[lets play] Fighting Fantasy (Scholastic 16): Assassins of Allansia.

[Queen of Swords]

Run outside. There's nothing in the hut that we need to protect.

[Dogopolis]

Poition of Strength wins by half a vote. Slashing with a sword wins on a tiebreak coin toss. (running outside just gives him a free attack, not much difference.)

You swing your sword through the darkness, and feel it strike home. A man’s muffled cry breaks the silence, and you hear the intruder stumble backwards. You step forward and strike again. Although injured, the intruder is a skilful KNIFE FIGHTER who is very agile and light on his feet. You must fight him in total darkness!

KNIFE FIGHTER SKILL 7 STAMINA 6

Code: Select all

R1 Finella 19 KF 11: KF at 4
R2 Finella 14 KF13: KF at 2
R3 Finella 13 KF13: Draw
R4 Finella 15 KF 12: KF dead.

If you win…..

--------------------------------------------------------------

Breathing hard after the desperate fight, you think about who your attacker might be but know you will have to wait for the morning light to find out. Not wishing to spend time in the company of a corpse, you decide to sleep on the beach.

Thankfully the rest of the night passes without incident, and you are relieved to see dawn finally break. You go back to the hut, where you find the body of a skinny man. Two long knives lie on the ground beside him. He has a dark moustache, a pointed beard and a thin, crooked nose. His clothing is Shazaari — loose fitting black robes and black leggings, and a headdress made of a long black scarf wrapped around his head.

His only jewellery is a silver necklace and pendant with a scorpion etching on it, which you take and put in your pocket. You also take one of the daggers from the cross belt slung around his neck. You wonder why he came to the island to kill you. Did somebody hire him to do it? If so, why? For now, there is no answer. Do you want to search through the Knife Fighter’s clothing or you would rather begin your daily quest for food?

Finella Noland
Skill 9/9
Stamina 21/21
Luck 11/11

Potion of Strength
Provisions:10
Silver necklaces: 1
Dagger

[Queen of Swords]

Search through his clothes.

[Beroli]

Search through his clothing.

[Thaluikhain]

Search...and did we take the knife on his belt, but not the two he dropped?

[SGamerz]

We already have the choice to loot most of his stuff, so I suspect the choice to search further may be a trap...

...but this is a Livingstone book, we can't afford to miss any chance for loot because lord knows how many items we'd need to collect to win, so I guess search, nvertheless.

[JourneymanN00b]

Sure, I also vote to search the corpse to see what else our hero can get from it.

[Dogopolis]

You find a small circular brass box with a hinged lid concealed in a hidden pocket inside the Knife Fighter’s robes. There is a silver ring inside the box. Do you want to try on the ring or would you rather begin your quest for food for the third day?

[Beroli]

Try on the ring.

[JourneymanN00b]

Hmmm. I don't think our hero should try on the ring, since this is just asking for Finella to be turned into a Ringwraith or lose stats. I vote to begin her quest for food.

[Queen of Swords]

Try on the ring, we probably won’t get an instakill this early.

[SGamerz]

I'm leaning more and more towards this being a trap, since if it's beneficial why isn't the guy wearing it? Also the fact that we don't have the option to just keep the ring without wearing seems suspicious (actually, do we keep the ring if we don't put it on?).

[Thaluikhain]

Yeah, if we have to put the ring on, it's probably a stat changing thing. Our stats are fine as they are, leave alone.

[Dogopolis]

We leave the suspicious ring behind.

You fill the tin jug with water from the rainwater traps outside and can’t stop thinking about the attempt on your life. After quenching your thirst, you decide to go in search of food. You are very hungry, having eaten only a bit of fish the previous day. Lose 1 STA MINA point. Do you want to go fishing again or do you want to explore the island for food?

[JourneymanN00b]

I vote to explore the island for food, as I doubt being in the same spot for long will be conducive to our hero's survival.

[Queen of Swords]

Agreed, explore the island.

[SGamerz]

I doubt being in the same spot for long will be conducive to our hero's survival.

And I doubt being in the same spot for long will be conducive to our hero finding essential quest tokens in this book either. Explore.

[Dogopolis]

Picking your way through the thick undergrowth, you see a tall bush with lots of ripe red berries hanging from its branches. Do you want to eat the berries or would you rather walk on?

[Beroli]

Eating strange berries never goes badly for anybody. (Since we apparently cannot identify poisonous from safe berries by sight, we truly, truly overestimated our wilderness skill when we took this bet.)

Walk on.

[SGamerz]

The chances of us being hit with a sudden Game Over because we didn't stop to eat some random red berries is, I think, relatively lower than the opposite happening. At worst, we'd probably be hit by STAMINA penalty for not eating. Walk on.

[Thaluikhain]

Agreed.

[Dogopolis]

You pass by a dead tree devoid of bark and leaves where a skeleton hand is hanging on a rusty nail hammered into the trunk. The bones are well weathered, dark ochre in colour, and look to have been hanging on the nail for years. Do you want to lift the dismembered hand off the nail or would you rather leave it where it is and walk on?

[JourneymanN00b]

I vote to leave it where it is and walk on, as nothing truly good ever comes from dismembered hands. See the Monkey's Paw and even the Hand of Vecna from D&D.

[Queen of Swords]

I want to lift the dismembered hand off, just to see what happens.

[Beroli]

Undead spirits that claim the lives of visitors, hm...

Let's avoid the skeletal hand.