After defeating the Six and claiming the Holy Avenger, Katarina and her team returned to Dragon’s Eye for their final push to the Severed Hand. The bottom level of Dragon’s Eye was a huge Magma chamber, with ruined palaces and complexes strewn about the area. It looked like the aftermath of a war-zone!.
They soon came upon a hooded boatman in an obsidian gondola, who confirmed that that is exactly what this was. A Yuan-Ti ambassador had assassinated the spiritual leader of the People of the Flame, sparking a war between the Yuan-Ti and the Flame King. After some investigation they learned that a Yuan-Ti sorceress had attempted to put the entire chamber in temporal stasis to stave off a volcanic explosion, but had miscast the spell. She had been put on trial, but was then killed trying to escape. And the Yuan-Ti ambassador had blamed Lord Pyros and poisoned him in turn. There seemed little to be done here. They had no reason to intervene in a war between evil Yuan-Ti and the likes of Fire Giants and Fire Salamanders. But when they attempted to leave the Magma chamber and continue on their journey…. they found themselves right back where they started! And returning to the boatman to try again they found he did not remember them at all, and also claimed no knowledge of events he had just informed them of at their previous meeting!
Further investigations with the (now living) Lord Pyros indicated that the Yuan-Ti sorceress’s temporal spell had gone awry, and they were all stuck in some form of time loop until they broke the cycle. Katarina tried to warn Lord Pyros of what was to come. All things considered he seemed eminently reasonable. But he simply did not believe her. He had too much misplaced faith in his lieutenants and his treaties with the Yuan-Ti.After a couple more go-arounds – each time shifting back one day further – they were able to end the cycle by slaying the sorceress before she completed the spell at the heart of it all. After which they beat a hasty retreat before the predicted volcanic explosion actually came to pass.From there they *still* did not find themselves continuing on their path towards the Severed Hand. The architect Nicodemus who had helped them way back in the Ice Temple called in a favor, and teleported them all the way back to his aid! It seems the demons he had used to power the temple were running amok, and he was out of magic with which to banish them. So he needed their assistance in sending them all back the Abyss. Fortunately, this was what Kordaal considers “a smashing good time!”.
Once the demons were dealt with, Nikodemus gratefully transported them back to their original location – at the entrance to the Fields of Slaughter. No sooner had they arrived, however, then a crazed Thayan mage affiliated with the Legion of the Chimera assaulted them with a task force of Orogs and Bane-knights. These were easily dealt with, but the Thayan escaped
The Fields of Slaughter was the site of an ancient battle between Elves and Orcs. But the magics unleashed in the battle led to the respective forces constantly reviving and eternally continuing the battle… They soon discovered that in order to continue on to the Severed Hand they would have to find a way past the Lich now commanding the elven forces. When they found him he was arguing with a living elven priest ,attempting to convince the Lich to allow him to sanctify the battlfield and put the spirits to rest. Unfortunately the Lich responded by incinerating the priest, and then turning on Katarina and company. Garin was the first to engage, as for all his love of nature and animals, there was little he truly *hated* more than undead.But even with all their new power, an entire army of powerful ancient undead elves was a tall order, and they were in danger of being overwhelmed. Fortunately, battling their way through was not actually the plan! As soon as the undead had their attention on the battle, Elara took advantage – grabbing the fallen priest’s holy vial and transforming… It took the Lich and his forces just a *little* too long to catch on to the true plan…From there she swooped down on the waterfall supplying the icy river through the Fields of Slaughter, dodging undead archers, and released the holy vial. As the waters of the river became sanctified, all undead on the battlefeld – Elves and Orcs – were finally put to rest.But just when it seemed they would finally arrive at the Severed Hand, they had one last complication. The mad Thayan Wizard returned with reinforcements. This time determined to stay the course and end them himself. Solstice, however, had other ideas. And as Katarina and the others engaged the Wizard’s strike force Solstice had it out with the Wizard himself. As it turned out, she was far better at mis-direction than he was at re-direction.
8 responses to “IWD2 Winter’s Warriors: Fire and Ice”
atcDave
Dang you get some good looking renders! Fun stuff. As you get deeper into things I have no memory of, it actually makes the narrative and renders that much more exciting.
I’ve never made it anywhere near this far into IWD2 basically… ever. Writing it up like this makes it come alive in a way it just never did playing it straight. So its all new to me at this point too. On the last Chapter now though. No idea what to expect from that.
That’s partly why I’m thinking I’ll try some Gold Box games again in a few months. I’m thinking the illustrated run might give me the push to deal with the outdated graphics and interface again.
Worth a shot. Its the GUI that kills me. Things like having to re-select memorized spells every rest irritate the bejeesus out of me. I’m a software guy. I’ve done a *lot* of GUI design. And there’s a hard point somewhere in the mid-90’s beyond which games just pass beyond my “bad GUI tolerance” threshold. I’ve played around with a “improved Gold Box GUI” utility that basically runs the gold box game within a container that adds in a lot of modern conveniences. That helps. But they can only do so much.
atcDave
I thought around the second or third game they’d made it so you would automatically relearn the same spells. Same time they added a “rest until healed” feature?
it has been a while! But for several years I just loved those games. When I retried them, just before I got back to my current IE games kick, I only finished the slums in Phlan. But I’d mostly just been wondering how they’d aged, obviously I decided “not well”.
The Gold Box Companion. If you’re going to try the old ones, my understanding is that’s one of the better ways to do it. It back ports a lot of the stuff from the newer games into the older ones. Auto-mapping. Auto-memorization. Paladins and Rangers. Etc.
There’s also FRUA versions of a number of them, that by the nature of that game give you all the newer features. I think FRUA is the one I *tried* to get going in – because there’s so many good user modules for it. But I bounced.
atcDave
That looks awesome! Man, I’ll be on a D&D kick for years…
I can’t even say how amazing that looks. Now if only we could import portraits…
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