Today we were going to be doing, uh, acquisitions. After paying for removing Montaron's curse, selling the Girdle of Feminity/Masculinity and sale of gems in Neera's pouch at Feldepost's, we were back up to 3022 gold. Feldepost's was the place to store our money and keep a running tab for shopping around Beregost, but we would need to withdraw that money soon enough for purchases just outside the town. Looking at the Feldepost's shopping inventory which had several expensive magic items and a certain book reminded me of someone. I told the girls we had an old friend to visit who lives in Beregost.
We quickly popped over to the house just next door to the inn, and knocked. A dignified old elf opened the door.
"Ah, you're Sonny, the lonely kid of Candlekeep!" Firebead said. "And Winthrop's strapping young lady too! Come in, come in."
"I'm an adult now!" I protested as we walked in.
Firebead expressed his condolences for my loss of Gorion. Word of his passing had reached everyone in Candlekeep since his body was discovered just beyond its walls. Winthrop had arranged for a proper burial for my old man. We chatted with him at length and found ourselves richer by another 300 gold again. Yeah, Firebead had money to throw around.
Firebead could not help himself but assign me another fetch quest as if I was his personal errand boy again like at Candlekeep. He wanted another book, the History of the Fateful Coin. I almost rolled my eyes, but was happy enough for news of Candlekeep that I was willing to indulge the old elf. We popped back into Feldepost's to purchase the very book Firebead wanted (2gp).
On his part, Firebead thanked us and gave us another book in exchange. "A touch darker than what you had given me but I get the sense that you may enjoy it, nonetheless," he said.
The book in question was the History of the Dead Three. I gawked at the title on the cover even as we left.
"You've heard of this book?" Imoen asked, noticing my expression.
"Yeah. It's a rather morbid read, really," I answered, passing it to her.
She flipped through it. "Gods of death gambling over a game of knucklebones? Yeesh. Count me out."
She handed it back. I offered it to Neera, who shook her head. The book detailed how the Jergal, god of strife, death and the dead, gave away his divine portfolio to Bane, Bhaal and Myrkul in a game of knucklebones. Not exactly chick flick material.
I had forgotten where I read this book in previous playthrough. Learning we get this book from Firebead, it kind of explained his behaviour. The old elf may know more than he let on.
The town crier nearby announced a bounty for the head of the mad cleric Bassilus for crimes against nature. An impressive 5000 gold as offered, to be collected at the Song of the Morning Temple we visited yesterday for Montaron.
"Aha! I bet that's what you're gunning for!" Imoen as we walked by.
"Good guess! We definitely want to claim that bounty, once we figure out where Bassilus is. Still need to do some acquisitions first."
"So acquisitions was a polite way of saying robbing the whole town?" Neera mused.
"We're thieves. That's just part of who we are, I'm afraid," I said. "Besides, we gotta to replace the healing potion we used when you set Imoen on fire."
"Not going to let it go, I see."
In spite of what she said, we avoided the other Inns, and going into Landrin's house which Landrin had asked us to clear of giant spiders. That would come a little later. Meanwhile making a round of acquisitions pushed our gold reserves up to a whopping 4317, healing potions to 10, an invisibility potion, a potion of heroism, a potion of agility, and an unidentified wand. At Thundersmithy's, I bought a Sling +1 (127 gold) and a Quarterstaff +1 (635 gold), leaving us 3555 gold. I nearly considerd buying Bullets +1 and Arrows +1 for myself and Imoen, but I wanted to head over to High Hedge to the west of town first.
"You'd think this mage you're talking about would build his home somewhere less hazardous." Neera said after we put down some gnolls just outside High Hedge's walls. "Good call on the Sleep spell, by the way. Very effective."
Sleep was one of the best spells right now as it put multiple enemies to sleep (unless they save vs death at -3 penalty). The main drawback of the spell was it doesn't work on enemies of level 6 and above, but that isn't going to be an issue for a long, long time.
The High Hedge was a circular building which was home to a powerful mage with a nice inventory of magical stuff. Lots of spells for mages, in particular.
"No arguments from me on the location," I said.
The gnolls had a short sword with a name at the hilt: Perdue. "Maybe its owner is in town? We've been avoiding the other inns cos of assassins though," I mused aloud, fully aware that the owner was in town.
"Assassins. Sure," Neera said, rolling her eyes.
On the way to High Hedge, we passed by an elven ranger in the forest, armed with longbow and halberd. I purposely steered clear of him.
Imoen pointed the guy out as we walked past. "Should we talk to him?"
I knew who it was. This was Kivan, one of the many recruit-able companions, and one of the best archers in the game. If I didn't have Imoen in my game, I would have replaced her with him. Kivan was tricky to use, for as soon as he is recruited you would be on a timer to progress the main quest (specifically, to find the bandit camp in a future chapter) before he leaves the party in a huff. Seeing as how we were now messing around rather than progressing the main quest, even if we did want him it wasn't a good time to bring him on board.
Seeing as how I was not recruiting him this time anyway, I shook my head to Imoen and we let the man be.
The master of High Hedge was a certain Thalantyr the Conjurer. He was a snobbish mage, but with a bit of persistence and flattery we could make some purchases:
1 wizard scrolls of Blindness for 127gp ("A great choice," Neera said.),
1 potion case for 254gp ("Makes sense to me," Imoen said.),
2 wizard scrolls of Protection from Petrification for 127gp each (Neera balked. "Wait a second, why…"),
And finally, 3 Potions of Explosions for 571 gp each.
Neera and Imoen gasped at the last purchase.
"Three?!? One is enough to wipe out an adventuring party," Imoen said. "Just how much trouble are we expecting to deal with?"
"Remember how big the bounty on Bassilus was?" I asked. "And what was his crime?"
"5000 gp," Neera responded. "And he was wanted for crimes against nature. Oh."
"What does crimes against nature refer to exactly anyway?" Imoen asked.
"Probably necromancy," Neera said with a sigh.
I nodded. "That'll come later, once we've prepared."
"We need MORE preparation than 3 Potions of Explosions?" Imoen asked.
"There's just a better order of doing things," I replied. "It looks like we managed to conserve Neera's spells, so let's go back and slay some spiders first."
(Neera scribed Blindness and Protection from Petrification into her spellbook first.)
Four huge spiders were not to be taken lightly. Landrin had given us Antidotes though, which made the prospects of the spiders much less threatening. I stepped in first to attract the attention of the spiders. Neera and Imoen came in soon after, with Neera casting Sleep. The spiders had pretty poor saves against that spell, and unsurprisingly all of them fell fast asleep. That was all she wrote.
"Not bad. I fully expected to get bitten back there," I said. Or at least I tried to.
I couldn't actually say anything since I was a disembodied soul again. Staring at me was the record sheet for Imoen. The Level Up button was available. Imoen had reached her second level as a thief.
This is how the levelling up process will go every time, huh? How queer. I clicked on the level up button for Imoen, and took stock of the choices available.
I grimaced. This could be rather tricky to plan out.
I had 25 points to distribute to a number of Imoen's thief skills:
Open Locks 25
Find Traps 35
Pick Pockets 25
Move Silently 35
Hide in Shadows 15
Detect Illusions 0
Set Traps 5
One good thing about bringing Imoen on this journey was that two thieves in the party meant I could cover skills that would normally be ignored in Baldur's Gate 1. Still not ideal, but I may as well make the best of it.
I already had Open Lock of 60, so that was my job. Imoen probably should be in charge of Find Traps since her skills there were already higher than mine. Probably. These two were the most critical skills, generally, but for now I didn't need Find Traps to be any higher than the 35 she already had.
Pick Pockets was very tempting. There was a cloak in Feldepost's Inn that was VERY powerful early in the game and could even help me with my shopping. And the sirines in the temple nearby each carried a pearl which was worth a nice amount of money too. But I would need the skill at 100 at least before I dared to use it on what I assumed to be ironman mode. If I knew I could load state safely, 50 would have been adequate. Perhaps I could start building up the skill until 100 now?
Most players loved Move Silently and Hide in Shadows. It made backstabbing super convenient rather than waiting for stealth to roll a success using poor chances. The skill was also valuable for scouting purposes; boring but a very practical use. Unfortunately stealth was so well regarded that it got nerfed in-game so one would have to invest into it twice for the same results, once into Move Silently and once into Hide in Shadow. This nerf was huge and resulted in thieves having to specialise in the stealth skills in lieu of anything else. Not actually a good idea if you had one thief in the party, especially not for Imoen with her pathetic Strength score, but could be a good option for me if Imoen was helping to cover other skills.
Detect Illusions was used to remove illusion spells such as various forms of Invisibility and Mirror Images. A godsend against mages, and generally useless elsewhere. Players generally skipped this one for Baldur's Gate 1. Mages are considered to be a bigger issue in the next game. I had some disagreements with this logic, as the mages with Mirror Image and Invisibility we did meet even in BG1 were extremely threatening.
Set Traps was the thief's damage option. It was considered cheesy due to the shenanigans one could pull off with it, but it was also really finicky to use. Thieves could only set traps when enemies were not in sight, and even then the rate of success depended on the skill value. It would be some time before we saw any value of the skill, but we could start building it up now. I was already trying to build up my own Set Traps skills, but the party could always use more.
Considering the level caps in Baldur's Gate, how much did I have to work with in the end for Imoen? That wasn't straightforward either. If Imoen stayed a thief throughout, she could reach level 10, hence a total of 225 additional thief skill points including this level up. But that was a BIG if. Veteran players would opt for a different route, especially if there was already a thief in the party. And there was, me. How many levels in thief would Imoen actually take, assuming we reached that far?
We checked out every Inn except the Red Sheaf to pick up quests, Neera giving me a knowing look every time assassins were mentioned. From the Jovial Juggler we got a request from Bjornin the paladin who asked us to destroy a band of half-ogres in the south southwest of Beregost who had gotten the best of him. Gurke, a crusty old dwarf, bemoaned the loss of his famous cloak to tasloi in Cloakwood, as well as the fact everyone teased him for losing his cloak in Cloakwood of all places (heh).
In the Burning Wizard inn, Zhurlong mentioned that a hobgoblin south of Beregost had taken his boots of stealth, but not before helping himself to some of our gold. I didn't really mind, we were going to help ourselves to his Boots of Stealth after all. 15gp for the tip was a steal, pun intended. Speaking of which, we, uh, acquisitioned an unidentified mace upstairs. No sign of anyone named Perdue yet.
Night was falling, so I wanted to take the opportunity to recon the area around the Song of the Morning Temple since we would be heading through that area the next day.
"There's such a thing as being TOO careful, you know," Neera gave her input as we trudged around in the dark. "A few wild dogs here, a wolf there. What's the point-"
I put a finger to my lips and stuck my hand out in front of her. Imoen drew back her bow and leaned down. We withdrew back, and I checked ahead while moving through the tall grass.
When I came back, I had a grim look on my face. "Eight hobgoblins. Armed to the teeth. Hobgoblins have been sighted during bandit raids looking for iron, according to townsfolk. Any chance you think they're friendly?"
Imoen and Neera both shook their heads.
"Isn't eight a number that's way too big to deal with? Three already gave us enough trouble back when Xzar and Montaron were with us," Imoen offered. She was eyeing my pack at the time.
"I know what you're thinking, and it's not time to break out the Potion of Explosions. We can keep that option open if we need it," I said.
"So we just avoid them?" Neera asked.
"No. We'll be walking through this area again later, and I don't want to bump into them when we may not have the initiative like we do now," I responded. I gave them both a grin. "Actually, this shouldn't be so hard."
Cattack, the leader of the large band of hobgoblins, had hoisted a mighty sword on his shoulder that was much larger than the bastard swords the rest of his crew wielded. They worked for a mercenary organisation called the Chill, and was currently under contract to raid caravans and travelers for iron, of all things. Well, his gang was free to keep whatever gold they found but any items of iron would go to their employer.
Under the cover of night, they were laying in wait for unsuspecting travelers moving westward. It wasn't a particularly high traffic route they had been stationed at, but the Chill needed keep a wide net to catch travelers avoiding the main routes as well. Low-ranking hobgoblins like Cattack got stuck with boring jobs like this.
"No one is coming, chief," one of his crew sitting on the ground said. All of them were sitting right then. "May as well call it a night."
"You be quiet! I call shots here," Cattack yelled.
There was a swoosh sound just behind him. To his credit, Cattack moved just in time to avoid a lethal blow to the back of his head, but the quarterstaff crushed his shoulder. He got up immediately, and turned to find a tiny widdle halfling facing him. A slight glint in the dark, and Cattack narrowly side-stepped an arrow which whizzed by.
"We're under attack!" Cattack screamed, "Spare no one!"
But his allies, all seven of them, let out a big yawn and lay on the ground. "Ya got this, chief."
With his good arm, Cattack brought his his unyieldy two-handed sword to bear on his target. But the halfing's quarterstaff struck first, and Cattack's world turned dark.
The armor of the eight hobgoblins was too much to carry for one halfling and two ladies, so we had to settle for just the two-handed sword and bastard swords. Selling these at the Thundersmithy the next day would bring our gold reserves back up to 1425. We also restocked our regular ammunition; as well as 20 +1 arrows, and 20 +1 bullets. Though we still had a few gems in our pouch, we were only left with 964 gold in cash. It felt awful to drain our gold down that much, but we'll get it back up again.