Introduction

Six months can to a long time, especially when you are only a young lad of fifteen, and in the six months that elapsed since his last adventure Brian Woodlouse had had more than a change of underwear - he had also had a complete re-think and a change of attitude. No longer was he the rebellious little "barbarian" of his youth, now he was a more mature person with more mature thoughts. Now such things as destruction, pain and razor-sharp swords had given way to the likes of poetry, music and fluffy bunny-rabbits.

Okay, that might have been a small white lie concerning the latter, but Brian was a reformed character alright. These days he was more interested in helping others and offering his services in the furtherance of their cause than in beating the cr*p out of some evil-looking Orc - though he was still willing to turn his hand to the latter should the need arise. So it was that he offered to help a friend.

The Story So Far

Rodney Prentice had been a close pal for about as long as Brian Woodlouse could remember, and both of them had been chuffed when Rodney managed to get affiliated to the local High Mage. With luck and hard work Rodney might one day find himself in the position now occupied by the High Mage and maybe he would even have an apprentice of his very own.

However, not all schemes are trouble-free, and when Rodney accidentally lost the High Mage's Necronomicon (a very important tome) all seemed about to crumble into dust.

It had been a simple enough thing to happen - Rodney got bored with his daily chores and decided to pass the morning reading the great book, something normally forbidden to him. For an hour or two he was totally engrossed in the contents of the book and then, just as he was about to pack it in and return to the joys of the comic book Viz, the book decided to take a part in things and took complete control of Rodney's mind - not a hard thing to do at the best of times! - and force him to cast one of the spells etched on its pages.

Unfortunately for Rodney it was no normal spell but a "teleportation" one!!! In a trice the book had consigned itself to goodness-knows-where and Rodney was left pondering his fate when the High Mage returned from his journey.

In a last-ditch attempt to extricate himself from the "deep brown stuff" Rodney contacted Brian and asked him to help him find the missing book ... This is where you come in!

Notes

The game will recognise all the standard commands ... such as EAST, GET, DROP and EXAMINE, and in most cases a simple verb/noun input should suffice - though not always. Use the standard SAVE and LOAD to store a permanent record to tape or disk. However, you may use the likes of RAMSAVE and RAMLOAD to store your latest position to memory.

Hints

In some cases you will need to make more than a cursory inspection of what lies around you and don't forget that ... "If at first you don't succeed, try again." It often works.