My Sexy Skill Has Increased! Let's Play A Dance with Rogues

3. So hard. Because Vico makes me full of hatred.

3. 3 all day every day.

I don't care if you go BARN or Rizzen although I'm kinda wishing you had gone Pia :(, but Vico deserves to die. ASAP.

As you can probably guess, I'm picking number 3 as well. Vico just made it clear that the only regret that he had regarding what he did to Riona was that he didn't kill her as well. He doesn't want to confront the consequences of his actions, so we'll make him confront them. He needs to die.

3. Murder is the best solution! :D

This is off-topic, but is your new icon Haer'dalis, Nerys?

Indeed it is! Here's the source. I was going to go back to my regular non-Santa Hatted Xan, but then I found this beautiful piece of fanart. Haer'Dalis <3

Thank you for the source. Everyone in that game. <3 Yes, even Anomen and Aerie.

Well, I guess the anti-Vico contingent forgives my LP failure, at least. *whew* And now, back to regular updates.



That portrait is the generic "unknown speaker" portrait. Sometimes you get it going in and out of cutscenes.

I'm still on the boat, but below deck. Probably in Warek's cabin. I'm naked, and somebody has tugged me in a thick sleeping bag. My skin is covered with sweat, and I am terribly thirsty. I unwrap myself clumsily, then spot a small bucket filled with water. I drink greedily, then splash the remaining water on my face and body. Much better!

I dress and rise to my feet unsteadily. I find Warek nearby.

"Ah. Good to see you're up again, girl."

"Did we encounter any Dhorn on the trip?"

"No. Bad news however is that the Dhorn took he village a month ago. I've only briefly left my ship, but from what I saw, the city's in a pretty bad shape. Seems like the residents put up quite a fight."

Damn it. I should have expected as much.

"What happened to Baron Westwood? Do you know that?"

He shakes his head. "Alas, I do not. The castle still stands, at least most of it. But it bears the standard of Dhorn now."

"Where are the others?"

"That's more bad news, I'm afraid. They left the boat yesterday, and I haven't seen or heard of them ever since."

"I guess I'd better find out where they are."

"Be very careful, okay? I'm going to stick around with my ship for a few more days, but if I haven't heard from you or your friends by the end of the week I'll have to sail back to Betancuria."

I can take care of myself. I just hope the others can, too.

"Didn't take long until they were yelling at each other. The black-haired guy shoved Ranger Boy right into our table, spilling our wine! So I was forced to smack him a little."

"...While I took care of Ranger boy." She grins widely.

"What do you mean, you took care of him?"

"She threw him on the floor and squeezed him a little." He grins. "The fun was over when the patrol arrived. Arrested your friends, they did."

"How come they didn't arrest you as well?"

"The sergeant leading the patrol's sort of in love with Norah." He grins.



"No idea. Sorry, pretty Riona." He fondles my waist.

I pull away from him.

"I better go now."

"Let her go, bro. She just wants to find her friends."

He sighs and lets me go. "I don't see what's so special about those guys."

"Don't mind him, girl. He's just jealous."

As if he had any right to be. I hear him calling for another flagon of wine as I leave the inn, and shake my head.

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Right there with you. My playthrough is on hold indefinitely until I muster up the will to replay an hour or so to bypass a bug. Again. Didn't really have issues in part 1, but Part 2 is hammering home the need to keep staggered archive saves.

Oh, and I've totally gotten over whatever my hang up was and am voting 3. First we maim him, then we kill him.

What issue are you having in particular? I might be able to help.

My main problem is getting kicked out of dialogue due to enemies showing up out of nowhere and people running off to fight them. (Semi-related problem: getting kicked out of dialogue because the person who's turn it is to speak is stuck behind some scenery two screens away.) No cure for that other than putting everyone in peaceful follow mode after every single fight (and that doesn't even always work).

The other frequent issue I'm having is that you have more people in your party than the game can handle, and if you add any summoned creatures, save, and load that save, you won't see everyone's portrait in your party list. They're still in your party; there's just a blank spot where their portrait is. Once the summons get killed or unsummoned, if you save and load again the problem goes away.

Being vague to avoid spoilers, I'm at a relatively early section where there a lot of...things...between me and the objective. I'm totally stealthy enough to get by them without fighting, but my companions aren't. Which should be fine, there was a dialogue trigger for telling them to totes wait while I scout ahead. Except I chose the "You morons stay here, I'll take care of this" option and it didn't work. Telling individual people to stay put worked...except with Vico, who refuses to be left behind (apparently hamstringing him and walking away isn't an option). So I shrugged and decided to try killing my way through. It worked well! For a while. So just like an idiot I overwrote the pre-dialogue save (might have been a quicksave, I don't recall) and pressed on. Then I hit a point where there are enough badass critters to shred my party, and I can't sneak by because Vico's a clumsy oaf clad in plate. Which means that I need to go back to the dialogue trigger and try it again, but my previous save will require an annoying amount of replay.

There was another place where a dialogue trigger failed to fire (because we were stuck in combat for some reason) which also necessitated an hourish replay, and I've definitely run into the CAN'T TALK NOW MUST KILL issue (solution: pause immediately after every dialogue choice in a hostile area, only resume long enough to advance down the tree before pausing again). Think there were one or two other issues, but I don't recall.

Ah, yeah, that bites. If you're at the part where I think you are, it's absolutely possible to kill your way through, but half my party died in the process.

Oh yeah, I'm pretty sure I've won the battle before, but I lose enough people in the process that I'll need to trek to a safe area, rest to recharge the rod, come back and rez, trek to a safe area to recharge the rod, come back and rez, trek to a....well, you get the idea.

I was a little sad that we seem to be cut off from the Anden route, even if I deliberately didn't vote for him. For some reason, the fact that he's the ONLY nice guy makes him interesting to me. But Bran doesn't seem so bad. Kind of funny, actually. Here's hoping he doesn't start acting like a dick.

Is it kind of sad that I was thinking through that whole Bran scene "well, this guy's only sexually assaulting Riona a little, maybe he'll be the best boyfriend?"

He gets points in my book for slapping Vico around and having an amusing sister (packaged deal?).

To be fair, she did sit on his thigh. That probably came across as acceptance to him.

If you notice, he didn't really force her. It looks like the best so far, not FUCKING VICO and not bland Anden. Rizzen is still a mistery, but... do we really want to be a slave instead of a spouse?

"Is everything alright?"

"What? Oh..." He seems to notice me just now. "Forgive me my manners, young lady." He barely manages a bow.

"Why were you weeping?"

"I... I would never trouble you with my worries."

"Maybe I could help you."



"She's a waitress at the inn a few miles to the west. I haven't seen her or heard from her for a month. Two weeks ago, a Dhorn patrol was heading that way, and I traveled with them, but the inn was deserted. I... I fear something ill has happened..."

He describes his daughter, and I promise to look out for her... if I ever get out of Westwood.

next update

Sigh... the whole "everyone wants to fuck you" and "get naked at every opportunity" is really getting old, and I'm not even talking about the triggering things. Your excellent writing is pretty much the only thing that makes me keep on reading this LP X___x

24 pages in one sitting, AWWW YEAH. Ok, maybe it's because I've got a horrible cold and have not much else to do atm.

It's kind of strange, but I think Simon is probably the guy that I would want the PC to romance (know it's not possible though). First, he is the only one that doesn't continuously make a pass at you (Tony, Caron, Vico, the list goes on) aside from Auden(sp?), and plus he didn't rape you! Points to that. Oh god, this GAME. It's lowered my standards for romance options.

I wonder if the writer is making all these love options abhorrent or boring as to encourage us to become misandrists?

Thanks! I'm glad I can add something enjoyable.

Also, if it makes a difference, this upcoming scene has an actual stripping minigame and not just random nudity/harassment.

Just in case there wasn't enough nudity throughout.

Honestly, at this point I'm pretty inured. Oh, sex. Oh, coerced sex. Oh, objective-driven sex. Oh, I'm being hit on again. Last time I recall being ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME was a bullet-point spoiler on the wiki stating that, "In this quest you may mount a dragon." My interpretation of that statement was, um, somewhat inaccurate.

Simon would be an excellent guy to romance because his position in Dhorn would make the relationship have a greater impact on the story. (Vico's romance affects some things in the plot, but the others pretty much just affect party composition.) It could also have some interesting dynamics because wanting to marry Simon for politics doesn't necessarily mean being in love with him, and vice versa.

I don't think the point is so much "men are terrible" as it is "the world/everyone is terrible (but men, in general, have more power to harm you)."

You're right - I'm reminded of Cata. So it is that everyone is terrible...I noticed you mention good, evil, and neutral points throughout the gameplay. So the player can become just as horrible as everyone else, then?

That statement applies even in reality /sigh.

When I made that statement about Simon, I wasn't even thinking about the political consequences, but rather who I would want to kill the least if I entered into a realtionship with him/her. But nice to see that it works out that way too.

Oh, yes. The big turning point in Part 1, WRT alignment, is making the deal with Hyath to kill Christano. If you're Neutral, that's probably enough to push your alignment to Evil. The dialogue in regular conversation doesn't always have well-done evil options, but you sometimes have a chance to resolve quests by taking a self-serving option (e.g., blackmail) or by killing an innocent.

Roleplaying a Chaotic Evil PC makes the Vico romance make a good bit more sense, because you share an alignment and can basically just justify it as two people using each other for self-serving reasons. But I suck at playing Evil alignments in general, so I didn't get all the way through in that save file.

I think the vast opportunities to gain Evil points in Part 1 (less so in Part 2, but we'll get to that) are meant to push you (player and character) into really realizing, "This is what you need to do to survive in this kind of world, and maybe that's why everyone else is like that."

Admittedly, my only point of reference for Valine's intent is this interview, but I'm not sure she thought or thinks that these people are awful. Two bits in particular point to a lack of self-awareness (is it self-awareness or just an author's inability to recognize what it is they've actually written? Well, whatever).

I don't think it'll be controversially to say that, no, we don't think there's a theme of misogyny because the PC is a woman. We think there's a theme of misogyny because the attitude is crushingly pervasive. There are vanishingly few male characters in the module who recognize that women are, you know, people.

And then there's the bit where she says she usually had a specific person in mind when creating a new NPC, which I don't even want to think about.

This is a really compelling hypothesis, but later in the interview Valine says

And while it's true that she was specifically asked about lawful/chaotic shifts, it's certainly suggestive.

Thanks so much for linking that interview! I had read some comments by the author, but not something as in-depth.

I think "them" in that sentence refers to "sexuality and sex" and not "the NPCs," but still, describing rampant sexual harassment as just being "absolutely mad about my character" is... um, OK.

I mean, my favorite way to play Baldur's Gate II is to install too many romance mods (and Romantic Encounters), collect my party harem, and see how far I can take all the romances at once before my love interests start complaining. That's my idea of many NPCs being absolutely mad about my character.

I can see the argument that it's a self-insertion fantasy thing and the player thereby consents for the character, even if the character doesn't. But still.

Exactly.

See, this why I usually avoid ascribing authorial intent to interpretations. Death of the Author is of particular benefit to something like ADWR. I revise my previous statement to:

I don't like how she handled the alignment shifts overall, but a) that was a problem with Neverwinter Nights in the original campaign, too (I started out Neutral and ended up Good before the end of Chapter 1 just by not being a dick to anyone), and b) I hate alignment shifts in general because they ignore the intention of your act (except in certain cases, like dealing with Hyath, where intention is very clearly obvious or unimportant).

next update

Out-of-character, I hang around for another day so I can go shopping before I storm the castle. Specifically, so I can buy this:



By the end of the game, I will own at least three Rods of Resurrection. And I will need them.

Yes, that's correct. What I was getting at is that she talks about wanting to be able to experience the bawdy situations she imagined while playing HotU and then ends with a blanket statement about sex and sexuality being good. The module she's talking about isn't the one that we're playing, because the module we're playing is something like one part bawdiness and consensual sex to three parts assault/rape/coercion/squick. Which she doesn't mention at all. I suppose it's possible it's simply not something she's comfortable discussing and she's avoiding the issue, and it's also possible I'm reading too much into it. Those caveats out of the way, it very much reads as though she's unaware of just how fucked up a lot of the content is and that, indeed, a lot of this stuff is straight out of her fantasies. Which in turn implies that she's unaware of just how fucked up the characters performing the various sexual acts (for a value of sexual acts that includes assault, rape, gang rape, attempted rape...) are and that, indeed, they're right out of her fantasies.

That's probably a reach, now that I type it all out. Oh well!

Hah. I hear that.

EDIT: Wait, I could have bought a second rod of resurrection before I left town? Motherfucker, that'll teach me not to check the shops before going off a lengthy quest.

I see what you mean, and I'm really not sure either.

So, here's the fabled Chainmail Bikini. I forgot to take a screenshot of someone wearing it, but I'm sure you can imagine.

[Bluff] "Let me in!"



Well, it was worth a shot. At least they've opened the door.



I slip into the shadows as the guards rush out, leaving them searching in confusion as I sneak in.

I swear, I reloaded this like five times before I realized that the Bluff check was just based on your Bluff skill level, not a roll, and so there was no possible way for me to pass it. This actually caused some hilarious problems later, but I'll get to that.





I find everyone's gear in a storage room downstairs. At least the Dhorn didn't sell it or anything. I take what I can carry and head downstairs to unlock the cells.



I should have expected that Vico and the others aren't the only prisoners here. At least I'm pretty experienced at killing Orcs.



I hug her back. "I'm so glad that I've found you. Can you tell me what happened?"



"Those damn Dhorn took over Westwood."

She sighs and nods. "What about you, my sweet? Are you well again?"

"I'm fine, yes."

"Well, let's get out of this place!"



"Hello Anden, are you well?"

"I am, yes. Although the Dhorn took away my possessions. What is the plan now, if I may ask. I mean, are we still determined to rescue your friends from the grasp of the Dhorn?"

"I want to kick the Dhorn out of Westwood, first!"

"I doubt we have the strength to fight a whole army of theirs, M'lady..."

I don't care. I wasn't able to kick the Dhorn out of Betancuria yet, but I can sure as hell try to fight them here. We'll figure out some way.

I manage to convince Anden to try on some better armor.



He looks a bit uncomfortable, but I'm sure he'll get used to it. I just don't want him getting himself killed.

That's what Cata's armor looks like on a guy. At least the sexy clothing is equal opportunity.

"I'm very glad that you are here with me, Anden."



He nods.

"It doesn't change anything, okay Anden?"

"Lady Riona, if I had known..."

"I don't feel like a princess anymore. My father is dead, and the Dhorn own Betancuria now."



I know Anden means well, but... I wish I knew how I felt.

Happy New Year! Now here's some more Vico.



"I'm a nice girl."

"So you're happy now?" He grins and pinches my bottom.

"Take your filthy hands off me!"

I pull away. Vico just laughs.

"How come you let a couple of Dhorn arrest you?"

"I was doing fine, but they had the stupid ranger and threatened to kill him."

"Since when does that stop you?"

"I figured we'd still need him to show us the way to the Island."

Anden snorts contemptfully. "M'lady, could we please leave this scoundrel in this cell where he belongs?"

"And who'd come and rescue you then, ranger?"

"Certainly not you. As far as I recall, that was me who rescued you."



I don't know what I expected. Maybe a little bit of gratitude, at least.

Pia squeezes my hand when Vico's not looking. It helps.

next update