The Summoning: Terrible Swift Sword

Warmonger awakens.

          

After my last entry, a lot of commenters suggested that I ought to have found out more about Warmonger. I haven't been feeding WARMONGER to most NPCs, which was probably a mistake, but I realized that I was carrying a bunch of NPCs with me--the sorcerers' skulls. Only two of them allowed dialogue keywords, and only one (Firefang) had anything to say about the sword. He only said that it was the only being that could teach me the "Mending" spell, which I will ultimately need to put the two pieces of the Staff of Summoning back together.

Reluctantly, I equipped the sword and started using it in the combats in the Crimson Domain. The first time I struck a blow with it, against a griffin, the sword spoke to me. It related that it was rusted and weak from a lack of blood, but if I would "feed" it in battle, it would grow in power. Every time it "leveled up," it would teach me one gesture of the "Mending" spell. He also said he would need to be at peak power to defeat two sentient swords that guard the entrance to Shadow Weaver's quarters. He also confirmed that Abighael was the daughter of the God of Magic, not Borel, but that Borel and Abighael regarded each other as father and daughter regardless. When Borel disappeared in his failed quest to end the danger of the DarkSpyre, Abighael was devastated. "Thus was her hatred of this world, and its people, given birth. In the years to come, her hatred would only grow stronger."

        

Warmonger remembers Borel.

     

These lines, plus later information from another NPC that Shadow Weaver is female, strongly suggest that Shadow Weaver is Abighael, but that ruins my theory that Abighael is Rowena. Also, multiple other NPCs refer to Shadow Weaver as male, including Warmonger, who seems to know a lot about it. I have to say, this game has done a much better job than DarkSpyre in creating a real interest in the plot.

     

Anyway, once awakened, Warmonger was capable of a base 60 points of damage. I figured I'd better use it exclusively until I had all the "Mending" gestures because who knows how many enemies that will take. Although the sword "leveled up" several times over the rest of the session, giving me four letters of the "Mending" spell, the damage never increased. I think maybe it started swinging a bit faster, though.

        

Warmonger improves . . . but at what cost?

        

If you don't mind a little digression, all this business with Warmonger got me thinking about sentient swords. They seem to be a big part of my life these days, what with having recently created one in Ultima VII and re-reading about one in Brandon Sanderson's Stormlight Archive books as I gear up for the release of Rhythm of War in November. I think I first encountered the concept in the Dungeons and Dragons module called White Plume Mountain, which introduced the famous Blackrazor. You will wonder how I know this when I've always protested I never really played much tabletop D&D, and the answer is I don't quite remember. I think perhaps a friend had the module and we either role-played it with no character sheets or dice (I wonder if there's a word for this) or just read it like a novel.

    

I understand now that the concept goes back at least to the novels of Michael Moorcock. The common theme among all of these sources is that a sentient sword is by nature an evil sword, and using it is a danger. Even the friendly Nightblood from the Sanderson books will suck you dry if you wield it too long. But what also occurs to me is that sentient weapons always seem to be swords. I don't think I've ever read about a sentient morningstar or glaive-guisarme. (I don't doubt they exist, and I am soon to be educated in the "comments" section.) This goes along with another trope that I've noticed, which you might call something like, "The Supremacy of the Sword." (The TV Tropes entry called "Heroes Prefer Swords" is close, but not exactly what I mean.) Dozens of games suggest that your character can specialize in any weapon, and perhaps they can, but all the cool weapons are swords. There are plenty of exceptions, of course, but they're notable as exceptions. The Summoning is not an exception. No matter how much you might prefer to level up with axes, eventually you have no choice but to spend much of the second half of the game with Warmonger.

       

Three griffins, about to die.

      

Back to the game. The first level I explored after the Green Domain was the Crimson Domain. Early on, I met an NPC named Mael, a former master swordsman who had lost an arm. The amputation was punishment from Balthazar from an unspecified offense. Mael told me that Shadow Weaver was keeping Balthazar's soul in a glass Decanter of Lost Souls, and that if I want to defeat Balthazar, I'll need to free him by smashing the Decanter.

   

The Crimson Domain was basically a group of small areas accessible from a "transportation hub," a group of teleporters each behind a locked door, each door requiring a different key. The puzzles were relatively easy. I had fun with one puzzle involving two rolling balls, both of which I needed to coax onto pressure plates by using other plates to start and stop them and change their directions. It would have been more interesting if it were truly necessary, but the same plates could be weighed down by corpses of enemies (griffins, on this level) that I dribbled over to them. A lot of this game's puzzles are like that. Later on the same level, I spent a lot of time weighing down pressure plates to activate a teleporter, and all it did was return me to a place I'd already been.

         

I'm seeing pressure plates and rolling balls in my dreams.

          

I had to double-check that, however, because around this time, the game started introducing the theme of double-destination teleporters. That is, the same teleporter leading to two destinations, alternating every time you step into it. I'm not sure I like that. I suppose it's no less deterministic than a one-destination teleporter, except there are a lot of teleporters in the game, and having to check all of them twice is becoming annoying.

   

Elsewhere in the Crimson Domain, a man named Ogotai sold me a djinni bottle for 10 gold pieces. Jera was appalled at the price, but I was dancing in my seat at the thought of freeing up so much inventory space. The djinni, Rukn, appeared when I rubbed the lamp and said that Ogotai had been lying; that by giving up the lamp, he had "freed" the djinni. But he was an honorable djinni and granted me a wish anyway. My choices were a Figurine of Resurrection, a Bag of Lightness, a Cloak of Invisibility, Rancor (the magic sword), a suit of elven chainmail, and knowledge. I frankly already had most of these items (though Rukn accidentally told me how to use my Figurines of Resurrection), and I think it's pretty clear that in most cases like this, you're supposed to choose knowledge. 

        

Why didn't I just try "MORE WISHES"?

        

Unfortunately, Rukn just reiterated that to foil Shadow Weaver's plans, I would need to seek out the skulls of the 8 defeated sorcerers. He said that one of them would tell me of Warmonger, which I had already figured out. Finally, he offered:

 

In the end, you will have to make a choice. The right decision may not be clear. But after you have made the choice, everything shall be made clear. I hope, for the sake of others, your choice is made wisely. Beware of another's words . . . 

   

The culmination of the level was a fight with the Crimson Knight. I had learned how to use the Figurines in just enough time, because I used one in the battle. I eventually killed him with a combination of "Lightning Bolt" spells and Warmonger, with a couple of "Freeze" breaks before the end. I took his medal form his corpse.

        

       

The Crimson Domain held the exit from the area, including the slots in which I would need to insert each knight's medal. But I still needed the Ebon Knight's medal, so I returned to the Green Domain and took the exit to the Ebon Domain.

    

The Ebon Domain started with a teleporter maze, and I'm a little annoyed that they screwed it up. The maze consisted of 9 identical square-shaped rooms and two cross-shaped rooms. Each room had four teleporters, each one connecting to a different room and some of them double-destination teleporters. I had to make my way from beginning to exit.

    

I have solving this kind of puzzle down to a science. You made a node map of each room and its destinations and use dropped items to mark and name the rooms. If you don't want to have to spend a lot of time picking up items, you save, spend a lot of time making the map, reload, and traverse it a final time for real, with no need to drop anything on the last pass.

        

The game ruins a good puzzle.

      

Unfortunately, the developers must have decided that the maze was too hard. Right at the entrance, they give you an NPC named Vortigern who gives you a map to the maze. The map is actually printed in the manual, but Vortigern's parchment reminds you to consult that page. The page has all of the teleporters, including the double-destination ones, already annotated. You just have to follow it dumbly. I don't know why they'd screw up their puzzle that way.

    

After a few easy assassins, the level brought me into combat with the Ebon Knight, easily the hardest battle in the game so far. I couldn't last more than a few blows in combat with him, so I tried hitting him with missile weapons and spells from afar, then "Freezing" and fleeing when he approached. This was hard because he is quite fast. Early in the battle, I managed to blast him with a poison globule from the sword "Rancor." Eventually, he accidentally stumbled into a teleporter going back to the entrance. I followed him there and found him dead when I arrived. Either something about the teleportation process killed him, or poison killed him shortly after he arrived. No matter; I grabbed his medallion and his head and returned to the Green Knight.

       

The Ebon Knight pounds me while I stop to take a picture.

      

I had expected betrayal, but the Green Knight took the Ebon Knight's head and gave me his own medallion. 

         

Thanks. I hope your movie eventually gets released.

       

With all five medallions in hand, I returned to the Crimson Domain and opened the door to the map called End Four.

         

I suspect the "appointed time" never comes no matter how long you wait.

     

Rowena approached as I entered the new area. She said that Shadow Weaver probably had his piece of the staff in his quarters at the top of the citadel. She said there were two ways to get there: the main gate and the sewers. She suggested the sewers would be the harder choice, but that either way, once in the citadel, I should not enter the "lowest region" because there are "unspeakable horrors" there.

          

So what you're saying is, good grinding opportunity.

     

I started to map End Four. It appears it's going to consist of a lot of back-and-forth between the main level and its basement. In the basement, I found a dwarven armorer named Steelsmiter, who said he would make me a suit of magical plate mail if I found a strip of leather, a chunk of iron ore, and a chunk of mithril. Later, I ran into a dwarven miner named Earthborn who said he'd trade a chunk of mithril for an enchanted battleaxe called Mithras.

     

I started to explore more, but the Ebon Domain gave me the seventh skull, Pale, who also told me about Balthazar and his Decanter. In the final room of the Crimson Domain, I picked up the skull of the sorcerer CloudBurst. Between the two of them, I had the final gestures needed for the "Gateway" spell, and I was curious to try it out. 

      

Tearing a hole in the fabric of space and time.

      

The spell opened a portal to a map called "Otherworld One." The building has blue walls and transparent floors, showing a field of stars all around us. I soon found a man sitting on a throne, and he introduced himself as King Evermore. He knew of my quest for the Staff of Summoning, but suggested that he and his people are True Neutral in the affairs of those from our plane. I could have the staff if I could find it.

      

This may be a dumb question, but what is your term of office?

     

After a few light puzzles, I ran into Qasar, a fanged humanoid. He and his brother were each charged with guarding a piece of the Staff of Summoning. Each half of the staff was transmuted into some other object, and only Qasar and his brother know the "Alteration" spell needed to change it back. Shadow Weaver killed Qasar's brother to get her piece of the staff. Qasar is the only NPC so far to refer to Shadow Weaver as a "she," but he suggests it's more complicated than just him being right and everyone else being wrong. "When the time comes, Jera, you will know. Remember that things are not always as they seem." Anyway, Qasar is bound only to show the "Alteration" spell to one of his own kind, but he suggested that within the walls of the fortress is the solution to the paradox.

         

Shadow Weaver needs to put a gender pronoun line in her signature block.

        

The rest of the level included balls of lightning as enemies and a couple of puzzles where I had to find two Kano runes and two Eyes of Sight (fortunately, the level provided them) to pass. As I wrap up, I'm in the middle of another teleporter maze, this one not annotated in the book, so it's becoming a bit of a challenge. 

         

These didn't look like "creatures" at first.

         

I learned three new spells. Scrolls in the Crimson Domain gave me "Bounce Fireball" and "Zap Away." The former seems to be a regular fireball that bounces off walls if it misses; the second temporarily teleports enemies away. I suppose I could use it instead of "Freeze." An NPC in the Ebon Domain taught me "Magic Skill," which improves all the magic schools temporarily.

     

Encumbrance is a thing of the past. Now that I'm using Warmonger exclusively, I got rid of my extra swords (though I kept other weapons for leveling). I also found a second Bag of Lightness, and of course I can use "Gateway" to get to the lobby of Otherworld One whenever I need to, so I can use it as infinite storage.

         

The sequence for "Magic Skills"

        

Leveling has essentially halted. Jera is exactly where she was last time with magic and weapon skills, and she's still a "Warder." She did gain one level each in the magic skills and has maxed out her leveling in healing magic, of which she is a "Master." I think this has more to do with Perth runes than actual advancement.

   

I'm enjoying the game quite a bit and there's no question that I'll see it to the end, even if the blog suffers a bit from repetition. This is why I play two games at once.

    

Time so far: 31 hours