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

[Joshua Randall]

169

[direct quote for maximum humor value]

"Carr? Dalris?" This time the startled cry comes from the paladin, who has raised his visor and is starting at you.

"Look, Carr!" exclaims Dalris. "It's Garn!"

"Who's Garn?" demands the gnarled warrior with Thayne's mind.

"What are you?" counters the cavalier.

"Humans are so inefficient at communicating," Rufyl thinks, adding his smug mental barb to the confusion. "Why don't you all just sit down in the shade and ask each other questions until your respective stories are known to everyone? Speech is such a waste of time!"

[end direct quote]

We do as Rufyl rudely recommends and learn the following:

• Perth's spell worked! Thayne was reincarnated as a deep gnome, a svirfneblin. Thayne laments his ugly body, misses his red hair, and has to squint in the bright sunlight. We promise to "work on that". (The squinting, not the ugliness.)
• Garn went to Wealwood, but it had already been ravaged by the corrupted paladins who now style themselves the 'Knights of Truth'. He searched everywhere for Perth and learned the archdruid sailed for Seagate in disguise before Garn reached the grove.
• Perth and some other druids are in the mountains with Thayne's people, "only a few miles from here." Arno's forces "are no match for elven bows -- and svirfneblin darts!"
• We ask after the Scepter of Bhukod and Garn returns it to us.
• Dalris tells our story to everyone in her usual bard-y way.
• Thayne comments that it turns out we need the Sorcerer's Crown [take a shot] to defeat Arno and Pazuzu and not the Scepter of Bhukod.
• We agree and add that Estla has had the crown all along, "if" our information is correct.
• Thayne remembers hearing "something about Aerdrie's tiara, a very long time ago."

Dalris tires of talking (because it was a boring conversation, anyway?) and "blurts" that we should "just ask her" [Estla]. She also wants to see her father who must be crushed by the loss of Wealwood.

Off to the conclusion at (220)!

 

[Joshua Randall]

Commentary:

"Look, Carr!" exclaims Dalris. "It's Garn!"

Bzzt! Flag on the play. In the previous section, the paladin is described wearing a surcoat with the crossed logs of Blessed Dyan. Garn does not wear that symbol any more, not since Archcleric Oram redirected the paladins' faith from Dyan to Pazuzu.

"Why don't you all just sit down in the shade and ask each other questions until your respective stories are known to everyone?"

Rufyl. Buddy. That's EXACTLY what we started to do before you interrupted.

"Humans are so inefficient at communicating… Speech is such a waste of time!"

Well excUUUUUse us, Rufyl. Not everyone has innate telepathy.

Thayne was reincarnated as a deep gnome, a svirfneblin.

I can at last consult the AD&D PH, page 64, to see how the druid version of the Reincarnate spell works.

Reincarnate has a casting time of 1 turn. That's 10 minutes in Dungeon Time, but 1 day in Outdoors Time. So Perth really did have to chant all night and well into the next day over Thayne's body.

You'd then roll on a table to see what form the reincarnated creature takes. This could be anything from a badger (01 - 03) to a wolverine (81 - 85) to a gnome (37 - 40).

Deep gnomes or svirfneblin were introduced in the Fiend Folio, page 84, and became an officially playable race as of Unearthed Arcana.

Arno's forces "are no match for elven bows -- and svirfneblin darts!"

Svirfneblin darts are even more O.P. than regular darts, as we shall see in book 3.

We ask after the Scepter of Bhukod and Garn returns it to us.

If we took the scepter with us out of Wealwood and then left it with Garn before we entered the cathedral in Saven, then it makes sense that Garn would still have the scepter to return to us later.

But it is just as likely that any gamebook reader who didn’t want Carr to die on his Nth attempt did not take the scepter out of Wealwood. Which means the sceptre was still in care of Perth. Which begs the big question of how Garn ended up with it.

Are we to believe that Garn arrived in Wealwood, discovered the grove ravaged by Team Eeeeevil, searched the area, found a hollyphant-hide wrapped parcel on a table next to the spare mistletoe that Perth also forgot to pack, picked up the package without opening it, brought it along, and then intuitively knew it contained the Sceptre of Bhukod when Carr asked about it?

Thayne comments that it turns out we need the Sorcerer's Crown [take a shot] to defeat Arno and Pazuzu and not the Scepter of Bhukod.

He does not comment about that time he got super drunk and killed himself when he grabbed another man's rod. Which turned out to be pointless because said wand was flaccid when we attempted to use it against Pazuzu.

Thayne does remember hearing "something about Aerdrie's tiara, a very long time ago."

Imagine a world in which the gods are demonstrably real, can be communicated with, and sometimes walk the Material Plane. In such a world, if your aunt possessed a crown worn by an actual goddess, how and why would you forget about this?

This is not our world in which every church in the Middle Ages claimed to have a piece of the True Cross or the finger-bone of a saint. This is D&D world in which Aerdrie's crown is LITERALLY the headgear worn by a 100% real divine being.

How. Do You. Forget. That?!?!?!?!?!

 

[Jfdlsjfd]

Commentary:

Ding! Ding! Ding! We have a winner. This numbered section saves us from the drawn-out death sentence that is a trip to College Arcane.

So basically, asking the One True question has no other effect than retelling the obvious and getting us to avoid a totally unrelated event, our visit to the College Arcane? Because in book 1, we learnt (supposedly) about Thayne's family in the middle of the island and we might have thought by ourselves that they'd like to be informed of his drinking problem, err, death following the innapropriate fondling of a rod, err, pending resurrection. And maybe ask them for help.

However, even with our meta-game(book) hat on, there was no way we could know for certain which of the two reasonable questions to ask Shanif: the source of Arno's power or how to stop him. Asking about Landor's greatest secret is not a reasonable choice, although it does give us some critical background that will become relevant in book 3. (cue mysterious music)

So basically, all the cool foreshadowing is lost if you do the right thing? I mean, I'm all for increasing replaying value, but what about sharing the background information among several VICTORIOUS path instead? It reminds me of Icon and Psyche, in the companion thread, where their sad story will stay untold because we avoided obvious death traps.

So if you want to get through this gamebook alive, you need to visit Yellow Marsh, use impotent magic on Shanif (or whack him with your staff), and then know to ask about how to stop the bad thing.

That's empowering.

Freakin' FINALLY! It’s about damn time that SOMEONE remembers that Rufyl knows everything that Landor knew due to a combination of being with Landor during critical events and reading Landor's mind.

I'd even say, constantly snooping on Landor's inner dialogue.

Every human eye in the room focuses hopefully on the little pseudodragon…. Rufyl fades a shade or two in alarm at the attention.

This is SUCH a cute detail. I can imagine this perfectly in a D&D cartoon style scene.

Yes! (honestly).

"I observed my old master handling many crowns during our long association."

Ummmm… what?! Why did Landor handle so many crowns? Where did all those crowns come from?

He could focus a little on the story at hand to try and connect the dots, couldn't he? Also, I posit that Landor won the crown of the archmage tournament on Seagate Island several years in a row, when he opened his school and only had novices to challenge him. Landor was known to juggle crowns when he stopped that tournament.

"Landor presented [the crown of Aerdie] to a blind queen on Seagate Island in honor of her descent from elven royalty."

Estla was never a "queen" until this sentence. But of course she's descended from elven royalty, because every named Good Guy character is descended from elven royalty.

She might be descended, as in, be the daughter or granddaughter of elven royalty. If elves take 200 years to mature, the fall of the empire is 3 generations ago. She's as "removed" to the last queen of Tikandia as Prince George is from Elizabeth II. Unless my hypothesis on the dying out elves is confirmed.

• Wendel jumps up and gets a thick leather bound book written in High Elvish: Some Notes on Denizens of Foreign Planes of Existence, by Landor, Archmagus.

So that Wendel who sent us away in Freeton to look for our father's book actually had one of these books in his hut?

• We flip through the section on "Daemons, Demons, and Devils" until we reach the entry for “Pazuzeus, or ‘Pazuzu’, Demon Prince of the Lower Aerial Kingdoms” wherein Landor writes how the creature loves to corrupt paladins by tricking them into reciting its name three times in succession.
• The only way to get rid of Pazuzeus is with “the combined power of light and dark, of sky and abyss”. That would be a cool oblique reference, but Landor knew that his offspring would be a simpleton, so he spells it out: “Such power may only be wielded jointly by wearers of the twin adamantite crowns of Lolth and Aerdrie.”

Great forethinking. Also, he mentions wearers of the twin crowns. I am pretty sure this means that each crown is intended to be worn by a different person...

(4) to consult the library at College Arcane, or

Honestly, that sounds the best choice for a wizard. Except know-it-all Hermione Dalris told us to seek another route.

The only way to get rid of Pazuzeus is with "the combined power of light and dark, of sky and abyss".

We're eventually going to have to work in cooperation with Arno, aren't we?

I'd prefer to work on our DEX stat, in order to replicate our father's infamous crown-juggling skill so we can get the power of wearing both crown in quick succession, enough to trick the ritual.

Surprisingly, this is a chance to get off a failure path and onto the One Truth Path, if we heed Wendel's warning instead of Dalris's advice. Given that the word "dangerous" is used in one case and not the other, the meta-game play is to ignore Dalris. Which is also the petulant teenager play, so that tracks.

Oops, I mixed them.

 

[Jfdlsjfd]

We tread the same mountain trail we remember from the last time we used it when we were "a ragged orphan knowing nothing of magic."

So we'll end up in Freeton. That's where the path FROM Delmer leads to.

A couple of times we have to hide from wagons full of filthy wounded gnolls coming from the "rugged interior" where Thayne's people dwell.

Interesting piece of intel here: it is apparently within the realm of theorical physics to rout a group of gnolls.

Dalris comments that "it looks as if" Pazuzu doesn't have total control over Seagate: only the coastline is firmly under the thumb of "the evil horde." We nod and state that Thayne's people won't surrender without a fight

and we add that we say that just because it's cool because OUR Carr never actually heard of them before.

and that "their resistance might spread to the ports" if encouraged.

And the news about killable gnolls spread!

We near "Seagate's largest city" [i.e., Freeton] "in the early morning hours of [our] fifth day on the road." Monsters are everywhere. The only tradesmen are "orcish halfbreeds and prostitutes allowed to cater to the bestial gnolls." We don't see any paladins, and Dalris says they must be fighting in the hills.

Whom are they fighting exactly? The rumored Thayne's people? Also, what happened to the whole population of Freeton? There was a market, I remember it distinctly, and prostitutes catering to all sort of people back at the time. Has the sex-working scene changed so much?

Commentary:

Thayne's people won't surrender without a fight and that "their resistance might spread to the ports" if encouraged.

Too bad we left our budding resistance leader back in Saven.

And we just left, without encouragement, another anchor of the community, the respected speaker for Delmer's outraged ancestral spirits, in Delmer.

 

[Jfdlsjfd]

We pause at (92) long enough to wax poetic about the spirit of collaboration among academ -- no; sorry. I still can't type that with a straight face.

I feel the author, given his bio, was totally aware of that... or his experience of academia was totally opposite to... everyone else's?

This time we came to College Arcane by way of Delmer

Actually, we can never die from the Fire Trap. A careful reading of the option say that we end here if we wen't here "by way of Delmer", which we did in all case, since we left our mom's hut and passed through Delmer before coming here. Sure, it was years ago, but that still counts.

, so at least we don't die stupidly to a Fire Trap.

Fire Trap is one-activation only, isn't it? Hiring an hireling in Freeton to open a door would be well within the buying power of our infinite 4-gp-per-second purse.

Instead we comment that we know that "Pazuzu's great power has infested all of Seagate, including College Arcane. If it were just a matter of Arno's evil designs, the other magic-users would have kept him under control. I suspect they did do just that, until old Haslum vanished a year ago."

I know that there is a penchant for euphemism when it comes to dying, but is "vanish" one of them? I think it was quite clearly established that he's dead, isn't he?

Dalris says that must be when Arno summoned Pazuzu, "if he didn't summon himself." Either way, "the combined talents of every magic-user in College Arcane would not have sufficed to contain the awesome powers of a demon prince."

I normally would dispute this claim, and ask what kind of team wouuld be needed to remove Pazuzu from this plane of existence, and if it is compatible with a few near-archmage-level teachers and a bunch of expandable apprentices. But I remembered that they were all soundly defeated by a closed wooden door, so it's consistent.

Dalris advises that we "suspect anything and everything" and suggests we avoid the front door.

Lone Wolf never passed the opportunity to side with a few hirelings/companion who quite consistently died some sections later. I think opporunity for this should be included in all gamebooks.

I am know wondering if one could feed a gamebook to an AI and have it improvise around the structure to take into account the creativity of a human player...

However… we should untangle our fingers from the book and go all the way back to the boat to follow the path where we asked Shanif the One True Question and learned about the royal hats.

If we totally avoid the marsh path, can we take the boat initially, choose the path to the southern area of Seagate and chance upon the lost tribe of Lara Estla without knowing anything about the threat? I know you didn't want us to take this path earlier, but would it lead to another (un)wanted death?

 

[Jfdlsjfd]

Commentary:

… land on "the warm sand" and hide the boat in "a patch of reeds".

When we sail from Wealwood to Saven, the water is freezing cold. When we sail from Wealwood to Seagate Island just across Pirates' Alley, the sand of the beach is "warm". We also somehow discover some "reeds", which are grasses that grow in swamps and marshes, not on rocky coastlines.

Warm sand? When we established that we are in the dead of winter quite high (low) on latitude? While I could accept that Carr is sensitive enough so being suddenly plunged in water gives the impression that it's freezing cold when it's just of average temperature (like 15°C), I agree that there is no way for the sand to feel warm. Especially when we established that we must be high (or low) latitude and it's the dead of winter.

Your former home in the mountains above Delmer, on the other side of the island…

That would be either the northern or northwestern side of the island depending upon how we squint at the map.

Which would mean it takes the same time to reach as the southern tip. Which means we arrive at the same time we'd land if we had chosen to go to Delmer. Which is the middle of the night. So long, warm sand.

 

[Jfdlsjfd]

In book 1 it took about a week to get from Delmer to Freeton, then less than the rest of our day of arrival to get from Freeton to Thayne's village. In book 2 if we land on the southern coast near the eastern cliffs, we're only a few miles from the high desert from which it will take several days to reach Thayne's village.

If I were to construct a model of Seagate Island, could it be done within a 3-space like what we inhabit in the real world, or would it have to be some kind of N-dimensional hypercube?

There is a path that is nearly a road, easy to trail on, from Freeton to Thayne's village. Freeton is on the western side of the crescent.... well...

TIME FOR A MAP !

With WIS 3, our heroes chose to land at a southern point, in a sandy beach just under a cliff that is actually Mount Seagate, culminating at 27,000 feet (conveniently converted for our North-American audience). It didn't take long to get from Freeton to the Elf village because there was a path and it was on the other side of Mount Seagate. Crossing from our landing site to the village implies:

1. Going up the cliff using a goat path. For reference, an alpine ibex can walk up ridges up to 75° and can walk along manmade dams...
2. That was the easy part. Then, one has to cross the high-altitude graveyard of trees, an Atacama-like desert of high altitude (hence the sudden climate change, it's because we had a very high altitude change over a few kilometers.
3. Then there is problem of crossing the peak of Seagate itself, with all the problem linked to sparsity of oxygen before going down a steep denivaltion down to the elven village.

Alternatively, one could have landed in Freeton and taken the track Thayne's village, which, in the intervening 5 years, had been upgraded with signposts so one doesn't get lost and guardrails in the toughest part of the hill for the benefits of the city-dwelling tourist.

 

[Jfdlsjfd]

Our trek into "the rugged highlands of Seagate's interior plateau" takes us "nearly a week". Along the way we encounter wagons of wounded gnolls and "orcish halfbreeds", but Rufyl's telepathic warnings give us ample time to hide off the trail.

So now, Rufyl's telepathic seems to extend much farther. You calculated it worked across the road into the neighbour house, but since it helps us escape scouts.... there must be some much longer advance warning. 200-300m at least, less and they'll hear us complaining to Dalris about our aching feet, and back, and how badly we need a massage.

Dalris comments that fighting must be fierce, and we respond that we knew Thayne's people wouldn't give up easily because "they're much too proud of the High Elvish heritage."

And not because they are fighting a defensive war to hold their territory? Can't you patrolling your border without being a blood supremacist?

A mounted paladin wearing "glimmering plate armor with visored helm" trots along, "unsuspecting". His scarlet surcoat "bears the crossed-logs insignia of Blessed Dyan."

Thanks for the illustration. It makes me think that Bob Dylan is a nature god, with the logs and sprouts livery.

Lying in ambush in the bushes by the trail is a short, gnarled demihuman, dressed in a black leather tunic guarded by overlapping rings of bluish-white metal. The small creature's ugly head is completely bald except for bushy gray eyebrows which contrast vividly with his dark brown skin. The gnarled little fighter's only weapon is a war-dart held poised in his hand.

So we hid from an ambusher that is about to ambush a paladin.

Dalris wants to know what kind of creature it is. We don't know, but we think he must be either brave or stupid to confront an armored paladin with a single war-dart.

We know that paladins are bad because they were corrupted by Arno.
We know that the ugly character is bad because of our unbridled racial prejudice.
They are about to fight.

Why should we care? There is only problems if we intervene.

Thayne's people wouldn't give up easily because "they're much too proud of the High Elvish heritage."

They were Wood Elves in the previous book. And yes, those are distinctly different races in AD&D.

That conforts the idea that Estla was actually contemporaneous to Bukhod Empire's fall. High Elves, IIRC, are the worse offenders in terms of longevity. Which is logical since they followed Orome to Valinor and were blessed when they saw the light of the Trees... oops, wrong world.

Oh, heck: the series won't KEEP punishing us for intervening, will it?

Three times is a charm?

 

[Jfdlsjfd]

169

[direct quote for maximum humor value]

"Carr? Dalris?" This time the startled cry comes from the paladin, who has raised his visor and is starting at you.

"Look, Carr!" exclaims Dalris. "It's Garn!"

"Who's Garn?" demands the gnarled warrior with Thayne's mind.

"What are you?" counters the cavalier.

"Humans are so inefficient at communicating," Rufyl thinks, adding his smug mental barb to the confusion. "Why don't you all just sit down in the shade and ask each other questions until your respective stories are known to everyone? Speech is such a waste of time!"

[end direct quote]

I honestly loved this quote. I also like the fact that Rufyl complains, but doesn't offer to act as an information hub and just telepath-link with each of us in turn to get all of us up to date. Also, there is actually very few information to share that would necessitate a meeting under a tree.

We do as Rufyl rudely recommends and learn the following:

• Perth's spell worked! Thayne was reincarnated as a deep gnome, a svirfneblin. Thayne laments his ugly body, misses his red hair, and has to squint in the bright sunlight. We promise to "work on that". (The squinting, not the ugliness.)

Self-evident. Last time we saw him, he was being chanted at until he got revived. How he outrun us here is unexplained, but it's totally possible he took the direct path through Freeton instead taking the convoluted trek through the desert and peak.

There is, also, no need to cure his ugliness since he was used to be ugly, we always used to called it that before.

• Garn

Which, I guess, we don't know if we took a direct trip from Wealwood to Seagate, and chose to land south...

• went to Wealwood, but it had already been ravaged by the corrupted paladins who now style themselves the 'Knights of Truth'. He searched everywhere for Perth and learned the archdruid sailed for Seagate in disguise before Garn reached the grove.

He's kind of quick since he had time to revive Thayne, have him leave (presumably to meet his clan) and then wait for the corrupt paladins to arrive in order to nearly escape them while they ravage Wealwood. Admittedly he took an animal form, despite this being a later edition power.

Also, basically, he was the defender of Wealwood and left with the population to be killed and enslaved. And our rod to be fondled by strangers.

• Perth and some other druids are in the mountains with Thayne's people, "only a few miles from here." Arno's forces "are no match for elven bows -- and svirfneblin darts!"

Because apparently, Thayne got reincarnated into a whole svirfneblin civilization, able to develop a manufacturing technique for a cultural weapon all on his own.

• We ask after the Scepter of Bhukod and Garn returns it to us.

Irrespective of whether we left it in Wealwood?

• Dalris tells our story to everyone in her usual bard-y way.

No illustration?

Off to the conclusion at (220)!

What, this book is going to end on a cliffhanger???

 

[Jfdlsjfd]

"Look, Carr!" exclaims Dalris. "It's Garn!"

Bzzt! Flag on the play. In the previous section, the paladin is described wearing a surcoat with the crossed logs of Blessed Dyan. Garn does not wear that symbol any more, not since Archcleric Oram redirected the paladins' faith from Dyan to Pazuzu.

I probably lost count of the alternate path we took, but isn't there a way to get there and bypass Garrn totally? In which case we wouldn't know that. But good catch!

"Humans are so inefficient at communicating… Speech is such a waste of time!"

Since he mentally detected both Garrn and Thayne, whom he's familiar with (assuming we met Garrn), why didn't he warn us of who they were when he detected them, instead of saying "hide, there is an ugly-looking creature in ambush that is about to attack a random paladin." Telepathy is sure a useful tool, unless you yourself are WIS 3.

Thayne was reincarnated as a deep gnome, a svirfneblin.

I can at last consult the AD&D PH, page 64, to see how the druid version of the Reincarnate spell works.

Reincarnate has a casting time of 1 turn. That's 10 minutes in Dungeon Time, but 1 day in Outdoors Time. So Perth really did have to chant all night and well into the next day over Thayne's body.

How does one enters this magical dilation time called Dungeon Time? It would have been very beneficial for Perth to have small basements with rat kept in wait for a dungeon to start and revive Thayne much more quickly!

If we took the scepter with us out of Wealwood and then left it with Garn before we entered the cathedral in Saven, then it makes sense that Garn would still have the scepter to return to us later.

Even then, he was supposed to secure it, not keep it on him while he works out how to start a revolution...

Are we to believe that Garn arrived in Wealwood, discovered the grove ravaged by Team Eeeeevil, searched the area, found a hollyphant-hide wrapped parcel on a table next to the spare mistletoe that Perth also forgot to pack, picked up the package without opening it, brought it along, and then intuitively knew it contained the Sceptre of Bhukod when Carr asked about it?

Perth safeguarding seems to be as ineffective as Garrrrn safeguarding... "your hiding place is being attacked by unescapable waves of paladins that you can't possibly defeat (or six gnolls)" is basically the only situation where having your most precious possession on you is the right move.

He does not comment about that time he got super drunk and killed himself when he grabbed another man's rod. Which turned out to be pointless because said wand was flaccid when we attempted to use it against Pazuzu.

Given the efficiency of the Sceptre so far, why exactly did we took it out off the Crypt? The whole point of adventure one was moot as soon as we removed Uncle Beldon. Or more exactly, he mysteriously vanished one day.

Thayne does remember hearing "something about Aerdrie's tiara, a very long time ago."

Imagine a world in which the gods are demonstrably real, can be communicated with, and sometimes walk the Material Plane. In such a world, if your aunt possessed a crown worn by an actual goddess, how and why would you forget about this?

This is not our world in which every church in the Middle Ages claimed to have a piece of the True Cross or the finger-bone of a saint. This is D&D world in which Aerdrie's crown is LITERALLY the headgear worn by a 100% real divine being.

How. Do You. Forget. That?!?!?!?!?!

Even in our world, I would be pretty sure that the nephew of a knight who came back from the crusader's land and brought along a piece of the Holy Shroud, irrespective of the chances of it being false, would have heard of it and it would be the family's most treasured possession... Let alone being able to actually confirm its authenticity with magic. I agree that one can't forget that...