Excelsior: IND 203

 

Is it ethical to murder someone to free others from slavery?

      

Things have gotten complicated in Lysandia, so much so that I thought it might help to start mapping out the steps of the main quest. I don't know why I haven't done this in more games. Most titles have been relatively linear, but there are a few (perhaps most notably the Ultima and Might and Magic series) that would benefit from this type of organization.

  

This is where I am at the end of this session:

      

You'll probably want to click to enlarge.

      

This session begins with one of those coincidences that, if I were you, would make me skeptical that I wasn't using cheats. I didn't know where to proceed next on my quest to find the ingredients for the Elixir of Capital Power, save one (the "liquid light" was at the bottom of the Forgotten Pits), so I decided to just explore places that I hadn't explored yet. In the first place I explored, I found exactly the PC I needed. Play enough of these games and those sorts of things just happen.

   

The dungeon in question was on an island in a lake south of Castle Excelsior. I didn't even write down the name. It was only two levels, with no major puzzles. The first level was full of undead enemies and doors.

           

Working my way up.

        

The second level led me to a little arbor and the hut of a chemist named Hugh Windwell-Crumb. He offered to prepare a chemical mixture for me "at no charge, simply because I enjoy my work so much." He asked for the ingredients that I wanted to include. It turned out that he already had the first three: dragon tears, chimney soot, and black ice. He balked at liquid light, though ("one of the most potent and rare substances known"). He told me that to collect it, I would need a spun-diamond goblet. "See Alexis, a glassblower found in Davinhoven."

      

Approaching Davinhoven.

       

I didn't know where Davinhoven was, so I popped by Castle Infinitum and consulted with the cartographer. He said it was a dungeon along the northern coast. I found it without much trouble.

   

Davinhoven was a fairly large, square dungeon. It may have had three or four levels. I didn't write it down. On one level, a sign alerted me that the "D.S.C' was nearby. This turned out to be a "dual-shot crossbow," found behind a secret door. It shoots twice, but not for as much damage as my Retribution Sword.

        

And you have to maintain a quarrel supply.

         

Eventually, I found my way to a forge with an NPC standing nearby. She introduced herself as Alexis and said that to spin the goblet, I'd need to bring her fine sand from the southern tip of the Sandbar near Farborough. 

     

What does "spun-diamond" even mean?

     

Before heading there, I explored a level below Alexis and found a house occupied by an evil wizard named Fevez. "Begone!" he demanded, and I did, but only after looting his house of a couple of potions, a magic wand, and a spell with the code "DF." I have no idea what it does, as it requires more than 60 magic points to cast.

   

Back on the surface, I sailed my boat to Farborough and tried to figure out which of the islands in its vicinity was the "sand bar." I was smart enough to try digging with my shovel instead of just L)ooking or G)etting, and sure enough, I turned up some sand. Back in Davinhoven, I paid Alexis for the goblet.

       

I hasten coastal erosion.

           

With the goblet in hand, I returned to the Forgotten Pit. Since I had already explored down to the fourth level, I just used "Instant Descent" to get there quickly. The "liquid light" was a river that I had previously taken for lava. Perhaps that's what it is.

      

I hope that goblet has a lid.

      

I took the ingredient back to Windwell-Crumb, and he created a potion. "I'm not quite sure what you've got here," he admitted. "Use it sparingly, for the last of my black ice was included in this mixture."

     

I suspect I'll save it for "that one big battle" and never use it at all.

        

With no other leads, I returned to Intungo and the Resistance base beneath it. Ambora was delighted and referred me back to the leader, Sebastian. "We have isolated three items needed to restore the King to his natural self," Sebastian said. To wit:

   

• The Gem of Severance. A geologist in Woodshade named Nargausius knows about it.
• A Crystal Jar. Gnona, "found in the dangerous city of Grethal," knows more.
• An unknown item. They're still researching it.

             

Finally, something that sounds like the main quest.

      

I wasn't sure where to find Grethal, so I went after Nargausius first. He said that the Gem of Severance is "created by the combination of a small stone made of pure good with one of pure evil." To forge it, I have to take the two gems to a statue to an ancient god "deep underground." The worse news is that to create the gems of good and evil, I have to find pure representatives of each alignment and sacrifice them. He pointed me to Xoxiro in Burroughs to learn about the two people. 

   

A trip back to Castle Infinitum's cartographer alerted me that Grethal is a monster city, surrounded by mountains, on a western island. I found it without too much trouble. It is indeed inhabited by gremlins, goblins, and such, but it otherwise offers the same services as a human town. I couldn't understand most of the NPCs and worried that I'd have to find a way to speak with them, but fortunately when I found Gnona, she spoke in my language. She recognized me immediately as a Fixer but said she'd keep my secret. The jar, she said, is behind the magic fire at the edge of the world, but to retrieve it, I'd need a purely mechanical device from Karth Whitlaw.

      

Most of the "dialogue" in this town.

       

Fortunately, I knew where Karth Withlaw was from previous exploration: living on an island north of the continent. He had a solution for me: a mechanical cockatiel, like Bubo in Clash of the Titans. Unfortunately, he'd not only broken the key to the cockatiel, but he'd lost the mold for the key to a gambler in Pibsly. The key, moreover, would have to be made of pure eramel.

   

With a growing number of places to visit, I went to nearby Pibsly, where the gambler sold me the iron mold for 250 gold pieces. Next, I exchanged my ship for my horse and rode south to Keep Flare, where I had long ago heard that pure eramel was kept.

      

Dismounting my horse to enter the keep.

      

Level 1 of Keep Flare just had a bunch of enemies. Level 2 offered a puzzle. A bunch of signs had messages, culminating in this riddle: "How many small sacks can you fill with the gold that you receive between a quarter hour after noon and a quarter hour after midnight?" Individual signs held the clues:

   

• A small sack can carry one short of a dozen and four score gold coins.
• I give you one gold coin the first time the minute hand crosses the hour hand on a thirteen hour clock. 
• I give you twice as many as the previous time thereafter. 

          

This is a tough sentence to parse.

        

So a sack can carry 91 coins. The first time the minute hand crosses the hour hand on a 12-hour clock after 12:15 is around 13:05. I assumed the third clue means that I get twice as many gold coins as the previous time each time the hour hand crosses the minute hand, which on a 12-hour clock would be 11 more times, ending at 00:00. That would give 1*2^11 = 2048 coins, or 2048/91 = 22.5 bags. But that didn't work; neither did 22 or 23. I can't wrap my head around how to tell time on a 13-hour clock, but I assumed it would add one more crossing to the mix, tried 45 bags, and got it right.

     

On Level 3, I found a group of elves living in a small group of rooms. One of them, Oyo, explained that an enchantress named Medrabempo had cursed them with a condition that makes sunlight lethal, then offered them "sanctuary" in her tower as a pretense to enslave them and make them mine eramel. Oyo asked me to kill Medrabempo.

  

I found the sorceress on the next level, surrounded by wyverns, demons, undead, and dragons. She mocked me as I approached, saying that I'd be a good test subject for her new spell, "Medrabempo's Curse of Terminal Sneezing." The game said she hurled spells at me, but if she ever hit me with the spell, I never saw its effects. I killed her in a couple of blows. Her treasure chamber had some nice weapons, but still nothing better than my Retribution Sword.

     

The elves were happy to be freed and, more importantly, opened the way to the chamber with the eramel. 

         

I mean, you could sell it.

      

My next stop was the nearby village of Burroughs, just to the south of Keep Flare. I needed to find Xoxiro, who supposedly had the names of the paragons of good and evil, both of whom I would have to kill to make the Gem of Severance. I wasn't looking forward to that. Xoxiro turned out to be a stuttering ranger. He said the people I was looking for were a friar "who has committed not an evil act in his life"; I could find him in Keep Royal. The paragon of evil is Fevez in Davinhoven. I had already met both of them on my first visits to those towers.

     

I want to know exactly how he stuttered on the "X."

       

Instead of heading directly to either dungeon, I turned my attention to forging the eramel key, now that I had both the mold and chunk of eramel. While I was looking through my notes for something else, I had noted an NPC named Balzan in South Blagsell. "If you ever need anything forged out of any metal," he said, "feel free to stop by." I took him up on that now, and he was able to make an eramel key, but at the cost of the mold. "I should have anticipated this," he said. "Since I did not, I will not charge you for my services."

      

That's a true professional.

      

For whatever reason—because it was closest, I guess—I went to Royal Keep next and visited the "pale-skinned friar" where I had previously found him, sequestered at the end of a long room that looked like a dining hall in the royal prison. "Please do not speak to me," he begged. "News of the outside world can have an evil influence on those devoted to the good." When I explained the need for the gemstone, he seemed to accept it. "It is my life's calling to die before committing a single act of evil, and obviously the longer I live, the more difficult this becomes. Therefore, in a way, I wish to die now, though there is only one purely good and ethical way for me to allow this to happen." This turns out to be with a sacrificial dagger dipped in holy water, wielded by another person. He said a priest "in a dungeon" whose name he couldn't remember could help me with the holy water. Fortunately, I met him in the Forgotten Pit.

  

The encounter with the friar raises all kinds of philosophical issues. In Lysandian ethics, or at least this friar's, "good" is purely an absence of evil. This friar has earned the designation of "most good" by sequestering himself in a tower and refusing to interact with the rest of the world. If you've seen The Good Place, he's the equivalent of Doug Forcett, living off the grid and holding himself as inert as possible, walking slowly and carefully to avoid even stepping on an insect. An alternate take (e.g., Ultima's with its "Valor" requirement) is that the "most good" person would have to be an active agent in the world, even if it meant that some "evil" might result from mistakes or unforeseeable consequences.

     

I'm not sure that I understand the difference.

      

His avoidance of "sin" is also interesting. Is consenting to homicide so much different from suicide? And what difference in either case does holy water on the dagger make?

      

I hoped that Fevez would be a bit more straightforward. Since he's evil, I figured, I can just kill him. Unfortunately, the game wanted me to do a quest first here, too. Fevez said he would consent to the murder only if I first took care of his "bucket list" item to kill Lady Jasmine, leader of the Order of the Crescent. I've never met nor heard of her, so that's going to take a while. In the meantime, I tried just killing Fevez, but he didn't leave anything behind. I had to reload.

         

I wonder what "deal" I was going to offer him. "On one hand, I kill you; on the other . . ."

      

I next returned to the underworld via the magic fire on the island in the far northeast corner. Here, I maneuvered between flames to an obvious place to use the mechanical cockatiel and retrieve the Crystal Jar. I then returned the cockatiel and key to Karth, who rewarded me by telling me about his dual-shot crossbow, which I've already found.

           

A plank would have been too obvious?

     

Some other notes:

   

• I've found a variety of wands—magic, fire, and lightning—in various dungeons. They work well as ranged weapons, and I have to assume that they never run out of charges. The Retribution Sword still seems better for melee work, though.

• Combat continues to be annoying rather than dangerous. Even when enemies completely surround me, I can withstand them long enough to kill them and heal. A character with no spell points would have a difficult time with the game.

• I hit Level 9 just as I closed this entry. The magical orbs stopped increasing my attributes when they got to 50, which was a couple of levels ago.

         

My current character.

       

I'll also remark that it's unusual for a game to re-use its dungeons so many times. Usually, dungeons are good for a single quest and then you never return. Excelsior has brought me to several dungeons two or three times, each time going deeper or making use of some NPC who just had generic dialogue the first time. I find value in Excelsior's approach without necessarily committing to saying that it's "better."

 

This has been a decent game, but I really hope I can finish in one more entry.

 

Time so far: 25 hours