Warlock Magazine #2

There's not a lot to write about in the second issue of Warlock; that's what happens when more than half of the mag's page-count is taken up by gamebooks that I'll be covering later.  What's left over isn't all that interesting.  I should probably have just tacked it on to the front of my post on the revised Warlock of Firetop Mountain, but I am something of a stickler for consistency, so Warlock #2 gets its own post.

Out of the Pit: The first article is probably not the most interesting thing in here, but it is the most relevant.  Normally the "Out of the Pit" columns introduce new monsters, but this month it has a table listing 100 monsters from the books that have been published so far.  It's not comprehensive - just off the top of my head I can see that the Mirror Demon is missing.  Still, most of the monsters are there, and the list only works if it's an even hundred. (It probably didn't need multiple varieties of Snake though.)

The books used to compile this list are the first seven in the Fighting Fantasy series (minus Starship Traveller), and the first two of the Sorcery! epic.  That's what I've covered so far, and it makes me feel pretty good about the accuracy of the release schedule that I pinned down.

The main table lists the monsters average Skill and Stamina, Attacks (for those using the Fighting Fantasy RPG), an asterisk denoting whether the creature has a special ability, and finally the book in which the monster made its first appearance.  None of the special abilities are described, and I don't mind that. Readers are left to look it up in the relevant gamebook, and nobody is spoiled who doesn't want to be.

The list seems to be mostly accurate, although a at least two of the first appearances are incorrect.  The Imitator is listed as first appearing in Island of the Lizard King, but it actually debuted in Deathtrap Dungeon.  I don't recall there being any Man-Orcs in Forest of Doom; I was sure that monster first appeared in City of Thieves.

The article ends with some smaller tables for generating random encounters in four different environments: Dungeons, Castles, Wilderness and Water.  Everything here is logical enough, except for the Wererat in the Water entry.  Presumably this came about due to the boatman in The Warlock of Firetop Mountain.  Am I to understand that he is one of thousands of Wererat boatmen? Is it a family business, or a side-effect of becoming a Wererat that one is suddenly drawn to boats?  Maybe Wererat lycanthropy only affects people whose immune systems have been weakened by scurvy?  Who the hell knows, it's a baffling entry.

Warlock Profile No. 1: Peter Jones: The second article is a profile in Peter Andrew Jones, which is fair enough, even though I'd say he's the artist on the early books that I'm least interested in.  It does the usual job of mentioning his influences, his non-gamebook work, and the tools he prefers, but it's all surface-level stuff.

Sam, Cars and the Cuckoo: The most interesting thing to be found in the issue is an early short story by Garth Nix, who these days is a very successful and accomplished writer of children's fantasy novels.  He would have been in his early twenties when this was written, which is honestly older than I thought based on the material; it reads like something written by a very enthusiastic teenager rather than a grown-ass adult.

The story - such as it is - is about two guys driving home from work through a very weird, sort-of Mad Max setting.  There are glimpses of interesting material here: comments about consumerism, corporate culture, the media, religion.  Mostly they're drowned out by Nix's almost pornographic fascination with made-up cars and weapons.  His descriptions of those skirt well over into parody, as does the way he revels in anarchic violence.  Make no mistake, it's not good. It barely qualifies as a story.  But the voice is humourous, and there are enough glimpses of interesting ideas that you can see there's a good writer in there somewhere, buried very deeply.

The Rest: The remainder of the magazine is taken up by the second half of the revised version of The Warlock of Firetop Mountain, and a preview of Caverns of the Snow Witch.  Caverns is the 9th Fighting Fantasy book, and it hadn't been published as of Warlock #2.  I'm interested to see how different the preview is.  As for The Warlock of Firetop Mountain, I've already played through the first half, and I'll be taking on the second half in my next post.