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All signs point to Shanif the Marid as the source of key information regarding a pair of adamantite crowns and a being called 'Pazuzeus'. How do we reach Shanif? If you are like 13-year-old Joshua, proud owner of the AD&D Monster Manual II, you have already looked up the Marid. You take note...

Clearly this gamebook abides by the Apocalypse World principle: "Name everyone. Make everyone human." Pfft, that happens to me at least three times a day IRL. I do work in I.T. though. Woah woah woah. "In a loop"? Like, she can do that? Can she just escape into a spiral of her own making...

Maybe! I'm now super curious about the first recorded instance of "detect magic makes stuff glow [a certain color]". Maybe someone can get a grad school paper out of this! At least she's wearing pants this time. I did [REDACT] one previous descriptor of one of the crowns, and we have come...

Absolutely not Keep on the Shadowfell. It’s wretched. From ‘free’ you get what you pay for. If you want to start 4e the right way, Heroes of (words with F) or PH + PH2 for players. I’m not a big fan of the Essentials classes but they’re fine if you don’t want to shell out for the PH’s. (PH3...

Commentary: Ohhhhhkay. It’s been a while since I worked myself into a frothing rant, but in a book filled with frustrating deaths, this one takes the cake. Let’s start with that timeless pastime, complaining about timelines. We see a corpse just inside the door, its face half-eaten by rats...

There is a major plot point that OUR Carr Delling does not actually know yet which is spoiled in this section. Arguably, this could be intentional, but I'll enclose it in spoilers for those who want to discover the information the "right" way. 171 Our powerful thrust (with our spell, sheesh!)...

Commentary: ”The Spider Climb spell works this time just as well now as it did when you first learned it five years ago.” OUR Carr Delling did not learn Spider Climb in book 1. Just sayin’. (He could have picked it up in the intervening years, I suppose.) “How sharp is your sense of...

We roll 2, 1 which is a terrible roll on 2d6. Fortunately, OUR Carr Delling has INT 19 so we eke out a success against our deadly foe, the tower. --- 160 ”The Spider Climb spell works this time just as well now as it did when you first learned it five years ago.” We surge past Dalris, reach...

It is weird that after the first book, which emphasizes the natural surroundings and climate, we get none of that in this book. Does the lack of mention mean anything? Do we assume this is a northern area like upper Canada where it's cold and has short days for 6 months out of the year and...

Commentary: A “fiery” dweomer flares around the “heavy portal” for a few seconds, long enough to show that the door is indeed trapped! Once again the gamebook version of Detect Magic functions nothing like the AD&D version. 1e DMG p. 44: Detect Magic: This spell detects the intensity of the...

45 With our WIS 3, we determine that the best way to find out if Arno’s friends have taken over the college is to barge through the front door. Dalris warns us to wait; she must have rolled a natural 20 on her Don’t Be A Complete Idiot check (to compensate for her own –5 WIS modifier). She...

Pretty typical winter day where I live. In the dead of winter it starts getting dark around 16:30. And I don't even live that far North, compared to some! We did comment in book 1 that We must be far north of this world's equator if it is just now dawn, some time after 8:00 AM. So at least the...

106 We board the ship at nearly midnight, and the taciturn captain and crew sail us across the straight. It’s not until we can make out the dark outline of Seagate Island on the moonless horizon that the captain asks where we want to land. (2) if “a marid” told us a tale about a demon named...

Two possibilities, They were being polite. They are paladins, after all. Once they saw how badly outnumbered we were, they decided to come at us a few at a time. But they had to agree on the order: ascending or descending by seniority? They were watching Dalris’s, umm, “dance”. So the...

79 We “suddenly” remember that Garn warned us about the strength of our sceptre. “If” he’s correct, then the corrupt “senior paladins” have “somehow” retained their clerical magic and “may” detect the sceptre “if” we encounter more of them. (156) We can ask Garn to take the sceptre to Perth at...