I want to open this thread to discuss the various options to dispose of this annoying character after she tries to press you into service and extort her "tax". The obvious issue here is that starting hostilities in Verbobonc may screw up the game, unless you are evil and butcher everyone on sight anyway. What worked well for me once is to bring a charmed bugbear, have her start hostilities by failing a pickpocket attempt, not participate in the fight, and hightail it out of the building as soon as the bugbear had brought her down. Everyone outside seemed ok with that, and the tax was gone. Now there were several components to this, and I would like to understand better which ones are important to avoid the negative reputation. We have - Bethany starts the fight - no party member attacks or wounds a Verbobonc citizen - the bugbear is the only one who does damage Do I need all of these? Anyway, currently I tried something else: dominate her and take her to a random encounter where she bites it, then hide in the moathouse tower until her body has suitably decomposed. I am not sure whether this fully worked - when I left the constabulary, a woman started a fight (but then went into hiding). But then I walked past the guards at the city hall and they remained peaceful. So we'll see. What did not work is charm instead of dominate. The shorter duration aside, the fact that you cannot control her is problematic, for example, she will often kill the woman outside the constabulary before she can hide and may actually win basic random encounters by herself. But the biggest issue is that when she gets hurt during a random encounter, she starts her original annoying dialog ("comply/refuse/comply/refuse ...", argh. Where is the renegade option to interrupt her and put a bolt between her eyes?), drinks a Heal potion she does not even have, gives you the Hickory Branch assignment all over again, and disappears. This is certainly a bug. Please share your methods and insights.
What worked for me was to press the "C" key during the conversation when she gives you the original quest. It's been a while, but I doin't recall any negative consequences from taking that tack.
Maybe she would have if she lasted more than one round. By that point, she was taking 15-20 highly enchanted arrows and a melee attack from a two-handed weapon regardless of where she was standing.
Starting an altercation in the constabulary apparently has the drawback that the guys in there will be ticked off for the rest of the game. I'm trying to turn in Darlia, but these people won't listen to reason.
