Butch Baylen, 10th BG1 installment
In the context of their outlaw status and the advisability to ‘lay low’ for some time, the companions decided to revisit Durlag’s Tower. Butch dreaded the Tower after what had happened to Shar-Teel there, but he had accepted an assignment from Hurgan, a Dwarf in Ulgoth’s Beard who had claimed to be a distant relative of the late Durlag himself. The party was to retrieve a dagger for the Dwarf and would receive an enchanted Warhammer, a good weapon for Yeslick, in return.
On their way to the Tower, Butch paid his friend Nalin a visit to see how Imoen, Isra, Kagain, Kivan, and Shar-Teel were doing. To his embarrassment it had been nearly three tendays since he last checked on his former companions. Butch was very glad to find all five of them in a much better condition than they had been in the last time. Imoen was physically weak still, but otherwise very much her old self. She was thinking of traveling to Beregost as soon as she was a bit stronger, to ask Firebead Elvenhair to train her in the arcane arts. Butch updated Isra on recent developments regarding Sarevok and the Throne. She said she would soon travel to Amn to report those tidings to her Paladin order of the Ruby Rose. Kagain, the toughest of Butch’s friends, was pretty much fully recovered. He told Butch he was willing to rejoin him later, but first he had some business to attend to. He wasn’t very specific to Butch, but the rogue understood that the Dwarf wanted to reopen his mercenary company, albeit it in a different set-up. Kagain's plans could include Butch should he be interested, the Dwarf had said. Shar-Teel, the last of Butch’s companions to suffer near fatal injuries, and Kivan were still unfit for adventuring though Nalin had hopes that they too would eventually fully recover.
Butch felt good after his reunion with these old friends (really not that old, he had only met them in the past six months, but much had happened that made the period seem longer).
In the cellars below Durlag’s Tower Quayle found a hidden door that led to what would turn out to be a series of underground levels. I had not forgotten about the many traps, some of which I had failed to disarm or even discern, on the upper levels. Thankfully I had honed my trap detection skills since then, and I had an ample collection of potions of perception to help me find and disarm any snares. I had Quayle cast Invisibility on me, and set out to explore the first underground level by myself. Unlike the plain upper levels, this floor had a rather complex design. It was built around a spacious hall with a well in the middle, covered by a locked trapdoor, and guarded by four motionless Dwarves. At first I thought they were statues but upon closer inspection their eyes looked very real. Around the large hall there were corridors that led to several different smaller rooms: a bedchamber, a forge, a treasury, and a trophy room, among others. I realized that Durlag and his family and greater clan had made their home underground rather than on the upper levels, very Dwarflike.
I encountered and ignored numerous monsters (Flesh Golems, Doppelgangers, Skeletons, and Spiders), focusing solely on my task of removing the traps. I actually missed one, thankfully not a lethal one. When I returned to my comrades I informed them of my findings. We dispatched the monsters, struggling only with the (Greater) Doppelgangers as they repeatedly Dire Charmed Yeslick.
We then looted the place, finding among other things a second Manual of Gainful Exercise after the one we had found a few days before at the Ulcaster Ruins.
[This was a courtesy of the Item Randomizer. Unfortunately Butch had started out with 16 STR, so reading the second tome ‘only’ brought him to 18 STR. I believe DSotSC adds another STR tome, on a LE merchant-wizard in the Wood of Sharp Teeth, but I’m not sure about that.]
Curious as we were, we decided to show ourselves to the Dwarven warders of the well. They spoke, urging us to bring them different items we could find or assemble in some of the rooms we had already explored: a bottle of wine, a gong mallet, a gemstone and a key to be precise. When we handed those items the Dwarves attacked us. Quayle, Keiria and Faldorn were still invisible, but Ajantis, Yeslick and I weren’t. The three of us fled in different directions, dispersing our attackers. It enabled us to fell the Dwarves one at a time.
When all four Dwarves lay dead, we were able to remove the trapdoor on the well, and descend from a ladder to a second underground level.
This second level was similar to the previous level in that it consisted in a warren of corridors and halls and chambers, and that it was guarded. However apart from conventional guards (as in physical protectors), the place was also guarded with an intricate security system that locked or opened doors depending on specific actions such as picking up one item or touching another item. Some actions would cause one door to be opened and another to be locked at the same time. As before, I scouted each section we entered for possible traps. After some experimentation we managed to open all the doors. It was then merely a matter of looting the place, good for a Greenstone Amulet and some enchanted weapons and armor, and dispatching the warders. We had difficulty once again with a quartet of Greater Doppelgangers (initially disguised as some of Durlag Trollkiller’s close relatives) when Keiria was Horrored during the casting of a spell. As we were no longer protected by Keiria’s song, Ajantis was forced to save against another Horror which, thankfully, he did
unlike Yeslick who also got Dire Charmed, as had happened to him before. Faldorn and I fortunately saved against a third Horror spell.Eventually my bolts of dispelling and Ajantis’ anti-Doppelganger sword were too much for the shapeshifting creatures to handle.We didn’t have any difficulty finding a way down to a third underground level, but still had a hard time actually making it there. First we had to battle four Dwarven Doom Guards,and shortly after that Quayle had to save my skin with an Invisibility spell as I passed out in a gas chamber inhabited by belligerent Skeleton Warriors.Once the undead were down though, we were able to proceed.
The next level was very different from the previous ones, much simpler. I liked it. We found ourselves right in front of a round chamber with a fountain-like structure in the middle. However, rather than being the source of water, it let off fireballs every few seconds. I found no snare or mechanism that caused the explosions, so we decided to take advantage of the moments between the explosions to run one after the other to a door on our right.
We stepped into a very large hall that showcased the skeletal remains of a massive Wyrm, allegedly slain by Durlag himself. A speaking Skeleton warned us of three Greater Wyverns nearby and advised us to animate a number of statues of fallen heroes behind it to help us slay the Wyverns. I did animate some of the statues, but the heroes weren’t very effective against the monsters. In the end I dispatched the Wyverns myself with attacks from the shadows.
We also cleared a maze garden (again, after I had disarmed a number of traps) of several Ashirukurus and Greater Ghouls. A treasure trove contained a Tome of Clear Thought that I read with great interest.
I was never fond of magic, at least not as an instrument of combat. There was magic I respected and even considered desirable for myself in the exercise of my vocation as a spy and investigator, Divination magic for example. But spells that confused an opponent in the heat of combat, or that made a typically weakling wizard suddenly untouchable, or that summoned forth all manner of monsters from the Gods know where, were all reprehensible in my view, corrupt, treacherous.
I was aware that I was no warrior, and I had always taken a certain pleasure in my independence of magic, using instead my physical abilities to the fullest, my agility, my stealth, even my talent with snares and contraptions to overcome seemingly stronger opposition.
As a mercenary I understood well enough that the end often justified the means. But even so, I had always tried to be a fair and honest man. Resorting to mind and magic tricks like the ones I just mentioned were hard to reconcile with my concepts of fairness and honesty. And yet, here I found myself, with my artificially increased intelligence and with Imoen’s decision to train herself as a mage on my mind, wondering whether it would be a good idea for me to try and study the arcane arts as well.
Four ‘elemental rooms’ brought me back to the business we had at hand. They seemed to serve no purpose but to send nosey folk like ourselves to their deaths. We battled a Polar Bear and Winter Wolves in an ice room, a Fission Slime in an earth room, an Air Aspect and Invisible Stalkers in an air room, and finally two explosive Phoenix Guards in a fire room. When he had slain those last two, Quayle told Ajantis in his typically sardonic way that he felt a crescent teleportation spell was soon going to take us elsewhere.
(I must say that while his style wasn’t mine, I appreciated the sharp-tongued little Gnome for his wit, his insights and his secret loyalty to the party.)
We knew not what to expect, so Quayle turned us all invisible. Moments later we were indeed teleported away. We arrived in a room that consisted of little else than a giant chessboard, with animated pieces opposite us. A male voice that came from above us said that we had to beat the other side in order to be free again and continue with our exploration of the tower. The side whose King fell first, would lose the game. As there was no way out, we had ittle choice but to agree to play. We immediately discovered that it wasn’t going to be an ordinary game of chess, for the opposing pieces attacked all at once. It seemed there were no rules, other than the requirement to keep one’s King alive. (I didn’t even know who our King was, so I wanted all of us to stay alive at that point more than ever.)
Those of us who didn’t normally enjoy Free Action all drank potions of freedom as Faldorn dropped two or three Webs on the middle of the chessboard. Yeslick summoned two Skeletons to our side. We first slew a few Pawns that had made it to our side of the board before Faldorn cast her first Web,
and then carefully pushed forward. Even so, some of us sustained injuries from lightning traps we inadvertently triggered. Our eyes were on the King though.Both he and the Queen were heavily buffed spell casters but thankfully one of my bolts of dispelling aimed at the King struck true, right before a Glitterdust blinded me. It removed the King’s protections, allowing Ajantis and Yeslick to assault it. An Insect Plague by Faldorn greatly facilitated our battle, as it frustrated the King’s and Queen’s spell casting. It was Yeslick who dealt the King the killing blow.The other pieces then disintegrated and the storm subsided.
After our chess victory we were able to proceed to a fourth and final underground level. It was pretty straightforward in its design due to half of the area being comprised of a complex of caverns (with highly acidic pools in them, painful to the touch). The other half of the level consisted of two larger rooms – a hall inhabited by spiders, and a large pantry – and three or four smaller rooms, including a forge room. Our task was pretty straightforward as well. A Durlag apparition told us, cryptically, that we had to find three wardstones in order to open a sealed door. We found one in the forge, one in the room with the Spiders, and one in the caverns, on a Ghoul Lord we slew.
With the wardstones we removed the seal and then passed through the door to enter a small storage room. There we defeated a party of unnecessarily hostile adventurers with relative ease (I respected them nonetheless for having made it so far down).
One (injured) adventurer was unaggressive. She warned us that a Death Knight awaited us in the adjacent hall – something that didn’t worry us all that much after we had already successfully dispatched such a creature during our first visit to the Tower – and that we could try and turn a Mirror of Opposition on it in hopes of conjuring a copy of the Death Knight that would fight the real Death Knight with us. It could however also create hostile copies of ourselves.
We decided against using the mirror, and we wouldn’t regret that decision. The Death Knight was unsusceptible to Quayle’s wand-paralyzation attempts, cast Symbol: Pain and Power Word: Blind at Ajantis and Yeslick, and injured the others (including myself) with Ice Sheets.
He also level-drained blinded Ajantis and Yeslick, but both warriors kept on fighting the abomination without despair. My enchanted bolts interrupted some of the Death Knight’s spell casting and eventually felled the creature.
Amongst its meager possessions the Death Knight dropped a dagger that Keiria identified as the Soultaker Dagger, presumably Hurgan’s dagger.
The party didn’t immediately travel back to Ulgoth’s Beard to hand Hurgan the dagger as they left Durlag’s Tower behind them. First they decided to see if they could enter the nearby Firewine Ruins using Charleston Nib’s scroll. They could, but they found it a dangerous place, with Ju-Ju Zombies and Vampires (which prompted Ajantis, Yeslick and Butch to use Protection from Undead scrolls) roaming about, and with Astral Phase Spiders and Sword Spiders occupying the souterrain.
The treasure, a suit of caster-friendly Elven chainmail of the Firewine was perfect for Keiria though.
A separate part of the Ruins was inhabited by Kobolds, led by a hostile Human wizard and an Ogre Mage. The companions slew the evildoers without difficulty thanks to Butch’s dispelling bolts.
They left the ruins via a secret tunnel that led them to the Halfling village of Gullykin. The town elder, Gandolar Luckyfoot, thanked them with his Lucky Ring for rooting out the Kobolds and wizards, and a Halfling lass named Alora offered to join the party. Butch and Quayle liked the girl, but they also felt she might be unprepared for the Life. They declined for Alora's own good.
En route to Ulgoth’s beard Butch thought about how much of a hassle it had been to obtain the dagger, and considered renegotiating the deal with Hurgan. Eventually he decided not to, mainly because their second excursion to Durlag’s Tower had been a profitable venture in its own right.
Upon arrival in Ulgoth’s Beard they found the village flooded with nondescript cultists. One of them knicked the Soutaker Dagger from Ajantis and made off; others attacked. They were no threat to the party, which at that point was a well-trained unit. Keiria would go invisible, singing her battlesong unless/until her emergency spells were needed (which wasn’t the case in Ulgoth’s Beard). Quayle went invisible as well after he got hit twice. Like Keiria he would only interfere if the situation called for it. Faldorn cast her usual Insect Plague and Chromatic Orbs.
Yeslick and Ajantis did their part in melee combat, and Butch attacked with his crossbow, mostly to dispel and disrupt casters. The Enforcer wizards liked to cast Emotions at Butch, forcing the rogue to swig potions of magic blocking.
At the Ulgoth’s Beard inn, Hurgan informed the party that the Cultists would use his dagger to summon a Nabassu they worshipped as their God, and urged the companions to go after the dagger.
Personally, that was a deal-breaker for me but I went along with Hurgan's wish for Ajantis, whom I knew I would want by my side when facing Sarevok and his cronies, and whose friendship I had come to appreciate, remarkably enough. Ajantis considered going after the dagger and if necessary fighting the Nabassu of the utmost importance.
My relationship with Ajantis was a complicated one. On the one hand I considered him my brother-in-arms, and possibly the most capable warrior I’d had in my company, along with Kagain. And he in turn had complimented me on my prowess (and even my virtue) on multiple occasions. There was a deep mutual respect, and besides, a mutual trust between the Waterdhavian and me. On the other hand, as a Paladin, Ajantis followed the tenets of his patron deity Helm and his own insatiable desire to serve the good races, whereas I was first and foremost a survivor and a mercenary. I couldn’t fathom why one would risk their own life to help a stranger in need. Wasn’t survival the main purpose of life? My cruel awakening after Gorion’s death, the bounty hunters and assassins that had sought to kill me at every turn, had taught me just that. But it was not Ajantis’ way. Truth be told, my life had not solely revolved around survival. I had had my pleasures as well: the heists I had pulled off at the Travenhurst and Silvershield estates, or the nightly delights I had shared with Branwen, to name a few. But those were things I knew Ajantis didn’t approve of either. Of course there were the friendships with my companions, including Ajantis himself. I had put my life at stake for them and I was willing do so again if necessary. But to do the same for strangers was a lot to ask of me. I felt I had a hard enough time staying alive as it was and I didn’t feel the need to endanger myself any further. Nevertheless Ajantis had me thinking about my purpose in life, once my business with Sarevok was all over. I realized that as much as I considered myself more akin to a free-lance like Kagain, or a vigilante like Kivan, it was probably a good thing for my conscience that I had Ajantis with me. Who knows what dark paths I might have trodden in the company of the likes of Shar-Teel or to a lesser extent Kagain.
Inside the lair of the cultists, the party dispatched more demon disciples. Butch then descended to an open ritual chamber where he saw more cultists, as well as the already gated Nabassu. He swiftly retreated when he sensed the fiend attempting to lock him in its death gaze. The rogue was quite vexed when he informed his comrades about what he had witnessed, and decided to ask how the others felt about simply leaving the place. As expected, Ajantis was eager to fight the Nabassu, and much to Butch’s chagrin, so were most of the others. Everyone except Quayle. The party went downstairs, slew the ritualists first, which wasn’t too hard as they had been too caught up in their ritual to be battle-ready,
and then took on the fiend – without having the slightest idea what to expect of it other than its terrible death gazes. Initially Butch took a cautious approach, believing it up to the ‘heroes’ to deal with the demon, but when it chose Quayle as its target, repeatedly teleporting toward the Gnome, he felt bound to stand up for his Gnomish friend and started attacking their foe with his crossbow.
Besides using its teleportation powers, the fiend used an ability to go ethereal and regenerate, and it kept Silencing the party constantly. The Silencing could have been a huge problem, as it could have prevented Death Gazed party members from being cured by caster companions. However, the fiend for some reason decided to rely on its level-draining claws rather than its deadly gaze to defeat the party. This proved to be its downfall. Although the creature managed to level-drain Yeslick, Quayle and Ajantis, it wasn’t enough to kill any of them. Eventually it was Ajantis who slew the fiend, banishing it back to its hellish plane.
After the deed, the Cavalier looked around with what Butch – justly or unjustly – took for a somewhat smug smile, which struck the rogue as inappropriate given the fact that his traps and a whooping with his staff had left the demon for all but dead before Ajantis felled it.
Not that Butch cared much; being a hero wasn’t really his thing anyway.
On their way out, Reedrig, the monk they had released from the Orcs in the Fields of the Dead came up to Ajantis with an interesting story. Apparently he had been a member of an occult order called the Order of the Black Hand. They were located in the Wood of Sharp Teeth. Together with the cultists that had gated the Nabassu, the Cult of the Black Hand had wanted to gate an even more powerful demon, a Prince of Baalors.
This story was grist to the mill of Ajantis and Keiria, who had revealed to Butch her true ideological colors by pretty much always agreeing with Ajantis’ ideas (though she hadn’t manifested any romantic feelings toward the Paladin yet, at least not in Butch’s presence). They exchanged the Soultaker Dagger for a Hammer of Giantslaying with Hurgan, and left for the Wood of Sharp Teeth.
Butch decided for himself that this was going to be the last unpaid job he would carry out before returning to Baldur’s Gate to deal with the Iron Throne. After that he could finally decide for himself what he wanted to do with his life, and with whom. This concerned not only Ajantis or soft-spoken but high-principled Keiria, but also Faldorn. The two respected each other’s abilities, but he had no doubt that the Druid would leave the party as soon as Sarevok was dealt with, and he was fine with that. Their partnership had never become a friendship due to their widely differing worldviews and the female’s rigid character.
Butch, a skilled sneaksman, scouted the woods for the base of the Order of the Black Hand, a temple, and single-handedly dispatched thirteen hostile monks in black soutanes. This was no small feat, for the monks were able marksmen with their Ripper bows, and they fired arrows of piercing and detonation at him.
Inside the Temple there were thirteen more of the black cloaks. A clumsy attempt at picking a lock (not his forte) on a chest betrayed his presence and caused a salvo of arrows to find their way toward him. A vision formed in his mind. He was a statue, one of countless statues standing on window sills in an unfathomably high tower. A crack appeared in the statue that represented Butch. And from it, more cracks sprouted. He felt he was about to faint, but in an ultimate effort he managed to gulp a potion of invisibility.
He sat down, quietly, and started quaffing healing potions, with his eyes closed. The image of the statue was still there. The cracks gradually vanished, and then the vision grew blurry before it faded altogether. When the healing potions had done their job, he snuck out of the temple, back to his companions, and explained the situation to them. The strategy was simple. With Stoneskins and Ironskins, Keiria, Quayle and Faldorn were expected to be able to cast their Skull Traps, Confusion and Insect Plague spells at the archers in the back. They drank potions of fire resistance to protect them from the expected arrows of detonation. Ajantis and Yeslick buffed with oils of speed, and heroism and strength potions. They would engage the frontliners in melee, while Butch would support the others with ranged attacks. This worked fairly well. Quayle didn’t manage to cast his Confusion and had to flee after having been hit twice in a row, and Yeslick looked to be a goner at one point (1 HP)
but he healed himself just in time. Keiria’s battlesong was essential against mind-affecting spells cast by the cult leader, a Half-Orc named Brother Draagis, and she dealt the archers in the back some serious damage with three Skull Traps. Faldorn was very effective with her Insect Plague and Webs spells.
Before long all the cultists lay dead,
so that the party could finally return to Baldur’s Gate.
Back to top
.
..
...
