ToughPick: A

Adept. One who has taken what amounts to the Postgraduate Course in MAGIC. If a MAGIC USER is given this title, you can be sure he/she is fairly hot stuff. However, the title is neutral and does not imply that the Adept is either GOOD or EVIL. Examine carefully each Adept you encounter and be cautious, even if she/he seems friendly. See COLOR CODING for the best way of telling friends from enemies.

Alleys are the most frequent type of ROAD in a CITY or TOWN. They are always narrow and dark and squishy, and they frequently deadend. You will escape along them when persued and also be AMBUSHED there.

See also REFUSE and SQUALOR.

Alligator. Probably extinct in Fantasyland and now to be found only in a mummified state hanging from the rafters of a WIZARD's workroom. If the Alligator is present, it is a sure sign that the Wizard is friendly.

Alters are of three types:

1. In TEMPLES. These are for SACRAFICES, so they will be waist high and long enough to contain the supine body of a VIRGIN. The stone top will have grooves for blood, and the whole will be covered with dry brown stains of a troubling kind (OMT) from former Sacrifices.

2. In the open, usually on a hilltop.These are of marble and quite simple but handsome, because they are always devoted to a GOOD diety. The size and shape varies, but general effect is of unassuming potency.

3. In RUINS. These Alters are underground or inside a pyramidal structure (OMT). They will sit on a dias at the further, darker end, and be about the size of a laundry hamper, in stone. Approach these with care. Though they undoubtedly hide or contain SECRETS or QUEST OBJECTS you need, they will be set about with magical booby traps that are still operative even after a thousand years. You need to disarm these first, and then possibly the thin shade of the enraged diety after that.

Ambushes will be of four kinds, and you will have them all.

1. By BANDITS, of the CARAVAN with which you are traveling. This will happen early on in your Tour. It will have been carefully set up, usually by a SPY masquerading as a CARAVAN GUARD. In some narrow place with high sides (rocky defile (OMT)) or where there is thick forest on either side of the route, Bandits will first shoot the Guards and then come pouring down to overwhelm the Caravan. This is where you will part company with the Caravan since nearly everyone but you will be killed. You will just be left for dead.

2. By LEATHERY- WINGED AVIANS a little later on, at night in a high place. This will be your first light brush with the forces of EVIL (you can tell the Avians are Evil because they SMELL). You will fight them off quite easily, but you may be left with a festering wound.

3. By the forces of Evil, upon a group of people you either care about or were depending on for help. You will come upon the evidence of this Ambush some time after the midpoint of your Tour. It will be in a ravine. Here you will find the corpses of your brutally murdered friends being eaten by scavengers. Your rage and grief will be enormous- the more so as you had hoped that this party had made it through to the CITY/ WIZARD/ KING for help. You must dig graves and proceed.

4. By you, on the forces of Evil. This will be near the end of the Tour, when at last you will be able to turn the tables on the ENEMY, by lying in wait at the top of the cliffs beside a rocky defile (OMT). With luck, you will have help here both from the GOOD King and from assorted Other PEOPLES, usually DWARFS, who will be experts in the art of rolling boulders down on the soldiers of the DARK LORD as they pass below you. You, with your now considerable experience of Ambushes, will then attack and finish them off. This will be one of your first victories aainst the forces of Evil. You will throw up afterwards, but basically you will feel good.