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Mod author: Aurelinus, Sir BillyBob, k4thos, jastey

Version used for review: 5.0

Northern Tales of the Sword Coast is a mod almost as old as Baldur’s Gate itself, with a storied history of different developers maintaining the project. It once came shackled to Dark Side of the Sword Coast, the proposed ‘first mod’ for Baldur’s Gate, but is now an independent install — and is significantly better off for it.

I hesitate to say that I enjoyed playing Northern Tales. It carries a lot of baggage as a 2000’s era mod, but even in an era of lavish productions built atop the shoulders of those mods, it does stand out a little. The potential it holds is potent, but I found that it never really lived up to it, even in its brightest moments.

True to its name, the mod largely concerns the northern section of the map, but nonetheless it will have you running up and down the coast to bring its many threads to a close. A few of these threads simply serve as small quests, while the majority of them concern an overarching plot involving the ‘Cult of the Black Hand’, which is introduced to be related to the Aec’Letec plotline, although loosely.

The mod adds six new areas and relocates Ulgoth’s Beard to the west of Baldur’s Gate to make room for them. Not all of the new locations are available until later in the game, and it’s quite clear that most of the additions here are meant to be late-game content, as the combat encounters can be punishingly difficult if you’re unprepared.

The Northern Coast, a new area west of Baldur’s Gate, is probably the first one that you’ll visit. It’s largely a copy-paste job of the lighthouse map down to the south, with a few minor changes. There are some fishermen that want you to kill some fire salamanders and sirines that are making their jobs difficult. You do so. There’s not much more to it. The sirines here refer to themselves as being part of Syl’s tribe, opposed to the sirines at the southern lighthouse being part of Sil’s tribe. Perhaps there’s a near-identical tribe next to this near-identical lighthouse.

The Wood of the Dead, north of the zombie-infested farm, is a modified Cloakwood map that contains a tomb sealed by magic that you’ll likely only be able to enter long after finding it. The Field of the Dead is a mountain map that received a little more attention — there’s an orc encampment here and some folks to save for some quest-givers in Baldur’s Gate and Ulgoth’s Beard, as well as another magically sealed tomb!

The Northern Wood is a copy-pasted version of the Bear River north of the Gnoll Stronghold, and has a tribe of wood elves who are there basically just for a fetch quest. The mod’s finale, if you can call it that, takes place in its own area of “Temple of the Black Hand” which is a wilderness map with the Hall of Wonders there. It’s not bad, all things considered, though all of these areas can be explored and completed quickly.

There’s also the Northern Fortress, but we’ll get to that later. If you noticed that these areas seem pretty empty, then you’d think correctly. The original game gets away with its meandering map design with each locale being a unique affair, and as sparse as encounters are, they’re sparser still in Northern Tales.

So, the Cult of the Black Hand — what is it? Well, I’m not entirely sure. You see, the quests in Northern Tales are rather lacking in context much of the time. After speaking to Shaella in the Blade and Stars tavern, you’ll be approached by an obviously-evil fellow who wants the Book of the Unknowing. I’m not too sure why he wants it, but it seems important to him and the cult.

There’s very little plot here for me to actually review. It’s simply a sequence of events where the player goes to a place and gets an item, whether to give to another character or to use as some kind of obscure key.

Obscure keys are the name of the game, here. Northern Tales adds a door to the little tower in Larswood, turning it into a mage tower. The wizard, Haeball, sells more high-level spells, potions, and wands than High Hedge and Sorcerous Sundries put together. He also has a chest that can only be opened by a key obtained from a tree next to a sunken house several maps away. Why? I’m not sure! But in that chest is one half of the necessary items to unlock one of the magically sealed caverns.

The general obtuseness of this quest design leads to a walkthrough being more or less mandatory unless you already know what you’re doing. It’s frustrating, and I was not a fan. Either way, following the cult plot to the end will pit you against several difficult foes, and I found the boss encounters to be much better designed than the encounters throughout the rest of the mod, which throws higher-level enemies at you regularly.

Where Northern Tales shone most brightly for me, before the light died back down, was with the Northern Fortress — and there’s a good reason for that. Much of the material within the Northern Fortress plotline is cut content created by BioWare, and it speaks volumes how pleased I was by the jump in writing quality when that dialogue kicked in. The dialogue in Northern Tales is mostly flat exposition in the longer quests, while the shorter ones have small bursts of colour, but the Northern Fortress is an exception… for the most part.

The fortress itself looks great from the outside. On the inside it’s forced to reuse indoor areas to create the sense of the fort, but it works well enough. Duke Eltan will give you the opportunity to travel to the Northern Fortress prior to returning to Candlekeep, to investigate a series of disappearances.

Everything seems great — until you actually start investigating. The feeling I had while playing quickly went from enjoyment to frustration as it becomes blatantly obvious that this is cut content, and the attempt to graft it back to the game was somewhat a botched operation.

Speaking to those around the fort will almost immediately point towards the acting captain of the guard as the main suspect in the missing persons case, and whatever information you gather is kind of useless anyway, given that all you have to do is speak twice to the acting captain, Eldod, and he’ll say that he has to kill you — except he doesn’t. He runs away, and when you follow him, you find out that an ogre killed the abbot while you were upstairs. No ogre had been mentioned prior and even though the killer has been discovered, we still have no motive for him.

The quest leads straight into a boss battle with Krotan, the ogre. This cut content is where Krotan’s Skullcrusher comes from — Eldoth was also supposed to be involved in the quest, as was Ajantis in some capacity. Clearly, things went in a different direction. Regardless, while this quest is exciting on the face of it, it falls apart under any real examination.

There are a few smaller quests worth mentioning. East of the Beregost Temple, there’s a spirit haunting the surrounding area. In order to free this spirit and complete the quest, you have to create the Vampire’s Edge sword — the easter-egg weapon — and take it to him with some holy water. Of course, your journal doesn’t help you at all with this, so if you’re unfamiliar with the item: good luck if you don’t want to look up a walkthrough on how to make the sword through the combination of niche side-quest items. This does grant you a ridiculous number of experience points for something that can be completed so early on, too.

There’s also a new dungeon room in the Firewine Ruins, from one of the bridge towers. Get this: this one is also magically sealed! Charleston Nib of archeology fame can help you out with that, if you feel like fighting a load of vampires locked under a bridge.

Speaking of dungeons, it’s worth mentioning that Northern Tales reuses multiple locations from Icewind Dale for its subareas. For the most part, I think that it was tastefully done, though I do have to suspend my disbelief when a hot rocky cavern glowing red sits right on the edge of the sea.

Contrary to what one might expect from a mod such as this, there are not many ultra-powerful weapons introduced by it. There are a decent number of items, though. Some are taken from Icewind Dale, some are unique — better than what you’d find in Baldur’s Gate but lower-tier than in Siege of Dragonspear — and then there’s the more confounding stuff.

For example, when I cleared out the final room of the mod’s last dungeon, I was rewarded with the Claw and Horn of Kazgaroth. I had to check, so I went to High Hedge, and Thalantyr does indeed sell you both items, so this mod will just give you duplicates as a thank you for playing. It’s a bit baffling, but I guess stranger things have happened — Kazgaroth had more than one claw, after all.

There are some good encounters added by the mod, despite my nitpicking. Saving a hunter’s dogs from dire wolves, a friendly ogre in Baldur’s Gate who wants dead rats for his dog to eat, and finding a way to let a wistful druid fly were highlights for me.

There is also, of course, a new pit-stop on the way back from Balduran’s Isle at the wondrous Isle of Sirines, a place that exists purely to give sirines gifts so that they’ll sleep with you. That’s… uh, cool.

Despite my complaining, Northern Tales is undeniably better than the mod that it once came packaged with. While I found Dark Side of the Sword Coast to be utterly unplayable without a guide, I probably could have toughed it out for Northern Tales had I the patience and relative naivete of someone who does not play and review mods for fun. But I do, and I do it for you.

This mod feels like it’s grasping towards something greater, but having excavated it rather thoroughly, I think that the pieces are too scattered to pull together a cohesive work that I can easily recommend. If you’re looking for a mod that’ll give you more end-game content and wilderness adventuring, I’d say give Northern Tales a go — you’ll probably like it more than I did, and it is quite well polished for something that graced the internet so very long ago.

Thanks for reading.