Might and Magic (Ch. 7)

My ongoing blog of Might and Magic: Secret of the Inner Sanctum

Chapter 7: Crazed Wizard Lair + Lord Kilburn

In this corner of the hills not far from Sorpigal in C2, we found an entrance to a dark cavern. It was not immediately obvious what danger or information may lie within, but we had sworn to leave no corner of Varn unchecked.

We scarce had a chance to gain our bearings before we stumbled headlong into a trap! The floor gave way to a slippery slide that drove us far into the dungeon past many twisting passages...

And straight into a pool of burning acid. From far off, we heard a mad cackling at our plight echoing through the passages. We rested to recover from our sudden and unpleasant surprise--and then with Alicia's Location spell she was able to give us a slightly better bearing on where we were.

Faulkner consulted his book of maps to tell us what he could divine from the author's old notes. He pointed to the '1' as the cavern entrance, and traced his finger around the corner to the '8', which he said indicated the slide we had hit. With our bearings at the acid pit at the '9', he reasoned we could work our way back out if needed. However, the ominous hallway leading to '4' caught our eye and we resolved to investigate it first.








On our way, a banner threatened that the encounters in this hall were endless. And indeed, it appeared to be so. Traversing the hallway we would inevitably encounter groups of gremlins or skeletons, and when bloody combat had been finished we would find ourselves no closer to our goal. In the end, Alicia took careful note of where the ambushes were most likely, and then cast her Jump spell to carry us over the danger.

In the furthest corner of the dungeon, a crazed wizard in filthy rags wailed at us excitedly, covering Sam and myself in his foul spittle as he challenged us, to "Encounter the 13 and Win the Prize". Although we were unsure what, precisely, he intended for us to encounter, we took up the old madman's challenge and took to exploring the rest of the twisting passages in this small cave.

It became clear before long that the '13' the wizard referred to were the numerous monsters stationed in the rooms and halls around the cavern, acting as summoned guards. These Caryatid constructs were not terribly strong, but they were perniciously resilient. Our best spells and blows often deflected completely away without doing any damage. Sam, who was using a magic halberd, had better luck and carried us through.

Trial-and-error tells me that these enemies are susceptible only to weapons that carry a modifier of +1 or greater.

 The mage's centaurs were not the most threatening foe we had faced, but they were capable of casting a spell of sleep that could render us helpless quickly. Alicia conserved no spell points and threw one fireball after another to smite them as quickly as possible.

Many of the beasts were quite strong and sturdy. The wizard's hired militia, enslaved barbarians, and trained cyclops all hit extremely hard and took many blows to fall. In these battles, Faulkner's Heroism spell bolstered my fighting ability and with my flamberge I carried us through. The Heroism spell did not work on Sam, who was too much of a self-righteous goodly sort to take the aid of Faulkner's dark Almighty.

When we felt we had cleaned the cavern of all it's defenses, we made our way back to the crazed mage's lair, only to find that it was now deserted. Had he slipped away in fear of our success? No...in the corner of the soom, a bulging cloth sack lay by its lonesome. Although not expecting much from the mad wizard, we were stunned to find an enormous sum of gold and treasure. Among it, an unmarked bronze key which I pocketed. Well now, that was a fair sum for a day's work.

We next followed the path from the hills further to the south, into the C3 sector. The east side was a woody area with little of note, while the west side was divided by two slightly taller hills, navigable by winding paths.

Out further from civilization, our foes came at us in greater numbers. Although any one snake or gnome or goblin posed little threat to us with our growing strength and skill, a group of 20 or 30 at once could still overwhelm us if we were not careful.

It also makes for some pretty boring battles at times because fleeing is damn near impossible in this game it feels like. Not to mention that a successful flee moves you to a 'safe' square in the map anyway. CTRL+A is a nice 'auto-attack' command though that automatically makes anyone in melee or missile range attack whoever is in position 'A'.

In a far off corner of one of the hills we encountered a lone hermit. His skin wrinkled and beaten with scars and sun and with thin wisps of white hair that grew in long patches on his head. A hermit would have to be crazy to live out in today's dangerous Varn. He was also surprisingly friendly and wanted to trade items with us.

The moment we expressed an interest in what he might have to offer us, we found him relieving us of our belongings and investigating them with an approving look. In return, he crammed our bags full of useless junk he had accumulated from his scavenging. Before we could protest this unequitable trade, he had disappeared from view back into some mountain trail which we would never locate. The old bastard. There went the bronze key we risked life and limb for not long ago in the mad wizard's cave. Perhaps if we went back the mad wizard would forget he'd seen us before and offer us another prize. On the other hand, the strange maps he left us were of a location not indicated on Faulkner's book of maps. It pointed to the location of some abandoned ships in the sea to the south, but we were not quite ready yet to explore that far afield.

Indeed, you will lose everything in your bags to the Hermit. Fortunately, there are no quest-items in Might and Magic that can't be re-obtained from just repeating the quest.
 

Death from above! As we explored another winding trail, wyverns swooped down from their hidden nests and assaulted us from the sky. They were a mighty foe, with strength of force even greater than the barbarians in the cave. We took care to flee from the larger groups, only staying to engage the flocks that were smaller and more manageable. It was a tremendous, if bloody experience, and lucrative to boot. The old saddlebags hooked around their legs often held a couple thousand gold in total.


Wyverns are a really tough enemy for a party that's pre-level 8 or so. If you have enough gold, splurging on Potions of Skill from the Dusk blacksmith can give you a big edge and grant some good xp and gold for this stage of the game. Unfortunately, they don't seem to drop gems.

 On our way back to Sorpigal, we passed another winding trail and encountered none other than Lord Kilburn, the exiled master of the long-lost Castle Dragadune. Dragadune, a desert castle town, became a crumbling, abandoned shadow of it's former self along with it's nearby town of Dusk--just after King Alamar was said to have reached the Inner Sanctum. Hearsay said that it was by Alamar's hand that the region has been so ravaged, for failure to submit to the new laws and taxes which Alamar had levied.

Without knowing us or what our intentions were, Kilburn thrust a map of his old desert kingdom into our hands and babbled half-incoherently to us about exploring that desert ourselves. Following in Corak's footsteps to see what apparently Kilburn and Corak had seen out in the sands and then report to the other Lords. I did not know precisely what Kilburn intended for us to find, but I did not like the look of crazed fear in his eyes as he implored us. Faulkner took the map from me and kept it safe in his book, and then the exiled Lord, apparently satisfied, wandered on.

So begins the thread that starts the basic plot of the game.

We had accomplished much in our little excursions. We returned to Sorpigal to rest and replenish ourselves...and it was time to visit the Guildmaster again to train and for our magic users to learn new spells.