Roguelike Roulette [Slot 1q]

 

Level 25: "Looks like any other level."

The only evil about is an imp, a priest, and a kobold, all sleeping. Marash is wary.

She heads south, picking up an interesting-looking cutlass from the floor. Soon she gets the feeling it is merely magical and tosses it aside.

A silver mouse falls to an arrow, and then Marash comes upon the imp she detected earlier. It is still sleeping, so she lets it be and passes by.

Unfortunately the imp had other ideas. It woke in the darkness and conjured up illusions to terrify Marash. A mistake on the imp's part - Marash cleansed herself of fear with prayer and quickly struck the demon down.

Soon afterward she finds a magic shovel, which disappointingly does not dig better than her maul. She heads north again, to an interesting-looking room with a corridor moating it.

A novice priest patrols the outside and falls quickly, dropping an amulet of lightning resistance. This does not seem worth swapping her acid-resisting amulet for, so she leaves it be.

As Marash completes her circuit of the room, disarming traps along the way, a giant spider bursts through the door to attack her. She makes sure she is blessed, and meanwhile a blue dragon bat follows the spider and begins breathing lightning at her.

Perhaps it was a mistake to leave the amulet. Perhaps not. Once the spider is down, the dragon bat falls to a single arrow, and Marash is free to claim the room's treasure.

Another room holds two more amulets, which Marash uses her staff to identify. The first is a cursed amulet of wisdom, the other, a worthless amulet of adornment. In doing so, she is reminded she has been carrying around a scroll of unknown use for a while now, and expends another charge to learn it can enchant her weapon for greater accuracy.

Marash of course immediately uses the scroll on her maul, but the enchantment fails, fortunately to no ill-effect. She scoops up another unknown scroll, titled "calaudo tatus".

Heading south Marash comes upon a hill giant and a three-headed hydra right behind it. The hydra pushes past the giant to get at her, and Marash backs up.

Her maul barely dents the hydra. Time for another dose of trusty drain life. Immediately the hydra shrieks and flees, pushing past a centipede and a guardian naga to escape and looking much the worse for wear.

Marash near the mouth of a corridor, opening up just south of her. Immediately south, a 3-headed hydra shrieks in pain and begins to flee. Behind it, a metallic green centipede, a guardian naga, and a hill giant.

The centipede is out of place her, and dies immediately. Marash tries to duel the hill giant but something out of sight casts a spell to terrify her, wasting her time.

This is just the sort of fight the Maul of Westernesse was made for. Each blow hitting the giant harder than Marash is accustomed to, deeply wounding a creature she might otherwise fear to face... until the hydra, courage recovered, pushes its way to the front again.

The hydra pushes its way to the front to face Marash again. Almost the same configuration as before, except there is no centipede, and at the back a brown yeek has joined the fray.

It is a tough fight, but Marash is winning. The hydra tries to regain the upper hand by magically frightening her again and fails. It flees.

A guardian naga takes its place, infuriatingly difficult to hit, but not so tough when Marash connects. The hill giant is finished off quickly, and then there is only a brown yeek, which barely survives the first blow and immediately runs too.

Marash pursues, dismissing the hydra's illusions as fast as it can cast them and finally striking it down.

She uses the last charge of her identification staff to discover a ring on the floor is of escaping, and not something she is willing to use.

A priest attacks, proving not to be the threat Marash had feared. She wanders onward, dropping her cedar staff of identify in exchange for some studded leather armour.

The studded leather is magical, but proves to provide less protection than her damaged suit of augmented chain mail, and reluctantly is left behind.

A water vortex corrodes more of her equipment. Marash vindictively takes out her annoyance on a nest of more than a dozen Mirkwood spiders before continuing her descent.

Level 26: "You are unsure about this place."

Marash from the stairs has mapped the surrounding dungeon and detected evil. At the fringes of its range to the east she spies a number of ogres and orcs lurking in corridors. Meanwhile, to the west is Gorbag and his horde. A decision must be made.

A dilemma. To one side she senses Gorbag, the Orc Captain with an escort of 37 black orcs and an orc shaman. To the other, 18 cave orcs and 7 cave ogres. Each monstrous cluster with a relatively clear path to her, should they awaken and come chasing her down. So which would she rather face first? Which would she rather be caught from behind by? A Maul of Westernesse is a powerful weapon, but even with it she cannot down even a cave orc in a single strike...

After some indecision she settles on the cave orcs first. If she is caught out there she has a more defensible position available. Just better hope Gorbag's escort doesn't scatter meanwhile.

The cave orcs fall easily to light, arrows and her maul. Marash is rewarded with a ring of protection better than the one she had been wearing. But as she heads back out, she finds the cave ogres have woken and now come after her. She falls back into the corridor, waiting around a bend for them to come to her.

Those are tougher than cave orcs, but fewer. She gains another potion of cure critical wounds and a granite ring of light from them. A ring of light... seems less useful than a ring of protection.

She swaps them back, heading off on her way to confront Gorbag and co., when unexpectedly she spies a dragon following her. Large, with deep green scales, this seems no baby. She hurries onward, fearing to be caught in the open.

Travelling west to face Gorbag and his orcs, Marash spots a green dragon in the distance behind her.

It enters the corridor behind her, she turns the rod of drain life on it and... fails to use it correctly. The mature green dragon disappears from view. Unseen, the dragon tries to terrify her, but Marash resists.

She ducks around the corner and waits for its approach. This time her rod does its damage, and priest and dragon flail at each other, until finally the dragon lets loose its poisonous breath. Badly wounded, Marash sees only one viable option. She turns her rusty wand of teleport other upon the dragon, and fails to use it correctly.

Another swipe from the dragon's claws, and this time the dragon vanishes.

Carefully, Marash clears a path to an exit and rests up in preparation for confronting Gorbag's gang.

She is not quite ready when the first black orc opens the door in front of her. Numerous of them fall to her beams of light, but Gorbag himself resists. The rod of drain life does make a dent in him, but he is still in good condition. Marash fills the distance between them with arrows as he closes.

He is weakened when he reaches her, down that long corridor, and it is not long before Marash has beaten him down.

Gorbag is dead. The crossbow he carried falls at Marash's feet. But ahead of her still are numerous black orcs, and an orc shaman all crowding the corridor to get at her. The battle is not yet done.

She wins a magical heavy crossbow off his corpse, drains most of her wands of light and nearly runs out of store-bought arrows taking out the remainder of his escort. The other arrows she had been carrying prove to be usefully magical, and others found in the wreckage of the orcs even moreso. She ditches the remaining few of her ordinary arrows in favour of magic arrows and an excellent main gauche.

A rosewood staff, unknown function. Torn between taking it to identify or the main gauche to sell, a pursuing skeleton ettin convinces her to read a scroll of recall and get out of here quickly.

In town she buys a couple of identification scrolls, learning the main gauche slays demons and her hard leather cap is of beauty, protecting her charisma. She scurries off to her home, hauling out the bastard sword of also slaying demons she found long ago, the better to sell, and some magic crossbow bolts she found, the better to put holes in her enemies.

Leaving her bow and arrows at home, exchanged for crossbow and bolts of unknown magic, plus some more ordinary and magical bolts bought from the weaponsmith, Marash uses another scroll to return down.