Party of the little people

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Updated just for you, Rhyll. And you need not check back so often; I've only got four windows per week when I can add to the story from my laptop (which is where I'm writing it). This is my Tuesday night window, but I've also got Monday, Wednesday, and Friday afternoon windows. (In case it's not blatantly obvious, that's my school schedule. )

I had to restrain myself from mentioning every detail (i.e. Killing Joia for insulting me, getting the spiders out of Landrin's basement, giving the splint mail that I bought for myself to Kagain so he could tank, etc.), but I think I left the most important stuff in. Not quite done with chapter one yet (hence the "part one"), but I hope to be by tomorrow. Now why does that sound familiar?

Ach! You haf seen srouh mine decepsion! As Minsc would say, "Ooooh, you are a smart one. You are as smart as Boo sometimes!" I don't really regard English grades as very telling either, because the big problem I had was inspiration. I'd sit in front of that blank piece of paper for hours trying to get in the right mindset to write about whatever it was, and more often than not just couldn't do it. The ones I did write got me through most semesters, though, and for the ones where it didn't ... well, there was always summer school.

[ October 12, 2005, 01:41: Message edited by: Felinoid ]

 

Good one, Fel. Though I would rather like if you updated more seldom, but instead gave us all the juice details (I'm sure Kagain and monty can be quite "naughty"), but you can't keep Rhyll loosing any sleep over this, now can you

I agree with Rhyll that D's in English tells nothing about the writing skills of the writer, but rather the grammatical skills.
And I guess you found just the right inspiration in BG1

/me is anticipating the upcoming part two with great expectations, and withheld breath!

 

Well, I do allude to a number of things that someone playing BG would be familiar with. For example: the cloak was obviously stolen from Algernon, Silke's staff is +1 (making it a good 'blunt weapon' for my PC), and the axe I bought for Kagain was the +1 that Feldepost sells. And of course I found the RoW near FAI when I headed up there. Monty's been picking everybody's pocket, too. Bjornin's +1 shield and Mirianne's +1 RoP were given to Kagain as soon as he joined.

Monty's AC is still disturbingly high, though. Even with studded leather and the RoP +1 from the crossroads area, he was still hit three times (for 1HP each) by two of the merchants when I foolishly thought he could take them out by himself. That mistake cost me an extra 4 gold when I rested at Feldepost's, but there's no real harm done, and I figured it was poetic justice that a couple of his victims managed to land a blow.

But if you want some spoilers for part two:
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Too bad. I'm not going to give away the juicy parts before the rest. I may add things in here that didn't make it into the story, but only after I post the appropriate section of the story. So you'll just have to wait.
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On the contrary, my grammatical skills were second to none! Including the teacher on occasion.

 

But, you cannot get a 'D' for writting unimaginative stories, essay's, whatever, if your teacher couldn't land his/her finger on any faults beside the content's being uninspireing

Meh, you

 

Depends on the teacher. But I certainly got a lot of zeros when I couldn't even get started on an assignment and had to tell the teacher that they wouldn't be receiving one.

 

I'm thoroughly enjoying Quayle's autobio.

 

@kuemper & the rest:
Then enjoy it some more. I just edited Part Two into the Chapter One post.

Let's see
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juicy stuff
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I actually had no idea that saying you would throw your weapons down would cause the FF guy just south of Beregost to attack you. It's not my style, so I've never used it, but I figured that it fit non-violent Quayle. You wouldn't believe how surprised I was when he called me unworthy to drag in. Needless to say, I took great delight in chopping up that pr*ck. With no rep loss, I decided to just let him stay dead and take his plate mail and helmet. I guess it was just one of those things that turns out well.

I also did Mirianne's quest and grabbed the Boots from those wimpy hobs in the middle of that map, but I didn't think they were worth mentioning. I think everything else is in the story.

EDIT:
Chapter Two is kind of short, but not much happened between entering Nashkel and confronting Mulahey. I left out stuff about Prism and that gnome who you rescue from kobolds, as well as my short trip back to Beregost to sell the books from Nashkel and buy the +1 sling I forgot to get before I left. And of course Kagain's got the Ankheg Plate from "Monty's" little hidey-hole. I'm not sure what I'm going to do with Varscona, though. Do you think I should sell it?

[ October 14, 2005, 20:32: Message edited by: Felinoid ]

 

Chapter Three is now, erm, fixed. I decided to wait until the beginning of Chapter Four to explore the coast. Now I was going to leave this until the end of my story, but the lack of comments in the last week has me a tiny bit nervous, so here's just a few notes:

I'd like to make sure everyone knows that the arrogance that is (hopefully) coming through in the way the story is told is solely my attempt to emulate Quayle's character. Most things were not quite as stated, but I don't think Quayle would admit to his shortcomings. You may also have noticed the (by now) numerous instances of the "I and..." and the "me and..." grammatical mistakes. I have deliberately included them because I believe that Quayle is not only self-absorbed enough to put himself first, and he's also the type to make little mistakes like that.

I'd also like to point out that even I don't like how Quayle is progressing, but soon enough he'll have Yeslick and Alora to bolster him morally and help him choose a more balanced path than the one he's following now. Kagain and Monty are being rather bad influences on him at the moment.

 

Don't worry, mate! I'm really getting into the story. I don't pester you for more updates cuz I know you have a life and school and stuff.

Sounds to me that Quayle is more than frustrated with the Talls and pretty annoyed at Monty spending Q's gold and Kagain for demanding to kill things. I like how you played out Drizzt in your first meeting.

 

As the son of an English teacher, I can tell you that grades in English have nothing to do with the ability to weave a good tale, and you have proven it once again. You made me want to put my unfinished BG2 game on hold and play through BG again. Thanks for the good read!

 

Chapter Four (a three-parter) is now finished. Sorry for the delay, but I've had relatives visiting off and on for the past week, and even had to miss school twice.

[ranting]
Dynaheir is such a *****. I go through all that trouble to rescue her, but just because I killed Edwin back in Nashkel I can't get the 800XP for saving her? What a rip.

Centeol and her sword-suckers were hard. I've played this solo with no problems and with a party with few problems, but this time they just cut straight through Kagain's armor. We probably would have been slaughtered without the Gauntlets of Dexterity.

And to add insult to injury, Chelak's body weighs almost 200 lbs.!!! Normally I just have my PC (always at least 18 STR) carry it, but this time I had to pass it along a chain of me, Monty, and Kagain to get it back to get it back to that ungrateful *******, Tiber. We were even attacked at a spider spawn spot (say that three times fast) on the way.

The cook dying turned out to be a blessing in surprise, since I had forgotten that you get two rep points for freeing the slaves and saved after giving Rill the money. (I want my back!) But now I have to listen to Yeslick complain about dark horizons and keep from dreaming ( not a problem) until I get another rep point.

And contrary to Quayle's omission, Kagain had to put Davaeorn down after the Scorcher. And then in Chapter Five, [spoilers omitted, sorry oli ]
[/ranting]

Ahhhh, I feel better now; don't you? Hopefully Part One of Chapter Five (there's probably going to be several parts) will be out on Monday. 'Til then!

 

I chortled over this bit, recalling the hammer Quayle was talking about. Good stuff, very good.

 

I finished the latest installment. Duelling Quayles -

 

Part two is up now, and it looks like Chapter Five will be shorter than I thought: only a three-parter. I guess that's what happens when you leave out most of the "extra" stuff.

I'm glad you liked the duelling Quayles. It didn't seem right that my companions help me, so I actually had Quayle fight Quayle all on his own. All in all, I got lucky that the hold spell hit half-a-dozen of the Xvarts as well as the other Quayle; I only had to deal with two, one of whom I recruited to help deal with his friends.

I finally kill the last Xvart (except for the recruit), and suddenly both spells expire! The Hold falls and my Xvart 'buddy' disappears, and now we're right back to square one with me and the other Quayle one-on-one. The rest is in the story.

My first thought from the start with Tiax was to get him that Staff-Spear for more sensible backstabbing, but somehow he's taken the secondary tank position from Yeslick! The reason: he only has one weapon slot, and that's taken up by the Staff-Spear. Add the GoOP and some heavy armor to that, and he's just a melee-heavy cleric who can disarm traps.

Alora makes a great archer for now (esp. with the Eagle Bow from Marek), and I'm trying not to let her backstab too much because she ends up as a swashbuckler in BG2. Thanks to her great stats, she can do everything except disarm traps, and I've already got Tiax for that.

Monty's just a combat thief now, so he's taking a little damage every now and then if I can't distract the enemy he backstabbed. And Slick is being much more of a ranged combatant lately, protecting the back row when necessary as a third line of defense after Kagain and Tiax. I'm not even bothering with having Kagain throw axes anymore; now that he's got the Boots of Speed, he just rushes 'em.

Though they're not all mentioned, I've done (or will do) every quest in the city, including the Helm of Balduran and the +2 battle axe for Kagain, and the Helm of Glory for my charming self. Gonna have to make a trip back down to Beregost to pick up my Ankheg Armor and grab the Dagger of Venom for one of the halflings, but otherwise it's right on track.

 

Damn, Chapter 5 ended rather pathetically. I was expecting that bunch at the top of the Iron Throne to put up more of a fight and make a good scene, but they started dropping like flies after my Animate Dead despite the Silence spell being wholly ineffective. The only one who got any blows in was that cleric farthest to the right, who got a surprising number of hits on Tiax with his mace.

Chapters 6 & 7 should be one-parters and I've already got Intermission mostly written up to help fill in what happens in the gap between BG1 & BG2. More soon.

 

Quick Question for y'all; Chapter 7 is not quite complete, so should I:
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• Wait until Friday to post the whole thing
• Just post what I have now and edit the rest in on Friday
• Post now, and on Friday do both edit on Chapter 7 and post Intermission

What do you think?

NOTE: Unless I get some votes in the next three hours (while I'm still at school and can still post), I'll default to option A and wait until Friday.

 

I'd say wait and post on Friday.

 

Well, I did. Chapter Seven got a bit long, so I split it into two parts but posted both today anyway. Intermission is ready for Monday, and I'm already playing through Chateau Irenicus now, writing as I go. Thank Baervan I at least got to keep (most of) my cleric spells memorized when I imported.

Maybe I should add that into the story...
/me goes off to write some more of Chapter One

 

Part two is up (hope you liked the cliffhanger ) and I promise to have the final part of Chapter One by Monday.

A few bits of info I couldn't quite find a way to work into the story:
1. Deception refers to a power I arbitrarily gave Quayle during the Intermission adventures for RP purposes (i.e. disguising Goo so as not to freak out the populace). It doesn't affect anything gameplay-wise except for explaining a couple items I imported:

• Robe of the Neutral Archmagi for Quayle (only available in one store, which was then cut out of the game)
• Ring of Holiness for Quayle (not doing the temple district quests for Goo-related reasons)

Also imported:

• Gauntlets of Dexterity for Goo (not doing the temple district quests; I figured Goo could have easily found his way down there in the past and gobbled them up for the magic)
• The Cloak of Balduran will be making an appearance in Chapter Two
• The Dagger of Venom will be making an appearance in Chapter Two
• One other whose mention would spoil a bit of the plot

2. Personal changes:

• Imoen's personality change is the effect of her failing her version of the Hell Trials (within her own mind) sometime during her torture; she is now NE instead of NG.
• I've made up an entire different backstory and personality for Goo, so watch for it.
• More happened in the Intermission than Quayle knew, so watch for the flashbacks / history lessons too.

3. Bugs fixed; I won't have to kill off Goo.

• The throwing dagger (and axe) bug is not due to Goo but actually an EoU problem, which will not affect any of the magical ones. I recently remembered having similar problems on previous run-throughs.
• The Goo attacking bug seems to be dispel-related. I finally noticed the odd coincidence between Goo having a Dispel magic cast on him and the game crashing a few seconds later. I don't know what causes it, but it's connected to his "mouth" weapon, so any time he gets dispelled I just switch to bare-fist briefly and for some reason the game doesn't crash. *shrug*
• Not exactly a bug, but still strange: Goo is not actually a floating eye-ball. He uses the gauth animation, but his "mouth" turns him reddish or purplish or something. Very peculiar, and it's a little odd having a monster on my side rather than the wizard eye I expected. Those of you who do not know what a gauth looks like can take a look at Isshy's avatar (just search the directory for Isshy).

Phew, that's enough for one update; unless anyone has questions or comments?

 

Bum bum bummmmmm!!! (I'm getting rather good at cliffhangers, aren't I? ) BTW, is anyone still reading this? I'm kinda wonderin' if Rhyll or kuemp or anyone is still paying attention to my rambling. *sigh*

Chapter One is finished, and the alternate Quayle subplot comes to a close...or does it? (Bum bum bummmmm! ) There's still at least one piece to the puzzle that hasn't yet been revealed, but that one will be a while in coming. In the meantime, Quayle will have to occasionally deal with something his alter ego did earlier; I'll decide what on a case-by-case basis.

P.S. Me lonely. Need feedback.