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Chokes did mention that. Remember the MFing snake in the MFing cave?
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# ? Jun 11, 2024 03:15 |
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Centaurs and thri-kreen both appear later in the series, although the former not often.
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If you say so, but I don’t recall seeing either of them in the series outside this game. EDIT- I think there may be thri-kreen in Azure Bonds also, but I’d have to play the game again to remember how they fit in. If so, my bad for the mistake. Centaurs & Quicklings though are never seen after this game, I’m pretty sure. achtungnight fucked around with this message at 16:55 on Apr 11, 2020 |
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That's unfortunate because Quicklings were worth a ton of experience relative to how not at all dangerous (annoying yes, dangerous no) they were.
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Zurai posted:That's unfortunate because Quicklings were worth a ton of experience relative to how not at all dangerous (annoying yes, dangerous no) they were. On the C-64 they were THE most annoying fight in the game though. Remember how people were saying earlier in the thread that sometimes the monster AI would walk back and forth until they used up all their movement points if they couldn't path to the player? Quicklings would do this a lot, and they had 96 movement points each, and were encountered in huge packs in the wilderness. You would take your turn and do something else for 30 minutes, then return to the C-64 to see yet another Quickling was still walking back and forth with 50-something movement points left.
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Chokes McGee posted:https://youtu.be/mSB71jNq-yQ https://twitter.com/i/status/1117286347964858370
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Well of course he isn't real. That cicada is obviously yelling "Oh poo poo. Oh poo poo." That's the cicada that warns you constantly that poo poo is getting bad.
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Narsham posted:Fighters get pretty much all the main tools they had in a regular 1e game in this Gold Box series, while the spellcasters get a pretty restricted subset of their usual stuff. Try playing PoD with a party with no wizards and then try again with a party of three wizards and no fighters/rangers/paladins, and then tell me that wizards are underpowered compared to fighters in 1e. The real answer, of course, is that Fighters and Mages aren't meant to fight each other, but to fight together. Wizards are kind of hosed without a meat wall to keep their spells from getting interrupted, Fighters have trouble dealing with swarms of baddies without the Wizard Artillery to blow up big hordes.
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PurpleXVI posted:The real answer, of course, is that Fighters and Mages aren't meant to fight each other, but to fight together. Wizards are kind of hosed without a meat wall to keep their spells from getting interrupted, Fighters have trouble dealing with swarms of baddies without the Wizard Artillery to blow up big hordes. There is a reason Geek the Mage is an intrinsic reaction for rpg players.
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Jazzimus Prime posted:You would take your turn and do something else for 30 minutes, then return to the C-64 to see yet another Quickling was still walking back and forth with 50-something movement points left. lol that sounds like every encounter in Azure Bonds when I played it as a kid on an 8088
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![]() ![]() ![]() (insert dagger here) Well, we made it everyone. Welcome to... ![]() Our guys made the transfer (ish), which was an ordeal in and of itself. You see, the GUY (lol) format for Gold Box characters changed significantly between PoR and Curse of the Azure Bonds. Unfortunately, the converter they coded into Curse is bugged. Most of the time, you can copy your guys (and GUYs!) over successfully by:
The observant amongst us will notice the graphics have changed. It turns out the Amiga version of Curse is a bug-ridden piece of half-coded, flaming poo poo, and about 10% into the game, our party's stats went haywire. As funny as it is to have Shanna with STR 50 and Sternn with CHA 99 ( ![]() ![]() Nothing. ![]() I SAID NOTHING All right, all right, I bumped Sternn up a point in INT. I screwed up planning class advancement, because I didn't know a certain class was limited by INT. If I don't edit this stat, we're going to be super duper screwed later on. It has zero effect on anything we did in PoR, so I consider it inbounds. C'mon, I'm giving up paladins and rangers here. You gotta give me this one. But, enough preamble! Let's get this train wreck out on the tracks! Curse of the Azure Bonds, Chapter 1: Where Did You Sleep Last Night ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() quote:
![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Well, here we are in sunny Tilverton. After the world's worst raging kegger, priority one is to get our poo poo unfucked. Importing characters doesn't bring their actual combat icons over in any sort of coherant form, so we'll have to adjust it by hand. It's every bit as annoying as it sounds, but at least the graphics have improved, so we update our look. We also have to reorder everyone and get their spells memorized again. We have no idea what we're up against, so there's no sense in marching out without fireballs in hand. The game's not lying, either: all the stuff we collected in PoR is gone. Long Swords, Plate Mail, wands, rings, whatever. Just poof. Look, I can understand this decision—we would destroy this game given the equipment we had and a lift in level cap—but that doesn't mean it isn't annoying. All right, let's see what's waiting for us out there. ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Journal Entry 31 posted:You were brought in by a group in red robes. They said they found you on the road, near death. They paid for your rooms in advance, so you can stay as long as you'd like. You had those tattoos when you came in, but I've never seen anything like them. Filani the sage could help you though. You should go see her, two blocks north. ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Well, it appears we have some delightful times ahead of us. ![]() ![]() Fortunately, there's a shop over this way. Plus, whoever kidnapped us left us with money. I'm really not clear on the mechanics of this whole setup, and I've beaten the game multiple times. I'm not about to argue, though. ![]() We pick up the usual menagerie, and we're back in fighting shape. Note there's a new weapon available: the sling staff. We grab it for Shanna, and she finally has a ranged attack. In fact, we grab slings for everyone but Rezen. Slings are incredible. People will tell you otherwise because they only do 1D4 damage but they're loving liars, slings are one of the best ranged weapons in the game. I'll get into why later, but for now, we grab one for everybody. It'll save us a lot of grief later. ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Regardless of how flippant I was, a massive shakeup in our party composition has occured: I've just switched Sternn from Thief to Mage. You may remember from the beginning of Pool that non-human characters can multiclass with the penalty of slow level gains and complete inability to advance past a certain level. Humans are in a slightly different boat. They can keep training up to the cap, but they dual class instead. The name is confusing as poo poo, but here's the deets. Once (and only once) in your adventuring career, you can pick a new profession. This is not a decision to be made lightly, as your sheet resets to Level 1 and you lose all your former skills. (Fortunately, you get to keep the HP gains.) In order to reactivate your former abilities, you have to reach a level equal or greater to that of your previous profession, at which point everything comes back online. Violacello! Two classes at once! It's a baffling, convoluted, and also terrible mechanic, but we have something on our side here: Sternn is a thief, and who gives a poo poo about thief abilities? I can never get backstab to work worth a drat, so literally the only thing he gains from being a thief is the ability to equip slings and magic swords. Even more hilarious: if you dual class as a magic user, you can't wear armor, or you won't be able to cast spells. I don't know why, but I'm already using Bracers for our thief, so whatever. Finally, the only thing we get for going past Level 8 as a thief is more HP and (presumably?) modest THAC0 gains. If you're as lousy at backstabbing as I am, there's no reason to keep a thief in the party at this point. And, even if you're not, you most certainly don't need a thief to complete the series. What you do need is a second mage if you want to avoid a lot of pain and suffering, so a class we shall change! While we're doing maintenance, an idea has struck. We'll just pop over to the local church and have them cast Remove Curse. It'll just be Of The Azure Bonds after that, which would be way too silly to keep playing. Problem solved! ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Journal Entry 19 posted:As the cleric casts the spell, the bonds begin to glow brightly. Arcs of blue flame shoot out from them and strike about the room. The characters begin to writhe in extreme pain. The cleric ceases the spell, "These bonds fight my powers, removing them is beyond me. I wish you better luck. Go with Gond." ![]() ![]() Well, it was worth a shot. Moving on! ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() (real subtle, game) ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Look, our guys are already in a bad mood. It's not our fault if the barkeep assaults our fist with his face. ![]() Anyway, these are just some seedy types hanging around the bar and no match for our fully armed and operation team of ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Journal Entry 17 posted:![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Lotta kidnapping going around these days. Whole place is lousy with it. Oh well, it's not us this time, so not our problem! Let's go yell at that sage they told us about. ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Journal Entry 38 posted:You bear the symbol of five different organizations. Three I recognize, one I've never seen, and the last causes me some concern. The flame and dagger is the symbol of the Fire Knives, a group of assassins who last operated out of Westgate. That group has been destroyed, so they must have a new base of operation. I fear I do not know where. The mouth in the palm is the symbol of the god Moander. This god was banished from the world, but he reappeared briefly as a pile of filth. It laid waste to a section of the city of Yulash before its defeat. The cult's color of choice is green. The ornate Z in the triangle is the symbol of the Zhentrim, the Black Network. These are an evil alliance of priests, mages and thieves operating out of Zhentil Keep. Some say that they run Zhentil Keep. The Flaming symbol I've never seen, so I can give you no information. The last symbol, with the crescent moon, bears a disturbing similarity to a powerful sage in Shadowdale. For my own safety, I'll say no more about it. ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Filani will tell you you're utterly hosed for the low, low price of half your gold, and you have to talk to her to advance the plot. If you try lying to her, she'll chew you out and boot you out of her office until you pay up. As long as you make her the absolute last stop on your tour of the town, you should be fine. Training doesn't cost money anymore, and we've already got the best gear available from the shops. No harm in forking over the money. I just like to keep the amount as low as possible. It's the principle of the thing ![]() ![]() ![]() Another neat feature: rumors are swirling throughout the town, and you'll pick some of them up as you're running errands and getting your bearings. In addition to the above, you'll hear: quote:The town was safer before the troops came. Now strange folk are about. quote:The Knives are getting bolder. Something's gonna blow. ...and they're not wrong. Between this and your bonds, the whole thing feels like poo poo Is About to Go Down™. The storytelling has definitely gotten better since PoR. Some of that is we're on a narrative path instead of an episodic one, but still. Anyway, once you've had a chat with Filani, you can proceed to the town exit and trigger the next scripted event. ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Next Time: Mandatory Sewer Level Chokes McGee fucked around with this message at 19:15 on Apr 16, 2020 |
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Fun Trivia- this game was the unofficial sequel to a D&D novel called Azure Bonds by Jeff Grubb & Kate Novak. The heroine- Alias, the chick on the game title screen- wakes up with a similar issue of weird tats on her arm. There’s also a weird lizard dude following her, but we don’t have that issue. I’ll point out book similarities as we go. It’s a decent novel, a trilogy actually, if anyone wants to check it out. The two follow up books, The Wyvern’s Spur & Song of the Saurials, don’t have any relevance to this or future games. Alias wakes up in the same city as the game party, Tilverton in Cormyr. She sees a local priest about her tattoos, with similar results. At least she wakes up with gear, impracticality of the armor aside (the book says it has magical protection for the chest target a la Batman). Slings helped a certain folk hero against a giant. I’m not knocking them. Bar fights have significantly downgraded from last game. I agree punching the barkeep was inevitable though. Two of the groups that branded us are the same ones who branded Alias. In the book, the Fire Knives are a local assassin gang bent on killing the king. Moander is a deity of rot and plants whose cult wants to bring him into this world. He manifested as a Godzilla size pile of garbage with mind control vines. Alias has to wipe out all the book representation of both groups to get rid of her tattoos, how they came back is a mystery. As for the others who cursed her, two are powerful wizards and one is a demon who specifically manipulates her into killing the rest so he can have total curse power. Of course she then kills him too. Alias has no specific trouble with the Zhentarim, though we did last game, hence their return- maybe. She also doesn’t learn about all her tattoos this soon, or from the same sage. This one seems about as well informed, though. The Fire Knives try to use Alias as a king killer too. I won’t spoil the results just yet. Congrats to Stenn on his new vocation. I’m sure it will work out fine for all the world. achtungnight fucked around with this message at 18:44 on Apr 12, 2020 |
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Giving Sternn the eventual power to reshape reality itself will in no way come back to haunt Rezen in a manner similar to the way hat haunts her
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Oh man this is certainly one hell of a start. Though letting you import your characters and ALSO stripping their gear seems like a seriously rear end in a top hat move.
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PurpleXVI posted:Oh man this is certainly one hell of a start. It was inevitable. Turning our guys loose with a +5 long sword and +2 plate mail was going to end in either that or the game difficulty curve massively inflating beyond what people new to the series could handle.
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Chokes McGee posted:It was inevitable. Turning our guys loose with a +5 long sword and +2 plate mail was going to end in either that or the game difficulty curve massively inflating beyond what people new to the series could handle. You could also say that it's also something of a genre convention. A lot of old games that allowed importing from previous games reduced your power in some way in order to maintain a semblance of balance.
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Heck, both Baldur's Gate 2 and the expansions for Neverwinter Nights did basically the same thing.
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Chokes McGee posted:Moander GYAAAAAAAAARGH ... sorry, bad memories
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achtungnight posted:Fun Trivia- this game was the unofficial sequel to a D&D novel called Azure Bonds by Jeff Grubb & Kate Novak. The heroine- Alias, the chick on the game title screen- wakes up with a similar issue of weird tats on her arm. There’s also a weird lizard dude following her, but we don’t have that issue. I’ll point out book similarities as we go. It’s a decent novel, a trilogy actually, if anyone wants to check it out. The two follow up books, The Wyvern’s Spur & Song of the Saurials, don’t have any relevance to this or future games. Sort of a sequel, sort of "the whole drat plot of the book all over again but happening to your party this time". It's rather a bit silly. As long as we're talking novels here, I suppose it's relevant to briefly talk about the Pool of Radiance novel, also named Pool of Radiance, one of only two games in the quadrilogy that got novelized (The other being the last, Pools of Darkness, which is the second book in this trilogy, followd by Pool of Twilight, and obviously these events are completely unrelated to the Finder's Stone trilogy Achtungnight brought up that starts with Azure Bonds). Accurately dating this stuff is a mess, but as far as I can tell the game and the module were being developed at the same time, with the novel written after the fact, being released a year later. The book is very much a character-driven narrative, being about a a thief, a priest, and a wizard, and their personal quests that just happen to pit them against the forces of Tyranthraxus. This version of Tyranthraxus ends up with his dragon body ganked by a Ring of Three Wishes, possesses Cadorna, and jumps into the Pool to escape. It's an alright read, Azure Bonds was better, but neither of them is exactly up to the standards set by the Dragonlance team.
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Nemo2342 posted:You could also say that it's also something of a genre convention. A lot of old games that allowed importing from previous games reduced your power in some way in order to maintain a semblance of balance. Hell, Bard's Tale let you port characters over from Ultima (IIRC), and if I still talked to Nakar on a regular basis that would the dream crossover that he'd probably never do!
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If I recall, it was the Apple IIe that had the great Character transfer. You could transfer characters from Ultima 3, Bard's Tale, and Wizardry mostly.
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Andyzero posted:If I recall, it was the Apple IIe that had the great Character transfer. You could transfer characters from Ultima 3, Bard's Tale, and Wizardry mostly. One of these things is not like the other
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Yeah, Ultima 3 was faintly fair.
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Tylana posted:Yeah, Ultima 3 was faintly fair. ![]() Outside of Wiz IV I would take any Wizardry over U3.
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Oh god, this is bringing back memories. I used the cover of the Pool of Darkness novelization for an art project in third or fourth grade. Something about trying to translate it proportionally to the page or some such, I had a grid of lines written over it. It was pretty bad even for Forgotten Realms fare, Azure Bonds and Wyvern Spur I remember more fondly. Song of the Saurials was actually kind of grim from what I recall, too. Curse of the Azure bonds itself was a solid game even having not played Pool of Radiance first. I think Champions of Krynn came out first, but that system was a lot less polished in retrospect. Definitely enjoying the LP so far!
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Velius posted:I think Champions of Krynn came out first, but that system was a lot less polished in retrospect. Nope, Champions of Krynn was released in 1990, the year after this game, around the same time as Secret of the Silver Blades. They'd worked a lot of the jankyness out of the engine by that point.
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Truthkeeper posted:Nope, Champions of Krynn was released in 1990, the year after this game, around the same time as Secret of the Silver Blades. They'd worked a lot of the jankyness out of the engine by that point. Let's not say things we can't take back.
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Straight White Shark posted:
Chokes McGee posted:Let's not say things we can't take back.
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Chokes McGee posted:Let's not say things we can't take back. Didn't say it was anywhere near all the jankyness.
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Truthkeeper posted:Didn't say it was anywhere near all the jankyness. Champions of Krynn just unearthed new, previously undiscovered jank, that's all.
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KataraniSword posted:Champions of Krynn just unearthed new, previously undiscovered jank, that's all. bootin up my c64 emulator, starting my twelve hour shift in the jank mines
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you MOV sixteen bytes and what do you get, another game older and deeper in debt
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achtungnight posted:Fun Trivia- this game was the unofficial sequel to a D&D novel called Azure Bonds by Jeff Grubb & Kate Novak. The heroine- Alias, the chick on the game title screen- wakes up with a similar issue of weird tats on her arm. There’s also a weird lizard dude following her, but we don’t have that issue. I’ll point out book similarities as we go. It’s a decent novel, a trilogy actually, if anyone wants to check it out. The two follow up books, The Wyvern’s Spur & Song of the Saurials, don’t have any relevance to this or future games. IIRC from when Xenocides was LPing the series, the authors actually had written Alias with proper body armor, then had to go back and do rewrites when they finally saw the official artwork.
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That would not surprise me. Lots of different perspectives make up role playing games, practical and otherwise. In fact, now that I recall, Alias gets a starting outfit of armor without the magic or defense hole. She only finds herself in that outfit at the endgame. I’ve read the book more than once, but it has been a while since the last time. Feel free to correct me on it should I misquote. I won’t fully spoil the plot right now, but in terms of profession Alias is a wandering adventurer between jobs, like our party. Or so she believes, anyway. The truth is a it more complicated. Her tattoos’ makers can use them to force mind control on her, but only to a limited degree. Apparently someone rescued her prior to the experiment’s completion. She joins up with three more adventurers- a halfling bard, a mage from fantasy Arabia, and the lizard guy from the cover (who turns out to be an extradimensional alien paladin) and gets some other allies too. I’ll get more into the plot as the game progresses- as stated, there are many parallels. In terms of where we are in the Realms now, the Dalelands are a loose confederation of city states west of the Moonsea region that includes Phlan. They’re basically the same type of terrain- forested plains with mountains In some areas. The kingdom of Cormyr borders these lands on the southwest and represent a significant political and trade power in the region. Tilverton is your typical raucous frontier city on their border with the Dalelands. We’ll see more of the area as the game goes on.
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Said lizard guy is named (of all things) Dragonbait. Dragonbane I could understand, but Dragonbait? Isn't that kind of asking for trouble?
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Am I pretty sure he is called Dragonbait. In lieu of a proper name. He could not speak Common. I forget if his people spoke at all or had some tropey lizard scent language. EDIT : Painted over with spoiler for anyone come to read this late. Tylana fucked around with this message at 11:08 on Apr 14, 2020 |
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Tropey lizard scent language, though Dragonbait also uses sign language. His people are Saurials, dinosaur folk basically. His real name is Champion and he takes the name Dragonbait as a joke.
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Hey guys? I should've jumped in a while back and stopped this, but please remember talking about the future events of a book also describes exactly what we'll see in the plot of this game. As such, it constitutes spoilers. Again, my bad for not saying something sooner, but we should probably put the kibosh on anything from the books we haven't seen yet, like Alias and Dragonbait. (Although there's not much left to spoil there now laff)
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Apologies, I assumed they didn't show up in this game because that's what Sternn and co were doing.
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# ? Jun 11, 2024 03:15 |
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Apologies here too, but thanks for confirming we’ll see Alias and Dragonbait. ![]()
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