Bad Things Happened in Here

Way back at the start of the year I made quite a hash of playing Castle Death, the seventh of Joe Dever's Lone Wolf  gamebooks. In view of the nature of character development over the course of the series, and now that I've adopted a policy of establishing 'save points' between books, I shall be having another go at it before I proceed to the next one.

I don't think there was anything inherently wrong with the new equipment and Magnakai Discipline that I chose at the start of my previous attempt at the book, so I'll pick the same as before. Thus, I again commence the adventure with
Combat Skill: 17
Endurance: 25
Disciplines: Divination, Psi-screen, Weaponmastery (Sword, Bow, Dagger, Mace), Huntmastery
I explained the background to the adventure the last time I blogged about it. To recapitulate for anyone who'd rather not (re)read the earlier post just now: the second of the mystical McGuffins I require is located in the fortress of Kazan-Oud (aka Castle Death), which is surrounded by a magical shield in order to contain the evil that dwells within. I have been provided with a Power-key to enable me to pass through the shield, and a coracle to cross the lake containing the island on which the fortress is situated.

Learning from the previous Lone Wolf's mistakes, I head for the stone jetty. Lightning illuminates the fortress, the building's state of disrepair inspiring ominous and fanciful similes, and I become aware that the strong current in the water threatens to smash my tiny vessel into the jetty. I could grab for one of the slimy ropes that dangle from iron rings set into gargoyles' mouths, or abandon the coracle and make for the rocks jutting from the water to the west... Except that Divination tells me that neither ropes nor rocks are as they seem. Could those 'rocks' be the same 'boulders' that turned out to be part of the squidlike monstrosity that killed me last time? And the 'ropes' be tentacles, meaning that this gargantuan cephalopod just sits around hanging on to the iron rings all day on the off-chance that some adventurer might happen by, wanting to moor a vessel? A ludicrous concept, but sillier things have happened in gamebooks. Even non-comedy ones.

Comparing the original text to the Mongoose reissue, I see that there's more violence in the newer version. That is, whereas previously the boat was violently heading for a collision, nowadays it's violently heading for a violent collision. Well, that's a needlessly unnecessary gratuitous and superfluous edit that didn't need making.

Getting back to the plot, I now have the additional option of closing my eyes and praying for survival. Could be a 'you great twit, whatever made you think that would work?' Instant Death, but maybe the current isn't so dangerous after all, merely providing a perceived threat that scares the gullible into becoming squid-snacks. I'll take that chance - and it was the right choice, but not for the reasons I had in mind. The coracle is slammed against the jetty wall with destructive force, but the violence of the collision is so violently violent that I am flung from the shattering vessel onto solid ground, using my Kai stunt skills to avoid taking any damage from the impact. There's another less-than-ideal Mongoose edit here, replacing a nice bit of figurative language with a more prosaic description of my landing.

Two flights of steps lead from the jetty, one down to the beach I've been trying to avoid, the other up to a cave mouth. I don't get any of the hints that Pathsmanship would provide, so I remember my last failure at the book and go up. A hefty downpour commences as I ascend. Something in the cave smells bad, but I enter anyway. Perhaps not a good idea, as I wind up falling into a hole and getting knocked out, but if that's what it takes to avoid the leviathan on the beach, I'll accept it. The circumstances of the fall are a little mysterious, a new word choice in the Mongoose text potentially implying that the floor of the cave is somehow removed rather than just collapsing.

I regain consciousness atop a mound of rotting vegetation, with someone or something watching me and laughing at me through a grille. Oh, and I'm just about to get attacked by a giant monocular snake. Not the only oversized serpent in the book, which has led to mild confusion in the past. I don't have the Discipline of Animal Control, but I do still have my bow... and the arrows fell out of my quiver in the fall, so that's of no help to me right now. At least the Sommerswerd is still in my scabbard - until I draw it and start fighting the approaching ophidian. The Mongoose text here repeats the fact that I've lost my arrows (fair enough, as I wouldn't have known if I hadn't tried using the bow) and clarifies that the snake has two fangs (not as useful an edit, though I suppose the creature's below-average number of eyes could prompt speculation on other anatomical deviations from the norm).

On the far side of the chamber into which I fell, there's a small tunnel leading out. I can try to escape through it after four rounds of combat. Not sure I like the 'try' in there. By the end of round 4, there's a 70% chance of my killing the snake with one more blow (and reasonable odds of taking no damage in the process), and a 4% risk of mutually assured destruction. I've faced worse odds in books 2, 4 and 5 (and will face far worse in book 13, but that's a rant for another day), so I don't risk finding out what complications accompany making a break for the exit. As it turns out, I have to hit snakey twice more to kill it, but don't sustain lethal damage in the process. Mind you, I am in fairly poor shape by the end of the fight, and metaknowledge tells me that the healing potions I have on me aren't going to do me any good after this book, so I down one of them. Well, I do after dashing into the tunnel mouth, as the spectator starts firing bolts of destructive energy at me when the fight doesn't go as he/she/it wanted.

And the tunnel turns out not to be a tunnel, just an attached cave. Good thing I fought on rather than getting myself cornered in here. Especially as it contains a lot of massive eggs, neatly arranged on a bed of deceased adventurers' clothes and backpacks. I risk checking the packs for useful items, and find quite a bit of stuff. Some weapons I don't need, a blanket, a bottle of wine, another healing potion, and a couple of items of armour. Joe Dever may have encountered a few loophole-exploiting gamers in the decades between Beaver and Mongoose, as the more recent text spells out that Lone Wolf may not gain multiple bonuses by stacking helmets. The helmet here isn't as good as the one I'm already wearing, so I shall leave it, but the padded waistcoat may come in handy.

As I'm helping myself to things, I hear a hinge creak in the chamber where I fought the snake. I freeze, waiting for a new attack, and then I hear another noise. From behind me. The crack of a shell. There's a little reordering of sentences in the Mongoose text, and I don't think it's an improvement. Originally, the sequence went:

1. Hear another sound.
2. Note that it's behind you.
3. Confirm that yes, that is one of the snake's eggs hatching.

Now it's:

1. Hear the sound.
2. Realize that it's an egg hatching.
3. Oh, and yes, the eggs are still behind you. Just making that clear in case you were hoping that they might have snuck off somewhere else while you were distracted.

Both versions of the book imply that there are multiple hungry baby giant snakes emerging from the one egg, but have illustrations showing more than one egg hatching. While the newly-hatched brood have lower stats than the parent, a quirk of the Lone Wolf combat system means that I derive negligible benefit from the increased disparity in Combat Skill. I'm still significantly below full Endurance, so fighting them could get me killed. Rather than risk it, I hurl one of my Fireseeds into their midst. If I had the time, I'd try to come up with some 'Snakes on a Flame'-based witticism, but that creaking hinge has been followed by the clinking of weapons and armour, so I have a more pressing concern.

Unexpectedly, the next section has me searching for a concealed exit from the cave rather than confronting whoever came into the chamber. The Mongoose version also contains what looks like a spellchecker-induced error, mixing up 'effect' and 'affect'. I wish to effect an escape by smashing open the bricked-up trapdoor in the ceiling and climbing through. The armed and armoured figure(s) nearby may well want to affect my escape (probably to the extent that it doesn't even occur), but for some reason they choose not to interfere, even once I've broken through the bricks and am clambering up and not in a good position to defend myself.

I emerge into a dark and damp pillared hall, which contains a sarcophagus. More armour clanks in a tunnel to the right, and I'd feel more comfortable about the 'wait in ambush' option if the text were clearer about whether this sounds like one guard or many. Hiding behind a pillar may help clarify the issue, or it might just lead to a check on Invisibility, yet another of the Disciplines I do not yet have. I might as well try to find out.

Four armoured warriors - not human, judging by the length of their arms (and the fact that they have tails) - enter the hall. Not ambushing was a wise choice. Especially as I see their leader press a few buttons on the sarcophagus to open a secret door, through which they all depart. Once they've gone, I take a look at the sarcophagus myself. It's decorated with carvings of hybrids and even more bizarre creatures, and I am able to spot the outline of the concealed door. This is one instance where a Mongoose edit has improved the text, removing the implication that I didn't already know about the door (but not suggesting that I already did, so any reader turning to this section after having ambushed the warriors doesn't get confused by a reference to something they never saw happen).

The carvings include a snake that coils around three buttons. Divination provides no hints as to the correct sequence of button pushes, so either there's a clue somewhere that I failed to acquire, or this is a nastily arbitrary 'puzzle'. Still, having decided to try pressing buttons, I don't have the option of reconsidering once it becomes apparent that I can only make a blind guess. There are six possible sequences, so I roll a die to choose one, and wind up choosing 3-1-2. To my surprise, it works, opening the panel to reveal steps down to a door. I descend, and maybe that wasn't the right sequence after all, as a mildly awkward transition gets me trapped and gassed into unconsciousness. Well, I'm pretty sure there's no way of avoiding the trial I'm about to face, and this seems as good a way of getting to the bottleneck section as any.

I regain consciousness manacled to a wall in a large amphitheatre. Robed creatures glower at me. Close by is a pit, from which protrudes an iron pinnacle with a golden throne on it. A white-haired man sits on the throne, and floating above him are two crystals, one black, the other clear, with energy arcing between them. I recognise the clear one as the Lorestone I seek.

The man accuses me of having been sent to kill him, and the spectators address him as Lord Zahda and sentence me to 'the maze'. I am disarmed (but, oddly, not relieved of armour or the Power-Key that would enable at least one of the castle's denizens to breach the shield around the fortress), and experience the first, and mildest, incident of Joe Dever's punishing the player for having kept the same character since at least book 2 of the series: when one of Zahda's minions shows him the Sommerswerd, it emits a bolt of energy to fry the hand that wields it, and I get a punch in the face for finding this amusing.

Guards drag me away and push me into a pit. Out of the mist drifting overhead coalesces the shape of a skull with green eyes and a judge's wig. The skull speaks, telling me that if I escape from the maze, my life may be spared: otherwise, I will die. The maze entrance appears in the pit wall, and a crossbow bolt is fired at me to encourage me to go in. So I go in.

The mist up above gives off just enough light for me to be able to see the passage ahead of me. I advance to a circular vault, in which a sword lies on a stone block. Exits open to either side of me. The Discipline check here is slightly poorly worded, saying 'or' where 'and/or' would be more appropriate. Or do Divination and Psi-screen somehow cancel each other out, leaving me unable to sense what I could detect if I possessed just one of them? Rejecting that idea as just too silly, I learn from my Discipline(s) that the stone gives off magical emanations. Wary of a trap, I use the rope in my Backpack (evidently the minion of Zahda which took my weapons has never played Cluedo - pity I wasn't also carrying a candlestick or a spanner) to get the sword. It's just an ordinary weapon, but between the penalty for being unarmed and the bonus for having the right specialisation in Weaponskill, having the sword still significantly improves my chances in any fight I might get into down here.

This being a Joe Dever book, the exit to the left is probably the safer one to take. The passage soon turns a corner, and up ahead I see some large bubbles. A gust of wind blows them in my direction, so I draw the sword and puncture them before they can cause me any bother.

I did the obvious reference to The Prisoner last year, so here are some different hostile bubbles.

Somewhat bizarrely, the book describes the ease with which I slice through the bubbles with a comparison to 'scything cobwebs'. While, owing to the persistence of the spider that has taken up residence near my garden gate, I am familiar with clearing cobwebs out of the way, I have never felt the need to use a scythe to do the job. If anyone reading this has employed such an implement for that specific purpose, please comment on this post to let me know.

Up ahead is a pit, at least thirty feet across. As I wonder how I'm supposed to get to the other side, the bewigged skull appears again. The Mongoose text refers to the skull's return as 'unwelcome', but that seems a bit harsh, given that the skull provides a hint that there's an invisible path across the pit. Admittedly it does so in rhyme, which is a bit tiresome, but I still find doggerel preferable to being stuck. Again I get asked if I have 'Psi-screen or Divination', with no acknowledgement of the possibility that I might have both. And as the only other direction is for players who have neither of those Disciplines, that backs up my assumption of the implied 'and/' before the 'or'.

I can sense that there is indeed an invisible bridge, but not where it is. While searching for it, I hear something approaching, but cannot see what is coming. My hand finds the edge of the bridge, which feels like a plank, and is quite narrow, but then the footsteps stop, a whip cracks, and a wound appears on my hand. My attacker is no more visible than the bridge. I'm not sure that attempting to cross an unseen narrow bridge while being whipped by an invisible enemy is particularly wise, so I'd better fight. It's going to be a tough battle, but I'm armed, Huntmastery reduces the advantage provided by my foe's invisibility, and I still have my shield and helmet and the bonuses they provide. Quirkily, the odds would be slightly more favourable if I'd kept the blanket I found in the snake's nest, but even without bedclothes I have a decent chance of surviving.

My assailant becomes visible once I've killed him. At first glance he appears human, but a closer check reveals him to have a few feline characteristics, and scars suggesting that Zahda or one of his servants has been perpetrating Doctor Moreau-style atrocities. The whip my late opponent used remains unseen, but I can find a spear and a silent whistle on the body, both of which I take. Turning back to the pit, I find that the bridge has also become visible, so I cross it.

Zahda's voice sounds in my head, commending my bravery and wondering if I have brains to go with my brawn. I see a vision of him and the Lorestone I came here to acquire, and resolve to survive the maze and escape (why has it taken me this long to settle on such a goal?), then worry about what other dangers might be up ahead. I don't recall mood swings having been part of my character before now.

Continuing on my way, I reach a chamber that contains a bronze statue of a glum Zakhan. Judge Skull turns up again, and tells me in rhyme that I must answer the Zakhan's question correctly in order not to upset him. The statue then speaks, asking a riddle. It's a mathematical puzzle, and once I express it in algebraic terms, the answer becomes obvious. The Mongoose edition of the book repeats book 5's annoying gimmick of having the 'correct answer' section spell out that it is the section to which the reader should have been directed as a result of solving the puzzle. Apparently Joe Dever believed that his readers could figure out the answer to the riddle, but wasn't so convinced that they'd be able to infer from the phrase, 'In reply to your correct answer' that they had indeed got the question right.

A door opens, and I go through, descending a ramp to a new corridor. Slithering towards me is a giant worm (okay, so from a taxonomic perspective I was wrong about there being more than one 'oversized serpent' in the book, but it has been years since I last read the relevant encounters). Somehow I know to use the silent whistle here, and the worm turns out to really dislike ultrasonics. This is another place where the revised text is an improvement, toning down the sound's effect on the worm's nervous system from the implausible 'destroys' to the more reasonable 'wreaks havoc upon'.

In its writhings, the worm rears up into the overhead mist, which seems to be electrified. One fried worm later, the mist appears to have been shorted out, revealing a walkway and observation platform. I climb up onto it, as this is a good way of getting out of the maze. Possibly even the only one. The walkway is part of a whole network of suspended paths above the maze, and leads to a staircase that crosses the perimeter wall. An alarm sounds as I head for the exit, which leads to a junction.

There's a Pathsmanship check here, which makes me wary of automatically going left. In the absence of indications to the contrary, left does tend to be the better way to go in Lone Wolf books, but it may be that Pathsmanship would provide a hint that right is right on this occasion. Letting the existence of this Discipline check influence me is metagaming, but then, so is the whole 'go left' business. And it is, of course, possible that if I had Pathsmanship, I'd be advised to go left anyway. So that's what I do.

I reach the cells where the slaves are housed. The occupants hiss disdainfully as I pass by. At the end of the block is a cage containing a dirty and bloodstained man. Judging by the colour of his skin, hair and clothes, I may have been wrong in my previous post on this book when I said that there was no follow-up to Paido's revelation that his brother entered the fortress and was never seen again.

A key hangs on a peg close by, so I unlock the cage. The occupant is suffering from some disease, which has blinded him, and as I don't have Curing, I can't do anything about that. I can reassure him that I mean him no harm, though. He asks if the Elder Magi sent me, and since he wears the uniform of a Vakeros, I'm confident that even if he isn't Paido's brother, he'll still be on my side, so I answer truthfully and explain my mission.

He is Paido's brother Kasin, of course. He and I both know that he's not long for this world, as blindness is one of the symptoms of the terminal stage of the disease from which he suffers. It is not unreasonable that I should have this knowledge - I've had the basic Kai Discipline of Healing since the start of the series, and while its effectiveness has been diminished now that the advanced version is available, the medical knowledge it gave me should still be of some use. Anyway, Kasin tells me everything of use that he knows, which turns out to be quite a lot. Directions to Zahda's throne room, details of where to find a secret door into it, a warning to destroy the Doomstone to which the Lorestone has been linked, and the location of the boat in which Kasin came here.

I hear approaching guards, and absent myself before they arrive. The corridor leads to a staircase guarded by a Beastman, who soon ends up lying down on the job. I swap the spear for his dagger and descend the stairs. They lead to a hallway decorated with tapestries, statuettes, and a fountain. The tapestries are significant, as the secret door Kasin mentioned is behind one of them. The fountain turns out to be important too, as behind it is a guard with a crossbow. He steps out and tries to shoot me, and there's another Discipline check with an 'or' that should be 'and/or'. I have both relevant Disciplines, and with the help of one or other or both of them I evade the crossbow bolt with ease. The guard doesn't have time to reload or change weapons before I get to him, and only puts up slightly more of a fight than the one at the top of the stairs did. There's an odd Mongoose edit here, using the word 'belies' to express something totally unrelated to the actual meaning of the word.

More guards are coming, so I ignore the obvious exit and look behind the right tapestry for the secret door. This leads into a circular tunnel made of steel, and I hurry into it before the guards arrive. A little way along it I find a door set into one wall, and investigate. It leads into a steel-walled laboratory, containing all sorts of alchemical gubbins. This is also where the weapons confiscated from me have been stored, so I retrieve them. Also of note are a jar of a particularly powerful healing potion (which, in the Mongoose text, can only be consumed straight after combat, severely limiting its usefulness) and a Platinum Amulet which protects the wearer from high temperatures (but, IIRC, proves singularly useless for surviving the 'you dive into boiling water and die' Instant Death that may be encountered near the end of this book).

Returning to the tunnel, I continue along it. The temperature rises, but the Amulet protects me. There's another contentious 'or' for anyone who has the Discipline of Nexus - though, given that Nexus provides protection from extremes of temperature, it's possible that a player with Nexus wouldn't have bothered to take the Amulet. Not that having no need for an item would dissuade many gamebook players from taking it anyway, unless there was a limit on carrying capacity, and at this stage of the series only Weapons and Backpack items are subject to such a limit.

Anyway, the Amulet not only keeps me from being harmed, but also protects my clothing and equipment from the heat. Eventually the temperature drops again, and I reach an iron chamber. A spiral staircase leads up to a portal, which looks out onto the back of Zahda's throne, close to the levitating gems. It seems odd that this isn't better guarded. All right, there's the secret door, the heated tunnel, and the fact that the Doomstone is being used to booby-trap the Lorestone, but considering how paranoid Zahda was about assassins the last time I met him, an unsupervised portal to right behind where he generally sits still seems rather careless. Or is there more here than meets the eye? I have the option of looking more closely at the throne, so I'll check for other traps.

Nope, it turns out that the 'examine the throne' choice means 'wander out in front of the throne like a complete numpty so that Zahda can see and attack you'. Great. Maybe I'll get a chance to use that potion after all. The Sommerswerd deflects Zahda's initial attack, and its Combat Skill bonus brings me close enough to his level that I might just survive the subsequent fight. Still, I now wish I'd not put all my Combat Skill-enhancing items into storage at the start of the adventure. Though really I should be wishing the decision that got me into this mess in the first place had been better worded.

The first round of combat goes badly for me, but after that I get the upper hand, and by the end of the fight I'm only just below half of my maximum Endurance. Zahda falls into the pit around the throne, and (after downing that potion just to be on the safe side) I smash the Doomstone, causing molten lava to jet from the pit. Do I leave the way I came in or seek an alternate exit? Checking for something else, I find a symbol carved on the throne which activates an anti-gravity beam leading to surface level. I grab the Lorestone (which restores all my missing Endurance anyway), and step into the beam.

The fortress starts to collapse around me as I ascend, but the beam maintains its integrity until I arrive in a ruined temple near the castle keep gatehouse. Lightning lashes the disintegrating Kazan-Oud, and some way below, I see the lake. I'm pretty sure that diving in leads to the 'boiled alive' ending I mentioned before, so I head down some damaged stone steps to the jetty where Kasin concealed his boat.

Many of the fortress' residents are also trying to escape. I sustain no damage in the melee, but do lose my Backpack and everything in it (which is why I put so much into storage at the start of the adventure). The description of my triumphant arrival at the jetty is a little perturbing: the contrast between my appearance and that of Zahda's minions may be intended to evoke pulp tropes, but there's a nasty hint of white supremacism in there.

Let's just think about the Mongoose edit relating to that concentrated healing potion again. It established that the potion could only be used after a fight, so a badly wounded Lone Wolf would have been unable to take it before battling Zahda, when it might have come in handy. And a quick check of all possible courses of action that can be taken after finding the potion establishes that, what with the Lorestone-induced Endurance boost, there is no point between fighting Zahda and losing the Backpack (in which the potion must be carried) at which the healing provided by the potion would matter. So the edit has made the potion utterly unnecessary. Nice work, everyone concerned.

Getting back to the climax of the book, I make it to Kasin's boat and escape the doomed fortress. A hero's welcome awaits me outside the magical barrier, and a local dignitary indicates that he and I are related, and the Elder Magi have much to teach me regarding the next Lorestone I seek. Which will be covered in the next book in the series.

In case anyone else cares about the ongoing 'section 291' in-joke, in this book the relevant section describes one of the ways in which Lone Wolf can fail to save the life of Tavig, the viewpoint character of the mini-adventure accompanying the Mongoose edition of Castle Death.

Now I've beaten Castle Death again, I'm not sure what to make of it. It has some decent set pieces (one I missed on this occasion is the gruesome encounter with a brain-eating disembodied hand), but I'm not keen on the unavoidability of the 'captured and sent to the maze' sequence, and the compulsory Backpack loss at the end is just annoying.

As a Lone Wolf book, it lacks the scope of the rest of the series. Travel between locations has been a big part of every preceding adventure, and will be again in the rest of the series. This book just has the voyage to Herdos in the 'The story so far...' bit, and the lake crossings in sections 1 and 350. Everything else takes place in or just outside the one structure. The magical barrier around the fortress also diminishes the scale of the threat Lone Wolf is going up against. In the first five books the fates of whole countries hung in the balance. Book 6 played out against the backdrop of a war. And then this was 'find and kill the bad guy we trapped in here'. By the series' standards it's just small and petty. Still, this is (as far as I'm aware) a one-off aberration, and I'm through it now.

This Thing Should Have Died Long Ago

I acquired Terrors Out of Time, the second of Ian and Clive Bailey's Forbidden Gateway gamebooks, at the same time and place as I did the first. As I initially played it without dice, and the only decisions leading to certain death are rather obviously bad ideas, I made it to the end on my first attempt. It took longer to win by the rules: while not quite as harsh as Where the Shadows Stalk, it still has several unavoidable 'do or die' rolls, and when even a character with the maximum possible stats has a 1 in 6 chance of failing any roll, that makes the odds of winning fairly slim. When I ran the adventure for a group at rpg.net, unfavourable dice and the occasional unwise decision meant that they didn't succeed until their twelfth attempt.

Had my character in Shadows not gone insane in a dream (incidentally, I once dreamed that I came across a third Forbidden Gateway book involving zombies, but in the real world there are, alas, only the two), I might have gone on to save the world from Lovecraftian monstrosities, in the process acquiring a small pyramid made of crystal, with a design of an Ouroboros-esque dragon embedded in it. The first FG book ends on a minor cliffhanger, as the pyramidion is stolen by someone with taloned hands, who reaches in through a second-floor window to grab the artefact as I contemplate it.

Interestingly, Terrors starts shortly before the ending of Shadows, with an account (by an unspecified narrator) of the thief's breaking out of the British Museum, shrouding himself in the ambient mist, and heading for my character's home. Only with the jump to a new section does the viewpoint shift to that of my character, where it will stay for the remainder of the book. So as my character gets the focus, it's time to determine his stats:
Strength 5
Stamina 10
Mentality 5
Endurance 10
Dexterity 9
Well, this post should take a lot less time to write than my previous one.

As I sit in contemplation of the small pyramid, a tendril of mist drifts through the open window, followed by the thieving hand from the end of the previous book. Dashing to the window, I see the thief crawling down the vertical wall, and jumping to the ground. A hideous face looks back at me for a moment, and then the figure is off. I grab my coat and a swordstick, and give chase. By the time I reach ground level, there's no sign of the thief, but a creaking hinge draws my attention to the museum door, so I go through it.

The next two choices are utterly pointless, except insofar as they help bring the total number of sections in the book up to 375. My first proper encounter with the thief will proceed in exactly the same manner regardless of which staircase I ascend, and whether or not I spend several minutes fumbling with locked doors and heading into a dead end. I'd have preferred it if the Baileys had ditched the choice of staircase and used the extra section to include some minor adverse consequence of taking the wrong turning at the top of the stairs, consequently giving the thief more time to make his preparations.

Anyway, I reach the Egyptian Rooms, where I find the thief crouched in front of an open display case containing a sarcophagus. I try to sneak up on him, but even though I'm rolling against my only decent stat, I still fail, treading on a squeaky floorboard that alerts the thief to my presence. He dashes towards the sarcophagus, flinging a stream of golden particles in the direction of a nearby mummy. For a moment I catch hold of him - long enough to note his emaciated appearance, excessive number of teeth, and red-rimmed eyes. He pulls free, dives into the sarcophagus, and vanishes.

Though shaken by the sight I just glimpsed, I am not excessively traumatised. I don't cope so well when that mummy animates and starts shambling towards me, though, and while I'm gaping, it catches up to me and attempts to overpower me. The attack takes less than 66 seconds, but is resolved by a Dexterity contest, and the mummy isn't that agile, so I manage to break free. I could now try fighting it, but I don't have to, I'm not sure there's much to be gained by doing so, and it can't be long before the broken door onto the street attracts the attention of the Police, so I think I'll just run for it.

It's not that simple, of course. The mummy turns out to be blocking the exit, so I have to wrestle it out of the way to get out. That takes a contest of Strength, and my Strength is as much below the mummy's as his Dexterity is under mine. Unsurprisingly, I fail to overcome my opponent, and it manages to get its arms around me. My struggles are in vain, and the mummy begins to drain my Strength. I have one more chance to try and break free before I become so weak as to fail all subsequent rolls in this fight, and only a double 1 will save me. I don't get it, and soon everything goes black...

Incidentally, the structuring of this section is a bit misleading. It's split over two pages - two sides of the same sheet of paper, rather than facing pages. The last paragraph of the first side explains what must transpire for the reader to completely lose this fight, and gives the number for the section to which to turn if this occurs. However, it doesn't say, 'If this should happen, turn to...' or words to that effect. It just says 'Turn to...' And as the list of choices that can be taken if the reader should succeed at a Strength conflict roll is over the page, it's possible that a reader might not realise that the instruction at the bottom of the page only applies in the case of total defeat, turn to the wrong section, and get an undeserved fail ending.

Talking of which, consciousness returns. The mummy didn't kill me. But it incapacitated me long enough for the Police to arrive, so I'm going to be assisting them with their enquiries rather than trying to prevent the thief from using the pyramidion to bring about the end of the world. Oh, well, at least I lasted slightly longer than the rpg.net crowd on their first attempt at the book.

To Choose Another's Form and Make It Thine

I'm getting out of the pretty dismal state I've been in for much of the year. It's unlikely that I'll be able to get back to the 'three posts a week' routine that used to be standard, but this should be the point at which updates to the blog start to become more regular again.

For around a decade after moving away from Swansea, I continued to visit it quite frequently. During one of these visits, there was an afternoon on which I found myself at a loose end. I'd done the rounds of the local charity shops and found little of interest in the book sections, and those of my friends who still lived there had jobs, and were at work, so I couldn't interact with any of them until evening. Then I remembered the little library on Bernard Street (which Google Street View reveals to no longer be a library, alas). I'd been a regular customer there during the year after graduation, and in the course of my visits I had often spotted a copy of one of the FF books that came out after I stopped collecting the series. Back then I'd always left it on the display stand, as that was one of the periods when I was most strongly 'off' gamebooks. Nevertheless, the cover image, depicting sinister pumpkin-headed figures stalking through the rain, had lodged in my memory, and by the time of this visit, my interest in the genre was waxing again, so I decided to fill at least some of the time I had on my hands by going back to the library to see if the book was still there.

It wasn't. I don't know whether it had been withdrawn or just borrowed by a member, but either way, it had left the building. Indeed, I never did get my hands on a copy of that particular book until the discovery that got me back into gamebooks big-time. But tucked away in the little alcove where they kept the children's books, there was one book with a spine of that distinctive green, and it was one I'd never seen before, so I took it, found a chair, and spent until close to closing time investigating Keith P. Phillips' sole contribution to Fighting Fantasy, Siege of Sardath.

I attempted the book (without dice) twice, on both occasions falling victim to a flock of the villain's winged minions. I also flicked through the book in search of particularly juicy-looking deaths, and was none too impressed to find that there were a lot of very similar-looking bad endings. It wasn't a bad book, and it enabled me to fill that afternoon, but it didn't grab me enough to make me want to find another copy and play until I beat it, and I pretty much forgot about it until I wound up deciding to collect the whole series.

Siege was actually the FF book it took me longest to acquire once I'd begun collecting in earnest. In the end, it was the online gamebook trading network that enabled me to get a copy of the book. I got it from someone in Australia, in exchange for a copy of Steve Jackson's novel The Trolltooth Wars, and received it 50 weeks (to the day) after I bought the seven FF books that got me back into the series in the first place. I have yet to win it (it has a decidedly narrow 'true path'), but I have been making gradual progress towards finding out what needs doing. Mind you, my previous online attempt at it was something of a shambles.

I'd be interested to see my character's CV, if such things existed on Titan. An adventurer (as usual), but also a councillor. Skilled in forest lore (handy, as the town of Grimmund, where I fulfil my civic duties is right next to the Forest of Night), and a friend of the local Elves. The adventure starts with a dream that has me fleeing a malignant forest and reaching a mountain that splits open to disgorge a vast army of dark soldiers. This is, of course, significant - dreams in gamebooks (and fiction in general) are rarely just the sort of random strangeness that goes on in most people's heads while they sleep.

A Council messenger wakes me with a summons to an emergency meeting. A traveller from Zengis, by the name of Morn Preeler, has just arrived bearing ominous news. Apparently the Forest has become hostile, cutting Grimmund off from the city of Sardath. The paths have become overgrown, or blocked by Giant Spiders' webs, while the aquatic Slykk and unspecified monsters have made passage by river impossible. The rest of the Council wish to respond with fire, but I protest, citing the balance of nature and expressing my conviction that the source of the threat is from elsewhere. Preeler suggests that he can convince me of the truth of his claims with a more detailed account of his experiences, and the two of us adjourn to a separate room where he can recount his tale at length. As it turns out, he doesn't have a lot to say, but it does end the background section on a magnificent cliffhanger: 'When I was travelling through the Forest, I was accosted and killed by a powerful creature. He then assumed my form and came here in order to kill the only person left in the Forest who had any chance of thwarting the plans of his people!'

So what does the only serious opposition to the villains look like, stats-wise? I shall be allocating dice because I know of one rather nasty fight that I shall have to get into if I want even a shot at winning.
Skill: 12
Stamina: 15
Luck: 10
If I'd taken the dice as they fell, Skill and Luck would have been the other way round. When (if) I get to that fight, I'll keep an eye on the rolls and see how it would have panned out for a character 'as rolled'.

Preeler's killer/impersonator grabs my Council ring, the one thing on me that he wouldn't be able to duplicate, and starts to transform into a bat-winged, dark-taloned monstrosity. Every time I've attempted this book before now, I've fought the impostor, but earlier this year I learned that fleeing is apparently the better choice, so I'll try that for once. I dash back towards the Council Chamber, the fake Preeler gives chase, and the fall of the dice determines that he catches up with me and I have to fight anyway. Great.

Because I ran and he pursued me, we grapple rather than use weapons, and the initial round of combat inflicts no damage, but determines who gets the advantage. My higher Skill prevails, enabling me to break free choose what to do next. Running would mean another roll like the one that went so poorly, so I try to capture my opponent. That too involves a round of damage-free combat (two, in fact, as the first is a tie), and I successfully subdue him for long enough to get my sword at his throat. I invite him to surrender, and he takes his own life to prevent interrogation.

Examining the corpse, I note that it is like a Dark Elf in some regards. I retrieve my ring, and search the impostor's pack, finding three bottles with numbered labels, each obviously a component of something magical. Their precise function is unclear, but as two of them have been taken from the bodies of creatures with powerful natural camouflage abilities, it's almost certainly something to do with impersonating others.

I return to the Council Chamber to point out the flaws in the faux-Preeler's argument, and explain that I'm going to have to seek out the real enemy single-handed because it is the gamebook way. I then get some rest and, as the passage of time has a part to play in the outcome of the adventure, update the 'Day of the Week' check. As I prepare to set off, the leader of the Council gives me a four-leaf clover for good luck (also providing a non-obvious way for the book to check on whether or not 'Preeler' is still alive and able to impersonate me).

Before leaving town I call on my old friend Liam Astromonius, the local astrologer. He has been unable to discern anything about my future, but mentions that he has yet to try one hazardous ritual, which no non-magician has ever witnessed and survived. Sounds like a laugh, so I tell Liam to proceed. Though displeased at my risk-taking, he invites me into his spell chamber, where he uses a silver sceptre to knock on a mirror three times. Rather unimpressive, as dangerous rituals of great power go. Still, it works, summoning a divine messenger known as a Suma, who advises me to seek a tomb in the Forest, and warns that I will need an amulet. In the accompanying illustration, he's wearing an amulet like the one I seek, which for some strange reason hangs down at a weird angle. For years its positioning relative to the frame of the mirror (combined with its roundness) made me think it was a door-handle, but then I noticed the chain it was on. And remembered that mirrors don't generally have door-handles.

As I'm leaving the village, a horse-drawn wagon emerges from the Forest, and the driver asks if I want to buy any of his potions. Considering the trouble people have had getting through the Forest of late, I find this suspicious, and tell him I'm not interested. He gets desperate, admits that he only pretended to have just come through the Forest to give the impression that his wares were fresher than they are, and offers me a free gift if I'll buy something from him. I accept this offer, and he hands over a large bottle of a mystery potion - even the trader doesn't know what it actually does, though he is aware that it's harmful, and advises me to throw it at something hostile.

Turning my attention to his wares, I notice that a couple of substances are numbered according to the same system as the bottles I acquired from the late not-Preeler. Indeed, one of them is identical to the contents of the first bottle. The other, Powdered Pegasus Feathers, is not cheap, and doesn't look likely to be of use in an instant disguise potion, so I disregard it in favour of phials of Snapperfish Oil and Sleeping Draught. I could also afford a potion or two, though most of the ones in stock are different strengths of Love Potion, numbered according to potency. The strongest variant is number 5 (not 9), but if I get number 2, I can also afford a Potion of Fortune, which may be useful if I wind up needing to use Luck a lot.

Once I've made my purchases, I carry on to the harbour, which shows serious signs of neglect. My boat is still in usable condition, so I set off along the River Sardath. Someone has cut down the rope bridge across the river, but I have no trouble navigating around the remains. When darkness falls, I stop at a handy clearing and settle down for the night. This leads to one of the more annoying aspects of the book - a decison (and not the only one) that shouldn't be offered, as my character knows the best course of action. But the choice is still there, and picking the wrong option will lead to mockery and punishment. Having learned from past errors, I now know as much as my character as regards these shouldn't-even-be-a-choices, but the whole 'Why did you do something you know to be so stupid?' thing just makes me want to ask the author, 'Well, why did you suggest I might want to do it if I knew it was such a bad idea?'

While preparing to make camp, I see two winged creatures landing somewhere to the south-west. I think this is a point at which the narrowness of the 'true path' through the book kicks in: I will need to go to where they've just landed, but if I do so right now, I suspect that I'll miss out on something important or essential, so I just turn in.

During the night, I wake to find that a Giant Spider is approaching me with hostile intent. Will shooting an arrow at it help at all? Not really, as this is a Giant Spitting Spider, and my taking time to draw, load and fire the bow gives the Spider an opportunity to spew a mass of web at me. My Skill is high enough that I'm not immobilised by the web, and can extricate myself in time to fight off the assailing arachnid, but it's a little tiresome that my detailed knowledge of the Forest's fauna failed to alert me to the Spider's capabilities back when it would have been useful to know.

Continuing on my way the following morning, I see signs that I am being watched by amphibians. My boat's rudder gets tangled in weeds, which my forest lore skills enable me to recognise as River Bloodweed - just after I stick my hand into the water and lose about an armful of blood to the vampiric vegetation. The suggested ways of dealing with the Bloodweed include at least one more 'as you are well aware, that is an idiotic thing to do' option, but I think that may be the last one.

A little later I become aware that I am being watched again, but the creature spying on me fails to notice that I've noticed it. I could try shooting at it, but as I have yet to see any clear signs of hostile intent, I think attacking would be premature. My watcher submerges, and I carry on until I reach undisputed Slykk territory, at which point several of the batrachian humanoids surround me. Their leader indicates to the others that they should not attack (yet), and makes gestures that could be interpreted as either a desire for non-hostile interaction or a challenge to a duel. I go for the more diplomatic response, and a Slykk seer named Rurkk uses his limited grasp of my language to translate the ensuing dialogue. It transpires that their tribe was also infiltrated by one of fake-Preeler's kind, which Rurkk was able to identify as an impostor. Rurkk gives me the one item they found on the body, a leather-wrapped bundle, and the Slykk all depart.

Opening the bundle, I find it to contain half a dozen ivory squares with patterns carved on them. They're represented in an illustration, as figuring out the correct way to fit them together is a puzzle. I recently scanned the relevant page, as removing it from the book and cutting out the squares would deprive me of section 277, which may be an important one. With the help of a little three-dimensional thinking, plus a spot of image-rotation in Paint, I manage to line up the carvings in the right way, and some of the shapes formed look a lot like numbers, so I turn to the section indicated.

The shapes also resemble letters, and my character says the word that they spell out. This is, incidentally, the name of one of the big bads from an epically cheesy fantasy saga I read back in my teens, and I can't help but wonder if Mr. Phillips read it too, as the entity summoned by my speaking the name is a similar sort of creature - though constrained to assist me, rather than being something I have to fight. He's invisible to everyone but me and Demons, and will fight alongside me in any combat unless I tell him not to. Given that:

1. He takes a set amount of damage every time he aids me in battle
2. He cannot be healed, and 
3. I failed my most successful attempt at this book to date on account of not having his assistance

I think I'll try to keep him out of all but the most dangerous fights. No point in wasting him on a bunch of Skill 6 no-hopers.

At this point I think the wisest course of action would be to leave the river and start heading towards where the winged creatures landed last night. Along the way I find some healing herbs, which I add to my inventory. Towards dusk I reach the Elf-path through the Forest, which leads to the village of Ash Cleeve. Knowing how Elves tend to react to incursions into their territory, I stop and wait to be met. While waiting I think about Sorrel, the Elf who taught me archery and forest lore in return for swordfighting lessons, in the course of which he acquired a scar. I can only guess that either he wanted a scar in order to look tougher or I was about as good a sparring partner as he was a teacher of how to recognise Giant Spitting Spiders and River Bloodweed, because there's no real need for training in swordplay to result in a gash across the eye.

The anticipated reception committee arrives, headed up by Sorrel, who accuses me of being an impostor and has the others aim their bows at me. Except that the illustration shows the scar to be over the wrong eye, indicating to any attentive reader that Sorrel is no more Sorrel than Preeler was Preeler. Convincing the other Elves of this could be tricky, though, so I decide to simplify matters by shooting fake-Sorrel right in the giveaway. While slow to react to the sight of me getting out my bow, loading an arrow, and firing at their leader, the Elves respond pretty much instantaneously when the wound causes not-Sorrel to revert to his true appearance, and in seconds he's dead. Apologies follow, and I'm given a Snake Ring with a doubtless significant number of coils as compensation.

Another two of those flying creatures, named Black Flyers by the Elves, swoop down into the Forest, and tonight I do investigate. After a while I come across them attempting to force open a stone door set into a mound. Up close I can see that they look a lot like not-Preeler did when he shed his disguise. I remember from past attempts at the book that if I spy on them for a bit, they'll attempt to blow the door open with some kind of explosive, only to have it backfire and spread them across the clearing. But is there anything useful or important to be gained by attacking them before they can save me the need for combat? There's only one way to find out... FIIIIIGHT!

Even without the assistance of my monstrous companion, I have no trouble defeating them. Alas, as the second one hits the ground, he breaks the explosive he was carrying, and I only just have time to get out of blast range, so there's no loot to be had from this fight. At least I know for next time.

An engraving on the door indicates the mound to be the tomb I was advised to seek, and warns of a dire fate for intruders. On account of the Suma's message, and the fact that the Black Flyers have made more than one attempt at breaking in, I try to get in anyway. Rather than waste time searching for a secret entrance, I simply bash on the stone door a few times, thereby inadvertently performing the same rite that Liam did back in his spell chamber, which happens to be the way of getting the door to open. Believe it or not, that's actually the least ridiculous way of finding out how to gain access to the tomb!

Inside I find an upright sarcophagus with no lid, containing the mummified body of the seer Khornu Wych, dressed in ornate robes and wearing an amulet. Not the amulet I saw on the Suma, but I have to take this one in order to be able to get the one I actually need. As soon as I remove it, the body crumbles to dust and Wych's ghost begins to appear in its place. Through the translucent form of the manifesting spectre I catch sight of the outline of a secret door in the back of the sarcophagus, but at the moment I can't get to it without coming into contact with the ghost, which would not be good for my health. Lacking a weapon capable of inflicting damage on such an entity, I retreat to the tomb entrance, which has closed behind me. Gloating, the ghost advances on me, and I dodge around it and into the now vacated sarcophagus, pushing open the secret door.

As I step through, part of the tomb collapses behind me, blocking off  the way back. The good news is that that somehow prevents the ghost from coming after me. The less good news is that there are no other exits from the chamber into which I have stepped. Better news is that the chamber does contain Wych's real treasure: two goblets of liquid, a shiny silver shield, and a golden amulet engraved with an image of a Brain Slayer on fire. That's the amulet I need, so I take it. It's made of solid gold, and consequently rather heavy, and wearing it carries a Skill penalty. Oddly, just carrying it in my backpack circumvents the penalty, but the amulet's effects only work when it's worn, so if I survive to the endgame, I'll have to try and guess when I've had my last fight/Skill check, so I can don the amulet before the confrontation in which I need it.

Incidentally, I had to succeed at a Skill roll in order to spot that secret door, and only passed by a narrow margin. Apparently, if I'd already been wearing the amulet when the ghost turned up (yes, I know that I couldn't have been because of the sequence of events, but that's irrelevant to the point I'm trying to make), I would have been unable to make out the outline of the doorway on account of the weight hanging around my neck.  Which doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me.

Enough ranting. time to get back to the treasure. As I recall, the contents of one goblet are beneficial, while what's in the other will harm me. Can I remember which is which? Yes, I get the right one, which restores the Stamina I lost to that weed way back at the start of the day. So, ignoring the unhelpful drink, that leaves only the shield. Which is so shiny that there's a Mirror Demon in it, and as soon as I reach for the shield, she is summoned, emerging from the reflective surface to attack.

Being a Demon, she can see my otherwise invisible companion. Who apparently has another number associated with him, apart from the one that helped me to acquire his services, as there aren't enough sections in the book to use that one in the calculation that will identify the section to which I should be turning at this point. Oh well, at least I know where to look to find what I must have missed... Ah, he's 'the Twelfth and Last of the Veiled Guardians'. That detail could and should have been made less easy to overlook.

The Demon attempts to persuade the Veiled Guardian to abandon me and side with her, but it turns out that the only way he can be released from his exile is to die in my service, and he attacks her. I'm okay with his getting into this fight, as it's the nasty one I mentioned earlier - if I were her opponent, she'd only need to win one round of combat to defeat me. And as she does win the third round of her fight against my proxy (who, coincidentally, has the same Skill and Stamina that I do), only his having taken my place prevents the adventure from ending here.

When the Demon dies, the shield shatters, revealing a tunnel that leads out of the mound. The rest of the tomb starts to collapse, so I make a rapid exit, having to knock three times again when I reach the far end of the tunnel, and emerging into the Forest just before the whole structure caves in.

I spend what remains of the night asleep, but nightmares about Colrhyn, another friend, keep me from getting much rest. Suspecting that he is in some kind of peril, I spend the whole of the next day heading towards his home, only covering about two thirds of the distance before it starts getting dark. Considering how hostile the Forest is supposed to have been made, travel through it has been mighty low on incident.

Anyway, I make camp for the night, sleep better, and wonder if the nightmares were not premonitions but a consequence of the run-in with the ghost. Having come this far, I keep going just in case, and have a run-in with a Giant Wolf Spider. It's okay, Veiled Guardian, I can handle this opponent myself. Right? Right - I take one wound, but nothing serious.

Further along I reach a fork in the path, and the map in the front of the book indicates which turning one leads to Colrhyn's home, so I go that way, musing on my friend as I go. I'm distracted by the sight of something red, which turns out to be mould on a log. Then a sound behind me alerts me to the approaching Mould Zombie. Observant readers are likely to notice a distinct similarity between the figure depicted in the illustration for this section and the description of Colrhyn provided when my character started thinking about him.

This is definitely a fight in which I do not want any assistance: in a rather nasty twist, defeating the Zombie too quickly (which is only possible if I have help or use Luck) has lethal consequences. I hit the thing a couple of times, and then discover that the Mould is starting to spread up my leg. Time to see what that Mystery Potion the trader gave me does. I throw the bottle at the main cluster of Mould, which withers where splashed by the contents. What remains of the Mould retreats, not only from me, but also from the Zombie. None too surprisingly, the man revealed by the departure of the Mould is Colrhyn, in a pretty poor state, but still alive, and no longer compelled to attack me.

I give Colrhyn some healing herbs, take him to his cabin to recuperate, and seek his assistance in my quest. He tells me that Corianthus the Storm Giant, the greatest scholar in the region, should have some idea of what is going on. To identify me to Corianthus as a friend, Colrhyn gives me his key to the Giant's library. Before falling asleep, Colrhyn also tells me to help myself to his stuff, so I take a rope and more herbs, and refill my quiver.

Returning to the main Forest trail, I remember the mountain from my dream, and head away from the Forest and towards mountainous territory. It's getting dark by the time I reach the Fangthane Road, so I make camp for the night. In the morning the sound of an approaching wagon wakes me. The driver is a Fangthane Dwarf, on his way to Sardath. I advise him to find somewhere less hazardous to do his trading, and explain some of what's going on in the region. In return, he gives me an Encyclopaedia of Subterranean Flora, just in case I ever need to go underground, and draws my attention to the page on dangerous fungi. Slightly oddly, one of the fungi listed on the page is only actually harmful to Rock Grubs and Giant Spiders, two species not renowned for literacy. They other type mentioned is at least lethal to Dark Elves, but conspicuous by their absence are the sorts of fungus that I should avoid for the good of my health.

I leave the road and make for the mountains, and it is about here that my knowledge of the book becomes hazardously patchy. Up ahead is a steep ridge, so I must detour around it, and going the wrong way is liable to prove fatal in the long run. I'll try west. This path eventually leads to a landing-stage by the River Sardath. Many rafts are moored there, most of them in too bad a condition to be usable. I don't think I even want to risk taking the one exception, so instead I follow the other path leading away from the landing-stage. This leads to a junction, and one of the paths leads to a storm-lashed mountain that I'm pretty sure I need to visit at some point, so I head that way.

After a while the ascent becomes difficult, but I persist until, with a particularly impressive burst of lightning and thunder, a figure in black robes appears in front of me. I show respect, and the being identifies herself as Thyra Migurn (referring to herself in the third person, which is an ominous sign if ever I saw one). She disapproves of my being here, but I risk asking what she knows about the Black Flyers. This causes her temper to flare up, in a burst of lightning that atomises the robes and comes close to injuring me. It turns out that she really dislikes Dark Elves and, upon learning that I oppose them, she provides me with a Lightning Sphere to use against them, then warns me to leave before she gets really annoyed. I descend, and follow the first track I find until I reach another junction. One way probably leads back to the river, and there's an item check on the other path. Could be a 'have you already been this way and taken certain actions?' check rather than an 'if you don't have the Red Gem, you die' one, so I'll investigate.

Well, nothing terminal has happened just yet. I see a cave, with inexpertly concealed tracks leading into it. Possibly left by Dwarfs, though I'm not sure what would make Dwarf tracks easily distinguishable from the tracks of any other footwear-using humanoid race. In any case, I check them out. The cave turns out to be a mine entrance, and I use the crude lift at the back to descend into the shaft. At the bottom, three passages lead on, two of them marked with signs warning of poisonous fungi. The two types listed in the book, handily enough. I think the Dark Elf-proofed tunnel might be worth investigating. The fungi release spores as I pass through them, but I am unaffected.

A couple of Dwarf guards are waiting at the end. They're pleased to see someone from outside, and take me to their leader, Lokimur. He gives me a Red Gem (so I was right about the purpose of that item check) and asks me who I am. I explain my quest in some detail, and he explains that he's gathered the mining community together for mutual protection. They still suffer nocturnal assaults by Black Flyers, and daily attacks by Toa-Suo. I ask him what he knows of Corianthus, and get directions to the Giant's home. There's time for one more question, so I ask about the Toa-Suo. These creatures are from further north, but have been brought here by the Black Flyers, attacking in large groups that can easily overwhelm individual opponents.

A Dwarf brings news of a fresh attack by the Toa-Suo, and I decide to see if I can help repel them. The Dwarfs don't have many archers, so I'll add my bow to their ranks. They have plenty of spare arrows, and I kill an impressive number of the attackers. Towards nightfall, the lead archer has me follow her back into the tunnels. I am advised to stay here until morning, as Black Flyers patrol the region at night, and offer to help keep watch. The duty officer adds me to the rota, and I get a little rest before my shift.

I reach my post just as the guards are welcoming in a near-dead Dwarven refugee. Suspicious, I quietly tell the closest guard about the impostors I've encountered, and he asks the newcomer a few questions. Judging by the way he follows up the questions with a swift warhammer in the face, I'm guessing that that Dwarf was no Dwarf. Either that or he's the viewpoint character of the Dwarven edition of Siege of Sardath, and answering the questions is one of that book's 'present the reader with a choice even though the character would just know what to do' moments.

There's a time check here, but I haven't wasted any time, so when morning comes I am able to resume my adventuring. A Dwarf takes me back to the surface, and I follow the directions to the mountain where Corianthus lives. It's a nice straightforward journey, up until the point at which a Giant Eagle swoops towards me. Colrhyn mentioned that Corianthus' best friend is a Giant Eagle, so I wave the library key at the bird to deter it from attacking. Rather awkwardly, the Eagle indicates that it will carry me to where I want to go, so I ask to be taken to Corianthus.

The Eagle carries me to the roof of a massive castle way up on the mountain. Once I'm on solid ground, the Eagle starts scratching at a trapdoor and screeching. Unfriendly voices from below challenge the bird to come back at night and suffer its master's fate, from which I deduce that things have gone badly for Corianthus, and the beings occupying his castle don't like sunlight. The second of my deductions is confirmed when the Eagle triggers the opening mechanism for the trapdoor, letting light into the room below, and the taunting gives way to shrieks of pain.

I risk taking a look at the suffering intruders, and they're too busy fleeing the light to send any projectiles my way. They are Dark Elves, and one leaves the room by a door to the left, several others going right. I tie my rope to a battlement and climb down. The room turns out to be an observatory, with a telescope pointing at the trapdoor. There are three doors leading out, two of them with signs on them. The lone Dark Elf went into the Games Room, while the others went through the unmarked door, suggesting that the Library is locked. Not a problem, as I have a key. And I'll try the library first because that's probably the best place to learn things.

Being a Giant's library, it has large furniture. I have to climb onto the chair in order to reach the top of the table. On which I find a book, a sheet of paper, and a dish of mercury. The paper is an unfinished letter, from which I learn that the dish of mercury is a method of communication, and Corianthus recently acquired a device to help him create transformation potions. The last paragraph mentions a strange noise from the laboratory, which Corianthus was going to investigate. I'm not sure why he felt the need to note that he'd be away from the page for a bit, as he could just have resumed where he left off when he got back (if he hadn't fallen foul of Dark Elves), with no apparent interruption. This blog post has been written over the course of several sessions, and I'd be impressed if anyone were to successfully guess where I stopped writing last time and started today. Still, 'I'll just go and check' is preferable to the sort of 'Oh no, they've just burst through the door and are coming for me!' nonsense often found as the last line of fictional letters interrupted by the arrival of someone or something nasty.

The book has one page marked, so I turn to that and find instructions for using the Triplex Potion Concocter. I imagine it will be useful to know which ingredient goes in which aperture when I want to make my own potion.

When I focus my attention on the mercury, the pool goes dark and two eyes appear in it. A voice sounds in my head, asking me to whom I wish to speak. I name the leader of the Elves I met in the Forest, and his face appears. When I speak, he hears me, and once the confusion has passed, I explain what has happened since our last encounter, and he reveals that a group of the Wood Elves has reached the mountains, ready to attack the Dark Elves. He advises me to try and get into the Dark Elves' base and free their slaves. The ring I received at our previous encounter changes its size in response to Elven magic (and to indicate that I've had this conversation).

I try using the pool to contact a few others, with varied results. Colrhyn is fast asleep and unreachable. The leader of Sardath's armed forces reports that they're holding off the attackers, but will need help. Corianthus is still alive, but using all his strength to try and resist a Sorcerer, so chat is not an option. To speak with Liam I must pass an item check to establish whether or not I defeated pseudo-Preeler, but this turns out to be the most worthwhile call: the astrologer has been researching the amulet the Suma told me about, and has learned that it absorbs mental attacks, and can be modified to reflect such attacks on whoever made them. When we conclude our communication, I make the necessary changes to the amulet.

The library has two exits - the door by which I entered, and one marked 'Laboratory'. I've not yet seen any instructions stating that I can't return to a part of this castle that I've already visited, but the lab could be a point of no return, so I shall delay entering it until I've done a bit more investigating. I'm not sure exactly how many Dark Elves went through the unmarked door, but the prospect of being outnumbered does not appeal, so I go back through the observatory and follow the lone Dark Elf who went into the Games Room.

My opening the door causes sunlight to stream into the room, forcing the Dark Elf to flee into the shadows. He distracts me with some blather about formal greetings in the Dark Elf tongue, and throws something at the door to close it, after which he attacks me. It's another fight in which I need no assistance. Searching the room, I find lots of gaming paraphernalia of no relevance to the adventure, and a mathematical puzzle that hasn't quite been completed. While it uses higher numbers than usual, it's just another Magic Square, and filling in the missing number causes a secret door to open.

The secret door leads to a storeroom. The Dark Elves might not have been able to open the door, but they still got in by making a hole in a wall, so the room's been pretty thoroughly looted. Not quite completely, though: there's still an intact bottle containing another numbered potion component, and it's one I don't yet have. So now I have four of the things, though (as the 'Triplex' in the title of the Potion Concocter implies) I only need three. Still, the instructions I read narrow down the number of possible combinations to just two possibilities, and one of the substances between which I must choose looks a lot better suited to a transformation potion than the other.

After reclosing the secret door by removing the solution to the puzzle, I return to the library via the observatory and try the door to the laboratory. A hole in the wall leading to a tunnel suggests that the noise which distracted Corianthus was the Dark Elves breaking in. Predictably, the Potion Concocter is here. A previous owner of the book has written component numbers on the machine's funnels in the illustration (okay, so the book suggests doing so, but that doesn't make it any less annoying that it happened), and it looks to me as if the guilty party took at least four tries to get the correct combination. When you figure in the (probable) red herring ingredient available from the trader outside Grimmund, I can see how four different mixes are possible, but it's impressive (and not in a good way) that my predecessor seems to have got every wrong one first. Especially as the names of the different substances provide hints as to their relevance to a transformation potion, making this less of a blind choice than the recipe for Anti-Zanbar Formula.

I put the most likely ingredients into the appropriate funnels, and get a potion out. Drinking it causes me to feel uncomfortable and itchy, and parts of my body try to change shape, but there's no lasting effect until I return to the Games Room, at which point I change to look like the Dark Elf I fought there. I then hide his body in the library, the sunlight in the observatory making me uncomfortable but doing no real harm as I'm still basically human.

Now it should be safe to follow the other Dark Elves. Except that there are at least ten of them in the room just beyond the unmarked door, and while I no longer look human, my having come through the sunlit observatory unscathed enables them to figure out that I'm not what I appear to be, and they attack anyway. Against that many, not even the Veiled Guardian can help me.

A slightly frustrating ending, but I've learned a fair bit about what to do (and a couple of things not to do), so as long as the dice don't let me down, I should be able to get further on my next try, whenever that is. Maybe not much further, as I haven't a clue as to the correct sequence of events beyond the point I reached this time, but I've never made it to the castle before (for some stupid reason I opted to have the Eagle fly me straight to the Black Flyers' base the only previous time I got to show it the key), and I did more right than wrong in the castle. It just so happened that when I did go wrong, I did so in a manner that proved fatal to me.

There Is Too Much. Let Me Sum Up.

Apologies for the continuing low level of activity here. Life stuff is getting in the way.

On more than one occasion I've mentioned the time in the 1990s when I played through the first 12 Lone Wolf books in order, going back to the start every time I failed. I also commented on the 'condensed' version of Flight from the Dark that I created to reduce wear and tear on the book, and said that I'd have posted a scan of it if I knew where it was. I have now found and scanned it, so I'm posting it here. It's not as legible as I'd hoped, but then, it was written in pencil two decades or so ago.

Having found my preferred route through the book (by no means the only viable one, nor even necessarily the best one), I took it as read that I'd make the same decisions every time, and just noted down whatever would still require action on my part on each subsequent attempt at Flight - combat, healing, amendments to my inventory and random number checks. Doesn't look like much when you pare it down to those details, does it?

Actually, the pared-down Flight is even less than what's on the paper shown above. The rather wobbly horizontal line about two thirds of the way down the page marks the end of the first book (as could probably be inferred from the word 'Succeed' that precedes it). Below the line is the start of a similar summary for the second book in the series, abandoned on account of the random encounter that occurs at an early stage. With five different incidents that could occur, most if not all of them featuring further random elements, noting down all the different permutations would have been more work than I was willing to put in. So I just reread the actual book from that point onwards. Which almost certainly required me to make more effort in the long run, but that's not how it felt at the time.

Thinking about it, this is pretty much an early ancestor of the gamebook manager I created in the last decade (and have continued to modify and expand since then). That also contains a condensed version of Flight from the Dark (and around half a dozen of the subsequent books in the series), though the newer version isn't quite as 'simplified' as the original.

Progress.

These past few days I've been quite low-spirited regarding what I've achieved (or not) in my life. This has actually cheered me up a little.

A Mass of Incandescent Gas

As I recall, I had a bit of trouble getting hold of The Dying Sun, book 5 of Smith and Thomson's Falcon series. Unlike most of the preceding volumes, it never turned up at the Book Exchange, so I had to buy a brand new copy, and I'm pretty sure that it was the last one in the series that I acquired - if so, that means I came across and bought the last book in the series before I got this one, and I wouldn't have got them out of order if I could have avoided doing so.

Having more or less successfully returned from a trip to the future (taking in visits to alternate timelines, a different book series, and the interior of a large coconut along the way), Falcon now faces a new kind of challenge: interviewing trainees to pick a replacement for Agent Bloodhound, who has vanished into the next book in the series. Though the selection process is just a prelude to the actual mission at hand: dealing once and for all with Agidy Yelov, the ex-TIME operative who's been a persistent annoyance since turning out to be a villain back at the start of the series. He's now joined up with a criminal organisation known as CYBERNET, and got a few of its members to act as henchbeings.

In other news, completely unrelated to the main plot, contact has been made with a hostile alien civilisation in the 1743 star cluster. They've destroyed several of the Federation's probes, but how am I supposed to worry about the possibility of war with another species when I have dossiers to read? And so many, too - files on the interviewees, records on Yelov's new partners-in-crime, reports on current staff... It's like getting to play a solo version of Bureaucrat: The Paperwork.

As I'll be doing the interviewing before anything else, I start by finding out more about the people I'll be considering. I shan't go into detail about their academy ratings and biographies here, but one thing that did catch my attention is that the different skills and capabilities tested at the academy include deadliness. I'm not sure I want to know too much about the practical assessment aspect of that course.

Next I look up the new villains on the block, as knowing what my team is going to be up against might help me figure out who's best equipped to help deal with the opposition. No point in choosing someone who suffers from anatidaephobia if they're likely to have to face Desmond the All-Seeing Duck.

No duck, though there is a hawk-headed humanoid called Dark Star, who hates humans and has a pet genetically engineered killing thing. Oh, and she escaped from Chicago, which is apparently one big prison in this enlightened era. I wonder why Smith and Thomson didn't make it New York for a hat trick of John Carpenter references, what with their earlier homage to The Thing. Accompanying Dark Star are a human who's become host to a parasite that feeds on the suffering of others and uses psychic attacks to create that suffering, and the only representative of the Thaccoid species (sort of giant predatory spiders with lizard-style heads) in Federation territory. So psychopathic that diplomatic immunity has been waived in favour of a 'kill it with fire' directive. Nice bunch.

While I'm at it, I also check the profiles of the agents under my command. Bloodhound has lost two fingers since I last saw him (just like his counterpart in the alternate reality I visited in book 4), and has since gone missing. Lynx is in hospital after a run-in with Yelov at the Battle of Gettysburg. Chameleon is an inscrutable non-human who can change his appearance at will. Leopard is a human who lost the use of his body in a war, and had his brain transplanted into an android body. Sparrowhawk is from the same planet as Yelov, trained under him, and was very fond of him, but there's no way she could be harbouring any resentment against me for lasering half his face off at the climax of book 1, right?

And now I have to decide which of the three potential candidates I get to add to this crack team. One of them has yet to arrive, so for the first interviewee I must choose between Yellowblades the Rigellian (big blue-skinned guy, scored highest overall at the academy, more limited than the others as regards powers of the mind, but what he does have is stronger) and Sosquilla the Ardann (anthropomorphic squirrel-being, most intelligent candidate, but scored very poorly at unarmed combat and deadliness, has emotion-manipulating powers, doesn't really want the job, but is applying out of a sense of duty).

The Ardann get stressed easily, so I'll interview Sosquilla first: in my experience, pre-interview nerves are worse than waiting-for-results uncertainty. As I'm showing her to a seat, the third candidate arrives. I'm not sure that being 'fashionably late' is a particularly clever thing for a potential TIME agent. Mind you, my character is more concerned about the diplomatic repercussions of this first interview.

What I overheard of Sosquilla's dialogue with Yellowblades suggests that she doesn't think she is the best candidate, so my questions in the interview focus on her confidence and suitability for the job. I finish off by telling her of my most recent adventures, then reading her mind to find out how she reacts to the prospect of such terrifying experiences. Obviously the account I give her is a little different from my playthrough, partly because Falcon wouldn't make the in-jokes I do, partly because 'I climbed out of a big coconut and then broke up a bar fight without endangering myself' isn't really the sort of hair-raising stuff that will help determine whether or not she's psychologically prepared for the dangers of being a TIME agent, and partly because ending up with 'and then my counterpart from an alternate timestream shot me in the face and killed me' would raise all sorts of awkward questions. This 'test' is ultimately inconclusive: Sosquilla is perturbed but not traumatised, and it's not clear how she would react to experiencing such things rather than just hearing about them.

Next I interview Yellowblades, who is discussing the academy's combat simulator with the third candidate when I call him in. He thinks he may be the best fighter in the galaxy, but isn't so sure of himself when it comes to diplomacy. Indeed, interacting with other people seems to be one of his weak points: he prefers weapon practice to socialising. At this point the book presents me with a choice between insulting him and insulting him, so I pick the option that he's likely to find less offensive - while calling him 'an oversized killing machine' is overly dismissive, accusing him of being a spy would be a slur on his honour, and I'm not that desperate to get a demonstration of how he scored 9/10 on deadliness. He calmly replies that there's more to him than just a killing machine, and the rest of the interview is sufficiently uneventful that the authors don't cover it in any detail.

The third candidate is a human known only as 'the Bounty Hunter'. His origins are unclear, but I suspect that he's the product of an experiment to create the ultimate edgy eighties action movie hero. CYBERNET put a hefty price on his head seven years ago, and, well, he'd hardly be attending this interview if any intergalactic low-life had managed to claim the reward, now would he? Maybe he was slightly late for the interview on account of having been ambushed by a gang of cyborg ninjas on the way here. Oh, and he's completely invulnerable to mental attacks because he's Just. That. Hard.

Unlike the other two candidates, he doesn't hesitate to declare himself the best candidate when asked. More surprisingly, he doesn't appear to have a problem with taking orders - I was expecting the old maverick, loose cannon, if-City-Hall-don't-like-it-they-can-shove-it attitude. He seems okay with teamwork, too. The book then has me put some pressure on him, and as with Yellowblades I turn down the more insulting approach, instead suggesting that he might be too dangerous for TIME, and reading his mind to see how he reacts (his invulnerability to mental attacks evidently not blocking non-aggressive telepathy). He's not offended by the suggestion, but just wants an opportunity to prove himself.

That's the interviewing over - now I just have to decide who gets the job. The book warns me that 'The fate of the Federation may hang on your choice', and my memories of a couple of the authors' other books suggest that that's not just hyperbole. I can think of at least three in which not making the right decision at one point guarantees failure at a later stage. No pressure, then...

I'm picking the Bounty Hunter. That invulnerability to mental attacks is liable to come in handy, what with one of the villains specialising in psychic assaults. And it's just possible that the target that CYBERNET have painted on his back might distract one of their operatives at a crucial moment. He's a little surprised, but only for a moment, and then tells me I won't regret my choice.

Can we get on with the adventuresome stuff now? As it turns out, no. Because there's a solar yacht race on soon, and I wind up spending some time watching the preparations rather than getting on with my mission, even though I am never, ever going to participate in such a dangerous sport, ever. On a slightly more relevant tangent, the TIME equivalent of Q Branch has come up with some nerve gas grenades, wrist-mounted mini-lasers, a backpack with a built-in harpoon/grapple launcher, and some homing tranquiliser darts for me to try out.

The head of the Monitoring Section contacts me, and I get a bit short with him when he asks me how things are rather than immediately reporting on situations requiring attention, because this is important work and we don't have time to waste on pleasantries or social niceties (I did remember to switch off the sports channel before telling him off, right?). Anyway, there are disturbances in the timelines at the siege of Troy and deep space in the 27th century. Also, an undercover cop in Cybernet (presumably in the lower ranks of the organisation, where they're not notorious enough for ALL CAPS) reports plans for a raid on a polybdenum warehouse, presumably to procure fuel for Yelov's stolen Time Machine. I need to attend to one of the temporal incursions, and send agents to deal with the other and the impending raid.

The first time I played this book, I went to Troy, which turned out to be something of a red herring (well, there is villain activity taking place there, but nothing that significantly impacts history as I recall), and the agents I sent to Deep Space 2665 weren't able to resolve the situation there, leading to changes in the timeline that brought about the extinction of humanity. I think I'd better handle the space crisis this time. I send Chameleon and the Bounty Hunter to Troy, and give the task of preventing the polybdenum raid to Sparrowhawk and Leopard.

Having presented me with that array of gadgets, the book now limits the number that I can take with me, because picking potentially life-saving equipment is so much more fun when you have no idea what you're likely to need, right? The reason given for the restriction only makes things worse - I only have time to pick up three items (and with the tranquilisers subdivided into types for use against four different series, that's a bigger limitation than it might at first seem). Two sections back I was forced to waste several minutes watching pre-sport blather, and now I can't afford the seconds it would take to grab an extra tranquiliser or two. Based on what I can remember of the situation I shall be tackling, I take the harpoon/grapple-launching backpack, a homing tranquiliser suitable for use against insect species and a wrist laser.

Making the time-jump, I find myself not adrift in the void between worlds but in a dusty hangar. CAIN (my time machine's AI) identifies my location as the Ark, a colony ship full of cryogenically preserved humans sent off in search of colonisable worlds in the M43 star cluster. Only someone has changed the settings, so it's now heading for the territory of that hostile alien race that was oh-so-casually mentioned back at the start of the adventure. Prematurely attracting the attention of aggressive non-terrestrials by dumping several thousand deep-frozen telephone sanitisers in their lap-equivalents is not likely to go well, so I need to put the Ark back on track. There's a time limit, as the ship is moving away from the timehole that brought me here, and once we're out of range, there'll be no way of returning to my own time. Even so, that shouldn't be too much bother, unless whoever it was that tampered with the steering is still around, but what are the chances of that?

Gamebooks, like most TV shows and films (and Windows downloads), measure countdowns in Variable Units of Time. They might describe them as more conventional units such as seconds and minutes, but the duration of a VUT rarely matches the length of any real-world measure of time (nor even other VUTs in the same countdown). I have 11 VUTs before the Ark moves too far and I'm stranded in 2665.

11... Wearing my environment suit in case the ship's hull has been punctured anywhere, I head along a corridor lined with tanks of would-be colonists, eventually reaching a crossroads. Up ahead, the corridor ends at an unmarked door. In corridor networks, the shortest distance between two points isn't necessarily a straight line, but I decide to see if it is on this occasion.

10... A section of the floor is smashed open by the Thaccoid lurking beneath it, and the creature lunges at me. I manage to dodge out of the way of its forelimbs, and it makes a clicking noise that my translator interprets as something along the lines of, 'Oh, ******!' Scuttling backwards, the creature prepares to leap at me again, and I fire the homing tranquiliser. It hits its target, to negligible effect. Having eight limbs rather than six, the Thaccoid is an arachnid rather than an insect, and the tranquiliser is that bit too specifically targeted to interfere with its motor functions. Stupid taxonomy! The Thaccoid attacks again.

9... I manage to dodge it a second time. Drawing my blaster, I open fire - but not at the Thaccoid itself. Instead I shoot the bulkhead behind the alien, creating a hull breach (which raises some questions about the layout of the ship, what with this being a central corridor - I could understand there only being the one wall between me and space if I'd gone to the right or left, but as I went down the middle, I'd expect there to be a whole load of spaceship infrastructure in the way). The atmosphere rushing through the hole drags us both out into space, but while the Thaccoid confirms that explosive decompression is a reality in this universe, I am safe on account of being in my environment suit. Oh, and having a handy harpoon/grapple-launcher strapped to my back, which I can use to attach myself to the ship and climb back in rather than being swept out into the void.  While the ship's Maintenance Droids start repairing the hull breach, I resume my approach to the unmarked door.

8... Behind it is a shaft leading down to the Engineering Deck and up to the Systems Control Deck. I climb the ladder, reflecting that the Thaccoid can't have come here alone, as it lacks the capability to pilot a Time Machine. But has whoever brought it here gone again, or could they be waiting in ambush? I can afford to wait for a couple of VUTs.

7... This ship has many floors. If it were transporting a certain type of fish instead of humans, that would make it a multi-storey carp-Ark.

6... Suddenly Yelov shouts from inside the Control Room, warning 'Thak' that it's almost time for the Symbiont to get back here in the Time Machine. Muttering what the Thaccoid might well consider a racist slur, Yelov steps out to try and find out what's delaying his psychopathic pal. Resisting the temptation to make a weak pun about the Thaccoid's demise, I fire at my nemesis. It's too early in the book for me to kill him, so he spots me and dodges back into the Control Room in the nick of time. By repeatedly firing through the door, he is able to deter me from entering until his ride home arrives, and he taunts me as he does so. Only once he's inside the Time Machine does he stop shooting, and by the time I get to the doorway, he's dematerialising.

5... Checking the ship's instruments, I find that, in addition to redirecting the Ark towards a dodgy neighbourhood, Yelov has also slowed it down, wasting a significant amount of fuel. I need to set the ship back on a course that will take it to the originally intended destination despite the depleted reserves. I can remember which of the three suggested courses is the correct one, but I'm not convinced that one of the wrong options is as non-viable as the authors make out. There's time to check.

4... I was wrong: Smith & Thomson did think it through properly. The most direct route doesn't work because the ship's systems don't have a separate power source to the propulsion unit. At the current speed, the remaining fuel won't suffice to keep the cryogenic tanks, maintenance droids and in-flight movies operational until the Ark reaches M43. And increasing the speed would use up more fuel, so that wouldn't work either.

Programming in the correct course doesn't use up any VUTs, so the countdown no longer matters. The solution to this quandary is to program a course that slingshots the ship around a few suns along the way, thereby accelerating it without expending as much fuel as it would take to boost the ship's velocity without the assistance of a bunch of conveniently located gravity wells. So, having minimised damage to the timelines, I return to my Time Machine and head back to the 31st century.

For some reason, TIME HQ is located a significant distance from the Time Machine parking facilities. It takes half an hour by hovrail just to get to the terminus (and the background section states that 'the longest journey need take no more than an hour', so it must be possible to travel at least a quarter of the way around the planet in the amount of time it's taken me to get part of the way crosstown), and the hovrail for the second leg of the journey leaves from a different level. The lift has just broken down, so I'll have to use the stairs.

The stairs are not enclosed, though there is a low wall on either side to reduce the risk of falling off, and my descent provides the authors with an opportunity to show the readers some of the city of the future. To the left is a Maintenance Droid walkway leading to a hospital, and there's a hovcar landing park to the right. Ahead and up above I can see Highway 1232, and close by is a CYBERNET sniper with a laser, who just drilled a hole in the concrete by my foot.  A careless shot, especially as it only takes the police seconds to respond to any discharge of an energy weapon. Still, it would be possible for the would-be assassin to get off several more shots in those seconds, so I ought to take some evasive action.

What with that wall, and my having seen the blast, the shooter must be somewhere overhead, so running down the stairs or ducking would be unlikely to help me much. There's not a lot of cover on the Droid walkway (and I don't know how the Droids are programmed to deal with trespassing humans), so I think the hovcar park looks like the best place to take cover. Vaulting the wall, I see sunlight reflecting off the sniper's gun, way up on a nearby Communication Tower.

An explosion from the stairwell draws my attention to a second killer, heading up from a lower level. He hasn't yet spotted me, but the first one knows where I am. Time I was elsewhere. But I botch my Evasion Roll, and take a shot in the thigh as I leap behind a hovcar. Further shots from the Tower-based sniper fail to penetrate the hovcar, but they do get the attention of the other guy, whose weapon is powerful enough to blow the entire vehicle away. I try to incapacitate him with a psychic attack, but a second flubbed roll means that I don't succeed, and there's no time to pick up the dice a third time before he opens fire, blowing up the hovcar and incinerating me in the blast.

Oh well, at least the next time I attempt this book, I can gloss over the admin and get straight to the action.