Thea: Not going to "Let it Go"

[Part of the Darklands of Arkania Story.]

Fortunately it seems the herbalist from Hermit's Lake had also moved nearby, so while Cooper Team holds down the fort at the Memorial Ground the rest of the villagers make the run there and pay in food to be cured. The plan is successful and the mostly non-combat villagers are lucky to not encounter anything during their travels. Once they are back, Cooper Team explores the Ice Tower right beside their village and find Princess Zuzanna already in there, trapped by her own lackeys.

Just leave our prisoner alone!

They are willing to spend their undeath to keep her trapped within the tower, and she proposes a counter offer of riches for Cooper Team to help free her instead. Cooper refuses, and leaves the cruel princess to rot there for eternity. They then go on patrol, poisoning spider hives, assassinating bandits, helping a wandering translucent elf with food and finding a mithril mine filled with tough dwarves (who successfully defend their territory).

It is around this time that they finally come across the trail of the Leech Lord once again.

Thea: Magic Compass

[Part of the Darklands of Arkania Story.]

While on patrol, Cooper Team runs into a Bugay - another form of tree demon. This one is walking around happily eating people so there's no recourse but to kill the damn thing.

So either we kill it, or we kill it. Good choice options there game!

One of the Bugay's allies, a Pine Cone demon claims innocence after the combat and purely because of how the Wolf Pack was saved from the Leshy by one, Cooper decides to spare the creature and it joins his party as "Pineconette". I guess it's a girl? Soon after, Cooper Team meets up with the Wolf Pack who give them the cosmic shards to take to Alisyr. The plan is for the smaller force of Cooper team to make the run while the Wolf Pack covers them from the multiple abomination army lairs that seem to be springing up.

On the way Cooper Team finds a force field protected tree and attempt to break the spell but fail, earning instead a curse upon Cooper and Atheren. Regardless, they make it to Alisyr who constructs a magic compass from the shards which then point to the next location: the cosmic seed. Alysir is still too weak to actually help out, so it's up to Cooper Team and the Wolf Pack, who are having a successful run of assassinating undead abominations, to go check it out.

Back at Hermit's Lake, a crazy religious nut joins the village: Vayshen Panda.

Thea: News of the World

[Part of the Darklands of Arkania Story.]

While the expedition is out looting stashes and fighting "Spor" (large talking snakes), the village gets a lot of visitors during the Festival of the Goat. Some old guys called the Dziody come to the party and teach Cooper some folklore, and a trio of knights Ald Firstshot, Atheren, and Schulz Wenzel arrive - confirming the eclipse was more far reaching than initially thought.

A familiar dwarf also comes later on: Thorgrim, having escaped Riva himself after the judge Bosper Jarnug decided to execute anyone that helped or had connections to the team during their time there. Not only did he hang Stipen and Yann, he made an alliance with the pirates and slaughtered all members of the Guild. "Do you have any good news?" quipped Talarian, to which Thorgrim nodded. He had come across an abandoned gold mine on the way over. That lifts spirits somewhat.

Lastly, the village is visited by the demon Theodore. He is impressed with what they've managed to achieve and tasks the people to cure the land from the shadowy darkness that has befallen it. He provides a location to start the quest and once more vanishes, leaving Hermit's Lake to do the heavy lifting. That's just typical.

Obviously I can't do it: who else will sit on all these tree stumps!?

Thea: Character Building

[Part of the Darklands of Arkania Story.]

As a parting gift before he leaves the area, Theodore also mentions the location of a nearby dungeon the team might find supplies in. Instead they find a plague ghost who has imprisoned himself as to not spread the disease. The only way to fix him is if the team lets him grope someone. Wolfy shrugs and lets him cop a feel, it's not like its the first time that's happened anyway. The team learns from another adventuring group about a nearby herbalist which should be handy should anyone get poisoned or diseased.

They then busy themselves with poisoning the various vermin nests in the surrounding areas, slaying spiders, rats, bats, bees, ravens and the like. While doing so, they come across a werewolf agonizingly "character building" atop a shrine made of silver. While its tempting to slay him while he is weak, Heather Bee persuades him to share some of the silver instead to which the wolf man agrees.

Love the smart arse response.

Back at Hermit's Lake, Talarian has taken charge of constructing and improving the little settlement. It helps that two of the children grow up to be something useful: Cateaclysmic the worker and Missy Sparks, the warrior. Missy gets to see action right away as she has to help defend the village against crazed bees, an action undertaken with sword and pitchfork apparently. Regardless the bees are slain and the village is saved.

Thea: The Eclipse

[Part of the Darklands of Arkania Story.]

After a long journey, Wolfy had led Darth, Cooper, Braxwolf, Talarian and Mama Cori to a place where she figured the soldiers of Riva would not find them: Hermit's lake, where the role of hermit had now passed on to Curian - who was still hoping to find his unicorn. He didn't live alone though. In the little hamlet he now housed child orphans from the various wars, a retired soldier named Heather Bee as well as two sisters Wolfy recognized: Korima the warrior and Harika the one eyed thief, who was also on the run after managing to lose her sizable amount of loot at gambling.

They had only been there a few days passed when suddenly the sun darkened through means of an unnatural eclipse, and during that time the world around them changed for the worse. Mama Cori was unsure for how long the sun remained dark, but when the first greyish rays of light began to filter through, it was decided an expedition be sent out to discover the mystery of the darkness.

Those houses are tiny compared to the people! :P

This party, composed of Braxwolf, Mama Cori, Curian, Heather Bee, Darth and led by Wolfy decided to first make their way to a nearby ruined tower where they encountered a bearded demon named Theodore. The little bastard tasks the team with menial duties such as boar hunting, vegetable growing, structure building, and retrieving gold from a demon buddy of his, who is of the cuter Hohlick variety.

Rat-poodle Fairy?

Arkania: Hermit's Lake

[Part of the Darklands of Arkania Story.]

Back on the mainland the team decides to try find the thieving mage in the mountains, and seem to be on the right track when a large group of brigands jump them during the night. Alas the robbers had nothing to do with their prey, and neither did the cave full of goblins that they wandered into right after.

The brigands and goblins were nowhere near as difficult as the giant beetles in that cave, those critters simply didn't want to die. Humorously there was also a large pile of feces in one corner that the team had the option of searching through. I figured they were wealthy enough at that point to give it a miss.

Having crossed the mountains with no sign of the ruins, Wolfy suggested the team try for Hermit's lake next - and on the way there they ran across a Unicorn who seemed to "talk" to Curian - by stabbing him a little with its horn. The mage was all a fluster afterwards, proclaiming the mystical horse would somehow find a treasure map piece and bring it to them.

Neigh!?

The team waits around at Hermit Lake for a few days, patrolling the shores. Zubon is getting good at collecting herbs now, but not as good as Curian. Unfortunately a swampy marsh at one end of the lake seems intent on robbing the party of various items (like plate armor) while crossing it.

Fortunately most of these are replaceable by Nerk's old set. How Zubon managed to fit into dwarf armor is best left unexplained. Eventually the team votes to move on since the Unicorn doesn't seem to be coming back, which saddens Curian greatly.

There's also an option to end the game right here.

Tales of the Blight: Sit! Stay! Bad Dog!?

[Part of my Dragon Age: Origins play through. Spoilers ahead!]

With the majority of the city still closed to us we traveled next to the to the forest to meet the Dalish elves. They are quite stand offish from the get go so I bring Leliana along for peace keeping duty, at least in the camp. Seems they have a werewolf problem and their mysterious and ancient leader Zathrien tasks us with killing the alpha wolf and get its heart to help cure his infected people. After talking to a few other elves I strongly suspect Zathrien -is- the wolf but whatever.

More importantly I find this place to be an unending supply of the healing herb elf root and spend a bit of money on it. Soon it is time to enter the woods so I task Leliana with keeping an eye on the elves while Morrigan comes along for the action. It's a decent sized zone full of werewolves, ents, some maleficar and a few undead who are really the only ones who give us any grief. Those revenants are mean! The poet tree and the mad hermit who talks in questions were pretty cool though.

Almost as cool as this fellow.

After learning they could speak early on, I tried my best to talk to the werewolves but they were only interested in trying to kill us, or running away. Eventually we tracked them to some ancient ruins where they locked themselves behind an unopenable door. Sigh. Of course there would be a way around, but it would be somewhere deep within those ruins huh?

Darklands: Party Crashers

This is part of The Darklands story.

Just to irritate the Wild Hunt further, Jewel decided to destroy a random pagan altar they came across as they journeyed to the town of Speyer. Alas the monks there did not know of St. Thomas the Apostle, but Vagabond did learn of a job for the Medici - to collect ancient prayer books from a hermit called Wipo South-East of Bremen - which was a long way away. After more slayings of wolves and a pair of giant spiders, as well as hiding from the wild hunt, Stubborn scaring bandits, and Belghast killing bandits the team comes across the satanist village of Buckeburg which they purge of evil.

As usual, one of them yells out something about revenge as they flee - this time North West of Gronnigen on September 22. For a change the group decides to actually go see what this "revenge" is, and to their surprise when they get there on that day it is the witches high sabbat! A huge throng of people has gathered there in the marshlands for an unholy evil time.

Cunningly, Jewel convinces the perimiter guards that they are new initiates of evil and while the accompanying guard wolves growl a bit at first they are let through into the main grounds of dark revelry. With so many people and places to go, the team decides to plan out on how best to sabotage this event.

Nearly a hundred? Need to kill 25 each!

Darklands: Folkwin of Kyrburg

This is part of The Darklands story.

Back at Kolberg the replacement Schulz (since the original one is in the party) tells us they were still raided by bandits recently, this time those of Folkwin of Kyrburg based East of Berlin. That's a surprising distance to be raiding, but the replacement Schulz offers to come with the team to help slay him and since it is on the way to Goslar there is no reason to not accept.

The team, now composed of Jeromai, Lyle, Ravanel and the Schulz twins begin the long journey South West, scaring a wolf pack with fire, defeating many bandits in the woods, resting at a friendly lord's tower and learning some stuff from Aerbo the hermit before finally reaching the ominous castle of Folkwin the robber knight.

Because Hermits always know stuff!

The same plan as before works yet again because it seems these robber knights are stupid. It isn't long before Folkwin is caught alone in his room almost literally with his pants down, and this time the robber knight is slain without any friendly casualties. The team rejoices... and sets his castle on fire, because that seems to be tradition now. After watching it burn, they decide to head to the nearby city of Berlin to celebrate.