Pagan: Rite of Passage

 

I don't like the look of this.

         

The Avatar has been dumped by the evil Guardian on the alien world of Pagan. He has managed to outfit himself, but the only clue he has that might lead to a way home is to consult the hermit Mythran on the Plateau. The only thing stopping me from getting there is my tendency to stop and investigate everything along the way.

  

Hence, this entry opens with the Avatar in a cave whose entrance he has just finished clearing by painstakingly removing about 20 boards. It leads to a short dungeon with something that looks like a bedchamber, but the experience ends in a couple of locked doors. I return to the Valley.

          

As far as I can get in this cave.

       

Elsewhere on this map, I find:

   

• A large torax ranch with multiple toraxes in stables and an adjacent field.

• A dilapidated house with a dead kith (a spider-like creature) and a copy of Devenoming the Kith. 

• The house of Gwillim, the rancher I met last time. He's not in it, but I meet his wife, Corinth. She's proud of her son, Cyrrus, who has gone to study with the Theurgists to increase his natural talent for healing. Her second child, a girl, was devoured by a kith as a baby.

   

While I'm talking with Corinth, I notice that a lot of conversation options disappear if you don't click on them the first time. The weird thing is that they don't seem like mutually exclusive options. For instance, if I ask Corinth, "What do you do?," she tells me that she does a lot of things and that her son moved away. On the next screen, I can ask about "many things" or "your son?" Whichever I choose, the other disappears. Now this particular dialogue tree is repeatable, so that's not a problem, but I don't think they all are. It makes me wonder how many topics I missed with other NPCs.  

        

A rare role-playing choice appears in dialogue with Corinth.

        

I find none of the enemies who gave me trouble the last time I was here, including the kith and the troll. I also don't find an exit that will take me to the Plateau—at least not at first. It takes me a couple of circuits before I see a cave entrance that I missed the first time.

         

You see how it might be easy to miss.

        

The cave leads me to a large underground lake. I have to jump from stone to stone to cross it. This is no trouble at all; I just click with both mouse buttons on the stone I want to end up on.

       

Action shot!

       

I thought this would be a good place to try the unpatched version of the game, since I thought I could get here, running, without having to fight any enemies. Unfortunately, the Internet Archive—my only lead on a potential unpatched version—was down when I was playing this. I'm about to head off on a trip for a couple of weeks, and I don't know whether I'll have time to try again before this entry posts. Just in case, I watched a video of a player attempting this puzzle with the original version. Wow. I get the problem. In the original version, clicking both mouse buttons does cause the Avatar to jump, but not to where the cursor is. Instead, he jumps a fixed distance, making it remarkably easy to overshoot the target or to fall short. Running jumps seem even harder to time. Watch that video. It's hilarious if you're not the one playing. It takes the player 18 minutes and about ten reloads to get across the lake. I did it in one minute on my first try.  

   

On the other side, I face the occasional ghoul. There are a lot of corpses strewn about; many of them have potions. Sometimes, when you click on a corpse, a voice says something like, "Do not disturb my bones." I think this is random and not a sign that any particular pile of bones is taboo.

        

Which game had more random piles of skeletons? This or Ultima VII?

        

Upon a plateau, I'm enticed by a glowing object under a skull, but it turns out to be a trap that damages me. On the other side of that is a puzzle involving two closed gates and a nearby inoperable lever. A bridge takes me to a crumbled building with seven levers and no indication which ones to push into which positions. ("There is no escape from this prison," the Guardian intones as I enter.) I try all of them and note that the winch against the far wall only turns when some of them are activated. I push all of those and the screen rumbles and shakes. Back across the bridge, the inoperable lever is now operable, and it raises the two gates. A short jog later, and I'm out of the dungeon and in an area that turns out to be the Plateau, although despite its name, it has stone walls rising on all sides of it. Maybe "Plateau" is meant ironically. 

           

"Those kids seem to really love that Dungeon Master." - Someone at Origin.

       

I follow my usual exploration plan of exploring the perimeter and then filling in the middle. I encounter:

   

• Some hostile toraxes.

• A bunch of "fire 'shrooms" that I can't pick up but that explode if I walk over them. A patch of them actually manages to kill me. They're surprisingly hard to avoid.

• More changelings.

     

I don't remember which one is me.

      

• A cave that I decide to save for later. 

• It takes two reloads and almost all my health to kill a seeker. The problem is that his reach is longer than mine. He's guarding a shack with no valuables, but it's surrounded by mushrooms that I can eat to restore my health. 

        

"Yes, Avatar. Eating mushrooms directly off the ground in a strange world is always a good idea." - The Guardian.

        

Mythran's "house" is in the northeastern quadrant of the Plateau, not far from the cave exit. I put "house" in quotes, because the front door seems to transport me to a void, and the foyer is full of traps. Two spiked balls roll back and forth on either side of a pair of pillars. Lightning crackles between the pillars. I have to carefully time my passage through them. This basic setup is repeated for four consecutive rooms. The final room has a couple of healing potions on a table.

       

Passing through the gauntlet.

          

The exit leads me to a two-story wooden house. The first floor has a backpack with 137 obsidian coins and something called Korghin's Fang.

   

I find Mythran upstairs. Our conversation is long, particularly since I reload a couple of times to make sure I go through all the options. Highlights:

    

• The house is indeed in another dimension, although he doesn't provide details.

• For 50 obsidian coins, he sells scrolls that open magical barriers. 

• He tells me a lot about the history of Pagan, replicating what's in the game documents.

• He suggests I read the books in his house, of which there are many.

• He doesn't like Mordea or the Pyromancers.

      

"Or it would be a tragedy, if the city had more than six people."

       

• He practices Thaumaturgy, a fifth form of magic that is not tied to one of the elemental titans.

Most importantly, when I ask about leaving Pagan, he says that something about the titans' magic blocks travel to other worlds. He thinks the solution is to become a master of all forms of magic. He suggests I start with the Necromancers by asking Vividos to be his apprentice. They live in the cemetery.

        

Mythran has his own private fishing hole in his little pocket plane.

         

His house has a lot of books that bulk up my "Books of Pagan" entry. My intelligence increases by 2 points from reading them all. While I'm reading, I get a rumble from the Guardian that "Nyustl sends his regards."

   

Mythran also gives me a "recall item." When I double-click on it, I can choose to visit any teleportation platform that I've already visited, which in this case is the one in Mythran's house and the one on the roof of the palace. That's handy. I warp back there.

         

Does someone sit in that chair just waiting for people to teleport in?

       

On the way to the Cemetery, on the east side of Tenebrae, I find a house unlocked that was locked before. It turns out to be the residence of Rhian, widow of Toran, the man beheaded at the beginning of the game. She says he expressed his opinions one too many times in the tavern. Their son, Torwin, has gone off to be a Theurgist, something that confuses Rhian because he never expressed any interest in becoming a healer when he was growing up. Toran was a gemcutter, and Rhian is now running his shop. She sells both clothing (her own trade is as a weaver) and gems. I don't buy either for now.

        

I might stop by to sell you a dozen pieces of jewelry tomorrow.

        

The house is enormous; I guess gemcutting is lucrative. The loom in Rhian's workshop moves up and down if I double-click on it, but there's no way to feed yarn into it the way you could in Ultima VII. 

    

I leave Rhian and head for the cemetery. "I do so enjoy the cries of torment," the Guardian gloats as I pass through the gate. As usual, I explore the edges and then the interior. Encounters:

 

• There are lots of battles with ghouls and skeletons. I thought my mace was killing skeletons before, but now they're getting up. The toss-them-in-the-water trick doesn't seem to work for me. But running off the screen solves the problem.

• I take note of all the gravestones and report their inscriptions on the "Books of Pagan" entry. It's cute that they made references to most of the developers, but I think that gravestones are an excellent epistolary way to convey lore, and I wish more games took them seriously. There are only a few in-game references in the long list. 

      

One of many football references in the cemetery.

         

• A specter guarding a north exit kills me. I reload, but he keeps killing me before I can kill him. I leave it for now. Another one keeps killing me in front of a grave that reads: "Get off my grave." Curiously, many of my blows against these ghosts trigger the thunderclap, but they don't die. Yet I killed a ghost with the same mace the last session. I'm wondering if I'm mixing up ghosts and aerial servants; the manual doesn't supply an image of the latter.

     

A specter seems invincible as a zombie rises from the ground nearby.

       

In the center of the area is a two-story structure that turns out to be the Tomb of Moriens, the first Necromancer, who arranged the deal with Lithos by which the titan would stop the earthquakes if the people of Pagan would serve him in death. The first floor has an altar in the central area and what looks like a stone chair behind an unopenable gate. 

       

That looks uncomfortable.

        

The second floor has living quarters. The head necromancer, Lothian, is sick in bed. Her assistant, Vividos, is wandering around. (I'm pretty sure Vividos never tells me his name. It doesn't come up in my initial conversations, but when I speak to him again, I somehow already know it.) Vividos tells me that Lothian is dying. Vividos wants to perform the ritual (rituals are very important to the necromancers) that will let Lothian transition to the afterlife, but the "evil and power hungry" Mordea has confiscated the necromancers' ceremonial dagger and will only lend it back to them if they beg. If Lothian dies without the ritual, Lithos might destroy the world in his anger.

   

I offer to retrieve the dagger; it's clear I'll have to solve this issue if I want to learn necromancy. I teleport back to the palace and find Mordea in her throne room. She's shouting things every few seconds: "Feed them all to the lurker!"; "More work, less pay!"; "Flog the peasants!"; "Double the taxes!"; "No more days of rest!" Her seneschal responds to each rant with "pure genius!" or "you are correct!"

       

I'm guessing there's no romance option here.

         

I find the key to her bedchamber under a folded piece of cloth with a skull on it, but Mordea gets upset that I'm moving things around. I have to rest for a while for the throne room to clear out. I toss her bedroom and find a dagger in her wardrobe, but it doesn't look like what Vividos described. There is a locked closet with a chest in it, but I can't find the key to open it.

    

This seems too easy.

      

Remembering Aramina's (Mordea's handmaiden) offer to speak to me at her home during BloodWatch, I wait until the appropriate hour and then visit. She gives me the key to the closet as long as I promise not to tell anyone that I got it from her.

      

Unless there's more than one, they'll probably be able to figure it out.

       

I return to Mordea's chambers, but I'm stupid enough to barge in while she's in bed. She wakes up and destroys me with a fireball.

     

That's the best you could come up with?

       

On a reload, I wait until Mordea is in her throne room, then openly enter her bedroom, shut the door behind me, open her closet, and steal the dagger from the chest. A lot of what I'm doing relies on Tenebrae having no investigators, just patrol officers.

   

Back at the Tomb of Moriens, I find that Lothian is breathing her last. Vividos has laid her body on the first-floor altar. He gratefully takes the dagger and instructs the Avatar how to help with the ritual that will send Lothian's soul to Lithos. Lothian says he's ready to go. The ground shakes. Vividos incants a spell, and three zombies rise. Vividos plunges the dagger into Lothian's chest. (This is all handled without the player's input, but it's still a fun sequence. It might be worth watching online. I mean to capture a GIF, but I fail.) He later explains that he has completed the Ceremony of Eternity, which will allow Lothian passage into Lithos's halls. I expect that the zombies will somehow carry Lothian away, but they just sort of hang out.

       

What role do the zombies serve?

       

Vividos explains that with Lothian's death, he is now the Necromancer. Moreover, he has no apprentices. I volunteer for the role, and he says my first task will be to gather reagents: Executioner's Hood "from a place of danger," and "fallen sticks from a place where the spirits roam." I already have the first, but to find the second, I'll have to go to Western Tenebrae. This seems like a good place to wrap up.

      

Miscellaneous notes:

  

• Some experimentation suggests that the Avatar can indeed climb up onto any roof. I feel like I need to explore the entire town again now that I have a better sense of a) how to climb and jump, and b) how to search for keys by moving things around. 

• Drinking potions leaves empty bottles behind. Are they good for anything? I'd love an excuse to clear out the damned backpack. 

• I contributed a few more books to "The Books of Pagan." One, called Earthen Magic, gives the reagents and syllables for two necromancy spells: "Open Ground" and "Death Speak." A scroll in Lothian's room gives the recipe for "Quake."

• The dialogue options too often just repeat the last thing the NPC said with a question mark.

          

Don't let the door hit me in the ass?

        

I end this session with my attributes in the mid-20s, about halfway between the starting values (15) and the maximum values (30). [Edit: I guess maybe maximum values are 25.] Apparently, if I wanted to stand still and swing away with my sword, or to open and read the same book over and over, I could grind them all the way to the maximum before continuing on.

  

As I wrap up, it occurs to me that Pagan feels a bit like a simple console RPG of the period, with its limited NPCs, limited character development, rather linear plot, and simple action combat. There's nothing that makes me feel like I'm role-playing or otherwise playing in a unique or personal way. I feel as if I could get the same experience, and have about as much fun, just watching a video of someone else playing. Maybe I should watch a speedrun. I think I'd short-cut this one if I could.

   

Time so far: 14 hours

   

****

  

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   09/08/2026