Serpent Isle Plot Questions

[Knight Captain]

I've been digging a bit further into the specifics of SI's plot, and wanted to throw out a few questions.

1) Where was Selina's house? What was her magical specialty?

2) If Stefano was awarded Ensorcio's house, where was the lab?

3) What happened to Teldrono (NPC169), the other mage in the Mountains of Freedom? He's the one that turns into a bear and then flees when beaten.

4) What was exchanged for the pumpkin that Iolo has after the storm? Torches? Why isn't the pumpkin on the list of items?

5) Who are those freshly-dead bodies in Spinebreaker at the end of the trapped hallways? They're not Batlin's main goons, so where is he getting all this help?

6) Why don't any of those bodies or of the main goons have fur cloaks, hats, or boots? Or Batlin, for that matter? Were they in the city for that long?

7) Was Andrio intended to join the party? In the DOS cheat menu the option to gather companions adds him since he's NPC4.

8) Why don't the Goblins at Fawn Tower have the antique armor and swamp boots on them before they die? They have them on their corpses afterward.

9) Why doesn't the Black Sword's gem glow when there are three souls inside it?

10) How does Hazard suddenly kill off 2/3 of the Gwani in one attack?

11) What drove Draygan from simple greed to murderous insanity?

12) Who were his two goons and why did he keep them?

13) What's the pre-arrival chronology of SI?
Lands of Danger and Despair, with the two castles. Goblins eat Beatrix's corpse.
Ophidian culture arises after that, lasts centuries. They don't mention Goblins?
Sosarians arrive, conquer the Goblin village where Monitor was.

14) When did the Gargoyles take over Furnace? Were they connected to the Gargoyles from U6?

15) Why weren't the two old castles touched at all for centuries?

[Gotcha!]

Pfew, those are some questions. I think you'd best ask those to mr. Garriott himself.
But hey, don't mind me trying to fill some gaps.

1) Probably devs either forgot to add that house or didn't deem it important enough since Selina's never in Moonshade anyway. What her specialty was is anyone's guess.

2) Maybe his stuff was taken by Fedabiblio.

3) I'm guessing there's a part of the Mountains that the player never sees and where he fled to. Those ruddy rocks need to grow somewhere. You can only find a few in a crate, not impressive.

4) -

5) Batlin has more goons, as proven in Shamino's Castle. (Diary and henchmen.) Perhaps Brunt and Deadeye are Batlin's right hands while they have their own men as well.
So I believe the dead bodies we see are just Brunt/Deadeye men that fell to ancient traps.

6) Maybe they stored their clothes somewhere. Afterall, it's warm inside these mountains.

7) I feel whoever made that DOS cheat menu had made a mistake in it, incorrectly assuming the Avatar is npc 1, not 0. So it'd add Shamino, Iolo and Dupre (2, 3 and 4, which of course should have been 1, 2 and 3) to your party.
But who knows.

8) I am 100% sure the goblins didn't have this armour and swampboots in the original game, since I never had more than 1 pair of swampboots during my playthroughs. I never quite understood why Exult changed this, but I welcomed it. Swamp boots rock.

9) Arcadion knows that one. )

10) I feel a lot of time has passed after Batlin dies, since, well, so much happened once you return to the world of the living. A pity the game doesn't really reflect this, since you can teleport to anywhere in an instant.
They should have made the Avatar black out once the banes take over.
So Hazard had been gradually killing them while you were visiting Batlin.

11) Some people are simply like that.

12) He needs them to keep an eye on Berryl while he sleeps. And, well, he's not the kind of guy who does any work himself, so that's also what they're for I guess.

13) -

14) Since Britannia, Earth and Pagan all have humans living there I guess gargoyles might appear in more worlds as well.
Or they all came from that eerie red portal near Fawn and found refuge in Furnace. I can't recall Zhelkas giving any hint about how long they've been there. Does he?

15) One's protected by an insane undead/bone dragon and people might know its terrifying history, the other is firmly locked down and trapped.
Maybe people tried getting in, succeeded, were never seen again and other people just decided to stay away from these places.

[Knight Captain]

16) What was with the black Fellowship Medallion in the Goblin Camp?

[Gotcha!]

16) Perhaps one of the goblin raiding parties snatched one of Batlin's men (unlikely) or one of Leon's followers (more likely).

Sure, the sprite looks different from the ones in The Black Gate, but I don't hold any value to that: The sprite might just have been improved by the devs or it might have been crafted from a different material, since you don't see that blueish silvery metal anywhere on Serpent Isle. To my knowledge anyway.

So maybe Batlin gave Leon a sketch of how the medallion should look so Leon's group could carve new ones for their new members.
The one in the goblin camp is coloured a bit like a rock, grey, so maybe they used ordinary rocks.

[Knight Captain]

17) How does Selina already have a key to the depths of Spinebreaker before she or Batlin get there? Does that Blink ring have more power than stated?

[Gotcha!]

17) You mean that key she has when you meet her? Never knew it fits on a lock in Spinebreaker.

Anyway, I get the feeling that Selina could pretty much teleport anywhere with that ring before the storms became too strong, so maybe she did some exploring of the mountains.
Perhaps even sent there by Batlin before he arrived on the island.
No idea, just guessing here.

(A question of mine: Has anyone ever used that blink ring or the blink spell succesfully?)

[Dominus]

17. the key could be from anywhere. Having a key does not mean that you got it from the lock it fits. She could have found it on a dead body of someone who found it on a dead body of someone who found it.... found it... who found it on the dead body of the guy who locked the door, ran outside, slipped, hit his head and died...

[Knight Captain]

Frigidazzi talks of her travels to the north. Maybe she and Selina / Celennia went together?

Plot-wise the Blink spell doesn't work because of the growing Imbalance.

[Gotcha!]

Selina traveling with Frigidazzi makes sense to me. Probably snatched that key from some ruin at some point. (Or from some poor guy who slipped and hit his head.
I bet Selina already had contact with Batlin before this though, since how else would she know to hold on to that key? Makes me think she befriended Frigidazzi in order to use her.

[agentorangeguy]

Didn't one of the npcs (forest master? or the woman?) talk about how the Orb of Elerion or whatever it was might have warped Draygan's mind even more? That would be my guess as to why he went on a murderous rampage.

The castles of white dragon and shamino were somehow hexed I think by the spirits inside, both of them vengeful. Seems like there was a book that mentioned it, or scroll maybe... but that's just off the top of my head. Pretty sure it was mentioned that the goblins stayed clear of both castles because of the ghosts there.

Wasn't Ensorcio in cahoots with the vampire guy... Vasculio? Maybe they used the same lab. They destroyed Vasculio's house and then banished Ensorcio. One would assume they would do their experiments outside of town (Vasculio's house was out in the boonies a bit I think) and not in the middle of town which would draw more attention.

Teldrono... I forget if Stefano said anything about him or not, but I believe he does. I remember in the original game you'd fight him and if you killed him, he'd turn into a chicken and run thru the portal. Interestingly enough, it would perma change Ensorcio into a chicken too (they used the same shape). That happened in my game all the time, not sure about anyone else. I think someone in the game said that people mined stoneheart in there so some of them were there on their own volition.

Zelkhas... didn't he know something about the Avatar, and the False Prophet? it's possible they also were on Serpents Isle during the big cataclysms that split Sosaria into the diff continents after Mondain.

[Gotcha!]

@agentorangeguy: Haha, I had to laugh about the Ensorcio turning into a chicken bit.
My younger brother had this problem when he played the game eons ago, while I never did in countless playthroughs. We both wondered what was up with that.

[Knight Captain]

I recall that SI polymorphed the shape to another shape rather than the NPC. Exult implements this the way it was intended to work, so this bug does not occur with Ensorcio.

It would be interesting to check by teleporting away from the antechamber ambush if the other Gargoyles are also changed if Palos is, in the original game. That would explain why they reset those NPCs on death, and might explain why Exult does not.

[Alexander]

6) Why don't any of those bodies or of the main goons have fur cloaks, hats, or boots? Or Batlin, for that matter? Were they in the city for that long?

There are those potions you can drink (black and blue, I believe) that protect you from the extreme cold. Given Batlin's skills with magic, I would guess he brought a few with him.

9) Why doesn't the Black Sword's gem glow when there are three souls inside it?

The game's usecode has three different Black Sword portraits, presumably for when the souls are inside it. You can even find these at the Ultima Codex wiki. It looks a lot like this was a cut plot element.

10) How does Hazard suddenly kill off 2/3 of the Gwani in one attack?

I remember finding a crate full of glass swords when entering his hideout, so I always suspected he killed them with glass swords. It's never outright stated in-game, but I just kind of put 2 + 2 together.

12) I remember this.

This one is answered in the game itself, when talking to Draygan:

"I need not bore thee with the details of how I learned of this power. Suffice it to say that I cannot die. Thou wouldst do well to consider that a warning. Do not think of stealing my gold, for it is thee who shall lose thy life. I cannot die because I am destined to become wealthy. Hurd and Ivor work the mines night and day. Beryl cooks and cleans. They are good workers. They shall make me wealthy."

So their names are Hurd and Ivor, and it's implied he has threatened/intimidated them into being essentially slave labor for him, much like Beryl.

I remember when killing him, they never seemed to attack me (unless they got in the way by accident), so I doubt they are meant to be devoted to him. And no matter what, they just kept repeating the same barks: "I am not a spy", and "I'm no thief!".

I have no idea which one is which in-game, one has the Ruggs/Templar character sprite, the other the Flicken character sprite.

If this helps, I was able to find Hurd is character #157, and Ivor is character #158.

[Knight Captain]

18) Why does the temple with the Magic Lens have a sign that says Ophidian Vase? Is that how they referred to themselves? It'd be like finding a German sign calling themselves Allemands.

19) Why is there a White Wand of Lift in the same temple?

[Knight Captain]

20) Why does Kylista sleep inside a locked room in the Temple when her bedchamber where the magic armour appears is in another building to the west?

[Knight Captain]

The eggs for Bloodmoss south of Moonshade are monster eggs, set to hatch into combat.

[agentorangeguy]

20 - sounds like a wrong coordinate for her schedule. I noticed in U6 some of the sleep schedules were the same... some guy in Moonglow sleeping in what looks to be an armory when there was an emtpy house to the south of him

I believe in both BG and SI any eggs that spawned reagents, food, ores, random objects were always set to combat by default, because the object was inanimate and didn't do anything anyway

[Knight Captain]

The downside is that prevents more of the item from appearing. Some SI eggs have some logic behind them, so I may do that here.

[Blu3vib3]

13) What's the pre-arrival chronology of SI?
Lands of Danger and Despair, with the two castles. Goblins eat Beatrix's corpse.
Ophidian culture arises after that, lasts centuries. They don't mention Goblins?
Sosarians arrive, conquer the Goblin village where Monitor was.

It doesn't make things any less confusing, but if you check Torrissio's dialogue, he mentions that his family line goes back to the age of Two Kings, which apparently ended with a war against the daemons (gargoyles?) and not the goblins.

[agentorangeguy]

That is an interesting question.....

Can't remember anything mentioned about goblins and ophidians other than the goblins inhabiting Monitor which were built upon the ruins. It seems that maybe the ophidians were more military minded and would have been able to trounce any massive goblin threat. Also, weren't the goblins pretty much scattered until the Knight Helm, which came after the ophidians?

[agentorangeguy]

http://ultima.wikia.com/wiki/Ophidians

So basically what I gather from that, once Shamino was taken from the land and the white dragon king went crazy, the Goblins pretty much ruled the land by default... until the Great Earth Serpent united the survivors whom became the Ophidians. It's possible the goblins were confined to their mountainous areas since the Ophidians (especially Order) were very military minded and would have easily crushed the goblins who weren't united from what I gather. Once the imbalance wars happened and Order defeated Chaos, then eventually left for the void, the goblins once again had free reign of what was left , until the emigration of people from Moon, Two Montors, and Fawn escaping the Virtues and Lord British's rule.

[Knight Captain]

21) In Fawn, where is the key to the Serpent Gate?
22) Where is the key to the Fawn treasure room?
23) Aside from Jendon's bedroom, are there any other hidden areas in Fawn?

[Knight Captain]

24) Why is the bed for the vision of Cantra blue, but the one in the actual castle red?

[Gotcha!]

21) I don't recall which house it resides in, but it's there. Surely you have found it before?
22) You confuse me. Yelinda has it of course. Or are you talking about another treasure room?
23) Delin's basement. Other than that, nope.
24) It's bathed in blood once you get there! No, seriously, probably just a sloppy oversight. Nice catch though!

[Knight Captain]

21) Yes. Yelinda's bedroom dresser.