The Lighthouse and Other Adventures in the Southwest

We're still down in the south, far away from any civilization.  After we took care of that little problem in Nashkel, we almost immediately hit the wilderness.  Right now, my ragtag group has been kicking around between Nashkel to the east, the Sea of Swords to the west, the Cloudpeaks and Amn to the south, and High Hedge to the north.  Like I said last post, it's probably been almost a month since the last time we even stayed at an inn.  We've heard a little of the political talk involving Baldur's Gate and Amn, but nothing that seems relevant to our day-to-day tasks.  We don't even really know how our escapade in the mines affected the iron shortage situation.

That being said, we are becoming full-fledged adventurers, even though we're just wandering around in the wilderness more or less; I guess this is our occupation, now.  That doomsayer battle was something of a coming-of-age.  Soon after it, we headed northwest to the lighthouse area.  In almost no time, we ran into Sil and about seven other sirens on the beach over the course of two or three confrontations.  I won't lie; these were some sloppy battles.  Either Confusion or Dire Charm kept being cast on Idaen or Khalid, which put the weaker members of the party in lethal risk.  Luckily, we managed to clear the coast without losing any group members.  This happened with a strategy revolving around Xzar casting Web, Idaen and Jaheira casting buff spells and Doom, Imoen's stash of fire arrows, and a monster summoning or two.  It wasn't pretty, but it somehow worked.  Unforunately, while Idaen was confused, he wandered into a woman named Safana in the wilderness and smacked her with his flail +1 before any of us could talk to her...she became hostile and our only option was to kill her (there goes another NPC...).

Next was a cave full of flesh golems.  I knew we couldn't handle it after one of them took half of Khalid's life in one hit, then immediately followed it up with another hit for half of Idaen's life.  We fled out of the cave and kept running until we lost the hideous thing somewhere outside.  (To be honest, my PC kept dying after a few attempts at the cave, so I decided it wasn't worth it...of course reloads can't be a part of this blog's wonderfully consistent narrative.)  I'm going to head back to that cave at some point in the future, if I don't forget...I'm sure there's some worthwhile treasure in there.

We took care of the rest of the area, including rescuing a woman's son from a pack of worgs and running into a palm-reader that had a bizarre reaction after reading Idaen's palm.  A large armored figure had tried to abduct him, he's well-known among outlaw bounty hunters, and now this woman saw something horrifying in his past.  It's becoming readily apparent there is something unique and frightening about him, but he and the rest of the party don't know what it is...this is almost more of a reason to stay out in the wilderness, but sooner or later we will have to head back up north to face these questions head-on.  But not yet.

So I decided we would head to the the gnoll fortress in the far southwest.  I believe we can handle it now, and we will be doing a service for the entire Sword Coast by ridding the place of those vermin.  We returned to Nashkel one more time to sell some jewels and restock on ammo...in and out in the middle of the night.  We battled several small groups of ogres, ogre berserkers and the like, but eventually wound up on the one rickety bridge into the stronghold.  Cleared out the ridges and caves to the south, and prepared ourselves to storm the place...

That's where I'm at now....during this whole time, I've been thinking about my party, and my general dissatisfaction with it.  Khalid has been doing alright, and has the most HP of the group with 41, but he seems to take a lot of damage, and frankly I just really don't care for his attitude or personality.  Okay, so he's a coward who's scared to do anything?  Awesome, great character.  And Jaheira's doing alright too, but if she were to go, what would I really be missing? A few heal spells, a sling, and a club?  Pfft.  Idaen could carry that load.  And I don't like her much, either, with her holier-than-thou attitude about nature.  She hates cities, mines, Xzar and Montaron, everything.  Hey, I'm half-ranger too...can we take it down a notch?

Montaron is at a pitiful 20hp.  I finally took him off tank duty when I got a long bow for him, and he's been getting more skilled at hiding in shadows, moving silently, and detecting traps.  Imoen has been focusing on opening locks and detecting illusions.  So without another thief, I really need to keep Montaron around...which is fine.  Once he gets one more + in long bows, he'll be incredibly valuable.  Xzar, on the other hand, is driving me crazy.  He fails to copy almost every scroll we find...he's been relying on Color Spray and Larloch's Minor Drain almost exclusively, which translates into staying behind and throwing darts almost every enemy encounter.  However, Xzar goes hand-in-hand with Montaron, so I guess I need to stick with him for the present.  He recently learned Burning Hands and Chromatic Orb, so that could begin to make a difference.

But I'm thinking about dualing Imoen to a mage for all of these reasons, once she hits level 6.  As long as Monty's around, her thief skills can be out of a commission for a little while...and I would love to have a 2nd mage around to complement (supplement?) the mad necromancer.  She's at about 15 or 16k, so this decision will have to made soon...

Aaaannyways...I may get another post out by the end of the weekend about the gnoll stronghold.  Here's my paty now:

Idaen, lvl 4 cleric/lvl 4 ranger
Khalid, lvl 4 fighter
Jaheira, lvl 4 fighter/lvl 4 druid
Montaron, lvl 3 fighter/lvl 4 thief
Imoen, lvl 5 thief
Xzar, lvl 4 necromancer