Avernum VI – 2. The One Without the Title

After doing some minor side quests with what little time I had yesterday, I decided to progress the main quest a bit today. I went to Patrick’s tower, where the archmage Soldberg is trying to develop a strain of mushrooms that would be immune to the plague. After exploring the tower as much as I could, I went to the levels bellow, where the new mushroom strains are being bred. I had to kill a strange fungal creature and release the blight in the area to see if the mushrooms are resistant. This failed, so the solution of the problem will have to be found elsewhere. When I reported this to Soldberg, he mysteriously said that “it’s time”. Time for what, I do not know.
After returning to the castle, the commander had a new mission for me. I was to go past the blockades in Almaria and solve a problem with the Great Portal. I decided not to do this yet, as I still have to help Gnass. Before doing that though, I decided to explore the rest of the Great Cave. I managed to stumble into a lair of giant rats near Patrick’s tower. The magic from the tower caused the rats to mutate so I had to kill their hive queen and stop her from hatching more rats. Yes, hatching. I said the magic caused them to mutate.
Anyways, now I’m off to explore a mine that I bought from a guy near Darnham.
EDIT: The mine will have to wait. There is a ghost in there that, when killed, splits into three vengeful shades and another ghost. I managed to kill him 3 times and he split every time. In addition to that, the shades hit like a train.
After escaping the mine of doom, I decided to go save the son of Gnass’ chieftain. It wasn’t that hard because my party was way overleveled for that area anways. Also, I did a few side quests and explored pretty much the entire area of the Great Cave. All that’s left is the area west of Fort Remote. Anything other than that is still too hard for my party, so after checking the place out, I will go to the Eastern Gallery where the next part of the main quest is.