Tower of Destruction, Play 1 Part 2

We continue my playthrough of Tower of Destruction. My stats are 12 / 23 / 11 but I’m down to 17 stamina at the moment from a few fights. I have made my way across the tundra and to the sphere. I’m not sure how to get revenge on a sphere, but I find a doorway in one side and figure that’s gotta be it.

I step inside and find myself astonished to be at a three-choice crossroads inside a dungeon, with dimly lit passageways and all. What did I expect, after all? It is a Fighting Fantasy book.  I randomly pick the passage to the right. At the end, I find a brimstone golem. It’s picking up rocks from a pile, breathing on them until they become flaming hot, then throwing them down a tube at the other end of the room. That sounds like the weapon that blew up my village!

I engage some harsh words with the golem in regards to its role in the destruction of my village, mostly consisting of “hng!’ and “hyah!” and other onomatopoeias that I do not know how to spell. He goes down without much of a fight. Then I head back the way I came and decide to try the left passageway to see what else I can wreck up.

This room has another smoke spirit, which I kill with little trouble. I move past it and through a poorly-hidden door, up some stairs, and into what seems to be a mausoleum. There are scores of marble slabs with bodies lying on them. It’s a chilling sight.

I continue through the hall of bodies, and into the next room, where I see something even weirder: a sarcophagus with a large demon statue, surrounded by thrones, and tenanted by a wizard and a warrior. The ensuing battle is rough: the warrior has a skill of 10, and the wizard starts throwing magic missiles at me until I smash out one of the gems in the statue. I’m down to 7 stamina now, so I rest a moment with lunch (+4) and that healing potion (+12) to get back up to full health.

Meanwhile, I look at the warrior’s sword and am both impressed and disappointed. It is a +1 sword, which would even allow my to exceed my initial skill (a 12)… unless my skill is already 12. Oh man, that is kind of a rip-off.

As I stand musing over the demon statue, which appears to have a chain and a lever which surely control something, I hear a groaning sound from behind a door off to the side. I think about other FF books, and figure there’s a 75% chance that that’s a prisoner who knows how to operate this puzzle. Yep. I free the guy, he runs over to the statue and fiddles with it… activating the Super Explodey Self Destruct and there’s only a moment left!

We run for it together, and make it out of the sphere almost in time. Almost, because I got hit by a piece of sharpnel.

Then we sit down to talk.

This Sphere of Destruction, he tells me, is just a prototype of a much larger Tower of Destruction. The tower will fly, and spit acid, and even emit so much evil as to open a portal to the demonic realms, where we then have the denizens of Hell to also deal with. Why would a wizard do this? Because, as is usual, he thinks he’ll be made ruler of what’s left of the world, and not just betrayed and killed like always happens (dumbass).

He teleports us back to his house (hey, cool!) where he feeds me and heals me back to max, stuffs my backpack full of food, and gives me another healing potion. He also points me toward the Ice Castle to the northeast where that wizard is doing their evil. Then he dies. Dude, I am starting to take this personally.

What else can I do? The sphere was just a prelude. I haven’t had my revenge yet, and I can’t let this happen to anybody else. I check my gear and start hiking across the ice fields, toward the castle.