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.

The demise of Rebuilding Titan

Another short post, just to get me back into the swing of things after what has felt like a long, draining semester.

Those of you who have been involved in the Fighting Fantasy online community for a long time will likely know about the Rebuilding Titan Yahoo! discussion forum. The forum was launched in 2000, before I became involved in the FF online community myself (I think that was in 2001 or 2002), and was moderated by Daniel Fiander. Its aim was to try to pull together everything we then knew about the world of Fighting Fantasy and to try and bring some consistency to things. This was partly because at the time FF was no longer being published and there was no hint that the series would be relaunched by Wizard Books. There was kind of a feeling in those days that FF was no longer a going concern and that it was up to the fans to keep the franchise alive and even to develop it further.

The early years on Rebuilding Titan were exciting, filled with posts exploring and developing all sorts of things to do with Titan, the FF world. Well known names in the online FF community were involved, including Ken Beuden, Dave Holt, Jared Milne, Doug Riddell, Brett Schofield and Andy Wright. There's loads of great discussion on there if you can bear to access it (see below).

Unfortunately by 2006, the moderator of the group, Daniel Fiander, had disappeared (and has never been heard from since). Since the group didn't require moderator's approval to join, it became swamped with spammers, who began to fill the list with links to all sorts of dodgy business. Several of us complained to Yahoo!, but they appear to have a policy of only dealing with the moderator of a group and wouldn't do anything to help. As a result, we abandoned the group and set up a new version of it, titan_rebuilding, also on Yahoo!, where the discussion continued and ultimately gave rise to the FF bestiary databases and the FF wiki, Titannica. (That group has now largely fallen into disuse too, for entirely different reasons which I'll maybe come back to in another post.)

Although we had abandoned Rebuilding Titan, it still exists out there on the forgotten edges of the internet. In fact, I kept my membership of it going for years in order to have access to the (non-spam!) posts that are on there. Unfortunately in recent months the spam has got a lot more dubious (i.e. not just your regular links to sites for people in your area looking for casual fun, but stuff which looks illegal), so I decided I'd better terminate my membership. I made a quick copy of some of the posts I'd made on the group and pressed 'Leave Group'. A sad day indeed, but there doesn't seem to be any hope that the group can be saved. Not unless Daniel Fiander comes out of retirement, or Yahoo! finally decide to evict the spammers and clean up the site.

The history of FF online is in some respects a history of discussion groups which have waxed and waned (and which have often disappeared because the moderator has pulled the plug without warning), but the case of Rebuilding Titan seems particularly sad, like some kind of archaic deep space probe drifting beyond our communication in the lonely depths of space. Maybe one day it'll be fixed or, more likely, Yahoo! will just put it out of its misery.

Help us Daniel Fiander, you're our only hope!

Once more unto Deathtrap Dungeon, dear friends, once more

Just another couple of quick notes about the Deathtrap Dungeon computer game by Eidos:

• I didn't think they would, but the original cheats for DD work on the Steam version too. You can get unlimited health, increase strength and speed, acquire all the inventory, and access all the levels without completing each one. Just search for "deathtrap dungeon pc cheats" on Google. Very useful for anyone like me who wants to explore the dungeon without spending weeks getting killed over and over again, although I find that acquiring all the inventory is not much fun as you can just walk through each level without having to explore, missing lots of areas without realising it.
• You can view an almost complete playthrough of the PC version of the game on YouTube (thanks to bloodbeast on the Fighting Fantazine forum for the tip). I think you can do the same for the PS version of the game too, although I haven't looked into that yet.

So time to get mapping! The maps in the Official Strategy Guide by Prima aren't very detailed or complete, so there's plenty of work to be done. Happy adventuring!

The end is near. I hear a noise at the door, as of some immense slippery body lumbering against it...

Hang on, it's only the postman. Phew! They shall not find me after all. But what's that on the hall floor? A brown padded A4 envelope with an Arion Games label. Aaaaggghhhh! Yes, they are come. The nightmare creatures from Beyond the Pit have escaped and have found a way into our dimension - through the letter box. The letter box!

As I blogged about before, Beyond the Pit, by Andy Wright, is the first major brand-new Fighting Fantasy publication in a long time. And what a publication it is. Two-hundred-and-fifty FF monsters described in detail, complete with an illustration of each, from the original gamebooks or an excellent new one by Jason Lennox. The text is brilliantly written and full of details not only about the monsters themselves but about the world which they live in. We also get a (newish) map of Titan and treasure and encounters tables.

I haven't had a chance to read through the book yet but my favourite thing in it so far comes in the very first entry, AMAZON. Here we read that Amazons:

dwell in the mountainous wild east of the city-state of Kalamdar and other lonely places across Khul ... The identity of the Amazon Queen is a closely guarded secret, though there is a price on her head across the northern kingdoms of Kalamdar, Arion and Peleus.

Kalamdar, from the two-player FF adventure Clash of the Princes, is also listed alongside Fallow Dale and Arion as home to TRIBESMEN in northern Khul. Not only that, but Gundobad itself, where Clash of the Princes starts, is mentioned in the entries for FAIRY, SCUTTLIE and SHADE. At last we have an official FF publication which locates the lands of Clash of the Princes within Titan, indeed in northern Khul. This is something I argued for at length in my article in the very first issue of Fighting Fantazine; Andy was enthusiastic about the idea at the time and it's great to see Gundobad, Kalamdar and the lands around them finally brought properly into the FF fold.

I'll be reading Beyond the Pit properly when I get five minutes and I'll report on any other interesting things about the world of Fighting Fantasy that I find in there.