The Gaming Den

So far this book's elves have been portrayed as weird and alien as opposed to actual tricksters. Also we have no reason to assume the signet ring is actually powerful in its own right.

So return it to him as we don't want to offend an elf.

Signet rings are for sealing letters. Unless we intend to usurp his court via the mail, there's no reason to keep it.

The Elf King raises his open hand in front of your face, palm upwards. It looks empty, but when he blows across it a flurry of fine ochre pollen flies into your eyes. Stumbling back, you wipe the pollen out of your eyes. It stings, causing tears to run down your face, and by the time your vision clears the elves have melted away into the forest depths. You are alone in the clearing.

The moral of the story isn't "nature is good and we should do anything we can to preserve it" but rather "elves are assholes and you can't trust them as far as you can throw them."

You trudge on, singling out and mentally marking individual trees as far away as you can see with the object of keeping them in sight so you don’t walk in circles. Each time you reach your target tree you look back and try to identify the one you left behind so that you can choose another tree to make for in the same general direction. It is tiring work, and it exhausts you in body and mind.
As you walk on you eventually see gaunt grey crags jutting up out of the forest. It is a relief to find clear landmarks at last. The forest is broken here, as only grass can grow on where the soil is thin above the grey rock.
You walk out of the gloom into bright sunlight that hurts your eyes. There are countless paths leading back into the forest in all directions. As you stand contemplating which way to choose, a voice above and behind you says, ‘Lost, are you?’
You turn round and look up. All you can see is a silver-feathered owl perched on top of an outcrop.
‘Lost, are you?’ the voice says again. It sounded as if the voice came from the owl but its beak didn’t move.

(We have the emerald ring and the codeword Crabclaw.)

'It seems you will do little to save the forest by exploring its many paths,' says the owl. 'Where would you like to be taken?' (We have neither the codeword Bullhorn nor Waterbearer). You follow the owl's directions to the camp of the Westermen.

Climbing a rise you look out over a scene of utter devastation. The trees have been chopped down as far as the eye can see. An infernal engine of some kind belches black smoke and two hundred yards away you see a forge with a gigantic cauldron over a bonfire which six men feed constantly with ready-cut wood and charcoal. The men working here are very pale skinned, their faces long and thin, like hatchets. They shout to each other over the din of the engine in a language you don't understand.
Teams of horses yoked together pull logs to where groups of men cut them up with saws, ready for burning. A row of children sit nearby; they are darker skinned than the men and have been set to toil over sharpening the saws.
Where the trees have been felled and stripped men are scorching the underbrush to kill everything that lives in the forest. A pall of smoke hangs over everything like a storm-cloud.
The men haven't noticed you yet. There is a group of armed guards near the forge who sport more steel armour than you have ever seen. These men must be wealthy. They also look bored and edgy.
Will you show yourself and talk to them? Or will you sink back into the forest and hide?

Talk to them, maybe they'll help us kill the elves.

Damn

I don't think this book can be won if we don't win the elves' help.

But then again, I also recall this book being so terribly buggy that there are many ways to loop back to an earlier section we've already visited before without any reasonable explanation, so I guess our only chance is to exploit those.

Hide first, this was a spying/assassination mission, isn't it? Let's not be seen too early.

Wasn't this a scene from the crystal ball pool of scrying? Except we had a battalion of elves peppering the men with arrows. We are distinctly support-elfless, so let's not fuck with fate.

Hide and hope our backup arrives.

Rewind and keep the signet ring.

SGamerz wrote:

I don't think this book can be won if we don't win the elves' help.

But then again, I also recall this book being so terribly buggy that there are many ways to loop back to an earlier section we've already visited before without any reasonable explanation, so I guess our only chance is to exploit those.

It is in fact possible to loop back to the elves. If we make it to that point (which we can in this playthrough) I'll just assume we keep the signet ring this time around.

2 votes for hiding gets it.
Watching from the edge of the trees you see a man who bears an uncanny resemblance to the girl in the inn at Burg. He must her father.
Do you wish to free him from the clutches of the Westermen or are you content to abandon him to their tender mercies?

Fortune favors the bold. Go save Old Man Organa.

Sure, since we're hoping for a bug reset instead of just loading a save state immediately, be bold.

The innkeeper is chained in a line of five slaves who have been set to repair a broken cartwheel. Four of them lift the cart while another tries to tie a joint together. The guard comes over the group and starts kicking them to give himself the feeling he is doing his job well. The innkeeper groans and begs for mercy as the guard's boot thumps into his stomach. He groans again.
Will you kill the guard? Or bide your time?

The correct answer is a jackboot stepping on a human face forever, but that's not an option, so just start stabbing people until the situation improves.

Oddly topical. Kill him.

Also, I hope we can rescue more than just the person related to someone we know.

The guard has chosen a place, where he is not observed by any of his fellows, to brutalize the slaves, so there will be no one to save him when you attack. Immersed as he is in his sadistic pleasures it is easy enough to walk up behind him and kill him before he even knows you are there, just as he was about to kick the innkeeper hard in the chest.
Taking the key from its chain around the dead guard's neck you free the slaves, including the innkeeper, and tell them to hide out in the forest. You tell the innkeeper of your visit to the inn at Burg and find out it is indeed his hostelry. He asks anxiously after his daughter and you are able to say she is tolerably well. 'She will be all the happier when you return to her, no doubt.'
'Will you come back with me to Burg? I will shower you with hospitality, a banquet fit for a prince...'
Will you escort the innkeeper safely back to the inn or tell him you must stay in the forest and foil the Westermen?

Stay and finish the main quest.

Weird that he thinks he needs to have no witnesses to brutalise the slaves.

I want to say escort him back to the inn, but the reason I want to say that is that I think it might let us loop back to the forest.

I'm with staying and foiling.

2-1 in favor of staying with our mission.

You have moved to the edge of the trees now and look out over the grisly devastation. The innkeeper tells you his name is Pozzo and also reveals what he knows about the Westermen. Their leader has a scarlet and black pavilion tent beyond the forges where he plans how to despoil the forest. Pozzo offers to take you there.
Will you be guided by the innkeeper or return to the safety of the deep forest?

Snooping on their plans might reveal a good way to attack. Go for it.

Follow guy we rescued.

Snoopy time.

Pozzo takes you through the trees until you come to a large clearing. Noticing a steady stream of messengers riding post-haste to a point beyond the furnaces, you skirt round through the forest until, peering out between the branches of a Servis tree, you see a magnificent silk pavilion large enough to seat a hundred knights at a banquet. There are guards at each corner of the pavilion and two guards with halberds flank the silk porch which leads into the main tent. They are all dressed in rare steel armor and all have the sly look of the Westermen about them. It is a hundred paces across burned ground from the Servis tree to the tent.
If you have SPELLS and a wand, you can cast Vanish and sneak unseen into the pavilion or you can cast Friendship to charm your way past the guards and into their chief's confidence. Otherwise, you can sneak up to the tent as a spy.

Friendship, on the basis that we are better equipped to handle social difficulties of explaining ourselves with the guards actively on our side than physical difficulties of preventing the invisibility from breaking (have CUNNING and not AGILITY).

Friendship strikes me as the kind of spell that work differently on different people...as in, different people will have different idea of who they see as their friend. It should be something that needs to be cast on each person we meet rather than just once on ourselves. Given how many different people we're likely to see, it doesn't sound ideal. Or even if it can work by being cast just once on ourselves, there's the danger that the Westerman may individually perceive us as a different person, which may be a giveaway if they communicate with each other. Not to mention the chief may be the kind of person who can still happily slit his friend's throat.

Vanish sounds more straightforward.

Friendship means they'll voluntarily share the relevant information. Let's do that.