Two weeks later, we're back! Hey everyone! It's a good thing I didn't take a break right in the middle of anything important happening. In case you've forgotten, we've been sent by councilman Cadorna on a diplomatic mission to Zhentil Keep. Upon arriving, we were introduced to the commandant, given a very brief tour of the military-focus settlement and essentially locked into our chambers for the night, which is a normal thing to do with diplomatic envoys. We are now twiddling our thumbs until the big dinner date with the commandant and his boys.
All we can choose to do right now is relax, which will skip time until the dinner, or walk around, which allows us to annoy the guards a little. There's no reason to do that, so we just wait it out.
The game never describes any meals in Phlan and by this one I am gathering that that kind of discussion is not in the writers' wheelhouse anyway, but I assume breaking out the roasted boar and red wine is pretty fancy food in this region. Those boars get up once after getting KO'd, I can't imagine how hard it is to roast one.
At this point, we get to engage in a little dinner conversation with the commandant. I'll try and summarize in text:
The commandant turns to one of the characters and says, 'So, how's everything in Phlan?' What will you talk about?
Nothing | City | Magic | Politics
One of the commandant's advisors asks you if you've heard of any unique magical items or places?
Don't talk | Lie | Mention Pool of Radiance
Fuck it, what's the worst that could happen? The Zhentarim find out about a mythical pool that teleports around the Moonsea? Psh.
As you mention the Pool of Radiance the commandant tells you a story about that very pool. You enjoy the story and copy it into your journal under entry 46.
Here's the story from the journal, by the way. I'm increasingly thankful they updated the PDFs with this collection to be copy-pasteable:
Told as jaunty, after dinner conversation.
“This is an old story that I first heard while serving at the Citadel of The Raven. Dirg was the usual barbarian hero -- the type able to snap five men’s backs with his bare hands, wrestle and tame the cloud horses, pierce a man with a javelin from many miles away, and other equally preposterous things.
“The story goes that Dirg and his band of men found a pool of unfrozen water while wandering in the snowy wastes. Dirg’s little pet lizard Jezma got too close to the pool and discovered that not only was the water not frozen, it was boiling hot; so hot that it cooked the skin right off of Jezma.
“Dirg was so angered he thrust his spear into the pool and roiled the waters. The demon of fire that inhabited the pool was disturbed and roared out of the pool to do battle. The demon leapt from man to man, consuming them in a single touch.
“But the demon of fire could not defeat Dirg. Neither could Dirg find a weapon strong enough to withstand the creature’s fire. After battling for an entire day, Dirg finally called upon his totem god for aid. With this magical aid, Dirg was able to trap the flaming demon in a triangle of power where supposedly he is even to this day.”
Compelling stuff. This is one of those classic 'information-coaxing' style dinners, and even if all we got was a barbarian folk tale, we also didn't reveal anything new to the Zhentarim and did not annoy them in the process. +1 diplomacy score!
You continue your conversation with the commandant. What will be your next topic of discussion?
Nothing | City | Magic | Politics
Next, we bring up Old Phlan.
As you talk about Old Phlan's inhabitants the commandant says 'I know a legend about a fire being called Tirantikus. I believe, that Tirantikus and Tyranthraxus are one and the same'.
A mythical fire being? A pool so hot it burned Jerma's skin off? Surely this cannot be a coincidence.
You continue to talk about Old Phlan and the commandant says 'Is New Phlan having any trouble with Tyranthraxus?'
Don't Talk | Trouble | No Trouble
Uhh... I don't know, maybe? I think he lives right next to New Phlan but considering all the things we're learning about him it could be worse. I'm not sure...
The commandant says 'I expect there would be trouble; I've heard Tyranthraxus is a powerful fire demon. Your city's defences must be quite strong, how strong are they?'
Don't Talk | Strong | Average | Weak
Hey man just hypothetically speaking if I stabbed you in the back, how much armour are you wearing right now? 'Strong' feels like an easily-called bluff and I'm not sure why we would admit that our defenses are extremely weak, so we just tell him New Phlan has a normal amount of defences with an average amount of guards and walls as you would expect for a regular city.
You tell the commandant that New Phlan's forces are capable. He looks at youy and says, 'I hope, for your sake, that your city's forces can defend themselves from Tyranthraxus's horde.
On the third round of conversation I choose to bring up nothing hoping the Zhentarim will supply their own topics. Instead the conversation just dies, we finish our meal in silence, and are taken back to our quarters. Awesome!
Back in our quarters, we are given the option to either just go to sleep or go to sleep with a watch. I think this is the first time the game explicitly asks us if we want to have a lookout while sleeping, which is a really funny way to show your hand.
I guess they didn't care for the conversation.
4 aides, 18HP, 18THAC0, 1d8+1 damage per round. Nothing too bad for our seasoned party. After that, a second wave - 6 aides and 5 corporals (weaker than aides). Whatever information Cadorna must've supplied about us must be wildly out of date. Don't they have like 600 guys garrisoned here?
As we finish fending off the ambush, we hear an alarm going off in the distance. Whoops. Making our escape out of Zhentil Keep, we start running into some of those 600 guys. Fortunately most of them are just 'guards', which are kobold-tier enemies with 4 HP.
Stopping at nothing, the Zhentarim even lay a banana peel on the floor. I try to head to the commandant's quarters to ask him if it was something I said, but the inner keep seems to be completely locked off. All that's really left to do is escape the keep with our hides intact, which isn't too hard. The 'difficulty' in this part comes from the fact that the encounters grow in frequency and number of enemies, which would be more of a problem if it wasn't another kobold hordes situation.
Somehow, the front gate is the one completely unguarded spot in the entire keep, and we manage to slip out.
Uh huh. I'm sure he was 🙄 Listen, I th-
The clerk speaks. 'Porphyrys Cadorna is a traitor to the city. If you find him, kill him.'
Whoah! Intense! The clerk also says us Lord Urslingen, who now resides in 'the traitor Cadorna's old quarters', wishes urgently to speak with us. We oblige.
Looks like we've done enough questing for the game to finally push us in the direction of assaulting Valjevo Castle, the key to truly claiming back Phlan. In predictable RPG fashion, the only way Urslingen can do this is with the help of a small yet highly capable assault force. Something like - just ballparking here - six-ish people?
I'll be honest, I have no real idea what's waiting for us in Valjevo or Stojanow Gate, but the fact that we got the "did enough quests" flag for this from two relatively painless missions makes me wonder if we actually are capable of taking on either of those zones right now - the difficulty scaling in this game has been all over the place so far. So I think next time we won't rush out just yet - we still have a dragon to see, and a whole graveyard to clean up!