Got my butt kicked, then got turned into a werewolf

It’s been fun getting back into game books after a few months off. My sweetie and I played Escape From the Prison of the Tower of the Wizard, right on the heels of finishing Alice’s Nightmare in Wonderland and that was great fun. I have a new trove of Call of Cthulhu solo adventures, too, so that will be neat.

But for my next book, I decided to go with good ol’ Fighting Fantasy because it’s been a while. And the next pick is…

Spellbreaker, by Jonathan Green, FF number 53.

The dice give me: Skill 10, Stamina 20, Luck 10. Not bad.

The story goes: I have been a sword for hire for many years, and decided to take a spiritual pilgrimage to Hallow’s Well for some hot springs and forgiveness for the many things I’ve presumably killed in my career. I’m headed for a local monastery to stay the night and get out of the rain, and meet a fellow pilgrim who I invite along with me. Oh and a bunch of minor demons start harassing us from above as we get closer. We get inside and out of the rain and demons, but he was, unfortunately, evil. Once we’re inside he kills a monk and steals the monks’ books of O.P magic spells. As he leaves. a demon barges in to cover his escape.

So that’s page 1 – fighting a demon. It only has a skill of 8, but a series of lucky dice rolls and he kicks my butt down to 6 stamina. On page 1.

Afterward, the monks give me a few aspirin and bring me up to 12 stamina (hey, I’m still 40% dead, guys!) and tell me that their magic book includes The Spell To Resurrect Some Evil Baddie, so of course it’s on me to stop it before he does that thing. Sigh. I have time to read one library book and to take one herb from the garden, then I gotta go.

The good news, is that I’m not hitting the road alone. A rich lady has asked me to join the retinue as a hired sword. And since they’re headed for Hallow’s Well anyway, I may as well get paid for it. Along the way we do encounter a pair of bandits that whittle me down to 7 stamina, so although the pay is good I wish I could spend it all on healing or replenishing my provisions! Sadly, there’s only a lot of weird stuff to buy in the town – a falcon,  pictures and body parts of religious celebrities (yes, you read that correctly), and some herbs that do who-knows-what because I’m no herbalist.

And as I’m leaving town, I see that Hallow’s Well also has a troupe of The Acolytes of Pain, a bunch of religious folks who like injuring themselves an others – and they saw me on the street and randomly decided that I was to join their cult. Hell no. I run.

Fortunately, I sneak away and get out of town. I have a choice of heading south or west, and I have zero clue where the guy would have gone (heck, maybe he’s still in Hallow’s Well? I didn’t even ask around). So I head south.

That night, as I’m camping by the roadside, I am attacked by a werewolf. I fight it off, but it gets a bite on me. The fever sets in an hour later, and I turn to the werewolf life. Howl at the moon and chase down a deer, but no more hunting books and wizards for me. My adventure ends here.