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Friday 26 September 2014

Blood Sword redux: Doomwalk (part 3)

The final part of the Doomwalk designer's notes today, and as far as literary influences are concerned, the most obvious nods throughout the Blood Sword series are, of course, to Jack Vance. Those faltyns, for example: close cousins to the sandestins that were forever vexing Rhialto and the other sorcerers of Old Earth. I’m sure Shimrod in the Lyonesse books would know to be wary of a deal like this:
The faltyn flits through the streets, eventually leading you out of the north gate of the city along a rough track into the hills. There you see a jewelled door set in the side of a massive boulder. ‘What you seek lies beyond that door,’ says the faltyn. ‘As agreed, you will experience neither difficulty nor danger in obtaining it.’ With these words, it vanishes.
Why ‘faltyn’, incidentally? Doctor Strange fans, don't all shout at once. And how about this moment from Doomwalk for a typically Vancean way to get from A to B:
As soon as you have closed the cage door, the creature reaches down to seize an iron ring attached to the top and then launches itself into the sky. Despite its bulk and the burden of carrying you, it rises swiftly on its huge black wings. You are flung to and fro in the cage, but you manage to fight back your nausea until it has gained enough altitude to glide on the air currents.
(The picture here is from Pelgrane Press's superb Dying Earth RPG. Don't even read on until you've bought a copy.)

Now, I ought to warn you there are a few songs in this book. Not too many; don’t get alarmed, I didn’t go full Tolkien or anything. But you get a burst of the 14th century poem “Dou way, Robyn”, the Trickster gets to con some wights into thinking summer’s come to the underworld by singing a few lines paraphrased from Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, and a character greets his lover’s cruel rejection with a lament penned by Sir Thomas Wyatt. Blimey, you not only get heads rolling and demons ripping out guts, you get bloomin’ culture as well, eh?

The bridge that Modgud guards (or Móðguðr, if you must), which you need to cross to get from the nasty region of Sheol to the really nasty, is from Norse myth. You knew that. But the reason I included a covered bridge in the first place is because Roy Thomas and Gene Colan sent Karen Page across just such a bridge when I was at an impressionable age, and Gene the Dean was my first love in comics, so I had to build in a reference to his work somewhere.

But, raking over all these old influences and homages, I’m completely stumped by where these two oddities sprang from:
Forewarned that something inhabits the hill, you make use of the cover afforded by some thorn bushes to approach the summit unnoticed. Two odd creatures wait there beside an enormous treasure chest. One is a giant bat with crimson antlers sprouting from its head. The other is a dog the size of a warhorse, with white fur and a long beard flowing from its chin.
The Horned Bat and the Bearded Dog seem to be genuine originals and, my earlier reference to Afghan Black aside, I have no idea what chimerical vacuum spawned them. I know that I specifically didn’t want an illustration of them because I was trying for something like the encounters you get in dreams: elusive, ill-defined. Funny and creepy and odd at the same time. Are they characters animated by Disney or by Švankmajer? Would the movie be directed by Burton or by Spielberg? I know which version I see in my mind's eye, but reading is democratic. Having bought the book, how you choose to visualize it is up to you.

Just in case you're thinking this all sounds like serious stuff, let me assure you that there's a good lacing of humour through all the Blood Sword books, even when you're slogging through hell or counting down the minutes till Doomsday. Case in point: the talking boat figurehead whose conversation is limited to weather forecasts and continual re-estimates of arrival time. That example is unusual, in fact, because mostly I don't go for humour that pokes fun at fantasy tropes - too easy a target. Instead I take my cue from Vance, who always remembers that however desperate the situation - and often precisely because it's desperate - human beings will find something to laugh about. So next time you get on the wrong side of a bargain with a faltyn, try to see the funny side.

In the next "Making of Blood Sword" I'll be looking at the writing of the fifth and final book in the series, The Walls of Spyte - otherwise known as "The One Where They Blow Up the Universe". But that's still a month or so away. Next week we'll have Jamie's latest series and after that some really big Way of the Tiger news. Don't miss.

24 comments:

  1. I'd love to buy the new books, but book depository is my only option and they only have the new 2nd and 3rd books, they miss the Battlepits of Krarth.

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    1. A possible solution: you may be able to order directly from our printer:

      https://www.createspace.com/4782521

      If that's not possible, let me know where you're trying to order from (NZ? Australia?) as maybe you can pay Fabled Lands Publishing using PayPal and we can get a copy shipped to you.

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    2. Sadly, I can only pay with a Credit Card there as well, I am trying to order from The Netherlands :)

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    3. Be sure to check out the Amazon Marketplace sellers too, because some of them may offer you the option to use PayPal instead of a credit card. Good luck!

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  2. That's odd, since Amazon bought Book Depository and they also own Createspace, which prints the book for us. Sorry you can't get them. Did you email BD? Maybe they can order them.

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  3. Hi Dave,

    I am a big fan of Blood Sword and Way of the Tiger since I was a kid in the 80s. I got Blood Sword 1-4 and the entire Way of the Tiger Serious. It was a big regret I did not managed to get Walls of Spyte to complete the collection. Really looking forward for you to release the new Book 5 and I will definitely buy the entire series from Amazon. All the best!

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    1. Thanks, Jon. With Walls of Spyte, I have to say you didn't miss much. I'm still trying to decide how much rewriting to do on that one. If I had the time, I'd junk the whole thing apart from the last 50 sections and start over.

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    2. I wonder if this last book is so rare and therefore costs a bomb if I buy from amazon uk or us :( Over USD300

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    3. I'm pretty sure it's out there as a pirated PDF somewhere. I keep trying to shut the pirates down but they only move to another site. Normally I'd mind, but in the case of Walls of Spyte I think it ought to be available free - the original version is just not good enough to publish imo. I want to fix that and give the series the ending it deserves, but if you really can't wait (and don't say I didn't warn you!) better go looking for the pirates.

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  4. I do have the PDF copy but I would like the book for sentimental reasons. I ordered Fabled Lands books and the new Way of the Tiger 0-5 to support you! Hope you can finish the series espacially Way of the Tiger book 7. Really wanted to have a conclusion after Inferno as the ending was too abrupt for me :)

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    1. There certainly will be a WOTT book 7. It's already written (by David Walters) and many are saying it's better than the original books. Fabled Lands Publishing don't have the rights to that one, nor to book 0, but I expect David will publish it in paperback next year.

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  5. I know you wanted to release these "classic" editions of Blood Sword to begin with, Dave, but from what you say here about the Walls of Spyte it sounds like you are contemplating some major changes?

    Think you are being hard on yourself, Dave! I don't recollect the original being that poor at all! Maybe not reaching the pinnacle set by Demon's Claw, but to me it was still a superior dungeon crawl gamebook. Will be interested to see the extent of any changes you make.

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    1. I can't remember (the book's downstairs) but I don't think that you could actually run out of time in Book 5. Unlike in Book 3 on the ghost ship, where you were ticking off ticks before "bad things happened", you could do all kinds of fun sidequests and general pottering about. Perhaps you could get to the end too late (and find the Magi returned), or just in time, or something. Just a random thought. Then you get a risk/reward thing going on, where you COULD go and get the Ring of Red Ruin, but it would cost you time. Just a thought... Jamie did something fun with this in Court of Hidden Faces IIRC.

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    2. A ticking clock would help a bit, James. I'm not sure that it would fix the underlying problem, namely why is Spyte a dungeon with funny dragons and funny homunculi and orcs and old men with quests? It makes no sense. Unlike Battlepits, there's just no reason for all this stuff to be there. It's like a weird remake of Escape From New York in which Snake Plisskin is solving chess riddles out of The Philosopher's Stone.

      For the record, Jonathan, I'm not being hard on myself. I only wrote the last 50 sections of Walls of Spyte. I'd like to have seen the series end in a bang rather than a whimper, especially as I was quite pleased with how books 2-4 turned out. But do I fix it now, or just release it as is? Still pondering that one.

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    3. I'm now imaging Icon the Ungodly played by Kurt Russell. And Tobias de Vantery as Donald Pleasance. And the hunchback jailor played by Ernest Borgnine.

      Some of the weirdness/sadness of Spyte was quite cool. Some of it didn't make much sense though. And you didn't get much sense of Spyte as a city, or even as the citadel of a city. As you say, it does feel a bit more like the end of Wasteland, in that you have to go into 5 rooms, fight a monster, dodge a trap, get a key. Then go into the next hub.

      If you DO fix it, then I have a reason to buy all 5 new Bloodsword books :) The last bit, with the Ta'ashim Dude and the final fight are pretty cool. The first bit (with the "I know that all of these choices are going to suck, but how best to ameliorate...") is pretty fun too.

      Currently looking forward to my signed (but not personalised, I'm cheap) copies of Way of the Tiger...

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    4. They made you pay extra for personalized? Tsk.

      I guess I could live with the barmy ways across the Cauldron into Spyte. I do like some of Oliver's left-field ideas there like the titan carcass that has apoptosis as part of its decamillennial life cycle. And the teleporter that strips you naked - a bad dream, or a wink to The Terminator? Arbitrary though they are, the art installation oddness redeems them.

      Once inside the city, my objections start with the decor. Carpets and portraits and gilt-edged mirrors? Is this the cursed city of the Magi, or a naff hotel on a certain red-capped mountain? And the colour puzzles themed around White Light and the rest... What are those doing there, seeing as the last time White Light was in Spyte he called himself Magus Uru?

      And then the encounters. A drolly miserly Smaug-alike, funny enough in the context of a silly D&D game but hardly Legend's idea of dragons. Mysterious old geezers with quests and riddles, yawn. I guess the homunculous would have been okay if it had been done creepily, like a pickled baby in one of Doctor von Hagens' exhibitions. Instead of that, it was another comedy critter.

      And lastly the writing style. Lots of exclamations and adjectives, but those things alone don't evoke the Lovecraftian craziness the city needed. Where's the sense of scale? The daunting grandeur, the impossible geometries. When we reach the end, it should be, "See, see, where Christ's blood streams in the firmament," not, "What's the air-speed velocity of an unladen swallow". I'm giving it a C-minus, must try harder.

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    5. You do have a point -- several of them -- actually, Dave. On the one hand, I would love to read and experience the denoument to this series that you really wanted. On the other, I know you have been at pains to point out that the re-release of Blood Sword was a classic "warts and all" edition. Honestly, I for one would buy the Walls of Spyte without a single revision. But at the same time, I'd be excited to read the finale that you had wanted -- or now wanted all these years later.

      If it helps at all, my own inclination would be to go with a revision. After all, the re-release of these books is hopefully about engaging a new generation in the series (and maybe gambe books and RPGS more generally). Seems like a overhaul would also push back a December 2014 release. But, on balance, it might be worth doing it to turn that "C minus" into an "A plus!"

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    6. Truth is, Jonathan, I was busy on other projects back when Blood Sword 5 was being written so, leaving aside those last 50 sections, my real denoument on the series was with Doomwalk. However, it would be unfair to leave the blame for book 5 at Oliver's door, as he didn't get as much time as he'd expected to write it. And Jamie jumped in at very short notice to dash off 200 sections with no prior knowledge of the rules or storyline. No one's at fault, and back in the '80s lots of gamebook series featured random dungeons, which is probably why we didn't get any complaints. But I do think these books are now able to reach an appreciative audience of 30- and 40-somethings for whom jokey dragons and colour-code puzzles will seem like a real comedown after the earlier books.

      I'm torn, though. I did say I'd release these as the "classic" version - warts & all, as you say. So maybe I should save the rewrite for later.

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    7. Perhaps you could do a survey? Some folks might have never seen the original and want it, some folks might have the original but want the nice new edition (with typos and that XX bit changed), some folks might want the Special Edition Director's Cut.

      Book Five isn't bad per se. And even a Dave Morris C- is probably going to equate to an Olympic Bronze after all.

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    8. Kind of you to put it that way, James. If I do publish book 5 without substantial revision, I'm going to take my name off it. I wrote significantly less of it than Oliver or Jamie, and it doesn't in any way feel to me like one of my own books. That might solve the problem, actually - some people like old skool dungeons, so as long as I make it clear that I don't endorse the work, honour is satisfied.

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    9. Maybe, publish book 5 as a classic edition, Dave, and then you could release a revised version later as an ebook available for download. I would buy both as would many others, I am sure. I know you had mentioned about a "rules-lite" edition with major revisions somewhere down the road too, so this might be a good compromise until you get around to those. My two-cents anyway!

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    10. I'm coming around to that way of thinking. I'm aware that most people are buying the books to own the set as much as to actually play them, so it seems a little batty to worry about correcting mistakes from 27 years ago!

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  6. Off-topic, but just got my copy of Doomwalk and noticed on the inside cover that the Falcon series is "In preparation." That's a series I haven't thought about for ages, and would love to see it back out it print. Any updates or news coming on that? Seems like a whole new generation of Doctor Who fans might enjoy those.

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    1. I get the feeling Dr Who abandoned its time travel and SF aspects long ago, but the overwhelming impression I got while editing Falcon book 1 (which I'd never read before) was of 2000AD, especially Strontium Dog and Future Shocks circa 1985. There's probably a good reason for that ;-)

      Anyway, the interior of the book is all ready, we're just waiting on a new cover from Peter Andrew Jones, so I expect Falcon 1 should be out sometime in late January.

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