So my current random character is a gray elf paladin with some lawful tendencies--he's a messiah of Ayssia, but may turn to Corellius when he saves Khelevaster.

Anyway, this N+ gray elf paladin visits the Water Dragon Cave, finds the momma dragon, reports back to her son, and all is good. But he can't shake that, on the ground, a few steps from Shyssiryxius, he saw the Black Whip of Extinction, and thinks it'd be serving a much greater purpose in his hands than on the floor in a water cave (Though I guess in his hands it's more likely to wind up back out in the world, causing extinction...).

I've never robbed the water dragon cave before, and had a bad feeling, so I saved a backup of my character. He goes to the cave, puts doors all the way around the stairs, teleports to the whip, darkens the area, goes to pick it up, ignores the warnings, survives a barrage of attacks, teleports to the exit, and moves to the nearest land. On going to equip his new weapon, though, it's not there. In my terror I missed the messages about "a magical force brutally blocks your attempt" and a voice in your head saying "*NO*". Since this wasn't what I'd been lead to believe would happen, I loaded up the backup, and tested stealing from the cave by darkening the exit and the loot, and just by stealing in broad daylight, and neither works for me.

Is it no longer possible in 3.2.2 to steal from the water dragon cave without killing Shyssiryxius, am I missing something, or is this a glitch? Besides being too weak to kill her, this character would happily steal from her to save the world, but would never kill a) Blup's mom, and b) a lawful dragon.

Thanks for any help! I've just never encountered the whip before, and really wanted to mess around with it. I may have delusions of grandiosely dual-wielding Justifier and the Black Whip of Extinction if my crowning goes well. And I've noticed, digging around, that BWoE isn't as crazy-good as it has been in the past, but I'd still really like to try it out and see how I do with it even post-nerf.

TL;DR Tried to rob Shyssiryxius but can't because of magical forces, not because of deadly melee attacks. Why?