Mr Hawking: Part 4 - Crawling Through the Lair
The Amazing Adventures of Mr Hawking the Spriggan Enchanter of Nemelex Xobeh
Part Four - Crawling Through the Lair
... in which Mr. Hawking begins to explore the Lair of Beasts and learns the power of Nemelex.
We rejoin Mr. Hawking just outside the Temple. In the last chapter of his adventure he decided to worship Nemelex Xobeh. With his choice of god decided, it is time for him to make his way down into to the Lair of Beasts.
Just south-west of the Temple entrance Mr. Hawking has yet another unique encounter - there are an absolute ton of these guys incidently - with Edmund. The info on Edmund is:
Edmund is Sigmund's younger, jealous, and less magically talented brother. He has more money and wit though, and usually caries around a Flail of Protection!
Neither brother gave Mr. Hawking any trouble.
Still trying to make his way down to the Lair, Mr. Hawking meets another unique. This time it's a Shadow Imp named Grinder.
A unique shadow imp that weilds a pain weapon (a club, usually) and has the following spells: pain, paralyse, blink and brain feed.
Grinder gets ground up.
))
Mr. Hawking sees another Jelly. He doesn't want to get his weapons or his new robe damaged, so he decides that it's time to start using the cards he found earlier in the dungeon - time to start worshipping Nemelex properly.
Ouch! The first card he draws is Torment, which casts
Symbol of Torment and cuts his health in half. This isn't exactly going as planned.
He does end up killing the Jelly without ruining his equipment though.
This weird plant-like formation is actually a fungal colony composed of Ballistomycetes. They appear throughout the dungeon, spawning Giant Spores, which explode to enlarge the formation. Mr. Hawking has heard about them so he knows the trick to dealing with them.
Step 1) Don't let the Giant Spores come anywhere near you. Run like hell if they're close - as a Spriggan Mr. Hawking has an edge here.
Step 2) Destroy the active ballistomycete to kill part of the formation.
Step 3) Repeat step 2 until the entire formation dies.
Step 4) Profit!!!!
Mr. Hawking steps into the Lair of Beasts. Right away he notices that the ground is covered in lush grass and the air itself seems more full of life. He feels at home in this natural environ, but he does wonder how it can exist ten floors underground (Crawl, like most roguelikes, doesn't stand up too well to scrutiny by storyfags and larpers).
South of the entrance Mr. Hawking finds a great lake. He is unable to cross it, but just as well because he spots both an Ice Beast and an Ice Statue. The Ice Statue explains the red X's. Statues can't move but can be very dangerous opponents. Mr. Hawking will do well to stay outside the range of this statue for now.
Uh oh. The Ice Beast woke up and, unexpectedly, is able to cross the deep water. It's also immune to most of what Mr. Hawking can throw at it right now; and it's big enough to squish Mr. Hawing in melee combat. This is very bad. Time to run.
Mr. Hawking made a beginner's mistake and ran the wrong way. Instead of heading for the stairs he decided to run into an unexplored corridor. As a result he now finds himself running from a pack of wolves in addition to the Ice Beast.
This is very, very bad.
Mr. Hawking manages to put some distance between himself and his pursuers by using Ensorcelled Hibernation in a single space corridor, but his escape route is blocked by a Hippogriff.
Mr. Hawking subdues the hippogriff using a wand of paralysis and, thanking the gods above, takes a moment to pray.
You'll notice here that when Mr. Hawking prays (this isn't the first time he's done it - I pray above almost every corpse and useless item) the item he stands on top of is sacrificed to his god, Nemelex Xobeh. Different gods want different sacrifices, but Nemelex isn't picky. He wants everything, though what you sacrifice to him will influence what kind of gifts you get. The odds are very strong that Mr. Hawking will end up with mostly summoning decks because as a vegetarian he has no use for corpses and almost all of the dead bodies will go to Nemelex.
Well this is no good. The known exit is blocked by a Polar Bear and an Ice Beast. Time to make a new escape plan - and fast!
Mr. Hawking decides to dive down the stairs that he found beside the hippogriff earlier.
Now safe on Lair:2, Mr. Hawking finds a Book of Power. Some good stuff here.
Mr. Hawking sacrifices the corpse of a War Dog and gets his first gift from Nemelex!
It's:
Not sure what type of cards yet, but I have an inkling that it will be a deck of summonings.
Mr. Hawking gets chased by a Hydra and uses his god gift deck of cards. It is, as predicted, a deck of summonings. The first card he chooses is Repulsiveness, which summons this Ugly Thing to protect him. That probably won't be enough.
The Ugly Purple Thing on it's own wasn't enough but another Ugly Thing, a skeleton monster and an animated Club were enough to finish off the Hydra. Fantastic!
Back on Lair:1, Mr. Hawking decides to find out if Polar Bears can be confused.
Yes, yes they can.
Mr. Hawking finds the Book of Morphology. This is the first completely useless book (for a SpEn) that Mr. Hawking has found.
Mr. Hawking knows that dealing with an Ice Beast is a whole lot easier when you have a couple Grizzly Bears to back you up.
The best part about Nemelex is that you make him happy by drawing cards, which leads to getting more cards, which leads to more of this fun stuff. The bad part is that you don't get full XP for kills your summons make - so you need to be careful that you don't overuse them. In this case, Mr. Hawking has no other way to deal with the Ice Beast safely.
This is why you don't get too close to Ice Statues. Mr. Hawking made a very risky move doing this. Very stupid move in fact, looking back at it.
That said...
(Mr. Hawking's Spiny Frogs crossed the lake to kill the Ice Statue for him.)
Mr. Hawking finds the Book of Wizardry and immediately memorizes the Selective Amnesia spell. This will allow him to dump some of his low power spells later in the game to make room for stronger stuff.
He now commands a veritible army of wasps, but Mr. Hawking still pays attention to the details. He stabs a seven headed Hydra to death.
Mr. Hawking finds the Book of Enchantments. A great book for an Enchanter (obviously). He now won't need to spend the money to buy the one he saw in a shop earlier.
Mr. Hawking walks into a room filled with Yaks. Though not nearly as dangerous as their Death Yak cousins, they still pack a punch. He uses a legendary deck of cards that Nemelex gave him recently and comes up with an animated Executioner's axe. Good bye yaks.
Mr. Hawking steps onto Lair:7 and is concerned by what he sees. He's heard about a Lair level that has this type of layout with lots of small lakes. It is usually filled with electric eels - very dangerous opponents at this stage of the game. He needs to excerise caution here.
So far there have been no eels, electric or otherwise, but Mr. Hawking does encounter a unique named Gastronok. Gastronok is sleeping so Mr. Hawking has a couple quick minutes to check his journal for information on the new foe.
A greedy elephant slug who ate a wizard for lunch and now casts spells!
He has access to Airstrike, which uses Smite-style targetting and can really hurt Mr. Hawking. Mr. Hawking needs to either deal with Gastronok quickly, or just run away.
And Gastronok is dealt with thusly.
And here ends another chapter in Mr. Hawking's adventures.
In the next chapter Mr. Hawking will finish clearing the first seven floors of the Lair and move on to Lair:8, where reside death yaks, more hydras, and a vault of some kind.