So, last time we visited Fort Remote and met Grah-Hoth, He’s kind of a jerk and we’re probably going to kill him.
At this point, the game is starting to really push for us to go northwest, all of our current quests tend to lead up past fort Saffron into the Abyss and hte areas around it. Though we still have a few things we need to go do elsewhere, like dealing with Kyrass. For now though, lets focus on the area past Fort Remote.First however, a couple small notes, for one I forgot to show what’s in Thantria’s room properly.
The crystal seem to be another empire orb? It’s definitely how she talks to the surface at any rate. There doesn’t seem to be anything I can do with it. Outside of that? There’s some loot for winning the fight and that’s it, oh well.
While i’m at it, lets bring up the world map, as it’s been awhile.
Here’s a map of Avernum. The question marks are locations I’ve been to, towns, dungeons and the like. Exclamation points are locations for quests I haven’t completed yet. As you can see. we’ve got a lot of the map covered.Fort Saffrom and the areas north of it, as well as the lake in the north are about all that’s left.
Also you might notice a couple question marks in that blank spot in the southwest? Those are in the area past Fort Remote. which is where we’re heading now.
First there’s the Drake Pit.
with a name like “The Drake Pit” you’d expect a pit full of drakes. It is, but somehow the first thing I run into are these mages backed by some blademasters. I have no idea what these people are doing here. If I had to guess I’d say they’re more surface troops, like the group that tried to assassinate me last time I looked back here, but whatever the reason, they’re too busy tying ot kill me to explain why.
One of them had a nice bow for mages though.
There’s also some level 3 barriers I still can’t dispel, hmm.
most of the outside of the have is what you’d expect, some drakes and other lizards, as well as.. .a cemetery? It’s across from where those people where, it might of been made by them?
The middle of the pit is what’s important, lots of drakes along with the pit drake himself, some giant lizards for good measure, and a few volcanic vents that like to damage everyone near them every few turns.
The trick to this fight is mostly speed. Drakes can breath fire (or ice in the case of the cryodrake) can summon, and are fast enough to often move twice in a turn. The giant lizards are various basilisk variants that can readily lock party members down. you need to think the heard ASAP, especially the drakes, before you get overrun with summons and burned to death.
It actually took me a few tries to win this. Usually an attempt would end with most of my party dropping dead, often thanks to the hell bats the pit Drake likes to summon, Said bats breath fire and explode on death readily taken down weakened party members.
If you can get the drake isolated without taking too much damage, you’ve got a good chance of winning this. He does have a move that lets him relocate while damaging people, and the vents in the area are still a threat, as well as the bats. but with nobody else running around it’s easy to keep on top of things. Ward of Elements helps here.
The reward is a lot of money and some useful equipment, including a spear that’d be nice if I had anyone to use it.
The other major location back here is the tower of Sulfras. We’ve found another dragon!
The demon up front doesn’t seem much to begin with, just some enslaved greeter who also warns us not to go through the east passage in Sulfra’s lair. That is until you talk with him a bit and learn he used to work for Erika! Apparently he got dragon-napped while out on an errand.
The important thing here is he says Erika has a statue here, He says we’ll know what to do if we’ve spoken to Erika and that said statue is a guardian, though he won’t tell us what that means. He also notes Erika lives somwhere west of the Abyss. There is a tower on the west edge of the world map, maybe it’s that?
Meet Sulfras, She lives her had has been blocking a passage east through the fort. Apparently there’s something of interest back there and some people want a look at it. some people she notes, being the scimitar!
Clearly, we need to get back there, but she won’t let people through without her permission. Lucky for us we can ask her permission and it works! …kind of. She wants us to find a couple items, namely a silver circlet and a onyx scepter.
The circlet is somewhere in the abyss. As for the scepter, we have it already! If you remember, it was used to lure a demon into the tower of mages, and we got the scepter when we dealt with him. I could hand it in now, but for the moment I think I’ll hold off on that. We might have another use for it and besides, we’d still need the circlet. either way we need to get back there.
Heading back to town, I realize I overlooked something in Dharmon: They have a job board. most of the jobs send us up north, but there’s also a simple delivery to Bergha.
Probably a message for the scimitar. We also head south of Dharmon to handle some bandits on the road.
It’s not much of a fight at this point.
That’s that.
Finally, in Blosk, I think I forgot to show that Sabrina wanted us to slay the pit drake. We get nothing for this but her uncaring reply is kind of funny.
With that we’re more or less done for now. I need to finish searching the waterfall maze, and maybe take another (literal) stab or two at Kyass, but after that, it’s time to head for fort Saffron and start pushing north.