few more. While those who emerge are at first stunned by the sheer beauty of the land around them, they also begin to notice that things are not as perfect as they seem. The slimes encountered are only the first part of what becomes a series of monsters and terrible occurrences that are blighting the Empire and laying it to waste. When scouting the land, as per orders from the Avernite government, the player is asked by the Empire to help save the surface from its blight. Adventurers must bring the Avernites and the Empire together to find the cause of the destruction. Blades of Avernum Blades of Avernum is a non-canon installment in the Avernum series, released in June 2004. It comes with four pre-installed scenarios, three of which are only available after game purchase. Its most notable feature is a free scenario creation kit that can be downloaded and used to make scenarios that can be distributed to other players. It has come under fire for being "too complex" in comparison to Blades of Exile, its predecessor, which used a very simple instruction list instead of a script system. On the other hand, it has also been praised for allowing many new possibilities using said script system, which couldn't be achieved with the Blades of Exile system. Spiderweb Software has released the source code for the editor and allows others to make enhanced versions and add-ons, which a number of players have done. The most notable adaptation of the editor is a 3D editor, which allows the user to view and edit a project using axonometric in-game view. Avernum: Second Trilogy Avernum 4 Avernum 4 was released for Macintosh in late 2005 and released for Windows on March 2, 2006. It makes use of the Geneforge engine and merges it with the Avernum engine; essentially this means that the gameplay is entirely turn-based, but uses the Geneforge point-and-click navigation and user interfaces. In addition, there is a large amount of new art in order to bring the world of Avernum to life within the reworked Geneforge engine. Avernum 4 takes place long after the other games – one of the dialogue options remarks that the events of the third game happened "before we were even born". Weird monsters have been appearing in the underworld, and three powerful shades have been attacking people in the cities. A group of