Ultima VII, Day 9

Last night's quest revolved around heading to the Cube generator on the fellowship retreat island. In theory, you're supposed to join the Fellowship in order to be able to get there, but I don't feel the need to do so. I took my flying carpet from Yew to Jhelom to begin with, where I landed and saved a weakling innkeeper, who stole a flag from the local fight club through a series of bizarre circumstances, from a duel in which he was sure to die. My choices were to convince a warrior-cum tailor to trick the angry fighters with a fake flag, or simply to kill them all. I chose to kill them all, then realized that I think one of those people shows up in Ultima Underworld II in Lord british's castle, and felt bad. But then the game froze.

So I had to repeat all of the above, only this time I decided to do the fake-flag option. The guy wanted me to come back in a few hours, so I went to a local dungeon, wandered around awhile, and then came back. The dungeon was somewhat devoid of interesting treasure, but I did have a difficult situation with some shockingly dangerous bats. Dupre was heavily injured at one point and dropped unconcious to the ground, while I continued onward. When I came back, the bats would kill him. I reloaded the game several times, and finally managed to get Dupre to survive by putting an invisibility ring on him (from another area of the dungeon). The dungeon also had a dancing skeleton. Or maybe that is the one near the shrine of honor? Anyway, I got the flag, ended the duel, and headed out.

On the way there I saw a big nasty nest full of garbage, a dead kid, and one of my favorite disgusting corpses in Ultima VII--and this is in a game that's got plenty of disgusting corpses. Yes, it's the crushed skull man, where it's just one big bloody grey lump where the head used to be. There's also a body where the leg comes off, and Iolo gets completely severed in half when he dies! Ew. Anyway, this nest was outside of a harpy cave that was devoid of harpies, as well as of interesting treasure besides a lightning whip, I think. At the shrine of Honor, where the harpies were at, I found an abandoned baby. Spark told me I needed to get it back to Lady Tory, whom I have never met--fortunately I was on my way to Serpent's Hold anyway!

At Serpent's Hold, I stopped in and talked to the characters who are quite similar to those of Star Trek: The Next Generation, with the exception of two of them, maybe three depending on how you feel about Minion representing the weasly Wesley crusher. I solved a smashed statue mystery there, and also found the key to a cool treasure chamber that contains a wide array of awesome magic weapons, including the infamous Juggernaut Hammer, which is probably my faovirte of them all--a big glowing hammer that does a bunch of damage.

From, Serpent's Hold, I flew my carpet to the fellowship retreat island, landed, and talked briefly to Gorn, who the Guardian, masquerading as his god, was telling not to trust me. I then encountered a fighter-woman who told me to leave, and who was thus slaughtered. Which reminds me--I also had to kill the leader of the Library of Scars in Jhelom (the fighter group I mentioned earlier) when I confonted him about the serpentine dagger found at the Minoc murder scene. The cube itself however, emitted a piercing noise that knocked me to the ground when I got nearby, and which caused me to die when I got right to the entrance.

The next step is to head to a few islands after I buy a ship. I refuse to use the ship British gives me, because that seems cheap. I'll probably buy one from Trinsic or Serpent's Hold, though they are awfully expensive. Then I'll go to the Lyceaum, find out where to get a caddelite helmet to defeat the cube, and then do the Forge of Virtue.