Betrayal at Krondor: A Pox Upon Ye

 

"Again," the text forgot to mention.

      

Our narrative picks up in Chapter 2. Prince Arutha has been warned about the growing Moredhel threat, and now Seigneur James, the apprentice mage Owyn, and the Moredhel turncoat Gorath are on the road to Romney, where they hope to intercept communications between the Moredhel general, Delekhan, and the Nighthawks assassins' guild. These messages may reveal which northern city the Moredhel intend to strike first. We join the narrative on the road heading east from Malac's Cross towards the crossroads at Lyton. Romney is three more cities to the east from there.

     

The party hits the open road.

      

As before, we do not stay resolutely to the road, but rather adopt a zig-zag pattern of movement that careens between the impassable mountains on both sides of the road, allowing us to find stray treasures, NPCs, and other encounters. While engaged in such off-roading, we come across a dead body carrying three rations and a shell. Next to him is a fairy chest. We haven't had one of these in a while. The puzzle is of a different sort than before. Instead of a verse riddle, it offers five words in a row: MAGIC, DEATH, TEMPLE, BLESS, and REST. We have to input a sixth word. from the following letters:

     

S A S S T

T L I L S

A R E O E

C H R I U

     

Looking through the letter combos, I see (CHEST) as a possibility, and it turns out to be the answer, but I don't know why. The only thing I see the words having in common is they frequently appear in fantasy games. Is there some other commonality I'm missing?

        

It was satisfying to open nonetheless.

       

In any event, the chest has 74 royals, a shovel, a lockpick, and 4 uses of Flame Root Oil, which protects against cold-based weapons.

   

Further along, we come across a couple of houses with black ribbons on the doors. James tells the party this is a sign of sickness, warning people to keep away, and yet someone has clearly ransacked one of the houses recently. We enter to conduct our own investigation and find a sack of 34 sovereigns beneath the floorboards. The family being dead, James sees no reason not to take it, though he promises to "give a charitable donation of equal size to Father Tully should we ever see Krondor again."

     

This turned out to be a bad idea.

    

Unfortunately, the moment we leave the house, we all exhibit signs of plague. After thinking about it for a second, I decide to head backwards to the Temple of Ruthia rather than press our luck going forward. Alas, I forgot about the Nighthawk ambush that we evaded last time, and so we walk right into it and get slaughtered. My reload is from before contracting the plague, and I have to make that awful roleplayer's choice about whether to stay honest and do the unfortunate thing a second time.

       

I still can't beat these guys.

      

I compromise: I reload from Malac's Cross and spend 409 of my 630 sovereigns on the Keshian Tapir (haggled down from 487). I head for the ambush and buff with the only thing I have that will help: Dalatail Milk. I intend to fight until I win, then go back and get plagued, then return to the temple. I give up on this plan after about 10 tries at the battle. The problem is that the enemies always go first and always pathologically set their sights on Owyn, so he can never cast spells. On my best try, I manage to kill three of them.

        

Plague and poison are represented by percentages. If you can get them to 0, you're cured.

         

So I reload again, get myself plagued, and take my chances on the road ahead. It turns out that I don't have far to go: there's a Temple of Lims-Kragma a stone's throw from the plague houses. But before I find it, I come across the statue of a dragon. As we admire it, Owyn gasps and collapses to the ground. The statue speaks to Owyn in his mind: "I am no dragon though I wear a dragon's skin. I am the Oracle of Aal and I am the last of my race. I am ancient, older than dwarf or elf, older than dragons and older than the Valheru who were their masters." That's pretty damned old.

       

In a D&D game, we'd be on the alert for medusas.

       

The Oracle foretells that Owyn has a great destiny and will need to return to consult the Oracle again. For now, Owyn can ask him about GORATH and DELEKHAN. The Oracle says that Gorath is "not what he names himself to be," but he will be a strong ally to Owyn and perhaps even his own people. "A great destiny awaits him should he have the courage to renounce his pain." He has an even more cryptic but interesting prophecy of Delekhan: "Delekhan will never cross the boundary between the Kingdom and the Northlands, but through treachery he will strike a blow against both the Kingdom and his own Nations of the North." He is working on a "deceit" with six magicians. 

     

The Oracle plays a role in A Darkness at Sethanon. The Aal were the first race to inhabit the world of Midkemia.

       

Back on the road, we find the Temple of Lims-Kragma and soon discover that it will cost more to cure all three of us of plague than we have. Through experimentation, we find that each dose of Restoratives removes 5% of plague, and we have exactly enough for all three characters. I will not be entering any houses with black ribbons again.

    

I almost forget to talk to the head priestess at the temple. Lims-Kragma is the god of death, and James is curious what awaits him after death. The priestess says she can't tell him (or doesn't know), but "there is no joy or love in her realm, but neither is there sorrow or pain." She further relates that Nighthawks swear oaths to other gods to avoid death at the cost of their souls, something explored in Silverthorn. The temple wants 245 sovereigns to bless one of our swords--almost all we have left--so we move on without it. 

     

A random gravestone. That's sad.

      

There's another fairy chest at the next intersection, this one with a more traditional riddle: "It asks no questions, but demands many answers. Don't knock it until you are ready to see what waits on the other side." The answer is 7 letters long. I hope it's not easy because I cannot figure it out. 

   

Around this time, I noticed something interesting about the interface: despite its continuous-movement nature, time does not pass while the party is standing still. Nor does it pass if the party rotates in place. Only forward or backward movement causes the clock to advance. There are implications of this for the engine that I'm at the edge of understanding. One benefit of this approach is that when I switch screens to make notes, I don't have to worry about my characters getting exhausted in the meantime.

   

The road turns north towards Lyton, and a little way up the road, we're ambushed by four Nighthawks. We're able to defeat them. What makes the difference, more than simply one fewer foe, is that two of them are archers. While they're still dangerous, they don't rush forward and crowd Owyn, so Owyn is able to get some space and cast spells, which makes the whole thing go a lot easier. I do take a fair bit of damage, though, and Owyn is hit with a poisoned quarrel. After the battle, we even get a textual description of the poison: It is "slowly sapping his strength, draining him of everything but his will to survive."

     

And before them their rivals are deceased.

      

The poison prevents Owyn from regaining health or stamina. I try an herbal packet, and while it does reduce some of the poison, it's clear its effects will run out before the poison does. I turn around and head back to the Temple of Lims-Kragma, prepared to pay through the nose for the service, only to find that while they charge a Shkrelian cost for curing the plague, they apparently cure poison for free.

   

I'll pause here to say that in general, I enjoy the wound/poison/disease system of this game. I like that none of these conditions are trivial matters, easily healed with a spell or a night of rest. Recovering from a bad battle can take multiple days, a lot of money, or both. Avoiding wounds, or dealing with their consequences, becomes a part of the strategy of gameplay. It affects your choices of what roads and risks to take and informs your overall approach to a chapter. I'd almost call it a "survival mechanic." It adds to the challenge, the realism, and the sense of role-playing.

        

This is just a shot of us approaching the temple.

    

We find an empty chest, an abandoned inn, and some dead-end roads before arriving at a small house with a well in the back. We're zapped by magic as we try to approach the well. Owyn notices magical symbols on the house's front door, and its owner, an elderly man, surprises us as we study them. "I was out back tending some chores," he explains. He introduces himself as Flarr Wygn and says that his late brother, a mage, put protection spells on both the house and the well, which heals all injuries. He offers to let us drink for 25 sovereigns, which we accept. The ease of this healing doesn't negate what I said above, as 25 sovereigns is a hefty chunk of cash, and it turns out that he means each. I don't notice this until much later. I'm curious whether the well would have cured poison or plague, too. I'll remember that it's there in case I need it again.

    

Speaking of 25 sovereigns, a little way up the road, a group of armed men demand that much as a "road tax." They claim to represent Lord Lyton. The game annoyingly doesn't give me the option to fight the brutes, just to pay or leave. I guess perhaps there are too many of them to make fighting a realistic option. I leave and instead sneak into Lyton through the back yards of town. 

    

Arriving at Lyton through a cornfield.

      

In the town, we find:

   

• A house where the occupant is snoring so loud we initially mistake it for a monster.

• An empty barn.

• A house where we hear some noise, but it takes some coaxing to get the residents to come to the door. They assume we're tax collectors and won't accept our pleas to the contrary.

• An abandoned house whose residents left a whetstone with 5 uses, and another one where they left 15 sovereigns.

• A house where the resident is polite but doesn't want to talk with us.

• An inn where we have a drink and spend the night (after I say "yes," I don't know why I wasted money on it, since we're all healed). An NPC tells us that in Romney, the Guild of the Romney and the Riverpullers Guild "are as good as at war." Their conflict is being fueled by a "troublemaker down in Sliden," who's been sending mercenaries, including a local named Max Feeber, to cause trouble while dressed in guild clothing.

     

We find Lord Lyton in his manor a bit to the east of town, and it turns out he's not quite the villain that we assumed. His town has fallen on legitimately hard times since the death of Earl Presser of Romney, and he needs to raise funds. Now he's been ordered to send 12 fully equipped knights to Malac's Cross. He says he can stop the toll patrols if we can deliver 6 suits of standard king's armor to him. This is a tough quest, and not primarily because of finding the armor; we left four sets on the Nighthawks down the road. I can, at best, carry three sets at once without giving up some of my items, and he won't take one at a time. 

     

I've been avoiding screenshots of lots of text, but here's one just to remind you that they exist.

       

Knowing where we can get four sets, we set off to find the other two. I decide to go west of Lyton, looping around the city to avoid the patrols. We come to a house at which we're immediately ambushed by four Quegian pirates. We make short work of them and find they have exactly two suits among them. I take a save at this point, as I don't know if what I'm about to do is going to work. We drop a lot of stuff on the ground outside the house, which the game represents as a sack. We load ourselves up on armor and head back to the dead Nighthawks to get the rest. 

       

Packing my inventory with armor.

     

We return to Lyton, who "rewards" us with a virtue key and a note that offers the passwords to three chests in the area: RIVER, SWORD, and ICE. None of them are long enough for the chest I abandoned earlier. 

    

With the toll-takers gone, I head back to where I dropped my stuff, only to get attacked by three Nighthawks along the way. We deal with them, return to the sacks, and find one of them empty and the other one missing some stuff. Damn it. I needed some of that stuff. Stashing our things in an abandoned house in town doesn't work (it doesn't offer enough room), nor does stashing it in a regular chest (things disappear). Eventually, I go all the way back to the fairy chest that I opened with CHEST and store stuff there, which works, although it doesn't accept much. I only just clear enough space for four suits of armor, so James and Owyn have to give up their own. We return the armor to Lyton, go all the way back to the CHEST chest to get our things, then get new armor from the slain pirates. The whole enterprise took us about 90 minutes real time and a week of game time and leaves me thoroughly annoyed.

    

I decide that rather than continuing direct to Romney to the east, I'll go west as far as Sethanon. I'm hoping to find a shop there to sell my excess stuff. On the way, we find a house and barn. The house is vacant; the barn has a chest with four seals for the glazer's guild. This clearly has something to do with the upcoming quest, so we take them. 

     

I like games that let you stumble onto quest items before you get the quests.

        

Our next stop is at the Six Toe Tavern, where we meet a woman named Nia whose late father ran a goods store across the road. She's closed the store, which has a valuable sword for sale, because of a ghost on the premises. She says that she'll give us the sword if we can get rid of the ghost. There's also a gambler in the tavern, and on a whim I put 50 gold on a dice game and win. 

    

That sounds too easy.

     

Across the street, the game just tells me that the shop is closed. I have no way to interact with it. I lurk around all night looking for a ghost but don't encounter anything. I do note a nearby cemetery, where one of the graves has an inscription indicating that it belongs to Nia's father, Jared Lycrow. Although digging it up seems like a bad idea--the sort of thing that would cause a haunting--there's nothing else we can do with it. When we open the casket, Owyn notes that one of the corpse's hands is missing. During the conversation, the game notes that Gorath once said that the Moredhel use graves as secret caches. I don't remember this, but I guess it's what gives us license to dig up graves throughout the game. I try the others in the cemetery; one has a couple of doses of Naptha (you can apply it to blades); the others just have bodies.

    

We finally arrive at the road to Sethanon. As we turn north, we are attacked by a shade. We kill it without too much trouble, but two steps later, we're attacked by four shades, who absolutely tear us apart. Reloading, we try various other approaches, but it's no use. Something clearly doesn't want us to go to Sethanon.

   

One was hard; four are impossible.

      

Sighing, we head back east. A short distance from Lord Lyton's estate, we deal with a remarkably easy trap and then find, in a copse of trees, three fairy chests:

   

• "An untiring servant it is, carrying loads across the muddy earth. But one thing that cannot be forced, is a return to the place of its birth."

• "With sharp edged wit and pointed poise, it can settle disputes without a noise."

• "Power enough to smash ships and crush roofs. Yet it still must fear the sun."

          

"You guys think maybe we should just walk between them?"

      

For the answers, see above. I think I would have gotten them without Lyton's hints--particularly the last one. I remember all too well the power of ice to destroy roofs. The chests had various useful items that I had nowhere near enough space to carry.

   

Moving on, we meet a man named Abuk who said he was summoned to Lyton to help pick a "Webber lock." James counters that a Webber lock cannot be picked. The two of them argue for a while; finally, Abuk agrees to train James in lockpicking for 70 sovereigns. When James protests, Abuk raises the fee to 80. Suspecting I'll regret spending this much, I nonetheless say "yes."

   

Nice beard. I think it was on the top of another NPC's head.

      

Just outside Sliden, there's a-goddamned-nother trio of fairy chests:

   

• "He got it in the woods and brought it home in his hand because he couldn't find it. The more he looked for it the more he felt it. When he finally found it he threw it away." Irene happened to be outside my office when I read this one, and she suggested TICK, which I thought was a good answer, but it had 5 letters. This got us thinking about other things that you might pick up accidentally in the woods, and I thought about BURR (too short) and SPLINTER (too long) before getting it with (THORN).

• "Death to our Enemies! no Living adversary shall Escape the new King of these Isles. He will lead us to glory And provide new lands for our people!" The odd capitalization leads us right to the answer.

• "Today he is here to trip you up and he will torture you tomorrow. Yet he is also there to ease the pain when you are lost in grief and sorrow." I get this one (ALCOHOL) partly by logic and partly by studying the possible letters.

      

The first chest has a receipt indicating that Isunatus of Cavall Keep received 20,200 sovereigns in rubies and gold from an unknown payee. There are a couple dozen sovereigns in the chest and another 30 or 40 in another. Again, I have to leave a lot of stuff behind.

   

As we approach the city, we're attacked by three rogues who, in a scripted event that we can't avoid, throw disease-ridden dung at us. After we win the easy combat, we're all plagued again. We duck into Silden long enough to buy restoratives and herbal packets at the shop, then head back outside and camp for a couple of days while the medicines do their work. 

       

I keep wanting to write the city's name as "Slidell," which ironically also has a less-than-reputable history with fish people and slavery.

      

Silden is a menu city. In it, we find:

    

• Hakha's Cajunlo, a magic shop. We're able to sell an extra scroll, some rubies, and a few other items for several hundred sovereigns, but the things the shop sells cost a lot more, including 10 magic scrolls and lots of buffing potions and weapon treatments.

         

This will take me a while to save for.

     

• A ship called the Mist Devil (Silden is on the River Rom just before it empties into the sea). The captain offers to take us to the Isle of Eortis for 30 sovereigns. I'm curious, but I don't have any reason to visit.

• A house with a brass-plated lock that James declines to try to pick.

• The Anchorhead Tavern. A dwarf offers a gambling game with cards. A man named Joftaz suggests the rogues who gave us plague were acting at the behest of someone called "The Crawler." A depressed knight has been banned from tourneys because he was caught drinking a potion first; he gives us the remainder of it. The barmaid sells spoiled rations. Owyn tries his luck at barding and makes 14 sovereigns.

        

I wonder if the moose on the wall is supposed to be a homage.

    

Alas, there was no armory to sell the weapons I've been saving for just that purpose.

 

Some miscellaneous note:

    

• Every temple I've visited has had a pit of fire in the center. In every one, when I click on it, the game says: "The fire was cold. Unnerved by the unnatural flame, [Locklear/James] decided to explore elsewhere." Is there ever any purpose to these flames?

      

You think he'd be used to it by now.

     

• The game also offers a generic NPC who recurs at several taverns. He's rude and tells us to go find a "jongleur" because he doesn't have time to entertain us.

• The gambling "games" are all described in text. The game just gives the player the option to bet certain amounts of money. I have no idea whether the result is based on probability or whether it's scripted.

      

Where does the rest go? To taxes?

      

• If it's possible for the characters to get drunk, it's after far more pints than it would take a normal person (and more than I'm willing to buy).

 

I end this session still quite over-encumbered, camped outside Silden, looking up the road to Romney. Krondor is so packed with encounters that I can get more than 3000 words out of  walking a little way up the coast. But now there's only one town between us and our destination. Perhaps we'll solve this guild business and learn more about The Crawler.

   

Time so far: 20 hours