Hello everyone! I hope you had a nice holiday, if you celebrate! I was incredibly lazy. But we're back to see a bunch of monks and priests fight an evil curse!

I'm still sad about that poor dwarf druid though



Aw, this chapter starts at a sad point: Ivan wailing for his brother and cradling his head in his hands. Cadderly's not in much better shape. We're told that he's "never known the pain of a friend's death" before. His mother had died when he was too young to remember. The dead priests of Ilmater and the gluttons in the kitchen "were only faces to him, distant and unknown". I'm not sure that entirely makes sense with the way Library life is presented. We've got a fairly closed environment, it seems like he should know them all fairly well.

That said, it does seem reasonable that he'd been too focused on what they're trying to do to process the deaths of people he knew until now. And I like that Cadderly is a fairly sheltered kid when it comes down to it. And I like the realization here:

But looking at dear Pikel, he didn’t know how he should feel, didn’t know what he could do. It seemed a macabre game, and for the first time in his life, Cadderly understood that some things were beyond his power to control or change, that all his rationality, his intelligence, in the final estimation seemed a cold comfort.

I mean, there are resurrection spells in D&D. They never seem quite as readily available in stories as they do in games, understandably. But there are a lot of priests here. Maybe there is some hope?

I also find Cadderly pretty relatable as he sees Ivan being openly emotional and wonders if there's something wrong with him for not falling completely apart - if Ivan's love for Pikel is greater than Cadderly's own. I mean, they WERE brothers, so probably? But also we all express grief differently. And Cadderly realizes that if they don't keep going more people will die.

However when he suggests moving on, Ivan reacts "on the verge of an explosion". Cadderly is surprised at first, but thinks the curse may be at work too. Ivan's sorrow providing a chink in his magic resistance.

Cadderly's attempts to coax Ivan away fail, but he realizes that OTHER emotions might be able to overpower his grief. He reminds Ivan that Ivan can't do anything for Pikel other than avenger him and the killer is ahead. Not the imp, but the imp's master.

There's a funny bit to me where Cadderly acknowledges that "he's taking license in drawing such conclusions" but getting Ivan moving is worth it. Also, the imp wouldn't be there to poison Pikel if his master (who is releasing a curse that's killing people anyway) didn't summon him, so I feel like it's not really a lie.

So Cadderly successfully gets Ivan moving and they start backtracking with the intent to reorient so he can find the cursed bottle again.

Unfortunately, the problem with motivating Ivan through anger is that when they encounter some disoriented skeletons, Ivan's quick to dive in. It's pretty badass though. At one point, Cadderly gets basically pinned to the wall for Ivan's dramatic axe-save. Exciting!

Ivan is pretty heavily wounded though and he reacts very badly to attempts to dress his wounds. Eventually Cadderly gets through to him that he's fairly severely wounded, and he snatches Cadderly's own cloak and uses it to bind his wounds.

They do make it to the corridor and Cadderly ends up with an ethical dilemma. There's a single skeleton and Ivan's in no shape to fight:

He held his light beam in one hand and his loaded crossbow in the other, lining both up between the horns of the dwarf’s helmet at the skeletal face beyond. Cadderly had never intended his custom-designed crossbow to be used as a weapon, especially not while firing the exploding darts. He had designed the bow for opening locked doors, or blasting away troublesome tree branches that scraped against his window, or a variety of other nonviolent purposes. Also, he had to admit, he had designed the crossbow and the bolts in part for the simple challenge of designing them. But Cadderly had vowed to himself, as much an excuse as anything else, never to use the darts or the bow as a weapon, never to unleash the concentrated violence of the explosive missiles against a living target.

The arguments in this instance were many, of course. Ivan could ill afford another fight, even against a single skeleton, and the skeleton, after all, was not really a living creature.

Still, Cadderly’s guilt hovered over him as he took aim. He knew he was breaking the spirit of his vow.

I mean, didn't he go get a drow poison for it earlier? I feel like that's at least an indicator of an attempt to break this vow we hadn't heard of until now.

That said, I do rather like this beat as a character bit. Some vows really don't survive the real world. And after my frustration with seeing Catti-brie mow down a shit ton of gully dwarves only to whine about killing a human, I appreciate that Cadderly is having this angst about an animated skeleton. A life...of sorts...is still a life.

But it works, and it even startles Ivan out of his berserker rage enough to congratulate him and clap him on the back. Cadderly doesn't feel heroic.

But now we get to drama, because Cadderly leads them forward and eventually he reaches the end. Where the mummy is waiting.

And it's scary.

Again Cadderly tried to slow the dwarf’s charge, desiring a more cautious approach. He was just a couple of steps behind Ivan when the last sarcophagus swung open and a mummy stepped out to block the way. Too enraged to care, Ivan continued on undaunted, but Cadderly no longer followed. The young scholar was frozen with fear, stricken by the sheer evilness of the powerful undead presence. The skeletons had been terrifying, but they seemed only minor inconveniences next to that monster.

Ooo, fear aura is a bitch in Neverwinter Nights.

Anyway, Ivan charges. It doesn't go well and the mummy nearly kills Ivan, except he ends up crossing into the path of Cadderly's "light tube" which causes him to recoil. So somehow Cadderly manages to aim his light tube AND load his crossbow with his free hand. The mummy's scariness is an advantage here. He's so scary that it overpowers any of Cadderly's lingering crossbow angst. Nice.

So there's nice dramatic tension as Cadderly keeps shooting the advancing mummy with exploding bolts. One or two manage to go through without exploding, oops. But some do. It's a short term solution though, mummies have a lot of HP.

But Cadderly's got another trick up his sleeve. He lives at a temple/holy library after all. So guess what he has in his water skin? Holy water!

I don't remember him grabbing this in an earlier chapter, but even if he didn't, I can't complain. It's a temple after all. Between the pain of the water and the light source, the mummy ends up rampaging past them...hmm, I hope that doesn't backfire on Danica and Newander.

Anyway, Cadderly keeps Ivan from chasing the mummy by reminding him that Pikel's killer is straight ahead. Cadderly uses his crossbow for its intended purpose and weakens the doorjam enough so Ivan can barrel through.

The chapter ends here.

I have to admit, I didn't really expect the heavier moments, but Salvatore does a pretty good job with it. Cadderly's inexperience means that we get to tackle his emotions over death and battle straight on and it's well done without being to obstructive to the action. Nice!