Serpent Isle: Off this Mortal Coil

Well, we already knew you weren't monarchy.

      

After the last session, in which I was thoroughly annoyed, I took a break for a couple of days. I had work to do anyway. When I came back, I decided to follow Abacos's suggestion: Stop exploring and let the Hound of Doskar lead me to Batlin. This pains me a bit because I really do like the serendipitous encounters and little vignettes that the creators sprinkle through the world in both halves of Ultima VII, and I would have loved if this engine (with perhaps some combat tweaks) had been used to create a less-scripted, more open-world game with lots of side quests. Imagine a Serpent Isle that starts with no manual and no background lore. Drop Batlin entirely. We're just here on Gwenno's heels. Remove Monitor, Fawn, and Moonshade--the Sosarians never made their way here at all. Our whole job is to explore an unrestricted landscape full of Ophidian ruins and piece together all this Order, Chaos, and Balance stuff for ourselves via the clues we find in the ruins. I get chills thinking about it. Alas, this is what we have.

     

We enter the City of Order.

     

I pick up the narrative where the Hound of Doskar has led us: to the gates of the City of Order. "Avatar, thou shalt fail!" an automaton says as we enter. Dupre notes that it speaks with Batlin's voice. There are dead automatons on the floor of the chamber. The automaton continues: "By the time thou hast found the Shrine of Order, I shall have become as powerful as the Guardian himself! Come! Come and witness my ascent to power." It attacks and we have to kill it. All of the dead automatons have keys. They look like the same key, but of course I have to collect them all just to be sure.

       

"I'm not even lying!" Yaphet Kotto thinks.

     

The area beyond has an armory and crates and barrels full of supplies, including some needed reagents. The only way forward is past an automaton guarding a gate, and he wants a password. I'll bet it's found in that damned temple I decided to ignore, isn't it? I'm just about to head back there when I see a button on the other side of the grate. I decide to try "Telekinesis" on it. Fortunately, it works. We kill the automaton and loot another key.

  

At the next intersection, with grates to the north and south and buttons to open them, Batlin's toady Grunt appears and says that he wants to help us stop Batlin from opening the Wall of Lights. "Quickly, follow me! I will lead thee straight to him!" He runs off to the south. Suspecting a trap, we try the north room and find a secret passage that parallels the south hallway. Scorch marks and dead bodies in the hallway indicate that it is indeed full of traps. The secret passage rejoins the hallway south of these traps. There's a tremor as we continue on. Boydon says: "Make haste! Batlin must be opening the Wall of Lights!"

        

How do you know anything about it? Have we even explained to you who "Batlin" is?

      

We make haste, but the corridor dead-ends in a room with bows and magic arrows. Magic arrows would normally be cool, but . . . come on. It's too late for new stuff. I see a trapper pacing around in dead space, so I figure there's a secret passage there. It takes me a while to figure out how to get into it--it's one of the secret doors you have to double-click on to open rather than just walk right through.

    

We enter the City of Order proper. A scroll on the second story of a building close to the entrance describes how to open the Great Library in case it's sealed. First, I have to open the doors to the Temple of the Hierophant by placing the correct symbols of order on the pedestals in front of the temple, then enter the temple and place a scepter on top of a pedestal.

 

The City of Order has a large central room with the Temple of the Hierophant and a serpent gate. A pedestal stands in front of the temple, asking for relics of the virtues of Order. A bunch of smaller rooms and passages jut off to the sides of the central chamber. As we explore, the floor keeps rumbling, causing us to stumble around, but it doesn't seem to do any damage. Except for one giant spider, the only enemies are large rats. Some encounters:

   

• The ruins of a workshop with looms and spinning wheels. I waste some time cutting fabric into bandages, then later find a billion bandages in what seems to be a healer's workshop (it also has potions).

       

Bandages are like the cheese wheels of Ultima VII: They don't do as good a job as any other healing method, but you hoard them anyway.

         

• A wine press with barrels of grapes nearby. How are they still good?

• In the southeast corner, a gate with a button. I press the button. Palos the gargoyle comes to the other side of the gate: "To serve my master and to avenge the death of my people thou didst slay in ancient times," he says. He threatens me some more but then runs off to the east. I don't find any secret passages this time, so I follow, setting off numerous explosive traps that kill Shamino and Dupre. On a reload, I try "Detect Traps," but it doesn't do anything. I just have to gird myself, book it through the room, and heal everyone on the other side.

       

This again? It wasn't my fault!

    

• I nearly miss a book titled The War of Order and Chaos. I'm glad I read it, as I was under a misapprehension. I thought the two sides destroyed each other, but the book indicates that the forces of Order won "and imprisoned the Chaos Forces," then later realized they missed them. But then what happened to the Order forces?

• In a basement beneath the trap room, there's a weird cave with a few cradles with babies in them and an easel set up for painting. 

     

Is it alive?

    

• A pool room with little tables set up on the edges, and goblets and alcohol around the tables. One of the tables has a whip next to it.

    

These Order folks knew how to relax.

      

• Another gated passage. An automaton guards the other side (where did Palos go?). He'll only grant passage to a follower of Order. I get only two options here: "I follow Order" and "I follow Chaos." I have to lie no matter what. I say Order. He demands we prove it, mentioning that he recently let some people pass who also claimed to be followers of Order, but he doubts them. "One of them even threatened to tear me limb from limb if I failed to open this portal." Anyway, he gives me a quote and asks what book it comes from. I don't know. I guess a random book and I'm wrong. He suggests I return to the library for further study. I counter-suggest that I cast "Telekinesis" on the button behind him. Unfortunately, it only opens the second gate, on the other side of him, not the one between us and him.

• A basement with archery targets, bows, and magic arrows. This game really wants us to have magic bows.

  

The three most important chambers are small temples to Ethicality, Logic, and Discipline. None of them has anything obviously tagged as an artifact, just various books, scrolls, and tools. I have to try several different items on the pedestal. It turns out that it wants an abacus for Logic, a scroll expounding the virtues of Ethicality for Ethicality, and a serpentine dagger for Discipline (why?). It's not hard to figure out, as when I place the right item on the pedestal, it sparkles and disappears.

     

Does this look like a unique artifact to you?

     

Inside the temple, there's a pedestal asking for a scepter. Stairs lead down to the Hierophant's bed chamber, where an automaton greets me as the Hierophant but then realizes his mistake. "I have been waiting," he says," since the citizens of the city left through the Wall of Lights for their new world." So that's where the Order people went. But where, specifically, did they go? Do we see them again? For the first time in the Ultima series, I'm asking questions I honestly don't know the answers to.

  

(Funny aside: Google doesn't know the word "hierophant" and suggests as a replacement "Diophantine's." Why does its dictionary have one obscure Greek figure but not the other, and how do you possibly get from the first to the second?)

    

The automaton indicates that he has the Serpent Scepter. He misunderstands something that Shamino says and asks me point blank if I'm the Hierophant. I say no, and he chastises himself for nearly giving the Scepter to a stranger. Unfortunately, I can't find any dialogue option through which I can get the item through honesty. I thus try killing it, but he has nothing on his body. In a reload, I lie, resenting the game for making me go against one of the virtues of the Avatar for the second time in just a few minutes. The automaton hands over the staff and collapses. 

    

And a few minutes later, that's exactly what he does.

      

I place the staff on the altar upstairs and we're teleported to a library. A book called Holy Books of the Ophidians recaps what we already know but adds some things. It starts in the time of Mondain, and talks about how Serpent Isle was separated from the other lands in the chaos that followed. It obliquely mentions Shamino, away from his kingdom when the sundering happened. Meanwhile, "madness took the King of the White Dragon." A Great Hierophant became the leader of the people in the aftermath. (That the automaton asked if I was the Hierophant of Order suggests there were two lesser Hierophants, too.) He built the Wall of Lights so he could enter "the void" and communicate with the Great Earth Serpent. Three grand shrines were erected to Order, Chaos, and Balance, and nine temples to the various virtues derived from their combinations. A time of peace and luxury followed. Then Exodus kidnapped the Great Earth Serpent from the void, and without Balance, Chaos and Order went for each other's throats. Then, apparently, the Order forces kidnapped the Chaos Serpent from the void, split it into three forces, and imprisoned them in the three temples of Order. This caused more problems, and the Order people left completely. 

       

I wonder if this book is important.

    

I honestly don't remember any of this from playing the game before. Without an audience to explain it to, I probably just skimmed the texts and never got a complete sense of what was happening. It's not a bad story, and it integrates well with past lore. It's all a retcon but, as I think I've covered before, a retcon done well.

    

The book I really need is called The Structure of Order, and it's down a hallway behind a locked door. The key is under a book, so it takes me a while to find it. After reading the book, it then takes me about 20 minutes to figure out how to exit the area. There are two teleport pads behind locked doors, and the key blends in almost completely with the table underneath it (at least, to me). 

       

The key I couldn't see is left of the cursor.

     

Wondering how Batlin, who clearly didn't have the Serpent Scepter, managed to answer the automaton's riddle, we return to the automaton and give him the answer. Except I don't remember the line that he gives us being in The Structure of Order. I double-check, and the line is in fact in Strength Through Ethics, which was what I chose when I guessed on our first visit, and the automaton told me I was wrong.

         

He must run on ChatGPT.

          

Right or wrong, he opens the gate. The other one closes, and as we fiddle with the switch, Deadeye runs up. "The time hath come for thee to feel me steel!" But like his compatriots, he just turns and runs as the gate opens. We chase him down another hall. A couple of fireball traps go off before we reach the end, where a body lies before a locked door.

   

There's a body in front of the door, and a key on the body, but the key doesn't open the door. Neither do any of the other keys I've picked up in the city. I angrily slink back to the city and make another loop just to be sure I haven't missed something. There's a locked door to the north that reads "VAULT OF THE DEAD." I forgot about that. I try the key that I picked up from the body, and it opens.

      

I wonder how it got its name.

       

The vault has a bunch of corpses and some weirdly non-hostile snakes. There's a small room to the north with a serpent carpet and a small button just above it. Clicking on it causes the floor to lift up, like an elevator, and deposit us on a mezzanine. We cross a bridge (over some lava), go down a corridor, and find ourselves on the other side of the locked door. A large wooden double-door beckons to the north.

    

A corridor emerges into a large room with fountains and braziers. Suddenly, Deadeye, Brunt, Palos, and Selina--it takes me a minute to even remember who she is--apparate in front of us. I've been waiting for something like this. I have Shamino feed them all sleeping powder and potions--well, apparently I give one of them a "Resist Cold" potion instead--and soon three of them are sacked out on the floor.

        

Selina rushes to attack while the other three stand around having a conversation.

       

For some reason, the three men suddenly turn into cyclopes. It isn't long before they wake up. I try blasting them with some spells, but they don't seem to work. I keep getting hit with little balls of light, so perhaps they're interrupting me. The ensuing battle is quite long but not very dangerous. We just don't seem to do much damage to each other. (It occurs to me belatedly that I probably could have donned my old armor in place of the warm winter gear.) I check hit points every few seconds and apply healing potions and bandages as needed. 

     

We got three out of four.

     

Finally, Selina cries out: "Gloat if thou wilt! Even if thou slayest me here, thou hast not truly defeated me! Even as we speak, Batlin is opening the Wall of Lights in the next room! With the Guardian's help, he and I shall meet in the Eternal Void to conquer new realms together!" She then dies. I don't know if she thinks her soul is going to the void or what. Her body has a blink ring and a scroll of--finally!--"Dispel Field." I cast "Transcribe" on it and get it into my spellbook.

      

Sure thing, Obi-Wan.

       

With anticipation, we open the final door, walk along a blue carpet, and find Batlin waving his arms before the Wall of Light. "Quickly! Surround Batlin!" the Avatar screams. (Why? Everyone but the Avatar has missile weapons. Why can't they "Quickly! Throw your axes at Batlin!"?) The game takes over from here. The party spreads out to surround him, but everyone is suddenly frozen in place.

     

Why don't I have the "Mass Paralyze People Who Aren't Even Close Together" spell?

     

"Fool!" Batlin cries. "Thou art too late. Now I shall enter the Wall of Lights and become immortal! Then I shall return to destroy thy mortal soul!" He casts some more spells, but something seems to be going wrong. "Wait . . . no! The wall is not opening for me! This cannot be! No . . . the banes, they have . . . Oh, what have I done! I have been tricked, Avatar! I beseech thee! Help me before . . . " Lightning strikes him, the Wall disappears, and he's dead.

    

The Guardian's face appears. "See how I reward those who have failed me?" He boasts. Then three lights come out of the former wall and strike Shamino, Iolo, and Dupre. "I am Anarchy! Hahaha!" says Shamino. "The world shall quail before me! Wrong shall become right! And right shall become lost! Nothing shall escape my touch!" Dupre, whose head has somehow turned into a snake, proclaims himself the "Wantonness Bane," and Iolo claims the mantle of "Insanity Bane." They then disappear, leaving their items on the floor in piles.

       

Well, that fits your existing personality.

     

Boydon has apparently been killed, leaving just a torso behind.

        

How am I going to hold all of this stuff?

        

Before I have a chance to move, I get a vision of the Great Earth Serpent, who tells me to seek the Gwani Horn in the Skullcrusher Mountains. 

    

Does the Great Earth Serpent have to be a cobra? Why couldn't it be something less threatening, like a garter snake?

    

I don't really get the "banes" thing. I thought they were supposed to be trapped in the temples, not in this wall. And if they were in the wall, how was one possessing Cantra?

    

Aside from that, this was a reasonably solid session, especially after the last one. But do you know what would have made it better? If the game had ended here. There is no reason for it not to end. The entire continent has been explored. Batlin is dead. There's nothing else for this party to accomplish in RPG terms--we're probably not going to gain any more levels, nor any better equipment. There's no further reason for the economy. I don't remember what happens next, but I do remember what happens to the Avatar at the end, and there's no reason it couldn't have happened right here, while the Avatar is standing in front of the Wall of Lights. But for some reason, the authors wanted to cram in some more plot. The only thing I'm really looking forward to is the chance to adventure without a party for a while.

       

The Avatar stands alone among a thousand inventory items that he has no room for. Batlin's body has a key, the Blackrock Chaos Serpent, and a serpent jawbone with five teeth, which I immediately transfer to my own. I feel like the fact that he has the Chaos Serpent instead of the Order Serpent must have something to do with his failure. I'm going to try to work out some of the lore issues before the next entry. Since I ended the last entry on such a negative note, let me end this one on a positive one: The Ultima series is one of the few in my chronology so far to make me care enough about its lore that I'm willing to go back and re-read a bunch of books to solve the mysteries of the setting.

   

Time so far: 65 hours