Star Trail: Because It's There

 

This world really doesn't like elves.

      

Commenters on my last entry suggested that I should know where to go next from in-game hints. But that didn't change the fact that I didn't. With nothing more than the vague idea that dwarves were somewhere to the south in the enormous Finsterkamm range, and thus the "Dwarven Pits" must be nearby, we leave Gashok heading south. We're well-stocked with food and water, but none of the shops in town sold arrows, so my little green elf will have to fight with magic or get in melee range.

    

Two days into the trip, I can continue on the road to the southwest or go east or west along a river that originates in a mountain range. We head east, toward the head of the river. Unless I say otherwise, we take the game's recommendation to camp each evening, send someone out to find food and water (we fail often enough that we have to carry a lot with us), and send Lyra out to find herbs. We post two guards per night and fight anything that attacks.

       

This seems like a leading question.

       

In case it wasn't clear from earlier entries, simply surviving overland travel is a big part of the game. It was in Blade of Destiny, too, but there were more cities in that region, and the travel distances were shorter. In Star Trail, you could easily spend two weeks on the road between destinations. You have to be prepared for multiple hardships, including starvation, thirst, poison, disease, flooding, dangerous cliffs, and dense forests. I don't know if quicksand is a problem anywhere, but this is absolutely the type of game in which it would be. To deal with all of this, the player has to prepare the party as much as possible with equipment, spells, herbs, and healing skills. Thus, as we discussed in previous entries, my party is carrying rations, ropes, waterskins, sleeping bags, cutlery, nets, fishing hooks, tinder boxes, rope ladders, blankets, hammers, crowbars, grappling hooks, shovels, charcoal, writing utensils, and torches. This whole mechanic inevitably goes back to tabletop RPG gaming with its ropes, 10-foot poles, iron rations, and such. I doubt there's a direct connection, but I'm reminded a bit of Robert Clardy's Wilderness Campaign (1979) and its requirement that the party be prepared with every possible item for every possible eventuality. 

  

Here are some random encounters and troubles I had on the road during this session: 

     

• A forest gnome attacks in the night, strikes one character before I can react, and flees before I can engage.

• A druid of Travia asks to join our fire one night. He wants to make a soup with some herbs he found, and we let him. It turns out to be delicious, although it gives the party vivid dreams and for some reason reduces our strength for 72 hours. He's gone in the morning.

     

Even in retrospect, I don't know whether this was a good encounter or a bad one.

      

• We find a strange woman named Susan Heder sitting on the side of the road. We're curious about her, but the game has no basic "hello" in its dialogue options; you have to immediately start asking about FINSTERKOPPEN or SALAMANDER STONE or something. We try a few subjects, but she offers nothing on anything before she cuts the dialogue short, leaving us wondering what the encounter was all about.

• Mahasim's boots wear out, and he has to walk barefoot, which causes damage every day (though usually healed at night). 

     

That was a bit dramatic, Mahasim.

       

• Walking through a mountain pass, we have the option to "rope up" to prevent any individual from falling to his death. We take it. 

     

There doesn't really seem to be a downside.

        

• Random battles at night: tusk tigers, an orc patrol, harpies, and ogres. They go all right. I lose health and mana, but I generally regenerate what I've lost before the next battle. I'm saving an analysis of combat for when I've gained a few more levels.  

           

This orc battle goes relatively well.

        

I don't mind these encounters, but the frequency at which the party has to stop for the night, and the repetitiveness of the things I have to do each time, starts to annoy me. I would also note here that I have found two different world maps for the game, neither of which show the exact same territory, and neither of which show all of the territory in the game. I spend much of this session east of the edges of both maps. Furthermore, neither map shows all the roads. I spend a lot of time confused about where I am.

       

At the river's headwaters, I have choices to go northeast and south. I choose northeast, even though it takes me back in the direction I came from. I hit a crossroads with movement in all four cardinal directions. I go north for a bit, but when it becomes clear that if I continue in that direction, I'll be back in Gashok, I turn to the southeast and eventually enter the town of Reichsend, which unlike the other two towns I've visited is purely a menu town. All we can do is visit the Temple of Praios and the inn.

   

At the temple, Gordal Namir tells us the Finsterkamm range is full of evil, and Finsterkopp, the highest mountain, is the "center of all that is evil." The inn, the Pride of the Emperor, is run by Ilvina Endares. She says that Finsterkoppen is a town rather than a mountain, but she calls it a "stupid fairy tale." She gives us a couple of solid leads, though. She says we can ask about a dwarven mine in Nordhag, quite a bit to the south of Reichsend. When we ask about the Dwarven Pit, however, the specific dungeon we need, she directs us to some place called Hiltorp, "halfway down the road to Lowangen." We have a disgusting meal (something's crawling in it, the game says)  and spend the night.

          

Did you imagine that was helpful?

       

Even though I trust the Lowangen rumor more, I decide to loop there through Nordhag, mostly because it avoids backtracking, which I hate in both real life and RPGs. Even when I make a quick trip to the grocery store, I'm always looking to "make a loop out of it," sometimes at double the length. 

    

We're battered from an orc attack by the time we arrive at Nordhag. It's another menu town, with nothing but an inn (Gryphon's Fordian), run by a woman named Zuliana Saldek. She tells us that there are two roads across Finsterkamm, a well-traveled one that goes to Yrramis, south of Lowanden. The other goes more directly to Lowanden, but travelers have been avoiding it for some reason. Lowanden looks from the map like a big city, likely with a full set of services, and I'm starting to get low on rations and water. Moreover, she tells me that the pass to Lowanden goes past the dwarven town of Finsterkopp.

            

Later, in the mountain pass.

      

We take this less-traveled path, getting attacked by harpies at several points. Eventually, we reach the town and mountain of Finsterkopp. (Sometimes. Other times it's Finsterkopper and still other times, it's Finsterkoppen. I'm sure there's some German reason for the inconsistency.) As rumors had it, it's populated exclusively by dwarves. We make the rounds:

    

• We have to knock on most doors twice, once regularly, and once "with vigor." Most of the time, no one comes to the door no matter what. At several houses, old dwarves offer us their sheds for lodging. This turns out to be good, as there are no inns. But there are so many of these houses that it's frankly annoying.

     

If the game had offered a setting to "always knock with vigor," I could have shaved an hour off this entry.

      

• A random dwarf disparages Xamidimura's Sword of Artherion as "elvish work." 

     

Tough talk from a town that doesn't even sell weapons.

      

• Ogrim, son of Olgosch, runs a smithy. We have him repair Mahasim's sword, which involves leaving for a few hours.

• Blackbeard's Tavern. The bartender, the eponymous Blackbeard, gives us nothing. None of the other patrons want to speak to us. But Toliman earns a couple of gold pieces with his lute.

     

That's not bad considering how they feel about elves.

        

• The Red Earth Tavern, run by Dragoran, son of Denderan. He won't even talk to us. Despite the graphic showing a lot of other revelers, the game indicates there's no one else in the tavern.

 

A couple of guards block a tall passage leading to what I assume are the mines, possibly the Dwarven Pit I'm supposed to find. They won't let us pass because we have Toliman, an elf, in the party. I back off and try the "Camouflage" spell, which I was just reading about in the manual. Even though my best character (Toliman) has only a -3 skill with the spell, it works. It makes him look like a small child (the source of the bugged party portraits I talked about in the first entry) for 15 minutes. 

      

Great. Now we look like a party of traffickers.

     

We head back for the entry way, and now they have a problem with druids. We repeat the process on Lyra and finally make it through.

   

We enter a large, open, roofed area, which at first I think is a dungeon, particularly since the name is "Finsterkopp Pit," but it's just more town. There are another couple dozen houses, complete with the "knock vigorously" nonsense.

     

The graphics are kind of cool here.

       

This part of the town has a few more services, though:

   

• Arombolosch Ironarm, a smith. We don't need anything else fixed.

• The Hammer and Anvil tavern, run by Vothan Dengeler. Toliman makes a few silvers doing somersaults.

• Xagula, daughter of Xebrima, runs yet another smithy. 

• A general goods store (finally) run by Gundgrima. I'm able to restock my ration packages and buy a new pair of boots for Mahasim.

• A healer named Thoram, son of Cadrima.  

• A Temple of Ingerimm, where the high priest is Inradon Xermosch. I start to wonder if some kind of random combination of syllabus isn't responsible for all of the game's proper names. In response to DWARVEN PIT, he says: "We do not enter there. It's definitely not forbidden, you understand, but it is a holy place." This gives me a little hope that I'm in the right place.

       

I still don't know if this is where I want to be.

      

The area has a stairway descending deeper. Even though it still says "Finsterkopp Pit" when I arrive, I'm hoping it's the so-called Dwarven Pit. Unfortunately, I don't get very far. Lacking lockpicks or a key, we bash in the front door to the dungeon. We find ourselves in a square room with four braziers and a door locked solidly. The game tells us we'll need a key to open it. We have options to search the braziers or shift them out of place, but doing this with each of them only causes us to dirty our hands and jam our fingers.

     

Well, that seems pretty conclusive.

     

Having explored all we can of Finsterkopp for now, still not knowing if its "Pit" is the dungeon with the Serpent Stone, we leave town headed for our original destination of Lowangen. I figure there's probably a hint or a key there, maybe from the dwarf Ingramosch.

   

We backtrack to the main road. Two days into the journey, we're attacked by a large patrol of orcs. It does not go well. In contrast to the easier battles we've been enjoying lately, in this one, we seem to fumble every spell and miss every attack. They're gone on a reload, but as I look at the game map, I realize that Lowangen is farther away than I thought. Weeks, probably. I completely lose heart in the thought of all of those rote foraging and sleeping cycles, only to perhaps have to turn around and head back to where I came from. I end the session early.

       

The party is swarmed by orcs.

         

I still have a lot of game to go, but I have to tell you, I'm finding Star Trail boring. Weird and boring. Blade of Destiny had so much more vigor, with clearer direction (though still not very clear) and more interesting things between locations. I like some of the random encounters here, but so many are just baffling. What was that druid about? What was Susan Heder about? I also don't know why the authors decided to make Star Trail so spread out, to turn it into a hiking simulation, and to make key services so inconsistently found. I'm looking forward to seeing what dungeons are like, but not much else.

   

Time so far: 14 hours