Baldur’s Gate II: Shadows of Amn by Matt Bell

Author:Matt Bell
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Boss Fight Books
Published: 2017-02-07T00:00:00+00:00

IV

“Give a man a fish and he eats for a day,

but teach a man to fight and he can chow down

on the meaty marrow of evil!”

—Minsc

In an interview in The Writer’s Chronicle, the writer Patricia Henley once explained how fellow novelist Charlie Smith suggested that one way to draft a story is to first “write the islands,” by which he meant the writer should draft the parts he or she already knows, those pivotal scenes that can be seen even before the intervening connective tissue has been imagined.

In many ways, Baldur’s Gate II works in a similar way, by providing the islands and letting the player determine how they might be reached. For instance, every player will infiltrate Spellhold to free Imoen, where Irenicus will steal the souls of both Imoen and Gorion’s Ward.

Next, you must face Irenicus’s vampire “sister” Bodhi in the labyrinth beneath Spellhold, where the strain of constant violence and the loss of the player’s soul unlocks a malevolent avatar of Bhaal called the Slayer, a manifestation of the evil you carry within you. During your escape, a shipwreck will strand your party in the underwater City of Caverns, a city ruled by the sahuagin, an evil race of fish-like humanoids, whose political infighting must be resolved before a route from their city to the Underdark can be opened. In the Underdark—a sprawling underground world, one of the most famous locations in the Forgotten Realms—you follow the trail left by Irenicus and Bodhi to the drow city of Ust Natha, one of the most difficult locations in the game. To gain entry, you will make a deal with a nearby silver dragon, who will disguise your party with illusions that make you appear as evil drow elves, and once inside Ust Natha you’ll have to prove your worth to one of the city’s ruling houses, a necessary subterfuge if you are to recover the silver dragon’s stolen eggs so that the dragon will open the only path out of the Underdark.

Returning to the surface world, you find the drow now allied with Irenicus and besieging the elven city of Suldanessellar, which is not only under attack but also hidden completely in the elven forest, every path to its gates suddenly lost. Irenicus has created powerful magical illusions to seal it away, and only a magical lantern known as the Rhynn Lanthorn can reveal how to enter the city. Unsurprisingly, Irenicus and Bodhi have already secured this artifact, so the party once again has to pursue Bodhi to her catacombs beneath Athkatla, where killing her finally frees Imoen’s soul and earns you the Rhynn Lanthorn.

From there, you must enter Suldanessellar to confront Irenicus, a battle which begins beneath the city’s palace, amid the branches of the sacred Tree of Life and ends in the Nine Hells, a demonic underworld where you must reclaim your soul if you wish to return to the land of the living.

In Baldur’s Gate II, these are the islands provided by the game’s writers,

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