Fireball is ridiculous. It's 15ish damage to more or less everyone visible in this combat screen. Trolls take a little more since they're vulnerable to fire. It might be overkill for a bunch of ankle-biter enemies, but it might also be nice to clear these out so we have some better mobility in the second part of the fight?
Nope. Trolls use a newly-carved corridor to circle back and destroy our backline.
After a couple more attempts, the best win I can manage is still with most of our fighters unconscious. That's still a win, right?
We get pelted with crossbow fire immediately out of combat. All of our party is either dying or under 1/3 HP.
And a second fight starts, with even more kobolds and some wild boars, which, as the GBC informs me, keep attacking after they become unconscious. It's not even close.
Shit, man. Even if we survive this boar wave, there's a third encounter right after that. I don't think we're in the ballpark of 'having this'.
Clara receives a divine vision and stops the party before they open the door to the throne room. Maybe it's not such a good idea to do this right now? Maybe we turn around and adventure somewhere else for a little bit.
Unfortunately, Fatima leaves us the moment we leave the cave. It's not that she's disappointed in us, but her goal here was just to escape captivity and we've guided her to the exit.
On the boat back to town, the party thinks about what to do. We've still got missions in two areas in Phlan, alongside the yet-unexplored Mendor's Library, so maybe that'll be a good first step.
Mendor's Library is a stately red brick rectangle with a locked front door. Busting in with a Knock from Ondova, we find a foyer, decorated beautifully with various frescoes. I feel like I've been in a building or two like that, probably built in the 60s or so. The cluebook reminds me that there is a standing bounty for texts containing information on Phlan and its history, so it might be a good idea to give this place a clean sweep.
We quickly find the history wing of the library. In here, we find:
- The Grand Historian's Records of the Arts of War, journal entry 21. This mentions a flame-clad general of the Riders named Tyranthraxus, who conquered many kingdoms before burning alive and turning into some kind of malicious flame spirit. He was imprisoned in a vial of water by Baron Schodt and sank in Lake Longreach.
- The History of the North, a royal vanity project, which mentions a yearly tradition of the Riders to go into a place called the Tortured Lands to "praise the spirit of a glowing spring". The vial of water that contains Tyranthraxus is said to shine like the light of day, so this seems like an obvious connection.
- Lex Geographica, an atlas dran by Tomarus. These are maps of Phlan itself, as well as the area around it. You've been seeing the map of Phlan in some of these updates since I assumed it was information already known by the adventuring party.
In the rhetoric section, we run into a basilisk, which, you have to admit, Petrifying Gaze is a pretty strong rhetorical device. Trevorbrimbor gets stoned in the middle of the fight, but we take it out soon after. Thankfully this game's petrification mechanic is much more forgiving than something like Dungeon Encounters, and we can continue exploring the library with Brimmy in our party.
🙄 the books in the philosophical section that our adventurers find interesting are:
- Fyerdetha's Discourses on Power, which has a passage (journal entry 7) which talks about magical pools and provides a theory on why the Pool of Radiance could be changing its location from time to time. This might be one of the first times we see the phrase 'Pool of Radiance' in-world?
- Urgund's Description of Darkness, which talks about Ansem and the exploits of Organization XIII. It also has a list of minor courtiers in some place in the Lower Realms that became servants of Bane. Among these, Tyranthraxus, the Flamed One.
Working further through the library, we eventually find ourselves in the back rooms. We find a bunch of rooms with the funnily-named "3 Sheet of Golds" for treasure, probably used for script illumination by the ancient scribes here. Judging by the fact that these give me 0 exp I assume gilding is a dead art in New Phlan. We also find some kobolds (sigh) that draw a map for us as thanks for sparing them.
We also find a man curled up in one of the scribes' rooms, babbling nonsense, clearly traumatized by some kind of fiendish combat. We take him along, hopefully to leave him in the care of one of the temples in town.
On our way out, we are accosted by the ghost of a librarian - a single spectre. It's not a tactically interesting fight, but what is that spectres can actually drain levels on hit. Albert loses two in the fight. This is pretty bad, but thankfully we have a couple clerical scrolls with Restoration, a 7th level spell that restores one level per use, and Albert is soon back to his usual level 5 self.
Back in town, we drop the mad man off at a temple (the priest actually tells you to drop him from the party, using game mechanics terms) and go drop off some books for our best friend, the City Hall scribe.
She's as happy as ever to see us and hand out commissions. We get roughly 600 exp, which isn't a ton but it's not the real reward of clearing out Mendor's. What we got, in addition to some significant signposting in the direction of Tyranthraxus, are two very cool items: a Cloak of Displacement, one of the few AC-altering items Magic-Users can wear, which brings Margot down to AC0 (Thrigli could also use it but he's a lot more mobile and a lot less squishier than Margot if it came down to our backline getting hit) and the Manual of Bodily Health, which was unceremoniously hidden in between floorboards in one of the scribes' rooms in the library. The Manual lets us increase a single character's CON by 1 if we study it for an entire month, which does not seem super worth it, but apparently you can dupe it and use it multiple times to get everyone up to 20+, at which point a character gets natural HP regeneration. Everyone in our party is in the 12-17 range so we couldn't even really get the regen legitimately with just one manual, and an increase in CON doesn't retroactively increase our HP, so the manual is of negligible use to us. On the other hand, it does sell for 25000 gold, which would get us one more Fine Composite Long Bow...
I'll think about it. And so will you! Think about if one point in constitution will do anything for our intrepid heroes who are, by my guess, roughly halfway towards their peak in this game.
Let's Play Pool of Radiance
The fact that cohost is bringing screenshot let's plays back makes me so happy. This has been such a fun read
