And now, as they say, for something completely - or, at least, a little bit - different. This blog has of course mostly covered the cinematic, and on occasion, televisual medium - but this time we're veering off into what probably won't be a very regular sideways trip to The Psychotronic Phonograph. Yep, we're talking the audio medium here.
Audio, and radio especially, has long been a mainstay of genre product: from the old time radio pulp adventures of The Shadow on Detective Story Hour to the stentorian tones of Valentine Dyall's Man in Black on Appointment with Fear to the National Public Radio productions of George Lucas' Star Wars trilogy with its alternate universe cast such as Perry King's Han Solo, Brock Peters' Darth Vader and John Lithgow's Yoda.
Since the late 1990s, the UK's Big Finish Productions has been responsible for a lot of genre output (and for a long time, a lowering of my available bank balance!) with lavish full-cast audio stories from IPs such as Doctor Who, Blake's 7, Dark Shadows, Survivors, The Avengers and many others; providing additional stories that expanded and enhanced continuing fictional universes as well as giving a continuation of series and franchises long since gone. These ranges have been a source of much entertainment, joy, frustration and more over the years for myself and many others and yet I never expected any of the personnel involved in crafting these sonic gems of the fantastique to delve (like a dwarf into the Dwarrowdelf in the vasty deep) into the demesne of Fighting Fantasy.
Context being king e'en in the realm of swords and sorcerers, let us go back (back, back to my beginnings!) to circa 1990: picture this, a day in December when as a small child of around ten years old I was standing at a bus stop with my mother in the rain waiting for a bus service that seemed forever, ever, delayed. To pass the time, she suggested having a look in the shop that was behind us, which just inside the doorway had a display of cheap paperback books in various states of disrepair for low prices. Even at that age, around ten years old, I had amassed a small collection of second hand books that I loved - mostly comprising various Pan and Fontana collections of horror stories being a youth of a fannish, geeky, gothic bent - and so my eye was caught by the green-hued spine of a tome entitled House of Hell credited to one Steve Jackson and featuring an intriguing cover illustration for my slightly warped young eyes of a daemonic creature reaching outwards towards the reader. Duly purchased by my understanding and indulgent parent, I gradually became slightly puzzled during the subsequent bus journey when I devoured the opening scene-setting prologue (so far, so short story to which I was used) to find a format that baffled me - the format of the Choose Your Own Adventure Role-Playing Game, or as I would come to call it the "pick-a-page book".
Thus began my voyages into Titan, the Fighting Fantasy world, and the gradual amassing of a quite sizable collection of these RPG books - which would include the very first (the original, you might say) of the Jackson/Livingstone collaborations, The Warlock of Firetop Mountain. This battered old paperback contained a hero's quest against the wicked and powerful Zagor - the eponymous sorcerer - with many a travail during the travels into the wizard's mountainous lair ("Into the mountain / I will fall", as Black Francis crooned in 'Bird Dream of the Olympus Mons'). Fast forward, like a skipping record, to 2017 when I happened upon a post on a Doctor Who forum stating that Richard Fox and Lauren Yason (who had formerly worked on a number of Big Finish Doctor Who audios, so I was at least vaguely familiar with the names) had secured the rights to produce audio dramas based upon the Fighting Fantasy franchise. I couldn't help but feel a bit of a tingle of excitement, yet there was a slight element of apprehension added to this admixture: what if, like other properties i'd revelled in as a youth (like, say, The Lord of the Rings for example) I found the dramatic interpretation of others clashing with the "proper" version that had long been in my own head? Only one way to find out, I guess: let's pop in that disc, crank up the gramophone, and embark upon this tale of high adventure...
The first thing that I discover is that this, rather than being a dramatisation of a role-playing game - which is pretty much an impossible task, at least to do well: just look at the state of the Dungeons and Dragons (Courtney Solomon, 2000 [name and shame, and all that]) and Warcraft (Duncan Jones, 2016 [I expected better of you, Zowie!]) movies - is something of a prequel. We are introduced firstly to kick-ass elven warrior Vale Moonwing (played by Rachel Atkins with a voice so huskily familiar that it's impossible not to picture Ms Moonwing as a pointy-eared Frances Barber) who is well on her quest towhence Zagor's mountain with her trusty bow 'the Giver of Sleep' and silver arrows to fell the wicked warlock (of the West). Fighting through a snowstorm atop her trusty steed, she encounters an old man who turns out to be an astral emanation of Zagor himself, giving himself away be leaving no footprints behind him (how very Skywalker!) - then summoning a zombie which Vale quickly fells with an arrow. presumably to the head, destroying the brain. Zagor the necromancer can bend the dead to his will you see. How very Nekromantik.
Stopping at an inn, as you do - questing being a thirsty beast - Vale meets the drunken adventurer Cassius Stormblade, which is so a name I can imagine a character in an '80s game like Golden Axe having. Played by Tim Treloar, Big Finish's still-alive Jon Pertwee stunt double, Cassius is a sort of Welsh Boromir (one does not simply walk into Swansea) with a lilting voice and mighty sword. He's on a quest of his own, to rescue his dwarf friend Gimorel who is trapped on the other side of Firetop Mountain. Since the Tipsy Taff possesses a map of what lies under the mountain - a sort of Book of What is in the Duat for mystical mountain secret villain bases - Moonwing agrees to team up and enter the wizard's domain together. And so into the mountain they will fall.
"There is a junction ahead!" says Vale.
"Ah. Our first choice." replies Cassius. ""Which way? Left? Or right?"
And there we have rendered one of the book's decision points. Thankfully, they don't need to stop and take five minutes to roll dice and check whether their Luck Points are less than or equal to the result in order to arrive at their decision. Though rounding the next corner, they do find themselves in a bit that I remember quite vividly, as they espy a sleeping sentry:
"What is that? A goblin?"
"Too large. See the tusks protruding from the lower jaw. An orc."
Managing to pass via the usage of an invisibility potion, they proceed through a number of scenarios familiar from the book watched at all times by the all-seeing eyes of Zagor himself (Toby Longworth, another Big Finish veteran) who casts charms and curses and lays traps in their path, such as the choice between a brazen or iron helmet. Vale refuses to choose, but Cassius in his arrogance - being the Fool of the cards that Zagor has cast - takes one for himself and finds the warlock whispering in his ear and getting inside his mind. But this phantom doesn't want to teach him the music of the night, he wants him to steal away Vale's magical jewel: the weapon that she carries to use against the wily warlock. Slanted and enchanted, Stormblade becomes an even more unreliable ally than he already was.
Coming to another very familiar point, the landing point for the ferry to cross the underground river that marks the boundary of Zagor's sanctum sanctorum much like the Borgo Pass traces the perimeter of Dracula's domain where the phantoms come to meet you, they have little choice but to ring the bell. The old ferryman soon appears, as grouchy and haggling over the amount of gold pieces it will cost to cross the stream as ever he was (or, rather, will be in the future). The voice of the ferryman is startlingly reminiscent of Ron Moody's zookeeper character from Freddie Francis' 1975 lycanthro-pic Legend of the Werewolf - which seems appropriate as it is he who informs Cassius that the rat bite he received earlier will corrupt his flesh and transform him into a were-rat, a process that will accelerate if he gives into anger. Like the Hulk, but a rat, I guess.
Having moved, like God, over the face of the water - but not very gracefully - the dynamic dysfunctional duo find themselves fleeing from some Harryhausen-style reanimated skellingtons and arrive at another door (still, at least it's not another portcullis with a choice of levers to pull) only to hear some ominous sounds from within.
"There is something behind the door."
"That," Cassius replies in best Pink Panther style "is not a dog."
And so it it isn't, for just like me getting into the electro/intelligent dance music genres twenty years ago, they receive a sudden MINOTAUR SHOCK!
After escaping the clutches of Pasiphae's spawn, Cassius finds himself growing increasing agitated and ever more murine as he and Vale disagree whether to head East or West - he wanting to find his dwarven friends and she wishing to complete her mission to destroy Zagor. After the parting of the ways, Vale finds that he has quite literally ratted her out, having pilfered her mystic jewel to trade to the warlock for the freedom of the dwarves. You can't trust a warlock, though (I mean, it actually means "oath-breaker"), even when you've betrayed a friend for them, and the befurred and befanged Cassius finds himself greeting invisible ghost dwarves still digging in the mines of the mountain at the will of Zagor. The despondent rodent manages to converse with the spectral voice of his late compatriot Gimorel, who is as Scottish as he is Welsh. Are we "touring the regions" vocally? Did
Anyway, as Vale faces the mighty dragon that Zagor has chained aside the mountain and Tramaloled on sleeping grass to guard the way out, Cassius finds a shred of inner humanity and takes on the Orc chief in possibly the world's first and certainly the world's finest Were-rat on Uruk-hai rumble. Resigned to his inhumanity and fate to never leave the mountain, he laments:
"I played the hero, but I was just a man with a sword. Now, i'm not even that. I'm a rat with claws."
"The game is over" smirks Zagor triumphant. "You played well, but you have lost."
As Vale soars upon the freed dragon - tamed by an Elvish incantation - towards Darkwood (also known as the Forest of Doom) and the tower of the benevolent wizard Yaztromo (the Elphaba to Zagor's Galinda, to be all revisionist about things) she ponders.
"We can only hope that others will have the courage to face the warlock."
And so, the pieces are in place. The die is cast. Is your Skill less than or equal to the task? Can you succeed where Vale and Cassius failed and take on the warlock of Firetop Mountain? Then buy the book.
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