This has been quite an impressive adventure. The starting from the Shadow of the North reminded me of times when I'd just installed a new fantasy game on my computer (i.e. Everquest or Dark Age of Camelot) and the epic buildup in Flame of the North reminds me some of the Dragon Reborn series. The city defense theme was also particularly enjoyable to see, especially considering I'd actually been thinking of creating an adventure with some similar elements. Kudos to you Sir or Madam. Between these 2 adventures I've probably spent at least 10 hours. Thanks to FFPROJECT.COM as well for making the material so accessible.
paul Sat Mar 23 22:04:08 2019
should have used words rather than action :(
Thalantyr Fri Aug 23 16:55:45 2019
Where's the final part?
I love these books. :)
Brent Thu Mar 12 02:48:26 2020
Very well written but Titan fight provide's no options that result in anything other than death. Final battle is not heavily impacted by character actions.
Andyzero Thu Aug 6 00:56:44 2020
Very good. Shame the third story was never made.
Joonseok Mon Dec 7 21:09:28 2020
Can you get the download links for the Doc versions of "A Shadow in the North" and "A Flame in the North" working again? I would much prefer to print out the adventures and read them.
Brob Mon Apr 12 12:00:16 2021
Hello, is the sequel "A Light in the North" available?
As far as I know it is not yet written.
Brob Fri Apr 16 12:28:56 2021
Thanks, I hope we can read the completed sequel soon! Looking forward to the epic conclusion!
ZMFC Wed Jun 7 20:43:23 2023
Well I messed up real quick but this is very well made.
MPerera Fri Sep 8 01:56:35 2023
This was a challenge and I died quite a few times, but it felt great to finally win that awful battle in the end!
Too bad there isn't a third book, this journey really deserves completion.
YARD Mon Sep 18 13:02:43 2023
Finally saw all the four endings!
I must say, this seems like the primary candidate for a suggestion I voiced earlier, about "intermediate" ending markers. For all the other stories, they would promote some of the endings which currently give skulls even though you survive and are not doing too badly at the end of them, but here, they would demote the
SPOILER
Fenric's ship and Mechanist's airship endings
END SPOILER
Since it's really, really clear that they are not meant to be seen as "successful", even if it can still take quite a bit of effort to win in those ways.
SPOILER
In particular, it seems like the Thieves in the Mechanist's path got buffed relatively to what they were like originally (looking at the FFProject reply earlier in the thread, where a Glaive Thief apparently only had 6 Skill rather than 8?) I don't care about that one too much: although if there were already adjustments like that to nameless thieves here, I think it only strengthens my argument for buffing more important characters like Zamarra's Grauch.
The Prince of Thieves himself, however, is surprisingly difficult due to the timer. I fought him twice with an Enchanted Sword and a Chainmail Surcoat, as well as shooting at him one time and casting IRONHIDE the other - and still lost to the timer. The third time, I resorted to getting Dawnbreaker and setting it on fire, which may be a bit of an overkill narratively.
END SPOILER
Speaking of:
SPOILER
It took me way too long to win in "the cinematic way" because I didn't realize that the Dawnbreaker had to actually be equipped, and not just in your inventory. I suppose I misread "a weapon meant for the Gods" part as meaning that it would always damage you when used, and not just when it set you on fire, and so didn't want to resort to it unless I was going to risk the flame.
I think this is actually one of those things which you will probably NEVER see happen in a written version - a ref would ask to turn to one spot if you have Dawnbreaker equipped and to another if you don't, so a player with Dawnbreaker would either always assume they used it at that point, or at least know to switch next time around. Here, there is no way to tell what exactly the issue was. (At one point, I actually assumed you needed to have Clockwork Drill from the Thieves' Guild and use that on his skull!) Granted, I did also stumble on the Mechanist's machine ending thar way, which is in many ways superior for the city as it gives them far more lasting protection (only downside is that you would probably have no time to hunt down any Fingers and they would continue to be a nuisance for the rest of Novgard.)
So, I think the minimum response would be to modify the failure ref if you have the Dawnbreaker but didn't use it - i.e. "Length of blade is stuck...Of course! The Dawnbreaker! You hurriedly reach for the holy sword but the Titan's arm reaches you first..." A more logical one, though, would be to give the player the option to give away all the other Swords they have once they emerge "with Dawnbreaker on their belt" - that wording itself suggests that should be the weapon the Defender has equipped by default. Perhaps it would even happen automatically - after all, that very ref is about weapons getting distributed from the hall, and it would make perfect sense for the Defender to give away those weapons which are purely dead weight and inventory clutter at that point, with literally no benefit over the Dawnbreaker.
END SPOILER
YARD Mon Sep 18 13:33:56 2023
Less important weirdness:
SPOILER
As great it is to get another 10 powerful spells, their presence at times becomes overwhelming for the story, and some become inexplicably unusable at certain points. There's nothing as bad as the inability to LEVITATE to escape the bridge trap of the original, thankfully. (Though, I really thought LEVITATE at 135 was meant to be an attempt to levitate across the room, not to pull the lever.) Yet, it still makes for a poor first impression when the very first available ref (604) offers to climb the tower to see further ahead - and you cannot use FARSIGHT, which you were just told is meant to do EXACTLY THAT!
Further, I still don't understand why we can’t cast SHIELD (or ENERGY?) in most one-on-one fights: Fifth/First Finger, Fenric, Asgrim, etc.? Or why you suddenly get the option to attack Iuli with a mug, but not to cast REVEAL or DISPASSION on him - or to cast REVEAL on Kalbeck to see if he is worthy of your trust. (Could probably go for all the suspicious characters like the Talrasian Priest, Lyric or the Fourth Finger, I guess?) Plus, if we can knock out Iuli with a mug, why can't we knock out and interrogate the Fifth Finger, considering SHE LITERALLY GETS HELPLESSLY ESNARED at 212? Or indeed, after she is shot in the leg in 112, it would only require some self-control not to send the final arrow. Really weird, given those internal monologue complaints about the guards not keeping the fourth alive at 360.
To be fair, this might be solved by rewriting the archery option a bit and not making ENSNARE available there in the first place - the ability to make the vines emerge from the cobbles seems to contradict the claim that everything besides the Gold District is built on bedrock, which is rather important to the plot. Similarly, how can Kalbeck and co. buy food with 30 gold, if all the food is rationed?
And by the end, I was hoping that a healing potion could save the horse at 348, but I guess not.
END SPOILER
And some continuity.
SPOILER
You can go from ref 167 straight to ref 100, which is...really strange?
Sometimes, you have to guess which options are mutually exclusive and which ones are not, and it's hardly satisfying. In particular, it's not quite clear why exploring the outbuildings and talking to Iuli blocks you from looking at the top of the tower as well. On the other hand, at 303, you can climb the tower even if you have already done that before.
And while I know that whole tower is ultimately a time-wasting trap option on any run where you actually intend to get the best ending(s), I still find it strange that at 4, dialogue options do not change from reading Iuli’s journal, even though most of them would be asking about the things you already found out about by then. (Dialogue with the woman at Thieves' Guild tavern has a similar issue if you had already talked to the Mechanist.)
END SPOILER
With these comments out of the way, I'll concur with everyone else that this is very much a worthy follow-up to A Shadow in the North, one which retains its strengths and improves upon it as well. The city really is in a desperate situation, as you can see even from afar, with the rain of ash at 101. Once inside, the numerous times you can stumble into traps (or at least tricks/shakedowns) laid by the seemingly friendly characters only underscore that. Same goes for even more minor details, like the way herbalist’s stall is laid out at 159. The "taxation" option, and the response to it, is excellent. And I am not even getting into the "core" encounters required to either escape or to mitigate Necromancer's hordes. Perhaps the only exception is that 110 feels surprisingly idealistic.
YARD Mon Sep 18 13:43:46 2023
I should also say that the Talrasian Mage/Defender is a much better defined protagonist now, and his dialogue/internal monologue is actually pretty great when you make the right choices. More importantly, even many of the wrong/less-desirable choices have internal monologue that is convincing, which is no easy thing to do. In general, the addition of a timer, with quite a range of options being "feel-good" but offering you nothing substantial and taking up time, is certainly a step forward from there being effectively no benefits to avoiding rest and speeding along in the first part (other than that one time you get ambushed for more STAMINA than if you had just walked through the night.)
There's clearly been more of an effort to add modifiers and such to battles as well: while they can sometimes go a bit too far (i.e. the Wraiths up until you guess the one option which works the best on them), when they work well (i.e. Acolytes of the Blade). it stands out. (And also makes the ways you get to bypass those encounters, like the really awesome one at 277, all the more precious.)
Further, I was already impressed how even the goblin army in A Shadow in the North actually thought through military tactics properly (in fact, they were smarter than the Wildlings/Starks in A Game of Thrones, never letting their prized trolls go anywhere without armour, while Wun Wun was infamously wasted in a completely predictable manner), but the Necromancer's army takes this much, much further.
The only exception, ironically, is the Titan: the one time where "game" REALLY visibly overpowers "book", and the logic of power curve (bosses must be last) overwhelms the military logic (there is ABSOLUTELY NO REASON not to send out the Titan first, since it is literally completely useless outside of a siege or a massive pitched battle, while the basic ghouls, the fancier chitinous creatures and especially the fliers have far, FAR greater day-to-day utility, and all are wasted pointlessly if a Titan can do the job either way.) That aside, the siege is still an awesome moment: while Hunger of the Wolf also had a pretty good one, with similar mechanics, this is clearly on another level.
Unfortunately, it seems extremely unlikely that we are ever going to get A Light in the North nowadays, almost a decade since these two instalments. It reminds me of a story you probably don't know of (but really should): a free RPG Maker game called A Blurred Line - that one had a more sci-fi/science fantasy setting, but it was also quite dark, and remarkable for having a substantially branching plot, particularly for a JRPG-style game. Like here, it was only done to about two-thirds, and the final third is over 20 years past the initially promised date.
I wonder if for both of these cases, it's the same issue as what befell Berserk and A Song of Ice and Fire - the authors started out without too many ambitions, and readily embraced genre conventions along the way, but once they got going, they became so engrossed in the worlds they made, that to write out an ending which everyone could see from the start, an ending which the genre conventions they used as building blocks had demanded, began to feel like an unthinkable chore rather than as a triumphal conclusion, and so it never happened. Perhaps the parallels with Dark Souls and with The Banner Saga (which is much more group-focused, yet follows practically the same structure of "journey-capital city siege-cleanse heart of darkness") ended up weighing too much. Or perhaps it was the dreaded logic of the power curve again: how do you top fighting a hydra, a Titan and winged undead beings, in addition to the elementals and wyrms of the first part?
YARD Mon Sep 18 13:47:01 2023
And now, proofreading. Split into sets once again.
SPOILER
4 Once it stored ale and mead - as evinced by three tuns (evidenced?) + your hosts abode
7 similar to the grand-mages chamber in Talras + to deception and cowardice!". Bornvalt (?)
8 As 'Defender of Novgard' they may very well (comma?)
9 the stony splinters of a catapaults impact,
15 As you struggle to rise your last vision + before he can bring his club to bear you slice (comma?)
36 guards quarters + you definitely do not want to head. (to?)
43 "I choose to continue my studies in Talras"? (No period at the end of the quoted sentence, unlike the preceding one.)
53 part of the left statues inscription
60 felt covered boards + a well armed gentleman
61 Necromancer's catapaults
63 a well trained parrot.
66 a sour faced woman
78 the ripest looking fruit
82 near murder (hyphen?)
86 in the defenders favour. + by iron-tips. (is this hyphen needed?)
87 Ranks of pike men form
94 binding the Revenants legs
99 impacts the Titans head.
105 (such a nasty option!) a beautiful flaxen haired woman + before he can bring it to bear you smash (comma?)
115 to deflect the thirds sword + Pivoting you drive (comma?)
151 like a silver serpents tongue
161 No punctuation at the end of the options.
162 Go to the Tailors?
164 – missing punctuation after quotations.
165 the world-flame fell
184 But more follow hit (him?)
195 plummet down.For a moment
200 rows of iron tipped lances + the still burning wreckage +
202 on the passages sides + you reply "I am
215 by the crowds tide.
225 the machines fiery mouth
248 the ships head impacts
254 as the wraiths sword + it is sucked into the crystals fragments
260 are well founded + a crossbows firing mechanism
270 to be seen.Will you:
277 defeated us" he whispers.
284 at the ladders top + several archers filling turning any who try to climb back up into pincushions. (?)
286 in the defenders favour.
294 towards the revenants side
297 as the Titans bestial roar. + up the Titans back
299 found a worthy enemy.A + down the Titans body + off the creatures back + to the swords haft
300 the burnt out husks + in ever greater numbers + into the formations flanks,
END SPOILER
YARD Mon Sep 18 13:48:51 2023
The other set.
SPOILER
303 clumps of green fungus grows from it (singular vs. plural.)
307 It is thus in both our nations, and the world's, interests, + just self interest. (?)
308 at the districts centre
315 listening to the Preachers speech.
329 of the inns roaring fires.
343 as though it you who has suffered
348 your steeds pace slows
360 your fight.Your adversary
264 the ill prepared guardsmen
386 is between the monsters jaws.
396 towards the Titans head. + across the Titans back
403 But no sooner have you set eyes upon it does it fly up (?) + like beggars rags + seems well maintained + a drunken mammoth!" he whispers
404 "Guests first" he says.
407 It is two days ride
426 leap from the ships side
443 of your ships ram
449 the golden sun of the Revolutionary council. (capitalization?)
450 Tall banners bearing the golden sun
455 the wraith's essences (singular vs. plural.)
461 all the guilds weapons
462 tells you secrets he has seen" it rasps.
486 Alfgeir bellows "Pikemen to the walls!"
496 you shift onto the Titans back. + across the Titans back
499 scales of iron armour.You descend,
503 now my deaths been postponed
506 would be thieves
511 the lives of Innshelms people
542 the fire lit streets + the buildings children's toys. + the spires and dome's + 8 STAMINA.But
551 by the forges foremen. + an old - but well built – man
552 the forges blast-furnaces
560 the words Sovensons Tailors
567 like wind tossed seeds
577 of the World-lame
589 ones already-dented skull
590 of the cities soldiers. As the Titans looming arm falls
595 pierce the beasts mantling
596 towards the Titans back + across the Titans back
599 finds a soldiers visor + knocks the Novgardian's opponents + lice a ghouls head from its shoulder
