Roguelike Roulette [Slot 1v]

 

Level 32: "You are unsure about this place"

Marash steps off the stairs into a large, dark chamber. At the fringe of her light, a manticore sleeps.

A dark chamber of unknown size. Just to the south of her, a sleeping manticore, a creature she has yet to measure herself against. Nervously, Marash detects evil. There is none about, except the manticore itself which has now awoken.

She protects herself from evil, then blesses herself as it approaches.

Her whip does almost no damage to it. Her ranged attacks do, however: acid from Paurnen, lightning and fire bolts from her rods. But the manticore's attacks are hitting her hard. She turns to her trusty rod of drain life, and after a nerve-wracking misfire she is granted some respite.

She takes a breather, then calls upon her detections. No traps in the area. The passage out of her chamber was blocked by rubble, and after she cleared that, briefly obstructed by a fire spirit. Just as she destroyed it, she heard something else destroying a door nearby.

At a bend in a corridor, a fire spirit dissipates under Marash's attack.

A  cautious step, and semi-relief - the door-destroyer was merely a cold vortex. She guards her potions and lets loose with her rods.

Wandering, exploring, she detects evil again and discovers more algroths, and more worryingly a dark elven lord and a skeletal ettin. A further scan reveals these creatures inhabit one of those moated quartet rooms. They don't have immediate access to her or a direct path however, so she continues.

Up north is a sleeping earth elemental, and she doesn't dare face it yet,  leading her to wander down into the mess she'd been avoiding. The skeletal ettin hurt her badly, but not as badly as she had been expecting.

The first creature to give her big trouble was not even evil - a colbran. Immune to her rod of drain life, expectedly resistant to electricity, and its own electrical attacks jolting her unpleasantly.

After a rough battle she took it down, but the colbran had been shielding a giant flea, and by the time it was downed their infestation had thoroughly set in. Marash had to carve a path all round and through the quartet to finally be rid of them, and she got no respite. By then the algroshes were woken and coming after her.

They proved again surprisingly little trouble, and Marash's prize for persisting was another identification staff, to replace what she'd left behind. The ruby ring she was carrying proved to be of Bodykeeping, protecting her physicality from being drained. Her new armour, meanwhile, had only the power of conferring acid resistance. It still was a worthy successor.

Marash wandered north-east, spying via Detect Evil a cluster of ogres escorting their leader Lokkak. Maybe she can't kill him, but she might get something nice out of his followers. Maybe nice enough to do the job after all.

An ordinary ogre wandering ahead of the rest boosts confidence, until she runs into a solid wall of (one) ogre chieftain. Not something she can stand up to long at all, but with pluck and luck she takes it down. Then, the second chieftain comes after her and Marash discreetly teleports elsewhere to heal.

Being the hardy half-troll she is, that does not take long. And being the sort of leader he is, Lokkak has found his way to the front of the ogres and is ready to meet her.

Still hopeful, Marash zaps him with her wand of teleport other, catching the surviving chieftain in the beam. She takes down a few more ogres, including, with some frustration and shattered potions, one of their mages.

In the midst of battling some ogres, Marash spots Nar hanging at the back of the crowd.

Optimism strikes. Then Marash spots the hated dwarf Nár amid the ogres. Tempted to bail on this area entirely, immediately, she reconsiders.

So far, nothing valuable has come her way from these ogres. Nothing catching her interest strongly. So why not engage in a bit of reckless devastation?

Neither magical sleep nor slow have any effect on him, though they definitely get to the ogres she can see. Marash pulls out her wands of wonder...

After a lengthy battle Marash lets out a whoop of joy, triumphant. Finally Nár is down. She had been brought to the edge of death mid-way through, saved by a desperate heal. Nár had healed himself up too, multiple times. Several ogres died in the backwash of energies Marash directed at the dwarf before he himself succumbed. If she could take Nár, perhaps she could take Lokkak too. Perhaps.

Marash trudges back and recovers the identify staff, using it to learn she doesn't want much of anything dropped by the ogres or Nar, only an amulet of wisdom.

She runs around in a burst of confidence halted by the sight of a mind-flayer. A reputationally fearsome creature she has never faced before, it drops immediately to her rod of drain life.

A shock, perhaps they are not so tough?

She wanders south, knowing the longer she lingers the more chance she has of running into Lokkak again. The prospect worries her.

Instead she finds a supply of ice trolls and some more manticores. Apparently, when you reach 1600 feet below the surface, manticores become standard.

Those beasts drop nothing and the ice trolls drop nothing of interest. She feels she is wasting time.

Another Detect Evil, still no sign of Lokkak. Instead Marash becomes aware Lorgan, Chief of the Easterlings is about. He seems a more fearsome foe than the ogre chieftain, and she decides it is time to bail.

A mage attacked on her way to some stairs down, but a couple of blows with her whip sent it teleporting to safety.