Razaak

Razaak is a powerful undead necromancer, who serves as the primary antagonist and final enemy of the Fighting Fantasy gamebook Crypt of the Sorcerer. He is infamous among fans for being one of the hardest to reach and arguably the hardest to defeat of all the series' villains, being close to invincible without cheating.

Appearance
Monstruous, disgusting and repulsive. These are the only words that come in mind when facing Razaak. When the player confronts him, the narration states that the playable character never felt such a repulsion. No one knows what he looked like back when he was a living human, but as a Lich, he ranks among the ugliest villains ever seen in any media.

He is bald, deformed, unchbacked and small, not seeming to stand above 150 centimeters, if not less. His face is nothing but a oversized skull with palpiting red veins, whose mouth is fixed in a rictus, whose left eye is abnormally small and whose right eye is protruding. His skin is of deathly waxen colour, his arms are shrivelled, the left one being awfully shrunk while the right one is so long that it touches the ground, and his hands with pointed nails are described to look like a "birdprey's talon." Moreover, Razaak wears luxurious red and golden robes, further adding to the grotesque of his unbearable aspect.

Powers and Abilities
Unsurprisingly for a Fighting Fantasy villain, Razaak is a highly powerful wizard and necromancer, able to threaten all life in Allansia all alone. Being a necromancer, he can destroy all life in a defined perimeter, raise undeads from the grave, enlist the help powerful undeads-individuals, and return from the other side of the Veil. Razaak can also absorb someone's lifeforce by touching his victim with his fingers. If he touches someone long enough, the unfortunate victim dies and immediately resurrects as a zombie under his command, an ability which makes him virtually invincible in battle much to many players' dismay.

Furthermore, Razaak is skilled in Demonology, being able to drag dangerous demonic entities to the Earthly Plane and to create monsters. He is also well versed in traditional Dark Magic, as he masters several deadly attack spells, can summon living creatures, can shape-shift and can craft powerful magical artifacts such as his own cursed sword.

The fact that he owned a sword hints that Razaak was once a talented swordsman, and even if he is no longer able to wield a weapon, he remains an adept fighter, fast and spry enough to be more than a match for powerful knights. Though given his awfully deformed body, it seems quite clear that his fighting skills now mostly stems from his evil magic.

Background
Razaak is born the son of a man named Tamal, likely a powerful wizard himself, who died at 108 years old. It's written on his gravestone that his soul now resides in his son, but this is never fully explained.

Razaak was once an apprentice wizard, who like many other studied in the famous school of the Forest of Yore, under the tutelage of the great archmage Vermithrax Moonchaser. He was very greedy, selfish and ambitious and only learnt magic to become able to dictate his law to others. At some point, he exiled himself in the desert and studied magic on his own during fourty years of loneliness. Razaak became a dark wizard and then a necromancer. By doing so, he had to renounce to his own magical sword, in order to entirely devote himself to dark magic, and he cast it in a lake. After finally becoming a full-fledged necromancer, Razaak sent messages to every lord and ruler of the continent of Allansia, ordering them to pledge obedience to him. However, none of them had ever heard of him and therefore no one took him seriously.

Infuriated, Razaak summoned thousands of bugs who spread plague, pestilence and misery all over western Allansia. Then, after several months, he gave the Allansian lords until the next full moon to abdicate in his favour, slaying every mage and warrior sent to kill him. But one day, a warrior named Kull discovered Razaak's own cursed sword, the only weapon who could harm him, and used it to kill the evil necromancer. Though the unfortunate hero paid the heavy price for his victory, as just when Razaak fell, Kull suffered the sword's curse and was turned into a undead skeleton. Since then, Kull spent the following decades drifting aimlessly on a raft, on the lake where he found the sword. Razaak's corpse was put into a crypt into the Moonstone Hills, which was sealed by a wizard and was not to be reopened before 110 years, otherwise, Razaak would rise from the grave as an undead Lich and would try once again to take over Allansia.

Crypt of the Sorcerer
In the introduction of Crypt of the Sorcerer, the reader learns that an evil force is slowly spreading all over Allansia from the Moonstone Hills. For several weeks, plague, droughts and catastrophes had spread over the land and the sky itself is covered with ominous grey clouds. The player learns about a fissure near the Moonstone Hill where the surrounding have been turned into a wasteland, with all the vegetation withered, and where a demonic hand blasts firebolts on intruders.

The player decides to visit his old friend the great mage Gereth Yaztromo, who tells him or her everything about Razaak, who was slain 100 years before the beginning of the gamebook. Razaak rose from the grave when his crypt was opened, probably by graverobbers. Now a Lich, Razaak is preparing to raise every dead people in Allansia from the grave as his zombie servants, in order to invade the continent, where he would extinguish all life, making it a withered land of undeads. Razaak also recruited every troll in Allansia and secretly raised a monstruous Gargantis, a giant beast of awesome power which he plans to use as his major weapon. The player then sets out to find Razaak's sword and use it to destroy the vile necromancer once and for all.

During his or her quest, the player needs to find many artifacts and informations. The gamebook itself is a rather difficult one-true-path, meaning that the player needs to speak with everyone he encounters, to never flee from a battle and to look everywhere for every item and piece of information he/she can find. Upon finding the cursed sword, the player befriends an expert hunter named Symm, who accompanies him/her. They escape from an ambush by Razaak's monsters, as the necromancer has heard of them and wants to eliminate all resistance, and they rescue Yaztromo, who is about to be sacrificated by a hellish Demonspawn summoned by Razaak, who can only be destroyed by the necromancer's sword.

They then visit a haunted graveyard and meet the dwarf Borri, who invented a hot-air balloon for them to travel and who joins their team. The three head to Razaak's mines where he hides the fearsome Gargantis, which the player must slay to take its magical horn. The player needs a magical crystal when he/she faces the beast, or else its psychic power will drive every three character to sheer madness, and then to their death. If the player found a magic wand, he/she will paralyse it and avoid a gruesome and very hard battle. Indeed the Gargantis has 12 in skill (power level) and 24 in stamina (life points) the highest stats available.

Finally the three characters can head to the Moonstone Hills and the fissure where the evil Lich has built his underground lair. The player needs to venture inside on his own, and to disguise himself/herself as one of Razaak's demonic servants.

The player then needs:


 * To find a matricule number to enter the innermost sanctum ofUngoth.jpg Razaak's lair, without being killed by the throne sentinel.


 * To have a magical key to enter said innermost sanctum without getting imprisonned in a magical trap.


 * Upon entering, the player is greeted by Ungoth the Prince of Skeletons, a powerful undead-individual and the necromancer's right-hand-man. Ungoth will ask the player no less than four questions about Razaak and his troops and if the player doesn't know or remember the number corresponding to each answer, Ungoth turns him/her to stone, ending the game.


 * The same fate awaits the player if he/she doesn't know the secret code to enter Razaak's private quarters.

All this make Razaak a villain extremely well protected and hard to reach. And he is even harder to defeat!

Confronting Razaak
If the player wears an amulet representing a demon, the amulet will compel him/her to obey Razaak's command and the necromancer will win without fight. If the player doesn't wear this cursed talisman, he/she will have to survive Razaak's MANY attempts on his/her life before fighting the wretched Lich. When Razaak finally fells for good under the strikes of his sword, the player pierces his heart with the Gargantis' horn to prevent him from ever returning again, and needs to exit the collapsing crypt as quickly as possible, with more than 6 stamina points left to win the game. (Or else, the player dies crushed under the rubles.) Symm, Borri and Yaztromo then greets him/her and Yaztromo manages to cancel the curse, preserving the player's life while the accursed sword disappears forever in the chasm alongside its demonic owner.
 * Razaak appears to the player shape-shifted as Gereth Yaztromo. If the player doesn't wear a magical ring to see beyond the appearances, everything is doomed.
 * The player then needs to have breathed the magical smoke from a broken glass orb, in order to survive Razaak's firebolts spells.
 * The player then needs to have a special spell AND to know how to cast it to be protected from the swarms of man-eating bugs summoned by Razaak.
 * Finally, the player needs a magical shield to be protected against Razaak's lighting-blast spell.
 * At last the player can fight against Razaak, who is a formidable enemy with 12 in skill and 20 in stamina no less. THE WORST IS YET TO COME ! If the necromancer were to win two Attack Rounds (turns) in a row, he will grab the player and turn him/her into an undead, automatically winning the fight. Given Razaak's high level of power, it's virtually impossible to defeat him without losing two Attack Rounds in a row. Which means that the only ways to win are either to cheat or to be blessed by luck.

Trivia

 * Razaak has the power to absorb lifeforce through his fingers and needs a anti-illusion ring to be defeated. These are aspects he shares with Zanbar Bone, another Fighting Fantasy villain created by the same author Ian Livingstone.
 * The battle against Razaak is similar to that against Belgaroth, another Fighting Fantasy villain. Both are insanely difficult to defeat and both need lots of knowledge and items to be faced safely.
 * The chronology of Titan later stated that the knight who put a final end to Razaak was none other than the legendary hero Chadda Darkmane, a friend of Yaztromo who had already defeated another equally powerful necromancer Zharradan Marr, putting an end to the Trolltooth Wars, which opposed Zharradan Marr and his rival Balthus Dire.
 * Razaak's page on Titannica, the Fighting Fantasy Wikia: http://fightingfantasy.wikia.com/wiki/Razaak