Savage Empire: The Bugs in the System

When last I left off, I'd just taken my first steps into the underground domain of the original inhabitants of Eodon Valley, the Kotl. And I'm beginning to sense something of a trend here. First it was Ambrosia in Ultima III, then retrieving the Codex from the Abyss in Ultima IV, which was followed by the Underworld of Ultima V, then the Gargoyle lands of Ultima VI, and now the Kotl city in Savage Empire. The Avatar seems to have a certain fondness for hurling himself headfirst to explore vast, dangerous underground territory in search of something necessary to save the world. At this rate, I wouldn't be surprised if there was another game down the line that ended up being entirely underground!

...oh right. Ahem. Moving right along!

Ever feel like you might be overlooking something important?

Having descended into the depths of the ancient city proper, my first order of business was to track down Katalkotl. Knowledge is power, after all, and Yunapotli had told me that Katalkotl knew many things about the city I was about to explore. I thought it best to see what I could learn from him before pushing too deep into the city. Consequently, when I came across the teleporters just inside the entrance, I skirted past them, unwilling to fling myself even further into the unknown without arming myself properly. There was a ghostly-looking something near the teleporters, but I figured it for a statue or a weird lantern or something. But I would definitely be coming back to that later.

In the meantime, though, I poked around what remained of the city nearby. And it wasn't long - barely a few steps past the teleporters! - before I was attacked by what residents were left, in the form of robotic dinosaurs. The fights I found myself having in the Kotl city were not particularly numerous, at least in most parts of the city, but the ones I did have were brutal. Spears and arrows and swords and a fire axe were more than able to take down the metallic creatures, but whenever any of them landed a blow, it hurt. So it was with caution that we made our way through the winding corridors of the city, trying to get a feel for its layout and what we might find in its depths.

We did find a good deal of use, too. A lot of bones and corpses, which was... eerie, to say the least, but so too did we find shields, weaponry, and canisters that we quickly gathered and distributed amongst the group, sure they would be of great aid when we finally took the fight to the Myrmidex. And considering the design and nature of the technology of what we were finding, I found myself having vague thoughts of Ultimas I and II, what with all the blasters and light swords and the like. That particular blend of only-vaguely-defined high-tech weaponry coupled with the fact that I was wandering about with a shaman who could bring about a fair few magical effects - it was very reminiscent of those early wanderings of mine, if only in spirit.

Clearly something unpleasant went down here...

It wasn't just items that caught our interest, however. The city itself was full of peculiar sights - a room where the ground was simply dirt rather than the tiled flooring we'd been walking over in the rest of the city, gratings that revealed lava flows beneath it. And that whatcha-ma-call-it back near the entrance of the city, come to think of it. Katalkotl was supposed to be near the entrance, and I'd explored a fair distance in by this point. I headed back the way I'd come to see if I'd missed anything, and lo and behold, there he was - the very thingamabobber I'd dismissed as decor earlier. D'oh!

Reflecting on my latest lesson in humility (it is one of the Virtues of the Avatar, after all, shouldn't look a gift horse in the mouth, unless it's Smith I suppose), we spent some time chatting with the last of the Kotl. Or, as he explained to us, the memory of him, for that was what he was. It was from this memory that we finally learned the history of the valley proper. The Kotl came from reptilian ancestors, and possessed a large black stone. Eventually their mystics learned how to draw power from the stone, and used it to build a thriving city and the advanced technology we were seeing the remnants of. They had also created the Myrmidex to act as servants for them, when they realized they could not power enough automatons to do what work they wanted them to do - this explained the dirt-filled room I'd come across before, it was likely the old "servant's quarters," so to speak. They had hoped that the industrious nature of the ants they were bred from would make them ideal for the task. Unfortunately for the Kotl, they also took on the warlike tendencies of the ants and rebelled, taking with them the black stone from which the city drew its power. So the Kotl went out to find new servants. These were the ancestors of the tribes that now dotted the Valley of Eodon - it seemed that they too had grown weary of their role as servants at some point, and headed to the surface.

And then the Myrmidex returned. The city fell, and the Kotl were no more, save in what little the Sakkhra remembered of them.

It was a tragic tale, to be sure, though perhaps a situation the Kotl had brought upon themselves. There was little time to reflect upon this, however, for Katalkotl informed us of something else: Spector was currently in the city! After obtaining directions to the generator room (though the Myrmidex still possessed the black stone that served as their power source, the generators could still function off its power even from a distance), we set off in search of the crazed academic, marveling at the giant crystals and taking a moment to mourn at the evident battle sites we passed along the way. I even caught sight of a wisp at one point.

That's a dead robo-dino, by the way, he's not just dreaming of electric meat.

Spector turned out to be holed up in the generator room itself, both himself and the generators protected by the same force field we'd witnessed about him earlier. It took a while to catch sight of him proper, considering that my sight was limited in the underground city and the narrow path over the lava to where he was standing was blocked by a robotic tyrannosaur that I'd just so happened to kill on that path. Once I'd managed to get a grasp on things, the mad doctor and I had ourselves a little chat. He theorized that the moonstones that had brought us all into the Valley in the first place were pieces of the black stone the Myrmidex now held, and that one of the side effects of drawing power from that stone were odd changes in the flow of time. We knew we had to throw a monkey wrench into his plans somehow, but what could we do when both he and the generators that would power his plot were protected by force fields?

Mess with the controls, of course! Those were still within reach, and we soon managed to shut down the power in the city. The glow faded from around Spector, and he found himself in his right mind once more. The automatons froze as they shut down (Yunapotli included, sadly), and the city went dark. There was no chance to reflect on what this meant for the legacy of the Kotl, however, as the shut-off instigated a collapse of the city, and we found ourselves fleeing for our lives as the ground shook (complete with shakes on-screen, a nice touch). We managed to escape just in the nick of time, and as we stopped to catch our collective breath, Spector told us what needed to be done to deal with the Myrmidex threat once and for all. He told us there were too many for a single band to deal with, but with the tribes of the valley united, they could be defeated. Their queen would need to be destroyed, lest she spawn another brood and trouble the Valley all over again. So too would the black stone need to be destroyed - Spector wondered whether it was what was keeping us trapped in the Valley, but regardless, he feared what the Myrmidex might do if they figured out how to tap its power the same way the Kotl had. It was what had driven him mad in the first place - what might it do to the Myrmidex? It was too dangerous to ignore.

But... don't I have an admirable face, too?

Our course clear, we made our way back to Tichticatl to ensure that Huitlipacti the Usurper was properly dealt with. We arrived to find Moctapotl restored to his rightful place as ruler of the Nahuatl, the people having killed Huitlipacti as soon as the glow that protected him had disappeared as a result of our actions in the ancient city. They readily agreed to a unification of the tribes, and were the final tribe in the Valley to do so. It was time to head to Drum Hill and summon them for the last stand against the Myrmidex. There we found a man named Tuomaxx, who made and played the drums there on Drum Hill. To summon all the tribes, he would need a large enough drum to be heard in all corners of the Valley. He would need a hide in order to craft such an instrument. So we headed back to the Kurak village to rest up for the battle ahead and picked one up while we were there, Intanya was more than willing to donate the one in his home for a good cause. Tuomaxx made short work of crafting the drum, and so were the tribes called together to bring the fight to the Myrmidex.

Together, the peoples of Eodon charged the Myrmidex caverns. While the tribes drew the attention of the bulk of the swarms, I readied my own little band of warriors for the coming fight. It fell it us to track down the queen herself, and we armed ourselves with every trick in the book we could think of. The technology we had found in the old city would surely be of great use to us. Aric the Avatar, Aiela, and Dokray were all armed with the black staves we had uncovered there - as well as Jimmy, as I felt he deserved one after how much he'd developed as a warrior in the Valley. They proved extremely effective weapons - they were crushing the Myrmidex at a single blow, and from a distance even! We made short work of the stragglers we came across, traversing the caverns with a mixture of View spells (courtesy of Triolo) and a device picked up from the Kotl city. She chattered and clacked and called for our destruction, we braced ourselves for a fight, and... well, she died just about as quickly as the rest of them, really. Kind of a bit of an anticlimax, but at least it was an easy problem to solve once we'd found her.

For once, the Avatar's actually present for the victory party!

The queen kept the corrupted stone in her own chamber, and after hitting it with everything we had, it shattered, its hold over the Valley broken. And not only had the Myrmidex been defeated, we had accomplished it by helping the tribes to overcome their squabbles with each other. The Valley was truly at peace once more - and so, as it always is for the Avatar once his task is accomplished, it was time to depart. Rafkin stayed behind for further research into the Valley and its peoples, while Fritz, Spector, and good ol' Jimmy joined in for the trip back home.

And boy oh boy, would Jimmy have a story to tell.

~~~

So ended my own adventures in the world of Eodon. And even as I played through this last session,
right up until the end of the game, I found myself smiling at all the detail work. During the conversation with Tuomaxx, for instance, he throws the hide over the Avatar's head in order to admire it - and the little window that normally shows the portrait of the character you're talking to goes black, since you presumably can't see anything with a hide over your head! The entire game is full of these little touches, and it adds so much to its charm.

But I hesitate to say too much on that particular topic, as I still have one more post to lay out my final thoughts on the game. Stay tuned!

Farewell to Eodon

Linguistic Asides: Reflections on the UDIC 25th Anniversary Bash

It's been a while since I last did anything over here - judging by the date of my last post, over a year at this point. I think it's high time that I did something about that. My last session of Savage Empire has already been played out, long enough ago that I'm glad I cut my teeth on games that expected me to take notes in order to get anything done in them. If it weren't for the notes I have from that session, I might be in a bit of a bind right now! I'm in the process of pulling together a post to wrap up the game proper, but in the meantime I thought maybe to help me get back into the groove, I'd do something else I've been meaning to do - scribble down some thoughts on something else Ultima-related that happened approximately a year ago.

That's right, the UDIC's 25th Anniversary Bash in Disneyland.

It's been on my mind a lot in recent days, in large part because I was actually in Disneyland again at the end of February, on vacation with my parents. I even made sure to bring along the anniversary T-shirt, and wore it on the anniversary of the first day of the bash. There's a lot of fun memories from that weekend, but I think the best place for me to start is before the bash itself.

See, I wasn't entirely sure I was even going to be able to go in the first place. Gallara had done a fantastic job of getting the word out well in advance of the event, and I was very much hoping to go. The thing was, I'd wasn't sure whether I'd be in a position to do so. It was... June or July or something along those lines when Gallara reached out to see if I would be willing to give a lesson in Gargish at the bash, and so I had to make a decision. I'd been unemployed for a long while and thus didn't have much in the way of savings, and I was working a temp job at the time without anything concrete lined up afterward - I had opportunities, but nothing solid yet. I sat down, worked out how much I had, how much I was still going to make over the course of my temp job, and calculated how the trip would cost me. When all was said and done, my budget was going to be tight, but even if I didn't make anything beyond when my temp job was up in August, I'd just barely be able to make it to February and still have enough to afford attending.

So I told Gallara that I'd be happy to give a lesson.

I did end up landing another job on a more permanent basis, which removed that particular worry, but even if I hadn't, I still would have been there. I was excited about the prospect of meeting other Dragons, and even moreso when I found out Lord British and other Origin folk were planning on being there as well. At the same time, part of me was a little nervous. And not just about the lesson - I wondered if I'd get along half as well with Dragonly folk offline as I did online. I simply didn't have the same experience as I knew a lot of Dragons did when it came to the UDIC itself. I knew a lot of folks had been part of the Dragon community considerably longer than I had. I'd known about the Dragons well before I ever joined, and by the time the Bash rolled around, I'd been one myself for a little over three years. I still considered myself a hatchling by Dragon standards. I didn't grow up with the series like many of the Dragons had. I've said before that I'm as old as Ultima V, and by the time I actually discovered the series and played one of the games, Ultima VIII had already been out for a few years. I didn't even have the tech background a lot of Dragons seemed to have. As excited as I was, I wondered if I wouldn't feel a bit like a fish out of water.

That notion was dispelled the moment I walked into the Fellowship Hall that first day.

I'm still not entirely sure what it was that did it. Maybe it was the big hug Gallara gave me when we finally got to see each other in person. Maybe it was seeing Blu3vib3, aka Angelic-Demonic (or was it Demonic-Angelic?) Dragon, all decked out in Serpent attire and realizing that whatever else we might have been, just about everyone there loved the Ultima games just as much as I did. Maybe it was how jovial and personable Richard Garriott, Lord British himself, was when I finally worked up the courage to say hi. Maybe it was finding out just how far some Dragons had come to attend, or reading through the event book, hitting home that yes, we Dragons really did come from all sorts of walks of life.

But whatever it was, I had a grand time - even despite the fact I was sick the whole time I was there and was popping coughdrops like they were going out of style. (If you were there and got sick afterward, I'm so sorry, it was probably my fault.) I got to meet Dragons I knew from online, but never yet met in person, Gallara and Sorceress and Goldenflame. I got to meet Dragons like Shadow of Light, who I knew by name and by their work (I have stark memories of tearing through Shadow of Light's Ultima-related writings when I was in college) but never had a chance to put face to name. I got to experience the reverse, too - I can't tell you how many times I had someone tell me "oh, so you're Linguistic Dragon!" and it still caught me by surprise every time. I got to sit back and indulge in one of my favorite pastimes - origami - with Doctor Cat. I was there when Dominus helped christen Lord British as Splut Dragon, I chatted with Dennis Loubet about the poster he designed for the event while he signed mine, I got to play a bit of Goldenflame's The Dark Unknown with him right there to chat about its development. My Gargish lesson was small but glorious, soon turning into a discussion on what Gargish oratory tradition might be like. I exchanged favorite (and frustrating!) moments while playing the games over lunch. I joked about how riding the California Screamin' roller coaster in the rain must certainly have earned me some valor points. There was laughter, there was joy, there was exuberance, and there was Ultima.

As much as those particular memories make me smile, though, I think what stood out to me the most wasn't what I made of the event, but what my parents did.

See, neither of my parents are Dragons, nor have they ever played an Ultima - they don't play video games much at all, except mobile versions of board or card games they're already familiar with and the occasional family Mario Kart session. When I told them I'd been asked to give a lesson in Gargish, they asked (once we'd taken a moment so I could explain what that was in the first place) if I'd mind if they came along so they could be there for it too. I was more than happy to have them along for the ride, though I wondered whether they'd feel out of place themselves, on account of they don't have the Ultima context the rest of us did.

In the weeks leading up to our departure, I gave them a bit of an introduction to the series proper. I sat down and ran through Ultima IV's opening (and the virtue quiz!) with them, playing a bit of the early game, explaining what was going on and what I was doing and the basic run-down of the story of some of the other entries in the series - I remember my mom's looks of consternation as she deliberated over a few of the virtue questions and which way she'd answer, she really liked that aspect of the game. By the time we arrived, they had at least a vague idea of what Ultima was all about and why I liked it so much, why I wanted to hang out with this wacky group of people who called themselves Dragons for a few days.

And the thing is, even though neither one of them knew and loved the games the same way I and my fellow Dragons did, at the end of the day, that didn't matter. I remember my dad chatting excitedly with Lord British about his time in space, my mom having a lively conversation with Auora about knitting, the two of them talking with Dennis Loubet and Gold Dragon over dinner as they were all sitting at the same table. They listened with rapt interest during the Origin developers' panel, and told me how impressed they were that they didn't hold themselves apart - they were friendly and personable and were right there enjoying everything with us. And when we left the Fellowship Hall that first day to head back to our hotel room, I remember my mom telling me, "I can see why you wanted to come. They're good people." Neither of them had the context or experience with the games the rest of us had, but they were still right there laughing and enjoying themselves. It's an event all three of us have good memories about. My dad still asks how Shroud of the Avatar's development is going, even though I doubt he'll ever play it himself, just because he was so interested in what Lord British had to say about it.

One of the things the three of us talked about on our way home was just how impressive it was that the UDIC had been around for a solid 25 years, even though there hadn't even been a game released in the series it was formed around since 1999. I'd long thought that myself, but being there with my parents, I think it clicked exactly why.

We may have come together over our mutual love of a video game series - but that isn't what defines the Dragons as a community. My parents are proof enough of that - they've never played an Ultima themselves, but it was pretty obvious to me that they felt welcomed and enjoyed themselves anyway. And that, I think, is what's ensured the Dragons have stuck around this long. Sometimes fan communities can be ostracizing in their love for what it is they're fans of - not so, with the Dragons. They may have needed me to explain some of the in-jokes, but for that weekend, my parents were just as much a part of the community as any Dragon was. And it drove home that while it's Ultima that brought us together in the first place, it's not the only thing that ties us together. Word nerd, knitter, ham radio operator - the three of us found ways to connect with Dragons over all those things while at the bash.

Whoever you are, you're welcome among the UDIC. I saw that clear as day while I was at the bash, and I remember feeling, when it was all over, that I was proud to be among their number.

Still am, really.

Let's not wait another 25 years to do it all again, okay?