Why would Emeritus tell us that a slave will go shopping for us, when she is his wife? Emeritus is a big jerk? Or, he didn’t actually say that, but our lovely ladies ASSumed the woman was a slave?
That's exactly that. She's referred to as "the slavegirl" from the get go, starting when she opened the door to greet us in. The fact that she decided to let us stay didn't strike the character as odd... Then she's referred to by her name, Dahli.
The next morning, we're woken up at dawn for breakfast at the officer's table. Tobias is there, and offers to share a glass of watered down wine and a slice of (stale?) bread. He mentions he's pride to have a nice breakfast, without those overripe fruits and greasy meats that the locals enjoy so much.
He commits several instances of bigotry against said local, two counts of cruelty toward an animal (his dog, which he kicks and spits at)...
Is the book subtly trying to tell us he is a bad guy? Probably the sight of a servant being impaled in the nearby courtyard wasn't evidence enough? The writing is often nice, but sometimes less is more. Well, it is aimed at 12-15 years old, so maybe they needed to overdo it.
... and finally asks what is our quest.
Honestly at this point I am not tempted to reveal that we are looking for fragments of the Bloodsword, especially since Evil runs in the family and we killed his brother who was also looking to acquire the scabbard in the previous book.
The choices are between spilling the beans about our secret quest, deny an answer by saying we're on a secret quest, or just say we're looking for adventure.
Since this last one is probably a hint for a side quest, it's probably also the best choice.
He sternly tells us that we join, pro bono, the patrolling duty of his militia since we need to have an objective in our heart before the Enemy puts one there for us. Since disagreeing sounds unwise, we accept gladly.
He summons Sir Balian, a young officer commanding today's patrol, who look at us quizzically, and leaves to attend more important matters.
As we get ready to go, Sir Balian sigh and adds that there is no rush, and mentions that his way of doing thing is much different from the commander. He beckons a slave over and order for us a breakfast of roast goose, fresh baked bread, fruits and piping hot coffee. We get 1 HP from it (Salvia rolls another 6 on the healing roll, so that's a total of 5 HP for Winny, back to 21, breakfast included). Late in the morning, we get ready for a stroll.
Balian is a nice chap, and his men love him.
I do, too.
As we patrol, we see some kind of commotion. We're offered the choice to intervene, but since we're here to learn, and we're jerks, we won't do anything. We see a scuffle between two beggars, Balian intervenes to separate them and he gets in slight knife cut doing that.
Despite the wound not seeming that bad, the patrol is canceled as Balian needs to visit a doctor. He mentions that Emeritus is a very wise healer, perhaps the most knowledgeable man in the whole Outremer. Emeritus treats our newfound friend, orders him to spend a few days of bedrest and send him back to the knight temple for rest. He waves us over and hopes we'll meet again.
Emeritus ushers us in a curtained alcove and say "I recognize that scabbard and hilt you're carrying... It's from the Sword of Life, isn't it?"
So, the items that cause us instant death if we drop them for whatever reason, the item that several NPCs in the past tried to steal from us, the items that are evidence of our super-duper-secret quest to save the world by preventing the return of the True Magi on year 1,000, the items we didn't dare to talk about to the Very Holy Sir Tobias de Vantery for fear of telling too much of our quest, these items, we're carrying IN THE OPEN for anyone to see? Wow. WIS 3, indeed, we are.
Based on the information we have, I'd say she would...
1. Ignore locals as they are not Kandians.
2. Kill puppy-kicking Knight Commanders.
3. Blush at Sir Balian and insists to nurse his flesh wound, I guess.
We leave Emeritus' house and make our way through the busy streets of Crescentium.
As we pass by a street market, we notice a local woman being molested by two Thulander barbarians in a back alley. Thuland is probably not-Norse, but geographically closer to England. It's, IMHO, not-Danelaw.
Despite having the chance to not care at all and keep wandering through the bazaar, we decide to intervene -- we have basic decency, at least.
We diplomatically call them fatherless rodents and remind them that even a Ta'ashim woman is above their station.
We're expert at insult both the offenders and the person we're trying to protect. We're really experts at diplomacy.
Surprisingly, they don't like us interrupting and the insult. "They didn't like that. You can see that you have a fight on your hands now", the book informs us. We're collectively flabbergasted that they don't decide to politely excuse themselves from the conversation.
FP 8, PA 6, AR 0, Damage 2d6+1, Awareness 7, HP 30.
Special rules: we need to win within two rounds or turn to 443.
Technically it should be possible to inflict enough damage (Trixie can do three attacks a 1d6+3 for a total of 21, Winny two attacks at 2d6+1 for a total of 26, Salvia can fire two arrows for a total of 12, and Esmeralda can off one Thulander each round (enthralling one and vaporizing the other, or sheet lightning for 14 damage to both...) so we can deal a total of 60 damage in two rounds. It's heavily reliant on all the attacks connecting and the maximum damage being rolled.
Any suggestion? Moving one of our frontliner to sandwhich one of the Thulander would cost a round of taking the moving action, but it might allow to concentrate our physical attack on a single foe while Esmeralda deals with the other one.
Trixie moves on the square being the Thulander facing Winny. She incurs no AoO because she has a higher Awereness than her opponent.
Winny attacks her opponent (8) and inflicts 10 damage.
The northernmost Thulander, having no oponent adjacent to him and no ranged attack, has the choice to move one square forward to fight Salvia (depriving her of her ability to fire on the other Thulander, which I hadn't foreseen...) or moving one square back to fight Trixie. Odd=Trixie, and we fortunately roll a 1.
The southernmost Thulander attacks Winny (3) and inflicts 8 HP, reduced to 5 by armour.
Salvia fires an arrow at the Thulander sandwhiched by Trixie and Winny, and is lucky (6 on the attack, 6 damage).
Esmeralda casts Sheet Lightning (7+4=11) and inflicts 13 (!) damage to both Thulanders.
Trixie does her double attack (5) and inflicts 5 damage to her Thulander.
At the end of the first round, the northen Thulander has 17 HP left, Winny has lost 5 HP and the southern Thulander has fallen under the combined assault of our heroic team.
Round 2:
Trixie is the only one adjacent to her fighter, but the combined might of her attack (1d6+3), the Dagger of Vislet (1d6) and Salvia's bow (1d6) have very few chance of killing the last Thulander this round (16%). The alternative would be to abandon this possibility to move Trixie again, in order to keep her safe from the Barbarian's blow.
Now that Salvia has cast Sheet Lightning, she only has 2 spells left in mind, so she'll succed to cast Nemesis Bolt on a roll of 9 or less (and the odds of 7d6+7 doing less than 17 damage is really low (0.01%). So she has a 83% chance of removing the last opponent in the prescribed time.
So Trixie and Winny and Salvia for good measure defend this round, the Thulander misses (14) Trixie (he choses to attack her because she has a lower FP than Winny, both being adjacent to him), and Esmeralda casts her spell... that's a 6. We did it.
We won the fight in less than two rounds!
The barbarians lay dead in front of us. We get the opportunity to loot their shortswords and axes.
Just before, we had a chance to buy replacement weapons. Now, we can loot non-magical weapons: I suggest we fill the inventory with those replacement weapons just in case we need to drop some weapon in the future and the book is giving us a subtle hint.
(We don't have much space, though).
The lady thanks us for taking the time to intervene, and gives us a silver key, saying it will open the many path to the garden of Fatima. There are path all over the Ta'ashim world and she mentions that should we find a need to hide, then we should follow the ape.
She bids us farewell, then there is no trace of her. She seems to have vanished while we looted the Thulanders. So we resume our trip to Sussurien's estate.
Ah yes, the well known wisdom then when lost, follow the large primate and it will never lead you astray.
Also, absolutely keep your backpack full in gamebooks! There will inevitably be some section where you lose a random item from your pack, and this way you can buffer your valuable items with junk.
Unless there is a section where you fall in the water and drown if you have > N items in your pack. That could also happen.
Ah, yes, indeed, I remember those kind of sections, where you could lose either a ration you didn't care a lot or an item that was nearly essential to the completion of the book...
If you were wondering if there was any kind of danger, not really. After two rounds, Nassimah would have come to her sense and turned the two strangers into rats. Only the loot would have been lost. She would have been thankful for the help nonetheless and give the piece of advice and the silver key, which I feel will be essential at some point in the future.
Winny rank 4, FP 11, PA (psychic ability) 6, Awareness 7, Damage 2d6+1, HP 25
Armour AR3
Bludgetranker (+1 FP, +1d6 damage vs Giants)
A healing salve (2 dose, +2d6 HP, that we can use whenever we want, including a fight)
The Sommermulet (+7 damage and AR against undead)
Dagger of Vislet
A brooch of Shielding AR +1
A St-Ashanax reliquary crucifix
A fire orb
A cloak fur who took from the body of a dead girl warning us of the danger ahead with her dying breath
An amber tinderbox
Trixie rank 4, FP 8, PA 7, Awareness 8, Damage 1d6+3, HP 25
Armour AR3
Sword of Redundancy +1
An empty spot
Money pouch with 217 gp
Bow +1
Quiver (6 arrows)
A falchion called Shadowcleaver
A ruby brooch of Iblis, Lord of Jinni
A golden mirror
A silver clasp representing a wolf
Salvia rank 3, FP 7, PA 8, Awareness 7, Damage 1d6+2, HP 21
Armour AR2
Quarterstaff
The blade of the Blood Sword
Bow
Quiver (6 arrows)
A replacement sword
Another replacement sword
Provisions for a week
A lute we took from our former friend, the bard with which we played music before he got gored to death
Two blue gems that were the eye of a creature
Esmeralda rank 4, FP 7, PA 13/16, Awareness 6, damage 1d6+1, HP 15
(accompanied by a pet raven possibly sent by Odin)
(She memorize Nemesis Bolt, Sheet Lightning and Servile Enthrallment, which she succeeds casting on a roll of 8, 9 and 8 respectively)
Obsolete Sword of Uselessness +0
Armour AR2
The hilt of the Blood Sword
1 scroll of Time Blink (to rewind a fight)
A Golden Snuff-Box
A ring of Sorcery PA +1
A magic carpet (1/3)
A magic carpet (2/3)
A magic carpet (3/3)
A white amulet
We're running at full inventory, butu there are a few item that seems discardable: the Golden Snuff Box (we never used it once), the blue gems, the lute and the amber tinderbox (which seemed items of use in book 2, maybe not having future use), the fur cloack (we're in a desert-themed adventure, but if we're going back to krarth to kill the Magi, maybe it will save us some gold)...
These items are next on the line to be discarded.
We continue walking to Prince Sussrien's house. He's currently renting a flat about a butcher's house.
Quite noisy and smelly and bloody for a prince on the move to live, but hey... The encounter is deliciously creepy:
You enter and look toward a stone slab where a bearded giant of a man is dismembering a carcass. His cleaver strikes the raw flesh with remorseless whacks. As he sees you, his eyes betray no emotion - but the cleaver slips, striking the stone of the slab and giving a metallic shriek. The bearded man glowers at his chipped cleaver, then nods toward the stairs. Still, no word has been spoken. You pass him and begin to ascend. After a few moments, you hear him start to hack at the meat once more.
I find this quite evocative. It's just ambiant description, but I feel it's nice. The book is littered with descriptions of things of little consequeunces that makes it a nice read. TBH, the French version was shortened, despite translation often being longer than the original, and many of these moments were absent (but still, enough were present that I liked reading them back then).
Prince Sussurien lives in a plain room. He uses incense to cover the odour coming from the shop downstairs -- why he chose to live here is still puzzling. He's obviously not poor: he wears a richly embroidered tunic, a golden turban with a limpid red gem as an adornment, and his many jewelleries catch the morning sunlight.
Honestly, this man could rent a room in an inn, couldn't he?
He is swarthily handsome, has sharp, bright, white teeth, an intense stare... He beckons us to sit on cushions.
"I knew you'd come" he says with a deep, soft voice. "You seek the sword of Life, I seek the sword of Death. By uniting, we shall attain what we desire.
I know fully anticipate that our team of heroic jackasses will hate him: he's rich, handsome, smart and reasonable.
You don't pretend to like the idea, but there is no alternative, says the book. It's coming...
I have here a Hatuli, litteraly "the Bring-Hither", he says pointing to a mannikin. It was constructed by the great wizard Saaknathur, and my agents found it in the ruins of his fortress, he adds.
Unfortunately, it's broken, because it lacks eyes, that were stolen several centuries ago by the pirate Hunguk, and if we can bring back the eyes, he'll gladly help us.
We try to object that Hunguk died 500 years ago, but he points out that his ghost ship still appears, mentionning that while the common folk since it's a ghost ship condemned to roam the world for the sin of her captains until the End of Time (that's a few year down the line if you've followed the story, since a great catastrophe heralded by the coming of the True Magi will end the world in year 1,000), he prefers to think Hunguk was too great a man for Heaven or Hell. Sussurien has observed the sky to determine the next place where the ghost ship will appear, sixty miles offshore in the Gulf of Marazid, in two days.
He suggest that we use this information to acquire the eyes, then bring him back in the city of Hakbad, where he'll be waiting for us at the House of the Desert Breeze.
We ask if he has suggestion on how to get there, and he answers that it is our problem, not his, as it's in our part of the bargain.
We take our leave.
Wow, I fullly expected the scene to end in a fight, or us insulting Sussurien.
We make our way to the outskirts of the city, looking for a small fishing village to find a boat. But the city is large, and we found ourselves still navigating the streets during mid-afternoon, when the sun is scorching hot. Fortunately, in a back alley, a nice fellow is offering us do join him in drinking a flask of wine.
As accepting unlabelled drink from a stranger in a back alley can never go wrong for a group of young women in gamebook logic, we gladly accept his offer. He strikes a conversation and we get the opportunity to tell him about our secret quest. Which we do, because we're trusting fellows. He introduces himself as Galor the Grave-Robber, and he delighted for us that we spoke to him. He explains that a great marine beast scours the Gulf and no sane person would offer a boat to our destination, but he might have a solution for us. It involves tying a tight rope around us and attaching it to a sleeping Roc he has seen in the hills, earlier at lunch time when he was looking for gull's eggs for an omelette, and saw the Roc by happenstance. By doing so, we could fly to our destination as the Roc will take to the skies and fly over the Gulf of Mazarid.
This is delightfully Vancian, I can totally envision Galor as Cugel trying to trick some trusty oaf...
(314)
This is like one of those computer adventure games where you have what seems a simple task, but the game forces you to make it more and more complicated.
Task: get eyes from ghost pirate.
Approach: take ship to location of ghost pirate.
Complication: nobody is crazy enough to sail you out there.
New Approach: find a convenient giant bird.
NA 2: tie rope to it.
NA 3: hope it flies in the correct direction.
NA 4: wait until it is over the ghost ship spot.
NA 5: hope this took 2 days.
NA 6: cut rope?
At NA3 maybe we need a compass from somewhere, we’ll probably have to perform in a street fair to get it.
At NA5 we need to pause time, need the hourglass of time-sands, conveniently located in the lair of a vicious giant weasel that only eats lettuce from a certain garden in the next city over.
At NA6 we need a special knife because our swords can’t cut the rope, only the special knife, and that can only be obtained if we barter our 3 most valuable items…
Anyhow, we are not falling for such a trick and we say our goodbies to Galor the Grave-Robber (he'd be wise to choose another name to introduce himself as if he want to fool gullible people...) and keep walking toward the next seaside village.
On our way, we get the opportunity to yell at chidren who starts begging for money and insult an elderly woman who tried to tell us to be nice toward the destitute. The alternative was to offer them a gold piece or be a jerk, and we value our gold pieces.
We pass through the village toward the dock, in front of the stalls of various merchants, when we're accosted by one of them. He's a carpet maker, and recognize our flying carpet. Yes, the one that would have allowed us to fly to the ship without problem had we remembered it was sitting in our inventory, I guess.
He praises the Lord for returning his property to him at last. He claims to be called Sharkan, and to have woven the carpet. He is overjoyed to lay his eyes on it again, and explains that he was tricked out by Augustus de Vantery years ago who left with it never to be seen again.
He offers to travel wherever we want in the world as thanks for returning his long lost property, and demonstrate his ownership by commanding the carpet without the need of our mighty White Amulet.
He regales us with tales of the Ta'ashim lands while we quickly and comfortably fly to an island that the Ghost Ship should be reaching in two days, and departs.
We're really all WIS 3. We didn't need to give the carpet back. We can operate it. We are reminded that it is in our backpack by Sharkan. We even volunteer the information that Augustus used the White Amulet -- which sits in our backpack -- to control the carpet. We can easily fly over the sea... Damned be the nice tales to entertain us on the way.
Also, we don't even think to ask Sharkan to wait for us on the island. How are we expecting to get back once we've plundered the eyes of the Hatuli on the Ghost Ship? What is our escape plan? Aren't we able to think more than two days forward?
Also, in which world is a hike in a transport the correct selling price of said mode of transportation? "Here is a car. In return, I'll ask for a taxi ride"? I'll admit that the man was initially robbed of the carpet by Augustus, but we acquired the carpet then by the long-established law of Loot, and we should be aptly rewarded for returning the item...
This sequence doesn't make even a modicum of sense, especially since we're established jerks.
At least, the two day we spend on the island are great and we're relaxed and rested, gaining back 4 HP each.
Since we have no mode of transportation, we decide to swim toward the Ghost Ship when we see her emerge from the fog on the second night, exactly as foretold by Prince Sussurrien astrological charts.
And why exactly are we lacking a transportation mode?
Given the difficulty of the task, it comes to our mind to drop our armour on the island.
That's... understandable. It makes sense to remove our leather vest because we'd drown with it. I hope Trixie we'll be at ease carrying two greataxes, 205 gp, and several weeks worth of rations.
Also, even without a magic carpet, we have a sage that can fly over the water with the power of her mind. We did it in the last book, dammit.
"In its perpetual shroud of fog, the Devil's Runner seems to hang in a space between worlds. Dazed by a sense of disorientation and timelessness, you stare down from the rail. You can no longer make out the surface of the ocean, or even hear the waves lapping against the hull. Intermittent moans come from far away, like the muffled cries of all the sailors who have ever been lost at sea..."
Cool. Really cool.
We walk on the huge ship bridge to the helm, where we meet the figures of the helmsman, who claims to have held his post for seven human lifespan. He can spare some time to answer one question before having to return his attention to his task. We can ask where is Hunguk (433), where are we bound for (79) or where are the emeralds Hunguk stole from Sa'aknathur (517).
