Secret of the Silver Blades: Revealed

I finally learn the titular secret.

Secret of the Silver Blades is shaping up to be a passable game if not a great one. For the last post, I spent so much time mapping featureless corridors that went nowhere, I began to worry that the rest of the game would be something like that. But in this last session, it took a u-turn and transformed into a fairly linear experience with a lot of plot exposition.

As I closed last time, I was about to storm the residence of "Marcus," the Black Circle representative living in New Verdigris. Each time I'd visited before, his doorman had offered to sell me magic items and told me to leave when I was done browsing them. But the game offered an option to "stay," presumably against the wishes of everyone in the mansion. I took it.

This led to a battle with half a dozen "Black Circle Lords," a strong fighter-type that is nonetheless pleasingly susceptible to "Hold Monster." Within moments, I had brushed past them and had barged into Marcus's inner sanctum. He gave me a warning, laughed, disappeared, and left me to fight some medusas and other beasts. They went down quickly with my one "Fireball," so I didn't have to use my mirror.

Nice hat.

In another room, a group of Fire Knife assassins was "sharpening their weapons and perusing a map of the mayor's house." I guess Marcus's mansion was the source of all the Fire Knives I'd been encountering when I tried to rest in the mayor's house. I figured they were seeking revenge for my actions in Curse of the Azure Bonds, but it looks more like Marcus had hired them to kill me.

As I cleared out the mansion, I had a pang of regret that I'd no longer be able to spend my ridiculous boatloads of cash on Marcus's overpriced wands and scrolls. It turns out that this isn't the case: the townsfolk simply took over his shop.

Wait...aren't I entitled to all those items for defeating him?

The entire time, I had thought I was doing something original and unexpected by storming Marcus's place, but I guess the player is pretty much expected to do that, since it seems to be the only way to stop the constant Fire Knife attacks.

The only places I had to go next were the mines and the "Administration Building" in the ruins. I chose the latter just because the mines seemed more like the next step on the main quest, and I generally try to clear up side-areas before proceeding through the main ones. The admin building turned out to be the headquarters of the Black Circle, and it brought multiple battles with fighters and mages. It was here that my policy of "only one of each type of spell" started to hurt, as it would have been very convenient just to clear out the mages with "Fireball," "Ice Storm," and other mass-damage spells. I resorted to using my Wands of Fireball and Ice Storm and Necklaces of Missiles to prevent the mages from casting while I carved through the fighters in the front ranks.

A typical Black Circle squad.

The base was mostly linear and provided the satisfying sense of a party relentlessly pressing forward while the occupants tried all kinds of desperate tricks to keep me at bay. Usually, games make it seem like no matter how much damage you're doing, you're really "walking into a trap." I like it when a game does the opposite.

The Black Circle futilely tries to block my progress.

Back in the ruins, I had found a note indicating that the Black Circle was somehow connected to Phlan, and the clerk from Pool of Radiance had been sent to work with them. Sure enough, I soon encountered her in the base, furiously shredding documents.

Is it just me, or has she gotten cuter since Pool of Radiance?

As she fled, she left a letter behind that I'll reprint in its entirety:

My dear Sasha,

I'm sorry to hear that you have concerns about the Black Circle. However, their continued good will is essential. Their control of the Verdigris Mine gives us the gems we need at a reasonable price. As long as these shipments continue, we will not investigate them too closely.

You may tell them that my negotiations with the Red Wizards proceed very well. Some may be on their way even now. Should this turn out well as I hope, you can count on a position as my personal scribe.

With my strongest felicitations,

Gragnak Ulfrim
Councilor of New Phlan

Lots of revelations in this little letter, starting with the fact that the clerk's name is "Sasha." More important, what the hell is going on in Phlan since I left? I liberated that city, and now they're working with the Black Circle and the Red Wizards?! And who the hell is this "Gragnak Ulfrim"?! What happened to Ulrich Eberhard?

The worst part was confirmed a few rooms later, when I ran into Sasha again. She was clearly working with the Black Circle under duress. It hurt when she spoke about "the many heroes who freed the city" of Phlan but didn't seem to recognize us as those very heroes. Anyway, before she ran off, she indicated that all the gems she'd been paying us back in Pool of Radiance had come from these mines and the Black Circle connection. My party basically made its fortunes on blood diamonds.

The map culminated in the "inner sanctum," which was surrounded by a moat writhing with red dragon hatchlings. Every step I took, I had to fight between 4 and 8 of them.

Before the doors of the inner sanctum, it was clear that a major battle was ahead, so I loaded up with protection spells:

The battle was with about half a dozen fighters and half a dozen mages. Fortunately, I'd saved one "Fireball" just for the occasion:

I love it when they arrange themselves just so.

Like most of the battles in the game, it wasn't very hard, and soon I had a bunch of new magic items and a journal entry indicating the Black Circle's plans, which hinted at the "Castle of Twins," the "Dreadlord," "Oswulf's Confession," and the "Silver Blades."

The allusions didn't become fully clear until I entered the mines and explored the first level, a temple dedicated to Tyr. The large 16 x 16 area had few encounters, but the key one was with an old dwarf named Derf Strongarm, the temple's caretaker.

Between Derf's tale and the Black Circle's plans, I got the full back story. 300 years ago, two brothers ruled the valley in the Castle of Twins. Oswulf was a paladin and Eldamar was a mage, and both worshiped Tyr. But as Eldamar grew old, he became obsessed with immortality and eventually rejected his god to become a lich.

"Forseeing the evil that a lich would produce, Oswulf left the castle and searched for 12 great heroes," a band that became known as the Silver Blades. When the Blades returned to the valley, Eldamar had become a lich known as the Dreadlord and had summoned hordes of monsters to the valley. The Silver Blades cleaved through them and drove the Dreadlord's forces back to the castle gates. There, instead of pressing on and killing his brother, Oswulf had his mages and clerics cast a spell to cover the valley in a glacier, freezing the Dreadlord and all his minions inside.

The Black Circle is the descendant of the Dreadlord's Dread Legion of Magic, and for centuries they have been looking for a way back to the castle to free their master. They tricked the New Verdigris miners into delving deep into the mines, where they freed fire-based creatures. The Circle has recruited the creatures to start systematically melting the glacier. They are also seeking the Amulet of Eldamar to pass into the Sanctum. I believe I found the Amulet on an "ancient bier" in the ruins, which judging by Derf's story was Oswulf's tomb.

Derf himself is the last surviving member of the Silver Blades, but he won't help my party unless we prove ourselves "worthy to become Silver Blades." To that end, we have to retrieve the eight pieces of Oswulf's Staff from eight different levels of the mines below.

This is going to take a while.

It's a nice back story, but I have three questions. First, there's the line I quoted above. It's great that Oswulf forged the Silver Blades and defeated the Dreadlord's legion and all, but it sounds like he could have saved himself a lot of trouble by just killing Eldamar at the outset, before he could complete the lich ritual. Both brothers spent years developing armies to oppose each other only to end up at the same place they started. Second, why does Oswulf, a paladin, have a magic staff? Third, doesn't this exact story--two brothers, one a paladin, one a mage, one turns evil, etc.--recur in some other D&D game? If so, which one? It's driving me nuts.

The mines bring back Pool of Radiance's encounter options.

I leave you to explore those questions as my party explores the mines. I have mapped the first level and recovered the first piece of the staff. The mines seem to offer more options during encounters with enemies, including "Bribe" and "Talk," though neither work on animal enemies, of course. If the other levels are like the first one, I won't have to map them all, as it consisted of four completely linear paths radiating from the central shaft. I can just follow the left or right wall and be sure that I'll encounter everything.

You even get experience for successfully talking them down.

Uncategorized bits:

• The old man in town who had given me the Scroll of Protection from Dragon Breath also gave me a Cloak of Displacement on a later visit.

• In addition to "Fireballs," the one thing that never gets old in the Gold Box combat engine is landing a successful backstab. I probably waste more hit points trying to maneuver Karnov into position than I save with the tactic.

• The frequent copy protection is annoying. You have to answer a question from the adventurer's journal every time you start the game, and periodically it demands an answer from the rule book before you save.

• Many of the journal entries offer maps, but I couldn't imagine relying on them exclusively. Something about the Gold Box titles impels me to visit every corner.

• I found a Girdle of Giant Strength in the Black Circle's headquarters. The moment I had my paladin don it, my ranger lost the inflated strength that she had gained by importing into Secret while wearing the Girdle in Curse. Continuing to use that strength was cheating a bit, so I guess I don't mind.

• Once I got the quest to find the pieces of the staff, the well suddenly had a lot of hints about where to find them, provided I fed it gems. These are nice, but I imagine I'll be exhaustively exploring each level of the mines anyway.

• The economy, bad in Pool and worse in Curse, is just out of control here. I already have more than 100,000 platinum pieces. Even with the need to buy gems to get answers from the well, money basically serves no purpose. The game might as well have given me everything for free.

One down.

My party members have all achieved one level-up. I suppose its good that leveling is slow, since my imported characters can only make three levels in the entire game. As always, I'm reminded that it's far less fun to go from Level 10 to Level 14 than it is to go from Level 1 to Level 6. I miss having to use all my wits and resources to survive--miss having to load up on every possible advantage to beat, say, the troll battle in the Phlan ruins, or the sequence of three kobold battles. For this reason, it's hard to see any game outperforming Pool of Radiance for the satisfaction of both combat and character development, even if the later ones use the same engine.

****

In list news, I was prepared to give Dragonstrike a try for its D&D heritage. Even though it manifestly isn't an RPG, I thought I'd play it if I liked it. I tried it; I didn't like it; it's gone.