Asherons Call: This One’s Better, I Promise (Drudges)

Yesterday, Bob spent an hour on a quest before managing to begin.

Today, the “fun” starts.

Quotations.

Though it was quite a bit of fun.

So we start, getting to that locked door right quick and getting vulned even quicker when we step through the trap right in front of it.

Oops.

I weaken the lock, pick it, we’re in.

Head down this ramp, we get more vuln traps, and run into some bandits.

He got this frost takuba, I got my frost takuba (see [u]#6[/u]) which is much better, of course; but bein’ twenty to thirty levels over me still kills just about every bandit in there.

No shame in that.

Then he walks into another trap that blasts him back to the lifestone.

No shame in that, either.

I finish off the bandits, slowly, an’ head back to the door to wait for ’em.

Alone in there, I spends some time mapping out the floor traps, and pretty soon I knows just how to jump across or out of the way, all the way down back to the bandits.

Which is good, ’cause as soon as he got back and I let ’em in, I walked into another trap and got one-shotted.

The rest of the quest’s pretty much like that… back and fourth, through the dungeon.

Sometimes it was the traps, sometimes it was the bandit mages…

I found a Banderling dungeon that offered a closer tie than Hilltop from Tethena, so that sped us up a bit…

This run, I even got buffed quite a bit, level sevens over sixes, still hurting over the loss of my fire/frost ring…

We make it to a “special” area, with “special” hooms, “special” for the fact that they use some quest weapons and insult you.

It was wonderful.

This one guy implied this was my first time out of the BSD.

I killed that guy extra.

But before that, we had to lure ’em.

I got out my discuses, threw a couple, then ducked the war spells and missiles behind the wall.

Took out a melee or two, a mage came (ha-ha, in that ugly mage armor), blasted Jenoba.

With no mana leftover for me, we were fightin’ a while, neither getting anywhere…

I need to go back to pick the door, but we gotta be close, an’ he gotta buff yet…

So I run.

Lucky enough there’s no traps here, or I’d be dead for sure… but I makes it through the “boss” room into these twisty, anti-mage hallways.

Alright.

Fightin’ bandits easy now; still slow, but I don’t have five mages firing sevens at me at once anymore.

Even simpler, next I come to a locked door, and these “bandits” can’t even pick locks.

Swords fit through bars, spells don’t.

A joyful massacre.

Pick the door, run through the secret wall ahead (especially easy to spot with bandits streaming out)…

Here’s a mess of mages an’ archers in a biiiig open room, so I’m running extra fast even though the game don’t allow it, and jumping a bit, just because.

…here’s the last corpse of Jaleh… before I’m killed, I pay my respects by… yeah… ripping his heart out…

That’s the quest, but…

Shameful.

I recalled, Jenoba was done buffing (by quite a bit now, I assume) and we headed back in [B]with my eeeevil sword[/b].

Two or three hours into the quest by now, we attacked again.

I was now filled with adrenaline, blood lust, I could kill them slightly faster maybe.

And my sword bled.

I flew through the dungeon, as it saved me from tripping traps, killing and picking locks once more.

We put down the “bosses” no trouble.

And the million or so (I really need to learn to count) bandits in the room after.

This time we had a chance to get Jaleh’s loot, scattered about… that was disturbingly fun.

Next room was the big one, full of mages and archers… killing them slowly for a while from behind cover.

Once again at his corpse, Jenoba got his heart, and I… I dunno… I could try again…

A wispy voice says, “You have already taken my heart, would you have my soul too?”

Fair enough.

We stayed here a while, getting the rest of Jaleh’s stuff, I picked a few chests… put down the bandits another time or two on the way an’ we was done.

Back to Ayan… though from the widow’s reaction, I think we should ‘ave left it at that…

She sent us back to the tailor to apologize or something.

I stole her shoes.

It was funny.

Done.

Some four or five hours (I really need to learn how to tell time) later, done, and I went to bed.

[B]Done[/b]

…

…though there was still Oswald.

[b]–BBQ Bob[/b]