The geography of Scorpion Swamp

Over to the other side of Khul for a change, to that early Fighting Fantasy adventure location, Scorpion Swamp. Outside of the eighth FF book, the only geographic information we have on this miasmic place is the map of Khul (by Steve Luxton) and a few notes in Titan - The Fighting Fantasy World. Let's see what we can find out about it.

Scorpion Swamp, by the other Steve Jackson, was the second FF book I bought, encouraged as I was by my friends who thought the cover was crap and were worried it was rubbish inside too. It's never been an all-time favourite of mine, but I like it, as much for its old-school charm and non-linear approach (and, as we'll see, its easy mapability). There's not much information about the geography of the swamp and the lands around it in the background and the start of the adventure before you actually enter the swamp, but we know this much:

• There's a "King's highway" (sic.) with towns along its course (Background).
• Scorpion Swamp "lies far to the west of the kingdom", and you have to travel a long way to get there: "As you travel further west, the mountains around you turn to hills, the hills to plains, and the plains to damp lowlands". You eventually come to the little town of Fenmarge, on the southern edge of the swamp (para. 1).
• One of your possible benefactors in the adventure, Poomchukker, tells you that it would save weeks and weeks of time if his caravans could travel through Scorpion Swamp to the town of Willowbend on its northern edge rather than going round it. This suggests that the swamp is vast (para. 173).

In order to say anything more about the geography of the swamp as described in the book, I'm going to have to follow the advice given on pp. 21-22 and do some mapping! It's been a while since I mapped this one out, and I have no idea where my old maps are, so time to have some fun doing it again for the first time in years. Here's the result (obvious spoilers included):

That was fun! Very satisfying seeing all the clearings coming together so nicely. Not exactly a complicated layout, but I think it's effective (if not at all realistic). So what do we learn from this romp through the swamp? Well, here are some points of interest:

• It takes you a day to travel between Fenmarge and Willowbend, so the distance between them isn't great.
• The swamp is bisected by the Foulbrood River, which is about 200 metres wide and is crossed by an old stone bridge. Interestingly, the river flows west to east (see paras. 339 and 369).
• Willowbend is a bustling town with at least three inns in it. It lies north-northwest of Fenmarge.

That's about it for the geography of Scorpion Swamp from the gamebook itself. Let's have a look at what we can learn about the geography of the swamp from Titan - The Fighting Fantasy World. Here's the part of the Khul map that contains Scorpion Swamp:

Scorpion Swamp lies, like a rotten core, in the middle of the civilsed lands of western Khul. To its east are the King's Highway (sic.) and the Mountains of the Giants. The Foulbrood River runs roughly through its middle, from the northeast to the southwest. Fenmarge is at the east-southeast edge of the swamp, and Willowbend is at the west-northwest edge, and a considerable distance lies between the two towns (there's not a big difference between the two of them in a straight line compared with going around the swamp).

Clearly there are things here which don't match the original gamebook (again I'm not blaming anyone for this; in fact I'm glad it's different, otherwise this post wouldn't have to be written!). The swamp isn't in the far west of the kingdom, a long way distant from the mountains (though we can imagine a traveller coming south down the King's Highway past the mountains to the lowlands south of the swamp). Fenmarge and Willowbend are in the wrong positions relative to each other (they should be on a nearly north-south axis), and they are far too far apart considering it only takes a day to get between them (compare the distance to the size of the Inland Sea or Hachiman in the same map in Titan). And of course the orientation and direction of flow of the river are wrong! It should, according to the text in the gamebook, flow in a west-east direction.

I think it's time to revise the Khul map somewhat to bring it closer to the description in the gamebook. There's not much we can do about the direction of flow of the river, and I think we'll have to assume that in a swamp the water might be pretty stagnant and could flow in various directions. But the rest we can fix, to an extent at least. Here's my version of the same area of the map:

In this version of the map, I've changed the positions of Fenmarge and Willowbend to make them the same as the map drawn from the gamebook. I've also put them much closer together, essentially in the fringes of the swamp itself, presumably on drier promentaries. I've slightly widened the swamp in an east-west direction to account for Poomchukker's estimate of how long it takes caravan's to get round it (no doubt he was exaggerating somewhat, and I suspect he had other motives for exploring the swamp too). Finally, I've corrected the course (though not the direction) of the Foulbrood River somewhat to make it fit better with the text of the gamebook. What do you think?

Anyway, there you go. One of the curious things about the gamebook Scorpion Swamp is that it is really the only source of information we have about the civilised western lands of Khul north of Neuburg. However, it can hardly be considered to be typical of those lands! We can assume that most of the evil, nasty things in western Khul have ended up in places like this, where civilsation does not quite reach. The bustling towns of Fenmarge and Willowbend give us a better idea of what these western lands are like, but it would be nice to know more.

The geography of Hachiman

"The world of Titan has three main continents - Allansia, Khakabad [sic.] and Khul, the Dark Continent. It is on the eastern coast of Khul that the lands of Hachiman lie; the sea on one side and mountains on all the others cut Hachiman off from the rest of the continent."

So begins the memorable Background of the twentieth Fighting Fantasy gamebook, Sword of the Samurai (by Mark Smith and Jamie Thomson, published in April 1986). Unfortunately the book didn't come with a map (the first inside cover map didn't appear until three books later, in Masks of Mayhem), so we were, other than for geographical indications in the text of the book itself, left in the dark as to the wider geography of this part of Khul and, in particular, of the geography of Hachiman itself. The geography of places like Konichi, the Shios'ii Mountains, the Hang-Yo and Hiang-Kiang Rivers, the Mizokumo Fens, the Forest of Shadows, and Ikiru's mountain fastness, Onikaru, could only be guessed at. We had to wait until October of the same year to get our first (and so far only) map of this exotic part of the world of Fighting Fantasy. And here's what it looked like (map by Steve Luxton, from Titan - The Fighting Fantasy World, as usual):

Although the only place-name from the adventure to appear on this map is Konichi, it's pretty obvious that the mountains all around Hachiman are the Shios'ii Mountains, the forest is the Forest of Shadows, the marsh is the Mizokumo Fens, and the rivers are the Hang-Yo (to the south of Konichi) and the Hiang-Kiang (running west-east through the country). More detail would have been nice, given the size of the land, but at least it was something.

But on returning to Sword of the Samurai, it was clear that this map of Hachiman wasn't as good as it could have been (I'm not blaming Steve Luxton for this by the way, given the lack of a map in the gamebook and the rather confusing geographical indications in it as to the relative locations of the places). Despite some of the main geographical elements appearing on the map, it simply didn't mesh particularly well with the description of the lay-out of Hachiman in Sword of the Samurai. Let's take a close look at the geographical indications in the book to see what I mean (obvious spoilers ahead!).

• You start the adventure in the capital, Konichi, and travel north by road through beautiful countryside, soon coming to a fork. You can either head west and north to the Shios'ii Mountains via the Forest of Shadows and Hagakure Bridge, or east to the ford and through the Mizokumo Fens to the mountains (para. 1). This choice is the major split between the two paths in the adventure, and I'll discuss them both in turn.
• The west and north route is pretty straight forward. You travel for a few days through peaceful countryside (para. 10), before coming to a burning village and Lord Tsietsin's fortified castle, which nestles against the foothills of the southern Shios'ii Mountains (para. 300). Beyond that, the main road runs through a shallow valley before it comes to the large Forest of Shadows, which it passes through (paras. 222, 386).
• Eventually you come out of the Forest, almost immediately coming to the Hagakure Bridge over the Hiang-Kiang River, beyond which you can see the Shios'ii Mountains on the horizon (para. 82).
• The journey to the mountains takes some time (you must sleep between Hagakure Bridge and the mountains), with you eventually leaving the road and following a goat track into the mountains towards Ikiru's stonghold, Onikaru (para. 211).
• The east route is rather more complicated. You begin by following the East Road (the Road of the East Wind) through the civilised, fertile plain of the great Hang-Yo River, before climbing into the uplands and the Charcoal Burners' wood, leaving the river behind (para. 29).
• From here you can either travel northwest through the Dales of Kanshuro, including the Village of the Undead and the Vale of Tinshu (paras. 197 to 397), or north through the Longhills (paras. 195 to 237).
• If you travel through the Dales of Kanshuro, you eventually come to the Marcher Lands (para. 397) and then to a low range of hills, beyond which lies a sheer cliff that stretches as far as you can see (para. 381). Realising that you cannot get past this, you 'retrace your steps' to the upper Hiang-Kiang River, before coming, after two days' travel, to a ford over one of the tributaries of the Hiang-Kiang (para. 381).
• If you go north from the Charcoal Burners' wood, avoiding the Dales of Kanshuro, you travel for two days through the Longhills before coming to the same ford over the tributary of the Hiang-Kiang River (paras. 195-237). It seems likely that this is the same route you take after retracing your steps from the sheer cliff beyond the Dales of Kanshuro.
• Crossing the Ford of the Kappa, you travel over a ridge of slate hills (para. 335), which afford you a panoramic view of the lands beyond (para. 295). It's worth quoting the text in full here as the description of this bit of Hachiman is very interesting: "The great valley of the lower Hiang-Kiang River lies below you. In the distance lies its delta amid the Spider Fens of Kumo. The Spider Fens are lost in a pall of mist. Knowing that to detour around the enormous delta would take weeks, you set off down the gentle slope of the valley."
• This journey to the Spider Fens takes you three days across open lawless territory, but entering the Spider (Mizokumo) Fens "will allow you to penetrate deep within Ikiru's territory" (para. 17).
• The vast Spider Fens themselves consist of marshes and lakes, with ancient paved roads on dykes stretching through the delta (para. 17). Most of the paths through the Fens are treacherous and lead nowhere but the depths of the marshes, but it is possible to cross the Fens, ultimately emerging via another dyke on their north side, at the foot of the Shios'ii Mountains (paras. 285 to 87). From there, you can follow a goat track into the mountains towards Ikiru's fortress.

How does this compare to the map from Titan then? Well, there are a number of problems. Firstly, Konichi is far too close to the Forest and the Fens, which should be much further north, near the mountains. Secondly, the Hiang-Kiang River should, in its lower reaches, form a huge delta (presumably as it approaches the coast), which constitute the Mizokumo Fens. Thirdly, there's a problem with the geography of the Hiang-Kiang River which the map doesn't resolve. On the west and north route, you cross the Hiang-Kiang River via the Hagakure Bridge. The river can only be flowing west to east (or northwest to southeast) here, as the east route takes you to the lower Hiang-Kiang and its delta. On the east route, though, you appear never to cross the Hiang-Kiang itself but only cross a tributary of it as you travel north towards the Fens. It's hard to see how you can cross the Hiang-Kiang going north over the Hagakure Bridge, but only cross a tributary of it going north to the Spider Fens, especially if we try and fit all of this to the course of the river in the Titan map.

One notable long-time fan of the Fighting Fantasy series, Ken Beuden, set himself the task of not only trying to work out the geography of Sword of the Samurai, but also of detailing the rest of Hachiman in a way consistent with what we know about the land from published sources. The following beautiful map, from Ken's website, Fang's Finest Emporium, includes all of the places I've discussed above plus many more that Ken invented for the purposes of 'rebuilding' the word of Titan for the fan community (this was at a time, between the demise of the Puffin range and the production of the Wizard series of the gamebooks, that many fans felt FF to be dead, so that if they wanted to know more about the world of Fighting Fantasy, they would have to invent it themselves). He used the layout of the map from Titan as his starting point.

There are a couple of notable features of this map which relate to the outline of the geography of Sword of the Samurai given above. Firstly, Ken very sensibly locates Lord Tsietsin's fortress at the end of the southern spur of the Shios'ii Mountains that extends eastwards towards the Forest of Shadows in the Titan map. This is a good solution to the location of this fortress at the foothills of the southern Shios'ii (para. 300), even though you are still a long way from Ikiru's stronghold in the same mountain range. Ken also tries to accommodate the Hiang-Kiang delta in the Mizokumo Fens by assuming that the delta is where the Fens are marked in the Titan map and is fed by a number of smaller rivers running westwards from a range of hills. This is one way of imagining the situation, but I don't think it's ideal. The most striking feature of Ken's map, though is how he attempts to resolve the problem with the course of the Hiang-Kiang River itself. In order to explain why you never appear to cross the main course of the Hiang-Kiang, Ken has the river disappearing under the Longhills, into the nicely named 'Caves of the Fragrant Jewels'. In Sword of the Samurai, then, you cross over the river without actually crossing the river, coming to the Ford of the Kappa (which Ken problematically locates within the Spider Fens). This is an ingenious solution, but I think it's a bit unlikely and doesn't, in any case, really fit with the text of Sword of the Samurai, constrained as it is by the problematic layout from the Titan map. Let's look at the text of the gamebook again and see if we can come up with a better solution.

In fact, two other solutions present themselves. One option is that you do in fact cross the Hiang-Kiang (e.g. by bridge), but that it isn't mentioned in the text. This may be hinted at by the description in para. 381, where you retrace your steps to the upper Hiang-Kiang before coming to the tributary. This might possibly be problematic when we consider the location of the Hiang-Kiang delta, further to the north, though it wouldn't be very hard to work out a course of the river that would fit with this. The other solution is that the lower Hiang-Kiang breaks up into many smaller branches in the delta, which you cross without mention via the dykes in the Spider Fens. The tributary wouldn't be a problem in this case, as we could imagine it rising somewhere in the heart of Hachiman, say in the Forest of Shadows, and flowing eastwards to meet the Hiang-Kiang delta further east. In neither case is it necessary to imagine that the Hiang-Kiang conveniently disappears underground for a while.

But in any case, the Titan map doesn't represent the descriptions in the book very well at all. So maybe we need to fix that part of the Khul map, and try out the two solutions just described. Let's start by scratching the problematic detail on the Khul map:

That's better! Now we can start from with a blank slate and try to fix not only the Hiang-Kiang problem but also the other geographical issues.

Let's try solution 1 first - that you do in fact cross the Hiang-Kiang before you get to the Ford of the Kappa and the Fens. I've followed Ken in placing Lord Tsietsin's fortress near the eastward spur of the southern Shios'ii, but have located the Forest of Shadows further north and have combined the Mizokumo Fens with a coastal delta of the Hiang-Kiang River.

Hmm. I'm not convinced, even if the layout in this map isn't optimal. Crossing the Hiang-Kiang, then the Kappa tributary, then coming to the Spider Fens in the Hiang-Kiang delta is messy, and it forces us to shunt the delta so far east that you wonder why it couldn't just be avoided altogether (the sheer cliff is before the Kappa tributary, so it doesn't help). Also, the text suggests (para. 17) that the Fens are near Ikiru's territory. Let's try solution 2 to see if that fares any better.

Now that's more like it, if I may say so myself! I hope you agree. Increasing the size of the Forest of Shadows, and making the Spider (Mizokumo) Fens a huge delta stretching from the Shios'ii Mountains (near Ikiru's stronghold) to the sea fits much better with the book. Moving Konichi further south gives room for the Charcoal Burners' wood and the Dales of Kanshuro too. The bit where you lose your way and back track to the upper Hiang-Kiang is more problematic, but at least it allows us to imagine that you initially headed northwest towards the Forest of Shadows, came to the sheer cliff and then back tracked towards the Dales of Kanshuro and on to the Ford of the Kappa (the tributary flowing east from the Forest). The main civilised area of Hachiman would be in the south and along the course of the Hang-Yo River (which I've put flowing past or through Konichi). What do you think?

So there we have it. I think it is possible to construct a coherent map of the layout of Hachiman based on Sword of the Samurai without resorting to forcing the Hiang-Kiang to flow underground, as long as we're willing to accept that the map in Titan isn't right (I like to imagine that Titan was written by a scribe in Salamonis based on the best information (s)he had - and not all of it was right!).

There are still a few other parts of Khul that could do with further exploration - I'll return with some more geographical analysis soon.

Central northern Khul

While I wait for my visa to visit Hachiman (it's taken a while, I know, but it is a closed country), I thought I'd quickly revisit central northern Khul just to sketch out a few further geographical details, bearing in mind what I said about traders and slavers travelling between the Parine valley and Arkand in the south and Ashkyos and Gundobad in the north. In the following map, I've added details from the black and white map in Master of Chaos, and I've suggested locations for the Isle of Orcmoot and the Kingdom of Peleus from Clash of the Princes. 

I can imagine there are two main routes across this part of Khul. The first would skirt through the Wastes of Qor and around the worst parts of the Wastes of Chaos, making for Rahasta, then Ashkyos and Gundobad. This could only be a harsh route, but it is more direct and avoids traders having to pass through Arkand, which might be to their advantage tax-wise. The other route would be north from Arkand, either via Rahasta or, more likely, to the bay south of Corda (or even to Corda itself), then across the Battlegrounds to Ashkyos and Gundobad. This looks like the safer route, and is likely to be the route for trade to Arion, but it is longer and who knows what dangers lurk in the Battlegrounds.

The geography of Ashkar the Magnificent

One of the mosy interesting aspects of Ashkar the Magnificent from a Fighting Fantasy fan's perspective is what it reveals about the geography of the lands of the Inland Sea. There's all sorts of interesting geographical information in the book, especially concerning the Empire of Lagash and the valley of the River Parine, which we can use to give us an idea of what this under-explored part of Titan might be like (bearing in mind that Ashkar is not actually set in Titan, even though it is set in the Lands of the Inland Sea).

Let's start with the map. The map in Ashkar is almost identical to the one in Seas of Blood. Fewer names are marked on the Ashkar map, and two islands are missing - the one in the bay of Kish, and the southern island of Nippur, which is further south than the extent of the Ashkar map. The Ashkar map also names the Kishian wall ('The Wall of Walls'), and calls the river flowing through Lagash the 'River Parine' rather than the 'Parine R.' of the Seas of Blood map.

Turning to the text of Ashkar, we find the following places and place-names:

• The Empire of Lagash is centred on the city of the same name, at the north-east corner of the Inland Sea, and it stretches to the upper reaches of the Parine River, southwards to the Rivers of the the Dead, and westwards to the city of Tak (p. 21).
• There is an unnamed village at the edge of the Lagashian Empire, home to Furdle. It is described as being on the upper reaches of the Parine River (p. 12), in lands bordering the "barbarian lands of Kirf" (p. 13). Beyond it lies wilderness (pp. 12, 15). This village is a long way from Lagash ("many weeks' travel", p. 16).
• The barbarian lands of Kirf are home to the Kirfmen. The name "South Jin" appears in connection with the Kirfmen sailors of a boat on the Parine River, and may perhaps be a village or tribe of the Kirfmen (p. 88).
• The next location mentioned downstream on the Parine from Furdle's village is the village of Kul (pp. 55 ff.). The 'Hetman' of Kul is called Baws Klustre (p. 57).
• The next location mentioned downstream from Kul is called Embre (p. 61).
• The next location mentioned downstream from Embre is called Uffle (p. 61). Ufflemen, "with their silk skins and loud voices", are described as "ubiquitous" in the lands of the Inland Sea (p. 47).
• The next location mentioned downstream from Uffle (by two days) is called Aut Haat (p. 62). It seems to be about four days upstream from Lagash (p. 88).
• The next location mentioned downstream from Aut Haat is called Mantou (p. 102), a day or two upstream from Lagash.
• The principle trading cities of the lands of the Inland Sea are Assur, Calah, Lagash, Kish, Marad and Shurrupak (p. 46-7).
• Two other towns/cities are named: Appalanx (pp. 40, 89) and Ixtalan (p. 89). They are said to lack fortifications. No indication is given as to where they might lie in the lands of the Inland Sea, though it seems likely that they are not in the Empire of Lagash, given that they are considered as possible locations (during a scrying) of the girl L'lan, and the style of the street in the vision is described as "definitely not Lagashian" (p. 88).
• The river flowing into the Inland Sea at the city of Assur is called the Uphom (p. 46). It isn't named in Seas of Blood.
• In the harbour of Assur, there are ships from all over the Inland Sea and "even regions as far flung as Jje" (p. 46). No indication is otherwise given as to where Jje might be.
• The orange-haired "Bizenites" (p. 47) might suggest that there is a place in the region called Bizen (cf. Calahites).
• There is mention of the "Merry harpooners of Nimrud" (p. 160). It is perhaps possible that Nimrud might be a place, but there is no further information.

The most detailed part of this is the geography of the Parine River valley. One problem we have reconciling all this with the geography of Khul as detailed in Steve Luxton's map in Titan - The Fighting Fantasy World is that the Parine is not marked at all, and the big river flowing out of the north of the Inland Sea is the one that flows through Tak. If we're going to fit the geography of Ashkar into Khul, we're going to need to fiddle with things a bit. I suggest that rather than have that river enter the Inland Sea at Tak, we turn it into the Parine. Then it extends quite some way into the heart of Khul, providing us with ample room to accommodate the string of settlements (Mantou, Aut Haat, Uffle, Embre, Kul and Furdle's village) along its length. Furdle's village and Kul are at the upper reaches of the river, and beyond them is wilderness and the Barbarian Lands of Kirf. In the map below, I've done a quick Paintshop job on the Khul map to show what this might look like (with the locations from The Keeper of the Seven Keys added for good measure).

The Parine could maybe loop more to the south from the Aut Haat area before swinging back to Lagash, just to fill up more of that part of the map, but you get the idea, I'm sure. It's easy to imagine traders and slavers travelling up the Parine, and then either through the Barbarian Lands of Kirf to Arkand, Fernor and Sariandor (and then on to Corda and Arion), or skirting through the Wastes of Qor and the edge of the Wastes of Chaos before making for Ashkyos and Gundobad (cf. the buying and selling of slaves in Seas of Blood and the slavers of Clash of the Princes). I'd be interested to know what you think!

As for the locations of Jje, Appalanx, Ixtalan and maybe Bizen and Nimrud, I'd be interested in your thoughts too. Anyway, with the addition of these Lagashian towns to the map, the southwest of Khul is beginning to look like a rather interesting place, rather than the unknown area that it is in Titan. Of course, the map makes one other thing that is in need of attention stand out - Hachiman, which is rather poorly mapped I think, and could do with a proper update based on a close analysis of Sword of Samurai (and Ken Beuden's map of the area). I'll return to this in another post.

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.