Roguelike Roulette [Slot 1i]
Level 12: "This place looks uninteresting"
On detections, it does. Evil monsters she would previously have feared, but no longer does. Marash seeks stairs down, worried she has stalled in her quest to destroy Morgoth. Her only path anywhere is past those foes anyway.
Dark elf mage and warrior, little trouble. Nor a handful of wolves. Eight paladins, much more trouble, enough to worry. They leave behind money, an extra staff of slow monsters, and a pair of boots.
Level 13: "This place looks uninteresting"
Marash emerges amid a cohort of sleeping hill orcs and their leader, Lagduf, the Snaga. He doesn't look too tough at first glance, but facing fourteen orcs while trapped in a corner doesn't seem too friendly to her either. She takes a deep breath and prays for a portal.
She lands in a room with no visible exits and barely enough space to hold her. Nothing evil and nearby that she knows of. This makes her nervous that there might be numerous nasty non-evil creatures lurking nearby.
Marash creeps north, seeking a path to get at those orcs in a more favourable position. Along the way she finds a moonstone ring and puts it on. Nothing obvious happens.
An encounter with some giant white lice proves it to be a moonstone ring of protection, and the lice were guarding a jet ring of strength. Feeling better about this place.
After long and winding searching Marash finally finds a corridor back to the orc room. She opens the door nervously. The orcs are awake!
She fires off a couple of arrows, prays and chants for protection from this evil, and tries out the orb of draining she has been granted in prayer. It works very well. She fires off another, then stands her ground to hit the orcs as they come.
They die almost too easily, until her protection from evil wears off. Her first attempt to restore it fails and she lacks the energy to try again for a while, causing her health to drop from nearly full to about ten percent frighteningly quickly. Yet, in the end, they all die and Marash survives comfortably.
Lagduf left her a nice Pike of Lightning, but while trying it out she ran into an ochre jelly that seemed to tear up all her equipment with its acid. She didn't dare strike back. After being unable to outpace it and flee she finally portalled herself away to a safer room, with a gnome mage and spiders.
Or not so safe. The gnome mage backs away from her and summons help. At least thirty kobolds appear, including Mughash the Kobold Lord, four large kobolds and eighteen regular kobolds. Maybe more out of sight, but Marash is not about to waste her time detecting evil when there is evil right in front of her.
She starts by praying for protection from evil, then chants to boost herself and hurls an orb of draining at the kobold lord. It doesn't kill him, but does hit him hard and kill at least nine kobolds around him, as well as the gnome that summoned this mess.
Mughash looks like he could survive a second dose of the orb, so Marash refrains until he gets closer and she can supplement with the rod of draining, just in case he can heal himself too. Instead, she begins laying into the kobolds with her new lightning pike.
It's almost too easy, until Mughash reaches the head of the throng. Her attempt at another orb of draining fails, so she turns the rod of draining on him. She continues her slaughter.
The post-massacre item sorting is tedious, but yields a new shield and improved weapon, plus the death of that Ochre Jelly.
Her heart stops on further clean-up. Having put down her potions of true seeing to test items, she discovers the scroll is of deep descent only as she sinks through the floor.
