Game 530: Swords and Serpents (1990)

"Dear graphics department: Not that kind of serpent."

        

Swords and Serpents

United States

Interplay (developer); Acclaim (publisher)

Released 1990 for NES

Date Started: 8 October 2024

    

Commenters have been on me to try this one for years. It is a rare console game, and even rarer NES game, from a western developer. It clearly draws upon Interplay's experience with The Bard's Tale and other games of its ilk; indeed, its original lead designer, Paul O'Connor, also led the creation of Dragon Wars the same year. It benefited from slick marketing, which included cover art by Boris Vallejo and a rare (for the genre) television commercial. [Ed. To clarify, I didn't play it because comments have been on me for years. It was the product of a random roll.]

       

Given all of this, the game is surprisingly lame. I've taken plenty of shots at console games of the era, but I know that the platform was capable of better than this dumbed-down Bard's Tale in which every mechanic is more limited than any multi-character CRPG from five or six years earlier. I think I might have enjoyed the unrelated 1982 Intellivision game more. Nonetheless, I had a little fun with it, particularly when I started mapping. I'm never completely dissatisfied when I'm mapping. 

      

The party fights what I guess is a zombie.

      

The developers wasted no time on the story. Four adventurers have entered a dungeon on a quest to find and kill a serpent who has made "the crops go bad, the milk turn sour, and the earth heave with foul indignation." One wonders if the serpent isn't being scapegoated here, as I don't remember any setting that gives dragons the power to disease crops or sour milk. The default party--the one described in the manual--includes one warrior (Ajax), a thief (Mask), and two magicians (Iago and Erin). You can create your own, rolling for strength, intelligence, and agility on a scale of 2-14. I decided to go with a less magical party and played two warriors, a thief, and a magician. A few hours into it, and I think I'm going to regret not having two magicians.

    

An NPC--whose survival in this dungeon is unexplained--gives us the main quest.

     

I should mention that the game supports campaigns with two or four players--two with both game controllers and four with a four-player adapter. One player has to be designated the "lead"; he can move the entire party while the others can just control their character actions and inventories. This system strikes me as so pointless and annoying in a blobber that I can't imagine that anyone ever did it.

       

Rolling a new character.

     

The game begins in the top level of a dungeon of what I guess is 16 levels, since the blank maps provided in the manual go up to 16. Each level is 16 x 16 squares. In the tradition of other gridded blobbers, the dungeon is peppered with messages and encounters, including plenty of battles. The graphics offer only the most basic textures, and you don't see anything in the environment. The most banal, repetitive tune plays on an endless loop, and the game offers no ability to turn it off. I had to mute sound entirely.

    

Enemies respawn continually, with a chance of attack every time you move or turn. The game cycles through your characters in order of their appearance on the screen, and if you just mash the "A" button, you'll execute a default attack and get the battle over quickly. Health meters for the enemies monitor your progress. You theoretically can target the enemy's head or legs by holding the up or down directional buttons while hitting "A." Maybe this becomes important later, but I didn't notice any difference in the zombies, spiders, guards, and bats that I encountered on Level 1.

 

I imagine this is some kind of ogre.

     

Mages can naturally cast spells by hitting the "B" button during their turn. They start with only "Flash Fire" and "Heal," but I found "Sting" fairly early on Level 1. ("The ways of magic are scattered through the maze," a message offers.) The manual indicates that the game offers 16 possible spells, and that I'll eventually find mass-damage spells like "Phalanx" and "Thunder." For now, "Flash Fire" and "Sting" don't seem to do much more than physical attacks, so I've been saving my points for "Heal."

    

Late in the session, Kirk goes to cast a spell.

     

Despite the need to cast an occasional spell, I found combat exceedingly boring even holding down the TAB key in Nestopia to speed it up. If I weren't mapping at the same time, I'm not sure I'd put up with the relentless repetitiveness of this one.

    

Slain enemies reward the party with gold and experience and occasionally an item. The party gains experience and levels as a unit rather than as individual characters. Gold can be spent at an armory on Level 1. I assume that armories are found on other levels, but I'm not sure. I mostly used the armory to sell things, but it offers Swords +2 worth grinding for.

     

Leveling up.

       

Levels 1, 5, and 10 (according to a message) also offer temples, which heal you for free. These are the only places to raise dead characters. I imagine they're good places to grind, since you can just mash "A" with abandon and then turn around and get healed. I got the party up to Level 4 doing this, while earning enough money to buy one of those +2 swords.

        

My primary fighter's equipment late in this session.

       

On Level 1, I learned that to slay the dragon, I would need to collect seven "ruby treasures" which had belonged to a previous adventurer. One of them is apparently a ruby sword, which lies "at the point of the sword." An NPC in a 1 x 1 room asked for the "black crystal," but I never found it on the level, so I guess I'll be coming back here later.

     

Rude!

     

The levels all have names, which you can check by going to the party status option. Level 1 is called "Destiny Awaits." Level 2's name is "Who's Zoomin' Who?," which refers to the first appearance of "zoom tubes," or fast transports from one level to another. A couple of early messages explained how they work. Late in the level, you step into one (after a couple of messages of warning), which takes you back up to Level 1, in a spot near the store and healer. The tube is only two steps away from the stairs to Level 3 in terms of coordinates, but it's 60 steps given the wall patterns. I assume that later, when I'm trying to transition levels quickly, I'll be expected to use the mage's "Passwall" spell.

        

There was nothing wrong when they were just "teleporters."

      

The return trip to Level 1 was welcome, as I needed to heal, and I had a lot of items to sell. When I was done, I had enough money for a second +2 sword. I also found various armor upgrades during my explorations--helms, shields, scale mail, and such. Watching your armor class slowly increase is an experience that never really gets old in any game.

    

Nintendo was capable of the "+" symbol, correct?

    

The northwest section of Level 2 was taken up with a maze of 1 x 1 rooms. I wish developers wouldn't do this. They offer no navigational challenge, yet they're a pain in the neck to map. The only things to find in the maze were a +1 sword and the "Shield" spell, which increases armor class by 1. It can be cast out of combat, which is useful, but it doesn't last all that long.

     

An oddly prophetic name.

      

Level 2 had a 2 x 2 area that I couldn't enter plus a door in the southeast corner locked with a gold key. This meant, as with the black crystal (and a 1 x 1 area) on Level 1, I'd have to come back at some point. I'm glad I'm mapping.

      

My map of Level 2.

     

Level 2 had the same spiders, bats, guards, and zombies as Level 1, though they seemed harder. It also had some warty-faced thing that was probably meant to be an ogre. There were four of these guarding the way to Level 3 in a fixed encounter, and it took me a couple of tries to beat them. The party rose to character Level 5 before we took the stairs down.

Level 3 ("The Threshold") began with a tough combat against a new enemy--some kind of sorcerer, I guess--which put us at character Level 6. A corridor brought us to a central room with four doors, but only the southwest one was unlocked. Each door led to a different quadrant, and the shtick of the level was that we needed to trip a switch in each section to unlock the door to the next one. (If we couldn't figure it out, an NPC helpfully offered, "Locked doors have remote triggers.") The southwest quadrant had a tube back to Level 1 and a horseshoe.

       

My map of Level 3.

      

The northwest section had a little maze and the "Deadeye" spell, which improves accuracy for one character in one battle. It hardly seems worth it. The southeast quadrant offered the laziest of all gridded dungeon designs: a spiral. I suppose in this case it served a purpose, as it ended in a blank wall, where 99% of players were bound to test for secret doors. If you hadn't already figured out how secret doors work, this section would teach you. As if to drive it home, an NPC on the other side says, "Ah . . . that was a secret door."

       

That David played and it pleased the Lord?

       

The northeast quadrant was full of traps, but a message in the southwest had warned, "To avoid the traps to the northwest [sic], stay near the walls." In addition to the stairs leading down to Level 4, the quadrant also held a fountain where mages could restore spell points and (behind a secret door) a gold key. I used it back on Level 2 and found the Ruby Glasses. 

     

The game makes it sound like Chet is doing something wrong.

        

The only new enemy I noticed on the level was some kind of skeletal thing. It seems too early for liches, but I don't know what else is skeletal and floats. As with Level 2, the bats, spiders, guards, and zombies seemed to hit extra hard.

     

I asked ChatGPT, "What is a good punchline to the riddle, 'What is skeletal and floats?'" It came up with: "A buoy-t." I don't know what it means, but that's what I'm calling this enemy from now on.

     

Let's talk about saving. As I usually do, I've tried to adhere to the game's intended difficulty by walking all the way back to the temple when a character dies, and by not otherwise using save states to undo bad luck or bad choices. I am not, however, adhering to the game's intended process for loading and reloading when I suffer a full-party death or end a session. Despite appearing three years after Zelda had no trouble with saving, Swords requires you to write down a 10- or 12-character code for each character, plus another 14-character code for the game itself. Remember, you have to re-enter all these codes by arrowing around an on-screen keyboard with the directional pad. "Reloading" must have taken half an hour. Even then, the code doesn't save the experience points you've earned towards the next character level, nor the auto maps, nor the exact dungeon level the party was on. Instead, when you reload, you return to the closest temple. Screw that.

    

I'm curious how players who encountered this game on the NES felt about it. I'm conscious these days that I look for a different experience with console RPGs than computer RPGs, and I'm not sure that paper maps and external notes are part of that experience. And surely the music lovers turned the music off for this one, right?

   

Time so far: 5 hours

Betrayal at Krondor: Para Bellum

 

Prince Arutha strategizes to counter the Moredhel threat.

 

This is the first game I've played with "Chapters." It apparently isn't the first in the RPG genre, although unless some console game did it first, it seems to be the first with a western release. In any event, I can't imagine that the authors of Krondor played Dragon Slayer: The Legend of Heroes in Japanese, so I suspect that to them it was an original idea: An RPG with a story like a novel. It fits well with the thematic basis of the game.

   

I always have a viscerally negative reaction to "chapters" even though at least one of my favorite games, Baldur's Gate, uses them. I don't like gameplay that is overly structured: I prefer open worlds and nonlinear plots. I am aware that many games without chapters still have too much structure and linear plots, and I am aware that many games with chapters actually offer a lot of nonlinearity and player agency--Baldur's Gate again comes to mind--but I still feel like a "chapter" approach signals from the outset that the player's choices are going to be limited.

      

Arutha is a bit rude as the next chapter begins.

     

Chapter 1 of Betrayal at Krondor ends with the party's arrival at the titular capital, and the presentation of the Moredhel fugitive, Gorath, to Prince Arutha. The archmage Pug saves Gorath from an assassin posing as a palace guard. Chapter 2 ("Shadow of the Nighthawks") begins on the heels of this event. The opening narration is told from the perspective of Gorath, who is trying to warn Prince Arutha of the forthcoming Moredhel invasion. Pug's daughter, Gamina, and the Tsurani great one Makala (I believe an original character to the game) read his thoughts to detect any hints of treachery. Arutha bristles at Gorath's warnings and questions why Gorath would betray his own people; Gorath replies that as great a threat as Delekhan (the Moredhel general) is to the Kingdom of the Isles, his rule is even worse for the Moredhel.

     

I suppose that's better than vice versa.

      

Arthura complains that he doesn't know where to send his troops in preparation for the invasion ("Highcastle? Ironpass? Northwarden?"); Gorath replies that he doesn't know, either, but he thinks he can learn Delekhan's plans by intercepting messages sent between the Nighthawks--an assassins' guild that Delekhan is paying to spy for him--and Delekhan. "The messengers [are] always sent to a rendezvous in Romney," Gorath explains, and asks for leave to investigate the city. Arutha grudgingly accedes to Gorath's plans but insists that Seigneur James accompany him ("I know you might have preferred Locklear's company, but he has business elsewhere").

    

As Gorath leaves with Makala and Gamina to take a tour of Krondor, Pug and Arutha discuss strategy. Arutha thinks Highcastle is the most likely target, as it is closer to Delekhan's capital at Sar-Sargoth. Arutha begins drawing up plans to call extra soldiers from other garrisons. 

   

A new quest.

      

After that, I can finally start moving around. I begin with only James and Gorath--no third member--in the palace of Krondor, with Pug's wife Katala. She explains that no one important is around. James is able to enter Locklear's apartments, where we find all of the gold and Locklear's inventory left over from Chapter 1. I was worried we wouldn't be able to carry it forward. I gave Jimmy a few items related to lockpicking, torches, potions, and the picks themselves.

   

I try to have the pair exit the palace the normal way, but James insists that Delekhan might have spies, and that exiting via the sewers (the way we came) is the more strategic choice. Hence, we soon found ourselves back in there. I headed for the exit, finding no new encounters on the way. I should note that Christopher Theofilos's advice to fiddle with the step size and turn size did the trick, and movement was a lot faster and more intuitive, although I still haven't mastered the trick of not getting caught up on corners. You can't cut your turns closely in this game. You have to wait until the adjacent passage is a full 90 degrees to your left or right before you rotate and move forward. There's also no moving and turning at the same time; hitting either of the side arrows stops all forward momentum.

    

Owyn meets up with us as we reach the exit, having discerned through various palace clues that we were heading out on a secret mission. James and Gorath try to convince him that the journey will be too dangerous, but Owyn insists on coming along. 

       

I'm sure that dead animal on your head won't arouse any suspicion.

      

We reach the exit and are able to offload some excess gear in a shop outside the palace gates, bringing our financial total to 651 sovereigns, 9 royals. I briefly ponder whether to save it or to blow it all on either a Keshian Tapir (a weapon) or a suit of Euliliko Armor. I decide to keep it for now but to otherwise not be stingy with spending money on this leg of the adventure.

   

On the road, I take stock of James in comparison to Locklear. He's a little weaker, but faster. His "Melee Accuracy" statistic is 22% worse, but his "Lockpicking" is 32% better and his "Stealth" is 23% better. Other statistics are within 10%. All his equipment is at 100%. I'm sure he'll be fine, but as you might imagine, I don't love that the player has no choice in his characters. James is also more capital-c Canonical than Locklear, limiting any sense of making the character your own. 

     

He's also about 20 years older than in the books.

   

Outside, we're on the same map as in Chapter 1. I don't know if there are new encounters in the old places or if the chapter seeded the areas with new ones. Romney isn't terribly far away to the northeast, I could take one of two paths there, or I could go practically all the way around the world to get there. Part of me wonders what would happen if I went all the way to Sar-Sargoth and tried to find Delekhan right now.

     

Romney is further to the right than I remember.

    

Mindful that we're being stalked by assassins, I adopt the best approach I know to confound someone who is trying to predict your moves: randomization. The first intersection offers three paths. I roll the dice and end up on the southernmost path heading east.

     

I'm just doing what the coin says.

      

As before, I don't stick to the road but rather crisscross it, moving between the maps' edges and around mountains, looking for treasures or random encounters. The first place we come to is a village called Darkmoor. The name sounds familiar; sure enough, it's a dungeon in Might and Magic VI; it also appears in Darkmoor Hold (1985), a game I have absolutely no memory of playing or writing about. I hope that's just a matter of too many RPGs and not that I'm getting old. Anyway, in the town we find:

   

• A closed and locked barn where no one will answer our knocks.

• Three abandoned houses; one with 47 sovereigns and a light crossbow; one with three lockpicks and a shovel; one with a peasant's key.

• A shop offering rations, hammers, ropes, shovels, and torches. I buy a couple of torches.

        

The other items have been plentiful so far.

      

• An inn. Nobody wants to talk. We buy rations and ale.

• A house occupied by a woman named Caroline who tells us that the weird woman who lives down the road only comes out at night.

• A house at which a voice croaks to come back when it's dark, "and I will tell you about the Rusalki." I do as she instructs and meet an old woman who tells me a cryptic story about "innocence lost" and "spring blossoms robbed of carnal bliss." She concludes with: "Find the Magic Touch or you too may feel her icy kiss." I wouldn't be able to piece together her story except I've had some experience with Rusalki. 

         

I wonder if this will pay off later. I don't see any water nearby.

    

We wander into a trap on the way out of town, this one not accompanied by a battle. It's more elaborate than any trap I faced in Chapter 1, with six staves poking out of the ground, a rotating crystal, and what looks like another crystal on its side. The goal is always for at least one character to get to the far side of the zone.

     

Working my way through the trap.

          

I know from experience that walking between two staves will result in the character getting zapped. I think the staves are color-coded with the balls on top, but I can't discern the difference between most of the colors. I just have to guess. With some experimentation, I find that you can push the standing, rotating crystals in the direction opposite that from which you approach them. The crystal on its side shoots a fireball at anyone who enters its path, but these can be blocked with the crystals that you can push. With these rules understood, this particular trap becomes easy: push the standing crystal in front of the horizontal crystal and walk to the other side. I assume that the traps will get more complicated as the game progresses.

    

Our next stop is the Temple of Ruthia, where we unlock another teleporter. The high priestess won't see us. We fight our first battle of the chapter a few clicks along from the temple--with five Nighthawks! I whiff most of my attacks and get slaughtered. I hate how enemies crowd Owyn, leaving him nowhere to back off and cast spells. 

     

Five Nighthawks prepare to massacre us.

       

I don't know if Nighthawks are never visible in the environment or if this is just an inescapable ambush, but on a reload, I can't identify them before they attack. Two more attempts end the same way. Finally, I'm able to avoid the battle completely by skirting around to the south, but I don't like the solution. Surely, I'm supposed to be able to defeat these enemies. I just don't see how. I don't really have any tactics except for spells, and the ambush makes it impossible for Owyn to ever be in a position to cast any. What am I missing? I guess I should have bought that better sword.

   

A cemetery (again, Owyn wants to dig up every grave) precedes a southern spur, which we take, to the city of Malac's Cross. It's a bustling menu city with:

    

• A barrel with a rope.

• A hall where someone demands a "lecture ticket," which we don't have. 

    

I don't believe we ever learn who Malac is.

    

• An inn where we've apparently just missed an epic chess match, described for us in excruciating detail by the innkeeper, Ivan Skaald. James impresses him with his knowledge of the game ("the Prince likes to play"). The NPC offers more keyword options than any in the game so far. Several have to do with chess moves, and the innkeeper offers to play with emeralds for a bet, but we don't have any. He also tells us of a suspicious band of "tax collectors" demanding ridiculous amounts of money in Lyton. An old woman named Petrumh mistakes James for someone named Lysle, insisting that he's James's twin brother. The innkeeper agrees that James looks like Lysle, and he says the man can probably be found in Darkmoor.

      

I assume that at some point, I'll meet an NPC with whom I have 16 keyword options.

     

• An armory.

• The Abbey of Ishap. Again, we unlock a teleporter. Abbot Graves talks to us a bit about the program of study that the abbey offers, including a current lecture on tactics delivered by Guy du Bas-Tyra, who is something of an antagonist during the first two Riftwar books but redeems himself at the Battle of Sethanon. For 20 sovereigns, Graves gives us the lecture ticket we need to enter the hall. 

       

Graves tries to enroll Owyn.

      

• Guy gives his lecture, focusing on battles mentioned in the books. When he sees James with a Moredhel, he knows something odd is afoot, so we're forced to tell him the truth. "The party's abilities have increased," the game says as we leave town, indicating that our "Assessment" skills increased by a few percentage points.

    

I realize I haven't been using "Assessment" in combat, so I return to the Nighthawks and give it a try. It doesn't help and I get slaughtered again.

     

Even one Nighthawk is stronger than anyone in my party.

        

I have to wrap up here, a bit early, as I didn't have much time to play today. Maybe it's time to pick up the pace for the next entry. What do you think--keep going with this level of detail or start eliding more in the name of making quicker progress?

    

Time so far: 15 hours

Enchantasy: Quest Technically Completed

I just hope it's the right one.

       

This final session began in Keldar, where I took a ship to Hazlett and from there to Portsmith, stole a skiff, and rowed around the continent to Sonora. I used my pass to enter the Oasis Club, which turned out to be basically a regular tavern. As I entered, a patron named Sally warned me to show respect to an old man named Erasmus who's "always babbling about some legend."

      

Accessing an exclusive club.

    

As I suspected, the "legend" in question was that of Rotas, the Great Archer, who died in a sandstorm. His ghost is supposedly still around, guarding the Mystic Bow in a dungeon deep beneath the sand, near a mirage. "Go to it and invoke his name," he finished.

   

Pretty much every other NPC in the bar just commented on Erasmus, so we exited the town to find the mirage. We discovered it in a ring of rocks: a square that looked like water from a distance but disappeared as we got close. We stood in the square, invoked ROTAS, and found ourselves in a dungeon.

   

I'm not sure a real mirage would be surrounded by mountains like this.

    

Exploring, we found the ghost of Rotas, who asked us to bring him a golden bow from the southeast room. The room had a maze of corridors in which the wrong turn would dump us down to a level full of fire squares. It was impossible to get out of the level without taking some damage from the fire, and we had to find telegems to use in a teleporter. Since there was a limited supply of telegems, I just started saving and reloading if I fell down a pit. Through trial and error, we found a key that opened a door that led us to the golden bow. It turns out that there was a map through the area in a chest elsewhere in the dungeon, past two very hard battles with elite archers who always surprised us, but I didn't find that until later.

       

I found this after it was helpful.

       

We returned the golden bow to Rotas, who turned it into the Mystic Bow. Like the Mystic Sword, it has the maximum weapon rating of 25.  

       

Yes, I walked around a dungeon.

       

We returned to Keldar, rested, and then walked to the Royal Castle and made our way to the basement and its fields of fire. It turns out that the Flame Scroll is an infinite-use item that destroys one fire square at a time, so we could have saved ourselves a lot of hit points by using it in Rotas's dungeon. Slowly, we minced our way through the flame squares. 

         

Destroying the fire fields one by one.

       

The combats in the dungeon were the hardest I faced so far. Large groups of mages kept attacking, surprising us, and wiping us out in the first round with mass-damage spells. I had to reload frequently and had to retreat to Keldar four times, twice just to rest and heal, once to buy a telegem because the dungeon had one of those damned portals, and once for some dynamite to blast open a wall.

       

A typical dungeon battle.

       

In the middle of our explorations, RICH9000, our robot friend from the alien dungeon, suddenly appeared and alerted us to a destructible wall. I think we could have found it on our own, but it was still nice of him. Behind the weak wall was the king's tiara. I never found the magic sling that was supposed to be hidden in the dungeon despite casting "See Secret" on just about every wall.

       

This game's version of the Adoring Fan.

       

When I returned the tiara to Uriah, the king's advisor, he gave me a mage staff. I never got to see how it performed against other staves because the game crashed as I exited the dialogue. By this time in the game, it was constantly crashing, often when going into combat, often when changing between areas, sometimes in mid-stride. When I reloaded from the dungeon and tried to bring the tiara to Uriah again, the game seemed to think I had already given it to him, as it just had him say "thank you again for your help!" But the tiara was still in my inventory. I continued on, desperately hoping this hadn't caused an unwinnable condition.

       

If I need that staff, I'm screwed.

       

Moving on, I turned my attention next to Ransley Manor and the Magian Gem. Last session, I had spent a lot of time tracking down a piece of paper that gave a code: "YELLOW, BLUE, WHITE." I had written down: "Use the code to enter the locked room at Ransley Manor." I don't really know what I meant by that, since there's no place in Ransley Manor that offers the ability to use a letter code. The door I need to enter is simply locked. Yelling "YELLOW" outside the door didn't accomplish anything.

      

I imagine I looked like an idiot.

     

I went back to Trevor's house in Kadaar and realized in talking to him that I'd misunderstood some of the earlier dialogue. His father, Trevelyan, isn't in the house: he plays piano in the tavern downstairs. I visited the father and asked about his CHEST. He said he put it in storage at Griswold's, but he lost the claim ticket. At this point, I should have gone to Griswold's and just searched every chest (although I'm not sure that would have worked). Instead, I followed a very long quest chain--one of the many ways the game has of sending you on a long diversion--that started with Trevelyan's friend Somerton, who told me that his best friend, Kirk, has been missing since he went on an expedition for the Archaeological Society in Dalia.

      

Again the use of quotes instead of bold to annotate keywords creates some amusing dialogue.

       

In Dalia, the society told me that Kirk had gone on an expedition to a cave on Hesperios, but only Archaeological Society members have the password needed to enter. They forced me to join the Archaeological Society (this time, the membership director, Herbert, would speak with me), which involved going to a different cave, on an island in a lake in Meridion, and finding a dinosaur fossil. Kudos to this pseudo-medieval society for knowing what dinosaurs are; it took us until the cusp of the Industrial Age. 

   

The fossil dungeon wasn't terribly long, but I'm getting sick of combat at this point, so I groan every time I have to explore a dungeon, as combats are not avoidable there. Still, it only took me about 20 minutes to find the fossil.

      

I wonder if this medieval society has the same kinds of dinosaurs as we do.

     

I joined the Society and learned the password (KRATA) to the cave on Hesperios. I sailed to Aramon, on the same island, and walked north until I found the cave. It was a bit longer than the fossil cave, with about double the battles, and I had to retreat to Aramon once for healing, mana restoration, arrows, and potions. In the end, I found Kirk's mangled body in a corner. A piece of paper in his pocket directed me to the right area (Section J, Area 13) at Griswold's Storage. 

    

There's no particular indication how he died.

       

That chest contained a "Ransley Map," which depicted nine chairs, facing different directions, with different colored dots next to them. At this point, I was stuck on this quest. I couldn't figure out any place in Ransley Manor or otherwise in which I could do anything with different configurations of chairs. Fortunately, commenter RandomGamer reminded me of the "Magic Unlock" spell, which hasn't been used anywhere else in the game. It was the key to getting in the room, which had the same configuration of chairs.

      

The Ransley Map . . .

. . . and the room behind the door. I wonder if the game would have let me figure this one out through trial and error.

      

Sitting on the chairs in the right order opened a secret door, which led to a dungeon. I groaned, but fortunately there were no battles--just a corridor, another magically-locked door, a study, a book talking about the Magian Gem, and a chest with the gem itself. It seems to cast a kind of version of "See Secret" when used. This requires the user to be near the buried Grimoire.

      

Ransley's diary.

     

So all that was left at this point was to find the map to the Grimoire itself. For that, the game had a long scavenger hunt in store. It started with my visit to Pirate's Cove (the game has it that way, with the apostrophe in what I think is the wrong place), where two guards demanded the pass from the pirate boss, Seurat, which I had achieved several entries ago.

   

The underboss of the pirate clan, Bryce, said he knew of the treasure map, but he wanted me to kill Seurat for the knowledge. I knew there was no way I could do this, as the game has no mechanism for attacking NPCs, so I kept looking. As I wandered the village, a pirate approached with a warning message for me to bring to Seurat. 

    

Technically, I had to go retrieve it from under his bed.

      

I returned the skiff to Haslett and hopped a ship for Aramon, where I found Seurat still in the tavern. He appreciated my loyalty, gave me 100 gold, and told me to talk to Jonah next to him. Jonah said he'd see what he could find out about the map. As I wondered how to operationalize that, he said, "Maybe I'll see you in Pirate's Cove!" This was a clue to take the ship back to Hazlett, steal the skiff again, and row to Pirate's Cove.

   

As I approached Bryce's headquarters, I heard "a scream coming from inside." Inside, Jonah was standing over Bryce's corpse. Jonah had asked around about the treasure map. "Charlie remembered seeing it," he said. It was sold in Kadaar to someone named Sisley. Jonah called the map "worthless," as "the area shown on the map doesn't even exist!"

      

This, alas, turns out to be accurate.

      

I returned the skiff to Hazlett, took a ship to Keldar, stole another skiff, and rowed it around the continent to Kadaar. Sisley was behind a locked door that I had to knock on. Of course, he didn't have the map. He had given it to his girlfriend, Acacia, who was visiting relatives in Sonora. I rowed back to Keldar, took a ship to Portsmith, stole a skiff, and rowed it to Sonora. Acacia was in her sister's place. I remember talking to her before. She had the map and didn't like it. She offered to trade it for an ancient scroll--if I could get one from Halstead in Dalia.

     

Or maybe you just give it to me and help me save the world?

        

I rowed back to Portsmith, took a ship to Hazlett, stole the same skiff I've stolen 50 times previously, and rowed it to Dalia. Wouldn't you know, Halstead had just sold his last ancient scroll to Thorley, who lives northeast of Keldar. I rowed the skiff to Keldar, disembarked, and walked to Thorley's hut. Thorley had the scroll but wasn't interested in selling it. "I just put it away," he said. We looted it from the dresser in his room. If the game was going to make me resort to crime, I don't know why I couldn't have just strongarmed Acacia into giving us the map.

       

Using "See Secret" to find the map in Thorley's house.

     

Back we went to Sonora, where Acacia finally traded us the ancient map. As we were warned by Jonah, it didn't seem to depict any place in Savallia. There are only two places in the game world that have an east-west bridge crossing a river, and neither have a peninsula that comes to that sharp a point, particularly with mountains northwest of a city or building. I spent a long time trying to find the most likely place, investigating in particular the areas around the Forest of No Return and southern Hesperios. I considered the possibility that the map was rotated, mirrored, or depicted a land with more water than in the present. I couldn't find anything.

            

Here's the map . . .

And here's the area of the world map that it's supposed to be depicting.

                   

I went through my screenshots and discovered that Mage Zedikiah, living near Shaaran, had wanted to speak to me when I obtained the map. I took it to him. He snatched it from me and interpreted it to be depicting an island to the west of Enchantasy and south of Hesperios. That turned out to be true. The bit jutting from the east is the western end of Enchantasy. The map is a pretty rough sketch, then, because the actual shape of the land formation isn't anything like the southern coast of Hesperios.

        

Could I have that back? What if I hadn't taken a screenshot?

     

Zedikiah gave me a note to take to Mage Lucien in Shaaran: "Provide this trusted apprentice of Master Rudimon with the ancient scroll you've guarded these many years." Lucien gave me a scroll. It told me to seek out the Mystical Pond, stand on the eastern dock, and invoke the word HOYAM. I would then learn two new words. "Proceed to the location shown on the map," it continued, and invoke the first word "between the rocks" and the second to "reveal a hidden chamber in [the] cave."

   

The Mystical Pond was easy to find, and invoking the word caused bolts to come from the sky and write two more words in the middle of the pond. That was cool.

        

On the other hand, this is a good way to get the attention of the FBI.

        

The hard part was following the instructions to "proceed to the location shown on the map," since it was an island, and I had no way to reach the island. It turns out by "the location," he meant the western end of Enchantasy, where two rocks flanked the westernmost square of land. Invoking QADIA there caused a bridge to the island to appear.

      

Is it a magic bridge, or just an invisible bridge?

          

I walked to the ring of mountains depicted on the map and entered the cave. The cave had a few combats, but it wasn't too bad. A few minutes into my exploration, my old friend RICH9000 appeared and said the cave wall three paces to my south was emitting a strange energy. I walked back there and invoked TEILA, which opened a secret corridor. This led to a chamber where the Magian Gem depicted something in the corner.

      

You again!?

       

I dug, and at last had the Eternal Grimoire!

   

But you know what else showed something in the corner? The "See Secret" spell. I also probably could have figured it out by trial and error. So I'm not sure what the whole Magian Gem part of the quest is actually for. I wonder if you could win without it. 

        

I think I could have figured that out.

        

The Grimoire is pretty cool. It equips as a spellbook except that all spells are cast at three times their regular power. "Thunderbolt" wipes out most entire parties with the Grimoire equipped. "Major Heal" can get everyone to full health in just a couple of castings.

    

Grimoire in hand, I went to the secret Underground hideout on Sonora. Seeing that I had the tome, the lookout gave me the password to enter the mountain cavern. A short cavern led to a valley with several buildings, one of which held the Underground leader, Jamall, and his lieutenant, Raymond. They told me stuff I already knew: Xanoc was originally Conax, expelled from the Mage Council for evil magic. He is behind the death of the 9 council members who expelled him. Xanoc plans to use Duke Hawthorne as his puppet, and he has kidnapped the Prince to ensure that Hawthorne gets the throne. The only thing new that they told me is that Xanoc's castle is on the Isle of the Dead in northeastern Savallia. 

       

At last, the elusive Jamall.

       

Jamall had made a deal with the pirate king, Seurat, to give me passage to the island. Seurat was lurking in a nearby house and told me to find a ship waiting on the eastern coast of Sonora.

       

And I did!

      

I hate to break here, I won't be able to finish the narrative, plus offer the GIMLET, without making this the longest entry I've ever written. So we'll pick up next time with the assault on Conax's castle and the endgame.

   

Time so far: 46 hours