Game 589: Ravenloft: Strahd's Possession (1994)

           

Ravenloft: Strahd's Possession

United States

DreamForge Intertainment (developer); Strategic Simulations, Inc. (publisher)

Released in 1994 for DOS, 1995 for FM Towns and PC-98

Date Started: 14 August 2026

     

Strahd's Possession adapts one of the most popular tabletop RPG modules of all time—so popular that even I read it, although I wasn't much of a tabletop RPG player. I loved it. Decades before pop culture decided to reformulate vampires as angsty teenagers (or, I suppose, years before, if you think it all started with The Lost Boys), the module presented an atmospheric, gothic, suspense-filled adventure with a compelling and complex villain inspired by the original "vampyr." More on him in a bit.

       

The CRPG begins with a reasonably well-animated and voiced cinematic, the narrator using a Bela Lugosi-style Hungarian accent. The PCs (as we'll discover, there are two of them) are given as knights of the benevolent Lord Dhelt of Elturel. This is in the Forgotten Realms, just up the river from Baldur's Gate. Some unspecified evil has been threatening the land, and the companions have just returned from patrol. They arrive at Lord Dhelt's chambers in the wake of an assassin's attack that has left Dhelt and his mage, Baranta Chansil, wounded. Dhelt tells the PCs that the assassin stole a holy symbol of Helm and fled to the forest. The PCs follow him to a dark forest. End of intro.

         

The aftermath of the attack.

       

The player creates two characters from the usual AD&D races, classes, and alignments, and with the usual attributes. This might be the first game in which character creation has consisted of two characters. It's a weird number. Thanks to commenters on my "Upcoming Games" posting (thanks in particular to SB and Man of Stone), I understand that up to two hirelings will be able to join the party later, that clerics and mages are particularly important, and that there are no mage hirelings in the sequel. Thus, a player who wants to bring his characters into the sequel should probably create a cleric and mage. I decided not to worry about the sequel (I'll likely create new characters). I created:

   

• Summer, a lawful good female human paladin. 
• Quill, a chaotic good male half-elf ranger.

      

The unusual character creation process is in keeping with the spirit of the module.

      

The whole character creation process is presented as a Vistani fortune teller with tarot cards "foretelling" the characters. ("Vistani" are the gypsies of the setting. The term does not appear in the original module, which used "gypsy" exclusively. The game goes back and forth.) The player chooses sex, race, etc. by picking the appropriate cards. There are 18 portrait choices for both men and women. They offer a decent selection, but some of them are clearly at odds with the 18-21 age range rolled for each character.

           

These guys are supposed to be 19?

        

The game lets you just manually set the attributes for the characters, with no pretense that you're doing it to match a favorite tabletop character. But there's hardly any reason to resort to such cheating, as random attribute rolls are generous. I only got single digits a couple of times, and I only had to roll a few times before I had all attributes but one at 15 or above. Characters start at a reasonably high level, too. They come with 35,000 experience points, enough to put both my characters at Level 5 and on the cusp of Level 6. Most other classes would start at Level 6. The experience tables in the manual suggest that characters can go up to Level 20.

    

After character creation, the game begins with the two characters in the forest. Quill makes some ranger-y tracking observations, concluding that the assassin is "a bad woodsman." After his comment, I'm able to take control.

     

The characters frequently speak up in ways consistent with their classes.

       

The interface has the same basic elements from the Eye of the Beholder series—character portraits, hand items, a GTFO cluster, a compass—though rearranged. Mercifully, it appears that divine spellcasters don't have to sacrifice a shield hand to hold their holy symbols anymore. As for the main exploration window, the game lets the player toggle between freeform, continuous movement and tile-based "step movement," which is coincidentally the same term that Realms of Arkania: Star Trail used. Is there a precursor to both games that coined this term?

     

The player can move the party with the GTFO cluster, by clicking in the exploration window itself, by using the numberpad, and by using the arrow keys. (Well, he can't turn with the arrow keys, I guess; just move forward, backwards, and side to side.) Alas, the same spirit of redundancy does not apply to anything else on the interface. Attacking is only accomplished by clicking on the weapons, casting only by clicking on the spell symbols, other options only by moving the cursor to the top of the screen to access the buttons. Clicking on the portrait accesses the inventory screen. The keyboard is only useful for moving, checking the (T)ime, and (P)ausing. [Edit: And a quick (S)ave and SHIFT-(R)estore.] Wankers.

                

Moving the cursor to top of the screen brings up the game options. Any reason ESC couldn't have done the same thing? Any reason we couldn't have avoided this entirely with (M)ap, (Q)uit, etc.?

         

My paladin starts with a broadsword, a shield, chainmail (torso armor includes boots), a plate helm, and an empty sack. My ranger comes with a longsword, leather armor and helm, wooden shield, short sword, three throwing knives, and a smaller sack. It appears there's an encumbrance limit, but I'm in no danger of meeting it yet. The manual says that the character doll can accommodate amulets, cloaks, gloves, and rings in addition to the obvious slots. None of the screens say anything about money, making me wonder if the game even has an economy.

       

The inventory screens.

       

The automap, of which I'll have more to say later, shows us in the "Forgotten Realms Forest." We're limited to a narrow lane of trees, ending in a cul-de-sac, where we meet the cornered assassin.

     

I get my first taste of combat, which has the typical real-time attacking and cooling-down of other Dungeon Master-inspired games. The assassin does a reasonable amount of damage, nearly killing Summer, before we kill him, but we simply rest and heal afterwards. I don't see any signs that there's a hunger/thirst mechanic, so resting between battles doesn't have any downside.

         

Our first battle.

         

The assassin drops Lord Dhelt's holy symbol, a parchment, something called a "withered heart of mortal ardor," and a fourth object that looks like a weapon. Summer opines that: "The stench of necromancy hangs about these foul bits," but she suggests that we gather them for study. The assassin's parchment indicates that he came from the world of Ravenloft, and that he somehow figured out that Lord Dhelt's holy symbol was in fact the Holy Symbol of Ravenkind, an artifact that could destroy Strahd. He resolved to steal it ("even if it means the death of that good lord"), return to Ravenloft, destroy Strahd, and "free my people from their eternal fate." Well, now I feel bad about killing him. I guess he was more of a burglar than an assassin. But he should have asked.

      

The assassin's note.

       

I don't know what the fourth item is because the moment I pick it up, a thick fog rolls in. Weird shapes move through the fog. Three figures stand in front of us, and one reaches out his hand. Suddenly, we're in a different place and three of the four items are gone. (The parchment remains.) The automap now shows us in the "Svalich Woods" in the realm of Barovia.

     

Spooky.

        

Let's save the game at this point and learn a bit more about the land and its most famous denizen. The CRPG player first encounters Count Strahd von Zarovich, Lord of Barovia, as a triptych in the game manual—a debonair, thick-eyebrowed, slightly sinister figure. An elegant note offers "cordial greetings" and invites the party to explore the "misty, twilight dangers" of "this brutal paradise." He is speaking of Barovia specifically but also the Ravenloft campaign setting in general. Its first appearance was in 1983, in the module created by Tracy and Laura Hickman, a married couple who were looking for more story and atmosphere in their tabletop roleplaying sessions. They created it (along with several other modules) for their own roleplaying system, but Tracy ended up getting hired by TSR and brought his modules with him.

          

From my admittedly inexperienced perspective, Ravenloft is a high-quality bit of literature. I question how well it works as a D&D module specifically, but it's delightful to read. Barovia is a classic Transylvanian (fictional Transylvania, of course) region, shrouded in fog and gloom, existing in its own isolated plane of existence. Castle Ravenloft looms over the Svalich Woods, moorlands, and a pathetic town where residents huddle in terror at night, clutching holy symbols. Gypsies travel the land, dance amid giant bonfires in the evening, and tell fortunes. Wolves roam the forests, and at night the cemetery disgorges the spirits of slain adventurers, who trudge to the castle and re-enact their failure to destroy the vampire in charge of it all.

    

The 1983 module cover. Strahd sure does like standing and looking proudly at things.

         

Count Strahd has brought the party to his world, for one of four potential motives chosen at random at the beginning of the game. (There are several aspects of the session that are chosen at random using a regular deck of cards, so it was fun to see that mimicked with the gypsy at the beginning of Strahd's Possession.) Strahd isn't just some generic vampire "NPC." The module advises the dungeon master: "Strahd is supposed to be a genius; play him as one." He keeps track of the PCs' locations and acts accordingly. He charms, confuses, spies, summons allies, raises undead, drains, hides, and, if necessary, flees. His death ends the adventure, so the dungeon master "must use every power available to the vampire to keep him (and the game) going." Still, he is killable as per normal Monster Manual rules, and I have to wonder if any party ever rolled a 20 on a stake to the heart the first time they met Strahd and wrapped up the module in 15 minutes.

       

The game manual's depiction of Strahd.

       

I honestly don't know whether Strahd's Possession is an adaptation of the module, a sequel to it, or an unrelated game that uses the same characters and themes. I thus forced myself not to re-read too far into the module. I have a hard time believing that this particular interface will be able to evoke the unique environments and experiences that the tabletop party finds in Castle Ravenloft, but perhaps I'll be pleasantly surprised.

   

Back in the game, I start exploring the woods. Its borders are surrounded by poisonous vapors. We're attacked by a worg wolf almost immediately. Its constant dancing back and forth makes it hard to hit (or so I think at the time), but we kill it. Then we walk a few steps more and we're swarmed by more wolves and goblins (weirdly spelled "goblyn"). They seem to come out of nowhere. We suffer our first party death.

            

With an appropriately gruesome screen.

      

On a reload, we decide to head for a nearby building, killing a couple more wolves on the way but fleeing from others. The building is a roofless, abandoned hut. As we enter, Summer remarks on a poorly-concealed trap door heading down to some kind of basement. A skeleton sits slumped in a chair; a nearby note curses Strahd for the ruin he's inflicted on the land. A button on the wall opens the trap door.

  

The basement has a number of items clearly meant to help new adventurers: three Potions of Healing, a Potion of Extra Healing, a composite bow, a quiver with eight arrows, a suit of chainmail, a cleric scroll of "Raise Dead," and something called a Ba'al Verzi Dagger. (The note suggests the Ba'al Verzi are some kind of assassin's guild.) The basement also offers a safe place to rest.

       

Despite offering shelves and barrels, I'm not sure the game engine is capable of putting items in either.

           

As you might imagine from past experience with my entries, the first thing I did upon gaining control of the game was to turn off the music. At this point, I'm also considering turning off the sound. It is beyond horrible. The problem, if I understand it correctly, is that we're at the dawn of digitized recorded audio, which was ultimately a good replacement for synthesized sound, but only after developers learned how to blend it better with the environment. Here, when a monster becomes active, the game simply calls up the appropriate .wav file and blasts the player with it at full volume. There is no accounting for distance or direction, no subtlety at all. This is also true of what's supposed to be ambient sound. Every minute or so, the game decides, "Time for some chirping birds!" and WHAM, there they are in your ear. It's positively assaultive. I wish developers had just stuck with synthesized sound until they figured out how to modulate recorded audio for a 3D environment. Having said all of that, I feel I should mention that I rarely know what I'm talking about when it comes to graphics and sound, and it's entirely possible that some overlooked setting eliminates all of my criticisms.

     

The automap shows items, enemies, and NPCs. For once, I can differentiate the colors, but the size of the dots still makes it hard to interpret.

         

As we explore in east-west strips, heading south, the automap helps a bit. It fills in fast. Basically, looking in any direction is enough to fill in about 20 squares in that direction. The map shows the locations of items to pick up, creatures, and NPCs, among other things, although as you might imagine, my colorblindness makes it difficult to differentiate some of the objects. Still, the map does help lead me to a couple of piles of treasure and my first NPC. The items include stones, which the player can pick up and throw at enemies from a distance; I manage to kill a wolf trapped between two trees this way. 

        

A worg wolf attacks.

        

The first NPC is a timid-looking man cuddling a tree. The game offers full-sentence dialogue options—or, at least, full sentences. With this particular NPC, we're able to go through all of them, so they're not really "options." We ask if he needs any help, and he suggests that his son was killed. We ask where there might be a town, and he directs us to a road "a way off," which isn't much in the way of directions. When we ask who "Strahd" is, he says that he "freed the land from Old Dorian." He warns us that Strahd "applies justice with an iron hand." The voice is reasonably well-acted with an English accent, although the audio quality is poor and sounds very much like a .wav being called up from a CD rather than anything integrated with the environment.

     

These seem like "options," but we're able to ask all of them.

        

Slowly, retreating frequently to the basement to heal, we clear out most of the goblins and worg wolves on the map. Creatures seem to respawn, which is a little annoying but also relieves the burden of feeling like you have to clear all of them. I find another NPC tied up by a campfire in the southeast corner of the map. His voice acting is notably poorer than the first one. He introduces himself as Fhalken, a merchant, although the goblins have apparently stolen and eaten all of his wares.

     

Fhalken agrees to join the party. His statistics reveal him as a Level 5 chaotic good human fighter with high strength but middling everything else. His poor dexterity means a high armor class. Scattered around the fire, I find some armor and weapons, including a two-handed sword. I guess I'll keep him until someone better comes along.

     

Neither of these options feels very paladin-y.

       

Two western exits lead to the Old Svalich Road South. It's not so much a "road" as a "corridor" that extends pretty far to both the north and the south. I don't know whether the vine-covered walls on either side are really supposed to be walls or whether they're supposed to suggest that the foliage is too dense in that direction. Either way, here are the encounters we face:

 

• As we arrive, we see a skeleton tied to a post. A note pinned to it reads: "If you walk my land, then heed my laws. A WARNING to those who defy my will!" It is signed by Strahd von Zarovich. This is repeated multiple times on multiple skeletons in this area.

       

Is there some place where we can find out what those laws are?

      

• As we come to a narrowing in the corridor, Quill suggests it would be a good place for an ambush by bandits. "Remember who warned you when some ignorant thief comes screaming at us from the trees," he says. We thus remember when, a few seconds later, three ignorant thieves come screaming at us from the trees. We kill two of them, and as we're about to kill the third, he surrenders and begs for mercy, promising to never undertake thievery again. He says that further up the road, a stone with an arrow will point the way to the bandit camp.

• We meet a Vistani traveler who tells us that the nearest town is the Village of Barovia to the north. He claims that although Strahd rules from the shadows, "he is the lord, the land, and the law, a friend to the Vistani and a just ruler." He says that the Vistani have a potion that will allow passage through the poisonous mist, but we have no gold to buy it. He says that when we do have the gold, we can find him at the Blood o' the Vine tavern in Barovia.

     

I don't know, man. Just rulers don't usually leave notes on skeletons.

        

• We find the bandit's stone marker but can't figure out how to get into the camp at first. We figure it out after we enlist Velika (below). Clicking around on a wall causes a secret door to open into a grove with multiple bandits and skeletal bats. There are a lot of weapons and armor in this area. Quill gets poisoned, which I don't notice until I've already saved. I should have made that cleric.

      

Have you never played a CRPG before?

    

• We run into a cheerful woman named Velika. She's out for adventure and happily joins our party. She's a Level 4/4/5 chaotic good half-elf fighter/mage/thief. She wears robes and carries a longsword. Her spellbook has "Magic Missile," "Shield," "Agannazer's Scorcher" (the first time I've seen this spell), "Improved Identify," and "Ice Knife." 

       

The spell memorization screen.

        

• Those annoying bursts of sound I told you about include, in this area, peals of laughter that come out of nowhere. I realize the developers are trying for a spooky horror setting, but this is just like someone constantly sticking a wet finger in your ear.

• A northern gate leads, as the Vistani promised, to the Village of Barovia. 

   

Some miscellaneous observations:

    

• A lot of the items marked as treasures on the automap turn out to be rocks. I get all excited for nothing.

       

Well, that's disappointing.

        

• Repeatedly throwing the same missile weapon at an enemy hung up on a tree seems to be a consistently useful strategy in this game.

      

His attack range is shorter than my "reach and pick up the dagger I just threw" range.

        

• At first, I was annoyed at enemies constantly moving in combat, but it doesn't seem to matter. My attacks hit enemies even when they're not on the visible screen. However:

• The attack buttons are annoyingly far apart. Luckily, the player can also attack by clicking on the enemy (if he can keep the enemy on the visible screen), which cycles attacks by the four characters. How hard would it have been to just map this to the "A" key? 

• Time is given as "R.S.T.," which I assume is "Ravenloft Standard Time." An hour passes in about a minute real-time. Ambient light peaks at 13:00, then starts dimming, reaching its darkest at around 01:00. Even at its darkest, it isn't really "dark," and yet I still prefer it lighter.

• The manual says that the order of the characters doesn't matter unless they're indoors, at which point the two leftmost characters become the front rank and the two rightmost characters are the rear. No enemies seemed to attack the two new characters, though, even when we were outdoors. Their rank position didn't seem to stop the characters from being able to attack. I don't know whether that will change when we move indoors.

        

Coming up next.

          

I don't finish exploring the Old Svalich Road this session. Quill's poison keeps sapping his hit points, and I'm wasting healing potions bumping his health back up. So we head to the gate to Barovia, hoping to find healing (or a cleric party member) there. The game's a mixed bag so far, about as fun as one of the first two Eye of the Beholder games, perhaps—but a bit too early to judge.

  

Time so far: 3 hours 

    

****

      

Next entry in this series 

   

Further reading:    

• My "Index of Games by Lineage" has both all licensed Dungeons & Dragons games and all Dungeon Master clones. 
• The original Ravenloft module. 

08/31/2026 

  

Upcoming Games: Rogue II: Return to the Dungeon (1986), Jiji and the Mysterious Forest, Chapter 1 (1994), The Bard's Tale II: The Destiny Knight (1986), Aethra Chronicles: Volume One - Celystra's Bane (1994), Graal (1986), Hexx: Heresy of the Wizard (1994)

Clear "Game of the Year" for 1994.

         

Ravenloft is in active rotation, so it's time for another look at what's coming up. My sense is that this list is going to be relatively quick, but I've been fooled before.

   

As a reminder, this discussion is to offer:      

• Opinions about the game's RPG status. While applying your own definitions to such a discussion is fine, what really helps is if you apply mine. The FAQ (7th question) covers my definition.
• Tips for emulating the game
• Known bugs and pitfalls
• Tips for character creation
• Trivia
• Predictions for my reaction and/or the GIMLET score (without specifics that will spoil the game).
• Sources of information about the game from around the web, particularly obscure ones that I might otherwise miss during my pre-game research.

    

These are the next eight titles:

       

• Rogue II: Return to the Dungeon (1986 | Atari ST | Epyx). This game is alone a good argument for expanding my list of sources beyond Wikipedia and MobyGames. I only found it on AtariMania, and it's an official sequel to the Epyx release of Rogue! We should have learned about it years ago. It appears to be a roguelike with a graphical interface. I look forward to seeing what it keeps and ditches from its predecessor. LanHawk has already assisted me with getting a clean copy, sans the obnoxious "cracktro" nonsense. [Ed. I guess it's not a good argument for expanding my list. Rogue II appears to be a hack or mod of the original game and not a separate Epyx release.]

• Jiji and the Mysterious Forest, Chapter 1 (1994 | Windows | Independent). This game is technically a sequel to Jiji's Osakanakuzushi ("Jiji's Fish Crush"), but MobyGames classifies it as an action game. This is an independent children's game series from a Japanese developer, but in English, in which Jiji the cat romps around the Land of Fish. There was some discussion as to whether it's a real RPG in my "1993/1994" post. I don't expect it to be long or interesting, but you never know. If I really love it, Chapter 2 came out the same year.

• The Bard's Tale II: The Destiny Knight (1986 | Commodore 64 | Interplay): It's time I rectified a 16-year-old crime that I committed against this game. I decided to do it now because Michael Cranford has announced a new game (a sequel to Maze Master) and I wanted an excuse to talk about it.

• Aethra Chronicles: Volume One - Celystra's Bane (1994 | DOS | Independent). A shareware game, but it looks nice: detailed character creation, three characters, full inventories, tactical combat, NPC dialogue. Of all the games on this list, I think I'm looking forward to this one the most.

     

The Aethra chronicles looks like a well-designed shareware game.

       

• Graal (1986 | Thomson | Free Game Blot): This is a French game about which I've done virtually no research. The Wargaming Scribe posted a comment suggesting that it's more of a puzzle game than an RPG.

• Hexx: Heresy of the Wizard (1994 | DOS | TAG). A Dungeon Master-inspired game with continuous movement set in the Trazere universe. I've seen it described as a remake of Bloodwych (1989), but I think it's better described as a game in a similar style. Of the titles on this list, this one has the potential to last the longest.

    

As always, your comments, assistance, and predictions are welcome. 

    08/30/2026   

Pagan: Look at Me Now

This guy gave me trouble last time.

        

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

   

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

      

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

      

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

   

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

   

• A herd of non-hostile toraxes.

      

They speak for the lrees.

        

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

     

Fighting a giant wasp.

       

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

       

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

         

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

        

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

   

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

         

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

       

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

      

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

         

Laid low by a skeleton.

        

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

   

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

      

You're literally wearing a sack.

       

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

    

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

         

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

   

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

          

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

        

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

     

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

      

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

       

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

   

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

     

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

       

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

         

I really only need to jump across those top two.

          

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

      

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

  

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

         

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

       

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

  

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

    

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

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

      

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

          

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

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

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

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

       

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

            

Previous Avatars might have been offended by that.

           

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

     

This game really loves its messy scenes.

          

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

      

Enjoying my new bag.

      

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

   

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

    

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

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

• I have a magic weapon.

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

         

I'm a new man.

        

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

      

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

       

This is still sick.

        

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

   

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

       

Time so far: 10 hours

   

****

   

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08/27/2026