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Originally published at a denizen's entertainment. You can comment here or there.
Level 26: "This place seems reasonably safe"
Quiet, empty. The only evil around is Angamaitë of Umbar. He might be the only danger around here, but Marash is wary. Kitting herself out for crossbow has weighed her down. She trudges east.
A vortex, crackling with energy. They close range, she fires. Those bolts are magical alright, magically worse than ordinary bolts. But they are still better than the arrows she had been firing, so she isn't panicking yet. Get rid of the vortex, then get rid of the bolts. Onwards.
She hisses. There is a tengu about. She doesn't see it, but that yanking sensation is familiar. A bit of bouncing and it's gone somewhere else. She doesn't know if she got a hit in yet.
A snaga? Oh, don't worry about the tengu then. Marash has stumbled upon a pit of orcs. An orc captain, surrounded by eight uruks on guard, flanked by thirty black orcs, a dozen cave orcs and forty-three snagas for flavour. Good grief. And Angamaitë is awake and after her too. This is liable to go badly.
Now she throws away her bad bolts. They had been useful enough to fire, but right now she needs to be unburdened. Lack of speed could kill her.
Orcs, it turns out, are much easier than Marash remembered. Her main moment of panic came from carelessly drinking a potion that enhanced her constitution at the expense of wisdom, driving two prayers out of her mind. Little else does she find but some fresh sources of identification and a wand of wonder. Hopefully she can soon fix her foolishness.
A forest wight attacks, seeming uncertain, as likely to retreat as press on. Would be nice and easy except when it is wounded it draws upon Marash's mana to heal itself.
A mess, a mess. Carelessness gets her in an open fight with a gnome mage, summoning wyverns and other creatures to harry her. More carelessness, stumbling into a group of Crebain and Mirkwood spiders. The evil crows' harsh shrieking sending the spiders into a frenzy of speed, until Marash had to portal herself to safety even having blasted wave upon wave of them away.
Level 27: "You feel a little lucky"
Lucky? Directly south of her are more than a hundred of Morgoth's creatures. Another pit of orcs. One of their captains, a half-dozen half-orc warriors, a pair of uruks, a full eighteen shamans, with twenty-four cave orcs and a full forty-four snaga flanking. And on the far side of the pit is Uglúk, the Uruk with his own escort, a half-dozen hill orcs and another four half-orcs. Somewhere, beyond that, a black knight in Morgoth's service lays waiting.
Lucky. Will she be lucky to survive? Or lucky this is all she faces. At least the entrance is near Uglúk and his escort, so if Marash plays it right she won't have to worry about being surprised from behind.
Interrupted on her march by shrieking in the distance. This won't do - another flock of crebain. She puts them down, but on her return, as soon as she opens the door nearest the stairs a hill orc pushes through. Already? Worrying.
A couple of hits gotten in and the hill orc flees, revealing Uglúk right behind. Marash tries her rod of drain life, but fumbles its activation a couple of times and then, disappointed by its effect on the Uruk.
Uglúk is fortunately not a complicated foe, and Marash heals swiftly. He flees, she re-blesses herself, and turns her attention to the latest hill orc.
The first wave is past. One of the orcs had dropped a scroll which Marash uses to enchant her Maul of Westernesse for greater damage. Successfully this time.
More orcs than she imagined, supplemented by novice rangers and another hydra. She re-enchants her shield with a scroll from the resulting clutter, drinks a potion to enhance her appearance further.
The black knight is upon her as she mops up, conjuring darkness around her. A quick dose of drain life renders him vulnerable to violence, swiftly dispatched in the end.
Uglúk took Marash by surprise while she sifted through the treasure and trash dropped by his fellow orcs. Another dose of the rod and she soon had him on the run again, this time without an endless stream of orcs in support.
He dropped a shield when he died. To make room for it, Marash reluctantly put on an iron helm she had found previously and discarded her Hat of Beauty. The shield turned out to be worthless to her, but she soon after found a powerful whip which granted enhanced defence, stealth and the ability to see the invisible. Perhaps that, and the orcs, is enough to account for feeling lucky, but she continues exploring.
Another of her many mistakes? She stumbled upon a quythulg, a heap of inchoate flesh, a pulsing mound on the dungeon floor. Waiting to see what such a monstrosity could possibly do, it teleported itself away to the next room. She followed and found a gang of trolls waiting. Cause to back out already, and then the quythulg summoned a large group of novice mages to harass her. It disappeared again immediately after, leaving Marash to clean up.
Mages are annoying. Not even slightly tough in battle now, they persist in magically blinding and confusing Marash, forcing her to use up healing potions to stay aware of the battle.
Just when she's nearly finished mopping up, she sees the quythulg is back. It summons a pack of energy hounds as if contemptuous of Marash's efforts, and that is intolerable. She prays, launches an orb of draining into the room. The quythulg and a stone troll dissolve immediately. Numerous hounds howl in pain and flee, but they live. Not good enough.
A second orb thins the pack more definitively. Then she sets to work with her crossbow until she has the energy for a third orb, and finally more bolts until she is almost entirely out of ranged death. No bolts, no mana to power her prayers. There's the wand of wonder, but that risks destroying the room and everything in it.
Absent-mindedly she scoops a set of gauntlets off the floor before wading in with her mace... Paurnen? Artifact gauntlets? Quickly replacing her old magic gloves with those, she stalks into the chamber with menace.
The room falls silent. Only Marash and a rot jelly in the corner persist, and neither is going to trouble the other.
Better defence, better accuracy. More damage with every blow. The ability to conjure bolts of acid at intervals. Further details yet unknown, but no mere magic gloves will suffice for her now. She will make better use of these than that unfortunate novice mage ever would or could.
Anything else in this place before she moves on? Her first four-headed hydra, apparently. How many heads can these things get? It seemed to be guarding a room of not much. Nothing evil detected inside, and it turns out hardly anything non-evil. Just a cave bear sleeping on a ring of the dog.
Then, the phase spiders come after her. They must have used that straggler novice mage as bait, and now half-real arachnids close in upon her. She takes a step and they bounce her around like tengu. At least they aren't very fearsome in themselves.
She is set upon by a sabre-toothed tiger. It doesn't stick around very long, so she uses the peace to get some identifying her whip and the last details of Paurnen. The whip turns out to be a Defender, and might be even more useful than her maul.
Up ahead she spies a wereworm. Looks like exactly the sort of acid-drenched monstrosity she wants nothing to do with. Time to leave this place.
Carefully, she weaves a path away and manages to reach a set of stairs down without seeing it again... until she realises, if she is keeping the whip to use, her maul is now a huge burden on her movements. Time for another brief trip to town to stow it.
In town she drops her Maul of Westernesse at home, stocks up on scrolls of recall and identify, and zaps herself back down again.
