Lone Wolf - Books 13-20

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13. The Plague Lords of Ruel - Score = 7.5   Tier = Good

Sections: 350
Attempts to Beat: 8

Alright! After quite a bit of a layoff from this series, it's time to get back to some of that good-good Lone Wolf action from venerable author Joe Dever! And the first book in this, the "Grand Master" portion of the series, I found to be....... quite good! (Although I felt like it could have been much more). The story opens very strongly, as we learn that in the 5 years after the defeat of the evil Darklords seen in the events of the previous book, The Masters of Darkness, our Lone Wolf character is now a Kai Grand Master. Not only that, but he has spent those years rebuilding the Kai order back at the monastery in Sommerlund, and has even recruited a fair number of Kai initiates that he has been training so that the ways of the Kai will live on even after he is gone. In spite of the world of Magnamund having moved on from the Darklord threat, it is still undergoing the process of rebuilding, and it wouldn't be much of an adventure without a quest to undertake. Fortunately we are given such a task when we are visited by an old friend of ours, Lord Rimoah, who has learned through a captured enemy agent, that the Cener Druids who rule the nearby small kingdom of Ruel (I guess they "rule Ruel"), are currently undertaking a dastardly plan. It would seem the druids, who worship the gods of pestilence and decay, are concocting a deadly plague virus deep inside their main fortress of Mogaruith, which once finished, they plan to unleash on the rest of Magnamund, having first given themselves the antidote, which would kill most if not all of the rest of the population. This is obviously a dire threat, so Rimoah asks Lone Wolf (knowing he will say yes) if he is willing to venture alone to Ruel, sneak into Mogaruith, find where the plague is being developed, and somehow destroy it. I immediately did have to wonder why the whole of Magnamund would not have been immediately mobilized to remove this catastrophic threat that would affect everyone rather than just send one person, even if that one person IS the most badass warrior in the world. But this is one of the first rules of gamebooks (why send an overwhelming force when you could only send one guy?), but the book does at least attempt to give a reason for this, and I had no problem going along with it, even if it did feel unlikely that the Druids could have repelled the rest of Magnamund. You agree to the quest of course, are taken to the border of Ruel by another of your old friends, Banedon and his flying ship, where you then set off to accomplish your goal alone and on foot.

As far as opening premises go, I thought this was great. While yes, you are once again invading an enemy stronghold, at least it is not to assassinate someone this time, and I thought the destroying of a plague virus was a nice fresh twist on the formula, as was having your enemy attempt to use biological warfare as opposed to calling forth some unstoppable demon for example. But now I need to turn to the rules, and oh boy, this is where the head scratching started. First off comes the all important Combat Skill stat, which is arrived at for new players by choosing a number from the Random Number Table (or rolling a 10 sided die) and then adding 25. Hang on a second, add 25? Wasn't it add 10 in the previous books? You are also told you "can" carry your Lone Wolf scores over from those previous books should you have played them (can I carry over my items but re-roll my scores then?), but doing that would put you at a serious Combat Skill disadvantage would it not? Maybe this was meant to balance out newer players not having access to the powerful Sommerswerd and its +8 to Combat, but not all players who played some of the previous books would have the Sommerswerd either (and anyone who didn't play book 2, Fire on the Water, is instantly f&#%ed). I wasn't sure what to do here, so I just decided to roll up a fresh character.  

The confusion didn't end there though, as now I come to the most egregious part of the rules, which concerns your Kai Discipline of Healing or Curing. Yes, all those great Disciplines you picked up in the previous adventures are not only carried forward, but also awarded to new players of the series as well. So far so good. However, after playing the book a couple of times and dying in combat because I did not seemingly have anywhere close to enough Endurance points to make it through the adventure, I suddenly remembered that the Healing and Curing Disciplines awarded you 1 Endurance point for every new section you turned to that did not contain a combat. This is an absolute game changer, and thanks to the NUMEROUS sections you need to turn to between combats, I routinely found myself pumped back up to maximum Endurance before the next fight. So, that was my own fault for not remembering that particular Discipline and its effects right? Fair enough. But the egregious thing is, the rules do not mention this +1 Endurance at all when briefly outlining these Disciplines, all it says it provides is "steady restoration of lost Endurance points (to self and others) as a result of combat". What the heck does that mean? And most importantly, how the hell would any new player even know they were supposed to be getting this +1 Endurance per section???? Brutal miss there!  

That all being said, the Discipline system once again returns and is handled much as it was in the Magnakai series, with you getting to choose 4 from among 12 different Grand Master Disciplines before beginning the book, and you then get to add another Discipline after that each time you successfully complete a book. I couldn't help but notice that one of the Disciplines, Kai Surge, allows you to add +8 to your Combat Skill at the cost of 1 Endurance point per round. Needless to say, this seemed to me to be easily the most powerful of the Disciplines that you can select, and I wonder if the point of adding this was to give players who didn't have the Sommerswerd, as mentioned earlier, a fighting chance. Other than this obvious selection, I do feel as though Dever did a nice job in mixing up what Disciplines are useful where, and I enjoyed experimenting with almost all of them. Don't get me started on the Deliverance Discipline though, as it states it can only be used once every 20 days. How do we know how many days have passed in most cases? Will we always be told?  For what it's worth, I eventually decided to go with the Disciplines of: Assimilance (enhanced invisibility), Grand Pathmanship (ability to avoid hostile plants and ambushes), Kai Screen (to fend off any pesky psychic attacks, which are some of the most dangerous in the game), and of course, Kai Surge. Once you have selected your new Disciplines and loaded up your trusty backpack with a selected number of items from a list, you are ready to begin.

The adventure takes a little bit to get going, as you are treated to several pages of description about your travels over Sommerlund towards Ruel where nothing of note really happens, until you then arrive at the outpost of Stonewatch located on the border of Ruel. At this point, one of the best things in the gamebook happens, as you get to decide between two routes that will take you to the enemy fortress of Mogaruith. You can choose to take the more direct and dangerous approach through the Forest of Ruel, or you can choose to take a more circuitous underground route through caverns located beneath the Skardos Mountains that will eventually surface near the fortress. Both of these routes were a lot of fun to explore and very well described. And while each one in itself felt rather linear, there were still quite a few things to experiment with when it came to which Disciplines you selected at the beginning. I will say though that the shorter route, the one through the forest, was made out to be that way because it was supposedly the more dangerous of the two routes, however I actually found the forest route to be the easier of the two paths, and eventually settled upon it as my route of choice (after having fully explored and enjoyed the mountain route as well). I also found the enemy encounters along the forest route to be  more interesting with its swamp monsters and shambling ghouls, as the mountain route contained a lot of encounters with the main "footsoldier" enemies of the book, that being the Vazhag. These Vazhag are described as rat-men, and to me were a big disappointment. They seem to be afraid of everything, and hardly pose any threat at all to Lone Wolf, with our character sometimes dispatching several of them at once without even having to roll any dice. They also seem to exist to take the place of the Giak from the previous Lone Wolf books, but do not instill any sort of dread whatsoever. The Cener Druids who command the Vazhag fare much better though, with their all-consuming hatred of Lone Wolf coming through loud and clear, making them feel a threat due to their sheer intensity alone, if even they too are not much of a match for our character in combat.   

 

If those forest zombies had broken out into the Thriller dance, I would have lost my shit.

Eventually the two routes converge just outside the fortress of Mogaruith, where you must then sneak inside and locate where the plague virus is being developed. I have to say that sneaking into the fortress felt shockingly easy, once inside the keep though, you are again given the choice of two routes, as you can either investigate the Library or the Laboratory. While not bad, I did not find either of these options all that interesting to explore, although if you played some of the previous Lone Wolf adventures it can even lead to an extra section or two of exposition. The two paths join up much quicker this time though, as you descend deeper into the bowels of the fortress. Here you come across a dark congregation of pestilence worshippers before needing to solve a numbered puzzle. This seems to me to be a quirk of these Lone Wolf adventures, as Dever often throws one, and only one, of these numbered puzzles into the books. This one is not very difficult however, and you then proceed toward the confrontation with the main antagonist of the adventure, the Arch Druid Cadak. In a bit of an unexpected twist, while I did end up defeating Cadak's minions, I did not end up actually killing Cadak himself, who disappears once his most powerful servant, a bull-man called Exterminus, is vanquished. It may be possible to slay Cadak, I am not sure, I only know that in my playthroughs he seemingly managed to escape. Your mission is not complete yet though, as you still need to locate and destroy the plague virus, which you proceed to do in the next sequence, as the lab where the virus is being developed is immediately adjacent to Cadak's quarters.  

I have to say, from this point onwards the adventure started to drag. While I enjoyed the description of how Lone Wolf ends up destroying the lab and the virus, the book from here on begins to introduce something that has always infuriated me, that being random rolls where if you roll low, you die. Not only that, there are a few of them sprinkled in here to contend with, thus increasing your chances of one lone roll scuppering over an hour of gameplay. Why did Dever insist on putting these in here? True, many of them can be influenced by being able to add a certain amount to your roll should you have a particular Discipline, but it felt silly to me to need to select a Discipline solely to help you pass one die roll near the end of the book. Almost all my failures (after I remembered I had the Curing Discipline) came on one of these rolls, and I even twice rolled a zero that led to my death when any other number would have seen me pass through. To be honest, my personal experience with these rolls likely cost the adventure some review points in my eyes that it might not have otherwise suffered had I not fallen so afoul of them. It's absolutely maddening to strategize and plan, play for well over an hour, only to roll a low number near the end and be told, "Welp, that's it for you I guess. Better luck next time". This aspect reminded me very much of "Freeway Warrior", and you would think that the same author was responsible for it here as well. Oh wait....never mind! 

One aspect of this final stretch that I did appreciate though is how even after destroying the virus, you still need to escape the fortress and make it back to friendly territory. Many times this return trip after completing your goal in a gamebook is just glossed over in one paragraph, I suppose because the authors feel the return journey would be anti-climactic, but I enjoy the "realism" of it for lack of a better term. However, there is yet another do-or-die random roll right at the end of the adventure before you finally make it back to the safety of your allies. Grrrrr. There were also some other aspects of the Lone Wolf game system that appeared to be afterthoughts here. The inventory system for example. You start with a backpack that can carry up to 10 items, and get to choose 5 items from a list before you start, such as meals or a rope. Was any of this even needed though? I only infrequently came across something I could pick up, and while there are some items you will probably need to beat the adventure, such as a Cener robe and mask, and a Copper Key, these seemed incredibly hard to miss. The robe and mask can be taken off of a couple of different Druids that you need to defeat, and even should you lose them later, you can just pick up a replacement left hanging on a hook! The Copper Key seemed like a joke too, as I was asked if I had it to unlock a door immediately after I had just picked it up in the previous section! And what happened to the Meal system here where you need to eat when told or you lose 3 Endurance points? I think there was one time I was asked if I had a meal in the whole adventure. To be fair though, the whole meal system feels rather unneccessary at this point in the series due to Lone Wolf's abilities, so this one I am ok with, and I feel like it is just there because it always has been, so Dever was just stubbornly keeping it in.  

I wanted to end on a positive note though, and one thing I want to give Dever a ton of credit for is the writing here, which is wonderful. I mentioned in previous Lone Wolf reviews that Dever's writing noticeably improved as the series went on, and that was even more true here. This is one of the better written gamebooks I have read lately, and for me was up there with some of Dave Morris' efforts. The text is fantastically atmospheric and descriptive, and with lines such as "like a ravenous vampire let loose upon a maiden's throat", how can you beat that? And as become expected for the series, we once again have a beautiful map of Ruel located on the front cover of the book, although it didn't really come in all that handy this time and acted more as flavour for the adventure, but in that respect it worked very well. 

Ranking: This is a gamebook, which for me, is one of high peaks and low valleys, albeit thankfully with more of the former. There were times I was thinking this might end up being the best entry in the series so far, but then something would happen to piss me off. The score here is buoyed mainly by two things. First, the writing, which is excellent, and second, the opening of the gamebook which gives you two distinct paths to take in order to get to Mogaruith, with both of the paths having interesting things to experiment with and discover. What brings it down though is a sometimes drab trek through the latter half of Mogaruith itself, the confusing rules, and most importantly (in my case anyway), the brutal "roll low even once and you die" tests that pop up near the end of the book. Overall though I don't see how I can say this is anything other than a "Good" gamebook, and other than the random-death dice rolls I enjoyed it quite a bit and do think it is one of the better ones of the entire series to date, but it does feel like it could have been even better. I suppose perhaps it was just leaving some room for improvement in the books to come!

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14. The Captives of Kaag - Score = 6.0   Tier = OK

Sections: 350
Attempts to Beat: 3

So the thing is this. While I generally prefer challenge in a gamebook, it certainly doesn't HAVE to be that way for me, and I have greatly enjoyed and given "Great" scores to books that were not all that difficult when it came right down to it. However, when all the challenge of a gamebook comes only from random instant-death rolls, now that is a real problem that actually makes things even worse (for me at least) than an incredibly easy book, because any deaths encountered only serve to feel incredibly "cheap". Even this could possibly be overcome with a great story and atmosphere, but I still have no idea why an author would want to potentially anger their readers, but I am not a gamebook author so what do I know. Anyway, more on this topic later.

Ok, so book 14 kicks off almost identically to how the previous book began, with Lone Wolf receiving a visit from Lord Rimoah in the Kai Monastery who just so happens to have a new quest for him. It would seem our old friend Banedon has been kidnapped by the forces of evil and taken to the city of Kaag, which lies not far to the west of Sommerlund, and we of course agree to rescue him. So another title for the book might be, "The Captives of Kaag: This time IT'S PERSONAL!". After gathering up a selection of items to take with me as usual and also selecting a new Grand Master Discipline as the reward for completing the last book (I initially took Grand Nexus, but more on this later as well), my Lone Wolf character once again boards the flying ship Skyrider, whose dwarven crew anxiously want the return of their master Banedon, and will drop me off within walking distance from Kaag, using a dust storm currently raging over the area as cover.    

I need to take a minute here to discuss the dimensions of the city of Kaag itself, because they almost beggar belief. We are told that it is a walled circular city that is 40 miles wide across! I actually stopped reading when I came to this figure so I could do some checking on whether that would remotely make sense. On a heavily populated planet, I could see this, but Magnumund, in typical fantasy fashion, has always felt at least somewhat sparsely populated to me, so the presence of a city this size seems rather crazy. I realize it is one of the "bad guy" cities so they would likely have all manner of creature jammed in here, but still, imagine just the logistics required to keep this place running. But hang on, it gets even crazier, as we are additionally told that the center of Kaag contains a massive citadel that rises 2 miles into the sky! Ok, I was eventually prepared to go along with the 40 mile wide city, but a 2 mile high citadel just seems ludicrous. And we are supposed to traverse this huge city, climb this citadel, free Banedon (who could be anywhere in all this), and return to the Skyrider in a mere 2 days before they assume us dead and leave? Just for some context, the tallest structure currently on Earth is the Burj Khalifa located in Dubai, standing at a whopping 828 metres. The Citadel of Kaag would measure 3218 meters tall! Oh, and we are additionally told that it is a pyramid-shaped structure, so you can just imagine how big the base of this thing must be. And yes, I realize a certain level of hypocrisy in mentioning something like this in a world populated by evil sorcerers and rat-men, but there still needs to be some kind of internal realism. 

Anyway, into the massive city we go, and much like in how the previous book began, here we are given two different routes to make our way towards the citadel, as we can choose to enter either via a breach in the north wall of the city, or a similar breach in the east wall. I gave a large amount of credit to the opening branching paths in the previous book, but unfortunately this is done far worse here, as the two routes are nowhere near as different or interesting as the forest and mountain options provided in the last adventure. The city of Kaag itself is pretty much still in ruins after the war against the Darklords was won (and just how the Freelanders were able to assault a city of this size must make for a great story), so our character finds himself travelling down mostly deserted streets and alleys, with only a few roaming gangs of Giaks and their masters to contend with. I tried both the path through the north wall and the one through the east wall, and I couldn't really tell much of a difference between them. There are running battles between two different gangs of Giaks occurring in the streets that you need to avoid, but I found this whole sequence rather dull no matter which opening path I took. The reason for this gang battle is revealed in a fashion where the author also apparently wants us to know how horrific it is that the Giaks are apparently cannibals, as it is hammered home about how repulsed we are when it is revealed that the reason for the gang fighting is over a food source of dead Giak bodies (would we really be surprised at this though?). It's a shame too because if this massive city had been fully populated, this could have made for a tremendous urban-set gamebook, where our character got to explore various districts of a bustling city, perhaps having to gather clues as to where Banedon could be found. Instead though, I found myself covering the presumably 20 or so miles to the base of the citadel rather quickly and without much of note happening. That is, until I attempted to enter the citadel itself.  

Earlier in the review I mentioned how I had selected Grand Nexus as my new Discipline for beating the last book. Well, that would soon change. Because in order to enter the citadel, you need to first climb up to a landing platform closer to the ground, where you intend to then mount one of the flying beasts currently on it in order for them to bring you further up the tower. In order to climb up to this platform, you can either take an exposed staircase, or scale the wall itself. Problem is, both of these options require one of those oh-so-wonderful random death rolls, where you roll once (or choose a number from the Random Number Table), and should you roll too low, you instantly die. I don't know what it is with my luck on these things lately, but in my first two attempts at the adventure, I rolled very low both times (once attempting the stairs, and once climbing the wall) and had my character unceremoniously killed off in each case. I did happen to notice however that you are given a boost to your roll should you have the Discipline of Grand Huntmastery, which I did not have. So, not wanting to suffer the ignominy of failing this a third time in a row, on my next attempt at the book I decided to take this Discipline instead of Grand Nexus. This turned out to be a good move even beyond this roll, because this Discipline is called upon quite often throughout the whole quest. I thought the previous adventure did a nice job in mixing up the uses of the Disciplines, where it felt like each one came in handy at some point. In this book though, it's Grand Huntmastery all day every day. Take this one and don't look back.     

Once inside the citadel itself, we then begin the arduous trek of exploring this vast edifice. This is probably the best part of the adventure, although it doesn't have much to compete with, as we get some freedom in exploring the various levels and rooms, and can at times choose to go either up or down (but who are we kidding, we know we need to go up). The citadel fares better than the city in terms of things of interest going on within it, but still it feels rather empty overall, but with the size of this thing I guess that should come as no surprise. I love how at one point it is glossed over in one sentence how Lone Wolf climbs 60 stories of this thing! Nothing happened during that time? I will say though that there is a very well done and poignant encounter that occurs later on when Lone Wolf runs into a group of ghouls who are the remnants of previous prisoners of war held within the citadel, who had been tortured so badly that they now exist in a state of perpetual despair. After all this, including an encounter with a Helghast who is pretending to be Banedon to lure you in (and I remember the Helghast being more dangerous in previous adventures than portrayed here? Perhaps this is just due to Lone Wolf now being more powerful.), you finally make it to the chamber where the real Banedon is being held prisoner. 

Banedon is being guarded of course, and in order to free him we first must pass a very weird encounter, as we face off with a tiny furry creature (called a Vodok), before then needing to deal with a swarm of insects, and then after that a dragon. Quite the eclectic mix there! Once again though I do like how once this is done and Banedon rescued, we still need to escape and make it back to safety. Being a pyramid shape, I was half expecting Lone Wolf and Banedon to slide down the outside of the citadel, all 2 miles to the bottom, which would have made for quite the sequence. Instead, after passing through some spooky halls and a library, the duo attempt to escape using the same method Lone Wolf used earlier in the adventure, by commandeering a flying beast from one of the upper level landing platforms and flying away. It is then that I came upon a startling revelation.

This is where my question regarding Arch Druid Cadak from the previous book is answered, as it turns out he was behind the kidnapping of Banedon all along, as the villain himself steps out of the shadows to confront us. We were initially led to believe that Banedon was captured by the Nadziranim (evil sorcerers who serve the Darklords and wield "right-handed" magic), so that they could hopefully extract from Banedon the secrets of the good "left handed" magic. While this may have been an added benefit to the plan, the real reason for Banedon's abduction is revealed to be as bait for Lone Wolf, because Cadak knew we would be sent to rescue him. At this point though one of the more curious encounters of the adventure happens, as we have to face down yet another of Cadak's powerful minions, a creature called a Zavaghar, which is some kind of overpowered giant rodent. The strange thing about this combat though, is that as long as your Combat Skill is high enough, I don't see how you can possibly lose. If you kill the creature, then obviously you win, but even if you find yourself on the losing end, once your Endurance drops below a certain level, you are told to immediately turn to a specific section. Once you do this, Banedon steps in to help you, and the creature is instantly defeated. Granted, if you had a low enough Combat Skill, you could find yourself one-shot killed by the Zavaghar, but otherwise this just felt rather pointless. 

Excuse me, is this where I can purchase some Left-handed magical items?

Even after this, the quest isn't quite finished, because.....oh no.....we have one final random death roll to contend with as we fly away, with enemy archers taking some last desperation shots at us. C'mon with these! Thankfully you have a 90% chance of passing this, but still, how unfair would it feel to roll the one number that will kill you at this late stage of the adventure with no modifiers that can even be added to this roll even through prior planning? Considering my luck on these recently, I held my breath when rolling for this, and let out a large exhale when a 6 came up. Phew! With that, Lone Wolf and Banedon fly back to the Skyrider with another mission successfully accomplished. I assume though, because we once again did not kill Cadak, that he will be the ongoing antagonist for the Grand Master series. 

Returning to the point in my opening paragraph, my only two failures at the adventure occurred at the same place, that being the random death roll while trying to climb to the landing platform to enter the citadel. After passing this, I was able to make it all the way to victory first time, so the challenge here for me was pretty much solely tied up in passing those pesky one-chance-only rolls, although to be fair the back-to-back fights against the Vodok and then the Dragon was not a cakewalk by any means.   

Overall this was a rather large step back from the previous book in several areas, one of these areas being the writing. What happened there? The Plague Lords of Ruel was excellently written, and while still reasonably good here,  I immediately noticed a big drop-off in that regard right from the opening sections. Looking at the release schedule of these books, I wonder if because more time elapsed between books 12 and 13 than did between books 13 and 14 if that contributed to this, and Dever just didn't have the same amount of time to commit to the prose. I also found the map at the front of the book to be rather disappointing. Oh don't get me wrong, the artwork itself is quite good as usual, but the total distance we travel from our Kai Monastery to Kaag makes me wonder why they even bothered. On that note, is it just me, or do the Lone Wolf books work better when our character is making a long overland trek before arriving at his destination? It seems to fit the Lone Wolf character better with his more rustic style skills and general portrayal on the book covers. I used to greatly enjoy following along on the map as my character traversed such long distances and explored many of the different areas of Magnamund.  Here though, that is all glossed over in a skyship trek that is covered basically as an introduction. A detailed map of the massive city of Kaag could have been awesome and was a missed opportunity in my opinion.    

Ranking: This is a rather middling gamebook for this series and is definitely not one of the better Lone Wolf adventures I have played, and in fact I have it near the bottom of the 14 books so far with only Castle Death and The Prisoners of Time below it. Despite that statement, it's not what I would call "bad", it's just rather so-so in almost all areas. The opening of the adventure felt very similar to the previous book, except done worse, and the sequence travelling through Kaag was rather bland. It gets a bit better once you get inside the citadel, and there are some different areas to explore, but I personally didn't find all that much of interest going on in the interior either save for perhaps the odd moment here and there. Despite how massive both the city and citadel are supposed to be, they felt rather empty and I never really got the sense of their supposed enormity in my playthroughs, only knowing (and not believing I might add) of their size because I was told flat out their dimensions. City-set adventures can be fantastic, so this was a real pity. The random rolls leading to death are present once again, and have already become tiresome. Everything about this book felt like a step back from the previous entry, with even the writing falling victim to this, and I hope that at only 2 books into the Grand Master series, the entries are not already being rushed. 

And a 2 mile high tower?

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15. The Darke Crusade - Score = 7.4   Tier = Good

Sections: 350
Attempts to Beat: 1

I'm not sure what it is with the Lone Wolf books that only take me one attempt to beat, but they have so far been some of my favorites in the series, and this was another really good one! This adventure begins once again in the Kai Monastery, where Lone Wolf finds himself visited by the quest-giver for this book, but this time it is not Lord Rimoah, but an emissary from the faraway Kingdom of Lencia, located in the Western Tentarias, who has come seeking our aid on behalf of his king. We are given the rundown of what exactly is going on in the region, and I thought the premise for this adventure starts off rather well. For once, the "good guys" in Lencia are actually winning the war against the evil Drakkirim holdouts in the area, and have had the few remaining Drakkirim fortresses in the region under siege for quite awhile, with it only being a matter of time before they are finished off. Problem is, the leader of the evil forces, Magnaarn, is making a last desperate attempt to locate a magical artefact known as the Doomstone of Darke, thought to have been lost in the region long ago, which he plans to re-unite to its former place atop a magical sceptre. Should he succeed, this item would not only grant him great power, but would also win over many to his cause that as of now, refuse to join the fight against the Lencians, which would then lead to a much longer and costly war. It is therefore imperative that Magnaarn not recover the Doomstone, so Lone Wolf is tasked with locating it first and destroying it. Because Lencia once helped Lone Wolf out in the past, we agree to return the favor, and thus head out with the emissary aboard the.....sigh....Skyrider (again?) to make our way via the airship to the distant kingdom. While the adventure may eventually turn into a more typical kill-the-bad-guy style of quest, I thought this opening was rather unique in that the good guys were currently holding all the cards, with the bad guys being the ones making a last-ditch attempt at victory, and it was up to us to deny them that. 

After that opening I was all keyed up to get the mission underway (once I got off the damn Skyrider of course), but I immediately would come across what I felt was the adventure's biggest failing, that being stretches of sections with little to no player agency. I mean seriously, check out the string of sections this adventure begins with: 

Section 1 - Turn to 140

Section 140 - Turn to 257

Section 257 - Turn to 25

Section 25 - Did you take part in the Battle of Cetza in a previous Lone Wolf Book? If so, Turn to 315, if not Turn to 123

Section 315 - Turn to 80

Section 80 - Do you possess Grand Pathmanship? If so, Turn to 202, if not Turn to 159

Section 202 - Turn to 273

Section 273 - Turn to 60

Section 60 - Do you take the left channel or the right channel?  (Yay! Finally a decision!)

So you can't tell me the above opening sequence of sections isn't noticeable for its lack of anything required of the player. Heck, even the two sections that ask if you were in the Battle of Cetza and if you possess Grand Pathmanship don't require you to do anything, either you have those or you haven't. If this sequence had occurred in the middle of the book somewhere, I might have chalked it up to some form of "intermission" of the adventure, but coming right at the start as it does, it is incredibly noticeable and was, for a brief period for me, very concerning. I can't even say this is the only time in the book this happens, as there were a couple of other stretches where this was noticeable as well, although I don't think they covered quite as many sections as this opening (although I could be mistaken). While perhaps not a huge "negative", this all does contribute to the gamebook feeling like a 300 section adventure that was stretched out to make it to the 350 section count. These always seem like arbitrary numbers anyway, and a tighter 300 section gamebook with more player agency would probably come across better. I guess Dever felt like he had to make it 350 sections no matter what? This did cost it a little bit in my score, as there were times I felt I was reading a fantasy novel as opposed to playing a gamebook, but thankfully the adventure itself (the parts that I got to play) helped to make up for it.  

Once I actually got to make some decisions, I found myself in the middle of a pretty darn good adventure. Although it doesn't usually bode well for them, we get ourselves a travelling companion for this quest in the form of Captain Prarg, a Lencian soldier who you may or may not remember from back in book 10, The Dungeons of Torgar. I have to confess that while I do remember the Battle of Cetza, I had no recollection of Prarg, but it has been awhile since I played that adventure after all. Prarg is to be our guide as we seek out the Doomstone, as he is well acquainted with the area and can help lead us through some of the more dangerous places we will need to pass through. This then begins a quite tense journey through and along swamp, forest, river, and plains, most of the way spent under a very atmospheric snowfall, as we travel along avoiding rogue bands of Drakkirim and wild beasts. One of the better sequences involves you infiltrating an enemy encampment in a search for clues as to either Magnaarn or the Doomstone's whereabouts, where Prarg gets captured and you then need to rescue him. Later you find yourself in a labyrinth located underneath a temple (and as I suspected, these "inside" areas have much more impact when they are used sparingly), where you get to come face-to-face with Magnaarn himself, who surprisingly gets the better of Lone Wolf, leaving him for dead (and once again capturing Prarg, who is going to have PTSD after all this). Of course, we know Lone Wolf is going to escape the situation, but all this is told in a very claustrophobic and anxiety-driven manner, with our character needing to escape the fate of being buried alive. 

It takes Lone Wolf over two weeks to escape from this situation, and in that time Magnaarn has done exactly what we expected he would do. With his newfound power granted by the Doomstone, he has secured the aid of all the nearby Nadziranim forces, who combined with his own Drakkirim army and not to mention the mighty Doomstone itself, now have the Lencian forces in the area on the run. Lone Wolf is not out of the game yet however, and steels himself to complete the quest by tracking down Magnaarn and destroying the Doomstone. We now find ourselves travelling across a region with war raging all around us, and this sets off a couple more quite good sequences, including one where Lone Wolf rescues a group of prisoners of war from the horrible camp they are being kept in. With their aid we can participate in a final assault on the fortress of Darke, where Magnaarn is located, to hopefully end the war once and for all. Travelling through a war-torn area has always seemed to be in this series' wheelhouse, and that holds true here as well. The assault on Darke itself is glossed over a bit, with Lone Wolf fighting his way inside past some guards rather quickly, but once inside the walls we are reunited with Prarg, who has presumably escaped from his captors during the confusion of the battle (and why they didn't just kill him is a mystery, but I was more surprised that a travelling companion of Lone Wolf's actually survives!).   

Sensing that Magnaarn and the end of our quest is near, Lone Wolf and Prarg ascend the fortress tower for a final confrontation with the villain, only to discover that the Doomstone, and the sceptre it now rests in, have now become one with Magnaarn, transforming him into an evil, disgusting, and barely recognizable monstrosity. As they make it to the top, Prarg is conveniently knocked unconscious (again, I was dumbfounded he wasn't killed outright here), leaving us to face Magnaarn alone. But wait! First we need to defeat a Tahrdemon that Magnaarn has summoned (wussy!), and upon doing so we find that the main bad guy has flown the coop and run up onto the top of the fortress. So now that we have him right where we want him, it's time to finish him off for good as we close in for the........oh no, don't tell me....yep, it's another random instant-death roll! Before you can get to him, Magnaarn opens up a chasm in the floor that you must leap across, and although Grand Huntmastery can help you here, it still leaves a 20% chance of instant death! Should you not have Grand Huntmastery, this is a 40% chance of instant failure, which is nuts! Well, at least it came before the final fight this time, as little consolation as that is. Thanks to having the required level of Grand Huntmastery, and from finally getting out from under the cloud over my head on these rolls, I was able to pass this check my first time (phew!), and moved in for the final fight with Magnaarn. This fight isn't as difficult as it initially might appear, as even though he does have a rather high Combat score, his Endurance score is somewhat low for a final enemy, and combining this with the Combat Ratio Table greatly favoring your character as always, I was able to dispatch him without really coming close to death myself. And that's it, no final escape sequence this time, but that's ok as it wouldn't really make sense anyway, as with Magnaarn defeated the Lencian forces and their allies can now easily take the fortress. You then head back to the castle at Lencia to be feted with the standard gamebook celebratory banquet. 

Thankfully the writing of the adventure is on the upswing again, and I found it much more atmospheric and enjoyable than the previous book, although the setting of it helps out greatly in that regard also. (Although there was a line in here about a village being "raised to the ground" that had me razing an eyebrow). I do have to wonder though about the acquiring of items such as a Silver Rod that needs to be inserted in a hole later on in the quest, and question whether the author knew what this would sound like. (C'mon don't tell me you didn't go there either! Dever must have known how this might read, right?) Another aspect of the gamebook that contributed very positively to that atmosphere, at least for me, were the interior illustrations by Brian Williams, which I thought were great. There is a wonderful drawing from Lone Wolf's point of view as he looks up a staircase just in time to see himself being saved by a still-alive Prarg near the end of the adventure, and another more simple illustration that showed a stone bridge spanning an icy river that I thought was beautiful in its simplicity, and this is just to name a couple. Even the drawing of the rat-like Tahrdemon seemed to me to be an homage to the ROUS (Rodent of Unusual Size) from "The Princess Bride". 

   

"Doesn't anyone have a Rod of Resurrection? Because if you've got one, I need it bad! Get in here with your rod and give it to me!"

And saving this for last, in the course of this adventure I happened to acquire an item called the Jadin Amulet, which is a Special Item that allows you to add 1 to your roll when attempting to make a Random roll to avoid a missile such as an arrow or dart. Considering the random death rolls that have been popping up at the end of these books, this item could be gold I tell ya....GOLD! (And speaking of gold, is there any point to carrying gold pieces in these books?) On the other hand, this Amulet might raise more questions than it answers. For one, this would seem to suggest that Dever was aware of how these rolls might be frustrating, so put this item in to counteract them, but then, why have the rolls in the first place? It also wasn't lost on me that the final random death roll in this adventure did NOT involve avoiding a missile, so while useless here, I can only assume this is going to come in handy in the future. But boy, talk about rubbing salt in the wound to anyone who fell victim to the arrow shot death while fleeing the citadel in the last book. I can only imagine them having some choice words upon finding this item one book too late! Seriously, this feels like trolling.   

Ranking: This felt like a more "back to basics" entry for the series, and I enjoyed it quite a lot. I did find it rather easy, but that might be a factor of having played all the books up to this point, and other players who have not done so may find it more difficult. Unfortunately, there are some noticeable stretches here where nothing at all is required of the player which does detract from it a bit, but thankfully there is enough gameplay to be found overall over the course of the adventure that I don't feel that aspect ruined the book by any means. I do feel that my statement from the previous review regarding the Lone Wolf adventures working better when longer overland treks are involved held true (for me at least), as I think it fits the feel of the character better and contributes to the adventures feeling more "epic". Yes, there is yet another random-death roll right near the end of the adventure, and at this point I am wondering if this is now a series staple that I can expect in every book going forward. But on the positive side the writing, while not quite at the level of The Plague Lords of Ruel, is headed back in the right direction, and I found it much improved from The Captives of Kaag. Overall, while I can't say this is my favorite book in the series, I put it in the upper half of the rankings so far thanks to its intriguing story and captivating action sequences. Just please stop with the Skyrider already! 

 ______________________________________________________________

16. The Legacy of Vashna - Score = 6.5   Tier = OK

Sections: 350
Attempts to Beat: 4

So as I begin book 16 I find that the adventure starts off with....sigh....Lone Wolf being visited in his Kai Monastery by Lord Rimoah with the plot for this week's episode/quest. Rimoah brings news that President Kadharian of Magador has requested our aid, as mysterious and deadly storms have been appearing in the northern part of his realm, even apparently wiping out the lakeside village of Vorn in its entirety. These storms seem to be emanating from the Maakengorge, the giant fissure in the ground where the Darklord Vashna was cast into long ago. You are tasked with investigating these storms to determine what exactly the danger entails, and how worried everyone should be. So, we have a mystery to solve? Fantastic! Not so fantastic though, because then the mystery is immediately ruined, as it is explained to us that these storms are suspected to herald the return of Vashna, the evil champion of the Dark God, Naar. I mean sure this is initially just a theory, but the evidence already seems rather conclusive, and the theory is eventually proven true in any case. So way to spoil any suspense there! But hey, at least Lone Wolf did not board the Skyrider for a change when making his way to Magador, although he indeed did try to do so, but it turns out that Banedon and his flying ship are currently elsewhere, and would not be returning for some time. 

Lone Wolf thus sets off on horseback to investigate the northern area around Lake Vorndarol where the storms are occurring, and we once again get an overland journey that I enjoy so much in these books. In fact I would say the first half of this gamebook includes things that Joe Dever does very well. We get to visit a seedy inn, which Dever always has a knack for wonderfully describing, and this inn even comes complete with a busty wench barmaid (Whoa! Nice illustration there Brian Williams!). 

The description of the countryside you travel through is great as always, and we even get to meet up with characters from previous books. It is made clear early on that Magador is a poor country (with its run-down capital city leaving no doubt about this), which means it is rather lawless, with roaming bands of brigands all over the place attempting to take advantage of the chaos in the north caused by the storms. We continue to head north, avoiding or battling wild creatures as we do so, and possibly even aiding some refugees from Vorn who are being harassed by the brigands, until we finally make it to Vorn itself, which is confirmed to have been completely destroyed and is now being picked over by yet more bandits. Once inside Vorn, which is located on the southern side of the lake, we learn of the nearby presence of a large group of acolytes of Vashna, who themselves are currently in conflict with the very same bandits. We get to witness a raid by the acolytes by boat on the ruins of Vorn, where they put the remaining bandits to flight before rescuing a few of their own who had been captured by the brigands, whereby they re-board their ship to return across the lake to their stronghold on the eastern shore. 

At this point, I think the best choice of the gamebook is given, that being do you want to use disguise in an attempt to board the acolyte ship and follow them, or do you not want to risk that, and instead set off along the shoreline to pursue them on horseback that way. It was only after playing the adventure a couple of times that I realized how different these two paths were (and in fact, the shoreline route can be divided up even further, as you are soon asked if you want to head inland or keep following the shore), when it hit me like a ton of bricks in just how important providing different routes in these quests can be, even just from a replayability standpoint if nothing else. The routes are rather different too, as stealing aboard the ship requires, as you might expect, a lot of stealth and subterfuge, while the shoreline route might see you having to battle your way past some wild beasts. Once you manage to make it to the acolyte stronghold by any of the paths, you learn that your old buddy Arch Druid Cadak is once again responsible for all the shenanigans, as he is attempting to use a large magical portal in order to bring "something" forth from the Maakengorge. And to borrow a writing trick that Dever likes to use over and over (leaving you hanging in suspense at the end of a section), going through this portal ourselves found me discovering something that made my blood run cold.....

Oh no. On the other side of the portal we discover.....that we have passed through to another dimension. Ugh I hate it when that happens! I rarely like these "different planes of reality" sequences as they often just contain random stuff happening with no real rhyme or reason to it, and I found that to be true here as well, as most of the time I had no idea what was going on. We first travel across some sort of scorching hot lava plain before arriving at an "ice mountain", where we enter the mountain (by phasing through the wall I might add), and we then finally make our way to the end of the dimension, at which point we encounter a Demoness known as Shamath, along with her servants. Shamath is herself a servant of Lord Vashna, who in turn is the champion of Naar, so you get a feel of the hierarchy you are dealing with here. Shamath is additionally a towering figure who, being a Demoness, is also obviously very powerful, but just before you decide how to tackle her, a teenage girl appears out of nowhere (wtf?) to offer you advice on how to get past her, and then on how defeat Cadak himself back on Magnamund. Despite all the inter-dimensional plane nonsense, this confrontation with Shamath is quite good, as she initially challenges you to a battle of wits, at which point she provides you with a riddle to solve. And oh boy, WHAT a riddle! I spent more time than I care to admit on this puzzle and eventually had to admit I wasn't going to solve it. Was this just me? There is always the fear that I am missing something completely obvious here, but I have reproduced the riddle below so anyone reading this can see where I am coming from. 

In addition to the loyal servants, there are two Dwellers of the Abyss.

When the loyal servants and the Dwellers of the Abyss were counted together, their total number was doubled when my Lieutenants of Night arrived.

But when my Lieutenants of Night arrived, the Dwellers of the Abyss had to leave.

Exactly half of the remaining number also departed, for they were beholden to the Dwellers.

From the remainder I picked the loyal servants to guard my throne of power. I chose them all, except for one who was known to me as a traitor. I executed the traitor before I set my loyal servants to guard my throne.

So, mortal, answer my question: while I am here to do Naar’s bidding, how many loyal servants guard my throne of power?

  

A battle of wits? Is Shamath a Sicilian by any chance? 

At this point I was wondering if this meant that I was now going to be unable to complete the book, but thankfully, not being able to solve the riddle does not mean instant failure, but that you "only" now have to defeat Shamath in combat. With Shamath having a Combat Skill of 55, this is not an easy fight to say the least and even took my overpowered character a couple of tries, but this is probably how it should be when a riddle is involved, with failure to solve it not completely locking you out of completing the adventure (although to be fair, anyone who has not played all the previous books is probably completely screwed in this fight, so you could argue it is still very unfair to them). 

Even after defeating Shamath, she is not "vanquished" by any stretch, as you have only wounded her enough to allow you time to step through another portal back to Magnamund (the same portal she was intending on using). Once through, grabbing Shamath's precious Deathstaff on the way, you arrive back at the edge of the Maakengorge where you still need to defeat Cadak himself. The Arch Druid is no pushover, but not nearly as deadly as Shamath, and I was able to beat him my first try. Surprisingly, Cadak turns to dust when you defeat him, and I presume this means the villain I was expecting to last until the very end of the series is now gone for good? You are not done yet though, as we have another puzzle here that we need to solve in order to seal that portal so that Shamath cannot come through it, and this one also took me rather a longer time then I was expecting. However, unlike the Shamath riddle, I was eventually able to come up with the answer. Anyway, by this point, you KNOW what's coming next. Yep! Another do-or-die random roll! Thankfully this time you can have enough Disciplines and items which give you bonuses such that you can pass it automatically should you have all the "right stuff. Then in what must be one of the shortest victory sections of the series, you wake up next to the Maakengorge to find all traces of Cadak, his minions, and his portal have vanished. (So was this all just a dream?). You are then told Congratulations, and the adventure then abruptly ends right there. Talk about a wet fart of an ending.   

This was another well written adventure, although we still have not returned to the height of the prose found in The Plague Lords of Ruel. However, Dever seems to have a habit of glossing over some pretty incredible facts. For example, when passing through the lawless city of Vakovar, you are told that "no less than a dozen separate attempts are made to rob you" and "you leave a score of dead robbers littering the cobblestones". Yikes! I wonder just how many people Lone Wolf has killed in this series? Well, he would add to the body count substantially later, as in another example that occurs when you face down Shamath's servants, you are told "within the space of a few minutes you have slain every last one of Shamath's attendants, over a hundred in number". Wait a minute, a HUNDRED? Yep, just like that in one sentence. And of course, right on cue from my comment in the previous review about some possible suggestive prose, at one point here while wielding a staff we "bring it down with one mighty thrust, driving it deep into the hole". It might be just my dirty mind, but I don't know how you can write that and not realize the connotations. On the positive though, I always love it when the phrase "ill-gotten booty" is used, which we get here (and maybe that has an additional meaning also!)  

I will say that I thought the adventure started to drag considerably by the end, as the encounters with Cadak, Shamath, and then back to Cadak felt rather overly drawn out. I did find the difficulty level of the book to be fair as far as the Lone Wolf series goes for players who have played the earlier books, although a first time player is more than likely going to be totally up Schitt's Creek. There was once again a couple of random death rolls here, but at least you could heavily influence them based upon your Disciplines and what items you may have found earlier. That all being said, there were a couple of other things that occurred during the adventure that stuck out to me as odd. Some of these include:

- At one point I was asked if I had a Black Amulet. Well, no, but I was given a Black Talisman earlier, is that the same thing? Authors really need to take care when asking for an item to ensure it is clear what is being asked for, especially in a series like this where dozens of items can be collected and carried from book to book.

- At another point, you are asked to make a random dice roll, with a bonus for if you have the Assimilance Discipline. Should you pass the roll, you avoid the brigand searching for you and go on your way. Should you fail the roll, the brigand discovers you, but you then slaughter him in one sentence (no combat required), and then get to choose from a treasure trove of items that he had on his person, before also continuing on your way. So then its far better to actually fail this roll? 

- While in the dimension of Shamath, a teenage girl suddenly appears behind you, as I mentioned earlier. Before this girl makes any actions against you though, what does Lone Wolf do? He turns around and punches her upside the head! His punch has no effect on her so she is not wounded, but this has to be the most "un-Lone Wolf" like action I can recall in the whole series so far, as it feels totally out of character. 

- Finally, I am starting to get a bit concerned that the Grand Master series is going the way of the latter books in the Magnakai series, where thanks to all the various Disciplines that you start to pile up, the adventures start to become a long string of: "Do you have this Discipline? Yes? Move on safely then, nothing else to do here". Each of the last few book also seemed to have one of the Disciplines prove to be far more useful than the others. In the case of this book, I found Animal Mastery to be the one that came in most handy, so I started selecting that by the time I began my third playthrough.

Ranking:  While playing through this, something hit me, and that is it no longer feels like the series is advancing. While I felt the previous book, The Darke Crusade, was a nice back-to-basics adventure, the problem is that you can't do that two times in a row or it starts to feel like regression, which is exactly what The Legacy of Vashna felt like to me. The first half of the adventure was rather good, certainly just as good as the previous book even though those run-on sequences where nothing is required of the player return (although none so obvious as the opening run of that last book), but once I entered the different dimension, and with the exception of the Shamath encounter, my enjoyment of the adventure started to decrease very quickly. The book really started to drag on and on in the final act, and I found myself turning to each new section hoping I would see "Turn to 350" so that the adventure would just end already. Not the feeling you want when coming to the conclusion of a gamebook. The Legacy of Vashna is decent enough overall, but has quite a few little niggles that eventually dragged the score down for me, probably the worst of which being that the mystery set up at the beginning is almost immediately spoiled. While not my least favorite book in the series, I would definitely put it somewhere in the lower-middle. I'm really hoping the series gets a jumpstart with the next entry, as the repetitiveness of the adventures is now starting to become an issue.