Realms of Darkness: Rogues' Gallery

 

The graphic artist just never runs out of imagination.

        

When I last blogged about Realms, I had journeyed through a three-level dungeon to discover a new part of the world. I only explored it long enough to find an inn and save the game. As this session opened, I explored the town and boundaries of this new world.

    

The town, Baddel, is a lot smaller than Grail, which was hardly a metropolis to begin with. Grail at least had a square of streets, whereas Baddel just has a single street. It has no guard outpost or adventurers' hall, just an inn, pub, armory, and equipment shop.

   

The armory has breast plates and war axes. The war axes seem to be the best weapon in the game by literal damage done, but so many enemies these days require magic weapons that I'm not sure the war axes would be a good investment even if I could afford them. Breast plates would clearly be a good investment, but at 121 silver pieces each, I'll have to do some grinding first. 

       

I just noticed the "press space bar for more items" message. I wonder what I missed.

     

The pub looks pretty nuts from outside but is otherwise the same pub from Grail, selling only food. The equipment shop has a "blue sky potion" that I've never seen before.

      

The very odd pub.

        

The first time I visited the equipment shop, which for some reason looks like a circus tent, there was a sorcerer doing tricks out front. It was Stealth the Thief's brother. I gave him Stealth's letter, and he took off, rewarding us with a couple of magic staves, a healing scroll, a magic long sword, and a four-leaf clover.

      

My reward.

      

The area surrounding Baddel was 27 squares and included a couple of interesting encounters:

   

• A temple.

• A star inscribed on the ground that I couldn't figure out how to do anything with.

• A "skulking thief" who offered a tip for 75 silver. That was pretty pricey for us, but I paid it. The tip: "I learned from my fellow thieves that there exists an elevator whose descent is controlled by how many people are inside it." 

     

Sounds like a job for (N)ew Party!

       

• A dwarf sleeping on a tree stump. When I woke him up, he said: "Know this, my friends. The Rogue Alliance is protected by charms. These charms prevent normal weapons from affecting them. If you wish to destroy the Alliance, you must find the bones of dragon." I don't know that I particularly wish to defeat it, but perhaps that's the next quest.

• Some swampy squares that don't have anything in them but are a little freaky.

      

Behold.

      

More importantly, there are five ladders, chains, and stairways down to five different dungeons. This game is just getting started.

    

Do you suppose this guy is an elf or a dwarf?

      

No one had given me a new quest, and I still had a mysterious stairway down in the last dungeon I explored, so I decided to wrap that up first. It turned out to go nowhere; it dropped me above a pit (that I had already mapped) on the level below. But I took the time to travel all the way back to Grail and the first adventure disk to see if there was any follow-up on Stealth or any new quests. The answer should have been obvious: information is not traded between disks, so Stealth was still in his cell, no one gave me a new quest, and it was clear I wasn't supposed to be on this disk anymore.

      

I've got some bad news, buddy.

     

I made my way back to the other world and decided to explore the new dungeons from the top down. My first selection led me to a single 16 x 16 level with a lot of one-way walls. Encounters here:

     

• In the first hallway, I found a machine gun, "a shiny new Gatling gun capable of firing 3000 rounds per minute." If it's "new," I guess this world has entered its Industrial Age. I gave it to Cadoc, who has no trouble wielding it despite the real Gatling gun weighing close to 200 pounds. It does modestly more damage in combat than a sword. The game had nothing to say about ammunition, so perhaps he's just hitting enemies with it.

• Two places had buttons on the walls. One of them caused the word "suicidal" to flash on the wall, which then greatly increased the odds of a random encounter each step. The other one flashed "normal" and returned the dungeon to normal. I barely made it out alive after pushing the first one. I guess it would be good for grinding.

• A bunch of squares in the southeast corner had one-way walls, pushing the player inextricably to the southeast. After all that, there was nothing there.

       

My map of the dungeon.

     

• A "mild-mannered man" wearing a t-shirt that said "War is hell." He told me that I would need to strip myself of arms to pass, so I split the party and gave one party's weapons to the other. It was an annoying process. The man opened a secret door for the unarmed party, which had to run from every battle.

• In the area beyond the secret door was a misty figure who asked, "What am I a part of?" I tried ROGUE'S ALLIANCE and MIST to no avail. Maybe the answer is in one of the other dungeons?

    

I don't even know who you are.

       

• A gnome architect was studying blueprints. "Seek the shapes of things to come," he advised. Okay.

    

Enemies got harder and harder, and I had to leave the dungeon a few times when my priests ran out of "Restore Sight" and "Restore Senses" (cures stunning) spells. I still don't have a reliable way to cure poison, just to weaken it, so a lot of my money goes to the temple. Characters started leveling up again at 32,000 experience points, so it does appear that the interval is going to remain 8,000.

     

One of my favorites from this session.

     

The second dungeon I tried was a few squares north of Baddel and two squares east of the dungeon that had brought me to this area. An early sign announced: "Rogue Alliance Headquarters." I thus suspected I didn't want to be here, but I explored anyway, mapping out a small 10 x 10 cube full of pit traps. If the game has given me any way to avoid these, I've overlooked it. I just have to fall in, cast "Neutralize Gravity" to get out, and heal.

    

Oddly, there wasn't a single random battle, but at the end of my explorations, I ran into a fixed battle with 59 "wizard wasps." As the sleeping dwarf warned, they were immune to my weapons and barely responded to even my most powerful spells. I wasn't able to flee, suffered a full-party death, and had to reload.

    

This feels a bit unbalanced.

     

The third dungeon, just a couple moves west of Baddel, made a strange shape, as if to suggest some kind of vise or . . . cradle, maybe? I can't think of the right word. Like something was meant to fit between the two arms.

    

It bothers me that they're not equal heights.

      

Anyway, the only fixed encounter was on the tiny second level, where I ran into a message that offered "instructions for assembling a teleporter." Specifically, I'm to "combine the 3 shapes of arcane power," stand at the magic star on the outdoor map, and say "SPELLBINDER." Good to know—now what are the shapes of arcane power?

   

I spent a little time grinding in this dungeon against phantoms, zombies, magicians, dwarves, "wheretigers" and "theretigers," doom birds, scorpions, hulks, and other creatures. I so want to show you all the images. If there's one thing I admire most about this game, it's the diligence with which amateur graphic designer Alex Duong Nghiem dedicated himself to these dozens of monster portraits. They're all deeply flawed, and with an earnestness that somehow compensates. And they all come charging out of the screen, inexplicably breaking the borders of the game window. I swear that some of them even break the borders of the emulator window. I need to capture more of them when the game shows them in full portrait, before the bottom window appears in front of their legs. There are times I physically sit back in my chair as some new enemy comes tearing out of the screen like the Kool-Aid man.

       

Oh, yeah!

     

The next dungeon was shaped like a pyramid with a 30-square base and a 15-square height. Its only encounters were part of a stupid puzzle. To get to the final room, I had to cross a lake. (And the magic carpet couldn't do it, apparently; dungeon solutions are always entirely self-contained.) As I explored, I found a boomerang. Later, I came to a ledge with an object on it. "Neutralize Gravity" and ropes weren't enough; I had to THROW BOOMERANG to knock the item off the ledge. It turned out to be a cane. I had no idea what to do with it until I found a radio, which I turned on just in time to hear a broadcast about Dr. Nositall's fabulous new cane, which can freeze any body of water by tapping on it.

       

As known from the 1979 disco classic, "(Won't You Assemble My Radio in) Funkyville."

           

Sighing, I returned to the lake, typed TAP CANE, and crossed it. The final room had a riddle similar to the one in the first dungeon: "What am I a part of?" All the talk of shapes made me think the answer might be TRIANGLE, and it was! I received a pyramid object. I guess I need to return to that first dungeon and say CUBE or something.

 

Oddly, the game specified that the lake was to my north. I mapped it to the east, as I always map assuming the way I'm entering is facing north. If I'd mapped it correctly, it wouldn't be much of a "pyramid."

     

I entered the fifth dungeon but I didn't have a lot of time to explore before I had to get this posting out. In lieu of a longer entry, below are some more of my favorite monster portraits.

      

Time so far: 31 hours

    

******

    

"Flame demons." I love that they wear uniforms.

"High priest." I think the artist could have tried a bit harder on the belt.

 

The hulk's arms appear to end in stubs.

 

This guy's from last time, but I don't think I showed him. Look at that arm-to-head ratio!

"Vlads," one of many enemies whose graphics break through the top border of the game window.