tower Plate, which the kobold in the mines wanted, so I buy a set to take back to him. It costs a ridiculous amount of money, and in real life no one would spend that much to satisfy a side quest for a kobold, but this is a CRPG.

  

I think this is the only CRPG in which I've done a side quest for a kobold.

    

We bring the suit of armor back to the pit where we met the kobold. He sends back down to his people for a magical chalice, which he offers to us. It gives us 5 points to our maximum health and stamina, so I guess it was worth the cost and time. Two days later, we find ourselves back in the same spot we started.

    

Elvandar turns out to be a very large, open area. Rather than exhaust myself trying to explore it all, I decide to stick to the road but use the spyglass to identify things off to the sides. I find that it often shows me dots where I can't actually find any items or encounters, even when I'm standing right on top of them. Hopefully it doesn't have as many false negatives as false positives.

      

One problem I have in this area: the inability to tell the road from the rest of the ground.

      

Shortly after the shop, the road forks, and I take the right branch. We fight our first battle against three wyverns. They hit hard, and from a distance, but are as susceptible as anything else to "The Fetters of Rime." (A general rule of thumb in this game is that if there are three enemies or less, there's no way to lose the battle unless you deliberately handicap yourself by not casting that spell.) On the other side of an easy trap, we find a rope going up into the trees. It leads to a treehouse with a hammock and a chest. The chest has arrows, Flame Root Oil, and a wyvern's egg. I'm already carrying one of those, and I still don't know what they do.

    

Hacking a frozen wyvern while a dead one lies behind us.

      

The spyglass alerts us to a cluster of things in the woods to the east. Getting there becomes easier when I realize that the trees have no substance. They're not like the hills or mountains on other parts of the map; you can just walk right through them. We beat two more wyverns before finding a group of stumps with money and consumables. My inventory is so bloated at this point that I have to make some tough choices.

     

Continuing to follow the road network, I find:

    

• Three Moredhel warriors and a witch hag. Fortunately, they don't target Owyn, and thanks to trying to get rid of items at the tree stumps, I'm fully buffed. Post-combat, it's really hard to find their bodies in the thicket.

• More stumps with things like clerical oilcloths, coins, and poisons.

     

My money woes are over!

     

• Several more traps, more complicated than the first.

• Two Moredhel warriors and two witch hags. We surprise them, but one of the witch hags still manages to nail Gorath pretty solidly with a spell. 

• A really difficult battle in which two wyverns and a figure I couldn't identify attacked us on the same screen as a trap. The trap pieces force the enemy right up against us, which means Owyn can't cast any spells. I find it hard to discern the positions of everything on the screen, and not for the first time I wish that the game had featured a straight top-down battle grid, or at least one that was a little more rotated on the vertical axis.

    

Solving the puzzle after the battle.

     

An elf named Calin appears shortly after this battle and thanks us for killing the wyverns. Gorath assures him that he means no harm, and Calin asks us to tell his mother and Tomas that he is well. Calin appears in the books; he is the son of Queen Aglaranna and her late elven husband, before she married the human Tomas. He says that the Moredhel have been raiding their borders, and he is going to oppose them at . . . I missed the name of the place. He hints at something with Gorath—that they've met before or Gorath has been there before or something. He tells us the Moredhel have been controlling the wyverns, though not easily, and he gives Owyn a spell scroll that will allow Owyn to do the same: "Thy Master's Will."

         

What evil did we bring?

     

Calin also directs us to Elvandar. He offers several paths, one of which goes underground through a Valheru ruin, to which he gives Gorath the key. He warns us about the Sleeping Glades, where those who enter fall asleep for days and usually die of hunger.

    

We run into a river north of here and have to turn back around to the road and take it almost all the way back down to where this session began. On the way back, we trip a battle with four Moredhel that we missed on the way up. I take the opportunity to return to Split Tree Goods and buy some rations, which are getting low (each of the characters have about six) for the first time in the game. This turns out to be a bit ironic.

   

I thought this was a nice shot of the river and a bridge.

  

Calin suggested basically two paths to get to Elvandar. The "northern bridge," which would take us through a lot of battles with wyverns, and the "western bridge," which would take us through the Sleeping Glades and the Valheru ruins. I decide on the second path, largely because it sounds more interesting. I figure the river must cut through the entire map—otherwise, it would be an option to take neither bridge and just go around it—so I decide to follow the southern border of the map until I hit the river, then work my way up to the bridge. This seems like a nice balance between exploration and moving to the next plot point.

     

Except the exploration gets me almost nothing—there isn't a single battle or encounter all the way across the bottom border of Elvandar, except a moment in which the companions hear a high-pitched whine to the north and wonder what it might be. Eventually, we reach the river on the far western side of the map.

       

I should have taken the road.

      

I begin following it to the north, although I know it must cut east at some point. Again, the spyglass shows me things that I can't actually find in the dense growth. Where the river finally does turn, we face a battle with a Moredhel spellcaster and four rusalki, who I thought we were done with ages ago. They kill us on the first try, with the rusalki pelting Gorath with spells until he goes down. We make sure we're healthier and buffed for the second attempt. The spellcaster has a magic item called Eliaem's Heart, which summons rusalki to aid you in battle. 

     

Two wyverns attack as we approach the western bridge, and I notice for the first time that "Thy Master's Will" isn't among my combat options despite appearing in my spell list. The cause of this doesn't become clear until some time later, after I've shifted some inventory: Owyn has to have a wyvern's egg in his pack to cast the spell. So that's what they're for. Why did I start finding them like four chapters ago?

    

From what I can tell, a useless spell.

       

The spell makes one wyvern flee but for some reason does a ton of damage to Gorath and consumes the egg. Why would anyone carry around a bunch of eggs for such a pathetic outcome?

   

Anyway, that happens later. For now, dissatisfied with the lack of encounters, I decide to explore the river further before crossing the western bridge. Not far from the bridge, we meet a rusalki in the woods, but she wants to talk to us. "I can see that your hearts are true and as such I will do you no harm," she says. She asks us to help her by finding the Moredhel spellcaster who has been "perverting the wills of my kin with a strange device." This turns out to be Eliaem's Heart, and of course we already have it. 

       

Your sisters didn't seem to mind that our hearts were true.

       

As a reward, she comically gives us 126 rations in 9 packets of 14 each, plus a shell that she insists might come in handy later. (I might be wrong about this; she might have given us more like 200 rations, but some went into our inventory.) This is the moment that Georges warned me about a few weeks ago, and I prepared beforehand by dumping some excess stuff in a sack before talking to the rusalki. We can only take a little of the food.

       

Uh . . . thanks?

      

As we reach the northern bridge, Gorath makes a strong case for not crossing it, but I do anyway, intending to immediately turn south and make our way to the other bridge on this side of the river. Another wyvern battle follows—here's where I figure out the spell—but otherwise, we make it back without incident. 

     

Wuss.

       

Unless Sleeping Glade is going to consume several dozen rations, I'm not really afraid of it, but I also figure there's no reason to blunder into it. Calin told us to hug the mountains to avoid it, so we continue past the bridge to the western border of the map, then work our way north. We feel the effects of the glade at one point but otherwise manage to pass by it without falling asleep.

      

Stay awake! I don't think Glinda exists in this universe.

   

The mountain range ends at a cave entrance, where we're again attacked by two wyverns on the oddest combat map that the game has given me so far. After that, we're in the ancient ruins.

         

I guess I understand why this happened, but the game has never presented this angle before, nor started my characters in the upper part of the screen.

      

The ruins consist of a moderate-sized single level with a fairly linear path along a winding corridor. Dead-ends and rooms jut off this central passage. In order, we encounter:

        

• A dead body on the ground. It has a nice suit of armor and some spoiled rations.

• Two shades guarding a hallway. They are not immune to "Fetters of Rime."

• Gorath suddenly makes a connection with where we are and what we heard about the resting place of the Guarda Revanche. I'm glad he figures it out because I'm not sure I would have. This prompts me to load an earlier save and re-read the Abbot's Journal, where I learn what to do below.

     

A timely hint.

     

• A grave to Latham McCann, who "lived the mines" and "never wanted to leave." We leave it alone.

• Two more shades, who we catch by surprise.

      

Shades waiting in the corridor.

    

• A trapped chest. Although Owyn detects the trap, it blows up in our faces, killing us both, and we have to reload. A couple more attempts produce the same outcome. I hate to leave it, but I have no other choice. I haven't found anything that buffs disarming traps. I'm not even sure what skill governs it.

• A room with a locked door that opens with a Noble's Passkey. It has our first fairy chest of the session, raising the question of what the Moredhel have been doing in this ruin. "Don't grow too attached to this thing. Without it, you will never even know it is gone. But be careful, friend; it is much easier to lose on Kingdom soil." I want it to be MEMORY or MIND or HEAD, but I get it by playing around with the dials (LIFE). This has a few consumables and the "Mad God's Rage" spell.

• Second chest: "What is it of yours that you see every day, but our Leader sees only rarely?" (EQUALS) is the answer. I get the spirit of it almost immediately, but it takes me a while to get the specific word. This chest is full of arrows, an elven crossbow, and the "Mirrorwall" spell.

• A room with a door that opens to the Key of Lineages that Calin gave us (we also bought one in the shop). This room has a single fairy chest: "Where once there were three, now are only two. Ancient kin ours, whom we sent to their doom." You could get this one from the lore if you've read the books—a third race of elves called the GLAMREDHEL. But it's also explicitly in the Abbot's Journal.

       

I forgot how the Moredhel "sent them to their doom," though.

     

The chest has restoratives, clerical oilcloth, Killian's Root oil, and the handle and guard of a sword. It is labeled "exotic sword." But when I use the shell on it, the game tells me there's a "searing flash of heat" and the Guarda Revanche forms out of the two pieces. It has a base damage of 90 plus the user's strength and a base accuracy of 45 plus the user's skill (for a thrust, which is all I've done in ages). Gorath's existing Sword of Lims-Kragma has a base damage of 49 and a base accuracy of 10. So the Guarda Revanche is quite a bit better. And for some reason, the Guarda Revanche has a racial modifier for an elf.

      

I wish I knew what I was avenging.

     

Yet despite the greater statistics, it's not terribly more effective against the shades we encounter between this room and the exit. Perhaps swords just aren't as effective against shades in general.

    

On the other side of the dungeon, we emerge to find the end of the chapter. I thought we'd have to poke around to find Elvandar. Within moments, we are before Queen Aglaranna and Tomas. Owyn tries to explain our quest, but Aglaranna first makes Gorath swear an oath of "return" to the Eledhel and obedience to her and Tomas. The whole event is weird, starting from when Aglaranna asks Gorath whether he is willing to swear the oath:

      

Rage flashed in his eyes. Trembling with emotion, Gorath advanced on the Queen, his hand darting to the hilt of his sword.

"No, Gorath!" Owyn gasped, knowing his voice was too small to stay his friend's wrath. "You can't!"

    

"I was Gorath of Clan Ardanien," he spat, his voice thick with an ageless contempt. Color drained from his face as he gripped ever more tightly to the sword at his side. "I am Gorath and I formally return to the Eledhel and swear fealty to Aglaranna, Queen of Elves and to Tomas, Prince Consort and Warleader." Falling to one knee, he knelt low before Aglaranna's feet. "I am yours to command, lady."

        

Everyone's acting weird in this sequence.

     

I'm not entirely sure what to make of the exchange. Gorath has been presented as a proud Moredhel who might disagree with Delekhan but doesn't have any desire to divorce himself from his people. Why would he swear this oath? Does he just recognize that it's the only way to complete the quest? Why is he so committed to the quest in the first place? He's already finished what he originally set out to do.

     

Afterwards, Tomas relates that . . . I'm a bit confused, actually. He seems to say that there is no Book of Macros, but rather it's a code phrase that indicates Pug needs Tomas's help. Tomas has something that Pug gave him that will allow him to teleport to wherever Pug is. That thing is . . . a book. So there really is a Book of Macros? Either way, Tomas can't fulfill the request. He has been struck recently with a poisoned Moredhel blade, and he's barely able to participate in our conversation through the haze of all the painkillers he's on. Gorath—again, what the hell?—suggests that he send him and Owyn instead. Tomas agrees, and within moments, the pair are warped away.

         

"I mean, Owyn is neither the strongest nor the fastest. I'm pretty good at both of those things."

       

The game transitions to Northwarden for Chapter VII: "The Long Ride." Arutha's forces have won the battle and are celebrating their victory, though Arutha knows it is only momentary. Word arrives that the leader of the Moredhel army (not Delekhan, but one of his lieutenants) has been captured. Arutha has him tortured (by a comically stereotypical black-hooded bare-chested torturer) in a scene that is both uncomfortable and seems out of character. 

       

Not my conception of Arutha. In several ways.

         

Under torture, the Moredhel screams that his people "know the secret of Sethanon!" Arutha's like, "What?" The Moredhel says that they know Arutha captured Murmandamus (the Moredhel leader from A Darkness at Sethanon) and imprisoned him. "Deluded fool!" Arutha replies. "We killed Murmandamus at Sethanon and burned his bones for potash! There's nothing there for Delekhan to find!"

   

He demands how the Moredhel will get past Highcastle, and the Moredhel reveals that the Six (Delekhan's mages) have a rift machine that can open a portal to the Dimwood, which will allow the Moredhel to strike an undefended Sethanon while all of Arutha's troops are up the road in Highcastle. Arutha realizes he's been betrayed by the Tsurani, as the rift machine could only come from them. Why isn't this the betrayal? Of course, it's not really at Krondor.

       

Maybe the real betrayal is Arutha betraying his own values.

      

Arutha gives orders for James and Locklear to ride for Dimwood and to destroy the rift machine. Arutha has to ride for Highcastle to divert his troops to Sethanon. I still don't know if Arutha is lying. If not, why not just let the Moredhel sack Sethanon? The place is abandoned anyway.

   

The chapter begins with James, Locklear, and Patrus on the road with all their stuff from Chapter V.

    

I'll pick up with them next time, but I'm struck at this point by how little of Elvandar I explored and how quickly, and permanently, that adventure ended. It's a good thing I heeded the rusalki's call and decided not to just push my way through the wyverns, or I never would have found the Guarda Revanche. For the first time since I started playing the game, I let myself look up a map of the area online, on a site called Mike's RPG Center. It shows dozens of encounters that I didn't experience, mostly in the northwest quadrant of the map. It appears that most of what I missed was wyvern battles, though, so I guess I'm okay with my route. I used Mike's map to annotate my travels this session.

    

This chapter exemplifies most of the game's strengths: a somewhat open world, packed with encounters, some violent, some not, some simple, some complex, almost all optional. But now I'm ready for a more linear path to the game's conclusion. 

      

Time so far: 61 hours