Domains of Mystery

Bruno the Human Warrior - Part Two

2007-01-30T03:38:00.000-08:00

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Text in red is game mechanics.
Text in green is fiction from outside of the game.
Text in quotation marks is in-game text.

Expedition 2
Down in the dungeon again he tries a new scroll and senses the presence of buried treasure in the immediate vicinity. He mines metals for a total worth of 50gp. He goes down a staircase.

DL 2
He feels that "this level can’t be all bad" and decides to explore it some. He kills a Novice Rogue with four bolts and advances to Level 9 (86 Hp). His light begins to flicker so he fuels his lamp. He encounters Grip, Famer Maggot’s other dog. He hits it with a bolt. It howls with pain and flees. Bruno catches up with it and slays it. He then has some trouble with a pack of Cave Spiders (25/86 Hp) and drinks a potion of heroism. He heals some and feels like a hero. After rooting out the Cave Spiders most of the level is explored so he goes down.

DL 3
"What a boring place." He fights a Blubbering Icky Thing and it crawls on him and eats one of the food rations. He eats a food ration. He finds a Mithril Plated Wand. He identifies it with a scroll as a Wand of Magic Missiles with 12 charges. He mines quite a lot of treasure but is disturbed by a lot of invisible creatures so he reads a scroll of detect invisible. Slowly some wormy masses materialize into view. They are Clear Worm Masses that breeds explosively.

He can only see them for one turn so he retreats. He tries a potion hoping to restore his lost strength, but it’s a potion of weakness and he is slowed by the weight of his stuff (-1 Str). He tries another potion and it’s a see invisible. He goes down a staircase.

DL 4
"This level can’t be all bad." He drops his pickaxe weighting 15 lb and is no longer slowed. A Yellow Jelly poisons him but he survives. He finds some arrows but feels that they are cursed and drops them. He fights a Copperhead Snake and is now a Level 10 Warrior (110 Hp). He fights a bunch of Cave Spiders (29/110 Hp) and rests. He fights a Novice Warrior and gets a Chromium Wand. He gets hungry and eats a food ration. He is just about to pick up a pile of copper coins when the pile forms a mouth bites him. He slays it and picks up the scattered copper coins. He tries a white potion and his eyes begin to tingle. He now has infravision. He fights a couple of Large Kobold and they do heavy damage.

He quaffs a potion of heroism. He kills one but he can see more of them in a room at the end of the corridor, both Small and Large (56/110 Hp).

These are the toughest creatures so far. He reads a scroll of Phase Door and ends up in a room just south of the Kobolds. No corridor links up to the Kobold-infested room so Bruno rests. He then moves out and plans to engage the Kobolds with his crossbow. But when he picks the lock of a door and opens it the Kobolds are already there, looking for him.

He quaffs his potion of berserk strength and “feels like a killing machine.” He gets hit while drinking (95/103 Hp). He hits the Large Kobold and spots a third in the corridor while taking a hit himself. The next turn Bruno misses and the Kobold hits (78/103 Hp). He aims his wand of magic missiles at the Kobold and hits, doing about the same damage as with the broadsword. He fights the Kobold with his sword and finally slays it (42/103 Hp). A Small Kobold attacks next. He hits it and it flees but a Large Kobold takes his place. Bruno reads a scroll of Phase door and gets teleported about 10 meters back into the corridor. He wants to use the crossbow but the corridor is pitch black and he can only see two squares in the light from the lantern. He retreats into a lit room. He is only five steps into the room when he spots the first Large Kobold charging after him.

He hits the Kobold with a bolt doing quite good damage. He hits with the second but misses the third and the Kobold engages in close combat, with a second one coming up right behind him (50/103 Hp). He tries the Chronium Wand at the Kobold and hastens it. Damn! It's a wand of hsten monster so he won't be able to speed himself up. The Kobold hits him two times. Bruno reads another Phase Door. He teleports just a few meters inside the same room. He hits the Kobold with a bolt before it reaches him once again. He then shoots magic missiles at the Kobold two times but it still lives. Bruno reads his second last Phase Door. He only teleports a few meters away in the same room. The hasted Kobold catches up with Bruno really quick when he tries to flee out into the corridor (16/103 Hp). Bruno reads his last Phase door but only teleports a couple of meters and is slain when trying to flee.

Lessons learned: Large Kobolds are dangerous. The scroll of Phase Door don’t teleport you very far.

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Bruno the Human Warrior - Part One

2007-01-26T01:26:00.000-08:00

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Text in red is game mechanics.
Text in green is fiction from outside of the game.
Text in quotation marks is in-game text.

Bruno chooses to be Human.

Bruno chooses to be Warrior.

Bruno is a very good fighter and has balanced stats.

The Quest
It is said that once Sauron is slain At Dungeon Level 99 a magical staircase will appear that leads to Dungeon Level 100. Morgoth lurks on this level of his dungeon, with the Mighty Hammer “Grond” in hand. By killing Morgoth, you will receive the status of WINNER.

The Town
Bruno starts in town. Before he goes shopping he checks his inventory.

He wields his sword and wears his chain mail. He passes a Squint Eyed Rogue asleep in the street. A Mangy Looking Leper begs him for money. A Boil-covered Wretch drools on him. He passes the Magic Shop and goes to the armoury.

He checks the store.

He buys a pair of hard leather boots for 15 gp and a hard leather cap 14 gp (10% off). He tries to bargain but the shopkeeper doesn’t agree (auto-haggle). He wears all armor (AC: 20). He still has 159gp to spend. He goes to the General Store.

He buys a Pick for 103 gold (25% off), a Brass Lantern (10% off) and a Cloak leaving him with 8 gold. He gets too close to the Rogue who wakes up and attacks (14/19 Hp).

Bruno chases the Rogue and cuts him down. The Rogue drops a Viscous Pink Potion. The Wretch and Leper follow him around.

Expedition 1
He enters the dungeon and lights his Brass Lantern.

He has a feeling of this level: “It looks like any other level.” He enters a big room with five exits. He spots some magma veins in the dungeon wall and moves closer to inspect. A Fruit Bat, a fast moving pest, attacks him, but he hits it with his Broad Sword and it flees in terror.

He equips the Pick and begins to tunnel into one of the veins. It takes 11 turns to hack out one square (with the repeat action key). He finds nothing of value but the vein continues into the rock so he continues to tunnel. He tunnels through the wall and ends up in a corridor. He continues to tunnel. He finds a quartz vein and it takes double the amount of time to mine it but he finds nothing. Finally he spots a vein containing some kind of treasure. He mines it. The find is worth 29 gold.

The Fruit Bat attacks again and he wields his Broadsword and kills it with one cut. He decides to explore the dungeon instead of mining. A pile of rubble blocks a corridor and he digs it out with his pick. A Large White Snake lies asleep on the floor behind the rubble. Bruno walks closer without waking the Snake and then attacks.

It flees in terror but Bruno finishes it off (2 Experience Points). He enters a large room with two exits. He tries one and finds a closed door. He opens it and is immediately attacked by a Rock Lizard. Both misses but then Bruno hits killing it.

A locked door stops him and he isn’t able to pick the lock. He tries to bash it down and smashes into it. He gets paralysed for a while but the door still remains locked. He tries a few more times but then gives up. He kills another Fruit Bat. He kills a pack of five Jackals and advances to Level 2 (25 Hp). He finds a Sling and a broken Bone. In another room he spots a Giant Yellow Centipede and kills it before it wakes up. In the next room a sleeping Soldier Ant wakes up and attacks but Bruno slays it. He finds a Violet Speckled Potion and a Filthy Rag. He kills another pack of Jackals and finds a stairway down in a room with pillars. He leaves the stairway for now.

He mines a magma vein with copper worth 14 gold. He then spots a sleeping Floating Eye and avoids it. It wakes up but doesn’t attack. When he is about to leave the room his path is blocked by yet another Floating Eye. He takes another way around. He feels that the Filthy Rag in his pocket is cursed so he drops it. He finds a flask of oil for his lantern.

He walks into something invisible and manages to kill it. A Fruit Bat gives Bruno a graze and he bleeds for a couple of turns. He rests until he has restored his health (with the Rest command). He slays a Large Brown Snake and a Small Kobold and advances to Level 3 (28 Hp).

Something invisible touches Bruno. He tries to avoid it and bashes open a locked door. He moves into a corridor and falls into a spiked pit (21/28 Hp). In a room he finds a cloak, a shard of pottery and a broken dagger. He bashes open another door after many tries. A Small Kobold waits inside but gets wounded from a slash of Bruno’s broadsword and flees. Bruno sees a scroll on the floor.

He corners the Small Kobold and slays it, finding a Brown Potion. Something invisible touches him again. He cuts into the air and hits it and it disappears. He picks up the scroll labelled: “ypnin thercre”. He enters another corridor and steps on a gas trap and gets poisoned. It wears off after a while (13/28 Hp). He enters a lit room so he turns off the lantern before he rests to full health. The first dungeon level explored he takes a stairway down.

Dungeon Level 2
He has the feeling: “What a boring place.” But Bruno doesn’t think it looks that boring. He spots a Salamander and a whole bunch of sleeping Cave Spiders, all sleeping. He moves in the other direction without waking them up.

He hears a door burst open somewhere in the dungeon. He finds a robe and 27 gold in a room. Fang, Farmer Maggot’s Dog, suddenly attacks him.

It has two attacks but Bruno kills it with four direct hits (16/28 Hp) and is now a Level 4 Warrior (37 Hp). He rests. He gets hungry and eats a food ration. A Novice Rogue attacks but flees when Bruno gives him a couple of cuts. Bruno chases him through a corridor and hits him in the back a couple of times. The Rogue recovers his courage and turns to fight. Bruno slays him and finds 42gp (25/37 Hp). He sneaks upon a sleeping Giant White Centipede and a White Snake and slays them. He finds another scroll labelled “ypnin thercre” and reads it and gets blessed. The blessing expires quickly. He mines 17gp and 23gp worth of silver.

He slays a Novice Rogue with a great hit and then a Blubbering Icky Thing. It left a Slime Mold. He picks a locked door and advances to Level 5 (45 Hp). He has a tough fight with a Yellow Mold and rests.

To continue his exploration he now has to clear the room with the Cave Spiders. One by one they wake up and attack. He kills over half of them when the Salamander attacks (28/46 Hp). He kills them all and advances to Level 6 (62 Hp) and rests. He then kills a White Harpy and finds a potion. He now has six unidentified potions. He picks up a set of leather gloves. A Novice Warrior and a Novice Mage attack him. He slays both and finds yet another set of gloves. He feels that a robe in his pack is cursed and drops it. He feels that a cloak in his pack is good so he puts it on. It seems to be an ordinary cloak though.

He fights a Giant Green Frog big as a wolf. It dies after two cuts. He then falls into a spiked pit, is impaled and gets a light cut. It becomes a graze and then clots. The level explored he decides to return to town.

He goes up to dungeon level 1 and it’s a totally new dungeon (non-persistent dungeons). It is Morgoth that generates new confusing dungeon levels. He feels that "this is a boring place". He tries to find some stairs up to town. He finds some stuff and has to drop some bones he was dragging around. An invisible thing stalks him but he manages to kill it. He kills a lot of Jackals and is now a Level 7 Warrior (64 Hp). He drops an average robe and eats. One set of gloves is cursed. He wears the other set (AC: 22). He walks into a trap and is surrounded by a strange white mist. He watches paralysed as a Soldier Ant attacks. The Ant hits eight times before Bruno can kill it (51/64 Hp). He steps at a trap and a small dart hits him He feels very weak (Str -1). His light is growing faint. He refills the lantern with a flask of oil. He can’t find a staircase leading up and has to go down to Dungeon Level 2 again.

He has a feeling "that this level can’t be all bad." He tries out a couple of scrolls. One lights the room and another one is identify. He identifies a potion he has three flasks of and they are potions of blindness. He reads a third scroll and becomes blind for a short while. He then becomes hungry and eats his last food ration. He picks up 27 iron spikes and becomes slowed because of the weight. He drops them again before slaying a Novice Warrior. By mistake he lets a pack of Cave Spiders gang up on him and notices that they are dangerous. They are really fast and he barely is able to retreat to a corridor to fight them one on one.

He kills a Novice Rogue and finds a food ration (he is getting low on food). He is now a Level 9 Warrior (80 Hp). A Novice Magician blinks in and blinds Bruno with a spell of blindness, and then disappears. Bruno recovers his sight and fights some Green Worm Mass that breeds explosively but he manages to exterminate them all. Finding mostly potions he decides to return to town and goes up to Dungeon Level 1 again.

He walks into a trap and monsters spawn around him, a Yellow Worm Mass, a Black Naga and a White Jelly. He kills the Naga with a couple of blows but gets poisoned by the White Jelly. He wins the fight though. He tries a potion and it’s salt water. He vomits and becomes hungry and weak. He eats the slime mold and is now out of food. He tries another potion and it’s slime mold juice. Finally he finds a staircase leading up to town.

Town
He goes to the temple to restore his strength but can’t find any cure. Farmer Maggot follows him around and asks if he has seen his dogs. Bruno doesn’t answer. He tries his other potions. He is paralysed for a while by a potion of sleep. He drinks a brown potion but nothing happens. He then resists cold for a while. Another one is water and yet another one is Apple juice. The last two potions make him faster and then slower.

He goes to the Alchemy Shop and buys four scrolls of phase door for 80gp and two scrolls of identify for 142gp and one scroll of detect invisible for 20gp. At the General Store he buys five food rations and five strips of beef jerky and 20 bolts. He then buys a light crossbow at the Weapon Smith. He goes to his home and drops some stuff. He is carrying 96.9 lb and the threshold is 102 lb before he is slowed down. The pickaxe and crossbow are quite heavy, and all the food. He goes down again eager to try out his new crossbow.

Jump to Part Two

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Angband

2007-01-26T01:09:00.000-08:00

Genre: Roguelike
World map: Town
Permadeath: Yes
Races: 10
Classes: 6
Religion: No
Spellcasting: Advanced
Persistent dungeons: No
Version: AngbandTK 2.9.2r2
Latest version: Thangorodrim
Graphics: Tiles or ASCII
Mouse: Yes
Sound: Yes
Resource: Thangorodrim

From Wikipedia:
Angband is a dungeon-crawling roguelike computer game derived from Umoria (a C port of a game called Moria). It is based on the writings of J. R. R. Tolkien, in which Angband was the fortress of Morgoth. The current version of Angband is 3.0.6, and is available for all major operating systems (including Unix, Windows, the Macintosh, and DOS).

The game revolves around the exploring of a 100-level dungeon, in which the player seeks to amass enough power and equipment to ultimately defeat Morgoth. A new level is randomly generated each time the player changes levels, which gives Angband great replay value: no two games will be the same.

Angband is notable for spawning many derivatives. A family tree of around sixty (around a dozen of which are active) variants of Angband exist, each often greatly differing in purpose and depth of changes. The best known variants are OAngband, ToME (formerly PernAngband) and ZAngband.

Jump to the story about Bruno the Human Warrior

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Jagged Campaign Part 5

2007-01-25T10:20:00.000-08:00

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Jump to the First Part

Text in red is game mechanics.
Text in green is fiction from outside of the game.
Text in quotation marks is in-game text.

21:05 Day 3 Drassen Airport Attack
We entered from the south and immediately spotted two guards.

We crawled a little closer and just when we were about to attack they noticed us. Bursts from Ice and me and a shot from Nails took them down, but Nails got hit (56/72 Hp). There were no more attacks so Nails, Ice and I crawled stealthily over the road to the fence surrounding the airport. We could hear sounds from the east and northeast, somebody was moving close by. Fox with the Colt .45 in her left hand, and Ira came crouching when the coast was clear. Nails opened a hole in the fence with the wire cutters and we sneaked into the compound.

We crawled up against the wall behind the nearest house in the row. We saw a guard in front of the house but he didn’t look our way. He then disappeared from view. I was just about to peek around the corner when he came around the same corner. I got him in the head with two bullets and he died. We all prepared for a counter-attack. Nails was just about to sneak behind a tree when he noticed a second guard just around the other corner.

Nails turned around and ran back behind the house and dropped to the ground. The guard followed and hit Nails (40/72 Hp). Nails returned the fire critically wounding the guard (-40). Ice popped around the corner and snapped a round into the guard that was only a meter away. His chest exploded in a cloud of blood and he was thrown several meters back.

Fox bandaged Nail's wound for the second time around. Ice didn’t hear anything so he tried to crawl around the corner to get a better line of sight, but only a meter away was another guard. The guard hit Ice with three bullets (51/90 Hp). Ice turned around and hit the guard in the face. The guard spun around 180 degrees and then fell flat to the ground. Ice gave him a killing bullet. Ice was now badly hurt and low on energy. Fox moved up to him and began to give first aid.

Fox and I began sneaking around the houses but didn’t spot anyone except for some scared civilians. We moved towards a hangar and a small plane. The others began moving towards the gate and Ice got fired upon. He couldn’t see anyone in the darkness, but I had spotted his attacker and was in his right flank. I fired four snap shots but missed all. Fox ran up to me and dropped beside me.

The guard ran towards Ice and disappeared from view. Ice’s team ran into the closest house and hid behind the windows. Suddenly there was a gunshot from the darkness, the window where Nails crouched shattered and he was hit in the head (7/72 Hp and lost 4 points of Wisdom). He fell headlong and dropped his shotgun. Fox and I spotted the guard (interrupt) prone on the road. He was no rookie. That was a long distance shot to the head in the darkness.

I fired a burst and hit him in the side with two rounds and he died. “Yeah! This is an enemy free zone.” (everybody wounded get bandaged automatically after each battle)

We walked around and checked the place. We found two clips of 5.56 ammo for the MP53 SMG and a 10 round 7.62 WP clip. We also found a can of gas. We met Pablo, the guy managing the cargo stores at the airport. He was a rude dude. Ice said: “That dipshit is full of it.” When we reached the helicopter Skyrider came forth and told us he was glad to be back in business. He could now transport us around Arulco. He also told us about a SAM-site to the east that we should take out.

The time was now 21:38 in the evening. I began to train militia and the others played doctors and patients.

Day 4
Fox went to sleep at 07:00 in the morning, Ira at 08:00 and I crashed at 11:00. Before I got to bed I checked the finances. Drassen was now 97% loyal to our cause, raising our income to $7360 a day. That meant that I could afford some more mercs. I checked my daily costs.

With a daily cost of $3284 and a daily income of $7360 I had $4076 extra each day to play with. But I only had four more days of income ($29440 income + $6406 cash = $35846) before my contracts ran out and then I needed about $23000 to rehire all three again. That leaved $12846 to spend in those four days. I had just got a slightly higher income this morning and could exactly afford Lynx. For one day he charged $8050 with equipment and medical deposit and is arriving in Omerta at 19:00 this evening.

Later that day Ice was fully restored and began training his strength. Ira helped me with the militia. At 19:00 Lynx arrived and walked east to the rebel HQ. I had told him that he should check with Miguel if the food and supplies had arrived. Everything was fine and Miguel offered Dimitri to help us. He was good at throwing knives and a good mechanic.

They began the long walk to Drassen. Ira and I had trained the first squad of militias and began to train another.

Day 5
At 02:00 in the night Lynx and Dimitri arrived at the airport. At 04:00 Nails had fully recovered. Ira got better at teaching. I fell asleep at 07:00 in the morning and Lynx took over the training (Leadership: 39). At 10:00 the second squad of militia was formed. We distributed all militia evenly among the three sectors of Drassen.

We slept to 16:00 and then we prepared to move out. Lynx 24 hours had gone by and I paid him another $2850. “Okay. I’ll stick around.” The mine income had increased with $100 a day because of even higher loyalty (99%) now when the town had a bigger militia.

To be continued...

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Crawler VI the Spriggan Transmuter

2007-01-25T07:50:00.000-08:00

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Play style: Random character, everything default.

Crawler VI was a small magical creature distantly related to elves. He was trained as a Transmuter specialised in transmigrations. He knew one spell that was able to extract poison from corpses. When he entered the dungeon a Giant Rat and a Goblin immediately attacked him. He had a rod of striking and killed the Rat with a force bolt. He then injured the Goblin with another force bolt but when he again tried to use the power of the rod his brain hurt and he got confused.

When he restored from the confusion he noticed that he hardly did any damage to the Goblin with the rod so he decided to flee. He was very fast and ran away from the Goblin. Another Goblin came running at him from a corridor to the right so he turned left. A Giant Bat started chasing him and it was as fast as Crawler VI. Another Giant Bat and finally a third chased him through the corridors. No matter what he did they slowly ate him alive.

Lessons learned: Spriggans are no good Transmuters.

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Jagged Campaign Part 4

2007-01-25T07:15:00.000-08:00

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Jump to the First Part

Text in red is game mechanics.
Text in green is fiction from outside of the game.
Text in quotation marks is in-game text.

21:10 Day 2 Drassen Attack

Ice, Ira and I came in from the south and immediately spotted a soldier in the closest house. We tried to crawl up against the wall but a soldier looked out a window and spotted us. Ice took him out with a burst.

I ran to take cover against the wall but spotted a bad guy by the trees to the right of the house and retreated. Before Ice had time to move another soldier showed up in the window and shot Ice (-14) and then crouched. Ice could only see his head and fired a snap shot at his head. He hit and the soldier dropped to the floor. I left Ira to cover the dude by the trees and moved towards the window. I heard faint sounds from north and northwest inside the building.

Ira took some fire from two positions by the trees but couldn’t see the soldiers. She got hit (-19). A soldier came into view behind the window and Ice hit him in the head critically wounding him. I crouched in front of the window and finished him with a snap shot. Ira ran from her vulnerable position, opened the door and entered the house. I covered Ice while he too ran into the house. I got up, and was about to run into the house when a bullet from the trees hit me in the leg and I collapsed (-6). Two more rounds whizzed over my head before I could get up, run inside and slam the door. I covered the south side while Ice covered the north and Ira applied first aid. A dude ran into sight and I nailed him with a burst.

A second dude made the same mistake and I dropped him too. Everything got quiet. We found a second Glock 17 for Fox. We then sneaked outside and checked the trees. We found another Glock 17 and some ammo. We sneaked to the north side of the road and checked two houses there through the windows but there were only scared civilians. We looked around a large area but found no enemies. Suddenly we heard a sound in the darkness of some brush. We sneaked around trying to locate the source of the sound. Ice saw him first and hit him with 4-5 rounds. He was the last one and he dropped a shotgun.

The time was now 21:28. We began looking around. Ira had some info:

The civilians told us that there’s a guy called Perko in Cambria that can repair almost anything, and that San Mona is a bad place full of sinners. There’s also someone called Doreen in this town that they want to get rid off. I checked out a house and the civilian said that we shouldn’t underestimate the queen. I opened the fridge and took a beer, then I used the bathroom and found a key in a closet. It was a shiny key, fitting a more than ordinary lock. I took it.

There was a bombed out airstrip and a helicopter wreck, nothing of interest, but there was a big building with some crates outside. We found a t-shirt with the text: “Diedranna Rules”. We entered the building and it was full of children working late. I talked to Doreen, the manager, and she was so full BS.

I was direct to her and she agreed that the factory maybe wasn’t a good idea and left. The children were happy. I washed my face at a sink and found a first aid kit in the closet. There was a locked room in the back and as Nails wasn’t there with his lock picks I tried my key. It worked! I found a couple of lockers containing Jackpot! Three 9mm SMG AP clips (armor-piercing), $450, a syringe filled with energy booster and some duct tape. I transferred the money to my account. I ordered the others over to our sector and Ira and Fox began to treat our wounds. Nails was tired as usual and slept.

I was totally patched up at 02:00 in the night but not tired at all (because patients get rest). I began training some militia. The cost was $750 as usual and I checked my account on the laptop. We already had some income from the mine.

Fox and Nails got out of bed early at 05:00 and began their work. Ice was fully restored at 06:00 in the morning and helped me training the militia. Some of us got better at what we do (Dylan Leadership +1, Nails Mechanics +1).

At 09:00 I got email. One was from IMP reporting on my personal file. They called me Einstein because of my score of 80 in Wisdom. Well, that’s why I learn so fast. I knew most of the other stuff but one paragraph had me a bit troubled. Like I couldn’t throw a grenade, huh?

The second email was from M.E.R.C (More Economic Recruiting Center). It was a new site offering budget mercs.

Their selling points were no money upfront, cheap prices and streaming video. I checked their files and it had mostly hillbillies and outlaws on offer. There was a mechanic though but I couldn’t afford him right now. With a daily income of $3000 I could barely afford Nails and Ice in the long run.

Ira was fully restored at 08:00 and Fox began to train her medical skill. I got a note that Omerta had received food from Father Walker. At 13:00 a squad of militia was formed. We trained some, Nails and I trained Agility to become stealthier. We trained until 21:00 and then we prepared to move out.

Jump to the Next Part

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Rogge the Draconian Reaver

2007-01-22T02:56:00.000-08:00

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Play style: Random character, everything default.

Text in red is game mechanics.
Text in green is fiction from outside of the game.
Text in quotation marks is in-game text.

Random chooses Draconian.

“Draconians are a race of human-dragon hybrids: humanoid in form and approximately human-sized, with wings, tails and scaly skins. Draconians start out in an immature form with brown scales, but as they grow in power they take on a variety of colours. Some types of draconians have breath weapons. Draconians advance very slowly in level, but are reasonably good at all skills but armour (most types of which they cannot wear) and missile weapons.”

Rogge chooses to be a Reaver.

"Reavers are warriors who learn the magics of destruction in order to complement their deadliness in hand combat."

The Reaver chooses a weapon from short sword, mace, hand axe or spear. He chooses spear.

By looking at the item description it is learned that the spear is better for the dexterous. This is bad news for Rogge who has low dexterity.

From the manual it is learned more about dexterity:

“Affects your accuracy in combat, your general effectiveness with missile weapons, your ability to dodge attacks aimed at you, and your ability to use thiefly skills such as backstabbing and disarming traps.”

Dungeon Level 1
He finds a cloak and wears it over his robe (AC: 4). Rogge is fighting Kobolds and Giant Newts. As a Reaver he already knows the spell Magic Dart that hurls a small bolt of magical energy. First he weakens them with a Magic Dart and then he usually hits with the spear at the first or second try, killing the opponent. Sometimes the attack is a Draconian tail-slap. He advances to level 2 (21 Hp, 2 Mp) and tries to memorize the second level spell Throw Flame but fails. “This spell is somewhat difficult to memorise.”

He reads his scrolls. He smells wet wool? He teleports with the second one. Nothing seems to happen when he reads a third. He then encounters a Hogoblin and miscasts his first Magic Dart. The second hits lightly injuring the Hobgoblin. He retreats a short distance and restores some magic power (1 Mp) and casts another Magic Dart, moderately wounding the Hobgoblin. He then kills the Hobgoblin in close combat (10/21 Hp).

He is very close to advance his spellcasting skill (skill level 2) but although he is casting a lot of spells he seems to learn other skills first. He turns off all skills except Spellcasting and the next time he casts a spell he advances to level 2 in spellcasting. He now tries to memorise the spell Throw Flame and succeeds. “This spell throws a small bolt of flame.”

Level explored, he reads two new scrolls. Nothing happens when he reads the first one and it crumbles to dust. He reads the second one and “feels momentarily disoriented.” His memory of the map layout is muddled. He goes down some stairs.

DL 2
He encounters a Snake and throws a Magic Dart. He miscasts the spell and “sparks fly from his hands!” There’s a long fight with the Snake, it’s difficult to hit and wound. As soon as Rogge recovers some magic power he casts a Magic Dart. Finally the Snake is almost dead and flees (13/21 Hp). Rogge chases the Snake and when it’s cornered it turns to fight. It hits Rogge and he is poisoned (9/21 Hp). He quaffs a red potion and gets fully healed but is still poisoned. He drinks a murky potion and feels better. He is cured from the poison. It was a potion of healing. He views the item description and learns that the potion of healing is a more powerful version of the potion of heal wounds.

He is feeling hungry and eats an orange. It was delicious. He fights a Hobgoblin and miscasts the Throw Flame spell and has to kill it in close combat (11/21 Hp). He learns the dodging skill. He now is a Level 3 Reaver (28 Hp, 4 Mp) and chooses to raise his dexterity (Dex: 7). He rests and then chooses between two spells to memorise.

He chooses “Stone Arrow” and succeeds. “This spell hurls a sharp spine of rock outward from the caster”. He turns off the practice of polearms to save points for spellcasting skills. The weapon skills eat practice points because he uses weapons more often than spell casting.

He reads a scroll and chooses to identify an elven mace, and it’s cursed (+2, -2). He finds one more scroll of ID and identifies a glowing whip of speed (+2, +1). He wields the whip. His hands tingle. It’s a low damage weapon giving one extra attack. He is hungry and eats a bread ration.

He encounters a Snake and kills it with spells. His Conjuration skill increases (level 3). He runs around and checks all stairs leading to DL 1 and notices that two up-stairs can connect to one down stair and that they don’t have to lead to the closest stairway on the other level. It's very confusing. He reads some scrolls. “He senses the presence of curses on his possessions.” “His cloak glows green for a moment.” (+1) “This scroll appears to be blank.” He tries to wield some weapons but can’t identify them further. He wields an unidentified spear. He wears his uncursed robes and finds one that is enchanted (+2) (AC: 7) and drops the rest. He puts on a tiny ruby amulet and a wooden ring but can’t identify them.

DL 3
A Snake attacks. He has a hard time hitting with the whip and switches to the spear instead. He gets poisoned for a short while and then kills the Snake with a combination of spells and spear attacks. He kills a Giant Bat with a tail-slap. He encounters Hippogriff and avoids it.

He then stumbles into a room with lots of Gnolls.

Rogge retreats into the corridor and fights them one on one. After a few thrusts he identifies the spear as ordinary. He kills the first Gnoll but gets moderately wounded and quaffs a potion of heal wounds (26/28 Hp). This battle is too dangerous and he reads a scroll of teleportation and teleports three rounds later to an empty room.

A Giant Cockroach attacks. Rogge miscasts the Throw Flame spell. “Lukewarm flames ripple over his body.” He kills it with the spear. He is hungry and eats a lemon. He finds a scale mail armor but it doesn’t fit on his Draconian body.

Suddenly the Hippogriff attacks. The Throw Flame spell misfires but two magic darts lightly wounds the Hippogriff. The Hippogriff has four attacks and Rogge is moderately wounded already after 2 turns. He retreats to some stairs close by and is just about to climb them when the Hippogriff gets four hits killing Rogge.

He had a ring of sustain abilities and an amulet of conservation.

Lessons learned: Drink healing potions before trying to flee.

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The Morg Saga Part 3 - 10m below ground

2007-01-22T01:53:00.000-08:00

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10 meters below ground

He heads down the stairs into a dank dungeon. This is a big and deep dungeon as is shown on Morg’s map below. The blue square is Slaeter’s Sea that Morg entered through the Vortex earlier. The plane in the middle of the tree is Midgard where the humans live and is shown as a green square to the right. The grey plane below should be Niflheim, where Hela holds Balder’s captured soul. The rainbow bridge to the left of the tree leads from Midgard to Asgard. Here lie the homes of the gods and the Great Plain Vigrid, the prophesied site of Ragnarok, the final battle for the existence of the universe. The first section of the dungeon is shown down on the bottom.

There are a lot of planes and worlds and Morg doesn’t know how to access them yet so he focuses on the dungeon he is standing in for now. "The size of this dungeon is unknown but rumors have filtered back of the existence of a large crypt, a temple, and even a strange bazaar." (from the manual) Morg checks his inventory:

The sounds of chirping birds from the forest are now changed to the dark foreboding sounds of the dungeon. In the first room there’s a Ranger being attacked by a Bandit. Morg pierces the Bandit with the Trident. Some Elgars show up, there seems to be a lot of friendly creatures down here.

Morg enters a dark room and zaps a Wand of Light. He finds 86 gold lying on the floor. In the third room he fells two bandits and finds a Plate Mail. He returns to the surface and drops some unidentified items and armor and goes down again to collect some more. Now he meets a Viking, Gylfi. This is an allied Norseman and Morg can exchange items with him. Morg takes a Topaz Ring and a Boomerang from him but promises to give him some armor in return. He heads for the surface again and identifies all stuff.

Aha, the Boomerang was magical! (+3) Morg also has a ring of Regeneration and a ring of Genesis. He puts on the Ring of regeneration, it will speed his natural healing. The armor was normal. He picks up the Plate Mail to give to Gylfi. He goes down the stairs again and Gylfi is standing there waiting. Morg gives and tells Gylfi to equip the Plate Mail but notices that Gylfi now lacks a weapon. Morg runs up the stairs again and fetches Gylfi a Mace (+0). It’s not a Boomerang (+3) but it’s a weapon.

Down in the corridors of the dungeon Morg notices that the wall is missing in a couple of places There’s only empty space. Morg decides to wait to enter empty space until he can fly or something.

In the next room a Cockatrice attacks. Its gaze can turn a man to stone. Morg has a couple of Clay Lumps to counter that effect. He manages to slay the Cockatrice without meeting its gaze. A Summon Monster Trap blocks the next corridor. Morg uses his skill of relocation to teleport and his Ring Of Locust Mastery to control the teleportation and materializes on the other side of the trap. In the next room he finds the Red Bag. The Red Bag stores an almost infinite amount of items without getting any heavier because all the items are in another plane and thus it also protects its content from damage. Morg transfers his loot to the bag, besides a few important scrolls and potions that could be needed in a hurry.

Morg meets another Norseman named Kormack and takes a ring of Regeneration and a ring of Agility (+1) (AC -4). With two rings of Regeneration he will heal pretty quick. The section is now cleared, and Morg goes east.

Morg encounters a Pelgrat, an ethereal creature that feeds on the power of wands and breathes dangerous rays. Before Morg has the time to engage the Pelgrat it steals charges from his Wands and "changes shape slightly and disappears from sight". Morg wonders if it became invisible or teleported away.

Morg encounters a Vampire and incinerates it with a Wand of Fire. There’s a skeleton close by, perhaps from an unfortunate adventurer. He had a Ring of Famine, so he might have starved to death, but as there is a Food Ration by the skeleton he was probably a victim of the Vampire.

He reads the diary:

Morg meets a friendly Lacunar and in the next corridor there are two dead Lacunars and one dead Elgar. Morg is wondering if they are new victims of the Vampire, but a surprise attack from the Pelgrat disturbs his thoughts. Once again the Pelgrat draws charges from Morgs wands and disappears. Morg angrily places his wands into the Red Bag.

The Pelgrat once again makes a surprise attack and fires an orange ray at Morg that takes away half of his health. Morg engages and three times they exchange blows before the Pelgrat falls (33/105 HP). But with two Rings of Regeneration he regains his health fast (2 HP/turn) so he will be fully restored in no time.

Morg continues and fells three Womeras with his Boomerang. There are Elgars and Lacunars turned to stone in the corridors, presumably the victims of the Cockatrice that Morg dispatched a couple of rooms earlier.

He finds a vortex leading once again to Slaeter’s Sea. He uses the pocket-sized ship, Skidblanir, to sail over the sea and explores the land on the other side. A Bandit zooms in from nowhere but Morg kills it quickly and finds a Ring of Relocation on his body. A Hrygar swoops in and hits Morg and swoops away again but Morg stops it in the middle of the air with his Boomerang.

Some Giant Squids and Hatchet Fishes come to close for comfort and Morg decides to return to the dungeon. The Giant Squids are dangerous with their eight crushing arms and best be taken out from a distance.

Morg finds a scroll of Blessing and decides it’s time to return to the surface and identify the loot. He turns out a magical Grey Cloak (+3), a Ring of Crystal (acid resistance) and a scroll of Knowledge. He reads the scroll and learns the art of Alchemy, way before he has reached mastery as an alchemist apprentice. He learns how to mix three special potions.

Morg continues to explore the dungeon and gets surprised by an Archmage. They are very dangerous and can destroy entire classes of objects. Morg zaps the Wand of Cancellation to cancel the powers of the Archmage and then enters a long clash with him. The Archmage has inferior armor and loses the battle. Morg searches his clothes and finds an enormous amount of items.

Later, in another room Morg and his illusion encounters a Red Ooze. The Red Ooze consumes the illusion while Morg is keeping the distance and throwing the Boomerang. Something invisible is beginning to attack Morg, draining him. At the same time a Phausq, an eyeless creature that shuns light, enters the room and everything gets black. Morg zaps the Wand of Light and the room fills with light again and the Phausq is destroyed. The Red Ooze moves close to Morg and he panics, attacking the Ooze with his Trident (+1) that is instantly consumed by the same. If Morg should attack the Red Ooze again it might consume his Gauntlets and maybe even his hands. It’s really nice in a situation as this to be a Master Conjurer and have the ability of Relocation instead of relying on scrolls of Travelling. Morg teleports away and leaves the section to identify his loot. Luckily one of the Archmage’s rings turns out to be a Ring of Third Sight, which enables the user to see invisible things. Morg, with a firm grip around the handle of his Silver Sword, heads straight back to the place of the last engagement to seek revenge on the invisible thing draining him, and of course on the Red Ooze that ate his Trident. As an extra precaution he wears the Archmage’s Holocaust Cloak (+3) and a blessed scroll of Lava Strike.

The room of the last engagement is empty, only the body of the Phausq littering the floor. Morg continues down a corridor and spots, with the help of his acute senses from wearing the Ring of Third Sight, the Shadow that was draining him of health. He slashes the phantom with his Silver Sword until it disappears into thin air. Now where is that Red Ooze.

The rooms in the area are darkened, supposedly part of the Phausq’s lair. No sign of the Ooze. Some Gas Balls comes floating and explodes near Morg, making him deaf. Morg reads a scroll of Soul Seeking and senses all creatures in the sector, but can’t find the Ooze, it might be dead and the Trident gone forever. The dungeon section is empty of creatures so he continues exploring a new section, Silver Sword in hand.

In a corridor Morg encounters a Migdnart, a devil-spawned being from Niflheim. They exchange a couple of blows and Morg is down to almost half of his health.

Panicked he zaps the devil with a Wand of Sleep and it falls asleep. Just as Morg is about to finish the devil off, another one turns up. He makes that one fall asleep too and then finishes both off with 2-3 slashes at each.

The entrance to the next room is blocked by yet another Migdnart and when Morg engages it a crimson ray hits the Migdnart in the back and continues to hit Morg but without any effect. The ray kills the devil in the next round and Morg takes a quick peek inside the room. The source of the crimson ray is a Sorceror, and there’s also another Migdnart further into the room.

Morg teleports out of the situation, wears his Silver Mantle (magic resistant) and conjures forth his illusion. They together take on the enemy.

Morg charges the Sorcerer and the illusion takes on the Migdnart. Morg and illusion hits their foes three times in a row and the Sorcerer perishes. Morg steps to the side and gets a clear line of sight to the Migdnart and takes it out with the Boomerang.

A Migdnart attacks from the next corridor. His first hit causes heavy damage (-33 HP). Morg is shaken and zaps a Wand of Fire at the devil, but it is unaffected. Of course, it’s a devil from Niflheim and resistant to heat. Morg teleports out. He has to rearrange his equipment to get better protection. Maybe the Wand of Ice works better on the fiery devils? He doesn’t want to zap his Wand of Sleep too often, it hasn't many charges left.

Back in the next room there’s a body of a dead Migdnart and some Gas Balls and a Red Ooze comes toward Morg. The Ooze is frozen in its track with a ray of ice and killed by two more. In the last room of the sector Morg finds a stairay leading down. The toughness of the Migdnart convinces Morg that it’s best to explore the 10-meter depth before going deeper.

In another sector Morg encounters a Magician. He gesticulates and Morg's backpack quivers. Morg puts the Magician to sleep with a Wand and puts on the Silver Mantle to resist magic. He then slays the Magician with his Silver Sword. Some items in the backpack were polymorphed into something else.

Two Yapoks attack. "They are aggressive and can call others to their help."

Morg dispatches one and the other retreats. Morg quickly kills a Secitt, a small creature which rapidly multiplies when near its next meal, before it has time to multiply. A few steps later he meets a Breeder, a creature that clones other creatures. This sector seems to be a breeder’s heaven and Morg’s nightmare.

A Kalvin attacks ripping out one of Morgs four eyes.

Morg puts the Kalvin to sleep but then a Stun Worm comes from behind. This is a dangerous situation; if the Stun Worm stuns Morg the Kalvin might wake up before Morg and rip out all of his eyes.

Morg decides to quickly read a scroll of Lava Strike. The resulting streams of Lava kill the Stun Worm and Morg can kill the sleeping Kalvin. Morg was lucky to have a scroll of Lava Strike ready.

Morg kills a couple of Migdnart devils. They are dangerous, having two attacks and making heavy damage but Morg’s pair of Rings of Regeneration helps him to quickly recover after each battle. He kills a Wraith and eats it gaining experience and goes up to Level 14, learning three more potions to mix.

He finds an amulet. Then he sees a ring floating on the surface of a pool of quicksand and when he gets into the pool the ring sinks. Morg gets out of the pool using the Grappling Hook.

Beneath a scroll there was a vortex and Morg was teleported to Slaeter’s Sea and almost surrounded by Glards, but he made it back by jumping into the vortex again. Later he finds two skeletons and some equipment, and reads their dairies. He learns that "A disperser helm protects against psionic attack and that:

12000 turns has passed and all but one sector is explored of the 10m dungeons. There’s no visible way to enter the last sector. Time to make a permanent backup.

To be continued...

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Jagged Campaign Part 3

2007-01-22T00:34:00.000-08:00

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9:47 Day 2 Drassen Mine Attack.
We sneaked prone through the grass towards the houses from the south. A soldier walked around a corner and spotted Ice and drew his gun. Ice peppered him with lead and he landed in a pool of blood. Detected, we quickly ran to positions behind the nearest house.

Two soldiers came around the corner of the next house and Fox shouted: “Aggressives!” One of them turned around and disappeared around the corner again. Fox was the only one with a line of sight but it was a long shot. She missed with the first but hit with the second max aimed shot and she learned from the experience (Marksmanship skill +1). Ira and I ran behind the closest house to protect the left flank from flanking enemies. Nails and Ice moved up to better positions. Ice spotted the second soldier and had to drop to the ground without cover. He threw away a snap shot but missed. Both bad dudes fired at Ice but missed. Ira and I moved along the wall and I heard a faint sound coming from the northeast. “Just heard a noise.”

A new target presented itself in front of Fox. She choosed between her last wounded target that was prone or a closer standing target. To fire at the standing target would take a little more time when she shifted her aim, but he was closer and a greater threat so she fired at him. She missed the first and shattered a window in the distance but hit his chest with the second. That left him standing but in a poor condition. Nails tried to finish him off but aimed far to the right. Ice nailed him with a snap shot but missed the next target with his second one. Ira and I played it safe and waited for someone to come around the corner, but when I didn’t hear anything we continued moving. I noticed someone through a window cowering, but it was a civilian. Both visible bad dudes fired at Ice and grazed him once. One of the soldiers was bleeding, he was moaning (-1 Hp), and the second one disappeared around the corner. Ice moved to cover beside Fox and Nails fired at the bleeding soldier and hit but did only light damage (-3), he must be wearing body armor. Nails reloaded his shotgun with PolyCore Slugs, they tear through body armor as though it were tissue paper. He hadn’t time to fire though.

The second soldier came around the corner again and Ice sprayed him, hitting with two rounds, killing him. Fox emptied her Glock at the bleeding soldier without hitting.

I strafed around the corner and saw none. I quickly ran, vulnerable to fire from many houses across the street, and opened the door to the room where the civilian was cowering and entered. Ira followed me and ran to a window facing to the northeast. Too late she spotted an enemy hiding outside the house just a couple of meters away. She had no time to react and ran past the window to take cover. No one fired at her. She turned around and noticed that the soldier now was blocked from view. Nails took some fire that hit the tree he was taking cover behind. He returned the fire but missed. Ice tried a well-aimed shot and hit. “You’re history, dude.”

Ira heard a definite sound and I heard a faint sound coming from the northeast, indicating that the enemy was just outside the house to the north. I prepared to fire through the window I was crouching behind. Ice moved up to the wall to sneak a peek around the corner. Nails ran to a bush and crouched with a line of sight along the wall where Ira had seen the soldier outside the house. Apparently the soldier decided to turn around because a second later he came around the corner again in plain view of Nails. Nails hadn’t time to fire so he dropped to the ground (interrupt turn).

The soldier spotted Nails and turned around once again and ran straight into my line of sight outside the window. I had flipped the MP5K to automatic and sprayed the guy with both shattered glass and lead (interrupt for both Dylan and Ira). The soldier dropped out from view underneath the window. The immediate area cleared, Fox reloaded her Glock with 15 rounds and took out her medical kit to dress Ice’s wounds. Nails, Ira and I advanced. When I exited the house I noticed that the guy I had sprayed was still alive. I finished him off with a karate chop to his neck. Nails got spotted by a bad dude behind the next house in the row of houses and took a couple of rounds above his head (interrupt for enemy) before he had time to drop behind a small tree. The bad dude got a good look at Nails and obviously thought he looked mean as he turned around and ran around the corner into my view. I dropped to the ground beside the poor guy I just had killed. I let go of a burst but missed. Ira reacted to my bad situation and ran out and crouched behind me for an aimed shot but missed. The soldier fired two rounds at us and I reflected: “Yeah, that coulda been bad, but I got me some kickass karma.” Then I returned the favor with a well-aimed round killing the already wounded soldier. “Bingo!”

We all reloaded and sneaked along the row of houses (real-time) until Nails spotted an enemy a distance away to the east. We all took cover behind houses except Nails who dropped down behind a tree (turn-based). The soldier hid behind a house and disappeared. Ice and I sneaked along opposite walls to surprise him (real-time). Ice saw him first and fired a burst, hitting with one round (-22) and backed behind cover.

Figuring that the bad guy would wait for Ice to peek around the corner I sneaked around my corner and sent a focused burst at his side, killing him.

Area cleared we went scavenging. We found some powerful .357 ammo, but we didn't find the gun to load it into. We found some marbles in a drawer and a first aid kit in a bathroom. I talked to a civilianwho said: “I think all of us should be standing up to the Queen’s army. Maybe you should show us how to use guns?” I then went to the mining office and talked with the head miner, Fred Morris. He promised to continue mining and turn the proceeds to me. I took some TNT and some wire cutters from the office and then entered the mine. I was so low on funds that I decided to do some prospecting. There were a lot of workers down there, but they didn't say much. I found a much needed toolbox. With it Nails could begin to repair damaged stuff. I actually found quite many small silver nuggets worth around $50 a piece for a total of $1646. I deposited the money to my account. I was totally wasted when I came out of the mine and I had to catch my breath.

Nails found a bar. The bartender told him about his four brothers, all bartenders in Arulco. He served alcohol, wine and beer. A civilian at the pool table told Nails that there's a weapon dealer in San Mona.

A civilian told Ira that there's a hospital in Cambria. Another one told her that we should avoid Alma, because it’s a military town. Nails found a medical kit and two tranquilliser darts in a dentist’s office. I found a break light in an abandoned store. Ira found the church and talked to the priest. He promised to get food and supplies to Omerta by tomorrow morning. Nails picked the door to a room in the back of the church and found a shotgun and some ammo in a locked chest. He took the stuff; we’re on a holy war here.

Everybody gave damaged stuff to Nails and he began repairing it with the toolbox. I began to train militia; I had to pay $750 for the gear. Fox was doctoring Ice and Ira with a medical kit.

Ice was completely restored at 12:00 and helped me with training the militia. At 17:00 Fox and Nails went to bed. At 19:00 a squad of ten militia soldiers had been trained in the basics of the art of combat and Ira was fully healed. There were small enemy squads moving in the vicinity.

Ice, Ira and I weren’t especially tired so we formed a squad and got ready to infiltrate the next section of Drassen. It was becoming dark so I would lead because of my better night vision skill. I borrowed some 9mm pistol clips from Fox just in case. I only had one extra 9mm SMG clip. I switched my flak jacket for Ice’s kevlar west and borrowed Fox’s steel helmet to have some more body protection. Ice and I took one water canteen each, this fight could turn hectic. I took the Remington shotgun from the church, just gone over by Nails, just in case. We rested a couple of hours while we waited for the twilight. The crickets played ever louder.

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Jagged Campaign Part 2

2007-01-18T18:16:00.000-08:00

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10:36 Day 1 Country Road

We walked along a country road towards Drassen when Ira said: “We have company. Deidranna’s men are around." We had three choices; retreat and travel another way, try to sneak past the enemy squad or take them out. We didn't retreat.

I sent Ice ahead on recon. He crouched stealthily (highest agility: 89) to the next cover behind some brush. Then the rest of us moved over, a lot noisier. Ice moved again and then stopped and said: “The bad dudes are here. Time for them to taste trouble.” (switching to turn-based) He went prone and hoped the bad dude wouldn’t spot him. He remained undetected and the bad dude disappeared from sight. (switching to real-time) They all crawled towards a group of boulders north of the enemy position. Suddenly Ira said: “The army! I knew we would see them sooner or later.” (switching to turn-based) Ira was spotted. Ice, Ira and I took cover behind the rocks. Ira had time to fire a round, although the dude was outside effective range, and she missed. Ice spotted a second bad dude to the front left. Nails ran to the left to try to flank the left dude. Fox ran to the right and took cover behind a tree. The first bad dude fired two rounds at Ira and hit her with the last one (Red bar: Health. Blue bar: Energy. Green bar: Morale.)

Ira returned the fire but missed. Fox fired two rounds but missed. I fired two snap shots and hit with both. The dude fell and was dying. Ice fired at the guy to the left but he was outside effective range and missed. Nails moved in and spotted the left dude and dropped behind a boulder. Ice fired a couple of rounds at him to suppress him. I ran towards the dying dude but spotted a third a short distance behind the first one. I wanted to dive but only had time to kneel. Both enemies fired at me but missed. This gave Nails the time to get closer. I ran back to cover behind the rocks. Ira crawled behind a boulder and readied her medical kit to dress her wounds. The dude closest to Nails became nervous and tried to leave his position running. Nails was prone and had him lined up and fired away. A good hit in the chest (making –81 damage) dropped the dude. Ira was now bandaged.

Fox rushed forward to a position behind a boulder and spotted two more guys. She dropped behind the rock and took some fire. Everybody advanced some, leaving their cover, to come into range. Fox was in a dangerous position facing two enemies so she crawled behind a boulder and fired at another dude that came into view. Ice dropped behind a bush and fired a burst at a prone dude hitting him with one round. Snake fired his shotgun but hit a tree. A bullet grazed Ice and he got angry and killed the dude he just wounded with another burst. Fox peeped over the boulder and put a bullet into one of the two remaining enemies just a few meters away, wounding him. After a short sprint I reached a good flanking position behind a boulder to the left of the enemies. Ice took fire from both enemies. They got nervous and tried to change position. Fox peeped over the boulder again and dropped the dude she had wounded with two well placed bullets. I fired a burst at the last remaining enemy, hitting with one bullet. Ice fired two aimed rounds hitting with one leaving the target critically wounded. Fox peeped over once more and finished him off. He was the last one.

We searched the bodies and found some ammo and a Colt .45. We continued east along the road, but when we reached the northern part of Drassen, the airport, we went south into the woods. The airport was surely well guarded and had to be dealt with later when we were better prepared. We continued south into a swamp (D12). At 16:24 we noticed a house in the swamp (this location is random).

I entered the house and talked to a guy called Skyrider.

He was a chopper pilot hiding from Diedranna. He could offer transport if we escorted him to the airport. He seemed like a nice guy and a chopper would be really nice. I agreed (he joined the squad but couldn’t be euipped).

18:09 Day 1 Drassen Mine Recon

We prepared for battle and moved into town. “This is a guaranteed combat area. Got enemies.”

The number of enemies was unknown. The squad was low on energy from the trip through the woods and swamp, the only one fresh was Skyrider but he wouldn’t fight (EP = Energy Points).

We entered the zone from the west and we deployed as one squad in the southwest.

The position had bad cover so we retreated south onto a road leading out of Drassen. Fox said: “I need my beauty sleep soon.” Nails agreed. We were becoming tired. We then moved east and arrived at a river at 23:06 to plan an attack at Drassen from the south instead. We had enemy presence both in Drassen and in the swamp we just left. Everybody was tired so we took up defensive positions and went to sleep (time acceleration used).

07:00 Day 2 South of Drassen

I’ve got an email in the morning from Enrico. Everybody was still tired so we slept one more hour. At 08:20 we locked and loaded and began moving north.

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Jagged Campaign Part 1

2007-01-16T16:29:00.000-08:00

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Game options: Experienced, Iron Man, Tons of guns, Realistic

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Jagged Campaign Part 1

It all started with an email.

I met with Enrico at a bar (intro movie) and he told me that a Queen Deidranna had taken over his island of birth, Arulco, in a military coup. Now she is running the island as an evil dictator and Enrico wanted me to free the island of her evil reign.

I sent for some information on Arulco from the Recon Intelligence Service.

This is the most important bits of that report:

We agreed on the sum of $35.000. I usually don’t accept these kind of low-budget missions where the goal is to take on a dictator’s whole army, but in this case there were a rebel force already in place and there were some mining operations to take control over. As soon as the funds were transmitted I logged on to A.I.M (Association of International Mercenaries).

Len Anderson, my favourite choice on these bigger guerrilla missions, already was on an assignment. Looking at the prices of the people I wanted I finally understood that I myself had to participate in this mission. I had just recently got an email from I.M.P (Institute for Mercenary Profiling) to do a profiling for $3000 so I logged on to their site.

I answered a lot of goofy questions and used some points to define my abilities and skills.

It turned out that I still was ambidextrous and that my night vision was perfect. My knowledge about explosives was zero though.

Back at A.I.M I sorted the mercs to find the best medics. I wanted someone with good marksmanship skill and found Dr. Clifford Highball. He isn’t exactly an athlete but he comes with a Thompson for a total price of $13.345 per week. I continued looking and found Fox. I recognized her from the last issue of “Babes and Bullets.” Hmm, she is equally skilled with both hands and delivers for a whole week for $6.615 (click image to get the big picture).

Okay, but I needed some soldiers too, and the selection was quite limited because many mercs were on assignments. With that low a price for the medic I could afford Shadow, an ex-ranger and sniper that had turned stalking to an art form. Or I could afford both Ice, good at automatic weapons, and Nails, good at mechanics, explosives and lock picking. I called Nails and he agreed to serve for one week.

Then I called Ice and the team was complete, with $1680 left on my account.

7:00 Day 1 Omerta Sector A9

We rappelled into Omerta.

We knew the area had hostiles so we were just about to crouch down when Snake said: “Let the games begin.” He had spotted a dude to the right less then twenty meters away. We all dropped to the ground as the dude ran forwards then dived and threw a bullet in our direction, high. Ice missed his first snap shot with his Thompson M1A1, but found the target on the second try.

Nails sent a hail of buckshots from his shotgun but only managed to throw a cloud of dirt into the air to the right of the target. I aimed and eased away a round from my H&K MP5K. I finished him off with my first shot. “Tagged ya!”

We didn’t have time to regroup, a second hostile turned up from the south. “Time to take out the trash!” Fox and I moved behind an old sand bag trench. We fired one round each, missed and then dropped prone.

Nails tried to flank him to the right while Ice moved up to Fox and me. The hostile fired a couple of rounds over Ice’s head and then ran into a building. Nails crouched behind a car wreck and Ice moved into the trench and crouched, pointing his Thompson at the hole in the wall where the dude had disappeared. A gunshot was heard from the west and a bullet whizzed by Nails. “Hahaha… you have to do better than that!” Nails taunted the shooter.

The dude in the house showed his face in the hole in the wall and Ice sprayed him with a burst from his SMG. Two rounds hit and the dude fell. “You’re history, dude.” Ice said.

This cleared Nails left flank so he could move around the car wreck and take cover from the western hostile. He had the enemy in his sight but he was outside of effective shotgun range so Nails went prone.

Fox and I ran to a house on the other side of the street from the enemy. We lost sight of the enemy for a few seconds but when Nails sat up he spotted him beside a pile of stones on the other side of the street. He was still out of range so Nails went prone again.

Fox and I ran into the house in front of the hostile to get into firing positions. I took the wrong door and ended up in a toilet. Fox ran to a door opening and fired a round from her Glock 17 but missed. She ducked back into the room. Ice ran to the house where the first dude was dispatched and prepared to enter the hole in the wall. We lost sight of the enemy behind the pile of stone but suddenly he came running towards Fox out into the street. Nails got up on his knee and nailed him with the shotgun. “Wicked!”

We all observed the pile of stones for a moment but nothing was moving. We moved out slowly (the game switches to real-time). Nails said: “We haven’t eliminated the other club yet. Nobody get stupid!”

Ice crouched into a house on the other side of the street. It was getting brighter outside. He found a woman and a boy, Fatima and Pacos, in the house. They didn’t want to talk to him until it was safe outside. He checked the windows and spotted a bad dude with a rifle or a SMG a couple of houses away. He was not in range so Ice dropped down behind the window. While he popped up now and then to get a fix on the dude Nails and I ran for a house close to the dude to flank him from the opposite side. He must have heard us because he moved away from the house towards Ice’s position. Ice crouched and fired two snap shots (instead of one carefully aimed shot), shattering the window, but missed both and went prone again. Nails entered the house and spotted the dude through a window and fired but missed. I moved to the corner of the house and sent a burst of bullets at the dude, hitting with one leaving him in a poor condition. I took cover behind the wall.

Ice took a careful aim out of the window and hit the dude in the chest, killing him. “You’re history, dude!” “Yeah dude! Put another sector in the win column. Ain’t nothing left breathing here.” Sector cleared. Nails went out and checked the dude’s body and found an H&K MP53. It was in a bad shape. Nails looked at the gun and said: “I’ll fix this in no time. Just give me a toolbox.”

Ice reloaded his SMG magazine with rounds from a couple of .45 calibre pistol clips he had found. I found a bloody throwing knife in the street and Fox found a couple of .38 speed loaders (all other weapons broken presumably). While the others checked out the empty houses I talked to the woman, Fatima. She asked why we were here. I told her Enrico sent me but she didn’t believe me because everybody thought that he was dead. My laptop signalled that I had a new email. I read it.

Now I remembered the letter I had in my pocket. I gave it to her and told her that I was looking for Miguel (in charge of the rebel force). She was very happy to hear that Enrico was alive and wanted to help his old people. Deidranna had bombed them for two straight months now. It showed, the village was in ruins. All houses were already looted, but Nails found a crowbar and some wire cutters. Fatima agreed to show us to Miguel and exited the village to the east.

We entered another section of the bombed out village. Fatima took us to a house with a guard outside. He was very angry at first but then he calmed down and showed us down a secret trap door. Here we met the leader Miguel in the rebel headquarters and he was happy that Enrico was alive and had sent us to aid him. Nails said with his whiskey voice: ”Rebel force! Right on, scooter. Let me tell ya, I’m a rebel from way back. Your business is my business, Mike. I’m your man.” Miguel updated us on the situation and his right hand, Carlos, told us that the highest priority was to get food and supplies to the rebel HQ. We should clear a path to a village close by called Drassen and speak with the priest there. Nails whispered to me: “I ain’t crazy about tight places, man. This place is givin’ me the sweats.”

I asked Miguel if he wanted to come along, but he offered Ira instead.

She was a teaching expert and an okay medic. She was armed with a .38 special and equipped with a medical kit and a steel helmet. I had hoped for a platoon or at least a squad and got a teacher. Well, you never learn, do you?

We went up the stairs. There were some boxes by the stairs and Nails found some TNT with an attached detonator and some .45 and 9 mm ammo.

Before we left Omerta we checked the ruins and found a first aid kit in a kitchen more bombed out than mine. The time was 7:30 when we moved out towards Drassen.

Jump to the Next Part

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Jagged Alliance 2

2007-01-16T16:27:00.000-08:00

Genre: CRPG
World map: Yes
Permadeath: Optional Ironman Mode
Races: 2 (friendlies and bad dudes)
Classes: Hillbillies, murderers, psychos and machos
Religion: No, but tons of guns
Spellcasting: No, but lots of grenades
Persistent dungeons: Static
Version: Jagged Alliance 2 Gold
Latest version: 1.12
Graphics: Isometric
Mouse: Yes
Sound: Yes
Resource: Walkthrough

The Jagged Alliance series is one of the best turn-based tactical squad combat games in the family of X-COM game systems. The game is actually played in four layers. Through your laptop you get emails and attachments, hire mercenaries, buy guns & ammo and manage your budget. On the overhead map you deploy your squads, train militias, give your mercs tasks, manage inventories and examine the locations on the map. On the zoomed in map you pick locks, disarm traps, sneak around, talk to people, shop, kick in doors and step on land mines in real-time. In the turn-based combat you do all of the above, except talk to people, instead you dodge bullets and deal lead.

In Ironman Mode you get a kind of permadeath. You can't save the game when in a firefight, and sometimes they can take quite a while to play, so if the last bad dude on the map hits your favorite merc in the head it hurts as much to reload from the start of the battle as to see his head explode. The problem is that you can't turn your computer off until the battle is finished.

There are a lot of randomness in the game, like what stuff you find, what mercs are available, what's available in shops and the location of NPC:s. There are a lot of strange items, and some of them can be used to enhance other items or build totally new ones. It's all for you to figure out. But please, don't blow yourself up.

Read the Jagged Campaign.

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Fortress Tinearths – Year 1066

2007-01-16T13:08:00.000-08:00

Jump to details about Dwarf Fortress
Jump to First part

1066 Early Spring
We flooded the farm plots as usual. I ordered the production of some more tables and thrones. We laid some more stone floor outside. An Elven caravan arrived. Two Elves and their two pack mules. Etur is still lying wounded out in the bush and no one seems to help her. She is badly mauled and wont survive. It takes several days for the Elves to arrive at the trade depot. We trade some stone arts for different kind of cloth.

Three Ogres roam the wilderness. I didn’t notice that the squad leader for the Swordsdwarf squad was wounded and in bed, so two dwarves from the Marksdwarf squad arrived first. They only had a few bone bolts and got killed. One of them carried a baby into battle and it too was killed. Äs, the author of “a detailed study of a Trappers life in the bush” is one of the dead. Later the Swordswarves, with a new squad leader, arrived and killed the Ogres.

I noticed that there is blood, vomit and a bolt on the floor of the Entrance Hall and a corpse from an Ogre on the refuse pile. It must have reached the fortress and got wounded from a stone-fall trap, and then killed by a Marksdwarf.

15th Slate Mid-Spring.
The Mayor, Masons Guildmaster and the Berite (House Ber) have arrived. Population is now 87 dwarves. Justice demands two more ropes to hold would be prisoners. Tirist the Sheriff formed the Fortress Guard and is now Captain of the Guard and demands better quarters. The Fortress Guard needs 8 recruits. The Masons detail the floor in his quarters.

Urvad, a child and competent grower, gets into a strange mood and withdraws from society, and claims a craftdwarf’s workshop. He fetches some Ogre and Harpy bones and one jet stone and now sketches pictures of an ore mine. He wants some kind of ore or metal or glass bars. We try to make some glass bars but we need to collect sand to the glass furnace. To do this we need bags to put the sand into. We begin making them at the clothes workshop.

Late Spring
We build an ashery to make potash to make pearlash in the kiln to later make clear glass in the glass furnace. The Miners are mining some tunnels and strike tin ore. Urvad the child runs to collect the tin ore as soon as he hears about it. He begins a mysterious construction. We make some tin bars from the newly found ore.

The mayor wants us to make a couple of shoes. I order the shoes from the Manager. An Ogre comes close to the fortress but gets killed by the Marksdwarf squad.

Urvad with the strange mood constructs an Ogre bone shield. He is now a legendary bone carver and very tough and extremely agile and strong. Soldier material!

We struck Sphalerite ore. Combined with Malachite (copper) we can make brass bars. Captain of the guard is happy with the detailed floor but she thinks the office needs to be nicer. We trie to change to a better quality door. That’s not enough. We make an obsidian throne, she likes that material, and replaces the old throne in her office. That satisfied her.

Early Summer
7 Peasants and 1 Swordsdwarf were made recruits in the Fortress Guard. The Mayor wants decent rooms. We had to first smoth then detail both floors and walls to make her satisfied with 2x3 square rooms. A Goblin Thief sneaked into the finished goods room and stole a silk shoe and got away.

Mid-Summer
The mayor is finally satisfied. I had to give him a very nice cabinet. A Metalsmith is taken by a fey mood. He just stare into empty space. We lack the right kind of workshop, presumably the metalsmith’s forge. Etur the injured Carpenter, One-Eye, is still lying mauled out in the bush and is stricken with melancholy and dies.

Late Summer
All nobles are satisfied with their rooms. The Mason's Guild Noble wasn’t satisfied until he got a masterpiece cabinet in his bedroom. An Ogre seriously wounds a Fortress Guard recruit, before an ordinary Swordsman strikes the Ogre down.

Early Autumn
The dwarven caravan arrives. We trade for 30 meat and some leather and silk. We had too few arts, and had to trade some cloth for cloth to maximize the export value. This is to establish some reputation as a trader to be able to buy an anvil in the future (total export wealth is now 1750). The melancholic Metalsmith drowns himself.

Late Autumn
Another Metalsmith has been possessed, but he’s just lying in bed sleeping. 10 migrants with a foal arrive making the total population 96 dwarves. We have no empty barrels, I tell the manager to produce 10 wooden barrels. I added a new Swordsdwarf to the Fortress Guard. We haul a lot of calves to the cage by the butcher’s shop. We lost a dog to 2 Harpies.

Early Winter
We built a new living block. I ordered the construction of 10 doors and 5 beds. We’ve got lots of prepared meals, such as plump helmet stew and roast taking up barrels. We prioritise brewing for a while. I also restricted the use of plump helmet to brewing only.

The Mechanis installed two more stone-fall traps in the corridor leading to the underground forest cave. The Harpies strike down a Trapper. I am sending both squads. A Swordsdwarf kills all three Harpies. Trapper Ducim is later killed by new Harpies, but he killed one and injured another one before dying. I am sending the squads once again. Three Goblin child snatchers tried to escape with childs, two were killed, but the third got away and the child is MIA. It was Urvad the legendary bone carver child. I positioned the Marksdwarf squad just outside the Main Gates to protect from thieves and wild animals.

We expanded the Upper Main Hall, it was getting cluttered. The moody Metalsmith is stricken with melancholy. There isn’t much fish in the swamps or rivers so I made three Fisherdwarves join a new Marksdwarf squad. They are practicing with bone bolt in the barracks.

Middle Winter
Stukos the recruit becomes a Marksdwarf. Later the other two recruits also become Marksdwarves. Some recruits of the Fortress Guard becomes Swordsdwarves from sparring in the barracks.

Late winter
The melancholic Metalsmith jumps into the cave river. Five Frogmen get interested, one of them attacks the drowning Metalsmith and the other four enters the underground forest. Instead of entering the trapped corridor they jump into the river to climb the bridge. A Swordswarf, the same that killed three Harpies, is on the bridge and throws the first Frogman back into the river with a mighty slash. The second Frogman climbs the bridge and enters the fortress but dies from a falling stone to the head. The third and fourth Frogman is about to climb the bridge but the Swordsdwarf is waiting for them.

This time the Swordsdwarf isn’t that lucky and gets thrown back and stunned. One of the Frogmen jumps at him. The other Frogman takes a right through the doors and gets mauled by a falling stone. The fifth Frogman decides to retreat. The Swordsdwarf recovers from the stun and kills the last Frogman.

A heavily wounded recruit from the Fortress Guard is stricken by melancholy. Our last Metalsmith gets possessed and seems to be wanting a metalsmith’s forge. We expand the underground forest cave. There’s about 10 young Tower-cap trees growing in the underground forest. Nil the Miner is working hard, she has been ecstatic lately.

"I really like it down here. It's nice to look at the Tower-caps growing in the mud. If I did't have to go drink that wonderful beer now and then I could stay here all time." Nil said.

"I'm glad you're happy! No more barrel throwing then?" I asked.

"No, no. I am happy as a cow with my work, my fine bed, my good bedroom and our legendary dining room. I kinda miss Urvad though. Think about all the nice stone carving he could have made." Nil's happy face turns into a sad stare.

"Yes, we really have to post a guard outside the gates. Those sneaky thieves avoid all traps. The problem is that the soldiers get unhappy standing in the rain. I have to think of something."

"Maybe there's no other way than to rotate two squads?"

"Maybe it is so, my dear friend. There's a position free in the new Marksdwarf squad." I said and raised an eyebrow.

"Come on, you know I hate crossbows!" Nil said and continued hacking angrily with his pick.

To be continued...

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The Morg Saga Part 2 - The Alchemist

2007-01-16T11:24:00.001-08:00

Jump to details about Ragnarok updated with a short review!
Jump to The Morg Saga Part 1 - The Conjurer

Text in red is game mechanics.
Text in green is fiction from outside of the game.
Text in quotation marks is in-game text.

The Morg Saga Part 2
Morg decides to drink some Mead in the safety of the shop. Intoxicated he stumbles about confused in the shop and walks in directions not intended. He reads a scroll of Blessing and garbles the words. His pack glows white and many of his items are blessed. When he’s sober again he reads the now blessed scroll of Experience and advances to Level 5 (65 HP) and learns the spell Reflect. It’s a defensive spell that reflects some physical damage. But the spell uses 11 Magic Points (MP) and Morg only has 10 so he’ll have to raise his MP someway. He sells the blessed scroll of Pure Evil for 127 gold, because if it’s pure evil it can’t be any good.

He conjures forth his illusory self and they walk back into the forest. They battle with some Retchweed, a plant that stuns. There are a lot of them and the illusion perishes. When Morg has exterminated all the Retchweed he has regained all Magic Points so he conjures up a new illusion. The section is fully explored and he continues west.

There are Gnomes, Orcs and Womeras; cannibalistic ancestor of mankind. They are throwing crude spears from a great distance and are difficult to detect. Morg finds a Chain Mail, and a Boomerang. He decides it’s time to ID everything and the Boomerang is +1, great! Finally a real missile weapon. He isn’t sure he did much damage with the thrown Sai. He finds a Barbed Whip that turns out to be a Chameleon and grabs him and tries to eat him. He manages to kill it with the Trident.

A Berserker comes out behind a tree. Morg throws the Boomerang and hits, and the boomerang returns to Morg. The Berserker drops a Wand of Fire when he dies. He finds another shop with a lot of things. He sells his Sai +0 and throwing knives, relying on the Boomerang for now. He eats some food the shop has on offer. He then buys two scrolls of ID and two potions of Experience, drinks some Mead, reads a Scroll of Blessing and drinks the now blessed Potions of Experience. Before drinking though he identifies his pack to be sure that the potions of Experience really are blessed. They are blessed and a ring gets identified as a Ring of Immunity that grants poison resistance. Morg reaches Level 8 (85 Hp) and learns the spell Entombment. It’s a spell that locks all doors on a level leaving it’s occupants to starve.

He continues west. Suddenly he falls into a pit. A pack of Wild Dogs attack but Morg kills them from the inside the pit with the Boomerang. He climbs out of the pit. He kills an Anssk with the Boomerang and eats it, and just as he has heard, gets a Sixth Sense. If he ever becomes blinded he will sense creatures with the sixth sense. He finds a scroll of Blessing and potion of Experience, great! When the sector is cleared he goes north to the Village and sells some things and buys a Pick Axe.

He continues south to one of the last three forest sectors. A lot of Orcs, Womeras and Wild Dogs attack. He has a Boomerang/Spear duel with a Womera, but the Womera only has three spears so Morg has the chance to throw the Boomerang two more times as the Womera closes in and fells her. An Orc charges but steps in a teleport trap and disappears. Later Morg attacks a Dreg but the Boomerang +1 breaks and disappears (maybe because of the Dreg’s acid). Morg throws the Sai +1 but misses and finishes off the Dreg with the Trident. He is now out of missile weapons. His boomerang skill has increased to 32.

There’s a pool of lava in the forest. Two potions are floating in the pool. Maybe one of them is a Potion of Magic so that Morg can cast his new spells. He gets greedy and jumps into the pool and grabs the potions, coming up on the other side with only half his HP intact. Stupid, but he survived. Sector is now explored, so he identifies all his items, but finds no interesting potions, but a Holocaust Cloak (protecting against heat, such as lava, hmm) and a Ring of 94% Protection (detects traps with 94% chance) and a ring of Locus Mastery (controls where to teleport).

He then Fast Moves north to the shop and sells some doubles and now has 1918 gold pieces. He buys the scroll of Dispel Hex and reads it and he is finally able to let go of the Trident if he wishes. The Holocaust Cloak gives as much protection as his Grey Cloak +1 so he sells the Grey Cloak. He returns to the third shop and buys two Potions of Experience and blesses them by getting drunk as usual.

He then goes south and finds some unidentified items, reads a blessed identification and drinks the two out of three Potions of Experience that are blessed. He also notices that he has a scroll of Wonder and a scroll of Time Stop, and a Wand of Cancellation (cancels some creatures special powers). Sounds powerful. He wears a Helmet +0 (AC –2), drinks a blessed Potion of Strength (STR 18.96) He ends his apprenticeship and becomes a Master Conjurer (cheating with Potions of Experience, just as any Conjurer would do). He gets 99 HP, the skill to teleport at will and the spell Draining (drain life force with bare hands). He can now choose to continue as a Conjurer or become apprentice in another profession. He chooses to become an Alchemist to learn how to mix some powerful potions.

He goes north to sell a few things and buys three unidentified potions and identifies them in the hope that one is a Potion of Raise Magic, and one of them are! He drinks it and gets MP 11 and can now cast Reflect and Draining.

He gets back to the unexplored forest and finds a Vortex, it teleports him to Slaeter’s Sea where he finds Skidblanir, Freyr’s pocket sized Boat. Slaeter’s Sea is said to lie on the other side of the impassable mountains that surround Midgard. From here it might be possible to get to places such as Mimer's Realm (which is host to hordes of powerful creatures in addition to the Spring and Well of Mimer), Jotenheim (the land of the fire and frost giants), Nidavellir (the caves of the elusive dwarfs), the river Gioll (the entrance to Niflheim) and the base of the flaming rainbow bridge, Bifrost, which leads to Asgard.

There’s a lot of Elgars, friendly birdmen, fighting sea monsters and the Elgars are clearly losing the battle. One of them drops a Silver Mantle (resist magic), and Morg snatches it and returns to the forest as he feels he’s yet to weak to fight these baddies.

He then travels to the last forest sector and finds a Potion of Raise Magic. It gives him 14 MP so it must have been blessed and he is now able to cast all his spells! A Weird fume comes floating through the forest, and when Morg gets close and inhales its fumes he looses memory of the sector map, it gets almost totally black again. Then he grows a new finger, grows new eyes and changes gender a couple of times. Finally his brain throbs and he gets vertiginous. He moves away and drinks a blessed cure that cures the sickness and ends up with 9 fingers (default 8) and 4 eyes and a male gender. The eyes make it easier to hit foes in combat and the fingers permit more rings to be worn. He finds a food store and stairs leading down into a dungeon.

He meets a Raven that says:

Morg saw Thokk and are looking for her to slay her and trap her soul in the Ring of Soul Trapping. He hunts Thokk down and zaps the giant with a Wand of Fire then stabs her with the Trident. When she dies her soul is trapped in the ring. The ring should be given to Hela in Niflheim, to make her free Balder's soul. He takes off the ring so that no other soul is trapped instead of Thokk’s.

He meets some friendly Dwarfs, Lacunars (mermen of legend) and a Ranger. All nine forest sectors are now explored. He heads for the stairs leading down into the dungeon. Now 8000 turns have passed and it’s time for a permanent back up.

Jump to Part 3 - 10m below ground

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Deathbringer the Halfling Crusader

2007-01-14T17:30:00.000-08:00

Jump to details about Dungeon Crawl.

Play style: Random character, everything default.

Text in red is game mechanics.
Text in green is fiction from outside of the game.
Text in quotation marks is in-game text.

Random chooses Halfling.

“Halflings, who are named for being about half the size of a human, live in small villages. They live simple lives, and have simple interests. Sometimes a particularly restless halfling will leave his or her village in search of adventure.

Halflings are very small and are among the least robust of any character species. Although only average at most fighting skills, they can use short blades well and are good at all forms of missile combat. They are also very stealthy and good at dodging and stabbing, but are poor at magic (except enchantments and, for some reason, translocations). They advance in levels as rapidly as humans. Halflings cannot wield large weapons.”

Random chooses Crusader. (yes, Halfling Crusaders exists)

“The Crusader is a decent fighter who can use the magical art of enchantment to become more dangerous in battle. Crusaders start out lightly armed and armoured, but equipped with a book of martial spells.”

Dungeon Level 1
Wielding a short sword, wearing a robe and equipped with a bread ration and a book of war chants, Deathbringer the Halfling Crusader ventures down into the dungeon to bring death.

He has no religion. He runs away from an Ooze. After killing a Giant Newt and a Giant Cockroach his dodging skill advances to 2 (5/11 Hp).

He wears a pair of boots (AC: 2). He rests and heals. He finds a chain mail and sees a Small Snake that hasn’t noticed him. He begins to dress the chain mail and forgot that it takes time, and the Small Snake and a Giant Bat start to bash him. He is critically wounded when he has finished dressing the Chain Mail (AC: 7)(2/11 Hp). He quaffs an inky potion and becomes invisible! The monsters still attack him, so he can’t be totally invisible but they don’t manage to hit him. He flees and the Small Snake looses track of him. He fights the bat for a while but finally gets away and rests to full health in a corner.

He kills the Giant Bat and finds a sling. He spots the Small Snake and kills it with a well-aimed stone from his sling. He encounters a Kobold and throws three stones at it but misses with all three. The Kobold engages in close combat.

Deathbringer gets electrocuted! Ouch! What was that all about?

Aha, he had a dwarven dagger of electrocution (18 damage).

Lessons learned: Shit happens. Cool killer names get you nowhere. Don’t play with random classes if you aren’t suicidal.

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Killer the Deep Elf Monk

2007-01-12T17:27:00.000-08:00

Jump to details about Dungeon Crawl updated with a short review!

Play style: Random character, everything default.

Text in red is game mechanics.
Text in green is fiction from outside of the game.
Text in quotation marks is in-game text.

Random chooses Deep Elf.

"The deep elves are an elven race who long ago fled the overworld to live in darkness underground. There they developed their mental powers, evolving a natural gift for all forms of magic (including necromancy and earth magic), and adapted physically to their new environment, becoming shorter and weaker than other elves and losing all colouration. They are poor at hand-to-hand combat but excellent at fighting from a distance."

Deep Elves can be many classes, random chooses Monk.

"The Monk is a member of an ascetic order dedicated to the perfection of one's body and soul through the discipline of the martial arts. Monks start with very little equipment, but can survive without the weighty weapons and spellbooks needed by other classes."

He is only equipped with an elven robe and a bread ration.

Dungeon Level 1
He finds a meat ration and gets hit by an arrow trap (7/11 Hp). He finds 11 poisoned needles. He kills a Kobold with a direct hit from a needle. He sees a Hobgoblin but it hasn’t noticed Killer, so he takes a walk to get a better throwing position and heal some damage.

Killer misses the Hobgoblin with all needles and is engaged in close combat. He misses the Hobgoblin with a headbutt. The Hobgoblin hits two times critically injuring Killer (1/11 Hp), while getting moderately injured by two punches from Killer. Almost dead he takes a chance and drinks a cyan potion and he feels better! (7/11 Hp) The Hobgoblin misses while Killer drinks. Killer hits but makes no damage. He hits again and The Hobgoblin goes down. He rests (10/11 Hp).

He spots an Ooze (found out that there's detailed descriptions). He avoids and outruns it.

He finds a runed chain mail and picks it up although he isn’t using armor. He is about to rest after fighting a Kobold but gets disturbed by a Bat. He kills it and rests for 200 turns (10/11 Hp).

He encounters the Ooze and barely succeeds to kill it, advancing to level 2 (15 Hp). Has a close encounter with a Goblin, eats a meat ration and gets full, and rests. Has a close encounter with a Hobgoblin (4/15 Hp). Rests. Finds a rambutan. He hears a Bark and faces a Jackal. A second Jackal emerges behind it. There’s a tough fight but Killer wins.

He tries a potion, it restores abilities. He reads his 4 scrolls. His robe gets +1. He then gets teleported. Nothing happens when he read the other two.

DL 2
He kills a Goblin and a Bat and advances to Level 3 (19/19 Hp). He increases his strength to 11 to make more damage. He makes short work of a Hobgoblin and feels powerful. He reads two new scrolls but nothing seems to happen. Maybe the scrolls affects weapons and he is unarmed?

He encounters a snake and gets poisoned and is having trouble hitting the snake (7/19 Hp). He quaffs a potion and becomes confused. He quaffs another one and gets fully healed but is still confused. The snake hits him again and he is more poisoned, draining his health. He tries to flee as soon as he has restored from the confusion but the snake gives chase and hits him again (2/29 Hp). He tries to put on his golden ring, but it’s cursed and he doesn’t know what it does. He tries to flee but finally succumbs to the poison.

The ring was a cursed –2, -4 ring of slaying.

Lessons learned. Not many. Maybe to move around a bit more cautiously and try to spot the creatures before they spot you. This character had no religion, so he couldn’t pray.

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Crawler the Ogre Mage

2007-01-10T14:43:00.000-08:00

Jump to details about Dungeon Crawl
Play style: Random character, everything default.

Text in red is game mechanics.
Text in green is fiction from outside of the game.
Text in quotation marks is in-game text.

Random chooses Ogre Mage

"Ogre-mages are a separate race of ogres who are unique among the beefier species in their ability to use magic, especially enchantments. Although slighter than their common ogre relatives they nevertheless have great strength and can survive a lot of punishment. They advance in level as slowly as high elves."

Ogre Mages can be:

Random chooses Ice Elementalist

"Elementalists are magicians who specialise in one of the four types of elemental magic: air, fire, earth, or ice. Ice Magic offers a balance between destructive conjurations and protective enchantments."

He is quite intelligent. He is equipped with a quarterstaff, a robe, a bread ration and a book of Frost.

He has some spellcasting skills.

He is looking at the Freeze spell description in the book of Frost.

Dungeon Level 1
Crawler encounters a dangerous Kobold throwing darts (3/12 Hp). He has to retreat and heal for 100 turns (10/12 Hp). He enters the room again but the Kobold is gone so he picks up a few darts left on the floor. He almost dies in a fight with a Rat and a Giant Newt (3/12 Hp). He rests 100 turns again (7/12 Hp).

He casts a Freeze spell on a Hobgoblin, and it gets lightly damaged. It’s a touch spell. He finds a red rock staircase down. He kills a Goblin with the Freeze spell. He advances to level 2 (18 Hp, 4 Mp). He memorizes the level 2 spell Throw Frost from the book of Frost.

He forgets to rest to regain health and gets attacked by 3 Hobgoblins and 1 Kobold in a steady flow. He takes a lot of damage because of his bad armor protection and has to Freeze the first three enemies to kill them quickly, but that exhausts all his magic power. The fourth Hobgoblin chases the critically wounded Crawler (3/18 Hp). When Crawler is cornered he has regained 2 magic points and casts a Throw Frost spell at the Hobgoblin moderately wounding it. But the next turn the Hobgoblin hits Crawler with his club, killing him.

> The hobgoblin hits you with a club!
> * * * LOW HITPOINT WARNING * * *
> Cast which spell ([?*] list)?
> Which direction ([*+-] to target)?
> The puff of frost hits the hobgoblin.
> The hobgoblin is moderately wounded.
> The hobgoblin misses you.
> You miss the hobgoblin.
> The hobgoblin misses you.
> You miss the hobgoblin.
> The hobgoblin hits you with a club!
> You die...

Lessons learned: Focus! Don’t forget to pray! Always rest to regain health.

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Heala the Elf Healer

2007-01-09T17:36:00.000-08:00

Jump to details about Dungeon Crawl
Play style: Random character, everything default.

Text in red is game mechanics.
Text in green is fiction from outside of the game.
Text in quotation marks is in-game text.

There are a lot of races to choose from.

Random chooses Elf. From the Manual:

“There are a number of distinct races of elf in the world. Elves are all physically slight but long-lived people, quicker-witted than humans but sometimes slower to learn new things. Elves are especially good at using those skills which require a degree of finesse, such as stealth, sword-fighting and archery, but tend to be poor at using brute force and inelegant forms of combat. They find heavy armour uncomfortable, and make the finest, lightest armours to be found anywhere. Elves are particularly good at using elven weapons.”

Elves can be:

Random chooses Healer. From Manual:

“The Healer is a priest of Elyvilon. Healers begin with minor healing powers, but can gain far greater abilities in the long run.”

Heala has quite average stats.

He has no special equipment apart from the very effective potion of heal wounds.

Heala knows a few skills that are being trained when used. By turning some of them off he can choose to specialize in some skills. He also has the Lesser Healing invocation; it costs 1 MP and some hunger to use.

The Goal: (from the manual)

“You goal is to locate the Orb of Zot, which is held somewhere deep beneath the world's surface. The Orb is an ancient and incredibly powerful artefact, and the legends promise great things for anyone brave enough to extract it from the fearsome Dungeon. Some say it will grant immortality or even godhood to the one who carries it into the sunlight; many undead creatures seek it in the hope that it will restore them to life. But then, some people will believe anything. Good luck!”

Dungeon Level 1

Heala enters the dungeon and kills a rat and a Goblin.

He kills a Kobold and finds 21 bolts. He enters a bigger room and sees a Goblin and some stuff. He “hears a shout!” He kills the Goblin with one strike and it drops a scroll labelled: “RYL PE”. He finds a robe, a spear and 2 potions of heal wounds and 22 poisoned arrows. He cuts up the Goblin into chunks of meat to carry with him (D).

He encounters a Goblin and examines it. It is wielding a dwarven dagger. He kills it and finds stairs leading down. He fast moves back to the big room by clicking with mouse on overview map. He then kills a Rat and a Kobold and advances to level 2 (17 Hp). He finds a dart that was fired from a trap at the Kobold and picks it up while avoiding triggering the trap. He throws the dart at another Kobold slightly injuring it. He finds orcish banded mail, a quarterstaff and a shield and stairs down. The level is explored.

He tries the scroll. “It crumbles to dust. You feel strangely unstable.” The next turn Heala is teleported to a yet unexplored section of the dungeon level and encounters a Hobgoblin.

Heala misses with the dart but kills the Hobgoblin with the quarterstaff and suffers only a slight wound (16/17 Hp). The dart disappears but he soon finds 23 more.

He steps in a trap and gets hit by a dart. (13/17 Hp) He rests to fully heal (by pressing shift-5). “His equipment suddenly feels to weigh less.” It’s the Goblin chunks that rotted away. He encounters a Small Snake. It’s fast and moves two steps for each dart that Heala throws. He misses with both darts but squashes the Snake with his staff.

He finds ring mail, scrolls and some potions. Tries the scrolls. “Nothing appears to happen.” He reads a second. “Your +0 quarterstaff glows green for a moment.” (It is now +1 to hit +0 to damage) He fights a Giant Cockroach. It’s tough and wounds Heala before he can kill it (11/17 Hp).

He uses his Lesser Healing ability (heals to 16/17 Hp, loses 1 of 2 Magic Points) and feels somewhat hungrier. He has three similar scrolls and tries one. His quarterstaff glows black and is cursed. He can’t unwield it or draw a new weapon. “The smell of rotting meat makes you sick.” He drops the rotting meat. He searches for a way out. He tries two potions. He gets fast and refreshed but still can’t find the way out. The dungeon is now empty of monsters. He is getting hungry.

Suddenly a Kobold attacks. It carries two scrolls of blank paper. Heala is getting hungry but doesn’t want to eat kobolds. Then there’s a fierce fight with a Hobgoblin, Heala has to drink two potions of heal wounds to survive the battle. He can’t butcher and eat the corpse because he can’t switch to a sharper weapon because of the cursed quarterstaff. He is hungry. He got the Purification invocation. He tries a scroll. It shows all cursed items.

He searches for a secret door like crazy and is getting hungrier. Finally he sees a door in the top left of the dungeon. The Kobold and Hobgoblin must have come through it.

He enters and kills a Hobgoblin and finds a scroll. He reads it and it takes away the curse from the Quarterstaff. Finally Heala can butcher the Hobgoblin and eat some chunks of meat. “This raw flesh is not very appetising.” He has to eat two pieces to become satisfied.

Now that he knows which items are cursed he can try to wear the others (and they get identified). He wears a +0 orcish banded mail (AC:7) He finds stairs down but no other obvious exit. He goes down.

DL 2
He finds a glowing robe, kills a Hobgoblin and becomes hungry again. It doesn’t leave a corpse. A Snake attacks. Heala is poisoned. He hits the Snake but do no damage. He is moderately wounded. He wields the runed short sword instead and finally kills the Snake (6/17 Hp) and advances to level 3 (22 Hp). He chooses to raise his Intelligence (he could also choose STR or DEX). The poison wears off. He is still hungry. He cuts up and eats the snake. He is no longer hungry. The Hobgoblin chunk he had forgot begins to rot. He isn’t hungry enough to eat rotten meat so he throws it away. He checks his religion stats.

He puts on an elven ring mail. “Oops, that feels deathly cold.” It’s cursed and sticks to his body. He is now overloaded with items and has to drop some. All items that have no special appearance, like “glowing”, are dropped (they could still have bonuses though). He reads a couple of scrolls. The first one blinks Heala to a chosen square. Nothing happens when he reads the second scroll.

Later he has a dart-throwing duel with a Kobold. The Kobold hits and makes more damage (14/22 Hp) than Heala but runs out of darts. When the Kobold reaches Heala it is moderately wounded and Heala kills it with the runed short sword (7/22 Hp). He uses Lesser Healing and becomes hungry. He eats a Hobgoblin chunk. After throwing lots of darts the darts and throwing skills get higher. He eats a rotting meat chunk and gets sick! Luckily it last only for a short while. He then reads a scroll of remove curse and drops the elven ring mail and wears an elven scale mail (AC:5) The level seems to be explored. He moves down one of three stairs. (red dots)

DL 3
He sees some guy called Ijyb. He hits with three darts and Ijyb is lightly wounded and “grins evilly.” The two last darts miss and Ijyb engages in close combat. He is quite tough but makes light damage. He finally perishes from the repeating hits from Heala’s quarterstaff.

He advances to level 4 and becomes more dexterous. He reads a scroll and identifies a +0 hammer. It seems about half of the level is left to explore but he finds no exits. He is about to go up to try another set of stairs down. On the way back to the stairs he encounters Jackals and Snakes. A new door is now visible. He finds and reads a scroll of enchant weapon II that made the quarterstaff +1 damage.

In the next room he spots 5 Orcs and 1 Kobold. He kills them all in the corridor when they come for him. He advances to level 5 (30 Hp, 7 Mp) and then kills a though Quokka (some kind of large rat?) He eats a ration and gets full. He reads a scroll and it reassembles itself in his hand? He kills a Kobold and takes its blowgun of venom.

An Orc ambushes Heala and hits him with an orcish flail making massive damage (taking away half his HP). Heala kills it and uses lesser healing and his invocation skill increases to 3. He encounters an Orc Wizard. “It gestures wildly. Heala feels troubled.” Heala hits the Orc Wizards with a few poisoned darts and it is looking sick. Heala closes in but “the Orc Wizard mumbles some strange words. A puff of flame hits Heala.” Heal kills the Wizard. Level is explored and seems to have 3 stairs down.

DL 4
He finds Orklacuaxyq’s Assorted Antiques and buys two unidentified scrolls. The store has a couple of enchant weapon scrolls but Heala can’t afford them. Around the corner is Cij’s Magic Scroll Shop. He has cheaper scrolls. He buys one scroll of remove curse. He tries an unidentified scroll. It curses Healas armor. His Spellcasting skill increases to 1. He reads his scroll of remove curse and his armor is no longer cursed. He finds a square platinum amulet and reads a scroll of identification. It’s a amulet of conservation? The glowing robe is a robe of cold resistance +1.

He finds Hokih S’s Assorted Antiques. Heala wants the Crystal Ball but can’t afford it.

He then finds Hfrxtaw Byweqe’s Food Shop. It has lots of food. Good to know. He steps on a teleport trap and enters an unexplored region. He finds and wears a pair of boots (AC:6) He finds and wears a dirty hat and it’s a +2 hat of the Alchemist (AC:8). He finds a shop and buys 2 scrolls of identify. The blowgun of venom is +2, +2. The level has four stairs down and he tries one of them.

Dl 5
This is a large open room with a Hobgoblin Zombie. A Centaur shoots two accurate and heavy damage arrows each turn. (8/30 Hp) Heala quaffs a potion of healing wounds and fires poisoned orcish needles at the Centaur. It looks sicker with each hit. Finally it dies and Heala advances to level 6 and chooses to increase strength. (36 Hp, 11 Mp).

He finds a red rock staircase leading down. There’s a bunch of dangerous creatures. By hitting each one with a poisoned needle they die or get moderately wounded from the poison before they can engage in close combat. Heala had to use lesser healing several times in the middle of the fight with a Giant Iguana and a Worm to survive. He finds a staircase to the Ecumenical Temple. He finds a glowing ivory wand. He finds a red rock staircase leading upwards and yet another wand. A Phantom attacks. It teleports on and off, is difficult to hit and damage. A Hound is also attacking. Heala has to heal now and then. He is threatened and tries one of his wands. It’s a wand of magic darts and the Hound is heavily wounded as is Heala (5/36 Hp). He zaps the Phantom and it is moderately wounded. The Hound flees after a hit from the quarterstaff. Heala has to heal himself in between the Phantoms blinks and becomes hungry and has to eat. A long duel later the Phantom perishes and Heala advances to level 7 (41 Hp, 12 Mp). The level explored Heala notices a big empty square in the middle, it has to have a secret entrance. He goes down to the Ecumenical Temple.

Ecumenical Temple
This temple is a large room with lots of altars and fountains. He finds the altar to his god and offers some weapons to his god by dropping them on altar and then praying. He tries a plate mail and it’s cursed (AC:12). He goes up again and collects a lot of weapons and goes down and offers them at the altar. Elyvilon is very pleased and Heala can now call upon Elyvilon for moderate healing. He goes up and then down another set of stairs to look for stairs leading up into the empty square in the big room above.

DL 6
He meets an Orc Wizards that casts puffs of frost that freezes and shatters potions. It is dangerous and Heala drinks a potion of speed to kill it (20/41 Hp). He then runs into a Phantom without healing first and decides to go up again. He uses his new moderate healing power to fully heal, goes down again, fights the Phantom, uses moderate healing again but now loses the ability. He finally destroys the Phantom. He explores a section until there are no more exits, goes up, goes down another set of stairs and explores a new section. He finds the stairs down to the Orcish Mines. He fights yet one more Orcish Wizard and a Hobgoblin.

The Orcish Wizards speeds himself, attacks with a dagger, shoots magic darts and blinks away. They are though and Heala has to heal himself several times to win the battle. He kills the Orcish Wizard with a couple of zaps from the wand of magic darts.

He finds a Jewellery Shop with amulets and rings but can’t afford anything as the shops don't buy stuff. An Orcish Warrior wearing splint mail and wielding a halberd attacks before Heala has time to heal himself fully. Heala hits with two needles from the blowgun and zaps the Warrior two times with magic darts, emptying the wand, but the warrior is still only moderately injured. Heala has a difficult time making any damage with the Quarterstaff. He quaffs a potion of speed and finally kills the Orcish Warrior.

Heala goes up the stairs and heals some before going down again (36/41 Hp). He finds a Food Shop. Three Orcs attack. It is getting dangerous down here. Heala critically wounds one Orc but the other get two very good hits with his Orcish scimitar and kills Heala (you can see the one with a scimitar in the picture).

His items are identified and he had a wand of paralysis and a ring of magical power.

The scimitar that Heala was slain by was an orcish scimitar of slicing (20 damage).

Lessons learned: When you barely survive each encounter it’s time to play safer. Go up, identify items, and buff everything possible, and work out a good tactic for your character type. Beware of Scimitars of Slicing!

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Dungeon Crawl

2007-01-09T17:16:00.000-08:00

Genre: Roguelike
World map: No
Permadeath: Yes
Races: 26
Classes: 25
Religion: 12 advanced gods
Spellcasting: Advanced
Persistent dungeons: Yes
Version: Tile Version
Latest version: Stone Soup
Graphics: ASCII/Tiles
Mouse: No/Yes
Sound: No
Resource: Hints and Spoilers

Linley's Dungeon Crawl is one of the deepest and most popular of modern roguelikes. You descend a deep dungeon to retrieve the Orb of Zot. On your descent you will need to make side trips to branch dungeons to acquire "runes", keys needed to enter the Realm of Zot. Dungeon Crawl offers a multitude of playstyles depending on what race and class you play. Religion also affects the playstyle because of the many gods with different likings.

Jump to the story about Heala the Elf Healer
Jump to the story about Crawler the Ogre Mage
Jump to the story about Killer the Deep Elf Monk
Jump to the story about Deathbringer the Halfling Crusader
Jump to the story about Rogge the Draconian Reaver
Jump to the story about Crawler VI the Spriggan Transmuter

Review

The Early Game

The early game in Dungeon Crawl is an exciting, well-balanced exploration into the different character races and classes. Large levels and a lot of items give the player room to develop the character in a slow pace. Although the many items soon overload an inexperienced player and can become a nuisance, the player after a few plays will know what to keep and what to leave. Because shops don’t buy there’s no need to haul class-restricted or obsolete items. Another positive thing for the inexperienced crawler is the items quite harmless nature, beside cursed items that can lead to dangerous situations when they stick to the unwary crawlers hands. It is best to test all items with a scroll of reveal curse before trying them.

The large levels sometimes are disorienting when running up and down stairs to check if they lead to an unexplored section. This very easily leads to quick and unfocused play and suddenly the incautious adventurer is locked into a deadly situation. When a character starts with a religion the interaction with the God can be interesting already from the start depending on the gods preferences. The god of death, Yredelemnul, for instance appreciates killing in his name (while praying).

Although it is fun to check out random races and classes it can lead to characters that is quite difficult to play. It is recommended to play a few fighting classes first, and then maybe let random choose the race and then choose an appropriate class.

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Grubb the Troll Druid

2007-01-04T15:33:00.000-08:00

Jump to details about Ancient Domains of Mystery

Grubb the Troll is a Druid and born in the month of the Cup.

He is awfully strong and tough but not too bright.

He chooses the talent Good Learner (+2% xp) (trolls get less xp)

He is wearing a hood, thick furs and a light cloak (DV/PV: 9/7) and wielding a heavy club (+1, 1d10+2) [-1, +0].

He knows a lot of things.

He enters the hamlet and talks to the Druid and the Sheriff. He then buys two large rations and leaves the hamlet.

A coulple of steps from the hamlet he gets hungry (trolls get hungry fast). He stops to eat and encounters a wandering wizard and decides to evade him (wilderness encounter, survival skill helps to evade unwanted encounters). He finds the sinister cave entry.

Druid Dungeon Level 1
He kills some minor creatures but feels a certain tension now and again. He gets hungry and eats. He reaches a dead end and searches for a few turns and finds a locked secret door. His apple is beginning to rot so he eats it. He “discovers a worm in this apple. Nice flavor.” He finds the stairs down and "senses a pious area.” He finds a black obsidian altar to the chaotic god, but he is a neutral Druid. He reaches a locked door and kicks it and avoids a flash. The door shatters and he is “welcomed with lots of squeaking sounds.” The room is full of hostile rats. He cleanses the room of pests and advances to level 2 (44 Hp). He gets 3 skill improvements. His looks improve. He kills all rats and eats a rat corpse. “What a tiny snack.” (the food preservation skill helps to find corpses to eat after a battle)

He kills a Kobold and Orc and finds a bundle of 18 arrows. Some raw meat is getting rotten, so he eats it. “Raaahh! Raw and bloody meat! GGRRRREEAT!!!”

He finds studded leather armor and wears it (DV/PV: 8/8). He then kills a couple of monsters and advances to level 3 (56 Hp). He chooses the talent Healthy (heals 20% faster) (this combined with his healing skill of 45% is making him regenerate hitpoints fast) He goes down.

DD Lvl 2
He finds a room with “the skulls of many creatures embedded in the walls. It’s almost like being in the grave with them.” Nothing special happens though. He encounters some animals and they are non-aggressive because Grubb is a Druid. But Grubb is also a Troll, and Trolls are hungry, almost all the time, so Grubb kills and eats an animal now and then. (this has changed his alignment from N= to N-, he is getting chaotic)

DD Lvl 3
He reaches a room filled with water. He jumps into the water to swim and his spellbook of Divine Wrath is destroyed. He just completely forgot that he had a spellbook so now he can no longer learn the spell. (stupid stupid Grubb) He fails his swimming skill test and takes some minor damage but reach the other side. With a swimming skill of 49% it’s no problem. He kills and eats a Goblin. “A little tough but tasty nonetheless. ”He finds a short bow and a robe. He goes down some stairs.

DD Lvl 4
He feels a certain tensions. He opens a door. “Around you the walls are destroyed. You are welcomed by a multitude of angry sounds!” The room is full of monsters. He backs out into the corridor to fight them one on one. He kills all monsters and advances to level 4 (65 Hp). He finds another room where "the breeze accompanying you causes some ancient bones on the floor to transform into dust. You feel a sense of relief." (he healed somewhat)

He encounters a Dark Sage. “He mumbles arcane formulae! Grubb is hit by a painful stream of energy!” After getting hit by a few painful streams of energy he kills the Sage (48/65 Hp) Grubb has heard that Kranach, the Raider Lord that the Sheriff wants killed, may leave after a certain time. He decides to return to the surface to look for Kranach.

Lawenilothehl
He travels in the wilderness for a while and finds “a derelict and muddy settlement populated by equally derelict and muddy persons” called Lawenilothehl. He enters the settlement. "He hears the chime of a tiny bell." An Outlaw attacks and Grubb gets a bleeding wound. He kills the Outlaw and a Bandit. He talks to Kranf Niest, a mad doctor. "He is busy planning his experiments.” He talks to Skriek, the cloaked Ratling. He wants to sell a key for 590gp. He then finds and eats an Outlaw corpse. “Yum.” He kills an Assassin. He meets Yergius the master thief. He offers training. Grubb learns Pickpockets. He gets an alignment change to Neutral/Chaotic (N/C). Yergius wants Grubb to train some before teaching him more. He then meets Hotzenplotz, the Crime Lord. He asks Grubb to slay the sheriff in Terinyo. He enters Barnaba’s Black Market. There's lots of stuff. Expensive. An iron ration for 348gp.

He leaves the "hole in the wall"-town and walks out into the wilderness. “The moon slowly peeks through the cloudy sky.” He finds a small cave entrance to the north of Lawenilothehl, but leaves it alone, he is low on food.

He encounters a Hobgoblin patrol and chooses to evade. Later he encounters a roving Barbarian Group and chooses to evade but don’t get away and has to fight. He is surrounded by Barbarians. They exchange arrows and finally engage in close combat. He kills three of them and advances to level 5 (75 Hp). There’s a tough fight as he gets surrounded by 7 more Barbarians. He has to change tactics to very aggressive to hit (because of –1 to hit for each adjacent enemy over 1). Finally he kills them all and is seriously wounded (18/75 Hp). He finds some short bows and a lot of arrows.

He eats his last ration and returns to Terinyo. He talks to the Sheriff, and he still wants Kranach the Raider Leader slain, which means that Kranach still hasn't left the area. He buys two large rations and returns into the wilderness. He can't find Kranach and is starving when he returns to Terinyo. He buys four large rations and leaves again.

He encounters a group of bandits. Maybe that is Kranach? He kills them all (48/75 Hp) but no one was a Raider. Goes to Terinyo and talks to sheriff again. He still wants Kranach and now he follows Grubb out into the wilderness. They encounter an Orc patrol but evades it. They encounter a huge Grizzly Bear and can’t evade, but the Grizzly is friendly. When Grubb leaves the sheriff stays behind. Grubb enters the same spot again to look for the Sheriff but he is gone. Maybe he went back to Terinyo. Grubb runs out of food. He buys four more rations in Terinyo for his last gold and goes back to the Druid Cave again.

DD Lvl 1
He goes to the black altar and offers 7 rocks. He is thinking: "Me Troll. Me Druid. Me eat animals and learn to pick pockets. Me Bad. Me Bad Druid." He hears a voice inside his head. “*Welcome, Believer!*” The rocks are consumed by black flames. The gods of Trolls like stones and Grubbs offer was of enough value to make him shift to chaotic alignment and switch god. His new god Vagrak seems to be unconcerned. He offers all his stones but Vagrak is still unconcerned. He offers a Fire Beetle that steps on the altar. Vagrak is now pleased. Grubb goes down again.

DD Lvl 4
He kills an Orc and eats it. “ Tastes like pork… like bloody pork.”

DD Lvl 5
He finds a parchment tome and a scroll. He reads the tome but doesn’t understand it. He reads the scroll “FOO BAR” and "feels a tingeling sensation." He finds a glass wand.

DD Lvl 6
Grubb checks a couple of doors with traps and barely evades them. One of them drops stones from the ceiling. Great offerings to my god! He kicks a door and is stunned and blinded by a flash. No monster attack him while he recovers. He eats a Kobold Chieftain. He got sick! He gets feverish fits and takes massive damage. Oh no! Encounters a Goblin Chieftain. It punches through Grubb’s armor (9/62 Hp) and stuns him. Grubb prays and are healed. The Goblin hits again causing a bleeding wound. Grubb finally slays the Goblin. He returns for the altar.

DD Lvl 3
Before swimming over the river he drops the parchment tome.

DD Lvl 1
He offers 9 rocks at the altar. Vagrak is pleased. He tries some uncursed items. There’s a necklace of the silver tongue (+3 Cha). A blessed short bow turns out to be (+2, +0). He then kills some monsters and advances to level 6. He can now automatically evade wilderness encounters. He chooses the talent Basher (+1 with heavy weapons)

He is almost dead because of new feverish fits. He prays and gets healed. Prays again to maybe get cured from the sickness. “Mortal, ye art a nuisance!” “For some seconds the ground rumbles.” He gets very sick again. (35/73 Hp) He reads the tome and learns the spell Hellish Flames.

He is now running around the cave trying to find food and wait out the sickness. He runs out of food and goes up to the altar and tries to offer different things. The god is uninterested in most items. He is now starving. He tries his wands. Door creation and item detection.

He drinks a potion and becomes poisoned but also less hungry. The second potion is dwarvish mead. The third cures him from the poison. He finds a Gnoll and eats it (16/73 Hp). He still is hungry.

When he is about to swim over the water he fails four times in a row and drowns.

Lessons learned: Never eat Kobolds and never get sick. Read your spell books before swimming.

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Pask the human farmer

2007-01-04T14:46:00.000-08:00

Jump to details about Ancient Domains of Mystery

Pask is born in the month of the Raven.

She is a human female farmer.

From the manual:

"FARMER -- Even among the most average folks, there are some valiant and larger-than-life persons who are born to achieve more than their parents and grand parents. After the news about the impending danger had spread throughout the lands, those people started their journey to the location in the Drakalor Chain which might change their destiny -- and the destiny of their world. Farmers are neither great fighters nor skilled magicians, but they possess inner strength and endurance from years of labor. Often they are accompanied by their trusted dogs. They are accustomed to hunger and hardship and often have very little to lose compared to the amount of fame they might be able to win. Equipped with a broad knowledge about herbs and food, they are probably the best prepared class (except for barbarians and beastfighters) for extensive travels."

She is strong and quite perceptive.

She chooses the talents Healthy (heals 20% faster) and Good Learner (2% more xp)

She is Dressed in clothes (DV:10/PV:0) and armed with scythe (+1, 2d6+2) [-1, +0] She is equipped with a lot of food and equipment.

She has a lot of skills.

Accompanied by her Large Dog she enters the small hamlet of Terinyo.

The village fool says: “Walk to the north-west and retrieve one of the best!”

She talks to the Druid.

The village elder, Rynt, doesn't give her any quests now that she has talked to the Druid.

She went to the shop and bought a piece of raw meat. She used the skill Haggle three times to get the price to move from 32gp to 25gp, then haggled once more and now the shopkeeper wants 30gp again. That's what greed gets you!

She then goes southeast and spots a sinister cave entry.

Druid Dungeon Level 1
She forgot her pet in the hamlet. She returns for it and loses about one day. Back in the cave she finds a scrawl-covered tome. “The walls of this room are scarred by the signs of many fights. Most parts of the room are heavily damaged.” She finds some bread, gets hungry and eats the bread. “Somewhat stale but nourishing nonetheless. “Your equipment suddenly seems to weigh less.” She checks her inventory but nothing is gone. Maybe it's some food getting rotten?

A Hobgoblin attacks. It hits Pask (16/20 Hp), but then Pask hits with her scythe and slays him. She enters a dark room and uses a torch. The room is now lit. There's a locked door. A skeleton emerges from the shadows of the dark room. Pask destroys it and advances to level 2 (26 Hp) and gets 4 skill improvements because of her high learning (Le). She leaves the room and extinguishes the torch. She finds another locked door. She finds the stairs down in "an incredibly ancient room". She kills an Orc. The piece of raw meat rots away.

She enters a room and kills three different kinds of Goblins. She then kills a female Hobgoblin and advances to level 3 (30 Hp). She chooses the talent Polearms (+2). She finds a sling and a rock. A Giant Centipede is killed by the dog. She kicks one of the locked doors and it explodes, she partially evades the explosion, but the rock she is holding as ammunition is destroyed (18/30 Hp). She shatters the door with a mighty kick. She then kills three monsters and advances to level 4 (32 Hp).

She gets attacked from two direction by a Claw Bug and a Ghost Bat. The Claw Bug is very hard to hit, and has six attacks each turn. Pask misses and gets several hits by the Claw Bug and one hit from the Ghost Bat causing her to age. She is critically wounded (4/32 Hp) and changes tactics to very aggressive and manages to kill the Claw Bug with the next slash and the Ghost Bat misses. Pask transforms it into a wisp of smoke and advances to level 5 (38 Hp).

She closes all doors to a room and tries to regain some health. Only a few minutes later a door opens and a Kobold Chieftain enters. Pask misses but the Chieftain hits (4/38 Hp). Pask changes tactics to coward (-10 to hit, -4 to damage, +8 DV) and tries to retreat (this speeds up a critically injured character somewhat). The dog attacks the Chieftain, but the chieftain kills it. Pask changes tactic to very aggressive, but misses. The Kobold Chieftan hits killing Pask.

Lessons learned: Remember to pray!!!

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Endorfir the Gray Elf Part 2

2007-01-02T13:57:00.000-08:00

Jump to details about Ancient Domains of Mystery
Jump to the first part

Puppy Cave Level 1

Walking northeast from the hamlet he notices a cave beside the road. Endorfir enters and there’s a pool in the first room. “Maybe I shouldn’t mess with it... yet,” he reasons. The next room has 4 new exits. Maybe he should try some of his items before continuing. Endorfir is very curious about the dusty tome he found when he fought his way out of the Village Cave earlier. He tries to read it, but he can’t decipher the contents. He reads a scroll named “VoPaK”. It’s scroll of identification. He has to choose an item to identify. He looks through his stuff. A glass amulet, the Carpenter’s hatchet, the huge iron hammer, two rings and four different potions. It’s not an easy choice. He chooses the huge iron hammer. Suddenly he knows the function of all his weapons. There’s a orcish knife of weakness (+1, 1d3+3) and the huge iron hammer seems to do a lot of damage but is inaccurate and lowers the wielders defensive ability (-1, 2d9+2) [-3, +0] (all this means that the hammer has –1 to hit, makes 2-18 +2 damage, and lowers the defensive value with –3). Since he relies on speed and mobility he drops the heavy hammer. He also drops the knife of weakness although it has better values than his ordinary knife (+0, 1d3+2), but the name has a bad ring to it. He saves his last scroll for later.

He continues to explore the cave. He kills an Orc. A spear barely misses Endorfir. It was a trap. He finds a strange stick and adds it to his missile slot. He hears a ripping sound. He gets hungry and eats a loaf of bread. “Somewhat stale but nourishing nonetheless.” He hears a splashing sound. He finds 38gp and hears a ripping sound. He has heard that sound before from the ripping of webs.

He enters a room with some minor hostiles, backs out into the corridor, and tries to fire the strange stick, but “that’s hardly appropriate ammunition.” He then kills the monsters with his sword instead.

He encounters a Raider. They once were huntsmen but now are corrupted by chaos and have turned to robbery and pillage. The Raider misses with an arrow and then dies from iron poisoning. Endorfir equips the arrow instead of the strange stick.

He then encounters a Cave Fisher. “It looks like part spider, part lobster. The body is covered with thick plates and it has eight legs. It grabs its victims with the front two. It lays webs.” Endorfir slighty wounds it with the arrow and then kills it in close combat with four slashes. It never managed to grab or hit the dexterous Endorfir. He finds a large ration behind a web.

He stows the shield and equips a dagger to try some two-weapon combat. He kills a Lizard Man and a Large Bat with ease. He goes down to the next level.

PC Lvl 2
He leaves a locked door alone. A Worker Ant is coming up through a hole. There’s a clicking sound. Endorfir kills it. He passes the hole and walks into a room. He kills a Fire Beetle and eats a bat corpse. A Giant Ant Warrior enters the room from the corridor with the hole. There’s a tough fight, the Giant Ant Warrior seems to have thick armor. They manage to injure each other slightly (47/55 Hp). There is a clicking sound! A second Giant Ant Warrior enters the room. Endorfir retreats through a door and fights one Ant at a time. Endorfir hits the Ant with full force but doesn’t manage to harm it. Endorfir examines the ant to see what he has noticed so far about the creature.

The Ant has a better protection value than Endorfir but Endorfir has a better defensive value. This means that the Endorfir will probably hit more but do less damage than the ant. Many exchanges of attacks later Endorfir manages to moderately wound the Ant. He hears clicking sounds! Maybe there are more Ants on the way. When both Ants are lined up he zaps his wand of magic missiles. “ZZAAAMMMM!” The magic missile hits them. “The Giant Ant Warrior hisses in fury!” The closest one is critically injured and the second one is moderately injured. Endorfir hits the Ant two times with full force and finally it perishes. Before he has time to close the door the second one attacks. Endorfir hits it and it is now severely injured.

The fight continues on and the room behind the Warrior Ant begins to fill with Giant Ant Workers. One of them crushes the wall beside the door. Endorfir feels his defensive position threatened. Endorfir hits the Ant again but it is still only severely injured. He needs at least two more good hits at it. Meanwhile the Worker Ant seems to work on the wall. A new Warrior Ant enters the room behind the Worker Ants. Endorfir decides to retreat.

He runs through the corridor towards the stairs with the Ants chasing. He enters a room with two Pit Vipers with suspicious coloration indicating that they are poisonous. He runs past them as they sting the air behind him. At first the room seems to be a dead end but as he comes closer to the far wall he can see an open door. He runs through the doorway only to be met by a third Pit Viper. Behind it is a Giant Centipede. He stows his knife and wears the shield to defend better. He kills the Pit Viper in the corridor and is engaged by the Giant Centipede. He kills the Centipede and blocks the Viper’s attack from behind. The corridor is empty and he runs for the stairs.

There’s an open pit in the floor of the corridor. Endorfir barely evades it when he runs over it. The Pit Viper behind Endorfir is fast; it stings after him now and again. Finally he reaches the stairs and rushes up the stairs.

PC Lvl 1
One Pit Viper decides to follow him, but he kills it. Endorfir walks to the room where he dropped the hammer. He slays a female Goblin Slavemaster and gets sword skill 5. This means that he gets +3 to hit, +2 to damage and +1 to DV with swords.

He picks up the hammer. Then he reads his two remaining scrolls. The first one makes the long sword glow in a light red light. He can still put it down so it isn’t cursed, maybe it’s blessed then. The second scroll seems to be blank. Now he has to figure out a tactics to get the upper hand in the battles against the Ants. He equips the hammer sacrificing some defensive mobility and accuracy for greater damage (a DV of 15/7 instead of 28/7, +10 to hit instead of +16 and damage of 2d9+4 damage instead of 1d8+5). He moves down the stairs to try his new tactic.

PC Lvl 2
He turns a Pit Viper to a mangled heap on the second try. He gets hit by a Giant Ant Warrior (50/55 Hp). He returns the blow and critically injures the Ant and kills it with a second blow. “He senses strange vibrations.” He then kills a Worker Ant. There’s a watery potion on the floor where the Warrior Ant died. He kills a second Warrior and Worker Ant.

Endorfir moves towards the Ant hole. Suddenly his Find weakness skill increases by +5 and his Two weapon combat skill by +1. It seems as learning from experience has some lag. Nothing is climbing out of the hole. He moves on and kills another Warrior Ant. He hears clicking sounds and returns to the hole. He kills another one and his skill level with clubs and hammers improves to 1. He fights a third Warrior and gets a small bleeding wound but wins the fight and advances to level 8 (66 Hp). He upgrades Healing and Two-weapon combat to fair. He kills some more Ants at the hole. He then gets surrounded by two Ants and gets slightly injured (60/66 Hp) but squashes the bugs with the mighty hammer. He stands on the hole “and something is moving below his feet”. He leaves the hole for now.

A Zombie comes limping down a corridor. Endorfir wields his sword and knife and destroys the Zombie with a couple of slashes and improves the dagger skill level to 1. He continues down the corridor to an intersection and spots a Goblin Slavemaster Zombie and a female Necromancer to the right and a Big Dog to the left. He turns the corner and slays the Zombie as both the Necromancer and Big Dog closes in from different directions. Endorfir slays the Necromancer just in time to dispatch the Big Dog and a second Zombie.

In the next room he meets a Shadow Centipede. “Bits of the exo-skeleton are missing or hanging off, and miscellaneous guts are either spilling or have been spilt out of it.” Endorfir easily dispatch it and a Lizard Man behind it. Before the Lizard Man dies though, he hits a vital spot giving Endorfir a slight wound (60/66 Hp). Endorfir finds the stairs down. He continues and enters a room where “the air of this room refreshes him and sharpens his spirits!” Endorfir quickly heals his wound in this room.

He fights a Chaos Sister. She’s quick and gets a lot of attacks but she gets wounded and flees. Endorfir finds a way around into the room with the locked door and meets an Orc Chieftain.

The Chieftan has time to do four attacks while Endorfir makes his two. After about ten rounds the Orc Chieftan dies (50/66 Hp). He leaves a robe, glockenspiel, and a ring on the floor. Endorfir then gets hit by a Werewolf and kills a few more Ants. He "hears an evil hissing and something large crawling about the ground." He kills the Chaos Sister. He “senses imminent danger… but the feeling passes.”

The Giant Warrior Ants are becoming more experienced and harder to kill. One is causing a lot of trouble and a bleeding wound (40/66 Hp). It is moderately wounded when the Giant Ant Queen enters the room. Endorfir slays the Warrior and retreats to the refreshing room and completely heals his wounds before taking on the Queen. (resting by using walk (w) and the stand still key)

He kills a Fire Beetle and eats the corpse. “He suddenly feels very hot.” Finally it is time for the duel with the Giant Ant Queen. Endorfir wins the duel with only slight wounds. The hole is now crumpled. He finds a rock with metal veins in one of the heap of rocks the Ants left behind when digging. Maybe it’s worth money, but it’s heavy to carry. He goes up the stairs and drops some stuff and then moves toward the stairs down. A Displacer Beast attacks. It’s very difficult to hit so Endorfir changes tactic to Aggressive (gives +2 to hit, +1 to damage and –3 DV). He hits but it is still too difficult. He changes tactic to Very Aggressive (gives +6 to hit, +2 to damage and –6 DV). He takes a hit but finally kills the Displacer Beast. He goes down again.

PC Lvl 3
He finds stairs leading down in the first room. He finds a metal cap and wears it (PV +1). Finds a scroll. “Hm, I recognize this. It’s a scroll of identify! I think I save it for awhile.” A locked door explodes when he tries to open it (45/66 Hp). In the next room two locked doors block passage. Endorfir shatters one of the doors with a mighty kick but a trap explodes. He partially evades the explosion, but his cursed short bow is ripped apart! Why isn’t he complaining? He steps on an alarm trap and in the next room kills a Raider. He goes down.

PC Lvl 4
He kills a Large Orc and finds a secret passage in a dead-end corridor. There’s a thick potion inside a room. Encounters a Necromancer. The Necromancer summons help from a bunch of skeletons. Endorfir cuts them all down. He advances to level 8 (72 Hp) and improves literacy to good. It’s very expensive to improve literacy compared to many other skills. He chooses the talent Ambidextrous (+2 to hit with two weapons). His appearance improves to 21. He then tries to read the dusty tome but still has no success.

He encounters a red Viper. “Snakes of grren, great to be seen… snakes of red, avoid and dread.” He avoids it. He really could use some arrows. He kills a coward Kobold Chieftan and then goes down.

PC Lvl 5
This level is made out of large cave rooms. A Minotaur is coming in for the kill. Endorfir spots a gray altar to the side. He moves behind the altar and tries to get the Minotaur to step on the altar. When it does Endorfir offers it to Ayssia, his goddess. “The Minotaur is consumed by a roaring column of flame! Ayssia seems to be pleased.” A Bugbear meets the same fate. Ayssia is now very pleased.

Endorfir drops the 6 watery potions on the altar and they begin to glow in a gray light. They are now holy water. He drops all items on the altar to check if they are blessed or cursed. The empty wand of magic missiles is cursed and so is the white potion. He dips the scroll of identify into the holy water and it becomes blessed but the potion disappears. He offers an Orc and a Minotaur that disturbs his work at the altar.

Endorfir now returns to dungeon level 2 to get all the stuff he left there. A dangerous Shadow chases him. He closes a door and has just enough time to collect all stuff and run up the stairs to dungeon level 1 before the Shadow opens the door. He then reads his blessed scroll of identify.

The strange stick is a boomerang of thunder (+3, 2d4+1), the amulet is a blessed amulet of light. The large hammer is a mithril hammer (-1, 1d10+5), so he drops the huge iron hammer. There’s a good short bow (+4, +0), so he drops the other one (+1, +0). The piece of metal is adamantium ore. He drops a cursed glockenspiel. There’s a ring of damage. Is it dealing damage or incurring damage to the wearer? Two rings of acid resistance. He wears one. He also has a potion of healing and extra healing, a potion of youth, and a cursed oil of dust removal. The dusty tome is a Spellbook of Scare Monster. He goes down again.

He throws the boomerang of thunder at the Shadow and moderately damages it. The boomerang returns and he manage to catch it. The next two attacks miss and the Shadow engages in close combat. “Endorfir hits it with full force and destroys it.” He hits a Fire Lizard with the boomerang and it is stunned by the thundering hit and staggers around until Endorfir kills it in close combat. He then encounters an Ogre Magus that “invokes an incantation. Suddenly he is gone!”

“Endorfir feels something passing very close beside his head. Something hits him (66/72 Hp). Endorfir swings at the empty air and slightly wounds the invisible Ogre Magus. The Ogre Magus gets more hits on Endorfir (43/72 Hp) Endorfir retreats and closes a door behind him. After a while it opens but Endorfir sees no one. He throws the boomerang but hits nothing. The invisible Ogre attacks. “Suddenly he appears out of nowhere. He invokes an incantation. Suddenly he is gone!” Endorfir switches to the mithril hammer and the small shield to penetrate the Ogres protection and defend better. The tactic works and when the Ogre becomes visible again it finally perishes.

PC Lvl 5 again
A Homunculus and a Cave Tiger wait to attack him. He succeeds in avoiding the creatures and hides behind the altar and offers the Homunculus. But when he tries to offer the Cave Tiger he hears a booming voice in his mind. “Be warned! Sacrificing my own creatures is not something I welcome with joy!” He kills the Cave Tiger instead.

He then offers a Displacer Beast and feels an inner strength lifting his spirits. He then offers a Ratling Archer and he notices a thundering voice in his head. “You dare to sacrifice one of my own creatures? Defiler.” “Ayssia luckily otherwise seems to be unconcerned.” The Ratling Archer drops a whistle.

Continuing into the large caves he encounters and is paralysed by a Floating Eye. Luckily no other monsters are close by and the eye misses until Endorfir can move again. He kills the Eye and then “senses imminent danger”.

He moves forward and finds a room full of Skeletons and Jackals. A Doppelganger engages Endorfir and suddenly looks as Endorfir to confuse him. Endorfir runs into a wall. When he has recovered from the confusion he kills the Doppelganger and advances to level 10 (78 Hp). He trains in Literacy, Healing and Two weapon combat.

He fights more Skeletons and some Ghuls. He kills most of the Ghuls with the boomerang but after awhile he doesn't catch the boomerang and has to kill some Ghuls in close combat. Luckily they never hit him, they can drain the strength of a victim. After the battle he finds a short sword and a scroll of identify. He tries to return to the altar but there’s to many monsters in the corridor. He goes down instead. He gets hungry.

PC Lvl 6
He is greeted with a message: “You feel excited…” A Dire Wolf follows him down. Some more monsters attack, mostly Hyenas. There’s too many monsters, he runs up the stairs again. Three Hyenas follow him. He kills them and a Swordsman and when things cool down he eats a Hyena corpse. “Foul meat… not your taste.”

A Fire Lizard breathes fire at Endorfir but misses but the heat consumes some bones on the floor. He goes down again and kills a lot of Hyenas. They never hit Endorfir so he switches from shield to two-weapon fighting. A Hyena manages to hit him but they are to few left to be any threat. He finds a climbing set, a scimitar and a blubbery potion.

He moves up a corridor and here comes an army of Gnolls, a grotesque hybrid of Man and Hyena. Just as the greeting message hinted this causes some excitement.

After some fierce fighting, taking only slight damage, there are only three Gnolls and the Gnoll Chieftain left.

Endorfir hits the Chieftain and wounds him slightly but gets critically hit in return (40/78 Hp) and is bleeding. He switches to shield and sword for better protection. The bleeding stops. He hits the Chieftain with full force and he panics. Some Large Gnolls cover his retreat and they are quite tough.

After killing the Chieftain there are a lot of items to pick up, Endorfir becomes burdened. He dips the scroll of identify into a potion of holy water and identifies all stuff. A leather cap is better than a metal cap but much lighter. A medium shield offers [+3, +1] at 100 stones and the small shield offers [+5, +0] at 50 stones, so he drops the medium shield. There’s a mithril scimitar (+0, 1d8+3) and three battle-axes with different stats, one is hefty, doing more damage but harder to hit with. There’s a mithril-shod quarterstaff doing (+0, 1d10+6) and a cursed potion of wonder.

He moves on, now fully healed. Some Gnolls attacks and throws battle-axes. He finds a blue gem and a brittle wand. He advances to level 11 (84 Hp) and trains Literacy and Climbing. Appearance improves again to 22. He is burdened by all the stuff and returns to the stairs to drop some stuff.

He encounters several tough Hyenas and Switches to mithril hammer to deal more damage. He finds a tome. Thinking about tomes, he tries to read his old spellbook of Scare Monster, but it explodes. The bracers of protection melt away and the heat shatters the amulet of light. He finds a ring mail in the vault but leaves it. He continues on but turns around when a dark corridor blocks safe passage. He tries another passage and meets a Staring Eye and kills it with the boomerang. In the last room he finds a cute dog corpse. The dog that he wanted to rescue is dead. He picks up the corpse and returns up the stairs.

PC Lvl 5
He gets hit by a Chaos Lizard and feels corrupted. He “senses imminent danger”. He runs to the altar and fends off a large group of monsters. A Gray Slayer hits and poisons Endorfir(55/84 Hp).

Endorfir feels the poison coursing through his veins! Endorfir hits the The Gray Slayer but it regenerates and hits Endorfir again (32/84 Hp). Endorfir takes a chance. The Gray Slayer seems to be some kind of neutral monster so Ayssia wouldn’t like it to be offered, but he tries anyway. “He feels inner peace”, so it was obviously okay. The poison is strong (22/84) so he prays. He is fully healed by Ayssia but is still poisoned. The poison takes away 10 Hp each turn so he prays to Ayssia again, and she cures the poison. He then kills all monsters and drops stuff on the altar to check if they are cursed or blessed. He has too much stuff; he should have saved the scroll of identification for now instead of reading it earlier.

A Dark Elven Warrior hits him and he is poisoned again. This poison isn’t as strong. He offers the Dark Elf. Tries out a bow and a bundle of five arrows. The arrows are of undead slaying. He offers a Large Orc and feels spiritually invincible. Gets more poison from a Tarantula and prays to get cured. Threatened by all these poisonous creatures he decides to return to the surface.

PC Lvl 1
With the dogs corpse in his backpack he is ready to return to the hamlet and finish his quest. He is just about to return to the surface when he notices the pool. Why not try a few sips? He drinks from the pool. “The water is suddenly writhing with snakes!” He kills five snakes but gets poisoned. He prays and gets cured. He thinks he has a very good standing with his god so he tries three more sips from the pool. He first becomes depressive, then poisoned and finally sick. “There has to be some positive effects.” Endorfir thinks and drinks some more from the pool. “Great Pure Dwarven ale!” Endorfir gets drunk, and then feels very lucky. He then suddenly remembers his early youth. He gets a couple of feverish fits from his sickness and gets seriously injured. (10/60 Hp) He prays but is still sick. He drinks some more from the pool hoping to get cured from the sickness. Suddenly “he feels like jumping around”. Now he is seriously injured again (13/60 Hp), this sickness is a real killer. He prays but this time the god isn’t answering (8/60 Hp). He drinks a potion of extra healing, but is still sick. He no longer seems to have feverish fits though. He has a lot of attribute minus from his sickness. (That’s why his maximum HP is low.)

He decides to go down to the altar to sacrifice to get help from his god. He can’t quick walk while sick and he begins to get feverish fits again. He goes to the quick healing room. A Floating Eye enters the room and paralyzes him with its gaze. Endorfir chokes on his own vomit when he is paralyzed and dies.

Lessons learned: Never drink from a pool if you don’t know what you’re doing. Sickness is dangerous! Maybe a blessed potion of extra healing could have cured the sickness completely?

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Endorfir the Gray Elf - Part 1

2006-12-29T17:02:00.000-08:00

Jump to details about Ancient Domains of Mystery
Play style: Random character, everything default.

Text in red is game mechanics.
Text in green is fiction from outside of the game.
Text in quotation marks is in-game text.

Intro (summary from the manual)

“For 6000 years, the world of Ancardia was left untouched by the incursions of Chaos, but finally the sinister forces of evil and darkness have found this young and teeming world. In a remote mountain complex, huge dungeons were formed by great magical powers. They seem to contain some kind of dimensional gate which allows terrors from unknown dimensions to enter the world of Ancardia and wreak havoc.”

“Finally Khelavaster, the great sage, uncovered an ancient prophecy foretelling the Coming of Chaos -- a dark and sinister time when the skill, power and valor of a single hero would determine the future of the world. The ancient scrolls of prophecy hinted at a remote mountain range -- the Drakalor Chain -- which was destined to be the final battle ground for an epic fight between Chaos and Order.”

“You were told to visit a small village by the name of "Terinyo" and talk to the village elder for he might have the latest information about the region. Steady yourself and be prepared to engage in a heroic struggle for the fate of your home world!”

Endorfir the Gray Elf

Gray Elves train in the following skills: Dodge, Listening, Literacy, and Stealth.

Fighters are trained in the following skills: Athletics, Archery,
Dodge, Find Weakness, Metallurgy, Stealth, Swimming, and Two Weapon Combat. He is also of basic skill with sword and shield.

Endorfir gets one extra talent because he is born in the Candle sign. He chooses Alert (+1 Perception) and Quick (+2 Speed).

Endorfir has very good strength (St), average learning (Le) and willpower (Wi) exceptional Dexterity (Dx) average or below average toughness (To) and charisman (Ch), he is of very good appearance (Ap), has average magical power (Ma) and exceptional perception (Pe). He is of neutral alignment (N=). He is hard to hit (defensive value of 19) but has little protection (protection value of 5). He can take a lot of damage (H: 18) but has low magical power (P: 3). He is in the wilderness (DrCh?) and is a little faster than normal (Sp: 104).

He has an elven chain mail made of mithril. It is very light and gives some protection (+5 protection value). His light cloak and small shield makes him harder to hit (+1/+2 defensive value). The leather boots give a boost to his melee and armor attacks. In his right hand he wields a long sword (1-8 damage).

Terinyo

“The weather is mild and comfortable. A slight wind is blowing. A road.” Endorfir starts on a mountain road. He follows the road and spots Terinyo, a tiny hamlet, in front of a forest.

He enters the hamlet.

In the hamlet there are some houses and people. He meets a baby water dragon that seems sad. He chats with it and it asks: “Hast ye seen me mommy?” Endorfir then meets a couple of farmers, a child and a fool. The fool is saying some mystical things and the child wants candy.

He then meets Rynt, the village elder, outside his house and talks to him. He wants Endorfir to rescue the village carpenter from the dungeons to the southeast. He continues his stroll through the hamlet.

He hears someone counting money and finds a shop. He enters the shop and gets greeted. “Welcome to Munxip’s Magnificient Munchies Mall.” The shop is filled with large food rations. They are quite expensive and heavy but he buys one. He now has only 4 gold pieces left. He leaves the shop. Munxip says: “Have a nice expedition, Endorfir.”

He meets a Druid that says “Aye, champion, yer time will come…” A tiny girl asks Endorfir to rescue her lost dog from a dungeon. He then meets Tywat Pare, the Sheriff. He asks Endorfir to kill Kranach, a raider gang leader.

Endorfir looks at his notes.

He then leaves Terinyo.

He goes southeast through a forest and finds an ancient stairway leading into the depths of the hills. 19 hours and 40 minutes has gone by since he started his journey. He enters the cave.

Village Dungeon Level 1
He finds a scroll labeled: ”IDNUM AIROLG TISNART CIS” Better not read it yet; you never know what foul magiks it can conjure. There’s a door in the room. He opens it and goes through a corridor and enters another room. He finds 33gp on the floor. He tries another door; it’s stuck but opens on the second attempt. In the next corridor he encounters a creature. He examines it.

The Large Bat attacks. Both miss with their attacks a couple of times. The third time Endorfir misses but blocks the Bat’s attack. He then hits and slays the Bat.

In the next room a Goblin attacks. Endorfir is faster and hits the goblin with full force and transforms him into a mangled heap. He finds a purple wand and a harp.

In the next room there’s a Kobold, but it doesn’t care about or sees Endorfir so he picks up a small shield from the floor. He equips it and it’s identified as a [+5, +0] small shield. It offers better defense than his other shield (Defensive Value (Dv) goes from 19 to 22). The air of this room is filled with a very rich flavor (a spoiler reveals that such a room is a good place to rest without getting hungry).

He then enters a new room with a hostile Kobold and Goblin. Endorfir waits in the door and kills each creature with one blow as they attack him. He finds studded leather armor and a short bow. He picks up the bow. A stair is leading downwards but Endorfir decides to explore the full first level of the dungeon.

(Uses walk mode to move automatically through explored corridors) He encounters an Orc. It doesn’t care about Endorfir. He examines the Orc.

He then sees a Kobold, but it doesn’t care about Endorfir. Level is now fully explored and he goes down the stairs.

VD Lvl: 2
In the room below he encounters a hostile Kobold. He examines it before he attacks.

Endorfir has now seen enough Kobolds to know some things about them. Both misses their attacks. Endorfir then hits and transforms the Kobold into a mangled heap. He finds the stairs down and six arrows. He equips the arrows to the missiles slot and equips the short bow as a missile weapon.

He is becoming hungry and eats a ration. In the next room there are a Skeleton and a Rat. Endorfin kills both and advances to experience level 2. He now gets to improve three of his skills. He chooses Athletics, Dodge and Stealth. There’s a Rat corpse and a scroll on the floor. A distance into the room there’s some frog legs, light boots and a Large ration. The light boots has the same characteristics as his leather boots but are 5 stones lighter so he drops his old leather boots.

He encounters a Large Bat. He shoots an arrow but misses. The Large Bat engages in close combat but Endorfir deflects the attack and then transforms it into a mangled heap. He then eats the Large Bat corpse. It tastes like chicken. He finds an onyx ring and picks up the arrow he fired earlier.

He kills a Kobold and finds a short bow. He tries to wield it notices that he can’t let go of his other short bow, now identified as a (+1, +0) short bow (cursed). It is a good bow and Endorfir might as well continue to use it.

When Endorfir enters the next room an Orc surprises him by throwing a crude knife but it misses. Endorfir targets the Orc and releases an arrow, killing the Orc right away! He picks up the arrow, the crude knife and an iron ration.

He spots a giant Rat in a corridor outside the room. He tries to shoot it but hits the wall, destroying the arrow. He kills the rat with his sword and finds a Large ration. He encounters a hostile Orc and Goblin and kills them both with arrows and advances to level 3 (29 Hp). He gets three skill improvements as usual. He chooses Archery two times to make his skill level Fair and then chooses Dodge. He also gets to choose one new talent. He chooses Affinity with swords (+2 to hit).

He encounters a Skeleton and hits with an arrow but do no damage. Maybe Skeletons are immune to arrows. He kills it with one blow from the sword instead. He then slays an Orc and a giant Rat. The level explored he goes down to the next level. He has now been exploring the dungeon for about seven hours (game time).

VD Lvl: 3
A giant Frog comes jumping down a corridor. Endorfir hits it with an arrow, severely injuring it. The second arrow misses but his sword hits and slays it. Endorfir moves into a dark room. He decides to leave the room until he finds a light source. He finds a watery potion. He enters a door into yet another dark room, or it might be the same one. Endorfir turns around to leave and feels something passing very closely beside his head. He goes a few steps down the corridor and an Orc comes out of the dark room behind him. Endorfir kills it with an arrow.

He tries to open a door but it is locked. “He shatters it with a mighty kick! By smashing it he activates a trap protecting the door. The door suddenly falls in his direction! He barely evades it by jumping backwards.” The room is empty.

In the next room he kills a goblin with his bow. His skill with bows have improved to level 1. In the next room he spots a Bugbear and a hostile wild cat. He retreats and checks out another room. He kills a Claw Bug and loses the arrow but finds 77gp. He kills another Claw Bug with an arrow and advances to level 4 (35 Hp).

He goes back to the room with the Wild Cat and kills it. “Suddenly the cat’s spirit rises from its lifeless body. Moaning pathetically, it plunges into the ground. Endorfir hears a faint echoing roar filled with hate and sorrow!” A fire Beetle attacks.

Endorfir tries to flee to shoot arrows at it but can’t outrun it. He hits the Beetle with his sword and slightly wound it. The Fire Beetle misses. He hits a gain slightly wounding the Beetle. He misses and then hits but do not manage to harm it. Endorfir blocks the attack from the Beetle. They fight for a while and finally Endorfir slays it.

Returning to the room the Bugbear now has become hostile. Endorfir fires his two remaining arrows but misses. He notices another Bugbear and rushes the first one with his sword. It picks up an arrow but Endorfir kills it with one mighty blow. He picks up the arrow and fires it at the second Bugbear, moderately injuring him. The Bugbear throws a couple of blows but Endorfir blocks them and then hits the Bugbear slaying it.

He encounters a Goblin Slavemaster. He kills it with his two last arrows, destroying both. He goes down the stairs.

VD Lvl: 4
He meets Jharod, the healer. Jharod offers to heal Endorfir or teach him something. Endorfir isn’t wounded so he chooses to learn something. But Endorfir has to prove that he is able to exert mercy before Jharod will teach anything. There’s a stair leading down in the room but he moves on.

In the next room he kills an Orc and a Bugbear and finds a scroll. He follows a Lizard Man through a corridor and kills it when it becomes hostile. Next up is a Large Kobold. It drops a tiny key. It’s a long corridor that ends with a door. Behind the door a Kobold fires an arrow but misses. Endorfir rushes into the room and kills the Kobold and equips the arrow. He becomes hungry and eats the frog legs. Slimy.

He finds an ancient altar of black obsidian. He leaves it alone and encounters a Goblin Slavemaster. He easily deflects his blows and kills him and advances to level 5 (38 Hp). He finds a Clean Robe. He doesn’t try it on. He kills a Hobgoblin and advances to level 3 with swords. He goes down the stairs.

VD Lvl: 5
He finds some raw meat and a bubbly potion. A Bandit attacks but Endorfir slays him. He then kills a White Worm and a Goblin Slavemaster. He finds a huge iron hammer. It weights 200 stones so the drops his [+2, +0] small shield to not become burdened.

He kicks a locked door and avoids a sudden flash. But the door is still locked. He kicks it again but it wont budge. He tries again and it shatters revealing a corridor. It ends in a room with stairs down. The raw meat is beginning to rot, so Endorfir eats it, but he doesn’t like raw meat very much.

He encounters a Ratling Archer.

Endorfir targets it and kills it right away.

(The image above shows that a straight line of sight isn't required to target enemies in ADOM) “He became one with my missile, that’s for sure.” Endorfir thinks with a smile on his lips. He then encounters a Gnoll standing seven feet tall. He hits it with the arrow and severely injures it and then waits for it to come into range and slays it with the sword. A Raider Skeleton attacks but gets killed. He finds a glass amulet, some clothes and a chain mail weighing 400 stones. That’s a lot compared to Endorfir’s elven chain mail with a weight of 10s, so he leaves it.

He enters a room with an Orc. Endorfir notices a slurping sound. He kills the Orc with an arrow getting skill level 2 with bows. He is about to get his arrow when he notices a Swordsman. The Swordsman hasn’t detected Endorfir yet. He picks up the arrow and a hostile Ogre appears behind the Swordsman.

Endorfir backs away and zaps the purple wand at the Ogre. It’s a wand of Magic Missile with one charge left. The Ogre closes in but Endorfir has time to hit it with an arrow. Two hits from the sword finally kill it. The Swordsman has now become hostile and attacks.

Endorfir hits him and slightly wound him. A couple of blocks and deflections later Endorfir severely wounds the Swordsman and he suddenly seems to panic. He runs away and Endorfir chases him for a while but then returns to pick up the arrow and a sling. He later kills a Gnoll and finds the Swordsman and kills him. He finds a square key. He hears a slurping sound.

He moves to the stairs leading down and finds the room full of spider web. He kills the spider and manages to get stuck in some webs for a few seconds while retrieving the arrow. He picks up six rocks for the sling. He heads down the stairs.

VD Lvl 6
He finds 100gp beneath the stairs. He spots an army of Kobolds hanging out in a room down the corridor. They seem somewhat experienced.

Endorfir backs out into the corridor and begins defending. He is burdened and hungry when the battle begins. He transforms a few Kobolds to mangled heaps and tries to eat a ration when there’s a gap in the enemy line. But a Kobold is attacking Endorfir before he has time to finish eating the ration. He kills a couple more Kobolds and advances to level 6 (47 Hp). As a 6:th level fighter he now gains a +7% Protection Value bonus from some items. He chooses the talent Careful (DV +1).

He kills three more Kobolds and when no more seem to come down the corridor he swallows an iron ration. It tastes good. He kills a giant Rat, a Cave Lion and one last Kobold. He finds a leather girdle [+0, +0] in the corridor but the room is empty.

In the next room he finds a watery potion and stairs leading down. He checks out the last door in another room and encounters a Barbarian and a Black Hurthling. He kills them and picks up a hand crossbow, a crude knife and a dwarven sausage. There’s a corpse from an Orc here. Suddenly a Huge Bat attacks.

Endorfir kills it with one single blow. In the next room there’s a black obsidian altar. He drops some clothes on the altar as an experiment. “Suddenly several figures appear out of nowhere.”

It’s rats!

Endorfir slays them all. It seems that he angered some god, and the black altar is probably built to some chaotic god. He finds a loaf of bread and some copper bracers. He tries them on and they are bracers of protection [+0, +2] giving him better protection (Pv: 7)

There’s a locked door but the square key fits and he unlocks it. Endorfir is shocked when he finds a copy of himself on the other side of the door. It is a Doppelganger. Endorfir fires an arrow at the Doppelganger but it just deflects it and closes in for the attack. They both block each other’s attacks, but Endorfir gets the next hit and the Doppelganger gets seriously wounded and flees. An Ogre Zombie attacks. He kills it and next up is a Lizard Man getting killed. He then corners and kills the Doppelganger.

He kills some larger creatures and gets skill level 4 with swords. When the level is fully explored he moves to the stairs. Before going down Endorfir decides to read the scroll labeled “IDNUM…” After reading it he suddenly loses bits and pieces of his memory and the map becomes filled with blank holes. He reads another one labeled “IAZNAB”. “It’s suddenly hard to remember things.” What has happened? Am I losing my mind? Maybe it is not wise to read any more scrolls right now. He has now been in the cave for 25 hours.

VD Lvl 7
There’s an empty room without exits. He searches and finds a secret door. He walks through long corridors. “Suddenly an extremely bright light flares up! He closes his eyes just in time to avoid being blinded.” It was a light trap.

In the next room there’s a Dark Elven Archer. Endorfir engages the Dark Elf but has to retreat when a Large Kobold and a Mimic closes in. The Dark Elf begins to fire small bolts but misses. The Dark Elf engages in close combat and Endorfir gets skill level 2 with shields. After a longer fight with the Dark Elf it finally dies and Endorfir advances to level 7. The Mimic is wounded and flees and the Large Kobold dies from Endorfir's mighty blows.

He encounters a Harpy and engages in close combat. The Harpy stings and Andorfir falls asleep. It misses a few attacks and Endorfir wakes up. Both misses some attacks but finally Endorfir hits and kills the harpy. Down the corridor comes a man running with a hatchet over his head. He is wearing bloody clothes and an insane smile. It is the Carpenter gone mad.

The Carpenter chases Endorfir down a corridor. Endorfir doesn’t want to kill him and tries to lead him out of the dungeon. A Chaos Sister is blocking the path. Endorfir hits her and she turns to flee. She is very fast and disappears into the darkness in the distance. Arriving in the room with the stairs Endorfir finds both the wounded Chaos sister and Mimic. He kills the Chaos Sister and attacks the Mimic but the Mad Carptenter hits Endorfir (taking away 3 Hp) and is causing a bleeding wound. Endorfir heads for the stairs. He loses some blood (1 Hp) but then the bleeding stops. Endorfir rushes up the stairs.

VD Lvl 6
The map has blank spots but Endorfir thinks he remembers where the stairs up are located. He reaches the right room but a Gelatinous Cube blocks the way up. The Carpenter has disappeared. Endorfir gets trapped between a Large Kobold and the Gelatinous Cube but manages to kill the Kobold. He equips a crude knife, he doesn’t want to damage his sword if the cube is acidic, and attacks the Cube. He kills it with two hits. Now the Mad Carpenter attacks again and Endorfir has to flee through a long corridor to fool the Carpenter.

A Giant Rat blocks the path and while Endorfir kills it the Mad Carpeter manages to penetrate Endorfirs armor and wound him (47/55 Hp). A Goblin Berserker attacks and hits Endorfir causing a bleeding wound. Endorfir kills it and finds a dusty tome. He continues to move back to the stairs (46/55 Hp) but meets a Ghul. He avoids it and is now chased by the Mad Carpenter followed by the Ghul. A Pixie blocks the path, but Endorfir slays it and finds 244gp.

VD Lvl 5
He reaches the stairs without any fights. The Mad Carpenter is still following him.

VD Lvl 4
Jharod the Healer is in the room. He touches Yrrigs the Mad Carpenter and heals him from his insanity. Yrrigs bows to Endorfir and puts down some items before he leaves. It’s a hatchet, a potion and a huge manual. Talking to Jharod he now agrees to teach the skill of healing to Endorfir. He touches his forehead and Endorfir now has the healing skill at 14 points (mediocre). Endorfir heads for the exit.

On VD Lvl 1 he slays an Orc that drops a leather girdle. It’s a Girdle of Carrying allowing Endorfir to carry more stuff without becoming encumbered.

Back in the village the sheriff informs Endorfir that the Raider Leader no longer seems to be in these parts so Endorfir doesn’t have to look for him anymore. Endorfir walks to the Village Elder. He says: “You deserve our eternal gratitude.” He tells Endorfir that the shop will adjust the prices. He then says: “Now try to find the source of all this Chaos stuff.” He talks about some ancient dungeon in the western central part of the mountains. Endorfir then talks to the Carpenter, and he agrees to train Endorfir in the skill of bridge building. Endorfir buys a couple of melons at Munxip’s Mall and then starts walking to the puppy cave.

To be continued...

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Ancient Domains of Mystery

2006-12-29T16:22:00.000-08:00

Genre: Roguelike
World map: Yes
Permadeath: Yes
Races: 10
Classes: 20
Religion: One god for each alignment and race.
Spellcasting: Advanced
Persistent dungeons: Yes
Version: 1.1.1.
Latest version: ADOM Central
Graphics: ASCII
Mouse: No
Sound: No
Resource: Guidebook

Ancient Domains of Mystery is one of the deepest and most popular of modern roguelikes. It features a static world with many places to visit. It is also one of few roguelikes that includes many quests to get from NPC:s in the game. Alignment also plays a big role in ADOM, some quests and some of the various ways to win the game are only available to heros of a particular alignment.

Jump to the story about Endorfir the Gray Elf
Jump to the story about Pask the Human Farmer
Jump to the story about Grubb the Troll Druid

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Fortress Tinearths – Year 1065

2006-12-19T14:57:00.000-08:00

Jump to details about Dwarf Fortress
Jump to First part

1065 Early Spring
With a hostile outside environment we decided to move the butchery and tannery inside. A Fisherdwarf gets a strange mood. She is possessed and claims a mason’s workshop. She collects two limestones and some logs and is getting some bones but they disappear because of the new year. (Refuse gets deleted to reduce clutter) She goes back to the workshop and waits for the bones. No one knows what kind of bones she wants. She is just repeating: “bones… yes… leather… skin… “ over and over again, being possessed.

To get some bones and some needed meat Äs is made Trapper again. He becomes very unhappy when he is once again relieved from duty. But he is the only skilled Marksdwarf and we need some bones. He picks up ONE iron bolt and goes to hunt. He wounds a Gazelle with his only bolt and then kills it with the crossbow. He gets into a short brawl with some other Gazelles and gets a slight wound to his upper body. He returns the kill and then picks up ONE iron bolt from a barrel when there’s 20 iron bolts grouped in another barrel. (Tried to move the single iron bolts to a new barrel but they are still separated)

The Fisherdwarf finally finds some Frogman bones, I don’t know from where. She then gets some Gazelle leather and then begins a mysterious construction. She constructs a Limestone Bed with an image in willow of an Ogre striking down a dwarf. The object menaces with spikes of Frogman bones. I made Äs Marksdwarf again.

All Carpenters help with planting seeds. We are also trying to gather lots of plants this year to get more seeds.

Mid-Spring
We are detailing the floor in the Upper Main Hall and making a great dining hall. We are also building a trade depot outside with a stone floor all around.

6:th Felsite Late Spring
Today Ilral excitedly told me that some immigrants had arrived. There were some nobles among them. I went out to greet them. The first one to reach me was an agile female dwarf wearing chain mail armor and holding an iron shield and a battle-axe.

“Greetings, I am Tirist Tholkol, the Sheriff. I am sent to enforce dwarven law here in Tinearths.” She said with a commanding voice.

“Greetings to you Sheriff. Anything particular I can help you with?” I asked.

“Yes, I demand that you arrange a prison suited to hold at least six prisoners. Then I would like a modest office, quarters, dining room and a chest, cabinet, weapon rack and armor stand.” She answered.

“Of course, I will see to it.” I answered and met the gaze from the next noble. She was clad in Cave Crocodile leather trousers and a silk tunic.

“Hello, I am Libash Emmörul, Manager. I am ordered to help you with organizing work in the fortress. If you want something produced just tell me the quantity and I will arrange the production. You can also tell me how skilled a worker should be in each of your workshops. I demand the same things as the Sheriff.”

“Certainly.” I said and looked at the third noble. He looked ordinary and was wearing silk clothes.

“Hi there... Vabôk, Broker. I’ll help ya ta keep track of ya import/export ratio an da value of all da goods. Jus show me some place to set up ma office, some place to crash and eat an the same furniture as the others twos and I’ll be happy as happy can be. Ya have any beer?”

19 migrants and 1 cat and 2 mules also arrived making a total population of 59 dwarves. After doing some calculations I ordered 6 small rooms and 3 noble quarters built. We also need 15 new beds, 3 cabinets, 3 chests, 3 armor stands, 3 weapon racks and 15 new doors. I told the manager what to produce.

The Broker came by and told me to make two moonstone items. I told the Craftsdwarf and he agreed.

Some of the immigrants were Swordsdwarves and Marksdwarves making a total of 5 Marksdwarves and 6 Swordsdwarves deployed in two squads. No new Trapper arrived though. I told Sigun, a competent Marksdwarf, to hunt. He didn’t like to be relieved from duty but he went to fetch a water skin. I gave 4 new Peasants the farming(field) job. We are mining a new and larger barracks.

Early Summer
A Carpenter gave birth to a child. The cave river is overflowing and I locked the doors to the cave bridge. No one was hurt. The Broker is now satisfied with his meager 2x1 rooms. Two farm plots are now fully sowed all the time.

A Kobold Thief tried to enter the fortress but got shot down by a Marksdwarf. The Manager and Sheriff are happy with their 2x3 rooms except their quarters. They think they’re meager and they want modest quarters. I tried to give one of them a better quality bed but that wasn’t enough. We are making some dark and light stone cabinets, the Manager likes marble and the Sheriff likes obsidian. We could detail the floors and walls in their quarters but that takes a lot of time.

Mid-Summer
One Ogre comes very close to the fortress. I am dispatching both squads. One of the Marksdwarves didn’t bring any bolts but the other one shoots turtle bone bolts with little effect. The first Swordsdwarf engage the Ogre but gets stunned. The Ogre hits him again throwing him back with wounds to the upper body and one arm. The Swordsdwarf gets up and knocks down the Ogre with the help from the Marksdwarf without ammo. They kill the Ogre before the other soldiers arrive. A second Ogre comes close but dies in a rain of bolts. The Swordsdwarves engage the third Ogre, and it gets thrown away several yards from a mighty blow and dies.

We are making silk rope in the clothes maker’s workshop for the Sheriff’s prison. These will be used to tie up prisoners with. A lot of the Peasants get promoted to Farmers.

Late Summer
We got some calves. We are mining a small prison in new barracks. A Marksdwarf gave birth to a boy. Sigun became novice ambusher and Trapper. We have no more free barrels to brew with. I am allowing cooking with Plump Helmet although it destroys the seeds. We've got over 200 units of Plump Helmet. I also ordered some new barrels.

Early Autumn
The Sheriff is satisfied with his new Obsidian cabinet and the Manager is satisfied with a +Limestone cabinet+. (+ means finely crafted) The dwarven caravan arrives.

Six Frogmen attack from the cave river. The Swordsdwarf squad leader is sleeping. I gave another Swordsdwarf the command. The Frogmen climb the bridge and try to enter through the doors. Two die from stone-falling traps and one loses consciousness. The Manager is on the bridge and gets attacked by three Frogmen. They throw her down, she gets up, but they throw her down again. She begins grappling with one Frogman and gets injured in her right arm. A Farmer attacks another Frogman and wounds it. A Marksdwarf kills the Frogman lying unconscious underneath a stone-fall trap. The Manager has a hard time fighting two Frogmen but a Farmer helps her. The two Frogmen are almost incapacitated when a third joins in. The Marksdwarves arrive and begin to spray bolts. The Manager breaks loose and runs away. The Farmer continues bravely to fight the Frogman as it gets hit by bolts in its back and dies. The cave river is colored red.

Six more Frogmen attack from the cave river only seconds later. The first Frogman on the bridge gets hit by a bolt and faints. A Swordsdwarf engages the second Frogman. Another Swordsdwarf is about to kill the unconscious Frogman but get jumped by a third. The soldier hacks the Frogman’s both legs off but gets jumped by a fourth. The first Swordsdwarf has now killed his adversary and aids in killing the last Frogmen. No one received any serious wounds except for the Manager who goes to bed to heal. The cave river gets even redder. The Mechanics reload the stone-fall traps.

We find Sigun the Trapper mauled outside. (Hippos?) He lost his right leg.

Mid-Autumn
We are trading stone arts for 5 meat, plump helmet, cow cheese and 6 pieces of leather. With the Broker it is now possible to see the value of items.

A Metalsmith is taken by fey mood but he goes to bed instead of claiming a workshop. It seems we don’t have the right kind of workshop. We are building a few new kinds of workshops but there is nothing he likes. Probably he wants a metalsmith’s forge but we are out of anvils. He is going to be depressed.

Migrants arrive. 11 Dwarves, 3 are children, a mule and a puppy. Total population is now 71 dwarves. A new Trapper tries his luck.

Late Autumn
Making some charcoal and copper and silver bars in the smelter. It is always a good idea to have at least one piece of all materials or products available in case someone gets in the mood to construct an artifact.

Early Winter
The Metalsmith wanting a metalsmith’s forge is stricken by melancholy. He later drowned himself. We killed three Kobold Thieves. They all sneaked past the traps in the Entrance Hall. One managed to get to the goods storeroom but was killed. We now have a lot of Hippo meat, The new Trapper is effective. We are making some more barrels and brewing more wine.

Mid-Winter
There’s a deep rumbling from the cavern. This is a sign that there will be a cave-in sooner or later. We are searching for possible places and build support pillars.

Late Winter
Three Harpies strikes down a Miner, the Trapper and a puppy. The squads are dispatched. The Harpies strike down a mule just before the first Swordsdwarf gets to them. He gets injured and flees with a Harpy chasing him. The two squads kill them all.

8th Obsidian - Late Winter
An Ogre comes running into camp. He chases a Mason but a dog interferes. The Mason gets away but the dog is incapacitated before a couple of Swordsdwarves gets there and kill the Ogre. The squads get ordered to seek out two more Ogres. Three Swordsdwarves attack.

After recovering from the initial stun they slash at the Ogres, sending one of them away 5-6 yards. They win the fight and no one gets wounded.

Sigun the incapacitated Trapper went berserk in his bed and was killed.

A Hippo is on a rampage. It kills a Farmer out cutting wood. Then it attacks One-Eye and badly mauls her left hand, leaving her unconscious out in the bush, her severed left hand beside her in the grass. The Hippo, now known as “Rendmiles”, runs over to the other side of the river.

One-Eye wakes up for a short moment and looks at her hand lying in the grass. "Well, you can't have two of eveythings." She thinks and loses consciousness again.

The layout of Fortress Tinearths at the end of Year 1065.

Jump to the Next Part

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Fortress Tinearths – Year 1064

2006-12-14T20:03:00.000-08:00

Jump to details about Dwarf Fortress
Jump to First part

Early Spring
This year begins with the crazy Trapper starving to death. There’s only one empty coffin left, which makes 17 stiffs. We are now opening up that river cave I promised Nil. 18 dwarves and 4 cow calves and a mule arrive. Among them 3 Swordsdwarves, 2 Jewellers, 1 Trapperdwarf and 1 Metal Smith. That makes a total population of 28 dwarves. We were careless and had a cave-in in the new river cave but no one was wounded. There are some plants already growing in the river cave to collect.

Mid-Spring
We are now mining a second farm plot room. With five Miners it’s really fast. A Swordsdwarf suffocated because of a lung wound from sparring in the barracks. Ilral the Mason got a head wound from something and is now resting in bed.

Late Spring
Üshrir the Jeweller is taken by a fey mood. In a trance he goes to the jeweller’s workshop and claims it. He then gets some bones and gems and starts a mysterious construction.

Early Summer
The Jeweler created Notlithast, a Aventurine ring and he became a legendary jeweler.

We lost the new Trapper to two Ogres. One of the Ogres got a bolt stuck in the lower body. The other Ogre gets close to fortress entrance and one of the two new Swordsdwarves kills it, and later finds the second wounded Ogre and after a short fight leaves it unconscious in the river to drown. We are now mining a second housing block.

Mid-Summer
One Ogre comes chasing after a Carpenter. The two Swordsdwarves intercept it at the bridge. The Ogre stuns Tun and starts wrestle him. Ingish the second Swordsdwarf tries to attack the ogre but also gets stunned by the Ogre’s powerful blow. The Ogre breaks Tuns swordsarm and he drops his obsidian short sword. Ingish starts to slash at the Ogre cutting off his upper left arm. The Ogre falls down and looses consciousness. Ingish kills it while Tun crawls towards the fortress, but he faints. A new Metal Smith recovers Tun and carries him inside. (The small red number two in the second image is the Ogre's left arm.)

A second Ogre is roaming and chases a Farmer all the way to the entrance. The global order “Soldiers can go outside” makes all civilian dwarves retreat inside. The Ogre follows through the main doors but gets a stone in the head from a trap. It faints. When Ingish the Swordsdwarf is trying to catch up with the Ogre he harasses some Hippos instead and gets seriously wounded in the sword arm. Etur the one-eyed Carpenter is close by and kills the Ogre with his axe before it wakes up. Both Swordsdwarf goes to heal their wounds in bed.

We got a lot of raw turtle, made one of the Fisherdwarves to focus on fish cleaning. We are building a new dining hall in the Lower Main Hall (other side of cave river). Setting a stockpile close by to only receive prepared meals, and setting the stockpile close to kitchen not to take prepared meals, results in prepared meals being hauled to the new dining hall. To the right is the new Forge Hall being mined.

Late summer
We are building one more mason’s workshop to make a lot of stone blocks to later build a caravan road. We are building the first wood furnace to make charcoal. We are building one more kitchen to make tallow of animal fat to be able to use it for cooking.

Three Frogmen crawled out of the well. Both Swordsdwarves are still wounded and resting in bed. The blue Craftsdwarf to the right is the squad leader Tosid the Wrestler. Made his squad active, it’s the old crew with the one-eyed Carpenter and everybody else carrying axes. Made the Wrestler fight unarmed to keep him from getting a weapon and attacking right away instead.

Tosid throws down the closest Frogman and wrists his left arm until he is stunned. The blue Axedwarf to the left lying down by the doors (brown background) is the one-eyed Carpenter unconscious as usual. The gray recruit to the left of him is a peasant training to become woodcutter, so he’s already wielding an axe. The upper Frogman chases after the Jeweler (green) and the third frogman chases after the Mechanic (red)(confused yet? ;).

Ilral the Mason attacks the upper Frogman even though he hasn’t had time to get his sword. He throws the Frogman to the ground and begins to wrestle it. Both Ilral and Tosid the Wrestler slowly breaks the bones of their adversaries. The recruit is having a hard time to engage the third Frogman and tries to catch up with it. Just when Tosid’s Frogman faints a fourth turns up and wounds Tosid in the leg. Ilral has killed his adversary and is moving down to help Tosid. The third Frogman chasing the Mechanic gets a stone in the head when he tries to leave the fortress. It gets unconscious and the recruit takes it out of its misery.

Tosid the Wrestler is fighting a losing battle. The Frogman throws him back and wounds him in the lower body. Ilral joins in and knocks the Frogman down, but getting injured in the upper body. Two against one they now kill the last Frogman. Awhile later the one-eyed Carpenter awakes and looks around surprised at the bloody mess with his one good eye.

Late Summer
Eshtan the Peasant is practicing as a Carpenter. He is a dabbling Carpenter and very slow, but one-eye isn’t much faster because he’s unconscious half of the time. The planting goes well. There are two Farmers; one of them was a Peasant now promoted to Farmer. There’s also one Peasant planting seeds. We have 47 plants and 71 seeds meaning that it’s a good idea to open up the second farm plot section above. A Peasant got promoted to Carpenter.

Early Autumn
The Mechanics are switching some stone-fall traps to Ogre bone crossbow traps at the entrance. They reload automatic and faster. We are building the metalsmith’s workshop. There’s going to be a flood and the Metal Smith that is carrying our anvil to the building site decides to take a break and drops the anvil on the bridge!!!

It washes away with the flood! The rumor travels fast around the fortress. “We lost the one and only anvil.” “This fortress must be cursed!” "We are surely doomed.."

The making of charcoal in the newly built Forge Hall is canceled. Without a metalsmith workshop there’s no need for charcoal (except making metal bars). The dwarven caravan arrives. We traded stone arts for 15 meats and 25 Plump Helmets.

We desperately need an anvil! But the mule caravan will never bring one. We are building a caravan road to make it possible to receive bigger caravans with wagons.

By mistake we destroyed the trade depot while the caravan was still there, and when they leaved they refused to bring their stuff. I don’t know what kind of diplomatic complications this will result in.

Late Autumn
10 immigrants arrive, one of them a child. There’s a new Carpenter and Marksdwarf. Äs the Marksdwarf gets the hunting job; we’ll see how long he survives. We now have a population of 37. Ilral the Mason gets a strange mood and withdraws from society. She claims a mason’s workshop and fetches a limestone and some acacia logs and begins a mysterious construction. She constructs a limestone coffin and becomes a legendary Mason.

Notices that the barracks is full of sleeping civilians. Time to place all doors and beds in the new housing block. Two peasants are drafted as Marksdwarves. Aban, one of them, becomes a Marksdwarf after training for a while.

Mid-Winter
Both Swordsdwarfs are now healed, as am I. A puppy has grown to become a dog. Booked an odd cow for slaughter. A short while later it has been struck down. It gave 9 chunks, 9 meat, 9 bones, 6 fat, 1 skin and 1 skull.

Late Winter
A Frogman climbs the cave bridge and hits a Fisherdwarf in the head, stunning him. Nil the Miner flees. Five more Frogmen are swimming down the river towards the bridge. Both Swordsdwarfs and both Marksdwarfs are activated and sent to the bridge. Momuz the dog attacks and wounds the Frogman in the upper body, stunning it.

The five Frogmen close in on the bridge. The Swordsdwarf squad leader is sleeping and the Marksdwarf squad leader is too far away to be able to save the Fisherdwarf and dog. The Miners Nil and Dumat are close by and they are formed as squad “The Gloved Rams” and are ordered out on the bridge with their picks.

The dog forces the Frogman back and bites it in the head. It gets stunned, winded and feels pain, drops into the water, leaving some Frogman chunks on the bridge. The cave river is colored red. The second Frogman has climbed the bridge and jumps the stunned Fisherdwarf and wounds him in the arm. Both Miners and the dog reach the Frogman and rip him to pieces. The other Frogmen have retreated. Both Miners complain about being drafted and gets relieved.

Just got some calves, orders them to be placed in the cage. Äs the new Trapper comes up to me, looking unhappy. He hands me a notebook with the words: “Do whatever you want, but I ain’t hunting no more.” After reading the notebook I recruit him to the Marksdwarf squad to keep him inside for a while, I know how depressed Trappers can become.

This is what Äs the Trapper wrote:

Äs Zonlolum Trapper (a detailed study of a Trappers life in the bush):

Walked close to a flock of Hippos, they didn’t mind, I did though, they looked dangerous. Met my pet Dodók the foal. He likes to follow me around. Walked past a marsh infested with flies. Saw a couple of monarch butterflies. Traveled past the road construction. (Passed a flock of Warthogs) I saw Etur the Carpenter felling a tree on the other side of the river. He kept awake. Dodók returned home. I did the same. Came real close to a Warthog and hit it in the left front leg with a bolt. (Äs seems almost blind, must have to do with low ambush skill) Hit it with a second bolt and it lost consciousness. Killed it with a couple more bolts.

Returned the kill to the refuse stockpile. Don’t want to butcher. Asks a Peasant close by doing nothing to butcher the Gazelle. He gets the butchery and tanning job. Went out to hunt again.

Went inside to drink some wine. Heard that the Warthog gave 5 chunks, 5 meat, 4 fat, 5 bones and 1 skin. Went out to hunt again with Dodók. Found a flock of Gazelles. Had to kill four to get one, wasted a lot of iron bolts (with global refuse order: “Gather refuse from outside” free dwarves will return the other kills). 17 bolts left. Returned the kill. Heard that the warthog leather was tanned and that they now are making a leather water skin for me to bring water on my hunting trips.

Early Winter
I returned to the last hunting ground and shot a wounded Gazelle and returned it. Dodók has grown to become a horse. Went north this time. (Passed real close to some gazelles without noticing them) I turned around, reached the road construction site and greeted a couple of Masons carrying stone blocks. I like the new fine road. I got hungry and went inside to eat. It was crowded in the Upper Main Hall, dwarves running around doing all kind of chores. Passed on the turtle stew in the first dining hall, and went over the cave river to the second dining hall to feast on some dwarven wine biscuits instead. I really like the taste of dwarven wine. I am a little upset with being relieved from duty. I liked it as a Marksdwarf. I don’t mind being outside though, at least not for a short time. I finished my meal to the sound of a Mason cutting stone blocks close by.

I then went to the brewery and drank some dwarven wine. A Farmer was brewing in one of the stills. I went out to hunt again. Met Kogan on the bridge, he looked completely healed now. I got tired, and went to sleep in the wilderness.

Mid-Winter
Woke up and went inside. Got my new water skin and began to fill it at the well. I got thirsty and went to drink some wine. That was a fine drink! Then I went back to the well to finish filling the water skin. Went out and shot a Gazelle, returned the kill and hunted some more. Got one more. Returned it. Killed two more. Only 1 bolt left.

Late Winter
I had a hard time finding prey. Suddenly I got more than I wanted. Three Ogres rushed at me. Fired my last iron bolt and ran as fast as I could.

Two of them almost caught me at a river crossing but Dodók my horse turned up and attacked one of them. They had me surrounded but now I got the chance to run over the crossing.

He fought both Ogres for a while before they killed him. He fought them both bravely and gave me time to run away. My poor horse...

I returned home to get more bolts but I got sleepy and slept outside. Now I am unhappy because I lost Dodók. I am getting used to tradegy. I don’t want to be a Trapper any more… I want my brave horse BACK!!!

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Hacker II – The Barbarian Exhibitionist

2006-12-14T19:12:00.000-08:00

Jump to details about Nethack
Play style: Random character, everything default.

Text in red is game mechanics.
Text in green is fiction from outside of the game.
Text in quotation marks is in-game text.

Hacker II is a male chaotic barbarian orc.

He’s a born fighter and weak in other departments. He wields a two-handed sword, wears an orcish ring mail and carries some food and a spare axe.

Dungeon Level 1
He enters the dungeon along with his tame dog called Idefix. He thanks Set when he finds 55 gold pieces. There’s a fountain and a glittering spell book.

Dungeon Level 2
Idefix falls down into a pit. He waits for Idefix to get out of the pit. After hacking a few lesser crawlers he finds a green gem. Advances to Level 2 (23 Hp) There’s only three rooms and he can’t find any secret doors so he continues down.

Dungeon Level 3
He tries to #force open a locked chest in a dark room but breaks the axe. He kicks open the chest. Finds 115gp, a circular amulet, a couple of scrolls and two grey stones. Hacker II #rubs the stone against his sword and makes scratch marks on both. It is said that a magic stone should produce the sound: “scritch, scritch”. He then tries to rub the stones against the green gem and it makes green scratch marks on the stones. Hacker II doesn't understand a thing what's happening and return to dungeon crawling.

Later he finds a new axe. He hears the footsteps of a guard on patrol. He slays some Kobold Zombies and advances to Level 3 (30 Hp). He finds some gems, a key, a chain mail and a potion. Now he is burdened. He tries the chain mail (AC: 5). He has to drop some stuff to be able to go through a small corridor section, but finds nothing. He gets the stuff again. He falls into a pit but gets out before anything attacks him.

Dungeon Level 4
He is now getting low on food. He finds two rations. He has a tough fight with an Iguana and advances to Level 4 (36 Hp). He finds and eats a fortune cookie. The message is: “Yet Another Silly Message. (YASM)”

Dungeon Level 5
He kills a Hobbit and a Golden Naga Hatchling. Advances to Level 5 (44 Hp). He enters a room with statues.

In the middle of the room is a smaller room with a friendly character saying: “Hello Hacker II, welcome to Delphi.” A detailed look at the character reveals it to be the Oracle.

He #chats with the Oracle. She charges 50gp for a minor consultation and 750gp for a major. He pays for a minor. True to her word, the Oracle says: “They say that wielded, a long sword named Fire Brand makes you feel cooler.” He continues on and finds a splint mail (AC: 4). Idefix steps on a teleport trap and disappears. He finds a curved wand and Idefix. He notices a Gnomish Wizard with infravision. The Wizard fumbles with his spells but manages to cast a speed spell but Hacker II kills him. He finds one more circular amulet.

Dungeon Level 6
He kills a Pony and eats it whole. A Leprechaun robs him and then disappears. Later two Hillorcs and the Leprechaun ambush him.

He softens the Orcs with darts and slays them with a final slash from the two-handed sword. He hits the Leprechaun with three darts but it robs Hacker II of even more gold. There is a set of stairs leading up.

Dungeon Level 5 Sokoban

There’s some kind of boulder pushing puzzle. He is burdened with all loot. He drops a lot of stuff and finds a ring. He begins pushing boulders into the pits. One boulder is blocked by something behind it. It’s ambushing Mordor Orcs.

He kills one and advances to Level 6 (56 Hp). He kills three more. The last one zaps a wand of magic missiles. Hacker II closes in for the kill as the Orc zaps the wand again. “The magic missile whizzes by you! The magic missile bounces (on the wall)! The magic missile hits you! The magic missile hits the Mordor Orc!” Hacker II smites the Orc and kills it. He picks up the wand and notices that it’s similar to his other wand, both now identified. He finds and wears an orcish helm. It’s +1 (AC: 2). He continues to push around boulders to fill the pits. He kills a Hobbit and a Baby Crocodile. The puzzle now solved he moves up the stairs.

Dungeon Level 4 Sokoban
He finds himself in a new but similar puzzle. He pushes boulders and finds some more loot. He kills a Pony and advances to Level 7 (68 Hp). He now feels quicker (he got the intrinsic speed). A Hobgoblin is picking a fight by blocking a boulder. It dies. Two Human Zombies attack and are killed (again(IVAN)). Happy to finally have solved the puzzle he rushes into a room behind a door and gets ambushed by a lot of monsters.

A Kobold Shaman casts a spell and Hacker II gets a slight headache. There’s a Black Naga Hatchling, a Gnome Zombie, a Leprechaun and a Kobold Lord. Hacker II backs out through the door opening and zaps a magic missile at three of them.

The Kobold Shaman dies. The Kobold Lord throws two daggers, one hitting the Black Naga Hatchling, the other almost hitting Hacker II. Hacker II kills all monsters except the Leprechaun who is closing in to steal Hacker’s gold. He backs out into the corridor and when the Leprechaun follows he zaps it with a magic missile that hits and then bounces and hits one more time. Finally Hacker smites it with the sword killing it. It leaves 85gp.

Dungeon Level 3 Sokoban
A new puzzle. There’s a ring in one of the holes. Hacker II wants it and jumps into the hole.

Air currents pull him down to Dungeon Level 4. There’s a whole bunch of Manes but Hacker II kills them with darts. Hacker II gets hungry often but there’s lots of food rations in the Sokoban. He goes up again and solves the third puzzle. He readies himself for battle before opening a door, but there’s only one Giant Ant in the room. He finds a jewelled wand.

Dungeon Level 2 Sokoban
Hmm, this puzzle is difficult. Hacker II manages to make it unsolvable by pushing the wrong boulders. He undresses everything and manages to squeeze behind the boulders to move them. Three Giant Rats attack the naked and unarmed Hacker II. He manages to reach his sword and kills the Rats. He feels more confident in his skills and chooses to become skilled in two-handed sword fighting.

He drops the sword again and is about to squeeze in behind a boulder when it reaches out and grabs him. It’s a Giant Mimic!

Hacker II reaches for his sword but can’t escape the Mimic’s grip. He begins bashing the monster with his bare hands.

The Mimic is slow but it’s crushing attack do a lot of damage. Hacker II hits the Mimic many times but the Mimic finally crushes Hacker II only one step away from his battle gear.

There are no possessions to identify, as he was naked when he died. He vanquished 82 creatures. He was a greater hero than Hacker the first.

Lessons learned: Never feel safe in the Dungeons of Doom! Maybe remember to pray next time!?!

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Fortress Tinearths – Winter of 1062 and Year 1063

2006-12-13T14:58:00.000-08:00

Jump to details about Dwarf Fortress.
Jump to First Part

New version installed: 22.120.23a

After Kogan has penned down the history of the expedition so far, he begins to focus on the present. This is what he wrote:

After the catastrophic start up of Fortress Tinearths, with the deaths of two dwarves and the incapacitation of a third, we are now facing a long winter. To survive we have to focus on these matters:

Food
We have 65 units of wine and 28 units of Plump Helmet to brew making another 140 units of wine. Liquor will not be a problem, and hopefully we will get some meat and fish. There’s a lot more wild game here than they had in Fortress Tinshot, according to the logbooks. We have a horse and a foal that can be slaughtered in a crisis. There’s 24 units of raw turtle meat that have to be cleaned in the fishery. We have some fat and have to build a kitchen to make tallow to use in cooking.

Stockpiles
We have 11 empty barrels and as soon as we have a kitchen and can cook bigger dishes more barrels are going to be free to use. The problem is bins to store weapon, armor and finished goods. We only have got three logs so we have to cut some more trees.

Weapons and Armor
With Ogres roaming about it is best to equip all dwarves with weapon and armor as soon as possible. We have 5 obsidian short swords, 1 iron battle axe and 1 iron crossbow. We only have one set of leather armor. If we build a tannery we could make some leather to make leather armor with a leather works. Right now we are too few though.

Immigrants
We had no immigrants. Hopefully there will be some next year.

Assign jobs
Brewing: Tun the Farmer.
Cooking: Tun can cook when there’s no more empty barrels to brew with. Render fat.
Hunt: Tosid the Metal Smith.
Fishery: Nil the Miner cleans raw turtle meat.
Wood Cutting: Kogan the Miner cuts wood.
Make Bone Bolts: Ilral the Mason

I will continue penning tomorrow.

Bad News
Tosid the Metalsmith never came back from the hunt last night. Early the next morning she met an Ogre. She bled to death but left a bolt stuck in the ogre’s right leg. The Ogre left. Now hunting is out of the question. Prioritizing cleaning of raw turtle meat. It is noticed that there’s some kind of communication problem. When Tun has brewed a barrel of wine a Plump Helmet Spawn is left. The seed is taken to a seed bag in the furniture stockpile instead of to the seed stockpile that is much closer to the farm plot. This wastes a lot of time and have to be fixed some way.

Late Winter
We have 60 units of liquor, no meat, and 4 fish left. There are still lots of unprepared raw turtle. We are too few dwarves. With everyone concentrating on their jobs no one hauls the products to the stockpiles, and food is getting bad in the kitchen. Tosid is now buried. Ilral begins to make stone crafts instead of bolts.

1063 Spring
Flooded farm plot and began sowing. The cat drowned in a cave river flood, it got trapped on the bridge. The horse got three foals.

Today 15 immigrants arrived. Three roaming ogres attacked them before they could reach the fortress. Two of them chased a Fisherdwarf and the third chased a Farmer.

One of the immigrants was a Trapperdwarf and fired bolts after the Ogres. He managed to incapacitate one Ogre. (The global order “Dwarves stay inside” is activated.) Everybody ran inside with the ogres following. The Farmer, the Fisherdwarf and a mule died outside. Fikod the badly injured Carpenter from the original crew went berserk in his bed when he heard about the Ogres and we had to kill him, as he was dangerous. The old crew and I met the Ogres inside with short swords drawn. There was total chaos.

Wearing my leather armor and axe held high I attacked the Ogre that just killed a farmer. As I was about to slay the Ogre with one mighty blow I slipped and the Ogre wounded me and I had to tactically regroup outside.

A Craftsdwarf was then struck down. Tun the Farmer attacked with her obsidian short sword, aided by an unarmed recruit. The ogre got tired from the wrestling and was slain. Finally all recruits formed up and killed the other two.

Three dwarves died, four including the berserk Fikod, making a total of 16 survivors out of which 4 are left from the original crew. Tun the Farmer lies critically wounded in bed. Inod, a new Mason, is also wounded in bed. I am wounded but working and not very happy with life.

We now have 2 Miners, 3 Carpenters, 2 Masons, 1 Trapper, 1 Craftsdwarf, 2 Farmers, 1 Mechanic and 3 Peasants. We also have 1 horse, 1 mule, 4 foals, 1 kitten and 1 cow calf.

Miners are now focusing on mining. Mechanics build mechanisms to make much-needed traps. I try to work as much I can but I have to rest now and then because of my wounds. Assigning a main Carpenter focusing only on carpentry jobs. He quickly makes 9 new beds. We are building a tannery.

Late Spring
While mining out a barracks Nil struck silver.

Summer
Making plans for 22 2x1 square rooms. Three Ogres roam the lands, killing one Carpenter. Making a squad. One Ogre gets close to the fortress entrance and kills the cow calf. Likod the new Trapper wrestles (no bolts left) the ogre and the squads comes and kill it. The squad goes out and kills the remaining two ogres, but a Carpenter is wounded. The squad is disbanded except one Peasant now training marksmanship in the new barracks.

Tun the injured Farmer throws a tantrum in her bed when she is drafted by mistake to the squad. I made her civilian again. She is unhappy, but healing. I have to go to bed, the pain from my wounds are too great.

Mid-Summer
Nil the Miner gets more experienced, she is now an Adept Miner just as me, and she is also extremely tough, while I am very agile instead, well if I wasn’t wounded. It’s a hot and dry summer, the grass becoming brown. Tun the injured Farmer went mad from boredom, running around babbling.

Late Summer
A Peasant working in the farm plot got ambushed by 5 Frogmen. They killed him and no one was close to help. A squad was formed and dispatched. The first recruit that arrived wasn’t armed. He wrestled with three of the frogmen and managed to flee with minor wounds. The second recruit that arrived was Etur the Carpenter equipped with an axe and she got tangled up with four frogmen. She stunned one of them and another one was becoming tired. One frogman followed the fleeing recruit over the bridge, but met the rest of the squad’s 5 recruits. Two Marksdwarves fired bolts at the frogman that turned around and fled back over the bridge.

While Etur the Carpenter wrestled the four frogmen she got promoted to Axedwarf. She managed to tire all four frogmen and entered a martial trance. Tosid the Craftsdwarf who arrived unarmed wrestled the fifth frogman and became a Wrestler. The other squad members went to fetch something or eat in the middle of the battle. By making the new Axedwarf squad leader instead of the one leaving the battle, one of the other recruits turned around and entered the battle again shooting bolts. The Frogmen perished one after another, the last one tried to crawl away overexerted. Etur the Axedwarf and Tosid the Wrestler got wounded, and Etur may lose one eye. The Mechanics are now building stone fall traps by the river.

Etur has extreme pain from her wounded eye and looses consciousness now and then but she continues to work. The new Trapper made some weird mistake and got run over by 4-5 hippos, getting badly wounded. A Carpenter goes out to recover the wounded Trapper.

Early Autum
The dwarven caravan has arrived. We trade a lot of chalk bracelets, idols and other stone arts for 15 meats, 5 cow cheese and 11 units of leather. Tun the crazy Farmer died of thirst, taking away the most experienced Farmer from the fortress and leaving the original crew with 3 members alive. Inod the wounded Mason is now fully healed and gets up from bed. Etur the Carpenter’s left eye hasn’t healed and she still faints now and then.

Mid-Autumn
Built leather works and made some leather armor.

Winter
There are now 2x1 rooms for everyone, a barracks with archery range, a burial room, a new dining room and a new storage for finished goods. Assigning the now trained Marksdwarf to the hunting job. I am up and running, but a little stiff in the left upper arm.

Mid-Winter
Harpies threw a farmer into the river and killed him and then a mule, but the mule managed to wound one of the Harpies. Then they killed the Marksdwarf that now was hunting (no shit!). He had no bolts left. Sent a squad. Ilral the original Mason arrived first and slew one Harpy with his short sword. Then came Etur the one-eyed Carpenter and slew the injured harpy, but then Etur got unconscious because of her old wound. The last harpy closed in on the unconscious Etur but she awoke just in time and killed it.

Tosid the incapacitated Trapper went stark raving mad and is running around babbling. Four Lizardmen attacked from the cave river bridge. One chased a Fisherdwarf that was fishing from the bridge but got killed when it stepped under a stone-fall trap. The second Lizardman also fell for a stone trap. The last two seemed to retreat, they were gone when the squad arrived.

Ilral came and reported that the Entrance Hall’s defenses were built. I followed her to inspect. In the Upper Meeting Hall the new moat, mined by Nil and me, was filled with water, and over it was built a rough Onyx bridge.

“How do you like my bridge?” Ilral asked.

“It’s nice, rough and durable.” I answered.

“Yes, and it’s retractable incase invaders survive the defenses in the Entrance Hall.”

“Which are?” I asked.

“Come here, let me show you.” We walked through the doors into the Entrance Hall.

“If the invaders breach the entrance doors they will be greeted by our mechanic’s carefully placed two lines of stone-fall traps (^). If they survive the cracks in their heads bolts from the fortifications carved in the north wall will spray them.”

“Good work! The problem is that we have no Marksdwarves to spray the bolts. Maybe we could ask Nil to become one?” We went back to our chores with smiles on our faces.

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The Smiling Blob

2006-12-12T20:12:00.001-08:00

Details about Dungeons of Daggorath

Intro from manual:

"There is a tale," he said, "passed down for centuries and almost forgotten, of a time in the Olden Days when a curse such as this descended on the land. Deep beneath these towering crags, in the Dungeons of Daggorath, an evil Wizard made his home and grew in power. But before his destruction of the land was complete, a brave adventurer ventured into the fearsome Dungeons and drove the Wizard away, saving Rivenshire from a devilish fate."

The hero enters the dungeon. It is pitch black. He can hear the heart beat in his chest. There are a lot of strange sounds in the dungeon. Some seems close, some distant. The hero pulls out a torch from his backpack with his left hand. (Commands: “Pull Left Torch” or “P L T”) He lights the torch and mounts it on his backpack. (“Use Left” or “U L”) He can now se a corridor. He then pulls his sword with his right hand. (P R SW) It is a wooden sword.

He hears a sound from behind. It sounds like a viper (with a lot of imagination). He turns around and sees a door to the left. Suddenly a viper coming from behind attacks him. (That’s the problem with 2D-sound) The hero is lucky; monsters can’t attack from behind, they always line up in front of him before attacking.

The hero is surprised and the viper hits him. The heartbeat increases. The hero hits (“Attack Right” or “A R”) the viper a couple of times but the viper is fast and hits him a second time. The heart is pounding fast. He hits the viper and kills it with the third blow. His heartbeat is slowing. A spider attacks but is killed by one blow.

He waits a short while to get his heartbeat down to a more relaxed beat and then moves forward (M). He turns right (T R) and then goes through the door (M). He hears sounds everywhere. He turns left. There’s nothing but an empty corridor. Suddenly a viper attacks and hits. His heart is pumping faster. He kills the viper with three blows. He waits a moment for the heartbeat to slow down and then moves down through the corridor. When he moves his heartbeat increases again. He has to gain some experience to get a better condition. Sometimes he has to rest for a moment before continuing. He turns around a corner and ends up at a door. On the other side is yet one more corridor. He moves past a couple of doors to the right. He now hears a deep thumping sound close by. Down the corridor comes a smiling blob.

It moves slowly and the hero prepares to attack. (A R without pressing enter) He makes three attacks and then moves away.

He waits for the blob to catch up and attacks again and moves. This is very dangerous, one hit from the blob could kill him. After about ten hits the blob dies leaving something on the ground.

He moves to the thing and then examines the corridor. (EX) He now sees what’s in the corridor and in his backpack.

It’s a ring. He picks up the ring. (“Get Left Ring” or “G L R”). He tries to identify the ring. (“Reveal Left” or “RE L”) He’s too inexperienced to identify it.

By listening for sounds he finds a viper and kills it. Two blows was enough, he is getting stronger. He now hears a loud clanging sound. A stone giant comes around a corner and attacks.

The hero panics and moves backwards (M B). While getting ready to face the giant a second one comes around the corner behind the first one. He panics and runs straight ahead through both giants. They are to slow to hit him running by. He moves left through a door (M L) and then moves a couple of steps into a corridor. With a racing heart he turns around. (T A) Soon one of the stone giants enters the corridor. The hero attacks three times, moves two steps, turns around (to better time the attacks). He slays it with two more hits. He can hear the other giant moving in the distance. The giant leaves a torch on the ground.

He is just about to pick up the torch when the second giant attacks. The hero moves away. The giant picks up the torch. The hero dances around the giant and kills it with five blows. It leaves a sword.

A couple of vipers attack but he kills them with ease. Before picking up the stuff he tries to identify the ring. He fails again. He puts the ring into his backpack. (“Stow Left” or “S L”) He gets the torch and stows it in the backpack. Underneath the torch was another torch. He stows it. He then picks up the sword and identifies it as a wooden sword. Disappointed he stows it to.

He moves around in the dungeon looking for something to fight. He kills a spider and a viper. The viper drops a shield. He examines.

Then he looks up at the dungeon again (L). He picks up the shield with his left empty hand (G L SH) and identifies it. It’s a Leather shield. A spider attacks, but the hero is not afraid of spiders any more.

He is now lost in the dungeon. Every corridor looks the same. There are no sounds. He moves around. The heart rate increases. He spots something in the distance.

The torch is burning out and it’s getting darker. He moves closer and finds a hole down.

There’s a sound of a viper from behind. Afraid that the torch will burn out in the middle of the fight he stows his shield and pulls up a new torch. The viper attacks and is barely visible and very difficult to hit.

He lights the torch and swings his wooden sword. A couple of hits and the viper is dead.

With his left hand empty he pulls his ring and tries to reveal it. Now he knows what it is! It’s a Vulcan Ring.

But to use it he needs to a activate it by incanting the right word. He incants a few words and finally gets it right. (IN [word]) With a sound the ring transforms into a Fire Ring. He thinks it’s best to get some better weapons before climbing down the hole. (C D) He moves around and hears a blob. It’s close. He strafes out into a corridor. (“Turn Left” then “Move Right”) No blob there. It was behind him! It attacks and hits. The heartbeat races and the hero desperately tries to move away but after only one step the heartbeat gets to fast and he loses consciousness. Everything goes black. He can hear the blob closing in. The heartbeat slows again and he slowly regains consciousness and vision. But the blob is ready and hits him again. The last thing he sees is the blob fading from vision. "I should have used the Fire Ring... aaaaaah... *gone*"

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Dungeons of Daggorath

2006-12-12T18:53:00.000-08:00

Genre: First person dungeon hack
World map: No
Permadeath: Yes
Races: 1
Classes: 1
Religion: No
Spellcasting: No but scroll reading
Persistent dungeons: Yes but static
Played Version: 0.5
Latest version: PC Port
Graphics: 3D wireframe
Mouse: No
Sound: Yes
Resource: Fan page, PC Port

The Dungeons of Daggorath is a video game for the TRS 80 released in 1982 by DynaMicro. If a modern dungeon dweller gives it some time and patience a great adventure awaits with a stunningly deep immersion factor. Although it uses 3D and is played in realtime it has many roguelike features.

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Fortress Tinearths – 1062 Autumn

2006-12-10T14:58:00.000-08:00

Jump to details about Dwarf Fortress.
Jump to First Part

Early Autumn
The cave river is overflowing but there’s no damage. There are only one cat and one horse left. The carpenter builds a wooden cage to keep the horse inside. No one asks questions, everybody know why.

Mid-Autumn

A dwarven caravan has arrived. It is composed of one Merchant, two Axedwarves and two pack mules. A trade depot has to be built so that the Merchant can unload his goods. Instead of building the trade depot the Mason takes a long brake and then goes to bed. The Metal Smith gets the architect job instead. When the trade depot is ready the awaiting Merchant unloads the wares and the crew haul all bins with finished goods at the trade depot. The Merchant offers a barrel of cow’s milk and 10 units of dwarven cheese and some leather.

When everything is unloaded the trading begins. Ilral the Mason never had time to cut any stone arts so Kogan tries to offer some animal fat and used clothes, but the merchant isn’t interested. Kogan then tries to trade with the obsidian swords.

It was tough business. First he traded two obsidian short swords for the cow’s milk barrel. Then he traded the last obsidian short sword and dead Kel’s silk clothes for 10 dwarven cheese. But he managed to keep Kel’s old full leather armor anyway. The caravan loads all wares and leaves.

Checking the stores it is noticed that the barrel of Cow’s milk only was worth one unit! Tinshit, the stores don’t look too good!

Now everyone have to work hard before the winter to gather food. The Carpenter and Metal Smith are made hunters, giving the carpenter the leather armor because he is hunting with an axe. Kogan is fishing. Nil has calmed down after throwing a mule to the ground, but she is given easy service. She gets cratfsworking and builds one more craftdwarf’s workshop to make bone bolts. Ilral makes new obsidian short swords. A foal has been born.

Late Autumn
All seeds are planted. Tun the Famer gets the brewing order and builds a still. Fikod the new Axe Hunter is badly mauled during some hunting accident. He misses most of his limbs. No one saw what happened and Fikod is unconscious. Probably he got to close to a stampeding flock of hippos. Tosid the other hunter carries the carpenter inside to a bed. Tosid has been luckier as a hunter, earlier she was butchering a gazelle. She is now a Dabbling Ambusher and a Novice Marksdwarf.

1:st Moonstone. Early Winter
It is now winter and the farm plot dries up. It is time to brew some liquor. Kogan tries his best at cleaning fish but isn’t fast enough and some raw fish in the fishery rot. The farmer has to brew wine in a cloud of miasma. In only a few days there are 20 units of dwarven wine made. Tosid brings in one more gazelle. A dwarf is hauling the horse and foal to a wooden cage to keep them safe inside the fortress.

Finally, at the end of Moonstone Kogan is done with the most pressing business. Edëm is finally buried in a coffin. Kogan and Tosid the Metal Smith sit down at the newly cut stone tables to feast at some turtle.

“This some nice stone thrones to rest a tired hunter’s backside upon you have made.” Tosid says.

“Aye, me thought them tables a little too crowded lately and cut some more thrones. Not that we will be needin many with this bad luck of ours.” Kogan answers.

“Don’t be talking such nonsense, bad things are about to happen at a place this sinister. Let us enjoy the turtle in this nice dining room of ours instead.” Tosid says and smiles.

“Aye, you are right me friend. And look at the nice beds Fikod has made.” Kogan says and nods toward Fikod’s broken and unconscious body lying on one of the beds. Kogan’s eyes glister in the dimly lit cavern. “I shouldn’t have ordered him to hunt with an axe…” Kogan’s voice trails off.

“You have to think about all the gold we will rob this haunted place of. The ores with which we will forge the strongest of armor and sharpest of weapons. Fortress Akrulber will be sung about in distant lands in a future to come. Kogan, you have to lighten up, soon Tun will bring the newly brewed wine, I suggest you drink a whole barrel.” Tosid makes a turtle shell spin on the table and rises to get some turtle bone bolts from the ammo stockpile. Without a word she heads out into the rainy afternoon to make one last hunting pass before nightfall.

Kogan picks up his logbook, not even touched since they arrived at The Tower of Rooters. Sucking on his pen, wondering where to start, someone is coming down the corridor from the cave river. It is Tun bringing a barrel of newly brewed dwarven wine. After dropping the barrel at the food stockpile she brings some gazelle meat to the injured Fikod who is lying on his bed thirsty and starved. She then brings a bucket stored close by to fetch him some water. With a nod she goes to bed and snores within a minute. Kogan fetches a big tankard of wine and begins to pen down the happenings of the expeditions first miserable half year.

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Fortress Tinearths – 1062 Summer

2006-12-09T15:28:00.000-08:00

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Early Summer.
Finally the second floodgate is ready and linked up. The lever is pulled and the room is flooded.

The lever is pulled once again and the room is drained of water and now the cave floor is muddy. The Farmer begins to make a farm plot, while the miners are mining a stockpile room close by for the seeds and later the plants.

The Farmer moves all stones away from the farm plot and when it’s ready it's time to select what crop to grow in each season. As the fortress only have Plump Helmet Spawn that’s the choice.

In the newly mined store room close by a food stockpile is designated and custom made so as to only accept seeds and plants. If the other food stockpile in the Upper Main Hall is changed not to accept seeds the dwarves will soon begin to transport the seeds to the new stockpile.

The cave river is overflowing but doors protect the corridor from getting flooded. Everybody goes to sleep in the beds, except the Trapper who sleeps outside. The Trapper has just gone to sleep when she awakes by the flapping of wings. She looks up and sees three Harpies that are swooping down at her. She looks at them in terror and thinks "My god, they look just like brown h:s! Aaaaah!!!" and then she runs for the fortress gates. They almost catch up with her but a dog interferes and attacks the closest Harpy.

The dog is killed and the trapper is almost at the doors when she decides to flee south instead of into the fortress. (This is fixed in the latest version with the global order “Dwarves stay inside”) To take control of her movements she is recruited to become a soldier but it’s to late. The Harpies are too close and she attacks a Harpy in a martial trance. She seems to be out of bolts for the crossbow because she uses it in close combat. The other dwarves are sleeping inside and can’t be awaken. The Harpy and Kel collide and both get stunned. The other two Harpies jump her and she dies a horrible death.

The fortress’s entrance doors are now locked. The Harpies proceed to strike down a dog and a mule outside. One of the Harpies gets seriously wounded in the fight with the dog. Another mule comes by and is attacked but manages to kick the Harpy, slightly wounding it, and gets away. Now the dwarves are trapped inside and all food and seed is stored in a stockpile outside. As soon as the dwarves wake up a squad is formed with the two Miners wielding picks and the Carpenter wielding his axe. The squad leader is one of the Miners but the Carpenter, who is an Axedwarf refuses to serve under a Miner and takes the position as squad leader.

The lightly wounded Harpy recovers quickly and kills a horse. The squad goes to the cave river to drink before going to battle. They gather inside the doors while the Harpies kill another mule. One of the Harpies is out flying somewhere else so now is the time to attack.

They rush out the door and one Harpy flees at the sight of the Axedwarf swinging his axe. The seriously wounded Harpy is lying unconscious on one of the wagons and the Axedwarf hits it hard and sends it flying through the air. When it lands it is dead.

The two Miners catch up with the fleeing Harpy and send it to death with their picks. The third Harpy, now known as Aståsbobrur or Roguemother is on the other side of the river. It is the one that killed Kel. The squad is sent after her. They kill her after a short battle and Kogan is lightly wounded in the lower body and right upper arm. The squad gets disbanded and the dwarves continue their work.

It is a sad day for the dwarves. Ilral the Mason builds a stone coffin in silence. The coffin is placed in the Upper Meeting Hall and Kel is buried. She was a very good hunter. Fikod the Carpenter is made hunter by activating his hunting job and deactivating his woodcutting and carpentry jobs.

The Plump Helmet Spawn is now delivered to the seed stockpile and the Farmer begins to sow. After building a craftsdwarf’s workshop Ilral begins making dark stone short swords from obsidian, then she is going to make stone crafts to trade with the autumn caravan. The short swords use up one obsidian stone and one wood but it’s worth it arming all the dwarves. The fortress is now out of liquor and there’s only 30 meats left. Fikod the Carpenter is hunting with his axe. Maybe someone should use old Kel’s crossbow to hunt also. Nil the second Miner is set to hunt with crossbow and leather and she collects Kel’s old trapper gear.

The dwarves are busy moving every foodstuff but fat and raw fish inside. Three more Harpies are seen on the map. They seem to keep far south. There are no empty bins to store the new short swords so the Carpenter’s hunting job is cancelled and his carpentry job activated and three wooden bins are ordered from the carpenter’s workshop. Without bins the stockpiles get full and cluttered very fast.

Mid-Summer
A Metal Smith arrives hauling an anvil. Her name is Tosid and she is a novice Armor Smith, Metal Crafter and Furnace Operator. A group of warthogs get to close and she drops the anvil and runs to the fortress. Nil the Miner, now working as a Trapper with a crossbow, is drafted as a one-man squad and sent to scare the warthogs off. Nil isn’t happy with being drafted a second time this summer. She is marked as unhappy and this can lead to dangerous situations if it gets worse. By checking her info it’s also learned that she’s complaining about not having a well and the lack of chairs.

Kogan fetches the anvil and Nil is made civilian again. Rock blocks and a wooden bucket is needed to build the well. There’s also need to make wooden or bone bolts for Nil the new Trapper. She has only got one iron bolt in her quiver. Everybody goes to sleep inside except Nil who sleeps outside in the rain, unhappy, and the new Metal Smith who seems very active is up late working. After some thinking Kogan makes her the new Trapper instead and Nil a miner again, maybe she gets happier. All the crew is complaining about the lack of chairs. The Mason has to cut some rock thrones and tables that are placed in the Upper Main Hall. The now empty wagons are dismantled giving three logs each. Everybody helps with the first harvest when they have the time.

Two Ogres comes walking on the other side of the river. All dwarves outside form a squad and get ordered inside. (With new version use global order “Dwarves stay inside” instead) Edëm the Fisherdwarf is too close to one of the Ogres, and as a newly drafted recruit he attacks it unarmed. They begin to wrestle and the dwarf is no match for the Ogre. Edëm dies without even making a scratch on the Ogre.

All dwarves are inside, entrance doors locked. The Ogres continue north and leaves the map leaving a muddy trail. Doors are unlocked and all logs are carried inside for obvious reasons. With two crewmembers dead already it’s time to move everything inside the safety of the fortress and place traps at the entrance. Ilral cuts one more stone coffin.

Nil is throwing a tantrum. Dwarves throwing tantrums aren’t just a little angry; they are close to getting crazy. This can end up in very bad things and is one of the greatest dangers for a small group of isolated dwarves. Nil walks to the raw fish stockpile outside, lifts a barrel with 15 turtle meats and throws it at least 15 yards away.

Kogan is close by and shouts:

“Every hand, haul the raw turtle inside, including the barrel thrown by mighty Nil himself!”

Nil focuses his angry eyes on Kogan, and considers throwing the dwarf into the river. “You like to take a swim oh almighty Kogan the fortress builder?” Nil hisses through his teeth.

“Nobody tosses a dwarf! Not even another dwarf, you well know that Nil!” Kogan answers and squeezes the shaft of his pick harder.

A cold wind blows in Nil’s face, foreboding the coming of autumn. Nil thinks about the seriousness of the situation, with both Trapper and Fisher dead, and calms down.

“So what are the remaining six of Akrulber's crew to do without both hunter and fisher? Making me hunter! Hmpf, you know I cannot hit with a crossbow. I am a miner. I like MINING! DEEP!”

“Aye, that is exactly what we are going to do. We are going to mine! A mighty cave beside the cave river. Forget plans and designs, just mine a mighty natural cave.”

“And what good does that, beside keeping me quiet?” Nil asks.

“When the cave is flooded it will turn into a muddy mess. In this mud there’s going to grow things, maybe even trees. We are going to make an underground forest so big not even elves would believe it to be true. Here we are going to harvest both logs and plant and we will only have to go outside to test our new swords on Ogres now and then.”

“Hmm, great plan! Maybe we can find some Aquamarine gems or some amber; you know how much I like those. Let’s get to work!”

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