1), 2) and 3) When Jan's step daughter gets sick (Lissa is her mother, and she is not sick), Jan's uncle Gerhardt sends you to Lady Jysstev to find a cure. She sends you to the CC sewers, to meet the Hidden, who is a Githyanki. He cures the girl. But that quest is unfinished, Jan should confront that shrimp Vaelag.

7) He thinks of the icosaedar in the Underdark. The thing that has stored souls in it, and you free them to kill them.
I have always thought that that is mere coincidence that both Gont and the party are from Riatavin. Why do you think it should have been connected? (this isn't Seinfeld)
Although it would be nice.

What's up with the men behind TorGal?
He is referring to some kind of assignment he has. From whom?

OK..that's why they didn't ring a bell--Jan is another character I've never used for very long (looks like a Jan/Mazzy/Nalia/Valygar/Korgan party is inevitable...lol). As for the second part, I do remember that now. He was one of the only ones you didn't have to kill, right? I think you're right about it being a coincidence. IIRC, they were going after the drow...

The only reason I listed the Riatavin mercenaries to begin with is because, reading in one of the D&D handbooks, it mentions that Riatavin, a city in Amn, is trying to leave and join the nation of Tethyr. I thought perhaps they were involved with the Twisted Rune (which has strong ties to the nobility in Calimshan and Tethyr), who were involved with the slaver and the Roenalls. Just a working theory, of course ;)

SPOILER
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
You find this out if you play through the fighter/barbarian/monk stronghold. It is Roenall. Thus, this is already addressed. However, this was supposed to link to the Slavers/Twisted Rune, but they took that out.

Are you *sure* that a definite tie to Roenall exits? The only reason I ask is because there was a little controversy at another forum as to who Torgal is actually working for. Several members there did not think that Torgal was working for Roenall at all...

Email recieved, icelus....

Here's my prioritization plan for all the misbegotten loose ends lying around:

1) Give Jaheira a Quest and a Romance. Judging by the fact that this hasn't been fixed yet, a complete rewrite may be neccessary.

2) Clear up the entire "de'Arnise--TorGal--Roenall--Slave Ship--Baron Ployer (former slaver, he lives right next door, how could he <u>not</u> be involved)--Slave Lords--Twisted Rune" quest array, with clues tying each. Additional clues and links if Nalia/Jaheira are in the party.

3) Clear up the entire "Temple Sewers Illithids--the Hidden--Lady Jysstev--Uncle Gearhardt--Lissa's daughter--Vaelag" quest array, with clues tying each.
To clear up some misconceptions:
<u>The Hidden</u>: A high-ranking Illithid, mentioned in the Temple Sewers, but only seen during Jan's Quest. (Vedran said that he was a Githyanki, but actually a couple of Gith are trying to <u>kill</u> the Hidden.)
<u>Lady Jysstev</u>: Appears to be a member of some cult led by the Hidden. As the Hidden's plans are to destroy and dominate the human city, and Lady Jysstev enjoys the benfits of being of very high rank in such a city (her husband is one of the Council of Six, but don't tell anybody), this seems very unlikely.
<u>Uncle Gearhardt</u>: For whatever stupid reason, he knows that Lady Jysstev has links to the Hidden.
<u>Lissa</u>: Lissa is Jan's old girlfriend, and Vedran was right, it's her daughter that develops a crippling mental illness. (I've forgotten the kid's name.) Ths girl is not Jan's stepdaughter, but if things turned out they way they should have, she soon would be.
<u>Vaelag</u>: A useless rat-bastard Evil Gnome with ties to the Shadow Thieves and every other corrupt organization in town--in other words, 80% of Athkatla. Got to satisfy part of his desire to taint and corrupt innocence by marrying Lissa, and is implicated as being the cause of the mental disease in Lissa's (and his) daughter.
My suggestions for this particular quest array: The Hidden is the leader of an advance party of Illithids, on a mission to consume all the minds in Athkatla. They plan to accomplish this by dominating a few key people to keep the panic under control, and systematically decimating the rest of the population. This will provide the Illithids the power that they need to destroy an entrenched Hive of Beholders. But they lack the resources to pull off such a stunt alone, and so the Hidden has turned to an unlikely ally: The Drow. Since the Drow are well acquainted with surface raids, he has sent some of his people to Ust Natha to negotiate a treaty (which we already see them doing on one of the city platforms), in which the Drow will dig a tunnel from the Underdark directly to the Hidden's base in Athkatla. This will provide the Drow with a vast new source of wealth and slaves, the Illithid with new minds to consume, and as a bonus, both races have large population centers at the Underdark end of the tunnel, thus nearly eliminating the problem of being outnumbered. (The Hidden's goal of negotiation suffered a serious setback with Phaere's capture: This suggests that the Master Brain in the Underdark knew nothing of this bold plan, suggesting in turn that the Hidden is from some other Illithid city and under some other Master Brain.)
As for the Jan/Lissa/Vaelag side of the quests, I'd like them to have no connection whatsoever with this Illithid/Drow plot. (Uncle Gearhardt: "Oh, the little girl's got some brain problem, huh? Tell you what, why don't you sit her right down in front of a Mind Flayer and he'll fix her right up.") The Jysstevs can be left right out of it, too--I don't think a single person would mind. Just a nice, little quest: After jumping through verbal hoops for Uncle Gearhardt, he'll mention that his old pal Kreel at the Temple of Lathander read a few good books on Psionics before becoming a Priest. Going back upstairs, you re-recruit Jan, take the kid (Inventory item) with you, and toddle off to the Temple. One Restoration later, the girl has most of her memory back: The last thing she remembers is her dad (Vaelag) making her some oatmeal--it smelled weird, and tasted really bad. He got mad that she didn't like his cooking, so she had to eat some, and then she remembers that everything just sort of went black. This, of course, is enough justification for Jan to go disembowel Vaelag, although some additional evidence will be required in order to placate Lissa; a book of psionicists' curses and an Antidote to whatever it was that Vaelag put in her oatmeal will do the trick quite nicely. (At this time, however, I have no idea WHY Vaelag would do such a thing, but I'm sure a reasonable motive can be found.) Due to Vaelag's links with the Shadow Thieves, killing him could mean complications if one has the Thief stronghold or sided with the Shadow Thieves, not to mention Jan's Epilogue.
A fringe benefit of rewriting this quest array is that the location of the Sewer Key can be made MUCH more logical--on the corpse of one of the Illithids in Ust Natha, perhaps? That would tie in perfectly, ensuring that the Temple Sewers Illithids can't be dealt with until Chapter 6, and ensuring that the party has already been through the Underdark would make the quest much easier to write.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Suna Seni is the leader (well, the only one with a name, anyway) of a party of Slavers that Waylay you very early in the game. (They're the ones that drop Arbane.) According to stuff that never made it into the game, she was once Valygar's sweetie, but now works for a Mage, possibly against her will. (Geas, anyone?) Judging that she's with a group of slavers, that Mage is likely either Sion or Shangalar. It actually IS possible to have Valygar in your party before getting Waylaid by Suna, but they show no signs of recognizing each other at all. What DOES show up in the game is a banter between Valygar and Cernd, in which Valygar is metaphorically gritting his teeth in anticipation of killing the Mage who "killed Suna without a moment's thought." This was mentioned in my "2nd edition of the Grat, Big, Pain-in-the-Butt, Shadows of Amn Trivia Quiz" thread.

The "missing Priest of Helm, Guardian Herolde" is mentioned in that thread as well.

If you do Xzar's quest and enter the Harper compound, one of the chests on the second floor contains a low-level scroll and a few Darts+1. After taking Xzar the Harper Bird, the entrance is Locked again, so the only (legal) ways back into the Harper Hold are to have Jaheira confront Galvarey, or to leave somebody standing right in the doorway (so they can't shut it) before taking the Bird to Xzar. Anyway, once you're back inside, go take a look in that chest again--and there's Monty's Body. (No correction is required on this particular issue, I'll take care of it myself with the Montaron MOD.)

True, there may be no real connection between Gont and the Mercenaries, but it would have been nice to at least have the conversation option of mentioning one to the other.

I have never seen a concrete link between the Roenalls and the "Stronger" that TorGal mentions. Perhaps Arnel's Nalia Romance MOD adds more detail, but I never played it long enough to find out--too buggy for me.

Six wrote a book!

This may be a little off topic, but...
Is something also supposed to happen to Jaheira after doing Xzar's quest? Something like... Her getting kidnapped? Or maybe I'm just st00pid and confused... [img]smile.gif[/img] [img]smile.gif[/img] [img]smile.gif[/img]

I apologise for those incorrect information I brought out [img]graemlins/dropatear.gif[/img] . It will not happen again (yeah, right).

I agree that Jan-Lissa-Jysstev quest should not intermix with Illithid plot too much, but the Hidden should still be the one who cures the girl. Or perhaps not, because that would imply that Flayers are good, which is untrue if they want to enslave the city.

But the whole story with drow, beholders and mind flayers...

While there are Illithid emissaries in Ust Natha, that doesn't mean that they are allies. Drow generally don't like nor trust MFs, and they would have to be really motivated to step in such an alliance ("Have them watched at all times.").
Yes, those emissaries and Flayers in Athkatla could be from another MF lair, but why would this MF lair work against them?
(Unless... Phaere was the safe-guard that the drow will keep their side of the bargain, and she was transported from that other MF lair to the one near Ust Natha. But her escort was waylaid by Solaufein and the protagonist, and she was freed.
But why would drow find her so valuable to let MFs blackmail them?)

The drow are currently allied with Irenicus, warring with surface elves. I don't think that they would gladly engage with two kingdoms at the same time. Drow are powerful, but not reckless.
Neither they like to undertake extended surface conquests, because they feel disoriented outside. They are not trained to fight in the open area, they fight room by room, cave by cave.

That entrenched beholders you speak of, do you mean the Unseeing Eye? Or those in Underdark?

Why would the drow dig the tunnel? Couldn't umber hulks do that?

I do. The girl found some evidence about Vaelag's activities (heard him order someone killed, for instance), and she had to be eliminated. Killing her would be hard to explain, so he decided to lobotomise her.
Or she fell into coma herself because that knowledge was to much for her to take.

Something like: [img]graemlins/hehe.gif[/img]
Hey, we've seen a fellow named Gont that is from Riatavin, too. Do you know him?
No.

BTW, Six, why do you cope with Ranchoweb? It proved that it can't be trusted to. Can't you just upload your image at your site? If no, I could host it.

[ 07-05-2003, 11:32 AM: Message edited by: Vedran ]

you can 'heal' the feebleminded mage, the unable to speak one, and get a nice sword as reward from him instead of some spells. this way you have to do 3 fights only and got 3 peaceful solutions.

Ye st00pid and confused one, you're getting her Romance mixed up with her Quest. The two are indeed separate--people have taken Jaheira into their party <u>without</u> Romancing her, yes it does happen. Both her quest and her romance are severely bugged, of course.

Jan and his Uncle may both be insane, but I don't think they're insane enough to get all cuddly-cuddly with a Mind Flayer. The only connection between the "Gnome Quest" and the "Illithid Quest" that I think I could stomach would be the Hidden giving you the cure <u>by force</u>. I think something like "Tell us what to do and we won't kill you" makes a lot more sense than "We ran all over the whole tamn town--twice--and killed a couple of stupid Githyanki for you, now cure the girl."

You're right about the Drow/Illithid complications that you bring up, Vedran. Although the fact that the Drow have allowed a pair of Illithid into Ust Natha in the first place clearly shows that the Illithid have something that the Drow are very interested in. Perhaps if, instead of an actual alliance with the Drow, the Illithid only want permission to travel through the Underdark without being attacked by Drow. That would save a huge amount of digging time, even for Umber Hulks. In exchange for free passage, the Illithids could offer the Drow X percent of the loot/slaves. As for the Hidden declaring war on the Unseeing Eye--why not? They're certainly close enough, and there IS an artifact of great power that they would both conveivably want.

As for Ranchoweb, I put up with it out of sheer laziness. If you'd host it for me, that'd be great, because the Geocities and Ironworks servers do <u>not</u> like each other: I can provide links to my webpages on Geocities, but I can't post the images themselves. Quite annoying. Shall I PM thee?

Have you done this yourself, or only heard about it? From what I recall, he starts a conversation with you as soon as you're in his sight range, and there's no opportunity to cast a spell while you're in conversation mode.