As I wrote in my last response to Aderyn in the comments, I’ve now finished with the structural changes I had to make to Chapter 1 to accommodate the two new races: the Hellmen and the Earthen. It turned out to be a huge amount of work, and quite a bit more than I expected. All the new encounters, creature blueprints and items are done, and for the most part tweaked and tested. Among other things, the “Delay Quest” battle near the end looks and plays very differently now as a result. Not surprisingly my initial tests for it started out as completely un-survivable for the party against the newly designed Hellmen and their allies, even with the help of the Guardians (a couple of which, to my surprise, actually took some damage in the fight). I’ve since re-balanced the battle, and aside for a few tweaks to support the area rework (see below!) , I think it’s pretty much done. One additional tidbit I’ll share: General Y’thra can now be either a male or female character, and will be set to the opposite of Robin’s gender. That’s to make it so that I can emphasize the threat of making Robin his/her personal slave consistently for all of the player’s RP choices.

I’ve also just merged all of the Sanctum-specific custom content into a single hak in preparation for one final “2DA merge” with the new CEP 2.4 and Project Q 1.5 content. That’ll be my last major task. I’ve also been re-writing the lore to be consistent with the new races and other new story elements, such as the introduction of and emphasis on the Church of the Divine — and of Orion’s order within it, The Order of Light. I’ve also been adding new lore as well; for example, The Legend of the Defender is already in as a new book. I’m also including some new conversation and role-playing elements that I think will add some new interest and color to the story. Aside from needing a few minor tweaks the new treasure system is also done and seems to be working quite well.

The biggest task I’ve been working on recently is that I’ve finally decided to fix the “beginner’s design problem” Chapter 1 has always had with the size of the areas in the Ancient Ruins. The Upper and Lower ruins levels have now been cut up into three separate areas each, with transitions linking them, and each (except for one) with their own portal rooms. That required a certain amount of re-resign in their layout, moving some rooms and encounters and introducing a few more into the resulting extra space.

The update for Sanctum 2 will be easier in some respects, and harder in others. The easier part is that many of the changes needed in chapter 1 either don’t apply to chapter 2 (like the treasure system), or (like the Earthen) are already done now. The real (but fun!) challenge in chapter 2 will be re-building the flying areas to use the new “Sanctum Flying Skyscape” tileset.

All in all, the v4 rework is going well and proceeding quickly now. Hopefully I’ll be ready to invite playtesters to try out the new version of Sanctum 1 within the next month.

Merry Christmas from The Sanctum!

And thanks to TarotRedhand for his NWN Map Mats Ice Sculpture Christmas Card Kit!

Main Quest Profile – Ally With Rayche

The party will land on the roof of Castle Highpeak. The Pegasi will tell them that they will be on call to fly to nearby areas should they be needed, and then leave. If Robin is in the party, she’ll don a disguise to keep her from being recognized by any of the Raychian nobility. When they try to enter the castle, they will be confronted by a squad of guards and brought to the Castellan…

From the Castellan they’ll learn that Chancellor Rhys has just been assassinated and the Royal Treasury looted, and that the city and castle are in chaos. The King has retreated to his apartments under heavy guard, with strict orders that no one except his most trusted and loyal advisors be allowed in to see him. The Castellan is loath to make an exception to his orders until or unless the party can win his trust…

The party will need to fulfill a certain number of “points” worth of quests to build up their reputation with the King’s advisers in order to gain an audience with him. The King and his Court are also influenced by public opinion, so developing a positive reputation among the people will help to win their support as well.

Character Profile: Captain Flynn

Captain Flynn is a young officer who is also Marshal Briggs’ most trusted assistant. He’s charming and a bit of a rogue, romantically speaking, and will flirt mercilessly with a player that shows an interest in him… As a henchman, he’s a fighter with excellent combat skills. He’s charged by the Marshal to help them with the Defeat the Demon Force and Destroy the Demon Base quests… He’s also a skilled dancer, and if the player enters the Dancing Competition in the Grand Tourney she can choose him as her partner.

Quest Profile: The Shield of the Defender

High Priestess Aleanne is worried about the peoples’ morale in face of the demon threat and the crushing taxes that have had to be imposed to make up for the looting of the treasury. She is convinced that they need a symbol of divine favor to inspire them, and proposes that the PC undertake a dangerous quest to recover a holy artifact: The Shield of the Defender, once wielded by the great hero Calindra. The shield is a symbol of the archetype of The Defender from the statue gallery in the Ancient Ruins from Chapter 1.

The Legend of the Defender is an ancient story, now thought by many to be more myth than history. But Aleanne believes in it, and the tale of Calindra is a personal favorite of hers that has always filled her with inspiration. She has faith that the shield can be found again, but doesn’t know where to look for it. She recommends that the party start their search by visiting the library in Highpeak Castle and consulting the definitive book on subject, aptly titled The Legend of the Defender…

Character Profile: Prometheus The Giant Slayer

Prometheus Antonos, also known as “Prometheus the Giant-Slayer,” is a member of the renowned adventuring group, The Heroes of Glorn. He was sent by the Magistrate of Glorn as an emissary from the Free City-States of Landis to coordinate the hasty marshalling of the Landissian and Raychian armies at the mouth of Stonegate pass. He can be found in the King’s Throne room and the player can talk to him about his adventures, and the lands of Landis and Glorn. He adventured with Nimrod and will recognize it if the player is wearing Nimrod’s Ring.

Prometheus is a large and powerfully muscled fighter who wields a huge battle hammer named “Iron Thunder.” He also has bright green hair, the result of opening a cursed door in a dungeon on one of his adventures. He affects a pronounced “tough guy” manner, but has a keen intellect and a highly developed sense of honor. Prometheus can join the party during the endgame sequence (for the “Find the Traitor” quest), and as henchman he’s a ranger with giants and demons as his racial enemies.

Copyright Notice. Copyright 2011, all rights reserved.

Another thing I’ve finally gotten around to doing is merging my two websites. I’ve wanted to do this for the last year, and it became a necessity now that the free hosting package from my cable company (which was providing the original domain) was going away with the move. I’m pleased to announce that the (newer) andarian.com and the (older) andarian.net domains are now merged into a fully integrated site. That includes both the New and Legacy Sanctum Blogs, the urls for each of which now point to a single Blog with (as you can see by looking at the archives list to the right) all posts going back to March 2007. My old andarian.net website is still archived (for “historical” purposes). Here are the links:

• http://andarian.net – The Old Sanctum of the Archmage Writing Projects Site
• http://sanctum.andarian.net – The New Merged Sanctum Blog and Writing Projects Site, Including Legacy Posts
• http://andarian.com/TheSanctum – Another URL for the Merged Sanctum Blog and Writing Projects Site

One thing that I have been working on, though, is a final remake to the first two chapters to implement a lot of the design changes I’ve made to the series for Chapter 3. I mentioned this in a recent blog post, and the changes are actually quite major. Part of my motive in doing the update was that I wanted to get some of the good work I’ve done for the third chapter out there. Some of it is custom content related, such as integrating Project Q and CEP 3.4, using the fabulous Sanctum Flying Skyscape tileset that Estelindis built for me to remake the flying areas at the end of Sanctum 2, revamping the score with some of the new tracks from the expanded Sanctum 3 soundtrack, and so on. The technical base of haks used by the v4 update will be the same one used by Sanctum 3 when it’s released, which will make integrating the third chapter with the first two a much easier task.

Some of the changes, though, are to start removing some of the unnecessary D&D references included in the modules. I originally did a lot of that for convenience, and to help make the setting feel a little less unfamiliar to NWN players. When I first built the modules my ability to do things like create new races and appearances was limited, and using player-familiar ones from the toolset was much easier. Most of these elements really don’t fit well with the non-D&D story world of the Sanctum novels that I’m working on, though, and on which the modules are based. Some examples of this are the Drow and the Deep Gnomes, which don’t even exist in them at all.

I’m reworking a lot of that now, and including a lot more of the lore from the original world of the novels — including things like history, religion, custom races, and the like. (For a spoiler hint about what will replace the Drow, and the new face of General Y’Thra, see here and here.) I expect to have the v4 update out before the end of this year, and be back on track building Sanctum 3 for release sometime next year.

Sanctum v3.4b Patch Update

This patch adds a cutscene that I’ve always wanted to include in the climactic confrontation from Sanctum 1. Players will probably get the idea from the title, but here’s a video clip for anyone interested:

Proceed to Battle!

This is just an “intermediate version” of one of the major changes going into the V4 update, but I thought I’d make it available now. The final version will actually replace the Drow with one of the custom races from the Sanctum novels. But more on that later…

• Updating all the modules for Project Q compatibility, and to use new content from it
• Adding a number of new tracks from Sanctum 3′s expanded musical score
• Rebuilding the flying areas in Sanctum 2 using Estelindis’ fabulous Sanctum Flying Skyscape Tileset
• Updating the first two chapters to use much more of, and be much more consistent with, the original lore from the Sanctum novels (including some new custom races)
• Creating many more custom items, and a “randomization” system for them that will mix up which items are found, when, and where

and many more things besides.

Nature Abhors a Vacuum — The Aielund Saga, Book One by Stephen Nowland

(For more information, see The Aielund Saga Website.)

• There was a problem in recent releases with Len and Robin frequently not engaging in combat in the North Forest in Sanctum 1. That’s now resolved, and Len is back to his old spellcasting self.

• The Pegasi in Sanctum 2 were gaining an extra pair of wings when played with CEP 2.4 installed, due to a bug with the new models introduced in CEP 2.4. I added the correct models to the patch hak to fix that.

The updated patch hak is available on the module download pages for Sanctum 1 and Sanctum 2.