Behind the Scenes: Knights of Doom - the Celastrix

I was going through my old Fighting Fantasy files the other day and came across some of the notes for Knights of Doom, along with copies of some of Tony Hough's illustrations for the book.

Now, if you've not read this hard to get hold of FF adventure (Knights of Doom is the only one of my gamebooks that hasn't been re-printed by Wizard Books and is going for £35+ on Ebay) then you might not want to read on just yet.

WARNING - SPOILERS!

WARNING - SPOILERS!

WARNING - SPOILERS!

Still here? On your head be it then...

In the latter stages of the adventure you save the mythical Celastrix from a band of Beastmen. The Celastrix is a huge bird that glows with an ethereal light and its release is vital to your success in the mission, helping you in your quest to heal the land by ridding it of the foul influence of Chaos.

The Celastrix by Tony Hough

The Celastrix was directly inspired by the Caladrius of legend. It was an all-white bird that lived in the king's household. If it looked into the face of a sick man, this action predicted that the man would live. However, if the Caladrius looked away, the sick man was doomed to die of his illness. To cure the sick man, the Caladrius could look at hi, and draw the sickness into itself. The bird then flew towards the sun, where the disease was burned up and destroyed. The Caladrius was considered an unclean bird and as such must not be eaten.

Behind the Scenes: Howl of the Werewolf - the Werebat

WARNING - SPOILERS! WARNING - SPOILERS!

Okay? Got that?

WARNING - SPOILERS!

Sure?

Well, on your head be it...

In the Tower of Maun, in the cursed land of Lupravia, the hero of Howl of the Werewolf is likely to run into a Werebat. I was thrilled with Martin McKenna's rendition of this particular monster which I have reproduced for you here.



Of course, in a book about were-creatures, I was looking to include all sorts of variations on a familiar theme. Bats and vampires go together like toast and butter, so a werebat seemed like a suitable addition to the storyline.

While I was imaging this particular scene, I inevitably found the image of Dracula as bat-monster from Bram Stoker's Dracula coming to the fore in my mind. However, there was also another influence - that of the Man-Bat from Batman.

In the DC Universe, Dr. Kirk Langstrom is a scientist specializing in the study of bats. He develops an extract which is intended to give humans the bat's sonar sense and tests the formula on himself - of course - because he is becoming deaf. While it works, it has a horrific side-effect, transforming him into a hideous humanoid bat-like monster.


In case you were wondering, the Man-Bat's latest incarnation appears in the next Lego Batman: The Video Game.

Behind the Scenes: Howl of the Werewolf - The Malice

WARNING - SPOILERS!

If you've not read Howl of the Werewolf yet - or you haven't finished it - and you intend to, stop reading now!

You have been warned!

WARNING - SPOILERS!

During your exploration of the land of Lupravia you can happen upon some mysterious ruins where, in the past, an unroly rite was enacted. This event, and its consequences, were so appalling that they have left an indelible mark on the place. The longer you spent exploring the ruins, the greater your chance of meeting the Malice!

The Malice was inspired, in part, by the Malus, a malevolent alien entity from the Fifth Doctor Who story The Awakening. I certainly had the creature's distinctive gargoyle face in mind when I wrote that particular passage of the book.

In this particular Fifth Doctor adventure, the Malus (Latin for 'bad', in case you didn't know) was responsible for creating a time link between the year of 1984 and the events from the English Civil War.

As well as inspiring the Malice's ultimate malign form, another image of the Malus from The Awakening also appears in the book (although it was not illustrated separately), with the stone imps that you can encounter in the ruins - the Grinnygogs. And for anyone who was a child during the early 1980s, yes, I was also thinking of The Witches and the Grinnygog when I wrote this. Now that is a show I would like to see again!

Behind the Scenes: Howl of the Werewolf - The Glass Knight

One of the 'creatures' you can fall foul of during the course of Howl of the Werewolf is the Glass Knight. Animated by evil magic, the image of a warrior from a stained glass window comes to life and battles you, attempting to chop you into little pieces with its razor-sharp glass sword.

The idea of the Glass Knight was one that I had been hoping to use in a gamebook for quite some time, but I cannot claim that it was an original one. The encounter was wholly inspired by a memorable scene from the 1985 cinematic feature Young Sherlock Holmes.

During the course of the movie, an old priest is hit by a poisoned dart shot from a blowpipe. As a result, hallucinates that he is being menaced by a stained glass knight. Considering the film was made over 20 years ago, the effects are, on the whole, excellent, especially the creation of the knight which took Industrial, Light and Magic artists four months to create. It was brought to life through computer animation, helped along by John Lasseter of a little known company, at the time, called Pixar.

If you've not seen the film before, it's worth tracking down for a look. It's better than you might have been led to believe. And if you have seen the film, you'll know that already, in which case, perhaps it's time you revisited that particular moment of escapism from your childhood.

Behind the Scenes: Howl of the Werewolf - The Water Wyrd

I can't really give today's 'Behind the Scenes' too much of a context, otherwise it would rather give the game away for anyone who is still to read Howl of the Werewolf, so I'm just going to tell you about my inspiration for the encounter.

BUT BE WARNED, the following would still count as a SPOILER in my book.

Got that?

Still want to read more?

.

Well, you have been warned...

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For anyone who has encountered the slippery, fish-eyed old Water Wyrd and the Daughters of the Drowned in Howl of the Werewolf, one source of inspiration may be pretty clear - Jenny Greenteeth. For those not already in the know, Jenny Greenteeth is a character from English folklore. She was essentially a river hag, and would pull children, or even the elderly into rivers and quiet pools to drown them, before consuming their flesh.

She was often described as green-skinned, with long, unkempt hair, and sharp pike-like teeth. She was known as Jinny Greenteeth in Lancashire, whereas in Cheshire and Shropshire she was called Ginny Greenteeth, Wicked Jenny, or even Peg o' Nell.

In reality, if you like, she was the folkloric personification of a very real danger for people who couldn't swim. The name Jenny Greenteeth is also sometimes used to describe pond weed or duckweed, which can form a continuous mat over the surface of a small body of water, making it misleading and potentially treacherous, especially to unwary children.

However, there was another source of inspiration behind the encounter as it appears in Howl of the Werewolf, especially in relation to the eeriely alluring Daughters of the Drowned. It was an episode of Jim Henson's The Storyteller (starring John Hurt), first broadcast in the late 80s, called Fearnot. In this story, a young man goes on an expedition to explore the source of fear, accompanied by a devious tinker. The young man overcomes various obstacles without learning what fear is, and one of these is a run-in with a Terrible Thing that lives at the bottom of a still, green pool along with the Sisters of the Deep.

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Coincidentally, at about the time that I was writing Howl of the Werewolf, the character of Jenny Greenteeth appeared in the 2000AD comic strip London Falling, by Si Spurrier and Lee Garbett (as seen in the illustration below).

Behind the Scenes: Spellbreaker - The Acolytes of Pain

When I was commissioned to write my first Fighting Fantasy adventure in the summer of 1992 I had been living on a diet of Brother Cadfael medieval murder mysteries for some years and this inevitably influenced Spellbreaker.

The overall adventure involves the hero in helping the monks of Rassin Abbey recover the Black Grimoire, a book of dark magic which holds the key to unleashing a hellish demon on the highly religious land of Ruddlestone.

My take on Ruddlestone came from a passing reference in Titan: The Fighting Fantasy World, which referred to a devout populace ruled over by a priest king. Hence, a lot of the things that feature in Spellbreaker involve quasi-medieval religious mumbo-jumbo of one type or another - the bits that don't feature witches, that is.

The adventure is populated with pilgrims, holy men, martyrs, fanatics, saints and hallowed sites. One of these is the town of Hallow's Well. As our hero tries to leave the town by the West Gate he runs into the Acolytes of Pain.

A bald man at the front of the group has a metal band around his head, which seems to be spiked on the inside, and another similar artefact around his neck. Another man stares skyward while beating himself with a cat-o'-nine-tails. One woman, almost in a trance with the chanting, grips hot coals in her hands. These are the Acolytes of Pain, religious fanatics who believe that to get closer to their gods they must endure great physical suffering.

If our hero is captured by the acolytes, as a punishment for profaning the sacred way to enlightenment, he is then put to either the Test of the Wheel or the Test of Scorpions.

Apart from a general fascination for all things medieval and their religious beliefs in particular I remember, quite clearly, that this encounter was also inspired by a scene from Terry Gilliam's first solo feature film Jabberwocky.

Very loosely based on the nonsense poem by Lewis Carroll, the Internet Movie Database describes the movie as follows:

After the death of his father the young cooper 'Dennis Cooper' goes to town where he has to pass several adventures. The town and the whole kingdom is threatened by a terrible monster called 'Jabberwocky'. Will Dennis make his fortune? Is anyone brave enough to defeat the monster? A medieval tale with Pythonesque humour.

During his adventures Dennis (played by Michael Palin) runs into a bunch of religious fanatics who at first intend to set him on fire. However, the more they discuss his horrific death-to-come, the more excited one of the masochistic fanatics (played by Kenneth Colley) becomes, until he sets himself alight and launches himself from the city walls using a giant catapult. It was he that I had in mind when I wrote the description of the acolyte withe the metal band around his head.