10: Two Deaths
In which we die. Twice.
In the URLUSAM sanctuary, we rest a bit to replenish our virtue and psychic points and then teleport to BORASAL, the shopping area teleporter. We stock up on food...
...and buy a light helmet for Bee, a Sallet:
When we equip it, Bee's armour stat goes up by one point and now equals 12:
At the forge, we repair the broken mace:
We teleport back to URLUSAM and take the eastern exit leading further into the deep of Eriosther. Wish us luck.
We descend the stairs and go down the corridor...
... only to find ourselves in another corridor going south and north.
Something sinister seems to have happened here.
We should be on our toes.
Facing south, we can see a door in the western wall:
As we approach it, we get another sinister message -- and a random encounter:
The enemies are few...
...but one of them is an Orc Chieftain, accompanied by two G(r)ay Orcs. Rocket attacks the Chieftain for 15 hp, and then spekkio casts TEI to boost our defense -- the party's armour stats go up by two points. Kalos recites RALKOR, which strikes the Chieftain who responds by attacking Lord Rocket for 21 hp:
Another sucessful RALKOR almost kills one of the Gray Orcs. Lord Rocket misses:
Bee damages the, uhm, northernmost Orc for 14 hp, and then the Chieftain tries attacking Rocket but misses. spekkio attacks melee:
Why the hell did I order spekkio to attack melee, I have no idea.
The second Gray Orc misses when aiming for Rocket, and Bee strikes the nearest Orc again, this time for 19 hit points.
And then trouble comes to spekkio:
Rocket lunges at the Chieftain and hurts him for 12 hp. (Meh.) An Orc strikes Bee for 34 points of damage. spekkio casts SHUMMUR on himself:
The Orc strikes Bee again -- and stuns her:
Rocket attacks the nearby Gray Orc for 13 hp, Kalos fails at invoking Ufthu's aid -- and troubles kick in again. First the Chieftain inflicts 28 points of damage on Lord Rocket, and then the Orc hits Bee hard:
Poor Bee. :/
Luckily, Kalos rushes to the rescue, and manages to successfully recite SIRDHE, the basic healing prayer:
And then spekkio further increases Bee's hp with a SHUM. An Orc wounds Rocket for 18 hp -- and Bee is no longer stunned:
Okay, you orc bastards, now I'm coming for you!
spekkio casts another SHUM on Bee, and Rocket kills one of the Orcs. The remaining Orc attacks Bee for 24 hp, and she wounds him for 23 hp in return. (I seem to remember I switched Bee's current weapon to something else at this point, but I don't remember the particulars.) The Chieftain misses at Rocket. The Orc slashes at Bee for 14 hp, but then she kills the monster:
Take that, bastard!
In a couple more turns, Lord Rocket finally deals with the Chieftain. We obtain experience...
...and some loot:
Now we can finally enter the southwestern door:
Let's---
Oh no not this again.
Yes.
We run away, but spekkio is silenced now. Grrrrr.
Exploring further...
...we finally discover the source of all those "something has been dragged through here" messages that guided us to this room:
It's a giant spider, and it doesn't look too friendly.
Still, it turns out to be not so hard to deal with. The only problem in this battle is, Lord Rocket gets stunned:
The spider is hitting us for ca. 20 hp; we heal ourselves with SIRDHE and attack it with AMRAS as well as melee -- and the victory is ours:
This battle was easier than the previous one, and yet we get more exp. Not fair. We also obtain some coins for loot.
It looks like the spider was guarding a key. Or maybe the key got here by accident. Who knows.
Let us explore further west:
There's a locked grate here:
Yay!
Oh noes!
Now this is freakin' NASTY! We are blocked in the corner. :/
Uh-oh. The Orc turns out to be an Orc Captain, and he's targeting both Kalos and spekkio, two our weakest characters, at once, so a bit of repositioning is in order.
As we try changing our places, the situation gets even nastier ... for Kalos:
That's because the enemy can move simultaneously with our movements, and sometimes the AI isn't that dumb. Anyway, spekkio is safe for now, but Kalos is surrounded by two strong foes, which isn't good.
Kalos' RALKOR manages to cause some damage to the Orc Captain. Then a Giant Ant bites Kalos for 8 hp, and spekkio casts SEHK:
And then something awful happens:
All our melee attacks, by the way, either miss the target or cause some truly measly damage:
Switching weapons doesn't help. It looks like this particular random encounter is a bit beyond our current melee capabilities. :/
Long story short, first we're poisoned...
...then hit really hard...
...again...
...and again...
...and again:
We patch ourselves up with SIRDHE, but a couple of turns later the trouble is back:
And then we die.
I got so frustrated I forgot to capture a screenshot of Lord Rocket's "dead" status, sorry. But anyway. We're dead.
Death count = 1.
of meself.
Per this LP's death policy, I reload the back-up sanctuary save -- and then make it to the spider again, and then grab the key again, and go west again, and unlock the grate.
Another random encounter, this time with three Orcs and a Wolf, without any ants. The number of enemies is manageable, so no problems here ... well, almost:
Still, we prevail in the end, even though Lord Rocket is stunned again:
Yay! And 68 coins for loot.
We come across a drawing:
The question marks hint at a secret door and secret treasure, I guess. Comparing the room's shape with that in the drawing, we indeed discover a secret passage:
Bee discovers it, yay!
It takes us three attempts, and quite a bit of Rocket's HP, to pry it open:
Inside we find ... a pile of animal dung?
Ewwwwwwwwwwww.
And we're back to URLUSAM, to rest up a bit.
We teleport to BORASAL. Which means ... it's shopping time again!
Let's sell the cap we found (for 4 coins) and one of our daggers -- we've got too many of those -- for 10 coins, and buy a Chain mail for Bee:
As Bee equips it, her armour stat goes up from 12 to 14.
We sell Bee's old Studded armor for 230 coins, and buy a Leather coif for Kalos:
It raises Kalos' defense from 4 to 6.
Since we weren't at all effective in melee combat, I decide to buy a new weapon for Bee -- a Broadsword:
We also stock up on food again, and then teleport back to URLUSAM. We back up our game and can be moving on now. It's time to explore further south:
In the end of the corridor, there's a single door that we enter:
Three Orcs attack us, but that's just regular Orcs, so we deal with them quite easily -- and then take the southwestern passage:
The orcish odour is getting heavier:
Okay, let's enter the door.
Like expected.
Meh, these are all Brown Orcs, the weakest ones.
The fight was easy, and so our exp reward is low.
102 coins isn't bad, really.
Nothing of further interest here, so we turn back.
Another random encounter is triggered:
This time we face not only Brown, but also two Gray Orcs.
We hurry to get spekkio out of harm's way. That done, we have no more problems.
Some nice exp there. And 88 coins, to boot.
Back in the large hall, we discover a secret door:
And when I say "we", I mean "Bee", of course.
It won't budge -- meaning we have to resort to HOYAMOQ.
After two more HOYAMOQs...
...the door still doesn't open. :/ It's only then that I decide to look for a device to open it:
Sorry I'm slow.
But, well, at least the door is open now!
We climb up the opening, finding ourselves in a room with another locked grate:
Unfortunately, neither of our keys fits, so we'll have to come back here later.
*Makes a note in her uukrul.txt*
As we exit the secret area, we are ambushed by an Orc Leader -- which is different from Orc Chieftain -- and three Brown Orcs:
Feeling our POWAR, one of the Orcs runs away:
And then his leader follows:
Run away to live another day, they say.
Yay!
The random encounter rate in this area is dramatically high. Like, really high. A couple of steps further, we have to deal with 5 Brown Orcs -- and then to run away from a really scary-looking group of foes:
Now we can fina---
Uh-oh. It's THAT time again. We flee -- but not before the Orc Chieftain (?) almost kills our poor Kalos:
Phew. It's rest-and-back-up time again.
Returning to the large hall, we take a southern passage:
This is some sort of cavern.
Exploring further south, we find a small coin-filled purse:
Then we kill an Orc Leader accompanied by a Red Orc and a Brown Orc:
103 coins is our loot.
Oooh, shiny!
It's funny how money and gems are scattered all around this dungeon. Do the local Orcs have no need of them or what?
We enter the southern door.
Let's follow the
rabbit gnome, then.
The path is long and has its share of turns.
Scary, yay!
We finally reach the end of the passage. It opens into a large room.
A toad that steals nose-rings?
Is that a hint or what?
We find some money in a corner of the room...
...and a totally mysterious drawing...
...but not much else.
We can't interact with the gnome, alas, or least I haven't been able to find a way to.
Oh, and there's a secret door here:
After a couple of attempts, Lord Rocket forces it open:
The staff looks fine.
I'd like spekkio to take it, but it looks like he's overburdened as he is. So Kalos it is. For now.
Nothing more to do here (?), so we head back. As we crawl back through the passage, it's getting lighter:
We return to the large hall and brave the northeastern passage:
I smell... trouble ahead.
And a trouble does indeed appear.
This is a rather strong group of enemies: an Orc Chieftain, an Orc Warrior, two Red Orcs, and an Undead Corpse. Truth be told, I was tempted to run away, but then decided to persevere.
spekkio casts SEL, a stronger protective spell than TEI:
3 SEL The Iron Armor
All those who stand with the caster will have the strength of their armor substantially increased for a brief period. This Spell forms magical armor around each person. Although this armor is strong, it cannot last long.
Our armour is increased by 4 points:
We attack melee, as well as with RALKOR (fails most of the time) and AMRASMUR. But then the Chieftain silences spekkio-kun:
:/
Now spekkio's rendered totally useless -- and if he tries casting a spell, nothing happens:
Quite a few turns later, Bee manages to kill one of the Red Orcs, and Lord Rocket slays the Orc Warrior:
After a few more turns, spekkio is finally free to work his magic:
With the help of AMRASMUR, the Chieftain is weakened, and Lord Rocket kills him at last:
Too bad his Broadsword is broken now. We switch Rocket's weapon to a regular sword. Now the victory is surely ours.
Nice, yay!
We go back to URLUSAM to back up our game ---
--- but are attacked. Uh-oh.
Luckily, Kalos' attempt at reciting SIRDHE is successful. But we must flee I guess!
Yup.
But as we attempt fleeing...
But finally we do run away. Phew.
At URLUSAM, we back up our game and then make it back to the large hall, this time going northeast and then turning south:
So this is where LucasArts found the inspiration for the pirate insults, eh?
No Gray Orcs or Chieftains in this group, however, so we slay them all quickly, getting a bit of exp and some loot:
Movin' on.
Good. We'll identify it later.
Exploring further...
Uh-oh. We try to get Kalos and spekkio out of trouble, but fail:
Kalos is in for some serious beating:
As is spekkio:
And then again:
And again:
We're dead.
Death count = 2.
So, uhm, anal virginity lost? Well, yes, in a way. All this, however, is but the beginning, yay!
