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

[Queen of Swords]

Sure, trading post sounds as good a choice as any.

[SGamerz]

You look around the trading post. Tacked up on the walls are signs proclaiming that 'We buy anything'. You will probably need gold in a city like Sharrabbas. Do you have anything to trade? You read one of the signs:

Yellow Gem 2 gold coins
Red Gem 5 gold coins
Green Gem 10 gold coins
Blue Gem 15 gold coins
Any ring 5 gold coins

If you decide to do any deals at these prices, mark the changes on your Adventure Sheet. You come out of the trading-post and bumps into a small, bedraggled boy. He offers his services as a guide for 2 gold coins. Do you accept? If you refuse his offer, then turn to 318.

The sign claims that they buy anything, but apparently they really only buy 5 things. Unfortunately, we don't have any of these.

Do we want to pay for the guide?

[JourneymanN00b]

Sure, I vote to pay for the guide.

[Queen of Swords]

Let alone medallions, we didn't even find a single gem.

Pay for the guide, why not. This adventure feels hopelessly lost; might as well see what random event happens next.

[Thaluikhain]

Pay for guide, hopefully that skips more blind choices.

[SGamerz]

You agree to take him on, and he stands there, determined to have his money in advance. You get out your bag of gold coins, when suddenly another small boy runs past you and grabs it; they both disappear into the crowd. Deduct all the gold coins you have, except your lucky piece.

I guess the moral of Qulan's story is that you shouldn't accept the help of anyone that asks you for money. Twice in a row it hasn't gone well. Meanwhile, the people who don't ask for payment (Flaxwort, Drukkah, etc) are the ones who have been genuine.

There is a large crowd of people in front of you watching a procession, but you cannot see anything where you are standing. Do you push through the crowd or ignore it and head for the Fortress?

Do we still love the crowd?

Adventure Sheet:
[spoiler]Name: Qulan Gal
SKILL 10/10
STAMINA 12/18
LUCK 11/11
Poison: 20/24
Equipment: Sword, Leather Armor, Potion of Fortune (+1 to Initial LUCK, restores LUCK to new Initial value), Flower, Treffilli (2 sprigs)
Provisions: 1
Gold: 1 (sewn into boot, lucky piece)
Abilities: Darkfight
Medallions:
Extra Lives unlocked: 5/8 remaining
No. of deaths/failures: 3
[/spoiler]

[Darth Rabbitt]

It feels like we’ve just been making every wrong choice.

Anyhow, head to the fortress because the people in this town are assholes.

[Thaluikhain]

I vote to see what the crowd is seeing.

[Beroli]

Head for the fortress. We're too poisoned to sightsee.

[JourneymanN00b]

Holy jeez is Qulan Gal getting the middle finger in this book. I vote to head for the Fortress, as time is running out for our hero due to the heavy poison that he already has.

[Queen of Swords]

It feels like we’ve just been making every wrong choice.

Yeah, and we don't even get the option to chase down the little thieves. This bites.

Go to the fortress, I suppose.

[SGamerz]

You walk towards the Fortress. The only visible way in seems to entail climbing a long staircase of stone steps that are guarded by a dozen bored-looking Orcs with a Mamlik captain. You know immediately that you cannot attempt this route. You look around and notice a woman standing by a tall obelisk and carrying a large basket of flowers. She waves to you. Do you approach her or carry on looking for another way into the stronghold?

If we don't have time to sight-see, do we have the time to haggle for flowers?

[Darth Rabbitt]

Approach her.

[JourneymanN00b]

I vote to approach her. Maybe we can masquerade as a local florist in order to get past the guards?

[Queen of Swords]

Approach her. Maybe this will be the start of a fulfilling new career in ikebana.

[Thaluikhain]

Approach her, hopefully to start a plan of orc deceiving by way of flowers.

[SGamerz]

You walk over to the obelisk. The woman is young and strong, and you notice a sheathed dagger under her cloak. She asks you if you wish to enter the Fortress, adding that she doesn't want to know why, but she knows people who could help, 'for a price'. You ask how much and she replies, "Twenty-five gold coins." Have you got this much, and do you think you can trust her anyway or do you prefer to carry on alone?

Unfortunately, we couldn't have afforded her aid even if our hold hadn't been stolen.

You set off behind a cart. trying to look as much as possible like one of the locals. There are numerous Orc patrols and you pass the the occasional Mamlik. Suddenly, a small bird lands on your shoulder, then hops to the ground and into a quiet alley. You follow it and stare as it scrawls the 'A' rune, the sign for Astragal, in the dirt. You watch in amazement as the bird proceeds to write a complete message from the wizard.

"I hope this winged messenger reaches you in time. If you have not already done so, contact one Mandrake Wolfsbane and no other. He is usually to be found smoking a large smelly pipe at the Dragon's Wings Tavern - where my absent-minded brother wizard, Geroniicus, will be signaling unceasingly from its chimney with puffs of smoke." The bird then hops over the message, erases it with its wings and flies away.

You stay and rest in the shadows for a few hours, before setting out to follow the trail of smoky puffs and find the tavern.

The Dragon's Wings Tavern is packed. Several fires are blazing, but the smokiest corner is that part of the room where an old man is sitting with a box on his lap. By his side is another, puffing at a smelly pipe. You head for the pair of them. If you have not met them before, the man with the pipe looks at you carefully then holds out a small crystal that glows red. He introduces himself as Mandrake Wolfsbane and his companion as Geronicus. (If you have met the absent-minded Mage before, he does not recognize you now.)

You sit down and Mandrake begins to bried you."Chingiz has tried to spellbreak the ancient secret entrances to the Fortress. Geronicus alone possesses a set of the phials that point the way and open the hidden gates for the Select. All the others have been taken by the devilish Necromancers who are trying to discover the secrets of the Throne. You are the last hope of the Kazanids; you must enter the Fortress, with a Medallion of without, and sit on the Throne, in order to rid us of the evil Chingiz and his deadly daughter, Meghan-na-Durr. Now, look into your heart and choose a phial."

Which phial do you choose:

The Dagger?
The Half-Moon?
The Cross?
The Holy Triangle?

Geronicus is in fact the person who could have taught us how to fight Necromancers..

Adventure Sheet:
[spoiler]Name: Qulan Gal
SKILL 10/10
STAMINA 12/18
LUCK 11/11
Poison: 20/24
Equipment: Sword, Leather Armor, Potion of Fortune (+1 to Initial LUCK, restores LUCK to new Initial value), Flower, Treffilli (2 sprigs)
Provisions: 1
Gold: 1 (sewn into boot, lucky piece)
Abilities: Darkfight
Medallions:
Extra Lives unlocked: 6/9 remaining
No. of deaths/failures: 3
[/spoiler]

[Queen of Swords]

Dagger is out, because of the Mamlik dagger. And I'm leaning away from Holy Triangle unless the story so far has made it clear that triangles really are sacred. Otherwise this sounds like naming the potion "Safe Good Potion".

So it comes down to either Half-Moon or Cross. I'll go with Cross.

[Thaluikhain]

Hmm, we've encountered a piece of paper that mentions the Wolfsbane here, and sorta encountered an insta-kill from someone with Wolfsbane on their saddle, which gets us stabbed in the back by something...but that doesn't help.

Half vote for half moon.

[JourneymanN00b]

I vote for the Cross.

[Darth Rabbitt]

I think I'll go with the cross.

[Beroli]

Half-moon.

[SGamerz]

Geronicus hands you the phial, which you drink while they lead you through various back-streets to Fortress. You feel a stabbing pain in your shoulder as you are pulled against your will towards a sheer rock-face. You pass through the rock, but when you reach the other side you fall to your knees in agony (deduct 2 points from your STAMINA, 1 point from your SKILL and mark off 2 Poison units). You realize that something is dreadfully wrong. Suddenly a Necromancer stands before you, staff in hand. He speaks to you in a hoarse, rough voice: "Yes, we have found this entrance and tainted it with the Black Poison of Lisz. Now, proud adventurer, you DIE!" If you do not have Necromancer fighting ability, your quest ends here in dreadful agony and death. If you have the skill to fight the shadowy beings, turn to 365.

I just gotta hand it to you guys: there was actually only ONE bad option out of the list of 4 and you just had to pick that one!

And it might not have been a totally blind choice either, since there's a path where the PC may overhear from enemies that they have spell-broken the Cross entrance, although of course we did not go by that route.

Rewinding again, and I'm won't wait for votes on the other 3 options, since they're actually all good and all redirect to the same section. We'll just take the half-moon which got 1.5 votes.

All three of you leave the Dragons' Wings by a back door. Through various back-streets you approach ever closer to the Fortress. Geronicus hands over the phial you have chosen and you drink it, feeling it do you good. Standing in front of a rock-face, you are drawn through the stone. Unseen forces then lead you down an ancient corridor until eventually you come to a halt.

You stand in front of a torchlit panel showing six circles with, on each, the drawing of an animal: the Bull of Uruz; the Eagle of Hulugu; the Fangtiger of Yigenik; the Snake of Korkut; the Horse of Bogomil and the Dragon of Kazilik. If you do not possess a Medallion, turn to 61. If you have one or more Medallion, choose one and place it on the appropriate niche. Then deduct the number 642 from the number on the back of the Medallion you have chosen, and go to the paragraph with that number.

This is the only place where the PC learns all the 6 animals that represent the 6 clans, I believe.

We have no Medallion...

You hear a deep booming voice. "Your paths will be hard, you must be brave and have faith in your true purpose." Torches suddenly flare up, to reveal a large circular room with two doors on the far side. Between you and them, however, stands a very large black bull. It snorts and stamps, then lowers its head and charges. You pull off your cloak and hold your sword ready.

BLACK BULL SKILL 7 STAMINA 8

If you survive, do you leave by the left-hand door or would you prefer to go out through the right-hand door?

...and that actually means the PC has the chance to see the clan animals up close. Basically, with the Medallion we get to skip a whole section where we fight our way past the various animals. Mercifully, it looks like these fights don't increase our Poison units (we're just 4 away from death), so we might still get through this.

COMBAT LOG:
Black Bull 15, Qulang Gal 16. BB is at 6.
BB 10, QG 18. BB is at 4.
BB 11, QG 16. BB is at 2.
BB 13, QG 15. BB is defeated.

Which way do we go after that? I don't think it's too much of a spoiler to reveal that it just determines which clan animal we encounter.

Adventure Sheet:
[spoiler]Name: Qulan Gal
SKILL 10/10
STAMINA 12/18
LUCK 11/11
Poison: 20/24
Equipment: Sword, Leather Armor, Potion of Fortune (+1 to Initial LUCK, restores LUCK to new Initial value), Flower, Treffilli (2 sprigs)
Provisions: 1
Gold: 1 (sewn into boot, lucky piece)
Abilities: Darkfight
Medallions:
Extra Lives unlocked: 5/9 remaining
No. of deaths/failures: 4
[/spoiler]

[Beroli]

Right-hand door.

[Darth Rabbitt]

Right is as fine as any other direction.