Pagan: Ordeal Involving Conflagration

 

Just a normal day on Daemon's Crag.

        

The session begins with the Avatar standing on Daemon's Crag, a peninsula surrounded on all sides by the lava spewed by Mount Morgaelin. As usual, I begin exploring by rounding the circumference, but the only things I find are a welcome teleportation pad and a stone bridge leading to a large, locked double-door.

   

I then turn exploration inward to the small road network leading through a group of buildings. The first house I come to is labeled "ACOLYTE BANE." I am surprised to find it occupied by a woman.  She intuits that I'm a stranger to this island and asks my name, calling me "friend" in the process. Among the responses is an amusing one: "You are not my friend, lady." But as is this game's wont, choosing it, or any other option, just leads to the same result: Bane says that I need a name in the Elder Tongue and decides to call me "Daemion." Now I want to know what happens if you create a character named Daemion.

     

That does not look like a stable bridge.

      

The dialogue with Bane is long, but here are the highlights:

   

• Corodin was the first leader of the sorcerers, but he wasn't very good. He was overthrown by his acolyte, Maedron. This set a precedent for the Calling, a time of wizard's duel that allows masters to be overthrown. I'm sure that, somewhere, Anton Chekhov is smiling down at this dialogue. Later, Maedron created the Elder Tongue. 

• The Elder Tongue allows sorcerers to bind fire to objects like wands and rods.

• The sorcerers are led by a Master named Malchir. All other sorcerers are acolytes or disciples. Malchir is a "wily one" who prefers to keep to himself, making him disliked by some of his acolytes.

• Fire is the domain of the Lord of Flame, Pyros. Bane thinks he is the most powerful of the titans. He is bound to the sorcerers, which limits his power somewhat. If the titans were not bound in this way, they would be gods.

• All sorcerers have a Truename that differs from the name they use in conversation. Knowing a being's Truename allows a sorcerer to bind it to service. Something called the Tongue of Fire allows sorcerers to control Pyros.

• Daemons are the souls of people who have been killed by flame. They are mindless and filled with destructive rage, but they can be bound.

• Daemon's Crag was so named because the first demon appeared here, that of a young woman whose father threw her into the lava to save her from a bloodthirsty mob. She roared out of the lava as a daemon and scared the attackers away. 

• Morgaelin means "Dark Jewel" in the Elder Tongue. 

• Vardion is the First Acolyte. He is "more beast than man . . . a brutish, overbearing, pompous lout." 

     

Bane holds nothing back.

       

• The other acolytes are Gorgrand ("slow of wit") and Beren ("a man to be trusted").

• Bane thinks Vardion is preparing to overthrow Malchir and return the sorcerers to their traditional levels of power, which Bane thinks will lead to them being shunned by the rest of the island.

      

By the end of the conversation, Bane has decided to trust me. She asks me to gain Vardion's confidence and learn his Truename, which will allow Bane to spy on him and learn his true intentions. I say that I'll think on it, and I leave. 

   

Continuing on, I next come to the house occupied by First Acolyte Vardion. Again, I have options to be rude to him, which I take just for fun, and it leads to Vardion attacking me. He surrounds me in a ring of fire, then teleports outside of it and starts hurling spells at me. I can't escape the ring. But when the ring dies, I charge up to him and kill him. I figure that's probably irrecoverable and I need to reload, but the game removes any dilemma by crashing with the error: "Halting in file YAMM.C, line 131."

         

I push Vardion too far.

       

On a reload, I try again. Vardion is a bit difficult. He demands to know why I'm here and tells me that he's in charge. He otherwise mostly repeats what Bane told me, only more obnoxiously. When he asks how I can be so ignorant of the elements, I say frankly that I'm from another world. Not only does he believe me, but he also says that his own grandmother spoke of other worlds and may have in fact vanished to one. You'll recall that Vardion's grandmother, Mordra, is in the Chronicle of Pagan as the source of information about Britannia. She appears in Ultima VII as the healer in Skara Brae. I assumed she traveled there and back home again, but from Vardion's account she must have learned about Britannia (and told people about it) while she was still on Pagan, then somehow traveled there at the end of her life.

       

The Avatar practices for Ultima IX.

          

Although he briefly seemed to like me, Vardion returns to being a jerk in further conversation. One new bit of information he imparts is that the people of Tenebrae pay the sorcerers in food, clothing, and other sundries so that the sorcerers keep Pyros from destroying Tenebrae in a flood of ash and lava. When I accuse him of "extorting" the people of Tenebrae, he orders me from his house. 

   

Moving on, I meet:

  

• Daemos, Cardas, Tallon, Mentar, and Kothius, all disciples. They have the exact same dialogue, which mostly confirms what I already know. They live in single rooms and mutter to themselves when I'm not talking to them. 

       

A disciple talks to himself.

        

• The Hall of Sorcery is a large building with some wooden tables and a pentagram on the floor. A library in the rear is locked.

• A road ends at another pentagram, this one with gouts of flame at every point.

• Acolyte Gorgrond is pacing around his house. As Bane warned, he's a little thick. He takes easy offense to my questions. He worships Vardion and says he "has plans" for Bane. He says he's been here since he was a babe, and there's a hint that he might be Malchir's son. 

• Acolyte Beren is also in his house. He relates the story of the Guardian, the Destroyer, and the creation of the elemental titans as told in the Chronicle of Pagan. If the player has not already figured out from the story that the Guardian and the Destroyer were the same being, the Avatar has. When I say this to Beren, he refuses to believe it or hear any more about it.

    

I love to think that half the players at this point were saying, "Wait . . . what?!"

       

• Also, he's clearly in love with Bane. When I tell him I'm trying to find my way home, he insists that Bane can help.

• All of the sorcerer's houses have pentagrams in the middle of their floors, some with flames in the center, some dormant. 

• None of them have any dialogue options about stopping Hydros. But I'm not able to find Malchir. Maybe he's in the library or behind those other locked doors. 

       

And that's it. Lacking anything else to do, I return to Bane and agree to help. She says that I will become her disciple. She decides that "Daemion" is my Truename, and she gives her own as Sabriane. (I think I've told you before that "Sabrina" is just about my favorite woman's name, and that's a cute variant.) She gives me my first task: "Enter into the confidences of our illustrious First Acolyte and get from him his Truename." 

     

So does "Sabraelin" mean "Well of Jewels?"

     

It takes me a few tries to do this. Vardion doesn't respond well to rudeness, but he doesn't want a toady, either. Finally, when I reverse my earlier comment and tell him that his arrangement with Tenebrae is "shrewd," he suggests that I become his disciple. He also designates my Truename as Daemion and says that his own is Morduin. His first task for me is to get Bane's Truename. He warns me not to trust her friendly demeanor: "It is a ruse. She is power hungry and ambitious." He thinks that she plans to kill both him and Malchir.

    

You know what would really help sort this out? Some spell that makes people speak the truth. Naturally, it does nothing. I suppose this could be one of those situations in which the rude person turns out to be good and the nice person turns out to be evil (for some reason, I immediately think of the first episode of Scrubs), but in my experience, nice people are usually actually nice while rude jerks are usually actually jerks, so I go with my instinct. (I'm sure the lady's name has nothing to do with it.) I return to Bane/Sabriane and give her Vardion/Morduin's name. 

      

The game has some fun dialogue if you say that Vardion's Truename is "Sabriane."

      

Bane summons a daemon and orders it to go kill Vardion. It teleports away. Thuds and cries of pain ring in the distance. "I do so enjoy the cries of torment," the Guardian gloats. Whoops.

      

Yes, that was a daemon.

      

Malchir now apparates into Bane's pentagram and demands an explanation. "Vardion was planning to assassinate you," Bane reports to him. Malchir reams her for acting on "baseless suspicion" instead of consulting with him. "You have destroyed a valuable Acolyte." Bane asks to replace him as First Acolyte and says that she has a promising young disciple (me) who can replace her. Malchir agrees that I have great potential. "Teach him our ways," he commands, and disappears. 

    

Bane's method of "teaching" me is to give me a key to the library. She tells me to return when I'm ready for the test. (I'll have to try that with my students.) I have the option to rail at her for lying to me, but she just stubbornly defends her actions with a "dog-eat-dog world" philosophy.

      

"It's all part of life's rich pattern, Brenda, and you'd better @*$%*# get used to it."

       

I briefly reload and see what happens if I give Bane's Truename to Vardion. He does the same thing she did, gets the same lecture from Malchir, and gives me the same key. He says the same thing Bane says in response to my accusation of "You lied to me!"

   

The library has a lot of books. The Art of Flame by Maedron and On Sorcerous Ways by Corodin explain the basics of sorcery. If I understand it correctly, it involves the following steps:

   

1. Assemble black or red candles around a pentagram. Different spells require different combinations of candles placed at different points.
2. Put various reagents near the candles; the specific reagents depend on the spell.
3. Put a focus in the center of the pentagram. Focuses are metal disks, wands, rods, staves, and daemon skulls, all made of Blackrock. Different focuses hold different spells and different numbers of charges.
4. Light the candles.
5. Chant a mantra specific to the spell.

   

At this point, the sorcerer can use the focus as a magic item with a limited number of charges. In all my CRPG playing, it's possible that I've never encountered a more exhausting magic system. And the last thing I need is more items in my inventory. Is there any way I can win without it?

     

This is the last thing I need right now.

        

Other books in the library teach me the words, candles, candle positions, and reagents for "Extinguish," "Flame Bolt," "Flash," "Explosion," "Summon Daemon," "Banish Daemon," "Armor of Flames," "Endure Heat," "Ignite," and "Fire Shield." There are reagents everywhere: volcanic ash, brimstone, daemon bones, pumice, obsidian, and pig iron.

   

I can't really carry all this stuff, so I put my money bag and necromancy reagent bag in a chest in the library and hope they're still there when I get back. I put a handful of each reagent into the bag I normally use for mixing earth reagents, take five of each candle, grab a wand and rod from the shelves (I don't see a staff or disk), and head back to Bane.

   

Bane helps clarify the names of the points of the pentagram, which I spend an absurd amount of time trying to draw in PowerPoint before I realize I can just copy an image off the Internet. Anyway, here are the points:

   

        

There are some real-world influences on these names, but they're mostly nonsense. I mean, aphelion means the furthest point from the sun, but in the game, it's the farthest point from the volcano. Mesostel would seem to mean something like "middle of the pillars." Perivolcan would mean "around the volcano," not just closest to it. Pa and ze are being used as "right" and "left" here, or maybe "east" and "west" and have no real-world origins that I can tell. 

       

Instructions for "Flame Bolt."

        

Bane wants me to enchant an object, or multiple objects with "Flash," "Flame Bolt," and "Endure Heat." Just "Flash" alone requires me to:

   

• Put red candles at aphelion, perivolcan pa, perivolcan zee.
• Put black candles at the other two.
• Put pumice at aphelion and volcanic ash at mesostel pa and mesostel ze.
• Light the candles.
• Chant FLAM POR.

   

I run into a few vexing problems. First, the game intermittently won't let me drag away candles that are already on the pentagram. It won't let me drag them at all at first, so I assume they must be fixed in location and I'm doing something wrong. I'm in the middle of trying to look up a solution when it suddenly works.

    

The game's most persistently obnoxious problem.

       

Second, it's not clear to me at first from the spellbooks that they only give the locations of red candles. You have to assume that black candles go everywhere else. Third, it's not entirely clear to me whether the reagents go outside or inside nor where the Avatar has to stand. Finally, how do you proactively say words in this game? It turns out that you do it by double-clicking the pentagram itself. All of this takes a lot of bumbling around. At least candles never seem to burn out.

     

The Avatar sets things up for the "Flash" spell.

     

The result is a Wand of Flash, which is now all sparkly glowy. I had the impression that you could put multiple spells in one object, but I don't know how that works if the game insists on naming the object after the first spell. Anyway, I don't really try. Instead, I put a rod down for "Flame Bolt" and use a rod I found in Bane's house for "Endure Heat." 

   

After I make "Flame Bolt," the game will not let me pick up the rod no matter what I do, so I have to reload and start the entire thing over again. 

     

Again.

        

When I started playing the game, some commenters praised the originality of the magic system in superlative terms. I assume they must be talking about this. I really do appreciate the wondrous variety of the human species, but sometimes it's hard for me to believe that we evolved from the same monkeys.

      

I'm not sure your eyes are what matters.

      

When I'm done with the three spells, Bane tells me to visit Malchir in the Obsidian Fortress. I assume that's the place across the bridges with the locked doors. I optimistically head over there without restocking my reagents, hoping that the game won't require me to make any more sorcerer spells. It's not that crazy; I only had to cast about three necromancy spells to finish that little questline. 

   

The double doors open automatically as I approach and lead me into a small cave, where Malchir stands with daemons on both sides. "You will remain within this fortress until you have found my inner sanctum or you are dead," he says. He then casts a spell that turns the daemon statues into daemons, wishes me good luck, and teleports away.

      

I tried to avoid taking screenshots when the "mist" effect was active, but sometimes it couldn't be helped.

         

I deal with the daemons with Protector, pausing halfway through the battle to cast VAS MANI on myself (now that's a spell system; just double-click on a rune). I'm helped by the fact that the daemons start attacking each other halfway through the battle. I was probably supposed to cast "Banish Daemon."

   

The next room has another daemon, but he's non-hostile and says hello. When I speak to him, he congratulates me on my wisdom in not attacking and says I'm free to loot the place for spell reagents. When I ask him his name, he says it's Arcadion, which is a significant surprise. I'm glad no one spoiled it for me.

      

Arcadion asks where I'm from. Even if I'm trying to tell the truth, I don't know which of these to say.

        

Arcadion, you might recall, is the daemon that the Avatar bound to the Black Sword in the Forge of Virtue expansion to Ultima VII: The Black Gate (after freeing it from a mirror in which it had been imprisoned by the mage Erethian). The Avatar continued carrying the sword in Ultima VII, Part 2: Serpent Isle, losing it for a while, then reclaiming it, then having to free Arcadion to defeat the mad mage Lorthondo. The daemon fled after this encounter, never to be seen again in that game.

   

Here, I have options to remind him of these events, but he claims we've never met and he's never been bound to anyone, let alone someone named Erethian. By way of explanation, he suggests that the past I'm describing is still in his future: "Time does strange things to those who travel the worlds." That's all cute, but this daemon neither looks nor sounds anything like Arcadion. This is a classic Origin retcon: it initially intrigues you, but when you think about it, it doesn't really fit and is kind of dumb. See also: Mordra, daemons are really gargoyles (clearly not), the serpent that guarded Exodus's fortress was the Great Earth Serpent, the Avatar was the hero of the first three games, Shamino's whole deal. I'm sure there won't be anything like this in Ultima IX.

        

It never makes sense in sci-fi and fantasy when anyone accepts "Earth" as a proper name.

             

A platform in the center of the room has a pentagram and tables and chests with plenty of reagents, candles, and focuses. I go to save the game here and accidentally hit "Read Diary" instead of "Write Diary," and instead of saving over Game #2 reload from Bane's house after completing the second spell. I check the word count and decide I can stop here. 

       

There is a degree to which this is Ultima—exploring a new place, talking to a bunch of people, getting a lot of lore, running around doing errands. That's been the series' modus operandi since about Ultima IV, and when it works well, it's a strength. But at least earlier Ultimas coupled this type of exploration and info-dumping with some attempts at classic RPG character development, leveling, and inventory and wealth acquisition. These elements hit their peak in Ultima V and have been slowly degraded ever since, arriving here at a character who starts with no creation options except a name, hits peak attributes within a couple of hours, almost never has to buy anything, has no karma meter, and only fights when he feels like it.

      

Still, the story parts of the game aren't as bad as I'm making them out to be, and I think the problem is that the interface just spoils my mood for the entire game. I am so sick of holding down the right mouse button, of getting caught on dumb obstacles, of mincing along when I'm trying to run, of dashing heedless into lava when I'm trying to move carefully, of trying to double-click on NPCs who are moving, of not being able to pick up or move items for no reason, of tossing items into the blue yonder when I'm just trying to move them a few feet, of ESC bringing up the options menu instead of dismissing the active window, of NPCs kicking me out of dialogue because I'm taking notes for my blog, of jumping and missing, and, yes, of clicking on "Read" when I mean "Write" and vice versa. So no, I don't want to mess around with candles. For hours, I've been tempted to just watch Kikoskia play the rest of this damned thing and tell you I accidentally deleted the screenshots. I guess now that I said that, I can't actually do it.

   

Time stamp: 45 hours

    

****

   

Previous entry in this series

   

Next entry in this series

11/05/2026