Will new strongholds be added?

[Kish]

I'm unlikely to change the role of the circus; Haer'Dalis is better suited for the Five Flagons Playhouse, and the circus is fine with Quayle. I can't see the circus, as a stronghold, being anything but lightweight compared to the other strongholds

[Hendryk]

Uh...didn't Duke Darkwood's minions already catch up to the Sigil players once in the Five Flagons? Isn't HD still fleeing the Duke's wrath? Mightn't HD feel just the teeniest bit insecure, setting up shop there again?

[Kish]

If Haer'Dalis was worried about that, he'd flee Athkatla entirely with Raelis. Instead, he hangs around Athkatla and--if you don't take him in your party--hangs around only one flight of stairs away from the Playhouse. Haer'Dalis isn't the sort to avoid doing something just because it puts his life in danger.

[Hendryk]

Yeah but that behavior is never justified - or even discussed - in-game. And the only reason it occurs is the metagame need to keep joinable NPCs on hand. At the very least, the point deserves a mention so that Haer'Dalis can brazen it out:

 

PC: Aren't you worried about the Duke, Haer'Dalis? I mean, isn't it standard police procedure to check on the last known residence of a fugitive?

 

HD: You reckon without the subtlety of the Duke, o raven. To a mind like his, there can be no question of revisiting the past when the future is what beckons him.

 

PC: Uh-huh. If he's as subtle as all that, mightn't he foresee your reasoning and come here expecting to find you?

 

HD: If such a notion occurred to him, he would, I believe, then assume that I would again foresee his conclusion and have absented myself. So I do not conceive that there might be a place in all the planes that is safer from the duke's attention than this tavern.

 

PC: And if you are wrong?

 

HD: I have often been wrong about such matters. If I am so once more, I shall naturally pay a forfeit. But really, the point is scarcely worth such fretting over.

[neriana]

Yeah but that behavior is never justified - or even discussed - in-game.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

It's justified by Haer'Dalis character. Danger draws him, and if someone were to point out that he was more in danger because of where he was hanging out, his likely response would be a sarcastic, "gee, I didn't realize that," perhaps with a riff on how all life is dangerous and how great that is. If he respected the person enough to be as serious as he ever gets, he would likely point out that a being of such power wouldn't be set back by a little thing like locating a charismatic tiefling who uses two swords on Faerun, and besides, the very last thing HD would ever do under any circumstances is go into hiding.

 

By the way, "standard police procedure"? On Faerun?

[Hendryk]

I recall his discussing entropy a good deal. I don't recall his saying or doing anything that suggested any undue eagerness to join it in the near future. But then, I never used him all that frequently because he dies so easily.

 

As for "police procedure", I used the term which makes the meaning clear to me. I wouldn't suggest that it would be appropriate in-game but it will do in an example of how a question might be treated that was composed in about 90 seconds.

[Kish]

I recall his discussing entropy a good deal.  I don't recall his saying or doing anything that suggested any undue eagerness to join it in the near future.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

"At last, oblivion!"

"Ah, mayhap this will be the end!"

"Beneath the earth our fates await us! And just think, we shan't need go far to lie in our graves!"

 

Also, Haer'Dalis' lack of gratitude for the PC saving his life is much (and indignantly) discussed. I would contend that he's not grateful because, in his mind, you didn't do him any particular favor by saving his life.

[Hendryk]

First, I don't challenge your right to interpret Haer'Dalis' character in your own way in your own mod. Indeed, the simple banter was an attempt to illustrate his brash, don't-care-a-damned attitude in response to the rather (to my mind) more sensible concerns of the PC.

 

In regard to your quotes, the first is his remark from the soundset when he is actually dying, the second is the least aggressive of his three battle cries and the third strikes me as a mordant joke, as a cover for justifiable apprehension, rather than an expression of eagerness to shuffle off this mortal coil. As far as his lack of gratitude goes, he is also an actor and actors are notoriously self-centered enough to consider their rescuers more than repaid by their company.

 

Other quotes support other interpretations too. When his morale fails, he doesn't urge a suicidal charge but says "Best to make a swift escape now, my raven." And in one of his dialogues he states "Yes...well, I must admit I do not look forward to my own decay. I imagine myself being full of memories of a life well-lived by then, however...those, I think, shall comfort me."

[neriana]

Haer'Dalis doesn't have a death wish. That would be far too ordered. Thrill-seekers usually don't have death wishes, but he's not mere thrill-seeker either.

 

Running away from one battle that isn't going well is perfectly consistent with HD's character, as he is not suicidal. He's not cautious, or crazy, or stupid. He has very little respect for anyone. This tiefling from another plane is a bard who has dedicated himself as much to the blade as to the story. He's a Doomguard, dedicated to Entropy, the inevitable decay of everything. That doesn't make him a force of destruction either; forcing things to fall apart would not be in line with the idea that things inevitably fall apart, as it would be introducing conscience agency into the equation.

 

To Haer'Dalis, the play's the thing, and all the men and women on Faerun (and everywhere else) are merely players.

[NiGHTMARE]

I'd just like to point out that by rescuing Ralis and killing the jailer, the PC would also have made an enemy of the Duke... So by the logic expressed here, it wouldn't be very sensible for a PC bard to run the playhouse either.

[Hendryk]

So the PC should, IMO. But this thread is about HD, not the PC. And in the PC's favor, all the PC did was kill a bunch of dully retributive minions and free some prisoners out of a "misguided sense of some Prime damnfoolery or other." If one can judge the Duke by his cousin in WK, he wouldn't cheer the PC's efforts to extend his game but wouldn't get all that exercised about it either. The interference of self-appointed "heroes" from backwater Primes is probably something he's used to by now. Above all, the PC hasn't insulted the Duke in public and in Sigil. So it's at least possible that the Duke wouldn't obsess about the PC like he does about HD and the other actors. The only way to know for sure though is to mod his butt into the game and ask him.

 

@ neriana. I agree about HD's character. So I started this mess by wondering how he'd feel at continuing his "play" at a site where he's already been apprehended once by the Duke's gophers. I don't think that a cool indifference to a mortal and highly personal peril is the best attitude for him to take but if Kish disagrees, well, he's writing this. I'm not. I do think that, if HD is to run the playhouse, *someone* ought to mention the fairly obvious point that the Duke is still around and still peeved. And that the Duke presumably knows that the Sigil troupe was last seen at the playhouse in Athkatla on Toril, so it would be the logical place for him to look for clues, in order to resume his pursuit of the actors.

[neriana]

There's also the question of how much trouble the Duke is going to go to just to catch a misbehaving bard. Raelis and co. returned to Sigil, where the Duke lives. I don't see someone spending more and more money to send bounty hunters who keep getting killed after someone who embarassed him. What'shisname was very powerful, and he ended up very dead after pursuing HD. How much more is another powerful person going to charge? Is the Duke really ready to spend his entire fortune on this, which incidentally would bring even more attention to his humiliation? I don't see it.

 

Besides, as I said before, it's not like HD would be exactly tough to find on Faerun no matter where he happened to be. That's if the Duke even blames Haer'Dalis for anything, rather than just Raelis and her troupe.

[Andyr]

Also, in pnp didn't something nasty happen to Rowan Darkwood recently anyhow? So he might no longer be in the picture.

[Guest Kania Blade]

Dalis's lack of gratitude?! And what about "My dear raven! Valiant as always, you are poetry, you are song!"?! The sound, the way how he sayes this makes me laugh happily (gee, how my husband despises all this! ). And I doubt he HAD TO thank the PC every 5 minutes for a month after all that. (Remember for example Garrick's behaviour after Silke was killed.)

IMHO his presense is truly a gift.

 

And about the Duke what I think - as Dalis once said, "We've been on Prime Material for almost 3 seasons." Than WHY didn't Darkwood catch them earlier? I guess, they were found because of the Stone. Dalis does not have any stones.

And.

Before the Stone was activated Dalis said something like they were going to the past. When there was no play yet. When nothing of this started (can't quote - I played a russian version). If Raelis returned to the past, there WAS NO play at all. And I do not think she was foolish enough to return to that time in Sigil where she would me immediately caught. So there was no play, Darkwood is calm and he does not care about some bard disappeared from some Sigil theater.

 

By the way, will this MOD work with NPCKits, BanterPack and HDRomance?

[Kish]

By the way, will this MOD work with NPCKits, BanterPack and HDRomance?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Yes. However, it will not take any class changes due to NPCKits (or Shadowkeeper, for that matter) into account. Even if you hack Anomen into a wizard, this mod will still treat him as a fighter/cleric.