A fairly bad 1985 fantasy movie by Ridley Scott. It starred Tim Curry as Darkness (excellent), Tom Cruise as Jack (young, fat and flaccid) and Mia Sara as Princess Lily (forgettable). The 007 soundstage burned halfway through filming, which is not so much excuse as portent, but the remainder of the film was shot on whatever locations could be beggged, borrowed, or hacked together. The film is redeemed from itself by Curry's performance as the demonic villian Darkness.

The film has two complete soundtracks. Jerry Goldsmith's original score was removed by studio execs who replaced it with a work by Tangerine Dream. The wisdom of this is readily apparent in hindsight. Bryan Ferry's excellent "Is Your Love Strong Enough" was the main romantic theme.

The tag went something like this: "There can be no Good without Evil. No Love without Hate. No Innocence without Lust. No Light without ME! I ... Am ... Darkness."

The last one chance to keep Infocom's creation alive, Legend was created by a group of former employees of Infocom. Their games captured the same wicked geek creativity that belied many of Infocom's games, as well as the same high respect for the gamer's intelligence which is exactly what put Infocom in the shitter. Some of the best names in adventure gaming are to their credit, such as Eric the Unready, the Spellcasting Series and the Gateway series, based on the Frederick Pohl book series bearing the same name. Their latest creation Wheel of Time is a fantasy-oriented 3D shooter, a complete deviation from their original line, and even though it manages being a more intelligent and interesting variant in that genre, it marks a true end to commercial interactive fiction.

When I was in sixth grade we had HBO for free (it was already hooked up to the house we rented.) We had never had pay channels before, and could not seem to turn off the set, even if we had seen the movie more than ten times. Legend was one of those movies I watched over and over. I was in love with the sets, thought Lily (played by Mia Sara) was the epitome of grace and beauty and was particularly struck by the fact that she wore no visible eye make-up. I had a crush on Jack (Tom Cruise), even though his teeth were enormous. He looked like he was fifteen. I thought the unicorns were really amazing, but I wouldn’t admit it to anyone, because by that time unicorns were not supposed to be cool any more.

I watched this again recently with my daughter and husband (he fell asleep and she wandered off to play with blocks). I was again struck by the sets, which were really beautiful and fanciful. But I had forgotten so many things. Like how in the beginning there are these outdoor scenes where Jack and Lily are traipsing through the forest and the air is filled with particles. I guess allergies would have been hell back then. I noticed that the unicorns’ horns bounce around like they are strapped on with elastic. I noted how the director managed to get Jack half-dressed and squatting in many of many of the shots, as my husband put it, “Sheesh, enough with the thighs already”. In the scene where Lily dances for Darkness she is dressed as the ultimate Goth girl. I remember thinking the dance scene was my favorite, good girl gone bad, with her bony chest showing right down to the navel.

Darkness couldn’t really prevail without the horn of the female unicorn because she had the power of creation. Darkness even tried to get married, since he was not complete without a bride. But in the end he gets defeated by giant pie plates and sunlight, as well as a sword fight, complete with lots and lots of thigh action.

I would agree that this movie was kind of bad, but in the best way. If you are a twelve-year-old girl, Tim Curry fan, thigh aficionado or insomniac, this is definitely the movie for you.

A classic computer game primarily aimed at the 16-bit formats - the Atari ST and Commodore Amiga. Was also available on a whole host of other formats though, PC included. Published (written?) by Mindscape.

The game was an isometric exploration-based RPG. There were 4 character classes - Beserker, Troubador, Assassin, Runemaster. Translation: Fighter, Bard, Thief, Wizard.

The most notable aspect of the game was the spell system. There were spell sub-components like missile, area, thrall, damage, surround, paralyze, teleport, disrupt, shield(?) and dispel(?) - not too sure about the names of those last two, but those were certainly the effects. Providing you had the reagents - in this case herbs - you could combine these into very long chains.

A simple spell might be missile-damage, which would fire a ball of damage at a target. Equally surround-thrall would temporarily convert anyone in the adjacent 8 squares to the caster to your side. surround-missile-damage-surround-missile-thrall, a more complex spell, would fire 8 damaging missiles around the caster, and if any of those struck an enemy, 8 thralling missiles would come from the enemy struck by the initial missiles. Extremely long chains were possible, and later in the game spells could be constructed to take down everyone on screen's defences, paralyze them and do them extreme damage (disrupt).

Overall this was rather an inspired title.

Legend is the first, and most popular, book from David Gemmell the famous British heroic fantasy author.

Legend was first published in 1986 by Del Rey Ballantine Books. It was republished in 1993 by Orbit.

Legend is the first of Gemmel's long series of Drenai books. These are all set in the land of the Drenai or it's surrounding countries.

An extremely brief synopsis of Legend is that there is large Nadir army amassing to the North. The only way they can invade Drenai lands is through the great fortress of Dros Delnoch. This is guarded by a small, weak army of soldiers led by the legendary Druss the axeman.

Unfortunately Druss is far past his prime and is unable to perform the feats that he once could and that everbody believes he still can. This makes for a very interesting storyline in which Druss continually fights against his old age and fatigue. This is often said to represent Gemmell's own struggle against cancer

The main character of Legend is Rek. He is a simple man with, he believes, nothing special about him. But as the story progresses, his past becomes revealed.

Legend is filled with many, many other characters such as the warrior priests - The Thirty and Rek's main love interest - Rowena.

This writeup refers to the Legend computer game by Mindscape, which I believe was also known as The Four Crystals of Trazere, or Empire. The name most widely used, I believe, is Legend.

The basic premise was that Evil had overtaken the land of Trazere and sent hordes of bloodthirsty monsters charging across the place in search of loot. To stop them, four heroic adventurers were summoned to uncover why and destroy it. They then charged around what was conservatively described as 40 hours' game time of charging around isometric dungeons killing monsters and solving puzzles. Notice I said conservatively described as 40 hours. The amount of playing hours this game offered was way above that, IMO. Or maybe I just sucked at it.

These heroes came from one of each of the four cardinal compass points, conveniently, and were as follows:

  • The Berserker, a bare-chested barbarian walloper from the North with a big axe. He could fly into a rage similar to the barbarian rage in Dungeons & Dragons except with no fatigue afterwards, and smear everything in his (or indeed her) path.
  • The Troubadour, a wandering minstrel type from the West who could sing magically-imbued "bardish melodies" which pumped your team. He was also a passable fighter himself.
  • The Assassin, a martial artist from the East who could hide in the shadows and backstab for quad damage.
  • The Runemaster, a wizardly type from the South, who used a really quite inventive spell system, as is described here:
  • Although WyldWind did a pretty good job as it is in describing the spell system, there were, in fact, 16 runes, twelve of which comprised effects: Damage, Healing, Antimage (not shield), Dispel, Paralysis, Speed, Thrall, Make Weapon (which gave you a high-powered magical weapon. Some enemies could only be damaged by this,) Teleport, Regeneration (continuous healing), Disrupt, and Vivify (resurrection). Then there were four separate "direction" runes, which worked by moving the "cursor," so to speak, on the room grid to the desired area of effect:

  • Forward - This shifted to one square in the direction the Runemaster was facing.
  • Missile - Click and shoot.
  • Surround - This split the "cursor" into eight, so to speak, one in each direction around where it was. Hence, missile-surround-paralysis would paralyse everything around the target but not the target itself.
  • Continuous - A sparkly cloud would inhabit the target square and repeat its effect(s) every few seconds.
  • So, you could, if you truly wanted to pwn everything in sight, mix something along the lines of antimage surround dispel paralyse continuous disrupt missile dispel paralyse continuous disrupt surround dispel paralyse continuous disrupt missile dispel paralyse continuous disrupt which left nothing but the Runemaster standing, assuming that the room wasn't shaped in such a way that he'd be hit by his own missiles.

    The other point of note about this rather inventive game was the roaming hordes of evil that would spawn every midnight. These came in eight different flavours, signified by their banners, depending on how tough they were and of what they were composed:

  • Eagle - A rather humdrum bunch of orcs and kobolds.
  • Snake - More of the same, but also with more magic-users.
  • Evil Eye - Ratmen. Yep, humanoid rats.
  • Lightning flash - Soldiers and similar. The cloaked and plate-mailed knights were pretty nasty.
  • Claw - Humanoid goat-things and hairless worgs. This was quite a tough banner.
  • Crescent moon - This banner was heavy on magic-using monsters. It involved snakelike slithery creatures, among other things.
  • Horned helm - A REALLY tough banner, it had small dragons and lots of the knights from the lightning flash banner.
  • Skull - The toughest banner. It was a horde of skeletons with large malformed demon things that could only be hurt by the Mystic Weapon rune.
  • The banners, or, as I named them, "hot air balloons" since on the map they resembled squashed red blimps rather, also held a way to lose the game without being killed. If every location on the map was taken over by evil, you would lose.

    Legend spawned a sequel, named Worlds of Legend which was in turn subtitled Son of the Empire. This was basically more of the same, but with a distinct Oriental feel to it (place names like Iyoto, Wei-Sung, Guidato and Yinn instead of Treihadwyl, Zorendorf, Hightower and Martindale.) I believe that they may well have planned to have another three Legend games, since the link between the first one and Worlds of Legend was the Assassin character. I for one would have liked to see the Runemaster's home land, which I presume could have had an Arabic feel to it.

    Therefore, in conclusion, if you can get your hands on a copy of Legend one way or another, do so. Not only was the game, as WyldWynd has said above, quite inspired, but it was also bloody enormous! Highly recommended, even if it is 13 years old.

    Legend
    by Marie Lu
    SPEAK/Penguin books, 2011


    Legend is the first in a young adult dystopian future trilogy. If this sounds familiar... well yes. It is very familiar. However, it is quite enjoyable if you want to read yet another story about orphaned teenagers fighting against the tyrannical government.

    Day is a small-time, independent guerilla -- doing his best to harass the government by vandalizing military vehicles and picking the pockets of police and soldiers. Despite being only moderately successful, he is one of the major thorns left in the Republic's side, as they have been fairly successful in eliminating rebellion amongst the citizens. Day and his orphan sidekick are checking up on Day's family one day when the Plague Patrol move through their neighborhood, checking the residents for infection. They wait for the patrol to pass -- but they don't. They spend an inordinate amount of time checking Day's family, and when they finally finish they mark the door -- not with the red X of a quarantined home, but with a red asterisk. Day doesn't know what this means, but it can't be good.

    June, on the other hand, is one of the Republic's best and brightest -- the only one to ever score a perfect 1500 on the citizen's Trial. She is in training to be a military leader, and while she does tend to get in trouble a lot everyone knows that she is one of the best students the Republic has -- physically, mentally, and in all-around ability. Her parents died when she was very young, and she is being raised by her older brother. He hints that he has something important to tell her, but that same day he is put out of commission by a mysterious accident.

    June is given the top-priority mission of catching (or killing) Day, and when they finally meet up they find that they have important information to share about the current government and its propaganda. Saying much more would involve spoilers.

    Overall, this is a good read. It is a fast-moving and entertaining book, without a lot of depth, but it is not lacking in any area either. One of the things that makes Legend worth reading is that it is just like The Hunger Games or Uglies/Pretties/Specials -- except without the Games or the Pretties. It is a straightforward story without any weird gimmicks (other than being set in a dystopian future America, of course) that keeps the reader engaged just on the basis of having likable characters and lots of adventure.

    Legend is the first book in a trilogy. The next book is Prodigy, and the final book is Champion.


    SBN-10: 014242207X
    ISBN-13: 978-0142422076
    Accelerated Reading level: 4.8

    Leg"end (?), n. [OE. legende, OF. legende, F. l'egende, LL. legenda, fr. L. legendus to be read, fr. legere to read, gather; akin to Gr. to gather, speak. Cf. Collect, Dialogue, Lesson, Logic.]

    1.

    That which is appointed to be read; especially, a chronicle or register of the lives of saints, formerly read at matins, and in the refectories of religious houses.

    2.

    A story respecting saints; especially, one of a marvelous nature.

    Addison.

    3.

    Any wonderful story coming down from the past, but not verifiable by historical record; a myth; a fable.

    And in this legend all that glorious deed. Read, whilst you arm you. Fairfax.

    4.

    An inscription, motto, or title, esp. one surrounding the field in a medal or coin, or placed upon an heraldic shield or beneath an engraving or illustration.

    Golden legend. See under Golden.

     

    © Webster 1913.


    Leg"end, v. t.

    To tell or narrate, as a legend.

    Bp. Hall.

     

    © Webster 1913.

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