[Fighting Fantasy] Bloodsword v2

[Jfdlsjfd]

We finally reach the other side of the fortification, having successfully crossed the Path of Confusion. We're in the castle courtyard, where absolutely nothing happens -- and this a marvelous time to recount our last 3 healing options: 2, 6, 4, yielding 12 HP, half of which heals Salvia, the other half fill Winny (13 to 19 HP). Only Trixie is still injured at 11 HP.

Another nice art. We must be at an important section.

We cross the courtyard and approach the main dungeon. "A number of pallid men and women seem to be moving like in a dance, but we hear no music". Hey, gamebook, with the game lore and the illustration, don't kid me, those are ghosts, you can use that word.

One by one, they dissolve, and when we reach the door, we hear the faint noise of distant shrieks, of pleasure or agony, we can't tell. We can read on the mantel: "Here is the journey's end. After life's fistful fever, sleep thee well."

Old English thee, as in the Ultima games. And Shakespeare, who is also quite renowned.


We cross the door. finding ourselves in an octogonal room. On the floor, traced with silver dust, a square with runic symbols, and candles the angles. We can take them if we want.

Why wouldn't we? They are strange magical item near the end of the gamebook, I think we can safely drop our cloaks at this point.
But... how exactly are we going to collect silver dust on the floor? It must take an inordinate amount of time without a vacuum cleaner or even a simple broom. Will that stop adventurers from expanding their inventory? You bet not.

After leaving this room, we carefully avoid to enter the magical square, walk past a statue of an executioner holding a scythe and a head that seem to be looking at us (creepy!) and we reach the safety of the other side of the room. With no little relief, we pass the door into the next room. And Winny is decapitated by the scythe-holding executioner, viciously wielding his weapon. There is nothing that Winny can do, and in her misery "the player evaporates in a thin mist".

Hello, anyone can hear me? I am a player of the book and somehow I was instructed to turn into a thin mist... Is anyone there? why is the world all in black and white? And do you have news of what happened to my character? Is she behind that big bright tunnel exit I can see over there?

 

[Jfdlsjfd]

This is a placeholder section for us to mourn about Winny, who is now dead (and we can't recover her equipment, which vanished with her).

 

[Jfdlsjfd]

After a brief period of mourning, we can resume our exploration.

It actually exactly what the book tells us:
"You look at the fading stand of mist, then shrug off your sad thoughts. You enter a long, silent gallery. Looking at your right, you see a line of huge mirrors hung along the wall. In them you see yourself reflected, and also reflections of bizarre portraits that seem to hang on the left hand wall. However, when you turn to look at this wall, you see mirrors hanging there, reflecting a row of portraits on the right hand wall..."

That's fun, and creepy, and I am totally copying that for a future game.

But I find the group is awfully quick at forgetting about our beloved Winny, that have been with us for nearly two books. Is there something amiss? Can you spot it?

 

[Joshua Randall]

pours a glass of Kandian mead

When I first met Winny, she didn’t even have a name. She was just “The Warrior” and we lamented her lot in life, without even a special section to turn to at the beginning of the quest. She was almost named Wilma. But she settled on Winny because she was always whining that she didn’t get to do cool things.

She was mocked for her low INT, which is cruel, picked on because of her mental state. But whatever her INT, Winny was too clever to be fooled by checkers-playing merchants, and immediately stabbed one in the face that one time.

Later Winny swore an oath to help a knight with a really long name kill a statue. So that happened. She also had no patience for carpet-flying shenanigans and ended the life of the man who tried to rob us of our scabbard while also freezing everyone’s butts off by flying a thousand feet in the frigid air.

She also spend a lot of time Defending.

Winny, here’s too you!

pours one out for her

—

What? What’s that you say? There might be something amiss here with the ghosts and mirrors and the instant death?

I want to feel clever. I really do. But I am not seeing it.

Is this one of those subtle clues hidden in the art itself like in Lone Wolf Book 2 Fire on the Water or in Sorcery! Book 3 The Seven Serpents?

 

[Jfdlsjfd]

Not exactly the mirrors and ghosts, but the instant death. And in your eulogy, you named the exact thing that is off.

The scabbard. Winny got killed, and all her equipment disappeared, and we are not turning to the dreaded section 419 where we are captured into the extradimensional space by the angry True Magi (5 remaining out of an initial number of 36, a lore information we can only get from them in this quest-ending section). That means that somehow, the universe still considers that we are the owner of the scabbard. There is... HOPE!

 

[Jfdlsjfd]

After a time, we reach the end of the gallery. We're overlooking a passageway, leading to a chapel. Below, we see an eerie procession of cowled figures, lighting their way with large blue candles, and surrounding a bier on which is laid a shrouded body. They pass along the passageway below with slow, silent thread.

As we descend the stairs to reach the passageway, we notice in the blue light that the shouded corpse, white as death, is the one of our fallen comrade! It is lying on the bier surrounded by unlit candles. (177)

We can attack them, ignore them, follow them or use an item.

I love the choice for insensitive players... well, let's ignore our fallen comrade and just go our merry way. After all, we didn't know her for that long...

 

[Joshua Randall]

I think an argument could be made that the ultra-cautious yet semi-reasonable thing to do IS to ignore the corpse. Because this feels a bit like one of those gamebook situations in which something bad happened, and you are then asked if you’d like to trigger another round of badness.

Sort of like:
“A bear lurches out of the woods and bites the head off your companion.”
“You continue on through the woods. There is a clearing with a sleeping bear in it.”
“Do you: poke the bear? Ignore the bear? Or turn to (420) if you have Delicious Honey and choose to use it.”

—

But seriously, of course we should try to revive Winny (if that is her name). Given the BLUE candles maybe this is where we use a BLUE item?

I think we also have the holy something of someone that we got from the dying woman in the snow… or was that somewhere else… anyway, some kind of holy relic that might help here?

 

[Jfdlsjfd]

I'll bow to your gamebook logic of having considered it is best to not intervene at this point. When researching what people thought about the permanent healing of sages, and how to read the relevant rule, I found a wiki where they said that acting at this point would lead to a section mishap, where we'd be sent to a place bypassing an opportunity to get an essential item to survive the boss fight. I don't think it was intended, since it's corrected in later editions and translations, but I guess it must have been particularly irritating in the original game to die after being asked if we have a McGuffin or die, and wondering where such an item could be acquired. You really have a supernatural hunch.

We do have a set of blue items, the blue gems that were the eyes of the skeletal servant sent after us by the Blue Moon, formerly Magus Tor. They are not on the list of usable item in this case. We do have a holy item, the crucifix of St Ashanax, but he's protecting travellers, and not raising dead people. We also have an item we plundered from a dying old girl, but it was just her cloak and gloves. We just took them to be petty. Your hunch didn't extend to the next section!

The procession proceeds to a sanctuary whose wall are covered in human bones. We notice that besides the glow of the candles, a light comes from the ceiling... there is a gloomy chandelier, with a trapped Faltyin, in a iron cage, crucified head down, acts as a source of light. The pallbearers lays our friend on the altar and place a strange silver falschion on her chest and start chanting.

Creepy, isn't it?

At the item using section, we're told that we feel the unlit candles around the body are key to the ritual, and we're offered to way to light them: using the amber tinderbox (which we have, we stole it from the old lady's cave, after she offered to shelter us from the evil of the land by her protective fire in her cave) or the orb of fire (which we have, since we collected it from the lab of the witch when we helped Sir Toolonganame fight the statue.

Since using the Holy Handgrenade of Antioch to light a few candles seems overkill, let's try the amber tinderbox... or not. We're also told that we can get back to section 45 and reconsider our options.

Which I immediately take as an opportunity to consider my options and notably whether I'll use an item 7 times in a row, in order to provide healing for Trixie. Keep chanting, creepy guys!

An upright Lone Wolf would never had done that with Curing, but I seem to remember we were actually not faring well on Fehmarn day in our studies, so... I never had a qualm doing that when playing that series.

 

[Joshua Randall]

We can attack them, ignore them, follow them or use an item.

I totally misread this section. Damn you, modern English, for corrupting the plural word "them" into singular!

(Err... not the band Modern English... Melt With You is a great '80s song!)

Of course this section asks if you want to attack, ignore, or follow THE PEOPLE DOING THE RITUAL, "them". Not the dead Winny, which is how I originally interpreted it. I did wonder why you would attack the corpse of your dead friend. But it was an '80s gamebook. We did a lot of weird stuff.

I'll bow to your gamebook logic

Do whatever is most amusing to you as the god-author! I like to throw out my perspective upon things as a grizzled veteran gamebook reader who is simultaneously baffled by this particular series. I don't have any expectation you actually take my terrible advice.

The procession proceeds to a sanctuary whose wall are covered in human bones. We notice that besides the glow of the candles, a light comes from the ceiling... there is a gloomy chandelier, with a trapped Faltyin, in a iron cage, crucified head down, acts as a source of light. The pallbearers lays our friend on the altar and place a strange silver falschion on her chest and start chanting.

Creepy, isn't it?

Gnarly! I wonder what is the significance of the awesomely Gygaxian falchion? Possibly some obscure real-world religious or cultural thing?

Can we save the poor Faltyn? I'm sure the answer is no, because poor Faltyns never get any love, they just scrape and serve, guiding you through the Dead Marshes, DON'T LOOK INTO THE WATER, yes precious.

let's try the amber tinderbox... or not. We're also told that we can get back to section 45 and reconsider our options.

Which I immediately take as an opportunity to consider my options and notably whether I'll use an item 7 times in a row, in order to provide healing for Trixie.

I bow to your superior cheesing of gamebook curing!

 

[Jfdlsjfd]

I totally misread this section. Damn you, modern English, for corrupting the plural word "them" into singular!

Honestly, blame me. I was taught that them is plural. That's what school teach us to do. Then I mix it with what I read (here, notably) and it becomes fuzzier. Then, I think and translate, instead of thinking in English, so a lot of pronoun must get wrong. If you see he, him or she, her, popping around, it's probably because I can't not think of an armour as a she and a shield as a he. Gendered-word, and especially arbitrarily-gendered words are learnt from early age and they are ingrained.

Of course this section asks if you want to attack, ignore, or follow THE PEOPLE DOING THE RITUAL, "them". Not the dead Winny, which is how I originally interpreted it. I did wonder why you would attack the corpse of your dead friend. But it was an '80s gamebook. We did a lot of weird stuff.

I think it's safe to admit that the book is talking about the ritual participants indeed.


After much considering, we found ourselves at full health somehow, and we decide to try to use our tinderbox to produce flame.

The ghost are terrified at the warm light of our tinderbox! It really seems to have protective powers. We ritually light the lanterns around Winny's dead body and suddenly... she has a spasms are wakes up, casting off her winding sheet.

DING. At this point, and for the first time in nearly two books, the book reveals its assumption that our warrior is a guy. First, it uses "his" and "him"as in "You rush to him and help him to his feet". It's evidence enough. Also, If we allowed the ritual to continue, they'd take the falchion and plunge it into our hero's breast. Which I understand to mean the heart for a guy, but and odd choice for a girl, and they absolutely don't want to mention our heroine's assets, in this case...)
Our comrade has no recollection of what happened since she was struck by the executioner's scythe... but she knowhs she has faced death, and came back, and no longer fear what's behind the Veil. She permanently gains 1 to her fighting prowess as she can be fearless.

So, our favourite sociopathic killer is now suicidal as well. A lucky combination.
Also, the falchion is an antique magic blade called the Shadowcleaver (it's written on the blade, Salvia said, being a Sage and all-educated). Also, we can take a skull-shaped amulet that was on the altar.


Time for a quick inventory and character sheet recap.

Spoiler

Winny rank 3, FP 10/11, PA (psychic ability) 6, Awareness 6, Damage 1d6+2, HP 19

(currently suffering from frostbite, compensated by a +1 sword. Gained 1 FP for facing death.)

1. Armour AR3
2. Bludgetranker (+1 FP, +1d6 damage vs Giants)
3. A healing salve (5 dose, +2d6 HP, that we can use whenever we want, including a fight)
4. A chequerboard and pieces marked by the rune of the Elf-Lord
5. Dagger of Vislet
6. Golden Snuff-Box
7. A St-Ashanax reliquary
8. A fire orb
9. A cloak fur who took from the body of a dead girl warning us of the danger ahead with her dying breath
10. An amber tinderbox

Trixie rank 3, FP 7/7, PA 6, Awareness 8, Damage 1d6+1, HP 19
(currently suffering from frostbite, compensated by a +1 sword)

1. Armour AR3
2. Sword of Redundancy +1
3. A jug of milk we took from a starving innocent woman
4. Money pouch with 105 gp
5. Bow +1
6. Quiver (6 arrows)
7. A +0 falchion called Shadowcleaver
8. A skull amulet found on an alter
9. Silver dust and assorted candles
10. A brazier
11. A silver clasp representing a wolf

Salvia rank 3, FP 6/7, PA 7, Awareness 6, Damage 1d6+1, HP 16
(currently suffering from frostbite)

1. Armour AR2
2. Quarterstaff
3. A magical thurible still fuming grey mist dropped by a fleeing altarboy
4. Bow
5. Quiver (6 arrows)
6. A bedroll
7. A bedroll
8. A bedroll
9. A bedroll
10. A lute we took from our former friend, the bard with which we played music before he got gored to death
11. Two blue gems that were the eye of a creature

Esmeralda rank 3, FP 5/6, PA 15/16, Awareness 6, damage 1d6, HP 10
(Has increased her PA by 7, wears a +1 PA brooch and suffers from frostbite)
(accompanied by a pet raven possibly sent by Odin)

1. Obsolete Sword of Uselessness +0
2. Armour AR2
3. An iron bell
4. 1 scroll of Time Blink (to rewind a fight)
5. A charm of Shielding AR +1
6. A ring of Sorcery PA +1
7. A magic carpet (1/3)
8. A magic carpet (2/3)
9. A magic carpet (3/3)
10. A white amulet

Since there is nothing more to do here, we're going to leave the horrible sanctuary covered in human bones and proceed with our quest by stepping toward an archway when we're stopped by a feeble, pleading voice disturbing the silence of the Cathedral of Doom. The Faltyn above us weakly cries... "wait, free me, please..." We had forgotten about him!

Esmeralda barely refrains from bargaining a reward with the poor creature, something of no use at all just to spite their ilk, before seeing the common agreement that letting the little guy to suffer isn't what hero do.

Several of us can try to help: a Sage, a Trickster or an Enchanter.

"I am back to being useless, I guess" whines Winny while going to sulk in a corner.

The most logical solution is to let our Salvia try, since she can levitate. She prepares to not care at all about the Faltyn as the book twice already tried this, but this time we're just offered to go to either 325 or 30. Since it's a random choice, I'll roll a dice (odd 325, even 30, got a 1) and go to 325...

Where we're uplifted to see Salvia uplift herself to the level of the Faltyn's cage and gently removes him from the pins that kept him on that horrible cross made of human bones. Esmeralda should note that it's a practical way to keep a Faltyn in check... There is so much to learn!

The Faltyn offers to help us by providing information before disappearing. He told us that countless ordeal awaits further in the castle, as they are all dreams made true by the spirit of the Wytch-king. To survive, we should definitely get a skull amulet (and we're told that if we didn't take one but saw one earlier, we are allowed to retrace our steps and pick it up), a handful of silver dust (check!) and that we cut the shroud into small pieces to drench them in water and wind them across our lips to proceed.

We can then proceed or leave the cathedral altogether and take the other path the pallbearer were coming from.


Since we did a just and noble thing with absolutely no ulterior motive by saving the Faltyn, we'll now follow his advice.