The Clathran Menace: Behind Every Great Man

My final map of the galaxy.

          

I'll return to a slightly more chronological narrative to recount this particular debacle, which put the number of hours for the sequel a little past the original.

    

This entry is very long, and I'm not sure anyone is going to care to read all of this, so here's the summary: I discovered that this part of the galaxy used to be ruled by a race called the Masters who used the Clathrans as their enforcers. The Masters were dependent on a wide Dual Space Interphase, so as it continued to narrow, they decided to retreat to the galactic core, where the Interphase is a lot wider. They took the Clathrans with them. On the planets they left behind, they left various means of impeding technological development and evolutionary progress so that when they returned, they would have an easy time reasserting their control. The latest Clathran advance is the vanguard of that return, now that Dual Space is opening up again. I learned that they hate humans because we have more potential for growth than other aliens and could eventually challenge the Masters for galactic dominance.

     

I continued to acquire personal equipment and ship equipment, visited the rest of the planets, and made several alliances. I made it through the Clathran Survey Line (which did advance across the galaxy) and got quests to visit the Clathran home planets, collect intelligence, and perform acts of sabotage. This culminated with my discovery of the Clathran homeworld, where a Dodecahedron Device seemed to be causing the widening of the Dual Space Interphase. I constructed a bomb to destroy the device, but the game is set to require all players to participate in the creation of the bomb, and for them to have all completed their personal quests first, so I was stuck, as Corin Stoneseeker had been dormant since Turn 60. In attempting to rectify this, I managed to put the game in an unwinnable state.

    

Here's the detailed account:

                

Turns 297-362: Finishing Up

     

I spent this period trying to visit planets that I had missed on my first pass, made clear when I finally started labeling the actual map. The first one was in the far west of the galaxy, which turned out to be on the other side of the Clathran Survey Line, so the trip was largely wasted, although as I flew, I was busily arranging trades to buy the last few items on my list, including the Automated Repair System for my ship. It took a while to plot out the routes, as I was down to a single unit of phase steel at one point, but as I noted last time, if you have at least one of anything, you can eventually fill your cargo hold. I had to personally visit Dosia for vortex coils; not all trade goods are available in the automated market that the drone can visit.

 

On the way to the next unlabeled planet, in the southeast quadrant, I stopped by Sallion, where I still hadn't earned citizenship, and still managed to fail in the arena battle. How many more items do I need?!

   

The planet south of Sallion turned out to be Mardahl, and its discovery was beneficial for a lot of reasons. First, it is the only source of culture as a trade good, and several items were waiting for that. Second, it turned out to have several personal offense and defense items for sale (Biogun, Gravity Tilt, Call-a-Wall). Third, I had to visit this location to continue the Brotherhood questline. I had worried it would be on the other side of the survey line.

   

The Mardahlians were an avian species, looking a bit like ostriches. They lived lives of leisure while androids did all the work. The androids are humanoid, which Turner found curious. As I spent time on the planet's various activities, I had my drone furiously trying to assemble the goods necessary to buy all the items in the personal weapons market.

     

There was no option to seek the Brotherhood, so I did the only thing available on the planet (other than trade): I went to the amusement park. A couple of Mardahlians named Struth and Phrnk showed Turner around. After getting tossed around by rides called the Omelet Maker and the Wringer, I tried the Haunted House—which mostly had displays of birds being eaten by cats and lizards—and found Brother Mathus impersonating one of the androids, which apparently the Brotherhood builds and maintains.

    

I had to go through the long Dialogue again, to which I learned more lines. After being designated Master of Reason and getting the Geas of Reason, Turner met with the High Council of the Brotherhood and learned more about the organization's history. It began with explorers who visited the planet Golgotha and had an experience so horrifying that they became convinced that humanity should never leave Earth. They told me to go to Golgotha, which I knew immediately had to be on the other side of the survey line.

       

More steps in the Brotherhood's interminable Dialogue.

     

On the way out of the area, I tried Sallion again, and fortunately, my new upgrades allowed me to finally win and gain citizenship on the Hadrakian colony. And it turned out to have another weapons market with things to buy with batches of trade goods, plus a guy named Lonner gave me the recipe for a Stasis Field Generator.

    

I finished assembling and buying items—the Automated Repair System, the Stasis Field Generator, a Disintegration Gun, Propulsion Caps, Muon Glue, and so forth—and bought an extra vortex coil for Keros, the planet where some alien cube was keeping the population at low levels of intelligence. When I took the vortex coil to the cube, I learned about its history. It had been created by an advanced race that relied on a wide Dual Space Interphase to live. When the Interphase started shrinking, the race packed up and moved to the galactic core. "Our plan," it said, "is to take the Clathrans with us, and return when we have found some remedy to address the constricting Interphase." These aliens must be the unknown Masters that the Clathrans worship.

 

The Masters left the cube with the power of "Fiorenza," the ability to control the minds of individual creatures. I acquired it from the cube. 

   

As this phase ended, I received a radio broadcast that the Clathrans had captured the Hadrakian colony of Adafa, so that answers one question: the Survey Line does move over the course of the game.

     

Turns 363-373: Crossing the Survey Line

       

Having upgraded my ship as much as possible on this side of the Clathran Survey Line, I decided to try to cross it again. I reached it a couple of trisectors inward from where I had encountered it last time. I was curious how all the options played out, so I backed up my save (since the game automatically writes over the saved game at the end of each turn) and restored it often enough to figure out the proper sequence of events. The chart below shows the outcomes. Crossing the line requires you to have gone to Ghorbon (to get the password from the Clathran base) and to have upgraded your ship enough to win one combat. You also must have obtained the Anti-Clathran Evasive Maneuvers from the Hadrakians.

   

Turning off my systems in Stage 1 got me through the automated drones, but the game said then that I encountered a scout ship with an x-ray scanner. The solution at this point is to contact the ship and give the password learned on Ghorbon. It causes the drones to back off, but the captain remains suspicious, so in Step 3, the only way to deal with him is to blast him. This causes a dreadnought to approach, at which point the only option is to flee, which causes the Anti-Clathran Evasive Maneuvers to kick in.

      

CRPG Addict's official guide to crossing the Clathran Survey Line in Star Saga: Two.

     

Fortunately, I only had to go through all of this once. From the first success forward, the game automatically moved me across the line with a slight time penalty. Oddly, my drone never had any trouble crossing the line. Surely its cargo bays are big enough for a person.

   

Once across the line, Turner radioed success to the Institute for Space Exploration, who immediately dropped another quest into his lap: Find the Clathran world of Morikor, infiltrate it, and get intelligence.

       

The final choice in crossing the survey line.

       

Turns 374-510: Strange New Worlds

       

I had no idea what planet was Morikor, but I had a dozen new worlds to explore. I started at the "east" and made my way roughly west, finding the planets in this order. I'm going to elide a lot here because otherwise I'll be writing for days. A lot of these planets had Clathrans on the surface or in orbit, but the books talked about how I and the computer figured out how to sneak in under the radar and maintain a low profile.

    

1. Golgotha. This planet was the origin of the Brotherhood, and wow, was it crazy. By the time I left, I didn't want to explore space anymore, either. The basic setup is that the planet offers the widest Dual Space Interphase in the area (the variometer just reads "***"), so everything behaves bonkers. The character's perception shifts constantly from one possible universe to another, and his thoughts manifest in reality. It started on my approach, as I noticed we were leaving the planet. The computer claimed that we had already landed and I ordered it to take off. After some more confusion and near-accidents, I finally landed, but things didn't get any better: "There is a planetary crust of rock and iron, water and winds, sometimes vegetation and sometimes none. The physical surface is hard and would be impossible to travel on foot, except that there is always a different Golgotha nearby in the Interphase that has a path leading in the direction you want to go." Faced with multiple places to explore and multiple ways to explore them, Turner ended up exploring all of them in multiple realities.

     

Turner then extended his mind to explore past and future.. He saw Vanessa Chang's arrival on the planet in Fool's Errand. He saw the Brotherhood arrive on The Archangel and see future possibilities that horrified them. He sought out those visions himself and saw three paths: one in which the Clathrans completely destroyed humanity and drove all other alien races back to their home worlds; one in which humans, having mastered Dual Space, have completely populated every corner of the galaxy, keeping small populations of other races in zoos; and one in which humans have evolved to a higher stage and serve as stewards to the galaxy, keeping it in balance. It's this vision, Turner realizes, that led to the Final Church of Man.

   

Golgotha is a place in which all possibilities happen at once.

       

Finally, he thought about humanity itself and why the Clathrans are so afraid of us. He perceived that of all the races in the galaxy, humans have the greatest capacity for change. They take other species' strengths and graft them onto themselves. Hence the Clathran's horrified statement about humans having "no limits." There's something in here I don't understand about bringing the Message to the core of the galaxy. Anyway, I completed the quest for the Brotherhood. The game noted that I don't need to go further on their questline, but that I may want to.

   

2. Knapt. This is an enormous planet the size of Jupiter but with a mass equivalent to Earth thanks to a colossal network of caves creating mostly empty space within the planet. It is occupied by cloud-like plasma energy beings. The Clathrans visited some time ago and set up a beam weapon that shoots down any object that tries to leave the surface, including the creatures themselves. I shut down the system and incorporated its technology into my own ship, getting a new ability called "Track-Aim."

   

Below the surface, I met a plasma alien who contacted me telepathically and introduced himself as Fred, "one of the Tenscore True Names, from which all others are derived." (I'm reminded of Brandon Sanderson's discourse on "Doug.") I learned that the Clathrans hate the creatures because they tend to "clog" their equipment. They're not native to the planet; the Clathrans just drove them here.

    

3. Geefle. Geefle is a Zyran colony conquered by the Clathrans. The Zyrans are a nasty cannibalistic species who have attacked me several times in space already and refused to let me approach their home planet of Zyroth. The first time I visited Geefle, my ship still wasn't strong enough to break through the Clathran blockade. I had to visit again after visiting all the other worlds on this list.

   

After I had upgraded my ship some more, I returned and managed to break through the Clathran blockade and land. I met my first Zyrans, multi-headed, tentacled aliens with voracious appetites. I had to win a personal combat to avoid being eaten. They bristled at the Clathran occupation, and when I proposed a truce, they said to visit their king on Zyroth.

      

Surviving a Zyran mob.

      

4. Wythym. A green and pleasant planet occupied by intelligent amoebae who are fanatic about ecology and environmental protection, such that after my arrival, they hold a funeral for the lichen killed by my landing. The planet is a source of unlimited food and, more importantly, Flame Jewels. The natives fly away from me when I try to talk to them, leading the computer and I to devise a "smart net" to catch and hold them for short periods.

   

I learned that the Wythyms originated on a planet called Tayzha but were guided here by an unknown race who encouraged them to replace the native mammalian species. Turner noted that they were largely uninterested in growth and innovation. "The result is the same stagnation of development that you have seen throughout the galaxy," seemingly the work of the mysterious Masters.

   

5. Innermost. This is a Hadrakian colony, horribly polluted, recently conquered by the Clathrans, but still maintaining Hadrakian customs. These include the need to win an arena battle before doing any serious business on the planet, which fortunately, I did, defeating a dragon! The market was shut down, but there was a local office of The Battle, Inc. We had a celebration in honor of my getting through the survey line before they gave me my next mission: find the location of the Clathran home planet, Karnossus, and destroy Clathran military facilities and/or assassinate their leaders. No one knows where Karnossus is, but I got a command (which requires 2 weeks of time every time I use it) to search any trisector for the planet.

         

A rare sci-fi RPG in which you fight a dragon.

     

From the native species on the planet, the Wesmlots, I learned the "Chameleon" ability, which lets me disguise myself as anyone. My other attempts to explore the polluted surface just damaged my health.

   

6. Sirissi. A very technologically advanced, overpopulated planet inhabited by small aliens with numerous sensory organs on their heads. The Clathrans have a presence but do not interfere with the Sirissians. The planet is so overpopulated that the Sirissians have created technologies to deal with it, including a Corporeal Decompressor to reduce dead bodies to protoplasm in a second, although I discerned how to use it as a weapon. I also obtained a Dimensional Transducer, a component of a system that the Sirissians use to briefly phase buildings and vehicles to other dimensions to avoid collisions.

    

I made contact with a resistance group called the Golden Triangle, but they wanted me to prove my hatred of the Clathrans by attacking one openly. For some reason, Turner decided to do this on the Sirissian colony on Takata instead of here. Once I did that (see below), I had to return to Sirissi. It took a couple of turns; the two colonies are on the opposite sides of a space wall. When I returned, I was allowed to watch a movie that taught me how to make a Cloaking Ray and a Stasis Field Generator (which I had already gotten elsewhere).

    

7. Qualathara. A barren planet with a single highly sophisticated spaceport run by lizard-like cousins of the Clathrans. Like the Mardahlians, they leave most of the planet's work to automatons, preferring to spend their time at libraries and museums and in religious meditation. Despite this, they are extremely prone to violence, reacting to any insult, never backing down from a fight, employing any tactic to win. The Clathrans have no presence here, and there's a suggestion that the Qualatharans may have killed a Clathran envoy.

   

There was more stuff to buy here—a Tight Beam Laser Pistol and a Stunner Shield—which of course involves another flurry of trades.

   

Finally, I visited the Shrine of Space, which had a bunch of questions to ensure that I was a Qualarathian. I had to use what I learned about the race from my readings and experiences to answer the questions correctly. I learned from visions there that the Qualatharans are Clathrans, left behind when the Masters left this part of the galaxy for the Core, taking the Clathrans with them. The Qualatharans evolved into their own sub-species. I never found anything to do with this knowledge.

        

The answer was a resounding "no."

      

8. Takata. This is a Sirissian colony with a shipyard with yet more stuff for my ship, including Energy Bolts and a Multiphasic Laser Torpedo. The market sells tools. For some reason, Turner had decided he had to prove himself to the Golden Pyramid by attacking a Clathran here, so I did so, defeating him in combat just before a Sirissian vaporized him with an atomizer.

     

9. Ululu. Another Sirissian colony so lush that vegetation thrives in orbit around the planet, providing a limitless source of food. They use teleporters to get ships and cargo through the vegetation barrier, and I was able to acquire a copy. They offered a unique item called Diamond Cloth, for which I assembled the right amount of cargo. It was a necessary component for the Cloaking Ray for which I got the recipe on Sirissi. Because of my visits to the three Sirissian colonies, I was able to convince the race to join the alliance against the Clathrans.

   

10. Morikor. Finally, I found this key Clathran planet, and it's a good thing I didn't come here first because I needed the Sirissian Cloaking Ray to get through the defenses. However, after landing, I immediately got into a fight with Clathrans and had to take off, leaving both my personal and ship's health at 20 (fortunately, my automated systems heal up to 80). I don't know why "Illusion" or "Chameleon" didn't help me here. I had to get "Concealment" from the next planet I visited.

        

Various options on Morikor.

      

With that ability, I was able to sneak onto Morikor and infiltrate their central computer room, intelligence office, war room, and research and development offices. It took a lot of phases, but I learned about the Clathran plans to wipe out humanity; I blew up their main computers after first sending all their battle plans to the Institute for Space Exploration; I learned how to make a Dual Space weapon called an Interphase Reflector; and I learned the location of the Clathran home world at Karnossus: trisector 773, although I accidentally wrote it down wrong as 783.

        

Later building an Interphase Reflector.

       

As I blasted off from the planet, I contacted the Institute, which was going through the data I sent. They gave me the next phase to the mission: Stop the Clathrans. I think that this moment signaled the end of M. J. Turner's personal mission.

       

11. Tayzha. This is the home planet of the amoeba aliens that I met on Wythym. It is a source of unlimited warp cores, whatever they are, somehow "drawn" from the gas giants in the system. It is also a source of Insulicon, a necessary component in the Discontinuity Wave Generator, which I was finally able to build. More important for now, I learned the "Concealment" ability from the aliens.

   

12. Darkwhistle. This was the last new planet I explored, and man did it have a lot of options. Its spongy surface originally had no atmosphere but obtained one as I approached. It was occupied by an invisible, incorporeal, omniscient intelligence capable of both answering questions and showing me visions of the past and present in faraway places. The planet took a random item of cargo for every action I chose, so while I was on the planet, I had my drone frantically making as many 3-for-1 trades as possible to keep me stocked up. It gave me a Gradient Filter, a necessary component for some devices, but took it away again almost as fast. Fortunately, I had another source for those.

      

My drone tries to keep me supplied so I can ask questions at Darkwhistle.

    

I learned so much here I should just bullet the key points:

   

• The intelligence that inhabits Darkwhistle once had form, and occupied many planets, but they were driven to this planet by another race that sought to dominate the galaxy, the mysterious Masters.

• Humanity is on the verge of extinction because of the Dual Space Interphase, which is being artificially widened by the Clathrans. We journeyed to Earth briefly and saw it consumed by fire and violence.

• The Clathrans are a slave race to the Masters (who Darkwhistle calls "Archigenitors"), who left this area of space 50,000 years ago, taking the Clathrans with them. They have now sent the Clathrans back with three primary directives: Return to the Arm of the Galaxy, conduct a Survey, and build the Dodecahedron. After the Clathrans met Vanessa Chang, a fourth was added: find and destroy all humans.

• The Masters hate humanity because of our potential: "You have free will. Your aspirations are uncontained, uncontrolled. You threaten them." Because we were so primitive when they left this part of the galaxy, they never inhibited our growth the way they did on other worlds.

• The Clathrans genetically engineered the Space Plague and seeded it in John Silverbeard.

• Vanessa Chang was last seen heading for the core, carrying some kind of message. Her fate is unknown. The Darkwhistler was cryptic when I asked about the message itself.

• I learned how to build an Interphase Reflector, which counters the effects of Dual Space weapons.

• The entity made my ship's computer smarter, giving me an edge in combat.

          

Another ability!

     

I should note that while exploring these planets, radio transmissions and other miscellaneous encounters started happening again during voyages. I think they restarted after I crossed the Survey Line. They painted a grim picture of what was happening on the Nine Worlds. Riots have broken out everywhere; contact has been lost with most of the major cities. The government is basically gone. On Atlantis, officials have built an ark to carry a few hundred sane people "away from the Home Worlds and the madness of SAPS." Later, I heard a transmission of the ark launching but blowing up because it had been constructed in such haste.

    

I also got regular notifications that the Clathran Survey Line was advancing. It conquered the Hadrakian colony of Psorus. And at one point, my computer said that it had found a number at the bottom of one of Vanessa Chang's old maps: 38962. I never figured out what to do with this.

    

Turns 511-570: Back in Friendly Space

        

I knew I'd have to build some of the devices I'd learned about on the 12 worlds, but some of them required special items like vortex coils and probability membranes that I could only get way back on planets like Dosia and Dahl, on the other side of the galaxy. I spent many turns getting back home, again trying to arrange trades on the way. Over a couple dozen turns, I built everything that I had items for.

   

This game is pretty crazy when it comes to equipment. I think the first game maybe had eight or ten devices and abilities that you needed. When I wrapped up this session, I had 32 personal items and abilities, 23 ship items, and 11 non-combat items and abilities, and that's after a lot of things had been consolidated. Just when you think you have everything, you visit a planet and find a bunch of new stuff, as happened when I returned to Zyroth.

     

Some of my many abilities and items. I don't think half of them have ever been called into play.

       

Right, Zyroth. I returned and told the intercepting, hostile ships that Lord Ruckel from Geefle had told me to speak to their king. I got an audience with him and convinced him to join the Clathran resistance. I learned that the Zyrans used to be peaceful. A device called the Projector of Peace, set up by the Masters, sent out a wave of positive energies that eliminated the race's inherent hostility. But some alien visited and stole the power source from the projector, called the Stone of Immortality, which made it stop working. This is clearly the stone that Corin Stoneseeker seeks. Her sect was organized around worshiping something meant to keep a powerful race docile so it wouldn't evolve.

         

I think this was my last trade for weapons.

     

I visited The Battle, Inc., on Hadrak, but they just wanted me to find Karnossus. 

  

Back with the Brotherhood, I became Master of the Message and got the ability of "The Ghost," something like the fourth ability that supposedly makes me unnoticeable. I was told to go to the planet Chee in the Paracore and seek out Sage Zantar, but I assume that's for the third game.

    

Turns 571-599: It Takes Two, Baby

    

I was finally ready to go search for Karnossus. I flew to trisector 783 and entered the code that would let me spend two weeks searching for the planet. But because I had written down the wrong location, those two weeks were wasted. I did get an ominous message that I was running out of time.

  
The real trisector containing Karnossus was only three jumps away—except for space walls and other obstacles, which required me to take 24 jumps going around. When I arrived, I spent another two weeks searching for the planet.

      

The Xbox has conditioned me to expect a chime and a little achievement banner at times like this.

     

I finally found it, but when I tried to land, the computer reported so many sensors and orbital mines that it would be impossible, even with all my equipment and abilities. But we did find the Dodecahedron, drawing its power from a nearby star. However, there was nothing I could do with it here.

     

I returned to The Battle, Inc., on Innermost. After consultation, they gave me the plans for an Inversion Bomb, which should destroy the thing. It required 4 munitions, a Discontinuity Wave Generator, a Stasis Field, an Interphase Reflector, and a bombshell. And wouldn't you know, thanks to my diligent building, I had all of those items except for 2 of the 4 munitions easily traded. I set my drone on a course to obtain those last two items and flew back to Karnossus just in time for the drone to arrive. 

      

Lots of reading, culminating in the Hadrakians dropping a bombshell.

     

I entered the code to build the bomb, and that's when the game dropped a house on me: the bomb was defective, it said. I would need to have it inspected by another character. "Your fellow human travelers represent a wealth of diverse talents."

   

At first, I incredulously thought that the game required multiple players. My mind flashed back to "Two Hero Valley" in Rivers of Light. But the instructions were clear that it could be played by one person, and I realized that it must require you to pass the bomb between as many players as joined the game at the beginning. So I sighed, re-activated Corin Stoneseeker, and flew all the way across the galaxy to join her (she couldn't come to me, as she hadn't progressed far enough to get past the survey line). We used the "meet" command to meet in space, and I passed the bomb from Turner to Corin and had her enter the code to inspect it.

     

Trading goods between characters.

      

"You sense that you could contribute to the Bomb project, but that you lack the necessary knowledge at this time," the game said. "Perhaps if you finished more of your personal goals, you would then have the expertise necessary to correctly fix the bomb." The overall outline became clear: every player has to finish their primary goal first. The one who gets to Karnossus first can build the bomb, but the other players have to have "won" their personal games to contribute to it. Corin hadn't played more than 60 turns, so there was no chance of that happening soon.

      

This was a bad idea.

      

I went to the game's main screen and deleted Corin from the game entirely, but that just put me in an unwinnable state where the bomb is incomplete but there's no one around to complete it. The Bomb Shell is a unique object, so I can't get another one to build a second bomb. Entering the code to tinker with the bomb myself does nothing. I'm going to have to restore the backup I made before crossing the Survey Line, delete Corin, do almost everything in this session again, and then try to build the bomb without a second player on the board.

   

At least this game is producing entries worthy of the amount of text I have to read. At 5,000 words, this is probably the longest entry I've ever written.

   

Time so far: 26 hours

Game 537: The Power Stones of Ard II: The Five Towers of Trafa-Zar (1990)

 

We were just talking about that. That's two obscure references in one title. What do you think?

     

The Power Stones of Ard II: The Five Towers of Trafa-Zar

United States

Three C's Projects (developer and publisher)

Released in 1990 for Tandy Color Computer 3

Date Started: 10 January 2025

        

I had curious feelings when I saw this game coming up on my list. Its predecessor, The Power Stones of Ard: The Quest for the Spirit Stone, was one of the most maddening games I've played for this blog. I got stuck and quit it about 15 times, but I kept finding (often aided by LanHawk) the next clue needed to move forward, if only for a few steps. But by the end, I had to admit that it was mostly fair (the more arcane things the game wants you to do are clued, if only obscurely) and competently programmed by a developer (Bill Cleveland of Hamlet, North Carolina) who had some original ideas. The Tandy Color Computer 3 was not exactly a well-served platform when it comes to CRPGs, and Ard would have given contemporary players a satisfying, if difficult, experience.

  

The manual for the sequel retcons the original story a bit. In the original, the three Power Stones were deliberately created to fight evil; in the sequel, we're told their creation was accidental, that they were physical representations of "good energies" that the wizards of the time were trying to cast. The original says they were never employed against the evil, that the wizards lost their nerve and fled to different areas, each taking a Power Stone with him. This game says they used the stones to vanquish the evil and then hid the stones in "great strongholds" afterwards. Whatever the case, this game concerns one of those strongholds, where the evil wizard Trafa-Zar keeps the Mind Stone. He can't use it himself—he can't even enter the room where it's kept—but he can stop anyone else from getting to it.

   

The sequel offers a revised interface and a vastly different setting, all indoors.

     

The PC is surprisingly not the same character from the first game but rather an apprentice of the good wizard Niz. Niz has learned that Trafa-Zar can be defeated by a staff that has absorbed some of the Mind Stone's energy. He asks the PC to help him prepare the magical powder for a teleportation spell that will take him (Niz) to the fortress to confront Trafa-Zar. But a cat jumps up on the table while the apprentice is preparing the formula. It overturns on the floor, activates, and sends the Level 1 apprentice to the fortress instead.

   

Character creation has you choose a name, race (human or elf), and sex for the character. The game then rolls five sets of values for strength, intelligence, dexterity, and constitution from a range of roughly 2-30, although there are modifications for race. You can select one of the five sets. Health points are derived from constitution and spell points from intelligence, and the game chooses a character portrait for you from a small library of them.

   

If you don't like any of these, you have to restart the program.

     

After a long loading time (loading times in general are excruciating), you find yourself in the pitch dark in the first tower of Trafa-Zar, carrying only a dagger, which you want to put immediately I)n Hand. This opening moment feels a bit like Dungeons of Daggorath (1982).

      

The game keeps some of the conventions of the first game while jettisoning others. The most significant change is that the sequel takes place indoors (at least, so far) in a 3-D view; the original had outdoor and indoor areas and used a top down "view," but the views were really just static screens that appeared as you moved from node to node. I guess the same is true here to an extent, but you can enter each square from multiple directions and see an appropriate image from that direction, so it has some of the same DNA as Wizardry or Dungeon Master. Icons along the top of the screen are highlighted as you cast various navigation spells.

    

The opening square, with my dagger in hand and my "Light" spell going.

     

Preserved from the original is the use of every letter on the keyboard for one command or another, including A)ttack, C)limb, J)ump, K)neel, M)ove, S)ay, and Y)ank/pull. The player encounters numerous puzzles that involve identifying the right command or set of commands to use in the appropriate place. It also has a strange movement system (although not unique) in which you turn and move as part of the same action. You cannot just turn.

   

Enemies do not appear in the environment; combat comes along suddenly when you walk into occupied squares. Enemies can move; once they become aware of you, they chase you around the level. The composition of each level is randomized (from a pool of monsters of appropriate difficulty) when the level first loads, but after that the actual number of monsters on a level is fixed, and when you clear it, they don't (at least, so far) return.

        

Getting attacked by four toad warriors at once.

       

When you meet an enemy party, the game tells you how many foes you face. You only have a second before they start attacking, so you either want to flee (by hitting a movement key) or start pounding A)ttack. Combat timing is . . . odd. I can't quite tell if it's real-time, or if it's turn-based, but the game registers a "pass" if you don't act within a certain (very short) time. (Again, there's a bit of a Daggorath feel here.) Either way, you really want to lay into the attack key. When enemies go, they all get to attack at once, so the more of them you can clear in the opening seconds of combat, the better. You can also cast spells here, but a Level 1 player doesn't really have enough spell points for offensive spells yet.

       

Bill Cleveland is a member of the "pig-nosed orcs" faction.

          

The game has 20 spells (to the first one's 9), and you have access to all of them at the beginning, although you don't have enough spell points for most of them. The five exploration spells ("Magic Shield," "Light," "Detect Door," "Detect Life," and "Direction") cost an initial bunch of points (from 3 for "Light" to 50 for "Magic Shield") and then continue to sap your spell points every so often as long as they remain active. Other spells (e.g., "Lightning," "Hold," "Knock," "Healing") just have a fixed cost. Spells are cast by hitting their appropriate numbers or CTRL and their appropriate numbers.

    

Unlike the first game, there's no permadeath here. You can Q)uit and save any time you want, although the game won't let you do it in combat or if there's an enemy hot on your trail. Once a level is clear, or you're at least a few squares away from an enemy, you can choose W)izard's meditation to restore your spell points, which you can use to restore hit points. Sleeping (with the "Z") key restores lost strength. Both "W" and "Z" are risky in areas with enemies still active because if you get caught in a vulnerable moment, you die instantly.

      

If the rest of the game is like the first tower, it is small, linear, and predictable, albeit with challenging puzzles. The five levels I experienced were all 5 x 5, each with four or five parties of monsters like goblins, orcs, trolls, and toad warriors. Each had a puzzle that required solving before I could get to the next level. The monsters are hard, and I restarted the game a couple of times to try different combinations of statistics. On my second pass, I got unlucky with the number of toad warriors on Level 2, and I couldn't kill them all. 

       

The game's first five levels.

         

Level 1 has mostly goblins, one of whom drops a short sword (to replace the starting dagger). There's a lever on one wall next to a sign that says ,"Earth and Water." If you pull the lever, you get dropped into quicksand and die instantly.

   

The level is completely open except for a single square in the northeast corner with a locked door. A square along the north wall notes that the ceiling is transparent and shimmering. You have to cast "Knock" to open the door. Inside, you find a bed and a trunk with a rusty lock. You have to B)reak the lock on the trunk to O)pen it and G)et its contents: a belt that increases your armor class by 2. You have to X)amine the bed to note that the mattress is extra springy, G)et it, haul it to the room with the shimmering ceiling, D)rop it, and J)ump on it. It's not a hard puzzle in concept, but it took me a while to get all the commands right and also to get used to the game's conventions. If it points out something particular, like a mattress, it's never just for flavor.

      

Overcoming the first challenge.

     

You come up through the floor on Level 2 and can't get back down. Enemies are a bit harder; in addition to goblins, you get orcs and toad warriors. One of them drops a red potion, which increases your might for a time. There's another lever on an east wall that says, "Earth and Fire," and if you pull it (technically, Y)ank it), lava flows into the room and kills you. A western wall has a brown "E" painted on it, and I never figured out what that was.

    

I'm starting to distrust levers.

      

The level appears at first to only be 5 x 4, but the bottom row is hidden behind a secret door that can be revealed with the "Detect Door" spell or just by walking into it. You want to avoid just walking into most walls, though, because you take a point of damage if you're wrong.

     

Note the secret door outlined in blue.

     

One of the squares behind the secret door has a black potion and a green scroll. The black potion restores all your attributes; more on that in a bit. I haven't read the green scroll yet.

     

I never found anything to do with the tapestries, which worries me.

       

An archway has words over it that read, "Show harmony by actions, then word." Two steps beyond is a room with a guardian who does not attack. If you try to attack him, you don't do any damage, and he destroys you. K)neeling before him gives you a sense that he's good. It took me a while to figure out how to operationalize the message. I tried N)odding at him, S)aying a variety of things, and giving him a variety of things. I was almost about to wrap up the entry here when I realized that I could "show harmony" by dropping my weapons. As for what to say, the image of the guardian himself made it clear.

      

VICTORY, of course.

         

Once I got it right, he opened a secret door and shoved me into a room with no exits except a ladder to the next level.

   

At some point on dungeon Level 2, I leveled up, reaching character Level 2. You get so many new spell points with each level increase that a lot of new options become available to you. This was good because I reached (dungeon) Level 3 with no weapons and lots of tough enemies, including large packs of giant fleas who sap dexterity with every hit. Your hands aren't very effective as weapons unless you also cast "Augment" for 5 spell points. It can be cast up to three times, each one building on the previous, making you a lot deadlier in combat no matter what weapon you're using. It lasts for a while, too, and I don't see any good reason to not always have it on. Unfortunately, unlike the exploration spells, there's no visual representation of it, so you don't really know when it disappears.

        

My least favorite enemy so far.

     

I emerged in the lower left corner. It was another 5 x 5, but with each of the corners hidden behind a secret door. A lever on the south wall read "EARTH," and expecting some other horrid death, I saved and then pulled it. Instead of killing me, it produced a diamond.

   

The northwest room had a barrel full of oil and a bone. The northeast had a battle axe and a clay tablet. The southeast had a hole in the ceiling, but it was too high to reach. There was a stone block in the room next to it, but it was too heavy to M)ove. I'll let you muse on the possible solution to that problem.

   

In the meantime, the clay tablet had this message on the front: "MTV QBFRKP M RDHRRNG JBC M KDZFM." The back promised, "Whom soever that breaks the code shall hold the key." I couldn't break the code. I tried for a while. I don't believe it's a straight cryptogram, and I tried it forwards and backwards. Lacking any vowels, it can't be an anagram. But cryptography isn't my strength, so maybe one of you can come up with something. In any event, I figured out how to leave the level without it, and even got a silver key in the process, but it could be referring to a different key or a later puzzle.

    

Oh, right. Air sharks appeared at some point.

      

Level 4 had a statue of a bird with the message "TURN BACK EVIL AND SPEAK IT." This is a classic crypto-crossword clue, and the answer was to S)ay LIVE. The bird came to life, flew into a hidden opening, and came back with a wand that says "BOLT" on it. I haven't had a chance to use it yet.

     

A lever on the north wall read "EARTH AND WIND," and pulling it caused a sandstorm that killed me. I guess maybe only the single-element levers are safe. A room in the center of the level had a statue of a dog with an open mouth. I intuited immediately that the solution to the puzzle was to give him the bone from Level 3, but again, it took a while to figure out how the game wanted me to do that. Simply H)anding it to him didn't work; neither did D)ropping it or P)utting it on the dog. The "Put" command always asks where you want to put the thing. It turns out you have to specify MOUTH. This causes a secret door to open behind him. It has a coin on the floor that you have to throw (using the V)olley command) into a slot, which magically teleports you to the next level.

   

Finally, Level 5 starts off seeming like a 3 x 3 level, but of course there's a secret door to the outer rim. The inner side has a pedestal glowing with a magic light and a picture on the wall of a man with a scar on his cheek, a black eye, and a missing tooth. I couldn't figure out anything to do with either of them. In the area beyond the secret door is a square with a riddle:

         

You can't make them all impossible, after all.

      

The answer was painfully obvious, and saying it transports you to the second tower, but I kept my save from before the transport while I try to figure out anything to do with the pedestal or painting.

   

Miscellaneous notes:

    

• Reloading is bugged. I often get the wrong character (a default character named Irac) or a weird mélange of the two, where the character is named "Chester" but has different stats and a different portrait than what I saved. I've thus been mostly saving and reloading with emulator save states, which is always an iffy thing to rely on in the long-term. 

• The game tracks both maximum values and current values for your attributes. Current strength occasionally drops a point from combat. Current dexterity was damaged by those fleas. Current constitution just drops periodically for apparently no reason; the manual says that food will restore it. Sleep restores strength. I don't know what restores dexterity except the single black potion I found, which restores all attributes once. I drank it on Level 5, before a bunch of fleas got me again, and I'm worried about when I'll find another.

     

My inventory late in the session.

    

• There's an encumbrance system, but I don't know when it becomes a problem.

• You can X)amine any object, including inventory, to get a brief description of it. I always like this.

     

It's not much, but I still like it.

      

So far, I've enjoyed Trafa-Zar. It's been challenging but fair, if a bit too linear. However, I have a feeling of dread that I'm going to run up against a puzzle eventually that I simply can't figure out, and the game is obscure enough that I don't think there are any online hints to help. I don't want to get to the point where I'm inspecting program code, as I did with its predecessor. I'll try to keep a sense of optimism.

   

Time so far: 3 hours

 

Betrayal at Krondor: Completely Irrational

 

James, displaying a talent for extreme sarcasm.

      

At the end of the last entry, I expressed a desire to start wrapping up Betrayal at Krondor, and I was happy to see that the game agreed with me in the opening moments of Chapter VII: "The Long Ride." The action switches to Locklear, James, and Patrus, but they're not just outside Northwarden. They're all the way down in Dimwood Forest (and for some reason, it's the middle of the night). If I try to go north, I end up in endless battles with large groups of pirates and Moredhel spellcasters. At least, I assume they're endless. I can only survive a couple in a row, and none of the figures in the landscape seem to diminish.

I guess I won't be going this way.

      

(It's interesting how the game doesn't settle on just one way to signal "you can't go this way." Sometimes it does it with a text message, sometimes with a physical barrier, sometimes with a single impossible combat, and sometimes with a series of endless combats.) 

 

My explorations this session. Again, I didn't look at the online map until I finished the chapter.

 

      

This party lacks the spyglass, so I don't even attempt to explore off-road. I just follow the path. It winds southwest past a battle with two Moredhel and a spellcaster, then ends at a closed tavern called the Fife and Laurel. 

      

"If you are looking for something to eat, look literally anywhere on this map."

     

Lacking any road as a guide, we do what I usually do with open maps and work on exploring the perimeter first. I go north until I hit the mountainous border, then start working west. I go around a ridge into a little hollow in the northwest corner of the map, hit a river, follow the river far to the southeast until it ends in a point, then work my way northeast until I find a bridge. Along the way, we find:

    

• A fairy chest. Again, Patrus has to cast "Union" to understand it: "What goes down to the cellar with four legs but comes up with eight?" My first thought, no joke, is "my cat when it catches a mouse." MOUSER does turn out to be the answer. The chest has a sword, some armor, 177 gold, a dose of silverthorn antivenom (which is good because everyone on this map seems to have poison), and two doses of silverthorn venom.

• A group of four fairy chests. I think I'm done typing out the riddles. I'm sure they're on spoiler sites. I get them all. None of the treasures are life-changing. 

    

The moment I kind of got sick of fairy chests.

   

• Various non-fairy chests or holes with minor treasures.

• A battle with a rusalka.  

• Several dead deer (or something) caught in a trap, from which we are able to obtain rations.

• 33 rations in a tree stump. What's with this game and rations lately?

• Three Moredhel and two spellcasters, who killed me on the first attempt--this party sucks. James misses most of his attacks and Patrus takes 80% damage from every crossbow bolt. On a reload, Patrus gets off an "Evil Seek" that kills two of them, but he still takes a bolt to the chest and has to be nursed back to health with herbs and potions.

• A fairly complex trap. I haven't been describing those very well. They all involve the same elements: lines between pillars, cannons, hollow prisms, and solid prisms. Stepping through a line or in front of a cannon causes you to take massive damage. Pushing a solid prism in front of a cannon blocks it. Pushing a hollow prism in front of a cannon causes it to fire but doesn't block the shot. You have to figure out the right combination to get the cannons to shoot the pillars (sometimes), taking down the lines between them and/or blocking the cannons to get at least one character safely to the far side of the map. I get most of them; worst case, you take some damage just running to the other side, and you have to heal.

       

The solution here was to push the hollow prism in front of the left cannon, causing it to fire and deactivate the line between the two leftmost pillars, then push a solid prism in front of the same cannon, then walk through those pillars to freedom. Everything else is a distraction. Locklear doesn't have to escape his "trap" because only one character needs to make it to the other side.

     

• Two Moredhel spellcasters. They surprise us and manage to kill us all with "Fetters of Rime." On a reload, when James finally attacks first, he does 14 damage. 14. What has made him suddenly suck so bad? His statistics don't look any worse. Meanwhile, both fighters are whiffing 60% of their attacks, and Patrus manages to hit Locklear with a "Fetters" aimed at an enemy. In my third reload, not even poison on their blades and Fadamor's formula in their systems helps. I finally kill them on my fifth try by having Patrus exhaust himself with "Evil Seek" and then blast them with his Staff of Lightning. James and Locklear contribute almost nothing. When did my party members turn into the Three Stooges? Thank the gods I have plenty of healing items from the last chapter.

      

At one point along this journey—this becomes important later—while following the edge of a mountain ridge, we go into the ridge and come out the other side. It's an illusion. But we find nothing on the other side except the trap and the battle with Moredhel spellcasters described above.

    

Looking at a river junction from the peninsula.

     

We finally reach a bridge and cross a river, then have a chest blow up in our faces and have to reload. (Patrus has the spell that detects traps, but I . . . somehow miss it until later. It's too hard to explain.) We move south along the riverbank to another bridge, encountering two Moredhel warriors and two pirates on the way, but again the battle seems a lot tougher than it ought to be.

    

We come to a bridge guarded by goblins. James tries to bluff past them by pretending to be Quegian mercenaries sent by Delekhan to guard the rift machine, but they attack us since we don't have the password. There are six of them, and two immediately swarm Patrus, so he can't get off a spell. The others pelt us with poisoned quarrels. James soon goes down, since on this map enemies are doing more damage with quarrels than they do with melee weapons during the rest of the game. The only way we win is through Patrus's Staff of Lightning. I have to use up an entire stack of 24 restoratives to get James away from "near-death."

      

We cannot get a break.

     

We cross the bridge. I'll later determine that the river network divides the forest into four areas, and the southwest one, which I've just entered, is the largest, accounting for about 40% of the total map. I work my way northwest along the riverbank, around a couple of ridges, until the river ends in the northwest mountains. Along the way:

   

• Chests with more rations. Come on. What I really need—for the first time in this game—are buffing items.

• Three goblins. No major problems, but again I get poisoned. I'm down to three silverthorn antidotes.

• The game exploits my need for buffing items by luring me with two treasure chests that both explode, requiring another reload.

     

Some developer thought this was funny.

     

• A fairy chest has a "Grief of 1000 Night" scroll, some money, and 10 restoratives. An adjacent one has "The Unseen" spell, the "Mad God's Rage" spell, 4 doses of Naphtha, and 20 restoratives. Nice.

• Four Moredhel warriors and a spellcaster. Again, two of the warriors swarm Patrus, so I'm forced to take them out with melee attacks (which, as is par for the chapter, usually miss and hardly do any damage) and Patrus's Staff of Lightning, which has swiftly become the MVP of the chapter. When the battle ends, I only have 14 charges left, though. Patrus gets some Dragon Plate from the battle. 

     

I follow the mountains west and south, where we soon encounter the western road leading out of the forest, but again the exit is blocked by too many figures to fight. We follow the road east and stop by an abandoned house, where we find a wooden chest with 24 "uses." I try using it, and it sends us flying up above the house, levitating in the air! That's a cool mechanic that I wouldn't have expected from a game of this era, until I remember that the engine was based on a flight simulator. In any event, if we move or even turn while in the air, we just fall back to the ground again, so I'm not sure what I'm supposed to use it for. Scouting? That would only help if there was a way to look down while in the air.

      

The view from a mountaintop.

    

In a nearby tree hollow are 33 rations. You've got to be kidding me.

     

I give up.

      

Farther along the road, we meet 3 giant scorpions, and suddenly the characters don't suck so bad—James and Locklear kill the first two in one hit each—so perhaps the goblins and Moredhel on this map just have better weapons and armor. Two seconds later, we're attacked and slaughtered by 7 goblins, so my cockiness doesn't last long. It takes me three tries to kill them, and that's with Patrus and Locklear both knocked out and at near-death, so I waste a few more restoratives and then, since we have plenty of rations, rest until healed.

     

With the scorpions, the game makes it really hard to tell the square that they actually occupy.

      

The road soon comes to an end, just like the northern one did, so I return west to the mountains, follow the border south, then east until we hit the road coming from the south (again, blocked by numerous enemies). Along the way:

    

• Some dirt piles and fairy chests give us some miscellaneous treasures.

• Six goblins attack and cost me another silverthorn antidote. I become convinced that the reason these battles are so much harder is because of equipment. Almost everyone has blessed or poisoned swords, enchanted armor of the highest type (Dragon Plate), and magic arrows. What temple is blessing Moredhel swords, I'd like to know.

      

The loot on the body of a typical regular enemy in this area.

     

• I find 8 more silverthorn antidotes in a fairy chest, so I guess we're good.

• Near the southern road, a body with 5 rations next to a stump with 19 rations. The game is just screwing with me at this point.

• A house occupied by a sad man named Craig who says while exploring to the east, he ran into some kind of magic that weakened him and doubled his age. He needs his iron jaw trap back to be able to catch food to feed himself.

• A stump with 15 more rations.

     

A Moredhel NPC—the first NPC on the map so far—named Obkhar. He turns out to be one of the dissenters, Moredhel who oppose Delekhan, and he warns us about what we already know: that Delekhan is going to use the rift device to bring his army to the area and capture Sethanon. He says that we can find it "on a peninsula where the rivers meet, accessible only by passing through the illusion of a mountain created by the Six." We've been there! It was the first place we visited! I'm pretty sure there was no rift device.

     

This is literally the only character in the game who looks halfway decent.

   

Anyway, Obkhar says that the rift gate can be disrupted by throwing something made from Waani, a foreign wood, through the gate. If anyone would have any Waani, he says, it would be the commander of the rear guard, Moraeulf, who is preparing his troops "near the southern tip of this wood." James suggests that we pose as Quegians—is that his only play?

   

I'm not sure what he means by "southern tip," as we're in the southern part of the map and there isn't really a "tip," but we continue east along the southern border, kill three Moredhel warriors, and then run into Moraeulf almost immediately. He's not even surrounded by any other Moredhel, just hanging out by himself near a hill. James puts his plan into motion, claiming that we're Quegians, recently ambushed, having come from the rift gate, where the mages in charge need "one of the parts they had stored away." He told us that it's hidden in a box in the southwest corner of the woods, with the password VICTORY.

    

What a moron.

      

The game gives us no option to kill him, so we head back to the southwest, looking for any chests that we missed. We find it near two fairy chests we already opened. It seems impossible we missed it before, so I suspect it didn't spawn until we talked to Moraeulf. 

   

The chest has 98 rations. And a note. It's signed by Phillip of the Dimwood, who found the device and worried that someone would steal it, so he brought it to his house to the north.

    

Nothing like telling the enemy exactly where they can find you.

      

The "house to the north" is guarded by 7 goblins, who we defeat mostly with "Evil Seek."

     

Aftermath.

   

Squire Phillip runs out after our victory. He appears to be a member of Arutha's military, and he begs us to aid in the fight, "whether you've sworn an oath to the secret garrison at Sethanon or not." When James expresses confusion, instead of saying, "oops, I shouldn't have said that," Phillip presses on: "Has [Arutha] ever explained to you why there is an absolute ban on visitation to Sethanon? Can you recall any other occasion in which Prince Arutha or King Lyam have forbidden people to visit battle sites?" But he doesn't disclose the final mystery, just says that he needs to get a message to the garrison. He also knows Craig and recommends that we stay away from the eastern woods until some scouts can find out what's happening. Before we leave, he gives us something made of Waani, which the game says is a metal rather than a wood. 

    

And for some reason a mushroom.

     

The house that Phillip occupied has—you guessed it—84 rations, along with lots of arrows, healing powders, restoratives, silverthorn poison and antidotes, plus a shovel, a hammer, and some bow strings. Clearly, the game wants us to be prepared for what's next.

    

Crossing through the illusory mountain range.

      

At this point, we've explored virtually nothing of the eastern half of the map, but that's the type of thing I worry about with games I haven't been playing for half a year already. Instead, I retrace my steps back across the two bridges, through the illusory mountain barrier, and to the peninsula I already visited. I prepare myself for battle with buffing items, but there's nobody there. Apparently, the two spellcasters who gave me so much trouble earlier in the session were the final battle. Well, at least it was hard.

       

The "rift device."

     

The "rift device" turns out to be two stubby stakes with globes on top. It's possible it was here before and I just overlooked it. We walk up and click on it to activate it. The end-of-chapter narration takes over from here.

   

We toss the Waani through the posts, which causes an energy storm to burst out of the machine, creating a vortex that pulls in everything.

    

I know it's supposed to be serious, but I guffawed a bit here.

This actor did a decent job, I have to say.

         

Locklear and James grab onto a tree, but Patrus isn't near anything he can grab. He gets sucked through a red gateway. Afterwards, for reasons I don't quite understand, Locklear shouts, "Spellweavers!" The end. I'm not sure if something went horribly wrong or horribly right.

      

Whatever that means.

    

We'll pick up Chapter VIII: "Of Lands Afar" next time. In the meantime, you can tell me everything I missed on the east side of the map. Also, I'm curious how many of these things I might have encountered had I visited the forest in an earlier chapter.

    

Time so far: 65 hours