[AD&D Gamebook] Sceptre of Power (Kingdom of Sorcery, book 1 of 3)

[Joshua Randall]

240

Fear wars with excitement as we remove the black ribbon and unfurl the stiff parchment.

To summon Rufyl, I, Landor, of College Arcane, do conjure and summon Rufyl, loyal familiar, friend, and servant, to the side of my only son and heir. I charge thee, Rufyl, with the task of serving Carr Delling as you have served me, his father, for more than forty human years.

Protect him, share all thy magical and worldly knowledge with him, and do his bidding, and never shall thee conspire with other sorcerers against thy master. All of these things I command of thee in my hour of death, O worthy Rufyl.

[*Credit where it's due: this is a spot-on imitation of real-world occult writings.*]

As soon as we read the last word, a "shrill whistling noise" fills the room. Something begins to materialize on the desk. As the shape materializes, the whistling noise diminishes, such that it almost seems to create itself from the sound. [*That is such an evocative description!*]

Color and shape fill the form. We back away towards the door in fear because we are looking at the contours of a red dragon, one of the most evil monsters in Tikandian legend.

Except this one is only two feet tall.

Turn to (21).

 

[Jfdlsjfd]

Commentary:

That's not a slip of the pen: Dalris is a bard, the AD&D character class. Strap in while I drop some four-decades-old knowledge.

Hush, don't say that word, it might attract a Snarf!

After a few days away, it's time for me to resume my favourite activity: nitpicking.

To even qualify for the bard class you needed MINIMUMS of Strength 15, Dexterity 15, Constitution 10, Intelligence 12, Wisdom 15, and Charisma 15.

There is no way you rolled those ability scores on 3d6 in order unless you cheated like a madman.

It was like Paladin, the character class no one had every played where someone was witness to the character creation?

The odds are 0.00001723277% That's a character in 100,000. There are, according to probably unfouded rumours, 50 millions persons who have played D&D ever. Even if they somehow all played D&D 1e and stopped there, that would be 500 bards ever. Well worth the price of the paper to print the class.

And let's ask again: how old is Dalris?

Suppose she began her fighter-ing at age 16, the absolute youngest age a 1st level human fighter could be according to the AD&D Dungeon Master's Guide (page 12). She's a prodigy when it comes to fighter-ing and reaches level 5 in just 1 year.

She goes off to be a thief. She's also a prodigy at thief-ing and reaches level 5 in that class in just 1 more year. She's now 18, one year YOUNGER than the minimum 1st level human thief age according to the DMG, but we’ll allow it.

Dalris then studies druid magic with her dad and due to nepotism and favoritism, passes her bard classes in a week (hey, it worked for Carr with magic-user classes!), so she's still only 18.

Then for some reason Dalris studies magic-user magic with Landor. Maybe she doesn't get very far or maybe Landor dies soon after she starts, so maybe only another week has passed. Dalris is still just over 18 years old.

But that was FIFTEEN YEARS AGO. So she's 33 years old now. And this is assuming the most favorable possible advancement rates imaginable.

Although I will note that per the AD&D DMG, the minimum age of a 1st-level human magic-user is 26, and Carr is only 15, so we're not playing by the rulebook when it comes to character ages in this series.

---

An addition with the benefit of hindsight that will be seamless to readers, but was actually written several days after the above.

One of my old-timer friends pointed out that it didn't take anywhere near two years to reach level 10 or 11 in an AD&D character class. With regular play, assuming your character didn't die, and pretty much all you did was enter the dungeon, kill monsters, grab loot, rest in town, repeat -- you could easily reach level 5 in a couple of weeks of game time and level 10 within several months.

While I agree that she could conceivably level up quicker than a year for 5 levels, which is totally possible -- even with 5e's rate, an adventuring day is a day, so one could reach level 5 in a month. On the other hand, wasn't there a rule that you needed to get money to get xp? Is she sitting on top of untold riches or couldn't she just get a gift from her wealthy father to jump up 5 levels? "Daddy, I wanna be a level 5 fighter" "Here is a cheque honey". Or he could gift a random rat a few tens of thousands of gp if they needed to be looted from the dead body of your enemies (I know for sure 1e had some strange loot so a rat owning money wouldn't be out of place).

Put there is no way she could be a bard so young: she'd have to wait to get the thief minimum age of 19 to reach level 1 and get her other level-boosting cheque. Maybe there is a requirement of legally buying a glass of liquor from a store to get that first level? I think the minimum age rule should apply. Sure, she isn't 26 and neither OUR Carr when we start school, but the minimum age for a character is to be a 1st-level magic user. She didn't mention that she graduated magic with Landor, only that she started training, which she could have from a tender age -- maybe even before starting fightering and thief-ing. Along the same line, (1) we can't discount that Carr is 26, and suffers from amnesia about his youth (2) he isn't yet a 1st level magic-user. As far as we know, he didn't gain any xp yet.

She's a minimum of 34 years-old. A grandmother in the Middle Ages.

That just leaves her claim to have studied magic with Landor. As my friend pointed out, maybe Dalris exaggerates this claim the same way she exaggerates her claim to be a direct descendant of Bhukodian / Kandian royalty. "Studied magic with Landor" might mean that baby Dalris drooled on the pages of Landor's spellbook while she cooed on his lap, or maybe toddler Dalris looked at pictures while Landor was preparing his spells for the day.

That's my head canon.

Dalris, age 3: looks at picture in Landor's spellbook and resolve to be a spellcasting princess when she's all grown up.
Dalris, age 4: learns that Landor passed away. She doesn't care anymore.
Dalris, age 6: starts thief training after seeing an episode of Robin Hood.
Dalris, age 9: starts fighter training after seeing an american football match.
Dalris, age 19: speaks with her father about her career, cashes a cheque to reach the required level overnight and conclude she's heard enough of her dad's rambling to validate bard level1.

19 is a reasonable age for OUR Carr to be, unless I am mistaken, so they are a perfect match.

Or, heck, maybe Dalris was an incredible prodigy like John Stuart Mill, who was taught Greek at age 3!

Plato started earlier!

As for the tower climb: the specifically described window means that anyone could use that window of Landor's room to bypass the murder door to gain access to the ultimate magical power stored within.

Bonus point for that door being visible from the court yard. I am not sure about druid in 1e to be honest, but couldn't her father just turn into a bird? Didn't they have animal forms? Or couldn't he cast Shapechange?

In a gamebook path we didn't take, Beldon uses the Fly spell. Beldon didn't need to wait fifteen years after Landon’s death for Carr to show up to get into Landor's quarters. Beldon could've entered Landor's quarters fifteen MINUTES after Landor’s death.

---

We'd better stop asking questions before we fail a bunch of Sanity checks and have our Wisdoms reduced to 3 like Carr.

WIS 3 is the reason why Beldon failed. But it's established that Dalris is WIS 15.

 

[Joshua Randall]

Hush, don't say that word [bard], it might attract a Snarf!

I should be so lucky.

After a few days away, it's time for me to resume my favourite activity: nitpicking.

Without my rants and your nitpicking, this thread would be super boring.

It was like Paladin, the character class no one had every played where someone was witness to the character creation?

Haha, right?

I will say this about the bard. Given that you can't even become a bard until after level 10, it is possible that your character could have discovered a variety of treasures that allowed you to increase you ability scores. Like the various "Manuals of XXX" or "Libram of YYY" which would give you +1 DEX or +1 INT or whatever, permanently. Maybe your wannabe bard also got a Wish cast her behalf, which could also increase your ability score.

But the paladin? He needed STR 12, INT 9, WIS 13, CON 9, and CHA 17 from level 1. So good luck with that.

500 bards ever. Well worth the price of the paper to print the class.

1e AD&D is the epitome of "well worth the price of paper" to print some incredibly narrow use-case. Which is why we love/hate it to this day.

we can't discount that Carr is 26, and suffers from amnesia about his youth

This would explain why he apparently knows nothing about what happened from the time he was old enough to form memories, until last week when he started down the mountain trail with his mom.

Maybe he was accosted by a lion and it was so scary it caused retrograde amnesia.

(2) he isn't yet a 1st level magic-user. As far as we know, he didn't gain any xp yet.

Alternatively, he must be at least level 4 by the end of the story because it is hypothetically possible for Carr to cast 3, 1st-level spells all in the same day!

I am not sure about druid in 1e to be honest, but couldn't her father just turn into a bird? Didn't they have animal forms? Or couldn't he cast Shapechange?

Ah -- the 1e druid didn't have on-demand shapechanging the way later druids did. But you could get it via spell.

Also, we'll find out later that the windows to Landor's room have glass in them. But still....

---

I will also say that unfortunately the book has the perfect "out" for why nothing makes sense according to the rules. To paraphrase again from the intro, these gamebooks are merely "based on" AD&D but "without complicated rules."

So everywhere the gamebook differs from the 1e PH/DMG, well, those are the complicated rules we're not using.

I'm still going to rant about them, though.

 

[Joshua Randall]

21

Fortunately, it's a red dragon that is only two feet high.

The creature blinks its eyes at us "like a chameleon" [another evocative detail] and projects its thoughts into our mind. Rufyl tells us not to be afraid because we are its master now. Oh, and it's not a red dragon; it's a pseudodragon.

Rufyl drops some plot on us. Apparently Beldon began his scheme to steal Landor's secrets while still a student. Thayne tried to warn Landor, but Beldon used "forbidden demonic magic" to become stronger than both of them and "drove them both from the academy."

Landor and Rufyl later snuck back inside, hid the Sceptre of Bhukod, and sealed Landor's quarters "so that Beldon couldn't use the powerful dweomer of the sceptre to find it."

To enable all this mighty magic, Landor had to "sacrifice his existence on the material plane."

We ask where the sceptre is now, and Rufyl replies that it's in a subterranean vault below the tower. [We. Already. Knew. That!]

We ask how to get there, and Rufyl explains that only the "crypt thing" that guards the sceptre can transport us in or out. Apparently Landor sought far and wide for something awesome enough to protect the most powerful magic item in existence. (Well, other than the money pouch, of course.)

Rufyl says (err, thinks) that the crypt thing will transport only Rufyl at first, but the familiar will go and convince it to bring Carr as well.

"The miniature dragon's red body begins to fade to pink, then to a pinkish white, then to translucent, and finally to nothing at all." Cool!

We contemplate the walls and wonder what happened to Dalris, who's been written out of the story for now. Ah well. We’re sure she’s fine.

Turn to (236).

 

[Joshua Randall]

Commentary:

Landor also had WIS 3, confirmed. Or maybe INT 3 depending upon which of those two ability scores you believe governs planning.

With more up-to-date information, let's review.

1. Landor, already an archmage, founds the College of Arcane Sciences.
2. Beldon and Thayne separately arrive to study magic with Landor.
3. Landor delves into the ruins of Ancient Bhukod and recovers the Sceptre of Power and other unspecified magic items. He shows them to Thayne.
4. Thayne warns Landor that Beldon is evil. Landor ignores the warning.
5. Beldon makes pacts with demons and gets powerful enough to kick Thayne and Landor out of the college. (Or Thayne had already left after Landor ignored him — sources differ.)
6. Landor, despite wielding the sceptre that can absorb magic from anything or anyone, and despite personal might greater than the gods, is helpless to combat Beldon.
7. If Beldon gets his hands on the Sceptre of Bhukod, he'll have unlimited powuhhhhh and be able to spread his unspecified evil far and wide!
8. To prevent Beldon from getting the Sceptre, it must be hidden away somewhere Beldon can never find it.
9. Landor stops off at Perth's druid grove and leaves his spellbooks there.
10. Landor and Rufyl sneak back into the tower, go into Landor's room, write a bunch of scrolls, make contact with a crypt thing, convince it to guard the sceptre, get teleported to the crypts, and leave the sceptre there, directly beneath the tower where Beldon now resides. Whew! Good thing Landor found a hiding place far away from Beldon’s demon-powered evil.
11. Landor then peaces out of this plane of existence while Rufyl goes off to wherever familiars go when their master doesn't need them.
12. For a decade-and-a-half, Rufyl chills in null-space while Thayne and Perth chill at the grove. They allow Landor’s wife Marla and son Carr to grow up in poverty on the run from Archcleric Oram (remember him?) and potentially under threat from Beldon.
13. From the perspective of Landor prior to his ceasing-to-exist: If all goes as planned, and despite the pointless lies from Thayne and Dalris, Carr will find Landor's letter, summon Rufyl, have Rufyl convince the crypt thing to transport Carr to the crypt, get the sceptre, and then take the sceptre to the… druid… grove.

FACEPALM.

Landor's death could have been avoided if he simply stayed at the druid grove with Marla and Carr, where his spellbooks and the Sceptre of Power were both safe.

Or "safe" in scare quotes. Because even though Landor had to sacrifice his own existence to hide the sceptre in the crypt with a thing, Landor's instructions to Carr are to relocate the sceptre from a hiding place that is impossible to get to without the crypt thing's permission to the druid grove that anyone can get to by normal means.

This is a Mobius strip of bad plotting.

I wonder if the originally intended plot of the book avoided some of the nonsense? The confusion around where the sceptre is hidden, who knows what, the characters' ages, people who get mentioned and then dropped -- all feel like symptoms of rewrites plus the constraints of the Choose Your Own Adventure format.

---

Dalris isn't the only PC in this game who "got really lucky" with her "random" dice rolls. Landor, when he originally cast Find Familiar, must have rolled a 15 on his d20 to get a pseudodragon. Further reading informs us that "special familiars are entitled to a saving throw versus magic when summoned by the spell, and if they succeed, they will ignore the spell, and NO familiar will be available that year to the caster" (emphasis in the original).

I'm too lazy to look up the pseudodragon's save vs. magic, but suffice it to say that's another die roll that had to "luckily" go Landor's way for him to end up with Rufyl as his familiar.

We can also deduce that Landor was "chaotic good, neutral, or neutral good" because otherwise he'd have had a brownie (lawful neutral or lawful good) or a quasit (chaotic evil or "neutral chaotic") or an imp (lawful evil or neutral evil) as a familiar.

 

[Jfdlsjfd]

We are flummoxed by the dweomer, which causes Dalris to scoff: "Some magic-user you are!" She correctly identifies the effect as a Wizard Lock and tells us to cast the Knock spell. Unfortunately for our pride and our desire to impress the hot older woman, we haven't learned that spell yet. [There isn't any way in this book to learn any spells higher than level 1.]

This is 100% coherent with my guess that we aren't yet level 1. The most spells we can learn is three, provided we succeed in learning each one, isn't it? And newly minted level 1 magic users are entitled to FOUR spells.

When you are red robed, you're level 1. It's only because of your artful reading that you know that Beldon can cast Fly so he's level 5. As he said "there is still a lot to learn to become an archmage".

"Suddenly [our] left foot slips while [we're] watching Dalris!"

She wasn't even wearing a skirt!!!

 

[Jfdlsjfd]

We flatten ourselves against the stone wall and call upon what we learned from our days in the mountains. We reach the parapet where we find Dalris has already opened the trapdoor that leads from the battlements to the landing below.

1. Our days looking at the mountain, while guarding sheeps. Since when are shepherds moutaineers? Certainly not OUR Carr...

2. Why reach the what if the goal is to skillfullly avoid the window to get up to the battlement, then we go back down afterwards to reach... the same door that we couldn't open two sections ago because someone had cast the Arcane Lock spell? What's the point?

"ONLY FOR THE ONE WHO WOULD FOLLOW IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF LANDOR."

Any Magic User.
Any Person who intend to seize the scepter of Bukhod.
Any person who showed a book to Dalris.
Any person who has an affair with an underage student?

The instructions are left vague but the bard can easily qualify. Carr, on the other hand...

Dalris says the inscription "may" mean that only we can enter.

"The only thing to do is try," we say. Our trembling hands reach out to touch the door.

[We absolutely trust our lives to this woman we just met who says the inscription "may" apply to us.]

Well, so far, it's only a "NO TRESPASSING" sign. I wouldn't expect to die right now. Maybe Beldon was overexaggerating.

 

[Jfdlsjfd]

She rummages through drawers and cupboards while we wonder aloud where Landor's spellbooks could be.

"Forget the lousy spellbooks!" Dalris says. "Help me find the Sceptre of Bhukod before your uncle realizes we've breached the door."

Hey! Those "lousy" spellbooks are our father's "only" legacy to us. Well, that and the magic money pouch. And the Sceptre of Bhukod. And our finely chiseled features.

Technically, I suspect the whole building is also our father's only legacy. I mean, it's technically HIS school, so why is BELDON running it? OK he was his brother-in-law, that's something, but we're his next of kin, shouldn't we get at least 50%?

Dalris's expression softens. She admits that she lied to us about the spellbooks, which are safe on the mainland at her father's sacred grove. "You'll be able to study them at your leisure as soon as we find the Sceptre of Power."

Our feelings are hurt and we ask if Dalris lied to us just to use us to get through the door.

"Yep," she says.

[Not her exact words.]

She, her father, and Thayne thought the spellbooks would be more of a lure than the sceptre.

I'd say it's the appropriate time to cast the Alarm spell and get Beldon involved, while we sit in an armchair eating popcorn. The following fight will prove interesting, a liars' contest!

Then we squash the survivor with our EXTERMINATE cantrip.

Before we can complain about being played for a fool, we hear the sounds of footsteps below us in the tower. Someone has raised the alarm.

Great, we don't even need to cast a spell.

"You're the only human who can touch the sceptre and live!" Dalris cries. She volunteers to stall the wizards with some magic of her own while we find the sceptre.

This is bound to allow for dozens of practical jokes where one attach the scepter to a door knob and wait for travelling salesmen. Right now, using it as a mace to remove both Dalris and Beldon seems tempting.

Dalris pulls out her bard flute, steps outside the door, and plays a haunting melody. Soon the tramping footsteps cease; she's bought us some time.

She's also distracted... WHACK-A-BARD!

When we pick up the crystal cube, it immediately disintegrates, and the three scrolls fall towards the floor. We grab two of them, one bound with a red ribbon and the other with a black ribbon, but the third scroll hits the floor, bursts into flames, and is reduced to ash before we can do anything.

That's not where I'd put my most powerful magical object, whose power is reserved for my rightful heir...

 

[Jfdlsjfd]

The spellbooks have been in Perth's druid grove all along, and everyone knew this, including Thayne. Which means he also lied to us when he met us in the bazaar.

So let's review the plan from Team Good Guys based on what we currently know.

At this point, do we have any solid evidence that they are team good guys, except that Dalris is pretty?

Because the Other Side has:

• Uncle Beldon -- Uncles are nice if slightly flawed, see Uncle Donald, Uncle Ben, Uncle Drosselmayer, Uncle Scrooge...
• He build a statue to our Dad in the main hall of his school
• He adopts nepotism to fast-track us into his school, skip O-level lessons and he doesn't even mention a price
• He shows us the door and explains his problem readily (everyone who tried to open this door died)
• He compliments us on our achievements when we put down Arno

At this point I am not sure he earned the Evil Side tag (except out of character information screams that he's using us).

Dalris's comment that the druid grove is "on the mainland" means the search for Carr on Seagate Island may have been slightly more difficult than my previous complaints implied.

Why? Was their quest for a civilization-ending item hampered by the high cost of travel allowance?

 

[Jfdlsjfd]

120
Landor explains how he's stuck in his own "house", that "assassins" have infiltrated the academy, and that his own death is only "hours away."

I don't know about high level MU in 1e, but a 3.5e archmage, realizing that, would have approximately 347 ways of making himself scarce instead of just waiting to die in his own "house".

Landor next writes that he couldn't trust any human with the sceptre's hiding place. Only his familiar, Rufyl, can guide us; one of the other scrolls will summon Rufyl. [Hope it wasn't the one that fell to the floor and burned to ash.]

The last remaining scroll will protect us against Beldon's greed "for wealth and power." [Hope it wasn't the one that… err… guess we're screwed out of at least one scroll no matter what.]

Yeah... Too bad there was a spell to protect the scroll from... clumsiness?

Instead of feeling sadness, curiosity, or love towards dear old dad, we get angry and wrench open the last scroll, the one that will summon Rufyl, our father's familiar, "who will become [our] instrument of vengeance against Beldon." [Somehow we know it's THAT scroll, and not the OTHER one that fell to the floor and burned to ash.]

Even if Rufyl was the wasted scroll, we'd be left with a spell to "protect us from Beldon's appetite for wealth and power", which I suspect is a Disintegrate spell...