As I said, I had to go to Kva again, because the dragon has new issues. Both his lair and the local town are being attacked, by ogres this time. In fact, I helped him fight off an attack while I was there. He said he did some aerial scouting and found the source of the ogres to be somewhere in Jhereth Deeps, an old mining abandoned mining complex. Coincidentally, the captain of the guard unit assigned to him has lost another scouting party in that area.

FIghting this dragon was a bad idea.

I went there, explored it fully, saved the scouting party and found the source of the ogres. A new dragon has moved into the area. this time one that has a frost alignment. From what I can tell, it’s a female, but I’m not certain. After I told it of the ogre issue, it got mad, claiming the ogres acted outside of her knowledge and pointed me in the direction of their lair. I went there, killed the titan that was leading them and met a person named Merula. She was a mage who was giving orders to the titan. She claimed her intentions are not all bad, and that the aim of the people she’s working for was to change things in the Pact and possibly overthrow Redbeard. She asked me to think about all of that and I promised I will. I also offered her a chance to flee, but she wouldn’t take it, so I was forced to kill her.

After all that, I cleared out some of the side quests in the area and returned to Avadon. Soon after I got there, I got a message from my shaman, saying she had to leave on a personal errand. I also got my next mission, this time from Redbeard personally.

As I said, my new mission took me to Khemeria, which is a Farland nation, not part of the Pact. Suffice to say, I was not well received. The surprising thing is, it wasn’t hostility that I encountered, but fear. It seems the Pact isn’t as nice as I’d like to think. I explored Dhorl Stead, which is a settlement built near the portal, and tried gathering some information, but no one would talk to me, saying to go and see their leader. The problem is, when I got to the keep of Oghrym’Tor, where the leader resides, I was not allowed entry.

Spiderweb games usually have rich writing. The game over screen shows Avadon is no exception.

His wizard, whose name escapes me right now (as usual), but starts with M said that he was in charge of talking to me and that the leader couldn’t leave the keep due to some disease epidemic. Of course, this was all very suspicious, but I couldn’t do anything about it, so I went back to town. Luckily, I finally got some good info from a clanless runner that lives on the edge of the village. He told me the beast most often roams around Dorla Woods, so that was where I went next.

I met a shaman in the woods who left the city due to a disagreement with the wizard. She seemed to have shared my mistrust towards him. On a side note, her back room was trapped, so being the explorer that I am, I tried to trigger the trap to see what happens and saw my first game over screen. Other than the trap, the room also contains an Incubus (male version of the Succubus) and a bed, so I’m thinking the shaman has some dirty secrets.

I went deeper into the woods and finally found a ruined village. Everyone other than a single villager fled this village, chased away by the beast. The one remaining person told me there was another settlement over the river, which had it even worse. This led me to believe that the beast’s lair might be near that other settlement. On my way there, I encountered and fought the beast several times, but it would always run away once any real damage was dealt to it. I also encountered a woman called Liese, living in a lone hut. She claims to have trained a lot of soldiers, so I asked her to train me, but she said I have to prove myself somehow first.

I finally reached the other village and found the beast’s lair underneath. After a long battle, I finally defeated it,but then it started acting strangely, like it was trying to talk to me. I only understood a few words – “no hurt”, so I decided to spare it and take it to Avadon for examination. Since the lair was an old wizards laboratory, I had good reasons to believe the beast was artificially made. Before I could do this, though, the wizard from Oghrym’Tor arrived and finished it. He gave me some half-assed explanation as to why he did it and left. In any case, my mission was over and I returned to Avadon.

I reported my success to the Heart and also mentioned all the suspicious behavior I experienced. She said she would look into it and assigned me to my next mission. The dragon in Kva has issues again, this time with ogres, who are also attacking the village. This is where I will be going next.

Well, some stuff definitely happened since yesterday. I met the dragon, but I had to clear his lair from an invasion of wretches first.It took a while to find and kill all of them, but it was in no way hard. That reminds me, I increased the difficulty level from normal to the next one up (can’t remember what it’s called), but the game is still pretty easy. Only boss battles seem to provide a challenge.

I talked to the dragon and found out that the wretches were a bigger issue than I realized. A large group of them, led by an ogre commander has moved in to some caves to the south and they keep raiding his lair. The soldiers Avadon has assigned for protection simply can’t handle it. I decided to help him with his problem and also promised the local guard captain to look for a lost patrol.

Portals are usually in secluded areas such as this one.

I went south and met the patrol almost instantly, but they were a man short. One of the soldiers got captured by the wretches and is held in the dungeons now. The front gate to their caves was to well guarded so I had to find a back entrance which led to the lower levels. It’s there that I met the ogre leader, but it didn’t go as expected. The leader tried to avoid conflict, saying he was promised by someone who’s giving him orders that there will be no danger from Avadon. Now that he learned this isn’t true, he wishes to gather the wretches loyal to him and leave. Since my mission was only to deal with the problem, and the details of how to do it were up to me, I decided to let him go. Still, there was plenty of other wretches not under his control, so I still had some killing to do.

Pretty soon, I’ve found the captured scout and took him with me. He could hold his own, so we traveled in a group of four now. After fighting my way through a pit of wolves and killing a sonic bat, I finally found a way up from the lower levels. I killed a few commanders on the way, opened the front gate and killed the guards, and then found the throne room with the ogre in it. I just stumbled into him talking with a shadowy figure, which wasn’t to happy with the ogre’s attempt to flee. Under a threat of death, the ogre was forced to fight me while the mysterious figure fled. I promptly killed him, returned the scout to his unit and went back to see the dragon. He was fine now, so my main mission for Avadon was done and I was ready to return.

I got my next mission now. I have to go to another province, this time one that isn’t part of the Pact and is located in the Farlands and deal with a monster killing the local populace. I rechecked my gear, bought some new stuff and got rid of my junk, and then I stepped through another portal, which took me to a new land. This is where I stopped. One other thing I should mention is that I can take the other two companions with me now, but I decided to stick to the sorceress and warrior.

I played some more last night and will be off to play right now, so here’s just a quick update.

First of all, the alliance of nations is actually called “The Midlands Pact” or just “The Pact” for short. What I forgot to mention yesterday was that you also get companions in the game, four total, of which you can take two with you on missions at a time. On the first mission, I could only take one of two, but I’ve already met the other two in the fortress, though I have yet to recruit them.

Area transitions occur on visible zones.

My second mission took me to the land of Kva, which is one of the nations in the pack. I was to go to the town of Goldcrag, where I had to do a task for Zhethron, one of the dragons that still live in the world. I went there, explored the town and gathered plenty of information. Then I went to explore the general area and solve a few side quests on the way. Everything optional is explored and cleared now, so I will be going to meet the dragon next. Actually, there is one other optional quest I haven’t solved, but based on the description; it’s in an area I’m not supposed to visit yet, so I will deal with that later. My party is about level 4 now. I decided to build my main character as an offensive mage, and leave the healing and support to my companion sorceress, Nathalie. Note that the names might be slightly wrong, since I suck at remembering them.

I started this one recently, but then I reached my decision.Since it was a pirated copy, it had to go and I was sad. Luckily, it was on a discount at Steam yesterday (might still be, haven’t checked) and I bought it for 3.50€. It was a good investment and it will keep me entertained for a long time. How do I know this? Because it’s made by Spiderweb, and their Exile/Avernum and Nethergate games rock. Their Geneforge series is OK to, but not my cup of tea.

This is Redbeard

Anyway, I didn’t go too far last time, so I decided to restart the game. It’s a completely new world, but somewhat similar in style to Avernum. I took my time to read all the dialogs, and learn some lore about the world. Apparently, Avadon is this big important fortress that watches over all of the kingdoms in an alliance. This alliance of kingdoms is surrounded from all sides by the nations of the Farlands, if I recall correctly. A guy named Redbeard runs this fortress and commands the Eyes, the Hearts and the Hands. The Eyes are guards and watchmen, the Hearts are commanders and advisors to Redbeard and the Hands are his agents, which he sends on various important missions. The player is one of these Hands and he has just started serving.

Also, from what I understood from a conversation, the position of the fortress “controller” gives Redbeard power and anyone who kills him replaces him on this position. Plenty of people have tried, but no one succeeded.

I decided to play with a Sorceress, the default one, though I can’t remember her name right now. I introduced myself to the staff, learned a bit about the lore and got my first mission – enter the dungeons below the fortress and stop a prisoner escape in progress. I also got a choice of one of two companions – a warrior and another sorceress. I’m playing on normal, so I decided to go crazy and run with to spellcasters. It worked out fine – it was quite easy actually, so I’m considering raising the difficulty level.

I’ve cleared the dungeon, disposed of a few prisoners and returned to the ground level. One of the Hearts sent me to meet Redbeard, which I did (and got a medal for it) and then I was assigned to my second mission – go to another town and do some stuff there. Honestly, I can’t remember right now what my second mission is and that was where I stopped playing, so I will give a better description in my next post.

In any case, Avadon is a nice, fun, old school game, which I think I will greatly enjoy.