From TES issue 70 (July 2011)
Series 5
Quest: The Sword of Freedom.
Dungeoneer: Kelly II.Advisors: Keighley, Tarin and Rachel.

Home town: Rochdale, Lancashire.
Team score: 4 out of 10.

These lasses were never going to be given the chance to win, but at least they managed to make the final episode-and-a-bit of series 5 fairly engaging.

Level One: In the Wolfglade, Kelly picks up a purse of silver and a candle from a clue table. A lengthy spyglass sequence reveals practically everything the team needs to know for the rest of the level – Skarkill has taken delivery of his new hobgoblin, Tiny, and from Lord Fear’s detailed instructions, the team learns the password – “rat pack” – as well as the fact that the Gatemaster is guarding the exit from level one, and will let Kelly pass if she can present a token from Gwendoline. Kelly then progresses to Wolfenden, where Sylvester Hands cons her into exchanging the silver for a goblin horn, which he says will protect her in the Greenwood.

Kelly reaches the charcoal burner’s camp, where an assassin is lurking. Treguard and Pickle build up the sense of danger as much as they can and tell the team to do something to defend themselves, thus coaxing them to make the “mistake” of blowing the goblin horn. The assassin is scared away, but Gwendoline rushes in and has a right go at Kelly for blowing a goblin caller in the Greenwood. Once Kelly has explained the situation, Gwendoline says they will journey together until they find Hands, so that Kelly can point him out as proof that he was the one who supplied the horn.
Conveniently, they find Hands drinking ale outside a farmhouse, but he runs off as soon as the advisors identify him. Gwendoline says she will catch up with him later, before inviting Kelly to sit with her at the table and have a drink. As Gwendoline gets tanked up, the advisors remember that they are supposed to ask her for a token to present to the Gatemaster, but Gwendoline still thinks Kelly is a bit stupid so she sets the team a little challenge – to name two of Robin Hood’s Merry Men. They quickly come up with “Little John and Friar Tuck” so Gwendoline agrees to let Kelly have the green arrow. Next, in a pleasingly amusing filler scene, Hands rushes in to take his revenge on Kelly for dobbing him in to the Green Warden, but Sir Hugh turns up and “rescues” Hands from Kelly’s supposedly vicious clutches.

A quick jaunt past a blocker and across the Path of Defence on the causeway leads to the final room of the level, where the Gatemaster is on guard as promised. In another pleasing but pointless Knightmare moment, Tiny the hobgoblin turns up, but the Gatemaster immediately gets rid of him with a lightning blast from his staff. Kelly is then able to present the green arrow, and the Gatemaster grants permission for her to fly on Smirkenorff to level two. The advisors have to spot when Smirky is approaching the castle, and Kelly has to call out “Abashkrav” to make him land, but I don’t think this concept works very well with the pre-recorded flight sequence.
Level Two: Kelly meets Hordriss, who proposes a bargain that involves Kelly taking his staff with her and holding it in Aesandre’s blue fire (”the fire that freezes rather than burns” – Hordriss) to restore its magic powers. After an unnecessarily long time, the team agrees to do this for Hordriss, and he fixes the staff across Kelly’s shoulders so that she can still carry two clue objects, again bending the rules for his own ends, just like he did with Alex and the book. A clue room follows, where Kelly picks up a large book and a bar of gold, but the season is almost over and the next room is the last.
Icicles hang from the ceiling and the blue fire is present, as is a spyglass. The team sees Lord Fear and Aesandre discussing their plans to freeze the entire Dungeon as a last-ditch attempt to defeat Kelly before the end of the questing season. Treguard states that Hordriss is the only one who can get Kelly back safely, so she holds his staff in the blue fire and then shouts “Malefact” three times to summon him. Hordriss appears in a flash of lightning, accepts the staff, and accompanies Kelly back to the Great Hall of Knightmare, where a terse conversation between Treguard and a frozen Lord Fear is carried out, and the series draws to a close.
Summary: They didn’t seem like a particularly good or a particularly bad team, and they were led into the one “mistake” they made by the production team, so it’s impossible to say how they would have fared under “normal” circumstances, i.e. if they hadn’t just been filling in until the series ended.

[Previous team: Team 8 of Series 5
Next team: Team 1 of Series 6]

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