You are the Sky Lord Jang Mistral of planet Ensulina, one of many thousands of planets on the Holo Saluksh System on the Bernices Supergalaxy. As Jang Mistral, you are a four-armed Ensulvar from the sixteenth aeon, descended from Enzuls and Ivars of Jajax-Green. Once a planet torn between the warring tribes of Fethps and Deiks, through the leadership of a human named Ari Skyfarer of Arbitrakt, soon planet Ensulina has found its peace, its law and order maintained by Solar Troopers known as the Sky Lords, Knights of Ensulina, which you are a member of since age 20.
However, the peace is coming to an end. Beneath the domes of Marvels in the vaults of Arrok on Planet Ensulina, L-Bastin, evil geneticist and renegade steward of Vaax, is ready to unleash his army of terrifying clones, the dog-headed Prefectas, to conquer the cosmos! Only you, Jang Mistral, the greatest of the Sky Lords, the Knights of Ensulina, can stop L-Bastin! So you embark your trusty ship, the Starspray, and set off to Arrok for your quest, and... are you confused yet?
No, really, do you need a break from reading the two paragraphs above? Go on, take a drink or something while we wait for you to catch up. No? Okay, let’s go on.
Sky Lord is the 33rd entry of the Fighting Fantasy series of Gamebooks, written by Martin Allen, and is the very last sci-fi based entry of the franchise.
Infamously known among fans as "the one apparently made while high on psychedelic drugs" and, to some extent, the worst Fighting Fantasy Gamebook of all time, Sky Lord is known to be inconsistent, near-incomprehensible, filled with trippy imagery (and not in a good way) and a schizophrenic storyline that borders on Random Events Plot. It's no surprise that it killed off the sci-fi sub-series of Fighting Fantasy (all future books will be set on Titan or Allansia, except Blood of the Zombies).
In the years ever since its release, while majority of the Fighting Fantasy fans looked back at Sky Lord with scorn, there are some who can find enjoyment in Sky Lord as an experimental piece of work, an attempt to try something entirely new. Or maybe it can be enjoyed as a So Bad, It's Good entry into the franchise, and a sort of challenge for long-time players who were fans of an Out-of-Genre Experience.
Sky Lord provides examples of:
- Added Alliterative Appeal: For no reason at all, you get to confront 3 Prefecta soldiers called Snappy Sergeant, Crafty Corporal, and Pugnacious Private.
- Aerith and Bob: Character names ranges from Jang Mistral, Dr Strangething, Fog Farkin, Ludo Kludwig... and Ben Frumpet.
- An Arm and a Leg: You risk getting an arm ripped off by a robotic claw. Good thing you have four!
- Blob Monster: You encounter one on the Starspray, which cannot be defeated. Your only way is to get out before it swallows you.
- Body Horror: Zud will fuse a metal cylinder containing a metal-eating alien into your body.
- Enemy Civil War: In the end of the story, if you have rock salt, you can instigate a fight between the old and new batches of Prefectas, causing them to fight each other to the death until only one remains. The last surviving Prefecta can be easily taken out, leading to your victory.
- Enemy Mine: Near the end of the story, you team up with L'Bastin, after his Prefectas have turned against him.
- Evilutionary Biologist: L-Bastin is one of these, specializing in genetic mutations and cloning.
- Featureless Protagonist: Averted, for once. Your character is Jang Mistral, a four-armed alien from a planet named Ensulina.
- Fighter-Launching Sequence: One in the very first page, which describes in detail your ship, the Starspray, taking off.
- Flying Seafood Special: You get to confront a trio of jellyfish aliens. Who can speak!... Unfortunately, because of your reputation, they're not on your side and will attack you immediately.
- Gladiator Games: You get to take part in an arena battle against several other aliens on your way to the Domes of Marvel.
- Gone Horribly Wrong: L'Bastin's attempts to create the Prefectas as the best warriors... didn't end up as well as he'd expect, to say the least.
- It May Help You on Your Quest: At one point, you encounter Sam, one of L'Bastin's first creations. If you help him, he rewards you with a "fabulous power-jewel" which turns out to be rock salt. It's a required item to defeat the Prefectas; they rebelled because L'Bastin added too much salt to the mixture for the first batch of Prefectas, and adding even more to the second batch would cause infighting, resulting in them killing off one another.
- It Tastes Like Feet: In the parlour, you risk ingesting foot ointment which you assumed to be healing paste. Blergh!!!
- Last of His Kind:
- Rhio, one of the original inhabitants of Aarok, who avoided the space plague that wiped out his race. If you encounter him, he dies soon after saving you as the excitement was too much for him.
- The last Prefecta is the last opponent you have to fight, after the others had all killed off one another.
- The Many Deaths of You: What this book lacks in logical reasoning, it made up with the sheer number of colourful death sequences for your character, from getting vaporized by a megaton bomb, dissolved by a Blob Monster, blasted into oblivion by lighting strike, hitting a pylon with a splat, getting nuked, drowned in molten radiation... too bad most of these deaths are written in one-sentence paragraphs.
- Mix-and-Match Critters: Alien animals that assaults you includes a duck-billed caterpillar, a rhino with armadillo shells, and a scorpion-beetle hybrid.
- Multi-Armed and Dangerous:
- You, a four-armed Ensulvar.
- The four-tentacled Fahbad Redneck and Jaj, a four-armed beast, also counts.
- Multiple Head Case: You can get into a fight with two brutes, one which has two heads.
- Multipurpose Tongue: Fog Farkin, an alien gangster, have this and will use it to smother you.
- Oddball in the Series: Besides the obvious — that the writing sounds like the ramblings of someone high on hallucinogens, this is also the only sci-fi-based Fighting Fantasy where the player is explicitly an alien, the storyline seems more directionless and the adventure runs on Random Events Plot as though it was written without a planned script.
- One-Book Author: Unsurprisingly, Martin Allen has not written another Fighting Fantasy book after Sky Lord.
- Playing Possum: You get to play dead in order to fool an alien spider.
- Press Start to Game Over: Right a the beginning of the adventure had your ship being attacked by some sort of space fungus. If you ignore it, thinking some fungus wouldn't do any harm to your ship... you then crash and blows up, dead in 4 pages.
- Press X to Die: Many examples, but one that stands out is when you are asked to pursue one of three action plans in a vessel you're piloting, one of which note is detonating a ten-megaton bomb to destroy everything around it.
- Redemption Equals Death: L'Bastin dies shortly, killed by a stray bullet after his Heel–Face Turn.
- Robot Dog: A hostile one called a Metal Hound attacks you at one point.
- Space Pirate: Captain Big-Ears, a mouse alien with an army of cut-throats flanking him.
- Strapped to an Operating Table: The aptly-named Dr Strangething will do this to you if he catches you alive.
- Swallowed Whole: A gigantic space monster with clawed arms extending from its cheeks, should it get its hands on you, will do this to you.
- Taking You with Me: In one death, an old man pushes you to a pillar covered with sticky green liquid dripping from the roof, that has already claimed a number of creatures. You pull him in with you with your free arm.
- Turned Against Their Masters: The Prefectas have turned against L'Bastin near the end of the story.
- Unexpected Gameplay Change: When confronting Fog Farkin, instead of throwing for Attack Strength immediately, you make different branching choices to break out from being choked by its tongue.
- Unexplained Recovery: You crash your ship several times in this adventure, but walks it off without a scratch every time.
- Water Torture: The Prefectas have a giant water tank meant for this purpose. You find out shortly that one of its victims is none other than L'Bastin himself...
- Wall of Weapons: You can find an armoury hidden behind a bookshelf, containing guns, grenades, battle armour, laser rifles and enough weapons to equip a small army, leading to a Lock-and-Load Montage.
- Word Salad Title: The title of this book, your character's name, and some NPC names: Bric, Brac, Brag, Zap, Zud...
