[Sazerac]

Prior to Wizardry 6, the Wizardry games were set in the mythical world of Llylgamyn, a city of wonder, magic, and learning. Wizardry I: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord introduced two notorious NPC's: Trebor the Mad Overlord and his arch-nemesis, the dark wizard Werdna. Your quest was to find the amulet that Werdna had stolen from Trebor and return it to its rightful(?) owner (because Trebor had stolen it as well!)

In Wizardry II, Llylgamyn has taken a turn for the worse as the Staff of Gnilda, divine artifact of protection for the city, has been removed because of the evil rampant in the city. Your quest is to reassemble the ancient armor of the Knight of Diamonds and reclaim the staff, restoring it to its place in the Temple of Gnilda.

Wizardry III: Legacy of Llylgamyn had your characters embark on a quest to retrieve the Orb of Llylgamyn from the Dragoness L'Kbreth. The orb was required to keep the city from being destroyed by elemental forces run amuck. To do this, your characters had to travel both the paths of Good and Evil to regain the Orb.

Wizardry IV: Return of Werdna was a side-game, not really related to the main saga, but was more of a "deathmatch" game. It had little or nothing to do with role-playing as much as it was an action game with RPG elements.

Wizardry V: Heart of the Maelstrom once again returns to Llygamyn. This time, the fabric of reality of the universe is unraveling; the problem being that the elemental forces in the Heart of the Maelstrom, the center of all beingness, are out of control. Your job: to travel into the Maelstrom, retrieve the Gatekeeper (a demigod of sorts who has been lost in the rift), and battle an evil being known as the Sorn who is abetting the rip in reality and thus flooding the world with chaos.

(Wizardry 5 was the first of the DW Bradley Wizardry saga).


From the inside cover of Wizardry 6: Bane of the Cosmic Forge's manual:

"Llylgamyn is not what it once was.

The kingdom has fallen and its people have moved on.

Five generations after the defeat of the Maelstrom a new King was born. So loved was he that the royal family was once again granted merit in the political system of Llylgamyn. Eventually the council decided to dissolve and to restore exclusive rulership royal family.

It was not long for the true colors of the King to shine through. Rumors quickly spread throughout the kingdom of his alliance with demonic beings, and his dabble in the dark arts. His queen was whispered to be a perverse harlot, torturing men of the kingdom for her own pleasure. In an attempt to gain more power, the King joined forces with an unknown wizard. Together they began to wage magical war on other planes of existence. During one of their battles they became aware of an artifact of amazing power.

The Cosmic Forge.

The Cosmic Forge is a magical pen of divine power. No one is sure of it's origin, but it is said then whatever words were written with the pen would we woven into the fabric of the universe, and thus would become reality.

The King and the Wizard managed to obtain the pen, they scripted things so unspeakable that no man can attempt to even imagine the horrors. Fortunately the two soon became jealous of the power that they had discovered, and they engaged each other in an epic battle.

Legends say that the lights of magic could be seen flashing in the windows of the castle, and the very ground shook. Eventually everything fell quiet, and neither the King nor the wizard were seen again.

That was nearly one hundred and twenty years ago. The kingdom is no more, it's name is remembered by very few. No one know what happened to the king, the wizard, or the pen. But now, a group of adventurers is about enter the ancient castle, and all that is about to change...."


Thus your characters set out into the Bane Castle, the remnants of Trebor's ancient fortress from Wizardry I, to reclaim the Bane Pen for the Lords of the Cosmic Circle. It is this Wizardry that first starts the saga from which Wizardry 8 will take its story.

As you solve the mysteries of the storyline, you learn that the King and Queen were anything but happy together; he wanted power and immortality, she was a harlot who delighted in sado-masochistic torture and was a lover of snakes. (Elements of Elyssia from WW here...) Xorphitus, the Wizard, also sought power, and made an allegiance with the Bane King and Queen.

After they obtained the Cosmic Forge, the King used it to script that he would become Immortal. Xorphitus used it to script that he would know all things in the Universe. The Queen used it to script that the "Demon Girl" (Rebecca, the King's illegitimate demonness daughter) would be murdered, and the Wizard's apprentice used it to script that he and the Queen would be lovers.

But the pen carried with it a Bane: that whoever wrote with it outside the Cosmic Circle would suffer its writing as a curse. The curse was such that you got EXACTLY what you wanted...and quite a few things you didn't.

The King wanted Immortality, and became a Vampire. The Wizard wanted to be all-knowing; so he gained all the knowledge of the universe; but since all knowledge is duality, he was split into two beings, both insane and ineffective from that point onward. The Queen's writ came to mean herself (a "demon girl") and she fell on her own knife, killing herself. The hapless apprentice who wanted to be the Queen's lover was turned into a Snake! (Remember the queen loved snakes).

So, having resolved the storyline, you meet with the shades of all the major characters (shades except for the King and Rebecca, who are immortal), and have to make some decisions: Do you believe the Queen's story that the King and Rebecca are evil, or do you believe the King and Rebecca to be the "good guys"?

This determines the multiple endings of the game. To date, there were four documented endings to Bane:

1) Believe the Queen, kill the King and Rebecca, and get the Cosmic Forge.
2) Believe the Queen, kill the King and Rebecca, ignore the Cosmic Forge, kill Rebecca's brother the dragon Bela, and escape in a spaceship.
3) Do not believe the Queen, side with the King and Rebecca, and get the Cosmic Forge
4) Do not believe the Queen, side with the King and Rebecca, ignore the Cosmic Forge, and team up with Rebecca's brother Bela the dragon (escaping in a spaceship).

The next post will document Wizardy 7's storyline, taking it up from this point.

-Sazerac