Pagan: Skull Island

The blacksmith is sexist and fascist.

     

The Guardian has banished the Avatar to a world that has undergone a cataclysm. The last remaining city (at least, that anyone knows about) is ruled by a tyrant named Lady Mordea. After witnessing Mordea beheading a dissenter in the last episode, the Avatar is now taking his first steps into the city of Tenebrae. As I do, the voice of the Guardian rumbles: "Yes, Avatar. Seek the way home."

     

Tenebrae looks to have roughly the same early-19th Century technology level as Britannia. It has wide stone streets lined with landscaping, wrought-iron fences, stone statutes, and bright gas lamps that cast pools of light on the street. 

     

A guard tells me that I'm in Central Tenebrae. The palace is to the north; he suggests that I avoid it. The rich area is to the east and the poor area to the west. I explore the guardhouse behind him, which has two entrances connected by a stone bridge. In the east guardhouse, I open a chest, which explodes and takes me down to 8 hit points. There's some food in a nearby barrel, and each piece restores a couple of points. The chest has a helmet and a bag with some obsidian coins.

          

Looting the guard tower. Note the skull on the tankard.

       

In the western guardhouse, I find two Scrolls of Trap Detection and a chest with two cloaks and a flask of oil. It's locked, but there's a key nearby. I decide I don't need to feel bad about stealing from guards who serve a tyrannical ruler.

   

I skip the exits to the rich and poor areas for now and move north across a bridge, where I find myself at Lady Mordea's palace. Most of the NPCs around her are rude guards who suggest that Mordea doesn't really even need guards since she's a powerful Tempest. I find Mordea eating dinner in a dining room. She's affronted that I dare speak to her and keeps asking where I come from. I try all the answers, but she doesn't like any of them.

        

I suppose I should be happy she didn't order me beheaded.

      

Mordea is being served by a woman named Aramina, who says she's too busy to talk now but will be at her house in East Tenebrae "at Bloodwatch." I guess time does matter in the game.

   

Elsewhere in the palace:

   

• I find a bunch of food in the kitchen and dining areas, which slowly get my hit points back to 30.

• I come across several casks, but unlike Ultima VII, this game doesn't let me turn them on and watch their contents pool on the ground while my companions yell that I'm wasting it.

      

I guess I'll just have to imagining Dupre screaming in my head.

       

• In what looks like an infirmary (with no patients), a bunch of cloths are laid out on a table with nearby razor blades, presumably to cut them into bandages. But this game won't let me do that. I'm finding that a lot of things in Pagan are not interactable the way they were in previous Ultima games. You can't sit in chairs, use looms, turn lamps on or off, turn the spigots on casks, or move most of the furniture. You can sleep in some beds, but the game just asks how long you want to sleep; it doesn't even show the Avatar lying down.

• I am, however, able to throw darts at a dartboard in the barracks. 

• A Big Book of Adventure by Sladek suggests this game will feature lever puzzles, traps, chests of loot, mazes, and trick books called Tricks of the Trixter. Later, west of the palace in a little wooded area, I find a body lying on a bench. It has a book on it. When I double-click on it to read it, it explodes.

     

The "Trixter" is somehow Chuckles. I just know it.

         

• A lower level has a door opened by a switch. A plaque reads "Authorized Personnel Only." It opens into a torture chamber with a bunch of locked doors leading off of it. I can't figure out how to open them. Cobwebs and desiccated corpses suggest that no one has been here in a while. 

     

I guess they no longer bother to imprison people first.

       

• An armory looks like it has some cool stuff, but the doors are locked. A guard log on a table outside suggests that nothing ever really happens here.

• There's a weird area on the palace roof that has four dragon statutes facing inward towards a glowing square on the ground. A throne-like seat sits facing the square. When I step on it, though, nothing happens. 

    

Do I even want to know what happens here?

            

I still hate the controls. I find it hard to steer the Avatar where I want him to go and even harder to activate moving NPCs. I would so much rather move with the keyboard and talk to someone by hitting (T)alk and clicking on them rather than trying to double-click with the same arrow I use for movement. Argh. 

      

That wraps up Central Tenebrae. Next, I go through the east gate to the wealthy quarter. "Your treasured Britannia succumbs easily. Soon, all the land will be mine," the Guardian rumbles as I start moving through the area. Discoveries:

   

• A beggar asks for money. I give him three obsidian pieces.

• A little girl has a lot of questions. 

     

The girl asks what I did in Britannia. The third option is a joking reference to the bread-baking mechanic of Ultima VII, which, silly as it was, exemplified a kind of interactivity that this game isn't capable of.

      

• There's a warrior training hall run by a man named Darion, who also sells arms and armor. He'll spar with me for 50 coins, but I don't have that much. I later find Darion on the other side of town, so I guess he gets around.

• Darion's house is attached to the training hall. It has a basement with several rooms, but I can't figure out how to get out of the arrival room.

     

I see the switch on the other side; I'm just not sure how to get to it.

       

• There's an opulent building in the southern part of the district, but there's no sign on it and no one in it.

• There's a huge building belonging to Salkind the Seneschal (according to a sign). Salkind is inside. Haughty and insulting, he shows loyalty to Mordea and tells me that the title of Tempest is hereditary. He has a number of books in his study, one of which is yet another exploding book, which this time kills me.

      

Were these really necessary?

       

• Salkind's desk has a "logbook of crimes and punishments on it." It lists about eight people recently beheaded for treason and slander. There are several other books that I add to "The Books of Pagan" entry  (which published at the same time as this one, in case you missed it).

      

Beheading and fining sounds like something they'd do in Florida.

       

• There's a patch of mushrooms I can pick.

• Several large buildings are locked.  

• A large pool of water—one of several in the area—is called the Spring of the Eternal Hydros. 

• There's a large library with even more books. This takes me a while. All books are added to "The Books of Pagan." Bentic, author of The Chronicle of Pagan, is in his office here. He's a cheerful fellow who acknowledges that the government is "restrictive." They recently took his personal diary. His best friend is Devon, the fisherman who rescued me. When I ask him about leaving Pagan, he suggests I talk to Mythran. My first lead! He even gives me directions to Mythran's home on the Plateau, north of the city.

      

Just give me the address. I have a GPS.

      

• I can't remember what building it was, but when I entered, the Guardian's voice said: "Soon, Britannia will be mine. It seems that you are missed here. Why, I believe I hear Lord British crying out for you now." 

      

That's about all I can find to do in the rich quarter, so I head back through Central Tenebrae to the poor quarter.

   

• The first building I enter is a tavern. The barmaid is Jenna, who took the job after her father kicked her out for refusing to marry. She wants to be an adventurer and wears her grandfather's sword on her hip; she claims she's killed several men with it. The bartender is named Orlock; he tells me a story about a ghost who wanders the hills above Tenebrae, guarding buried treasure.

     

However he came about it, that's an unflattering sobriquet.

        

• South of the inn, I find the house of Shaana the Executioner—the woman who cut off poor Toran's head last session. She's hacking away at practice dummies. In conversation, she says that she likes her job, but she cannot countenance Lady Mordea's denying proper funeral rites to those she executes. She's a private person in general and doesn't want to answer my questions; she suggests I go see Bentic at the library. At one point, she says something like: "Why are you so interested in my name and occupation?" I didn't screenshot it and didn't think anything about it at the time, but now I realize it's a joke about the NAME and JOB keywords that characterized a lot of previous Ultima games. Pagan sure enjoys making fun of games that are better than Pagan.

     

Shaana doesn't mind the executions, just the burials. More on her tapestries later.

         

• A blacksmith named Korick runs a shop. He's satisfied with his place in life, even though it hasn't made him rich. He says there was recently a fire on the north end of the district, in which an old man was killed. He laments that the people have become hard and unfriendly lately. He recently captured a cutpurse who attacked an old woman.

     

That third dialogue option seems odd out of context.

       

• While I'm in Korick's place, I make the mistake of slightly moving a saber on a table. He immediately summons a guard and accuses me of theft. The guard (a sorcerer, I assume) sentences me to death and hits me with a fireball. I am literally blown to pieces, with my arms, legs, head, and torso falling into a bloody pile. Lesson learned: don't steal things in front of people. Unfortunately, Korick never seems to leave his shop.

    

Pagan has a brutal criminal justice system.

       

• One house has a dead peasant slumped at a table, with no indication what's happened.

     

Should I alert someone?

       

• There are several unoccupied houses.

• I run across a guard interrogating a woman, either about something that happened last night, her unpaid taxes, or both. The conversation just goes in a circle, and there's nothing I can do about it.  

     

Why, with your wife, my friend.

       

• There's a building that seems like a jail, with a troll wandering behind the bars, and a wounded torax (a domesticated reptile) on the ground. Maybe it's a gladiatorial pit.

     

This series is fond of visual vignettes with no explanation.

        

• Near a ruined building on the north end of town, a specter appears and starts conjuring zombies out of the ground. I kill one of them, but flee from the others. 

    

I do no damage to the specter while zombies close in.

       

And that's it, although NPCs seem to keep to schedules, so it's likely that I missed some of them. Still, in many ways Tenebrae is the opposite of the typical Ultima city. In previous games, the cities were unrealistically small but packed with NPCs. Tenebrae has a larger physical space than any previous Ultima city, but a tiny number of NPCs live there, and most don't have anything interesting to say.

         

Other notes:

   

• The NPCs move about, do chores, pace, and talk to themselves and to each other. I suppose they did that in Ultima VII as well, though.

      

They don't always say profound things.

       

• You have to talk to NPCs at least twice to get everything they have to say. Not all dialogue options come up during the first conversation. 

• If you pause during conversation (for instance, to take notes for a blog entry) without choosing one of the options, the NPCs sometimes get angry.

      

Shaana reacts to a tongue-tied moment.

         

• The water graphics in this game are just bizarre. Even small pools are drawn as if to suggest that they plunge into an abyss.

      

A little thalassophobia here in the courtyard.

             

• The Pagans are obsessed with skulls. There were skull carvings along the bridge, skulls on the tankards, skulls on the corners of the end tables, skulls on the water troughs. Shaana's house is full of skull tapestries. In Lady Mordea's palace, there's a cushion with a skull on it in her throne room, and in her bedroom, she has a picture of a skull propped up on her vanity. 

      

What kind of sick person looks at a skull while putting on her perfume?

       

• In Ultima VII, you could double-click on chests and doors from an entire screen away, and they'd open up. Pagan makes you get right up to objects before you can activate them. 

     

I cannot read this book from here. Realistic, but still annoying.

       

• In the two Ultima VII games, all the buildings were packed with valuable stuff. There's no way I could have gone through any city in Britannia or Serpent Isle and not walked out with a full suit of armor and a better weapon. After leaving Tenebrae, however, I have a dagger, a helmet, clothes, 16 coins, and a couple of potions. 

• Judging by the clocks I clicked on, time passes very slowly. I think there are six time periods: DayTide, ThreeMoons, LastEbb (this is my best interpretation; it actually looks like "LastE66"), EvenTide, BloodWatch, and FirstEbb. (Everyone stop reading my entry right now, click on this, skip past the Pocket ad, and close your eyes. What a great song for a summer evening.) 

       

Or maybe it's LastEgg?

        

• This is the first Ultima game in a long time with no experience points or levels. The manual suggests that attributes increase directly through exercise. It says that intelligence increases from casting spells, dexterity from jumping, throwing, and grabbing. It does not mention how strength increases. In any event, my intelligence and dexterity have both increased by a point since the beginning of the game. I have not cast any spells yet, though. I don't even know how. 

   

Aramina told me to meet her in east Tenebrae at BloodWatch, so I keep an eye on the clocks and head back to that side of town when the hour rolls around. I run around the district and find her in a house that was locked before. She doesn't offer much, though. She says Lady Mordea is a hard woman who will do anything to retain power, even commit murder. Meanwhile, the seneschal constantly torments Aramina with mindless tasks and sexually assaults her in the hallways. She's afraid she'll lose her head if she says anything. It's good background info, but it's not like I needed a reason to dislike Mordea and Salkind. 

         

Aramina lets it all spill out.

         

Aramina also says she met Devon once in the market and liked his smile. She asks me to mention her to him. I head back to his fishing spot, but he's gone. While I'm there, though, I discover I can roll up his sleeping mat and take it with me, allowing me to sleep wherever I want. On the way back to Tenebrae, I find a ruined building that I missed previously. It has a locked chest in it. It and all the locked doors in town make me wonder if there's some way to open locked things without keys. I try attacking it for a while, but that accomplishes nothing except making the chest jump around, which is kind of funny.

      

One of many mysteries.

        

My only lead at this point is that Mythran might be able to help me, and that he lives on the Plateau north of the city. I head through the palace and out the north gate. I start exploring this new area (from Bentic's directions, I gather this is The Valley) by going counter-clockwise about its perimeter. A few minutes later, I come upon a group of little girls, the ground around them strewn with dolls. The girls attack me! Figuring they're demons in disguise or something, I retaliate, and soon the bodies of four children are on the ground in front of me. What the hell, Ultima?! Is there supposed to be some connection to the Expedition Journal, Book II? Or is this just one of those inexplicable weird encounters like the ones we saw in Ultima VII? I know game development studios aren't like television shows, but I'd like to be in the equivalent of the "writer's room" for Ultima VIII when this kind of decision is made. How does no one object to it during playtesting?

       

Somebody has a sick sense of humor.

      

I reload, skip this area, and continue past a herd of nonviolent toraxes and then am attacked by a kith, which has no trouble killing me. 

     

I wish I had more than a dagger.

      

Reloading again, I take the other direction and head clockwise from the entrance. I find:

   

• A very large area of grassland with nothing in it. It's kind of fun to go skipping through it, though.

• North of a mushroom patch, two trolls are fighting each other. The winner turns his attention to me and kills me in a couple of blows.

         

I miss Britannia's bridge trolls.

       

Okay, clearly I'm missing something. I assume one of the following is true:

   

• There are one or more areas where I can fight and make money, perhaps out the east or west exits from Tenebrae.

• The game assumes I'm going to loot the armory.

• I missed some other encounter that would have helped. In particular, that ghost I fled from was supposed to be guarding treasure. Maybe I should try harder in that area.

• I'm meant to just run through the area north of Tenebrae and not stop to meet the kiths or trolls. 

      

I'll explore these possibilities next time. I'm a bit disappointed as I reach the end of this session. I would have expected a lot more world-building, development, maybe even some side-quests in the land's only city. It's also a bit too much like a generic Britannian city; I feel like the authors could have made an alien world a little more alien.

    

Here's something that will make you laugh: Deep into this session, I was vaguely wondering when I would meet the first member of my inevitable party. I thought it would be Jenna. It didn't hit me until I was four hours into the game that this would be a solo adventure. That's almost startling. The Avatar has been a team player since Ultima II.  

      

Time so far: 5 hours 

   

****

   

Previous entry in this series

   

Next entry in this series

   08/19/2026