Version used for review: 6.1.
“The Cost gives the player a chance to continue Skie’s plot that began in Siege of Dragonspear. Note that Skie in this mod is supposed to continue the Siege of Dragonspear character, so she may be a tiny bit more mature, but still a bit reckless, and will not hesitate to tell you how she feels about people and events. The change in her character may be seen in both her dialogues and soundset.“
This mod is three things at once — a continuation of Siege of Dragonspear, an NPC mod for Skie, and an NPC mod for (uh, spoilers?) Eddard Silvershield, Skie’s supposedly dead brother. Unfortunately, it’s much better at being the latter parts than it is at the former.
Before one can have Skie or Eddard in their party, they must complete a quest. In the equipment room of Chateau Irenicus, you will find the Soultaker Dagger. It’s shattered, seemingly beyond repair, but you are given a choice between taking it with you or leaving the past behind.
Once you leave the dungeon, you can ask around about Soultaker to get it repaired. In the Adventurer’s Mart, you’ll ask Ribald about it, to which he’ll say he can’t help. Upon stepping outside, Brelm will approach you and give you a tip about a mage named Nem who could help.
Nem can indeed help, and she’s standing right near the Copper Coronet in the slums district. I feel like it’s a little too convenient. The Soultaker Dagger, perhaps inevitably, is reduced to a very small side quest that functions more as a recruitment mission for Skie than it does as an actual conclusion to Siege of Dragonspear’s story. All of the interesting and worthwhile callbacks to Siege happen while Skie is in the party.
The process to retrieve Skie’s soul from the broken dagger is a little contrived — you have to find someone to replace her, and there happen to be multiple people around the Slums whose lives suck so badly that they’d willingly do this for you. Finding a willing participant will allow you to enter a demi-plane held within the gemstone of the dagger.
After a few waves of enemies are defeated in this place, the quest is over and Skie wakes up back in Baldur’s Gate, though we don’t see her for a few more days.
This quest feels more like a means to an end than it does a proper conclusion to Siege of Dragonspear, with the end being Skie and Eddard as recruitable NPCs. This is what I meant when I said that the mod is much better at being one of the things it’s trying to be than the other.
There is a problem that anyone continuing this storyline will face, however, and that is the fact that such a major plot thread really doesn’t have a proper place in the story of Baldur’s Gate 2. It will wind up being a side quest no matter what, and as such there’s a possibility that it would always end up being overwhelming. I would love to have an official conclusion to Siege, but it’s undoubtedly a very tough thing to do. I do not fault this mod for how underwhelmed I was by this initial quest. I think that perhaps Beamdog went a little too far with adding new plot threads that lend themselves to underwhelming conclusions.
Thankfully, this part is over quickly. As I said, pretty much everything after this point is far more interesting and worthwhile. A few days after some soul-saving shenanigans, Skie will show up at the tavern you’re staying in and ask to join your group.
One major aspect of Skie that makes a return in this mod is the fact that she’s not a terribly likeable character — though your mileage may vary. Skie certainly grew on me over the course of the mod. She has grown and matured since the first game, but Skie being the spoiled daughter of a Duke is, alas, an unavoidable fact.
Unlike many other NPC mods, Skie does not have a terribly large amount of dialogue. She will interject and complain on occasion, and she does have a friendship track, but it advances fairly quickly — and then we are introduced to the mod’s second quest.
Remember Eddard Silvershield, the dead guy that Kagain was supposed to protect in the first game? Turns out… he’s been alive all along, and is currently in captivity of a slaver. Skie understandably wants to go and rescue him, but there’s never a moment where her emotions are that poignant beyond “I’m so mad that they took my brother.” Though this type of scenario is hard to write for, given how few people could fathom what it would be like to have lost your sibling for a year just to find out that they’re alive.
Skie doesn’t act out of character, but how she reacts to the information that her brother is alive reinforces the fact that she is a character. The sort of character that will always struggle to grow out of their one-dimensional boots.
All of that aside, Skie’s friendship with the player is well written in the sense that it’s completely on brand for her. She’ll meet up with you and start calling you her bestie, and eventually you’re given the option to relent and agree to your newly assigned friendship, and by the time that you do, you’ll probably be fairly fond of her.
Suddenly it’s all gossip and gifts and boys and all the other actual problems seem a little bit smaller now. It helps remind the player that their character is still mortal, deep down. This is a nice touch in Throne of Bhaal, because a few moments of lightheartedness with Skie makes everything else in the game seem just incredibly depressing, which is great for the tone.
Skie’s friendship path is backed musically by music from Siege of Dragonspear, and it feels pretty thematically appropriate for her. I enjoyed hearing it whenever I spoke to her, as Siege’s soundtrack is one of its best qualities, being composed by the great Sam Hulick.
After a few banters in Shadows of Amn, Skie will pretty much stop talking to you. Instead, she interjects quite a lot in Eddard’s conversations. It usually boils down to Eddard talking about some sort of memory from his childhood, and then Skie will butt in and say something rude about someone. It can be pretty funny at times, and sometimes a little annoying. But I guess that’s on brand for Skie.
So let’s talk about Eddard, now.
Eddard Silvershield was long thought to be dead — in fact, you could find his dead body laying on the ground in the first game, near Beregost. This mod retcons the identity of that body, letting you know that it was indeed a replacement to cover up the fact that Eddard was kidnapped. In fact, he was stolen away for ransom before the leader of the bandit group changed the plan, instead selling him into slavery.
For a year, Eddard grew used to living in cuffs. He slept on the cold, hard floor, and performed physical labour daily. The slavers wanted to keep him in pristine physical condition. By the time that you and Skie come along to rescue him from a life of servitude, he’s about to be sold to a new master. After the expected conversations between him and Skie, he joins your party.
Eddard is a highly educated, noble-born man almost 20 years of age. He’s flirty and playful, but also insecure and scarred from his experience in slavery. He doesn’t trust too easily but having Skie around certainly helps him open up to you about himself.
The brother-sister relationship that Skie and Eddard have is certainly believable, with him being the more mature, favoured child.
Eddard is good at outwardly portraying a confident persona. Realistically, however, he was sent on his first mission a year ago at the age of 18, and was then kidnapped and forced into slavery. Trauma does not build maturity, as some would have you believe, and it makes sense that on the inside, Eddard is still just a boy trying to prove himself.
He does that and more, in your company. Eddard grows from a frightened man riddled with insecurity to a brave and noble warrior who is full of life by the end of the game.
The writing for Eddard is probably the best content in this entire mod. I thoroughly appreciated his character from beginning to end, despite the somewhat stiff retconning of his death.
In order to romance Eddard, first you must complete his friendship path, and out of all the romances I’ve seen in this game, Eddard’s is probably one of the healthiest relationships the protagonist can have. He’s romanceable by male and female characters.
His playfulness is amped up a notch when you flirt back with him, and he’s more than okay with entering a relationship slowly, though he will tell you that he loves you at some point. He’s okay with it if you need more time to reciprocate the exact feeling, but he will want a monogamous relationship with you.
At the end of the day, Eddard wants what is best for you. You are both individuals with your own lives and he will accept it with grace if you ascend to godhood at the end of the game. I very much enjoyed the romance here and it stands out even among the vanilla romances. Seeing Skie’s reaction when she finds out you’re snogging her brother is also pretty funny.
Eddard is a custom kitted bard — a Caravan Intercessor.
The intercessor has a higher Hit Die than a regular bard, on par with that of a priest or monk, and may achieve High Mastery with all weapons, as well as maximum points in any weapon style. An intercessor will receive a total of only 12 pips by level 40, so choose carefully.
All hits against the intercessor have a 2% chance of casting remove fear. This never occurred in my playthrough nor was I ever in a scenario where I would need it to. It’s purely an ability for flavour.
Lay on Hands, Command, Resist Fire and Cold, Clairvoyance, and Defensive Harmony are all good spells to have, especially as an innate cast. At level 24 the intercessor will receive Chaotic Commands as an innate spell, which is fantastic. In my playthrough, Eddard got this at the end of the Underdark.
The intercessor has no pick pockets skill, can’t be evil, and only has 50% the lore of a vanilla bard. They also suffer -1 to their arcane caster level, which hurts, but gradually becomes less of a big deal, since bards can achieve a higher level than mages anyway. Unlike Blades, the intercessor doesn’t receive any warrior HLAs.
The Caravan Intercessor is an incredibly powerful class, perhaps surpassing the Blade as the most powerful Bard class. Dungeon & Dragons fans will literally never stop trying to reinvent the Figher/Mage. The Intercessor was patched to have only High Mastery rather than Grand Mastery, but I still feel it’s a little too powerful. It feels like it’s trying to make up for how average Skie is, as a single-class thief.
There are some very minor instances where descriptive parentheticals are used, and I didn’t encounter any spelling errors that I noticed. One thing I found was that sometimes dialogues would just drag on for a bit too long sometimes. Some scenes are quite long while not impacting story or characterisation at all, but overall I can’t complain too much. I was just born to be a hater — what can you do?
Another component of this mod is a storekeeper that will sell Siege of Dragonspear inspired items. These are not items FROM SoD, but are rather inspired by the events of that game. So, this mod is still compatible with other mods that add Siege items.
However, while I do really like most of the items and they don’t upset the balance of the game, there is one — Irenicus’s Hood — that is just too on the nose. I can’t imagine how that storekeep feels knowing that he somehow owns the former hood of the dude that destroyed the Promenade.
For those not interested, you can simply choose not to install that component of the mod. In fact, you can choose to skip Eddard in your installation, meaning that he remains dead and buried while Skie joins your party. Alternatively, you can even choose not to install Skie herself — leaving you with the initial quest and/or the vendor, though I would recommend at least checking out the rest of the content before you make that decision, and this is a mod that I recommend checking out if you wished, even a little bit, that Beamdog continued their Siege of Dragonspear plotlines.
Thanks for reading.
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