Roguelike Roulette [Slot 1g]
Level 10: "This seems a quiet, peaceful place"
Marash tries out the prayer of Sense Surroundings. Immediately she knows the shape of much of the surrounding region. She doesn't know where the treasure is, but quickly finds a dragon tooth amulet. But she still doesn't know what the copper one she's wearing does, and putting on a second seems a gamble.
She creeps past a sleeping orc skeleton, gets attacked by an unexpected baby gold dragon. The rod of drain life puts an end to that and gains her 490 gp worth of adamantite from the young dragon's hoard.
Undead and dragons. Skeletal orc, zombified kobold, a baby blue dragon... this patch of dungeon seems busier than the one she left.
She spends a charge from a birch staff on a sleeping giant tick to learn it slows monsters. She isn't scared of ticks by now anyway, but taking the staff with her means doing without a potion.
Her first pile of gold coins found and, just her luck, it creeps toward her to attack. It seems far tougher than she can do away with unaided, and there are snagas coming in from the side, so she zaps it with her rods. It dies on the second attempt.
Immediately she prays for light. The light reveals a whole lot more snagas than she was prepared for, but the light hurt them, so she calls it again. None die, so she fires off her rod of light. Still none die, and they are beginning to surround her. Marash flees for the corridor, hoping to contain their approach.
Marash is granted the spell of remove curse as her reward, and immediately emboldened puts on the dragon tooth amulet. That turns out to be an amulet of charisma and she just knows she is much cuter wearing it.
Contemplating this new amulet, she suspects the copper amulet may be of strength. Certainly, something protected her from the red frog's weakening bite earlier, so she swaps back for now.
Lucky again! Marash immediately stumbles into a green naga and discovers her copper amulet actually protects her from its acid attack, nothing at all about preserving strength.
The scrolls found in the snaga room are discovered to be Satisfy Hunger.
A kobold archer lures her up north, and when it flees a brigand steals her wand of magic missile and vanishes with it! Time for things to die.
The kobold archer must have it in for her; when next spotted it is screening a baby green dragon. And then a tengu shows up behind her. The kobold dies, the dragon breathes poison on her, seems to hit the tengu too, which flees immediately.
The rod of drain life does away with the baby green dragon. The rod of light makes the dark elven warrior that emerged from behind the dragon flee. Marash pursues grimly.
She manages a second blast of light at the elf before the tengu yanks her back amid a pack of wolves.
The tengu jerks her around before being slain, and Marash turns her attention to the wolfpack. When the dark elven warrior returns, she destroys it with another blast of light before finishing off the wolves.
Feeling much better about the brigand incident, but to her chagrin that was not the last of the wolves, yet.
A giant spider. Careful not to wake it, even when a priest attacks her in the room.
An orc shaman. A hill orc... a nervous feeling. Marash prays to know evil in the area and learns too much. Thirteen snaga. Two cave orcs. Four more orc shamans. Seven more hill orcs. Wormtongue, Agent of Saruman, off in the distance. Grishnákh, the Hill Orc, right in the midst of the rest. The giant spider still hopefully sleeps in the room behind her.
For now her current location seems as defensive as can practically be found. Her safest bet seems to be standing ground and blasting with light, keeping herself buffed where practical. And if that proves ill, switching to a slow falling back style. It would be a shame to lose the wand of magic missiles, but Marash hopes she'll know to get out when the getting is good. Twenty-eight orcs and two unique, powerful individuals. At least she is just about at her maximum capability.
With a deep breath, she raises her rod of light...
A few orcs down, another priest approaches from behind. She swings back and kills it immediately - it drops a lantern of brightness, but no time to pick that up now. Slowly, she is worn down as orcs fall. She takes to praying for healing after each kill.
Grishnákh is resistant to light, but not as resistant to drain life once his diminished escort isn't shielding him. It doesn't kill him but does make him look defeatable. Marash prayers for healing, swallows her potion of heroism, but finds him hitting too hard still. She takes a potion of Cure Serious Wounds too, but that isn't enough either. She prays for a portal.
She finds herself in a dark room with Wormtongue, who fails to drain her strength but does steal money from her and vanish. She stumbles into a blinding gas trap, but the room seems safe enough - no entrances or exits she can see.
When her vision is recovered she prays for knowledge of her surroundings. More traps are revealed, and a secret door out. She sits herself by the door and waits until she is recovered from the battle.
At last she feels ready and re-emerges into the dungeon.
Long, running battles with Wormtongue and various orcs. Grishnákh reappears with orc shamans, but with them blocking his retreat, another dose of drain life makes him easy prey. The wand of light finishes off the shamans.
The mopping up takes a long time. Sorting treasure, a bit less with a hard-won staff of Identify.
Something invisible releases spores at her. Marash prays to see the invisible and a carpet of clear mushrooms is revealed to her. She hacks her way through, and Wormtongue shows his face again. Another dose of Drain Life does away with him for good. Several hundred gp won from Wormtongue's corpse, and a pair of boots that identify as a better version of what she is wearing. She is rewarded with the prayer of Cure Serious Wounds, and ditches the potion of nimbleness.
Despite all her searching, no sign of the brigand with her wand of magic missiles is found. Reluctantly, she heads downstairs.
Level 11: "This place looks uninteresting"
The first thing Marash does is to pray for knowledge of her surroundings. She follows this up by carelessly testing an unknown scroll, which turns out to cast Aggravate Monster. She grabs a metallic purple potion off the floor and prays to know of evil in the region, finding only a black naga in range.
It turns out Night Lizards are not evil. But not dangerous either.
After some wandering she encounters a new foe - a gnome mage. A bit worrying, but should be handleable. And then it summons a warg, which looks to be even worse.
Light does not harm them. She prays for protection from evil, so the warg's attacks slide off her. She kills it quickly, and the gnome seems frail too, but before she can strike it down, it summons a squad of rangers to attack her.
Marash takes a moment to bless herself before wading back in.
9 rangers later there is breathing space to sort through what was dropped. She tests out potions which turn out to grant infravision and speed, and saves a scroll for later.
Sensing a dark elf and a swarm of lemures up north, she takes the southern path instead, finding a marble ring. Her cedar staff identifies it as a Ring of the Dog, which would protect her from fear but make her more obvious to foes. She puts it on, hoping this will not be regretted.
She works up a hunger slaying a dark elf warrier, so reads another scroll of Satisfy Hunger.
Wandering around north on the far side, Marash encounters an orc shaman and immediately detects evil. She finds another two orc shamans, fourteen cave orcs, a baby gold dragon and a tengu. Nothing she believes she can't handle, unless they all show up together.
She kills the shaman quickly. The tengu flees after she gets her first hit in. As the second orc shaman approaches, she protects herself from evil. The orc flees, she pursues. Something behind her breathes sound, stunning her. She casts her rod of light back, revealing a chain of orcs and a baby dragon pursuing her.
Marash makes her stand in a space where foes can approach only in single file either side. She blesses herself again, casts her Ring of the Dog to the floor for making her easier to hit.
A second blast of light destroys some orcs in front of her, giving the dragon a clear path to breath sound at her again. Marash responds with a lethal dose of Drain Life.
The tengu teleports her right into the middle of the orc swarm before blinking away again, but a quick dose of light kills most of them, and the ball-and-chain she won from Grishnákh does away with the survivor.
She finds a cypress staff of blindness and casts it away.
Having explored as much of the area as she feels safe doing, Marash decides to test a couple of scrolls before returning to town. The first is revealed to be a scroll of Monster Confusion. The second, of light. Not wanting to waste the charge of confusion she seeks out and kills a white worm mass, then reads one of her Word of Recall scrolls.
