The origin of the Lich Lord

I've previously posted the various FF gamebook proposals Jamie and I made to Puffin. Though I preferred some (actually, most) of the others, the one they went for in the end was Keep of the Lich Lord. I don't remember a whole lot about it. As it was set in the Fighting Fantasy world, it wasn't personal to us and we treated it as just a job. Hopefully we made a decent fist of it, but I guess the right people to answer that one are the collectors of FF books.

The proposal that the Puffin editors picked is here exactly as we originally submitted it:

You have journeyed to the Arrowhead Islands east of Khul, where you signed on for a short time as a mercenary in the famous White Tiger Regiment. Now your term of service is up, but just as you are packing your belongings to leave Port Vernale, word reaches you that you have been summoned by the Triumvirs - the Council of Three who rule the Varadian Alliance. You arrive at the Council Chamber to find old General Dolon waiting for you. He explains the situation as you wait together for your audience with the Triumvirs.

"Even though you're a foreigner, you've learned a bit about our country while you've been here," he says. "You know that the various city-states of the Varadian Alliance are the outer bulwark of civilization against the reavers of Blood Island. Our fleets hold those chaos-pirates in check, and have done for centuries. Now that could be changing. Our main eastern fortification is Bloodrise Keep, on Stayng Island. We've lost contact with the Keep and the outlying villages."

Before General Dolon can tell you any more, you are called into the Council Chamber. The Triumvirs are studying a glimmering image that hangs in the centre of the chamber - a V-shaped line of verdant islands set in an azure sea. You realise it is a strategic map of the Arrowhead archipelago fashioned by means of mirage-spells.

One of the Triumvirs points to a bright red dot on the shore of the easternmost island. "This shows the location of Bloodrise Keep," he says. "The General will have filled you in on the background details. We have here the last report filed by Castellan Braxis, and it sheds a rather sinister light on recent developments there."

You take the report and quickly scan it. Bloodrise Keep will shortly fall, it reads. The troops I sent to investigate the strange lights in the sky above the village of Menela have now returned. They have marched back to within sight of the walls but refuse to answer signals. A runner sent out came back shivering with dread. He got close enough to see that the men have grey mask-like faces and their eyes are the staring eyes of zombies! In place of their old battle standards they now carry ragged black pennants - the symbol of plague. Even as I write it is close to dusk and the camp is active. Troops are massing, and people from the villages are also milling about the camp as though hypnotised. I can see a man in tarnished silver armour who appears to be in command. Now he has given the order for his troops to advance. There are too many, and the small garrison I have left cannot hope to hold them off for more than a few hours. I will send this report by messenger pigeon and hope it is not shot down by the enemy's archers. Now it only remains for me to take up my weapons and go out onto the battlements for the last stand. I regret having failed in your service, my lords. I am your dutiful vassal, Braxis, Castellan of Bloodrise Keep.

"A brave man..." you say grimly as you hand the report back. "Do you have any information on who the silver-armoured warlord might be? And how he took control of Braxis's troops?"

"It is all too clear," says one of the Triumvirs. "The black plague-standards and tarnished silver armour are the trademarks of Lord Mortis of Balthor, who was formerly Tyrant of Stayng Island and who tried to conquer the eastern provinces of our nation. It took the combined strength of all the Varadian armies to defeat him, for he was a mighty necromancer as well as a warlord, and it is said that he recruited his own army from the bodies of fallen foes."

Baffled, you turn to General Dolon. "How is it I've never heard of this Mortis?" you ask. "I didn't know there'd been any wars within the archipelago for centuries."

"There haven't," he says. "This all happened two hundred years ago. Mortis died in battle and was buried in a black granite tomb near the village of Menela. Now it seems that he has returned from the grave to take his revenge."

The Triumvirs nod in agreement. "He is even now turning the people of Stayng into undead," says one. "His evil will eat at our good empire like a cancerous wound until excised. For this we have need of a sharp knife. You."

General Dolon takes you straight to the harbour, where a ship has already been prepared for you. Although he is hardly a young man, even you have difficulty keeping up with his brisk strides. On the way he explains that most of the military strength of the Varadian Alliance is currently tied up fighting the reavers of Blood Island. "That means you're on your own," he says. "In any case, because assassinating Mortis would immediately neutralise his entire army of zombies, the Triumvirs feel it makes more sense to send one capable individual than a body of troops."

On arriving at the ship, Dolon introduces you to the captain and then accompanies you to your cabin for a final briefing. He gives you a map of Stayng Island and a Ring of Communing. "The ring will allow you to telepathically communicate with us for information or advice - but over such a large distance it will only function a limited number of times, so use it sparingly."

A whistle from on deck signals that the ship is ready to cast off. Dolon turns in the doorway of the cabin for a last word. "Don't forget," he says grimly, "it's vital that you stop Mortis before his undead army can join forces with the reavers. All our lives are in your hands."

"Rest assured, General," you reply as you slip the Ring of Communing onto your finger, "I'll return Lord Mortis to his grave."

It is only after he has saluted you and left that you find an inner voice adding: "...or die trying." Now turn to 1...

NOTES

Since most of the military strength of the Varadian Alliance is currently tied up fighting the reavers of Blood Island, the protagonist is on his own. The Triumvirs feel in any case that, because assassinating Mortis would immediately neutralise his entire army of zombies, it makes more sense to send one capable individual than a body of troops. It is vital that he stops Mortis before the undead army can join forces with the reavers.

The protagonist is given a map of Stayng Island and a Ring of Communing. The latter item allows him to telepathically communicate with the Council for information or advice - but only a limited number of times during the adventure. Once having reached Stayng, he can travel to one of the three villages mentioned. It is most sensible to go to Menela, where Mortis was buried - in the tomb he will find an ivory spear which was thrust into Mortis's chest by a hero of old, and which still has the power to destroy him. The other two villages contain some useful clues, though it is important that the protagonist does not waste so much time looking for these that Mortis leaves with his undead fleet. In Menoa there is an old wizard hiding in the sewers who may give the protagonist a useful potion to bolster his resolve against necromantic hypnosis. In the third village, Keladon, the protagonist may encounter a centaur who will act as a steed, allowing much faster movement around the island. It is also possible for the protagonist to meet up with some villagers in a "refugee camp" in the woods. Among them is a minstrel whose songs of ancient heroes contain several clues as to how to overcome Mortis.

The book features two special rules systems. First is the Resolve characteristic, which is rated from 6 to 12. It is a measure of the protagonist's ability not to panic when confronted with undead, and his resistance to hypnosis. Resolve is used in a similar way to Luck, except that it increases each time it is used - because the protagonist gradually gets inured to the horrors he will encounter on Stayng. A clever player will exploit this fact, allowing himself to get used to minor encounters first rather than charging straight in to tackle Mortis with all his undead legions.

The second rule feature is completely unique and unlike anything tried in other gamebooks. When in the Keep, the protagonist will have to avoid undead patrols. Patrols which he does fight will fail to report in after their tour of inspection, and the central security of the Keep will tend to note this and despatch more patrols to the area to investigate. This is represented by a cunning rule technique. Each encounter the protagonist has gives him an Alarm Value to add to a running score. The Alarm Value is reduced by 1 each time he turns to a new entry without encountering something. If he turns to an entry that does involve an encounter, however, then the current Alarm Value is doubled and the new Alarm Value is added to that. The total Alarm Value determines the strength of the encounter: the higher it is, the more zombies he must fight. The impression given is of an intelligent security network operating inside the Keep. The protagonist must try to avoid patrols - and, even more importantly, he must get out of areas of the Keep where he has seen several patrols in a short time, otherwise the security system will begin to home in on his location and will send ever-tougher patrols to capture him.

Aficionados may like to compare that to the proposals for The Mists of Horror, Knights of Renown (the precursor to Fabled Lands), The Curse of the God Kings and Dinosaurs of Death. (There's actually one more, but I think we'll save that for a special occasion. Tantalizing or what?)

Jamie and I split the work right down the middle, with him doing the 200 paragraphs up until you enter the keep, and me taking over from there. But editor Marc Gascoigne, now at SF publisher Angry Robot, took exception to about fifty sections that were devoted to wandering around a cemetery on the cliff tops, a classic gamebook maze set-up where you had to know the sequence of directions to get out. I added an extra series of encounters in the keep to replace the cemetery sequence outside, so in the end you got about 60% me and 40% Jamie - though he jumped in and contributed part of Blood Sword book 5 when Oliver got too busy on other things, so in the grand scheme of things it probably all evens out. And if there is anything more you could possibly wish to know about this Fighting Fantasy book, you'll certainly find it in this very comprehensive write-up!

We have a real gamebook scoop coming up in about two weeks. But plenty of other cool stuff before then, never fear.

In the sky with diamonds

Okay, okay - I admit it, Russ Nicholson I'm not. The picture is my finger-paint attempt to illustrate this scenario for the Fabled Lands RPG. It's pretty freeform and would fit into an Over the Blood-Dark Sea kind of quest as a peripheral standalone adventure.

Now, if you're planning to play in this scenario I suggest you read no further!

To the referee, umpire or (if you must) game-master: choose carefully which player-character you use to initiate the adventure, as the payoff hinges on him buying into the romantic ideal so that the ending will have a suitably tragic flavor. You will probably want to adjust the stats to fit the characters' rank; the Angels should be a tough fight, especially because of their cunning, while the apparitions should be a real struggle for survival.

BY HER GAIT

A Fabled Lands RPG seafaring scenario that would fit in with a Sinbad/Odysseus type of campaign.

The bait

A young woman appears to one of the characters in his sleep. She wears a lacquered mask which she sets aside to reveal a face of startling beauty. She pleads with him to come to her rescue, but appears distracted. "I am trapped within a tower," she says, "and can appear to you only in your dreams. But if you can free me, you will have my gratitude and my love."

If any of the other characters are on watch and look into the cabin, they will see the dreaming character moaning and tossing in his sleep.

Surprise at sunrise

Shortly before dawn, a shadow appears on the horizon. Wary in case it is an uncharted island, the captain trims the sails. The rising sun, however, reveals an astonishing sight: a circular citadel with a central silver tower gradually takes shape out of the twilight, floating hundreds of feet up in the air.

While the characters watch, a tiny figure plunges from the citadel and hits the water. He does not surface - unsurprisingly, as nobody could survive such a fall. (In fact it is one of the "Angels", see later; it swims to the ship and waits underwater until it can slip aboard unnoticed, and may cause trouble in subsequent adventures.)

Obviously, if the characters have no means of levitating up to the citadel, this encounter is merely another eerie episode on the Violet Ocean and they must sail on. No need to force it. The dreams could recur over months or years of the character's life and that will only make the eventual resolution more effective.

The floating citadel

Consists of five circular terraces connected by steps passing through ornate archways. Trees and flowers grow in marble beds ranged along the terraces. A tower rises from the middle of the citadel.

Inhabitants of the citadel

Five hundred and fifty-five people live here. They are tall and slender with dark skin, narrow faces, gentle in disposition. Whenever a 556th baby is born, the oldest inhabitant leaps down a well shaft (located on the third terrace) into the sea. These people call themselves the Exalted and subsist on fruit, plus occasional fish that may be thrown up from the sea during very violent storms. For fresh water, they rely on the rain.

When picking fruit, they process around the terraces at regular intervals; a date might thus be described as "the time of the Third Orchard of the Second Terrace".

The Exalted never ascend beyond the third terrace - the second and first are off-limits, inhabited by "Angels". The Angels serve and guard the Goddess, who lives in the central tower. The legend states that the Goddess originally dwelt here long long ago (ie, in prehistoric times) and departed, but was brought back only a generation ago by warriors bearing a green banner. These warriors tried to slay the Exalted, who hid from them. They bore the Goddess on a silver catafalque, levitated from ships far below, and carried her up beyond the third terrace. From that day, all who glimpsed her could speak only of her sad beauty. After plundering the place, the green warriors flew back down to their ships. But they left the Goddess in the tower. The Goddess's servant, a green bird, sometimes descends to take offerings from her shrine on the first terrace.

The true story

The "Goddess" who dwells in the tower now has no connection to the legendary deity of ancient times. She is actually a sorceress called Virinasi, left here 40 years ago by soldiers from Chrysoprais ordered to conduct her into exile. If she was beautiful then, the long years of solitude have stolen that from her. Now she is wrinkled and barely sane. The green bird is her familiar, which brings her morsels of fish.

The "Angels" are pale, mute, homuncular creatures created by alchemy, sexless and undying. They were set here as the original guardians of the armoury. They retreated in the face of superior force when the Chrysoprais soldiers arrived, and would now like to trace and retrieve the plundered weapons. To this end, one of the Angels will hurl itself down into the sea and try to get aboard the characters’ ship.

There are twenty Angels here. (Despite the name, they have no wings; envisage white-skinned, naked, androgynous figures with pupils as large as their eyes.) They will attack only if somebody tries to plunder items from the armoury, and will fight intelligently:

"ANGELS"
Combat 5; Intelligence 10; Magic 5; Muscle 7; Scouting 5; Thievery 5
Defence 9; Stamina 11
Special attack: Pacify – if the Angel succeeds in a Magic roll of difficulty 11, the target will stand passively for one minute unless attacked.

The Angels ignore Virinasi. She sent her dream self, which still appears as a 20-year-old, to lure a rescuer here.

2nd Terrace: The armoury

At the back of the plundered armoury (describe gaps on wall where once were swords, spears, shields) is a huge metal door. There are tiny scratches on the surface of the door. Inscription in huge letters hangs over the door, in unknown language.

The damage to the door was caused by the pickaxes of the soldiers who brought Virinasi here. They looted the armoury itself and wanted to get into this inner vault but the door resisted every effort.

The inscription on the door is in an ancient language that can be read by means of an Intelligence check at Difficulty 15. (Language skill applies.) Reading the inscription aloud causes the door to open. Beyond lies the Lightning Armour Hall.

Inside the Lightning Armour Hall

Dim blue lighting flickers on. There are two daises set into the floor, one silver and one black. Each dais contains two oval indentations as though for feet. Directly above each dais is a silver disk suspended from the ceiling.

If you step into the indentations on the silver dais, the dais slowly rises and the disk lowers. Electricity crackles around you. Then you are returned to the floor.

This provides one user with the Lightning Armour. The Armour functions only when you have discarded any crystalline objects on you (including metal, and jewels). If you wear such items, you only notice minor side-effects: acrid taste on tongue, ozone smell, people get a mild shock when they touch you, bits of paper stick to your fingers, etc.

When you're down to very little crystal adornment, you might even notice sparks crackling around you in the dark. When no crystal at all is worn, then the Lightning Armour becomes active: a scintillant white aura that gives Defence +6 and full resistance to any electrical-based attack. You can wear leather armour with it (for an additional +1 Defence) but no form of metal armour. The glow of the Lightning Armour illuminates a circle of 10m radius around the wearer, causing -2 to any Thievery rolls involving stealth.

The black dais functions similarly but equips the user with the Thunder Spear.
This can be thrown (like a javelin) or used in melee. It always appears in the user's hands when a weapon is required. This means that it is never out of your hands for more than half a round (even if dropped) but also that you can't use any other weapon. No armour counts for better than 4 Defence against the Spear. It cannot be broken.

If the user of either the Lightning Armour or the Thunder Spear is killed, the item returns to the dais and can be claimed by somebody else.

The damsel in distress

Virinasi shows herself as the characters leave the Lightning Hall or if they fail read the inscription. They see a slight female figure in white robes, her face covered by a lacquered mask. She beckons to the character whose dreams she visited, calling him her champion and thanking him for coming to rescue her. But as he approaches her, the characters will become aware of creatures emerging from the shadows all around them. Virinasi screams, terrified, and seeks the protection of her champion.

Forty years of solitude with only the silent Angels for company have left Virinasi unhinged. Though her conscious reaction to her rescuers is one of gratitude, her troubled psyche unleashes monsters from the id that will attack. These are in fact just apparitions – but apparitions that can kill:

APPARITIONS
Combat 9
Defence 11
Stamina 14

Each round, 1-6 more apparitions appear on the scene until there are ten in all:

• Worm-thing
• Oozing slime that mutters
• Swarm of skulls
• Robed spectre
• Bloody corpse with teeth for hands
• Fiery spider
• Carrion bat
• Clanking warrior
• Jellyfish with heads inside
• Shrieking fungus man

The apparitions are not real, but will cause real damage to anybody who fails a Magic test at Difficulty 15. A character who succeeds in the roll will take no damage when hit, and can then try to convince others they are just illusions. This takes one round and everyone in earshot can then attempt the roll again, this time at Difficulty 12.

If anyone specifically states they are looking at Virinasi during the battle, they will notice on making an Intelligence test at difficulty 9 that she seems to be subvocalizing a spell. If she is struck unconscious, the apparitions immediately drop by 3 in both Combat and Defence.

If the apparitions are defeated, Virinasi gives a cry and drops to the floor. The psychic backlash has slain her. If they remove her lacquered mask, the characters will see that she is no longer the beautiful woman who appeared in the dream.

It's alive!

As a follow-up to the previous post, I'm pleased to announce that Fabled Lands Publishing has just released a Kindle edition (Amazon US here and Amazon UK here) of award-winning SF author John Whitbourn's latest novel, Frankenstein's Legions.

Baron Frankenstein's work let the genie out of the bottle. New life can be created from the bodies of the dead. The governments of the early nineteenth century see a means to create a new supply of slave labour and military cannon-fodder. An army that falls on one day can be pieced together and returned to battle the next. And so the world descends towards the maelstrom of total war.

Ada Lovelace has been murdered, her friend Charles Babbage framed and arrested, and Julius Frankenstein, last of his line, looks set for an "accident". But Ada's death, while no exaggeration, is not going to slow her up. Restored to life, she teams up with Julius to find out just who it is that will stop at nothing to see the Analytical Engine destroyed.

If you like your science fiction dark, devious and steampunky, with intrigue, horror and violence, you'll love Frankenstein's Legions. Just one warning, though. This book is definitely adult content and not for the squeamish.

And even if you don't have a Kindle or emulator thereof, don't lose heart. As long as there's enough demand, Fabled Lands LLP will consider a paperback edition to come out following the Binscombe Tales series in October. (Sadly, we can't use Martin McKenna's brilliant painting above for the cover, but scoot over to his website and I guarantee you'll find lots of other deliciously gruesome stuff.)

The Twilight Zone of suburban Surrey

This is a cross-post over to the Mirabilis blog, but it probably belongs here even more than there, because John Whitbourn's Binscombe Tales series is the next publishing endeavour from Fabled Lands LLP.

The Binscombe Tales are true classics that exist in the overlap between SF, fantasy, horror, ghost stories and whimsy (hey, fiction is an n-dimensional space, didn't you know?) and they have previously appeared in The World's Best Fantasy and the After Midnight books. Mr Whitbourn himself is a a laureate of the Gollancz/BBC first fantasy award - which is no mere tyro genre-writer award, believe me - making him the modern Hemingway of the bizarre.

We will be releasing the complete series of twenty-six tales in print form (three eminently collectible paperback volumes) and on Kindle in time for Hallowe'en. (In fact, October 31st is the very day of publication, how about that.) Lovers of the macabre, the mysterious and the marvellous in fiction will not want to miss.

When Earth was a planet with rings of vril

This blog has had a lot of coverage in the past of Abraxas, the lost continent that Jamie and I originally developed as a massively-multiplayer game world. It's definitely a setting that inspires us and we'd like to do something with it - though whether as a series of fantasy novels, a roleplaying game, a comic book, or something else remains to be seen.

In the meantime, while thinking of the best way to use it, we've put together an overview of Abraxas on Kindle - UK edition here and US edition here. Devotees of the blog will find no new material in the Kindle version, unless you count the poem by Robert E Howard, but if you want it all in one place in a form that's easy to cart along to a game, there it is. The cover blurb will tell you whether it's your cup of chumetl. (Sorry, in-joke there; don't worry if you don't get it.)

Abraxas is a lost continent from before the dawn of history. A place of high adventure, flashing swordplay, wild jungles, deserts of black sand, floating cities, classical temples, primordial animals, exotic wizardry and evil psionic aliens. When Abraxas finally sinks below the ocean, survivors will reach the mainland and seed the great civilizations of antiquity.

Who are the heroes?

Mighty swordsmen, gladiators, statesmen, scientists, explorers, barbarians. And wizards who watch the stars to predict threats to their homeland and their ideals. Some – the noble champions of the five city states – are born to greatness. Others achieve it despite humble beginnings, and even Neanderthal heroes are possible.

What do they do?

On the mainland, new young races of men (both Cro-Magnon and Neanderthal) are populating the world. Our heroes are destined to be remembered in legend as tutelary deities who guard and guide new cultures in the difficult struggle to survive. At the same time, they strive to confound the prophecies that say Abraxas itself is doomed.

What threats do they face?

Alien beings whose own worlds are dying have designs on the young Earth. Projecting their psyches across the gulf of space, they can influence the minds of weak mortals who worship these beings as if they were gods. The most powerful aliens such as the Churuk – and the Ulembi, whose home lies beyond the Coal Sack – are capable of physically manifesting themselves in our world.

How does magic work?

First of all, it's not really magic. First there is Thaumaturgy. In this period of the distant past, glittering rings like those of Saturn still encircle the Earth – remnants of a second moon that exploded. Adepts trained in the use of Thaumaturgy can draw down psychic energy from these rings. It is a form of magic that is powerful but unpredictable, based as it is on the solar-magnetic “weather” within the rings.

The other main form of magic is Wizardry. It is derived from the combination of the Four Substances (Earth, Air, Fire and Water – the “elements” as they were handed down to the ancient world) with the Four Essences (Aether, Life, Ur and Death). Wizardry is typically less epic in scale than Thaumaturgy, but more reliable and controllable. Think of it like technology is for us today.

What makes Abraxas unique?

Abraxas is very far from the usual quasi-medieval style of fantasy. There are no orcs, goblins and dragons. Every animal and nonhuman creature is unique to the Abraxas world, making it highly brandable and distinctive. Many of the fauna of Abraxas are mutated versions of mid-Tertiary animals that have survived on Abraxas itself until the time of the game, around 35,000 B.C. The cities of Abraxas are wondrous metropolises, mighty proto-civilizations of the great cultures of history such as Egypt, Babylon and Carthage.

The black and the green

Joe Dunthorne, the author of the sharply comic novel Submarine on which Richard Ayoade's recent movie was based, has recently been experimenting with interactivity in his writing in a way that may be of interest to gamebook readers. Talking in the Financial Times, Dunthorne says:

"There are so many possibilities for interactive fiction, which is where I see the e-readers really coming in to their own. I’ve been writing literary Choose Your Own Adventure stories, and these seem perfect for digital.”

You can try it for yourself on his website: "Taking the lid off the olives, you wonder whether to have a black one or a green one. You watch the line of shade shift..." The story is pretty short, but I like that gamebooks don't always have to be about undead pirates.

The colour of thunder

One of the many things Jamie and I have been holding under our hats lately is The Art of Fabled Lands, a lavishly produced, full-colour, 112-page book from Megara Entertainment that would do credit to anybody's coffee table. Currently it's only available on Lulu, but often that means there'll be a listing on Amazon before too long.

Mikael Louys, CEO of Megara, describes the book thus - and I wish my French was as half good as his English:

"When Fabled Lands was first published in 1995, it amazed readers with a rich, multi-book-spanning adventure far beyond the scope of traditional gamebooks. Now it has cracked its paper shell and spread its wings in the new realm of the digital, soaring on currents not only of text, but of music and colour artwork. From a team of visual artists with many skills and styles came a storm of hard work to vastly expand the original illustrations, giving graphics for text that had until then been untouched. This book holds a beautiful fraction of the artistic creativity that forms worlds within your mind. You submerge in the wonder of the moment: what creature is it that stands in those woods? Will this rain ever cease beating upon the fields? Sifting through the Art of Fabled Lands is like adventuring in the world already. We hope you enjoy the art and this perfect accessory for Fabled Lands gamebooks owners, with new text material included."