Ye gods.

We do Shar's Gauntlet and Shadders lets Nightsong live. After three years of cutscenes and verbal diarrhoea Nightsong finally flies off to fettle Thorm. We take the portal which drops us off outside the mausoleum. I was planning on looting Balthazar's place but I'd lost the will to live by this stage and decided to go to the inn to sell some gear as all the Act 1 locations have gone. Why? What has that got to do with completing the gauntlet or freeing Nightsong? We also get at least three different dialogues with Shadders about her breaking with Shar. In one of them she was blathering about pain as if she had been whisked off somewhere and had just returned to us.
We arrive at the inn to be told by Isobel that everyone has left for an assault on Moonrise and that Halsin is waiting for us by the lake (which I knew). This is a reprise of when you first arrive at the inn and Jaheira telling us that Isobel is the person to talk to and you walk right into the Marcus fight.
Luckily Dammon is still there and he has enough money to buy my heavier stuff.
We find Halsin and he gives a masterclass in stating the bleedin' obvious about the Nightsong being free and an assault on Moonlight. Then we get a saga about him going through a portal and drama, drama, going in alone, drama, drama, hold it open, drama, drama.

We are nearly out of spells but at full health. So after yet another cutscene which seemed to last an eternity Halsin goes through the portal and the enemy starts to beam in. I've got a bunch of harpers shooting at the portal, a bunch of shadows coming at my party, plus all sorts of other things moving towards the spot.
We can kill most of this stuff easily enough but we do not have any AoE damage and even with everyone having two attacks per turn there are just too many of them. More and more are coming in including a bunch of gith who do take a bit of putting down. Meanwhile the harper archers are still hitting the portal and now there are melee enemies at the portal. No sign of Halsin, my party is in good shape but the portal is on its last legs. Then its gone and a message about Halsin dead and the curse will never be lifted.

So once again what I was planning to do has gone out the window and I have to do what Larian want. Tomorrow I'll probably roll back to outside the mausoleum and avoid the inn completely. There again I may just forget about the game altogether - I really don't like it.
Total War Pharoah is due out around October so I could keep my finger crossed until then.