The Ormus Saga II: As Far as I Could Take It

Confronting the "big bad."

          

I've told you before about the encyclopedia that I wrote in college. As I learned back then, there are two major approaches to writing an encyclopedia:

   

• Gather all your sources and start with a specific topic like MAGNA CARTA or MAGNESIUM. Write a full entry on that topic, synthesizing what every source has to say.

• Start with one of your sources rather than a topic. As you read the source, fill in the details of multiple topics at once as it delivers new information.

     

I'm just going to blather for a few paragraphs, so in the meantime, here I am finding the Mystic Helm in a bucket.

           

For instance, if I were writing an encyclopedia on characters in The Lord of the Rings, using the first method, I might start with BAGGINS, FRODO. I would read the entire book, taking notes specifically on Frodo, and summarizing his biography when I was finished. For subsequent characters, I might use an index or CTRL-F with an electronic version to skip between mentions of that character, but otherwise the process would be the same.

 

If I wrote such an encyclopedia using the second method, I'd start on the first page of the text. By the end of the epitaph, I'd have entries on ELVES, DWARVES, DARK LORD, MORDOR, and ONE RING, but I wouldn't be able to say much about them. After the first page of Chapter 1, I'd have entries started for HOBBITS, RED BOOK OF WETMARCH, and BILBO. They'd just be skeletons, of course. I'd append new material as I read on, page by page, and when I finished a single reading of the text, I'd have a relatively complete draft of all the characters and places in it. I'd move on to secondary works and scholarly works and flesh out the entries even more.

      

A magic map shows a secret area in the mountains.

     

I wrote my encyclopedia using the second method. The difficulty it posed is that whenever my editor asked for an update, no part of the encyclopedia was ever "finished." Even when it had grown to 500 pages, every entry was still in progress, because I didn't know if my next source would deliver even more information about that topic. 

   

Writing about an open-world with only a main quest (no side quests) is a bit like writing an encyclopedia using the second method. There are no obvious stopping points, no complete stories to tell. Each hour fills in a bit of information here or there, but nothing is done until the entire thing is done. For this reason, I pressed hard this week to get the entire thing done. Even as I missed my target publication deadline on Wednesday, I continued to think that just another few hours would wrap it up.

        

But then you have to listen to a voice growling, "I see you . . . " everywhere you go.

        

In the end, the scope of the game is rather impressive, particularly for a diskmag title. Released on four disks, The Ormus Saga II comprises 65,000 overworld squares and 39 locations, including 20 towns with around 120 NPCs. These numbers are considerably higher than the Ultima games (primarily I-III) that inspired it.  

    

I spent about 10 hours with the game after the last entry. I began by finishing my clockwise loop around the continent, logging cities, services, NPCs, and "to do" items. In the middle of this loop, I had enough money to buy a skiff, and shortly after the end, I had enough to buy a ship. Skiffs and ships work as they did in the first game, or a bit nonsensically. They're inventory items, and when you want to use them, you just board them wherever you happen to be. You don't have to worry about where you left them, as they disappear (and go back into your inventory) once you disembark. They degrade over time, and you have to periodically visit a boat shop to repair them.

       

Someday, I would like to visit (0,0) in real life.

                

With both skiff and ship in my possession, there was nowhere on the overworld that I couldn't go, save the rare high mountaintop inaccessible even with a climbing tool. I thus re-explored the overworld, this time in 9-square strips, ensuring that I found every location. I cleaned up items on my "to do" list as I did so. I learned that the game world is 255 x 255, wrapping.

   

There are multiple purposes of all of this exploration:

   

• To learn more about the game's backstory and, thus, the main mission.

• To level up, primarily so you can cast some of the more advanced spells needed for success. 

• To free each city from the presence of the Brotherhood (and defend the cities from attempts to re-take them).

• To find the locations of the 25 treasures buried in the game world.

        

Finding yet another treasure. The Death Sword is the best weapon in the game. It broke in the next battle.

      

• To find various artifacts needed to win the game.

• To learn the names of the 9 god-servants, each of whom has a task that must be completed to win the game.

• To learn the three words of power and the one "holy word."

     

Busca generously provided a translation of the German manual (which had existed up to this point only in an image format) to assist with the backstory. It concerns the Brotherhood of the White Rose, an organization founded 120 years ago by a good cleric named Sullivan. He intended that the Brotherhood serve altruistic purposes, but he realized too late that it had become too powerful and corrupted. Towards the end of his life, he tried to dissolve it, but seven members led by someone named Gulhaven assassinated him in Arbon Castle before he could accomplish the task. The public was told he died from an illness, and the order lived on. One of the priests present at the assassination wrote the truth in a book called Ulbore, then walled it up in the library of Arbon Castle. The assassins each mysteriously died. 

   

An earthquake recently exposed the book, which scholars spent nearly 40 years translating. It revealed the truth: Sullivan had been the personal protégé of the high god Carion, who was preparing a severe punishment for mankind's treachery. If some hero could not complete 9 tasks set out by Carion's servants within 1 year of the reading of Ulbore, the world would be destroyed.

        

As we'll discuss, Gorab is no longer "living" in Beryland.

      

I'm a little unclear about the relationship between the Brotherhood of the White Rose and the Ormus Cult from the first game. Any player who wins the first game kills Lord Marox, leader of the cult. In this game, Marox's castle, Magmar, is still around, and his successor, Lord Finning, is leading the cult. But Finning also claims to be a member of the Brotherhood. I guess it's kind of like the Fellowship and the followers of the Guardian in Ultima VII, with the cult using the ostensibly benevolent organization for nefarious purposes.

      

As for leveling up, I made it to Level 7 before ending this session. You periodically pray before the altars at the three temples to earn new levels, which come with additional strength, maximum hit points, and maximum spell points. You also get the ability to cast more spells. Having already found magic armor, a magic shield, and a magic axe while on Level 1, I didn't have much reason to try to upgrade to better weapons, but I was forced to regress a few times when my items broke. As I covered before, items break on a set schedule, so if you really want to keep one, you have to notice when it breaks, reload, switch to a different (lesser) item, let it break instead, then switch back to the one you want to keep. I confess I did this a few times.

         

"I'm a what? A 'player'? What does that even mean? What am I playing? Is this all a game to you!?" - my character

          

Monsters got a lot harder as I leveled up. By Level 3, I was already facing balrogs, sea dragons, and giants. I made combat harder for myself because I neglected my endurance statistic, upon which accuracy depends. Every time you rest at an inn (which takes one game day), it resets to 99, and you're healed to maximum hit points. But the latter also happens when you pay a healer, which is cheaper and doesn't cost you a precious day. Until I re-read the manual and realized the importance of endurance, I was suffering through long battles in which I hardly ever hit the enemy.

        

Trading blows with a balrog.

    

Freeing each city means attacking it with enough troops and weapons to defeat the enemy garrisons, then leaving enough troops behind to defend it when the enemy tries to re-take it. You have to periodically replenish troops lost in these battles. Fortunately, every town has a "troop shop" for this purpose. Every week, you get an income based on the number of cities you hold, but you have to pay any troops in your active army. This system keeps the economy relevant deep into the game, but even so, there was a point that I stopped bothering to sell accumulated jewels, nuggets, and other items because I had enough gold.

    

Perhaps the most interesting and fun part of the game is fully exploring each city, temple, dungeon, hut, and castle, talking to each NPC, and searching the city's furniture, trees, and other locations for the eight treasures located in each indoor area. If you can find all the treasures, you get a bonus of 75 experience points. More important, some of the treasures are unique or near so. Some cities are very easily explorable by a starting character, but most of them have some combination of:

   

• Locked or magically-locked doors that you need keys or magic keys to unlock. These are sold in a very small number of "special" stores or looted from furniture and creatures. 

• Rivers or other bodies of water that you need a skiff to cross. 

• Secret doors that you have to search the walls to uncover.

     

Getting to that ladder involved both a skiff and searching for a secret door.

      

• Mountainous squares that you need the climbing tool to cross.

• Squares of fire or lava that you need the Fire Cloak to survive.

     

The eighth treasure in this town, behind a secret door, was crucial to navigating the rest of the game.

     

• Places that are blocked by furniture that you need the AN PULVIS (Level 4) spell to remove.

      

I need to make this bookcase disappear to get to the secret door on the other side.

     

• Doorways blocked by force fields that you need the FOREMIS (Level 5) spell to remove.

   

Even when you have these tools, some of which come late in the game, it can be difficult to figure out the exact path you need to take to find hidden areas. There were also times I ran out of resources (e.g., keys, spell points) in the middle of the exploration and had to start over. As of now. I've only found the eighth treasure in about two-thirds of the locations visited. As we'll discuss, I clearly haven't found every NPC. 

        

Negating a force field.

     

Some notes on encounters and gameplay elements:

   

• Most NPCs just offer a few paragraphs of dialogue for which you have no input. There is one chain of about six NPCs who feed you keywords to tell the next person in the chain. (The last one gives coordinates to a treasure.) This and the occasional use of the YELL action are the only uses of the keyboard in the game.

      

The game features NPC names like "Vincent," "Larry," and other inventions from the realm of high fantasy.

       

• Several NPCs talk about the Black Dragon, the last survivor of the Dragon Wars, one of the most ancient creatures in Beryland. I encountered it while exploring the world and killed it in combat. The only thing I got was experience and gold. I don't know if killing it is required to win the game. 

      

"You are the Black Dragon . . . You possess the power of the glow."

      

• Several NPCs talk about Lord Thorn, a wizard who I guess died during the first game. Exploring his old hut, I found his ring, which turns me invisible. I never found a use for that.

      

Imagine how hard it must have been to find it in a tree.

      

• Each of the three temples has a brazier (behind the types of obstacles described above) containing an amulet. Together, these amulets are supposed to form the Trigonom, which allows entry to the Land of the Dead. I found all three amulets but not the spell necessary to enter the Land of the Dead.

        

 

The most important treasure in this temple was also the final one.

     

• To enter Castle Magmar, I had to show an Ormus Badge. The only way I could get one was to kill an NPC named Gorab, a member of the cult. Killing NPCs has a price: When the next week's payday rolls around, you lose 3 days (in jail) for every NPC you've killed in the meantime, plus some gold, plus a few hundred experience points. It's a rare game of this era that has a criminal justice system. 

   

A weird message to get while I'm at sea, fighting a serpent.

       

• Actually visiting the castle was freaky, just like visiting Blackthorn's Castle in Ultima V (which is the clear inspiration for the sequence). Some of the guards are demons. 

       

Do you think I'd have to go to jail for three days for killing him?

      

• I have found several Masks of Baal, and I have no idea what they are.

       

Finding a treasure deep in a dungeon.

      

• With most games like this, some kind of fast travel system eventually emerges. Not here. Getting from place to place is a real annoyance late in the game. 

• The "Board" command is right next to the "Attack" command when scrolling through the commands with the joystick. Once selected, there's no way to back out of it. I was constantly boarding my skiff in the middle of battle. 

   

In the middle of battle, I decide to go for a little river ride. But there's no river in sight.

         

Once you have the names of the god-servants, you just YELL them from any location to summon them and get their quests. This is what six of them want:

 

• FERMON: To find three Black Jewels. I found two.

• LIVIUS: To find all 25 treasures. I only ever found the locations to 21, and three are in the Land of the Dead.

• MARCIUM: Wants the holy word. I tried giving it to him (RUNOGAR), and he said I was wrong, so I'm not sure what I did wrong there.

• NIKODEMUS. Wants five Mandor Roots. I've found four.

• URUK. Wanted me to complete a sequence of letters. Commenter Ken Brubaker was correct about the answer. 

    

Solving Uruk's rune puzzle.

      

• YKARUR. Wants 11 Stone Keys. I've found 9 nine. 

     

After at least giving the entire land a cursory exploration, here's what I do not know/have.

   

• The sixth, seventh, or eighth treasures in a bunch of cities, some of which might be Black Jewels, Mandor Roots, and Stone Keys. I swear I've searched every tree and piece of furniture. On one map, I found a treasure in the middle of a lake, and on another, at the end of a path, so I suppose literally any square is free game. I don't really want to take the time to search every square. 

• How to combine the amulets to make the Trigonom. 

• Where to get the DOL GANDUR spell to enter the World of the Dead. I do not believe any of the magic shops have sold it.

• How to get the city pass necessary to enter Elvenstone, the only city I was unable to visit, where I suspect some of these other items might be cleared up.

• The names of the final three god-servants. (This problem can be solved on a spoiler site.)

• The locations of the final four treasures. (This problem can be solved on a spoiler site.)

• The "real" location of the treasure whose clue tells me to look at 54N, 173W, as we discussed last time. I did try searching 173N, 54 W to no avail. 

          

This is where the endgame will take place once I accomplish all the other quests.

       

That final item strikes me as a mistake by the author, and thus not something that is likely to be overcome with extra effort. The treasure could be literally anywhere. That, in turn, makes me question how much sense it makes to spend the effort on the other items. I'll let it sit for a couple of days, see if anyone has any ideas, maybe take a crack at some hacks, and then decide what to do.

    

Time so far: 19 hours 

 

Game 555: Castle of the Winds: Part Two - Lifthransir's Bane (1992)

 

       

Castle of the Winds: Part Two - Lifthransir's Bane

United States 

SaadaSoft (developer); Epic MegaGames (publisher, as shareware)

Released 1992 for Windows 3 

Date Started: 13 July 2025

Date Ended: 16 July 2025

Total Hours: 12

Difficulty: Easy-Moderate (2.5/5) but user-definable
Final Rating: (to come later)

Ranking at time of posting: (to come later)  

         

Well, Part Two was mechanically very much the same as Part One, but I enjoyed the plot, and there were some notable equipment upgrades.

     

Part Two allows you to create a new character or import one from the first part. New characters start at Level 7 with 1,880 experience points, which is one level less (and about half the experience) as my imported character. More important, my imported character came in with over 90,000 copper pieces and a full set of equipment. A new character has only 75,000 copper pieces and must purchase everything anew.

       

The sequel offers similar gameplay to the original.

       

The game begins with a long message indicating that the Amulet of Kings has teleported the character to a small city with a keep and a Temple of Odin. To the north are "the massive ruins of the Castle of the Winds." The message recommends that the player stop and speak to the jarl before heading to the castle, but an attempt to enter the keep has the character stopped by a "burly guard" who refuses to believe the character's story or to let him pass. "[The jarl is] busy enough trying to handle creatures that sneak out and kidnap peasants. Do something about them and maybe he'll talk to you."

             

The opening moments.

        

The nearby town has a lane with five stores on each side. There are two armor shops, two weapon shops, two magic shops, two general stores, and two scroll-and-potion shops. South of the keep is the Temple of Odin. West of the keep is a bank. There's a sage (who identifies equipment) north of the keep, but it's hard to imagine a player who gets to this point without "Identify" in his spellbook already. North of the sage are a few rows of huts; the player can't do anything with them. The road to the castle stretches north from the huts, and along the way is a junk shop that will buy anything, even cursed or broken items. 

               

Wandering the streets of the new city.

      

There are no enemies in the town or on the castle screen to the north. The first floor ("Level 0") of the castle has a fixed layout. In the throne room is the corpse of the character's grandfather, King Lifthransir. (Like all the proper names in the game, "Lifthransir" comes from Norse mythology. A man and a woman, Lifthrasir and Lif, are foretold to survive Ragnarok and to repopulate the world.) As the character approaches, the ancient king's ghost speaks and lays out the backstory: One day during his reign, the trickster god Loki showed up and offered him a helm that would give the king control over wind and storms. What Loki didn't mention is that the helm was stolen from Thor's treasure room, and that Surtur, "the demon Lord of Fiery Muspelheim," wanted the helm for himself. Thus, shortly after Lifthransir accepted the artifact, the kingdom was invaded by hill, stone, frost, and fire giants. "They came, led by their kings, and with them came devils from Muspelheim. Even now they roam the lower depths."

          

Finally entering the titular castle.

       

The kingdom tried to hold out, but it was hopeless. Lifthransir's subjects made their last stand in the throne room, and Surtur himself "slew [the king] with his sword of fire, took the helm, and doomed [him] to roam Midgard as a spirit for as long as he remained!" But as he died, Lifthransir declared that one of his descendants would return and banish the fire giant and his allies. He suggests there's a time limit to this task, but if so, it's unspecific.

     

Meeting grandpa.

       

The dungeon below the throne room level is 25 levels, randomly-generated. As with the first game, but unlike Moria and Angband, the levels persist in memory after you leave, so you can fully explore and clear them. I did discover that if you go up or down the stairs by hitting SHIFT-parentheses instead of SHIFT-angle brackets, you'll get a new random level. I don't see a particular reason to do that in this game, but the mechanic is there.

       

As I explored, I almost immediately fell into the familiar pattern that characterized the final hours of Part One—indeed, that characterize Moria (1983), Angband (1992), and every other variant in this line, including the later Diablo (1997). I explored until my backpack was full, cast "Rune of Return," identified and sold all my stuff, checked the shops for new items that I might want, healed, and cast "Rune of Return" again to go to the lowest dungeon level explored so far. I did this about once per dungeon level, sometimes twice. Moria offered scrolls of return, of course, but the game mechanics required a bit more strategy than this. The player couldn't memorize the spell, for one thing; he had to hunt for scrolls, and sometimes there weren't enough. Even then, various calamities could befall him in the dungeon that might destroy his scrolls. Those don't exist in Castle. With "Rune of Return" as a learned spell, costing very little to cast, there's no reason not to use it for regular healing and mana restoration. You can just warp out to a safe space, rest, then warp back. 

      

Getting surrounded like this is a bad idea.

    

The other aspect that makes the game a bit too easy is a spell, which I found within two or three levels, to fully heal the character. It obviates most of the other spells, makes intelligence the most important attribute, and completely changes the nature of combat. Now you can just whack away, watching your hit points, fully heal when they get too low, and keep whacking away. These two spells together make dungeon exploration incredibly rote.

          

The game offers lots of new gear.

        

And yet I still had fun upgrading the character. Part Two introduces some equipment not found in Part One, including utility belts that greatly expand the number of active items you can carry, Packs of Holding, Gauntlets of Slaying, Boots of Speed, Elven Chain Mail, elixirs that resist elements, and—best of all—potions that permanently increase attributes. I also learned something that I didn't realize in the previous game: not all "enchanted" items are equal. You have to right-click on them to see the nature of the enchantment. One set of Bracers of Defense might "increase the armor value," but another set might "strongly increase the armor value." There's even a "very strongly." Weapon enchantments can increase accuracy or damage or both, or increase attributes. Armor enchantments might include resistances to elements in addition to AC boosts. Between stuff I found in the dungeon and the rotating inventories of the shops, I was constantly getting upgrades.

       

My endgame inventory. Note the different enchantments on my bastard sword.

       

The one negative aspect of all of this is that if you want anything, you don't need to worry about paying for it. I ended the game with 1.6 million copper pieces after buying anything I wanted whenever I wanted it. I could have made it more challenging by relying exclusively on found money instead of selling unwanted equipment, I guess.

       

Monsters are naturally harder as you go down. You meet dragons of various types and colors, starting with young dragons on early levels and progressing to ancient ones on later levels. There are demons who can summon other demons, giants, vampires and other high-level undead, elementals of all types, and necromancers. So many of them (in addition to traps) are capable of attribute-draining attacks that I got in the habit of simply chugging attribute-restoring potions whenever I found them, plus visiting the Temple of Odin to pay for restoration services on every visit to the town.

      

I have three attributes to restore from that last visit.

     

Once I had the "Heal" spell, only high-level dragons gave me much trouble. They have a fun breath animation, and some of those breaths were capable of wiping away all my hit points in one attack if I didn't have any resistance. Thus, an exception to using almost all of my spell points for "Heal" was to cast resistance spells against the appropriate element when I saw those dragons coming. I got a little use out of mass-damage spells like "Fireball" and "Ball Lightning" when enemies clustered together. 

       

That breath animation.

        

All that remains is to tell you the story beats:

    

• On Level, I heard someone "screaming for help." (Or so the game said; the sequel has no more sound than its predecessor.) I found a woman tied to an altar in a room full of ogres. She thanked me for rescuing her. She said she was a simple farmer who had been kidnapped to sacrifice to Surtur, and she warned me that Surtur is immune to fire but vulnerable to the lightning bolts that Thor uses.

      

Well, well, what's happening in here?

         

• After this rescue, the jarl was willing to see me. He gave me 100 gold pieces, or 10,000 copper pieces, a laughably small sum given what I already had. Later, I visited him again, and he gave me some Gauntlets of Slaying and told me the depth of the dungeon (25 levels).

       

I'm not going to post all the long text screens, but the game is more verbose than my summaries suggest.

    

• On Level 6, I met a wolf-man in charge of a pack of wolves. On Level 8, a bear pack. On Level 12, a wizard leads some manticores. These were all brief encounters, but they at least had some context.

• The giants and their kings were found in special rooms on Levels 16 (hill giants), 18 (stone giants), 20 (fire giants), and 22 (storm giants). Each king has a mocking message when you first engage him and then a death message in which he expresses confidence that he'll be avenged by Surtur.

        

The hill giant king's welcome message.

Entering the stone giant king's lair.

The frost giant king's death message.

        

I don't know whether it's necessary to defeat all of these fixed encounters on the way down. I suspect not. It's easy to miss some of them because of the game's love of trap doors, although I insisted on working my way back up to finish each previous level whenever I encountered them. I stuck resolutely to the pattern of exploration and return even when it became clear that I could probably win by just heading directly for the endgame.

   

I made it to Character Level 13. I got to 11 through experience alone, then immediately quaffed two Potions of Gain Level I had been saving for the occasion. I don't know what the level maximum is, but to make it to the 245,720 experience points required for Level 14 would require days of grinding. 

       

Hitting my max level.

         

Surtur is in a throne room on Level 25, surrounded by demons, giants, dragons, and other minions. It took me a while to clear them out. When I first struck Surtur, he responded with a monologue in which he claimed credit for killing my father, grandfather, and godparents and expressed confidence he would do the same to me. "I still have the legions of Muspelheim and Niflheim at my command!" Yes, he's capable of gating in demons as one of his attacks, although this isn't too dangerous if you can trap him in a hallway.

     

I used "Ball Lightning" here, just for fun.

      

He disappears a couple of times during the battle, like Minax in Ultima II, and you have to go hunting him down in some remote part of the level. When he finally dies, he has a villain's speech as a portal takes him to Hel. He leaves the Helm of Storms behind. I didn't have any problem killing him. I just had to cast "Heal" a lot. I might have restored my mana once with a potion.

           

There you are, you rascal.

        

The Helm of Storms makes the character simultaneously resistant to fire, cold, and lightning plus keeps "Detect Monsters" active. Unfortunately, "Rune of Return" doesn't work with the helm in the character's possession, so I had to walk up 25 flights of stairs. It's good that I had taken the time to fully explore each level.

    

Upon my return to the surface, I visited the jarl first. He congratulated me on my victory, knelt before me (apparently, the king of the Castle of the Winds outranks the jarl of the town), and reminded me to take the helm to my grandfather's ghost so that the helm could be returned to Thor.

       

That's too bad. I was looking forward to meeting him.

        

King Lifthransir said that not only was I king ("by deed and bloodright"), but Thor had visited and said that it was fine if I kept the helm. I took the throne and the game was over. I was a little disappointed to see that my leaderboard position was determined entirely by experience points and that my 1.6 million copper pieces did nothing for me.

   

I'm not sure I need to offer a full GIMLET or even change it from Part One. I thought the sequel had slightly better equipment, but it was balanced against a lower challenge. I also thought Part Two was a bit too long. I got bored by the end, longed for the more complex mechanics of Moria, and reached a conclusion that was a bit different from last time: While I would still prefer to replay Castle to taking another trip through Moria, that's entirely because Castle has an endgame achievable within a reasonable time frame. Mechanically, I would pick Moria. So I think the higher score for Moria makes sense. I give Lifthransir's Bane a 35.

        

I'm going to be awfully alone in this huge castle.

       

Since we covered the developer's history and future in the last entry, there's not much else to discuss here. Both parts of the game get a lot of love online, perhaps a bit more than they deserve. It's a fun game, and it hits my "recommended" threshold, but I think its place in the hearts of gamers has more to do with timing than quality. It rode the crest of the Windows, Internet, and shareware explosions and was more accessible than the ASCII roguelikes that preceded it. I have faith we'll find better graphical roguelikes in the future, however.

    

****

      

I just wanted to offer an aside here because I have nowhere else to talk about this stuff. I called Castle a bit boring and repetitive, and it was, but it would have been more so if I hadn't been listening to a book at the same time. That book was Stephen King's The Outsider (2018). I have a complicated relationship with Stephen King. I've always enjoyed his books, but after investing years and multiple re-reads in The Dark Tower series, I felt deeply betrayed by the last book (The Dark Tower, 2004) that I kept away from him for 20 years. Okay, that wasn't absolute. I read 11/22/63 (2011) because I kept hearing how good it was (and I agreed), and I gave Under the Dome (2009) a try because I liked the concept, but I thought it had a horrible ending. It's not an original observation that King can be awful with endings, and it's not helped by his insouciant insistence that he simply "finds" the story and has no control over where it goes.

   

Mid last year, I decided to give him another try. I started at random with Joyland (2013), which I knew nothing about. I began the book during a morning commute and was listening when I got home on my evening commute. At some point, I realized I was sitting in my driveway, refusing to get out of the car and go inside, because I was riveted by the book—and at this point in the story, absolutely nothing had happened except a teenager from New Hampshire had gone down to North Carolina to apply for a job at an amusement park. He managed to make it riveting with the quality of language alone, the evocation of scene, the establishment of character, the realism of dialogue. I've always thought King was a good writer, of course, but I don't think it ever hit me how good until I was delaying dinner to hear about the day-to-day operations of a fairground.

      

I've since listened to Doctor Sleep (2013), the entire Bill Hodges trilogy, Revival (2014), Blaze (2007), and Duma Key (2008). It strikes me that somewhere along the line, King finally got good at plotting an ending. So far, Dome seems to me the only recent book for which he had a good idea and couldn't make it work. Don't get me wrong—Revival has a horrible, horrible ending. It's perhaps the most horrific horror novel I've ever read. It has ideas that nobody, particularly those in the second half of their lives, should have implanted in their heads. But it's horrible for its content, not its plotting.

 

I am now hopelessly ensorcelled by The Outsider. (Please, no spoilers, even if you know the ending and find it deliciously ironic that I have just claimed that "King finally got good at plotting an ending.") I have no idea which way it's going. I don't even know whether it's going to turn supernatural or not. I keep looking for excuses to do errands so I can listen to it. So hats off to Stephen King, who is having an amazing "late period" and will always be oddly paired in my memory with Castle of the Winds. 

The Ormus Saga II: The XYZ Affair

 

     

I had to start over with The Ormus Saga II because I had been relying on save states rather than saving my character to the disk, and I accidentally overwrote all the save state slots trying to get Ring of Elanor to work. There's no particular reason to use save states for Ormus, as you can save from anywhere and saving and reloading both seem to work okay. But I have a long track record of C64 games, particularly those on tape, for which I can never get saving to work, and adopted the convention a long time ago of hitting ALT-S frequently as I play. That very muscle memory got me in trouble here.

   

It wasn't so bad, though, because ever since I learned that every town, keep, and dungeon has exactly eight treasures, and that the character gets an experience bonus after finding the eighth, I felt the need to start tracking how many I found. Unfortunately, I've rarely been able to get to eight. Ormus's locations often have areas blocked by locked doors, magically-locked doors, force fields, water, mountains, other pieces of furniture, and lava, each of which requires a different item or spell to bypass, none of which the starting character has. Many of the treasures are on the other sides of those obstacles.

     

Something needs to get me either past that chair or through that wall.

       

The joystick-only interface is so annoying that I was frankly considering bailing on the game, but I forced myself to slow down and keep notes. This is a paradox that I've repeatedly discovered while writing this blog: If I find myself impatient with a game, sometimes the solution is not to play faster, but to slow down and document everything. In a first-person game, this often means making maps, if I'm not already making them. For this kind of game, it means creating the sort of workbook that I've used for many Ultima clones, with tabs for locations, NPCs, equipment, monsters, and open tasks. (I'm keeping it in Google Sheets, so you're welcome to take a look.) Either way, completing the documentation becomes a goal in itself and increases my enjoyment even as it increases the amount of time I'm destined to spend on the game.

     

Finding the eighth treasure.

       

Since I had explored counter-clockwise the first time, this time I explored clockwise from Remfield. I hit the Temple of Ghur; two dungeons; the towns of Coldwater, Borger Springs, Greenfields, and Welling; a castle called Arbon; a tower called Skymount, and a small hut. Each had eight treasures, even though the huts were all in one room (every piece of furniture had something) and some of the castles had them spread out on four or more floors. The gold I found in these locations was enough to keep up my army and buy occasional equipment upgrades; battles in the wilderness remained rare.

    

Various findings:

    

• The enemy always attacks the Royal Palace moments after the character first leaves Remfield. A player who doesn't figure out quickly how to buy troops and send them to the palace is in for a short, frustrating game. The reason that the enemy always attacks the Palace is that every other town starts in enemy control. You have to free some of them before the enemy has any other place to attack.

• The game is a bit like Ultima II in that you have an inventory of usable items—maps, keys, magic keys, torches, skulls—that can only rarely be purchased. You generally get them at random for killing monsters or searching furniture.

      

Nice. Those are expensive.

     

• As you can see from that list, there are indeed both keys and magic keys. I was wondering about that during the last session. 

• All temples have monsters in the corners. It's one of the few reliable ways to find them.

• Every week, "payday" rolls around. The character gets money for every free city, town, and keep but also has to pay soldiers in his active army (i.e., not stationed at any particular location). 

       

Oof. I should have gotten rid of some of those soldiers.

       

• Monsters so far have included zombies, giant snakes, mean trolls, orcs, giant spiders, squids, seadragons, and pirate ships.

• As I checked out the inventories of each new city, I upgraded to a magic shield, magic armor, and a magic bow. So far, each of these is the best item in its class. 

          

Hell, yeah. It took the Avatar almost the entire game to get to this point.

      

I was curious how the game would approach dungeons—remember, every location in its predecessor is a menu—and it turns out that they're simply multi-leveled, indoor, top-down locations like towns and castles, but using outdoor terrain. An occasional chest or barrel hides the eight goodies that each dungeon has. A beginning character can't get very far in dungeons because so many of their areas are blocked by mountainous squares (which require a climbing pick) or lava, which I have not yet found any way to cross safely. I suspect a spell is going to be involved.

      

I guess I'll need to return later.

       

Speaking of spells, I found two magic shops among the towns I visited and logged, and between them, I bought nine different spells. Of them, there is only one that I a) know what it does, and b) can cast. That's CURAX, which cures poison. FOREMIS supposedly dispels force fields, and AN PULVIS removes obstacles, but neither work when I cast them. I suspect I need to reach a higher level. My character is still Level 1 because I haven't found a temple since the game's beginning.

         

I can't see any other way to reach that chest.

       

I know from King Argon that to beat the game, I have to:

   

• Solve the nine tasks of the god-servants.
• Go to the mystic flames in the mountains.
• Yell the Holy Word.
• Enter the Halls of Carion.
• Speak the three Eternal Words, backwards. 

    

I have not made much progress on this main quest. By the end of the first session, I knew the names of three of the god-servants, and I didn't learn any more this time. I did learn the Holy Word. In Wishek Falls, a woman named Madame Lane gave it to me as QTMNFEQ, but said it was encoded using an "ancient elven technique." According to her neighbor, Sullivan, that "ancient technique" is a simple Caesar shift of one place. However, a third NPC named Willis says that A and E are exceptions and always shift to each other. That gives the final result as RUNOGAR. That sounded familiar, so I looked up my notes, and that was the Holy Word in the first game. I guess someone who's won The Ormus Saga has an advantage.

       

Standard pronunciation?

       

Speaking of puzzles, an NPC named Allan in Monter Bay says that Tolkien's The Hobbit has the solution to one of the god-servant's riddles in Chapter 5. This is the chapter in which Bilbo and Gollum exchange a bunch of riddles, so I guess I'll just have to wait for that one.

     

I'll get right on that.

     

To this main quest, an NPC named James in Coldwater added something else. He said there were 25 treasures hidden across the land: three in the world of the undead and 22 on the mainland. He further said that I would need to find all 25 to succeed. So far, I have the locations of 8 of them. I've only dug up one. It was 4 squares away from the coordinates I had been given, and it had 3 jewels, 1 silver, 3 linen, and 2 CURAX spells. I'm not sure why I would have needed to find that to win the game. Maybe finding all the treasures is one of the god-servant's tasks. 

       

I don't like where this is going.

      

Most of the NPCs have just flat-out given me the coordinates for the treasures, but one of them, Jones in the town of Welling, had to make it a puzzle. He gave me an algebraic formula for figuring out the coordinates; I had to get the values from two other NPCs. This was the sequence:

   

Y = north coordinate

Z = west coordinate

    

Y = C + (4 x 6)

Z = (Y x 3) + D

C = 4 x 7 + 2 

D = (5 x 9) - 34

     

I'm aware none of those parentheses are necessary, but that's how the game gave them to me. 

         

This NPC is part of the problem.

        

I realized as I talked to NPCs that there's something I don't understand about the backstory. I don't know how much of it is left over from the first game, how much is kept deliberately hidden, and how much is just inept storytelling on the part of the author. This is the relevant text from the backstory in the game's introduction:

       

After reading the compendium, you know of the black book called Ulbore. The book has finally revealed the terrible truth about Sullivan and the Brotherhood of the White Rose. It is now up to you to complete 9 tasks provided by god servants in order to rescue the kingdom from the Armageddon.

       

So what was the "terrible truth," and how does that segue to needing to complete nine tasks? And who is Sullivan? I don't believe the first game mentioned Sullivan or the Brotherhood. Whoever Sullivan is, he appears to have been murdered. Princess Sheila says that King Argon feels responsible. All the conspirators who killed him have themselves been killed except for one named Gorab.

     

That's my summary of where I am with the game. Since I don't think the entry is long enough, I'll pick up from here and relate part of my journey in real-time, starting from Monter Bay, the last city I visited. It's on the east coast of Beryland, and I'm still working my way clockwise. I'm at full health and have 414 gold pieces, 44 troops, and 35 food. I immediately send 20 troops to Monter Bay, as I had to liberate it to explore the city and it otherwise has no garrison.

       

Checking my surroundings.

      

I check my coordinates and note that I'm not too far from a treasure. Monter Bay is at 96N 221W and there's a treasure at 64N 217W. It's dark as I head out. I'm out of torches, so I won't be able to see much of anything until the sun comes up. I use a map to get a sense of the area and see that the treasure is surrounded by swamp, which will almost certainly poison me. Not a problem; I have a CURAX. The bigger issue might be navigating around these rivers. If it gets too tough, I'll wait until I have a skiff.

     

As the sun comes up, I get a message that the enemy is attacking the Royal Palace. I have plenty of troops there, so the battle is quick. Unfortunately, I can't afford to replenish any of the soldiers I lost, since I need them to force my way into the next enemy-held town I encounter.

      

Defending the Royal Palace. Again.

       

64N 217W turns out to be right on the edge of an inlet. Of course, the treasure isn't there. I find it four squares to the north and west. It consists of 1 silver, 2 copper, 3 linen, 1 wood, and a magic axe. The magic axe sounds cool. I haven't seen one for sale. I equip it, get out of the swamp, and cure my poison.

        

A pretty good haul.

     

I soon encounter an orc. I attack with my magic axe and am happy to see that it's a ranged weapon. It hits him—and immediately breaks. I remember this from the last game. Ormus decides that the next time you fight, whatever weapon you have equipped is going to break. The only way to avoid it is to reload and equip a different weapon. No way am I losing my magic axe after one hit, so I reload, equip a dagger, watch it break, change back to my magic axe, and finish off the orc. I get 16 experience, 47 gold, and a key.

  

Combat is such a rare and minor part of the game, at least so far.

      

I almost don't see a little hut to my west. I enter. The location is labeled only "a small hut." The map consists of a single building and a fenced garden to its south. A tree in the garden has some gold. The building has a locked door, which I open with a key. Inside are two barrels (gold in both) and a bookcase (magic keys). A barrel in some woods has maps. There isn't any furniture left, so I start searching ground squares in the house and garden and find a couple units of jewels. 

 

Treasures are rarely hidden in random squares like this.

     

A zombie attacks in the northeast corner, and I kill him for 14 experience, 52 gold, and a nugget. Then I spy a troll by a pond and get 18 more experience and 28 gold. Then another one appears. This turns out to be the best grinding spot in the entire game. I'm tempted to stay until I have enough money for a ship.

    

After an entire night spent searching the walls of the buildings, the pond, and other terrain features, I can't find the final treasure. I'm not willing to search every square on the 576-tile map (I might if I could do it with "S"), so I reluctantly leave. 

       

The magic map of Caldara.

      

Not too far south of the hut is the city of Caldara. It's naturally occupied by enemy soldiers. I attack with y 24 troops. There isn't much strategy to these battles. You can either "attack," or fire a single volley at a single column of soldiers, or use a "weapon" which damages multiple soldiers at once. Weapons are single-use items that cost 24 gold pieces to replace, but you need a few of them because attacks only hit one soldier at a time, some soldiers require multiple hits, and you have to destroy the wall in front of them first. We're evenly matched here, and it takes me a couple of tries to win. I'm down to 4 troops when I do.

     

Caldara is a standard-sized city. My normal practice is to use a map when I first enter a location, then keep the screenshot handy for reference. Like many cities, most of its shops have ladders and thus rooms above them, but I rarely need to take a shot of the second floor. Night falls halfway through my visit, but the screenshot helps me navigate without requiring me to waste a torch.

         

You rarely have to worry about getting lost on the second floor.

       

The first thing I find is a boat shop, where I have enough money for a skiff (451 gold) but not a ship (3801 gold). I'll come back. The skiff, meanwhile, will get me across small bodies of water and increase the chances I can fully explore a city. A weapons shop has nothing new. At the troop shop, I replenish my lost troops and buy enough to garrison this city when I leave. At the inn, I replenish health and mana and buy a little extra food. 

   

There are two very valuable NPCs. Steve, above the weapon shop, gives me the name of another god-servant: NIKODEMUS. The town's mayor, Maddock, living above the inn, tells me of the Trigonom, which lets the wielder enter the Land of the Dead. It is assembled from three amulets, each of which is at a different temple.

      

I'm pretty sure I was supposed to try in the first game.

      

I find all the treasures and get 75 experience points. The treasures are five units of gold, one of silver, one of jewels, and a Stone Key, which seems like a unique item. I stop at the pawn shop on the way out of town and sell my excess treasures. I end up leaving with about as much gold as when I entered.

   

The enemy attacks and retakes Caldara the moment I step outside. I don't even have time to even save first. I re-conquer it, re-enter, replenish my troops, exit, and immediately send 20 to garrison the city.

   

Again, I realize I'm close to another treasure: the one from the algebra puzzle. Of course, I can't find it. I search for a five-square radius around the chest (which shouldn't be necessary, since Jones said the formula was its "exact location"). I double-check the solution to the puzzle (54N, 173W). I even go all the way back to Welling (without saving) to verify I wrote down the clues correctly. Nothing. Either I'm not going to be able to win the game because the author bungled his own algebra clue, or you're all about to tell me I somehow failed at simple math. 

    

Time so far: 9 hours