Down, Down, Down By the River: Let's Play Baldur's Gate 3

[Timrod]

Summary

: Welcome back to Baldur’s Gate 3! Today, we’re going to finish the last area of Act 2 and fight Ketheric!

: Welcome to the Gauntlet of Shar. This dungeon is about finding ways to cheese puzzles.

Narrator: “Cross from light into darkness; give your life to the shadows.”

Shar: “Shar’s warriors must not be caught, must not be tricked. Only loss awaits the unworthy.”

: Let me explain how this room works. The statue at the center has a force field around it that will push anyone who gets too close to the edges of the room.

: The goal is to get the room completely dark. There are eight of these “mystic thuribles” that have to be shut off, but they’re too high up to interact with.

: The room is filled with vent traps, which are linked to pressure plates in those little corner alcoves.

: Disarming the plates (or jumping past them) gets you access to a lever, which lowers one of the lamps down.

: This is one solution, though we’d have to put away the Blood of Lathander due to the light it sheds.

: A much, much faster solution is to use Frost Bolt to put out the lamps from range. You can use thrown water bottles as well.

: The other solution is to simply teleport inside the rune circle and avoid the force field altogether.

: Making the room dark shuts off the force field - I did try using the route the new rune circle shows and it doesn’t work unless the puzzle is solved.

Shar: “Welcome, child. Follow my voice and prove your worth.”

: The statue room has a few hallways coming off it that don’t go anywhere.

: The developers really loved their obvious traps.

: Let’s send Astarion down there in stealth.

: Cloakers are evil manta rays that, true to their name, can disguise as a cloak. They also disguise as one-piece swimsuits and underwear, but fortunately aren’t very good at either.

: Cloakers in 3.5E are a CR 5 monster, which means they wouldn’t even pose a threat to a 9th level party. In 5E, they were upgraded to a CR 8. The BG3 devs took some liberties with the rules here.

: The cloaker has its extra attacks removed, but instead gets to make clones of itself that can do damage. It also gets a surprise round if you don’t spot it.

: Of course, if you see the stealth messages you can figure out pretty easily where the cloaker must be. Toss a couple of explosives down there and it can’t do anything.

: No, seriously. Being up here breaks the pathfinding algorithm and breaks the cloaker’s scripting. It’s a free kill.

: Below the cloaker is a door that leads to a kitchen that looks nearly identical to the one we saw back in the forge in Act 1.

: Do demons eat, or has that soup been there for a century?

: Of course they do.

: Mara! Are you gonna sit there, or are you gonna help out? We need someone at the bar.

: Oh fuck. Do the rest without me. I swear, you’d think some of these kids would realize that they have eternity on their hands.

: Down the hall from the kitchen is this altar with a bunch of rats worshiping it. If you have Speak with Animals active, it gives us a major hint for a quest we haven’t done yet.

: “Unworthy! Unworthy to walk among friendly bones! Leave!”

: “Who are you talking about?”

: “Talking of you - intruder, invader, unworthy one! These halls are not for you!”

: The real hint comes if you kill one of them.

: “You kill many, but many remain. Stop. Spare our lives, or face my teeth and claws. Every little death fills my head with more thoughts. It’s too much - too painful. Kill one more of us, and you will pay.”

: “What are you, exactly?”

: “An ordinary rat alone. But together? Something more. Some remember turning away from the sun. Some remember donning a black cloak. Some remember plunging a blade into an innocent heart.”

: “But we all remember a name. Lyrthindor. We share who he was.”

: “Are you telling me you’re one person turned into a swarm of rats? How can that be?”

: “It shouldn’t be. We should be one, long dead. Instead we are many - scurrying, hiding, surviving. We are just crumbs of a life. Harmless nothings, unless you test us. Leave us in peace.”

: We know that this guy is probably a Shar worshiper and that being a swarm of rats would probably make him hard to find.

: Behind the rats is this altar. It’s kind of useless if you saved Isobel - it provides a one-time buff that halves necrotic damage taken in exchange for a DC 14 religion check.

: Isobel’s buff already does that, so we don’t need it.

: This next room is Balthazar’s, and has a fight that is a pain in the ass on higher difficulties unless you know how it works.

: The idea here is that you want people who have multi-target ranged attacks and high mobility.

: “You prowl my battleground - why? Are you friend? Foe? Thieving scavengers?”

Narrator: You find yourself in a dead, putrid skull - somehow hosting a tadpole amongst a squirm of maggots. Another presence lurks within, manipulating the corpse like a puppet.

: “Ah. A friend - an uninvited friend. I did not request help.”

1. Z’rell sent me, looking for someone called Balthazar.
2. Who am I really speaking to?
3. I am no friend of yours - whatever you are.
4. Attack.

: If you didn’t talk to Z’rell, the first option won’t be available.

: “Z’rell sent me, looking for someone called Balthazar. I know that’s you talking through the skeletons.”

: “Did she now? Enter - I will see if I have any use for you.”

: “Stinking pile of ogre afterbirth! The quakes herald the shadows - they’ve found me!”

: I wish Mara was here, because there’s something funny we can do here. We’d need Lyselle for that, unless I have a spare Knock scroll somewhere.

: This is an easy fight. The purple things pop out one of those armor ghosts once a turn unless they’re destroyed.

: A few more portals spawn each round, and a big one spawns in the middle on the third turn.

: If you do it fast enough, you can win this without ever fighting the ghosts. You have a bunch of weak skeletons to help you with the one ghost that spawns at the start.

: Balthazar is in this room behind a locked door with an unlock DC of 30. The door unlocks after combat.

: But what if we didn’t give a shit about Balthazar? He doesn’t have any plot items, and while we would miss out on some loot, it’s not much.

: The answer is we can have Astarion lockpick Balthazar’s door after the portals show up.

: This forces Balthazar, his three ghouls, and his flesh golem into the fight. At this point, shit gets a little glitchy.

: Most of the time what happens is that the game counts you as being on Balthazar’s side unless you leave combat. Balthazar likes using Cloudkill, which is very effective on the ghosts.

: Eventually, the big portal spits out this guy, and by that point Balthazar is probably overrun. We still get experience for any ghosts Balthazar kills.

: Then near the end we can sneak Astarion away from combat before sniping Balthazar just before the ghosts get him. This gets us the full 350 experience from killing him.

: The only problem is that now we have a room full of angry Shar ghosts who don’t despawn. Let’s go back to the regular save file.

: “Ah, the interloper - and in one piece as well. Not an entirely uninteresting specimen, for one naturally-born. Not just any True Soul would have succeeded in following my path through this place. You should be pleased.”

1. Balthazar, I presume? Z’rell sent me. She thinks you’re in danger of failing your master.
2. I fought a battle right under your nose - help would have been useful.
3. True Soul? Bold of you, to assume I’m a comrade.
4. Naturally-born? That’s a strange thing to hold against someone.
5. Attack.

: “Balthazar, I presume? Z’rell sent me. She thinks you’re in danger of failing your master.”

: “General Thorm…? Rubbish. Everything is at hand here - Z’rell merely envies the General’s faith in me. I am in the midst of a grand strategy.”

: “But you’re here now, and I may be able to put those limbs to work. You know what’s at stake here, I take it?”

: I’m not going to bother transcribing the options because they’re all one in the same - you can find out Balthazar isn’t his real name if you’re a bard.

: If you went through Balthazar’s room, there’s a book you can find that tells you the relic he’s searching for is the Nightsong. Pointing this out to him causes him to attack.

: “Z’rell said Ketheric wants you to find a relic. That’s all I know.”

: “General Thorm to you. But yes, recovering the relic is the crux of it. He commands, and I, his humble servant, fulfill that command. While you, an infinitely more humble servant, fulfill my command. I will put you to work - as a scout.”

: “So you need my help - what would I have to do?”

: “I do not need you, or your help. But you are here in spite of that, so I may as well make use of you. The relic is close, but the way is barred and Shar’s dead are… uncooperative. Clear the path for me - by blade, cunning, or whatever it takes.”

: “I’d trust this gasbag about as far as I can throw him - which isn’t far. But perhaps better to play along, for now.”

1. I’ll see what I can do.
2. What exactly will you be doing while I’m out risking myself.
3. [PERSUASION] You have resources to spare - give me something to aid my search.
4. This sounds like your problem, not mine.

: If you pick the third option, you get a bell that summons Balthazar’s flesh golem in combat. We’re going to do this, because we desperately need reputation with Shadowheart.

: We’re not going to do that, because someone voted for it. As it turns out, that’s the correct answer: you can still get the hand crossbow that way, it just takes some doing.

: “Have I mentioned that Flesh is my unborn twin and I keep my mommy in a jar in on the shelf?”

: “Just give me the bell so I can exterminate you.”

: We’re going to go and use the bell in one of the only two places it’d be useful.

: Down the hall is a fast travel point. We could have come here if we had gone a different route from the room with the statue in it, but I intentionally wanted to meet Balthazar first.

: If we walk past this hallway a bit further down, a displacer beast walks off screen. This is the demon’s pet. We could sneak up and get the drop on it if we wanted to kill the demon.

: Meet Yurgir. He’s the demon Raphael wants us to kill. If we attack the displacer beast, we fight him and eight merregons, plus the displacer beast.

: Yurgir himself isn’t particularly difficult, and we could probably take him, but we’re not going to.

: Instead, we want to go down the other route from the warp point. This leads to the trials, which we have to do in order to progress.

: “Countless initiates walked these halls once, seeking to become Dark Justiciars. I will follow in their path. I will succeed.”

: We’re going to take the middle door, which leads to the “Self-Same” Trial. This is the easiest one to cheese, and how we’re going to take out the flesh golem.

Narrator: The bowl contains an ancient, rust-colored bloodstain. It forms a neat disc, as if spilled calmly and willingly.

: If your approval with Shadowheart isn’t near the top of the bar, you want to have your main character examine the bowls at the start of each trial.

: If you’re going to do this trial, the easy way to do it is to take off all your armor and weapons before starting it.

: Shadowheart will ask to bleed on the thing, and letting her do that gets you approval. I mentioned why we need approval, but I never talked about the second point system.

: The second point system is called Nightsong Points, and they come to a head at the end of this dungeon. There are a total of six, and you need at least four to persuade her.

: The six points are:

• One for making a DC 18 religion check after the wolf dream (or using the owlbear scroll)
• One for using specific dialog options following that check
• One for seeing Shadowheart’s wound flare up four times and asking her about it
• One for feeding Shadowheart the noblestalk from the underdark
• One for giving Shadowheart a night orchid
• One for letting Shadowheart start a trial by bleeding on it

: On Patch 7, this is nearly impossible to do. As you’ve already seen, the wolf dream is really buggy, so that locked us out of the first two points.

: The point for seeing her wound flare up is virtually unobtainable in Patch 7 - it was only fixed in Patch 8. This means we’re completely locked out.

: “Oh no.. I know the gimmick now. Four clones for four people. We’ve got evil Astarion..”

: “I’m evil Astarion. I want a cute, stable boyfriend who can fix what’s wrong with me, and I’m not mentally unstable at all.”

: “Can we keep that first one? I think we should keep that first one.”

: “No.”

: “I’m evil Shadowheart. I’m also mentally stable and not played by a sixteen year old girl emulating an actual play podcast.”

: “You know what? I’m siding with the clones.”

: “Tsk’va! I’m Evil Ka’r’lach! I like abusing punctuation and using stupid fantasy slang!”

: “All of the clones except that one. We can get rid of that one. Also, why is Evil Karlach a gith.. actually, wait, that makes sense.”

: “I’m evil Pol-nya-x! I’m constantly nude and drink heavily and I’m dating Evil Gale.”

: “Okay and that one. That one fucking dies.”

: If all the clones are nude, you can run up and kill them all fairly easily. There’s only one rule: each character can only attack their clone until the clone dies.

: Breaking the rule gives you a -1 to all stats, which stacks up to a -4. This is cured on long rest. But you know what that rule doesn’t apply to? Summons.

: Speaking of summons, I wonder if Mara’s done yet.

: That’s my hit list, not hers. And you want to know who’s on top? All you goddamn reporters, and then that fucker with a TV for a head!

: I told him not to leave that where people could find it.

: Sorry, folks. What he meant to say was that we had some hustle in the first quarter, but then had a distinct drop in our hustle count around 6 minutes into the second. We’re going to continue to build hustle until we beat the Chiefs. Does anyone have any questions?

: How did you even get here?

: Football.

: How are you gonna get out?

: Football, and also rocket boots.

: Beating the clones gets you this ring, which guarantees a critical once per long rest. On Tactician, I was able to do this with just Astarion and Karlach against naked clones.

: It also gets us this gem, which we need to progress the plot. The only problem is that now we have a flesh golem and nothing to use it on. Let’s do this the hard way.

: This time, we have Astarion sneak up behind everyone, get into combat (which gives us a surprise round), and then have him drop the golem.

: On this run, I removed everyone’s armor but not their weapons.

: Astarion uses the surprise round to stealth away while the golem gets beaten to death. We miss out on 180 EXP this way, but that’s not really a big deal.

: From there, everyone else sneaks in and we take out Evil Karlach and Evil Astarion. Evil Pollux and Evil Shadowheart really aren’t much of a threat because their AI sucks on purpose.

: Caster clones will usually try and cast crowd control spells, and will often do dumb shit like cast one spell and immediately break concentration by casting a different one.

: Our next uh.. “challenge” is the soft step trial. This is a pain in the ass stealth gauntlet.

: It’s really not so bad. Just run it like a football play.

: Weren’t you in hell a second ago?

: Football.

: This one’s all about running the right plays. Special Teams can sneak in and disarm the traps ahead of time, but that’d make us the Eagles.

: The two tacklers run in straight lines. Let’s draw a route up.

: Those X’s are the traps, right?

: That’s right. This whole route should be done in turn-based mode, and we want to disarm the traps because it doesn’t take an action.

: Pick this door, and we’re in the red zone. The tacklers can see into that room, so it has to be timed just right.

: One gate later, and touchdown!

: The final trial is down these stairs, but we don’t want to do that just yet - I believe if we do, it locks us into a much more annoying fight against Balthazar.

: I’m back. Let’s go finish him off before I decide to take a potshot at the TV fuckhead.

: Just like trying to kill a man whose head is a TV, there’s no good way to kill Balthazar. He’s going to get an attack off, and it’s going to do damage.

: A box wall won’t work because he can teleport, and the boxes won’t stop him shooting through them.

: Without his golem, he’s nothing. He’s going to run away like a little bitch who thinks he’s a god, right before I tear his head off and present it to the angels on a platter.

: I wasn’t joking when I said Balthazar keeps his mom on the shelf. There is one tactic we can use to make the fight easier.

: If we use the “trade” button, Balthazar has a Potion of Haste he chugs on his first turn. By buying it off him, we can significantly reduce his ability to nuke people.

: He also drops a circlet that boosts allied undead. This is useful for Lyselle.

: The final trial is the “faith-leap” trial, which is basically those levels from Mario Galaxy where you have to navigate along a hidden path.

: On balanced and tactician, you get one free attempt at the maze. If you fall, the game puts you right back where you were. On Honor Mode, falling is instant death.

: Once you start the trial, the whole area gets flooded with a darkness spell. Before Patch 6, you could use Daylight to eliminate it and make traversing totally safe.

: Yeah, fuck that. There’s an easier cheese method.

: What you’re meant to do is use this map on the floor to navigate, and sure - we could do that.

: Or we blow one cast of Fly and have Astarion fly across the entire map to the goal before starting the trial. Keep in mind it has to be fly: if you try jumping on the platforms, you die.

: Then we grab the orb and book it.

: That’s out of the Eagles playbook. I bet Sirianni would use magic if he could.

: I believe we now have enough approval with Shadowheart to bypass the point system. We now have three orbs, but that’s not enough to progress. To do that, we need to temporarily ditch Astarion and Shadowheart.

: The reason for this is because even if you haven’t talked to Raphael, you lose approval with both Shadowheart and Astarion for siding with Yurgir.

: I wanted to kill him!

: Before we do that though, let’s kill him in the funniest way possible. We’ll need Shadowheart and Astarion for this, so I’ll do it before I switch the party up.

: For this, we need a couple of things. We need the ring off the ooze in Last Light, and we’ll also need the necklace we got from the myconids in the mushroom colony.

: We also have Guidance from Shadowheart and Phalar Aluve. Barcus sells a ring once you’ve cleared the prison that gives you +1 to Persuasion that can help as well.

: We could re-spec Pollux into a sorcerer to get access to Disguise Self to activate the shapeshifter ring, but I have the Digital Deluxe Edition which I bought on sale. It gives you this item from Divinity: Original Sin 2 that allows you to use Disguise Self at will.

: We’ll equip that and disguise Pollux for maximum bonuses.

: “What’s this? Fresh entertainment. But you’re too fresh for this place, aren’t you? You may look like a dark-dweller, but there’s a whiff of the surface to you…”

: “Holy shit. An orthon. Powerful devils - I wouldn’t get on their bad side without a good reason.”

: “You - tiefling. You’ve got the stench of the Hells about you - the stench of home. And a whiff of the surface besides. A servant of Zariel, if I’m not mistaken. I’d know the stench of her infernal machinery anywhere.”

: “What do you know of infernal machinery?”

: “Only what I can smell. And whatever engine burns within you is grinding to an inevitable explosion. Burning and fear - you reek with it.”

: “There’s something else, almost hidden by your fear-stink.. cherries, musk.. and sulphur. Raphael! I can smell him all over you. Where is he?!”

1. Wait - you know Raphael?
2. I don’t know what you mean.
3. Attack.
4. Run.

: The fact that they even give you a run option tells you how fucked the game thinks you’re going to be if you engage him head-on.

: “Wait - you know Raphael?”

: “That perfumed trickster swindled me - trapped me.”

: “I’ve had dealings with him. Granted, most of those were me either shooting him or telling him to fuck off. Maybe we can help each other.”

: “Where is he? Spit it out - NOW!”

: “We piss off a devil no matter what we do. Pick your poison - we’ll handle the fallout like we always do.”

1. Let’s share our experiences with Raphael. Perhaps we can help each other.
2. Raphael could be anywhere. But let me go, and I’ll free you from his grasp.
3. I’ve said too much already.
4. Attack.

: “Let’s share our experiences with Raphael. Perhaps we can help each other.”

: “Bargaining, are you? A Kara-Tur warlord once tried the same - I made him watch as I ate his concubines and young, then fashioned a codpiece from his skull.”

: “How did you make him watch you make a codpiece if he’d be dead by that point?”

: Got 'em.

: “I meant I did that after he was dead. He didn’t watch that part. Because he was dead.”

: “You’re really not very good at this.”

: “You can’t help. It’s not just walls that keep me here. Not the traps, the dark, or the creatures it hides. Something stronger holds me - a contract.”

: “Either I fulfill the contract, die trying… or forfeit my freedom. If I leave this place now, I’ll become Raphael’s slave.”

1. You’re hardly free as it is, trapped here. Maybe you’re better off indebted to Raphael.
2. The likes of you is frightened by a contract? I find that hard to swallow.
3. [BARD] Diabolic deals in legend always have loopholes - we just need to find it.
4. Attack.

: “Diabolic deals in legend always have loopholes - we just need to find it.”

: “Raphael is no foolish story-devil, his mind is different. Sneaky. Listen…”

: “Spill all the blood sworn to the night. Silence all prayers, smother each rite. Wander Shar’s halls; hungry to slay. Leave no Justiciar alive to obey. Leave none to hear it, then be set free; this song is your oath, swear, swear it to me.”

: Yurgir’s VA doesn’t really sing this so much as he just kinda speaks it. I guarantee that if this had come out in late 2024, it would be a song called “Kill Them All” with the merregons as backup.

: What a dumbass contract. Sounds like the radio asshole.

Narrator: Well, that explains where all the Dark Justiciars went. This song differs from others you’ve studied. The final couplet contains a trick: a clause not easily fulfilled.

: “Pretty tune for a contract that says ‘kill all Justiciars’.”

1. Your contract is a song?
2. Raphael wanted you to kill Dark Justiciars? Why?
3. Bravo.
4. That was awful - perhaps you should stick to killing.
5. [BARD] Quite bloodthirsty, as lyrics go. Have you considered some instrumental accompaniment?

: “Your contract is a song?”

: “Parchment can burn. Oral agreements aren’t worth the tongues they’re waggled out on. A song lingers. Raphael made double sure of that. I can’t forget the damned thing so long as my work’s not finished.”

: “I did as instructed, but the song still rattles about in my head - the contract still stands, somehow. If I break it, I will become Raphael’s slave forever. Anyway, enough prattle. The lyrics are clear - all who hear the song must die.”

1. It’s Raphael you want, not me.
2. [PERSUASION] There must be something you missed. Let me search this place for you.
3. [PERSUASION] The lyrics are a trick. You’ve always had an audience - your followers. Get rid of them.
4. [BARD] [PERSUASION] Raphael’s a sly lyricist - he tricked you. Your followers heard your song and still live.
5. Attack.

: “Kill yourself.”

: “God dammit. Okay boys, off yourselves.”

: The first check gets rid of the merregons. This alone makes killing Yurgir far easier.

: “I still hear it. Seems your theory is wrong.”

: “Kill yourself.”

: “…Kill Nessa? Stay very still, my beauty…”

: “I STILL HEAR IT!”

: “KILL YOURSELF.”

: “That was incredible - I’m actually impressed! You have a wicked little mind.”

: Actually, let’s not kill him. Turns out, the angels are mostly idiots who eat nothing but ice cream. Imagine sending this guy there.

: Doing this gets us an inspiration for Astarion, a bunch of approval with him, and..

: This crossbow. The thing is, there’s another way to get the crossbow in Act 3 - or at least, I’m pretty sure there is. Let’s work with Yurgir and see what happens.

: Halsin gets respecced into a disarm specialist who exists primarily to make a fool of Ketheric.

: To help Yurgir, we need to go down to the bottom of this giant statue. It’s not obvious that you can get there.

: One of the merregons is a trader, and we’ll want those healing potions because we have a very annoying fight coming up.

: At the very bottom of the statue, there is a book and a ritual circle.

Use this spell to turn into rats.
Raphael.

: Going near the circle causes a rat to teleport in and threaten us.

: No problem, it’s dead.

: If I felt like using spells, there’s an easy solution to this. Have your wizard cast Wall of Fire, which will fry the rats if they try to walk through it.

: The rats have a boosted crit chance and eventually spawn “necrotic rats” that do extra damage and “soporific rats” that shit out a sleep cloud when they die.

: By the end, Halsin is beaten half to death. This is nothing the potions we got off the merregon can’t fix.

: The rat turns into the last surviving justiciar, who goes insane and attacks. He dies in one turn.

: This gets you a pretty okay weapon, a greatshield that isn’t as good as the one we stole by kidnapping the trader in Last Light, and some EXP.

: Note that you can kill this guy even if you get Yurgir to kill himself. It is also possible to accept the quest from Yurgir, kill this guy, and then kill Yurgir afterward.

: “Wait.. quiet.. it’s gone. The song is gone! The contract is completed!”

1. It seems you’re free to go.
2. You’re lucky I came along to help. Now you owe me.
3. There was one last Justiciar - dead now. Raphael helped him hide from you.

: “There was one last Justiciar - dead now. Raphael helped him hide from you.”

: “That conniving sack of worms. I should’ve known. I should’ve ripped his tongue out before he even spoke of this contract.”

: “Here I am, Yurgir, tongue and all, precisely on time for a lesson in semantics. Devil’s in the details, you see, and the details are in the fine print.”

: “You were to fulfill the deal. Nowhere does it stipulate you could subcontract the last kill to the first adventurer’s party that came trotting along. In short, you’re in breach of contract, my friend. Oh dear.”

: “Back to the hells with what we agreed! I have you now, Raphael. Pay the debt, and I will make this quick.”

: You hold him down, we’ll get the explosives.

: “Consider your position. You are about to forfeit what reputation you have left. No contracts. No fame. No power. You’ll be a streak of excrement even lemures will slither away from.”

: “That doesn’t even make sense. There’s nothing in the contract about who has to kill the justiciars, just that they have to die. They’re all dead.”

: This is how you know Raphael’s a bitch. He tries this in Hell, he doesn’t make it outside of Pentagram City alive.

: “Unless, of course, you consider my infinite mercy. A new contract. A chance to balance the books. Not to mention a welcome change of scenery.”

: “…Bastard. Fine. On one condition - NO MORE SONGS.”

: “What’s a contract without whimsy, I say, but fine: no more songs. Now off to the House of Hope for cocktails and canapes - and a brand new signature on a brand new deal.”

: “But first, it would be only befitting if you reward your subcontractor. The greater reward for the greater hunter.”

: “Anything I leave behind is yours. Pick over it however you like.”

: We get the last gem and virtually nothing else.

: There are some boots for Pollux here that let him restore a bardic inspiration charge, but are useless because he restores all his charges on a short rest.

: Our last destination is next to the Mario Galaxy trial.

: It has a bunch of ghosts and one of those portals generating a silence field. This isn’t even worth a tactics segment.

: The only thing to note is that it is entirely possible to permafuck yourself out of Shadowheart’s quest in this room. Why, you ask?

: There are a bunch of bookshelves here. All of them are trapped. The traps don’t work correctly in Patch 7, but in Patch 8 they can destroy the books if triggered.

: Behind the big gate in the back (which is opened using one of four buttons, three of which are traps) is a pillar that asks us “What can silence the Nightsong?”

: To get the answer, we need this specific book, which is on one of the trapped shelves.

: This opens a hidden door that leads to the thing that allows Shadowheart to behave like a spoiled idiot.

: “This is Mommy Shar’s spear! I love Shar!”

: If you go to the point of no return, the game will turn you around and force you to pick up the spear. If Shadowheart isn’t in the party, she throws a bitch fit and quits.

: The chest has a really stupid looking helmet that is slightly better than the one we found off the meenlocks, so Astarion gets it.

: Before we go, there’s one last thing I want to do.

: We missed something when exterminating Moonrise - namely the door leading to Ketheric’s boss fight. If you go up here before dealing with the Shar temple, you get turned around by this NPC.

: She’ll join the boss fight if you come up here after the temple, so let’s kill her and her small army of skeletons early.

: “I love Mommy Shar! She’s not like my “real” parents who won’t let me be hardcore.”

: We place one of the orbs here, and it activates an elevator. There is an unrelated scene where Shadowheart prays to Shar because she’s an edgelord.

: The elevator leads down here, with an altar that has three spaces for the three remaining orbs. This is where I need to mention that there’s something I’ve been hiding.

: You can skip all of the trials using the knock spell.

: No one does the trials on Honor Mode because they’re skippable. In fact, the ENTIRE TEMPLE is skippable except for getting the spear.

: “This is where they make the dark justiciars!”

Shar: “One more test awaits. Descend to the Nightsong. Make a sacrifice. Rise again a Dark Justiciar.”

: “This must be the last step. I need to pray. Only by Lady Shar’s grace did we even make it this far.”

: You can try a wisdom check to learn that she’s being mind controlled by Shar, but oh well. We’re not making that.

Narrator: As you step into the silent water, a foreign dread travels through you. It curls its way up your leg, squeezing tight.

: There’s a dumb “walk and talk” segment that I’m going to skip because it’s entirely Shadowheart trying to hype up killing the Nightsong.

Nightsong: “I have felt you coming. The first in a century.”

: “You, who have come to seek the praise of your wicked goddess. You, who have come to drive a dagger through my heart.”

: Meet the Nightsong. She is a bad fanfiction. According to the game, she is an aasimar - the writers took liberties with that the way they did tieflings.

: Let me refer to Pathfinder 1E’s description of what an aasimar is. This mirrors 3.5E’s description:

Aasimars are humans with a significant amount of celestial or other good outsider blood in their ancestry. While not always benevolent, aasimars are more inclined toward acts of kindness rather than evil, and they gravitate toward faiths or organizations associated with celestials. Aasimar heritage can lie dormant for generations, only to appear suddenly in the child of two apparently human parents.

Physical Description: Aasimars look mostly human except for some minor physical trait that reveals their unusual heritage. Typical aasimar features include hair that shines like metal, jewel-toned eyes, lustrous skin color, or even glowing, golden halos.

: There’s a table in the PF 1E rulebook for random aasimar features, which you can also pick from. Funny enough, half of them are “you can be a catgirl”.

: If she’s an aasimar, she’s the aasimar equivalent of Astra.

: I’m not sure whether to resent that or not.

: “Not a dagger - a spear. My Lady Shar’s spear. Her fate is mine to seal. Let me handle this.”

: “The fate you seal is your own. To be a Dark Justiciar is to turn your heart from everything but loss. You will know no love, no joy - only servitude.”

: “Until, of course, your mistress inevitably discards you. And there is much she does not tell you - a terrible blood price that may extend beyond my own death.”

Narrator: You feel Shadowheart bristling - this is important to her. But your bond is strong. You may yet be able to sway her from the path of duty to the path of light. And Nightsong is not blind to your conflict. Behind that raging heart is the restless beat of one who knows too well that her fate hangs in the balance.

: I thought we had enough approval with Shadowheart, and it turns out we don’t. The game is lying.

1. Trust Shadowheart - do not interfere.
2. Do as you must.
3. Is this truly what you want?
4. Choose your own way, Shadowheart. You cannot allow your goddess to control you.
5. Please, Shadowheart. Don’t do this.

: If I had bothered to figure out how to save edit, I would just save edit in the points and get the two dialog options that allow you to force her to stand down.

: “Shadowheart, you will stand the fuck down immediately or I am going to end you.”

: “SHUT UP! YOU’RE NOT MY REAL DAD!”

: “Cast her down to meet her goddess.”

: And so we kill Shadowheart.

: It’s not like she was ever coming off the bench after this anyway. I reloaded after this to see if I could get enough trust with her.. and we just BARELY can.

: What happened is that I forgot to give Shadowheart the night orchid - this is because I do multiple recording runs and probably forgot to save.

: Giving her that gets us 39 out of 40 trust points. How do we get the last one? By selecting option 1.

: “Well, well, well. What’s that I sense? A spear intended for my heart. Empowered by your goddess, aye - empowered to kill the child of a god.”

: This is why I say Aylin is a bad fanfic. She is literally Selune’s daughter. That would make her some kind of demigod, not an aasimar.

: “Do you know what I am, little assassin? For I know you - a lost child, frightened by wolves in the dark.”

: “What did you say…?”

: “Much has been promised to you, hasn’t it? But what has been taken from you? What do you know of your own heart - your own life? I sense more in you than you know.”

: “Whatever you know of me won’t matter, once I become who I’m meant to be.”

1. Kill her. Let’s finish this ritual.
2. [PERSUASION] Don’t do it, Shadowheart. Don’t kill her - you’ll regret it.
3. She knows something about you. Spare her, and see what she has to say.
4. Say nothing.

: “She knows something about you. Spare her, and see what she has to say.”

: Funny enough, I made the check and then Astarion’s AI bugged out and I had to reload the game.

: “I can’t believe I did that - Shar will disown me. Now I’m truly lost…”

: “Lay a hand on me in friendship, not-quite Sharran, and I will fight the battle that has been waiting for me this last century. Then - oh then, we will have much to discuss.”

: “Our Lady of Silver. Hear me! She Who Guides, the Moonmaiden Selune - MOTHER OF THE SO-CALLED NIGHTSONG. THE NIGHTSONG IS NO MORE!”

: “I AM… THE TOKEN PLOT LESBIAN!”

: “IN THE NAME OF SELUNE, I’LL PUNISH YOU!”

: We did that already.

: So yeah, she gets a full Sailor Moon transformation sequence. I hate Aylin as a character. She exists I think primarily because the writers wanted a canon lesbian couple.

: “I am RESPLENDENT!”

: This is from the first run where I killed Shadowheart. That run was.. something. Pollux kills Shadowheart, kills Aylin once for the experience, and then lets her go.

: Afterward he talks to Shadowheart even though she’s dead.

: “You have given me a great gift, little warrior. Don’t you find it oh-so-curious that you would spurn your heterosexuality Dark Lady? Perhaps you feel a stirring of bisexuality the truth already.”

: “But that will come later. There is a battle yet to be fought. You have done what we feared was impossible. You have released me from a century of sorrow. Your power is great. So too must be your weapon. You must choose what you will wield. And the Moonmaiden will provide. Thus I have said; thus it will be so.”

: As you can probably tell, Jaheira is a recruitable party member. I don’t care for her, but we need to use her to get this game’s Frank.

: “We need to leave. Lady Shar won’t stand for us to be here - not after what we did.”

: When we take the portal out, Shadowheart comes out on the ground.

: “I.. I thought I was done for. I thought perhaps I might be dead. This.. this is all like some terrible dream. But it’s real, isn’t it? I stood before the Nightsong. I heard Lady Shar’s words.. and I failed her.”

: “Worse than failed her - I defied her. Just because of what that aasimar said. I tried to leave, but.. Shar blocked me. Punished me for failing her. I thought I knew the limit of pain that the incurable wound could inflict, but I had no idea.”

: “It felt like I was suffering the agony of a thousand people, all at once. My blood was boiling, my hair was on fire. I thought I’d claw my own face off with the pain.”

: “But then she released me. - banished me more like. She said I was an outcast, that all of her children would know me and revile me. I’m alone.”

Narrator: Shadowheart looks distraught - abandoned by her goddess and all former allies. And as for her divine magic..? Admitting who empowers her now may break her spirit for good.

: “If it’s any consolation, I think you did the right thing.”

: “You’re lucky to have such confidence. Me.. I think the full price of what I’ve done has yet to reveal itself. I’m a target to Lady Shar’s followers now.”

: And now it’s time to exterminate. Ketheric is all alone in his gooncave, and we’re going to rip him a new asshole.

: I decided not to take Halsin, after realizing that his chances to disarm aren’t much better than Karlach’s. Our party will be Karlach, Astarion, Lyselle, and Pollux.

: What’s supposed to happen is that you arrive at Moonrise Towers and join up with Jaheira and the harpers to kill all the cultists. Because we already did that, shit gets weird.

: The gnolls are just kinda wandering around, as are a bunch of harpers.

: The main trader from Last Light will also be here, so we can rob her. I forgot she even showed up here.

: Jaheira is in here, and we can take her with us.

: One thing to note: fighting Ketheric is a second point of no return. It would be a good idea to long rest beforehand and dismiss your summons. Save those for after.

: “YOU! What have you done?! What have you done to me?!”

: “I’ve come to finish you.”

: “How dare you interfere? You are like the digits of a hand - it is for you to act, not to decide. You serve the Absolute. You. Serve. ME! Bow, you dog. BOW!”

: “The Prism. You’ve had it all this time - you worm! You will bow before me. And if you will not bow, you will break.”

: That’s one of Lae’zel’s dialog responses.

: “How good it is to see you again, Ketheric. At last you’ve found a god-master that suits you, it seems.”

: “Aylin. The thief. You stole Isobel from me, and now you think you’ll take my life in the bargain?”

: Yep, Isobel is Ketheric’s daughter. What makes even less sense is that she died, Balthazar brought her back, and she’s somehow completely normal afterward.

: “You dare to speak her name? My very gay girlfriend’s name? After your crimes innumerable, you would evoke her before me?”

: You know, maybe we’re not that different.

: “Enough! This ends here and now - at last.”

: “He will crumble at the power of your touch - give him all you have. THE GODS FIGHT AT OUR SIDE!”

: In case you’re wondering, the tactics are “he’s fucked”. It’s six on one, and it doesn’t really matter what his level is at that point.

: Jaheira has a limited moveset, but that’s fine - we might need her if the necromancer and her skeletons were still alive, but they’re not.

: Ketheric starts by giving us a glimpse of his gimmick - he spawns skeleton bombs that explode after one round and spawn a skeleton.

: It’s possible depending on turn order that he spawns it right at the end of the round and it explodes before anyone can destroy it.

: If you really want to make him a non-threat, disarming him stops him from using his smite, which is most of his damage.

: This is something you would never, ever see happen in a competently designed 3.5E scenario, and is why 5E is dumb and bad.

: See, in 3.5E, any suitably paranoid melee type is going to spend the 8 gold on a locked gauntlet. This makes you VERY difficult to disarm.

: Pollux makes up for the start of the game and grabs Ketheric’s hammer - Ketheric can’t get an attack of opportunity because he’s not armed. This is another failing of 5E.

: In 3.5E, every single melee type will have a spiked gauntlet on the hand that doesn’t have their locked one. Why? Because it counts as being armed, so you can make AoOs even if it’s your only weapon.

: At around 40% HP, the fight ends.

: “Enough. My lord beckons me.”

: “You must return to your prison. And my daughter must be reclaimed.”

: “Your daugher - Isobel?!”

: How’d he get his hammer back?

: “You will fall as sure as she. This has only begun.”

: The tentacle touches Aylin and teleports both her and Ketheric out. I’ll skip the chest with a useless ring in it.

: This is the point of no return for Act 2. Once we enter here, Act 2 is cut off. We’ve got everything we need, but the site is already slowing down a bit. Next time, we fight Fanfiction Ketheric.

: We’ve already seen what happens if we kill Shadowheart and what happens if we don’t kill Shadowheart. What happens if we let Shadowheart get her way?

: “There it is. True death, at last. You are Shar’s child after all. And I am.. I am…”

Shar: It is done. You have proven yourself. You have answered my highest calling. My Chosen. My Warrior. My Dark Justiciar.

Shar: Your pain is now your power. Wield it true.

: The scene they took this shot from is actually in Act 3. You only see it if Aylin survives. It is.. not a particularly great one.

: There’s a reason that D&D is described as a combat system and not a storytelling RPG.

Shar: My church must be cleansed. You shall be my instrument in ridding it of the impure, then you shall take up the mantle as its new leader.

: On this timeline, the game has to outright tell you what to do once you reach Act 3. The other part of Shadowheart’s quest involves exterminating another Shar temple.

: We’re going to do that as early into Act 3 as is feasible, because it is the source of one of the only permanent stat increases in the game.

Shar: First, hunt down the traitor, Ketheric Thorm. He shunned my embrace. He left my armies be slaughtered. He used my domain to safeguard his wretched life.

: You know what doesn’t make any sense about this? Why didn’t Shar just kill Aylin herself? This isn’t a Vlaakith situation where at least there’s a plausible reason why Vlaakith needs the person in the prism alive.

: “Lesbian.. powers.. fading..”

: Wait, what? The inn isn’t in the fuck zone. The only place torches don’t work is that house across the bridge - everywhere else they work just fine.

: The last thing Isobel hears is the banging on the door as the zombies come in and kill her.

: For killing Aylin, Shadowheart gets her own special armor and spear. The armor sucks compared to the adamantine armor, and we get a different version of the spear later.

: If we go back to the inn, everyone is a zombie.

: Shadowheart gets a couple of new abilities, which are admittedly pretty okay: Beckoning Darkness and Shar’s Darkness are essentially Hunger of Hadar on a single target and have no cooldown.

: This route locks us out of a bunch of stuff in Act 3. It’s better to kill Shadowheart off if you can’t get her to stop being an edgelord.

: Shadowheart doesn’t really add a lot to the party unless she’s respecced, and honestly I don’t like her as a character.

: If I had someone like that at an actual table, I’d probably go “I respect your dedication to your absolutely godawful character but I’m still going to kill them.”

: Here’s Beta Shadowheart. For me, it’s the one in the top-middle with the hair completely over her eyes.

: Beta Aylin was probably an improvment over what we actually got.

: And finally, Beta Ketheric. Beta Ketheric is a rejected Warhammer design. I saw a mod last night while browsing weapon mods for.. unspecified reasons.. that restores the beta appearance to his hammer.

: Oh, and Beta Balthazar. The one on the left page, third row, first on the left (with the hood off) looks like a guy I used to play Pathfinder with.

: My nickname for him was Dipshit McOracle, because he was a dipshit and played oracles. He was an okay guy, he just sucked so bad at the game.