#whatever. only 2 months left. exactly 2 months before i either fail spectacularly or get my degree. i can do that

[eerna]

my dealer: got some straight gas🔥😛 this strain is called writing your master's thesis😳 you'll be zonked out of your gourd💯

me: yeah whatever. i don't feel shit

19 months later: dude i swear this is the final research day after this it's just a matter of formatting my thoughts totally smooth sailing

my buddy, REM sleep, pacing: the alarm clock is lying to us

[why-this-kolaveri-machi]

For the dysfunctional pairing prompt: Dick/Kory?

s2!AU - SPOILERS until 2.11

1.

“You’re good with the kids,” Kory tells Dick. It’s an absurd thing to say when one of those kids is beaten half to death, another is strutting around in a spandex costume like it’s his second skin and yet another… vanquished an interdimensional demon like it was nothing, but they’re all laughing, and Dick looks lighter than Kory has ever seen him.

Dick looks about as bemused as she feels. “You think?”

She smiles. “I do.”

“You’re pretty good with them, too.” He hesitates, then tilts his head at the car. “You know, this model seats five…”

Oh. Oh, no. She has only just come back to herself; there are so many decisions she has to make and so much to think about. Still, she’s curious about the light that’s animating Dick, about what it would feel like to cruise down stark and beautiful landscapes while knowing exactly who she is and where she is coming from and nothing about where she’s going. Only for a little while.

Just for–

“I’m in,” Kory says, and relishes the huge, delighted grin that breaks over Dick’s face.

6.

When Jason falls from the balcony, Kory’s first instinct is to dive right after him. She hasn’t tried flying in so long–not since leaving Tamaran–but the way her power coils around her, lifting her, is so familiar that she lets conscious thought go and let it take her where–

“KORY, NO!”

A desperate grip on her hand jerks her out of the moment. She hangs, swaying, from Dick’s hands even as Jason plummets to his death.

“What have you done?!” she screams at Dick. He has nothing to say, but she sees the answer in his eyes: he has made his choice, and it is going to haunt them for the rest of their lives.

10.

After the whole truth has been told, punches thrown, and the dust settled, Dick and Kory are the only ones left in the room. The silence is absolute, like a crypt–and Dick looks like he might belong in one, pale, stooped, blood pouring down his face. Kory, for her part, sits curled on a couch, her phone in one white-knuckled hand, staring past Dick. He grabs a towel and presses it to his gushing nose.

A few moments pass before Dick ventures, “Kory, what’s wrong?”

There’s a picture of Faddei’s corpse on her phone, the name Blackfire burned into his skin in Tamaranean. Kory feels… brittle, anxiety and regret buzzing under skin that feels like paper. “There’s nothing you can do,” Kory tells Dick, and the words unstick themselves from her throat with visible effort. “You need to be here.”

“Please.” Dick’s face crumples with the kind of emotion he’d dared not show the others. “Please, let me help you.”

“Dick, I–”

“We’re in this together, right?” He takes her hands in his. “Whatever this is, you don’t have to deal with it alone.”

His touch is so very cold, but Kory doesn’t let go.

2.

The first few months at the tower are wonderful.

Kory goes out as frequently as she can, soaking in the sights and sounds of a bustling city. She drags the others out with her often–riding roughshod over Dick’s protests. Rachel and Gar seem delighted that they are together, in peace, and with purpose; and although Jason is wary at first, he warms up to her soon enough.

At night, after the others have gone to sleep, Kory joins Dick in bed. There is a reverence to the way he touches her that turns boisterous without warning, which she finds delightful. Honestly, all of this is more than Kory could ask for.

(and if she finds Dick lying awake in bed well into early morning, or hears Rachel scream into her pillow, or sees Gar unable to look either of them in the eyes for more than a few minutes at a time, or runs into Jason nursing bruised knuckles in the training room in the dead of the night… well. They’re here to work through all of their problems together, and that’s exactly what they’re going to do.)

8. 

The devastation and betrayal in Jason’s voice is palpable when they confront him. Kory knows she should intervene, that without Dick there she needs to take control before things spiral further, but she stares at the pieces of her sawar bracelet in her hand and thinks for a single, vicious, shameful moment: Good.

5.

“Why didn’t you tell me you were having trouble with your powers before?” 

Rachel’s huddled under a table in the control room, and flinches at the sound of Kory’s voice. “What’s the point,” she says. “I just killed Rose. Maybe I’m just born bad, Kory, and there’s nothing anybody can do about it now.”

Kory crouches in front of her and tentatively reaches out to touch her thigh. “You know that’s not true,” she says. “Me and Dick, we believe–”

“Please don’t tell Dick!” Rachel says suddenly, eyes wide, clutching Kory’s hand with both of hers. “Please, Kory–it’s why I didn’t say anything earlier. He can’t know.”

“He can help you, Rachel. All of us can.”

“He’ll only think he’s failed me, somehow. And then–” Rachel’s voice drops to a whisper, “he’ll leave. Again.”

Kory thinks of how wound up Dick has been since Deathstroke returned; how he flinches and mutters at thin air and refuses to tell her why. She thinks of his haphazard battle plans, and the reckless glint in his eye as he discussed how to rescue Jason from Deathstroke. 

“Okay,” she sighs. “I won’t tell him.”

12.

“And worst of all, the idiot goes and gets himself arrested so he can feel better about his guilt.” She takes a healthy swig of her wine. “And I’m stuck. Lost–literally!–in space and time. We were supposed to help each other find ourselves, yet all we’ve managed to do is get lost even further.”

Her one night stand removes his briefs from around his neck and slips into them with no small measure of disappointment. “Seems to me,” he says, “that neither of you were particularly ready to enter into a relationship.”

She considers him critically over the rim of her glass. “Why, are you some kind of expert?”

“I am a psychiatrist,” he says mildly, brushing glitter off his pecs.

“Of course you are,” Kory mutters, rolling her eyes, and finishes the rest of her wine in one final swig.

4.

Faddei keeps calling.

It’s not that Kory isn’t aware that she has responsibilities on Tamaran, or what would happen to Faddei if she didn’t return to him. It’s just–she has an obligation to the people here, and with Rose’s arrival, Deathstroke’s return, the older Titans coming back, she’s been putting out fires left and right. Dick stops sleeping altogether, pacing the hall in the middle of the night, muttering to himself. Kory can’t possibly leave things the way they are.

Tamaran can wait.

9.

Dick stays long enough on the roof after a red-eyed Jason returns to the tower for Kory to get worried. He doesn’t react when she moves to sit beside him; only continues to stare out into the city, a kind of invisible weight stooping his shoulders. His arms are shaking, and Kory tenses, ready.

“I’m sorry,” Dick says at last. “None of this is fair to you.”

“I’m not sure I understand what you mean.”

“All of this.” He gestures at the tower below him vaguely. “Kinda dragged you into the middle of a giant clusterfuck that was my fault. Figured the least I could do is apologise.”

“I’m here by choice,” Kory says. “And we’re going to get through this together.”

“Yeah,” Dick says, faintly.

3.

“It’s wonderful that you two are together,” Dawn says. “Dick can be a difficult person to get close to, though.”

Kory frowns puzzled. “Sexually he’s both quite active and enthusiastic–”

Hank chokes on his lunch while Dawn smacks his back. “No I meant he’s a closed book emotionally. It’s just the way he was raised, I guess.”

Kory thinks of the warmth in his eyes and his smile when he thinks nobody is looking. “Yeah,” she says. “I guess.”

11.

Dick drives them to Nevada after they discover that every means of transportation that Kory had to her home planet has been destroyed for good, then disappears.

Kory leaves him a voice message and doesn’t bother to look.

7.

Saving Conner with her powers is the most Kory has felt like herself since Trigon was defeated.

It’s a startling thought, and she doesn’t know what to make of it.

13.

“I see Dick dying,” Rachel says, her eyes wide and very white. “Please, Kory, he needs us.”

Kory breathes in the dust kicked up by Dawn’s car. “I know,” she says. “Let’s go get him together.”

-

(  Give me a pairing and I’ll write you a way it could be spectacularly dysfunctional! )

[argylemnwrites]

We Need to Talk

Relationships: Drake Walker & King Liam (friendship); Drake Walker x MC (Riley Liu)

Book: The Royal Romance (Book 2, Chapter 17)

Word Count: ~2200

Rating: PG (brief adult language)

Summary: After Riley rejected Liam’s proposal in NYC, Drake and Liam have some things to discuss upon their return to Cordonia.

Author’s Note: Hey, I wrote something that isn’t canon divergent! I can only fathom that Drake and MC didn’t sleep together in the hotel in New York if Drake was planning to talk to Liam first to clear the air before he took that step with her.

I’ve included tags for people who are on my tag list not just for Drake, but also who are tagged for It Couldn’t Wait Another Moment. If you would prefer to only be tagged for that series and not Drake fics that are TRR canon compliant, let me know, and I will happily adjust my tag lists!

Drake nearly dropped his phone as he checked the time. 15:27. Letting out a shaky sigh, he shoved the phone in his back pocket. He needed to calm himself down. His mouth was dry, his palms were clammy, and he was sure if anyone were to pass by, they would hear his heart pounding. Luckily, no one really came to this part of the palace unintentionally. As he paced the hallway in front of the closed door, he checked his phone for the time again. 15:28. He let out a loud sigh as he ran his hand through his hair. He needed to get a grip.

This had to happen today. Hell, he should have done this weeks, maybe even months ago. Trying some deep breaths, he dropped to the bench next to the door, but couldn’t suppress the fidget in his leg. He couldn’t have been seated for more than ten seconds when the door opened. Drake sprung to his feet, but only Bastien walked out of the office. He raised his eyebrows and nodded in greeting, but stopped himself as he took in Drake’s appearance. “God, Drake. You look like hell.”

“Yeah, well…”

“Are you sure you’re okay? You know I’m here if you need something.”

“I just gotta talk to Liam. Thanks for getting me this meeting.”

Bastien nodded. “What the hell is this about, Drake?”

Drake just shook his head and resumed his repetitive path, pacing across from the door, but Bastien stepped in front of him, interrupting his rhythm. “Is this about Lady Riley?” he asked, dropping his voice to a whisper.

Drake’s head shot up, and his eyes locked on Bastien’s. “What do you know?”

Before Bastien could respond, the office door opened once again. Both men turned toward the sound, taking in Liam standing in the doorway. “Come on in, Drake.”

Bastien clasped Drake’s shoulder as Drake swallowed and turned toward the office. Once inside, Liam closed the door and turned to Drake expectantly. However, Drake couldn’t seem to form any words and just stared back at Liam with wide eyes. After a moment, Liam spoke, “You’re the one who wanted this meeting. I think I know what this is about, but I don’t want to presume.”

“You do know… what this is about, I mean. I didn’t really think this through past knowing I needed to talk to you.”

Liam chuckled, “Sit down; I’ll get us some drinks. I think we both might need one.”

Liam turned and opened the bottom drawer of his desk pulling out his bottle of Highland Park whiskey and two glasses. As he added ice to one of them, Drake sat in one of the leather arm chairs across from the desk. He would usually sit on one of the couches, but having a barrier between them felt appropriate today. Not that Liam would punch him or anything. If he did, maybe Drake wouldn’t feel like such a colossal piece of shit. But the couches felt like they were meant for better times than whatever this was about to be.

Liam sat in his chair and passed Drake the whiskey on the rocks, locking eyes with Drake as he did so. It was time. “So, I know that you, er… spoke to Liu.”

“If by spoke to, you mean proposed to and was rejected, then yes.”

“Liam, I’m sorry.”

“Why didn’t you two tell me?”

“We should have, I know. I don’t know when, but obviously a while ago. I’m sorry. I never thought you would get hurt, though.”

“How could I have been anything but hurt, Drake? I’m sure you know that she was my pick at the Coronation Ball. And not to make things too uncomfortable here, but I believe my… actions made my intentions fairly clear to Lady Riley.”

Drake sighed, “I never thought she would… I mean, look at you and…I’m just.” Taking a deep breath, he started again, “I assumed the only one who would be hurt was me. Obviously, she was going to choose to be with you once you were free.”

Liam frowned and took a sip of his drink. “I’m not sure I follow.”

“Don’t make me spell it out for you.” Liam just continued to stare at Drake. “Fine, over the years, how many women do you think have flirted with me in an attempt to get close to royalty? Because I’m guessing not many women have used you to find an in with me.”

“Riley’s not some crown chaser, Drake. If she was, I don’t think either of us would be here.”

“I know, I know, but it just felt too familiar. I mean, one moment she was kissing me goodbye at the Coronation Ball, and then next thing I knew she was talking about us dating and actually being together after you got engaged to Madeleine. It just seemed like I was some sort of consolation prize.”

Liam’s eyes had widened significantly during Drake’s fumbling speech. “Wait, this has been going on since my Coronation?”

“Er, I’m not sure exactly when this started.”

Liam shook his head with a slight chuckle, “Heh, why doesn’t that surprise me?”

“Look, I’m not trying to be sneaky or... coy or anything. You deserve honesty, I get that. It’s just kinda hard to pinpoint when things changed. I was attracted to her right away, but I did everything I could to keep my distance at first. I was downright cruel to her, actually. But somewhere along the way, I don’t know, she just cut through all my bullshit. Maybe it was in Lythikos when we got tipsy in the wine cellar after days of Olivia being a complete bitch to both of us. Maybe it was my birthday when she actually seemed to understand me. Maybe it was when she insisted on making sure I was okay after Tariq and I got into it, but suddenly we were friends who were attracted to each other, and then…”

Liam’s eyebrows shot up as Drake trailed off. He opened his mouth as if to say something, then stopped and let out a sigh, “It’s probably best if I don’t know, isn’t it?”

“Oh no! Not that, I mean, we haven’t…”

“Okay, okay, I believe you.”

“Man, this is awkward.”

Liam laughed, “Well, it was bound to be. Hence the whiskey in the middle of the afternoon.” The two shared a genuine smile as they each took a sip.

“In the spirit of full disclosure, I kind of embraced our, I guess you would call, er, flirtation? after the whole Tariq scandal and Madeleine engagement. I guess I figured if I could be a distraction or a comfort or whatever, I dunno, it might’ve made things easier for her. Once it all blew over, I just assumed she would go back to you. It seemed like the best solution for everyone.”

“Drake…”

“Okay fine, I was tired of fighting it, okay? She was alone and hurting and I couldn’t be another person who rejected her, particularly since I didn’t even want to stop things. I figured it would hurt when she got back together with you anyway, so I might as well enjoy the ride. It wasn’t until New York that I had any idea she might want, well me, as anything serious.”  

Drake paused, looking at his friend, trying to gauge where he stood, but Liam maintained his stoic mask. Drake wasn’t used to seeing that face when it was just the two of them. A casualty of his actions, he supposed. After a moment, Liam spoke slowly, clearly choosing his words carefully, “Obviously, her rejection was painful. However, the fact that the two of you, particularly you, didn’t feel you could trust me with your feelings, well that hurts more.” Drake dropped his eyes to his glass, unsure of how to respond, but Liam wasn’t finished. “I valued how honest you always were with me, Drake, and now that is called into question. Did you keep this from me to protect me or to protect yourself?”

“I’m not sure what you mean.”

“You told me that you were sure that whatever you and Lady Riley had was temporary. Did you mean to keep your relationship a secret so that I could live in a naïve bubble were Riley was always 100% invested in our relationship, or was it because vocalizing your love would make it real and you would have to face that fact, even if she left you?”

Drake swallowed, taking a moment to collect himself. “A little bit of the first, a whole lot of the second. I tried to tell myself it was better for you to not know, but mostly, I was trying to keep some semblance of distance. I failed, obviously.”

“Rather spectacularly, in fact. I noticed that you didn’t object to my use of the word ‘love’ in my question.”

Though Liam’s words were heavy, Drake heard no judgement in them. He looked back at Liam, staring straight at him as he responded, “And?”

“Fair enough. Obviously, I wish you two nothing but happiness. How could I begrudge you that? You are two of the people I care most about in this world.”  

“Liam, I swear I tried to shut it down over and over again. But she just saw through my excuses and called me out on them time after time. I just couldn’t-”

Liam raised his hand, cutting off Drake’s continued ramblings. “As much as I appreciate the sentiment, believe it or not, hearing how, shall we say actively Lady Riley pursued you is not incredibly soothing.”

Drake grimaced at that. His goal wasn’t to cause Liam more pain, but he felt that he couldn’t let that assumption stand. He wasn’t going to let the fault fall to her. “It’s not that she pursued me. She befriended me. I think it was just nice for her to have someone to talk to that wasn’t a stuck-up noble at first. Everything after that just kind of happened.”

Processing Drake’s statement, Liam took another sip of his whiskey. “I never thought I’d live to see the day Drake Walker essentially told me that he was fated to be with a woman.”

“What? That’s not what I’m saying at all!”

“Isn’t it? Everything you’ve described about how you feel for each other implies this element of destiny, that it was somehow out of both of your control.”

“Come on, Liam. You know I don’t believe in soulmates or any of that crap.”

“Are you sure about that?”

Drake opened his mouth to argue, but he realized that Liam sort of had a point. His feelings for Riley had felt largely out of his control. Like some overwhelming force that he was powerless to stop. Like he was addicted to her. He wasn’t sure if he would call it fate or destiny or anything like that, but it sure felt more inevitable than anything he’d ever experienced before.

“I will take your silence as confirmation of my wisdom,” Liam teased, drawing Drake out of his own thoughts.

“Come on, Liam. I-”

“Don’t worry; your sentimentality need not leave this room. But I would hope, given the circumstances, you wouldn’t begrudge me some teasing?”

It was a peace offering. A truce. A clear message that Liam was going to work to put this behind them. Drake knew it was more than he deserved, so he responded the only way he could, “Like anything would have stopped you from teasing me. Come on, let’s hear it. Get it out of your system.”

Liam laughed, “Oh no, I’m saving my teasing for the right moment. It’s just not satisfying when you’re expecting it.”

The two men shared a genuine smile, finishing off their whiskeys. And while the silence still carried some tension, the air certainly felt clearer than it had 30 minutes earlier.

“Are we okay?” asked Drake, finally voicing his biggest concern.

Liam nodded, “We will be. It might take me some time to adjust, but you’re a brother to me. After everything, it would take more than this to damage us.”

“Thank you, Liam. For what it’s worth, I am sorry for how this all went down.”

“But not that it happened?”

Drake bit his lip, slowly shaking his head. He couldn’t lie. “I could never regret her.”

Liam nodded sadly, “I understand. I’ll see you tonight at the beer garden, I’m assuming?”

“Of course.”

And with that, both men rose. Liam walked Drake to the door, clapping him on the shoulder as he exited the office.

“I am happy for you. I may feel a lot of things right now, but that’s the most important one.”

Drake felt his words get caught in his throat at that, but before he could even attempt to give an appropriate response, his phone started vibrating. He was pleasantly surprised when he saw the name.

“It’s Savannah.”

“Go ahead. I have another meeting soon, anyway.”

As cheesy as it sounded, Drake really did feel as if a weight had been lifted off his shoulders as he swiped his phone to answer the call. He wasn’t sure what the future held for him and Riley, but knowing that Liam would still be in his life was plenty for today.

Tags: @wickedgypsymoon @thesumofmychoices @cosigottahavefaith @thequeenofcronuts @thequeenchoices @katedrakeohd @carabeth @feartheendlesssummer @jovialyouthmusic

[ciathyzareposts]

Game 348: Realms of Arkania: Blade of Destiny

              Realms of Arkania: Blade of Destiny

Germany

Released in Germany as Das Schwarze Auge: Die Schicksalsklinge

attic Entertainment Software (developer); Fantasy Productions (German publisher); Sir-Tech (U.S. Publisher)

Released 1992 for DOS, 1993 for Amiga

Date Started: 13 November 2019

               Where Britain and France mostly created their own styles of RPGs, and largely failed at it, German developers found more success analyzing and modifying the mechanics of the most popular U.S. releases. In the few years after Germany’s RPG industry really got started in 1988, we saw games inspired by Ultima (Nippon, Die Dunkle Dimension), The Bard’s Tale (Legend of Faerghail, Antares, Spirit of Adventure), Alternate Reality (Fate: Gates of Dawn), Dungeon Master (Dungeons of Avalon), and Demon’s Winter (Sandor). Each of these games introduced its own innovations, to be sure; there are plenty of times, as in Fate and any of the Bard’s Tale-inspired games, when the German adaptation exceeded the original.            

Starting out in Arkania. The screen is nearly identical to Might and Magic III, although none of the gameplay is.

            Realms of Arkania strikes me as the apex of this process of adaptation, drawing not from just one source (like most of the German titles) or two sources (as Faerghail did with both The Bard’s Tale and Phantasie) but rather at least four. Building on the engine previously used in Spirit of Adventure (1991), attic has combined the basic exploration of The Bard’s Tale with the main screen arrangement of Might and Magic III, the inventory interface of Dungeon Master (or perhaps, more directly, Eye of the Beholder), and a combat system inspired by the Gold Box while looking more graphically advanced.          

The inventory interface recalls SSI’s Eye of the Beholder.

          Arkania is a licensed adaptation of the best-selling German tabletop RPG Das Schwarze Auge (“The Dark Eye,” although I always have to remind myself that it’s not “The Dark Age”). It started as a relatively obvious adaptation of Dungeons and Dragons (the developer, Schmidt Spiel & Freizeit, had first tried to get a license to publish D&D in German), but it got more innovative as the editions moved forward. In particular, I find that the inclusion of “negative traits” (introduced in the third edition) creates more memorable characters.

Arkania followed the by-now common 1990s tradition of telling one backstory in the game manual and another one–complementary but usually not identical–in the animated opening scenes. The opening is set in Thorwal, an ancient free settlement “populated with indomitable warriors and seafarers, rich in treasures from innumerable forays.” Thorwal is surrounded by plains in which orc tribes roam freely and occasionally semi-organize into a threatening confederacy. This is currently the case, with a “great chief” gathering orcs on the steppes, planning “the utter conquest of Thorwal.”           

Evocative graphics introduce the setting.

         Somehow this threat is going to involve a certain captain named Hetman Hyggelik who lived a couple centuries ago. He made a fortune pillaging the “hated slave trader towns of the south.” After a particularly successful expedition, he had a magic sword forged in the Cyclops Islands, then took it with him into the orcish lands, where he and his band were slaughtered. I suspect that his sword is the titular Blade of Destiny, and that it will be needed to fend off the invasion.            

If it was just left sticking out of a dirt mound, someone’s probably taken it by now.

          Either way, very little background is given regarding the party. Your group of six simply arrives in Thorwal seeking fortune and glory.              

Character creation offers some good graphics for each of the classes.

          Character creation is complex enough to tie in knots even an experienced CRPG player. There are 12 classes, which the system calls “archetypes”: jester, hunter, warrior, rogue, Thorwalian, dwarf, warlock, druid, magician, green elf, ice elf, and sylvan elf. (Female versions have slightly different names in the manual, even when spectacularly unnecessary, as in “she-jester,” “she-rogue,” “dwarvess,” and “magicienne.”) Among them are five different magic systems. There are seven positive attributes (courage, wisdom, charisma, dexterity, agility, intuition) rolled on a scale of 8 to 13, seven negative attributes (superstition, acrophobia, claustrophobia, avarice, necrophobia, curiosity, and violent temper) rolled on a scale of 2 to 7.            

Allocating numbers to attributes as they’re rolled.

           There are 52 skills, arranged into seven categories: combat, body, social, lore, craftsmanship, nature, and intuition. I have been jaded by a long string of Paragon games into suspecting that a lot of them will turn out to be useless. My money is on “Dance” and “Carouse,” but I’m also suspicious of “Self Control,” “Streetwise,” “Human Nature,” and “Tactics.” “Ancient Tongues” sounds like a skill that will come in handy exactly once, but on that one occasion it will be pivotal.             

Selecting skills to increase during character creation.

             When creating a character, you can choose the class you want, but if you do, you only get the minimum attributes necessary for that class. The other method, which generally results in higher attributes, is to let the game roll the numbers and you allocate them to the attributes as they arrive. You could get unlucky and end up with worse than minimum statistics, but you can always start over. One positive of the character creation process is that you can take its steps in any order. You can wait until you see what kind of character you have before assigning name and sex, or you can start with those answers and then take whatever you roll.        After spending far too long studying the materials, I went with:              

Female Thorwalian

Male dwarf

Male druid

Female green elf

Female magicienne

Male ice elf

              My analysis was that if Realms is like similar fantasy games, spells will be more important than physical skills, and this configuration gives me the most spell options. I lack only the warlock/witch. I thought they had the smallest selection of spells, many of them sounding more like solutions to puzzles than typical RPG magic (“Witch’s Eye,” “Heal Animal,” “Camouflage,” “Fire’s Bane”). It may turn out that I’ll miss the position for just this reason.               

Choosing my green elf’s starting spell skills.

            My primary angst is over the first two characters. I felt that for role-playing reasons, I ought to have a Thorwalian given the setting. I felt that the second character would need to be more of a rogue, but I didn’t want to leave the party too weak in physical combat, as a rogue would be, and dwarves seem a bit like warrior/rogues. I’m happy to take recommendations, though, since I haven’t gone very far into the game.           

The city of Thorwal.

         Gameplay begins at the Temple of Travia in Thorwal. In Arkania, it is at temples rather than inns where you can manage your party members. Thorwal is a 16 x 32 map with ocean to the south and west and rivers and ponds taking up some of the inner space. The buildings create irregular patterns in a way that goes back to the original Bard’s Tale. Also adapted from that game is a tradition by which nearly every square of building can be entered, although many are houses occupied by offended Thorwalians who immediately tell you to leave. Sometimes, the residents give you a hint. Sometimes, the houses are locked and you have the option to break in.            

This manual conditioned me to expect something else when I encountered a “Thorwalian.”

          There are numerous taverns, inns, inn/tavern combinations, armories, banks, supply shops, temples, and healers. (I bought some standard items like torches and rope at the supply shop.) These seem redundant, but each has its own unique name, and I suspect there will later be quests that require me to visit a particular location. I enjoy some of the location names, including the taverns “Drunken Emperor,” “Boisterous Welsher,” and “Red Morrow.” There’s also a temple called the “Temple of Tsa,” which in the game’s all-caps font makes it sound like it was founded by the one person who respects American airport security. The temples are all named after the names of their gods, which also seem to be the names of the setting’s months.         

I don’t know how well I’m going to sleep tonight.

               The taverns are quite odd. When you enter, you have options to order drinks or talk, but whatever you choose, events have a way of unfolding on their own. For instance, if you order drinks, you’ll probably end up with a clue anyway, but if you choose to just start talking, some bartender will say, “Aren’t you going to order anything?” Anyway, the “leave tavern” option seems to disappear a lot, so you get trapped in a loop of ordering round after round until your party members get drunk. (I guess this is governed by the “Carouse” statistic.) Also, if you have any talent in music, dancing, or acrobatics, you have options to engage in those activities for the amusement of the patrons, and thus have a little money thrown your way.            

I don’t want to know what kind of dancing Bramble was doing.

          There are no combats on the game map, which distinguishes Arkania from most of its predecessors, including Spirit of Adventure. There are occasional random encounters in the street, such as traveling merchants, beggars who ask for a ducat, and a weird repeating encounter where a “small fellow” dances around a “table containing a mass of floral arrangements” and then falls down dead.             

A random event. No, that is totally not “OK.”

             There are a number of unique buildings and oddities among the doorways on the map. These include:             

Three estates with multiple entrances, all blocked by guards who refuse entry. Two are called “otttaskins” and are owned by groups named the Stormriders and the Windrunners. I don’t know what “ottaskin” means; a Google search suggests the game may have invented it.

            Can you just tell me what it is?

            A large monolith at the end of the street that seems to have no entrance.

A post office called the “Beilunk Riders.” It was closed.

Two “embassies,” one from the “Central Empire,” one from the “New Empire,” both closed.

A couple of closed towers.

            Maybe this will become important later.

          A shipbuilder’s where you can have your own ship made for way more money than I have.

An academy of magic where you can purchase potions and get artifacts identified.

                  I thought this harbor scene was particularly well-drawn.

           There are four exits from the city, oddly placed. Only one is at an obvious point at the end of a road at the edge of the map. Two others are found in the harbor and a fourth in a random building in the northwest. Each exit seems to take you to a different option for moving forward on the overland map.               

Each exit takes you to the outdoor map, but to different destinations on it.

            As I mentioned, some of the random denizens offer a bit of intelligence when you open their doors. Everyone seems to be talking about the gathering orcs, and it’s rumored that they’ve sacked a city called Phexcaer, but we also heard a little about other people and locations in the town.

Unfortunately, Arkania seems to have dropped Spirit of Adventure‘s keyword-based dialogue for more traditional dialogue options, some of which are either poorly translated or deliberately nonsensical.            

Dialogue options allow us to insult the innkeeper for no reason.

             During one visit to a tavern, a guard entered to announce that Hetman Tronde Torbensson, ruler of the city, is looking for heroes to take on a dangerous quest. We found our way to the Hetman’s house at the west edge of town. There, Torbensson reiterated the danger posed by the orcs, united under a single chief, amassing in the Upper Bodir Valley.             

The party learns of the main quest.

             Noting that orcs are a superstitious lot, Torbensson suggested that their federation might collapse if a hero showed up wielding Hetman Hygellik’s lost sword, called Grimring. “It is said that the sword put the fear of the gods into the orcs and their shamans or whatever they call their religious leaders,” the Hetman recounted.

The sword is probably buried in Hygellik’s tomb, and the Hetman suggested we start by visiting Hygellik’s last surviving descendant, Isleif Olgardsson, in the city of Felsteyn. He gave us a writ allowing us to take a certain number of weapons from the city’s armory. I always like it when a game has an answer to the common and obvious objection of forcing characters to fund their own adventures when the fate of the world is at stake.             

The Hetman lays on the main quest. I love how my characters can say they have “just one question” when I have no idea what the question is.

            There is one dungeon–the lower levels of an old fortress–accessible from Thorwal. The captain of the guard (or something like that) asked us to investigate the lower levels because someone keeps stealing supplies stored on the upper levels.

              It took me a while to figure out how to light a torch. You can’t just “use” the torch, nor can you use the tinder box. You have to pick up the torch, then right click on the tinder box and “use” it. This is annoyingly undocumented. 

             Coming across a chest.

          Anyway, the first dungeon level had a couple of combats and one chest. I’ll write more about combats in the future, but for now suffice to say that it blends several systems. The screen uses the axonometric 45-degree rotation that feature heavily in British adventure games (Knightlore, Cadaver) and RPGs (HeroQuest, Legend) of the period. Characters move on discrete floor tiles, and action is turn-based, with the player selecting both movement and attack options from a menu. There’s an auto-combat option called “Computer Fight” that puts your players under computer control, with or without magic. Overall, it plays a lot like the Gold Box games, and a “Guard” command (the player stands still until an enemy comes in range, then gets a free attack) particularly points to a Gold Box origin.

           The combat interface.

          I would finally note that the game has a decent automap, with walls, corridors, and doors clearly annotated by color. This helps make up for the fact that it’s hard to see some doors when they’re to the party’s side rather than directly in front of you.

          The automap alerts me to a couple of doors that I missed on my first loop.

          Realms of Arkania is a thick game, meaning it has a lot of little elements that I may forget to talk about if they don’t play a big role in my experience. When starting, it offers basic and advanced modes of gameplay; the primary difference seems to be that the computer controls your skill and spell leveling (and character creation) in basic mode. I’ve been playing on “advanced.” Money is in gold ducats, silver crowns, and copper bits at a 1:10:10 ratio. At temples, you can donate and pray for miracles. There’s a food and drink system by which you “feed” characters by picking up items and clicking on their mouths. You can split the team into two or more groups. An adventurer’s log keeps track of major plot points. When camping, you assign various characters to guard duty for the hours of the day. Wounds, sickness, and poison can be treated with skills as well as spells. Armor and weapons degrade and must occasionally be repaired. You can pocket-pick shopkeepers. If I never mention any of these elements again, it means they weren’t really important.

I thought Spirit of Adventure had a lot of promise, so I’m going to remain optimistic about Realms even though the first few hours have covered a lot of well-trod ground.

Time so far: 5 hours

source http://reposts.ciathyza.com/game-348-realms-of-arkania-blade-of-destiny-2/

[ciathyzareposts]

Game 348: Realms of Arkania: Blade of Destiny

              Realms of Arkania: Blade of Destiny

Germany

Released in Germany as Das Schwarze Auge: Die Schicksalsklinge

attic Entertainment Software (developer); Fantasy Productions (German publisher); Sir-Tech (U.S. Publisher)

Released 1992 for DOS, 1993 for Amiga

Date Started: 13 November 2019

               Where Britain and France mostly created their own styles of RPGs, and largely failed at it, German developers found more success analyzing and modifying the mechanics of the most popular U.S. releases. In the few years after Germany’s RPG industry really got started in 1988, we saw games inspired by Ultima (Nippon, Die Dunkle Dimension), The Bard’s Tale (Legend of Faerghail, Antares, Spirit of Adventure), Alternate Reality (Fate: Gates of Dawn), Dungeon Master (Dungeons of Avalon), and Demon’s Winter (Sandor). Each of these games introduced its own innovations, to be sure; there are plenty of times, as in Fate and any of the Bard’s Tale-inspired games, when the German adaptation exceeded the original.            

Starting out in Arkania. The screen is nearly identical to Might and Magic III, although none of the gameplay is.

            Realms of Arkania strikes me as the apex of this process of adaptation, drawing not from just one source (like most of the German titles) or two sources (as Faerghail did with both The Bard’s Tale and Phantasie) but rather at least four. Building on the engine previously used in Spirit of Adventure (1991), attic has combined the basic exploration of The Bard’s Tale with the main screen arrangement of Might and Magic III, the inventory interface of Dungeon Master (or perhaps, more directly, Eye of the Beholder), and a combat system inspired by the Gold Box while looking more graphically advanced.          

The inventory interface recalls SSI’s Eye of the Beholder.

          Arkania is a licensed adaptation of the best-selling German tabletop RPG Das Schwarze Auge (“The Dark Eye,” although I always have to remind myself that it’s not “The Dark Age”). It started as a relatively obvious adaptation of Dungeons and Dragons (the developer, Schmidt Spiel & Freizeit, had first tried to get a license to publish D&D in German), but it got more innovative as the editions moved forward. In particular, I find that the inclusion of “negative traits” (introduced in the third edition) creates more memorable characters.

Arkania followed the by-now common 1990s tradition of telling one backstory in the game manual and another one–complementary but usually not identical–in the animated opening scenes. The opening is set in Thorwal, an ancient free settlement “populated with indomitable warriors and seafarers, rich in treasures from innumerable forays.” Thorwal is surrounded by plains in which orc tribes roam freely and occasionally semi-organize into a threatening confederacy. This is currently the case, with a “great chief” gathering orcs on the steppes, planning “the utter conquest of Thorwal.”           

Evocative graphics introduce the setting.

         Somehow this threat is going to involve a certain captain named Hetman Hyggelik who lived a couple centuries ago. He made a fortune pillaging the “hated slave trader towns of the south.” After a particularly successful expedition, he had a magic sword forged in the Cyclops Islands, then took it with him into the orcish lands, where he and his band were slaughtered. I suspect that his sword is the titular Blade of Destiny, and that it will be needed to fend off the invasion.            

If it was just left sticking out of a dirt mound, someone’s probably taken it by now.

          Either way, very little background is given regarding the party. Your group of six simply arrives in Thorwal seeking fortune and glory.              

Character creation offers some good graphics for each of the classes.

          Character creation is complex enough to tie in knots even an experienced CRPG player. There are 12 classes, which the system calls “archetypes”: jester, hunter, warrior, rogue, Thorwalian, dwarf, warlock, druid, magician, green elf, ice elf, and sylvan elf. (Female versions have slightly different names in the manual, even when spectacularly unnecessary, as in “she-jester,” “she-rogue,” “dwarvess,” and “magicienne.”) Among them are five different magic systems. There are seven positive attributes (courage, wisdom, charisma, dexterity, agility, intuition) rolled on a scale of 8 to 13, seven negative attributes (superstition, acrophobia, claustrophobia, avarice, necrophobia, curiosity, and violent temper) rolled on a scale of 2 to 7.            

Allocating numbers to attributes as they’re rolled.

           There are 52 skills, arranged into seven categories: combat, body, social, lore, craftsmanship, nature, and intuition. I have been jaded by a long string of Paragon games into suspecting that a lot of them will turn out to be useless. My money is on “Dance” and “Carouse,” but I’m also suspicious of “Self Control,” “Streetwise,” “Human Nature,” and “Tactics.” “Ancient Tongues” sounds like a skill that will come in handy exactly once, but on that one occasion it will be pivotal.             

Selecting skills to increase during character creation.

             When creating a character, you can choose the class you want, but if you do, you only get the minimum attributes necessary for that class. The other method, which generally results in higher attributes, is to let the game roll the numbers and you allocate them to the attributes as they arrive. You could get unlucky and end up with worse than minimum statistics, but you can always start over. One positive of the character creation process is that you can take its steps in any order. You can wait until you see what kind of character you have before assigning name and sex, or you can start with those answers and then take whatever you roll.        After spending far too long studying the materials, I went with:              

Female Thorwalian

Male dwarf

Male druid

Female green elf

Female magicienne

Male ice elf

              My analysis was that if Realms is like similar fantasy games, spells will be more important than physical skills, and this configuration gives me the most spell options. I lack only the warlock/witch. I thought they had the smallest selection of spells, many of them sounding more like solutions to puzzles than typical RPG magic (“Witch’s Eye,” “Heal Animal,” “Camouflage,” “Fire’s Bane”). It may turn out that I’ll miss the position for just this reason.               

Choosing my green elf’s starting spell skills.

            My primary angst is over the first two characters. I felt that for role-playing reasons, I ought to have a Thorwalian given the setting. I felt that the second character would need to be more of a rogue, but I didn’t want to leave the party too weak in physical combat, as a rogue would be, and dwarves seem a bit like warrior/rogues. I’m happy to take recommendations, though, since I haven’t gone very far into the game.           

The city of Thorwal.

         Gameplay begins at the Temple of Travia in Thorwal. In Arkania, it is at temples rather than inns where you can manage your party members. Thorwal is a 16 x 32 map with ocean to the south and west and rivers and ponds taking up some of the inner space. The buildings create irregular patterns in a way that goes back to the original Bard’s Tale. Also adapted from that game is a tradition by which nearly every square of building can be entered, although many are houses occupied by offended Thorwalians who immediately tell you to leave. Sometimes, the residents give you a hint. Sometimes, the houses are locked and you have the option to break in.            

This manual conditioned me to expect something else when I encountered a “Thorwalian.”

          There are numerous taverns, inns, inn/tavern combinations, armories, banks, supply shops, temples, and healers. (I bought some standard items like torches and rope at the supply shop.) These seem redundant, but each has its own unique name, and I suspect there will later be quests that require me to visit a particular location. I enjoy some of the location names, including the taverns “Drunken Emperor,” “Boisterous Welsher,” and “Red Morrow.” There’s also a temple called the “Temple of Tsa,” which in the game’s all-caps font makes it sound like it was founded by the one person who respects American airport security. The temples are all named after the names of their gods, which also seem to be the names of the setting’s months.         

I don’t know how well I’m going to sleep tonight.

               The taverns are quite odd. When you enter, you have options to order drinks or talk, but whatever you choose, events have a way of unfolding on their own. For instance, if you order drinks, you’ll probably end up with a clue anyway, but if you choose to just start talking, some bartender will say, “Aren’t you going to order anything?” Anyway, the “leave tavern” option seems to disappear a lot, so you get trapped in a loop of ordering round after round until your party members get drunk. (I guess this is governed by the “Carouse” statistic.) Also, if you have any talent in music, dancing, or acrobatics, you have options to engage in those activities for the amusement of the patrons, and thus have a little money thrown your way.            

I don’t want to know what kind of dancing Bramble was doing.

          There are no combats on the game map, which distinguishes Arkania from most of its predecessors, including Spirit of Adventure. There are occasional random encounters in the street, such as traveling merchants, beggars who ask for a ducat, and a weird repeating encounter where a “small fellow” dances around a “table containing a mass of floral arrangements” and then falls down dead.             

A random event. No, that is totally not “OK.”

             There are a number of unique buildings and oddities among the doorways on the map. These include:             

Three estates with multiple entrances, all blocked by guards who refuse entry. Two are called “otttaskins” and are owned by groups named the Stormriders and the Windrunners. I don’t know what “ottaskin” means; a Google search suggests the game may have invented it.

            Can you just tell me what it is?

            A large monolith at the end of the street that seems to have no entrance.

A post office called the “Beilunk Riders.” It was closed.

Two “embassies,” one from the “Central Empire,” one from the “New Empire,” both closed.

A couple of closed towers.

            Maybe this will become important later.

          A shipbuilder’s where you can have your own ship made for way more money than I have.

An academy of magic where you can purchase potions and get artifacts identified.

                  I thought this harbor scene was particularly well-drawn.

           There are four exits from the city, oddly placed. Only one is at an obvious point at the end of a road at the edge of the map. Two others are found in the harbor and a fourth in a random building in the northwest. Each exit seems to take you to a different option for moving forward on the overland map.               

Each exit takes you to the outdoor map, but to different destinations on it.

            As I mentioned, some of the random denizens offer a bit of intelligence when you open their doors. Everyone seems to be talking about the gathering orcs, and it’s rumored that they’ve sacked a city called Phexcaer, but we also heard a little about other people and locations in the town.

Unfortunately, Arkania seems to have dropped Spirit of Adventure‘s keyword-based dialogue for more traditional dialogue options, some of which are either poorly translated or deliberately nonsensical.            

Dialogue options allow us to insult the innkeeper for no reason.

             During one visit to a tavern, a guard entered to announce that Hetman Tronde Torbensson, ruler of the city, is looking for heroes to take on a dangerous quest. We found our way to the Hetman’s house at the west edge of town. There, Torbensson reiterated the danger posed by the orcs, united under a single chief, amassing in the Upper Bodir Valley.             

The party learns of the main quest.

             Noting that orcs are a superstitious lot, Torbensson suggested that their federation might collapse if a hero showed up wielding Hetman Hygellik’s lost sword, called Grimring. “It is said that the sword put the fear of the gods into the orcs and their shamans or whatever they call their religious leaders,” the Hetman recounted.

The sword is probably buried in Hygellik’s tomb, and the Hetman suggested we start by visiting Hygellik’s last surviving descendant, Isleif Olgardsson, in the city of Felsteyn. He gave us a writ allowing us to take a certain number of weapons from the city’s armory. I always like it when a game has an answer to the common and obvious objection of forcing characters to fund their own adventures when the fate of the world is at stake.             

The Hetman lays on the main quest. I love how my characters can say they have “just one question” when I have no idea what the question is.

            There is one dungeon–the lower levels of an old fortress–accessible from Thorwal. The captain of the guard (or something like that) asked us to investigate the lower levels because someone keeps stealing supplies stored on the upper levels.

              It took me a while to figure out how to light a torch. You can’t just “use” the torch, nor can you use the tinder box. You have to pick up the torch, then right click on the tinder box and “use” it. This is annoyingly undocumented. 

             Coming across a chest.

          Anyway, the first dungeon level had a couple of combats and one chest. I’ll write more about combats in the future, but for now suffice to say that it blends several systems. The screen uses the axonometric 45-degree rotation that feature heavily in British adventure games (Knightlore, Cadaver) and RPGs (HeroQuest, Legend) of the period. Characters move on discrete floor tiles, and action is turn-based, with the player selecting both movement and attack options from a menu. There’s an auto-combat option called “Computer Fight” that puts your players under computer control, with or without magic. Overall, it plays a lot like the Gold Box games, and a “Guard” command (the player stands still until an enemy comes in range, then gets a free attack) particularly points to a Gold Box origin.

           The combat interface.

          I would finally note that the game has a decent automap, with walls, corridors, and doors clearly annotated by color. This helps make up for the fact that it’s hard to see some doors when they’re to the party’s side rather than directly in front of you.

          The automap alerts me to a couple of doors that I missed on my first loop.

          Realms of Arkania is a thick game, meaning it has a lot of little elements that I may forget to talk about if they don’t play a big role in my experience. When starting, it offers basic and advanced modes of gameplay; the primary difference seems to be that the computer controls your skill and spell leveling (and character creation) in basic mode. I’ve been playing on “advanced.” Money is in gold ducats, silver crowns, and copper bits at a 1:10:10 ratio. At temples, you can donate and pray for miracles. There’s a food and drink system by which you “feed” characters by picking up items and clicking on their mouths. You can split the team into two or more groups. An adventurer’s log keeps track of major plot points. When camping, you assign various characters to guard duty for the hours of the day. Wounds, sickness, and poison can be treated with skills as well as spells. Armor and weapons degrade and must occasionally be repaired. You can pocket-pick shopkeepers. If I never mention any of these elements again, it means they weren’t really important.

I thought Spirit of Adventure had a lot of promise, so I’m going to remain optimistic about Realms even though the first few hours have covered a lot of well-trod ground.

Time so far: 5 hours

source http://reposts.ciathyza.com/game-348-realms-of-arkania-blade-of-destiny/