The Saga opens
with a cloaked and masked figure aiming a ballista at a dragon that is being
ridden by an orc. The figure fires the
ballista, killing the dragon. By the time
the figure arrives where the dragon crashed to the ground, the rider is gone but a trail of viscous blood and footprints
in the sand make tracking easy. When the
two clash, it comes as no surprise that the cloaked and masked figure is a
woman; she is also an elf. After an
overlong fight, Nemyt (Danielle Chuchran) the elf bounty hunter kills the orc but is cursed in the
process; the mark of the shadow appears on her wrist.
Meanwhlie, Keltus
the Wanderer, a cleric in the service of the Prophetess, has tracked down a
dwarf, who is armed with an arquebus or two.
After subduing the dwarf, Keltus demands information on the growing
shadow threat. The dwarf is hardly
helpful but Keltus leaves with one of the dwarf’s arms; it has the mark of the
shadow on the wrist.
Elsewhere, Kullimon
the Orc berates the horde for attacking a human settlement which will trigger
reprisals. The horde doesn’t care. They have been seduced by the shadow and
Kullimon is deposed and left to die.
Arriving in a
frontier town, Nemyt seeks to get her bounty for the orc head and also reveals
the marking she got while taking him down.
She is immediately arrested – with some resistance – and tossed in a
dungeon. Keltus arrives moments later
and demands that the elf be released to his custody. It is not a happy alliance. En route to investigate a lead concerning the shadow, the pair
discovers Kullimon the Black crucified among a litter of corpses (the orcs who
were loyal to him). Kullimon reveals the
treachery of his horde and that they are allied with the shadow. It is an even less happy alliance that
follows when Keltus releases Kullimon.
The acting is
surprisingly good for a B-movie, especially being fantasy. The characters aren’t quite what one expects
from the races. Nemyt the elf has a
habit of spitting and her personality is all edges and hostility. It turns out that she is a survivor of an elf
clan that was slaughtered by orcs when she was a child and thus she has no
family. Also, she didn’t have a
bow. What kind of elf doesn’t have a
bow? And what about that ballista from
the beginning? She lugged that thing
into position then just left it? She
wields a peculiar saber/scimitar thing.
Keltus is a cleric to a barely explained goddess. She seems to be lawful neutral since he is
blindly obedient and yet is willing to sacrifice allies for the quest. I did like the cinematic way his communing
was done; he would find himself in a desert landscape with the goddess standing
before him, wearing a ridiculously long scarf-like thing that swirled in the wind. When she spoke, her mouth did not move. Yeah, that was really well done. On the other hand, for a cleric, he didn’t seem
to have much in the way of magic. After
a fight where he was wounded, he washed and bandaged his wound but didn’t use a
healing spell. In fact, his only spell
seemed to be Commune with Deity.
Kullimon reminded me of a Klingon in the Next Generation. You see, orcs are noble warriors, not
murderers and raiders. Oh, right. Kullimon was wise and loyal and immune to the
charms of the shadow. Kullimon never had
any of the inner turmoil that Nemyt and Keltus suffer. He is a rock, an orc of high moral standing
and clear convictions. Not at all what
you expect from an orc.
For a low budget
film, the production is quite good. The
make-up is first rate. The orcs were
almost on par with Lord of the Rings.
There was some minotaur-ogre thing that was cheesy but the rest was
quite good. The battles were a bit too
choreographed and lasted longer than they should. In her opening fight, Nemyt must have been
kicked, punched, or bludgeoned in the face 5 times.
The plot is
boilerplate stuff. There is a scheme to
bring the god of death back to the world and thus sweep all before him with legions
of undead. Blah blah blah. To bring back Goth Azul (the God of
Death), one had to recover the ashes of this fellow, get the blood from this
place under a full moon, and sacrifice so many virgins, and so forth. Those who have succumbed to the shadow are
essentially undead and are difficult to kill.
The greatest failing was the epic conclusion. In order to prevent the ceremony that will
bring back Goth Azul, they send Nemyt – since she has the mark of the shadow –
to infiltrate the milling horde and steal one of the required ingredients. Meanwhile, Keltus and Kullimon will attack –
2 against a hundred – to provide a distraction.
Well, Kullimon almost immediately encounters the orc who stole the horde
from him, so the two of them engage in a one-on-one duel. That means that Keltus is fighting everyone
else. Through much of this fight, we see
orcs just milling around, seemingly paying more attention to the ceremony –
that would be the one where Nemyt is trying to ruin it – or cheering against
Kullimon. The whole thing was just badly
done. However, presuming Keltus, Nemyt,
and Kullimon are mid to high level and the orcs are just 1 HD, this might be
just fine in a gaming sense.
The movie was made
by Arrowstorm Entertainment, based in Provo, UT. It is hardly surprising then that Monument
Valley made an appearance in the film.
The cinematography is quite good.
With a more coherent script, this could really have been great. Even so, I enjoyed it and look forward to
other Arrowstorm movies.
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