Stargate (Virgin Books)

A text adventure game published as a type-in game in the book "Castles & Kingdoms".

When I was a very young lad," the bard began, "I fancied myself as an adventurer, a blades man of rare talent and a hero of epic quality." He glanced round at the attentive faces of his audience. They were young, for the most part; firelight warriors who would not see the far edges of the fields they tilled year after year. But they' d come for a story and that much he would surely give them. "During my earliest travels, I chanced to come across a gypsy caravan, led by a matriarchal old crone named Moola. She invited me for a taste of soup and a night of music -as is their custom with strangers -and offered, after the victuals were done, to read my future, for a few coins of course. "After much hocus-pocus and ceremony, and after lightening my purse of several ducats, a crystal ball was brought forth. It was a stunning sight, larger than any hall I' d ever seen in my short life or, as I can now testify, in the seventy-odd years since then. "She approached this crystal ball with much reverence and muttered several incantations over it. From where I sat, I could see inside it, a swirling mist of pattern and hue blended together in perpetual motion. I was fascinated. "But my fascination turned to horror as the inside of the globe plunged into blackness. Moola recoiled as if slapped, and cried out in pain. But she returned to her vision at once and with renewed intensity peered at the images only she could see. "At length she spoke, in a strange voice, different from the one I knew to be hers. 'Henceforth, wanderer,' she intoned, 'you shall journey with purpose, you shall quest with a goal in your eye and you shall canya song in your heart. You shall be minstrel to the masses. You shall carry word of great deeds and small failures from village to town, from mountain to desert. Your name shall be spoken of as bard to the world.' "There had been wandering minstrels for as long as there had been Men and Graylocks struggling against each other and the evils of the land. I knew not a single song or a heroic story other than the bogy stories of my camp-fire days. Perhaps this gypsy Moola was mistaken. " 'I see the North Mountains,' she continued, ignoring my doubts. 'I see Northstar Castle, a secret entrance. I see your destiny, Freerover the Bard, for that is your name now and you can accept no other.' "And as ls at there, listening in disbelief to the journey that was to be my quest, I quaked in my boots.I was no hero, but rather a badly frightened boy, a long way from the safety of my father's fire, charged with a task no sane warrior of the elite would have accepted. Until she mentioned The Book. "In the depths of a special dungeon of Northstar, she told me, was a Key to other worlds. Fire and Water, Sand and lee were these worlds in their turn. Each held secrets of incredible value, but one (she dare not tell me which) held the pedestal of all life upon which rested the First Book of Graylockland, a volume of history and chronicle concerning our world, stored there for safekeeping. "And so I became Freerover, the shell of a bard -for who listens to a minstrel without tales? I listened to the deed stories of hero after hero, and remembered each in its turn.

But as I travelled aimlessly throughout the Kingdom, I found myself drifting towards the North Mountains, drawn inexorably by the call of The Book. "To look at me now, my friends, you'd not believe me a mountaineer, but there was strength in my body as a youth and as sure Iy as I stand here I made the Northstar climb. I made the climb to the plateau of Thunder Mountain and negotiated the treacherous passage to the valley of the Castle Northstar. Moola's instructions, though 1 swore I'd never use them, guided me through traps that generations of warriors had died to discover. In the end I was able to enter that part of the Castle known as the Guardian of the Gates. "There was no treasure here