Roguelike Roulette [Slot 1u]
Level 31: "You are unsure about this place"
Hope it's not anything like the last one. Looks like a few dragons around, of a more handleable sort than the last. Looks like another moated room to the west too, but nothing evil in there so her senses can't get a grip. The unknown is a worry.
Weirdly, it turned out to be nothing much, it's only contents a single killer fire beetle, which didn't kill anything.
She kills another baby multi-hued dragon, then falls carelessly into another encounter with Angamaitë of Umbar, who somehow survived her prior act of destruction. Perhaps time to try and do away with him.
Long battle, badly even - they both miss a lot. But Marash has damaging magic on her side which he seems not to, and prevails. Her prize is an ordinary pair of magic boots, worthless to her.
Carelessness leads easily to death. Having used up the last of her frost bolt wand, Marash is trying out weapons she found laying around when she lets herself get cornered between a hill giant and a young bronze dragon.
Thanks to the dragon's confusion breath, she manages to lose track of which is which and nearly dies, thinking she has just about slain the dragon when in truth it barely has been touched. Fortunately self-rescued at the last moment with her rod of curing and a quick Portal elsewhere, to rest up and recover.
Of the spear she obtained from destroying a shade, her suspicions bore out. It *slays* dragons, as she proves upon the body of a young gold dragon.
This place is getting far too busy. All she wants to do is try out stuff on the floor and discover whether any are useful, but instead she is being beset by uruks, various trolls and repeatedly that young bronze dragon until finally it dies. Now, an unexpected wall of ice trolls keeping her from trying out a new whip and maybe being done.
Trolls out of the way, now a summoning priest. More trolls ahead, Earth spirit behind. Maybe she should just abandon this place. Not much space to carry anything, and could there even be anything to find here worth the trouble?
She uses one of the charges on her staff of slow monsters, rendering the earth spirit and priest easily dispatched. The last two stone trolls follow quickly, leaving Marash to sort out what, if anything, that they have dropped is worth more to her than the gear she already carries.
After some consideration she settles on dropping her wand of fire bolts for the time being, in order to carry around and think on a pair of leather boots. It is quickly discarded when she senses it to be merely magical and thus worthless. A beaked axe meets the same fate.
While wandering about aiming to get a feel for a whip she is set upon by two more stone trolls. Doubtless they are stragglers from the previous pack. Marash retreats to the relative safety of a corridor, blesses herself and zaps the nearest troll with her rod of lightning bolts.
A priest and an earth spirit set upon her also, and she finds herself low on divine energy. A lightning bolt from her rod dispatches the priest. She trades blows with the remaining creatures, feeling she has health to spare for the moment.
Her whip dispatches them and she drinks one of her potions of enlightenment, becoming aware of this area's layout. Very nearby she sees an interesting quartet of rooms, such as she has found often to be well-stocked in both foes and treasure.
She makes her way to the east; the nearest room begins disgorging a stream of novice rangers. A green glutton ghost approaches too, and she focuses her attention on that, with several incidental ranger deaths before the ghost is destroyed.
Spying a potion mimic in the distance gives her pause, but it appears to be immobile, so she disregards it for now.
The second room contains stone trolls, which she wakes with the Phial of Galadriel, then pulls back to the corridor for a convenient choke point. One of the novice rangers regained enough foolish courage to attack her again, so she spares it the moment's attention it takes to kill.
Then, the mimic attempts to magically blind her from a distance. Marash curses her inattention and withdraws somewhere safer.
The upper rooms of this quartet are uninteresting, as is the treasure she is so far identifying. From somewhere, a trickle of stone trolls continues to harass her.
Marash continues to feel misgivings about this area, but Detect Evil reveals only a Forest Wight, a Grave Wight, and a pack each of Uruks and Algroths.
Her crossbow downs the potion mimic and prompts the forest wight to flee in a distinctly un-menacing way. Feeling quite capable, she headed up north and cleared some rubble to get at the grave wight, between them crushing an unfortunate bloodshot icky thing.
The Algroths seemed less fearsome than she recalled, and frequent lightning bolts from her tin wand hurt not only them, but the otherwise uninvolved uruks still in the room from which they came.
A lead rod dropped by the grave wight proved to conjure fire bolts, a very welcome device for clearing out this little horde. Even the killer slicer beetle which joined the fray proved no cause for concern.
With the mopping up in progress Marash feels confident enough to begin scrounging. She empties out her wand of fire bolts in a shower of death to replace it with the renewable rod of same she has found, and her augmented chain mail is replaced with some enchanted chain one of the trolls had dropped. Almost as protective, and harbouring as yet unrevealed abilities. But especially, freeing up her divine energies for further use. She leaves it on the floor to gain some more carrying capacity.
A bit more roaming around, finding and killing nothing exciting, and Marash decides it is time to head elsewhere. Down? Down.
