Now that my character in Steve Jackson’s Secrets of Salamonis has finished training as an adventurer, it’s time I got started on a proper sub-quest. Rather than listing the available options in the text, the book depicts the Quests Board outside Adventurers’ Guild HQ, and has the Guildmaster obscuring my view of one of the posted notices. I wonder if the unreadable one is going to prove important at some later stage…
For now there are seven listed missions that I can see, so I’ll pick one of them. They include accompanying a caravan to Shazâar, a city to the west of the Forest of Yore, and as I already have experience of similar work, it seems like a good first choice.
The Guildmaster explains that the merchant Luquin Garreau is transporting a valuable cargo to the Southern Plains, and wants experienced fighters to guard it during the weeks that it’s on the road. He’s already engaged the services of a Strongarm Captain to lead the security detail, so the armband I received from Nanoc should suffice as evidence of my suitability for the job even if the Strongarm heading up the squad isn’t my recent comrade-in-arms and trainer.
None too surprisingly, the veteran in charge is Nanoc, and he’s delighted to see me again so soon. Garreau pays half our wages up front, and stresses that the cargo must be delivered as quickly as possible. While working at the Guttery I learned that its clients are based in Shazâar, so I wonder if we’re transporting a consignment of their special rancid animal innard sauce. Wouldn’t want that to spoil in transit, now would we?
A couple of days into the journey (so according to the tracker on the Adventure Sheet it is now Fireday), Nanoc seeks my advice. We can cut short our travel time by taking a short cut through the foothills of the Craggen Heights, but that region is inhabited by Trolls and Goblins and other such ‘bad guy’s cannon fodder’ species, some of them in service to lucifugous demi-sorcerer Balthus Dire. Should we prioritise caution or speed?
Considering how insistent Garreau was that we get the job done quickly, I advise taking the riskier route, hoping that this lack of caution won’t cause me to end up an imprudent dead ‘un. The next day (Earthday by the local calendar) we enter a pass with steep, rocky sides, which Nanoc notes to be ideal territory for an ambush. I could offer to scout ahead, but that might just lead to my being cut off from the rest of the guards. Or it may provide intel that helps us avoid an otherwise lethal trap - when Steve Jackson is the author, cautious behaviour is sometimes rewarded, and on other occasions it gets penalised.
I stick with the caravan, and nothing untoward happens. For some time, at least, and our wariness gives way to boredom until the arrows start flying. A mob of Hill Goblins, mounted on Dire Wolves, rides to the attack, causing some of my companions to panic. Will Spelling help here? Yes, it enables me to conjure a protective barrier into existence, protecting us from the arrows and gaining me a point of Amonour.
We pick up our pace, hoping to outrun the Goblin Wolf Riders, but they catch up to us and battle commences. Though the term ‘Brawling’ implies punch-ups and disorganised combat, the Special Skill turns out to encompass techniques like wielding a sword while riding a horse, giving me a slight advantage as I endeavour to fight off a couple of our assailants. I take one wound in the fight, but kill both Goblins, and the rest of the bodyguards take down half of the attack party. The surviving Goblins retreat, and I take some cash from the two I slew.
Resuming our journey, we encounter no further trouble in the Craggen Heights, and by Seaday (two days later, for those of you unfamiliar with the Allansian week), we reach the fringes of the Southern Plains. This region is arid and windswept, and a Luck roll determines that my horse is startled but does not throw me when something erupts from the sand. We have been ambushed by a group of desert-dwelling reptilian predators known as Gretch. This could be a nasty fight, as their claws do extra damage when they land a blow, but my slight Skill advantage enables me to prevail without losing an Attack Round. At one point I had the potential to use my Instant Death ability again, but by then the Gretch was low on Stamina anyway, so I chose to risk fighting on, and beat my enemy the conventional way in the very next round.
The rest of the party dispose of their opponents just as efficiently. The condition of the bodies suggests that these Gretch have been short of prey for some time, and attacked us out of desperation. Even so, it may be worth searching the area for past victims, so I do a little digging, finding the skeletal remains of a human. On one finger is a brass ring, which I risk taking: rings have often proved beneficial in Steve Jackson’s books (though not always).
Several days later (why was I instructed to keep track of when in the week it is if the book’s going to give imprecise measurements of time like that?) we reach our destination. Elsewhere, Shazâar is often referred to as the City of Madness, and the sight of the architecture and the locals’ bodily adornments (plus what I already know of their culinary habits) suggests that this epithet is not undeserved.
The caravan comes to a halt in the hexagonal plaza known as Star Square, and while we are unloading, a female Hobbit beckons me over to an alleyway. She says that her master is willing to pay a good price if I’ll transport something for him. Could be a trap, could be a legitimate solo commission. I risk sneaking away from the caravan to find out more, and the Hobbit leads me to a house occupied by a Lizardine. While taxonomically accurate, this name indicates little about the nature of the species: based on an encounter in another book, they would seem to be intelligent traders, not hostile (except to shoplifters). This one gives me a pouch of money to take a parcel to a sage in the tower on Brightstar Street when I get back to Salamonis. I wonder if making this delivery will get me a point of Amazonour.
I rejoin the caravan before anyone notices my absence, and we travel back to Salamonis without further incident. For the first time since accepting this quest I am specifically instructed to update the day of the week, so I guess my earlier calculations weren’t necessary after all, and it’s Fireday again.
Now I have a parcel to deliver, but the book has my curiosity get the better of me, and I sneak a peek at the contents, finding a significant quantity of the rare herb known as Medusa Grass. I have the option of keeping it for myself, but I have no desire to join the ranks of the couriers who fail to make their deliveries (my gamebook collection is smaller than it should be because of a couple of online purchases that never reached my mailbox).
Proceeding to the address I was given, I am greeted by a Chervah (a ‘little people’ species that sort of featured in Steve Jackson’s FF novel), who leads me up a flight of stairs to a cluttered study occupied by a Hamakei scholar (benign vulture-headed humanoids). The Hamakei thanks me, comments that he’d foreseen my arrival in his scrying glass (so even Titan has courier tracking), and gives me some of the Medusa Grass as the glass also revealed that I’m liable to need it in the near future.
The sun is setting as I leave the tower, and the fact that this detail gets its own section has me wondering if it’s a textual cue pointing to a hidden section - Steve Jackson has used such mechanisms before now. Well, even if it is, I don’t have the relevant lead, so I just have to sort out where I’m going to spend the night. And a calendar check indicates that what happens next depends on whether or not today is Fireday. Sundown is usually a while before midnight, so I guess it still is. I wonder if that’s a good thing…
A couple of guards are heading towards me, but as I have no codewords identifying me as a lawbreaker (probably because I paid that pesky tax collector), it turns out that they’re just walking down the street, and our paths cross without incident.
Paying a gold piece to spend the night in the Half-Darned Sock enables me to recover the Stamina I lost in the Craggen Heights, and another calendar check establishes that this is neither of the days of the week on which something time-specific occurs at this point in the narrative.
In the morning (Earthday, not that I’ve been instructed to update that information) I set off to Guild HQ again, pausing along the way to see if there’s anything worth buying at the Bazaar. Another check ensues, and I have neither the item nor the affliction mentioned. Thus, as I browse at the adventuring supplies stall run by the Bruise Brothers, a shady-looking duo who make the mildly disconcerting claim that they’re not going to forget me, Pinchpenny approaches, now accompanied by an intimidatingly big dog. Again my not having assaulted or fled from him keeps me from getting into serious trouble, but does not avert the issuing of a demand for a cut of my recent takings. Hoping that he turns out to be up to his neck in something villainous enough to provide me with a valid excuse for putting him out of circulation one of these days, I pay the new tax and receive a token confirming that I have done so.
Returning my attention to the stall, I buy some Chainmail that adds to Initial and Current Skill, and also purchase a brass instrument in the shape of a Dragon’s head, as weirdly specific items like that usually wind up proving useful or essential. Elsewhere in the Bazaar I also buy a couple of portions of Provisions, a length of rope, a bag of salt, some nose plugs, and a copper armband for the ‘no idea what it’s for, but it may save my life’ pile.
Nothing has changed on the Quests Board by the time I get back to Guild HQ. I think now I’ll see if I can survive the job that brought my previous two attempts at this book to an end: acquiring supplies of Cauldronweed for the Witches of Dree. This will require me to head north to Bu Fon Fen, a swampy region inhabited by Toadmen who get a bit proprietorial about the vegetation that grows in it.
It takes me a few days to reach the fen. Making my way through towering reeds, I enter a clearing from which two new trails lead. Webbed footprints on the path leading north-west suggest the presence of many Toadmen, and as I don’t have an expendable Half-Orc companion with me, I think it advisable to steer clear of them and head north-east.
A Swampsnake attacks me, and despite having a 5-point Skill lead, I still take a little damage in the fight. Not as much as the snake, though, and I take its skin, hoping to be able to sell it to an alchemist. Continuing along the trail, I draw near to a riverbank, and a couple of bushes catch my eye. Circumstances will, of course, prevent me from taking samples of both. The first time I played Secrets, I made an educated guess as to which bush was more likely to be Cauldronweed. On my second attempt, my training included some data acquisition which backed up my theory. I will, thus, be picking clumps of the same plant as before.
Once I’ve stashed the leaves in my backpack, a Toadman leaps to the attack. This is the fight I didn’t survive when I first had a go at the book, but this time around I win without incurring any damage. Anticipating that more of his kind will soon follow, I hurry back the way I came until I reach an unexpected fork in the path. The last time I got this far, I picked the turning I thought should lead back towards dry land and encountered many more Toadmen (the collective noun for toads is a knot, so I’m tempted to call it a tangle of Toadmen), who overpowered me and dumped me in a sinkhole to decompose. So, did I get confused and head the wrong way, or did I get surrounded on the way out of the marshland, and if the latter, will heading deeper into the fen actually prove any more survivable? While Steve Jackson has on occasion created detailed areas in which all decisions lead to defeat, the book mentioned opportunities to sell the snakeskin on Brightstar Street and in the Bazaar, which suggests that there is a way of getting out of here alive.
Taking the turning that should take me away from the river, I find that that is the way I went last time, so at least I know that my past self didn’t get mixed up. As before, I find myself hemmed in by Toadmen. However, on this occasion I have Spelling, which enables me to raise a thick fog, causing the batrachian bunch to lose sight of me. Evading them, I flee south to the Windward Plains.
After a while I reach a path, and a signpost shows the way to Dree. Heading in the direction indicated, I reach the witches’ village (so either that wasn’t the misleadingly rotated signpost that features prominently in Creature of Havoc or this is before it got turned around). Not a particularly pleasant part of the world, but it’s where I need to be to complete this quest. Unless I got the wrong plant, in which case I’m liable to end up marranghaed into something that Doctor Moreau would consider an abomination. No, as indicated by that passing mention I spotted on my previous attempt at the book, my inference was correct and I did get some Cauldronweed. A crone says she’ll pay me 3 gold pieces for it, but other locals are starting to take an interest, so I could try to get a bidding war going.
The fact that I gained Amonour on the caravan to Shazâar implies that acquiring it remains relevant even after I raised my stats with what I gained in the earlier stages of the adventure, and I think raising my profile by auctioning off the fruits of my expedition into the fen is more likely to gain me another point or two, so I opt to have a go at selling the Cauldronweed on DreeBay.
Attracting more attention is easy enough, but as I didn’t go back to Rodriguez for advanced training in manipulating people, a Luck roll determines how I fare. Fortune is not with me, though, and the hag with whom I first spoke threatens to do something adventure-ending if I don’t accept her offer. Concerned that her idea of giving feedback might involve relocating my mouth to between my shoulder blades, I hand over the leaves and receive the scant payment. The harridan indicates her willingness to become a repeat customer if I ever have any other spell components to sell, netting me another point of Amonour. I risk offering her the Swampsnake Skin, but she’s not fussed about it, offering only a gold piece and not caring if I hang on to it in the hope of getting a better deal elsewhere (which I do).
Trekking back to Salamonis, I am again instructed to track the passage of time. Just over a week has passed since the last official update of my calendar, so it’s Earthday again. As before, a night’s rest in the Half-Darned Sock is all I need to return to full Stamina, and in the morning I set off to the Guild again
Along the way I check out the Bazaar, encountering the same check that prefaced my previous visit. This time I do have the item in question, so I’m spared another run-in with the taxman, but don’t get to revisit the Bruise Brothers’ stall either. Then again, I probably wouldn’t have been able to afford anything, considering the negligible profit I made on my last quest. Still, I’m not as hard up as some: in the crowd I find someone sufficiently desperate for cash to be willing to work at the Guttery. Before proceeding to the Quests Board I buy a Potion of Luck and sell the snakeskin for twice what the hag offered me.
For my next quest I think I’ll try and get rid of whatever is interfering with local mining operations. Several of my other characters have fared quite well at adventures involving mines. Not all, mind you… The Guildmaster tells me that the silver mines are located to the north of the city, and the excavations have disturbed an as yet unidentified ‘something that would have been better left alone’. It happens.
While the mines aren’t far from Trolltooth Pass, home of assorted Trolls, Goblins and the like, their output is valuable enough that plenty of soldiers have been posted to guard the approaches. And it would appear that none of them are the sort who enjoy throwing their weight around, as I make my way to the mine workings without incident.
A Half-Ogre appears to be in charge, so I show him my Adventurers’ Permit, and he asks if I’ve come for the pest control job. For some reason I have the option of denying it, but I can’t see any benefit to be gained by lying, so I confirm that that is my current quest. He explains that work in the western galleries has ceased owing to an infestation of Rock Grubs. What a bore!
The Half-Ogre gives me directions to the relevant part of the mines, and says I’ll get a gold piece for every Rock Grub I kill, though I will have to bring evidence. At each junction along the way I’m given a choice of which way to go, and while sometimes not heading straight to the right part of a mine can prove beneficial, right now I’m not going to risk straying. Especially as someone has inscribed a picture of a skull at the mouth of one of the wrong turnings. The correct path has been marked with what appears to be a representation of some vicious-looking fangs, which isn’t a lot more encouraging, but I’m not going to gain anything by fleeing the first hint of danger, so in I go.
This tunnel starts to show signs of not having been created by miners, and then I encounter a Rock Grub. These pests have a pretty low Skill, but a lot of Stamina, so there’s a good likelihood of one getting in the odd lucky blow in the course of the fight. Indeed, that is what happens here: while I do prevail, I take a wound along the way.
Taking the Grub’s head, I head back the way I came. On my way in, I thought I heard footsteps coming from one of the wrong turnings, and I am again given the opportunity to investigate. As the alternative appears to be leaving the mine with a single trophy and making less on this quest than I did getting ripped off by a witch, I think now I will take a look.
Moving quietly so as not to alert whoever I heard in case they’re up to no good, I reach another junction. This time there are no hints. Well, this book isn’t by Ian Livingstone, so I don’t go in his favourite direction. It leads to a cavern where I find a Jib-Jib, a harmless fuzzball on legs, with a formidable-sounding roar that tricks predators into thinking it’s much bigger and more vicious than it really is. Startled by the light from my torch, the Jib-Jib bellows and scurries away. Still not ready to leave the mine, I give chase, but once the little critter stops making a noise, I lose track of it. To reduce the risk of my also losing myself, I down that Potion of Luck.
The passage I’m in joins another and leads on to the lip of a massive crevasse, spanned by a rope bridge. On the far side is a scruffy-looking man, hunched over and shivering. I am about to step onto the bridge when the man turns and yells at me to stay away, putting a knife to one of the ropes that hold the bridge up. I halt, but the risk of falling from a severed bridge isn’t the only peril here. A horrendous shrieking noise issues from the fissure, and I have nothing with which to plug my ears, so the noise costs me a point of Skill. Then I see what’s causing it: a swarm of Shriekers, which are basically undead winged piranhas. Not being equipped to deal with them, I try to flee, but a Stamina roll determines how I fare, and the damage I took from that Rock Grub is enough to make the difference between success and failure. Still, having the Shriekers catch up to me isn’t an Instant Death: I merely lose a randomly determined amount of Stamina, which turns out to be just over half of what remains to me.
I do at least make it out of the mine alive, and while I only have a single gold piece’s worth of trophies, I still gain 2 Amonour for my efforts. Trudging back to Salamonis, I am instructed to advance the date by one day. I eat some Provisions to recover some of the Stamina I lost, and then lose another point by spending the night on the streets, as paying for a room would deplete my already negligible funds.
Another calendar check follows, and as it’s now Windsday, something happens. It’s another dream, in which I find myself at the entrance to what FF veterans should recognise as Firetop Mountain. This must be a lucid dream, as I get to choose whether to head inside or turn away. Well, Secrets was written to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the publication of TWoFM, so I might as well check out the nostalgia-fest.
An instruction to take note of my current stats suggests that any harm incurred during this dream might not carry over into the waking world. Apart from that parenthetical directive, the section repeats the final paragraph of the first section of TWoFM word for word, right down to the section numbers given at the west-or-east choice with which it concludes. This duplication continues as I investigate: the boarded-up door to the east (which I don’t risk charging down in case I’m wrong about dreamed Stamina loss not persisting into reality), the dozing Orc guard (though, doubtless to avoid having to pay royalties to Russ Nicholson, there’s no illustration of him)…
The clip show goes on. My dream-Luck suffices to keep me from waking the snoozing sentry, but lets me down when I try to steal the box belonging to his napping associate in the closest room. That Orc wakes, but my dream continues, the text in Secrets only deviating from the original insofar as it provides an additional section number to turn to if I should lose the ensuing fight. I win, claiming the coin inside the box (and the rather more useful Luck bonus that comes with it) and releasing the dead Orc’s pet mouse.
Advancing through the déjà vu, I kill the snake-in-a-box in the next room, and take the accompanying key. No picture, added instruction in case of fight loss, and ‘turn to’ has inexplicably and inaccurately become ‘return to’ in the direction for leaving the room. The inebriated Orcs in the next room also lose an illustration and gain a ‘However, if you lose the battle…’, and while the original text mentioned me facing them in combat, the Secrets variant has them facing me (a trivial alteration, but the odd thing is that it should have been made at all).
The book guarded by the Orcs differs from the one in TWoFM in two regards, and while the change of ‘Dragonfire’ to ‘Dragon Fire’ is no big deal (beyond suggesting that Steve Jackson has bowed to the tyranny of the spellchecker), the fact that the spell for killing evil Dragons has been replaced with instructions for lifting a curse must have some significance. Perhaps I will be able to make up for unintentionally hurting Dog by restoring him to humanity.
Resuming the rerun, I reach the junction, meet and kill the Orc Chieftain and his seemingly masochistic servant. As usual, no picture, added note of where to go if killed in battle (or by the booby-trap on the treasure chest). In other minutiae, the (redundant by Secrets rules) opportunity to eat Provisions remains in the text, and in one paragraph there’s a whole new comma. All this comparing of texts is making me want to sneak a peek at section 291.
The trap doesn’t kill my dream-self, but it does bring his Stamina uncomfortably low. Still, the loot in the chest is as before. The section describing it is on the same page as the one to which any in-dream character death leads, making it easy for the curious or careless to learn the outcome of such a fatality.
Continuing through the copy, I proceed to the next junction and take a calculated risk. If fighting the quintet of squabbling Orcs still brings the Stamina bonus it did in TWoFM, it’ll leave me in better shape than I was when I entered the dream. Unless I lose a couple of Attack Rounds, in which case I’ll be dream-dead, but nothing ventured…
Flawless victory. A pity the Shrieker-induced Skill loss was to Initial as well as Current, or the originally superfluous bonus awarded for the victory might finally have come into play. But my dream-Stamina is now more than twice what it was before I fought this mob, and the dining room still contains the Giver of Sleep, so I should be thankful for the benefits gained from this encounter. Anyone not yet bored by the ongoing textual comparison will doubtless be pleased but not surprised to learn that there’s no picture, but there is a direction to the dream-death section for anyone who fares less well than I just did in the fight.
Incidentally, this has just alerted me to the existence of an arguable mistake in Return to Firetop Mountain. If the hero of TWoFM takes the Giver of Sleep from here, they take ‘the bow, arrow and case’ (my italics). But if, while playing RtFM, you come in here and kill the Orcs’ animated skeletons, you find the empty case.
But I digress. Back to the last junction and north. Secrets ditches the mention that the right-hand wall is to the east, and adds the inevitable ‘where to go if you die’ direction in case anybody should sustain lethal damage while trying to break down the door behind which a man is screaming. It’s not as formidable a door as some, and I release the captive. No picture, same advice as in the original adventure.
I can’t be bothered to go through all the faff associated with breaking into the armoury and acquiring the marginally helpful shield. However, I do go into the torture chamber, which has gained an illustration. The text has also been trimmed a little, though the basic scenario (two Goblins stabbing a captive Dwarf, who expires as I enter the room, options to fight, flee, or stab the corpse and go "Muahaha!" in a bid to look villainous) remains unchanged. The fight includes the usual addition, but it’s only the Goblins who expire.
At the portcullis, my dream-self automatically identifies the bogus lever as a fake and pulls the correct one, proceeding to the junction beyond. Despite this deviation from the core text, the section numbers for moving on are as before. So, do I go the way I would need to go if I wanted a shot at success in the original text, or the way I would need to go if I wanted a shot at success in the Warlock magazine edit? Stick with the original true path.
The passage leads me to the 'Rest Ye Here Weary Traveller' bench (the text gaining a few commas), but this is where the recapitulation of TWoFM ends, as seated on the bench is the small man I encountered towards the end of the dream with which Secrets opened. He congratulates me on having got this far, and says it’s time to wake up, sending me to the section to which I would have had to go if I’d ever died in-dream.
I wake with a start, wondering what the dream was. Well, from one perspective it was around 10% of the book’s sections being partially or wholly recycled material. And unless there was a radical edit that I missed, the Orc Chieftain’s room was the last part prior to the awakening that mattered - everything in between provided neither gold nor Secrets-relevant information. Maybe Steve Jackson has some issue with fictional Dwarfs – his previous FF book opened with a set-up that made it impossible to avoid murdering a Dwarf, and now this one has a score or so of (gameplay-wise) redundant sections that allow for the inclusion of a picture of a Dwarf being tortured to death. Unresolved childhood trauma related to a viewing of Disney’s animated Snow White, perhaps?
My stats have, as I expected, reverted to what they were when I turned in, and the items I collected in the dream have disappeared, but the money remains with me, and I get a Luck bonus that would have come in very handy if I hadn’t downed that Potion in the mine.
It’s time to head back to the Quests Board, but I think along the way I’ll do some more shopping before Pinchpenny can come running after me for payment of ‘Dreams of Wealth Tax’. I think that can wait for another blog entry, though, as the end of the month is looming, and between quests seems like a good point at which to leave things hanging.
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