[Let's Play] Fighting Fantasy 35 - Daggers of Darkness!

[Thaluikhain]

Walk to the throne.

(Also, did anyone else think that when the gremlin swallowed the key our solution would have been bad for the gremlin?)

[Darth Rabbitt]

Walk to the throne.

[Queen of Swords]

(Also, did anyone else think that when the gremlin swallowed the key our solution would have been bad for the gremlin?)

Yes, I was wondering why we didn't have the option to perform a key-ectomy.

[SGamerz]

You will not draw a weapon in the shadow of the Throne of Kazam. You walk past the Ogres, who suddenly stop in their tracks and turn to stone. You sit on the Throne and watch, horrified, as Meghan-na-Durr, daughter of Chingiz, collapses and turns to dust. A slight breeze blows her ashes out through an open window.

You have defeated the evil Vizier Chingiz and his deadly daughter, Meghan-na-Durr, in their attempt to seize the throne of Kazan. Through your bravery. wisdom and skill, you yourself have say upon the legendary throne at Sharrabbas. The Six Clan will now support you, both by dint of tradition and because you have proved to them that you are the greatest warrior in the land. The Necromancers, Mamliks and all the other fell creatures summoned by Chingiz slink away into the shadows and crawl back into their holes. You set up a strong force to police the land and protect the weak. Trade between Kazan and the rest of Khul flourishes and the land experiences an era of peace and prosperity. You are hailed by many as a worthy successor to the great Segrek.

After one year and one day of your reign, you must declare your own Select. Once you have died, they will strive to sit upon the throne of Kazan; thus the traditions continue.

Congratulations for making it to the finish! In the process, we used up 6 lives out of the 10 we unlocked! That's actually a higher fail-rate than a lot of other books with higher difficulty rating that I've run (Masks of Mayhem, Legend of Zagor, etc).

Half of them were due to trials via random random dice roll, which is a trademark of Luke Sharp books in general. On the other hand, despite the high fail rate, there was no long rewinds required because, as you can tell Sharp doesn't believe in single true paths, and there isn't a single mandatory quest token in the book. Not even the Medallions were necessary for winning, although they certainly would have saved us from 2 of the failures if we had them.

So, as usual, I will cover some of the stuff we miss over the next couple of days, but there's no way I can cover them all, so it certainly help if you pinpoint any of the stuff you're particularly interested in. It has been noted a couple of times that we missed a lot of stuff, but that's actually perfectly normal for this book's design: there are so many different paths through the book that it's impossible to see them all, and highly unlikely that that you'd see more than half in a single playthrough. Another factor that I'm sure some of you noticed is that Luke Sharp has a very "economical" use of his numbered sections. In most books, authors would spend 3 sections for a LUCK test, but Sharp would just tell you to make the test, and tell you the results of both Lucky and Unlucky within the same sections. Thus, he's able to cram in more content than most authors. And yet even so a lot of his ideas seem underdeveloped. Like, for example, out of the 6 clans, 1 of them practically isn't featured at all, and there are really only 3 Mazes fitted into the book and no way to gain 2 of the Medallions.

But I see that another Luke Sharp book has won the polls, so it looks like at least most of you enjoyed this book enough to want to play another of his (warning: we may die more times in that one)? Either way, as usual I'd probably fit in another shorter (non-FF) gamebook LP in between as a break, as is my usual style.

So, as I said, I would appreciate if you would raise which parts of the missing content that you wish to learn about and help me narrow it down. I would certainly post the remaining pictures that we didn't get to see, since this is a tribute to the artist.

Thanks for playing.

[Queen of Swords]

Thanks for hosting this! And I'm pleasantly surprised. When we didn't find a single Medallion and just seemed to be wandering randomly, I thought that was it for this playthrough.

But as far as questions go :

1. If you have the power of persuasion, does the gremlin who swallowed the key retrieve it for you? And do I want to know how?

2. If a weapon can't be drawn in the shadow of the throne, why does nothing happen to Meghan-na-Durr after she pulls a dagger?

[Darth Rabbitt]

In addition to Queen’s questions:
What other powers could we have gotten from the potions (or is it just the two we got and Persuasion)? Are any in particular really good and/or interesting?
There seem to be a number of other skills that can be picked up over the course of the journey. Curious how many there are of those, and again if any were particularly useful.
The woman with the dagger who wanted 25 gold for her help getting into the fortress, does paying her get us anything worthwhile?
What’s up with Geronicus, who could apparently teach us how to fight Necromancers if we met him earlier?
Was it possible for us to get the medallion from the Orc or Gyrfalcon/various giant birds?
What other medallions did we miss? Any of them particularly easy/hard/interesting to get?
Did we just take every wrong turn early on?

[Thaluikhain]

Thanks for hosting this.

Is there another way to find Mandrake Wolfsbane? The bit of paper saying "The Wolfsbane at the Street of the Forty Guilds..." suggests this, and is there any connection with the Wolfsbane on the saddle of the guy who offers us a ride and has us killed?

[Darth Rabbitt]

Oh, I totally forgot to thank you for the LP! Thanks.

[Beroli]

Thanks for hosting this! And I'm pleasantly surprised. When we didn't find a single Medallion and just seemed to be wandering randomly, I thought that was it for this playthrough.

But as far as questions go :

1. If you have the power of persuasion, does the gremlin who swallowed the key retrieve it for you? And do I want to know how?

Yes and probably not. The gamebook indicates you don't watch.

2. If a weapon can't be drawn in the shadow of the throne, why does nothing happen to Meghan-na-Durr after she pulls a dagger?

Something does. The "you drew a weapon there" bad ending has you living just long enough to see her die, since she drew a weapon right before you. And in the ending we just got, she turns to dust. The bad outcome for the entire gamebook is anarchy, not tyranny, since neither Chingiz nor Meghan ever actually had a chance to take the throne.

I misremembered the pattern on the alchemy (Eye of Newt+Volcanic Dust is also deadly), but there are six total powers you can get (and if you have two medallions, instead of the alchemy, you just randomly pick two of them). Change Metal (potentially making two orcs fight each other for gold instead of fighting you), Great Wisdom (the most useful for a ruler and, as far as I know, 100% useless in the test to become a ruler in this gamebook), and Fortune (auto-passing every Luck test you're ever expected to make for the rest of your life) are the ones we neither got nor saw mentioned. For the Test we probably got the best two.

[SGamerz]

1. If you have the power of persuasion, does the gremlin who swallowed the key retrieve it for you? And do I want to know how?

Yes and probably not. The gamebook indicates you don't watch.

To be precise, it's only mentioned that the Gremlin turns its back and there were some convulsions before he produces the key.

To add on, while you will save 4 STAMINA points (which you then promptly get back the next section after you meet Chingiz) for not having to smash the door down, you actually also don't receive the advice about the sword not being what holds a kingdom together for some reason, an advice which is relevant to your final choice, so I'm not even entirely sure it's the better option...unless you are REALLY short of STAMINA by that point, of course!

As Beroli mentioned, Great Wisdom is a power that's 100% useless from a game standpoint and was never checked. Maybe they should have the PC only receive the advice when he has this power instead? :shrug:

2. If a weapon can't be drawn in the shadow of the throne, why does nothing happen to Meghan-na-Durr after she pulls a dagger?

Something does. The "you drew a weapon there" bad ending has you living just long enough to see her die, since she drew a weapon right before you. And in the ending we just got, she turns to dust. The bad outcome for the entire gamebook is anarchy, not tyranny, since neither Chingiz nor Meghan ever actually had a chance to take the throne.

Yep, as mentioned, there is a consequence for her too, just that it seemed to be a delayed reaction. So you and her share the same fate if you draw your sword, which would leave Kazan without any prospective ruler, since none of the other Select seemed to have made it to Sharrabbas.

What other powers could we have gotten from the potions (or is it just the two we got and Persuasion)? Are any in particular really good and/or interesting?

This has been answered too:

I misremembered the pattern on the alchemy (Eye of Newt+Volcanic Dust is also deadly), but there are six total powers you can get (and if you have two medallions, instead of the alchemy, you just randomly pick two of them). Change Metal (potentially making two orcs fight each other for gold instead of fighting you), Great Wisdom (the most useful for a ruler and, as far as I know, 100% useless in the test to become a ruler in this gamebook), and Fortune (auto-passing every Luck test you're ever expected to make for the rest of your life) are the ones we neither got nor saw mentioned. For the Test we probably got the best two.

In fact, yes, it looks like what would have been the least useful power in real life becomes the most useful in the book, and vice versa. Invulnerability to Sword-strike is way too specific to be too useful in preventing assassination or even open warfare with so much variety of weapons in the world. The Ability to Change Metal Objectonly gets checked once, but it pretty much ensures your kingdom's financial wealth as long as you live since you can literally change lead to gold like every alchemist in history was seeking to do. The Power of Fortune is again practically useful in all senses, but you really only get told to test your luck once after getting it. However, depending on how you interpret its use, it can also be potentially the most useful as well, since the text was not specific in whether it can be used for battles. If it does, then it practically means you are guaranteed to do double damage and take half in all battles for the rest of the book (and of course rest of your life too), which would have boosted it immensely.

I guess the Power of Persuasion does get checked twice (which makes it relatively more useful compared to half of the other powers) and is legitimately useful especially for someone dealing in politics. Storm-bringing only gets checked once, but it's an important check, because not have it means you need to go through the toughest fight in the whole game (against a mad Necromancer transformed into dragon form, with SKILL 11). It's obviously cool and also useful realistically, but again seems to be specifically limited, since it doesn't even say if you have the power to end or negate a storm, which would have been hella more useful.

There seem to be a number of other skills that can be picked up over the course of the journey. Curious how many there are of those, and again if any were particularly useful.

In terms of pure skill, Necromancer-fighting ability is the only other one besides Darkfight. We can also learn the magic spell to use Treffilli, which can put an enemy to sleep (using 1 sprig) or turn ourselves invisible (2 sprigs).

There are actually a number of minor bugs regarding the skills and spells (none of them really game-breaking) that kind of shows that Sharp doesn't spend a lot of time planning out the little details in his books. Mainly, there are multiple sections that check for skills or spells that you cannot really have had the chance to learn. Darkfight was only checked like 3 times, and 1 of them was at an early point where it's not possible to have met Alkis Fearslicer yet (it was actually during the Yigenik skirmish with the Orcs, and we just missed hitting that). Another point it would be checked is inside the Korkut Maze, where it not possible for us to not have the skill (getting to Korkut always involves meeting Alkis). So the only check really necessary was actually another point where we almost went through: the encounter with the Mamlik while we were with Beshbalik's Marauders. If we'd tried to hide in the hut instead of staying with the crowd, he would have followed us, and we'd then have to fight him in the darkness of the hut.

Similarly. there are a lot of places we could have picked up Treffilli, but only 1 point where we actually get to learn how to use it, so majority of the sprigs that we can find during the game turn out to be useless because they don't lie in the same path as the one where we learn the spell. I will talk more about this when I post the pictures.

The woman with the dagger who wanted 25 gold for her help getting into the fortress, does paying her get us anything worthwhile?

She does deliver on her promise to help us get into the Fortress, but I'm not sure it's quite worth the price (although there aren't that many uses for gold by that point of the game anyway). The fastest way to get to the Heart of the Throne is actually with the help of Mandrake Wolfsbane and Geronicus. Getting into the Fortress is actually the longer route way to get there with its own risky encounters. Of course, using Geronicus' phial does carry the 25% chance of picking the Cross entrance and getting us captured (which did happen to us at 1 point).

It was strongly indicated (but not explicitly said) that she's probably a member of the local underworld/criminal society. They apparently also have a Mamlik turncoat/renegade working with them, and if you manage to not run away upon seeing him, the Mamlik confirms that you are not one of Chingiz's agents, which prompts the local thieves guild/criminal society to go through with their promise to reveal a hidden back entrance to the Fortress. As mentioned, you still need to find your way down into the Heart of the Throne once you get inside, so it's actually not as straightforward compared to using one of Geronicus' phials.

What’s up with Geronicus, who could apparently teach us how to fight Necromancers if we met him earlier?

Just that. He was sent by Astragal to help us potentially gain the ability to deal with Necromancers and fight them directly. However, learning the skill is NOT a definite thing even if we encounter him. We need to go through another trial-by-random-dice-roll similar to the Korkut pre-Maze test (but slightly less deadly), and navigate this grid:



So, similarly, our movements are determined by dice only and we need to get to one of the higher numbers (6-8) to learn the skill. We have 2 chances max, and the second chance requires us to sacrifice some LUCK.

Note that even learning the skill has its own issues. Having the skill is definitely useful, because they would help you survive against what would otherwise be an auto-fail section if we run afoul of Necromancers...but note that even when we DO get the chance to fight them hand-to-hand, we don't fight with our SKILL, but with the number level of the skill we scored during the test (as I mentioned, 6-8). And all the Necromancers that we can fight in this book are SKILL 9 or above, so...yeah, we'd still be at a disadvantage no matter what. It's still better than auto-fail, and some of the encounters have alternative ways to deal to them other than fighting, but still...not the most practically-utilized ability.

We may encounter Geronicus if we break away from the Yigeniks early without going through their trials. After we try to learn Necromancer fighting from him (whether we succeed or fail), he summons 3 giant eagles to carry us to 1 of the Mazes. We choose by the colour of the eagle (black, white or gold) without knowing which maze each will take us to. 1 will carry us to Bogomil, 1 to Uruz, and the last one gets attacked by predators and drops us after a short distance, causing us to continue on foot towards the encounter with Alkis and then on to Korkut.

Was it possible for us to get the medallion from the Orc or Gyrfalcon/various giant birds?
What other medallions did we miss? Any of them particularly easy/hard/interesting to get?

No, Yigenik is not one of the Medallions that was ever available to the PC. We always lose it to the Orc.

The 4 Medallions we can get in the book are Bogomil, Uruz, Korkut and Hulugu. The first 3 are also the 3 that have Mazes featured, and they are on mutually exclusive paths. Every time we exit a Maze (whether we get the Medallion or not) we are contacted by one of Astragal's agents telling us that all the Medallions have been taken. In our case, it was Adana, but in most cases it'd be a talking bird. I think that's a pretty neat mechanism to indicate that other events are going on at the same time, and while we focus on 1 Medallion, others are busy getting the ones we're not.

Hulugu is the odd one out. We never get anywhere near it, but has the chance of encountering a dying woman who was one of the Select and managed to get the Medallion. She would give it to us before we die. She's the only way we can obtain more than 1 Medallion.

We never get anywhere near Kazilik's Maze, or Medallion.

Did we just take every wrong turn early on?

Wrong or right turns are very loosely-defined in this book because it's so open-ended, but we probably would have a slightly easier time with Bogomil's maze, or even Uruz, because they are more like standard mazes with compass direction for us to navigate. We might still not find the Medallions, but we'd not have been completely at the mercy of the dice. And both of the other Mazes have a "formula" to them that we may have the chance to find out (both of them basically involve us alternating between the same 2 directions over and over again to find the Medallion), so the initial paths we took could have gone better. I think we might have been better not not going through with the Yigenik trial at all since we couldn't have gotten the Medallion. There were also a few minor "wrong turns" that mostly just take us through unnecessary fights that lead to STAMINA loss or extra Poison units, like for example turning right while we were chasing the Orc got us into an extra fight with the Dark Elf that went on to redirect us to the other section anyway. But most of them don't do too much to change our course.

Is there another way to find Mandrake Wolfsbane? The bit of paper saying "The Wolfsbane at the Street of the Forty Guilds..." suggests this, and is there any connection with the Wolfsbane on the saddle of the guy who offers us a ride and has us killed?

Yes, he has a shop at the Street of the Forty Guilds, and his sign is the Crossed Keys (probably a locksmith).



If we get there, we need to choose the right sign to enter. And there are also multiple clues in that book that point us to him. The dying woman who could have given us the Hulugu Medallion would also have told us to look for Wolfsbane at the Crossed Keys.

As to the trap option that killed us, nothing was ever explained. My best guess is that Chingiz or his agents also heard some vague hint about Wolfsbane but didn't manage to find out who or where he was, so they settled for setting a trap with the name to lure people in.

Tomorrow, I will post a bit more about the other stuff we missed (including the other Mazes) and the remaining pictures.

[SGamerz]

So, going through the book, I think we missed more pics than I first thought. Let's start with the ones that we actually came close to getting on the route we took on this playthrough:



That's the Korkut Medallion that we did not find in the Maze (if you look closely you can see the snake symbol on the Medallion), guarded by 2 Fiends. This is where we could also have used flowers to "bribe" the Fiends and avoid combat (1 flower needed per Fiend). It's at Section 358, only a few sections before the Maze's exit. Also, if we find the Medallion, we can immediately exit the Maze without having to roll further.



Also in the Maze, this is something we were lucky to have missed. It's just a simple snake-pit trap. We have to get to the exit and use the dice to determine how many times we get bitten in the process.



We also get to see a picture of the Yigenik Medallion even though we never get our hands on it. If we took the "cautiously" way when we pursued the Orc into the house, we encounter a Necromancer who apparently summons 2 panthers to guard the Medallion against us. Curiously, we don't have to fight the Necromancer (not that we could have learnt how to do so at this point). His aim was just to delay us, and after we defeat the panthers, we discover that the whole scene is an illusion, we just killed 2 rats, and the Medallion is long gone.



This is what we see if we'd joined the crowd to watch the procession on the street of Sharrabbas. Yes, this is the only other time we actually lay eyes on Chingiz. Not that we can do anything to him or interact with him in any way. What happens in the section is that you get to hear another person describing the scene to his blind companion, and in the process he will also point out 2 other men, one of whom is Mandrake Wolfsbane, whom you can then attempt to follow to the Street of the Forty Guilds. The other one is named Vetch, who is dressed in adventurer gear, and it's also possible for the PC to have heard about him as a possible source of help earlier in the adventure. But unlike Wolfsbane, Vetch is a trap option. There's really no explanation of who he really is or what his motivations are, other than that he's quite known and respected by the locals, and the man describing the scene even said that "if he were Vetch, he'd kill Chingiz right now". But whether he's really Chingiz's enemy or secret agent, he's apparently not on the side of the Select, because if you approach him for help he just leads you somewhere and asks you to wait...and then you get attacked by 2 Ogres and he apparently just disappeared. If you distrust him and follow him instead of wait, you catch him unchaining a Gargoyle with and Orc, the Gargoyle attacks you, and he flees with the Orc. The entire sequence was unexplained and weird.



These are the witches who could have taught us the magic words to use Treffilli. The whole thing begins on the very initials path you choose from. One of those take you to Owlshriek Forest (you can see it on the map). There, you can get captured by the outlaw huntresses of the forest for trespassing, and make you go through tests for their amusement and your survival. You may get imprisoned with a witch, who will find some Treffilli on your clothing (stuck on while you were going through the forest), and use it to turn both of you invisible so you can escape. To return you the favour for bringing the sprigs to her, she brings you to the coven of 3 in the picture.

Using Treffilli also drains your STAMINA each time, supposedly 3 points per sprig used...but the book is actually weirdly inconsistent on that point, and at several points where you use it later you actually lose a variable amount of STAMINA each time. Another thing points to Luke Sharp (or the editor) not really paying much attention to the details and losing track of the established rules.



Another useful item that we missed (and which seem to be better-managed than Darkfight or Treffilli, in the sense that we're never checked for it on paths where it's not possible to have got it) is the Gray Talon of Sakar. Again, it's a very early encounter. I think we missed that when we took the path that brought us into encounter with the Yigeniks. We get it from the tribe of Birdmen shown in the above picture, who call themselves the
Boulyanthrops. We can save one of them from a giant fanged worm, and after that, if we reveal ourselves as one of the Select, they will help us. The Talon can summon any winged creature within range to assist us. Other than that, they also help us with the Uruz Maze: we are given a spell (and number references to turn to) that we can use when we reach the maze:



Uruz's clan animal is the Bull, and their Maze guardians are the classic Minotaurs, who are released into the Maze before we enter. If you look at the top left hand corner, you see a bird standing on top of a symbol there. With the Talon, the bird's spirit will explicitly tell us that the symbol is the key to the maze which, as far as I can tell, means that the maze can be navigated via and east/south directional pattern. We can also get a similar clue about the diagram in another earlier encounter, where we help an old sorceress recover her gold from some Hellhounds.

The Talon also helps us in quite a few later encounters, although we didn't go through any of them in our playthrough. While we're in the Maze, there are also signs that Chingiz's agents are also trying to get in and steal the Medallion. We may even encounter a Mamlik who manage to dig through into the maze with the help of a Goblin after tricking him into believing that there's gold to be found there (and then promptly stabbed him in the back once they get in). The Mamlik then proceed to get trampled by one of the Minotaurs, whom we then have to fight. After we exit the Maze, we get tracked down by some Sniffer Orcs, and there we may use the Talon to summon one of the Birdmen to carry us to safety.

On the subject of Mazes and the formula to navigating them, Bogomil's Maze is actually the easiest to find, and it also has a similar formula: repeated west and north directions until we reach the Medallion. For this one, there are also a couple of encounters where we can learn about it. One of them was with a Bandit Leader who used to be one of the Select, but decided he liked his current life better, and we can buy that secret from him with gold. Another encounter with a beggar, who will tell us the same secret in exchange for slightly less gold, is more mysterious. If we spend the night in his hut at his invitation, he disappears the next day....and we wake to find a Mamlik Assassin standing over us about to kill us:



There are a few pictures of Mamliks in the book (the only things that tell us what they look like), although we seem to have missed them all. If we managed to get nicked by another assassin's dagger, we need to double our Poison unit increment every time! For this encounter, we can also grab one of his rings in the ensuing struggle, which we can later sell at the trading post of use it to trick an Orc patrol into letting us pass.



Here's another Mamlik we can encounter within the Bogomil maze itself. The half-human face here is because he was disguised as a woman, but something went wrong and half his face peeled off and we were thus able to identify him. The Mamliks are constantly found to be in disguise throughout the book. In fact, that "hurdy-gurdy man" that Drukkah rejected as an additional customer was also a Mamlik in disguise (there's a possibility that we might have met him first, and he could try to hypnotize us with a musical spell before killing us).

The "formula" wasn't the only possible path to the Bogomil Medallion, but it was the optimal path because we would also find individual words along that path that would eventually form a sentence that says "THE MEDALLION WEIGHS TEN GOLD PIECES", which tells us how much gold we need to substitute for the Medallion's weight when we find it and allow us to take it without triggering a trap.

We can also encounter another of the Select in the maze, and here we learn that by tradition, the Select need to fight each other upon encounter in the Maze because only one of them can claim the Medallion.



One more picture of a Mamlik Assassin. This one is triggered when we visit a shop in Korkut and are dropped into an underground stream via a trapdoor.



This is a picture we could potentially have see after we got captured for picking the Cross entrance but was able to fight an defeat the Necromancer. There are also other ways to get here, since there were a few ways we can end up getting captured in Sharrabbas. It doesn't kill us outright, but our captors try to end us by throwing us off the Fortress wall and then throwing rocks and pouring boiling oil after us. We can survive with the help of the Gray Talan of Sakar (summons a bird that catches us and bring us down safely) or having a Medallion (which somehow causes us to float down safely)...or just pass a LUCK test, all of which ends to us landing safely on a ledge where we manage to kick a hole in the wall (!) and enter the Fortress. Greatest warrior or not, the PC is certainly a great kicker.



Another Necromancer encounter, and as you can see she's summoning undead to attack us. If we haven't learnt how to fight her, the Gray Talon again helps us survive (Birdman carries us to safety), or Trefilli can turn us invisible and enable us to escape.



Yet another Necromancer (this one only a tiny figure in the distance) but one that wasn't able to locate us in the crowd, even though he could sense our presence, so in a rage he decides to summon a huge tidal flood to kill everyone in the vicinity.



This frozen warrior posted beside a bridge across a chasm isn't the type of guardian that attacks passerbys - he doesn't need to. To lower the bridge, we need to pass another of those random dice trials so that we can throw a metal ball on chain into a hole in the obelisk beside him. It's an unremarkable encounter in itself, but it's one we need to pass if we want to encounter the dying woman who can pass us the Hulugu Medallion.

The remaining pictures are just random and minor/inconsequential encounters with random creatures or people.



This is an Yigenik knight. It's a late encounter completely unrelated to the Yigenik Maze or Medallion. Basically, the knights are holding a tournament and one of them was injured (I think...my memory of this is vague) and you are asked to be a replacement. Each joust we win earns us some gold, and losing one means we're out of the game and take some minor damage.



This is some weird Gnarled Oak that, as you can tell from the picture, feasts on people. Another early encounter that's close to where we may meet Geronicus.



This is a random battle with a "Khomatad". I believe Alkis briefly mentioned them, but other than that I have no idea what they are (and if Luke Sharp does, he doesn't tell us), other than the fact that the picture doesn't look entirely human, so it's another of those random new species created by the author.



This is a Kazanid guard we may encounter after we get into the Fortress.



This is the last one, which pretty cool, I think, but there really isn't much to it other than that we get captured by them and have to find a way to escape. I'm not entirely sure who they are, but they probably work for Chingiz or his agents in some manner.

And that's all the pictures in the book!

[Thaluikhain]

This is a random battle with a "Khomatad". I believe Alkis briefly mentioned them, but other than that I have no idea what they are (and if Luke Sharp does, he doesn't tell us), other than the fact that the picture doesn't look entirely human, so it's another of those random new species created by the author.

Ok, that's probably a spear, but on first glance it looked like a parasol in their right hand they are going to float down with, and I can't unsee that.