Auren Aseph NPC Mod for BG2: ToB, BGT, BGII:EE, or EET

A Gibberlings Three Mod
Authors: theacefes
On the web: Home page and discussion forum

Version 11
Languages:English, French, German, Russian
Platforms: Windows, Mac OS X, Linux
GitHub: Gibberlings3/AurenAseph

One of the things that makes BG2 so enjoyable are the NPCs in your party, and how their background and your character's relationship with them add so much more depth to your own storyline as well as your gaming experience. This mod will add Auren, a joinable NPC.

BG2 is rated T for Teen. This mod contains language considered to be PG-13 material. It also contains a female/female romance which is considered to be PG material. Please do not play this mod if this type of content offends you.

This mod is designed to work with all Baldur's Gate II games (Baldur's Gate II: Shadows of Amn with or without the Throne of Bhaal expansion pack, BGT, Baldur's Gate II: Enhanced Edition, EET). There are currently no known incompatibilities.

Please note that versions prior to v3 will need to be completely uninstalled prior to installing v3 or later. We apologize for the inconvenience. This mod contains content for both SoA and ToB, however, ToB is not required to install Auren.

If you should encounter any bugs, please report them to the authors at the Auren Aseph forum. In addition, Auren Aseph is available on GitHub, so fixes and changes can be submitted by the community.

Enhanced Editions Note
The Enhanced Editions are actively supported games. Please note that every patch update will wipe your current mod setup! If in the middle of a modded game you might want to delay the patch update (if possible) as even after reinstalling the mods, you might not be able to continue with your old savegames. Alternatively, copy the whole game's folder into a new one that can be modded and will stay untouched by game patches. For BG2:EE it is important that you install the mod to the language version you are playing the game in. Otherwise, the dialogues of the mod will not show but give error messages.

Windows
Auren Aseph for Windows is distributed as a self-extracting archive and includes a WeiDU installer. To install, simply double-click the archive and follow the instructions on screen.

Alternatively, the files can be extracted into your game directory using 7zip or WinRAR. When properly extracted, your game directory will contain setup-aurenaseph.exe and the folder aurenaseph. To install, double-click setup-aurenaseph.exe and follow the instructions on screen.

You can run setup-aurenaseph.exe in your game folder to reinstall, uninstall or otherwise change components.

Mac OS X
Auren Aseph for Mac OS X is distributed as a compressed tarball and includes a WeiDU installer.

First, extract the files from the tarball into your game directory. When properly extracted, your game directory will contain setup-aurenaseph, setup-aurenaseph.command, and the folderaurenaseph. To install, double-click setup-aurenaseph.command and follow the instructions on screen.

You can run setup-aurenaseph.command in your game folder to reinstall, uninstall or otherwise change components.

Linux
Auren Aseph for Linux is distributed as a compressed tarball and does not include a WeiDU installer.

Extract the contents of the mod to the folder of the game you wish to modify.

Download the latest version of WeiDU for Linux from WeiDU.org and copy WeiDU and WeInstall to /usr/bin. Following that, open a terminal, cd to your game installation directory, run tolower and answer Y to both queries. You can avoid running the second option (linux.ini) if you've already ran it once in the same directory. To save time, the archive is already tolowered, so there's no need to run the first option (lowercasing file names) either if you've extracted only this mod since the last time you lowercased file names. If you're unsure, running tolower and choosing both options is the safe bet.

To install, run WeInstall aurenaseph in your game folder. Then run wine BGMain.exe and start playing.

Note for Complete Uninstallation
In addition to the methods above for removing individual components, you can completely uninstall the mod using setup-aurenaseph --uninstall at the command line to remove all components without wading through prompts. .

Auren Aseph is a young and eager fighter from Beregost. She was born to a middle class merchant and his wife, and grew up a headstrong girl. Her father would tell her stories of adventurers he'd run into while on his caravan routes, and Auren became more and more interested at the thought of adventuring as she got older. She'd spend hours every week at the famous blacksmith Thunderhammer's shop, staring at all of the many types of weapons and armor, both magical and non-magical. Her desire to explore the world and independent nature was quickly noticed when she was thirteen, when the leader of a group of adventurers passing through town saw her eavesdropping on their conversations at Feldpost's Inn.

The adventurers took an interest in Auren and stayed in Beregost for a few months. The leader encouraged Auren to learn the ways of swordplay, and she begged him to teach her all he knew. By the age of fourteen, Auren had joined the group and accompanied them on their travels. She saw much of Faerun as they did good deeds for other towns, explored caves and dungeons, and acquired many types of treasure. At the start of her twentieth year, a series of tragedies occured that convinced Auren to retire from the world of adventuring. She went to Nashkel, hoping to build herself a new life and settle down with the large amount of gold she had saved up over the years of traveling. She soon heard about the iron crisis and began to notice it herself when she saw her old daggers and sword deteriorating. Auren usually fought with two swords, one which she had picked up in a dungeon during her travels, and another that she had bought in Beregost from Thunderhammer, which appeared to be an ordinary sword, but for some reason showed no signs of deterioration. She was tempted to look into the iron crisis herself, when she realized the pain that adventuring had brought her, so she went about her business and ignored it.

Not too long after she heard about the iron crisis, the news came that a group of adventurers, lead by a Child of Bhaal, had stopped the force behind the iron crisis and had saved the Sword Coast. Realizing that she could no longer ignore the call of adventuring, Auren packed her things and made her way to the south, to Athkatla, to find a group of good-hearted adventurers like herself that would be willing to let her fight alongside them. She arrived in Athkatla and made her way to the slums, to the Copper Coronet, where she was sure she was bound to run into *someone* interesting...

Biography

When you ask her about her past, AUREN is silent before explaining that she was born in Beregost, not far from your own home. The only daughter of a middle class merchant and his wife, Auren threw herself into the art of swordplay when she was only fourteen. She is barely twenty years old now, but you can somehow tell from the way she carries herself that she is an experienced fighter and has seen much of Faerun. You wonder exactly where she learned how to fight so well and why she has traveled so much at such a young age.

theacefes created this mod. You can find out more about Auren by visiting the Auren forum or her project page. Visit the Gibberlings Three Forums for information on this and any other Gibberlings Three mods on which we may be working.

Special thanks to:

• CamDawg and the rest of the Gibberlings for hosting this mod
• The members of the Pocket Plane Group: Thanks for all your help and tutorials!!
• The Chosen of Mystra team for hosting this mod when it was in its initial release stage.
• Feuille (my 100% Certified Personal Genius), Miss Sakaki, Grim Squeaker, and Zyraen for putting up with all my silly questions and assistance with coding.
• H.Hiis for originally giving me webspace for Auren's soundtrack to be uploaded onto.
• K'aeloree/Liam for fixing Auren, Valinor, and Arianna's CRE and also for making Auren's sword.
• K. Lou of Combs for assisting with the coding of Auren's conversations with the Bioware NPCs.
• The Wizard for hosting Auren at iegmc.org
• Icelus for providing me with sarcastic and insulting remarks to keep me going.
• All of Auren's wonderful beta testers who found and helped squish Auren's bugs.
• Anyone and everyone who visited Auren's forum: your input and encouragement helped me get this thing done!

Writing and coding: theacefes

Writing for Haer'Dalis - Tameon the Dragoon

Writing for Anomen - Feuille

Writing for Korgan, Minsc, and Viconia - K'aeloree/Liam

Writing for Aerie and Mazzy ToB - Noctalys

Auren's original  portrait is done by Karsten Dahl and is ©2003 KarWal Entertainment.  Auren's first alternate portrait is done by Error Engine and is ©2004.  Auren's second alternate portrait is from the original Neverwinter Nights game.

Original Auren Beta Testers:

• AEnemia
• Dave "Grim Squeaker" Bradshaw
• H. Hiis
• George "Kain" Carriglio
• Bert "Lord Ernie" Van Hertum
• Revan's Shadow
• rossbach451
• SP101
• Rafal "Undertaker" Krajnik
• K. Lou of Combs

Cast:

• Auren Aseph: Feuille
• Valinor: Kain
• Arianna: Revan's Shadow

Soundtrack: theacefes - You can download the soundtrack at the Auren Aseph forum

For information on how to make your own NPC for BG2, visit my tutorial!

Tools Used in Creation

• WeiDU by Wes Weimer, the bigg, and Wisp
• Near Infinity by Jon Olav Hauglid, FredSRichardson, and argent77
• Shadowkeeper by Mud-Master
• Infinity Explorer by Dmitry Jemerov
• Notepad by Microsoft
• ConTEXT Text Editor by Eden Kirin

THIS MOD IS THE SOLE PROPERTY OF THE AUTHOR AND MAY NOT BE SOLD OR REDISTRIBUTED IN ANY FORM WITHOUT THE CONSENT OF THE AUTHOR.  THIS MOD IS NOT AFFILIATED WITH BIOWARE, BLACK ISLE, OR INTERPLAY.   AUREN ASEPH IS ©2007-present, theacefes.

Version 11 - August 03, 2020

• Fixed install error for EET
• Added aurenaseph.ini for support of ALIEN's Project Infinity
• Updated links in readme

Version 10 - August 26, 2018

• Compatibility updates for EET

Version 9 - October 2, 2013

• Fixed bug where new-fangled audio extraction was failing on non-EE games

Version 8 - September 30, 2013

• Updated for BGII:EE compatibility
• Added Russian translation by Caroline
• Added French translation by Ixion
• Typo corrections
• Updated to WeiDU v232

Version 7.2- May 7, 2010

• Mod traified and translated into German by Gerri
• Updated to WeiDU v217

Version 7.1- May 2, 2010

• Corrected Mac OSX audio installation scripts

Version 7- April 30, 2010

• Included Mac OSX audio installation scripts
• Updated to WeiDU v216

Version 6.2- July 20, 2008

• Various bug fixes, including more hostile Auren and unlinked states.
• Some more typos!

Version 6.1 - January 16, 2008

• Various bug fixes, including a stutter bug and hostile Auren

Version 6 - October 8, 2007

• Added ToB content
• Composed new song for ToB portion
• Even more typographical error fixing
• Various bug fixes

Version 5 - July 18, 2007

• Corrected an interjection that caused Auren to turn hostile in the Copper Coronet
• Composed all new music for the mod
• More typographical error fixing

Version 4 - September 18, 2006

• Added new alternate Auren portrait.
• Fixed interjection coding.
• Added new content in Auren/PC dialogues.
• Fixed bug in Valinor/Arianna encounter.
• Added string fixer.
• Added force-talk option AKA "friendship flirts".
• Fixed various typographical errors.
• Fixed moral break and recovery on Auren's CRE.
• Area script appends are now added to the bottom of area scripts rather than the top to play nicely with other mods
• Fixed bug with script append for the High Merchant's Estate in Trademeet

Version 3 - April 19, 2006

• Changed Auren's portrait.  Auren also has her original portrait as an alternate choice.
• Changed the Tp2 and Exe file names.
• Throne of Bhaal is no longer required.
• Fixed broken trigger in Anomen-Auren banter.

Version 2

• Fixed Auren-NPC talk stutter bugs and repeats.
• Fixed error in scripting with Minsc's talk in the sewers.

Version 1

• Initial release