Over in the southeast district in the Blade and Stars, Lothander was quite pleased with the Geas Removal Scroll. We were upstairs when I held the scroll in front of him.
"You have done well! I can't even imagine how you managed to get such a powerful item from a priestess of Umberlee," Lothander said while reaching to receive the scroll.
Even as he reached for the scroll, I moved it away and held up a hand. "A moment. How did you get a geas put on you in the first place?"
He scowled at me something fierce. "I don't see how that's any business of yours."
"Seeing as how you worked for the people that poisoned me and I found the cure to your geas, I think I have a right to know how you got involved with the Iron Throne in the first place. Was it to pay off a gambling debt? Are you going to get another geas placed on you in the future?"
There will in fact be ANOTHER thief in the future who will be placed under a geas in the far future. The writers in this game have a habit of sending thieves controlled by a geas to mess with us. A geas was NOT a simple spell by any stretch of the imagination. Why place a simple thief under one every time?
"No! That's not going to happen again. I'd rather die," Lothander flatly. He reached for the scroll again, but I adamantly held it away and glared.
Lothander sighed. "Con job gone wrong. The wizard who captured me place me under a geas," he muttered under his breath.
Could have been worse. I was half expecting the reason for the geas was to pay off his gambling debts. How many mages were powerful enough to cast a geas that the Iron Throne had access to? "Rieltar, Bruno or Thaldorn?"
Lothander nodded in appreciation. "Out of the three leaders of the Iron Throne, which one is a mage? The answer is Rieltar. It was indeed he who placed the spell on me. I never met the other two."
If he could cast geas on people, why did Rieltar even bother torturing Yeslick for the location of the mine? Right, Yeslick might have chosen to die immediately under the geas rather than reveal the secret.
"If you must con people for a living, pick targets who can't cast a geas on you," I said to Lothander, and handed the Geas Removal Scroll to him. "I'm serious. I don't have a second scroll to bail you out the next time."
He took the scroll from my hands. "There will be no next time, and you will most assuredly never see me again. I'm leaving for somewhere not at the brink of war. Maybe Waterdeep. Then again, Neverwinter's weather is always nice."
I cringed. Really, both the hotspots for D&D campaigns, intrigues and major battles? "Tch. Centeres of commerce and easy marks, sure, but also more trouble. Not going to retire to a nice beach vacation?"
"Not yet!" Lothander laughed., He passed a bottle of fluid to us. "Here's my half of the antidote. Marek, my partner, possesses the other half of the antidote. You'll find him at the Blushing Mermaid inn. I can't help you other than that. Good luck taking down the Iron Throne. I mean it."
Not quite what we were promised, but it couldn't be helped if Marek had the other half of the antidote.
If.
I peered at the bottle of 'antidote' that Lothander had passed to us, then passed it to Neera for her to examine. Neera's Lore skill had surpassed Imoen's at this point.
"It's just colored water isn't it?" I asked.
Neera took a sniff. "Probably. But we should probably use it as instructed anyway. Just in case."
What a conman! Still, I had gotten back at Lothander in my own way. I had had Lothander kindly donate a Potion of Fire Resistance and water opal to us just before he left.
---
In the floors of the Blade and Stars below where we met Lothander, there were a few people of interest. The first was a seer named G'axir who called out to me as I passed him by. "You! You are a light entering darkness! You are a seeker of truths. You are more than you realize!"
Imoen rolled her eyes. "I bet he wants money. To tell your fortune. We've already found the real deal in the central district."
G'axir ignored her comments. "The Seer has spoken it because the Seer knows the fear you harbor, the fear you shall yet become. In the lair of the basilisk, you will find a sphene gem... You would do well to bring it to me."
"Told ya. Probably changed the terms from pure gold to a precious gem just ta contradict me," Imoen said under her breath. "Don't take a seer to know a basilisk was running rampant in the docks. News like that spreads fast."
G'axir scowled while trying his best not to look at her.
I considered. Eh, did we find a sphene gem in the docks where the basilisk was released. It probably belonged to someone at the docks but who cares.
I produced the sphene gem in question. G'axir snatched it out of my hands and peered right at it intensely. "You are more than you appear. Someday, you must journey further through the muck and mire of this place for it will tell you as much or more than all of fabled Candlekeep-"
"We want the gem back after you're done," Imoen butted in.
"Shush! Ahem. As I was saying. Like yourself, this city is more than it appears. There are cities below cities, dreams beneath dreams, the past laying buried beneath the crushing weight of the present... Go now, wanderer, for the time will come when you must walk through the darkness to find the light."
He pocketed the gem and waved us off.
We didn't move.
"Yes, the reading wasn't for free," he said finally. "A sphene gem is suitable payment for my talents."
As if! I had him donate it back to me, naturally.
Let's hear it for… what's the word… FORESHADOWING. Yup, the whole point of all that was just foreshadowing. Moving on!
---
Plenty of enigmatic sorts in the Blade and Stars. Other than G'axir, there was also another woman in priest robes.
"Shaella sees through the mists of the Lady that you are strong and worthy adventurers," she said.
Okay, I remember this conversation. I have to either word my responses in the form of a question, like I was playing Jeorpardy, or just say I don't' understand.
"Who is Shaella?" I asked.
"It is Shaella, Most High Middling Priestess of the Mistshadow, who is here before you, speaking through the mists of Leira."
"Who is Leira?"
"Leira, Lady of Mists, Mother of All Illusion, the Guardian of Deception, the Mistshadow. Some say she died in the Time of Troubles, killed by Cyric, betrayed by Mask. Some say she loved Mask and loves him still. Some say gods can die. Some say gods can be born. Some say gods can live. Some say gods are an illusion we create for our own contentment. Some say gods are an illusion we create to disguise our fear of living, our fear of dying, our fear of being. If gods are a disguise, if gods are an illusion, then perhaps Leira is the only beacon of truth in our entire pantheon of lies. But if gods are real and true and all-knowing, then Leira cannot be a god and must be dead if indeed she ever lived at all."
In other words, Shaella is a lore dump disguised as a priestess of Leira. Leira, being the goddess of… what exactly? Wasn't her portfolio of deception taken by Cyric when she was supposedly killed by him? From the way this priest acts, it seems like she is the goddess of ignorance more than anything else.
"But how can you worship what you cannot know?" I asked.
"More or less precisely my point," she answered.
"But I don't understand," I said, genuinely. What in the nine hells was she talking about?
"Ah, then you are truly one of us, you are truly with Shaella in the Mists of Leira. May Shaella grace you with a quest from the Lady?"
HUH?
"I don't get it," I said, again, genuinely.
"Ah, indeed. You walk well with Shaella in the mists of Leira. Forgotten deep in the library of Candlekeep lies the Great Book of the Unknowing. Bound with the chameleon's hide, it too walks in the mists of Leira, changing always, as does Shaella. Ask no one there of it for all who have touched it are blessed with the ignorance it grants. But you can always find it somewhere in the inner rooms, wreathed in the mists of Leira. Go to it, make your pilgrimage, and you too may be blessed with unknowing."
Urrrrgh, how does this go again? I can't just say yes. I have to word it as a question. "Have you ever seen the Great Book of the Unknowing?"
"Perhaps I have. Perhaps a thousand times."
As we left, the rest looked to me.
"What in the nine hells was all that about?" Neera asked.
I shrugged. "I haven't a clue."
No, seriously. Can someone explain it to me? Because I've tried to make something more about that but I hadn't a clue.
---
Marek was indeed found in the Blushing Mermaid.
Marek looked at our party even as we surrounded him, outnumbered yet undeterred. "So you've come, I assume, to take the antidote. All you're going to accomplish is to hasten your death, but I think that isn't the foremost worry you have at the moment," he said to Khalid.
Marek is a level 7 wizard and level 13 thief, somehow. His first action was to cast Confusion on us, which proved too slow. Between my Quarterstaff+3 being brought down on his head from behind and Khalid's slash with Varscona +2 empowered by Gauntlets of Ogre Power, Marek was cut down long before he could complete the spell.
As he lay bleeding out over the floor, I stood over him with quarterstaff on my shoulder and the other hand pointed at him. "You had the right idea with poison the first time," I said then gave him a thumbs down. "Facing us in combat directly, now that was a mistake."
---
We drank the combined antidote as instructed. We didn't feel any different, and as of such had no way of knowing for sure if we were cured. All we had to go on was our trust in Lothander's word. Well, in my case I knew that this was the correct solution and I could reassure Neera as such, but the rest had to simply have faith.
It was in fact possible to skip this entire sequence of events by killing Marek as soon as we first saw him, but then we would have missed out on the experience and Book of Wisdom along the way. It was nice to do Lothander a good turn, anyway.
---
Nadarin in SE district paid us 500 gold for killing the basilisk. He also donated another pair of Boots of Stealth to us. This went to Imoen.
Ragefast back in the north district donated an Amulet of Protection+1 and a Wand of Paralyzation to our cause.
Delorna was the most troublesome. Once she realised I was in her bedroom, she screamed bloody murder and started incanting horrible spells at me. I drank an Invisibility Potion and ran for my life, but not before she had donated to me her Necklace of Missiles. I now had a total of 4 Necklaces of Missiles, one for each non-mage! Oooh, just imagining the carnage we could accomplish with that many fireballs made me tingle.
And that was it for the most notable items in Baldur's Gate, for now. There was some other minor loot around the place and items in the Iron Throne itself, but that could wait until later. After we're done memorising all this stuff, it was time to head outside of Baldur's Gate city.