Wings - Aerie expansion for BG2:EE

[Coutelier]

Wings for BG2:EE

 

This is the mod I've spent the most time one... although I've taken a few quite long breaks from it since I started.

 

As of now, this is an expansion for Aerie in BG2 that adds new banters with most the other NPC's (mostly Imoen), a friendship path with the PC, and a special that may result in Aerie acquiring her own familiar (and getting a little HP bonus like the PC does).

 

Also, when I went through Aerie's banter file for the game I found three banters (with Minsc, Jan and Yoshimo) that weren't implemented in the game as they didn't have any trigger conditions. So I restored those (I don't know if any other mods restore them too, so it's an optional component).

 

Most the banters with other NPC's are on their first draft, and the friendship is on it's second. For the friendship I mostly just followed the pattern in her romance, taking out the mushy stuff and changing the emphasis from her being depressed about her wings to her talking more about her life and her growth as a hero/explorer and adventurer.

 

Still to come:

 

I obviously want to do something with Minsc and Aerie, since she is his witch after all. Might be that other Rashemi don't recognise her as such, but Minsc does and that is what matters. So yes, I'm writing a little mini-quest for them both, with pretty much the theme I just mentioned (Aerie, not wanting to disappoint Minsc, excepting a challenge to prove herself).

 

But the main part of this mod when it's done though, will be a new personal quest for Aerie. This will involve her encountering again some of the slavers who originally captured then took her away and broke her before selling her on to the circus. It will be a good chance, I think, to actually see her developing into the more bad-ass version she is in ToB instead of that just happenly silently in the background all the time.

 

A couple of early encounteirs in her main quest were included in earlier versions of the mod, but I've taken them out for now until it's a little further along (and I may change them a bit). I have lots and lots of ideas but obviously I'm trying to be conscious of not making it so extensive that it overshadows every other quest in the game. I think it's essentially going to be a four 'act' affair in SoA, although then I'll likely follow it up with something in ToB as well.

 

On the official forum linked to above, there are a lot of posts in that thread... but it's mainly just random thoughts and ideas I've had, most of which I've since altered, or changed my mind about, or dropped altogether.

[Coutelier]

Here are some screenshots of the mod so far (I recently updated it correcting a script and a few errors in the text, although I'm sure there are many I've missed. Some of these screenshots were taken in the early stages of this mod, so the text may have since been revised, changed or corrected:

 

There are a few new characters hanging around the circus:

 

 

 

 

Aerie finds a familiar:

 

 

A 'restored' missing banter with Minsc:

 

 

New banters and interactions with NPC's, in this case Neera:

 

 

[Tash]

Halt, I recognize you, Coutelier!

 

You're the one who sent my NPC coterie on a summer vacation to some remote beach. They lost all of their stat upgrades ^^.

 

No, but really, those were some cool pictures and dialogs a few years back on some random forum. I see you've taken everybody's suggestion to write an NPC mod. Spiffy!

 

I can already glimpse just a bit of that dialog wittiness. More, please .

[Coutelier]

Halt, I recognize you, Coutelier!

 

You're the one who sent my NPC coterie on a summer vacation to some remote beach. They lost all of their stat upgrades ^^.

 

No, but really, those were some cool pictures and dialogs a few years back on some random forum. I see you've taken everybody's suggestion to write an NPC mod. Spiffy!

 

I can already glimpse just a bit of that dialog wittiness. More, please .

 

I hope you don't mean those things I wrote when I was drunk... think I was anyway. I can't remember what I was doing.

 

I'm trying to be a little less silly, for the most part. Obviously there will be some humorous events and encounters. Aerie herself though isn't really a funny character... I mean, she can be, but mostly she just plays the straight man to other sillier characters like Neera, Imoen or Minsc. She has a very good relationship and dynamic with all of those, I think.

[Coutelier]

I've corrected/changed a few small things lately, like making it so The Spectrum Knights only appear outside the circus during the day:

 

[BigRob]

A nice looking mod. Aerie's a character who lot a lot of growth in the main game, and she can be mischievous given the right partners, like Imoen, and she did lack an NPC quest from what I recall, so seeing her get that kind of additional expansion can be good. And nice to see some EE expansion going on too, I should look into playing that at some point.

[Grand_Dracolich]

Just want to say, really looking forward to this! I saw some of the content in the other thread, and it looks great! There was a lot of half-finished ideas in that character, originally. She had a lot of potential, but didn't seem completely finished.

[Coutelier]

Sorry I'm procrastinating so much over this. But I've actually been writing quite a bit of my own original fiction as well, although I would still like to get this finished. Some of the original ideas I had were possibly a bit too ambitious... and the ideas after that. I mean don't want to give her personal quest that's too large and takes over the game. But I've so had so many ideas that it was impossible to compress it all down. So I know I'm just going to have to cut out a lot and strip it down to the most basic elements.

 

I ruled out the idea of actually restoring her wings early, as I don't know how to make that work mechanically, and also it would mean rewriting quite a bit of her existing dialogue which I don't want to do.

 

Basically, as for as I've got with her personal quest is this:

 

Aerie is approached by an odd stranger who tells her and the party that slavers have returned to the slums (oh yes, her quest will only start if you help the slaves there). If you go back to check it out, you encounter a group of slavers led by an elven archer named Amra, whose face Aerie recognises. After Amra sets her lackeys on you and rushes off, Aerie later explains that Amra was part of the raiding party that originally captured. Before she was sold to the circus, she was taken to a fortress, the location of which she doesn't remember as she was prevented from being able to see outside during all her transportation. While the slavers arranged her auction, she spent quite a bit of time with a man called Praxis, who was in charge of 'processing' new slaves. As in breaking them.

 

The rest of the quest has obviously got to be about finding and confronting Praxis, but I haven't settled on all of the steps yet.

 

So I've got to do that, and I've got to redo some of her friendship talks. I mean I haven't read them myself for a while, but they were written originally in a bit of hurry. But I'd like to get as much feedback suggestions and ideas as possible.

[Coutelier]

I'll post this on other forums a well, but unfortunately I don't know if I'll ever get to finish this mod. I'm busy on so much other stuff and working on my own original fiction as well, which is making so much happier than I've ever felt in years so I don't know that'll I'll ever have time to get back to this (and to be honest, I've almost completely forgotten everything about writing mods for this game, and never did figure out how to script fights anyway...)

 

As it is, this mod adds quite a bit of dialogue for Aerie, as well as her familiar, so it just means I won't get to make up any major quest for her along the lines of Neera's etc in BG2:EE.

 

But, if you would like to contact me to ask any questions or whatnot, it's best either to contact me via Tumblr, as I just happen to be on there more often than any other site, or you can if you want cut out middle men entirely and just e-mail me: jc@coutelier.org.uk