Legends of Valour: Ragged Chet

 

I just learned to cast my first spell like four days ago.

       

I began this entry sleeping in hovels. I ended as the leader of two guilds, my room and board covered by the organizations. I'm still broke--this game has the stingiest economy of any game I've ever played--but otherwise, Legends of Valour could have been written by Horatio Alger.

    

What makes the economy particularly insidious is that you have to pay for quests. So even if you've worked out your living expenses, you still have to make anywhere from 40 to 160 gold pieces on top of that to level up in the guilds. Failing a quest means having to pay again. While I generally enjoy games in which economies are tough and in which there are many ways to make and spend money, I have to admit that it's getting pretty boring here. I've shuffled dozens of parcels from one end of town to another, sold rocks and weeds (which, of course, is better than selling rock and weed), tried every possible angle at gambling, and even created a spreadsheet to track commodity-trading options and times. I can't find any way to "get rich quick." You have to put in an honest day's labor in this game.

       

Step by step.

      

I ended the last session trying to save up enough money for the next week's lodgings. Eventually, I had enough money for the next quest. I don't remember why, but I decided to keep going with the Guild of the Men at Arms. Their next quest required me to "collect a bottle of Universal Beastbite Antidote from the Institute of Zoolatry" and return within five days. Finding the zoo involved the usual process of asking for directions. It was south of the entry gate.

   

There was a scroll on a table in the foyer of the Institute. It said that they had run out of the key ingredient for the antidote, which was venom from a red vampire bat. To get a bottle of antidote, I would need to return to the Institute with a live specimen. A special ball called a "bat stunner" was on the table for that purpose.

   

I spent some time poking around the Institute, and I'm glad I did. In the last entry, I had noted that a lot of the buildings have interesting names but absolutely nothing in them. The Institute was an exception, and I found a few more exceptions during this session. The Institute actually houses a zoo in its basement. There are exhibits on "rare crimson pygmy-trolls," red vampire bats, brown bears, minotaurs, and lizard men. Some of them are in cages formed by stalagmites; others are in more secure structures and can only be viewed through windows.

       

Windows are opaque from a distance.

      

That brings up an interface element that I didn't notice until this session. It's quite wonderful. If you walk up to any window in the game and press yourself against it, it becomes transparent (there's a brief disk access), and you can see what's happening on the other side. This works in the main town map for regular buildings, and it works in dungeons for these grate-like windows. I guess thieves even have a skill by which they can pass through windows this way. It's an impressive feat of programming; I can't even think of a modern game that does it, at least not when (as here) there's a disk transition from outside to inside.

          

Pressing against the grating gives me a view of the minotaur on the other side.

        

No NPCs I consulted gave information on where to find bats, but a building called the "Belfry" is listed on the map, and I had fortunately already stumbled across it while I was poking my head into random buildings. There were regular bats and red bats flying all around a room called "the gallery." Killing bats produces a corpse called a "bat snack" that you can eat. I needed one alive. It took a bit of practice with the "stunner" to nail one, but I eventually got it and returned to the Institute.

    

I had no clue what to do with it, but fortunately an NPC wandered up and initiated a conversation in which she took it off my hands. There are a lot of moments like that in this game--moments where you don't know exactly how the next plot point is going to progress. If someone tells you "go to the Mermaid's Rest and collect a pouch from a guy named Lars," anything could happen. Lars could be standing in the room and hand you the pouch. You could get to the Mermaid's Rest, find no one, but find a message on the notice board from Lars with your next destination. You could find the pouch on the floor of the main room or some hidden side room on the second floor. Some random NPC outside the tavern could have some dialogue relating to Lars. You really have to look around. And as we'll see in the rest of this entry, the clues aren't always that precise.

        

A helpful NPC.

     

In this case, making the trade caused a bottle of antidote to appear on a nearby table. I took it back to the guild and was promoted to "Weaponsmith."

   

Shortly after this event, I was treated to my first arrest. Some guard just randomly grabbed me on the street and said that I was under arrest for "acting suspiciously." Throughout this session, I would face several other arrests for charges like "excessive snooping," "being drunk and disorderly," and "handling stolen goods." I honestly don't know if something I'm doing is resulting in these charges or if it's just a sign of the corruption of the city. When arrested, you're hauled in front of a judge at the Hall of Justice who either assesses a fine (so far, no more than 20 gold pieces) or a couple days in jail. Almost always, these arrests have happened when I haven't saved for a while, so I've generally gone along with them rather than reload. It has made me avoid guards on the street, however.

         

This might be a fair charge.

"Found guilty"? I don't even remember a trial.

          

The next quest for the Men at Arms is to become champion of the Pit of Death at the Mercenaries' Guild. I had no idea what that meant and no one would tell me. Much later, I found that while the quest is active, the noticeboards of taverns and shops change to show notices about the Pit of Death and the monsters that you face there. The notices indicated that to become champion, you have to kill "all three beasts": a bear on the Day of the Moon (Monday), a troll on Woden's Day (Wednesday), and a minotaur on Freya's Day (Friday). The problem is that the guild only gave me one week to return with the laurels, so you really have to hustle to get over there and win all three in the same week.

           

         

The notices said that the Pit was "under" the guild. I couldn't find any stairs down in the guild or the arena next door. Both had locked doors at their rears, but I had no way to open locked doors, having not progressed in either the Thieves' Guild (which teaches lockpicking) or any of the spellcasting guilds. I spent a lot of time trying to find a way to get into the guilds legitimately before enough days had passed that there was no way for me to complete the quest. Much, much later, I discovered that there is a way into the Pit that doesn't involve a locked door. It's through an unobtrusive building west of the Mercenaries' Guild. I should have poked around more.

    

No guild will give you a new quest while another is still active, so I spent the rest of the week just making money. I discovered that the area of the Mercenaries' Guild is a violent place. Lots of NPCs--particularly women--want to pick fights when you're hanging out in front of it. So it was a good place to collect a few gold pieces at a time through combat. I also upgraded (I think) my primary weapon to an "ornate axe." This would be a good time to mention that combat has not once been a problem in this game--not even when I finally got into the Pit of Death. I don't know if it's related to my high initial statistics or if it's just fundamentally easy, but enemies die in a couple of hits and have never been in danger of killing me. It's easy even when I forget to keep my weapon equipped and thus have to fight with my hands.

           

Does every man-at-arms who wants this promotion in the future have to fight me?

            

I thought maybe one of the reasons I couldn't get into the Pit was that you had to be a certain level of fighter, so I ended up spending the money I made to get trained up to the "Fourth Dann" in weapons skills. You just have to trust the game that anything is actually improving. I really didn't notice any difference.

   

When the week was over, I returned to the Fellowship of the Asegeir for their next quest, which was to find Forseti, "the patron god of the Asegeir," and return with the Scroll of Truth. The first NPC I spoke with said that Forseti is usually at the Halls of Justice--a building with which I was becoming intimately familiar. At the Halls of Justice, an NPC named Denby of Akhbar told me that Forseti had gone to the Casino, and that when I found him, I should tell him that "it's my scroll you want." At the Casino, Forseti wasn't there, but there was a notice on the notice board that listed three scrolls. "Denby's scroll is downstairs at the Halls of Justice," it offered.

        

This is a weird way to advance the plot. Does everyone in the tavern need to know this?

     

Back I went to the Halls, and here I got into trouble for a while. I interpreted "downstairs" as being in the basement. I found a stairway down. It led to a series of caverns mostly occupied by goblins, who are infuriating. They have a way of picking your pocket for a few gold pieces every time they touch you. They're otherwise not hostile, so if you want to kill them and get your gold back, you have to chase them down, swinging your fists, until they agree to fight. Even then, you never loot as much gold as they stole in the first place. I couldn't find the scroll anywhere, so I ended up slaughtering all of the goblins to see if any of them had it. When it turns out they didn't, I reloaded because I wanted my gold back.

            

These guys are little bastards.

       

Anyway, it turns out that "downstairs" just means on the first floor rather than the second. I eventually found the scroll in a side room, returned it to the guild, and received my promotion to "Scribe."

    

This promotion finally got me access to the game's mage spells: "Portal," "Fireball," "Create Food," "Create Drink," "Warp," "Heal," "Power," and "Protection." I might have had access to some of these at a lower level, but I didn't really experiment. It was "Portal" that I was waiting for. This spell moves you through locked doors. I'll experiment more with spells for the next entry.

      

The mage's spellbook. I love how "Create Food" and "Create Drink" give you a cheeseburger and a cocktail.

          

Before testing it at the Mercenaries' Guild, I decided to finish the Asegeir questline. The next promotion asked me to retrieve a "mystic tablet" from a mummy's tomb. It took me a while to find the tomb, because although NPCs gave me directions, they seemed to converge on a building that was only labeled "dwelling" when I entered. It was only by going downstairs that I found the tomb, which I guess makes sense.

            

It's nice when the game confirms you're in the right place.

      

After fighting my way through ghosts and zombies--again, no real danger at all--I found the tomb door locked. A nearby goblin, I guess some kind of caretaker, told me that to get into the tomb, I would need to place two identical pyramids "forged from secret metals" on two pillars on either side of the entrance. Unfortunately, one pyramid had been destroyed a long time ago. I found the other one.

   

I wasn't sure how to progress, but the game gave me a clue. Notice boards in shops and taverns suddenly had a poster about "Lefty Knuddson," a convicted forger recently escaped from prison. He was last seen at the Snakes tavern. According to the faux newspaper in the game manual, the Snakes is supposed to be near the guild's secret entrance. I poked around until I found an underground tunnel that led me to the guild, where Mr. Knuddson was manning the front counter. He took my pyramid and told me to come back tomorrow for its copy. When I returned the next day, he was gone, but the two pyramids were on a nearby table.

           

I love the idea that an ancient mystic talisman can simply be forged.

        

Back I went to the tomb, opened the way, killed about four mummies, and retrieved the tablet. The guild promoted me to "Spellcaster."

           

I was disappointed to encounter no living mummies in Assassin's Creed: Origins, which I have been playing on the console this month.

       

The "Wizard" promotion required me to pick up a barrel of tar at the Boatyard, take it to the Temple of Loki (apparently, the Asegeirs' main rivals), and use it to defile the inner sanctum. That seems like a bad idea, but I did it.

   

To give me the final promotion quest to "Master Wizard," the guild wanted all my gold. I had a fair amount at the time, so I decided to spend a bit first by completing a couple of Men at Arms quests. With the "Portal" spell, I was able to force my way through the doors at the Mercenaries' Guild and make it down to the Pits of Death. On three different days, I won three cage matches against the three beasts, got the laurel crown, and was promoted to Captain. I re-upped at my current lodgings, which dropped my holdings down to 33 gold pieces before I returned to the Asegeir and handed them over.

       

Killing the troll in the Pit of Death.

      

The last quest for the Asegeir was an odd one. The guildmaster told me that I had to "absorb the wisdom of the Twelve by touching the Heligo Goblet, one of three goblets kept upstairs. She warned me that touching the wrong goblet would mean instant death. A lamp kept with the goblets would somehow help me out.

         

Two of the three goblets.

        

The room indeed had three goblets and a lamp. When I rubbed the lamp, I met a genie calling himself the "Spirit of the Asegeir." To know the right goblet, he said, I would have to "look into the eye of the Great Sea Monster." To do this, I would have to bait the monster with the corpse of a bat. I had to go back to the Belfry and kill a bat for a "bat snack" before the genie would continue. His directions to the Sea Monster seemed clear: "Enter Nidavellir, through the doorway at the south of Twinoaks. Take in the view through the south wharf door. Then place the bat's remains on a table by the door to attract the monster."

            

Digitizing Barbara Eden would have killed you?

        

Actually finding the proper place took forever. "Nidavellir" is the dwarven section of the city, but its label on the map is far north of where the correct building turned out to be. I couldn't find anything labeled "Twinoaks." I had to explore every building in the area before finding one that had a south-facing door with a table next to it. Looking through the door without placing the bat corpse offered a nice image of the river south of Mitteldorf. Looking after placing the snack revealed a giant one-eyed octopus.

          

I can't tell if that's a pupil and iris without a sclera or an iris and sclera without a pupil.

        

With help from Irene, I determined that his eye (the outer part, at least) was yellow, and that one of the goblets had a yellow gem. I touched it and returned to the guildmaster for my final promotion.

     

There was a nice cut scene, but with both good and bad news:

    

As leader of the Fellowship of the Asegeir, you have free access to all the rooms and chambers. Your new position is an honorary one, and as such, you receive no wage, although whilst you hold office, you need pay no rent at your current hostel.

      

It's been a long-running joke among Elder Scrolls players that you can show up new in town, perform six quests, and become the head of a guild. It looks like Legends started that trope, but at least this game makes it clear that the position is only "honorary." Still, it makes you wonder why the creators of both games didn't halt the character's progress at a high-but-still-not-ultimate position. It's not like becoming head of the guild means that I get to assign quests or manage guild funds or do anything that such a position would suggest.

    

At this point, I had to spend some time building up 175 gold pieces to pay for the final promotion in the Men at Arms guild. That involved a couple of days of random questing. At one point during the process, I developed lycanthropy after fighting a werewolf at night. You can also contract vampirism in this game. I don't know if either has any benefits or plot points associated with the disease like the Elder Scrolls would later develop, but I didn't want to spend time on figuring it out. I went to the Temple of Aegir for healing. To minimize the cost, I joined the temple and did their first quest--a simple quest to fetch a scroll from a building called the Shrine of Mjord. 

      

It's nice when it's this easy.

        

The final quest for the Men at Arms was to bring back the head of the Gorgon. A random NPC told me that Zorgoth the Slayer would know where to find it. Through the usual process, I found my way to Zorgoth's house and found him in the dungeon beneath it. He said I would need two things to kill the Gorgon: the magic Axe of Gorn and luck, as touching any part of the Gorgon would turn me to stone. I interpreted "luck" as being a random thing and not something I could actually find or plan for. As to the location, he would only say that "the followers of Set and Asegeir have links to the Gorgon." As leader of the Fellowship of Asegeir, this was news to me. He also said I could find it by going through the door behind him, but he would lock it behind me. I tried that way first but got lost in the dungeon and had to cast "Warp" to get back to town (the spell brings you to the Stone Circle on the surface).

          

I'm not a fan of dialogue by scrolling text.

        

The Temple of Set and the Fellowship of Asegeir are close to each other, so I figured the "link" must be a shared dungeon entrance. I was right, but it still took me a long time to find the Gorgon. The dungeon goes under the entire city, and it was thus easy to be led along fruitless paths, wasting my energy on trolls or mummies and losing half my gold to goblins. Eventually, I found the lair by concentrating on places near the two guilds.

    

The Gorgon, looking a lot like Medusa, wandered her room alone. I couldn't find the Axe of Gorn at first, but the lair turned out to have a couple of secret exits behind waterfalls. One led to an area with a bunch of infuriating goblins but also the Axe.

          

If you were a medusa, I think it would be self-defeating to show so much cleavage.

          

I returned with it and killed the Gorgon in a short combat. I was hoping I'd be able to keep the axe, but it disappeared as soon as she died. Afterwards, I stupidly tried to pick up her head and was instantly killed. Reloading from the last inn, I had to do the entire dungeon again, this time continuing my search of the Gorgon's lair long enough to find a hessian sack (what we call "burlap" in the U.S.) in which to store the head. This required me to equip the sack and then "use" it while standing over the head. I tried it first by equipping the sack, standing over the head, and trying to pick up the head--which killed me again and required a third trip through the dungeon. On the final attempt, I got it right.

        

My only death so far.

      

My promotion to Templar in the Guild of Men at Arms was accompanied by the same type of ceremony as the Asegeir guild, along with the same notice that I would no longer be receiving a weekly wage. Sven's note said that I would need to rise to the head of a guild and a temple. I don't think the Asegeir fellowship counts as a "temple," so I'm going to have to finish the questline in the Temple of Aegir.

      

Random notes:

      

• I'm no closer to finding out what happened to Sven. I found his diary for sale in one of the shops. It's from early in his visit to the city, describing how he got settled, joined the Guild of Men at Arms, and completed his first quest.

        

     

• You occasionally find bottles of water for sale (or on the ground), but most of your resources for making the thirst meter go down are alcoholic, such as ales or gin-and-tonics. The problem is, if you drink too many of them, the graphics go all woozy for a while and it's hard to walk.

        

This being a British game, I'm surprised the image doesn't show a glass of gin, a separate bottle of tonic, and a separate bucket of ice cubs with a pair of tongs.

         

• "Ox blood" is a drink that does nothing for your thirst. Instead, it restores your hunger meter, and quite quickly and cheaply, too. Sven mentions it in his diary. 

• Robed guys keep approaching me on the street at night and asking if I want to buy insurance. I have no idea what this does.

• New insults from random NPCs: "You walk like a squashed tomato"; "I'd rather talk to a halfwit bog elf"; "You look like a geriatric dung beetle."

        

I missed the beginning of this one. He's either referring to me or my mother.

        

• A lot of buildings are connected by dungeons, which makes sense. But others are connected by their second stories, which makes less sense, as you don't see bridges between them when you're outdoors.

            

I might have found a bead on the main quest. While I was searching for the dungeon entrance from the Fellowship of Asegeir, I discovered a "Master Wizard's room" that they hadn't bothered to tell me about when I was promoted to Master Wizard. It had several tables, one of which held a skull called the Skull of the South. A nearby scroll told me the following: "Becoming leader of our group is not the pinnacle of your achievement. You must gather the four skulls in order to balance power in the city. The other three skulls are kept by Mitteldorf's other societies--one to each type." 

          

Walt Disney pictures presents a Wes Craven film . . .

          

I'm not sure what "one to each type" means, exactly. The map shows only two types of organizations: guilds and temples. If you split the Fellowship of Asegeir and the Brotherhood of Loki off into their own grouping of magic users, that's still only three. Maybe four means fighters, thieves, mages, and priests.

  

Once I became head of the Templars, I poked around and sure enough, there was similar room with the Skull of the North. "The second skull is yours," the scroll read. "On your travels, you must also find the Orb of Vision, a very precious object, to direct you once you have the four skulls." (Ironically, I just found a Gem of Vision in Secrets of Bharas.) Since this message refers quite literally to the "second skull," and it happened to be the second one I obtained, I assume this isn't a coincidence. Rather, you find the skulls in the guild rooms that you happen to become head of. Since these rooms are "secured" (not just locked) until you become head of the guilds, I assume you can't obtain them through burglary. That suggests that it's not just one guild and one temple that I must master, but at least four.

   

I'm compiling a lot of thoughts about the game for the final entry. I'll say two things here: First, I think this is one of the earliest examples of a game that separates events from geography. Most early RPGs conflate the two, so that to progress geographically is to progress narratively. Here, the two factors are independent, or mostly so, which allows the game to re-use much of the same physical space. It gives the sense of a "living town" in a way that most early RPGs don't, although there's still a long way to go. Second, I like that the nature, length, and difficulty of the guild quests are varied. It keeps them from getting boring even though there's little exciting happening with game mechanics.

 

Time so far: 22 hours