The Black Gate: The Next Generators

We don't know it, but we're about to very significantly break the game.

          

When we wrapped up last time, our leads were growing thin. The gypsy fortune teller had told us to seek out the Time Lord--or specifically, to seek out the person in Empath Abbey who knows how to contact the wisps, who know how to contact the Time Lord. I had visited all the major locations except Skara Brae and Serpent's Hold (including the Fellowship Meditation Retreat, east of Serpent's Hold). I had repaired the ether and technically solved the murders, and while I knew where to find Hook (on the Isle of the Avatar) because of the note in his quarters, I also knew that I needed some other things before heading to the endgame. Throughout this process of playing the game "my own way," I hadn't been entirely sure whether I would be able to win without joining the Fellowship, or whether I would have to finally capitulate. I think this session cleared up that question, but it also introduced some new problems.

    

We begin in Jhelom, where I've just killed de Snel, the Fellowship conspirator whose dagger was found at the murder scene in Minoc. It's time to head to Empath Abbey, but I want to make a stop along the way. Since deciding to go my own way, I've been doing a few things while in the process of visiting each city, including restoring its rune to a worthy individual, visiting its shrine, and clearing out its associated dungeon. Because I started the game in Trinsic, I never got to those things there. I decide to head up the western continent, stopping by the Shrine of Honor, Trinsic, and the Dungeon Shame on the way to Empath Abbey.

    

The plan goes awry almost immediately. As we land the magic carpet near the Shrine of Honor, we're attacked by a group of harpies. We make short work of them and head to the shrine, where to our horror, we find a baby--a living baby--on the altar. Jaana, apparently exhibiting some psychic or precognitive ability, suddenly blurts, "Praise All! The child is still alive. He must be returned to Lady Tory immediately!"

     

As religiously-neutral exclamations go, "Praise All!" is pretty lame.

         

Now, "Tory" is the name of one of my best friends, so I'd remember if I'd encountered an NPC by that name. I'm sure I haven't. That means she's either in Skara Brae, Serpent's Hold, or some random hut somewhere. Skara Brae seems unlikely, given that it's supposed to be (literally) a ghost town, and the "Lady" part makes me think she's probably not some peasant living in a stick hut on an island. I can't keep a baby in my backpack while I reach Serpent's Hold organically, so I decide to head there right now.

    

Along the way, we do find a stick hut on one of the smaller items in the island chain that holds Serpent's Hold. It turns out to be occupied by a pirate and mage, both of whom attack. The mage kills me with an unlikely casting of "Death Bolt" or some similar spell, and when I reload back in Jhelom, I consider skipping the inconvenient baby--but leaving him out there, exposed to the elements, with a bunch of harpies flying around doesn't seem like the virtuous thing to do. We repeat the events and this time manage to kill the pirate and mage. Their hut contains crates full of blackrock and various other ores, weapons, sextants, lab equipment, weapons, and food. Gods know what they were prepping for.

         

These two seem to know that some world-ending event is coming.

        

Another island has a cave entrance, so I stop to check it out. There are caltrops lining the entry, and apparently they have an ownership flag attached because my party starts complaining about unvirtuous behavior when I move them out of the way. The small cave beyond has a dead pirate, a stack of gold bars, and chests and bags with even more gold and glass swords. This game has an awful lot of weird caches like this, where you find game-breaking levels of equipment and wealth, while simultaneously not rewarding you much for major dungeons (Destard excepted).

     

A pirate's cache.

            

Serpent's Hold has the same martial focus as the previous games; it's the seat of courage, after all, although that word never comes up. It is the only one of the three original keeps that retains an independent identity, Empath Abbey and the Lycaeum having merged with Yew and Moonglow. The ruler is Lord John-Paul, which is not a homage to the Pope or the better half of the Beatles, but rather Jean-Luc Picard. (As we'll see, nearly everyone in Serpent's Hold has a name derived from Star Trek: The Next Generation.) He wants me to solve another dastardly crime--no, not a murder, but rather the defacing of a statue of Lord British.

     

Lady Tory is one of John-Paul's advisors. A druid and amateur empath (cf. her namesake, Deanna Troi), she is mildly upset over the kidnapping of her baby, Riky, by a group of harpies. When we produce the baby from Gideon's backpack, she's grateful, but she asks us to put the infant in its crib, which is in a room on the other side of the Hold, and then she doesn't accompany us to the room. In fact, she never leaves the tavern during our entire visit. I would think that most mothers, reunited with their kidnapped infant, would grab the child and not let it out of their sight. My headcanon is thus that she herself meant to sacrifice the child to the harpies for some boon, which I've probably just ruined by bringing the baby back to her.

         

Because of pixel snapping, I can't quite get him into the cradle. I have to balance him on the edge. This kid is going to be messed up when he's older.

          

The statue vandalism is relatively easy to solve. One of the guards, Sir Pendaran (one of the few non-Star Trek names), has a grudge against Lord British. British and his advisors "have gone soft," the knight complains. "Brigands populate the land, disease overruns the towns, and corruption fills the councils," he goes on. Just as I find myself sympathizing with him, he starts to claim that the Fellowship is the solution to Britannia's ills.

          

You almost had me on your side.

         

Although it's clear that Pendaran is the culprit, I have to solve it the long way by talking to pretty much everyone else. Sir Denton (Data), the stiff bartender, suggests I speak to Sir Richter, who was first on the scene. Richter (Riker), the armorer, investigated the statue and recovered some stone chips. These chips have blood on them. Lady Leigh (Beverly Crusher) is the healer; she analyzes the chips and determines the blood belongs to a gargoyle. That leaves the sole suspect as Horffe (Worf), John-Paul's bodyguard, who was abandoned on the island and raised by two humans but still speaks in infinitives. He agrees that the blood is his, but claims that the injury happened while he was fighting the true vandal, whom he cannot identify (it was dark).

      

That might be just a slight over-statement, Richter.

Dun-dun-DUNNNN. Cue commercial break for Sunny Delight and Reebok Pumps.

            

Meanwhile, Sir Jordan (Geordi), a blind knight who runs Iolo's South (but doesn't believe that Iolo is Iolo), heard a woman scream the night of the vandalism. By process of elimination, we narrow it down to Lady Jehanne (no Star Trek connection), Pendaran's wife. (Lady Jehanne is also the provisioner of Serpent's Hold and sells ships. I cannot imagine a circumstance in which someone could arrive at Serpent's Hold and yet still need a ship.) Jehanne collapses under questioning and admits that he's changed since joining the Fellowship, becoming less individualistic and more critical of Lord British. She had screamed that night when she saw the blood on Pendaran's sword.

    

Finally, Pendaran (after attempting a little misogyny) confesses to the deed and agrees to apologize to his fellow knights, and Lord John Paul says he'll see Pendaran punished. It's a hollow victory since I wouldn't mind defacing a few statues of Lord British myself these days, a sentiment that only grows when I see the state in which he's left Skara Brae for nearly 200 years.

          

Oh, Pendaran. #DONTBEAYOHO.

      

We find nothing else important in Serpent's Hold, and thus are soon on our magic carpet heading east. While we're in the area, we might as well scout out the Fellowship's so-called "Meditation Retreat," where members are taught to hear "The Voice."

              

The facility turns out to be a walled compound, generally accessible only from the sea, with a locked front door. The director, Ian, stands inside the gate and will only let in Fellowship members, which of course we bypass by landing the magic carpet on the grass next to him.

      

"...which we then exploit for money and power," he might have continued.

            

The Retreat doesn't seem to have any meditating Fellowship members today. Inside the barrier is an empty Fellowship hall and a cave entrance. As we poke our heads into the cave, the Guardian's voice booms, "Avatar, you are not welcome here."

    

Inside the caves, we soon run into Gorn, hero of Dallas Snell's The Quest (1983) and Ring Quest (1985), who wandered through a moongate during the time of Ultima V and got himself thrown into Blackthorn's dungeon. We freed him from there in that game, then found him wandering around the same place--now belonging to Sutek--in Ultima VI. Here he is now, a couple islands away, trying to find the source of the voice in his head, which he thinks is his god, Brohm. Although skeptical of some of the things Brohm says, he nonetheless becomes hostile to us when "Brohm" apparently tells him that he can't trust us. We reluctantly leave him behind. I get the impression that trying to talk to him too many more times will result in a fight.

       

Gorn shows confusion at Brohm's second directive.

          

Further along, we find a female fighter named Iriale Silvermist, an interesting name to go with an interesting portrait. I'm curious about her, but we don't get much chance to delve into her backstory before she orders us to leave on pain of death. Naturally, the seven-to-one odds quell our fear, and Iriale is soon dead on the dirt floor of the cavern.

      

The game is called Ultima, lady, not Ultimatum.

          

In the caverns beyond Iriale, we soon spy a large, round object embedded in the cavern, its doorway swirling with magic. It is clearly made of blackrock, some sort of counterpart to the tetrahedron generator we destroyed back in the Dungeon Deceit. I suspect it somehow allows the Guardian to amplify his ability to project his Voice from wherever he is. Whatever it does, we must destroy it. Steeling ourselves, we stride forward. There's a red light, a lot of pain, and when my vision recovers, my six companions are all dead at my feet.

       

And my light went out.

            

I check my stats and the Avatar has 29 hit points. I suspect I know what's happened. We're supposed to have something that will protect us from the generator's attack, which causes just enough damage to kill anyone with the maximum number of hit points, normally 30. But the developers didn't take into account the bonuses from The Forge of Virtue, which gets the Avatar up to 60 hit points. Thus, although I know that I can cheat the game by reloading, dismissing my companions, and going alone, I decide to do it the "right" way and I reload from before we left Serpent's Isle. As we'll later see, I might as well have just dealt with it while I was there.

    

At this point, we return to our original intent to stop in Trinsic. Reviewing the notes of my previous visit, I can't say that any of the residents (aside from the dead ones) are notably more honorable than the others. However, I have a better idea for the Rune of Honor: I return it to the pedestal in the town square, where it resided in Ultima VI, daring anyone to dishonorably take it, reminding everyone of the city's founding virtue. 

         

It's as if the game expected this.

          

From here, it's on to Empath Abbey, after what I assume will be a brief stop in Shame. Going to Shame is really more for the sake of completeness than anything else. My characters are all Level 7 and 8 at this point (I get them trained in strength and dexterity on the way to Yew later). The Avatar has every spell in the book, plenty of reagents, and plenty of money. Almost everyone is dressed in magic armor and wielding deadly weapons like magic swords and lightning whips. We're well stocked with potions, glass swords (one-use weapons that basically kill anyone instantly), and powder kegs. There isn't much more we need in the way of character development or equipment.

      .

Anyone want to say "to hell with this" and head to Empath Abbey?

        

Shame is a large, maze-like dungeon with numerous traps and teleporters. We fight mongbats, skeletons, giant spiders, giant rats, and headless as we start to regret entering it in the first place.

           

Suddenly, we're in a large chamber with another generator. We had no clue that we'd find anything here. (I honestly didn't remember.) This one is round, and the opening to its chamber is blocked by a moongate--or so we think. I'm curious where the moongate will take us, so after taking a save, we stride through, and nothing happens.

                     

It's important to understand that at the time, I didn't know what had just happened. I figured that maybe something I'd found previously--like the prism from the other generator, or my destruction of the first generator--had kept the red moongate from working. Much later, I do some Googling and learn that the moongate was supposed to have worked, kicking the Avatar backwards. I just happen to have walked through the gate across the one set of pixels that are bugged, allowing me access to a place that I was supposed to have done a lot more things to reach.

    

At the time, I blithely continue through the door. As with the tetrahedron generator, my Avatar finds himself alone on the other side of the door, hovering in a void, on a platform with a red moongate to the north and a blue one to the south. Several similar platforms surround us. This is a moongate maze, the right one taking me closer to the platform with the spherical prism, the wrong one dumping me into a trap back in Shame. If I had not saved on the first platform, or if I had insisted on re-entering the sphere every time one of the gates teleported me back to Shame, I certainly would have figured out that the red moongate is supposed to repel visitors. Instead, I reloaded from the first platform whenever I entered the "wrong" moongate.

          

Is there an in-game clue that gets you through this, or trial-and-error for everyone?

           

Eventually, I find myself on the final platform, where I smash the box surrounding the spherical prism. I am teleported outside the generator and re-united with the party as the generator explodes, leaving the prism behind. Suddenly, the person I assume is the Time Lord contacts me telepathically:

      

Congratulations, Avatar, on destroying the Sphere. I am free from my celestial prison. I thank thee. But I regret to inform thee that the Guardian engineered the Sphere such that its destruction has permanently disabled the Moongates, and thy Orb of Moons as well. Thou canst not return to thine home by way of a red Moongate. Thine only hope of leaving Britannia at the conclusion of thy quest is to use the Guardian's own vehicle for entering the land--the Black Gate. The Guardian's followers are building The Black Gate of blackrock and will be using magic and natural elements to activate it. The Guardian plans to enter Britannia during the upcoming Astronomical Alignment, which is imminent. That is the only time when the elements will work well enough for the Black Gate to be permeable and active. Thou wilt need a device which has the ability to vanquish blackrock. If thou hast not already encountered such a device, thou canst find something to help thee in the workshop of Rudyom the Mage, in Cove. Before thou canst locate the Black Gate, there is one more generator which must be destroyed. It is the device used to transmit the Guardian's voice to his followers and charm them into obeying his wishes. Look in the area near Serpent's Hold for a dungeon containing this generator. It is most likely shaped like a cube. It could very well be on the Fellowship island east of Serpent's Hold. When thou hast completed this task, concentrate thine efforts in Buccaneer's Den. Thou mayest find clues there as to the location of the Black Gate. Shouldst thou wish to speak with me again, simply use the hourglass. Goodbye.

           

Thanks. That will help us distinguish it from all the other blackrock generators in the area.

           

Wow. Where has the Time Lord been this entire game? He's more useful than a walkthrough--although he didn't tell me anything I didn't already know except the one thing that should have given me pause. "What hourglass?" the Avatar asks as the voice fades and disappears.

          

At this point, I kind of get that I've broken the order of things, but I've been doing that the entire game. I already woke up Penumbra before I apparently was supposed to know to do that. I looted Hook's quarters long before I was supposed to know to even go there. I saw a hit list marking Alagner dead before he had died. I found Lady Tory's baby before I got the quest from her. And except for walking through the red moongate, which was an honest bug, all of these things should and could have been completely predictable. It would have taken mere minutes of programming--in the original game or any number of patches--to set a flag so that Hook's key and "hit list" doesn't show up until after the associated murders, so that the baby doesn't appear on the Shrine of Honor until the quest is given, and to stop Penumbra from asking who sent you until someone actually sent you.

        

So I don't reload. But I do try to mitigate things somewhat by continuing to head to Empath Abbey, even though I suspect I no longer need to deliberately seek the Time Lord. In Empath Abbey, Julian tells me that he doesn't believe in the wisps, but the Emps are known to be able to speak to them. This links up with my previous experience with the Emps, in which there was an inexplicable push to get one of them to join the party. I remember the contract in my backpack, still waiting to be signed by the mysterious woodsman.

     

I don't know where he is, but I start exploring systematically from the northwest corner of the land, going as far south as the road to Skara Brae, slowly working my way east. I soon find a hut in the Great Forest that I had missed on my first pass, and it turns out to belong to a woodcutter named Ben. He's even written a book called Trees, and Then Some. He freely admits to chopping down Silverleaf trees--his own logbook shows a growing demand for the wood--but he quickly agrees to stop once he learns that the Emps depend on them. Shortly thereafter, I'm heading back to the Emps with a signed contract.

       

If only everyone were this helpful.

             

Back in the Emp village, Salamon is delighted to have the signed contract, but Trellek's wife, Saralek, reneges on her promise to let Trellek join the party. When she hears we want him to speak with wisps, she has an alternate solution: he can make us a whistle, just like the one he uses to talk with them.

    

I steel myself for a trip to Minoc to get wood for the whistle, but it turns out I'm thinking of the wrong game. Trellek just makes it in front of us. With the whistle in hand, we set off looking for wisps. On the way back to Ben's hut, where we recently saw one, we come across a small keep, overlooked before, that seems to belong to the wisps. There's no one else in it, in any event, and each chamber has an information-dense book of the kind the wisps desire, including The Book of Lost Mantras, which I recovered for them back in Ultima VI.

         

       

The wisp once again introduces himself as a representative of the Xornite dimension and offers to make an exchange with us: The Undrian Council (wherever they are) is seeking information from Alagner's notebook. If we bring it to the wisp, it will give us information about the Time Lord.

           

We fly back to Alagner in New Magincia. He agrees to let us borrow his notebook, but only if we "offer proof of [our] eagerness to learn the true knowledge of the world." For such a test, he asks us to consult the Tortured One, a spirit in Skara Brae, about the "answers to the questions of Life and Death."

       

What questions, specifically?

           

I'm certainly willing to go to Skara Brae. It's the one town I haven't visited; it's important to the lore of the setting; and I know there's a quest to solve there. Beyond that, I don't know. It occurs to me that nothing's stopping me from heading to the endgame right now. I know how to survive the last generator and get the third prism. I've already learned that the Black Gate is on the Isle of the Avatar. Most important, if I don't finish this quest line the "right" way, I can prevent Alagner's murder. I'm also a little worried that I can't finish the official quest line, as I suspect it involves using my Orb of Moons to visit the Time Lord in his prison, and the Orb is now a paperweight and the Time Lord isn't in the prison.

     

On the other hand, I have saved games going back a while, and there's probably no point in the game from which you can't get to the ending within a few hours if you've already gone through all the dialogue, so I'll continue on and see what happens. It's more exciting this way, right?

          

Time so far: 66 hours