#14 - "Temple of Terror" by Ian Livingstone (1985)

Somehow I'm here again, volunteering for another suicide mission.

'We need a fearless young warrior who is willing to risk life and limb to save us all. Is there one among you who would volunteer?'
[...]
With a wry smile on your face, you raise your arm in the air and offer your services. Yaztromo sees you and says, 'Haven't I seen you somewhere before?'

Well, it was like ten years ago, and I think I wouldn't have been  wearing a crown, can't remember exactly when I started doing that but it was maybe later, and, ah - oh yeah -  probably also I had no wings back then and I was not continuously on fire, but yes, we have met before, Yaztromo. You were my boss.

Some folks got a great memory for faces I guess, or in your case Yaz, something more like a memory for silhouettes, what with my body being a more or less totally charred and blackened husk after the last mission you sent me on.


But hey, Yazza - it's good to see you. Nice to be working together again.


Hello, my friends - today we are playing Temple of Terror, and because it's a direct sequel to Forest of Doom, I'll be playing as THIS GUY:

"Never mind," says Yaztromo, "you look like the kind of person we want."

Background

So, to back it up a little - I am cooling out in Stonebridge, "after the rigours of a recent quest... enjoying the merry company of the Dwarfs... the local blacksmith has honed the blade of your sword as only Dwarfs can".

Hooray! A statement which was intended innocently by the author, can instead be interpreted as a sex thing!

Since, as diligent readers will recall, I did not win Forest of Doom, but instead turned into a FIRE DEMON and took over management of an underground mushroom farm entirely staffed by wizened, inscrutable CLONES, I will say that my "recent quest" was, like, I had a mushroom delivery for King Gillibran and I needed to hit the general store to pick up thirty kilos of baking soda to re-up my cloning vat.

I don't remember what were the supposed consequences of failing to recover the Hammer of Gillibran in Forest - but, we can safely assume they were not as bad as everyone thought. Though given that I'm a fire demon, psychopath, and someone who just wears a big evil crown 24/7, perhaps it caused some crazy shift in societal norms, a greasy slide into moral decadence that enables Yours Truly to somehow avoid the status of a total pariah, and thus be gladly getting on that Merry-Merry with my main Dwarfs - as only Dwarfs can.

Pictured: Flair dish-washing, a merry dwarfish pass-time.
The nihilistic/annoying lyrics are because they didn't get their dumb hammer back.

It is against this background that Yaztromo comes "huffing and puffing" into the Stonebridge town square like a database administrator who's been cajoled into a fun run. He must have jogged all the way from his tower - up the "Footpath", past the "Hills", over the "River" and then over the other "River" - which is quite a stretch for an old feller.

I'll say it again - this is one shitty fuckin' map.

So, this gasping, sweat-soaked, hairy recluse - whose only reason for maintaining contact with the outside world, Ian tells us, is his love of cupcakes - this known weirdo clambers up on a soapbox in the town square and starts telling everyone about a conversation that his pet crow overheard.

 

The artwork in Temple is pretty hit-and-miss but I will say this portrait of Yaztromo is mmm-mmm *chef's kiss* mwah, delizioso!

The gist of his story is; there is a guy called Malbordus who was abandoned by his mother and raised instead by "Darkside Elves" in Darkwood Forest (Darkwood Forest has a Dark Side, apparently). These Very Dark Elves have been grooming him as an evil wizard and war-leader, putting up motivational posters of Balthus Dire on his bedroom wall and whatnot, and now as a final test of his excellence in evil, they are sending Malbordus to the Lost City of Vatos in the Desert of Skulls to find five ancient dragon charms which can totally turn into Real Actual Dragons. The plan then being that he will fly his five magic dragons back to Darkwood Forest, and in the meantime, the Elves will have raised a huge army, and then they will invade Poland.

What I enjoy about this set-up is that it reveals Allansia's baddies also have no problem with pinning their entire hope on one guy completing a fetch quest all by himself. I imagine the Darkside Elves sending Malbordus out the door with 10 x PROVISIONS and a pat on the bum, before turning to the enormous effort and cost of raising their army while they wait for him to return. Potentially a massive waste of effort should Malbordus fail to e.g. pick up a ball of beeswax that was inside the mouth of an ornamental soap dish shaped like an alligator, in a room three doors down a side-corridor that he breezed straight past because it looked, and I quote: "a bit slimy".

So! Yaztromo was tipped off after his crow overheard one conversation that covered all this stuff.. Possibly it was someone's dying words, already proven to be the densest unit of information in Allansia.

Predictably, Yaztromo's genius counter-gambit to the Dark Elves' plot is to send his own wandering swordsman to Vatos to grab up those dragon charms before Malbordus does. Which is where I come in.

That's me! Willing, and... able? Ish? Definitely willing anyway!

Rolling Up My Dude

Let me address the baluchitherium in the room - it has been a LONG-ASS TIME since I completed a post! I apologise to those who had already mourned my death. In fact, there have been two previous attempts to write up Temple of Terror, about three years apart maybe, both honouring the original rules of play, rolled up in regulation style, and both ate shit almost immediately, in exactly the same way.

You see, a little while after Yaztromo sends you trudging off towards the desert on foot, he gets on Reddit or something and reads a bunch of horse-shit about how Gandalf could've clocked Lord of the Rings really quickly by summoning a giant eagle to carry Frodo to Mt. Doom. You might think that sounds quite sensible, but: it is a very bad idea and you are dumb for liking it.

Why, you ask? I will let my dude the Grey-dogg break it down directly, and in his own inimitable style.

So yeah it's PTERODACTYLS. That was the reason.


Yaztromo though, is just a third-rate knock-off of ya boy the Shadowfax Kidd and he doesn't get it. If you decide to walk all the way to Vatos (like an idiot - you can take a boat instead) - he will send a Giant Eagle to give you lift.

Well, sure enough once you have been flying through the air for a bit a "hideous PTERODACTYL" attacks. The annoying thing about this combat is that it's between the GIANT EAGLE and the PTERODACTYL - apart from one round of ranged combat if you have a bow or the right spell, YOU cannot contribute. And because this is probably the same dumb fukken eagle that dropped the Hammer of Gillibran in Darkwood Forest, the PTERODACTYL has higher SKILL, making it mathematically very likely that you're going to eat shit.

Anatomy of a Wack Situation

 
Anyway here's my dude, a strong little on-fire man from Forest of Doom:

 

SKILL - 12
STAMINA - 15
LUCK - 11

Plus on each combat round, roll 1d6, on a 1 or 2, I hit the bad man with my whip for an extra 1 STAMINA damage.

Is this cheating??? Nope! Just very great role-playing! 

The Adventure

Yeah so you get to his tower and Yaztromo, that slapdash motherfucker, makes a big deal out the ten flimsy Level-1-ass spells that he knows, only lets you learn four and then boots you out the door with 25GP pocket money.

I decided to opt for utility spells over combat options, since I already hit like a goddamn tyrannosaur.
Detect Trap - in case there is trap!
Create Water - for when I'm thirsty!
Language - for Google Translate!
Light - in case it gets dark!

These spells cost STAMINA points to use by the way, with the exception of Create Water, which is nice 'cos it's the only one that turns out to be useful.

Yaztromo's crow - whom he unsentimentally addresses as "crow" - escorts you for the first three hours / six sentences of the journey, which to be fair is a lot more support than you usually get as a lone adventurer with the fate of the world hanging in the balance. Thanks, "crow"!

So, we gotta make our way to the Desert of Skulls. Dare I hope some of the skulls will have boney bodies attached? (gentle whisper: "SKELETONS"). But let's not get ahead of ourselves. Our first big choice is whether to travel downriver to Port Blacksand and try to take passage by sea, or just, you know, walk. Walking is clearly the dumber option, which triggers an exasperated Yaztromo to send his crappy Giant Eagle to come help you. I'd rather thumb a ride with Richie Valens and the Big Bopper than go through that again, so instead I jump onto a barge with these "rough-looking characters":

A realistic depiction of ordinary British men circa. 1985. This is what half the dudes on BBC TV looked like back then.

The captain is a little surprised that someone is willing to pay to go to "the city of thieves" (Ian Livingstone:😉); but otherwise doesn't seem to mind ferrying an on-fire demon-boy with a spooky crown, so we're golden.

I reached Port Blacksand by the evening of the same day.  It's a brief stopover - there's not a lot of Port Blacksand content in the book - but nevertheless I manage to get swindled and jumped by ne'er-do-wells twice before booking passage out. I'll spare you the details, but as a general piece of advice, if "suddenly an old man in tattered clothes jumps out of a doorway" with an offer that seems too good to be true - it probably is!

Paying off a bartender gets me a seat next to the first mate of the good ship Belladonna, who introduces himself as Gargo. And I introduce myself as Dread Lord Rantastuphan, Master of Mushrooms AKA the Clone King AKA The Embodied Flame AKA Candle Guy. Gargo shakes me down for ten geeps and puts me in charge of loading cannonballs during the voyage south, because, hey why not put the permanently on-fire man right next to the powder magazine.

Turns out the most famous namesake for First Mate Gargo is "Gargo the Vampire Man" from the Galoob line of toys and 1981 TV cartoon called Blackstar, which I guess was some kind of Masters of the Universe precursor. I'm sure everyone reading this will assume I know all about Blackstar but I never heard of it until one second ago.

So, I'm supposed to be working for my passage (on top of paying 10 GP, the bloody cheek of it!!!) You'd think that just loading cannonballs wouldn't really be a full-time job, but this is Fighting Fantasy, so of course we get into a naval battle pretty much immediately and the Belladonna is unavoidably sunk.

I chose not to swim towards the ship that sunk us in case they execute me for being a presumed pirate and/or presumed mid-level boss of an MMPORG. So after taking 2d6 STAMINA damage from getting wet, I wash up on the shore of the Desert of Skulls itself.

At least I've reached my destination. Or rather... the vicinity of my destination. Which is to say, I've manage to strand myself in a pitiless sea of dunes, a bone-dry death trap that stretches from horizon to horizon, and somewhere within is my destination: the Lost City of Vatos. One speck of gold in a fistful of sand! And why is it called the Lost City of Vatos? Cos nobody knows where it is! It's worth taking a pause here to step back and evaluate - WHAT THE FUCK WAS MY PLAN ACTUALLY?!?!? Wander around the desert alone until I just stumble across the Lost City?

Apparently: yes, that is the plan. Might as well get to it.

If Nathan Drake can do it why not me? We're both lovable, mass-murdering rogues.

Wandering through the desert doesn't go too badly, all things considered, since I can magically create water at will. And I found some coconuts (?) on the beach (??) of the desert (???). That takes a lot of tension out of the situation! Though I do cop a bit of heat-stroke damage since I don't have a knotted hankie to keep the sun off my head. Some NEEDLE FLIES attack me - one at a time, which is very considerate - and they're not really a problem. I take 2 damage from a sand-storm and find a brass hand-bell poking out of the sand afterward. A guy on a camel says what's up. All iconic desert vibes, you know.

ICONIC DESERT VIBEZ

Further aimless roaming gets me to a nomadic trader's tent. The proprietor, Abjul, is a stand-up G who comps you a kebab with the works. He's selling a bunch of antique store tat with no indication of what any of it does. I spent the rest of my cash 'cos you cannot take it with you when you die - which is more than a platitude in the Fighting Fantasy context since I am very likely dead within the next ten paragraphs. 

All of the items he sells are conspicuously featured in the accompanying art. This necessitates the "Crystal Key" being about the length of Abjul's forearm - it's like the big novelty "Key to the City"  which Buster would get from the mayor for, I don't know, saving a cat from drowning in the canal or some similar act of working class childhood heroism. And if that reference is too bewilderingly specific - let me remind you that you're reading a blog that deep-dives into a gamebook series that about 0.01% of the population has any awareness of, let alone fondness for. You knew what you were getting into.

Here's what I scooped from the lucky dip:

Silver Mirror - because even if it's not enchanted, mirrors are kind of useful, e.g. for touching up those  weeping cracks in the skin of your blackened, smouldering face

Bracelet of Mermaid Scales - Abjul assures me this is the real deal, "straight off of a mermaid's butt". Probably lets you breathe underwater or whatever. Knowing my luck with magic items, it transforms your head into a fish's pee-hole.

Ivory Beetle Charm - 'COS I <3 BUGS ;)

 

"Welcome effendi! Please inspect all my clearly-depicted, novelty-size wares!"

Abjul is even kind enough to give me directions, of a sort. He "thinks Vatos lies in the southern part of the Desert of Skulls". Okay well - thanks for narrowing it down, brother.

So I trudge southwards, wondering what further iconic desert encounters I could possibly experience now that nomads, camels, and (uh) NEEDLE-FLIES have already been exhausted. When I feel a rumbling beneath my feet...

"You realise with horror that a Giant Sandworm is about to engulf you with its spiked oval mouth. It is at least twenty metres long and you must fight it."

It's really not clear how this would work in practice, but I manage to kill the titanic worm with my sword and whip. Just stabbin', whippin', and a whole lot of patience I guess. Before moving on, I chip off one of its teeth to use as a knife, because Ian really wants you to know that, yes, he has read Dune. And I immediately use it to saw the crusts off my ham sandwiches because you best believe I need some num-numz in my tum-tumz after taking a few knocks from that big boy.

 

UPDATE - ONE known weakness (i.e. being hit 10 times with a sword)

Moments later, I just stumble across the Lost City of Vatos "less than half a kilometre away" (I guess I was day-dreaming and it snuck up on me). As per the text: "Vatos!" a voice inside you shouts, which is a little bit concerning phrasing since it heavily implies it's somebody else's voice.

These Super Mario themed vatos are yelling the word "VATOS!" in front of the city of Vatos. But you hear it coming from inside your body...!?!?!

The city walls are still in pretty good nick, thus, for lack of appropriate burglary spells, I pretty much just have to ring the doorbell. And who should answer but my dearest darling boy, SERPENT GUARD!

Hiiiiiiiiiii!

"O, SERPENT GUARD!" I say, my eyes welling with tears, "how many years hath it been that thine wildly enthused eyes, and thy unhinged and gaping :D face hath beamed back at me from the tattered copy of Temple of Terror 'pon mine desk, buoying me up, imbuing me with heartful courage - come on mate, come back and finish your blog! You got this mate! I'm here for ya maaaaaaate...!"

 

I'm practically blubbering as the memories crash over me and sweep me up like a storm tide. 

"Come to my embrace, o squamous saint!" My arms spread wide, "BRING IT IN HOMIE!" 

SERPENT GUARD slithers towards me over the pulverised remains of the Fourth Wall and says: "HIIIIIISSSSS!" 

 

Then he hits me with his weirdly dainty, long-handled axe! It's like a back-scratcher but for if you wanted to chop up the hard to reach spot between your shoulder-blades with an axe! (Seems like the kind of thing you could buy on Wish, probably?!?) And I can't help but notice his combat power is exactly equivalent to the twenty metre long giant sandworm that I just fought. Crazy!!!!

I think I misread this situation!

Anyway, then I snap back into character with the audible crack of a fiery whip: wha-PEESH! 

I temporarily forgot that I'm the psycho fire demon from Forest of Doom - so of course I mercilessly ram my sword down the throat of the SERPENT GUARD and step on his corpse on the way through the doorway. Not so irrepressible now, eh motherfucker?

So! My lunatic behaviour of wandering around aimlessly has again been rewarded with success, and I've made into the long-lost city - specifically into a featureless courtyard behind the main gate. On the opposite side of the square there is a large stone archway. It seems as good a place as any to start your search for the Dragon artefacts. Yeah it does. 

It's never clarified who was responsible for hiding the Dragon artefacts in Vatos and for what reason, but it's basically an Easter egg hunt from this point onwards, except in a trashy old city full of death-traps instead of your grandad's back yard. Below (spoilers!) I list where the richly detailed Frankton Mint commemorative pewter dragon figurines are to be found:

Gold Dragon - inside the mouth of a bronze statue of a dog

Ebony Dragon - hidden in crack in a carving which depicts Vatos under attack from three GIANT SANDWORMS

Crystal Dragon - a GNOME has it. He'll swap it for a telescope

Bone Dragon - inside a bucket of bones hanging from a rope attached to the ceiling of featureless room where a CENTIPEDE lives

Silver Dragon - fuck knows, couldn't figure it out even by cheating

 

So you can see that we'll be falling back on some classic FF Bizzare Search Behaviour. But! It gets complicated when this dude shows up: 

MESSENGER OF DEATH

Not long after you arrive in Vatos, this creep taps you on the shoulder and gurgles the word "death" in your ear, then vanishes. That in itself is super grody and more than enough to spoil your week - but it gets worse. Evidently the MESSENGER has a bit of a rep because the protagonist already knows what's up:

The Messenger of Death is a sadistic killer who plays games with its victims. Staying ahead of you, it will place each letter of the word 'death' in various locations. Should you come across and read all the letters of the word, the Messenger of Death will reappear to revel in the sight of your life draining away.

  

So now it's more like an Easter egg hunt in a trashy old city full of death-traps where half the eggs have razorblades stuck in 'em, plus the Easter Bunny has a penchant for revelling in the sight of my life draining away, and there's snot leaking out of every hole in his fluffy wee head. No good! 

 

I already have to toss the whole city in case someone left a Dragon Artefact hidden in the toe of an old boot, and now whenever I try I might accidentally find a cursed letter A fridge magnet instead. It's a real situation.  

Failure and Death

I can take some small spiteful satisfaction that the MESSENGER didn't get to do any revelling and wasted the rest of his day sneaking about painting letters on the inside of chest lids and whanot, because not long afterwards, I died of unrelated causes. Though I did manage to find the Bone Dragon artefact from the aforementioned innocuous bucket.

What a normal and fully acceptable room.

A scant few direction choices later I was dead, thanks to this big squidgy polyp!

 

 

EYE STINGER

Evidently EYE STINGERS are a well-known hazard as FIRE DEMON MAN is already familiar with their modus operandi - hypnotise with the eye, petrify with the stingers. Thinking myself fabulously clever, I whip out the mirror I bought from Abjul to reflect its gaze back on itself, but, that's not a thing apparently. In fact it's so useless that I just drop the mirror onto the floor, shattering it and losing a LUCK point. Inconveniently, I must then Test My newly-depleted Luck in order to stab the levitating kina without meeting its gaze, and I fail.

 

That naughty echinoderm's pokey bits brush my face and I am quickly turned to stone. Later that day the Serpent Guards will take you away to join the other gargoyles on the city walls - there's a nice symmetry in that thought, that I shall become an art object for SERPENT GUARDS to ogle and enjoy, even as I ogled and enjoyed their cute little faces in life. Plus I already have demon wings, so, probably one of the better gargoyles up there I reckon! Easy come, easy go!

Notable Encounters

Well, I did want to mention this dumb corridor:

This is so dumb I can't even think of a bit about it. Like... what if they gave you high-fives instead? Is there a gag buried in that idea, somewhere?

Right near the end of the adventure a poor half-dead dwarf from Stonebridge shows up because apparently Yaztromo and King Gillibran started second-guessing themselves for leaving the whole impending apocalypse for a local mushroom farmer to handle. Also Yaztromo forgot that you would need the Hammer to be able to destroy the Dragon artefacts (I swear half the wizards in Allansia are senile).

 

"Sorry about that... we decided... to take this shit... more seriouslyyyy, ahhhhhhh" DEAD

I imagine he came in on the giant eagle, he looks like the local TERODACTYLS have really had a go at him.  

Finally I'll touch on the named boss characters in this book. Firstly, while it's not super clear what the community situation is in Vatos, this chick named Leesha seems to be in charge. She has a VIP lounge where you have to pass through a golden shower (Ian, really?!) which neutralises all your magic spells. 

An unperturbed Leesha about to get clouted across the back of the head by the 1985 Coro Street version of Vin Diesel.

Oddly enough, when you face her in battle you are asked if you want to attack her with the Giant Sandworm Tooth, which is the only time this option is offered. You know, use it as a knife? Like in the novel Dune by Frank Herbert, now a major motion picture? And it just so happens that this is her only weakness! How did our protagonist intuit this? Were those inner vatos shouting hints at your brain again? Probably, who knows!

Unlike our old mate the Lizard King, Leesha is smart enough to bug the hell out when somebody is brandishing the only object in the world that can harm her. You can chase her but she gets away - AFAIK she never shows up again in subsequent books but you know what? She's pretty cool, I hope I'm wrong about that. 

Malbordus, on the other hand - when he finally shows up - turns out to be just a really gross nerd. Here he is, inexplicably popping up out of the floor in a featureless room, busting out the special intense stare that he practices in the mirror while squeezing zits and reciting self-affirmations that he really is just as good as Zagor & Balthus Dire (untrue).

Hello, it is I, Malbordus, a definitely credible and impressive villain who doesn't have any self-esteem issues. I was waiting underneath the floor for you to arrive.

 

 

If you find all the Dragons and wipe out this loser, your reward is that you get to walk back to Stonebridge where you assume Yaztromo MIGHT deign to teach you some more spells (you hope). Whoop-de-fukken-do mate. 

 The SKELETON Count

 Here's a couple of bonnie boys, you can just bump into them somewhere in Vatos. It's a basic "wandering undead guards" encounter, which is a classic use of SKELETONS in fantasy that I completely endorse. There's nothing especially notable about the encounter, other than the fact that they're wearing armour which leaves their pelvises exposed. I feel that's somehow obscene in a way that doesn't apply for a fully nude SKELETON.

 

Meanwhile - what to make of these dirtbags?

 

SKELETON Count or SLAMMIN' BODZ Count? Or both???

 

Like Skeletor, these SKELETON MEN have skull heads and beautifully muscular male human bodies. They can talk (they get precisely one line) and are guards outside of Leesha's boudoir. I'm excluding them: but I know in my heart that if it wasn't for those unambiguously genuine SKELETONS elsewhere in the book, I probably would have talked myself into counting them. And what does that say about me? Very troubling. 

Final Thoughts

Back when I was a young scumbag in my 20s, I flatted with a number of like-minded scumbags. Thanks to our deeply held anarchist principles, we never instituted any chore roster, and this combined with the inherently perverse and slovenly nature of young scumbags soon meant that we were squirming in our own filth like a RAT KING, each waiting to see who would break first and clean something (anything).

 

This stand-off deteriorated to the point where I announced that I was hiding the letters D-I-S-H-E-S in secret spots around the house, and whosoever was the first to accidentally see them all was going to have to do the dishes.

 

My plan was deeply flawed because of course nobody ever moved any objects and revealed the hidden letters since it would have been an activity somewhat adjacent to "tidying up". Besides, at this point in our descent, we would soon become fully engaged in chewing up aged mandarin peels and carpet fluff and adhering ourselves to the walls in cocoons formed from the resultant paste.

Flatting - I do not miss it. But the actual point of the story is that it's only mostly exaggerated, this book really did leave a strong impact on me as I child and I expected people to just get it and fall into line when I tried to invoke the authority of the MESSENGER OF DISHES. The Messenger is certainly the most interesting and novel thing in Temple, and in case I neglected to mention, he does have slime ceaselessly pouring out of his eye sockets and mouth. It makes an impression. 

 

Of coure, his mechanic only really makes sense in a world driven by Bizzare Search Behaviour. I thought City was getting pretty wild with the searching, but Temple makes you search most bizzarely even to even find the dungeon that you're supposed to do your main searching in. And then once you're in there it adds this whole layer of meta with the Messenger. Truly bizotic behaviour! Will we see anything to top that?

 

Anyway I'm back. Type in BOM if you want to give me another chance!

 

 

 

 

#11 - "Talisman of Death", by Jamie Thomson and Mark Smith (1984)

Death popped a wheelie on his horse and then did a mean jump in the air. Fire was shooting out of the horse's back feet and then some lightning zapped down. It was pretty close to Death but he didn't even care. He had a magic crystal ball that if anyone looked into it they would see their own skull, and he held it out in case anyone was looking. Just then, smoke come out the horse's nose and Death lifted up his sword-stick and he yelled "U GUNNA DIE" at everyone. That's when everyone knew that it was time, time for:


TALISMAN OF DEATH


Thank you, thank you. Talisman is the second book in the series to be written by someone other than Ian/Steve, and happily we've gotten past that thing where the author is allowed to be another guy but only if he's still called Steve Jackson. Behind the typewriter this time we have a couple of knuckleheads called Jamie and Mark and they do a splendid job, shoulder-to-shoulder at the typewriter there. As I understand it, these fellows were employees of Games Workshop, and one day Ian pulled them out of the meeting room where they were composing crossword clues for White Dwarf magazine and said, "you're writing a game-book now, this is more important". And so they got to it.

You probably already picked up on this, but Talisman of Death is not a fish-out-of-water comedy in which Death is transported to modern-day New York City and is forced to make the best of it. There are no bemused interactions with wiley taxi drivers who have seen it all before, no hot-dog vendors hollering, "Say pal, ain't you Death? Hey errybody, we got Death ovah heyah!" - there are no misunderstandings that result in someone telling Death to "get a room". There is nothing of the sort!  We are back in the genre of high fantasy, sword and actual sorcery. However, our new authors brought with them a new setting, the world of Orb rather than the now-familiar land of Allansia that Ian Livingstone has been stitching together over the course of half a dozen books. It's the same kind of place, but it has its own feel.

Background


For instance, Orb has gods. Maybe Allansia also has gods - if so, we have heard little from them. In Talisman, though, gods play a big role from the get-go. They are basically the assholes who get you into this mess. The protagonist wakes up lying on a green couch, which with suspicious rapidity he deduces is in the uppermost tower of a great white castle that hovers suspended in an "ocean blue canopy of a sky in which there is no sun", rather than e.g. some girl's apartment. (I liked the author's poetical description of the place but I'd have had the protagonist wander around a while looking for somewhere to piss before revealing all this stuff). Our hero gapes in bafflement at his surrounds and his Robin Hood type clothes, then realises to his amazement that he has a sword and can use it with skill and power (well, fairly limited skill and power if you happen to roll a 1 actually). Yes, it turns out I psyched everyone out one paragraph ago because this is a fish-out-of-water comedy after all, but the water is the normal world! And the fish? The fish is YOU! A talking song-bird succinctly explains that you have been transported from Earth to Orb to act as "the Champion of Fate", because "you are more likely to succeed than any other on Earth".

More likely than this guy, though?

Let me say at this point, I usually despise this plot device in fantasy. Average guy gets plucked from our mundane sphere to save some fantasy land in the moment of its direst peril? Pah! I've been known to throw a book out the window in disgust. In this case, though, it proves tolerable, as our hero just thinks "oh hey, i can sword-fight now" and then gets on with it. There are none of the usual tiresome doubts, no staggering about clutching one's head hollering "OH, IS IT REAL", no Mary Sue nonsense whereby some banal real-world trait such as, say, mild proficiency in Excel '97, somehow transfers to a unique power or some incredible aptitude in magic. He doesn't teach anyone English slang, nor how to skateboard, nor what French kissing is. So: allowable. You can forget about the protagonist's earthly origins for most of the book, which is just as I like it.

The bird leads you to a large circular room, the floor of which forms a great map of Orb. Waiting within are the two gods who have shanghaied you - they don't trouble to introduce themselves, but later it becomes apparent that they are Fate and Time (many of Orb's gods seem to be named quite prosaically). Time, who has the disconcerting habit of continually transforming from a baby into an old man and back, sells you some rubbish about cosmic balance and impending chaos and then begs off that it's not his job to fix it, you gotta do it. He doesn't tell you what you actually need to do though, and then he heavily implies that he already knows whether you'll succeed or not, but refuses to say any more. In short, you're given a bunch of "mysterious ways" clap-trap that ought to make any right-thinking mortal resentful. Fate - who is an eyeless woman in a Hypercolor robe -  then chimes in to say that you'd better not fail in the task which they haven't bothered to specify, while stroking your cheek inappropriately. As managers and motivators, clearly these guys suck.

Before you can voice any objections, you have a Wile E. Coyote moment as you realise the map on the floor beneath you is in fact a satellite's view of the actual land below, and you tumble down towards a great rift in the earth.

As the world of Orb rises up to engulf you, the awesomeness of what is happening overwhelms you and you lose consciousness.


Rolling Up My Dude

SKILL - 7
STAMINA - 20
LUCK - 8

I know envious minds out there have been just waiting for me to roll SKILL 7. After all, my average SKILL for the first 10 books has been a hefty 10.7 - or, if you exclude the crew of Starship Traveller - an astonishing 11.2222222222222 recurring. That is to say, I've been a tinny bastard, and I don't doubt many a reader has been awaiting my comeuppance. Today, it seems, is the day.

Talisman sees the welcome return of 10 x PROVISIONS - I was dismayed in House when even a tasty meal of roast duck didn't restore so much as a single STAMINA.

It's just empty calories.

You also have some kind of light source, though it's not clear what exactly. On page 7 you are told that you have "fire flares to combat the dark terrors of Orb". Great! That sounds cool. Shame it's never mentioned again. And the writer of page 7 was apparently not in communication with page 15's author, who informs us that:

To explore the network of caves and tunnels and to combat the terrors of the night, you are also equipped with five torches. To light them you have flint and tinder - guard them with your life!

Both these guys were in the doghouse with the team that wrote the rest of the book, since you don't ever explore a network of caves and tunnels and no opportunity to use torches, flint and tinder, nor the intriguing "fire flares", is ever given.

The Adventure

You awaken from your awesomeness-induced coma in a great underground vault, the howls of some unseen throng echoing around you, and getting louder. You can attempt to scarper or stand there staring at your hands like a numptie, either way you will quickly and inevitably encounter this merry crew.

An honest-to-goodness party of adventurers!

This is a well balanced party, we got a tank, a shooty lady, a cleric for heals, and a gentleman who found a mumu and one of those racist rubber masks they sell in Japanese novelty stores - ohwaitthat'saWIZARD. (The cheap and shoddy joke that preceded this sentence was brought to you by my childhood vexation that the WIZARD was not wearing a pointy hat and lacked stars upon his robe. And for some reason, the Wizard somehow seems to be one of those drawings where the artist accidentally draws three arms, even though he really has just the two. Am I going to shut up about the funny-looking Wizard? Let's find out).

This lot are presently fleeing from the terrors of the underworld but they're so bemused to find you wandering around like someone lost in an airport that they stop in their tracks. "Who are you and what are you doing here in the Rift, the spawning place of all evil?", asks the Shieldmaiden. Oh, the spawning place of all evil, is it? Yeah, nice one, "Fate". Nice one, "Time". Cheers. Thanks for the ride, fuckers.

In a nod to their boss, Jamie and Mark give you the option to attack the Shieldmaiden upon the instant, however I decided to just 'fess up that I was from another world. "I guess that might sound exotic," I said, "but it's just Earth".
 "It is the truth, and spoken from a true heart", says the Cleric after zapping me with Detect Bullshit.
"Word up", quoth I.

The intrepid party finds themselves in a bind as they have no means to escape the dungeon - yes let's call it a dungeon - except for the Wizard's last Teleport spell, which can only transport a single person.
"Have you considered barricading yourself in a room and lying down for 8 hours?" I ask.
"Why ever would we do that?" says the Paladin.
I only shrug. The Cleric then launches into all the exposition which the gods Fate and Time neglected (which is very much the purpose of priests I suppose). He explains that the party of four are the last survivors of an expedition into the Rift to snatch up the Talisman of Death, a ruby skull medallion made by followers of the god Death, which, "when the time is right", allows Death to physically enter the world of Orb and terminate all life, forever (I believe that is the exact moment depicted on the cover).

With a remarkable lack of consultation the party all agree that their best bet is to hand the Talisman over to me and teleport me out of the dungeon before they all die nobly in a doomed last stand. "[The Talisman] cannot be destroyed , but if you take it to your world, it will be beyond the reach of the claw of the Fleshless King." I note the assumption that I have any idea at all how to get back to Earth and keep my mouth shut. He hands me ten bucks and suggests heading west to the city of learning, Greyguilds-on-the-Moor. Finally, a hundred DARK ELVES and CAVE TROLLS enter stage left and the guy in the mask zaps me out of there.

So suddenly I'm outside the dungeon standing in the sunlight. "Huh, I guess he really was a Wizard", I think to myself. At this point I make the mistake of assuming that I have been teleported up from like Level 50 of the dungeon or something like that. I'm thinking that the Rift was the kind of dungeon where Level 1 is just mushrooms and kestrels and you spend days walking down stairs before seeing such as a CAVE TROLL.

The KESTREL is a ferocious bird that inhabits Level 1 of many dungeons.

So as I said, I'm assuming that I'm now about a vertical mile distant from the evil horde and decide to just walk westwards across open ground rather than moving under cover of the woods' edge. Unfortunately it seems I was only teleported a few hundred meters, because soon afterwards I notice two groups in pursuit, a rabble of about twenty ORCS and a similar number of DARK ELVES. The book gives options to approach either group, but no enticement to do anything so silly - both predictably result in death (in the case of the ORCS, you are bull-rushed into a chasm that the text only mentions at the very moment you bail into it - both you and the orcish captain unwittingly take a dive so I suppose it was an unprepossessing sort of chasm).

It ain't like the Grand Canyon or nothing.

But of course I know that I'm SKILL 7 and therefore I suck, so I just run and then keep running. Eventually the DARK ELVES and the ORCS converge and they have a brawl. "Trouble in paradise, dickheads?" I yell back at them as the the Elves zap up the Orcs with purple lightning and whatnot. Then I caper into "a verdant valley, deep in ferns".

Failure, and Death

What, already? Yes, already.

That verdant valley is deep in ferns and also semi-deep in water - I find a bubbling spring and decide to take a drink. I also resolve not to drink too fast in case I get stitch! I just did heaps of running. There isn't an option for this but I did think about it because I'm an amazing role-player.

I kneel at the waterside next to a willow tree and suddenly start feeling sleepy. I shake off the drowsiness with a successful Test Your Luck and look up to notice that the willow tree is glaring at me from its trunk with cartoony green eyes. It is in fact a WILLOW WEIRD, an angry tree that casts Sleep spells on people and then thrashes them to death with its branches. Even if you're still awake it will nevertheless have a go and thus I was cast into combat.

WILLOW WEIRD
SKILL 8 STAMINA 20

Regardless of the impressive STAMINA score you only have to hit the thing four times before it gives up - but I only managed two hits before spilling my innards across its roots like an amateur gardener.

Talisman has an unusual feature in that if you die at certain points, Time will wind himself backwards and resurrect you at an earlier point in the storyline. More specifically, as your ghost approaches the Valley of Death "an ethereal wind gets up and your soul is wafted away". Those two divine scoundrels give you 15 STAMINA points back and drop you off at a save-game checkpoint, such as the moment you leave Greyguilds-on-the-Moor (you need to make it through a couple of pretty tough combats to reach that point so having the option to skip them is rather nice). Plainly Jamie and Mark understood the frustration of replaying from scratch - of course there's a pre-existing, popular and highly successful solution to this problem: cheating. But it's nice to have the author's blessing for a change.

However! No such service is rendered if you get beaten to death by the first tree you meet - presumably Fate and Time just get on the phone to Van Damme's agent like they should've in the first place.

Fate. Time. I have a method for dealing with trees.

Notable Encounters

So, that's a shame eh? Particularly since this book has a lot of fun stuff in it. If you can get to Greyguilds-on-the-Moor, the Talisman of Death is nicked by a bunch of tough dames and you get to wander folornly around the city reflecting on how you screwed up and wondering why the adventure is still going. This passage of play has a heap of fun encounters, for instance, the VIVISECT:

She's a lady!

A scholar in Greyguilds called "Moreau" (that went over my head as a kid) offers you gold to have a play-fight with the VIVISECT, of course should the fateful moment come that you cry uncle, Moreau's tranquilizer fails to work and it turns into a death match. "Sorry!" says Moreau - it's just a silly fuckaround encounter that accompanies this splendid illustration.

Another superb beast is the GRENDEL - unfortunately not depicted - but expertly described in the searing prose which follows:

You wade carefully into the scum-covered pond (context - it's in a scum-covered pond) and hold your hand out to the old woman. There is a sudden churning in the water and slimy tentacles slither around your thighs. The old woman's head rears up at you, revealing a huge horny beak where her chest should have been, above a bloated body, sprouting six tentacles. You must fight the GRENDEL.


So the GRENDEL is a giant carnivorous pond squid that has somehow evolved an old lady's head to lure prey like an anglerfish - plainly it subsists on a diet of Boy Scouts and other do-gooders. Such improbable bio-mimicry is not unusual in fantasy roleplaying - nevertheless it never fails to galvanise my interest. GRENDEL fan-art is now being eagerly accepted!

But look though, there's just a bunch of good stuff. But what about this:

Bam!

Okay so this is such a great encounter. You meet a TRICERATOPS, and you have to fight it for three rounds, and then a TYRANNOSAURUS shows up and attacks the TRICERATOPS. And so the two greatest "name" dinosaurs in all pre-history, Yin and Yang of the Cretaceous, the iconic herbivore and carnivore, clash like wild freight-trains together in the ultimate in mortal kombat! This is the image that all children have in mind when you say or repeatedly whisper the word: dinosaur. Plus usually there's a volcano in the background. Anyway you Test Your Luck and if you're unlucky the TYRANNOSAURUS beats the TRICERATOPS and you have to fight it as well. On the other hand if the TRICERATOPS wins it staggers off for a lie-down and you can proceed without further saurian harassment.

I should mention also that the lead-in to this fight is that you're flying around on the back of a GRIFFIN and a goddman PTERANODON knocks you off. I mean this is just wonderful stuff. And it all happens about twenty minutes walk outside of Greyguilds-on-the-Moor, a major fucking city by the way. These are the times that I look to the sky and yell: "I! Love! Fantaseeeeeeeeeeee!"

Digression - co-author Jamie Thomson is listed on Titannica as also having worked on an unpublished Fighting Fantasy called "DINOSAURS OF DEATH", for which on strength of the title alone I would trade all the tomes of Alexandria's lost Library.

Yes, so I am inspired to launch an official count of the number of times a TYRANNOSAURUS fights a TRICERATOPS in the Fighting Fantasy series. We now stand at:

"ONE"

If we make it to TWO, I'll be ecstatic.

The SKELETON Count

First of all, there's Death, who might be trying to fake us out with his slippers and alligator tooth necklace, but don't trip, he's a SKELETON. He's only on the cover but that still counts. Then there's the ENVOY OF DEATH. Even after the Talisman is taken from you by worshippers of yet another god (I think she's called "Flowers" or something like that), minions of Death keep homing in and pestering you. The Envoy is one such, he has an glamour upon him that makes him seem to be a fine gentleman but when he wants to talk turkey he suddenly is a SKELETON.

"I am the envoy of Death; I have come for the Talisman" he says in a voice of doom.
Doom, though!

He does SKILL damage as well as STAMINA when he hits by the way. He's a tough hombre!

I like how the artist has used technique to draw the viewer's focus towards the SKELETONS.

Then there's these lads! I counted them as 4 since it was unclear if the fifth is merely a pile of inert bones or in fact a bona fide undead SKELETON who has fallen, Urkel-like, and cannot get up. In fact there are "4 + x" SKELETONS, where x is undetermined but is probably a lot - I left x out 'cos it screws up my stats. Let me explain - there's actually a Temple of Death in Greyguilds-on-the-Moor and like many urban churches you can wander in and take a look around, it's surprisingly mainstream. You may find yourself in a necromancer's parlour with  "walls of pale bamboo" and after you annoy the fellow by destroying his WINGED SKULL (not counted), he starts animating SKELETONS out of the walls, which are in fact fashioned from "the bones of [his] victims", which makes more sense than the Thai restaurant vibe you were picking up earlier. You are given no option but to scarper before his grim work is done, hence the final number of SKELETONS remains unknown to us, the reading public. 

Final Thoughts

Well I didn't get to play through much, but Talisman was one of the few FF books I owned as a kid and I played it a hundred times back then. Reviewing it today I feel it holds up well. The world of Orb feels much richer than Allansia - more authentic, if it makes sense to use that term in a high fantasy context? - and as it turns out, long before Talisman came along the authors had fleshed it out over the course of a long running Dungeons and Dragons campaign. So the setting feels lived in, and the characters and institutions of the world have a sense of depth behind them that surpasses their fleeting function in the game-book itself. Some of the characters were originally developed by players in the tabletop campaign that Mark Smith ran, others were no doubt well-worn NPCs. Some of them, notably the superbly annoying TYUTCHEV and CASSANDRA, were carried over another game-book project by the authors, the Way of the Tiger series (the protagonist is a ninja - so is there is NINJA vs. DINOSAUR action in these books??? I've never read them).

On the real tip, though: fuck these guys.

Glancing at the book for fairness, I see a couple of unavoidable SKILL 12 fights - somewhat mitigated by the availability of multiple SKILL boosting items. Of course it still says that your SKILL can never exceed your Initial score in the starting rules, but it also said that crap about fire flares, so probably just nobody bothered to edit it (though I play these books without cheating, I ignore that particular rule as a mistake). 

In conclusion, Talisman of Death is pretty good, and it sits at the top of my list so far, lounging there even, on a comfortably fat, mattress-like margin.