We're back once again like a renegade time lord with The Castle of Lost Souls by Dave Morris. There's actually two versions of this, a Golden Dragon version and one from White Dwarf. We're going to be doing the latter because it's mechanically stronger and supports evil play better. (Rhi wants to play a moustache twirling villain. Which is what she is in real life, minus the moustache). Those wanting to check out the magazine version of The Castle of Lost Souls for themselves can do so on Dave's blog, where he's kindly made it available for all to enjoy. (Despite not liking the gamebook that much himself. Death of the Author. And possibly the adventurer. We will see). So, allow us to introduce our protagonist (he's certainly no hero) Duke Bartholomew McBastard. He's not actually a Duke. He was called “Duke” as a nickname at villain school because he liked punching people and has kept it because he likes the implied status. And stabs anyone who questions him. He's a dashing swashbuckler (Fighting Prowess 11!), but his hedonistic nature has lead to him being rather sickly (Constitution 13 which is awful). He's of average Cleverness, considering his nature lends itself to skullduggery rather than book learning (Cleverness 9) and he's not great as resisting hostile magic he can't backstab (Magical Fortitude 5). He has Honour 3, which should last about a minute. And so our adventure starts. Duke is a skilled adventurer, having killed crazed wizards, ancient mummies and a multitude of peasants with annoying faces. We start in an inn as is traditional. The Greengosh family are looking to hire a warrior for a great quest. They're wealthy, our favourite personality trait in an employer. Apparently some other adventurers are applying, but naturally when the Greengoshes meet us there will be no question of our superiority. In fact, they've probably already heard of us. We spend the night at the inn and then leave in the morning without paying our bill. (Not in the adventure, but of course we don't. They should pay us for having such a prestigious guest in their guest room). We arrive at the Greengosh estate and meet our soon to be employer Hogrun. And then a scandal takes place! He gives the job to someone who is not us, some oaf called Salakar. Outrageous! We consider challenging Salakar to a duel, but that strikes us as beneath our talents. So we wait outside to follow him on his quest. Really, this is in Hogrun's best interests. Salakar buys some equipment and heads out, with Duke cunningly behind trying not to loudly do his evil laugh. After about an hour Salakar stops to fill his waterskin. So we job him from behind. Salakar isn't particularly skilled, but we're both wearing chainmail armour so this fight takes a long long time as we lightly stab each other repeatedly. We triumph, but his pinpricks did get to us quite badly so we drink our healing potion. And we get 12 Gold and some kind of silver amulet. See kids, evil pays. Another hour's travel into the hills, cackling all the way. At which point we get hit with a small javelin. HOW DARE THEY! We look round for the culprit and see a rabble of hill goblins running away into the distance. This is not on. We sneak attack, we are not sneak attacked. We make a note to track down their families and torture them and move on. At which point we realise that we don't actually know what Salakar's quest was as he didn't have a useful diary, which had been the hope. Oops. We consider going back to Hogrun and going “we killed Salakar so you need to tell us what he was doing” but that seems unwise, so we look round for a hopeful clue. There is a cave up ahead in the hill, so maybe that was it? It's going to turn out to be really embarrassing if we were supposed to wipe out those hill goblins. There's a giant in the cave busy being a greedy guts. He doesn't notice us, which we approve of. We like our giants like we like our mugging victims. Unawares. It's a classic skill versus brute strength battle. We triumph, but the giant smacks us twice with a leg he seems to be eating. (We've tried peasant leg. It's overrated). We're pretty badly wounded. But Duke runs from nothing but law enforcement and alimony payments and so we persevere. Two tunnels! A completely random choice with no helpful information! We bravely go right! We enter a chamber with several notable features. A pool of shimmering blue liquid with a lever inside it. A stone slab blocking off a tunnel. We certainly aren't going to be doing ugh physical labour here. And we are not scared of what looks like toilet duck, so we reach our hand in to pull the lever. Ooo, ooo, cold! Very cold! In fact, this a bit too cold... Cause of Death: Cold Toilet Duck. Rhi Says: It was really amusing to not know what the fuck I was doing because I wasn't the hero. A really nice change to have the opportunity to play a villain as well. I did feel like I died before I ever got started!
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