Ambermoon: One Small Step for Dwarf

 

Who needs Starfield?

       

Ambermoon's story so far: The granddaughter of the hero of Amberstar sets out to uncover a new threat to the world, delivered in vague hints as her grandfather dies. As she pieces together clues and artifacts from her grandfather's old party, it seems that the source of the threat is going to be the Brotherhood of Tarbos, a monastic order dedicated to the wizard/demon whose imminent return drove the plot in Amberstar.

      

But it turns out that the Brotherhood is just a front. They couldn't care less about Tarbos. They are, instead, lizard-like invaders from another planet. They've already tricked the dwarves into building some kind of terraforming machine meant to make Lyramion more like the invaders' home planet. Then they "rewarded" the dwarves by sending them off on a flying ship to a jewel so enormous that it looks like a moon--except that it's really a forested hellscape on which the dwarves are now stranded.

   

In the last session, the party stormed the stronghold of the Brotherhood and killed its high priest. They also killed Thornahuun, the King of Hell and the father of Tar, who became "Tarbos" when he united with his father in the distant past. Apparently, when the moon on which Tarbos had been exiled crashed into Lyramion, Tar and Thornahuun were separated--Tar eventually wandering into Spannenberg, insane. The healers there imprisoned him (for his own safety and others') in the basement beneath their temple.

   

As I wound up the last session, I had found two amulets that I felt were necessary to restore Tar's sanity, but I didn't know what to do with them. Fortunately, in reviewing all my notes on the game after a long absence, I was alerted to a woman in Burnville who would repair broken jewelry. I visited her as this session began. She repaired the amulet, though angrily, as it "is the work of the devil" and has "the name of the God of Chaos!"

      

Having a space between letters lets you know it's a powerful amulet.

     

We returned to Spannenberg and showed the amulet to Tar. It caused him pain at first, but then somehow cleared up his madness. For the first time since his childhood, he was both sane and separated from the demon. He collapsed crying into a corner. "I brought so much evil, sin, and suffering to everyone . . . How can I settle the debt I have incurred. How can Lyramion ever forgive me for the wounds I have caused?" Sensing that we were about to face great danger, he offered to join the party and "dedicate [his] life to this good deed!"

     

As painful as it was to give up Nelvin, I really couldn't pass up on the opportunity to have the villain from the first game join my party in the sequel. Such is not a unique occurrence in CRPGs or fiction in general--the Fast and the Furious franchise seems to thrive on it--but it is somewhat unusual. This might be the first appearance in CRPGs. (Werdna is the first example of a previous villain coming back as a PC, but he doesn't join a "good" party.) The only other one I can think of right now is Sarevok in Throne of Bhaal.

      

Tar's full name is Tar the Dark; let's hope the sobriquet refers to his facial features. He joins at age 40 and Level 35 (two years younger and one level higher than Nelvin). His skills and attributes are actually a bit worse than Nelvin's, but he has about 25% more hit points and 12% more spell points. He also comes with every mage spell already memorized. I shifted most of Nelvin's equipment over to him and sent Nelvin back to the alchemist's tower.

     

Let's talk for a minute about the "the Dark" part of your name . . .

         

We then returned to the Brotherhood of Tarbos and to the flying ship we had discovered on our last trip. We put the Navigation Stone in the receptacle for FOREST MOON. The ship came to life, lifted off, and landed on the new planet.

     

The moment we emerged from our airship, the game told us that we encountered a nine-foot tall, bearded, red demon who snatched our broomstick, smashed it to splinters, and disappeared. This is the game's ham-handed way, I guess, of not allowing easy transportation options while on the Forest Moon. I don't know if he would have smashed the magic disc, too, as I didn't bring it. [Ed. I later read that the "red demon" is an insert for producer Erik Simon, who hated the broomstick.]

        

Some games have been clumsier about this.

         

Directly north of where we landed, just a few steps from the airship, was a walled city. As we approached, we were greeted by excited dwarves. "Your arrival is a sensation!" The dwarves explained that they arrived 20 years ago to learn that they'd been betrayed. Their promised "jewel" was instead a hot and steamy moon full of dangerous predators. Nonetheless, the leader, Kire, insisted that it be named Kire's Moon and that the first city be named Dor Kiredon. As time went on, the dwarves became divided between those who clung to the old ways and continued to see the moon as a hostile place and a younger generation, born on the moon, that strove to learn more about the plants and animals and live with them in harmony. This latter faction eventually left Dor Kiredon to form their own city of Dor Grestin. The dwarves then gave us the bad news that Navigation Stones last for one trip only, so we're now stuck on the moon, too. 

      

The town had a lot of encounter text.

      

I started exploring the town. The first place I entered was Ferrin's Smithy, a large building where I could get repairs, buy ammunition, and sell excess items. The NPCs in the building were sad and crying, and Ferrin eventually told us that his young daughter disappeared from the storage cellar. He gave us the key with the implicit hope that we might be able to do something. 

       

Some nice lighting effects in the basement, I thought.

        

I briefly considered exploring the rest of the town first, but instead I opened the door and headed downstairs. The basement was a top-down level, but it soon led to a first-person cavern beneath it. Both areas had boxes and barrels stuffed with shovels, ropes, pick-axes, crowbars, lockpicks, lanterns, and torches. I had not left these items on Lyramion, but these caches would have been helpful if I had. I also found a bottle of Ferrin's Liquor and a random Amber Stone on the floor.

       

Hmmm, that seems to be the same size and shape as the Navigation Stone.

         

The cavern area was small, and I fully explored it in a few minutes, finding nothing. Valdyn's "Map View" spell showed a corridor to the east, but none of the walls seemed to have secret doors. Some of the wall textures looked a little odd, though, and given that the game had just tried to put crowbars, shovels, and pickaxes into my hands, I decided to try these. At one wall, the using the pick-axe caused it to collapse, as if "the bricks were held together by a kind of gluey saliva."

       

Would you have thought this was anything special?

     

On the other side, I found a hole leading upward and thus had an opportunity to use a rope for the first time. I was surprised to find that they're one-use items, but "Levitate" works as a spell backup. (Most items have spell backups; I wonder why shovels, pick-axes, and crowbars do not.) In the upper area, where I had to use the pick-axe multiple times to progress, I encountered numerous pairs of beasts called "tornaks." They were clearly modeled on rancors in Star Wars. They had lots of hit points and a devastating physical attack every round, but I was able to keep up with healing. Fighting them, I realized that none of the "earth" spells from Lyramion (e.g., "Mudsling," "Rockfall," "Earthquake") work on the Forest Moon.

       

Why isn't it the "wrong world" for wind and water, too?

      

The last battle in the area had us fight three regular tornaks and a larger one called "tornakweibchen," or a female tornak. I guess they're a matriarchal species.

       

"Tornakweibchen and the three Tornaks" would be a great rock band name.

       

Another hole dropped us into a cavern absolutely full of tornaks, but fortunately they were docile. Ferrin's daughter was in the middle of the group, apparently having made friends with them. We convinced her to go home to her parents, and the monsters let us leave. (This is all told automatically in text, of course; there are no role-playing options like this in the game.)

        

Nobody sneeze.

       

Ferrin's parents were overjoyed to see her, and Ferrin gave me a magic crossbow that almost any class can use and requires no ammunition. 

   

As for the rest of Dor Kiredon:

    

• There is a little "crystal garden" showcasing treasures found in various expeditions. I don't know how they got here.

       

Why did you bring them with you?

      

• Kire's palace is enormous and ornate, suggesting the dwarves have suffered few privations during their two decades of exile. 

         

Where did they get the raw materials for this?

        

• In Kire's house, I met Storgat, the "head of the digging team at the test mine of Dor Kiredon." Apparently, some years after the dwarves arrived, they did what dwarves do and sunk a mine. The results were disappointing, just some amber and shiny rocks used for floor tiles. Lately, it's been overrun with tornaks. Kire has the key.

• Kire was happy to hear about what had happened on Lyramion recently. He mentioned that his wife, Dorina, disappeared 10 years ago, but she has recently been seen in the "swamps to the south of Dor Grestin." He gave me a message to give to her. He wouldn't even consider giving us the mine key.

• Various chests in Kire's palace held food, adventuring supplies, and basic weapons and armor.

• A dwarf named Doreb runs an inn in the center of town. He said that Brog, who visits in the evenings, might be able to tell us more about Dorina. She was apparently a talented magician.

• Donner, a dwarf from Gemstone in Amberstar and namesake of Donner's Old Labyrinth in this game, was hanging out at the inn. He gave more context on Dorina's disappearance: it happened after Kire's son, Ketnar, stormed away from home after an argument with his father.

• Darbog, another inn patron, comes from Dor Grestin. It lies to the south and west. He warned that "the forests are not exactly safe!"

• Brog, a rare dwarf mage, confirmed Dorina's talent for magic and lamented her loss.

• Multiple dwarves refer to the Forest Moon as a "compost heap."

       

At least you have plenty of liquor.

          

• At night, the town is threatened by curse wasps, annoying creatures capable of causing sleep, blindness, and madness. They suck up damage like stones  and only deliver 5 experience points!

      

Leaving Dor Kiredon, I noticed that the locator device still worked for the new planet. It showed Dor Kiredon at (180,130).  I was curious about the dimensions of the new world, so I set off on a one-way expedition to find (0,0). I was almost immediately attacked by more curse wasps. I realized after a few of these pointless battles (honestly, why are the experience rewards so small?) that you can see these random encounters in the exploration window. There's a barely-visible symbol in the squares that have the encounters, but it pulses on and off, making it a bit easier to see. I wonder if this was true of the locations that had outdoor encounters on Lyramion, and I just didn't notice.

        

Kudos to the developers for making the place look alien.

     

The alien landscape had interesting flora and fauna. There were numerous bulbous or tentacled plants, giant mushrooms, and twirling masses of vines. In addition to curse wasps, monsters included gizzeks, which look like giant grasshoppers, and also offer virtually no experience for some relatively tough battles. We crossed swamp and all got poisoned. Eventually, without finding any dungeons or habitations, we made it to (1,1) which crossed immediately to (300,300). So it's only a little smaller than Lyramion and does seem to make use of all the space.

     

Reloading, I explored south and west, looking for Dor Grestin. I found it surrounded by cylindrical stalks that looked more like plants than anything manufactured. The inside of the town continued this theme. The dwarves had clearly tried to adapt themselves to the planet rather than the opposite, creating a town with plants and trees for boundaries, natural pools of water, and little mushrooms that scurried away at our approach. The few buildings were made of wood rather than stone.

          

What happens when a bunch of hippies build a town.

       

Encounters:

    

• The first NPC we spoke with, a dwarf named Darla, had already heard of us somehow. She mentioned the town leader, Ketnar, and suggested we speak to him at the Council Hall.

• A dwarf woman told us that their healer, Asrub, is the best healer among the dwarven people. He knows a lot about valuable herbs.

• In the northeast corner of town, I found Asrub in his healing shop. He said he prefers herbs and natural processes to magic. One of his patients survived a tornak encounter at the mine in Dor Kiredon. When asked about HERBS, he mentioned that many of the plants on the moon have a permanent effect on the body or spirit.

        

I thought it was cute that the healer had a poster with a diagram of the body.

       

• A dwarf named Gorban was sleeping in one of Asrub's beds. He told me that he discovered that tornak's seal passages behind them; I guess maybe I was supposed to get this hint before rescuing Ferrin's daughter.  

• An inn called "The Nest."

• A food shop called "The Treasures of the Forest."

• In the Council Hall, I met Leira, Ketnar's wife, before Ketnar himself. She told me that Ketnar misses his parents. The game's tunnel vision when it comes to dialogue is reflected in the fact that Leira has something to say when you ask her about KIRE, but when you ask her about KETNAR, she gives the default response: "I don't know anything about that."

• Ketnar was sitting on a throne surrounded by trees. He reiterated the philosophy of his city: cooperate with nature rather than fight it. He wouldn't say much about his missing mother, but he was clearly worried about her. When I showed him the letter his father had written his mother, he relented and said the password SCHNISM would open the way to her.

       

Is that really how you're supposed to sit on that?

     

• A chef in Ketnar's kitchen, Drongeb, sold herb pies.

• Randor's Shop sold giant eggs and various plants from the moon as well as ropes and potions. Unfortunately, I didn't bring much money from Lyramion. I sold some minor scrolls to get enough money to try each of the herbs. It appears that Fragrant Herbs increase strength, Glowing Blossoms speed, and Sparking Mushrooms magic resistance. But they only increase the current value, not the maximum, and most of my characters were at or (because of equipment) above maximum in all these values anyway.

    

As I wrap up, I'm headed out of Dor Grestin to find Dorina. Can we safely say that this is the Ambermoon? Or does green not describe "amber" any more than red does?

And since "Forest Moon" has put Endor permanently in our heads: Does the "Forest Moon of Endor" mean a) the forest moon called Endor, or b) the forest moon that orbits the planet of Endor?

Time so far: 68 hours

m199h: New Findings Both Solve and Deepen Mysteries

 

The best evidence we currently have on "m199h." This cover page comes from a sheaf of documents printed in 1976 or 1977 by a player who played "m199h."

         

This entry serves as an update to information that I previously offered in my entry "Everything We Know About 1970s Mainframe RPGs We Can No Longer Play."

   

Regular readers and aficionados of CRPG history know the basic backstory: The first known CRPGs were created on the PLATO educational platform hosted by the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. They include The Dungeon ("pedit5"), The Game of Dungeons ("dnd"), Orthanc, Moria, Oubliette, and Avatar. The earliest of them started to appear within a year of the first tabletop edition of Dungeons & Dragons (1974). These games were written furtively by students, using lesson names that disguised that they were games. When found, the earliest of them were mercilessly deleted by system administrators.

 

A screen shot from The Dungeon ("pedit5") which ultimately survived the purge.

        

For years, a game with the lesson name of "m199h" has been mentioned by various authors as the legendary lost "first" CRPG. The primary source seems to be Dirk Pellett's history of the PLATO RPGs on Cyber1: "It is 'common knowledge' that someone created the very first dungeon simulation game in a lesson called 'm199h.'" Similarly, Brian Dear wrote in The Friendly Orange Glow (2017), a history of PLATO: "Legend has it that an earlier gamer, with the equally obscure name of 'm119h' [sic], pre-dates Pedit5, but no one remembers who wrote it or when exactly it appeared."

    

Dirk Pellett's history of PLATO CRPGs. I now believe "common knowledge" is wrong.

          

Two major things happened over the summer:

   

• A PLATO developer who had played "m199h" sent me a handful of photographs related to the game.

• Rubén, our resident Explorador de RPG, launched an exhaustive search of the PLATO text files and did his best to track down every person mentioned in any of them.

       

The result of this new material can be summarized as follows: Despite what earlier sources have claimed, "m199h" is probably not the first CRPG; that honor almost certainly goes to Reginald Rutherford's The Dungeon ("pedit5"). Instead, "m199h" (which had the actual name of Dungeon) was likely a 1976 remake and expansion of "pedit5" that had lofty ambitions but was deleted before they were realized.

    

For evidence, we begin with documents shared with me by Don Gillies, a software engineer whose father, Donald Bruce Gillies, was a professor at the university. Don didn't attend the university until he went for graduate degrees in the late 1980s, but he had access to PLATO via terminals at Urbana High School. In 1977, he wrote Swords & Sorcery, which I covered a few years ago.

    

Once connected to the system, Gillies discovered "m199h" and loved it. Knowing that it was in danger of deletion, he printed as much of the documentation as he could and made graph paper drawings of monster images. He kept these documents for years and recently photographed them and shared those photographs with me. He has since also posted them in a comment on The Data-Driven Gamer blog.

      

Gillies' recreation of some of the graphics from "m199h."

        

You can see the full album of images here (I will repost them in my own album if that link goes down). If you enable comments, you can see my initial reactions to some of them and Gillies' reply. There are several problems with the album:

     

• The only evidence we have that any of them come from a game with the lesson name "m199h" is Gillies' own handwritten note on the cover page; however, this note was made in 1976 or 1977 and was thus unlikely to be completely inaccurate.

• Gillies' own notes say that some of the images are not from "m199h" but are from the also-lost "Think" series of games that inspired Gillies' own Swords & Sorcery. Some may also be from the lost Pits of Baradur.

• Many of the images specifically seem to duplicate maps and instructions from "pedit5" (The Dungeon).

      

The game's help file confirms its name as Dungeon.

         

That last point seems damning, and at first I thought that Gillies had simply mixed up the games. But over time, I became more persuaded that these images duplicate (or near-duplicate) The Dungeon precisely because "m199h" was a copy of The Dungeon. Specifically, I now believe the following about "m199h":

       

• The game's actual name was Dungeon.

• The game played like "pedit5." A single character entered a large dungeon, fought monsters, cast spells, and collected treasures.

• Its monster list included griffins, harpies, demons, dragons, deaths, wizards, werewolves, dwarves, thieves, Spirits of Christmas, vampires, dwarf wizards, medusas, cockatrices, ogres, goblins, hobgoblins, zombies, nazguls, and wraiths. Many of these shared the same graphics. There may also have been some punny monsters with names like "hisnia" and "yourgraine" (after hernia and migraine).

• The character would have been a combination fighter/magic-user/cleric/thief, just like "pedit5."

• Its spell list promised every spell available in the Greyhawk supplement (March 1975) to the D&D rules, whereas "pedit5" only offered about a third of them. Whether all of these spells were actually programmed is uncertain; "pedit5" had listed more than actually worked, with the yet-to-be-programmed spells identified in the instructions with an asterisk.

          

A spell list from the game that Gillies identifies as "m199h." These are identical to the Level 3 cleric and magic-user spells offered in the Greyhawk supplement to Dungeons & Dragons.

     

• "m199h" introduced teleporters and chest traps, both of which "pedit5" had lacked.

• "m199h" removed the framing backstory that "pedit5" had offered; the only goal is to collect treasures and experience and retire in the Hall of Fame.

      

The most compelling images are the monster lists and spell lists, neither of which precisely match any known PLATO game; Gillies insists that they both come from "m199h." Another good piece of evidence is the page titled "Helplesson for Dungeon," which I thought at first was an early version of "pedit5" but am now inclined to think is from "m199h" and is later rather than earlier, since the spell list is expanded and there are new mechanics mentioned in the instructions.

        

Beholders did not exist in "pedit5" but apparently did in "m199h."

       

The game's map remains a mystery. Gillies' album is full of maps that cannot possibly be from the same game. A couple, depicting a single-level dungeon, are identical to "pedit5" (one is rotated). One of them has a core identical to "pedit5" but different edges, as it shrinks "pedit5's" 30 x 30 dungeon into 20 x 20. Several of the maps depict multi-leveled dungeons with smaller levels. 

     

Perhaps the "m199h" map. The "pedit5" map was more than twice as large but featured many of the same room layouts.

            

I believe we are on firmer ground with the dates. All the existing stories about "m199h" say that it was quickly identified and deleted, suggesting that it existed for a blink in between the appearance of tabletop Dungeons & Dragons in 1974 and the release of "pedit5" in 1975. But whether Gillies is correct about all of the images or not, he clearly encountered "m199h" at a time he was interested in "remaking" it, and he is relatively sure that wouldn't have been until late 1976 or early 1977. Again, this timeline better supports the notion that "m199h" was intended as a follow-up to "pedit5."

 

Finally, we have a random collection of anecdotes. Josh Tabin, author of Camelot (1982), has always contended that "m199h" and "pedit5" were the same game; he reiterated this belief in a 3 September email to El Explorador. Don Gillies called around a bit after sharing the images with me and sent me opinions from several contemporary students that "pedit5" was the first PLATO CRPG.

     

After Don Gillies sent me the images, I shared them with El Explorador de RPG, Nathan Mahney at CRPG Adventures, Ahab at the Data-Driven Gamer, and RPG scholar Matt Barton, looking for confirmation of my initial reactions. Each had something to offer, but Rubén ("El Explorador") really took it and ran. He is planning a multi-part account of his process and findings on his own blog; suffice here to say that he mined the PLATO notes files for everything they had and embarked on a summer-long campaign to track down every PLATO game developer and player still on this Earth. In the process, he discovered the origins of a commonly-used graphics set, confirmed some important dates for games we already knew about, discovered tantalizing hints about additional CRPG authors, and conclusively dispelled some existing claims about the origins of both "pedit5" and "m199h." I'll let you read the rest of his fascinating coverage for more on his findings.

     

It was always too much to hope that we'd ever see "m199h" in action. I had hoped we could at least identify the author. It's not impossible that one of the many people that Rubén tried to reach will eventually get in touch. Until then, I am satisfied that the preponderance of the evidence grants the title of "first CRPG" to "pedit5."

Serpent Isle: Won!

 

Two out of three of you tried to kill me. Multiple times.

          

It's been a while, so let's recap: The Avatar, Iolo, Dupre, and Shamino came to Serpent Isle to spring an obvious trap. A search of the evil Batlin's belongings had revealed a curiously-preserved message from the Guardian instructing Batlin to meet him here. Coincidentally or not, Iolo's wife, Gwenno, had also traveled here during the events of The Black Gate, just to explore.

   

Serpent Isle was once called the Lands of Danger and Despair (Ultima) but had been severed from the rest of Sosaria/Britannia during the cataclysms that followed the destruction of Mondain's gem after the events of the first game. The isolated residents, later called Ophidians, divided into three factions that worshiped the serpents of Chaos, Order, and Balance--three primal entities of ambiguous origin who hung out in some place called The Void. Lord British and the rest of Sosaria/Britannia must have been aware of them because of the ubiquitous serpent symbology found throughout the series. During the events of Exodus: Ultima III, Exodus somehow kidnapped the Great Earth Serpent (the serpent of Balance) to guard the entrance to his fortress, which strikes me as overdoing it. The loss of the serpent of Balance triggered a war between the forces of Order and Chaos. Order won, massacring its rivals, and even managing to split the serpent of Chaos into three evil forces, the Banes of Chaos, which they imprisoned in their three Temples of Order. After the war, the people of Order fell into a terminal funk and decided to depart the Serpent Isle through the Wall of Lights. Every faction had its own Wall of Lights, activated with a blackrock serpent specific to its faction.

       

A book near the endgame recaps the plot.

        

After the events of Exodus, a group of malcontents upset with Lord British decided to emigrate from Britannia to the Serpent Isle, finding it deserted. They set up the cities of Monitor (fighters), Moonshade (mages), and Fawn (no particular class, but obsessed with Beauty). Several hundred years later, Batlin arrived and put his plan into motion. The Avatar and his party arrived on Batlin's heels and began their search for him. Our search led us to solve various problems in the three cities while Batlin stole a blackrock serpent and freed the three Banes from their prison. He then had to hunt down the three people that the Banes possessed--Cantra, Gwenno, and an unknown third person--and kill them so he could collect them in soul gems, although I'm not sure why he couldn't have done that when he freed them in the first place.

   

Eventually, the Avatar and company encountered Batlin as he was about to open the Wall of Lights in the Chaos Temple, but using the Order Serpent. (I still don't know what Batlin's goal was here, other than a vague belief that he would somehow accumulate power to rival the Guardian's.) Because of the use of the wrong serpent, the ritual went wrong and Batlin was killed. The Banes managed to escape again, this time inhabiting Dupre, Iolo, and Shamino, who went off to kill 90% of the population of Serpent Isle. The Avatar had to chase them down, kill them, collect the Banes in three new soul gems, and have them resurrected. He then had to clean their souls of the taint of the banes with the waters of the temples of the balancing virtues.

       

This guy asks this question literally every time you see him.

     

With Batlin dead, Gwenno resurrected and cleansed, and the party all together again, my original quests were solved. But the imbalance--manifested in lightning storms and a strange sleeping sickness--was affecting Britannia as well as the Serpent Isle, so I still had to solve that by reuniting the Banes of Chaos into the serpent of Chaos, a process that required a significant power source to fuel. That power source: the ashes of my late-departed friend Dupre, who sacrificed himself in my place. I finished the reunification at the end of the last session, but I guess that didn't completely solve the problem, because for some reason I still have to go to Sunrise Isle. 

         

This is, at least, according to the Chaos Serpent who tried to kill me.

      

Before starting Serpent Isle in February, I had last played it in the late 1990s. I remembered elements of it, but mis-remembered a lot more. For instance, I thought it was the demon Arcadion, escaping the Blackrock Sword, who caused all the devastation to Serpent Isle. I also thought I remembered an episode in which I had to fight him after he escaped. (It turns out that you never see him again, which I find rather ominous.) I thought Dupre's sacrifice came much earlier in the game. More important, I remember some episodes in which I literally rounded the island multiple times looking for anyone to talk with to move the plot forward, something I didn't experience here, likely because of better note-taking.

    

This session begins as we arrive at the Temple of Balance, which is apparently on Sunrise Isle, but you never see the outdoors, so it could be anywhere. My party members start complaining about being cold. I try to ignore it, but the temple takes so long that I eventually have to warp back to the Dark Path hub and sort through all of the junk I've left there to find warm hats and boots amidst all the gold, gems, armor pieces, and magic items. I don't find enough, because my characters keep complaining about the cold all through the endgame.

         

The next person to find his way here is going to be able to take over the world.

      

We arrive in the middle of an enormous temple with doors to the north and south and three scales and three pedestals in front of each door. A nearby book announces this as the Temple of Balance. "Only he who hath achieved balance within the temple may be free to find greater balance on the path to the Grand Shrine," the book warns. To move forward, we will need to "use the fire of chaos and the ice of order to restore balance."

   

There are glass serpents of fire and ice all over the place. Putting one each on the north scales and one each on the two south scales causes six objects to apparate onto each of the pedestals: a torch, an abacus, a heart, a rose, a chain, and a dagger.

      

The first of many "balancing" exercises in the game's final act.

      

What follows is a pointlessly long quest in which we have to open the north and south doors and find our way through a huge maze to six little shrines, three exemplifying the virtues of Chaos (Emotion, Enthusiasm, and Tolerance) and three exemplifying the virtues of Order (Ethicality, Discipline, and Logic). There's no reason the shrines couldn't have been rooms immediately off the main temple except that, Great Serpent forbid, the game might be over in 111 hours instead of 113. As you might imagine, each of the six objects that appeared on the pedestals is associated with one of the virtues, although some of the associations are a bit obscure. I get why the heart is Emotion and the abacus is Logic, but what does a chain have to do with Tolerance, or a dagger with Discipline?

      

A book tries to make sense of it, but these seem like after-the-fact explanations.

       

In any event, the goal is not to put the shrine's symbol on its altar but to put the symbol of the balancing virtue on its altar; to wit:

    

• Emotion is balanced by the abacus of Logic to create Rationality
• Enthusiasm is balanced by the dagger of Discipline to create Dedication
• Tolerance is balanced by the torch of Ethicality to create Harmony
• Ethicality is balanced by the chain of Tolerance to create Harmony
• Discipline is balanced by the rose of Enthusiasm to create Dedication
• Logic is balanced by the heart of Emotion to create Rationality

     

If the objects are a bit mysterious, so are the layouts of the shrines. I get why a tidy garden might represent Discipline, but why does a desert scene suggest Enthusiasm, and what about a swamp suggests Tolerance? For the record, these are the scenes:

   

Emotion: A barren dirt scene with a bunch of dead trees and a guy crucified on a cross.

       

Ah, yes, this area just screams, "Emotion."

     

• Enthusiasm: A desert with dead trees, weeds, and a beast's skull.
• Tolerance: A swamp.
• Ethicality: A kind of seascape with a sandbar jutting into it.
• Discipline: An ordered garden. My favorite part about it is there's a hidden chest with six torches in it. My headcanon is that it originally contained a pumpkin.

      

The party finds the last of the missing items.

      

• Logic: An empty void. I get this one, I guess.

     

I try to balance logic with the torch of Ethicality and get attacked for it.

       

It's impossible to mess up the puzzle because if you put the right item on the pedestal in each shrine, it disappears and one of the party members yells, "That did it!" If you put the wrong item on the pedestal, nothing happens in most places; some enemies appear in others.

    

When we've placed our last object, a book appears on a pedestal between four stone obelisks. It tells us to read it again when we stand between "the great pillars." These pillars are found just beyond the northern doors in the arrival temple. "Thou art worthy!" the book says when we read it there. Two bridges of fire appear, one blue, one red, leading us across a chasm to the final area. 

     

      

The final area nearly broke me. It is such an unwelcome slog of puzzles after such a long game, and I honestly nearly looked up a walkthrough to just get me through it even though none of it is very hard. 

  

The final area is, I guess, another temple. There are too many things called "temples" in this game. You find yourself having to make distinctions between "a temple of order" and The Temple of Order. This one starts in a room with two pedestals, one red, one blue, both with plaques on the front that call for symbols of Chaos and Order, respectively. Two coiled serpents are on nearby tables, but of course that's too easy. 

    

This is what I'm going to say to Irene when I have to open a window in the middle of January to counterbalance the blazing wood stove.

         

There are a bunch of chambers off to both sides, and on the level above, and . . . I can't even bring myself to finish this narrative. Honestly, I was planning to post this on Friday but I've had such writer's block from this one section that it's going to be more like Sunday. If you really want the blow-by-blow, watch a video or something. Suffice to say that I have to find various gems and cubes for at least three pedestals, and finding them takes like an hour of going up and down stairs, through doors and teleporters, opening chests, pulling levers, pushing buttons, casting "Telekinesis" and "Dispel Field," finding objects in one place to use in another place, and so on. There's an "escape room" quality to the entire episode, which isn't so bad on its own, but this is a bit like coming to the end of a 10-year prison sentence and finding that you still need to solve an escape room to go home.

      

This kind of thing.

     

When everything is in place, a stairway to a teleporter has emerged over what was previously a void. A scroll lies on the teleporter. It warns me that:

    

• To "commune with the Serpent," I will need the Earrings of the Serpent.

• To "be at one with Balance," I will need all three blackrock serpents.

• To enter the Grand Shrine of Balance, I'll need to be wearing the Armour of the Serpent, carrying the Staff of the Serpent, and wearing the Crown of the Serpent.

   

It's a miracle that I actually have all of these items and haven't lost one of them at some point along the way. I can imagine that some players must reach this point missing one or more of them.

       

"Wait . . . What's the Crown of the Serpent?" -- some poor bastard after 120 hours of gameplay.

         

I don all of the items and head through the teleporter, finding myself in a room in which all of the symbols of the virtues that I used in the previous area's puzzles (abacus, rose, etc.) are resting on pedestals. I notice to my alarm that the rest of the party didn't follow me through the teleporter.

   

An image of the Great Serpent appears and instructs me to lay the staff, armor, and crown on the altar at the north end of the room. Each sparkles as I place them on the table, and then the Eye of Order suddenly appears. Now, I already have the Eye of Chaos from the last session, but why does putting the artifacts of Balance on the altar cause the Eye of Order to appear? In any event, the image of the serpent declares me "worthy to bear the emblems of the Great Hierophant of Balance." I am automatically teleported back out to the temple and my friends. A large wooden door that was previously locked now opens.

            

You say that like you've seen it before.

          

On the other side is the Ultimate Final Grand Temple. As we approach, an image of the Serpent of Order appears: "Dost thou think thou canst chain the Serpent of Order within a prison of Balance? Never! Servants of Order, attack!" This causes eight "magical ice creatures" to gate in and attack us. I kill them all with one casting of "Mass Death."

       

Thus ends the final battle.

      

Before the statue of the Great Serpent lie repositories for all three blackrock staves, and it takes me about 10 minutes to drop them exactly where the game wants me to drop them so they'll actually go into the receptacles. "Now place the Eyes of the Serpent before my statue," the Great Earth Serpent demands. I place the two eyes on the altar.

         

The Serpent comes to life. But why?

         

There are lightnings and flashes, and then the statue starts wagging back and forth. "Slay me! Slay me with the Serpent Sword and send my soul back into the Void," the serpent demands. I do as he demands. The Avatar is then blasted with fire and lightning a few times, and the screen goes black.

    

The endgame cinematic shows the Avatar floating in a void, wearing the staff, armor, and crown that he no longer has. The Order, Chaos, and Balance serpents come together to form a kind of caduceus, but with the rigidly straight Balance Serpent occupying the position of the staff or wand in traditional depictions. 

        

Great! Can I go somewhere where I can breathe again now?

      

"There," the Great Earth Serpent says, "we are done. Balance is restored. Serpent Isle, Britannia, your Earth, the entire universe, are all saved. Worry not about your friend Dupre. He is one with us, and content. Goodbye, Avatar. We thank you."

        

The Void apparently has ale and wenches.

       

Before the serpents can execute what I'm sure is a sensible plan to send me home, the voice of the Guardian breaks in: "Well, well, well, Avatar. You have managed to thwart me once again. By restoring balance where once chaos reigned, you have saved your accursed world. But now here you are, poised at the edge of Eternity. Where would you go? Back to Britannia? To Earth?" A giant red hand emerges from the darkness behind the Avatar. "Perhaps you would join me in another world altogether? We do have a score to settle!" The hand closes into a fist and carries the Avatar away to Ultima VIII: Pagan. Roll credits.

        

Do we? I'd honestly forgotten about you.

      

A few thoughts on the ending:

   

• Why isn't this area of space riddled with the bodies of the followers of Order who went through the Wall of Lights after the Imbalance War? Did they somehow "swim" to another planet?

• Why is the Great Earth Serpent needed at all? Why aren't the Order and Chaos serpents coming together balance enough? Or, to put it another way, if Balance is its own entity, what purpose do Order and Chaos serve? What would have happened if Exodus had kidnapped one of them instead?

           

         

• Balance is a nice sentiment, but it's boring in practice. If not for imbalance, the universe wouldn't exist at all. I'd like to see a game that acknowledges the need for, as Oscar Wilde put it, "everything in moderation, including moderation." We've had games that have used ankhs and caducei and taijitu as symbols; I want a game that uses a bell curve as its guiding symbology. "Be pretty much normal 68% of the time, but one day out of twenty, go wild," would be its message.

• Why was the Great Earth Serpent's soul not in the void in the first place? How did it get into the statue that I had to slay? 

      

       

• What does the Guardian mean by, "where once chaos reigned"? Chaos was destroyed by Order. Order reigned. Or is he just using "chaos" as a synonym for "imbalance"?

• I'm glad that I didn't know that the fate of "the entire universe" rested on my success or failure. If the Serpents are that important, then how was a computer able to kidnap one of them in the first place? 

• I've always thought that the Virtues of the Avatar were a better-constructed system than the Ophidian Virtues, but that was before I went to the Void and saw the reality of the three Serpents for myself. Truth, Love, and Courage are just Some Guy's Idea, whereas Order, Chaos, and Balance are objective reality.

• The idea of a giant hand appearing in space is as silly here as it was in Star Trek. If the Guardian is this powerful, how have I been able to stop his plans at all?

    

Any angst I feel over these questions, however, is overshadowed by a much more annoying realization: I never used the damned glass sword.

   

Final time: 112 hours