I have a lot of fond memories of Gemstone. Here are some I felt like sharing!
As I'm sure many know, there's a small underground ruin northwest of Wehnimer's Landing that's a low-level hunting area. It was one of my first exciting exploration moments as a new player, with some neat unique features like the trapped door that would have you fall in a pit or something if you didn't open it the right way. At one point there's some messaging carved into the wall that says "ENOTSMEG OT EMOCLEW". This is one of my earliest memories of just really loving this game.
This is a really hazy memory as it's an older one, but I remember someone taking me (along with a group, I think) up to the top of the colossus out behind the Abandoned Inn, and from up there, we could see an army approaching in the distance, or something like that. I never really got into the whole Bregandian War stuff, but I remember a lot of people dying in town, and all the talk about assassins in town killing people and that no one was safe, hiding away indoors, stuff like that. It was a wild time, and felt really exciting even if I had no idea what was actually going on.
See, part of the terror was that even saying the name of these, uh ... creatures? Beings? ... would bring their wrath upon you. I have a very vivid memory of Wehnimer's Landing under attack, and a bunch of us were hiding inside a building trying to get an idea of what was going on. One of the people with us said the word "Vishmii-" ... uh, I won't finish it, but he said the whole thing, and *POP* his head just friggin exploded. Instant death. It was gross and terrifying and amazing. My buddies and I never got particularly involved in things beyond that but man was it cool to just be there and experience the chaos that was unfolding around us.
Farn and Defij were actually featured in the Elanthian Journal over this one. I don't know if we had any particular reason in mind, but we were trying to steal food from the grocer in Wehnimer's Landing. I don't remember exactly what happened, but it was something like the grocer saying "Quick, call the constable!" and we ran. There was a whole series of scripts about us hearing shouts and the barking of dogs as we fled the scene, then the town, then started making our way to Solhaven when it seemed they weren't going to give up. They eventually did give up though, I think somewhere around Cairnfang Forest. We were later interviewed by Rharosch for the first edition of the Elanthian Journal. Click here to go to the GSwiki copy of that little news bit.
Levihathan was one of Farn's buddies, and he was also a smug and surly sorcerer. After a hunt, Farn begin working through the boxes we'd found. Presumably in an attempt to show Farn up, Levihathan cast the unlock spell at a box, which happened to be trapped and blew up in the sorcerer's face, killing him. I'm pretty sure Farn said something along the lines of "That's why you never try to magic boxes open in front of a fully-trained locksmith."
We were in a group hunting party and at one point encountered some thunder trolls. Rimalon, a wizard, cast Cone of Lightning. The lightning proceeded to bounce off all the thunder trolls and kill a bunch of our party members (I think Rimalon was among the dead). Farn was nimble enough to dodge the bouncing bolts, thankfully!