Ambermoon: Everything is Illuminated

 

That's one hot flame.

       

My last session ended with the discovery that some demon named Luminor had kidnapped the inhabitants of Burnville and taken them to his tower. As this session began, the party set out in search of this tower. Almost immediately, we wandered into a swamp and got poisoned. I had to reload. The swamp on the other island didn't poison us, but maybe that's because we were mounted. We couldn't bring our horses with us to this island.

   

I eventually found a dungeon entrance (Bollgar Tunnel) southeast of Burnville, which led me into a dungeon guarded by a couple of fire giants. They were reasonably hard. Although they responded to "Lame" and stopped moving, I guess that "Lame" only affects physical attacks. They were still able to cast spells. Each of them could cast two "Fireballs" before their spell points ran out, so I had to weather those two attacks and rest and heal afterwards. I ran out of food around this time. Rather than go back, I had Qamara memorize the "Create Food" scroll and simply cast it every night before sleeping.

      

This is a fire giant.

      

The tunnel deposited us in a valley surrounded by mountains. Rivers crisscrossed the area, and it was tough to get around without taking damage from the water--until I discovered that you can walk across riffles undamaged. 

    

I forgot what game I was playing and thought I was about to wake up a god.

     

The only thing to find in this area was a large, single-room house. The building had an altar in the middle of the center room. As we approached it, Nelvin said: "That must be the altar which my master Trasric described. All we need is to use the Sphere of Opening on the altar and that will open the path to the tower." Until now, I had forgotten that Nelvin had said he wanted to find the old Tower of Black Magicians. I looked over my old entries, and I remembered that we'd had to use the same Sphere of Opening to visit the tower in Amberstar. In both games it removes a mountain that otherwise blocks access.

   

With the way open, we reached the tower and entered. For a long time, I couldn't figure out how to move past the antechamber on the first Level. There were no doors, secret doors, or buttons that I could find. I had to look up a spoiler. The secret was to find an unlit torch and use the flint-and-iron on it, which opened a secret passage to the north. I have two excuses for not figuring it out. The first is my usual one: for me, the unlit torch almost completely blends with the wall behind it. I can see the base of the sconce okay, though, so it's only a partial excuse. The rest of it is that I wasn't looking out for that kind of puzzle. All previous puzzles in the game have been simpler (find a switch) or have been presaged with hints. I'll know better in the future. 

   

I can kind of see the torch, now that I know to look for it.

       

There were a couple of fire dragons in the chamber beyond. They attacked individually and were about as difficult as the fire giants. They could cast "Firestorm" a couple of times but were vulnerable to "Lame," preventing their physical attacks after that. I had to reload from a particularly damaging "Firestorm," but otherwise I was able to get past them.

         

Might and Magic would have us just walk right into them.

      

The level had two exits, up and down, both blocked by swinging, bladed pendulums. Their off switches were behind secret doors. I went down first. In the basement, the game switched to a top-down view. The level consisted of one large room with torture instruments and a bubbling pool of lava. The people of Burnville were locked in a cage, calling feebly for help, and the healer Sabine was frantically trying to pick the lock. She told us that Luminor personally held the key to the cells and offered to join the party, which I accepted. She's a human healer, and at the time she joined, she was Level 6.

        

"Doesn't she have the same face as everyone else in the game?" "No, look: she's facing a different direction." "Wow, good job."

        

Up on the second floor, we met more enemies, including a fire giant and fire dragon attacking together and two fire dragons attacking together. Each battle took me multiple reloads. I suspect the key to making it easier lay in one of the scrolls I had left in my bureau at home. As when I fought them individually, "Lame" only did so much. Each pair had at least four mass-damage spells, so I had to hope that they chose not to use them or hope that the damage rolls were favorable. I managed to survive both battles by having Sabine cast healing spells and Selena use healing potions in between rounds.

     

Those fire dragons are jacked.

     

The second floor had a large central chamber scattered with pools of lava. These killed some of my characters outright if I walked into them, so I had to carefully step around them. In the middle of the chamber was a large fire. As I approached, a voice said: "I AM HIS POWER AND HIS MIGHT. THE HIGHER I BURN, THE STRONGER HE IS. HE WILL NEVER DIE AS LONG AS I LIVE." If we walked into the flame, we were "instantly turned to ashes."

  

A stone grotesque on a north wall had a round hole in its mouth. Sabine noted that "it looks as if it is very thirsty."

   

On the next level, we found a glowing necklace hovering in the air. When I touched it, there was a loud explosion, and some kind of portal between worlds opened in front of us. There were "two shadowy figures" on the other side. One of them was hit by lightning, after which the gate closed and the room got dark. We heard growling. Lighting another lantern, we found a half-human, half-cat standing in front of us. 

      

If I was about to complete my main quest and save my girlfriend and this happened, I'd be a lot angrier than Valdyn was.

        

The being introduced himself as Valdyn, a Felinic male ranger. He said he had found the necklace in his world and had hoped to use it to remove a curse on his girlfriend, who had been turned to stone by a powerful magician. "You, too, can experience the adventures of Valdyn," the game said. "Play Lionheart today!" Lionheart is a 1992 or 1993 side-scrolling action platformer from the same development team (Thalion). The plot concerns Valdyn trying to recover a stolen holy relic, the Lionheart, for the King of the Cat People. Valdyn's beloved, Ilene, was turned to stone during the theft. According to Wikipedia: "The game epilogue has Valdyn returning the Lionheart to the temple, still grieving for Ilene. However, in the optimal ending, if the player has found the amulet in the earlier hidden level, Valdyn is able to heal Ilene." I guess I just interrupted that little ceremony. Whoops. Valdyn joined the party at Level 8 , reasoning that "perhaps we will find a way for me to return." 

   

That gave me a full complement of six characters. It was a rare combat in which I could use them all effectively; owing to the rigid battle lines the game enforces (for the party, anyway), no more than three characters can ever be within melee range of a single enemy. I'll have to invest in ranged weapons for a few of them. Valdyn can learn mystic spells, meaning I have a full complement of potential spellcasting power.

    

Trying to work out a sensible arrangement.

      

The next two levels were full of traps, including a passageway blocked by "huge iron bars" that came shooting out of the ground--instantly fatal to a few characters. The traps were deactivated by switches behind secret doors. Also behind secret doors were a number of trapped and locked chests containing vials of "ice cold water." When dumped into the mouth on Level 2 that "looked thirsty," they caused the flame in that room to diminish. I guess they weakened Luminor for the final battle.

       

I'm not sure how a stone face looks thirsty, but whatever gives me the hint.

   

I found four of these vials, the last of them in a large room full of flames that moved around in random patterns. If they intersected the party, they would explode and kill a few of us. Getting through this room took at least four reloads. I said I wouldn't complain about the interface anymore after I dissected it a few entries ago, but honestly, movement in this game is not precise, responsive, or quick enough for this kind of puzzle.

     

Threading through these flames was my least favorite part of this session.

     

Four is a weird number; in the end, the flame was only diminished, not extinguished; and Luminor was still plenty difficult in battle. All of this makes me suspect there was a fifth vial to find, but I never found it.

  

Luminor--a large, beastlike demon--was on the top floor. He attacked when we entered his room. He was a tough customer--immune to "Lame" and "Sleep" and capable of mass-damage spells like "Firestorm" every round. Fortunately, he wasn't immune to fire-based magic himself. After a couple of reloads, I defeated him in two rounds by having my Qamara and Egil use the special "Fireball" attacks from their Flameblades, having Nelvin cast a powerful spell called "Windhowler" that I'd learned at some point earlier in the session, and having Selena cast a damage spell from a scroll. Valdyn attacked in melee range and Sabine healed Egil, who had been damaged in the first round.

     

Fighting fire with fire.

       

Luminor had the key to the cage on his body. A chest nearby had several attribute potions, another Windpearl, a couple of wishing coins, a Ring of Anti-Magic, a Target Bow and some magic arrows, a second Ring of Sobek, and a third Throwing Sickle. I gave the sickle to Sabine and the Target Bow to Valdyn, giving me three melee characters and three ranged characters.

      

I've been struggling on the attribute potions. My policy has been to give them to Qamara if she needs the potion (i.e., if she isn't maxed out in that attribute) and to the person who needs it most otherwise. My reasoning is that I don't know for sure which party members will be with me until the end and which will be replaced. I assume there are more potential party members; I still haven't encountered a paladin, alchemist, or mystic.

   

We returned to the basement and freed the prisoners, who thanked us profusely. "Most of them are badly injured," the game noted, "and you help them to carry the weakest. Everyone stutters their thanks and many of their eyes are full of tears." One of them introduced himself as Captain Torle, owner of the boatyard in Spannenberg. "Please visit me there," he said. "I would like to show my gratitude to you for releasing me."

    

I guess we were too late for at least two of them.

     

We headed back through the mountain pass to Burnville. Back in the city, all the buildings were now open and occupied. Our first stop was the House of Art, where we met several people. Theresa was a jeweler who had several items for sale, including gems, magic rings, and a Windpearl. She said that she'd fix any broken jewelry that we had. I tried to give her the Windpearl Necklace, but she didn't have any reaction to that.

   

Maybe change the town's name while you're at it.

     

A human mystic named Milzor asked if we knew anything about magic words. He noted that two of them, SCHNISM and TEMPUS FUGIT, had some power in the past. These are apparently references to cheat codes that were possible in Amberstar, as outlined in this comment by Fincki. They were apparently activated by the HELP key, which does nothing in this game. I'm not sure how else you'd use "magic words," since you can't just speak random words at any time. I assume Milzor is just making an insider reference rather than imparting anything I can actually use. Milzor also had a shop selling mystic scrolls. I bought "Identification" so I could save 250 gold at the sage--only to find that Valdyn doesn't have enough spell points to cast it.

     

In the same building, a cartographer named Michael gave us a hot-off-the-press map of Lyramion, which allows me to finally use the map that came with the game. An artist named Dieter Rottermund gave me an oil painting that he'd just completed on commission for the Baron of Newlake. He asked me to bring it to him. The painting is called Ambermoon. These are all further in-jokes. Dieter Rottermund is a real person, credited with the cover artwork, and Michael Bittner is credited with the game map.

        

A developer's avatar gives me a quest.

     

Looking at the map, I realized I've been a bit of an idiot. From the backstory, I obviously knew that the former continent of Lyramion had been split into the "Lyramonic Isles" thanks to the moon striking the planet. I somehow didn't realize the degree of correspondence between the map features, however. Probably Ultima's insistence that "earthquakes and tsunamis" are capable of changing the size, shape, and composition of entire landmasses led me to not question it. With the maps side-by-side, I can see that the correspondence in these two titles is quite faithful. Ambermoon starts in what was the Hoimon Desert in Amberstar. Alkem's Tower was the Tower of the Grey Wizards in the previous game. The caves where I encountered the fairies and orcs were the Dwarf Mines of Amberstar. The Bollar Mountains are in the same place, forming the same ring around the Tower of the Black Wizards/Luminor's Tower. I'll note other parallel features as I visit those islands. 

      

The two game maps, in comparison.

     

Elsewhere in Burnville, the general store sold nothing I really needed, but they had a mysterious, non-magical scimitar for sale for an incredible 25,000 gold pieces. The House of Healing had healing scrolls for sale, as well as some wounded people retrieved from Luminor's dungeon. One of them, an old woman, was suffering from some heartbreaking PTSD, having hallucinations that she was still being tortured. There was a guy training the "Swimming" skill, but I didn't bother for now. The owner of the Cactus Inn let us stay for a reduced price of one gold piece each. Wandering about town, an NPC told me that the elves of Illien "desperately need people to help them" in some kind of struggle against Sansri, the goddess of snakes. Another told us that the Master of the Forest on the island to the east was looking for a new apprentice. He also said that the island has rare Xenobil Trees; "their wood is so valuable that even a single stick is worth more than even the whole town of Burnville."

    

Perhaps most important, a blacksmith shop on the west side of town offered to repair broken items. I spent thousands of gold to repair the Magic Disc, Crystal Ball, and Locater Device found in my grandfather's stash. The Locater Device added a permanent element to the interface showing our coordinates (which don't seem to line up with the coordinates in Amberstar). The Magic Disc allows us to skim across both water and land, although we still can't go over deep water. I'm not sure what the Crystal Ball does, as it's "out of charges."

      

The disc makes it look like I'm floating in an inner tube.

     

Finally, we returned to Spannenberg, visited my house, sorted through our equipment, got some training (Valdyn can learn "Critical Hits"), and spent some money on attribute potions at Alchem's Tower.

      

The party heads out on new adventures!

     

We capped the session with a visit to Captain Torle who, true to his word, left a ship for us at the end of the dock outside the city. With this ship and the game map, it looks like the world is open to us! The next obvious stop is Newlake, but I don't know--I think I might try to take advantage of one of the few open-world games of the era. It's likely that enemy difficulty or various keys and other plot elements will channel me along a particular path, but I'm of a mind to at least see.

Time so far: 38 hours