The Cursed: Keep to Yourself

[Part of the Cursed story line]

Looking for an exit the team run into a powerful wraith demon, and only thanks to Neera's chaos orb do the team manage to take it and it's allies down. Unfortunately Haer'Dalis is killed in this battle as his minute meteors are reflected back to him by the wraith's shield.

Mazzy can do that too!

One member down and wandering this place of demons really blows so Catharina switches tactics. The team are now just gonna run. Run like hell. Using invisibility and haste, this actually works - somehow getting past rooms and rooms of enemies until they find themselves back at the start.

Exhausted and again one person down they return to Athkatla to regroup. During their rest Catharina suddenly realized... "Shouldn't we be rescuing Imoen?"

Insight: Haer'Dalis is a strange cat. He's weak, but actually good at everything if you can micromanage him. Too bad, I hate micromanagement.

The Cursed: Gambling with Many Things

[Part of the Cursed story line]

Near the portal down, which the party cannot activate, is a demon and his lackeys. Fortunately this demon knows Haer'Dalis and wants to gamble with the team with his deck of many things.

What? Demons love to gamble!

Catharina agrees to the game, winning the first two rounds and getting a nice sword and a scroll of "Wish" while only suffering minor curses but on the third round the demon wins, having bargained with the holy icon that grants freedom from the keep.

Catharina honors the deal and the demon and entourage leave. Thankfully he throws the icon back after stepping through his portal, giving the party the chance to escape - if they can find the way out of the damned maze.

Unfortunately she's not smart enough to just Wish them out.

Insight: The Wish spell here is more combat oriented, which seems to be a really bad time to summon a djinn and carefully word something.

The Cursed: A Tempting Maze

[Part of the Cursed story line]

To replace Anomen, Lu Lingqi begrudgingly asks Haer'Dalis (who has a clear crush on her) to join the team. The bard has an odd set of skills, but the most surprising is his fame. Almost everyone in town recognizes him.

The team returns to the Watcher's Keep and descends to Level 3, which is a bastard of a maze made of little rooms, some being magic dead zones. It's also filled with powerful, warring demons making it a slog to get through.

Aren't succubi horny little devils?

A room of succubi lustfully offer passage to the end of the maze for the prize of a kiss and Catharina agrees - getting level drained in the process. The succubi don't lie, but only after they leave do the team discover they don't have the key down, and must now go through the maze in reverse!

Insight: And that's what I get for trying to skip the level. Lol.

The Cursed: Breaker of Prisons

[Part of the Cursed story line]

With the cult of the Unseeing Eye destroyed, the team decide to check up on Haer'Dalis and his theater troop - only to find them being abducted by inter-planar bounty hunters! The party follow into the planar prison, and defeat the demons in charge of it. Of course, most of the slaves actually die during this but the theater company is fine.

These two also made it out. They always do.

They opt to teleport on to Sigil, but Haer'Dalis returns with Catharina's team back to Athkatla in hopes of adventuring with her (specifically Lu Lingqi) one day. Keldorn, happy with recent events, invites them all to his house to meet his wife and daughters. This doesn't go so well as his wife is upset at the job hours he keeps and admits to having a relationship with another man! Distraught, Keldorn leaves to report this to the courts, leaving the party one member down again.

They decide to visit Jaheira at the docks and find a Harper inquisition waiting for them! Unwilling to be magically imprisoned for eternity the team slay all the Harpers present with the exclusion of Jaheira who wisely decided to side and rejoin with her old team. Having had enough of the city, the party decides to leave it to follow one of the many quest hooks outside but before doing so, they pay a quick trip to the adventure mart to gear up properly. At this point they had 94k gold anyway.

Insight: The Robe of Vecna at the Adventure Mart is very handy as it reduces spell casting time. Instant skull traps? Yes please!

The Cursed: Looking and Unseeing

[Part of the Cursed story line]

Having had enough of the Graveyard, the team heads into the Temple sewers next to hunt down a new cult forming below. An encounter with a well equipped band of brigands sees Minsc getting killed by a magical throwing axe which Korgan claims for himself before kicking Minsc's corpse down one of the many shit pipes. Taking his place is the paladin Keldorn, who is also looking for this mysterious cult down here.

Instead, the group finds the secret lair of a wizard who has enslaved the local actor Haer'Dalis. After rescuing the hapless actor the team goes deeper into the sewers and finds the base of the Unseeing Eye cult. It doesn't take much to learn that these self-blinding crazies worship a beholder who is looking for half of a powerful artifact, since it already has the first half.

The team finds it first in a long forgotten temple even further down before hopping into the beholder's lair to face the monster. There are a surprising number of undead servants here too, but most of the trouble comes from the random beholders and gauths (little beholders) in the area. Catharina makes use of all the summoning scrolls she has been hanging onto, letting her own skeles, efreeti and fire elemental handle all the dirty work. As for the Unseeing Eye, Korgan uses the assembled artifact (it's a plasma rifle) to almost one shot it, making it the easiest enemy in the entire place!

Beware of dwarves with plasma rifles!

Insight: Buying the Shield of Balduran at the Adventure Mart would have saved a lot of headaches here as it reflects beholder rays, but summoned fire elementals are a good fall back as they are immune to most of what the eye tyrants can throw.