Pagan: Destiny Is Always Right

Not terribly resourceful. I just followed the right wall.

       

Ugh. Pagan. Fine.  

    

I start in the Pit of Death. Commenters have already alerted me that I'm lost, that I need to head back to the Upper Catacombs and try to find other pathways. I don't feel like it. I just keep looping around this area:

    

• A corpse has a stuffed torax on it. Aww.

• I keep getting killed by gouts of flame, fireballs, and lava.

     

You can't see me because I just fell down the hole in the middle.

        

• A corpse behind a grating has a plaque nearby: "MARIOTA CONVENTICLER."

• Ghouls, skeletons, ghosts. A troll. Mandrils.

• The screen repeatedly shakes for no reason whatsoever. 

• More of those rolling, spiked balls.

      

What keeps them in motion?

       

• Lots of lava. Lots of jumping across lava. What looks like safe spaces often give way into pits (instant death) or shoot gouts of flame.

• Lots of spell reagents. Not sure I really need them.

• I come across a big building. A plague: "CONVENTICLE OF THE DEAD." This seems interesting. But the door is locked and won't open. 

     

Ah, my old nemesis. We meet again.

      

• A troll's room. It's a disaster. A backpack has a deed to a torax in it. The owner of the deed is Toliver P. Barkley. (Is he an NPC?) The torax's name is George.

     

The lack of a 5 in this document is bothering me.

         

• A roomful of exploding mushrooms has a chest at the far end. It has an axe, 8 obsidian coins, and a couple of potions. Not worth it.

      

A doorway brings me into Stone Cove, near the entrance to the Hall of the Mountain King. Continuing to follow the right wall would have me loop through the Mountain King's domain again, then enter the cave that brought me here from the catacombs. I don't think I ever explored the rest of it, so that seems like a fine idea.

      

A short distance through the caves, encountering nothing more exciting than a . . . mimic? Doppelganger? Whatever the hell looks like the Avatar. I don't feel like going back to the manual. Anyway, a lever opens a gate, and my Key of the Scion opens a door. I can't tell you how much I love having an additional key that isn't activated with the (K)ey command.

        

Whatever these things are.

       

The door takes me into a new cave, an enormous one, with a raised plateau in the center. Stone bridges cross-cross each other overhead, and it takes me a while to figure out how to get onto the bridge network. The plateau has a little pond in the middle, and a white stone bridge brings me to a platform in the pond. It has an emblem of a large fish carved into it. Suddenly, a tentacle comes out of the water, and a woman's voice asks: "Who dares?!"

   

"Are you . . . Hydros?" I ask, since the only other option is "Goodbye."

   

"Indeed," she responds. "Know that it is into my domain that you have trespassed. Why do you disturb my rest?"

     

"I wish the power of Tempestry," I say, again as my only option. 

    

"A wise request from someone who has made a difficult journey to my current home. Alas, your request must go unfulfilled. Trapped here as I am, I cannot help you."

   

"What can I do?" I say, choosing it over "Goodbye" and, hilariously, "Too bad."

   

"Ah, you will assist me then. My gratitude will be boundless, mortal. The task is a simple one. Merely open the ground next to the gravestone of my captor's beloved, releasing the waters on the cliffside. Do that and I shall be free."

        

What happens if you just say "Goodbye"? I need to save more often.

       

As per the Chronicle of Pagan, Hydros's captor was Kalen. I looked through all my notes and screenshots but couldn't find his "beloved" named anywhere. Could it have been Mariota? Why would I help free Hydros? She doesn't seem like a nice person.

      

Curiously, I don't see any Blackrock in the area. I thought that was how Hydros was imprisoned. 

 

I keep on. An opening leads out of this area and into another . . . cave. I need better language to differentiate them. Probably also need to make a rough map. I pass by a troll, then come to a spiked wall with just enough of a gap in the spikes that I can jump over it. Continuing on:

   

• At another wall, a lever (which I nearly miss) opens a grate that lets me crawl through. Another lever turns the world upside down. Enough with that nonsense, Pagan. It wasn't fun the first time.

      

I have lowered the grate, but those spikes still look like they're going to hurt.

       

• Two more trolls, but I've found that trolls don't seem to want to attack if you just leave them alone and stay out of their direct path.

• A chest, which explodes—also never gets old!—has a couple of potions and a pair of magic leggings. My armor class goes from 14 to 15 and I save two pounds.

    

A doorway leads to a cave full of mushrooms. There's a gravestone here: "ALEXIS. HER SPIRIT TO LITHOS I GIVE." Next to it is some kind of retaining pond. I guess this is probably Lithos's beloved. Now I have to weigh the likelihood that the developers would set all of this up just so the Avatar could make a bad decision. It wouldn't be the first time—I think of the whole "Oppression" subplot in Ultima V. 

         

This might have been a mistake.

        

I take a save, then cast "Open Ground." A channel opens up in front of the grave, and water goes rushing out of the retaining pond. I start to loop my way back to Hydros's chamber, running past a whole bunch of enemies that I don't feel like fighting. More encounters:

   

• A stairway leads up to a chest. It is completely surrounded by a fence. There are stone pillars in the room of different heights, and it looks to me as if I'm meant to climb up the shortest pillar, then jump around to the others until I can get over the fence. But I can't make it work. I leave very frustrated after 20 minutes. Let me know if there was anything vital in that chest.

     

Trying to jump up on that pillar.

        

• A body in another troll cave has magic arm guards. My armor is now 17, and I save another pound. There are a lot of other minor treasures in the cave. 

       

I got in this troll's way.

         

The screen is misty as I return to Hydros's cave. Much of what was dry land before is now water. There's thunder and lightning. I return to the platform, and the tentacle appears again.

   

"Ah, I am now free! Thank you, foolish one, for your actions. Consider my gift of your wretched life as payment for your part. Now I will have my vengeance upon your pathetic kind! I will slay the descendant of my jailer! Let us see who can reach Devon first, groundling." So you won't be teaching me Tempestry, then? 

    

I find a new teleporter pad on my way out of here. It appears in the list of destinations as "Carthax Lake." I'm glad for it, since I feel the need to go to the palace and warn Devon, but I want to be able to resume my exploration pattern when I'm done. When I arrive at the palace, I again wonder why there's a chair facing the pad on the palace roof. It also appears that the mist and thunderstorms have come with me. I rush to Devon's chamber, where thankfully he's alive.

     

It would make more sense if this was a guard post. People shouldn't just be able to teleport onto the palace roof.

       

"The Lurker is free!" I warn. Devon replies that the torrential rains kind of gave it away. "Tell me, friend, how did this come to pass?" I meekly admit that I freed the titan. (Although "I know not" is another option.)  He says that he's not surprised—he sensed when we first met that I was an agent of change, for good or ill. He says that an unchecked Hydros will soon flood the land, though, and I have the responsibility to stop it. He suggests that the sorcerers may be able to help.

       

Note the "foggy" effect on the screen. Or maybe it's just a bug.

         

You know what annoys me? I tried to go my own way by just resolutely following the right wall, and I ended up doing things exactly in the order that the Zealan gods told me to. 

      

I warp back to Carthax Lake and re-enter the caverns that brought me here, continuing to follow the right wall. I soon come to a blocked door. A lever opens one block but raises another. I look around and find a barely-visible switch on the wall, partly hidden behind a wall and a spike. I have to click madly around the area for a few minutes before I get the precise set of pixels that will activate it.

    

I come to a large cavern with a huge lava lake in the middle. On the other side, an NPC catches my eye and speaks. He says that we're in the Mouth of the Daemon, which used to be "the first test for those wishing to join the Sorcerer's Cabal. Someone has rendered it mostly useless by directing an underground river this way." Whoops. What would have happened if I'd come here first? I sheepishly admit to doing it. He says if I want to reach him, I'm going to have to learn to fly; he recommends that I seek the sorcerer named Bane.

         

The NPC lays out the new comment rules for the blog.

        

So again I've managed to stumble into exactly the place the game wanted me to go. Is free will an illusion? Next game, I'm following the left wall, I don't care how unnatural it feels.

   

The game keeps switching between misty and not-misty as I try to find my next move. I can't find a way to cross the lava. I confirm that "Rock Flesh" protects me from damage, but the Avatar still goes "gah!" and gets stun-locked if he tries to cross the lava with the spell active. So I head back into the caverns to see what comes next. I'll probably find Bane next whether I want to or not.

     

The caverns wind around a bit, and it's a while (with nothing interesting except jumping over water) before I find another door (which opens with the Key of the Scion), which causes me to emerge in the sunlight on a stone path. "One world lies in ruin, nothing more than a charred shell," the Guardian says as I explore. "The other will soon fall." That's a new one. I cross a bridge and start exploring an island:

   

• A bunch of mandrils (I keep wanting to call them "cazadores") swarm over the corpses of two people on bedrolls next to a fishing boat. In between them is a book, which turns out to be yet another copy of Killer Jokes. Boom! Hah, hah! I'm so amused! This is fun! 

• A man in blue robes roams the shore. He says he can't help me, but I should talk to Stellos. 

      

I later learn that the "generic" theurgists all look like this and never have anything to offer.

       

• I find a teleporter pad, which becomes available as Argentrock Isle when I use the Recall Item. (Was "item" the best they could do? It looks like a ring. Why not "Recall Ring"?) My notes say this is the home of the Theurgists as well as a silver sword named Protector. And hey—I was supposed to find a magical axe called Deceiver in Stone Cove. I wonder where that was. 

• On the west end of the island, there's some kind of glyph, or maybe just a pattern in the stone, on a stone platform. I can't get anything to happen here. 

• West of the glyph, the land ends at a pair of stone pillars. The first time I visit, I would swear that the game takes control of the Avatar and forces him to jump off the ledge between the pillars and into the sea. Also, the Guardian chuckles, also suggesting that something suspicious is happening. But when I reload and investigate again, this doesn't happen. 

      

In the screenshot, it looks more like a void than an ocean.

        

The Theurgists (healers who worship Stratos, the air titan) occupy a large compound in the center of the island. The first one I talk to is named Cyrrus, who turns out to be the son of Corinth and Gwillim, the ranchers in the Valley. He misses home greatly, and he's haunted by the inability to save his sister from a kith's bite when he was young and still coming into his powers. He really doesn't want to live on Argentrock Isle, but he can't escape the fact that he has a natural talent for theurgy (enough so that his comrades call him "Holy" Cyrrus). He pines for Jenna, the barmaid, and misses his old tutor Bentic. I have to tell him that Bentic was executed by Mordea. Nothing material comes from the conversation, but he's the first NPC in the game that I've actually liked.

       

Giving Cyrrus the bad news.

         

Moving into the compound, I meet Xavier, a healer, who is also responsible for administering the first two tests for those who want to receive Stratos's enlightenment. They are the Test of Wisdom and the Test of Centeredness. The Test of Wisdom consists of five questions, and Xavier recommends that I study at the library first. 

 

The "library" is actually the monastery. There, I read books on the spells "Intervention" (a wall of air that acts as a shield), "Hear Truth" (allows you to hear both what the speaker is saying and what the truth is), "Aerial Servant," "Healing Touch" (light healing), "Divination" (know location, day, and time),  "Restoration" (full healing), "Fade from Sight" (invisibility), and "Reveal" (dispel invisibility). The books give the syllables for each spell and a "focus" but don't really tell how to cast them.

       

One of eight spellbooks.

          

Other books give insights into Stratos and the virtues she prizes, most by relating some kind of parable. We learn that Stratos wants her followers to be honest to a fault, impartial, clever, kind and forgiving to children, and quiet. My favorite of the parables concerns the virtue of wit, or cleverness. A healer was called upon to administer to an injured knight, bested in combat by a vain warrior named Yevaud. Yevaud crowed that he was the best warrior in the land, but the healer said he knew of a better one. When Yevaud demanded to confront this supposedly superior warrior, the healer led him to a cave and said the warrior was inside. Yevaud emerged from the cave some time later, battered and bleeding, and complaining that the only thing in the cave had been a swarm of mandril. The healer said yes, and those mandril had recently killed a small child. By dispatching them, Yevaud had done something good with his blade and thus emerged a superior warrior. I like this story. I think it might be the best book in Ultima canon. I find myself wishing that Ultima IV had offered similar stories reflecting the eight virtues.

      

There are two more NPCs in the monastery. One, Torwin, is a young and upcoming Theurgist, proud and haughty of his magical skill and the speed at which he has passed the various tests. "No one here has the raw talent and ability I have. And I will suffer no one to surpass me." I suspect this is going to be a problem.

    

Torwin's boast about constructing focuses on the first try is a bit laughable given what we later learn about how focuses are constructed.

        

The second is Stellos, the eldest and informal leader of the Theurgists, who call themselves the Order of Enlightenment. He is over 200 years old and has gone blind. "It is the price I pay for being able to serve Stratos so completely." He explains that theurgical spells require a "focus" that the theurgist must make himself. I say I want to learn air magic, and he says that I'll have to join the Order by passing the two tests that Xavier administers.

       

I feel like there has to be a catch.

         

With my notes and screenshots in hand, I return to Xavier and tell him I'm ready for the Test of Wisdom. He gives me five questions. In short, they are:

   

• Will I welcome home a runaway child "after several years of debauchery and crime," or will I turn him away?

• My brother is accused of thievery, and I know that he's guilty. Do I testify against him?

     

One of Xavier's questions.

         

• To heal a child, I'll have to make a sacrifice. Will I sacrifice my hearing, speech, sight, or life?

• My king has been fatally wounded in a battle. As he dies, he wants to know how the battle is going. We're losing badly. Do I tell him the truth or lie so that he dies happy? 

• I'm in a tavern, and my comrades start boasting of their deeds. Do I join in and "tell of the glories of Stratos" or remain quiet?

   

I get them all right on the first try, mostly since these scenarios are all drawn directly from either the texts or NPC dialogue. The game could have made it a bit more challenging and meaningful by offering dilemmas that required knowledge of the virtues but with different fact patterns.  

    

Next comes the Test of Centeredness. It takes place on the stone tower with the glyph that I found earlier. The Avatar stands in the center while the winds of Stratos push and pull him in various directions, trying to knock him off the tower. If he falls off the tallest side, or falls off any side while at less than half health, it's fatal. Meanwhile, he can walk or run in the direction opposite the one that the winds are trying to push him. The whole thing lasts about 30 seconds and takes me a couple of tries.

      

I did this once in El Paso and spent the next six hours trying to flush sand out of my eyes.

          

Xavier is now done with me, and Stellos has the next test, which is to construct one or more focuses. They must be made with a special silver found only in the caverns beneath the monastery. The silver must then be taken to Korick on Tenebrae, who will create the focuses. Finally, the focuses must be brought back to the monastery and laid on the Altar of Focus. This will imbue them with Stratos's power.

   

The caverns are the usual annoying combination of monsters and fireballs randomly shooting out of nowhere. It takes me a while to identify the silver ore, as it just looks like any other background rock to me. I don't know how many I need, but I pick up as many as I see.

      

Silver, gray, and pink are identical colors to my eyes, alas.

        

While there, I find a building with no apparent doorway, so I use the magic door scroll, and one appears. Inside the building, on an altar, is the sword Protector, as described in the book My Dearest Prevan. The monastery has two copies in case the player hasn't encountered it before now. The axe Slayer has served me well, but it takes a lot of hits before the thunderclap sounds and the enemy dies. When that happens, it's a great weapon, but I'm starting to resent all the hacking that I have to do before the d20 rolls a critical hit (or whatever is happening). In subsequent tests, Protector seems to kill enemies a bit faster, and more important, it increases my armor class by 5. I'll keep Slayer, of course, but I'm going to continue to test Protector for a while.

       

It seems like a waste of potential to just leave it here.

           

With my backpack full of silver ore, I teleport back to Tenebrae and walk to Korick's workshop. He gives me eight options for focuses, one for each spell I read about. Of course, I want all of them, so I go through this dialogue tree eight times, until my backpack has eight silver talismans.

     

What does a "closed eye" talisman look like? A football? (Answer in screenshot below: Yes.)

      

I then teleport back to Argentrock Isle, enter the monastery, and put the focuses on the altar one by one. Each one is imbued with magic, brightening the icon. Now, when I click on the focuses, I cast the related spell. Much nicer than having to mix reagents! (The Avatar's mana score puts a limit on how many spells he can cast at once, though.) The "Divination" spell is my favorite, since it tells me the official name of the area I'm in. I don't need to come up with new names for identical-looking caves.

        

Turning the dull talismans into proper focuses.

        

I have to wrap up here, but I feel like I made some progress, and I liked the game more by the end of this session than at the beginning. Exploring Argentrock Isle felt like a classic Ultima experience, and the books and NPCs were more interesting. I'm still confused about a couple of things, though. First, how do the Theurgists get to Tenebrae and back? Does everyone have one of these Recall Items? Do they take boats? Do they go through the Catacombs every time? If the latter, do they all have Keys of the Scion? How do they cast "Open Ground" to get back?

   

Second, I wonder about the nature of Stratos. How is she the one good titan? I suppose Pyros might turn out to be good, too. That would have a nice symmetry: two good, two evil, one each male and female. But their association with elements confuses things; as building blocks of the world, it doesn't feel right that elements should be assigned "good" and "evil" roles. It feels like good and evil should be independent of the fundamental nature of reality. I had been assuming that they were all evil; perhaps Stratos is, and she's just done a good job fooling her followers. Anyway, no spoilers, please. I don't mind if the answer is "PAFO."

     

Oh, and was I supposed to do something with that Skull of Quakes? Cast it into some lava somewhere? I just noticed it in my backpack and realized I never figured out its purpose. 

      

Time stamp: 38 hours  

    

****

   

Previous entry in this series

   

Next entry in this series

10/24/2026 

 

BRIEFs: Journey into Danger (1981), Mazies & Crazies (1982), Spy Daisakusen (1982)

 

         

Journey into Danger

United Kingdom

ICL (developer and publisher) 

Released 1981 for ZX81, 1982 for ZX Spectrum
Rejected for: No character development

     

Journey into Danger is a simple proto-RPG released as part of ICL's Super Programs 6. It has no backstory, no character creation, no character development, no attributes, no tactics, and no goal other than to earn points.

    

I just earned points.

          

The player character (an asterisk) is released into a single-screen maze with a clearly marked entrance and exit. The maze has a fixed configuration but a random distribution of treasures, traps, and monsters, all invisible until the asterisk enters their squares. The player's goal is to get to the exit with as high a score as possible, which includes treasure and slain monsters. He has to get out before the time counter, which starts at 500 moves, reaches 0. 

      

The only real choice in the game.

      

The player's only choice to make, other than the route through the maze, is whether to (F)ight or (R)un from monsters. The monsters include giant earwigs, giant spiders, giant crabs, griffins, and dragons. When the player meets a monster, the game indicates the relative odds of victory, and the player makes his choice. All fights are to the death (the character has no hit points), and fleeing carries a loss of both time and any accumulated score.

     

Traps include tea breaks (this is how you know it's a British game), rests, rock falls, narrow ledges, and pits, all of which just deduct from the "time left" meter. 

     

I didn't have to BRIEF this. I could have called it a "win."

                

It's really a simple gambling game. Any direct route to the exit probably offers about four encounters. So you need an average probability of 85% per encounter to have at least a 50% chance of making it to the exit alive if the player fights every battle. Of course, any player can make it to the exit by just fleeing every battle. In any event, there's a 100% probability that this is not an RPG.

   

****

   

    

Mazies & Crazies

United States

ICL (developer and publisher) 

Released 1982 as BASIC code for the TRS-80
Rejected for: No character development

   

Mazies & Crazies is a simple roguelite game published as type-in code in Frank Dacosta's Writing Basic Adventure Programs for the TRS-80 (1982, TAB Books). It is one of two full programs in the book; the other is called Basements and Beasties, and it mimics text adventures like (Colossal Cave) Adventure (1976).

     

Though clearly based on Rogue (1980), with perhaps a bit of Dunjonquest (1979), Mazies strips away too many elements to retain its RPG status. Instead of getting stronger throughout the game, the player starts with 9,999 points of strength and immediately starts losing them—about two per second, plus five for every square moved, and a lot more when the unnamed character meets an enemy.

       

Confronting a snake with a couple of treasures nearby.

          

The character appears as an @ and explores a 90-room dungeon with a fixed layout and room numbers, collecting treasures and helpful items such as swords, torches, and bombs. Monsters (*) include spiders, huge bees, trolls, and dragons and must be fought, shot, or evaded. The goal of the game is to find as much treasure in the dungeon as possible and return it to the first room, where you can accumulate a score.

    

I was able to check it out a bit thanks to blogger Jim Gerrie, who entered and debugged the program, then published a series of entries about it on his "Type-In Mania" blog. He speculates that the "winning condition" is to find all 16 treasures before the counter runs out. If the player does run out of strength and die, though, he can "resurrect" with all of the treasures where he left them. Gerrie had some fun with the game, altering the program a bit to fix perceived bugs and to offer a "boss" battle with a demilich. His coverage is pretty comprehensive, and since I don't really see it as an RPG anyway, we'll move on.

      

**** 

     

     

Spy Daisakusen

("Large-Scale Spy Operation"; the Japanese version of Mission: Impossible) 

Japan

Pony Canyon (developer and publisher)

Released 1982 for Japanese PCs, including the PC-88.
Rejected for: No character development

     

Japanese role-playing games have always tended (with plenty of exceptions, of course) to feature defined protagonists—in contrast to the dominant American approach, in which the player determines sex, race, class, alignment, and backstory. The Japanese approach doesn't disqualify the game as an RPG by my definitions—as long as the character improves. In modern JRPGs, he usually does. But in the early era, it was common for Japanese RPGs to include immutable attributes as part of the prescribed character.

   

That's what we have with Spy Daisakusen, which is the way the Japanese render Mission: Impossible, which of course had several iterations as a television show before the first Tom Cruise film in 1996. The player controls Jim Phelps, head of the Impossible Mission Force, as he penetrates a six-level, 60-room, randomly generated enemy base, collects intelligence, and dispatches rogue agents. His ultimate goal is to reach the "document room." 

     

Attributes alone do not make an RPG.

        

Phelps has attributes: endurance, stamina, accuracy, agility, judgment, and luck. Based on a small number of trials, endurance seems to roll in the 8-20 range, accuracy around 5-15, and everything else about 2-8. There's no opportunity to re-roll without restarting the game entirely.

    

The game begins with Phelps getting his mission on a reel-to-reel tape, which of course explodes when the message is finished. After his attributes are rolled, he selects from a list of weapons and equipment, including an assault rifle, hand grenades, a knife, sleeping gas, a time bomb, and a fire extinguisher. He then enters the six-level dungeon.

      

The tape will self-destruct in five seconds.

            

Navigation in the game is bizarre. The player gets a split-second screenshot of his current position in the hallway before a text screen takes over and asks the player to input the direction of movement on the numberpad. Did something about the PC-88 make it impossible to show the image and ask the question on the same screen?

      

I had about a second to take this screenshot. I'm heading towards an elevator, with four rooms on either side of the corridor.

            

The corridors are lined with doorways, and the player can choose to enter any of them. They might have documents or enemies or both, and after Phelps deals with anyone inside, the player can choose to destroy the room. As I learned the hard way, if the character doesn't have the right equipment to deal with whatever's in the room, the game immediately ends.

     

If the room requires combat, you get a little screen showing the enemy positions, but I think this is just cosmetic. Everything happens with menu commands, as the player chooses various options related to his equipped weapon.

      

Combat in a "radar room."

             

I'm going to be honest: if I thought this were an RPG, I'd have a hard time playing it. My normal rules don't even require me to play a game if I can't easily translate the text. But I'd rather reject a game on definitional grounds than technical ones, and I think I'm on solid footing here. 

        

This doesn't look much like Peter Graves to me. But maybe that's deliberate.

        

I searched in vain for any evidence that Spy Daisakusen was an officially licensed Mission: Impossible game. Opinions online seem to suggest that it was not. It was written by Yoshinobu Takahashi, who is better known for a game he created the following year: Genma Taisen (1983), based on an apparently-famous manga franchise. Jason Dyer has a solid history of Takahashi and his games on his "Renga in Blue" blog. My translation of the title may be a bit controversial, as I'm not in any way an expert in Japanese. Jason suggests that it should be simply translated as Mission: Impossible; other sites just give it as Spy Mission. I am relying on dictionaries that say that daisakusen means something beyond just a "mission," though—that it indicates a major operation. Some translations use "epic." Hence.

    

10/21/2026 

Ravenloft: Strahd's Confession

You're so vain, you probably think this game is about you.

         

Grinding has proven unnecessary in this game, at least so far, but I start this session doing a fair bit of it anyway, just so I can get my new cleric, Mischa, up to Level 5. I start with ghouls in the Cemetery, but it turns out they only deliver 44 experience points each, so I'd have to kill 100 of them. (Vampires are worth more but apparently do not respawn.) Darklings in town and werewolves in the Wooded Area West of Barovia are worth 105 each, but they're actually dangerous and also somewhat limited in number. From an efficiency standpoint, I think the best option is zombies on the Old Svalich Road North. They're worth 68 points each and there are a lot of them in a small area. More important, they have no status effects when they strike.

   

Once Mischa is Level 5, I head for the crypt with the banshee. It takes some fumbling, but I figure it out. There are two statues flanking the entrance to the crypt, and when I use the pouches of Unusual Gold Dust on them, I awaken the female spirits within them. They speak of a brave elven warrior, slain unjustly by "a prince of our land" (Strahd?), entombed below the crypt. Their sister—the banshee—guards the entrance, but their blessing will allow us to pass. Sure enough, when we enter the crypt, the banshee is gone. Stairs head downward beyond the point that she guarded.

       

My first idea, to throw the dust on the banshee, ended more quickly and hilariously than this.

          

We head down and find ourselves in the Elven Warrior's Crypt, Lower Level 1, which of course suggests that there will be multiple levels. I thought this was going to be a quick lark. We start exploring corridors decorated with statues and tapestries. 

   

We meet the ghost of the titular Elven Warrior in the second chamber. He relates that the prince who slew him was not Strahd, but his own brother. Both brothers loved the same woman (the banished banshee), who the brother also killed. To free their spirits and allow them to go to Avernaith, I will need to find a locket in the hallways below.

       

It was nice of someone to decorate the place.

         

Encounters in this dungeon:

   

• Werebats and wights. The werebats pose no real danger, but the wights can level-drain, so I start using "Negative Plane Protection" scrolls and spells. It turns out that they a) only protect one character for b) one hit. Easier to just stay back, which isn't so hard since the wights seem to have trouble with doors. Still, I end up reloading a lot in this area. The wights sound like elephants.

      

Freaky but easy. Like your mom.

       

• A room full of arrows for some reason. I'd rather have my back characters do nothing than spend time picking them up after each battle. Fortunately, my back characters have returnable throwing weapons.

     

A special screenshot for my OCD readers.

        

• A room full of shields and spears, including two Javelins of Lightning. I'll save those for some future boss battle that will definitely come at some point and make itself crystal clear when it does. 

• A lightning bolt trap. Maybe a thief would have identified and disarmed it.

• Mage scrolls with "Wizard Eye" and "True Seeing."

• A spinner.

• Multiple piles of bones, each of which I feel compelled to try the Rod of Rebirth on.

• I like the paintings and tapestries, but the artists in this place seriously need some new ideas. Everything is either a ship confronting a sea monster, an evergreen tree, or a king in robes carrying a staff.

    

Nice of the developers to take a position on Maine politics.

       

• On the floor of a corridor, in a pouch, I find a Ring of Free Action.

• We encounter something called a "pyre elemental." It repeatedly kills my first two characters. The game has no "Resist Fire" spell. I kill it by shooting it at a distance with a Wand of Frost. Mischa hits Level 6. There are more of them later, and Somers, Quill, and Glorianna all hit Level 8 at about the same time.

           

I like to think I'm not shooting a "Fireball" at him.

          

The large level falls into a pattern. There are four locked doors in one section. Hidden buttons around the level open the doors in succession. Each door has a teleporter behind it that takes the party to a new section of the level, where they must find the button to open the next teleporter before finding the teleporter out of the hidden area. Each "return" teleporter dumps the party in the corridor with the lightning bolt trap, where they must hie out of the way before the bolt fires.

      

This is a big dungeon.

         

Eventually, we find a key, which unlocks the door to the next level. The lower level is equally as large as the upper one and very maze-like. We meet more pyre elementals, and for undead, the game introduces specters. They level-drain just as quickly as wights and are utterly unimpressed at my attempts to turn them. I start keeping "Prayer" and "Aid" going as I travel. "Negative Plane Protection" doesn't seem worth memorizing given how short a time it lasts. 

      

Somehow, this is the best shot I got of a specter. Look, from now on, there are no more "spectres" or "sceptres" on my blog, regardless of how the game spells things.

         

I do my best to actually use items as we move forward, including wands, potions, scrolls, and Oils of Fiery Burning. I think it's time to admit that I'm never going to use all these "Raise Dead" scrolls, though. I can't imagine a scenario in which I'd rather lose a point of constitution than reload an earlier save. I also have a lot of "Cure Disease" scrolls, and I'm waiting for something to cause disease.

        

This level requires finding a bunch of these buttons.

        

Moving on:

   

• A room has a Wand of Fireballs and a suit of Elven Chainmail. Glorianna remarks that even mages could wear the chainmail—except that she can't.

     

Is your name Willis? 'Cause I have to ask you . . .

        

• Mischa hits Level 7 against another pyre elemental. This has been a good session for him. 

• Fireballs shoot down some corridors. 

• In a nook, I find my first magic shield along with a magic battle axe.

• In another nook, a Bag of Holding with eight slots, all filled with stones. I note that you can put other containers in it, but I'm a bit afraid to do that.

• More spinners. They're particularly annoying in this game because if you travel a single inch beyond the spinner, you have to turn around and enter it again. You have to notice immediately when you've spun, stop, and then back up to continue going the original direction. I'm never a huge fan of spinners, but I definitely like them more in tiled games. 

         

There's no way to show a spinner, so here's a nice shot of a statue.

        

The goal on this level is to open a series of doors, each with a button hidden somewhere in the dungeon. I get all but one of them on the first pass, then have to run around for about an hour hunting down the last one. The succession of doors ends in a large room with the elven warrior's signet ring.

     

Back on the first level, the warrior gratefully accepts the artifact: "You have freed not only my tortured soul, but that of the groaning spirit and her sisters. We go to Avernaith, that place of beauty away from all but elves." He leaves behind an ancient elven sword, platemail, shield, helm, and crown. The last item is clearly the second item I need to use Trimia's Catalogue and escape this place.

        

All right, lyricists: get to work.

        

While I was fiddling with my inventory at some point during this session, I noticed that almost all my scrolls are called "Scroll of Whatever," but a few of them are called "Special Scroll of Whatever." I note that the game won't actually let me use them. I come to suspect that these are the spells needed to cure the werewolf over in the Wooded Area West of Barovia. Once I'm in the sunlight again, I head over there to test the theory.

     

Quill tries to be polite about it.

      

There are three Special Scrolls: "Atonement," "Cure Disease," and "Remove Curse." If the order matters, then I'm lucky enough to get it on the first try. The werewolf melts back into a human. He's happy to be normal again, but he remembers his victims as a werewolf. "I must make amends. I must help those families I have cruelly torn." (This immediately reminds me of the Jack Handey quote: "It's sad when a family is torn apart by something as simple as a pack of wild dogs.") He gives me a key to his house in Barovia, where he says a questionable "reward" will be waiting: "Many of my victims' belongings are there."

         

Will your story shine like a light, or end in a field?

         

Ugh. There are a million houses in Barovia, and I don't remember which ones had locked doors. I should have been using annotations. I sigh, head back to Barovia, and find the house in about twenty minutes. His room of blood treasure does have a lot of stuff, including a halberd, seven sling bullets, an adamantite plate helmet, a dagger, a cloak, a spear, a shield, two Potions of Extra Healing, a quiver, Keoghtom's Ointment, a suit of chainmail, Gauntlets of Dexterity (they just add +1), and a Ring of Regeneration. 

    

As we enter the room, Somers the Paladin complains: "There is nothing here worth defiling our good natures over. How can we confiscate the objects of the slain, of innocents sent to their deaths by a werewolf?" But Somers the Paladin disagrees: "What's done is done. Lord Dhelt's Amulet is our goal, retrieving it the greater good. To use what we can from these supplies is only common sense."

      

Maybe she's possessed.

             

This is the kind of thing I was just talking about in the comments. Clearly, the game is just selecting the speakers at random; otherwise, Somers wouldn't be arguing with herself. It would have been nice if these types of outbursts were tied to the characters' classes or alignments. The first one makes sense coming from the lawful good Somers; the second may have made more sense from a more chaotic or neutral character. You could imagine an evil character being even more mercenary, although I don't think the game has any.

     

It's an authentically good roleplaying choice, whether to use powerful items like the Gauntlets of Dexterity and Ring of Regeneration despite their grisly origins—although it raises a key question: in a blobber, who are you really "role-playing?" I keep the items, less because I'm convinced it's the right decision and more because I haven't saved the game since before I cured the werewolf. But if Somers had made a stronger argument and not immediately contradicted herself, I probably would have kept her happy. 

    

I can't think of anything to do at this point except head for Ravenloft, I head up the Old Svalich Road North and unlock the gate. A cutscene shows our arrival at the castle. No key is necessary to enter the building itself.

      

"Particularly since you've been here before and met him."

      

We're back on the main floor of Castle Ravenloft. The first door we open disgorges a huge pack of doom guards. Backing up from them, we accidentally leave the castle and have to watch the cutscene again as we re-enter.

      

We're greeted by Strahd's minions.

       

The doom guards turn out not to be very hard, though they're worth a solid 500 experience points. Amidst growls of some nearby monsters, we move into the main hall, where we've already been. The dining room in which Strahd greeted us last time is empty, though there's a nice portrait of him on the wall. On the other side of the room, between two griffon tapestries, is a portrait of what looks like a man and a woman. It's too bad that the graphics can't quite show more detail.

      

When you get to my last paragraph, remember this shot.

         

An illusory wall in the dining room leads to a hallway with more doom guards and a gargoyle who dies so quickly that I don't get a screenshot. The hallway ends at stairs going both up and down. Instead of continuing to follow the right wall and go immediately upstairs, I decide to take this castle one floor at a time. I'm going to need to break this entry while still in the Castle, and it will get confusing if I'm all over the place.

       

A difficult decision.

         

Continuing to move counter-clockwise around the floor, I find:

   

• A lightning trap. It's right on the other side of the secret door from the dining room. I don't know how I missed it on the way through. Again, I'm curious if a thief helps with these traps.

• Another set of up/down stairways in the main hall.

• A long hallway with more doom guards. Mischa hits Level 8. 

• In an enormous chapel with numerous benches, we find a book on the floor. It is titled I, Strahd. In it, Strahd describes how his brother, Sergei, was destined to be a priest but fell in love with a peasant girl named Tatyana. Strahd scorned his brother's choice, then fell in love with the girl himself the moment that he saw her. "From that moment on, my brother became no more than a cold obstacle to me, and Tatyana became my life." Honest of him. I wouldn't have left that book on the floor. 

       

Strahd says that he "fell in love," but all he can say about the girl is her physical appearance. Gross.

        

• Two side rooms, perhaps a vestries, have more doom guards and gargoyles. Each has a stairway up.

       

Got a screenshot this time.

        

• An illusory wall on the north end of the chapel leads to a small closet with a mage scroll of "True Seeing" and two cleric scrolls of "Cure Serious Wounds."

   

At this point, I cannot find any other paths from the Main Floor, although the misshapen automap suggests otherwise. I've rubbed along every wall looking for illusory doors and visually inspected them for buttons.

          

The automap at the end of this session.

       

For my next move, I decide to go down first, heading for the stairway behind the dining room. It takes me to the Larders of Ill Omen. The "larders" part is justified by the numerous barrels and boxes on the level, the "ill omen" part by the numerous undead that I meet. There are two vampires, both of which I manage to kill without taking any level drains. The other undead are wights and . . . skeletons. Seriously? Skeletons haven't been an issue in at least four character levels. I mow down scads of them.

           

I don't know why I'm wasting a "Fireball" on them.

         

I don't find a single item on the level except for a scroll of "Raise Dead," which is the last thing I need. I do, however, find two stairways up to unexplored areas on the Main Floor. 

      

Lots of miscellaneous notes:

 

• "Light" makes a big difference. I wish I'd had it from the beginning. I like when in-game spells make a difference for the player, not just the characters.

• "Wizard Eye" is supposed to let the party scout around without moving the party. In practice, it just shoots forward for a few steps and then dissipates.

• I wish someone would tell me what "Knock" is in this game for. And lockpicks.

• While I'm on things that don't work, I'm not sure "Turn Undead" really does anything in this game. I haven't been able to get anything meaningful to happen with it since the caves west of Barovia, and I'm not sure it really did anything even there. 

• I would give a lot to know what these things are supposed to be. You can't see it in the screenshot, but they wiggle. 

      

At least they're just cosmetic.

       

• All of my characters wear helmets, but the book says they don't do anything. The ancient elven helm does modify armor class by -1, but it's the only one so far that does. 

• No comment on the holy symbols? Can I just toss them? They do nothing if I click on them. 

• This late in the game, I noticed that hitting the SPACE bar changes the nature of the interface, allowing the player to move the party exclusively with the mouse. Moving the mouse right and left moves the party rather than moving the cursor across the screen. Moving forward and backwards does the same to the party. It's a cute bit of programming, but I find it awkward, and you have to exit the interface any time you want to go into inventory.

• The game has a quick save option (S) and a quick load (SHIFT-R). They usually work great, but about one time out of five, the game decides that you can go screw yourself and doesn't save. Twice, I've had the whole system break, with both commands unresponsive until I quit and reloaded. This is one of the earliest games I can remember with a quicksave option, maybe even the first, but it would be nice if it worked.  

• I'm going to have more to say about this at the end, but I really miss epic battles. I'm not sure that they're even possible in this engine, since battle happens so fast that the player doesn't have time to finesse the tactics. Ravenloft would work great in Might and Magic VI's engine, with the ability to pause the game and go into turn-based mode. 

         

Character standings at the end of this session.

       

Let's do a character/equipment check-in:

    

• Somers is a lawful good Level 8 human paladin. She wields a Paladin's Sword +3 and a magic shield (unidentified). She wears ancient elven plate mail, an adamantite chain helm, Gauntlets of Dexterity, a Ring of Protection, and a Ring of Regeneration. Her armor class is -6.

• Quill is a chaotic good Level 8 half-elf ranger. He has an ancient elven sword and an ancient elven shield, and he wears magic chain mail (unidentified), an ancient elven plate helm, a Ring of Free Action, and a Ring of Protection. His armor class is -5.

• Mischa is a neutral good Level 8 human cleric. He carries an Axe of Hurling and a regular shield, but as I was writing this, I decided the regular shield was silly, tossed it, and decided to start putting usable items in his left hand. He wears a suit of regular plate mail, an adamantite plate helm, and a Ring of Fire Resistance.

• Glorianna is a neutral good Level 9 elf mage. She's got a Dagger of Throwing in her right hand and either a wand or scroll in her left. She wears a cloak +2, a bronze plate helm, and a Ring of Wizardry.

      

Their collective inventory is an overflowing mess, and I have got to start using more magic items.

            

My mother wouldn't have understood this, but I still would have been embarrassed to show it to her.

         

As I wrap up, I want to say that in a game that has done well with creating a sense of atmosphere, Ravenloft is particularly remarkable. It feels like a real place, with identifiable rooms and a sensible layout. The art department went to the next level here, introducing some images not found in other parts of the game. The combinations of furnishings, paintings, tapestries, candelabra, sconces, boarded-over stained-glass windows, etchings, and cobwebs make Ravenloft a joy to explore. At the same time, it's a little frustrating because it's 1994, and the graphics are not quite there. Worse, the sound problems that I mentioned in my first entry (.wav files that have only one volume and no subtlety) both slightly enhance the mood and slightly ruin it. I don't often call for remakes, but I would love seeing a modern take on this setting.

    

I have to say, this was a tough session to end. I wish I could just keep playing this instead of going back to Pagan.

   

Time so far: 25 hours 

    

****

    

Previous entry in this series

    

Next entry in this series

10/18/2026