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 reset 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. 

   

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.

         

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 cataclysmic day in which the elemental titans defeated the Destroyer, which was the last day that the sun shined on the world of Pagan.

     

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 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  

 

Pagan: Skull Island

The blacksmith is sexist and fascist.

     

The Guardian has banished the Avatar to a world that has undergone a cataclysm. The last remaining city (at least, that anyone knows about) is ruled by a tyrant named Lady Mordea. After witnessing Mordea beheading a dissenter in the last episode, the Avatar is now taking his first steps into the city of Tenebrae. As I do, the voice of the Guardian rumbles: "Yes, Avatar. Seek the way home."

     

Tenebrae looks to have roughly the same early-19th Century technology level as Britannia. It has wide stone streets lined with landscaping, wrought-iron fences, stone statutes, and bright gas lamps that cast pools of light on the street. 

     

A guard tells me that I'm in Central Tenebrae. The palace is to the north; he suggests that I avoid it. The rich area is to the east and the poor area to the west. I explore the guardhouse behind him, which has two entrances connected by a stone bridge. In the east guardhouse, I open a chest, which explodes and takes me down to 8 hit points. There's some food in a nearby barrel, and each piece restores a couple of points. The chest has a helmet and a bag with some obsidian coins.

          

Looting the guard tower. Note the skull on the tankard.

       

In the western guardhouse, I find two Scrolls of Trap Detection and a chest with two cloaks and a flask of oil. It's locked, but there's a key nearby. I decide I don't need to feel bad about stealing from guards who serve a tyrannical ruler.

   

I skip the exits to the rich and poor areas for now and move north across a bridge, where I find myself at Lady Mordea's palace. Most of the NPCs around her are rude guards who suggest that Mordea doesn't really even need guards since she's a powerful Tempest. I find Mordea eating dinner in a dining room. She's affronted that I dare speak to her and keeps asking where I come from. I try all the answers, but she doesn't like any of them.

        

I suppose I should be happy she didn't order me beheaded.

      

Mordea is being served by a woman named Aramina, who says she's too busy to talk now but will be at her house in East Tenebrae "at Bloodwatch." I guess time does matter in the game.

   

Elsewhere in the palace:

   

• I find a bunch of food in the kitchen and dining areas, which slowly get my hit points back to 30.

• I come across several casks, but unlike Ultima VII, this game doesn't let me turn them on and watch their contents pool on the ground while my companions yell that I'm wasting it.

      

I guess I'll just have to imagine Dupre screaming in my head.

       

• In what looks like an infirmary (with no patients), a bunch of cloths are laid out on a table with nearby razor blades, presumably to cut them into bandages. But this game won't let me do that. I'm finding that a lot of things in Pagan are not interactable the way they were in previous Ultima games. You can't sit in chairs, use looms, turn lamps on or off, turn the spigots on casks, or move most of the furniture. You can sleep in some beds, but the game just asks how long you want to sleep; it doesn't even show the Avatar lying down.

• I am, however, able to throw darts at a dartboard in the barracks. 

• A Big Book of Adventure by Sladek suggests this game will feature lever puzzles, traps, chests of loot, mazes, and trick books called Tricks of the Trixter. Later, west of the palace in a little wooded area, I find a body lying on a bench. It has a book on it. When I double-click on it to read it, it explodes.

     

The "Trixter" is somehow Chuckles. I just know it.

         

• A lower level has a door opened by a switch. A plaque reads "Authorized Personnel Only." It opens into a torture chamber with a bunch of locked doors leading off of it. I can't figure out how to open them. Cobwebs and desiccated corpses suggest that no one has been here in a while. 

     

I guess they no longer bother to imprison people first.

       

• An armory looks like it has some cool stuff, but the doors are locked. A guard log on a table outside suggests that nothing ever really happens here.

• There's a weird area on the palace roof that has four dragon statues facing inward towards a glowing square on the ground. A throne-like seat sits facing the square. When I step on it, though, nothing happens. 

    

Do I even want to know what happens here?

            

I still hate the controls. I find it hard to steer the Avatar where I want him to go and even harder to activate moving NPCs. I would so much rather move with the keyboard and talk to someone by hitting (T)alk and clicking on them rather than trying to double-click with the same arrow I use for movement. Argh. 

      

That wraps up Central Tenebrae. Next, I go through the east gate to the wealthy quarter. "Your treasured Britannia succumbs easily. Soon, all the land will be mine," the Guardian rumbles as I start moving through the area. Discoveries:

   

• A beggar asks for money. I give him three obsidian pieces.

• A little girl has a lot of questions. 

     

The girl asks what I did in Britannia. The third option is a joking reference to the bread-baking mechanic of Ultima VII, which, silly as it was, exemplified a kind of interactivity that this game isn't capable of.

      

• There's a warrior training hall run by a man named Darion, who also sells arms and armor. He'll spar with me for 50 coins, but I don't have that much. I later find Darion on the other side of town, so I guess he gets around.

• Darion's house is attached to the training hall. It has a basement with several rooms, but I can't figure out how to get out of the arrival room.

     

I see the switch on the other side; I'm just not sure how to get to it.

       

• There's an opulent building in the southern part of the district, but there's no sign on it and no one in it.

• There's a huge building belonging to Salkind the Seneschal (according to a sign). Salkind is inside. Haughty and insulting, he shows loyalty to Mordea and tells me that the title of Tempest is hereditary. He has a number of books in his study, one of which is yet another exploding book, which this time kills me.

      

Were these really necessary?

       

• Salkind's desk has a "logbook of crimes and punishments on it." It lists about eight people recently beheaded for treason and slander. There are several other books that I add to "The Books of Pagan" entry  (which published at the same time as this one, in case you missed it).

      

Beheading and fining sounds like something they'd do in Florida.

       

• There's a patch of mushrooms I can pick.

• Several large buildings are locked.  

• A large pool of water—one of several in the area—is called the Spring of the Eternal Hydros. 

• There's a large library with even more books. This takes me a while. All books are added to "The Books of Pagan." Bentic, author of The Chronicle of Pagan, is in his office here. He's a cheerful fellow who acknowledges that the government is "restrictive." They recently took his personal diary. His best friend is Devon, the fisherman who rescued me. When I ask him about leaving Pagan, he suggests I talk to Mythran. My first lead! He even gives me directions to Mythran's home on the Plateau, north of the city.

      

Just give me the address. I have a GPS.

      

• I can't remember what building it was, but when I entered, the Guardian's voice said: "Soon, Britannia will be mine. It seems that you are missed here. Why, I believe I hear Lord British crying out for you now." 

      

That's about all I can find to do in the rich quarter, so I head back through Central Tenebrae to the poor quarter.

   

• The first building I enter is a tavern. The barmaid is Jenna, who took the job after her father kicked her out for refusing to marry. She wants to be an adventurer and wears her grandfather's sword on her hip; she claims she's killed several men with it. The bartender is named Orlock; he tells me a story about a ghost who wanders the hills above Tenebrae, guarding buried treasure.

     

However he came about it, that's an unflattering sobriquet.

        

• South of the inn, I find the house of Shaana the Executioner—the woman who cut off poor Toran's head last session. She's hacking away at practice dummies. In conversation, she says that she likes her job, but she cannot countenance Lady Mordea's denying proper funeral rites to those she executes. She's a private person in general and doesn't want to answer my questions; she suggests I go see Bentic at the library. At one point, she says something like: "Why are you so interested in my name and occupation?" I didn't screenshot it and didn't think anything about it at the time, but now I realize it's a joke about the NAME and JOB keywords that characterized a lot of previous Ultima games. Pagan sure enjoys making fun of games that are better than Pagan.

     

Shaana doesn't mind the executions, just the burials. More on her tapestries later.

         

• A blacksmith named Korick runs a shop. He's satisfied with his place in life, even though it hasn't made him rich. He says there was recently a fire on the north end of the district, in which an old man was killed. He laments that the people have become hard and unfriendly lately. He recently captured a cutpurse who attacked an old woman.

     

That third dialogue option seems odd out of context.

       

• While I'm in Korick's place, I make the mistake of slightly moving a saber on a table. He immediately summons a guard and accuses me of theft. The guard (a sorcerer, I assume) sentences me to death and hits me with a fireball. I am literally blown to pieces, with my arms, legs, head, and torso falling into a bloody pile. Lesson learned: don't steal things in front of people. Unfortunately, Korick never seems to leave his shop.

    

Pagan has a brutal criminal justice system.

       

• One house has a dead peasant slumped at a table, with no indication what's happened.

     

Should I alert someone?

       

• There are several unoccupied houses.

• I run across a guard interrogating a woman, either about something that happened last night, her unpaid taxes, or both. The conversation just goes in a circle, and there's nothing I can do about it.  

     

Why, with your wife, my friend.

       

• There's a building that seems like a jail, with a troll wandering behind the bars, and a wounded torax (a domesticated reptile) on the ground. Maybe it's a gladiatorial pit.

     

This series is fond of visual vignettes with no explanation.

        

• Near a ruined building on the north end of town, a specter appears and starts conjuring zombies out of the ground. I kill one of them, but flee from the others. 

    

I do no damage to the specter while zombies close in.

       

And that's it, although NPCs seem to keep to schedules, so it's likely that I missed some of them. Still, in many ways Tenebrae is the opposite of the typical Ultima city. In previous games, the cities were unrealistically small but packed with NPCs. Tenebrae has a larger physical space than any previous Ultima city, but a tiny number of NPCs live there, and most don't have anything interesting to say.

         

Other notes:

   

• The NPCs move about, do chores, pace, and talk to themselves and to each other. I suppose they did that in Ultima VII as well, though.

      

They don't always say profound things.

       

• You have to talk to NPCs at least twice to get everything they have to say. Not all dialogue options come up during the first conversation. 

• If you pause during conversation (for instance, to take notes for a blog entry) without choosing one of the options, the NPCs sometimes get angry.

      

Shaana reacts to a tongue-tied moment.

         

• The water graphics in this game are just bizarre. Even small pools are drawn as if to suggest that they plunge into an abyss.

      

A little thalassophobia here in the courtyard.

             

• The Pagans are obsessed with skulls. There were skull carvings along the bridge, skulls on the tankards, skulls on the corners of the end tables, skulls on the water troughs. Shaana's house is full of skull tapestries. In Lady Mordea's palace, there's a cushion with a skull on it in her throne room, and in her bedroom, she has a picture of a skull propped up on her vanity. 

      

What kind of sick person looks at a skull while putting on her perfume?

       

• In Ultima VII, you could double-click on chests and doors from an entire screen away, and they'd open up. Pagan makes you get right up to objects before you can activate them. 

     

I cannot read this book from here. Realistic, but still annoying.

       

• In the two Ultima VII games, all the buildings were packed with valuable stuff. There's no way I could have gone through any city in Britannia or Serpent Isle and not walked out with a full suit of armor and a better weapon. After leaving Tenebrae, however, I have a dagger, a helmet, clothes, 16 coins, and a couple of potions. 

• Judging by the clocks I clicked on, time passes very slowly. I think there are six time periods: DayTide, ThreeMoons, LastEbb (this is my best interpretation; it actually looks like "LastE66"), EvenTide, BloodWatch, and FirstEbb. (Everyone stop reading my entry right now, click on this, skip past the Pocket ad, and close your eyes. What a great song for a summer evening.) 

       

Or maybe it's LastEgg?

        

• This is the first Ultima game in a long time with no experience points or levels. The manual suggests that attributes increase directly through exercise. It says that intelligence increases from casting spells, dexterity from jumping, throwing, and grabbing. It does not mention how strength increases. In any event, my intelligence and dexterity have both increased by a point since the beginning of the game. I have not cast any spells yet, though. I don't even know how. 

   

Aramina told me to meet her in east Tenebrae at BloodWatch, so I keep an eye on the clocks and head back to that side of town when the hour rolls around. I run around the district and find her in a house that was locked before. She doesn't offer much, though. She says Lady Mordea is a hard woman who will do anything to retain power, even commit murder. Meanwhile, the seneschal constantly torments Aramina with mindless tasks and sexually assaults her in the hallways. She's afraid she'll lose her head if she says anything. It's good background info, but it's not like I needed a reason to dislike Mordea and Salkind. 

         

Aramina lets it all spill out.

         

Aramina also says she met Devon once in the market and liked his smile. She asks me to mention her to him. I head back to his fishing spot, but he's gone. While I'm there, though, I discover I can roll up his sleeping mat and take it with me, allowing me to sleep wherever I want. On the way back to Tenebrae, I find a ruined building that I missed previously. It has a locked chest in it. It and all the locked doors in town make me wonder if there's some way to open locked things without keys. I try attacking it for a while, but that accomplishes nothing except making the chest jump around, which is kind of funny.

      

One of many mysteries.

        

My only lead at this point is that Mythran might be able to help me, and that he lives on the Plateau north of the city. I head through the palace and out the north gate. I start exploring this new area (from Bentic's directions, I gather this is The Valley) by going counter-clockwise about its perimeter. A few minutes later, I come upon a group of little girls, the ground around them strewn with dolls. The girls attack me! Figuring they're demons in disguise or something, I retaliate, and soon the bodies of four children are on the ground in front of me. What the hell, Ultima?! Is there supposed to be some connection to the Expedition Journal, Book II? Or is this just one of those inexplicable weird encounters like the ones we saw in Ultima VII? I know game development studios aren't like television shows, but I'd like to be in the equivalent of the "writer's room" for Ultima VIII when this kind of decision is made. How does no one object to it during playtesting?

       

Somebody has a sick sense of humor.

      

I reload, skip this area, and continue past a herd of nonviolent toraxes and then am attacked by a kith, which has no trouble killing me. 

     

I wish I had more than a dagger.

      

Reloading again, I take the other direction and head clockwise from the entrance. I find:

   

• A very large area of grassland with nothing in it. It's kind of fun to go skipping through it, though.

• North of a mushroom patch, two trolls are fighting each other. The winner turns his attention to me and kills me in a couple of blows.

         

I miss Britannia's bridge trolls.

       

Okay, clearly I'm missing something. I assume one of the following is true:

   

• There are one or more areas where I can fight and make money, perhaps out the east or west exits from Tenebrae.

• The game assumes I'm going to loot the armory.

• I missed some other encounter that would have helped. In particular, that ghost I fled from was supposed to be guarding treasure. Maybe I should try harder in that area.

• I'm meant to just run through the area north of Tenebrae and not stop to meet the kiths or trolls. 

      

I'll explore these possibilities next time. I'm a bit disappointed as I reach the end of this session. I would have expected a lot more world-building, development, maybe even some side-quests in the land's only city. It's also a bit too much like a generic Britannian city; I feel like the authors could have made an alien world a little more alien.

    

Here's something that will make you laugh: Deep into this session, I was vaguely wondering when I would meet the first member of my inevitable party. I thought it would be Jenna. It didn't hit me until I was four hours into the game that this would be a solo adventure. That's almost startling. The Avatar has been a team player since Ultima II.  

      

Time so far: 5 hours 

   

****

   

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   08/19/2026