Serpent Isle: Won!

 

Two out of three of you tried to kill me. Multiple times.

          

It's been a while, so let's recap: The Avatar, Iolo, Dupre, and Shamino came to Serpent Isle to spring an obvious trap. A search of the evil Batlin's belongings had revealed a curiously-preserved message from the Guardian instructing Batlin to meet him here. Coincidentally or not, Iolo's wife, Gwenno, had also traveled here during the events of The Black Gate, just to explore.

   

Serpent Isle was once called the Lands of Danger and Despair (Ultima) but had been severed from the rest of Sosaria/Britannia during the cataclysms that followed the destruction of Mondain's gem after the events of the first game. The isolated residents, later called Ophidians, divided into three factions that worshiped the serpents of Chaos, Order, and Balance--three primal entities of ambiguous origin who hung out in some place called The Void. Lord British and the rest of Sosaria/Britannia must have been aware of them because of the ubiquitous serpent symbology found throughout the series. During the events of Exodus: Ultima III, Exodus somehow kidnapped the Great Earth Serpent (the serpent of Balance) to guard the entrance to his fortress, which strikes me as overdoing it. The loss of the serpent of Balance triggered a war between the forces of Order and Chaos. Order won, massacring its rivals, and even managing to split the serpent of Chaos into three evil forces, the Banes of Chaos, which they imprisoned in their three Temples of Order. After the war, the people of Order fell into a terminal funk and decided to depart the Serpent Isle through the Wall of Lights. Every faction had its own Wall of Lights, activated with a blackrock serpent specific to its faction.

       

A book near the endgame recaps the plot.

        

After the events of Exodus, a group of malcontents upset with Lord British decided to emigrate from Britannia to the Serpent Isle, finding it deserted. They set up the cities of Monitor (fighters), Moonshade (mages), and Fawn (no particular class, but obsessed with Beauty). Several hundred years later, Batlin arrived and put his plan into motion. The Avatar and his party arrived on Batlin's heels and began their search for him. Our search led us to solve various problems in the three cities while Batlin stole a blackrock serpent and freed the three Banes from their prison. He then had to hunt down the three people that the Banes possessed--Cantra, Gwenno, and an unknown third person--and kill them so he could collect them in soul gems, although I'm not sure why he couldn't have done that when he freed them in the first place.

   

Eventually, the Avatar and company encountered Batlin as he was about to open the Wall of Lights in the Chaos Temple, but using the Order Serpent. (I still don't know what Batlin's goal was here, other than a vague belief that he would somehow accumulate power to rival the Guardian's.) Because of the use of the wrong serpent, the ritual went wrong and Batlin was killed. The Banes managed to escape again, this time inhabiting Dupre, Iolo, and Shamino, who went off to kill 90% of the population of Serpent Isle. The Avatar had to chase them down, kill them, collect the Banes in three new soul gems, and have them resurrected. He then had to clean their souls of the taint of the banes with the waters of the temples of the balancing virtues.

       

This guy asks this question literally every time you see him.

     

With Batlin dead, Gwenno resurrected and cleansed, and the party all together again, my original quests were solved. But the imbalance--manifested in lightning storms and a strange sleeping sickness--was affecting Britannia as well as the Serpent Isle, so I still had to solve that by reuniting the Banes of Chaos into the serpent of Chaos, a process that required a significant power source to fuel. That power source: the ashes of my late-departed friend Dupre, who sacrificed himself in my place. I finished the reunification at the end of the last session, but I guess that didn't completely solve the problem, because for some reason I still have to go to Sunrise Isle. 

         

This is, at least, according to the Chaos Serpent who tried to kill me.

      

Before starting Serpent Isle in February, I had last played it in the late 1990s. I remembered elements of it, but mis-remembered a lot more. For instance, I thought it was the demon Arcadion, escaping the Blackrock Sword, who caused all the devastation to Serpent Isle. I also thought I remembered an episode in which I had to fight him after he escaped. (It turns out that you never see him again, which I find rather ominous.) I thought Dupre's sacrifice came much earlier in the game. More important, I remember some episodes in which I literally rounded the island multiple times looking for anyone to talk with to move the plot forward, something I didn't experience here, likely because of better note-taking.

    

This session begins as we arrive at the Temple of Balance, which is apparently on Sunrise Isle, but you never see the outdoors, so it could be anywhere. My party members start complaining about being cold. I try to ignore it, but the temple takes so long that I eventually have to warp back to the Dark Path hub and sort through all of the junk I've left there to find warm hats and boots amidst all the gold, gems, armor pieces, and magic items. I don't find enough, because my characters keep complaining about the cold all through the endgame.

         

The next person to find his way here is going to be able to take over the world.

      

We arrive in the middle of an enormous temple with doors to the north and south and three scales and three pedestals in front of each door. A nearby book announces this as the Temple of Balance. "Only he who hath achieved balance within the temple may be free to find greater balance on the path to the Grand Shrine," the book warns. To move forward, we will need to "use the fire of chaos and the ice of order to restore balance."

   

There are glass serpents of fire and ice all over the place. Putting one each on the north scales and one each on the two south scales causes six objects to apparate onto each of the pedestals: a torch, an abacus, a heart, a rose, a chain, and a dagger.

      

The first of many "balancing" exercises in the game's final act.

      

What follows is a pointlessly long quest in which we have to open the north and south doors and find our way through a huge maze to six little shrines, three exemplifying the virtues of Chaos (Emotion, Enthusiasm, and Tolerance) and three exemplifying the virtues of Order (Ethicality, Discipline, and Logic). There's no reason the shrines couldn't have been rooms immediately off the main temple except that, Great Serpent forbid, the game might be over in 111 hours instead of 113. As you might imagine, each of the six objects that appeared on the pedestals is associated with one of the virtues, although some of the associations are a bit obscure. I get why the heart is Emotion and the abacus is Logic, but what does a chain have to do with Tolerance, or a dagger with Discipline?

      

A book tries to make sense of it, but these seem like after-the-fact explanations.

       

In any event, the goal is not to put the shrine's symbol on its altar but to put the symbol of the balancing virtue on its altar; to wit:

    

• Emotion is balanced by the abacus of Logic to create Rationality
• Enthusiasm is balanced by the dagger of Discipline to create Dedication
• Tolerance is balanced by the torch of Ethicality to create Harmony
• Ethicality is balanced by the chain of Tolerance to create Harmony
• Discipline is balanced by the rose of Enthusiasm to create Dedication
• Logic is balanced by the heart of Emotion to create Rationality

     

If the objects are a bit mysterious, so are the layouts of the shrines. I get why a tidy garden might represent Discipline, but why does a desert scene suggest Enthusiasm, and what about a swamp suggests Tolerance? For the record, these are the scenes:

   

Emotion: A barren dirt scene with a bunch of dead trees and a guy crucified on a cross.

       

Ah, yes, this area just screams, "Emotion."

     

• Enthusiasm: A desert with dead trees, weeds, and a beast's skull.
• Tolerance: A swamp.
• Ethicality: A kind of seascape with a sandbar jutting into it.
• Discipline: An ordered garden. My favorite part about it is there's a hidden chest with six torches in it. My headcanon is that it originally contained a pumpkin.

      

The party finds the last of the missing items.

      

• Logic: An empty void. I get this one, I guess.

     

I try to balance logic with the torch of Ethicality and get attacked for it.

       

It's impossible to mess up the puzzle because if you put the right item on the pedestal in each shrine, it disappears and one of the party members yells, "That did it!" If you put the wrong item on the pedestal, nothing happens in most places; some enemies appear in others.

    

When we've placed our last object, a book appears on a pedestal between four stone obelisks. It tells us to read it again when we stand between "the great pillars." These pillars are found just beyond the northern doors in the arrival temple. "Thou art worthy!" the book says when we read it there. Two bridges of fire appear, one blue, one red, leading us across a chasm to the final area. 

     

      

The final area nearly broke me. It is such an unwelcome slog of puzzles after such a long game, and I honestly nearly looked up a walkthrough to just get me through it even though none of it is very hard. 

  

The final area is, I guess, another temple. There are too many things called "temples" in this game. You find yourself having to make distinctions between "a temple of order" and The Temple of Order. This one starts in a room with two pedestals, one red, one blue, both with plaques on the front that call for symbols of Chaos and Order, respectively. Two coiled serpents are on nearby tables, but of course that's too easy. 

    

This is what I'm going to say to Irene when I have to open a window in the middle of January to counterbalance the blazing wood stove.

         

There are a bunch of chambers off to both sides, and on the level above, and . . . I can't even bring myself to finish this narrative. Honestly, I was planning to post this on Friday but I've had such writer's block from this one section that it's going to be more like Sunday. If you really want the blow-by-blow, watch a video or something. Suffice to say that I have to find various gems and cubes for at least three pedestals, and finding them takes like an hour of going up and down stairs, through doors and teleporters, opening chests, pulling levers, pushing buttons, casting "Telekinesis" and "Dispel Field," finding objects in one place to use in another place, and so on. There's an "escape room" quality to the entire episode, which isn't so bad on its own, but this is a bit like coming to the end of a 10-year prison sentence and finding that you still need to solve an escape room to go home.

      

This kind of thing.

     

When everything is in place, a stairway to a teleporter has emerged over what was previously a void. A scroll lies on the teleporter. It warns me that:

    

• To "commune with the Serpent," I will need the Earrings of the Serpent.

• To "be at one with Balance," I will need all three blackrock serpents.

• To enter the Grand Shrine of Balance, I'll need to be wearing the Armour of the Serpent, carrying the Staff of the Serpent, and wearing the Crown of the Serpent.

   

It's a miracle that I actually have all of these items and haven't lost one of them at some point along the way. I can imagine that some players must reach this point missing one or more of them.

       

"Wait . . . What's the Crown of the Serpent?" -- some poor bastard after 120 hours of gameplay.

         

I don all of the items and head through the teleporter, finding myself in a room in which all of the symbols of the virtues that I used in the previous area's puzzles (abacus, rose, etc.) are resting on pedestals. I notice to my alarm that the rest of the party didn't follow me through the teleporter.

   

An image of the Great Serpent appears and instructs me to lay the staff, armor, and crown on the altar at the north end of the room. Each sparkles as I place them on the table, and then the Eye of Order suddenly appears. Now, I already have the Eye of Chaos from the last session, but why does putting the artifacts of Balance on the altar cause the Eye of Order to appear? In any event, the image of the serpent declares me "worthy to bear the emblems of the Great Hierophant of Balance." I am automatically teleported back out to the temple and my friends. A large wooden door that was previously locked now opens.

            

You say that like you've seen it before.

          

On the other side is the Ultimate Final Grand Temple. As we approach, an image of the Serpent of Order appears: "Dost thou think thou canst chain the Serpent of Order within a prison of Balance? Never! Servants of Order, attack!" This causes eight "magical ice creatures" to gate in and attack us. I kill them all with one casting of "Mass Death."

       

Thus ends the final battle.

      

Before the statue of the Great Serpent lie repositories for all three blackrock staves, and it takes me about 10 minutes to drop them exactly where the game wants me to drop them so they'll actually go into the receptacles. "Now place the Eyes of the Serpent before my statue," the Great Earth Serpent demands. I place the two eyes on the altar.

         

The Serpent comes to life. But why?

         

There are lightnings and flashes, and then the statue starts wagging back and forth. "Slay me! Slay me with the Serpent Sword and send my soul back into the Void," the serpent demands. I do as he demands. The Avatar is then blasted with fire and lightning a few times, and the screen goes black.

    

The endgame cinematic shows the Avatar floating in a void, wearing the staff, armor, and crown that he no longer has. The Order, Chaos, and Balance serpents come together to form a kind of caduceus, but with the rigidly straight Balance Serpent occupying the position of the staff or wand in traditional depictions. 

        

Great! Can I go somewhere where I can breathe again now?

      

"There," the Great Earth Serpent says, "we are done. Balance is restored. Serpent Isle, Britannia, your Earth, the entire universe, are all saved. Worry not about your friend Dupre. He is one with us, and content. Goodbye, Avatar. We thank you."

        

The Void apparently has ale and wenches.

       

Before the serpents can execute what I'm sure is a sensible plan to send me home, the voice of the Guardian breaks in: "Well, well, well, Avatar. You have managed to thwart me once again. By restoring balance where once chaos reigned, you have saved your accursed world. But now here you are, poised at the edge of Eternity. Where would you go? Back to Britannia? To Earth?" A giant red hand emerges from the darkness behind the Avatar. "Perhaps you would join me in another world altogether? We do have a score to settle!" The hand closes into a fist and carries the Avatar away to Ultima VIII: Pagan. Roll credits.

        

Do we? I'd honestly forgotten about you.

      

A few thoughts on the ending:

   

• Why isn't this area of space riddled with the bodies of the followers of Order who went through the Wall of Lights after the Imbalance War? Did they somehow "swim" to another planet?

• Why is the Great Earth Serpent needed at all? Why aren't the Order and Chaos serpents coming together balance enough? Or, to put it another way, if Balance is its own entity, what purpose do Order and Chaos serve? What would have happened if Exodus had kidnapped one of them instead?

           

         

• Balance is a nice sentiment, but it's boring in practice. If not for imbalance, the universe wouldn't exist at all. I'd like to see a game that acknowledges the need for, as Oscar Wilde put it, "everything in moderation, including moderation." We've had games that have used ankhs and caducei and taijitu as symbols; I want a game that uses a bell curve as its guiding symbology. "Be pretty much normal 68% of the time, but one day out of twenty, go wild," would be its message.

• Why was the Great Earth Serpent's soul not in the void in the first place? How did it get into the statue that I had to slay? 

      

       

• What does the Guardian mean by, "where once chaos reigned"? Chaos was destroyed by Order. Order reigned. Or is he just using "chaos" as a synonym for "imbalance"?

• I'm glad that I didn't know that the fate of "the entire universe" rested on my success or failure. If the Serpents are that important, then how was a computer able to kidnap one of them in the first place? 

• I've always thought that the Virtues of the Avatar were a better-constructed system than the Ophidian Virtues, but that was before I went to the Void and saw the reality of the three Serpents for myself. Truth, Love, and Courage are just Some Guy's Idea, whereas Order, Chaos, and Balance are objective reality.

• The idea of a giant hand appearing in space is as silly here as it was in Star Trek. If the Guardian is this powerful, how have I been able to stop his plans at all?

    

Any angst I feel over these questions, however, is overshadowed by a much more annoying realization: I never used the damned glass sword.

   

Final time: 112 hours