Ashkar the Magnificent

I've always been a big fan of Andrew Chapman's Seas of Blood. Great atmosphere, place-names, set pieces, creatures, and funky map. Not everyone likes it as it's very difficult to beat by the rules, but I've never been much of a one for playing the Fighting Fantasy books strictly by the book, so I've never let that spoil my enjoyment of it. The lands of the Inland Sea have always been one of my favourite areas in Titan, so imagine how pleased I was to discover that Andrew Chapman had written another book, a novel, set in the same place: Ashkar the Magnificent (published in 2000). In issue 7 of Fighting Fantazine, I discussed some aspects of Ashkar and its relationship with Seas of Blood in the Fact of Fiction article. In this post, I've extracted the bits about Ashkar as a preface to an analysis of the geography of the lands of the Inland Sea as described in that book, and added a few other comments on why us FF fans might be interested in Ashkar the Magnificent.

The Lands of the Inland Sea

The lands of the Inland Sea first appeared in the Fighting Fantasy gamebook, Seas of Blood, written by Andrew Chapman and published in 1985. Nothing in Seas of Blood indicated a connection between these lands and any other Fighting Fantasy setting, which is perhaps not surprising as the world of Titan was first referred to in Sword of the Samurai, published in April 1986, and was first revealed in detail in Titan – The Fighting Fantasy World, published in October 1986. In that book, the lands of the Inland Sea were placed in the continent of Khul in Titan, and Andrew Chapman was thanked for his contribution to the Fighting Fantasy world in the acknowledgements at the front of Titan. This placement of the lands of the Inland Sea in Khul was not unproblematic, however, since it was not Chapman's original intention that the lands of the Inland Sea should be included in the world of Titan. Chapman revealed on the Rebuilding Titan Yahoo! group that he “had created a more extensive geography and history for that world which I used later in two other books, and also in the unpublished FF Deathlord”. One of these other two books is Ashkar the Magnificent, which contains the same map as Seas of Blood. The other is the unpublished Darksoul (come on Andrew, let's see it published!).

What is Ashkar the Magificent?

Ashkar the Magnificent is a novel set in the lands of the Inland Sea which tells the story of the confrontation between the brothers Ashkar and Morkain, Autocrats of the Lagashian Empire, and the adventures of the mysterious girl L’lan, the sentient sword Prax, and Starg, the Captain of the pirate ship Banshee from the notorious city of Tak. The setting of Ashkar is at once familiar and strange to those who have played Seas of Blood. The places detailed on the map in Seas of Blood are all there, and elements such as the Kishain Winged Hussars and the pirate ship Banshee are common to both. Indeed, the captain of the Banshee himself takes centre stage in both books, but whether Chapman intended them to be the same individual is unknown.

But unlike Seas of Blood, with its Mesopotamian and Arabesque nomenclature and culture, the lands of the Inland Sea in Ashkar are full of peoples, places and things with exotic sounding names of an entirely different sort, more reminiscent of Jack Vance’s Dying Earth setting. It seems likely that Chapman, finding his lands of the Inland Sea co-opted into the Fighting Fantasy world, Titan, continued to use the setting for his own adventures whilst making an effort to distinguish them from the Fighting Fantasy version of the region. So the lands of the Inland Sea and its peoples exist in two places at once, in Khul and in another world (called ‘Earth’ by Chapman in Ashkar), two alternate versions of the same fantastical vision.

What can we learn about the lands of the Inland Sea from Ashkar?

There's all sorts of interesting stuff in Ashkar the Magnificent concerning the lands of the Inland Sea. The following is only a small sample of the kinds of interesting titbits that lie between its covers:

• Although the city of Kish itself does not feature in Ashkar the Magnificent, Kishian Archimandrites such as Mengg comb the Inland Sea in search of virgins for their 'Isostatic Rite'. 
• In Ashkar the Magnificent (p. 82), a group of fifty Kishian Winged Hussars is termed a flight, and it appears that they can be hired as mercenaries.
• The city of Tak, with its towering granite bay (just as in Seas of Blood) is, to all intents and purposes, ruled over by the pirate lord Lolfant the Interminable.
• The captain of the Banshee is also one of the central characters in Ashkar the Magnificent. Named Starg, he is an unwholesome character, dressed in a cape of human skin and ready to kill his crew for raping his female slaves, not because he cares about the poor girls themselves but because he recognises the value of virgins to the nefarious Kishian Archimandrites. Although he acknowledges Lolfant the Interminable, de facto ruler of Tak, as his superior, it is Starg who is instrumental in the gathering of forces to attack their common enemy – Morkain, Autocrat of Lagash.
• The great golden city of Lagash is the centre of the Lagashian Empire, ruled over by the autocrats Ashkar and his brother Morkain.
• Although Lagash plays a central role in Ashkar the Magnificent, no Wazi of Lagash, as found in Seas of Blood, is mentioned. However, the autocrat (leader) of Lagash, Morkain, is served by a Vizier called Shagtran (Ashkar, p. 112-3), and we can assume that this is the same office of state.
• Starg visits Assur to enlist the aid of the Kajn Lizard Men, and the river which flows inland from the city is named the Uphom.
• The Lizard Men are called the Kajn, are described as “blue-tongued reptiles, towering at seven or eight feet in height” (p. 47) with skin “composed of gorgeous blue scales” (p. 49), and are willing to act as mercenary forces in the assault on Lagash by the pirates of Tak.
• The nature of the beasts ridden by the Lizard Men in Seas of Blood is unknown. In Ashkar the Magnificent, the steeds of the Lizard Men are not mentioned, although the massive, lumbering Gunderwals, which act as beast of burden, might possibly be the same creatures (Ashkar, p. 51-2).
• The inhabitants of Calah, the Calahites, are described as having copper skin.
• The name Goth appears once in Ashkar the Magnificent (p. 91), where it is said of Ashkar, in reference to his mighty power, that “the power and strength of his nature swept from him like the fire of Goth”. Is this a reference to the volcanoes which flank the western shore of the Channel of Goth, or to some god of the Inland Sea who has given his name to this fiery region?
• One wonders whether the enormous, plesiosaur-like sea creature which looks and acts like an island in Seas of Blood (para. 120) might be one of the Coelacanths, summoned from the depths by Ashkar to swallow the pirate ships of Tak (Ashkar the Magnificent, p. 86).
• The River Parine is the central artery of the great Lagashian Empire, with settlements such as Mantou, Aut Haat, Uffle, Embre and Kul found along its length.

As you can see, there's loads in there of interest to the fan of Fighting Fantasy in Ashkar. I'm particularly interested in the geographical aspects of the book and what they can tell us about what 'Khul' might be like beyond what we know from other (FF) sources. I know Ashkar isn't set in Khul (kind of), but just as was the case with Dave Morris's outline of The Keeper of the Seven Keys, it's fun to imagine what Khul might be like if Ashkar was set there. I'll return to this in another post, exploring in particular the geography of the Lagashian Empire and the River Parine area.

Gundobad in Khul

If you've ever played the 2-player Fighting Fantasy gamebook Clash of the Princes,* you'll be familiar with the golden city of Gundobad and the lands surrounding it, as detailed in this beautiful map by Dave Andrews:

The curious thing about Gundobad and its surrounding lands is that they were not connected in any obvious way with the rest of the Fighting Fantasy world, Titan, despite looking like they should be (in terms of the style of map, the kinds of monsters and situations you encounter and, of course, because this was a fantasy-themed FF adventure). When I joined the online FF community, it turned out that other fans had, like me, been wondering whether Gundobad was in Titan and where it would be if so. Not only that, but Andrew Chapman, one of the authors of CotP, had told fans on the Rebuilding Titan forum the following:

"I don’t think I was even aware of Titan when I wrote Clash of the Princes and was certainly never consulted by anyone about it. I have no problem with Gundobad being situated in Titan and you may place it there with my blessing."

All sorts of theories were dreamed up, from Gundobad being on Titan's Unknown Land (see the world map of Titan in Titan - The Fighting Fantasy World) to Gundobad being on the ancient continent of Irritaria. None of these theories was particularly convincing, although there was some support amongst fans for Gundobad being in the Unknown Land or in Khul.

In 2005, I put together a document (placed in the titan_rebuilding discussion group files section) summarising my thoughts on the location of Gundobad in Titan, and I later developed this as an article in the first issue of Fighting Fantazine in 2009. In this article, I discussed the likely locations for Gundobad in Titan and suggested that it was in northwest Khul for the following reasons:

• We know nothing about the Unknown Land and it could be that it is a frozen wilderness.
• Likewise, we know very little about the geography of the ancient continent of Irritaria, and no part of it looks like the map in CotP.
• One place on the CotP map (Kalamdar) has a similar name to a place in Khul (Kalagar).
• The coastline of Khul in the neighbourhood of Kalagar is very similar to the coastline in the CotP map of the lands around Gundobad, with Kalagar and Kalamdar lying in exactly the same position.
• The mixture of Asiatic honorific ('Pasha') with a Germanic personal name ('Vulfolaic') of the emperor of the lands around Gundobad looks quite Khulian (compare the Vizier of Kazan and the barbarian horse-lord, Khan Gyorgir, of the central Khulian plains).

In the Fantazine article, I suggested that Kalagar and Kalamdar were the same place and the reason for Gundobad not appearing on the maps in Titan was that this part of Khul had simply not been developed at the time Titan was written (in the same way that various other areas developed in later FF gamebooks don't feature in the Titan maps). Whether the resemblance of the coastlines around Kalagar and Kalamdar in the Titan and CotP maps was an accident or was intentional (though perhaps muddled by the committee) still remains unknown, but the idea that Kalagar = Kalamdar and that Gundobad is in Khul seems to have been well received by the online FF community. So much so, in fact, that Andy 'greyarea' Wright has written the new FF bestiary, Beyond the Pit, under the assumption that Gundobad is in northwest Khul (see here). So it looks like Gundobad has found a home at last in the Fighting Fantasy world.

In the Fantazine article, the editor, Alex Ballingall, drew a map of the Kalagar/Kalamdar area showing where places like Gundobad would lie in Khul. This was based on a Paintshop job I'd done on Steve Luxton's map of Khul from Titan, which I thought it would be nice to share with you:

I think this looks like just the spot for Gundobad, with its woods, hills and barbarian overlord.

Oh, and in one other intriguing cross-over between the lands of CotP and the continent of Khul, we have a scene which appears in both The Warlock's Way and in Seas of Blood, also by Andrew Chapman (thanks to 'Vastariner' for pointing this link out). In The Warlock's Way, you may catch a merchant ship from Kalamdar to the Isle of Orcmoot (not marked on the CotP map) via the kingdom of Peleus (also not marked on the map). The ship is waylaid by pirates, and the captain surrenders his passengers and cargo so that he and his crew can go on. You can either surrender to the pirates (and be sold into slavery), or use magic or some artefact to scare the pirates off or escape. One option given to you is to summon a SHADE to attack the pirate captain; unfortunately this leads to several pirates firing their crossbows at you, resulting in your death (para. 266). In Seas of Blood, your pirate ship may be sailing in the middle of the Inland Sea, between the isle of Enraki and the Shoals of Trysta, and you may encounter a heavy laden merchant ship travelling from the Eastern Rim to Kish. If you attack the ship (with your crew of pirates who wield scimitars and crossbows), "a hooded figure, obviously a Warlock or Magus" steps forward from among the other terrified passengers and summons a SHADE to attack you (para. 391). If you defeat the SHADE, the other passengers on the merchant ship seize the Warlock, tie him (he is identified as male) up, and throw him into the sea to his doom (para. 252). The merchant ship captain places himself and his ship at your mercy (and you are in fact fairly merciful).

Although the two episodes are very similar, they are not quite the same, and it's impossible to square their geography. No doubt this is just Andrew Chapman having a bit of fun, but it's another interesting link between Gundobad and Khul. Anyway, the placement of Gundobad in Khul means that there's another part of the Dark Continent we now know something about. If we add this to what we know from the other FF gamebooks and Titan, the projected location of Arkand, and what we can conjecture from Andrew Chapman's Ashkar the Magnificent (which I'll return to in a later post), a pretty detailed picture can be reconstructed as to what the geography of Khul might be like.

*I never heard about Clash of the Princes when it first came out. In fact, I was totally oblivious to its existence, having never seen Warlock Magazine where it was advertised and having never seen it listed amongst the gamebooks inside the front cover of any Fighting Fantasy gamebook. In about the year 2000 or 2001, just before I got involved in the online FF community, I was browsing through a collection of greenspines in a second-hand bookshop in Newcastle-Upon-Tyne and found a copy of The Warrior's Way. How could there be an FF book I've never heard of?! I had dreamt of such things, but it was a big surprise to find such a thing for real. I soon bought The Warlock's Way on ebay to complete the set.

Various bits of Fighting Fantasy-related news

I've been swamped with work lately so things have been a bit slow around here, but here are a few bits and pieces of news relating to the world of Fighting Fantasy:

• Issue 13 of Fighting Fantazine (website currently down due to server malfunction seemingly) is out, featuring an interview with Lord of FF Darkness, Peter Darvill-Evans, a Western-themed FF adventure by Gaetano Abbondanza, author of the Tin Man gamebooks Slaves of Rema and Sultans of Rema (this link's not working either right now; what the hell is wrong with the internet today?!), and loads of other stuff.
• Dave Morris keeps us dreaming of what might have been over on the Fabled Lands blog with his outline of the 'lost' FF gamebook, The Thief of Arantis, which ultimately became the Virtual Reality book Twist of Fate (now the Critical IF book Once Upon a Time in Arabia). More Arabian Nights themed action in southern Allansia would have been a lot of fun!
• Steve Luxton, master of the FF map, has produced an amazing MapMaker package which allows you to draw your own fantasy maps using over 200 predefined map symbols drawn in his inimitable style. I've had a brief play with it and it's a doddle (and pleasure) to use.
• Jon Green has arranged the first ever Fighting Fantasy convention, to take place in Ealing on the 7th of September, 2014 (cost £50). Guests will include Ian Livingstone and Steve Jackson, and the convention will also see the official launch of Jon's eagerly awaited history of FF, YOU are the Hero.

I'll be back soon with more FF news, analysis and comment.

Where on Titan is Arkand?

Many of you will no doubt be aware that there were a number of 'lost' Fighting Fantasy gamebooks - gamebooks which were in the pipeline, typically only at the ideas phase, when the Puffin series came to a close or which just never made it into production for one reason or another. I'll explore all of these in more detail in another post or series of posts, but right now I want to consider a possible geography for one of them, The Keeper of the Seven Keys, as recently described in detail by Dave Morris on the Fabled Lands blog.

Now of course Seven Keys never became an FF gamebook, as it never got past the concept phase, and Dave Morris and Jamie Thomson may even end up reusing the idea without connecting it to FF at all. But it's such an interesting idea for an FF gamebook, with lots of nice names of people and places, that it's fun to imagine how it might have fitted into the world of Fighting Fantasy had it been published as part of that gamebook series.

Let's start with what the original proposal for the book tells us. The adventure is set in the continent of Khul in Titan and revolves around a conflict between the 'evil' lord Karabane of the 'Tower of Doom' and the nearby city of 'Arkand'. Neither of these two places had appeared on FF books or maps before, so we're left wondering where in Khul they might have been. Let's look at what else we can learn about the geography of the adventure from the outline on the Fabled Lands blog. Firstly, the names associated with Arkand (Karabane, Araminta, Kalara, Arkand itself) look Khulian enough without looking like they come from places such as Hachiman, southwest Khul and the Inland Sea, which have their own unique linguistic 'flavours' (i.e. Japanese, Turkic/Mongolian, Sumerian respectively). So we can rule out those areas. Where else might Arkand lie? Well, most of the centre and south of the continent is a chaos-warped wilderness or desert, so that doesn't fit with the 'poor harvests' and 'blighted crops' that the people of Arkand are blaming on Karabane. The west of Khul is a relatively settled and well documented part of the continent. The northeast is less well known, but this is Robin Waterfield territory, with Masks of Mayhem, Phantoms of Fear and Deathmoor all being set here, so we know a bit about this part of Khul. In addition, it looks like Clash of the Princes is set in the same part of the continent too, especially given the retconning done by Andy Wright in the new Beyond the Pit. All that being the case, that really only leaves us with one part of the continent which hasn't been explored or detailed in any of the FF books - the central eastern part of the continent, between Hachiman and Corda. Could Arkand and the Tower of Doom be located here?

Let's look at some other evidence from the Seven Keys outline. One obvious feature is the presence of two characters from Hachiman in the adventure: Uldarik Hsao and Fudoshin Raiko. Hsao's first name isn't very 'eastern' at all, but maybe that's what we'd expect from someone from that secretive land who now lives amongst people from a different culture. One other name in the outline is vaguely 'eastern', if not exactly Japanese or Chinese, in type too - Prince Chemcho (of Sariandor). So although Seven Keys can't be set in Hachiman, it looks like it might not be a million miles away from it, given the Hachimanian element in the adventure. That fits the area between Hachiman and Corda in eastern Khul rather well I think.

There are a few other places named in the outline which may be in the same general area. There's 'Fernor', home of Mogresh the Alchemist, 'Kelados', home of Syrena the Amazon, 'Sariandor', home of Prince Chemcho, and 'Qor', home of the Wizards of Qor and the Longbow of Qor. Amazons are a well-known element in society in some parts of Khul (see Beyond the Pit), so we can assume it is somewhere in the continent. The location of the other places relative to Arkand is of course unknown, but we can guess that they aren't too far away, as people from those places are involving themselves in this adventure. In the map below (adapted from the original by Steve Luxton in Titan - The Fighting Fantasy World), I've marked most of these places to give an indication of where they might have been had Seven Keys ended up as an FF book - Arkand in a plain amongst the hills, the Tower of Doom in the nearby hills to the west, Qor on the edge of the central Khulian wastes, and Fernor and Sariandor as ports on the eastern coast. I'd be interested to know what you think!

South of Qor lie the lands of the Inland Sea. There's a whole lot more detail about those in Andrew Chapman's non-FF novel, Ashkar the Magnificent, especially the lands north and east of Lagash, which I'll talk about in another post. So although none of this is part of Fighting Fantasy canon, there is a considerable amount we can project for our own adventures in this otherwise undocumented part of Khul.

Some Fighting Fantasy statistics

We all remember those heady days when it seemed like there was a new Fighting Fantasy book on the shelf every time you went into the local bookshop. Or at least you do if, like me, you're now in your 40s and your memories of things long in the past are sometimes better than things that happened yesterday... Then came the slow decline and first death of Fighting Fantasy, followed by the empty years, before the franchise was resurrected in the new century, at least for a while.

It's interesting to look at some statistics from the history of FF, and in this post I'm going to briefly examine the publication history of the original Puffin Books run of the series.* The first FF book, The Warlock of Firetop Mountain (obviously), was published on the 27th of August, 1982. The last Puffin FF book, Curse of the Mummy, was published on the 26th of November, 1995. That's exactly 13 years and 3 months of Fighting Fantasy, but of course for us FF fans it wasn't long enough. Publication of the books throughout that period wasn't constant though. The following graph illustrates the rise and fall of the Puffin Fighting Fantasy series:

That works out as 59 regular gamebooks and 21 other books (such as Sorcery!, the novels and the Advanced Fighting Fantasy series, but ignoring the Adventures of Goldhawk books which hardly count as FF books IMO), at an average of 4.2 regular gamebooks (5.7 over all) per year. Not all years were equal of course, as the graph shows clearly. From its first tentative step in 1982, the series exploded from 1983 to 1988 or 1989, and then tailed off in a slow death, with only a brief flutter of its old glory in the tenth anniversary year, 1992. The years 1984 to 1988 in particular stand out as the years when FF was at its height. 1985 was a bumper crop. Those were the years when the books came thick (well, Appointment with F.E.A.R. and Creature of Havoc were thick anyway) and fast, and the only down side to that was when you walked into the bookshop, saw a brand-new FF book, lifted it up excitedly, and then realised it was a sci-fi one. I hated it when that happened! It's interesting to have a look at the publication history of these (and other non-Titan) books too:

In this graph, I've grouped gamebooks (from the original 59) according to whether they were set in Titan or not. I've categorised Spectral Stalkers and Magehunter as being half in Titan, half not. There's a pretty obvious pattern here: non-Titan books were fairly common from 1983 to 1988, peaking dramatically in 1985. After that they disappeared from the scene almost entirely (and those which contained non-Titan elements were either partly set there or, in the case of Legend of Zagor, linked to Titan in other ways). Someone clearly realised that it wasn't just me having that reaction to the sci-fi books!

So there we have it, a little bit of Fighting Fantasy history. I don't suppose we'll ever see the like again, but maybe in another post I'll explore other FF statistics, e.g. the Wizard Books runs of the series.

*Thanks to Titannica for the dates analysed here.

What does YOUR bookshelf say about you?

I've always liked Lortag the Elder - a gentle scholar living quietly in a corner of that open sewer of a city, Kharé, spending his time puzzling over ancient runes and trying to educate the lawless Orclings of the city in what is probably a futile attempt at widening participation. At least until I read Inkle Studios' engrossing version of the second Sorcery! adventure... But that's a different story for another day. In the original Kharé - Cityport of Traps, Lortag may invite you into his study for a chat and, as has happened to me far too many times in real life in similar situations, you might find that you aren't so much paying attention to what he's saying as to what books he has on his bookshelves. (In real life of course, this is not a good thing as you may suddenly realise you haven't been following the conversation and find that you are expected to reply to something you haven't really heard.) And what a collection of books Lortag has! They say you can tell a lot about someone from the books that they read, so what does Lortag's collection tell us about him?

 

This excellent illustration by the master of punk-fantasy art, John Blanche, is worth a closer look, especially if you are a Titan nerd like me who likes to find out as much about the world of Fighting Fantasy as possible. I don't know about you, but I really want to know what's on Lortag's shelves, so there's only two things we can do, short of interrogating John Blanche - either scan the image in at high quality them zoom in and see what the book titles are, or get a decent magnifying glass and have a closer look. I think you'll agree that squinting through a magnifying glass is much more fun than clicking buttons on a computer screen, so let's go for that for now. So what's Lortag been reading then?

Let's start on the top shelf. This is clearly where Lortag shoves all sorts of stuff that he hasn't sorted out or doesn't want visitors to see, so most of it is not spine-outwards and we can't work out what it is. But at the right-hand end of the shelf is a stack of books, some of which have readable titles on their spines. These are:

• Axiome
• Necropolitics
• White Dwarf 1-30 (or 1-36)

Axiome brings to mind the word axiom, meaning 'premise', 'initial assumption' or 'principle', derived from Ancient Greek ἀξίωμα. Necropolitics obviously refers to the politics of death or, as Wictionary puts it, "The relationship between sovereignty and power over life and death". Definitely top shelf material! White Dwarf is of course the name of the gaming magazine published by Games Workshop. How Lortag has managed to get hold of a bound volume of the first 30 (or 36) issues is anyone's guess.

Let's move on to the rather untidy second shelf. The only legible spine here is near the left:

• Tolkien

Ah hah! I always look to see if people have any Tolkien on their shelves when I visit their houses. It's generally a good sign, although a battered copy of just The Fellowship of the Ring bought in a second-hand bookshop on holiday one time doesn't qualify, whilst having the whole History of Middle-Earth in hardback proudly displayed in your living room is probably going too far, as is having ANY Tolkien on your office book shelves. Lortag seems to be playing it safe with what looks like a single hard-cover copy of one of Tolkien's books (probably the Silmarillion by its thickness).

On to the third shelf. Things are starting to get really interesting here, not surprisingly as this looks like a shelf that Lortag can easily reach. As well as a small telescope and various other bits of paraphernalia and untitled books, we have, from left to right:

• possibly volume V of something with a sun symbol on the spine
• volumes II and III of something with a fleur-de-lis symbol on the spine
• Jackson
• Jes
• Balykoth
• Malkuth
• Voloder (?)

and two others at the right-hand end which have illegible or obscured titles. Jackson may be the Kakhabadian name for the Trickster God, revered by many in those chaotic lands. Jes and Voloder are obscure, but Balykoth and Malkuth are very interesting. Although I can't find a source for Balykoth (though it's the kind of word that looks like it has one in the real world), it is similar to Balkoth, the name of an arch-demon in the Lords of Magic PC game, and Balchoth, a term created by Tolkien for a race of eastern barbarians. Whatever its origin (do let me know if you have any ideas), it has a diabolical look to it. Malkuth (Hebrew מלכות, meaning 'kingdom') is named after one of the attributes of the Kabbalah tradition. All very esoteric!

On the fourth shelf, we have a strange collection of stuff:

• Garibo[...] (?)
• Khare
• Dwarf Hymns
• Syn 1

Hmm. Garibo[...], if that is what it is, is partially obscured by Lortag himself. Khare (there may be an acute accent floating to the top right of the e) is obviously about Lortag's home city. Dwarf Hymns hardly seems like fascinating reading, though Syn 1 looks more promising.

The remaining shelves are mostly obscured by Lortag, but on the fifth shelf we have:

• Blanche Vol I
• Unlife Vol III
• Ions
• Bezelgue (?)
• Mogibell

Blanche Vol I appears to refer to an obscure (but obviously prolific) Kakhabadian artist from the mid 280s After Chaos. Unlife Vol III adds to our growing suspicion that there's a darker side to Lortag. Ions hints at a fascination with atomic physics, which is somewhat unexpected in a medieval fantasy world. Bezelgue (if that's what it is) and Mogibell are rather more obscure; the former looks like a French surname, the latter like it could be a book about cute cats to me.

Nothing can be made out on the sixth and seventh shelves, but on the eighth, unfortunately partially obscured not only by Lortag but also but his table, we have:

• Slee[...]
• D. McFa[...]

Not much to go on there. I initially thought D. McFa[...] might be MCFA (which looks like it might refer to Middlesex County Football Association), but that requires us to ignore the D. and the small size of the c.

So there we have it. Lortag might look and act like a mild-mannered old gentleman, but his library gives us an insight into what's going on behind his calm exterior. He's definitely into some weird, indeed disturbing, stuff, as we might expect from a scholar in the Verminpit of Kakhabad. He also has a penchant for role-playing and fantasy fiction, whilst in his quieter moments he enjoys singing Dwarf hymns and reading about cute kittens.

If you happen to have any other ideas about any of these weird and wonderful books titles, do let me know!

Where did you say you're from again?

Unlike Magnamund, the Lone Wolf world, which was created by Joe Dever alone, the Fighting Fantasy world of Titan was essentially designed by committee - each author created his* own part of the world, with only the over-all structure as laid out in Titan - The Fighting Fantasy World as a guide from 1986 onwards. I say committee, but I sometimes get the impression that this committee never met and that its members didn't really know the other members or that there even was a committee! The result is a wonderfully incoherent world with a mish-mash of cultures, races, monsters and lands which make Titan an interesting place to adventure in for sure but also one which lacks the consistency of more carefully planned worlds. It's one of the things I like about it, but this rather eclectic approach sometimes creates problems which might have been avoided with just a little bit of coordinated effort. I'm thinking of things like Khul in the southern hemisphere having the same seasons as Allansia in the northern hemisphere, the Foulbrood River running the wrong way on the Titan map, the Inland Sea existing in two fantasy worlds simultaneously, there being three entirely different maps of Kharé, none of which matches the original description of the city in Sorcery! or each other, and any number of other inconsistencies.

In this post, I want to consider how this rather haphazard approach to world-building has resulted in two villages in Titan having up to three different names each, and how we as fans of Fighting Fantasy might react to this bizarre situation.

The first of these villages is where it all began in 1982. In The Warlock of Firetop Mountain, you start your adventure in an unnamed village two days away from the mountain. This village was given a name in the first issue of Warlock Magazine in 1984, in the reworked version of TWoFTM that appeared there - Anvil (which is also marked on the first map of Allansia in the same issue). The sequel to TWoFTM, Return to Firetop Mountain (1992), also starts in Anvil, creating a nice link between the two adventures. So far so good, but then all of these adventures were written by the same person, Ian Livingstone, and the identity of the village hadn't been interfered with by the 'committee'.

Fast forward to 2003 and this village suddenly received an entirely new name - Gilford. It is named Gilford in the Myriador d20 conversion of TWoFTM (there's no reason to think it's not the same place, as you start the adventure there, two days' travel from Firetop Mountain, just as in the original adventure). And in the same year, a possible third name for the village appears in the short-lived Salamonis Gazette, by former administrator of the Official Fighting Fantasy website, Dave Holt. In that issue, a village named Haven appears on the map of the area around Firetop Mountain, although it's not stated that that's the village you start TWoFTM in, so maybe it's another village entirely. But that's at least two different names for the same place, something which could have been avoided with a little background research by the Myriador team.

Crossing the Western Ocean to the Verminpit of Kakhabad, a similar situation arises. In the first Sorcery! book, The Shamutanti Hills, you may pass through a village afflicted by plague. This 'plague village' isn't given a name, but when you encounter the riddling hunchback, Vancass, he lists villages you may have travelled through (Cantopani, Kristatanti, Dhumpus, Birritanti) plus another village, Gorretanti. The identity of Gorretanti is unknown, but it seems possible that it could be the otherwise unnamed plague village.

Again fast forwarding to 2003, and the plague village is named Taddapani in the Myriador d20 coversion of The Shamutanti Hills (unfortunately Taddapani is about the only authentic Kakhabadian-sounding new name in the module). The name Gorretanti doesn't appear anywhere in this version of the adventure. And then in 2013, the plague village received another new name, the similarly authentic-sounding Urrustanti, in Inkle Studios' excellent reimagining of the Sorcery! epic for iPod/iPhone.

So, what are we FF fans meant to think about all these multiple names for the same places then?! Do we raise our hands in despair and mutter something about arses and elbows? Do we try to come up with imaginative but unlikely scenarios that allow us to explain these apparent contradictions? Or is there some other way of reconciling ourselves to the curious hodge-podge that is the world of Fighting Fantasy? Well, while the first option certainly has its attractions, we can set it aside for now as not really contributing anything useful to the problem. The second option is very much the kind of approach that was imagined in the old Rebuilding Titan Yahoo! discussion group, as stated in its group description:

"due to being created by a variety of different authors with little cohesion, it requires some help to become a fully operational fantasy world. This list is a discussion forum for roleplayers and fans of the Fighting Fantasy series to rebuild the world as they feel would be most useful"

For example, the plague village and Gorretanti could be considered to be different villages entirely, as would Gilford and Anvil, whilst Taddapani and Urrustanti would be explained by there being two plague villages (plague does spread after all), by a change in the name of the village, or by a mistake by some Black Lotus addled adventurer. Or by declaring certain FF publications 'canon' and others as not (or ranking the canonicity of the various sources). Hmm.

As is often the case, a third way is, in my opinion, the best. Rather than giving up on the FF world in despair or trying to create cohesion where none exists, I prefer to study the whole corpus of Fighting Fantasy, from the first gamebook to the latest digital wizardry, as part of its unfolding (hi)story. Anvil, Haven, Gilford, Gorretanti, Taddapani and Urrustanti are all part of that story, and it doesn't really matter whether some of these are alternative names for the same place. Actually, this is really the only valid approach to the problem when a world has been built at random by committee and/or is full of inconsistencies. It's not up to me as a fan of FF to decide which bits of the franchise are canon and which are not, or what the 'truth' is behind all the contradictions. The next fan who comes along might have different ideas and the FF 'committee' is and was too diffuse to have one opinion on such matters (assuming they have any!). Those of you who have followed the publications of, for example, J. R. R. Tolkien, will be familiar with this issue. In his case, his mythology was his life's work, but it never achieved a fixed, final form, and those who search for a final 'canon' version of his world and languages will search in vain. This has led fans who are especially interested in his works to study everything he ever wrote as equally valid and to recognise that internal consistency isn't what's important.

So if someone asks you where you're from in Titan, don't tell them you're from Gorretanti, which shouldn't be confused with a plague village formerly called Taddapani and now Urrustanti, but tell them that according to Steve Jackson/Vancass, your village might (or might not) be called Gorretanti, according to Myriador it's called Taddapani, and according to Inkle it's called Urrustanti. Oh, and try not to cough on them - you might have the plague!

*Have there ever been any female writers for Fighting Fantasy? I can't think of any other than Ruth Pracy, who only contributed FF-style adventures to Warlock magazine.