A 150-section mini adventure set in the world of his upcoming Hellscape Gamebook series, David Lowrie’s Jailbreak is the first atmospheric release in the Shadow Thief series, which has been inspired by the Fighting Fantasy gamebooks (especially Midnight Rogue written by Graeme Davis).
Your name is Shadow, and you are a thief. An exceptional thief. For the last 3 years, you have been working the rooftops of the city of Laevani, stealing from the rich and powerful. You are well named, as you seem to have the ability to move unseen in the dark and pass like a shadow in the night. For the last three nights, you have been watching a local merchant. You have worked out his routine and his weaknesses and tonight you intend to rob him blind. However, what starts as a routine burglary of his townhouse turns into something else completely.
For the first time in your short career, you are captured, and then as you try to escape, you find yourself cast into the centre of an evil plot. For beneath the city, an evil dark power waits, restless, trapped in the dark. If the portents are true, then its time has almost come, and when it rises again, the whole world will tremble. Its servants search the city for the last key needed to unlock it from its eternal jail. And the net is closing. On you.
You are no hero. No great warrior from the epics. You are just a street rat, who has grown into a thief. You are beholden to nothing except the Guild of Thieves. But now you find yourself thrown into a world of dark magic and cruelty. And you may be the only person in Laevani who can stop the return of this eons old terror.
As the thief Shadow, you make all the decisions, choosing unique abilities that may assist or hinder progress as you attempt to uncover the terrifying scheme that threatens the city. Are you ready to take on these dark powers? To do so you must first escape – beginning by breaking out of jail.
Your Jailbreak character will stay with you across the entire series, with your attributes and skills at the conclusion of Book One carried over to the beginning of Book Two. In addition, you will also get to choose new skills, developing your character over time from one adventure to the next. Any items you find can also be carried across, with some items not having any immediate use, however, they may become very useful beyond this first adventure.
Your character has a series of 6 attributes, including: fighting skill, endurance, fortune and agility. You can also choose up to 5 of the 10 available physical and mental skills; as above, some of these will be helpful when playing Jailbreak, while others may only offer assistance in future books.
The Shadow Thief series will feature content cross-overs with the longer Hellscape series of adventures, but can be read independently. Events taking place in Shadow Thief begin before those occurring in Hellscape, with the book therefore providing more introductory information, and a few Easter eggs, about the nature of Hellscape’s world.
Shadow Thief Book One: Jailbreak is currently available to purchase in Paperback from Amazon, with an eBook version still to come sometime soon.