It is one year to the day since Malcolm Garcia posted his first The Second Swordsman piece. Since then write-ups of another twelve attempts have been posted, featuring 35 different Fighting Fantasy adventures!
Today, to mark the first anniversary of
The Second Swordsman, Malcolm presents his 14th post, which is intriguingly entitled...
The Second Swordsman - In Safe Hands?
By Malcolm Garcia
While several of the FIGHTING FANTASY adventures
I have recently attempted have had an oppressive atmosphere, namely
House of Hell,
Phantoms of Fear and
Spellbreaker, few authors create
an unremitting sense of despair as well as Stephen Hand. All of his three books
are based in the northwestern part of the Old World, a continent I hadn’t
visited since an earlier attempt at using the
Second Swordsman process on a trio of adventures by Jonathan Green.
And in each of Hand’s books a feeling of dread pervades the somewhat-medieval world
that YOU move through in your quests.
In Legend of the Shadow Warriors YOU
are an army veteran who, somewhat skeptically, accepts the task of
investigating claims of shadowy riders terrorizing the village of Karnstein,
deep in the mountains of the Witchtooth Line. In Moonrunner YOU are a
bounty hunter who is hunting (or should that be, is being hunted by) the evil
war criminal Karam Gruul through the city of Blackhaven, a place that somehow
makes Port Blacksand seem like a nice spot to retire to. And in Dead
of Night (co-authored with Jim Bambra) YOU are a Demon-Stalker who is
being plotted against by your old adversary, the Demon Lord Myurr, who is out
for revenge after YOU have foiled too many of his horrid schemes. [These three titles were also all illustrated by Martin McKenna - Ed.]
While sticking with choosing every second option
didn’t have me ignoring huge amounts of things in these books (as it has
previously done so), it did mean I did some pretty stupid stuff, sometimes with
significant consequences.
In Legend of the Shadow Warriors I started off promisingly enough when using
the Second Swordsman process.
Although I had a purse of gold I chose not to try and supplement it through
gambling – while this worked in Legend of Zagor it failed to
gain me any money in both Seas of Blood and Bloodbones. At the markets in
Royal Lendle I bought every second item, including metal rot, a chameleon
cloak, and a mirror (which would have been handy against the Mountain Basilisk
in my previous adventure in Night Dragon).
Although what I could get was limited by my budget, I generally enjoyed this
process more than looking for individual objects in cupboards and under rocks. My
first major NPC encounter was with Gallantaria’s chief tax collector, who I
unsuccessfully tried to bribe and who then put me in jail for the, surely
near-irrelevant in Titan, crime of unpaid taxes.
Luckily my quest did not end there (unlike
when I was imprisoned in both Bloodbones and Black Vein
Prophecy) and I managed to
escape after fighting the jailer (although I was somewhat blasé about the fact
that I’d added murder to my previous charge of tax evasion). As I made to leave
through one of the city gates I was again confronted by the tax collector. With
a poor starting LUCK score I was unlucky and put in a better-guarded jail. My
adventure thus ended without even leaving Royal Lendle.
I started Moonrunner with similar SKILL,
STAMINA and LUCK scores to those in Legend. As an experienced bounty
hunter YOU are able to choose several special skills at the beginning – I selected
every second one, of course. The book started ominously with the man I had been
talking to in the background section being killed by a throwing dagger. Thanks
to my recently acquired lock picking skill I obtained some gold pieces and
potentially useful paperwork from his office. My searching of the room was interrupted
by some guards, but I was able to use another of my skills to confuse them and
escape – thus avoiding having another adventure end in my imprisonment.
As my exploration of Blackhaven got under
way, by choosing every second option I then callously decided not to give a
beggar a single gold piece (even though I could easily afford to) and then not
to pursue her killer, the fantastically named ‘The Shocker’. Instead I headed
for the local asylum and, after turning down an offer of a drink from the
deputy director (being keen to avoid what happened when I did that in House of Hell) I gained some
information about Gruul from one of the inmates. But then I got locked up,
again! I escaped only after fighting a Frankenstein-esque creature and headed
for another potentially useful source of information, but he turned out to be
dead too. In my search of his room I gained some more gold and paperwork, but
this time the letter was from Gruul himself, and it had been laced with mocking
words and a poison which killed me instantly.
As with Moonrunner, at the start of
Dead
of Night YOU can choose three skills that YOU have learned during your
life as a Demon-Stalker. As the Second
Swordsman I chose every second one and also picked up some gold, holy water
and an ominous vision of my parents and Myurr. Because YOU are an adventurer
who can stray close to the dark side, there is also a personal EVIL score for
YOU to keep track of.
I began by arriving in my home village of
Crowford after ignoring a mocking skeleton and went to visit the local priest.
He told me my parents were dead, but that their graves have been taken over by
demons. Although I could sense the demonic presence I chose not to confront the
blight and thus earned my first EVIL point for being generally unhelpful. My
next destination was that of a seer who conducted a summoning to help me in my
quest; but the demon that was summoned killed her and I had my first fight on
my hands.
After slaying the demon I left the seer’s
cottage, which was now in flames, and chose to also ignore a group of peasants
and an opportunity to pray. When I arrived in the next village I chose not to
use one of my skills and narrowly escaped a swinging blade trap. Luckily I was
rescued by the locals who told me of the onslaught their village was under from
a swarm of Moon Demons. Rather than staying and helping the villagers – as any
proper Demon-Stalker would – choosing the second option had me again being
unhelpful and I abandoned them to their fate and walked outside, only to slip
in the mud and be torn to shreds by the swarm.
Compared to other FIGHTING FANTASY books,
while this trio by Hand had plenty of atmosphere, there was not much actual
fighting. In my short-lived adventure in Legend I managed to only have one
fight and, although I was unarmed (having been relieved of my sword when taken
into custody), I defeated the SKILL 8 STAMINA 7 Jailer without losing a single
round. I also had only one fight in Moonrunner, but this was a tough one
against the SKILL 11 STAMINA 14 Kauderwelsch Monster. I was down to seven
STAMINA when this battle was mercifully brought to an early conclusion by a
riot of asylum inmates. For consistency I also only had one fight in Dead,
against the summoned SKILL 8 STAMINA 8 Spirit Demon, which I killed after losing
two rounds of combat, but which robbed me of a potentially useful ally.
In the end it was stupid decisions that
brought about my failure in using the Second
Swordsman process in Legend, Moonrunner, and Dead.
A puddle of mud, a piece of paper, and not paying my taxes proved too much for
a seasoned adventurer like me to overcome.
If there were any FIGHTING FANTASY adventures where I could have used a ‘Hand’
to save the Old World from unspeakable evil, these three books would have been
them.
Congratulations to Malcolm on a year's worth of
Second Swordsman posts. But there are plenty more Fighting Fantasy adventures still to go, so which will he be tackling next month?
