The northern borderlands of your kingdom

At the start of The Forest of Doom, you are told that "You are an adventurer, a sword for hire, and have been roaming the northern borderlands of your kingdom ... Not once during the last ten days since entering the northern borderlands have you set eyes upon another person" (FoD, Background). And during your adventure in the middle of Darkwood 'Forest', you may encounter a man riding a white stallion and accompanied by a pack of hounds (FoD, paras. 194, 396). If you chat to him, you learn that he is a hunter and that "the best game in all the northern borderlands can be found in this grassy plain within Darkwood Forest". These are very interesting little nuggets of information on the as yet unnamed lands the adventure is set in, and given what we now know about those lands from the later adventures and source-books, it's a rather intriguing reference. What is meant by "the northern borderlands of your kingdom"?

Other Fighting Fantasy fans have of course considered this issue. Here's what Simon Osborne had to say about it in on p. 121 of his excellent, though unfortunately no longer available The Atlas of Titan (I believe he was asked to take it down from his website due to it containing a large number of maps copied from FF sources CORRECTION: Simon tells me he had to remove it from his website as the file was too big and he was going to be charged for hosting it):

Later maps call this area south of Darkwood Forest the Windward Plain, the nearest city to which is Chalice on the Silver River.
   A marriage alliance was proposed between Barinjhar, son of King Pindar of Chalice, and Sarissa, daughter of King Salamon LVII of Salamonis. However, Barinjhar had no desire for such an alliance for fear of Chalice becoming nothing more than a vassal city-state, allowing Salamonis to extend its borders northwards and become a small empire. Further south is the Kingdom of Salamonis, though its distance from the Windward Plain seems too considerable for it to have borders toward Darkwood Forest. This seems to be borne out by the events of 285 AC.
   This being the case, it could be that the term “northern borderlands” refers to a wild area of the Windward Plain some days’ walk northwest from Chalice, and adventurer in this vicinity could therefore hail from an outlying village under the protection of that city-state.
   Alternatively, the term northern borderlands could be an old term referring to kingdoms long since perished. If the ancient kingdom of Allansia, with its capital city of Carsepolis, stretched this far east, or if the kingdom of Salamonis extended further north before the War of the Wizards, then this archaic term could have stuck in the memory of those living in countryside that once belonged to either kingdom.

I think Simon has hit the mail on the head with the latter idea. While it's not impossible that the reference is to Chalice, I like the idea that a memory remains of the old political border between Allansia, with Carsepolis as its capital (and Salamonis as a smaller town towards its eastern edge), in the south and Goldoran, with its capital Gar-Goldoran, in the north (and with the Dwarven towns in between as a kind of buffer between the two states). Perhaps the people of this part of Titan still think of the area south of the Red River as a single historical kingdom, now centring on Salamonis, which, however, is not really in control of most of the lands that were once ruled by Carsepolis (especially the rebellious Port Blacksand). It makes for an interesting view of Allansian geo-politics - Salamonis as the pompous inheritor of Carsepolis, which ruled all the lands south of the Red River (and Dwarf towns), from the sea to the edge of the Flatlands. But although Salamonis feels, as a result, that it has a historical claim to rule the same area, Port Blacksand has sprung up in the ruins of Carsepolis and pays heed to no-one, and Chalice, a relatively new power if Crypt of the Sorcerer is to be believed, considers itself to be an independent polity (as evidenced by Dungeoneer) and is resentful of Salamonis' presumptions of superiority. That just leaves Silverton as the only major settlement in the old kingdom of Allansia, and given that its ruler seems to be a 'Mayor' (City of Thieves) perhaps it is still notionally under the rule of Salamonis, even if the power of Salamonis is rarely felt so far west. Of course, north of the Red River things have changed even more dramatically, with the destruction of Gar-Goldoran and the emergence of two new polities, Chiang Mai and Kay Pong, with their eastern names and (in the case of Chiang Mai at least) rulers, perhaps in origin eastern barbarian inheritors of Goldoran's power after its destruction.

The Doughnut of Doom

Ian Livingstone's first solo Fighting Fantasy gamebook, The Forest of Doom, was an important landmark in the history of the series. It was the first time we had the opportunity to properly venture out of doors in this new fantasy world, it was our first encounter with the wizard Yaztromo, it had the first map, it contained a host of new creatures, many of them illustrated in Malcolm Barter's unique style (giving a very appropriate feeling of gnarled and knotted wood, unfortunately never repeated), and it had that iconic cover, with Iain McCaig's first Fighting Fantasy contribution still standing out as a highlight of the series. The creatures and encounters in the book were memorable, from the hideous Shape Changer to the oddly passive Clones, and the forest itself felt alive, the perfect place for an exciting adventure. And although it felt kind of artificial, the dungeon-like mappability of the paths through the forest was certainly one of the aspects of it that appealed to me.

One of the most curious things about this book though, and a thing which I remember my school-friends in the mid 1980s commenting on repeatedly, was that Darkwood Forest didn't actually seem all that big. Not long after you've entered the forest and had a few encounters, you notice the trees thinning out (paras. 27, 97, 300, 337), and soon after that you exit the forest entirely, onto a grassy plain (paras. 109, 118, 300, 329). Thereafter, a large chunk of the adventure doesn't take place in forest at all, but in plains, hills and scrubland, including the various places where you cross the (unnamed) Catfish River. (For many years I wondered whether Ian had originally intended the Catfish River to flow west-to-east, giving that having it flowing the other way would mean a river bifurcation, a very rare phenomenon, and that its east-to-west flow was a result of Darkwood Forest being forced into the later Allansian map. But the text of The Forest of Doom does in fact make clear on closer examination that the river flows east-to-west - para. 291 - so the bifurcation of the Red/Catfish Rivers is original.) It is only much later in the adventure, as you approach the Dwarven village of Stonebridge, that you re-enter the forest (paras. 144, 149, 150, 390), and after a few more forest adventures you exit the forest again just south across the (Red) River from Stonebridge (para. 311). Here's a quick map of the adventure that shows what I mean:

This map shows pretty clearly that in fact most of the adventure doesn't take place in forest at all, but in the grassy, hilly plain in the middle. The text of The Forest of Doom describes the geography of this plain as follows (paras. 119, 198, 314):

"All around in the distance you see the (dark/tight) green cicle of Darkwood Forest."

We know from Malcolm Barter's map and later maps that Darkwood Forest is roughly oval in shape, though with fairly flat east and west sides. That means that the forest, rather than being a dense tangle of trees throughout is in fact doughnut shaped, i.e. it has a hollow, unforested middle, something like the following:

Strange indeed! And curiously never referred to again in Fighting Fantasy canon. For example, none of the later maps show the deforested plain in its midst, and at the start of Temple of Terror, you spend the night in the middle of the forest with Yaztromo, on your way from Stonebridge to his tower. No mention of the plain is given in Titan - The Fighting Fantasy World, despite two important Elven settlements being located within the bounds of the forest (the underground city of the Dark Elves, Darkside/Tiranduil Kelthas, and the tree-top Wood Elven town of Caëranos, destroyed by Malbordus).

So there you have it, one of those strange quirks that make Fighting Fantasy the thing we know and love. I'd be intrigued to hear your thoughts on how this strange plain in the middle of Darkwood Forest came into being and how long it has been there. At any rate, the name of the book, The Forest of Doom, is somewhat misleading (though I suppose many places we think of as forests, such as the New Forest, have large patches of heathland in them), and although The Doughnut of Doom may not be quite right, maybe it should have been called The Forest and Plain of Doom, though I think we'll all agree that it wouldn't have sold half as well and that a name like that might have doomed the series entirely!

The Crossing at the Crossing

Just a quick one, prompted by the map of the area around Firetop Mountain in Brett Schofield's excellent Advanced Fighting Fantasy adaptation of The Warlock of Firetop Mountain (Arion Games 2014) which I received in the post the other day (by the way, hat-tip to Arion for sending it within two days of me ordering it!).

Ever since the publication of Forest of Doom in 1983, we've known that there is a road running up the east side of Darkwood Forest, crossing the Catfish River before reaching the bridge across the Red River to Stonebridge.

In the classic map of northwest Allansia in Out of the Pit, this area looks like this (no roads are marked on the map):

Stonebridge has been rather shunted to the left here, but this is probably explicable by the orientation of the map generally, which has got a slightly warped shape, with things shifted slightly to the left the further north you go (e.g. the coast isn't quite in a straight north-south line, which other maps suggest it should be). It should probably be just under the BR of 'Stonebridge' on the map.

Although less detailed, a similar layout is indicated in the important (largely because it shows the major roads) map of northwest Allansia in Dungeoneer. Stonebridge is where it should be, but unfortunately the Catfish River is obscured in the crucial stretch where it enters Darkwood, but it looks like it might be indicated branching south from the Red River just above the R of 'Darkwood' on the map, which doesn't seem right at all when we compare it with other maps of the area.

And here's the relevant bit of Brett's map for comparison, which is more or less compatable with the Forest of Doom map, though more detailed, and with a somewhat odd shape to the northern part of the forest:

What both Dungeoneer and the AFF The Warlock of Firetop Mountain (and other later Fighting Fantasy sources, such as the d20 conversions and Dave Holt's various maps of the area) ignore though, is that this area of northwest Allansia is described in the first FF novel, The Trolltooth Wars. On p. 177 of the novel, we read that Chadda Darkmane, Jamut Mantrapper and the Chervah spend some time looking through the telescope at the top of Yaztromo's Tower. Among the sights they view is the area of the road east of Darkwood as it approaches Stonebridge, which is described as follows:

Yaztromo advised them to follow the path between the edge of the forest and the lower reaches of the Moonstone Hills ... The viewing-scope picked out the busy Crossing at the Crossing, where a ferry service would take them across to the north bank. Yaztromo swung the scope westwards to pick out Stonebridge ...

This is interesting, containing as it does a name which doesn't appear elsewhere in Fighting Fantasy and which hasn't been picked up by later authors - the 'Crossing at the Crossing'. But it's not easy to interpret this description, or fit it with the maps we have of the area in the other books. The Forest of Doom map shows bridges over the Catfish and Red Rivers, and it's not immediately apparent that Stonebridge is west of this crossing, even if it was a ferry crossing. So where is the Crossing at the Crossing, and why is it called that?

One option is that there is more than one road in the area, and that one of them runs straight north along the edge of the Moonstone Hills to the point where the Catfish River and Red River diverge, crossing before the two rivers split so that only one river crossing is needed. We can assume, in this case, that a road then runs west to Stonebridge from the north shore of the Red River. And as for why it is called the 'Crossing at the Crossing', might this refer to the two rivers in the area, which appear to rise as two streams in the northern Moonstone Hills, before merging together for a while and then splitting again into the Red River and Catfish River? In a sense, this is almost a crossing of rivers (not very likely in real-world terms, but this is a fantasy world after all). Might this give rise to the notion that the two rivers are crossing each other, and that the Crossing at the Crossing is so named because it crosses the river in the stretch where they are combined (i.e. where they are crossing)? Anyway, that's one idea, I don't know what you think of it. 

Another option is that the Crossing at the Crossing is at the bridge across the Catfish River halfway up Darkwood Forest. It's possible that there's also a ferry service there (or the bridge has been destroyed and replaced by a ferry service). This might also explain the name - there was a crossing (the bridge), but it's now replaced by another crossing (the ferry service), which is known as the 'Crossing at the Crossing' as a result. This would avoid the complication of having two roads and would fit better with the maps, but it doesn't quite square with the description in The Trolltooth Wars. What do you think?

Anyway, once again the novels prove a fruitful source of information on the world of Fighting Fantasy, and I suspect there's plenty more in there that I'll explore at some point. I still think the definitive map of northwest Allansia, spiritual home of Fighting Fantasy, has yet to be drawn, and this is one area it would be nice to see sorted out taking the various sources into account.

The 'Stonebridge' Trilogy?

Unlike the Lone Wolf series, each of the Fighting Fantasy gamebooks (other than the Sorcery! epic of course) was a stand-alone adventure. In other words, nothing you did in any adventure affected any other, and you technically played a new character in each book. I suspect this was one of the things that made the series interesting - it allowed greater freedom and variation for the authors and readers. That doesn't mean that some of the gamebooks weren't linked in some way though, and I'm going to explore some of these links in some posts here on The World of Fighting Fantasy.

One of the most obvious links is between three of Ian Livingstone's early gamebooks, Caverns of the Snow Witch, The Forest of Doom and Temple of Terror.

In Caverns of the Snow Witch, you begin your adventure guarding the caravans of the merchant Big Jim Sun in the frozen north of Allansia, with no hint of any connection with any other FF adventure. Assuming you survive as far as Stonebridge with your companions Stubb the Dwarf and Redswift the Elf (and that's a big assumption given how hard the book is!), you learn that the fabled war-hammer of Gillibran, Dwarfen king of Stonebridge, has been stolen by an eagle (which subsequently dropped it whilst flying over Darkwood Forest). Stubb leaves you and Redswift to join his fellow Dwarf, Bigleg, on a quest to find the war-hammer and return it to Stonebridge (see para. 211).

In Forest of Doom, you start your adventure as a sword for hire 'roaming the northern borderlands', where you chance upon the mortally wounded Bigleg, who has failed in his mission to find King Gillibran's war-hammer. You take on his quest, visiting the wizard Yaztromo and braving the perils of Darkwood Forest in an attempt to return the hammer to Stonebridge. There is no mention of any connection with any other FF adventure, not surprisingly as this was only the third one published, but Livingstone's retconning in Caverns of the Snow Witch clearly establishes a relationship between the two books.

Temple of Terror, the fourteenth FF gamebook, begins with you relaxing and recovering in Stonebridge after a recent quest. The wizard Yaztromo brings news of Malbordus and asks for aid to bring an end to the Storm Child's evil plans. When you volunteer to help, Yaztromo asks 'Haven't I seen you somewhere before?', and during the adventure you are given King Gillibran's war-hammer to help you in your quest (para. 171). No other link with other FF gamebooks is mentioned, but the obvious inference is that Temple of Terror starts where The Forest of Doom left off.

So there we have it, an early trilogy within the FF series by Ian Livingstone. Caverns comes first, then Forest, then Temple. The hero of Forest and Temple look like they could be the same individual, although there is no indication that the same goes for Caverns and Forest (though of course they might be). But what should we call this trilogy? I've named it the 'Stonebridge' trilogy in the title to this post, as Stonebridge is the only place that occurs in all of them, but have you got any other suggestions?

Oh, and it's possible that this isn't a trilogy at all, but a quadrilogy! Another of Ian Livingstone's books, Crypt of the Sorcerer, starts with you visiting your 'friend' Yaztromo, who hasn't seen you 'for over a year'. Other than that, though, there's no obvious link with the 'Stonebridge' trilogy, even though your adventure to defeat Razaak does take you to Stonebridge itself (well, if you can survive that far at any rate...). So is this the 'Stonebridge Quadrilogy'? Or am I going too far, and giving in to that temptation we've all had at one point or another to try and link ALL of the FF adventures with one super-human adventurer who stalks the world of Titan banishing evil wherever (s)he can find it?*

And just in case you are wondering, all of these adventures are probably set in 284 or 285 AC (After Chaos) in Titan's timeline. We know this because Titan - The Fighting Fantasy World states several times (e.g. in 'Dwarfs Today' and 'Reckoning the Years') that the current year is 284 AC, and at the time of writing Gillibran's war-hammer hasn't yet been stolen, and the Snow Witch, Malbordus, and Razaak are all incipient threats.

I'll have a look at some other sub-series within Fighting Fantasy in later posts.

*See here for a classic example from the early days of FF online fandom.