Literature / The Ultimate Adventure (1939)

Not El Ron Hubbard?

"I am a coward. Yes, there is no doubt about that. I am a coward, but I've found I don't have to act like one."

—Stephen Jebson

The Ultimate Adventure is a Science Fiction-turns-Fantasy novelette set in and around the legend of "The City of Brass". It is written by L. Ron Hubbard and was originally published in the April 1939 issue of Unknown with eight illustrations by Paul Orban. Its first print in book form occurred in March of 1970 when it was bundled with Fear.

Stephen Jebson is freshly homeless when he accepts Doctor Thomas Bolton's offer of food in return for becoming the other's latest test subject. Regret kicks in when Bolton locks him in a contraption to send him across realities with no guarantee of return. Inspired by Stephen's own copy of the Arabian Nights, Bolton sends him off to "The City of Brass". Stephen discovers that the eponymous city's population isn't dead but put in suspended animation by King Karoof, an ifrit, who seeks to marry Queen Tedmur. By accident, Stephen breaks the spell moments before being pulled back to his world. The experiment a success, Bolton repeats the risky procedure and Stephen arrives back in "The City of Brass" four years later. Since then, Tedmur's been taken prisoner by Karoof in his castle and the tyrant Graco has taken control of the City of Brass. After nearly being executed but also making some allies in the city, Stephen resolves to rescue Tedmur. Out in the desert, he tricks a group of ghouls into helping him reach Karoof's castle. The latter is absent, which Stephen makes use of by pretending to be a sorcerer Karoof sent for to convince Tedmur to marry him. Karoof, however, returns, which necessitates quick thinking from both Stephen and Tedmur to escape the jinni king. They almost reach the City of Brass when Karoof catches up with them, but it turns out that jinn burn well and Stephen has a box of matches. With Karoof's gruesome death, the jinn get subdued, which leaves Steven and his allies with their hands free to kill Graco and his loyalists. All thus resolved, Tedmur proposes to Stephen and he, aware that he's been gone far too long to be pulled back to his world, accepts.

The Ultimate Adventure is the first of a handful of stories Hubbard wrote inspired by the Arabian Nights and similar tales from the East. Its thematic successors are The Ghoul, Slaves of Sleep, and Masters of Sleep. Almost a prerequisite read, "The City of Brass" is the main influence on The Ultimate Adventure. Coming in second is "The Sixth Captain's Tale", which is the source of most relating to the ghouls, as no ghouls appear in "The City of Brass". The subject of ghouls is further explored in The Ghoul while Slaves of Sleep focusses on the ifrits that are the main source of trouble in The Ultimate Adventure.

In 2006, Chick Corea recorded the album The Ultimate Adventure based on the novelette The Ultimate Adventure.

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The Ultimate Adventure provides examples of the following tropes:

• Absent-Minded Professor: Doctor Bolton concerns himself only with himself and with his research into reality hopping. Everything that falls outside those priorities slips by his notice and the more he loses himself in his work, the more overt his absentmindedness becomes. He gets especially bad after Stephen's first trip through realities, because it is a breakthrough in his research but also only just short of actual results and finding what he's missing occupies him.
• Acid-Trip Dimension: During his first trip across realities, Stephen is sent off without any sense of direction or destination. This leaves him hurtling between realities, glimpsing everything without ever being anywhere, which is all exacerbated because it makes him nauseous too.
• Adaptation-Induced Plot Hole: In "The City of Brass", Queen Tedmur, knowing that not a single one of her people would survive the famine, had a tablet created about the inevitability of death as it hit the City of Brass. In The Ultimate Adventure, the story is adjusted so that instead of having died from hunger, the population has been put in suspended animation by an ifrit seeking to force Tedmur into marrying him. The tablet is still set up in Tedmur's throne room, even though with this change in backstory Tedmur doesn't have reason to talk about the inevitability of death. For one, no one's dead and for two, she chose a deathlike sleep for her entire city over personally marrying an ifrit.
• Ambiguously Human: There is an old woman who does the housework for three ghouls. She herself is not identified as a ghoul nor does she do anything that would indicate her to be a ghoul and, in fact, she is pointedly toothless. She is only ever identified as a hag, which she might be, but there's also no reason that she would be anything but a ghoul.
• Animorphism: Ghouls may change shape into animals at will and are well-known to do so by the humans they prey on. This appears not to be an innate skill, but one ghouls en masse use amulets for. An amulet needs to be the point of focus to instigate the transformation whether that be ghoul to animal or animal to ghoul. It's implied that some animals are harder to change into than others and fear of getting stuck in animal form makes the average ghoul inclined to stick with the first few transformations they get familiar with.
• Apocalyptic Log: With the Arabian Nights left open on "The City of Brass", the part that Stephen reads as the room darkens to ready him for his reality journey is the tablet before Queen Tedmur's throne. The tablet urges its reader to heed the inevitability of death and relays how the City of Brass came to be a ghost city.
• Artistic License – Religion: Jinn and implicitly ghouls are said to be inherently antagonistic to humans and, on the same end, to be opposed to God. In real-world Islam, jinn and ghouls are just as likely to be Muslim or not as any human.
• Attempted Rape: When Stephen is about to rescue Tedmur from captivity, Karoof returns home to ask the young queen to marry him. In order to get him to leave as soon as possible, lest he detect Stephen hiding nearby, Tedmur rejects Karoof extra viciously. It does not have the desired effect, because Karoof is at the end of his patience and hardly cares to see his feelings returned anymore. Just as he is about to overpower her, Stephen whacks him unconscious with the butt of his gun.
• Bad Boss: Karoof is so obsessed with Tedmur that nothing matters to him but having and keeping her. One servant that pays for it is the marid assigned to guard Stephen while Karoof is away. Stephen tricks him into letting him into Tedmur's prison chambers on the argument that Karoof asked him to talk with Tedmur on his behalf. Karoof returns shortly after and in fury that someone might have whisked away Tedmur, he crushes the marid's skull. He doesn't even regret his actions when he finds Tedmur to still be imprisoned.
• Big Bad Ensemble: There are three unaffiliated antagonists Stephen faces during his ultimate adventure: Doctor Thomas Bolton, King Graco, and King Karoof. Doctor Bolton is the mad scientist who, for his own ego and material gain, gets Stephen stuck in "The City of Brass". Stephen thrives, however, and gets a chance at revenge when Bolton pursues him to the other reality. Wryly grateful for his new life, Stephen leaves it at locking him away for a bit. King Graco is the police informer who managed to manipulate his way onto the throne of the City of Brass when Queen Tedmur disappeared. He is cruel, vicious, petty, and all-around unfit for leadership. Stephen stabs him dead with one determined thrust of his sword during a fight over the throne. And King Karoof is the ruler of the jinn who fell in love with and abducted Queen Tedmur. When she and Stephen realize they cannot escape him, Stephen remembers that jinn burn well and strikes a match to end the threat that Karoof poses.
• Bookworm: Stephen loves reading, but fiction and philosophy only. Nearly all of the knowledge he possesses came from the books in his aunt's mid-Victorian library. He also had access to newspapers during that time, but never bothered with them and the religious tracts his aunt collected from them weren't more than kindling to him either. When he ends up in "The City of Brass", though, his knowledge of the Arabian Nights is one of his most important assets.
• Bunker Woman: Karoof fails to threaten Tedmur into marry him by putting her city in a deathlike sleep and therefore resorts to abducting her. He has a luxurious habitat built underneath his palace where he keeps her for as long as it takes for her to change her mind. The only way in or out is a large stone slab only a jinn can lift without tools.
• Changed My Jumper: Stephen worries that his 1930s American clothes will draw hostilities in the City of Brass, a settlement in North Africa some time around 700. As it happens, people do take note of his strange apparel, but Stephen's worry-fueled behavior is the only thing about his clothes that actually causes him trouble.
• Circling Vultures: A coterie of vultures hover above the square in the City of Brass where the day's public executions are to take place.
• City of Gold: The City of Brass is a wealthy city of which the population invests a lot in making the place beautiful. Iconic to its look are its black stone walls above which two towers rise with domes covered or cast in brass kept pristine, giving the appearance of two eternal candles. There may be other roof coverings in brass, but it's the two towers the city gets its title from.
• The Coats Are Off: When Stephen doesn't return from "The City of Brass", Dr. Bolton himself makes the trip across realities and meets his former meek test subject as quite a more capable man. Upon seeing his original tormentor, Stephen sends away any witnesses including his wife, lays aside his crown, takes off his robe of honor, and rolls up his sleeves to give Bolton an old-fashioned beatdown.
• Conveniently an Orphan: It's not outright said, but between being raised by his aunt since a young age and losing everything with her death, Stephen's parents are clearly dead. Would they have been alive, Stephen would've turned to them upon his aunt's death and he would never have fallen in Dr. Bolton's hands and therefore he would never have been transported to "The City of Brass".
• Cool Horse: Asib lends Stephen his police horse to escape the City of Brass. It is a well-trained and formidable animal that leaves all its pursuers in the dust and gives Stephen, who has no experience with horses, no trouble. The horse runs for a full hour before it slips into a walk on Stephen's order and when Stephen decides to continue on foot, he sends the horse off knowing it will go straight back home.
• The Corpse Stops Here: Stephen hides in a dark building to avoid a police patrol and regrets that decision when inside he stumbles on the freshly beheaded corpse of a woman. Worse, the police patrol stops at the building because they spot the woman's torn veil and think it wise to investigate. They find the headless corpse and they find Stephen and they conclude that he is a ghoul who ate the head. Stephen's protests and a lack of escape attempts do get the patrol to doubt, but because Stephen vehemently demands to see the one in charge, they do as he wants. The one in charge deems the suspicion sufficient to sentence Stephen to death.
• Creepy Cleanliness: Doctor Bolton has set up his laboratory in the bad part of town because of the poor social control there. It is a place of filth, smell, and noise, but his own lab is kept clinically pristine from the floor to the walls to the machinery and the instruments Doctor Bolton uses for his experiments. It is a sharp and foreboding contrast that immediately sets any visitor on edge and rightfully so. Those experiments require test subjects and while they're not deadly per se, they are dangerous and cruel.
• Curtain Camouflage: Stephen hides behind a curtain when Karoof enters Tedmur's living space, knowing that the ifrit will kill him on the spot if he sees him there. It takes a lot of willpower not to give his presence away by shivering and teeth chattering.
• David Versus Goliath: Stephen comes close to being publicly executed, having the means but not the spine to save himself from the cruel purpose of Moseb, the large and imposing executioner. Hearing and smelling one prisoner being tortured to death just to the side of him coupled with the memories of all mistreatment he's already suffered, Stephen grows a spine on the spot, breaks free from his loose restraints, and shoots Moseb down with the gun hidden in his pocket. From then on, Stephen regards himself in two stages with Moseb as the dividing point: the meek pre-Moseb Stephen and the bold post-Moseb Stephen.
• Deadly Dust Storm: To illustrate the surrounding desert's danger, Shakar mentions how once an enemy army tried to come over and lay siege on the City of Brass. They all perished in a succession of sandstorms and the city's population still occasionally find remnants of their once-enemy.
• Deer in the Headlights: Stephen, who is already believed to be a ghoul, wriggles out of his binds during his public execution, grabs his gun, and shoots his would-be executioner. It leaves the stout man's back a "gushing crater" and the spectators, civilians and guards alike, all unfamiliar with guns, don't know how to deal with a ghoul with that kind of power. It's only when Stephen breaks free from all of his binds that the sense to run returns to the crowd.
• Defiant to the End: Before figuring out a way to escape his looming execution, Stephen resolves that he'll die putting up a fight so that he'll at least be worthy of the literary heroes he admires so much.
• Died Standing Up: The population of the City of Brass has been put into a deathlike sleep. Either they've slumped where they stood or they've not fallen at all, staying standing while as good as dead.
• Dirty Coward: When the people run from Stephen, whom they believe to be a ghoul with particularly powerful magic, two babies are left behind by their caretakers to fend for themselves.
• Dramatic Ellipsis: Doctor Bolton and Stephen are both prone to pronounced hesitations in their manner of speech when they need to speak strategically. As Stephen's confidence grows during his adventure, the hesitations go away, while Doctor Bolton never overcomes his slimy disposition and continues to talk with occasional pauses.
• Dream Reality Check: With his first trip to "The City of Brass", Stephen convinces himself he is dreaming. He proceeds without verifying and by accident trips over a sword and cuts his shin, both feeling pain and bleeding. He still reasons that this all could happen in a dream too, but the experience slowly works his thoughts to accept that he truly is in the City of Brass.
• Dressing as the Enemy: After knocking him out to save Tedmur, Stephen dons Karoof's clothes on Tedmur's urging so that he can pretend to be the ifrit and fool the guards into letting him and Tedmur leave the castle.
• Eunuchs Are Evil: Only one character is identified as a eunuch and that's Moseb, the brutish executioner in service of King Graco. He has a showman's attitude towards public torture and mercy for no one.
• Even Evil Has Standards: Karoof is a selfish and troublesomely powerful ifrit who shrugs at murder and isn't above rape. He does, however, disapprove of eating humans and therefore holds a low opinion of ghouls.
• Evil Cripple: The ghoul Toreel only has one eye. His other socket is empty, which Stephen thinks gives "him a villainous appearance."
• The Executioner: The man appointed by King Graco as public executioner of the City of Brass is Moseb, "a towering, sullen eunuch." His job responsibilities include prolonged torture of the condemned prisoners on display, which he does purely because he enjoys the showmanship of his role. Its not a wasted talent either because his work draws enthusiastic crowds up until his demise at Stephen's hand.
• Eye Scream: Toreel has but one eye left, having lost the other when he went up against Moseb, the executioner of the City of Brass, and lost badly.
• Fading Away: When someone is sent across realities and automatically gets pulled back after a time, they fade away from the other reality in pieces. Stephen fades from Karoof's hold legs first, then his arms, then his torso, and lastly his head.
• Food as Bribe: Dr. Bolton offers Stephen food if he will assist him in his experiments as test subject. Despite another homeless man warning Stephen that the doctor is not to be trusted and despite Bolton's own subtle admittance that Stephen's safety would not be guaranteed, all Stephen hears is the promise of food.
• Foreshadowing: Only a few paragraphs in and Stephen owns nothing more than one set of clothes to wear and some trinkets in his pockets. The trinkets are summed up alongside a hint of what their purpose in the story will be: "a volume of the Arabian Nights — later to be greatly regretted — a fountain pen — destined to purchase his life — a pocketknife, his late father's watch — which was soon to tell him more than time — and a presently priceless box of matches."
• Foul Cafeteria Food: A homeless man suggests that if Stephen is as hungry as he claims to be, he could go to the nearby meal center for breakfast. Stephen is about to take the advice until the man notes that "cockroaches in breakfast cereal look so awful floatin' around in blue milk."
• From Dress to Dressing: Seeing the poor state Shakar is in after being lashed on his feet a hundred times, Stephen takes off his shirt and tears a strip from it. Rather than using it as a bandage, he uses it as a sponge to clean the wounds.
• Caught in the Bad Part of Town: Stephen Jebson is used to a sheltered middle class life as provided by his doting aunt. When she dies, he soon has nothing anymore and gets picked up from the streets by Doctor Bolton with the promise of food. Bolton leads Stephen to a peculiar-smelling, dirty apartment in a "dingy neighborhood where the kids and garbage cans and clotheslines were drowned in the roar of trucks and gabble of gossiping women." It is not the neighborhood itself that poses a threat, but rather the prim and proper doctor himself. However, Bolton specifically chose the neighborhood because of its lack of social control. Everyone who lives there knows that the doctor is someone to avoid, which they do, but they don't warn Stephen about him either.
• Ghost City: The population of the City of Brass has been put into a deathlike sleep by a powerful ifrit named Karoof. It happened while they were going about their day and Karoof's spell preserves them in this state, which gives visitors the sinister impression that everyone died all of a sudden a few days ago at most. By chance, Stephen frees the city from the spell and life returns to it as if it never left.
• Hand Gagging: In Bolton's most overt act of aggression, he shoves his hand against Stephen's mouth and presses him back against his pillow when the latter refuses to go across realities a third time. As close as he is to his goals, Bolton has no tolerance for backtalk.
• Hanging Judge: King Graco appears to be all the City of Brass has for a judge during Queen Tedmur's absence. His style of justice is to make everyone, defendant and plaintiff, miserable, which is why people try to not involve him in disputes. One day, a slave and his master are brought before him when the police witness the latter beating the former. The master hesitantly explains that he beat the slave for theft and is sentenced to pay a fine of a hundred tallers for being an incompetent slave owner. The slave is sentenced to a hundred lashes and confiscated. Right after these two Stephen has to argue that he isn't a murderous ghoul, but any attempt to speak to Graco makes the sentence go from "death" to "death by torture" to "death by slow torture".
• Happily Ever After: The protagonist Stephen, having struggled through and grown from many adversities, and Queen Tedmur, who's been harassed by a lovestruck ifrit for years, four of which she spent as his prisoner, marry once all their enemies have been vanquished. By the looks of it, it is a solid and affectionate union built on mutual respect for each other's talents and strongmindedness.
• Happiness in Slavery: During Queen Tedmur's reign, at least before her abduction and likely reinstated thereafter, the nobility is not a class based on hereditary right but on personal merit. Only decent people who benefit the greater community can be part of it. Similarly, slavery exists, but slaves can buy their freedom, which few care to do because only the nobles own slaves and they're fair masters by virtue of being nobility. Moreso, slaves derive status from their association with the nobility, enjoy protection, and have their daily needs taken care of, which are luxuries few are willing to give up.
• Head Crushing: For letting a human sorcerer meet with Tedmur, whom Karoof keeps captive, Karoof kills the marid guard by crushing his skull as if it were made of glass.
• The High Queen: Tedmur is the beloved and respected queen of the City of Brass. She is reputed for her beauty and benevolence and fair judgement. All of this catches the eye of the djinni king Karoof, who wishes to marry her. He abducts her when other means fail and immediately the crown is seized by Graco who cares only for himself and inflicts four years of erosion on the city's social structure. Aside from the few people loyal to Graco, everyone believes that all ills will be righted the moment, though if ever, Tedmur returns. This faith in the queen is well-placed, because Tedmur does return and her retaking of the throne from the usurper is a battle finished swiftly by her supporters.
• The Igor: Boris is Doctor Bolton's brutish assistant who on one hand is a regular assistant and on the other an enforcer who subdues and manhandles uncooperative test subjects. He isn't one for showing emotion on his face or in his voice, the latter of which he makes limited use of. When he talks, which is rare to begin with, it's in short and contracted sentences like "Get strong. Tomorrow, next day, maybe go some more." Mention is made that Boris's head "comes up to a point," which is phrenological code for a predilection to violence, although all violence enacted by him is strictly on orders of Bolton. As for Boris's working relation with Doctor Bolton, the latter treats him agreeably; bossy but with proper respect for what Boris adds to the research.
• Imagine Spot:
  • During his first night out on the streets, Stephen gazes at a park light as if at a crystal ball and perceives his own untimely end in a pauper's grave.
  • During his first night out on the streets with not a penny to his name, Stephen imagines coming across a burning building with a millionaire's daughter inside that he could rescue to be richly rewarded. The thought ends with his acknowledgement that the scenario is unlikely to occur and that he would absolutely mess up the rescue.
  • When Stephen learns that Doctor Bolton will send him back despite the danger of a ferocious ifrit lurking in the City of Brass, he vengefully imagines the ifrit bringing harm to Bolton.
• Imposter Forgot One Detail: According to Tedmur, Karoof either always forgets to make his ears round when he impersonates a human or he is straight-up incapable of changing the shape of his ears no matter what form he takes. He's tried the forms of a prepubescent human boy, of a human shepherd, of a human king, and of a human knight, and they all had pointy ears. Additionally, Karoof cannot hide his lisp even though he can change his voice.
• It's All About Me: Every single time Doctor Bolton talks with Stephen Jebson, his unwilling test subject, he is nothing less than forthcoming that everything Stephen does and is subjected to serves the singular purpose of Bolton's convenience. Stephen is to risk his health and life to pave the way for Bolton to find himself a reality more appreciable of his intelligence. Stephen ought to feel honored that he gets to help Bolton. And would Stephen bring something valuable back from his trips, whatever it is it belongs to Bolton because he is more deserving of it.
• It's All Upstairs From Here: During his first visit to the City of Brass, Stephen reasons it's best to leave the ghost city for a lively one and climbs one of the city's two iconic towers to survey what direction he'll walk in. At five hundred feet tall, it is a long climb that is only made bearable by the windows to gauge his progress through. At the end, by sheer coincidence he finds the gong that allows one to end the spell cast over the city.
• Kill It with Fire: The jinn are composed of "hardly more than smoke and energy" and burn like tinder. They spend their lives avoiding fire of all kind. Stephen gets transported from his own reality to "The City of Brass" with a box of matches which, even though he has to get dangerously close, he puts to good use burning Karoof, one of their kings and their strongest, to death. The threat subdues his court, which makes it unnecessary to come after them too.
• Life-or-Death Question: Stephen, who is accused of being a ghoul by the City of Brass, seeks shelter in a house located far from the city. He doesn't know that the house belongs to ghouls, who welcome him only because he must be a fellow ghoul because no human would dare enter a ghoul's home. Stephen, for his part, reasons that since the home owners make a lot of noise, they can't be guards looking to recapture him. When the ghouls ask him if he happened to have escaped from the city, they seek confirmation that he is a ghoul because they've heard about a ghoul escaping from there. Stephen answers positively. Had he denied, there's a good chance he'd have been discovered to be a human before he'd realized he's dealing with ghouls and therefore been eaten.
• Love at First Sight: Stephen is immediately smitten with Queen Tedmur's beauty and the goodness she radiates. It is at the time one-sided because Tedmur isn't conscious, but when she meets him again when she is awake, she deems him handsome and soon after falls for him because of his courage.
• Love-Obstructing Parents: Shakar is the badly treated slave of a master who used to be his slave and treated significantly better. The switch in their relative position is the result of a political takeover and the new master is antsy about handling and keeping his new position. He cannot accept that his own daughter and Shakar are in love and beats the man for it, which almost leads to Shakar's death. Shakar survives and is later restored to power, which presumably ends his lover's father ability to obstruct their romance.
• Made a Slave: When Graco seizes the throne of the City of Brass, he uproots the social order by executing anyone of wealth and standing that is particularly liked by the population and makes slaves of the rest of the upper class. Their former slaves he makes their new masters in order to secure the formers' loyalty.
• Mad Scientist: With the help of his muscle-heavy assistant Boris, Doctor Thomas Bolton takes Stephen prisoner to use him as his test subject in reality travel. Despite Stephen's pleading, Bolton proceeds with full knowledge that his test subject may end up lost in another reality, unable to return, or simply get killed thereabouts. This is fine by him, because either way, he gets data out of the experiments. Even after Stephen has already been sent away twice and taken longer to get back the second time than the first, Bolton insists on a third experiment partially to confirm the procedure is safe, although he openly acknowledges that Stephen is unlikely to return, and partially for monetary gain as Stephen brought back diamonds from his second trip.
• Magical Incantation: In order to get directions to Karoof's castle from some ghouls, Stephen pretends to know a magic word that guarantees that a ghoul who changes shape will not get stuck in that shape. Once he has his intel, he makes up a magic word on the spot to buy time: "Subway-train". To win more time, he further makes up the word has to be shouted as "Subwa-a-ay-trayen" while looking at a magic sign.
• Maiden Aunt: Stephen has lived with his aunt for at least twenty years and as Stephen makes no mention of other family members, it appears that it always was just the two of them before her passing. His aunt loved Stephen dearly, even though her desire to make him happy ended up detrimental to his ability to stand on his own two feet. Being a devout woman, she collected religious tracts from newspapers and magazines and strictly instructed Stephen against lying. Her tastes, if her personal library is anything to go by, leaned Victorian, which Stephen grew up to appreciate too.
• Manchild: Stephen Jebson is in his mid twenties at the very youngest when his aunt dies. Up until then, he's barely been to school, never had a job or tried for one, never did any housekeeping, and seemingly never did anything that inconvenienced him because his aunt took care of everything. As a result, when she died, she left Stephen a man too immature to make anything of his inheritance and with a childlike naivety regarding jobhunting, the law, and the trustworthiness of strangers. It lands him into a series of dangerous situations that force him to catch up on maturing in a few days time.
• Meaningful Rename: When Stephen Jebson befriends Shakar, the latter deems the former's name to difficult to pronounce and renames him El Stephen abd Jebson. Stephen adopts the name to make things easier for him in the world he finds himself stuck in, but keeps thinking of himself by his childish nickname Stevie. It takes becoming king of the City of Brass and defeating all three of his adversaries for Stephen to think of himself as El Stephen.
• Mighty Whitey: Stephen Jebson is American and, both implicitly in the text and explicitly in the accompanying art, white. He has lived nearly his entire life with his aunt who coddled him and sheltered him to the detriment of his independence, his education, and his physical skills. With only a set of good morals and some modern trinkets to him, Stephen gets transported across realities to "The City of Brass". There, he proceeds to be the one guy who can solve all of the eponymous city's problems and may very well be the only one who even tried. He wins the heart of the city's beautiful queen, drawing her attention even before she knows anything about his heroic feats, and marries her once all has been settled.
• Mirror Scare: Karoof realizes something dangerous is behind him when Tedmur fails to keep her gaze on him. He turns just too slow to do something about the first blow Stephen deals him.
• Miscarriage of Justice: Only a little after arresting Stephen for being a murderous ghoul, Captain Asib suspects that the curious man is innocent. However, because Stephen vehemently demands to speak to the ruler of the City of Brass, he takes him to him. To Stephen's surprise and Asib's dreaded expectation, the former is condemned to death by slow torture by King Graco, who can't be bothered to hear him out. Asib attempts to prove Stephen's innocence, but his findings do not sway Graco in his judgement. Asib reports this to Stephen and asks for forgiveness, which he gets to make good on later by helping Stephen escape the city.
• Misery Poker: Stephen gets abused and manhandled and forced back to the reality of the City of Brass despite the high risk that he'll never be able to return to his home reality. Once there, he gets apprehended on suspicion of being a ghoul and sentenced to death by slow torture the next day. Until then, he is thrown into a cell with Shakar, a slave Stephen knows got lashed a hundred times just prior and who has more violence waiting for him. Realizing how bad Shakar must have it if the guards locked him in with someone they think is a ghoul, Stephen forgets about his own woes and sets about sanitizing Shakar's wounds.
• Mistaken for Transformed: Upon meeting him, Tedmur believes Stephen to be her abductor Karoof in yet another human disguise and orders him to leave her instead of cooperating with an escape plan. She only realizes her error when the real Karoof arrives. They two later deliberately make it appear that Stephen is Karoof in another form in order to fool the guards and get out of the castle, which is a plan that goes flawlessly.
• Must Make Amends: Stephen sets out to find Queen Tedmur, save her from the ifrit, and return her to her throne because he feels responsible for her abduction. It was he who tolled the gong that awoke the City of Brass and that act necessitated the ifrit to switch tactics in order to have Tedmur. At least while the city was asleep, it wasn't in the hands of King Graco.
• My Beloved Smother: Stephen's aunt was his caretaker for at least twenty years, because twenty years ago she took him out of school when he got a cold, arguing he was too frail of a person to take further risks. She's held him close and at home since, doting on him and badly hampering his personal growth. Stephen's lack of experience and independence become a problem upon her death when he doesn't know how to create stability for himself and goes through the inheritance in mere months.
• Natural Spotlight: When Stephen enters Queen Tedmur's throne room for the first time, a shaft of sunlight falls upon her "exquisite face".
• Nephewism: From a young age, Stephen has been in his aunt's custody. She loved him very much and made sure he had need of nothing, but in doing so she also held him back. Pointedly, twenty years prior, his aunt decided that "the cold he had gotten at school was indicative of his frailty and consequent inability to ever again attend such a place." His only education since then has been his aunt's mid-Victorian library, he never got work experience, and all this left Stephen with nothing when his aunt passed away.
• The Nose Knows: The ifrit guards identify Stephen as human by his scent.
• Off with His Head!:
  • When Stephen arrives in Tedmur's throne room, Talib's beheaded corpse and loose head still lie on the floor just as Emir Musa and the rest of the expedition left it.
  • For a public exaction, the executioner Moseb first tortures the condemned and then chops off their heads.
  • The ghouls appear to exclusively dine on human heads, which they chop off the body to bring along to wherever they intend to eat in peace.
  • Execution by beheading is a common practice in the City of Brass during King Graco's reign.
• Oh, My Gods!: When trying to save her, Stephen has a hard time convincing Tedmur that he's a human and not the ifrit Karoof in disguise. His frustration leads him to utter: "Make haste in the name of God before that Ifrit returns!" This startles Tedmur, because an ifrit is not supposed to use the name of God, and it almost makes her believe that Stephen is telling the truth. Later, when they've escaped by been caught up by Karoof, the latter proclaims: "By Gog, spawn of Shaitan, you'll never escape me now!", thus swearing by the evil king of the stories surrounding Gog and Magog.
• Our Genies Are Different: At a few hours travel through the desert from the City of Brass stands the castle of the mighty Karoof. He is an ifrit and a king among jinn. Other than ifrits like himself, his court contains marids, shaitans, and auns. Ifrits and marids, at least, are eight feet tall and hairy all over and they have either piercing cat eyes or eyes red as a flame, mouths like hell fire, horns on their heads, and fangs jutting upwards from their lower jaws sometimes as high as their eyes. Jinn are much more resilient to physical attacks than humans and piercing weapons in particular have little to no effect on them. They can also take other forms, be that of another creature or of a phenomenon like a tornado, which grants them travel speed far surpassing that of humans. The big weakness of the jinn is their vulnerability to fire, as they are composed of "hardly more than smoke and energy". For fear of burning to death even by candles, their habitats are lit only by the stars at night. The City of Brass has fire posts installed along the city wall to fend off any attacks and the two iconic brass towers are specifically designed to strike fear by resembling candles. After Stephen kills Karoof with a mere three matches, he forces Karoof's court to swear loyalty to Queen Tedmur of the City of Brass to ensure that the city never again has to worry about the jinn.
• Our Ghouls Are Creepier: Ghouls are neither human nor jinn but they look like the former and associate with the latter. They have a strong preference to nourish themselves with human heads and in times of abundance won't bother with the rest of their victims' bodies. As hunters, ghouls rely both on their physical strength and their ability to change into animals to lure prey to quieter places. It appears that ghouls can only shapeshift into animals and that this is not an innate capability but one enabled by amulets. The amulets are needed to transform in either direction and have no impact on maintaining the animal form. Stephen encounters up to six ghouls during his adventure. The first are two jackals that in retrospect definitely were shapeshifted ghouls. The remains of their last meal cause Stephen to became mistaken for a ghoul by humans, which nearly gets him executed but provides him with a reputation that later makes a group of ghouls trust him as one of their own. They are Toreel, Blofel, Denep, and an unnamed toothless old woman who may or may not be a ghoul. Stephen manages to trick them into helping him out reaching Karoof's castle.
• The Outsider Befriends the Best: Stephen makes two friends in the City of Brass. The first one he meets is the police captain Asib, but the first one he actually befriends is Shakar. Stephen meets Shakar as a slave, but the latter reveals that he used to be a nobleman and that he is the best archer to be found in the City of Brass. Stephen does what he can to help Shakar in his pitiful state, which Asib hears of. Asib used to be Shakar's faithful servant and dislikes his own inability to save him. Stephen's kindness to Shakar is a major factor in Asib's decision to use his rank to help Stephen escape the city. Stephen returns later with Tedmur, the city's true queen, whom he has rescued, and with the assistance of Shakar, Asib, and their troops, Tedmur is restored to power.
• Peek-a-Boo Corpse: Stephen spots a police patrol coming his way and opts to hide in a nearby dark building to avoid questions about his out-of-place clothes. Just before entering the building, two jackals run out, which Stephen takes as a sign no predators are inside anymore. In truth, those jackals are ghouls and they've left the sticky corpse of their latest victim to rot in the dark. Stephen discovers it by touch when he stumbles around and by then can't leave anymore until the police patrol has moved on.
• Pinned to the Wall: In a now-or-never assault on King Graco for the throne of the City of Brass, Stephen storms the palace and faces the usurper in combat. Graco is no match for him and backs himself up against the throne, which Stephen answers by thrusting his sword forward with his full might. Graco gets impaled through the chest, but doesn't slump down because the sword went through the back of the throne too. It holds up the corpse.
• Poor Communication Kills: When Asib and his men arrest Stephen on suspicion of him being a ghoul, Stephen insists he be brought to the city's leader because he thinks they'll bring him to Queen Tedmur and he knows for certain she will see he's innocent and order his release. What Stephen doesn't know is that Tedmur is no longer in charge and that who is in charge couldn't care less about justice. What Asib doesn't know is that Stephen doesn't know this. At the hour of Stephen's execution, Asib drops by to apologize and Stephen lets him know he doesn't hold it against him.
• Public Execution: Every once in a while, King Graco arranges for public executions for condemned prisoners. With his sense of justice, it is unclear whether executions come about because there are enough prisoners or if people are sentenced to death specifically to fill a public execution quota. Under Graco's reign of terror, public executions do sometimes include torture and always draw a sizeable crowd.
• Rage Breaking Point: Moments before Stephen is about to get the flesh scorched off him in a public display of torture and execution, he makes the decision that meekly letting things happen to him isn't going to fly anymore. Despair makes way for "a wave of hot rage. Rage against Bolton, against Graco, against the Ifrit and now against Moseb." With the benefit of a gun in his pocket when his adversaries only have swords, he kills Moseb, his would-be executioner, and scares off the confused crowd long enough to escape retaliation.
• Rearing Horse: In a moment of quick action, Asib throws himself off his horse so Stephen can pretend to steal it from him. Well-trained as the animal is, it lets Stephen get in the saddle easily, dramatically rears up, and sets off at an unmatched speed.
• Reduced to Ratburgers: The second day being of homeless, having eaten only a turnip the day prior, Stephen contemplates capturing and eating a pigeon he spots in the park. His first two considerations end when he deems pigeon flesh undignified and realizes he has no idea how to kill a pigeon. A third time he attempts to actually capture the bird, but jumps back up in embarrassment when Dr. Bolton approaches him.
• Rescue Romance: Tedmur very quickly falls deeply in love with Stephen when he comes to rescue her. It makes it easier for her to pretend-flirt with him when he has to pretend to be Karoof to get the both of them past Karoof's guards. Once the genies are defeated and Tedmur has her throne back, she asks Stephen to marry her. He happily accepts.
• Rightful King Returns: Queen Tedmur of the City of Brass has been abducted by King Karoof for her refusal to marry him. During her absence, a man named Graco takes over as king for his own gain only and the city suffers for it. Stephen, an admirer of Tedmur and nearly a victim of Graco's reign, sets out to rescue the queen and return the throne to her. He succeeds spectacularly and wins Tedmur's heart in the process. Both she as the old queen and he as the new king are welcomed with much cheering.
• Rooftop Confrontation: For reasons unrelated to the enchanted gong atop one of the City of Brass's two iconic towers, Stephen climbs the tower all the way up. He accidentally activates the mechanism to chime the gong, which undoes the spell Karoof has cast over the population. The furious ifrit rises up as wisps of smoke against the cupola and takes humanoid form. He grabs Stephen to fling him out of the tower to his death, which Stephen only survives because just then he's pulled back to his own reality.
• Saved by the Church Bell: Karoof had either installed a magic gong of brass on top of one of the iconic towers of the City of Brass or he enchanted one that was already there. The gong is hammered mechanically by pulling a lever and its chime undoes the spell that put the whole population in suspended animation. Likely, it was also used to cast the spell in the first place. Stephen accidentally presses the lever to chime the gong and there by frees the city from its deathlike state. Incidentally, the cover of Unknown announcing the story depicts the brass gong as a brass bell instead.
• Scary Black Man: King Graco's royal flogger who gets ordered to administer Shakar a hundred lashes on his feet is specifically identified as a "brawny Nubian".
• Sense Loss Sadness: The risks of dying or getting stuck in another reality are what make Doctor Bolton's procedure terrifying, but what makes it torture is that the journey starts with a step-by-step loss of all sensory input. First there's the injection with eucaine to shut off touch, followed by a whiff of chiliou to block smell. Ear plugs take away auditory input and thereafter comes hermetic darkness. All the while, the mind is kept unaffected and aware of its losses.
• Shapeshifter Mode Lock: Stephen tricks the ghouls Toreel, Blofel, and Denep to change into animal forms, respectively a chicken, a donkey, and a pig. Then he steals their amulets from them, which they need to change back. He threatens not to return them unless the ghouls help him reach the castle of King Karoof, leaving them no choice but to cooperate. On his end, Stephen keeps his promise of returning the amulets after ensuring a safe distance between him and the ghouls.
• Shout-Out: The protagonist of The Ultimate Adventure is an avid reader, so several literary references are made.
  • Stephen gets send to the reality where "The City of Brass" exists. Unlike in the legend, its population isn't dead from famine but put in suspended animation by a powerful Ifrit who wants to force Queen Tedmur to marry him. Stephen arrives some time after Musa's expedition visited the City of Brass and comes across the ladder they left behind, the corpse of the man who fell off the city wall, and Talib's corpse. By accident, Stephen undoes the ifrit's spell and sets out on an adventure that ends with him marrying Tedmur.
  • Several stories other than "The City of Brass" also are of relevance to The Ultimate Adventure. Stephen specifically names and quotes from the "The Tale of the Porter and the Young Girls" to describe Queen Tedmur's loveliness. Two guards quote from but don't name "The Sixth Captain's Tale" as it appears in the Mardrus-Mathers version of the Arabian Nights when they recall the habits of ghouls. Stephen's deception of pretending to be a sorcerer who can convince the queen appears inspired by the way the protagonist of "The Ebony Horse" pretends to be a doctor to see the princess. And the three male ghouls and the ghoulish hag taking care of them are a setup often found in folk tales with the "mother milk" motif.
  • The Vedas, The World as Will and Representation by Arthur Schopenhauer, Critique of Pure Reason by Immanuel Kant, and the philosophies of Baruch Spinoza are mentioned by Doctor Bolton as the inspiration and starting point of his research into reality hopping.
  • When Stephen realizes he's Doctor Bolton's prisoner after his first journey across dimensions, he laments that he doesn't have "the courage of James Fitz-James, the ferocity of Roderick Dhu," and "the calm of Galahad." The first two are the unsuccessful romantic rivals in The Lady of the Lake by Walter Scott, while Galahad is one of few morally pure Knights of the Round Table in Arthurian Legend.
  • When curious to check a supposedly dead man for breath, Stephen takes out "his watch, after the fashion of Sherlock Holmes," referencing Sherlock Holmes.
  • Stephen recalls his childish dreams of "being the friend of Launcelot and Galahad, Prince Diamond or Aladdin." The first two are Knights of the Round Table in Arthurian Legend, while Prince Diamond is from "The Splendid Tale of Prince Diamond" and Aladdin is from Aladdin.
• Sinister Schnoz: King Graco, who seized the throne of the City of Brass through ill means and under whose rule many have perished and many more will as the social structure corrodes, is a "hawk-faced fellow."
• Slipped the Ropes: Because Stephen is sentenced to death for being a ghoul, the people who are supposed to tie him up to await his execution aren't thrilled to be near him. They do their job hastily and poorly, which leaves Stephen with one hand that he can easily wrench free. He keeps it a secret until the executioner comes near him so that he can shoot him dead and undo the other ropes during the confusion.
• Strapped to an Operating Table: Doctor Bolton has built a chair to strap someone into for the purpose of taking away all their senses, which is needed to send them across realities. The chair looks disconcertingly alike to an electric chair, but other than the straps and a focus cap it is an ordinary chair.
• Sudden Principled Stand: Captain Asib despises King Graco's reign, but doesn't have the courage to make himself a target by challenging the wrathful usurper. He tries to maintain some semblance of justice in the City of Brass through his work as police captain, but he accomplishes little. When Stephen, a man nearly tortured to death due to his interference and also a friend of Asib's former well-liked master, manages to escape execution, Asib makes his first move in defiance of Graco and has his men help Stephen escape the city.
• Take Me to Your Leader: Asib and his men arrest Stephen on suspicion of him being a ghoul, which Stephen is fine with because he thinks they'll bring him to Queen Tedmur and he knows for certain she will see he's innocent and order his release. Therefore, he demands to be brought to the city's ruler, unaware that Tedmur's gone and the current king isn't at all interested in justice.
• Tap on the Head: Stephen hits Karoof on the head with the butt of his gun at full force multiple times. A human's skull would've cracked under the violence, but Karoof is an ifrit and merely falls unconscious. It takes a few hours for him to recover and give chase.
• They Called Me Mad!: Doctor Bolton once was a respected member of the scientific community and worked on his reality-travelling theories within the regular scientific circles, but he was mocked away for them. Probably always an ego-tripper, this humiliating experience made him resentful and reckless to boot. As is, he cares less about finalizing his research to prove that he is right and more about getting to use it himself and move out to a reality where he gets the accolades his genius deserves.
• This Is My Boomstick: Stephen brings a few 1930s' possessions with him to the City of Brass around 700, among which a loaded gun, a pocket-knife a fountain pen, and a box of matches. These are the items that give him an edge over the people of the past not just for what they can do but also for how they make Stephen look like a sorcerer not to be trifled with. The gun, though filled with six bullets, is used only once against Moseb, Stephen's would-be executioner. The bullet leaves a "gushing crater" in Moseb's back, startling the spectators about how such is possible, and Stephen further lays it on by proclaiming that he is "master of thunder and death, and thunder and death are" for his enemies to suffer. The pocket-knife doesn't need to be used to make Stephen look like a sorcerer to the ghouls for his ability to summon a knife from nothing. The fountain pen that functions without inkwell looks like a magic trinket to a marid, who trades it to Stephen for an early opportunity to meet Tedmur. Lastly, the matches come in handy to burn the combustible ifrit Karoof to death and threaten his court with a similar fate if they take up arms against the "master of flame".
• This Was His True Form: Karoof approaches Tedmur in the form of a handsome young knight. While he's distracted, Stephen leaps from hiding and pummels the ifrit with the butt of his gun. As Karoof is weakened and eventually knocked unconscious by the barrage, he reverts from his handsome human visage to his hideous ifrit form. His ifrit scent also returns to him.
• Took a Level in Jerkass: Driven by a need to perfect his method of reality travel, Doctor Thomas Bolton is very willing to sacrifice others, but his manners aren't yet completely gone when Stephen becomes his test subject. Though Bolton risks the other's life sending him off, he's run enough tests to know the risk is low on a first trip. It is when Stephen returns and success becomes tangible that Bolton becomes rapidly more aggressive, even physically violent, and greedy for the fruits of his labor. He steals the diamonds Stephen brought back from the City of Brass and takes a lecherous interest in the story of Queen Tedmur. It culminates in Bolton sending Stephen off on a third trip with orders to get him more riches even though he knows that a return from a third trip is highly unlikely.
• Trail of Bread Crumbs: When two ghouls attack a woman in a desolate cemetery some distance from the city, her veil tears on a protrusion at head height and waves like a flag in the wind. It is what alerts a police patrol to the location of her corpse.
• Translator Microbes: Stephen realizes he can read the Arabic texts he comes across in the City of Brass just fine. It appears English to him, but he doesn't know for certain if it is actual English or if being in the legend makes Arabic as natural to him as English is in his own reality.
• Trapped in Another World: Riding some creative takeaways of The World as Will and Representation by Arthur Schopenhauer as well as the works of Immanuel Kant and Baruch Spinoza and the Vedas, Doctor Bolton discovers that being anchored to the here and now is a matter of sensing the here and now. If a clear mind is isolated from all perception, it drifts to other realities and drags the body along. This is unheard of, but partial sense deprivation, such as during hypnosis and daydreaming, is nothing new and all of humanity's fiction may be attributed to the minds of the authors glimpsing other realities. Bolton has developed a procedure to bring about the required state of mind and body and all that's left is testing it to perfection. So far, all human test subjects have returned, but some animals have gotten lost because a given individual can only be sent off a few times before they're no longer tethered to their home reality. Bolton now needs an intellectual like Stephen to provide a detailed report on his experiences. After a disappointing first run, Bolton realizes that for tangible results, he needs for Stephen to have some sense of destination. Taking Stephen's own copy of the Arabian Nights, he randomly leaves the book open on "The City of Brass" to be the last thing Stephen perceives before his next trip. This does indeed send him over to the world of the legend, shortly after the eponymous city has been visited by Musa's expedition. Wandering around and taking some diamonds from the palace, Stephen accidentally revives the frozen population before being pulled back. Bolton confiscates the diamonds and sends Stephen off again to "The City of Brass" knowing that his return is unlikely. Stephen arrives four years after his previous visit, indeed without a way back to his original reality.
• Tyrant Takes the Helm: King Graco is a former police informer who schemed and manipulated his way to the throne when the rightful ruler, Queen Tedmur, was abducted. Naturally, with this background, he is not a good king. If they don't serve to keep him in power, his orders and judgements are up to whims at best. The only ones truly happy with his reign are the ghouls living outside the City of Brass, because the city has become so disorganized that they hardly have to worry about getting caught themselves when out hunting humans. When eventually Tedmur returns, Graco is killed for his actions.
• Unreliable Illustrator: Paul Orban's illustration for the moment when Stephen discovers the corpse of a woman whose head has been eaten by ghouls depicts the head as lying next to the corpse.
• The Usurper: During Queen Tedmur's reign, Graco was a lowly police informer, but this did mean he had connections. Once the ifrit Karoof makes off with the queen, Graco schemes and manipulates himself to the throne with a small army of loyalists at his side. Condemning the City of Brass to four tough years under his self-serving reign, he breathes his last when he is fatally stabbed on his throne when Tedmur returns and those loyal to her finally retaliate.
• Villainous Crush: Karoof is a cruel king among the jinn and Tedmur, a human and the benevolent queen of the City of Brass, has the misfortune that he develops strong feelings for her. She rejects him, for which he gives her an ultimatum: either she changes her mind about him or he'll put her whole city in suspended animation, reawakening only her once a month to check if she's become more accepting. Tedmur chooses the deathlike sleep for her city and Karoof, for his part, ensures that nothing happens to the buildings or population in the meantime. When his spell gets broken due to outsider interference, he straightforwardly abducts Tedmur and locks her away in a living space beneath his castle. She's not allowed out until she agrees to marry him and after neither that nor all manner of trickery yield results, Karoof settles on rape. It doesn't come to that due to the timely arrival of Tedmur's self-appointed champion, who kills Karoof for good measure.
• Water Wake-up:
  • When Stephen returns from his first trip across dimensions, he's first unconscious and then groggy. Doctor Bolton lets him be for the unconscious part, but solves the groggy part with an icy cold and dripping cloth to the face.
  • Under King Graco's reign, prisoners that are sentenced to execution by torture get tortured until they faint and then woken up with a splash of water. Then they get tortured to the point of fainting again and woken up once more and so on until they stay down. It's only then that they get executed. Stephen witnesses one such gruesome display, which gives him the courage to escape the same fate.
• What You Are in the Dark: Before picking up any heroics, Stephen demonstrates his sense of justice when he comes across a semi-corpse getting pickpocketed by another semi-corpse in the City of Brass. Despite both men being in suspended animation with no hope of getting to resume their lives and both men being strangers to Stephen, he automatically steps in to remove the thief's hand from the victim's pocket.
• Wounded Gazelle Gambit: Asib pretends to have been attacked by Stephen so that Stephen can take his horse and escape from the City of Brass while Asib, who is a police captain, won't be accused of treason.
• You Have Failed Me: Stephen manipulates a marid guard to let him see Tedmur, whom King Karoof is painstakingly keeping isolated as his prisoner. Karoof returns to his castle all too quickly and hears of the sorcerer that's been allowed into Tedmur's room. Furious about the chance that Tedmur has been broken out, Karoof beats the guard to death.
• You Won't Feel a Thing!: Doctor Bolton is the kind of man that pretends to have ambitions for the greater good but who doesn't need much opportunity to show his sadistic side. One of the the first things he tells Stephen, his latest test subject, once he's locked in is: "It is highly unlikely that you will be seriously hurt."

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