More undead killing for goodness! Or something!
We head south and loop around to the west, killing more skeletons and ghosts. However, some winged foes are about to make their displeasure known...
The harpies cometh! Harpies are actually very low on health compared to most enemies, being even weaker in this area than the ghosts. They don't hit very hard either. However, the advanced ones have mass curse abilities, meaning that they make spellcasting a lot more fun. Thankfully, the Harpy Hags that do this are rare in this part of the world.
Fireballs are godly in taking out these packs, with a few Ice Bolts once the numbers are thinned. Of course, spell points do run dry, but who cares when we have arrows! Picking off the enemies is so much fun.
We keep our distance and avoid melee whenever possible, especially with the ghosts. There's no point in making this too hard on ourselves and getting cursed, aged, or otherwise beat up.
Once this part is clear, we move to the bridges. These bridges, unlike bridges in previous areas, are much higher off the ground, meaning enemies can move under them. However, the undead enemies, in a direct simulation of what happens when your physical brain is rotted away, can't actually navigate being on the bridge very well.
We move from bridge to bridge. We get a couple of curses, but none on Huaryu, and he removes them nicely. Eventually we come to a small tightly build town. And...oh boy.
The town is full of undead. Ghosts and skeletons aplenty. But most bizarre of all...the townsfolk are walking around among these undead like the haven't a care in the world.
Wow, I knew living in a place like this probably would inure you to the dangers, but this is a little much...
We pull them out of town and kill them off a few at a time. Using area-of-effect magic is very dangerous here, as is wantonly firing arrows. We don't want to hit any of the people here. (Although I suspect Toblerone would not mind.) Anyway, we clean house quite readily.
Now that the town is clear, we can go to the inn at the north end and...a dwarf?
The dwarf, the only friendly dwarf NPC in the whole game (that should tell you something about what we're going to do soon), is named Avinril Smithers. He was a former weaponsmaster, but was exiled for supporting the former King Rocklin, who is in hiding.
Smithers wants us to take back the dwarven caverns from the usurper Smergle, and in turn he will be willing to teach us the finest dwarven axe techniques. In short, he's the Master Axe trainer.
Sounds like we've got a quest on our hands, and it's a doozy! But we need to rest up...and there may be more than the fate of the dwarves at stake...as we will soon see!
