It's Some Time Since We Went A-Foraging

While the most noteworthy thing about 2022 as regards Fighting Fantasy was the publication of two new gamebooks by the series’ founders, the same year also marked the release of issue 17 of Fighting Fantazine, around five years after the previous issue had come out. As the zine was made available for download before the books hit the shelves, I shall now be playing the mini-adventure that appeared in it, Andrew Wright’s Barbarian Warlord.

While I enjoyed the author’s previous Fantazine adventure and what I’ve read of his earlier interactive works, and what feedback I’ve seen on Warlord from others has been positive, I do not like this adventure. The need for high stats, the repetitive gameplay, the inconsistent tone and the ‘gleefully destroy what other authors created’ premise combine to drag it down to the lower ranks in my estimation. Not the absolute bottom, but since having finished playtesting Warlord I’ve had no desire to return to it, and am only doing so now for the blog’s sake.

Before I go any further, please make a note (written or mental as you prefer) of three things that typically come to mind when you’re thinking about Barbarians. I’ll be coming back to this later

There will be no reminiscences about how I failed the adventure on my first go, because all the occasions on which I made an unsuccessful attempt at it have blurred together in my memory. Now I think about it, I’m not sure Warlord even has any deaths other than via combat or Stamina loss. There’s a ‘you failed’ section for the benefit of any players who might struggle to grasp that getting slaughtered in battle does not constitute a successful outcome, but unless I’m forgetting something, that and the ‘victory’ section are the only two endings in the whole adventure.

My character is the eponymous anti-hero, the chief of a tribe of Barbarians who reside in the Flatlands, about to embark on a campaign of slaughter and pillage because of a drug-induced vision in which ancestral spirits encouraged me to go off on a destructive rampage. I’d better generate some stats, for my army as well as myself, and I will definitely be allocating dice, as average-or-below scores for a couple of attributes pretty much guarantee defeat. In fact, I’m tempted to take advantage of the fact that the adventure includes an optional ‘roll to determine the name of your character and his tribe’ feature and use the name generator as a dumping ground for the lowest numbers.

So, here’s Krong the Strong…
Skill: 12
Stamina: 19
Luck: 11
Honour: 4
…and this is the Blood Axe tribe -
Horde Strike: 11
Horde Strength: 21
Gold: 1 talent
I did wind up using the name generator as a receptacle for mediocre rolls. Otherwise, it would have been appropriate to go with Crud the Inept, of the Anaemic Lemming tribe.

So, it’s time for us to demonstrate to the peoples of the surrounding regions that we’re not just ‘primitive savages’ by attacking them without provocation, slaughtering lots of their people, and looting and destroying their homes. And where should we go pillaging first? I think on my first try I started out in Trolltooth Pass, where randomness pitted me against an undead enemy I couldn’t fight because I hadn’t yet found a weapon that would harm it, and I got penalised for retreating rather than just letting it kill me like a real man would. So maybe try somewhere else first, eh?

I choose the Moonstone Hills, and now it’s time to go back to that note I asked you to make several paragraphs back. Tell me, does ‘travelogue’ appear anywhere on your list? The thing is, Andrew Wright has written for a variety of Advanced Fighting Fantasy sourcebooks, and while his work as a Titanographer has doubtless proved invaluable to many a player of the FF RPG, he’s not entirely managed to suppress the urge to educate and explain in less-than-suitable circumstances. Thus, whenever my army reaches some new location, there’s a brief lapse into guidebook mode to ensure that I am needlessly well-informed about the people we will be massacring and the land we are about to despoil.

On this occasion we’re up against a force of Hill Trolls, and I’m told that they bear a ‘bewildering array’ of arms. Only five different types of weapon are mentioned, all of which can be used to stab, so I guess it doesn’t take much to bewilder my character. It’s a good thing for me that they don’t appear to have any blunt instruments or projectiles, or my head might have exploded from seeing such variety.

Actually, this is not a good time to be mentioning variety, as almost every encounter with organised opponents in this adventure plays out the same way:
i) My troops fight two rounds of battle against the enemy.
ii) A leader steps forward to target me with a ‘special’ attack and I have to waste a point of Luck Testing to see if I can reduce the in any case underwhelming Stamina cost by 2 points.
iii) I then take on the leader in single combat.
iv) If I win, all hostile troops shrug and resume battle as if steps ii and iii had never occurred, their morale completely unaffected by the death of their leader.
v) If we win, plunder and admin ensue.
Hands up who put ‘predictable’ or ‘rigidly structured conflict’ on their list.

Anyway, our armies clash, a few Trolls die, and Nurm, King of the Trolls throws a boulder at me. (A weapon without a point or an edge! My mind reels at the prospect.) He misses and charges at me, belying his brutish appearance with a cry of ‘The price for entering the Moonstone Hills without our permission is death!’

He’s the one who ends up paying that price, though a series of bad rolls makes the outcome less of a foregone conclusion than the disparity in our Skill scores would have suggested. A few of my troops also die in the renewed hostilities, but ultimately the Trolls are massacred, and we add a little gold to the horde’s hoard.

It’s time to move on, so I pull up the map I made during playtesting. While the setting for this adventure is very familiar, and has been depicted in map form in quite a few FF books (and also appears on the back cover of Fantazine 17), travel between locations is subject to certain limitations, and it can help to know which journeys can be made and which cannot. If ‘strictly delineated transport network’ was on your list, well done.

Considering the amount of Stamina damage I took fighting the Troll King, getting some healing would be advisable, but I can only do that when the text says I can. It might be wisest to head back to the Flatlands and see if I can heal up a bit there before I go any further, but it seems a bit early to be reversing course, and I think there’s potential for things to go badly back on my home turf as well, so I’ll risk venturing on for a bit longer.

From here we could proceed to any of seven locations – over half of those featured in the adventure. I’ve already ruled out the Flatlands, and I’m still not equipped to handle that potential encounter in Trolltooth Pass, so I’ll pass on that option. Firetop Mountain and Darkwood Forest can also wait, as my low Stamina makes confronting the resident magic-users that bit too much of a risk, which leaves Zengis, Chalice, and the Forest of Spiders. My map shows that once I’ve acquired one essential resource, I’m liable to pass through Chalice and/or the Forest on the way to doing what must be done with it, and thus might as well leave them for later. Zengis it is, then.

One geopolitical info-dump later, my army is lurking close to the poorly-defended city. Nharog, my second-in-command, encourages me to attack, using an analogy I’d expect from a native of the frozen north rather than a fellow Flatlander. We emerge from cover, and a horde of militia and mercenaries emerges from the city gates to confront us.

After the requisite two rounds of mass battle, in which the defenders of Zengis take heavy casualties, I confront the city’s ruling Baron. This encounter deviates slightly from the standard pattern, as my Luck doesn’t come into play. Instead, the Baron uses a coin to summon a Golden Sentinel, which is invulnerable to any enemy who lacks gold. Having saved wisely (anyone put ‘prudent management of financial resources’ on their list?), I am perfectly capable of harming my new foe, and one swift goldbeating later, the Sentinel transforms back into a coin, now bent out of shape.

The massacre of the opposing forces resumes, and it would appear that the Baron attempted to flee but was betrayed by some of the mercenaries, as his body turns up some distance from the field of battle. Close by are some other corpses and a few ‘strangely’ bent coins (my character apparently being too thick to realise that they were most likely transformed into Sentinels that proved incapable of defending their master). Suddenly as incongruously eloquent as the Troll King, Nharog philosophises about the Baron’s fate while I decide whether to post a garrison in Zengis or just ransack it.

Leaving troops behind will reduce the size of my army (well, obviously), and I don’t think there’s any real need to return here, so in the absence of a ‘just leave and let the survivors get on with salvaging something of their lives’ option, I make the pragmatic-ish decision to thoroughly loot and pillage the place, thereby gaining a substantial quantity of gold and causing widespread death and destruction (so it’s a little incongruous to see the next section describing the region as picturesque and peaceful as we prepare to leave it).

I think it’s time I returned to the Moonstone Hills to see how the region has adapted to the slaughter of most of the resident trolls. Various lesser powers are in the ascendant, and redundancy lurks within the text, evading the editor’s Delete key. Luck determines that none of the groups vying for control of the region risk preying on my troops, and we proceed to the inaccurately-named Lost Lake.

It’s an eerie place, and only Nharog and I go to the water’s edge. A raft drifts towards us, bearing an animated skeleton which offers me a fancy sword. Nharog quotes Monty Python because memes apparently transcend the bounds between realities, and I take the sword, which is magical and does extra damage. The skeleton disintegrates, and we go on our way.

Now I think it’s worth heading for home. The first time I did that while playtesting, I thought that returning to the Flatlands might mark the end of the adventure, but there are actually some very specific conditions that must be fulfilled before a non-lethal game over can be achieved. What does happen when we head for home is that we rejoin those of our tribe who stayed behind, and our Shaman casts runes to determine whether or not my conduct to date meets the high standards of the spectral mob that urged me to cut a swathe of destruction across the western lands. The bloodthirsty bunch have been sufficiently entertained by the mayhem I wrought I have acted honourably enough that they approve.

Since this whole adventure requires me to behave in ways of which I would not generally approve anyway, I might as well pay a visit to the Ancestors’ Shrine. There, rumour has it, the sacrifice of powerful magic may reap great rewards. And as no heed was paid to a playtester’s suggestion that some clarification of what constitutes sufficiently powerful magic might be helpful here, I’m going to assume that the sword I acquired from the skeleton qualifies, and that ditching it here enables me to rid myself of the thing without suffering any of the consequences of the curse that comes with it.

A bolt of lightning obliterates the sword, and a reanimated corpse erupts from the ground, introducing itself as Volgera Darkstorm. Back in the day, he trained (and was subsequently murdered by) three of Allansia’s most notorious evil wizards, and now he’s back, he wants to help me cause more mayhem. For some reason, entering into an alliance with an undead villain has no impact on my Honour score (though I remember from playtesting that recruiting the more disreputable kind of barbarian to replenish my troops would deplete it, so it seems that the social standing of my associates is more of an issue than their immorality - well done if you put ‘snobbery’ on your list).

It’s time to head west again and get back to wreaking havoc. Hoping that Darkstorm’s capabilities will suffice to deal with that undead pest if I encounter it, I now lead my men to Trolltooth Pass. The fall of the die determines that we do not run into the hostile Spectre: instead, we find an encampment established by a Dwarven merchant, who is willing to let me in and trade with him, but my army must remain outside.

If I’d plundered more places, or not sacrificed that cursed sword, I’d have the opportunity to sell something, but as it is, I can only buy some of what the trader has for sale. The Potion of Strength should restore the Stamina I lost, the Potion of Fortune will help counter the attrition of Luck that results from the way battles play out (even if it doesn’t work as well as such potions always used to in FF), and the horned helmet provides an Attack Strength bonus that should reduce the impact if the dice turn on me again in some future combat. Before moving on, I take a ‘not buying, just checking’ peek at the section covering acquisition of a soul-draining weapon, and I’m a little disappointed to see that, despite my having raised the issue in my playtester’s notes, wielding such an abomination would still have no impact on my Honour.

Taking my leave of the trader, I lead my men south to the Craggen Heights, domain of one of Darkstorm’s erstwhile students and killers. We march until we sight the Black Tower, and that merry japester Nharog calls Balthus Dire ‘impudent’. I order an attack, Dire and his troops come out to meet us (Balthus being carried in a curtained palanquin because of his vulnerability to sunlight). As we have Darkstorm with us, the battle does not follow the pattern I outlined earlier: the revenant mage takes on the demi-sorcerer, so I can ignore him and just focus on the conflict between the two armies.

Without Dire’s support, his troops are a pretty dismal bunch, and we rout them without taking any casualties. Meanwhile, Darkstorm has shredded the palanquin’s curtains, with fatal consequences for its occupant. We loot a decent sum of gold from the Tower, and it’s time to move on again. I’d rather not head back to the Pass, and it’s too soon to go to Salamonis, which leaves just the Forest of Yore.

This is the location of the School of Magic where three of Allansia’s most renowned good wizards (and the hero of at least one FF book) trained. Nharog wants to destroy the whole forest, and while doing so is not necessary (by which I mean that this location provides nothing essential for successful completion of the adventure), leaving the place untouched would not fit the character I’m supposed to be playing.

Around four years ago I started listening to a podcast in which someone played gamebooks (mainly FF) and recounted his adventures and misadventures, but I rather lost interest after the podcast reached Appointment with F.E.A.R. because the podcaster so resolutely refused to engage with the premise of the book. He was not a fan of superheroes, and had ethical concerns about vigilantism, and consequently was overly reluctant to even play at being a super-powered freelance crimefighter. Fair enough (though I don’t recall his having had anywhere near the same sort of qualms when Seas of Blood had him robbing, butchering and enslaving people), but listening to him repeatedly not even try to stop costumed miscreants from menacing the public until, inevitably, his inaction led to the annihilation of his home city, was just not entertaining - sufficiently so that I lost the motivation to keep listening.

Bearing that in mind, while I would be quite content to leave the Forest and its denizens unharmed and move on to somewhere the text does require me to loot and pillage, I recognise that Krong is more likely to share Nharog’s outlook, and ready my troops for another battle.

It doesn’t take long for the Forest’s inhabitants to gather a defensive force, and we are soon confronted by an army of Wood Elves, Half-Elves and trainee sorcerers, led by the Grand Wizard, Vermithrax Moonchaser, who reveals himself to be a disguised Gold Dragon (and a sneering elitist).

He’s about to try and immolate me when Darkstorm intervenes with a horribly misused bit of continuity. He snuffs out the flames Moonchaser was about to breathe at me by using an incantation that originally appeared in The Warlock of Firetop Mountain. An incantation created specifically for killing evil Dragons, designed to destroy anyone who tried to misuse it. An incantation that was hidden by its creator just after he perfected it, and not discovered until some time after Darkstorm’s death. An incantation that contains its creator’s name, so it’s not even as if someone else could have independently have come up with it. I’d have no problem with Darkstorm’s using a similar chant, perhaps suggesting that the one in TWoFM was adapted from a weaker, less discriminating spell, but having him say the exact same one is wrong on many levels.

Anyway, having prevented me from being incinerated (well, mildly singed, as I vaguely recall from playtesting other ways the encounter can play out), Darkstorm transforms himself into an undead Dragon and goes for the Gold Dragon, leaving me and my troops to deal with the rest of the Forest’s defenders. We take a few casualties in the course of defeating them, but victory is ours, and before long my horde has razed the School of Magic to the ground and incinerated the contents of its libraries. (Really not enjoying this adventure.)

In addition to the Honour I gain for bringing an evil monstrosity to slay a powerful force for good and obliterating a centre of learning, I also get a little more gold and a randomly determined treasure, winding up with a Potion of Skill.

It’s time we were on the move again, and while I’d like to go back to the Craggen Heights, as something essential can only be acquired by returning there after eliminating Dire and his forces, that’s not an option. Apparently the road from the Black Tower to the Forest is a one-way street (anyone have ‘strict adherence to the Highway Code’ on their list?). This restriction on travel (the only such to be found in the whole mini-adventure) seems to exist solely for the purpose of making Warlord that bit trickier, as my querying it in the feedback that followed playtesting elicited no explanation or alteration to the text.

Anyway, thanks to that arbitrary limitation we can only proceed from here to Salamonis or Chalice. At this stage of the adventure, going to Salamonis would only lead to my being penalised, so Chalice is the only viable option. It would appear that Chalice suffers from an urban identity crisis, unable to decide whether it’s a town or a city – both terms are used to describe it at different points in the text. Or maybe the locals have some kind of scam going on, so to prospective tourists they present themselves as a city, with all the prestige that comes from that status, but when the taxes are due, they claim to be just a town, hoping to be charged at a lower rate.

Chalice seems more poorly defended than Zengis - indeed, when we attack, only a weak militia stands against us, their low stats contradicting the text’s claims about their efficiency. A quirk of the dice enables them to inflict a little damage on us, but we overcome them and kill their King. The crown Prince and the leader of the militia flee, and as I may need to return here later on, I think it might be worth leaving a garrison to guard against any attempt at restoring the old order.

Taking control of Chalice provides me with an opportunity to recuperate and regain a little Stamina, and I gain a little gold, some of which I spend on a night’s entertainment for my men. This nets me a little more Honour, and in the course of my carousing I encounter a Dwarf (judging by the name, one who came to an unpleasant end in an alternate timeline) who tells me that Salamonis is defended by a hero who can only be harmed with a weapon made from a type of metal found at Craggen Rock. While I remembered this from playing the adventure before, having my character learn it provides a decent in-story motivation for seeking to acquire such a weapon.

The most direct route to where I next need to go is via Darkwood Forest, so that’s where I take my rabble next. When we get there, Nharog speaks disdainfully of resident wizard Yaztromo and encourages me to lead my troops against the locals. I do as advised, and am soon confronted by Yaztromo and an army of Forest denizens.

When I ignore Yaztromo’s attempts to persuade us to leave in peace, he targets me with a ‘Volcano Spell’, boasting about the lethality of an attack that wouldn’t even kill an average Goblin. I remember when this guy had what it took to hit an inadvisably belligerent adventurer with one of the fastest ‘fail’ endings in all FF, and now he’s reduced to dealing out a meal’s worth of damage at best.

Not that I come to any harm at all, as Darkstorm intervenes again. Blocking Yaztromo’s already underwhelming volley, he retaliates first with mockery and then with a spell of his own. Up until now my undead associate has spoken like a bog-standard generic fantasy villain, but suddenly he starts spouting dialogue better suited to Gene Hunt or Al Murray’s Pub Landlord, tossing in a gratuitous reference to either Alien or the works of Joseph Conrad for bonus incongruity.

While the two magic-users exchange sorcerous projectiles, my horde takes on the assembled host of Wood Elves, Pixies, Woodlings and Sprites, taking a couple of casualties but annihilating the sylvan horde. By the end of the battle, Darkstorm has prevailed, obliterating Yaztromo apart from his glasses, which I crush underfoot just to make the adventure that bit more mean-spirited.

Once I’ve helped myself to Yaztromo’s gold, we are on our way once more. Nharog is keen to get away from Darkwood, finding the Forest’s atmosphere enervating, which contrasts quite significantly with the gung-ho bloodlust he displayed when we first got here. This change of attitude between arrival and departure would have occurred even if I’d chosen not to attack the locals, making Nharog look decidedly inconsistent (or an absolute yes-man), with dialogue that could be paraphrased as:
Nharog: The people here are pathetic. I say kill them all!
Krong: No, we shall just pass through.
Nharog: Good idea. I don’t like it here: it's creepy. Let’s get away, and quickly.

Anyway, from here we move on to Stonebridge. For some reason Darkstorm doesn’t get involved in our attack on the town, so after the Dwarfish army and my own have had a bit of a tussle, King Gillibran hurls his fabled war-hammer at me. One of the most famous weapons in all FF, and even if it had hit me (which it doesn’t), ‘a mighty blow’ from it would only have inflicted a measly 2 Stamina damage.

Single combat between Gillibran and me ensues, and the dice turn on me. In spite of my having a three-point advantage when it comes to determining Attack Strengths, my foe wins almost twice as many rounds as I do, and even with my using Luck to reduce damage in the later stages of the battle, I wind up dead.

The ‘you are dead’ section orders me to replay the adventure with a new character at once, but even if I had any desire to give Barbarian Warlord another go, I still have another three FF books that I’ve not yet attempted on this blog, and over 80 other FF replays to get through before I cycle back to it. That’ll take a while, so there might even be some new books to play by then. Possibly even another issue of Fighting Fantazine, if I slow down a little. 

All Nothing But Cold Calculation

The pattern which largely determines what I play here (subject to change based on various external factors) has brought me back to Proteus, and as the last issue of that to be covered was (to the best of my knowledge) the final one, that means it’s time for another go at an adventure I previously failed when covering it for this blog. Thus, I am now going to replay David Brunskill’s The Forgotten City.

Given that my last attempt at City ended badly because I failed a Courage roll and consequently missed out on an essential item, I shall be allocating dice for character creation, thereby winding up with:
Dexterity 13
Strength 20
Courage 10 (which is as high as it gets)
Overall inferior to my stats from last time, but that maxed-out Courage gives me just over 30% better odds of succeeding at the roll which doomed me before, so I’m probably actually better off.

So, do I enter the city by the secret passage I used last time, or try the main gate for variety’s sake? I have vague memories from when I repeatedly played City in order to review it, suggesting that there’s a whole region of the city that guarantees failure to anyone who enters it. As I recall, it ends with a choice that has both options lead to death, but shortly before that ‘doomed either way’ decision there’s a puzzle-based encounter which can redirect the reader onto what would be a viable route - except that players join that path after the point at which an essential item can be obtained, and thus wind up failing at an inventory check. What I don’t remember is how you end up blundering into the ‘ultimately dead whatever you do’ zone, and while I doubt that it’s a direct consequence of the very first decision in the adventure (pretty sure I’d remember a detail like that), I think that sticking with what I know worked before is still going to be the safer option. Doing something new just to avoid a little repetition will be counterproductive if it ultimately results in my having to replay the whole adventure again.

So, as before, I go through the tunnel, but this time the Bolgroth who’s trudging past fails to notice me, and I make it to the crossroads without incident. Here I’m going to take a chance on deviating slightly from the route I previously took, in the hope that going east will enable me to bypass the trap that did some serious damage to my previous character but enable me to rejoin the correct path before I miss anything essential.

And that causes me to encounter a completely different booby-trap, this one involving a tripwire that causes half a dozen crossbows to fire at me. Randomness determines the outcome, and I get a middling result, which costs me slightly less Strength than would be restored by one meal. Rather than waste healing, I'll hold off on eating until I've taken some more damage, and hope it's not incurred in the course of a combat that I narrowly lose. 

An enforced change of direction at the end of the alley sends me towards the glowing tree, which means that I’m still on track for now. Resting by the tree puts right the damage sustained in the trap, so I’m glad I deferred eating. When I continue on my way, I soon reach the well, and climb down into it as before. My exploration causes me to encounter the Serpent before the Lumberbug this time, but the important thing is that I still meet and kill both and claim their treasures. The Lumberbug wounds me a couple of times more than it would have my previous character, but that’s no big deal.

More serious is the fact that I still roll too high when encountering the Flying Skull (last time I needed 6 or less and got a 7, this time 8 or under would have got me through, and the dice gave me a flipping 10), and thus am again scared away from the key that I need.

Now that failure is once more unavoidable, I’m tempted to try and find out what befalls anyone foolish enough to attack the old man who poses the puzzle with the jugs, but I think there could be potential to learn something more useful after the fight against the Vortigern, and my chances of surviving that battle will be improved by having the reward for solving the puzzle, so for now I proceed as before. The Vortigern does a fair bit of damage when I encounter it, but I still prevail.

Venturing into new territory once I’ve claimed the spoils of victory, I wind up in a particularly run-down part of the city. Something gives me the impression that I’m being watched, and I hear laughter and spot signs of the presence of large numbers of rats in the ruins, but nothing occurs until rattling noises draw my attention to a run-down building in which two disconcertingly skinny individuals are tossing pebbles into a jar. Showing signs of hostility may provoke an attack by rats or worse, so I attempt to join in. My first throw somehow constitutes a win, earning me a sapphire.

Playing on may wind up costing me, but I’ve already lost the adventure, so I might as well assuage my curiosity here. One of the others does ‘win’ the next round, and wants the sapphire. It’s of no use to me, and wouldn't be of any value in game terms even if I still had a shot at winning the adventure, so I hand it over and ask for advice regarding the route to Chaladon’s palace. The men are clearly troubled by my question, but one of them does warn me of robbers and give directions for the next junction.

Proceeding on my way, I notice a foul smell, which emanates from an open sewer to my right. This is a part of the adventure I remember from my reviewing days, and it’s best avoided. Before I can make use of the directions provided, a trio of miscreants charges to the attack, and randomness determines that I fall into that sewer. My meals and restorative herbs are spoiled, and if failure hadn’t already been assured, it would be now. The odds on that roll slightly favour the less catastrophic outcome, but the chances of disaster are still too high, so I shan't be coming this way on any future attempts at the adventure now that I've been reminded of where the incident occurs.

Though the robbers find my misfortune amusing, two of them stop laughing and run off when I emerge from the filth, sword in hand and a wrathful expression on my face. Their Chief is not so easily deterred, but I kill him with little difficulty. The gold he has on him does not compensate for the essential item I lost in this encounter.

At the next junction I take the recommended turning, but at the two after that I head in what is probably the wrong direction, just to explore a bit more of the city. This leads to my falling into a crater, taking a little damage, and getting sent back to the second of those junctions to go the way that the text hinted was safer.

I don’t even get a choice of which way to go at the next junction, and before long I am at the house of the quasi-catatonic trio. Having lost my herbs, I can’t restore them to full awareness, and I’m not curious enough about how the author will penalise murderous behaviour to try attacking, so there’s nothing for me to do here.

Leaving the house, I get offered a choice of directions that wasn’t given the last time I played this adventure. It’s not often that I get the opportunity to go back the way I came, so I try that, and persistently going against the flow, combined with the odd enforced turning, eventually leads me to a still more run-down region, where somebody fires an arrow at me, and another Courage roll determines what happens. Again I fail, taking a whole point of Strength damage. Underwhelming, but this whole incident is padding, so I guess it’s only to be expected that the arrow barely penetrates. The archer flees, and I go on my way.

For a while I continue to shun the directions that have generally indicated progress, and nothing good comes of my defiance of authorial preference. At one point I get attacked by rats, which do more damage than that arrow, and ultimately I wind up just north of the waste ground where I fell into a pit. What with cumulative damage sustained since I fell into the sewer and lack of healing, I wouldn’t survive another fall, so I have to head back to the house with the unresponsive trio, this time choosing to continue past it. This takes me to the tunnel where I could encounter Miletus, but on this occasion the only thing I’d be able to get from him is a particularly sadistic demise, so I avoid his home.

I’m only delaying the inevitable, though, and while delivering the Vortigern’s barb to Tylwyth Teg gains me a little healing, it makes no real difference in the long run. As before, I reach the palace without the key I need. Having already checked out one of the futile ways of trying to break in, I now investigate the other: hitting the door with my sword. This apparently attracts Chaladon’s attention and, doubtless regarding me as a cold caller, he goes for the ‘ironic death’ option and turns my body to ice.

John at Gamebook Odyssey was seriously lucky to beat The Forbidden City on his first attempt.

The Dead Outnumber the Living

While visiting family in Devon earlier this year, I did a little browsing in Taunton, and the the title of one of the books on display in a charity shop caught my eye. Upon closer examination, Max Brallier’s Can YOU Survive the Zombie Apocalypse? proved to be a gamebook, as I’d hoped, rather than a parody emergency survival handbook or a scam aimed at people driven paranoid by watching too many episodes of The Walking Dead and spin-offs or George Romero movies, or reading Ian Livingstone’s worst Fighting Fantasy gamebook. Consequently, I bought it, and in view of the theme and the fact that October wasn’t that far off, I’ve been holding off on playing it until now.

The book’s introduction indicates that my character is an American in his mid-twenties, living in Manhattan and stuck in an unrewarding corporate job. It also reveals that this book is more ‘adult’ than most gamebooks by using a couple of naughty words.

At the start of the adventure my character is in a meeting at work, and by the end of the third paragraph I already dislike the lazy whinger. Character growth had better kick in quickly when the crisis starts, or this self-centred slacker will have no chance of survival.

Angela, the receptionist, interrupts the meeting to say we need to turn the TV on at once, doing so herself when nobody heeds her advice. Not being a regular viewer of American news broadcasts, I don’t know if it’s plausible that preliminary waffle concerning a sudden emergency would go on for as long as it must have, but the live feed hasn’t yet started by the time Angela gets the set working.

Initially the coverage treats the incident as a riot in a hospital not that far from the office, but once pale-skinned patients erupt from the building and begin attacking and frenziedly devouring bystanders, it becomes clear that this is a standard zombie outbreak (three words that really shouldn't go together anywhere near as well as they do). 

Colleagues panic, and for a while I’m too stunned to do anything. Once I’ve pulled myself together, I go online to find out more about the situation. The news site I choose is displaying a red siren (I know the auditory aspect of a siren is traditionally of greater significance than its colour, but that’s what the text says) and some sort of headline (which the text doesn’t say, though there’s a big gap on the page where it should be) above a list of trending topics which make it clear that serious badness is afoot not far from here.

Concluding that I need to get away from Manhattan, I join my fleeing co-workers, running down fourteen flights of stairs once it becomes apparent that I’m not going to find space in an elevator any time soon. Eventually I get out onto the street, and face my first decision of the adventure – what to do next.

Taxis are probably not going to be stopping for people, and if the subway is anywhere near as crowded as the building I just left, heading down there will be just asking for trouble. Heading home, the only other option presented, doesn’t look that great a course of action either, but at least it’ll give me an opportunity to gather together whatever potentially useful belongings I can carry before I get out of town.

Or, my character not being the sharpest spatula in the drawer, I could wind up concluding that going back to my apartment means adopting a siege mentality, stocking up on ‘essentials’ (inverted commas because the staples my character buys include more beer than the real me would consume in a year) in a convenient store before locking myself in and hoping that nobody comes knocking at my door asking to borrow a cup of braaaains.

I’m just locking the door when the phone rings, and caller ID indicates that my mother is on the line. And I’m guessing that my character doesn’t get on too well with the rest of the family, given that I’m now offered the choice between taking the call or ignoring it in favour of a heavy boozing session.

Hoping that it won’t lead to my having to bludgeon a zombified stepfather to death, I answer the phone. As I anticipated, this is one unhealthy relationship (though it sounds as if both parents are still alive and together and living near Boston), my mother’s concerns about my being close to ground zero of the zombie outbreak being disregarded as ‘momtalk’. It turns out that I have an aunt on Staten Island, but despite the obvious greater defensibility of an island compared to the very city in which the living dead are currently rampaging, I refuse to take the ferry over there until offered a hefty cash bribe. Odds are that if my character ends up dying owing to a bad decision, it will be an authorially imposed one rather than an error on my part.

The ‘essentials’ I pack for the journey are even worse than the ones I got from the bodega. Well, the clothes are going to be necessary, but prioritising a gaming console and top-shelf periodicals over anything that might help with survival in apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic conditions is just asking for trouble.

On the way to the Ferry Station I see signs of the more human side of the current trouble - gridlocked streets, rioting mobs, looters - but shortly after I reach my initial destination the paranormal element kicks in. One of the ferries has stopped moving, and for the first time my character shows signs of intelligence, using a set of coin-operated binoculars to get a better look at the unmoving vessel. A fight has broken out on board, and soon people start jumping off and swimming to shore. At least some of the swimmers are zombies, so I guess the island isn’t going to be as secure as mom hoped.

I run away, seeking refuge in a warehouse. Mention is made of a painting of a smiling cow on the gate, and a quick search online suggests that it relates to a local sporting mascot (and pulls up a few probably AI-generated pictures that may haunt my nightmares).

Inside the warehouse I find a large crowd of zombie cosplayers. That’s people cosplaying as zombies, rather than cosplayers who have become zombies (though there are plenty of those on another path through the book) or unconventional zombies who like to dress up as fictional characters when not massacring the living and feasting on their corpses. This group had been getting ready for a march (well, a large-scale public shamble) to raise awareness of the zombie issue, but recent developments have publicised the matter rather more effectively than any parade by this shabby bunch could have done.

It appears that the cosplayers aren’t actually any better informed about what’s going on than I am. All their reference points are movie-based, and while popular culture does sometimes influence scientific discourse, there would still be some terminology and allusions from (in-universe) non-fictional sources if this lot had any real information on zombie outbreaks and associated cover-ups. They’re just horror nerds who mistook 28 Whatevers Later for a documentary and accidentally wound up believing in something real.

Following some discussion and arguing (mainly relating to the possibility of fooling the zombies by pretending to be like them, though there is also some bickering about the relative merits of Manhattan and Brooklyn because petty rivalry between boroughs is so much more important than the ongoing crisis), I do a little exploring in the warehouse and find a walk-in freezer containing sides of beef (and possibly my character from the gamebook I played for the blog this time last year). Seizing the initiative, I get some of the cosplayers to help bring out one of the frozen half-carcasses, and we spend the next few days waiting for it to thaw, strategising, and not getting to know each other (seriously – I’ve been with these guys almost half a week and still haven’t even learned their names).

Despite the risk of swimming zombies, the decision has been made to relocate to Liberty Island, so once the meat has softened enough that we can smear ourselves with bovine innards, we do so in preparation for a brief shamble to the water’s edge, to be followed by a rapid swim. Should be fine, as long as:
1) the zombies don’t detect our imposture and slaughter us as soon as we hit the streets.
2) the island hasn’t already been overrun by the living dead.
3) any humans already on the island don’t mistake us from zombies and provide a lethal welcoming committee.
But what’s the alternative? Continue to hide out in the warehouse and hope for the authorities to save the day? I can’t see that ending well, while there is a slim possibility that making for the island could work out for the better.

Initially things go all right. The zombies on the street don’t seem to notice that we’re still alive, and nobody panics and breaks character when a few of them lurch into our midst. However, one of them blunders into me and knocks me over, and as I haven’t studied zombie behaviour in any depth, I have no idea how a fallen one gets back up, and could give the game away if I move in the wrong manner. Still, I can’t just lie there, so I endeavour to rise in a manner that shouldn’t attract unwelcome attention.

A few zombies draw near. Remembering that one of the cosplayers had mentioned the zombies’ ability to move rapidly given the right stimulus, I figure that trying to run will doom me, so I do my best to keep up the performance, hoping that this isn’t a ‘doomed whatever you choose’ decision.

Keeping my head enables me to also retain my limbs and viscera. The shuffle to the harbour resumes, and we’re within sight of the water when one of the cosplayers loses his nerve and starts running. This agitates the zombie horde, prompting the rest of us to make a dash for the relative safety of the bay.

Most of the group don’t make it. I’m one of the two who do manage to swim away, as well as being the one who doesn’t get a bullet through the head just after reaching the island. It turns out that a boatload of US Marines got there on day one, but found the place already occupied by zombies, and only two members of the unit survived the ensuing battle. Hammer, the trooper who shot my companion, has severe PTSD, which explains why he’s so trigger-happy. And also why he’s mounted a severed zombie head atop every fence post on the island. His more stable superior officer, Hauk, explains what happened, including the fact that their boat went down during the hostilities, taking all their communications devices with it.

I tell him what little I know of the state of things on the mainland, and my mention of having seen some abandoned army vehicles piques his interest, as they should still have functioning radios. While trying to scope out the relevant area with binoculars, Hauk sees indications that I have drawn unwelcome attention to the island. At the point where my doomed associate and I leapt into the water, zombie after zombie is lurching over the edge, and while they’re sinking rather than swimming, a message that came in shortly before the loss of the boat indicated that zombies have reached other islands by walking across the sea bed, so it’s probably only a matter of time before we have company.

Hauk and Hammer have a couple of one-man submersible vehicles called Hellfires, so Hauk decides to send Hammer below on a recon mission, and I volunteer to accompany him as I feel responsible for having provoked the impending invasion. A decision-free redirection to another part of the book follows, but that may well be this path through the book linking up with another - the back cover claims that the book has twice as many paths as endings, so different routes must converge at times for that to be possible.

Suitably decked out in wetsuit and breathing gear, I take control of one of the Hellfires and follow Hammer out across the water, not diving until he does. It doesn’t take us long to sight the hundreds of zombies plodding through the water. Approaching them more closely than is advisable, Hammer gets into a fracas with a few of the zombies, and while he does get away (aided by my use of the harpoon gun mounted on my Hellfire), one of the zombies wounds him. A scratch rather than a bite, he claims once we’re back on the island, and his threats are enough to keep me from doing the sensible thing and telling Hauk when we rejoin him.

Hauk decides to try and get to one of the abandoned vehicles and radio in, and sends Hammer and me up the Statue of Liberty so Hammer can provide armed cover and I can keep a look out for zombies. During the ascent I observe that Hammer is in better condition than I am (bar the possibility that a zombie has infected him), and when we reach the statue's crown, he assembles a sniper rifle and starts bragging about his display of severed zombie heads and his killing of the cosplayer.

I observe the blood soaking through his sock from the injury he sustained in the water, and get presented with a choice between two sub-optimal courses of action. Do I attack the mentally unstable trained killer with the gun who is fitter than I and seems to be trying to provoke me into attacking so he can blow me away and claim self-defence, or do I utterly disregard the possibility that at any moment he could transform into an even more savage automaton consumed by the desire to eviscerate me, and focus my attention on what’s happening in Hauk’s vicinity?

Right now the hints that I’m outclassed and Hammer retains enough military discipline to require an excuse to attack me outweigh the suspicion that he might be undergoing zombification. I do as directed by Hauk. He’s in the water, approaching Battery Park, and the animated corpse of one of the cosplayers is shambling around close by. Hauk submerges, and it’s a little while before I catch sight of him again, but he makes it onto dry ground. I catch sight of a couple of zombies, formerly Goths, heading his way, and tell Hammer to target them.

No response. Again I try and draw his attention to them, and after another reminder elicits no reaction, I finally turn my attention away from what’s happening at ground level.

The zombie formerly known as Hammer lunges at me. Luckily for me, he’s too unreasoning to have any awareness of the sidearm dangling from his belt, and as he starts to throttle me I grab the pistol, angle it upwards and in his direction, and fire. The shot does no more than send him stumbling back, but that gives me time to get a proper aim, and empty the gun into his torso, the force of the fire knocking him out of the crown. Hammer falls.

After taking a couple of seconds to regather my wits, I remember Hauk’s situation, and hurry over to the sniper rifle. My first shot is off target, and only shatters a window on a nearby SUV, but the noise gets Hauk’s attention, alerting him to the approaching zombies. Correcting my aim, I take out one of them, while Hauk eliminates the other with his handgun.

More zombies converge on him. He makes a dash for an overturned Humvee, and I do what I can to thin the ranks of zombies closing on him. Not every shot is a hit, but I do manage to down several of the enemy before recognising that there are too many for this to be a workable strategy long-term. Catching sight of a nearby motorbike, I try to shoot its fuel tank, succeeding with my second shot. The resultant explosion downs the horde, at least for long enough to allow Hauk to do what he can in the Humvee.

Not many zombies come between him and the water’s edge, but it’s still one more than he has bullets for. I take care of the final obstacle for him, and he’s soon heading back across the water on a Hellfire while I hurry back down to ground level.

When Hauk asks after Hammer, I explain what happened, and would show him the body, only it’s not where it landed. That’s not good. Nor, on aggregate, is Hauk’s news regarding his attempts to radio for help. On the positive side, he was able to contact someone. However, it was only a civilian. Still, the man in question used to run a business taking tourists around in helicopters, so he has the resources to rescue us. But he didn’t seem to be in any great hurry to do so.

In other news, the vanguard of the underwater zombies is coming ashore. We head back to the statue, and naturally Hammer is waiting for us, his body showing signs of blunt force trauma consistent with a fall from a long way up, but still functional enough to pose a threat. Good thing Hauk reloaded his gun after I cleared the way for his return to the island. Hammer down.

Time to go back up the statue. This time we head for the torch, pursued by hundreds of zombies. While neither Hauk nor I have much of a head for heights, the undead mob at our heels leaves us little choice, and we go out, sliding down the statue’s forearm and finding a kind of refuge on the biceps. Some zombies attempt to follow, but lack the coordination to make a suitably controlled descent, and fall off.

And this route through the book ends on, if not a cliffhanger, at least a statue-sitter, as Hauk and I now have nothing to do but wait to see if a helicopter will come our way, perhaps making awkward small talk about our recently deceased associates to help pass the time. 

Well, by the end (if you can call it one) my character had become more tolerable, and things did get quite exciting. I think I'm going to have to fine-tune the colour-coding on the blog's index page, though, in order to reflect the ambiguous nature of the ending I reached. Having finished the above attempt at the book mid-month, I've got through almost a dozen more goes at it since then. On some paths things got so preposterous that the sheer absurdity of the goings-on provided some amusement. More to the point, none of the other endings I’ve reached were anywhere near as ‘up in the air’ as the one described in the preceding paragraph: while a couple were still inconclusive, there were also undeniable failures (devoured, drowned, blown up, deep-frozen, futile last stand against zombie zoo animals) and the occasional definite rescue. Perhaps a paler shade of yellow would reflect the 'not an outright failure, yet still not a victory' nature of this playthrough.

Perhaps the oddest thing about the book is the way it handles real-world figures: a sporting celebrity who features prominently on one path is consistently referred to as ‘[LEGAL EDIT]’, presumably in case 2011's 'leading shortstop for the New York Yankees' (a description which I'd imagine identifies him almost as clearly as the repeatedly redacted name) felt like suing over the suggestion that he’s romantically involved with a stripper who can massacre zombies with ease. Meanwhile, on another path the outbreak turns out to have been orchestrated by a certain famous movie-maker, who is portrayed as a deranged genocidal misanthrope, and is repeatedly named in the text even though he was alive and doubtless capable of taking legal action when the book came out.

So far I’ve encountered very little convergence of different paths. There’s been one blip, where a choice of three improvised weapons to use against a zombie had two ‘that does the job’ outcomes that both led to the same page, but I’d expect to have found more by now, based on what the cover text asserts. The section map I’ve been roughing out to help keep track of paths taken indicates that I’ve now been through just over half the book’s pages, so unless there’s some very complex interweaving of routes that I’ve not yet discovered, the claimed number of paths through the book must be an exaggeration. Still, a cursory check has confirmed that CYStZA does indeed have as many endings as the back cover says, so it’s not the most misleading gamebook blurb I’ve encountered, regardless.

The title of the book made it pretty obvious what sort of book Can YOU Survive the Zombie Apocalypse was going to be, so while I'm not keen on 'adult'-due-to-swearing-and-violence-but-short-on-actual-maturity media, I can't really fault CYStZA for its schlocky nature. It is what it indicates itself to be (more or less - the jury is still out as regards how many paths the book has), and taken on its own terms, it does its job well. I've dipped into a fair few 'not for kids' gamebooks over the course of the past quarter-century, and some of them give the impression that the author looks down on interactive fiction and its readers, and is just trying to cash in on what they regard as a fad, convinced that even a half-hearted effort on their part will still be vastly superior to anything previously published in the subgenre. CYStZA revels in its pulpiness rather than sneering at its audience, and I can respect that even while acknowledging that I'm on the periphery of that audience rather than the sort of person at whom the book is targeted. Some of the other gamebook fans I've encountered would probably love this book, and I don't begrudge them any of the enjoyment they can derive from its more gruesome and OTT aspects. 'Not for me' and 'bad' are not always the same thing, and this book is one of the clearest examples of that distinction I've read in a long while.

A Few Too Many Plans That Have Gone Wrong

This should be the last part of my playthrough of Rhianna Pratchett's FF gamebook Crystal of Storms. As at the start of the previous instalment, I need to find a couple of objects for a Goblin Technomancer, though this time I have more specific details of the items in question. Despite being seriously wounded (or perhaps recognising that he’s already beyond help), Vizzig gives me a Healing Potion before I head off to search for the artefacts he requires.

Earlier I turned down the opportunity to explore the kitchens of the sunken Citadel, but now I need to get hold of a silver goblet, I think it worth checking to see what kind of drinking vessels can be found there.

I return to the Nimbiferous Chamber without incident, and proceed to the kitchen door. A moaning sound issues from behind it, and the book has me steel myself to confront whatever horror awaits within, so I’m anticipating the 'twist' that it's something unthreatening - an injured chef, or maybe a Sky Watch officer who panicked following the fall of Nimbus, fled to the kitchen to seek solace in food and drink, and is now regretting having overindulged.

Not far off. It’s my commanding officer, trapped under a mound of debris, and vomiting into his helmet. He’s understandably surprised to see me, as he sent me off the island a short while before disaster struck. I explain what I’ve been doing since the incident, and he commends me and outlines his own rather less heroic actions, which boil down to ‘chose to get something to eat before searching for other survivors, was standing in the wrong place when part of the ceiling collapsed, has now lost all sensation in his legs’.

The Captain asks if I can extricate him from the rubble, and after downing Vizzig’s potion in order to bolster my strength, I attempt to shift enough of the wreckage to enable him to get out. Checking the rules, I find that the roll against Stamina required of me is on fewer dice than anticipated, so the odds would have been favourable even if I hadn’t healed up, and the potion has done enough to make failure impossible.

Once I’ve freed the Captain and helped him into a more comfortable position, I search the kitchen. No silver goblets, but I do add a cleaver to my assortment of weapons, and a pie to my food supplies. I also look through the hole in the ceiling, observing that the room above appears to be a workshop. The Captain informs me that that’s where Engineer Krazic developed a lot of technomantic prototypes, which prompts me to climb up for a closer look. Information on the weapons Krazic has been developing could mean the difference between life and death – and there’s always the possibility that the clutter up there might include something helpful or essential.

A Skill roll determines whether or not I make it into the workshop, and I succeed by a wide margin. Multiple rooms have been knocked together, both horizontally and vertically, to create space for work on something big, and there’s a set-up for raising and lowering a platform. A quick search turns up a candle that meets Vizzig’s requirements and another potion for boosting Attack Strength.

The only other thing I can do in here is activate the movable platform, which may give me access to something useful, or expose me to new danger, or both. Might as well find out which. I pull the lever, and nothing happens. Or so it seems. I’d probably have received a codeword if there were to be consequences at some later point, but maybe Ms Pratchett doesn’t want to spoil the surprise just yet, and there'll be an 'if you pulled the lever in Krazic's workshop' check later on.

Talking of codewords, I get a check on one after returning to the room below, and based on where I got that codeword, along with the avoidance of descriptive text regarding the room, I get the impression that there may be more than one way of encountering the Captain and gaining access to Krazic’s workshop. Intriguing, but short of peeking at sections I’m not supposed to be reading, there’s no way of finding out more about that on this attempt at the book.

Uh-oh. It would appear that I’ve hit one of the instances of poor gamebook design that other readers have complained about. The section that follows leaving the kitchen offers just three options: check out the flooded hallway if I haven’t already done so (and I have), go into the kitchen (which, oddly, is not forbidden to readers who’ve already done so, even though that would put me into a loop), or try the door to the Great Hall, which I’ve been avoiding because I know there’s a ward on it, so at best I’ll get nowhere and at worst I’ll suffer harm from the ward. Where’s the option to return to Vizzig if you’ve found something he needs? Or the chance to explore somewhere else if you still have to find an item for him? Checking for errata, I see that the FF wiki entry for Crystal lists this section, but only to mention a typo. Okay, so saying ‘you’ when it should say ‘your’ is a mistake, and in other circumstances I might have got picky about it myself, but sloppy structuring that might render what should be a viable path through the book unplayable strikes me as being a more serious issue.

Fine, I’ll approach the warded door because the book leaves me no sensible alternative. And it shocks me for a point of Stamina damage – but at least this section has no restriction on heading back towards the library. Sure, I’ll probably have to fight the crocodile and Giant Scorpion again and take further damage from Vizzig’s traps before I get any opportunity to go somewhere new in search of the last item I need, but at least I’m now allowed to head in the general direction of progress again.

On reflection, I’m not going to replay everything that happens on the way to Vizzig. I’ll go through the sections, as I’m not going to find the section number for returning to the bathysphere and checking out other flooded parts of the Citadel unless I do, but there’s no sense in resurrecting and re-fighting enemies just because the bathysphere option isn’t available here owing to authorial oversight and inadequate playtesting. And I shall be adding the omitted option to the relevant section of my gamebook manager, so if I ever have to play Crystal again, I can avoid the idiotic runaround that’s about to be forced upon me.

Okay, I needlessly redo over a dozen sections’ worth of stuff in order to be able to head back to the Barnacle and head for the flooded passage I previously avoided. While there aren’t as many corpses in it as in the water-filled halls through which I previously piloted the bathysphere, the dead bodies I do see have been viciously mutilated.

A sudden attack inflicts automatic damage on the vessel, and I’m into a fight against the Shark-Kin that ended my first attempt at this book. I think my Skill is better this time round, so I hope it’ll suffice to bring me through this fight with a functional craft.

It doesn’t. Thanks to a series of appalling rolls, the Shark-Kin turns the Barnacle to scrap metal, and I join the shredded dead outside. And the shambles I encountered just after leaving the kitchen has wrought similar destruction on the good will I had previously had towards this book. I think I still prefer it to the preceding FF books only published by Scholastic, but it definitely needed more work done on fixing the bugs.

This Ain't No Technological Breakdown

Returning to my ongoing attempt at Rhianna Pratchett's Crystal of Storms, I now embark on my hunt for a Thingie and either a Doobry or a Wotsit. It appears that if I’d been more successful in dealing with the spying device I encountered on Cirrus, I would have acquired a Strange Metal Object that might be of use here, but as it is, I shall have to search further afield. Indeed, I need to head for the technomancers’ island, Asperitas, which means that I must recharge the hovers if I want to make any further progress in the adventure. There is a charger close by - coin-operated, like the one I used on Cirrus, so this is another opportunity to fail through lack of funds, but I still have some money, and can thus power up the hovers and get going.

Not far from my destination, I get attacked by a couple of Harpies. The fight is not particularly challenging, but it feels like an ambush, making me suspect that whoever was responsible for the fall of Nimbus is aware of my investigation and seeks to bring it to an end.

Close by, several Goblins are arguing. Some want to head down to Nimbus, others think it’s still too dangerous, and they can’t agree on who should take charge. I introduce myself to a young Goblin who’s cleaning glassware outside a workshop, and he’s so startled at being addressed by an officer of the Sky Watch that he drops and breaks the vial he was holding, babbling that he’s innocent, and implicating Paxlo and Pox.

Hoping to calm him and get him to open up, I help pick up the broken glass. He introduces himself as Yurik, and says that he’s been on edge of late, and is likely to start getting charged for all the breakages he’s been causing. He blames the fall of Nimbus for his nervousness, and when I ask why he thought I might suspect him, he claims that the Goblin brothers he previously mentioned have had it in for him ever since he turned down their invitation to join in with a secret project on Nimbus. I ask what he knows about the project, and he refuses to say any more, scurrying into the workshop and operating a complex-sounding mechanical lock behind him.

Attempting to break the door down might trigger some kind of trap, so I get back to seeking the items that Matix requires. For now I’ll stick in the quarter where the workshops and laboratories are located. While wandering around the warren of streets and alleys, I hear talk of a mysterious metal item that dropped onto a workshop in the east, and head off to investigate that.

A crowd has gathered around the site of the incident, and I’m slightly surprised to see that the object is around the size and shape of a boulder. It appears to be some kind of technomantic artefact, but nobody here has seen its like before. Nix, the owner of the workshop that it partially demolished, is currently attempting to attach a power source to the thing, and I’m torn between thinking that that may be a really dangerous idea and wondering if seeing what the device does will give me any clues as to what’s afoot.

I advise against powering up the unknown contraption, but Nix won’t be deterred. He attaches the charger, turning it up when nothing happens, and then the mechanism activates. Springing into the air, it unfolds what I briefly take for limbs before realising that they’re digits. This thing was no metal boulder: it was a giant robotic fist - and it’s a fighting hand.

The crowd disperses as the hand scuttles to the attack. When I score a hit on the thing, it tries striking back at me with its fingers and thumb, but some lucky rolls mean that I deflect them all, doing extra damage to each appendage. I fare less well against the next such retaliatory strike, and get wounded by three fingers, but in the course of fending off the fourth and thumb, I inflict sufficient bonus damage to put the hand out of action.

A dead Goblin falls out of it, and I see that his belt buckle has a ‘P’ engraved on it. Could this be Paxlo or Pox? Very probably, as a Goblin with a similar belt rushes over to the body, bewailing the fact that the deceased ignored his warnings. After allowing him a moment to grieve, I approach him, seeking information, and he throws some powder in my face, causing me to black out.

By the time I recover, the dead Goblin and his rueful brother are both gone. The metal hand is still there, though, and dangling from it is a component which I tentatively identify as a Thingie. Not sure what leads me to that conclusion - maybe it’s shaped like a turnip.

Now I head west to the residential area. There are many people out on the streets, discussing what happened to Nimbus. The Goblin contingent are particularly agitated, as the fall of the island might be due to a technomantic failure, for which they would be held responsible.

While traversing an alley, I hear a buzzing noise which alerts me to the presence of a mechanical eye like the one I encountered on Cirrus (well, it could even be the same one, but as this would still be happening even if I’d done some proper damage to the one I previously found spying on me, it’s probably supposed to be another one). It flies off, and I try to follow it, the outcome being decided by the whim of the die. On this occasion the thing suddenly spins round, and I duck into the shadows, hoping that the device won’t realise I’m tailing it. My Luck holds out, and after a moment the flying spying thing resumes its travels and I continue to follow.

Eventually it flies through a hatch leading into a house. Knocking on the front door is not likely to get me anywhere, so I head round the back in search of an alternative entrance. There is a back door, which is unlocked, so I go through that, startling a Goblin - most likely the one who threw powder in my face earlier, judging by his belt buckle. He yells words I don’t understand, summoning a couple of Wheelies, and flees through the front door while I’m fighting off the discoid thugs.

The house is cluttered, and most of the gubbins lying around seems unlikely to be of use to me. A leather bag with the name ‘Paxlo’ on it hangs on a hook, and inside that I find some money, a Potion of fire oil, and some dried fruit, which I eat in order to regain some of the Stamina I’ve lost on Asperitas.

The house has two floors, so I head up the stairs, finding a couple of beds and a cage that houses three mechanical eyes, in a dormant state and making a sound like snoring. There’s also a crystal ball, and strewn around are many sheets of paper with writing and drawings on. A closer look at the eyes reveals them to be powered by storm crystals, and currently recharging, while the papers provide ample evidence that I’ve been under surveillance for some time. I wonder if the surviving Goblin is the elder of the two siblings - after all, Big Brother has most definitely been watching me.

Observing that there are controls for regulating the charge being supplied to the eyes, I turn it up to maximum, overloading the mecha-snoops and causing them to explode in a shower of components, taking negligible damage from the shrapnel. From the debris I am able to salvage a Wotsit, so I think my work here is done. It’s time to head to the nearest hovers charging point, power up again, and return to Matix.

The flight back to Incus is uneventful, and the sound of hammering and invective helps me to home in on Matix’ workshop without difficulty. She is more than satisfied with the Thingie and Wotsit I obtained, and advises me to get some rest while she finishes repairing the bathysphere. Settling down in a mound of blankets, I doze off.

A while later Matix wakes me with the news that the bathysphere, named the Barnacle, is now ready. It’s equipped with various devices that are sure to come in handy during my underwater explorations: mechanical arms with pincers for self-defence, an attachment that uses suction to retrieve items from the surrounding waters, and a gadget that transmits sound from outside.

Boarding the Barnacle, I commence my aquatic exploration. While inside the bathysphere, I must use its stats - a Skill slightly lower than my Initial score, and a predetermined Stamina - and I don’t get to use the bonuses provided by the weapons and helmet I have acquired.

First I must decide whether to check out the surface waters or immediately descend into the depths. I know that boats have been active in the area since the disaster, so there’s a good chance that anything or anyone that was floating will already have been found. Plus, while my destruction of the mechanical eyes should have reduced my enemies’ capability to spy on me, being on the surface would leave me that bit more vulnerable to further airborne attacks, so I think I’ll dive.

Of course, being submerged doesn’t provide any kind of protection from underwater enemies, and I haven’t been in the sea for long before a creature combining attributes of squid and shark swims to the attack. The Barnacle’s armaments don’t have much trouble dealing with the Great White Squark, but the vessel does take a little damage, and I can’t heal its Stamina like I can my own.

Scanning the surrounding area, I detect a cave system and a large object that could be Nimbus. Exploration of sunken caves in FF adventures doesn’t always end well, so I take a closer look at the unknown shape.

It is Nimbus. Now to find out whether it’s just full of corpses, or if there are survivors in air pockets. As I approach, I catch sight of something else in the water close by - a big air bubble with somebody in it. A codeword check leads to the realisation that it’s Methedus, still unable to get through the wards that are blocking the Stormborn from accessing the sunken island. Using another bubble, he sends me a potion that will help me in one combat, and then he heads for the surface since there’s nothing more that he can do down here at the moment.

The wards don’t seem to be impeding the Barnacle, so I continue towards the sunken island. As I approach, I catch sight of a damaged bathysphere close by. The fishermen I rescued from the giant crab mentioned that collateral damage from the fall of Nimbus included several boats and a bathysphere, so I figure that this must be the one lost in the crash. I decide to take a closer look - while it’s probably too late to save anyone who was inside, there may be something of use that can be salvaged from the wreck. Indeed, I find some waterproof firesticks and a Greater Healing Potion.

Plus an implicit homage to a classic cinematic jumpscare.

Proceeding to the Citadel on Nimbus, I find my way blocked by a sea giant. Cordial relations are not out of the question here, as the people of Pangaria have been trading with his kind for some time, but the giants can be a bit volatile at the best of times, and the recent disturbances have agitated a lot of the local life, so things could get a bit unpleasant.

As it turns out, this giant doesn’t seem to have been upset by Nimbus’ falling from the sky. Having his sleep disturbed when a freshly deceased Great White Squark landed on him a short time ago, well, that’s a different matter. Despite having breakfasted on seafood, Tideus the giant is hungry, and in the mood for a wrestle. I give him the fruit I’ve collected, which takes the edge off his appetite, but he’s still determined to have a bout of grappling with the Barnacle. I do manage to subdue him, but the bathysphere takes more damage in the course of the fight.

Having been bested, Tideus agrees to do me a favour at some future point, and gives me a conch with which to summon him. Having a Giant at my side could come in handy if I wind up having to confront a body that goes with the giant mechanical hand I fought on Asperitas, so I’m hoping that future benefits will outweigh the harm sustained by my vessel.

Tideus opens the Citadel door for me and settles down for a nap, and I pilot the Barnacle inside. Navigating past the bodies of drowned Sky Watch members, not looking too closely in case I should recognise any friends, I reach an air pocket, and surface in a chamber with two exits: a water-filled passageway and a flight of steps up to another unflooded area.

I’ll start by checking where there’s still air. That’s not what I did the last time I got this far, as my gamebook manager hasn’t yet had anything relating to that path entered into it. I remember that my first attempt at this book ended when the Barnacle was wrecked by a Shark-Kin, so I guess that encounter must take place in or beyond the flooded passage. I may end up having to go that way eventually, but for now there are other areas to explore.

As soon as I emerge from the Barnacle, a couple of survivors head my way, one of them wounded and supported by the other. They are being pursued by a trio of Amphibious Spinefish, which I must fight off, and the rules are unhelpfully imprecise about how the combat is to be conducted. There’s more than one approach to fighting multiple opponents simultaneously in FF, so telling me to fight ‘two at a time’ and not going into any more detail really isn’t that helpful.

My gamebook manager is currently only properly set up to handle one of those combat models, so I’ll use that one. It feels slightly riskier than the only alternative worth considering, but the Skill lead I have here is enough that I should be all right. Indeed, I only take one wound, which I’d have sustained no matter how I chose to handle the fight. Randomness determines that I take double damage thanks to venom, but that’s still nowhere near enough to kill me, and now I’m out of the bathysphere, healing is back on the menu.

Sooner or later I’m going to get the urge to tinker with code some more and properly program in the other standard variants, and then when writers neglect to specify, I’ll have to give the matter that bit more thought. Still, that’s a concern for another day.

The unharmed Sky Watch officer asks me a stupid question. Okay, he has no way of knowing that I’ve only just arrived here by bathysphere, but when you’re in a building that’s fallen into the sea and sunk, there’s little point in wondering whether another presumed survivor fell victim to the same disaster or was stranded here as a consequence of some separate, unrelated misfortune. I get to ask a (hopefully) smarter question in return, and I think I’m going to have to prioritise investigation. All indications are that the surviving Goblin brother and his associates haven’t yet finished causing havoc. Besides, I don’t think the Barnacle has anywhere near the capacity required for evacuating the Citadel, but if I can identify the source of the wards and deal with it, I open the way for a better-resourced and larger-scale rescue mission.

Identifying himself as Ferris, the officer says that there was a stomping sound, followed by screams, and he saw something big that might have been a giant. Then there was an explosion, and Nimbus fell. Ferris also claims to have passed out a couple of times, and his manner leads me to infer that either he’s embarrassed about such an unheroic response to the incident or he’s trying to cover something up. Further questioning is permissible, though the presence and placing of an ‘if you haven’t already’ implies that only one of the questions I’ve not yet asked will continue to keep this dialogue open.

I might as well try to find out as much as I can before I have to move on, so I ask what happened to the injured officer. The wounded man indicates that he can speak for himself, says his name is Bal, and explains that one of the Spinefish got him in the leg. He asks if I have any spare healing, and I let him have a potion, consequently receiving a Luck bonus.

In view of the number of variables brought into play by that interaction, I think it less likely that the last question I have the option of asking will trigger some perfidious response from Ferris, and thus enquire about other survivors. The officers have heard cries for help, but flooded passageways are an obstacle to proper investigation, and it appears that a ward has been placed on the door to the Great Hall.

Advising Bal and Ferris to keep out of trouble, I head further into the Citadel, noting that the air quality is deteriorating. It’s still breathable by the time I reach the Nimbiferous Hall, one of the central hubs of the Citadel. The hallway to the right is partially collapsed and flooded, the one to the left leads to the kitchens if I remember rightly, and straight ahead is a door to the Great Hall.

If the officers were right about the door having a ward on it, I’m not going to achieve anything by trying to open it, and the text frames heading for the kitchens as allowing my stomach to override all other concerns, so the flooded hallway actually seems like the best way to go right now.

I wade until the water gets so deep I have to swim, and randomness determines what happens next. A middling roll has the chill prompt morbid musings, but nothing worse. Emerging on the far side of the flooded area, I take a little Stamina damage from the cold, but there are papers and broken furniture scattered about, so I could use those firesticks or some fire oil to start a fire and warm myself up. It’s also possible that I’ll spot some useful evidence while gathering up burnable scraps, so I shall emulate the Prodigy rather than Billy Joel.

None of the papers have any pertinent information on, but the heat of the fire restores more Stamina than I lost to the cold. After extinguishing the fire I go on my way, recognising the library entrance up ahead. There’s more water between me and the doors, and this pool turns out to be inhabited by a saltwater crocodile. The fight is not particularly challenging, and once the crocodile is dead, I have the option of cutting it open to see if it’s eaten anything unusual. Checking, I find no alarm clocks or license plates, but there is a copper ring and a Potion that’ll provide a temporary Attack Strength bonus in there.

Some water has got into the library itself, which has done nothing good to the books on the lower shelves. Strange noises draw my attention to one specific area in the upper level, where I hear chanting coming from behind a bookshelf. Dotted around the shelves are four books with similar spines and distinctive titles. I wonder if the more ominous-looking ones (one mentions ‘Death From Above’, and another purports to contain ‘Unexpected Endings’) are traps, or just designed to deter people from touching them. If the latter is the case, the one helpful-looking title (apparently a guide to killing aquatic beasts) may be booby-trapped.

Hedging my bets, I’ll take the one on ‘Fights to the Death’. If these titles do hint at what the books do to their readers, a potentially survivable threat ought to give me more to work with than an Instant Death, and my Skill is high enough that I should be in with a fair chance if the book summons up something to attack me.

A Clawbeast erupts from the pages, wounding me a few times before I subdue it. Okay, let’s try checking out the one that suggests it might inform rather than injure… No, it teaches via practical demonstration, leaking water onto the floor until a Sea Troll emerges from the depths and attacks. At least this enemy fails to harm me.

Does this library contain nothing but traps? Or could it be a War Games-esque set-up where the only way to progress is not to read? I’ll risk one more book, and hope that an unexpected ending need not be fatal. Well, taking that book seems to activate something, but there’s a sting. Which comes attached to a Giant Scorpion. Despite having a higher Skill than the Clawbeast, this enemy doesn’t hit me as often, but I do take damage, so once the fight is over I down the healing potion I didn’t give away.

After helping myself to the Scorpion’s stinger, which I can use to envenom my weapon and do extra damage in one fight (though I doubt that it’ll do much against mechanical enemies), I find that the bookcase doubles as a secret door, which has now opened to reveal a staircase ‘spirally downwards’. Not sure about the grammar there.

Descending, I reach a torchlit tunnel, and a whooshing noise suggests an attack or a trap. And it’s a trap, but my Skill enables me to dodge the blade. There’s no way of dodging the small fireball which a statue spits at me a little further along, but the damage done is negligible. Nevertheless, it is clear that somebody doesn’t want strangers wandering around here.

Green light illuminates an area which appears to have been used for some dark technomantic ritual. Broken storm crystals mark the cardinal compass points of a circle on the floor, which is filled with runic inscriptions and clutter. At the centre of the circle stands Elder Technomancer Vizzig, who appears to be seriously injured, and is also risking a lawsuit from Spiderman’s copyright-holders, as he uses a wrist-mounted device to ensnare me in a net. I tell him why I’m here, and he starts laughing.

Unexpectedly, his laughter is not villainous cackling. While he did bring about the fall of Nimbus, he is actually working against my enemies. Since Vizzig’s retirement, his rank of Elder Technomancer has been little more than an honorary title, and the real power is in the hands of his successor Krazic, who has been working with the shipwreck survivor Talliman to create technomantic WMDs. I speak of my own findings regarding the matter, and Vizzig is sufficiently impressed that he releases me from the net, evidently concluding that I’ll be of more use as an ally than a captive.

A codeword check establishes that there is some information that I missed in the course of my investigations, so I hope that it’s not too important. I now have the opportunity to ask Vizzig some questions, and as I don’t know how many of the available options I’ll be able to pick, I think I should be more concerned about the present and the immediate future than the past. Thus, I start by asking what he’s planning to do with the set-up he’s created here. It turns out that he’s trying to bodge together a Ritual of Repair, despite the scarcity of necessary resources in the sunken Citadel.

Further questioning is permissible, so I ask about the ward on the Great Hall doors. Vizzig placed it there to stop something nasty from getting out - but it’ll only last as long as he does, and he’s dying.

It looks as if I’m going to be able to ask every question on the list after all. The fall of Nimbus was apparently collateral damage: when Vizzig attempted to assemble the Sky Watch to oppose Krazic’s plot, the villainous Engineer turned one of his war machines on them, so Vizzig overloaded the storm crystals to try and destroy it, thereby denying the island the powers that kept it aloft. And the injuries that will probably cost him his life were sustained as a consequence of the fall.

Vizzig then asks me what happened to Samuel, his pet Giant Scorpion. Awk-ward! I ask what I can do to help Vizzig, and after initially trying to dissuade me on the grounds that, being responsible for the destruction, he should be the one to fix it, the retired Technomancer concedes that I’m probably better able to find the artefacts he still needs than he would be, and accepts my assistance.

He needs a copper ring, a black candle and a silver goblet. I have one of them already, so I give that to him, but I will need to search the Citadel for the other two items. And with the end of the month imminent, this seems like another good point at which to pronounce the incantation ‘To be continued…’ and suspend the narrative until a later date. 

The Gap Between Crack and Thunder

It’s high time I was getting back to my attempt at Rhianna Pratchett’s FF book, Crystal of Storms, the first part of which is here. My character's sleep is troubled, filled with dreams about repeatedly trying and failing to catch friends as they fall from the sky. At one point I do catch someone, but am unable to hang on to him, and before he slips from my grasp and plunges into the sea, I see that he has my face.

A buzzing sound wakes me, and I open my eyes to see a winged mechanical eye, around the size of a grapefruit, hovering in the corner of the barracks, watching me. It starts to dart around mid-air, blinking at me, and in a desperate attempt to avert the introduction of paparazzi and reality TV into Titan, I grab a boot and hurl it at the flying pest. Randomness determines that, while the boot does hit the thing, I do no significant damage, and the steampunk monopticon flies up the chimney before I can take any further action.

There’s nothing more I can do here, so I leave – well, I try to, but the vines I previously noticed encroaching on the building have become that bit more militant, and block the way. A bunch of grapes explodes, and these aren’t just sour: they’re acidic, so I take damage from the juice that hits me. This encounter might sound a bit daft, but the impending combat is what ended my second attempt at the book. This time round my Skill is significantly higher, but I see that using a potion would take me to a different section than fighting and winning, so as I have a spare and I’m curious about the outcome, I attempt to calm the wrath of grapes.

Well, the vines subside and permit me to leave, but they don’t offer me any restorative fruit by way of apology, which I’d thought might result from choosing the more peaceful approach. Nor do they attempt to tell me anything, so I can’t be Titan’s equivalent of Marvin Gaye.

I’m wondering if it’s time to move on to another island when I hear shouting in the distance, and decide to investigate that first. In an orchard I see that more lush, aggressive vegetation is causing trouble: a Dragon Fruit Tree has sprouted dragon heads, and is attacking an old woman armed only with a spade. Or rather, a spade handle, as a plume of flame breathed by one of the heads has just melted the shovel blade. Here I have no choice but to fight.

Subduing the tree is easy enough (though it might not have been if the dragon heads had had a Hellhound-style randomised chance of doing extra damage), and its intended victim thanks me and introduces herself as a retired adventurer, formerly known as Maude the Mauler. She tells me that her daughter is a member of the Sky Watch, and asks what happened on Nimbus. I don’t think a reassuring lie would be appropriate here, so I explain that that’s what I’m trying to find out. Maude concludes that I could do with some assistance, and fetches a healing potion and a warhammer from her cottage. I thank her and, having now exhausted all obvious avenues of enquiry on Cirrus, head north in search of the local Goblin flyer.

It takes me a little while to find the flyer, and things don’t look too good when I do reach it: the balloon is deflated, and the pilot is clearly displeased. Cautiously approaching, I learn that the pilot was on his lunch break when a chunk of rock punctured his balloon, and the shock caused him to drop his pie over the edge of the island. Nowhere near the worst thing that’s happened to anyone today, but belittling his misfortunes because others have had it worse wouldn’t help. The silk cloth I was given could work as a patch for the hole, but I don’t have anything that would serve as an adhesive, so repairing the balloon is not an option.

Grateful for my willingness to help, even if I couldn’t actually provide any meaningful assistance, the pilot directs me to the charger where I can power up the hovers, so long as I can pay. It’s a good thing I was able to get back the money pilfered by that cockroach, or my adventure would be ending here.

I can only charge the hovers enough to enable me to fly to one of the closest islands, which means heading for Altos as I’ve already done what I could on Cumulus (well, the lack of any 'if you have not been there before' restriction means that technically I could head back to see what Hazi and Methedus can deduce from the fragment of the crystal shard that I acquired, but the book isn’t really set up to handle return visits, so I’d wind up having to repeat almost every encounter I had there, which is obviously not ideal).

The voyage is largely uneventful, but as I draw near to the island I startle a flock of the sentient clouds which are farmed here, and the mother Cloudkin hits me with a bolt of lightning, inflicting a little Stamina damage and causing me to make a rather ungainly landing on Altos.

No, I'm not about to stop making obscure in-jokes referencing decades-old media.

As there’s a Cloudkin farm close by, I commence the next phase of my investigation there. It appears to be deserted, and I can guess why when a mutated Cloudkin attacks me. A farm worker emerges from hiding and throws me a wooden staff to use in helping subdue the rogue storm. She also assists me in the fight, providing the same sort of bonuses I gained from having Dav’s help on Cumulus, and we cloudbust our tempestuous foe without difficulty.

The Cloudkin farmer thanks me, expressing some regret at having had to kill one of her stock, but acknowledging that it was already beyond help. She introduces herself as Nemi, and when I explain what I’m doing here, she reveals that I might not be the only member of the Sky Watch still active, as she heard someone snoring inside the local Watchhouse just before the explosion on Nimbus. Nemi also mentions that her best Canidor (a kind of winged dog, not that the text gives any indication of that here) has gone missing, and might have taken refuge at the Great Waterfall.

Deciding to check out the Great Waterfall first, I get to the pool at its foot and, remembering that its waters are said to have healing properties, opt for a quick bathe in the hope of regaining some of the Stamina I’ve lost. Bad idea: there turns out to be something hostile in its depths, and while randomness determines that I take only minor damage in the course of escaping, I get the impression that a worse roll could have ended in death.

After downing one of the healing potions I’ve been given, I continue my exploration, finding paw prints in the mud and catching sight of the local Goblin flyer. The tracks lead to a cave, and inside I find Nemi’s missing Canidor, which is undergoing some kind of mutation in response to the elemental forces given off by the explosion. I use the shard that Methedus gave me to extract the harmful energies, and he returns to normal and sets off back to the farm.

A quick search of the cave turns up a longsword that provides an Attack Strength bonus. As regards game mechanics, it’s no better than the dagger that Hazi gave me, and I can’t dual-wield the two weapons, but it’s good to have a back-up, and there could be an occasion where the longer reach of the sword will prove advantageous, so I’ll keep it anyway.

Now I should check out the Watchhouse, and what I remember from previous attempts at the book prompts me to down a healing potion beforehand. The most direct route passes through a marsh, and while I am making my way across the morass, something spits a dollop of goop at me. I dodge the organic missile with ease, and confront the Giant Toad responsible. Here I have the option of using the other calming potion, but I’d rather keep it in reserve, and just fight my amphibious assailant, winning with ease. Before continuing on my way I carefully add a leaf with some of the toad’s adhesive mucilage on it to my inventory. It may be that the punctured balloon incident was the only situation in which the stuff could have come in handy, but I’d rather have the stuff and not need it than risk failing the adventure for lack of something sticky.

Proceeding to the Watchhouse, I hear that the occupant mentioned by Nemi is still snoring inside, and find that the door is locked. Not having any corrosive grapes with me (evidently I shouldn’t have used that calming potion on the vines – and I am a little disappointed to find that the book is effectively penalising some nonviolent resolutions), I have no option but to try and break the door down, taking a little Stamina damage in the process.

Heading towards the snorer, I am taken by surprise when a log comes swinging towards my face. My Skill is high enough that I dodge the blow, and I discover that the log is being wielded by a Sky Watch officer. He starts to ask how I escaped from the Citadel on Nimbus and, inferring from his words that he is implicated in whatever is afoot, I pin him against a wall and demand that he tell me what he knows about it. He protests his innocence, claiming to have received a message warning him not to attend the meeting, but is reluctant to say who warned him. This is not a lead I can afford to ignore, so I threaten him. He gets me slightly off balance by asking if I’m really willing to kill a fellow member of the Sky Watch, then pushes me away and draws a sword, indicating that he has no qualms about doing so.

Fortunately for me, he doesn’t have anywhere near as high a Skill as I, and in a very short time I have him at my mercy. He begs me to spare him and, hoping that I won’t have cause to regret staying my hand in the hope of getting information from an opponent again, I let him go. He hands me the note and flees, promising to pay me back for letting him live, and I gain a codeword. Well, I could probably have recovered the note from his corpse, and I don’t yet know if that codeword will lead to his assisting me or betraying me, so I remain uncertain about whether or not I was wise to spare him. Still, that codeword is a name, and not the one I found circled on the ledger page I picked up in the Cirrus Watchhouse, which suggests that the man I just fought is not the officer who was already identified as a person of interest.

The note is signed ‘Paxlo’, a name I recognise as belonging to a Goblin who lives on Asperitas, the technomancers’ island. A quick search of the Watchhouse turns up no further clues, but I do find an apple that I can eat to make good the damage I incurred breaking in.

There are no further leads to follow on Altos, and the hovers are in need of a recharge again, so I head for the flyer I noticed earlier. I find it without difficulty, but the pilot is in no fit state to operate his craft, having been hit in the head by a chunk of rubble. I give him a cabbage leaf, which provides enough healing that he can return to work, and he tells me that he’s only licenced to transport passengers to Incus, the hub of the local fishing industry. That is not a problem, as I now need to move on from the initial cluster of islands, and Incus would give me access to Paxlo’s home territory.

This encounter has brought me into the vicinity of possibly the biggest fault in Crystal: while I was able to find an exit from the Altos-Cirrus-Cumulus loop, if I’d used the cabbage leaves to heal myself before reaching the flyer, I’d be forced to recharge the hovers and head back to one of the islands I’ve already visited, repeating at least some of the encounters I’ve already had, and potentially having to keep looping around until I found a means to ‘unlock’ flyer access. It could be worse – there’s more than one way of rendering a flyer usable (though I have yet to experience whatever encounter provides the healing honey that could be used in either of the situations where a flyer pilot requires assistance, and its name suggests that, like the cabbage leaves, it’s a resource that a player might use up for Stamina restoration before learning that it might be needed to facilitate progress to the next stage of the adventure) – but enforced looping that can mess with internal chronology is not a good thing.

Still, I do have a means to open up the route to Incus, so that flaw in the gamebook structure doesn’t affect me this time round. A substantial info-dump follows my arrival, the most noteworthy-looking details being the presence of dangerous marine life in the waters below, the use of bathyspheres for underwater harvesting, and the fact that any shipwreck survivors who get brought in from outside Pangaria in the course of being rescued are not permitted to leave.

Straight after disembarking from the flyer, I get asked if I have the codeword I received after letting that Sky Watch officer go. Time to find out if I chose poorly… And a cloaked figure gives me a small package before disappearing into the crowd. My mercy has been rewarded with a little money and a potion that provides an Attack Strength bonus.

The sound of screams and conflict gets my attention, and I investigate, finding that a Giant Crab is attacking a couple of fishermen. Hurrying to the attack, I carve up the crazed crustacean, and am rewarded with some crab meat and a weaponisable pincer.

I ask the fishermen if they know anything about what befell Nimbus (which seems to have suddenly gained a ‘the’), and they say that it was afloat in stormy and foggy waters when they last saw it. When I indicate that I want to head out to it, they advise against doing so, and then tell me that if I insist, I’ll need to use a bathysphere, and should talk with a local by the name of Matix. They also let me know where she’s most likely to be found.

Before heading off in search of Matix, I show the fishermen the ledger page. They confirm that it’s from one of the books used for record-keeping here, but don’t recognise the highlighted name. One of them speculates that it might have something to do with a recent shipwreck, and suggests that I ask around to see if anyone knows anything about Talliman.

Proceeding to the district where Matix lives, I ask directions to her home, and get told to follow the sounds of banging and cussing. It doesn’t take me long to start hearing percussive maintenance being carried out on something metallic, accompanied by the yelling of quirky invective. While avoiding the sort of language that would garner a ‘parental advisory’ label, the insults are blistering enough to convince as expressions of frustration, unlike the invective used in some gamebooks.

The hammering and verbal abuse issue from a spacious workshop, in which I find a bathysphere suspended from the rafters, surrounded by a wide assortment of tools and components. I call out to Matix, and an exasperated-looking Goblin emerges from the bathysphere and asks if I have a Wotsit or a Thingie. I explain that I’m investigating what happened on Nimbus, and thus need to requisition a bathysphere, and Matix’s response includes what’s either a mistake or a very obscure pun. More pertinently, she explains that in order to make the bathysphere seaworthy, she needs a Thingie and a Doobry (though a Wotsit – and not the cheesy kind – would be a viable substitute for the latter).

With the end of the month imminent, I think I’ll pause the narrative before I embark on this fetch quest, so I can update the blog before August is out.