When last we left our Lone Wolf cub, he was facing a band of fell brethren blocking his path. We decided to draw our weapons and confront the savages, but note that they didn't tell us ahead of time the main guy looked like this:
Convenient, no? I'm pretty sure we're cowardly enough that we'd have run if we knew we were faced with Skeletor in drag. I mean, I know I would.
So Rhygast is blocking sorcerous blasts with a shield Jedi-style while we ... trip and fall into the bushes. Lucky that, as my Kai Discipline of Future Forecasting predicts we've got a 100% chance of crapping ourselves, and what better place than a bush for that?
It's lucky that "Strength and steel" will not avail us here, because we are fresh out of both. We are fully stocked on "Lying stunned in a ditch while others die for us" and "spaghetti spine", however. Lead on, Rhygar!
Let's take a moment here to review. Our big approach so far is to try to get Rhygar to fight our battle for us. When that failed, we chunked his remaining men at arms in the path of our enemies to buy us time to run away. Heroism! Now, having run out of cannon fodder, we return to our original plan of ... throwing Rhygar into the path of the oncoming doom while we run away into a metaphorical womb. We just get more and more noble, don't we? I wonder if we can ask Rhygar for a loan before we dash off, promising to pay it back next time we bump into him. No?
On a mechanical level, this is one of those times when these "Choose Your Own Adventure" books really cheese me off, since this is the first I've heard of a Magic Spear. Did we miss it at a shop? Did we have a chance to fight something that would've given it to us but instead chose to run away (like that would ever happen!)?
No. It turns out waaaaay back when we first entered the forest we had a choice to go left or right. Guess which way the Spear was? That's right, the way we did not go. A totally meaningless, random choice at a completely innocuous moment results in Total Party Kill. Awesome.
The guys who put the book up on the web made some editorial decisions that cleaned up the decision point, which is nice. Now the meaningless earlier choice lets us condemn Rhygar to death without having to worry about having the spear or not. Win!
Look how cute! I wonder if their rodent-like noses can smell our complete amorality and ruthlessness. We better hope not.
Luckily we have the Kai Discipline of Animal Kinship -- which we've only used to talk to rodents, implying we're directly related to a rat, appropriately enough -- so off we go.
Wait, these things are nudnics? Isn't that a variation of "nudnik", which means "A pestering, nagging, or irritating person; a bore"? Awesome. The good times they are a-rollin'!
So we have a decision to make, which you are Constitutionally obliged to defend in the comments:
