Might and Magic III: Mounted and Mastered!

"And on the pedestal, these words appear . . ."

      

There wasn't much Might and Magic to play after the last entry. I could have finished it in another 15 minutes, probably. That it took me a few more hours was reflective less of my savoring the last moments and more that, because I didn't know what was coming, I spent a lot of time in needless character development.

The session started when I gave all my remaining Ultimate Power Orbs to "Tumult, King Chaotic," the neutral king, who had initially struck me as a good halfway choice between the zeal of the "good" king and the clear maleficence of the "evil" king. It turns out they were all jerks.

     

Guys, we might have made a mistake here . . .

     

Once Tumult had the orbs, he apparently used them to lay waste to the other two castles. They were no longer accessible, in any event. I got what I needed from the process, a "Blue Priority Passcard."

      

Sorry, king. But I suspect you would have done the same thing.

      

It's curious how the developers pitted "chaos" as the neutral point between good and evil, rather than the opposite: order for its own sake, irrespective of the ends. I wonder if they were making a point about the absurdity of classic D&D "alignments" in general. I think they disappear from the main series after this, and my understanding is that the alignments offered in the Heroes series are more nuanced.

After this, I dropped all of my gold at Gringotts and began the process of working odd jobs for 50 gold per week. To finish getting all the rewards from Greywind and Blackwind, I needed to wait until Day 50 and 60 of three consecutive years, and I figured I might as well earn interest in the meantime. As I started the process, I had 20 million.

     

Unfortunately, there's no option to burn weeks while resting leisurely.

       

Both Greywind and Blackwind had three thrones. One of them permanently raised attributes; the other two delivered gold and items. (Some of those were Precious Pearls of Youth and Beauty that I spent several days offloading one at a time to the Pirate Queen.) When I started the session, I had this idea that you could only use each throne once, but now I'm not sure that's true. Maybe I'll fire it up again and experiment before the summary and rating.

       

Not that I really needed any more advancement.

      

During the three-year period, I also turned in two more seashells to Athea on Day 99 and brought my love-struck party members to Princess Trueberry, finally curing her doldrums.

      

Yes, the solution to this puzzle was quantity, not quality.

      

Trueberry gave me the alicorn horn in return, which I brought back to the shrine in Orc Meadow. Something happened there involving a galloping unicorn. I didn't really understand it, but I got a few million experience points from the deal.

     

Isn't an alicorn supposed to have wings?

        

Just for the hell of it, I had my characters continue working odd jobs for another few years, rationalizing it with my belief that it's obnoxious to try to accomplish too much before you're 30. As I was wrapping up the process, I realized that Terra's years are only 100 days long, so a 30-year-old Terran is only a little more than eight years old by our standards. I've been practicing child endangerment this entire game.

     

Back at the vault, I retrieved my earnings. I had gained 15 million in interest in five years. Not bad.

      

I have to wonder who his other clients are that he can afford a 12% APR.

      

I immediately spent 13 million leveling my characters about 7 levels each. The average was 115 when I was finished, with the two NPCs now asking for 250,000 each per day. I still had plenty of money, and I could have leveled up some more by scattering some of it into the central fountain in Fountainhead, but at this point I didn't know how much longer the game would last.

      

My party as we head for the endgame.

   

I figured it was time to explore the central pyramid. I'm not going to keep mentioning it, but during the explorations below, I wasted a lot of time visiting buffing fountains before entering the pyramid and its various sections. The enemies weren't hard enough to justify all the additional buffing, and I'm not sure why I was being such a wuss.

The tunnel led to the Central Control Sector of the great space ship resting under Terra's oceans, the various storage and engine areas of which I had explored last time. Immediately as I entered, I was attacked by "Death Agents," who despite their name died in single blows without doing any damage to me.

      

Death needs better representation.

      

The area consisted of a central room with a bunch of side-rooms off of it, and one long corridor heading off to the west. I naturally explored the side rooms first. They held robots, including a new kind called a "Terminator" that couldn't be damaged in melee combat and was capable of "eradicating" my party members if he got lucky. I had to destroy them with spells; "Implosion" did particularly well. I had to resurrect slain characters a few times.

        

If they were going to give it this name, you think they could have tried harder on the graphics.

       

The rooms held a few boons, including chalices that added a few million experience points to the character who drinks from it. One of them served up an "Interspacial [sic] Transport Box," which is capable of visiting any of the game's maps by entering its number. It's a cute idea, but by this time I already had the ability to zoom to any game map with a combination of "Lloyd's Beacon," "Town Portal," and "Teleport." Since the box would have required a lot of fiddling to determine which number corresponded with which maps, I didn't waste a lot of time with it. Getting to this location ASAP would be the key to a successful speed run, however, as the box seems to remove the need for keys to the various dungeons.

     

Next time I swallow a good single malt, I'm going to think, "Ah, there's another 4 million experience points."

       

Most important, the half a dozen side chambers held talking heads that, when prompted with a password (CREATORS) that I got from another one of the ship's sectors, were quite explicit about the plot of the game. Together, they said:

       

Spanning the farthest reaches of the universe, two super-developed societies, the Ancients and the Creator, are engaged in a galactic race for power. The Creators exist in a nebulous realm where they construct their plots and create vile, chaotic armies to disrupt the civilizations of the Ancients. [The in-game text uses the singular "Creator" the first time and then "Creators" everywhere else.]

The Ancients draw their power from the heat and light of stars to create the intricate mechanisms of society, then send these civilizations to cultivate developing worlds. 

      

      

This mission has been code named The Great Experiment. It extends further away from the seat of the Ancients than any other colonization. It is under much greater threat from the Creators.

Because of the interference created by the renegade Guardian, Sheltem, the CRON and most of the VARNs carried by this vessel were lost in the Great Sea of Terra.

     

Okay, lots of exposition there. We'll learn more about Sheltem in a minute, but let's talk about the implications of the above. First the ship we're exploring is clearly the same vessel that held the CRON and VARNs of Might and Magic I and II. Now what do they mean that "most" of the VARNs were lost? Were some saved? Did the creatures from them supplant or merge with the existing life on Terra? How long has passed since this all happened, anyway?

What happened, I wonder, to the party that occupied this ship at the end of Might and Magic II? My pet theory is they somehow became the "Death Agents" that attacked me when I entered. There were only like six of them, and they're not found anywhere else in the game.

The background of the Ancients seeding worlds with their little CRON/VARN biospheres makes sense, but did they have to add vampires to the mix? How do undead in general fit with this backstory?

For that matter, how do the legends of the Elemental Lords fit? Are they the "Creators" mentioned here? (I suspect not, given what follows.) Either way, how were we able to visit their dimensions from CRON?

Finally, who are the "Creators"? Are the Kreegan of the VI-VIII series part of their "vile, chaotic armies"?

Seeking answers, we pressed forward down the long hallway. Well, no, actually we left the ship, returned to town, leveled up some more, visited the fountains again, and so forth, which again was all unnecessary. Then, we returned and pressed down the long hallway. The Blue Passcard from King Tumult was necessary to get through one of the doors.

       

       

I can't remember if there were any battles in the hallway. I don't think there were, meaning that one of the random combats with a "Terminator" was the last necessary battle in the game. Actually, I suppose those side rooms aren't technically necessary to win, so those pushover "Death Agents" were the last necessary combat in the game. There may have been one or two robots in the corridors; someone else might remember.

    

In any event, at the end of the long hallway, we ran into a scene that I wish had been illustrated but instead was only described via text:

     

The air is filled with the smell of ether and the flickering of colored lights, like horrible lightning. Down the corridor to the left, two robed figures battle among the plasm of magic so thick it hangs in the air like fog. It is Corak and Sheltem, locked in mortal combat among the sparks of their supernatural clash. Sensing your presence, Corak looks away long enough to give Sheltem the chance to pass into a nearby transport tube. Cursing under his breath, Corak beckons you to follow before disappearing into the same transport tube.

     

Would it have been too much to show Corak and Sheltem?

      

It's not a huge surprise that Corak is alive; the party from Might and Magic II reunited his soul with his body as part of the cleric's quest. I don't know how Sheltem came back to life. More important, though, the party from this game has no idea who these people are.

The player can turn left at the screenshot above and immediately proceed to the endgame, but naturally I had to explore the rest of the map. The automap clearly shows it shaped like the front of a ship:

     

Though not so much like the Enterprise.

   

At the ends of the corridors that look like guns are levers that say things like "Torpedo Launch Control" and "Primary Phaser Batteries." They didn't seem to do anything when activated, though its mildly amusing to think that the party is causing destruction and chaos all over Terra while they frown and flip the levers back and forth.

      

On the surface, an entire island is vaporized.

      

The whole area was swarming with robots, including a ton of those "Terminators." I fired off volley after volley of "Implosion . . ."

      

       

. . . but still had to reload a couple of times when everyone capable of casting "Resurrection" was eradicated.

     

Things aren't looking so well.

       

At the nose of the spacecraft were a couple of talking heads that congratulated me for making it through a difficult optional area. One of them offered the game credits. The other told me to use the special code "KTOW" when reporting my success to New World, to prove that I had made it to the optional area. It promised a "special reward" for this. I will wonder for the rest of my life what that award was.

     

Well, that's clearly me.

       

Time to win! Heading back to the location of Corak and Sheltem's duel, I found the transport tubes that they had entered. Entering myself, I found a couple of round doors . . .

     

       

. . . opening into the cockpit of a small two-seat craft:

       

As we presumably took the seats, a holographic head (accompanied by a digitized voice) appeared on a screen and asked us to "enter init sequence," which I correctly guessed to be the six-digit number offered by Kings Greywind and Blackwind. The five hologram cards I'd been collecting in the game's last hours were needed here.

     

     

The head then offered the final exposition as text on the screen:

       

The Grand Experiment of the Ancients: to use the technology of Elemental Manipulation to create a completely viable ecological and social microcosm. This microcosm was then to be transported to a distant biosphere (Terra) to supplant its indigenous ecosystem. The need was acknowledged for a central controlling unit capable of compensating for unexpected anomalies. 

Sheltem was created to be the Overlord and Guardian of Terra--the Supreme Law--but his conditioning was flawed. Seeing himself as the Guardian of Terra, not of the Ancients' colonization experiment, he rebelled against the "invading army" that was to be sent to "his" world. Sheltem was contained but later escaped, determined to undermine the Grand Experiment.

Learning from their earlier failure with Sheltem, the Ancients created a new Guardian named Corak. With his conditioning properly completed, the Grand Experiment was launched on its journey through the Void. Corak's first duty was to eliminate the threat of Sheltem, then assume the role of Guardian and Overlord of the Terra colonization.

Unable to stop the colonization of Terra, Sheltem has succeeded in disturbing the balance between the three alignments of men, a balance Corak must work to regain upon his return to Terra. However, Sheltem sees this as only a minor compensation and has set out to exact revenge by sabotaging other experiments the Ancients have scattered throughout the Void.

Two escape capsules have disembarked from this vessel, the first occupied by Sheltem, the second by Corak. At Corak's request, a third has been prepared to follow their course for a rendezvous at whatever world Sheltem seeks to exact his revenge upon. Having proven yourself as an Ultimate Adventurer, Corak and the Ancients ask your help in the adventures yet to come . . .

     

The scene then shows a small vessel departing from the main ship under Terra's seas . . .

     

      

. . . and launching itself into space.

    

"Fineous and Allan, I think it may be time to renegotiate your daily rate."

      

As we know now, of course, that vessel--called the Lincoln--missed its mark. While Corak and Sheltem ended up on Xeen, where a new party of locals would have to continue their fight, the Might and Magic III heroes somehow crashed into the seas of Enroth, found some SCUBA suits, and walked out of the ocean and onto a foreign shore.

     

Ah, but we're getting way ahead of ourselves.

(Side note: I never did find Tolberti or Robert the Wise, the two other canonical NPCs from VII. Where were they supposed to come from?)
      

From the exposition above, it sounds like the Ancients are the creators of the Elemental Lords, and all the backstory from the manuals in II and III about the elementals creating the worlds are mythological interpretations of a real creation process.

Sheltem and Corak are described as creations of the Ancients, but not robots, I assume, since Corak had a "soul" in Might and Magic II (although maybe that was an abstraction for something like a CPU). 

Sheltem being briefly "contained" seems to be a reference to Might and Magic I, where the alien (an Ancient?) described him as an escaped prisoner. It's hard not to agree with Sheltem's cause, incidentally. Isn't "supplanting" the life on an existing planet a bit evil? Especially when you're supplanting it with vampires and giant poisonous spiders and stuff? And if Terra is a real world, not a created one, why is it so small and flat? What condition are we leaving it, having taken Sheltem's existing "disruption of the alignments of men" and apparently carried it to an extreme conclusion?

As we ponder these issues, there are three other things I'm wondering for the final entry:

          

• What's the highest score that anyone has ever achieved? On the surface, my score above (1,106,212,020) seems likely close to the maximum because I solved just about every quest in the game. I'm sure I could have gotten it higher by spending more time in the Arena and using the fountain in Fountainhead. However, when you consider that I could have worked my party at odd jobs for another 20-30 years, earned tens of millions more interest, thrown most of that in the fountain, and leveled up accordingly, I'll bet I'm nowhere near the top.

• Even more interesting: what's the lowest score you could win with? That's related to the next question:

• How fast could you win the game in a speedrun? I suspect you could do it in less than an hour. You'd probably solve Fountainhead's quest (to get the experience fountain active), put the reward gold in the bank, work odd jobs for a decade or so, use the interest to pay for 10-15 levels and the needed transport spells, and make the "Interspacial Transport Box" a priority, bypassing the need for a bunch of keys. After that, you'd have to go to a series of dungeons, zooming around for the Ultimate Power Orbs and hologram cards. The big question mark is to what extent you can avoid combats. I didn't mark the location of individual enemies on my maps, so I don't know how hard it would be to avoid monsters even if you could "Teleport" around. If there are a few major combats that you can't avoid, you would need the appropriate levels and spells to deal with them, which would result in a higher score.

         

Maybe I'll experiment with these things for the final entry.

*****

If any of you are following the progress of Felipe Pepe's CRPG book project, it appears it's almost done. It is done, I think, to the extent originally envisioned, but Felipe keeps adding more games and reviews. Right now, he's seeking dedicated fans to complete short reviews of a few remaining games, including Eamon, Fracas, Rogue, Questron, Divinity: Original Sin, and Dragon Age: Inquisition. You can see the full list here. If you're interested in contributing, you can reach Felipe at crpgbook@gmail.com