Walking the Sacred Way

Players who have completed the Vulcanverse usually tell me that they made dozens of pages of notes on all the quests. That's not surprising considering there are over 6100 sections in the whole series; I reckon that counts as a true epic. In a CRPG you'd have a quest log that automatically updated as you played. The equivalent in Vulcanverse are the companions and mentors who will nudge you in the right direction based on the titles, items and codewords you've acquired.

The snag is that you might be focused on one quest when the companion decides to give you a clue about another. So then it's back to the notebook. And not everyone likes taking copious notes (me, for one) so I got to thinking that a Guide to the Vulcanverse might be a handy adjunct to the series.

But how to do it? In an app I could easily hide spoilers. It's not that hard in a Kindle book either, where every clue could have its own page so you only see as much as you want. Here's one way it might work -- and be warned there are spoilers ahead.

Your brother's story

A tragic, multi-book quest concerns the death of your brother and your subsequent hunt for vengeance. The quest is tracked by three codewords: Ostrich, Quibble and Quad. The first of those triggers the quest, and the last means you have successfully completed it. This quest is only open to worshippers of Ares.

A death on the road

In the deserts of Notus (The Hammer of the Sun), you cross paths with a stranger whose face is obscured by a cloth. Later, after his death, unwinding the cloth from his face, you discover to your horror that he was your own brother. As his jaw gapes open, you realize he did not speak because someone had cut out his tongue.

The codeword Ostrich tracks your guilt at your brother's death and your vow to find the person who mutilated him. You are now a grieving sibling on a quest for justice. There are multiple circumstances that reflect your trauma and your thirst for vengeance:

• The Seer's Advice (The Hammer of the Sun): When you speak to the seer Antiphantes, he questions your responsibility for the death, but advises that before answering that, you must "find the one who cut out your brother’s tongue".
• The Furies (The Houses of the Dead): If you venture into the abyssal prisons of Tartarus where the Furies (the winged goddesses of retribution) nest and punish the wicked, the game checks if you possess Ostrich but do not yet have Quad. Since you are carrying the burden of guilt, this alters your encounter with them.
• Counseling the Dead (Workshop of the Gods): You can speak with the weary authority of someone who intimately knows grief and suffering. It grants you a bonus to your CHARM roll when trying to convince a despairing shade to cross over rather than fade into nothingness.
• Homecoming (Workshop of the Gods): The Ostrich codeword is checked when you return home (if you began your adventures in Book 5, in which case you'll have the codeword Reverie). Your sisters mournfully break the news that your brother was found dead by the roadside, mistakenly believing that "robbers stabbed him through the heart".

The hunt for the mutilator

In the realm of Boreas (The Pillars of the Sky) you encounter two men holding an amulet that belonged to your brother. When you threaten them, one of them breaks and confesses that he was given the amulet by a Halizon named Belus, a man with a purple tattoo of a crow's beak across his face. This news awards you the codeword Quibble. You have identified the man who mutilated your brother and you now have a specific target to hunt down in the Borean mountains. 

Having the codeword Quibble opens up specific avenues of investigation in the Halizon stronghold. For example, it allows you to make discreet enquiries about the crow-tattooed Halizon, leading a loquacious slave to inform you that the vicious Belus hangs out at the Inn of Prokoptas.

Vengeance is yours

When you finally confront Belus, he reveals a bitter truth: your brother was actually a highwayman who robbed travellers alongside him on the western road. Belus cut out his tongue so he wouldn't reveal the magic password to a hidden door where they stashed their loot. In a fight to the death, you cut Belus down and leave him choking on his own blood. Upon his death, you gain the codeword Quad. Your quest is complete and your brother's soul can rest easy.

The codeword Quad acts primarily as a resolution filter to turn off the ongoing vengeance-based encounters:

• Bypassing the Furies: As noted above, encounters like the Furies in The Houses of the Dead explicitly check if you have Ostrich and do not have Quad. Having Quad signifies your guilt has been expiated, meaning the Furies no longer pursue you.
• Family Reunion (Workshop of the Gods): As mentioned before, if you return to your childhood home in Vulcan City your sisters mournfully break the news to you that your brother was found murdered in Notus with his tongue cut out. If you possess the codeword Quad you can comfort your family with the knowledge that you have already tracked down Belus and exacted retribution.

You can see how a full guide to all the quests, NPCs, and items could easily fill a book. I should have written it at the same time as Jamie and I were working on the books. (Hindsight is a wonderful thing.) On the other hand, I now have NotebookLM, which makes sorting through all the references a lot easier and a lot more fun than it used to be with a simple Word search.

This is a good time to own up to a few errata from the Vulcanverse books namely:

The Houses of the Dead 182 should have the two initial codeword filters the other way round, ie:

• "If you have the codeword Negate ► 656 immediately. If not, read on. If you have the codeword Newhouse or Nimbus ► 343 immediately. If not, read on."

The Houses of the Dead 629 should begin as follows:

• If you have the codeword Nought or Nervous or Nefarious ► 587 immediately. If not, read on.

The Hammer of the Sun 474 should include this line, which should be deleted from section 6:

• Note the knotted rope on your list of possessions.

Thanks to the anonymous reader who spotted those. A much bigger howler is in Workshop of the Gods, where one of the endings couldn't be reached. Teófilo Hurtado, who has surely walked the Sacred Way many times, pointed out the problem. It requires a slight amendment to Workshop of the Gods 973, the options for which should read:

Make a STRENGTH roll at difficulty 16 to endure her punishing onslaught.

Success  ► 458 if you have the codeword Rhombus, and ► 1531 if not.

Failure  ► 385

Get a complete list of Vulcanverse errata here.