We'll End With a Whistle and End With a Bang

I don't remember the circumstances of my buying Stephen Hand's first Fighting Fantasy book, Dead of Night (co-written with Jim Bambra). My first attempt is a little clearer in memory - I'm pretty sure I didn't use dice, I know that I turned back to the previous section to avoid a couple of deaths, and I now realise that it was ignorance about the normal size of jewels that led to my making the correct choice first time at the climax.

This is another book in which my character has a specific identity. A renowned hunter and slayer of Demons, who joined the Templars as a child, shortly after my brother was killed by a Demon and a strange ghost made a brief appearance at his funeral. My track record includes thwarting more than one plot by the Demon Lord Myurr, one of Ishtra's peers, and one element of the plot of this book is Myurr's attempted revenge.

In addition to the usual attributes, I have three special Talents (chosen from a list of seven) and, should I misbehave too seriously along the way, I may also accumulate Evil points, which can render me susceptible to corrupting influences. This time round my stats are
Skill 10
Stamina 17
Luck 11
Potentially enough for a win (a low Luck has doomed me on at least two past attempts), so I'll risk doing without one of the Talents that can make the adventure a lot easier, namely Dark Veil. This would, when used, make me invisible to most evil creatures, but has the peculiar side effect of adding a point of Evil every time it's used on the grounds that 'veil' is an anagram of 'evil'. Thankfully, the book doesn't inflict a similar penalty every time I live (another such anagram) through a fight. Anyway, I'm not taking that one, but I will have the also very useful Holy Circle, Banish Undead and Speak Demon.

The previous owner of my copy of the book filled out the Adventure Sheet in biro, and cheated a bit, giving him-or-herself 50 Skill, 80 Stamina, 92 Luck and all seven Talents. In what's more likely to be a misunderstanding of the rules than a momentary burst of honesty, they also recorded an Evil score of 100.

But I digress. The adventure starts when I have a vision suggesting that Myurr has kidnapped my parents. This prompts me to head back to Crowford, the village where my parents live, to see if the vision is based on reality. As I approach it, I notice that the road passes under the remains of a criminal dangling from a gallows. Not something that will deter me from my path, especially as the detour involves an encounter with a scarecrow that's no Worzel Gummidge. The gibbet is in a pretty poor condition, and the skeleton inside the cage mocks me, but I just pass below, experiencing nothing worse than a creepy sensation.

The villagers flee from my approach, and the clichéd 'mother snatches up a child and bolts indoors' thing happens. I've had better welcomes. The parental home is deserted, so I decide to see what the local priest can tell me of recent developments. On my way to the church, I hear screams from the graveyard. Anson, the new priest, tells me that my parents were found dead in their home three days ago. Or it's just possible - based on the semi-skeletal nature of the corpses, the malevolent gleam in the bodies' eyes, and the way in which, as soon as they were buried, a strange blight tainted the land and that screaming began - that they were actually crude demonic replicas.

Dead... Blight demons. Dead... Blight Demons.

I head for the grave to investigate, and Anson gives me a shovel. Not that I need it, as the occupants of the grave burrow out and attack me. Hey, I'd have sent flowers if anyone had bothered to tell me about the funeral. But these are definitely not my parents, and a quick Banishment eliminates them and their pestilential aura. As the Demons dissolve, I notice a metal tube in the gunk. This turns out to contain a map, on which a cave by the Weddonbrige road has been marked. Beside the cave are written the words, 'Captives held here', which I suspect to mean 'Blatantly obvious trap' in some too-obscure-for-me-to-know Demonic dialect.

Leaving Crowford, I decide to call on my friend Sharleena the Seer, who lives in the area. I'm about to take the turning to her home when I hear a wagon approaching. As I recall, there's nothing worthwhile I can achieve by interacting with the wagon, so I press on to Sharleena's. She invites me in and says she's about to contact the spirits. I watch as she does so, and an antlered humanoid appears, announcing that Myurr has taken my parents to his tower in the Northlands. She asks for more precise directions, and a Demon appears. It is compelled to mention the Cragrock Peaks, but prevents further questioning by slitting Sharleena's throat. I could use Holy Circle to protect myself, but my friend deserves to be avenged, so I attack. Not a difficult fight, but the dying demon manages to set the house ablaze, so I have to leave quite promptly. At least the fire will make for a decent pyre, and keep looters from raiding the place.

A storm blows up as I resume my journey. At a crossroads I see pitchfork-wielding peasants lowering something into a freshly-dug hole, and stop to ask what's afoot. They explain that they're burying a scholar who committed suicide, and attempting to practise the appropriate rites to keep him from becoming undead. I agree to help, but it's already too late: part of the way through the ceremony, the coffin's now-vampiric occupant bursts out. Thinking quickly, I immobilise him with my cross, while one of the peasants stakes him.

The crowd disperses, and I take the Weddonbridge road. Let's see what this trap is, then. The cave isn't too hard to find, especially with the reddish glow inside it. The glow is emanated by a flying stone skull, which swoops to the attack. I dodge its eye-beams and smash it with my sword, and the consequent release of magical energies gives me another Talent (I pick Meditation). It also causes the cave to start collapsing, so I depart, wondering if every place I visit from now on is going to get destroyed before I leave.

Back on the road I reach a holy monument, and stop to test out my new Talent. Some force compels me to open a hidden compartment, in which I find a Holy Amulet that I take with me. After crossing the Way River, I reach Weddonbridge (so why isn't it called Waybridge?), where an atmosphere of evil startles my horse and causes it to bolt. There are two buildings close by, and this is one of the rare instances in the adventure where the Sense Demon Talent would do more than just indicate that the Demonic figure approaching is in fact a Demon. Almost every time I play this book, I pick the wrong building here, and for some reason knowing that doesn't seem to help. Only this time I second-guessed my second-guessing, and made the right decision. Well, as right as is possible here - I merely get jumped by a Moon Demon while entering the inn, rather than risk decapitation in a trap. And the villagers attack the Demon and cut it to bits, so only my dignity is harmed.

They explain that the village has been attacked by increasing numbers of Moon Demons of late, and they'll be evacuating in the morning. Assuming they can keep the inn Demon-free until morning. I choose to stay and help, and after posting guards on all the doors and windows, I head up to the loft to check on the integrity of the roof. Not good - indeed, it's already been breached. I use the Amulet I found to make the trapdoor down to the ground floor off-limits to the Demons, successfully fighting off the one Demon that tries to interfere.

I rejoin the villagers just before things get cinematic and Demons smash in all the doors and windows simultaneously. With Holy Circle I am able to establish a Demon-proof zone within the inn, and gather all the villagers into it. We wait for dawn, the Demons wait for my power to wane, and I win the waiting game, as the circle is still intact by the time daylight banishes the Demons.

Resuming my journey, I hear the sound of wings, and risk confronting whatever is approaching. It turns out to be a magical summonation, which grabs me and bears me off towards Colton-on-the-Marsh, and I sense that it was created by someone named Magrand. Attacking the thing that's holding me a hundred feet above the ground seems unwise, even if it is marshland below me, so I just wait for this trip to end. The creature drops me in a pool of quicksand, but I am able to extricate myself. Trails criss-cross the marsh, one leading to a derelict-looking mill, others heading for the nearby village, but before I can make any decisions, the village paths sink into the mud. Looks like someone in the mill wants a word with me, and after he's gone to this much effort, it would be churlish to refuse.

Zombies emerge from the marsh and converge on me, some cutting off the way to the sunken village paths, others barring the way to the mill. A quick Banishment gets rid of the undead obstacles ahead of me, and the other Zombies hold back, then sink back into the mire once I reach the mill. It has one door, which is a bit obvious, but the only other way in is a hole in the wall some way up, and climbing to it would require me to Test my Luck, costing me a point that could make the difference between survival and terminal sliming once I'm inside. So I go through the door. The handle grows a mouth and bites me.

Magrand the Necromancer is waiting for me inside the mill, and hurls a sphere of magical sludge at me. I dodge it, and don't give him a chance to conjure up another one. With him dead, the Zombies lurking in the marsh disintegrate. As does the mill (and I'm guessing there wasn't much left of the inn at Weddonbridge left by the time the Demons were dispelled, so my 'wreck everywhere you enter' aura seems intact). I'm able to grab a Luck-restoring potion before fleeing, and the inhabitants of the nearby village give me some money for ridding them of a troublesome neighbour and his eyesore of a residence.

Moving on, I reach a junction. Close by are a signpost and a shrine, and a quick Meditation heals my door-bite and gives me a vision: one of the names on the signpost drips blood, the drops forming the words 'Death-on-the-marsh'. Suspecting that there may be unfinished business relating to my most recent encounter, I head in the direction indicated, towards Stanford. Along the way I cross the River Merton, which fails to burble amusing non-sequiturs at me, and as night falls I catch sight of torchlight and hear guttural chanting from a nearby clearing. This merits investigation.

In the clearing I see a Moon Demon Mage, standing over an altar with unpleasant inscriptions, on top of which lies Magrand's corpse. Recognising that the Mage is attempting a Rite to raise Magrand from the dead as a fully sentient, Demonically-powered Abomination, I use Speak Demon to disrupt the ritual. This nets me a point of Evil, but utterly and irrevocably gets rid of the cadaver before it can rise. The Mage attacks, and I use my sword to disrupt its face. I also destroy the altar.

In the morning I reach Stanford, which is pretty quiet. A local farmer named Tom seeks my help: Skeleton Riders have been attacking and destroying farms in the area of late, and he fears that his will be the next target. Figuring that if the place is due to be razed to the ground anyway, I can't make things a whole lot worse by visiting, I accompany him to his home. There I meet his wife Gertrude and their daughter Kate, and work out a strategy for guarding the farmhouse. It has two doors to the outside, and four windows. I stand guard by one door, hanging my cross above the other, and set Tom, Gertrude and Kate to guard the windows furthest from me.

At midnight, eight Skeletons attack, the dice determining where each one tries to break in. The first bursts through the door with the cross on, and disintegrates. The second breaks the window Gertrude is guarding, and has its skull knocked clean off with a rolling-pin. So does the fourth, while the third is clambering in through the unguarded window. The fifth Skeleton repeats the error made by the first, while the sixth and seventh follow the third. Tom has to deal with the eighth while I hurry away from the door I was pointlessly guarding and Banish the trio that got into the house. Tom and Gertrude have taken some damage in the fight, but the family are all still alive, and there's still one window intact, so I'd call that a pretty successful night's work.

In the morning, Gertrude gives me some food to thank me for my assistance, and as I set off again, the farmhouse remains untroubled by meteorites, sinkholes, tornadoes or other potential means of destruction. A boatman offers to take me to Axmoor for 2 gold, and while that's not really on my way, it's a detour that could be worth making, so I pay up. Also on the barge are the owner's son Palinn and a strange old woman named Venghul. In the afternoon, Palinn falls overboard (unless someone knocked him into the water with a big fish), and I dive into the river to save him. This gets me my fare refunded, and Venghul offers to tell my fortune. She's not able to offer much advice, but does give me one hint that would be useful in the endgame if I hadn't hit on the right course of action straight off back in 1989.

Axmoor is in a pretty horrendous state when we get there, and just after I step ashore, tentacles erupt from the waters of the river. I fight them to buy the barge time to get away. My toughest fight yet this adventure, but I win, and my erstwhile companions are safe. Turning my attention to what remains of Axmoor, I find that much of the village has been demolished to make way for a monstrous organic edifice that spews noxious smoke into the air. To destroy this I'll have to get inside, and I ignore the obvious entrance in favour of a hole in the ground that may be the living building's sphincter. The less said about the next few minutes, the better (and if I'd been Unlucky, that would have been one of the worst possible ways of dying in a gamebook), but I make it into the building okay.

Taking a narrow and damp turning, I proceed to a dungeon where two Demonic Servants stand guard over dozens or prisoners. Attacking, I easily defeat the guards (assisted by the fact that a Demonic Servant is automatically destroyed if its opponent wins two consecutive rounds of combat - FF veterans are likely to understand if I call them the opposite of Razaak). However, while I can unlock the cells, I am unable to free the captives, who are held in place by the influence of the building, and will be fed into its furnaces unless I can destroy it.

Heading back along the corridor, I ignore steps leading to a hatch for the moment and proceed to a chamber that radiates heat and emits the sound of grinding bones. Inside is a massive heart, connected by vein-like pipes to a ramshackle-looking contraption. Operating the controls is another Demonic Servant, who doesn't last any longer than the last couple I encountered. Turning my attention to the control panel, I see three dials connected to tubes, which have been labelled in Demonic script. The wildly throbbing red tube reads 'FEED', the more gently pulsating blue one says 'DRAIN', and the unmoving green one is marked 'ADDITIVE'. I switch off the feed tube, the chamber starts acting like a Bond villain's base in the final reel of the movie, and something big and nasty-looking begins to emerge from a split in the wall. I don't loiter to find out what it is.

Now I ascend to that hatch, which opens into another corridor. At one end is a door, at the other an archway leading outside, and guarded by three Demonic Servants that appear to be in telepathic communion with Myurr. No point heading for the exit while this monstrosity is still operating anyway, so I try the door. This leads to the heart of the structure, where magically pacified prisoners are being marched into a furnace shaped like a sharp-toothed worm's mouth (not that I recall ever having seen a mouth on a worm). In the centre of the chamber is a Death-Stone, the 'seed' from which this Land-Blight has been grown. But before I destroy that, I need to take out the furnace. A Demonic Servant tries to get in my way, and actually does significant damage before I kill it. The others fail to react, awaiting instructions from their master, who must be busy with some other part of his plot for global conquest, so I hurl a vial of Holy Water into the furnace. The mouth explodes.

I approach the Death-Stone while the remaining Demonic Servants panic and yell that I'm here. Myurr is still on another line. The baleful aura of the Stone surrounds me, but I'm not Evil enough to fall under its spell. Still, I only know of one way to actually destroy the thing, and if I mess up, I'll be annihilated. Nevertheless, a Demon-Stalker's gotta do what a Demon-Stalker's gotta do. And if I use up all my remaining Holy Water in the process, then in combination with the Talents I have and the damage I've already done to the Land-Blight, I'd need to get 13 or above on two dice to fail. I pronounce the incantation and time and space ripple with the forces unleashed...

And just like that, the Land-Blight is gone, the surviving prisoners are free, and I've had my Skill and Luck enhanced by my contact with primal energies. And somehow Magic Circle kept me from gaining any more Evil.

Along the way to the next village, an Orcish wagon-driver tries and fails to run me over. The wagon moves too quickly for me to take any action against the driver, so I press on to the unexpectedly untroubled village of Dunningham. A hooded figure beckons me across, then drops the hood. I face a woman from the sixties Star Trek planet of incredibly unsubtle allegory, who has symbols on her hands that I recognise from Titan - the Fighting Fantasy World as showing her to be a devotee of this world's Trickster gods, who are neither good nor evil, but endeavour to maintain the balance between the two sides. And with one of the highest ranking Demons in all Titan gearing up to invading the world, I'm pretty sure that any balance-tipping she wishes to undertake will be in my favour, so I greet her. She dispels the illusion that hangs over Dunningham, revealing ruined buildings, scenes of devastation, and a wooden tower with a Sauron-like Eye atop it, somewhat anachronistically described as being 'like a searchlight'.

The woman has advice for me, but it will be a random mixture of truth and lies because that's the Trickster way. After advising me to destroy the tower and the Eye, she tells me a password to get into the tower, says which balance my destiny lies in, and instructs me to seek the pool. And then she's gone.

Hearing laughter, I decide to see if I can find an invader with a uniform in my size. Can I take on ten drunken Orcs? Let's give it a go. Well, four are too drunk to fight, and the others are slow enough that I can find shelter in a doorway, forcing them to attack one at a time. Two of them wound me, once each, but the outcome was a lot less doubtful than I initially thought it would be.

Continuing to the tower, I find one guard on the door. He asks for a password. I give the one I was told, and he lets me in, so I should ignore what the woman said about the balance. Beyond the door is a storeroom, where I find the sort of disguise I'd hoped to get by fighting inebriated Orcs - a full face helmet with a skeletal motif, and a cloak. I also find a Goblin on 'guard duty' in a barrel, who eats some mould and settles down to sleep. Sometimes gamebooks just get odd.

A ladder leads to the next level, where three Orcs are playing dice. On the way to the next ladder I step on a squeaky floorboard, but my disguise causes the Orcs to believe that I am a superior officer. One of them gives me a lantern to check on 'Old Beady' (I love that they have a disrespectful nickname for the Baleful Eye), and they pretend not to have just been gambling on duty while I ascend to the top of the tower. The Eye isn't as easily fooled, but when I smash the lantern over its lid, it burns well. So does the tower. That farmhouse surviving must have been a fluke.

The fire escape consists of a long rope attached to the roof. Amazingly, it doesn't burn while I'm climbing down. There are three places I can go from here. The pond is not the pool I seek (not dying that way again, thank you very much), so that leaves the Temple and the Courthouse. I try the former, using Speak Demon to negate the influence of the defiling graffiti, but the place has been ransacked. Must be the Courthouse, then. That too is ruined, but has a cellar down a flight of cobwebbed (and thus untrodden by Myurr's forces) steps.

I descend to a chamber containing a pool of water. At the pool's edge is a statue of a woman like the one who spoke to me, holding a functional set of brass scales. Voices overhead indicate that I was seen coming in here, and can expect company, so I tip the scales in a direction contrary to the one I was told. The pool glows, I am drawn into it, my Luck is restored to its new maximum, and I find myself on a barren plain.

A path leads into a dense forest. Without warning a large building appears in front of me, and a voice tells me to enter at my peril. I do enter, and a wind blows me through a hall into an insubstantial replica of my room at the Templar Citadel. Three doors with symbols on lead out of it, and based on my recollection of what can be acquired here, I manage to pick the one that doesn't send me back outside.

I enter a peculiar banqueting hall, that has no furniture, but the food, cutlery and dishes just float in the air. As does my genial host, who bids me eat and then introduces himself as one of the Netherworld Sorcerers, further servitors of the Tricksters. But here it is the Tricksters who have been tricked: Myurr has conned them into believing that the forces of Good are so strongly in the ascendant that in order to restore the balance, they must help him open a portal from the Demonic Plane to Titan. I've been invited here because the Sorcerers aren't sure what part I am to play in events. It's obviously important, given that Myurr will be using my parents' life-essence to open the portal...

Using Meditation, I contact higher powers, who reprimand the Sorcerer for being a gullible twit, and tell him to help me before it's too late. Embarrassed, the Sorcerer gives me the Sword of Demon-Slaying, which confers a poorly-explained bonus in fights against Demons, and offers to teleport me straight to Myurr's tower. I accept the offer, as it's about time I was starting to wind up this adventure.

Lightning crackles around the tower, which has live gargoyles on the walls and a nasty-looking sigil on the door. I erase it before entering, and find myself in a black corridor with monstrous portraits on the walls. It leads to a circular chamber, and I ignore the writing that starts to appear on the floor, as it's pretty much the opposite of a welcome mat. Three doors lead from the chamber. Clattering noises come from behind one, a metallic swishing from another, and no sound from the third.

I open the door with the clattering behind it. The source of the noise is an obscure musical instrument made from dragons' bones, known as a Demonic Pandemonium. It's playing a funeral march, and I can also hear a bell tolling. Listening to the music (it can't be any worse than the really experimental Philip Glass stuff a friend once inflicted on me), I find myself transported through time and space, becoming an insubstantial spectator at my brother's funeral. A mourner throws a stone at a raven, reminding me of folklore that says a raven can steal the soul of a person whose funeral it watches.

Feeling a compulsion to approach someone, I go up to the priest, who recognises me as both a Templar and an older version of the nearby child, and hands me a ring. I've just become the 'ghost' whose appearance preceded my being sent off to become a Templar. Wibbly-wobbly... And then I'm back in the Pandemonium room. It has no other way out, so I return to the circular chamber and try the silent door.

I enter a red room, and somehow know that I've just gone through a Door of Teleportation. There are exits to all cardinal points of the compass, and I think I can still remember the quickest route through this teleporting maze from when I mapped it a decade or so ago. Let's see... Orange room, yellow room, green room, spiral staircase. Yes!

I ascend for a long, long time. An animated Horned Skeleton with a gigantic axe blocks the way. It's immune to Banish, but not to being repeatedly hit with my sword. Once I've beaten it, it falls downstairs for ages. The stairs lead to a room full of candles. It also has a window, with a raven perched on the sill, and a mirror. Whispering voices, gradually increasing in volume, advise me to go through the window, to pass through the mirror, to snuff out the candles. The babble starts to become unbearable, and my brother's ghost appears and tells me which advice to follow. I take the right hint (not falling for that Instant Death again, either), and wind up in a chamber that contains my parents, three Netherworld Sorcerers who haven't yet got the memo about their being suckers, assorted paraphernalia, and Myurr himself.

The Demon gloats that I've taken his bait and entered his tower of my own free will, so he can now complete his portal-opening plan (so would he have been thwarted if one of his minions had killed me on the way here?). Apparently my soul is the final ingredient required for making the portal permanent. But he hasn't got it yet, and what with the unclear rules regarding the bonus from the Sword of Demon-Slaying, and the possibility of his prevailing in combat even if I can use the whole bonus, I'm going for the more straightforward solution. Concealed somewhere in this room is a magical gem that allows Myurr to stay outside the Demonic Plane. Destroy it, and he'll be banished.

Of course, Myurr has concealed the gem extremely well. It could be almost anywhere. It could be in the crystal ball, inside the pyramid of bones, embedded in the dagger, between the pages of the book, concealed in the chalice, or stuck under any one of a hundred candles. However, I happen to know it's in the water barrel place that seemed so blatantly obvious to my seventeen-year-old self. As I head for it, Myurr realises that things aren't going as well as he'd hoped, and makes a last-ditch attempt to subvert me to his side. To resist, I must get above 1 (my Evil score) on two dice. That's the total score, not needing to get 2-6 on each one.

Unsurprisingly, I do not succumb to his power, and while he's waiting for me to acknowledge him as my new master, I smash the gem. It explodes, but the priest's ring and the Sword of Demon-Slaying both magically shield me from the blast. Myurr threatens revenge before being expelled from the world, the Sorcerers vanish, and I advise my parents to start running: given my track record, this tower's not going to last much longer, and we have a lot of stairs to descend.

That was fun. One of the fairer FF books from the second half of the run - the worst unavoidable opponent only has 8 Skill, and common sense or in-text clues aid with avoiding most of the Instant Deaths scattered around. There's also more than one way of making it to the end alive - I went for one of the more eventful routes, but there are alternatives, and interesting encounters that I missed on this playthrough.

I've mentioned the odd flaw here and there, and the book would be even better if they were fixed (sort out that Sword bonus and it might be worth having a go at the big fight in the endgame), but besides being playable, it also has a better-than-usual 'save the world' plot thanks to the personal element, plenty of entertaining set pieces, and a storyline that's clearly had some thought put into it, with seemingly incidental details paying off later on in the book. Back when I was originally collecting the books, this ranked among my favourites, and it still does today.

I Will Hunt You Down, and the Last Thing You See Will Be My Blade

The Magnakai sub-series of Joe Dever's Lone Wolf books starts with The Kingdoms of Terror, a book that has never made all that much of an impression on me. Assorted aspects of it linger in the memory, not all of them for good reasons, but the adventure as a whole remains fuzzy and ill-defined in my head, despite my having played it several times.

The first time I read it, my character wound up beheaded because I hadn't paid sufficient attention to place names (this makes more sense in context). When I was playing through the series by the rules (and going back to the start of book 1 every time I failed), the first time I reached this book, I managed to get Lone Wolf killed in a way that couldn't happen. The thing is, all the Kai Disciplines get upgrades in this series, and you start with just three of them, accumulating the rest over the course of books 6-12. The original Discipline set is largely overlooked. However, when I came to Kingdoms, I'd just finished book 5, in which I had all but one of the basic set, and hadn't yet got into the mindset of not having most of the Disciplines. So when the book asked if I had the new and improved version of Tracking, I forgot that I didn't, acted on information I shouldn't have had, and somehow wound up killed by guards. I was about to create another new Lone Wolf for book 1 when I remembered that I didn't actually have the Discipline that had led to my death, and therefore couldn't have died like that, so I went back to the Discipline check where I'd gone wrong and started over, paying more attention to what was actually on my Action Chart.

The implementation of the new set of Disciplines leads me to suspect that the Kai are actually Artificial Intelligences, and their Disciplines are software. The rules don't actually engage with the issue of the basic Discipline set acquired during books 1-5, but the implication is that they no longer work, as if they had to be uninstalled before I could add the new and (at least in some instances) improved versions. Since book 1, Healing has enabled me to regain lost Endurance at the rate of 1 point per combat-free section. Now it appears that I have to get the Magnakai Discipline of Curing to get the same effect. Similarly, it seems that the Combat Skill bonus for having Weaponskill no longer applies, and while Weaponmastery is a lot better than Weaponskill (a higher bonus, working with more than one weapon, and I get to choose the weapons), losing the old bonus for no good reason is a bit iffy. And while I didn't get Mindblast, if I had done, I'd be less than thrilled to find that it no longer works unless I get the .1 version, Psi-surge. Since the climax of the previous adventure I've spent three years in intensive study and training, at the end of which I'm significantly inferior to the dozy twit who knocked himself out on a tree at the start of the first book.

To give Mongoose Publishing their due, the reissue of Kingdoms does state that the original set of Disciplines can be carried across along with my stats and certain items. (Hang on, Backpack Items don't carry across? So the Combat Skill-boosting potion from book 3 that I was saving for the really nasty fight in book 9 or the even nastier one in book 11 is just gone? Expletive deleted!) On the downside, the bonus adventure in Mongoose book 6 implies that the main adventure has been George Lucased to such a degree that I might not be able to stomach reading it. So do I play as a shadow of my former self, or risk concussion from the headdesking that the retcons are liable to induce? I'll go with the Mongoose rules, as these books are tough enough without adding nonsensical restrictions. And in addition to the old set of Disciplines, I'm taking Divination (enhanced Sixth Sense), Weaponmastery (in Sword, Bow and Dagger) and Psi-Screen (because all the psionic power-using enemies in this series are just too powerful for Mindshield to protect me against them, even though it worked fine against Darklord Haakon).

Since the death of Haakon, the remaining Darklords have been involved in a civil war, so they won't be bothering me for another book or two. As indicated above, I've been spending the time between books learning Magnakai Disciplines. Well, three of them. The others cannot be learned, only gained by repeating a quest undertaken by the first Kai Grand Master, Sun Eagle, more than a millennium ago. He made a record of everything he did, but his handwriting has faded, so all I can make out is that I must start by fetching McGuffin B, otherwise known as the Lorestone of Varetta. It seems a little odd that the 'training manual' part of The Book of the Magnakai is still perfectly legible, while the only part of Sun Eagle's 'What I Did on My Quest' essay to survive is the part that was written first, but maybe his pen ran out part of the way through the first sentence, and the replacement was a cheap one with inferior ink.

Anyway, Varetta is located south of the region I visited in book 4, so I cancel the milk and the newspapers, and then set off. The first section mentions a couple of incidents along the way that are too trivial to merit more than a passing reference - being ambushed by brigands and leaving a bunch of them dead, getting VIP treatment in Ruanon, using my Kai skills to win handsomely at a gambling house - and then as I reach Quarlen, location of the only bridge over the river between me and my destination, I have to decide which gate I will use to enter the town, because that's not trivial at all.

This being a Lone Wolf book, I know what's likely to be the better one, though it's possible that if I'd chosen Pathsmanship I'd get an indication that this is an exception - then again, thinking I had Pathsmanship was what got me pseudo-killed back in the nineties, so whatever information it provides obviously isn't as helpful as it could be. And this is an exception to the 'rule': a guard demands a pass that I don't have. Offering a bribe may be a bad idea, and trying to just ride in is sure to mean trouble, so I just say that I don't have a pass. Well, either my thinking I had a Discipline I didn't happened later in the adventure than I remembered, or I chose very poorly back then, because there's nothing to prevent me from ignoring the guard's insults and trying the other gate. At which I am charged money to enter, seemingly for not being on wheels (the wagon and caravan ahead of me are allowed straight through), but it's an affordable price.

Not far from the bridge is a tavern, which the text has me enter. Among the clientele I notice some soldiers who appear to be mercenaries from Varetta, and approach them to see if I can find out anything about their home city. They fall silent as I approach, and are obviously ready for trouble. I'm not sure whether offering to buy them drinks would break the ice or be perceived as an insult, so I just ask if I may join them. One of them tells me to state my business or leave them alone, and as I'd rather not attack them or order a meal, I introduce myself. It turns out that they've heard of me, and are keen to get to know such a renowned hero.

After a while I mention the Lorestone, and get a hefty info-dump about it. Lots of people want to get their hands on it, because legend has it that whoever wields it will rule the region. It was last seen being dropped into the River Storn by Prince Kaskor, just after his belief that it would make him invulnerable was fatally disproved. The soldier who tells me the legend also mentions that the sages on Brass Street in Varetta know more about it.

I know that the need to consume Meals at periodic intervals is part of the rules, but six consecutive choices where one of the options is to buy some food (and the only alternative for the sixth one being to eat what I brought with me) leave me wondering if Joe Dever was on a diet while writing this part of the book. And in the midst of this obsession with eating, the book doesn't allow for the (admittedly remote) possibility that I could have enough money to pay for a room (which I just did) but none left over to buy dinner, and no food in my Backpack. Oh, and the picture of the innkeeper in the Mongoose book is inaccurate, unless your standards for 'fat' meet the fashion designers' standard where anyone who can walk over a cattle grid without risk of falling through the gaps is considered overweight.

And after all that, the food is undercooked, judging by the way the 'roast' beef is leaving bloodstains on the serving maid's hands. Besides which, I'm obviously not going to get to eat it even if I trust Healing to protect me from food poisoning, as I'm being directed to the same section to supposedly tuck in as was given for going up to my room without paying for a plate of warm raw meat. Yep, I get distracted by the arrival of an arrogant, duel-scarred lordling who's apparently wearing clothes made of wood and metal (all right, so obviously 'ebony and gold' is figurative language for the colours, to show how swanky and expensive the clothing is, but a literal reading is more amusing). After making demands of the staff, he seats himself at an occupied table, and within seconds he rounds on the old man who was already there, heaping abuse on him for daring to sit at the same table as him. He leaps to his feet, his hand going to the hilt of his sword.

Okay, hands up if you find this situation so utterly implausible that you are drawn to the conclusion that the arrogant youth must actually be a hired assassin who's been specially engaged in order to kill the old man. Because it would appear that Joseph C. Williams did, since he chose to include that 'explanation' in the tiresome mini-adventure that accompanies Kingdoms in the Mongoose text. Thankfully, while the 'edited and augmented by Joe Dever' credit on the mini-adventure implies that this preposterous retcon has Mr. Dever's approval, he hasn't rewritten the relevant section of the main adventure to back up Mr. Williams' bizarre theory.

Anyway, not wishing to see the old man murdered, I get out my bow and fire an arrow into the lordling's arm, causing his blow to go awry. Take it from someone who used to do archery: that's the most implausible element of this set piece. Cursing me and threatening to kill me for having the audacity to wound Roark, highborn of Amory, the lordling demands that the innkeeper return his cloak and sword (how was he able to almost skewer the old man if he'd left his sword in the cloakroom?) and staggers out of the inn.

The old man introduces himself as Cyrilus, a magician from Varetta, and my obvious interest in his home town catches his attention. I ask him about the Lorestone, and he answers evasively until I reveal my identity (which doesn't fit well with Williams' claim that Cyrilus was waiting here specifically to meet me because of a prophetic dream). Then he tells me pretty much the same things that I learned from the soldiers, and says he'll take me to someone who can help me find the stone.

It's unclear whether or not I get back to my (by now doubtless cold) raw beef. Regardless, the book says nothing about the standard penalty for not eating, and given that the encounter with Roark and Cyrilus would have happened just the same if I'd been heading upstairs rather than sitting in front of a plate of potential salmonella, all that tedious stuff about buying food was even more unnecessary than I'd thought.

In the morning we set off towards Varetta, and along the way we pass a village that's holding an archery contest, with a bow for first prize. Quite a nifty bow, too, but I'm reluctant to enter the contest because I'm not sure that my Combat Skill is good enough to give me a decent chance of winning, and I know from past experience that even if I do win the bow, I'd have to either give it away or face a randomised chance of getting killed. Probably at worse odds than the unavoidable '1 in 10' situations that have cost me a Lone Wolf or two before now. So I'll just ride on.

Further on we see a castle, which Cyrilus tells me contains a healing spa. He offers me a jar to collect some of the water, but I decline: between Healing and the profusion of Laumspur potions available, medicinal waters are not a priority.

It would appear that I've not remembered the sequence of events in this book entirely correctly. I'd thought that an encounter I've been awaiting was another of the opportunities to get separated from Mungo Cyrilus, but a few minutes ago he commented on this being a region 'where war and death are unfamiliar visitors', which ranks alongside 'one more day until I retire' in the life expectancy-shortening stakes, and now we're approaching the gate where he meets his end if I refuse to take any of the preceding bait. Just to drive home the point, he mentions that the gatekeeper is his brother, whom he hasn't seen in ages. He suggests that I go to the nearby ale hut or bread hut while he catches up on the gossip, but I stick with him.

There's no response when Cyrilus knocks at the gate, and even if I didn't already know what's afoot, Divination would warn me of the imminent ambush. At last the gate opens, to reveal an armed warrior who's aiming a crossbow at me, and fires. Bizarrely, when asking if I have Divination (again), the Mongoose text adds 'and wish to use it'. I mean, what's the point of having an ability that allows you to anticipate and avoid unseen dangers if I have to make an active decision to sense danger with it? And who in their right mind is going to go, 'Well, I could be prepared for this attack and have a good chance of dodging, but all things considered, I'd rather increase the chances of my being fatally shot,' anyway?

I deflect the bolt with the Sommerswerd, and (apparently in less time than it takes an enraged lordling to strike a blow, as I'm told that there's no time to use my bow here) the warrior drops the crossbow, grabs an axe, and charges at me. I make short work of him. Not short enough, though: while I've been fighting, five armoured horsemen have surrounded and captured Cyrilus. Five warriors against one old man might seem a bit excessive, especially as there's been no indication that his wizardry can do anything useful, but I can imagine that, as they saw me hacking away at their associate with such finesse and lethality, they found themselves less than eager to confront me. Certainly, they make a rapid departure, taking Cyrilus with them.

The speed with which I give chase makes no difference to the outcome, so I stop to search the body of my attacker. To my surprise, it's a woman, who wore unisex armour and used reeds to deepen her voice. Her face is vaguely familiar, and apart from weapons and armour, she has only a money pouch and a silver brooch. I conclude that this is because hired killers travel light, but then, I was making inaccurate assumptions about her sex a couple of sections back, so my conclusions about her profession shouldn't automatically be taken as indicative of the truth (though they must have been accepted and extrapolated from by Mr. Williams). The book makes me keep the brooch for the purpose of gameplay mechanics rather than from any clear character-based motive.

Now I pursue Cyrilus' abductors, and maybe this is where I forgot that I didn't have Pathsmanship back in the nineties. As it is, while my basic Disciplines of Tracking and Hunting help me follow for a while (and if I can still use them, there's definitely no reason why Healing shouldn't still work too), I lose track of the riders when I reach a village. I take a wrong turning, but soon spot a local who tells me that no horsemen have come past lately, so turn back without wasting much time. Could not taking the wrong turning lead to a fatal ambush? Quick peek - yes it could (though it's not automatic). Well, that's that mystery solved.

Anyway, it turns out that Cyrilus' captors were hiding in the village, so whichever path I took would have been wrong. As I'm heading back to the village, I see them emerge from hiding. Following a brief argument, they set off again, heading in my direction, so now it's my turn to hide from them. I'm not sure an attempted ambush with my bow will work much better than the female warrior's did, and Cyrilus is doomed no matter what I do, so rather than attempting to take the last rider in line by surprise and risking getting into a fight with the lot if he gets their attention, I just follow them. Bad choice: Cyrilus starts to slip from the horse on which he's being carried, and as the rider turns to secure him, I am spotted. Now I will try using the bow. It works better than expected, killing the rider who spotted me, and startling the others enough that I'm able to get his horse, and my ill-fated companion with it.

Not much further ahead, the road is blocked by another man on horseback. It's Roark, the lordling who attacked Cyrilus back in the inn. Having the silver brooch means that I recognise the family resemblance between him and the woman who tried to kill me. The other riders catch up to us and tell him that she's dead (though they wouldn't have bothered to mention my killing of a relative of his if I hadn't seen her face), and he goes a bit mad and calls upon a denizen of hell (or someplace similar). The only way I can escape is by detouring through a nearby churchyard, but as I do, a chill descends, cracks open in the earth, and the dead rise, startling the horse, which throws me. I have to fight the walking corpses, and the Mongoose text includes a reminder of the extra damage that the Sommerswerd does against undead opponents. Not that I'd forgotten, but the omission in the original text always did bother me a little, so the edit is welcome.

I rapidly dispose of my assailants, and see that Roark's summonation has gone out of control, and further zombies are slaying his men. He rides off, and in his absence the living dead disintegrate, but it's too late for the riders. Too late for Cyrilus, too, who was crushed when the horse fell on him. With his dying words he tells me where to go, naming the same street the soldiers mentioned. If I had Curing I could prolong his dying agonies long enough for a more substantial info-dump, but there's no way of preventing his death. I bury him in the churchyard, which seems a little inappropriate, what with its occupants having brought about his death, but then, abandoning the body or taking it with me wouldn't have been any better.

Towards the end of the day I reach another inn. A conjurer is putting on a show there, and invites people to bet on the solution to a logical conundrum he presents. It's not tricky to solve (though in a 'guess the sexes' puzzle the use of the gendered adjective 'blond(e)' rather than the neutral 'fair-haired' creates problems for the author - and the Mongoose edit really doesn't improve things), and by making a wager I win enough money to cover the cost of a room for the night, stabling for my horse, and a cooked meal. During the night, rats gnaw their way into my Backpack and eat the Meals inside because readers who didn't choose Huntmastery at the start of the adventure are Bad People and must be punished.

The next day I reach the village that I thought preceded Cyrilus' capture. There's a shrine in it, where old women tend shrubs with orange berries. Not having Curing means that I fail to recognise the significance of the berries (even though in book 3 what was needed to recognise a byproduct of these berries was either Sixth Sense or Weaponskill, and I have the upgraded versions of both of those Disciplines). Still, I can stop at the shrine and buy some berries even with this strange gap in my knowledge. The berries are Alether, which can be used for temporary boosts to Combat Skill. I buy three doses, two of which definitely need saving for later books.

In the evening I get to Varetta and proceed to a quadrangle. Four streets lead from it: Helin (or Helm) Way, Coachcourse, Flute Street and Dever-Couldn't-Be-Bothered-To-Name-It Road. I pick the default direction, and after a while I see a Taxidermist's shop, and choose to take a look inside. The proprietor offers to give me a tour of the shop, and I accept, proceeding to his workshop when he invites me to see that as well. In there, he offers me a goblet of wine to help take my mind off the smell. Okay, Divination ought to be kicking in about now (I know that this is a trap from earlier attempts at the book), but it isn't. Maybe I need to accept the wine before an inner voice says, 'No, don't do that!', but if Mr. Dever has for some strange reason decided that the Discipline which should 'warn [...] of imminent or unseen danger' doesn't work here, that'd be game over.

Other odd things here: the taxidermist has decided that the last of the Kai is a suitable subject for preserving. But how does he know who I am, when everyone else in the book has had to be told? And does he really keep a decanter of drugged wine (or possibly a drug-tainted goblet) sitting around in his workshop just on the off-chance that someone interesting enough to have stuffed will pop in?

Anyway, I decline the drink, and the taxidermist just lets me go. Continuing on my way, I reach a tavern that's clearly popular with soldiers. There's an insane game going on in there as I arrive. Remember the legend about William Tell shooting an apple off his son's head with a bow? Well, switch William Tell for a soldier on horseback, change 'shooting with a bow' to 'spearing with a lance', and substitute a row of soldiers accused of cowardice for the son. Oh, and it's probably some made-up fantasy fruit instead of an apple on each condemned man's head, but the text doesn't specify, and the artists have both gone for something apple-like.

Not particularly wanting to see what happens if the lancer's aim is off, I decide to ask a barmaid the way to Brass Street. Before I can get her attention, a couple of mercenaries decide to try and supplement their pay at my expense. It costs them their lives, and gains me the respect of several mercenary captains. One offers to buy me a drink, and I can sense that he has no malign intent (so why couldn't I tell that the taxidermist was up to no good when he offered me a drink, eh?).

The captain is recruiting men to help with the siege of Tekaro to the south, and asks me to join him. I decline, but the offer remains open, and he tells me that his company will be at the town of Soren for the next two days. Leaving his table, I have another go at getting directions to Brass Street, this time approaching the tavern-keeper himself. After slamming two brawling soldiers' heads together to break up the fight, he writes me some directions, and I pay for a single room. My night's rest is disturbed by a shooting star (which seems more like a meteor than a comet, despite Mr. Williams' claims), but I'm still well-rested by the time I set off again in the morning.

Following the directions I was given, I reach Brass Street and find a Hall of Learning. Inside I see signs to the observatory, the library and the temple. From the mini-adventure I know that the observatory is where I'll find the man I seek, but in book 5 I found that strictly unnecessary detours to libraries can be a good thing, so I'll try going there first. All I find there is evidence that someone has recently removed every book that could help me find the Lorestone. Oh, and a bit of iffy gamebook design. When I entered the library, I saw another exit, and was given the option of looking at books or trying the other door. After looking at books, there's no further mention of the second door, and I'm offered a choice of moving on to the temple or the observatory. As I tend to remember section numbers (incidentally, in this book 291 forms a part of the search for the way to Brass Street), I know that that mysterious door goes to the same section as following the sign to the observatory, so it's obvious to me why the section doesn't repeat the opportunity to go through that door - even the less number-observant would be likely to notice if two of the options led to the same number. Less obvious is why Mr. Dever considered the extra door necessary.

Anyway, I go to the observatory, where I startle a group of old men who are poring over tomes, charts and maps. Only one does not seem surprised to see me, and I recognise him as the man who gave me a copy of a poem back in book 4. He reassures his companions that I'm Lone Wolf, then introduces himself to me as Gwynian and explains to me that there are people here who are prepared to kill to keep the Lorestone from falling into anyone's hands.

At this point there's a disturbance outside. Apparently my horse has been noticed, and I guess it must have a registration number on it or something, because that's enough to have revealed my presence to those who oppose my quest. We make a hurried departure via a secret door, and Gwynian tells me that the Lorestone is in the crypt of Tekaro cathedral. He gives me a Silver Key to unlock the relevant tomb, and explains how and when I should leave Varetta. I also get to help myself to a selection of items, and take three Meals, a Rope and a Brass Whistle.

At the set time I leave my refuge, following a tunnel to a copse where a horse with false number plates has been left for me. Close by is a highway junction with a signpost indicating routes to Amory (home of the lordling who wants me dead) and Soren (current location of the mercenaries who are going to Tekaro and invited me to join them). This is where I went wrong on my first attempt at the book because, not having memorised the contexts in which I'd heard the two names before, I foolishly did as advised by Mr. Dever, consulting the map at the front of the book and seeing that Amory was on a more direct route to Tekaro than Soren. It's also a point where the more narrow-minded advocates of the 'always go left' policy will come to grief. Lone Wolf's face is on 'Wanted' posters all over Amory, though this news is learned just too late to avoid capture and execution.

So I head for Soren, and Roark remains out there as an ongoing antagonist, still determined to have my blood, ready to make trouble for me in subsequent adventures. In theory, at least, though actually I'll never see him again unless I make a very bad decision in book 10 (or a perversely whimsical one in book 18). Towards the end of the Magnakai series there are several encounters with old enemies to tie up loose ends, but the Roark one is handled poorly, being on an exceptionally difficult path that can only be reached by making a complete hash of a meeting with a potential ally.

Along the way to Soren I pass through a hamlet with a prominent bronze statue. This is of the local Robin Hood/Dick Turpin-equivalent, and has a slot for making donations, should I want his spirit to protect me from robbers and highwaymen. Though it's also possible that there's someone watching, and anyone seen to put coins in the slot becomes a target for banditry, their desire for protection implying both vulnerability and ownership of something worth stealing. Not a theory I have much desire to test.

Further on, I pass another church, and see a man staggering around in the graveyard. He calls for help, and while I don't have Curing, Healing should still work. Except that the man's actually a decoy for bandits (have I switched Divination off?), and as I draw near, a dozen rogues emerge from hiding and impale themselves on the Sommerswerd. Well, they try to attack me, but what with the Combat Skill disparity and the way the Combat Results Table works, I kill the lot in the first round of the fight. I take as much of their money as I can (there's a 50-coin limit), help myself to the Mirror that one of them is carrying, and ride on.

At a ford I have to stop and eat, and both versions of the text omit the usual 'unless you have Huntmastery' when stating that I must eat a Meal or lose Endurance. Okay, so this Lone Wolf doesn't yet have Huntmastery, but given that the write-up for the Discipline states that it can be used to find something edible even in wasteland and desert, I can imagine a reader who did select it being quite put out that it apparently doesn't work here.

Eventually I reach Soren. This is on the river, and a sign indicates the cost of passage by boat to several other towns and cities. Tekaro has been crossed off the list because of the current siege, so I decide to seek that mercenary captain rather than buying a ticket to somewhere near Tekaro. Especially as the destination closest to my goal is called Eula: I'd rather not have to wade through dozens of paragraphs of small print before I can click 'Accept'.

Slight problem: the non-ticket-buying option doesn't actually allow for seeking the captain. Instead I wind up musing over whether to continue to Tekaro via Amory (bad idea) or the Ceners (not as obviously unwise, but given that that region is the home of the bad guys in book 13, I'm guessing that there could be trouble there too). Still, it's late, so I wind up entering a tavern to get a room for the night, and coincidentally encounter the very man the book wouldn't let me seek. He and his men are going as far as they can by boat, and he offers to pay my fare. Well, given the alternatives, I shan't refuse his offer.

A slightly awkward transition takes me straight to the hold of the Kazonara, which I suppose must be the name of the boat on which we're travelling. I then get some much-needed rest in my cabin, and in the morning I get my first Lore-Circle check. Lore-Circles are an addition to the rules for the Magnakai series: there are four such 'circles', each containing between two and four Disciplines. As soon as I have all of the Disciplines in a specific Lore-Circle, I get an Endurance bonus (and probably also a Combat Skill one). The text goes slightly over the top, claiming that these bonuses can raise Combat Skill 'to a level far higher than any mortal warrior could otherwise attain'. Tell that to my previous Lone Wolf - even with every bonus, he'd still only be the equal of a just-starting-book-1 Lone Wolf who got lucky during character generation.

I kept the Lore-Circles in mind when picking Disciplines at the start of the adventure. While I haven't completed any of them yet (choosing Disciplines that could help keep me alive during the adventure was another consideration), I should have completed enough to give me as much of a Combat Skill boost as is achievable by the time I reach the preposterously tough fight in book 9. But I don't yet have any of the Disciplines in the Lore-Circle I'm being asked about now. To be honest, I can't imagine many players prioritising the ability to hide and follow tracks above danger sense, improved fighting prowess and protection from psychic attacks. Expect further commentary on Mr. Dever's strange promotion of lesser Disciplines when I reach book 13 and rant about one of the most rubbish deaths in gamebook history.

The boat hits a trap (I'm definitely going to have to send Divination back for repairs), and river pirates attack. The text focuses my attention on a one-eared, split-nosed rogue who 'is relishing the thought of ending [my] life'. Yesterday I took out thirteen grave-robbers with one blow - am I supposed to be scared of one man who's been seriously hurt in at least one previous fight? I have no problem with colour text in principle, but this is like making out that opening a jar of pickles is a challenge greater than all Hercules' labours combined.

I draw my bow and try to shoot the pirate, but thanks to the unstable footing, I wind up hitting a completely different pirate. As split-nose advances, the book tells me to draw another weapon if I have one - what kind of idiot wouldn't have a second weapon? There are two slots on the Action Chart exclusively reserved for weapons, there's a hefty Combat Skill penalty for fighting without a weapon, and there were a Quarterstaff, a Mace and a Short Sword for the taking in the hidey-hole provided by Gwynian.

Anyway, I pull out the Sommerswerd and try to face the pirate, only to discover that I inadvertently decapitated him while unsheathing it (well, that's my interpretation of the one-hit kill I score in the fight). I then have to fight off a horde of berserkers, and it takes me three blows to deal with them. In the mean time, the boat's captain has fought off a number of pirates himself, and after smashing the pirate captain's head against the mast he makes a Schwarzenegger-level pun. Most of the rest of the crew didn't fare so well, though the majority of the mercenaries survived.

The boat reaches Luyen, city of flowers and wine, and I accompany the mercenary captain to the local apothecary. Of the various potions on sale, only an Alether derivative appeals to me. Browsing around town, I replace the arrows I've used in a second-hand weapon shop, and get a map of Tekaro from a cartographer. I could also buy a map of my homeland, but there seems little point unless I'm feeling homesick. Rejoining the captain, I help him carry his purchases back to the boat, and the next leg of the journey is uneventful. The boat spends the night in the port at Rhem, and the mercenaries stay on board because a company with which they have a vicious rivalry is encamped nearby, and the captain doesn't want any unprofitable hostilities to break out.

In the morning we sail on to Eula, along the way spotting refugees heading away from the fighting, and giant toad-like beasts of burden towing barges upstream. Disembarking with the mercenary captain and his men, I accompany them to their new paymaster's camp, feeling under some obligation since the captain paid my fare. The sight of Tekaro burning in the distance is none too encouraging, After spending some time in consultation with his new boss, the captain returns with plans for an assault on the city's main gate, which has been weakened by recent assaults. The troops are unhappy with this, as there are still plenty of archers guarding the gate, and the announcement of a substantial fee does little to encourage them. The captain angrily dismisses anyone who won't join the assault, and I gladly take advantage of this opportunity to dissolve whatever contract we have.

Parting with the mercenaries might have got me out of a suicide mission, but it doesn't help me get past the city's formidable defences. Walking around, I see wounded soldiers whom Healing will not help for no adequately explained reason, and spot pontoons being constructed by Ogron engineers and carpenters.

No. The ones in the book are blue. And skilled craftsbeings.

Then I notice a sewer outfall set into the city wall, and ask the Ogrons about it. They tell me it's been nicknamed the Hell-hole, because ten soldiers were sent in to explore it, and evidently met with complications. As did the ten Ogrons sent to find out what happened to them. Also, unpleasant noises issue from it after dark. I ask to borrow a pontoon to cross to the 'Hell-hole', but my request is denied on the not unreasonable grounds that the Ogrons will receive 100 lashes apiece if any of the pontoons are taken. So I have to swim across the river, losing a little Endurance owing to the cold.

Entering through the hole that presumably admitted my 20 predecessors, I proceed to a junction, noting with mild concern the complete absence of rats and other sewer vermin. After a while I reach a junction and a Mongoose blunder. At this point I'm asked if I have a map of Tekaro, and since I bought one in Luyen, the answer should be yes. But the map I bought was described as a Backpack Item (I had to ditch the mirror to make space for it), and the Mongoose text goes on to say, 'If you do not possess this Special Item...' The rules make a distinction between Special Items and Backpack Items, so either the Mongoose text is using the wrong terminology somewhere, or the map I bought is for some inexplicable reason not usable here. The original book lacks the 'Special Item' specification, and as there's no reason given for my not being able to use the map from Luyen, I'm going to just dismiss this as yet another example of Mongoose's dismal quality control and use the map. (A quick check of what would have happened if I'd had Curing reveals that using it to help some wounded soldiers would have given me a second opportunity to acquire a map of Tekaro - which is also categorised as a Backpack Item. Sigh.)

Using the map, I work out which tunnel leads in the direction of the cathedral and head that way. Further along, I see stone steps leading up to a trapdoor. I don't think that leads into the cathedral crypt, but I do remember from an early attempt at the book that it's all too easy to go past the entrance and blunder into an Instant Death, so I'd better just check. No, it doesn't lead into the cathedral, but to the city square, around 200 yards from the cathedral. The square contains many guards too unobservant to notice a trapdoor being raised in their vicinity, but probably not so dim as to fail to spot me if I try clambering out. At least now I know how close I am.

Less than 50 yards ahead, I see and ignore a side turning. And just over 150 yards after that, I spot a ladder ascending to a stone door. That adds up to something worthy of further investigation. The door is jammed from disuse and, lacking any Disciplines useful for door-opening, I must barge it open. The rules treat this as a combat, and I take more damage 'fighting' that stiff door than I did battling a baker's dozen robbers or that full-of-himself pirate. I think that's more embarrassing for them than for me, but nobody comes out of this covered in glory.

At last the door opens, and I enter the crypt. It doesn't take me long to find the right tomb, and I'm just inserting the key into the lock when the reason none of those soldiers or Ogrons came back out shows itself. A ten foot-high monster with hairy limbs and a reptilian tail advances on me. I fire an arrow - not because I expect to achieve much with it, but that might give me another section for Healing to make good my door-inflicted injuries. Yep, the arrow ricochets off the creature's scales, but if I survive this fight with just 1 Endurance remaining, that shot will have saved my life.

I narrowly miss out on one annoying feature of this final fight. Complications are to arise as soon as I've halved the attacking Dakomyd's Endurance. If my Combat Skill were a point higher, I'd have a 1 in 10 chance of striking my opponent dead every round (and those odds could be increased to as much as 3 in 10 with a suitably optimised character). So it's possible to instantaneously slay the brute, and then wind up being killed by the creature even though it's already-dead. Indeed, unless you already know the counter-intuitive way of surviving this battle, it's highly probable that you'll die as a consequence of your easy victory.

Two blows with the Sommerswerd, and the Dakomyd is at less than half-strength. At which point one of its severed limbs grabs my ankle, doing the first damage I've taken all fight (yes, the end boss joins the ranks of the 'achieves less in battle than a door'). Other parts of the monster are dragging themselves back together. It's preparing for a fresh assault. So I turn my back on the beast, finish unlocking the tomb, and open it. That's the only way to make it to the end of the book, believe it or not. You see, as has not been foreshadowed or hinted at in any manner, the Lorestone emits a radiance that paralyses the Dakomyd, and touching it grants me an insight into the creature's Achilles' heel, enabling me to slay it with one blow.

Now that I've absorbed the power and wisdom contained within the Lorestone, it becomes just a hollow sphere of - depending on which version of the text you're reading - glass or crystal (until Mr. Dever forgets that detail in a later book). But I've leveled up, and am ready to proceed to the next adventure. Good thing too, as this one has been a real slog (hence the longer-than-usual gap between blog posts), and the prospect of having to play it again does not appeal. So I'm definitely sticking with my save point policy.

To Hunt Me and Frustrate Me in My Designs

Some readers of this blog might find it strange that today I'm having a go at Dracula's Castle from J.H. Brennan's Horror Classics series. After all, I've played it for this blog before, haven't I? Twice, even?

Oddly, no. That is, each of the Horror Classics books actually contains two separate adventures, one using the odd-numbered sections, the other the evens. Jonathan Harker's misadventures take up the even-numbered sections of Dracula's Castle, while the rest of the book is devoted to the trials and tribulations of Count Dracula himself following the exsanguination of Mr. Harker. The thing is, not that long after Harker's unsuccessful attempt at ridding the world of the Count, a second visitor turns up outside the castle: the rather better-equipped Abraham van Helsing.

Stats are generated in the usual manner, and as Dracula I have the following:
Life Points 100
Speed 2
Courage 2
Strength 6
Skill 1
Psi 5
Fractionally above average, but there are some serious weaknesses in there.

My biggest disadvantage as Dracula is the need to sustain my unnatural existence. Whereas Harker regains lost Life every time the reader turns to a new section, Dracula loses Life each time, and can only regain lost points by draining the blood of an opponent (achieved by getting a total of 6 or 12 for the 'to hit' roll in combat). The last time I played as Dracula, I got killed in an avoidable fight with a wolf, having attacked just so as to have a chance of feeding.

Until I can find the secret door leading into my crypt, I can only get in and out by teleporting, which costs PSI points (or a lot of Life I can ill-afford if I'm out of PSI). I hope I shan't have to return to it often, as the search for secret doors is very risky when playing Dracula: hidden somewhere in the castle is a priest's hole, with so intense an aura of sanctity that blundering into it is automatically lethal to the Count.

Anyway, I start by teleporting to the music room. There's someone playing hymns on the piano, and my low opinion of van Helsing's musical skill leads me to conclude that it's not him. A quick look reveals the pianist to be a baby, but then I notice the wings that indicate it to be a cherub. Don't ask why the whole 'ability to play a tune on a piano' thing didn't make me suspect that this was no ordinary infant.

The cherub has a PSI ability of its own, which enables it to hurl garlic-flavoured fireballs at me. The rules governing how and when it uses that ability are not massively helpful, even if I assume that 'not' is supposed to be 'now' in the phrase 'Throw one die not to determine how often the creature will attempt to use this ability'. Is the fireball-flinging in addition to or instead of a conventional attack? And, given the cherub's low PSI score, there's a 50% likelihood that it'll kill itself by using Life points to fuel fireballs. In fact, after just two rounds of combat, the cherub is down to 16 Life, so it can't afford to conjure the third of the five fireballs that the die indicated it would try to use.

I survive the fight with just 2 Life points left. Given the drain that comes from turning to new sections, that means I'll drop dead as soon as I leave the room. But I don't have any choice, so I fling open a door, step into the sitting room, and presumably disintegrate. The rules of this half of the book need a major overhaul if it's to be made playable.

A Furnace Where There Used to Be a Guy

Fangs of Fury, the last FF book by 'Luke Sharp', came out at the start of the summer holidays. Early on in the holidays, a group from my school was going to north Wales for a climbing holiday, and I was among the sixth formers who also went along (in theory to help keep control of the younger pupils, though the others turned out to be at least as immature as their juniors). I don't recall where or when I got a copy of Fangs, but I do know that I saved it for the coach journey to Wales, which means I almost certainly played it without dice. The fact that I won the adventure also suggests that I wasn't using dice - while the book is by no means unfair, I have yet to win it since I committed to playing by the rules. I'm pretty sure that the first time I did try it properly, I got fireballed out of existence by an insane Genie thanks to a couple of unlucky rolls.

My character is an ordinary soldier in the besieged Citadel of Zamarra. Nobody special, nobody of noble blood, just an average, everyday army grunt. I stress this because there was a fan theory some time back that all three of Mr. 'Sharp's Titan-based gamebooks (plus half a dozen other titles) all had the same hero, but I don't go along with the theory on the grounds that:
a) It contradicts numerous details from the actual books.
b) It's utterly ludicrous. Yes, I came up with equally ridiculous ideas as a teenager, but I grew out of them.

Anyway, just before the start of the adventure, the Captain of my troop asked for a volunteer, and I was impetuous enough to step forward. He takes me to see the King and the twelve Wizards of the Mage Order, and Astragal the Wizard explains the plot. We're under siege because the Dark Wizard Jaxartes wants to conquer south-western Khul, and the fact that the entire Mage Order is gathered here gives him an opportunity to wipe out all serious opposition to his plans. His minion Ostragoth the Grim has gathered together a vast army to attack Zamarra, and somebody has sabotaged the magical defences that would usually cause Dragon statues to breathe fire on any attacking forces, so only the citadel walls stand between us and complete destruction.

However, it's just possible that if some insignificant nobody of a soldier were to get out via a secret tunnel, they could reactivate the Stone Sentinels by thrusting a magical Torch into the flame at the core of the volcano known as the Fangs of Fury (yes, this book is worse on vulcanology than your average Hollywood blockbuster). Guess what I've volunteered for. And let's take a look at the volunteer's suitability for this vital and highly dangerous mission:
Skill 12
Stamina 22
Luck 9
And that's without fudging (otherwise Luck would be a little higher, Stamina correspondingly lower). In with a good chance as long as I can steer clear of Instant Deaths and random fatalities.

And get the job done within the time limit. This limit is not chronologically fixed, but based on how long it takes Ostragoth's forces to smash through all fourteen Citadel walls. You see, one of the Wizards, concerned that I might be the deserting kind (or even the traitor who put out the Sentinels' flames), has convinced the rest to have me fitted with a rather special bracelet. It cannot be removed until I've completed my mission, and if the Torch has not been lit by the time the innermost Citadel wall is breached, the bracelet will kill me. This detail convinced one of my fellow gamebook bloggers that the King and Mage Order are actually the villains of the book, even though it's clear that not all of them approve of this method of keeping me focused on the task in hand.

I am provided with some Black Cubes, each of which will temporarily fireproof me, and some nondescript armour that will make me look like an ordinary fighter rather than one of the troops from the Citadel. Then I'm taken to the secret tunnel. The Captain wishes me luck, and then orders me to succeed at my mission so as not to besmirch the honour of the regiment. The tunnel entrance is resealed behind me, and I fumble in the dark until I blunder into a mound of rubble where the roof has collapsed. There is a side tunnel, so I try taking that. Something bites my ankle in the darkness, but I don't drop down dead, so it can't be venomous.

I get indications that I'm heading towards the sea, and take a turning that ends in a wall of sand. The sand is surprisingly loose, and I'm able to dig up and drag myself out onto a beach. Ostragoth's fleet isn't far off (which provides some explanation for why the King and Mage Order didn't try using the tunnel themselves), and a nearby sergeant mistakes me for part of the army and orders me to help shift a bogged-down siege engine. Seeing little profit in facilitating the attacks that could bring about my death, I run off.

Losing any pursuers in the sand dunes, I come across a Great Orc who's burying something. He assumes that I'm spying on him, and attacks. Despite massively outclassing him, I take a couple of wounds in the fight. Still, I win in the end and, remembering from a previous attempt at the book that what he was burying really isn't worth the additional fighting that goes with acquiring it, I hurry away without further ado.

After a while I reach a stretch of beach that, judging by the spiked pits with dead Zamarran troops in, has been boobytrapped by the invaders. I get lucky and manage not to blunder into any of the unsprung traps. Once I'm away from that danger zone, I hide in some bushes, and after a bit, my bracelet glows to indicate the fall of a Citadel wall. A small boy approaches the bushes and says he'll tell the soldiers where I am unless I give him something. Reflecting that, while a clip round the ear might be considered 'something', it's unlikely to prove an effective bribe, I give the brat a coin, and he offers to show me an escape route in return for another four of them. I pay up, and he takes me to a cove where a small boat has been concealed. Pointing to a nearby island, the boy tells me of a ship that I can take from there to somewhere beyond enemy lines.

I'm about half way to the island when a tentacle flops over the side of the boat. In view of the flimsiness of the craft, I think it better not to get into a fight here if it can be avoided, and keep still in the hope that the owner of the tentacle will assume that the boat is just an unappetising bit of driftwood. The plan works, but takes long enough that another wall is breached before I am able to move on. The current has taken me off-course while I've been waiting, so I paddle hard to ensure that I come ashore in the right place.

Proceeding towards the harbour, I encounter fleeing crowds who warn me that Ostragoth's Press-Gang is here. Hurriedly diving through a nearby door, I come face to face with a group of sailors and men wearing Ostragoth's insignia, all of whom stare at me. Moments later I am clubbed unconscious.

Someone throws a bucketful of water over me, causing me to come round just as my bracelet lights up again. Good thing they didn't leave me to regain consciousness of my own accord, or I'd be closer to death than I realised. I'm in a ship's hold with around thirty other captives. The ship's Captain, escaped criminal Cory-Ander, announces that we're going to be part of Ostrogoth's fleet for the next 25 years, unless we die before our time is up. He then gets us to form into two groups, and the one I join is assigned to work up in the rigging. This turns out to have its good points, as I escape attention when Pirates attack the ship. After they loot it, they set it ablaze, so I dive into the sea and make it to a drifting raft just before a Slaughterer Shark takes an interest in the other swimming sailors.

Just after the next Citadel wall is breached, another sailor swims to the raft. I help him aboard, but he's a big guy, and the raft can only just bear the two of us. He decides that I'm unnecessary ballast and attempts to throw me off, but I outclass him so much, it's ludicrous, and within moments he's shark-food. Some time later, the raft reaches dry land, and I head for a nearby settlement.

The villagers are taking stacks of grain and rice to a central store. I sit and watch them for a while, regaining Stamina for resting. A little girl carries a bag of rice past, and the bag splits. I help her pick it up, as she says she's late for school. Once the sack has been refilled and handed in, the girl disappears into a nearby building, and I hear screams and the swish of a cane. I enter the building and find a teacher beating the girl for being late. There's also a stick-figure-based alphabet on the board at the front of the classroom, so I make some mental notes about how it works.

Back when I first played this adventure, I missed every opportunity to get the key to the alphabet, but the first time I came across a message in it, I was able to work out the meaning based on context, and noted down all the letters I'd identified, which made translation of subsequent messages a lot easier. That may have run contrary to the author's intentions, but if you don't want readers to crack your code unless they've been given the key, you should either explicitly forbid it or use something tougher than a basic substitution cypher.

When I attempt to explain the reason for the girl's tardiness, he tries using the cane on me. I use my sword on his cane, and rather more forcefully repeat myself, and he concedes that I make a valid argument against further chastisement. Then a trumpet sounds, and people hurry over to the west side of the village. I decide to check that the girl is all right, and when an elderly monk arrives to collect her from the school, she points me out to him, and he tells me to accompany him.

Back when I was being briefed on my mission, mention was made of the Wazarri, an obscure religious order that has some connection with the Fangs. They helped set the Sentinels up in the first place, so they could be of assistance in my quest. What are the chances of this monk belonging to the sect, eh? He does, of course, and he hopes that I'm the prophesied One. A rather odd Test ensues, in which I have to find my True Path and indicate the Awareness of my Being by throwing a die and moving on a kind of triangular game board painted on the floor. It turns out that I'm Level 6 (out of a possible 9).

Based on this, the monk teaches me the stick-figure alphabet (so was I not supposed to recognise its significance in the classroom, or are there ways of meeting him without going to the school?) and tells me the name of his religion. Apparently, doing so means that he'll die in a year and a day, but he reckons he's not much longer for this world anyway, and knowing the name-that-cannot-be-uttered (which should probably be referred to as the name-that-should-not-be-uttered, since he did just utter it, but will pay a terrible price for having done so) may help me out, and I'm the Torchbearer who may save his people from their oppressors. Interesting to see the slight uncertainty in that prophecy.

Following his directions, I leave the village, thereby evading the Nazgûl knock-offs patrolling the road that leads from it. From here I can either go along a road that might be the one depicted on the map at the front of the book, or I can enter a forest. I've been into the forest on previous attempts, so I know a lot of what to avoid in there, whereas the road is new to me. I'll stick with the familiar, as I would like to win the book if possible today.

The trail leading into the forest forks after a while. A stick-figure letter has been carved on a tree-stump, and the method I used to remember the alphabet this time works well enough that I can work out which direction the carving indicates without having to refer back to an illustration. There's another stick-figure at the next junction, and again I translate with ease. The path leads to a river valley containing a tall tree with a more detailed inscription, which prompts me to climb up. There are more of those flame-proofing Cubes on a platform at the top, and a creeper swing that enables me to get across the river.

Continuing through the forest, I encounter a two-headed fire-breathing Serpent. When I try to fight it, a second such Serpent drops down from a branch, carrying in its coils a Kragaar Warrior (any similarity to an alien species invented by Arnold Rimmer the year before this book came out is almost certainly coincidental), who attacks me with an axe and a flaming scimitar, and fails to land a single blow on me. The Serpents surround me with a wall of flames, so I use a Cube to help me get through unscathed.

Further on, the path skirts a smooth mound. I decide not to touch the mound in case it's alive, and carry on until I reach a dried-up river bed. This splits into three, and the turning I take soon gets overgrown. When I try to cut my way through the bush blocking my way, it screams and attacks me with thorny creepers. I prune it into submission, but can see more such bushes up ahead, and opt to turn back and try another way. Incidentally, the fifth Citadel wall must be remarkably sturdy, as it's been under attack since I was on the raft, but hasn't yet fallen.

After a while on my second choice of path, the vegetation thins out and I reach a river with water in. There's a bridge across it, which I remember to be booby-trapped, so I try wading, and ford the river without difficulty. On the other side, several figures are seated around a camp-fire, cooking something that smells good, but I ignore them in favour of investigating a fist-shaped flame over to my left. It blazes on a hill where a female knight is fighting a horde of Ostragoth's troops. I wade in, killing three Garks (why is it only ever the Skill 7 opponents that manage to hit me?), and find that the woman has slain more than twice as many opponents, so only the two of us still stand. Without speaking, she indicates that I should follow her. Not wishing to annoy someone who's obviously a much better fighter than I, I do so.

She leads me to a fortress surrounded by a ring of fire, with a squadron of Goblins and their Dark Elf leader outside the wall of flames. We move closer to the fire, and she is able to conjure an opening in the flames. We pass through, and a couple of Goblins notice and give chase. The opening closes up before they've made it through, and they die rather horribly.

There aren't many people left in the fort, which is is a pretty bad state. After consulting with my companion, a squire addresses me as the Torchbearer, and instructs me to follow him. He leads me to a chamber in which a wounded knight sits on a throne, vacant seats to either side of him. I realise that I'm supposed to pick a chair, and this is some kind of test. Reflecting on the hand at which faithful servants are often said to sit, I pick the appropriate chair, and it's the correct choice.

The squire shows me a map of a complex of caves, explaining that it shows the True Path to the Fangs of Fury. He recites an incantation that tells me to find the Key, heed the Warnings, carry the Blocks and place them correctly in order to open the door to Fury. I'm given food and allowed to rest, and then the woman who brought me here takes me back out through the wall of flames, pointing me towards a distant flat-topped mountain.

Climbing the mountain is hard work, as I've not acquired Elf-Flyer wings, whatever they are. Still, I eventually reach the top, where I find three holes leading into it, forming the points of an equilateral triangle, 100 paces to a side. I jump into one at random, landing in a torchlit chamber. There's a wooden plaque in it, with an inscription that I translate. Nothing that will help me pick the right exit, but it's useful to know for the endgame. Or would be if I didn't still remember that aspect of it from almost 25 years ago.

The exit I pick leads to a cave containing blocks of stone, each carved with a triangle and a number. There was a triangle shown in one of the caves on that map, so I may now have my bearings. Slipping one of the blocks into my backpack, I pick the exit that, if I've worked things out right, should lead me to blocks with crosses on. It does, so I take one of them as well. The fifth Citadel wall finally succumbs to the attacking armies. If wall six is equally tough, it might still be standing by the time I reach the end of the adventure.

From there I head to the cave with the crescent-marked blocks, and then as returning to cross-block cave would lead to the fall of the sixth wall, I detour through a cave shown to be empty on the map. But it's not completely empty: it has stick figures chalked on the wall. They spell out a variant on one of the most clichéd bits of graffiti ever to be spraypainted onto the side of a public building. I am not amused.

Still, from there I can get to the cave with the cube-marked blocks (judging by the map, it's actually a square, but given the significance of Cubes in this adventure, I'm prepared to accept it as a simplistic two-dimensional representation of the three-dimensional shape), thence to the one with blocks that have a circle on, and on to one of the caves containing blocks with a mushroom symbol (for some reason there appear to be two such caves, but as I can only carry up to six blocks and there are six different designs, the duplication cannot indicate that I need two mushroom blocks. Maybe it's just to confuse anyone who missed the map.

Anyway, I proceed to the cave where a key hangs on a cord. Next to it is the stick-figure inscription that told me so much on my first attempt at the book. Heeding the warning it provides, I acquire the key without setting off a trap, and another one appears in its place. Passing through the other mushroom block cave, I confirm that the blocks are identical to the other mushroom ones, and discover that the sixth Citadel wall must have been put up by a right bunch of cowboys, as it's already been breached.

The next cave I enter contains numerous phials. The last time I got this far, I opened one, and that was the end of my adventure. Unless there's a warning in one of the 'empty' caves I didn't visit, that's a hint of the unfairly lethal 'Luke Sharp' of Star Strider and Chasms of Malice. Still, it's not a mistake I shall repeat. As one of the caves I didn't check out is accessible from here, I take a look in it to see if it contains a warning - and narrowly avoid falling to my death when gaping holes open up in the floor, forcing me to jump towards an exit while carrying half a dozen big stone blocks. I've had enough of Mr. 'Sharp's games, so I return to phial cave, and proceed from there to the exit.

The exit is a large metal door with six holes in it, each one marked with a different block symbol (cube has now become box, which is a bit sloppy). As I have the set, I'm able to unlock the door by placing the blocks into the relevant holes. If I didn't, the seventh Citadel wall would turn out to be made of spit and tissue paper as I trudged back to phial cave to try and find the way to whichever blocks I was missing.

But I do have all six blocks, so the door opens, giving me my first view of the Fangs. Three paths lead into the volcano, and I go straight ahead. Further on, the passage splits again, and the turning I take leads to a small chamber containing what appears to be the corpse of one of Jaxartes' Mage Warriors. I don't take a closer look, as a chunk of the ceiling almost falls on me and, reluctant to push my Luck any further, I turn back and try the other way.

Descending a flight of steps, I encounter a not-so-dead Mage Warrior. As I don't have a Wand, he's my toughest opponent yet (in this adventure), but he only manages to injure me as often as the decidedly inferior Great Orc and first Gark that I fought earlier. The steps lead to a cavern containing a chasm spanned by a bridge, with seven openings in the far wall. Two monks appear and tell me that the number of White Cubes I have accumulated determines which of the exits I will be able to take. Having missed the instructions about White Cubes, I have to take the lowest one.

First I must cross the chasm. A dark figure with a flaming spear tells me that I must take the hardest path. Flames erupt from the chasm, and I have to use up almost half of my Black Cubes to avoid getting singed. Considering the low Stamina cost of getting burned here, if I encounter more harmful fires later on, and don't have enough Cubes to keep me intact, I will be very annoyed at having had to use so many to evade minor damage here.

Following a not-very-challenging fight against a couple of Flame Warriors, I find evidence that using those Cubes might not have been such a waste after all. There are gaps in the floor up ahead, and looking into the first one, I see a steep drop to an inferno, in which the remains of a Goblin are merrily blazing. To leap each gap requires a successful Stamina roll, and in my unburned condition I have no trouble getting across them all.

I proceed to a room that I think contains two charred corpses plus Jaxartes, though the wording of the descriptive text implies that he too is a burned cadaver. But even if he is, he still gloats at me and then vanishes. Which is mildly encouraging, when I think of the last time I was taunted by the Wizard who was the major villain of a Fighting Fantasy book.

Sheets of fire, more harmful than the ones I negated on the bridge (mild glower) force me to use up just over half of my remaining Cubes. The next turning I take is a bad choice, as it leads me to a chamber containing the corpses of many elderly monks, plus the smouldering remains of several Mage Warriors. A simian creature with a wand tells me that I'm trespassing in a sacred place, and shoots fireballs at me. Only one hits before I make it to an exit, but I could easily have wound up roasted there.

Again I chose poorly. The exit I chose leads to an encounter with Jaxartes and three Mage Warriors. The Warriors inexplicably melt, and Jaxartes is so annoyed that he magically causes the tunnel roof to collapse on me. This is like one of the arbitrary Instant Deaths that infest the later stages of Mr. 'Sharp's first two FF books - except that it's not an Instant Death. It can be fatal, but I get Lucky and only take severe damage.

Dragging myself out from under the rubble, I carry on to the heart of the volcano, only to find that the Flame has been extinguished. Jaxartes stands between two statues of warriors, gloats some more, makes himself bigger and starts hurling fireballs. A cube with 50 locks in it appears in front of me. Having deciphered that inscription (and still remembering the clue I translated on my first try, which told me the same thing), I know which lock to put the key from the caves in, but even if I didn't, the way this 'puzzle' is constructed means that no reader will ever try at least a couple of the wrong ones - there is no section 0, and nobody's going to have forgotten that section 1 is the start of the adventure.

Trying a wrong lock means being hit by one of Jaxartes' fireballs, and losing either a Black Cube or more Stamina than any previous Cube-consuming event in the Fangs. Not having to worry about the fireballs, I'm not too peeved, but the obligatory use of Cubes on lesser damage earlier on is still unfair.

Anyway, when I turn the key in the correct lock, it rekindles the Flame at the heart of the volcano. Jaxartes suddenly regrets having chosen to stand gloating on the exact spot where it used to be. I light the Torch, watch as Jaxartes is consumed by the Flame, and then pass out from the heat. While unconscious I dream of floating back through the tunnels, and when I come round, I'm elsewhere, being taken care of by a girl. She tells me that I'm in the Wazarri monastery, and shows me a crystal ball. In it, I see the Sentinels animating, and barbecuing Ostragoth's hordes. The girl tells me that the Wazarri will celebrate my deeds in ballads, and my bracelet drops off my wrist and turns into gem-studded gold.

Once I've recovered from my ordeal, I return to Zamarra, where the King promotes me to Commander-in-Chief of all the troops there. I have a momentary encounter with the Captain who was looking for a volunteer way back before the book began, just to underline the fact that I'm now his boss, and then I set off to find out what new responsibilities come with my increased rank.

Quite a satisfying ending, there. Initially I thought that devoting four sections to what happens once the right lock is selected was a bit excessive, but now I've read them, they help give an epic feel to the climax of the adventure. The book still suffers from many of the flaws of the author's earlier books, but they have been toned down enough that it's not unplayable or ridiculously unfair. I certainly don't think it's as bad as Cybe did. But she doesn't find Battleblade Warrior as objectionable as I do. Different players, different tastes.

Nobody Must Go Down the Mine

Just over a year ago I played Andy Holmes' Halloween-themed Tunnels & Trolls adventure Dark Harbour for this blog. That's not the only T&T solo with a spooky side by Mr. Holmes that I own, so today I'm having a go at the other one, The Haunting of Tilford's Hollow. As with Harbour, I got it from the author on eBay some time ago, but I haven't yet had a proper go at this one.

The text states that Haunting can be played with a freshly-created first level character, so I may not do as badly at this adventure as I have most of the T&T solos I've played for this blog to date. Especially as, in a departure from the norm, I am assumed to already have basic equipment (a weapon, clothes, footwear), which saves me having to spend a significant amount of my starting gold on them. It appears that there are opportunities to go shopping in the early stages of the adventure, so I might save some money for that rather than just going for the most expensive armour I can afford.

Time to see what I do have. The dice give me a mostly slightly-below average character, but with a Constitution way too low to have any realistic chance of survival. Change species to Dwarf, and I have something more viable.
Strength: 20
Intelligence: 10
Luck: 13
Constitution: 10
Dexterity: 9
Charisma: 5
Speed: 13
That Charisma score means I'm unlikely to encounter the one element of the plot that I remember from looking through the adventure when I first got it - proving so irresistible to a female Dwarf that she drags the player character off to ravish them.

I live in the town of Rosil, a pleasant place, but in seemingly terminal decline owing to the closure of the nearby mines. The other day, a stranger stirred up a little bother by asking for directions to the abandoned mine at Tilford's Hollow. People don't like to talk about it, as it's reputed to be haunted. Speculating that that mine might not be exhausted, and that getting it reopened could save the town, I resolve to look for it myself.

Before heading off I call in at some of the local shops to better equip myself, starting with Dolin's House of Armour. There's a sale on there, so I can get a reduced price on anything I buy, but there's no guarantee that what I want will be in stock. I get lucky, and find a complete set of scale armour. No chance to ask any leading questions about the Hollow, though, as the shopkeeper is not the talkative type.

Next I try Glusur's Outfitting Emporium. The proprietor is a veteran of many battles, and has beads and trinkets woven into his beard. He's also offering reduced prices, but has all the basic equipment in stock - and might have less conventional items (within reason) as well. Though tempted to ask if he has a Fez for sale, I take a more practical approach, and buy some rope and a lantern.

Once I've made my purchases, I try asking him about the Hollow: while my poor Charisma means I have a less than 1 in 6 chance of a favourable response, the worst possible outcome is being ejected from the premises. Unexpectedly, I make a good impression, and Glusur tells me that the mine is haunted by Matthew Tilford himself. Desperate to make his fortune, Tilford got trapped in an abandoned mine shaft in Dark Water Crag, and his spirit remains there to this day, purportedly striking dead anyone who encounters it.

While my main weapon is a two-handed job, I can conceive of times when I might benefit from having a knife handy, and I still have enough money left for a small one, so I call in at the town's third and final shop, Madame Kumli's Swords and Polearms. After buying a poniard, I ask Madame Kumli about the Hollow, in case she can add anything useful to Glusur's story. The initial roll here is Luck-based, so my chances of success are significantly higher, and I am successful again. I don't do so well at the follow-up Charisma roll, though, so she advises me to have nothing to do with the place - but at least she's still talking to me.

I have the option of taking her advice and abandoning the quest before it starts. As there are no lives at stake, there's probably no penalty for doing so, but it wouldn't make for a very interesting ending to this post, so I shall persist with my possibly insane plan. The following morning is wet and windy, but that does not deter me from setting off towards Dark Water Crag.

Along the way I'm attacked by a wolf, but one swing with my heavy mace crushes its skull. That was the easiest of the possible random encounters here, but even the toughest-looking opponent wouldn't necessarily be as impossible an opponent as the ones who killed around a dozen of my previous T&T characters. Moving on, I reach a fork in the path, and take the trail leading to a craggy region, rather than the one that plunges into a forest.

Rocky outcrops soon overshadow me, and I'm suddenly ambushed by Goblins with daggers, spears and nets. Unluckily, I roll the maximum possible number of Goblins, which means that this is going to be a tougher fight. Well, it would be except that an unlucky roll results in my getting netted in the second round of combat, after which the Goblins are able to poke me with their spears without fear of retaliation, and I wind up as a roast dinner.

Despite that rather abrupt ending, that was a lot fairer than most T&T solos. If I'd rolled a lower number of Goblins, I might even have managed to pulp the lot of them before the net could entangle me. Based on what I experienced of the adventure, it would appear to be suitable for first-level characters, which is a much rarer occurrence than it should be in my opinion.

One Who, On a Lonely Road, Doth Walk in Fear and Dread

Like the last two of the Sagas of the Demonspawn and the first of the Cretan Chronicles, I got Ian and Clive Bailey's Forbidden Gateway gamebooks in a January sale at Chiesman's. It must have been January, as I remember reading some of the first book, Where the Shadows Stalk, for the first time while waiting for the pantomime I was reluctantly attending to start. I didn't use dice, and failed at what I think is the one point in the book where it's possible to fail just by making the wrong decision - taking a wrong turning, winding up at a dead end, and getting smothered by the more-gruesome-than-it-sounds wind beast.

Back when I first designed my gamebook manager, FG was one of the first systems I adapted it to play, and I made attempt after attempt until I finally beat both of the books. While not overly unfair, these are tough if you play them by the rules. Once (and only once) I got the maximum possible stats at character creation. That character was one of the quickest to die. Indeed, it's not possible to die earlier in the adventure than he did - only the fact that that wasn't the only time I failed in that manner makes him 'one of' the quickest.

More recently I ran both books for a group of people at rpg.net. They failed the first one 8 times, and the number would almost certainly have been a lot higher if I hadn't been using 'save points' that spared them the need to replay a lot of the early encounters.

Let's see how well I fare this time. First up, character creation:
Strength 7
Stamina 14
Mentality 5
Endurance 10
Dexterity 5
Utterly, utterly doomed.

The adventure starts when I receive a letter from my old friend Charles Petrie-Smith, telling me that strange things are afoot in the Welsh village where he lives. After an earthquake, a local eccentric was found suffering from strange burns, and raved about things in the mines before dying. Other locals have contracted a disease that causes a mysterious fungus to consume their bodies, and an unnaturally wind-resistant mist threatens to cut the whole area off. Petrie-Smith believes that dark forces have been awakened by the tremor, and seeks my help in dealing with them.

I get the steam train (it's a non-contemporary setting, though that becomes a lot more obvious in book 2) to Corris, the nearest station to the afflicted village of Bryn Coedwig, and get a lift some of the rest of the way on a farmer's cart. Once our paths diverge, I take a path that runs along a steep ledge at one side of a valley, and catch sight of a wall of fog up ahead.

Entering the fog, I find it a little more substantial than usual, and perceive coloured lights in it. Just walking on is hard work, leaving me sweaty and short of breath, and a sudden pounding noise that fills my head threatens to disorientate me and cause me to fall over the edge. Indeed, I do fall over the edge, and make a desperate grab at some dangling vegetation. Rolling better than I did when playing with maximum stats that one time, I manage to hang on, and to drag myself back onto the path, worn out but still alive.

Continuing on my way, I emerge from the fog bank to find that, judging by the height of the moon, more time passed than I was aware of. Exactly how much time is impossible to ascertain, as my watch has stopped. The road ahead runs between hedgerows, and as I continue towards the village, I start to get the impression that someone or something is keeping pace with me on the other side of the hedge to my left. Usually I'm not a fan of 'fake' choices in gamebooks, but I think the one here is justified. In view of the nightmarish quality of the situation, it seems quite appropriate that the same thing happens no matter what I decide to do.

With my knobkerrie (a type of club, of African origin, which implies interesting things about my background) I prod at the hedge, trying not to sound scared as I ask if there's anyone there. In answer, a figure bursts through the hedge. Though roughly humanoid, it's made of plant matter, and as it stands before me, the roots and shoots that comprise its face reshape themselves into a likeness of my own appearance. With a cry of, 'I am you!' it lunges at me, twig-fingers closing around my neck.

My sub-par stats are actually beneficial in some ways at this point. The changeling attacking me has modeled itself on me so precisely that it shares my mediocre Dexterity, and is no stronger than I, so I'm able to break free without too much difficulty. I drop my knobkerrie in the struggle, though, so I have only my fists as weapons in the fight that follows. Considering how inept we both are as fighters, the brawl is over surprisingly quickly, a couple of particularly lucky rolls enabling me to do double damage twice. I'm barely injured by the time my attacker is compost, and within moments only the weals on my neck remain to prove that I didn't imagine the whole encounter.

The rest of the journey is uneventful, and at the Petrie-Smith residence I am welcomed in by Charles' daughter Lucy, who explains that her father is in bed with a fever. She's not surprised to hear of what I experienced on my way there, and after I've had something to eat, she shows me to her father's study, where a camp bed has been set up for me. Before turning in, I do a little snooping around, because I'm not expecting this character to survive the night, so I'll look through the journal on Petrie-Smith's desk while I can.

It was written in the 1880s by George Hindlett, an engineer at the local quarry and mine. Much of its content is unremarkable, but the last half-dozen entries, written in much shakier handwriting than the rest of the book, are more obviously relevant to the current situation. They start with an account of an earthquake on the 23rd of March 1884. Two days later, Hindlett was able to check the mines, finding them largely undamaged, but a sensation of being watched by an unknown horror kept him from checking out the new lode. By the next day, inexplicable mechanical failures were occurring, and those who tried to leave the village found themselves back there, unable to explain what had happened. The day after that, tentacled monstrosities showed themselves, mind-controlling the miners and quarrymen and turning them into a mob that almost killed the diarist. After further such horrors (including 'nocturnal visitations by snuffling things'), Hindlett resolved to take a load of dynamite into the mine and seal the new lode. That's the final entry, so clearly he never made it back, but from the fact that Bryn Coedwig hasn't been a Lovecraftian hellhole for the past few decades, it's also evident that he had some degree of success.

With my bedtime reading done, I turn in for what will be an eventful night. As I sleep, I dream of being on a grassy plain, surrounded by mist. An old man with a spear stands beside me, and some other consciousness overwrites the contents of my mind with an irresistible compulsion to follow him into the mist. He leads me to the foot of an ancient oak tree in a ruined village and introduces himself as Myriddin, who has slept beneath the Welsh hills for centuries, awaiting this time of need, and now chooses me as his champion. He has brought me to the border between life and death, sleep and waking, to face the Wild Hunt. If I prevail, he will enable me to call on the Hunt for assistance. If I fail... well, it won't be pleasant.

Instructing me to wait beneath the oak, Myriddin hands me his spear and prepares to leave. Before he goes, I ask him about the 'great evil' he mentioned, and he tells me that an evil which serves the Outer Darkness has been entombed beneath the valley since the dawn of time, and now seeks to break out. Not very informative, really. He advises me to guard the spear, as its spirit blade is the only thing I have that can harm the dead, and then leaves.

Strange lights and an oddly mobile shadow appear in the remains of a mill. I stay where I was told to wait, and don't investigate. The mill starts to shake, and shingles from the roof fly at me, but I stand my ground, and they fall short. The lights go out, and a bolt of lightning strikes a ruined building, setting it ablaze. I shelter from the storm under the tree - after all, that worked for Homer Simpson, didn't it? The burning ruin appears unaffected by the fire. As I watch, intrigued, lightning strikes again.

D'oh!

A falling branch hits me, but the damage isn't lethal. The fire in the ruins has disappeared, but now cold blue flames spring from the head of the spear and burn down the haft to my hands. I grit my teeth against the pain and endure the additional damage, as the consequences of abandoning the spear are almost certain to prove fatal for this character.

An unnatural wind springs up, and I hear the sound of horses' hooves. A group of faintly luminescent dead men ride deceased horses into the village, accompanied by a pack of unliving hounds. I brandish the spear at them, and they halt. Their leader, dismounting with the sort of difficulty you'd expect to be experienced by someone whose sinews are decaying, identifies himself, assumes that I am to be their prey tonight, and sets two of his hunters on me. Their weapons do both physical and psychological damage (Stamina and Endurance), and while I manage to strike one blow against a hunter, they hit me enough times to shred my already fragile sanity.

I wake up in a strange room. Getting up, I look out of the window and see a sign that tells me that I am now a resident of a 'Home for the Deluded'. But the book does not concern itself with whatever horrors confronted asylum inmates in the 1920s or 1930s, so that's the end of this adventure. Considering the variety of hideous fates that can be met in these books, I got off pretty lightly. Probably a lot more so than the inhabitants of Bryn Coedwig.

Both Forbidden Gateway books are very tough, this one probably more so than the other, but given the genre, it's not entirely unjustified. A fairly ordinary man should have a tough time when pitted against otherworldly monstrosities from prehistory. Besides, I could name a lot of other gamebooks that are far more unfair than this one.