The Prisoners of Time is the second of the Mongoose Books Lone Wolf reissues to feature a mini-adventure set after the main adventure rather than before it. Now that I've won Prisoners, I'll move on to the bonus material, James M. Stuart's Lord of Meledor, hoping that it's not as linear or as harsh as the slog that it accompanies.
In this adventure I play the part of Lorkon Ironheart, leader of the army that fought the forces of the Chaos-master when not too busy having friendly fire incidents. In the two years since otherworldly interloper Lone Wolf assisted in the slaying of the Chaos-master (sure, he may have struck the final blow, and most-to-all of the others that preceded it, but I was the one who wore the Chaos-master down by making him chase me and try to hit me with a tree, so, you know, credit where it's due), my troops have been driving the remnants of the Chaos-master's armies from our lands, and only occasionally massacring each other.
Now I've been called upon to deal with bandits based in the Nahgoth forest, who have been attacking nearby villages, causing death and destruction, and retreating to cover before any proper opposition can get organised. I get together 400 cavalry to aid me, so perhaps Lone Wolf told me about incidents in his world in which armies of 50 or 100 fared poorly against unexpectedly numerous bandits.
Before I get going, there is the matter of character creation. Randomness determines my stats, giving me:
Combat Skill 10
Endurance 25
I also get to pick three of a possible five special skills, and given that my CS is as low as it could get, I think I'd better make one of them Swordmaster in order to gain a +3 bonus when fighting with a sword, making me just mediocre rather than appallingly inept. For the other two, I'll have Enhanced Psi and Master Tactician, and hope that the sort of situation that Rune Mastery clearly exists to remedy is not an unavoidable element of the adventure.
Starting equipment is at least partly pre-determined. I have a broadsword, armour painted with runes to ward off chaos, a backpack, and three healing potions. No food and no money, though the description of the backpack's carrying capacity suggests that I will need to eat at times. Maybe I'll have a chance to pick up more stuff before my troops and I properly hit the road.
Maybe not. By the end of the first section, I'm leading my army to the site of the most recent bandit attack. And not only do I have no opportunity to collect further equipment, I don't even get to make a decision. Just shunted on to a new section, which likewise ends in a redirection rather than a choice. I wonder if Mr Stuart thinks allowing the reader to have any influence on what happens would be bringing too much Chaos into the sequence of events.
We see the smoke before we catch sight of the hamlet itself. Or rather, its remnants. The buildings have been torched, and their inhabitants killed and mutilated. Near one smouldering ruin are assorted beings, some of them human, the others chaos-spawned hybrids. While the initial description of the mob had them arguing, the next section says that they're marching away, and pick up their pace upon catching sight of us, leaving the slow-moving undead who didn't previously get a mention lagging behind.
At this point I can choose what to do, though first my Master Tactician skill provides advice which suggests that a more appropriate name for it would be Stating the Blooming Obvious: if I let the bandits escape, I won't be able to obtain any information from them, but sending some of my troops in pursuit risks exposing them to danger.
If the author wants my army dead, they're going to get slaughtered no matter what I do, and letting the only promising lead I have just escape seems unlikely to facilitate progress. My fastest units and I give chase - but our quarry reach the cover of the forest before we can catch up to them, and the thickness of the vegetation makes it necessary to dismount if we want to keep going. Conditions have now become that bit too unfavourable, so I think it better to turn back and hope to find some kind of clue on one of the undead.
Calling off the chase leads to another section ending only in a redirection, but this one is more reasonable, as it points to the same section I'd have turned to if I'd not given pursuit at all. Using an interim section to hide the fact that the outcome would be the same (at least until after the decision was made) is sound authorial strategy.
No further mention of the slower-moving enemies, so presumably even they were actually quick enough to elude us. Makes me wonder why they were even mentioned. Anyway, with no leads at all I must now try to anticipate where the next attack will occur, so we can be ready for the bandits and their inhuman associates. Will being a Master Tactician prove any more helpful here?
It does: the series of past raids suggests a pattern, from which I deduce that the enemy's next target is likely to be the town of Khonat. We proceed there, evacuate the locals, and prepare an ambush. Again there's a decision-free section transition, but unless not choosing Master Tactician automatically results in failure (and I do know of a gamebook which is apparently unwinnable if a certain special skill is not picked during character creation), there'd have to be a textual bottleneck to bring at least some of the 'chose other skills' players back onto the same track that I'm on.
Scouts soon confirm that this is where the hostile forces are now headed - and reveal that my troops are outnumbered four to one. What is it with the Lone Wolf system and ridiculously oversized and well-organised bandit armies? We prepare for the attack, and it would appear that Rune Mastery would help with shoring up our defences. Well, we'll just have to do without whatever edge that skill might have provided.
The enemy come into view. A horde of bandits and mercenaries (the latter distinguished from the former by uniforms) with rusting armour and well-maintained weapons is flanked on both sides by chaotic monstrosities, and despite having seen undead amongst the retreating troops at the devastated hamlet, I am apparently surprised to see animated corpses bringing up the rear. The author draws particular attention to the zombie of a biped with the head of a horse, and then forgets about it in the excitement of another decision-free section transition.
As the attack commences, the bandits defy their leaders' commands and stand their ground, letting their chaotic and undead allies precede them into battle. Volleys of arrows bring down many of the chaos-spawn, but have little effect upon the shambling corpses. My troops draw their swords as our opponents near striking distance, and again I get redirected to a new section without any opportunity to influence the course of events.
Once battle is joined, I am targeted by an Undead Agtah Assassination Squad. My bodyguards reduce the amount of damage I take, which is a good thing, as the random factor skews towards the 'fare poorly' end of the scale, but as the text doesn't bother to indicate whether halves round up or down, I can't be sure exactly how much Endurance I lose. If this adventure ends with a close-fought battle, that ambiguity could spell the difference between success and failure, but considering how that first fight went, I'm probably doomed regardless.
In the battle as a whole, the tide is slowly turning in our favour, as our opponents' numerical advantage is outweighed by my troops' greater proficiency and organisation. Thus, when I catch sight of an enemy who's got better armour than the rest, and is actually issuing orders to his subordinates, I figure that eliminating him could prove advantageous. Given my poor Combat Skill, the likelihood of my successfully taking him out isn't as high as I'd like, but as there's no option to send a more competent fighter to deal with him, I just down one of my healing potions and charge at him.
Well, the randomiser certainly made up for its earlier bias against me. In the course of eviscerating that Bandit Officer I took less damage than was healed by the potion. Some of my troops form a protective cordon around me and my dying foe as I attempt to interrogate him regarding who is behind these attacks. He refuses to speak, so I make use of my Enhanced Psi to probe his mind.
Before he dies, I see visions of a bearded man in robes, his flesh visibly rotting in places, outlining a battle plan, and then draining the life of a chaos beast, followed by the sight of a city in which people wear herb pouches over their faces, where a mixed army much like the one we're fighting is mustering in a public square.
The section to which I now turn has its number right at the bottom of one page (in footer territory), and its text at the top of the next one, and that's not even the worst instance of such editorial sloppiness in this book - the next such error has the section number and the corresponding text on different two-page spreads.
Searching the corpse, I find a Golden Medallion with the image of a dragon on it. I get to choose whether or not to retain it, so I'm going to have to guess whether it's helpful or harmful. And since this series has precedent for both lacking a certain item and possessing a specific object to guarantee Instant Death, choosing poorly here could end very badly. I think I'll risk taking it, in case it's needed for passing a checkpoint somewhere in enemy territory.
Oh, and remember how these adventures distinguish between Backpack Items and Special Items, and have separate carrying capacities for both? Well, somebody involved in the making of this one forgot, so I'm going to have to guess about that, too. Not that it matters at the moment, but it could be a problem if I pick up more stuff along the way. Especially if the adventure forces me to carry around a load of irrelevant tat.
Just like that, the battle is over. The enemy forces are routed, and this time my cavalry are able to thin the ranks of the fleeing miscreants. That should put an end to the raids on villages, but I'm left wondering who instigated them, and how he managed to get the disparate groups involved to cooperate. Then a healer brings me a potion, which restores most of the Endurance I lost in combat (or all of it, depending on which way I should have rounded off those pesky half-points of damage).
Stepping out of character for a moment, I've just remembered that the group of Sommerlund's Most Unwanted that Lone Wolf fought just before taking on Vonotar included one villain with a comically long beard. And a quick peek back at the potted biographies of that rogue's gallery confirms that one of them was a necromancer. What are the odds that Lone Wolf didn't kill him hard enough, and he's the one behind all this unpleasantness?
Anyway, I get shunted to a fresh section to consult with my surviving officers. It turns out that we captured some of the enemy as well as killing a load of them. The chaos beasts in their midst are being slaughtered, but the humans get treated humanely, and we question them about their leader. They know little beyond the fact that they were promised lots of loot and really don't enjoy fighting alongside chaos-spawn. Such creatures are apparently prone to ignoring the distinction between friend and foe (even more so than my own troops), and powerful magic was being employed to keep them from indiscriminately mauling bandits and mercenaries along with the villagers they were massacring. Whoever is responsible for all this is obviously a serious threat.
Only one of the men we question provides any more concrete information, thereby bridging the gap between metaknowledge and in-character awareness. The vision of people with herbal face-masks combined with my memories of the endgame of Prisoners had already made it clear to me as a reader that the villain was based in Haagadar (which is also where Lone Wolf fought the necrobeardy), but the last brigand to be questioned provides confirmation that that's where out real enemy has his HQ.
Given that Haagadar is a long way away, and has formidable natural defences, I decide against taking an army there. Well, the decision is made for me - I've just been redirected from section to section without any input into what happens for a while. In fact, almost two thirds of the sections through which I've passed so far ended with a single 'Turn to' direction, and around half of the rest were special skill checks rather than proper choices. But I digress.
The plan is to send a team of scouts to infiltrate Haagadar and gather intel. Well, 'send' as in 'lead'. And, gamebooks being gamebooks, I imagine that this expedition will include a confrontation with Zombie Saruman rather than just having us find out what's going on and come back to lead a better-prepared army in an assault on Haagadar.
The night's rest before we set off on this mission provides enough healing that I'm back up to full health regardless of rounding. The first few days of the 'difficult journey' which ensues are covered in just a few sentences, which is a bit unimpressive, but after another special skill check, things get more detailed. I'm not sure that that's an improvement, though, as my anonymous companions and I now get to experience a cut-price version of the tedious mystic trip that Lone Wolf experienced at around this stage of the trek. Blah blah psychedelia, blah blah flashback, blah blah false memories, blah blah possible premonition of a dragon, blah blah section transition.
Suddenly everything goes normal, and my generic associates and I find ourselves at a desert oasis not that far from Haagadar. Uncertain how long it has actually taken us to get this far, we pick up the pace for the march through the wasteland between the oasis and our goal. Left, right, left, right, left, right, aaand... wait for it... section transition!
We are at the bottom of a cliff, and Haagadar is at the top, surrounded by a wall with a big statue of a dragon on it. Like Lone Wolf before me, I am faced with a choice between trying to climb the cliff and sneaking into the city via a sewage culvert, and like my predecessor I opt for the latter. If that vision of a dragon was showing a potential encounter, or a symbolic representation of the city's defences, the climb might be even more dangerous than your standard ascent of a steep rock face without ropes or safety net. Yes, there are hostile creatures lurking in the foul waters we shall traverse, but I'm sure the unidentified bunch by my side will prove a match, or at least a distraction, for any attacking denizens of the detritus.
There's a walkway alongside the stream of filth, and luminescent fungi make it easier for us to see where we're going. And also to see the threat which awaits us on the other side of the next section transition. Which turns out to be a mystical barrier rather than muck-dwelling fauna. Rune Mastery would come in handy here, but I don't have it. Resisting the temptation to sneak a peek at the consequences of passing through the barrier, which are on the facing page (there really is no excuse for having decision and outcome that close together when there are so many choice-free sections just to bulk out the numbers), I reluctantly choose to turn back and try the climb.
As with reconsidering pursuing the enemy at the start of the adventure, there's an interim section to disguise the fact that there's no penalty for changing your mind, and I don't have a problem with that one either.
We take off our armour and attach it to our packs, split up into pairs, and rope ourselves together with previously unmentioned safety equipment before commencing our ascent. My partner in climb gains a name, Oran, but loses his footing at an inconvenient moment, and randomness determines whether or not I lose my grip. The odds would be worse if my Endurance were low, but even without that penalty, they're not great.
I get the middling outcome, which takes me to a nonexistent section. A quick check to see if lopping off the first or last digit takes me to the right section... nope, so I'm going to have to check for online errata. The only list I can find points out that one edition of Prisoners slightly misspelled the name of the cover artist, and the Mongoose edition's Combat Results Table designates the player character as Lone Wolf even though Lorkon Ironheart is the hero of the mini-adventure, but overlooks the whole 'spectacularly wrong section number listed' thing. I'm just going to have to go through section by section until I find the right one. And despite trying to focus only on the first few words of each section, I still come across a massive spoiler before discovering that the book meant 138 when it said 199.
[That error and the spoiler so annoyed me that it took around a week for me to work up sufficient motivation to play on.]
By wedging a fist into a crack, I manage to keep us from falling while Oran finds a foothold, but I take some damage in the process. We resume our climb, reaching the top without further incident, and put our armour back on, donning cloaks as a vague attempt at disguise. I brush off Oran's attempt at an apology because my character doesn't yet know what I inadvertently learned while trying to find the right section, and thinks the slip was a genuine accident.
We're still on the wrong side of the city wall, so we need to either do some more climbing or head for the doubtless guarded gate. Our not having been attacked by a dragon on the way up has me wondering if that vision I had was a cryptic hint that the Golden Medallion might enable me to impersonate an officer from the army being mustered here, so I opt to head for the gate.
When the gate comes into view I see a couple of guards with swords and crossbows, who look inattentive, being rather too confident that any would-be attackers will be unable to get past the cliff. The options available to me here include bluffing and trying to use Enhanced Psi, but I know that using powers of the mind sometimes costs Endurance, so I'll stick with the Medallion plan.
The text again points out that the sheerness of the cliff has lulled the guards into a false sense of security. Maybe Mr Stuart should have checked his notes and reminded himself that it's not the reader who's failing to pay attention. There is indeed a check to see if I have the Medallion, which I display prominently as I march up to the guards and claim to be bringing news from Vhozada. Despite the text's having repeatedly stressed how complacent the guards are, there's still a 40% chance of their seeing through the deception, which seems a bit high.
I get the more favourable outcome, which means that the guard I address, though clearly very suspicious, nevertheless allows us through. What happened to the whole 'slacking because he was sure enemies would be incapable of getting up here' thing? Seems to me that if anyone wasn't paying attention, it was the author and editor.
Once inside the city we notice its foul smell (what are the walls and gate made of, to contain it so effectively?), and cover our noses and mouths with our hands to try and block the stench, also concealing our faces from the locals. And we're back to strings of gratuitous section transitions with no choices or checks. We distance ourselves from the gates, and take shelter in an abandoned building. At the text's behest I head up to the roof for a better view. The city looks grim, and as I proceed to the fifth consecutive option-free redirection, so does the adventure.
One of my companions tends my wounds, healing the damage I took during the climb. It's time we were on the move again, and I get to make a decision, though only a 'be smart or take unnecessary risks' one. Do we continue to keep a low profile, or are we suddenly in such a hurry that stealth is no longer an option? I don't think there's going to be a 'your homeland is destroyed because you didn't reach enemy HQ half an hour earlier' ending, so let's stick to back-streets and alleyways as much as possible.
We head for the city centre, passing a rogue apostrophe and another choice-free section transition. The alley we are using leads to a wider street, and to a startling sight hidden behind yet another redirection to a new paragraph. That sight turns out to be a parade of chaos beasts, bandits, mercenaries and undead, led by a bearded man in dirty robes, who shows clear signs of physical decay and chaos mutation, but radiates power. He's obviously in charge of the enemy forces, and takes them out of sight and into a fresh paragraph.
Distancing ourselves from the street, we head back up the alley. Up ahead, a gang of chaos beasts rounds a corner and rushes at us. A second mob of brutes follows behind them. I have to choose between flight and two variants of fight, and Master Tactician provides no hints. In case the influence that was restraining the chaos beasts in the army isn't affecting these creatures, I lead a charge at the closer lot, hoping to provoke a retreat and have the two groups come into conflict with each other.
While it seems that the two groups of enemies just combine, the charge does give us a slight edge. Nevertheless, I now have to fight two chaos beasts in turn, and I should probably try to conclude the battle rapidly, as their chaotic influence appears to be warping the text, producing a direction for if I should win 'all both of these combats'.
I survive the fight, but now find myself alone, with most of my companions lying dead in the alley, and Oran missing presumed captured. My character, still being unaware of that spoiler, shudders to think what horrors my erstwhile climbing buddy might now be experiencing. Following another redirection to a new section, I conclude that the 'man' I saw leading the parade has the potential to become as serious a threat as the Chaos-master, and I need to kill him before I leave this place.
Using my Enhanced Psi, I attempt to send a message about the situation here to my people in case I should fail to overcome the new enemy leader, but find that something is blocking all telepathic communication.
After sheltering and resting in another abandoned building, thereby recovering a little of the Endurance I lost in the fight, I encounter another Rune Mastery check. For a skill that the rules made out to be all about chaos-proofing armour, it's coming up more often than expected.
Missing out on whatever benefit the skill would have provided, I return to the back streets of Haagadar and make my way to the temple at the centre, sensing that the villain I seek is based within. A couple of tentacled monstrosities stand guard by the main doors, so I decide to try the vent on the roof that Lone Wolf ignored back when he was trying to get into the same place. The vent leads me to a chamber with a locked door, and I use Enhanced Psi to get it open, losing a little Endurance. In anticipation of a climactic fight or two, I down the rest of my healing potions.
Leaving the room and closing the door gets a paragraph all to itself. Proceeding down the corridor past numerous bolted doors, I reach some unsecured double doors and a spiral staircase leading up. I ascend to a balcony overlooking a circular hall, in which a marble throne stands in front of a grotesquely-carved archway opening into a dark void.
In front of the throne, the bearded man and Oran are talking. For some reason, Oran has stripped to the waist, as a result of which I can see the reptilian scales that cover much of his torso, indicating him to have been an agent of chaos for some time. Eavesdropping on the conversation, I learn that the semi-decomposed mutant is named Vezh, and he thinks I must have fled the city, while Oran believes me to be in hiding and devising a new strategy. I guess I am, in a way, but not quite as he thinks.
The text presents me with three options, and while yelling at my enemies is obviously a bad idea, I'm not sure if remaining hidden will enable me to learn something of value or just lead to my being discovered and losing the opportunity to launch a surprise attack. Waiting could also mean that something nasty has time to come through the portal, so I think I'll just hurl myself into melee.
While I have surprise on my side, I am outnumbered and Vezh knows magic, so the odds are not in my favour. If I get 7 or above a lot, I might be in with a chance, so let's see what the randomiser has for me... More low numbers than high, alas, so while I do a decent bit of damage, my foes are still standing by the time I expire.
Well, while Lord of Meledor shares many of the flaws of the full-length adventure it accompanies, it's not as tedious, and probably less unfair - winning that combat would not have taken me to the final section, so I don't know what follows the fight, and thus can't be certain that the climax doesn't involve egregiously unfair authorial shenanigans. Still, I wouldn't be averse to playing it again, though I'd definitely want less abysmal stats.
