Nil Desperandum - dwarf berserker (update 7)Nil has defeated another of his main targets and is now preparing for his next pocket plane challenge.
The first task of the day was to defeat the statues at Watcher's Keep. Arriving there, Nil pushed at the door - and was pushed back. He pushed harder, but to no avail. Checking his equipment he realised that the wardstone was still in Athkatla, so it looks like no Foebane (did I mention this is my first proper outing in ToB
).
Instead he journeyed to the Temple of Mir. Arriving there he was
attacked by some nasty undead. Being invisible seemed to put off the devil shades, but not the rest. Nil gulped a potion of speed and ran round a bit before moving out of sight range of the devil shades and summoning the efreeti. While the others concentrated on it, a GWW with the iMoD killed all but the Master Wraith. Rather than try and run round in tight conditions until its buffs disappeared Nil switched to Gesen and 2 more
GWWs killed it before he switched back to the iMoD for the devil shades.
Invisible again, Nil went into the temple, but a skeleton cleric soon cast true seeing. At least he was already out of sight range of most of the bad guys and only a skeleton mage followed him. When that eventually ran out of casting magic missiles while invisible Nil raged and finished it (level 38 - GWW). By this time true seeing had stopped, but Nil still waited for a fresh rage, then used improved invisibility and mirror image and hit the undead with further iMoD attacks. He wasted a GWW trying to hit the skeleton cleric (he looked close enough, but the invisible skeleton assassin was obviously deemed to be in the way). However, once the assassin had backstabbed a mirror, it and the
skeleton cleric were victims of another GWW.
After a pocket plane rest Nil returned and spoke to Nyalee, who seemed rather heartless in her attitude to her adopted son. Following her advice Nil journeyed to the Marching Mountains. There he soon ran into fire giants, but using Roranach's Helm and the Girdle of Bluntness seemed to make them pretty harmless (at least in small numbers; I also
noted that the giants were subject to Blackrazor draining). There were also burning men (but their damage seemed to be turned aside by the Cloak of Mirroring) and a group led by Chinchilla (who might be tough in the world of rodents, but was no match for Nil). He thus made pretty easy progress to Yaga-Shura's lair.
He initially came inside invisible and checked to see if the guards could be taken one-by-one, but they were too smart for that. Nil therefore ran back outside and buffed before coming back in. He used 6 Blackrazor GWWs in melee to kill the initial group of giants, getting up to level 39 in the process (GWW). While exploring the area Nil was drained by a trap, so used a scroll of restoration and rested before returning. Exploring further up the left side (now keeping rage up while moving), Nil opened a chest containing lots of fire trolls and salamanders. Fighting those on some narrow stairs made them simple and using a hammer from the container soon gave access to another area. Investigating that, Nil triggered a new horde of enemies. Noting some of them were moving extremely fast he immediately ran away outside and rebuffed before returning to kill them.
Starting up the right side I noted that Nil had been drained again at some point
. With only 1 restoration scroll left he took a quick trip to Watcher's Keep to buy some more before returning. Once back he GWW'd another group of fire giants (L40 - GWW). After quickly flicking through a book he'd found Nil pulled Gesen and some ordinary arrows out of his bags and shot a magic golem. Using a skull wardstone opened up another area; Nil had already buffed for this and just led the attackers back to some narrow stairs before chewing through them.
Down to his last couple of GWWs, Nil rested before returning and trying to activate the central altar. He had buffed up for that, but all it did was remove a barrier that Nil had not even noticed yet at the top of the temple. Moving on up, Nil killed a couple of guards and investigated the area. He would have found it simple to kill all the fire giants in melee anyway, but some character types might like to note that the giants don't appear to be able to stoop to get through the gap into the end bit of the temple! After
killing Berenn with Gesen a bit more exploring located Yaga-Shura's heart. Nil then spoke to a slave woman and was told to look under the giant's bed - I presume this was the location of the container with another heart. A bit more exploring and Nil ignored the damage to himself as he
drove through Imix's fire shield to kill him.
After returning the hearts to Nyalee she had second thoughts about killing Yaga and turned hostile. After retreating to put on hardiness and rage Nil ensured
Nyalee won't change her mind again before finishing off the rest of the opposition. I found it rather surprising in doing that to find that Blackrazor healing works on shambling mounds.
Nil approached the siege camp invisibly and used hardiness, mirror image and rage before engaging Yaga-Shura. A GWW made him run, but Nil just had time to kill one of his soldiers before Yaga was back with some friends. Ignoring them, Nil went straight for the giant and
one and a bit GWW with the FoA finished him off. He was just turning to engage one of the officers when the Solar summoned him back to the pocket plane to tell him a bit more about his origins.
Nil Desperandum, berserker L40, 214 HPs (incl. 5 from Helm), 1,431 kills
) and is ready to move onto sterner tests in ToB.
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