Journey to Jotunheim

Journey to Jotunheim
◄Eamon adventure #148►
Author	Tom Zuchowski
Released	October 1987
Revised	18 January 1995
EAG number	148
EDX number	05-03
EDX set	The Thomas Zuchowski Adventures
Native format	Apple DOS 3.3
Files	Eamon 148 - Journey to Jotunheim.dsk Eamon 148 - Journey to Jotunheim (ProDOS).dsk

Journey to Jotunheim is an Eamon adventure written by Tom Zuchowski.

Premise

From the introduction:

It has been many months since you have seen home.

Ever and again had you heard tales of the wonders of the Northern lands. And so it was in the spring that you took passage on a packet north-bound for new places that you have never seen.

But the Northern Sea is rough at best, and its worst is very bad, indeed. Your ship was beset by a great grandfather of a storm that drove you far north of the common sea-lanes, finally driving the ship hard upon the rocks of a lee shore.

You have little memory of the struggle in the pounding surf; at length, you alone attained the rugged shore, the only survivor of the disaster.

And now you find yourself in a cold, desolate country, where the people are hard, the diversions few. And the only wonder that you have seen is a rare cold, flickering light in the northern sky, sometimes in the dark of the night. The locals say the light comes from the Valkyrior as they choose the valiant to serve Odin at Ragnarok, when he battles the great wolf Fenris on the Final Day.

And so, having a high opinion of your own valiancy, and liking the sound of this battle with the wolf, you continue north. Besides, there's little else to do in this frozen wasteland."

It might have been better if you had inquired further about such things as Valkyries before you set out...

Author's notes

Zuchowski follows his introduction with some notes for the player:

Welcome to the world of the Norse sagas!

This adventure is quite a lot different from the ordinary Eamon. It decidedly is not a member of the "Hack & Slash" variety of adventure.

What I have attempted to do here is to present some Norse mythology in Eamon format. Unfortunately, the result came out more like an interactive novel than a regular text adventure.

It is a very small dungeon. This was on purpose; even so, the complexity that was involved in keeping 90-odd special effects properly interacting with one another nearly overwhelmed me.

Much of my programming energy in Eamon is spent on a special feature unique to that adventure. In Thror's Ring, I fixed most of the V6.0 MAIN PGM flaws. Dolni Keep had the "comments" feature.

The "gimmick" in this particular Eamon is the program's vocabulary. You will find that it will understand actions on most everything that you can see, and will often know more than one name for a given object. Try it and see for yourself!

Part of this "gimmick" is that there is nothing "hidden" to be found by the LOOK command. The things that must be found must be deduced from the text.

Special Commands:

• LOOK: prints room description only
• EXAMINE: must be used to examine things
• INVENTORY: also gives the state of your wounds
• INVENTORY (MONSTER): lists his stuff
• VERBOSE: always print the room description
• BRIEF: normal Eamon 1-time room description
• REQUEST: lets you get artifacts from monsters (REQUEST A FROM M)
• TELL: allows you to inform others about things (TELL M ABOUT A)
• POWER: has no harmful effects
• RESUME: resumes a saved game

Don't be too quick to hit the reset key — things are not always what they seem here. However, if it says "Insert the Eamon Master Diskette", you have had it.

If a companion stops you from an action that he thinks unwise, he will generally do it only one time. You are thereafter free to do what you will.

The program will always accept shortened commands and artifacts. I recommend that you use the left end of the word rather than the right end, as some routines only check for LEFT$ abbreviations.

Massive changes were required to convert this adventure to ProDOS. Among other changes, the files EAMON.ROOM.NAME & EAMON.ROOMS were combined into a single file named EAMON.P.ROOMS.

Additional files are available on the DOS 3.3 version of this adventure that include a TEXT.FILE editor & a variable listing.

If this adventure whets your interest in Norse mythology, I recommend Bulfinch's Mythology for further information. It was my primary source of information.

I also heartily recommend The Roaring Trumpet, a novella by L. Sprague de Camp and Fletcher Pratt, which can be found in their books The Incompleat Enchanter and The Compleat Enchanter. It was this novella that inspired me to write this Eamon adventure.

Special thanks to Pat Hurst for his very valuable assistance in program and plot debugging.

If you have any comments or complaints, I would welcome your correspondence.

Tom Zuchowski
7625 Hawkhaven Dr.
Clemmons, NC 27012

And now the saga begins...

Walkthrough

⚠️ A walkthrough is needed for this adventure.

⚠️ A map is needed for this adventure.

External links

• Eamon Adventurer's Guild Library Master List
• The Interactive Fiction Database: Journey to Jotunheim
• Interactive Fiction Reviews: Journey to Jotunheim