FF 40: Dead of Night
I remembered nothing about this book until I started reading it, and then I kept recognising things! Strange how memory works. Anyway, it's by one of my favourite FF writers, Stephen Hand (with a co-writer) and one of my favourite artists, Martin McKenna. There's a colour map inside the cover by Leo Hartas.
You play a warrior-priest, a Demon Stalker, and the Demon Lord Myurr, a Snake Demon, has kidnapped your parents; your objective is to find them and stop whatever Myurr is up to. You get to choose three special talents from a list of eight; I went with Banish Undead, Holy Circle (a defensive spell) and Speak Demon (which should be called Read Demon really, it lets me understand text in the demonic language). I cheated by giving myself maximum skill, staminal and luck scores. There is also a novel Evil score, which starts at zero and increases if you do evil, selfish or cowardly things -- this becomes important at the end of the book.
I begin by visiting my home village, to find that all is not well. The village priest tells me my parents were found dead a few days ago, and were buried, but after some supernatural goings on he realised that they are actually missing, and their supposed corpses are in fact demons! I have to go to the cemetery, where I hear screaming coming from under the ground, and then two demons burst out of the soil. I use Banish Undead to get rid of them (are demons undead though? Discuss). There's nothing left to do here, so I set off to look for them.
My first port of call is to pay a visit to my friend Sharleena, who can speak to spirits and get information from them. I get to her without incident (avoiding one encounter by hiding from an approaching wagon), and I watch her summon a big scary demon who is compelled by her power to tell her that my parents are somewhere north (not very helpful really, as as I started at the southernmost point on the map, so I had already worked out I was heading north). He then rips Sharleena's throat out, and I have to fight him. I win, but in the process Sharleena's home burns down. It's probably better to not be friends with a Demon Stalker.
Moving on, I find some peasants burying a suicide under a crossroad, to prevent him turning into a vampire. As I'm a priest, I agree to officiate, but it's too late. A vampire bursts out of the coffin, and I hold it at bay with my silver cross while one of the peasants saves the day with a wooden stake. Strangely, I get all of the credit for this.
I now have a choice of three directions. Although they boil down to west, north or east, my choice is more informed than that because of the map, which keeps it interesting. North leads to a village in a marsh -- I don't like the sound of that. West feels like a trap, because when I killed the two demons inthe cemetery, I found a clue that there were captives being held that way, but the book warned me at the start that demons are devious and treacherous and like leaving traps, and I should be careful not to fall into those. East seems like an inoffensive route to a village called Astonbury, so not knowing anything negative about it, I head that way.
On the way, I find a very suspicious caravan parked at the side of the road, and so I investigate. It is occupied by a seemingly-friendly old man, but at this point the bok asks me if I have Sense Demon talent, and I do not. Hmm... However, I reject the option of attacking him, since I'm supposed to be one of the good guys, and he turns out not to be an enemy. He gives me a clue (which doesn't come in useful later, at least on the route I took), and the next day I take my leave and come to a bridge over a river. Here, I can continue to Astonbury or take a boat to the town of Axmoor, which is on the western edge of the map but beyond the place where I suspected a trap. The boatman tells me there is a plague in Astonbury, and I don't fancy getting mixed up in that, so I leave my horse behind and pay some gold to go to Axmoor.
Did I mention I had a horse? I should have, because that's very unusual for a Fighting Fantasy book. He was a lovely white steed called Godsfire, but apart from adding a minimal bit of colour to my background, he has nothing to do with anything, and I had actually forgotten about him until I left him behind (don't feel bad for him though, as apparently he is intelligent enough for him to obey my command to make his own way back home to my monastery). I feel like the horse could have been put to better use, like if having or not having him actually made any difference to anything at all. If I'd felt like he mattered I probably would have braved the plague instead of leaving him on the riverbank. This is really my only criticism of this book, and it's an incredibly minor one really.
The ferryman has a young son who duly falls into the river and needs me to rescue him. Fortunately I make the right choice here and save him, and his father rewards me with a refund of his fee for the trip. Also, some woman who is alos on the boat reads my future with some tarot cards. She tells me to look out for -- actually I won't spoil this clue in case anyone reading wants to play this book, but it comes in very, very handy indeed when I finally confront Myurr.
The next day we reach Axmoor, and it's an absolute mess. There is no sign of the human population, and there are signs of demonic occupation. As I disembark, the pier is demolished by some massive tentacles, and rather than trying to fight whatever they belong to I just flee inland. Looking over my shoulder, I watch the boat I was on being broken in two and dragged under the water, with the loss of all on board! (Looking at the alternative choices I could have made, it turns out I missed an opportunity to save their lives! Oops! But I don't get punished with any increase to my Evil score.)
Heading into Axmoor, I find a massive evil-looking thing that appears to be responsible for killing everyone here. It's basically a giant organic citadel, and the tentacles I saw earlier are a part of it (like the big monster in Rogue Trooper: Cinnabar). I venture inside...
