It is mentioned that Baldur's Gate is 10 days from the Emerald Grove. Even IF you go with the theory that every foot of the EA map is actually a mile, or something of that nature - which I have a hard time with because you can literally travel foot for foot (meter for meter) in Turn-Based Mode - even IF you go with that theory, there is still no reconciling that Halsin and Aradin and company were gone for over a month and a half just traveling to the goblin camp and then traveling back AFTER they got discovered and chased out.
It's just not executed well at all. For the first 200+ hours I'd played the game, I honestly thought that Halsin and Aradin and their group had left maybe, at most, a day or so prior to the game starting and that Kagha was just jumping all over seizing power for herself. "Well, Aradin's back without Halsin, so I guess I'm in charge now," was how I took it. And I thought a day or two was a stretch.
A month and a half? That's totally unrealistic without further explanation. That's why I came up with some sort of alternate story plot that I had to create for myself because the game doesn't really properly account for it. Even a journal or book or something that details the full story would be really nice.
I just worked up the following for my fan fic:
Aradin and Halsin and their group went to the goblin camp and they got there and saw that it was unexpectedly too full of goblins to just walk in through the main entrance. I chose this story arc because there seemed to be evidence that there were goblins in the area prior to them going to the camp, they just didn't think there'd be that many.
So, I developed the idea that they spent a bit of time just hunting for a way to get in. Then they finally found a secret way in, perhaps via a waterfall or something, but it was into an area of the temple you can't access in the game. It was in some sort of catacombs or lower levels beneath where Halsin was being imprisoned later, or something of that nature. Then they spent a month and a half hunting around down there searching for the Selune floor puzzle until, only a few hours before the nautiloid arrived, they were discovered. Brian, the dwarf, wandered too far up and ran into a goblin patrol, alerting the goblin camp that they were hiding down there. The goblins swarmed, and Aradin and his party had to fight their way out. They escaped and were chased all the way to Moonhaven where there was a final fight just outside the eastern entrance. That was where Halsin was captured and dragged back to the camp. Aradin and his surviving two party members continued on to the grove to escape, and the large raiding party split, some taking Halsin back while some continued on after Aradin and company.
That's the best I could come up with. I'll tell you, one of the reasons I created my fan fic was to try to make sense of the entire story, and it was REALLY REALLY hard. It took a LOT to try to piece it together to make sense. I had to do a LOT of stretching.
