Serpent Isle: Venomous Mood

 

"I don't know what happened. We were walking along; it seemed to be a pleasant day; and suddenly the Avatar lopped Dupre's head off!"

        

I ended my last entry slightly stuck, having exhausted all of the obvious avenues forward. What I had missed--and thank you to commenters for keeping the comments mostly ROT-13'd--is that I hadn't asked the Hound of Doskar to track Batlin, using the pendant that Batlin left in Shamino's castle. My reactions to this were also already covered by commenters, but just to summarize:

   

• Yes, asking the hound to track Batlin was a sensible thing to do. I had just used the hound for tracking when I found Batlin's amulet, so it should have been fresh in my mind.

• However, Batlin had also told me where he was going to go, which happened to be the only place I hadn't explored yet. So I didn't really need the hound.

• Either way, Yenani doesn't know that I'm tracking Batlin and that I had or hadn't used the hound. She has no connection to that part of the quest. Thus, it makes no sense that her dialogue (offering the password to Skullcrusher) is dependent on me having done so. 

      

I'm putting the Gwani cloak on again out of spite.

      

• Whatever magic mechanism controls the door to Skullcrusher also doesn't know whether I've consulted the hound or spoken to Yenani. However, Yenani does tell us the words that the runes stand for (ISAL SAL CRA GAAS ISKAR). The animation shows the Avatar saying those words after touching the runes but before the door opens, so you can headcanon that the Avatar needed to know the words, not just the letters, to open the door to Skullcrusher.

       

I'm pretty sure all the people in Ultima just spoke regular English.

    

In any event, we soon make it into the ancient Ophidian city, former stronghold of the forces of Chaos. Moving into the city, we come upon a large building with various artifacts displayed on tables. A nearby journal reveals that Vasculio, the exiled necromancer from Moonshade, has been living here. The journal outlines the artifacts that he stole from the city, including a locket stolen from Frigidazzi, a spectral orb stolen from Mortegro, a flux analyzer stolen from Gustacio, and a Wand of Stone stolen from Torrissio.

   

"Flux analyzer" rings a bell, so I search my notes and find that Gustacio told me he could repair my Black Sword with it. (I've been using the Black Sword all along, so I'm not sure exactly what's "broken" about it.) I double-click on the analyzer and click on the Black Sword. It sparkles, indicating that something happened. I'm not sure what.

      

I'm guessing I didn't re-imprison the demon.

      

I pack up all the artifacts, thinking I'll return them to Moonshade. There's one I cannot reach behind a force field. It might be the Horn of the Gwani, although amusingly it's a brass horn with valves rather than just an animal horn like you'd expect from a more primitive society.

        

If I can get it out of here, Iolo and I can play, "I Wish that I Could Shimmy Like My Sister Kate."

     

There are corpses in a side chamber, along with a cage with two skeletons, one dead, one undead. The undead one says "Help me, Avatar" through the bars. I don't know who he is or how he knows me. I cast "Unlock Magic" on the lock, and the door swings open. The undead skeleton attacks me, and I'm forced to destroy it.

       

Seriously, who is this?

       

The dead one has two serpents' teeth--I was wondering if I was ever going to find more of those--and a journal on his body. The journal belongs to Maleccio, a former enemy of Vasculio's. Vasculio apparently kidnapped him and imprisoned him here. The journal goes on to indicate that Vasculio is a lich (which Ultima insists on spelling "liche"), having extended his life using blood and Stoneheart. The unfortunate Maleccio apparently had too much of his blood taken, weakened, and died.

    

Vasculio himself is asleep in a coffin in the next room, something I discover accidentally by opening it. He wonders why we disturbed him and who sent us to destroy him. We have the option to answer with the name of one of Moonshade's mages, but instead I ask him about "vengeance." Noting that I possess Magebane, he offers to exchange his "greatest spell, one that can dispatch any foe" for it. My companions all urge me to refuse, and I do. He attacks. I put him to sleep with a sleeping potion, then beat at him with Magebane until he's dead. He has a key on his body.

       

No offense, but you seem more like a vampire than a lich.

     

In another building, apparently a library, we see a ghost flying around. It's not hostile. When I try to talk to it, it drops a book. We have to cast "Translation" to read it. It's about penguins and their habitat. In a building that looks like a restaurant, another ghost actually talks to us, saying that the ghosts--the Souls of Chaos--will help vanquish "the foe." I'm not sure they realize I already killed him. In another building, four ghosts are performing some kind of ritual to Chaos.

   

Lava men and hostile Gwani attack as we continue to explore. I feel bad about killing the Gwani; I don't know why they're attacking me. This mystery is cleared up when I find a little lab where Vasculio has left another journal. He describes entrancing the Gwani and extracting the secrets of exploring the city from them. We nearly leave the lab, having looted some potions, without noticing Rudyom's Wand just lying there on a table. I realize Dupre no longer has the strange apparatus that replaced it. I think I left it back in Moonshade.

     

I could have easily missed this. Then again, I'm not sure what I need it for.

      

Vasculio's key opens an exit door to the northeast. There are two other giant golden double-doors that I can't open. Nearby signs suggest they lead to shrines of the virtues of Chaos. Automatons stand guard at various points in the city but don't attack and don't respond to talking.

   

Before taking the exit, I save the game and use the serpent gate that I found in the northern part of the city. I do this for a couple of reasons. First, I'm way overloaded, and I want to store some items in the hub. Second, I want to try out my new teeth and see where they go. In the process, I start making a map of the different exits from the central hub. I've been running on memory and trial-and-error until now.

       

Figuring out the paths available to me.

      

The exercise gets me what I really need: confirmation that I can at least make it back to the northern forest. If I had to walk through Gorlab Swamp again, I'd delay until I had more teeth.

   

My first visit is to Monk Isle--and hey, look! Cantra is up and running around! And she's saying, "I want thy flesh!" So either something went wrong with that resurrection or she's entering those awkward late-teen years. The no-named idiot who brought her here has nothing new to say. At least I can tell her mother, "Hey, she was walking and talking the last time I saw her!" All joking aside, it's annoying that there's no dialogue relating to the girl.

     

To bait fish withal?

     

Next stop: Moonshade. Like Santa Claus, I come bearing gifts in the pack on my back. First stop: locket, stolen from Frigidazzi. She's still nowhere to be found, so I leave it in her chest. Second stop: Torrissio, from whom Vasculio stole a wand called the Philanderer's Friend. (Let your mind run riot on that one.) I note with some amusement that Columna is sleeping in Torrissio's bed when I arrive. Torrissio snatches the wand back from me in triumph and runs off with it. You're welcome.

     

I mean, we were going to give it to you anyway.

    

Mortegro is still missing, so I can't give him his Spectral Orb, and Filbercio is still hiding from me, so I can't give him his "living scalp" (yuck). Gustacio doesn't want his Flux Analyzer back as much as he wants to sleep, apparently, and when he finally wakes up, he has no dialogue about it.

       

Canst thou not see that it is practically noon?

      

I didn't come here to give out presents, though. I came to find out what mage could teach "Dispel Field" so I can get the Horn of the Gwani. It turns out that no one has it. Neither does Ensorcio over in the Sleeping Bull. So that leaves either Mortegro or someone I haven't met yet. Either way, I guess I need to keep searching up north. This was a wasted trip except for Torrissio.

       

In Monitor, Harnna already knows that Cantra is dead: "Her spirit has been haunting me. She is suffering and tormented." Shamino tells her that the monks have taken her to their island. Harnna thanks us. "Perhaps now there is hope that my daughter shall return home to me." As we turn to leave, a prophecy suddenly comes upon her. But it's all stuff we've already done: recover the three artifacts and journey north.

      

Have you ever met a horse named Smith?

     

That leaves avenging Gannt. We head into the forest until we come upon what I think is the right building--the locked one labeled HOUSE OF WARES. It opens with the key that was on Gannt's tomb. The first floor has some basic furnishings, a stove, a pirate flag on the wall, and a parrot on a perch. The second floor has Captain Stokes, I guess, sitting at a baby grand piano. He doesn't speak, attack, or do anything. 

       

The party unloads all their saved magical junk on one poor pirate.

        

A locked, trapped chest next to his bed has 100 of each of the game's currency and some lockpicks. I loot it, but it still doesn't provoke a reaction from Stokes. It feels wrong to kill a non-hostile enemy. In fact, Ultima IV taught me you shouldn't do that. I'm torn. Finally, I have Iolo feed him a sleeping potion and then a poison potion. At least I can make it painless. Except he wakes up while still poisoned. Fine, we'll do it the hard way. I enter combat, and my characters must read him as hostile because they immediately kill him. On his body is a lightning whip, some dried meat, a poison dagger, and a bandage.

  

Downstairs, I have a closer look at what I took for a wood stove and realize that it's a computer. Trying to "use" the computer gives an advertisement for Origin's Strike Commander. Another double-click gives an ad for Privateer.  Another one, and there's a suggestion of Ultima VIII: Pagan. Then the computer explodes.

     

Must have been an Apple III.

      

The whole episode was silly. Some dialogue from Stokes could have saved it, maybe, but otherwise it falls flat as both a side quest and an Easter egg.

    

Contemplating teleporting back to the northern forest and then walking through two dungeons to get to where I left off, I realize I've gained nothing from this entire expedition. Torrissio can have his wand back some other time. I reload from Skullcrusher and exit the mountains.

         

That sounds pretty boring.

     

A check of the map shows that we're in a valley in the central part of the northern mountain range. We move to the east and find a ruined Ophidian building with another serpent gate. Half a dozen skeletons mingle behind a closed door, and I kill them. Inside, what appears to be a face on the wall turns out to be the spirit of a little girl, Shriash, a "faithful follower of Chaos," who belongs to the Temple of Emotion. She was trapped by a spell during the war, hundreds of years ago, and has occupied the wall ever since. She says she can be freed if I'll smash the Pedestal of Love--the broken column in this very room. "But it might kill thee! Or worse, thou mightest be trapped in this wall in my place!" She walks me through the ritual they used to perform to create the Water of Emotion. 

  
It doesn't seem Avatarish to leave her trapped in the wall, so I swing away at the pedestal, which eventually explodes. The face disappears. The "Lodestone of Love" is left behind. On other pedestals are lodestones of hatred, despair, and happiness. I leave them all alone.

     

"I once tried to show charity to a young girl." "What happened?" "It blew up in my face."

         

Something called the "Moon's Eye" looks like a teleporter but turns out to be something like a crystal ball. When I double-click on it, I have a vision of Batlin bustling around some kind of temple, flanked by huge blue serpent statues. I guess it might be the City of Order, but I thought Furnace was Order, so who knows. Batlin summons Deadeye, his pirate friend, and tells him that: "the Avatar must not enter the Shrine of Balance before the Wall of Lights is fully open." Deadeye hints that he has some private score to settle with me, but I don't think I've ever met him before. Batlin continues on and instructs Brunt to "delay the Avatar" and Palos to "make sure the Avatar feels the warmth of our welcome." 

       

This is probably a stretch, but this whole scene seems to parallel the "Then You May Take Me to the Fair" scene in Camelot.

       

I decide to explore the rest of the map in sections from west to east. The first job is to move north up the mountains, testing for secret doors. I find nothing except some hostile Gwani and trappers. The map makes it look like we can move east along the northern coast, but we can't, so I head back south along the next mountain range. My search for a secret passage pays off, and I soon find myself in an ice cavern maze in which lightning bolts and fireballs come shooting from the walls. 

   

Past some caltrops--which I try to pile to the side, but of course my party members blunder right over them--I find a room full of locked treasure chests. Inside is an impressive haul of magic armor, weapons, money, and potions. There's a straight "blackrock balance serpent" that I imagine will be important. A journal reveals this as Silverpate's treasure--I had forgotten all about that. The journal describes a conflict that Silverpate had with Erstam.

     

Is there even any point to money anymore?

    

At the southern end of the same range is a non-hidden cave full of dead bodies, including a dead Ice Dragon. There's a serpent gate in the same room. Some ice trolls and magical ice creatures attack us in the hallways. Part of the corridor is obstructed by ice blocks, but a few "Explosion" spells take care of them. I come to a room with four teleportation pads, but stepping on any of them just causes me to get zapped with lightning bolts. I leave without really figuring out what this place was about.

       

Someone's been through here.

      

I follow the mountain range to the east coast, fighting polar bears, trappers, snow leopards, wolves, and frost serpents along the way. I find a large building to the north with a three-level stone maze. This building has way too much going on, and I'm not in the mood to absorb it. There are a bunch of books about Chaos, and things on pedestals that seem to be artifacts, plaques to read, chests to open, scrolls to loot. My bags are already bursting with stuff that I don't know if I'm ever going to use, and now suddenly I'm looking at a Hammer of Dedication, and an unnamed wand that doesn't seem to do anything, and a "magic lens." Rather than half-ass it, I decide to just reload and leave this building for another day. 

     

This place broke me.

        

In case it isn't obvious from my tone, I really started to lose patience with the game during this session. It needed to be drawing to a conclusion several hours ago, not only is it nowhere near over, but I've also got that whole Silver Seed expansion. Aspects of the game that I found lovably irritating in previous sessions became enraging here: the way action slows to a crawl the moment an enemy is on the radar; the way the game sometimes flashes red at you during combat; the way your party goes charging off-screen when you're trying to keep them together; the way that enemies respawn the moment you leave their screens; the way that the game constantly decides it doesn't like where you're trying to move something, gives you a red "X" and a buzz, and puts the item back in its original location; the way that you can never find anything in your backpack; "I could use a little food"; all the goddamned keys.

   

So I figure this is a good place to take a break for a couple of days and see if I can re-engage the game in a better mood. If not, I may put it on the back burner for a week or so.

   

Time so far: 60 hours