Dead of Night playthrough, part 3
Tomorrow I'll find out if I was supposed to go into the house or not. Meanwhile, I encounter the giant demon on the front cover of the book, and fend him off with my Holy Circle talent. Thank goodness that worked, I didn't fancy tangling with him!
(Cover by Terry Oakes.)
I soon find a tower with a symbol of evil on the door, and since I know that Myurr is in a tower, this looks promising. I am given the choice of either going straight inside, or removing the symbol before opening the door. Either of these could be a trap. I make the wrong choice, and once inside I lose all of my possessions, including my sword!
In the hallway, I avoid another trap, and then there are three doors to choose between. Two of these have ominous noises coming from behind them, so I opt for the silent one. (This was a mistake, because I have since found out that I missed a really cool scene where I get to appear as a ghostly presence at my late brother's funeral years ago when I was still a child, and the priest would have recognised adult ghost me and given me a useful item! I didn't really need that item, but it would have been fun. Also there is a good instant death paragraph there if instead of meeting the priest you foolishly choose to meet your past self, creating a devastating time paradox.)
The door I chose leads into a red room, which turns out to be the first room in a maze of different-coloured rooms. It reminds me a bit of the maze in Stealer of Souls, but is different enough to still be interesting. I had to map my way through this bit, which was a little tricky because the maze doesn't always conform to geographical expectations, but it is a magic maze after all. Sometimes you can get teleported back to the red room at the start. There was one room where I lost six stamina points, but otherwise it is harmless. I eventually found a way through, and left by heading up a long spiral staircase which had this charming fellow to greet me at the top:
Banish Undead didn't work on him, because he was too powerful, so I had to fight him. His Skill of 8 was not as high as that setback or the picture had led me to expect, and that was almost disapointing, although at least no-one could accuse the book of being unfair. I actually found myself thinking that I shouldn't have cheated by giving myself maximum stats at the beginning.
The next room had a nasty trap in it, which I won't spoil because it was a cool one. I managed to be paranoid enough not to fall for it, although I think that I might actually have been killed by it back in 1989 and that I just remembered enough to avoid it this time, rather than by being clever.
Anyway, in the next room I find my parents, and Myurr! Endgame! Yay! Now, forget what I said about the Horned Skeleton: Myurr is an absolute badass. He has a skill of 14, stamina 25, and two Attacks -- meaning that he can attack you twice in each attack round, while you only get one shot of injuring him. This fight would basically be unwinnable (even if I still had the magic sword I lost earlier), but for two other things you can do instead of fighting him. In each attack round you can throw holy water at him (I didn;t have any left), or you can search for a magic gem hidden somewhere in the room, which is the only thing enabling Myurr to remain on the Earthly Plane. This is where the tarot reading on the river came in helpful, because now I know where the gem is! I smash the gem and exile Myurr to the Demonic Plane! I survive the explosion with a loss of 7 stamina points, and rescue my parents at paragraph 400!
This is a really fun book, a good example of FF done well, and it's not even Stephen Hand's best one! I'm looking forward to those!