Pagan: Destiny Is Always Right

Not terribly resourceful. I just followed the right wall.

       

Ugh. Pagan. Fine.  

    

I start in the Pit of Death. Commenters have already alerted me that I'm lost, that I need to head back to the Upper Catacombs and try to find other pathways. I don't feel like it. I just keep looping around this area:

    

• A corpse has a stuffed torax on it. Aww.

• I keep getting killed by gouts of flame, fireballs, and lava.

     

You can't see me because I just fell down the hole in the middle.

        

• A corpse behind a grating has a plaque nearby: "MARIOTA CONVENTICLER."

• Ghouls, skeletons, ghosts. A troll. Mandrils.

• The screen repeatedly shakes for no reason whatsoever. 

• More of those rolling, spiked balls.

      

What keeps them in motion?

       

• Lots of lava. Lots of jumping across lava. What looks like safe spaces often give way into pits (instant death) or shoot gouts of flame.

• Lots of spell reagents. Not sure I really need them.

• I come across a big building. A plaque: "CONVENTICLE OF THE DEAD." This seems interesting. But the door is locked and won't open. 

     

Ah, my old nemesis. We meet again.

      

• A troll's room. It's a disaster. A backpack has a deed to a torax in it. The owner of the deed is Toliver P. Barkley. (Is he an NPC?) The torax's name is George.

     

The lack of a 5 in this document is bothering me.

         

• A roomful of exploding mushrooms has a chest at the far end. It has an axe, 8 obsidian coins, and a couple of potions. Not worth it.

      

A doorway brings me into Stone Cove, near the entrance to the Hall of the Mountain King. Continuing to follow the right wall would have me loop through the Mountain King's domain again, then enter the cave that brought me here from the catacombs. I don't think I ever explored the rest of it, so that seems like a fine idea.

      

A short distance through the caves, encountering nothing more exciting than a . . . mimic? Doppelganger? Whatever the hell looks like the Avatar. I don't feel like going back to the manual. Anyway, a lever opens a gate, and my Key of the Scion opens a door. I can't tell you how much I love having an additional key that isn't activated with the (K)ey command.

        

Whatever these things are.

       

The door takes me into a new cave, an enormous one, with a raised plateau in the center. Stone bridges criss-cross each other overhead, and it takes me a while to figure out how to get onto the bridge network. The plateau has a little pond in the middle, and a white stone bridge brings me to a platform in the pond. It has an emblem of a large fish carved into it. Suddenly, a tentacle comes out of the water, and a woman's voice asks: "Who dares?!"

   

"Are you . . . Hydros?" I ask, since the only other option is "Goodbye."

   

"Indeed," she responds. "Know that it is into my domain that you have trespassed. Why do you disturb my rest?"

     

"I wish the power of Tempestry," I say, again as my only option. 

    

"A wise request from someone who has made a difficult journey to my current home. Alas, your request must go unfulfilled. Trapped here as I am, I cannot help you."

   

"What can I do?" I say, choosing it over "Goodbye" and, hilariously, "Too bad."

   

"Ah, you will assist me then. My gratitude will be boundless, mortal. The task is a simple one. Merely open the ground next to the gravestone of my captor's beloved, releasing the waters on the cliffside. Do that and I shall be free."

        

What happens if you just say "Goodbye"? I need to save more often.

       

As per the Chronicle of Pagan, Hydros's captor was Kalen. I looked through all my notes and screenshots but couldn't find his "beloved" named anywhere. Could it have been Mariota? Why would I help free Hydros? She doesn't seem like a nice person.

      

Curiously, I don't see any Blackrock in the area. I thought that was how Hydros was imprisoned. 

 

I keep on. An opening leads out of this area and into another . . . cave. I need better language to differentiate them. Probably also need to make a rough map. I pass by a troll, then come to a spiked wall with just enough of a gap in the spikes that I can jump over it. Continuing on:

   

• At another wall, a lever (which I nearly miss) opens a grate that lets me crawl through. Another lever turns the world upside down. Enough with that nonsense, Pagan. It wasn't fun the first time.

      

I have lowered the grate, but those spikes still look like they're going to hurt.

       

• Two more trolls, but I've found that trolls don't seem to want to attack if you just leave them alone and stay out of their direct path.

• A chest, which explodes—also never gets old!—has a couple of potions and a pair of magic leggings. My armor class goes from 14 to 15 and I save two pounds.

    

A doorway leads to a cave full of mushrooms. There's a gravestone here: "ALEXIS. HER SPIRIT TO LITHOS I GIVE." Next to it is some kind of retaining pond. I guess this is probably Kalen's beloved. Now I have to weigh the likelihood that the developers would set all of this up just so the Avatar could make a bad decision. It wouldn't be the first time—I think of the whole "Oppression" subplot in Ultima V. 

         

This might have been a mistake.

        

I take a save, then cast "Open Ground." A channel opens up in front of the grave, and water goes rushing out of the retaining pond. I start to loop my way back to Hydros's chamber, running past a whole bunch of enemies that I don't feel like fighting. More encounters:

   

• A stairway leads up to a chest. It is completely surrounded by a fence. There are stone pillars in the room of different heights, and it looks to me as if I'm meant to climb up the shortest pillar, then jump around to the others until I can get over the fence. But I can't make it work. I leave very frustrated after 20 minutes. Let me know if there was anything vital in that chest.

     

Trying to jump up on that pillar.

        

• A body in another troll cave has magic arm guards. My armor is now 17, and I save another pound. There are a lot of other minor treasures in the cave. 

       

I got in this troll's way.

         

The screen is misty as I return to Hydros's cave. Much of what was dry land before is now water. There's thunder and lightning. I return to the platform, and the tentacle appears again.

   

"Ah, I am now free! Thank you, foolish one, for your actions. Consider my gift of your wretched life as payment for your part. Now I will have my vengeance upon your pathetic kind! I will slay the descendant of my jailer! Let us see who can reach Devon first, groundling." So you won't be teaching me Tempestry, then? 

    

I find a new teleporter pad on my way out of here. It appears in the list of destinations as "Carthax Lake." I'm glad for it, since I feel the need to go to the palace and warn Devon, but I want to be able to resume my exploration pattern when I'm done. When I arrive at the palace, I again wonder why there's a chair facing the pad on the palace roof. It also appears that the mist and thunderstorms have come with me. I rush to Devon's chamber, where thankfully he's alive.

     

It would make more sense if this was a guard post. People shouldn't just be able to teleport onto the palace roof.

       

"The Lurker is free!" I warn. Devon replies that the torrential rains kind of gave it away. "Tell me, friend, how did this come to pass?" I meekly admit that I freed the titan. (Although "I know not" is another option.)  He says that he's not surprised—he sensed when we first met that I was an agent of change, for good or ill. He says that an unchecked Hydros will soon flood the land, though, and I have the responsibility to stop it. He suggests that the sorcerers may be able to help.

       

Note the "foggy" effect on the screen. Or maybe it's just a bug.

         

You know what annoys me? I tried to go my own way by just resolutely following the right wall, and I ended up doing things exactly in the order that the Zealan gods told me to. 

      

I warp back to Carthax Lake and re-enter the caverns that brought me here, continuing to follow the right wall. I soon come to a blocked door. A lever opens one block but raises another. I look around and find a barely-visible switch on the wall, partly hidden behind a wall and a spike. I have to click madly around the area for a few minutes before I get the precise set of pixels that will activate it.

    

I come to a large cavern with a huge lava lake in the middle. On the other side, an NPC catches my eye and speaks. He says that we're in the Mouth of the Daemon, which used to be "the first test for those wishing to join the Sorcerer's Cabal. Someone has rendered it mostly useless by directing an underground river this way." Whoops. What would have happened if I'd come here first? I sheepishly admit to doing it. He says if I want to reach him, I'm going to have to learn to fly; he recommends that I seek the sorcerer named Bane.

         

The NPC lays out the new comment rules for the blog.

        

So again I've managed to stumble into exactly the place the game wanted me to go. Is free will an illusion? Next game, I'm following the left wall, I don't care how unnatural it feels.

   

The game keeps switching between misty and not-misty as I try to find my next move. I can't find a way to cross the lava. I confirm that "Rock Flesh" protects me from damage, but the Avatar still goes "gah!" and gets stun-locked if he tries to cross the lava with the spell active. So I head back into the caverns to see what comes next. I'll probably find Bane next whether I want to or not.

     

The caverns wind around a bit, and it's a while (with nothing interesting except jumping over water) before I find another door (which opens with the Key of the Scion), which causes me to emerge in the sunlight on a stone path. "One world lies in ruin, nothing more than a charred shell," the Guardian says as I explore. "The other will soon fall." That's a new one. I cross a bridge and start exploring an island:

   

• A bunch of mandrils (I keep wanting to call them "cazadores") swarm over the corpses of two people on bedrolls next to a fishing boat. In between them is a book, which turns out to be yet another copy of Killer Jokes. Boom! Hah, hah! I'm so amused! This is fun! 

• A man in blue robes roams the shore. He says he can't help me, but I should talk to Stellos. 

      

I later learn that the "generic" theurgists all look like this and never have anything to offer.

       

• I find a teleporter pad, which becomes available as Argentrock Isle when I use the Recall Item. (Was "item" the best they could do? It looks like a ring. Why not "Recall Ring"?) My notes say this is the home of the Theurgists as well as a silver sword named Protector. And hey—I was supposed to find a magical axe called Deceiver in Stone Cove. I wonder where that was. 

• On the west end of the island, there's some kind of glyph, or maybe just a pattern in the stone, on a stone platform. I can't get anything to happen here. 

• West of the glyph, the land ends at a pair of stone pillars. The first time I visit, I would swear that the game takes control of the Avatar and forces him to jump off the ledge between the pillars and into the sea. Also, the Guardian chuckles, also suggesting that something suspicious is happening. But when I reload and investigate again, this doesn't happen. 

      

In the screenshot, it looks more like a void than an ocean.

        

The Theurgists (healers who worship Stratos, the air titan) occupy a large compound in the center of the island. The first one I talk to is named Cyrrus, who turns out to be the son of Corinth and Gwillim, the ranchers in the Valley. He misses home greatly, and he's haunted by the inability to save his sister from a kith's bite when he was young and still coming into his powers. He really doesn't want to live on Argentrock Isle, but he can't escape the fact that he has a natural talent for theurgy (enough so that his comrades call him "Holy" Cyrrus). He pines for Jenna, the barmaid, and misses his old tutor Bentic. I have to tell him that Bentic was executed by Mordea. Nothing material comes from the conversation, but he's the first NPC in the game that I've actually liked.

       

Giving Cyrrus the bad news.

         

Moving into the compound, I meet Xavier, a healer, who is also responsible for administering the first two tests for those who want to receive Stratos's enlightenment. They are the Test of Wisdom and the Test of Centeredness. The Test of Wisdom consists of five questions, and Xavier recommends that I study at the library first. 

 

The "library" is actually the monastery. There, I read books on the spells "Intervention" (a wall of air that acts as a shield), "Hear Truth" (allows you to hear both what the speaker is saying and what the truth is), "Aerial Servant," "Healing Touch" (light healing), "Divination" (know location, day, and time),  "Restoration" (full healing), "Fade from Sight" (invisibility), and "Reveal" (dispel invisibility). The books give the syllables for each spell and a "focus" but don't really tell how to cast them.

       

One of eight spellbooks.

          

Other books give insights into Stratos and the virtues she prizes, most by relating some kind of parable. We learn that Stratos wants her followers to be honest to a fault, impartial, clever, kind and forgiving to children, and quiet. My favorite of the parables concerns the virtue of wit, or cleverness. A healer was called upon to administer to an injured knight, bested in combat by a vain warrior named Yevaud. Yevaud crowed that he was the best warrior in the land, but the healer said he knew of a better one. When Yevaud demanded to confront this supposedly superior warrior, the healer led him to a cave and said the warrior was inside. Yevaud emerged from the cave some time later, battered and bleeding, and complaining that the only thing in the cave had been a swarm of mandril. The healer said yes, and those mandril had recently killed a small child. By dispatching them, Yevaud had done something good with his blade and thus emerged a superior warrior. I like this story. I think it might be the best book in Ultima canon. I find myself wishing that Ultima IV had offered similar stories reflecting the eight virtues.

      

There are two more NPCs in the monastery. One, Torwin, is a young and upcoming Theurgist, proud and haughty of his magical skill and the speed at which he has passed the various tests. "No one here has the raw talent and ability I have. And I will suffer no one to surpass me." I suspect this is going to be a problem.

    

Torwin's boast about constructing focuses on the first try is a bit laughable given what we later learn about how focuses are constructed.

        

The second is Stellos, the eldest and informal leader of the Theurgists, who call themselves the Order of Enlightenment. He is over 200 years old and has gone blind. "It is the price I pay for being able to serve Stratos so completely." He explains that theurgical spells require a "focus" that the theurgist must make himself. I say I want to learn air magic, and he says that I'll have to join the Order by passing the two tests that Xavier administers.

       

I feel like there has to be a catch.

         

With my notes and screenshots in hand, I return to Xavier and tell him I'm ready for the Test of Wisdom. He gives me five questions. In short, they are:

   

• Will I welcome home a runaway child "after several years of debauchery and crime," or will I turn him away?

• My brother is accused of thievery, and I know that he's guilty. Do I testify against him?

     

One of Xavier's questions.

         

• To heal a child, I'll have to make a sacrifice. Will I sacrifice my hearing, speech, sight, or life?

• My king has been fatally wounded in a battle. As he dies, he wants to know how the battle is going. We're losing badly. Do I tell him the truth or lie so that he dies happy? 

• I'm in a tavern, and my comrades start boasting of their deeds. Do I join in and "tell of the glories of Stratos" or remain quiet?

   

I get them all right on the first try, mostly since these scenarios are all drawn directly from either the texts or NPC dialogue. The game could have made it a bit more challenging and meaningful by offering dilemmas that required knowledge of the virtues but with different fact patterns.  

    

Next comes the Test of Centeredness. It takes place on the stone tower with the glyph that I found earlier. The Avatar stands in the center while the winds of Stratos push and pull him in various directions, trying to knock him off the tower. If he falls off the tallest side, or falls off any side while at less than half health, it's fatal. Meanwhile, he can walk or run in the direction opposite the one that the winds are trying to push him. The whole thing lasts about 30 seconds and takes me a couple of tries.

      

I did this once in El Paso and spent the next six hours trying to flush sand out of my eyes.

          

Xavier is now done with me, and Stellos has the next test, which is to construct one or more focuses. They must be made with a special silver found only in the caverns beneath the monastery. The silver must then be taken to Korick on Tenebrae, who will create the focuses. Finally, the focuses must be brought back to the monastery and laid on the Altar of Focus. This will imbue them with Stratos's power.

   

The caverns are the usual annoying combination of monsters and fireballs randomly shooting out of nowhere. It takes me a while to identify the silver ore, as it just looks like any other background rock to me. I don't know how many I need, but I pick up as many as I see.

      

Silver, gray, and pink are identical colors to my eyes, alas.

        

While there, I find a building with no apparent doorway, so I use the magic door scroll, and one appears. Inside the building, on an altar, is the sword Protector, as described in the book My Dearest Prevan. The monastery has two copies in case the player hasn't encountered it before now. The axe Slayer has served me well, but it takes a lot of hits before the thunderclap sounds and the enemy dies. When that happens, it's a great weapon, but I'm starting to resent all the hacking that I have to do before the d20 rolls a critical hit (or whatever is happening). In subsequent tests, Protector seems to kill enemies a bit faster, and more important, it increases my armor class by 5. I'll keep Slayer, of course, but I'm going to continue to test Protector for a while.

       

It seems like a waste of potential to just leave it here.

           

With my backpack full of silver ore, I teleport back to Tenebrae and walk to Korick's workshop. He gives me eight options for focuses, one for each spell I read about. Of course, I want all of them, so I go through this dialogue tree eight times, until my backpack has eight silver talismans.

     

What does a "closed eye" talisman look like? A football? (Answer in screenshot below: Yes.)

      

I then teleport back to Argentrock Isle, enter the monastery, and put the focuses on the altar one by one. Each one is imbued with magic, brightening the icon. Now, when I click on the focuses, I cast the related spell. Much nicer than having to mix reagents! (The Avatar's mana score puts a limit on how many spells he can cast at once, though.) The "Divination" spell is my favorite, since it tells me the official name of the area I'm in. I don't need to come up with new names for identical-looking caves.

        

Turning the dull talismans into proper focuses.

        

I have to wrap up here, but I feel like I made some progress, and I liked the game more by the end of this session than at the beginning. Exploring Argentrock Isle felt like a classic Ultima experience, and the books and NPCs were more interesting. I'm still confused about a couple of things, though. First, how do the Theurgists get to Tenebrae and back? Does everyone have one of these Recall Items? Do they take boats? Do they go through the Catacombs every time? If the latter, do they all have Keys of the Scion? How do they cast "Open Ground" to get back?

   

Second, I wonder about the nature of Stratos. How is she the one good titan? I suppose Pyros might turn out to be good, too. That would have a nice symmetry: two good, two evil, one each male and female. But their association with elements confuses things; as building blocks of the world, it doesn't feel right that elements should be assigned "good" and "evil" roles. It feels like good and evil should be independent of the fundamental nature of reality. I had been assuming that they were all evil; perhaps Stratos is, and she's just done a good job fooling her followers. Anyway, no spoilers, please. I don't mind if the answer is "PAFO."

     

Oh, and was I supposed to do something with that Skull of Quakes? Cast it into some lava somewhere? I just noticed it in my backpack and realized I never figured out its purpose. 

      

Time stamp: 38 hours  

    

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