Game 586: Pagan: Ultima VIII (1994)

Both the title screen and the box agree: The master name of the game is Pagan.

        

Pagan: Ultima VIII

United States

ORIGIN Systems (developer); Electronic Arts (publisher)
Released 1994 for DOS
Date Started: 24 July 2026

    

I've told this story before, but I basically took a break from almost all gaming starting around 1991; partly because I wanted to actually finish college; partly because I stupidly bought a Mac in 1993, not realizing there were virtually no games for it; partly because Irene and I started dating. All of these things were rectified by 1998: I had graduated; I had a proper Windows machine; and Irene had discovered that you date Plan A and you marry . . . well, a CRPG Addict.

   

On my first trip to CompUSA at the end of this dark period, I bought a Might and Magic compilation and an Ultima compilation. I was so eager to catch up on what I missed in Britannia. At that time, I had never even finished Ultima VI: The False Prophet. I damn near wept at the opening strains on the title screen of Ultima IV. I loved Ultima V just as much as I had a decade earlier. I enjoyed Ultima VI. I gaped at Ultima Underworld. It took me a while to get used to Ultima VII: The Black Gate, but I ultimately made peace with it. I couldn't finish Serpent Isle. And I bounced hard off of Ultima VIII. I didn't get through more than 15 minutes of it. I hated everything about it. Because of it, I never even looked at Ultima IX when it came out. Nearly 30 years later, I don't remember precisely what I balked at, so I'm curious to see whether I have the same reactions this time. I hope not, because I have to finish it.

     

I don't think this guy would have fit through that Blackrock Gate.

       

The cinematic opens where Ultima VII: Part Two - Serpent Isle (1993) left off. You may recall that in that game, the Avatar follows the spirit of the Great Earth Serpent through the Wall of Lights and into the Ethereal Void. There, he watches it take its place between the Order Serpent and the Chaos Serpent, restoring balance to the universe (or, at least, Serpent Isle). But before he can enjoy his victory, the giant red hand of the Guardian emerges from the void and grabs him. The Serpents are apparently powerless to stop this, and they're the gods of an entire world, so it makes one wonder how the Guardian needed a bunch of cultists to build a Black Gate for him to visit Britannia in the previous game.

   

Pagan begins with the guardian's hand thrusting through a pentagram, then opening to reveal the Avatar standing on his palm. "You have been a thorn in my side for far too long, Avatar," the Guardian says in a reverberating bass. "Your two worlds will be crushed, Britannia first, then Earth. I shall parade you before their conquered peoples as the fallen idol of a pathetic ideal." He turns his hand over, dropping the Avatar through the clouds and into the ocean near a volcanic island. "I banish you to the world of Pagan. No one here knows of the Avatar." Nice to get the banallure out of the way in the beginning.

     

Kind of wish I weren't wearing a full suit of armor.

          

Ever since Ultima IV's The History of Britannia as Told by Kyle the Younger, the Ultima series has been famous for its epistolary manuals. I still think the manual for Ultima VII: The Black Gate is the best piece of game documentation that we've seen through 1993, with the story of Britannia told in a beautifully subversive way. It's thus no surprise that Ultima VIII comes with The Chronicle of Pagan as written by "Bentic, a humble scholar and student." I have to admit that I rolled my eyes at it and lost patience a bit as I read it. Is that because it feels like the Origin team was just going through the same old motions, or is it because I let my previously-negative view of the game cloud my perceptions? I'm not sure. I'll just say that it feels a bit less inspired than previous Ultima manuals, as if someone was just checking off a box that said: "Write game manual from the perspective of someone in the world."

    

The summary of the backstory is that the first inhabitants of Pagan were known as Zealans, and they worshiped gods called Ancient Ones, including Amoras (goddess of love and joy), Odion (god of strength or something like it), and Apathas (god of logic). I say "including," but that might in fact be the entire pantheon. I'm not sure. The Zealans were united under a war chief named Khumash-Gor, but his empire fell apart after his assassination. Sometime thereafter, residents started hearing whispers in their minds from someone called the Guardian. The Guardian told of the coming of a Destroyer who would, well, destroy the land with earth, water, air, and fire. The Zealans could avoid this fate by turning their worship to those very elements. Some, but not all, of the Zealans joined this new cult, raising an enormous temple. Their faith gave birth to four elemental titans: Lithos, Hydros, Stratos, and Pyros. I'll let you figure out which lord goes with which element.

      

This all feels a bit cribbed from Might and Magic II.

          

A civil war began between the Zealans who worshiped the old gods and the new "Pagans." (Seriously, that's even worse than having the world inexplicably named "Pagan.") The Pagans won this war, culminating with Lithos sealing the recalcitrant Zealans in the Lost Vale. That's going to become important later. But no sooner had the Pagans achieved victory than the Destroyer appeared in the sky. "[His] malevolent yellow eyes glared out across the land." He summoned lighting, storms, floods, cyclones, earthquakes, and volcanoes. Eventually, the titans united and destroyed the Destroyer. "The world that remained was pitted and scarred, a vast wasteland with a smattering of island chains." The survivors gathered on the largest island, Morgaelin, to reconstruct their civilization. The clouds the Destroyer summoned never went away, so the world is in perpetual dimness.

     

(I would bet a week's salary that the being we know as the Guardian is not in fact the Guardian of Bentic's history. I'm betting the Guardian was the Destroyer and that he stole the Guardian's identity at some point. That raises the question of the identity of the original Guardian. It has to be someone we know, like Lord British or the Time Lord. Don't spoil it for me either way, please.)

      

This would be a good place for the story to end, but it doesn't. Instead, the titans turned evil, demanded sacrifices, and went to war with each other. The short of it is that four different heroes dealt separately with the four elemental lords, their efforts resulting in the creation of four schools of magic: necromancy (earth), tempestry (water), theurgy (air), and sorcery (fire). There's a lot more in this section, but I'll reference it as I encounter things in-game that make use of the additional lore. The story concludes by saying that we are now in the Fourth Epoch; the elemental lords are "appeased or controlled"; and "people are free to live normal lives."

       

From the manual, the symbols of the elemental lords.

       

At this point, the book has a section on Britannia, featuring stories that supposedly originated with an old woman named Mordra. A check of my notes reveals that Mordra was the healer in Skara Brae before a magical accident killed everyone, Mordra included. In that game, she helped the Avatar with the ritual that destroyed Horance the lich. It's hard to imagine that this is the same Modra since she was a ghost in Ultima VII and thus presumably couldn't have traveled to Pagan to tell a story that includes the events of Ultima VII. The manual suggests that she only knew the events through Ultima VI, so perhaps she visited Pagan, told the history of Britannia, and returned. Or maybe she came from Pagan in the first place. In any event, the whole section is just the obligatory history of the Ultima series from Mondain through Batlin and the Fellowship. I don't know whether it's there to orient new players to the universe or whether it will actually have some relevance to the plot of Pagan.

 

It's worth noting that we've had a couple of references to Pagan before, one in Ultima Underworld II and one in Serpent Isle. The latter was the longer one. The Avatar meets a blind hermit named Morghrim who explains that he is from Pagan, and that the Guardian invaded his world and burned Elerion, the great world tree. This event is not referenced in Pagan's backstory. Perhaps there will be a reference to it later, but it would be entirely on-brand for Origin to retcon lore written only one year previously. 

            

Our previous experience with someone from Pagan.

         

Let's move on to the game itself. Character creation is nothing more than giving a name. There is no option to select any Avatar except the blond male one, which is a major step backwards, although clearly this guy's been the canonical Avatar for a few games now. 

   

The game begins with the Avatar waking up on an unfamiliar shore, in a fisherman's camp, a crackling fire having dried his wet clothes. The fisherman, Devon, addresses the Avatar by name (I went with "Gideon," my standby) and sheepishly admits that he went through the Avatar's logbook, which I didn't even know I was keeping. He explains that he pulled the Avatar up in one of his nets. "You are welcome to stay with me for as long as you need," he says, "until you wish to head to the city." As he turns away, he mentions a crowd gathering on the city docks. "That can only mean trouble." He also has a few things to say about Lithos and Hydros, but they mostly repeat what's in the manual, which I'll cover later.

     

My first dialogue options.

        

The interface isn't quite as different from Ultima VII as I thought I remembered. It uses the same northwest-facing oblique view, though rotated a bit more on both axes to give greater depth to the perspective. Most of the same keys work: Z for stats and wearable items, I for backpack, C to enter combat, and so forth. What does not work is any movement with the arrow keys. It has to be done entirely with the mouse, which is extremely unwelcome. The right mouse button causes the Avatar to mince along, walk, or run, depending on the distance of the cursor from the figure. The left mouse button is used to grab things, use things, and talk to people. Both mouse buttons together jump.

         

Running, jumping, suicide.

        

The ESC key brings up the game options, including "Read Diary" and "Write Diary," which turn out to be the game's clumsy way of saving and reloading. I thought they might activate an actual diary at first.

   

The Avatar is depicted wearing a full set of armor (boots, helmet, gauntlets) and either an ankh pendant or an ankh emblazoned on his tunic. In fact, a trip to the equipment screen shows that he doesn't have anything. (He must have ditched it so he didn't drown.) He starts the game with 15 strength, 15 intelligence, 15 dexterity, and 30 hits and mana.

    

The Avatar fights the power.

        

While meddling with the jump and movement controls, I soon discover that despite a lack of armor, the Avatar sinks like a stone when he enters water—that's instant death. I also manage to kill myself by wandering into Devon's fire. The game is a bit insidious when it comes to character death. It makes you wait. There's a pause of about 10 seconds between the death and the appearance of a gravestone and the ability to reload. I've often asked for this kind of thing, to make death and reloading a little less cheap.

         

How does anyone here know what "the Avatar" is?

     

At this point, I should mention that I'm playing the game version purchased from GOG, which combines features from several previous releases and patches, including the extra audio that came on the 1994 CD-ROM release, the later 1994 "Pagan Speech Pack," and a 1995 patch that trivialized the game's famous jumping puzzles, although the original version was apparently so annoying and buggy that no one minded the reduction in challenge. I was still hoping to at least experience the original version anyway, but I'm having trouble discerning which of the versions available online are "original." In the meantime, I'll just play this one and maybe compare it later.

   

I think I'm a minority on this, but I don't like the graphics. I particularly don't like the black outline around the Avatar, the NPCs, and most of the interactable objects. The figures strike me as a bit too . . . I'm having trouble finding the right words here. "Soft." "Rounded." "Blended." Note how in the graphic below, you can't really distinguish the character's boots, or whether the ankh is a pendant or something embroidered on his chest. They would have looked good in 1994, sure, but these days, I'd prefer something actually detailed or completely abstract, rather than this weird, ungainly doll wandering across a matte painting.

      

The Avatar stands there and takes my insults.

            

As for that background, yikes. It feels like a huge step back from Ultima VII. The shoreline here looks nothing remotely like a real shoreline. The patterns of the rocks and forest floor are just blobs of color. I'd rather have the grasses and ruddy forest floors of its predecessor. 

    

Getting back to the game, I head west and then north, where I find a dock with a couple of barrels and my first items: a dagger, a keyring, some wine, several mushrooms, and a scroll written to "Most Honorable Lady Mordea," warning that the Skull of Quakes "has been removed from the upper catacombs."

       

Five minutes into the game, and I already can't find anything in my backpack. The interior space is even smaller than in Ultima VII.

      

Up on the dock itself is the "trouble" that Devon was talking about. A bunch of people stand around a man kneeling in front of an executioner's block. From subsequent conversation, he is named Toran, and he's been accused of "blasphemy against our Lady Mordea and sentenced to death by beheading." (Lady Mordea is the ruler of Tenebrae and a Tempest.) Toran expresses confidence that he will meet Lithos honorably, but Mordea tells him that his body will be cast into the sea, so in death he will be ruled by Hydros rather than Lithos. "This is forbidden, lady," a guard named Tarna notes. "The Ritual of Interment is sacred." Mordea tells him to shut up and then tells the executioner to get on with it. In a gruesome animation, the executioner chops off Toran's head, which rolls off the dock and into the sea and is promptly consumed by a sea monster.

     

The grisly scene. Are those carved skulls all along the edges of the dock? That's morbid.

       

Mordea and her entourage walk off the dock. Tarna the Guard demands to know who I am and what I'm doing there. I decide to be ornery and tell him that it's none of his business. "You are sadly mistaken," he says. "For every moment you spend in Tenebrae, what you are doing and where you are doing it is exactly my business." He gives me two more opportunities to explain myself, but I refuse both times, so he attacks me. I haven't even equipped my dagger yet, and even with it, I don't think I'd be any match for this guard with his bardiche. I'm soon dead.

      

This guy should work for ICE.

      

I guess I already have to explain stuff from the chronicle. At the beginning of the Third Epoch, Lithos wouldn't cut it out with the earthquakes. So a hero named Moriens went to bargain with him. Lithos agreed to stop the quakes if the people of Pagan would serve him in death. Ever since then, when Pagans die, their bodies go to Lithos, and they serve him as undead workers indefinitely. That must be the worst bargain ever struck. I'd rather die in an earthquake than spend eternity serving an insane earth god.

       

Maybe it's just their bodies that serve him. That would make more sense.

       

Meanwhile, Hydros (also known as the Lurker) was still battering the land with storms, one of which killed the beloved of a necromancer named Kalen. Lithos told Kalen about Blackrock, which Kalen used to trap Hydros in her temple. He planned to kill her, but she agreed to give magical powers to him and the subsequent line of tempestry practitioners if he'd let her live.

   

On a reload, I go east from Devon's camp instead of west. There are some mushrooms that look like I should be able to pick them up, but I can't. I kill a couple of spiders and small enemies called skellots with my fists; these are not among the creatures described in the manual. Combat involves clicking repeatedly with the mouse on a moving enemy while trying to face the character the appropriate direction. Maybe I'll get used to it, but I don't care for it in these initial stages.

      

My first taste of combat.

      

I soon come across a high, impassable wall. A pile of bones at the base has a fire gem within them. I follow the wall a distance to the northwest until a large portcullis appears with a winch at its base. Another guard with a bardiche demands that I explain my presence. This time, I introduce  myself (I don't have any option to do otherwise), and he gruffly notes that Mordea is in a bad mood today and suggests I "see for myself" at the dock. Trying to manipulate the winch gets me nowhere. 

     

Why is "Get that polearm out of my face" not an option?

         

I wander around some more but find nothing, and it becomes clear that the only way to proceed is to go to the docks. I watch the execution again and this time answer the guard's questions. I tell him my name, that I come from another world (he doesn't like that), and that my business in Tenebrae is to find a way to return home. He tells me I can go about my business. He says he's going to escort Toran's grieving widow from the docks, but he doesn't do that. He just wanders around while the woman remains kneeling by Toran's corpse.

      

Frankly, my dear . . .

        

There is no sense of any passage of time so far, partly explained by the backstory, although the graphics don't suggest perpetual darkness so much as perpetual cloudiness. Despite the presence of food items, the Avatar doesn't seem to get hungry. I don't necessarily mind these deletions from the previous Ultimas, but they are emblematic of the many mechanics that Origin simplified for this release.

   

The city gate is now open, so I stride into Tenebrae. The manual calls it "The City of Eternal Twilight," the only city that still exists on Morgaelin and perhaps in the entire world. The Great Palace is Mordea's seat of power.

    

Even though I haven't made much progress, I'll wrap up here and explore Tenebrae next time.

   

Time so far: 1 hour 

    

****

    

Next entry in this series

    

For further reading:

  

• My Index of Games Played by Lineage has the Ultima series and its clones.  

  08/14/2026

Game 582: The Odyssey (1993)

       

The Odyssey

United States

Independently developed and published as shareware
Released 1993 for the Macintosh
Date Started: 20 July 2026

     

This is not Odyssey: The Legend of Nemesis (1996), but rather an intriguing shareware effort from David Larkin of Brooktondale, New York. When I fired it up, I thought that the timing worked out particularly well on this one, as I just finished listening to a Teaching Company course on "Famous Greeks" and was planning to see the new Christopher Nolan The Odyssey that weekend. It turns out that game isn't based on any existing legend, nor is it set in any kind of real history. It just uses names and themes from Ancient Greece to tell its own story.

   

The game is set in the city-state of Athenia. Rome is mentioned but it has already fallen. The city has been besieged by demons whose leaders will not explain what they want. The PC is an Athenian guard who is one day summoned to the chambers of Damocles, Seer of Athenia. The Seer has had a vision that the monsters are controlled by a "Chaos Master" named Nok Hurthtu. His vision further showed him that the PC is the one person who can defeat the Chaos Master, and to do so, he will need to descend into the earth, past sewers, crypts, and caverns.

     

The Seer lays it out for me.

       

No sooner has the Seer finished explaining his vision than Nok Hurthtu (or a vision thereof) appears in the chamber, howling wordless sounds. "It is a primeval mass of bestial desires and turbulent motions only sporadically able to assume the semblance of reason," the Seer observes. The Chaos Master manages to get out a few threats before disappearing, leaving a couple of chaos rats in his wake.

     

Man, don't have a hernia.

      

Character creation consists of only a name. There are no attributes that I can see, except attack and defense scores based mostly on inventory. The character has a level, but I'm not sure what causes it to go up, as there are no explicit experience points. Health is purely ordinal, starting at "good" and proceeding through "scraped," "hurt," "wounded," "mauled," "badly wounded," and "critical" before death.

    

The interface suggests an Ultima influence, but one light enough that I wouldn't call it a clone. It similarly has roguelike elements without being quite a roguelike. Commands are movement (no diagonals), talk, attack, use, look, and (in something of an innovation) scroll the window without moving the character. There are icons and keyboard backups for these commands, though the keyboard backups use the Command key, which is a little awkward.

        

My once-per-Mac-game reminder that if my screenshots were honest, you would always see the menu bar. As it is, you can always see a bit of the game's folder behind the game windows.

             

The character is cast immediately into combat with the rats, a la Ultima VI, but the battle is an easy one. It is nominally turn-based, but the game assumes a "pass" if the player doesn't act within a few seconds. To fight, the player clicks on the "attack" icon and then the enemy, at which point a little pop-up menu appears with options based on the character's equipped weapon. Having no weapon (odd for a guard), my options are to kick, punch, or block. The rats die quickly, leaving hunks of meat behind.

    

I naturally speak to the Seer and get a text box. I will soon discover that about 50% of interactions in the game involve no input from the player. That doesn't mean that they're the one-line NPCs of Ultima and Ultima II, however. Some NPCs have a lot to say, and the character has a lot to say in return, all unprompted by the player. The dialogues can get fairly verbose. Here's an example with Homer, a farmer:

       

PC: "How's it going, Homer?"

Homer: "Terribly. We lie here like slugs under the sun, waiting for our life to burn away and for our little souls to flee to Hades." 

PC: "All of our souls have to go to Hades eventually, Homer." 

Homer: (angrily) "We should all go out and fight the Chaos demons! I try to tell people this but they're all cowards. We should all fly from the walls and live or die in one glorious battle. Enough of this besiegement! Better a quick death than a slow one." 

PC: "You would throw all the city's lives away when there's some chance they could be saved?" 

Homer: "You're one of those fools who thinks there's hope. Why should we believe that? The mists and the demons have never stopped coming." 

PC: "And we have never stopped fighting. And we will fight, Homer, to the last man, to protect those who cannot fight for themselves. Meanwhile you will ensure that the city has enough to eat. That is your duty. And I will thank you to stop whining about how the world isn't arranged to your liking. We all have to suffer now."

       

The game isn't shy, as you can see, about giving a fixed character to the PC. He's brave, noble, intolerant of despair in others, intolerant of those who shirk their duty, unafraid to speak truth to power.

      

Achilles not being very Achillesque.

     

With some NPCs, the player gets a keyword-based dialogue box, but it's hard to find words that actually work. No NAME, HEALTH, JOB here. Rarely does the NPC say something in the previous dialogue that prompts additional discussion via keyword. The box is used more as a puzzle element, with the player feeding keywords that other NPCs have given him. The box supports full sentences, but it doesn't seem to read the keywords within the full sentence like Ultima VI did. When talking to the Seer, CHAOS MASTER gets some additional dialogue, but WHAT CAN YOU TELL ME ABOUT THE CHAOS MASTER does not?

     

Athenia is 60 x 60 tiles, surrounded by a stone wall. There is no exit, the old gate having been walled in to defend against the demons. A palace occupies the central part of the map, containing the Seer's chambers and guard quarters to the south and the king's throne room to the north. West of the palace is a farm with several workers and a couple of houses for the farmers. There's also a small lake with an island that I cannot reach. Northeast of the palace is a temple, then a bunch of small buildings. Southwest is a forest with some ruins plus the only other monster I've encountered so far: a wild boar, who I punched to death and harvested for meat. There are 15-20 NPCs, including guards and farmers, running around.

     

One key element of this game involves the passage of time. As in Ultima V, NPCs have daily schedules. They work during the day and go to bed at night, sometimes in houses or rooms with locked doors. A small window tracks the passage of time in eight phases depicting the position of the sun. (Full night, which lasts three phases, is depicted by a single graphic with a moon and stars.) The "sunrise" graphic is cute, showing a god literally hauling up the sun, which rises in the west and sets in the east.

     

That must be Helios (bottom right).

      

A full day's cycle takes between 18 and 19 minutes if the character stands still. If he moves, time passes a lot more quickly. Each move is assumed to take about three minutes, so 480 moves pass an entire day. That can happen in as little as 80 seconds if the character is moving continually. I had entire days elapse in which all I accomplished was talking to two or three NPCs.

    

As time passes, the character gets hungry and fatigued and must occasionally eat and rest. Eating hasn't been much of a problem so far, but resting causes time to pass so quickly that if the player doesn't almost immediately start clicking the button to awaken the character, he'll keep sleeping until he starts taking damage from starvation. I can only guess that game speed is tied to the system clock, but I took pains to emulate a Mac (the Color Classic) that would have been popular in 1993. 

    

You may have noticed that the inventory system uses a small paperdoll interface with slots for both hands, legs, chest, and head. There are also two windows that open independently: the character's backpack and items on the floor. You can drag from one to the other to pick up or drop items. It's a bit like Ultima VII in that regard. So far, I haven't found a single weapon or piece of armor. There's a guy named Mr. Jones who runs a shop, but it sells things like food, torches, and potions.

       

You'll note that nobody stands between me and my man.

        

That leaves the plot. The Seer didn't give me much to go on. He said I would need to descend into the sewers, but I haven't been able to find any sewers or other pathway down. King Antiphos and his guard captain, Frederick, are a bit useless. 

     

Three distinct problems (and thus, potential side quests or main quest steps) become apparent other than the demonic siege: 

    

• I heard from NPCs that there's a traitor in our midst. Someone has stolen next year's seed from farmer Marian and Paul, meaning that we'll starve to death. The guards' payroll has gone missing. The enemy seems to anticipate our troop movements. But Antiphos denies the problem and refuses to hear anyone even talk about a TRAITOR. 

• A sleepy guard named Manthos tells me about a woman living in a northeast house who only comes out at midnight. I hang around the locked houses at midnight and find a blind woman named Sarah leaving a house full of trash, cobwebs, and one locked interior door. She's waiting for her husband, Xenophos, to return from a quest. It's clear that she's a bit loopy and he probably died a long time ago.

• Theocritics and Electra tell me that their daughter, Xallas, went for a walk one night and never came home.

    

I explore everything and feed what I think are all the important keywords to every NPC, but I get nowhere for a while. However, there are many locked doors, and based on my experience with Sarah, I know that they sometimes open for a very short time when certain NPCs go about their daily schedules. I hang around a few of them and catch Bartholomew, an officious guard captain (and advisor to the king) leaving his house. I manage to sneak in as he leaves. In the corner of his room, I find a key, but it's only possible to enter this corner by walking through a fire, which nearly kills me. Fortunately, I have plenty of time to rest because he locked the door behind him, and this key doesn't go to that door.

      

Bartholomew's secret corridor.

         

Sixteen hours later, when he comes home, I rush outside and start trying the key on all the nearby locked doors. It opens a nearby door into a short hallway where I find a scroll. It's a note from Bartholomew to the Chaos Master, indicating that Bartholomew has been following his orders to steal the seed and the payroll and to report on troop allocation.

   

Frederick tells me to bring all evidence about the traitor to him, but I can't get him to acknowledge the scroll or Bartholomew's guilt. I thus take it directly to the king, where I have an option to show it to him. Bartholomew is summoned, denies the charges at first, and finally confesses. King Antiphos throws him in jail and rewards me with a Scepter of Lordly Might, which when used increases my level (permanently) to Level 2.

     

Nice sobriquet.

         

For a while, I can't figure out any other leads. There are four locked buildings, plus the locked door in Sarah's house, plus a locked door in a ruin in the forest. There are three locked doors in the palace, but two of them just go to the chambers of the Seer and Mr. Jones, neither of which have anything. I finally find that one of the locked buildings has a window. It turns out to be the jail, and I can see Bartholomew inside and talk to him through the window. He has a little more information to offer, including that the Chaos Master used to leave him notes in the sewers and that he has the sewer key. At my encouragement, he gives it to me. He also says  that he hid the payroll and seeds in a room and threw the key on the island. Unfortunately, I have no way to cross the water.

     

I do not want to know how he managed to keep the key on his person in jail.

        

Bartholomew's key doesn't open any of the locked doors, so I'm stuck again for another hour or so, to the point I start mapping the city and inspecting every individual tile. Eventually, I find a section of wall with a keyhole, open it, and find another key plus a ladder down. I run around town with the new key but can't find any door that it fits. I return, go down the ladder, and immediately die at the claws of a "shadowy stalker."

     

Ah, so it's going to be this kind of game.

            

On multiple subsequent reloads, I encounter this situation in the sewers:

   

• The first room has a Scepter of Lordly Might and a helmet. Unfortunately, it also has an invisible shadowy stalker, who can kill me in two hits. If I target empty squares, I can sometimes hit him, but never kill him before he kills me. There's a ladder I can take immediately to a lower level. 

• On that lower level, a pressure plate opens a wall. There's a wraith and two goblin archers behind the wall. Every time I approach them, I get killed by arrows. They will not budge from their positions to chase me around corners and get into melee range.

• If I try to ignore the wraith, the only place to go is a corridor where a cannon is constantly shooting cannonballs down it. No matter how I time it, I can't get down the corridor before the next cannonball. Even if I could, the chamber at the other end is absolutely packed with enemies.

    

I return to Mr. Jones's shop looking for items that might help. The Potion of Invisibility is out of my reach, but I buy a minor wand (which stuns enemies) and a bottle of Greek fire. It takes about 10 reloads, but I'm eventually able to stun the shadowy stalker and kill him. I loot the chamber; there's also a Potion of Invisibility under the Scepter of Lordly Might. The scepter brings me to Level 3. I have to wonder whether there's any traditional leveling in this game or whether it's all scepters.

      

The only exit from this chamber other than the two ladders is locked, so I go down to the lower level with the pressure plate and cannonballs, but whatever I try, I cannot make headway against any of the obstacles here.

     

One of the places that I keep getting killed.

              

Just as I'm about to give up, I discover that there are a couple of squares in the lake around the island shallow enough to let me cross. I find a key, which opens the doors in the ruins to the southeast of town, where I find the stolen payroll and seed. Returning the payroll to my friend Joseph gets me a dagger, while returning the seed to Paul gets me a tunic. Before you get all excited, these two items do absolutely nothing to help me against the enemies in the sewers.

    

It's become clear to me by the end of this session that this is not a typical RPG. It, or at least its beginning, is extremely linear, and every battle is a unique puzzle that has to be solved with the right tactics, items, or both. I might already be in a "walking dead" situation because I've already spent too much of my starting money with Mr. Jones and have no way of earning more.

   

Mr. Larkin charged $25 for the game and promised a hint book for anyone who paid the fee. I made contact with the author, and he said he no longer accepts any money nor makes the hint book available, but he directed me to a video series (starting here) that solves the game. I hope I don't have to consult it, but I'll let you know.

         

Time played: 3 hours

   

****

   

Next entry in this series

08/02/2026 

Yendorian Tales: Book I: Won! (with Summary and Rating)

The endgame sees Zamora restored and the sequel set up.

         

Yendorian Tales: Book I

United States 

SmithWare (developer and publisher) 

Released 1994 for DOS

Date Started: 6 May 2026

Date Ended: 19 June 2026

Total Hours: 37

Difficulty:  Moderate (3.0/5)

Final Rating: 39

Ranking at time of posting: 484/582 (83%)

      

Summary:

    

Yendorian Tales is a superior shareware game by a talented family of programmers. On the continent of Yendor, where society is divided into spellcasters and the miners who supply the spellcasters with their ore, a party of six sets out to determine why monsters have started invading the mines. Soon, the chief wizard, Zamora, is struck down by a mysterious figure, his magical orb stolen, and the party's mission grows.

   

The game combines elements from several successful commercial releases, predominantly Ultima V: Warriors of Destiny (1988), which is replicated in the NPC dialogue and the tactical combat, and Ultima VI: The False Prophet (1990), which is replicated in its axonometric exploration. The game has solid mechanics, although the sheer volume of combat gets to be too much, and the economy, initially promising, ends up hilariously broken. The story ends up being a bit unoriginal, but the game, unlike almost all its predecessors and contemporaries, has rewarding side quests.

   

****

   

I thought it was time to wrap this up. AlphabeticalAnonymous's Search for Freedom entries, plus my own Multi-User Dungeon break, afforded me some breathing room, so even though I could have stretched it into two or three additional entries, I pressed forward to the end.

     

Paltivar, the game's villain, stands by the stolen orb.

       

The main quest, kicked off by the theft of Zamora's orb, had me meeting all the scattered members of the Society of Wizards. I guess I was supposed to visit them in turn, each supplying the clue to the next. But my habit of feeding the JOURNAL keyword to everyone I met meant that I met some of them before I was supposed to. Each had a task for me to accomplish; each gave me an item when I finished, then supplied the title (but not the name) of the next wizard; each was accompanied by Zamora's voice whispering a clue as to some name or keyword.

       

Member	Location	Task	Item	Hint
Flagell  The Hermit	Cave	Kill a wyvern nesting nearby.	Flagell's Scroll	The first of last is third, and the third of first is last.
Paundor The Diplomat	Port Hope	Buy a Grapnel Arrow, use it to retrieve the Great Red Gem from a cave.	Red Powder	Half of "W" is sixth.
Bysette  The ?????	Moloch	Retrieve a ring that he lost on Blackmane.	Magic Branch	It is in the middle backwards.
Prezlin The Merchant	Duomin/New Devon	Find out what happened to Winze.	Magic Liquid	One from each end is A.
Griffin The Scholar	Athaneum	Retrieve the Hourglass of Stopped Time from the desert.	Sands of Time	He and Prezlin begin the same.
Winze The ????	Devon	Retrieve lava from the underworld.	Amulet of Lava	Eight letters make up his name.
Quai The Explorer	Cave in Desert	Kill the Cynotaur to free Quai.	Horn of Encasement	N/A

           

I had finished through Prezlin's quest at the end of the last session, though I hadn't returned to find him in New Devon. I visited the city first thing at the beginning of this session and got Prezlin's item and hint. He sent me on to the Scholar, who I already knew was Griffin from dialogue ages ago in the Athaneum.

      

That missing piece annoys me.

       

New Devon also had a side quest in which the governor wanted me to deliver a peace treaty to the king of the giants and return it with his signature. The king was happy with the terms ("Little people will stay out of the mountains; giants will stop attacking town") and signed it. I had to flee from a lot of giants on the way in, but otherwise it wasn't a tough quest. I got enough experience from it to reach Level 10.

    

The last city I had to explore was Anatolay. (I never ended up exploring the two mines that lay just outside of town.) The most important things I found here were:

   

• An enhancer who would take +2 or +3 items and enhance them to +3 or +4. This bridged the gap between the enhancer in the Athaneum and the enhancer in Port Hope. I got all my weapons and armor enhanced, then went to Port Hope and got everything up to +5. This all cost far less than it should have.

• The Amulet of Anatolay, which the governor of Port Hope wanted. When I returned it to him, I had enough experience for Level 11.

          

We're just calling them that in-universe, huh?

        

It occurs to me that most of the leveling in this game comes from finishing the side quests and not from fighting regular foes. This is good because I fled from pretty much every regular combat this session. For combats that I knew or suspected that I had to fight, I adopted a fairly simple strategy:

       

• Have my wizard cast "Earthquake" every round.
• Have my clerics cast "Critical Damage" every round.
• Have my two fighters and thief restore the spellcasters with purple potions, heal anyone who is low on health with white potions, or toss silver potions (poison) and gold potions (acid) at enemies.

         

You're goddamned right I do.

       

The economy is so broken by the end of the game that you could buy all the purple (full mana restore) and white (full health restore) potions that you could possibly need in a lifetime of adventuring, not to mention processed Nuore. Even if the economy wasn't broken, you find so many of these things that you hardly have to buy them.

      

Griffin was a pain to find because if you (L)ook at NPCs, the game tells you one person is Griffin, but you have to (T)alk to them to find out that the game is wrong. The real Griffin wanted me to find the Hourglass of Stopped Time in the desert in the northeast part of the continent. This is accessible from a mine near Giant Town (past the paleoscinus). The desert is a small region ringed by mountains with multiple caves. Dragons fly overhead constantly, which is annoying.

      

The game identifies Vincent as Griffin.

         

The hourglass is between two frozen dragons in the middle of the desert. When I grabbed it, they came to life and (instead of thanking me) attacked. I killed them, although I don't think I had to.

         

One wonders why I didn't freeze the moment I entered the hourglass's presence.

         

Back at the Athaneum, Griffin smashed the hourglass and gave me the sand. I got the final clue, but by then I had figured out that the clues spelled out PALTIVAR—an NPC I had already met in Devon. He had sent me on a quest to find his apprentice, Joseph, who in turn wanted me to find some sweet wine. Spoiler: Paltivar turns out to be the "big bad" of the game. 

       

Few games logistically explain how the evil castle is so full of monsters. This one, admittedly, doesn't explain how a single alcoholic was able to corral a bunch of ghosts and demons.

            

Griffin said I should speak to Winze next, but I already knew that he was dead, so I figured I could skip this quest and go right to Paltivar. I visited town after town, asking for SWEET WINE or BOTTLE in the taverns. After five or six tries, I got a hit in Stachus. Grabbing a single bottle somehow led to my having 65,535 bottles in my inventory. To add insult to injury, the game won't let us drink them.

   

I returned the bottle to Joseph, who spilled a little dirt on Paltivar: "A few years ago, I helped him round up several types of monsters for his castle. He didn't tell me where it was, but I know it wasn't on the mainland." When I returned to Paltivar's shop in Devon, he was gone, so I started searching the various caves in the desert. I eventually found the last member of the Society of Wizards, Quai, imprisoned in a cave by the Cynotaur. 

     

I think his name means "dog-bull."

          

I killed the Cynotaur in a long battle and got his horn. Quai then told me that I "did not have all of the items that [I] need." He admonished me to make sure I had spoken to all members of the Society of Wizards.

     

Just what you want to hear when you're 30 minutes away from civilization.

           

I despaired at circling all of the cities asking for SOCIETY again, but I consulted my notes and realized I hadn't actually gotten a clue from Winze or his grieving wife. I returned to Devon and spoke to Winze's wife, Joan. This time, she asked me for flowers for his grave; fortunately, I had bought a bouquet ages ago from a random NPC somewhere. When I gave it to her, Winze's ghost appeared. He had a quest: "Travel into the Underworld and bring back a small quantity of lava." He opened a portal in the north part of the cemetery to take me there.

      

I love that there's no discussion about how we're going to carry lava. I mean, we could cool it with any variety of spells, but then it wouldn't be "lava" anymore.

          

"The Underworld" turned out to be a large cave system with a lot of demons, devils, and lava beasts. Lava beasts suck because they have a ranged attack that can easily kill the last character to flee, when all of the enemies are focusing on him exclusively. 

   

There were pools and lakes of lava but no way to retrieve a sample. I had to loop the area a couple of times before I realized that one of the figures wasn't attacking me. I figured he must be an NPC and talked to him. He said he was Demonacus, "master of this realm," and that he planned to lead his demons in conquest of the world. (According to Usenet posts, in an early version of the game, Demonacus failed to appear. SW Games had to send around a patch.)

      

That's what you went with? "Demonacus?" How long did that take to come up with?

         

Demonacus attacked with a bunch of demons, lava beasts, and princes of evil, but here's where my standard combat policy paid off, and I whittled them down. Demonacus had an Amulet of Lava on him, which was good enough. It was the last item I needed for Quai, who (after I made the long trek back to him) assembled all of my quest items into the Horn of Encasement, which he promised would nullify the protections of the magic orb.

           

Demonacus and his allies.

         

It took me about half of the final session to find Paltivar's castle on the southeastern island. I had to explore multiple cave systems, fleeing from dozens of enemy battles, to even get to the island. Then, once there, I had to explore multiple caves (there are eight separate entrances on the island) to find my way to the castle—which had no entrance, so I had to explore more to arrive in the castle from the basement. Along the way, I found the second-to-last map piece. I never did find the piece covering the desert in A5.

     

A password check gets me into Paltivar's castle.

      

The castle had five levels, all very annoying for the sheer number of enemies I had to flee from. The first level was full of secret doors, so I had to test basically every wall space. There's a spell called "Reveal" that shows them, but it disappears every time you're attacked, which is always. Also annoying is the way the "Miner's Light" spell constantly wears off, and you have to wait and suffer the animation as the area around the party grows dim, then watch another one when you re-cast the spell and it gets light again.

    

I don't remember anything special about Level 2. Level 3 had a bunch of teleporters, most of which just went to other places on the same level, so I had to find the right one to get to Level 4—all the while fleeing from ghosts that continually respawn. 

     

A maze of teleporters.

       

Paltivar was standing in a large, open room, next to the orb on the fifth level. Nearby teleporters went to Devon and into the meeting hall at the Athaneum, and I thought it was nice to get an explanation of how the evil wizard had gotten around so deftly. 

        

I exit a teleporter in the Anathaneum—exactly where Paltivar exited when he struck down Zamora.

       

I buffed with healing, attribute potions, "Party Invisibility," and "Shield of Mist" before approaching him. He attacked with a bunch of archmages and princes of evil. Again, my usual strategy won the day with only a few potions required. For some reason, it was important to me for Paltivar to die to a melee attack, so after all his allies were dead, I spent some time maneuvering my lead fighter into the right position.

        

A "Critical Damage" spell reduces Paltivar's forces. My guys have "Party Invisibility" on, so you only see their weapons.

        

A message popped up when he would have died: The Society of Wizards intervened to prevent me from striking a killing blow. The message said to use the Horn of Encasement to retrieve the orb, then bring it to the healers at the Athaneum. 

     

Victory is stolen from me.

      

I had enough experience for Level 12, but I just went directly to the Athaneum, where the endgame sequence began the moment I walked into the healers' chambers. The orb helped restore Zamora. Once he was on his feet, he reunited the Society of Wizards to deal with Paltivar. Apparently, they had some kind of deal that none of them would ever allow another to be destroyed (tell that to Winze!). It turned out that Paltivar had turned evil a long time ago, and it was the Society that banished him to the island castle. Since that didn't work, they came up with a new punishment: "We decree that you shall exist for eternity in a single instant in time." With that, Paltivar slowly dissolved away.

         

Paltivar suffers a potentially-horrifying fate.

       

Question: Is he conscious for this? Because that seems pretty unfair no matter what he's done. No mortal crime deserves eternal punishment. (This is an issue I have with a lot of religious doctrine, by the way.) Anyway, a few days later, Zamora told us that Paltivar used the orb to make the fog around Yendor so thick that no ships could come and go (never mind that the fog was there even when Zamora had the orb). Zamora has recently discovered that the wizards back in the homeland of Thaine are using Nuore for "evil purposes," so he's not so sure that lifting the fog was a good thing. End of game.

     

The fog bank at the edge of the world wasn't just the developers being lazy.

       

It sounds to me like the Society of Wizards knew exactly what was going on. But instead of telling me to "seek out this bastard named Paltivar that we banished to an island for being evil," they had to feed it to me one letter at a time.

      

Some of the items I never got around to using.

        

I rushed the ending a bit, I admit. Since I didn't explore some of the mines, I didn't find keys to almost half the cities. I didn't find the final map piece (though that might be bugged and impossible). I found but never tested a Scroll of Portals, a Scroll of Revealing (I assume it casts "Reveal"), a Ring of Protection, a Poison Trident, an Ice Medallion, and a Crystal of Power. For reasons I've mentioned, whatever they do, I didn't really need their help. I ended the game with over 300,000 gold pieces plus 52 jewels, 20 ancient scrolls, thousands of units of ore, and hundreds of excess weapon and armor items that I could have sold for a lot more. It's hilarious that four postings ago, I thought the economy was good.

     

Here's my GIMLET:

   

Category	Assets	Liabilities	Score
1. Game World	Reasonably detailed backstory of Yendor. Clear (though evolving) main quest.	Main quest is a bit unoriginal and doesn't make a lot of sense given revelations at the end. Game world doesn't really respond to the player's actions.	4
2. Character Creation and Development	Four classes, presented slightly differently from most RPGs (i.e., transition from miners to fighters, magic students to wizards and clerics). Regular leveling with palpable increase in power via boosting attributes (which in turn determine what you can wear/wield) and acquiring spells.	Fairly simple system overall. Rogues wasted as usual. No role-playing by class, race, alignment, sex, etc.	4
3. NPCs	Many NPCs scattered throughout the towns. You learn backstory and lore from NPCs. Keyword-based dialogue system like Ultima.	NPCs don't have a lot to say. Keywords, but no dialogue options or role-playing.	4
4. Encounters and Foes	A couple of dozen monsters, mostly standard D&D derivatives, but with the types of special abilities, strengths, and weaknesses that I look for.  Encounters and weapon/armor drops are somewhat randomized, though sensible for the location.	Monsters are derivative. Few non-combat encounters, and only a few light puzzles.	4
5. Magic and Combat	Tactical combat grid works fairly well, recalling the best of Ultima V. System allows for melee attacks, ranged attacks, spells, use of special items, use of throwing items. Terrain is important.  Nice variety of spells.	Combats are far too frequent. Combats take too long. By the end of the game, battles are far too easy.  Generosity of money/equipment unbalances the spell system.	4
6. Equipment	Multiple types of weapons, armor, and shields restricted by attributes. Clear statistics to help determine which item is best.  Lots of usable items, including special artifacts, to find and wield. Ability to pay to enhance items.	Restricted to only weapons, armor, shields. No boots, cloaks, helms, rings, belts, necklaces, etc. No artifact weapons/armor. Items way too plentiful and generous.	4
7. Economy	Solid complexity. Lots of ways to make money (mining, battle, item sales, gambling, selling found artifacts, side-quests). Lots of ways to spend money. For the first third, the economy is pretty tight. Have to make some tough decisions about what to prioritize.	Economy gets far too generous by the halfway point. The party finds too much and the things that it spends money on do not cost enough. It should have taken tens of thousands of gold pieces to enchant weapons up to +5.	4
8. Quests	Clear main quest with multiple stages. About half a dozen meaningful side quests with solid rewards.  Many side-areas to explore with artifact rewards.	No decisions, alternate outcomes, or role-playing.	4
9. Graphics, Sound, and Interface	Graphics reasonably good for a shareware game, particularly in the cut scene graphics. Mixed keyboard/mouse controls are easy to master and let each player use what he's comfortable with.	Keyboard buffering issues cause problems throughout the game. Sound is underwhelming; just a few effects.	4
10. Gameplay	Reasonable nonlinearity. World can be explored in any order and some of the quest steps can be done out of order, as we've seen.	Not much replayability. Drags on too long (though only a bit). Gets far too easy by the end.	3
Other/Total			39

    

The total is high enough to at least near my "recommended" threshold, which is about 40 in 1994. Yendorian Tales is by no means a perfect game, but it's a commercial-quality game that transcends its shareware origins and has a lot of innovations and surprises (albeit mostly at the beginning).

   

I was sorry that I couldn't reach any of the Smiths during my coverage of this game, as I would have loved to include their comments and recollections. My childhood memories of the times I spent with my father all involve sitting on bar stools, so I find it heart-warming that Rodney Smith managed to enlist his two sons in such a creative and educational project. I hope they look back on the experience with fondness.

       

Exploration and combat in Yendorian Tales: Book I - Chapter II.

            

I also hope it sold well, but it's hard to find any contemporary reviews. There are Usenet references to it rating well on CompuServe. One heartening sign is that the Smiths kept going; Chapter I was followed by the awkwardly-named Yendorian Tales: Book I - Chapter II (1996) and Yendorian Tales: The Tyrants of Thaine (1997). Moreover, the trio followed the example of their primary inspiration (Ultima) by refusing to re-use the engine they created for the first game. Instead, they created a fusion of Ultima Underworld and Might and Magic III/IV. Both games feature far more complex inventory and character systems, including a set of 13 skills.

        

A shot from the never-released Fourth Book of Yendor.

       

SW Games announced the development of The Fourth Book of Yendor on their web site in 1999. It would apparently revolve around missing members of the Society of Wizards. The announcement promised a "fully animated smooth-scrolling world," "non-linear quests," and a "huge fantasy world to explore." A handful of screenshots suggest they took inspiration from Might and Magic VI: The Mandate of Heaven (1998). Alas, it appears the game was never finished, and SW Games went offline sometime between 2007 and 2013.

       

****

   

Previous entry in this series

      

For further reading:

 

My coverage of the games that I think most influenced Yendorian Tales: Book I: 

 

• Ultima V: Warriors of Destiny (1988)
• Ultima VI: The False Prophet (1990)  

07/30/2026