"Minions of the King" (a scenario set in Legend)

A guest post today by Steve Foster, my co-umpire of the Tekumel campaigns that brought together many of the RPG and gamebook authors and editors of the 1980s and '90s. This scenario, though, was from our Legend campaign and has appeared previously in Annwn magazine.

I only included orcs in the original Dragon Warriors rules under sufferance. They were staple fantasy creatures back then, and I had to assume players coming cold to the game might want to include them. The world of Legend had yet to properly take shape, so the setting of early DW was not a lot different from other fantasy RPGs like D&D.

Later I ignored orcs entirely. They had no place in my Legend; neither faerie nor devil nor of any mortal nation, there was nowhere I could see to fit them in anyway. To me they were specific to Tolkien's world. But Steve found another take on the idea.

Minions of the King

by Steve Foster

I ran this scenario pretty much from these notes to give Tim Harford a break in his long stint as referee of our Legend campaign. The player-characters were staying at a minor castle between the lands of Montombre and Aldred. The castle’s lord was Eustace, one of Aldred’s men. A man named Gwylas had just turned up, an important aide to the local bishop. The adventure begins shortly after his arrival and would take the party west across Ellesland to the desolate moorland under the Shriven Hills.

Dramatis Personae

• Brother Theodoric -- a too-curious friar.
• Canon Gwylas -- an assistant to Bishop Daniford of Trewyn, and an honoured guest.
• Sir Hrognar -- companion and bodyguard to Gwylas.
• Father Damien (Damgharn) -- a spectacularly ugly, though equally holy, priest.
• Father Alric -- a missionary; still hale, even in his 70s.
• Sir Cerewyn (Kurwan) -- a pugnacious knight.
• Freydwina -- a distraught mother.
• Krazkul -- an aged orcish leader; grandfather of Damgharn.

Plus assorted men-at-arms, peasants, orcs and demons.

The history of Ogsmoor

Ogsmoor is a small village set on a small, high moor of the same name on the edge of the Bleaks. For many years, the moor was shunned for its evil reputation. Folk nearby said that it was the abode of devils and goblins. Strange lights and drums were seen and heard from its misty summit and the surrounding farms were often attacked or raided in the night. Yet, no one in those days talked of a village on the moor.

More than forty years ago, Herolaut, the grandfather of Montombre, put an end to the troubles by taking a sizeable troop and his sorcerer, Broden through Ogsmoor. His journals say that he fought more than one pitched battle, but his well-trained and well-armed troops were in little danger. He built a pyre from the bodies of the orcs that he massacred, and declared the area safe. A few years later, a young priest arrived at Herolaut’s court and asked permission to build a chapel on Ogsmoor. Herolaut, on his deathbed and fearing that his sinful life had doomed his soul, not only granted permission but also money and favours. A few years later, the tithes and taxes began to flow in. No one questioned the sudden springing up of a new village high in the moors, particularly one that paid its taxes.

An untimely death

It is early morning on the second day of Gwylas’s visit. A guard has seen a horse wandering on the edge of the forest. When it is brought in, the load it bears is seen to be the dead body of Brother Theodoric. The dead man has a massive head wound, caused by a stone axe, though it looks like he lived long enough to escape his attackers. There is no sign of the two men-at-arms who would have accompanied him. Perhaps they held off the attackers until Theodoric could flee?

Gwylas knows the unfortunate man. Theodoric had been charged by the bishop with maintenance of tithe records and travelled around various parts of the see. He was also a learned man who brought back records of interesting locations that he had found. A quick search indeed reveals a blood-stained parchment, stuck to his horses neck by the dried blood from his own wound. The parchment bears the words "The Stones at Ogsmoor" and has several marks arranged in part of a circle, a small numeral by each. Theodoric’s blood and brains obliterate the rest of the circle. A guard may have heard of Ogsmoor: "Ugly as an Ogsmoor wife, my dad used to say."

Unless the players react so first, Gwylas will be affronted by the death and request that Eustace dispatch a party to investigate.

An ugly priest

While on the road to Ogsmoor, the party encounter an unfortunate priest whose donkey has thrown a shoe (perhaps in protest at the absurdly heavy load of chests and boxes that it bears). The priest is a singularly ugly man -- jutting jaw, large nose, prominent brow ridges, small and deep-set eyes, greasy hair, bow legs, long arms, barrel torso -- though also well groomed and scrupulously clean. He introduces himself in a pleasant but slightly grating voice as Damien, a recently appointed priest.

Damien explains that he is on his way back to his home village, Ogsmoor, to see his mentor, Fr. Alric and his grandfather. Thanks to Alric’s influence, Damien has been able to study in Chaubrette at the famous Chaunterle Abbey. He has been absent from Ogsmoor for some fifteen years since the age of 10, though he has corresponded regularly with Alric. Damien is something of a scholar. As well as being fluent in several languages and having an excellent familiarity with religious books and doctrines he is also a trained healer. However, he has been away from Ogsmoor for a long time and is unfamiliar with recent events. In all but one aspect, Damien is the mild, pious, educated priest that he seems.

In Ogsmoor

Ogsmoor is set in the middle of the often misty moor. There is a fine chapel, but only a curiously small graveyard. The houses are small and rude but well-maintained. A circle of standing stones can be seen looming in the mist, a short distance off.

The people of Ogsmoor are of a similar appearance to Damien -- squat and ugly, yet exceedingly well groomed and clean. For the most part they are also mild-mannered and courteous. They are delighted to see Damien and greet him warmly and devoutly - they clearly are proud that he is now a priest -- yet they are shy and nervous in the presence of the strangers. One woman, less ugly than most, peers at them from a doorway. She is Freydwina.

While the greetings take place, Alric arrives. He is a lean, silver-haired priest. Clearly in his early seventies, he shows no signs of physical or mental frailty. He wears a crucifix around his neck and the observant will see that there is also a second chain carrying another sign -- a small oblong stone. Alric passes this off as a good-luck charm, a memento from his early days here.

Alric insists on a service of welcome and invites Damien to lead it. Alric steps in to lead some of the prayers, which seem familiar until one additional proclamation and response is added. "Give unto God that which is God’s," says Alric. "And to the King that which is the King’s" respond the congregation. Moreover, a small child begins to say, "For the minions of the King are countless…" but is quickly silenced by those around him. Alric seems unconcerned but Damien’s brow is furrowed.

As the party leave the church, they see the woman Freydwina talking to a knight some distance off. The knight pushes her roughly to the ground and storms off. He is Sir Cerewyn, and he has several men-at-arms with him.

Freydwina says of this incident only that she sought help to find her missing child and that Cerewyn refused. Cerewyn, a short-tempered and brutish man, will only say that the brat was forever running off and could "damn well find himself".

Asking about Theodoric

Alric says that Theodoric and his men left before dawn a few days ago. He is saddened to hear of their disappearance.

Cerewyn says that he doesn’t care what happened and that the men-at-arms probably slew Theodoric for his gold and then fled.

Freydwina will get very upset at the question. She will give several different stories, then just say, "The Minions of the King are Countless," and "They will render unto the King! Oh Sweet God, How could you take my child away!"

Damien’s grandfather

At some point, a player may observe Damien and Alric heading off into the moor. If followed, they will come to a cave, in a low, bramble covered cliff. There is the light of a fire deep in the cave and smoke. On entering, the players will see Damien, Alric and a woman from the village around a litter on the floor. Surrounding the litter are various orcish totems: skulls and animal skins. On the litter lies an ancient orc, Krazkul, too old and near death to be any trouble. It is clear from his features what the secret of the village is. Damien, Freydwina, Cerewyn, all except Alric have the characteristic features of orcs which, cleaned and groomed, can almost pass for human. Alric is clearly respectful of the aged orc. If the players stop to overhear, they may catch something along these lines:

"Pah! It is bad enough that I let a priest overrun my tribe, now my own grandson is a shaven-headed shaman too! Changed your name too, eh, boy! What’s wrong with Damgharn? A good orcish name!"

"Grandfather, you must not talk like that. I’ve come to show you that we can change. I am accepted by men. I am a priest of their god -- no, of my God. You will be accepted too if only you will convert to the True Faith."

"Pah! Though shalt not kill! Thou shalt not steal! Thou shalt bathe! What sort of life is that for an orc? Damn you Alric! You have destroyed my tribe."

"And if I had not, Herolaut would have done the job forty years ago. Save my people, you said, and I have done, in more ways than one. They are God-fearing folk, now, for the most part, and have souls for the saving. Your own could be saved too if you’d agree to the baptism."

"Kurwan. Now there’s a good orcish name too."

"Perhaps too good. I believe that he still worships the King. I cannot prove it, but I believe he killed the friar for breaking the taboo, for counting the minions. I believe he has taken Freydwina’s child and will sacrifice him. I believe he is trying to revive the old orcish ways, and if he does then Montombre’s men will raze Ogsmoor to the ground."

From these conversations, it should not be too difficult to fathom what has happened. Alric came here shortly after Herolaut’s massacres. He found a beaten, demoralised people in fear of their lives. Moreover, he realised that these orcs were somehow very similar to men. He educated them and cleaned them up so that they’d pass for men then, bit by bit, converted them to the True Faith. However, he has had to make a few compromises by allowing some of the pieces of the orcs’ old religion to remain -- the worship of the King. Kurwan wants to bring back the old religion and the old orcish ways, and he plans to do so by sacrificing Freydwina’s child to the King.

The King and his Minions

The players will discover Kurwan and his henchmen at the stones. No doubt a fight will ensue and blood will be spilt on the stones, be that the child’s or Kurwan’s. This blood sacrifice is enough to call up the King and his Minions -- a number of stone-skinned orcish ghosts. They are terrible opponents whose skin is almost impermeable. However, their strength depends upon the belief of the people. If only Krazkul, the last unbaptised orc, could be converted to the True Faith before he dies…

How it played

I ran this scenario back in early 1997. I created the blood-stained map as a prop, and people soon wanted to go to Ogsmoor without much prompting. However, we were a bit short of players that week so Hrognar became a useful NPC. Things pretty much followed the route here, though no one attempted to get Krazkul to convert. This was a shame, as I’d planned that the Minions would actually be impervious to normal weapons until that happened. In the end, to avoid a massacre I just gave them a very high armour rating that halved when Krazkul "spontaneously" converted. Of course, a little party blood had to be spilt before this happened.

Steve was inspired to run the scenario by thinking about what happened to Neanderthals. There's no place for multiple hominin species in the history of Legend, of course, where mortals fell from grace after being created by God and where there's no principle of evolution or genetics, but the point is that orcs in this telling became a brutish offshoot of mortal men who could be saved by faith. Steve brilliantly wove them into the world of Dragon Warriors where I'd treated them like a fart not to be acknowledged. Perhaps it helped that, like Tolkien, Steve was raised under Catholicism, and so gnarly questions of belief and salvation are at least familiar to him as concepts to be considered, whereas I have no priors for that kind of thinking outside of fantasy fiction.

Tolkien supposedly derived the word "orc" from a few lines in Beowulf:

þanon untydras ealle onwocon
eotenas ond ylfe ond orcneas
swylce gigantas þa wið gode wunnon
lange þrage he him ðæs lean forgeald

There is nothing in the Beowulf poem to say that Grendel and his mother are "orcs" (which seems to mean something like draugr) but we are told that they are descendants of Cain, along with those other creatures mentioned (eotenas = ettins, ylfe = elf). Tolkien couldn't use Cain's lineage as explanation of his orcs as there had been no Old Testament in the Midgard of The Lord of the Rings. But then, we are happy to use words like ettin and elf in our own fantasies -- the elves of Dragon Warriors are not descendants of Cain, for example. Tolkien was merely upholding the honourable tradition of authors as coiners.

Just to prove I've made my peace with orcs in DW, here is the description from Book One:

Orcs are the archetypal henchthings of evil, and have been found in service to many masters: Sorcerers mad and mighty, undead knights, dark demons, priests of chaos. Orcs care not what or who they fight, so long as they are given ample opportunity to indulge their violent ways. The harsh brutality of orcs gives them a slight edge over the average human fighter, but they are too ill-disciplined to properly hone their combat skills. Some orc warriors and chieftains may have the combat abilities of a Barbarian, but they never rise beyond 4th rank.

Orcs see well in darkness, but they hate and fear bright light. If forced to fight in sunlight, an orc must subtract 1 from his ATTACK and DEFENCE scores. Orcs often live below ground, so dwarves are particularly hated enemies. The stats for a typical orc-at-arms are as follows: 

ATTACK 12     Damage depends on weapon used
DEFENCE 5     Armour Factor depends on type worn
MAGICAL DEFENCE 3    Movement: 10m(20m) 
EVASION 3
Health Points 1d6 + 3         Rank-equivalent: 1st

The picture at the top is from the Natural History Museum and is  licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license.

Victorian-era D&D

Towards the end of my second year at college, I got a hankering to run a Victorian occult investigators campaign. This was 1978. There wasn’t yet GURPS or Cthulhu by Gaslight, so I used white box D&D rules only with spells capped at 2nd level. 3rd level spells were possible too, but only if found on scrolls. That way it wouldn’t all get too munchkin.

That was the idea. It didn’t stop the PCs slapping charm spells on suspects and just asking if they committed the crime, so investigation took a back seat to the usual OSR donnybrook with demons. If I were running it today I'd use a variant of the Dagon Warriors rules with sorcerers as well as psionics but spell-casting capped at maybe 3rd rank (4th rank from scrolls).

We had three player-characters. Father Simon Arkayne (Steve Foster) was a Catholic priest. A.X.E. Knolsbet (Andy Booth) was a gentleman detective and magic-user. And Tufton Beamish, Lord Beauchamp (Chris Elston) was a nobleman with a penchant for derring-do.

In the absence of a lot of spell-casting, there was much use of revolvers (there were few legal restrictions on those in 1890s Britain), sword-sticks and fisticuffs. The characters investigated murder cases, usually with a cult connection like this, often embroiling them in battles with mummies, werewolves or Babylonian demons. Sexton Blake and the Demon God was on TV and I had been a devotee of Sherlock Holmes in my teens. Blend those influences with Doctor Strange's interdimensional forays and a dash of Carnacki and John Silence (and, though I hate to admit it, Jules de Grandin) and you have a sense of what the games were like.

In fact, talking of Jules de Grandin...

That scene is taken straight from one of our adventures -- which, since it spilled over into the summer vacation, we had to complete by post. Paper letters with stamps, I mean, email not being a thing in those benighted times. Here's part of the very write-up I sent to the players:

The following term we even recorded a session in Steve's college rooms. That was long before actual play was a thing, and I have no idea if the cassette tape (1978, remember) still exists, but if I should come across it in a box in the attic, I'll digitize it and put it online.

Halloween treat, no trick

Forty years ago I wrote my first gamebook. I was a roleplayer and board gamer. I’d played the Fantasy Trip solo adventures, and even wrote a short solo dungeon for my friend Steve Foster (designer of Mortal Combat) when he had to spend a week in hospital, but I’d hardly noticed the growing kids’ gamebook craze until Ian Livingstone asked me to write a serialized solo adventure for White Dwarf. That was The Castle of Lost Souls.

It wasn’t long before almost everyone I knew was signing up to write a gamebook series. Joe Dever and Gary Chalk left Games Workshop to do Lone Wolf. Jamie Thomson too, teaming up with Mark Smith (who was another stalwart of our Tekumel campaign) to create Way of the Tiger and Falcon. You can see why Ian Livingstone and Steve Jackson (UK) might have felt a bit miffed. They’d started a trend and now half their workforce was deserting the ship to jump on the bandwagon – if that isn’t mixing metaphors.

I used to freelance for White Dwarf a lot in those days, but once Jamie quit the editorial chair I didn’t have as much reason to show up at the office. Then Steve Jackson asked me to come in to talk about a series of gamebooks that he wanted to publish. He and Ian were committed to doing more Fighting Fantasy for Puffin Books, so these would be Games Workshop’s own series.

Steve was always coming up with fascinating game mechanics. He told me about a little tactical combat system he’d thought of when stuck in a motel in the middle of America. You had a tactical diagram that showed which actions were permitted in a combat round. So from EVADE you could move to DEFEND, REST or NORMAL ATTACK. From DEFEND you could only move to EVADE or NORMAL ATTACK, and so on.

When the player’s action was compared with the opponent’s, that gave the number of hit points each combatant lost. ‘Do you think you could use this for a gamebook?’ Steve wondered.

I went away and did a little work on it. I can’t remember how I handled the NPC adversaries, but this was a 1980s gamebook so there wasn’t going to be any AI. Probably the NPCs just acted randomly each round, and that was cross-referenced with the player’s action to give the outcome for that round. That would eat up a lot of paragraphs if every encounter had its own set of action entries, so I imagine I had a few dozen entries for each of several types of monster. They could be customized by SPECIAL ATTACKS, which would vary depending on the monster.

‘Looks good,’ reckoned Steve, ‘but I’d like to see a sample. Fifty or sixty sections, say.’

I went home, sat down at my Olympia Traveller typewriter, and began: ‘Dusk in Wistren Wood…’ and launched into a solo adventure in a vampire’s mansion. When I showed it to Steve he liked it and proposed a contract for Vampire Crypt, as it was then called. When the contract came it had a clause preventing me from writing gamebooks for any other publishers. I’m glad I never signed it, as if I had then my writing career would have been over before it began. (You may have noticed that Games Workshop never did get around to publishing their own gamebook series.)

Still, I was left with the beginning of a gamebook. When I signed with Grafton Books a few months later to do the Golden Dragon series, those fifty sample sections let me get a head start on the tight deadlines. Of course I couldn’t use Steve Jackson’s clever rule system, but Golden Dragon needed something a lot simpler anyhow. And thus Crypt of the Vampire was born – or spawned, or sired, or whatever the appropriate term is for vamps.

(Yes, these are the original maps and notes. I'm that much of a hoarder.)

And here we are at the 40th anniversary. To mark it I dug out a reboot of the book that I wrote for Amazon a couple of years ago. They wanted apps for Alexa (for some reason they call them skills) so I turned Crypt of the Vampire into The Vampire’s Lair, a consciously old-school adventure in audio form. Rather than retain the dungeon fantasy flavour of the original, though, I leaned into the influences of those Universal and Hammer monster movies I loved as a kid, when horror was delicious shuddersome fun and before it became synonymous with serial killers, torture porn and (yawn) demonic possession.

The text I wrote for that is now on sale for Halloween in a slim paperback with Leo Hartas’s original illustrations reworked in full colour. (My generous Patreon backers get to read it for free -- just sayin'.) It was Leo’s first book too. I’d seen his portfolio when he came into the White Dwarf offices one day, and when my editor at Grafton, Angela Sheehan, asked me if there were any artists I wanted for the series Leo's name sprang to mind. And because of that I began a close and dear friendship, a friendship which also now forty years old. If it were a marriage that means Leo and I would be celebrating our ruby anniversary – a very suitable hue given the blood-sucking tastes of the sinister count.

The pivot of destiny

I came across this 120-player game of D&D on LinkedIn. Unfortunately the post was whisked away from me before I could note the name of the valorous GM, so apologies for not crediting him here. It reminded me of when my friends Nick Henfrey (co-founder of Flat Earths) and Steve Foster (creator of Mortal Combat) and I turned up at our university D&D society just after Freshers' Week. Dozens of new members had signed up, so we found ourselves crammed into a tiny room (five metres square at the most) with a couple of dozen eager first-timers.

"You can't run a game for a party this size," I pointed out to the GM as we all put down figurines in the traditional ten-foot-wide corridor.

"Course we can," he insisted, announcing that the two people at the front could just make out an ochre jelly or whatever it was.

We played on for half an hour, with most people there watching in bafflement as the experienced players leading the party rolled lots and lots of dice. It didn't look like many of these newbies would be coming back next weekend. Nick whispered in my ear. "Let's liven things up."

We were in the middle of the party, so we started blasting spells and swinging swords in both directions, slaughtering folks on both sides until the experienced D&D players waded back and killed us. Outside in the corridor, one of the first-year players whose characters we'd killed asked, "So what are we going to do now?" I didn't know then, but he was Mark Smith.

I opened the next door. It was another meeting room even smaller than the first, maybe four metres square this one, but it was empty. "Have you ever heard of Empire of the Petal Throne?" I said. And that's where we started a game with the core of a group who went on campaigning together for a long time to come -- decades in some cases. There were several who went on to careers far removed from games (and hi there, Les, Sheldon and Pauline, if you happen to see this) but most notable among them was Mike Polling (yes, the author of "The Key of Tirandor") a friend and creative mentor with whom I did much of my early writing. Mike and Mark had been at school with Jamie Thomson. It was through Mike that I was introduced to Oliver Johnson -- they had met at a party the night before our weekly game, and Mike gave Oliver a drunken but apparently brilliant (neither of them can remember it now) account of how roleplaying worked. The next day Oliver showed up to see for himself. And so, directly or otherwise, that Sunday afternoon connected me to most of the RPG writers I'd be working with over the next forty-five years.

Maybe life is full of those "Turn Left" moments. I met my wife because of another, but although that's obviously of paramount importance to me personally there's no gaming dimension so I won't recount the story here. What about you? Are there people or games that have changed your whole life which would have gone entirely unnoticed if you'd made just one different choice?

Blood Sword to Dragon Warriors - part 5

The Walls of Spyte is the last installment in Oliver Whawell's series of rules conversions from Blood Sword to Dragon Warriors rules. The stat blocks are available in PDF form here.

I had a lot less to do with the writing of the fifth book than the rest of the series. Oliver Johnson was supposed to write it, but ran out of time. Luckily Jamie Thomson was on hand to step in, but necessarily it was a rush job so he didn't have time to read the earlier Blood Sword books. I came in right at the end to tie up the last 40 sections or so.

Patreon backers can see how I'd have liked the series finale to pan out. Tambù's Blood Sword 5e campaign and rulebook drew on those notes, and I have a feeling so will Prime Games' forthcoming CRPG.

Various player-characters guest starred in the Blood Sword books, in a manner of speaking. This time it was the turn of Zaraqeb (Zara in the book) and Karunaz, who were played in my and Steve Foster's Empire of the Petal Throne campaign by Gail Baker and Paul Mason. The original PCs weren't a lot like their gamebook incarnations, incidentally. The real Zaraqeb wasn't a sorceress and wasn't that nasty; the real Karunaz was neither posh nor noble, though he was a much more interesting kind of hero because of that.

Character sketch

On the rare occasions when I've played D&D I usually haven't taken it very seriously. In my defence, that was mostly back in the mid-'70s and the way the early books were written I don't think you were meant to take it seriously. I don't mean the rules; we used the latest iteration of those for the Blood Sword RPG and they work brilliantly. But the default fantasy setting of D&D is a bit sub-sub-sub-Tolkien by way of Monty Python, or so it usually seemed to me.

There were exceptions. I ran a Victorian-era investigative campaign (this was years before Call of Cthulhu, never mind Cthulhu by Gaslight) in which the only magic was 1st and 2nd level. That wasn't played for laughs. Also, when I joined in a game of Blood Sword 5e I not only thought it was brilliantly atmospheric, I actually liked the game system, which was several quantum leaps beyond the D&D of fifty years ago.

Anyway, back to 1976. Invited to join a D&D game by Steve Foster, creator of the Mortal Combat rules, I rolled up a Cugel-like knave called Necromageus Knoll, who soon had a reputation for greed, deceit and treachery. Come to think about it, he was three parts Cugel, two parts Zachary Smith, and one part Tricky Dicky.

The other players seemed to find Necromageus Knoll jolly enough that I put him in a comic strip (inexplicably relocated to the Tekumel underworld, hence the reference to 'Eyes') that lasted a week or two until we moved on to other campaigns. I did something similar but more serious a few years later with this authentic Tekumel write-up.

Having come across that Necromageus Knoll strip just recently, and intrigued to see how my visual storytelling had developed between 1976 and 2008 when I came to write Mirabilis: Year of Wonders (long story short: a lot!) I thought I'd share a bit of it here. Don't worry, I won't quit the day job.

Everything must go

It's always a wrench having to chuck stuff out. Well, it is for me as I'm a bit of a hoarder. But lately I've had to take an "exterminate all the brutes" attitude to clearing out, so I've given a couple of boxes of gaming treasures to my wife to flog on Ebay. It's that or take them to the tip, and with classics like these that would be a crime. 

There's sets of Imagine, Adventurer, Red Giant (with Brymstone by Robert Dale), and Fantasy Chronicles - including the issue above with Steve Foster's superb Christmas adventure which I still remember us playing in his house on Western Lane.

There are some scenario books, Chaosium games such as Big Rubble, gems like Bushido and Champions, and some figurines. Take a look if you have space for them. I'd like to think they'll go to a good home.

The player who couldn't make it

'You killed my character and I wasn't even there!'

It was the early days of roleplaying and we were still feeling our way, but the player was right to be aggrieved. It's like borrowing a friend's Hellblazer collection and returning it covered in coffee stains. (A sore point; we won't go into that.) Still and all, what should I have done? We'd been in mid-battle the previous session, we'd had to press pause, and that player hadn't been able to turn up to the next game.

I can't remember what I decided. There might have been a retcon, but I was pretty hardline in those days so maybe the player just had to suck it up. At any rate, they didn't die in vain. From then on it was understood that PCs wouldn't get killed in the player's absence.

One simple solution is to avoid breaking the session in the middle of a fight. I've talked before about why cutting a session there doesn't work. There are more suspenseful ways to build in a cliffhanger. For instance, suppose it's the eve of Waterloo and the player-characters are sent to evacuate an important NPC from a chateau some miles from the main battle line. They get there only to learn that an enemy detachment is also heading that way. That's a good point to break. There's tension, there's uncertainty. Before the next session the players will be thinking about what to do. Run for it? Barricade the chateau and make a stand? Head towards the enemy for a surprise attack? Negotiate? Disguise one of the party as the NPC?

The icing on this cake is that if any player can't make the next session it's easy to explain away their absence. Maybe they've made a break for it with a message for high command, or they're out scouting the enemy's position. Contrast that with having the enemy characters burst into the chateau and then breaking till next time. Quite apart from the problem of having to cold-start with action rather than character interplay, you have no easy way to account for the absent PC. They were there last time making plans with the rest of the team -- but for some reason they sit out the fight? The other players can just shrug and accept it, the way you have to give a free pass to plot details in Doctor Who, but it's not great for immersion. In every way the former solution works better.

It's easier when you have plenty of prior warning that a player can't turn up. Their character can be off doing something else and there's no need to come up with an excuse for them not taking part in the action. Our long-running Tekumel campaign used to be run by me and Steve Foster (the designer of Mortal Combat and Eureka) taking turns as referee. We soon spotted the flaw in this arrangement: our own characters were only getting to be half as powerful as the rest of the party. Our fix was to award our own characters 80% of the average experience points earned by the other characters for sessions when we were refereeing not playing, the one-fifth deduction reflecting the fact that we weren't in danger of death. If a player couldn't turn up one week, they got the same deal.

Nowadays it's less of a problem because I don't tend to bother with awarding experience points, or else I play in games run by referees brought up in a culture of "every kid gets a prize" who scrupulously award each character the same experience regardless of what they did. In settings less vivid and immersive than Tekumel, suspension of disbelief may be less of an issue and players may just accept without comment that a character blinked out of existence for a week. Whatever works for your group, just so long as you don't hand a borrowed character back in a body bag.

Mortal engines

For this year's freebie, don't thank me, thank Steve Foster. He's the designer of Mortal Combat, the homebrew RPG that pulled our thinking away from mega-hit dice heroes towards a grittier blood-&-mud style of fantasy that ended up inspiring Dragon Warriors, for one.

Steve has given his blessing to handing out free PDFs of this seminal (if rough-&-ready) work:

• The Mortal Combat rulebook 
• The extremely rare card insert
• Steve's rules addenda

Just so you know what you're in for here, Mortal Combat is as old school as it gets. It's a combat system with spell lists, designed almost entirely for traditional hack-n-slash adventures. There's an implied medieval setting, but no social skills or details, no stealth, no rules for survival or climbing or lore or any of the other few dozen things you might try in a modern game. Back then, if it wasn't covered by the rules then you could do anything that seemed reasonable. Somehow we managed, and there are times when wrestling with GURPS's several hundred skills and perks when I've yearned to strip things right back. Maybe not quite that far back, but almost.

And you can see now why I didn't choose a career as an illustrator. Happy Christmas!

The Keeper of the Seven Keys

Well, this is odd. In all the posts about "lost" Fighting Fantasy books, I've never actually featured the write-up for The Keeper of the Seven Keys. Correspondence at the time seems to indicate that Jamie and I submitted this to Puffin Books twice, first in April 1988 and then again the following year alongside the Fabled Lands prototype concept Knights of Renown.

Why two submissions? I think there may have been a change of editor at Puffin. At any rate, neither of them bit, and of all the proposals we came up with, the one that they plumped for was possibly the least interesting (Keep of the Lich Lord). I was recently asked in an interview by Jonathan Green why I didn't write more Fighting Fantasy books, and I think that answers the question.

We must have done quite a bit of work on this one, when you consider that the written proposal that gets sent to the publisher is just the tip of the iceberg. Certainly it was a concept that Jamie and I were pretty keen to do. Around the same time, I had the idea of doing a computer game called Dungeon Builder where one player would design a dungeon with a set number of points - 5 per orc, 10 for a pit trap, or whatever - and then a friend could try taking on the dungeon with a character based on the same points score. You could put allies into the dungeon for the contending player to find (those cost negative points) and even get tricksy by dropping an illusion spell (2 points) of an imprisoned knight onto an orc (5 points) so that it could tag around with the contender and backstab him when he least expected it. A gamble, of course, as he might have spent 15 points on the Detect Illusions skill. I mention that because Keeper of the Seven Keys would work pretty well as a boardgame or videogame, so maybe we'll resurrect it one day in another form.

Enough chat. You came here for the gamebooks, right? Thus, without further ado, the original pitch to Puffin from April 1988:

THE KEEPER OF THE SEVEN KEYS

This gamebook is intended as something original, markedly different from all previous gamebooks, and with a vein of humour running through it. The pattern of all gamebooks to date has been hero setting out to destroy the evil lord/demigod/demon, battling against great odds. The Keeper of the Seven Keys sets out to reverse that role. The reader plays the so-called Evil power beset by the fanatic forces of good. The book presents things from the viewpoint of the poor persecuted Lord of Darkness! So as to avoid any moral dilemma for younger readers, the so-called "Lord of Darkness" is actually no villain but a much maligned hero.

Introduction
You are Karabane, Master of the Seals and Runes, Knower of the Way and Member of the Honoured Society of Sages, an ancient and venerable society now all but extinct. Many years ago you set out on a quest to defeat a powerful demon lord who threatened the continent of Khul. Unable to completely destroy this entity, you were forced to bind it with powerful spells into a dimensional cage. Since then, you have dedicated your life to maintaining its imprisonment and have been forced to take up residence in the ancient castle of the demon lord. Through the intercession of divine forces of Good you have extended your life to carry out this mission. Each year for the last two centuries you have performed the rituals of binding.

Unfortunately the people of the land have come to view you as a force of Evil, the fearful inhabitant of the Tower of Doom, for your home is a fell forbidding place. They know you as Bane, or the Banelord, the Evil One, He who Sits in Malice, the Purveyor of Terrors, and so on. They call the old castle the Tower of Doom, The Place from which None Return, the Citadel of Illimitable Agonies, and the like. They call your servants the Creatures of Hell, Banebeasts, Servants of the Dark One, Fanged Horrors of the Tower of Doom, etc. Well, most of your servants are the original inhabitants and are indeed evil beings - but you have bound them to your will and thus the service of Good. After all, they are more reliable then mere humans.

For a time you played along with popular belief. You caused illusions of evil magics to light up the night sky around your home. You sent demons, flapping and cawing, to circle your tall towers and baroque battlements. This suited your purpose, for you wished to remain undisturbed by prying eyes, to execute your mission alone. Better for the safety of others that they continue to regard you as evil, and thus keep their distance. But now it seems that policy has backfired.

The nearby city of Arkand lives in fear of you. Poor harvests, blighted crops, disappearances, murders and so on - all are laid at your door. Crazed prophets, eager for congregations and donations, talk of your rise to power and the threat to civilization you are supposed to represent, and of how you must be destroyed, excised from the land like a canker. Kings and lords offer rewards for your death. Several times in the past you have had to fight off fanatic heroes and adventurers who sought to penetrate your citadel and slay you. Most failed to get past your wards and servants, but some have won through to your Inner Sanctum and you were then forced to use your sorcery to defeat them. This saddens you for they are great and good heroes, but you have been unable to reason with them. Many times you tried but they would clap hands over ears, yelling things like "Avaunt ye, spawn of Hell! I will not listen to your vile blandishments and devious words, O Lord of Lies!" You have never ceased to marvel at the determination and courage of these heroes. By your sorcery they are all kept safely in a millenial slumber, bound inside blocks of adamantine crystal. Regretfully you cannot free them, as they would merely attack you once more. All you have ever wished for is to be left alone. But it is not to be.

This time, things are bad. The beautiful Princess Araminta, fancying herself a scholar, scoured the Great Library of Arkand in her quest for knowledge. She discovered the history of the Society of Sages and the truth about you - who you really were and your real purpose. Curiosity aflame, she set out to visit you. Many tried to dissuade her but she crept out of the city at night, in secret. She came to you and you welcomed her, not only out of courtesy but because you were eager for the company of another human after so long. She loved your books and ancient artifacts and has spent days studying in the castle library where she is even now. But she is outstaying her welcome. The townsfolk say that you bewitched her and that foul demons spirited her away to your tower. The King of Arkand has promised her hand in marriage or a reward of fifty thousand crowns to the hero or heroine who will rescue her from your "evil clutches". Many heroes and adventurers flocked to Arkand and, in fear of your life, you went to Princess Araminta and begged her to return to her father's court. Absently she refused, patting you fondly on the head while she studied an ancient mirror that reflects the enhanced image of those who look in it so that they appear ten times more beautiful than they really are. She said she was enjoying herself too much and was not ready to leave. What could you do - short of throwing her out by force? And that, of course, would be quite wrong...

Some of the most powerful heroes and heroines of the age, mighty warriors and skilled sorcerors, have gathered at Arkand to pursue the quest. Their vow: "to slay the evil Banelord who has cast a dark shadow across the land for too long." Even now your outer defences have begun to sound the alarm. Winged Homunculi and Lesser Imps have come to you bearing messages. Groups of adventurers are heading towards the citadel and they look tough. And worse still, tonight is the very night you must perform the Rituals of Binding that must be performed each year to seal the demon lord Gagrash, Devourer of the Living, Bestower of Death, Giver of Unimaginable Sufferings, in his prison once more. If he escapes, the whole land could be destroyed! What are you going to do?

Special rules for The Keeper of the Seven Keys

The player will generate his or her character as normal for Fighting Fantasy (Skill, etc). Then some additional preparation is necessary. Essentially, the reader examines the map of the castle and places the defences and snares at his or her disposal so as to prevent the entry of three groups of heroes. Some of the heroes will inevitably win through to the Inner Sanctum for a climactic battle, but with skilful choice of defences the reader should be able to minimise the threat.

At the same time that this is going on, the reader must perform the rituals to bind the demon lord. Thus he or she also faces a race against time. There are also various other options and puzzles that must be solved - the reader will not just be sitting in the Inner Sanctum directing things. The demon lord must be bound by hourly rituals involving the use of the seven keys and thus the book will be divided into seven chronological stages. During these stages the rituals must be performed, the heroes will be penetrating further into the castle, and the reader will be taking defensive steps as needed. Passage of time is recorded by crossing off hours when directed to do so in the text:

Hour of the Wolf
Hour of the Dragon
Hour of the Bear
Hour of the Wyvern
Hour of the Tiger
Hour of the Unicorn
Hour of the Moon (midnight)

A map of the castle will be provided, as below:

The Tower of Doom, or The Place from which None Return, or The Citadel of Illimitable Agonies, or "Home Sweet Home".

A list of the reader's servitors will also be given, as below.

20 Demonkin
Winged gargoyles from another plane. You travelled there and bound them to your service a century ago.

50 Orcs
You must dress as a hideous demon and constantly display your powerful magics whenever an orc is about. They believe you to be a demon and worship you. You must bind them to your will with fear, for fear is all these filthy orcs understand.

2 Hellgaunts 
Demons of the Abyss. You have bound them to you - in your Sanctum you have two vials containg their smoking black hearts. Whoever possesses the hearts controls the hellgaunts.

4 Winged Homunculi
Little creatures like tiny winged old men. You created them in your laboratory using secrets of alchemy you found in an old parchment. The homunculi are useful as spies and messengers.

4 Lesser Imps
Slightly larger than the homunculi. Hideous little winged beasts that you won to your service using sorcery when you first defeated the demon lord Gagrash. Again useful as spies and messengers, although some also know rudimentary attack spells.

2 Automata of the Wizards of Qor
Two mechanical warriors that you created following ancient texts from the legendary land of Qor. Soulless creatures of ivory and iron with visors that spit lightning-bolts.

Beasts
In the Beastpits you keep various hideous beasts you have created or captured and enslaved. They can be released in certain areas but are equally likely to attack anyone (including you and your servants) who enters their assigned area.

The Enchanted Gate
The gate of the keep. Anyone who passes with evil intent against your person triggers the gate. It screams a warning that can be heard throughout your Citadel.

The Castle Defences
At the start the reader is provided with a chart to fill in, placing his defences as he wishes.

AREA
Wall A:
Wall B:
Wall C:
Wall D:
Tower of Night:
Tower of Stars:
Tower of the Moon:
Tower of the Sun:
Maingate:
Postern Gate:
The Well:
The Rivergate:
The Orc Barracks:
The Demonkin Barracks:
The Hall of Ancient Artifacts:
The Beastpits:
1st floor of Keep:
2nd Floor of Keep:
Inner Sanctum:
Cellar:

To place:
• 2 Hellgaunts (separately, one in each area)
• 2 Automata (separately, one in each area)
• 2 units of 25 orcs each
• 2 units of 10 demonkin each
• 2 groups of 2 homunculi
• 2 groups of 2 imps
• The beasts

Also the following, set to patrol area, will attack all comers:
• The Manticore
• The Gorgon
• The Wyvern

The reader will also have the following creatures in his Sanctum at the beginning of the adventure: 1 orc messenger, 1 demonkin messenger, 1 homunculus and 1 imp.

Artifacts
In addition to three Potions of Strength and one Potion of Fortune, the reader will also have several wonderous items at his disposal:

The Orb of All Seeing
This enables you to examine any area of the citadel at will, though it takes some time to examine an area.

The Staff of Might
Adds 1 to skill and 1 to damage done in combat.

The Ring of Excellent Defence
Subtracts 1 from any Stamina loss that results from a wound taken in combat.

Book of Spells
Enables Karabane to cast various spells:
• Lightning Bolt - an attack spell that inflicts the loss of 1-6 Stamina points.
• Battleskill - adds 1 to Skill for the duration of a single encounter.
• Healing - restores one die's worth of lost Stamina.
• Confusion - reduces the target's Skill by 1.
• Teleport - enables Karabane to teleport back to his Sanctum.

These spells will generally be usable when indicated in the text.

Other items are held either in the cellar or in the Hall of the Ancient Artifacts. Karabane will have to take time fetching these if he thinks they might be needed. Such items are those whose name and general function is known, but whose precise powers must be tested (possibly with unexpected results) during the course of play. They include the Mirror of Reflecting Thunderbolts, the Iron Bell of Meragren, the Shield of Ice (said to absorb flame), and so on. These things may become useful depending on how the plot develops.

Heroes
The reader will also be provided with a list of the heroes gunning for him and some useful information about them. These are:

Barak Arakyn the Berserk
A berserker warrior in light armour who wields his two-handed battleaxe "Slayer". A peerless fighter of heroic strength and endurance.

Sir Gondris of the Order of Knights Errant
A paladin of an order dedicated to destroying evil everywhere. Wears full plate: the Armour of Purity, the Shield of Truth and the Sword of Wrath. A renowned knight of unswerving purpose and redoubtable might.

Kalara of Arkand
A noted adventurer and suspected thief. Has a reputation of being a rogue. She wields the Longbow of Qor and the Arrows of Flame.

Arcos Arcanus
Master of Magics and Doctor of Marvels. A powerful wizard of great power and repute.

Mogresh
Alchemist of Fernor and Priest of the Holy Ones. A famous 'smiter of evil'. A fanatic priest and creator of many herbal potions which can be used in combat.

Uldarik Hsao
Master of the Martial Arts and Supreme Sensei of Unarmed Combat. A martial artist from Hachiman, skilled in all forms of unarmed combat.

Fudoshin Raiko
A lordless samurai from Konichi in Hachiman. This famous master of the sword has sworn to destroy Karabane even at the cost of his own life.

Syrena, Amazon of Kelados
A mighty fighter, she is known to wield the Helm of Thunderbolts, and the Sword and Shield of Chrysos (an ancient legendary hero).

Prince Chemcho of Sariandor
A noted warrior-mage. Wields a slender sword of night-black steel. This dashing roguish adventurer is said to know some powerful spells.

During the book the reader will have the opportunity to consult his library about the heroes and their weapons and abilities.

The heroes are divided into three groups of three:

Group A - Sir Gondris, Mogresh and Fudoshin Raiko
Group B - Kalara, Prince Chemcho and Barak Arakyn
Group C - Syrena, Uldarik and Arcos

Events
The following would not be known to the player, but it demonstrates the general course which the book would take and is divided into stages, corresponding to the hours:

Of course, some heroes may not even get all the way through, depending on the reader's actions.

The optimum conclusion leads to the remaining heroes witnessing the start of Karabane's battle with the demon lord. If Karabane can convince them where the true evil lies, they will help destroy the demon lord forever and Karabane will have succeeded in clearing his name. This conclusion requires the reader to act with restraint, putting himself into danger at some points in order to achieve a non-violent resolution to his battle with the nine heroes.

*  *  *

A few notes of mild interest: Gondris was the name of a player-character in my Tekumel campaign at Oxford. Serena was a very fit instructor at the gym Jamie and I used to work out at. Arcos was a character Jamie played in the RuneQuest campaign that I and Oliver Johnson ran for a while to playtest the Questworld scenario pack that Games Workshop had commissioned us to write. (I say commissioned, but no money ever changed hands nor did they go so far as to give us a contract.) Uldarik was the name of one of Jamie's NPC bodyguards in the Tekumel campaign that I and Steve Foster ran in London. Mogresh may have taken his name from Mogs, the nickname of one of the players in that campaign. You get all the trivia here, eh?

A neck romancer

I think of Crypt of the Vampire as my first gamebook, but it’s moot. I’d already written the magazine version of Castle of Lost Souls. That was serialized in White Dwarf in the summer of 1984, several months before the Golden Dragon series launched, and later got reworked as the sixth GD title. But Crypt was the first time I’d taken on a whole book.

Those were busy times. I had to turn down designing the PC game “Eureka by Ian Livingstone” because of all my magazine and book commitments. Maybe that was a mistake, as my friend Steve Foster, who wrote it in my place, told me he bought his first house on the proceeds. (The picture below, that's us back then in our slimmer days. I'm the one reading Captain America.) But at least with Golden Dragon I got my name on the title page. The road that’s grassy and wants for wear, you see.

Crypt and the later books nearly didn’t happen. In spring of 1984, while I was writing the first instalments of Castle of Lost Souls, Ian Livingstone and Steve Jackson offered me a contract to do a series of gamebooks for Games Workshop. I’d done bags of work for GW before – an entire role-playing game in 1980 called Adventure (never published; GW acquired the RuneQuest rights) and then in 1983 an entire Questworld campaign pack with Oliver Johnson (never published; GW lost the RQ rights). In the case of the gamebooks, though, they seemed to be serious. They were willing to pay an advance, and that was a first.

Except… it was £350 per book, which was a pittance even in the ‘80s. And it would have been an exclusive contract, meaning I couldn’t work with any other publisher. “Why would Ian and Steve want to compete with Fighting Fantasy?” I wondered. For whatever reason, I dragged my heels about signing and was mighty glad I did, as a matter of weeks later I went to see Angela Sheehan at Dragon Books, had a nice long chat, and walked out with a two-book deal.

Originally Temple of Flame was down as the first book in the series, and the contract describes the other as “Dungeon of the Undead”. I think it was probably my dad who said, “Put ‘vampire’ in the title, it’ll grab people more than ‘undead’.” The publishers wanted to call it Crypt of Dracula, but I wasn’t having that. These books would be read by kids, and I didn’t want their first experience of Bram Stoker’s creation to be in a gamebook. Dracula was already in public domain, Stoker having died seventy-two years earlier, but I believe writers owe a creative courtesy to each other that lasts a lot longer than the term of copyright – though, regrettably, not everyone shares that view.

For the new edition, I’ve revised the text slightly to excise the trad fantasy elements (a hobgoblin, an elf) that seemed most intrusive. Now the atmosphere is very slightly more Gothic, the setting less definitely medieval. “Ah!” the DW players will say, “but isn’t Wistren Wood in Ellesland?” And so it is, but my Legend games have moved on – past the Last Trump at the end of The Walls of Spyte, even – to a time of matchlocks and sabres*.

But that’s getting close to a foolish consistency. Whether or not Crypt of the Vampire is set in Legend, at heart it belongs to the lurid fairytale world of Hammer horror, where Cushing’s alert, flashing gaze locked with the fiery brooding in the eyes of Lee, and dark ivy-choked halls waited in the depths of darker woods. I like what Johnny S Geddes said about Crypt on Demian Katz’s gamebook page:

“Every now and then around midnight, and especially when there's thunder outside, I go back and take another tread through the enchanted forest leading to a dark mansion.”

That’s how I like to think of it being enjoyed. And, with Halloween almost upon us, here’s the chance to curl up with something creepy. The new edition also has Leo Hartas’s illustrations, incidentally – it was Leo’s first book as well as mine. Start as you mean to go on, that's our motto.

* Update 2024: In fact that gunpowder-powered version of Legend never came about, as I realized that the kind of campaign I was planning to run wasn't a good fit with the tastes of some of my players. So the Legend you'll see in my Jewelspider RPG is the original Dark Ages/early medieval setting familiar from Dragon Warriors. 

Dirty linen

In the spirit of intrepid explorers from Lewis and Clark to Henry Morton Stanley, lately I’ve been delving into that most alarming and hard-to-penetrate of realms, the past. And, sparing no blushes, I’ve unearthed this fragment from the back of my first published work, Mortal Combat, written with Steve Foster and published by Waynflete House, the company I set up with Nick Henfrey in 1979.

The Crypt of Lieberkuen really is a “dungeon bash” of the crudest sort. As my own games almost never involve dungeons, and certainly never of the random monsters-n-puzzles variety, it’s a little surprising to find something like this even among my juvenilia. I think the explanation must be along these lines:

Nick: “You’ll have to put in an adventure. People expect it these days in a new role-playing game.”
Dave: “That’s a whole other book. I’d have to explain the background, the politics, all that stuff.”
Nick: “Seeing as it goes to the printers next week, can’t you just do an underworld? You know, like the scenarios in White Dwarf.”
Dave: [sighs, grumbles, starts typing]

The scenario, such as it is, might best be consigned to the flames, but for a couple of points of mild interest. Anvil, the wizard mentioned here, was the character played by Mark “Min” Smith (below, looking ridiculously young) in my and Steve’s Empire of the Petal Throne campaign. The inspiration (if we can use that term) for the name came from the crypts of Lieberkühn, another name for certain intestinal glands. And – but no, that’s all.

Mortal Combat itself was an excellent game (largely the work of Steve Foster, not me) and it brought us to the attention of Ian Livingstone and Steve Jackson at Games Workshop, who commissioned us to design an RPG called Adventure. So I was about to say there’s the silver lining, but come to think of it, we were never paid a penny and, just as Adventure was finished, GW got the UK RuneQuest licence so they didn’t need a role-playing game of their own. So let’s put this back in its box and never mention it again. I can only plead in my defence, M'lud, that I atoned for these early sins against creativity six years later by designing Dragon Warriors.

If you are looking for a good dungeon-type adventure, let me refer you back one year to Steve Foster's superb seasonal Legend scenario "Freeze Thy Blood Less Coldly". Yes, it's that time of the year again - nearly. Yo ho argh.

THE CRYPT OF LIEBERKUEN (scenario for Mortal Combat)

Background notes on the adventure:

While drinking in a tavern, the players learn of the knight Lieberkuen, an honourable & powerful nobleman who died a hundred years ago and whose wife, Karen (a great sorceress) had built for him a grand tomb with many treasures. She also stocked it with magical guardians of various kinds, to test the mettle and ingenuity of any trying to infiltrate the tomb.

Upon travelling to the tomb (a burial mound out on the moors), they discover the entrance and steps leading down deep into the ground...

Note that in a ten foot wide passageway, characters can fight two abreast, but greater crowding than this makes combat very difficult. Magicians casting spells can stand three abreast. A torch or lantern is needed per group of four people exploring unlit places. Torches burn for one hour; lanterns require refuelling. Torchlight has a range of no more than thirty feet, and counts as "poor light" for missile use (Section 3.093). Doors are usually five feet wide and made of wood banded with metal, or sometimes wholly of metal. If bolted or barred, they may take several kicks to break in (or even several axe-blows), and this alerts beings in the room beyond. Remember to take such things as the position of open doors, direction of spiral stairways, etc, into account during combat. During exploration of some fortress or tomb-complex, characters are assumed to move cautiously, and hence movement is reduced by 25 percent.

1. A stone blocking passage. Will take three men with picks an hour to break it up, assuming average strength. However, if players think to look, they will find a hidden lever which raises it into the tunnel roof.

2. Empty room lit by magical braziers which burn continually; if touched, the braziers flare up to attack the person doing this (treat as Flaming Hand spell). On the wall is this inscription:

The Crypt of Lieberkuen. Take both doors or neither.

Remember that only characters of Learning greater than 12 can read.

3. A Grave Gaunt. If the players get the significance of the inscription in room 2, they will split the party and the others will go around to attack the creature from behind. The Grave Gaunt is using a magic sword (+1).

4. Room with marble floor and velvet tapestries along the east and west walls. The room is lit by torches on the walls. At the table in the middle sits an old man flanked by two warriors. (The old man is A 0, D 0; 7 hp; 1st rank fighter-equivalent; no armour or weapons. The warriors are A 5, D 8; 12 hp; 1st rank fighters; chain-mail, shields, swords.)

The old man says to the characters: "If you wish to gamble, you may. Otherwise leave." He takes out three cups and a gem of obvious value, and places the gem under one of the cups. Those players not wishing to gamble may go through the south door. Although he has no real powers, the old man has an aura of tremendous power and authority.

He explains the deal. He will move the cups around. If the players can guess which cup the gem is under, they get it (it's worth 200 crowns); if not, he takes an item from them – probably a weapon. He will use sleight-of-hand to cheat, and only players of intelligence 15 up will spot this. (They can always attack him, of course. If willing to gamble at all, why not gamble on him being powerless?)

5. The old man's treasure-room (entrance hidden behind tapestries). Contains: 45 crowns, 200 florins, 3 nonmagical shortswords, a flask containing one draught of the Elixir of Bramullin, and an Amulet of Fidelity disguised to look like a Talisman of Norfengu - anyone putting it on after the death of the old man (the owner) will be both the new owner and the victim of the amulet, and thus will be reduced to a mindless automaton until the amulet is removed.

6. Room with three doors, of (looking from east to west) gold, silver and lead. Before the doors floats a ghostly figure which says: "There is a statement on each door, but only one is correct. One at a time, you must choose which door to go through."

The Ghost was a rank 7 fighter in life (A 10, D 12; 14 hp; sword), and if the players try to confer, it will first caution them, and then attack.

The inscriptions are:

GOLD door-- Your goal lies through this door.
SILVER door--Your goal does not lie through this door
LEAD door-- Your goal does not lie beyond the gold door

The Ghost will read these aloud for illiterate characters. The players should pass thru the central, silver door; the others each lead to a Gorgon!

7. Here the players will meet the magician Anvil, coming from the west tunnel. He is short (5' 2" tall) and powerfully built (Strength 19: damage bonus of +6), of 8th rank with A 13, D 13; 17 health points; chainmail, great helm, morning star, crossbow. He has Reaction Speed 15, Intelligence 13, Talent 15; 82 spellpoints; +2 on Physical and Evasion Saving Throws. He wears robes of black velvet, his helmet is silvered, and he has a potion (Essence of Air) in a flask at his belt. He will join a party rather than attack, but he is an untrustworthy ally and may turn on them later.

8. Empty room, except for the body of a goblin which burrowed in from elsewhere and was slain by Anvil.

9. An altar to the patron god (actually a minor demon) of the tomb, covered with treasure. There are 100 crowns, 300 florins, 2 gems, 6 items of jewellery and a scroll of type 6. If any of this is touched, the two giant urns (in the north-west and south-west corners, on either side of the door) burst open and a Revenant (fighter variety) steps from each. They will attack any attempting to steal the treasure.

10. At this intersection, a single torch burns in a bracket on the wall. By it lie 3 dead men, slain by arrows. (See 11.)

11. A party of two bowmen. They have left the torch at the intersection (10) and wait until characters step into the passageway to begin shooting. Since they have no lighted torches with them, return shots are unlikely to hit. Note that the range of torchlight is thirty feet, and they will wait until the players are this far from the torch on the wall before they begin to shoot. (The intelligent thing for the players to do, of course, is remove the torch from the bracket and take it with them.)

The bowmen are 3rd rank; A 7, D 7; 13 health points; hardened leather armour, long bows, swords, shields. One is a sorcerer (Intelligence 16; 15 spellpoints).

12. An iron key, suspended by three thin cords, hangs from the ceiling of this chamber. The key cannot be reached directly, as a sheet of unbreakable glass is interposed just above head height. The cords pass through hooks on the ceiling and down through tiny holes in the glass to empty suits of armour (in the north, south-west and south-east), to which they are tied. The key hangs above another hole, centrally located and just large enough for it to fall through. The locked door in the south has a prominent keyhole.

If an attempt is made to synchronize the cutting of the cords – which are quite thin – it will fail, and the key will swing to one side and fall onto the glass. The best course of action is to untie the cords and steadily lower the key through the hole.

13. The Crypt of Lieberkuen. In an open sarcophagus lies the remarkably well-preserved body of the knight Lieberkuen. He appears to be asleep rather than dead, but his heart is not beating and his body is cold. He wears full battle regalia: chainmail armour (including chainmail helmet) with white surcoat, and magical shield and sword (both +1). Over his form lies a white shroud with runes sewn into it in gold thread.

Anyone donning the shroud will begin to sink into the floor at the rate of three feet per round. If an attempt is made to grab him, he will be found to be intangible. If he removes the shroud, he will solidify in the floor and die. He will continue to sink down for a minute (thirty feet), and then emerge into a second chamber below the first, whereupon he may safely remove the shroud. (Note that the others will remain unaware of what is befalling him; the umpire should send them into another room while he explains the following to the player concerned.)

The chamber in which the player finds himself is unlit. Wan light can be seen from a tunnel to the south. If he follows this, the player will come to another room, where a ghost with the appearance of Lieberkuen confronts him, saying, "You show a bravery I admire, and I reward you with the gift of my earthly prison. Throw yourself into yon pool; no harm will befall you."

If the player jumps into the pool that the ghost indicates, he will find his soul transferred to Lieberkuen's body in the crypt above. He retains his own Reaction Speed, Intelligence, Learning and Talent; but his other characteristics become those of Lieberkuen's body: Strength, Constitution and Looks of 18 (health points thus 27) and all other characteristics of 14.

The other players should be called back in at this point and told that the body is climbing from its sarcophagus. However, it will take 1-3 rounds for the player who has undergone the metempsychosis to gain sufficient control of his new body to speak. If the players panic, they may attack and kill him before he can tell them of their mistake! (If the player concerned is wise, he will lie motionless in the sarcophagus at first, so as not to surprise his companions into such rash action. Note that if the players destroyed Lieberkuen's body before the soul transfer, then the unfortunate fellow who donned the shroud can only appeal to the Gods for help.)