Those Who Do Not Wish You Well

The discontinuation of Warlock magazine didn't just affect my acquisition of Fighting Fantasy books. Without a bimonthly column to keep me informed of what was on the way and whet my appetite for the latest releases, I was less motivated to go on looking for any new gamebooks. There was the odd exception - for example, the fixed schedule and limited shelf life of Proteus ensured a prompt purchase of every issue right up to the end of the run - and the very fact that I'd pop into assorted local bookshops on a regular basis (even if only to check for the latest Doctor Who novelisation) meant that I soon became aware of additions to series I was following, but my reaction to new gamebooks was more often along the lines of 'I'll get it some time, probably' rather than 'I'm buying that as soon as I have the money'.

This slump in interest hit my Lone Wolf collection particularly hard. My memories of getting the books that followed The Jungle of Horrors are hazy, and it's possible that I didn't even bother until the twelfth and (back then) final book in the series hit the shelves. Being able to actually complete the set would certainly have added some incentive to do so.

Regardless of whatever it was that finally induced me to part with £2.25 for book 9, The Cauldron of Fear, I started to read it on the way home from town, as I do have a distinct recollection of reaching the text that went with one of the more bizarre illustrations as I approached the railway bridge under which I had to pass along the way. And then I got home, and homework or TV or some other distraction intervened, and I'm not sure I ever concluded that 'attempt' at the book. When I finally got as far as Cauldron in my epic 'play through the whole series and go back to the start every time I fail' folly of the early nineties, very little of the adventure was familiar to me, and it does include a couple of 'WHAT?' moments that I'm pretty sure would have lodged in my memory if I'd encountered them previously.

So, leaving the not-that-interesting story of my history with Cauldron, I turn my attention to the ongoing saga of Lone Wolf. By the end of the previous adventure, I had acquired three of the seven Lorestones that would enable me to become a Kai Grand Master, but seen my companion Paido captured by the forces of Gnaag, the new leader of persistent nemeses the Darklords. Still, a rescue mission is not on the cards, as getting my hands on the next Lorestone must take precedence. Not only are the Darklords making a fresh bid for world domination, but Vassagonia, a region which has been the source of not inconsiderable bother before now, has chosen to ally with them (not for the first time), and their armies are currently attacking the Republic of Anari, which just happens to be the location of the fourth of the Lorestones.

More specifically, the Lorestone is somewhere in the ancient city that lies some way beneath Tahou, the capital of Anari. Exploring a long-abandoned subterranean city in search of a lost artefact is liable to be tricky enough in its own right: should that city and its environs become enemy territory, it'll become a good deal tougher.

On the subject of increased toughness, a small and nasty tweak to the rules excludes Backpack Items from the 'carry across equipment from past adventures or put it into storage' rule, meaning I no longer have the Combat Skill-enhancing Alether I went through some contortions to keep for books like this one. Because of this, I will definitely be metagaming, so for the duration of this adventure, the Sommerswerd is going into storage.

Incidentally, I fairly recently read some Lone Wolf discussion which revealed that, while the books say items go into storage at the Kai monastery, they're actually being kept safe by the Elder Magi at Dessi. Which is sort of like saying 'Paris' when you mean 'Cairo'. A fairly significant difference at any time, but a lot more so for an Allied soldier stationed in Africa in 1940.

Anyway, with my magical sword safely stashed where it can't vastly increase the odds of my dying at the end of the book, I turn my attention to the other updates I must make to my Action Chart before getting started. Having completed book 8, I gain another Magnakai Discipline, and I'm going for Nexus. Partly because I'm aware of at least two instances in the book where it can make a difference for the better, and partly because it completes another Lore-Circle, more specifically, the one that gives me +3 to both Combat Skill and Endurance. And yes, I was already taking that into account when I decided that the loss of the Alether took the boss-fight-with-Sommerswerd from 'harsh' to 'ludicrous'. I can also add to the list of weapons for which my Weaponmastery provides a bonus, and since I'm not going to be using my sword, but do still have a Magic Spear, it makes sense to pick Spear this time round.

I receive 17 Gold Crowns, which go straight into storage, as I already have 40, I can't carry more than 50, and having some local currency on me could prove important at some point. I also get to pick a few items from a list, so I take a quiver to replace the arrows I used last book, a couple of Meals in case Huntmastery cannot help me find anything to eat once I'm below ground, a healing potion, and a rope to replace the rope I just lost when the rules got changed. And I bid good riddance to the pass, lodestone and poison vial that I was forced to cart around for much of the previous adventure.

Okay, time to get this show on the road. Or should that be 'in the air', given that my old friend Banedon is transporting me to Anari in his skyship? We travel to Navasari, a city around a hundred miles south of Tahou, to ascertain whether or not the capital is still in friendly hands, and are advised to go no further by skyship because that would make the book too short any airborne vessel is liable to be considered hostile and shot down.

Banedon and I borrow a couple of horses (not that there's much chance of our being able to return them) and ride north, before long encountering a wagon train of evacuees. I decide to see if they carry any fresh news from Tahou, and the captain in charge of their military escort is instantly suspicious of us. Before things can get nasty, a woman in one of the wagons recognises Banedon as an old friend and defuses the situation. The captain wants to keep the wagons moving, though, so we head back south with them for a few minutes while Banedon chats with Lortha, the wife of his former mentor. She gives him a handwritten invitation to her home, which for some reason I have to carry (good thing I freed up space for this compulsory Special Item by ditching all those compulsory Special Items from the last book), tells him that hostile troops are about two days' travel from Tahou, and warns us that the village of Sidara is rumoured to have been taken by the enemy.

We resume our northward voyage, and after a few hours we reach an unidentified village. Probably not Sidara, as there are no signs of recent trouble, and the locals just want to try and sell us things. Might as well stop to check whether or not they have anything of use. Their wares consist of greasy food and flasks of an unpleasant-smelling wine called Boza. I risk buying a flask of Boza, and also give a few coins to the villagers who are too poor to have anything to sell.

Impressed at my generosity, an old woman invites me to receive the blessing of the local shaman, and I follow her. The shaman turns out to be a scrawny old man with a beard, dressed entirely in feathers (and the accompanying illustration is the picture I remember from my initial desultory stab at the book).

So far I’ve said nothing about the changes made for the Mongoose Books reissue, which have been unimpressive but pretty innocuous. The new artwork for this encounter merits a mention, though, as it replaces the unhappy avian-featured oldster with a quasi-simian glowering brute. I recall that this meeting leads to a vague and not very helpful bit of fortune-telling, but the only prediction I can imagine being uttered by the man in the newer picture is along the lines of, “You’re gonna get your ***kin’ ‘ead kicked in!”

The shaman tells me that I have many enemies (I know). Powerful enemies (I know). They plot to keep me from walking my chosen path, as it will bring about their destruction (I know). One enemy will claim to be a friend, but should not be trusted, as he is treacherous (okay, that's a new one, but rather too vague to be any real help). He then enters a trance-like state, keeping me from asking for a name or anything else that might be of actual use to me, so I rejoin Banedon and we set off again.

Towards midday we draw close to a house, outside which several farmhands are warming a pot of soup over a dung fire. A dirt track leads west from the road, and a signpost indicates that it leads to Tahou. My Discipline of Pathsmanship tells me that the sign is pointing the wrong way, and my eyesight tells me that the Mongoose edition's picture of the signpost doesn't match the description given in the text.

There's no need for me to talk to the farmhands, but I do so anyway. They know nothing about the war (so none of the refugees from Tahou who passed this place over the course of the past week and a half can have bothered to warn them of the approaching Darklord armies), and the sign is pointing the wrong way as the result of a refugee wagon having collided with it. The farmhands offer to share their soup with us, but I decline, politely omitting to mention that my refusal is because the smell of the fire has 'destroyed' my appetite. In a development which makes no sense whatsoever, I have to eat a Meal from my Backpack (or use Huntmastery) before Banedon and I ride north again (turning to the same section that I would have if I'd not stopped to chat, which means that if I hadn't stopped and had my appetite ruined, I wouldn't feel the need to eat).

A few miles further on, we see another turning to the west, which a marker stone indicates leads to Sidara. That's the village said to have already been taken by the enemy. We could pop along there just to bump off a few invaders, but I suspect that Joe Dever was expecting readers who received Lortha's warning to avoid the place, and will have prepared a hostile reception for those who 'unwittingly' take the side trip, so we just continue north.

Not long after sundown we reach the village of Chadi, and opt to spend the night in the local tavern. The book attempts to overcharge me for the room. It has already been established that the exchange rate is 4 Lune to 1 Gold Crown, but when Guyuk the tavern owner says that a room is 12 Lune, a not-so-handy parenthetical aside states that that's 4 Crowns, when it should say 3. This mistake has not been remedied in the Mongoose Books reissue.

I pay the correct price, and Guyuk gives us both a free glass of Lovka, a spirit named after a town which I know to have been burned to the ground by Gnaag's troops just a few days ago. The book's description of it as a 'warming liquor' strikes me as being a trifle insensitive.

Some of the tavern's other patrons appear to be gambling, so I decide to see if I can join in. As wagering money on games of chance is illegal in Anari, they're betting with valuables other than coins, and challenging each other with riddles, thereby avoiding prosecution on technicalities. I opt to stake my Platinum Amulet, as it doesn't really do anything I can't do with Nexus. Not that I need to worry about losing, as my mathematical skills make short work of the puzzle. The unnecessary 'this is the correct section' text in the Mongoose edition is less blatant than its equivalent in earlier books, but it's still tiresome, especially when the relevant section already starts with the words 'You have answered the riddle correctly'.

For some reason the list of precious things from which I can choose my winnings is one item short in the Mongoose reissue. No great loss, as the omitted potential prize is a Spyglass, and Huntmastery gives Kai of my rank telescopic vision anyway. Precious metals and stones aren't that big a deal in the Lone Wolf series, so I pick the Scroll of Honour and Altar Cloth, as I might find a use for one or other of them before I get to the end of the adventure and am compelled to throw them away by that preposterous change to the rules.

Now I've demonstrated my mathematical skills, the technically-not-gamblers won't play with me any more, so I decide to have a quick chat with Guyuk. He's rather agitated, the recent evacuation of Tahouese women and children having caused him to become sceptical about the Senate's repeated exhortations to keep calm and carry on, and intends to close the tavern and move away at the end of the week. He advises us to depart the region as well, and then scurries off to serve a customer, so I decide to call it a night.

I sleep well, and am woken at daybreak when Guyuk's wife starts ringing a bell and yelling to everyone to get up. Banedon has already saddled the horses, and we are soon on our way. At around noon we reach another village, and Banedon tells me that the standing stones which line the highway here are reputed to be all that remains of a Vassagonian army that was turned to stone by divine intervention long ago. I hope the locals aren't relying on the same thing happening again this year.

A little later we see a cloud of dust on the road ahead, and I use the telescopic vision granted me by my Huntmastery to find out that it's being thrown up by a score of Anarian cavalry who are riding this way. Banedon and I could try hiding from them behind some of the standing stones, but these men aren't the enemy (or shouldn't be, at least), and if one of them should spot us, the fact that we were trying not to be seen is liable to raise unnecessary suspicion, so we ride to meet them.

The sergeant leading them is unnecessarily suspicious of us, leading me to wonder if these are genuine Anarian rangers until my Sixth Sense tells me that they're legit. I show him the invitation from Lortha as proof that we're allies, and he finds it deeply suspicious that two Northlanders should be carrying a personal invitation to the home of a couple of Tahou's most respected citizens. Banedon explains, probably using the shortest, most unthreatening words he can, and the sergeant finally accepts that we're not a threat. Either that or, as soon as Banedon mentions being a powerful magician, the sergeant decides he'd better leave us alone while his face and navel are still the right way round. Even so, he warns of dire consequences if we're not in Tahou by sundown. A deadline which has doubtless been made that bit more difficult to achieve now we've been delayed for so long by some paranoid twit of a ranger demanding proof that our proof of being trustworthy is trustworthy.

That was, incidentally, one of the all-too-infrequent instances when the Mongoose edit improved on the original text. Only minor changes, but some rather clunky phraseology from 1987 has been replaced with a line that works much better.

By late afternoon we see the Tahou hills. A watchtower guards the pass through them, and a Discipline check hints that something is not right. I don't have Pathsmanship (which, at the level mentioned, would enable me to detect an impending ambush a long way off), but as we get closer to the tower, I see assorted indications that all is not well: the absence of a flag on the watchtower, the lack of guards demanding to know our business, the discarded clothing and other items strewn along the road, the Giak wolf-riders charging towards us, spears at the ready...

Looks like we're finally going to see some proper action. Will using my bow help here, or just use up an arrow or two before I get directed to the same section I'd have had to turn to if I chose to fight from the outset? I take a chance on finding out, and my arrow unseats one of the approaching Giaks, causing him to fall into the path of those directly behind him and cause a bit of a pile-up. Those further back have enough reaction time to swerve around the obstruction I've created, but I have delayed our attackers by just enough that we can get to the pass without being intercepted. Woo!

For a short time the wolf-riders pursue us, but they soon give up, perhaps discouraged by my evident prowess with the bow. Once we get through the hills, we reach a village with a name that varies between editions of the book: originally it was Vanta, but for the reissue it's been changed to Varta, which I'm pretty sure is the name of a company that manufactures batteries. I wonder if the newer text also mentions the guards of Tahou being 'ever ready' to repel invaders, or reveals that the city's more dangerous criminals are imprisoned in specially toughened facilities known as dura-cells.

Regardless of its name, the village is abandoned, its men having moved into Tahou to assist with the city's defence, while the women and children were in the wagon train of evacuees we passed earlier. Once we're through it, we reach the edge of the ring of fields around the moat which surrounds Tahou. The city looks impressive in the moonlight (so much for our being doomed if we didn't get there by nightfall).

When we reach the South Gate, guards with crossbows surround us and demand to know our reasons for coming here, so I show off the invitation again. They're as dubious about it as the ranger sergeant, but the gatehouse commander is able to tell that it's genuine. He impounds our horses and gives us receipts for them, the text explaining that these Special Items don't count towards the numerical limit because they're so small (and perhaps also because there's no real chance of our ever seeing those horses again, and Joe Dever was not so mean-spirited as to force readers to discard some potentially useful Item in order to make space for something so blatantly worthless). The commander also instructs us to report to the citadel in the morning to be allocated positions among the cannon fodder. Not that he phrases it quite like that, but the subtext is clear.

We are allowed into the city, and as we're a good hour's walk from the home of Banedon's erstwhile mentor Chiban, my companion suggests we stop for a meal in a nearby eating house. I refuse because, if I remember rightly, going in there inevitably results in our winding up arrested for not allowing local racists to murder us (yes, Tahou has one of those legal systems).

We proceed to Chiban's house without incident. He is delighted to see Banedon, and offers to assist me in my quest for the Lorestone. We dine well on magically-sourced food, and then turn our attention to my primary objective here. The 'Tahou Cauldron', a funnel-shaped hollow (the Mongoose text is to be commended for fixing the typo that had it 'tunnel-shaped') with a 500-foot long shaft at its base, is the way to get to the ruins of the ancient city of Zaaryx. The Lorestone was apparently thrown down there to keep it out of the hands of a Vassagonian Zakhan, and the shaft was sealed off 360-odd years ago. Chiban would like to join me on my expedition, but the defence of the city must take precedence. Still, he can at least arrange for me to meet with President Toltuda, whose permission will be required to get the shaft opened for me.

Chiban sorcerously composes a letter to the President (possibly also banishing a paperclip-shaped demon which tries to advise him on how to write it) and sends it by messenger to the Senate House. In under an hour we receive a reply, inviting me to address the Senate, who will vote on whether or not to permit me access to the Cauldron. Chiban is a little disappointed, as he'd hoped that the President would grant me a private audience, but he wishes me well as I prepare to set off.

I reach the Senate House and gain access to the Appellant's Gallery without any trouble. Twelve senators are seated in arches surrounding the oval-shaped hall, and the President sits on a throne in the centre. Arguments are made for and against the proposal being considered, and a show of hands determines the outcome. The President invites me to make my case, which I do. Senator Zilaris is in favour of granting my request, as the power contained within the Lorestone could be used to help repel the invaders. Senator Chil... well, it may not be a coincidence that the letters of his name can all be found in 'Chamberlain', as he proposes that they hand me over to Gnaag in the hope that this will persuade the Darklords and their allies to leave Tahou alone.

The senators' vote is quite literally a case of 'six of one, half a dozen of the other', so it's up to the President to break the tie, and a 50/50 random number check determines his decision. Being President, he gets a more fancy way of indicating his vote: beside his throne is a beacon, and he presses a button to light it. On this occasion, the green flame of approval illuminates the chamber, and Senator Zilaris is eager to escort me to the Square of the Dragons, where the entrance to the Cauldron is located.

Along the way, Senator Chil smarmily backpedals on his opposition to me (slightly more fawningly in the Mongoose text), and invites me to help myself to any equipment from his warehouses that might assist me in my quest. For some reason, while the Items available to me are the same in both versions of the book, the list is in a different order. Neither list is in alphabetical order, and both lists jumble up Weapons and Backpack Items, so the rearrangement doesn't appear to serve any useful purpose. I replace the arrow I used earlier, and get a second rope as a precaution against something I remember from a previous attempt at the book.

Chil also provides the equipment that will be used to lower me down the shaft, and personally supervises the assembly of the rig. Regrettably, the book offers no option to say, "Based on a warning issued by a wacky peasant clad only in feathers, I would like to request that that untrustworthy maggot not be allowed anywhere near the set-up to which I am about to entrust my life."

The President inserts a crystal rod into the stone sealing the mouth of the shaft, breaking the enchantments that hold it in place. The stone is moved out of the way, the winch, ropes and cradle are put into position, and I prepare for my descent. Zilaris tells me that guards will be posted up here, and I can indicate my readiness to be brought back up by giving a signal, which really isn't going to be worth memorising. Chil says he hopes I'll come to know him as a friend, and the book still doesn't allow me to remember the shaman's warning and request that someone from Health & Safety double-check the Senator's handiwork.

My descent commences, and after a few minutes, my Discipline of Divination finally kicks in, revealing that I was wrong to distrust Chil, as he's now helping with the rope. Mind you, he appears to have forgotten to put down his razor since the last time he had a shave. Still, now I can see how things are about to go tragically wrong, I can act on this knowledge by... Er, where's the option to do something other than turn to the same section to which I'd have gone if I didn't have Divination? And how come that omission hasn't been remedied in the Mongoose edition?

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I plummet into a freezing cold lake, and randomness determines what happens next. My newly-acquired Nexus turns what would have been a lethal outcome into a merely hazardous one (or, owing to an egregious error in the original text, turns guaranteed survival into ongoing peril), In any case, I'm sinking and running low on air, and will have to discard some equipment to improve my chances of survival. It would probably be safer to ditch the entire Backpack, but losing half of its contents should suffice. What gets thrown out is randomly determined, but the way my Backpack's contents are distributed means that I will definitely retain one meal, one rope, and one of my winnings from the riddle-solving wager, plus either the healing potion or the flask of Boza.

The coin flip establishes that I lose the Scroll of Honour and the potion, plus my spare meal and rope, and the random number check indicates that dropping them is enough to arrest my descent, so I can surface, start breathing again, and swim to the shore. Again the text asks if I have Divination, and somehow I doubt that this is my chance to take the Discipline and give it a good kicking for proving so utterly useless in the minutes leading up to the cutting of the rope. No, it just means that I know my fall to have been caused by Chil rather than some unexpectedly sharp air particles, and get to rage futilely against my betrayer.

This isn't the only time I'll be comparing Lone Wolf to him.

My shouts are not loud enough to be heard up above, and the winking out of what little light I can see overhead indicates that the shaft entrance has been resealed, doubtless with a few resigned shrugs on the part of the President and Senators. I ruefully reflect on my prospects, and then become aware of a sensation similar to the one I experienced when close to the Lorestones I've collected.

My eyes adjust to the near-darkness, and I make out a massive stone staircase ascending out of the lake. I must now have something to eat, and while the first edition of the book says nothing about the effectiveness of Huntmastery down here, the Mongoose text clarifies that 'this subterranean area a wasteland in regard to fulfilling Meal requirements'. Assuming that there's supposed to be a 'constitutes' or similar after 'area', that means that Huntmastery works, but Hunting would not, so I'll save that Meal in case other parts of Zaaryx don't even a wasteland.

After eating, I curl up in a convenient hollow and go to sleep. The stink of decay wakes me an unspecified time later, and I catch sight of a Zaaryx Ghoul about to bury a sword in some part of my anatomy. I seriously need to check the warranty on Divination. Huntmastery saves me from fighting the Ghoul at a Combat Skill penalty, and another welcome Mongoose edit confirms that, like Fighting Fantasy Ghouls, this creature is undead, so I'd be able to do double damage if I hadn't left the Sommerswerd behind when I set off. While I'm comparing the editions, I will concede that at least the original version had an illustrator who grasped the meaning of the word 'lifted'.

I take a little damage in the fight, but nothing that Healing can't handle. At least as long as I survive the encounter with the Ghoul's friends, which are gathering close by. Will my bow prove as effective here as it did against the wolf-riders? Well, it allows me to kill one Ghoul, causing the others to pause, and I see that, while the section number for fleeing up the stairs is unchanged, there's a new one for drawing a hand weapon. I raise my spear, and the Ghouls flee.

There's a slightly odd Mongoose edit here. One Ghoul has been crouched above the entrance to the hollow, intending to ambush me when I came out. Upon seeing the rest of the pack, it jumps down. In the original text, the implication is that the Ghoul intends to join the others as they run away, but the Mongoose variant gives the impression that it decides to attack, as if emboldened by the fact that I scared off its fellows. Either way, as the Ghoul leaps down, something falls from its pocket. The Ghoul attempts to retrieve the item, but I'm in an acquisitive mood, and gash the reaching hand with my spear, at which point the Ghoul decides to relinquish ownership of whatever it just dropped.

I pick up my new treasure, which is a hexagonal token made of a creamy-coloured metal. It has the number '6' engraved on it, and must have been manufactured by the people who made the tapes for the Mission: Impossible team, as it suddenly heats up in my hand, and explodes as I fling it into the lake. Time I was elsewhere, I think.

Ascending the stairs is a slow and laborious process, as each is 'as tall as a young tree', but eventually I reach the top and gaze out across the streets of Zaaryx. Did I fail to pick up on all previous mentions of the fact that its inhabitants were descended from a dragon, or was that detail not considered worth mentioning before now? Again I must eat, and a more coherent Mongoose edit confirms that Zaaryx is effectively a wasteland, so I can use Huntmastery.

As I'm preparing to move on, I catch sight of a shadowy figure in a nearby ruin. Having completed the Lore-Circle of the Spirit, I am able to detect formidable psychic powers. I don't think I want to tangle with the owner. Alas, it does not share my desire to avoid conflict, and launches a mental attack. Psi-screen keeps me from taking damage, but I suspect that things are about to get nasty.

In fact, while the Psi-Ghoul is a more powerful opponent than the Ghoul that woke me, I fare better against it, taking even less damage than in the previous fight, and less time to win than expected, judging by the ‘at last’ at the start of the next section. A ring with a glowing stone set into it catches my attention, and I take the Psychic Ring and put it into my pocket.

My exploration of the city takes long enough that I have to sleep and eat twice before the next noteworthy occurrence, Huntmastery continuing to compensate for my not having packed my Backpack with as many Meals as it can hold. At the centre of Zaaryx I find a building that seems undamaged by the ravages of time, and inside it I spot a group of reptilian creatures huddled around a large leathery egg (or possibly a rugby ball), stroking it and whispering sibilantly to each other. Looks as if the city’s original inhabitants may be less extinct than has been assumed.

If I try to sneak up on the creatures, the book may penalise me for not having the Discipline of Invisibility. Assuming them to be hostile and pre-emptively firing an arrow would be species-ist (and guarantee an unfriendly reception). I think the best thing to do is to greet them and see how they react. With fear, as it turns out: they grab the egg and flee down a flight of steps. Evidently they can see in the dark, as there’s no illumination. I have my trusty Kalte Firesphere, though, so I can light my way with that.

The light reveals that one of the reptiles dropped a hexagonal metal token in the rush to get away from me. Remembering what happened to the last such token, and observing the lack of a convenient body of water in which to dispose of this one if it should become unstable, I examine the token in as much detail as I can without actually touching it. Embossed on it is an equation, and for once the book just assumes that I have the mathematical skill required to work it out, and tells me the answer straight off.

Descending the stairs, I avoid a trap that the reptiles probably thought I’d have failed to notice in the dark, and finally reach a door that’s slightly ajar. I don’t have a mirror to help me get a sneak peek of what’s behind the door, but after that trap I’m suspicious, and lie flat on the floor as I push the door open.

A bolt of energy passes over my head. The paranoid lizards have the equivalent of a flipping laser cannon! But as they’re gawping at my having avoided getting a smoking hole blasted through my thorax, I leap up and charge at them, spear in hand, and the peculiar ability of gamebook heroes to learn the name of previously unknown species just by engaging them in combat lets me know that I’m lethally skewering a couple of Crocaryx.

Regrettably, I don’t even get the chance to try and figure out how to operate the flipping laser cannon!, and simply head on along the corridor. More stairs take me down to a chamber with around a hundred ominously dark archways set into the walls, and a couple of huge metal doors up ahead. Set into the doors are a couple of combination locks, and the number of digits each lock can handle makes it clear that those two tokens have provided me with everything I need to know.

Well, not quite everything. The locks disengage, but the door won’t open. A voice in my head tells me I’ll need a key, and I turn to see a female Crocaryx, whom I somehow recognise as their leader, holding a rod like the key the Tahouese President used to release the stone seal in the Cauldron. Gleaming eyes in archways indicate that reinforcements are close by if I want to initiate any violence, and the boss Crocaryx again addresses me telepathically, noting that I’m different from the other humans who’ve found their way down here (I do not want to see the slash fiction doubtless inspired by that line), and asking what I want down here (repeat previous parenthesis).

My only options are to answer truthfully or ready a weapon, which makes me wonder if it's possible to deceive telepathically. I specify 'deceive' because that's more intentional than 'lie', and I'm sure that anyone who genuinely believes something which is not actually true would inevitably pass on that untruth if it were to come up in the course of direct mind-to-mind communication, but to 'say' something you know to be a falsehood? Probably not without advanced training as a liar - for instance, a journalism course at the Daily Mail.

But I digress. Getting ready for a fight against potentially hundreds of Crocaryx, some of which may be armed with flipping laser cannons!, is not likely to prove wise, so I reveal that I'm here for the Lorestone, and hope that the Crocaryx haven't designated it some sacred item which must be kept out of scale-free hands at all costs.

I put a good spin on my answer, invoking the name and memory of the Crocaryx' dragon progenitor, and the leader reveals, with a mixture of sadness and joy, that her people had dealings with the founder of the Kai centuries before, and have been waiting for me to follow in his footsteps ever since. Should have gone with a welcome mat rather than a flipping laser cannon! 

She opens the door, and we spend the next several hours wandering through places which no human has seen before, eventually reaching a circular chamber with a glowing stone dais at its centre. Instinct compels me to step up on the dais, watched by a crowd of Crocaryx, who share their leader's mixed feelings: pleased because this is what they've been waiting for since my predecessor originally found the Lorestone, and sorrowful at the thought that they have now fulfilled their purpose and now have nothing to do but decline and die out. This is another regrettable instance of the Lone Wolf series drawing on pulp tropes now recognised as being pretty vile - the idea of the indigenous populace only being there to tend and protect things until the right people come along to claim them, after which they become dispensable, has fed into plenty of real-world atrocities. Still, I'm sure none of the noxious associations were in Joe Dever's mind when he wrote this, so I shan't go on about it.

Back in Zaaryx, a golden light shines down on me, and at its core appears a leathery ovoid, which cracks open to reveal the Lorestone. Hang on, was that the egg that the first group of Crocaryx I encountered had when I saw them? That is so typical. They're meant to have been guarding the thing, but someone just couldn't resist the temptation to get it out and fiddle with it. I bet the only reason it took so long for the leader to bring me here is that, as soon as my identity was announced, the guilty Crocaryx owned up to what they'd done, explained how long it would take to put the Lorestone-egg back and reset the 'epic reveal' devices, and asked her to take me on a long detour so they'd have time to put things back as they were supposed to be. I almost wish the mini-adventure accompanying the Mongoose edition had focused on the misadventures of the Crocaryx who has to bring the egg back and set up all the shininess before Lone Wolf reaches the chamber.

If Healing hadn't long since taken care of what little damage I sustained fighting Ghouls, the Lorestone would restore my Endurance to maximum. Then a magical vortex forms and sucks me in, and I find myself back above ground level and on a balcony overlooking what remains of Tahou. It's midday, but little sunlight makes it through the clouds of smoke overhanging the city. The description of the damage wrought by the invading armies is a little more evocative in the Mongoose edition of the book.

Observing that the fighting is heaviest in the West District, I head that way, passing the smoking heap of rubble that used to be the Senate House. Close to the West Gate I see a few soldiers attempting to evacuate a makeshift hospital which has caught fire, and pause to assist them. One of them tells me that the captain is trapped on the first floor, trying to save his brother. Nexus grants Magnakai of my rank the ability to extinguish fires at will, though only small ones at the moment. Recognising my limitations, I put out the flames at the top of the stairs and rush up to help the captain bring his brother out. We make it back to the street just before the roof caves in and the inferno consumes the whole first floor. The captain invites me to join him and his command at the North Gate, but as I'm closer to the West Gate and the need appears greater there, I politely decline and hurry on.

Ascending to the battlements, I get a better look at the assault from without, and notice that work has almost been completed on a bridge which will enable a Squad of Drakkarim to get to the gate. Let's see if I can achieve a third display of awesomeness with the bow. This time round there's a random element to the outcome, and the odds are only slightly in my favour thanks to my Weaponmastery. Still, that 'slightly' is just enough, and I put my arrow through the throat of the engineer who was about to put the finishing touches to the bridge, buying the Tahouese a little time to reinforce their defences.

Further to the north, a new problem arises. Some Giaks have managed to put up a scaling ladder, and a big Gourgaz has preceded them up it. This one is more powerful than the one that half-killed me during my first adventure, but I've improved quite a bit since that fight. I don't get as good numbers this time round, though, and still wind up losing half my Endurance. Still, the death of the Gourgaz scares off the Giaks (at least the ones quick enough to stay out of reach of my spear), and reinforcements on the Tahouese side arrive to help discourage further such sorties.

I use my enhanced vision to spot Banedon at the top of the tower on the boundary between the West and North Districts, and decide to join him because it makes such strategic sense to have two of the most powerful fighters in the city defending the same spot, right? Incidentally, the lack of any 'use a spyglass' option for any reader who doesn't have Huntmastery at the required level makes it more understandable that the Item was dropped in the Mongoose edition: I can imagine anyone who picked it just to compensate for such a deficiency getting seriously annoyed.

I get to the tower without any bother. Banedon is delighted to see that I'm not dead, and brings me up to date on developments. The President and Senator Chil both died in one of the first attacks, the enemy's airborne troops did a fair bit of damage but have practically been wiped out, and things are looking better now that I'm back and have the Lorestone.

Dawn brings a fresh onslaught from the besieging armies (time flies when you're having exposition), and the Vassagonians lead the attack. At their head is a figure in gold armour, surrounded by a halo of blue fire which destroys all arrows fired at him. He carries a black metal sphere, which spits out a bolt of fire that atomises the West Gate. Most of the defenders in the area flee from him, and the one soldier who summons up the nerve to attack is fried the moment his spear touches the magical shield.

The Vassagonian leader heads straight for me, and I discover that he's Zakhan Kimah, an old enemy, deriving his magical protection and destructive power from the Orb of Death, which he obtained from Gnaag's predecessor under false pretenses. I said I'd wind up regretting not pilfering the Orb back when I almost nearly had the chance. He fires a bolt of energy from the Orb, and as I don't have the magical attack-repelling Sommerswerd on me, it hits, doing a fair bit of damage (though if I did have the Sommerswerd, the bolt would still strike a glancing blow, doing exactly the same amount of damage).

I have in my possession two items that could help me here. I shall try using the Dagger of Vashna, partly because I think it'll offer better odds of victory, and partly because there's a kind of symmetry to it: Kimah is a Vassagonian bad guy wielding a weapon he acquired by pretending to have defeated a Kai Lord, and I'll be a Kai Lord wielding a weapon I acquired by actually defeating a Vassagonian bad guy.

The Dagger is one of the few items that can pierce Kimah's shield, because it has trapped within it the spirit of one of the nastiest Darklords ever to cause mayhem in Magnamund, I could use it to fight the Zakhan, but unless his Combat Skill is a lot lower than I expect it to be (and it won't be as preposterously high as it is against a Sommerswerd-wielding Lone Wolf because Joe Dever suddenly turned on his long-term readers), I'm unlikely to prevail. Throwing the Dagger, as I recall, is a 'do or die' option, but as Dagger is one of my Weaponmastery proficiencies, I'm pretty sure I only have a 1 in 10 chance of failure. Actually the Weaponmastery only brings it down to 1 in 5, but one of my Lore-Circles halves the risk. And the number I get would be a success even without bonuses. The Dagger gets Kimah in the heart, and his magical shield incinerates him and the Orb.

This slightly demoralises his troops, who are rapidly driven back out, and the other besieging armies also lose heart. Then friendly troops stream from the hills around from Varta (which now has that name in both books) to recharge Tahou's defences. The hostile forces are routed, and Senator Zilaris proclaims me the Saviour of Tahou. While I managed to avoid having my equipment confiscated, I’m pleased to see that the Mongoose edition has the grateful Tahouese returning anything that had been taken: the omission of that detail from the first edition made it possible to lose the Dagger of Vashna and the Sommerswerd for good.

Then things take a turn for the ominous. A black cloud forms over the West Gate, and starts yelling threats. The speaker identifies himself as Gnaag (just in case I thought I was being harassed by a sentient cumulonimbus) and gloats that he’s managed to get hold of the last three Lorestones, and will destroy them and me at the same time. I sense that he’s speaking the truth (at least as regards having the Lorestones – the destruction bit is not a certainty), and reflect that the completion of my quest to become a Kai Grand Master just got a whole lot trickier.

Well, I won the book, but only by acting on knowledge from past attempts and exploiting loopholes. A quick look at some sections I missed on this occasion reveals that the Mongoose edition reduces the Zakhan’s stats in all iterations of the climactic combat, though most drastically against a Sommerswerd-equipped Lone Wolf (and still not enough to give most players a decent chance of winning that particular variant of the fight). And that section 291 involves breathing in toxic spores while entering Zaaryx by an alternate route.

I’m tempted to peek at certain parts of the Mongoose text of book 11 before I start book 10, but I’m not overly keen on metagaming. I find it preferable to repeatedly failing because of authorial unreasonableness, but it’s still the lesser of two evils. Anyway, it’ll be a couple of weeks (at least) before I need to make up my mind about that one way or another.

Some New Story, Delightsome and Delectable

The sixth and last of the Virtual Reality Adventures, and the fourth to be penned by Dave Morris, was also the VRA it took me longest to acquire. I eventually got it on eBay, though not before my saved search for it came up with dozens if not hundreds of false positives, more often than not romance novels. As gamebook titles go, Twist of Fate is probably the second most bothersome one I've ever had to seek online (though it was still pretty straightforward compared to this one).

At a later date, while visiting relatives in Swindon, I found a copy (cheaper than the one I'd bought, but with a slightly damaged cover) in an Oxfam shop, and got that one for a fellow gamebook collector. Alas, it seems to have subsequently been devoured in transit by some bibliophagous ghoul infesting the postal service.

I know I did have a go at the book shortly after the copy I retained arrived, but I have absolutely no recollection of what happened to my character beyond a vague impression that he didn't get very far. My lack of recall may be in part because the book draws on the tales of the Arabian Nights, as did The Demon's Claw, the third book of Dave Morris and Oliver Johnson's epic Blood Sword series, which I'd already played several times by the time I first read a VRA, so my memories of Twist might have blurred together with those of Claw.

I think I'll go with one of the pre-generated characters listed at the start of the book. It should be possible to successfully complete the adventure with any of them (so long as I make the right decisions), as this isn't one of Mark Smith's VRAs. After considering the options, I'm going with the Nomad, whose Skills are Agility, Folklore, Magic and Wilderness Lore.

The narrative begins with my character outside Baghdad on the last day of Ramadan. Quite a busy day, as it turns out: I find and tame a wild stallion, overhear the Grand Vizier Jafar plotting to overthrow the Caliph, and then get robbed of the horse and banished from the city by Jafar, and that's before I'm even out of the Prologue.

An encounter with a beggar costs me one gold dinar and prompts minor confusion over the rules: I also had to pay a dinar in the Prologue, but in this section the text explicitly reminds me to delete the coin from my Adventure Sheet, while there was no such direction in the Prologue. Does that mean the starting sum given with my character description is what I had left after the initial compulsory expenditure, or am I now 2 dinars down? Okay, it’s only one coin difference, but I’m probably going to need to make some purchases before long, and even one coin could make a potentially game-ending difference to what I buy.

Anyway, the beggar directs my attention to the starry sky overhead and makes a portentous observation about God guiding the worthy to a just reward. While I'm focusing on the stellar vista overhead, the beggar leaves. I attempt to catch up with him, but he loses me in a crowd which has gathered to listen to a storyteller. The tale being told ends, the crowd disperses, and a sailor emerges from a nearby astrologer's shop.

I decide to speak to the storyteller, who offers me wine, and I wind up telling him what has happened to me today. His interpretation of the beggar's words is that I should seek the nest of the fabled rokh, which lays eggs of pure diamond. That seems a bit of a leap to me - maybe I told my tale so well that he's trying to send me on a suicidal quest in order to keep me from stealing his audience.

Speaking of audiences, a new one is gathering, so I depart, and catch sight of the same sailor as before, now watching a street magician. Could just be a coincidence, but maybe we are fated to meet, in which case I would be advised to say hello before some adversity comes my way to force the encounter.

The sailor notes my less than cheery demeanour, and I find myself recounting the day's incidents again - at least as far as the encounter with the beggar, at which point the sailor interjects his theory as to what the beggar was saying: I should become a sailor myself, and let the stars guide me to my destiny. Not as implausible as the storyteller's theory, but still pretty tenuous.

I wander off, and consider the options open to me. I can try heading to the Caliph's palace to warn him of Jafar's treachery (does approaching the authorities ever work in gamebooks?), I can become a sailor after all, or I can join a merchant caravan. And that's it, so I might just as well seek my fortune at sea after all.

I get hired, but at a low wage, as Seafaring is not one of my Skills. To make things more interesting, I choose to enter the employ of a captain who is heading south in search of the fabled Scarlet Isle. We travel down river without incident for a week, and then one night, while we are moored midstream, I have trouble sleeping, and thus am the only one of the crew to notice a barque approaching. Notifying the captain wouldn't be very adventurous, so I wait and watch. As the barque draws closer, I see obvious signs of great wealth, and then catch sight of a woman in a curtained pavilion to the stern. Probably unwisely, I slip overboard and swim towards the barque, only now noticing the half-dozen guards playing dice on the foredeck, and hearing the woman sigh.

Also lacking the Skill of Streetwise, I miss out on some insight, and must choose whether to make myself known to the guards or surreptitiously approach the woman. Sneaking up on women is not a good thing to do, so I make my presence known, and the guards threaten to kill me. I doubt that my magic will help me to overcome so many, so I return to the ship I left, and the encounter ends unsatisfactorily, but at least not lethally.

The voyage continues, nothing else of interest happening until we dock at Suhar to bring aboard supplies. I get to visit the market, and my funds are more than one dinar too low for everything that could be useful, so I make do with a water bottle, a whistle and some gloves.

It would appear that this market can be visited as part of all the sea voyages on which I could have gone: as I return to the harbour, the book asks where I'm headed. In addition to the three destinations I was offered earlier, there's an option for 'if you cannot remember'. Does that indicate that my character could have lost his memory in some encounter I missed, or is it just indicative of an authorial lack of confidence in the reader's attention span?

Or could there be something more devious afoot here? Wild speculation: if what the reader encounters between Baghdad and Suhar varies depending on intended destination (which would be a bit Schroedingery, but excusable in view of the suggestion that fate or destiny or some such force may be intervening in my life), 'forgetting' might provide a means by which the hero could, say, gain the benefits of the incident which befalls a sailor bound for Egypt, and then change direction and head for the Indies. Then again, I may be massively overthinking things. And even if I am right, trying to cheat fate in this manner strikes me as a risky proposition, and I'd need to know the book far, far better than I do before trying it. So I'm still trying to find the Scarlet Isle.

Once we're under way again, I ask the Captain what cargo he seeks, and he tells me he's after ivory. Maybe the storyteller was right after all - he mentioned that the rokh preys on elephants, and ivory traditionally comes from elephants, so the logical inference is that the Scarlet Isle might house a rokh or two.

We have to reach it for that to matter, though, and after three days we are fog-bound and becalmed. My lack of Seafaring may cost me more than just a higher wage bracket. Do I risk using my Magic to summon a jinni? There seems little point in having a Skill if I never use it, so I hope my shipmates don't turn on me in superstitious panic.

Things turn out badly, but not quite as I'd expected. The crew are terrified at the sight of the jinni, but the captain is a brave man, and is all set to attack it when I intervene. Regrettably, while trying to defuse the situation, I make the mistake of referring to the jinni as an ogre, which the jinni takes about as well as a Welsh nationalist would respond to being referred to as an Englishman. Wilfully misinterpreting my instructions, the jinni propels the ship into the clouds, leaving us literally high and dry.

Upon closer inspection, we discover that the ship is not actually stranded on a cloud. That would be silly. It's stuck up a tree that grows out of the cloud. The captain plucks a violet bloom and hands it to me to confirm that the tree is real. One of the other sailors catches sight of a city further along the cloud, and since it's my fault that we're up here, I get sent to find out if the inhabitants can help us get back down to sea level.

Stepping overboard, I find the cloud to be as substantial as moss, and walk off. Only a short distance away, I hear the sound of a child crying. Could be a trap, but ignoring it would be unheroic, so I'll investigate anyway. Rounding a bank of cloud, I find a little girl, clutching a broken garland of flowers like the one the captain took from the tree. I'm about to give the girl my flower to help fix the garland when my Skill of Folklore reminds me of the tale of a sailor who survived being cast into the heavens on a waterspout because he had on him a magic flower which enabled him to walk on the clouds. If that is what's keeping me aloft, I should wait until I'm assured of a gentle descent before relinquishing it.

The girl stops crying and gives me a startlingly nasty scowl before running away. How odd. I usually get on terribly well with children. Well, there's not much I can do beyond resuming my walk to the city, which is made of precious metals and stones.

An arch leads me to a hall in which a gryphon is fighting a giant scorpion, both of them badly wounded. The gryphon asks me for a drop of blood to sustain it, and as a winged and sapient ally strikes me as being a good thing to have in the current situation, I grant its request. As expected, this costs me a Life Point, but it helps the gryphon to prevail in the fight. Then a giant black goat enters the hall, and the gryphon says it'll need to eat one of my eyes to get enough strength for this battle. What's the betting that, if I agree, the goat will be followed by an oversized carp, prompting the gryphon to request a bite or two of my spleen to sustain it? Or something along those lines.

Refusing to succumb to the sunk cost fallacy, I find myself running away from the city and back to the ship, where a typo has me pleonastically telling the crew what I say. Hope that was caught and fixed for the reissue. The captain is appalled (at the situation, not the misprint) and resolves to abandon ship, having the rigging spliced together into one long rope. In view of my culpability in the situation, I am selected to descend first and find out if the rope is long enough to get us safely down to sea level. It isn't, but the remaining drop is survivable, though it does cost me another Life Point and, at least temporarily, my consciousness.

I come round to find that I have been washed ashore on a beach. Barely lucid, I stumble along, catching sight of a palace. Beautiful people emerge and carry me to a bed, where I pass out again. When I regain my senses a second time, I find myself in the company of a group of sailors, who explain that they were shipwrecked and rescued by the servants of the wizard who lives here. The wizard even provided them with a new ship, though he asked them to delay leaving for a week, as he had foreseen my arrival and wanted them to take me with them.

My possessions (such as they are) are stacked neatly by the bed, and my Life Points are back at maximum. The sailors want to be on their way, but before leaving I'd like to see the wizard and thank him. Or try to find out what the catch is, because such generosity must have a hidden cost, right?

Maybe not. The wizard claims not to be the master of the palace, but its custodian, and reveals that he can't often see the future, but the complex weave of Fate's tapestry around me is at least partly visible to him. He sees injustice, sinister friends, unwitting foes, an ascent to the rokh's nest, an airborne ride on horseback, possibly robes of honour. To assist me, he hands over a pair of embroidered slippers that will make me weightless. He also avoids giving me his name, but there may be a good reason for that.

I rejoin the sailors and we depart, eventually reaching the port of Zeila, which the map in the front of the book reveals to be a significant distance to the east. The other sailors are keen to head back west and north to Basra, but my adventures are not yet over. There are traders close by, and while my funds won't stretch to much, I can afford a veil and a candle. Still having no real idea what will be useful and what is not, I get both.

I also get to experience the injustice of which the wizard spoke, as a barber falsely accuses me of being the man who stole a ruby from the palace treasury. As the captain of the palace guard faces execution if he fails to apprehend the thief by moonrise, the guards aren't too concerned about due process. The barber's pious refusal of a reward makes him the number one suspect on my list, but unless I can convince my captors of my innocence, I'm not likely to have much opportunity to find out if my suspicions are valid.

The Sultan has me thrown into an oubliette while he decides on my punishment, and the guards pilfer my remaining money (but nothing else) along the way. The oubliette is already in use, and the occupant, an old man with a mangy cat in his lap, doesn't seem very impressed by his new fellow prisoner. I talk to him anyway, protesting my innocence, and he tells me a little of the notorious thief known as the Shadow, who has several impressive thefts to his record, and intends to add the diamond egg of the rokh to the list of treasures he has pilfered.

My description of the old man's account as 'strange stories' offends him, and he draws my attention to the tail of his cat as proof of his veracity. Not wishing to have an enraged lunatic as my cellmate, I say that he's convinced me, but he can see that I'm trying to humour him, and tells me a pack of obvious lies to demonstrate the point he was trying to make: the cat's tail briefly grows in length every time the man states a falsehood.

The man then notices my magic slippers, and comments that they can't be ordinary footwear. There seems little point in trying to conceal the truth from him, so I agree, and then things fail to pan out as I had anticipated. Instead of borrowing the cat, using the slippers to get to the oubliette entrance, using my Magic to break the lock, and then reading political manifestos until the cat’s tail is long enough for the old man to climb up, I simply reveal the secret of the slippers and then take a nap, subsequently waking from a bad dream about impending live burial to find that the old man has taken the slippers and absconded with them, abandoning the cat. There’s probably not much chance of my being able to use her to convince the Sultan of my innocence, but such an obviously magical creature is still worth keeping. Provided I can get away alive.

The thieving, cat-neglecting wretch wasn't the only other person in here, and one of my remaining fellow-prisoners tells me that food is thrown down here once a day, at most, and the only way to get water is to lick moisture from the walls. As I still have my water bottle, I might be able to spare my tongue that particular unpleasantness for a day or two, but things are looking pretty grim.

A week later, a new prisoner is lowered in to join us. The guards gleefully tell us that we now have the honour to be sharing our imprisonment with the infamous Shadow, so I point out that their having captured the actual thief of the ruby proves that I'm innocent. They reply that I'm in jail, therefore I must be a criminal, and stroll off to check their cold cases for some other crime to pin on me.

The newcomer, a young man named Azenomei, with a scar on his nose, reveals that he's not actually the Shadow, but he thought I was, and got himself captured in order to gain access to me. I point out a few of the more glaring flaws in his plan, and he goes on to demonstrate that he's not completely stupid, though the guards must be, as he has a massive bunch of keys on him. There is still the little matter of the entrance's being twenty-odd feet overhead, but once Azenomei learns of the cat's unusual feature, he comes up with a plan.

We wait until dark, and then he starts whispering to the cat, presumably going straight to the climate change denial and prosperity teaching, as her tail stands bolt upright and grows all the way up to the grille covering the entrance. We climb up, unlock the grille, and escape, though I do delay briefly, maintaining my grip on the cat's tail so that, as it shrinks again, it lifts her to freedom as well.

Concealing ourselves among the sacks of grain on an ox-cart, we get out of the city without further unpleasantness, and Azenomei invites me to join him on his quest across the desert to rescue his sister from the bronze citadel in which a jinni has imprisoned her. The wizard didn't mention any daring rescue or distressed damsel, so I politely decline.

Heading away from the city, I find myself in mountainous territory. Food is scarce, and only my Wilderness Lore keeps me from losing Life Points. Even so, I am very grateful when I stumble upon a stone palace and am presented with a gargantuan repast by the servants of the three old men who live here. Not so grateful as to be entirely unsuspicious when the men cannot stop by long enough for me to thank them, as they 'have something to attend to'. Okay, so the wizard's generosity turned out to be genuine, but I think it unlikely that I should be so lucky twice over, so I sneak after the men to find out more about this important something.

Proceeding to a hall, the men sit down for a quiet smoke, and then start discussing my suitability as a sacrifice. they are confident that, in return for my life, their gods will grant them the power of flight, enabling them to ascend the Peak of Hara and rob the rokh's nest, the location of which one of them has marked on a map. Bandwagon-jumping scoundrels!

One of them advises that they go to check that I've succumbed to the drugged sherbet. Roguery is not one of my Skills, so I guess I'm not going to be able to feign unconsciousness until such time as I can turn the tables on them. Nor, it transpires, even to keep from knocking a shield off the wall and attracting their attention, though I'd have thought avoidance of clumsiness would come under Agility rather than Roguery.

The head sorcerer tells me I've been chosen for a glorious destiny. I'm not sure I agree with his definition of 'glorious', so I turn to flee, and the three of them summon up a cloud of noxious-looking green vapour that fumes its way towards me. At which point a rope drops from a balcony and Azenomei slides down it, acting like he's the hero of this tale, and throws me a vinegar-soaked piece of silk. While I'm wrapping the cloth around my face, he enters the cloud, clobbers one of the sorcerers, and steals their map, which he throws to me.

We make a rapid exit, and Azenomei again invites me to join his quest. I'm not sure why so capable a hero would have need of my assistance. Perhaps I could be of some help if I were the Shadow, but I'm not. Then again, if I do manage to rob the rokh's nest (which should be easier now I have the map), that would put me on a level with the Shadow, making me a worthy companion. I try to explain this to him, but he unexpectedly demonstrates himself to be a powerful sorcerer in his own right, and transforms me into a jackass before I can make my point.

Well, that suggests that he's up to no good, but I'm not exactly in a position to make good use of this knowledge any more.

*     *     *

In a little over a month, it will be five years since I started this blog. To mark the occasion (assuming there is sufficient interest), I will rip off emulate fellow gamebook blogger Aussiesmurf and offer my readers the opportunity to ask what they like, gamebook-related or not. So if there are any questions you'd like to put to me for my anniversary post, please submit them below.

Some Sad News

Today I learned that, following a lengthy illness, gamebook author Joe Dever passed away earlier this week.

The gamebook I have owned for longest is one that he wrote - Fire on the Water, the second instalment of his epic Lone Wolf saga. I had other gamebooks before that one, but they all went when I got rid of much of my collection in early adulthood. The Lone Wolf series was one of the few that I retained back then: I never even considered disposing of that set.

Lone Wolf has given me a lot of enjoyment (plus, inevitably for a gamebook series, some frustration) over the years, not to mention a good number of memories. On more than one occasion I've mentioned that time back in the 1990s when I played the original series (books 1-12) through to the end, going back to the start of the first book every time I failed, no matter how far I'd got. It's the only series I've ever tackled with such dogged commitment, and the fact that it kept me coming back, even after I lost that tricky fight in book 11, or after the umpteenth time I fell foul of that unavoidable one-in-ten chance of an arrow through the head in book 4, says something about Mr. Dever's ability to grip the imagination.

My condolences to his friends and family.

You Can't Crown a Dead Prince

In what turned out to be the last days of the Puffin run of Fighting Fantasy books, Ian Livingstone attempted to grab the attention of a new generation of readers with a series of First Fighting Fantasy Adventures entitled The Adventures of Goldhawk. These were significantly shorter than standard FF books, and had a simplified version of the FF rule system (which was never that complicated anyway), larger pages, and full colour internal illustrations. The series made fewer concessions to its intended readership in one regard, though: most of the books had just as narrow a 'true path' as every gamebook Livingstone had written since Caverns of the Snow Witch.

Back in the days when I could afford to randomly browse for gamebooks on eBay, my searching once turned up a lot of the first two Goldhawk books for little enough that I decided to see what they were like. The first one so failed to impress me that I didn't even bother attempting the second one until my previous attempt at playing through the whole series of FF (including spin-offs) in order. My playthrough of the first book, Darkmoon's Curse, still exists, and can be read here.

The books are set in and around the Kingdom of Karazan, which has been at war with Orcs for two years. Their fortunes have taken a turn for the worse since the death in battle of their King. His crown (which he had with him despite its providing inadequate head protection, judging by the illustration of it towards the end of the book) was stolen, and is now in the possession of the chaos wizard Darkmoon. Then an assassin poisoned the heir to the throne, Prince Goldhawk, leaving him comatose. Goldhawk's Dwarf servant Orlando attempted to retrieve the crown, but was captured by Darkmoon, who transformed him into an animated tin pig before sending him back to Karazan empty-trottered. In these dire circumstances, court wizard Marris resorts to using a Time Gate to provide a replacement for the incapacitated Prince (who, despite the title of the series, never actually gets up to any adventuring).

In another time and place (supposedly here and now, though if that were true, this blog entry would be neither completed nor posted for reasons that are about to become apparent) I am reading a book about Karazan, only to get dragged through the Time Gate into Goldhawk's bedchamber and transformed into his exact likeness. This bothers me a lot less than it should, and I accept the role of Goldhawk-substitute and the mission to try and get back the crown without complaint. To aid me in this quest, Marris equips me with a suit of golden armour (not actual gold, I hope, since that would be appallingly heavy and provide mediocre protection in battle), 10 gold pieces, and Edge, the finest sword in the land (who is also animated, and warns me not to use him against any opponents without asking permission).

Before long I'm on my way, accompanied by Orlando, who soon starts bickering with Edge for no good reason. We reach a river, and Orlando mentions a nearby bridge, as he's not capable of swimming in his new form. The bridge turns out to be guarded by a man in spiked black armour (to which illustrator Russ Nicholson has added gold and blue ornamentation), who demands half my money in return for letting me cross. Instead, I ask Edge if he's willing to inflict some harm, and he agrees, so I'm into my first fight.

The combat system in these books is very basic. Characters have only one stat, namely Skill. Mine was automatically set at 8, while the Dark Knight's is just 7. To win a fight, all that is required is to roll equal to or above the opponent's Skill on two dice, and I get the first roll. Neither of us succeeds first time round, but the second roll for my character is high enough to kill the Knight, and I continue on my way, unperturbed at having just ended somebody's life. Sure, it's business as usual for your average FF hero, but I'd hope that most civilians from this day and age would be less blasé about the whole thing.

After a while, the path splits. There's a handy signpost, which indicates that one turning leads to Longshadow Forest. The other sign merely says 'Vanish', and on my first attempt at this book, I made the mistake of thinking that that could be a warning of what would happen to anyone who went that way. As I'm reading the signs, a crow flies down and reveals itself to be a messenger from Marris, warning me that I shall have to acquire the Golden Hand wristlet from the Howling Tunnels before I confront Darkmoon.

I take the path to Vanish, which turns out to be a village full of unhappy and disgruntled people. One of the locals, who goes by the name of Sad Sam, explains that everyone's so miserable because they keep losing things. It's unclear whether the place got its name because of this, or the name was chosen for some other reason and mysteriously caused the locals to start misplacing their property. Regardless, Sam lists three items of his that have gone missing just today, and says that if I give him 4 gold pieces, I can have any of them that I manage to find. I take him up on his offer, thereby reaching what is presumably supposed to be a puzzle, though spotting the mislaid objects in the illustrations for this section is unlikely to prove much of a challenge to anyone who can see.

Leaving the village (which, regrettably, didn't work its malign magic on either of my tiresome sidekicks), I proceed to the forest. In a clearing we find a Gnome sitting on a large mushroom. He has a bird on his shoulder, though the book only points this out when Orlando sneezes (tin pigs apparently having very sensitive nasal passages in spite of their being composed of metal) and scares it off. The Gnome is displeased, and threatens to turn us into frogs, but when I tell him of my quest, he suddenly becomes friendly. That's a bit odd, as he reveals himself to be a wizard and a hermit, and as heroes on quests have a tendency to go pestering wizards for advice and assistance, you'd expect him to have the same sort of attitude towards them that most people have towards PPI reclaim cold callers.

Though no longer angry, the Gnome is still unhappy that his Firebird has been frightened away, as he's worried that some of the Orcs in the forest will kill and eat it. Trying to recover the bird is an optional side quest, but I'll do it anyway. We search for a while, eventually coming across a couple of Orcs, who have found the bird and are trying to shoot it out of the tree in which it's resting. We attack, and I kill one of the Orcs with ease. Orlando only manages to knock over the other, so I grab a branch and smack it in the head. Another 'spot what's hidden in the picture' puzzle ensues, and the Firebird is better concealed than any of Sad Sam's stuff. Still not hard to find, though, so I capture it and return it to its owner, who rewards me with a Ring of Lightning.

Continuing through the forest, we come across a bald-headed Axeman fighting a Treeman. Both ask us for help, but the Treeman's need appears greater, so I restrain the Axeman, who reveals himself to be in Darkmoon's service. The Treeman expresses his gratitude by giving me some magic sap, which boosts my Skill, and advises me to seek Lady Helena, who can provide directions to the Howling Tunnels. He can't remember whether she lives in Westwater or Eastwater, and wrongly guessing which it is led to my failing my previous online attempt at this adventure. I don't make the same mistake this time.

Arriving at the village, I am surrounded by cheering Elves, who take me to see Lady Helena. She's on a throne beneath a lemon tree, and both she and the lemons are smiling. When I explain my quest, she tells me the wrist on which I must wear the wristlet for it to work, provides me with some garlic, and gives me a Potion of Good Fortune. She then tells me that I must now go to a place too evil for her to name, though I can find the way there by counting the lemons on her tree. That shouldn't be tricky, though a previous owner of the book evidently found it challenging enough that they felt the need to write numbers on all the lemons in the illustration.

While the number of lemons makes clear the number of the section to which I must turn to get to this place of evil, there's no in-story connection between the number and the place. The number just inexplicably causes us to go to the other of the villages named by the Treeman. Using the A=1 code that crops up so often in gamebooks doesn't help, as the number of lemons corresponds to a letter that appears part of the way through both village names. And the description of our arrival there doesn't really allow for the possibility that saying the number caused us to be magically transported there. It just doesn't make any sense if you think about it.

In any case, we proceed to the other village, which has a sign warning that strangers are not welcome. Undeterred, I stride into it, noting that the villagers are all fearful. A bell tolls, and while you'd expect the locals to already know the significance of this warning sign, someone still bothers to point out that it's the time that 'the beast' feeds. The streets clear, apart from my small party, and a loud roar prompts me to draw Edge without even asking for permission. Orlando indicates an alley he thinks we should avoid, so I stride into it and encounter a gruesome, drooling, skull-headed monstrosity in chainmail. The Skullbeast attacks, but I kill it with my first blow.

Taking the money I find on the corpse, I return to the street. Before long I notice a shop filled with bric a brac, and enter in spite of the sign reading 'Closed'. A balding man with a frown introduces himself as Domehead, and tells me that the shop isn't open, and in any case, nothing is for sale, so I ask if he'd be interested in a trade. That piques his interest, and he asks what I have to trade.

This is where my first attempt at the book ended, because the only items I'm allowed to offer Domehead are ones that can be found in Vanish, which I hadn't visited, and there's no 'if you have neither' option. It wouldn't have been difficult to turn back a page and choose the non-trade option, but I was too annoyed at the book's poor design to continue with it at the time. This time round I have both tradable items, so I offer the one that duplicates an unhelpful item from one of Ian Livingstone's earlier gamebooks. In return, Domehead gives me a pair of Elven Boots, a Magic Staff, and some Blue Cheese.

He also loudly accuses me of stealing from him as soon as I leave the shop, as a result of which several armed guards (who didn't seem to be around back when the Skullbeast was making the streets unsafe for the citizens of this miserable dump) charge at me. I flee into another alley, and when I reach a junction, I pick the turning that leads to a dead end. Edge is keen to spill their blood, but one of them shoots me in the neck with a poisoned dart, causing me to black out.

I regain consciousness in a cell. Orlando is with me, but Edge is in the room on the other side of the door, making snarky observations about his inability to free us. However, Edge is the only item the guards bothered to take from me before throwing me into the cell, and the key to Sad Sam's front door (which is one of the other items I picked up in Vanish) conveniently fits the lock on this cell, so I have no trouble breaking out. We flee from the village before any further unpleasantness can befall us.

It's getting dark, and the only shelter in the area (other than in the grotty dump we've just escaped) is a ruined house. It's better than nothing, and once we've settled down there, I spend some time chatting about the region with my companions before dropping off. The sound of footsteps wakes me a few hours later, and I just have time to gather my wits before a Vampire enters the ruin. The first time I played this book until reaching an actual ending, this was where I failed, having gone the wrong way after the Treeman incident and thus not having received the Garlic from Lady Helena. This time round I'm able to repel the bloodsucking fiend, and while doing so I spot a trapdoor that I somehow failed to notice earlier.

We go through the trapdoor, and I bolt it behind us (good thing it wasn't bolted before I tried opening it). Down below is a dank and damp passageway, along which we head. After a while, we reach a door that has 'KEEP OUT' written on it, so naturally I open it. The room beyond has large spiders all over the floor (and, in the accompanying illustration, at least one wall and the ceiling). Also in the room is a leather pouch, on the end of a rope attached to the ceiling, and there's another door on the far side.

As this is an Ian Livingstone book, there's a strong probability that entering the room without possessing the correct item will prove lethal, but not acquiring whatever is in that pouch will guarantee failure in the long run. I enter the room, and when the spiders prove non-hostile, Orlando joins me. As soon as I take the pouch, the door slams shut and the walls begin closing in, but when I wedge the Magic Staff I got from Domehead between the walls, they stop. The exact same thing can happen in a Tunnels & Trolls solo (IIRC, Deathtrap Equalizer Dungeon), but the set-up is conventional enough that the two authors could easily have come up with it independently of each other.

The pouch contains three precious stones, all of them types that could be acquired in Deathtrap Dungeon, and two of them featuring in that book's endgame. I wonder if the third is the only one I'll need here. The door on the other side of the room is locked, and apparently not even Sad Sam's key will open it, but the door through which I entered can now be opened again, so I return to the passageway.

Further on, we reach another door. Looking through it, I see a large monster (identified by Orlando as a Bonecrusher) chained to a wall, and a wooden chest on the other side of the room. I head over to the chest, and encounter another example of authorial sloppiness: the text asks if I've drunk a Potion of Good Fortune. There is no way of getting here without encountering the Vampire. The Vampire kills any character who has no Garlic. In this book, Garlic can only be acquired from Lady Helena. Meeting Lady Helena automatically leads to being given a Potion of Good Fortune to drink. Therefore, reaching this stage of the book without having drunk the Potion is impossible, so there was no need for the question, and there's no need for the paragraphs covering not having drunk the Potion.

As a result of my having drunk the Potion, the Bonecrusher's chain is short enough that I have no trouble evading the creature on my way to the chest, which contains a map of the Howling Tunnels and a warning about where Troglodytes may be encountered. The map doesn't specify where the Tunnels are, though, and despite having been to the person the Treeman said would tell me the way to them, and having gone on to the place where she sent me, I still don't have any idea of their actual location.

We return to the passage, and it leads to a flight of steps. At the top of these is another trapdoor, which opens onto a nondescript plain. I wonder what purpose the tunnel served back when the house from which it led was intact. I also wonder if Ian Livingstone ever gave any thought to the matter, or if he just threw it in for the sake of having a secret(ish) passage.

Orlando complains of being cold and hungry, so we start looking for somewhere we can find food and shelter. Instead, we discover a large, beetle-like insect which intermittently sprays a toxic white substance on the ground. According to Orlando, it's a Litterbug, which makes me curious as to what sort of stuff people were dumping on the streets in Ian Livingstone's neighbourhood back when he wrote this.

A Centaur attacks the Litterbug with a spear and kills it. I greet the Centaur, who is friendly towards us. He doesn't know where the Howling Tunnels are, either, but he offers to take us to the village of the Big Blue Mice, who apparently know everything, and are sure to tell us in return for a gift. We accept the offer.

The Big Blue Mice are what the name suggests: bipedal mice roughly the size of humans, with blue fur, skin, and houses. I stroll into a smithy and ask the mouse at work there if he can direct us to the Howling Tunnels. He replies in a strange language, which is created in exactly the same way that I 'invented' an alien language back when I was about nine years old, so I'd say that this puzzle is pitched just right for the target readership. Translated, the mouse's words turn out to be telling me that I'll have to hand over some blue cheese if I want my question answered. Good thing that just such a foodstuff was another of the items I got from Domehead. And that I didn't give it to Orlando when he was whining about being hungry (a detail he seems to have forgotten by now).

In return for the cheese, the mouse tells me how to get to the Tunnels, and adds a warning about a Dragon which might be encountered in them. I thank him, and we set off as directed. After some time we reach mountainous terrain, and catch sight of the landmark indicated by the mouse. Behind it is a cave entrance, through which we go. The cave is lit by torches, and guarded by a Cave Troll, though the Troll is currently asleep. Again the book brings in superfluous paragraphs by asking if I've drunk the Potion of Good Fortune. You know, it would have been more interesting if I'd been given the Potion in a bottle and told that its effect would only be temporary. That could provide a minor quandary for repeat readers - the knowledge that there are at least two situations in which the Potion can be of use prompting a little reflection on when is the best time to take it. But no, we just get intermittent wastage of ink and paper on impossible situations.

We manage not to disturb the Troll. As we head further into the Tunnels, we hear what sounds like a shriek, and Edge insults Orlando because there's been no pointless squabbling in a while. The scream is repeated, and we hear running footsteps and hysterical laughter. It thus comes as a minor surprise that the next thing we encounter is the Dragon of which the mouse spoke. Despite the noises we've just heard, it's asleep, and it is thus a little odd that in order to get past it, I need a Potion of Invisibility. Conveniently, just such a Potion was the third thing I got back in Vanish, and there's enough of it for me to share with Orlando, so we can both pass through the cave without being spotted by the slumbering Dragon.

Up ahead, the tunnel splits. Symbols are carved on the walls of both passages that lead on, and one of those symbols was mentioned in connection with the Troglodytes that the note on the map warned me to avoid. The same two symbols turned up on a couple of doors in Temple of Terror, and the one that didn't lead to death in that book is the one that doesn't lead to the Troglodytes in this one.

I take the non-Troglodyte passage, which leads to a cavern containing a marble fountain in the shape of a nymph pouring water from an urn. The nymph is wearing a golden wristlet, and the text and illustration don't match well here: the wristlet is described as being 'in the shape of a hand', but looks like a straightforward band with a hand attached. Also in the cavern is the source of the screams: a Banshee. She is also depicted in a manner that doesn't entirely match the text, as green skin is not a common feature among old women.

The Banshee attacks. This is the toughest fight in the book, the Banshee having a Skill equal to mine, and I've never got beyond this point while playing by the rules. On this occasion, neither of us manages to land a blow for something like half a dozen rounds of combat, but eventually the Banshee wins a round, and that's all it takes to ensure that this is yet another unsuccessful attempt at the book.

By Fitful Starlight

As I once mentioned before, there was a period when Flying Buffalo produced a magazine called Sorcerer's Apprentice, several issues of which contained short solo adventures for Tunnels & Trolls. I own four of those issues, and now that I've attempted all the official T&T solos that weren't obviously out of my league, I'll be working my way through the magazine-based ones I have yet to try. The earliest one I own is Robert B. Schofield's Thief for Hire, from issue 12.

The adventure is for a warrior, or a rogue who knows no magic. There seems little point in creating a character in the latter category, as the only advantage a rogue has over a warrior is the ability to use magic. It may be unwise, but I'm going to bring back my character from Solo for the Intellectually Challenged, who has used some of the treasure acquired in that misadventure to buy a proper weapon and some armour. His low Strength and Dexterity limit his options, but he's now as well-equipped as he can be in his current condition. I should also give him a name, and in view of his general ineptitude and lack of self-awareness, I think he'd go by something like Blugen the Brilliant.

Being a Great Hero is proving trickier than expected. I start this adventure in the Dead Dragon Inn, downcast at only having acquired 500 gold pieces on my latest excursion into a dungeon. Considering how most T&T characters fare, this is roughly equivalent to lamenting having won a mere £500,000 in the National Lottery, so maybe my not-that-smart character isn't such a bad fit for the adventure after all.

A man in dark robes speaks with the innkeeper, and they both look at me. I wave. The robed man then comes over to my table, and asks if I'm interested in a short and well-paid job. I express interest, so he explains that he requires a certain scroll which is currently held in the royal library at the local palace, and is prepared to pay a thousand gold pieces for it. I agree to have a go at it, and we arrange to meet outside the palace in an hour.

Nothing untoward happens in the intervening time, and at the foot of the palace wall, my new employer gives me a rope with a grappling hook, directions to the royal library, and instructions on how to identify the scroll he needs. He wishes me luck, and I start work.

Even with the rope and grappling hook, climbing the wall is a challenge for a clumsy oaf like my character. On my first two attempts, I slip and fall, taking some damage in the process, but a lucky roll gets me up there on my third try. From the top of the wall, I can see a courtyard with two guards in it. On the far side of the courtyard is a well-lit hallway leading into the palace. Fighting the guards is not likely to go well for me. The alternative, crawling along the top of the wall and then using my rope to swing down into the hallway, could go disastrously wrong, but how can I resist the lure of such a swashbuckling strategy?

The roll is tricky enough that my failing at it comes as no surprise. I do make it to the ground intact, but somebody spots me, and yells, "Halt!" Given my stats, running away is probably a worse idea than confronting the guard, so I turn to face him. The two guards find my attempt at breaking into the palace amusing, and order me to surrender. I draw my francisca (it's a type of axe) and attack.

The guards have worse armour than I do, but their broadswords do more damage than the francisca, and they're better fighters than I. Considering the ridiculous levels of overkill some of my characters have experienced, only being reduced to 0 Constitution feels like getting off lightly. Nevertheless, it's the end for Blugen the Beaten, Battered, Bruised and Bloodstained. Perhaps I'd have fared better with a less rubbish character - at least as long as I could spend some of the money mentioned in the intro on decent equipment - but I suspect that I'd have needed a significantly superior character to have a real chance, and the likelihood of rolling up a sufficiently good one is pretty low.

Because I Have a Special Job

Completism above and beyond the call of sanity was the main reason that I got all of the F.E.A.R. Adventures by the pseudonymous Jak Shadow, but the fact that the penultimate one I acquired was the less-disappointing-than-the-rest The Spy Master may also have been a contributory factor. Like most of the others, I got it on eBay, and on my one previous attempt at it, I got some way into the book before making what I thought was a sensible decision, only to find that the author considered it a catastrophically stupid thing to do. A not uncommon occurrence in this series.

As I have explained before, the series has me as a child recruited (for painfully ridiculous reasons) by anti-terrorism organisation F.E.A.R. to try and thwart the schemes of time-travelling alien bad guy Triton. In this book, I'm being sent to London in 1999. F.E.A.R. suspect that Triton (using the pseudonym Gary Steel) has kidnapped inventor Albert Fudge, who was attempting to create a computer that could control every other computer on Earth (because that kind of thing always turns out so well), and intends to exploit the Millennium Bug (which is explained in a manner that's not likely to make any sense to anyone not already familiar with the concept) to take over the world.

An agent reports that Fudge has left a trail of clues to help F.E.A.R. find him and learn all five letters of the password to his master computer. Yes, just five letters. I had more securely protected email accounts by 1999. The trail begins on Abbey Road, in Studio 1, an address that means nothing to my Beatles-ignorant character.

I get to pick an item of equipment before being sent off. There are three from which to choose, but I can only have one, which makes no sense whatsoever. Two of them are very specific to this mission, which means there'd be no point in saving them for some other occasion, and as F.E.A.R. will use their time machine to drag me to safety the moment I appear to be in even the mildest of peril, it's not as if anything needs to be kept back in case something bad happens to me and someone else has to take over the mission. It's just a petty, pointless restriction thrown in to increase my chances of failing and needing to be rescued.

Still, rules are rules, so unless this limitation makes the book unplayable (and author Jon Sutherland does apparently have form in this regard), I should abide by it. I'll take the replica of Fudge's eyeball for bypassing retinal scan-based security systems. The laser watch is a bit generic, and while the disk of computer virus has an obvious use here, there are other ways of wrecking computers. Besides, the text makes such a big deal of how unpleasant the eyeball looks, it makes me suspect authorial shenanigans. Making one of the items essential and then attempting to dissuade the reader from choosing it would be a bit underhanded, but not the sneakiest thing I've ever seen in a gamebook.

The time machine is located in a basement that was not in use at the time to which I'm being sent back. This causes my character to become nervous at the prospect of encountering rats, though I suspect that this gamebook series is far too tame to allow anything like that to happen. Before entering the machine, I'm notified that a motopod has already been sent back in time for me. That's a kind of lightweight motorbike/bubble car hybrid with tinted glass windows (to hide the fact that the driver is way too young to have a license).

Arriving in 1999, I find that the basement is messy, smelly, and apparently illuminated in spite of being disused, because there's no mention of my having trouble seeing. Or of rats. Collecting the motopod, I ascend the stairs to the exit. It's jammed, and flimsy enough that I break it while forcing my way out. Leaving the building via a convenient fire exit, I use the motopod's onboard computer to find the way to the studio.

The book hasn't previously mentioned that the password I seek is made up of the first letters of the places I must visit (in this instance the road rather than the studio), but my character must have been informed of this minor detail between paragraphs. Unless it's supposed to be self-evident. Please post a comment to say if you realised the password had to start with 'A' as soon as I mentioned Abbey Road.

Concealing the motopod in a bush, and taking the remote control with me in case I can't get back to the bike, I enter the building. Asking the receptionist if there are any messages from Albert Fudge could draw unwelcome attention, so I look for studio 1 on my own. There's a cheap joke about opera sounding awful, and then I reach the studio, which has a note attached to the door: 'Gary Steel Do Not Disturb'. I'm not Gary Steel, so that means it's okay for me to disturb, right?

Maybe not. In the studio I see a multitude of computers, connected to a pod which contains Triton. Beside each computer is a mind-controlled-looking musician playing an instrument (Studio 1 must have much better soundproofing than the one with the opera singers in, as I didn't hear this lot at all). Triton orders the musicians to get me, and I figure that trying to fight my way through them in order to attack Triton would be an idiotic idea, so I hurry away.

Hiding in the bushes where I stowed the motopod, I watch as Triton boards a truck and is driven away. Returning to the studio, I find it abandoned, containing only a mass of cables. And a circle of chairs, each one with a star on it. In case this clue is a little too obscure, one of the chairs also has a leaflet stuffed into its side (which suggests that the chair depicted in the book is nothing like the ones in the studio). The leaflet is advertising the London Planetarium, and my character knows better than to ignore the 'London' in the place's name, thereby identifying 'L' as the second letter of the password.

Proceeding to the London Planetarium, I join a group of tourists. Inside, I take a seat in the front row, and while looking around, I spot Triton, who's attempting to disguise himself with an upturned collar. That's more effective than you might think - sure, I recognised him, but I was on the look-out for tell-tale hints. Little things the average member of the public would overlook. Like green skin.

The show starts normally, but then the voice-over cuts out, replaced by a high-pitched noise that begins putting people to sleep. While I'm still conscious, I make for the fire exit. Guards fire sleeping darts at me, but I dodge them. I don't loiter in search of clues, but sneak back in after a few minutes have passed. Whatever hint Fudge may have put here has gone, so the time machine is operated to bring me back to the present day. Oddly, the text implies that I'm being rescued from some imminent threat rather than just getting recalled because I've lost the trail.

Like the rest of the series, the book gives the option of turning back to section 1 and trying again, but I prefer to treat failure as failure. This attempt at it has drawn my attention to some absurdities that I either failed to notice last time or forgot about in the intervening years, but I'd still rate it above at least the preceding two. I can't remember a thing about the content of the last two books in the series, but given time, I might be reminded of why they failed to make much of an impression back when I got them.

I Had to Stop for the Night

This is the third part of my playthrough of Keith Martin's Revenge of the Vampire, which commenced here and continued here. Considering what happened on at least two previous occasions that I got this far through the book, it may well be the last part, too, but if I correctly remember the specifics of what got my character killed on those earlier attempts, the odds of my surviving it this time round should be in my favour. Only slightly - around 55%, assuming nothing bad occurs beforehand - but that's still a better chance than some gamebooks offer.

After several days on the road, I reach the village of Fendringham, which is just an hour's walk from Mortus Mansion. Which does leave me wondering why, if Harquar was supposed to be keeping an eye on the house, he was living in Farleigh rather than here. Maybe staying that close to the place would have been a bit too obvious, but judging by the assassination attempt from which I had to save him, the added distance didn't really make him any safer.

It's late afternoon when I arrive, so if I carry straight on to Heydrich's home, it'll be close to sundown by the time I get there, and wandering around a Vampire's lair during the hours of darkness is pretty much asking for a terminal bout of anaemia. Consequently, I'm willing to pay the price (in gold and Blood Points) to spend the night in the local tavern, the 'Rat and Bat'. The other patrons being neither intelligent nor fragrant, I soon turn in for the night.

Just as I'm about to drop off, I hear the floorboards outside creaking. The two hired thugs who subsequently burst into the room to attack me must be slow-witted even by local standards, as I have time to get out of bed, grab my sword, and put on my leather armour before they actually smash the door open. I manage to position myself in a spot where they can only attack one at a time, and kill the first man without any bother.

The second fight is less straightforward, even though both ruffians have identical stats. The thing is, the outcome of the fight varies depending on whether or not I bring his Stamina below 4 without actually killing him. As he starts with a Stamina of 7, killing him outright is not easy. Indeed, unless the book includes an opportunity to acquire a weapon that does extra damage prior to this fight, the only way to do it is to use Luck twice in the fight, being Unlucky the first time, and Lucky the second.

Unsurprisingly, I do not kill the second ruffian outright, and when I have hit him a couple of times, he drops his weapon, drops to his knees, and begs me not to kill him. This is a trickier decision than you might think. One the one hand, I know that killing an unarmed opponent who's just surrendered is the sort of action that can lead to a Faith penalty. On the other hand, I know that sparing his life will lead to the situation that's already brought more than one of my previous attempts at the book to a premature end. And on the Beeblebrox hand, taking the risk of letting the man live (albeit briefly) provides a lead that might be useful or even essential, and I'm not aware of any other way of acquiring that information.

I don't kill the grovelling thug. He tells me that a huge brute with a hideously scarred face came to Fendringham last night, told him and his companion of my approach, and paid the two of them to get rid of me. Then, acting like a man possessed, he grabs a poisoned knife from a concealed sheath and stabs me in the stomach with it. To survive this attack, I need to roll no higher than my Stamina score on four dice. Given the damage from the blow, that means I have to get 14 or less. Regrettably, the total of the four dice is slightly higher than the total of the five dice I had to roll back when I created this character, which means that yet another of my Revenge characters has succumbed to the venom on the blade.