No sooner did the news reach the gates that Queron, the elf prince, and his team of assassins had been executed in the depths of the enemy camp, than the cloud of dust and brutal spears was sighted cresting the ridge to the north. Against such a powerful alliance of orcs, kobolds, and enslaved savages, the walls of Bluffhaven fell in a matter of minutes. Elric had grabbed the mace given to him by his mentor, Yargon, and without hesitation had started toward the filthy wave of torture and death sweeping through the city when he felt the hard strike against the back of his head.
When he awakened, He found himself in a dark chamber, a single upward ladder ending in a fallen and cantilevered section of stone wall. He had seen this ladder many times from the other end, and in this recognition he found only great dread coupled with loss. Clearly, it had been no orc or wild man who had dealt him that blow. Yargon himself had knocked the boy unconscious and dropped him into the catacombs, no doubt hoping the boy would find a way to survive the horrors therein and find a way to escape to safety through an adjoining cave.
For the first time since he had left his noble family to train with the escaped slave, Elric gave in and allowed himself to cry, knowing now that he could never die fighting alongside the man who had given him a purpose.
He did not mourn for long, knowing that his master had, through his final act, given him a single tacit order: survive and grow strong. Picking himself up off the dusty ground, he opened his pack, remembering from his mere months of training the many times he had been painfully reminded to keep aware of his surroundings and potential advantages at all times.
Since no self-respecting barbarian would ever be caught dead wielding heathen magic, Elric here starts with two skill books in place of a spell book: the Manual of Armor and the Book of Sharp Points. These should prove useful, since barbarians gain a free skill slot every level, more than any other class in the game. For now, we'll take medium weapons out the Book of Sharp Points, which will give us a nice to-hit bonus with our mace.
Also, we have a scroll of Enchant Armor right off the bat. Awesome, right? Not exactly. This particular scroll has been cursed, which means not only should we not wield it (as if we would anyway), but reading it will have the opposite effect it usually would, damaging our armor.
Satisfied that he had made all the preparations he could, Elric began wandering the halls, seeking an exit or a reliable source of shelter and food. What he got instead was his first true test as a warrior.
As he stepped over the strewn remains of the noble families of times long past, no doubt dragged from their resting places by hungry scavengers, he froze in shock as a bony arm clung to his ankle, using his studded leather armor to drag its body upright and locking its cold, hollow sockets with the young warrior's eyes.
Fear swept through Elric's body and soul as the unnatural thing raised a fleshless hand to his throat, but the teachings of Yargon and the holy words of the Horse Lord H'ruth were with him and he knocked the blasphemous thing backward with a fierce mace blow to the ribs.
Knowing neither pain nor fear, the skeleton advanced once again, clubbing and slashing in broad, crude movements. At first the bruises were superficial, but Elric found that his still-trembling muscles were unable to meaningfully retaliate, and soon he was bleeding in several places as his indomitable undead foe continued its clumsy but relentless assault.
He dashed away, to the side entrance of the chamber from which he had initially emerged, but the door , undisturbed for many centuries, refused to budge. Once again, the skeleton was upon him, cornering him against the end of the corridor and stumbling arms-forward to rake out his eyes.
As a final reflex, Elric lashed out with all his might and closed his eyes, waiting for the end.
But no end came.
Moments later, he opened his eyes to see what had become of his foe. A pile of bones lay crumpled at his feet, a shattered skull laying a few feet away against the wall of the corridor. Feeling his terror give way to a sense of pride, Elric shoulder-checked the door open and celebrated his new-found heroism by slaughtering and devouring a few helpless vermin who had wandered in. He then prepared himself to further battle blasphemies against the sanctity of death looting some rather nice shoes he found on the remains of a noble from a rival family.
Mice and rats, unlike their belligerent giant cousins, are docile creatures. They will not attack unless provoked. Some docile creatures, like the kiwi, are fairly strong and best left alone unless you are sufficiently high-level. These two poor schmucks are just free experience and tasty corpses, carrying no real danger aside from angering Pax.
Our intrepid hero has found riding boots. These, like the sandals, could have been cursed. However, they provide decent armor for Elric's feet, so I wasn't the least bit hesitant to slip them on. They also count toward H'ruth's barbarian outfit, which will grant us a bit of additional approval from our god along with the ability to move diagonally, should we ever manage to complete the set. I'll go more in-depth on outfits if we ever manage to complete one, or you can check out the wiki
for lots of sweet, sweet spoilers.
Moving on, Elric bashed in yet another door, leading into a large room containing a secondary, smaller mausoleum with no visible entrance. Remembering his lessons on the protection of important tombs against prying eyes and hands, he quickly located the false wall on the far side of the mausoleum, pulling it open to reveal its contents.
This is a special room. These rooms are a set of special templates that have a chance of being placed in most early dungeon levels. Other special rooms include simple sokoban puzzles, lakes and islands filled with strange inhabitants, nests of deadly giant rats, or even a lich's tomb! On the plus side, one of the most common special rooms is a vault full of tasty sleeping monsters, perfect for leveling any non-cleric early on.
Inside, he found more pests, larger and nastier than before. As he swung at a brightly-colored beetle near the entrance, he got a nasty surprise. The creature retaliated by spitting scalding oil onto his exposed arm! Not daring to retreat and lose the choke point he had created, he focused his attacks on this new threat before dispatching the other creatures packed into the crypt. Once again finding himself badly beaten at the end of the encounter, he pulled the false wall shut behind him as he settled in for a sleep much shorter than that of the chamber's original occupant.
If you find your hit points in the yellow or red, it's best to lock yourself in a critter-free room and take a quick rest with the upper-case 'R' key. This will cause you to wait in one place while your hit points recover, although you will be helpless if an opponent manages to get to you. If you cannot lock yourself in somewhere secure, find an empty area and pace around for several turns, or stand in one place with the '5' key, so you can recover hit points at your normal rate and still be awake and alert in the event of an intrusion.
After pausing briefly to pick up a vial of peculiar silvery liquid, Elric emerged from the crypt and continued on his way, plowing his way through more assorted pests and freaks of nature and offering thanks to H'ruth for the nourishing corpses they left behind. He met many more strange monsters, including a strange, four-legged chitinous creature that moved deftly in strange patterns. But he forged ahead, until the pain in his muscles and the fatigue in his mind gave way, and he broke through to a new feeling. Elric knew this experience well, having trained himself to his limits almost daily under Yargon. He knew that with each labored swing, with each new challenge he surmounted, he was growing stronger.
Woot! Our first level up! H'ruth has given us the large weapon skill, as well as an empty skill slot to fill on our own with one of our books. We won't be using large weapons any time soon, but we can type upper-case 'F' to forget any skills and spells we've learned and fill the empty slot with something more useful. Keeping in mind that books have limited uses, we'll hold on to that large weapon skill until we absolutely need to learn something else. After all, the spear is a large weapon and a part of H'ruth's barbarian outfit, so we may want to start using one later on.
For now, we'll crack open our Manual of Armor and pick up the body armor skill, which along with the new mithril chainmail I didn't bother to mention until now, brings our armor class (the number after the shield icon in the lower left corner) up to twelve, making us somewhat harder to hit. Remember that unlike Nethack, which uses a descending AC similar older editions of Dungeons And Dragons, higher is better in this game.
It was not long before Elric once again encountered one of the curious, insectoid quadrupeds whose movement had so vexed and fascinated him earlier. This time was different, however. This creature stood before him on thicker legs, its carapace clearly harder and cresting higher than those he had previously encountered. This particular grid bug looked upon him not with the instinct of a mere animal, but with a look of malice and recognition, almost intelligent purpose, as it braced itself and shot a potent arc of lightning directly into his now-useless mithril mail.
Gorkral here is a named monster, and he didn't get his name just by swinging by the courthouse and filling out some paperwork. Named monsters have likely survived countless battles, making them stronger, tougher and meaner than their rank-and-file brethren. On top of being named, Gorkral is a grid bug, who can move and attack diagonally. If we were to try to run in our current, four-directional state, it would be able to cut corners and take pot-shots at us as we fled.
Luckily, we picked up electricity resistance from eating a grid bug corpse earlier on, allowing us to ignore this sucker's nasty electric attacks.
Elric winced as the spark struck him, but found that he was unharmed by the attack. Shaking off his confusion, he lunged forward and did what he did best, pummeling the creature's rock-hard shell with a series of blows from his mace. After many fierce exchanges of crushing strikes for deadly electric shocks, the bug's natural armor finally relented, splitting down the middle as the beast emitted a dying scream.
Elric paused to dine on the bug's entrails before turning around with a smug confidence. His eyes soon lost their cocky sparkle, however, as they met a familiar pair of soulless eye sockets. This time, the sockets were sunken into a skull engraved with deep, faintly-glowing runes, which itself was attached to a skeletal body a full head taller than Elric himself.
Oh, goody! Another named monster. This one's a bit tougher, since his physical damage can get around my armor class.
Elric's new-found prowess was barely enough to compensate for the might of this new breed of skeleton, and he found himself once again badly battered after he finally split the skull of his adversary. He needed rest, and a good meal. That's when he saw the bat.
Easy lunch, he had thought as he swung at the nocturnal flying furball. His potential prey soon disproved this hypothesis by divebombing him a flurry of raking claws to the forehead. Thinking quickly, our hero deftly headbutted his own mace, crushing this irritating foe between a rock and a hard place. As he snacked on its still intact wings, he paused briefly to crush a large spider who was clearly laughing at this most recent display, then settled down in the corner to relax with a good book.
While not very strong, remember that bats have a higher base speed than the player. Lower level adventurers can take large amounts of damage very quickly from such a foe, and fleeing is not advised as a bat can use its extra actions to pursue and attack at the same time. If you manage to kill one, however, eating its corpse has a chance of granting you that speed for a brief period of time, via the 'quick' intrinsic.
Killing that spider granted us another level and the edged weapons skill. This means we are now more skilled with the long sword we've picked up than the mace we're currently wielding, since both are medium weapons but the sword is also edged. We'll use our free skill slot to learn all about boots, bringing our AC up to lucky 13, then we'll try a little experiment.
Dipping our silver dagger into the sole potion in our inventory, a white potion, does nothing. We now know that the white potion is neither acid nor poison, so it's safe to try it on our long sword. Unfortunately, this too yields no results, and we can now safely say that the potion is also not Greek fire. Had it been as I had hoped, Elric would have been the proud owner of a flaming sword. More on that later, though.
After finally catching a brief respite from the constant bloodshed, Elric decided to do a quick sweep for any hidden chambers he may have missed before backtracking to a downward ladder he noticed earlier. in his careless rush to get across the catacombs, he ran smack into something round and squishy.
Looking up to see what had impeded his progress, he immediately froze in place, but not out fear or indecision. He had met the gaze of a large, floating eye, causing his muscles to stiffen of their own volition. As he tried in vain to will himself to move, he heard from all around the skittering of skeletal feet, padded claws and the sickening sound of some great slimy thing dragging itself across the floor. In a matter of moments, a mob of skeletons, mutant rats and giant slugs would descend upon him from the shadows, and he could only stand helplessly as they rent him limb from limb. He failed to close his petrified eyelids as he thought to his dead master, "I'm sorry. I am too weak to be your apprentice. You gave me one final task, and I have failed."
This is one of the most dangerous situations in the game. Not only can a floating eye's gaze paralyze an unwary victim, but it also marks them magically, allowing every other hostile monster on that particular floor to find the now helpless hero.
But the proximity of so many foes forced a shot of adrenaline through Elric's body, snapping him free of his paralysis and causing him to reflexively swing out at the magical eye. As the abomination popped like a balloon, he willed his legs to leap backwards, taking a defensive position in a nearby doorway just as the advancing horde came into view.
Elric raised his mace and cracked skull after skull, drenching the floor at his feet with blood and mucus. Each deadly strike was met with retaliation however, and soon the young man's considerable vigor began to wane as his wounds caught up with him. He would soon have no choice but to succumb to the unending wave of foes.
Just as he felt his legs buckle underneath the pressing weight of the crowd, however, he felt a presence like none he had ever known. This being was powerful, nearly as much as the great H'ruth, but it felt more orderly, almost kinder. Whatever it was, it had closed his wounds and filled his muscles with renewed might. Unleashing a mighty roar, Elric forced himself forward,breaking the throng and slaughtering them all with a volley of powerful strikes.
That was a close one. Lucky for us, the always-helpful Klaskov was pleased enough to offer poor Elric some free healing in his time of need. As mentioned before, a happy god can help you out of even the deadliest situations, up to and including poisoning (as always, more later) and the deadly petrifying attack of the cockatrice (much later, hopefully). Don't count on this, however. Its not a sure thing and even the most devout follower can use up his favors quickly.
All those angry mobs rushing to the floating eye's call have provided us with yet another level. This time we get pointed weapons. We'll take the helmet skill as our freebie, bringing us up to 14 AC and leaving only the shield skill yet un-taken in the Manual of Armor.
The fog of battle lifted from Elric's mind, and for the first time he could feel how shaky and weak his limbs really were from the extended exertion they had endured. After catching his breath, he sleepily began dragging himself toward the ladder on the far end of the catacombs.
Once again careless, out of fatigue rather than youthful enthusiasm, he accidentally trod on something fleshy. Confused, he looked down just in time to see a pair of reptilian fangs bury themselves in the gap between his chainmail and high boots, sending the burning chill chill of venom coursing through his body.
That snake poisoned us! A poisoned character takes damage every other turn, followed by a final lump sum of damage as the poison wears off. Certain items grant poison resistance, but only curing the affliction with an antidote or divine favor can prevent the final bit of damage. Luckily, Klaskov comes through for us again, so we don't have to worry about either this time around.
Once again feeling that odd, lawful presence intervening on his behalf, Elric shook off the deadly toxin and bashed the serpent's brains in with the last of his strength. After the longest minutes of his life, the young warrior stumbled into the chamber with the ladder before lying down on the floor with a resounding thud. There were certain to be more challenges below to keep his troubled mind occupied, but for now he would gladly face the misery of mourning for a few hours if it would only distract him from the pain pervading every muscle.
Surely he had done enough growing strong to fulfill half of his master's last request. It was time to fulfill the other half, and simply survive.
Well, since I couldn't find any secret passages, that looks like the end of this floor. I'll save from the options menu, accessible with the upper-case 'O' key,and call it a day for now. What will Elric find as he ventures deeper into the dungeon? Find out next time, same penguin-time, same penguin-channel.
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