Al-Qadim: Bottle Shock

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The big mystery of this game is: What is giving genies the ability to break their bonds and act against the wills of their masters? It happened to Farid al-Mutan in times past, and it happened to my family's genie just recently, resulting in my mother, father, and sister being tossed into the caliph's prison. Meanwhile, the caliph (my future father-in-law) himself is growing increasingly tyrannical, suppressing speech and jailing people for criticizing his policies or even making jokes. (To be fair, neither the game nor the setting have given us any reason to believe that something like the First Amendment exists in Zakhara.) Oh, and my betrothed, Kara, is missing—transported somewhere by my family's genie.

   

Farid has told me that only the Genie Lords will be able to tell me what is happening. I spent the last session trying to find the name of their island, Jaza'ir Jiza. As this session began, I ordered the captain of my ship to take us there.

   

My dinghy came ashore on the north end of a sandy island. I started to move towards the center, but great fists of sand came thrusting out of the ground to block my progress and channel me along a particular path.

     

Apparently you don't want me to go this way.

      

The path ended at a carpet with a female efreeti. I ended up speaking to her second, though. Some guy (a sha'ir, it turns out) was levitating around the area in a cross-legged position, and I snagged him before I lost him. He introduced himself as Azrail Tajrish, Keeper of the Gate of the Four Winds. He expressed pessimism that the genies would be able or willing to help me:

       

The Council of Genies is all very well in theory. Mortals and genies SHOULD have a place where they can peacefully meet and settle their differences. But in reality the genies are unconcerned with the plights of mortals. Dao trade in slaves. Efreet delight in destruction. Marid cannot be bothered over a few thousand humans drowned, here or there. Only the djinn respect the power that humans wield over the lives of genies, pitifully small as it unfortunately may be. 

       

An interesting bit of world-building there. Until now, I didn't know that there were exactly four types of genies, and that djinn wasn't just a homophone but a particular class. In the coming hours, I would meet all four of them:

   

From upper-left to lower-right: a djinni, an efreeti, a dao, and a marid.

    

Each type is associated with a different element, which the images above should make clear, although the association of the dao with earth seems the weakest. Each inhabits a different elemental plane, accessed through portals. The Forgotten Realms Wiki tells me that efreet are lawful evil, dao are neutral evil, djinn are chaotic good, and marid are chaotic neutral. In my conversations with them, I don't know that these alignments really held up. They all seemed arrogant, callous, and unpredictable.

      

My understanding is that djinn, efreet, and marids come from Arabian mythology, although djinn is the master term for all of them and not a separate type. Dao seem to be an invention of Dungeons & Dragons, likely because they needed something for the fourth element. One thing I don't understand from this setting, and couldn't find it in the source book, is what compels genies to serve humans in the first place. How is the bond initiated? Are some genie types more susceptible to this process than others? 

       

I'm ahead of myself, though. First, I had to get past the female efreeti guarding access to the Genie Lords.  This part was annoying as hell because I had to keep going back to the same place: the city of Bandar al-Sa'adat. Each trip involved a walk of a few minutes from the efreeti to my boat, a return to my ship, probably a battle with some pirates or water elementals on the way, another couple-minute walk into the city, and then a reversal of the entire process.

       

Please just let me get to where I'm going.

         

First, she demanded the wisest snake in the world. I knew where to get that: at the store called Reptilian Desires. I had to pay about 60 gems for the damned thing, and when I got back to the efreeti, she just told me it wasn't good enough and ate it. 

     

Wouldn't the wisest snake in the world not get caught in the first place?

       

I had to pester her a couple more times to get the next quest. Her master, Gubishbuskin, apparently thinks this world is too cold. She wanted me to bring the "hottest coal in Zakhara." Again, I knew where to find it: at the coal shop in Bandar al-Sa'adat. I repeated the journey, bought the coal for 50 gems, brought it back, and was told that it wasn't that hot after all. 

    

Now she wanted "the famous veil woven by Idrid." I got lucky on this one, as I mis-remembered Ingrid's Shop of Wonders in Bandar al-Sa'adat as Idrid's Shop of Wonders. But even though it wasn't the same woman, she had the veil. I had to go to the moneychanger and exchange some gold for gems before I could pay her price. If you're wondering what happens if you've already splurged on healing potions with your gold, I imagine that you'd sail back and forth between islands, getting attacked by pirates, killing them and looting their chests, until you had enough.

     

You don't have to sell me on it.

       

That isn't to say that there aren't dead-ends, though. After a save, I tried talking rudely to the efreeti or refusing her tasks. She just shut down and refused to talk to me anymore. I suppose I would have been lost at that point if I didn't have a saved game to reload.

       

I will confess: your plan has succeeded.

            

Of course, when I got back to the efreeti, she just torched the veil and laughed. The next thing she wanted was the Bottle of Eternal Emptiness. I had no clue on that one, but since all the other items were found in Bandar al-Sa'adat, I went back there—this is the fourth time, in case you aren't counting—and started asking around. A guy hanging around the closed inn told me I could find it on the Lost Isle of Senat. Since the name of an island is all I need to go there, I returned to the ship and ordered the captain to steer a course.

   

The island turned out to be a hellish place with glowing red sand that continually damaged my health when I walked on it. There were fire elementals floating about, but I mostly ignored them as I raced around the island, swallowing healing potions, trying to find the bottle. It was in a chest in the center of the island. I snagged it, ran back to the ship, and returned to Jaza'ir Jiza.

      

Until you, you know, put something in it.

           

The efreeti refused to believe that it was the bottle. I convinced her to open it and check for herself. Apparently, since the Bottle of Eternal Emptiness contains nothing, its vacuum sucks in everything in the area. A few moments later, the efreeti was trapped and corked in the bottle, and I was free to walk past the entrance she had been guarding. It would have been cool if I could have taken the bottle, but the game wouldn't let me interact with it.

        

Phenomenal cosmic powers . . . itty-bitty living space!

        

Beyond the efreeti was a huge checkerboard with alternating black and white squares. It took me a while to figure out what I was supposed to do with it. The board had four entrances, and I noted that if I walked directly towards the center of the board from any of the entrances, certain squares would light up. If I walked too far, the lights disappeared and I had to start over. I discovered that there was an identical pattern from all of the entrances: Five squares towards the center, then a 90-degree turn to the left, then three squares, then a 90-degree turn to the left, then one square. At that point, depending on what entrance I had come from, I got teleported to one of the four genies' realms.

      

The result of trial and error.

          

There was a lot of backtracking during this section, but I'll skip that and just summarize. Ultimately, I had to reach the efreeti lord Mirza Gubishbuskin, but to reach him, I had to complete a quest chain involving the other genie lords. I guess it started with the marid lord, a giant creature relaxing in a pool with scantily-clad women (or perhaps nymphs) all around him. He told me a long and pointless story about how he once brought a tidal wave to douse an island that Gubishbuskin had set on fire. It transpired that he used to have a slave storyteller named Shahar Izad, but he lost her to the dao lord in a chess game. He put her voice in a jar before she left so the dao lord couldn't benefit from her talents. He wanted her back.

           

The dao lord was a female genie named Beya Hrampulpishkin, the one who tells Gubishbuskin about the Genie's Curse in the backstory. She and her associates were classic Sinbad-looking genies, sitting in earthen tunnels amidst piles of treasure. Shahar Izad was in a nearby cell, able only to pantomime her desire to get out of here. Beya would only release her if I brought her an "airy jewel of pale blue fire."

       

Beya and her servants.

      

I had to visit two djinn sisters to get the jewel. They were stereotypical I-Dream-of-Jeannie genies, floating about in midriff-bearing harem-style costumes. They were named Bubishah and Satarah, and to get anything out of them, I had to keep alternating conversation between them, always addressing them by their names at the outset. This was hard and annoying given that they kept floating around and often got close enough to each other that I wasn't sure which one the game had targeted with the action command. They didn't like it if I addressed them by their sisters' names.

        

At least I can see the differences between these colors.

       

They agreed to give me the jewel if I promised to do anything they wanted. When I did, they commanded that I: "Sail to the furthest reaches of Zakhara, fight impossibly old and strong monsters, face certain death a thousand and one times, recover the world's most fabulous treasure, and yet give all your prizes to us." I had several chances to back out of the deal, but I kept saying no, I'd do it, and they finally just gave me the jewel for being honorable or something.

   

Beya freed Shahar Izad, who followed me back to the marid, who gave me a potion that would make me invulnerable to the flames in the efreet domain. He was delighted to have Shahar Izad back: "She will remain here . . . and tell me delightful stories for a hundred and one years." I pointed out that since he had given her away, he released her from her contract. She said she'd stay and tell him one more story. She of course is a reference to the character most often given as "Scheherazade," the storyteller of One Thousand and One Nights, who postpones her own unjust execution by telling her husband stories with cliffhangers until he finally relents. I worked with a woman named Scheherazade once, and while she was perfectly pleasant, I kind of felt bad for her. There are some names so steeped in lore and expectations that to give them to a child is like setting them up for failure.

          

If marids really are chaotic neutral, this argument isn't likely to stick.

        

In Gubishbuskin's realm, his efreet servants didn't want me to reach him and tried to block me with flames, but the marid's potion kept them from harming me. I made it to Gubishbuskin, the most impressive visually of the genies. I told him my story, and he recounted how he had been freed from Farid's service by an unknown agent. 

      

I just told you that I was from Zaratan.

         

I asked who was behind it. "It is the Nameless Masters who released me from my servitude," he said. "And they are the new masters of your family's genie." I pressed him on who the Nameless Masters are. "Why, an alliance of powerful sha'irs, of course." Well, that's a bit disappointing. He was surprised that I'd never heard of them: "Why, your own father is one of the Nameless Masters, son of Al-Hazard!" As I sat there stunned, he gave me a Moonstone Shard that added another bonus to my sword.

    

In my last entry, I made a joke about how cool it would be if it turned out my father really had commanded the genie to destroy the Wassab ship, but I really didn't expect it to play out this way.

         

I just want to say that this is a really nice graphic of a palace door.

        

For the fifth time this session, I disembarked on Bandar al-Sa'adat and made my way to the caliph's palace. There, the guard wouldn't let me access the dungeon without the caliph's permission; the guards wouldn't let me talk to the caliph without the vizier's permission; and the vizier said the caliph was too busy to meet with me.

      

Why can't I just attack all these people?

       

With no other leads, I decided to head back to Farid and see if he had nothing new. But on my way out of the palace, I was approached by a  man who said that the head chef had prepared a banquet in my honor for saving the caliph. I went to the "kitchen" (really just a stove in the hallway) and spoke with Sumia, the head chef. After dinner, she told me there was a secret stairway to the dungeon from the kitchen. "It leads to the old dungeon, which was designed long ago to imprison marauding monsters." The man who runs the Office of Trade has the key. Overall, her dialogue pointed to a little conspiracy at work against the caliph; if she isn't the one who tried to forge the vizier's seal, she's probably working with the one who did.

   

This was confirmed when I reached the Office of Trade, and the proprietor said I would need to speak with Omar the Baker. "We have changed our codes. Do not mention the wine cellar, but instead tell him that you want the Key of Bone." I assumed correctly that Omar the Baker was the guy selling sweetcakes in the market. He gave me the key.

       

When injustice becomes law, resistance becomes duty.

        

Back in the palace, Sumia told me more about the old dungeon and the passageway to it, "left behind by the dwarves that built the palace and the old dungeon." This is the first time in this game that I've heard about any of the classic D&D races like dwarves and elves, and it threw me for a second. The dungeon that I've already visited, the new dungeon, was built specifically for the caliph's political enemies. Her organization, the Brotherhood of Freedom, built the secret passage from the old dungeon to the new one.

    

A few steps later, I was through a secret door and in the so-called old dungeon, yet another puzzle maze that involved a lot of pushing and pulling rocks to clear passages. The monsters that the caliph chose to "imprison" are curious. They consisted of a bunch of giant spiders (why?), a lot of undead (or were they originally alive?), and one cyclops.

   

The cyclops spoke with me. I had a chance to kill him, but I didn't. He introduced himself as Pangar-bek and asked what I wanted. I said I wanted to search his cell. He said he'd let me if I helped him escape from the palace. When I expressed my skepticism that a cyclops could just waltz through the palace, he found an old rug and covered himself.

      

I'm sure that will do the trick.

            

I got caught a couple of times, which led to a "game over" screen in the dungeon. But after a few reloads, I learned how to avoid the guard patrols and lead Pangar-bek to the exit. Once we got out of the palace, I insisted on leading him through town to the main exit. "Please do not harm any humans as the blood would be on my hands," I said as we parted. He promised to stay away from humans, and he told me of an island called Hajar where the Nameless Masters store great treasure.

       

I think you can take the carpet off now.

       

Back in the dungeon, the cyclops's cell had a note with the key to moving forward. The dwarven builders had hidden levers in the walls activated by pressure plates on the floor. To activate them, I had to:

   

• Drag a stone over the closest pressure plate.
• Find a nearby wall "made of porous, lichen-friendly stone."
• Hit the wall eight times, "once for each triumphant dwarven king."
• Pull the lever that then appeared.

   

The hardest part—yet another colorblindness issue—was identifying the right sections of wall. I guess to most people, they really stand out, but I could barely tell the difference. (Because I get these suggestions every time I mention colorblindness, I have already set Windows 11 to account for Deuteranomaly, and I already have the Enchroma glasses. They don't really help.)

       

It's just north of me. Note the ugly circular table weighing down the pressure plate to my left.

        

The lower part of the level had six more cells activated by wall switches, each disgorging some monster. There was an ettin, a mage, several zombies, earth elementals, fire elementals, and acid slimes. (I don't really understand this dungeon—was someone coming down here and feeding these captives?) Combat has become fairly trivial, although the ettin was tough. Some of the cells had treasure, and one of them had the pathway to the newer dungeon.

       

One of the uglier enemies in the game.

      

Once there, I had to avoid guards and automatons on the way to see my father. I stupidly went to the location of my father's old cell before remembering that I had bribed someone to move him to somewhere else. I didn't know where, so I had to explore the entire dungeon.  

      

Nice of them to put the scales of justice in the floor periodically. Just as a reminder.

         

I found him in the eastern section. He reluctantly admitted to once being a member of the Nameless Masters.

         

We were a force of good against the evil that ran rampant in this land . . . But the power we controlled was too much for some of our members. They wanted to use the magic for their own gain. I objected and left the group . . . Perhaps they are behind this. I do not know. They weave their magic through special words . . . The only way to cancel one of their spells is to speak it in reverse.

        

Sounds like the game has a different conception of "sha'ir" than the sourcebooks.

        

Finally, he told me where the Nameless Masters now live: the fog-shrouded island of Al-Naqqil.  

   

I earned enough experience points to reach Level 7 from this conversation. I avoided the guards, made my way back to the palace, and returned the key to Sumia.

       

Hadn't thought about that, but cool.

        

Back on the ship, I was surprised to see that Al-Naqqil wasn't a travel option. So for now I decided to try Hajar, the island that the cyclops had told me about. The island was small, with a bunch of scattered piles of gold and a few cyclopes guarding them. Those thorn-shooting bushes were also there, but it turns out that I'm immune to their attacks now. I don't know why. My level? My Ring of Protection +3?

   

A short maze of columns led to a clearing with a large treasure chest in the middle. But approaching the chest causes it to disappear, and lighting bolts shoot out of the columns and kill me. I'm still trying to solve this problem as I wrap up this session.

      

Either I'm missing something or this is one big practical joke.

            

Nothing has really changed in my overall impression of the game. The plot is good; the dialogue is well-written; there are some light role-playing options; some of the puzzles are fun. It continues to evoke a lot of the humor and tropes of the Quest for Glory series, particularly Trial by Fire and Wages of War, and I suspect the developers were exposed to them. Combat and character development remain underwhelming, and it's edging towards lasting too long. One more session would be good.

   

Time played: 18 hours 

   

****

     

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  07/20/2026