Might and Magic 2 (Ch. 6)

Ongoing blog of Might and Magic 2: Gates to Another World


Chapter 6 - Tundara

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A nomad in the northern row of Sansobar ran the Scirocco Portal, a transport gate straight across Cron to the next town on our list -- Tundara.

The first thing we noticed was the blisteringly painful cold. Tundara lay at the opposite corner of Cron, anchoring that region where the Element Plane of Air lie. It was no wonder that the biting cold and winds swirled so freely around us.

The sun hung high in the sky. And yet, even despite it's shining face, the snow still swept freely across the gusts of air. There was something magical about it that I didn't like. Lucreto offered to warm us up by setting a few warehouses on fire, but I didn't like that, either.

So, we soldiered on and bore it. After we had donated to the local temple, we noticed an advisory on one of the nearby walls about a missing person.

"Anyone missing in this cold air would have frozen to death before a single night had passed."  I voiced my dissent to Sam, who I knew was eager to jump at this chance to quest.

"It doesn't matter!" Sam replied, "Remember the Inner Sanctum? We had to search every corner of Varn and we need to do the same on Cron!"

"What -are- we looking for this time?"

"We'll know it when we find it." Sam countered, much to our dejected looks. The tavern wench was calling out from the warm hearth of her shop, inviting us to come in out of the cold and have a plate of red hot wolf nipple chips. But even at this, Sam moved on past and out further into the cold. And to a single one--we followed him in spite of our chill.

"Beware the Snowbeast or you will end up like me!" a local cripple warned as he shuffled past us and slunk into his flop for the night.

Motivated now more than ever, I felt weary from the draining cold and let Sam take point as we followed him to the access shaft he was looking for. Unsavory elements always collected in the sewers and undercrofts--and without a doubt he expected to find the Snowbeast underneath Tundara.

It was a little warmer down here and we were thankful for a chance to warm up.

A discarded scrap of tabloid news on the corner of the floor here advertised the services of a Gemmaker somewhere near the town of Vulcania. Learning to Enchant Items would be a valuable skill, but the fee reported was a little vague.

 Many of the rooms here were simple storage spaces. In one room we found crates of torches. In another, nothing but plain shields or helmets. There was nothing particularly noteworthy about them and it seemed they had been disused for some time- perhaps the remnants of from previous town militia. There was no sign of the missing person or any "Snowbeast". We found a lead on another artifact with a perplexing name...in Woodhaven, there can apparently be found the "M-27 Radicon".

 In a shed marked "Controls" we found a mysterious red lever. We shot each other a knowing look--and with a kick, I gave it my best shot and turned it on. There was no immediate effect, other than a large clank coming from a nearby storage room.

We turned toward the storage room we heard the sound from and let ourselves in. We had scarce taken a couple steps in when we realized our eerie surroundings. This wasn't an ordinary storage shed--it was the town's mausoleum. A natural morgue from the perfusing cold where an innumerable amount of cadavers were stacked in enormous shelves that lined the room from corner to corner.

And what was worse......they were starting to move. The red lever, whatever it controlled, had 'woken them up'.

These kinds of killer cadavers are a dangerous undead foe. Their embalming chemicals and fluids have aged poorly and gone unstable--at any moment, they were known to explode in a wide-area burst of gore. We had occasionally toughed one or two in our ongoing journey...but now, there were 200 at least advancing on us.

Ruce raised his Holy Symbol and made a prayer to Turn Undead. Six of them crumpled to dust instantly. And then the other 194 shuffled closer as we looked at our cleric expectantly.

"That's all I got." Ruce muttered.

Sofia caught the door behind us before it finished closing and we all did the reasonable thing and ran like hell!

In a gutter near the inn where we paused to catch our breath, we found another shred of a local tabloid. "Strange disappearances and mutilations of innocent residents continue..."

There wasn't anything of note besides the mausoleum in the underground. No Snowbeast, either. There was something fishy going on in this town.

Lucreto shivered and told us what he knew about the local surroundings. As a sorceror, he knew a little more about the rumors surrounding Tundara.

"Local wizards do experiments in ice magic. The town is rich with it because it's so close to the plane of Air..the locals allow it because they're supposed to freeze and destroy any monsters that get in."

And yet--now innocent people were disappearing and no mages had been seen lately. It was giving the town a decidedly dark reputation.

We helped ourselves to the outer walls of the city, where the mage conclave had originally set up their work. We expected to be stopped, but other than the usual contingent of town guard we didn't find any mages or researchers at work.

This wasn't looking good. Had they abandoned their studies?

In the south outer wall, there was a row of cells. A -long- row of cells. Marked 'Frozen Monster", in faded markings. The snowdrift that had piled up near the doors looked like nobody had opened or operated these prisons in days at least.

And inside, beasts and specters that jumped at a chance for escape engaged us in combat immediately. The mages were going back on their deal. They were freezing monsters that wandered in the city, but hadn't been destroying them--they instead kept them here for some kind of illicit scheme or experiment. But whatever they had been planning had never come to fruition before they disappeared. Or had it?

There was a much longer hallway formed in the space between the inner wall and outer wall of the city. From an access point here near the prison cells, we searched this long duct looking for any clues. The hall was charmed with an anti-magic field. None of our magic users' spells worked in this cramped place--and in addition, the field was draining our magic light very swiftly. Even with our multiple light spells casted beforehand, we realized as we got closer to the end of the hall that we would run out before we returned all the way out.

But our search was not in vain. At the end of the long space that circumscribed the whole city, we found a single button. And--like the lever we found downstairs, gave it a quick shot.

We found out what it had opened on our way back out. As we neared the entrance where we had first crawled into this space, a barrier had been removed by the button's press--and on the other side, a group of pale and vicious monsters fell upon us ravenously. The Snowbeast that the local cripple had warned us about was every bit as dangerous as we could be led to believe. And in fact--even moreso because our magic did not work in this space.

Fortunately for us, our potions of might and skill were still potent enough to carry us through a terrible fight. At the front of our group, the beasts overwhelmed Sam first--and then, to my shame--myself. Such was their vicious and unrelenting assault. But by then, we had thinned out enough of them that Deanna and Sofia were able to finish the last two off. It was too dangerous to rest in there, so our group dragged our beaten and unconscious bodies back to the entrance to rest for a moment before we plunged deeper into that dark hole.

With our magical light long since drained, we could barely see anything in the recesses of that dank place. But following the sound of muffled pleas for help, we stepped over several bodies and rescued two local victims from the Snowbeast's 'pantry'.

The mages had succeeded in their experiments after all, it seemed. And created a beast that was utterly immune to even the coldest of ice magic. Unable to freeze it and keep it with their other specimens in the cells--they attempted to create a jail for it here, in the outer walls. Only--the barrier was not strong enough to keep it from getting out and finishing them off...one at a time, before running out of mages to feast on and turning on the other townspeople instead.

On our way out--we noticed a hand of one of the local corpses was adorned with some fine jewelry--but the only piece that stood out was a large emerald ring. Poor Hanna. Sam took the ring from her finger, intending to turn it in to the temple as evidence of the missing woman's fate.

The commotion our battle had caused had stirred up the local guard, who were waiting for us when we emerged from the Snowbeast's hole.

With no chance to explain ourselves--we were accused of having kidnapped and robbed the old woman, citing the very same emerald ring as proof! Even Sam's people-skills were no use to us here. Bruised and bloody from our bitter battle with the beasts, we were rounded up by the innumerable and inexhaustable local militia and thrown into a jail cell...and then promptly forgotten about.



Trapped behind the prison barrier, there we languished and had a long time to think about the situation of the world. As the days and nights passed--our eyes were drawn over and over again to to the sun at sunset and sunrise--at how ever-present and opressive the light and heat seemed to get every passing day. The nights shorter and faster.

While Deanna and Lucreto and Ruce languished bitterly for having led us into this mess, Sofia and myself were engaged in long discussions with Sam at every evening. As strangers to this world, Sam and I didn't know as much about the history of Cron, but Sofia was able to fill us in on much.

A hundred years ago, the great King Kahlon had led the humanoid races of the world to victory in their battle against the Elementals. He had done so with an artifact that he himself had crafted and empowered to give himself power over the elements...his mystic orb. And with each Elemental lord he defeated, he took from them a talon, eventually setting the orb into a four-taloned claw which gave him unrivaled elemental mastery.

And yet--when the Water Lord summoned the terrible Mega Dragon into this world and Kahlon confronted the beast in the Savanna, the Mega Dragon defeated him instantly with it's terrible power--and the Savanna was permanently turned into the Quagmire of Doom, where Kahlon's artifact was still rumored to lay. But no treasure hunter or expedition had ever returned it.

It made no sense. For Kahlon's magic power to suddenly fail him there, in that battle against the Mega Dragon, was impossible to fathom. The power of the orb and taloned claw was absolute. Against even their primevil creation, surely Kahlon would have prevailed easily...

Unless---he no longer had the orb and claw with him on that fateful day.

It would explain why he lost. Why those artifacts were never recovered from the Quagmire.

The local hearsay is that Corak--the great sage and magician and priest, was researching feverously in his workshop before a mysterious clap of thunder struck the workshop in the middle of his exploits and he was killed instantly while handling and examining a curious four-taloned claw.

A relic from the past? Was the extent of Corak's power such that he could retrieve such a thing from the very recesses of time? But then--if he had stolen the Claw away from time, who was he trying to keep it from?

Sofia did not know--but Sam and I did. We didn't know how, exactly--but we knew that Sheltem's hand was involved in this somehow. In Corak's effort to retrieve the artifacts and return them to their rightful owner--Sheltem must have noticed and intervened. And whatever progress Corak was making had now been lost. "This Cron is out of alignment!" the great sage was said to have cried --  "And I don't know how to stop it!"

The gears of justice moved slowly in Tundara. But in time, realizing the extent of their error--we were free to go. With nothing but an apology, but free to go nonetheless. We took some time to train in the local facilities and visit the local mage's guild. Armed with new knowledge and spells, we began looking for the next city on our list to visit. And now we had some more concrete goals in mind.



[ ] Donate at each temple to uncover the secrets of Feldecarb Fountain.
[ ] Find out what Corak was attempting to finish and why.
[ ] Find out what Sheltem is planning and stop him.

Clerical spells: Level 3

3-1: Cold Ray - A prayer of temperance chills the enemy with freezing cold, inflicting 25 points of damage on up to 5 monsters at long range. Costs 3 SP + 2 Gems

3-2: Create Food - A prayer of piteous appeal for charity produces 8 pieces of manna from the heavens, ready to be divvied up however you want among your party members. 3 SP + 2 Gems

3-3: Cure Poison - Exactly what it says on the tin. 3 SP.

3-4: Immobilize - Attempts to paralyze up to 5 monsters. Status magic seems to be slightly more generously effective in MM2, but I'm so used to ignoring such spells that I haven't been remembering to try it more. 3 SP.

3-5: Lasting Light - Bestows 20 light factors on the party. 3 SP. Must be purchased.

3-6: Walk on Water - Produces a mobile sand dune for travelling on water. 3 SP + 3 Gems. Must be found.

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Sorceror spells: Level 3

3-1: Acid Stream- A shot of corrosive acid flays an enemy alive, inflicting 2-8 points per level of caster on a single enemy. Costs 1 SP per level + 2 Gems. Slightly more powerful than Energy Blast, but there are more critters slightly resistant to acid, too.

3-2: Fly - Moves the party to any overworld sector from A1 to E4. Useful for getting around to various caves and dungeons. Costs 3 SP. Must be purchased.

3-3: Invisibility - Cloaks the party with magical invisibility, decreasing the chances of being struck for the duration of combat. Costs 3 SP.

3-4: Lightning Bolt - Blasts enemies with conjured thunder, doing 1-6 damage per level to up to 4 monsters. 1 SP per level + 3 Gems. In MM1 it only damaged up to 3 monsters. In this game, the addition of a 4th makes this spell mighty useful for most of the game. Must be purchased.

3-5: Web - Wraps a group of monsters in tough silk, immobilizing them until they can break free. Affects 4 monsters + 1 additional monster per level of caster. 3 SP + 3 Gems.

3-6: Wizard Eye - Like Eagle Eye, but instead of outdoors, this one works indoors and underground. Must be purchased.  3 SP + 2 Gems