Gamebooks

[Richard]

Dead of Night playthrough, part 2

Moving stealthily through the organic citadel, I find some Demonic Servants (skeletal figures in black gowns) transporting some human prisoners around. I can either follow them and see where they're going, or investigate where they came from. Since I've just seen six demonic guards moving from A to B, I decide that there will be fewer guards at A, so I head that way.

I find some more prisoners, but there are only two guards. I fight the guards, and it turns out that these Demonic Servants are actually a bit of a pushover! Low skills, low stamina scores, and landing two consecutive blows will finish them off. But the prisoners can't escape. They want to, but the monstrous being we are inside of is telepathically or magically stopping them from exercising any free will. The prisoners are being fed to it. I have to destroy it!

I push on, and I find a chamber containing the giant creature's heart! I kill a guard and interfere with the heart by turning off its feed -- there are three tubes leading to it, each with a tap and using Speak Demon I figure out which one is best to close off. There's no time to close all three taps because as soon as I close the first one, a hideous, many-eyed, tentacled monster appears and I decide to make myself scarce before it can get close enough to attack me. In another room, I find a "Death-Stone", which apparently is the cause of all this trouble. There are also some prisoners beign fed into a furnace, but I surmise that this is a red herring to distract me from what needs to be done, so I focus on getting the Death-Stone. I roll some dice against my Evil score (which is still zero) while the stone tries to corrupt me, and then after a second dice roll against a whole checklist of factors, which I narrowly pass by just one point, I succeed in destroying it. I was very close to an instant death here! And I have used up all of the holy water I was carrying. I hope I won't need that later!

My reward for vanquishing this evil thing and avenging Axmoor is that my current and Initial Luck and Skill scores are increased. I now legitimately have a Skill score of 13, and an Initial (i.e. maximum) Luck of 14! (I'm always unduly excited when an FF book lets me boost my Initial stats! It's something you're usually not allowed to do, like the Ghostbusters crossing the streams.)

Anyway, I head out of Axmoor, and choose to stay on the road north instead of following a stream east (since north is where I'm meant to be heading, after all). I hear a wagon coming, and I hide again. But this time, unlike last time, I get a chance to see the wagon from my hiding place. It's an orc, with some human prisoners in a cage! He's taking them to Axmoor to be fed to the giant beastie! The monster is dead of course, but still, nothing good is going to happen to the prisoners when they get there, so I ambush and kill the orc and free the prisoners. They tell me that the next village has been occupied by a demon army and the whole population has been killed or enslaved. I head there anyway, because I'm a Demon Stalker, and when I get there everything looks perfectly fine, and the friendly villagers greet me cheerfully. Given what I've just been told, I suspect that this is an illusion, and I'm right. It's actually a devastated wasteland, with an Eye of Sauron-type tower with a big red eye like a searchlight.
 
I meet a strange woman who speaks in riddles and tells me that some of what she tells me will be true and some will be lies, and it's up to me to figure out which is which (not right now, but later on, when it may or may not come in useful). I'm pretty sure that one of the true bits is that I have to destroy the tower and the eye though.
 
I find ten orc soldiers, and try to get past them by throwing some gold coins among them to distract them or make them fight each other, but it doesn't work (I didn't throw enough coins). But they're so drunk that four of them fall over and can't even fight me, and the six that can are quite weak specimens and are easily overcome. I reach the tower, give the password the woman gave me, and promptly get arrested, tied up and thrown in a dungeon. (Bitch.)
 
Rather implausibly, I manage to wriggle out of my bonds (this escape was a bit annoying actually; I would almost have preferred an instant death paragraph) and find some orc clothes and helmet to wear as a disguise. Moving up the tower, I pass as an orc officer and avoid having to fight any more orcs. At the top of the tower, I set fire to the eye with some lantern oil, and abseil down a rope to the ground. Offered the choice between heading to a pond, a temple, or a courthouse, I choose the temple, but there's nothing there. I avoid the pond, as I expect there will be a monster there, and go to the courthouse, where I find a statue of a woman similar to the one I met earlier. The statue is carrying the scales of justice; remembering one of the woman's clues, I tilt the balance to the left and am teleported to a forest. I have no idea if that was the right thing to do or not, or where I am.

While I'm taking in my new surroundings, a whole mansion house magically materialises in front of me, and a disembodied voice says "Enter at your peril, Demon Stalker." My reaction:

https://i.imgur.com/0o2Ybby.mp4

I leave the house and head into the forest...

[Richard]

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!

[Richard]

[Deleted by author]

[Barrington Boots]

Really enjoyed reading that, thanks for taking the time to put that together dude! Did you get through without dying? You were right to avoid that pond, I misinterpreted the clue from the avatar anout water and jumped into it, and got melted.

Having played this one quite recently, it's interesting that you took quite a different route to me through the book, with different skills, and even won the final battle in a different manner. That's the mark of a good book I think and this certainly is that.

[Richard]

Thanks mate. I actually did get through it without dying! There aren't many combats, although I was one point away from being killed by the Death Stone. The book is pretty forgiving, until you meet Myurr anyway. How did you beat him?

[Jim_Campbell]

Hopefully this is appropriate to the thread, but I've just listened to the latest 'Imaginary Worlds' podcast which, although I haven't played a gamebook myself in decades, I found a great listen — it's about the Lone Wolf series, and the unenviable task Joe Dever's son was given to finish the series... literally by his father on his deathbed!

Probably well worth a listen if gamebooks are your thing.

[Barrington Boots]

Thanks mate. I actually did get through it without dying! There aren't many combats, although I was one point away from being killed by the Death Stone. The book is pretty forgiving, until you meet Myurr anyway. How did you beat him?

Nice! I got through on my 6th attempt. My saddest death using 'detect demon' on the monster on the cover thinking it was an illusion (it was not).
With Myurr, I had the magic sword still and I threw all my holy water over him - although looking at the book now I might be getting the fight muddled with the one in Vault of the Vampire (where you can also throw holy water) as I do remember destroying the special item as well..

Hopefully this is appropriate to the thread, but I've just listened to the latest 'Imaginary Worlds' podcast which, although I haven't played a gamebook myself in decades, I found a great listen — it's about the Lone Wolf series, and the unenviable task Joe Dever's son was given to finish the series... literally by his father on his deathbed!

I will check this out today! Thanks for the heads up!

[Richard]

Yes thanks Jim!

[Barrington Boots]

That was a really good listen and has me tempted to go back to the Holmgard Press series.

[Barrington Boots]

I've now wrapped up Black Vein Prophecy. No writeup on this one, as I went through it quite a few times and didn't especially enjoy it.

The book is very ambitious: it begins with you awakening in a sarcophogus with no memory and no statistics - you roll these up during the book itself - and quickly disgorges you into a ruined city and a surreal experience full of nonsensical creatures and odd happenings. After dealing with a talking horse and catapulting yourself into the sea where you fight a man trapped in a giant zorb ball the book settles down a bit, but remains incredibly strange thoughout.

I went round and round in circles for ages in this book - there are a lot of instadeaths and false paths, and choices at many times seem very arbitrary, meaning you can easily die or get derailed - until, reaching my wits end, I looked online and discovered that to succeed you need to FAIL the very first luck check in the book. That's not cool. Even if you do pass that the almost-final battle involves selecting from a list of magical powers in the correct order with no hints as to what to use where.

It's a shame as the story itself is quite clever at its heart - once you've got to the end, a lot of it makes more sense and there's a very good bit at the end where you can help yourself (I won't spoil that, just in case). I don't think the writing helps though: stuff isn't spoon-fed to you (for example, a character who is your friend can later kill you because you've killed a friend of theirs, but you need to be paying attention to work that out otherwise it seems very random) but mainly the text is quite terse and when combined with the obfuscating nature of the plot it can initially read like a lot of surreal unconnected encounters. There's not enough description to carry the atmosphere of what is a sort of wizardly Creature of Havoc, and whilst I had a better feel for the story by the time I'd read it several times, by then I was a bit sick of the book. The fights, at least, are easy.
There's also a bit where you're asked if you have an item but it's described a bit differently, which tripped me up first time.

Terry Oakes does the art, which is cool throughout: mainly of humans and has a bit of a Japanese feel to it with the costumes and the like.

Bit of a disappointment after a few really good titles.

[Richard]

That sounds even worse than I remembered! I used to own that book, I gave it away to a charity shop.

The next one is better!

[JayzusB.Christ]

These reviews are great fun - keep them coming, folks!  I realise I never stop banging on about Jim Moon and his podcast Hypnogoria, but his audio walkthrough of City of Thieves is a treat to listen to.

[Barrington Boots]

Keep of the Lich Lord

I was looking forward to starting this one, being written as it was by Jamie Thompson (Way of the Tiger, plus earlier great FF books Talisman of Death / Sword of the Samurai) and Dave Morris (Blood Sword). Just last night in Your are the Hero I read that Jamie did all the island bits and Dave did the keep, and that totally makes sense now I know. I was right to be keen, because it was really good!
There's one new stat in this - RESOLVE, which is essentially ones bravery when faced with an undead creature. It goes down when you fail a test but goes up when you pass, and as there's a lot of possible resolve bonuses, this was a bit thematic but also completely pointless as I never failed a single resolve check, so this is the last time I'll mention it!

The background is a fairly standard you vs a massive evil dude: the foul and titular Lich Lord himself Lord Mortis, defeated in battle two centuries ago, has popped back up on Stayng Island. The Varadian Alliance (good guys) have a keep there to battle incursions from the fearsome Chaos Pirates and contact with said keep has now been lost, although the castellan did manage to get out a warning that Mortis was back and storming everything. I'm a fabled mercenary from the White Tiger regiment (Way of the Tiger reference there surely) and the Alliance have decided to send me in to stop Mortis before he can ally with the pirates and form an army to invade the mainland. The castellans letter indicates that Mortis has the power to zombie-up large groups of troops which is why one guy is being sent instead of the technically more logical army, which sort of makes sense as a setup. The dour general Chaideshu gives me a ring of communing (3 charges, with which I can talk to him for advice or to report in) and then basically tells me to get on with it.

The book starts with me getting dropped off at the southern port town of Stilport, which is almost a ghost town as residents flee the island since the keeps fall and Mortis's influence begins to push southwards. I tell the locals nothing of my mission and checking the map in the book decide to head north towards Mortis' old tomb, which i hope will contain a useful clue but end up going right past it to the village of Menela which is set up as it for a siege, with its walls and gates half-battered in. I get myself inside by telling the defenders I'm on a Mortis-killing mission and they tell me they do know of the tomb, but it's up in a treacherous ravine and I can't get there without a guide. They also say that although Mortis hasn't got this far south yet the village is under attack from a massive monster that keeps eating people. You can see where this is going a mile off, and pretty soon I'm heading out to fight said creature but not before I've used some of my provisions to have my sword enhanced for extra damage by the blacksmith.
The monster turns out to be a sort of giant hyena toad and surprisingly weak. I make short work of it, get some gold from the villagers and one of them then takes me up to the tomb. Inside there's an ominously empty sarcophagus and a dead tomb-robber, clutching an ivory rune-covered spear in his dead grip. I swipe this, he predictably reanimates and I put him down again. I'm given the option of using my ring to report in with the general so I do so and he says the spear is the fabled Spear of Quadarni that killed Mortis last time around and he was buried with it still embedded in him, meaning that the tomb robber dude likely yanked out of his chest and caused Mortis to rise again. The spear does double damage to undead enemies and obviously has Lich-killing properties so we are off to an excellent start.

[Barrington Boots]

From here I can only return to Stilport (there's a nice touch here where the guards have obviously bet on my survival) and then East. I spot a cave en route and obviously wander into it - turns out its a forgotten temple to Lhyss, goddess of luck. I fight a guardian there (not sure if this is undead or not - the picture indicates it is, but the text doesn't: it's not an easy fight but not too taxing either) and wind up with a golden whistle and the mysterious Elixir of Lhyss.
From here I continue on to a crossroads with a cemetery and an inn. Someone has graffitied 'Stayng Cemetary' to say 'Vampire Cemetary' which seems a bit ominous. Inside the pub, everyone is dour and everything is covered with garlic. The innkeeper is all foreboding and muttering but the locals, when bribed, confirm there's a vampire problem. There's also a sinister looking hooded figure and a tough looking soldier - as I pass the hooded figures table it snakes out a hand and grabs me, but the soldier intervenes and knocks it to the floor before it scurries out. The solider introduces himself as Kandogor, a survivor of the fall of Bloodrise Keep and friend of the old castellan. He says that the castellan, Braxis, still lives as prisoner within. I decide to tell him of my mission and he offers to join me to avenge his fallen friends.
We share a room and I'm snoozing whilst Kanogor keeps watch when the door opens and the hooded figure enters our room. Kandogor decks it once more and is about to deliver the killing blow when I ask him to stop and pull back the hood to find a young wood elf. She begs first for mercy and then for our help, saying she has come from the Elven community in Shamdabag Wood where she has been charged by her priests to come out and help the fight against Mortis and his undead. Her name is Elindora and her mission is to put a stop to the vampire - who is actually Lotmora, Mortis's old wife, now returned as undead with Mortis' resurrection. Kandogor is unimpressed in a racist manner, saying Elves are wicked creatures who have no souls and we should press on ad kill Mortis, but I agree, and he goes to bed furious.
The next day Kandogor, Elindora and I meet up early in the day and head to the graveyard to search out the vampires in daylight. The search is a long one and I begin to grow suspicious of Kandogor as he keeps leading us deeper into the cemetery with not much luck. Eventually, the sun begins to set. Elindora urges us to flee back to the inn but before we can reach the gate darkness falls and to our horror the vampire Lotmora appears in front of us and gives us an evil monologue. Behind us lesser vampires- farmers and soldiers - begin to creep from their crypts, boxing us in. Time to fight! I resist her evil glare but to my horror Kanogor runs over to her - only to turn around and reveal that he has been in league with Mortis all along! Argh!
I am forced to battle Lotmora, Kandogor and two vampires all at once whilst Elindora takes on everyone else. Luckily the vampires are Kandogor are rubbish, so I focus my attacks on Lotmora and with my magic spear defeat her in short order before making quick work of the vampires. Kandogor breaks when his stamina is low like the rotten coward he is and makes a run for it so I chuck the spear at him and bring him down in a satisfying manner. I nick his keys and Elindora and myself high five before she heads back to the woods and I northwards to find Mortis, but not before she gifts me the magical ring of Fays. End of part one!

[Blue Cactus]

Keep of the Liche Lord - one of only about three (possibly two...) FF books I've ever completed! Enjoy!