Part six coming up.
I needed about 400 000 XP to advance to level 22, at which point I would challenge Bodhi. 400 000 cold ones, where to go? Both investigating the Unseeing Eye and doing some dragon hunting in the Windspear hills seemed to be a bit overkill. I needed a reasonably light quest that was quickly dealt with, so I went to the village of Umar, way out in the bush. Spoke with the mayor, he apparently had a bit of a problem with a lot of sudden disappearances, with ogres, with wolves, and with some local ghost, quite a handful in short. Starting out with the ogres, it turned out that Madulf and his followers had no other object than to try and initiate some trade with the village. I of course offered my assistance in seeing this peaceful resolution through by acting as a mediator.
Now that the ogres were out of the frame, I picked up the other trail and went to the ranger Merella's cabin. The house stank of rotten flesh, and in the bedroom lay a flayed and disemboweled wolf. With my razorsharp wit I soon came to the realization that something fishy was most likely going on here. Aha, a letter, describing the way to a mysterious old temple a few hours away! Could the source of the trouble possibly be located there? Maybe not, but I went there anyway just to be sure. The whole place was infested with nothing but undead creatures of the most vile kind, time to have some fun with the Turn Undead ability. About two dozen shadows were parked outside the entrance to the dungeon, they all went *poff* at the exactly same time in a glorious moment that I so wished I had caught on a screenshot. Inside the dungeon: Shade wolf? *Poff. Skeleton Warrior? *Poff*. Mummy? *Poff*.
Wherever I went, everything automatically exploded in beautiful puffs of flesh. The only four creatures in the entire dungeon that proved to be exceptions, were a halfing warrior who I rescued and sent away, a Bone Golem guarding some ancient statue, and two scary Liches. I dealt with both of them by sending in a few Skeleton warriors to soak up their most dangerous spells and triggers, and make them waste their PfMW spells. One of them never cast SI: Abjuration, so after a Dispel Magic he was dead, though the other simply delayed the exact same thing happening to him by a few turns. The liches in this dungeon are particularly easy because they were stripped of their totally annoying Recall ability, not that I mind. With the dungeon clean, I moved on through the next door.
Hmmm, what was now this then? A vast circular chamber with probably more than seventy feet to the ceiling? A disgusting smell? A slow and heavy breathing somewhere out there in the darkness? Could it be, a dragon! Just to show whatever was out there that I was meaning business, I summoned nearly half a dozen Skeleton Warriors and ordered them in a line in front of me with menacing looks and threatening poses. I had fortunately reached level 22 after killing the last lich, and so had access to the real BFG of the cleric arsenal - Implosion, three of them! I underestimated him at first, resulting in a few initial miserable failures with me and my minions being knocked around the place like ping pong balls while the cheap lizard ran off to heal himself after my Implosion assaults. I had not counted on him even surviving 3 Implosions, but decided that I would have to start the fight better prepared and more buffed up. Ironically enough, now that I was really prepared to administer some melee punishment after softening him up, and finish him off before he could even think of healing himself, I finally got some lucky rolls with the Implosions.
He was already at near death when I set off the final Implosion and finally killed him. Since I was already dressed up for another fight, I immediately moved on to the lord of the dungeon. His evil nasal voice rang false, he was quite soft compared to his pet. And so, light was restored to the forest surrounding the ruins! I went back to the village to report, and the mayor had not only agreed to do trade with the ogres, but rewarded me with a nice (albeit useless) leather armor.
The goal was level 22, and that I had already passed. So I made my way directly to the graveyard, stopping only to pick up the stakes I had dropped off in the bridge district entrance barrel. Encountered several packs of spiders down there, all who fell to Holy Smites, and also took my time to explore a tomb in the middle of the dungeon, turn undead served me well there. Then I met up with Haz, or Hez, or whatever his name is, right by the entrance to the vampire nest. The golem of his bashed the door open, and so the raid had begun. Activated HRDS and took care of the guardian Grimwarders before I moved on into the crypt itself. Poor vampires, they too could do nothing but automatically explode as soon as they got close. The only ones who actually offered any fights was a clay golem (the Aerial Servant won), and a vampire called Tanova, she couldn't put up much resistance against me and my three servants though. Down to the 2nd level, a few greater ghouls there, turned. Moved into the central room and turned a few vampires and their Grimwarder guards. There I had Lassal cornered again, but he escaped once again. Pursued him up to the 1st floor and killed him once and for all, those undetectable traps weren't too kind on me though.
Time for Bodhi, I had expected a tough fight with many reloads before success, but I found that activating all my usual buffers made her special abilities quite harmless. There was the Sephuchral Sleep, made harmless by Chaotic Commands, there was the Buried Alive, rendered useless by Free Action, there was the Chill of the Grave, rather non-threatening with 50% MDR and 170 HP, and a few other minor skills. Bottom line was that Bodhi actually wasn't particularly threatening from a distance, and she was apparently quite content to be trapped inside her ring of Grimwarder Archers, whose missile attacks rarely hit home. I wanted to wait till I had access to Implosion since I thought that would be only way I could seriously harm her without going melee (which is discouraged through one of the most frustrating inventions of cheese ever conceived - the undispellable dual fire shields). Sure enough, I fired off my Implosions and they hurt her a good deal, but apparently not enough to make her surrender. I tried my luck with the sling and pack of sunfire bullets I had picked up in the Shade lord's dungeon. Expecting a long and tedious process of slowly nibbling away at her HP 5 points at a time, I fired away and scored a critical, and it hit for a bloody 48 dmg! Oh yeah, that's right, the strength bonus counts for all magical bullets. With maxed of STR, every single bullet after that hit for 20-25 pts, so Bodhi fled after only two additional rounds.
With the rival guild destroyed and the leader fleeing the country, I returned to Aran and he pretty much instantly introduced me to the man that would take me to Brynnlaw. Chapter 4 has begun.
Part six ends here, will probably continue tomorrow.
[ 04-13-2005, 09:10 AM: Message edited by: Rataxes ]