[Let's Play] Fighting Fantazine Adventure 5: Bones of the Banished

[JourneymanN00b]

Use Luck to deal extra damage.

[Queen of Swords]

Agreed.

[Beroli]

Round One: George Dragonslayer 17, Longspike 18, Tyrannosaurus Rex 20. George Dragonslayer Stamina 11.
Round Two: George Dragonslayer 19, Longspike 20, Tyrannosaurus Rex 20.
Round Three: George Dragonslayer 20, Longspike 16, Tyrannosaurus Rex 17, Luck Test succeeds with an 8. Tyrannosaurus Rex Stamina 21.
Round Four: George Dragonslayer 19, Longspike 19, Tyrannosaurus Rex 20. Longspike Stamina 12.
Round Five: George Dragonslayer 18, Longspike 22, Tyrannosaurus Rex 16, Luck Test succeeds with a 5. Tyrannosaurus Rex Stamina 15.
Round Six: George Dragonslayer 17, Longspike 18, Tyrannosaurus Rex 20. George Dragonslayer Stamina 7.

A horn blasts in the distance behind you to the east. You turn to face a veritable battalion of Lizard Men charging towards you, each mounted on a lumbering, spiky beast. The buyers that Valgrek was going to sell your enslaved people to have arrived to claim their goods! You do not have long before they are upon you.

You do have delayed companions.

One of whom is a brontosaurus.

All seems lost when another call answers from the west! Stampeding towards you is an enormous four-legged beast with a long neck and an even longer tail – the Thunder Lizard! It has refused to give up the pursuit and has caught up to you at last. Seeing your predicament, the colossal creature rushes past you and charges into the incoming Lizard Men riders, who scatter and flee at the sudden and awesome attack. Your other companions jump off it as it runs by and come to assist you.

Round Seven: George Dragonslayer 21, Longspike 22, Tyrannosaurus Rex 21. Tyrannosaurus Rex Stamina 13.
Round Eight: George Dragonslayer 22, Longspike 19, Tyrannosaurus Rex 21, Luck Test succeeds with a 7. Tyrannosaurus Rex Stamina 9.

You do not have a javelin. To dislodge the Slaver Gem, you must climb up the Tyrant King's scaly hide to cut it free. The gamebook doesn't offer you a choice about attempting this, so, Test your Skill three times: a 6, 6, and 10 all succeed!

Your blow strikes home and dislodges the Slaver Gem. The moment it falls free, its evil hold over the Tyrant King is broken. The red glow fades from the creature’s gaze as it slowly recovers its wits. Released from its magical bondage, the terrible beast roars in fury and shakes its harness loose. It then turns from you and stalks towards Valgrek, who lies sprawled in the dirt. Even the shaman’s most powerful spell cannot hope to defend against the anger of the Tyrant King; he is gobbled up in one terrible bite and swallowed whole. Revenged for its enslavement, the monster strides away into the open plains where it can reign supreme once more.

With Valgrek’s death, the influence of the Slaver Gem is broken once and for all. The Oldbone warriors drop their weapons and run screaming into the wilderness. The enslaved beasts that were pulling the prison cages wrench out of their yokes and lumber away, shaking out the last vestiges of dark magic from their frilled heads.

You find the evil artefact lying in the dirt and pick it up. Its pulsing red light slowly fades until you are holding a harmless lump of grey stone. Tossing it over your shoulder, you set to work on freeing your people from the cages.

Soon the Boneridge tribe is reunited once more. They gather around you and listen as you recall your amazing adventure, from the sun-scorched northern plains to the cold, lifeless tombs of Celenasia. At the conclusion of your incredible story, the entire tribe is in agreement – YOU are declared the next warrior-chieftain of the tribe! The Rite of Banishment has ended at last. You begin the long journey back home, the entire tribe united under your leadership.

The End.

[JourneymanN00b]

Thank you for running this, Beroli. It was certainly much harder than it needed to be, and I am glad that we are finally done with the adventure.

[Queen of Swords]

Thanks for running this! It was tough but interesting. Some questions :

1. Can this be won without the brontosaurus?
2. Was there anything of value in the holes in Oldbone Gorge?
3. We can get both the silver headband and the javelin if we have trophies to trade for them, but is there a way to get two trophies?

[Beroli]

1) Certainly; you only need to win two consecutive rounds and then successfully dislodge the Slaver Gem. For that matter, there was only a 50% chance Kuwi would be injured going the way that encounters Sefu; if she had not been injured your Attack Strength would have been equal to the T-rex's. (At least for a little while; if she had been actively participating in the fight then the determination of who the T-rex attacked would have gone: 1-3 means 4 damage to you; 4-5 means 4 damage to Longspike; 6 means Kuwi is badly injured and needs to drop out of the fight.)
2) In the holes, yes: the Charm of Endurance you got by rescuing Udeme. If you had gone right in that cave complex first and been able to explore more you could have encountered the Oldbone chieftain, who would have attacked you, shouting a hint for later about your tribe having stolen his followers. If you had beaten him, you would have gotten the Chieftain's Crown trophy.
3) Yes. When you drink at the water where you saw the antelope, if you had rolled a 1, you would have been attacked by a starving lion. The fact that he was starving and desperate was the only hint the gamebook gave you that you should not skin him for the Tattered Lion pelt; it's useless for trading and if you offer it to the spirits later it offends them so badly that no matter what else you offer, they won't respond. But if you had rolled a 4-5, you would instead have encountered a Struthiomimus, which you could have chosen to attack, and the Struthiomimus Skull is a real and valuable trophy. If you had rolled a 6, you would have been attacked by a Pterodactyl, and the Pterodactyl Wing is also a real and valuable trophy. So you had a 50% chance of getting a trophy there, but you rolled the antelope, the only pure noncombat encounter, both times you were there.

However...

One of the bugs in the gamebook that I fixed, is that though it asks at the end "do you have a javelin?" there is actually no way at all to get a javelin. Every chance you had to get a javelin (being able to choose one at the start instead of a rope or torch, being able to trade for one, being able to use the Oldbone Spear as one instead of as a trophy) was something I added.

If your Delays had been higher, you would have first had to fight Oldbone warriors. Using the Halcyon Crystal would have freed them from Valgrek's control, but, finding themselves in front of a Boneridge warrior, they would have continued attacking anyway.

If your Delays had been higher still, you would have first had to fight three Lizard Men, then the Oldbone warriors, then Ogmil and so on. This encounter was why I kept asking you to indicate you wanted to use the Halcyon Crystal, because if you try to use it while facing the Lizard Men, they knock it away and you don't have it for any of the subsequent battles. (They are, of course, not controlled by the Slaver Gem; their desire to own and possibly skin your people is entirely of their own free will and thus not affected at all by the Halcyon Crystal.)

If Ogmil doesn't knock Valgrek off the T-rex, the fight is largely the same except that Valgrek blasts you for one unavoidable point of damage each round. When you knock the Slaver Gem down, Valgrek falls with it if he hasn't fallen already, and the T-rex still eats him. If you kill the T-rex instead of knocking the Slaver Gem away, it falls on Valgrek and crushes him.

[Queen of Swords]

Thanks for the answers!

One more question. If we interrupt Vendictus to ask for his help, what happens?

[Beroli]

He grumbles about people today being impatient and tells you where to find the Slaver Gem. You only get one Delays instead of two for talking to him, but you don't get the Halcyon Crystal, which makes the rest of the adventure vastly harder.

[Queen of Swords]

It's weird how such supposedly good characters would rather risk the villain winning than let the hero get away with slightly discourteous behavior in a high-stress situation.

Thanks again!

[Beroli]

I think the implication is that Vendictus isn't particularly sane, being an ancient ghost. If you let him ramble he eventually remembers the Halcyon Crystal; if you push him to get to the point he only answers the question you know to ask, about where the Slaver Gem is.

I appreciate the thanks!

[Thaluikhain]

Thanks for running.

And that was a lot of deaths reaching the end, though not a record.