The Eyes Have It is a book of adventure. While reading it, I got thesense that before it was written into a book, it was a Role Playing Game,and the Games Master had played the adventure, liked how his players hadconducted the adventure, and wrote it into a book. In this way it relatesto my topic heavily, as it IS a Role Playing Game. In another way itdoesn’t relate to RPG’s at all because it’s a book, and not a game. But itrelates to my topic in one pure sense – it’s an adventure.
All RPG’s areadventures. The story begins as one Askar-Ben-Oba, son of the chief of the WolfNomads, must travel through a continent to marry his betrothed, one MariaGriswalda. Askar does not want to marry Maria, but he must. His tribe,the Wolf Nomads, was once a proud and happy race.
They fought numerousbattles and won the battles and also the fear and respect of their allies. But over time, they had softened. The Spider Queen, an undead creature,had the plan to take over all of the Yeomanry. The Yeomanry is where thestory takes place, and is a huge continent where many different races andcultures live (like Asia and Africa put together with some aliens and snowthrown in. ) the Spider Queen had the notion of destroying all this good forher own, and turning it into her black domain. She did.
She casted aspell which made a huge black bubble. It spread like a plague and grew forleagues in every direction. Anything that entered this bubble never cameout. The Spider Queen threw her min orcs, demons, kobolds, etc.
into thisbubble to plunder and destroy. This she did successfully. But one person would not take this sitting down. While the WoldNomads, who were far away and too far to really receive the effects of thisbubble, rested their haunches and became couch potatoes, one KathrynFern-Cliffe, daughter of King Buncombe the Green. Kathryn had the will andthe need to destroy the Spider Queen. This she did, with the help of amagical gem, the Eye of Tiros.
Kathryn used the magic power within the eyeto destroy the Spider Queen. Once she was destroyed, life became normal inthe Yeomanry. Kathryn also had the job of rebuilding the destruction of theSpider Queen. But while the Wolf Nomads were deteriorating, and Kathryn rebuilding,Kranoch, a king of a region in the Yeomanry, was plotting revenge onKathryn.
Her father had blinded Kranoch by an arrow while on an assaultraid, and Kranoch wanted revenge. Kranoch gathered his armies and the leftover minions of the Spider Queen, and made an army powerful enough todestroy Kathryn and her region of Sterich. Kranoch also wanted the Eye ofTiros, the magical gem, which he thought would cure his blindness. Withthis as his main driving force, he went on a rampage.
Back to the Wolf Nomads for a moment. The Wolf Nomads were quicklydeteriorating. Askar-Ben-Oba, the son of the chief, was to marry MariaGriswalda, the daughter of a wealthy Nomad who had gone to Sterich and madea fortune. Maria’s sizeable dowry was badly needed to fund the Wolf Nomadsin their daily lives and to rebuild themselves into the powerful tribe theyonce were.
The story all comes together as Askar sets out on his journey toSterich to marry Maria. On his journey, the Eye of Tiros is stolen, and heis framed as the thief when he sits in a seedy bar. The bar “patrons” foundAskar as the dupe and framed him with the crime. Askar is punished,searched, and found innocent.
But he does not get away with the theftcleanly, as he is still the prime suspect. Askar gets an iron collar fitaround his neck, with a magic spell on it. The spell makes the collararound his neck shrink a little every day, so eventually it will stranglehim. His only escape is to find the Eye of Tiros so the collar can beremoved. Askar knows his only way to survive is by finding the Eye. This hesets out to do.
But during his quest, he gets captured by Sea Pirates,meets up with a dwarf with a flying ship, and eventually reaches Kathryn inher quest to find the Eye of Tiros. The Eye is wanted not only by Kathryn, Askar, and Kranoch, but by thegold dragons also. The Eye is the only thing that keeps them alive. TheEye was created especially for them, as forged by dragons. Its magic isthe fuel by which the dragons live by.
And they want it back. As in a normal RPG, the story comes to a climax when all four of themajor characters in the story, Askar, Kathryn, Kranoch, and the leader ofthe gold dragons, Buelath, all clash in combat. The huge battle is foughtin the heart of the Yeomanry. Askar has helped Kathryn and also fallen inlove with her.
By now the iron collar has been removed, as Askar helpedKathryn defeat a huge Medusa and rid the sewers of a vile beast. ButKranoch is still hell bent on getting the Eye to cure his blindness andkill Kathryn. And the dragons of regaining their life blood. The dragonsare slowly dying off, much like the Wolf Nomads. The climax reaches its height when all three of the major charactersbattle. Kranoch has waged incredible war by destroying most of theYeomanry’s forces, and is ready for the kill.
The dragons want their gemand their power is unmatched. Kathryn and Askar have the gem (it wasretrieved by Askar) and they have used it to thwart some of Kranoch’splans. In the battle, Kranoch is defeated when his prime minister betrayshis king by wanting the gem for his own. The Prime Minister, Alamkamala,kills Kranoch in an attempt to retrieve the gem. This he does, and he getsthe gem, but he himself is destroyed when the dragons attack.
The gem islost in the battle but the forces of the Yeomanry, led by Askar, get thegem. Kathryn leads a final bargaining session with the dragons. The dragonswant only the gem. Kathryn gives it to them, but the dragons also thinkthat the Yeomanry is not bog enough for the both of them.
Askar negotiatesthat since the humans helped the dragons retrieve their life blood, thatthey should live together in harmony. The dragons agree. So, after theclimax, the only people left are the dragons, who are content that theyhave gotten their gem, and the Yeomanry, led by Kathryn and Askar. The plot winds down when Askar, who still has to go marry MariaGriswalda, fulfills his promise. But it is ironic to see that when hereaches Sterich and the home of Maria, that she had already married and ispregnant.
Askar had been deemed dead, because he took so long. Askar,still not happy that he had to marry Maria, follows his heart and marriesKathryn. The story ends in the usual adventure manner, with no epilogueand leaving the reader in the dark about the Wolf Nomads and Askar’s past. But this would be the perfect story for another adventure. . .
. The story relates to my topic because the two are almost exactly alike. They share the same base, adventure. In a RPG, the people role play in anadventure. In the story, the same is accomplished, when the reader readsthe adventure. So, the next time you pick up a book and think “how boring,just a lousy adventure.
. . ” think of how you might actually live it in arole playing game.
