Let's play Bloodsword, book 3/5

[Jfdlsjfd]

I think Psyche probably won't summon a weak demon and as supernautral creature, it's possible they will have a strong Psychic Ability. So I decide to drop Sheet Lightning and Enthralment from Esmeralda's mind, and replace them with Sword Thrust. I don't expect the fight to last more than two rounds, but each of them should count.

Round 1:

Demon moves one step westward, closing in with Winny and Trixie.
Trixie attacks (11) and misses.

Winny attacks (9) and hits for 10 damage, reduced to 6 by the demon's tough hide (54).
Salvia remembers she had Exorcist training but didn't bother to use it when facing a bona fide Demon... Sigh. With such an AR, her bow is near useless so she pass her turn.
Esmeralda casts Nemesis Bolt (5+5=10) and sears the demon for 44 damage, reduced to 40 by the demon's fried hide (14).

This is turning out even better than expected.
Trixie uses her extra action to Defend.
Round 2:

The Demon attacks, and, being adjacent to both Winny and Trixie, focus on the lowest Fighting Prowess of the group, so that's Trixie. Who is defending so the Demon rolls 3d6+1 against his FP. It's a 13, and he misses Trixie.

Trixie keeps defending, which means sommersaulting around the demon, jedi-like.

Winny attacks and hits (10) for 4 net damage -- the demon is reduced to a tenth of his initial HP.
Salvia keeps quiet.
Esmeralda casts Sword Thrust (9+3=12, it's still cast successfully) for 11 damage, reduced to 7. The demon has 3 HP left.

Round 3: (yes, there wasn't supposed to be a round 3...)

The demon hits Trixie, who is safely jumping around (13).
Trixie keeps defending just in case.
Winny beheads the demon with a mighty chop of her blade (9, for 11 damage, reduced to 7).

We emerge of the fight unscathed.

Since technically the fight is over, we memorize two counts of Servile Enthralment and proceed to the couryard. My bet is that, like other spellcasters we've fought before, Psyche will alternate calling spell to mind and casting them, which means reducing her psychic ability and lowering her odds of resisting our spells.

Where Psyche (PA 8, Awareness 7, AR 0, HP 45) has the common sense of standing behind a wall of human shields, cscimitar-weilding slaves (FP 8, PA 6, AR 0, HP 15 each, 1d6+2 damage, Awareness 6).

The fight will be much easier than the one before, as Psyche PA is indeed lowered by a spell she takes 3 rounds to cast. Curiosity killed the cat, it's a Mass Polymorph Other spell called the Cantata of Shapes, in which everyone must resist by rolling under PA or be turned into a small monkey and fleeing to live in the jungle happily thereafter. Which could count as a non-standard positive ending.

Round 1:

Trixie hits her slave (8) for 9 damage.
Winny hits her slave (9) for 9 damage. Both stands heavily wounded...
Psyche chants in her Yamatese tongue of magic and concentrates on her spell.
Salvia fires an arrow (there are unarmored targets...) at a slave and misses (8), complaining about her lack of magic bow.
Esmeralda casts Servile Enthralment on Psyche. The spell succeeds (6+5=11) and Psyche misses her save roll (9). She's out of the fight. I elect to let her in this state instead of trying to make her attack her own slaves -- she would have another save.
The Slaves attacks our martials, one each... both scimitar connects, the first doing 2 HP to Winny and the second 5 HP to Trixie.

Round 2:

Both Trixie and Winny kill their opposing slaves with ease before they can act.

The other slaves don't seem interested in defending their dead mistress. One of them points to a tower of the villa, saying Kinuz Trezir to us. And repeating it loudly for good measure since we don't get it the first time.

Salvia appears to have a deep case of amnesia. Not only did she forget she was an exorcist but now the no longer remember being fluent in the local tongue.

Since looting is what we do and Trezir sounds too much like Treasure to me, we decide to investigate. The tower is decorated with glazed mosaic fragment and topped by a copper minaret. The door is a slab of blank, black stone.

Usually called a wall, not a door.

A Sage, a Trickster or a Warrior could try to do something here, but "if you're a lone Enchanter, you will have no other choice than going back to bed". There is some Brennan-esque dialogue sometimes.

Since usually having Winny act involves someone being unexpectedly murderer, and there is no one around... Let's try this.

She pushes on the black stone to make it yield... Rolling 4d6 under FP. Each attempt costs 1 HP as her muscles are strained.

I notice we're bound to succeed, since there is a loop that allows us to retry. In our usual way, we will loop and heal at the same time, hopefully ensuring a painless victory against the Damn Door of Doom.

The odds of us succeeding each time are quite low, but there is nothing that preclude us for casting spells outside combat at will, as per the rules. So it's time for Esmeralda to cast the little-used Eye of the Tiger, to add 1 FP to everyone in the group for the next four rounds.

Luckily, it only takes 2 attempts to force the door open. During which Salvia can't heal anyone but herself. Looting will be scheduled at section 279.

 

[Joshua Randall]

Wow, that was a close one. The dice give and the dice take away: blesséd be the name of the dice.

—

I love that a solo Enchantress sees the black stone wall/door and just says, “Screw it. Back to bed.”

 

[Jfdlsjfd]

We ascend the stair of the tower. It's a observatory tower, full of astronomical charts and implements, the secret of which died with Psyche.

Taking the stairs up, we arrive at a landing.

We don't take time to measure it exactly, so we will never know if it is an appropriate 15 feet wide landing for a magical tower.

Two doors, a white and a black one, can be tried.

We first go throught the white door. In the room, hung with silk curtains, stands a cowled figure in a corner, that bids us to close the door behind us, because there is a draught.

We are presented the choice of agreeing, or leaving.

Being certified jerks, we would certainly tell him to shut up and keep the door open while we loot his room, but this option isn't given.

Hearing the click as the door close, the figure removes his cowl and gives a gleeful chuckles. He reveals himself to be a leper. His face is ravaged and his eyes are sightless. He taunts us that we're trapped now with him as the door is one-way, and while he's guarding a golden mirror, the irony is we won't have any use for the loot as we'll just die of leprosy with him.

We have no solution but to die here, wallowing in despair, as now the Psyche is dead, there is few chance one of the slaves would venture here and open the door from the outside...

Seriously? Ways of leaving:

• There is a window, that is blocked by the silk curtain. We're on the first floor. Accident happens, but between leaving through the window and being trapped forever and die from leprosy, I think it's worth trying.
• We can force the door, as we did by bashing the front door, which was a slab of rock larger than the interior wooden door.
• We have access to the Immediate Deliverance spell. It's a short-distance ethereal jaunt, more than enough to move to the other side of the door. And we've seen the other side of the door since we came through it 10 seconds earlier.
• We have a flying carpet to leave through the air.
• A Sage can fly through his Levitation power. There is a window. We have all the time we want to empty our mind and reach weightlessness.
• We have a fire orb that will burn easily through the floor, since it burned through a whole whaler ship in seconds when activated in a path we didn't take (mostly because doing so while standing on the whaler ship in high seas was not deemed as smart.
• We can probably do the same by casting Nemesis Bolt repeatedly at the floor. We're doing 7d6+7 damage every two round, continuously. We could level the place easily... let alone blast a wall.

All are easy solutions, but the books offer more convoluted reaction: "hey let's die here and revel in hopelessness". Also, don't kid me. Those poor slaves were positively frightened of their mistress, now there is noone else but them in the rich villa, and they won't want to loot it to start their lives anew?

However, we have a Trickster, so we are told to go to section 354 instead, without a choice.

Trixie moves forward and takes the mirror from the hand of the leper, after wiping it thoroughly against an silk carpet. Then she leaves through the door that she blocked with a wire on the way in, having noticed that there was no handle on the inside and anticipating a trap. The leper asks how we did that and Trixie just replicate with click sound with her tongue and boast the usefulness of being able to imitate a creak on a floorboard, the crackling of fire, or the mewling of a cat. The leper is rejoinced that he can at least be free, but we close the door shut before he can cross, saying "The next sound you hear will be the click of the door actually closing".

Well, that was very cool. And I liked the book playing a trick on the reader. Though my rant still stands. I also liked the jerk move, as befits us, including the added, gratuitous taunt! Even if the blind leper was working for Psyche, he wasn't really in a position to refuse the job.

We enter the other room and loot an empty crystal phial containing a potion we can drink anytime outside combat (section 370).

We try to ascend on the second floor, but a force field, a diminishing remnant of Psyche's magical power, blocks our path.

So we get back to bed. We have a short, but sound sleep. In the morning, a slave named Sha'at brings us a fine breakfast of spiced buttermilk and unleavened bread with dates and oranges. Everyone gets back 3 HP -- and since we had been healing all the way, everyone is now back in full health.

The slaves assume that since we killed Pyche, we're now the new sorcerous owner of the place, including all the properties, which include themselves. These poor people probably have nowhere else to go. It would be inhumane to just leave and not add Psyche's estate to our list of assets? There is nothing wrong to get a little richer while adventuring, isn't it? Honestly, in this book we're total jerks.

We have the choice to explore the tower (131) or get back to Crescentium (521), since this detour hasn't helped us to get a clue on the location of the blade of the Bloodsword.

And yes, all these books are 600ish section longs, with few strings of linear section without a real choice (mostly only when several path remerge again).

 

[Joshua Randall]

Taking the stairs up, we arrive at a landing.

We don't take time to measure it exactly, so we will never know if it is an appropriate 15 feet wide landing for a magical tower.

Obligatory cross-promotion link for readers in 2045 who have no idea what this joke references.
(Hey, don’t laugh: I still re-read story hours from the 2000s here in 2025!)

Hearing the click as the door close, the figure removes his cowl and gives a gleeful chuckles. He reveals himself to be a leper.

The good news is we are highly unlikely to contract leprosy from him in his brief reaming lifespan after taunting four heavily-armed murder-hobos.

The disease is believed to be transmitted through droplets from the nose and mouth of an untreated case of leprosy, containing the causative agent, following prolonged, close contact. The disease does not spread through casual contact (like shaking hands or hugging, sharing meals or sitting next to each other).

So we can hack him down, being sure not to endure “prolonged, close contact” and contemplate how to get out of the room

We have no solution but to die here, wallowing in despair, […]

Seriously? Ways of leaving:

Quality rant! It’s particularly ridiculous that the book would “trap” us on the 1st floor (2nd floor for U.S. Americans). We’re in a tower. It can be as tall as it needs to be. And this room has astronomical stuff in it. Wouldn’t it make more sense to trap us on the top floor? And say it is 100 feet in the air? At least that would be a plausible reason why we don’t just hop out the window, which on the 1st (2nd in USA) floor is only about 8-10 feet off the ground and easily survivable by normal people, let alone hardened murder-hoboes.

I liked the book playing a trick on the reader.

Agreed - that was awesome. More gamebooks need(ed) stuff like this.

“You’re dead in some elaborate yet stupid way.”
“Unless you have this character / item / scrap of rhyme written down…”

We enter the other room and loot an empty crystal phial containing a potion we can drink anytime outside combat (section 370).

What is it what is it whatisit WHATISIT? As a D&D player in those day I absolutely would’ve quaffed this thing immediately. As a gamebook veteran here in 2025, I… still kinda want to quaff it ASAP, but I suppose we should wait until just before the end of this book to see if it has some other use. (And if not, definitely quaff it at the end because we have to know what it does.) (Feel free to blame me when it’s instant death.)

a slave named Sha'at

Psyche named one of her slaves after the past tense of the vulgar word for defecate? MONSTROUS.

We have the choice to explore the tower (131) or get back to Crescentium (521),

How have you not turned to (131) already?

 

[Jfdlsjfd]

Indeed. That's one small trick of the book for unexperienced players, I guess. Those would say: we already searched the tower during the night, we will just encounter the same two doors that we can visit unless we've already done it, which is pointless, so let's leave immediately.

An attentive player will have noticed we couldn't explore the second level because of the dwindling magical forcefield... that was there yesterday. He should have now finished dwindling at this point and be non-existant, allowing us to find more loot.

A seasoned player will loot anything anyway, and go the 131 without thinking twice.

We notice that the forcefield has indead decayed, as well as several part of the tower, which was apparently maintained through sorcery. Anyway, we find a Ruby Brooch of the Djinn Lord Iblis, that we eagerly pocket before resuming our journey to Crescentium.

For the potion, I think we should drink it before fighting a big fight, just in case it's "Increase your stat by X for the next fight", which would be a waste if the next fight is against an angry yorkshire.

 

[Jfdlsjfd]

Anyway, we're back in town. And the excusion to visit Psyche netted us an orange grove and villa, but no clue regarding the blade of the Sword of Life (that's the official name of the Blood Sword). We resume our marching order of Trixie, Winny, Esmeralda, Salvia. Esmeralda keeps in mind Sheet Lightning, Nemesis Bolt and Enthralment.

So we're back to square one. Since following the idea that locating an item would be within the purview of an academic seer of immense power, and failing, let's try the spice dealer, at the bottom of our contact list this time. Applying gamebook logic could pay.

So we head out to meet Lagrestin, the spice dealer.

Side note: while doing research for an errata possible for his book, I went back to the blog I had found detailing the difference between editions. I found an interesting commentary showing that not only most people did abuse the Adjust scroll to create an uber-Enchanter like we did, we were quite mellow by sacrificing HP for PA. On the blog, they had their Wizard with... -3 Fighting Prowess, arguing that no rule states that a statistics should be positive, so it's entirely possible to sacrifice 9 out of your 6 points. At this point, they had dropped the Wizard's sword since there was no way he could ever hit anything. I am jealous. Also, I learnt that Crescentium is not not-Byzantium but not-Damascus.
Anyway, we arrive at dusk at the spice market. We locate Lagrestin inspecting the wares and trying to get the better deals off the merchants before they pack at the end of the day. We hail him, reminding him of past adventure, and he denies knowing us, telling us we're mistaken.

It's quite possible that after several years, he might not recognize us instantly so...
We immediately berate him for his rudeness and proceed to insult him for snubbing us. Lagrestin's face goes white, and he orders four of his goons to thrash us. Such impudence! The thugs themselves are delighted to impress us by doing elaborate movements with their curved daggers... thinking we're easily impressionned peasant and not experienced murder-hobos.

I am now thinking of the Indiana Jones fight with the sword-wielding champion...

The thugs are FP 8, PA 6, AR 0, AW 6, 1d6+1 and have 15 HP each.

Round 1:

Trixie shoots at the one to her north-west and misses (12).
Winny throws her Dagger of Wislet (10) and hits for 2 damage her own thug.
Salvia shoots an arrow, too, and hits (4) for 2 damage the easternmost thug.
Esmeralda cast Sheets Lightning (7+4=11, easy peasy) for 11 damage to all of them.
Trixie does a quick attack (8), hitting thanks to the magical bow, for 5 damage to Esmeralda's thug, who ceases to exist.

The thugs, lacking any ranged attack, close in realizing that playing with their daggers won't save them.

Round 2:

Trixie attacks her thugs, and misses (12, twice in a row!)
Winny cleaves her own in half (10, for 7 damage).
Salvia uses her quarterstaff for the first time in three books and bashes (4) the adjacent thug for 7 damage, who ascend to a higher plane.
Esmeralda casts Nemesis Bolt on the remaining thug for an overkill 34 damage (near Trixie), turning him to dust.

We realize that the thugs had no actual occasion to roll an attack on their own. Since we dispatched them in less than 4 rounds, we notice that Lagrestin has tried to use the commotion to leave our company, but, as he is no Usain Bolt, and he's walking in a crowded market, he coudn't really lose us in the span of the 20 seconds that combat lasted.

We follow him (we still have to teach him a lesson for not readily helping someone who had worked once with him several years ago and he didn't recognize) until he reaches the docks. On the way, he's rejoined by several mean looking men who make a conscious effort of avoiding the militia.

One of them imitate the cry of the screech-owl and we hear a splashing of an oar coming the dark, moonless water.

We therefore do nothing and wait for their boat to light up while a dispatch of gnolls pelt them with iron spears... but this is isn't the next volume of the cross-promotion operation.

So they, surprisingly, disembark unnoticed, and they started a hushed negociation on what appears to be smuggled goods. The negociation is succesful: they pocket a fat purse of gold, and begin unloading the crates.

We get the choice to raise the alarm and call a militia patrol in (583), or we could attack the smugglers by surprise (105), or just say "hi" (89).

 

[Joshua Randall]

Lowering your ability score into the negatives is a cheese wheel too far, even for me.

As for the smugglers, this feels like a good opportunity to attacks both sides and size the goods and the money. I mean. If we’re amoral murderhobos.

 

[Jfdlsjfd]

The trap choice was just announcing ourselves.

Doh! The smuggler, for once, wouldn't mind focusing on a single opponent in this case, as a lifelong practice of crime has trained them well... the fight might have been tactically more challenging.

Since we are doing a surprise attack, and have a rogue Trickster with us that creates a distraction by sending a pile of barrel over them, we get 3 rounds before they can react.

I am tempted not to copy the map, is it's obvious the fight will be very one sided.

We can rest assured that we have plenty of area to flee to.

There are 8 smugglers, FP 8, PA 6, AR 0, AW 6, damage 1d6+1 HP 12 each.

Sigh... so many to die to our bloodthirsty, Sayan Wizard.
Round 1:
Trixie in slot 1 hacks her nearby smuggler (8) and hits, thanks to the redundant magic blade we got from the magi in book 1, for 5 damage.
Winny in slot 2 strikes the east smuggler (to free the square in order for another one to take his place should the fight reach the rounud the smuuggler can actually act...) (6 for 6 damage)
Salvia in slot 4 fires an arrow at the smuggler at the south of Esmeralda in 3, and hits (6) for 3 damage.
Esmeralda casts Sheet Lightning and... misses (12).
Trixie takes her extra action and misses the smuggler (11).

The dice are against us... The smuggler will certainly act before being dead.
Round 2:

Trixie keeps hacking... and keeps missing (10)
Winny cleaves the pristine southern smuggler in twain (8, for 9 damage).
Salvia fire another arrows at the smuggler closest to Esmeralda and misses (11)
Esmeralda keeps chanting her Sheet Lightning spell, this time with a -2 to the roll: 4+4-2= 6, for 9 damage -- honestly, the first die gave a result of 1 and I was readily expecting a minimal roll of 4 damage... -- clearing a few of our foes.

Round 3:

All the reamining smugglers are coming to their senses. They also are 3 HP each.

Trixie shoots an arrow with her magic bow (8) and hits for 6 damage the northernmost smuggler. We need more magic bows.
Winny uses her Dagger of Wislet (10) and kills the now northernmost smuggler (4 damage). The dagger rematerializes in her hands.
Salvia shoots the now brand-new northermost smuggler (6) for 3 damage. RIP.
Esmeralda wastes a perfectly good Nemesis Bolt on the last, northernmost smuggler, rolling a 10, which works since she no longer has Sheet Lightning in her mind. Damage is: 6, 2, 2, 2, 2, 1, 3 = 18+7 = 25 damage.

The remaining smugglers move... oh, there are no remaining smugglers.

We catch Lagrestin as he was trying to run off. We hold him over the side of the quay and resume our beratement: "So far you have not given an old friend a warm reception in Crescentium, Lagrestin. This will now change. Let us go to your house, where you will provide luxurious lodging and a sumtuous meal". "Impossible, gasps Lagrestin, starting at the water lapping inches below his nose. I have fallen on hard times. I currently reside in a single rented room near the bazaar. It is so small that my cat and I must sleep in shifts." "Suggest an alternative" You push his head under the water to give your words emphasis. "Glub", he splutters.

Yes, that's us, the heroes of Crescentium.

Anyway, he offers to write us an introductory note to the local equivalent of the Templars, at the Temple of the Roc. He's acquainted to their commander, who will let us stay a few days. It is now time of offer our thanks:

You haul him up and wait while he scrawls the letter, then you boot him in the harbour, "Hope you can swim, Lagrestin..." and leave.


I really enjoyed games like Knights of the Old Republic where youu had a light side and a dark side solution to puzzles, varying your standing with the Force as you go. Here, we made the Light side choice. The absolute jerkiest choice would have been to call the patrol to scare Lagrestin, forcing him to push his contraband into the harbour and tell him that we could have denounced him and force him to recommand an inn. At said inn, we think that he might send people during the night to kill us, and we get the opportunity to befriend noble, fierce badawin warriors from the desert, remember that their strict observance to the Ta'ashim faith forbids them to drink any alcohol, spike their lemonade (I kid you not) so they snore loudly, put our cloaks on them, enjoy them being beaten by Lagrestin enforcers, intervene just before they are dead so the thugs leave, recover our cloaks. The badawin warriors then gives us their gold as thanks for saving their live.

Further commentary: we're determined to nearly kill (or actually drown) Lagrestin for snubbing us in the spice market, we've killed 4 of his guards and 8 of his associates, but apparently we won't touch his loot. There was a juicy purse of gold that we might have taken to fund our stay in Crescentium... I suppose it would be stealing, and stealing is beneath us.

We make our way to the Temple of the Roc, an old Ta'ashim temple rededicated to the True Faith. We are welcome with our letter of introduction (technically our letters, since Winny already had her own). We are allowed to stay in the monastery of the templar knights and learn that a new commander has recently been appointed. His name is Tobias de Vantery.

 

[Joshua Randall]

His name is Tobias de Vantery

Sounds French. Immediately suspect.

(Just messing with you.)

The alternate path where we mess with the not-Bedouin is quite jerktastic! It is only missing a scene where we kick their puppies.

 

[Jfdlsjfd]

His name is Tobias de Vantery

Sounds French. Immediately suspect.

(Just messing with you.)

We are carrying his brother's carpet. The nice fellow who formerly owned it was called Augustus de Vantery. [OK, they could be just coming from the same place, but still... does treachery runs in the family?]

The alternate path where we mess with the not-Bedouin is quite jerktastic! It is only missing a scene where we kick their puppies.

AND the worst is yet to come.