Let's Read and also Play Baldur's Gate: Bhaal must be stopped!

[Khay]

Not collecting the free Ankheg armour this playthrough then?

Ehh, maybe. I'm not picking up most of the hidden "free" items since that always felt a little cheesy. I haven't yet decided how closely I'll follow the books in terms of party choice, but if I do end up replicating the book-canon party, I'll... probably need some cheese.

Reading this kind of makes me want to play the game again. Which is probably a bad idea, because my backlog is so big right now.

Yes I continue to read your journal and have decided to replay the game - though in the Enhanced Edition. So I got to make a CN Half-Orc Berserker that I made into a combat monster while staying very charismatic (what good is a divine heritage when you lack even demihuman power?).

Haha, Baldur's Gate is one of those games people keep going back to. The first one especially has so much hidden weirdness going on, there's always something new to discover. (I'd recommend the Enhanced Edition, though, since BG I is really showing its age.)

Reading all your posts with interest! I never got to read the novels, and I'm happy to see how lucky I've been

Oh, the worst parts are still ahead of us, trust me. The book rapidly goes downhill around the halfway point... and given where it started out, that's really saying something.

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On to today's update! This one really makes me wonder if Abdel might secretly be the son of the god of luck rather than murder.

Spoiler: The book

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Jaheira has run off into the depths of the mine, unbothered by the darkness thanks to her keen (half-)elven senses. Abdel and Montaron are trying to chase her, becoming hopelessly lost in the process. They stop to catch their breath, and Abdel smells something halfway between wet dog and wet leather. That can only mean one thing:

Montaron looked up, nodded, and peered into the darkness. (...) “Kobolds,” the halfling whispered.

Kobolds are always good for some comic relief in D&D novels, and Athans delivers.

One was obviously standing guard but wasn’t the first to see Abdel come around the corner. Abdel made eye contact with the one who was standing next to a small iron cart. The third kobold was standing on this one’s shoulders and was pouring something over the load of ore stacked in a jumble in the cart. The kobold on the bottom yelped — a rich, city-woman’s small dog’s yelp — and its knees buckled a little in fright or in the beginning of an attempt to run. The guard spun but not at Abdel. Instead the fool looked at its partner, who yelped again when Abdel cut the guard’s head off. (...) “Filthy beasts, eh kid?” Montaron commented, kicking the severed kobold head lightly[.] (...) Kobolds were tiny, doglike humanoids with proportionally huge, long-fingered hands, long, curved, pointed ears like a bat’s, and short, pointed horns like a lizard’s. Their wrinkled skin seemed orange in the torchlight but was probably brown.

Abdel kills Larry and Curly but lets Moe get away. Montaron finds a broken bottle by the freshly contaminated ore and concludes that, well, maybe it was kobolds. Abdel considers it unlikely that the kobolds would be doing something like this on their own initiative, speculating that someone's probably paying them to do this. Montaron suggests Amn, and Abdel counters that it might be Baldur's Gate.

Proving that the smart decision noted above was a fluke, Abdel spots another kobold and runs after it.

There was a poodle yelp, and the thing turned and ran. Abdel didn’t hesitate this time but was off like a shot. He tried to track the kobold by sound mostly and seemed to do well. (...) Abdel had to assume that Montaron had been able to keep up and was becoming worried that he wouldn’t be able to retrace his steps back to the mine cart without the halfling.

Montaron is, of course, not keeping up.

This is such an obviously horrible idea, I wonder how Abdel survived working as a mercenary until now. I mean, come on. You're chasing a kobold through a twisty maze of dark tunnels that is the kobold's home territory. Abdel runs into a richly deserved ambush, but it turns out alright.

The kobolds came at him from all sides, bursting into the tight radius of his torchlight from the impenetrable darkness beyond. (...) Occasionally one would get in a lucky cut. (...) Abdel took maybe a dozen little wounds, none of any consequence, and killed as many kobolds before the few that still lived exhausted their meager supply of courage and slipped back out of Abdel’s torchlight.

Just shoot or throw things at him, you idiots, he can't see anything beyond the radius of- oh for Kurtulmak's sake...

The odds don't favour Abdel, but let's not get into that here. No, let's get into that in the commentary section below.

Once the kobolds are gone, Abdel becomes aware of a voice in the distance. It's too faint for him to make out any words, but he recognises the voice as belonging to Jaheira. Abdel, who has no experience navigating tunnels, runs off in a direction that seems likely. Once again, the inevitable happens:

He rushed to the side and screamed, “Jaheira!” so loudly that the echoes masked the sound of the half a dozen kobolds who rushed him from behind.
The things were no bigger than three feet tall, well under half Abdel’s height, and he certainly outweighed each by five or six times, but the six of them together were enough to push him forward that fraction of an inch that made falling into the pit impossible to avoid.

Using the same word twice in one sentence. I guess the editor didn't have the time (inclination? ability?) to do a proper job either. Anyway, The fall knocks the wind out of Abdel but fails to break his neck. He fumbles with his torch as the kobolds fail to take shots at him, and, once he gets it relit, discovers the pit to have been a dungeon skip.

When the torch finally caught Abdel saw that he was in an even larger chamber than the one above, and he was not alone.
The smell of the man hit him at the same moment Abdel saw him, and the sellsword nearly gagged. The man was rushing at him with a club fashioned from a heavy tree branch. The attacker’s face was not entirely human and had the tell tale snoutlike nose and the nubs of tusks of a half-orc.

It's Mulahey! Abdel slashes at the half-orc, fully expecing that to end the fight, but Mulahey parries with his club.

The look in his porcine eyes was one of mute terror. The sight of it made Abdel pause and ask, “Who are you?”
“I’m who Tazok sent you to kill!” the half-orc blurted. “You found Mulahey all right!”
The sound of the man’s voice made Abdel really want to kill him.

Aaaand that's all the reason Abdel needs! Mulahey barks (literally) some orders at the kobolds and Abdel starts swording at him.

Mulahey was speaking, but Abdel didn’t hear him. He was killing the half-orc and whatever the smelly, evil thug had to say just didn’t figure into it. Abdel did notice the sound and the smell of Mulahey wetting his roughspun trousers.

Yes, this was neccessary. Anyway, Mulahey dies and the chapter ends.

Spoiler: The game

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We enter level two of the mines and things get real.


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Never fear!

As soon as dialogue ends, a group of kobolds with bows spawns (regardless of what you say) and attacks poor Beldin.


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Intrestingly, Beldin's death is not actually scripted. If the kobolds miss on their attack rolls and you attack them quickly enough, Beldin escapes. You never see him again, but saving his life is still a feel-good moment.


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Sadly, not everyone was this lucky. For some reason, the corpses use the standard "villager" NPC model whereas the living miners all use the "beggar" one. I never understood this.


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The kobolds are usually placed such that they get two or three shots in before our melee fighters can reach them. Even at a THAC0 of 20 there's a good chance they'll get a hit in, and low-level characters are essentially made of tissue paper. Often there's a second group just in sight of the first one so you end up with running battles. It's not too hard, but the difficulty is certainly sloping upwards.


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We return Kylee's dagger to him and learn a little more about the situation. Apparently things get worse the further down you go. CHARNAME notes this isn't usual kobold behavior. Hmm.

It's a little odd that neither Emerson nor the mayor seem to know about the kobold problem - or at least they don't tell you. I don't think there's any reason for this.


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As you can see, the mines are pretty maze-like. I somehow manage to go down every tunnel but the correct one in the bottom right.


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Let's just rest up real quick before we go on.


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That's Joseph's Greenstone Ring on the ground there, part of a quest we, err, kind of missed. Oops. Oh well.


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The third level of the mine is the first time in the game we're really encountering traps, and they're not messing around. We're lucky Jaheira survived that one. Let's... scout ahead with Montaron, shall we.


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Oops.


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There, that's better. I'm leaving in that particular bit of failure because it illustrates nicely what happens when you get careless in the mines. Kobolds are weak individually, but there's a lot of them.

Anyway, the third level has essentially been given up, so it's mostly traps and combat.


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This bridge splits the level in two parts. We enter from the north and are trying to make our way to the south. Not only are there two traps on the bridge, but there's also a mob of enemies with ranged weapons beyond. In at least some versions of the game, these are multi-trigger traps. On your first playthrough, you'll send your party to attack the kobolds, hear about fifty "trap triggered" sounds, panic, send them back, and hear another fifty "trap triggered" sounds.

Kobolds are jerks.


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The area south of the bridge looks more like a natural cave system than a mine. There are some non-kobold enemies lurking here, notably spiders and ghouls. Be careful around those, the paralysis attack can really ruin your day.


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Pictured: Jaheira's day being ruined. (Don't worry, she got out okay.)


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This is also where we first encounter kobold commandos. They're stronger and tougher than regular kobolds, and also carry arrows of fire, making them well capable of killing a level 2 character with one shot.


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We make it through after taking some significant damage. Also, Xzar is in melee in some of these screenshots and I cannot for the life of me figure out the reason why. I think he ran out of sling ammo?


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Fun fact: due to the way these traps are set up, if you have your rogue approach from the side, the first trap will be triggered and deal enough damage to reduce them to chunky salsa.

I think we were supposed to pick up a vial of ore weakener on this level of the mines, but somehow I didn't end up with one. In vanilla BG, they're essentially flavour items that, ironically, look like vials of antidote.

This brings us to the fourth level. It's essentially just a big open chamber with a rock house in the middle. That makes it much smaller than the first three levels...


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... but no less horrible.


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Once again: If you're doing an Ironman run, kobold commandos are horrible.

We (somehow) make it past without casualties and enter the mini-cave.


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Thankfully, the only kobolds inside are the regular 7 EXP kind. We clear these out without trouble.


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As soon as you step into the lavish room in the bottom right, Mulahey initiates dialogue. Or rather, he walks towards you. You should use that time to get in position, either in the room above Mulahey's or in Mulahey's room.


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Mulahey isn't in the mood to talk. (I'm pretty sure it doesn't actually matter what you say here.)


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Mulahey is somewhat dangerous (being a Cleric with access to things like Hold Person) but not too dangerous. The tough boss fights are yet to come.


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His big thing is that he summons minions (skeletons and kobolds) but unless you stand in the throne room's entrance like a fool, they probably won't affect the fight. Here we are cleaning them up after defeating Mulahey himself.


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All that's left to do is clean out his throne room, free any prisoners he may have taken and figure out who this "Tazok" is... but we'll leave that for the next update.

Spoiler: Comparison and commentary

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So, I mentioned before that the narrative bends over backwards to make things easier on Abdel. This chapter provides an excellent example: Abdel does nothing but running down tunnels essentially at random as space and time warp to ensure he reaches his destination.

Abdel, who can't see anything and has no experience navigating tunnels, tries to chase after Jaheira and stops only when he's completely out of breath... which, coincidentally, happens to be in exactly the right spot to catch a group of ore poisoners in the act (they somehow didn't hear him coming.) Somehow, their little slapstick comedy act gives Jaheira enough time to be captured, subdued, transported to Mulahey and start yelling for help. (Strong! Female! Character!)

Our valiant hero (who has no experience navigating tunnels of any sort) chases a kobold through unknown territory, in the dark, while leaving the rest of his party behind, but the inevitable ambush somehow fails to wound him. Taking the lesson to heart, he does the exact same thing again, and that time the ambush just so happens to actually lead to a dungeon skip. During his fight with Mulahey, Abdel outright refuses to process anything the guy is saying, without even stopping to wonder who "Tazok" may be. If Mulahey didn't keep his letters around, the plot would just end then and there. This is much less forgivable than not keeping one of the mercenaries from Chapter 1 alive - Abdel has no reason to be emotionally upset and Mulahey is enough of a coward that he can probably be intimidated into surrendering.

In short: Abdel discovers the kobold-based iron poisoning plot and blunders into the person in charge through no real effort of his own. It's all pure dumb luck. This isn't a big writing sin if it happens occasionally - a lot of stories rely on lucky happenstance to work. Mulahey keeping his letters around is something that happens in the game as well. The problem is more with the sheer density of contrived coincidences working out in Abdel's favour.

This looks especially bad because the mines require a careful and methodical approach in the game. It's nothing but twisty passages full of traps and murder lizards. It's not the most difficult dungeon in the game, but let me just put it this way: If you're doing an Iron Man run (i. e. no reloading if a character dies), you want to do a few sidequests first.

Also, just throwing it out there: The novel isn't constrained by a need for gameplay (i. e. combat encounters). One of the letters we'll see next chapter chews out Mulahey for letting the kobolds kill miners, as that's what caused Nashkel to bring in mercenaries. It might've been cool if the kobolds really had been kept to a strictly nonlethal approach in the novel, so there'd be no reason for anyone to suspect foul play... except of course for Gorion, Khalid/Jaheira and Xzar/Montaron, due to their respective secret agendas. Abdel's group would've had to do a real investigation, something that goes beyond just following a trail of bodies. Throw in something about Abdel having a sixth sense for poison and toxins thanks to his divine heritage and you've got a stew going. Alas.

It's sections like this that make Abdel feel like a deconstruction of an RPG protagonist. Abdel pretty much just does whatever he wants, as if he knows he has plot armour. He doesn't listen to exposition since he know it'll be repeated later, and he kills without hesistation as though he can see whether NPCs are flagged as essential or not. Also, note that Abdel's enemies always happen to be ugly and stinky so we know it's okay for him to kill them.

In fact, I keep feeling there's something of a meta-story here. Imagine this is a pen-and-paper campaign with a dysfunctional group of players. Think about it - it explains everything. The inconsistent characterisation is clearly because of inexperienced players. The narrative twists and shifts whenever Abdel blunders straight past a plot hook because the GM has to make things work somehow. Whenever a player leaves, their character is unceremoniously killed off (uh, spoiler alert), with the exception of Jaheira, who was kept as an NPC because the group would otherwise be without a healer. She never does anything because the GM doesn't want to overshadow their players. We're seeing things from the perspective of Abdel's player, and the only reason the plot seems to revolve around him is because he's tuning out the sweet side stories everyone else gets. See? Perfectly sensible.

I've definitely met players like Abdel. Wannabe munchkins who are uninterested in anything except for combat but without much rules knowledge, so unless you feed the group a constant stream of easy encounters, they become upset and spoil the mood for everyone. They really add nothing to the group but you can't kick them out because they're friends with someone else.

Yes, I'm still bitter about high school.

Anyway, this'll conclude today's update. Next time, we'll meet Xan, who resembles his game counterpart so little I wonder what the point of even including him was.

(Also, this is neither here nor there, but Mulahey is a cleric in the game but shows no signs of having access to divine magic here. So that's another data point for this weird pattern of depowering magic users.)