D&D General Demetrios1453 Plays the Gold Box Games

[Demetrios1453]

Pool of Radiance (Part 56): Valhingen Graveyard (Part 6) - Valhingen Graveyard completed!

Having sanctified the vampire's coffin, we are actually going to backtrack a bit for an encounter that can only take place at this point. It's a bit awkward to have to head back, but for some reason, the programmers didn't allow for the encounter to be triggered the first time you go through that location.

So we head back towards the edge of the wight zone, and meet a man wandering, completely not suspiciously, around the graveyard.

Nah, bud, you're an obvious trap (and he is, he'll betray you the first chance he gets if you let him join).

A 6th-level magic-user is nothing to sneeze at at this point, but there's only one of him and six of us.

And that is that.

Intriguing.

Nice, we'll give that to Buffy, who only has a +1 ring right now.

We'll trade the old +1 ring to Brin, to be saved for later.

This encounter taken care of, we return to the northeastern corner of the graveyard to search for our elusive vampire. We find what looks to be a wall in front of us, but GBC shows there's a door there...

We go through and find some stairs going down.

A pit seems as good a spot to find a vampire as any, so down we go!

We'll ask him if he's seen a vampire anywhere around.

Woah! The tall, pale man with very white teeth was the vampire all along!

Note that our efreet buddy, who has been chilling out in his bottle this whole time since the kobold caves, has decided to pop out now that we've encountered a vampire. Unfortunately, he's not in the best position to get at the vampire, with little hope of the battlefield opening up in a way for him to do so.

The vampire has apparently called for some wolves to aid him, as vampires are wont to do.

Time to start taking this threat down before he can harm us! The magic users pop some magic missiles.

The efreet, in the only useful thing it can do in this battle, takes down one of the wolves.

I move Buffy around to get into position for an epic backstab. Honestly, a character named Buffy taking down the vampire from behind? You couldn't script it any better!

She misses.

Baroness Bella takes down the vampire right after.

With the vampire down, the remaining wolf goes quickly.

The battle is won! The vampire is dead!

But suddenly...

Argh. Stupid vampires!

But before we follow it...

We sure do!

Nice!

That's a lot of gold. Enough that it threatens to start encumbering my party. We'll still take it anyway - we're adventurers after all!

As for the items it had here...

Oh look. Even more scrolls of restoration. Not like we don't already have a couple dozen already. And why would a vampire have scrolls of restoration anyway? I guess loot from previous, less lucky, adventurers?

The shield gets put aside to be sold, and I'll give the wand to Bragir, whose wand of lightning seems to have used its last charge and crumbled into dust the last time he used it.

But it's no time to linger. We need to track down the vampire before it can re-form and regain its full power. Obviously, it's going to head back to the coffin we encountered earlier.

That's a pretty funny way of putting it. "Oh, by the way, there's a vampire here." Not even "The vampire you previously defeated is here" or something similar.

He's considerably weakened compared to the last fight, so we hopefully can take him down quickly.

And indeed we do...

With the XP of killing him, Baroness Bella can now gain a level!

And somehow I missed the screenshot for the level-up window. She will now have 105 HP, her THAC0 goes down by one, and, like Bant, she will now get 3 attacks every 2 rounds.

Now that we're done here, it's back to the city to earn our well-deserved reward. The Valhingen Graveyard is one of the toughest and most combat-intensive areas of the game, so the reward better be good!

We leave the graveyard and head towards the boat.

And return to the city.

Instead of going straight to the City Clerk, we head to the weapon shop so we can clear out inventory and consolidate our cash to lighten our encumbrance. Several party members were down to only a 3 speed in the last vampire fight.

The first thing we do is sell all those extraneous cleric scrolls. We have a lot of them.

Yes please.

Brother Baltor's inventory in particular is filled with them.

We'll let him keep a couple just in case, as well as the scroll with 3 spells which has some non-restoration spells. His inventory looks much better once the rest are gone.

Remember how I gave Brin the extra ring of protection +1? It's because we can buy her just plain old non-magical banded mail and have her wear that with the ring, which will lower her AC compared to her chainmail +1 alone.

With that, we buy some arrows to consolidate our coin. Our funds at this point:

All done at the store, it's time to see the City Clerk!

"Some" undead. My dear City Clerk, there was far more than just "some". Still, we'll take the reward...

That's OK I guess.

Then she speaks again:

OK, "special prize" sounds more like it!

Wow, that's a lot of XP!

25 jewelry is actually quite a lot.

Once she's given us the reward, she mentions that Urslingen wants to see us, which is just him imploring, once again, for us to capture the Stojanow Gate:

It's our next stop anyway, so hopefully we'll give him cause to quit his whining about this soon.

To prepare for our assault on the gate, we head back to the in to heal up and memorize spells. And to scribe those spells on the magic-user scroll we found!

Brin will scribe the one spell on the scroll she doesn't have.

And after that's done, Bragir will scribe the remaining two.

Spells scribed and memorized, we rest up. Next stop, the Stojanow Gate! We'll start up that mission in the next post. With only this and the castle left to go, we're in the endgame now!

Valhingen Graveyard map:

 

[W'rkncacnter]

this thread has been really fascinating to follow. these games are way before my time, so it's very cool seeing a playthrough.

i hope you get to see this endeavor through to the end!

 

[TheHand]

The graveyard is one of the most atmospheric and thrilling parts of Pool of Radiance and has always stood out to me as a highlight of the adventure.

However, when I recently adapted the adventure for live play (when I ran a Pool-of-Radiance & Curse of the Azure Bonds mega campaign), it struck me at how random the vampire and the graveyard are with the rest of the story. So I tried to find some connective tissues.

(Spoiler tags because I spoil some things about the video game...)

Spoiler

I decided that the vampire should have a personal reason for wanting to raise an undead army to take on Tyranthraxus, so I came up with the idea that he was a previous host to the spirit, who had only barely managed to survive the process and became a vampire due to his own twisted will and all the supernatural forces at play. Feeling rejected by Tyranthraxus, he naturally wanted revenge, and hunted him down over many years, searching for a way to control the Pool of Radiance. I had him try to actually forge an alliance with the player characters after they trashed his undead-making factories (they politely declined).

As for the random mage you encounter in the graveyard, I made him 'Genheeris', the high-ranking mage you encounter in the final stage, sent to spy on the player-characters and their progress in the grayeyard. This let me introduce one of Tyranthraxus' lieutenants early on and give the players an 'a-ha!' moment when they encounter him later... in my game Genheeris teleported out of the graveyard before the PCs could attack him.

As some side-notes, I linked the silver dragon in the mountains to the bronze dragon, they were friends and he was looking for the fate of his companion. And Yarash I tied to Dracandros in the next game... but I don't want to digress too much!

Cheers!

 

[Demetrios1453]

Pool of Radiance (Part 57): Stojenow Gate (Part 1) - Stojanow Gate Completed!

To get to the Stojanow Gate, we have to go back across the city, as it's on the northern edge of Podol Plaza. So, we head back into the Slums.

At this point I would hope it would be more "enviously" than "suspiciously". Also, it would have been cool if after a certain point (say clearing Podol Plaza or the Cadorna Textile House), there would be text that the Slums have started to be resettled by good, law-abiding folk.

We head past Kuto's Well...

And through Podol Plaza, exiting it to the north.

A short distance into the Stojanow Gate area, we meet up with an interesting character.

We decide to converse with the man.

250 GP? Is it a solid sterling silver wagon, or something? But still, it's our best hope to get through the gate undetected so we can get past its guards unaware. I have a feeling that Mr Cart Driver knows this and has upped the price accordingly. So we fork over the money. It's not like we don't have enough to spare.

Thanks, I guess.

Giants in the castle? That's worrying news. And it appears that we'll be fighting bugbear guards to gain control of the gate.

Bugbears and ettins at the gate, it seems. Well, he's somewhat made up for his price gouging with some decent information at least.

Taking his wagon and posing as simple merchants, we move forward towards the gate.

A bit of a geographic reminder for those who don't want to search through the thread to find the post with this map:

I can only guess that supplies and reinforcements are being sneaked through Podol Plaza even though it's been cleared of enemy patrols.

Watching the bugbears warily, we move forwards towards the wall to the right of the gate.

Not wanting to blow our cover, we move back away from the wall, then head west towards the gate itself.

This is getting to be an expensive subterfuge. But not wanting to blow our cover, we pay up.

Success! We are through the gate undetected! Now we just need to take out the guards in the towers to either side of the gate, then return to take care of the bugbears.

We head towards the east tower first.

Up we go!

I assume the 14-foot long beds are for the ettins.

You'd think we would have noticed that before we noticed the furniture!

Yikes! The Boss has a medusa? Good to know that ahead of time.

Well, surprise combat time it is!

Oh dear, that's never good. Well, let's take out this group as quickly as possible.

Well, the bad news is that there's a magic-user in this bunch. The good news is that he's apparently suicidal and decided to run to the front, when a wall of ettins ahead of him would have been a far more prudent strategy. We obviously focus our fire on him.

As my melee begin to swing away at him, Brin decides that they all look a bit chilly and could do with a nice warm fire.

By the time she can cast, the magic-user is down and the aide next to him is already pretty hurt.

23 points! Not bad. While the ettins are still up, the poor aide has met his end.

With the ettins wounded, it takes little time to take them down as well, and the battle is soon over.

There isn't much treasure, but among it is a magical ring!

Another ring of protection +2! That will be a nice upgrade for Brin!

With nothing else here, we head out and go to the western tower.

And up we go!

It's described exactly the same as the previous tower, to the 14-foot beds and the same inhabitants. At least they are having a different conversation.

Considering the only area of Phlan left under the Boss' control is this gate and the castle behind it, this seems to be a bit... optimistic.

Hmm, I guess that alarm in the other tower can't be heard here. Surprise attack it is, again!

And Brin does the exact same thing as well...

And she does the exact same damage a well. Serious deja vu in this battle!

The humans have been taken out again, and all that needs to be done is to take out the wounded ettins.

After killing the first two, the survivor runs to the other side of the room. Bant and Baroness Bella give chase, with Bant getting the killing blow in.

Sadly, no magic ring in the treasure this time.

All that's left now is to take care of the bugbears at the gate. We head back down from this tower and go east. Upon entering the gate area....

Even with that many bugbears, this should go quickly.

Bragir has felt left out when it comes to the fireball department, so he takes his chance to lob one into that big group of bugbears...

That's basically every bugbear left since my melee rushed forward and took out a few. That one gaining cover behind the wall is going to have a (briefly) lucky day.

Oooh, 30 points of damage. By far the best fireball we've seen so far!

Three made their saves, while the one sheltered by the wall took no damage. Not that he'll last much longer...

We rapidly take out the survivors...

And soon the battle is over.

They don't have any real treasure. By the time we've done searching them...

And the Stojanow Gate is now in the hands of the forces of Phlan! Only the castle remains in the Boss' hands.

With that done, we head back to town.

Suspiciously among the cheering crowds, no doubt.

Off to visit the City Clerk!

And with that, as she says, we will head back and lead the assault on the Valjevo Castle, the stronghold of Tyranthraxus. That's where we'll pick up next time.

Map of the Stojanow Gate:

As you can see, it's a pretty encounter-light area, which is why I was able to get it all into a single post.

 

[W'rkncacnter]

250 GP? Is it a solid sterling silver wagon, or something?

to be fair, it sounds like you're also buying all the merchandise in the wagon!

 

[Demetrios1453]

Pool of Radiance (Part 58): Valjevo Castle (Part 1)

With the Stojanow Gate cleared, it's time to head for the final location of the game - Valjevo Castle, where Tyranthraxus awaits!

But first, the reward given by the Clerk is enough for Bant to level up.

Bant has hit the max level for fighter in the game, and thus GBC will show his XP bar as full from here on out.

Everyone else still has levels to gain in one class or another, although we've hit max for Brother Baltor's cleric levels and Bragir's and Brin's magic-user levels. We might max out other classes as well before the game is over. I'll probably have a significant amount of leveling to do immediately at the start of Curse of the Azure Bonds.

Off to the store. We didn't get much of interest, so it's mainly buying arrows and consolidating my funds.

And now to the inn rest, heal, and memorize spells before we trek across town to the castle.

Once we're ready to go, we head back to the Slums...

(I really hope the party will have the clout to get these guards fired once we've finished saving the city)

And then we go through Kuto's Well...

Through Podol Plaza, and then the Stojanow Gate...

Until we reach the entry to the castle area.

Valjevo Castle is huge. It's basically divided into three concentric sections, each larger than the last. In the center is the castle proper, surrounded by a large hedge maze, and then an outer castle area. We're headed into the outermost section first, which is divided into four quadrants. The entrances from the Stojanow Gate lead to the southwestern quadrant.

As we enter this area, we go into the first door on the right.

As one of the strategy guides says, it's a big leap from us being someone they haven't seen before to assuming that we're here to kill Tyranthraxus! But if that's what they want to leave, we won't disabuse them of the notion.

We choose "Nice" and speak to them.

Sure! Sounds like as good a plan as any!

Simply leaving is the best choice. You can tie them up, but there's a chance they'll be discovered and the disguise fails, and if you kill them, they not only curse you as you die, but the disguise will be ineffective as well.

Being disguised means we can walk around without too much interference, unless the party does something to set off an alarm, in which case you'll be questioned and possibly attacked by the alerted guards. But even then, it's hard to lose the disguise unless you do a few specific things.

We're going to fully explore the entire southwestern quadrant, then turn back around and explore the remaining quadrants counter-clockwise. This gets the best items as quickly as possible.

So we head out from the laundry and head west. We skip past a few doors for the moment, and enter the first door along the western wall....

This room isn't accessed much, so it will be a safe place to rest. We don't need to do so yet, but it's good to identify such locations as quickly as possible should we need to hastily retreat to one.

We're going to rest since it's night, and it's better for most encounters if we wait until day.

Rested up, we head out and go through one of the doors we passed previously.

Fire giants! That's a pretty rough first encounter of one of the true giant types.

We walk up to him.

We can't let the smith armor up Tyranthraxus' forces, especially with fire giants at his side. So we decide to attack.

Luckily 1e fire giants are much weaker than their current versions. We start concentrating on taking them down.

We take them out so quickly (I guess we took them by surprise) that they don't even get a shot in before all but one is dead. The survivor rapidly retreats across the room.

And Brin takes him out with a bow shot.

The giants give excellent XP.

Mainly because of what they have in their bags...

The game faithfully follows 1e rules on giants' bags, meaning they have a ridiculous amount of coin after you kill them. It's not convenient to carry around (and we actually decline to do so to avoid encumbrance), but it is very helpful on the path to leveling up.

The smith apparently had a couple of magic items, which we take in lieu of all that heavy coinage.

Done here, we head north, investigating the doors to the east (the west is just a huge wall, with the hedge maze inside). Most of the rooms are unused and uninhabited, but some do stand out...

Well, that's gross. We'll head out and see if we can find something less disturbing.

And, yes, a temple of Bane is less disturbing than that smokehouse.

What exactly is at the end of the room that's crudely altering things? But before we can ponder 1980s spell-check errors...

He definitely looks suitably smug to be a priest of Bane.

And, no, we politely decline being blessed by Bane. And by "politely", I mean "violently".

Three clerics - we need to damage them as quickly as possible before they get any hold spells off! Luckily, the two 1st-level clerics will be taken out in a single hit, two at most.

Yep, single shot.

Bant takes down the leader, which I unfortunately didn't get a screenshot of. But in any case, it's a quick battle, and the acolytes of evil have been taken down!

Let's see what that cleric had...

Very nice! All three items are upgrades!

Brother Baltor will keep the mace.

I give Buffy the necklace so she can have something to do (firing off fireballs) when faced with foes immune to damage from non-magical weapons.

And Bragir gets the plate, which an upgrade over his banded mail.

We move back towards the "alter"

No we don't. There's only a few silver in the offering box, and attempting to steal it will cause damage. Bane doesn't like people stealing his change!

As tempting as it is (and, yes, they are magical swords), again we don't. First of all, the swords can only be equipped by characters of lawful evil alignment (which is one of the very few moments in the game where alignment matters) and will do damage to anyone else who tries to use them. Secondly, the swords are apparently quite distinctive and hard to hide, so we will lose our disguise if we remove them.

And, well, that's it for the southwestern quadrant. We backtrack towards where we entered and then continue eastwards. Next stop, the southeastern quadrant! But we'll cover that in the next post.