And hey what a coincidence: Bishop's a dick. He has a reason, but even he admits that it really doesn't justify what he is. Bishop's a dick because he's a dick and because Chaotic Evil is the alignment of dickheads.
See, this is that whole "gone horribly right" thing in my eyes. Like somebody writes a story about teens in love and successfully captures everything that makes teen romances painful and awkward on the page for the reader to bask in. Or, to use an example from Obsidian's perpetual nemesis Bioware, they did really well with the story, the look, the feel, of destroyed Taris in SWTOR. They have captured the distilled essence of traversing a swampy ex-urban hellhole infested by zombie monsters where if you stop to take a piss you run a 50% chance of catching Ebolaherpes Nether Rot. As a storytelling achievement, these are quite impressive.
It's just it makes your story and your game awful to actually read or play. So they used all their skill, all their talent, all their powers of storytelling...to fuck themselves over. Whoops!
So it's off to the "Solace Glade," where we must spend the night in contemplation or self-reflection or whatever.
Helm, Tempus, Torm, Tyr...all human gods! Pfagh!
As soon as Sir Grayson departs Shandra shows up, knowing that trouble's going to be hot on our heels:
Shandra's defining trait is that she knows she's in your typical RPG plot and while I normally dislike it when games do this whole meta-awareness thing ("THIS IS JUST LIKE ONE OF THOSE OLD ADVENTURE STORIES MY DAD USED TO TELL ME!") NWN2 does it subtlely enough that I don't mind.
Sure enough, some assassins show up, led by someone with a bad Scottish (Irish?) accent:
Sir Grayson is a bit dismayed when he returns the next morning and finds a pile of dead bodies at our feet, but regardless, we're nobility now!
We cut back to Castle Never, where Lord Nasher tells Torio that, since we're now a squire, our trial will take place in Neverwinter. She gets pissy and leaves in a huff:
Ha ha! No miscarriage of justice for you!
(And the real crime here is Torio's outfit. Seriously, that skirt looks like a quilt my aunt knitted for my bedspread when I was a child)
Lord Nasher remarks how pleasing it is to see that "gloating smile stripped from her face" before instructing us to head to Port Llast and Ember in order to determine the truth of what happened. Wait, so the accused is going to be in charge of gathering evidence in her defence? I'm no lawyer, but this seems a bit dubious legally.
Before we do that, however, we'll be working through Khelgar's personal quest. There's a location on the map called "Dwarven Scouts" which actually showed up after we finished the Old Owl Well questline. The game doesn't tell you this, of course, and given the number of map markers it's easy to miss:
Once we arrive, we find a number of dwarves belonging to Clan Ironfist, lead by someone named Khulmar, and strangely enough, while Khelgar speaks with a Scottish accent, none of the other dwarves do. They're looking for an old Ironfist clanhold that's somewhere in these mountains.
The reception he gets from his clanmates is rather frosty, to put it mildly:
Khelgar doesn't quite twig that his clanmates no longer consider him a member of their clan:
Khulmar tells Khelgar that the door to the clanhold is sealed, and that only by recounting the "legend of King Loudram" will he gain entry. Which is a bit confusing, because this quest doesn't involve that at all. The tale of King Loudram is involved in another quest in Act III. I have the feeling there's some cut content here.
Once again, Khelgar continues to display a total lack of self-awareness. He's been going from tavern to tavern, getting in fights and proclaiming the strength and honour of Clan Ironfist, all the while he's estranged from his clan and completely uninvolved with their affairs.
We end up fighting through a number of bugbears on our way to the clanhold, and since we're rather over-levelled for this quest they prove to be no trouble whatsoever. Along the way we come across a dwarven prisoner, whom the bugbears were planning to devour. Hilariously, the walls around his "prison" are so short that a human-sized individual could probably just climb over them:
We then get a conversation with Khelgar where he says that it's good to see members of his clan, and that's he been away from home for a while. When we suggest that he left his clan, he gets pissy (this seems to happen a lot in this game) and says that he didn't "abandon" them, he just went "looking for battle in another direction." Which reminds me of the old phrase, "We're not retreating, we're just advancing in another direction!"
If we point out that he left his clan to pursue his own interests instead of his clan's, he gets even pissier and we lose influence:
It's here that we see an obvious flaw in the influence system - this whole quest is about Khelgar learning how he's wronged his clanmates and making amends. But the moment we choose any dialogue option towards this end, he gets mad and we're punished with an influence loss. The game is effectively pulling you in two directions at once, effectively saying "You need to fix Khelgar...but not yet!"
Upon entering the ruined clanhold, we find it infested not only with bugbears, but ogres as well:
This area's a bit of a disappointment - no traps, no puzzles...even the architecture is rather dull and uninspiring. It also provides another example of the game's awful pathfinding:
In the above screenshot, my entire party is selected, and I'm directing them to attack the bugbear highlighted in red. But for some reason, Neeshka and Khelgar, standing by the door, simply will not move from where they're standing no matter how many times I give the attack order. Instead, I have to select them individual in order to get them to do what I want.
There's another irritating bug that occurs with some degree of frequency: If I'm scouting ahead with Neeshka (or any other party member), then occasionally they will suddenly swap places with the protagonist character.
We encounter a group of bugbears arguing over how to split a pile of gold:
You need to have a fairly high Hide skill in order to eavesdrop on their conversation. My character doesn't, but since I have Neeshka in the party she intervenes and we pass the skill check.
The bugbears, despite being rather thick, figure out that they can each get a bigger share of the gold if there are fewer of them left alive:
They end up slaughtering each other, leaving only two them for us to kill.
(A general rule for an evil overlord - always agree to pay your minions a fixed share of the loot individually, instead of dividing it up among them. That way they will be less inclined to kill each other in order to take a larger share)
The "boss" of this dungeon is an orge named Grausch, and since we're over-levelled he's a complete pushover:
I should point out that this is our first quest with Sand in our party, and while he's a capable wizard his selection voice lines quickly become extrordinarily irritating. You'll be wanting to cast a Silence spell on him after hearing him say "I think it is time everyone march behind me, your new GLORRRRRRIOUS leader!" a half-dozen times or so.
We find a gate up ahead, locked with some sort of complicated mechanism:
We insert a strange piece of machinery we had found in chest earlier, and the machine starts up and opens the door for us. That's it, that's the sole "puzzle" in this dungeon. Past the gate, we find a chest containing the Gauntlets of Ironfist, which grant the wearer a +3 bonus to Strength, among other things.
We return them to Khulmar, who's suitably impressed:
Khelgar declares that the gauntlets ought to be kept in the hands of the clan, but Khulmar says that Khelgar ought to have them for now, and he's a little more accepting of Khelgar's decision to leave the clan.
This completes the Trial of the Mained, leaving the Trial of the Even-Handed and the Trial of the Just. Completing the Trial of the Even-Handed requires asking him about our companions (specifically Neeshka), but at this point we don't have enough influence to change his mind. Looking at my save game file in an editor, I only have 5 influence, while 7 is needed. This is a lot less influence than I thought (probably because I tried to use Diplomacy and other non-combat skills to resolve conflicts, instead of indulging Khelgar's bloodlust). Worse, according to an Excel spreadsheet detailing all possible influence changes, there's only one more influence point to be gained between here and the end of Act 2. I could just use console commands to adjust my influence with Khelgar, but that would be cheating, and cheating in an LP seems a bit...dishonourable...to me.
I remember the first time I played this game I somehow completely missed the cleavage for a long time and it wasn't until this sequence that I realized Torio wasn't actually an extremely camp attempt to code someone gay.
I could just use console commands to adjust my influence with Khelgar, but that would be cheating, and cheating in an LP seems a bit...dishonourable...to me.
This is closer to using XComUtil to fix the difficulty resetting and to correct weirdnesses for an LP (something I've actually done) than it is to giving yourself god mode; you're using it to show us the game better and to make it more playable, not to make it easy or give us a distorted view of it.
See, this is that whole "gone horribly right" thing in my eyes. Like somebody writes a story about teens in love and successfully captures everything that makes teen romances painful and awkward on the page for the reader to bask in. Or, to use an example from Obsidian's perpetual nemesis Bioware, they did really well with the story, the look, the feel, of destroyed Taris in SWTOR. They have captured the distilled essence of traversing a swampy ex-urban hellhole infested by zombie monsters where if you stop to take a piss you run a 50% chance of catching Ebolaherpes Nether Rot. As a storytelling achievement, these are quite impressive.
It's just it makes your story and your game awful to actually read or play. So they used all their skill, all their talent, all their powers of storytelling...to fuck themselves over. Whoops!
Okay fine, tell me where in the Seldarine you see a god of law, order, and chivalry. Tell you what, we'll compromise and let you swear and oath to Moradin.
It's here that we see an obvious flaw in the influence system - this whole quest is about Khelgar learning how he's wronged his clanmates and making amends. But the moment we choose any dialogue option towards this end, he gets mad and we're punished with an influence loss. The game is effectively pulling you in two directions at once, effectively saying "You need to fix Khelgar...but not yet!"
I'll give the game a lot of shit but I think it nailed this part. Tell a guy, even one you like and who likes you in return, that they fucked up their closest relationships and they get pissy and start ignoring you. There's a time and place for that kind of talk.
This completes the Trial of the Mained, leaving the Trial of the Even-Handed and the Trial of the Just. Completing the Trial of the Even-Handed requires asking him about our companions (specifically Neeshka), but at this point we don't have enough influence to change his mind. Looking at my save game file in an editor, I only have 5 influence, while 7 is needed. This is a lot less influence than I thought (probably because I tried to use Diplomacy and other non-combat skills to resolve conflicts, instead of indulging Khelgar's bloodlust). Worse, according to an Excel spreadsheet detailing all possible influence changes, there's only one more influence point to be gained between here and the end of Act 2. I could just use console commands to adjust my influence with Khelgar, but that would be cheating, and cheating in an LP seems a bit...dishonourable...to me.
....What, seriously? I hate to ask, but are you deliberately antagonizing him? There's a line at the end of this quest that's worth 3 points alone, and given how you can get a lot of easy early points for talking up ideas of honor* before even reaching Neverwinter, it's kind of hard not to have at least 4 by this point.
*Khelgar's an irrational brute at this point but he's still culturally dwarfish. He thinks he's living up to those ideals but everything about his personal quests and interactions is about showing how shallowly claiming to ascribe to your ideals is nothing like actually living up to them.
....What, seriously? I hate to ask, but are you deliberately antagonizing him? There's a line at the end of this quest that's worth 3 points alone, and given how you can get a lot of easy early points for talking up ideas of honor* before even reaching Neverwinter, it's kind of hard not to have at least 4 by this point.
*Khelgar's an irrational brute at this point but he's still culturally dwarfish. He thinks he's living up to those ideals but everything about his personal quests and interactions is about showing how shallowly claiming to ascribe to your ideals is nothing like actually living up to them.
I choose the dialogue option you mentioned, and while I wouldn't say I've been deliberately antagonising him, I haven't been indulging his fight-happy ways, either. Looking at the older save games, my influence with him has hovered around 0 and -1 for most of the game. Which is odd, considering I've done "diplomatic" play-throughs before, and I could have sworn I had more influence than that by this point, although I could be remembering incorrectly.
Ah, yeah, this quest. When you started listing your complaints about the influence system and how it doesn't allow you to pressure your companions, instead forcing you to play along with whatever their whims were?
That particular dialogue tree is exactly what I first thought of.
My first character was a paladin of Tyr, actually, so I felt like my character was reasonably qualified to tell Khelgar that Tyr's order probably wouldn't accept someone who almost completely ignored his clan and responsibilities in favor of picking random fights. He didn't exactly appreciate my position of authority.
(I actually tend to do this quest the moment it first appears, so I was a bit surprised I didn't hear you mention it, and quickly scrounged through the thread seeing if there was an update I missed because with your previous comments I knew you'd have probably mentioned it by now and I didn't want to spoil things. I guess it does kind of make sense to do it now as opposed to before you spoke to that head priest and got the vision quest... quest. I had no idea you could do this quest after saving Shandra.)
In this episode we're going to focussing mainly on various sidequests in Blacklake.
First up is quite possibly my favourite sidequest in the entire game. It's completely irrelevant to the plot, but it is amusing nonetheless.
There's an amphitheatre by the lake where a "battle of the bards" is taking place. One of the competitors is a supremely arrogant bloke named Cain, who handily shows up his opponent:
His opponent retorts with this lame comeback:
Obviously we're going to have to show this knob his place, considering we are a bard, after all. (This quest can be done by any class, but bards will have an easier time of it)
So at this point, our elf strolls up to the stage, electric guitar in hand and backed by a trailer full of amps and loudspeakers, and proceeds to make his head explode with the sheer power of Finnish pagan metal...
...oops, that's my Shadowrun character. I guess we're going to have do this with old-fashioned acoustic instruments.
The actual mechanics of the quest are a bit annoying, however. Cain plays a brief melody, and you have to play it back. What makes it annoying is that you select which lute string you wish to play, rather than the specific note, so even if you had perfect pitch (which I'm pretty sure I don't) you might find it a bit tricky. I, of course, simply had the correct series of strings to play written down beforehand.
After successfully playing back the melody, you have the opportunity to use one of your skills (usually Perform, but others as well) which, if successful, will cause Cain to flub his playback attempt. These includes things like playing the lute above your head, or playing it while it's on fire. Unfortunately, we don't actually see this on account of the game's limited animation set.
We can also have Sand go into the crowd and heckle him, or as he puts it, "critical praise with just a bite of sarcasm."
After successfully playing back each tune and succeeding at all of the skill checks, Cain winds up thoroughly trounced in our little competition. When the crowd is asked to choose their favourite we are the clear winner:
Seriously mate, did you really expect to defeat an elf in a musical competition?
We win his lute as the prize, which is worth at least 10,000 GP if we try to sell it. That must be one fine instrument!
There's a few minor quests we pick up, such as taking a box of tithes back to Brother Merring back in West Harbor. There's another city watch quest we can do, where we go undercover and arrest some thieves involved in a weapons smuggling operation. But since I'm sure you're all thoroughly tired of seeing city watch quests I'll spare you the details.
If we head up to the Neverwinter Academy, we find a man standing next to some crates that emitting some very loud scratching and clawing noises. Talking to him reveals that he's the academy's "kennel keeper," responsible for the various creatures the students experiment on. "Lockin' em up, movin' em' in and out, beatin' 'em as they deserve it," he says. Wait, "beating?"
Are you suggesting sir, that at one point you have beaten a cat?
Oh, this will not stand!
A short distance away we find an imp, who implores us to free his imprisoned comrades:
"Aww, he's trying to claw my eyeballs out! Isn't that cute?"
He gives us a key to the crates, so we decide that the citizens of Blacklake could use a little more spice in their lives, so we set the imps free:
This shifts our alingment a full ten points towards Chaotic, and now the imps will be terrorising this part of Neverwinter until at least the end of Act II.
In another part of the district, we find a your girl arguing with some older girls. Apparently the older girls are going into some tomb "with a bunch of boys" in defiance of their parents. One of them is named "Raven" and dressed completely in black, and when we examine her it's quite clear she's a goth type:
The little girl, Kyli, is worried that her sister Lisbet is going into the tomb and doing evil, horrible things like kissing boys. Boys who, according to her, are all "dark, depressing and mean" and talk about how life is pointless and all that.
Yep, definitely goths all right, at least the sort of stereotypical goth as depicted in pop culture.
I remember this quest having something of a difficult boss fight at the end, so I'll hold off on it for a while. Still, we get this gem of a line from Shandra:
"Just" Khelgar?
There's another quest I'd completely forgotten about - the priest that went missing in the Tomb of the Betrayers. So it's off to the crypt we go!
Since we're rather over-levelled for this quest, the undead inside don't pose much of a challenge. There are also some puzzles, which involve incredible mind-bending tasks such as "use a switch to move a piece of stone to block a fireball trap." Oddly, when we examine the stone itself the descriptive text says it's an umber hulk:
There are a large number of traps present in the crypt, but almost none of them actually trigger. Well, the game says "Trap Triggered" but the actual trap effects are conspicuously absent.
At the very end of the tomb we find the priest of Tyr, who tells us that something has disturbed the spirits of the dead in this place:
He informs us that the one responsible is the one responsible for leading these unquiet spirits is the "greatest of traitors" and that we will not be able to leave until he is dealt with.
Hmm, I wonder who this "greatest of traitors" could be?
It turns out to be the ghost of Fenthick Moss. In the first Neverwinter Nights, he was Aribeth's lover who had the misfortune of unwittingly aiding someone who later turned traitor, and was executed by Lord Nasher in order to stem the wrath of the enraged citizenry. There's some great story potential here - a chance to tie NWN2 back to the first game - but alas Fenthick is just another undead creature you have to fight and then...that's it. No dialogue with his tormented spirit, no further mention of him from any NPCs, nothing.
It's also rather strange how there's been absolutely no mention of Aribeth de Tylmerande, either.
Poor Aribeth. Elves just weren't meant to be paladins.
I hate most fantasy bards, I can't think of a depiction of music in fiction that could possibly be more lame. I wish the ripped dude from Manowar cover art would come in and break their backs over his knee like Bane.
So at this point, our elf strolls up to the stage, electric guitar in hand and backed by a trailer full of amps and loudspeakers, and proceeds to make his head explode with the sheer power of Finnish pagan metal...
...oops, that's my Shadowrun character. I guess we're going to have do this with old-fashioned acoustic instruments.
Maybe the reason Ari isn't the "greatest traitor" is that after she got her powers back and helped stop Mephi people started to forgive her.
Or maybe they changed things cause they don't want to risk pissing off the immortal epic ghost paladin, the epic drow mage-assassin and the HotU PC (and Deekin). Especially with Nasher being the same Nasher as the NWN1 guy who executed Fenthick for spurious reasons and then (at least in my campaign) did the same to then-living-Aribeth after she surrendered.
Didn't Nasher pretty much attempted to do a damnatio memoriae on everything related to Aribeth and the stuff from the Wailing Death times? I thiiiink that's part of the explanation why the PC is... well wherever he is in the second expansion of the first game.
If he did, well, kinda explains why Aribeth isn't there, her body was probably shoved into a shallow grave somewhere... or fed to the pigs. We never know who handled the remains, after all.
Didn't Nasher pretty much attempted to do a damnatio memoriae on everything related to Aribeth and the stuff from the Wailing Death times? I thiiiink that's part of the explanation why the PC is... well wherever he is in the second expansion of the first game.
If he did, well, kinda explains why Aribeth isn't there, her body was probably shoved into a shallow grave somewhere... or fed to the pigs. We never know who handled the remains, after all.
From my memories of HotU (and it has been a while), the reason why the PC left is because it is implied they talked down Aribeth, Nasher executed her and they went "Did you learn nothing from Fenthick? And you worship Tyr? Well, screw this time you guys can handle this mess yourself" and just left.
Nasher also seems to have in-part unperson'd the first PC, given how the henchmen of that game are primarily credited as the heroes of neverwinter at the start of HotU (with little mention of the person who carried all the mostly-useless companions) before they all get worf'd in Undermountain.
From my memories of HotU (and it has been a while), the reason why the PC left is because it is implied they talked down Aribeth, Nasher executed her and they went "Did you learn nothing from Fenthick? And you worship Tyr? Well, screw this time you guys can handle this mess yourself" and just left.
Nasher also seems to have in-part unperson'd the first PC, given how the henchmen of that game are primarily credited as the heroes of neverwinter at the start of HotU (with little mention of the person who carried all the mostly-useless companions) before they all get worf'd in Undermountain.
I like this because it feeds into the "Are... are the Lawful/Neutral Good noble leader guys actually dystopian authoritarian assholes?" vibe that I get a lot from Forgotten Realms.
I like this because it feeds into the "Are... are the Lawful/Neutral Good noble leader guys actually dystopian authoritarian assholes?" that I get a lot from Forgotten Realms.
I like this because it feeds into the "Are... are the Lawful/Neutral Good noble leader guys actually dystopian authoritarian assholes?" vibe that I get a lot from Forgotten Realms.
Except that Forgotten Realms is epic fantasy, not the historical Middle Ages, and it is under no obligation to conform to our understanding of that time period. To quote author David Abraham, "At its heart, the argument that the Middle Ages were "really like that" misunderstands what epic fantasy is by treating it as though it was in conversation with actual history. It isn't. It's in conversation with the epic fantasy that came before it."
I saw this line of argument used with Lord of the Rings all the time - someone would take note of how the story made a big deal about how Aragorn was the rightful king of Gondor, or how many of the protagonsits were members of the aristocracy, and this would inevitably followed by a torrent of "WELL, ACKSHUALLY-ing" about how "real" feudal lords were brutal, power-hungry despots, completely missing the whole point of the story in the first place.
This assumption that fantasy ought to reflect "real" history and the reality of the Middle Ages is why so much of modern fantasy is so stunningly banal.
Except not really? Because when Forgotten Realms big goods act like evil assholes, they're not acting like power hungry warlords, they're acting like an Illuminati with Omniscient Morality Licences.
Yeah, I tended to take Nasher's actions with my character as more counterplaying Luskan than any actual benevolence largely because I remember him for his actions in the original NWN campaign. (Luskan is willing to kill off a village to frame this person? Must be serious, well, I don't like them playing games in our territory, how can we best screw them over despite this treaty we have?)
NWN's campaign and Aribeth Summarized:
Fenthick was a man who trusted a guy who turned out to be a traitor, working for a race of evil lizard people slumbering in a forgotten pocket dimension.
Once the treason was discovered and you killed the traitor, an angry mob's demand that Fenthick be executed, a man whose only crime was being a gullible sap. Nasher complies, and Fenthick is hanged, his body apparently sent to the Tomb of Traitors and heralded as one of the greatest traitor's in Neverwinter's history. Now, admittedly, it was a city ridden by plague, and loads of people were dying, so some mindless outrage and desire for people to be punished is understandable, but...
Aribeth, a paladin and his (I think?) girlfriend, or at least, a very close friend, continued to serve Neverwinter after her lord spit on her ideals in the name of expediency. Her sleep began to get worse, and she grew more and more stressed, and eventually, she started having different dreams. Dreams that the lizard people were giving her. Despite anything you try to say to her, eventually, all the stresses, both supernatural and mundanely induced, get to be too much and she joins team evil in the hopes of getting her revenge on the city that caused Fenthick's death.
When my character managed to get her to stand down, she returned to Neverwinter's battle lines to try to redeem herself for her mistake, using both her blade and her knowledge of the enemy's forces to try to save the city. Being a bit concerned, I went back and spoke to Neverwinter's spymaster and Nasher himself, saying, "Hey, Aribeth's trying to fix her mistakes, please don't kill her while I'm out saving all your lives, okay?" And they were all like, slightly paraphrased, 'Yeah man it's cool brah we got you. She's safe.'
Then I save the day and get to the ending slides and it goes, "The angry mob called for Aribeth's death and Lord Nasher totally caved. Again. The Hero of Neverwinter got pissy and left, never to be seen in the city again." Which was accurate enough, I suppose, I imagine my character was both really angry at the time and was engaging in basic pattern recognition, and noticed that Neverwinter didn't seem to treat its heroes very well so he might as well get the hell out of Dodge while the going was good.
So with that experience, even if he's actually helping the main character of this game out and is generally being a cool, justice concerned dude, in the one (?) cinematic we've seen of him so far, I can't help but be a bit cynical of anything Lord Nasher said.
...
Anyway, I do like bards, and it's... kind of weird that the game made an entire side quest with somewhat unique mechanics based entirely around bards. Like, it works here, since you happen to be one, but... bards. Not exactly the most popular class, I think.
(Note: I have been posting a lot, but I think, while I've been carefully avoiding spoilers, I've been talking mostly about my own experiences with the game. If you ever feel like my comments shouldn't be in this thread or they're disruptive to the LP, or simply not relevant, I'd appreciate it if you let me know. I'll try to shift to comments more directly relevant to the LP anyway.)
Frankly the hero just fucking leaving in a huff is just lame. That shit Nasher pulled is straight up cut off his fucking head and sit on his throne level offence.
Anyway, I do like bards, and it's... kind of weird that the game made an entire side quest with somewhat unique mechanics based entirely around bards. Like, it works here, since you happen to be one, but... bards. Not exactly the most popular class, I think.
My issue is that, aside from the one quest with Cain Lethellon, you don't really get to do anything really, well, bardish. You don't get to compose any stories or songs or plays. You don't really get to share your "bardic lore" with your party members. You don't even really get that many opportunities to perform.
Here's a quote from Alan Moore:
"Now, as I understand it, the bards were feared. They were respected, but more than that they were feared. If you were just some magician, if you'd pissed off some witch, then what's she gonna do, she's gonna put a curse on you, and what's gonna happen? Your hens are gonna lay funny, your milk's gonna go sour, maybe one of your kids is gonna get a hare-lip or something like that — no big deal. You piss off a bard, and forget about putting a curse on you, he might put a satire on you. And if he was a skillful bard, he puts a satire on you, it destroys you in the eyes of your community, it shows you up as ridiculous, lame, pathetic, worthless, in the eyes of your community, in the eyes of your family, in the eyes of your children, in the eyes of yourself, and if it's a particularly good bard, and he's written a particularly good satire, then three hundred years after you're dead, people are still gonna be laughing, at what a twat you were."
That sounds a lot more interesting than your typical D&D bard, which usually just functions as a sort of hybrid fighter/mage/thief who happens to be REALLY good at identifying stuff.
Yeah, I tended to take Nasher's actions with my character as more counterplaying Luskan than any actual benevolence largely because I remember him for his actions in the original NWN campaign. (Luskan is willing to kill off a village to frame this person? Must be serious, well, I don't like them playing games in our territory, how can we best screw them over despite this treaty we have?)
NWN's campaign and Aribeth Summarized:
Fenthick was a man who trusted a guy who turned out to be a traitor, working for a race of evil lizard people slumbering in a forgotten pocket dimension.
Once the treason was discovered and you killed the traitor, an angry mob's demand that Fenthick be executed, a man whose only crime was being a gullible sap. Nasher complies, and Fenthick is hanged, his body apparently sent to the Tomb of Traitors and heralded as one of the greatest traitor's in Neverwinter's history. Now, admittedly, it was a city ridden by plague, and loads of people were dying, so some mindless outrage and desire for people to be punished is understandable, but...
Aribeth, a paladin and his (I think?) girlfriend, or at least, a very close friend, continued to serve Neverwinter after her lord spit on her ideals in the name of expediency. Her sleep began to get worse, and she grew more and more stressed, and eventually, she started having different dreams. Dreams that the lizard people were giving her. Despite anything you try to say to her, eventually, all the stresses, both supernatural and mundanely induced, get to be too much and she joins team evil in the hopes of getting her revenge on the city that caused Fenthick's death.
When my character managed to get her to stand down, she returned to Neverwinter's battle lines to try to redeem herself for her mistake, using both her blade and her knowledge of the enemy's forces to try to save the city. Being a bit concerned, I went back and spoke to Neverwinter's spymaster and Nasher himself, saying, "Hey, Aribeth's trying to fix her mistakes, please don't kill her while I'm out saving all your lives, okay?" And they were all like, slightly paraphrased, 'Yeah man it's cool brah we got you. She's safe.'
Then I save the day and get to the ending slides and it goes, "The angry mob called for Aribeth's death and Lord Nasher totally caved. Again. The Hero of Neverwinter got pissy and left, never to be seen in the city again." Which was accurate enough, I suppose, I imagine my character was both really angry at the time and was engaging in basic pattern recognition, and noticed that Neverwinter didn't seem to treat its heroes very well so he might as well get the hell out of Dodge while the going was good.
So with that experience, even if he's actually helping the main character of this game out and is generally being a cool, justice concerned dude, in the one (?) cinematic we've seen of him so far, I can't help but be a bit cynical of anything Lord Nasher said.
...
Anyway, I do like bards, and it's... kind of weird that the game made an entire side quest with somewhat unique mechanics based entirely around bards. Like, it works here, since you happen to be one, but... bards. Not exactly the most popular class, I think.
(Note: I have been posting a lot, but I think, while I've been carefully avoiding spoilers, I've been talking mostly about my own experiences with the game. If you ever feel like my comments shouldn't be in this thread or they're disruptive to the LP, or simply not relevant, I'd appreciate it if you let me know. I'll try to shift to comments more directly relevant to the LP anyway.)
Nasher's really lucky most of the time it isn't evil Aribeth who comes out of hell. I'm not sure Neverwinter has the ability to stop a Lv40 Ethereal Blackguard from just walking through the city and lopping off Nasher's head, to say nothing of the evil MC possibly having Mephistopheles on a leash as a minion.
Frankly the hero just fucking leaving in a huff is just lame. That shit Nasher pulled is straight up cut off his fucking head and sit on his throne level offence.
I suppose that's true, but back when I first played the game I wasn't much for considering non-canon things. The game said I wandered off, so I wandered off, but I could at least define why I left. I guess my bard character was a bit weary of accidentally starting some tradition, what with the person trying to save Neverwinter being betrayed by it, a friend of theirs betraying Neverwinter in turn, then a new hero ending that threat before being betrayed and then their friend betraying Neverwinter and...
I mean, after Fenthick and then Aribeth and then him it would all end up as some sort of tradition, and he wants no part of that!
(But seriously, while I could see some of my characters just leaving, I can't... actually see any of them not calling out Lord Nasher and Neverwinter's people in public. I can see some of my characters being a tad more... forceful than that.)
My issue is that, aside from the one quest with Cain Lethellon, you don't really get to do anything really, well, bardish. You don't get to compose any stories or songs or plays. You don't really get to share your "bardic lore" with your party members. You don't even really get that many opportunities to perform.
Here's a quote from Alan Moore:
"Now, as I understand it, the bards were feared. They were respected, but more than that they were feared. If you were just some magician, if you'd pissed off some witch, then what's she gonna do, she's gonna put a curse on you, and what's gonna happen? Your hens are gonna lay funny, your milk's gonna go sour, maybe one of your kids is gonna get a hare-lip or something like that — no big deal. You piss off a bard, and forget about putting a curse on you, he might put a satire on you. And if he was a skillful bard, he puts a satire on you, it destroys you in the eyes of your community, it shows you up as ridiculous, lame, pathetic, worthless, in the eyes of your community, in the eyes of your family, in the eyes of your children, in the eyes of yourself, and if it's a particularly good bard, and he's written a particularly good satire, then three hundred years after you're dead, people are still gonna be laughing, at what a twat you were."
That sounds a lot more interesting than your typical D&D bard, which usually just functions as a sort of hybrid fighter/mage/thief who happens to be REALLY good at identifying stuff.
Hm, true. While I do like playing a bard, I mostly just like it because I like spellcasting and being a skillmonkey just to guarantee that I can make those various skill checks. Actual performances aren't really part of the game, except in a few, extremely isolated cases.
Being able to do something like that quote would be interesting, but... honestly, that's a lot of work for a single class. Crafting a campaign where your creative skills could have that sort of broad social influence would be... interesting, but logistically difficult.
How a bard might respond to various scenarios you've encountered...
Attracting attention and distracting the guards with a rousing performance for any of Neeshka's heists. Helping to spread further rumors about the katalmach among the orcs just to further increase their apparent fear and trepidation. (Make a song that stirs the emotions in their hearts, filling them with dread all about how Casavir answers the Orc Baby Ethical Dilemma by eating the orc babies.) Or possibly just give a heartbreaking tale of the Tragedy of West Harbor, and how further tragedy could be averted if they would just let your character continue their investigation and enter the damn Blacklake district already. Maybe when you walk in on your companions having their little insult fight, you could have you character walk in and spontaneously compose rude limericks about all of your companions to show that yes, the Bard is still top dog of smack talk.(Elanee: "I was just sitting here, not involved in any of that." "Don't care, you're still included.") Maybe if Khelgar's offended by outright telling him he's never going to become a paladin with the way he acts, maybe use allegorical stories to convince him without actively pushing him and causing him to get defensive.
There are options that could work.
In early DnD, a lot of Game Masters considered themselves in an adversarial role against their players, and the game was in a lot of ways less roleplaying and more a wargaming scenario. Of course, Paladins were unique in that they had vows and strict moral guidelines to obey, with mechanical penalties for breaking those rules. So, the adversarial DMs would confront their paladins with a moral dilemma to try to make them fall.
The archetypal such attempt is the Orc Baby Dilemma: As the party is killing orcs in an orc cave, they come across a baby orc. The standard question is, do they kill the orc baby, killing an innocent who hasn't had a chance to do evil yet, or do they let it grow up in the Always Evil orcish society, which would allow it to grow up and do harm to others. No matter what, the DM has some twisty logic they can use to make the paladin fall. I think it has been sincerely used, but it's mostly just used as the archetypal example of a DM deliberately trying to make a paladin fall through contrived scenarios and morally questionable logic.
Of course, there are a lot of problems with that scenario, but then, as what is basically a meme, it exists to be problematic to describe a flawed scenario, and the most common 'solution' I've heard was to just have the paladin adopt the child.
Elves just weren't meant to be paladins.
