Dark Sun: The Ungreat Escape

So much for secrecy.

        

I started the game anew, but with my existing characters. The discussion highlighted some potentially more powerful parties, but I thought I'd move ahead with the challenges of a less-than-perfect party. Besides, there was something I liked about the existing composition. 

   

The game started us in the arena again. The opening combat was with three sligs and a screamer beetle. I turned to the manual for more information about both. The "bestiary" in the manual is divided into two sections. The second one offers detailed information about monsters "appearing for the first time in an AD&D® computer fantasy role-playing game," suggesting that the ones in the first section have been described before. While this section does have common enemies like elementals, otyughs, and bulettes, I don't remember encountering rampagers, sligs, or slaads in previous games. Sligs are "distant cousins of goblins and hobgoblins," basically a low-level "monster" that has a purely physical attack with no status effects. Screamer beetles are in the "new" section. They're multi-colored giant beetles with deadly mandibles and a debilitating psi attack.

    

I can't remember whether the announcer is insulting us or the monsters.

        

I killed them all in a couple of rounds with melee attacks. This time, the citizens in the stands threw money into the arena that I could pick up. That didn't happen last time. This time, I yelled back at the announcer: "I'm a real warrior, and I'll prove it!" He sent two wild muls, two sligs, a daggoran, and a defiler after me. The game manual doesn't tell you what  "defiler" is, so I'm glad my commenters cleared that up last time: it's a mage who doesn't mind ruining the world by killing its life force for his own advantage. I wish the setting had gone all-in and called them "deniers."

   

Anyway, my commenters insist this battle is winnable, but the defiler opened with a cold-based mass-damage spell that knocked Featherweight and Yester out of action in the first round. The other two didn't last more than a round longer. The announcer taunted us as we died.

   

Restarting again, I kept my mouth shut, collected the money (5 ceramic coins), and went meekly back to the pens. Violencia, the first character, was automatically made leader of the party. You can switch with the 1-4 keys, which is nice. I kept her in the position because she has the highest charisma.

   

Kurzak, the leader of the guards, and Legcrusher, the half-giant monster-tamer, met us at the door. Kurzak described his job as "routine," claiming that it's a better gig than building the sorcerer-king's pyramid, even though "everything's been slowed down since his disappearance."

     

The arena complex. The slave pens are the section on the right side.

  

He led us to the pens, which comprise a rectangular ring of corridor. The gate to the pens is at the north end. Eighteen cells--eight inner, ten outer--branch off the ring. I started exploring counter-clockwise. Midway down the west corridor on the outer edge was a locked door which opened at our knock despite there being no one in it. As we entered, a breeze closed the door behind us. The state of the furnishings suggested that no one had occupied the cell for a long time, and the remains of the previous occupant were heaped on the ground in the corner. As we looked around, a zombie came walking through the wall separating the cell from a room (outside the slave pens) to the west. I didn't know zombies could do that.

   

Featherweight killed the zombie with her bow in the first round of combat, before he even reached us. After his death, we searched the wall and found a button, which opened the part of the wall he'd walked through. Violencia, who actually pressed the button, got 250 experience points. The hidden door led to two rooms, one with a sarcophagus, in which we found 50 coins and a gem worth 1,500. A chest in the south room had a suit of bone scale chest armor and 4 wooden arrows +3. I gave the former to Violencia, who started with no armor, and the latter to Featherweight, my ranger/thief. We had to remove the hinges to get back out into the corridor.

    

Just before the zombie phased through the wall.

     

The next cells had our first NPCs. Mirlon was a vain, narcissistic man. He said we'd need money to escape and talked of a valuable gem. He said that a slave named Seymon, currently chained up in the arena, had such a gem. "It's probably still on his body." We had the option to give him the gem I found in the secret area, but I held off for now. Something didn't seem trustworthy about him. 

   

Scar claimed that he runs the pens. He said he'd talk to us after a couple more visits to the arena. He had three henchmen who wouldn't say anything.

 

The only door on the south side of the rectangle was locked. Moving up the east side, we met Gilal, lying in the haystack in her cell. She was made a gladiator after she stole a loaf of bread to feed her starving family. Her neighbor, also starving, turned her in for the reward money. She was the only survivor of her first battle in the arena and hasn't had to fight a second one yet. She told me that enemies will escalate from sligs and screamer beetles to wild muls, renegade halflings, and mountain stalkers. In the middle of the conversation, she complained about a sharp pain in her head and wouldn't talk anymore.

    

Diagonally across from here, we overheard two men conspiring about something, one asking the other if he'd stashed "the stuff" in the haystack. One of the haystacks in the cell to the south of the men contained a club and 15 coins, but they were probably talking about the one in their room, as they threatened to kill me if I searched it. The leader of this group was named Merzol. We had some interesting dialogue options with him, including the aggressive "Listen, slaad-bait! I'm in charge" and a direct question about what they stashed in the haystack. I played it safer and asked about his escape plans. He agreed to let me join their escape if I returned after two more fights in the arena.

  

Interesting role-playing options here. I suspect the first two lead to combat, although I'm not sure "son of a beggar" is much of an insult in this setting.

       

The Trustee, a former gladiator now too old to fight, was wandering the hallways. The head guard let him stay on as a "helper" after he saved the man from an escaped stalker. He related that slaves sometimes escape but they have to flee the city into one of the free villages in the desert. Kurzak likes money, but it would probably take more than we could scrounge to make him betray his templar boss and let us go. He is mystified by Gilal's introversion. Between Scar and Merzol, he thinks Scar is a better fighter and more disciplined. Mirlon is not to be trusted. He finished the conversation by opening the southern door, which leads to the cook, Dinos (+200 experience for Sunstroke, who I had put in the lead in anticipation of the reward).

  

Dinos occupied rather luxurious quarters in the south. The moment I talked to him, he asked if we'd heard someone screaming. I said that Gilal was in severe pain, and he demanded to be led to her. We did as he asked and he healed her. (We could have done that, but the game won't let you cast "Cure Light Wounds" on anyone but other party members.) The party got 350 experience each, which put Featherweight to Level 3 as a thief. 

   

Just a shot of the character sheet.

       

The healed Gilal related that her head pain had been caused by a "memory block" installed by the templar after she escaped. She found a secret passage in the northernmost monster pen, leading to the sewer entrance. "It's a big hole in the northwest corner of the pens, to the west of the kitchen. You just have to push a button in the corner of the pen, and it will open." We'd just have to sneak past or overcome a guard there. Gilal had broken something to distract him. She was looking for a rumored village led by a man named Dominy, who has reportedly dug a well that has lasted for years, but she broke her leg before she got far, and the templars found her. There's a rumor that Tectuktitlay (the sorcerer-king) is gathering an army to wipe out the villages. Afraid if being executed if caught escaping again, she refused to come with me.

   

I suspect Gilal is setting up the main quest here.

        

We returned to finish our conversation with Dinos. He was the former head chef at the Red Plume Inn in Draj. (Any connection with the Red Plumes of the Forgotten Realms?) He was thrown in the slave pens when the high templar had an allergic reaction to his cooking, now forced to make meals for the man daily. To the east of his rooms was a water trough, where I was able to fill up a pot I'd found (+200 experience).

  

Having spoken to everyone I could find, I rested to restore the few hit points lost in the first battle. When we were done resting, Kurzak was hollering that it was our turn in the arena again.

   

This time, after entering the arena, instead of turning west to face the monsters, we ran east to explore a bit. We immediately found Seymon chained up, only he wasn't dead. He was alive and begging for water. We cut his bonds and gave him the pot of water (+750 experience). 

     

Approaching Seymon.

        

Before we could do anything else, the enemies reached us--two wild muls and two renegade halflings. Seymon joined us and nearly got killed by one of the muls, but we managed to defeat them in time. Sunstroke rose to cleric Level 3 from the experience. After combat, we took the 10 coins the crowd threw to us, but also thought to loot the bodies of our slain enemies for swords and armor. Seymon just kept telling us he'd "talk to us in a minute" and never gave us the information about the gem. We eventually had to leave the arena and return.

   

Overall, it appeared I had several options for escape:

   

• Attack the guards after winning a fight in the arena but before being locked into the pens. That should give me the run of the arena area, which would allow me to find the secret door Gilal told us about. Or maybe just run away from Kurzak while he's leading us between the arena and pens.
• Try to pick the lock to the door west of Dinos's room, again allowing access to the rest of the complex and the secret door.
• Try to bribe Kurzak.
• Give the gem to Mirlon and follow his plan.
• Win two more arena fights and join Merzol's escape.
• Win more arena fights and see what Scar has to offer.

     

I decided it couldn't hurt to fight one more arena combat and see what Scar and Merzol had to offer. We rested and demanded a new fight.

   

The announcer was more complimentary to us as we entered. Again, we turned east from the entrance and explored a bit before the creatures reached us. Seymon still had nothing to say, but a corpse near him had leather boots (given to Featherweight), and another in the southeast had a gythka (a polearm with a blade at each end). The enemies reached us before we could do anything else: four thri-kreen and a tohr-kreen, which the manual doesn't describe. Featherweight had the first successful use of a psi-attack, rendering the tohr-kreen unable to attack for a few rounds with "Ego Whip." We won, but we were pretty badly beat up.

      

The announcer pays us a compliment.

     

On the way out of the arena, we freed another fighter from bondage, but he died the moment he hit the ground. We found a club on another corpse.

  

Back in the slave pens, Merzol would talk to us, but it turned out he had no plan at all except maybe to ambush Kurzak when he opens the door. After that: "I don't know--we could just kill all the guards and take over!" Scar, meanwhile, still wouldn't talk with me.

   

I chanced another battle, and this one took me a few reloads. The enemy party consisted of three sligs and a mountain stalker. The sligs were trivial, but the stalker kept charging in and tearing someone apart. It gets four attacks per round, each of which can do up to 15 damage. I finally defeated them by casting "Bless" before the battle and using "Grease" to freeze him in place while I weakened him with arrows and spells. 

        

Specifying the radius for a "Grease" spell.

        

Back in the pens, Scar would finally speak to me. His plan was to arrange to fight each other in the arena, then join forces and fight our way out. He claimed to know how to open the west door. My role-playing tendencies nearly led me to simply escape on my own, likely via the door leading out of Dinos's quarters, but I wasn't 100% confident in combat yet, and I decided I'd feel better with allies. I ultimately decided to go with Scar.

      

The plan worked well at first. The next time we were summoned to the arena, we found ourselves facing Scar's party. Instead of fighting, both parties ran for the west door and escaped to the interior of the arena structure, but outside the slave pens. We fought a combat with a couple of guards on the other side of the door. Scar and his goons were a big help. We looted some obsidian longswords and bows off the corpses.

     

The gladiators break free!

            

Scar said we should go north and he would go south. I had Gilal's instructions for reaching the exit, but I figured I'd take my time. I was in "other game" mode, assuming that at worst, I'd find enemies in little pockets that I could clear one at a time.

   

Instead, every single guard in the entire complex converged on my location. Their pathfinding was unerring. I tried holing myself up in the corner of a remote room, where at least they couldn't snipe me from afar, but they just wouldn't stop coming. I saved in a bad place and don't even have the option to head directly for the exit now. I'll have to reload an earlier save from before the second arena battle.

        

The party cowers around a corner while waiting for enemies to enter the room. This strategy didn't work.

     

Miscellaneous notes:

   

• Hitting ESC brings up the save/quit menu. The two buttons are right next to each other, and the "Quit" button doesn't ask for any confirmation. Fortunately, hitting the "S" key activates "Save." After one mis-click, I'm going to be sure never to use the mouse on that menu again.

• The music, which I turned off, doesn't seem to be appropriate to the setting. Where the music for Perihelion was sparse, haunting, and appropriately apocalyptic, the title theme for Dark Sun features a driving 4/4 beat and a surprisingly upbeat melody. It feels like something that would accompany a montage of a character doing errands in Los Angeles. The slave pens theme is a bit moodier, and it has an interesting melody, rhythm, and (starting around the 1:15 mark) instrumentation, but it still doesn't feel to me like it has anything to do with the game world. The compositions are credited to Ralph Thomas, an alias for Ralph Cooksey-Talbott, whose first score was for Spelljammer the previous year. He spent the 1990s at SSI before starting his own software company and photography studio.

• In a setting where water is supposed to be more valuable than gold, I was surprised that there's a huge water trough in Dinos's room that anyone can just walk up and use. Later, during our escape, I found a huge fountain of water. I'm beginning to think that water isn't as scarce as I was led to believe.

     

The party stops and stares in awe.

     

• This is going to be my sticking point with the interface: it has keyboard backups for everything but switching the active icon. So instead of hitting "T" and then clicking on a character to talk, the process involves right-clicking several times and watching the icon carefully to make sure I don't miss the "talk" one. In combat, it's the same way. You can scroll through enemies with the (N)ext and (P)revious keys, but the only way to attack them (that I can find) is to click, and that involves first right-clicking to the appropriate attack option. Tell me if I'm missing something.

• I also can't figure out the "quick combat" system, not that I'd use it with combats of this complexity. But I did want to see how it performed. The manual says you activate it in combat with the SPACE bar, but this doesn't do anything as far as I can tell.

    

I'm weighing several options. Now that I know how tough things are after the escape, I could go back to my original plan of starting over with a new party. In particular, I need to roll a half giant with better dexterity. His current dexterity of 14 seemed okay by past D&D standards, but he hardly ever hits, somewhat ruining the purpose of having a giant. My preserver/druid is also a bit useless once he runs out of spells, which happens quickly at Level 2.

     

Can I possible leave without exploring this room?

     

The second option is to fight more arena battles until each character gains at least one more level. My only trepidation there is that they were already becoming pretty hard.

      

The third option is to role play and make my escape without insisting on exploring the outer complex. That's tough to contemplate given how many rooms and likely treasures that there are, but part of me still likes the idea of a game that forces that kind of choice. Part of me also wonders whether the door to the next area is one-way or whether I'd be able to clear out the arena by "escaping," then making guerilla attacks back into the arena.

   

Time so far: 5 hours