I Which We Make Jaw Droppingly Terrible Disguises

I had an opportunity, in the plaza, to disguise my party as monsters.

We chose, MaGuyverlike, to tape cotton balls and bits of pig skin to our faces and pretend we were Kogorcs.

We then entered a shrine and the orc cleric wanted to hire us to go another shrine.

Are- are we supposed to disembowel them? We are good at that.

We had to come back in 2 hours, but when we came back our disguises slipped and a knock down battle ensued. Well, they got knocked down- a necklace of fireballs will put a cramp in anyone's style I aim it at. So now that bit of RP is gone- I'll have to see how this happens now. I left, fixed our disguises, and we're trying the old "pretend we are monsters" trick again. We'll see how that works out :)

At first I was pissed, then I remembered that this reaction was a good one.

One of our commissions was to find out what was going down with an auction- find out what thing was being sold, find out who buys it. How they got word of this is weird- who makes a rumour like that? Not the sort of thing I would want to get out if I had a powerful item and were trying to sell it. But then I'm not being paid to think- I'm being paid to hit nonhuman humanoids with misshapen chunks of sharp metal until the bodily damage causes them to expire.

Infinite recursion.

I did get to see the actual auction go down. The "powerful weapon" appeared to be a wand of illumination and the orc sold it because he can see in the dark. It was a mysterious man in black who bought it, and he quickly shuffled into the crowd. I was given no option to follow.

I told you.

I also spent a lot of time in the plaza exploring things labeled "A naban doned house", and it, I am ashamed to say, took me a long time to figure out what that meant.

What's a naban doned- oh, hell, I get it NOW.

Right now I am stuck in the middle of exploring the plaza. My disguise is blown and I keep getting attacked by monsters who shriek "HUMANS!", draw their weapons, and attack. I'm being nibbled to death by ducks bearing large heavy weapons. I'll fill you all in on what happens next soon.

And I'll probably have more words and less pictures in the future. I realize I am kind of going screenshot crazy lately.

Should I Keep Doing Intermissions?

I personally like my little non-game pieces where I write up the characters interacting like it's a story and not a game. But I dunno if anyone out there really likes it when I do that... Howzabout if when you read this post, you write me a comment telling me what you think! If you just want me to skip that and keep on with normal postings, all right then, I will. But if you like hearing about Figtle and the gang, well, I can do that too!

Please comment to me. I feel so... lonely :)

Explorations And A Bullet Dodged

Fist pumps and fist bumps all around!

Yes, the slum is cleared and I have been working on the other areas around the place. Not sure what these areas are called, but they are being cleared.  One of the places I found was a large building in the middle of a large empty square. Being the curious fellow I am, in charge of a curious batch o' peoples, I decided that this building should be checked out. 

My guess is I'm in- a library?

So I checks this place out. I find a lot of boring shelves of philosophy, mathematics, and large hissing lizards. What?

Oh, THAT large hissing lizard.

I beat on this creature for a few smacks and had no real idea what I was fighting, until it took a turn, and I freaked when it said the BASALISK took it's turn! Luckily, there seem to be a quite a few charges in my fireball necklace! The Basalisk gazed once and I guess I was smiled upon by the Gods themselves because immediately after that it bit at one of my characters. I then slammed it for a mass amount of damage and it died. I recorded the fight in FCEUX FM2 format- I need to figure out how to convert/play and record into windows format so y'all can see it. I got a fair amount of XP for it but not nearly what I thought I should get.

I then continued examining and stealing everything I could get my hands on- a bunch of boxes of gold leaves in a couple of rooms, a couple other things I can't remember, then I came across these guys.

Thanks guys! Appreciate the info.

They begged for help and then told me the above when my help turned out to be not slaughtering them- and it turns out that's the help they were looking for :) I also found this guy.

I've fallen, and I can't get up!

Drat, stuck in caption mode again. Blogger is irritating sometimes. 

I wonder who he was?

I also found a book all about this Tyranthraxus guy. All sorts of history on this guy. Tyranthraxus, Tyranthraxus... Sounds familiar.

He sounds scary.

There was a lot of info on this guy. I'd show more pics, but Blogger is just being a royal pain right now and not putting pics where they belong.

Sigh. Except for this one, the last one.

And then when I am leaving the building, I'm faced with this blue guy.

Don't mean to belabour the obvious fella, but the lack of blood in your body says bad things about this "life" you mention...

Then it's another fight. Most of my guys miss him, but Thifling is in LOVE with his necklace and he fires a few fireballs. The others smack the blue guy around and he never hits me, and soon enough he too has become dead once again. I find out after when reading the rule book again that this SPECTRE likes to DRAIN LVLS, so I dodged another bullet.

I have gone from being accursed by God to being the luckiest guy on the planet! 

Hey, I guess that madman wasn't so crazy after all.

I'm rocking the joint like a hurricane. I have to head back to the city commisionors (How is that spelled?) office then up to the training hall. I have no guarantee I've gotten enough XP to go up a lvl, but I'm a hopin'!

I'll see you all later with more news :)

Behind The Scenes

Figtle was still worried that the dynamics of their little party would change, and change was rarely for the better. That morning he'd slept in since he and Fimu had been awake later than usual. The orc blood spilt during the day had left them both rather more randy than usual that night and by the time they were both spent it was very late.

Ficle had burst in at cock's crow to waken his sister for the day, and woke Figtle as well, still sleeping in Fimu's bed. The fighter cleric hadn't batted an eye, however, merely including Figtle in his morning's greetings.

But now Figtle was worried, hiding it behind morning sleepiness as they discussed the revelations of the last few days. He took a long drink of morning's beer.

"While I'm cheered by their new building in what were the slums," he grumbled, "I can't help but be worried about this 'Boss' person."

"I was nice being recognized by the city," said Fimu, referring to the ceremony a few days back when the city of New Phlan had given them all symbolic Keys to the City for their work in clearing the slums of dangerous beasts. "I've never had anything like that done before."

"That one worries me most," said Thifling, nervously playing with a butterknife as they ate breakfast. "It's bad enough that this 'Boss' doesn't like us already, and now this- letting everyone know we were the major reason the slums are cleared out and new work is being done. This 'Boss' scares me to death."

"Aye,"said Figtle, peering into his mug. Almost half empty and they'd just started eating. Hmmm. "We'll have to keep our eyes and ears open. I want to find out who this 'Boss' is, what this bloody Pool is about. I rather like New Phlan. If this is going to be my new home instead of just a stopping point for a month or two, I'll have to do something about this 'Boss' sooner or later."

"Us too," said Ficle, smearing a huge blob of greasy butter into a steaming biscuit. "I like the place too and I'm not so sure I want to hit the circuit of arena fighting. "I'm getting all the physical action I need right now."

"Depends on what the Watch is going to be like once the monster population keeps falling,"said Thifling. "If  the law keeps their eyes too open I'll be gone before you've time to whistle 'Johnny Law'."

Well, I beat The Trolls/Kobolds/Flour Bags Combo

That bint of a city commisioner had me open a CHEST in the middle of her OFFICE to get my reward for killing Norris. How weird.

I thought that with the XP bonus I got for slaughtering Norris the Gray like a bug I might be tough enough to take on the trolls. My fighter/cleric is like 2/3 now, and although I ain't thrilled with the lvl 2 clerical spells, I ain't gonna spit in my diety's eyes, if you catch my drift. My fighter is lvl 3, my thief is lvl 4, and my two fighter/magic users are both 2/2. So I headed in to take them on. I have a wand of magic missiles too- that might help tilt the see-saw in my direction.

Well, I put a few kobolds to sleep and that's... nice, but big whooptedoo, I always do that. I hit the one troll with magic missiles- pfah, might as well have kicked him in the leg. Then I notice, while checking out my thief in mid-combat, that I still have this necklace I got from someone. I can't remember if it changed my AC any, but what if it does something else? So I USE it, and a great big circle appears.

I remember what happens to my characters when the square casting mark touches them (SNORE along with the monsters), so I move the circle until it touches only two kobolds and both of the trolls. Then I hit the A button, and watch...

There was no animation for it, but I pretended to be appalled as both kobolds were BURNED to DEATH by the fireball, and both trolls also took massive damage. COOL! So we stepped on the baby kobolds a bit more until the thief was able to lay hands on his nifty necklace and FRUUUMT. The fireball killed both trolls this time and that left us with one kobold child left. To slaughter like an insect.

The poor adolescent kobold fell beneath our weapons and we left his corpse to rot with his fellows and my three conscious characters lifted the unconscious characters to the temple. I had never really paid attention to the impressive list of services offered there before, but they really offer a quite varied menu of services for a very reasonable price range.

5,000 GP isn't that hard to get if you want to risk dismemberment.

I think I am, and as such my characters as well, really starting to get along in this game. It's no longer a frustrating hose-a-thon and more of a challenge. I'm really liking it, even though it's a NES game. So far they've done a really nice job of it. Sadly for myself (and thus, all of you as well) I have never played nor, obviously, ever finished the PC version of this title, so I can't really contrast and compare as well as someone who has played and solved it. But then- I don't think anyone who has played and solved the PC version would be able to stomach this version anyway :)

Mega. Things A-Flapping. Mysteries. And Violence!

Wow, a lot happened last night before I went to bed (at 4 A.M. Whoops!) I had more characters lvl up!

Oh yeah! I'm rocking the house with ten HP!

And the game kept stressing that I was near Kuto's Well. Never told me why, but if I came within 30 feet of Kuto's Well, it lept out of it;s chair and yelled- "Hey! Kuto's Well! It's right behind you!" Well, I can take a hint after it's been shoved in my face ten times- I went to look at Kuto's well.

That's a- safe looking hole in the ground situated right where children play- in the dark.

This was after I had fully mapped out the entire map area that contained Kuto's Well. I mean- hey, I have work to do.

On the whole I really like the images they have when they put the small box up to give greater detail. Things are more realistic, more colorful, more detailed. And while this doesn't look like any ladder or well I've ever seen, it gives a proper mood to the proceedings.

So I sneaks my way down the ladder in the well...

And at the bottom I find this. Looks like a secret door to me, dunnit?

And then I am presented with this map of the area. The whole, entire map.

Which leads me to the weirdest part of this whole game. I understand that it does this on the PC version as well. But when I enter an area, I am given an entire map of the area- sans doors or labels of what a building holds within it. How does THAT work? my "mapping" requires me to walk around and hunt down doors so I can place them on the already provided walls. In New Phlan, I also went through and added labels of what each building was. If I showed you my map, you'd not be able to read it :)

I warned you- I. Told.You. You'd. Be. Sorry!

So mapping is pretty easy and pretty weird. Anyway. I get down into the area below the well, and I am presented with this-

After all, they tell you in creative writing classes- "Don't tell-  show."

And I thinks to myself- hey, didn't I get a snippet of information in the monster meeting grounds (where I was hiding in the shadows before they could see me) that said 'thieves use the catacomb as their hideout'? Yes, I sure did! But then, before I could really make a move-

Oh no they di'int!

However, rather than take me to a combat, or hit one of my guys for some unavoidable damage- nothing else happens. I can continue mapping and exploring as if nothing at all happened. So I did :)

I wonder what journal entry this would have been in the PC version?

Gad, he's an ugly s.o.b. ain't he? Sho ain't human, I can tells you dat. I like his ears though.

Norris the Gray and his merry band of thieves leap out of the shadows and confront my merry band of adventurers! I am given the option of surrendering, or of leaping into combat. Given the fact that I am deep in monster territory, and given the fact that "The Boss" seems to be in charge of the monsters in this area, and given the fact that "The Boss" does not like us at all, I thinks to myself that surrender probably isn't the smartest choice of action. So I choose to fight for my life!

When I saw what I was faced with, I thought I was toast. 6 goblin guards, Norris the Gray, and an ogre, my heart sinks. However, my fighter/magic users 'sleep'ed the goblins right quick and boom, they were out of the equation. My one magic user kept zapping the ogre with a wand of magic missiles (gad, I wonder how many charges are left in that thing!) until he went down, and between my fighter and my fighter/cleric, Norris fell pretty quickly as well. Then we simply walked around the sleeping goblins and cut their throats with our daggers. Tout de Suite!

After we divvied up the XP, the GP, and the one piece of actual loot, we discovered that Norris had secreted a letter upon his person. He and his band of thieves were to head to the port and follow the orders of the ogres there. However, Norris had written his reply on the back (dunno if he sent it, since he still had it with him. We must have disemboweled him and force fed him his bloody length of colon before he had a chance to pop it in the post). 

Aside from the fact that Norris appears to be a damned dirty hob/goblin, he also appears to have his head on straight (before we removed it from his neck)

But he does- did, excuse me- suffer from delusions of grandeur.

In the end I got enough XP to lvl up a character  or two, and I financed it by selling a metric busload of gems (well, 17 gems). Thins are looking up. And now that my 2 arena fighting magic users also have Magic Missile and Shocking Grasp... I think I'm going to go try those trolls again. I'll fill you in when I'm done, but I'll try not to make it a huge post like this one again :)

Intermission?

"You must be used to all this killing, being a dwarf and all," said Feyemoo that night in The Lonesome Dagger Tavern. The entire party was out that night, sans thief (he always vanished when the sun went down but never seemed to be at a loss for spare coin). They'd had a hard day- Feyemoo'd had to hide their four unconscious bodies in the slums and sneak back into New Phlan, hiding and ducking past kobolds the whole way. He'd come back with a pouch full of healing potions and brought them all back to the world of the living. Without his heroic measures, the four of them would have died of their injuries before the sun had gone down.

"Ha," grunted Figtle. "We don't spend all our time fightin' and killin'." He took a mouthful of chicken, followed it with a slug of draught. "Most of us haven't swung a blade and drawn blood. The rest of us mostly fight orcs an' those beasts that attack our homes. I'd only killed a few orcs until I got here. More like animals, some of them in the mountains."

"We'd only fought animals before we left home," said Fimu, sipping from her mug of mulled wine. "It's hard to practice being an arena fighter when no one else wants to fight." She still had a brilliant black and green bruise that covered half of her face.