April A to Z - K is for Karam Gruul

His pedicurist gave a
glowing report.

Appears in:  Moonrunner (Fighting Fantasy 48) by Stephen Hand.




Background:  Karam Gruul was a powerful but little known general in Brice during the War of the Four Kingdoms.  He is responsible for the deaths of thousands through murder, inquisition or deadly traps.  He was declared dead at the end of the war but he has made a reappearance and wants to start another War of the Four Kingdoms.

Prominence:  Gruul's agents are all over the place.  You can trust no one.  The only people you can trust are probably dead.  One of his assassins kills the only person who knows why you are here and makes you look like the killer.  And that is paragraph 1.  He is the brains behind the a cult, an army of Brician criminals a reign of terror by strange monsters and undead creatures, the local insane asylum (as a way to get rid of enemies) and pretty much any organisation in Blackhaven.  He has managed to infiltrate every group in Blackhaven and control it.  Only a few individuals dare make a stand against him.  9/10

Hardness:  When you encounter Gruul, he is surrounded by his army of war criminals, disguised as his lieutenant, Radu.  If you manage to fight your way through them, you can then only get close to Gruul if you have one of two skills out of a choice of nine.  If you don't, you die.  If you do manage to confront him, he then unleashes his magic upon you.  If you do not have the right wards and if you roll a 1 or 2, your adventure is over (either immediately or in a few paragraphs time).  Even after his magical onslaught, he will try to turn you into a moonrunner, a beast that he turned you into years before.  If that fails, you have to make sure that you get him to Royal Lendle.  If you make the correct decisions and have a high enough stamina, chances are you will win.  7/10.

Ambition:  He wants to start another war between four countries.  8/10.

Style:  Karam Gruul has style.  He's an evil sorcerer, but his magical technique is his own.  He also knows many many ways to kill you, including traps of his own design (my favourite being the pit filling with water with a ladder which has razor blades on it), poisoned envelopes, poisoned food, carriages that flood and many more.  He also likes to trick you by sending false messages in order to divert you and if he does capture you, he puts you in a sadistic torture device where rats gradually eat you.  10/10

Diabolical genius:  Karam Gruul epitomises diabolical genius.  First of all, he is almost impossible to find as he hides behind a secret organisation hiding behind a secret organisation hiding behind a tavern.  He spends most of his time disguised as someone else and has a mandrake to look like him.  He has killed of most of his enemies quickly and efficiently.  He leaves deadly traps all over the city for you to stumble into.  His servants are not just ordinary mooks - he has a squad of acrobatic assassin sorcerers, an undead monster, an unkillable guard and many many more great monsters.  You get the feeling that you will only succeed by the skin of your teeth.  11/10.

Total score:  Karam Gruul is the epitome of evil genius.  He has everything worked out and you will only stop him by the skin of your teeth.  45/50.

Fighting Fantazine issue 5 is out!

If you have not seen Andrew Wrights blog,

1)  Why not?
2)  You may have missed the news that Fighting Fantazine issue 5 is out! 

Below is Andrew's post describing what is in this great issue.

Editor Alex Ballingall has really been burning the midnight oil putting this incredible package together! Among the many amazing features included inside its bumper 104 pages:

• An astounding cover by Natalie Roberts.
• An interview with John Sibbick, illustrator for Fighting Fantasy, Games Workshop, and many excellent dinosaur and extinct prehistoric animal books. Includes never-before-seen pencil roughs of some classic FF book covers.
• Bones of the Banished - a 274 paragraph Fighting Fantasy adventure written and illustrated by Brett "Jediboyy" Schofield. Brilliant stuff!
• Results from the previous Fighting Fantazine survey, including extensive essays on the ten best Fighting Fantasy gamebooks. (I've contributed a piece on Steve Jackson's Creature of Havoc).
• An interview with Graham Bottley, writer of the revised Advanced Fighting Fantasy RPG system, due for publication soon by Arion Games.
• Guillermo Paredes' Omens and Auguries, featuring all the latest gamebook news.
• Jamie Fry gatecrashes the lair of notorious Fighting Fantasy author Ian Livingstone.
• Dan Satherly attempts the infamous Sky Lord by Martin Allen - the final science-fiction adventure in the Fighting Fantasy series.
• Part 2 of the Adventure Game series, where yours truly talks about how to plan the structure of your own Fighting Fantasy adventure.

I have written one of the essays - I wrote about Moonrunner.  I liked it from the start but after going through it in depth in order to write the essay about it, I liked it a whole lot more.  I love the atmosphere of the book and I think that Karam Gruul is a great villain.

You can download issue 5 from here. The main website can be found here.

Enjoy!

Coming soon - What writing 25 paragraph microadventures has taught me.

Your adventure ends here - Some I like

Here's some failure paragraphs which I like for some reason.  Enjoy!

The first one is from Space Assassin by Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone.
 
An orange glow pervades the room, reflecting off everything except the spheres which remain implacably black. Little doors materailize in front of each sphere and swallow them as they droft over their thesholds; within seconds the entire room is bereft of the spheres. The doors evaporate, leaving you easy eaccess to the other side of the room. Before you can stroll across, however, the room vanishes and you find yourself floating in a starry void, light years from anywhere. A stone tablet drifts slowly into view. It is engraved: "We eliminated seventy-seven spheres of annihilation on your account. As you do not have the means of paying your bill for this service we have taken the liberty of foreclosing and transporting you to this place. Sorry."
 
The tablet drifts away, leaving you to spin in the void. You have failed.

Why I like this ending

It's all about the 'sorry' at the end.  It adds a touch of humour to floating in eternal blackness.

This ending is from Moonrunner by Stephen Hand.

You have leaned the hard way that there is no escape from Karam Gruul's infamous wire tunic.  Your hunt for the fiend ends in a most grisly fashion.

Why I like this ending

This ending highlights what an evil genius Karam Gruul is. Anyone who has invented their own grisly infamous trap deserves respect.

The next ending is from the Citidel of Chaos (no, not that one) by Jamie Thompson.

You ave no way of entering e Overlord's World and none of the thinkers among the Champions can come up with a solution either...and time is running out.  After ten minutes or so, the double doors crash open and a veritable army of Enforcers and Cybermarines come boiling in.  The battle is epic in scale and you will go down i the annals of the Resistance forever.  But the outcome is never in doubt.  Eventually, you are all overwhelmed.  It is all over.

Why I like this ending

It is a great example of a blaze of glory ending. 

This ending is from Deathtrap Dungeon by Ian Livingstone.

You step up to the mirror and are amused by your distorted reflection. Your head looks as large as a pumpkin and your face is exceedingly strange. Suddenly, without warning, a terrible pain pounds through your head and you try to look away from the mirror but are unable to. Some evil force is keeping your eyes glued to your own reflection. You grip your head with your hands and realize with horror that it is expanding. You can withstand it no longer and, blacking out with the pain, you fall unconscious to the floor, never to wake.

Why I like this paragraph

It has an element of horror to it.  It starts off with you looking at a funny image of yourself in a mirror and ends up with you dying horribly.

The last one is from Necklace of Skulls by Dave Morris.

No expression shows on the hard ma-like face as you make your genuflection.  There is no roar of rage to show he is affronted nor flash of sullen anger in his eye.  He only raises his sceptre slowly as though to emphasize the point he is about to make.  Then, before you have a chance to move, he brings the sceptre swishing down to split your skull open like a melon.  Your adventure ends suddenly and horribly.  

Why I like this ending

This paragraph really drives home how stuffed you are and hopeless your situation is against your foe.  First of all, it contains the word genuflection.  I have no idea what it means and so my situation also becomes hopeless in a literary way. 

Then he does nothing to show off his power which is a clear indication that he has so much power that he does not need to show it off.  Oh dear.  All he does is slowly raise his sceptre.  However, even that is too quick for me and he then splits my skull open like a melon.  Which means he didn't find that too difficult. 

Next time...

A summary of what I have learnt from all these death paragraphs.

I will also post about my own writing.  Something I have done very little of during the winter, but I think I need to do it more regularly.