Fighting Fantasy – Page 3

Sorcery! – The Crown of Kings

The Fighting Fantasy gamebooks by Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone were blockbusters of the era. Now let’s head into the grand mini-series of gamebooks in the lands of Kakhabad: SORCERY! – THE CROWN OF KINGS!

In 1982, Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone, founders of Games Workshop, released the book ‘The Warlock of Firetop Mountain’. Intended as an introduction to tabletop role-playing games of the era, the book’s choose-your-own-adventure format mixed with simple dice-based combat proved massively successful, giving rise to a full series of books – Fighting Fantasy. With over 65 books in the series by a legion of authors and illustrators, the series’ legacy continues to this day. Come along with us as Cybe and co play through each one – with no prior knowledge, no hints or walkthroughs and no cheating!

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And here we are – after travelling through three books (and dying horribly in each of them), we arrive at the finale of Steve Jackson’s Sorcery! series, The Crown Of Kings! The Mampang Fortress stands before us, in the distant mountains – and within, the dread Archmage! Think we can do it? Well, first of all we need to get to the fortress, and that’s not as easy as it sounds…

Our trek resumes in the Low Xamen foothills. The fortress is in the distance, clearly visible against the sky. The route winds through the mountains, and there are clear signs of life around the trail. Before too long, we arrive at three caves – our first choice in this book. That’s quite nice, and really sets the tone for the adventure in that it has not one but three choices. Definitely gives you the feeling that this is the big conclusion to the epic. Which, of course, is a sentiment that’s echoed by the book being twice the size of a typical Fighting Fantasy book!

I settle into the cave that’s furthest away, in no small part because there are hoof-prints outside which causes me hope that whoever may be inside would be friendly. Instead, I find a satyr. She’s quite friendly. Well, I mean, she’s not aggressive and doesn’t attack me. Well, I mean she doesn’t attack me because she’s dead. But I guess that’s as friendly as people in the Low Xamen foothills can be!

Feeling a bit perturbed, I leave that cave and stick my head into one of the others, hoping that perhaps we can find some treasure. As I head into the second cave I am met by a terrifying wailing sound. So horrific and so haunting is it, which the text asks if I wish to head in. Drawing my sword, I venture onwards, fearing that I’ll meet whatever it was that killed the satyr. The source of the noise is a Jub-Jub – a small fuzzy critter that defends itself by wailing loudly. Startled, it runs off. Well, at least the cave is safe!

The Jub-Jub’s cave contains a small glass bottle, which holds a little scrap of paper which features writing in a mysterious language. I figure this is quite enough cave-diving, and decide to press onwards with my travels. I push on into the mountains, choosing to risk crossing a potentially rather dangerous rope bridge. Shortly thereafter I catch sight of a large nest up in the Cliffside but, knowing that the area is packed with exceptionally vicious bird creatures I decide not to gamble quite that far.

Sure enough, it’s not long before a Birdman decides to swoop down and peck at me. Nasty bugger it is, too – but easily dealt with by means of a hefty dose of fireball spell. Boom. Hurling a fistful of flame at the birdmen seems to cause their feathers to ignore and them to tumble out of the air with a smell similar to roast turkey. The next obstacle we come across on our trek through the mountains is nothing less than a rope. It’s not an angry, living rope that tries to snap at me, oh no – it’s a rope swing. I have the option to grab it and swing across to the other side of the chasm, all Indiana Jones like. I decide that no, I’m not feeling especially suicidal today, and take the long route around.

The trek through the mountains in the first part of this book is deadly. I was left with the sincere impression that Steve Jackson really hiked up the difficulty in this section, and left the player weaving their way through a series of instant deaths. There are doubtless numerous important items littered around the area, and I really don’t think that I was able to collect any of them aside from the piece of paper that we mentioned earlier. But eventually, with much effort, we wind our way to the fortress itself. Of course, we need to survive a deadly rock-slide before we can get to the door, oh no!… But fear not, because thanks to the WAL spell, which creates a rather handy little magical barrier to keep us safe from the tumbling boulders, our hero is able to elude this terrifying trap and make their way to the door to the fortress itself!

The Archmage’s fortress is a terrifying sight, decked with foul spikes and evil gargoyles that leer down on the player ominously. So ominous and fearful, in fact, that you lose one Skill point until you get into the fortress itself! That’s pretty harsh, there’s no other way to put it!

Getting into the vast gate that surrounds the fortress, however, is another matter – we can sneak in, or make a run for it while the guards are looking in another direction. It seems that sneaking in is significantly easier than I thought because, as I draw closer, I realize that they are slouching around drinking from flagons. Oh, silly drunken guards, you never change. Once I get through the gate, I’m extremely close to accessing the fortress proper. Not a bad day’s work – we camp out for the evening.

During that night, the Goddess Libra appears before us in a vision. She tells me that she is pleased with my progress, but that she cannot help me once I am inside the fortress. Oh gosh, thank you sooo much! Instead, she states that she is aware of a hidden entrance into the fortress, and tells me that I can access it by deducting 92 from any paragraph. This is one of those ‘if the paragraph makes sense, then it is the right one’ type of a deal – not one that generally care for personally because my idea of ‘making sense’ isn’t necessarily the same as anyone else’s, if I’m honest. I tend to prefer the more specific ‘if this is correct, the paragraph will start with a specific word’, but… well, it’s all an anti-cheating system really, isn’t it?

Arriving at the entryway to the fortress, I figure that the best way to get inside is the old knock-the-door-and-run-away trick. When the guard sticks his head out and finds nobody there, I slip past – only to run face-first into three other guards! I mean, can’t fault them, they’re clearly better than the ones at the outer gate! As the four of them rush towards me, I cast DUM – a spell which causes one of the four guards to trip and knock himself out. The remaining three are dispatched easily enough! So far, so not dead.

The entire fortress is packed with guards. I am able to sneak through a door to the right of the main hall – it’s exceptionally rusty and squeaks something fierce, but I’m lucky in that I can get through without alerting the guards. No sooner have I got into one of the hallways am I confronted by a group of, uhh… oh dear. Well, I’ll describe this encounter as tactfully as I can. A group of Black Elves meet me and, before combat begins, they make a comment about how disgusting my skin colour is. Black Elves, as I’m sure you can guess, are elves with black skin. We could go into a discussion here about why the defining feature of them that signifies that they’re ‘evil’ is the dark colour of their skin, but I won’t go into that here. Instead, the book offers me the chance to laugh it off and try to befriend them, which I choose – instead, the book states that I make a similar comment back to the elves, which can only be described as exceptionally racist. My character then continues, unabated, to make more and more racially charged comments – completely without my input as a reader – telling the elves that they ‘must surely find it hard to see themselves in the dark’, until the elves have had quite enough of me. The book tells me that I have learned that the elves’ sense of humour doesn’t extend to laughing at themselves (!) – because, of course, it’s the elves who are to blame for being upset at being subjected to my character’s racist tirades.

The elves quickly chase my character out of the room, much to my relief and ever-lasting embarrassment. I’m soon able to find my way to a large set of double doors, which I open by means of whispering the password that Libra had given me earlier. This section of the fortress is occupied mostly by Birdmen – before too long, I hear their footsteps approaching. I hope to elude them by diving into a nearby room. No sooner have I shut the door, though, than I notice that there are three other Birdmen standing in the room I’ve just entered! I try to talk my way out – hoping that I don’t start spewing racial insults at these poor people!

I chat with the birdmen for a while, politely asking them about their hobbies and if they have any news about the current affairs in the fortress. To my amazement, they start chatting away, telling me that the Archmage has been spending a lot of time in his tower lately, and awaiting guests. Hey, I wonder if that guest might be me! Having proved that good communication and open sincerity beats casual racism any day, I leave the Birdmen to their lunch and begin my favourite Fiighting Fantasy gamebook pastime – wandering blindly around hallways until I find something of interest!

Sure enough, I find my way into a greasy and ill-kept room. It is occupied by a creature called a Mucalytic, It’s easy enough to kill it, but it’s a monster which does something nasty to you if it hits you three times. I, mercifully, don’t find out quite what that ‘something nasty’ is, because I kill it before it gets a chance to do that. My reward is a bottle of cooking oil that it was drinking at the time I interrupted it. Eww.

Leaving the chamber, we come to a tunnel which ends in a pair of doors. One leads to a room containing an old, grime-encrusted machine. After playing around with the machine for a while, I figure out that it’s an automatic blade-sharpener, so I polish up my sword nice and fine. There’s no other way out of the room with the machine, so I head back to the other door. This one contains an inferno. Yeah, just… a literal inferno. “This is where the fire lives”, I guess. The book gives me the choice of either diving blindly into the inferno or, y’know, not. Choosing not to simply loops me back to the hallway, and because there is only the machine room, I don’t have much of a choice. With nowhere else left to go, I dive into the inferno room. Hey, maybe it’s just an illusion or… nah, I die. Horribly.

So ends the tragic tale of Steve Jackson’s Sorcery! An adventure which saw me die in a field of flowers, drown in human excrement, starve at a lakeside, and finally just hurl myself into a chamber of fire. It’s been a wild journey, we never did get to the Archmage or recover the Crown of Kings though. I know that when you do eventually encounter the big bad, you face an especially challenging situation which requires you to out-think your enemy rather than outfight them. No spoilers, but it requires careful use of the Zed spell!

Sorcery! is a heck of a good series, and certainly one of the best products to bear the Fighting Fantasy label. Although perhaps it has aged… somewhat…

Cause of death: Jumped into a fire because of lack of alternatives.

Sorcery! – The Seven Serpents

We resume our adventure through Kakhabad in this, the third volume of Steve Jackson’s Sorcery! series. After our inauspicious trek through the city of Khare, which ended with a most undignified dump in the town’s sewers, things can only get better! At least, that’s what we hope… The vast Baklands await, a huge wilderness with few inhabitants, loads of monsters, and more environmental hazards than a Pentex landfill.

Our adventure wastes no time, for shortly after leaving Khare we are attacked by a swarm of giant crows. Unusually large and vicious, the beasts swoop down to attack, and I opt to fend them off with my sword. It looks momentarily grim as I’m sharply outnumbered, but after only a few rounds the fight is interrupted as a large eagle swoops in to save the day.

The eagle is the loyal servant of the King of Analand, and has been dispatched to deliver a vital message to me. Word of my mission has reached the Seven Serpents – vicious minions of the Archmage – who now rush across the Baklands to bring warning of my quest to their master. Our mission is now to not only reach the end of this region, but take out the seven monsters during the trip. Sound good? Yeah, we’re screwed.

I rest for the night near an old tree. In the morning, I wake to find that the tree’s branches have taken the form of a face. The tree advises me to seek out a hermit who lives in a nearby cave – I tend to trust the words of pieces of wood, so I head in that direction. The hermit, as it turns out, is a wise man called Shadrack who greets me well, providing enough food to heal my injuries and regaling me with the tales of the serpents.

As it transpires, the serpents were created by the Archmage from the remains of a slain Hydra. The heads of the serpents have been imbued with the power of an element – fire, earth, sun, water, air, heart, and potassium. He also tells me that each one has special weaknesses. That’s useful and all, but it doesn’t really help me in finding the buggers. He does give me a Galehorn however – a magical item. Ooh, thank you!

Thanking Shadrack, we head off northwards, eventually stumbling into the hunting ground of a desert-dwelling beast called the Baddu-Beatle. “Fine” I say, and ready up a good ol’ ZAP spell. Hurling it at the beast, the bolt crackles off its heavy armoured shell, making it only angrier. Lovely. “Right” I say, grabbing my sword and swinging it at the giant beetle. It’s at that point that I discover its penchant for spraying acidic blood when injured. Lovely. Just… just lovely.

I stumble away from the fight with the beetle, rather the worse for wear. Dented and bruised, I head through the wilderness until I hear the echo of a distant cackling from a remote rocky outcropping. As I approach, a skeletal figure shrouded in black robes emerges and beckons to me menacingly. Now, at this point I’m quite badly injured from the fight with the beetle and haven’t really had much of a chance to recover, so it’s not too smart for me to get into this fight – but on the other hand, the skeletal figure has a big full-page illustration, so I figure it’s important to go check it out!

The creature is a Deathwraith, a powerful undead fiend. Fearing launching into a fight with it without proper defences, I quickly cast the MAG spell, hoping that it will defend myself from any deathly magic that the undead monster possesses. Unexpectedly, the Deathwraith vanishes entirely, revealing a hermit! The monster was entirely an illusion. Gosh, the Baklands are quite populated, it seems! And also, hermits tend to have some rather potent magic!

The man is infuriated and attacks me, but I fend him off and choose to spare his life. Angrily, he gives me all of his possessions if I promise not to harm him. He hands over some valuable gold, a throwing disk (which allows me to get a first strike in combat) and some magic powder. Nice! I then ask if he knows anything of the seven serpents, only for him to point behind me and say “There’s one right behind you!” I’m… not really the kind to fall for that trick, but the fact that he collapses dead from sheer terror immediately after saying that is a bit worrying…

I turn around, and the Moon Serpent is upon me! The world turns black, and the serpent is all that can be seen, shimmering with a silvery light. At this point, the book asks if I wish to make a fire, so I quickly fashion one with a small tinderbox and, boom, we have a potent tool which just so happens to be the serpent’s weakness! The battle is none too challenging, as the serpent now has a rather low stamina score. I slay it, and it leaves behind a curious crystal orb. I take the orb and, feeling a bit relieved, head off to the north. One down, six to go!

That night I settle down to sleep, only to be awoke during the night by a blazing light. I open my eyes and what do I see before me? The Fire Serpent, trying to steal my backpack and fly off with it! If there’s one thing I can’t stand, its backpack-thieves – especially serpent ones! So what do I do? I grab onto my backpack, and am promptly carried off into the air with it! Well that’s… not ideal. The serpent flies off with me dangling under it, until eventually I release my grip and fall, fall, fall…

I wake up from the nightmare (dammit, Steve Jackson! Normally I have to go to a Goosebumps book for that kind of twist!) to find myself under attack by three bandits. I guess they like to pick on people who are asleep and dreaming of falling. I kill the lot of them, and then spend some time trying to remember what it means to dream about falling while trudging off to the north. Ahead waits the Forest of Snatta.

As I draw close to the forest, seven translucent figures rise from the ground before me. They float around ominously for a while and speak in hushed ominous whispers, much like how the world does each time I drink too much. Gosh, this is a strange adventure. Anyway, the figures tell me that they are spirits, who have adopted translucent forms to move through this world, and wish to share powerful wisdom with me. When I ask that they reveal their true forms, however, they show that their faces are those of hissing, terrible snakes. Yeah, definitely reminds me of my last drunken revel.

The spirits, revealed to be the minions of the Archmage, depart, taking one of my skill points with me. Like, ouch! Anyway, I push on into the forest. I’m given the chance to exchange any of the items in my backpack for various bits of leaves and twigs – I’m sure some of them are useful, but I don’t bother – and before long I catch sight of a little red snake darting through the undergrowth. Oh, hello there plot point!

I follow the snake until it arrives at a tree. Drawing my sword, I approach cautiously. No sooner have I done so than the little snake darts up the tree, transforms into the Fire Serpent, and hurls flames down at me. Like, ouch! Damn, my stamina is running very low. So I use the HUF spell, blowing the Galehorn that Shadrack gave me at the start of the adventure. It reduces the difficulty of the fight by some, although it’s still pretty frantic and leaves me severely wounded. Like, three stamina points left kind of wounded.

Killing the Fire Serpent gives us no fanfare, as I’m quickly ushered onwards to choose which route through the forest to continue. I opt to head to the leftmost path, and settle down for a short meal. My stamina goes up to five. Then a bear attacks. God damn it! I really don’t want to risk the fight, so I use the LAW spell to command the bear to sod off and leave me alone. It works, but the cost of the spell is four whole stamina points. Once again I’m on death’s door.

Eventually I arrive at the shore of a lake and settle down for the night. In the morning, I wake and try to figure out how to cross the lake. I walk along the shoreline, but can’t seem to find any way around the lake. I call out for anyone who might be nearby to help, but there is no answer. I try walking around again, with no luck. What is this, the never-ending body of water? What a crap sequel for the never-ending story! Eventually I just slump down and determine to wait for something to happen. I wait, and wait, and wait, and eventually the book tells me that without any means of summoning the ferryman, my quest is at an end. Oh poo.

This is a bit of a disappointing ending. Okay, a hugely disappointing ending. I had hoped that we wouldn’t run into dead ends like this – not when the Sorcery! series has your character possess access to Libra, the goddess, who can intervene to help on your adventure. This seems like the opportune moment for her to aid in some way. But ah, to no avail. Well, join us for the next part, The Crown of Kings! Maybe we will do better then!

Cause of death: Gave up, sitting on the lakeside.

Sorcery! – Kharé, Cityport of Traps

One of the neat things about Jackson’s “Sorcery!” series is that the difficulty increases with each book.I don’t mean this in terms of combat, though. It increases in terms of complexity in how the gamebook works.

For instance, The Shamutanti Hills is a rather straightforward adventure. You move from village to village, on a journey through the hills, aiming to reach the city of Khare. There’s no special items needed in order to ensure you finish the book, it’s all very straightforward, with the biggest range of choices coming from the branching pathways that take you to your destinations.

Khare ups the ante by requiring you to hunt for a few items in order to get through the door at the other side of the city. I can’t remember exactly which items they are (I don’t want to spoil the adventure for myself before I go back in), I seem to remember it was some kind of key or lock or other McGuffin. Either way, the ‘find a specific item’ requirement is infamous in Fighting Fantasy books, dating back to the first ever one in the series, which as I’m sure everyone will remember fondly – having slain the warlock of firetop mountain, only to curl up in a fetal ball and cry because you couldn’t unlock the chest he’s stored all his treasure.

The following book, The Seven Serpents, raises it further by making each of the things you need to track down an enemy, one of the serpents, which you then need to dispose of. It uses the full range of environments to make this more challenging, and the game includes a slight twist in the fact that you only need to slay six of the serpents. How’s that for thinking outside of the box? And it’s taken even further in The Crown Of Kings, where there are multiple branching solutions to get to the end – one of which even involves playing with the narrative itself via time travel!

So you see, the structural complexity of the adventure is ramped up in each book. In this book, we start out arriving at the city of Khare, with the clear goal of getting to the other side of town. Not that easy. Hell, in my playthrough of The Shamutanti Hills, I didn’t even get to the city! But we’ll give this one a shot. I’m using the same stats as I rolled up for the first book, but without any of the items that this adventure doesn’t let me start out with. So if you want to see how I handled the first part, give my playthrough a read first.

Done that? Okay, let’s get this underway!

We are treated to a bit of history of the city of Khare, before we arrive at the south gate. The guards do not seem to take kindly to visitors, as the moment they see me they throw me into a prison cell for the crime of not bribing them. Ah, it’s going to be one of those cities, isn’t it?

While in jail, a fellow prisoner tells me that the only other gate out of the city will only open if I recite a magic spell to it. The four lines of this spell are known only to four of the town’s most prominent citizens. He then steals all of my food while I sleep. Bastard. Think it’s safe to say at this stage that this is going to be one of those very short playthroughs…

It quickly becomes evident that the inhabitants of Khare are all a bit mad. Possibly not quite as mad as the inhabitants of Port Blacksand, but definitely madder than the inhabitants of Innesmouth. Funny thing about Innesmouth, when Lovecraft wrote his story ‘Shadow over Innesmouth’, he described all the inhabitants as having a certain look. It’s… a little bit worrying. But hey ho, let’s push onwards!

I’m given the option of following a bunch of kids down a road. Assuming that these kids, who are all wearing backpacks, are Khare’s version of chavs, I decided to follow them from a safe distance. Before long I catch sight of some city guards, and am told that I hide in a nearby house. I haven’t done anything illegal or that would require me to hide from the guards, I just assume that my character has learned that it seems best to avoid the law enforcement around here unless he wants to be locked up overnight again.

Inside the house I’m hiding out in, I find a group of black elves. I’m instantly worried that this is going to spiral off into racially insensitive territory again, but instead it just seems that these elves are just sitting back smoking weed. Oh dear. Sigh. I decide to be deliberately obtuse to the game at this point, and sit back to smoke some weed with them. Apparently the medical benefits have not been exaggerated, as it heals some of my stamina (although the odds of it doing this were about the same as the odds of me getting violent and attacking them).

I try to ask them for some advice, but I’m unable to get much sense out of them, so I head out of the house and carry down the road until I get to a fountain. It’s at this point that the full effect of the weed I’ve smoked must have kicked in, because one of the fish in the fountain tries to talk to me. I have a rousing discussion with the fish, during which it gurgles at me. I’m then given the choice of stealing some coins from the fountain, but I choose not to do this in case it upsets the fish. Fish are known to have strong emotional connections to large pieces of metal that people throw into their homes, after all.

My next attempt to speak to an animal occurs when I see a horse standing at the side of the street. Unlike the fish, this horse is sensible and doesn’t talk back. Reasoning that a horse may be useful later on in this adventure, I decide to steal it. I climb on board, and the horse kicks into a gallop and charges down the road, leaving me grabbing on for dear life. Did I mention that this book is rather odd?

Eventually the horse kicks me off and runs into the distance. I’m now completely lost in this city. I spy two huts, and opt to enter one. The sign on the door reads ‘chainmaker’, so I assume that it belongs to a man who makes chains. Indeed, nobody’s home – or more accurately, the owner of the shop is upstairs, so I decide to raid the entire store. I test my luck and find three gold coins. I’m then asked if I want to test my luck again, during which I find some blue and bilburry juice. I’m then asked once more if I wish to test my luck, which causes a trap to fall and catch me. I was lucky all three times, so I assume that if I was unlucky on that third roll, the entire shop would explode or something.

Anyway, I’m abruptly rescued from the chainmaker’s trap by the prisoner I met earlier, in exchange for giving him all the items I’d found in the store. Thanks, mister prisoner who I suspect was following me around this entire time purely to take more items from me as well as all those meals you stole earlier. I leave the store three luck points lighter and head into another hut instead. I’m desperately hoping that whatever I find in the next hut will be vaguely more useful, or at most I’ll be able to keep ahold of without some nasty bugger stealing it all!

Hut number two, and I find a kitchen. Sweet aromas fill the air. I look around and notice the chef, a man with a horrifying jellyfish head. My sanity breaks at this point. “Oh for the love of… what fresh new hell is this?” I mumble aloud, and decide just to kill the silly abomination of nature.

I chuck a spell at it, but the book tells me that no such spell exists and charges me five stamina points for the information. So instead I just beat the jellyfish headed man to death with my sword.

Stealing a mirror and a scroll from the kitchen, I run down the street until I come to a travelling fair, which seems to have set up right in the heart of the city for some unknown reason. I decide that this will be a fun chance to indulge my thirst for wanton cruelty, so I go to watch the dancing bear show.

Hoping to see some ridiculous cruelty seems in keeping with my actions to date, but to my horror I find that during the show I am pickpocketed and all of my gold is stolen. I’m not given the chance to chase down the pickpocket and stick a sword in them, and the man with the dancing bear seems to quickly vanish into the crowd, making me quite convinced that they were in cahoots with each other. So I’m now penniless. Eager to win it back, I push on through the fair until I find a boxing ring.

Inside, I watch a barbarian fight an ogre who is far stronger than himself. Unsurpringly, the ogre wins, and I notice that this seems to be a fight to the death. Because I have no self control in this book, I jump at the chance to enter the arena and try to fight this giant and powerful ogre that has just ripped a grown man’s torso apart. Amazingly enough, I do indeed win, and am rewarded with a puny fifteen gold coins.

And, because it’s a fair, I immediately waste a few of those coins on a prize machine. This prize machine is rather interesting, because there’s six possible prizes and an imp chooses one for you, for only two gold coins. Expecting that I’ll probably receive something vaguely useful to my quest, I give it a shot. The imp gives me an apple. Not too bad, because I have no provisions at this point… except that it’s a rotten apple, which proceeds to make a mess over the inside of my backpack. I’m now convinced that the whole city of Khare is conspiring to give me a really crappy day.

I stumble blindly through the city streets, holding on to my precious rotten apple in the hopes that I’ll find a man with a dancing bear so that I can throw the apple at them. No such luck. Instead it starts to get dark, and soon it’s about time for me to get some rest for the night. I won’t sleep rough on the streets of Khare overnight, I’d probably wind up getting eaten by a sentient brick wall or something similar!

I spend another eight gold on room and food that night in a local tavern called ‘The Wayfarer’s Rest’, which is located near the center of Khare. That’s rather worrying, as I an now sure I’ve missed at least half of the spell I need to get out of this city. Nevertheless I opt to spend the night at this tavern, which is full of singing sailors and whoring wenches. A friendly sailor offers to buy me some ale, and I opt to pry him for information.

Over the course of several pints, he tells me that one of the lines of the spell is kept by a vampire, and I’ll probably need to head to the local graveyard. He also tells me that I should never kiss statues of gods on their cheeks. I then buy him a drink in return, and he beats me over the head until I fall into unconsciousness. I wake up in the hold of a slave galley. Getting a little tired of meeting complete creeps all the time, I shoot a lightning spell at the side of the ship, aiming to sink it and everyone onboard just to teach them a lesson.

Climbing through the hole I’ve made in the rapidly-sinking galley, I see that it’s now morning. Lacking any real sleep for the night, my patience is growing thin. I eventually catch sight of a rather unusual monument that seems to have been constructed in the middle of a city street, to which a variety of elven-type figures seem to be worshiping. I push my way to the monument, keen to see what the source of their curious behaviour is, and see that it’s just a small pool of water. I innocently ask one of the elves what it is, and all hell breaks loose.

Among cries of ‘unbeliever’ and ‘heretic’, a group of the elves try to throw me into the water for some weird baptism ritual or something similar. I’m in no mood for this, so I draw my sword… which causes the elf to shoot me with his laser eye-beams!! The group drag me off to their special elf prison, from which there is no escape… no wait, I’m still getting over the laser eye-beams. deep breaths

Anyway, not particularly wanting to spend my whole life sitting in yet another jail cell, I pray to Libra to break the lock and get me out of here, which she does. I urge a fellow prisoner to join me in my escape, and he’s so grateful that he restores my luck to its initial level. Feeling pretty lucky, I decide to head into the world-famous ‘Gambling Halls of Vlada’, which is just down the road from where I’m now standing.

I manage to lose every single gold coin I have. Again I’m penniless, and just when I’m wondering what the next awful fate will befall me, I see a door that reads ‘portal room’. Hoping beyond hope that this is a portal outside of Khare and maybe to a tropical island somewhere I can relax and spend the rest of my days in sunny happy climates, I head in. The ‘portal’ in question, it turns out, is a hole into the sewer which one of the security guards throws me into. For no good reason, either. I just assume that the security in this casino are so strict that they’ve dug a massive hole into the sewers to throw troublemakers into. Not a bad idea all in all, but still… blah.

So I’m in the sewers of Khare, piled up to my neck in sewage, muck, slime and vast amounts of human and animal feces. Literally up to my neck. Okay, so the day can’t get much worse… then I hear a rumbling from a nearby pipe, as it prepares to shoot a whole load of excrement right into my face.

Inside, my soul breaks apart, just a little bit. I now have to decide if I wish to stand firm and take a fountain of poop to the face, or hold my breath and dive into the mountain of poop that I’m buried up to the neck in and WHY IS THIS HAPPENING TO ME OH GOD WHY….

I hold my breath and duck. I emerge from the mess feeling very sick, and very eager to get out of the sewers. In an especially sadistic twist, the sewers consist of a massive maze full of dead ends. And filled with Slime Eaters, horrible little burbling monsters known for being on the cover of this book. I manage to kill the first two, but the third one eventually drags my stamina down to zero, leaving my body to sink in the depths of the sewers beneath Khare, penniless and smelling of poop. Somewhere in the macrocosm, far beyond this small cityport, Libra is watching on and having a great big laugh at my expense.

This has to be the most humiliating death to any Fighting Fantasy book I’ve played. I didn’t care for this book when I was a kid, but as an adult I really enjoyed it. I didn’t find a single line of the spell, and I don’t care – I just had LOADS of fun! It’s just so utterly crazy and insane that it’s difficult not to love this. I haven’t had so much fun with an FF book in weeks, and I highly recommend this one to you. Yes, you. Why are you still reading this? Go play the book, now. Tally-ho!

In my next post, we’ll be tackling the third part of Steve Jackson’s “Sorcery!” series, ‘The Seven Serpents’. After having escaped the nightmarish hell on earth that is Khare, we are growing closer to our goal. But the foul seven serpents are flying their way across the great plains, bringing with them news of my quest to the Archmage of Mampang. So as well as getting across the Baklands and all its inherent dangers, we will need to do our best to track down and prevent the seven serpents from sabotaging their mission. The question is, just how much of a total mess will I make of this rather simple quest? Stick around and find out.

Meanwhile, following the death in this book, I have the urge to take a long and hot shower…

Cause of death: Just… just gross.

Sorcery! – The Shamutanti Hills

If someone asked you to travel from your home in Analand across the land of Kakhabad, across the Shamutanti Hills and over the Baddu-Bak plains and the dreaded Forest of Snatta to get to the fortress of Mampang that lies in the peaks of High Xamen, and recover the Crown of Kings from the villainous Archmage of Mampang, you’d probably say “How did you come up with all those silly names?”

But that’s what Steve Jackson did really well. That, and make up encounters with very strange people, in very odd locations, which were all very colourful and strange. In those early, slightly trippy days of Fighting Fantasy, Steve Jackson brought a lot of the weirder elements. Ian Livingstone brought the risk of being instant-killed by a horde of zombies. They complimented themselves perfectly, like Rob Grant and Doug Naylor did when writing Red Dwarf.

So when Steve Jackson wrote a series of four books, all of which continued on from each other to form one massive and epic adventure, it was a really neat twist. Like many of the early FF books, it had an experimental magic system, and artwork by the amazing John Blanche, whose unique flair gives this series a fantastic atmosphere. In fact, I like his artwork so much, it’s pretty much all I’ve used in this post. Enjoy!

The storyline is simple enough – you need to cross from the borders of Analand to the port city of Khare. Later books in the series take you further in the journey, but for now, our focus is on crossing the Shamutanti Hills and getting to the city. I had a copy of this book as a kid, which I got at an indoor market in Blackpool one year. The eyes on the monster on the cover were covered over in black marker pen, possibly because his despairing expression scared a previous owner of the book. I do regard this as the better version of the cover, though, because the newer one has a rather grotesque dismembered body littering the floor by the manticore, it’s not even a cartoonish body, it’s simply too realistic and grotesque.

So let’s get things underway. The book can be played in two ‘modes’, basic and advanced. If you choose basic, it works just like any other FF book, then you play as just a regular adventurer. If you go for the advanced mode, you take a slightly diminished skill score but have access to a variety of magic spells. The spells are listed in a separate section in the book, and all have a simple three-letter name like ‘zap’ or ‘dim’, which makes them easier to memorise – and memorise them you must, because you’re not allowed to look at them once your adventure has begun!

And given that I have managed to win a grand total of zero Fighting Fantasy books so far in this blog, I am clearly ready to charge head-first into an advanced escapade!

My stats are very fortunate when starting out – a full 12 in luck, 20 in stamina and 10 in skill (the highest that you can have for a wizard-type character in this game). I also have 20 gold pieces, and only two meals which I can eat only when instructed.

The adventure begins as I stand at the gate from my homeland of Analand. I have to admit, any country that marks its borders by building a giant wall around it tends to be a little suspicious in my book, and I’m now starting to work on the theory that I’m not so much ‘liberating’ the crown as instead ‘sneaking in and nicking it’ or something similar. Nevertheless, a guard in a silly hat opens the gate and lets me out, telling me that he won’t wish me a safe journey because I’m pretty much dead meat.

A short walk from the border gate, and I’ve found my way into a trader’s village. Given that I have only twenty gold, I take the chance to buy a few useful items, but I’m unsure at this point what would count as useful. I know immediately that a lot of the objects listed are used in spells, because I remember them being mentioned in the spell section of the book. I play it a little conservatively and don’t buy all the items I want right away. I end up with a bag of monster’s teeth, and a bottle of Bilbury Juice. I remember that the teeth are useful in a few spells, but the juice’s use eludes my memory. It does, however, refresh some stamina, so maybe I can use it as a quick energy drink.

I leave the village, and quickly encounter my first combat sequence of the game, in the guise of a pair of bandits who demand that I pass over my worldly goods (namely the bag of teeth and bottle of juice). They should be easy enough to dispatch by hand, but I’m keen to try out the magic system. I recognise one spell from the ones I’m allowed to choose, and select that one, which creates a force-field. The bandits hammer on the field for a while, before they get bored and go home.

Pressing on in my travels, I soon encounter an old man who seems to be stuck in a tree. He explains that he was chased up the tree by some elves, who stole all his belongings. I help him down, and he gives me a little riddle about a monster who protects a key. It’s not very useful at this stage, only really telling me that the monster in the riddle may be a bit near-sighted, so I convince the old man to go home so that I can steal some honey from a nearby beehive. I manage to swipe the honey without being stung by the bees, which will serve as a spare meal. Lovely!

I press on until the sun is going down, whereupon I make camp for the night. I dine on honey that night, and fall asleep beneath the stars. During the night, I am woken by the sounds of elven creatures playing in the river, tormenting fish and the like. The book actually asks if I wish to call out to them. Knowing the way that elves are racially profiled in these books, this would count as suicidal, so I hide from them and am lucky enough to not be noticed. The next day, I continue my travels.

Crossing at a bridge, I push on through the undergrowth when something unusual happens. The flooring beneath me collapses, and I am about to fall into a trap… when the book gives me the option of NOT testing my luck. This is really odd. why would I choose not to test my luck? This makes me curious, I choose this option. Sure enough, I collapse into the pit trap, only to wake up being tied and bound by a group of headhunters. Not quite sure what the point of this was…

I try to blast them with a spell, only to be told that I have now learned that magic does not work when my hands are bound. This is a mistake I won’t make again, I can attest to that. Meanwhile, the dark-skinned headhunters who wear animal skins and have bones through their noses start to gather around a large boiling pot filled with human bones and oh god this is so politically incorrect right now.

I’m unsure if now is a good time to pray to the goddess Libra to free me, or if I should sit tight and wait for the cannibals to start doing their impersonations of the crows from Disney’s “Dumbo”. That’s another point that I’d neglected to mention about this book – in desperate times, you can pray to your goddess for salvation. She can help free you if you’re trapped, or you can ask her to restore your stats or cure you from a curse/poison, but you can only choose to invoke her once during the adventure.

It’s a bit of a gamble, because I was hoping to save this for later, but I’m not really wanting to think about what might happen if we let this silly escapade go on any longer. My prayers are answered as clouds start to gather and rain pours down, extinguishing the cooking fire and sending the natives fleeing at this terrifying display of typical British weather. I toddle along on my merry way.

Before too long, I find my way to the entrance of a goblin’s mine. Deciding to be especially greedy, I slip into the mine and poke around for a bit, until I find a processing room where the minerals are shoved through machinery by a large ogre, resulting in a few pretty gems coming out of the other end. The other end of the machine, that is. Not the ogre. We don’t want to think about what comes out of the ogre’s other end. Any way, I kill the ogre (with my sword this time, rather than risking a spell) and take the gems.

I head down from the hills and into a small village. Hitting the nearby inn to unwind, I decide to spend the evening chatting to an old man, because old men often have strange wisdom and are usually powerful wizards in disguise. It seems that this time it was just a local farmer, because he tells me a little bit of advice (informing me that there is a lady who lives in a cabin that I should probably avoid) and giving me an apple. I don’t think it’s a magic apple, but you never know!

The local inn rips me off for a full 5 gold pieces for a night’s dinner and bed, but in exchange I do manage to get my stamina points up to their full level once again. The next day, I head across the hills and make route towards the unfortunately named village of Dhumpus. I feel sorry for anyone who ever has to admit that they’re from a village called Dhumpus. The people of Dhumpus seem nervous, possibly because all the people from neighbouring villages make fun of their village’s name, but also because I’m carrying a sword. So as to avoid a diplomatic incident with the noble village of Dhumpus, I leave my weapon to one side and chat with a few of the locals. Sadly, this all goes down badly when I say something insulting (possibly “So what’s it like being from a village with a name that sounds like a genital disease?”) and wind up being chased out of town. To make things a little more entertaining, I’ve managed to leave my sword in Dhumpus, meaning that my skill now has a -4 pentalty, bringing it to a mere rating of 6.

I make camp for the night, and the book asks me to roll to see if I am attacked by a random monster. Sure enough, during the night a wolf attacks me, and I have to cast a spell to fend it off (because with my skill of a mere 6, I’m liable to fall over and hit my head on a rock, resulting in instant death). I cast a spell which transforms me into a twelve-foot tall giant, which causes the wolf to flee in terror.

I don’t want to use my remaining provisions, so when I’m told to eat, I don’t. Instead I chug down the Bilbury Juice, as I still can’t remember what spell it has any use with, and make my way into the next village. And here is where I display a total lack of any kind of common sense whatsoever. The villagers, many of whom are sickly and missing limbs, flee from the sight of me. Some of them lock themselves inside their houses. I decide that they must be hiding something, so try to make friends with a family that is cowering in terror. Only after shaking hands do they tell me that they have THE PLAGUE!! And although I thought it required a bit more than just a handshake to catch the plague, I’m also now infected. Joy of joys. Silly question, but if you’re reading this, do you remember if Bilbury Juice was a cure for the plague?

It seems that the book was not satisfied to simply give me the plague, because it then decides to give me something even worse – a little pixie companion. Her name is Jaan, but I call her Navi. This charming little creature asks if it can accompany me along my journey, I decide to allow it in the hopes that I can feed her to a monster at some point. Navi goes on to tell me that the next village is quite large and populated with very annoying children who are running wild.

A little word about the kids in this village, and this is something that’s quintessentially Steve Jackson – there is a local festival going on at the moment, a day during which children and adults swap roles. The kids, of course, take this a step too far and run riot. I initially thought of checking out one of the local sights, but decided not to risk it in case I run afoul of the Children Of The Corn. This little town offers a place to stay, but at a cost of 9 gold for bed and food – I opt to pay for this by handing over a gem, as I only have seven gold pieces left. I go to sleep, hoping that the children of the village won’t decide to tie me up and feed me to a rancor overnight.

I wake the next morning, and I’m sure that Navi laughs at me while I spew up part of my lungs as the plague causes me to lose three stamina points. I hate this little pixie, and I’m sure that it is plotting my untimely demise. This suspicion is later confirmed to be correct. I pick a route to lead me to the next stop on my journey, and the pixie cheerfully advises that yes, this lovely and merry field full of sweet-smelling flowers is definitely the quickest route. So off I go, through a field full of black lotus flowers, on the advice of Jaan the Demented.

It’s only by the time I start to see all the skeletons of previously-deceased adventurers that I realise that the pixie’s plan has succeeded. Sure enough, the scent of the flowers is poisonous, and I die there in the field. All I can hope is that I have the strength remaining in my body to grab Jaan and bite her little pixie head clean off. It’s a fair death, because it gave me the choice of using a spell to determine if this route was indeed the best route. I was foolish enough to trust an evil, demented pixie who has no doubt lead many poor adventurers to her field of death over the years.

This is a fun adventure for sure, and definitely has that classic Fighting Fantasy feel that is so unique to its time. I’d forgotten how much fun this was, how unique it feels, and hopefully if you’ve not played this before you’ll want to give it a shot!

Cause of death: Damn you, Jaan!!