[AD&D Gamebook] The Sorcerer's Crown (Kingdom of Sorcery, book 2 of 3)

Volume 2 of the Kingdom of Sorcery AD&D gamebook series from the 1980s.
(for Volume 1, see previous thread)

The Sorcerer's Crown
by Morris Simon
cover art by Clyde Caldwell
interior art by George Barr
copyright 1986

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Throughout the series, we play as Carr Delling, "orphaned son of Landor, the renowned Tikandian arch-magus."

The books' rules are loosely based on the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons rules (AD&D 1st edition or "1e"), greatly simplified for gamebook purposes. Indeed, one of my delights is to rant about how the gamebook simplifications create situations that make no sense according to the full AD&D rules.

I will explain the gamebook rules more fully as we go; if you can't wait, you can read the explanation in the thread for book 1 of the series.
 

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The Story So Far

It's not actually titled that. The gamebook goes directly from a section titled "An Exciting New Experience in Books!" to an untitled page just before "Playing the Game - Establishing Your Character". But I'm going to refer to this section as The Story So Far because that's what it is. I'm also going to quote it in full so I am not accused of selective paraphrases that serve my rants.

---

In the first adventure, SCEPTRE OF POWER, you were a boy of only sixteen, experimenting with comparatively simple spells under the guidance of Thayne, an elven ranger-wizard who learned his magic from your father. He and a Kandian bard named Dalris, the wildly beautiful daughter of Archdruid Perth, helped you locate and recover the Sceptre of Bhukod, a powerful magical weapon fashioned by sorcerer-kings of the ancient Bhukodian Empire. You would have failed in your quest had your father not bequeathed to you his loyal familiar, a telepathic pseudodragon named Rufyl.

THE SORCERER'S CROWN begins in the large druid grove of Wealwood, approximately five years after the conclusion of SCEPTRE OF POWER. It was in Wealwood that your father worked for most of his life, uncovering the lost magical secrets of ancient Bhukod. After you recovered the legendary Sceptre of Bhukod, Perth insisted that you remain in his sacred grove as tribal mage, in the same log house erected for your father before your birth. Though you spend most of your waking hours delving into your father's coded spellbooks and extensive notes on the magical secrets of ancient Bhukod, you realize it will take you many more years just to reach the point where Landor left off two decades ago.

Your continual quest for more magical knowledge has taken its toll on your health. You are no longer the fresh-faced novice of sixteen that you were in the first adventure in the trilogy. In fact, you look considerably older and more haggard than your twenty-two years, causing Dalris to label your work a "greedy and dangerous obsession."
 

Commentary:

The Story So Far canonically uses the learn-magic-from-Thayne gamebook path that we didn't take in the first book. But I'm going to continue to assume that OUR Carr Delling took the other path, the one in which after he met Thayne, Carr headed to the College Arcane where he enrolled as a student and learned magic from his uncle Beldon and from senior novice Arno (psycho-killer-in-training).

The differences between the path that OUR Carr Delling took and the one that The Sorcerer's Crown assumes we took will cause some paradoxes, but that's part of the fun. OUR Carr Delling already exists in a world in which he has returned from death scenes three times in book 1. I will continue to keep a running total and continue to feel appropriate amounts of shame each time OUR Carr Delling dies.

---

Let the arithmetic ranting begin.

In book 1, we learned that Carr's father, Landor, disappeared "shortly after" Carr's birth 15 years ago. We had assumed this meant immediately after Carr's birth, when he was still a baby. But we could allow for some time to pass between the date of Carr's birth and the date of Landor's disappearance. So it's plausible that Carr could have been "a boy of only sixteen" in book 1.

It is now "approximately five years after the conclusion of SCEPTRE OF POWER" and Carr looks "considerably older and more haggard than [his] twenty-two years."

16 + 5 = 21, not 22

Maybe the word "approximately" does some heavy lifting and it's been five years and 11 months. Maybe in book 1, Carr was "only sixteen" but actually more like sixteen years and 11 months old. Maybe some combination of both allows for the following sentence to be true: "five years ago you were sixteen, and now you're twenty-two."

Maybe.

---

Carr lives in the log house erected for Landor before Carr's birth. This muddles the timeline even further, because at some point after becoming tribal mage to the druids, Landor finds the Sceptre of Bhukod. Also at some point Landor establishes the College Arcane in the port of Freeton on Segate Island, across the water (Pirate's Alley) from the mainland where the Wealwood / druid grove is located.

Got all that?

The question is in which order these events occurred:
  • Landor serves as tribal mage to the Kandian druids.
  • Landor finds the Sceptre of Bhukod.
  • Landor founds the College Arcane.

I've put them in the order I believe is correct, but readers should not be surprised that there is no definitive answer.

I'm working on a new and improved timeline that combines some references from this book with some references from the previous book. But for now, let's rant about one other thing.

---

"Though you spend most of your waking hours delving into your father's coded spellbooks and extensive notes on the magical secrets of ancient Bhukod, you realize it will take you many more years just to reach the point where Landor left off two decades ago."

Ugh. I hate this anti-intellectual bent in many fantasy stories, whereby knowledge transfer is SLOWED DOWN by methods that SPEED IT UP in real life.

Landor, a prodigy and scholar, wrote down all that he learned over a lifetime, presumably so that knowledge would be passed along to others including his son. Carr, a prodigy and… OK, not a scholar… will require "many more years" just to get back to the point where Landor left off.

Aaaaargh! That is not how knowledge transfer works. That is not how written languages work. If writing things down made it take LONGER to transfer knowledge than oral history, then no one would ever write anything down.

This could be a situation where Landor's writings are so erudite and require such advanced understanding that one can only grok them after decades of study. That makes some sense, but it casts Carr in an even worse light than we left him: too dumb to understand his father's writings about the same topics that Carr studies.

We have the running joke that Carr has Wisdom 3, but it's starting to seem that Carr also has Intelligence 3.

---

I promise there will eventually be some actual game-bookin' in this thread. But it's important for me to get some rants going here in the introduction.
 
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Commentary:

The differences between the path that OUR Carr Delling took and the one that The Sorcerer's Crown assumes we took will cause some paradoxes, but that's part of the fun. OUR Carr Delling already exists in a world in which he has returned from death scenes three times in book 1. I will continue to keep a running total and continue to feel appropriate amounts of shame each time OUR Carr Delling dies.

This is a sound decision, as it will ensure maximum paradox.

First paradox, know Dalris is wildly beautiful. This isn't the description we were given in the first book, despite Carr being interested.

Let the arithmetic ranting begin.

In book 1, we learned that Carr's father, Landor, disappeared "shortly after" Carr's birth 15 years ago. We had assumed this meant immediately after Carr's birth, when he was still a baby. But we could allow for some time to pass between the date of Carr's birth and the date of Landor's disappearance. So it's plausible that Carr could have been "a boy of only sixteen" in book 1.

We havent reached section 1 yet, and already we are mystified. Thayne and Dalris said that they had been looking for us for 15 years. We're 16 years old. Why didn't keep track of us during the one full year between our birth and the disappearance of Landor? Trying to locate his pregnant wife (or wife-with-newborn baby) that he might have kept in an undisclosed location just at the moment of his death is one thing, but I doubt he kept them in secrecy for a full year. They could just have asked Landor "how's the wife, budddy?" and spare them their time consuming, silent quest for Carr.


It is now "approximately five years after the conclusion of SCEPTRE OF POWER" and Carr looks "considerably older and more haggard than [his] twenty-two years."

16 + 5 = 21, not 22

Maybe the word "approximately" does some heavy lifting and it's been five years and 11 months. Maybe in book 1, Carr was "only sixteen" but actually more like sixteen years and 11 months old. Maybe some combination of both allows for the following sentence to be true: "five years ago you were sixteen, and now you're twenty-two."

Maybe.
There is a simpler explanation. We started the Sceptre of Power at age 16.

We're told that:
THE SORCERER'S CROWN begins in the large druid grove of Wealwood, approximately five years after the conclusion of SCEPTRE OF POWER.

If we are 22 years old right now, it's because we ENDED the Sceptre of Power at age 17. There is no telling how long it took to be teleported back by the Crypt Thing to the room, now how long we took to leave the academy (possibly, or not, recovering Dalris along the way, whom we know barely at all, from the room). Remember that in this world, it takes Carr a whole day to read nine words. It is not out of place to think it took him six month to wait for the alarm to goes back to normal and slip off from the Teacher's Quarter. And possibly clear the Academy of all danger, as it ended saying that we still have to clear the dungeon, though not exactly in these terms.


Carr lives in the log house erected for Landor before Carr's birth.

A log house that has been neglected for 15-55 years, depending on how soon he left the groove to build his College Arcane.

Also, he recruited us as a tribal despite an odd chance of us mastering absolutely no spell at the end of book 1. The job's requirement are quite lax. They don't mention the pay, but you get a free hut, and presumably free stew.

Got all that?

The question is in which order these events occurred:
  • Landor serves as tribal mage to the Kandian druids.
  • Landor finds the Sceptre of Bhukod.
  • Landor founds the College Arcane.

I've put them in the order I believe is correct, but readers should not be surprised that there is no definitive answer.

The College Arcane was canonically founded in 784 C.E (Canberra's Era, named after Perth's wife, who was an elf and who build a calendar based on her birth date, lending credence to Dalris' pre-teenage claim of being an elf princess).

We enter our study session in Spring 822 C.E. That is evidenced by the book (who cannot be lying ot us).

Since we're 16 at this point, we're born in 806 C.E.

At this point, Landor was at least 66 (based on his need to being served by Rufyl for 40 years) -- so he's born in 740 C.E. but possibly earlier as there is not yet an upper limit for Landor's age.

"Though you spend most of your waking hours delving into your father's coded spellbooks and extensive notes on the magical secrets of ancient Bhukod, you realize it will take you many more years just to reach the point where Landor left off two decades ago."

Ugh. I hate this anti-intellectual bent in many fantasy stories, whereby knowledge transfer is SLOWED DOWN by methods that SPEED IT UP in real life.
There is a strong chance taking 5 (so far) + many more years is still less than the 40+ years it took Landor.
Also, while studying spellbook should tremendously speed up the acquisition of knowledge, those are coded spellbook. Being WIS 3, there is a strong chance that Landor left his spellbooks for his son, in a coded manner, but forgot to mention where he had stored the code. So somewhere, in a dilapidated crypt accessible only through the service of another Crypt Spawn, there is a scroll waiting for Landor's heir. Forever. Landor added the instruction on how to recover the code in the last page of his spellbooks, unfortunately in a coded form.

The interim years will be spend trying to break the cypher.
 
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know Dalris is wildly beautiful. This isn't the description we were given in the first book, despite Carr being interested.

Well accccctttttually, it was:

Sceptre of Power said:
… a young woman, dressed in the buckskin clothing of a frontiersman or ranger. The wild beauty in her face and body can't be hidden, however, even in the crudely tanned skins.

Why didn't keep track of us during the one full year between our birth and the disappearance of Landor?

Indeed! If Carr is The Chosen One (TM), then why does Team Good Guys do such a terrible job of protecting him? Heck, they didn't even know where he was nor that he even existed, apparently: both Thayne and Perth have to study Carr's features intently to determine who he is.

Also, what the heck happened to Marla (Carr's mother, for the benefit of new readers) and to Carr from the time Carr was born (in or around the city of Saven on the main continent) until they went into hiding in the shepherd's hut on Seagate Island? I honestly cannot remember if this ever gets cleared up in the books.

There is no telling how long it took to be teleported back by the Crypt Thing to the room, [...] Remember that in this world, it takes Carr a whole day to read nine words. It is not out of place to think it took him six month to wait for the alarm to goes back to normal and slip off from the Teacher's Quarter.

Hahahahaha! Excellent points.

It's also totally plausible that the duplicitous, chaos-loving Crypt Thing would use a weird variant of Teleport that, yes, sends Carr back to the surface from the Bhukodian vault, but also causes a year to go by in the interim because after all, Carr didn't specify when he wanted to be returned to the surface.

now how long we took to leave the academy

We will learn later in this book that we had a "brief stay" at the Academy, even in this book's canon whereby we didn't study there. (It'll make more sense later. Or not.)

But as you pointed out, in Carr's world, a "brief stay" could be six months.

Also, he recruited us as a tribal [mage] despite an odd chance of us mastering absolutely no spell at the end of book 1. The job's requirement are quite lax.

It could be one of those corrupt governmental do-nothing jobs where the applicant is not only unqualified, but not expected ever to lift a finger.

Perth: "Carr, thank you so much for your years of service as 'tribal mage', wink wink nudge nudge. Here's your yearly payment. Be sure to VOTE PERTH in the next archdruid election."

Carr: "You do know I have infinity money in this pouch, right?"

They don't mention the pay, but you get a free hut, and presumably free stew.

FREE HUT is a new in-joke.

The College Arcane was canonically founded in 784 C.E.

(snip additional math and dates)
You continue to excel at anticipating my future comedic riffs! No one is going to attend my comedy routines if all my material is stale before I even deliver it.

Things you should not joke about so as not to embarrass me further:
  • the killing power of the Magic Missile spell
  • the mating habits of [monster type redacted]
  • Rufyl's weight gain
  • the impossibility of subtracting 1 from 30

C.E (Canberra's Era, named after Perth's wife, who was an elf and who build a calendar based on her birth date, lending credence to Dalris' pre-teenage claim of being an elf princess).

Hahahahaha! That's also definitely an in-joke now, too.

Also, while studying spellbook should tremendously speed up the acquisition of knowledge, those are coded spellbook. [...] Landor added the instruction on how to recover the code in the last page of his spellbooks, unfortunately in a coded form.

This would perfectly fit the Mobius strip of bad plotting that I ranted about in the previous thread.
 

Let the proper game-bookin’ begin!

1

"The golden hues of the sinking Tikandian sun bring a message to gentler dwellers of the wild: feed and hide before the thick evening shadows call the nightly hunters."

(Cool, evocative opening line.)

We’re the hunters! And we’ve cornered "one of the most fearful of those predators, the dreaded manticore", a "vicious leonine creature". We need one of its tail spikes for a "powerful spell" used to enchant darts.

The "leather clad" Dalris [yowza!] who "moves with the stealth of a cat" approaches the manticore "with only her Charm Mammal spell and her druid’s torc to protect her." The red stones on the torc glow, rising and falling with Dalris’s voice as she politely asks the manticore to hold still so we can take one of its "quills". [Huh? It has tail spikes, not quills.]

Dalris tells us to hurry up before she loses control over the beast. We contemplate if the Magic Missile that we prepared for just such an emergency will be enough to handle the manticore.

Our original plan was to blast the manticore and grab a tail spike while it was mortally wounded, just before the beast dies. Because, as Rufyl our pseudodragon famililar reminds us telepathically, A spike from a dead manticore is useless for the enchantment of a magical item. Rufyl is nearby but invisible as is his wont.

We telepathically reply to Rufyl that Dalris’s life is more important than a spell component. Which begs the question of why we are here at all.

"Get your damned quill!" Dalris says, channeling the gamebook's reader.

We can…
(10) use Magic Missile anyway,
(19) grab a tail spike while Dalris’s spell is still active, or
(50) decide that the spell component isn’t that important after all.
 

Commentary:

What are we here for, a tail spike or a quill? Those are not the same thing.

And manticores don’t have quills. I sadly no longer own my 1e AD&D Monster Manual (more's the pity), but I'm assuming the creature didn't fundamentally change by 2e, where it's described with "a leonine torso and legs, batlike wings, a man's head, a tail tipped with iron spikes, and an appetite for human flesh." See? No quills.

The manticore's special attack reiterates that it fires tail spikes, not quills.

---

We contemplate if the Magic Missile that we prepared for just such an emergency will be enough to handle the manticore.

The manticore has 6+3 HD (hit dice). AD&D HD are 8-sided, so this is a HP spread of 9 to 51 hit points, with an average of 30 HP.

Magic Missile does 1d4+1 damage per missile (average 2.5+1=3.5) and the magic-user gains an additional missile at every odd numbered level of experience.

To kill an average 30 HP manticore, Carr would need to strike it with about 8.5 average Magic Missiles, rounded up to 9 because you can't hit with half a Magic Missile. (Duh!) That means Carr would need to be 17th level (9 magic missiles) to kill an average manticore with average Magic Missile.

Or if we assume the most favorable possible Magic Missile damage, Carr would need exactly 6 of them to kill an average manticore, meaning he'd need to be 11th level.

Or if we assume that the manticore rolled really poorly on its hit dice, it could have only 9 HP, and then Carr would need only 3 average Magic Missiles, meaning he'd need to be 5th level.

Or if we assume that the manticore rolled really well on its hit dice, it could have the maximum 51 HP, and then Carr would need 14.6 average Magic Missiles, rounded up to 15, which means Carr would need to be 29th level.

Or if we assume a manticore with only 9 HP, but Carr rolls only 2 damage on all Magic Missiles, then… you get the idea.

So what level is Carr? Presumably not 29th. We do have some other clues as to Carr's level, namely the spells he has prepared for this adventure, but I will hold off on showing those until a more sensible part of the story. At which point I will revisit his expected Magic-Missile-versus-Manticore outcomes because that type of pedantry is highly entertaining.

Bottom line: it's possible that a sufficiently high level Carr could kill a sufficiently average manticore with Magic Missiles. But given all the other spells available to a magic-user by that level, why the heck would Carr prepare a 1st-level spell?! Why would he prepare a random damage spell at all, which may or may not leave the manticore mortally-wounded-but-just-alive-enough-for-the-tail-spike-to-count, when he could have prepared an incapacitation spell that would be better suited for this situation?

Oh, right: WIS 3.
 
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My take, until contradicted by facts I can't deny reasonably, is that Carr is still level 1. That's why he picked Magic Missile. Over the course of 5 years, he didn't learn a lot -- the book are coded -- and is still mastering cantrips. As it should, since he'll be a 1st level magic user when he turns 26.

Why on earth did they decide to handle a manticore by themselves is the result of the low WIS.

Same as putting Dalris in danger to get the quill/tail spike and... going back saying we are no longer interested after all.
 

Obviously, they needed to confront a dangerous beast in its natural habitat in order to get the material components for a spell that will… hang on…

checks notes

… enchant our darts.

shuffles papers

Did I read that right?

turns papers over, looks at the back, then looks on the floor for any additional papers that fell off the table

Huh. That’s… yeah. That’s it. We need manticore tail spikes so we can make our backup weapon more better.
 

That depends on the enchantment. If it is to create a magical item called the Dart of Death, it's certainly worth it. If it's to give a +1 bonus to our dart for level rounds, so we suck a little less once our spell per day has been cast, it's certainly a bad return on investment... But with WIS 3, it's difficult to say.

The ROI is difficult to estimate even for them. Given their superficial apparent knowledge of the beast they are trying to hunt, they probably have no idea if it's a level-appropriate opponent to tackle. A Manticore? It's some kind of small raccoon, isn't it? Can't really remember what I read in Dad's book, and also, it was coded.

I am smiling at the idea that they don't really know if they need quills or spikes. It's really like they are 1st year students who half-learned their textbook and try to fumble through the practical sessions...

Also, Charm Mammal? How on earth is a manticore a mammal? Not only is it a fantasy creature, but references to manticore eggs abound.

But she's a druid, and a bard, how could Dalris know anything about natural stuff?
 
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