You Just Can't Get the Psychopaths These Days

Ghost Road, the fourth and final of Ian Livingstone's Adventures of Goldhawk, is the only book in the series I didn't buy online. I have already explained how I got the first couple of books in the series, and how unimpressed I was by the first one. However, I have not previously mentioned that I disliked it enough to write a negative review for an online gamebook group (which was subsequently modified and archived here). My review prompted some discussion, in the course of which someone pointed out that the last book in the series was by far the best. Thus, when I came across a cheap copy of Ghost Road in an Oxfam bookshop while visiting relatives in Swindon, I decided to give it a chance, and bought it.

I think I bought something else - not a gamebook - at the same time, and that got my attention afterwards, so I didn't get around to playing Ghost Road until I'd failed at the three preceding adventures during my playthrough of all Fighting Fantasy and spin-offs at a long-dead forum. It ended a losing streak that was about to hit double figures, and between the good mood engendered by my victory and the loss of my write-up when the forum hosting it went to section 404, I can't say off hand whether or not I agree that the book is significantly better than its predecessors. Not as harsh, obviously, but difficulty is only one element of a gamebook. In any case, this is a fresh opportunity to find out if I actually like the book at all.

If, on my previous adventure, I'd chosen the Tombstone Bell rather than the Flashbang Powder, and had survived the assorted perils that come after the Swamp Zombie encounter that did for me, following the successful conclusion of my quest I would have received a Crystal Ball and been told that I could find my destiny by breaking it. Following a night's rest, I decide that it's time, and drop the Crystal Ball on the floor. The gas contained within it takes on the form of an old man's face and, speaking in atrocious verse even by this series' standards, tells me that to avert disaster I must go to the Tower of Ghosts and prevent Princess Jet from marrying Darkmoon.

I take this information to Marris, who explains that Princess Jet is a demi-ghost who can only take on human form at the full moon, and speculates that Darkmoon must have met her in Ghost World after I turned him into a ghost. Excuse me, mister court wizard, but I did not turn Darkmoon into a ghost. I turned him into a mouse, and he then became a ghost because Ian Livingstone thinks children don't have the critical faculties to notice when a plot development makes zero sense. Feel free to blame me for not killing him when I had the opportunity (despite having had no qualms about taking the life of the Dark Knight earlier), but don't go accusing me of things I didn't do. Or I might find myself unexpectedly busy the next time you need someone to risk his life to save your neck.

Anyway, the full moon is imminent, so I need to find a way of eliminating the 'far worse even then Darkmoon' Princess before she can get married and... Well, given the mouse/ghost nonsense, who knows what non-sequiturial transmogrification might result from Jet's becoming a bride?

Marris says he'll take me to the start of the Ghost Road, which leads via the Rainbow Bridge to the Tower of Ghosts, and advises me to use a Trapping Mirror against the Princess. He doesn't give me such a Mirror, though, or even suggest how I might get hold of one, but i suppose I should be grateful that I've been briefed on what I need rather than having to rely on some random burst of inspiration.

We travel to the start of the road by Giant Eagle, accompanied by Orlando the Tin Pig and Edge the talking sword. They bicker along the way, and even the book starts making false assertions about me, making out that I enjoy their tedious shenanigans. We land on a grassy plain, and Marris indicates a strip of grass that's a little lighter than the surrounding vegetation. He warns me to return by dawn if I don't want to become a ghost myself, and sets off back to Karazan Castle.

As I step onto the discoloured grass, ethereal voices call my name and the sky turns red. It's almost atmospheric. After a few paces, the grass withers, revealing a cobbled road. A masked figure in a black cloak advances along it towards us and demands to know my identity and business. The book gives me the option of answering truthfully (except for the bit where I give the name of the comatose Prince I've been impersonating all series) or making up a name and claiming to be a wedding guest. I say that I'm the King of Karazan, and an enemy of the Princess, and the cloaked figure assumes that I'm joking, and am actually a bad lot by the name of Tinto.

The masked entity mistakes Edge for the legendary Sword of Serpents (and my sword has the sense to keep from complaining about the misidentification) and asks me to hand the weapon over. Thinking about Edge's interminable squabbling with Orlando, I'm tempted to do as requested, but can only choose between attacking the figure or claiming that I must keep the sword with me as it's a wedding present. Getting into a fight here, while not game-endingly bad, is not a good idea, so I say the sword is a gift for the nearly-weds. The being in the cloak expresses disappointment that I didn't bring him a present, too, and asks to see my invitation. I say that I've lost it, and he offers to sell me a replacement for half my gold. Yes, even supernatural villains' nuptials can attract scalpers. I hand over the money rather than risk a more physical form of scalping, and continue on my way.

A side turning catches my attention, and I head down it to a forest clearing. A grotesque man in black rags sits on a branch, surrounded by crows, and asks why I'm here. I observe that the vines hanging from the trees seem partly material and partly spectral, and grab a couple. This displeases the man, and his crows attack me, pecking away a point of Skill before I'm able to flee back to the main Ghost Road.

Ghostly voices threaten me with unpleasant fates as I continue along my way. At a crossroads we encounter a Gnome on a rock. He looks west, and smashing sounds are audible from the north. For no good reason I tell the Gnome that I'm going to the wedding, and he says nothing but somehow indicates that I should say more. As honesty worked well during my first encounter, I clarify that I intend to be the 'just cause or impediment', and the Gnome practically high-fives me. He explains that he's here to guide everyone who'll be fleeing the arrival of the Tower, and tells me a rhyme he was taught by local inventor Professor Graymane. It's prophetic in nature, and implies that I'll be able to find the Mirror I seek to the south of Misery. The Gnome also mentions counting the bite-marks on an Ogre's bone from the Ghoulfields, and suggests that the cause of the noises to the north may be a malfunctioning invention of the Professor's.

West is probably the way to the Tower, then, but resolving the situation in the north is the sort of tangential mission that could turn up something essential, so I make the detour. The path leads into another forested area, and I see that some of the trees have been uprooted. My companions get annoying again, and I press on until I get to the remains of a hut, erratically patrolled by the out-of-control mechanical humanoid that has wrought the damage.

As the Brass Man lurches towards me, I catch sight of what could be a control box set into its chest, and risk getting close enough to try and operate the levers. A Skill roll is required to find the off-switch, but the damage I took from the crows isn't quite enough to have reduced my mechanical aptitude to an unhelpful level. I deactivate the rampaging automaton, and extract the control box on the off-chance that it will be compatible with any other mechanical threats that might come my way.

Searching the wreckage of the hut, I find some money and a flask of Ghoulbane. Orlando makes a vaguely amusing faux pas regarding the relative edibility of humans and Tin Pigs, and we return to the crossroads and head west.

Before long we encounter several caravans of travellers heading our way. Russ Nicholson still hasn't got the memo about Karazan having no horses, as such creatures are depicted pulling the caravans. Even if one were to speculate that these people might have been drawn into this realm from another world, there's still the problem that Orlando's questions about the travellers don't include anything about the unknown (to him) beasts that draw the caravans and (knowing his timorous nature) how likely it is that they might feed on tin.

Bizarre aspects of this encounter:

1. The book asks if I have blue ears.
2. Mild sexual tension. Which is only odd because of the context. To my recollection, there's not been a hint of that in any preceding Fighting Fantasy adventure, and now here it is in one of the books specifically targeted at younger readers.

Regrettably stereotypical aspects of this encounter:

1. The travellers try to sell me stuff. Not lucky heather or clothespegs, at least, but still...

Before moving along, I buy some clothes and a statue of a Night Elf. If I didn't have those vines, I might have gone for a Ghost Rope instead of the statue.

Further to the west, the road passes an odd-looking house surrounded by a wall. The gates are guarded by a Pixie who's playing with a clockwork soldier. He states that the house belongs to Professor Graymane, mentions that the Professor constructed the Ghost Tower's clockwork statues, and implies an interest in turning Orlando into scrap metal for the Professor to use. When I ask if the Professor is at home, the Pixie tells us to go away, so I decide to see if he's susceptible to bribery. He is, and will accept either 3 Gold Pieces or a bag of clothes. Now I remember that on my previous playthrough of this book I noted that I'd have been better off not buying the clothes, as they cost more than 3 Gold, but where was that memory when I was thinking 'I'm pretty sure there's an encounter where those clothes come in handy'?

I hand over the clothes, and the Pixie lets us in. The front door leads straight into a laboratory, in which the Professor is tinkering with another toy soldier. He's not happy at being interrupted, but when I express an interest in the work he did at the Ghost Tower, the focus of his annoyance changes, as Darkmoon never paid him for it. I mention that I'm planning to upset Darkmoon by thwarting his wedding plans, and the Professor starts talking about wanting money again. I distract him with the control box from the Brass Man, and in return for it he gives me a brass watch that slows down time, a bottle of Memory Juice, and a hint that name-dropping him should enable me to get a lift from one of his other inventions further down the road. He also tells me a little about the Trapping Mirror, explaining that Darkmoon had it buried in the Ghoulfields because he couldn't destroy it.

Leaving him to his work, I return to the road, and we head west again. It starts getting dark, and several metal pigs on wheels trundle our way, prompting another tedious spat between my companions. I tell the Roadhogs (sigh!) that the Professor sent me, and they carry us along the road at great speed. A ghost in a shroud attempts to intercept us, but we're moving too quickly for her.

At last we are dropped off on the outskirts of a village. A sign indicates that the place is called Misery, with a population of 32, all of whom are dead and far from pleased about it. The resident ghosts are all victims of Darkmoon, but they're too busy bewailing their lot to assist me in opposing him. Still, the bone mentioned by the Gnome is not hard to find. 

Somehow, paying attention to the bone allows me to discover that the wall at the end of a nearby alley is an illusion. I walk through it, finding myself on a road paved with tombstones. A pack of Ghouls approaches, and I throw the Ghoulbane in their faces. It weakens them, but some still attack. I manage to drive them off with Edge, but without the Skill bonus I got for having used the Ghoulbane, I'd now be on the menu.

The Ghouls were guarding a tomb. Looking inside, I find that either the Professor was misinformed or Darkmoon's idea of 'buried' is 'in plain sight on top of a stone coffin'. Regardless, I grab the Mirror and rush back to the Ghost Road.

The night is wearing on, the Tower must have appeared by now, and we're still not there. A flock of Vampire Bats swoops to the attack and, not possessing a Bat Lantern (I guess we missed an encounter with Commissioner Gordon), I must either attack or flee. This is the sort of situation where fighting is unlikely to help, so I run for it.

As I dash away, I notice another side-trail. Now, the text has only recently reminded me that time is running out, so when a diversion like this shows up, what do you think I should do? If you answered 'ignore the distraction and stay on the Ghost Road' (or words to that effect), you fail Basic Livingstone. I don't want to think about what the resits entail.

The side path leads to an encounter with notorious thief Razorhead, a club-wielding thug who can move at incredible speed because of the aerodynamic properties of his Mohican haircut. With the watch the Professor gave me I am able to match Razorhead's speed, and then the book makes me attempt to bribe him with the statue I bought from the travellers. This item terrifies him so much that he gives me all his money and departs. On the Ghost Road, everything is fine.

At last I sight the Tower. Assorted supernatural entities are still heading into it, suggesting that the ceremony has yet to commence. Orlando suggests we try and get a lift on the wagon which is coming up the road behind us, laden with gifts, some of them the sort of disgusting delicacy that would amuse the book's target audience. Judging by the mention of a headless horseman driving the wagon, even Ian Livingstone has forgotten about the 'no horses' thing by now.

As the wagon overtakes us, I leap onto the back of it and hang on. I then try to grab one of the wedding presents, but fail the Skill roll required, and lose my grip. We'll have to complete the journey on foot.

The Rainbow Bridge is guarded by a Ghost Giant who wears magical armour and wields a scythe. I don't like the idea of fighting him, so I seek an alternate approach, and the only thing that will work is to use a Ghost Vine. That immobilises the Giant, but I'm not able to retrieve the Vine. Good thing I got two of them, because I know I'll need one for the endgame.

Inside the Tower, I see a gathering of the undead and the monstrous, enjoying a banquet of repulsive dishes. A rat-faced usher, flanked by a pair of heavily armoured skeletons, asks to see my invitation. I hand it over, and rat-face asks for my gift. Regrettably, only one item will satisfy him, and that's the one I failed to grab while hanging on to the wagon. As I don't have it, he sets the skeletons on me, and this is one fight I have no chance of winning.

This is pretty much the only book in the series in which there's more than one viable route to success, so replaying it (a long way down the line) is not as unappealing a prospect as, for example, retracing my footsteps through The Demon Spider. Nevertheless, I'm not exactly enthusiastic about it.

Adventure of a New and Different Kind

Judging by the traces of glue on the spine, I most likely got my copy of Lone Wolf book 10, The Dungeons of Torgar, in Ballard's. The shop was mainly devoted to models and RPGs, and had only a small amount of shelf space devoted to gamebooks, so to get the most out of that limited space, the stock was mostly 'spine out' rather than 'face-on', and to cut down on unnecessary handling, price tags were placed on the spines. Those tags did, regrettably, tend to leave a sticky residue when removed. Still, having delayed my acquisition of the later books in the series, as explained here, I had to buy them where I could find them, and at least the labels could be taken off without tearing the covers.

I must have at least read through the book after getting it. While I have no clear memories of doing so, I know that when GM magazine adapted a sequence from Dungeons into a mini-adventure in connection with a competition, I played the magazine version and recognised an incident in it. The lack of more detailed memories, and the fact that much of the content was new to me when I came back to the book while playing through the whole series in the nineties, suggests that I only had one go at Dungeons when I bought it, though.

By now I know that there are essentially three different routes through Dungeons. Aussiesmurf has recently covered one of them in his Lone Wolf playthrough (and I know of another online attempt at the book that went the same way, though I shan't be linking to that one as it's in a part of the internet to which I hope never to return). For the sake of variety, I shall take a different one. Much as I'd like to cover the one that includes a not-so-fond reunion, it is only possible to get onto that particular path by making some sub-optimal decisions, and it includes a fight of similar difficulty to the one everyone hates in book 9, so I'm ruling it out. That leaves the path I took first time round.

So, at the end of the last book I learned that my enemy Darklord Gnaag had managed to get hold of the final three of the Lorestones that I need in order to become a Kai Grand Master, and intended to destroy them and me. Since then, the Elder Magi have learned that a soldier who escaped from the city-fortress of Torgar reported having seen the Lorestones brought into it. I must travel to Eru, the allied region closest to Torgar, and then Eruan ruler Prince Graygor will furnish some kind of assistance to help me get into the city-fortress, retrieve the Lorestones, level up and save the world.

Before I set off, I should sort out character progression from book 9. I get to add another Discipline, and with an eye on my next Lore-circle and a vague memory of something that happens near the end of the adventure, I pick Invisibility. While I've passed the point at which gaining weapon proficiencies particularly matters, I should take care of that as well, so I select Quarterstaff. I'm given some money to add to my bag, and get to select some new Backpack Items, as the rules still insist that only money, Weapons and Special Items may be carried across to later books. Bye-bye to the rope, meal, Altar Cloth and flask of slightly suspect alcohol, hello to a new rope, two fresh meals and a healing potion.

Since (as far as we know) Gnaag doesn't know that we know where the Lorestones are, my friend Banedon is disguising himself as me as he returns to my home province of Sommerlund, and I am disguising myself as a messenger for my journey west. The cover illustration to the Mongoose Books reissue of Dungeons suggests that I make the mistake of choosing a messenger disguise that looks exactly like my normal costume, but that's nowhere near the worst mistake Mongoose has made. Dare I hope that it's the worst one in this book?

I think section 1 of this adventure may contain more text than the entirety of some Tunnels & Trolls mini-adventures. Buried a couple of pages in is a description of the way Eruans salute, which I commit to memory to reduce the risk of blowing my cover with an incorrect salute at some later point in the adventure. Another detail that catches my attention is the off-hand revelation that one of the captured Lorestones was seized by the enemy two years ago. Conspiracy theorists could probably make a lot out of the fact that the Elder Magi never bothered to mention that fact to me.

The Prince gives me a new disguise, as there aren't many messengers from the Tahouese army in these parts, and being conspicuous even in a way that doesn't mark me out as a Kai is probably inadvisable. Thus, I now wear the costume of an Eruan Pathfinder, elite woodsmen (or scouts, depending on which version of the book you're reading) who operate in some of the more insalubrious parts of the region.

Anyway, once I get through all the waffle, I have a simple choice. Do I want to go to Torgar via the Hellswamp or the Moggador Forest? The first route would require me to track down partisan leader Sebb Jarel and persuade him to act as my guide, while the latter means assisting the Prince, his ally King Sarnac, and their armies as they fight to retake the border town of Cetza. I shall improve Sebb Jarel's chances of surviving to retirement age by leaving him well alone.

The journey to Cetza is uneventful, and for some reason the Mongoose text is less precise about the number of soldiers on our side than the original version. Scouts ascertain that the enemy forces have fortified their position and received reinforcements since their last battle, which is not great news. It's late in the day by the time the troops have all arrived, and the decision is made not to attack until morning. King Sarnac invites the Prince to make battle plans for tomorrow, and the Prince says I can come too, so I accompany him.

For a while the Prince and the King formulate strategies, and then the King points out that a lot of lives could be saved if we were better informed about the enemy reinforcements. And who happens to be in the tent with the King, standing incognito in the uniform of an expert scout? That would be me. (I now give an unreserved thumbs-up to the Mongoose edit I mentioned a few paragraphs back, as it properly sets up this awkward situation.) Well, if nothing else, this should be a good opportunity to test drive my newest Discipline, so I resolve the Prince's dilemma and maintain my cover by volunteering to investigate the enemy ranks. I am given yet another change of costume for more effective camouflage, and get told the password to give our sentries upon my return.

There's not a lot of cover, and I wind up in a rather unpleasant ditch that passes under a bridge. There are men on the bridge, speaking Giak with a fluency that identifies them as elite Drakkar Death-Knights. But even elites have their off-days, and one of them drops a spear, which lands close to me. The fumbling Drakkar descends the bank to retrieve his weapon, and I'm one Discipline short of the Lore-circle that would guarantee my escaping his notice, so randomness determines what happens next. Invisibility does give me a bonus, but that merely reduces the likelihood of an unfavourable outcome to 50%. And the number I get would be a resounding success anyway. The Death Knight fails to spot me, grabs the spear, and clambers back up to rejoin his doubtless sniggering comrades.

I wait for some time, and then continue along the ditch until I reach a spot from which I can spy on the enemy army. Once I've learned as much as I can, I return to my allies' camp. To my surprise, it is taken as read that I remember the password, and the possibility of a friendly fire-based fatality does not arise. The King and the Prince appreciate the information I relay to them, and I am allowed a good night's rest while they modify their battle-plans to take the new data into account.

At dawn we prepare for battle. I join the Prince at his command post, and he notes that while we have numerical superiority, our opponents have the better position. Nevertheless, it is time to fight. The leading troops take heavy damage from archers, and when the Prince sends in fresh troops to support them, a blast of electricity from a ruined temple indicates the presence of someone with sorcerous capabilities. I get a Discipline check, and could go with more than one option. Do I choose the one that enables me to detect magic users (subject to shielding), or the one that gives me telescopic vision? Both versions of the book list them in the same order, and I recall previous Mongoose edits rearranging the occasional poorly-structured selection, so that probably means the first one is better in this situation.

Yes, the magician responsible for the blast is not shielded from my Divination, and I point him out to the Prince, who has a telescope. The Prince's response is courageous but probably unwise, as he leaps onto his horse to lead a cavalry charge towards the ruins. I can only go with him or stay behind and watch, and I don't fancy my chances if the Prince's death prompts a rout, so I join the charge in the hope of averting catastrophe. Concealed enemy archers open fire, but neither the Prince nor I are among the casualties. Then an injured, riderless horse runs into mine, and I am knocked off and into the ditch. It's one of the rare occasions when Animal Control can make a difference, and not getting the bonus that would come from having it means I miss the target number on this randomised check. Mortally wounded, my horse falls on me, doing a substantial amount of damage.

It's not lethal, though. I manage to drag myself out from under the dead horse, and crawl along the ditch. Close by I see one of the Palace Guard, trapped under his own dead horse, and face down in the mud. He'll drown without assistance, so I pause to try and extricate him. This turns out not to be difficult, and the man gives me a medal he won in an earlier battle as an expression of his gratitude. (This, by the way, is the incident I remembered from my first read of the book.)

The soldier then hurries after the Prince and what remains of his entourage. I could try looking for a replacement horse, but my lack of Animal Control might make that an overly hazardous course of action, so I follow the man I rescued on foot. Up ahead, the Prince and his Palace Guard clash with Drakkar pikemen, and a few of them break through and make for the temple. The remaining Drakkarim close ranks, and two try to intercept me. A single blow with the Sommerswerd fells the pair of them. The Palace Guards who failed to break through but still survived also take fearsome casualties, and the Drakkarim break and run.

I hurry to the temple ruins and find that only the Prince and the enemy sorcerer still stand. The weapon that dealt electrical death lies on the ground, still sizzling with energy, as its owner struggles to retrieve it. I draw the Sommerswerd, the enemy soldier gashes open the Prince's leg, and a thrown sword distracts me for the second it takes him to recover his Powerstave and attack me with it.

One problem with having read but not played through this path is that enemy stats haven't always registered, and this is the first time I realise just how tough this guy is. He's immune to Mindblast but not Psi-surge, but would the increased damage dealt justify the Endurance expenditure of using my psychic attack? I decide that it's not, but keep a mental note of how different things would be if I did throw Psi-surge into the mix.

Well, thanks to a few abysmal random numbers that come up in the course of the fight, I don't survive. And I'd have hurt the Drakkar warrior a bit more by using Psi-surge, but he'd still have survived and I'd still have died.

So, in a few weeks I'm going to have to decide whether I take this path again and hope for much better numbers next time, or take the less lethal path that's already been covered at least twice on the internet.

I'm Not Here Now, But That's Because I'm Somewhere Else

Years ago, back when it was still possible to browse in Brown's Books, I once had a look at the sale table and picked up a book that I would normally have avoided. It purported to be a 'Guide to the Secrets of the Wizards' Guild', which really wasn't the sort of thing that would appeal to me, regardless of whether or not it was intended to be taken seriously. Nevertheless, I took a quick peek inside, and found that a little over half the pages were given over to a gamebook. The whole book was cheap in the sale, so I decided to get it as a curio, if nothing else. Then I read the copyright information, and things started to make a bit more sense, because it revealed Cornelius Rumstuckle, the rather obviously pseudonymous author of The Book of Wizardry, to be J.H. Brennan, the man behind the part-gamebook, part-rulebook Monster Horrorshow, and assorted other humorous or preposterous gamebooks in my collection.

Looking through the rules for The Wizard's Adventure, the gamebook contained within that book, put me off trying to play it, as the first step involved constructing a pendulum, which was not a task that appealed to me. Still doesn't, to be honest, so I'll see how far I can get without the thing. While I've adapted my Gamebook manager to handle the rules that come with this book, I can't incorporate a simulated pendulum, because I don't know of any way (at least with the resources and capabilities I have) to get the computer to replicate the subconscious influence that would be exerted upon the swing of a pendulum by the person holding the string.

For now I'll focus on what I can do, which is character generation. It's a simple process, consisting of rolling six dice to generate Life Points (picking the best of three attempts), and another two dice to determine how much gold I have. That works out as:
Life - 25
Gold - 9

The premise of the adventure is straightforward, and not unfamiliar. A wizard in bygone days casts a spell to bring me to his physical and temporal location (and more specifically to the Visitor's Center (sic.), where I can buy equipment and ask directions to the Wizards' Guild). However, something interferes with the spell, as a result of which I wind up somewhere else. A dark and damp cavern, to be precise. To the north is a faint glimmer of light, and to the south a crevice provides access to a steep passageway leading downwards.

Before making my mind up which way to head, I conduct a proper search of the cavern, finding some dropped coins and a rusty dagger that will enable me to do slightly more damage in battle than I would with just my bare hands, though it'll only last for a few fights. Not a bad start.

The text implies that going south would be a bad idea, which half makes me want to check out that exit anyway. Still, the combination of darkness and steepness could easily lead to a fatal drop, so I shall investigate the light in the north. It turns out to be the cave mouth, which would be a convenient exit but for the fact that it's several hundred feet up a sheer cliff face. In the distance, beyond a forest, I can see a town, but attempting to climb down seems inadvisable. Even if it just leads to an Absolutely Anything Roll, the chances of success are not high, and while the likelihood of a fatal outcome is even lower, I'd still rather not risk it. And I'm making that decision without consulting a pendulum even though this section makes it mandatory rather than optional.

So, back into the cave and south after all. A bit of careless design means that there's nothing to stop me from searching again and finding another dagger and more money, but I'm not going to exploit that little loophole.

Talking of little holes, that crevice is slightly too narrow for me, and I get stuck. A bit of struggling gets me through, but the dice determine that I take a little damage in the process. The darkened passage beyond eventually splits into three paths, faintly illuminated by some luminous writing. Each path is marked with a symbol, and the writing explains that the green road is for people with nothing to declare could lead to wealth or death, the black one is certain death, and only purple will take me to where I want to go. The actual paths are, of course, not coloured. Still, I can tell that the symbols adorning the entrances are astrological in nature, and a quick look at the chapters of the book that deal with such twaddle enable me to assign one of the specified colours to each passage.

In the hope that large sums of money are not required for the successful completion of this adventure, I pick what should be the purple passage. And while the text is nowhere near florid enough to meet that description, it is indeed the route down to ground level and out of the cave. Outside, a path leads to a crossroads with a somewhat eccentric signpost. One arm accurately states 'Back the Way You Came', the next claims to point to the Wizards' Guild (but it can't be that easy), and the last two have questions on: 'Is This Right?' and 'How About This Way?'

One of the 'lessons' in the first section of the book is about using a form of numerology to answer questions. Applying the principles outlined within, I get a resounding 'no' to one of the questions, while the other indicates the possibility of a favourable outcome if I use my head. I try the path indicated by the point with the latter question. After a while it narrows, the sound of birdsong ceases, the skies darken, and the text asks if I'm sure I want to go this way. Considering how unhelpful the last textual hint to avoid a certain direction was, I'm not about to let a sombre atmosphere discourage me now.

The path continues to narrow and get darker, the silence becomes more oppressive, and around a corner I encounter a Sphinx, which the text notes cannot be killed by any means, so I'm not going to be able to fight my way out of this situation. The Sphinx greets me as Oedipus, and when I point out that that's not my name, she says that's my bad luck, as he's the only person to have solved her riddle, and anyone who fails to get the right answer meets with a violent death. I ask if the riddle is the traditional one, and the Sphinx scornfully points out that everybody knows that one these days, so she's got a new one.

It's not much of a riddle, to be honest. Depending on your perspective, it could be considered general knowledge, a memory test, or a very basic mathematical equation, but none of those have the 'unconventional description of familiar thing' element that characterises most riddles. The question is which of the Magic Squares featured earlier in the book adds up to 65. While the text doesn't explicitly forbid turning back, the bit about having a 1 in 7 chance if you guess does imply that checking is not an option. Also not an option is one of the featured Squares, as the section only lists 6 from which to choose (Brennan does have form for this sort of omission).

Since it's not a proper riddle, and the list of possible answers is incomplete, I have no qualms about peeking at the appropriate lesson in the book, and most of the Squares are so obviously wrong (too large or too small) that it takes next to no time to identify the correct one. My character shows off a bit, listing a number of facts about the planet associated with the Square, and concludes with what is definitely a Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? reference.

The Sphinx begrudgingly allows me to pass, and I soon emerge from the valley. The path becomes a road, which leads to a village with a stockade wall. It's getting late in the day, so I decide to go in and find lodgings for the night, only to find my way barred by a pitchfork-toting yokel. After a little pedantic banter, the yokel tells me I may not pass unless I pay him a frankly extortionate amount of money. I can pay up, fight him, or risk an Absolutely Anything Roll to try and jump over the fence once I'm out of sight. I suspect that fighting is more likely to prove lethal than attempting the jump, so I'll try the roll first, and reconsider if I fail without getting myself killed.

I succeed quite spectacularly. Good thing I didn't try fighting, as those two sixes would have been wasted on the roll to determine who got first strike. Now I'm in the village, I have to pick a location from the map provided. There are 14 from which to choose, or 17 if you include all the towers in corners of the stockade, despite each one leading to the same section number. Most of the other locations are houses, with little to distinguish one from another, but there is a church in the south-west quadrant, and a well roughly in the middle.

I start with the well, wondering if it'll be like either of the wells in a couple of Brennan's Grail Quest books (and hoping that, if so, it's more like the one in book 6 than the one in book 2). Based on the number of warning signs around the well, that is probably a vain hope, but I'll check it properly anyway.

As I get closer, I discover that this is a genuine wishing well, as another sign indicates that wishes should be made out loud and, wherever possible, in rhyme. The rhyme which the book has me come up with is pretty contrived (which even the text acknowledges), and nowhere near as practical as, say:

I wish to find the Wizards' Guild

And go there without getting killed.

Something like that might have prevented me from being dragged into the well by the resident Monster and having to fight for my life. That dagger might just give me the edge I need to survive, but even slightly sub-par rolls could doom me here. Getting first strike is probably a good thing... Yep, keeping track of the rolls, I see that (before adding the dagger bonus) we do equal damage to each other over the course of the first four rounds, and then I manage to do maximum damage with my next blow, which is just enough to kill the Well Monster, leaving me in fairly serious need of healing but not at death's door. Probably not even death's garden gate, actually.

The Well Monster recites a short and cryptic list of professions and threatens a rematch before sinking from sight. I am now faced with a difficult Absolutely Anything Roll to see if I can climb out of the well, and I don't succeed, so I wind up drowning. I should probably have heeded those warning signs. Still, I'm liable to remember that list whether or not I try, so if it's of any importance, that death could save me some bother on a future attempt at the adventure.

* * *

Quick reminder: in just over a fortnight it will be the fifth anniversary of my starting this blog, and I shall be marking it with a Q & A session - that is, if readers provide any Qs for me to A. Otherwise I'll probably just waffle on about statistics for a bit.

I Walk Away From Light and Sound

My completist tendencies eventually led to my tracking down a copy of Mudworm Swamp, the third of The Adventures of Goldhawk, on eBay. If I'd only had the first two books in the series, I might have been content to leave things as they were, but once book 4 joined them on the shelf (in circumstances I shall doubtless recount a few posts from now), annoyance at the gap outweighed my lack of fondness for the series as a whole. Not sufficiently that I was prepared to pay silly money for the missing book - indeed, I could have got the book almost a year earlier than I did if I'd been prepared to exceed the price limit I'd set for it, but in the end I managed to buy a copy for a reasonable price. After which I stuck it on a shelf and did nothing with it until I wound up playing the whole series for a thread at a now-defunct forum.

My first try at the book didn't last long, as I made the mistake of acting like a sensible person rather than an Ian Livingstone hero, and thus failed to acquire an essential item. A while later I had another go at it, possibly when I was looking for something to say about the adventure for my column in Fighting Fantazine, and while I got a good deal further second time around, I eventually fell victim to a different inventory failure. This will be my third attempt.

In an alternate timeline where my character didn't get an Orc Warlord's axe in the face at the climax of The Demon Spider, I continue to impersonate the poisoned Prince Goldhawk, who's not going to be coming out of his coma any time soon. The lack of change to the Prince's condition may well be in part because court wizard Marris is spending all his time teaching me about the land of which I am the stand-in King and playing Dragon Chess with me rather than researching possible cures. A suspicious-minded reader might even start to wonder if Marris has some nefarious reason for wanting me on the throne rather than the real heir.

That's probably not the case, though, especially given that Marris proves willing to take a bullet for me when evil wizard-turned-mouse (and part-time ghost, for reasons which may make sense to Ian Livingstone, but not to anyone else) Darkmoon tries to get me killed again. Well, not so much a bullet as a bite from a bat-like creature with venom that will prove lethal within a few days unless the only known antidote can be administered in time, but the point remains that he endangers himself in order to save me. It's a bit convenient that the cure for this toxin is known, but unless my irritating friend Orlando the timorous Tin Pig is in on the scheme, that's just Marris' good fortune. Well, good-ish. There are no supplies of the antidote to hand, and the only source is an anthropophagous monstrosity native to the eponymous swamp, so his only chance of survival is if someone is prepared to risk their life in a quest to track down the Giant Slime Beast and extract the required substance from it. Naturally, I decide that since he was prepared to sacrifice himself to save me, I should risk the life he was willing to die to protect in a probably doomed attempt at helping him.

In the morning Orlando and I set off, accompanied (as usual) by my pig-provoking, fight-loving, talking sword Edge. Those of us who have limbs are walking, and I comment that it's a pity horses don't exist in this world. It's also a pity that nobody told Russ Nicholson that when he was drawing a battle scene for the previous book, as one of the knights in that is atop a decidedly equine-looking steed.

While I'm trying to explain horses to Orlando, a man emerges from the long grass, introduces himself as Hyde, and offers to hire out his Galomper to me. A Galomper turns out to be something like a bactrian camel with the head of a warthog. Hyde waits until I've handed over my money before warning me that the Galomper loves to sit on fish, so I must make sure not to ride it across any rivers. If this were the sort of blog to intersperse animations between paragraphs, I'd be using that Nathan Fillion .gif round about here.

We ride along at considerable speed for an hour, and then the track along which we're travelling passes through an orchard. Without warning, the Galomper sits down and refuses to budge, so I trek back to Hyde and make a complaint. He apologises for neglecting to follow the word 'fish' with 'and apples', but says he can't refund my money. He does offer me compensation, though - in the form of a silver arrowhead with the letters 'B.R.' marked on it.

The reason I originally lamented the lack of horses was because we don't have a great deal of time in which to complete this quest. Even if I were able to travel on foot as quickly as by Galomper, returning to Hyde will have taken an hour, and it'll be another hour before I get back to that orchard again, but I must now proceed by turning to the same paragraph as I would have if I'd not hired the Galomper, or decided to cut my losses when the stupid beast stopped moving. So this is a race against time in which wasting two hours or more makes no difference to how things turn out.

After a while Orlando starts complaining about how tired his tin trotters are getting (must be metal fatigue), and then he spots a Magic Gate which he somehow knows can transport us straight to the swamp. How very convenient. You know, if not for the lethality of this adventure, I would be suspecting that this is all a scheme by Marris (in cahoots with Orlando) to convince me that he is actually a good guy.

The Gate is guarded by an Ogre-like creature that demands 5 Gold Pieces to let me past. On my first try at the book, I tried fighting the Guardian instead of paying. It was not a standard fight, and while the cost of failure didn't contribute to my eventual defeat, it makes me wary of attempting the same approach. Paying up will take almost all my money, though, so I hope I won't need to spend much more over the course of the adventure. If it turns out that winning the fight is the only way of getting all the resources necessary for completing the adventure, I will not be happy.

I pay up, the Guardian steps out of the way, and Orlando becomes irritatingly exuberantly enthusiastic about travelling through it. That'll DO, pig!! He does also imply that the Gate transports its users to the location of which they are thinking, so that business with it being able to take us straight to the swamp isn't as implausible as it seemed.

I grab hold of Orlando as he starts to think about the Great Nose Stone, and we pass through the Gate. After a few seconds in what's either a magical vortex or the interior of a washing machine full of Hawaiian shirts, we find ourselves next to something like a Moai statue with a massive nose, which stands at the edge of a swamp.

I don't often get excuses to use my picture of a Moai-headed pianist with his arms fused to the piano.

Orlando complains about the smell of the swamp, Edge insults him, and the text asks if I want to climb the Great Stone Nose, contradicting what Orlando called the statue last section. I climb up in order to get a better view of the swamp, and do not fall foul of the 1 in 6 chance of losing my grip and tumbling to the ground. From the top of the Inconsistently Named Nasal Rock I can see a hill in the north-east and a monster in the north-west. I also spot a bird's nest in the statue's ear, and have a quick rummage around in it because essential tat keeps turning up in arbitrary locations in Ian Livingstone books.

In the nest I find a bronze frog and a gold key. And a venomous snake, which bites me for a point of Skill damage. This book pre-dates Bart the Mother, so that can't be a taxonomically sloppy in-joke, much as I would like it to be.

Back at ground level I resolve to head north-west. My companions bicker, and I am also annoyed by biting insects. Then a humanoid with toad-like characteristics emerges from the mire, and offers to help me through the swamp - for a price. He'll act as my guide in return for my last Gold Piece, or if I can give him one of the Treasures of the Toads, he'll give me some helpful items.

The bronze frog I found in the nest turns out to be a Treasure of the Toads (now that is taxonomically sloppy), and Toady (that, alas, being the batrachian anthropomorph's name) allows me to take three of his four best treasures for it. As I recall, the Buzz Balm and the Zanti Horn are both essential, but I don't know whether I'm more likely to need Flashbang Powder or a Tombstone Bell. I remember a bell being one of the more incomprehensibly important items in one of Ian's earlier books, but I'm going with the powder anyway.

Toady guides us around patches of Suckermud, which is apparently a local phenomenon more dangerous than quicksand (well, that or the swamp dwellers' name for innocuous geographical features which can be made to seem threatening to gullible outsiders to make it seem as if they need a guide), and warns us to tread particularly carefully as we circumvent a large black pool that stinks of sulphur, as it may house a monster.

So this is where Orlando trips over and falls flat on his face. Randomness determines what happens next, and if the pool does have any denizens, they don't react. However, the vibrations caused by Orlando's clumsy stumble do cause a skeletal arm to emerge from the pool, holding aloft Excalibur a wooden box. I wade in to fetch the box, which turns out to contain a gold fly, a crystal snake, and a small iron shield, all of which I add to my inventory.

We resume our slog through the swamp until we reach a point at which Toady says we will no longer require his services, so we go our separate ways. Soon afterwards it starts raining, and just to accentuate the misery, my companions start squabbling again. Then a buzzing noise alerts us to the approach of a giant insect, ridden by a man who carries a small umbrella and looks a bit like Richard Attenborough circa Jurassic Park (at least, judging by the illustration, which rather carelessly shows no rain).

The man tells me that he's lost his Zanti Horn, and asks if I can sell him a replacement. Suppressing the urge to ask him what kind of misfit requires such an item, I produce the Horn, and he offers me a couple of Gold Pieces and some advice in return for it. Maybe if I had the faintest idea what a Zanti Horn does, I'd have some idea of whether or not that's a good deal, but I don't, so I just accept.

Once he has the Horn, the man explains that it will enable him to control his Hoverbug, so he can finally get out of the swamp. He mentions having seen a pack of Swamp Riders, and recommends that if I should encounter them, I claim to be on a scouting mission for Baron Ranzig, as the Baron is a friend of their leader. After that, he blows the horn, and the Hoverbug flies off at great speed.

We continue to trudge through the swamp, and the miserable weather reminds me of home, prompting me to bore Orlando and Edge by waffling on at length about Great British institutions such as tea, the lunchtime broadcast of Neighbours, and losing at sport. Or something like that. Then we encounter a dubiously stereotypical Rain Dancer with a snake tattooed on his chest. He reveals himself to be an ally of Darkmoon, and demonstrates his power by causing lightning to strike the ground just in front of me, gloating that the next bolt will be on target.

This is obviously a situation in which one of the bits of clutter I've picked up on my way here will save the day. In view of the Rain Dancer's tattoo, the crystal snake from that box is either going to be the best item for the situation or the absolute worst one, and since the only other object I have the option of using is one I don't possess, that's what I'm going to have to go with.

The Rain Dancer would make a rubbish poker player. The moment he sees the crystal snake, he starts pleading and grovelling. Intuition tells me to touch his tattoo with the snake, and when I do, the rain stops and the clouds disperse. The improved visibility enables me to spot three mounted figures on the horizon. These are probably the Swamp Riders mentioned by the man on the Hoverbug, and the fact that I've been told what to say if I should encounter them suggests that such an encounter may be necessary, so I head in their direction.

The Riders turn out to be serpent-headed humanoids riding creatures like lizards (though they can't actually be lizards, because they're sweating), and armed with spears. One of them asks who I am, so I tell him that I'm one of Baron Ranzig's men on a scouting mission. He demands proof, so I show him that silver arrowhead and hope that the initials inscribed on it do relate to the Baron. The Rider is satisfied, and tells me that it is his people's custom to exchange gifts with allies. He gives me some Bogtree Bark to chew on, claiming that it may save my life. I doubt that I'll need the crystal snake again, so I hand it to him in return.

He then asks me where I am headed, and I tell him that I'm going to Doom, which is not a fourth wall-breaking observation on the slim likelihood of my surviving this adventure, but an incredibly lucky guess (unless there was a passing mention earlier in the book that I failed to notice, and I have absolutely no desire to reread the text I've waded through up until now to check) as to the name of a nearby place I might be expected to visit. The Rider asks what I plan to do there, and after Orlando attempts to join in with fabricating a cover story and proves utterly inept at it, I interject that we're getting some gold for the Baron. I ask if it's far away, and the Rider tells me it's just beyond Black River. That would be helpful if I had the faintest idea where Black River is.

Okay, I had planned to ignore the quibble in the sentence following this one, because it seemed a bit too picky, but it's starting to look symptomatic of a problem with this part of the book. The Swamp Rider leader was initially referred to as 'The Swamp Rider with the two daggers' in spite of the fact that no mention of the daggers had been made in the preceding description. What with that, the out-of-nowhere mention of Doom, and now my being given a direction relative to a place that could be anywhere, it seems as if Ian wrote this sub-section without distinguishing between details that only existed in his head and what he'd actually included in the text. If 'Black River' is supposed to be a clue that can change an arbitrary choice of direction into an informed one, omitting the information that makes it possible to act on that clue is seriously shoddy gamebook design.

Night is falling, so I seek shelter, managing to find a hut on a boulder before it gets too dark to see anything. Orlando, in one of his occasional bouts of usefulness, has a candle with him, enabling us to illuminate the hut. As I'm preparing to bolt the door, Darkmoon's ghost manifests inside the hut and gloats that he won't be a ghost much longer. He then causes all the stones inside the hut to rise up and fly at me, but the shield I took from the wooden box attracts them to itself and shatters them all.

Orlando mocks Darkmoon, who states that he will have all his powers back a week from now, and invites us back to his home for a rematch. The ghost then disappears, and we settle down for the night. Morning arrives, and I must choose which way to head next. There's no mention of a river in either of the directions mentioned (and while the morning mist is a valid reason for not seeing one, it could still be possible to hear running water), so the Swamp Rider's information about Doom's location appears to have been a complete waste of ink.

I head north, which can't have been the way I went on my previous attempt, as my gamebook manager doesn't yet contain details of what happens. Which turns out to be an encounter with a couple of Marsh Zombies. Orlando warns me that a single touch from one could turn me into a Zombie, and advises me to flee. I do, but this time I'm the clodhopping klutz who trips over. The Zombies approach, and I discover that I chose poorly when picking the third of Toady's treasures, as that Tombstone Bell would come in handy here. Lacking it, I have to fight, and as I'm getting back up and outnumbered, the Zombies get first strike.

The first Zombie manages to get its hands on me, and it's game over. This failure does at least leave me a little better informed for future attempts at the book, which is an improvement on the 'hope to roll better next time' that's all I got out of my defeats in the preceding Adventures of Goldhawk.

I Do These Things Just So I Survive

Back to Tunnels & Trolls and the Sorcerer's Apprentice mini-adventures I own. While I do have a copy of issue 15 of the magazine, I don't yet have a T&T character advanced enough for the mini-adventure contained within, so I'm skipping ahead to issue 16. Owing to changes at Flying Buffalo, the magazine changed its name to SA at this point in its history, which could well make tracking down subsequent issues tricky, but as I don't know of any SA mini-adventures that come after issue 16's Hot Pursuit, that's not a problem about which I am overly concerned.

The introduction implies that I should be a Warrior, so character generation takes a little while, even with my gamebook manager creating all stats with a single click: the first couple of characters it produced were both better suited to being Wizards (one mediocre, one marginally above average), so I've saved them for more suitable adventures. Still, eventually I got a character who could be a Warrior, and this one is actually a relatively decent all-rounder.
Strength: 13
Intelligence: 13
Luck: 10
Constitution: 9
Dexterity: 13
Charisma: 14
Speed: 9
I also got enough starting gold for a reasonable weapon and a couple of bits of armour. Probably still doomed, but I might continue to be lucky.

Maybe I just don't have access to the right resources, but I know very little about the world in which T&T adventures take place - its geography, its history, its politics. While I am vaguely familiar with the city of Gull, the setting of this adventure, I know nothing about the group known as the Rangers, which could be a problem, as I'm supposed to be looking for Ranger spies. Considering what a delightful place Gull isn't (at least based on what happened to one of my characters there), and the fact that the fictional Rangers with which I am most familiar were on the side of good, I'm not even certain that interfering with their plans would be for the best. And the fact that the introductory section asks if I'm a member of the Rangers just raises more questions. Is this something I get to decide, or is there some adventure taking place before this one in which it is possible to be recruited by the Rangers? This time round it's simple enough to decide that I'm not a Ranger, but it would be helpful to know more about the whole affair.

Anyway, the Captain of the City Guard is offering me a substantial amount of money and a free pardon for any one non-capital crime if I can bring in a Ranger spy, preferably still alive. I've been chosen because I haven't worked for the City Guard before, which makes my reputation (or lack thereof) an advantage.

I decide to commence my enquiries at the Kraken's Cave tavern. This turns out to be a bad decision, but not for in-game reasons: the text gives the wrong section number, and even just skim-reading the first few words of sections in order to try and identify the right one causes me to spot a spoiler before I find where I should be turning (it doesn’t help that the correct section is the very last one in the magazine).

The Kraken’s Cave is a portside tavern, its customers a mix of sailors, women of negotiable virtue, and servants. My investigating technique turns out to be rather unsubtle, consisting of speaking loudly about the Rangers to see how people react, though I do get to decide whether I praise or condemn them. While that spoiler I inadvertently glimpsed makes it clear which is the more inadvisable option, I might have opted to go for the other one anyway, given that the Guard Captain said the suspected spying is believed to be in preparation for an attack on the city.

I speak derisively of the Rangers, and somebody buys me a drink (which already makes this mission more of a success than well over 50% of the T&T adventures I’ve played here). A fat merchant looks nervous, and a ruffian scowls and slinks out of the door. I decide to see what’s troubling the merchant.

Acting on a hunch, I quietly threaten to reveal his dealings with the Rangers, and he tells me he’s only passing on information to them because they have his daughter as a hostage. He goes on to explain that he’s due to meet with them at midnight, and I offer to rescue his daughter while he distracts them with doctored documents. We work on the plan until he has to leave for the rendezvous, and then I shadow him through the streets because Gull breeds cynicism, and I’m not convinced by the man’s sob story.

That was the right decision for the wrong reason. The merchant was telling the truth, but someone must have seen him talking to me, as a couple of Rangers intercept him before he reaches the place where they were to meet. I don’t know what he tells them, but it’s convincing enough that a third man joins them, bringing the merchant’s daughter, and hands her over in return for the maps we edited.

I decide to do what I can to ensure that the merchant and his daughter get home safely, partly out of guilt at having doubted him and potentially increased the danger to his family, and partly because trying to confront three Rangers simultaneously looks suicidal. Besides, if the Rangers discover they’ve been tricked, they might send just one back to avenge the deception while the others flee with whatever information they may have gained from other sources, in which case I could be in with a chance of catching him and getting that reward.

Evidently our tampering was done carefully enough that the Rangers didn’t spot it, as nobody comes after the merchant. He’s grateful for the protection I offer anyway, and gives me a magical dagger to show his thanks. That's all the reward I'll be getting, though, as the Ranger spies will be long gone by now.

Not as profitable an adventure as it might have been, but I survived it, and did a little to interfere with the Rangers’ plans. I also earned some experience, and while it’s not enough to qualify my character for any of the more advanced adventures I’ve had to leave unplayed, it brings me a step closer to the right level.

The Concentration of Force and the Development of Courage

This entry should please some of my readers, but it may also disappoint them a little. I'm back at the Mark Smith and Jamie Thomson subset of the 'shorter series' section of my gamebook collection, which means that I'm starting on The Way of the Tiger. However, I only have the original run, not the more recently published prequel or the long-awaited series finale. It's possible that I might have got my hands on the latter by the time I'm in a position to play it here, but I can make no guarantees.

I'll say something about my introduction to the series when I get to the book I encountered first. My earliest memory of Avenger!, the first book in the series, involves looking through a (most likely borrowed) copy during what was probably a private study session in room C at my school, just down or across the corridor (or both) from my form room. By this time Chris Pennington had drawn my attention to the fact that the same illustration appeared under every 'death' section in the TWotT books, and I was using that knowledge to help me find the grisliest endings. I also spent some time exploring different ways of handling a certain encounter to see if I could find a way of contradicting a reference back to it in the second book, but failed to find any loopholes.

Quite some time passed before I decided to collect the series myself (and that's a story for another blog post). When I did opt to get the set for the first time, I only managed to obtain half the series, but Avenger! was one of the books I did manage to track down. If I'd got the whole series I might have been more inclined to play Avenger! properly, or until I actually won it, but the incomplete set saw relatively little use until it became one of the casualties of the drastic downsizing of my gamebook collection in the early 1990s.

I did play Avenger! several times a decade or so later, after acquiring digital copies of the whole series from a site which had lots of gamebook scans. That was probably after I’d managed to get the whole series in paperback form - some of the physical books were in pretty shabby condition, and while my conscience didn't get on well with the thought of downloading unauthorised copies of books I didn't own, obtaining a digital back-up of a book I had on the shelf seemed fine. My attempts at that digital copy provide the one clear memory I have of playing and failing the book, a lethal bite from a serpent/human hybrid causing me to reflect that maybe I should have picked Immunity to Poisons as one of my Skills after all.

There's no random element to character generation, but, as indicated above, I must pick Skills. There are nine on the list, and I have just four of them, but Shurikenjitsu is selected by default, so I only get to pick three. I think, in honour of my only memorable deceased character, I should make Immunity to Poisons one of them. Picking Locks, Detecting and Disarming Traps (all one Skill) also looks useful, and I think I'll finish off with Climbing.

So, on the world of Orb, which has featured in a few gamebooks outside The Way of the Tiger series, the monks of the Temple of the Rock worship Kwon, a deity associated with helping others and unarmed combat. Brought here in infancy by a dying servant, my character has been raised by the monks and trained as a Ninja. The oldest of them became a father to me, and was murdered by Yaemon, a follower of Kwon's unsubtly named brother Vile, who impersonated a follower of Kwon in order to infiltrate the Temple and steal some scrolls that were stored there. I have vowed to avenge the murder, but there are other challenges I must face first.

One of the Grandmasters of the Five Winds has died, and a replacement must be chosen. I am one of the two most worthy candidates, and must prove myself more suitable than the other. My rival is Gorobei, who is older, heavier and stronger than I, and has already faced this trial once. We meet in the Temple, with assorted monks and locals spectating. The first stage of the challenge is unarmed combat. This being Gorobei's second try, it scarcely needs saying that the fight is not to the death (unlike the similar test that starts one of Jamie Thomson's other books).

The combat system in The Way of the Tiger is more complex than those of most other gamebook series, so I've had to dust off my coding skills in order to program my gamebook manager to handle the fights here. At the start of each round, I choose whether to try a punch, a kick or a throw, and my opponent's defence varies depending on the type of attack I'm making. Between the weight disparity and Gorobei's having oiled his muscles prior to the fight, attempting to throw him is likely to be pretty futile.

Thanks to the more detailed rules, I could give a literal blow-by-blow account of each fight, but that would make these write-ups take even longer than they already do.

Not to mention rendering them somewhat non-gripping.

So I will merely explain that I quickly find Gorobei to be worse at protecting himself from kicks than from punches, and exploit that weakness far more than I could ever get away with doing against a human or AI opponent. Despite some shockingly bad rolls that lead to my losing half my Endurance before I even manage to lay a foot on my opponent, I eventually kick Gorobei into unconsciousness, and hobble on to the second stage of the trial of worthiness.

Joining the remaining Grandmasters, I sit in silence and make no move for an hour. Then the Grandmaster of the Dawn asks me about my greatest desire and my greatest fear, conveniently making both of these queries multiple choice questions. I give the correct answers: that my desire for vengeance against Yaemon is even greater than my wish to serve Kwon, and I fear only failing in a mission. Which is pretty ironic in a series that makes winning so tricky and, for a couple of decades, didn't even have a successful outcome at the end of the final book.

Having passed the test, I am taught the secret litany of the Ninja Grandmaster, given an Opal Ring, and ordained as the new Grandmaster. Gorobei has recovered from his kicking sufficiently to applaud me along with all the others present, and I reflect that he will probably become a Grandmaster when if I die.

That night I have a vision in my sleep, finding myself first on a boat in the company of a man addressed by one of the sailors as Glaivas, and then walking towards a dark castle with three turrets. Despite the not entirely restful night, I wake back at full health. On my way to the Temple, I am informed that a ship is anchored offshore. A man rows to the beach, introduces himself as Glaivas (shouldn't I have recognised his face if my nocturnal vision was a glimpse of the future) and asks to speak to the Grandmaster of Grandmasters.

The Grandmaster of the Dawn tells Glaivas to speak freely, as there are no secrets on the island, and Glaivas snappily retorts that that's true now we've let Yaemon steal those scrolls. He goes on to explain that Yaemon has learned how to use an incantation in the Scrolls of Kettusin and, if he uses it in the right place at the right time (a planetary conjunction that happens once every 500 years, and is naturally imminent), Kwon will be imprisoned in Inferno, Orb's equivalent of hell, allowing Vile's followers to take over the world. Preventing Yaemon from achieving this is obviously far too great a challenge for just one man, so Glaivas wants one of us to help him.

I volunteer on the spot, and the Grandmaster of the Dawn renames me Avenger and agrees that I am the one who must undertake this quest. Glaivas gives me a map of the region to which we must travel, and I spend the rest of the day gathering together my Ninja equipment and meditating. We set sail in Glaivas' ship, the 'Aquamarin',on the evening tide.

For at least a couple of weeks the voyage is without incident, but then the ship encounters a vessel from Port o' Reavers, which it cannot outrun, so we have to contend with a boarding party, led by an Ogre that wields a spiked hammer. I attack the Ogre as it boards the Aquamarin, and while opening up with a kick doesn't enable me to send the brute straight overboard, it reveals my opponent's defence against kicks to be so poor that I don't bother trying out any other attacks. More favourable dice rolls enable me to kill the Ogre in just three rounds of battle, without taking any damage myself.

The rest of the Aquamarin's crew are not faring so well. Glaivas is a capable fighter, but is slowly being outnumbered. I deal with a couple more of the raiders without having to use the combat system, and decide to try and end things quickly by targeting the pirate Captain. I just hope the Skill of Acrobatics isn't a prerequisite for successfully jumping across to the other ship.

No, I make it across without any trouble, but must make a Fate Roll to learn whether or not I get spotted by a pirate. That's a straightforward roll of two dice, with the odds slightly favouring success right now. That may change later on, though, as Fate is an actual anthropomorphic deity on Orb, and if I do something to please or annoy her, I'll get a modifier to such rolls in future. On this occasion Fate does not smile on me, but then the one pirate who spots me leaping aboard decides not to raise the alarm, and as he sneaks up with murderous intent, I hear his earrings jangling, take him by surprise, and throw him overboard, subsequently proceeding to confront the Captain pretty much as I would have done if unnoticed. Given that outcome (all of which follows straight on from the Fate Roll with no further randomisation or any input from the reader), it seems to me that the pirate who saw me is the one who's in disfavour with Fate.

So far in this adventure I've not attempted a throw, so I'll try one against the Captain. This fight turns out to have a time limit, but it's not one about which I need to worry, as I succeed at the throw, and the Captain goes overboard, hitting his head on part of the ship and shattering his skull along the way. The remaining pirates turn on each other, seeking to become the new Captain, and I swim back to the Aquamarin, which makes a swift departure.

Nothing else troubles us for the rest of the voyage, and at last we reach locations depicted on the map at the front of the book. Glaivas tells me about the port of Doomover, to which we are headed. It's a big city, ruled by the Legion of the Sword of Doom. The order of the Scarlet Mantis, to which Yaemon belongs, has a temple there, and uses the symbol of a serpent twined round a cross.

Two ships from Doomover intercept us as we approach the port, and only let us through when Glaivas claims to be here to sell galley slaves. He drops me off at the wharf, throws me a bag of gold, and then prepares to head south to his home city of Tor to organise troops in case I fail in my mission.

Two exits lead from the harbour, an obsidian gate and a set of marble columns with a portico identifying them as the 'Portal of the Gods'. I try the portal, and a disembodied voice welcomes me to the Sanctuary and bids me to draw no swords. Things then get a bit weird, as a mounted knight ignores the 'no swords' rule and decapitates a priest who's trying to assist a wounded warrior, another priest upsets the horse, two more knights lead the first one away, and a self-proclaimed Seer claims to have predicted this and been ignored. He also names their god, enabling me to identify them as members of an order that capriciously does good deeds and opposes restrictive laws - something like a more anarchistic Amélie. The spelling of their deity's name varies at different points in the section, which may be an indication of the kind of whimsical frivolity in which they indulge, but is more likely to be just a typo.

If that really is a Seer, he may be able to give me a helpful warning, so I follow him. He enters a small, tidy chapel, and calls for his acolyte, who looks to be barely out of her teens. Drawing a sacrificial knife, the man tells me to lie down on what appears to be a tomb, next to a silver ewer. I doubt that this will be a lethal blood-letting, so I do as directed.

The Seer only takes half a pint of blood, and shows me a vision of Yaemon and Honoric, the Marshal of the Legion of the Sword of Doom, riding north from the city of Mortavalon, on their way to imprison a god and a goddess in Inferno. Glaivas being a follower of the All-Mother, I think I can guess the identity of the second of their intended victims...

I fall into a trance, and the next thing I know, I'm walking along the road to Mortavalon. Hope I didn't miss any important encounters in Doomover. Well, if this attempt at the book goes as badly as my every previous one, I can always try to find out next time.

As I continue along the road, I reach the edge of the Plain of Feet, on which several thousand of Honoric's troops are training for the war they intend to wage once Kwon is out of the way. I keep moving, and after a while, trees and vines start to predominate on the land by the road. For now I think I'll stick to the beaten track.

A night's sleep makes up the Endurance damage from the blood loss. The following afternoon I reach the encounter that ended one previous attempt at the book: a cobra-headed man, tethered to a wagon with a cage on it, is about to kill a small boy, while the men on the wagon are stupefied by fear. I attempt a kick, partly to save the boy, and partly to avenge the Avenger who died here. It's slightly disappointing that the only type of intervention possible is a kick, because striking the Cobra Man with a Cobra Strike punch would be so much more appropriate.

This time round I didn't need Immunity to Poisons (at least at this stage of the adventure), as my kick is on target, and the boy and I are both able to get out of range of the Cobra Man before he recovers. The men on the wagon tell me that they're taking the Cobra Man to Mortavalon zoo, having found him in a cave nearby. They think there may be treasure in the cave, too. The boy thanks me for rescuing him, and warns me not to shake hands with the young magician.

I should probably just keep going to Mortavalon, but now I'm curious about that cave. Investigating it results in my being trapped in a cage for several hours, after which a door in the cave wall opens onto an arena, and spear-toting guards 'encourage' me to go through, one of them telling me that whatever is about to happen in the arena will have only one survivor.

Spiked walls divide the arena into four sections, with a miniature castle in the middle. A moat surrounds the castle, and a trident-wielding Hobgoblin stands on it. Each of the four sections outside the moat is a different environment: grassland, swamp, ice and desert. I'm on a platform between grass and ice, and on a similar platform on the far side is a man in armour. On the platform between grass and swamp is a Dark Elf, and a young man in blue and gold robes (the magician mentioned by the boy, perchance?) is on the platform across from her. On the grassy plain are two lions, on the ice is a Snow Giant, a boat floats in the swamp, and a Cobra Man is in the desert region.

The platforms descend to ground level. The Dark Elf heads into the swamp, the armoured man into the desert, and the robed man does nothing. The 'two against one' thing with the lions looks less appealing than the lone Giant - besides which, the ice zone is closer to the probable magician, and the boy's warning might just give me a slight edge if I have to fight the young man.

Of course, the ice is slippery, and I have to make a Fate Roll as I launch a kick at the Snow Giant (which turns out to be more like a Yeti than your typical 'oversized humanoid' giant). This time I succeed, though my attack still proves unsuccessful. Mind you, the Snow Giant's retaliation is equally off target, despite having better odds. I'll try a throw instead. No Fate roll for that, but I still fail, and get a quarter of my Endurance gashed away by the Snow Giant's claws. There's no Fate roll to go with punching, either, and the Snow Giant's defence is less good against a fist in the face. Still, while I hit it a couple of times, it hits me more often and harder, eventually ripping my face off.

It'll be a while before The Way of the Tiger is featured here again, but in view of character and plot development over the course of the series, I might have another go at Avenger! before moving on to the second book. I may even try a few undocumented attempts in between, just to get a better idea of what I should be doing and what to avoid, so as to reduce the risk of the series stalling.

Searching Out Fear in the Gathering Gloom

As I mentioned in my playthrough of Darkmoon's Curse, the first of Ian Livingstone's Adventures of Goldhawk series of FF-lite gamebooks for younger readers, I acquired the second book in the series, The Demon Spider, in the same eBay lot as Curse, and was too underwhelmed by the first book to even bother having a go at Spider for a long while afterwards. Indeed, I only got round to giving it a shot when it came up as part of my playing through the whole Fighting Fantasy range, including spin-offs, at a now defunct online forum. Despite making a couple of sub-optimal decisions along the way, I managed to get to the climax, at which point my character was killed in the toughest fight in the book. My account of that attempt is the last such account to have been preserved by the quirks of the Wayback Machine, and can now be found part of the way down this post at the lost forum's successor.

If I had been luckier back when I played Curse here, I'd have defeated the Banshee, obtained the all-important Golden Hand wristlet, and gone on to confront the villainous Darkmoon, forcing him to transform himself into a mouse, and recovering the Karazanian King's crown. With the real Prince Goldhawk still in a poison-induced coma, court wizard Marris would have requested that I continue to play Dave and have myself temporarily crowned King. Which is more or less where Spider picks up...

I agree to continue my imposture (which is not a choice given to me - I guess the only way to decide not to continue impersonating the Prince is to not buy the book), and am crowned, following a bit of maybe-hilarious-if-you're-six slapstick from my annoying sidekick Orlando, the Dwarf turned Tin Pig. Celebrations ensue, and in the morning comes an unexpected dash of realism. Darkmoon's defeat has not caused the Orcish armies which were invading Karazan to give up and disband, and they're only a few days' fighting from reaching Karazan Castle.

The Orcs are faring so well against Karazan's army because of their allies: untiring, relentless animated Skeletons, and Dark Druids, who destroy morale with their daftly-named terror bubbles. Marris decides that Karazan's army will also need allies, and arranges to contact the Silver Elves, who should be able to destroy the terror bubbles with their magic arrows. To deal with the Skeletons, we will need the assistance of the Giant known as Stonehammer. Who, in a rather warped twist, is revealed to be Marris' son.

Marris confesses a tragic tale of appalling parental neglect. Up until the age of sixteen, his son was a normal boy, but Marris never quite got round to teaching him that going into a Wizard's laboratory and consuming the contents of random vessels is a ****ing idiotic thing to do. So guess what happened the moment Marris forgot to lock his laboratory door before dashing off to sort out one of Darkmoon's weirder pranks (making all the inhabitants of a village look 30 years older than they really were). Yep, the boy swigged down a cocktail of potions that brought about changes far more drastic than a conventional puberty, causing him to vastly increase in size while his skin turned rock hard. I wonder if these changes were gradual, or if Marris returned to find his home a heap of rubble, with a sullen, stone-skinned giant standing in the ruins and mumbling that 'a big boy did it and ran away'.

The youth renamed himself Stonehammer (no nominative determinism here, at least) and ran away to the mountains, where he has lived in seclusion, often being mistaken for part of the scenery, for the past decade. Marris cannot tell us exactly where on Sunstone Mountain his transformed progeny lives, but the Queen of Pain knows everything about the mountain, so we'll just have to ask her. Her home is the Dungeon of Despair, and naturally a respected public figure such as Marris doesn't know the exact location of her establishment and has never been one of her clients, despite those allegations in the tabloids a few years back... honestly, the photos don't even look that much like him...

Ahem! If we're able to find Stonehammer and persuade him to come and smash the Skeletons, we'll have to take him back again straight afterwards. Otherwise, he'll die because that's how the magic works. No, of course Marris isn't just trying to avoid an awkward reunion, or minimise the risk of Social Services hearing about the whole affair. It's the magic, being all... magical.

Anyway, while Marris seeks the assistance of the Elves, Orlando, Edge the irritable sword and I will have to go south and seek the Dungeon so we can find the Queen and learn the whereabouts of Stonehammer. And, this being an Ian Livingstone book, I will have to find a multitude of obscure items during my travels in order to avoid being killed in any of a dozen or so arbitrary and mildly gruesome ways.

I automatically start the adventure with a Skill of 8, an unspecified quantity of food and water, and just 10 Gold Pieces. My tiresome companions and I set off early in the morning, and have a not-as-charming-as-Ian-hoped conversation in which I request that Orlando and Edge not use any titles or terms of respect when addressing me, but just call me by the name of the comatose Prince I'm impersonating.

We head south for some hours, eventually reaching a log cabin. Outside it sits a two-headed man, arguing with himself about which head gets to eat the lizard he's just roasted. My metal associates squabble often enough that I'm not in the mood to listen to further disputes, so I suggest that the heads share the lizard, and they tell me to mind my own business. Suppressing the urge to retort, "Well, I am King!" I offer to share my food with them/him in return for information. This freakish double act doesn't know the way to the Dungeon of Despair, but will tell us how to find someone who does know in return for two chicken legs and two Gold Pieces, and I agree because I remember that I'll need the 'little present' that accompanies the advice.

The two heads devour the chicken legs simultaneously, spoiling their shared stomach's digestion, and start arguing about who gets to swallow food first. I remind them that they owe me information (and that I haven't yet handed over the money they want), and am told to go west at the next junction, seek out the belly racers, and ask for Fat Jack. The bicephalous lout also hands me a violin string, and I set off along the road again.

After half an hour we reach the junction that was mentioned, and I turn west as directed. The track leads to a village of cottages with wide doors, and in a field nearby is an event ripped off from homaging Judge Dredd, as half a dozen extremely obese individuals with wheels attached to their distended guts prepare for a sprinting (well, vaguely speedy waddling) contest. We stay well out of the way of the participants, and the winner is identified as Fat Jack, so I approach him after he's collected his prize.

When I ask the way to the Dungeon of Despair, Fat Jack states that nobody in their right mind would want to go there, but I must have my reasons, so he'll tell me. I need to go back east, then south across the Badlands until I reach the Valley of Skulls. At the end of the Valley is a large, heavy boulder which blocks the entrance to the Dungeon. The sort of thing I’d be liable to need a Giant’s assistance to shift. But I won’t be able to find the Giant unless I enter the Dungeon, so…

Fat Jack also warns me that the Valley is inhabited by Little People, who would kill me for a brass button, so I had better make sure I don’t have any brass buttons on me take along a crystal as a bribe. He then prepares for the next race, which we stick around to watch. A small boy wanders among the spectators, trying to sell books. This is the sort of bizarre encounter that usually leads to the acquisition of something important in Livingstone adventures, but I remember from my previous attempt at Spider that the book I’d buy is irrelevant and has a nonsensical title. What makes this all the stranger is that, later in the adventure, I’m going to have to ask for an essential item that has never been mentioned before. This book-buying sequence would be the perfect opportunity for a hint that encountering the Queen of Pain will be a lot more survivable if I have that artefact, but it’s just an irrelevant bit of padding. Unless, at some unspecified point in the future, Ian Livingstone writes his autobiography and gives it a cryptic title about fingers and moons, in which case this would be the most drawn-out and obscure in-joke ever.

We proceed to the Badlands, my companions bicker, and as I pause for a gulp from my flask, a Horned Shrieker emerges from the sand and charges at me. Edge is keen to fight, and a good roll of the dice gives me an instant victory. The pit in which the Horned Shrieker had concealed itself contains assorted items, and while the text forces me to take the rope, I get to choose which, if any, of the spear, the gold medallion and the copper ring I take. I don't remember any of those items turning out to be harmful, so I grab the lot.

Further south, a trail of smouldering footprints crosses the path, heading east. We follow them, Orlando expressing caution while Edge is still in a belligerent mood. After a while we get close enough to see that the footprints have been left by a Lava Beast, which has a sack that must be made of an impressively heat-resistant material. Orlando warns that Lava Beasts are vicious killers, and even Edge would have difficulties harming one, and then the Beast notices us and exhales steam in our direction. I am not scared off, but I heed Orlando's warning (even irritating sidekicks occasionally do something useful) and attack with something other than my sword. Unsurprisingly, that turns out to be the rest of my water (credit to Ian for the unobtrusive reminder that I was carrying it a short time before), which causes the lava to cool in a manner that proves fatal for the Beast of which it is composed. I make a sub-Schwarzenegger quip, and check the sack's contents, which turn out to be a Firestone, an iron key and a Gold Piece, all of which I pocket.

I could go south from here, but the text also offers the option of returning to the track and then heading south, and my knowledge of the author's idiosyncrasies leads me to suspect that doubling back is the better option. As I resume my journey, my mind is filled with images of undead armies, Darkmoon, and the Queen of Pain (in spite of the fact that my character has had no opportunity to learn what the latter looks like). Orlando interrupts my broodings to draw my attention to a half-buried skeleton that's pointing at a cave mouth. Also half-buried is a leather bag, which I don't touch because, as I recall, the venomous snake inside it is somehow still alive and bitey.

The cave merits exploration, though. It contains a significant quantity of sand, several broken clay pots, and one undamaged pot standing on a suspiciously sand-free copper plate with strange engravings. I toss a handful of sand onto the plate, and it is blown away. Orlando wants to leave, Edge is keen to smash the pot, and I ignore both of them and toss a coin onto the plate for no reason other than that the book gives me the option of doing so. The pot disappears, and two rings and a roll of parchment appear in its place.

The parchment has written on it a few lines of barely-scanning doggerel, warning me to take only one ring. One of the rings is made of gold, and inscribed with the image of a skull. The other is silver, and engraved with a cobweb pattern. The clue is in the title, as my schoolfriend and fellow gamebook nut Edward Webb used to say, so I take the ring with the more spider-related motif. And leaving the cave takes me to the same section as going directly south from the petrified Lava Beast would have done, so retracing my steps was the right thing to do.

Even further south, we encounter a hide tent with a peculiar quadruped (seemingly part-mule, part-anteater) grazing close by. The tent's occupant emerges, and turns out to be a man with lots of daggers, and snakes tattooed on his face. He asks if I come in peace, I reply that that depends what side he's on, and he professes to be neutral and reveals himself to be a trader. Well, it wouldn't be a late Livingstone book without an option to buy stuff somewhere, would it? I check out his wares, and opt to buy everything I can, spending most of my remaining money on a Crystal of Healing, a Trapping Box and an Invisibility Spell. He's also offering a Magic Carpet for the oddly specific price of one Firestone and a gold medallion, and I make the trade because the Carpet will enable me to avoid an encounter in which the fall of the dice determines whether or not I get my brain fried. The trader tells me the rather silly word of command needed to activate the carpet, and Orlando adds 'flying' to the list of things of which he's scared. I suppose I should be grateful that Edge doesn't start spoiling for a fight again.

We fly off, and after initially shrieking and cowering and generally being pathetic, Orlando catches sight of the assorted beasts over which we're flying, well out of harm's reach, and decides that he quite likes flying after all. Which is, naturally, a cue for the 'attacked by a flying beastie' sequence that inevitably crops up when air travel features in an Ian Livingstone gamebook. A Terrorwing (think an electrified red pterodactyl with mind powers) swoops towards us and tries to compel me to crash the carpet, and I need to remember the word of command in order to stay in control. The wrong option offered in the book is that bit dafter than the real word, and I have no trouble picking the right answer. We escape from the Terrorwing, and then the carpet runs out of whatever fuels it, and we have to land and resume our voyage on foot.

Orlando starts to suspect that we're no longer heading south, so I decide to ask for directions from a convenient stranger. The man sits cross-legged on a rock, with one hand resting on a wooden box. He wears only a loincloth, so the rainbow patterns that cover his body are clearly visible. Well, the text says they're like a rainbow, but the illustration suggests that Russ Nicholson got taught the wrong mnemonic for remembering the colour sequence. Go Buy Various Random Objects, Youngster, perhaps.

Orlando asks if we’re heading the right way for the Valley of Skulls, and the man replies that he’s only interested in colours, and too busy thinking about things that are blue to help us. Unless we solve his puzzle, which is a variant on one that previously appeared in Trial of Champions, with an additional element that assumes that weeks are the same length everywhere. Still, I answer correctly, and my companions and I are instantly transported elsewhere.

From our new location, I can see distant mountains with a valley running through them. Closer at hand is a ruined temple, which I'd probably have decided to explore even if the book hadn't insisted I do so. Inside are damaged statues, and I see steps leading down at the rear. More bits start falling off the statues, and Orlando gets scared and wants to leave. I catch sight of a crystal ball amidst the broken marble, but as collecting it brings a randomised chance of death, and I don't think I need it, I leave the ball where it is, and head straight for the steps.

They lead down to a bolted iron door. We can hear the sound of someone humming and playing a violin, and have a short and pointless debate about the merits of helping whoever is trapped behind the door, in the course of which Orlando implicitly insults many of the characters who've assisted me over the course of this series.

I open the door and, in a shocking non-twist, find a man playing a violin. After briefly mistaking me for a new guard, he explains that he used to play music for the Queen of Pain until he displeased her (possibly as a result of confusing Joy Division's Atmosphere with Russ Abbot's Atmosphere) and she had him locked up. He considers himself lucky not to have been killed. I mention that I'm looking for the Queen of Pain, and he says she's not far off, but all he wants to do is go home and mend his violin. By one of those staggering coincidences that occur with startling regularity in gamebooks, the violin string I have is just what he needs, and he gives me a tin whistle in return for it.

We proceed to the valley, and ascertain from the number of skulls scattered around the place that this is indeed the Valley of Skulls. A few of the Little People mentioned by Fat Jack leap out of a tree and point spears at us. While expressing his usual (for this book) zeal to shed blood, Edge manages to insult Orlando again, and the Tin Pig opines on the superiority of axes to swords. Advising the two of them to quit squabbling until we've taken care of the immediate threat, I address the Little People, who tell me they won't let me pass without a gift, so I throw them the Crystal of Healing I'd bought for just this situation. Its shininess so distracts them that we are able to get away without any further unpleasantness.

Further along the valley we see a wooden hut, and I decide to take a look inside. The place is full of litter, and smells bad enough that Orlando chooses to stay outside, his subsequent mutterings suggesting that he could have a promising future coming up with tacky slogans for deodorant ads. I search the hut properly, finding a brass lamp next to a copper dish, on which further doggerel encourages me to put some money in the dish in order to have a wish granted. The book gives me no choice but to do so, suggesting that Ian Livingstone wasn't paying close attention to the figures when writing this, as there's no certainty of having money left by this point in the adventure. I still have a couple of Gold Pieces because I didn't buy the book the boy was selling, and found a coin among the Lava Beast's belongings, but it's far from impossible to have spent everything by this stage.

Anyway, I drop my remaining money into the dish, and a bubble with a face grows from the lamp's spout. The face asks me what I wish for, and the book gives me a choice of either instantaneous transportation to the Dungeon of Despair or a Wand of Control. Remember what I was saying 15 paragraphs ago about needing to ask for a previously unmentioned item? That's the Wand. The other time I reached this stage of the adventure, I actually went back and checked every single path not taken on the route here, just to see if I'd missed a hint about the Wand and wasn't supposed to be asking for it in such a random-seeming manner. Nope, there is not a word of set-up for this request.

So, out of nowhere I ask for and receive a Wand of Control, and on the way out of the hut I spot a brass scorpion in the debris, which I leave where it is, because I remember that it turns out to be one of those animal-themed boobytrap items of which Ian became fond for a while.

We hurry on along the valley as dark clouds gather overhead, and a bolt of lightning strikes the ground just ahead of us. Then a figure appears from nowhere, causing the clouds to part and allowing the sun to shine down on us once more, This would be a more pleasing development if the figure in question were not a skeletal entity wearing dark robes and armed with an upright sickle (which illustrator Russ Nicholson has, for understandable reasons, chosen to depict as a scythe, though they seem to be different implements). The Grim Reaper announces that we must perform two tasks or perish (though 'answer two questions' would be a more accurate description of the challenge I now face).

Readers from outside the target age range of this book may be reminded of Monty Python and the Holy Grail, and all the more so when the first question turns out to be about a colour. More specifically, the one that was on the Rainbow Man's mind. This book came out a few years before Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? started up, so the Reaper's asking if I'm sure about my answer can't have been influenced by the show, but nowadays it does seem a little reminiscent.

The second question concerns the number of skulls in the valley, though I only actually have to count the ones in the picture, and I know that can't be all of them, because a larger number of skulls could be seen in the illustration of the Little People earlier in the book. In any case, I answer correctly, and the Reaper vanishes.

We proceed to the end of the valley, and with some effort shift the boulder, revealing a damp, slimy, torchlit tunnel. Edge starts verbally abusing Orlando again, but a Goblin attacks before this can develop into another infantile spat. The fight is pretty inconsequential, but at least it shuts my companions up for a bit.

Further along the tunnel, we see a side turning and hear a cry for help. We investigate, finding a gold miner who accidentally dug his way into the Dungeon and got stuck in a pit. We use the rope to help him out, and I explain our quest to him. He says we'll need to use magic to get the better of the Queen of Pain (advice rather too vague and too late to help with the Wand issue) and gives me a rabbit's foot made of gold for good luck. I could question its effectiveness, not only because of what happened to the miner carrying the 'lucky charm', but also because this is the point at which anyone who picked up that brass scorpion experiences the ill effects it brings.

Returning to the main tunnel, we advance further into the Dungeon and get to a particularly 'kids will accept any old rubbish' sequence. A mouse emerges from the shadows ahead of us and reveals itself to be the transformed Darkmoon. The mouse then turns into Darkmoon's ghost for no remotely sensible reason, so I get out the Trapping Box. The spectral wizard literally responds, "Curses! Foiled again!" before reverting to mouse form and exiting through a hole in the wall.

We continue down the tunnel until the floor gives way beneath us, causing us to fall into a massive spider's web. My sword arm gets stuck, so I'm unable to even try using Edge to cut myself free. A Giant Spider with a human face clambers onto the web and walks over to us, introducing herself as the Queen of Pain. She comments that I look as if I'd make a good meal, and on a whim I rub the ring I'm wearing, which causes the Queen to shrink to the size of a coconut. Somehow I get one hand free to use the Wand to keep her from running away, and compel her to answer my questions. She tells me an incantation that will summon Stonehammer (yet more doggerel), and says I'll need to use a magic whistle to soothe him. I then let her go free, assuming that her reduced size renders her incapable of doing any more harm. My character in these books is just rubbish at dealing with the major villains.

Eventually I manage to struggle free from the web, and we find a way out of the Dungeon and make camp for the night. In the morning we proceed to Sunstone Mountain, and Orlando prattles annoyingly until I recite the incantation. Part of the side of the mountain breaks away, and a huge stone human descends, accompanied by assorted rocks and rubble. Fortunately for us, the whistle I was given by the violinist turns out to be magical, enabling me to play a merry tune that cheers Stonehammer up. I explain the situation, and he agrees to help, so we set off towards the battlefield. I don't know how we're able to find it when we went off track on the way here and had to be magically transported to the vicinity of our destination, but we manage it.

The battle is still going badly for the Karazanian army, but Stonehammer's intervention turns the tide. The Orcs renew their assault in desperation, and Orlando and I are soon in the thick of the fighting. I trip over a fallen Skeleton, and an Orc Warlord tries to cleave me apart with an axe while I'm prone, but that lucky charm turns out to work after all, spoiling the Orc's aim. I manage to get up and fight back, finding the Orc to be as formidable an opponent as the Banshee that did for me in the first book - and this time round I don't even have the Skill bonus I got part of the way into Curse. The only thing in my favour is that the rules allow me to hit first, but the odds of my killing the Orc are not good. That roll I got against the Horned Shrieker would do the job here, but I do not manage to do as well this time. Several missed attacks follow, but eventually a weapon makes contact, to lethal effect... and it's not mine.

Well, that's two times I've played this book, and on both occasions I fell at the final hurdle. Owing to the narrowness of the viable path, if I try the book again, I shall have to do almost exactly the same things as I did on this playthrough (though I can skip one purchase). Not a prospect that appeals.