Maimed God's Saga

[BlueSalamander]

The Maimed God's Saga is a user-made module for Neverwinter Nights 2. In this module you're supposed to play a Cleric of Tyr, my favourite D&D 3.5 Forgotten Realms character. I played the original NWN 2 campaign with a cleric of Tyr. So in this adventure the character answers a call for help from the local noblewoman of a village that looks like Hommlet in Temple of Elemental Evil. With the help of a ranger PC, your cleric must find the source of a series of abductions in the noble family. The abductions began two hundred years ago.

Link: http://nwvault.ign.com/View.php?view=NWN2ModulesEnglish.Detail&id=452

Character level: Starts at level 6 (you can also start at level 5 for more challenge or level 7 for an easier time). Ends at level 9.

My character
Male human Cleric (Tyr)
Str 16, Dex 12, Con 12, Int 12, Wis 16, Cha 08
Background Appraiser
Starting skills: Concentration, Diplomacy, Lore, Spellcraft. And later on Appraise, Intimidate, Spot, Open lock
Starting feats: Able learner, Luck of heroes. Then Toughness, Skill focus (concentration).
You can get hit by arrows or a sword while you're casting in NWN 2, even if you're casting defensively, and this triggers concentration checks that are not covered by the feat Combat Casting. That makes Skill focus (concentration) better.
Cleric domains: War and Good (as they're supposed to be the domains of Tyr, according to the module's documents. Otherwise, I'd say the best domains for this module are War, Earth and Healing). Select 'high-pitch evangelist' for your voice and your character will shout 'Damnation, damna-a-a-a-tion!' at his enemies

Liked

Liked the great atmosphere, the music (would have been cool to have some electronic music from Enigma)

Liked the absence of useless loot

There were no spelling or grammar mistakes, it's very well written

Liked the rather realistic (believable) attitude of the female companion

Liked that the spells 'Shield Other', 'Magic Vestment' and 'Greater Magic Weapon' are actually useful for once. There are no magic weapons and no magic armour in this module, apart from Tyr's weapon, given at the very end.

Loved the tactical challenge and the variety of combat situations. For example, early on you can have a fight on a moving boat, with lizardman shooting at you from the shore, and other lizardman jumping onto the boat. In another battle you fight against three or four evil druids together. In another battle you attack a fort and many of the enemies are equipped with bows and poison arrows.

Liked the fight with 'massive fighter', who is in fact a cleric of Malar, the god of bestiality. He loves to use Inflict Wounds, has a DR of 4 and wields a scythe. It was a tough fight for a cleric level 7 + ranger level 7 because it occurs right after a another battle with lots of guards, and you can't rest.

In the end game I loved the discussion between the gods Malar and Tyr, and liked the fact that the player is asked to determine what sentence to inflict on the guy who was responsible for the PC's torture, scarring, excommunication, repeated attempted murder and false accusation, as well as the death of a friend. You're given many options like flogging (you decide how many lashes), death, imprisonment (I guess you have to decide how long, too), a pilgrimage, losing his position in the church, no punishment at all, or any combination of the possible punishments. And then Tyr himself tells you whether he thinks you were too lenient or too harsh. I selected 20 lashes plus a pilgrimage plus the loss of his position. I thought that was lenient, Tyr said that was a bit harsh.

Liked the entire story overall, also liked how the love story is wrapped up at the end.

Disliked

At one point, you don't really know what you're supposed to do and in fact you're stuck until you let your character go to sleep.
The game should say something like 'You feel that you haven done everything that you could possibly do today and should now go resting.' Or else give the player another way to find the next step. Allowing the PC to get stuck is not good design.

At the end of Act II, after you complete your initial main quest, I really thought that the game was over. Looking through the hints I realised that the game went on and there was an Act III! I guess it's my own fault but a message like 'Don't exit the game just yet as more quests will follow!!' wouldn't come amiss.

In one situation the companion's spot skill is not used (only the player's) even though the companion has got a very good spot skill. Why encourage the player to put points in the same skills as the companion? As a side note, I've never understood the benefit provided by Spot and Listen in Neverwinter Nights 2, apart from exceedingly rare checks that happen during scripted dialogues.

I hated having to walk up and down the village again and again and again. From the town centre, the game should allow teleporting back to your room in the manor. In a pen and paper module, the players would just say 'we go back to the manor' and this would be instantaneous.

The game is too wordy especially when the castle's Lady talks about her ancestors, or when the companion talks about her past.

I didn't like the silly Brew Potions feat (recommended in the module's documents): it's silly because brewing potions is ridiculously costly. It not only requires taking the feat, having an empty flask and wasting a spell slot for the day, but also a large amount of gold (several hundreds for cure light wounds and several thousands for cure serious wounds) which you do not receive in the module. And in the middle of the game one NPC comes to the PC asking to buy a Cure Light Wounds potion and offering to pay only SIX gold coins for it.

Didn't like the anti-climactic, too easy battle with the Mistress (At first I thought that she was the final boss but she's not). I don't really understand RPGs where the important bosses are all alone. No minions fighting with the boss, really? In fact just before the battle with the Mistress you have to kill a tough black panther: they should have fought together, then it would have been an interesting fight. The real final boss also fights alone and again, it would have been better if he had had support. By the end of the game you can boost yourself so much and you have direct help from Tyr in lots of ways.

Some questions remain unanswered, such as why was the village of Navatranaasu placed under interdict (excommunication) by Tyr's clergy 200 years ago? Why did the player character and his priest friend not know about this interdict? How did Tyr's clergy learn that the player character went to Navatranaasu (the fact that he went there and helped the village was the basis for his accusation and torture). In Navatranaasu, why did every witness of the beast/werewolf report that the beast stared directly at them before disappearing? (I thought that meant the beast was an illusion created by a wizard, but there was no wizard).

At one point you find a document that mentions the cost of the cathedral, 56 gold 'not adjusted for inflation'. But the cool thing about a society using gold coins is that it doesn't inflate (as long as the gold content in the coins remains the same). Inflation is a consequence of using fiat currency.

The locked room quest is too difficult, especially considering that the room does not contain anything of importance. It's not difficult because you have to do a tiny bit of cryptography, but because the game tells you about a decoding device without giving you any clue as to where the device is or what it looks like. I'll give a hint: the device is red and you will find it in a room not far from the locked room.

My rating
5/5, mostly because the battles were interesting; and also because the story was interesting.

Screenshots

[Tiberius209]

First, thanks for your detailed commentary. As you had some unanswered questions, I wish to address them. Needless to say, for anyone who hasn't played this, this all contains spoilers.

Some questions remain unanswered, such as why was the village of Navatranaasu placed under interdict (excommunication) by Tyr's clergy 200 years ago? Why did the player character and his priest friend not know about this interdict? How did Tyr's clergy learn that the player character went to Navatranaasu (the fact that he went there and helped the village was the basis for his accusation and torture). In Navatranaasu, why did every witness of the beast/werewolf report that the beast stared directly at them before disappearing? (I thought that meant the beast was an illusion created by a wizard, but there was no wizard).

1. This question was answered by Tyr in his discussion with you during your trial. Haloran Dezlentyr was the descendent of Acin VanGhaunt, the man who fled back to Waterdeep after feeding his brother to the Beast of Navatranaasu. Immediately after arriving back in Waterdeep, he married into a prestigious family and began a political career. Fearing that his cowardice would eventually come out, he sought to hide his shame in Navtranaasu, so he had the town placed under interdict to prevent anyone from going there. Remeber, Acin was the son of a famous Tyran war priest, and so his family would still have contacts in the church. In subsequent generations, the family then tried its best to make that chapter just disappear.

2. A couple of reasons for this. First, it was implied that although the church in Waterdeep may fancy itself the leading Tyran authority on Faerun, others may not see it that way. (In fact, official D&D canon states that there is no central authority on Faerun.) During the torture scene, the player can even state this fact, although Dezlentyr and Eton Skye dismiss the argument. For this reason, an interdict handed down by the Waterdhavian church may mean nothing to a Tyran priest from Amn or Tethyr, for example. This is one of the two principal reasons I state in my character creation guide that the story will not make sense if the player assumes their character is from Waterdeep, the other being that the whole escape from the city mission doesn't work if they already have contacts and friends in the city.

Second, the Dezlentyrs went out of their way to hide all knowledge of Navatranaasu. It could be learned in your time at Waterdeep - although this was only on a sidequest and so wasn't forced down your throat - that all mention of Alred VanGhaunt and Navatranaasu had been purged from the Waterdhavian records, the implication being that Dezlentyr or his ancestors did it. (Tyr mentioned in his final appearance that Dezlentyr himself was at least partially responsible for this.) As an aside, directly manipulating public documents also runs counter to Tyran teaching.

Summarizing everything written in answers 1 and 2, it is obvious that nothing about the interdict, your arrest, torture, or trial was just. It was all to hide one family's shame and further their political aspirations. Therefore, Dezlentyr knew he was beaten when you invoked Tyr's Justice and so had his henchman try to cheat the trial and kill you illegally to force the result he wanted. There was never any doubt that Tyr himself would pronounce you innocent. For all these reasons, Dezlentyr and his followers, despite masquerading as good Tyrans, were fallen paladins corrupted and now backed by Malar into furthering that deity's aims on Faerun.

3. Not stated directly, but given the answer to #1, Haloran Dezlentyr's current political ambition to become Grand Prelate, and Jellica's recent letters, Dezlentyr knew that someone might make their way to Navtranaasu, and his agents were on the lookout for people traveling there. The priest at Riverford, Ternias, even said that he had been in contact with a friend at Silverymoon about Jellica's letters, so there was a trail that would lead to him. When Dezlentyr's henchman, Eton Skye, followed the trail and eventually arrived at the temple in Riverford, he asked if anyone had responded to his call yet and Ternias would certainly admit as much to a "paladin" of Tyr. Why would he deny it given that the uniform implied he was an ally? That leads to you.

4. Never stated directly, but the supernatural appearances of the "Beast of Navatranaasu" were supposed to be an avatar of Malar that stalked the land. As such, it had divine knowledge of all mortals who witnessed it.

At one point you find a document that mentions the cost of the cathedral, 56 gold 'not adjusted for inflation'. But the cool thing about a society using gold coins is that it doesn't inflate (as long as the gold content in the coins remains the same). Inflation is a consequence of using fiat currency.

I'm not an economist, so you may be right in stating that inflation is generally a characteristic of economies that don't use the gold standard, but I can guarantee you an economy on the gold standard can inflate. Inflation is caused whenever the monetary supply exceeds that of goods and services. If you believe that a gold standard economy cannot inflate, then you must account for what happened in the Spanish Empire in the 16th century. In that case, not only did an economy on the gold standard inflate, the inflation was actually caused by the large influx of gold and silver imported from their new world colonies.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inflation

I quote: "However, the consensus view is that a long sustained period of inflation is caused by money supply growing faster than the rate of economic growth."

From that same article: "However, historically, the U.S. saw inflation over 2% several times and a higher peak of inflation under the gold standard when compared to inflation after the gold standard. Under a gold standard, the long term rate of inflation (or deflation) would be determined by the growth rate of the supply of gold relative to total output.”

[BlueSalamander]

Hello Tiberius209 and thanks for the answers.

This question was answered by Tyr in his discussion with you during your trial.

Yes I played this part but I didn't feel properly enlightened.

Fearing that his cowardice would eventually come out, he sought to hide his shame in Navtranaasu, so he had the town placed under interdict to prevent anyone from going there.

First, how would any common citizen of Navatranaasu know about Acin VanGhaunt's cowardice? If there are no witnesses then no one knows and then there's no point in blockading the town. It seems to me that the player gets to know about this only because he has access to perfect information from Tyr himself. No one in the village seemed to have any clue. Second, how does an excommunication order prevent the transfer of information from a village to another? After all, it does not stop travel or commerce, unless you have a military blockade. Third, in the magical world of D&D, scrying spells would be the best way IMO to uncover good bits about someone. A NPC who did this would not have to be located in Navatranaasu.
It just seems to me that if no one knew, then an excommunication was unnecessary, and if someone knew, then an excommunication was insufficient. This even doesn't address how Acin VanGhaunt could actually convince the Waterdeep clergy to implement a permanent excommunication on a village without giving any reason. That just sounds crazy to me.

others may not see [the interdict] that way.

But then why even have an interdict from Waterdeep, if it's not going to be respected?

the Dezlentyrs went out of their way to hide all knowledge of Navatranaasu.

Why did Acin VanGhaunt tell his son about his cowardice, if that was a risk to him?

Dezlentyr knew he was beaten when you invoked Tyr's Justice

Why have the PC captured by paladins and then tortured? It would seem better to hire 10 assassins and do the deed quietly, rather than risk an investigation. Or capture him with the paladins and then make him disappear while he's vulnerable.

Ternias, even said that he had been in contact with a friend at Silverymoon about Jellica's letters

Okay but if that friend was a member of Waterdeep's clergy then Ternias should at least have known about the interdict and maybe have warned the player.

the "Beast of Navatranaasu" was supposed to be an avatar of Malar

Ah. It would have been cool to fight it.

I'm not an economist, so you may be right in stating that inflation is generally a characteristic of economies that don't use the gold standard

I was indeed making a general point. It is a lot easier to inflate paper or electronic currency than it is to produce new gold. I agree that gold 'inflated' whenever new sources of gold were found. In this sense, gold is inflating even as we speak since we do still have gold mines around the world. However, I would not compare this marginal increase to the scale that has been achieved with paper.

Inflation is caused whenever the monetary supply exceeds that of goods and services.

No, for a general increase in prices, all that is needed is an increase in the money supply, irrespective of level. With all due respect it makes no sense to say that the money supply 'exceeds' the supply of goods and services. Perhaps you mean whenever demand exceeds supply and that is true. A money supply increase, in time, becomes a demand increase of equal proportion.

Concerning Wiki, I really don't see it as the fountain of all truth. This statement is a perfect example: 'historically, the US saw inflation over 2% several times and a higher peak of inflation under the gold standard when compared to inflation after the gold standard.' When you click the source for this, you do not get a real source but a graph, without any explanation. What is the period that they considered to be under the gold standard?
The gold standard could be said to have existed from 1870 to 1931, but it was suspended during the first world war. I quote wiki: 'In order to finance the costs of war, most belligerent countries went off the gold standard during the war, and suffered significant inflation.'
If you look at the period from 1870 to 1900 on the chart provided by Wiki, there was hardly any inflation at all in that period, and in fact prices declined on most of these years. I'm reproducing that part of the chart. Green is a deflation period, blue an inflation period and the dotted lines at the top and bottom represent +5% and -5% respectively. The vertical line corresponds to the year 1900. The left edge is around 1870, right edge 1914.
In fact, this chart proves that an economy based on gold does not inflate in most years, and when it does inflation doesn't exceed 5%. It's true that prices can increase on some years because of a surge in demand for whatever reason, or because new gold mines are opened. During the first world war there was a huge spike in prices, much higher than in the preceding Gold Standard period. This completely disproves the statement 'higher peak of inflation under the gold standard when compared to inflation after the gold standard'. After the end of the world war in 1918 and the return to the standard, again we see large deflation rates.

the long term rate of inflation (or deflation) would be determined by the growth rate of the supply of gold relative to total output.

In fact, no. Because the supply of gold only increases marginally nowadays. Therefore, factors like goods production and technology would take the lead in determining deflation rates, as in the 1870-1900 period. There could still be some years of increases as in the 1900-1910 period, whenever demand increases for some genuine reason, or when gold extraction suddenly improves. I'm not sure what caused increases in 1900-1910. This website mentions that the US halved the minimum capital requirement for banks in 1900, that may be a reason for the three increases (of 3%, 4% and 5%) afterwards.
Edit: Another reason for the spikes of 1907 and 1910 is the increase in spending in Europe. I guess the US was constantly increasing military exports to Europe at the time, which is equivalent to an extraordinary increase in demand. From Wiki: 'Between 1908 and 1913, the military spending of the European powers increased by 50 percent.'

[Tiberius209]

Hello, thanks again for your comments. In response:

First, how would any common citizen of Navatranaasu know about Acin VanGhaunt's cowardice? If there are no witnesses then no one knows and then there's no point in blockading the town. It seems to me that the player gets to know about this only because he has access to perfect information from Tyr himself. No one in the village seemed to have any clue. Second, how does an excommunication order prevent the transfer of information from a village to another? After all, it does not stop travel or commerce, unless you have a military blockade. Third, in the magical world of D&D, scrying spells would be the best way IMO to uncover good bits about someone. A NPC who did this would not have to be located in Navatranaasu.

It just seems to me that if no one knew, then an excommunication was unnecessary, and if someone knew, then an excommunication was insufficient. This even doesn't address how Acin VanGhaunt could actually convince the Waterdeep clergy to implement a permanent excommunication on a village without giving any reason. That just sounds crazy to me.

Navatranaasu was always portrayed as a distant backwater high in the Greypeak Mountain. In one of your very first conversations, Ternias states that once he received the letter, he had to work to even locate a map that had the town on it. The town also had very little commerce with the wider world – VERY little. Multiple people commented about how they had never seen a stranger before you and your companion in their entire lives. You are correct that none of the story works if there was regular exchange with the outside world, but the backstory of the entire town makes it clear that almost from the start the town was pretty much cut off. Note that that doesn’t mean communication is zero, just that it is very slow.

To your individual points. First point: It was never implied that they did. My memory of the exact wording fails me years after I wrote it, but Tyr said something along the line of “…eventually rumors started to trickle back from Navatranaasu…” If information from Navatranaasu gets back to Waterdeep that Acin was killed by a supernatural beast and yet he’s been seen at all the local parties, what gossip do you think follows? Second point: See above. It was always stated that information (rumors) did get back to Waterdeep. Hence the need for a cover-up.

Your third argument is perhaps your best one, but it still assumes a lot. I think that you and I make have some very different views about Faerun. How many magic items did you see in the campaign? One major one that Tyr gave you and one or two minor ones. It may run counter to Faerun lore – and many people complain about this in my modules – but I don’t view the setting as being particularly highly magically powered. Therefore, I don’t view scrying magic as being at the beck and call of everyone. But more importantly, I don’t think the average person would know or care enough to look in on a town like Navatranaasu.

And if you think I’m just hand-waiving away your arguments, I’ll only point to this morning’s paper as a real-world example of how and why people do everything you just called crazy. I don’t know where in the world you are, but here in the US, there’s a huge scandal that recently broke around a football program at Penn State in which an assistant coach molested a dozen boys over several years. This was all covered up for over a decade. Until the story finally broke late last year, I hadn’t heard a peep about it and judging by the media reaction, most other people hadn’t heard about it either.

But the trial of this man has just ended, and it has now been revealed that a lot of people around the football program had heard rumors, but the people in charge continually denied everything, and few people could be bothered to look into despite the absolute horror of the potential charges. Even after the jury found the man guilty last week, he STILL denies he did anything wrong and has stated he will appeal it. Does it make sense he would deny it now? Of course not, but people have an amazing capacity for self delusion in the cause of self (even image) preservation.

So to correlate the real-world example back to your points about TMGS. (1) In the Penn State case, no one outside the immediate area had a clue what was going on for an entire decade, indicating that the cover-up was pretty effective despite the existence of things like cell phones and recording devices that don’t exist in Faerun. (2) This didn’t stop rumors from trickling out about what was going on. (3) Despite these rumors, no one in a position of power looked into it because most of them had a stake in the Penn State program and others displayed an alarming sense of apathy. This addresses your two points as to why not use scrying magic and how does he convince other clergy to go along with it. After all, once Acin is indoctrinated into the clergy and married into a wealthy aristocratic family, don't those organizations have a stake in seeing he isn't discredited too? (4) Those outside the immediate area had no reason to suspect something was going on and so didn’t know to look.

I could pull historical examples as well, but the morning papers show the best one in a while. People try to cover things up that they consider damaging to themselves even when they know they cannot perfectly control all the variables. Others can become involved in the conspiracy or else don’t want to become involved and so look the other way. I do not see why any of this is implausible to you or why you expect people in Faerun to act differently from those on Earth.

others may not see [the interdict] that way.
But then why even have an interdict from Waterdeep, if it's not going to be respected?

I'm sorry, but I don’t get this argument at all because, again, there are so many real-world examples that run counter. Why does the Pope today say anything when 75% of the world isn’t Christian, 50% of Christians aren’t Catholic, and a large number of Catholics shrug off his rulings anyway? Historically speaking, England was under interdict from 1208 to 1213 (with some concessions for absolution of the dying). Do you really think no one went to mass or got married during that time? Did the church effectively cease functioning and close up shop for five years? If not, then why do it? Here’s a hint. Despite all the endless run-arounds and cheating of the interdict, Pope Innocent III eventually brought King John to his knees, so the interdict obviously had it's desired effect.

Similarly, the interdict in the story achieved its goal for 200 years. No one ever found out until the PC became involved.

the Dezlentyrs went out of their way to hide all knowledge of Navatranaasu.
Why did Acin VanGhaunt tell his son about his cowardice, if that was a risk to him?

It was never implied that he did. Refer back to the rumors about Navatranaasu bit above.

Dezlentyr knew he was beaten when you invoked Tyr's Justice
Why have the PC captured by paladins and then tortured? It would seem better to hire 10 assassins and do the deed quietly, rather than risk an investigation. Or capture him with the paladins and then make him disappear while he's vulnerable.

Perhaps that would have been “better” if you’re Machievelli’s Prince, but that assumes a certain motivation on Dezlentyr’s part. You assume a CE alignment for Dezlentyr and that he knew of his fallen status and willingly served Malar. In fact, he was always portrayed as seriously deluded into thinking he was still acting in the best interest of the church. You may have believed he was cynically playing the good cop in the “good cop,bad cop” routine in the torture scene, but have you ever considered that he actually believed what he said and only reluctantly came to the conclusion later that you had to die? Again, one need only look at the Inquisition for a real-life example, and there are many others. People can perform some pretty heinous acts thinking they’re acting in the best interest of those they’re performing them on.

In short, Dezlentyr’s motivation is summed up thus. He legitimately believed that what was in his best interest was also in the best interest of the Tyran church – and therefore everyone on Faerun. If he could be elected Grand Prelate, he would use his new authority to do all sort of good: kill all the orcs, clean out the bandits, etc. You name it. But he had to get elected first, and he knew his family secret would hinder that ambition, so any means he took to secure the election was ultimately in the public good. That didn’t mean he believed the player committed evil acts and therefore really deserved to die, but he did need them silenced. He wasn’t even sure the PC knew anything damaging – hence his continued questioning about what the player learned in Navatranaasu during the torture scene. However, after trying everything else, he eventually reluctantly concluded that it was best for the church and the world if the PC died, and so he had Eton Skye take care of it away from public view. If that all sounds like Dezlentyr was labouring under immense self-delusion, you’re right.

Ternias, even said that he had been in contact with a friend at Silverymoon about Jellica's letters
Okay but if that friend was a member of Waterdeep's clergy then Ternias should at least have known about the interdict and maybe have warned the player.

Why? Do you think every priest in backwoods Wisconsin knows about every decree issued by the Vatican? Not in my experience. On top of that, if there was a second Pope in Washington that claimed primacy over the US, would that same priest have even less reason to know about every decree issued by the Pope in Rome? That’s the situation the Tyran church is in on Faerun. Whatever national government you live under, I would bet big money that you are not aware of every law and decree passed, and that’s a government you live under and one that has authority over you. Do you really pay attention to the decrees of the government of neighboring countries too? What about in a world where communication isn’t instantaneous?

Finally, regarding the inflation argument, as I said I’m no economist and you obviously know more than I, but I do know medieval history quite well – specifically medieval English history, and I can guarantee you that there was a period of real sustained inflation from around 1050 to 1350 AD, and I’ve already given the example of the Spanish Empire in the 16th and 17th centuries. Since you don’t like Wikipedia, I could pull journal articles and text books that prove both periods of inflation, but I’m not going through all the work for a throw-away comment in a game text. Whatever mechanism you want to ascribe to it I’ll leave to you, but history has proven that economies based on precious metals can inflate. It’s simply undeniable.

[BlueSalamander]

Hi Tiberius209, I'm cool with all these explanations and I think your module is great. It's certainly a more complicated story that what it seems at first.

I don’t view scrying magic as being at the beck and call of everyone.

I was thinking something along the lines of the Wizard spell Legend Lore and other divination spells, that could be cast with Dezlentyr as the target. But it's true that I haven't seen any wizard in your module.

people have an amazing capacity for self delusion in the cause of self (even image) preservation.

So you're saying the Waterdeep clergy did the excommunication to preserve its image. Yes, if we have a more real-world approach, that makes sense. Especially if some of the heads of the Waterdeep clergy were neutral-aligned rather than good-aligned.

don't those organizations have a stake in seeing he isn't discredited too?

Okay but just out of curiosity what was the official reason given for excommunicating the village 200 years ago?

I'm sorry, but I don’t get this argument at all because, again, there are so many real-world examples that run counter.

Yes, you're right, I see that now. But I hope the Pope's people didn't capture all the priests from England it could get his hands on, and torture them from 1208 to 1213. Real-world excommunication is/was an exclusion from the official church, not a mandate to detain and torture. However, as you say, the inquisition did torture people.

he would use his new authority to do all sort of good: kill all the orcs, clean out the bandits, etc. You name it.

I guess Malar wouldn't have allowed that, though.

He wasn’t even sure the PC knew anything damaging – hence his continued questioning about what the player learned in Navatranaasu during the torture scene.

Yeah. I guess a good reason for torturing the PC would be to find out if anyone else could threaten Dezlentyr or plot against him.

Why? Do you think every priest in backwoods Wisconsin knows about every decree

No, it's just that for Dezlentyr to find out about the PC coming out of the village, there would need to be a link between the backwoods priest and the Waterdeep clergy. But that's not important.

history has proven that economies based on precious metals can inflate. It’s simply undeniable.

I do not deny that you can have some years of inflation even with gold coins. What I'm saying is that the cause of this inflation is usually not gold itself but war expenses and the diversion of production activity towards military activity. In England in the period from 1050 to 1350, how many wars were there and how did the gold content in English coins evolve? Those would be the crucial factors. Let's count some of the wars: Norman conquest 1066-1088, Crusade 1096-1099, Civil war 1135-1154, Crusade 1145-1149, Crusade 1189-1192, Civil war 1215-1217, Civil war 1264-1267, Crusade 1271-1272, Scottish indepedence war 1296-1328 and many more in 14th century. As a general rule I think it's fair to say that the use of gold guarantees deflation in most peacetime years, while banknotes guarantee inflation even in peacetime.