Serpent Isle: Armor Wars

Getting this screenshot was a lot more work than it should have been.

     

As this session begins, I decide to be oddly stubborn about getting Dupre's shield back from Luther. The problem, as I outlined last time, is that Luther will only relinquish the shield if I beat him in a duel, and he only duels on the List Field. You can choose to train or fight on the List Field, but if you "fight," you end up fighting everyone, whereas training is done one-on-one with your chosen opponent. Thus, to ensure I can win a fair fight against Luther, I have to have enough points to train. I decide to try to get these points by returning to the dungeon I found last time, partly because there's a chance it also has my spellbook. The book was replaced with a chunk of pumice, and several NPCs have indicated that pumice, a volcanic rock, probably comes from a dungeon called "Furnace." I don't know for sure that this dungeon near Monitor is Furnace, but it makes sense, as knights apparently often go questing there.

    

The trip is a partial success. I get some armor pieces to replace the ones I accidentally sold. We kill enough trolls for Dupre to level up, and we loot a ton more gems from their bodies. This time, some weird flaming dude attacks me with fireballs, but fortunately we're able to kill him before he does much damage. We find a magic axe in a pile of debris that I had missed last time. We even bring back a couple of pikemen's bodies for cremation. Renfry pays us 100 monetari each.

       

Renfry should be glad we're not evil, or he'd learn what the term "perverse incentive" means.

       

It's a failure in that we don't figure out how to open the locked grate or the locked door (behind which I can see a serpent staff) or figure out how to lower the drawbridge. Or find the spellbook. 

   

Combat has the same problems as The Black Gate: It's a complete mess in which it's nearly impossible to figure out what anyone is doing. Luck plays a huge role. The Avatar does nothing if an enemy isn't right next to him. Other companions vacillate between doing nothing and charging off-screen after distant enemies you haven't even seen yet, sometimes on the other sides of walls. Adjusting party "tactics" doesn't seem to have any effect. Enemies respawn as quickly as it takes to leave a screen and return. The only thing I haven't been able to assess is whether "friendly fire" is as big a problem as in the previous game.

        

Different combat strategies produce very little difference in results.

     

The next day, we arrive early at the List Field. I take a save, then send Dupre to train with Luther. He defeats Luther in about three blows. But Luther just says he's impressed and nothing else. Maybe training with him isn't enough. We waste most of a day trying to catch Luther off the field. He doesn't leave until late afternoon, and when he does, we can't find him in the training hall, sculptor's shop, or tavern. We have to resort to finding him in his house at night again. When we do, he has no new dialogue, continues to insist the shield is his, and continues to invite us to challenge him on the List Field.

   

Fed up with this part of the quest, we sleep for the night in our inn (Simon's body remains in the lobby, just as Lydia's did in her shop) and then head for the goblin encampment. The stairway behind the dead tree leads to a small dungeon with three goblins guarding a locked iron door. We dispatch the goblins and unlock the door with Simon's key. 

       

You'd think the guards would be on the other side.

     

Beyond the door is a large, multi-level dungeon, which I find surprising because I don't believe any of the dungeons in The Black Gate were multi-level (despite plenty of them in previous Ultimas). A little Googling confirms what I already suspected based on previous remarks from commenters: Both The Black Gate and Serpent Isle exist entirely on one "plane." In Gate, because you can explore the entire plane by ship and magic carpet, all dungeons had to be hidden within mountain ranges, constrained by those ranges' sizes and shapes. Stairs, in the rare places they exist, are illusory, simply moving you laterally to graphics that appear to be higher than the surrounding base, but never have anything underneath them.

   

Serpent Isle also exists on a single plane, but here you have no way of exploring the entire overworld. The magic carpet is back in Britannia, and for plot reasons, there are no ships on the sea. Thus, the developers could use the edges and corners of the world for whatever they want, including multiple levels per dungeon and levels that don't really fit within the constraints of the mountain ranges. When you go up and down stairways in dungeons, you're functionally just teleporting to other parts of the same plane. If you could see a true map of the Serpent Isle, you would find it crammed with dungeon levels and alternate instances of key overworld locations, all of them just slightly out of view of the Serpent Isle's coasts.

   

These goblins could use a housekeeper.

    

Getting back to the goblin dungeon specifically, it takes us a few visits to get through it. I wonder if the developers intended players to do some other things, or at least find a spellbook, before tackling this part of the game. There are fire, sleep, and poison fields throughout the dungeon that we must walk through as we have no means of dispelling them. I die twice, both times resurrected (by the monks) in Harnna's cornfield back in Monitor. Features of the dungeon include:

   

• An area full of headless, who often carry gold nuggets.

• A barrel full of potions.

• A room with five casks of liquor behind a magically-locked door. I can't get through the door but I don't particularly need to get at the goblin brew anyway.

       

The goblins magically-lock this but not their treasure room.

        

• A cavern with an enormous game board of 49 squares. It is reminiscent of Knight's Bridge in Britannia (see this entry), but with some key differences. It has the same number of squares as Knight's Bridge, but without the "roped off" squares on both sides. Where Knight's Bridge had a chest in the center that you had to dribble around, this one has an immobile pedestal in the center with a firedoom staff on it. Like Knight's Bridge, the game seems to involve human knights against gargoyles, but Knight's Bridge had interchangeable pieces that the player could move, while this board has pieces in different poses--plus one that looks like Lord British--and they won't be budged. A number of stone harpies stand on the board and come to life and attack when we approach. There's also a crazed mage in the room who tosses fireballs at us. A sign on the wall says, "DO NOT DISTURB GAMEMASTERS." Very weird. The stone harpies were responsible for one of my deaths, and the firedoom staff was responsible for the other when I actually tried to use it in combat. Has anyone actually successfully used the firedoom staff?

      

And wasn't the firedoom staff red in the previous game?

     

• A stairway leading down to a pool of water. Some headless lurk on the shores. A sign reads, "BEWARE OF WATER CREATURES," but there are none in this room. 

• A second, larger, "pool" room, with five monoliths erected around a fountain. Anywhere from one to four tentacles erupt every time the party enters this room. The fountain heals, though, so it's a great place to grind.

       

A rare instance of a Wilhelm Scream in text format.

      

• A cavern containing a destroyed stone building with a checkerboard floor. A statue of a lich (or just an immobile lich?) shoots fireballs continually to the south. A fire wand rests on a pedestal. Mongbats patrol the southern part of the chamber. I can't find any way to stop the flow of fireballs or "kill" the lich.

     

What was this ever for?

     

• A chest with four poison potions that explodes when we open it.

• A room full of treasure that we have no way to access. The door won't respond to our blows or to picks.

      

The dungeon finally disgorges us in a seaside enclave with about a dozen huts. There's a well and a trio of campfires in the center. The area is swarming with goblins, of course, both male and female. Their disheveled huts show repeated signs of human butchery, including corpses, heads, limbs, and buckets of blood. The body of a female knight has a Sword of Defense; I wonder if this is Astrid.

     

You read my mind, Dupre.

    

We make our way slowly through them, killing goblins and collecting loot and food. The largest hut, with several furnishings (though still a dirt floor), belongs to Pomdirgun, the goblin king. We catch him sleeping, though he soon wakes up. After a couple of blows, he wants to talk. He presents his case simply: Serpent Isle (or at least this part) used to belong to the goblins; then men came and started killing goblins; one day, the goblins will kill all the men and reclaim their land. Their cause would be more sympathetic without all the butchery. Pomdirgun loses interest in talking after a few dialogue options. Some goblins rush in behind us. We're victorious in the subsequent battle, with no deaths, which surprises me. Pomdirgun drops a key and another magic axe. A chest in his hut has a pile of monetari, a pile of filari, and a couple of gems.

      

I love how in this game, there's no ambiguity that the goblins just need to be killed.

      

More important, a crate has a second key and 23 burst arrows. I'm going to assume these are Shamino's and the hairbrush we found belongs to Pomdirgun.

   

A crate in another hut contains, oddly, a Fellowship medallion. Yet another hut has a locked door with a pikeman on the other side. We free him, and he introduces himself as Johnson, probably the same Johnson who wrote Fighting is an Art.

     

Although he doesn't seem quite as brave as he claimed he was in the book.

      

Back in the dungeon, we use the goblin king's key to open the locked door. The room is full of liquor, gems, jewelry, and money. There are 15 guilders, 28 monetari, 10 gems, and several pieces of jewelry. I wonder why Pomdirgun is hoarding money used by each of the cities on the continent. There's a gold sextant, which I swap for my regular sextant, though I don't see how it's any better.

        

The goblin hoard.

    

Most important, the Helm of Courage sits on a table with two pieces of paper nearby. After settling the helm on my own head, I take a look at the papers. One of them is a scroll signed by Marsten, the leader of Monitor, though he stylizes himself as "king" in the signature line. He outlines his plans to send the Bears on a patrol near Bull Tower, then withdraw his forces from the tower, allowing the goblins to both destroy the patrol and sack the Sleeping Bull. In the letter, he describes his "enemies" as the Wolves and the Bears. The second letter is an older one, giving the goblins the information they needed to destroy the patrol near Fawn Tower and capture Astrid. It's signed by Spektor. Marsten and Spektor clearly decided at some point that the other factions in Monitor were somehow worse than the goblins. 

       

The Guardian should teach Marsten how to do the giant-talking-head-scroll thing.

     

We head back to town, where Marsten and Spektor have some 'splainin to do. We talk to a few people as we pass, but no one seems to recognize that I'm wearing the Helm of Monitor. We find Marsten and Spektor in Town Hall. Marsten has no new dialogue options, but we can tell Spektor we know he's a traitor, and we do. He shouts that he can defend himself, but then doesn't attack. Sighing, we head off to find Brendann, the leader of our command, to see if he's interested. 

       

"I just won't!"

       

Fortunately, that works. He's surprised that the traitor isn't Luther, but he vows to have Marsten and Spektor arrested. He also names me Champion Knight. He says that Bull Tower will need to be warned; I have no option to tell him that the goblin king is dead. After the conversation, he shouts, "Pikemen!" and three pikemen appear, but there's no more to the conversation. They act quickly, though: by the time we reach the jail, Marsten and Spektor are already in separate cells.

      

Oh, $$@#%. As you'll see, by the end of this session, I had completely forgotten about this.

    

Marsten gives the expected explanation: he needed to weaken the Wolves and Bears so the Leopards could rule the city--and somehow thereafter deal with the goblins despite the reduction in population. He says he had a "secret weapon" to defend the city, a "substance," but I'll never find it. I suspect he means blackrock. Spektor defends himself with the same logic, but adds that Cantra's father "stumbled into our secret cave, so he had to be killed." He adds that the secret weapon is "explosive." 

        

There is absolutely no analogue to this in contemporary politics.

        

We've done a great job depopulating Monitor. I'm beginning to wonder if there's anyone in town who isn't a traitor of some kind. 

   

The goblin expedition leveled up the Avatar and Dupre by one and Shamino and Iolo by two. Time to get Dupre's damned shield back. The next morning, I head to the List Field, where I have the Avatar ask to train with Luther. Fortunately, I defeat him. Luther acknowledges his defeat humbly: "Thou art a better man than I am." Unlike last time, I find him almost right away in Andral's studio--except that he won't talk to me while he's having his statue created.

        

I'm a little insulted.

     

I run around the rest of the town to see if anyone has a reaction to recent events. I have no idea who's in charge now. Both Brendann and Caladin hang around Town Hall during the day, but neither has assumed the role of money-changer, so I guess I'm screwed in that regard until I visit one of the other towns.

   

Lucilla in the tavern is the only one with any important dialogue. She says that Spektor gave her a key for safekeeping. I assume it opens the door to the "secret cave" he mentioned. At first, I assume it's the locked door in the dungeon I've already explored, but it doesn't work. I next go through the crypts, looking for secret doors. I don't find any, but I do see the slightest bit of a corridor south of the crypts that seems inaccessible from them. Exploring the mountain range to the south, I find a hidden door in the right location (accessible from within the town) that leads to a locked door.

     

I still don't see how you can have an illusory wall in a mountain.

     

We open the door with the key, enter the caverns beyond, and find 10 powder kegs, four locked chests, and the corpse of a pikeman. It's Cantra's father, as evidenced by a note on his body. The chests (which open with the same key) each have coins and gems, which I leave in place for now, maybe permanently. I mean, Spektor embezzled it from the treasury; it's not mine. So the substance that Marsten mentioned wasn't blackrock; it was just regular gunpowder. We've had that for hundreds of years in Britannia.

   

Back in town, I catch up with Luther in the training hall. "Now that thou hast bested me on the field of battle," he says, "I am thy friend." As my friend, he happily (and finally!) turns over Dupre's Shield, reclaiming his own. Well, technically, he reclaims a different Shield of Monitor that was in Iolo's pack, but I guess they're all interchangeable.

      

He's certainly changed his tune.

      

The last order of business is to notify Harnna about the fate of her husband. She's grateful but doesn't ask us to do anything special. I take his body to the crematorium for the usual 100 monetari reward.

     

He's right over there!

     

Miscellaneous notes:

   

• Double-clicking on cows causes all the companions to shout, "Moo!"

        

Grow up, Shamino.

     

• One exception to enemy respawning: at one point, I cleaned the goblins out of Fawn Tower, and when I returned, a pikeman was patrolling the location.

• Lightning continues to strike randomly, occasionally damaging the party, occasionally dropping random objects.

    

Wouldn't it be nice if all lightning strikes left bouquets of flowers behind?

   

• In the forest, I found a lot of money and a serpent crown stuffed in the hollow of a tree.

      

Geocaching!

     

• My companions keep unequipping their weapons, usually when I sleep, but often in the middle of the day. I have no idea how to stop this.

     

And speaking of equipment, let's do a quick equipment check:

    

• Gideon, the Avatar, has a Sword of Defense, chain armor, Helm of Monitor, magic shield, magic leggings, magic boots, gauntlets, and a Gwani cloak.

• Dupre has a magic axe, chain armor, chain helm, Dupre's Shield, chain leggings, chain boots, chain gauntlets, and my wolf cloak.

• Shamino has a magic axe, leather armor, chain helm, Shield of Monitor, chain leggings, and leather boots.

• Iolo has a bow, leather armor, leather helm, chain leggings, and leather boots. He'll run out of arrows eventually, so he has a crossbow and bolts in his pack. When he runs out of those, he also has a Shield of Monitor and a regular morningstar in his pack.

    

There's a book somewhere that gives weapon statistics--at least, I saw one in The Black Gate. I don't remember the values. I know that eventually I'm going to have to figure out the best weapons from a lot of potential possibilities.

     

I think I'm done with Monitor for now. It's time to explore avenues and new adventures on the Serpent Isle.
   
Time so far: 10 hours

 

 

*****

 

Lost equipment status:

 

• My spellbook was replaced with a chunk of pumice. Harnna thinks Krayg might know more about it. Krayg says such stones come from the center of the Earth, and Standarr often goes deep on his Quests of Courage. Standarr mentions a dungeon called Furnace.
  
• My Black Sword was replaced with a ruddy rock.
  
• My glass sword was replaced with a pinecone. Pine trees are found in the great forest to the north, according to Harnna.
  
• The blackrock serpent was replaced by a pair of fine stockings.
• A hunk of mutton was replaced by a bottle of ice wine. Harnna suggests that I run it by Simon at the inn. Simon says it's probably made by the rangers of Moonshade.
  
• A leg of meat was replaced by 83 filari, a currency from one of the cities. Shamino's note oddly doesn't mention the money. This is the only trade in which I came out ahead.
  
• Rudyom's Wand was replaced by a strange apparatus. Harnna doesn't know what to make of it but thinks that it may have something to do with Fawn's statuary or Moonshade's magic.
  
• My magic armor was replaced by an enameled breast plate, "suitable for ceremonial occasions." Harnna says I should ask Standarr the armourer about it. Standarr says that he made it for Kylista, priestess of Fawn.
  
• My magic helm was replaced by a woman's fur cap. Shamino's note says it's "ridiculous." I think it's very practical and not obviously a woman's at all. Harnna thinks it might be the work of Cellia the Furrier. Cellia recognizes it and says she created it for a mage in Moonshade named Frigidazzi.
• My magic gauntlets were replaced by a ring. Shamino's note says that it's a "finely crafted ring, of silver, of a size to fit a small woman or child." I don't know what to make of the Avatar wearing it, then. Harnna points us to Lucilla, who is "interested in baubles and trinkets," but Lucilla only offers that it might be a marriage or engagement ring.
  
• Dupre's Magebane has been replaced by a blue egg. Based on the thickness of the shell, Harnna thinks it probably comes from a bird that lives up north.
  
• Dupre's Shield has been replaced by a Shield of Monitor. Harnna mentions that it could belong to anyone, and I should inquire around and see if anyone is missing a shield. Later, I hear that Luther has a new magic shield.
  
• Shamino's 24 burst arrows were replaced with an odd hairbrush. "Crude," according to Shamino. Harnna has an odd reaction to it and says I should ask Templar about it. Templar says that it's a goblin hairbrush, made from the bones of their victims. Found in a goblin hut.
  
• Shamino's dagger was replaced with a severed limb. The note clarifies that it's a "bloody hand." Harnna suggests we check with Renfry to see if he's encountered a body missing a hand. Renfry doesn't know where it came from, but he deduces that it's "not dead," so some kind of magic is involved.
  
• Shamino's swamp boots were replaced with a pair of slippers, "such as might be worn in the privacy of one's home." Harnna doesn't believe they belong to anyone in Monitor and suggests I check with Krayg the Provisioner. Krayg says the closest place where someone might wear these is Sleeping Bull.
  
• Shamino's magic bow was replaced with a bear skull Found in the opening minutes.
• Iolo's crossbow has been replaced with an urn with ashes. Harnna confirms what I already know: it's a funeral urn, and Caladin's grandfather's urn is missing. Found in the Monitor crypts.
  
• Five torches Iolo was carrying in his pack have been replaced by a pumpkin. Iolo's list doesn't mention this substitution, and all the others have been one-for-one.