The Search for Freedom: Won!

 

Whew! About time, too.

      

Guest post by AlphabeticalAnonymous: 

 

In the previous post, I made a serious effort to push through and finish the game. The game manual promises "two outdoor areas, each 32 squares by 32 squares" and the previous 58 hours of gameplay sufficed only to explore the first of those. Luckily, I had some hope that as in other games (e.g., Ambermoon) the final world wouldn’t take nearly as long to complete as the game’s primary world. This dream was given form and in this post I finally finished, but it took a long time to get there.
     
We begin the session having passed through the portal into Aegea, the Netherworld, the Land of the Dead, the Mad Plain—where Kamazol the evil Lich rules and is building his army to invade our planet, Earth, when its moons align. The geography and color palette of this new world are both different from Earth: "the sky is a pinkish hue," water is red, swamps are brown, and deserts are blue (?). 

     

Atlas of Aegea. We exit the portal in the bottom right.

    

We explore the land, generally fleeing from encounters more because of my impatience rather than any challenge, and we find a town to the northwest. As groovy music plays in the background, a sign welcomes us to "Nwotehtyms," which is just the name of the adventure’s first town in reverse. Although the land is ostensibly ruled by Kamazol, there are only a few fixed combats in the town (with killer poodles, guards, witches, and demons). Although we beat them all, the last of these pose a rare challenge: when their crude AI decides to, they can cast the "Gotterdamerung" spell to do 30-60 damage to all my characters, and they can even cast "Invincibility" (from physical attacks) on each other. Witches can also cast "Earthquake," essentially a weaker version of "Gotterdamerung," when the mood takes them. Otherwise the town is very much like any other. It has a standard temple (run by dead clerics), a normal pub and diner, a bank, a magic shop, an inn, stores, and even a training center where we can level up.
    

Would you trust the healing services of a dead cleric?

      
We find two skeletons in town that are interesting for very different reasons. For the first, the game merely tells us that "a skeleton hangs from shackles on the wall—you can't tell if it's dead or undead, but it makes no movement." The ominous part is that this square is not marked (s)pecial on the automap or with the "Vision" spell. I had been using the map to avoid any parts of dungeons that lacked special squares, but if the game allows hidden special encounters then that means we will have to meticulously explore everything after all. The second skeleton, named Dufrey, provides perhaps the longest single text dump in the entire game aside from the introduction. It provides Dufrey some interesting backstory but nothing really relevant. The game makes us automatically release him; he gives us a few tips and bonuses; and before he leaves, he promises to meet us "in the throne room of Kamazol himself." As you’ll see below, he had to be awfully patient to do so.
      
Nwotehtyms offers a few other interesting encounters. There’s a glass orb that I realize we never did anything with, located in a locked case in the center of the "nwot erauqs." We fight and handily best a giant, undead dragon for reasons I neglected to record; everyone gets 3,333 experience and the party recovers 29,000 gold. By now the economy is well and truly broken, and our gold remains maxed out at or near 99,999 for the rest of the game. "A mighty-looking skeleton" calling himself The SwordMaster gives us a quick fetch quest and then improves our to-hit and lockpicking (?!) skills. I suppose that makes three interesting skeletons in town, for those who are counting. A clue helps us recover some +2 plate armor hidden in the "slimy swamp" in the northeast; this is the best armor in the game, as far as I can tell. At this point, we have to find the Temple of Seth (the god of death) to reforge the sword, Soulseeker, and then find Kamazol in his lair.

 

What was this all about?

    

The Temple of Seth is in the middle of a bridge, over a lake. Level 1 is a mortuary, which our "Vision" reveals is filled with around 50 two-square crypts. Each crypt contains a special square. Although we initially try to bypass them by descending as quickly as possible to Level 2 (altar room and chapel), it turns out that some of the crypts contain information we need to advance. The mortuary really provides the perfect antidote to the hugely overpowered "Vision" spell because we have to explore every single room. Most provide pointless and offer trivial combats with undead, but a few others provide what we need to make it through Level 2 below.

    

I think there was only one mimic in the entire game.

      

There, we find a room with a series of increasingly strident warning signs. After ignoring them all, we are told that we have defiled the god Seth’s Holy Room. "The mighty god attacks the party, in one of his many possible forms!" He has 999 HP and 8 armor points, great initiative, and he paralyzes when he hits. He gets all of the party members pretty low, but in the end he can only hit once per turn. We win and earn 16,666 experience per character, enough for everyone to level up at least once.
        

I guess we've now killed a god. In some games this would be the climax of the story, but here it was a mildly interesting but unnecessary optional combat.
     
Elsewhere we meet a "small, cute fuzzy creature" who increases our wisdom and intelligence (unnecessary at this point, since we’ve already maxed out the relevant party members’ statistics). More curious is this character:

"Corpus supremus maxima?" he asks us. Is that even valid Latin?

     

Luckily, the game doesn’t actually expect the player to know Latin. Elsewhere, the dungeon gives us the words "ixnay ooglevay," which in Pig Latin translate into "Nix Voogle." It means nothing to me, but the pig grabs all three pieces of Soulseeker and streaks off like greased lightning. We chase him through several rooms, including this puzzle suggesting someone with pre-calculus on the brain:
     

If you emulate a Pentium, the correct answer is 1.00000003. 

     

Eventually, we catch the pig (who also speaks English) and can either kill it or (as we choose) listen to its advice on how to make it through the rest of the level. This brings us to the Altar Room of Seth, where Soulseeker must be reforged. We can't approach the altar, because it is protected by a force field—not a magical field (nor the Netzian field, known to Earth science), but an honest-to-goodness technological force field. Two control panels are defended by dark clerics with assorted minions. After destroying the panels (which we are made to understand are definitely technological), we can approach a giant statue of Seth with three vacant eye sockets. We fill these with our three glowing spheres, place the pieces of Soulseeker on the altar, fight the statue (which has of course come to life) and voila: 

       

Room?

      
The temple clear, we head back up to the surface. Unfortunately, I’m not paying close enough attention: I forget to heal the party until it's too late, and then suffer a full-party death to a group of greater demons and witches. To add insult to injury, I lose both my clerics to another such party after reloading. We make it back to town, where we dump our spoils and level everyone up to Level 12 (the highest available is 13). At this point, most stat increases hardly seem to make a difference, and we already have our full complement of spells.
        
We set out to find and finish Kamazol once and for all. We encounter the Alphan Toll Bridge where we are told that "the toll is your life force. Will you pay the toll?" This is a false choice, as are too many in this game: declining just puts us back off of the bridge. We therefore agree, only to find that both of our clerics are knocked unconscious and the bridge disappears behind us. We try to soldier on and enter Kamazol's Den, but the remaining characters are rapidly picked off one-by-one by enemy critical-hits. I worry that perhaps clerics are always knocked out at the bridge to prevent healing, but happily we had just had a bad roll of the dice. On a reload, neither of the clerics are knocked out and everyone just loses a few hit points.
     
Kamazol’s Den consists of five levels with fairly straightforward maps and two main puzzles, as the strains of Bach's "Toccata and Fugue in D-Minor" repeat in the background. I have to consult the hint guide included with the game on several points to advance, but in any case the first puzzle involves a series of keys: ivory, ruby, emerald, crystal, and so on, which open important doors or critical objects. The critical objects form the second puzzle: a series of colored shapes that we have to collect. These include a yellow hexagon, a red pentagon, a green circle, a silver square, and a pink triangle.
     

Let me know the truth, let me kno-ow the truth.

      

Along the way are a number of fixed encounters, some more narratively compelling than others. We meet a Grim Reaper-like figure who reduces all characters’ dexterity by one in order to let us pass. Tossing a coin into a fountain gives us a magic lamp with a genie who gives us one wish: to increase a vital stat by up to three points, heal the entire party, restore all magic points, give everyone 10,000 experience points, or fill our pockets with gold. The first is all but pointless after so much leveling up; the second similarly so as long as one has a cleric (we have two); the third can be alleviated simply by resting for a few hours; and gold is pointless at this stage in the game. We meet and defeat Kamazol’s pet, Shugreth the giant pink slug.

       

At first I thought the slug was shouting for help, which confused me.

      

The final (stone) key unlocks a door in Kamazol’s Laboratory. There we find a blue potion, which is the key to ensuring that a killed lich doesn't return to life (or to undeath). But most unusual of all has to be the Hades Health Spa. After telling an imp that we need to bathe (a word spelled out in the dungeon’s very walls), they give us a spa membership card. Inside we find:

     

• A weight room, where all characters can increase their Strength by two.
• A (or the?) SwordMaster, who can allow us to level up or even purchase spellbooks if we still need them.
• A casino with several games; we can only play the slot machine, which gives us the stone key mentioned above.
• A Sauna: we have to leave all equipment to enter, and then fight some Wights bare-handed.
• A whirlpool tub, which gives +20 HP to all characters and in which we find the silver square. 

        

This was just weird.

    

After this, we have to laboriously work our way all the way from Level 5 back up to Level 1 before quickly descending a set of dedicated stairs down to the bottom floor again. There, we find five candles arranged in a circle around a central pillar of light. Instructions given throughout the upper floors tell us that we have to arrange the shapes at the candles, in order of the number of sides. How many sides does a circle have? We initially assume two (the inside and the outside), but that doesn’t work. We assume some number greater than six, and:
   

Surprised, aren't you? I knew you would be.

      

He asks why I summoned him, to which the only correct answer is LOGARITHMS. In the dark times before Chegg and AI cheating tools, I suppose only the Devil himself could help with math homework. He opens a previously hidden door, gives us costumes to disguise ourselves, and leaves. Based on what I can see of the map, I know we’re close now, and it’s only Day 79. Over 900 days until Kamazol and his army can enter the portal. We have this in the bag!

We step into the newly-opened corridor, and an unavoidable trap of magic gas puts us to sleep until day 994. Yes, we sleep undiscovered and undisturbed for two and a half years. The seasons come and go; Kamazol (not to mention our families) must have forgotten about us entirely as they went about their business, until we suddenly wake up to complete our quest.
      
We enter the throne room and see Kamazol on his throne. He runs away and we have to fight six etherial [sic] guardians, each of whom can one-hit kill our party members. To my surprise, Dufrey the skeleton shows up to help in this and all subsequent combats. He must have been cooling his heels in Kamazol’s halls for 30 months, waiting for us to show. If we hadn’t, I like to think that he would have tried to save the world on his own. Two chimeras guard two final keys, and then we finally face Kamazol for the last time.
     

It's nice to see a boss villain "nervous" for once. They're usually so cocky.

   

He casts "Gotterdamerung," does 400-800 damage per party member, and we all die.

I reload and we fight again. We last a bit longer, until he casts the same spell and slaughters us all. Another reload, and the third battle ends the same as the others. Kamazol has 999 hit points and 8 armor points (the same as Seth, the dark god) and is also attended by six shadow guards with 280 hit points apiece. Dufrey gamely tries to help out, doing 10-20 damage per turn on his own as the rest of us hack somewhat more effectively. Alas, there’s no more strategy than any other combat: we just try to surround the enemies, set up for backstabs, and hold out. Our patience is rewarded, and the fourth time is the charm. Any weapon can hurt Kamazol but once he’s down to one hit point, only Soulseeker, wielded by the doughty Teddy thief Ruxpin, can deliver the killing blow. We sprinkle the blue potion and his body dissolves into ash: "He is now dead for good. You hope."
    

Freeing all the animal friends of By Golly Gulch.

   

In what I have to admit is an interesting twist, that’s not quite the end of the story. We’re stuck in the land of the dead, the portal home doesn’t open for another five days, and an entire army of darkness is assembling to begin the conquest of Earth. We have to wait for five days by (L)ooking around. As the army tramps into the room, the portal opens and we dive into it (we have no choice; the game compels us). It stays open for only a half-hour, so we have to move smartly to make it out of Limbo and back to Earth in time. We fight several battles with undead scouts and clerics, a battle with Kamazol’s general and his evil champions, a battle with more undead, and yet more undead. Sensing that the end is near, we stop being so parsimonious with our magic points and let loose. In all the battles, "Earthquake" (from the clerics) and "Gotterdammerung" (from the mages) quickly clear the field. Dufrey continues to help us with all the battles.

We make it out of the portal and jump 100 feet down to the ground without suffering injury, but the portal is still open for 10 more minutes. We fight three more successive waves of undead, and with magic points running low we have to resort to melee tactics again. It’s only then that the portal closes and all the undead are sucked back through it (I forgot to mention that we had destroyed the device that would have let them stay on Earth permanently). A last enemy rips Soulseeker off of our belt and it flies away with him . . . but then the portal spits Soulseeker back out again, because it staying in Aegea would violate "the higher powers of physics." A note with an illegible signature vows vengeance, but our party disregards it even when it disappears in a puff of magic to the sound of ominous laughter. 
    

Home at last; followed by undead; sucked back to Aegea; home at last.

     

We won, and the world is free at last. The party is right next to Smythetown, right where we started from. There, roaming villagers say, "Thank you ever so much for saving us," and children ask for our autographs. As they should. I’ll have the final rating and a summary in the final posting, yet to come. 
       
Time played: 72 hours. 8 party deaths, 8 reloads, 7 crashes, 10 hints.

    

****

   

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07/18/2026