Serpent Isle: Red and Yellow, Kill a Fellow

 

The party gets the whole potion thing figured out.

       

In a recent comment, Adamantyr alerted me to the level of correspondence between Serpent Isle and the Lands of Danger and Despair in the original Ultima. I knew that Serpent Isle was supposed to be one of the "lost" kingdoms from Ultima, and that it was Shamino's kingdom in particular. But I didn't otherwise realize how much the geography matches.

     

Here's the map of the Lands of Danger and Despair from the 1986 Commodore Release of Ultima (thanks to the Museum of Computer Adventure-Gaming History):

    

The game box had maps of each individual land.

     

And here's the Serpent Isle from the game box:

     

    

Not only are the shapes almost identical--you can almost chalk up the major differences to differing map projections--but the maps have the same physical features, including placements of mountains and forests. Given what happened to Britannia over the course of several games, the changes to Serpent Isle are almost mild.

   

Perhaps more important, many of the map features have analogues. The table below avoids spoilers (for me); I based it solely on what I've already experienced or what I could see on the map that came with the game.

    

Ultima	Serpent Isle
Dextron (City)	Unnamed dungeon to goblin village
Hole to Hades (Dungeon)	Furnace (Dungeon)
Dead Man’s Walk (Dungeon)	Knight’s Test (Dungeon)
Turtle (City)	Gone; some remnants of buildings in the same area
Bulldozer (City)	Sleeping Bull (Inn)
Dead Cat’s Life II (Dungeon)	Something called “Claw”
City of Magic	Moonshade (City)
Free Death Hole (Dungeon)	Mountains of Freedom (Dungeon)
Morbid Adventure (Dungeon)	Isles of the Mad Mage
Gorlab Village	Gorlab Swamp
White Dragon Castle	Unknown as I haven’t been there yet, but the map shows a castle
City of the Brother	Monk Isle
Dead Cat’s Life (Dungeon)	Not sure, but the map shows a dungeon in the same area
Wheeler (City)	Map suggests it’s gone
Shamino’s Castle	Shamino’s Castle (shown on the map)
Spine Breaker (Dungeon)	Spinebreaker Mountains (may have a dungeon)
Eastern Sign Post	Maybe Sunrise Isle, but if so, it’s moved a bit west
Grave of Lost Souls	Isle of Crypts

     

Keep in mind that a number of things are supposed to have happened between these two maps: the cataclysms that accompanied the destruction of Mondain, the rise and fall of Ophidian culture, and the emigration from Sosaria by those fleeing the "Beast British." There are no analogues to Monitor and Fawn on the old map since they were established by those immigrants. All told, it's a great set of correspondences, with believable changes over time while keeping similar themes. Ultima's world-building has always been pretty good, but its world-building between games has rarely been this good.

     

This was a good time to study the rest of the map since I've just been given a way to teleport from place to place. The game still gates your progress by requiring you to find serpents' teeth to use the teleporters, but I still like the inherent possibilities. As this session begins, I have four teeth, which collectively get me to the Isle of the Mad Mage, Moonshade, and two dungeons, either of which could be Furnace.

   

I still have stuff to do in Moonshade, but I decide to start exploring one of the dungeons first. It takes me to a large chamber with north and south exits. The north exit leads to a locked door; the south one takes us to a stairway upward. It's clear we're in some kind of crypt. A metal door opens into some kind of storeroom, looking anything but abandoned. There's a pristine loom, shelves of crockery, and an ale keg. Stairs lead up. 

        

This is promising.

    

We emerge in the larder of a large building with multiple bedrooms, a dining room, and some kind of chapel with an ankh altar. I've seen this before. We're on Monk Isle! And in the flesh--not briefly between resurrections. Thank the Serpent, as the locals would say. I can find that mandrake and finally get my spellbook.

   

But of course we have to talk with the locals first. One of the annoying things about that is that some of the monks are generic and have taken vows of silence. They're indistinguishable from the named monks who have dialogue options. Highlights:

   

• On a table in front of the altar is the full text of Xenka's prophecy. In brief, it says the Hero from Another World will arrive with three companions, will "unite the serpents," will require powerful magic "and the implements three of the Hierophant." My friends will be my enemies; I will need to triumph "even in Dreams," and the dead shall aid me. I will need "a thief and a braggart" as my ally, and I shall ally with those who were once my enemies. The color red and a woman is involved.

• Karnax is here, but he has nothing new to say. However, talking to him I realize something I missed before (see below).

        

Is there any reason I couldn't have explored a bit after one of my resurrections?

         

• Thoxa clarifies the "vow of silence" bit. She was the one who met me right after I arrived. The daily lives of the monks--prayer, work, study, sleep--are governed by bells, although no one rings them. "It is said that when all the bells toll, it will signal Xenka's return." She doesn't specify that the bells ring at consistent times each day, and I love the idea that the monks have no idea how long they're going to be spending on each activity when the day begins. Gwenno is no longer there: she left to seek the "ice people" of the north. Miggim knows more.

• Miggim from the Sleeping Bull is here. He invites me to check out the library. He also says I can eat any of the food I find on the island, which the monks grow themselves.

• Miggim's library has a few bits of interest. A monk writes about having encountered undead in a dungeon and hiding the key in a nearby hollow tree. I don't think it's the same dungeon as the one we came from. Some other verses of Xenka's prophecy suggest that I'll doom the world if I attack the "men who are not men covered in fur"; I suspect this refers to the Gwani.

• More interesting is the memoirs of Brother Markus, who recounts how someone hammered at the monastery's door one dark and stormy night. He opened the door and admitted a weary traveler who introduced himself as . . . Blackthorn. According to Markus, Blackthorn studied with the monks for a while and developed some perspective. I wonder what happened to him and if I'll run into him again.

      

Lord British's moonstone managed to exile the usurper all the way to the next continent. Great job.

      

• There is one book and one scroll of nothing but Ophidian script. "No way am I translating this," I write, just before I realize that there's a Lens of Translating in the middle of the room. Double-clicking on it allows me to read the script. The book, Temples of Order, describes a pilgrimage route to the Temples of Ethicality, Discipline, and Logic, all near the northern mountains.

• Yet another prophecy from Xenka--they clearly weren't all collected in that book--describes us finding Gweno in a wall of ice and shattering the wall with a horn obtained from the Gwani.

• There's a love poem written by Minax about Mondain. I wonder where this came from.

          

You have it from Minax's own hand: "Mondain" rhymes with "fountain."

      

• Draxta fawns over me a bit. She mentions that Xenka got her visions at the Place of Visions to the northwest. She offers to meet us there and show us a vision.

• A monk who does not believe in names tells me that fresh mandrake can only be picked when "the tides are right" or some other nonsense that makes me think I'm not going to get my damned spellbook after all.

              

Yes, the corn in the field has a name. It's called "corn."

      

In talking with Karnax about the Amulet of Balance again, I realize that I've been under a misapprehension. I remembered from my previous experience with the game (roughly 20 years ago) that you can teleport at the serpent gates and that the jawbone is needed to determine your destination. When I arrived and Karnax gave me the Amulet of Balance and immediately started talking about serpent gates, I just assumed it was part of the same mechanism. I never actually tried it because I thought I needed both the amulet and jawbone to teleport. Now I realize that the amulet is something else entirely, and in fact it's what takes you to the "Silver Seed" expansion. So at least now I know how to get there when I'm ready. 

       

People love hiding stuff in tree hollows in the Serpent Isle.

         

I find and explore the small dungeon mentioned in the scroll--it connects back to the monastery basement--but I don't get any good screenshots because I'm out of torches again and I refuse to fiddle around with them any more. I want my "Light" spell. 

   

I meet Draxta in the Place of Visions, which is a small theater with a large "screen" of white brick. I guess Xenka's "visions" weren't just in her mind; the monks literally see things projected on the screen. I asked Draxta for a vision and she showed me what appears to be Petra, the automaton from the tavern in Moonshade, walking through smoke. It's very brief.

        

What is that to the left of her? Is that supposed to be me?

      

I talk with does-not-believe-in-names one more time before departing, and--miracle of miracles--he tells me the tides are right to pick mandrake roots. I follow his advice, hustle up to the swamps, and fight against the red-on-red graphics until I find five mandrake pieces.

       

Can you pick that out?

     

Hoping some scripted idiocy doesn't hijack me, I book it back to the serpent gate and take the path to Moonshade. I rush into the Seminarium and hand Fedabilbio the mandrake. "Still I'm hesitant," he hedges. I prepare to lodge my axe in his head, but it turns out he just wants to ask me some more copy protection questions. When he's done, I finally have a damned book. I start working to transcribe the scrolls I've been carrying.

       

Some of my new spells.

       

The book comes with "Awaken," "Heal," "Translation," and "Transcribe." I have about a dozen scrolls with different spells that I can "Transcribe," but I need reagents for that spell. Certain mages--Columna, Mortegro, Torrissio, Melino--sell the spells I don't have. What follows is about two hours of me changing money, buying spells, buying reagents, and casting "Transcribe." The process is made annoying by a couple of issues. The NPCs who sell spells don't have a "buy" option automatically; you have to tease it out with the right conversation options. Then a useless "haggling" mechanic slows down the process with extra clicks.

  

Once I have "Great Light," "Unlock Magic," and "Telekinesis," I don't really have any priorities. I focus on buying out individual NPCs' inventories so I don't have to keep track of who's sold me what. I end up being able to afford everyone's entire list (minus the ones I already had) except Mortegro's.

      

Finally!

       

I'll talk more about spells and their utility in a later entry. "Great Light" does what it's supposed to do, but the duration seems extremely variable. I'm going to have to stock up on ash. Some other things come up during this process:

   

• Columna talks to me for the first time. She takes her stockings back, unnecessarily promising to "wear them for [me] in a night of passion that [I] shall remember all of [my] days." Then she destroys them and laughs at me for a fool. She also insists that Mosh is lying about being her sister.

         

I don't find you remotely attractive.

    

• Melino, Columna's husband, also talks with me. He seems like a decent guy except for his utter contempt for "mundanes." He says Columna has a serpent's tooth, but this produces no new dialogue options. He also mentions that the executed necromancer Vasculio came back from the dead.

• Speaking of serpents' teeth, I un-avatarishly ransack every house in Moonshade looking for more and come up with nothing except a note in Frigidazzi's place that she lost her tooth in the north.

• Frigidazzi is in her house for the first time. She has no dialogue options relating to the fur cap, but the door to her bedchamber is now unlocked. I sneak in and find my missing magic helm in her dresser drawer. I replace it with the cap. Frigidazzi invites me to visit her after midnight to learn cold spells.

      

Cross another one off the list.

     

• In the dead Rotoluncia's vacant house, I smash open her locked chest and free the imprisoned naga. The naga immediately slithers over to a candle and lights it, saying, "That's better." Make of that what you will.

      

The naga has her priorities straight.

      

• Mosh is happy that I believe her and not Columna, but I get no more dialogue options to continue investigating this sub-quest. 

• In order to try to get more money to pay for Mortegro's spells, I pop over to Furnace. I'm also hoping that, through Furnace, I can make my way back to Monitor for some training. Alas, I encounter nothing but locked doors.

           

There's a skeleton with some cool stuff, though.

         

Speaking of Mortegro, we visit him after midnight a couple of times to have him run more seances. The first one is staggering. The spirit of Gwenno appears to tell Iolo that she'll always love him. Gwenno is dead! Iolo, for his part, refuses to believe it. Xenka's prophecy said that I'd free her from ice. Maybe she's only "mostly dead"?

        

This was pretty shocking, not to mention ghoulish. There's no way Gwenno is dead, right? She's been in every Ultima since the beginning!

     

In the third seance, Mortegro tries to contact Kane's dead brother but can't find him in the spirit realm. Mortegro says that may mean he's not dead. Duh. He's "Ale," the parrot. Did anyone not figure this out immediately?

  

Also during these days in Moonshade, I spend a lot of time getting a handle on my inventory, sorting things into appropriate packs and discarding excess stuff. This is what I come up with:

    

• Gideon, the Avatar, carries commonly-used items (map, watch, sextant, jawbone, lockpicks) in his belt pouch and quest items in his backpack. His backpack also has separate bags for reagents and "old" keys.

• Dupre carries the items that replaced our missing items in a chest. He also carries tools and usable non-magic items, principally bandages.

• Shamino carries usable potions and scrolls.

• Iolo carries our money in his belt pouch and extra weapons, wands, and ammo in his backpack.

• Boydon carries food.

           

I start to long for the "list" inventory system of Ultima V.

       

Shamino has about a thousand potions, so I take the time to remind myself what all the potions do. There's an in-game book called The Apothecary's Desk Reference that helps with this process, except the part where I can't tell the difference between some of the colors. It would have been really nice if the game had offered some way of discerning the color other than visually interpreting it. For instance, when you click on it once, it could have said something like "red potion" instead of just "potion."

   

I offered a long screed about my color blindness a couple of years ago. One of the things I talked about is how I have more trouble distinguishing absolute colors than comparative colors. Take the red, green, and yellow potions. If I have all three, there's no question in my mind which is which. But if I only have the red potion, I can't be sure whether it's red or green, and if I only have the yellow, I can't be sure whether it's green or yellow--or orange, for that matter. So I have to keep one of each potion so I can say, "Well, this one clearly isn't yellow because that one has to be the yellow one." Even with all that, green and orange are practically indistinguishable. My notes have to account for this confusion lest I accidentally drink a poison potion while trying to cure poison.

    

So this is what I have:

      

• Black: Invisibility. No potential confusion.
• Blue: Sleep. Potential confusion: purple.
• Bluish-Black: Warmth. I assume this is the potion that I perceive as blue-and-white. It creates a black octagon on my character sheet.
• Green: Poison. Potential confusion: red, orange, yellow.
  
• Orange: Awakening. Potential confusion: green, yellow, red.
• Orange Shimmering: Restore magic points. That's what the book calls it, anyway. To me, it looks like red and yellow mixed together.
• Purple: Protection. Potential confusion: blue.
• Red: Cure poison. Potential confusion: green, orange.
• White: Illumination. No potential confusion but I just keep forgetting what it does. Now that I have "Great Light," I'm not sure there's any good reason to keep these.
• Yellow: Heal. Potential confusion: green, orange.

      

It's a good thing that this book exists because in The Black Gate, the red-yellow potion completely destroyed Skara Brae. I would think the Avatar would have gotten rid of those as soon as possible.

        

If you try to use the "F" key to feed your party when you're out of food, the game notes that you do have some garlic.

       

The funny thing is that green and blue potions can work on enemies. There's no point to them otherwise. My question is, how? Am I throwing it at my foes or somehow, in the middle of combat, convincing them to drink? In any event, green poison potions seem to account for the vast majority of what I have.

     

Anyway, using color comparison, I get everything straightened out. I put useful potions and scrolls in the bag at Shamino's waist and offensive ones in his backpack. It's ironic that I choose this moment to do all this inventory shuffling, as we'll soon see.

       

At this point, I have no idea what to do next. I seem to hit dead ends with all the plot lines. I have no way to get back to the main continent unless I missed the serpents' teeth that would take me to Monitor or Fawn, or the keys that would open the locked doors in Furnace. After wandering around aimlessly for a while, I remember that Frigidazzi wants to see me after midnight. What's about to happen immediately clicks. Maybe I'm remembering past experiences with the game, but I also think the game did a good job foreshadowing it.

         

If I find someone to sleep with in Fawn, do I get some kind of achievement?

      

Frigidazzi isn't interested in selling me spells. After getting me to dismiss the rest of the party on the pretense that magic must remain between mages, she goes through an elaborate seduction ritual. The player can either resist or play along. I played along--no wedding ring on Gideon's finger. Frigidazzi showers the Avatar with compliments and asks him or her to kiss her (I verified online later that the episode is the same for female avatars). She casts the "Est Nudi" spell, which conjures a sort of vortex to remove her clothes, then dances the Dance of Passion, accompanied by spells like "Vox Erotis," "Ort Erotis," and, curiously, "Vas Flam." 

       

Good god, Avatar--put the sword away, at least.

   

Finally, she and the Avatar tumble into bed, Frigidazzi saying that she's falling in love with him. Predictably, Filbercio chooses this moment to apparate in and catch the lovers in flagrante.

       

I'm upset that we never got to hear her explanation.

     

No matter what you say, the enraged Filbercio convenes the Council over Frigidazzi's protests. Throughout the rest of this episode, Frigidazzi begs for the Avatar's life. I assumed at first she was faking her interest for Batlin or some other ulterior motive, but I guess not.

       

Frigidazzi melts my heart.

     

The following sham trial confirms that the whole place needs to be burned to the ground. Bucia is the first to testify against me, claiming that I've been asking all kinds of "strange and personal questions" about the townsfolk and that I've been showing her weird objects. Then Flindo reports that I'm "a liar, a fraud, and [a] known consort with people of the lowest type." He claims I only came to Moonshade because I was fleeing a charge of bribing the tower guards to release a prisoner.

       

I hate these people.

      

After hearing the "evidence," Filbercio demands judgment. Gustacio announces that the council finds me guilty. "And the sentence?" Filbercio asks. It's Mortegro who pronounces it: "The criminal must be sent to the hellhole known as Dungeon Freedom." That hurt. I thought Mortegro and I were friends. Now, Bucia objects that I'll "never be seen alive again!" Regardless, I'm compelled to march into the teleporter in the next chamber. Gustacio calls after me that if I find my way out, I'll be a free man again.

     

The audience reacts to the sentence.

      

An automaton greets me as I arrive. He takes my name and crime, warns me that some of the other prisoners are violent, and reiterates that if I can escape, I'll be free. Most of my inventory is gone. I (oddly) have my spellbook and reagents, the magic hourglass, and a suit of scale armor. Somehow, I've acquired a staff. Everything else is gone. I am about to say that those items better be waiting for me when I get out, or else I'm killing everyone in Moonshade, but frankly I'm planning to do that anyway.

                 

Time so far: 28 hours