I think it’s kinda funny how woefully inept the harpers are

I’ll start this with a disclaimer that I don’t think this is a slight against the game and the story. I acknowledge that the writers were telling a story and it’s not meant to be over analyzed like this. I just find it fun to over analyze things that aren’t meant to be thought about in these kinds of ways. Also I’m not a military strategist or historian, this is largely just conjecture and some thoughts I had while playing this game way too many times.

The Harpers are written to be these guerrilla fighters with a legendary commander who’re in an impossible situation… but… like… they’re not. Like at all. The shadow curse seems like it’d be this incredible boon for the harpers due to the way it isolates moonrise and limits troop mobility. Sure moonrise itself is untouchable but the movement of absolutists is limited to the number of moonlanterns. That means to get soldiers and more importantly supplies into or out of the tower. It also means anything en route to moonrise will be bunched together to fit under one moonlantern, rendering them vulnerable to explosives, fire, smoke and poison gas. At best this means absolute soldiers will need to be stationed where the shadow meets the deep shadow, rendering them vulnerable to attacks from the shadow as well as having a much greater logistical cost due to the food requirements and the shadows causing constantly burning fires to consume twice as much fuel. Meanwhile the harpers have the blessings of seluna to both protect them at last light without the same fuel cost and allow small numbers of them to traverse the shadows without needing torchlight that would give away their position leaving them not only not needing to give away their position with firelight but also actively obscured by the shadow making ambushes easier.

The water is also shown to be threatened by the shadow curse both by the ship outside Baldur’s gate still having shadow clinging to it and the shadow cursed kua toa. This means for goods to arrive at moonrise they need to be well lit, possibly with a moonlantern or two as they approach the tower meaning resupplies would be rare and a lost ship would be costly. This also means an unlit harper boat or some well-placed mines could sink supply ships as they approached moonrise, starving out the inhabitants rendering them unable to fight and having to be withdrawn elsewhere. Meanwhile the harpers would find it much easier to transport goods with last light being on less cursed waters. Also the druids and rangers among them supplying goodberries could supplement their rations.

An assault on Last light wouldn’t be an easy either. Soldiers would need to make it through the shadow curse after being harassed by both harpers and the shadow and in already small numbers due to the logistical cost of moving the soldiers. Meanwhile the harpers are shown to be well enough stocked on weapons, armor, scrolls and explosives as shown by the quartermaster’s stock. Even if the absolute’s forces could somehow overrun last light the harpers would just need to find somewhere to wait out the shadow curse eating soldiers stationed at last light.

Then there’s Ketheric. Sure he’s formidable but he’s also just one guy. One guy who’s only weapon is a hammer. One guy who moves only as fast as a typical human. He may not be stopped but he can be slowed by harpers who are mostly rangers who could cast longstrider and entangle and alike to get away from him while wherever he’s not is getting its shit pushed in. He’d also be useless in defending ships from their hulls being damaged. At best he swims back to shore and at worst he’s trapped underwater under a sunken ship.

And what do the harpers do about all this? Absolutely nothing (as far as I know). They bumble around the dark and act surprised when attacked by the shadows either because they weren’t properly briefed or because they’re completely incompetent. They try to ambush a drider accompanied by soldiers but unlike the one fuckass goblin in the drider’s squad don’t have any bombs. Bombs we know they could’ve stocked up on from the quartermaster. No prepping with mines of longstrider or fog cloud or darkness or anything from the wizard at the ambush. Nope, just shoot some arrows at this guy who can solo us in 12 seconds. They don’t even keep anyone stationed outside of Isobel’s room nor do they have an escape plan from the oh so paranoid and experienced harper Jaheira.

I think it’s kinda amazing that even with all that the writers managed to set the tone and pacing well enough that you can go multiple playthroughs without noticing or thinking about this. But now that I’ve blighted the 3 people who read this far with this borderline infohazard I hope you too can laugh along at this dissonance