It's Way More Dangerous Than That

A longer-than-planned gap between posts here, at least in part because I've been busy playing gamebooks in a different context (about which I intend to say more at a later date). Still, my aim is to cover at least one gamebook a month here, so with the end of April not that far off, I'd better get a move on.

Next on my (provisional and flexible) list is Fortress of Assassins, the third of Dave Morris' Knightmare tie-in gamebooks. Like the previous two, the book is a combination of novelette and short gamebook, and before starting on this I read the story. Given that it has Treguard searching for Richard the Lionheart's heir, it doesn't take a particularly detailed knowledge of English history to figure out that his quest would not be successful. Knowing from the outset that the hero isn't going to succeed doesn't automatically make for a bad story, but it did mean that the question of how he would fail was prominent in my mind all the time, and I anticipated the twist some way ahead of its revelation. Mind you, I'm significantly older than the target readership, and cannot tell how unexpected it might have been for a reader in the age bracket for which Morris was writing.

More serious flaws are Treguard's failure to pick up on a blatant clue that one of the characters he encounters is not what he seems, and the contrived 'rocks fall, villains die' climax to the story. Nevertheless, it's quite an entertaining tale, and makes decent use of its historical backdrop to add some colour and low-key horror.

Still, this blog is about the gamebooks, so I should move on to that aspect of the book. While the story took Treguard further afield than the earlier ones, this is another exploration of the dungeons beneath Knightmare Castle. Prior to entering I can choose to learn a spell or take a slice of quiche to eat when low on health. Food is generally easier to find than magical knowledge, so on this occasion I will not give quiche a chance. I get to pick one of three different spells, and go for Rust, as I can think of a couple of ways in which it could come in handy.

A narrow passage leads me to a room with four exits, each marked with a different symbol. Comets are traditionally associated with ill fortune, so I'll avoid that one. The ringed planet is most likely Saturn, 'bringer of old age', which seems similarly unpromising. That leaves the sun and the moon, and the moon is linked with wisdom. Also madness, now I think about it, but the sun has its own fair share of negative associations (Icarus and Phaethon, for instance), so I'll stick with the lunar option.

Once I step through, a door decorated with runes bars the way back. I advance to a hearth where a woman is embroidering a cloak. Close by is a table on which I see an eye-patch, marked with a glyph signifying destructive power. Trying to steal the patch is liable to have dire consequences, and just walking past without saying anything would be rude, so I greet the woman.

She asks if I can help her solve a riddle. I've encountered some rather tricky riddles in Dave Morris gamebooks before now, but this is one I've seen before in a gamebook by associates of his, and I solved it straight off at the age of 14, so unless the author is being particularly devious and picky, I should be fine here. It really is that straightforward, and the woman rewards me with a ring of luck that I can use to automatically succeed at one die roll in this adventure.

Continuing on my way, I reach a room occupied by a group of Ogres, who were playing at dice but are now arguing about an alleged incident of cheating. Upon catching sight of me, they draw their weapons, one of them commenting that I'm probably a worse cheat than Scumbore. Neither fight nor flight is likely to help me much here, but diplomacy was one of the virtues recommended in the introduction, so I shall try talking.

Good choice. I reply that I'm nowhere near as big a cheat as Scumbore, and while that earns me his enmity, it also convinces the others that they were right to suspect him of dishonest play, and they turn on him. I make a discreet exit while he's too busy being beaten up to make good on his threat to pull my fingers off and stuff them up my nose.

Proceeding further, I encounter a man who appears to have had one of his hands cut off. Regrettably, he can handle a sword perfectly well with the remaining one, and attacks me without provocation, taking my Life Force down to Red. He then apologises, claiming to have mistaken me for someone else, but when (by authorial imposition) I express my annoyance at his careless action, he threatens my life and demands that I show him respect that he really hasn't earned. I leave by the exit he indicates before anything worse can happen.

Stairs descend to the second level. On the way down I reach a door set into the wall, and take a look behind it, hoping to find some healing. It contains a chest, but there's a pit in the way. The pit is five metres wide, and dropping a pebble into it indicates it to be deep enough to kill anyone who falls down it. With only a metre for a run-up, and the Helm of Justice adding weight, even a champion long-jumper might find that a challenge. My character might not be as deficient in athletic prowess as I, but I doubt that he's Olympic team material. Lacking the winged sandals that might be of assistance here, I decide not to risk it, and carry on down the stairs.

A man wearing rainbow robes and a golden diadem, wielding a wand of ice, waits at the bottom of the stairs. He suspects that I might be a disguised goblin, and threatens me. Lacking the spells and item that could be of use here, I can only run or protest that I'm at least as human as he. If I make a dash for the exit, he might hit me with a spell, so I'll try talking again, and hope he's not as quick to lash out as the last person I encountered.

He demands that I prove my humanity by solving a puzzle, and somehow I know his name to be Hordris without having been told it. A quick Google establishes that this is a character from the TV series, and thus would probably be familiar to any fan of the show reading the book. Possibly even familiar enough that they'd know the actual spelling of his name, which has a double 's' at the end according to around 93% of online sources.

The answer I give is apparently wrong, but Hordris considers my mistake understandable enough that, today being his Birthday, he is inclined to give me the benefit of the doubt, and allows me to pass unharmed. I suspect that I've just missed out on a plot token, and am consequently doomed anyway, but I can still potentially learn things that could be of use in subsequent attempts, so there's no point in giving up. Oh, and working backwards from the hint provided when Hordris told me I was wrong, I can see the logic, so I know which of the other possible answers must be correct for next time.

Exits lead east and west. I don't know if the first Knightmare book's advice on picking a direction when faced with a blind choice remains valid, but in the absence of any other hints, I might as well stick with it. The archway leads to a circular room in which a jester is practicing juggling. He hasn't noticed me, so there's a risk that by talking to him I might break his concentration, with potentially harmful consequences, but the doors leading onward have distinctive handles, so there could be a clue to be had in conversation. Couched in a riddle, no doubt, but that's still preferable to pure guesswork.

Though I do startle him, he's too relieved that I'm not a vampire to be cross with me. He asks if I feel like a sausage roll, and while I suspect that answering 'yes' will merely garner the response, "You don't look like one," the slim possibility of getting some food and thereby moving my Life Force Status one step away from 'hanging on by a thread' is not something I can afford to pass up.

Yep, saw that one coming. The jester thinks his joke a lot funnier than I do, but I force a laugh, as the only alternative is to be unnecessarily rude, and taking lethal damage from being clouted in the face with a juggling club by an offended jester would be a terrible way to go. He then asks me a riddle, and after much reflection I go with a not-great-but-possible-to-make-fit answer. It then transpires that the author has played a prank on me: though the text warned me to think carefully about my answer before turning to the next section, the answer I give is irrelevant, as the jester can't remember the right one. If there even is one - for all I know, Dave Morris might have just made up a riddle-esque question and not have given any thought to an actual answer.

It looks as if the food for thought that that riddle provided might be the only food to be had here. After enduring more puns and other banter, I make a discreet exit while the jester is looking for some puppets. And maybe I was wrong about having been pranked: I'd been focused on the riddle for so long, I'd forgotten about the different door handles, but now I get faced with the choice between them, I can see how the riddle could relate to the material from which one handle is made, and choose that one. No idea where I came across the bit of trivia crucial for making that connection, though.

Proceeding to a junction, I am compelled to take the turning which has at least a little illumination. It leads to the head of another flight of steps, and Treguard reveals that I need to find a key of luminous crystal on the lower level if I am to succeed at my quest.

At the bottom of the stairs I face another blind choice of exits, and continue to go with the recommendation from book 1. I then get asked if I want to open the door or try a different one. When a gamebook gives an option to reconsider, sometimes it's a chance to avoid a disastrous outcome, and sometimes it's an attempt at discouraging the reader from making the right decision, and trial and error is often the only way to determine which it is. I'm sticking with this door.

The tunnel beyond has an iron grille rather than a stone floor, and dropping a coin through one of the gaps indicates the drop beneath to be bottomless. As I advance towards the door at the end, I hear hoofbeats coming up behind me. It's time to use that Rust spell, and hope I have the sense and ability not to target the part of the grille that I'm standing on.

Such fine-tuning is apparently beyond me. My pursuer plummets into the void, but as I still don't have the winged sandals that were mentioned earlier, so do I. Still, I imagine the jester would have been impressed at my handling of the adventure. That was, in the end, a floorless performance.