Talisman of Death is a book I’ve got no real nostalgic connection to. Despite it being one of the older Fighting Fantasy gamebooks, I’ve only read it once and never owned it until recently. I assume this is because there weren’t many copies of it in the local library system when I was a child. That makes it the first book in the series where I’ll be more or less going into the adventure blind, rather than with memories of previous play-through welling up in my mind.

It’s a co-authored book, by Jamie Thomson and Mark Smith, who also co-authored Sword of the Samurai, and is set not on the usual world of Titan, but on Orb, which never features in Fighting Fantasy again. Orb is, however, the setting for Thomson and Smith’s Way of the Tiger series of gamebooks. They also collaborated on the Falcon and Duel Master series of gamebooks. Thomson also went on to co-author the 43rd Fighting Fantasy book, Keep of the Lich Lord, with Dave Morris, before the two of them went off to write the Fabled Lands series (into which Keep of the Lich Lord was later adapted, presumably because the rights reverted to the authors when the book went out of print for more than a few years).

Mechanically, Talisman of Death is classic Fighting Fantasy: Skill, Stamina, Luck, 10 meals’ worth of provisions, a potion, plus a sword and a backpack. No leather armour though, not that it makes any difference to the rules.

One notable innovation (the lack of which I’ve complained about in several previous reviews) is the incorporation of how to fight more than one opponent into the core rules section. I’m surprised it took eleven books and two years to realise that was a sensible thing to do.

I roll up my stats, and get Skill 10, Stamina 21, Luck 8, and pick a Potion of Luck to bolster that weaker stat. Not a bad stat line overall, and I didn’t even have to modify the Skill roll in the way I suggested in my previous review of Caverns of the Snow Witch.

My memories of this book are so hazy that I know almost nothing about the plot, other than the blurb on the back of the book: The Evil One’s minions are seeking the titular Talisman of Death, and I’m the only one who can stop them. I also recall that I’m some random Earthling plucked out of space/time by the gods, trained in swordsmanship, and sent to Orb. This is actually the first Fighting Fantasy book to have a pantheon of gods, even if it’s not the same pantheon that is later developed for Titan. Somehow, the previous books have all avoided developing a religious culture for Allansia. The closest we got was the Good paladin/angel manifestation in Scorpion Swamp, as well as the efficacy of Christ-free crucifixes against vampires.

On with the story: I wake up in a white castle in the clouds, with a beautiful blue sky outside that’s notably lacking a sun, and I’m wearing a leather jerkin, dark green leather breeches and calf-skin boots. Many animals died to bring me this outfit. It might also count as armour, unless it’s soft leather.

Ever on the lookout for signs that the series is assuming I’m male, that outfit seems pretty masculine to me, at first glance, but then again, non-chainmail-bikini warrior women tend to dress that way in fantasy.

Oh, and I’m brilliant with the sword, which is surprising, as I wasn’t when I went to sleep. On Earth.

Fortunately, a songbird explains to me that I’m the Champion of Fate, and am currently in the Garden of the Gods, on the world of Orb. What’s Orb, I ask.

“You will find it most strange and full of wonder, as it is very different from Earth. Men must share it with not just talking creatures such as I, but with weird and fell monsters, giants, dragons and demons. There are warlocks and sorcerers, too, great wielders of magic, in the city, But do not fear, you have been chosen to be our champion, for you are more likely to succeed than any other on Earth.”

Yeah? Well, I’ll have you know that I’ve just killed a demon with a culturally-appropriated Indonesian knife, and I’ve still not made it to my vague, work-related appointment.

That’s my head-canon anyway. I can’t imagine the traumatised protagonist of House of Hell ever made it to their important meeting, even if the fire brigade did turn up and found them covered in stab wounds and dog bites, while babbling about trying to find a district nurse, right next to a blazing example of Colonial Americana in the English countryside. I think there would have been an even bigger delay once the police started pulling the first of fifty or so burnt human corpses from the rubble, and an even bigger delay than that once they found the charred corpse of a peer of the realm, hugging the body of an actual, dishonest-to-God, demon. Plus, their car was in a ditch with a flat battery, so it’s not like they could go anywhere, even without an arrest for arson and lots of murders.

It’s so much easier to think that being abducted by alien gods and whisked away to Orb would make more sense, and also explains why I was picked, rather than, say, any one of the thousands of people on the planet already trained in swordsmanship.

And then I meet a god and goddess. Today’s turning out to be quite eventful. Castles in the sky, talking birds, an actual sword, and now I meet a pair of deities.

They explain nothing to me, except that as gods, they can’t interfere directly with the cosmic scales getting tipped in the wrong direction, but they can manipulate mortals to do that for them. That sounds like interference to me, but who am I, a mere mortal, to argue? I’m being sent down to Orb’s surface, and they beseech me not to fail them.

Wait, fail them at what?

This makes me really angry (me the protagonist, not me the reader), and I resolve to find my way back home instead. Screw their all-important, yet unspecified, quest.

I lose consciousness again.

And it was all just a dream… No, actually, it wasn’t. I’m now in a vast underground chamber, and something just howled. Orb isn’t all castles in the clouds; I realise I have no idea what’s down here with me. More immediately though, a group of adventurers is running towards me.

They’re an interesting mix: a shieldmaiden with a crossbow (kind of hard to make use of her shield while carrying a crossbow, but…), a robed wizard with a golden mask, a mace-wielding priest with a red cross on a white surcoat (hey, it’s another crusader type on another world without Christianity), and a dashing-looking knight with a glowing two-handed sword. “Who are you,” the shieldmaiden demands, “and what are you doing here in the Rift, the spawning place of all evil?”

Of all the places on Orb that the gods could send me to, and they sent me to the worst of them? Brilliant.

I tell them the truth, that I’m from another world. The priest casts a spell to check I’m not lying, and I barely react to the fact that SOMEONE HAS JUST CAST A SPELL. Like, ACTUAL GODDAMN MAGIC!!!!!!

I mean, there’s no special effects described, so basically he wiggles his fingers or mutters a few words, and then says, “Yup, this guy’s on the level.”

The wizard comments that all the exits are blocked, and he only has the power to teleport one of the four out of the Rift. But, he adds, perhaps this stranger (me, obviously) has been sent by the gods to carry on our quest.

Mate, you have the power to teleport one, and only one, person out of this underworld, and you’re still here? You’re better qualified to carry the talisman to safety anyway. I’ve never even been to this planet before.

The crusader-priest-polygraph dumps a load of exposition on me. The god Death (you know, tall, bony, TALKS LIKE THIS) can’t come to Orb, or everything dies. Makes sense. Unfortunately, he has minions in somewhere called the City of the Runes of Doom (their Tourist Board really struggles with attracting visitors), and they’ve manufactured a talisman that will allow them to… uh… summon Death.

Not sure why they’d want to destroy Orb, because it’s where they keep all their stuff.

To prevent this act of self-destructive stupidity, the holy Loremasters of Serakub (the good guys, it seems) have sent an army of crusaders to steal the talisman from someone called the Fleshless King. These four are the only ones left. That went well. Oh, wait, it did go well. The cleric hands me the Talisman of Death.

So, do I throw this into a volcano, or…? It can’t be destroyed. However, if I find my way back to Earth, I can take it with me, beyond the Fleshless King’s grasp.

I take the talisman and put it on. Christ, this is an evil god-summoning artefact, and I’m wearing it like it’s from Claire’s Accessories.

Conveniently, my objective is already to escape Orb and return to Earth. An ugly cursed amulet is exactly what I want as a souvenir.

The wizard gives me 10 gold pieces and instructions to go west from wherever he sends me, until I reach the city of Greyguilds-on-the-Moor, and then prepares to teleport me. At this point, a horde of ‘creatures’ boils into the cavern.

Dark elves and cave trolls, apparently. How do I recognise them as such? Dunno, since an elf is an elf is a humanoid figure when you’re in a dark underground chamber, and these trolls are in a cave, though I bet they don’t look like this:

There’s also a huge shadowy form looming behind the horde. Someone had just watched the Ralph Bakshi animated version of The Lord of the Rings, clearly. (If you don’t know the scene I’m referring to, Peter Jackson referenced it in his live action films, as he did several of the iconic shots from the Bakshi cartoon.)

Oh, right, that’s why it’s a mix of dark elves and trolls being herded into battle by this Balrog while a group of adventurers tries to transport a super-powerful magical artefact from A to B. What are the origins of Middle Earth orcs? Yeah, they’re corrupted elves. Subtle.

There’s a reference to the dark elves using magic, which is why they manage to overpower the adventurers. Again, I’m from Earth. The only magic I’ve seen is Dynamo turning a paper butterfly into a real one for the entertainment of Natalie Imbruglia, and I was only watching that because Natalie Imbruglia is one of the most beautiful women in the world. Give me more detail. What horrific or brightly coloured things are happening to the shieldmaiden that allows the elves to defeat her? The only magical special effect I’ve encountered so far is that the paladin’s sword glows.

Then I get teleported out, which is another magical effect, but not a particularly dramatic one. I’m stood at the top of the Rift. I need to go west, and I even know which way that is. How do I know this? I have no map, no compass, no GPS. Am I following the sun?

I’m on another world. Does the planet spin in the same direction as Earth? Does it rotate around its star in the same direction? If I follow the sun, am I going to be going north instead, due to the planet being on a tilted axis?

I assume the narrative knows what it’s doing, and that what it tells me is west is actually west. It would have been nice to have better directions than the cardinal compass points when I’ve no way of measuring those.

Would a magnetic compass even work on Orb? Not all planets have magnetic poles like Earth; Mars and Venus don’t, although other planets in the solar system do.

I can either take a direct route across open ground, or a more indirect route through a forest. This is a good choice to present the reader with. Yes, there’s not much information being provided, but then I don’t have much information in-character either. The only things I know are that Death’s minions are looking for the talisman, which I have, and that I need to go west towards Greyguilds-on-the-Moor (which the text has thankfully started shortening to just Greyguilds). Going through the forest would conceal me from sight, but take longer and I could get lost. Plus I have no idea what lives in a fantasy world’s forests.

I opt for the more direct route.

Inevitably, this is a bad idea, as after a short while I spot two bands of warriors heading to intercept me. One is a bunch of twenty or so orcs (how do I know what an orc is?), who are ugly and brutal looking, and bear the banner of a purple claw, and the other is a smaller group of dark elves (again, how do I know they’re dark elves, or even elves at this distance?) similar to those the crusaders fought in the Rift.

So, my choices are to get hacked to death with rusty hatchets, and then get eaten, or to get tortured for hours in exquisitely elegant ways, before being neatly finished off with a long, shiny dagger through the throat. I hide instead.

It doesn’t work. Fortunately, it turns out that the orcs and dark elves are hostile towards each other, and I manage to escape as the elves wipe out the orcs using magic, although I lose the contents of my coin purse in the struggle.

At the bottom of a valley, I stop for a drink from a stream. A nearby willow tree tries to kill me. Interestingly, in one of the circumstances in which I fight this tree, it has Stamina 12. In the other, it has Stamina 20. This is presumably a typo or an editing error, as there was no damage done to the tree in the Stamina 12 scenario. However, the fight only goes on until you hit the tree four times, at which point the tree stops trying to whomp you, so it doesn’t make any real difference.

Hey, how about that, the sap from the willow is a good source of healing. I scrape a glob of it off my arm and save it for later, before leaving the tree behind me and following the stream west along the valley floor.

Oh crap. A dark elf. He’s from the same group from earlier, tracking me (or the talisman, maybe). He’s sniffing at my trail – I assume the text means that literally – and points in my direction. The illustration here, by Bob Harvey, is interesting, largely because my image of elves, and dark elves in particular, is defined by their presentation in Games Workshop – tall, lithe, eerily attractive humanoids who look pretty sleek in their armour. This one looks, based on his proportions, to be about five feet tall, with a big nose (all the better for sniffing you with, my dear) and generally ugly profile.

His armour does remind me of Games Workshop imagery though, specifically the old-school 1980’s Citadel Miniatures dark elves, as can be seen here. In fact, reading the linked article from the Collecting Citadel Miniatures wiki, it seems the early Citadel dark elves were short in stature, having been based on the dark elves of Norse mythology, rather than their later, more developed, Warhammer imagery.

It should be noted that this group of dark elves numbers just five individuals, and they took out an entire warband of twenty orcs using magic. On multiple occasions during the journey to Greyguilds, encounters with these elves (including if I make the wrong decision now) result in them paralysing me with magic and dragging me down the Rift.

The sniffing of my trail was literal. Wading down the river means they lose my trail, a la the classic way of evading bloodhounds.

The elves do eventually catch up, but shy away when a large group of armoured riders approach from the west.

They’re all women, which is interesting, in terms of representation in Fighting Fantasy. The shieldmaiden was the first person I met after descending onto Orb, and now here’s a band of twenty more badass women. It’s not like female characters have been absent throughout the previous books, but they’ve tended to fall into traditionally feminine roles: Balthus Dire’s ridiculously vain wife, the ghost of Dire’s laundress, Owen Caralif’s agency-less daughter Mirelle in City of Thieves, Mordanna the dead/dying old woman in House of Hell (okay, that’s an unusual role) and so on. There were the two unnamed cavewomen on Fire Island, and the elf adventurer in Deathtrap Dungeon, and of course the Snow Witch, who were all pretty badass, but lacking characterisation.

They ask what I’m doing out here. How you answer dictates how you enter Greyguilds, and there’s a certain degree of guesswork involved as to what the correct answer should be. However, this isn’t a list of blind choices, as are often the problem with Fighting Fantasy. Of course, you know very little about Orb, so there’s some guessing, but there’s also common sense. If you claim to be the sole survivor of a caravan, be ready to say where your caravan was coming from, and of the connotations of that answer.

One of the options is to pretend to be deaf and dumb, which seems a bit out there insofar as plausibility goes, but avoids me having to guess what answer won’t get me arrested or killed. They’re actually quite amused, and one of them comments, “A deaf warrior – well there’s a turn-up for the scrolls!”

If they’d left that idiom as it should be, ‘a turn-up for the books’, I’d have probably let this slide. But they had to fantasy it all up by referring to scrolls. A ‘turn-up’ is a term meaning a stroke of unexpected good luck. So what’s the ‘book’? It’s the notebook carried by bookmakers at a sports event, in which bets are recorded. In other words, it’s an unexpected stroke of good luck at the races. Bookmakers have only existed since 1795, when Harry Ogden stood at Newmarket (thanks, Wikipedia), and Orb appears to be several hundred years of social development before that. And, even if bookmakers did exist on Orb, why would they use scrolls, when the point of the notebook is that it has an integrated hard surface upon which to write, something that a scroll does not.

Anyway, the warriors let me share a horse with a rider called Elvira, who (regardless of what truth or lie I tell them) does not like to share. The advantage of them thinking I’m deaf is that the riders eventually start chatting unguardedly among themselves as we ride towards Greyguilds. They’re the Greyguilds Watch, and that they’re in disagreement with the local Priestesses of the All-Mother, who they consider to be too lenient.

I hope this doesn’t mean the Watch are medieval Judge Dredd types.

They’re quite nice actually, so long as you maintain the fiction that you’re deaf, and they drop me off in Greyguilds, on a road called Moorgate. It seems a rather nice place, a lot better than Port Blacksand anyway, and the locals are a mixture of people shopping and young men and women carrying scrolls. I assume Greyguilds has a university or some sort of arcane college. And now I’m asked if I want to visit Store Street or Smith Street. Since I have no idea what I’m doing in Greyguilds, and no money following my close escape from the orc and dark elf war bands, I pick one at random. Smith Street.

Some distance down the street, a hooded beggar confronts me. Then I realise there’s no face under the hood, just a pair of glowing eyes. “Did you think you could run from Death?” it hisses.

To avoid violence, I pretend not to have the talisman any more. This Minion of Death doesn’t believe my lie and touches me, sucking away 1 Skill and 2 Stamina. Right, self-defence it is then.

The Temu Nazgûl goes down like a sack of wet hobbit-weed, though it takes another point of my Skill with it. Ouch.

Fortunately, a rest lets me restore one of those lost Skill points, and I have a bite to eat while I do so.

There are no shops on this stretch of Smith Street, which means it was deserted apart from me and the ‘beggar’. Not sure how that works. The illustration shows houses, and surely two people fighting would draw some attention.

Personally, I’d have put that encounter down an alley. This isn’t Blacksand; there’s no suggestion that you can have battles in the streets of Greyguilds during business hours.

I head onto Silver Street and, due to a trick of the wind, overhear three thieves in a nearby house preparing to rob the jeweller’s shop just ahead. I could go into the house and confront them, but the more sensible thing appears to be to get to the jeweller’s before them.

The jeweller takes one of them on, while I handle the other two simultaneously. The rules for this are actually in the rules section! What an innovation! I kill one of the thieves and the other flees.

Yesterday morning, I was a normal person (House of Hell head-canon or not). Today, I’m a killer. This is not traumatic.

Oliol the Jeweller has killed his opponent too. Two dead bodies, killed with swords, so blood sprayed all over the shop. He’s remarkably cheerful, and gives me 10 gold pieces and a box containing a magnificent ruby. Nice.

I thank him and leave.

So, is he just going to drag those butchered criminals out the back door and let the dogs chew on them? Or is he going to flag down the next passing city watch patrol and explain that some randomer turned up, killed that guy, while he killed that guy, and the other guy ran off?

I carry on off Silver Street and onto Booker’s Walk. There’s a library here, along with another building that appears to have lots of young people in togas, being led along by an old guy in robes. I get to pick one.

Have I missed it or do I not actually have a clue what I’m doing in this city? I’m wandering aimlessly, with no idea who or what I need to find in Greyguilds. Surely, I should be asking people where I can find a wizard or someone who can send me back to Earth.

Still, I appear to have found some potential avenues of enquiry on Booker’s Walk. The library might have some books, but what I assume is a university will have some people who’ve read them, so I go there.

The Guilds of Learning are surprisingly empty of people inside, so I just wander around, looking in scrolls in the reading rooms. Turns out those City Watch women worship a god called Fell-Kyrinla. That’s all I know about that. I spend more time reading up on the various types of magic and magicians of Orb, and, in a nod to the target audience of Fighting Fantasy books, find myself most interested in necromancy, ‘for these are the death magicians who perform human sacrifices and other unspeakable abominations in their pursuit of power,’ which is cool, in a 13-year-old boy kind of way.

I assume that I can read whatever language the Orb-dwellers write in just as easily as I can understand the definitely-not-English that they’re speaking.

A book bound in strange, multi-coloured scales is drawing me in. This can’t go badly at all. I read the book.

It’s title is Tome of Misfortune… Oh. Dammit! Who the hell writes that in the first place, and who else leaves it lying around in a bloody university library?

It sucks away a point of my Luck, but where does that Luck go? I theorised in a previous post (Island of the Lizard King, I think) that there’s a principle of the conservation of magic in play on Titan, and possibly Orb as well. You can make an amulet that grants you a boost to your Luck, but to balance everything out, to get it to work, you have to make a cursed artefact of a similar type, to maintain the net global amount of whatever metaphysical or physical concept (in this case, Luck) that you’re interfering with.

Alternatively, there’s an extremely lucky author out there, who writes books that are good at reeling the reader in, but ultimately make their life worse.

Having tried to read The Lost Symbol, I suspect that it’s Dan Brown.

Annoyed at being tricked into reading just the front cover of a piece of trash fiction, I abandon my efforts at finding someone who knows about magic. Instead, in the gathering gloom of evening, I carry on along Booker’s Walk and… wait, what? I step into a concealed mantrap that snaps shut around my ankle.

Is this magic, because how in the hell did this suddenly-appearing cult of Death worshippers know to set a trap designed for hunting animals in a forest, in the middle of a street in the university district of Greyguilds? Any drunken student could have got stuck in that?

Maybe it’s magic. There is a lack of special effects described on other bits of magic I’ve witnessed, so maybe it’s so subtle that I think I’ve just put my foot in it, rather than been targeted by an Ankle-Biting Impedimentary Immobility Charm.

And just like that, the leader of these representatives of the Priesthood of Death seizes the Talisman from around my neck and announces that they can now summon their master to Orb.

Well, damn. Is that the end of the story then, or am I again going to get saved by the cavalry at the last minute?

I get saved by the cavalry at the last minute. Again.

For the second time in this adventure, the City Watch tell the cultists to stand down, one of the cultists starts incanting a spell, several of the Watch, or their horses, turn tail and flee, others charge the cult, and it all goes chaotic for a little while.

The priest who took the Talisman gets decapitated while running away. Christ, the Watch take no prisoners. Well, except me, earlier today, apparently.

Not now though. Now, they just leave me with my ankle caught in a trap and take the Talisman of Death off to the Temple of Fell-Kyrinla.

I take it all back. Although Greyguilds is a more pleasant-looking town, it’s easily as vile and inhospitable as Port Blacksand.

A random bloke shows me the quick release catch on the trap and invites me stay at his house for the night. Stranger danger! I’m tired, I’m fed up, and so yeah, I’ll go back to the house of some guy who’s roaming the streets at night. He takes me back to his bungalow, and I actually get a decent night’s sleep and wake up in the morning with all of my internal organs internal.

He has been watching me sleep though…

I talk in my sleep, something about having something stolen from me, apparently. He asks me how I ended up caught in a trap in the middle of Greyguilds. From the illustration, he seems like a scholar of some sort, and it’d be rude not to share something with him, so I tell him all about myself.

Turns out that Apothecus (for that is his name) is a historian. He knows about the Talisman of Death and agrees that I need to get it back from Hawkana, the high priestess of Fell-Kyrinla. He suggests that while he does some research on the Talisman, I enlist the Thieves’ Guild, to which end he points me towards the Red Dragon Inn on the Street of Seven Sins.

Hmm. I probably killed a Thieves’ Guild member yesterday evening. Worse, one of his accomplices got away. This could get awkward.

Apothecus also gives me a jade rose, to show him when I return, which will prove I’m not a shapeshifter.

Great, that’s a thing on Orb, is it?

I make my way to the inn, which is a beer-cellar hive of scum and villainy, and get chatting with the barman. He regales me with a story about one of his former customers, Heimdol the Mighty, who was killed after losing an arm-wrestling bout against someone called Tyutchev. Tyutchev, who then carved his initials into Heimdol’s forehead (which suggests Tyutchev has more than one name), is apparently a worshipper of Anarchil, the god of insane chaos.

Why’s he telling me this? Am I going to meet him at some point in this adventure? I’m going to meet him, aren’t I?

I approach a bunch of patrons who look like criminals. Pretty bigoted of me, really, but it turns out that my irrational prejudice against scruffy working class people is accurate on this occasion: they’re thieves. They invite me to meet them at the Thieves’ Guild, which is inside a disguised coal-hole on Hornbeam Road.

Success. Things are going well.

A tall, wiry man with curly dyed-blonde hair and a clothing ensemble best described as ‘black’, enters the beer cellar, accompanied by a woman wearing a patchwork of armour. The barman mutters under his breath, and then greets Tyutchev and Cassandra.

Bugger. I’m reminded of the prescient words of Lieutenant Aldo Raine of the US Army: ‘You know, fightin’ in a basement offers a lot of difficulties. Number one being, you’re fightin’ in a basement!’

I try and ignore the newcomers, but Tyutchev tells me he doesn’t like my face. Aware of what happened to Heimdol’s face, I apologise for being ugly and leave.

Getting out of the Red Dragon Inn alive gains you a point of Luck.

In the interests of completeness, I had a flick through the various combinations of threats, insults, violence and localised earthquakes that can result from engaging with these two characters. It’s not difficult to avoid getting into a fight with these two highly-statted individuals, so long as you’re cringingly polite to them and don’t stand up for yourself at any point.

With the detailed descriptions, level of characterisation and just sheer badassery of Tyutchev and Cassandra, I’m getting the distinct impression that Greyguilds-on-the-Moor might actually be the setting for Jamie Thomson’s and Mark Smith’s Dungeons & Dragons games, and I just met their player-characters.

That incident with Heimdol the Mighty probably happened in-game as well. The DM probably reacted with horror when one of his friends described in detail how he was carving his initials into the forehead of the man he just killed. Or he just expected it. There’s nothing like a roleplaying session for unveiling your friendship circle’s repressed sociopathic tendencies.

On the way back to Apothecus’s house, a small boy invites me to do some work for some really clever scholars. I’m more than half-expecting a Blacksand-style mugging, but he leads me to the Guilds of Learning, so maybe it’s legit.

Two scholars, Moreau and Polonius, want me to test a war-beast they’ve been developing. Wait, what? Holy… WHAT THE HELL IS THAT?

That, it turns out, is a vivisect. It’s a giant cockroach with massive hairy arms for legs, and two badly-positioned heads (one of a crocodile, the other of an ogre).

How do I know it’s an ogre’s head? I’ve been on this planet for less than a weekend, and not met any ogres in that time. Anyway…

I volunteer to fight the beast (which is lucky, because if I declined, these two psychopaths would trap me in a room with the thing, the arseholes). Polonius can help me if it’s too difficult, using a sleep spell.

Yes, Moreau is clearly a reference to H.G. Wells’ The Island of Dr Moreau, in which a mad scientist creates monstrous hybrids through vivisection. Polonius is another literary reference, to Hamlet, though I can’t see the relevance of that character (Hamlet’s evil uncle’s servant) to this situation.

I kill the vivisect without suffering a scratch, thanks to its low Skill and lucky dice rolls. However, if I had asked Polonius to intervene, it turns out the spell doesn’t work.

There’s an interesting game mechanic here: in both paragraphs in which you fight the vivisect (the voluntary and the involuntary one), you can call on Polonius’s assistance, in which case you remember the paragraph number you’re on, and turn to 158.

Hilariously, when you demand payment, Polonius pats the pockets of his robe, unable to find where he left his money. However, he hands me a scroll containing a Spell of Agonising Doom, good for one use, to assuage my obvious anger.

Judging by the success of that sleep spell, what do you bet that if I ever have to resort to using this scroll, it doesn’t work?

Later on, over dinner, Apothecus introduces me to his friend, Diodorus, another sage, although his specialism is inter-planar travel. Being a historian doesn’t sound quite so cool and impressive now, does it?

Diodorus suspects that the gods used a portal to get me to Orb. I’d honestly assumed it was just them being, you know, gods. However it happened, Diodorus advises that to get back to Earth with the talisman, I need to travel south-east from Greyguilds to the Great Plateau, and then up Mount Star-Reach, which has a portal at its summit.

If all that wasn’t enough, he also teaches me an invocation to be granted the aid of the All-Mother.

Interestingly, if I hadn’t revealed my quest to Apothecus and then gone back to his house for dinner, using the jade rose token to prove I wasn’t a shapeshifter, then I’d not have got this critical quest information.

On the way to find the Thieves’ Guild, I stop to watch a conjurer performing tricks on the street. One of his tricks is creating clouds of smoke, through which I notice that antihero-of-another-story, Tyutchev, creeping through the smoke, shortly before numerous people discover their purses have been stolen.

This has to be something that happened in a roleplaying game, and this conjurer is another member of Tyutchev and Cassandra’s party.

As I leave the scene of the crime, a servant appears and presents me with an invitation to drink sherry with his master, Mortphilio, one of the elders of the city.

Why is one of the elders interested in me? Also, that name…

Mortphilio sounds suspiciously like it means Death-Lover.

I go to Mortphilio’s house, a large, gothic mansion with bat-like gargoyles, because I’m an idiot, and am led through to a gloomy parlour at the back of the house. Mortphilio is a decrepit invalid, so probably harmless, right? No sooner have I noticed the soporific effect of the four black candles burning in the gloomy, bamboo-walled chamber, the human skull on the mantelpiece starts talking: “This is the one, master.”

Mortphilio the necromancer sics the winged skull at me, and I kill it without breaking a sweat. Unfortunately, those bamboo walls… they’re bones, not bamboo. I flee from the horde of skeletons that pop out of the architecture into the main house… which is a gods-damn Temple of Death.

There are hundreds of worshippers here (which puts the forty that were in the cellar of the House of Hell to shame) and, thanks to the light of the black candles, I can see that ‘many of them have embraced death already’.

What does that even mean? Are they dead? Undead? Branded with a skull on their foreheads? I could do with another sentence of description there.

Similarly, I somehow know that the high priest’s name is Somnus. Has he been referenced earlier, because I don’t remember it? My only encounters with the Death cult has been when they mugged me in the street and when I fought the down-on-his-luck Ringwraith.

There’s a pretty good chance you’ll die in here, but I pick the right option and get a nifty little magic helmet into the bargain. Unfortunately, my Skill is already at its maximum, so the +1 Skill it grants me is meaningless. Skill boosts from weapons and armour really should be boosts to Attack Strength instead.

I continue on towards the Thieves’ Guild. There’s a really neat bit of bastardry now. ‘Have you been told about the storm drain?’ the narrative asks. Why yes, yes I have, you might answer, and you head in to find the secret entrance to the Guild. Test Your Luck. If you’re lucky, you survive a vicious trap. If you’re unlucky, you get eviscerated by a harpoon trap (and sent back to a divine respawn point, just as the shieldmaiden and her comrades are getting slaughtered by Dark Elves – how do you know they’re -Dark- Elves?). Once you’re inside the Guild, the thieves point out that they didn’t actually want you to visit, or else they’d have told you the safe route into their headquarters. If you try and fight them, a crossbow sends you to back to the Rift respawn point.

Meanwhile, if you weren’t obnoxious towards the thieves in the Red Dragon ale cellar, you’re not told to enter via the storm drain, but by that safe route. The way these options are structured is a subtle deterrent to cheaters, with the better choice being the ‘no, I don’t know about this secret entrance to the place I’m trying to get to’ paragraph, in which you go straight to the concealed coal hole on Hornbeam Road. It’s reverse psychology brilliance.

Once inside the coal hole and through the coal cellar, I discover the Thieves’ Guild is opulent in the extreme. This is no Riften.

Wait, if the non-trapped entrance is via a coal cellar, where you crawl down a chute and over a pile of coal, how the hell does the Thieves’ Guild look so nice? It should be filthy with coal dust.

Maybe there’s another door, and I’ve just gone in through the guests’ entrance.

Presumably covered in black dust, I meet Vagrant, the leader of the Thieves’ Guild, and enlist their aid. There are various conversation options to be taken, but all the bad ones sooner or later lead to you being killed and sent back to the respawn point. I get lucky/play it smart and manage to recruit four thieves to assist me in stealing the Talisman of Death: Scarface, Jemmy the Rat, Bloodheart and the young Lord Min. Awesome.

As we leave the Guild lair, I notice some graffiti written, in blood, on the wall: “There is no honour among thieves.” Not awesome.

They might not be honourable, but damn, they’re good. A quick montage of coolness as the thieves break us into the temple of Fell-Kyrinla, and we’re in. Then I balls it all up by being seen by a servant.

The thieves disappear, abandoning me. Great.

I hide but one of the guards sees me. I try and fight but I get stabbed repeatedly and die.

I guess I’m not cut out for burglary.

My spirit wafts towards the Valley of Death, but those two meddling gods pull me aside and offer me a second chance. I take it.

This is a blunt reset, similar to that featuring in Forest of Doom but, in this case, literally restoring a saved game rather than continuing the adventure from an earlier point. I’m fully healed, with 10 provisions again, but have lost everything I’ve picked up along the way. Oh, and I’ve got the Talisman of Death. Let’s see where I get sent back to.

Oh, bloody hell…

At this point, a horde of ‘creatures’ boils into the cavern…

I’m back in the Rift, watching the shieldmaiden and company get slaughtered by dark elves and orcs, before I get teleported up to the surface.

Wait… I keep all the equipment I started the adventure with, so that’s a sword, provisions, five torches and a Potion of Luck, plus the Talisman of Death. What isn’t explicitly included is the 10 gold pieces that the wizard gave me the first time around.

Also, I presumably remember the invocation that Diodorus the interplanar expert taught me to invoke the protection of the All-Mother.

Now, I don’t think the book is written to explicitly facilitate this, but something I’d like to see with this kind of reset mechanic is for there to be actual advantages to dying beyond being given a second chance to make bad mistakes and get killed breaking into the Thieves’ Guild or the temple of Fell-Kyrinla. For example, I could call on the All-Mother as I was being chased down by orcs and dark elves on the way to Greyguilds, even though I only learned it a day ‘later’ in the city itself.

Do I remember that the correct way into the Thieves’ Guild is via the coal hole on Hornbeam Road? Shouldn’t there now be an option to leave the Red Dragon earlier, to avoid that tense conversation with the psychopathic Tyutchev and Cassandra?

As it stands, this reset button takes me back to virtually the beginning of the adventure, skipping only the conversation with the last crusaders. I could easily just roll up a new character from scratch, hopefully getting a better Luck score, or taking a different potion, and only add on a few turns of a page to get to the same point in the adventure.

Anyway, this time, I decide to avoid travelling over open ground towards Greyguilds, because those orcs and dark elves were bloody dangerous. I plunge into the forest instead, and immediately come across a huge she-wolf, the size of a pony, suckling her young. She snarls and gets ready to pounce.

I distract her with some provisions. Smart move, since along comes Wodeman, the Guardian Druid of this sacred grove, who appreciates that I didn’t just stab mama-wolf, and rewards me with a blessing and a golden apple that restores 4 Stamina points (so it basically replaces the provisions I just gave to the wolf).

Further on in the woods, I encounter a sleeping, eight-legged lizard and can try and sneak past it. Eight legs? Is this a basilisk?

It is, but fortunately I manage to avoid waking it, unlike the now-petrified mouse that runs past it shortly afterwards.

Now I’m in the woods, the adventure has bceome a linear sequence of encounters, rather than a plot. At least the journey over open ground became a dramatic chase scene that led directly to being rescued/captured by the Greyguilds Watch. The third encounter in the sequence is an old lady tangled in pond weeds, asking for help.

It’s not just bait, it’s a Grendel, which is apparently an old lady with a beak and six tentacles growing out of her bloated body.

Pretty sure that Grendel was male, and it was Grendel’s mother that was female. And although he is a swamp-dweller, he’s also normally portrayed as a non-tentacled giant or humanoid monster (and his mother is normally portrayed as a naked, CGI Angelina Jolie, covered in gold paint – I swear, go and read the original myth).

So ‘the’ Grendel dies a stabby death, and the next paragraph unceremoniously dumps me in front of the Watch cavalry. Their shield heraldry, I notice from the illustration (though not the text), is a pair of crossed swords over the female symbol (♀).

This is actually the Roman symbol for the goddess Venus, and is also used in astronomy as shorthand for the planet (the male symbol is used for Mars, planet of the war god, which says something about society’s attitude to masculinity). Seems that, on Orb, it’s also the symbol for Fell-Kyrinla.

Having experienced the brutality and callousness of the Watch in my previous life, and knowing a little more about Orb this time around, I lie and pretend to be the last survivor of a merchant caravan from Serakub. They give me a lift to Greyguilds and don’t even try and confiscate my sword (although Elvira still hates having me behind her on her horse).

Ah, yes, the book does tell you you’re arriving at Greyguilds in the late afternoon. I missed that the first time around.

Instead of going down Smith Street, which is where I met the Poundstretcher Black Rider, I instead travel along Store Street, where I meet a short-haired woman in green robes, who recognises me as a stranger and asks, politely, who I am.

With the parallels between this story and The Lord of the Rings, I’m reminded of this:

“I think a servant of the Enemy would look fairer and feel fouler.”

Frodo Baggins, upon meeting Aragorn

Nevertheless, I tell her I’m on a holy quest and have just travelled across the wilderness. She introduces herself to me as Lillantha, a priestess of the All-Mother, after I tell her I met Wodeman on the way to Greyguilds, and invites me to come and pray with her. Since the druids seem a little friendlier than the followers of Fell-Kyrinla, and she’s probably not going to take me to Mortphilio’s house, I accept.

It’s all very pleasant. Considering I’ve been into three temples on Orb and was either nearly killed or actually killed in the first two, this one’s my favourite. Lillantha gives me a shirt of lightweight magical chainmail as a gift, because what adventurer carrying the evil one’s favourite piece of jewellery to a mountain doesn’t get to wear a shirt of mithril?

She also lets me know that the gates of Greyguilds are guarded by followers of the All-Mother on the evenings of market days and for three days afterwards, so that’d be a good time to sneak out of the city if I ever need to. (Presumably, it’s the Fell-Kyrinla-aligned Watch that do it the rest of the week.)

Back on Store Street, I meet another Envoy of Death. Rather than being an impending lawsuit from New Line Cinemas, this one is a funeral director who transforms, unnoticed by everyone else in the street, into a skeleton. Oh, and the coffin in the back of his little hearse with the little horse has my name on it.

It demands the Talisman of Death. Remembering how hostile its comrade on Smith Street was, I attack it straight away. (I’ll worry later about the rest of the street witnessing me murder an undertaker.)

Oddly, no one seems to care that I just murdered an undertaker. The crowd that parted to let the hearse through isn’t mentioned, nor is the storekeeper that greeted the ‘undertaker’ immediately before it spoke to me. If this is weird supernatural stuff, then it’s not noticed by the protagonist. Honestly, it feels like an oversight by the authors.

I head onto Bookers Walk and am presented with the same scene as last time. This time around, I investigate the library, rather than the university, and peruse a book about the history of Greyguilds. The various religions hold all the power in the city, and it turns out that Vagar, god of thieves, liars and cut-throats, has the most followers. ‘Thieves, liars and cut-throats’? That explains why this city’s Thieves’ Guild is a lot more casually murderous than those in most fantasy settings. According to this book, and matching what Lillantha implied earlier, the city’s armed forces are split between the warrior-women of the ‘evil’ goddess Fell-Kyrinla, and the followers of the All-Mother.

Oh, and there’s a temple of Death in the city as well.

It’s right there, in black and white in the book. It would have been useful, perhaps, if the wizard in the Rift had mentioned that detail to me. There’s me, thinking that these robed cultists and sinister undead monsters were operating at least slightly covertly.

I leave the library when it gets dark and promptly step into a mantrap. Again. I have the Talisman stolen from me. Again. Then the Watch arrive, butcher the Death cultists and steal the Talisman, leaving me to rot with my foot trapped. Again.

Apothecus approaches, lets me out of the trap and invites me home. Out of curiosity (as a reader) and because I already know the information he has to provide me (as a character), I politely decline. “No, thank you, I’m just on my regular evening bleed-from-the-ankle.”

Saying yes is the better choice, because there are no inns around by the time my wounded ankle becomes too painful to walk on, so I end up sleeping rough in an alleyway. I always like it when an injury received in the text actually has lingering effects. Less nice is when I get woken up by an ogre slamming my head against a wall. I’ve been mugged for the second time in one night. What are the odds?

I kill the ogre. I wonder if its head will later end up mounted on a vivisect?

Actually, unless fate is a thing, it’s unlikely that it’s the same ogre. In the timeline where I fought the vivisect, I hadn’t killed this ogre. If fate dooms it to die tonight, then it could end up glued to a cockroach, but the very fact I’m able to fork the timelines by taking a different route this time around is an indication that predestination isn’t a thing on Orb. (EDIT AFTER FINISHING THE BOOK: Oh, am I wrong on this assumption!)

Also, I’m on a meddling mission from the gods, which suggests ‘fate’ is whatever some random deities think it is at any given moment.

I do know that being mugged three times in one night isn’t my fate, so I find somewhere else – specifically an empty stable – to sleep.

The paladin from the Rift appears to me in a dream, suggesting I hire the Thieves’ Guild to liberate the Talisman of Death from the temple of Fell-Kyrinla. That was convenient. Who needs a warm bed, hot meal and the friendship of a scholar when I can have rough sleeping, damp straw and getting my head slammed against a wall by an ogre?

I get mugged for the third time in one night, this time by a Death Knight, aka a suit of empty black armour with a rather disturbing lack of face behind its visor. With its Skill 10, Stamina 15, and my current Skill 10, Stamina 17, this is going to be an attritional fight.

Fortunately, when my Stamina drops below 6, an apparition of the paladin appears, slices the Death Knight in half with its sword. Both of them then vanish, leaving only the paladin’s holy sword behind. Another magical artefact that gives a +1 boost to Skill, when my Skill is at its maximum value already.

I’ve double-checked the rules at the start of the book. No, magic items can’t increase your Skill above its initial value, even if that’s what is presumably intended.

After a really bad night’s sleep, I go to the Red Dragon Inn, as recommended by the dead paladin, to recruit some thieves.

How and why does a paladin not only recommend I enlist the Thieves’ Guild, but also where to find them? I guess he wasn’t always Lawful Good. I manoeuvre my way through the conversation with the thieves-who-look-very-much-like-thieves-but-it’s-rude-to-say-that, avoiding getting sent to the storm drain by way of not being a dick at them.

And here come Tyutchev and Cassandra. I’m tempted to send the conversation in a different direction, for shits and giggles, but since that involves being stabbed repeatedly by a pair of psychopaths, I decide to employ tactical wimpiness, apologise again for my face (I wonder if Tyutchev experiences deja vu at that?) and then leave.

Without an invitation to dinner at Apothecus’ house, I need to find my own entertainment for the evening. Cobbler’s Walk or Merchant Street? Merchant Street, I think.

I visit an alchemist called Alembic. Really? Did he invent the alembic, or is this just a nom de selling stuff? Unfortunately, without having been given the 10 gold pieces at the start of this iteration of the quest, thanks to the reset button dropping me about two paragraphs too late, I only possess a single gold piece, found in the straw in that stable. I can’t afford a damn thing. “Just looking,” I say, to his probable irritation, and then leave.

I need an inn for the night, and find the Silver Trinket, which the text notes looks a lot nicer than the Red Dragon. I can’t afford the 3GP for a room for the night, but the landlord lets me do the washing up instead (nice touch!) and get a room and a warm meal for free. I have to wash up after myself though, so it isn’t all good.

In the morning, I recruit the Thieves’ Guild again. “There is no honour among thieves!” Yeah, yeah, I know.

We break into the temple of Fell-Kyrinla, and there’s that servant again. Maybe I should have said to the guys to wait for a minute or two before we enter, so we could avoid him. There’s a couple of missed opportunities with this reset button.

I knock the servant out with the pommel of my sword, and then Lord Min slits his throat with a dagger. Hmm. I could have intervened, but I don’t want the honourless thieves to turn on me.

Fell-Kyrinla’s apparently an evil goddess, so it follows that her followers do evil deeds. However, does that make it okay to slit their throats while they’re unconscious?

No.

I absolutely deserve to lose that Luck point for letting him die.

We sneak further into the temple until we come across the high priestess. “Hounds of Hell! It’s Hawkana, the High Priestess!” hisses Jemmy the Rat, helpfully, and then adds, less helpfully, “I’m off!” And so are the rest of the team. Bastards.

Hawkana sees me, gets a bit miffed that I interrupted her communing with her goddess, magically slams the doors shut, and blasts me with a fireball. That’s 6 Stamina points lost. (Bloody hell, that’s a lot.)

Interestingly, the narrative emphasises that being set on fire is really painful and I can hardly see. Other Fighting Fantasy books have been quite blasé about being hit with dragon fire or similar.

I’m given the option of using various items I may have picked up on my travels against Hawkana. The Scroll of Agonising Doom that I got from the idiot vivisectionists is a really good choice here. Unfortunately, that was in a different leg of the Trousers of Time. Here, it’s just me, a sword and third degree burns.

Hawkana is tough. She’s Skill 12, Stamina 14. Her Skill is two points higher than my own and she’s just blasted away a good third of my Stamina.

And I kill her, through sheer good luck and having one Stamina point when she has none.

I recover the Talisman of Death from the altar of Fell-Kyrinla and notice that Hawkana’s wounds are healing. Damn.

I pull the glowing ring off her finger and slip it on my own. What is it with me and randomly throwing on magical jewellery? Fortunately, it’s a ring of regeneration and returns those 6 Stamina points she blasted away. I assume it also closes up those hideously weeping burns that cover large parts of my body.

I open the temple doors and find the Thieves’ Guild crew, who’ve been taking turns to watch through the keyhole as I get set on fire. Good of them to stick around, I guess, though I’d imagine they were hoping that Hawkana and I would kill each other, and they could just lift the talisman off our corpses.

The alarm’s well and truly raised and we flee the warrior women of Fell-Kyrinla, only for Bloodheart the thief to try and stab me in the confusion. The Greyguilds Watch live up to their reputation for saving my life in the worst possible way, and riddle him with crossbow bolts.

We escape the temple and regroup. Scarface looks surprised to see me and asks about Bloodheart. “Failed, you treacherous dogs,” I reply.

Really?

Remember, I’m not a typical Fighting Fantasy protagonist. I’m an alien abductee from Earth. When was the last time you heard someone call someone else a treacherous dog?

Jemmy the Rat runs away without another word, while Scarface and Lord Min declare that they’re not going to fight the killer of Hawkana, and leave with a little more dignity.

I rest in the Thieves’ Guild safe house for a while before I try to flee the city.

Brilliant. Guess who turns up, courtesy of a tip-off from Lord Min? Tyutchev, Cassandra, and a giant floating octopus who appears to be getting it on with Cassandra. When I refuse to hand over the Talisman of Death, the octopus transforms into Thaum, the illusionist who was helping Tyutchev with his cut-pursery earlier. So blatantly a gang of PC’s.

Or maybe they’re just a very well characterised and written set of recurring villains a step above every other villain faced in Fighting Fantasy to date.

I dodge Thaum’s spells and get into it with Tyutchev. The first time I stab him, Thaum turns him invisible. Cheating little…

Tyutchev is a master swordsman, and now he’s invisible. Cassandra is also pretty nasty in combat, according to the bad branches of the Red Dragon Inn conversation, and Thaum is chucking spells around everywhere. I call for divine intervention.

“All-Mother, nature herself, preserve me!” Fortunately, I remember this from my previous life, where Apothecus’ friend, Diodorus, taught it to me.

You’re given five gods to choose from during this fight, or the alternative is to fight Tyutchev using just your own skills. Every single option, apart from calling on the All-Mother, results in that blond-haired arsehole slicing off your head and causing the gods to press the reset button. In a conventional Fighting Fantasy book, this would be a One True Path moment, where refusing Apothecus’ offer of a room for the night, and then returning to his house in the evening to meet Diodorus, causes you to fail the quest. However, because of the reset button, you can either remember the invocation of the All-Mother from previous attempts, or you now have a chance to learn it for the first time, thanks to taking a different leg of the Trousers of Time.

In theory, you could Groundhog Day this book, just trying every option and then dying until you get it right.

An eagle swoops down and picks me up in its talons, flying me and my magical artefact of ultimate evil towards my goal, that mountain over there.

Is this a dig at The Lord of the Rings, eighteen years before the Peter Jackson adaptation of The Return of the King popularised smartarses asking why Frodo didn’t just fly an eagle into Mordor?

The reason, incidentally, is this:

Those eagles would be ripped to shreds before they even flew over the Black Gate, and the Nazgûl would have picked the One Ring out of the bloody mess that was once Frodo Baggins.

In this case, the Talisman of Death feels really heavy to the eagle, forcing it to dump me in an alley off Store Street, where I encountered the knock-off Nazgûl.

In a subtle moment similar to the narrative asking if you’ve been told about the storm drain, it now asks if I’m wearing magical chainmail (i.e. if I spoke to Lillantha the priestess of the All-Mother and got told about the arrangements over who guards the city gates on which days). If you say no, you’re given a couple of options, including heading to the cemetery as recommended by Apothecus. If you say yes, the narrative gives you the same options, and also points out that it’s market day and asks if you want to lie low in an alleyway until evening.

I choose to lie low in an alleyway, before slipping out at nightfalls to head for Moorgate, which should be guarded now by the All-Mother’s followers.

Sonofabitch! One of the dark elves that attacked the crusaders in the Rift (and in a previous lifetime pursued me along the valley towards Greyguilds) has infiltrated the city and tries to kill me. Nice bit of continuity there.

Once out of Greyguilds (thank you, followers of the Allmother!), I’m given three routes to take to get to the plateau – directly across the moorlands, along the old trade road, or over some heath and into the hills. The road is likely to be patrolled, I’d have thought, whether by Fell-Kyrinla’s unhelpful valkyries or by servants of the Rift. The direct route is also an obvious one, so I’ll go over the heath.

I beat up a griffin and cadge a lift on its back to the plateau. And promptly get attacked by a pterodactyl. Because obviously.

Also, remember what I said earlier about the difficulty of flying an eagle to Mount Doom when there are airborne reptiles in the service of the big bad? Oh well.

I kill the pterodactyl and continue across the plateau. A panicking triceratops attacks me next. Dinosaurs are bloody tough. Fortunately, when the tyrannosaurus rex(!) that was chasing it arrives, the triceratops wins and then limps off, sparing me an obscene combat against a Skill 12, Stamina 30 king of the tyrant lizards.

I find a sulphurous cave and investigate it. It’s a sleeping dragon. Nope. Nope nope nope. I leave the cave and reach the end of my journey… only to encounter that very same dragon, who announces that he is bound by the Gods (you know, some of whom I’m working for) to prevent anyone going through the portal on Mount Star-Reach.

With a bellow he empties his cavernous lungs. Rolling jets of flame engulf you, before you can attack him. You are charred to a cinder. Your quest ends in sight of your goal.

Time for the reset button. I appear in the Rift, possessing only… no, wait… Thankfully, this second save point takes me to just outside Greyguilds, having just escaped the city, with 15 Stamina points and all my equipment barring certain specified items that you can pick up after the reset point.

Rather than fight a griffin and a series of incredibly tough dinosaurs, I take a different route to Mount Star-Reach. Let’s try the direct route this time.

The talisman seems to be warning me of the presence of the minions of Death. First up is a wraith, who wakes me up in the night, scares me a bit and then leaves. The next night, it’s six of the bastards.

There’s a previously unnoticed inscription in the talisman: “One talisman to rule them all…” No wait, I’ve not got my reading glasses on. That’s better: “I am Death’s talisman. I am protected by the Faceless Ones who serve my wielder.”

Wait, I’m the wielder of the talisman, so why are these legally-distinct-Black-Riders tormenting me?

I tell them to piss off and let me sleep. They do so, but remind me that once some other servant of Death nabs the Talisman back, they’ll become lords under the reign of Death. I really don’t care. I just want to sleep, which I do.

The next morning, I reach the plateau, and rather than climb the steep slopes, I find a secret cave that will, hopefully, lead to the top.

Oh look, a frieze with a picture of a dragon. I’ve got a bad feeling about this.

There’s some inscriptions on the pillars in the first few caves I go into: “Behind the symbol on the first door lies that which you risk your life for,” and “Put yourself in the place of the monkey. To the left is danger. The idle shall act.”

These smell suspiciously like there’s a logic puzzle coming up…

I find four doors, each with a picture – a serpent, a monkey, a scarab and a dragon. Right, so, behind the serpent is something that I risk my life for. Put myself in the place of the monkey – in other words, pretend I am the monkey door – and to my left is danger (the scarab). ‘The idle shall act’ is clearly a reference to the giant idol, labelled as ‘Damolh, Son of the god Nil, Mouth of the Void’, and it squishing me to death if I open the wrong door.

I have no idea.

Well, I do. The first door – the serpent – seems to be what I’m meant to go for, but when I do, I get bitten by a snake and go straight back to the reset. I retrace my steps to have another go, reading a different pillar this time: ‘Furthest from the poison of the scarab beetle, you will find a venom more deadly than dragon fire.’

I could have done with that five minutes ago, thanks. Also, it’s exactly as deadly as dragon fire. Trust me.

And then I fail to Indy-roll under a descending stone slab door, which crushes my rib cage ‘like a concertina’. Thomson and Smith like their gruesome deaths, particularly when the poor protagonist lives to remember them.

So. Much. Therapy, once I get back to Earth.

Back to the idle idol of Damolh.

So the serpent door is out. The scarab door is dangerous and presumably animates the idol, so that one’s out as well. That leaves the monkey and the dragon, and I’m not sure which is which.

Monkey. It’s a blank wall behind the door, so I guess, through trial, error and two deaths, I pick the dragon door.

It’s a tomb. Not what I expected. And I’m trapped in it. After a while, I decide to rob the tomb, and take the spear out of the mummified corpse’s hands. Two important things: the spear has ‘Dragonsbane’ inscribed on its shaft, and also the mummy doesn’t want me to have it.

This is another magical weapon that gives me +1 to my Skill, but the rules-as-written mean that it doesn’t help me as I’m already at my initial Skill.

I defeat the mummy, compounding my grave robbing with, what, murder?

The base of the sarcophagus is, for some reason, hollow, so I smash my way through it and find a tunnel leading to the top of the waterfall. As I get onto the plateau, I meet a group of hogmen. As in, pig-people. I’m pretty sure these are unique to Orb, as they never show up on Titan. I’m given the option of attacking them or trying to communicate, but the narrative contains no indication of their numbers, which is vital information for that decision.

I give them some salted meat as a gesture of friendship.

I’ve just remembered, my provisions consist of salted pork.

Pork.

FFS…

(And yes, I’ve just checked back to the game rules, where you’re given your provisions – no, it doesn’t say what they’re made of.)

To appease the DIY ham sandwiches (just add bread!), I go with them to their village. I’m not a captive, I’m a guest, right?

Their chief, fortunately, forgives my moment of cultural insensitivity and agrees to help me, because whenever this dragon wakes up, it despoils the local area, including this village. The only way to protect myself against dragonfire (oh, yes please) is to steal three of its scales while it’s asleep (what, what?) and turn them into a shield.

How does he know this, and if he knows this, then why over the last few generations in which this dragon’s been asleep, haven’t his people stolen some already, to prevent their village from being transformed into a (deliciously smelling) barbecue?

The theft of the scales is surprisingly easy. This burglary went a lot better than the time I burgled a temple full of fanatics, in the company of a team of traitorous cutthroats. Times, plural.

The book does that subtle thing again, where it asks whether you’ve got a particular item to establish if you know certain information – in this case, the gum you need to use to make a dragon-scale shield. Otherwise, you’d just be a weirdo who saw a mythical creature lying on a vast pile of gold coins, and you stole its dandruff.

I’m not entirely sure how I made a strap or handle or whatever, since the book doesn’t say. Anyway…

I reach the portal at the top of Mount Star-Reach, and the dragon says, ‘I am bound by the gods to guard the portal.’ Does he rehearse this and say it to everyone he meets, or is it just what he’s been planning to say to the next person that comes to the portal, in different timelines?

I try and negotiate, because that’s the nice thing to do. I warn him the world is about to be destroyed by Death, so I just need to get through that portal there. The dragon isn’t overly impressed, since Death can’t touch him, due to being a divinely-appointed guardian. A bit antisocial, don’t you think? I explain about how I can stop it all by taking the talisman through the portal. The dragon explains to me that metal objects can’t pass through the portal, so if I just put all my weapons and armour over there, I’ll be able to go through.

What this foolish dragon doesn’t realise is that I have also seen The Terminator, which came out in 1984, the year before this book was published. I ask him if he thinks I’m an idiot. He explains to me in a surprisingly soothing voice, which sounds like warm honey, that he doesn’t make the rules. He sounds really quite reasonable.

Wait, no. He’s beguiling me. With a successful Luck test, I shake it off like Taylor Swift and do what’s normally a bad idea in Fighting Fantasy boss fights, and resort to violence.

Then, I test my Skill to dodge a flail of his claw as I move in to attack. Just kidding, no I don’t. I roll two dice and go to one paragraph if the result is equal to or less than my Skill, and another if it’s greater.

Seriously, at what point do these books start testing your Skill instead of going through that awkward phrasing. About book 40? 50?

Anyway, I stab the dragon. He’s Skill 12, Stamina 20, which is better than me on all counts. Fortunately, Dragonsbane causes 5 points of damage each time I hit him, and the fight finishes when he’s reduced to Stamina 5.

Battered, bloody and about to keel over, I win the fight and the dragon transforms into an old man who begs for mercy and offers to let me through the portal, if he takes me with him.

Nuh-uh. You’re a psychopathic dragon who has already tried lying to lull me into a false sense of security, and clearly relished the first time you incinerated me. Without a single instant of remorse, conscience or regret, I murder the old man. Take that, psychopath!

Turn to 400.

I get back to Earth and meet the two gods, who reveal that they’re Time and Fate. Not a big reveal, but thanks for the basic politeness of an introduction. The last line of the book is Fate and Time saying, ‘We may call upon you again!’

Maybe, but not as part of the Fighting Fantasy series, Orb!

My god, that was a long one, thanks to some time-loops that mean I ended up going through pretty much all 400 paragraphs, but I enjoyed it. The world-building in Talisman of Death is top-notch, with an entire setting revealed through a mixture of details, carefully deployed lore-dumps, and implication. I’m still convinced that Tyutchev et al are Thomson and Smith’s Dungeons & Dragons party, but the vast cast of characters in this book, from Apothecus to Hawkana, to the thugs from the Thieves’ Guild, to the semi-competent vivisectionists Moreau and Polonius, are all stand-outs despite their individually small screen-time.

Sure, the plot is basically a Chosen One version of The Lord of the Rings, which possibly misses the argument that Frodo was just some bloke, rather than having been chosen by the gods, but the distinctive setting means that the Tolkien tributes aren’t too distracting.

On that note though, I couldn’t get past the first couple of chapters of The Wheel of Time series when I realised how blatantly Robert Jordan was ripping off the Shire sequence at the start of The Fellowship of the Ring, so Thomson and Smith were definitely doing something right. (I later discovered that Jordan was doing it as an overt pastiche, so I might yet give that series another go.)

I’ll have to keep an eye out for the Way of the Tiger books.

Next up, back into space for some badass military sci-fi, Space Assassin.