WARNING: The Story You Are About to Read (TM) has been rated PG-13 for extremely mild language incidents, references to Playboy Magazine, and because it's full of so many lies. There are also BG1 spoilers. Read on at your own risk.
My Life Thus Far
Volume One of The Bhaalspawn Chronicles
by Sir Quirkius of Candlekeep
My life has always been one filled with problems and conflicts. I suppose you could say that I was a problematic child. Being the spawn of Bhaal, Dark Lord of Murder, Violent Death and IRS Audit Team Members would tend to do that to a young boy.
I was raised by the sage, Gorion, who obtained me through my mortal mother, the elf Maya. How did a mighty wizard and adventurer like him have time to raise a child? Well, he didn't, really, but attempts at giving me to another family always failed. They went something like this...
---------
GORION: He's a sweet elven kid, really. His mother was a great woman.
PROSPECTIVE PARENTS: That's nice... what about his father?
GORION: Oh, funny thing 'bout that... yes... well... you see, he's the son of Bhaal.
PROSPECTIVE PARENTS: You're kidding.
GORION: Nope.
PROSPECTIVE PARENTS: *scream and run away*
---------
They figured, and I suppose they could be right, that being a descendant of one of the most evil gods to ever hold influence on Faerun would make you an unusual child.
As would spending your entire life in a library... I mean, what normal young, hearty lad would spend two whole decades in a library that didn't even have a good "Mature Readers Only" section? Damn monks at Candlekeep didn't even subscribe to Playboy. I blame my bizarre and frightening nature on that.
And thus were my teenage years very different from the average boy's. I flew into fits of rage at the slightest provocation, did everything in my power to make the lives of the monks similar to what Hell must be like, and I made a general mess of my quarters within the library. Most teenagers fly into fits of rage at the slightest provocation, do everything in their power to make their parents' lives similar to what Hell must be like, and make general mess of their rooms within their parents' homes. The differences are obvious.
At about the age of 20, Gorion finally came up with a plan to get rid of me. You see, he had great debts towards a pro-wrestler named Sarevok "The Slayer" Simmons. He took me out one night into the forests near Candlekeep. He met with Sarevok, who very much looked the part of pro-wrestler. He was gigantic, and dressed in a suit of armor that was designed specifically to make people soil themselves when they saw it. Gorion was negotiating to give ME to this monstrosity as payments for his debts. A problem arose when "The Slayer" also wanted some choice pieces of Gorion's bedroom furniture. Gorion refused, so "the Slayer" killed him. I fled the scene, of course.
That left me without a home, without an escort, and without much anything else, either. Some of Gorion's last instructions to me had been to find Khalid and Jaheira at the Friendly Arm Inn in the event that I got lost. I found them, all right, but it turned out that Gorion's instructions had been a practical joke, because Khalid was as useful in a fight as a butterfly, and Jaheira's personality was repulsive to anyone but a masochist. Out of respect for Gorion, I took them along just long enough to hear them mention something about going to Nashkell. Then, I gave Jaheira a special present of a fine belt of masculinity, and sent him and his husband Khalid off to negotiate peace with some ankhegs. For some strange reason, I never saw them again.
I headed down towards this Nashkell, mainly on account of some of the stories I'd heard about Nashkell's fabulous topless bar. Turns out those stories were lies... hmph. If I ever meet that fellow who told me THAT one...
*ahem*, I forget myself.
Despite the disappointment at the bar, there WAS something to be done in Nashkell. There were apparently problems in the mines. So, I collected a band of the heartiest heros to be found on the Sword Coast, and armed myself with the finest in weaponry, collected a great deal of scrolls of magicks and studied them over, and charged into the mines. We penetrated deep into the heart of these gold mines before one of the guards kindly told us that we had made a mistake. It was the IRON mines that were having problems, and the gold mines were perfectly all right, thank you very much, and furthermore, if we didn't get the hell out of his gold mines, he'd be feeding us our longswords in short order. We thanked this helpful fellow, had a hearty laugh about the mix up, and ran out of those mines like squirrels scattering from one of my frequently mis-targeted fireball spells.
We finally made our way to the iron mines. Their, we overcame many obstacles, such as finally removing that pebble from my shoe that had caused me great foot irritation since my flight from Candlekeep. There was much rejoicing after THAT incident, I can assure you. Oh, and we also found Mulahey, the leader of the band that had being screwing with the iron supply, and slew him in an epic, stirring battle that lasted all of five seconds because right after I shouted my challenge to him, he tripped over his over-sized boots and broke his neck.
Rejoiceful after our difficult ordeal in the mines, we looted him and brought proof of our deed to Nashkel. Collecting our reward, we were discouraged to find that we had erred, and the real leader of the operatino was a wizard named Tranzig. We nonetheless charged to the location where Tranzig was staying, and slew him in another noble battle. NOW we were relieved. At least, we were until we read another notice that said that the REAL leader of the operation was a man named Tazok who operated a bandit encampment to the north. Collecting our spirits, we ONCE AGAIN nobly charged to meet this Tazok, only to hold this conversation with his secretary...
****
US: Excuse me, can we speak with Tazok?
SECRETARY: I'm sorry, Tazok is busy right now, do you have an appointment?
US: Well, no, we just kinda nobly charged through your bandit camp, killing as we went, and we kinda forgot to request an appointment. It's really important that we speak with him, though.
SECRETARY: Let me see what I can do. Number of visitors and purpose of visit?
US: Six, and we are here to nobly whoop his villainous ass because we're heros and he's committed so many criminal actions.
SECRETARY: All right, just sit right there and wai- URRRRRKKK! (at that moment, I'd had enough, so I stuck my new longsword+2 into her throat.)
****
Tazok wasn't in, but we learned from one of his prisoners that AGAIN we had the wrong guy, and the real leader of the operation, seriously, no kidding this time, was named Daeveron and he was operating a mine in the Cloakwood. So, being the noble people who liked to charge that we were, we nobly charged into the Cloakwood and slew the wizard Daeveron, who liked to glow purple and talked like he thought he had just stepped out of a cheap early vampire movie. Searching his corpse we found a letter from the mighty Council of Gods, BlackIsle, saying "Well, yeah, we were messing with your head again, but this time, we're serious. It's the Iron Throne that is the real group of bad guys here. Trust us!"
After yet another hearty laugh, we joined together and killed the Black Isle plot developer, and then we laughed heartily some more. (what can we say? we like hearty laughs.) However, we could not undo what the plot developer had already written down, so we nobly charged just one more time into the city of Baldur's Gate, and marched into the Iron Throne complex. We were kicking ass and taking names (among those taken were "James", "Gregory", "John Wayne", and "Noober") until we got up to the top level and found out that we were wrong, and the REAL leader of this operation was... wait, no, my mistake. We WERE right that the Iron Throne, but they weren't in right now. In a touch of Irony, they had just taken a vacation and were at Candlekeep, the very spot where my story began! Don't you think that's clever, dear readers? No, neither do we.
We charged into Candlekeep, and nobly slaughtered the Iron Throne leaders. The problem was that we had made a mistake... those weren't Iron Throne leaders, they were the guys who were supposed to chant prophecies all day long... but we cleverly covered that up... we told people they were really dopplegangers in disguise! Ha ha! Was not that a clever lie? And the BlackIsle people bought it, so that they actually wrote it into the game that Candlekeep had been taken over by Dopplegangers!
Then, we found the REAL Iron Throne leaders, and nobly slaughtered them, too. No sooner had we taken all of their blood-stained gear, though, than the leaders of the library charged us with murder and locked us up, with plans to execute us. Some weird old fogey in red actually believed us when we claimed to be innocent, though, so he let us out. It was then that he mentioned that we had been mistaken one more time, and that the real villain was some fellow by the name of Sarevok "the Slayer" Simmons.
Oh, the delicious irony! It became even more delicious when we added some salt, and a touch of oregano.... *ahem*, I've gotten off the subject again.
We had just enough energy for one more noble charge into Baldur's Gate. We confronted Sarevok in his underground lair, where he told us a secret of incredibly frightening consequence: "Wait! You forgot to do the expansion pack adventures," he said.
And so we had another hearty laugh, swearing to massacre all of BlackIsle, and ran out and did some pleasant little quests, making the world safe for mankind by killing a bunch of stuff, and then we nobly charged BACK to Baldur's Gate, met up with Sarevok, and confronted him.
He had still more surprises in store for us. "QUIRKIUS!" he shouted, "I AM YOUR FATHER!"
We had another hearty laugh, and I said, "That's a good one, Sarevok. I know my father is actually an evil god of murder, not you."
"Damn", he cried, "who told you?"
"Nobody, I read it on a scroll in Candlekeep."
"I see," he said. "Well, ok, I'm not your father, I'm really your half brother!"
"NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"
"YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"
"NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"
"YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"
"NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"
"YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"
"Ok, maybe you're right. But why have you done all of this stuff to screw up the Sword Coast? Are you planning to cause enough deaths to revive Bhaal and take his place as a new god of violent death?"
Sarevok laughed. He didn't laugh heartily, however, because he was a villain and only heros can laugh heartily. "Actually, I was just getting back at all the kids who told me I'd never amount to anything in middle school. But your idea actually is a pretty good one."
"Yeah, I thought it was," I said. "Shall we get to our epic battle to the death, then?"
"Yes, lets."
And so we fought. We fought for ever and a day. As my trusty long sword +2 clashed against his wicked looking two handed sword, I thought I saw sparks dazzle up and down the blades... then again, it might have been because I was roaring drunk at the time. While we fought, most of my companions eliminated his henchmen successfully, while Minsc and Dynaheir played a dramatic "duel tune" on kazoos (Boo's solo was particularly moving). However, my own fight was not going so well. Indeed, Sarevok might have beaten me, had I not come up with an exceptional tactic at the end. "Look behind you!" I shouted.
"Hah!! HAH HAH!!!" he laughed, "Do you think that I would really fall for that tric-URRRRRKKK!" At just that moment, my faithful companion Coran dug his dagger deep into Sarevok's throat from behind.
"You really should have turned around," I said, simply. But Sarevok was not finished yet. He had one more piece of information to tell me. "Ouch!" he said. Then, he died.
And thus did I save the fair city of Baldur's Gate from the horrible plans of a crazy pro-wrestling Bhaalspawn. My adventures would have ended there, but for the fact that my noble tale was a best-seller, and it therefore meritted a sequel. But that is a story for Volumes II through XXIV.
-End
My Life Thus Far
Volume One of The Bhaalspawn Chronicles
by Sir Quirkius of Candlekeep
My life has always been one filled with problems and conflicts. I suppose you could say that I was a problematic child. Being the spawn of Bhaal, Dark Lord of Murder, Violent Death and IRS Audit Team Members would tend to do that to a young boy.
I was raised by the sage, Gorion, who obtained me through my mortal mother, the elf Maya. How did a mighty wizard and adventurer like him have time to raise a child? Well, he didn't, really, but attempts at giving me to another family always failed. They went something like this...
---------
GORION: He's a sweet elven kid, really. His mother was a great woman.
PROSPECTIVE PARENTS: That's nice... what about his father?
GORION: Oh, funny thing 'bout that... yes... well... you see, he's the son of Bhaal.
PROSPECTIVE PARENTS: You're kidding.
GORION: Nope.
PROSPECTIVE PARENTS: *scream and run away*
---------
They figured, and I suppose they could be right, that being a descendant of one of the most evil gods to ever hold influence on Faerun would make you an unusual child.
As would spending your entire life in a library... I mean, what normal young, hearty lad would spend two whole decades in a library that didn't even have a good "Mature Readers Only" section? Damn monks at Candlekeep didn't even subscribe to Playboy. I blame my bizarre and frightening nature on that.
And thus were my teenage years very different from the average boy's. I flew into fits of rage at the slightest provocation, did everything in my power to make the lives of the monks similar to what Hell must be like, and I made a general mess of my quarters within the library. Most teenagers fly into fits of rage at the slightest provocation, do everything in their power to make their parents' lives similar to what Hell must be like, and make general mess of their rooms within their parents' homes. The differences are obvious.
At about the age of 20, Gorion finally came up with a plan to get rid of me. You see, he had great debts towards a pro-wrestler named Sarevok "The Slayer" Simmons. He took me out one night into the forests near Candlekeep. He met with Sarevok, who very much looked the part of pro-wrestler. He was gigantic, and dressed in a suit of armor that was designed specifically to make people soil themselves when they saw it. Gorion was negotiating to give ME to this monstrosity as payments for his debts. A problem arose when "The Slayer" also wanted some choice pieces of Gorion's bedroom furniture. Gorion refused, so "the Slayer" killed him. I fled the scene, of course.
That left me without a home, without an escort, and without much anything else, either. Some of Gorion's last instructions to me had been to find Khalid and Jaheira at the Friendly Arm Inn in the event that I got lost. I found them, all right, but it turned out that Gorion's instructions had been a practical joke, because Khalid was as useful in a fight as a butterfly, and Jaheira's personality was repulsive to anyone but a masochist. Out of respect for Gorion, I took them along just long enough to hear them mention something about going to Nashkell. Then, I gave Jaheira a special present of a fine belt of masculinity, and sent him and his husband Khalid off to negotiate peace with some ankhegs. For some strange reason, I never saw them again.
I headed down towards this Nashkell, mainly on account of some of the stories I'd heard about Nashkell's fabulous topless bar. Turns out those stories were lies... hmph. If I ever meet that fellow who told me THAT one...
*ahem*, I forget myself.
Despite the disappointment at the bar, there WAS something to be done in Nashkell. There were apparently problems in the mines. So, I collected a band of the heartiest heros to be found on the Sword Coast, and armed myself with the finest in weaponry, collected a great deal of scrolls of magicks and studied them over, and charged into the mines. We penetrated deep into the heart of these gold mines before one of the guards kindly told us that we had made a mistake. It was the IRON mines that were having problems, and the gold mines were perfectly all right, thank you very much, and furthermore, if we didn't get the hell out of his gold mines, he'd be feeding us our longswords in short order. We thanked this helpful fellow, had a hearty laugh about the mix up, and ran out of those mines like squirrels scattering from one of my frequently mis-targeted fireball spells.
We finally made our way to the iron mines. Their, we overcame many obstacles, such as finally removing that pebble from my shoe that had caused me great foot irritation since my flight from Candlekeep. There was much rejoicing after THAT incident, I can assure you. Oh, and we also found Mulahey, the leader of the band that had being screwing with the iron supply, and slew him in an epic, stirring battle that lasted all of five seconds because right after I shouted my challenge to him, he tripped over his over-sized boots and broke his neck.
Rejoiceful after our difficult ordeal in the mines, we looted him and brought proof of our deed to Nashkel. Collecting our reward, we were discouraged to find that we had erred, and the real leader of the operatino was a wizard named Tranzig. We nonetheless charged to the location where Tranzig was staying, and slew him in another noble battle. NOW we were relieved. At least, we were until we read another notice that said that the REAL leader of the operation was a man named Tazok who operated a bandit encampment to the north. Collecting our spirits, we ONCE AGAIN nobly charged to meet this Tazok, only to hold this conversation with his secretary...
****
US: Excuse me, can we speak with Tazok?
SECRETARY: I'm sorry, Tazok is busy right now, do you have an appointment?
US: Well, no, we just kinda nobly charged through your bandit camp, killing as we went, and we kinda forgot to request an appointment. It's really important that we speak with him, though.
SECRETARY: Let me see what I can do. Number of visitors and purpose of visit?
US: Six, and we are here to nobly whoop his villainous ass because we're heros and he's committed so many criminal actions.
SECRETARY: All right, just sit right there and wai- URRRRRKKK! (at that moment, I'd had enough, so I stuck my new longsword+2 into her throat.)
****
Tazok wasn't in, but we learned from one of his prisoners that AGAIN we had the wrong guy, and the real leader of the operation, seriously, no kidding this time, was named Daeveron and he was operating a mine in the Cloakwood. So, being the noble people who liked to charge that we were, we nobly charged into the Cloakwood and slew the wizard Daeveron, who liked to glow purple and talked like he thought he had just stepped out of a cheap early vampire movie. Searching his corpse we found a letter from the mighty Council of Gods, BlackIsle, saying "Well, yeah, we were messing with your head again, but this time, we're serious. It's the Iron Throne that is the real group of bad guys here. Trust us!"
After yet another hearty laugh, we joined together and killed the Black Isle plot developer, and then we laughed heartily some more. (what can we say? we like hearty laughs.) However, we could not undo what the plot developer had already written down, so we nobly charged just one more time into the city of Baldur's Gate, and marched into the Iron Throne complex. We were kicking ass and taking names (among those taken were "James", "Gregory", "John Wayne", and "Noober") until we got up to the top level and found out that we were wrong, and the REAL leader of this operation was... wait, no, my mistake. We WERE right that the Iron Throne, but they weren't in right now. In a touch of Irony, they had just taken a vacation and were at Candlekeep, the very spot where my story began! Don't you think that's clever, dear readers? No, neither do we.
We charged into Candlekeep, and nobly slaughtered the Iron Throne leaders. The problem was that we had made a mistake... those weren't Iron Throne leaders, they were the guys who were supposed to chant prophecies all day long... but we cleverly covered that up... we told people they were really dopplegangers in disguise! Ha ha! Was not that a clever lie? And the BlackIsle people bought it, so that they actually wrote it into the game that Candlekeep had been taken over by Dopplegangers!
Then, we found the REAL Iron Throne leaders, and nobly slaughtered them, too. No sooner had we taken all of their blood-stained gear, though, than the leaders of the library charged us with murder and locked us up, with plans to execute us. Some weird old fogey in red actually believed us when we claimed to be innocent, though, so he let us out. It was then that he mentioned that we had been mistaken one more time, and that the real villain was some fellow by the name of Sarevok "the Slayer" Simmons.
Oh, the delicious irony! It became even more delicious when we added some salt, and a touch of oregano.... *ahem*, I've gotten off the subject again.
We had just enough energy for one more noble charge into Baldur's Gate. We confronted Sarevok in his underground lair, where he told us a secret of incredibly frightening consequence: "Wait! You forgot to do the expansion pack adventures," he said.
And so we had another hearty laugh, swearing to massacre all of BlackIsle, and ran out and did some pleasant little quests, making the world safe for mankind by killing a bunch of stuff, and then we nobly charged BACK to Baldur's Gate, met up with Sarevok, and confronted him.
He had still more surprises in store for us. "QUIRKIUS!" he shouted, "I AM YOUR FATHER!"
We had another hearty laugh, and I said, "That's a good one, Sarevok. I know my father is actually an evil god of murder, not you."
"Damn", he cried, "who told you?"
"Nobody, I read it on a scroll in Candlekeep."
"I see," he said. "Well, ok, I'm not your father, I'm really your half brother!"
"NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"
"YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"
"NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"
"YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"
"NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"
"YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"
"Ok, maybe you're right. But why have you done all of this stuff to screw up the Sword Coast? Are you planning to cause enough deaths to revive Bhaal and take his place as a new god of violent death?"
Sarevok laughed. He didn't laugh heartily, however, because he was a villain and only heros can laugh heartily. "Actually, I was just getting back at all the kids who told me I'd never amount to anything in middle school. But your idea actually is a pretty good one."
"Yeah, I thought it was," I said. "Shall we get to our epic battle to the death, then?"
"Yes, lets."
And so we fought. We fought for ever and a day. As my trusty long sword +2 clashed against his wicked looking two handed sword, I thought I saw sparks dazzle up and down the blades... then again, it might have been because I was roaring drunk at the time. While we fought, most of my companions eliminated his henchmen successfully, while Minsc and Dynaheir played a dramatic "duel tune" on kazoos (Boo's solo was particularly moving). However, my own fight was not going so well. Indeed, Sarevok might have beaten me, had I not come up with an exceptional tactic at the end. "Look behind you!" I shouted.
"Hah!! HAH HAH!!!" he laughed, "Do you think that I would really fall for that tric-URRRRRKKK!" At just that moment, my faithful companion Coran dug his dagger deep into Sarevok's throat from behind.
"You really should have turned around," I said, simply. But Sarevok was not finished yet. He had one more piece of information to tell me. "Ouch!" he said. Then, he died.
And thus did I save the fair city of Baldur's Gate from the horrible plans of a crazy pro-wrestling Bhaalspawn. My adventures would have ended there, but for the fact that my noble tale was a best-seller, and it therefore meritted a sequel. But that is a story for Volumes II through XXIV.
-End