Another uber update is in order as we hack our way through cultists, zombies and foul-mouthed prostitutes.
Well, duh!
It turns out to be the temple of an evil cult. Many members have some poison on them which we can sell for good money.
Puzzles!
We skip that one.
Investigating the main hall further isn't such a good idea.
We land in some sort of breeding chamber.
No reason to run away, yet.
Murrow dies during this encounter, so much for his good spell resistance. :/
Restarting on level one, we encounter more traps.
I admire the extra effort that they put into every individual trap description.
Thanks to the immense usefulness of Murrow's pentrate&teleport combo, the party discovers a hidden room and a magical spear. Walking around a bit reveals a teleporter.
This thing drains health and mana so we stick with our initial method of transportation. We’re now on level two where many chests with promises of treasure lurk us from one pitfall into another.
Still, we're fairly in luck compared to other people.
Murrow teleports us into another hidden room with a chest.
It's a good thing to have an able healer around in times like these. There is also yet again a teleporter hidden nearby but this one comes with a twist as it drops us in an enclosed 1 square room with no obvious means of escape.
Hint: It's not The Nameless One
The team gets teleported back to the entrance of the cave, again for the cost of some physical and mental health. We could have made good use of those in our next encounter against the local fanatics.
There was actually a reason why the fellows above were giving us such a hard time and we have an opportunity to get rid of some crystals that the spiders a few rooms back were guarding.
The spider demon looks and fights like your average spider for the most part. Once we've fried the thing with some magic, we skip to the fun part.
Now we just need to take care of the hive itself.
The heroes make their escape over the ladder.
It's time to collect some debts.
Whoops, let's try that again.
No notable changes. Either his map piece is a fake or some of them have doubles.
Our trip down south continues.
toastboy seems to get the hang of it.
We probably should have accepted the offer, considering what follows next.
Looks like a dead end to me. :/
There are two hidden doors in here.
Seems unlikely that we're going to gain any riches down here but we push on regardless.
toastboy is soon lost due to an unexpected trapdoor.
We'll have to continue without him for a while.
Everyone present loses three points of courage.
Very funny.
Since I don't want toastboy to miss out all the fun and XP, the rest of the party starts to jump down the hole. Murrow is the first one to go and, without light, the rest is soon to follow.
Other than a bunch of skeletons, this room has one really nasty surprise in store for us.
Everyone except for Murrow and korenzel get paralysed as well. The next fight against a bunch of skeletons is a real blast, as you might imagine, but the two still prevail.
korenzel fails to retrieve the artefact and gets paralyzed like the rest which translates into
We have to reload from an old save back in Ottarje and find out what happens if your danger sense fails you during this occasion.
There is one hallway left in level one that we skipped last time.
The totem beams us to an unexplored area in the second level.
He turns out to be just a simple underling for a much greater threat.
The guy has a ton of recipes lying around in his laboratory next to some technical equipment.
The door leads to the place of the group’s prior demise. This time we smash the apparatus which disables the paralysis trap and Holga is able to find another hidden door and a lift beyond it.
We earn a lot of pain for our heroics but a great amount of XP as well. This place has been cleansed.
Almost cleansed but those mummies are just a minor bumper on the road.
Daspota is more of another dungeon than a real town but we'll skip this place for latter once we've got some rest.
More adventure!
We're making fast progress anyways so I might as well grant the battle weary heroes a few months off.
Yeah, it happens. At least now we know that the orcish threat is really not to be taken lightly.
It's a treasure cave filled with mean pirates and hideous traps but also some great reward. Quick summary:
The key is probably meant for a door we can't open by any conventional means. It doesn't work though so Murrow will again have to help us out here before we can reach the second level.
The book isn't really useful for anything, apparently.
Still no love for poor little Holga
This is the big boss battle in this dungeon which turns out to be less than big when the leader and his henchmen are revealed to be prone to magic.
This one goes to golgepapaz for obvious reasons. All in all, a rewarding little detour, for the most of us at least.
*Phew* Here we go.
Attempt #2
Attempt #2
Attempt #3
Ha. Ha. Ha.
Bee kills him too fast before his reinforcements can spawn into the room but we still get their gear regardless.
Probably the hardest fight in this place:
And the results:
This guy is completely useless despite his claims. Can't fight him either.
It's really just one guy for a change but the loot from his store is rather disappointing.
With that we’re done in this town. I have lost counts how many times someone's weapon broke and we had to travel back to Rybon for repairs. Our stock of healing herbs is running low too but the reward was well worth the effort: A magical 2-hnd. bastard sword for golgepapaz,
an unbreakable axe for Holga,
and an unbreakable sword for toastboy.
Again, old news, pal.
Eliane's hut is right next to the entry point so...
We're on our way, fair maiden!
Nothing of interest here.
What else?
Ha!
This should please the gods, hopefully. They really do hate the Nameless One. At least his/her followers are familiar with the concept of hygiene.
In other places however, not so much.
He manages to escape during the fight but it doesn't have any apparent effect on our victory. Since I overlook a fake wall, we teleport into a hidden room with a lever.
On our way to level two...
These bolts can hit multiple party members at once and deal a hell lot of damage. We're going to suffer through a bunch of those while we try to figure out how to proceed.
Apparently, someone will have to stay behind for the lever to take effect. I pick Bee for this task since her rapier is broken yet again.
Everyone levels up for this heroic task, except for Bee. korenzel replaces her at the lever to compensate for her XP loss. It unblocks the path to the inner sanctuary from the looks of it as we have to get past traps
and some foul-tempered priests.
The meanest thing these guys can do is to cast Iron Rust. Soon everyone in the party who doesn't carry unbreakable weaponry is forced to fight bare handed.
While searching through the loot pile, Murrow comes upon a real beauty.
This should be a great help against other magic users. Too bad we probably killed most of them at this point.
We're closing in on the finishing line.