Scum and Villainy, Harpies and Gods

I take a breather in the cemetery, outside the crypt. The wraith inside was what I had hoped: a spirit of one of the town elders, who gave me the third line of the four-line poem I need to leave town. But the fight with the wraith knocked me down to 6 stamina, through a phenomenally unlucky series of dice rolls.

I know that I’m close to the North Gate, having played this before, so I use my once-per-book blessing from Libra. Holy light shines down, filling my heart, healing my wounds. 1UP!

I stride toward the north gate, clearly running out of time to find that fourth line. I run into a blind old beggar, and I know how these things go – beggars always have some tidbit of good advice or something. This guy… has harpies.

The damn things swoop from the sky, screeching and clawing and trying to steal the old man’s gold. I throw a DIM spell at them, rendering one of them harmless as it flies into a wall and forgets what it was doing. The other goes down without much of a fight, and the old man is saved. And yep, turns out he’s actually a disgraced town elder with half of the fourth line of the poem. The other half, he figures I can get at the shrine up the road.

Man, they’re really trying to pad this thing out to feature length, aren’t they?

I head on up to the shrine, and there’s an idol with instructions on how to make out with it. Eew. But when in Khare, I guess slipping some tongue into a god is part of the local custom. Still, eew. The god wakes and give me the last piece that I need to make sense of that fourth line of the poem.

And onward. The gate is just up ahead.

Thinking quickly, I have to bribe the guards. I reach into my pocket and find the crumpled up pass to the Crystal Waterfall way back at Birritanti. I throw DUD on it and turn it into a sheet of gold leaf, which the guards just go mad for. They ignore me, and I get to the gate.

Klaatu! Barada! Nickelback necktie nectar! Maybe I don’t say every single little syllable, but basically I say it… and the gate opens. Goodbye, Khare. I think I’ll come back for a vacation after I finish this quest.

Closing stats: Skill 9 but +3 effective when using a sword in combat, 14 out of 18 stamina. Luck at its 13 max. 4 provisions and 12 gold left.