We continue The Chasm of Doom, in which I’m looking for the bandits who stole a royal shipment of gold. I had 50 rangers at my command yesterday, but 40 are walking home, 2 are dead, and 8 turned tail and fled when we were attacked by a legion of unusually well-armed and well-trained bandits.
Now I’m back in my native Fighting Fantasy environment: a solo adventurer, crawling through mines.
But I should point out, that I have the mines mapped out and know the shortest route. Only three pages later, I can see the exit from the mines, and with a little help from one of the slaves I’m off into the woods two pages later. And down below, I see the city of Ruanon. The local lord is there, and soldiers, and maybe answers.
Or, maybe the city has been burned down, and the remaining center of the city is under siege by a mix of bandits and armed, trained soldiers dressed as bandits.
There’s no combat, though: just running, and some random rolls. In a glorious cutscene, I’m terrorized by hunting dogs and a sniper, and am saved by Captain D’Val who isn’t dead after all!
It’s a sad scene here in Ruanon. Most of the population is dead or enslaved, the rest have been besieged for over a month. The bandits are indeed not bandits at all, but soldiers of a warlord named Barraka. The local baron has completely snapped under the strain and horror of seeing his land and people destroyed and his family killed. And it gets weirder: Barraka kidnapped the baron’s daughter as a human sacrifice to raise a legion of undead Darklords according to a prophecy.
Well, crud. The mission has changed.
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