Pagan: Look at Me Now

This guy gave me trouble last time.

        

The Avatar ended the last session wondering how, with no money and limited theft opportunities, he was going to outfit himself properly enough to avoid getting wrecked the moment he stepped through the town's exit gates. I planned to explore two possibilities: 1) Searching harder for something to steal, and 2) Going out one of the side gates to see if there were more money-making and skill-building opportunities there.

   

Idea #1 pays off almost immediately, mostly thanks to my recent experience with The Odyssey, which also had a lot of locked doors—including those that had keys on the other side. So as I walked under the arch separating the two halves of the guardhouse near the northern gate, eyeing a valuable looking chest in the east tower, it occurred to me that there might be a way to get in here from the other side. I spent some time messing with my new jumping skills and figured it out: Jump and grab the ledge of the bridge, then haul myself up.

      

Save your locks. The Avatar is a second-story man.

      

Among the various treasures inside, I find a longsword, what looks like leather armor (though just called "armor"), and some arm guards. So that's an upgrade. Now I think I have to revisit the entire town looking for similar places I can jump up to.

   

I don't think it would be an Ultima game if it made you steal, however. So I decide to investigate other areas around Tenebrae. I start with the outdoor area east of the east district. I explore the perimeter of the area first and then fill in the middle in east-west strips. Encounters:

   

• A herd of non-hostile toraxes.

      

They speak for the lrees.

        

• A fisherman's boat hauled up on shore. A giant bee-like creature called a mandril attacks me, and I kill it with a loss of 11 hit points. Two more attack me a bit north of here. I miss the days when you only had to click once on an enemy and the Avatar kept attacking. All this double-clicking is annoying when the enemy is continually moving.

     

Fighting a giant wasp.

       

• Every time I get near the water, a menacing creature comes up from the depths and snaps his jaws. I keep missing the screenshots.

       

Have I talked much about sound yet? It's not bad, but it's . . . aggressive. Everything is louder and more pronounced than it really needs to be, including the "whoosh" of a weapon when attacking, the "shing" when the Avatar sheaths his weapon at the end of combat, the "thud" of a connection with an enemy's skull. When the Avatar exerts himself to jump or climb, he yowls like a FIFA player. Even the footsteps seem a bit too ostentatious. 

         

Little do I know that I'm about to take a long detour.

        

"Do not go in there, Avatar," the Guardian's voice rumbles as I near a fallen-down shack with a skeleton inside. A zombie attacks just outside the door, but I manage to kill him.

   

As I enter the house the floor gives way and dumps me into a basement, in a room with a little spider and a troll wandering around. (The Guardian: "Ah, Avatar! The thrill of conquest is so invigorating!") The troll is fortunately not hostile unless I attack him or get into his path. The basement is littered with bodies, one of which has a healing potion I desperately need; another has a pair of leggings that add 3 to my armor class. Meanwhile, the troll just completely disappears, even though there are no open exits from this room. There's a locked chest in the northeast corner, and the troll probably took the key with him.

         

The arrival room. A troll stomps around to my east.

       

The only exit is a door to the north. A book next to the door suggests that something called "the Slayer" lies beyond and that if I am "true," it will strike down my enemies. "Find the one who is identical to me," it advises, "and he shall lead ye further." 

      

The door opens the way to a crypt. There are a lot more bodies and more spiders. My strength goes up by 1 point at some point. The "twin" to the first book is on an altar on a raised platform. It praises me for continuing to seek the Slayer, but it warns that the Slayer is treacherous. "In one branch will ye find another in my family tree," it says. "In the other branch will ye find a hard road empty of all but pain." Robert Frost could take lessons from this guy.

         

Laid low by a skeleton.

        

Two skeletons stand motionless at the end of a hallway. One comes to life as I pass it. He kills me, but I hit him enough times that I feel it's worth trying again. This time, I manage to kill him. I'm celebrating and looting his body when he suddenly comes back to life! He wallops me, and I'm dead again. On a reload, I run past him, and he's mysteriously gone when I return. I feel like I'm running from too many enemies, and it's weird that they keep disappearing.

   

In a far corner—this is a weird goddamned dungeon—I find a troll milling about with three peasants. Once again, the troll is non-hostile if I avoid him. The peasants will speak to me, but they won't tell me much. A backpack in this area has a key. 

      

You're literally wearing a sack.

       

A nearby room seems like a bedroom, although a corpse is lying on one of the beds. The room is a disaster, with clothes strewn everywhere. Within the room, I find various potions, 10 obsidian pieces, and an axe. 

    

Walking in front of a mirror causes a vague shadow to appear.

         

The troll is back when I return to the first room to try the key on his chest. I actually manage to kill him, though it takes me down to 2 hit points. He has about 10 oil flasks and 57 obsidian coins, so if I can get out of this dungeon, I'll have to consider this expedition a success. Oil flasks work by double-clicking on them to light them and then throwing them across the screen with the mouse—not double-clicking on them and then sitting there watching them burn like an idiot, which results in the Avatar's body flying to pieces before the inevitable death message. 

   

Speaking of flying to pieces, the chest does open with the key, but of course it's trapped, so I'm soon reloading again. I use one of my Scrolls of Trap Destruction, but that just causes the trap to go off, killing me a third time. I finally open it by standing farther away before using the scroll. It just has another key.

          

A typical Ultima VIII experience: lighting a flask to throw it, then losing it underneath some other object in your backpack.

        

(While I'm complaining about keys: The player can activate the keyring with the "K" key and then click the target. Would it have been so hard to program the same functionality into (T)alk, (O)pen, and (A)ttack?) 

     

There's a door that only opens with a lever, but using the lever summons a specter that I can't kill (or even hit), and it summons endless zombies. Fortunately, there's a way around it, but it requires me to kill a zombie (+1 dexterity) and then contend with a seeker that blocks a passageway. Seekers are flying eyeballs with long tails that "whap whap whap" for a lot of damage. After several deaths, I run past it with the Potion of Invisibility (again a comparison to The Odyssey is apt). 

      

"What if beholders had tails?!" - Someone at Origin.

       

On the other side of the seeker, I find another book on a pedestal. It tells me that the Slayer is near and congratulates me on getting so close. A changeling appears and takes my form, but he dies in a few hits, dropping some more oil flasks and some obsidian coins, all of which I lose when I flee out of the area to avoid the seeker. Apparently, leaving a screen in this game causes all of the items on the ground to disappear. 

   

I reach what seems like a dead end, except that I again remember that the Avatar can jump in this game.

     

In real life, I might throw my backpack over ahead of me.

       

I kill another zombie (+1 dexterity), move forward, and finally get to experience one of the game's famous jumping puzzles. In this case, it's a bunch of rock platforms sticking out of the water, some of which sink and rise on a timer. To jump from one to the other just requires the player to click with both mouse buttons, although it is possible to try to jump too far and end up in the drink. The only thing hard about this particular puzzle is that there are more platforms than necessary, fooling me at first into thinking the sequence was more complicated than it really was.

         

I really only need to jump across those top two.

          

The island on the other side of the puzzle goes west to a door. There's a seeker in front of the door when I first approach, but when I run away and come back, it's gone. That's a handy trick. Another book on a pedestal says that I'm entering the Slayer's chambers. "The Slayer, whose fine oaken body be so strong as to withstand Titanic forces that would try to tame it," it elaborates. "The Slayer will not travel with ye unless it deems ye worthy." This makes me think the Slayer is a weapon rather than a demon.  

      

There are two skeletons in the mausoleum beyond. It takes me a few reloads, but I manage to destroy them both (permanently) with the oil flasks, although the game is maddeningly inconsistent when it comes to a) where you can throw things, b) how far you can throw them, and c) how far away they have to land before the Avatar takes damage from the explosion. They both have fire gems, chaos gems, and potions, so it's a good haul, although I don't really know what those gems are for.

  

The inner chamber has a raised altar that I have to jump to reach. On the altar is . . . the Slayer. It's a mace. By the glow around it, I assume it's a magic mace. I have no trouble picking it up and equipping it, so I guess it deems me worthy.

         

Never thought of myself as a mace guy, but what the heck.

       

A doorway under the altar takes me back to the surface, in the middle of another ruined shack. I'm almost immediately attacked by a zombie. My new weapon kills it—eventually. It seems to take more hits than my long sword. But there is a peal of thunder at one point, so I guess that's special.

  

I make my way back to where I fell into the dungeon and continue my circuit:

    

• A guard patrols a ruined house near the water. The house has a treasure chest. He attacks when I get near. I manage to kill him; there's another thunderclap as I do. The chest he was guarding is locked, but there's a key in a nearby backpack. The chest—which explodes, of course—has a mace, a skull tankard, and four oil flasks. This game really wants me to have oil flasks.

• I find a sunken area of dirt with three changelings. They drop a few coins. There's a mound in the middle of their area with a bunch of mushrooms called executioner's hood.

      

A changeling in Avatar form (behind me) and in its natural form (ahead of me).

          

• As I climb out of this area, my strength goes up by 1. Can I grind my strength by just climbing up and down from things? 

• I pass a northern exit and come back to the building where I exited the dungeon. There's another zombie there. As I kill it, I get another point of strength. There's also another thunderclap as he dies. Other than pealing thunder whenever I kill a foe, I'm not sure what this Slayer does.

• I'll stop narrating every one of these, but my dexterity increases by 1 while killing another zombie. I feel like the game is erratic in the duration between these increases.

• The Guardian, as a hostile torax attacks me: "Care you no more for your own world, Avatar?"

       

That's all I find in this area, but I'm curious if the Slayer, being a magic weapon, will kill the specter that gave me trouble in the western district. Also, I have enough money to check out the options at the armory. I go there first and buy a shield, the only type of armor that I don't have. I actually buy two, because after buying the first one, I cannot—despite it being as big as a shield—find it in the mess that is my backpack. Couldn't the developers have made the backpack space a little bigger?

            

Previous Avatars might have been offended by that.

           

It soon turns out the mace can kill the specter, although it takes a lot of hits. When it and its summoned zombies are dead, I explore the burned-out building next to it. It has stairs leading to a basement, where a peasant woman screams at me to "go away!" In the east side of the building, it looks like debris is covering a stairway, so I spend some time removing it piece by piece. This is harder than it should be given the game's mercurial rules about what the Avatar can pick up, how close he has to be to pick it up, and where he can put it down. To be fair, these issues plagued the two Ultima VII games as well, although there wasn't quite as much junk in them.

     

This game really loves its messy scenes.

          

When I'm done, I've exposed a hole rather than a stairway, and it takes some serious effort to go down the hole. The Avatar just keeps teetering on the side, or jumping over it. I'm about to give up when he finally falls down. I find myself on the other side of the wall from the peasant woman. At first, it looks like there's nothing there, but by clicking around carefully, I find a bag with 57 obsidian coins. The bag is frankly the more important find. I put all my mushrooms into it. Now I need one for potions.

      

Enjoying my new bag.

      

Getting out of this area is a chore. I have to maneuver under the hole where I fell down, then jump at just the right moment to grab the edge and haul myself up.

   

Back on the surface, I take stock. I started this session hoping to get stronger so I could better deal with the enemies north of the city. As the session nears its end:

    

• My strength and dexterity have both gone up by 3 points, which in turn has increased my maximum hit point value by 6.

• My armor rating has gone from 3 to 12 thanks to my new leggings, arm bands, armor, and shield.

• I have a magic weapon.

• I have enough money to buy other things if I find myself in a place where there are valuable things to buy. 

         

I'm a new man.

        

So I'd say mission accomplished! As much as I don't like aspects of this game, I have to admit, the Ultima series rarely offers satisfying character development (unless you're developing your moral virtue, of course). 

      

Let's check it out. I make my way north into the Valley, start exploring, and—ah, dammit. I forgot about the little girls.

       

This is still sick.

        

I reload to avoid them and run into a guy named Gwillim before I find any enemies. He lives in the area with his wife, Corinth. Their son, Cyrrus, just joined the Theurgists. He says he honors Lady Mordea, and I should tell her that she needn't worry about anyone in the Valley breaking her laws. It's clear that he thinks I work for Mordea, and he won't listen to my protestations otherwise.

   

I don't find any monsters before I find the barricaded entrance to a cave, which I spend a while clearing, board by board. This leads to a whole big thing, so I guess I'll try to pick up the main quest thread next time. I'm curious whether the whole Slayer business was an authentic side-dungeon or whether it's a quest item I'll have to deliver to someone at some point.

       

Time so far: 10 hours

   

****

   

Previous entry in this series

 

Next entry in this series

08/27/2026  

  

Game 588: Dragon Lair (1982)

What do we make of the little character in the middle of the "N"?

            

Dragon Lair

Japan

Fugen Electronics (developer and publisher)

Released in 1982 for PC-6000, PC-8000, PC-88, and FM-7

Date Started: 8 August 2026

Date Ended: 10 August 2026

Total Hours: 5

Difficulty:  Moderate (3.0/5)

Final Rating: (to come later)

Ranking at time of posting: (to come later) 

    

In designating the country of origin for an RPG, I typically go with the official headquarters of the primary developer. This quite often differs from the headquarters of the publisher. Less commonly, it differs from the residence or birthplace of the primary author. In this case, we have a game in Japanese, released only in Japan, for which the game materials mention only a Japanese company. And yet, I happen to know from previous experience that the named authors, John and Patty Bell, are Americans. (They are credited as "Brother Sun" and "Sister Moon" on the PC-8x versions but by their proper names on the FM-7 version.) But since I don't do extensive research on the primary authors of other RPGs, just the development company, I feel like I have to accept what the manual is telling me and localize this one in Japan.

    

The question isn't just pedantic, since Dragon Lair has a potential claim, along with a number of other 1982 games (principally, The Dragon & Princess), for "first JRPG." We no longer have good information on the release dates for these titles, so it's tough to identify which one deserves the "first" ribbon. You might consider Dragon Lair out of the running if you decided it wasn't a JRPG at all.

     

A typical room in the dragon lair. The game asks if I want a fox pelt.

       

In addition to the specific release dates, we've lost information about how John and Patty Bell, owners of the California-Based Crystalware, wrote and sold an RPG to Fugen in the first place. We know from previous investigations that John Bell was an eccentric, manic developer with grandiose and frankly unrealistic visions for his company. Right up to his death in 2020, he was promising earth-shattering advances in nanotechnology for national defense as well as a watershed MMO called World of Twine. Perhaps he saw the Japanese market as a natural extension of his ambitions. Perhaps someone at Fugen became aware of Crystalware's low-quality but high-quantity catalog of games, or was impressed by one of their over-the-top newsletters. It's also possible that we're misinterpreting or over-interpreting what the title screens mean by "author." Perhaps the Bells are being given an "in the style of" credit, as Questron did for Richard Garriott. Perhaps they consulted but didn't do any of the actual programming. We simply don't know.

     

That's a cool cover, though.

        

Dragon Lair has already been covered in detail by El Explorador de RPG and HG101, so I decided to use this experience as a test case, to see if translation technology had come far enough to allow me to play the game unassisted—but knowing I could fall back on El Explorador's descriptions if I got stuck.

   

We start with the manual, which Google Translate completely mangled. I relied on Adobe Acrobat's new AI summary tools, and it seemed to do a decent job. The manual describes the titular Dragon's Lair as being full of dangerous monsters and treasure, including a fabled Golden Dragon guarded by a Great Dragon. The character's job is to become a Dragon Master, defeat the Great Dragon, and recover the treasure.

   

I started pasting screenshots into Google Translate, but the service sometimes can't decide whether its job is to translate the script or to simply romanize it. For instance, for the first screen, it accurately translated the key question as: "Are you going to buy a weapon?" But for the text at the bottom, it gave ima anata wa 200 kokinka o motteimasu, which I had to then put back into the translator to get: "You currently have 200 gold coins." It also simply declined to try about 25% of the time. I found that Gemini did a much better job. Either way, I had to update my AI statement to allow the use of AI for translation. 

      

Google Translate does its best.

      

The first screen asks if you want to buy a knife, axe, sword, or spear from among the available weapons. The next one lets you purchase a shield, armor, chainmail, or a helmet. (I don't know what kind of armor the non-chainmail is.) The third screen has you purchase a short bow, long bow, arbalest, or "mysterious bow," which I assume is a magic bow. Finally, you can purchase ammunition for 2 gold pieces per shot. There's a confirmation screen, allowing you to start over or enter the dungeon. 

   

The character begins his explorations with 100 energy, 100 strength, 0 experience, and attack, defense, and ammunition totals commensurate with the equipment the player purchased. Movement is with the numberpad. Once the character starts moving, he continues in that direction until the player hits the "5" key, which is sometimes hard to time precisely. Other commands include: (A)ttack, (F)ire a missile weapon, (L)ook for a secret door, and (Q)uit. Questions (such as whether you want to pick up treasure) are answered with "Y" and "N."

      

The starting room.

              

The game eases the player into it. The first screen has nothing. The second has a treasure, but no traps or monsters. The third has a monster, but on the other side of a lake. Depending on where you go from there, the game slowly introduces its elements, only one of which may be found in each room (i.e., there are no rooms with monsters and treasure):

   

• Traps. These are couched as scorpions, rhinoceros beetles, or some other kind of hazard. They're scattered all across the screen. They don't move. You just move around them to avoid damage.

     

An area full of mines.

     

• Monsters. I didn't bother to translate all of them, as the only thing that matters is how many hit points they have. They include dragons, vampires, and wizards. They make a beeline for you the moment you enter their room, hopefully giving you enough space to shoot some arrows before having to resort to melee combat.

• Regular Treasures. These are represented by thick bars. They can be positive or negative, and can include upgrades or replacements for the equipment the player bought back in the town. Some of them are gold or valuables, which just add to the final score.

      

A treasure restores my stamina.

       

• Special Treasures. These are high-value items represented by an "X" and are always positive.

                

I pick up a sapphire amulet.

       

Dragon Lair plays a bit like one of the many Crystalware titles of the era, with a single protagonist, represented by a cursor, moving around a structured space and finding monsters and treasure. In its approach to combat and the specific character attributes, I agree with El Explorador that it most resembles House of Usher (1980). But if I didn't know anything about the authors, I'd assume that it was yet another adaptation of Brian Sawyer's Quest 1, published in SoftSide magazine in 1981. I guess all of these games were ultimately influenced by Temple of Apshai (1979), so it makes sense that it's hard to untangle them.

      

The dungeon layout, its treasures, and its monsters are all fixed rather than randomized, so winning the game is about accumulating knowledge about where to find health and stamina upgrades and other key items, and where to avoid damaging "treasures" and unnecessary battles. From my experiences exploring the dungeon:

   

• Melee combat is almost always fatal.

• Stamina depletes by 3 points for every room transition, so you don't want to waste time or go back-and-forth unnecessarily. The few stamina-restoring treasures are vital.

• Almost any time the game specifically asks if you want to pick up a regular treasure (rather than automatically picking it up), it will turn out to damage you in some way. 

• I never found any treasures that restocked my arrows. 

• Armor is basically extra hit points. Enemies deplete it before starting on the character's hit points. 

• You get "experience" for each battle, but it doesn't affect missile damage or speed. If it affects melee prowess, I didn't see it. Maybe it affects enemy hit points?

         

In melee combat with a monster dragon. It has already eaten away my armor.

       

Because of #1 and #4, I had the most success ignoring melee weapons and armor and putting my starting 200 gold into a mysterious bow and 50 arrows. The mysterious bow does 100 points of damage every shot, and you can get between 2 and 6 shots depending on the room layout. Enemies seem to have between 100 and 1000 hit points, but if an enemy seems too tough, leaving the room and returning will reroll his hit point total. Enemies are pretty rare in general and you can avoid the ones that aren't necessary. I think you only have to kill one before finding the Golden Dragon, though the path I took required me to kill at least two.

      

The Golden Dragon is on the far east side of the dungeon. Judging by the map at HG101, it can be approached from two directions. The southern one, which I used, has an enemy just before the screen with the treasure. Maybe this is the Great Dragon. I don't know; I didn't translate that one. But he died in just a couple of shots.

     

Finding the Golden Dragon.

       

Once the character has the Golden Dragon, the player can leave at any time with the "W" key, so I didn't even bother to map. I just alternated following the left and right walls, noting the treasures I encountered in order: mandrake that increases strength, something that causes a rockfall and depletes health, a longbow, a stamina increase, gold, and so forth. When I died, I started over and used my foreknowledge to avoid the damaging treasures. I escaped after I found the Golden Dragon and was given a score of 17,668, or "shogun." 

      

My final score.

         

I'm not entirely sure Dragon Lair is a proper RPG, given my questions about that "experience" statistic. The Dragon and Princess, offering a full set of RPG elements, has a better claim to the title regardless of the specific dates. I give this one 10 on the GIMLET, a series of 0s, 1s, and 2s. It's an okay arcade-like quasi-RPG experience for its year, but its lack of imitators in Japan testifies as to its limited appeal.

     

This does not mean I will be adding Japanese games in Japanese to my list. Sending individual screens through Gemini was annoying enough that I'm not going to do it for a text-heavy game. 

     

For further reading:

   

• My "Index of Games by Lineage" has all of the games in the Dunjonquest/Quest lines as well as the Crystalware titles.
• The Dragon and Princess (1982), this game's primary competition for "first JRPG." 
• Dragon Lair coverage at HG101.
• Dragon Lair coverage at El Explorador de RPG. 

   08/25/2026

Warriors and Warlocks - Scenario: Castle Myrhavell: Summary and Rating

This game did not skimp on production values.

           

Warriors and Warlocks - Scenario: Castle Myrhavell

Canada

Warriors and Warlocks (developer); 408614 Ontario Ltd. (publisher)
Released 1983 for the TRS-80, possibly for Commodore 64 in 1984
Date Started: 29 July 2026

Date Ended: 15 August 2026

Total Hours: 23

Difficulty:  Hard (4.0/5)

Final Rating: (to come later)

Ranking at time of posting: (to come later)

     

Summary:

A Wizardry clone that adds a few elements but makes itself absurdly more difficult than even the original Wizardry. The game is really all about character development and tactical combat; the large dungeon levels lack any significant story or main quest.

   

***

   

After the ridiculously long and difficult first session, I reported that reaching Level 2 hadn't really made things much easier. That turned out to be not true. My characters reached Level 3 in less than half the time it took to reach Level 2. At that point, they were tough enough to survive a few encounters, and thus the proportion of expeditions that I needed to quit and reload went from 80% to about 15%. I eventually got my fighters and spellcasters to Level 5 and my bowmen to Level 6. Characters can supposedly age and die, but in my 23 hours with the game, none of them aged even one year. 

        

You may recall from my first entry that during character creation, you get no opportunity to re-roll and that if the statistics aren't high enough, the default choices are fighter and bowman. If you don't like the result, you have to go through the process of deleting the character from the disk and trying again. My opinion now is that as annoying as this process is, it's better to do it than to put your faith in your characters being able to qualify for different classes later. Because characters have a random chance of gaining or losing attributes every time they level up, there's no guarantee that your character will ever meet the minimum requirements for another class. My characters just seemed to get worse in all of the attributes that they needed to increase. Only two of them ever qualified for a better class, and one of them I didn't even want (fighter to cleric). I did manage to switch one of my mages to the wizard class, which allowed him to keep his mage spells even as he gained levels in his new profession.

    

A warrior requires 13 courage, 15 strength, 13 agility, and 13 dexterity. This guy has a long way to go.

        

Spellcasters continued to gain spell slots, although I never got higher than spell Level 2 for any of them. "Sparks" was my first mass-damage spell, available to both the mage and the wizard. I mostly used those, the cleric's "Refresh" (minor healing), the mage's "Magicspear," and various forms of "Locate."

       

My map of Level 1.

      

With my party stabilized, I focused mostly on mapping the first level, which has an enormous, open, cross-shaped space in the center and four quadrants of oddly-shaped rooms in the corners. There were several symmetrically-placed (but, maddeningly, not -sized) areas of dead space. (Secret doors are revealed with the "Glow" spell. I explored all sides for the filled-in squares on the map with that spell active.) In this entire area, there were only a handful of special encounters:

   

• Two fixed battles with three centaurs each. Once the centaurs were killed, those squares had messages about what the characters saw in the area.

• A copse of trees with a buried treasure (a large shield).

• Four locations, symmetrically arranged, in which we found dials that let us set them to -60 to 60. I never figured out what they were about.

     

The game doesn't even acknowledge that you've made a choice.

       

• A square, just behind a secret door, that had a fixed battle that included a black bear. After the battle, we found a long sword +1.

• A message that said: "Goldilocks was here." A wall adjacent to the message had a secret door. Behind the door was a fixed battle with three black bears (ha, ha). In the corner of that room were the stairs to the next level.

        

What is it about RPG developers that they always have to do goofy nonsense like this?

      

Although the game remained miserly with gold rewards, I earned enough to purchase several equipment upgrades. My fighters went from regular swords to long swords, my bowmen from 40-pound bows to 60-pound bows. Everybody got armor upgrades, which include torso armor, helms, gloves, and shields. I never got a point where I felt comfortable purchasing any "electric arrows" or any of the few potions or scrolls that the shop offered.

      

My best fighter's last trip to the armory.

        

The game hadn't offered much at this point, but there's always a certain visceral satisfaction as you slowly grow stronger and start wiping the floor with enemies who once forced you to restore game disks from a backup four-fifths of the time.

   

I was thus intrigued enough that I took the stairs to level 2. My first encounter, right in the arrival square, was with this party:

     

"More behind them" were a bunch of ogres.

          

Nothing on Level 1 had given me more than five or six enemies at once—and all of those enemies were much easier. Two of my fighters were paralyzed from spider venom by the end of the first round. By the end of the second round, three characters were dead. That's when I decided I had enough of this game. I wasn't interested in going through the same multi-hour grinding process again.

      

We can tell a little more from the game files. First, the castle seems to have five levels, titled in their file names MCOURTYD, NDUNGEON, ODUNGEON, LTOWER01, and KTOWER02. The MESSAGES file shows that there weren't many more special encounters on those levels. Here's everything that appears in that file that I didn't cover above:

      

• A ragged piece of parchment you can barely read: 36R27L19R.

• A hole in the wall!

• You can see daylight and the level below! You can jump if you want.

• Scattered equipment and bodies mark the location of a battle.

• You see the faint glow of a Camp spell!

• A message posted on the wall: "Magic User's Conference. By Invitation only!"

• There's been a lot of digging but some yellow still glints in the walls and floor.

• Many bodies litter the floor. One of them has not decayed. A striking silver bracelet adorns his wrist, and his axe still lies by his side.

• A broken sign on the floor: "Breeding experiment! Keep out!"

• Directly north you see statues and an altar. So many statues! On the altar lies a body. The glow of hibernation masks the detail, but you can dimly make out her flowing robes and a silver bracelet. 

      

That first message, perhaps meant to be found on the first level, would seem to perhaps offer a code for the dials, but there are four dials and only three numbers here, plus no indication of the order.

      

Spells available to my Level 5 mage.

       

A review of the WEAPONS file suggests that the long sword +1 was in fact the best weapon in the game. No higher-level weapons are coded. Everything in the file except for the long sword +1 and one other thing is available in the shop. That one other thing is a bracelet called "Valkon's Band." You may recall from the last entry that two characters are listed on the character roster, but as "OUT": Valkon, a Level 8 warrior, and Myrhavell, a Level 7 warlock. My guess is that one of them is the undecayed body described above, and the other is the sleeping beauty. Those encounters would then let you recover them and use them in the party. The files don't give any hint of any explicit acknowledgement of those recoveries, though.

   

As for enemies, there are just over 60 listed in the appropriate file. Some are listed multiple times, suggesting that they come in different power levels. Per the manual, they are supposedly organized into six categories: humanoid, animal, animate matter, were-creatures, undead, and spirits, but I'm not sure where some of the enemies fall in this classification. Are dragons just "animals"? In any event, the list has the standard D&D fare, including orcs, kobolds, black jellies, werewolves, gargoyles, wyverns, harpies, ghouls, demons, specters, fire and storm elementals, vampires, and dragons. As we saw from my Level 2 encounter, they have different special attacks and defenses. There are a few mysteries, like "mere-dragons" (maybe it was supposed to be were-?) and "ethyl cats."

     

An accurate depiction of the game's first dozen hours.

        

I am sorry I didn't get to experience higher-level spells. In addition to mages getting spells that affect multiple enemies in a group and then multiple groups, and clerics getting spells that heal various conditions and restore more damage, we have a few original ones. The Level 5 wizard spell "Incarnate" turns ephemeral enemies like specters into corporeal form. "Dank Smoke" level-drains enemies; you don't usually see this on the player characters' end. The Level 5 mage spell "Power" increases the potency of every spell cast after that point.

      

From my experience, I give the game a 21 on the GIMLET. It does reasonably well in a few areas, with 4s for character creation and development, magic and combat, and the economy. These are balanced with 0s in NPCs and 1s in a lot of other categories, including "Graphics, Sound, and Interface": it has no graphics nor sound, and while keyboard interface is generally okay, speed is a huge issue. In the game's best moments, it almost makes it to Wizardry levels, but it doubles down on Wizardry's challenge without understanding its sense of balance.

      
The game was reviewed in that issue of 80 Microcomputing, which gave it one star. "It's too challenging to get past the first hurdle," reviewer Thomas Quindry said, "even if you're a practiced D&D player, as were some of the people with whom I played. And if you can't get into the game, why would you want to continue to play? My family certainly didn't." The review prompted a response from creator Brian Livingston in the April 1985 issue, where he argued that the game isn't that hard, although he allowed that "a discovery period is necessary to successfully play the game." Judging by the manual credits, the game had at least six playtesters, and you'd think one would have brought up the fact that the early-game difficulty is unhinged.

      

One of the manual illustrations credited to Martin Murphy.

           
I wasn't able to get in touch with Livingston, but I did reach artist Martin Murphy, whose work in the manual is perhaps the best thing about the game. He says he met Livingston through his friend's step-father, who was one of Livingston's friends. He recalls that Livingston was in his 30s at the time, which puts him anywhere from the early-70s to early 80s today. Other than his work on the illustrations, Murphy didn't have much interaction with the team. He went on to a long career in painting and visual effects for film, including nearly 20 years at Industrial Light & Magic and Lucasfilm, where he worked on the Pirates of the Caribbean, Star Wars, and Terminator series, among others. You can visit his online studio here.

         
Livingston appears to have created a company, "408614 Ontario  Ltd.," to publish the game; it was created as early as March 1979 and named after its Ontario corporation number, which I find about as nuts as business owners who name themselves after their street addresses (including the best steakhouse in Worcester, Massachusetts: the 111 Chop House). There are reports of a Commodore 64 port, which I have been unable to confirm. All signs, including the modular nature of the game and the $39.50 selling price (about $127 today), suggest that the author thought he Really Had Something Here. Alas, given its lack of presence online and in other media, it's possible I'm the only person to have even made it to Level 2.

    

Thanks again to LanHawk for helping me figure this one out. 

      

****

   

Previous entry in this series

   

For further reading:

   

• Wizardry (1981), from which this game takes most of its ideas.

08/22/2026

   

 

Pagan: The Books of Pagan

        

I'm a sucker for lore, so this bonus entry chronicles all of the books I'm finding in Pagan: Ultima VIII. It will be updated continually until the game is finished. (Note that this entry published at the same time as "Pagan: Skull Island." Don't miss the previous one!)

      

Adventure Quarterly, Vol. IX

An issue devoted to the Forgotten Riches of Knarl. Knarl was a dungeon deep in the earth where magical weapons were forged and magicians were trained. Somehow, it got sealed off, maybe by an earthquake, maybe by a secret sect of monks called the Dark Brothers. Again, I wonder if this place is to be found in-game.

    

Adventure Quarterly, Vol. XII

Discusses the legend of an enormous Ship of Doom that was sent to find a solution to a particularly devastating winter. The ship never returned, but the weather did let up, suggesting that the crew might have found someone to help.

          

The Beauty of Rhian by Toran

A pleasant if prosaic ode to Toran's wife. Toran is the man executed at the beginning of the game; Rhian is the woman kneeling and crying on the docks.

      

You tempted fate with those final lines, Toran.

         

The Big Book of Adventure

Talks about common adventuring obstacles, including lever puzzles, traps, chests, spell chits (scrolls), mazes, and Tricks of the Trixter (exploding books).

     

Brogdan's Helpful Guide to Mushrooms by Brogdan

Blue Bulgie and Green Capper are tasty, but a blue mushroom called Daemon's Paw is often mistaken for the former and causes various maladies. The yellow and green Adventurer's Friend heals; the Stench Mushroom keeps most monsters at bay but attracts undead; the Fire Mushroom explodes. 

      

Captain's Report 

Guard Captain Stovan recommends a guard named Grommet for bravery citation. Grommet recently saved a little girl from a troll—then accidentally killed the girl while attacking the troll. (See Honor Lost below.) "She was only a peasant, however, and of no import." This place is messed up.

         

The Chronicle of Pagan

Replicates the first couple of pages of Bentic's history of the land that comes with the game. 

     

De-Venoming the Kith by Ioria

Detailed instructions for removing the venom sack from a kith, a type of giant spider-like creature that the Pagans domesticate for silk and food. It's funny seeing the word used this way since I recently finished Avowed, in which "kith" is used as a term for sentient humanoid races.

    

Ear of Arricorn by Kram, Volumes III and IV 

I haven't found the first two volumes yet. These two describe an outcast called a "Shadowlander" entering a tavern, getting insulted by a herdsman, and shoving his fist down the herdsman's throat and literally turning him inside out. The rest of the tavern-goers then flee for the hills.

     

Expedition Journal, Book II 

Chronicles Days 17-22 of the journey of a party from somewhere to Tenebrae. The party is menaced by a group of strange "children" who might be the conjurations of a companion named Salem, who everyone thought dead. This seems to be referencing something, but I don't know what.  

     

Maybe they met these children.

             

Eye of the Boulder: The Runes of the Myth Drainer 

Chronicles an adventurer's search for the six pieces of the Eye, a meteor with magical properties. Once obtained and fitted into the author's skull, the Eye turned out to be "antithetical to [his] own" magic, leaving him worse than if he'd never found it. There are digs at the famously bad third game in SSI's Eye of the Beholder game: "The images I beheld lost resolution, and the sounds around me began to seem like bland reproductions . . . I am ashamed to have wasted so much time and so many of my resources upon such a disappointing thing." Given how poorly Pagan was reviewed, maybe Origin shouldn't have been so quick to throw shade. 

     

The Final Sunlight by Nolandru the Blind Idiot of Tenebrae

Describes the battle between the elemental titans and the Destroyer, which destroyed most of the world and left it in perpetual gloom. "There is no true night, but there is no true day. And the Titans, demanding ever-increasing sacrifices in payment for their deed, offer no answers." I wish the game would just tell us what the sky looks like. Is it just cloudy?

     

Gold: Valuable Commodity or Worthless Trash? by Okapi the Elder

Describes why gold is valuable (it's pretty and malleable) and how to find it through mining and panning. Despite the title, the book does not explain why anyone would call it "worthless trash." It also says that gold "is the basis for our monetary system," which is manifestly not true. One wonders if this was written before the developers decided to use obsidian pieces as the base currency. 

      

The History of Necromancy, Vol. I

Recounts how Kalen converted many of the Zealans into Pagans by preaching against the gods of emotion and in favor of the elements. Exiled by their peers, the Pagans retreated to Mount Morgaelin and built an altar to the elements out of Blackrock. When the Zealan army destroyed the altar and killed Kalen, the elemental gods manifested as the four titans and destroyed the world.

  

The History of Necromancy, Vol. II

This volume is concerned with Moriens, the necromancer who struck a deal with Lithos, the earth titan, convincing him to stop destroying the world with earthquakes by promising that the Pagans would serve Lithos in death. Lithos taught necromancy to Moriens, who passed it to his apprentice, Galious, the author of these two volumes.

     

Honor Lost by Metzars the Troll 

Chronicles the thoughts of the titular troll, who suggests that trolls were once a noble and educated race, but they've fallen into barbarism. Metzars himself fell into a magical sleep while the troll race was still civilized and awoke after they'd turned animalistic. He recently rescued a human child from a fellow troll and plans to bring her to a human city, hoping it will engender goodwill. Captain's Report would seem to be an unfortunate follow-up.

     

We're meant to believe that these guys were once poets and scholars.

        

My Dearest Prevan 

A letter in book form. The letter writer, a healer named Veras, tells her husband about a troll attack on a small town in which the trolls kidnapped several children. A young mother called on the god Stratos to protect her, and her knitting needle turned into a silver sword that slew the trolls. The sword was named "Protector," and the writer intends to put it in a shrine on Argentrock Isle. This island is mentioned in the game manual as the "home of the monastery to the Order of Enlightenment," or the theurgists.

      

The Mythology of Zealan Deities 

Discusses how before the titans, the people of the land worshiped common emotions—love, hate, apathy, joy, grief, and fear—and personified them in the deities Amoras, Odion, Apathas, Felicitar, Doloras, and Timyra. The latter three were eventually dropped from the pantheon. The Zealans built temples to these gods, housed them inside, and filled them with mazes and traps so that the average person couldn't reach one of the gods.

      

The Objective History of Pagan by Mythran

Essentially replicates Bentic's history found in the game book, A Chronicle of Pagan. It's so similar, in fact, that it seems likely that one plagiarized from the other.

   

On Sorcerous Ways by Corodin of Argentrock

"Sorcery is the magic of fire." Sorcerers use something called The Pentacle to (I gather it's a diagram) to bind the Lord of Flame and channel his power. There's a detailed description that might become important, but I need to see it. There are further passages on candles, reagents, and "the focus."

       

Reagents of Thaumaturgy by Mythran

Basically says that reagents are a crutch and that the sufficiently talented and focused spellcaster doesn't need them. 

    

The Saga of Bone Crusher 

The earth god Lithos demanded that the people of Tenebrae serve him. They pleaded that they already served Hydros. He sent undead to attack the city. The people asked Hydros for help, and she gave them a weapon called Bonecrusher. Lord Elsmil wielded it in battle and defeated the skeletons, but both he and the weapon were lost in battle. The skeletons might have carried them off. I also wonder if this will be something I can find.

       

Stories to Make Children Sleep by Brother Grim 

Only has one story, told in rhyme, about a young boy named Jelly who refused to eat anything but cheese. His father offered money to a mage to cast a spell that would free Jelly of the compulsion, but the mage accidentally turned the boy into a girl. Another mage came along and reversed the spell, and the father gratefully accepted his cheese-eating boy rather than deal with a normal girl. "'Tis not that I don't want a girl,' claims the tired old father, 'But when a boy is young, he is less of a bother.'"    

      

The Voices of Mary by Salem 

A rhyming account of a dream or hallucination or mental breakdown or something. Final lines: "As the waters roll in and I'm swallowed by sea, I can hear Mary whisper, calling to me. 'Come on, baby,' from somewhere she cries. 'I want you to love me like spiders love flies.'" 

      

"And so it waah-aas, that later . . ."

        

Untitled, Anonymous Treatise on Magic

Investigates accounts of magic that are not based on the elemental titans. These include a fisherwoman named Kilandra who claimed a ghost could cast spells (the author decided she was mad); mysterious lights on a plateau (an ornery hermit on the Plateau named Mythran said that they don't exist); and a magical axe called Deceiver, supposedly found on an island in Stone Cove (the author says the island doesn't exist). Mythran is in the game manual, given as a master of thaumaturgy.

     

Untitled Biography of Moriens

A glowing biography of the first Necromancer, who arranged the deal with the earth god Lithos that stopped the earthquakes but ensured the people of Pagan would serve Lithos in death. 

    

****

   

Previous entry in this series

   

Next entry in this series

   

For further reading:

  

• My entry on "The Books of Britannia," this entry's counterpart for Ultima VII.

08/19/2026