CotAB: Entry 8 (a fighter's fall from the faith)

So I'm in charge of letting the public know about the BIG news! If you'd direct your attention to the left side of our blog layout, you'll notice that through some sort of wizardry I don't understand, we've added a live Ustream link! What this means is that at specialized times throughout the week, you -- the blog reader, can actually watch us as we conquer the Curse of the Azure Bonds (and whatever adventures come after that). Simply click on the viewscreen underneath where it says "watch us play live!" Or, if you'd rather, direct your browser to http://www.ustream.tv/channel/blogging-forgotten-realms. Of course, we do need to be playing, I mean adventuring, at the exact time you attempt to view us. We actually rest a lot during the week. I'd say we really only "adventure" for maybe a couple of hours a week. Anyway, good luck.

Moving on!

Whilst backtracking, the weirdo at the Standing Stones mentioned something about something green in the northwest.


This led us right back into Shadowdale. Something we didn't know about the town until now is that it has a weird set of caverns similar (pretty much identical) to the ones at Essembra. What gives with these Dalelands towns? What made these people decide to build all their towns right next to a series of caverns crawling with dark elves? I would think that an adequate water source would be a better priority.

Anyway, even more weird is that we met up with that same party of adventurers from the last set of caves! At first we were intimidated, but I think we now realize that they're simply incompetent. They keep rushing from town cavern to town cavern, but they never seem to clean them out! It's like they just want to beat us to the destination and not the objective. They must have delusions of The Amazing Race.


Here's the non-interesting first level. Note that in this convenient version I jotted down the directions and number of steps that lead directly to the second level.


The more interesting second level had a whiny guy complaining about some captured chick.


Here's another awesomely crafted map. Notice my directions directly to the chick in trouble. I also provided supplementary directions to the next level and to guy who told us about the chick. It's actually weird, now that I look at the map. We must have walked right past the captured girl and her captors to go the the long way 'round to where the dude was. The guy who told us about the girl was far more out of the way than the girl herself.


A lovely maiden is being menaced by dragons? And you need to ask me if I want to save her? That's the exact scenario I envisioned when I first decided I wanted to become an adventurer! The question, really, is quite rhetorical.

I don't usually get pumped about the magical stuff, but we did pretty awesome magic work on the dragons. Disposo cast a "hold monster' spell on the dragon in the front. Since it was so big, the other dragon couldn't get out from behind it and then us fighters took potshots until it died. Then we mercy killed the one in front. Dragons are majestic creatures. They deserve mercy killings (and potshot killings too, I guess).


Demurely? I just looked that one up. It's not nearly as sexual a word as I was hoping it might be.


The fact that we simply teleported back to town really takes for granted all the hard work I put into map making.

What's the deal with this guy who gave us the reward? Is he the same guy who "expired" in the cavern, because it's more than a spitting image. Anyway, he (Father? Handsy uncle, maybe?) gave us 4000 platinum pieces for bringing the chick back. A very tidy sum. He probably assumed that we'd say "our reward is that justice is done!" and then be off. The money's nice, though. We took it. It's enough to resurrect three people. It sure came in handy when we took it to the temple to revive the three of us who actually did die down there.


Why were we carrying around a robe of powerlessness for so long? That's just trouble waiting to happen. Of course a better question would be what type of person would be willing to pay 500 gold pieces for a robe of powerlessness?


I really don't know if this elfin chain mail is that important. All I know is that I'm pretty sure most of us wear medium or large sized tunics. I doubt any of us can fit into "elfin."


After our little break back in the town we opted to head back into the caverns. We're like totally addicted! It would probably be a good idea to continue getting rid of our bonds, but the caverns just need to be spelunked! Anyways, on the third level we found a couple more "burly" dark elves. They're tough (108HP, -7AC!), but once again our magic-users simply disabled them with hold spells. Maybe I should've studied magic.