As the New Jedi Order and the Antarian Rangers arrived on the Wookiee resistance colony of Muaagra, they were greeted by swarms of cheering Wookiees shouting Lowarra's name. Lowarra quickly gathered her comrades and encouraged her people to chant their names as well. Then their friend Han Solo, who had come with them to Muaagra to help his friend Chewbacca reunite his mate with their son, looked around and realized that there was someone missing from the celebration. Where was Princess Leia? C3PO also wanted to know where his mistress was. As the group members realized that she wasn't with them and no one knew where she had gone, it also dawned on them that she had last been seen standing in a location that would have been crushed beneath the AT-AT when it fell. Luke Skywalker searched his feelings and told the others that he was certain she was still alive, as he would have known had she died.
With a heavy heart, Neri reported Princess Leia's status to Mon Mothma and explained Luke's certainty that Leia still lived, which Mon Mothma accepted without question. Han Solo immediately planned to reach out to some of his smuggler contacts for information, and Luke intended to seek out other sources. The Jedi and Rangers were ready to start searching for her at once. They decided that Point Nadir would be their rendezvous location and they would leave messages with Dexter Vex there.
Dash suggested that Han accompany the Jedi/Ranger group, but he declined. He also wanted Chewie to remain on Muaagra with his family, who were grieving the loss of his mate's father, but Chewie was torn between his desire to be with his family and his concern that Han would be in greater danger without him. Lowarra had a chat with Chewie and encouraged him to go with Han. Neri then approached Chewie's mate Malla and asked her if she would be willing to let him go. It was Malla who told Chewie that he should go with Han. Chewbacca then picked up Han and half-carried him aboard the Millenium Falcon, with Han complaining all the way that Chewie's fur would clog the environmental system.
Neri found it difficult to choose between meeting with the Rebel Alliance and going directly to Point Nadir. To help her decide, she retreated to her quarters aboard the New Hope and searched her feelings for the right decision. She found that both options were equally likely to lead to success. She also discovered that she couldn't sense Leia, but it was as though something was blocking her from finding Leia's signature within the Force. The only reason she could find for this was that Leia was in the clutches of either Darth Vader or the Emperor, or perhaps both.
After communicating this to her friends, Neri decided that they should split up. She and Taanar would meet with the Alliance to give a report on the action at Kashyykk and return C3PO, while Lowarra, ADX, and Dash would take the Sky River Venture to Point Nadir to talk to Dexter. ADX was concerned that the princess might be in the hands of Vader or the Emperor, worrying that this could be part of a trap and that the Jedi and Rangers couldn't out-think someone as experienced as either Palpatine or his pet Sith Lord. Lowarra gave Neri a huge embrace, and even hugged Taanar before they parted, while Dash warned Neri not to get herself killed as Dash still owed her. Neri and Taanar then took the Mithrim Montes to meet the Rebel leaders. Just before they departed they had a brief meeting with Kanan Jarrus, who had reunited with Hera Syndulla and had decided to go with her and Phoenix Squadron. Neri was glad that he had decided to stop isolating himself.
When Neri and Taanar arrived at the Alliance headquarters, they were greeted by an honor guard and escorted immediately to meet with Mon Mothma and General Hutsell. In the past Hutsell had been antagonistic toward the Venture crew, but now he agreed with Neri when she expressed the opinion that the Alliance should publicize their success on Kashyykk. Mon Mothma revealed that there had been no public announcement from the Imperials about Leia's capture, nor any news about what had happened on Kashyykk. She worried that if he Rebels spoke about the action there, the Empire would then reveal the news about Leia, which would be a huge blow to Alliance morale. Neri argued that this was war and Leia was a soldier, and that sometimes soldiers are captured or killed in warfare. Mon Mothma concurred that this was what Princess Leia would want, but was still uncomfortable with letting the rebel troops know that Leia was missing.
In the meantime, the Venture arrived safely at Point Nadir and the three companions let their friend Dexter Vex know about their mission. He had no information about secret Imperial detention centers where Leia might be held, but he told them who might know: bounty hunters. And who but the best of the bounty hunters would be the most likely to know? The three friends knew that this would mean making contact with their nemesis Boba Fett and risking that he might try to claim the bounty for capturing them, but they decided to take the risk. They went to the Bounty Post to leave a message for Fett.
At the Bounty Post, Lowarra learned that the bounty for her had been increased to 25,000 credits, while the bounty on Neri was still only at 20,000. The bounty for ADX's former identity, ARD, had been removed, as he was believed destroyed. Perhaps this would be an advantage for the group, as they assumed that Boba Fett wouldn't know about ADX or Taanar Ryl. The message they had left told Fett to meet them where he had last encountered them, which was outside of Jabba the Hutt's palace near Mos Eisley on Tatooine. They let Neri know what they had arranged, and she and Taanar flew to meet them at Point Nadir before the whole group traveled to Mos Eisley.
Once the Venture had taken a docking bay at Mos Eisley, ADX and Taanar went out to do some reconnaissance. Almost immediately ADX was attacked by some Jawas firing ion bolts. The Jawas tried to grab Taanar, but she pulled free. Though she asked that ADX try not to kill the Jawas, he fired his heavy blaster rifle at one Jawa, killing the little scavenger and leaving its burning corpse on the ground. This didn't seem to deter the rest of the Jawas, so Taanar used the Force to stun one of them, which had more effect. The surviving Jawas fled. After ADX and Taanar returned to the Venture, Taanar discovered a message chip in her pocket that hadn't been there before. When played, the chip told them to meet at the Cantina two hours after sundown.
The group arrived at the Cantina at the appointed time, and Neri bribed the proprietor to allow ADX to accompany them inside. He pointed them to a table in the corner, where they found Boba Fett waiting for them. ADX and Taanar hung back while the others negotiated with the bounty hunter, though it now seemed likely that Fett knew more about the newest members of the group than they had expected. Neri asked Fett for information on secret Imperial detention centers. In exchange she offered the iridium chip she carried, which had the potential to give him nearly unlimited funds. Dash tried to persuade Fett to help the Rebel Alliance and then retire on the proceeds from the chip, but the bounty hunter wasn't interested. He didn't want to choose sides, nor did he have any interest in giving up his current occupation. He also not only knew about ADX and Taanar - he knew that the New Jedi Order had acquired the Banking Guild head's secret contingency funds. The group overlooked this disturbing revelation to focus on finding out where Princess Leia was being held. Fett told them that he didn't have that information himself, as he didn't know where she was, but he did know someone who could probably tell them: an architect who had designed several secret detention facilities for the Empire. The architect's name was Golas Aram, a Senitene who had since retired to a compound near the city of Kai Pompos on Irudiru. Fett warned that Golas Aram didn't like visitors and they would probably "have to beat the information out of him."
When their negotiations had concluded with Fett agreeing to ignore the bounties on the group and not report his meeting with them to any Imperial contacts, Fett placed a remote detonation trigger on the table. He explained that it would help them to disarm the explosives that had been placed around the docking bay where the Venture was housed.
Saturday, October 22, 2016
Monday, October 17, 2016
Skyrim vs Inquisition - Dawn of Obsession
Just recently I picked up playing The Elder Scrolls: Skyrim (Skyrim) again, and now that we've purchased an Xbox One, we've started over with Dragon Age: Inquisition (Inquisition). Back when we first acquired Inquisition for the 360, I started to write a comparison of the two, and now that I've refreshed my memory a bit, here goes.
Both Inquisition and Skyrim provide an expansive game world, and allow your player-character to wander off the beaten path and explore. If you want to ignore the main plot quests and roam the countryside in search of herbs for crafting potions, or see if you can acquire 50 bear hides, you can do that.
Both games are set in medieval fantasy worlds, where your character can cast spells or fight with a bow or sword. Both games pit you against a variety of opponents, from bandits to necromancers to giants and dragons. Both also allow you to collect plants, game, and minerals that you can use to craft weapons, armor, and potions for your characters.
The two games also place your character in a world that is engaged in a civil war, where the character must choose a side. There is also an outside danger that provides a much greater threat than the war. While you can choose to create a character of several different races/species and either male or female, your character will be the "Chosen One" who can help to save the world from an outside danger that threatens to destroy everything.
The setting for Skyrim is much more open than Inquisition. You can go anywhere on the available world map, even underwater (as long as you have some way to breathe). The entire game is limited to a single country in the game world, but you can explore every nook and cranny of that country if you choose to. Inquisition actually offers a bigger game world, as you visit several countries during the course of the game, but you can only explore a limited part of each location. In Skyrim you can access the next jarldom of the kingdom by simply walking to it, without having to complete any quests or unlock any map locations first. But in Inquisition you can only access other locations by unlocking them through quests, and you can only reach them by utilizing the game's travel mode, which skips you past the intervening landscape and takes you directly to the new map location.
Both games include crafting options. You can gather materials to make potions, weapons, and armor. You can only craft at certain designated crafting stations. The mechanics of doing this differ significantly between Skyrim and Inquisition, but the concept is the same. Skyrim's crafting process is more a series of experiments to find out what combination of elements you need to create a particular type of item, especially when crafting potions. You can spend hours combining various substances to see what kind of results you get. The same is true of crafting weapons and armors. Inquisition gives you specific recipes for potions and schematics for weapons and armor that you must fulfill. You can only craft what you have a schematic or recipe for, as well as the necessary type and quantity of ingredients.
As I mentioned above, in both Skyrim and Inquisition, a civil war has begun, and your character is expected to choose sides. Choosing a side opens up some different quests and causes some non-player characters to react differently to encounters with your character. This is much more noticeable in Inquisition. Once you've chosen a side in that conflict, some quest and character interaction options become unavailable to you. In Skyrim it doesn't matter as much which side you've chosen, as you still have most of the same quest options available to you and the NPCs still treat you largely the same way. It's actually possible to play both sides of the conflict in Skyrim, even if you've technically chosen to support only one.
As mentioned above, in addition to the civil war, the game worlds of both Skyrim and Inquisition are threatened by powerful outsiders seeking to expand their influence. Your character is the Chosen One who is the only person capable of saving the world from these powerful villains. You can, if you choose, shirk that responsibility indefinitely, but if you want to reach the end game you’ll eventually have to complete all the quests related to that Save the World plotline. This is especially true in Inquisition. Skyrim doesn't really push you to complete the main plot. You can play for hours without ever completing one of the quests in the main plotline. Your character becoming the Chosen One doesn't really have that much weight in the game world. Nothing bad happens if you don't pursue the 'Save the World' part of the story. By contrast, Inquisition pushes you pretty hard to follow the main plot. If you don't you'll rapidly run out of places to explore. Many areas are locked until performing certain main plot quests unlocks them, so you can't even leave the starting map area if you don't stick to the main plot.
Skyrim and Inquisition both allow you to customize your character's appearance extensively. And in both games, once you've chosen your race and gender, you begin the game as a prisoner. Both games also offer you an opportunity to change your character's appearance later in the game if you decide you don't like the facial options you originally chose. Skyrim also allows you to choose your character's body type, which is an option Inquisition doesn't offer. Skyrim has more races available - 9 as opposed to only 3 in Inquisition. Inquisition has character classes - Mage, Rogue, and Warrior - while Skyrim lets you be whatever you want, though the race you choose will have some influence on how good you are at certain things, like wielding two weapons or casting spells. Inquisition actually sets some limits on what you can do based on the race you choose: dwarves can't be mages. Skyrim has no such limitation; an orc may not be as good at magic as an elf, but you can still play an orc and focus on spellcasting if you choose.
Both games give experience points that allow you to increase your character's abilities as you progress through the game. This is a very open option in Skyrim; as long as you have enough experience to progress in a particular skill, you can expend experience points on that skill. Inquisition uses a talent tree method, which encourages you to specialize a bit more. Inquisition also doesn't offer any skills for personal interactions or crafting; you're just capable at those things automatically and all your experience points go toward combat skills. Skyrim provides a huge selection of skills, including skills for crafting weapons or armor, picking locks, sneaking and hiding, or bargaining with merchants.
Inquisition and Skyrim have similar methods of allowing your character to interact with non-player characters in the game. When you approach an NPC who is available for conversation (not all NPCs have conversation options), you can trigger the conversation by clicking a button on the controller, and then select from a menu of dialogue options for your character to say. The conversation option that you choose may invoke additional options, and in some cases can influence the reaction the NPC gives.
But Skyrim and Inquisition differ dramatically in how they handle conversations, which is part of what makes the experience of playing the two games so different even though they are thematically very similar. In Skyrim your character dialogue is only text. You never hear or see your character speak to anyone, although you do hear what NPCs say to you. The number of conversation options you have are fewer, and sometimes details like your race or the side you've chosen to support in the conflict don't seem to make much difference in how the NPCs react to your character. For example, high elves aren't very well liked in Skyrim, but playing a high elf won't make NPCs treat you differently. Inquisition actually gives your character a voice. Each character gender has two voice options to select from at character creation. You can actually hear yourself speaking, and watch your character having conversations with NPCs in fully animated cut scenes. The side you choose to support in the conflict has a much bigger impact on how NPCs react to you and what conversation options you have available. Some NPCs will completely dismiss you based on your character's race or the side you've chosen to support in the civil war. You also get a much bigger 'conversation tree' to choose responses from. It makes for a much more immersive experience.
Both Inquisition and Skyrim provide your character with companions so that you don't have to adventure alone. You also have the option of playing without companions, at least to a certain extent. But while Skyrim only allows you to have a single traveling companion (not including magical constructs and animals), Inquisition gives you the opportunity to travel with three comrades. Skyrim starts you off with a housecarl, and as you complete more quests you gain other housecarls. You can also hire companions to accompany you. This means you have a wider selection of people to choose from, but there's no cheat or expansion that allows you to take multiple people along. Inquisition only gives you a total of nine companions to select from, but you get to decide if you even want to make them your companions at all. At the beginning of the game you get three starting companions, and if you want to you can just keep those three people for the entire game; or you can get rid of them as soon as you get new companion options and never take them with you again. Taking your companions with you can improve their attitudes toward you, though, so it's worthwhile to accept all nine companion characters and take turns having them accompany you on various quests. Only certain companions can unlock doors for you unless you've chosen to play a Rogue, and some companions will have special knowledge about the various locations you'll visit during the game. In Skyrim your companions don't give you any advantage in social interactions or dealing with certain locations. Even if you have a housecarl who was assigned to you by a particular jarl, having that housecarl with you when you go to see the jarl doesn't improve the jarl's attitude toward your character, and your housecarl can't help you find locations within that jarldom any more quickly than you'll find them if you go alone.
While it's theoretically possible to adventure solo in Inquisition, it's not a good idea. You'll need the extra firepower in combat, because everything in this game is tougher than what you'll fight in most of Skyrim. Your companions also provide interesting tidbits of information, as you can chat with them while you're back at your base, and they'll talk to each other while you're traveling, providing both their own backstories and extra details about the game world. You can have a maximum of three companions accompanying you at any one time, and if you add all nine companion characters to your choices it can become challenging to decide who to take along on individual missions. By contrast in Skyrim your companion serves primarily as extra storage space. You can't have a conversation while you're traveling, except to give simple commands, and you learn very little about your companions or the game setting from talking to them. It won't make much difference to your experience of the game if you play the entire game with your very first housecarl as your only companion, or if you decide to change companion every time you set out on a new quest. If you decide to forego the extra carrying capacity a companion provides, you can still successfully complete all the quests in Skyrim with only your player-character. In both games your companions can die, although they're more difficult to kill in Skyrim. You don't really have any options to direct what your companion does in combat in Skyrim, and sometimes they'll act in ways that create disadvantages for you, by ruining your stealth or getting in your way when you want to make a ranged attack. In Inquisition if your comrades die during combat you can revive them, and you can use some character abilities to provide protection or bonuses to everyone in the party. You can also assign your companions tactics so that your can coordinate their abilities better. If you fall in combat control immediately switches to the nearest companion character, and you can continue to play that character until your player-character can be revived. You can also let your companions take the lead in some social interactions if it seems like they'd be better at it than your character is. In Skyrim the NPCs behave like your companion is invisible.
Both games provide the opportunity to forge romantic relationships with your companions, and some of those relationships can be same-sex. But the complexity of these relationships vary widely between the two games. In Skyrim you just need to pick a companion who is available as a marriage partner (not all companions have that option), acquire a special amulet, and then get married. There's no real romance taking place; you don't even ask if your companion wants to get married. Acquiring the amulet takes the place of that step. In Inquisition you need to pick the right conversation options to get to the romantic ones, as well as be of the right gender and/or race (some companions only respond romantically to certain genders or races), and it takes time for the relationship to develop. If you make a decision your romantic partner strongly disagrees with it can ruin the relationship. There's no marriage option in Inquisition, but the relationships feel much more realistic and believable. If you choose to have a romance with a companion, you'll also see cut scenes of your private time with them - nothing overtly sexual, but definitely more romantic and personal than just acquiring an amulet.
Since both Skyrim and Inquisition are fantasy RPGs with a roughly medieval European setting, you’ll encounter some similar types of monsters in both games. They both include everything from sheep, wolves and bears to dragons, giants, and demons. But as I mentioned earlier, everything is a lot tougher in Inquisition. In Skyrim your character can defeat many of the dragons and giants solo at first level, but in Inquisition you're better off not even trying to fight a dragon until you've got more than 10 levels under your belt and a well-prepared party of four with plenty of healing potions available to do it. Giants are similarly challenging. Even bandits can kill you if you're not careful. And bears in Inquisition are an extreme hazard in certain map areas, especially since they seem to be attracted by the sounds of combat.
You can walk – or run – everywhere in both Skyrim and Inquisition. You can also acquire a mount to ride. In Skyrim your only option is a horse (even if you’re playing an Argonnian or Khajit, which both have tails that would make riding a horse rather problematic). Your horse can also attack in combat, and you can fight from horseback. If you’re not riding your horse you need to leave it in a stable, which can be found outside a major town. If you get a horse, your companion doesn't get one and just has to run along behind you and catch up to you when you stop moving. Inquisition provides several additional options besides a horse, though they function the same way as a horse. Inquisition makes mounts disappear shortly after you dismount, but you can call them again at any time as long as you’re not in the midst of combat or back at your stronghold. Your companions don't get their own horses, but they are somehow able to keep up with your horse without falling behind. Inquisition mounts are also indestructible, but they can’t help you in combat, and you can’t fight while mounted in Inquisition.
In addition to mounts, the games offer “fast-travel” options. You can go on foot or ride to every destination, but because both games involve a lot of back-and-forth from your base of operations when you want to complete quests or off-load loot, players often weary of seeing the same landscape over and over. That’s where the fast-travel option comes in. Skyrim allows a player to fast-travel to any location they’ve already visited and marked on their map. Need to stop exploring that mine because your inventory is full? Well, actually you can’t fast-travel when your inventory is full, but if you drop a couple of less valuable items you can fast-travel back to your house to stow some gear and then fast-travel to the mine again to finish clearing it of monsters and loot. Skyrim also let's you hire a wagon to transport you to towns, so you can add them to your fast-travel map locations without having to walk all the way there first. Inquisition’s fast-travel option is more limited. You can only fast-travel to your headquarters or established campsites, and from there you have to run/ride the rest of the way to your destination. But Inquisition also provides a sort of locator beacon you can set on destinations to help you find your way there a bit more easily. These “waypoints” show up on your quest map and your radar, so you won’t accidentally set off in the wrong direction or overshoot your destination if you use this feature. Since Inquisition doesn't allow you to traverse any of the territory in between the different quest locations, fast travel is really the only way to get there.
The two games follow the current RPG trend of having some loot show up after your characters kill a monster, and other loot just lying around waiting to be found. Random chests appear in the middle of nowhere, and you can walk into houses and take stuff. Skyrim does make walking into strangers’ homes to take their belongings a bit more challenging by locking doors and forcing you to use lockpicks to get in. You can also be arrested by the authorities if you do too much of that, or aren't stealthy enough about it. Inquisition doesn’t include this type of mechanic, because the houses you find mostly tend to be abandoned, their owners driven off by the rampant warfare. Inquisition does occasionally present you with a locked door, but if you have rogue in your party you can usually get past it with little difficulty.
In Skyrim your player-character always picks up the loot. You and your companion have separate inventories. When yours gets full, you can hand off some items to your companion as long as their inventory still has space. You can generally use anything you pick up immediately, and items are usable by either you or your companion as long as you fulfill any prerequisites. Once both your inventories are full, you can go to a shop in a town and sell some items, or you can take them to your house (if you have one) and leave your excess treasure there. You can also just drop items to lighten your load. You are notified that your inventory is full, and if you leave it that way your movement is dramatically slowed until you get rid of the excess, and you're unable to use the fast-travel option. When you gain character-building points by leveling up, you can increase your character’s ability score for carrying capacity. You can also craft magic items that improve your capacity to carry things. If you give an item to your companion and the game's AI determines that it's better than a similar item the companion already has equipped, the companion will automatically start using it without any input from the player.
In Inquisition the character you are currently controlling is the one who picks up the loot, but you can use the Inventory menu to assign specific items to your companions. The items in inventory are treated as a global pool if they’re not equipped by a specific character. The inventory size limit is also global. Once you hit the limit, you simply can’t pick up any more loot until you either sell something, or craft an item using the excess loot. You cannot store extra loot in your headquarters (at least, not in your initial headquarters location), so it’s generally better to sell or craft to reduce your load. You can't drop items you already have in inventory, though you can destroy items to reduce your load if you don't want to head back to base to get rid of them. Some loot items are only usable by certain classes or races, by characters of a specified level, or even by specific named companion characters. Your companions will not equip new items unless you assign those items to them through the inventory menu. You can only increase your party’s carrying capacity by spending ‘Inquisition Perk’ points that you earn by completing quests related to the game’s main plot.
As both game worlds are fairly open, your character can climb any mountain that isn’t too steep, ford rivers, and splash through marshes. Both games permit your character to climb especially steep slopes by jumping, although you can’t climb vertical surfaces. Inquisition uses some very nice animation to show your character descending slopes. The character walks like someone walking down a slope, and can even slide down on her backside if the incline is too steep for walking. Characters in Skyrim tend to move as though they’re always walking upright no matter how difficult the incline. Skyrim also allows your character to swim, although you’ll drown if you stay underwater too long without a magic item that allows you to breathe. Inquisition dispenses with swimming altogether; if the water isn’t shallow enough to wade through, your character immediately drowns. Both games will let your character die if you jump from too great a height, though as your character's hit point total increases the height you can safely fall from increases as well. But there are some falls in Inquisition that will always kill you, no matter how many hit points you have.
Discussing travel brings up the topic of the game world itself. Skyrim is set in the same world as the other games in the Elder Scrolls series, but this game is limited to the country of the same name, Skyrim, which is the homeland of the Nord race and analogous to a Scandinavian country. Skyrim’s terrain is mostly rocky and mountainous, with the only variation in the presence or lack of snow. By contrast, Inquisition allows you to visit two countries, Ferelden and Orlais, and includes a whole variety of different terrain within those boundaries. You can travel from desert to snow-capped mountains, from perpetually gloomy and rainy marshes to lush rainforest. The types of creatures, plants, and minerals you find vary for each terrain type, and even the appearance of the NPCs changes with locale, which you don't see in Skyrim because the terrain is more homogeneous. But because Skyrim allows you to fully explore every part of the map, it also includes a day/night cycle and weather effects. Your character can rest in homes and inns during the night when it's too dark to travel, or you can light a torch and keep going. It may rain or snow on you, and you'll see the seasons change as the calendar advances. Since Inquisition limits where you can go, it also limits the apparent passage of time and changes in weather. You only experience night when you visit one of the desert locations where it's too hot to do anything during the daytime. Every time you visit a location, the weather conditions there are always the same; for example the Storm Coast is always rainy, and there's always snow on the ground at Haven.
The world of Inquisition is simultaneously vaster and more empty than that of Skyrim. Skyrim has a number of towns and villages, but their populations of NPCs are relatively small. In Inquisition you don’t visit many towns, but you find a lot of people roaming the countryside, although quite a few of them want to kill you. You can’t have a chat with them or bribe them to leave you alone as you can in Skyrim. When they’re identified as enemies, your only options are to fight them or avoid them. All of these wandering enemies do serve to reinforce that this is a world at war. Skyrim's war seems more distant, since there's little sign of destruction and the towns you visit don't reflect any reduction in population or amenities as a result of the conflict.
The size of the world of the Dragon Age setting is further emphasized by the variety of accents given to the characters. Orlesians sound French, Antivans sound Spanish. Elves always have British or Irish accents (although you can choose an American accent for your character if you elect to play an elf). The characters of Skyrim don’t have accents specific to geographic location, although some races like Argonnians and Khajit do have racial accents. Skyrim uses a much smaller voice cast than Inquisition, too, so you’ll hear the same voices over and over though coming from different NPCs.
Repetition occurs in Skyrim in other ways than the limited voice cast. Every mine or dungeon or cave contains basically the same elements as every other location of the same type, just arranged slightly differently. Inquisition does some of this too, reusing familiar architectural or landscape elements, but because the terrain options are more varied, the repetition isn’t as obvious. You also don't spend nearly as much time exploring random caves and mines to gain loot in Inquisition as you do in Skyrim.
Probably the most obvious repetition in Inquisition is that you find the same Requisition Officer at every camp you establish in each of the game’s map regions. If you’re in the Hinterlands, for example, your Requisition Officer is always a British-accented female, but in the Hissing Waste it’s a British-accented male. Both games also tend to have non-conversational NPCs make the same random remarks repeatedly when your character passes by them.
But in general the game world of Inquisition feels much more expansive than Skyrim, even though Skyrim is more open about allowing your character to freely explore its world. This is because not only does Inquisition allow you to visit more of the game world than Skyrim, but the game characters in Inquisition talk about the rest of the world often, including areas of it you can't actually visit as part of the game. The titular Inquisition organization is in contact with other parts of the world even if your character never travels there. In Skyrim you only read about other parts of the world in books and scrolls you can find. If you don't read the info-text or have never played another game using the Elder Scrolls setting, you won't learn much about the rest of the world in which Skyrim exists. Locales outside of Skyrim are seldom mentioned in the NPC dialogue.
Skyrim and Inquisition both have excellent musical scores, musical cues, and sound effects. Skyrim warns the player that enemies are close in part by using musical cues, starting a slightly tense, ominous theme. Inquisition doesn’t have the musical cues quite as closely tied to the onscreen action. You may sometimes hear what sounds like combat music when there are no enemies in radar range. The sound effects in Inquisition for travel on different surfaces are especially well designed; footsteps on wooden floors sound like someone walking on wood, snow crunches underfoot, and walking through a cave causes a stony echo.
Inquisition does have a few sound glitches, unfortunately, probably caused by the complex programming for all the dialogue options. Sometimes the character dialogue gets garbled. Other times the characters fall silent during a conversation. There are also occasions where you can hear the sounds of fighting while passing through an area with no people present other than your party. Skyrim doesn’t have such glitches because it doesn’t have as much ambient sound or as many lines of spoken dialogue.
Speaking of glitches, when Skyrim was first released it was infamous for numerous glitches, which have been amply recorded on YouTube. Most of these seem to be related to the PC version of the game rather than the console versions, although we did experience some glitchiness in the console version as well. NPCs could be seen floating in mid-air instead of sitting on the wagon seat or horse they were meant to be associated with; characters could fall into a small crevice and be unable to climb out, necessitating a restore to the last saved game file; and there were frequent episodes of "clipping", when two objects occupy the same space that weren't meant to do that, such as a person stuck halfway through a wall. There were also occasional doors that wouldn't open, or loot that either couldn't be picked up or could be picked up and yet didn't show up in your character's inventory. Dragons frequently keep moving after they die, even when their flesh has all burned off and there's nothing left but a skeleton.
Inquisition has similar issues. There's a fair amount of clipping; characters often don't stand directly on the surface they're meant to be standing on; and sometimes when you use the travel option, your party members appear at the destination by abruptly dropping from the sky. Monsters normally fade away after they die, leaving behind only any loot they produce, but occasionally the monster corpse will linger for a long while before vanishing. One of my favorite examples in Inquisition is 'floating corpses', when an enemy dies and the body falls to a resting position in mid-air. But as described above, most of the noticeable glitches occur in relation to the complex dialogue options. Fortunately the game offers captions as an option, which can help to alleviate these bugs. There isn't much you can do about glitches in Skyrim beyond reverting to a prior saved game.
A big difference in the openness of the game worlds is reflected by the fact that in Skyrim, even if you’ve completed the end game, you can keep on playing. Your character can go on completing any side quests you haven’t already done, or find more materials for crafting, or continue decorating your houses if you’ve acquired all of the available homes. You can join every one of the many organizations the game offers. You can even become a vampire or a werewolf (but not both at the same time). In Inquisition, once you’ve completed the end game, the game is over. You may not have completed all the side quests, but to go back and finish them, you’ll have to revert to an earlier saved game file or start over with a new character. This means that the continuous play possibilities of Skyrim are greater since you can go on playing it for a long time after you've accomplished all the main quests. But the replay-ability of Inquisition may be superior, since you can start over with a different class or race, choose to support a different side in the war, select different conversational options, and/or take different companions with you on the quests, and any one of these changes can lead to quite a different experience of the game.
Which game you'll prefer will depend on what style of player you are. If you like grinding through dungeons and collecting loot, or exploring, or crafting, but aren't as interested in following a plot or getting to know the NPCs, Skyrim is probably the game for you. If you prefer an immersive game where you can get really invested in the story, but you don't care about being able to go anywhere and do anything you desire, Inquisition is probably the better choice. For me personally, it's hard to choose a favorite. Each of them satisfies a different entertainment need. Both games provide interesting game worlds, exciting visuals, and plenty of fodder for the imagination. I would happily play in either the Elder Scrolls or the Dragon Age setting for as long as the makers continue to produce quality games.
Both Inquisition and Skyrim provide an expansive game world, and allow your player-character to wander off the beaten path and explore. If you want to ignore the main plot quests and roam the countryside in search of herbs for crafting potions, or see if you can acquire 50 bear hides, you can do that.
Both games are set in medieval fantasy worlds, where your character can cast spells or fight with a bow or sword. Both games pit you against a variety of opponents, from bandits to necromancers to giants and dragons. Both also allow you to collect plants, game, and minerals that you can use to craft weapons, armor, and potions for your characters.
The two games also place your character in a world that is engaged in a civil war, where the character must choose a side. There is also an outside danger that provides a much greater threat than the war. While you can choose to create a character of several different races/species and either male or female, your character will be the "Chosen One" who can help to save the world from an outside danger that threatens to destroy everything.
The setting for Skyrim is much more open than Inquisition. You can go anywhere on the available world map, even underwater (as long as you have some way to breathe). The entire game is limited to a single country in the game world, but you can explore every nook and cranny of that country if you choose to. Inquisition actually offers a bigger game world, as you visit several countries during the course of the game, but you can only explore a limited part of each location. In Skyrim you can access the next jarldom of the kingdom by simply walking to it, without having to complete any quests or unlock any map locations first. But in Inquisition you can only access other locations by unlocking them through quests, and you can only reach them by utilizing the game's travel mode, which skips you past the intervening landscape and takes you directly to the new map location.
Both games include crafting options. You can gather materials to make potions, weapons, and armor. You can only craft at certain designated crafting stations. The mechanics of doing this differ significantly between Skyrim and Inquisition, but the concept is the same. Skyrim's crafting process is more a series of experiments to find out what combination of elements you need to create a particular type of item, especially when crafting potions. You can spend hours combining various substances to see what kind of results you get. The same is true of crafting weapons and armors. Inquisition gives you specific recipes for potions and schematics for weapons and armor that you must fulfill. You can only craft what you have a schematic or recipe for, as well as the necessary type and quantity of ingredients.
As I mentioned above, in both Skyrim and Inquisition, a civil war has begun, and your character is expected to choose sides. Choosing a side opens up some different quests and causes some non-player characters to react differently to encounters with your character. This is much more noticeable in Inquisition. Once you've chosen a side in that conflict, some quest and character interaction options become unavailable to you. In Skyrim it doesn't matter as much which side you've chosen, as you still have most of the same quest options available to you and the NPCs still treat you largely the same way. It's actually possible to play both sides of the conflict in Skyrim, even if you've technically chosen to support only one.
As mentioned above, in addition to the civil war, the game worlds of both Skyrim and Inquisition are threatened by powerful outsiders seeking to expand their influence. Your character is the Chosen One who is the only person capable of saving the world from these powerful villains. You can, if you choose, shirk that responsibility indefinitely, but if you want to reach the end game you’ll eventually have to complete all the quests related to that Save the World plotline. This is especially true in Inquisition. Skyrim doesn't really push you to complete the main plot. You can play for hours without ever completing one of the quests in the main plotline. Your character becoming the Chosen One doesn't really have that much weight in the game world. Nothing bad happens if you don't pursue the 'Save the World' part of the story. By contrast, Inquisition pushes you pretty hard to follow the main plot. If you don't you'll rapidly run out of places to explore. Many areas are locked until performing certain main plot quests unlocks them, so you can't even leave the starting map area if you don't stick to the main plot.
Skyrim and Inquisition both allow you to customize your character's appearance extensively. And in both games, once you've chosen your race and gender, you begin the game as a prisoner. Both games also offer you an opportunity to change your character's appearance later in the game if you decide you don't like the facial options you originally chose. Skyrim also allows you to choose your character's body type, which is an option Inquisition doesn't offer. Skyrim has more races available - 9 as opposed to only 3 in Inquisition. Inquisition has character classes - Mage, Rogue, and Warrior - while Skyrim lets you be whatever you want, though the race you choose will have some influence on how good you are at certain things, like wielding two weapons or casting spells. Inquisition actually sets some limits on what you can do based on the race you choose: dwarves can't be mages. Skyrim has no such limitation; an orc may not be as good at magic as an elf, but you can still play an orc and focus on spellcasting if you choose.
Both games give experience points that allow you to increase your character's abilities as you progress through the game. This is a very open option in Skyrim; as long as you have enough experience to progress in a particular skill, you can expend experience points on that skill. Inquisition uses a talent tree method, which encourages you to specialize a bit more. Inquisition also doesn't offer any skills for personal interactions or crafting; you're just capable at those things automatically and all your experience points go toward combat skills. Skyrim provides a huge selection of skills, including skills for crafting weapons or armor, picking locks, sneaking and hiding, or bargaining with merchants.
Inquisition and Skyrim have similar methods of allowing your character to interact with non-player characters in the game. When you approach an NPC who is available for conversation (not all NPCs have conversation options), you can trigger the conversation by clicking a button on the controller, and then select from a menu of dialogue options for your character to say. The conversation option that you choose may invoke additional options, and in some cases can influence the reaction the NPC gives.
But Skyrim and Inquisition differ dramatically in how they handle conversations, which is part of what makes the experience of playing the two games so different even though they are thematically very similar. In Skyrim your character dialogue is only text. You never hear or see your character speak to anyone, although you do hear what NPCs say to you. The number of conversation options you have are fewer, and sometimes details like your race or the side you've chosen to support in the conflict don't seem to make much difference in how the NPCs react to your character. For example, high elves aren't very well liked in Skyrim, but playing a high elf won't make NPCs treat you differently. Inquisition actually gives your character a voice. Each character gender has two voice options to select from at character creation. You can actually hear yourself speaking, and watch your character having conversations with NPCs in fully animated cut scenes. The side you choose to support in the conflict has a much bigger impact on how NPCs react to you and what conversation options you have available. Some NPCs will completely dismiss you based on your character's race or the side you've chosen to support in the civil war. You also get a much bigger 'conversation tree' to choose responses from. It makes for a much more immersive experience.
Both Inquisition and Skyrim provide your character with companions so that you don't have to adventure alone. You also have the option of playing without companions, at least to a certain extent. But while Skyrim only allows you to have a single traveling companion (not including magical constructs and animals), Inquisition gives you the opportunity to travel with three comrades. Skyrim starts you off with a housecarl, and as you complete more quests you gain other housecarls. You can also hire companions to accompany you. This means you have a wider selection of people to choose from, but there's no cheat or expansion that allows you to take multiple people along. Inquisition only gives you a total of nine companions to select from, but you get to decide if you even want to make them your companions at all. At the beginning of the game you get three starting companions, and if you want to you can just keep those three people for the entire game; or you can get rid of them as soon as you get new companion options and never take them with you again. Taking your companions with you can improve their attitudes toward you, though, so it's worthwhile to accept all nine companion characters and take turns having them accompany you on various quests. Only certain companions can unlock doors for you unless you've chosen to play a Rogue, and some companions will have special knowledge about the various locations you'll visit during the game. In Skyrim your companions don't give you any advantage in social interactions or dealing with certain locations. Even if you have a housecarl who was assigned to you by a particular jarl, having that housecarl with you when you go to see the jarl doesn't improve the jarl's attitude toward your character, and your housecarl can't help you find locations within that jarldom any more quickly than you'll find them if you go alone.
While it's theoretically possible to adventure solo in Inquisition, it's not a good idea. You'll need the extra firepower in combat, because everything in this game is tougher than what you'll fight in most of Skyrim. Your companions also provide interesting tidbits of information, as you can chat with them while you're back at your base, and they'll talk to each other while you're traveling, providing both their own backstories and extra details about the game world. You can have a maximum of three companions accompanying you at any one time, and if you add all nine companion characters to your choices it can become challenging to decide who to take along on individual missions. By contrast in Skyrim your companion serves primarily as extra storage space. You can't have a conversation while you're traveling, except to give simple commands, and you learn very little about your companions or the game setting from talking to them. It won't make much difference to your experience of the game if you play the entire game with your very first housecarl as your only companion, or if you decide to change companion every time you set out on a new quest. If you decide to forego the extra carrying capacity a companion provides, you can still successfully complete all the quests in Skyrim with only your player-character. In both games your companions can die, although they're more difficult to kill in Skyrim. You don't really have any options to direct what your companion does in combat in Skyrim, and sometimes they'll act in ways that create disadvantages for you, by ruining your stealth or getting in your way when you want to make a ranged attack. In Inquisition if your comrades die during combat you can revive them, and you can use some character abilities to provide protection or bonuses to everyone in the party. You can also assign your companions tactics so that your can coordinate their abilities better. If you fall in combat control immediately switches to the nearest companion character, and you can continue to play that character until your player-character can be revived. You can also let your companions take the lead in some social interactions if it seems like they'd be better at it than your character is. In Skyrim the NPCs behave like your companion is invisible.
Both games provide the opportunity to forge romantic relationships with your companions, and some of those relationships can be same-sex. But the complexity of these relationships vary widely between the two games. In Skyrim you just need to pick a companion who is available as a marriage partner (not all companions have that option), acquire a special amulet, and then get married. There's no real romance taking place; you don't even ask if your companion wants to get married. Acquiring the amulet takes the place of that step. In Inquisition you need to pick the right conversation options to get to the romantic ones, as well as be of the right gender and/or race (some companions only respond romantically to certain genders or races), and it takes time for the relationship to develop. If you make a decision your romantic partner strongly disagrees with it can ruin the relationship. There's no marriage option in Inquisition, but the relationships feel much more realistic and believable. If you choose to have a romance with a companion, you'll also see cut scenes of your private time with them - nothing overtly sexual, but definitely more romantic and personal than just acquiring an amulet.
Since both Skyrim and Inquisition are fantasy RPGs with a roughly medieval European setting, you’ll encounter some similar types of monsters in both games. They both include everything from sheep, wolves and bears to dragons, giants, and demons. But as I mentioned earlier, everything is a lot tougher in Inquisition. In Skyrim your character can defeat many of the dragons and giants solo at first level, but in Inquisition you're better off not even trying to fight a dragon until you've got more than 10 levels under your belt and a well-prepared party of four with plenty of healing potions available to do it. Giants are similarly challenging. Even bandits can kill you if you're not careful. And bears in Inquisition are an extreme hazard in certain map areas, especially since they seem to be attracted by the sounds of combat.
You can walk – or run – everywhere in both Skyrim and Inquisition. You can also acquire a mount to ride. In Skyrim your only option is a horse (even if you’re playing an Argonnian or Khajit, which both have tails that would make riding a horse rather problematic). Your horse can also attack in combat, and you can fight from horseback. If you’re not riding your horse you need to leave it in a stable, which can be found outside a major town. If you get a horse, your companion doesn't get one and just has to run along behind you and catch up to you when you stop moving. Inquisition provides several additional options besides a horse, though they function the same way as a horse. Inquisition makes mounts disappear shortly after you dismount, but you can call them again at any time as long as you’re not in the midst of combat or back at your stronghold. Your companions don't get their own horses, but they are somehow able to keep up with your horse without falling behind. Inquisition mounts are also indestructible, but they can’t help you in combat, and you can’t fight while mounted in Inquisition.
In addition to mounts, the games offer “fast-travel” options. You can go on foot or ride to every destination, but because both games involve a lot of back-and-forth from your base of operations when you want to complete quests or off-load loot, players often weary of seeing the same landscape over and over. That’s where the fast-travel option comes in. Skyrim allows a player to fast-travel to any location they’ve already visited and marked on their map. Need to stop exploring that mine because your inventory is full? Well, actually you can’t fast-travel when your inventory is full, but if you drop a couple of less valuable items you can fast-travel back to your house to stow some gear and then fast-travel to the mine again to finish clearing it of monsters and loot. Skyrim also let's you hire a wagon to transport you to towns, so you can add them to your fast-travel map locations without having to walk all the way there first. Inquisition’s fast-travel option is more limited. You can only fast-travel to your headquarters or established campsites, and from there you have to run/ride the rest of the way to your destination. But Inquisition also provides a sort of locator beacon you can set on destinations to help you find your way there a bit more easily. These “waypoints” show up on your quest map and your radar, so you won’t accidentally set off in the wrong direction or overshoot your destination if you use this feature. Since Inquisition doesn't allow you to traverse any of the territory in between the different quest locations, fast travel is really the only way to get there.
The two games follow the current RPG trend of having some loot show up after your characters kill a monster, and other loot just lying around waiting to be found. Random chests appear in the middle of nowhere, and you can walk into houses and take stuff. Skyrim does make walking into strangers’ homes to take their belongings a bit more challenging by locking doors and forcing you to use lockpicks to get in. You can also be arrested by the authorities if you do too much of that, or aren't stealthy enough about it. Inquisition doesn’t include this type of mechanic, because the houses you find mostly tend to be abandoned, their owners driven off by the rampant warfare. Inquisition does occasionally present you with a locked door, but if you have rogue in your party you can usually get past it with little difficulty.
In Skyrim your player-character always picks up the loot. You and your companion have separate inventories. When yours gets full, you can hand off some items to your companion as long as their inventory still has space. You can generally use anything you pick up immediately, and items are usable by either you or your companion as long as you fulfill any prerequisites. Once both your inventories are full, you can go to a shop in a town and sell some items, or you can take them to your house (if you have one) and leave your excess treasure there. You can also just drop items to lighten your load. You are notified that your inventory is full, and if you leave it that way your movement is dramatically slowed until you get rid of the excess, and you're unable to use the fast-travel option. When you gain character-building points by leveling up, you can increase your character’s ability score for carrying capacity. You can also craft magic items that improve your capacity to carry things. If you give an item to your companion and the game's AI determines that it's better than a similar item the companion already has equipped, the companion will automatically start using it without any input from the player.
In Inquisition the character you are currently controlling is the one who picks up the loot, but you can use the Inventory menu to assign specific items to your companions. The items in inventory are treated as a global pool if they’re not equipped by a specific character. The inventory size limit is also global. Once you hit the limit, you simply can’t pick up any more loot until you either sell something, or craft an item using the excess loot. You cannot store extra loot in your headquarters (at least, not in your initial headquarters location), so it’s generally better to sell or craft to reduce your load. You can't drop items you already have in inventory, though you can destroy items to reduce your load if you don't want to head back to base to get rid of them. Some loot items are only usable by certain classes or races, by characters of a specified level, or even by specific named companion characters. Your companions will not equip new items unless you assign those items to them through the inventory menu. You can only increase your party’s carrying capacity by spending ‘Inquisition Perk’ points that you earn by completing quests related to the game’s main plot.
As both game worlds are fairly open, your character can climb any mountain that isn’t too steep, ford rivers, and splash through marshes. Both games permit your character to climb especially steep slopes by jumping, although you can’t climb vertical surfaces. Inquisition uses some very nice animation to show your character descending slopes. The character walks like someone walking down a slope, and can even slide down on her backside if the incline is too steep for walking. Characters in Skyrim tend to move as though they’re always walking upright no matter how difficult the incline. Skyrim also allows your character to swim, although you’ll drown if you stay underwater too long without a magic item that allows you to breathe. Inquisition dispenses with swimming altogether; if the water isn’t shallow enough to wade through, your character immediately drowns. Both games will let your character die if you jump from too great a height, though as your character's hit point total increases the height you can safely fall from increases as well. But there are some falls in Inquisition that will always kill you, no matter how many hit points you have.
Discussing travel brings up the topic of the game world itself. Skyrim is set in the same world as the other games in the Elder Scrolls series, but this game is limited to the country of the same name, Skyrim, which is the homeland of the Nord race and analogous to a Scandinavian country. Skyrim’s terrain is mostly rocky and mountainous, with the only variation in the presence or lack of snow. By contrast, Inquisition allows you to visit two countries, Ferelden and Orlais, and includes a whole variety of different terrain within those boundaries. You can travel from desert to snow-capped mountains, from perpetually gloomy and rainy marshes to lush rainforest. The types of creatures, plants, and minerals you find vary for each terrain type, and even the appearance of the NPCs changes with locale, which you don't see in Skyrim because the terrain is more homogeneous. But because Skyrim allows you to fully explore every part of the map, it also includes a day/night cycle and weather effects. Your character can rest in homes and inns during the night when it's too dark to travel, or you can light a torch and keep going. It may rain or snow on you, and you'll see the seasons change as the calendar advances. Since Inquisition limits where you can go, it also limits the apparent passage of time and changes in weather. You only experience night when you visit one of the desert locations where it's too hot to do anything during the daytime. Every time you visit a location, the weather conditions there are always the same; for example the Storm Coast is always rainy, and there's always snow on the ground at Haven.
The world of Inquisition is simultaneously vaster and more empty than that of Skyrim. Skyrim has a number of towns and villages, but their populations of NPCs are relatively small. In Inquisition you don’t visit many towns, but you find a lot of people roaming the countryside, although quite a few of them want to kill you. You can’t have a chat with them or bribe them to leave you alone as you can in Skyrim. When they’re identified as enemies, your only options are to fight them or avoid them. All of these wandering enemies do serve to reinforce that this is a world at war. Skyrim's war seems more distant, since there's little sign of destruction and the towns you visit don't reflect any reduction in population or amenities as a result of the conflict.
The size of the world of the Dragon Age setting is further emphasized by the variety of accents given to the characters. Orlesians sound French, Antivans sound Spanish. Elves always have British or Irish accents (although you can choose an American accent for your character if you elect to play an elf). The characters of Skyrim don’t have accents specific to geographic location, although some races like Argonnians and Khajit do have racial accents. Skyrim uses a much smaller voice cast than Inquisition, too, so you’ll hear the same voices over and over though coming from different NPCs.
Repetition occurs in Skyrim in other ways than the limited voice cast. Every mine or dungeon or cave contains basically the same elements as every other location of the same type, just arranged slightly differently. Inquisition does some of this too, reusing familiar architectural or landscape elements, but because the terrain options are more varied, the repetition isn’t as obvious. You also don't spend nearly as much time exploring random caves and mines to gain loot in Inquisition as you do in Skyrim.
Probably the most obvious repetition in Inquisition is that you find the same Requisition Officer at every camp you establish in each of the game’s map regions. If you’re in the Hinterlands, for example, your Requisition Officer is always a British-accented female, but in the Hissing Waste it’s a British-accented male. Both games also tend to have non-conversational NPCs make the same random remarks repeatedly when your character passes by them.
But in general the game world of Inquisition feels much more expansive than Skyrim, even though Skyrim is more open about allowing your character to freely explore its world. This is because not only does Inquisition allow you to visit more of the game world than Skyrim, but the game characters in Inquisition talk about the rest of the world often, including areas of it you can't actually visit as part of the game. The titular Inquisition organization is in contact with other parts of the world even if your character never travels there. In Skyrim you only read about other parts of the world in books and scrolls you can find. If you don't read the info-text or have never played another game using the Elder Scrolls setting, you won't learn much about the rest of the world in which Skyrim exists. Locales outside of Skyrim are seldom mentioned in the NPC dialogue.
Skyrim and Inquisition both have excellent musical scores, musical cues, and sound effects. Skyrim warns the player that enemies are close in part by using musical cues, starting a slightly tense, ominous theme. Inquisition doesn’t have the musical cues quite as closely tied to the onscreen action. You may sometimes hear what sounds like combat music when there are no enemies in radar range. The sound effects in Inquisition for travel on different surfaces are especially well designed; footsteps on wooden floors sound like someone walking on wood, snow crunches underfoot, and walking through a cave causes a stony echo.
Inquisition does have a few sound glitches, unfortunately, probably caused by the complex programming for all the dialogue options. Sometimes the character dialogue gets garbled. Other times the characters fall silent during a conversation. There are also occasions where you can hear the sounds of fighting while passing through an area with no people present other than your party. Skyrim doesn’t have such glitches because it doesn’t have as much ambient sound or as many lines of spoken dialogue.
Speaking of glitches, when Skyrim was first released it was infamous for numerous glitches, which have been amply recorded on YouTube. Most of these seem to be related to the PC version of the game rather than the console versions, although we did experience some glitchiness in the console version as well. NPCs could be seen floating in mid-air instead of sitting on the wagon seat or horse they were meant to be associated with; characters could fall into a small crevice and be unable to climb out, necessitating a restore to the last saved game file; and there were frequent episodes of "clipping", when two objects occupy the same space that weren't meant to do that, such as a person stuck halfway through a wall. There were also occasional doors that wouldn't open, or loot that either couldn't be picked up or could be picked up and yet didn't show up in your character's inventory. Dragons frequently keep moving after they die, even when their flesh has all burned off and there's nothing left but a skeleton.
Inquisition has similar issues. There's a fair amount of clipping; characters often don't stand directly on the surface they're meant to be standing on; and sometimes when you use the travel option, your party members appear at the destination by abruptly dropping from the sky. Monsters normally fade away after they die, leaving behind only any loot they produce, but occasionally the monster corpse will linger for a long while before vanishing. One of my favorite examples in Inquisition is 'floating corpses', when an enemy dies and the body falls to a resting position in mid-air. But as described above, most of the noticeable glitches occur in relation to the complex dialogue options. Fortunately the game offers captions as an option, which can help to alleviate these bugs. There isn't much you can do about glitches in Skyrim beyond reverting to a prior saved game.
A big difference in the openness of the game worlds is reflected by the fact that in Skyrim, even if you’ve completed the end game, you can keep on playing. Your character can go on completing any side quests you haven’t already done, or find more materials for crafting, or continue decorating your houses if you’ve acquired all of the available homes. You can join every one of the many organizations the game offers. You can even become a vampire or a werewolf (but not both at the same time). In Inquisition, once you’ve completed the end game, the game is over. You may not have completed all the side quests, but to go back and finish them, you’ll have to revert to an earlier saved game file or start over with a new character. This means that the continuous play possibilities of Skyrim are greater since you can go on playing it for a long time after you've accomplished all the main quests. But the replay-ability of Inquisition may be superior, since you can start over with a different class or race, choose to support a different side in the war, select different conversational options, and/or take different companions with you on the quests, and any one of these changes can lead to quite a different experience of the game.
Which game you'll prefer will depend on what style of player you are. If you like grinding through dungeons and collecting loot, or exploring, or crafting, but aren't as interested in following a plot or getting to know the NPCs, Skyrim is probably the game for you. If you prefer an immersive game where you can get really invested in the story, but you don't care about being able to go anywhere and do anything you desire, Inquisition is probably the better choice. For me personally, it's hard to choose a favorite. Each of them satisfies a different entertainment need. Both games provide interesting game worlds, exciting visuals, and plenty of fodder for the imagination. I would happily play in either the Elder Scrolls or the Dragon Age setting for as long as the makers continue to produce quality games.
Apples to Oranges
Lately I've been seeing a lot of videos and stories show up in my Facebook feed that are intended to show how much better other countries do things than the US. They're supposed to shame us into making ourselves better. While I think it's great to look at what other countries do and think about how we could improve things in our own country, comparing our country to countries that aren't like us isn't really productive. I've compiled some information to show why.
The first one of these comparisons I've seen recently is with the Finnish school system. Finland is reputed to have one of the best school systems in the world. Of course the US would like to be the holder of that title. But let's look at what's different about Finland that makes it possible for them to have such good schools. Finland has a population of approximately five and a half million people. It's the most sparsely populated member nation in the European Union. Their largest city, Helsinki, only has a population of a little over a million residents. The United States has over 300 million residents. The largest city in the US has a population nearly 1.5 times the population of the entire country of Finland. Right there, it's much easier to have a good school system when you have fewer people to educate. Finland also has a much less racially and ethnically diverse population than the US. Nearly everyone in Finland belongs to the same religious group as well. It's also much easier to have a good school system when most of the students and teachers are from the same cultural and spiritual background and speak the same language. In Finland schools are managed by municipalities. Private schools are rare. Kids don't often attend preschool, and after high school they're just as likely to go to a vocational school as to college. All of that reflects an entirely different attitude toward how schools are operated and what their purpose in society is when compared to the US. And probably one of the most important differences: the personal tax rate in Finland is around 50%. The Finns have a lot more money to spend per capita on education than we do in the United States.
So how would we like to make our schools more like schools in Finland? First we have to change the public attitude toward teachers, and then what's our next step - higher taxes? Reduce immigration? Force all immigrants to speak only English and convert to Christianity?
Now we'll go on to the next "let's be like them!" post I've seen. This one is about how Germany recycles 65% of its garbage. Let's look at this. I think we all know that Germany is a smaller country in both land mass and population than the US. One of the things this means for Germans is that people who live in rural areas aren't that far away from a population center. Consequently it's probably not that difficult for German citizens to have recycling pickup or a recycling center in their neighborhoods. In the US there are rural areas that are hundreds of miles away from population centers. Here in the US, most garbage and recycling is handled by private corporations. Can you imagine how much it would cost residents in remote rural areas to have recycling from a company that had to drive a 200-mile round trip to make a weekly pickup? And we know that if the people have to transport the material to the recycling center themselves, it's not going to happen. What rural residents can afford to drive even 50 or 100 miles a week just to get rid of their recyclables? The highest poverty rates in the US are in rural communities. Even if recycling was handled by municipalities, it wouldn't help rural residents. Low population density and low per capita income would mean that many rural communities simply couldn't afford to pay for the service.
The only way the US is going to have a 65% recycling rate is if it's government-enforced and probably government-operated, and if urban residents are willing to be taxed for the service provided to rural residents. And on top of the financial and logistical considerations we'd need a major change in public attitudes, to convince people that recycling is an essential social responsibility, like feeding kids. We're not doing so well at convincing people they ought to feed kids, so it's hard to see how we could convince people they ought to recycle.
None of the above is meant to say that we can't achieve the same results as Finland and Germany. I think we can. But we need to remember that the United States is not like those countries, and what made their successes possible isn't necessarily going to work for us. Let's also remember that we don't know where these stories get their figures. Maybe Germany only recycles at a 65% rate in major urban centers. What basis are they using for claiming that Finnish schools are better? Graduation rates? Test scores? Are we sure those are the figures we want to use to measure success?
It's good to look to these countries as inspiration, but we shouldn't be comparing ourselves to them. It's like comparing apples to oranges.
The first one of these comparisons I've seen recently is with the Finnish school system. Finland is reputed to have one of the best school systems in the world. Of course the US would like to be the holder of that title. But let's look at what's different about Finland that makes it possible for them to have such good schools. Finland has a population of approximately five and a half million people. It's the most sparsely populated member nation in the European Union. Their largest city, Helsinki, only has a population of a little over a million residents. The United States has over 300 million residents. The largest city in the US has a population nearly 1.5 times the population of the entire country of Finland. Right there, it's much easier to have a good school system when you have fewer people to educate. Finland also has a much less racially and ethnically diverse population than the US. Nearly everyone in Finland belongs to the same religious group as well. It's also much easier to have a good school system when most of the students and teachers are from the same cultural and spiritual background and speak the same language. In Finland schools are managed by municipalities. Private schools are rare. Kids don't often attend preschool, and after high school they're just as likely to go to a vocational school as to college. All of that reflects an entirely different attitude toward how schools are operated and what their purpose in society is when compared to the US. And probably one of the most important differences: the personal tax rate in Finland is around 50%. The Finns have a lot more money to spend per capita on education than we do in the United States.
So how would we like to make our schools more like schools in Finland? First we have to change the public attitude toward teachers, and then what's our next step - higher taxes? Reduce immigration? Force all immigrants to speak only English and convert to Christianity?
Now we'll go on to the next "let's be like them!" post I've seen. This one is about how Germany recycles 65% of its garbage. Let's look at this. I think we all know that Germany is a smaller country in both land mass and population than the US. One of the things this means for Germans is that people who live in rural areas aren't that far away from a population center. Consequently it's probably not that difficult for German citizens to have recycling pickup or a recycling center in their neighborhoods. In the US there are rural areas that are hundreds of miles away from population centers. Here in the US, most garbage and recycling is handled by private corporations. Can you imagine how much it would cost residents in remote rural areas to have recycling from a company that had to drive a 200-mile round trip to make a weekly pickup? And we know that if the people have to transport the material to the recycling center themselves, it's not going to happen. What rural residents can afford to drive even 50 or 100 miles a week just to get rid of their recyclables? The highest poverty rates in the US are in rural communities. Even if recycling was handled by municipalities, it wouldn't help rural residents. Low population density and low per capita income would mean that many rural communities simply couldn't afford to pay for the service.
The only way the US is going to have a 65% recycling rate is if it's government-enforced and probably government-operated, and if urban residents are willing to be taxed for the service provided to rural residents. And on top of the financial and logistical considerations we'd need a major change in public attitudes, to convince people that recycling is an essential social responsibility, like feeding kids. We're not doing so well at convincing people they ought to feed kids, so it's hard to see how we could convince people they ought to recycle.
None of the above is meant to say that we can't achieve the same results as Finland and Germany. I think we can. But we need to remember that the United States is not like those countries, and what made their successes possible isn't necessarily going to work for us. Let's also remember that we don't know where these stories get their figures. Maybe Germany only recycles at a 65% rate in major urban centers. What basis are they using for claiming that Finnish schools are better? Graduation rates? Test scores? Are we sure those are the figures we want to use to measure success?
It's good to look to these countries as inspiration, but we shouldn't be comparing ourselves to them. It's like comparing apples to oranges.
Sunday, October 9, 2016
Movie Review: John Wick
John Wick (2014)
Starring: Keanu Reeves, Willem Dafoe, Michael Nyqvist, Alfie Allen, Adrianne Palicki, Lance Riddick, Ian McShane, John Leguizamo, Dean Winter
This afternoon my husband and I decided to watch John Wick. I had read some reviews indicating that for an action movie about a hitman, it was better than one might anticipate. Having viewed it, I have to concur with those opinions.
The movie does a lot of the same kind of thing you see in other action films of the same type: there are some big set-pieces in which Reeves' John Wick character takes out a small army of opponents with relatively little difficulty because he's supposed to be the baddest badass of them all. There's a car chase. There's lots of fighting and shooting. But the way that it does them isn't the way these sorts of scenes are being done in recent films.
We saw Jason Bourne recently, the 2016 entry in the Bourne film franchise, and I was rather disappointed in it. I have a certain fondness for the first film in the series, The Bourne Identity. But 14 years later Jason Bourne had fallen into the reliance on rapid editing and "shaky-cam" cinematography that passes for exciting action scenes in films lately. During that film's "boss" fight scene, it was almost impossible for me to tell what the two combatants were doing. Made only two years before Jason Bourne, John Wick avoids those action-movie stylistic cliches and goes back to an older style of editing and camera-work in which the audience can actually see what's happening. That's not to say there aren't plenty of cuts in the action scenes, but they're farther apart, and the shots are long enough and the camera position far enough away from the actors that the audience can make out each movement. After watching a couple of scenes done this way, I realized that I'd become so (reluctantly) accustomed to the other style that John Wick's action scenes seemed almost as if they'd been slowed down. I had to remind myself that actually everything in other movies has been sped up. It was really refreshing to be able to see all the fight choreography clearly.
Another thing John Wick does is keep the plot simple. Jason Bourne is all about spies, so it's not surprising that the story is complicated. John Wick is about a hitman going out to get revenge. That's it. He's not rescuing anyone, he's not trying to steal the mob boss's big stash or recover some information that is being used to blackmail him. He isn't even trying to get out of the business. He's just trying to punish someone for doing him wrong. That simplicity stands the movie in good stead.
John Wick also has a really amazing cast. Look at that cast list up above. John Leguizamo and Ian McShane aren't in it much, but when they are they shine. They're not just there to get some other big names on the marquee. Keanu does just fine in the lead role. It isn't a stretch for him, but there's something to be said for finding your niche and sticking to it. I know a lot of people think he's not a good actor, and while I'll certainly admit there are many better performers, he's good in the right part. My husband always says that his bar for judging a performance is an actor's ability to display grief convincingly, and in a scene near the beginning of the film Reeves has to do that. He does it well.
Other things I enjoyed about this film: the Russian mobsters speak Russian and are subtitled. The movie physics seem like real-world physics; no one made any incredible leaps or rail-kills, and there were no exploding cars or springboard jumps. The guns ran out of bullets in what seemed like a reasonable amount of time. Most importantly, my husband didn't cringe or complain about any of the firearms action. It's one of his pet peeves that people in movies usually do really ridiculous things with guns.
The film isn't without its share of movie tropes: near the beginning there's a funeral taking place in the rain. The hero is able to walk away with injuries that would incapacitate a normal person and also miraculously avoids any serious bruising on his face. But in defense of these examples, the film does show it raining again in later scenes, and the protagonist gets stitches and limps about painfully after being injured.
While I wouldn't rate John Wick as one of the best movies I've ever seen, or even one of he best action movies, I have to say that it's a decent movie and worth watching if you want to see an old-school action film where you can actually figure out what's going on.
Starring: Keanu Reeves, Willem Dafoe, Michael Nyqvist, Alfie Allen, Adrianne Palicki, Lance Riddick, Ian McShane, John Leguizamo, Dean Winter
This afternoon my husband and I decided to watch John Wick. I had read some reviews indicating that for an action movie about a hitman, it was better than one might anticipate. Having viewed it, I have to concur with those opinions.
The movie does a lot of the same kind of thing you see in other action films of the same type: there are some big set-pieces in which Reeves' John Wick character takes out a small army of opponents with relatively little difficulty because he's supposed to be the baddest badass of them all. There's a car chase. There's lots of fighting and shooting. But the way that it does them isn't the way these sorts of scenes are being done in recent films.
We saw Jason Bourne recently, the 2016 entry in the Bourne film franchise, and I was rather disappointed in it. I have a certain fondness for the first film in the series, The Bourne Identity. But 14 years later Jason Bourne had fallen into the reliance on rapid editing and "shaky-cam" cinematography that passes for exciting action scenes in films lately. During that film's "boss" fight scene, it was almost impossible for me to tell what the two combatants were doing. Made only two years before Jason Bourne, John Wick avoids those action-movie stylistic cliches and goes back to an older style of editing and camera-work in which the audience can actually see what's happening. That's not to say there aren't plenty of cuts in the action scenes, but they're farther apart, and the shots are long enough and the camera position far enough away from the actors that the audience can make out each movement. After watching a couple of scenes done this way, I realized that I'd become so (reluctantly) accustomed to the other style that John Wick's action scenes seemed almost as if they'd been slowed down. I had to remind myself that actually everything in other movies has been sped up. It was really refreshing to be able to see all the fight choreography clearly.
Another thing John Wick does is keep the plot simple. Jason Bourne is all about spies, so it's not surprising that the story is complicated. John Wick is about a hitman going out to get revenge. That's it. He's not rescuing anyone, he's not trying to steal the mob boss's big stash or recover some information that is being used to blackmail him. He isn't even trying to get out of the business. He's just trying to punish someone for doing him wrong. That simplicity stands the movie in good stead.
John Wick also has a really amazing cast. Look at that cast list up above. John Leguizamo and Ian McShane aren't in it much, but when they are they shine. They're not just there to get some other big names on the marquee. Keanu does just fine in the lead role. It isn't a stretch for him, but there's something to be said for finding your niche and sticking to it. I know a lot of people think he's not a good actor, and while I'll certainly admit there are many better performers, he's good in the right part. My husband always says that his bar for judging a performance is an actor's ability to display grief convincingly, and in a scene near the beginning of the film Reeves has to do that. He does it well.
Other things I enjoyed about this film: the Russian mobsters speak Russian and are subtitled. The movie physics seem like real-world physics; no one made any incredible leaps or rail-kills, and there were no exploding cars or springboard jumps. The guns ran out of bullets in what seemed like a reasonable amount of time. Most importantly, my husband didn't cringe or complain about any of the firearms action. It's one of his pet peeves that people in movies usually do really ridiculous things with guns.
The film isn't without its share of movie tropes: near the beginning there's a funeral taking place in the rain. The hero is able to walk away with injuries that would incapacitate a normal person and also miraculously avoids any serious bruising on his face. But in defense of these examples, the film does show it raining again in later scenes, and the protagonist gets stitches and limps about painfully after being injured.
While I wouldn't rate John Wick as one of the best movies I've ever seen, or even one of he best action movies, I have to say that it's a decent movie and worth watching if you want to see an old-school action film where you can actually figure out what's going on.
Saturday, October 8, 2016
[Pathfinder] Kingmaker Campaign Journal #8
Session 60 - October 2, 2016
As the team prepared to forge ahead in search of Armag's Tomb, Landon drank a potion to allow him to see anything invisible, and Tahjah cast to protect herself from negative energy effects. Amaya's spell of good hope was still in effect.
The group found themselves entering a narrow passage in which the floor was covered in loose stone, making it more challenging to move quietly. At the end of the passage was a chamber occupied by three statues on plinths standing in a row. Directly ahead of the party stood a pair of iron doors. A second pair of doors lay to their left. Tahjah scanned the statues for magical auras and found that all three carried some strong magic. While she did this, Landon went to investigate the nearest set of doors. He found them locked, as were the second set when he examined them. He also noticed something about the plinth of the center statue that caught his eye. His dwarven engineering skill told him that the plinth could be moved to reveal a compartment or opening. He enlisted San'Kari's help to shift it.
When Landon and San'Kari began lifting the statue, all three statues came to life and leaped down, the central one almost landing on top of San'Kari. Two of the statues faced San'Kari while the third turned on Landon. Garrick raced across the room to take on one of the statues nearest to San'Kari, while Landon focused his attention on the center statue so that he and San'Kari could enjoy the benefit of flanking it. The rest of the group waited, ready to step in with healing or aid if the three warriors had difficulty with their opponents.
Two figures clad in the robes of Black Sisters abruptly appeared in front of the far doors. One of them attempted to attack the nearest person, who happened to be Kara, but she failed to connect. Garrick rushed across the room to protect his wife and her bodyguard, raining blows on the Black Sister who had tried to attack Kara. His attack left the Black Sister shaken. Tahjah attempted to forbid the two Black Sisters from casting any spells but her magic had no effect on them. Kara then struck a powerful blow against the Sister who had tried to hit her, and Silverleaf flung two handfuls of flames at the same Sister. Meanwhile the center statue had hit San'Kari several times.
Cyst flew invisibly over to the center statue's plinth and tried to move it while the fighting was going on, but the imp wasn't strong enough to push the plinth aside.
The second Black Sister cast a spell, but no one observed any effect. The first Sister then issued a magical shout that deafened Garrick, Landon, and San'Kari. Garrick responded by pummeling her again. In the meantime San'Kari and Landon disposed of one of the statues, leaving only two to contend with. Tahjah again tried to prevent the Black Sisters from spellcasting but her second try was no more successful than the first.
Amaya chose to issue another battle cry to bolster her comrades. Silverleaf lobbed two more handfuls of flames at the Black Sister who had been shaken by Garrick's attacks. Then one of the Black Sisters summoned a swarming mass of black tentacles to fill the center of the chamber. Though the tentacles lashed out at everyone in the space they didn't manage to snare anyone in their grasp. Kara quickly reacted to herd Amaya out of the room and away from the tentacles. Untroubled by the presence of the tentacles, Silverleaf hurled more flames at the Sister he had been targeting. One of the Sister tried to cast another spell, but Tahjah had readied her own magic to dispel it and was able to counter it.
The tentacles lashed out again, this time grasping hold of Silverleaf, Kara, and the two remaining statues. Unable to break free and unwilling to risk losing a spell to the tentacles that gripped him, Silverleaf channeled positive energy to heal his companions of the wounds dealt by the statues and the Sisters' magic. Landon had abandoned fighting the statues to move close to one of the Black Sisters and stabbed her with his wounding dagger. Immediately after he did so her holy symbol began to glow brightly, searing into her flesh - and then her body exploded, showering the room with her remains. The other Sister had already fallen.
In addition to being splattered by remnants of the Black Sister, Silverleaf was paralyzed. San'Kari pulled him free of the tentacle's grasp, and Tahjah searched his scroll case for a scroll to free him of immobilization.
Once Silverleaf was free, Landon searched the body of the Black Sister who hadn't exploded, and he and Silverleaf determined the magical properties of the dagger, cloak, and two potions they found in her possession.
After the items were retrieved, Landon returned to examining the central statue's plinth while Garrick used his ability to see through doors to look at what lay beyond both sets of doors leading out of the chamber. The doors on the far side of the room let into an area with two narrow passageways leading away. The doors nearest the statues showed Garrick a long passage leading to a flight of steps and another door. He saw four boulders of varying sizes sitting near the doors through which he looked, and on the floor of the passage were four indentations that appeared to be about the same size as the boulders.
Beneath the plinth, Landon found a compartment containing a large box. Inside the box were seven large pearls, each worth up to a thousand gold pieces. All of the pearls radiated a magical aura to Tahjah's sight, the same aura for all but each pearl had a stronger aura than the last. Further examination revealed these to be items known as 'pathway pearls', which could transport a single individual and a certain amount of items to a specific location the bearer was familiar with. The party members each took one of the pearls.
When they had distributed the pearls, the group proceeded through the doors closest to where the statues had stood. Landon moved forward to check the passage for traps. He recognized that the floor panels were mounted on pivots designed to drop an unwary person into a pit or chasm. But placing the boulders in the indentations might lock the floor panels so they would remain stable. After attempting to move the smallest boulder unsuccessfully himself, Landon left the task to San'Kari. But despite San'Kari's exceptional strength, he found moving the round, smooth boulders a challenge. More than once he lost his grip and the boulder rolled backward, crashing into him. As he moved toward the larger boulders the danger increased. A boulder rolling back toward the doors threatened to hit everyone in the party. Finally, as he prepared to maneuver the biggest boulder into its indentation, San'Kari took a bottle of universal solvent from his pack and handed it to Silverleaf, then drew out a pot of sovereign glue and covered his hands with the sticky stuff so he could maintain his grip on the boulder and push it into place. Once he had succeeded, Silverleaf used the solvent to release San’Kari’s hands from the stone.
With the floor now stable, the party moved toward the stairs at the opposite end of the passageway. Garrick viewed through the next door, seeing an empty chamber lined with columns made of fused iron weapons. In the center of the chamber stood a large horizontal wheel. The chamber floor was also covered with iron. But he saw no creatures or obvious dangers. Landon opened the door, and he and Garrick entered the iron room. As soon as they stepped inside, a sheet of ice a foot thick covered the entire room, cutting them off from their companions. Garrick immediately began to suffer the effect of extreme cold, but Landon was immune to such discomfort.
Garrick created a campfire, though it did little to protect him from the cold. Landon began to examine the wheel, while outside San'Kari started to chop his way through the thick ice with his greataxe. Landon found that when he turned the wheel he could feel a spring tightening under the floor. Garrick left his campfire to examine a small door in the wall near the door through which they had entered the iron room. His sight showed him little beyond it, as the passageway or room on the other side was hidden by fog, though he could tell that the door had been unused for a very long time. The door wasn't locked, and Garrick opened it and went into the room.
As soon as he stepped into the foggy room, Garrick found himself face to face with a very large, spiny, spider-like creature. He had no idea what it was, other than some variety of daemon. Garrick immediately tumbled out of the room to get away from the daemon, and it followed him out into the iron chamber. As it emerged from the side room, Landon was struck by an aura that rendered him almost mindless.
San'Kari at that moment smashed through the last of the ice and stepped into the iron room. As he did so Amaya granted him the ability to better withstand some threats, and the daemon's aura had no effect on him. San'Kari approached the daemon and inflicted a very deep gash on it with his axe. The daemon moved to attack Landon, who was able to fight back despite his feebleminded state. Kara also moved into the iron room, but suffered the same fate as Landon. Silverleaf said a prayer to Sarenrae to grant his comrades greater fighting prowess and determination, but he was unable to discover what manner of creature the daemon was and declined to enter the room it stood in himself. Tahjah also decided to get no closer to it. They waited outside the door and watched as San'Kari's axe chopped the daemon to pieces.
After the daemon fell, Tahjah and Silverleaf determined that a powerful healing spell would restore Landon's and Kara's wits. The daemon's ability had also affected Cyst, and once his own intelligence had been restored Landon realized that the effect of the daemon's ability would have faded after a time. When he knew that Cyst would eventually recover, he told his companions not to expend any more of their magic on the imp. He busied himself by cutting open the daemon, finding in its abdomen an enchanted chain shirt, which the party members decided would best suit Amaya once it had been cleaned of the daemon's digestive juices.
Loot:
+2 keen dagger
cloak of resistance +1
2 potions of barkskin
7 pathway pearls
+1 glamered chain shirt
Kingmaker #9
As the team prepared to forge ahead in search of Armag's Tomb, Landon drank a potion to allow him to see anything invisible, and Tahjah cast to protect herself from negative energy effects. Amaya's spell of good hope was still in effect.
The group found themselves entering a narrow passage in which the floor was covered in loose stone, making it more challenging to move quietly. At the end of the passage was a chamber occupied by three statues on plinths standing in a row. Directly ahead of the party stood a pair of iron doors. A second pair of doors lay to their left. Tahjah scanned the statues for magical auras and found that all three carried some strong magic. While she did this, Landon went to investigate the nearest set of doors. He found them locked, as were the second set when he examined them. He also noticed something about the plinth of the center statue that caught his eye. His dwarven engineering skill told him that the plinth could be moved to reveal a compartment or opening. He enlisted San'Kari's help to shift it.
When Landon and San'Kari began lifting the statue, all three statues came to life and leaped down, the central one almost landing on top of San'Kari. Two of the statues faced San'Kari while the third turned on Landon. Garrick raced across the room to take on one of the statues nearest to San'Kari, while Landon focused his attention on the center statue so that he and San'Kari could enjoy the benefit of flanking it. The rest of the group waited, ready to step in with healing or aid if the three warriors had difficulty with their opponents.
Two figures clad in the robes of Black Sisters abruptly appeared in front of the far doors. One of them attempted to attack the nearest person, who happened to be Kara, but she failed to connect. Garrick rushed across the room to protect his wife and her bodyguard, raining blows on the Black Sister who had tried to attack Kara. His attack left the Black Sister shaken. Tahjah attempted to forbid the two Black Sisters from casting any spells but her magic had no effect on them. Kara then struck a powerful blow against the Sister who had tried to hit her, and Silverleaf flung two handfuls of flames at the same Sister. Meanwhile the center statue had hit San'Kari several times.
Cyst flew invisibly over to the center statue's plinth and tried to move it while the fighting was going on, but the imp wasn't strong enough to push the plinth aside.
The second Black Sister cast a spell, but no one observed any effect. The first Sister then issued a magical shout that deafened Garrick, Landon, and San'Kari. Garrick responded by pummeling her again. In the meantime San'Kari and Landon disposed of one of the statues, leaving only two to contend with. Tahjah again tried to prevent the Black Sisters from spellcasting but her second try was no more successful than the first.
Amaya chose to issue another battle cry to bolster her comrades. Silverleaf lobbed two more handfuls of flames at the Black Sister who had been shaken by Garrick's attacks. Then one of the Black Sisters summoned a swarming mass of black tentacles to fill the center of the chamber. Though the tentacles lashed out at everyone in the space they didn't manage to snare anyone in their grasp. Kara quickly reacted to herd Amaya out of the room and away from the tentacles. Untroubled by the presence of the tentacles, Silverleaf hurled more flames at the Sister he had been targeting. One of the Sister tried to cast another spell, but Tahjah had readied her own magic to dispel it and was able to counter it.
The tentacles lashed out again, this time grasping hold of Silverleaf, Kara, and the two remaining statues. Unable to break free and unwilling to risk losing a spell to the tentacles that gripped him, Silverleaf channeled positive energy to heal his companions of the wounds dealt by the statues and the Sisters' magic. Landon had abandoned fighting the statues to move close to one of the Black Sisters and stabbed her with his wounding dagger. Immediately after he did so her holy symbol began to glow brightly, searing into her flesh - and then her body exploded, showering the room with her remains. The other Sister had already fallen.
In addition to being splattered by remnants of the Black Sister, Silverleaf was paralyzed. San'Kari pulled him free of the tentacle's grasp, and Tahjah searched his scroll case for a scroll to free him of immobilization.
Once Silverleaf was free, Landon searched the body of the Black Sister who hadn't exploded, and he and Silverleaf determined the magical properties of the dagger, cloak, and two potions they found in her possession.
After the items were retrieved, Landon returned to examining the central statue's plinth while Garrick used his ability to see through doors to look at what lay beyond both sets of doors leading out of the chamber. The doors on the far side of the room let into an area with two narrow passageways leading away. The doors nearest the statues showed Garrick a long passage leading to a flight of steps and another door. He saw four boulders of varying sizes sitting near the doors through which he looked, and on the floor of the passage were four indentations that appeared to be about the same size as the boulders.
Beneath the plinth, Landon found a compartment containing a large box. Inside the box were seven large pearls, each worth up to a thousand gold pieces. All of the pearls radiated a magical aura to Tahjah's sight, the same aura for all but each pearl had a stronger aura than the last. Further examination revealed these to be items known as 'pathway pearls', which could transport a single individual and a certain amount of items to a specific location the bearer was familiar with. The party members each took one of the pearls.
When they had distributed the pearls, the group proceeded through the doors closest to where the statues had stood. Landon moved forward to check the passage for traps. He recognized that the floor panels were mounted on pivots designed to drop an unwary person into a pit or chasm. But placing the boulders in the indentations might lock the floor panels so they would remain stable. After attempting to move the smallest boulder unsuccessfully himself, Landon left the task to San'Kari. But despite San'Kari's exceptional strength, he found moving the round, smooth boulders a challenge. More than once he lost his grip and the boulder rolled backward, crashing into him. As he moved toward the larger boulders the danger increased. A boulder rolling back toward the doors threatened to hit everyone in the party. Finally, as he prepared to maneuver the biggest boulder into its indentation, San'Kari took a bottle of universal solvent from his pack and handed it to Silverleaf, then drew out a pot of sovereign glue and covered his hands with the sticky stuff so he could maintain his grip on the boulder and push it into place. Once he had succeeded, Silverleaf used the solvent to release San’Kari’s hands from the stone.
With the floor now stable, the party moved toward the stairs at the opposite end of the passageway. Garrick viewed through the next door, seeing an empty chamber lined with columns made of fused iron weapons. In the center of the chamber stood a large horizontal wheel. The chamber floor was also covered with iron. But he saw no creatures or obvious dangers. Landon opened the door, and he and Garrick entered the iron room. As soon as they stepped inside, a sheet of ice a foot thick covered the entire room, cutting them off from their companions. Garrick immediately began to suffer the effect of extreme cold, but Landon was immune to such discomfort.
Garrick created a campfire, though it did little to protect him from the cold. Landon began to examine the wheel, while outside San'Kari started to chop his way through the thick ice with his greataxe. Landon found that when he turned the wheel he could feel a spring tightening under the floor. Garrick left his campfire to examine a small door in the wall near the door through which they had entered the iron room. His sight showed him little beyond it, as the passageway or room on the other side was hidden by fog, though he could tell that the door had been unused for a very long time. The door wasn't locked, and Garrick opened it and went into the room.
As soon as he stepped into the foggy room, Garrick found himself face to face with a very large, spiny, spider-like creature. He had no idea what it was, other than some variety of daemon. Garrick immediately tumbled out of the room to get away from the daemon, and it followed him out into the iron chamber. As it emerged from the side room, Landon was struck by an aura that rendered him almost mindless.
San'Kari at that moment smashed through the last of the ice and stepped into the iron room. As he did so Amaya granted him the ability to better withstand some threats, and the daemon's aura had no effect on him. San'Kari approached the daemon and inflicted a very deep gash on it with his axe. The daemon moved to attack Landon, who was able to fight back despite his feebleminded state. Kara also moved into the iron room, but suffered the same fate as Landon. Silverleaf said a prayer to Sarenrae to grant his comrades greater fighting prowess and determination, but he was unable to discover what manner of creature the daemon was and declined to enter the room it stood in himself. Tahjah also decided to get no closer to it. They waited outside the door and watched as San'Kari's axe chopped the daemon to pieces.
After the daemon fell, Tahjah and Silverleaf determined that a powerful healing spell would restore Landon's and Kara's wits. The daemon's ability had also affected Cyst, and once his own intelligence had been restored Landon realized that the effect of the daemon's ability would have faded after a time. When he knew that Cyst would eventually recover, he told his companions not to expend any more of their magic on the imp. He busied himself by cutting open the daemon, finding in its abdomen an enchanted chain shirt, which the party members decided would best suit Amaya once it had been cleaned of the daemon's digestive juices.
Loot:
+2 keen dagger
cloak of resistance +1
2 potions of barkskin
7 pathway pearls
+1 glamered chain shirt
Kingmaker #9
[Pathfinder] Kingmaker Campaign Journal #7
Session 59: September 25, 2016
Following their defeat of the trolls and giant near Wyvernstone Bridge, and a brief berry-picking excursion, the heroes from New Hope continued toward the suspected location of Armag the Twice-Born’s tomb. Thim did not continue with them. He had chosen to go to Varnhold to train archers there. As dusk approached, the remaining group camped for the night and enjoyed an uninterrupted rest, protected by Garrick’s keep watch spell.
The next morning the group members saw several bright flashes like lightning in the sky some distance away. Later in the day after they had left their campsite, they spotted several large flying creatures near two promontories. The sharper-eyed among the group recognized the creatures as chimeras, but the chimeras either had less acute vision or were simply not interested in the travelers. As the party made their way past the boggy edge of the Hooktongue Slough, they could hear the sound of a waterfall. Narthropple’s map indicated that the river disappeared into a cave near the falls, which was the surmised location of Armag’s burial place. They came upon an area of stone rubble that indicated the presence of a long-disused quarry, likely of dwarven make. Once the waterfall came into view they could also see that at one time someone had constructed piers for a bridge over the river, but if there had ever been a bridge it was long gone.
Landon sent Cyst ahead to get a closer look at the area surrounding the cave they thought to be Armag’s resting place. The imp, invisibly spying in the form of a raven, observed a cluster of round hide huts of the kind used by the Tiger barbarians. The collection of huts was not large, and almost half of them appeared to be decayed and unoccupied. The huts were divided into two groups, one on each side of a clearing occupied by a rectangular structure and a fire pit. Cyst saw several burly warriors among the people present, but there were also women and children. When Landon had relayed this information to the rest of the party, Tahjah and Silverleaf expressed opposition to simply killing all the barbarians. They both hoped that the barbarians could be reasoned with and perhaps even made allies. Garrick agreed, and the group left their horses with the two militiamen who had accompanied them and went down to the village to talk.
They were met by a barbarian who did not appear friendly, though he made no move to attack the new arrivals. When questioned by Garrick, who knew the barbarians’ language, and by Tahjah with Garrick interpreting, the barbarian revealed that some type of ritual of rebirth was taking place inside the cave and he insisted the visitors should leave at once. Tahjah elicited from him that the barbarians would not willingly have been as bloodthirsty as they had been recently; they were under some form of compulsion. Tahjah offered to free them of it, but the speaker declined, fearing retribution from the Black Sisters.
In the meantime, Cyst had approached a fenced enclosure that held some horses and mules, and had opened the gate. When Garrick began trying to convince the speaker that the group should be allowed to go into the cave and observe the ritual, one of the horses whinnied loudly. Cyst, still invisible, flew over to Tahjah’s should and attempted to persuade her that the horses had something to communicate. When she showed no interest in investigating, Cyst tried to persuade Silverleaf. But Silverleaf didn’t believe the horses could be intelligent enough to tell them anything of use.
Despite the speaker’s warning, Garrick and the rest of the group approached the cave entrance. They had already seen that two large beings were standing guard. On getting closer they could see that these two creatures were not Tiger barbarians. Tahjah was able to identify one of the creatures as a type of aberration, a gug. The other creature was some sort of extraplanar entity that resembled a fetchling but was much larger. The party members decided that since they knew there were probably Black Sisters and other creatures inside the cave, they didn’t want to expend too much of their magic on the sentries. Garrick attempted to parley with the two creatures, but they were not at all willing to make conversation. They also appeared to be stalling for time, though to what purpose Garrick couldn’t tell.
With negotiations going nowhere, Amaya opened with a battle cry and the fight began. Tahjah tried to affect the gug with a murderous command, but found that something resisted her spell, though she knew that gugs weren’t ordinarily resistant to magic. Silverleaf hurled a fireball from his staff of fire at both creatures and it overcame whatever was causing the resistance. Garrick, Landon, and San’Kari moved up to attack the two guards with their weapons, while Tahjah and Silverleaf remained behind them with Amaya and Kara. Tahjah had cast life link on every member of the group to help to reduce the damage they were subject to. Amaya cast haste on the group as well.
Suddenly Tahjah saw the gug begin to appear blurry, and at the same time she felt the ground trembling beneath her feet. At that moment two ankhegs emerged from the earth beside her and Silverleaf. While San’Kari, Landon, and Garrick were busy battling the gug and its comrade, she and Silverleaf employed their seldom-used weapons against the ankhegs, reserving their magic for more powerful foes.
One of the Black Sisters abruptly appeared behind the two sentries, where she had evidently been hiding invisibly. She attempted to affect Garrick, San’Kari, and Landon with an aura of madness, but all three of them resisted her effect. Silverleaf disregarded the ankheg beside him to trigger another fireball from his staff, which he aimed behind the Black Sister so the flames would affect her as well as the two summoned creatures.
The second creature moved forward beside the gug, and San’Kari dealt it a fierce blow. Landon was knocked off his feet, but thanks to Tahjah’s channeled energy was able to get back up and continue fighting. Garrick was busily attacking the gug with an axe in each hand. Amaya cast good hope to further bolster the fighters, and Tahjah’s holy smite left the Black Sister blind for a short time. Unfortunately the Sister did not need to be able to see to channel her own negative energy to harm her opponents, though she was unable to prevent the energy from also harming the two sentries. Silverleaf conjured a spiritual weapon and set it to attack the Black Sister, but it found her a difficult target to hit.
Tahjah began to sense something else happening. There was something emerging from the nearby river. As she called out a warning to her companions, Landon dealt the fetchling-like being a grievous blow, and an instant later Garrick slew the gug. Silverleaf summoned a flame to his hand and pitched it at the Black Sister, but the magic failed to affect her. Amaya then summoned a swarm of mad monkeys, which scrambled over the Sister, snatching away her holy symbol of Gyronna and gnawing it while they distracted her from casting further spells. This allowed San’Kari to move up beside her and strike a heavy blow with this axe. The Sister fell to the ground, dead. When she died the ankhegs vanished and whatever had been about to emerge from the water disappeared as well.
The group members quickly searched the Black Sister’s body in preparation for entering the cavern. They found that she had two scrolls, two potions, an enchanted dagger, and a magic staff in her possession. They decided to take a few extra moments to determine what these things would do, as they might be useful in the coming fight.
Loot:
Scroll of ice storm
Scroll of sending
Potion of cure moderate wounds
Potion of levitate
+2 keen dagger
Staff of healing
Kingmaker #8
Following their defeat of the trolls and giant near Wyvernstone Bridge, and a brief berry-picking excursion, the heroes from New Hope continued toward the suspected location of Armag the Twice-Born’s tomb. Thim did not continue with them. He had chosen to go to Varnhold to train archers there. As dusk approached, the remaining group camped for the night and enjoyed an uninterrupted rest, protected by Garrick’s keep watch spell.
The next morning the group members saw several bright flashes like lightning in the sky some distance away. Later in the day after they had left their campsite, they spotted several large flying creatures near two promontories. The sharper-eyed among the group recognized the creatures as chimeras, but the chimeras either had less acute vision or were simply not interested in the travelers. As the party made their way past the boggy edge of the Hooktongue Slough, they could hear the sound of a waterfall. Narthropple’s map indicated that the river disappeared into a cave near the falls, which was the surmised location of Armag’s burial place. They came upon an area of stone rubble that indicated the presence of a long-disused quarry, likely of dwarven make. Once the waterfall came into view they could also see that at one time someone had constructed piers for a bridge over the river, but if there had ever been a bridge it was long gone.
Landon sent Cyst ahead to get a closer look at the area surrounding the cave they thought to be Armag’s resting place. The imp, invisibly spying in the form of a raven, observed a cluster of round hide huts of the kind used by the Tiger barbarians. The collection of huts was not large, and almost half of them appeared to be decayed and unoccupied. The huts were divided into two groups, one on each side of a clearing occupied by a rectangular structure and a fire pit. Cyst saw several burly warriors among the people present, but there were also women and children. When Landon had relayed this information to the rest of the party, Tahjah and Silverleaf expressed opposition to simply killing all the barbarians. They both hoped that the barbarians could be reasoned with and perhaps even made allies. Garrick agreed, and the group left their horses with the two militiamen who had accompanied them and went down to the village to talk.
They were met by a barbarian who did not appear friendly, though he made no move to attack the new arrivals. When questioned by Garrick, who knew the barbarians’ language, and by Tahjah with Garrick interpreting, the barbarian revealed that some type of ritual of rebirth was taking place inside the cave and he insisted the visitors should leave at once. Tahjah elicited from him that the barbarians would not willingly have been as bloodthirsty as they had been recently; they were under some form of compulsion. Tahjah offered to free them of it, but the speaker declined, fearing retribution from the Black Sisters.
In the meantime, Cyst had approached a fenced enclosure that held some horses and mules, and had opened the gate. When Garrick began trying to convince the speaker that the group should be allowed to go into the cave and observe the ritual, one of the horses whinnied loudly. Cyst, still invisible, flew over to Tahjah’s should and attempted to persuade her that the horses had something to communicate. When she showed no interest in investigating, Cyst tried to persuade Silverleaf. But Silverleaf didn’t believe the horses could be intelligent enough to tell them anything of use.
Despite the speaker’s warning, Garrick and the rest of the group approached the cave entrance. They had already seen that two large beings were standing guard. On getting closer they could see that these two creatures were not Tiger barbarians. Tahjah was able to identify one of the creatures as a type of aberration, a gug. The other creature was some sort of extraplanar entity that resembled a fetchling but was much larger. The party members decided that since they knew there were probably Black Sisters and other creatures inside the cave, they didn’t want to expend too much of their magic on the sentries. Garrick attempted to parley with the two creatures, but they were not at all willing to make conversation. They also appeared to be stalling for time, though to what purpose Garrick couldn’t tell.
With negotiations going nowhere, Amaya opened with a battle cry and the fight began. Tahjah tried to affect the gug with a murderous command, but found that something resisted her spell, though she knew that gugs weren’t ordinarily resistant to magic. Silverleaf hurled a fireball from his staff of fire at both creatures and it overcame whatever was causing the resistance. Garrick, Landon, and San’Kari moved up to attack the two guards with their weapons, while Tahjah and Silverleaf remained behind them with Amaya and Kara. Tahjah had cast life link on every member of the group to help to reduce the damage they were subject to. Amaya cast haste on the group as well.
Suddenly Tahjah saw the gug begin to appear blurry, and at the same time she felt the ground trembling beneath her feet. At that moment two ankhegs emerged from the earth beside her and Silverleaf. While San’Kari, Landon, and Garrick were busy battling the gug and its comrade, she and Silverleaf employed their seldom-used weapons against the ankhegs, reserving their magic for more powerful foes.
One of the Black Sisters abruptly appeared behind the two sentries, where she had evidently been hiding invisibly. She attempted to affect Garrick, San’Kari, and Landon with an aura of madness, but all three of them resisted her effect. Silverleaf disregarded the ankheg beside him to trigger another fireball from his staff, which he aimed behind the Black Sister so the flames would affect her as well as the two summoned creatures.
The second creature moved forward beside the gug, and San’Kari dealt it a fierce blow. Landon was knocked off his feet, but thanks to Tahjah’s channeled energy was able to get back up and continue fighting. Garrick was busily attacking the gug with an axe in each hand. Amaya cast good hope to further bolster the fighters, and Tahjah’s holy smite left the Black Sister blind for a short time. Unfortunately the Sister did not need to be able to see to channel her own negative energy to harm her opponents, though she was unable to prevent the energy from also harming the two sentries. Silverleaf conjured a spiritual weapon and set it to attack the Black Sister, but it found her a difficult target to hit.
Tahjah began to sense something else happening. There was something emerging from the nearby river. As she called out a warning to her companions, Landon dealt the fetchling-like being a grievous blow, and an instant later Garrick slew the gug. Silverleaf summoned a flame to his hand and pitched it at the Black Sister, but the magic failed to affect her. Amaya then summoned a swarm of mad monkeys, which scrambled over the Sister, snatching away her holy symbol of Gyronna and gnawing it while they distracted her from casting further spells. This allowed San’Kari to move up beside her and strike a heavy blow with this axe. The Sister fell to the ground, dead. When she died the ankhegs vanished and whatever had been about to emerge from the water disappeared as well.
The group members quickly searched the Black Sister’s body in preparation for entering the cavern. They found that she had two scrolls, two potions, an enchanted dagger, and a magic staff in her possession. They decided to take a few extra moments to determine what these things would do, as they might be useful in the coming fight.
Loot:
Scroll of ice storm
Scroll of sending
Potion of cure moderate wounds
Potion of levitate
+2 keen dagger
Staff of healing
Kingmaker #8
[Pathfinder] Kingmaker Campaign Journal #6
Session 58: January 31, 2016
After the heroes returned the people who had been under the Black Sisters' control to Oleg's Fort, the following day they set off for Wyvernstone Bridge with a company of militia. They pushed their horses to get as close as possible to the bridge by the end of the day, then camped in the lee of a rock outcrop. During the night, Landon left his body and had his consciousness occupy one the simulacra he had left behind in Oleg's Fort.
The next morning the group rode cautiously toward the bridge, sending Cyst ahead to scout. The imp saw a small number of people and at least one structure, but no sign of the trolls the refugees from Pitax had warned of, and he detected no magic or evil in the area. Garrick felt oddly drawn to go to the bridge. When the group approached the people around the bridge, they were greeted by a man named Otis Barker, who told them that he and the others were settlers from distant Brevoy. They were unaware of the existence of Galisat or New Hope, for they had written to Restov for help when they saw trolls, though Otis claimed that they had been able to drive the trolls off themselves. When Garrick and Landon told them about the threat of the Tiger barbarians, the troubles in Pitax, and the dangers in the nearby marshlands, they were persuaded to pack up their camp and head for Oleg's Fort. Garrick gave them a letter of introduction to give to Oleg when they arrived. He wondered if these settlers had been drawn to the locale as he had felt.
The group stayed with the settlers for the day, sharing their food, and saw them off the next morning. They also saw off most of their small troop of armsmen, who they sent off to explore some of the territory on the Galisat side of the river. Only two men remained to help with the horses.
After leaving the bridge, the party decided to head for a region where Cyst had detected an unpleasant aura of evil during his reconnaissance the previous day. As they rode along a bend in the river, they heard voices. Thim moved out ahead to find out where the voices came from, and returned to report that he had seen four trolls and a giant. Everyone dismounted and most of the party members activated their rings of flight to approach their foes. Silverleaf began the attack with a fireball from his staff of fire, and Tahjah quickly followed with a holy smite that left two of the trolls temporarily blind. San'Kari then swallowed a potion of enlarge person and charged the giant. Garrick put on a burst of speed and rushed one of the trolls to stun it with blows of his fists. His wife Amaya laid down a path of glory to provide healing.
Three of the trolls and the giant had remained in a tight group, so Silverleaf surrounded them with a wall of fire in a ring shape, trapping them inside it. Tahjah then forbid them to move, leaving them unable to escape the encircling flames. But the spell did not prevent them from attacking, and they continued to battle with San'Kari until he was sorely injured. At that point a creature suddenly emerged from the river and emitted a blight wave that affected not only the heroes but also the trolls and giant. Landon identified the creature as a type of evil aquatic fey called a nuckelavee.
Silverleaf saw that San'Kari was in dire straits and moved forward to channel energy to heal him. San'Kari stepped back and drew his cold iron axe. Tahjah forbid the trolls and giant to attack, leaving them unable to do anything. Landon moved, leaving behind one of the trolls to attack the nuckelavee. The fey creature at that point retreated into the river, swimming away far too swiftly for anyone to catch it. The combination of fire, attacks by Garrick, Landon, and San'Kari, and the nuckalevee's blight wave ability, had dropped the giant. Soon the trolls joined him in death.
When searched, the giant proved to be carrying potions of aid and delay poison, and one of the trolls had a potion of cure moderate wounds and a tattered scroll of bestow curse in its possession. The trolls and the giant had a total of 212 gold pieces between them.
When everyone had recuperated from the fight, the group moved on, heading toward the possible location of Armag's tomb. Cyst had located a group of cloudberries which they harvested on behalf of Bokken the alchemist. Later they found an encampment of boggards that showed clear indications of having been overrun by the trolls and their giant compatriot. The boggards had been slain and some of them had been eaten.
Loot:
potion of aid
potion of delay poison
scroll of bestow curse
212 gold pieces
After the heroes returned the people who had been under the Black Sisters' control to Oleg's Fort, the following day they set off for Wyvernstone Bridge with a company of militia. They pushed their horses to get as close as possible to the bridge by the end of the day, then camped in the lee of a rock outcrop. During the night, Landon left his body and had his consciousness occupy one the simulacra he had left behind in Oleg's Fort.
The next morning the group rode cautiously toward the bridge, sending Cyst ahead to scout. The imp saw a small number of people and at least one structure, but no sign of the trolls the refugees from Pitax had warned of, and he detected no magic or evil in the area. Garrick felt oddly drawn to go to the bridge. When the group approached the people around the bridge, they were greeted by a man named Otis Barker, who told them that he and the others were settlers from distant Brevoy. They were unaware of the existence of Galisat or New Hope, for they had written to Restov for help when they saw trolls, though Otis claimed that they had been able to drive the trolls off themselves. When Garrick and Landon told them about the threat of the Tiger barbarians, the troubles in Pitax, and the dangers in the nearby marshlands, they were persuaded to pack up their camp and head for Oleg's Fort. Garrick gave them a letter of introduction to give to Oleg when they arrived. He wondered if these settlers had been drawn to the locale as he had felt.
The group stayed with the settlers for the day, sharing their food, and saw them off the next morning. They also saw off most of their small troop of armsmen, who they sent off to explore some of the territory on the Galisat side of the river. Only two men remained to help with the horses.
After leaving the bridge, the party decided to head for a region where Cyst had detected an unpleasant aura of evil during his reconnaissance the previous day. As they rode along a bend in the river, they heard voices. Thim moved out ahead to find out where the voices came from, and returned to report that he had seen four trolls and a giant. Everyone dismounted and most of the party members activated their rings of flight to approach their foes. Silverleaf began the attack with a fireball from his staff of fire, and Tahjah quickly followed with a holy smite that left two of the trolls temporarily blind. San'Kari then swallowed a potion of enlarge person and charged the giant. Garrick put on a burst of speed and rushed one of the trolls to stun it with blows of his fists. His wife Amaya laid down a path of glory to provide healing.
Three of the trolls and the giant had remained in a tight group, so Silverleaf surrounded them with a wall of fire in a ring shape, trapping them inside it. Tahjah then forbid them to move, leaving them unable to escape the encircling flames. But the spell did not prevent them from attacking, and they continued to battle with San'Kari until he was sorely injured. At that point a creature suddenly emerged from the river and emitted a blight wave that affected not only the heroes but also the trolls and giant. Landon identified the creature as a type of evil aquatic fey called a nuckelavee.
Silverleaf saw that San'Kari was in dire straits and moved forward to channel energy to heal him. San'Kari stepped back and drew his cold iron axe. Tahjah forbid the trolls and giant to attack, leaving them unable to do anything. Landon moved, leaving behind one of the trolls to attack the nuckelavee. The fey creature at that point retreated into the river, swimming away far too swiftly for anyone to catch it. The combination of fire, attacks by Garrick, Landon, and San'Kari, and the nuckalevee's blight wave ability, had dropped the giant. Soon the trolls joined him in death.
When searched, the giant proved to be carrying potions of aid and delay poison, and one of the trolls had a potion of cure moderate wounds and a tattered scroll of bestow curse in its possession. The trolls and the giant had a total of 212 gold pieces between them.
When everyone had recuperated from the fight, the group moved on, heading toward the possible location of Armag's tomb. Cyst had located a group of cloudberries which they harvested on behalf of Bokken the alchemist. Later they found an encampment of boggards that showed clear indications of having been overrun by the trolls and their giant compatriot. The boggards had been slain and some of them had been eaten.
Loot:
potion of aid
potion of delay poison
scroll of bestow curse
212 gold pieces
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