PoR: entry 19 (oh! we were supposed to raze THIS town!)

So it turns out that we were envoys to the settlement a couple of miles west of the buccaneer base. One good slaughter deserves another, sort of like that classic part in Holy Grail where Lancelot just goes on this total killing spree.

The commandant reminds me a lot of the leader of the military school in the first season of Malcolm in the Middle. He's also a little too late nineteenth century German to be in a sword and sorcery type game. Hey, better to paint with broad strokes than with a single fiber (I just made that expression up -- did it make any sense?


Upon entrance into Zhentil Keep, our tour guide gave us a few bits of trivia. First, they've got six barracks of 100 men each. Hmm. That means it's either a stash of playable NPCs, or we're gonna be in a huge fight soon. The second bit of trivia our guide bragged about was that they've even survived a dragon attack. Hey, didn't the only dragon in the game so far actually turn out to be good?

The most open-ended part of the game happened with our dinner conversation with the commandant. We were able to talk about Phlan, magic and politics with changing points in the dialogue based on our responses. Personally, it stressed me out quite a bit, because he adjourns the dinner after too much talking and we weren't able to get every combination of dialogue in. Every last piece of information probably isn't that important, but the knowledge that we may be missing some is plenty annoying. Much of the conversation was just about the Phlan politics we're having a hard time following (who's more corrupt, Eberhard or Braccio?) The whole point of the conversation, though appears to be journal entry 46.


There were a couple of other things worth noting. He mentioned Tyran-somebody again. The name's popped up a few times as a villain. I'm aware that He's a pivotal bad guy, but is Tyr (as in temple of Tyr) a short name for the villain? Is Phlan worshiping the wrong god? Maybe we shouldn't have overturned that temple.


So, after escorting us back to our quarters the game gave us the option to "sleep with a watch." Yeah, all the hundreds of other times we camped out in dungeons and in the wilderness, and now suddenly we get the bright idea to have someone stand guard in the middle of a welcome city? Thanks for the foreshadowing programmers.

Omigosh, we got attacked in the middle of the night! Didn't see that one coming. The fights were sort of frustrating because we thought we had to go to a specific place to "clean house," but the house in the middle of town wouldn't even give us the option to attempt to break the door down. Turns out we had to face the commandant in the eastern outer wall. Chances are, the location was meaningless. We just faced him and his dwarf companion after facing four or five waves of other fighters. As usual, the 'hold person' spell worked swimmingly.

Why in the world did they attack us? Couldn't we get a little bit of exposition? We may be awesome fighters, but we don't know why everybody we meet needs to attack us. Where's the MO? Did the city council try to have us whacked by sending us on this envoy commission?

And why do I always forget to screengrab from all the good battles?