Alwyia the Mist Elven Bardess (p20)

[Utnapishtim]

This was my 2nd win and my 100th attempt at the game, so also the last time before gaining access to the bug cave. Thus no killer bug taming on the cards yet.

After my first win with Tharkun, the dwarven healer, I decided to try another standard ending with a much more fragile character, who would also let me experience some new and different aspects of the game. A female mist elven bard seemed to fit the bill. As it happened, history repeated itself and the first run beyond the mid game was ended by Nuurag-Varn. This time the avenger was not to be found among the immediate successors, who all succumbed very early to traps, orcs and goblin rockthrowers. It took a dozen or so attempts and a decision to really think through every move during the very early game to get another character over the early hurdles. Eventually, she was to go all the way.

This game was marked by many first times for me, such as the first visits to the Minotaur Maze and Quickling Tree, and also the first time utilizing ventriloquism ("dubidu! The jackal seems confused." - for some reason I found this utterly hysterical). After closing the gate, I also did some exploring in preparation for a possible future ultra, such as the Blue Dragon Caves quest and assassinating the Assassin Prince, just to see how those play out. So quite a lot of ground was covered during this game, which also shows in the turn count and the time elapsed. Still, had no trouble with corruption this time.

Other notable things: No sources of wishing was found during the game, and no spenseweed could be stabilized, which was especially disadvantageous for a mist elf. Finally, in a moment of bloodthirsty frenzy, our heroine failed to adhere to the principles of the cat lord: a rather embarrassing lack of merit for a bardess.

(caveat: this happened already a couple of weeks ago, and I just now summoned enough stamina to scrape a half-decent write-up based on my earlier notes)


EARLY GAME

Alwyia started with To 9 and the same amount of max HP. She had PV of 0, but with her heir gift 7LB was able to outrun the early game monsters. SMC had stairs in adjacent rooms, and the blanket run was successful. When returning from SMC, Alwyia still had zero xp, but her mist wolf companion was already moderately experienced. Starting skills included healing, so she took the druid guest. Unfortunately, way to DD:3 was blocked by an exploding rune. (It really seems as if in every single game with a mist elf, there is this kind of potentially deadly rune or booby trap somewhere in the early game blocking progress. I freely admit to having quitted every mist elven bard that started without detect traps). So went to Puppy Cave, spent some time in PC:1 gaining one or two levels, and descended just to find out that the upstairs in PC:2 was surrounded by water (min. 4 water tiles to cross). No swimming or carrot juice of course. Decided to brave UD, but almost immediately faced a fire vortex and had to retreat. So had to swallow my pride and head to ID with no other good options. Gained a couple of levels exploring different versions of ID:1 and ID:2. Found my first spellbook there: Teleportation! However, thought it would be best to increase concentration and literacy quite a lot before trying to read it.

The mist wolf was tragicly poisoned by an assassin in Holeinthewall, and perished. All the ID earnings were spent to food and keys from the rattling, none of which were the right one for the door with the exploding rune. So back to UD, managed to kill the vortex with missiles. Some nice and easy zombie/skeleton tension rooms gave weapon skills, exp. and loot. UD:2 had a co-aligned (neutral) altar in the room with downstairs. Was still true berserking (switching the 7LB off and on as needed), and had a lot of trouble with a room full of hill orcs in UD:3, as their missiles took away around 10 HP when hit. Lured them one by one to the upstairs altar in coward mode. Found a wand of knocking, so headed back to DD through SMC's adjacent stairs. Finished the druid guest without problems and got herbalism. Two carrot juices had been found at this point also, so got swimming and headed back to PC. Ants in two different levels succumbed to the enticing harmonies produced by Alwyia's flute. Hostile blink dogs on the third level soon dropped a corpse. The puppy corpse level had a gnoll vault, which Alwyia managed to clear by reverting to hit-and-run whenever a large gnoll was encountered. Poison resistance did not come easily, as none of the individual spiders seemed willing to drop corpses (no food preservation). Finally a spider factory met on the way back through the upper puppy cave levels solved the issue.

After some further shopping for food, it was time to head back to UD again. UD:5 was a herb level. Curaria/antidote and pepper petal/stomafilia could be stabilised. Encountered another fire vortex, but managed to trap it inside a short corridor between doors. After reaching HMV returned to explore the rest of the UD levels more fully. Nothing really noteworthy aside from some more blink dogs on UD:6, dropping a further corpse. Sold it to the HMV shop for backup.

CoC yielded a lawful altar on the level above the big room, centrally located and near the downstairs. It was soon converted to neutral. No obstacles on the way to DT. Thrundarr's first assignment was an annis hag, not one of the easiest to find. Bought a ring of clear mind from the shop. Just having ascended back upstairs from DT, Alwyia got a reminder of her fragility, when an encounter with a lightning vortex left her with less than 10 hp, and prompted her to return to DT to recover a bit.

The next thing on the agenda was precrowning. The altar above the big room was best for that purpose due to its location. Digged some additional corridors around it to facilitate monster flow. The precrowning went very smoothly. Popped down to the big room quite a few times in order to lure monsters from there. Alignment kept returning to N= when saccing, but neutralizing animals with music before killing them was a quick fix for that. Received Wyrmlance for the trouble.

For some reason Alwyia seemed to be peculiarly vulnerable to getting stunned/bleeding/confused/lulled to sleep. I don't recall any other character at this stage having as much trouble with harpies and doppelgangers while not doomed or cursed. This made me a bit worried, but I nevertheless decided to continue with the usual mid game agenda. Perhaps the ankh would alleviate some of the these issues.


EARLY MID GAME

On her way to the Pyramid, Alwayia managed to learn the teleportation spell in the wilderness. The first two levels of the Pyramid seemed to go pretty much as usual. Dropped extra stuff to get unburdened, drank a potion of invisibility, and entered the third level. No dangerous monsters apart from a ratling duelist. Stairs were two blocks from the mummy lord. Teleported next to him and the melee commenced. The nearest jackal demon also moved to join in the skirmish. It went all downhill pretty much immediately. Two turns after the teleport Alwiya was at her half HP, profusely bleeding, sick and confused! So switched to the coward mode and cleared the confusion by putting on the ring of clear mind. Then moved one block to the stairs, descended and applied some curaria and first aid. So Alwyia was safe for now, but I was pretty disgusted and dumbfounded, as nothing like this had happened in the pyramid to any of my characters, including the previous couple of mist elf bards that got as far. I had to conclude that despite having lucky and fate smiles, Alwyia was not yet ready for this at all, perhaps due to still having quite low PV of 9. She was also still at level 13, which is a bit earlier than I usually have visited the pyramid.

So I decided that Griffyard would be her next destination. On the ground level everything was as easy as usual and a zombie dropped a studded leather armour, which improved PV to 12. So decided to try the Pyramid again and this time there suddenly were no major problems whatsoever. Did not clear the third level though, but left as soon as getting AMW and Ankh. Then returned to clear Griffyard's lower level. The Griff and the Necromancer went down quite nicely, but the bone golem could barely be scratched, which of course meant that I coudn't even dream of touching the steel golems at this point.

Returning from the Griffyard Alwyia paid a visit to the old barbarian. Alwyia's first kill was a hobgoblin and quite conveniently she encountered a party of them in the wilderness just outside the glade. Having gained some Courage, Alwyia returned to CoC. She met a lightning lizard and decided to tame it, calling it "Zap". After following Alwyia around for a while, it was soon moderately experienced, but unfortunately a bit too slow to really be practical. Alwyia left it to guard the downstairs room in the arena level, and there it bravely stood in silence until the end of the game.

Back in DT, Alwyia used her newly learnt teleportation magics to get some potions of strength and attributes from the mystic. Exploring below DT she dug her way around a large room of stone golems, and noted a pool in the level before the crossroads. Still no sight of any annis hags, so decided to just do the Arena at this point, in order to get Tactics as soon as possible. Bonk the hill giant fell easily as always. On the level above the big room Alwyia repeated the steps she had taken for the precrowning, only skipping the part about killing neutralized animals. Soon she was absolutely close to Balance and received immunity to fire and the Wand of Creation. The latter was decisive for the general direction of Alwyia's further development. From now on she was to rely less on melee and more on the arcane ways. However, this posed an immediate problem: Alwyia had found quite a few utility spells, but no offensive ones whatsoever. Thus, for the purposes of delivering some damage, she was currently having the worst of both worlds.

At least she had found some wands of cold. So she headed towards the north-western corner of the map. Usually the cavernous levels are teeming with annis hags, but none were seen this time around. As was to expected, Alwyia had significant trouble with the skeletal king. Thanks to the staff of creation, confusion rarely occurred and didn't last for long. But she was really struggling to get any damage across to the royal heap of bones, while receiving plenty of it herself. Soon she resorted to luring the big guy upstairs and away from the stairs, and then returning to fetch the ring unimpeded. However, fighting some monsters in the level above, I noticed that she was about to gain level 18. Now at last there would be some offensive spells at her disposal, I though. Well, she did learn one offensive spell: fireball. Apart from that: magic lock, remove curse, revelation. Not really helpful regarding the skeletal king, but decided to return to face him anyway. With the combination of wands and berserking Alwyia finally had the king under her feet, while tauntingly wearing his ring on her finger.

Back in CoC Alwyia spent some time in the big room gathering moss and morgia. There she finally encountered an annis hag, promptly doing away with it, and running straight to Thrundarr afterwards. Now was the time to continue the the exploration of CoC down to Khelly, long overdue. DH1 had stairs in adjacent rooms, but DH2 required a bit of digging and one emergency teleportation when sandwitched in a corridor. Khelly was on the level immediately downstairs. Otherwise there wasn't anything really notable, so returned after killing the chaos servants. As saving Khelly would be nice and there weren't many intrinsics to lose, Alwyia emptied the pool above DH. Got sick, cursed and lost teleport control, all easily fixed. Gained stun resistance, petrification resistance and invisibility! Quite disappointingly, the ogre tribe did not yield any additional strength. The next task was to kill a stone giant, which was much more easily accomplished than the first quest. Sacced the greater demon, and with the Big Punch finally had something with which to do some damage to the steel golems. Darkforge only had six pools, Alwyia already had some nice intrinsics, and there weren't any spare blink dog corpses stored anymore, so decided against further sipping. Nothing really useful in the weapon and armour rooms.