Serpent Isle: This Broken Jaw of Our Lost Kingdoms

Apparently, they have T. S. Eliot in Pagan.

        

Despite my misgivings about the game's length, I start this session with a certain excitement--even optimism. Serpent Isle so far has been somewhat predictable: three cities, three sets of problems to solve, three artifacts, culminating in a bottleneck that requires those three artifacts. But now that I'm through the bottleneck, looking at the northern half of the island, the game seems wide open again. This could be an illusion--probably is an illusion--but that doesn't change the immediate feeling of being on a frontier where anything could happen.

    

My map shows some kind of structure to my east, which I would encounter quickly if I adopted a counter-clockwise exploration pattern from my current point. So just to be ornery, I decide to go west and adopt a clockwise pattern. 

   

As we skirt along the northern border of Gorlab Swamp, we're attacked by an insect swarm and a couple of boars. This is good because boars drop meat, the party is getting hungry, and I haven't maintained a large reserve of food (of course, I have a "Create Food" spell, but why waste the reagents?). Wolves join the attackers as we get nearer the coast. Shamino is poisoned and Iolo wounded, which gives me an excuse to burn a couple of my thousand potions.

         

Curse save us all from a death like this.

           

We reach the site of what I first take to be a shipwreck, debris scattered all around it, but it turns out to be the camp of some extremely messy adventurers. The corpses of two men and three women line the shore. A journal chronicles a harrowing half-year in which a large party arrived to search for gold. They found several veins of ore but frequent attacks by wolves made them paranoid, and they eventually turned on each other. One of them, Draygan, burned the ship, and it seems that the rest were killed by wolves. There might be some Treasure of the Sierra Madre allusions here; it's been a long time since I saw the film. 

   

One of their barrels holds a couple of white potions--easy go, easy come--and some jugs of milk. I waste the reagents for a "Telekinesis" spell to bring down the gangplank only for Dupre to tell me that it's blocked. We'll never know what's in the two crates on board.

    

By what? Water?

       

The journal wasn't kidding about the wolves, though. As we continue along the coast, we're attacked repeatedly--and of course the bastards respawn the moment we leave a screen. They're more annoying than dangerous, though.

       

There's something amusing about calling a wolf a "fool."

     

We soon leave the wolves behind, and it's a long, uneventful stretch along forested shore--the forest canopy occasionally accented with silverleaf trees and giant mushrooms--before the coast turns north, indicating that we've reached the island's western extremity. We pass gamboling deer and rabbits. A reaper, looking like a dead tree trunk, doesn't fool us. "Where are we?" the Avatar wonders at one point. "We are lost, Avatar," Dupre unhelpfully responds.

   

Our trek north along the western coast ends in a cul-de-sac, water to the north and west and mountains to the east. The dead body of a sailor inexplicably lies on the beach. A heavy rain begins to fall as we make our way back south and then east, this time following the mountains. Lightning occasionally strikes, depositing junk or turning rocks into cauldrons and candelabras.

        

End of the line.

      

Our first significant encounter in a while comes when we find a hut in the middle of the forest with a silverleaf tree growing through the center. A white-bearded man bustles about a neat interior with various plants, tables, cups, and potions tidily arranged. He introduces himself as Morghrim, "master of these forests." When I ask him to clarify, he gives his titles as: "Forest Master! Friend to Windrunner! Former protector of Elerion, and now refugee of Pagan!" This is, I believe, the second mention of "Pagan" in the Ultima series, the first occurring in Ultima Underworld II.

   

Morghrim goes on to explain that in his world, Pagan, he was the last of a long line of protectors of Elerion, the great world tree. When the Guardian invaded the world, Morghrim opposed him. The Guardian's forces burned the tree, and Morghrim lost his eyes in the fire. His friend, a gray wolf named Windrunner, rescued him, and Morghrim used the last of his magic to create a portal that dumped them in the Serpent Isles. Since then, he has spent centuries tending the forest and speaking to its animals. Frustrated with the differences by which magic worked in his new world, Morghrim stored his Pagan-based magical abilities in a living orb called the Heart of Elerion.

        

I guess his face is supposed to be burned. The graphics weren't quite good enough for me to notice until now.

     

As we talk, he mentions that he's friends with the Hound of Doskar, a magical beast who can track anyone if you give him something personal to that person--just what we need to find Cantra. But Morghrim has three problems. First, the forest is dying because of the imbalance problems that the Serpent Isles are experiencing. Second, a sadistic trapper named Hazard is slaughtering the forest animals. Third, the leader of a camp of miners, Draygan, has stolen the Orb of Elerion. Windrunner and the wolves went after him and killed all his followers, but the orb makes Draygan impervious to harm. Morghrim suggests that we might be able to reason with him. If we can return the orb, he can summon the Hound of Doskar to help us find Cantra.

   

Finally, Morghrim mentions that although Elerion was burned, he was able to save the Silver Seed at the heart of the tree and bring it to the Serpent Isles. The Silver Seed is of course the name of this game's expansion, which I've put off doing just because it hasn't come up organically yet. I don't quite understand the relationship between Morghrim's Silver Seed and the Amulet of Balance I got from the Xenkan monks.

       

This unexciting screenshot is here only to avoid too many paragraphs of text in a row.

    

Continuing along the mountain range, we come to a cave. It leads to a long, multi-leveled dungeon in which we fight boars, giant spiders, goblins, acid slugs, and bats and find crates full of potions and one crate with several magic armor pieces. After a while, we reach the exit to the dungeon. Just as we do, the party starts complaining that it's getting colder. Next to the exit, we find a dying trapper. He introduces himself as Fitch, a companion of Hazard. Some evil sorceress attacked his band, and he crawled into the cave to die. He expires shortly after explaining his tale; we loot a Gwani cloak from his body.

      

Apparently, we don't even try to heal him.

       

We emerge into a frozen landscape. I debate whether to save this area for later or continue my exploration pattern. I decide to continue the pattern. We head north and find another cave with two polar bears, which we unfortunately kill. Yet another cave north of that seems to have the remnants of the battle that Fitch spoke of. Bodies lie on the floor next to scorch marks and ghosts walk through the room. A trapped chest has more cloaks, including a Gwani cloak.

      

The color of the stats window seems to indicate how badly the character is suffering.

       

By now, though, we start to experience a serious problem. Despite being wrapped in Gwani cloaks, my characters are freezing. Their complaints go from "it's a bit nippy" to not being able to feel their faces. They actually start to take damage. I try different combinations of warmer gear, but I don't have enough fur hats and boots to go around. We turn around and head back for the dungeon. However, the characters don't stop complaining even after we pass the point at which they originally mentioned the cold; they keep complaining all through the dungeon. They're taking damage from frostbite while simultaneously taking damage from goblins. I try to keep everyone hale with potions and spells, but characters keep collapsing. I mistake "Poison" potions (green) for "Awaken" potions (orange) and make the situation worse. Eventually, I reload from just outside the dungeon and head back through it as fast as I can. The characters don't stop complaining about the cold until we reach the original entrance and head back into the forest.

     

If you don't like the climate in the Serpent Isles, wait five minutes.

    

Moving along, we find Hazard's Lodge in the forest. One trapper attacks as we enter, and we easily dispatch him. A note indicates what we already know: that Hazard has gone to the north. But it also tells us something we didn't know--that he's in possession of the glass sword we lost when we arrived on the island. He must have found the sword where it replaced a pine cone.

     

Only in this screenshot am I noticing that mandrake on the floor. Dammit.

             

North of the burned ship we discovered earlier, we find several dilapidated buildings that must have belonged to the miners. Still north of that, nestled in the mountains, behind a gated fence, we find Draygan's compound. The first person we encounter is a woman named Beryl. She says that there are actually four survivors of the expedition: herself, Draygan, and two men who work for Draygan. She recaps what we already know about Draygan having left the rest of the party to be eaten by wolves, and she blames Draygan for the death of her husband, Carvell. She's tried to run away, but Draygan's flunkies keep finding her. She confirms that Draygan is invincible, but she thinks we might be able to deal with him by treating an arrow with a plant called King's Savior, which puts people to sleep. The Forest Master should know where to find some.

   

We find Draygan himself in a small hut. He relates the history of the miners as we already know it, except that the ship they arrived on was called The Emerald Lady. I had been wondering where they came from, but a tattoo on his forehead confirms Monitorian origins. He doesn't seem to know or care that I'm a fellow Knight of Monitor. He has delusions of power and glory and warns us not to interfere with them.

          

From here, that would be a small nook of dirt surrounded by mountains.

       

For fun, I take a save and attack him. He retaliates with fireballs that quickly wipe out the party. I reload and feed him a "Sleep" potion (how is that different from Beryl's plan?) and he gets a protective aura around him. I feed him a "Protection" potion and he goes to sleep. I feed him a "Poison" potion and he wakes up. I feed him an "Awaken" potion and he gets poisoned. Confusion over the potion colors aside, poison doesn't seem to damage him, and if you put him to sleep with a potion, he just wakes up when you attack. Oddly, pikemen from Monitor respond to his cries for help.

      

The answer to the obvious question--where did they come from?--turns out to be the caves to the north of Draygan's compound. I don't know why we're repeatedly told that Draygan only has two followers when clearly he has more. The cave network is large and offers combats with giant spiders, headless, and trolls. Their bodies, as well as a few chests, yield gold nuggets and bars, which is nice because I haven't made any serious money for a while, and I still have spells and reagents to purchase.

     

Looting a troll lair.

       

We decide to finish our circuit before returning to Morghrim. As we near the eastern coast, Shamino starts exclaiming, "I know this place! I never thought to see this again!" He explains what we already know about the castle once being his home, and he laments the fair lady Beatrix that he abandoned there. He draws me a quick map of the castle as he remembers it and mentions a secret door that once existed to the west between two trees.

          

Helpful, but not really necessary.

      

A plaque at the impassable front gate reads: "BEWARE. SPIRITS PROWL HERE." Mountains block passage north around the castle. We head back west and find Shamino's secret door between the stumps of two trees. A tunnel leads through the mountains, past combats with giant spiders and giant scorpions (?), and down some stairs. In a cyclops lair strewn with debris and body parts, we find a chest with a magic shield and some magic crossbow bolts. 

      

Cyclopes are nasty.

        

A stairway upward leads to what Shamino has marked as a storage room. A ghost immediately greets us, welcoming us to "the Castle of King Shamino, the Betrayer!" She tries to attack us, but we're on the other side of a closed secret door, so she just beats at the wall for a few seconds before disappearing in a flash. We open the door and start exploring around the edges of the castle. Highlights:

    

• The storeroom has nothing of value but torches and bandages. Food in some of the barrels has rotted away long ago, leaving banana peels and fish skeletons behind.

• The well still has water at the bottom.

• The kitchen has a couple of fresh dead bodies. A diary on one of them indicates that he was a pirate hired by Batlin in Fawn. He relates how Batlin's party traipsed across the frozen north, hunting and imprisoning daemons. One of them was called Anarchy. How they came to their end in this kitchen is unknown.

• In the meeting hall, armored statues come to life, and we have to kill them in a (relatively) long combat. Almost everyone is wounded down to single digits, and I have to spend some time healing.

      

Did they come back to life the moment we left the screen? Of course they did.

       

• In the guard post, we use a winch to open the main gate so we don't have to exit through the caves.

• Undead attack us in the barracks, where there are a number of locked chests. I spend time picking them all, but they just have pieces of armor worse than I already have. A cluster of levers at the north end of the barracks unlock all the doors that were previously locked.

       

Between the wizard's chambers and chapel.

      

• The armory has eight locked chests. The four front ones yield to my lockpicks but are all empty. The four rear ones break every pick. One by one, I bash open the locked ones. I find a bunch of regular weapons and armor, a dragonslayer sword, a magic axe, a fire wand, and a note from Beatrix to Shamino. In it, she begs his forgiveness for having "looted the king's private arms" when the castle was besieged by goblins and Shamino was nowhere to be found.

• The dining hall and servants' quarters have nothing but cobwebs and rotting furniture.

• The wizard's chamber has a nice selection of reagents in several locked chests. A few magic scrolls lie behind a locked door, but an invisible chest has the key.

   

As we leave the armory, the ghost speaks to us again, and it is clear that it is Beatrix: "I loved thee once! I wrote three notes of love, letters of trust--but thou didst remember me no more, when Lord British summoned thee to his aid!" She attacks a couple of times and disappears. She appears again in the wizard's chambers: "So, thou didst finally think to return, King? It is too late! All are dead, the goblins conquered all ." Finally, she meets us a third time in the chapel: "Here is where my body did lie, until the goblins pillaged the tomb. I died of a broken heart, waiting for thy return." As if to drive this home, there's a casket in the corner of the chapel with a plaque that reads: "BEATRIX OF THE BROKEN HEART." It is empty.

       

Beatrix reacts to Shamino's mustache.

     

Shamino is curiously mute during all of this, and he has nothing to say when I double-click on him. Unfortunately, there's nothing else we can accomplish here at the moment. There's some kind of magic barrier in front of the castle's main keep. We make several loops around the area and search all the keep's walls for secret doors, but nothing comes to light.

     

That's convenient.

      

We continue our explorations and finally arrive at the castle that was just to our east when we emerged from the swamp. The swamp surrounds it like a moat. A few wooden planks serve as a bridge, but Boydon somehow manages to get himself poisoned as we cross it. The interior main doors are locked, so all we can do is take stairs up to the battlements. All ways here lead to dead ends or other locked doors.

     

I assume this is the Castle of the White Dragon.

    

Out of ideas, we make the long trek back to the Forest Master's house, using the trip as an excuse to probe the mountains for secret passages. We find one just before we reach the area with the hut. It leads to a small cave with barrels of food and potions, a trapped chest with a magic bow and magic arrows, and a little money in a sack. The remains of the presumed owner are spread out across the floor.

      

A secret niche.

         

Morghrim knows what King's Savior is: "Aye, it's a weed!" He describes it and tells us where to find it, near the mushrooms to the west. It takes me a while because his description depends heavily on color. Iolo has exactly one regular arrow, so I apply the plant, and it turns into a "Sleep Arrow." I grab a couple of extra just in case, and we head back to Draygan's camp.

       

One wonders how a plant that makes magic arrows ever managed to save a king.

        

I let Iolo do the honors, and of course he somehow screws it up, leading to another death at Draygan's hands. I reload and give the bow and arrow to the Avatar. He manages to put Draygan to sleep in one shot. Then Beryl rushes up and kills him! I wasn't expecting that. I guess I can't blame her, though. She thanks me and heads off, intending to offer herself as an aide to the Morghrim.

       

Technically, he only fell asleep thanks to me.

    

Draygan's body has magic leggings, a great helm, and the Orb of Elerion. Morghrim gates in and demands the orb immediately. I give it to him, and he gives me a whistle to summon the Hound of Doskar. I blow it, and a friendly little dog appears. I expected some kind of demon mastiff or something. I ask it to track something and give it Cantra's wooden sword. The dog points to the east.

      

Anyone know what kind of breed that is?

          

Apparently, the Hound of Doskar doesn't so much lead me to my quarry as point to it. I have to keep re-summoning him with the whistle if I want him. Still, there isn't much to the east except the two castles, and sure enough, the hound leads me directly to the front gates of Shamino's Castle. Next time, we'll see what's changed.

    

As the session closes, my open-world optimism is mostly gone, and while the session hasn't been unenjoyable, I find myself missing the less-linear world of The Black Gate. It's too bad that Origin didn't use the strengths of this engine in further titles. I want to explore more and follow step-by-step instructions less.

   

Time so far: 50 hours