So, a quick diversion - being too scared to once again cross the Threshold of the Earl of Drumer, I instead returned to the Way of the Tiger to play the second book in the series, ASSASSIN!. This was another brand new read for me: I must have played the first book in the WotT series, Avenger, dozens of times and always loved it.
The books join together to form a coherent story: I'm the totally cool Ninja known as Avenger and in the last book I lived up to this moniker by avenging my father by killing off the villainous trio of Manse the Deathmage, Honoric, Marshal of the Legion of the Sword of Doom and Yaemon, grandmaster of the monks of the Scarlet Mantis, thus preventing a plot to bind my god, Kwon the Redeemer, in Inferno. There are no stats in this book but, as it follows on directly from my playthrough of Avenger, I begin with Kwon's Blessing, giving me slightly better fighting skills and an extra Ninja discipline. I am skilled in the deadly disciplines of Poison Needles, Arrow Cutting and Climbing, and my bonus skill (new for this book) is Acrobatics.
The tale opens evocatively as the previous one ended, with my standing over the fallen body of Yaemon on the rainswept rooftop of Quench-Heart keep. I have recovered the sacred scrolls of Kettsuin and am charged by Kwon to return them to the Temple of the Rock on the Island of Tranquil Dreams. And then immediately the adventure starts, with soldiers charging up the stairs and an immediate need to get out of dodge.
Fighting this many guys would be suicide, so using my ninja skills I flip over the wall and begin scaling the sheer surface. This may not have been the smartest move as the soldiers below pepper me with arrows: I am skilled enough to avoid them but have to duck in through a window. This is where the first callback to the previous book happens: I've been here previously, killing the denizens and freeing prisoners, so I know the terrain and am able to rush down the stairs and towards an escape route and exit the keep.
Free, I decide to push on to the city of Druath Glennan to take an opportunity to rest, but after stopping at an inn (presumably out of my ninja garb) for breakfast I am ambushed by a force the Monks of the Scarlet Mantis. Using my acrobatics I escape but by now it seems I am hunted at all turns, leading me to attempt to lose pursuit in the forbidding Goblins Teeth Mountains.
Turns out the Goblins Teeth Mountains are infested with none other than Goblins: foul creatures who, it seems, worship some kind of Lovecraftian horror. I soon find myself in their tunnels, slinking about, but before long I am spotted by a sharp-eyed little Goblin nipper and once again the pursuit is on. This is where it all starts going wrong for me: I duck into a doorway but end up being trapped by the Goblins in a tunnel swiftly filling with water. With no escape I am forced to call upon Kwon for aid (this is a one-use reward for beating the previous book), enabling me to escape this fate only to find myself facing something far worse: an appalling Shoggoth-like entity, all eyes and tentacles, dwelling deep beneath the mountain on Goblin sacrifices - evocatively shown by a half-digested Goblin hanging from a rope above it, missing legs like something from Deep Star Six. Remembering my training I am able to resist the horrible lure of the primordial thing - my poison needles buy me a second and I am able to use my acrobatics to escape, fleeing up the rope the Goblins used to deliver their own sacrifices to the creature.
This is my final encounter in the mountains: I break free of their oppressive embrace and strike out towards the Sea of the Star. My pursuers do not seem to be close, but I have a new problem to consider: a terrible black rash spreading across my chest and arms. I encounter a hapless group of crusaders battling an undead warlord: this is my first dice-fuelled fight of the book and a very nasty one, but I prevail and in return they assist with both the wounds I have suffered and the plague I picked up in the Goblin tunnels, although it looks like I miss out on a powerful artifact. I take my leave of the adventurers and head East towards the port, sticking to the woodlands in case I am still pursued where I battle and slay members of the Legion of the Sword of Doom, carrying orders to kill me, and reach the port of Harith and am immediately waylaid by three infamous killers - a friend of whom I killed in the previous book. I swiftly down two of them (non-fatally) without dice rolls, which is lucky as a poor defense roll sees the third stick his sword into my lung for a massive 8 damage and before the fight can continue a new challenger approaches in the form of some hideous cross between Mortal Kombat Goro and a centipede. Although this fight looks horrific on paper, which the enemy rocking a huge number of hit points and technically able to kill me with one hit, I use a technique learned in the previous book to down it in reasonably short order, leaving me battered and bleeding but triumphant - or am I? Defeating this horror has, it seems, opened a portal between my world of Orb and THE VOID. Oops...
My next stop is the port of Wargrave Abbas where I am able to stop over at a temple of Kwon and learn of the city and it's guilds of swordmasters and assassins - but these are evil assassins, who kill for money and not to rid the world of evil (unlike me). Here I am given the opportunity to head over to the assassins guild to learn some new techniques but this seems a daft move: I am proved right when an assassin attempts to take my life within the walls of the temple itself but I deflect their blade with my arrow cutting skills. The killer escapes, and I make my way by boat to the Island of Plenty, meeting friendly faces along the way. Here I agree to assist the Daiymo in battle: I am delayed by a recue sidequest, but when I arrive he has won his battle anyway and we have a lovely dinner together - all looks well for my journey home, but my sense of hope is misplaced. I awake at night with a terrible feeling of wrongness. Silently I slip of my room, checking in with the guards and all seems well... but is it? I cannot shake the feeling of wrongness and retracing my steps I find the guards murdered by methods not unlike my own. A dangerous game of cat and mouse ensues, one I sadly lose as the rival ninja, a follower of the deadly Way of Scorpion, steals up behind me and slips a garotte over my neck, ending me the ay I have ended so many others.
This book absolutely ruled. It's packed with world building detail - I probably said this when discussing Avenger! but with these early FF books we're just starting to get hints of a coherent world, but here the world of Orb feels fully formed and the writing is peppered with detail irrelevant to the adventure itself but really bringing the surroundings to life. The writing is really strong throughout. There's plenty of callbacks to the previous book - not just the plot but other nice little nods and returning characters, both major and minor. The concept of legging it back home is totally different to the first books quest for revenge, and in the early chapters I really did feel under pressure to escape. I'm a huge fan of the fight mechanic, and the book is also very generous with its Endurance (Stamina) recovery which means it can have a number of small set pieces where your life feels seriously in danger before topping your health up again and moving on, avoiding the slow stamina drain of FF. In short it all feels rather epic and I can't wait to have another crack.
The books join together to form a coherent story: I'm the totally cool Ninja known as Avenger and in the last book I lived up to this moniker by avenging my father by killing off the villainous trio of Manse the Deathmage, Honoric, Marshal of the Legion of the Sword of Doom and Yaemon, grandmaster of the monks of the Scarlet Mantis, thus preventing a plot to bind my god, Kwon the Redeemer, in Inferno. There are no stats in this book but, as it follows on directly from my playthrough of Avenger, I begin with Kwon's Blessing, giving me slightly better fighting skills and an extra Ninja discipline. I am skilled in the deadly disciplines of Poison Needles, Arrow Cutting and Climbing, and my bonus skill (new for this book) is Acrobatics.
The tale opens evocatively as the previous one ended, with my standing over the fallen body of Yaemon on the rainswept rooftop of Quench-Heart keep. I have recovered the sacred scrolls of Kettsuin and am charged by Kwon to return them to the Temple of the Rock on the Island of Tranquil Dreams. And then immediately the adventure starts, with soldiers charging up the stairs and an immediate need to get out of dodge.
Fighting this many guys would be suicide, so using my ninja skills I flip over the wall and begin scaling the sheer surface. This may not have been the smartest move as the soldiers below pepper me with arrows: I am skilled enough to avoid them but have to duck in through a window. This is where the first callback to the previous book happens: I've been here previously, killing the denizens and freeing prisoners, so I know the terrain and am able to rush down the stairs and towards an escape route and exit the keep.
Free, I decide to push on to the city of Druath Glennan to take an opportunity to rest, but after stopping at an inn (presumably out of my ninja garb) for breakfast I am ambushed by a force the Monks of the Scarlet Mantis. Using my acrobatics I escape but by now it seems I am hunted at all turns, leading me to attempt to lose pursuit in the forbidding Goblins Teeth Mountains.
Turns out the Goblins Teeth Mountains are infested with none other than Goblins: foul creatures who, it seems, worship some kind of Lovecraftian horror. I soon find myself in their tunnels, slinking about, but before long I am spotted by a sharp-eyed little Goblin nipper and once again the pursuit is on. This is where it all starts going wrong for me: I duck into a doorway but end up being trapped by the Goblins in a tunnel swiftly filling with water. With no escape I am forced to call upon Kwon for aid (this is a one-use reward for beating the previous book), enabling me to escape this fate only to find myself facing something far worse: an appalling Shoggoth-like entity, all eyes and tentacles, dwelling deep beneath the mountain on Goblin sacrifices - evocatively shown by a half-digested Goblin hanging from a rope above it, missing legs like something from Deep Star Six. Remembering my training I am able to resist the horrible lure of the primordial thing - my poison needles buy me a second and I am able to use my acrobatics to escape, fleeing up the rope the Goblins used to deliver their own sacrifices to the creature.
This is my final encounter in the mountains: I break free of their oppressive embrace and strike out towards the Sea of the Star. My pursuers do not seem to be close, but I have a new problem to consider: a terrible black rash spreading across my chest and arms. I encounter a hapless group of crusaders battling an undead warlord: this is my first dice-fuelled fight of the book and a very nasty one, but I prevail and in return they assist with both the wounds I have suffered and the plague I picked up in the Goblin tunnels, although it looks like I miss out on a powerful artifact. I take my leave of the adventurers and head East towards the port, sticking to the woodlands in case I am still pursued where I battle and slay members of the Legion of the Sword of Doom, carrying orders to kill me, and reach the port of Harith and am immediately waylaid by three infamous killers - a friend of whom I killed in the previous book. I swiftly down two of them (non-fatally) without dice rolls, which is lucky as a poor defense roll sees the third stick his sword into my lung for a massive 8 damage and before the fight can continue a new challenger approaches in the form of some hideous cross between Mortal Kombat Goro and a centipede. Although this fight looks horrific on paper, which the enemy rocking a huge number of hit points and technically able to kill me with one hit, I use a technique learned in the previous book to down it in reasonably short order, leaving me battered and bleeding but triumphant - or am I? Defeating this horror has, it seems, opened a portal between my world of Orb and THE VOID. Oops...
My next stop is the port of Wargrave Abbas where I am able to stop over at a temple of Kwon and learn of the city and it's guilds of swordmasters and assassins - but these are evil assassins, who kill for money and not to rid the world of evil (unlike me). Here I am given the opportunity to head over to the assassins guild to learn some new techniques but this seems a daft move: I am proved right when an assassin attempts to take my life within the walls of the temple itself but I deflect their blade with my arrow cutting skills. The killer escapes, and I make my way by boat to the Island of Plenty, meeting friendly faces along the way. Here I agree to assist the Daiymo in battle: I am delayed by a recue sidequest, but when I arrive he has won his battle anyway and we have a lovely dinner together - all looks well for my journey home, but my sense of hope is misplaced. I awake at night with a terrible feeling of wrongness. Silently I slip of my room, checking in with the guards and all seems well... but is it? I cannot shake the feeling of wrongness and retracing my steps I find the guards murdered by methods not unlike my own. A dangerous game of cat and mouse ensues, one I sadly lose as the rival ninja, a follower of the deadly Way of Scorpion, steals up behind me and slips a garotte over my neck, ending me the ay I have ended so many others.
This book absolutely ruled. It's packed with world building detail - I probably said this when discussing Avenger! but with these early FF books we're just starting to get hints of a coherent world, but here the world of Orb feels fully formed and the writing is peppered with detail irrelevant to the adventure itself but really bringing the surroundings to life. The writing is really strong throughout. There's plenty of callbacks to the previous book - not just the plot but other nice little nods and returning characters, both major and minor. The concept of legging it back home is totally different to the first books quest for revenge, and in the early chapters I really did feel under pressure to escape. I'm a huge fan of the fight mechanic, and the book is also very generous with its Endurance (Stamina) recovery which means it can have a number of small set pieces where your life feels seriously in danger before topping your health up again and moving on, avoiding the slow stamina drain of FF. In short it all feels rather epic and I can't wait to have another crack.