On my way out of the first dungeon, I encountered a clone laboratory. The main villain, Irenicus, was attempting to bring a particular woman back to life. It was a sequence that highlighted the main weakness of crpgs. If I were playing this scenario in a tabletop game, I would have tried to ally with her. She had as much reason as I did to hate Irenicus, and she seemed to have an adventurer's skill set. If, as in the game, the clone was unable to listen to reason, I'd have used hold person or something to incapacitate her until I could bring her to a cleric for healing. In any event, the last thing I would have done is what the game forced me to do - kill her. It's always frustrating to brush up against a game's illusion of freedom, especially when it otherwise presents you with a great many choices.
Sadly, it was an unavoidable tragedy. Just like when we emerged from the dungeon and got into the middle of a magical battle. Irenicus was slaughtering some town guards for some unfathomable reason (I suspect he was trying to recapture us and the guards interfered, but then, why did he build his base under the town?) Imoen cast a spell to defend herself, and then the magic police showed up and arrested them both. Or, at least, they tried to arrest them, Irenicus killed a few of them, and more showed up. He finally submitted to capture on the condition that Imoen be taken as well.
Which, you know, is total bullshit. Given the circumstances of our encounter, it should be obvious that Irenicus is a ruthless murderer and general threat to the city, so why the hell would the magic police accommodate him like that? And what the hell do they have against Imoen? And why is there no way that we can get her released or at least tried in a court? Who are these assholes? Fantasy justice systems are always the worst.
On my way to the government building, I met Gaelyn Bayle, a highly suspicious character who claims to represent some sort of vague and mysterious organization. He told me his group would help me spring Imoen for twenty thousand gold.
My next move from here is to track down various odd jobs to earn the money to get Imoen out of jail. Currently, I am going after some kind of evil warlock or spirit called "the Shade Lord" in order to stop some killings in a random Podunk town. This involves winding my way through some very dim maps, and making a probably ill-advised alliance with a werewolf (as a D&D player, I should know that werewolves are always evil, but I've gotten used to thinking of them as the wild, yet noble creatures of more modern fiction).
My biggest worry at this point is that this is a much longer sidequest than I originally signed on for, and I'm not at all sure I'm tough enough to finish it (the enemies I'm fighting are immune to nonmagical weapons). I wish there was some way I could know what the intended level of the quest. I guess that is just part of playing an old-school rpg. Perhaps freedom necessarily includes the freedom to not know what the hell you're doing.
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