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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09/03/2026