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Mod author: Lava Del’V0rtel

Version used for review: 1.4.1

“Welcome to The Ink Gallery: a new Athkatlan establishment, and a place of many wonderful books. Read them, and let the tomes present you with epic battles and deadly struggles. Become the main hero/heroine of these books, even if only for a short moment, and face powerful enemies. Test your mettle and learn how to become even stronger than you already are. Remember, however, that there is a fee to be paid.”

Athkatlan Grounds is a well-established series of mods that has the goal of expanding the Amnian city of Athkatla through small, self-contained stories that take place within newly available districts or locations within the city. My opinion on these mods has been rather consistently positive, and I am pleased to say that The Ink Gallery is yet another success for the series as an addition that feels right at home within Athkatla.

This particular mod takes “self-contained” to a new level, as a majority of the content introduced by The Ink Gallery occurs within magical storybooks detailing historical battles. If you’re familiar with Planescape: Torment‘s Sensory Stones, this is a similar concept — except instead of recalling your own past experiences, you are thrust within the book’s respective battle, taking the role of the heroes of the tale.

This is the primary form of content introduced by the mod — twelve combat challenges, each within their own small arenas added by the mod. You can die, and you will gain experience points. Quite a few of them, in fact, if you can overcome the challenges within. These are not easy battles, after all.

To reach the titular location, you can enter through a new back entrance from the Council of Six building in the Government District, or simply walk the long way around if you, like me, try to avoid eye contact with law officials whenever possible. Behind the building, there’s a little house that you can now enter — this is the Ink Gallery.

The keeper of the gallery is Viscountess Velcealle, a character with only a small amount of dialogue, but one that manages to leave a charming impression nonetheless. Within the small building are twelve tomes that can be interacted with — doing so will give you a blurb of the battle that took place, with a little bit of flavourful context.

I couldn’t tell if the stories of these battles are all from established sources, but there were a few references that I picked up on — the origin of the Celestial Fury katana, and a battle based on one of Lava’s Icewind Dale mods, The War of Bloom and Rot. Either way, it’s a nice touch and the little bit of narrative that these blurbs provide goes a long way.

There is a fee for each battle — 3,500 gold pieces, with a couple of battles requiring a single character to fight it, in which case the cost is 3,000 gold.

The combat encounters themself vary in style and difficulty. They all require different tactics and some are much more approachable than others. I particularly enjoyed one solo-battle against a powerful foe in a dead-magic area. It feels like The Ink Gallery is designed to be repeatedly returned to between adventures, giving it a nice sense of presence within the city as you work through the battles over a long period of time.

The rewards granted by these battles are twofold. First, every battle has a small, permanent buff that can be granted to any character, most of them being a +5% resistance increase to a single damage type (or +3% in the case of magic) — though only once, and for a singular character. None of the bonuses repeat, so every battle will give you something different. There is also an opportunity to give a character a powerful kit-specific ability, but given that it’s a particularly useful one, it might put some players off — thankfully, you can also easily pass it up in favour of a small resistance bump instead.

If you feel so inclined, the mod gives you a little time to breathe after winning the battle and returning for your reward, so you can save right before gaining the reward in case you give it to the wrong character, as it is done via dialogue immediately after leaving the arena.

The rewards that are, depending on your perspective, more substantial, come from the Viscountess’s shop. Each battle will unlock a new magical item available in the shop, and as expected from Lava, these are interesting, fun items that fulfill small niches that I rather appreciate. Some of them seem almost prohibitively expensive, though that’s kind of the point.

A common complaint made about all the many excellent mods out there that one may wish to install is that having too many of them somewhat breaks that balance of the gold distribution in the game. With all of the new magic items, gold, and rewards that a mod-enjoyer will inevitably end up with, it becomes practically trivial to purchase any and all items that one may fancy. In excess, it becomes meaningless. By spending your gold on the battles in the Ink Gallery, and then on the optional store, it gives you a great opportunity to lighten your wallet.

Once all twelve battles have been fought, there is a particularly special finale that I won’t go too much into detail about, as I believe that it’s worth experiencing on your own without spoilers. There’s one final hidden book that Velcealle has been keeping locked away, and only after you’ve completed every challenge in the gallery will she bring you to see it.

What follows is not a battle, but something more akin to an extended dream sequence that has the same quality of character, atmosphere, production value, and even plot-relevance as the dreams present in Shadows of Amn. Needless to say, I thought that it was fantastic. It was a huge surprise to me, and it’s the part of this mod that I’m sure will stick with me long after playing it.

I highly recommend The Ink Gallery for all that it adds here. There’s not a single piece of bloat and I found everything within it to be fun and engaging. This is yet another mod that will be going straight into my permanent-install list!

Thanks for reading.