The Element of Surprise

The last regular issue of Proteus came out in April 1988, probably during the Easter holidays. I must have bought it in town, because I have vague memories of commencing a dice-free attempt at it while heading homewards along Upper Grosvenor Road.

What little publicity the previous issue had contained for the adventure, Boneshaker's Mountains of Forever, gave what turned out to be rather a false impression of it. Which is a little odd, as the 'taster' quoted extensively from the opening paragraph of the 'Your Quest Begins..' intro. It just so happens that, while that first paragraph does have you as the leader of a group of men paddling a canoe through a jungle in pursuit of a villain who robbed you, by the first decision you're on your own, exploring a network of subterranean tunnels in an attempt to rescue some kidnapped children from an evil wizard.

Mountains is by Ken Bulmer, author of the earlier Black Crag Castle, and the two adventures do have some similarities, not all of them good things. This isn't as quirky as Castle, though it does have its off-beat moments, and it didn't motivate me to keep trying it until I won - at least until I reviewed it back in the early noughties, at which point my appreciation for it improved. While tough, and with quite a narrow 'true path', it's not as unfair as Bulmer's previous adventure could be.

I still have the map I made back when repeatedly playing Mountains for review purposes, which is both overly and insufficiently detailed: overly in that I wound up including all the wrong turnings and dead ends as well as the places that have to be visited, and insufficiently because I didn't note the locations of several items essential for success. Referring to it will still be helpful, but won't guarantee success even if I get stats good enough to bring me through the tougher fights.

Talking of stats, I should generate some. A low Dexterity is liable to get me killed, so I may allocate dice, but I don't think a really high score is essential, so I'll accept a middling one if that's what I get.
Dexterity: 9
Strength: 20
Fate: 9
I did take the dice as they fell. Time will tell whether or not I was wise to let the best roll go towards Strength.

So, the remnants of my crew and I are heading up-river in Amazon-esque surroundings in order to get back what Corelli the Butcher stole from us, and make him pay for his betrayal. But then we get surrounded and captured by angry natives, who take us to the assortment of huts they call home and present us to their leader, who looks like a cross between Apocalypse Now's Colonel Kurtz and Homer Simpson. He demands to know why we're here, and he and his people react badly when I mention Corelli.

It turns out that when Corelli preceded us here, he took the local king's two daughters and the skinny chief minister's son hostage, and dragged them off to the nearby Mountains of Forever, which this tribe are forbidden to visit. As we know Corelli, we are sentenced to death in his stead (back when this adventure came out, the tribe would have come across as stereotypical savages - nowadays they seem more like a Twitter mob), but I think quickly, and point out that we also want Corelli dead, and aren't banned from going near the Mountains, so if we're allowed to continue on our way and take our vengeance on him, we can bring back his captives. After some reflection, the King offers a modified version of my suggestion (not as unreasonable as Twitter, then): I can go on, while the rest of my men stay here as prisoners. If I do kill Corelli and bring back the children, we'll all be free to go. If I don't return with the abductees safe and sound, my crew will be sliced and diced a week from now.

It's too late in the day for me to set out now, so I have a not particularly restful night, during which the girls' mother pays me a visit in order to describe her daughters, since nobody else had thought to give some pointers that would help me identify them. Somehow, despite the whole 'jungle village' set-up, the older of the princesses is wearing a white dress with pink ribbons and gold thread. Maybe her mother bought it on amazon...

In the morning I set off, reflecting on the fact that Corelli was a fellow adventurer of mine up until he grabbed all our treasure and absconded. Not that that will discourage me from taking my revenge when I catch up to him. My journey to the Mountains is uneventful, though I am bothered by insects. Oh, and by a mysterious entity radiating blue light which manifests for just long enough to glower at me so intimidatingly that I lose 2 Fate points straight off. Unavoidable and arbitrary penalties are one returning Bulmerism I do not appreciate.

A jagged opening leads into the closest mountain, so I step through. A tunnel heads north, and then east into a cave, which contains a heap of bodies. Atop the pile is Corelli, not yet dead, but clearly on his way there. Recognising me, and evidently feeling a twinge of guilt, Corelli tells me that an evil wizard has taken over the underground palace beneath the Mountains, and the children are now in his hands. He then expires, and I sum up the life and death of my comrade-in-arms-turned-nemesis with the pithy epitaph, "He just didn't run fast enough." Well, so much for my original original quest...

Searching the body on principle, I find an ebony figurine the height of my middle finger, depicting a half-man, half-beetle monstrosity. This is depicted in an illustration, revealing that somebody has a strange idea of how long middle fingers are. At last I get to make a decision - indeed, I have two in the one section: to keep the grotesque figurine or leave it with the corpses, and to take the north exit or the east one.

I go east. The passage leads to another cave containing bodies, and then a gust of wind blows out my torch and I lose another Fate point. Faint lights at the far side of the cave, accompanied by a shuffling sound, indicate that something is approaching, so I attempt to relight my torch. Which turns out to be a bad idea, as it makes it easier for one of the two advancing wolf-faced, four-armed humanoids to throw a spear at me. They then attack, one at a time, but each gets two attacks per round because of the extra arms.

Though the two Wolfguards are identical stats-wise, the second gets much better rolls than the first, and between them they hack me down to 2 Strength before I prevail. After a quick meal to move myself a short distance from death's door, I help myself to the meagre assortment of copper coins the Wolfguards have on them, and take the iron key that one of them has around its neck.

The exit east leads to a junction where I can go north or continue east. I take a chance on east, and soon find my way blocked by an immovable iron door, so I have to return to the junction and head north. This sort of thing is one aspect of the adventure that I do like: my nit-picky side needn't bother itself with questions of 'how did the people who lived down here do [activity essential for maintaining life or an ordered society] without the appropriate facilities?' because those facilities could be in one of the areas I'm unable to access. Some players may resent the existence of places they never get to explore, even if they don't contain anything relevant to the quest, but I see it as low-key worldbuilding.

The passage north soon turns east, but set into the north wall at the corner is a wooden door. I go through it into an untidy room with further exits to east and west. Of more immediate interest is the loaded crossbow affixed to a table and pointing straight at me, the pair of dead Wolfguards with crossbow bolts in them, and the tripwire I can see not far from the crossbow.

Going south or west would take me back towards the entrance, so I can only take the exit east. Unless I want to risk a closer look at the crossbow, which I do - after another meal. Stepping out of the line of fire, I prod the tripwire with my sword. The crossbow swivels on the spot to point straight at me, but then the quarrel falls off. A hoarse voice cries out, asking if I'm Ashenar or Fanfrar before the speaker realises that I'm a stranger. Since I'm obviously not a bone shaker, the man asks if I'd be willing to aid a dying elementalist. Reluctant to risk antagonising someone with magical abilities, I agree, and a door appears in the north wall, but before I can go through it, the elementalist says he wants to be sure that I understand what he is, and as proof asks me to say how many elements he commands.

I assume that we're talking classical Aristotelian rather than periodic table, and answer accordingly. The door swings open, and I step through. At once the door vanishes, leaving me in a bedchamber with no exits. The shrunken figure in the bed introduces himself as Flavian, and explains that this place has been taken over by a necromancer named Stirkness, also known as the Boneshaker. Flavian has split his powers into five, sharing each part with one of his acolytes, and he gives me a bronze talisman, which he identifies as the Quantrell, to aid me if I should meet any of the acolytes. A typo has the Quantrell described as being 'crossed-shaped' - hardly a major flaw, but sloppy all the same.

Flavian also mentions that his neophytes can be recognised by their green shoes, and that they believe help might be provided by an entity named Narn, if someone knew the correct way to invoke her. Or if some champion could be found to reunite all of Flavian's powers and call on Narn, that could mean the end of Boneshaker altogether. Care to hazard a guess as to what might be required in order to win at this adventure?

Having worn himself out with all this exposition, Flavian uses his powers to create an exit to the north, which reseals itself behind me. I continue north to a T-junction, and am again denied the option to head back west. The path east leads to another door, behind which I find a room strewn with dust, rubble, and damaged coffins and sarcophagi. There are exits in all four walls, though the door to the north is blocked by a collapsed wall.

Or rather, it was, but the wall rebuilds itself before my eyes, allowing a young woman with a torch, a white tunic, and golden shoes to step through the doorway. My appearance startles her, though, and before I can try showing her the Quantrell, she flees back the way she came and the wall tumbles down again, somehow leaving the dust in the same state it was in when I entered the room.

I go over to the re-fallen rubble, and a gleam catches my eye. It's a gold ring, with a black stone set into it, and the inscription 'Ashenar'. I pocket the ring and risk squeezing through the rubble to the north exit, which turns out to be a bad decision, as I lose some Strength and Fate doing so, and gain nothing for my efforts. The only sign of the woman is a footprint in the dust by a solid wall to the north.

After eating again I take a door east to another corridor, which ends in a bronze door. Beyond is a room in which a bronze handrail encircles a sandy area, above which a hook dangles from a crane-like device. Scraps of clothing on the hook suggest that it's been used for a rather nasty purpose, and a Giant Beetle emerges from the sand and attacks me. Though I have a higher Dexterity, I don't fare too well in the fight, and if I hadn't consumed half of my meals between the Wolfguard encounter and here, I'd be dead by now.

Movement in the sand suggests that there are more of the Beetles, so I don't loiter. There are two exits to the south and one to the east, and I go through the easternmost of the south doors. This leads to a large room which has clearly been the scene of a battle: in it I find four dead Wolfguards, one dead dog, and the corpse of a young man in a yellow tunic and green shoes.  There are no fewer than six exits, two in each wall bar the west, and again I go to the more easterly of the doors leading south.

Beyond it, the corridor soon turns east, and runs past an opening to the north. I take a look inside the opening, finding another dead neophyte, this one female. In one hand she holds a scrap of vellum with four letters printed on it, which I take in case it should prove important. There are no other exits from here, so I return to the passage and go further east, choosing to ignore a turning to the north.

The passage leads into a lobby, and while there's a second entrance from the west to the south of the one through which I come, I exit via a door to the east. This leads to an L-shaped room, in which two Wolfguards and a jackal-faced beast are brutally flogging a golden-haired girl who wears a tattered dress. A glowing oval appears in the air, and within it I see a beautiful woman in silvery clothes, her hair also golden, and decorated with rubies. With her left hand she makes a gesture to ask for help, and then her face turns to a skull, and she covers it with a scarf. Oh dear, it's all gone weird again.

I don't fancy my chances against this trio, but failure is guaranteed if I don't play the hero here, so I choke down the last of my meals to bring my Strength as high as I can, and then charge in to the rescue. And this fight is going to be tough. As before, the Wolfguards attack one at a time, but each gets two attacks. However, Jackal-face will also be trying to hit me while I fight the Wolfguards, so each round I have to defend against three separate attacks - and Jackal-face's Dexterity is equal to my own.

While fighting the first Wolfguard I take no damage from anyone. As with the previous pair, I have more trouble with the second: in two separate rounds of the fight against him I get hit by all three opposing attacks, but it's cumulative damage from slightly less catastrophic rounds that winds up finishing me off.

I may have been mistaken about the Dexterity range that offers a reasonable chance of survival. Still, this unsuccessful attempt at the adventure has reminded me of some things it's useful to know, so it was nowhere near my most unfruitful failure.