This week it's time for the sixth in Malcolm Garcia's
Second Swordsman series. Enjoy!
The Second Swordsman – 'The Scales of Adventure'
By Malcolm Garcia
While all manner
of creatures roam the continents of Titan, there are very few species that have
become organised enough
to form societies and take control of the land around them. Humans have their
cities, such as Port Blacksand and Kharé, and the
dwarves have Fangthane and Stonebridge. But there are also the Lizard Men, who have
their own extensive Empire in south-western Allansia and are your principal
adversaries in two FIGHTING FANTASY adventures – Island of the Lizard King and Battleblade
Warrior.
Island was the fifth book to be penned by
Ian Livingstone (making this the seventh of his adventures I’ve attempted using
the Second Swordsman process) while Battleblade was the only time that Marc
Gascoigne wrote a FIGHTING FANTASY book, despite being deeply involved in the
series. Both Island and Battleblade were illustrated within by
Alan Langford, the go-to guy for dinosaurs, and he would later return to
provide more thunder lizards for Portal
of Evil (which I’ll visit soon).
The Second
Swordsman process performed surprisingly in both of these adventures. The
bad surprise was in Island where I
set a new record for defeat. The mission was fairly straightforward, kill the
eponymous Lizard King and free the prisoners that he and his Lizard Men army are
keeping captive on Fire Island. My initial rolls gave me decent SKILL and LUCK
scores and, while my STAMINA was lower than I’d like, the background to the
adventure provided plenty of provisions to replenish my STAMINA between
battles. I arrived on the island with my buddy, Mungo, who told me of his
father’s death in Baron Sukhumvit’s Deathtrap
Dungeon (an adventure where a previous incarnation of me perished way too
soon because of some dodgy fungus). There is some speculation that the hero of Island is the same hero from Deathtrap but, as my character mentioned
nothing of the labyrinth during our boat ride, I figure this to be unlikely.
My defeat on Fire Island was brisk. I initially
found some pirates huddled around a treasure chest. They no doubt thought that
somewhere with Fire Island’s reputation would be a safe place to stash their booty.
I decided to ignore them (a frequent action when using the Second Swordsman process) and explore somewhere else, whereupon
Mungo was seized by a giant crab. Rather than come to his aid with my sword, I
cowardly ran away… into quicksand… where I instantly died. While my previous deaths
in both Deathtrap and Trial of Champions (which were also
authored by Livingstone) were relatively early, my adventure on Island set a new record – dead in four
choices.
Chastened and reincarnated, I headed south to
Vymorna where my mission was to head into the mountains of the Lion Heights and
find a magical weapon that would help to lift the siege imposed by the Lizard
Man Empire upon my city. While my initial SKILL and STAMINA were good, my LUCK
score was not ideal. Battleblade also
limited the number of provisions to four and removed the usual ability to
choose a helpful potion. However the Second
Swordsman process was up for the challenge.
During my adventure I fought the most creatures
I have so far – twenty-two in total, seven of which were Lizard Men (which is a
welcome change from Island where I
killed nothing). The monsters were nicely balanced with only a few being fairly
difficult – the Swamp Mutant and the Warrior King – and in several of the
battles I lost no rounds of combat at all. At one point I was lucky enough to
grab a Lizard Man by his foot and have him fall onto his own sword, and I also had
the most melees I’ve yet encountered in a FIGHTING FANTASY adventure.
Unlike several other adventures, in Battleblade choosing every second option
did not make me ignore opportunities for action. I struck down the crew of a
catapult which was throwing projectiles at Vymorna and also attacked several
Rat Men engineers who were part of the siege. After escaping the siege I crossed
plains and jungle to reach the city of Kharnek, hidden in the mountains and the
place where the Blade of Telak, the magical weapon I was searching for, was
said to lie. Something that Battleblade
does quite well is to give a sense of scale (pun not intended). The journey
from Vymorna to Kharnek took several days and there were several occasions when
I wondered if I was on the right path at all.
While I lost plenty of STAMINA during my
battles in Battleblade, my four
provisions (and several opportunities to replenish these) kept my STAMINA from
failing me. My longevity did, however, have a cost upon my LUCK which was
constantly eroded away. Fortunately Battleblade
replaces some obvious LUCK tests with SKILL trials (which I passed easily) and
even when I was unlucky, I wasn’t doomed to an instant death and sometimes had
the opportunity to fight my way out of the situation.
Once I reached Kharnek I found half of the
Blade of Telak and, for a brief moment, thought this would be the first adventure
where the Second Swordsman process
worked. Until it didn’t and I suffered an instant death. Backtracking for the
first time, I found where I went wrong and how I could have won. Thus, if not
for one choice where I bizarrely decided not to pick up an item within a few
sections of the end, I would have succeeded. In other FIGHTING FANTASY adventures
(such as The Citadel of Chaos, The Forest of Doom and Starship Traveller) I have come tantalisingly
close to the geographic end of the adventure, but without having either
knowledge or special objects necessary to succeed. In Battleblade this was not the case. For most of the adventure all
that is necessary is to survive – missing something near the start will not
doom the reader to failure and some clever or lucky choices near the end will
be rewarded with victory.
I’ll revisit both Island and Battleblade in
the near future, but without the Second
Swordsman process. I can’t possibly do any worse in the former and I think
I’ve got a good chance of succeeding in the latter.
Thank you, as always, to Malcolm, for his latest
Second Swordsman blog post. If you have any suggestions for items for the official Fighting Fantasy blog don't forget to get in touch via
mail@fightingfantasy.com.
