#port blacksand

[magicmalcolm]

You can find many things in Port Blacksand and, who knows, a haunted sandcastle might be among them.

One character short, dangit.

[vintagerpg]

City of Thieves (1983) is legit one of my favorite Fighting Fantasy books. Port Blacksand! We’re pretty early in the evolution of the series yet, so the proceedings are still fairly straightforward and lacking the tricksy things more ambitious titles in the double digits get up to, but you can really start to see the potential forming here. And I honestly LIKE the straightforward FFs. They’re routinely elegant and more polished than pretty much any other adventure gamebook line.

You’re at odds with a pirate named Zanbar Bone (that’s his leering skull on the cover, lest you think the pirate’s name was just poetic) and need to collect a bunch of items that will help you defeat him and his henchmen. Once you do that, it’s off to his tower, which I like a lot less than the exploration of Blacksand — there are a bunch of unfair traps and the last couple combats are hard if you aren’t a cheater like me. And, like Livingstone’s section of Firetop Mountain, it is easy to miss key items and therefore be thoroughly screwed when they are necessary to progress. That’s a symptom of these early days and I think it mostly goes away over time (can’t be sure, never really read them in order), but that doesn’t make it less frustrating when it happens.

Occasional lumps aside, this is one of the best looking FFs, cover AND interiors by Iain McCaig. Hard to pick a fave, but it is probably that wizard. Or the goth lady. I enjoy the surprise cameo by an issue of White Dwarf, too!

[highrook]

The Two Worlds of Highrook

(part 1 ) Blacksands

There are actually two worlds that collide to create the highrook experience. The first is the town of Blacksands and its surroundings (such as the Highrook estate where the game is based). The second is the shadow cosmic realm of Nibiru. When these two planes are brought into contact, via magics and ritual, the intersection results in horrifying consequences.

Blacksands is a decaying sea-port, settled on the broken coast of the inmost ocean. Its ash colored beaches fold in and out of dank coves and dreary estuaries.  The town itself consists of a handful of shambolic districts, tumbling from the storm battered heights of Highrook down to the rotting docks of Aldwerth. 

Hemmed in by the oily sea to the east and treacherous cliffs to the west, the streets and its inhabitants exhibit a sense of dreamlike stoicism. Trade is sparse but well weathered ships still dock at the moldering port, bringing supplies - both mundane and exotic - into the town. Its isolation has made it a haven for those who do not wish to be found; thieves and heretics alike. And because of this gathering of minds and materials, the shadowed streets of Blacksands harbor wonders both revelatory and horrifying.

Blacksands is an amalgam of the many gothic locations that have inspired me over time. From the narrow streets of Bram Stokers Whitby, through the rotting shanties of Innsmouth and the candle-lit cities of games like Thief and Dishonored. Even though our game takes place on the cliffs overlooking the town, the characters, their background and their personal goals all align with their positions in the town itself. 

Blacksands also diverges from a purely accurate historical representation of similar locations, specifically with the addition of more steampunk and magical elements. This is most obvious with the introduction of the mecanists, a guild of expert engineers and machine workers. Ritualistic practices, backstreet medicine, smuggling and underhand diplomatic espionage are all part of the bustling but covert city scene. Even though Highrook - the game - takes place outside Blacksands  proper there are continual references to the geography, politics and history of the city. 

Influences

Cities have always been a favorite fantasy location for me.  They are usually more grounded in reality than the open world, which suits my tastes more. You don’t tend to get dragons or giants hanging out in cities, they are mostly the domain of human(oid)s. This doesn't mean that fantasy cities are relegated to being historical stage sets  though. Some of my favorite fictional cities; Viriconium, New Crobuzon, Sanctuary, Leá Monde, Gormenghast are far from realistic settings.

The city of Viriconium is the location for several novels and short stories by M. John Harrison. Like much of Harrison's work it merges styles,settings and tone in a way that feels deliberately inconsistent and dreamlike. In one tale it is the site of quiet poetic recollections, in another it becomes a hub for almost sci-fi events. But throughout all the iterations it very definitely seems to have a life of its own, beyond the page.. China Miéville’s New Crobuzon, featured in Perdido Street Station and other novels, is similar in its hybrid mix of sources, but feels less dreamlike and more cinematic. Instead of the blurred edges of dreams Miéville’s city is  described in cinematic clarity, like film sets ready to frame the action of the story.

Thieves' World was an anthology series published throughout the 1980s, it took the city of Sanctuary as its central theme, but allowed various writers to interpret the city as they wished. As a result the sense of place evolved over time through a number of fairly unreliable narrators and different authors interpretations. It wavers from complex tales of diplomacy to page-turning action-adventure. But the city as a container really appealed to me when I first read the series.

Gormenghast illustration by ian miller

Finally the ruined worlds of Gormenghast and  Leá Monde have always been visual touchstones to me. Both places are abandoned crumbling citadels where the remnants of once powerful families still cling on, alongside phantoms and decay.

Leá Monde is the only city listed here that is from a game rather than a book, but that makes it no less inspiring. It's the setting for the  PS1 game Vagrant Story (2000) and like the crumbling towers of The Last Guardian or the derelict districts of the Thief and Dishonored games it offers an incomplete history of a cities past, full of ghosts and half told tales.

In all these examples, and in the case of my own Blacksands, there is an interesting contradiction between people and place. All these cities are clearly a product of their successive inhabitants, yet also seem to have their own identity that persists beyond their population.

Highrook sits at the top of the salt cliffs of Blacksands, overlooking the smog filled port and its ashen coast. But it also sits on top of a gateway to a very different world, the hidden citadel of Nibiru, which I will talk about in another post soon!

[orlaithrose]

when: 25th June where: blacksand beach who: @eliasvelari

Anyone would think Orlaith was leaving town for a weekend trip, not going to the beach with her best friend. She'd made her way across the beach searching for a good spot - harder to find now the weather had warmed up - laden with bags. Now, settled on a beach mat whose edges kept flapping in the wind, she presented it all to Elias as though she was handing over the keys to his freedom. "Some food, obviously. Beach cafes are nice, but it's such an effort to walk back across the sand to get there rather than just, staying here. Besides, what would we do with our stuff?" It wasn't like you could leave anything unattended on this beach.

Some food, when she opened one of her cool boxes, was revealed to be an understatement. It was packed to the brim with anything you could imagine, including two whole pizzas, cooked and cut up neatly into slices. "Stuff to make piña coladas, what else would you want to drink on the beach," - that was in the second cool box, both of them specially lined with ethereum to keep them colder for longer, pinched from home because her dad would never go on a picnic, - "ummmm, a pack of cards in case you want to lose at go fish to me, annnnnd—" She produced the last bag with rather a proud flourish. "Buckets and spades so we can make a sandcastle." She'd even brought along a tiny flag to poke into it, which she waved in Elias's direction.

There were also endless bottles of water, suncream, her iPad (stupid thing to bring to Port Grave but she'd never excelled at being sensible) in case they wanted to watch a film at some point, snacks in every bag (what if she'd lost the snack bag along the way with everything she'd had to carry? Better to spread them out), pillows if either of them wanted a nap, and a blanket in case it got cold later. "See. I told you we wouldn't have to move all day," Orlaith said with some degree of pride as she plopped herself into the beach chair beside her friend.

[songsofelisa]

Unexplainable Episode 173 The Severed Feet of Blacksand Beach → unexplained phenomena

Warning: This episode contains discussion and descriptions of the process of decomposition, mutilation, violence, and suicide. Listener discretion is advised.

Sand, sun, and crystal clear waters are generally what people think of and what they expect when they go to the beach. However, the island that we inhabit isn’t like many other places in the world and Blacksand Beach isn’t like any other beaches in the world. Aside from being the main port and known for being the hub for pirates, Blacksand Beach has also, in recent years, begun to experience a strange phenomenon of severed feet being found along its shores. Since 2001, over two dozen feet still inside their shoes have been discovered along the beach by unsuspecting beachgoers.

Today, we will be discussing the strange phenomenon that has been ongoing over the last twenty-three years and where these feet may be coming from and why. I’m Elisa Salaliphus and this is Unexplainable. 

*cue introductory music*

The Phenomena

It’s the summer of 2019 and Sean and Jenna were enjoying their usual walk along the beach. It is not unusual to find treasures or trash floating in the many tide pools that dot either end of Blacksand Beach. Yet, when Sean found a hiking boot floating in one, he never thought that when he poked it with a stick, he would be met with the gruesome realization that there was still a foot inside the boot. This would mark the twenty-fourth shoe with a foot still inside that would be found along Blacksand Beach since the unusual phenomena first started nearly twenty years prior. 

Since 2001, just about one foot a year has been found washed up from the sea. The feet are almost always relatively intact with muscle and skin still attached and are always severed at the ankle. Both left and right feet have been found as well as a seeming variety of victims ranging from varying species and varying races and potentially varying ages. Only just about half of the feet have been identified and are often connected to missing people from all around the island.

However, the real mystery is where are these feet coming from? Why have feet suddenly begun to litter the shores of Blacksand Beach at the turn of the century and continue to this very day with the most recent discovery being in November of 2023. And most importantly, why feet? There are several theories that have been proposed over the years about what could be happening and why. 

What makes it so difficult to pinpoint a particular cause or reason is that none of the rest of the bodies of any of the victims has been successfully recovered. Autopsies are unable to be performed without the rest of the bodies and most medical examiners seem to agree that the feet are not being severed but rather due to decomposition, the feet naturally break away from the rest of the body, with the foot being preserved in their respective shoes, shielded away from the elements as well as any scavenging fish. 

It also makes it difficult to pinpoint a precise time of death as varying other factors cannot be taken into consideration to determine just how long these feet have been separated from their owners. And to that end, many of the feet that have yet to be identified, their owners may still be alive. People do not need their feet to remain alive, after all. Additionally, only one foot has ever been found from one individual. The feet never wash up in pairs and two feet from the same person have never been discovered.

The Theories 

The first theory is there are one or several serial killers that are operating on the island, dismembering their victims and only the feet are washing up on the shore. As already mentioned, it is thought that the feet are being somewhat preserved within their shoes and so while the rest of the body decomposes more naturally and thoroughly, the feet are staying mostly intact until they are found. 

Researchers who study the natural patterns and movement of the water, also think that if a killer or killers are disposing of bodies, the dumping site is thought to originate in Wailing Waters. The natural ocean currents then bring the feet down south and around the island where they eventually land on Blacksand Beach. The problem with this theory is that it is impossible to prove until a body or several bodies are discovered that match the feet. There is no way to know if these people are even dead and whether it was due to foul play or natural causes. 

An offshoot of this theory is that these deaths are specifically victims of sirens. As mentioned, it is thought that many of these feet are being washed over from Wailing Waters, which is well known to be siren territory. Many believe these are victims not of land dwelling killers but rather sea dwelling monsters. Once again, this theory is one that may be impossible to confirm without bodies to confirm cause of death.

This third one, once again, belongs in the same category as the other prior theories in that many people seem to think these are gang killings. Many gangs are known to have very specific Modus Operandis that identify them as being taken care of by a specific gang. fter all, who among us hasn’t heard of the Columbian necktie, a hugely famous tactic that was used to scare and ward away potential enemies or rivals. 

In a similar fashion, the feet could be a sign that part of the MO is these severed feet that are being thrown into the oceans while the rest of the body is being disposed of elsewhere. Many say this is the most likely possibility as it fits the most neatly out of all the potential scenarios where these are due to murder. 

And yet, that is operating under the assumption that this is because of murder or some sort of foul play. Many experts believe that the sad reality is these are accidental deaths or suicides. People who have gone for a walk or a run along the cliffs that dot the island, have slips or falls that cause them to tumblr into the ocean. And yet others might do it as a purposeful act, never to be seen again once they leap off the edge, the only sign they were ever once around are their feet that eventually make it onto Blacksand Beach. 

The evidence of these accidental deaths lies in the disarticulation of the foot from the body. As mentioned, the one thing the medical examiners believe is that these feet are not being severed and removed from the bodies with a saw or knife, but rather due to natural decomposition. Of course, many opponents of this theory will say that the ocean has simply become a dumping ground. 

Wrap-Up

The reality is, we will likely never know which theory is correct or if it is a combination of all of the above. We may never know, without bodies, what happened to these people. By now, any bodies that may have been nearby would surely have completely decomposed, lost to mother nature and to the sea, nothing but bones that can only provide so much information now.

[aquadestinyswriting]

Another writing snippet

I've been looking through my WIP folders to check in on my backlog and came across this hilarious story that I started about two years ago. This section of it is what happens when you give a European magpie even more intelligence and the ability to use and cast magic.

There was nothing quite like the sensation of fresh, cool air between one’s feathers, Chrackle thought to himself as he soared high above Toreguarde’s central plaza. The magpie swooped down and landed on top of the head of the statue of his mistress and cleaned his pinion feathers. Spring was almost here and he had to look his best if he wanted to attract a decent mate. Not that his previous dalliances weren’t decent, but the previous year’s had been a little too air-headed for his tastes. Chrackle chuckled quietly to himself, ideally he would find another wizard’s familiar to settle down with, but apparently the only one to appreciate his clearly superior kind was his own mistress. Something to do with being seen as ‘common thieves’ and ‘bad luck’ or some such tripe and nonsense.

The bird cocked his head and looked down at the various people going about their daily business. A group of three noblemen passed by, chattering about the latest news that had filtered in from the western coast. Apparently Port Blacksand was getting uppity and placing import taxes on pretty much anything coming through their port, which was beginning to irritate the nearby Bleak Academy. Chrackle stored the information away for later, no doubt his mistress was going to be quite interested in that particular turn of events...

A glint on the ground caught his attention almost immediately after, causing the magpie’s head to snap around in the direction the glint had come from. Chrackle’s eyes pinned as he focused on the object more closely, recognising it as some sort of bracelet. The corvid blinked as he lifted his head and looked at the humanoids passing by beneath him. None were paying any attention to the ground, and no one seemed to be frantically looking around for a missing item…

Chrackle croaked as he fluttered to the ground to take a closer look at the bracelet. It was made of finely wrought mythril and studded with diamonds, real ones if the way the sun shone through them was any indication. Chrackle cocked his head and tugged on the faint connection to his mistress. While he was nowhere near close enough to properly cast anything, he could still use it to check if the item he was looking at was magical. He blinked again as his eyes lit up with a faint blue-purple glow, studying the lazy drift of the currents of magic around the bracelet. The item lit up in a blaze of bright blue almost immediately, causing Chrackle to squawk and turn off the ability almost as quickly as he had turned it on. Alright, so the bracelet was definitely enchanted. Chrackle hopped back up onto the dais of the closest statue, and looked intently around at the people passing by. Once more, no one seemed to be frantically looking around for the item and no one else appeared to have noticed it. Surely if the owner really wanted their item back, they would have noticed it was gone, especially since the enchantment upon it seemed to be incredibly powerful, right?

The magpie looked back down at the bracelet. On the one hand, he was constantly being told off for bringing back abandoned items to the tower. On the other, he needed to get a wing up on the uppity young male that had picked out Chrackle’s original choice for a mate the previous year. If this didn’t get the attention of all the females in the city, then nothing would. 

His mind made up, Chrackle fluttered back down to the ground and picked up the bracelet in his beak and immediately flew back up into the air and shot towards the Garden of Galana to the southwest. He never noticed the young elven woman being accompanied by two officers from watchhouse one walking towards the statue whose dais he had been perching on.

[wigc]

'Fighting Fantasy Classics' Charts a Course for 'The Port of Peril'

It's been a while since you last set foot in Port Blacksand. A lot has happened since, but one thing remains the same: it is still very much The Port of Peril! Which brings me to... ah yes, the time to claim your destiny is nearly upon you. While it will require you to face sinister forces and deal with treacherous environments, this Fighting Fantasy gamebook is bound to make a genuinely groovy addition to the Fighting Fantasy Classics lineup.

Continue reading

[druidx]

"a lore nerd? it's more likely than you'd think" Neeerrrd! Please tell me more about Fighting Fantasy's lore. It honestly sounds pretty interesting.

oh. hi. shit. I wasn't expecting to be challenged on this, and predictably my brain has just gone "you were expecting details. well tough. we ain't got shit" 😆️

Anyway I'm not sure where to start with, because y'know there's 70-odd gamebooks, a manual about the world, a dedicated TTRPG (which I've never played - we used D&D 3rd ed for our rules and the setting as a base), and a history book of the game books development themselves (which is about a 1kg and I haven't read fully).

There's a lot more better info at the Titannica wiki, but I'm going to ramble at you without fact checking myself because I'm tired like that.

So the world of Titan, which most of the Fighting Fantasy game books are based on, has a tonne of gods, but the principal three are Titan Himself; his daughter Galana who created elves and nature; and her sister Throff who created dwarves, mountains and related things. Then there's Logaan, the trickster god who made humans and is big on nuance between Order and Chaos.

The Chaos of Titan isn't brought by gods, but by the Demon Princes of the Pit, which is a sub-dimension which is filled with it's won, smaller dimensions. Prince Myurr who is a snake-headed, four-limbed, demon and lives on the plane of Rust, likes to make a nuisance of himself on Titan a lot.

So the main races are Elves, Dwarves and Humans. There are lesser races like Woodlings (my beloveds), pixies, ogres, and snake people. There's the standard fantasy racism you get in all games developed in the 70s/80s.

Some other canon characters who feature a lot are:

Gereth Yaztromo, a wizard of renown who lives in a tower in the middle of a forest, and who helps the player with advice and items

Zagor, a warlock who consorts with demons, becomes a litch and then a part demon

Varek Azzur, a pirate who took over the hive of scum and villainy known as Port Blacksands.

The world itself is made up of three continents: Allansia, where most of the adventures take place; The Old World, which I actually know nothing about; and Khull, which was the site of a magical war between Gods and Wizards that left the center of the continent an uninhabitable waste of chaos.

... I could go on, but I'd either start delving into headcanons and fanon, or I'd just end up writing out the contents of The Fighting Fantasy World of Titan (the name of the setting book).

You very much activated this nerd's trap card, but I hope you enjoyed my waffle anyway. Thank you so much for asking 🧡️

🫖️🌿️

[omnimic]

Fighting Fantasy Book #29: Midnight Rogue by Graeme Davis. A return to the City of Thieves, Port Blacksand, in which the reader must steal a jewel in order to gain entrance to the Guild of Thieves. The first two-thirds or so are a pretty fun trip through the colourful city, but the last third is a linear dungeon crawl that gets a little tedious. Would’ve preferred more city...

Cover and interior illustrations by John Sibbick. Since there’s much less fighting in this one, much of the interior art is focused on first-person scenes (the scorpion and the key being a good example) and less on monsters. Also, the cover is the only one that depicts the player character.

[geekynerfherder]

Cover art by Iain McCaig for the Fighting Fantasy Adventure Gamebook 'City Of Thieves', written by Ian Livingstone.

[dustymarsh]

WHEN:  8.7.22; sunset WHERE: Blacksand Beach; Port Grave WHO: Dusty + Tristan ( @walledupward )

Her ass buried in the sand, she must’ve strummed for hours, because her fingers were coated red the next time she glanced down to adjust. Playing through the pain had become more tolerable as a vampire. Doing anything agonizing had made existing through the past week much simpler. She picked fights with those she knew would beat her. She challenged her parents, breaking her heart and theirs. There wasn’t much she wouldn’t do to rain on anyone’s parade harder than the cloud above her poured day in and out. Her body would heal, but that was the only thing that could.

She’d seen him across the sand. Precisely, she’d heard the click of a camera long before he’d come into sight, but there he was now. And though it seemed the horizon might’ve been the target of his viewfinder, Dusty took his presence personally and made her annoyance known. She stepped in front of the camera the second he’d ducked in to, presumably, capture something magical. He was left with a vexed vampire, if she even appeared. She still wasn’t sure the semantics on photographs. Mirrors worked just fine.

“Just won’t fuck off when you tell him, huh?”

[magicmalcolm]

I see you trynna hide behind the Pokémon Center, you sneaky lil' sandcastle.

He wants to be Sociable but he's also a Shy Sandcastle. He's trying, bless him.

[vintagerpg]

Ah, here we go now. This is Dungeoneer (1989) by Marc Gascoigne and Pete Tamlyn, with lovely art by the legendary John Sibbick on the cover and throughout the interior. Dungeoneer is the cornerstone of Advanced Fighting Fantasy which, despite the name (which really serves to distinguish from yesterday’s post and the Fighting Fantasy gamebooks rather than the game’s inherent complexity), is an excellent introductory RPG. It also provides the basic mechanical framework for the highly weird modern RPG, Troika.

So you get the standard three FF attributes: skill, stamina and luck. You get special skills, specializations basically, that augment regular skill rolls. You get a magic skill that runs on stamina (health) to cast spells with (love that) (I could swear there was an arcane misfire table in here too, but if there is, I can’t currently find it). You get opposed rolls for combat (combat against multiple foes is…tedious). The broad category of other stuff, like jumping and poison, that was sort of handwaved in the previous FF RPG are here, accompanied with robust situational modifier charts that…are probably a slight over correction. Oh, dwarves and elves are playable too. There is guidance for experience and advancement, character downtime and a nice general primer on how to run and play these sorts of games. It is pretty robust!

Oh, and two adventures, the first a pretty good if actually physically linear dungeon crawl and the second a more open-ended city scenario set in Port Blacksand. I like the city stuff in that one, but its dungeon bit is a little rough around the edges.

What is not at all rough is the treasure trove of John Sibbick art. A feast for your eyes!

[lixinzhou]

WHEN: July 2nd, 2022 WHERE: Blacksand Beach / Port Grave WHO: 0/2

After his third 12 hour shift finally ended, Lixin took pity on himself and left his crowded apartment in the city and fled to the beach. He could’ve gone home. That was an even simpler solution. But Lixin didn’t have it in him to look at his parents today, nor listen to his siblings. What he wanted was peace, and what he was greeted with was a crowd of people that seemed thicker than the smog that seemed to curl around the island.

He had heard the weather reports. He knew that the next few days were going to be hell at the Hospital, and it was better to at least pretend to relax now than not have the time later. And he might’ve, expect for the fact that after a rather large shout, Lixin popped up from his laying position on his beach towel to a body crumpling on top of him.

“Whoa!” He exclaimed, though it might’ve sounded more like ‘Uaaghrr’. Either way, there was an elbow in his abdomen, and a person flailing more sand onto them. “Please, please stop moving.” His words came out garbled, half clear, half muddled by his own current discomfort.

[ahuntersraxium]

when: september 26, 2022 where: blacksand beach, port grave who: @nadiacattaneo​ availability: closed

“Uh, excuse me,” started Raxium as he approached the woman on the beach. Well, he knew exactly who she was. Although, he knew she had no idea who he was. Still, he held out the satchel that had conveniently been handed to him by another pirate. 

“I was told this was yours.” He held it out to her once she had stopped to acknowledge him. There was always that moment in films where people who were connected in some way seemed to have this instant connection to one another. Raxium knew this was no movie, but he couldn’t help but be hopeful that the shared blood would be recognized in some way (though the rational parts of him knew this was not destined to be so, but a man could hope). 

[songsofelisa]

when: 30 august 2022 where: blacksand beach, port grave who: closed availability: 2 / 2

Elisa stood curiously off by the cordoned area by Blacksand Beach. She couldn’t help the morbid curiosity when she had seen the tweet come through. She doubted she would really get to find out much, but maybe, just maybe if she could get close enough she could overhear something. Maybe if she were in the water, even. That might let her get close enough to the shore. Her eyes scanned the perimeter to see if there was a way for her to even get into the water from the beach.

She felt like she wasn’t alone, and even had it confirmed as she saw a shadow looming and moving, causing her to jump and turn around suddenly. “Oh my god! You shouldn’t sneak up on people like that!” she hissed.