So, last time we got the sword Demonslayer, then used it to slay a demon because really, what else do you do with a sword named Demonslayer?

At this point I should be ok to go to fort remote and get the main story back on track, if anything having a demon slaying sword would make handling the demons there a lot easier. But we’re currently pretty far north and there’s a few odds and ends in the area I’d like to get done first.

Plus with the holidays having everyone distracted, I figured it’d be better to do a smaller update.

First things first, I need to figure out where my boat went. It’s currently near Bargha, towards the bottom of the waterfall maze.It turns out the bottom of the maze leads near Drath’s crypt. and a small cave nearby gets you access to a bow… and a fight that surprisingly didn’t happen Because despite the game noting how the bow’s owner spotted me, he apparently totally didn’t and I was able to skip the fight.Going just past the crypt shows that the maze empties out into slith lands. Sadly as explained before the maze basically forces you to head southward so if i want to go north I’ll have to sail towards the east to where the portage is, then loop around to the north entrance into the maze. We’d likely need to do that a few times to fully explore the maze.

Interestingly, there’s a couple small areas I missed around slith lands, Namely this crypt, which unlike the towns nearby, I’m totally ok with robbing. This results in a slith avatar and a few monsters attacking me. But by now we’ve already dealt with whole teams of avatars so it’s no major issue.

another crypt nearby nets us a ring, along with another angry avatar to deal with.We also find a cave with a few drakes in it.That is until we find the secret passageway that leads to a large circular hall with a few undead in it.One undead stands out however, mostly due to being non-hostile.This ghost is haunting this ledge, as for why? He’s says he’s a vahnatai, and warns against the crypt in this dungeon, which is full of more vahnatai ghosts, the lord of which isn’t a big fan of the living.

As for what a vahnatai is? He says they’re an old race and… that’s it. in truth they’re the race we’ve met and seen signs of a few times before. you know, then ones where I keep saying “go play Avernum 2”? That’s them. Sadly “go play Avernum 2” will have to be my answer again as I’d rather not say anything on them until the game is ready to.The crypt takes up the area in the center of the circular hallway. At first there’s no too much of interest, just a couple rooms with some hostile undead, the secret room shown above hods something handy though.The large green crystal in the room works like the spellbooks we’ve seen elsewhere. Namely it teaches a level of the spell Daze.A coffin in here hides another secret.It opens up a way to the boss.Litch Knor’lhrno isn’t quite as nasty as some previous bosses we’ve faced. He has a lot of undead backing him up but they can be cleared out pretty quickly with a few area damage spells. Compared to Drath he doesn’t have as much in the way of mental spells or slows and stuns. The real threat is that he has two fairly powerful area damage spells, and no problem with casting them back to back. Fortunately having Return to Life makes this a bit easier to deal with, and it’s not long before we have him cornered.Again, Avernum 2 stuff.We run back to tell the ghost that we’ve dealt with his litch problem. He’s… ecstatic, I’m sure.Heading back outside, we find a slith village that’s actually peaceful,We can even trade with them! It is a bit surprising that these guys are living so close to where Sss-Thss was.Though we can’t ask about it as it turns there’s a bit of a language barrier and while we can trade, we can’t actually talk with them.Finally we had north to the Freehold, and find this quarry behind it, You can take some gems form here and with a high enough cave lore skill, you don’t even get caught. Nice!

Speaking fo, we should probably deliver that message to Kyass from the castle.He takes the news… surprisingly better than expected.Mind “better than expect” only means “didn’t immediately try to kill us.” We can totally walk away right now, message delivered. That said lets see what happens when we follow through on our threats.The good news about Kyass is that he’s more or less a straight forward fighter. No big nasty Area of effect attacks, no summoning horrible demons. At least a first.Kyass gets random defenses, including spine shield, which can reflect damage back at whoever attacks him. Making it worse is that while he’s mostly just a tough fighter, he’s a REALLY tough fighter.

Worse, it’s hard to show in screenshots, but fighting him basically makes the whole town hostile. town guards, random  shopkeepers, even the kitchen staff drop everything to come kill you.Even if you survive most of the town coming after you, a steady sully of fighters and archers will enter the room from upstairs.Then Kyass gains haste.It’s a long fight, eventually winding down to a badly beaten kyass and a few stragglers against a lone Adlous.It goes about as well as you’d expect.

Clearly, fighting off Kyass is meant for later in the game. I think I’ll stop here for now. Fortunately after dropping off the message, you can always come back to pick a fight later. for now though? I should probably handle something else. There’s a couple spots in the giant lands I haven’t looked at yet, and there’s still that matter of formally joining the Scimitars I’d like to deal with before heading to fort Remote.