Citadel: Meditations in an Emergency

 

The heart of a dead star? Your mom? Pizza?

       

[Chet here. Sorry that I delayed the rest of Quirkz's entries. There are probably two more after this one, which will carry us through most of the coming week, when I will be traveling. I should be back to my own schedule by next weekend (10-11 October). Quirkz has been shy about linking to his non-CRPG Addict material, but given the favor he's doing for us, a little promotion is in order. See Quirkz's web site here, where you can learn about his various projects and publications.]

      

Guest post by Quirkz: 

      

As this session begins, I go use the wand I found last time (the second one) on Lady Synd. Some more of the crystal dissolves. 

    
Now that I have the elevator key, there are new paths in front of me. It will grant me access to several of those previously dead-end locations on six and seven, plus provide entry to every floor below that. I'm feeling pretty buff from my recent level increases.

       
The first ones to get it are those squirrels on the sixth floor, which turn out to be black dragons. Their breath bypasses my invisibility, but only occasionally. Caltrop beats one of them while accidentally dual-wielding one sword and one sack of coins. 900 gold is a sweet reward, but training is now up to 2-4,000 for one character, so I need much more than that.

     
I try the seventh floor next. I've been here before but had not been mapping. The interconnected tangle of corridors sprawls over the entire western half of the floor. Either I've missed a secret door, or the eastern half is detached. Other than maneuvering around a bunch of floor pits and finding one staircase down at the far end, there isn't much to it.

     
There is one unsolved riddle from a talking head. "What was once hot, then cold, serves good and evil alike, and can bestow death and honour?"  I tried IRON and STEEL with no luck. Maybe I should have tried SWORD. 

         

At one point, I am standing by a closed door, looking at the map, when the door bursts open and three cutthroats attack me. I didn't realize monsters could open doors, but clearly they can.

      
I'd rather use the elevator than the stairs for now, so I backtrack and take that to the eighth floor. The elevator gate here is not locked, unlike almost all the other floors, which makes me wary. I know an ominous invitation when I see one.

    
Most of the walls on this floor are see-through, like thick glass. There's a vague haze in the air showing where they are. It's not exactly hard to navigate around them, only slightly disorienting. The map tends to put ceiling holes at junctions, which does help spot them as you move. The main feature is you can see more things in the distance, sometimes tantalizing things you don't know how to reach.

     

There are walls on both sides of the square in front, plus a pit in the ceiling.

          

I find some black platemail and an hourglass. The shopkeeper doesn't offer much (especially for the armor) so I sell it unappraised and see it listed in the shop afterward as a cursed item with a 4 AC penalty. Good riddance. Not sure what to do with the hourglass, I stick it in a backpack. It has the feel of a quest item.

     
I belatedly discover a hidden room in the corner of the sixth floor that seems like a lost armory. It's loaded with gear, most of it low-value, including too many arrows. But it's got a couple of pieces with promising descriptions. For example, of three long swords, two have plain blurbs ("gray iron with leather-bound grip") while the third's info pane reads: "gold filigreed blade, jeweled hilt." We haul it all back to sell but end up keeping a lightly enchanted long sword, a shield +1, and a ring that lowers AC by 2. The ring goes to the wizard, of course, who was walking around at an unimproved AC 10. There's also another suit of plate mail in the shop finally, so I buy that to replace Wort's ring mail, improving his AC by 4.

      
Back at the eighth floor, I am busy prepping a new page of graph paper when we're jumped by enemies. It's a large, mixed group: two vampires, four elementals (earth, air, fire, water), and a giant lizard just for kicks. The vampires attack immediately, triggering some kind of visible and audible alert, but I've missed what it was. I have my invisible characters square off with them while the others spread out and take on the elementals. I get the message window open and see that the earth elemental is trying to suffocate me and the water is elemental trying to drown me. I become more wary, because while these might just be the wording of their attacks, I'm not sure if there's a chance of an insta-kill. It's a long fight with a lot of missed attacks on both sides, and it grants over 3,000 XP, two or three times more than the next largest battle I've seen. When it ends, I confirm DV was level drained, twice, and is now level 1. I check in town but there doesn't seem to be a restore option at the temple, and I don't have the money to mess with this, so I reload.

     
I take a look at the party's armor status and realize Mulk in the back just got all the upgrades and is -1, while DV up front is 3 and Jexica 5. Invisibility has been helping so far, but it's not everything. Knowing I'm likely to run right back into the same group of enemies in a minute, I retool and give DV the best stuff, hoping that will get him through the next fight unscathed. I also have the clerics memorize a "Faer" and a "Fortis Al" for combat benefits along with some "Gestuns" for damage. I haven't needed to rely on spells other than healing so far, but this seems like the time to get prepared.

    
Naturally, the next time I visit, that group is nowhere to be seen. I fight battles with some other common monsters and earn about 900 gold. This is enough to level Caltrop the fighter to 5.

     
On another outing, I have a disastrous mis-click in what should be an easy fight. Two characters are overlapping each other, and while trying to move one I instead end up activating Jexica's weapon and dragging it away from her, which in the game interface causes it to be thrown. You can throw almost anything, but in this case it hurls the +4 rapier in the direction of Siobhan and kills her in one hit. Sheesh. That's a reload. (It's also the second time this has happened.)

      
There's a plaque that lists the symbol-words for three fifth-level cleric spells, "Cural" (improved party heal), "Sanctifis" (extended bless), and "Freosan" (freeze foes). The manual only gave the words for the first three levels, but plaques have now provided the next two levels of spells for me. (The hintbook has them, too, but I'm ignoring that for now.)

   

Exactly twice, we will face these enormous white dragons. It seems like an under-utilized capability of the game. The big ones don't turn into tombstones when they die. They just sit there, which is confusing.

          

While I'm on the subject, this is my third core memory from the past. The game will eventually give me most of the other cleric rune combos, but it will confusingly leave out a couple that are in the hint book, plus there's an upcoming event that will make me think even the clue book is incomplete. So I set out to discover the secret spells on my own. I methodically made a list of every combination, starting with all the 2-letter words, and working up to every possible 7-letter word in the game (EEEEEEE, EEEEEEA, EEEEEEF, EEEEEEW, etc.). The short words were easy to do on the fly, but I kept losing count on the long words. So during a tornado warning, while we crouched in the dorm's basement hallway for an hour, I wrote out by hand the entire list. Then I went back to the game later and tried every single combination. Just memorizing that many elemental runes took decades of in-game time, and my characters aged tremendously. (I don't remember if this did anything.) What I do remember is I didn't find a single new spell.

       
I have wasted time doing more misguided things in my life, but this one is pretty well up there.

     

One locked door has a circle on the ground in front of it, like that fire trap from earlier. Wise to its ways, I fire an arrow at it, but nothing happens. Maybe I did it wrong? I shoot another arrow across the square to the door, and then one aimed at the circle's edge. Nothing. Gritting my teeth I step forward and it still doesn't trigger. What gives? I don't have the right key for the door and have to leave it for now.

      
In one corner I see foes lurking through the glass. More dragons. They're hazy but far sight pulls them up in sharp detail. I never find a way to get to them, though. 

      

Dragons, like undead, are best seen from afar.

       

Fights come along at a decent pace. Not frequent, but you can't let your guard down. Post-combat looting averages 400 gold pieces these days—an improvement, but managing the inventory is challenging. I no longer run home for healing, but now I have to run home every 3-4 fights to offload gear. Sadly, 900 cash won't even cover a third of a training session. One fight with four elementals (but no vampires this time) delivers 3,300 XP. Everyone might be ready to go up 2-3 levels; they just need gold. Very frustrating.

     
On the north side of the floor there's one 3 x 3 block of solid rock, with stairs going up on all four sides. One of these leads up to the down stairwell I found on 6 but didn't use before. I'm guessing the others lead to fragmented sections covering the remaining half of the seventh floor. I skip them for now.

      
The second half of the floor goes quickly, and again finding ways to carry gold is the only obstacle. I decide I'm going to leave helms and gloves back at camp, because they don't give much protection and take up a full inventory slot that could be a bag of gold. I get firebombed by the same laughing magician a couple of times. 

    
We find another magical shield and a "boomerang axe." Damage is listed as only 1-6, which is low for a weapon, but if it's reusable and can replace a bow (which consumes arrows, a limited resource that also takes up too much inventory space) it might be worth it. When I test in combat, the axe is consistently doing 6 and hitting often, while a few tests with bows do 0 damage. I'm not sure if some monsters are simply immune, but Siobhan is still using her starting dagger and doesn't have enough spell slots to be effective as a caster yet, so I give her the axe. Her aim isn't great (the line jiggles like crazy) but since it boomerangs she can do this repeatedly from outside melee range as long as no party members are too close to her.

     
I pop back up to 7 and try the riddle door one more time. It was SWORD after all. A secret door slides open.

     
Beyond it, I'm charged by some vaguely salamander-looking creatures with a weird name like "lermensyty." Nobody can seem to hit them, and it's 30 rounds before one lucky strike kills one. I start having characters try to throw their axes, and that seems to work better. I have a fuzzy memory of doing this in tight spots back in the 90s. I think there's something weird in the differences between melee and ranged combat, and for whatever reason missile weapons connect more often.

     

$10 for anyone who can figure out the etymology of "lermenysty."

            
If I had to speculate, I would guess that melee combat uses a typical D&D-style to-hit table, and my low-level characters are mostly whiffing against tough foes. But when it comes to throwing objects, since the game interface provides a visual interpretation of bad aim (low level and low dexterity make the throw line jump all over the place) I think that stands in for the to-hit calculation. If you miss a throw, it's because you literally missed the correct angle, but if your line of sight is true, it hits, regardless of your level or ability. That said, thrown axes do miss some of the time, but it's less than 25%, whereas melee attacks might only hit 5% of the time.

     
I return to 8 and try the other three stairwells back up to 7. I think what's going on here is on the 8th floor, the stairs are separate, but on the 7th it's one square that behaves differently depending on which direction you approach it from. (Looking at the hint book much later, it talks about a weird pyramidical staircase, which I guess is supposed to represent this, but I can't figure out how that's morphologically possible.)

      
I explored the north side before, so I go up from the west and end up in the east. It's a compact, zig-zaggy zone with a lot of mirror symmetry and floor pits laid out like the five pips of a die in one spot and a diamond in another. You need "Levitas" to hit all the squares, but you can loop through most of them with checkers-style jumping.

       
Fights seem tougher, even though I trained recently and have also done the other half of this level already. They hit me a little more often. I miss about 80% of the time. But it's still a slow bleed, easily fixed by a "Haelan" or its full-party version. As I've leveled up, it's started doing 4-6 per casting more often (rather than 2), and in a few more levels it will be healing 8 or 10 HP on some castings.

     
After a fight with a bunch of air elementals or dervishes, I get a scimitar called Defender, which conveys -4 AC and 10% magic resistance in addition to doing 2-10 damage. Pretty good. I give that to Jexica, who needs the armor boost, and move the +4 rapier to DV.

     
The section traces a long, winding path and ends in a floor pit, with not much else to show for it. Suspicious. I check the map for the floor below, and this pit lines up with an unexplored box, probably a single square. I don't like it, but I save and jump in.

    
On the ground is a skull wand, so this is clearly a necessary visit. But I can't get out! I try Levitas and check every command and option three more times, also scouring the game manual for any other suggestion, like a higher-level flying spell, but there's nothing. Maybe there's an item that will let me fly? I know I could "Wish" myself back home, but then the elevator would be trapped on the wrong floor. I think I could probably get back down via pits, but the whole idea feels both risky and unnatural. I have to be missing something. For now, it's a reload. I mark the spot for a future return.

    
I try the other stairwells. One takes me to a single empty square. Huh.
       

The fourth set leads to a winding zone with lots of pits to jump. The far end is a 7 x 7 section filled with pits. Far sight shows me something lurking in the middle of one solid square. I "Levitas" over and find two scrolls of "Levitas" (think you're funny, do you?), a statue, and a spell book. This is my third. It has a lot of spells filled in, including spells from levels 4, 6, 7, 8, 9, and 10. Powerful stuff, if I can ever gain the levels to use it.

     
Another branch in this section leads to a single pit. This one, like the wand pit above, seems to be positioned over an unexplored square.  

      

I reconnoiter from the eighth floor. Peering through clear walls into this spot, I can see waiting treasure.

          

I feel like this is going to be another waste of time, but I have to check. In the hole there is an ivory gargoyle and three scrolls: "Cista" (magic chest), and two "Risans."

     
What the hell is a "Risan"? It's not in the manual, which is weird. Based on the name, it sounds an awful lot like it might be a flying spell. Is this what I've been looking for the whole time? I curse at the game for making this so obscure, and for the bad luck in jumping into the wrong pit first.

     
Like D&D, you can cast a scroll one time, which consumes it, or use the scroll to scribe it in the book, whence you can memorize it as many times as you like. Only a fool would allow a limited-edition, secret item to be destroyed. 

      
Siobhan studies "Risan." As the hours tick by, we get attacked by vampires. During the fight, DV is level-drained twice again, putting him back to first level. Worse, in the aftermath we find that the spell didn't make it into the book but the scroll is gone. It was destroyed by the interruption.

      
The manual told me there'd be days like this. You better believe that's a reload.

     
Back in the pit, I think smart and try to thin out the wandering monsters by having my clerics memorize some spells first. I'm interrupted three times in a row. They are tough fights, but no vampires. I'm seeing mind flayers and scanners—beholder ripoffs—along with other repeat enemies. The mix does seem partly randomized. After three interruptions, I try to scribe "Risan" again—it takes more hours than expected, like half a day—and I'm done! Now to memorize it.

     
Well, it's level 9. Siobhan is only level 5. She can't learn it. What the heck?

     
I guess that's why they gave me two of these scrolls. I invoke the remaining one, get out of the pit, and step clear. Two humanoid figures called "mantrees" attack. I've fought off some before, and they're dangerous because they sometimes cast a damaging area spell, "Flaming Hands." This time the two spam it so quickly and consistently half the party is dead before I know what's going on.
     

When the game has you cursing at it four times in ten minutes, it's time to step away for a while.

    

After a reload I ascend again without getting attacked this time, and rush home to save.

    
In camp, the gargoyle burns Meanie when he tries to take it for appraisal. I think this is an alignment thing. It's the first time I've seen it applied.

     
I sell the other statue for 2,900. I have to give the gargoyle to a neutral character to sell. It appraises for 8,000 but I can only sell it for less than 6,000 due to lower mien. Still, this is the most money I've seen in about three floors and three game hours. Everyone is so far behind on training it's not funny.

     
I have enough money to train either three base classes (cleric, fighter, wizard) from 5-6 or to get two premium class characters from Levels 3-4. I'm starting to regret the premium classes. I figured the greater XP requirements would slow them down but didn't imagine cash would be such a bottleneck. I pick the larger group.

     
Caltrop goes from 33 to 42 HP, Wort from 21 to 26. Siobhan gains a single point, up to 17. I'm worried her health is going to be a real problem. I confirm all three could go to Level 7 already if I had the money, and I'm guessing it's really 8, maybe close to 9, which is the level I need to be to memorize "Risan."

     
It's time to review my to-do list. With a few minor exceptions, I think I have explored all of floors 7 and 8 now. The remaining items include one locked door I can't get past and the pit with the wand. It bothers me that I still have roughly a third of the sixth floor remaining—the part with easy fights, lots of gold, and a magic dagger—but I can't get back out of that section without "Risan" or a "Wish."

     
It starts to dawn on me what the game probably intended for the order of my exploration. I was supposed to lose access to the elevator early. Doing the first five floors more or less in order was correct. As I ventured into floor 6, I would have regained access to the elevator. Then, because 6 and 7 were blocked, I was supposed to use the elevator to skip them and investigate floor 8 and proceed through it, climbing back up into 7 from there, only getting the elevator key right about now. The elevator grate being unlocked on 8 wasn't a trap: it was a feature. None of this requires a "Wish," either, and it flows fairly naturally, other than it offends my sensibilities to be doing things out of order. I guess that's how I know the big bad Nequilar is evil.
    

****

   

Previous entry in this series

   

Next entry in this series

10/04/2026

Citadel: Prism Break

What does it feel like to be 20% non-imprismed? Somehow that seems more dangerous than being fully enclosed.

       

Guest post by Quirkz:

  

[But a note from Chet first: I broke the last entry in a weird place. Quirkz was in the middle of exploring Level 5 of the dungeon. He was so engrossed in reading plaques on the wall that he missed the fact that he was approaching a key plot element. We pick up with his narration.]

    

After reading 10 walls of plaques, we turn around and realize Lady Synd is right there!

    

I see that the south end of this chamber lines up with the locked door next to the "break glass" pane I couldn't get through earlier. I circle back and discover the door isn't actually locked, it's just buggy. It takes 2-6 clicks to open, sometimes even giving a notice that the character tried and failed to open it, but then on the next attempt it works. It's very annoying.

     
I can approach the queen from three different directions, and for a while I think we will be curing her in stages, once from each direction, but I'm pretty sure I'm mixing that up with another game. [Ed. Maybe Chaos Strikes Back?] I take a look at that skull wand again, and it has a "brandish" button in the interface. I brandish. A chunk of gem dissolves. The wand turns into a "broken item" but the description has a suspicious wording: "This is now junk, or is it?" I keep it in the party stash for now.

     
The only part of the level we haven't explored is a detached chunk, the lower section of the queen's chambers. We go there and find a large room. There are a bunch of arrows and a bow in the corner. There are also new alcoves, which I click out of reflex. One of these also collapses, revealing a cave and confirming one of my three core memories from 1995.

        

I've heard of a wishing well, but a wishing wall?

       

I try to enter but am given a stern warning: "To win her gift or meet your fate only one may pass this gate." It takes me a minute to remember that the manual says it's possible to split the party, and another minute to figure out how to do it. I have to select a character and pick "leave behind" which kicks him out of the party and amusingly leaves him as an icon on the floor.  

        

Taking the advice of strange voices in dark caves is what adventurers do.

      

I send Caltrop in on his own. Because someone else is holding the light source, it's too murky for a screen shot, but I am in a dark square facing off against three opponents who look just like him, except he is invisible and they are not. He finishes them all without taking a hit. Combat ends with 0 XP rewarded, and then I'm kicked out of the cave, but there's now a scroll on the ground next to the icons of the party. It's a scroll of Wish.

      
The game from this point on can be completely broken, if you want, because this fight is repeatable, and with invisibility it's trivial. Without invisibility, it's a lot harder, fighting three of yourself at once, and I think the fight is designed to include a lot of misses and parries (the hint books make it clear there are four mirror images, sharing one mind, aware of each other's actions). 

     
I'm not going to play like a jackass, but I figure "three wishes" is a trope, right? So I collect two more.

       
Back in camp, I invoke one of the scrolls. I'm asked which character to pick and then given a large range of options to improve, including all six character stats, my health status, my hit points, my level, my armor class, and my magic resistance. There's also a grayed out "map" and "teleport to town" option, which I assume would work in the dungeon but not in camp. I'm not sure why "cash" is grayed out, but I'm guessing it results in literal moneybags that only appear on the dungeon floor.  

     

Where's the "more wishes" button?

       

There is a "bank" option. Because I'm desperate for funds, I try that and get 2,000 GP. It's a reasonable sum, but then I sputter in rage when I have Meanie appraise another scroll and it comes in at 10,000. Why does the Wish, the most powerful thing in the universe, give me less gold from its power than people will pay for the unused scroll? Oh, actually that's probably a reasonable valuation. As useful as my wish is to me, someone else might have a different wish that's more valuable to them. Deep.

      
Well, the scroll is gone, and the 2k is at least enough to uncurse the pentacle necklace my cleric has been stuck with. That costs 500 GP. I'm not sure if uncursing will make the item beneficial now or merely unlock it, so I pay to identify it and see it still gives +1 to armor class (which, like classic D&D, is the wrong direction). However, the amulet is very valuable, and Meanie pawns it to the shop for 7,500 GP.

     
I now have enough money to train everyone up to Level 3, and I suspect most of them are barely short of the XP required for Level 4. I also find that once any of the base classes hit Level 3, they're automatically invited to switch to a premium class. I allow Jexica the thief to become a ninja so she can wear better armor and be a stronger fighter. Letting the fighter DV change classes is obligatory (see my novel, The Eight-Bit Bard for a proper explanation) so he becomes a knight and gains access to priest spells. These promotions reset their level to 1. I leave the others at 3. My party is now a fighter, a knight, a cleric, a shaman (that's the cleric-fighter combo), a ninja, and a wizard. That's three prestige classes and three baseline ones—I want to keep the one pure fighter strong and I still really want to get some spells out of Siobhan one of these days.
       

This seems like an offer I should not refuse.

       

Speaking of, I finally figure out what's going on with the wizard spells. I was putting scrolls in my inventory and then checking the spellbook to see if I could memorize them, but they weren't showing as available. What you actually have to do is drag the scroll from your inventory to a special scroll icon on that screen, which loads the scroll into a hidden scroll slot on the character. From there the character can cast the scroll or, as I wanted, transfer it to his spellbook.

      
You can also transcribe spells above your level. Siobhan gathers the Level 2 spell "Divine" (an identify spell, I think); the Level 3 spells "Gestun" (light damage to all foes), "Spice" (conjure random item; I recall this being next to useless and not worth the time), and "Sumos" (summon monster companion); and the Level 4 spells "Fortis Al" (party defense) and "Locatus" (mapping location). I cannot yet memorize any of the Level 4 spells, but they're waiting safely in my book.

      
I realize I had confused "Locatus" earlier with "Levitas" (levitate) but I've got enough money that I can just buy the latter from the shop. It's 2,000, but I know I need it. It goes in the book as well, and I immediately memorize it, twice.

     
Something appears to be up with the wizard spell slots, because after that I can only memorize one "Haelan," which is level one, and previously I'd had two. A little experimenting gets me thinking that wizard spells have a sort of encumbrance component. I think Level 1 spells are small and only take up one slot, but higher-level spells take up several. Later on I'll find, for example, that I can memorize either exactly one Level-4 "Locatus" or 8 Level-1 "Haelans." I guess it's up to me to mix and match. 

   

The state of the party. Mulk is finally getting some HP, but Siobhan's health is concerning.

      

Back in the dungeon, characters now sometimes attack twice per round. This isn't just Caltrop, the Level 3 fighter, but also Jexica the ninja and DV the knight, both of whom reset to Level 1. I finally discover a hidden combat message window, which shows me the monster names and damage amounts I've been missing all this time. That's handy, but because it lies directly on top of the combat window and takes up a ton of space, it's impractical, and I mostly leave it closed unless I want to see what a new monster is called. In this case, it also helps me realize Jexica is dual wielding, attacking with a sword and then ineffectively with an empty bow right after. I unequip the bow, but she then begins attacking with her bare left hand. I eventually stick another sword in there and solve the problem.

     
I also start to rethink strategy, because I see now that my characters can successfully mob enemies. For instance, three of them might be able to attack in sequence before the enemy retaliates once. I'm not sure whether it's the added levels, the premium classes, or something else going on in the background. I try to keep an eye on it from fight to fight, adding or removing members from the mob depending on how the pacing seems to work. The Level 1 characters miss a lot more than they used to against tougher foes, and I know I need to level them up again, fast.

     
With "Levitas" in mind, I return to the pit with the Venus flytraps, hungering for the piles of easy experience and gold and especially that elevator key, which will be much more convenient than dashing through the twisty passages every time. I mop up on XP. I grab bags of gold until my inventory is bursting, plus a golden flute I'd forgotten about. I drop one more level, snag that elevator key, and backtrack to the portal in the ceiling. I cast "Levitas" and . . . nothing happens. I flip through all the menus and icons. Surely there's a "go up" button, right? Even The Bard's Tale had that! I try jumping. I try stepping away and back. But no, there's no way to ascend. "Levitas" keeps you from falling but does not make you fly.

     
Crud.

    

Quirkz's map of Level 6.

    
I roam Level 7, looking for another way out, but the problem is I still don't know anything about the sixth floor, either, so I don't know what I'm looking for. I turn the corner, bump into a pack of eight monks all casting some kind of area damage spell, and before I know it my party is dead. I guess all this loot will need to wait a bit longer.

     

It occurs to me a "Wish" spell might be necessary here to do the run and make a clean exit, but I don't want to resort to that yet.

      
I still have one obvious path forward: a set of stairs near the main landing on Level 5 that takes me to unexplored territory on Level 6. The landing offers a trio of doors facing east, each one into a different hallway. In front of each door is a pit. I can jump forward into the hallway but the door will close behind me, so "Levitas" will be mandatory if I want to return. Sneaky.
       

I take the southern branch and see in the distance a magic mouth, speaking, "Come closer, I can't hear you." At this point I find a menu item for "far sight" that a couple of my characters apparently have, and I discover that it slightly magnifies things in the distance. Huh. I step up again and the mouth begs me to come closer. This has "trap" written all over it, and indeed when I approach the mouth gives a giant windy breath, like it's blowing out birthday candles, and then wraps up with a toothy smirk. Except I'm carrying a glowing orb, not the torch, so I am totally unaffected. Take that, mouth! 

     

Could you BE any more obvious?

          

I have a fight with an arch devil, a mummy, and a medusa. The medusa appears directly in the middle of my party and I move everyone away in a reflexive panic. I'm not sure if petrification or paralysis are a thing in this game, but I'm not in the mood to find out. I let an invisible character take her down, hoping maybe if she can't see them she can't stone them, and it doesn't take long for her to fall. The arch devil holds out for a long time, though, mostly because my characters miss so much. Maybe it wasn't smart to make the two invisible fighters Level 1 at the same time. Eventually we win out.

      
The path leads down to Level 7. This is potentially scary stuff considering what those monks did to me, but I chance it. I find a big empty room, full of nothing.

     
In one far corner there's a coat rack with a key on it. Picking up the key closes off an open wall to my right and opens up a closed wall to my left. I worry at first I've been teleported, but putting the key back reverses the walls again. It's just a secret passage.

      
In this next room, there are a trio of jail cells, all unlocked, with skeletons shackled against the far walls, padlocks visible on their wrists. The interface makes this unintuitive again, because clicking on them, even with the character holding the key, does not work like it does on doors. Eventually I hit on the right combo, selecting the key in the inventory, clicking a "use" button, and then clicking on the padlock. In two cases, there's a flash and I find myself in combat with a cave wight and a masked figure. The wight makes me nervous (level drain? paralysis?) but goes down easy. The masked figure is hard to hit and takes a while.

      
In the middle cell, instead of a fight, a "body" appears on the ground. I kick DV out for a minute and add it to the party. Despite appearances, it's not dead: it's a living character, a dwarven clerk named Burliman. Out of the kindness of my heart, I decide to rescue him. I have to put the key back on the rack to get out of the room.
       

The key bone's connected to the . . . lock bone. The lock bone's connected to the . . . wrist bone.

       

Back in town there's no real recognition of the event or anything. He goes into the tavern and is a recruitable character, but is only Level 1 with bad stats. He has 300 gold on him and I assume he's grateful enough to give that to my party in thanks. According to the hint book, he can identify items for the party, but I missed that. Then I return and claim DV, who waited patiently in the jail cell. (The bartender in the tavern did indeed know about the missing DV, and guessed he was still alive, BTW.)

     
Past the jail cells there's one more door, this one locked, and none of our keys work. I'll have to leave it for later, and in fact never figure this one out. The cluebook suggests I missed a way of unlocking it, and I might have had free rein of Level 7 much sooner.

      
Back up on 6, I try the middle path, to the Buddha's delight. It is a short jump to a loooooooong hallway, 10 steps east and 18 north, expanding into a large, irregular room. There's a door to the north, and when I peek inside I see a book on the floor and a vaguely grim-reaper-looking monster moving around. It attacks when I step inside for the book.

      
According to the window, I am literally fighting Death, or at least a death. He hits hard and often, even invisible characters. None of mine hit him even once. I give it 20 rounds, but this seems like a foolish battle, so I pull my characters back to the edge of the screen and activate my second of three core memories about this game from 1995. I withdraw from a fight, which works as advertised, playing a short clip of "Run away!" from Monty Python and the Holy Grail. I probably should have tried it sooner, but I was looking in the wrong pull-down menu for the wrong words, and also failed to remember the character had to be disengaged from combat and at the screen edge.  

     

Combat with a wight, some bat-men, and some skeletons. Monsters turn into tombstones when you kill them.

       

Running away pulls you out of combat, but leaves the opponent a square away. If you're slow, they can re-engage. I grabbed the book and backtracked through the door as if death were literally on the doorstep.

The book turns out to be a second spellbook. This one even has several spells already saved into it, though Siobhan also has them all. 10 hours feels too long for the chance to bring a second useful magician into the game, but considering we're all still only level 3, going on 4, maybe not? I'm tempted to add a magus (the fighter-wizard) to the mix, but for now things are working well enough that I don't want to mess with party composition.

To the west of us there's a narrow passage and then another 3x4 chamber. It seems empty, but as I circle it checking for invisible walls there's a sound like something grating or moving. At first I'm not sure what's happened and worry I was teleported. The room looks the same, but the exit is missing. As I panic about being trapped I'm attacked by a wight and some critters. The fight is easy, but afterward I'm still confused about my location and since I appear to be trapped I keep checking for secrets. It turns out the entryway is still there, just covered by an illusion now. It's really confusing for a minute, but after some thought I have to give the developers credit for making it exciting.

I find myself impressed by the variety of mechanics and interactions I've seen lately. There's been a teleport, a false teleport with a deceptive illusion, the on/off secret passage from the keys, some illusionary walls, and a body to rescue with a split party. While some of the interface choices have been hard to figure out, it's got me using items in several different ways to find surprising outcomes. Honestly, not bad.

Back in camp I heal up and take stock. Money is the problem again. All of my characters can go up at least one level, but I can only afford to train the level 1 folks and one more. I pick Siobhan the wizard because I know I need more mage spell slots, and also because her HP are by far the worst. I'm pleasantly surprised when she goes from 10 to 14 HP, and also happy to see Jexica and DV get modest gains. I wasn't sure if they'd gain health while rehashing levels they'd already gone through once. I really hope being level 2 again helps with their accuracy.

Siobhan is only 200 XP from level 5, but I'm nearly broke. I don't even bother checking the others.
     

On the sixth floor there's only one path left, so I take it along a snaking, non-branching tour of the entire northern half of the level. A note on the wall gives me the recipes for a couple of cleric spells, "Faer" (fear, basically, weakens attackers) and "Fortis Al" (party defense). At the end I find stairs up, which lead through short stints on each floor before ascending again, all the way to the top. All told, it's probably 100 steps from the door to the final room.
       

A mage cannot cast spells while wearing armor. Despite some hints at other restrictions, this is the only one I've observed in-game.

      

I approach a skeleton, and as I do a wall in front of me disappears when I'm two steps away and reappears when I get one step closer. It takes me a minute to realize this is a basic pressure plate. Gear is not enough, though; I have to leave a party member behind. First I poke at the skeleton, which exposes a helmet and another skull wand. Sweet! I leave the shaman behind and step forward. The secret door slams shut behind me. I find myself facing the gate to the elevator shaft.

     
Uh, something was supposed to be here, right? Looking at the hint book, I see that this is how you're supposed to reclaim the elevator if you take it up to the first floor and then fall through the trap door. Except I didn't bother doing that because Chet had documented it in his walkthrough. So I've got no elevator to retrieve, and I've just locked a party member at the wrong end of an infinite corridor for nothing. Adding injury to the insult, I have to talk to the giant head and let the trap door send me down a floor because that's the only way out.

     

Chet's screenshot of this moment, for reference.

      

I always feel a little rushed and nervous with a split party, so selling some extra gear or using the wand isn't an option; it's an all-out sprint down through levels 2-6, taking the normal route. Critically, there's an interruption in the real world. I save and quit, take care of things, and come back—still antsy to make the party whole before I mess up.

       
Back through the north door, jump over the pit. 80 steps of snake tunnels to the stairs, climb 5 flights. There's Mulk, just waiting for me. I turn around and reverse the process. Stairs, stairs, stairs. Serpentine, serpentine. The hall straightens and the door is in front of me. I've been clicking fast to get through all of this and I run straight up to the door and smack into it.

      
And then I fall. Because these are the doors with the pits in front of them, the ones you need "Levitas" to make it back the other way. In my hurry, I've forgotten, and now I'm back on the seventh floor, in the same dead-end zone where two other valuable runs have already led to party wipes and full resets. I still don't know how to get out of here. It may not be possible. And of course because of that brief save, I'm not sure how far back my prior save goes. Probably just to when Siobhan leveled up. Without the need for mapping, it's probably only 10 minutes of game time to redo it. But crud, how annoying.

      

Rather than immediately reloading, I push on, hoping that since I'm stronger I can find an exit. I am not mapping. I'm being pretty sloppy, really. And it's a big level, so I'm running around kind of lost. I find the elevator key and figure why not take it a third time before I die? I hit the same battle with the 8 monks (wizards, actually) and this time I don't have much problem. My three spellcasters have picked up "Gestun" (light damage to all foes) and this seems a perfect time to try it out. It damages about three quarters of them on each cast; I assume the others resist. Gestun doesn't kill anyone, but the invisible characters mop up. I take a little damage, but not much.

      
I roam long hallways, occasionally getting into fights which all end well and give great XP and some bags of gold. I find a golden apple, which is clearly going to be valuable one way or another. There's a rapier, and the description says it's mithril, which has to be a good thing. We are running low on health, not so much from the fights but because we've run into a couple of traps or scripted events where a wizard—the villain Nequilar, presumably—teleports into the square in front of us, laughs, and blasts us all with fire. I've run all over the place and have found no stairs at all. Nothing but floor pits, if I want to go down to the eighth floor. From there I'd still need to find a way back up to 7 to get out.

      
I'm starting to think I'm doomed, but then I remember I'd picked up one more Wish scroll for testing purposes. I also started thinking, I've been down here so many times now, and I've been told there's no exit, and I can't find one. It might actually be true. I consult my maps and realize I have exhausted every path I know on the higher levels. Maybe I've missed some hidden walls or something, but my only next step is to jump right back down here anyway and map until I die or find my way out. As cheesy as it is, maybe the Wish scrolls are the intended way back?

     
Well, screw it. I'm stuck and this doesn't feel fun. I zap home.
      

The golden apple sells for over 9,000. I don't see a way to use it, and decide it's probably intended to be treasure rather than a quest item. I really don't need to start a 10-year war in Asia Minor right now.

      
I appraise the rapier and realize it is the best weapon in the game. It does 5-15 damage and confers 20% magic resistance. Very nice. I give it to Jexica, who dual wields it with another sword.

     
With the money, I can train my ninja and knight up to 3, get the others to level 4, and Siobhan, who was already 4, goes to 5. That should help tremendously. Everyone has enough XP to go at least one level higher, maybe more, but there's no more gold. Back into the breach.

     

****

   

Previous entry in this series

   

Next entry in this series

10/04/2026 

 

Citadel: Memoirs of an Invisible Man

Mocked for an especially stupid death.

       

Guest post by Quirkz: 

     

[Ed. We pick up after Quirkz's disastrous previous session in which he made almost no progress except for his hand-drawn maps.] 

     

On my next reload, I try a different path and immediately find a pile of treasure which includes four scrolls and a spellbook! For the last two hours, this repository has been only nine steps away from the room with the Tasmanian devils. That's what I get for following the right-hand path instead of the left-hand path, I guess. I sprint back to town to see what I can do with it. The book has "Haelan" in it—I thought this was a cleric-only spell, but I guess both classes do get it. I can only seem to memorize one copy. There's supposed to be a way to transfer scrolls into the spellbook—a concept familiar from Dungeons & Dragons—but I'm not seeing it in the interface. The scrolls are higher level, so maybe that's the issue? There is a "Levitate" scroll, plus some other promising spells, but for now I put them in the stash and figure I'll come back once I'm more experienced.

      
I learn to become more tactical in combat. There is an impulse to mob one enemy with all your characters, pick them off, and then move on to the next. This works great in the Gold Box games and many others, but the combat engine here is weird. I'm starting to realize that it almost always alternates one friendly attack with one enemy attack. If you have four heroes around one foe, they will each attack once in rotation while the enemy gets to attack four times. Once I pick up on this, I start strategically placing my fighter against the lead enemy and letting them go toe-to-toe, alternating attacks, while my healers stay back and provide support. Sometimes the enemies are all on one side, and I can work my way through the pack one at a time. Sometimes they try to maneuver around us, and I need two fighters making a front line. (Occasionally, combat begins with total chaos and everyone is in the thick of it from the start, but that's unavoidable.) The trick, of course, is that anyone who doesn't attack or cast a spell at least once gets no XP, so I also learn to move the others up, let them get in one swipe, and then back off, giving them a stake in the rewards.

     

I explore more of the fifth floor, mapping a long hallway and some side branches. In one large and suspiciously empty room, I accidentally stumble on my first illusory wall of the game. I guess that is a thing here. In a small room behind, there's a whole bunch of items, including two scrolls, several sheets of vellum (for creating scrolls from memorized spells, I think), and a nice shiny diamond ring. At first I think this is probably just for the resale value, but it's equippable. When my fighter wears it, there's a whooshing sound and his icon on the screen disappears and turns into a little starburst shape. I've just become invisible, and ancient memories resurface, suggesting this is an extremely valuable combat benefit.

      
I am pretty sure that I've got enough XP now for five of the characters to level up, but I'd like to finish mapping this long hallway. I find one locked door with monsters lurking behind it. I am content to leave that alone. Down at the end, I find a second locked door with more monsters. There is one empty square to the side, and for mapping thoroughness I step into it, expecting nothing. I'm surprised when there's a big white burst on the screen, a whooshing noise, and suddenly my surroundings have been changed. It's a fiendish teleport trap, at exactly the wrong time.

        

The teleport trap in action. There's a neat swirling animation that this freeze-frame only partly conveys.

         
I have no idea where I am. I can't save now, because I could be walking dead. Did I save when I found the ring? Maybe. I'm not sure how dire my circumstances are. I appear to be at the far end of a long, narrow room. As I walk in the only available direction, I see monsters lurking. Mummies. I try to pass but they attack me. When combat starts, there are two mummies on one side of the screen and four lesser critters near my party. Crud. The only other time I faced mummies, just two of them alone, they slaughtered my entire party.

      
But I didn't have the ring then. I rush my invisible fighter to engage one mummy. The second mummy charges and I have to put my other fighter in front of him. My other characters target the small creatures. The ring makes a huge difference, because that mummy either doesn't attack at all or never hits. The trash mobs clean up quickly, and I spend the rest of the time trying to keep the second mummy engaged with my healthiest character, healing until I run out of spells. The first mummy finally dies, and now my invisible fighter is free to take on the second mummy while the rest of my crew cower in the corner. This technique succeeds quickly. When combat ends, I find a key on the ground. A step away, there is a locked door at the end of the room. Stepping through, I'm right next to the teleport trap again. Phew! There are few feelings like the relief of being lost in a dungeon and then figuring out where you are.

     
From the mummies I also got a map book, an in-game editable scratch pad you can fill in yourself, but I would rather work from graph paper. Among other things, to get to the map you need to do a ton of clicking, and more to swap between levels, and more to edit anything. Mostly, though, because it pops up in a large window that covers everything else, it's just in the way. The graph paper is superior for other chronological reasons: it's an Ameritech-branded pad I picked up while on a job in 1998 and have been carrying with me since, so it's nearly as old as the game.

     

The in-game map book. Advanced, but inconvenient.

       
I save and rush home. Five of my characters are eligible for leveling up, but I only have enough money for two of them. I strategically choose my head fighter and my cleric; I really want the second level spell "Haelan Al," which cures light wounds on the whole party. [Ed. That was not a typo; the name of the spell in-game only has one l.] This will get some use in the dungeon but will also greatly speed up recovery at camp while in town, which is ridiculously fiddly—an average of 10–12 mouse clicks for every 2 HP restored. This should cut that effort by 80%.

      
Training also requires time. Both of my characters disappear from the party for three days. I have nothing better to do after healing, so I end up needing to pay good gold to pass the time in the hostel. My characters still don't show up, so I go looking for them. They're not in the tavern, either, so I spend a couple extra days resting, and only then do I find them in the tavern. (I later realize there's a bug or display issue; after leveling up I have to go to the tavern, leave, and then re-enter and they're available. It's annoying and weird.) The fighter has gone from 8 HP to 13, and the cleric from 7 to 12. Nice gains! 
         

Invisible me. And best of all, more torches!

       

Out of curiosity I give Meanie the diamond ring. I wouldn't consider selling it, but I want to know the appraised value. But in the shop when I try to click the "sell" button, the screen just flickers. Back at camp, Meanie's inventory is empty, several items just missing. This seems like a bug, so I quit and re-open, but it's in the same state. I'm not about to face the whole game without My Precious, so I have to roll back to my previous save.

     
That restores the ring, thank goodness, but when I re-level my characters, they only have 10 HP instead of 12 and 13. That's just unacceptable. I mean, I'm not inclined to start save-scumming just for a couple extra HP every time I level up, but in this case a bug stole them from me, and I feel like I'm owed. So I reload a couple of times, trying to get my proper stats back, and in the process nearly commit the same file management sin, tainting all but one of my recent save slots before I realize with horror what's about to happen. On my last try, I get an even better 13 and 13, and then make three extra saves, to be safe. Then I quit and make duplicate copies of all the important saves and move them to a separate folder, just in case. I'm not messing around now.

     
Now that I'm tougher, I go back to the fourth floor to clean up some loose ends. First, I get revenge on the trio with the minotaur. They're practically helpless against an invisible enemy. I think Caltrop takes 2 damage total, even though the fight runs 20 or more rounds. The sorceress, though, appears in the middle of the party and immediately poisons my thief. Jexica's health trickles down slowly over the course of a few minutes, both in and out of combat. It's not too hard to keep topped off with spells, but we're quick to grab the equipment and head home. The pile includes four pieces of armor, most of which go to the cleric to finally give him reasonable protection.

     
Poison can be cured at the temple. It takes both money and time. While being tended to, Jex's icon moves into the box on the right, with a timer displayed counting down the time until the penalty box opens. 

    

This is almost all our remaining gold.

       

I had picked up a throwing axe at some point, and when I go to sell it for cash I'm offered nearly 7,000 gold. That would be nice, but that price is far too good. I check the guidebook and the axe (which can also be a melee weapon) is listed as "magical," although the only real perk it offers is 3-10 damage, making it roughly a +2 weapon. I give it to Caltrop as my lead fighter.

      
I backtrack to that other locked gate with the lurking monsters on Level 4. The same key that let me out of the mummy room lets me into this one. There's a banner over the archway reading "Camera a Cwen" a phrase that I'm guessing is half Latin (camera=room/chamber) and half Welsh (cwen=queen) and thus likely the queen's chambers.
      

Skeletons to the left of me, mummies to the right. Here I am . . .

       

The fight isn't hard. In the reward pile, there's some money and a different kind of shield than I've seen. When I pull it into the thief's inventory, she also turns invisible. That is a very pleasant surprise. There are stairs down that I don't take yet and stairs up that I do. This leads to a small cross-shaped piece of Level 3, detached from the rest, with nothing in it. I spend a lot of time being suspicious and poking things, but I can't make anything happen.

  
I skip the queen's downstairs for now, feeling like I'm wandering too far from the central route, and backtrack to the unexplored parts of the fifth floor's central section. It's been generous to me so far, and it continues to pay off well. Near one locked door I find a display case marked "In Emergency Break Glass." A skull wand is inside. I shoot an arrow at the glass and gaffle the wand. 

       

A rare anachronism in the dungeon. Along with the elevator. And the Tasmanian devils.

        

Behind another secret door, I find a room with some shadowy figures lurking. When the fight loads, it's a batch of undead. One of them maybe looks like a wight, plus a couple of mummies and a couple of maybe-wraiths. We start out surrounded and it's a bit of a scramble to put my two invisible characters up against the scariest looking foes while the others try to hide, but it ends up being an easy fight. Wort, my cleric, straight-up kills a mummy in one hit. I guess rising to Level 2 did something for his combat ability.  The invisible characters take down the rest with almost no loss of health. It really is an extraordinary benefit.

       
After the fight, I find some gold, and then scattered around the room are so many bags I can barely fit them all in my inventory. I think I walk away with 950 GP total. This is a tremendous haul, enough to level up two more characters. I pick my other fighter, DV, and my wizard mostly because she needs HP, but I'm also hoping for new spells. DV goes from 8 to 15 HP, a great boost. Siobhan gets 3 more HP, moving up to 7. Not great, but better. She also gets one more spell slot, but I still can't figure out how to learn any new spells. I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong, but I leave it for now.
       

Four of them are now Level 2. Everyone but the shaman has enough experience to go to Level 3, but I don't have enough money.

       

On the fourth floor, I'd come across a square room with a skeleton in the middle. Directly between me and it was a circle on the ground, an obvious trap. I debated saving and stepping into it to see what would happen, but decided to play it safe and jump over it instead. The trap went off anyway, with everyone taking a few points of fire damage. Touching the skeleton revealed a book and a dagger. The book was a journal entry from the captain of the guard, talking about the tower being swarmed. It didn't seem to have anything valuable in it. Past the skeleton was a bardiche, which also looked normal.

    
Now, while cleaning up the inventory, I try to pawn both and am shocked to be offered 1,000 for the book and 500 for the bardiche. Confused, I spend 20 gold to properly identify the bardiche, only to have it confirmed it's totally unmagical, doing 1-8 damage just like the ones the shop sells for 15 GP. The description does say it's "blue steel" and has a fancy wood handle, where the base models are just iron. I don't know whether there's a hidden quality variable, or if this is just a nice way to give me some money, but I take it. Trouble arrives when I go to sell the book. I'd said no to the first pass and then tried a few more times, getting lowball offers in the 600s to 800s. While I'm waiting for 1,000 to come around again, the shopkeeper loses his temper and kicks me out for 10 days. I guess there are consequences to haggling after all!
       

But you were the one driving the hard bargain! You'd already offered me more gold the first time.

     

I still don't think time has any significance in the game, and I've discovered you can pass a day for free with the "carouse" button in the tavern. Much better than paying 2 GP per person at the hostel, if you don't need healing. But I feel guilty about unknowingly insulting the shopkeeper, so I reload to stay on his good side and sell the gear for reasonable amounts after two or three rounds of haggling. This is enough to let Mulk the shaman and Jexica the thief level to 2, and also Caltrop to 3. 

       

Seeing what condition my condition is in.

       

Caltrop gains a whopping 8 HP, jumping to 21 (and also takes 900 GP and 6 days to do it; I'm sensing an increasingly expensive pattern here). Jexica goes from 8 to 14. Very nice! Mulk only gets 3 HP, leaving him barely ahead of the wizard. I'm questioning whether he's going to thrive here. I also remember to check the before and after stats on a few characters, and leveling up does not provide any boost. The other four are ready to go up, but I don't have the funds.

      
The empty alcoves in the Level 3 queen's chambers are really bothering me. I'm sure I've missed something, so I consult the hint book, which is written as a narrative of other people attempting my quest. It suggests that messing with the rocks in one of the cluttered-up window alcoves (this is a sunken tower; the windows are now looking out onto rubble) should reveal a secret chamber with an orb. It's not always clear how to interact with things in this game. I have clicked on doors, and I triggered the one magic mouth pressing a button with the mouse. Other times you need to have something selected in inventory, and then a button becomes available there. It's frustratingly inconsistent.

     
I'm not seeing anything now, so I click around erratically on all three windows, with no results. I try shooting them with arrows. I try walking through them, and jumping at them. Nothing. I reread the hint book, taking closer note that it specifies pulling at one rock on the western alcove, toward the bottom. Visually I compare the alcoves and see no difference, but since it's in the hint book I start clicking on individual pebbles, one by one. Eventually one does trigger an animation and the sound of tumbling rocks, and inside the alcove is the promised orb, which is supposed to glow when activated.

      
It takes me a while to realize the hint book is very literal here. I have to equip the orb, view it, and then click and wave my mouse back and forth to mimic "rubbing" it before it lights up. You can't just hold it and don't get a button to use it. I don't know how anyone would ever figure that out. [Ed. I think Quirkz is underselling it here. This is absolutely enraging. No player should ever be required to consult a hintbook, and no player would ever come upon this solution organically.] It makes me glad I have the hint book—even though I'm trying to avoid checking it, and mostly only do so muddling along for a good while—because there's very little online for this game. But it also doesn't bode well for future riddles. The benefit of the orb is a perpetual light source, by the way. No need for all those torches.
        

I get light, but the evil wizard now gets to spy on me in exchange. Also note that the orb has both "Inspect" and "Examine" buttons. One gives you the usual description; the other gives you the window where you "rub" it.

           

About the alcoves, in the hint book one of the characters says, "Wow! We should be checking all of these things!" This I remember from 1995, because there is another, more important one of these out there, but I didn't recall the details for how to activate it until now. I run back through the dungeon checking every alcove I can find, but nothing shows up yet. It must be deeper. I will need to click every one from now on, though.

     
I start working on the northern section of Level 5, which has a large room labeled Templum Regalis. There's a fight with mummies, and in a back room there's a pentacle amulet that auto-equips when I pick it up, immediately announcing that my character is unwilling to take it off. Curses! Literally.

      
Through a door in the northeast, we're confronted by the figure of a man shouting, "Stay back lest ye meet your end!" I'm not sure whether this is a trick, so I approach, which initiates a fight with a lone man. He casts a "Confusion" spell on us immediately, and suddenly every time I try to move my characters, they run mostly in the opposite but sometimes random directions. I have a heck of a time getting one into combat range, but once I do it ends quickly. The hall stops in a suspiciously empty dead end, and at the back we find an illusionary wall, with entrances to two sides of a larger chamber. The walls are decorated with writing, telling the story of the man we slew, cleric Fra Elsof, a devoted servant of the queen. I check the hint book later and it seems that he might have joined our party if we had an empty slot.

    

Facing down the Fra.

          
As a test, much later on I'll load an early save and try walking in with only five characters, but we get the same warning. Approaching him still initiates combat. I figure I should at least try to withdraw—tricky, with confused characters running the wrong direction—but I get someone to the edge and run away. When the second combat ends, the Fra's icon is on the floor, looking like a lost party member. Aha! I can pick him up and have him join. He's a level 3 cleric with 18 HP and average stats. This might not be a bad way to improve the party. There is a minor inventory problem, though, because he is wearing a robe, a flail, and a necklace, and he refuses to take any of them off. This means you lose a couple of slots and can't ever improve his weapon.
      

Next time, we'll see some movement on the main plot.

    

****

   

Previous entry in this series

    

Next entry in this series 

 09/27/2026