Game 537: The Power Stones of Ard II: The Five Towers of Trafa-Zar (1990)

 

We were just talking about that. That's two obscure references in one title. What do you think?

     

The Power Stones of Ard II: The Five Towers of Trafa-Zar

United States

Three C's Projects (developer and publisher)

Released in 1990 for Tandy Color Computer 3

Date Started: 10 January 2025

        

I had curious feelings when I saw this game coming up on my list. Its predecessor, The Power Stones of Ard: The Quest for the Spirit Stone, was one of the most maddening games I've played for this blog. I got stuck and quit it about 15 times, but I kept finding (often aided by LanHawk) the next clue needed to move forward, if only for a few steps. But by the end, I had to admit that it was mostly fair (the more arcane things the game wants you to do are clued, if only obscurely) and competently programmed by a developer (Bill Cleveland of Hamlet, North Carolina) who had some original ideas. The Tandy Color Computer 3 was not exactly a well-served platform when it comes to CRPGs, and Ard would have given contemporary players a satisfying, if difficult, experience.

  

The manual for the sequel retcons the original story a bit. In the original, the three Power Stones were deliberately created to fight evil; in the sequel, we're told their creation was accidental, that they were physical representations of "good energies" that the wizards of the time were trying to cast. The original says they were never employed against the evil, that the wizards lost their nerve and fled to different areas, each taking a Power Stone with him. This game says they used the stones to vanquish the evil and then hid the stones in "great strongholds" afterwards. Whatever the case, this game concerns one of those strongholds, where the evil wizard Trafa-Zar keeps the Mind Stone. He can't use it himself—he can't even enter the room where it's kept—but he can stop anyone else from getting to it.

   

The sequel offers a revised interface and a vastly different setting, all indoors.

     

The PC is surprisingly not the same character from the first game but rather an apprentice of the good wizard Niz. Niz has learned that Trafa-Zar can be defeated by a staff that has absorbed some of the Mind Stone's energy. He asks the PC to help him prepare the magical powder for a teleportation spell that will take him (Niz) to the fortress to confront Trafa-Zar. But a cat jumps up on the table while the apprentice is preparing the formula. It overturns on the floor, activates, and sends the Level 1 apprentice to the fortress instead.

   

Character creation has you choose a name, race (human or elf), and sex for the character. The game then rolls five sets of values for strength, intelligence, dexterity, and constitution from a range of roughly 2-30, although there are modifications for race. You can select one of the five sets. Health points are derived from constitution and spell points from intelligence, and the game chooses a character portrait for you from a small library of them.

   

If you don't like any of these, you have to restart the program.

     

After a long loading time (loading times in general are excruciating), you find yourself in the pitch dark in the first tower of Trafa-Zar, carrying only a dagger, which you want to put immediately I)n Hand. This opening moment feels a bit like Dungeons of Daggorath (1982).

      

The game keeps some of the conventions of the first game while jettisoning others. The most significant change is that the sequel takes place indoors (at least, so far) in a 3-D view; the original had outdoor and indoor areas and used a top down "view," but the views were really just static screens that appeared as you moved from node to node. I guess the same is true here to an extent, but you can enter each square from multiple directions and see an appropriate image from that direction, so it has some of the same DNA as Wizardry or Dungeon Master. Icons along the top of the screen are highlighted as you cast various navigation spells.

    

The opening square, with my dagger in hand and my "Light" spell going.

     

Preserved from the original is the use of every letter on the keyboard for one command or another, including A)ttack, C)limb, J)ump, K)neel, M)ove, S)ay, and Y)ank/pull. The player encounters numerous puzzles that involve identifying the right command or set of commands to use in the appropriate place. It also has a strange movement system (although not unique) in which you turn and move as part of the same action. You cannot just turn.

   

Enemies do not appear in the environment; combat comes along suddenly when you walk into occupied squares. Enemies can move; once they become aware of you, they chase you around the level. The composition of each level is randomized (from a pool of monsters of appropriate difficulty) when the level first loads, but after that the actual number of monsters on a level is fixed, and when you clear it, they don't (at least, so far) return.

        

Getting attacked by four toad warriors at once.

       

When you meet an enemy party, the game tells you how many foes you face. You only have a second before they start attacking, so you either want to flee (by hitting a movement key) or start pounding A)ttack. Combat timing is . . . odd. I can't quite tell if it's real-time, or if it's turn-based, but the game registers a "pass" if you don't act within a certain (very short) time. (Again, there's a bit of a Daggorath feel here.) Either way, you really want to lay into the attack key. When enemies go, they all get to attack at once, so the more of them you can clear in the opening seconds of combat, the better. You can also cast spells here, but a Level 1 player doesn't really have enough spell points for offensive spells yet.

       

Bill Cleveland is a member of the "pig-nosed orcs" faction.

          

The game has 20 spells (to the first one's 9), and you have access to all of them at the beginning, although you don't have enough spell points for most of them. The five exploration spells ("Magic Shield," "Light," "Detect Door," "Detect Life," and "Direction") cost an initial bunch of points (from 3 for "Light" to 50 for "Magic Shield") and then continue to sap your spell points every so often as long as they remain active. Other spells (e.g., "Lightning," "Hold," "Knock," "Healing") just have a fixed cost. Spells are cast by hitting their appropriate numbers or CTRL and their appropriate numbers.

    

Unlike the first game, there's no permadeath here. You can Q)uit and save any time you want, although the game won't let you do it in combat or if there's an enemy hot on your trail. Once a level is clear, or you're at least a few squares away from an enemy, you can choose W)izard's meditation to restore your spell points, which you can use to restore hit points. Sleeping (with the "Z") key restores lost strength. Both "W" and "Z" are risky in areas with enemies still active because if you get caught in a vulnerable moment, you die instantly.

      

If the rest of the game is like the first tower, it is small, linear, and predictable, albeit with challenging puzzles. The five levels I experienced were all 5 x 5, each with four or five parties of monsters like goblins, orcs, trolls, and toad warriors. Each had a puzzle that required solving before I could get to the next level. The monsters are hard, and I restarted the game a couple of times to try different combinations of statistics. On my second pass, I got unlucky with the number of toad warriors on Level 2, and I couldn't kill them all. 

       

The game's first five levels.

         

Level 1 has mostly goblins, one of whom drops a short sword (to replace the starting dagger). There's a lever on one wall next to a sign that says ,"Earth and Water." If you pull the lever, you get dropped into quicksand and die instantly.

   

The level is completely open except for a single square in the northeast corner with a locked door. A square along the north wall notes that the ceiling is transparent and shimmering. You have to cast "Knock" to open the door. Inside, you find a bed and a trunk with a rusty lock. You have to B)reak the lock on the trunk to O)pen it and G)et its contents: a belt that increases your armor class by 2. You have to X)amine the bed to note that the mattress is extra springy, G)et it, haul it to the room with the shimmering ceiling, D)rop it, and J)ump on it. It's not a hard puzzle in concept, but it took me a while to get all the commands right and also to get used to the game's conventions. If it points out something particular, like a mattress, it's never just for flavor.

      

Overcoming the first challenge.

     

You come up through the floor on Level 2 and can't get back down. Enemies are a bit harder; in addition to goblins, you get orcs and toad warriors. One of them drops a red potion, which increases your might for a time. There's another lever on an east wall that says, "Earth and Fire," and if you pull it (technically, Y)ank it), lava flows into the room and kills you. A western wall has a brown "E" painted on it, and I never figured out what that was.

    

I'm starting to distrust levers.

      

The level appears at first to only be 5 x 4, but the bottom row is hidden behind a secret door that can be revealed with the "Detect Door" spell or just by walking into it. You want to avoid just walking into most walls, though, because you take a point of damage if you're wrong.

     

Note the secret door outlined in blue.

     

One of the squares behind the secret door has a black potion and a green scroll. The black potion restores all your attributes; more on that in a bit. I haven't read the green scroll yet.

     

I never found anything to do with the tapestries, which worries me.

       

An archway has words over it that read, "Show harmony by actions, then word." Two steps beyond is a room with a guardian who does not attack. If you try to attack him, you don't do any damage, and he destroys you. K)neeling before him gives you a sense that he's good. It took me a while to figure out how to operationalize the message. I tried N)odding at him, S)aying a variety of things, and giving him a variety of things. I was almost about to wrap up the entry here when I realized that I could "show harmony" by dropping my weapons. As for what to say, the image of the guardian himself made it clear.

      

VICTORY, of course.

         

Once I got it right, he opened a secret door and shoved me into a room with no exits except a ladder to the next level.

   

At some point on dungeon Level 2, I leveled up, reaching character Level 2. You get so many new spell points with each level increase that a lot of new options become available to you. This was good because I reached (dungeon) Level 3 with no weapons and lots of tough enemies, including large packs of giant fleas who sap dexterity with every hit. Your hands aren't very effective as weapons unless you also cast "Augment" for 5 spell points. It can be cast up to three times, each one building on the previous, making you a lot deadlier in combat no matter what weapon you're using. It lasts for a while, too, and I don't see any good reason to not always have it on. Unfortunately, unlike the exploration spells, there's no visual representation of it, so you don't really know when it disappears.

        

My least favorite enemy so far.

     

I emerged in the lower left corner. It was another 5 x 5, but with each of the corners hidden behind a secret door. A lever on the south wall read "EARTH," and expecting some other horrid death, I saved and then pulled it. Instead of killing me, it produced a diamond.

   

The northwest room had a barrel full of oil and a bone. The northeast had a battle axe and a clay tablet. The southeast had a hole in the ceiling, but it was too high to reach. There was a stone block in the room next to it, but it was too heavy to M)ove. I'll let you muse on the possible solution to that problem.

   

In the meantime, the clay tablet had this message on the front: "MTV QBFRKP M RDHRRNG JBC M KDZFM." The back promised, "Whom soever that breaks the code shall hold the key." I couldn't break the code. I tried for a while. I don't believe it's a straight cryptogram, and I tried it forwards and backwards. Lacking any vowels, it can't be an anagram. But cryptography isn't my strength, so maybe one of you can come up with something. In any event, I figured out how to leave the level without it, and even got a silver key in the process, but it could be referring to a different key or a later puzzle.

    

Oh, right. Air sharks appeared at some point.

      

Level 4 had a statue of a bird with the message "TURN BACK EVIL AND SPEAK IT." This is a classic crypto-crossword clue, and the answer was to S)ay LIVE. The bird came to life, flew into a hidden opening, and came back with a wand that says "BOLT" on it. I haven't had a chance to use it yet.

     

A lever on the north wall read "EARTH AND WIND," and pulling it caused a sandstorm that killed me. I guess maybe only the single-element levers are safe. A room in the center of the level had a statue of a dog with an open mouth. I intuited immediately that the solution to the puzzle was to give him the bone from Level 3, but again, it took a while to figure out how the game wanted me to do that. Simply H)anding it to him didn't work; neither did D)ropping it or P)utting it on the dog. The "Put" command always asks where you want to put the thing. It turns out you have to specify MOUTH. This causes a secret door to open behind him. It has a coin on the floor that you have to throw (using the V)olley command) into a slot, which magically teleports you to the next level.

   

Finally, Level 5 starts off seeming like a 3 x 3 level, but of course there's a secret door to the outer rim. The inner side has a pedestal glowing with a magic light and a picture on the wall of a man with a scar on his cheek, a black eye, and a missing tooth. I couldn't figure out anything to do with either of them. In the area beyond the secret door is a square with a riddle:

         

You can't make them all impossible, after all.

      

The answer was painfully obvious, and saying it transports you to the second tower, but I kept my save from before the transport while I try to figure out anything to do with the pedestal or painting.

   

Miscellaneous notes:

    

• Reloading is bugged. I often get the wrong character (a default character named Irac) or a weird mélange of the two, where the character is named "Chester" but has different stats and a different portrait than what I saved. I've thus been mostly saving and reloading with emulator save states, which is always an iffy thing to rely on in the long-term. 

• The game tracks both maximum values and current values for your attributes. Current strength occasionally drops a point from combat. Current dexterity was damaged by those fleas. Current constitution just drops periodically for apparently no reason; the manual says that food will restore it. Sleep restores strength. I don't know what restores dexterity except the single black potion I found, which restores all attributes once. I drank it on Level 5, before a bunch of fleas got me again, and I'm worried about when I'll find another.

     

My inventory late in the session.

    

• There's an encumbrance system, but I don't know when it becomes a problem.

• You can X)amine any object, including inventory, to get a brief description of it. I always like this.

     

It's not much, but I still like it.

      

So far, I've enjoyed Trafa-Zar. It's been challenging but fair, if a bit too linear. However, I have a feeling of dread that I'm going to run up against a puzzle eventually that I simply can't figure out, and the game is obscure enough that I don't think there are any online hints to help. I don't want to get to the point where I'm inspecting program code, as I did with its predecessor. I'll try to keep a sense of optimism.

   

Time so far: 3 hours

 

Betrayal at Krondor: Completely Irrational

 

James, displaying a talent for extreme sarcasm.

      

At the end of the last entry, I expressed a desire to start wrapping up Betrayal at Krondor, and I was happy to see that the game agreed with me in the opening moments of Chapter VII: "The Long Ride." The action switches to Locklear, James, and Patrus, but they're not just outside Northwarden. They're all the way down in Dimwood Forest (and for some reason, it's the middle of the night). If I try to go north, I end up in endless battles with large groups of pirates and Moredhel spellcasters. At least, I assume they're endless. I can only survive a couple in a row, and none of the figures in the landscape seem to diminish.

I guess I won't be going this way.

      

(It's interesting how the game doesn't settle on just one way to signal "you can't go this way." Sometimes it does it with a text message, sometimes with a physical barrier, sometimes with a single impossible combat, and sometimes with a series of endless combats.) 

 

My explorations this session. Again, I didn't look at the online map until I finished the chapter.

 

      

This party lacks the spyglass, so I don't even attempt to explore off-road. I just follow the path. It winds southwest past a battle with two Moredhel and a spellcaster, then ends at a closed tavern called the Fife and Laurel. 

      

"If you are looking for something to eat, look literally anywhere on this map."

     

Lacking any road as a guide, we do what I usually do with open maps and work on exploring the perimeter first. I go north until I hit the mountainous border, then start working west. I go around a ridge into a little hollow in the northwest corner of the map, hit a river, follow the river far to the southeast until it ends in a point, then work my way northeast until I find a bridge. Along the way, we find:

    

• A fairy chest. Again, Patrus has to cast "Union" to understand it: "What goes down to the cellar with four legs but comes up with eight?" My first thought, no joke, is "my cat when it catches a mouse." MOUSER does turn out to be the answer. The chest has a sword, some armor, 177 gold, a dose of silverthorn antivenom (which is good because everyone on this map seems to have poison), and two doses of silverthorn venom.

• A group of four fairy chests. I think I'm done typing out the riddles. I'm sure they're on spoiler sites. I get them all. None of the treasures are life-changing. 

    

The moment I kind of got sick of fairy chests.

   

• Various non-fairy chests or holes with minor treasures.

• A battle with a rusalka.  

• Several dead deer (or something) caught in a trap, from which we are able to obtain rations.

• 33 rations in a tree stump. What's with this game and rations lately?

• Three Moredhel and two spellcasters, who killed me on the first attempt--this party sucks. James misses most of his attacks and Patrus takes 80% damage from every crossbow bolt. On a reload, Patrus gets off an "Evil Seek" that kills two of them, but he still takes a bolt to the chest and has to be nursed back to health with herbs and potions.

• A fairly complex trap. I haven't been describing those very well. They all involve the same elements: lines between pillars, cannons, hollow prisms, and solid prisms. Stepping through a line or in front of a cannon causes you to take massive damage. Pushing a solid prism in front of a cannon blocks it. Pushing a hollow prism in front of a cannon causes it to fire but doesn't block the shot. You have to figure out the right combination to get the cannons to shoot the pillars (sometimes), taking down the lines between them and/or blocking the cannons to get at least one character safely to the far side of the map. I get most of them; worst case, you take some damage just running to the other side, and you have to heal.

       

The solution here was to push the hollow prism in front of the left cannon, causing it to fire and deactivate the line between the two leftmost pillars, then push a solid prism in front of the same cannon, then walk through those pillars to freedom. Everything else is a distraction. Locklear doesn't have to escape his "trap" because only one character needs to make it to the other side.

     

• Two Moredhel spellcasters. They surprise us and manage to kill us all with "Fetters of Rime." On a reload, when James finally attacks first, he does 14 damage. 14. What has made him suddenly suck so bad? His statistics don't look any worse. Meanwhile, both fighters are whiffing 60% of their attacks, and Patrus manages to hit Locklear with a "Fetters" aimed at an enemy. In my third reload, not even poison on their blades and Fadamor's formula in their systems helps. I finally kill them on my fifth try by having Patrus exhaust himself with "Evil Seek" and then blast them with his Staff of Lightning. James and Locklear contribute almost nothing. When did my party members turn into the Three Stooges? Thank the gods I have plenty of healing items from the last chapter.

      

At one point along this journey—this becomes important later—while following the edge of a mountain ridge, we go into the ridge and come out the other side. It's an illusion. But we find nothing on the other side except the trap and the battle with Moredhel spellcasters described above.

    

Looking at a river junction from the peninsula.

     

We finally reach a bridge and cross a river, then have a chest blow up in our faces and have to reload. (Patrus has the spell that detects traps, but I . . . somehow miss it until later. It's too hard to explain.) We move south along the riverbank to another bridge, encountering two Moredhel warriors and two pirates on the way, but again the battle seems a lot tougher than it ought to be.

    

We come to a bridge guarded by goblins. James tries to bluff past them by pretending to be Quegian mercenaries sent by Delekhan to guard the rift machine, but they attack us since we don't have the password. There are six of them, and two immediately swarm Patrus, so he can't get off a spell. The others pelt us with poisoned quarrels. James soon goes down, since on this map enemies are doing more damage with quarrels than they do with melee weapons during the rest of the game. The only way we win is through Patrus's Staff of Lightning. I have to use up an entire stack of 24 restoratives to get James away from "near-death."

      

We cannot get a break.

     

We cross the bridge. I'll later determine that the river network divides the forest into four areas, and the southwest one, which I've just entered, is the largest, accounting for about 40% of the total map. I work my way northwest along the riverbank, around a couple of ridges, until the river ends in the northwest mountains. Along the way:

   

• Chests with more rations. Come on. What I really need—for the first time in this game—are buffing items.

• Three goblins. No major problems, but again I get poisoned. I'm down to three silverthorn antidotes.

• The game exploits my need for buffing items by luring me with two treasure chests that both explode, requiring another reload.

     

Some developer thought this was funny.

     

• A fairy chest has a "Grief of 1000 Night" scroll, some money, and 10 restoratives. An adjacent one has "The Unseen" spell, the "Mad God's Rage" spell, 4 doses of Naphtha, and 20 restoratives. Nice.

• Four Moredhel warriors and a spellcaster. Again, two of the warriors swarm Patrus, so I'm forced to take them out with melee attacks (which, as is par for the chapter, usually miss and hardly do any damage) and Patrus's Staff of Lightning, which has swiftly become the MVP of the chapter. When the battle ends, I only have 14 charges left, though. Patrus gets some Dragon Plate from the battle. 

     

I follow the mountains west and south, where we soon encounter the western road leading out of the forest, but again the exit is blocked by too many figures to fight. We follow the road east and stop by an abandoned house, where we find a wooden chest with 24 "uses." I try using it, and it sends us flying up above the house, levitating in the air! That's a cool mechanic that I wouldn't have expected from a game of this era, until I remember that the engine was based on a flight simulator. In any event, if we move or even turn while in the air, we just fall back to the ground again, so I'm not sure what I'm supposed to use it for. Scouting? That would only help if there was a way to look down while in the air.

      

The view from a mountaintop.

    

In a nearby tree hollow are 33 rations. You've got to be kidding me.

     

I give up.

      

Farther along the road, we meet 3 giant scorpions, and suddenly the characters don't suck so bad—James and Locklear kill the first two in one hit each—so perhaps the goblins and Moredhel on this map just have better weapons and armor. Two seconds later, we're attacked and slaughtered by 7 goblins, so my cockiness doesn't last long. It takes me three tries to kill them, and that's with Patrus and Locklear both knocked out and at near-death, so I waste a few more restoratives and then, since we have plenty of rations, rest until healed.

     

With the scorpions, the game makes it really hard to tell the square that they actually occupy.

      

The road soon comes to an end, just like the northern one did, so I return west to the mountains, follow the border south, then east until we hit the road coming from the south (again, blocked by numerous enemies). Along the way:

    

• Some dirt piles and fairy chests give us some miscellaneous treasures.

• Six goblins attack and cost me another silverthorn antidote. I become convinced that the reason these battles are so much harder is because of equipment. Almost everyone has blessed or poisoned swords, enchanted armor of the highest type (Dragon Plate), and magic arrows. What temple is blessing Moredhel swords, I'd like to know.

      

The loot on the body of a typical regular enemy in this area.

     

• I find 8 more silverthorn antidotes in a fairy chest, so I guess we're good.

• Near the southern road, a body with 5 rations next to a stump with 19 rations. The game is just screwing with me at this point.

• A house occupied by a sad man named Craig who says while exploring to the east, he ran into some kind of magic that weakened him and doubled his age. He needs his iron jaw trap back to be able to catch food to feed himself.

• A stump with 15 more rations.

     

A Moredhel NPC—the first NPC on the map so far—named Obkhar. He turns out to be one of the dissenters, Moredhel who oppose Delekhan, and he warns us about what we already know: that Delekhan is going to use the rift device to bring his army to the area and capture Sethanon. He says that we can find it "on a peninsula where the rivers meet, accessible only by passing through the illusion of a mountain created by the Six." We've been there! It was the first place we visited! I'm pretty sure there was no rift device.

     

This is literally the only character in the game who looks halfway decent.

   

Anyway, Obkhar says that the rift gate can be disrupted by throwing something made from Waani, a foreign wood, through the gate. If anyone would have any Waani, he says, it would be the commander of the rear guard, Moraeulf, who is preparing his troops "near the southern tip of this wood." James suggests that we pose as Quegians—is that his only play?

   

I'm not sure what he means by "southern tip," as we're in the southern part of the map and there isn't really a "tip," but we continue east along the southern border, kill three Moredhel warriors, and then run into Moraeulf almost immediately. He's not even surrounded by any other Moredhel, just hanging out by himself near a hill. James puts his plan into motion, claiming that we're Quegians, recently ambushed, having come from the rift gate, where the mages in charge need "one of the parts they had stored away." He told us that it's hidden in a box in the southwest corner of the woods, with the password VICTORY.

    

What a moron.

      

The game gives us no option to kill him, so we head back to the southwest, looking for any chests that we missed. We find it near two fairy chests we already opened. It seems impossible we missed it before, so I suspect it didn't spawn until we talked to Moraeulf. 

   

The chest has 98 rations. And a note. It's signed by Phillip of the Dimwood, who found the device and worried that someone would steal it, so he brought it to his house to the north.

    

Nothing like telling the enemy exactly where they can find you.

      

The "house to the north" is guarded by 7 goblins, who we defeat mostly with "Evil Seek."

     

Aftermath.

   

Squire Phillip runs out after our victory. He appears to be a member of Arutha's military, and he begs us to aid in the fight, "whether you've sworn an oath to the secret garrison at Sethanon or not." When James expresses confusion, instead of saying, "oops, I shouldn't have said that," Phillip presses on: "Has [Arutha] ever explained to you why there is an absolute ban on visitation to Sethanon? Can you recall any other occasion in which Prince Arutha or King Lyam have forbidden people to visit battle sites?" But he doesn't disclose the final mystery, just says that he needs to get a message to the garrison. He also knows Craig and recommends that we stay away from the eastern woods until some scouts can find out what's happening. Before we leave, he gives us something made of Waani, which the game says is a metal rather than a wood. 

    

And for some reason a mushroom.

     

The house that Phillip occupied has—you guessed it—84 rations, along with lots of arrows, healing powders, restoratives, silverthorn poison and antidotes, plus a shovel, a hammer, and some bow strings. Clearly, the game wants us to be prepared for what's next.

    

Crossing through the illusory mountain range.

      

At this point, we've explored virtually nothing of the eastern half of the map, but that's the type of thing I worry about with games I haven't been playing for half a year already. Instead, I retrace my steps back across the two bridges, through the illusory mountain barrier, and to the peninsula I already visited. I prepare myself for battle with buffing items, but there's nobody there. Apparently, the two spellcasters who gave me so much trouble earlier in the session were the final battle. Well, at least it was hard.

       

The "rift device."

     

The "rift device" turns out to be two stubby stakes with globes on top. It's possible it was here before and I just overlooked it. We walk up and click on it to activate it. The end-of-chapter narration takes over from here.

   

We toss the Waani through the posts, which causes an energy storm to burst out of the machine, creating a vortex that pulls in everything.

    

I know it's supposed to be serious, but I guffawed a bit here.

This actor did a decent job, I have to say.

         

Locklear and James grab onto a tree, but Patrus isn't near anything he can grab. He gets sucked through a red gateway. Afterwards, for reasons I don't quite understand, Locklear shouts, "Spellweavers!" The end. I'm not sure if something went horribly wrong or horribly right.

      

Whatever that means.

    

We'll pick up Chapter VIII: "Of Lands Afar" next time. In the meantime, you can tell me everything I missed on the east side of the map. Also, I'm curious how many of these things I might have encountered had I visited the forest in an earlier chapter.

    

Time so far: 65 hours

The Clathran Menace: The Adventures of M. J. Turner in the 29th Century Across the Rim of the Galaxy in Dual Space

This is not the sort of game that can be told in screenshots.

      

I'm going to abandon the day-by-day account of my space travels in favor of a more summarized entry, particularly because most of this session involved a lot of backtracking to places I'd already been. Suffice to say that in about 180 turns, I finished exploring the part of the galaxy that I could explore, visited every planet but two, logged all of their trade goods, bought all of the weapons and armor (both ship and personal) that they had to offer, made new allies, read about 75 pages' worth of text, followed several quest chains to their conclusion—and still got stuck at a crucial moment. More to come.

         

Let's otherwise organize this one topically.

    

The Story So far

       

M. J. Turner is a hotshot pilot for the Space Patrol, assigned in the first Star Saga to explore Beyond the Boundary and destroy a notorious space pirate named Silverbeard. In the process, he discovered that Silverbeard's planet was in fact the last Outpost of famed explorer Vanessa Chang, last seen hundreds of years ago, who discovered the threat posed by a species of lizard aliens called the Clathrans. Now the first Captain of the Space Navy, Turner's mission is to collect intelligence on The Clathran Menace.

     

The Clathrans are so dangerous that I agreed (along with fellow hypothetical players controlling other characters) to destroy all information about how to get back to Earth. Only a giant compass on Outpost still points the way.

   

In my first three entries, I met several species. The dominant ones are:

   

• Hadrakians, "a centaur-like combination of tiger and gorilla." They come from the planet Hadrak but have colonies throughout the galaxy. All Hadrakians are born male and earn citizenship through victory in the arenas present on each of their planets. Visitors have to go through the same ritual, winning an arena battle, before they're able to do anything on the planets except make limited, unfavorable trades in the "civilian markets." I made contact with The Battle, Inc., an organization that resists the Clathrans. They keep telling me I have to upgrade my ship's defenses before they'll give me any serious missions.

• Worzellians, a species fighting a constant civil war. They've agreed to join the anti-Clathran cause.

• The Brotherhood, a human sect—remnants of a lost colony—researching a phenomenon called Dual Space. They've set me on a path to learn more about the phenomenon and to gain abilities inherent to their order.

• Bluvians, a hairy, ugly species whose people are intelligent and capable but also somewhat naïve. They live on several colonies, all with simple names (Bloo, Cloo, Gloo). They were conquered by the Clathrans thousands of years ago. The Clathrans experimented on them, giving different orders on different colonies, to see what method would best prepare them as Clathran soldiers. All the efforts seem to have failed, and the Clathrans abandoned the planets, but the Bluvians still live by those instructions.

        

My galactic map, in progress.

      

From the Hadrakians, Turner has learned about the Clathran Survey Line, an armada of ships moving slowly across the galaxy, ostensibly "surveying" each planet, but in reality conquering them. The Clathrans have a particular hatred of humanity and seek to wipe us out. You might say they're a menace.

     

Trading     

    

I bought my first trading drone, with three cargo spaces, in the last session. I used it for a few things but remarked that I was annoyed by the constant messages that I hadn't tasked it during a particular turn. In the comments, Scott offered: "I seem to recall having mine ALWAYS on the move, with its trades plotted out 10 or more turns in advance." I had a few more planets to visit before I could do this reliably, but once I hit Turn 120 or so (I started this session at 97), I was emulating Scott. The drone never sat idle. I identified what items I wanted to buy next and worked out the routes to travel.

      

I finally find a synthetic genius.

       

There are 12 common trade items in the game, traded in the common markets of each planet, accessible by the drone:

        

• Crystals
• Culture
• Fiber 
• Food
• Medicine 
• Munitions
• Phase Steel
• Radioactives 
• Super Slips
• Synthetic Geniuses
• Tools
• Warp Cores

        

For other items, such as weapons available in special markets and ship upgrades, you have to go to the planet and trade multiple items. 

   

I like to think I'm spreading Super Slip 'n' Slides all over the galaxy.

     

Enough planets sell 2 or 3 of something for only 1 of something else that as long as you have at least 1 trade item, you can eventually acquire anything you want. It happened a few times that after a particularly expensive trade, I was down to only a couple of items, but with time I could always bounce back. For instance, assume I got to the point that I only had 1 unit of radioactives (which can be mined in unlimited amounts on Dahl). But I wanted to buy the Causality Shielding on Dahl, which requires 1 phase steel, 1 synthetic genius, and 1 tools.

• Fly to Dosia, trade 1 radioactives for 3 munitions
• Fly to Unaria, trade 3 munitions for 3 phase steel
• Fly to Sallion, trade 2 phase steel for 2 synthetic genius
• Return to Turner, offload 1 phase steel, 1 synthetic genius
• Fly to Rialla, trade 1 synthetic genius for 3 tools
• Return to Turner

   

Now I have what I need and 2 extra units of tools besides. Obviously, I'd ideally start planning this six turns before getting back to Dahl, but there were plenty of times I screwed it up and spent a turn or two doing nothing on a planet, waiting for my drone to arrive (I could have skipped a step here with a five-bay drone). 

   

What hung things up for a long time was that I didn't know where to find synthetic geniuses. They were on Sallion, a Hadrakian world fairly close to the beginning of the game, but one I overlooked just because there are a lot of planets to keep track of. I should have been labeling a copy of the map rather than writing planets and their coordinates in a separate notepad. Even at turn 274, I don't have a reliable source for culture, which is required in a couple of major recipes. I had to buy some units in a special encounter that required a unit of primordial soup, also difficult to obtain.

     

Buying a new piece of equipment at the Ship Improvements Market. I don't know why I'd want to crush quarks.

       

But slowly, through this process, I acquired things I needed at the shipyards and weapon markets of different worlds, including personal weapons like a phase sword and power armor; ship defenses like a quark crusher, a plasma beam, and an entropy loop; and special materials used to construct other devices, such as a vortex coil (2 food, 1 medicine, 1 super slip, 1 warp core on Dosia) and a flame jewel (2 medicine, 1 culture, 1 synthetic genius, 1 warp core on Rialla). Using the special actions, I was able to build an Advanced Healing Unit (1 primordial soup, 1 probability membrane, 1 fiber, 1 synthetic genius, 1 tools) and a Discontinuity Wave Generator (1 flame jewel, 1 vortex coil, 1 crystals, 1 munitions, 1 radioactives). I also bought a stargate key at Dosia and upgraded my ship to hold 15 cargo pods (the maximum), but for some reason I never got around to buying a higher-capacity drone.

       

Assembling a Discontinuity Wave Generator from its component parts.

      

I have to say, I rather enjoyed the trading aspect of the game: making notes about what was available where (which sometimes changes), fitting new planets into the existing network, and plotting the most efficient routes. So much of the game is deterministic, told in long narrative paragraphs. This is really the only mechanic over which the player has full control. 

         

No More Outpost

    

While in the midst of all this trading, I decided to speed it along by returning to Outpost and its unlimited supply of most of the trading goods. It was at a time where my ship was damaged, and I figured I could fix it for free there. Bad idea. Shortly after I landed, the Clathrans arrived and started bombarding the planet. My computer noted that since it was just a solid rock, it could easily be destroyed by orbital bombardment. I had two chances to flee the planet. After trying to wait out the attack on the first chance, I fled on the second one.

   

Outpost was destroyed. Theoretically, this means I can't return to the Nine Worlds, since I destroyed all my information about their coordinates and Outpost had the only pointer. Something tells me I'll figure out another way before the end of the game.

        

Battle

 

By Turn 120, my notepad was filled with items like "return to Psorus when I can win the arena battle" and "return to Ghorbon when I can win the space battle." (Most battles are fixed like this, and fairly well telegraphed, but occasionally you get a random space battle, usually with a Clathran scout.) For a while, it seemed no matter how many upgrades I purchased—both ship and personal—I couldn't win anything. The tide really only started to change towards the end of this session.

      

Getting closer, at least.

      

When you meet an enemy in battle, the outcome is completely deterministic based on what equipment you have. There are things about the process, but in general, my understanding is:

    

• Every piece of defensive and offensive gear (again, both personal and ship) has a base offensive or defensive value. For personal combat, this also includes abilities you've acquired, like "Paralyze" and "Telekinesis."

• These base values are modified by your personal health or ship health depending on the type of battle you're fighting. If you're at 50% personal health, your phase sword is only about 50% as effective as normal.

• Base values are also modified by other characteristics, such as the nature of the enemy and the environment. For personal abilities, base values are modified by the "Dual Space Interphase" of the area, basically a value that tells you how much of the magical realm is leaking into real space. More on that later.

• The game automatically selects the three items having the highest offensive and defensive values in the current time and place.

• The values of those three items added up have to cross a certain threshold (I think it's been 100 for all battles so far) for you to win.

• Overcoming the "Attack" threshold is necessary to progress the plot (i.e., to win the arena combat on Hadrakian worlds or actually get to land on Ghorbon). Overcoming the "Defense" threshold is necessary to avoid damage to your personal or ship's health.

        

Made the grade.

     

Please correct me if I'm wrong about any of the above. Anyway, it would have been more of an RPG if the game had introduced some randomness or player agency to this process, but I recognize that for plot reasons, the authors wanted the player to cross certain thresholds before key events.

    

Both kinds of damage can be difficult to repair. If you don't fix damage, you can get into a downward spiral in which all your attacks are ineffective. Only a few planets have hospitals or shipyards, and some of them charge for services. I found out by accident (while twiddling my thumbs waiting for my drone) that unused phases during a turn can promote healing, and once I got the Advanced Healing Unit, it started happening automatically. Late in this session, I had a random space encounter in which an alien told me that they sell Automated Repair Systems for ships on Hadrak. I don't know why I didn't find that when I visited, but it's on my list to return and check it out.

  

This is not good.

     

Anyway, thanks to these increases, I was slowly able to win the arena battles on the Hadrakian colonies, fight off the harpy on Dardahl, and destroy the attack ship orbiting Ghorbon (this took me about six revisits). By the end of this session, I didn't have any fixed battles left on my list to complete, saving the Clathran Survey Line, which I'm guessing is not defeatable in regular combat.

      

New Life and New Civilizations

      

Most of the planets I visited during this session were colonies of species I'd already encountered, particularly the Hadrakians, who have about half a dozen colonies on the map, including Hadrak, Holoth, Sallion, Psorus, Adafa, and Franclair. Every one of them required winning an arena combat to explore the planet and get any decent trades in the market, although I never won on Sallion and thus made unfavorable trades for synthetic geniuses throughout this session.

Since these Hadrakians are colonists, the planets they live on often have other native species, such as the bat people on Holoth. On Psorus, the planet was populated by dinosaurs, one of which (a winged one) attacked me as I tried to leave the planet, and I had to fight it in a "space" battle. On Adafa, the Hadrakians are occupying an orbiting dome built by a more advanced, unknown race. The same is true of their colony on Adafa; it's an artificial world with advanced technology built by an unknown species. While exploring the devices, I gain a skill called "Prescient Choice" but lose "Paralyze." On Franclair, the Hadrakians co-exist with a race of protoplasmic blobs who constantly play pranks on everyone else.

       

The Bluvians were also relatively interesting. The Clathrans had tried several tactics to turn the gormless race into soldiers. On Bloo, they were given military-style training by robots and rewarded for completion of those tasks. On Gloo, they were taught to respect authority and created a rigid hierarchy for themselves. Then I discovered Cloo, where the Clathrans apparently taught the Bluvians to embrace individualism, to the point where nobody does any work (fortunately, they have robots) and their governmental and economic systems are constantly changing. In all cases, the Clathrans determined that the experiment didn't work and abandoned the colony, a fact I discovered by breaking into the Clathrans' empty bases and reading their research reports. In Cloo, I managed to give an impassioned speech that convinced them to join the Clathran resistance, but I never got acknowledgement of that the way I did with the Hadrakians, Worzellians, and Riallans.

          

The Cloo Bluvians are so disorganized that they can't even agree who gets to greet alien visitors.

     

New races included:

   

• Rialla, a planet of telepathic sentient gas bags. I guess I met some Riallans in Star Saga: One, although I don't remember it. These Riallans, who call themselves "Middle" Riallans, were created by that other race. Riallians apparently thrive in places where the Dual Space interphase is wide; in fact, such conditions were necessary for the original race to survive. Since it's been widening lately, the Riallans are doing well. I was able to convince them to send a courier to "old" Rialla for help against the Clathrans; the other option was to convince them to build a fleet of spaceships, which seemed beyond their capabilities. I learned more about Dual Space on the planet (see below) and acquired the "Sensearound" ability. The planet is also the only source of flame jewels, so if I were Valentine Stewart, I would have completed my personal quest.

    

Another ally.

      

• Zyroth and Yinkle both have hostile aliens who won't let me land. (At Yinkle, they called me a "disgusting alien-who-might-be-food.") The game doesn't even give me an option to fight. I suspect there's nothing to do at those worlds. A Zyran later attacked me in space, looking for a meal.

• Once I got past the ship blocking access to Ghorbon, I found a primitive race of racoon-like creatures called Roquies. While not unintelligent, they proved to be too capricious. When I tried to teach them to spy on the Clathran base on their planet, they just wandered away. 

• On Keros, I find a short, hairy, humanoid species. They are intelligent but uninterested in anything but playing games. I join some children in one for a while. They work only a couple hours a day and don't seem interested in culture or scientific progress. I learned a dodging skill from them called "Jump'r'." But while exploring the subterranean geology of the planet, I found some kind of cube that calls me "Master" and says that it has been following its prime directive "to keep the Kerosian race at a minimal intelligence level." Any Kerosian born too intelligent is compelled (telepathically) to report to the cube for "genetic revision" but the transport tube to the cube has been broken for centuries, so the Kerosians have just been jumping into a volcano. I tried to order the cube to stop is prime directive, but it wants an access code I don't have. I asked what it would take to fix the transport tube, and it said a vortex coil. I know where to get one, but I haven't had a chance yet.

    

The Hadrakian Questline

    

The Battle, Inc. is the inter-colony resistance organization the Hadrakians organized against the Clathrans. The Hadrakians, having the most colonies in this area of space, are the natural choice to lead the effort. They're concerned about the conquest of their colony on Innermost (which I haven't been able to visit yet), and they expect Adafa to fall next.

   

Every time I visited, on every colony, they would tell me that my ship was inadequate for any missions. Finally, at some point, I crossed the necessary threshold and they invited me deeper into their confidences. In a regular RPG, I'd do a few small missions for them, forming an overall questline. But in this game, they gave me the big one right away: Cross the Clathran Survey Line and do some scouting. Identify the Clathran home world, map the locations of their bases, encourage occupied colonies to rebel, and learn the status of the occupied Hadrakian colonies.

       

This was not quite the boon that the name suggests.

      

In response to my objections to the danger of the mission, they gave me intelligence from their agents that allowed them to create a series of tactical maneuvers to avoid Clathran destroyers, the Anti-Clathran Evasive Maneuvers. More on the Clathran Survey Line soon.

    

The Brotherhood Questline

    

The mysterious Brotherhood, headquartered on Margen, had already helped me out by teaching me the skills "Kothan," "Darthan," and "Paralyze." As I closed the last session, they had asked me to find some operatives on Unaria, which I didn't get around to doing until late in this session. It's in a remote part of the galaxy.

    

Every time I returned to Dahl, I got more lines from the Dialogue, which I had to recite in full every time I returned. It got pretty old.

      

There are like eight of these responses at this point.

   

The agents on Unaria asked me to return their report to Dahl, after which I was sent to Dardahl. I had previously visited the temple of the gods there and was told by Derva, the Goddess of Knowledge, to return when I had more training. This turned out to be Brotherhood training, as this time I was introduced to Brother Almed, who was sort of controlling the goddess as a puppet. It turns out that the Dardahlian "gods" are just Brotherhood members speaking through statutes. I expressed some moral outrage about this, but Almed brushed it off: "Who is to say what a god is? We perform miracles and take care of them."

   

Almed taught me "Illusion" and asked me to find Brother Gretzen on Hadrak.  Gretzen had been collecting data on the Clathrans. I found her working in a garbage recycling facility, pulling intelligence from discarded reports. She gave me a report to take back to Almed.

     

When I did, he gave me more of the history of the Brotherhood. It dates back hundreds of years, to the time of Vanessa Chang. When she and her crew came up with the plan for the Boundary (to hide humanity from the Clathrans), the Brotherhood volunteered to remain in this part of the galaxy to keep watch. When I asked what happened to Chang, he said only the highest brothers know that information. I can find them on Mardahl.

   

The only problem: I don't know where Mardahl is. I assume it's on the other side of the Survey Line.

         

Random Noise  

       

The game doesn't really like you to spend an entire turn flying through space. It has a way of always finding a paragraph to give you even when all you've done is plot a series of moves across trisectors. In addition to their narrative purpose, these encounters also prevent imbalance in multi-player games.

     

I wonder if the authors programmed a specific order for these paragraphs to appear. Some of them clearly build on each other, but I otherwise don't know if there's any randomness to their selection. Most of them have to do with things heard over the subspace radio. Some examples:

   

• Multiple friendly contacts with engineers on Para-Para, who tell me about the strange things happening in the Nine Worlds.

• An argument with my computer about whether we're taking the shortest possible distance between points. The long paragraph goes into more detail about how the "trisector" system was created.

• A dream in which I'm contacted telepathically by the Riallans, who tell me flame jewels are available on their planet. I'd already been to the planet at this point.

• A Hadrakian vessel whose captain teaches me to play Thrakkah, the Hadrakian answer to chess. At the end of the match, she tells me I can find primordial soup on Dardahl.

• Through miscellaneous radio transmissions, hints about what trade goods I can find on various worlds. These are never accompanied by any information about the location of these worlds, though.

       

Some information in case I hadn't discovered Unaria.

     

• A power surge caused by a probe beam. No lasting damage.

• Transmissions that indicated that the Institute for Space Exploration had finished dismantling the beacons that made up the Boundary, dissolving the Space Patrol and incorporating it into the Space Navy.

There's quality world-building and storytelling in these paragraphs, but I have to admit that I've started to get annoyed when I'm just trying to get from one place to another, and the game wants me to stop and read another paragraph about a radio report.

    

Towards the end of this session, I stopped getting them, which strikes me as a bit ominous. If the game is out of random paragraphs, perhaps I'm running out of time.

     

Dual Space   

    

I learned more about Dual Space on Rialla from a scholar named Gloossh. It described it as "the theoretical dimension of all possible universes" or of "all conceivable changes to the real universe." Tapping into its energy causes changes in the real universe, such as teleportation, telekinesis, and the other abilities that I've been acquiring. There are places and times at which the barrier between real space and Dual Space is thinner (i.e., the "Interphase" widens); for some reason, it has been thinning all over the galaxy in recent years.

   

Since humans evolved in a time at which the Interphase was narrow, we don't have as much capacity to use it as other races. Too much access to Dual Space drives humans insane.

    

Unfortunately, that seems to be happening. As I traveled from world to world, I kept getting updates from the Nine Worlds, and things are looking pretty grim. News outlets are reporting increases in mental illness, hallucinations, suicide, violent crime, and riots. Researchers call it Sudden Adjustment Psychosis Syndrome (SAPS). Accidents, industrial disasters, and power outages are on the rise as people lose focus. A Harvard scientist tried to release the smallpox virus (but was stopped). A shuttle crashed on Monument, killing hundreds, while the pilot raved about dragons. Fringe political and social groups have been forming, leading to efforts to tamp them down. Harvard University (not the original, but the one on the planet Harvard) was destroyed by rioting students. Word of the Clathrans has somehow made it home, but people generally believe it's another delusion due to SAPS.

       

The Clathran Survey Line

    

I first ran into the Survey Line while circling the galaxy. I tried to draw it on my map, but of course it's just an estimate because I didn't visit every trisector. It cuts northwest to southeast (the way I've oriented the map), cutting off access to about a dozen worlds. I don't know if it moves. I don't think so, because when I went back a few dozen turns later, it was still in the same place. But it's possible that it starts moving later.

    

Obviously, the idea of ships forming a "line" across the galaxy is absurd, but when you're dealing with science fiction and hyperspace, I suppose anything is possible. You can imagine that each ship has advanced scanning abilities that cover a vast area and that their jump drives allow them to reach any anomalies in seconds. Of course, that should allow the anomalies to jump away in seconds, too. 

      

Stopped by the Survey Line.

    

Whatever the case, I had multiple options for dealing with them, none of which worked. On the first attempt, I tried turning off my ship's systems and drifting along like a rock. This got me a little farther, but then a ship with x-ray detection capabilities popped into view, and I had more options. I tried just speeding away, but a fleet of destroyers surrounded me.

      

First move options.

      

This not being the sort of game where you can just die and reload (I'm not sure you can die at all), a long passage subsequently related how I was taken to a base and tossed into a brig, but I managed to ambush a guard, knock him, out, take her gun, shoot up the control room, find my ship, and make a getaway, all my cargo and equipment intact. I was about a dozen trisectors to the east, though.

       

Second move options.

       

I hit the Line several times, always trying a different option, always failing, always managing to escape in the same way. You think they'd learn their lesson. Eventually, I had enough of a sense of the location of the Survey Line that I could avoid it.

After my first escape, the game related how I radioed my report back to the Institute for Space Exploration. I sent them information about the Survey Line, and they basically responded that I needed to find some way to cross it and recon the planets on the other side. 

          

Stealing a Clathran blaster from their base.

       

I continued upgrading my ship and equipment and acquiring abilities. I continued along the Hadrakian and Brotherhood questlines described above. After I learned "Illusion" from the Brotherhood, I used it to sneak into their (active) base on Ghorbon, where I stole a blaster from the armory and, more importantly, got the password to pass through the Survey Line: PENUMBRA.

   

At this point, having learned the Anti-Clathran Evasive Maneuvers from the Hadrakians, having obtained the password, having acquired new skills and equipment, I was sure I'd be able to cross the Survey Line. So I returned to where I encountered the first time, blasted right through, and . . . got caught again. The Anti-Clathran Evasive Maneuvers didn't even appear as an option. When I tried using the password, the captain of the Clathran ship got suspicious and grabbed me anyway. I escaped as before, but what the hell?

         

This got me nowhere.

     

So, clearly there's still more stuff to find. Fortunately, I have a couple of options other than just revisiting every planet to see what I missed. In particular, I took the time to label all of the planets on the map, and I realize now that I missed two of them on this side of the Survey Line. Maybe they'll have what I need. Maybe one will be Mardahl, and I'll be able to get to the end of the Brotherhood questline. Otherwise, I hope that returning that vortex coil to Keros somehow accomplishes something significant.

       

I realize this is a long entry. I was trying to finish the game the other night, so I pushed much further past the point at which I would normally have stopped to write an intermediate entry, and since I decided not to organize it chronologically, there was no obvious place to break it. If I can win it in a few more hours, it will be about as long as the first Star Saga.

    

Time so far: 19 hours