CotAB: Entry 3 (what an interesting smell we've discovered!)

Have you ever been a part of something and you have no idea what's going on? That's how I've felt lately. We haven't had a chance to just hang out in a city in a long long time. First we get enslaved to bonds and try to kill a guy, then we have to maneuver around a bunch of sissy thieves and then we get dumped into some sewers. In the meantime, i have to carry around all these weapons I'm not supposed to use because we can't take them to a shop to get them appraised. Ever since we started this silly adventure our non-linear freedom has gone out the window. We're constantly getting scooted all over the place and we can't keep track of what's going on. We are doing all the dirty work though. I guess that's our role.

Currently our role specifically is to eliminate these Fire Knives. They're a bunch of poseurs. So far none of them have even had any fire or knives. I sure don't know why Tilverton didn't just take care of them themselves. I mean their big hideout is right on the other side of the wall of the city.


Following the Knives into the sewers only led us to something infinitely worse.


I hate making friends with things I don't like to smell. Here's a better view of an otyugh that I was able to research:


We could've skipped that whole wretched ordeal. I don't know why we had to search the sewers in their entirety. Why didn't we just head as far south in the city as we could and then just lift up a manhole?

The trolls in this part of the land have meaner poses. I wonder why they're down here? They're tough enough to live wherever they want.


We found a training hall down here. I still can't believe it cost 1000 gp to train. I mean, a school in the sewers couldn't possibly have that kind of accreditation. Disposo and I both leveled up again which means we were able to pick up some fourth level spells. We went with "confusion" and "ice storm." Ice storm seems like it's exactly like fireball, but it's fourth level, so it's gotta be better, right? Confusion might get us out of some tedious fighting. I can't believe I'm saying that. Most people would probably find my job exciting, but lemme tell you, when you're snuffing life 24/7 it just sort of loses its excitement after a while.

This buff guy didn't join us. Shame, it seems he not only has our same goals, but he also has a friend where we're going who hasn't been back in a while. Well, I guess we can keep an eye out. We'll have to find a cleric with a hammer (is there any other kind of cleric?).


So our crazy hammer friend blazed the trail for us, I guess. Yeah, if he did a better job, though we wouldn't need to fight as much as we are. Also, there are a couple of really cryptic clues about who the new "big boss" is. Some guy who can possess people and things and is all fiery. Crappit, if only the note that said his name wasn't cut off! I haven't been this frustrated since our epic battle with Tyranthraxus!

So we went hiking around the sewers some more. Here's a map we put together:


We found this one guy in this room with... a hammer. But he didn't join up with us either! Isn't it obvious who's on whose side? Give a little love NPCs!

Alright, so anyway -- end of the sewers: big battle. These S.O.B.s sucked. It's not that they were all that tough, but there were so many of them that every turn all of us in the party seemed to take damage. The loss of hit points was secondary to the inability to cast spells due to getting hit. Extremely frustrating when it shouldn't have been so. We saved some chick and some guy we, I guess, tried to kill earlier. So I guess karmicly speaking, we broke even. That chick, though, Princess Nacacia, is pretty cool for a chick. She leveled the leader before the fight started, got rid of one of our cursed tattoos and then vouched for us later. It would have been cool if she had joined us, but I guess she's too good for us.


Sheesh! What a long, long day though! I really miss the days where we could just head back to the inn whenever we wanted.

Had some weird freaky dream. I love interpreting dreams! I think dreams are vague on purpose so that our minds can figure them out and interpret this one. I think this dream represents some sort of transition, a change. Change is good. Sometimes we need to force ourselves to tell ourselves that every so often.

CotAB: Entry 2

Hi there! My name is Disposo and I've been assigned this part of our little story. Lots and lots has happened. It actually happened like a week and a bit ago, but this writing thing is new and intimidating to me.

Anyway one great thing about our new adventure is that like half of us (including me) moved up a level right off the bat! I'm now a level-7 magic-user. That's like this close to a black belt. I even got to pick a new spell to learn. I really wish we could try out a few spells before we commit to them. I went ahead and learned the "charm monsters" spell, which I hope will come in handy. What if I accidentally picked "bestow curse"? That would verge on useless, I think.


The chicks in this town sure are ugly. I wonder if the guys will look any better.


The town temple didn't do much in removing our hideous tattoos. He sure seemed cock-sure. I wonder if the priest knows he totally mispronounces "god."


The sage was at least half-useful. She got some sources on some of these markings. Still don't have a motive, though. Honestly, I don't know how all these separate bands could possibly organize themselves enough to get all these working markings on us. If they have that kind of power over time and space they probably wouldn't still be five different groups and they'd also be the complete rulers of time and space.


Okay, so what happened next is kind of understandably blurry. Some hoidy-toidy carriage came through town and we all attacked it for no reason. Hey, can't blame us though! The bonds made us do it! Like I said, whoever's responsible must be in complete command of time and space.


For some reason the thieves came and led us to their hideout. I guess that's why Derfindor is on the employ. He certainly has no other specific job qualifications besides his "thief ID card." Whilst cavorting with the thieves we got into some fights with that weird group called "Fire Hand" i think. Weirdos.


The "Fire Hand" killed our kind benefactor, the guildmaster. Fortunately on his body we found a map of (we think) where they're coming from. Unfortunately it looks like the guildmaster didn't know how to work the settings on the thieves' office copy machine.


Well, hopefully we can read it well enough before we enter the door to the sewers, 'cuz that's where we are right now.

Will report again if we survive the sewers (and after we all shower up).

Curse of the Azure Bonds: Entry 1 (first impressions)

Hey, it's Chlorine here. I'm that religious chick from all those previous Phlan-related adventure nonsense. Before I get into our adventures in Tilverton, I just have to say really quick what we did before arriving here. Just for fun, we went back to the big castle in Phlan and guess what? Tyranthraxus was still there, just kinda hanging out. What's up with that? We killed him again.

Apparently after slaying the world's most malevolent creature we simply got mugged on the way here. It was dark. I have an excuse. I don't know what excuses Derfindor, Disposo and Pilgrim have. They supposedly have "infravision" -- some kind of weird ability to see in the dark. If you ask me, it's just something those other races made up so they wouldn't feel so bad about not being human.

We had a lot of really awesome stuff! How many months did we lug around all those restoration scrolls that we couldn't cast, because we couldn't level up enough? A lot. The sweet rings alone could've fed us for years.

Now we're here. We all have these freaky moving tattoos on our sword arms. Already this is way more riveting than our last adventure, but I already have a really big protest. These tattoos are on our sword arms? I'm a freaking cleric! That means I don't have a sword arm. I don't believe in sword arms. Why is my sword arm affected when it doesn't even exist? And, yes, I know that in my picture I'm holding a sword, but that was just posing for for the picture!

So this is the first vision we woke up to:


Looks like the women in this part of the land are slightly looser than they are in good 'ol Phlan. I may need to up the ante on my own loose behavior if I want to keep my rep.


The guy next to us in our inn room seems to have a few problems. Perhaps he's already adventured through half of this "azure bonds" mumbo-jumbo already.


After seeing my first man in these parts, I'm suddenly not too worried about being promiscuous enough. No doubt it won't take much to impress this sloppy ilk.


Sooo... do all the guys look like this then? After seeing my second man, I think I'm considering switching to girls. That one back at the inn seems nice...

PoR/CotAB interlude

Hello. We're in the process of making some changes here at Blogging Forgotten Realms. Some of you may notice that the title bar and description module are changed from first-person singular to first-people plural (if that's the way to say it). Also, notice that the list of contributors consists of the ending player characters from Pool of Radiance. Now, the player characters will be writing the majority of posts. Feel free to treat them as the individuals that they are.

So, we're now on the verge of beginning Curse of the Azure Bonds. I'm super excited since this is specifically the game that I remember my friends playing when I was younger. It took a good while, but thanks to Simeon, I was able to immediately get a working copy. I downloaded a mediocre version of the manual and Adventurer's Journal. It's from the-underdogs.info. It's data-entried instead of scanned so reading some of the maps may be a problem. It took forever but transferring characters from Pool is finally working. Turns out I needed to remove all my characters from all the other Pool savegames in order to allow Azure to accept them.

Here we go.