The Black Gate: The Wrong Kinds of Sacrifice

"That's not what 'Shrine of Sacrifice' means!"

      

As veteran players know, my approach to Ultima VII differs from that taken by probably a majority of players, certainly from what the developers intended. The key point of divergence was when I refused to join the Fellowship, even "undercover." Even that early in the game, their villainy was so clear that I wasn't going to lend them the legitimacy of having the Avatar as a member. I've been playing as if my goal is to restore the primacy of the Eight Virtues as Britannia's primary moral and philosophical system--while simultaneously investigating the Fellowship, the Guardian, and the murders.

    

From previous experience, I knew that the game wouldn't exactly bend to my style. But the open-world, sandbox approach means that we can almost pretend that it does. And my Avatar is still on the scene for important events, just with different knowledge, and for different reasons, than the player who follows the "intentional" order.

   

As for that intentional order, it converges with my approach at this point, so I should briefly sketch it out. It starts the way I did: the default player investigates the events in Trinsic, figure out the major clues, and heads to Britain as the obvious next stop--that is, The Crown Jewel was heading there, Elizabeth and Abraham were traveling there next, and there are rumors of a similar murder there. The player probably also has a desire early in the game to check in with Lord British.

The default player joins the Fellowship in Britain, however, and gets a quest to deliver a parcel to Minoc. This converges with Chuckles's clue, which is to see a fortune-teller in Minoc. Thus, everything I've written since my "Wee Britain" entry in April has been a bunch of free-form roleplaying, or "surplaying" as I've recently coined it, to get to this point, at which most players arrive in the first eight hours. Obviously, the time hasn't been totally wasted. When I have to return to the locations I've already visited, they'll go a lot faster.

         

A fortune-teller later gives me some advice I don't want to hear.

        

The default player heads to Minoc with Batlin's box. I head there with a list of Fellowship "hit" targets that includes two Minoc residents: Frederico and Tania. I hope they're alive because Alagner was, but when I get there and find what I find, it's not as much as a surprise for me as the default player.

    

Although I have the magic carpet, I approach Minoc from the south, on the road from Cove, the way a party on foot would. Investigating a side path, we come across a hut. I think maybe it's owned by the woodcutter who the Emps want me to see. I can't find him anywhere in the area, so I leave my carpet there with the intent to return at night, and we continue up the road.

             

An incriminating ledger.

        

The first building we find belongs to the Britannian Mining Company, a company that has been accused of drugging its gargoyle workers with silver snake venom to get more out of them, and of polluting the river (I don't know if it has a name) that rises in the mountains south of Minoc and empties into Lock Lake. I confirm the first part immediately: a chest in the damned lobby, opened with a key from a nearby desk, has about 10 vials of silver snake venom. I confiscate the supply. The company's mining log shows that in addition to iron ore and lead, they're also mining blackrock, coded as "B.R."

   

There's no one in the building, so I head out the back door. Near a bridge leading over a stream, several people are gathered. The first, named Karenna, tells me that two people have been murdered in the nearby sawmill. A resident named Jakher confirms that they were gypsies. Karenna gives their names: Frederico and Tania. I'm too late.

          

Dammit. Maybe I should have come here before New Magincia.

         

Almost immediately, it transpires that the victims were enemies of the Fellowship; Frederico once threw a rock through the local branch's window. 

    

On the other side of the footbridge, I see a friendly face: Julia, looking and speaking very different than in Ultima VI. She says that since our last adventures, she has "become the tinker of Minoc," apparently forgetting that she was a tinker all the way back in Ultima IV. I decide to let her join the party, not intending to keep her, but figuring she might have things to say as we explore Minoc. She tells me that I have enough travelers for one group. I'm puzzled because I thought I could have eight in this game, but perhaps the number of party members is set at the Avatar's current level the way it was in Ultima IV. If that's the case, I've been lucky not to hit it already.

         

You've been a tinker every time I've met you and you're over 200 years old. If that's not what you want to "do with your life," you'd better get started on something else fast.

            

A bunch of people are stewing about the entrance to the sawmill: a glassblower named Gladstone; Elynor, head of the local Fellowship branch; a sawmill employee named William; Burnside, the town mayor. From them, I learn that Minoc is a quiet town that hasn't experienced a homicide in years. William, a recent Fellowship convert, is the one that found the bodies. Most people think the murderer must be someone from outside the community. Frederico and Tania have a son named Sasha who lives with the other gypsies outside of town. 

       

The crime scene is similar to the one in Trinsic, but with two bodies instead of one. Both have candles around them in a pentagram. Both victims' limbs have been cut off. Both have had their blood drained into nearby buckets. Oh, and there's a goddamned Fellowship candelabra right in the middle of the scene. This is clearly Hook's work. Elynor, who claims the deaths are a tragedy but you can tell she really thinks they aren't, says she's never seen or heard of anyone with a Hook and knows nothing of The Crown Jewel. The mayor, though a Fellowship member, thinks they promote a "dubious" philosophy and that most of its members are "emotional weaklings and fools."

           

The murder scene--through which practically every resident in Minoc is freely traipsing.

           

I recover a weapon from near the bodies: a serpentine dagger that looks a lot like the one I found in the Library of Scars in Jhelom. This may just be a design common to daggers made in Serpent's Hold, but it reminds me that I need to visit the Hold and perhaps re-visit Jhelom.

    

Our next stop is the gypsy wagon outside of town, across the way from the Britannian Mining Company Office, where we find Sasha, a young man who is surprisingly wearing a Fellowship medallion. He doesn't have much to contribute except that he's facing a tough choice about whether to remain with the Fellowship. Jergi, Frederico's brother, is the new leader of the gypsies. He plans to move his clan out of the Minoc area, but he doesn't know where to go. If the game let me, I'd suggest he go to Terfin, where the gargoyles would presumably have no ancient prejudice towards gypsies.

       

Strange. I don't remember you guys back then.

        

Margareta, Jergi's wife, is the fortune-teller that Chuckles suggested we seek. At first, she doesn't say anything that we want to hear. After a quick vision of Nastassia, she says that to learn more about the nature of the Fellowship, we will have to join them. A new evil threatens Britannia, and it has something to do with the substance affecting the ether (blackrock). The evil will gain great power in the near future during the planetary alignment, and I should seek out a man in Moonglow to learn more. Of course, I already have.

    

Then she drops a bomb: I need to seek out an audience with the Time Lord, who is in trouble. I haven't heard about the Time Lord since the events of Exodus: Ultima III, when he told us in what order to insert the cards (discs) into the machine. I guess there's a fan theory that Hawkwind the Seer in Ultima IV and V was the Time Lord in disguise, but I'm not sure what evidence it's based on. Anyway, to find him I'll apparently have to consult the wisps in the Forest of Yew (I must have missed them), and the monks in Empath Abbey know how to contact the wisps. 

           

Perhaps the most surprising part of this is that I actually got a useful clue from Chuckles.

          

My discussions with Minoc's residents have revealed another major issue in town: the Fellowship wants to build a huge statue to Minoc's local shipwright, Owen, and the non-Fellowship members in the community are outraged. Not only is Owen apparently not that good of a shipwright (a lot of his ships have foundered--including the one I recently discovered at New Magincia), but the local artisans are concerned about the effects on the economy. If orders for Owen's ships increase, then so will the price of the raw materials the other artisans use. They're already taxed mercilessly by the Britannian Tax Council and are operating on slim margins. It's becoming clearer that the Britannian Tax Council, which seems to be just Fellowship-aligned Patterson, is in the pocket of the Fellowship. Not for the first time, I wonder what the hell Lord British has been doing for the past few years.

    

The rest of Minoc is dominated by the Artists' Guild in the center of town. Most other buildings are arranged in a ring around it. East is Julia's workshop, where I learn nothing. Northeast is the training school where Karenna and Jakher work, but my party hasn't earned many training slots since the last bout of training in Yew. North is the town hall, where Burnside offers nothing new. Northwest is private residences.

    

West is the Fellowship hall. I'm not being gentle with these bastards anymore; I ransack the place. In a drawer is a crystal ball fixed on Lord British's bedroom. The game won't let me destroy or take it.

        

Is that why he's so unresponsive about the Fellowship? Are they blackmailing him about Nell?!

        

The tavern is run by a one-armed, one-eyed man named Rutherford. Not only does he confirm that the Crown Jewel was in port during the murders, but it was apparently Hook who cost Rutherford his arm and eye some years ago. He says Hook lives in Buccaneer's Den, and he confirms that the ritual aspects are part of Hook's modus operandi. I don't remember getting such a clear lead in Minoc.

          

The Artists' Guild is a large building where people live, work, and sell their wares. A woman named Xanthia makes candelabras and says that the Fellowship recently commissioned one from her. When I describe the one at the murder site, she confirms that was it. Confronted, Elynor says that the candelabra must have been put there to implicate the Fellowship. She thinks the gypsies were probably murdered by "their own people." I don't honestly know if she's one of the top-tier evil leaders of the Fellowship or one of the bottom-tier idiot ones. 

           

She's definitely one of the racist ones.

        

Somebody in the Artists' Guild has a barrel full of trash in his bedroom. Inside that barrel is a sack. Inside the sack is a dead animal (maybe a rabbit?), two lockets, 100 gold coins, and a gold bar. I make a note to return at night and see who occupies this disturbing room. The same person also stores chunks of iron ore and pick-axes.

          

What is going on in this place?

         

Owen's house is full of his own book, This Olde Ship. I find him hanging outside his workshop, where he introduces himself as "the greatest shipwright who has ever lived." He confesses that he didn't always think so--that in fact he had been about to give up his trade--when a voice started speaking to him in his head. Through the Fellowship, he learned that the voice was his own conscience (although it was almost certainly the Guardian) telling him to do better. After that, he improved his craft and became worthy of the monument the town plans to build. 

         

You're about to get major recognition for something you don't deserve. Sounds par for the course for the Fellowship.

        

Owen is also useful in a couple ways: he confirms The Crown Jewel was in town during the murders, that it left for Paws, and that he saw a man with a Hook lurking around the previous night.

     

While we wait for night to fall, I decide to check out the Dungeon Covetous, which is harder than it sounds. There is a bunch of small mountain clusters surrounding Minoc and at least 10 different entrances to at least 7 different "dungeons." The largest is north of the city, with a sign outside declaring that it belongs to the Britannian Mining Company. Despite the sign, the mine is clearly long since abandoned, though still full of useful things like torches, powder barrels, food, and gold nuggets. Giant spiders have taken over one corner, trolls another, cyclopes a third, and headless a fourth.

          

This guy apparently died under a table.

          

Behind a magically-locked door, I find the body of a gargoyle near an abandoned mining machine and a sack of silver snake venom. It seems like the company has covered up the overdose of one of its employees. In another room, I find a bonfire going with a dead cat on a mat next to a meat cleaver. I'm not sure what to make of that.

         

Somebody disturbed lives here.

        

I find a second dungeon entrance southeast of town, near the gypsy wagon, but it just cuts through the mountains and emerges near the moongate. There's a third entrance north of this, accessible only from the east side (not the town side) that goes into a small cave full of . . . I guess rotworms? You can barely see them as they tunnel through the ground near you, but then they suddenly emerge and start swatting the party. If I don't delete this, it means I forgot to check the bestiary before publication.

        

The fourth "dungeon" has an east-facing entrance far to the southeast of town. It's inhabited by cyclopes and slimes. The slimes do their dividing trick, as they've done all the way back to Ultima IV, but they're a little easier here to kill permanently. Cyclopes are nothing to me at this point, but worth killing for their experience and gold nuggets. A fifth cave south of the Britannian Mining Company office is just a small loop with giant rats. Number Six is south of Number Five, and is a small cave network with skeletons and slugs.

            

What kind of cyclops screams "Aieeeeee!"?

       

The seventh and last dungeon is the active BMC mine, just south of the sawmill. The foreman, Mikos, claims that this one was the former dungeon Covetous, but I'm not sure about the geography. The BMC isn't even trying to hide their narcotics trafficking; half the crates in the place have silver serpent venom. Mikos says that the mine is mostly closed right now for machinery repair, and that a couple remaining employees are involved in a "special project" and shouldn't be disturbed. 

   

A single gargoyle employee named Fodus is working, and showing the effects of serpent venom addiction. He hallucinates that I'm Mikos and begs not to be given any more venom. He also lets on that the BMC is really after blackrock. I try giving him some healing, but it doesn't do any good. Confronted, Mikos claims that he has no idea what the "silver fluid" is--despite there being crates of it literally at his feet--and he blames Fodus for being lazy, which is "typical for a gargoyle." Before he can say anything else, Dupre--yeah, Dupre--kills him. Of course, he has a Fellowship medallion.

         

The Avatar's blood starts to boil.

        

Behind a magically-locked door--this company sure does have an m.o.--is evidence of a cave-in that killed a bunch of miners. It annoys me that I can't actually do anything about all this, so I have to content myself with stealing all their venom and detonating all their powder barrels. 

     

Deep in the mines, I find Owings and Malloy, the two "special project" employees, who for some reason are both carrying dirty spoons. (Their portraits are deliberately made to look like Laurel and Hardy.) Through long and tedious conversation with the two idiots, it transpires that they were tricked by Sullivan into thinking that there was treasure hidden in the mines, so they got jobs with the BMC so they could surreptitiously dig for it. Mikos, assessing their true worth, assigned them to dig a tunnel to New Magincia with spoons. I left them to their jobs. We use the company's own crates to barricade the entrance on the way out. There's a back entrance that Fodus, Owings, and Malloy can take if they don't mind a little swim.

          

This should stop them mining blackrock for 15 seconds.

       

It's night as we leave. The mysterious bedroom in the guild seems to be occupied by absolutely no one, but we have better luck at the hut south of town, which turns out to be owned by a man named Karl. (We had parked the carpet in Karl's yard.)  He has nothing to do with the Emps. Instead, he is the brother of a man who died on one of Owen's ships; it sank during a relatively mild storm on its maiden voyage. And it wasn't the only one; three ships and a dozen lives were lost based on the same ship design. Karl ended up stealing Owen's plans for the ship so that no more of that design would be built.

           

I hate to break it to you, but you kind of live in the lowlands south of the mountains.

          

Karl gives me the plans, and at his suggestion, I take them to Julia. She confirms that the designs are "unsound" and suggests I show them to the mayor.

   

(At this point, I realize my party is looking a bit light. I do a quick roll-call, and somehow I'm missing Dupre. I run back through the mines to no avail. I finally find his body in Dungeon #6, where he must have died fighting giant rats. Jaana says she needs to rest more before she heals anyone again despite my not having asked her for anything in about 24 real hours and two game weeks. I carry him in my off-hand until we can return to Lord British.)

           

Nobody noticed?!

        

We rouse Burnside from bed and he is aghast at the plans. First, he wants to cover things up because he doesn't want Minoc to be known as a place where "death ships" are made. Then, he realizes that if the statue is built and Owen gets more business the death toll will be worse. In the end, he cancels the statue.

     

What about the rest of it?!

       

We beat around Owen's bedroom until he wakes up, at which point we give him the bad news. He rails at the town and the mayor and dismisses talk of "design flaws." I should probably leave it there, but I remind him that "there were deaths." He grows mournful, then perks up saying that his "work will be [his] monument." While we try to figure out what he means by that, "with a dramatic flourish," he "produces a dagger" and "plunges it into his chest." The game says, "Owen, the greatest shipwright who ever lived, is dead." I can't tell if it's being sarcastic or what.

         

This is legitimately sad.

         

Just for fun, I try casting "Seance," but nothing. Well, we were headed for Lord British anyway. The Avatar puts Magebane into his pack and hoists Owen in his main hand. We stop by the Fellowship hall as we pass back through town, but Elynor has already put Owen's suicide behind her and says she "does not concern [herself] with ones such as him these days." She is just the worst. Dupre's hand twitches, but we continue on.

    

As usual, the word "sacrifice"--the town's old virtue--hasn't come up in a single conversation. But on the way out of town, we drop off the Rune of Sacrifice with the one who has sacrificed the most: Jergi the gypsy. He sacrificed his love of Tania so that his brother could marry her, then lost his brother and Tania. Now, he is sacrificing his own freedom to lead the gypsies and raise his nephew. I slip the Rune into a chest in his wagon as he and his people sleep quietly on the ground.

            

Another rune to the most worthy.

        

The Shrine of Sacrifice is like half a continent away, but I swing by on the way back to Britain. I expect to find it in decent shape like the others, so imagine my surprise when I find it occupied by a lich and seems to have been the site of an actual sacrifice of a woman. (The screen shot is at the top of this entry.) I put the carpet down just slightly to the west, put Owen down, equip Magebane, and charge in . . . only to find nothing there. The Shrine is falling apart and overgrown, but otherwise empty. That's what this game's approach to respawning occasionally gets you.

        

Did we just hallucinate it?

         

Mop-up items:

          

• Lord British resurrects both Dupre and Owen. Dupre re-joins the party. Owen doesn't comment on his resurrection, but I suspect if I follow the same path of keywords, he'll kill himself again. I leave him alive in the throne room. Lord British still has no dialogue relating to anything I've discovered about the Britannian Mining Company, the Britannian Tax Council, the Fellowship, Hook, or the Guardian. What a useless git. It's time for someone else to be king.

Laying the bodies before the king.

        

• After selling my accumulated venom, nuggets, bars, and gems, Iolo reports our cash total at 3,783. Kessler, the apothecary, takes so long to show up at his shop that I go looking for him--and find him in the tavern at 10:00 in the morning.

            

The party sells narcotics in a public place.

          

• With my full purse, I visit Nystul, Mariah in Moonglow, Wis-Sur in Vesper, and Rudyom in Cove and purchase the remaining spells I need for a full book, along with a few reagents. Rudyom is just selling the "Armageddon" spell on the open market, incidentally. By the time I'm done, we're down to about 600 gold.

• The dock in Paws is empty. No one has any dialogue relating to the Crown Jewel.

• On the way from Vesper to Jhelom, I find a couple of interesting things. The first is what looks like a bootlegging operation at the end of a northeast peninsula. Some pirates have set up a fortress with a cannon. Nearby is a still and a crate full of alcohol. But the place also has crates full of cloth and women's clothing and glassware, so who knows what they're up to. Maybe it's a fencing operation, too. The other encounter is at Ambrosia, discussed below, but it happened before the rest of these items.

         

Something kinky is happening here.

         

• In Jhelom, I'm surprised that Master de Snel has a reaction to the serpentine dagger I found in Minoc. He claims it was stolen from the Library of Scars, but then attacks me. He dies in one hit. There's a Fellowship medallion in his body, naturally. No one seems to have any reaction to his death. 

          

You could have at least summoned your students. That would have made it almost fair.

         

Quickly, on Ambrosia: northeast of the "fencing operation" described above, I find an unexpected island. It has wild horses and deer and other animals on it, and signs of human habitation in the form of a campfire with some bows and arrows nearby. There's a chest with a magic helmet and a magic sword, plus some food and gold, and I'm not really sure whether I'm stealing if I take it or not. 

          

The active fire would suggest someone owns this stuff.

           

Outside a cave entrance, I find a fairy named "Kissme Kissme" who claims to love me--and everyone else in my party. In between flying around and kissing everyone, she welcomes us to "Ambrosia," which is another callback to Ultima III. She says the island was "battered" years ago by stones called "Caddellite," which the hydra now guards. 

         

Dupre, get a grip.

    

Curious, we enter the cave behind her and find some treasures, a lich, one hostile human male, and a three-headed hydra behind a seemingly-impenetrable wall. We can't access it, but we are able to talk to it, and it introduces itself as Shandu, Shanda, and Shando. They call us "food" and say that their job is to protect the Caddellite. They attack upon further questioning.

        

One wonders who put the hydra in charge of guarding the Caddellite.

        

After some testing, I find a secret door in the north wall and open it. I feel like this is a good time for one of my glass swords. It works as intended, and the hydra is dead in one blow. 

           

The hydra has corpses of a troll and headless in its body.

       

Beyond the hydra, in a depression in the mountains, we find the strange, pulsing, blue "Caddellite." We pick up a few chunks, but I don't know what for.

          

I'm afraid to look up what was supposed to have happened to Ambrosia in previous canon. This might turn out to be a somewhat silly retcon.

         

As we leave, I note a structure in the middle of a cove that we would need a boat to access. I'm not sure if it's worth coming back or not.

         

Any opinions?

        

Sorry for the very long entry. Next time, we'll pick up the trail with the wisps and, hopefully, the Time Lord.

    

Time so far: 62 hours