From TES issue 53 (September 2008)
Series 8
Quest: The Shield.
Dungeoneer: Rebecca Hughes. Advisors: Natalie, Julie and Emma.
Home towns: Dorchester and Weymouth, Dorset.
Team score: 4 out of 10.

Rebecca was the last dungeoneer ever to die on Knightmare, and also the last one to attempt level two. Let’s not get bogged down in the reasons for this, but simply take a look at the details of the quest.
Level One: The quest begins in a large sewer pipe, which turns out to be a short cut to the clue room. The presence of a firestone on the table causes Treguard and Majida to start going on about how they haven’t seen Smirkenorff for a while, and the clues from the scroll make it quite plain that Rebecca is due to meet Smirkenorff pretty soon, for which she will need a horn to wake him and a firestone to feed him. Rebecca takes these two objects, and also looks through a spyglass. Lord Fear is instructing Sylvester Hands to dress up as Brother Strange and give Rebecca the wrong combination for the rune lock, but he eventually decides to do this himself, as Hands does not really understand what he is supposed to do.
The new-look dwarf tunnels follow, where Brother Strange – the real one – is waiting for Rebecca. He tells her the combination to the rune lock – also the real one – in exchange for a proverb. Rebecca then arrives at Smirkenorff’s pit, and she wakes him up by blowing the horn. Although the advisors are obviously expecting a flight, which is not an unreasonable assumption, they soon realise that Smirkenorff’s role is now to give out information, so they swap the firestone for a spell called SPEED. This is required in Fireball Alley, where the fireballs are coming out of the wall at a much greater speed than normal. Smirkenorff’s spell slows down the fireballs (rather than speeding Rebecca up, as its name suggests it should) and the team complete the challenge with no real problems, although the approach of some goblins adds a bit of tension to the scene.

Rebecca next meets Lord Fear in his Brother Strange disguise, and she gives him the same proverb as she gave the real Brother Strange. He is very grateful for this, and rewards Rebecca with a FLOAT spell in addition to the wrong combination for the rune lock. This long-promised puzzle makes an appearance in the next room, and Majida demands to know how the team can tell which of the two Brothers Strange is the real one(!) The advisors explain how they know that the first one was the real one, and then they use his code to clear the runes from the doorway. (Of course, if they had started to use the wrong code, they would have realised very quickly and could then have used the right one instead – not one of Lord Fear’s best plans, I feel.)

Again, goblins can be heard approaching, and two of the little critters appear in the chamber just as Rebecca manages to open the door. This sends the advisors into a complete panic, and they start sending Rebecca all over the place, shouting and screaming at her hysterically – what a farce! Eventually, she manages to get out through the door, and into the trapdoor room. Two skeletrons are on guard, but the Reach wand soon opens the trapdoor, and Lord Fear’s FLOAT spell ensures that Rebecca is able to fall safely into level two.

Level Two: Rebecca lands in one of the corridors of Goth, where there is a clue table waiting for her. The objects on offer are a spanner, a bar of gold and a bottle of Fireball Brandy; while the scroll makes it quite clear that the spanner will be required, the choice of the second object is a fifty-fifty chance, and unfortunately the team plump for the wrong one – the gold. A spyglass shows Lissard and Maldame plotting to overthrow Lord Fear, but it turns out that Lord Fear and Lissard are in league and are attempting to use Maldame to turn both Rebecca and herself into skeletrons by having them both touch a magic wand at the same time.
Doubtless Rebecca would have later met Maldame and attempted to rectify this situation, but she never gets the chance. She meets Snapper-Jack in the Sewers of Goth, and the team just about manage to scrape two correct answers, but they are living on borrowed time, and the end awaits them in the next room. Rebecca enters a corridor that is completely blocked by miremen, and she walks right into one of them! Treguard explains that the Fireball Brandy was required to defeat the miremen.

Summary: They panicked far too much and were never likely to do very well, although they coped with their level one challenges fairly competently, and were floored simply by the lack of a clue to help them choose their second level two object.

[Previous team: Team 4 of Series 8
Next team: Team 6 of Series 8]

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