Chasm of Doom, searching for the search party

Tonight I start The Chasm Of Doom, the fourth of the Lone Wolf series.

I’ll be using the character which survived the Caverns of Kalte. I have a full backpack of food left from my journey to Kalte, 17 combat, and 20 for endurance. This character is your classic ranger: sixth sense and tracking, camouflage, and talking to animals, and shorts word proficiency and mindblast to buff up in a fight.

It seems that a wagon full of gold has gone missing. The king sent his army, but the army vanished. So let’s send a small group of rangers to do but the entire army could not. Typical.

As we’re traveling through the amber waves of grain, with no idea where to start looking, we come across a hut in which a strange man reads me a poem.

Further along the road, we come across a performance troupe who invites us to camp with them for the night. It’s our job to protect our subjects, and they might know something, so we take them up on it. During the night, I find Captain D’Val’s sword! The performer who has it says that he didn’t know it was stolen, and tells us that he bought it at a tavern in Eshnar. I’m inclined to believe him, so I take the sword and move on.

The next evening, we stop at a tavern, which has been reinforced and fortified. It seems they’ve been under attack by bandits lately. Again, it’s our job to protect our subjects, so we stay the night. The bandits do indeed attack, and I make that swashbuckling move of leaping out the upper story window through the roof of the stable, and killing the bandit in one stroke. Aww yeah!

On the third day, we find the turnoff to Eshnar. We head into town, and despite my sixth sense telling me that this is not a good place, I want to investigate that tavern where D’Val’s sword was sold. We are immediately ambushed, and in the fray I was killed in a cut scene.

Well, that’s too bad. At least it was bloody and in combat.

So far, I don’t have much impression of this book to make a judgment. So far we’ve just covered squalid prairie and fields.  But I didn’t make it that far, and have no idea what still lies ahead.