The Citadel of Chaos: After Dirk

     Kylltrog woke up with a pounding headache. Third day in a row. He really was sick. He felt like throwing up, but he hadn't eaten in two days. He got up and made his complaints to Drethlek. Drethlek laughed at him.

     "You complaining to me?" she said scornfully. Being little more than a collection of a centipede bodies and a human head, Drethlek had little sympathy for the bodily problems of others. This was popularly held as the reason Balthus Dire had put her in charge of labor complaints.

     "I really need a herbalist," Kylltrog persisted.

      Dethrak hissed disapprovingly. "The herbalist came for you yesterday."

      Kylltrog squinted his ghastly multi-pupiled eyes, "Herbalist? I didn't see an herbalist."

      Dethrak rolls her eyes. "Gasvak and Lydrem said he came in yesterday. Asked for you by name."

     Kylltrog frowned at this. "Didn't see him."

     Dethrak bobbed her head. "Maybe he got lost. Could still be around."

     Kylltrog nodded his spiked neck. "I'll go look."

     Gasvak and Lydrem said that the herbalist was a human of some kind. Very slender of build and unimpressive in stature. The imps in the temple said he ruined their milk. The butler gibbered incoherently about the eyes in the walls. A huge number of partygoers have memories of a human attendent. A bold and championing man, or maybe woman, who won knifey-kinfey and runestone. Even the usually statuesque suits of armor pointed out a doorway.

    Kylltrog eventually found the herbalist in the chamber of Naz'groth's triplets. The three little tykes were making costumes from the human's skin. They insisted they hadn't killed her, but found her like this. Kylltrog frowned at this. He searched the human's backpack for the useful herbs, but found only weeds. Weeds easily picked from the mountains nearby.

     "This was no herbalist!" Kylltrog screeched. The triplets' ears bled from the noise.

     Within a day Balthus Dire had trapped the soul of Dirk Hope in a magic ring and begun the torture. Within a week, he knew all that Dirk had to tell. Within a fortnight, the assassination was public knowledge not only in the Citadel, but in the Vale of Willow.

     Backed into a corner, the King was forced to either admit to such ungracious subterfuge... or go to war.

     There were few survivors in the Vale of Willow. Beasts and monsters settled the land, and their reach spread as far as the forests of Yore. They breached the college there without difficulty, only to find it abandoned. The Grand Wizard of Yore and his students were gone, abandoning the world to its fate.

*          *          *

     Welp. Another one dead.

     This book is a big improvement over The Warlock of Firetop Mountain. There's a rich vein of humorous strangeness running through it as the enemy monsters go about their lives. Guards that can be bluffed into apologizing for being asleep on the job, games of deadly chance, harmless children, it's all a lot more lived in and interesting. I still have serious questions about what the architecth was thinking in laying out the rooms, even before the seemingly random placement of interior features.

     The spells are a great new addition. They allow for interesting choices in character creation, and dynamic moments in the story. They falter a bit in execution in that there seem to be places where 'if you don't have and pick the right spell you're just dead. Better to have spells make life easier or avoid damage, but not be an instant life/death switch.

     But, I really only ran into one such situation. Because I checked, and having Levitaiton would still not save me from the Ganjees. That room was just unfair in a way I tend to expect closer to the end of these stories.

     The spells were brought up again in Sorcery, something of a spin off quadrilogy by Steve Jackson. Sorcery's system's a bit more intricate when it comes to the spells, but that's for another time. Sorcery's books are not presently on my list of FF to get through, as they weren't numbered. While they have the FF label, they're also linked as a series of adventures that follow one from the other, so I feel they'd be better served by an effort to not just stop at first death.

     Let's take a look at Mr. Dire himself...

Pppff... that hair!

     I dig it. Nice buff demi-sorcerer (still don't know what that is) who can kick your teeth out without his spells. I did a little poking around his scene, and it's good. Some nice combats and decent opportunities for spells and trickery. Real sense of the space to. Solid stuff.

     My favorite detail might be the rat hole Nicholson put in the bottom right.

     When I finished The Warlock of Firetop Mountain I really wanted to go on to the next one. Finishing The Citadel of Chaos I find I would quite like to try it again. I suppose that says it all.

     Next up, we're back in Ian Livingstone's hands for The Forest of Doom.