On Trailing Winds and Changing Tides

The mini-adventure accompanying the Mongoose Publishing reissue of the twelfth Lone Wolf gamebook, Vincent N. Darlage's Aboard the Intrepid, returns to the 'prequel starring a character who features in the main adventure' formula. On this occasion I play the part of Borse, Captain of a three-masted ship named the Intrepid. The details of crew and inventory provided at the start of the adventure give the impression that this could be a blend of Starship Traveller and Seas of Blood, with extra bookkeeping, which doesn't massively excite me. Also less than encouraging is the fact that the Action Chart provided clearly belongs to the previous mini-adventure, as it identifies my character as Lorkon Ironheart, lacks any means of keeping track of crew numbers, and gives the wrong name and number of slots for Skills.

Perhaps recognising that the prospect of admin on the high seas isn't the strongest of hooks, the author attempts to get the readers fired up during character generation by abandoning the usual 'Special Skills' tag and instead giving the player character one Exceptional Skill. I guess I should be thankful he didn't also replace the standard stats with 'cool' variants. On which note, my stats are as follows.
Fighting Awesomeness Combat Skill: 19 (increased to 24 by equipment)
Physical Badassitude Endurance: 21 (increased to 23 by equipment)
Exceptional Skill: Navigator
Crew and manifest are not randomised - I always start with 27 men (including five named officers and two other sailors considered noteworthy enough to get a specific mention), plus more than enough cutlasses to arm the lot, and a selection of spears and throwing axes that will doubtless be depleted once we start chucking them at enemies.

For the benefit of any reader daft enough to have skipped the mini-adventure's rules section (these things invariably include some deviation from the basic LW ruleset, so it's always advisable to check what's different from usual), the first section opens by telling me who my character is. Perhaps that's the author's way of resisting the temptation to open with a certain infamous cliché, though the absence of the line doesn't change the fact that there is little illumination, the weather is the kind that features lightning, and it is after sunset but before sunrise.

Observing a raft out on the turbulent seas, with a man on it, I get my crew to rescue its passenger. He introduces himself as Vijya Nath, and tells me that he was seeking a specific island before his ship got wrecked. My boatswain (who's slightly changed the spelling of his name since the list of prominent crew in the rules) doesn't trust him, and predicts that one of us will end up having to kill him if we don't throw him overboard. While not as eager to end the man's life, my first mate also warns me not to get caught up in Nath's quest, and says we need to prioritise finding a safe harbour where we can repair the ship (and yes, this is the first mention of any harm having come to the Intrepid - clearly making absolutely certain I knew I was Captain Borse was considered more important than establishing that my ship is damaged (let alone making clear how serious the damage is, but then, why would the ship’s Captain need to know whether the vessel is still broadly functional or on the verge of sinking?)).

I could simply agree with the first mate, but in case authorial contrivance is going to force me to get involved in the hunt for the island, I think I’d better find out what I can about the place. Just asking Nath for information shouldn’t commit me to anything (though the caprices of gamebook writers do sometimes lead to such abuses of causality).

Sigh. It would appear that enquiring about the island is taken to indicate the desire to join Nath’s hunt for treasure. Not that he’d actually said anything about seeking wealth – up until now the only mention of loot came when my mutably-named boatswain commented that our new passenger would probably spin some fanciful yarn about a lost treasure. But that was a whole section ago, and a busy gamebook writer can’t be expected to keep track of trivia like who said what on a completely different page, right?

Now I come to think about it, lack of consistency from one section to the next was one of the issues I had with Mr. Darlage’s previous mini-adventure, The Crown of King Alin IV. Maybe that reminder of the player character’s identity at the start of the first section was actually for the author’s benefit, to help him remember that he was writing an adventure starring Captain Borse rather than, say, Lord-lieutenant Rhygar, Grey Star, Pip, the Silver Crusader, or Margaret Thatcher.

Anyway, Nath tells me that the island is further away than most would dare to venture, and surrounded by hazardous coral reefs. On it are multiple active volcanoes and the ruins of an ancient city, containing a temple that holds vast quantities of treasure. Nath then asks to see my ship’s charts to help him pinpoint the precise location of the island. I note that my navigator may be reluctant to show them to a mysterious stranger, and suggest that Nath describe the region to him and allow him to work out how to get there. While considering this an inferior option, Nath concedes that it might work, and as my Exceptional Skill could help with identifying the right place, I go with the approach less likely to upset my crewman.

As it turns out, my having the Navigator Skill doesn’t come into play here. My navigator thinks he can identify the place, but doesn’t believe that the island described exists. He asks if I’m ordering him to have the helmsman set course for it anyway, or if we should head back to port. I imagine any attempt at heading to safety will be thwarted, bur demonstrating some willingness to heed my crew’s concerns before we get railroaded (or the aquatic equivalent) into the treasure hunt may reduce the risk of having to deal with a mutiny later on, so I’ll heed the navigator’s advice.

Given that I have on more than one occasion complained about gamebooks pushing the ‘decline the call’ option, it may seem odd that I’m not enthusiastically throwing myself into the quest for the treasure. I think it’s down to a combination of factors.

In character, there’s my responsibility to my crew. Maybe if I’d been painted as some reckless hunter after fortune and glory from the outset, I’d have fewer qualms about risking the lives of the two dozen plus men under my command for the sake of loot, but the introduction to the mini-adventure implied a sense of responsibility, so dragging them into peril doesn’t sit well with me. Especially when some have clearly indicated their unwillingness to get involved.

As a reader, the issue is mainly my dislike of railroading. The whole set-up just has a strong vibe of ‘I’m going to make it look as though you have the option of doing something else, but force you down this path no matter what you do,’ and I’m no fan of that. There are circumstances in which a choice that isn’t really a choice can work, but a lot of the time it’s just robbing the reader of agency for no good reason.

Incidentally, the last couple of sections only ever referred to the navigator as ‘the navigator’, which got me wondering if he had been left out of the list of named crew members, so I checked the rules. Not only does he have a name (Ghoro), but he’s actually the helmsman in addition to being the navigator, so it makes no sense that he was going on about being made to chart a course for the helmsman. Unless he has a form of multiple personality disorder that causes him to regard himself as a different character in each of the roles he fulfils.

It turns out that Nath is a carpenter, so I have him work his passage by helping with what repairs to the ship can be carried out while we’re under sail. He keeps to himself when not required to interact with the rest of the crew, but maintains civil relations with most of them. However, the boatswain continues to insist that he’s a bad lot, and that Nath will kill him unless he kills Nath first.

One night, while pacing the deck, I observe that Nath’s turban is missing its white-and-purple plume. That’s not all that has disappeared, though: back at my cabin I notice that my sword isn’t where I usually keep it. Still, it doesn’t take me long to find the missing weapon, which turns up embedded in the boatswain’s stomach. Before expiring, he clutches at me, smearing me with his blood, and mutters about something that screams when freed. In case his dying words refer to my sword, warning of an enchantment that will draw unwelcome attention if I should extricate the blade from the corpse, I make no attempt at recovering the cutlass with a view to concealing it, and instead search the body for anything that could indicate who the murderer is – Nath is such an obvious suspect, it’s almost certainly going to turn out to be someone else.

There are no clues on the dead man, but I do see that a trail of blood leads back to his cabin. Some of the crew catch sight of me standing over the corpse, and jump to predictable conclusions. I can try to take charge, or protest my innocence. It should be possible to do the former in a way that blatantly implies the latter, but whether or not I can do that is going to be down to authorial caprice. On this Mr. Darlage and I are in accord: I call for an investigation into the murder, pointing out that anyone could have taken and used my sword.

The investigation gets under way, and I report the boatswain’s dying words, only the ones I mention are significantly different from what he said a few paragraphs back, and refer to something that writhes when touched and emits a foul stench. Is my character’s misrepresentation of the facts there to help set up a plot twist in which I am the killer, but committed the crime behind my own back and unsubtly framed myself in order to throw myself off the trail? Or just another authorial and editorial failure to maintain consistency?

One of the crew finds some planted evidence designed to incriminate me, but my decisive action back when seen with the dead man seems to have convinced the other innocent men that I’m the victim of a fit-up. A little asking-around establishes that three crewmen other than Nath have possible motives for the murder. They’re all pretty flimsy, though, and given that the man with the weakest of those motives – a long-standing grudge against me – is one of the crew named in the rules, I find it a little odd that his animosity wasn’t mentioned when he was introduced.

Remember that trail of blood leading from the corpse, which could be taken as indicating that he was killed in his cabin, and there might be a clue about his killer there? If not, don’t worry. The author appears not to have done so either, as there’s no opportunity to follow up on that potential lead.

A recent addition to the crew, a former pirate by the name of Sordello, approaches me. There’s something vague about his history – and not in the ‘Mr. Darlage can’t keep track of the details’ sense, either. My character just cannot remember the specifics whenever he tries to bring them to mind, and is aware of this, yet untroubled by it.

For now the text won’t allow me to engage with this perturbing-to-me-the-reader-but-not-to-my-character mental oddity, so I focus on what Sordello has come to show me. It’s an amulet in the shape of a demon, which wriggles about and gives off a horrendous smell. Sordello says he’ll only tell me where he found it if I promise to head for the island sought by Nath. Agreeing is probably a bad idea, but most likely the only way I’m going to have any shot at reaching a good ending in this mini-adventure.

When I begrudgingly accept his terms, Sordello reveals that the amulet is his property, and that he killed the boatswain (who, by his account, was trying to steal it). If I take him where he wants to go, his buddy Bonvesin will take the blame for the death (but must be allowed to escape before he can be turned over to the authorities) and I’ll get a share of the riches to be found on the island. It all sounds very dodgy, and I don’t trust him for a moment, but that ‘hazy memory’ business suggest that he has access to some kind of mind-altering sorcery, so feigning acquiescence and remaining on the alert for his sudden yet inevitable betrayal seems like the safest course of action.

We set sail into uncharted waters where few would dare to venture, and… see some whales in the distance at one point. And that’s the only remotely noteworthy thing to happen before we sight the island. I’m not sure who’s more unadventurous: the seafarers of this world who fear to undertake such peril-free voyages, or the author who made travel into the unknown so free from incident.

I ask Nath about places where we could make landfall, and he describes two. The one in the north is in less dangerous waters, but the route from it to the temple passes through territory occupied by a tribe of cannibals. A taboo keeps the cannibals away from the vicinity of the western inlet, which is closer to the temple, but there are more naturally-occurring hazards around there.

My Navigator Skill should help me find a safe passage through the reefs to the west, and as the Skill’s description in the rules makes it out to be wholly nautical in nature, odds are that approaching and departing from the island are the only situations in which it could come into play. Additionally, one of the alternative Skills is Poison Resistance, and stereotypical cannibals are often armed with poison darts, so my Skill choice diminishes the likelihood of my surviving the trek from the north.

I have to decide how many mariners accompany Nath, Sordello and me to the island and how many remain on the ship. As Captain I should have some idea of the minimum size of crew needed to pilot the Intrepid back to civilisation if anything fatal should befall the landing party, but the text makes no mention of such trivia, so I have no clues on how best to split the crew. Let’s say that a dozen of us go on the expedition, and if I have any say in the matter, Bonvesin is not among them, and is clapped in irons or confined to quarters or whatever it takes to minimise the risk of his trying to seize control of the ship in my absence. We also take enough supplies to cover four Meals for each member of the landing party.

The Skill check that enables me to bypass the randomised determination of how we fare on the trip from ship to shore rebrands Navigator as a Special Ability. At this rate it’s only a matter of time before I get told to Test my Luck or make a Driving skill roll. Still, thanks to my Exceptionally Special Skillability, the twelve of us make it to land without any of the men or boats coming to any harm.

We head into the jungle, take a break to eat, and then reach an area where a toxic scent pervades the air. My companions collapse and, lacking Poison Resistance, I take a not inconsiderable amount of Endurance damage. Sordello rallies enough to be able to drag Nath out of the affected area, and I can rescue other members of the party, but will take further damage (randomly determined) for each person that I save. Should have brought a smaller team. I go back for one of my nameless companions, and take so much damage that trying to recover a second crewman could kill me.

Regretfully abandoning the others to their fate, I press on. The trek is the sort of arduous jungle exploration that involves no noteworthy encounters and takes no further toll on stats, though we do need to eat again. Hours later we find traces of the ruins of which Nath spoke, and by the time we reach the remains of the actual city, the sun is setting.

Sordello is eager to continue the expedition even as night falls, but Nath would rather make camp. I think I’ll side with the man who isn’t a manipulative, untrustworthy murderer who tried to frame me. That may seem like pettiness, but resting may enable me to recover some of the Endurance I’ve lost – or at least prevent further attrition through fatigue.

We make camp, but at some point Sordello sneaks away, and when his absence is noted, my crewmen (indicated by the text to be plural despite the fact that by this stage I could only have one with me – maybe even zero, as it’s not clear whether or not Nath is being counted as one of my men) are so concerned that he’ll steal all the treasure, they force me to go after him. Well, their concerns might have a little validity if the lost civilisation’s treasure consisted of just one incredibly valuable jewel, but the hoard Nath described is way beyond the carrying capacity of a lone man, even if he wasn’t going to have to to hack a route through the jungle, find a safe route through the treacherous waters, and deal with everyone who stayed on the ship before he’d be in a position to get away from here.

Nevertheless, the text gives me no choice. Nath leads the way, acting on knowledge he seems to have gained in a dream, and brings us to the temple. By the time we reach the entrance, not even starlight provides any illumination, and the temple interior is somehow even darker than the total darkness surrounding us. This does not deter me from going in, because I am a sailor (seriously, that’s the gist of what the text says). On the walls are illustrations straight out of a story by H.P. Lovecraft or Robert E. Howard (which I can apparently see in spite of the darker-than-darkness).

Lighting a somehow-less-effective-than-it-should-be torch, I lead Nath and ‘several of the crewmen’ deeper into the temple. Look, Mr. Darlage, if you wanted me to still have a decent-sized party at this stage of the adventure, you should not have made rescuing men from the toxic cloud so hazardous. Or is this whole wretched mini-adventure just your way of saying, “If you don’t pick the ‘right’ Skill during character creation, you DESERVE to die, loser!”?

I cannot be bothered to go into any detail about the nonsensical description and ponderous info-dumping that follows. Sordello is making pacts with something demonic, he launches a ranged attack that is ridiculously overpowered against any player stupid enough to have thought that the Skill of Navigator might be a good choice in a seafaring adventure, killing everyone but Nath, and I get to move on from this odious exercise in trying to get the readers to bow to authorial whim.

A Sea of Troubles

It's taken a good deal longer than expected, but at last I'm returning to Gary Chalk and David Kerrigan's Prince of Shadows duology. Given that, in Lone Wolf style, having successfully completed the first book would give my character an additional Street Skill, it might be advisable to have another go at Mean Streets rather than move on to the second book, Creatures from the Depths, but I've never actually attempted Creatures, even though I've owned it for longer than I have Streets, and I think it's about time I actually gave it a go.

To recap the premise for anyone who's not familiar with the series and didn't just read the playthrough of the first book linked in the previous paragraph, my character is Prince Edrix, heir to the throne of Salos, but keeping a lowish profile since my uncle Luko seized power following the not-at-all-suspicious incineration of my parents. The 'ish' is because the identity I've assumed so as to reduce the risk of my suddenly experiencing a severe bout of spontaneous combustion is that of an actor, so I have been making public appearances, just not as myself. Also because I recently joined the Resistance who seek Luko's overthrow, and played a pivotal role in an act of civil disobedience designed to strengthen public opinion against the usurper. And on account of my not being very good at concealing the birthmark which identifies me as the missing-presumed-fried Prince.

Anyway, that's me in plot terms. As regards stats, I'm...
Strength: 20 (owing to the quirks of the character generation set-up, this is both the minimum possible score and the most likely one)
Princely Skills: High Tongue, Persuasion
Street Skills: Streetfighting, Gutter Speak
Randomness determined what proportion of my Skills came from each category, and of the three Street Skills I picked last time round, Orientation seemed the best one to drop, as the description indicates it to relate to the streets at ground level, and the description on the back of the book suggests that I'm going to be spending more time in subterranean warrens than urban sprawl.

The adventure commences with my death in combat. Well, my character's character's death in combat: I'm playing the villain in the play currently being performed by the troupe, and tonight's performance has just reached the climactic fight scene. During the curtain call I see that the audience includes Hannuk, the leader of the resistance, who silently indicates that he wants to speak with me.

Master Melfi, the leader of the troupe, invites all players to a celebratory drink at a local tavern, and indicates that he can pay some of us tonight. My funds are pretty low right now, so if this adventure calls for any significant expenditure, accompanying my fellow performers might be the better option, but on this occasion I prioritise finding out what prompted Hannuk to seek me out.

A brief exchange of words with the Resistance leader allows me to set up a proper meeting with him, while still giving me time to show my face at the tavern and get a share of the funds being shared out. I don't loiter once I have the money, but head off to the arranged rendezvous.

Along the way, I cross the path of one of the barbarian mercenaries Luko employs to help keep the populace subdued. Ducking into a nearby alleyway could raise suspicion, so I try to swagger past like somebody who has nothing to fear from those in authority. Alas, he's looking for an opportunity to rough someone up, and I have no choice but to fight. At least I get to strike first - perhaps I can get the death spiral built into the combat system to work in my favour this time round.

The fight includes quite a bit of swinging and missing on both sides, and a couple of lucky swipes on the part of my opponent bring my Strength perilously low, but I scored a few more blows than he did, so the trouble he was looking for turns out to be more than he could handle. Still, I'd probably have been better off fleeing at the earliest opportunity - I just forget that self-preservation isn't treated as a vice in Prince of Shadows. There's still a chance that the enemy will wound me as I disengage, but the rules aren't as disparaging about beating a strategic retreat as in some other gamebook series.

Proceeding to the harbour, I join Hannuk and several other Resistance men in a boat, and after rowing (hopefully) beyond earshot of any lurking secret policemen, informants or paparazzi, Hannuk explains that we need to take action because Luko has arranged a politically advantageous marriage. If it goes ahead, he'll add a sheen of legitimacy to his rule and gain allies able to provide him with a lot more manpower for oppressing his subjects.

A fast-moving boat approaches, and turns out to be crewed by more of Luko's hired thugs. Aware that flight is not an option, Hannuk tries to convince them that we're just fishermen, out on the water so late because we were delayed by the need to make repairs to our nets. One of the goons boards us, missing his footing in the darkness, and randomness determines that while sprawling in the nets he becomes aware of the weapons concealed beneath them, but has the presence of mind not to raise the alarm while he's vulnerable. I twig what he's up to and, lacking the Skill that could help here, quietly warn Hannuk that the game is up, also causing a little disorder by seizing the halberd with which our vessel has been grappled. We cannot escape, though, and combat is soon joined.

Rather confusingly, the text tells me that my opponent gets first strike, and then indicates that I get first strike unless I want to exchange the halberd for a sword. It also says that the barbarians are all armed with spears, yet my opponent wields a two-handed sword. Oh, and as far as I can tell, my chances of being able to strike a blow would improve from nonexistent to mediocre if I were to fight bare-handed rather than hanging on to the halberd. A slim chance is better than no chance, and I only need survive for two rounds of combat before something occurs to change the state of play, so I'll drop the halberd. Even if I manage to hit my enemy, it'll only marginally reduce the likelihood of his being able to wound me, but a couple of per cent could make all the difference between living and dying.

My punch misses, his stab does not (and would not have done even if I had landed the blow). Thanks to the damage I sustained in the earlier fight, that's enough to finish me off. If I'd run away from that earlier fight, I might have survived. And then again, I might not. Escape was not an option during the two rounds preceding whatever would have happened next, and if my enemy's second attack had also proved successful, that would have been enough to kill me even if I'd started the fight at full Strength.

I think before I next attempt either of these books I might modify my gamebook manager, so at the end of the first round of any combat, I get a reminder that flight is an option.