Shadow Warriors

The Shadow Warriors are five highly powerful, undead demonic knights (clearly inspired by the Nazgûl from Lord of the Rings) who serves as as eponymous major villains in the Fighting Fantasy gamebook Legend of the Shadow Warriors. They seek to revive their demonic lord Voivod the Waster, so that they could take over the entire world of Titan.

The Shadow Warriors are described as five ghastly creatures with long hair and robes, who wear an iron mask. It happens that this mask is their anchor, so to speak, in the earthly plane and that taking it off after defeating one of them would banish the creature in limbo for a century. However, they cannot be fully destroyed until the Evil that sustain their demonic lord is extinguished. An Evil which in turn cannot be destroyed when they are present in the Earthly Plane, as Voivod is invincible as long as the five of them aren't banished. Each Shadow Warrior wields a different kind of weapon with immense proficiency, making them deadly opponents, almost unstoppable when the five are together.

The Shadow Warriors were created by Voivod, the dreaded Chaos Lord, shortly after he himself was created, and they faithfully fought by his side since then. They may have taken part in the First Battle alongside their lord and escaped after the fall of the Demon Gods. What is sure is that they lead Voivod's armies when the Waster took over Titan and then assisted him in controlling the world. When Voivod was defeated by the Gods and sealed inside the Zarrikiz Shrine, the Shadow Warriors managed to escape and aimlessly wandered across the world for two millenia. Mankind then forgot about them and when the story begins, they are only remembered as mere bogey men from children's fairy tales. So that very few still believe in their existence.

The gamebooks starts five years after the gruesome War of the Four Kingdoms, which opposed four of the most prominent kingdoms of the continent of the Old World. Apparently the war was violent enough to make Voivod's escape imminent, and the Shadow Warriors then set out to free him, looking for the Zarrikiz Shrine where he is imprisonned in the region near the village of Karnstein, village wich they frequently attacked and ransacked. Few villagers come to Royal Lendle, the capital of the kingdom of Gallantaria, and hire the player who accept to investigate, despite not believing in the Shadow Warriors in the first place. (The player thought that it was a gang of bandits who ransacked a easy prey, though he or she did not understood what could interest bandits in such a remote place.)

The Shadow Warriors attack them when they exit the city, killing all the villagers and leaving the player for dead. (The player must pretend that he/she is dead when one of the Warriors pierce his/her leg when he/she lies on the ground, or else there is no way to escape them and the game ends quickly.) As the player is gathering knowledge about Voivod and his demonic servants, a Shadow Warrior will sometime appear and attack him/her, leading to a battle. If the player meets the friendly hermit Hammicus and manages to save him from the wraith of his dead son, he/she will learn how to banish a Shadow Warrior by taking off his mask. Thus, each time the player defeats a Shadow Warrior and banishes him, the Warrior will no longer be encountered in the game. Should the player not learn this and defeat a Shadow Warrior the normal way, the evil knight will reappear and be fought again.

Fighting a Shadow Warrior
Each time the player encounters a Shadow Warrior, he/she rolls a dice and fights the Warrior of the same number. Each Shadow Warrior is a very dangerous enemy with 9 in skill (level of power) and 9 in stamina, (life-points) and each one of them has a special way of fighting. They may be 3 points below the maximum level of skill, but they remain powerful, and given their dangerous special abilities and the number of fight led against them in the whole gamebook, should they have been stronger, they would have been close to invincible.
 * The First Shadow Warrior is an accomplished master of martial arts who attacks twice in a turn, as if the player were facing two equally powerful enemies. This makes him arguably the most dangerous Shadow Warrior.
 * The Second Shadow Warrior fights with daggers. He launches one of them in every turn, aside from the regular fight and the player must roll a dice: 2 in 6 times, the dagger will strike and the player will get an additional wound.
 * The Third Shadow Warrior is a very skilled swordsman who wields two broadswords. Everytime he strikes the player, he causes a loss of 4 stamina points instead of the usual 2 and there is no way to avoid this. He is arguably the second most dangerous Shadow Warrior, if not the most.
 * The Fourth Shadow Warrior wields a heavy, multi-headed spiked mace. In the beginning of the fight, the player musts succesfully test his/her luck or have his/her weapon thrown away. If the player doesn't have a weapon to begin with and fails the test, the blow costs 6 stamina points and 1 skill point no less!
 * The Fifth Shadow Warrior attacks with shurikens. Before fighting, he throws a shuriken made of the magical Cruel-Metal. If the player fails to dodge, he/she will get killed by the shuriken as the wound it caused will expand until tearing the player apart.

The Final Battle
When the player reaches Karnstein, the Shadow Warriors have already burnt the village to the ground and freed Voivod. The player must find them before Voivod raised his armies of ten thousand undeads, or else Titan is doomed. Before fighting Voivod, the player will have to defeat every Shadow Warrior, save from those whom he/she may have bannished by taking off their mask. The player can use the Spear of Doom to defeat the Warriors without fight, but by doing so he/she will weaken the Spear and reduce his/her hopes to defeat Voivod. If the player managed to find the ring of Rabbam, its magic will cancel the Shadow Warrior's special abilities and reduce them to "normal" enemies. (But normal enemies with 9 in skill, which is nothing to be sneezed at.)