I’m rather disappointed to find that the first day doesn’t include any actual gladiatorial face-thumping yet, but instead we’re told that we should compete in a 100 meter sprint. I’m nowhere near stupid enough to get into a brawl with these guys at this stage, so I chew some food and prepare for the morning to rise, where I will meet others in the arena – or at the book calls it, the Arena OF DEATH!! *horror movie music* My very first choice in the game is if I should eat some of the food that one of the slave pen’s guards is offering me, or try to punch him in the face instead. Seriously, why not just round up some ‘contestants’ and chuck them into a giant mincing machine? They’d have about the same chance of survival! Anyway, I may actually stand a chance here – the weeks of slavery have forged me into a brutal and cold-hearted warrior machine-man, with a skill of 11 and a stamina of 22!! Lucky dice rolls – but my luck was a mere 8. Which, if you remember what it was like last time, seems bloody well impossible anyway. The Baron has announced that his new, improved dungeon is even more deadly than before. Where else would you be attacked by pirates? When it comes to Port Blacksand, you’re kinda lucky you’re not kidnapped and sold into slavery by the city guards! Anyway, you’ve been purchased as a slave by Lord Carnuss, the evil brother of the devious Baron Sukumvit, and he plans to make you fight for the honour of representing him in his brother’s annual dungeon challenge. The book starts with a tale of you being captured by pirates after having just left Port Blacksand, of course. I suppose this is what makes adventurers so respected, and why they have such a low survival rate. Only this time you are entered into the dungeon in order to win your freedom from slavery, rather than simply because you’re greedy for money and too stupid to start up your own merchant business. The strange thing about Trial of Champions is that it acts as something of a pseudo-sequel for Deathtrap Dungeon. The only time anything useful ever turned up was when I found a copy of Trial of Champions and Demons of the Deep for sale one day.

I hated the experience, which always ended up trudging through boxes of people’s unwanted rubbish with a fortnightly regularity. When I was around 9 or 10 years old, my grandmother would drag me to a local weekly car boot sale every other Sunday, which took place on a scrap of unused land a short car drive from home. Written by Ian Livingstone, Artwork by Brian Williams Return to the Parallax Walkthroughs Index Trial of Champions playthrough

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