Sorry about the two days delay. Here it is. I hope you enjoy.
Malavon Despana - I need you to do a favor for me.
Malavon Despana - I want you to go outside our encampment and kill all the driders there.
Malavon Despana - I suspect you will have to deal with whatever is producing them too, because their numbers are increasing very rapidly.
- Why do you want the driders dead?
Malavon Despana - Uhm, they are disrupting our commerce with the surface, and-
- What commerce with the surface? This exit was sealed by the monks until now. What are you hiding?
Malavon Despana - I'm terrified of spiders, all right? Are you happy now?
- But you are a drow, don't your lot worship Lolth or something? Isn't she the goddess of spiders?
Malavon Despana - Yes, and talking about how I'm terrified of spiders probably isn't earning her favor.
Malavon Despana - So please, if you don't want her to smite me, and probably everybody around me, i.e. you, Drop the subject.
- All right. But there's still the matter of why the hell should we do it.
Malavon Despana - Well, I imagine you want directions to cross the Underdark. I can give you those directions.
- How do you know we want to cross the Underdark?
Malavon Despana - Because nobody wakes up one day thinking "I think I should move to the Underdark. No sun, no decent food, filled with monsters, drow and mind flayers. Lovely place, and really cheap real estate pricing. I wonder why?"
- Point taken. Ok, you got yourself a deal.
Let’s make some dead driders
The "enemies appearing behind us" thing is back here.
But at least in small numbers, those things aren't much to worry about.
They keep appearing. Some are clerics, some wizards, and some are fighters.
Obviously, none are rogues, because rogues are useless.
- So they are half drow, half spiders.
- That's not so bad, my mother in law is whole viper.
- Mortimer, don't talk like that about your family.
- No, seriously, A wizard transmuted her.
- The family dinners were a lot more peaceful after that.
- Until she learned to Morse code her hisses, that is.
- Now the "My daughter should've never married that no-good idiot" spiel can be heard all the time again.
- Venom spitting snake...
We meet MORE driders. But only a couple here and there, hardly noteworthy.
A bit of architecture. A weirdly out of place statue. Are we going to solve the mystery of the weirdly out of place statue?
Stay tuned!
(No, we won't.)
Imphraili Asserbai - I asked first.
- I already said my name.
Imphraili Asserbai - Oh, right.
- What are you doing down here?
Imphraili Asserbai - I asked first.
- You didn't ask!
Imphraili Asserbai - I didn't? What are you doing here?
- I asked first.
Imphraili Asserbai - Touché.
Imphraili Asserbai - Well, I'm researching new forms of dridrae life forms, altered via magic.
Imphraili Asserbai - For example, this drider here seems equal to the others, but instead of shooting web, it produces coffee.
- That's absurd! A creature can't-
The scientist hands a cup of coffee to Lizzie.
- Hmm, that's good. You think you can install those in a more ubiquitous animal, like a cow?
- Liz, that's hardly what I expected of you!
- I have no love for those udder-wielding, vicious biting machines.
- One of them tried to drown me with milk when I was sleeping.
- Like I was saying, the cow could also produce fresh cream, so you could put it in the coffee.
Imphraili Asserbai - I'm sorry, but I only have experience with driders.
Imphraili Asserbai - Maybe you would like to see my singing drider?
Imphraili Asserbai - It's a project of mine, it is perfectly tuned, and in theory, it should learn all kinds of music instantly.
Imphraili Asserbai - But right now, it only knows the bard Justin Bieber songs.
Imphraili Asserbai - Do you want to hear them?
- Er, not really, no.
- Forgive me the curiosity, but who finances your experiments?
Imphraili Asserbai - Oh, the Wizards of Thay pay me.
Imphraili Asserbai - They are interested in a biological weapon development.
- I can see the value of that on the battlefield, but how are you going to make those songs affect only the enemy's troops, instead of your own too?
Imphraili Asserbai - Songs? Oh, no, no, the bio-weapon is a drider which is immune to magic and has the strenght of 20 men. It isn't very mentally stable though.
- Isn't it dangerous?
Imphraili Asserbai - Well, if anything goes wrong, I will throw the contents of this at the driders and the drider producing thingie.
- You have a... Uh, "drider producing thingie"?
Imphraili Asserbai - Oh yeah! You don't think I made all of those in the first try, did you?
Imphraili Asserbai - It takes months of work. The coffee producing one for example, had to have the coffee beans inserted up its bum.
Imphraili Asserbai - Needless to say the coffee taste was somewhat poor.
Lizzie looks horrified.
Imphraili Asserbai - Oh, don't worry, the process is totally hygienic now. Although to be honest, I haven't developed a mug-washing drider yet.
Imphraili Asserbai - - Winks -
- What is in the jar?
Imphraili Asserbai - A fine mixture of peanuts.
- Peanuts? That's quite a strange failsafe you installed in your creatures.
Imphraili Asserbai - I didn't install a failsafe, actually one of them died when eating my peanut butter sandwich.
Imphraili Asserbai - Apparently they are alergic to peanuts.
Imphraili Asserbai - Serves it right for trying to steal my food!
- I see.
- Mortimer?
- Yes Ma'am.
Mortimer proceeds to stab the wizard and get the jar.
- Should we proceed now?
After that, we move a bit and find those weird cocoon things.
And a drider appears from it.
And a few more. You can see a fireball in the air in this SS.
I don't know what the casters are casting.
And I still don't, because I didn't SS it. Anyway, Wizerella and Mortimer get paralyzed.
Lizzie is casting a spell that I don't remember the name; it does 6d12 fire damage to one target.
It's that purple ball in the middle of the screen.
There, it appears on this SS. Sol's searing orb.
A bit more of bashing their heads, they all die.
The Viciscamera thing.
- Isn't this thing supposed to give birth to driders?
- Why does it have a giant gaping maw?
- How that makes any sense?
- Well, it has to feed, I guess.
- Really, that is your opinion on that? And how a limbless amorphous giant maw feeds on anything?
- Does it wait for a blind, idiotic creature to approach it - because it would have to be blind and idiotic to approach a GIANT FANGED MOUTH - and trip, falling inside it?
- Does that seem a reliable method of feeding to you?
The thing moves like it's in pain.
And die. It was pretty disgusting.
Back to the camp.
Malavon Despana - Good. Now, for getting out of here, you go outside of our camp, and head south...
Malavon Despana's assistant - North.
Malavon Despana - North? It's south!
Malavon Despana's assistant - That direction?
Malavon Despana - Yes!
Malavon Despana's assistant - That's north.
Malavon Despana - Are you sure?
Malavon Despana's assistant - Yes.
Malavon Despana - Ok, you head north, there you are going to find a mind flayer lair. You gotta pass through it, it's the only way out.
- How can you trade north and south? Are you sure you're giving us the right directions?
Malavon Despana - We live in a fucking cave, all right? There's no sun here to orientate us. Give me a break, ok?
- All right...
The area we are supposed to enter is heavily guarded.
Belthot - Well, I'm sorry I hurt your delicate sensibilities.
Belthot - I will apologize to you.
Belthot - Come here, give me a hug.
Belthot - Seriously, nobody hugs me! They all think I'm going to eat their brains.
Belthot - I can't think of a reason why!
Belthot - I'm so lonely...
- Oh, poor thing... I will hug you.
- Liz, don't!
- OUCH!
Belthot - Whaf a thif sfull! I thinf I brofe a tooth!
- He bit my head!
- You bastard!
The fight broke out. Those circles are an attack by the mind flayer.
With Lizzie, I cast Sol's searing orb, and with Wizerella Hold Monster.
Nice damage on Lizzies spell. The Fomorian Thrall on the right fails his save too on Hold Monster and gets paralyzed.
That blur next to the center-left Formorian Thrall is Sir Dwarfington. I found a cloak earlier that makes him like that. I don't remember what the effects of the cloak were, but they weren't anything special.
Apparently, nobody thought the blur thing would be annoying. I sent Mortimer to try to kill some casters.
After the mid-center Fomorian Thrall goes down, I send Dwarfington to help Mortimer. I don't remember where the mind flayer is. I think I thought it was the biggest threat and killed him as quickly as I could. But I don't see its body, so maybe it teleported out of combat. They do that, sometimes.
Some Duergar Thralls started the game of "Whack the Wizard". Meanwhile, I forgot that right-most Thrall was paralyzed, and sent Barbaric! there.
Shit, that fight didn't last 5 minutes, and I was already forgetting stuff.
At what age do I have to worry about Alzheimer's?
Dwarfington joins Barbaric!, don't remember if I send him there, or it was the game AI. Meanwhile, I'm casting the most damaging spells on the thrall hitting Wizerella.
Tried a Charm spell too, as a form of disabling him, no success though.
Mortimer caught the attention of the Duergar Thralls, and Turtle Shell made itself necessary. At least the casters are now free to, well, cast.
But the Turtle Shell is losing is effectiveness. The damage the creatures are dishing out is growing, and the spell doesn't scale anymore, I think.
I casted it again. If I had a cleric, I could cast sanctuary. Much better than this crap.
But now my fighters are here too. They should make short work of those guys.
And we are done. That flesh golem thing was acquired from the trasmuter wizard earlier, I didn't bother showing it.
It proved to be more trouble than it was worth, by attacking a charmed party member, because I can't control it directly.