A Really Bad Day in Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead

Yeah, these screenshots don't do the game justice. Sorry, but I didn't take any screenshots while I was playing, because I didn't know I was going to post this.

I haven't been blogging about games or books lately, although I've still been reading and gaming just as much as ever (if not more so). But I'm sick to death of politics, after what bigots and idiots (and bigoted idiots) did to our country last week, and I thought I'd post my first day of a new play of Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead.

I've blogged about this game many times before. It's one of my all-time favorite games - which is really something, given that it's free, developed entirely by volunteers. Note that I'm playing 0.C Cooper, which is still the latest stable  (i.e. non-experimental) version of the game. But it has tons of content.

Cataclysm is a turn-based zombie-survival game. I set the options to my own preferences (no joke monsters, no skill rust, no NPC's - which tend to be annoying as hell - and extra character points), then usually pick the hardest starting scenario in the game.

Ironically, if I survive, that makes my character even more powerful. But I don't play long enough for that to matter much. I like the early game the best, when I'm struggling to survive. When survival seems assured, I stop playing or start a new character. But hey, those are just my own preferences. They don't have to be yours.

When the day began, I was drunk to the point of incapacitation, depressed, dying of an infection, and sick with the flu. I was naked, wearing only a wet towel, inside a city infested with the undead. And the house was on fire.

There was actually a zombie in the room with me, only a couple of steps away. [That's a first for me. I've never started this scenario with a zombie in the same room!] The door was only a couple of steps to my north, but my afflictions and the pain I was suffering had slowed my movements drastically. I would have died in the next few minutes, but for a chair which slowed the zombie just enough that I could get through that door and close it behind me.

[The hardest part of this "Really Bad Day" start is how slow you are. Until you heal up, you can't outrun anything (and you certainly can't out-fight anything, even if you weren't naked and completely unarmed). Luckily, zombies are mindless. They'll walk into lava if it's on a direct path to you. In this case, the lucky placement of that chair made the difference - and only just barely, even then - between death and at least a few more minutes of life.]

Zombies can break down doors, but it takes awhile. With the house on fire, the roof would collapse before that would happen. And speaking of which, I needed to get out of that house ASAP. The fire had started in the wall to my left, that same wall I'd just come through. Unfortunately, that was the same direction I needed to go.

I found myself in a large room - a combination living room, dining room, and kitchen - and there was no possible exit to the east. There were bedrooms to the north, but I could hear zombies behind the doors in that direction. So that left only west, through the smoke, as a possible escape route.

Luckily, the main door to the house was in that direction. However, I could see a second fire burning in the northwest corner of the living room. I had to get out fast, before the roof caved in. There was just no time for anything else.

So I plunged into the smoke, taking further damage (thus, slowing me down even more) and increasing my coughing. Admittedly, at this point, there was enough noise from the burning house that a little coughing wouldn't make much difference. But it would make it just that much harder to hide, assuming that I managed to escape at all.

When I opened the door and stepped outside, I ended up on a little patio at the northwest corner of the house, which was itself at the northwest corner of town. Walls on the south and east sheltered me from sight, and there wasn't anything but an empty field in view.

Of course, it was snowing, and I was naked, but you can't have everything, right?

Map: I started in a house in the northwest of that north town, then entered the two houses just north of that. Once I broke contact, I looped around counter-clockwise, west of that tiny subway station town, then southeast to the town with an office tower (T), ending up in a house at the northeast side of that south town, south of the mansion (M), west of the prison in the forest.

I walked west along that wall until I could see around the corner to my left. There was a pack of wolves to my southwest - and zombies closer yet (apparently drawn to the noise of the burning house). One of the zombies was huge, and another was... well, I don't know what it was. It was humanoid, but snow-white in color and with no eyes or nose, just a perfectly round mouth in a blank face.

[Note that, as many times as I've played Cataclysm, that's a monster I've only ever seen once before - and I avoided it then, too. So all I knew is that it was very, very scary-looking.]

Clearly, I couldn't go west. Maybe the wolves and the zombies and that... weird-looking horror would all fight among themselves, but I couldn't risk it, not as slow as I was moving! So I backed up, then moved north along the wall there, staying as close as the smoke would let me get.

There were zombies nearby to the east, and since I wasn't able to hug the wall and peer around it, they quickly spotted me. A grabber zombie, with long arms, was the closest, but there was a van in the street just a few steps to my north, and it wasn't smart enough to go around the van to get at me.

But when I went along the van to the north, with the grabber zombie mindlessly ripping apart the vehicle in a frenzied rage to get at me, I discovered another zombie, which shrieked loudly when it saw me, coming from the northeast. I don't know if that one had a few brain cells left, or not, but it came around the van to attack me. So I just entered the side door of the van and escaped out the back, still heading north.

The shrieker zombie saw me, but I went through a car the same way I'd gone through the van [and out the trunk, somehow], which put me just a few steps from the southwest corner of another house.

The door was to the east, but it was almost certainly locked. And there were more zombies in that direction, anyway. So I stumbled my way to the nearest window and smashed it with my bare hands. Then I leaped through the broken glass, cutting myself on the sharp edges, just ahead of that shrieker zombie, which had been delayed - but not very long - by my previous tactics.

That window wouldn't delay it very long, either - not even long enough for me to pick up a piece of the broken window to use as a weapon. But there was a bedroom door to my north, and I was able to make it there and shut the door behind me.

Luckily, there weren't any zombies inside, but there wasn't anything useful, either. Another door to the east led to a hallway, and I checked the rooms which led off from that: another bedroom, a kitchen, and a pantry. But I couldn't find any clothes or medicine. (I was hoping for a well-stocked bathroom medicine chest, but the bathroom wasn't in this part of the house.)

Before leaving, I quickly drank a coke and ate a cheeseburger I found in the kitchen. That was the only way I could carry anything, except in my hands (which I needed for smashing windows). But there was another house very, very close to the east of this one - close enough that I could probably cross the gap without anything seeing me. Things were looking up!

Of course, I was still naked (and drunk, depressed, infected, and sick), and it was still snowing. But it's funny how adrenaline and the prospect of being eaten alive can take your mind off the inconsequentials. :)

This time, I smashed a window on the north side of the house. (I was on the edge of town, so nothing but empty fields were in view in that direction.) I entered into a bedroom, and although I could hear zombies in the south part of the house, the bedroom door was closed.

There was another bedroom to the east, and I finally found some clothes there: winter boots and gloves, a hoodie, and a raincoat that actually fit. (That last was very welcome. It was early spring, and I knew that the snow would turn to rain as the day went on. Nothing like being wet to put the capper on a really bad day...)

OK, I was still naked below the waist. And if you want to talk shrinkage, try being freezing cold, sick, and seriously injured, while being chased by zombies. Luckily, there wasn't anyone to see my embarrassment. (I don't think the zombies cared, one way or the other.)

After that, I snuck back out the window and headed north, only to discover a giant, pink crab-like monster fighting a zombie dressed in tattered military gear. I didn't wait to see how that turned out (though the zombie was clearly out-classed), so I turned around and ran - or hobbled, really - west. There was a science lab and a hazardous waste sarcophagus to the north, but neither would have done me any good, even if I could have gotten to them.

So I went west, into the open field, then south when I was far enough outside of town. After awhile, I came back east to loot a house on the outskirts - and finally found a pair of pants! - but there wasn't much else inside, not even enough to fill up the pockets of my hoodie.

There were a bunch of non-animate dead bodies outside the house - they looked like scientists - and some weird blob-like creatures. There were lots of zombies further east and southeast, so I turned around and headed west again. I had to skirt a large hotel and a megastore that were absolutely packed with zombies, and then squeeze between a couple of slime pits filled with more of those weird blob-creatures.

But eventually, I found a gas station, where I could grab some snacks. I ate what I could, since I couldn't carry very much, but it was very close to the forest, and I had to sneak out the back to avoid a bear which had become enraged.

As it turned out, there were lots and lots of bears around - and moose, too. There was only one direction I could go - southeast - and even that was quite difficult. In the distance, directly to my east, there was a subway stop, surrounded by a few buildings, but I couldn't even get close to it. Face it, I couldn't have outrun a bear or a moose even if I'd been healthy. As it was, I was just very, very glad to avoid their attention.

The next day, I moved into this mansion.

Eventually, I came upon another town that was directly south of the first one. I got inside a house on the northwest side of town and found a few more clothes (it was still very cold outside), but then a bunch of zombies spotted me through the window.

I couldn't outrun them, but I had a head start, so I jumped out a south window, then ran around to the back and entered the house again from the west (where I'd initially smashed a window to get inside). I closed an interior door behind me and slipped out a north window, leaving the zombies happily smashing their way through the house.

Luckily, zombies are mindless. If you use your brain - and you're not surprised in the middle of nowhere, without many options - you can usually confuse them and lose them. Of course, in town, there are a lot of zombies, so you might just run from one bunch of mindless predators to another.

Again, I had only one direction I could go - this time, north. So I skirted the north side of town (too many zombies to loot any of the buildings there) and ended up in a house on the northeast corner, with a mansion off to my north and a prison to the east.

This time, nothing spotted me, and I was able to close the drapes on every window. Better yet, I found a well-equipped first aid kit in the bathroom, so I was able to treat my infected wound. [The infection is fatal if left untreated for too long.]  It was mid-afternoon, so I'd sobered up by then, too.

But I was still sick with the flu (although I'd found some cough medicine, at least), and I had nothing to kill the pain, not even aspirin. I hadn't found a knife or a backpack or a flashlight. I'd picked up a rock, which I wielded as my only weapon. Not that I was in any shape for a fight, anyway.

Still, I'd found a few snacks and a bottle of lemonade. And nothing was trying to eat me right this minute. There were even a few magazines inside - Cosmopolitan and Sports Afield, to be precise. But it was pouring rain and too dark to read, and when I tried out the bed, I couldn't sleep either.

So I explored a couple of nearby homes and found a backpack! Finally, I could carry stuff. I didn't find much else, but I made a crude knife out of a stick, a sharp stone, and a piece of string (not for fighting, but for crafting).

Finally, I went back and tried to sleep again, but I was too sick. I kept throwing up, which just made me hungry and thirsty again. When it got dark, I cleared out a nearby grocery store, finding a shopping cart with wobbly wheels to carry everything. Still no medicine, unfortunately.

I tried exploring a couple more houses, too, and I almost died stumbling into a dark basement filled with zombies (still no flashlight, either). Luckily, the zombies weren't smart enough to do anything but stumble around in the dark themselves, and they made enough noise to mask my own movements. So I escaped with deep scratches and torn clothes.

I headed back to the house I'd found (still zombie-free) and tried to sleep again. After a few tries, and numerous fits of vomiting, I finally got to sleep, and when I woke in the morning, I was no longer sick. I'd survived one really bad day in the zombie apocalypse.

___
Note: I'm not sure if I'll continue with this or not, but the rest of my game-related posts can be found here.

"The Sea of Time" by P. C. Hodgell

(cover image from Amazon.com)

The Sea of Time (2014) by P. C. Hodgell is the seventh in her Godstalker series (or Chronicles of the Kencyrath, as it's also known), which began 32 years ago with God Stalk (1982).

That was long before I started blogging, but I described the whole series - and my long wait for sequels - in my review of Bound in Blood (2010), here.

As I noted then, and in my review of the following book, the series has always seemed wildly imaginative, and I've certainly been entertained by it. But the story didn't advance much in the last two books. In a series with imagination in spades, staying in the same setting (the randon college at Tentir) for three books has been a bit frustrating.

But that's over now. This book begins with Jame's arrival in Kothifir, the southern city that hires her people as mercenaries, and ends with her being summoned back to Gothregor. In the meantime, we get to see another weird city and learn more about the past.

After 32 years, the whole thing is starting to make sense. I think. :)

The Kencyrath people hate their Three-Faced God and despise their priests. But there's real power there. The temples - which were built before their people had even arrived on this world, 3,000 years ago - tend to be unstable. And in this case, the instability creates... temporary gods from the Kothifir townspeople.

It's funny, but we've been hearing about Kothifir for a long time, but it's only now that we hear the details about what happened there. Mostly, that's because Jame dreams about what happened to her twin, Tori, years ago. (Her twin is ten years older than she is. Yeah, don't ask.)

I have to say that I'm impressed that it all hangs together so well - especially given the long times between books. Has Hodgell had the whole thing planned out?

It does jump around a bit. Mostly, things are seen from Jame's perspective, but sometimes from Tori's. And both of them dream about the past - about the past of the other twin, too - and there's often no clear divide between past and present. It can be a bit confusing.

It's also a little hard keeping track of characters, especially since they don't all appear in every book. There's a list of characters - four pages long! - at the back of the book, but the descriptions are so brief they're pretty much useless. (And those are only the characters in this book.)

I didn't find that any of that a real problem, though. In most cases, it doesn't matter much if you can't remember the details from previous books - or even earlier in this one. It's still lots of fun.

I didn't intend to read this book - not when I did read it, I mean. I bought the book, and I certainly planned to read it, eventually. But I made the mistake of picking it up and reading the first few pages of the prologue. That was it. I just couldn't put it down.

I love the whole series, though I was getting impatient for progress in the last two books. In this one,... well, I can't say there's much progress. But it's a new setting, and apparently just for this book. That's good enough for me.

___
Note: My other book reviews are here.

Geshud Cabnul, the Fortress of Fools

Our arrival in the Hills of Singing [Spacefox graphics pack]

Note: I'm playing Dwarf Fortress 2014, the recent release (version 0.40.10, right now), in fortress mode. Please look elsewhere for information about this game. This is just the story - rather uneventful, so far - of the first year of The Fortress of Fools.

We call ourselves Nabotad Udril - "Two-Hands of Oxen" - but they call us fools for our appreciation of 'undwarven' architecture. Not for us burrowing underground like frightened moles. We think we dwarves should stake our claim to the surface world, too. So we pledged to do so.

Of course, there might also be some petty sexism involved, since we were six females - 'Doc,' 'Bibs,' 'Archie,' 'Cogs,' 'Cookie,' and 'Poindexter' - while our leader, Urdim 'Boss' Steelpracticed was male. [I'm using nicknames in an attempt to remember who does what.] Let them sneer. We'll show them!

We're not much different in appearance from anyone else in the Helpful Fair Chamber. We're a small, thin people - scrawny even, for dwarves - with auburn hair. Of the females in our group, only 'Cookie' has plumped up to any real extent - from sampling her own cooking, no doubt.

Our boss carries some extra weight, too, which gives him rather a distinguished look - sleek and self-satisfied. He's a miner by trade, but that shouldn't surprise you. We did plan to mine, of course. That's what dwarves do. We just intend to live on the surface, as much as possible.

So we headed to the Hills of Singing to stake our claim. It was still very early spring - the 15th of Granite, 250 - when we arrived, but it was already rather warm in this latitude. The area was tropical woodland, not quite a jungle (a bit too dry for that), and we chose a low bluff overlooking a pool at the intersection of two small rivers.

[The river to the east is at a higher elevation, so there's a short waterfall where it pours into the pool below. Note that, thanks to the weird fluid dynamics of Dwarf Fortress, this means there's an increased risk of flooding my fortress, if I'm not careful, since water taken from the river will naturally rise to the level of the upper river.]

There were hippos in the river, and alligators, and carp, so we planned to stay above the river and avoid the shore. [Carp are notorious dwarf-killers in Dwarf Fortress - or they always used to be, at least. Let a dwarf get near the river, and carp would rip him to pieces.] As time went on, we spotted rhinoceros, giraffes, and lions, as well.

The palisade was completed by summer.

So we immediately went to work building a wooden stockade around our small settlement. Wood is not the most secure building material, but it was readily available, and - absent dragons - it would probably do.

Our priority was to wall off the cliff, to keep our people from slipping off the edge and becoming carp food, and somewhat to our surprise, we accomplished that with no fatalities. We put bridges over the river, to the northeast and the south, and another bridge over a moat at the north end of our camp. Then we worked to extend the palisade to the west, as well.

We'd almost completed that, leaving only a couple of openings where we could cut timber, when a bull rhinoceros wandered into camp. Our war dog (we'd stationed one war dog at each of four openings in the stockade) took one look at the huge, bad-tempered beast and ran off in terror.

To our great good fortune, we had no one working nearby. So the rhino calmed down after awhile, browsed a bit, then went back to join the rest of his crash. [Yes, a group of rhinos is apparently called a 'crash'.]

We'd dodged a bolt, but we probably wouldn't be that lucky a second time. So we quickly walled up both openings to the west, abandoning the lumber we'd already cut there. (The dog made it back safely, too.)

By late spring, we were needing stone, so 'Boss' dug down from the center of camp. The surface layer was quite sandy, but there was claystone below that - with considerable iron and coal deposits - and marble deeper down. We'd chosen our location well, apparently.

Nine or ten levels below ground, we broke through into an extensive cavern system. But we weren't nearly ready for that, so we walled up the opening and started mining the claystone and marble. (We thought a marble road would look sharp, and it would do well for the more opulent parts of our castle, too, while the claystone would suffice for our walls and fortifications.)

Initial stonework [shown via the Stonesense utility]

In mid-summer, seven immigrants arrived, doubling out population. (None had any useful skills, but what do you expect in a brand-new settlement like ours?) Specifically, they were two couples, each with one young daughter, plus one older woman on her own. We were now up to 11 females and 3 males.

We welcomed both families, though the children were a bit of a burden. But the lone woman was rather worrisome, since she was a stranger to everyone. (We do have to fear vampires, after all.) However, she seems to have fit right in.

In early autumn, a caravan arrived from home - well, from the Helpful Fair Chamber, I mean. (This is our home, now.) It didn't bring much that we needed, but then, we didn't have much to trade, anyway - just some gourmet meals, packed to store well, which 'Cookie' had created. (Admittedly, she is a fine cook, so those meals sold well.)

In return, we picked up another anvil, a couple of water buffalo cows (just because they were available), some leather and some raw foodstuff. Mostly, we wanted to encourage further trade, so we didn't bargain very hard. I think they left happy (and impressed with our trading setup).

Our paved roads dip underground at the trade depot.

(Thanks to our hard work, we had a paved road - marble - coming into our camp from the north and from the south. From both directions, the road dipped underground when it got close, with the trade depot itself built into the first rock layer below the surface. It was a nice layout, we thought.)

After the caravan left, more immigrants arrived - eight, all adults, evenly split as to gender. There were lions in the area when they arrived, which could have been disastrous, but they scooted past safely, if just barely.

Again, most of those people were unskilled, but Ezum 'Digger' Sternchannels was a competent miner and Avuz 'Greenjeans' Splashwhips was a pretty decent farmer - both quite useful to us.

Risen Hairypaged said he had experience with wax-working, of all things, but upon further conversation, it turned out that 'Sarge' was also a highly experienced swordsdwarf. We're certainly going to need a military, eventually, though we put him to work hauling stone until then.

Winter was little different from the rest of the year. We're going to miss the seasons, I think, but the good weather meant that we could keep working nearly every day. We've still barely begun, but we're proud of how our 'Fortress of Fools' is coming along.

Starting to build upwards. (Note the wooden henhouse - blue peafowl, not chickens - at the top, farm plots to the left, and pastures to the right. The main building does extend below ground, mostly through necessity, at first.)

We still don't have any real defenses - just a few cage traps (which did catch us a giraffe, just before the year ended). But we can raise bridges to keep enemies out, if necessary - well, unless they can fly or climb well, at least.

Our war dogs have been useless - they ran in fear from the giraffe, too [Edit: I was wrong about this. After finding rhinoceros blood in our camp, I checked the combat logs. Our dogs did fight the rhinos and the giraffe, at least for awhile.] - but they'll do better against goblin or kobold thieves, I'm sure. [This is part of the new morale system in Dwarf Fortress. We can no longer expect dogs to sacrifice themselves for their dwarven masters, apparently.]

It's spring again now - we've been here a year, already - and so far, so good. But we have a lot to do yet. And pretty soon, we're going to need to take some dwarves off building, so they can start training as soldiers. Well, maybe we can get some more immigrants this year.


Yeah, uneventful, as I warned from the start (and as is usually the case in the first year of a new fortress). However, I did want to document our construction progress. The wooden stockade encloses the entire hill, or nearly so, with bridges which can be raised to prevent most enemies from entering at all.

Of course, we need to let trade caravans in. So there's a stone wall in between the paved road and the rest of the fortress, with more bridges which can be raised to block off the road and the trade depot, if necessary.

My original design for our castle wasn't large enough, so I've started extending that to the north. But the lower floor is for the cook, the butcher, the brewer, the miller, and others who need close access to farms and pastures.

The raw materials for these professions are stored one level down, underground. Prepared meals and barrels of booze will eventually be stored one floor up, just below the dining area.

First level underground, with farms (certain crops grow only underground) and temporary bedrooms. Near the river is a room with two wells (not very fancy yet). The trade depot is one level further down.

Eventually, we'll have bedrooms above that. We'll also have towers and other fortifications for our marksdwarves (crossbow-wielding soldiers).

Mines are underground, of course, and that's where most of our crafts will be produced, close to their raw materials and close to the trade depot. (Admittedly, most of our trading will probably continue to be of prepared meals.)

___
Note: You can find all of my posts about this and other games here. As you can see, I rarely ever finish a game. But I plan to tell the story of this fortress until... I don't. :) Well, as long as I keep playing it, I'll probably keep posting about it. (No guarantees, but with any luck, this will get more exciting later.)

The rest of the story

Dwarf Fortress, Ironhand graphics pack.
Here, the snow has melted, though the river remains frozen.

Note: This is the sequel, and conclusion, to Just a flesh wound, my first play of the new Dwarf Fortress 2014, version 0.40.08, in adventure mode. Make sure you read the beginning of the story first. (And please see my other posts about DF for information on how to install and play the game.)

In a tavern in Ecrueagle, we met an unusual figure - a marksdwarf (dwarf crossbowman) necromancer. Kib Mastersabres looked as old as the hills, with white hair, sunken eyes, and wrinkled skin.

In fact, I actually accused him of being a night-creature! But he just laughed. Well, if you'd seen him, you'd have understood the mistake (particularly since he was wearing jewelry made from elf bones).

Quickly, I made a decision. I fired Nique, my swordsman follower who'd been so completely useless, and asked Kib to take his place. I wasn't sure if he'd accept - or if I could completely trust a necromancer follower - but he agreed, if I would promise to lead him to glory and death.

This was probably the worst decision of my life.

Anyway, my plan was to head south "about a day's travel" to Jreekus, a camp in the Drab Winter, and clear out a bunch of thieves. "Skulking villains" didn't sound too tough for our small group, right?

But halfway there, we were ambushed by a pack of wolves. Kib was closest to them and took the brunt of the assault, but as I moved up to help, Atal, our maceman,... ran away. In his panic, he ran right through the five wolves, but they ignored him completely. Cursing, I turned my anger on the wolves.

(It used to be that followers in adventure mode would charge right in towards an enemy. Now, they don't even make good meat-shields, because they just run away from every fight. This is part of a new morale character setting, apparently, but I'd say it needs work!)

Kib was nearly surrounded by wolves, and getting chewed up badly. But I figured I could lower the odds quickly enough. After I killed the first wolf, I was shocked to see the corpse stand back up and rip the throat out of a former pack-mate. Maybe having a necromancer on my side wasn't such a bad thing!

Or maybe it was. It turned out that the zombie wolves didn't much care who they attacked. They didn't appear to attack Kib, but they did snap at me if I got too close. Luckily, two of them were just re-animated heads - since I'd decapitated both wolves - so it wasn't hard to stay away from them.

(Actually, the other one was just a re-animated wolf neck - at least, according to Dwarf Fortress. It was actually the wolf neck which ripped the throat out of that other wolf. Nice trick, huh? But when I hit it with my axe, the record indicated that I'd killed a zombie wolf.)

When the pack was finally put down, I was a little worried about the remaining zombie wolves. Specifically, I was worried about what Kib would do if I attacked one of them. They weren't friendly, but they were his.

And my dwarf follower had become enraged, which also made me hesitate. But after he shot one of the zombies with his crossbow, I figured it was OK to step in and help, so I quickly... re-killed each zombie wolf or part thereof.

Kib was really a mess! One wolf had completely ripped off his lower lip, and he was chewed up pretty badly elsewhere on the face and hands, too. None of his wounds looked fatal, but he was even uglier now than when I'd first met him. The best you could say was that he... looked like a necromancer.

We had to track down Atal. I was really disgusted with him, but I still didn't want to leave him out in the wilderness all alone. Then we butchered the wolves and ate our fill of wolf meat. I took the skins, too. I figured they might be worth something (but I never found out).

A quick stop at The Luxurious Risk

We continued on, and Kib's wounds scabbed up pretty quickly. (In fact, they were just scars by the time we fast traveled a bit.) Then, we got to Jreekus, which turned out to be a kobold camp.

But there was already a battle going on. Several reindeer corpses were rampaging through the camp, killing the kobolds. We watched as a bull reindeer zombie smashed a kobold to bits, then quickly turned to charge towards us.

Atal, of course, immediately turned to run. Kib just stood there. Our necromancer didn't seem to be worried about the undead reindeer charging towards us - he never even fired a bolt at it, nor at the two undead reindeer cows which followed.

I tried to fight. That zombie reindeer was fast, so I hoped to slow it down, to cripple it, so we could get away. But it was quite agile, too. It kept jumping out of the way of my attack. And soon, the other two reindeer corpses joined him. I couldn't win this fight - certainly not all by myself!

So I started running. As the saying goes, you don't need to be faster than reindeer corpses, you just have to be faster than your companions. And I was.

Kib was still just standing there, doing nothing. As I ran on past him, so did the zombie reindeer. Maybe he didn't have anything to worry about.

To his credit, Atal had stopped running. He even seemed to be debating coming back to help. But it was far too late for that, now. "Run, you fool!" I yelled, as I swept past him. And he tried, but the dead reindeer were on him almost immediately. He didn't even get a chance to swing his mace before he was dead.

I thought I was dead, too, because I didn't have much of a headstart, and those reindeer corpses could really move! And there was just no cover at all - no trees, just windswept, snow-covered plains. I kept running, because that was all I could do. But I didn't expect it to be enough.

It worked, though. I don't know if those zombie reindeer turned back towards Kib, or if they were just distracted by poor Atal's dead body. But I soon realized they hadn't followed me.

I was on my own, now. I didn't know what had happened to Kib, but it would have been suicide to try to find out. Still, all this had happened to the north of the kobold camp, and I didn't expect there were many kobolds left. So I thought it might be safe enough to loop around to the south and approach it from that direction. If it looked too dangerous, I could just run away again.

Unfortunately, it didn't look very dangerous at all. There was only one kobold left alive, and he didn't look to be armed. He was east of the camp a ways. It looked like he'd run when the reindeer corpses had attacked his buddies.

Right now, there just seemed to be a lot of loot, completely unguarded. Oh, there was a corpse of a peregrine falcon - an animated corpse, which made me pause - but like those wolf heads I'd fought previously, it didn't seem to be able to move.

So I quickly picked through the bags and chests at the camp, collecting whatever was both light in weight and valuable. I checked the kobold bodies, too - they were wearing giant cave spider silk clothing!

But just as I turned to leave, Kib showed up - running towards me from the north like a bat out of hell. Only it wasn't Kib. It was Kib's corpse!

I suppose those reindeer zombies had killed him, after all. Something had, at least. And something had then raised him as a zombie. Unless, maybe, that's automatic when necromancers die? At this point, the question was academic. I just needed to get the hell out of there!

I ran to the south, but Kib's corpse was far faster than Kib had been. Like the reindeer corpses, he was faster than I was, even when I was sprinting as fast as I could (and I could move pretty fast, myself).

I did get a little ways south of the kobold camp before I turned to fight. I was just hoping that was far enough away that I wouldn't have reindeer zombies joining the battle, too!

It was a long battle. Kib no longer had the intelligence to use a weapon, but he seemed to be immensely strong, as well as supernaturally quick and agile. But I could still hit him with my axe. He dodged pretty well, but he couldn't dodge all of my attacks.

Unfortunately, it didn't seem to make any difference how many times I hit him. With a powerful blow to the stomach, I gutted him completely, but it didn't even slow him down. I chopped at his neck, over and over again - powerful blows, doing real damage - but I couldn't cut his head off. I couldn't even cut off his leg, though I tried, oh, I tried!

I could, and did, chop zombie Kib into hamburger, but it didn't even slow him down, let alone seem to bother him in any way. He was already dead, so he didn't feel pain, and bleeding wasn't an issue. He wasn't actually healing his injuries, but no amount of damage seemed to cause him any problem.

If I could have chopped his leg off - or his head - I could have run away, at least. But I couldn't. Heck, I even tried to start a fire, hoping to burn him up. But I couldn't do that, either - not in combat.

(This is a different kind of invulnerability from what I've encountered before. I've noted how, in Dwarf Fortress, I'll do just fine until I encounter an enemy I can't harm at all. But normally, that's because I just can't hit them. Like that goblin bowman who deflected every attack, if you can't hit them, you can't harm them.

(But I could hit Kib's corpse, and I could damage it. Badly! But it made absolutely no difference. I got damage reports that indicated I was inflicting horrendous wounds, but they didn't even slow him down.)

So I died.

As the battle went on, and on, and on, as I chopped at the zombie with increasing desperation, I'd been dodging every attack, or blocking it with my shield. Every single attack. That was the only way I could survive, and I was doing it.

Until I missed one. I failed to dodge fast enough. I missed the block. So Kib's corpse grabbed me and smashed my hip into splinters. Then he battered my head in.

RIP, Wom Mythwards.

___
Note: My other posts on a variety of computer games, not just Dwarf Fortress, are here.

Just a flesh wound...

The Ecrueagle market (Ironhand graphics set). Yeah, we finally made it there.

After two years of development, Tarn Adams has finally released a major new revision of Dwarf Fortress. (See my previous posts about this incredible - yet free - game here.)

Actually, it's been out for a few weeks, but there are always a lot of bugs with a new release, so I didn't want to jump right in. Even now, after seven or eight bug-fix updates, I figured I'd just start with adventure mode, which tends to be a much shorter game than fortress mode, the real meat of Dwarf Fortress.

(Note that the Lazy Newb Pack is no longer being updated, so I'm using Peridexis Errant's Starter Pack, which is basically the same thing (thus, my "Getting Started" post is still useful). I'm not using any of the utilities in the starter pack - I've never even tried most of them - and for this playthrough, I just picked Ironhand's graphics set at random, pretty much.

(I don't have many screenshots here, though, because the land is still covered with snow, thus it's not very colorful. Not that the graphics are much, anyway, by today's standards - but the game is developed in ASCII, so be thankful there's even this much! Still, I should have taken more screenshots. My apologies for this wall of text.)

My character is a human axeman named Wom Mythwards (the random name-generator came up with that), hearthperson of Nac Councilflax of the hamlet of Trancebolted. It's a cold land, and still very, very early spring.

My lady had a number of guards in The Accidental Lull, so I recruited two followers. Both Doñas Smithhill, who was also an axeman, and Nique Thriftystrings, a swordsman, were eager to be led to "glory and death."

I also searched through weapon and armor supplies at the fort and equipped myself almost entirely with iron armor. Unfortunately, I could find no chest armor of any kind, but both Doñas and Nique wore iron chainmail shirts and were almost exactly my size. (As you can see, I was thinking ahead.)

Then we were off in search of adventure. Now, I'd talked to my lady and her consort, so I had some idea of the troubles plaguing our land - bandits, criminals, and beasts, as well as an army marching on Hideunite. (Note that, from the conversation options I've seen so far, I still don't know if that army is friend or foe - or anything else about it, for that matter.)

However, I really felt that food was my first priority. I started with only five servings of chopped spiny dogfish liver - not my favorite food, and not nearly enough of it. :)  As an axeman with no sneaking or throwing skill, I figured that I wouldn't be too successful hunting for more, either.

So I thought we'd look around the nearby hamlets to find a shop or a market. Unfortunately, we didn't find a store of any kind, piddling away nearly the whole day before I thought to ask someone. It turned out that Ecrueagle, a "short walk" to the northwest, was the market town for the whole area.

Coincidentally - or not - that was also the town we'd heard was infested with criminals. So maybe we'd have a chance to do a little fighting, too.

By then, it was too late to get there before nightfall, when the bogeymen come out, so we stopped at a village along the way and asked permission to spend the night. The next morning, we got up early to fix breakfast, then headed on our way.

Perhaps I should mention breakfast? I built a campfire to warm up our chopped spiny dogfish liver, but I'm wondering if it might have tasted better frozen. (Either way, I was already down to just two servings left.) Our water was frozen, even in my waterskin - even after spending the night indoors! So I had to warm that up at the fire, too.

But as I say, we got an early start, and we made good time. At one point, we were slowed down at a cliff, where I had to go south to find a way down, then travel north at the bottom before finding a way up the other side.

It wasn't until we were up the other side that I realized we'd crossed a river. The ice, like everything else, had been covered in snow. (Even with a graphics pack, it wasn't very scenic.)

Then, as we were traveling through a small town, we suddenly dropped out of the fast travel map. I had a bad feeling about this! (This is how you get ambushed when using fast travel.)

There were five goblins nearby, including a bowman to the north and a crossbowman to the south. Since there was no cover at all in this windswept town, I moved towards the nearest house - and the goblins came closer.

According to the humans in the town, these goblins had been harassing people. ("A bandit gang led by Taviti Hilllaw has been harassing people on the street.") But they weren't overtly hostile to us, and we didn't see any signs of combat.

The goblins told me they were on a mission, but I couldn't figure out exactly what mission. (There are a ton of conversation options in this new version of Dwarf Fortress, but few of them tell me anything I really want to know.)

As we talked, though, they got closer and closer, getting right up in our faces. (The two ranged goblins stayed at a distance, which was also a concern.) I didn't like the situation at all, so I headed off to the east, then north around a house, leading my followers out of there.

Three of the goblins stayed right with us, though. So I tried to talk to them again. I demanded that one of them yield. He called me a coward and demanded that I yield, instead.

At this point, I discovered that my bronze great axe was still in my backpack. Heh, heh. Yeah, I'd put it away in the previous town, because the townspeople weren't eager to talk with a man who looked ready to chop their head off. And I'd simply forgotten to equip it again. (I'd also forgotten the 'q' command, which toggles drawing/sheathing your weapon. I didn't actually have to put it in my pack.)

So I took my axe in hand and things went to hell immediately. In fact, a lot of things happened before I was able to make another move, myself.

(Note: I don't know if that's because it takes a long time to remove a weapon from a backpack, or if I just hit the wrong key while trying to wade through pages of combat announcements. Either way, I wasn't entirely sure what had happened until I went back and read the announcements afterwards.)

I suppose it was my fault, because the goblin crossbowman yelled, "What is happening? Is this an attack?" when I drew my axe. Then he started yelling at my followers to yield. The goblins hadn't drawn their own weapons, but they started punching and kicking my men.

Nique, my swordsman, immediately yelled, "I yield! I yield!" Doñas was made of sterner stuff, though. "Has the tide turned?" he asked. "I laugh at the face of death."

That was the last thing he ever said, because the goblin crossbowman shot him, and when he fell to the ground, the goblin lasher smashed his head in. (Lashers wield whips, which are incredibly dangerous weapons in Dwarf Fortress.)

In explanation, the goblin crossbowman said, "Wom Mythwards demanded submission of me." And so I had. But the shit hadn't actually hit the fan until I drew my weapon. For that, I'm sorry, Doñas.

Nique was still standing frozen in place. He kept saying, "This is truly horrifying." And so it was. But I wasn't going to let the goblins get away with murder.

The goblin crossbowman was to my southwest, right next to me, but just around the corner of a building. The lasher and a sword-wielding goblin were to my north (both lying on the ground, as it turned out, because that was the only way they'd could fit in the same location). So I thought I'd try sprinting and jumping over them, so I could possibly take them from behind.

This is something new to this version of Dwarf Fortress, but it turns out that a man wearing iron armor, with a full pack on his back and carrying a great axe, can't actually jump that high. Go figure, huh? :)

As I made the attempt, the lasher rolled out of my way to the east. The goblin swordsman tried to roll away, too, but unsuccessfully. So I struck him, knocking him to the north and temporarily stunning him.

Quickly, I swung my axe at the lasher and took his head off. Then I did the same to the goblin swordsman lying stunned on the ground. Things were looking up! I was expecting a crossbow bolt in my back, but the goblin crossbowman and my remaining swordsman both seemed stunned by the violence.

So I took a quick step back to the south and knocked the goblin to the ground, then removed his head. The other two goblins - a pikeman and that bowman - were nowhere to be seen.

So I looted their corpses. :)  Ah, poor Doñas. I didn't lead him to glory, but I did lead him to death. He probably didn't expect it to be in his very first fight, though, or that he wouldn't even get a chance to bloody his axe.

Luckily, as I say, he was almost exactly my size, so I had my iron chainmail shirt now. It was rather bloody, of course, but then, everything was bloody at this point. Doñas had a gold coin on him, too, which I figured he wasn't going to need anymore. I thought about taking his iron great axe, but my bronze weapon seemed to be working just fine, so far.

Then I looted the goblins. They didn't have much, especially since I couldn't carry anything too heavy (and I wasn't willing to take their soiled underwear), but at least I had a little something to sell, if we ever found a merchant.

A food store in Ecrueagle. Note the clothing stores to the north and west. And that's a tavern - where all the noise is coming from - to the south.

With only two of us left, I figured it was time to get out of town, so I headed north. But Nique didn't follow me, so I went back for him. He was still standing in the same spot, still staring at the carnage, still muttering about how terrifying death was.

I checked him over and discovered that he had a bruised foot. A bruised foot! That was all. And he hadn't even swung his weapon! Hey, buck up, Nique. Walk it off! I didn't have the conversation option to chew him out as I wanted, or even to demand that he get moving, but when I headed off again, this time he followed me.

And this time I went south, back where we first entered the town. Maybe I was feeling cocky, but I thought the two of us could take out those two remaining goblins - assuming that's all there were, of course. (As it turned out, I came across a human maceman - Atal Wrungfortresses - who also wanted me to lead him to glory and death. So I was back to having two followers before I even spotted the remaining goblins again.)

We saw them both, and I thought I could sneak up on the bowman and get a jump on him (literally). I never saw the goblin pikeman again after that, but I did get close enough to sprint forward and jump at our ranged enemy. Unfortunately, he saw me, too, and stepped backwards, so I didn't hit him. But he was now standing at the edge of a drop-off - not a tall cliff, but not something he'd want to fall down, either.

So I swung my axe at him. He parried with his bow. I swung my axe again, and again he parried. But he also yelled out, "I yield! I yield!"

Now, that was great, but... what was I supposed to do now? He didn't drop his weapon, and I didn't seem to have any conversation options to take his surrender. So, not knowing what else to do, I demanded that he yield.

And he shot an arrow at me! Yeah, I'm standing in his face, swinging a great axe at his neck. But he's not only parrying every attack with his bow, he's actually able to shoot that bow! I dodged the arrow, but it was still quite surprising.

So I swung at him again, and again he deflected the attack with his bow. So I reached out with my left hand (my "lower left arm," technically) and grabbed the bow. I didn't have any wrestling skill, but I thought maybe I could at least prevent him from using the bow, if not pull it out of his hands completely.

But no, I didn't seem to have that combat option. I could release the bow or I could change my grip, but that was all. (I don't remember exactly how that second option was worded, just that it wasn't clear to me what it would do. But when I tried it, the result was, "You adjust the grip of your lower left arm on the Goblin Bowman's bow." Whoopee.)

[Edit: Apparently (my thanks to Migue5356), this was all because I had a weapon in one hand and a shield in the other, thus I didn't have the option to use my hands when wrestling. (I'd assumed that "lower left arm" was just the weird Dwarf Fortress way of saying "left hand." I should have known better.)

[If I'd grabbed the bow with my hand, instead of my lower arm, I would have been able to Interact with it, just like when you get a weapon stuck in an enemy. And if I'd grabbed the goblin with my hand, I would have had more wrestling options, including throwing (though not the option to throw him in a particular direction, I guess). All good to know, huh?]

And when I tried swinging my weapon at him again, he still deflected the attack with that bow, even though I was hanging onto it with my left hand. [Edit: I just noticed a bug-fix today where Toady - Tarn Adams - "Stopped shared/wrestled items from being used for block/parry." Apparently, this should have worked to keep the bowman from deflecting my axe attack.]

So I also grabbed his left arm with my right hand (my "lower right arm"). There was still no option to disarm the goblin or throw him off the cliff, or anything like that. But I had one hand on his bow and the other on his arm.

So he shot me in the left lung.

Yeah, he could still use the bow, even with me hanging onto him. Apparently, the only result was that I could no longer dodge his arrows.

The arrow went through my leather coat (my leather "dress," actually, although that's another thing that doesn't make much sense, since my character is male) and through the iron chainmail shirt that I'd just taken from Doñas. (It hadn't done either of us much good, huh?)

Looking back at the combat report, I see it just "bruised" the lung (and my chest muscle). But "mortal wound" kept flashing on the screen. Apparently, I was dead and just hadn't realized it yet.

So I kept fighting. I mean, why not? If I was dying anyway, maybe I could at least take the bowman with me. But he still parried every attack I made.

Nique was finally moving close enough to maybe think about helping - throughout all this, he hadn't even swung his sword yet, but he was at least braver than our new maceman, who was nowhere in sight at this point - when the bowman wrenched free of my grip and ran off (not down the cliff, but to one side).

I tried to catch him, but with an arrow in the lung, I'd gotten winded, and I was a lot slower than I had been. I don't know what good it would have done, anyway, since I couldn't hit him. (This has been my typical experience with Dwarf Fortress adventure mode. I kill enemies right and left, until I encounter one I can't hit at all. There seems to be no middle ground. Either they're easy to kill or completely impossible - at which point they kill me.)

I still had my mortal wound, and there didn't seem to be anything I could do about that. There are doctors and hospitals in fortress mode, but there aren't even bandages in adventure mode. Technically, there are civilians with medical skills, but they don't actually use those skills for anything, as far as I know. And "mortal" seems rather final, anyway, doesn't it?

But this is Dwarf Fortress. :)  I went to fast travel again - mostly because I wanted to get my death over with - and headed north, just to the other side of town. It hadn't even been an hour, I'm sure, but when I dropped back out of the fast travel screen, I was completely healed - not even a scar to indicate I'd ever been hurt.

I don't know where the arrow went, because I hadn't thought to pull it out of my chest. But maybe, since my chest muscle and my lung were just "bruised," it hadn't actually pierced anything? Still, a flashing "mortal wound" on the screen does seem rather critical, doesn't it? Heh, heh.

OK, my character has "high toughness," which no doubt helped. But I think there's a bit of luck involved here, too. Sometimes, fast travel will cure whatever ails you. But sometimes, you're healed, but permanently impaired (like my crippled peasant here). Of course, if you lose any bits and pieces, amputation is permanent. But I was surprised to recover at all, let alone so completely, from my "mortal wound."

After that, we traveled on to Ecrueagle with no further delays, and there were lots of shops in the town. (No criminals yet, not that I've seen anyway, though we encountered a friendly - apparently - "dwarf marksdwarf necromancer" in the tavern. I tried to recruit him, but I can only have two followers until my fame goes up a bit.)

At the first clothing store, I sold the bloody clothing I'd looted from those goblins (probably too cheaply, but I didn't realize how expensive food would be). Then we bought some good food, so I'm not stuck with that chopped spiny dogfish liver.

In fact, I bought a variety: prepared giant toad brain, prepared elk bird gizzard, and prepared swan intestines. Yum, yum!

PS. Here's the sequel and conclusion to this story.

___
Note: My other posts about Dwarf Fortress - and other games - can be found here.

Two by Kate Griffin

(cover image from Amazon.com)

These are two books by Kate Griffin I read a few weeks ago. Yes, I'm that far behind in posts here. So I'll make this quick.*

The Neon Court (2011) is the third in her Matthew Swift series of the sorcerer who returned from death, thanks to the blue electric angels of the telephone wires who now inhabit his body. (See my reviews of her earlier books - and books by other authors - here.)

As of the previous book in the series, he's also the Midnight Mayor of London. Now he gets summoned - literally - to a blood-drenched, burning office tower, which leads to a war between two magical factions and a night that might never end.

Like the previous books, this is very entertaining,... and also quite dark. Indeed, it's even darker than the previous two books. Oddly enough - because that's not my style - I still enjoyed it.

OK, time for an extended digression:

There's a big difference between science fiction and fantasy which is abundantly clear in this book - and it's one big reason why I prefer the former.

Science fiction doesn't have to be optimistic, but there's usually a sense that progress is at least possible. After all, technology is democratic. You don't have to be anyone special, because nearly everyone has the capability to use, create, and even invent technology.

Science and technology are connected to the past by a long line of discoveries and advances. All you have to do is look back to see how far we've come, and it's pretty easy to expect that trend to continue in the future, as we continue to educate human beings and learn more about our universe.

Of course, there may be setbacks. Dystopias frequently demonstrate what can go wrong. But we readers, at the very least, can certainly see that progress is possible. Indeed, dystopias are usually just cautionary tales from people who do expect progress, or at least hope for it.

Fantasy tends to be very different. For one thing, it's usually aristocratic, rather than democratic. Magic is normally something you're born with. You're either a Muggle or you're not. If you don't have any magical power, there's nothing you can do about it.

You can be trained if you've got the innate ability, and training does help a great deal. But only if you're already magical to begin with. And even then, different people have different degrees of magical power,... innately. This, too, tends to run in families, but even when it doesn't, you're still stuck with what you're born with.

Furthermore - and I'm talking about this fantasy series in particular now, though it might apply more generally than that - there's no sense of progress. Good people can fight evil, but evil will always exist. Whether you're talking about evil people being born with powerful magical abilities or about evil existing as an inherent part of life, as in The Neon Court, the best you can do is just fight it when you can.

After you're gone, things will be no better. Of course, if evil wins, things will be a lot worse. It's commonly a given in fantasy that losing will be absolutely catastrophic. But winning just means that you and your society live to fight the next battle. In this book, and others, there's no sense that progress is even possible.

I don't know if these are two separate things - democratic vs aristocratic and the whole idea of progress - or not. Technology has had a democratic influence in human societies, especially after peasants could be handed a musket and be trained as soldiers in a matter of months (instead of the born warriors who dominated previously).

And social progress tends to follow technological progress. Maybe it's not inevitable, but I doubt if you can have one without the other.

Well, I've gotten completely off the subject, haven't I? Let me just say that The Neon Court is dark, not just because of what happens in the book, but also because it's clear than progress isn't possible in that world. The dangers are always going to be there, and there's really nothing anyone can do about it.

(cover image from Amazon.com)

Since the Matthew Swift series is so dark, it seems rather surprising to me that Griffin has created a humorous offshoot of it, her Magicals Anonymous series which starts with the book, Stray Souls (2012).

Don't get me wrong, Stray Souls is fairly dark, too. But it also tries very hard to be funny (too hard, really).

Sharon Li is an untrained shaman with a messed-up life who creates a Facebook page for magical misfits and then gets involved in fighting a deadly danger to all of London. (Matthew Swift is a minor character in this book.) Of course, her diverse group of weird characters are the key to saving the city.

OK, the book was fun enough, but Griffin really seemed to be trying too hard. Whether it's the failed druid with psychosomatic asthma attacks or the vampire germaphobe or the troll gourmet, it's as if she made a list of the weirdest characters she could think of.

Many of them are more pathetic than funny, really, and that includes Sharon, herself. Plus, with people being killed in disgusting ways, this series is also surprisingly dark. It's a weird combination.

Maybe this was meant to be a young adult book. That wouldn't surprise me. And it's not that I didn't find it entertaining,... but I doubt if I'll continue with the series. It just didn't work for me. I love humorous fiction, and even humor in serious fiction, but the author just seemed to be trying too hard in this one.

I might continue with the Matthew Swift series, but I'm not sure. My big problem is that it doesn't seem to be going anywhere. Swift doesn't seem to have a personal life - not with anyone who isn't quickly killed. OK, his apprentice is a possible exception to that, but...

My big problem is still the lack of progress. In this case, it's that Swift's life doesn't seem to progress, but the overall situation doesn't progress, either. Nothing changes, so every book is much like the others. Is the overall story going somewhere? Not that I can see. And that's a problem for me in a series like this.

Matthew Swift doesn't have enough of a personal life for me to remain interested in his own story. And nothing else seems likely to change much, either. For the first two books, I was OK with that. But by the time we get to the third, I guess I expect to see progress of some kind.

*PS. You didn't actually believe that, did you?
___
Note: My other book reviews are here.

Divinity: Original Sin - initial impressions

Chloe and Willam at closest zoom

I think I looked at Divinity: Original Sin during its Kickstarter campaign, but I'm not sure. Either way, I passed it up. Well, then as now, I needed another computer game like I needed another hole in my head.

But it's just been released, and after watching some YouTube videos of the gameplay, I knew I had to buy it. Yeah, I didn't even wait for a sale! (It's $39.99 full price and runs on Steam.)

Divinity: Original Sin is a turn-based, party-based RPG like they used to make - only with modern improvements. Apparently, this isn't a popular kind of game these days - not popular enough for the big companies - but it raised almost a million dollars on Kickstarter - more than twice their goal - so maybe there are more of us fans than they expected, huh?

Note that this is the fourth game in the series, though I haven't played any of the others. Divinity: Original Sin is apparently supposed to be the prequel to the first game, Divine Divinity, originally published in 2002. However, I don't think that any of the other games in this series had turn-based combat.

Anyway, so far, I've been hugely impressed with this game. This is a party-based RPG, with a twist or two. You start with just two characters, but you can recruit two more followers as you go (and summon additional creatures during combat, if you want).

You maintain full control over all of them. Your characters may be male or female, with different hair and skin color, and whatever attributes, skills, and talents you want. Followers are pre-set when you meet them, but you still have full control when leveling them up, full control over equipping them, and full control during combat.

Also, note that you can play the game with a friend, if you wish, with each person running one of the characters (and one of the followers). That's a built-in multiplayer component, made very easy via the Internet. Now, I'm not sure how that would work, in a more deliberate game like this. I haven't tried that part of it.

The Cyseal docks at maximum zoom out. (My two characters are on the stairs at the lower center part of the screen.)

Anyway, your two characters are set down on a beach near the town of Cyseal, where you've been sent to investigate a murder. There's a lot going on, since the town is also beset by undead and by orcs, both. But the initial walk up the beach, and the first dungeon, serves as a tutorial.

The first thing you'll learn is that this is a game of exploration. There's no day/night cycle. Time doesn't seem to pass at all. Thus, you can take your time, and you should. You get both loot and experience from exploration, and you can encounter little side quests along the way, too. (Note that investigating a murder isn't time-sensitive, so exploring doesn't ruin your suspension of disbelief.)

There's also a robust craft system. You can find recipes for creating useful items like potions, weapons, or arrows, or you can just experiment by trying to combine different items. So far, I haven't found much of a need for crafted items, but there are a ton of different 'ingredients', and I've barely scratched the surface.

Combat is turn-based, which is great, and it's also very much focused on the environment, which is even better! Cast a spell which creates a pool of oil around your enemies, and that will slow them down. Then cast a fire spell on the oil, and the whole thing will explode in fire. (You can do the same thing with a poison gas cloud, instead of oil. Poison your enemies, then burn them alive. Heh, heh.)

Alternately, cast a rain spell to make your enemies wet, then electrocute or freeze them. (Or if your own characters are on fire, cast a rain spell to put it out.) If you don't have a spell, you can do very similar things with arrows. Destroy a water or oil barrel, then use a special arrow to electrocute the water or set fire to the oil. Or use a teleport spell to throw the barrel - or an enemy - into the fire.

There are just a million different things you can do in combat, depending on your skills and your spells, and the environment is critically important in most circumstances. For example, you can get a skill where you automatically heal when standing in a pool of blood (not uncommon for melee characters). Or you can get a talent to lower the spell point costs of water spells when you're standing in a puddle of water. (I'm not sure if those abilities are especially useful, but they are options.)

Of course, if you're standing in water, you can be effectively targeted by electricity or cold attacks, yourself. The AI has the same options you do. (I'm not sure how well they take advantage of that, though, since I haven't been in too many fights yet.)

Environmental manipulation also works when you're not in combat. You can pick up and move objects that aren't too heavy, or smash objects with a hammer or axe. And if it's made of wood, it will burn. So if a crate is in your way, pick it up and move it, or smash it to pieces, or set fire to it. Traps and locks can be dealt with in various ways, too. If you can't pick a lock on a chest, just break it open (note that you'll damage your weapons, if you use them).

I assume that female orcs are supposed to be funny? Unfortunately, it comes off as just dumb.

I customized both of my characters, starting with a ranger and a witch. I love archery, and the ranger can shoot regular arrows from his bow without requiring ammunition. But he also has a million different kinds of special ammo he can make or buy - fire arrows, poison arrows, silver arrows, etc. - which do take up inventory slots.

My female character casts elemental spells - fire, water, earth, and air - attempting a flexible response to any situation. She can also summon a giant spider to distract enemies while the rest take them out at a distance. (The first follower we encountered was a melee fighter, which complemented my two characters perfectly.)

Now, even for a million dollars, you're not going to get cutting edge graphics, but they're certainly not bad. The first screenshot above shows my two characters at maximum zoom in. The second screenshot show how far out you can zoom.

You can turn the camera, too, though only in a very limited fashion, by default. However, there's an option to remove that limitation, so you can rotate the camera 360°, if you want. (The game discourages this, because it was designed to be seen from certain angles. But I prefer to have more control over the camera, even if I see graphical glitches occasionally. I really like that they've given me that freedom of choice!)

Admittedly, I've been stuck occasionally, not being able to zoom in or out. But a little fiddling - just talking to an NPC, frequently - has always fixed that. By default, you press v, then move the mouse to rotate the camera. But you can easily change that, too, so I use my right mouse button for rotating the camera. (Oddly, Divinity: Original Sin doesn't seem to use the right mouse button for anything else.)

Generally-speaking, this all works fine. I wish there were an option to lock the camera to an over-the-shoulder view of the lead character, but I suppose that's just being picky. You have to be methodical in searching, though, so you don't overlook anything. (Note that there is a key to switch to a camera that's directly overhead, if you want to place your characters in battle precisely.)

I also wish the game used a popup menu, with a right-click of the mouse, to choose items, abilities, and attacks. But there are so many different options in this game, maybe that wouldn't actually work very well, I don't know. (In the screenshots here, you can see the quick-select menu bar of the lead character at the bottom of the screen. But there are actually multiple pages of that. You can click the arrows on the left of the menu to page through them.)

There's a surprising amount of voice-acting in the game, too - surprising because voice-acting is expensive. Not everything is spoken, but it really does add to the game. (You have a choice of three male and three female voices, when creating your characters.)

There is at least one feature that's a little weird. Your two characters don't have to agree about everything, and when they disagree, they frequently play a game of rock, paper, scissors to settle it. Likewise, you play this mini-game against NPCs, too, when you're trying to persuade them in a certain way.

Now, I can see playing rock, paper, scissors with another human being, but how do you play it against a computer program? The AI doesn't seem to be picking randomly, either, as far as I can tell. At least, the result has been either an easy win for me, or a complete loss - nothing in between. Either every choice I make is correct or every choice I make is the worst I could choose. (Never once has the computer and I made the same pick in rock, paper, scissors, either. That doesn't make any sense at all.)

It's not a big deal, though I've failed at least one side-quest because I lost a game of rock, paper, scissors to the AI. Now, maybe this was designed for the co-op feature of the game, I don't know. But it really seems weird playing against the computer. I can't say I like it much.

Still, so far, Divinity: Original Sin has been a lot of fun. I really like the murder mystery as a main quest, because that's the perfect excuse for exploration and talking to the townspeople. (And since the victim is already dead, there's no reason to hurry. In other games, it always seems a little weird to be doing sidequests when the fate of the world is at stake.)

The game is laugh-out-loud funny sometimes, too. The story is serious, but there's plenty of humor, here and there. I hope other game developers take note of that!

I'm not too far into the game yet - still exploring Cyseal and the murder, in fact. So these are just my initial impressions. But I love it, so far. This is the kind of game which might bring back the turn-based, party-based RPGs I loved years ago. (Wasteland 2 will be released in another few weeks. I really hope that will be another!)

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Note: My other posts about computer games are gathered together here.

"The Midnight Mayor" by Kate Griffin

(cover image from Amazon.com)

The Midnight Mayor (2010) by Kate Griffin is the second book in her fantasy series about Matthew Swift, urban sorcerer and host to the blue electric angels.

Like the first, this is a big book - 467 pages - and lush with descriptive language. It also begins in a somewhat similar fashion, with Swift badly injured and under attack, struggling to understand what has happened to him.

In fact, that's my only real problem with the book, that it's so much like the previous volume. The plot is different, though he's again fighting a terribly powerful foe, this time bent on the complete destruction of London. But even the minor characters are much the same.

Oh, I enjoyed it, and I'm sure I'll continue to read the series. But one of the reasons I liked the first book is because it was so imaginative. Well, this time we already know about Matthew Swift and the blue electric angels, and we already know about sorcerers in general. So it really doesn't have the same impact as the first.

In fact, I must admit that I just skimmed through some of the detailed descriptions this time. There's still a reason for such detail, I suppose - Swift is still a sorcerer, after all - but not such a good reason as last time, when he was recently resurrected and everything was brand-new to... them.

OK, I'm sure I sound much more negative than I feel. I enjoyed the book, and you will, too, I'm sure, if you enjoyed the first one. It's very similar.

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Note: The rest of my book reviews are here.

"A Madness of Angels" by Kate Griffin

(cover image from Amazon.com)

I've been reading a lot of urban fantasy lately - Ben Aaronovitch, Benedict Jacka, Jim Butcher, among others. But A Madness of Angels (2009) by Kate Griffin (the pen name of Catherine Webb, who writes young adult fantasies under her real name) still managed to be quite unique.

Partly, that's due to the lush, descriptive language of the book. 450 pages long, this is a lot more detailed than most of the urban fantasies I've read. There's a good reason for that - it actually fits with the story - and the book kept my interest very well. What can I say? It works.

I wasn't too surprised. I picked up this book because of a review by a friend of mine, Tony Williams. An author himself - and a good one - he almost always favors shorter books, quicker reads. So when he liked it, despite its length, I had to take notice.

But the plot is different enough, too, from the usual. (One of my pet peeves with fantasy is the widespread lack of imagination among fantasy authors.) Two years after his murder - by magic - sorcerer Matthew Swift has returned to life. But he's not alone in his body.

"Life is magic." The idea here is that life itself creates magic, just by living. Swift is an urban sorcerer, someone who can get so caught up in the rhythms of the city that he risks getting lost in it. Yes, this is another fantasy set in London, and by another author who seems to love the city.

Who killed Matthew Swift, and who killed so many others in the two years he's been dead? And who brought him back? In a sense, this isn't just a fantasy, but a mystery, too.

I loved it, and since it's the first of a series, I've already ordered the sequel. I must admit to being skeptical that the sequels can be as good as this book - the whole idea won't be new anymore - but I'm anxious to find out.

Thanks, Tony, for the recommendation!

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Note: My other book reviews are here.