Time now for the Ritual, in this thirteenth post.
I stopped by the Bridge District barrel to pick up a 5-pack of Oils of Speed and a 9-pack of Invisibility potions. Re-arranged my spell book to contain mostly Fire Storms and a few Devas for 7th level, and packed my 3rd level full of Dispel Magic. A rest later, I was off to the Watcher's Keep. I would enter it soon, but for the time being, my business was with Pontifex. He said I must disrupt a ritual of unspeakable evil that threatens the entire world. Suspicion grew when he wanted to put a Geas on me, but I reluctantly agreed. Teleported me on the spot and left me with the words "You have 7 hours. Fail, and die" and some treasure, most of which I didn't need. Among those things were the Preserving Boots however, pretty much the only reason I didn't wait with everything surrounding Watcher's Keep till ToB.
He'd given me some instructions on how to deal with this. There were seven skulls, seven guardians for each of the seven skulls, and I had no less than seven hours to kill them all. A pretty coincidence, no? I must destroy the seven skulls in order to break the barrier protecting the ritual, and for each skull, I must kill it's seven guardians before I can destroy the skull itself. Best get moving. The first skull was located directly south of me, with the guards neatly spread out to prevent any nice area damage. I tried a variety of different procedures, which included fully prebuffing and assaulting the entire party head on, spamming Fire Storms, and using a lot of servants while staying behind with energy blades in my hands. Neither worked very well. What did in the end work was a slower and more cautious tactic. I drank an Oil of Speed and lured out the fighters one by one. When only the battlemage and druids remained, I cast Dispel Magic and Silence to prevent spellcasting and instead forced them to attack me, at which point I lured them away from the skull and killed them one by one.
Great, one skull was gone, only six to go! This little escapade had taken two hours though, so I was way behind schedule. The next skull was to the north, and fortunately, this bunch was very tight. Dual Fire Storms worked like a charm here, leaving only two fleeing survivors that I took down with some energy blades. Yet another skull down, and still four hours to go. Went straight east for the next skull. This group also had these annoyingly spread out positions. Luring out the fighter in the outer circle enabled me to place another pair of Fire Storms close to the core of the bunch without being spotted though. Had a few more survivors to contend with this time before I could deal with the skull itself.
The three following groups to the south, west, and southwest, were disposed of with largely the same tactic utilized against the first group, mostly because I was out of Fire Storms. I also summoned a few servants and used up my two Deva summonings to speed up the process slightly. The seventh and last group was pretty much the same thing, only I had some trouble with the two druid's extraordinary spamming of Call Lightning. In the end I got tired of it and dug up my Potion of Magic Blocking, which was a more amusing solution than the Prot from Electricity scrolls I for some reason had elected not to take with me in the beginning.
Just keep'em coming!
With approximately half an hour to spare, all seven skulls were destroyed, and I still had 70% of my memorized spells left, though I drank 6 Oils of Speed. So I went to the center of the map and met the priestess. She convinced me to let her complete the ritual (not that I had any way of stopping her without resorting to lethal force anyway). For some reason, those three giant golems became hostile, some luck I had already buffed up. They were at least twice as mean as regular Iron Golems though, and underestimating them really got me into trouble.
"Damn! We're in a tight spot!"
The ritual was completed seconds after I had managed to kill the first golem, and then the rest turned into goo. I had failed my task, though at that point I really couldn't tell whether that was a good or a bad thing. I went back to the Watcher's Keep anyway. Immediately upon entering the map, I was teleported away, and moments later appeared in some dark and dank dungeon. The Red Badge had caught me. They warned me of an upcoming confrontation and then sent me back. I thought it would take them at least a day to drag me back into that smelly little snake nest again, but I when I was prepared to initiate the fight with Pontifex, they called me back, less than two minutes after we first met! I can't say I was prepared for that meeting just yet and certainly didn't have the appropriate spells for them. Thus, reload back to the point where I failed to disrupt the ritual, modify the spellbook. I had checked out these creatures and knew that the only thing they were vulnerable to was pure magic, that and any kind of weapon of course. So gone were the Dispel Magics, 3rd level was now full with Holy Smites. Rested, and then went to the WK. Met with the reptiles, and then I started with the prebuffers. I added a Physical Mirror besides the regular bunch, and was summoned back only a few seconds later.
Only two of the foes can be said to possess ranged offense: the Bloodbane-wielding one, and the one on the other side who periodically casts Poison Clouds at you if you show yourself to him. With Physical Mirror on, the first had already been taken care of. He stunned himself with the fourth attack and I finished him off with energy blades. Flinging a few blades and then running was a favourable tactic with Boots of Speed and Imp Haste. There were three monsters on my tail, one retaliates with Project Force as soon as he's hurt, one is immune to magical weapons, and the third has no special perks. So I killed the third with another set of Energy Blades and then ran away far enough to summon a Deva. Thereafter cast four Holy Smites, and all of the sudden, there was just this one Poison-Cloud-flinging snake left, whom we took care of with a few more Holy Smites. Now that I look back at the fight, I'm pretty positive the whole Red Badge could've been killed with nothing but Holy Smites, the energy blades would've been superfluous if not for providing me with Imp Haste (now that
was needed).
Now, with the threat of suddenly being teleported away in the middle of the fight gone, I returned to Pontifex. He would apparently have let me go, despite my failure, but after resting and once again re-organizing my spellbook to include a lot more Dispel Magics, I went back and spoke with him again. This time he was going to kill me he said. "What can
you do, old man?" He could turn into a dragon, always something.
Now this here is Ira'kiou'dneg, and he's just about the cheesiest dragon that ever lived (the yellow hide simply cannot be a coincidence). I first got acquainted with his manners when he surprised me with a Time Stop, somehow crammed into a Chain Contingency, and killed me before I had moved a muscle. The second time I was prepared for that and summoned a Deva for him to chew on beforehand, but after that I found his ability to use Dimension Door about twice per second slightly disgruntling, and doing it after casting yet another Time Stop was certainly a turn-off. That was the second time I tried to fight him, and it was the second time he clawed me up while I was gray and frozen. I tried once to cast a Storm of Vengeance, since it was one of the few things I had that could damage him, but I learned that standing still for more than a second when he was on-screen only resulted in being splattered by "Yellow Dragon Scorching Sand", that did something like 48d10 piercing damage.
No, it was time for a change of tactics. There was no way I was going to be able to run around in the open and avoid him long enough to wear out his SI: Abjuration, especially not with his fondness for casting Time Stop. Re-organized my spells - A pair of Skeletons, lots of Dispel Magics, lots of Aerial Servants, two Devas, and the rest of the 7th level filled with Energy Blades. After the rest I went up the first set of stairs leading up to the various exits from the keep. Nice and narrow, no chance in hell that thing would be able to teleport to this place. I summoned 3 Aerial Servants here, and then went down to Pontifex and summoned a skeleton. Cast the regular prebuffs and then talked to Pontifex. Ran the hell out of there as soon as the dialog finished, up the stairs. The skeleton left behind triggered his Chain Contingency and I was this time well out of the danger zone, not even being on the same screen.
What happens with Ira'kiou'dneg when can't reach you, is that he goes completely nuts. He had gone to the bottom of the second staircase and there spammed Dimension Door like crazy. Since he was temporarily not occupying the space at the bottom of my staircase, I went down and quickly attracted some Sand Golems up the stairs.
3 Aerial Servants VS 2 Sand Golems was a surprisingly even fight that ended with 1 badly injured servant left alive. I wagered that the SI: Abjuration had worn off by now, so I summoned a new skeleton at the bottom step and went down so that a sizeable spot of the ground below the staircase was visible. This caused the dragon to teleport right in front of the stairs, which was my cue to move back a bit again to keep out of his reach. I summoned the skeleton so that he would hopefully occupy the dragon long enough for me to cast a Dispel Magic without him simply vanishing again through a Dimension Door. It took effect, all his protections were gone for a moment or two. This was my chance to hit him with Energy Blades, so I rushed down and just kept pumping blades into him. He tried to cast his Scorching Sand, but it is fortunately a non-targetable breath attack with an effect delay and a small AoE, which makes it easy enough to avoid it if you can just stay on your feet. The fun probably didn't even last half a round though, since after taking 5 blades, he autocast both Stoneskin and PfMW at the same time. "Barely Injured", well it was progress.
Something odd happened at this point. The dragon had teleported back to the other staircase and summoned several Mordies. For some unexplainable reason, they started to attack him, presumably he accidently hit them with some of his scorching sand. I had some fun watching them very slowly strip away his Stoneskins, but then decided it was time to hit him again. I repeated the exact same process, even used the same skeleton (he'd been pushed up the stairs by a Wing buffet). Placed the skeleton on the bottom step, walked a bit down the stairs, waited for the dragon to dimension door there, then went back up and cast Dispel Magic. Success once again, his protections were gone and now I had to seize those few seconds he was actually vulnerable to the blades. I got a few more good hits, and he had actually moved down to "Injured" when he finally recast his PfMW. I had 5 minions left to summon, more than half a dozen Dispel Magics, and an entire 7th level filled with Energy Blades. I could do this for a good while. And so I did, twice when I ran down the stairs and started to throw those blades did he try something other than the "Scorching Sand". The RM/Chaos Trigger and the Dragon Fear/Slow special move only slowed me down though, and barely that with the prebuffs I had on. Slowly his health status changed from "Injured" to "Badly Injured" and finally to "Near Death". I was down to using my Devas to lure him to stay, when I dispelled his protections for the 8th time and began throwing my third set of Energy Blades. He finally fell!
With that, I'll end this installment. Status check: My Priest of Helm is now level 39, and 48 days have passed since he woke up in Irenicus dungeon. I'm not sure whether I'll be doing WK now to retrieve the breaching wands, or just get on with the main storyline and go and kill Bodhi next.
[ 02-11-2004, 07:48 PM: Message edited by: Rataxes ]