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I just had to delay anyway, I couldn't pass through without visiting the colossus, another hydra, another goblin lord, and now a minotaur. This one had a lower level from which it had been murmuring sinister nothings at us. When I went down to locate his treasure room, I found one corner in the sand filling up with 1/7 of water. If I had the presence of mind to simply dig a ditch to contain it (assuming the next layer down is also aquifer) then I wouldn't be excavating the entire ceiling over it. I suspect I'll find nothing but more pieces of steel that only the elf could wear, half of which he doesn't need.

Xbow was the first weapon I mastered this playthrough, but I don't carry bolts around because the weight isn't worth it. My quiver is too full of multipurpose tools and weapons that can be thrown at need, I don't need 25+ pounds of single shot expendables that won't even get me drunk. If I run across bolts laying around when they would be useful, I can make good use of the opportunity, then toss them aside when they're no longer useful.


EDIT: Or you could do that:

These angels keep hobbling me, getting past my shield (formerly one of their shields,) and one even managed to poke a hole my bronze boot, and ruined my masterwork wool sock! My base is close enough to crutch back to rest and sneak back later, but they still respawn every time. My dodge and shield use is finally reaching Master, and I got the guardian out of the way, so eventually I'll see the slab at the bottom of it all.

I'm also close enough to base for one of my companions to catch wind of the battle and come to my aid. I recruited him because he devoured enough opponents in the past to have achieved a full name before we met. With his silver spear he helped a little against a Wicked Hand and Miserable Enforcer, earned a few scars, and was fortunately sized to wear their jagged searing metal helms and high boots, and their bulky searing metal gauntlets. I walked him back to the 'tavern' because I don't need any assistance. I just keep these guys around to keep me sane, so I don't turn out like guys like Vailnoff and johiah.

I retired a successful legendary adventurer and he died in a block of ice. Those rivers are out to get us!

At the library I had planned to deposit my poet and check out another, but there weren't any. No poets, no scholars, no bards, not even dancers. Instead there were skilled tradesmen of all the kinds you would find in a village, or rather tradeselfs and tradesgoblins  -- no humans, and even stranger, no dwarves. The best I could say about this library is that it's the largest this adventurer has seen, only 2 floors with only a dozen mostly empty bookshelves. At least there were plenty of materials to write down a few of my compositions and produce a few more. More ribaldry and gallows humor for the ages!

Downstairs, the only weapons and armor were made of copper and silver, though the anvils were all made of steel. The central shaft was sensibly filled in so that it wasn't a natural hazard, depriving me of the opportunity to practice climbing. There was no exposure to any of the cavern layers, so the single stack of plump helmets in the entire place must have been imported. Gold and galena were exposed, so I took some down to the magma smelters to work on electrum a bit.


I knocked a path into the 3rd cavern later for bloodthorn and nethercap and encountered queen antwomen too panicked to parley. For all their mass, they were kind of fragile, and a whack over the head with my bortu was more than enough to knock them unconscious. Most of them fled after wasting all their blowdarts, but one spearantwoman stayed long enough to murder an elf woman before disappearing from the map.


From this leg of the journey I've acquired: masterwork bloodthorn crutch and shield for beating and blocking with, a masterwork nethercap shield in case of dragonfire, a masterwork nethercap cup for transporting magma, and a masterwork electrum ring for no good purpose. I'm leaving behind a few verses of filthy jokes and a few inspired compositions to play bortu to.


EDIT: Oh, almost forgot: the hydra was in an apartment minding its own business, so it wasn't very pleased with me when I swung a pick into its lung, but it also wasn't able to protest much. And my axegirl yet again got the kill credit; that's 2 out of 2 hydras lengthening her name. At least I got the roc on the way here, so I'm now indisputably legendary.

My original itinerary, before it was sidetracked by a crying mother, is the nearest vault, and en route the nearest library, both deep in the polar north. Why do all my adventures start in the cold?!  The library is in the sole ruin of a civilization >8 centuries dead, but the hydra hasn't prevented scholars and writers from visiting and settling there. Between my civ and my destination is miles of savage wilds, then miles more of savage tundra to glacial regions so blisteringly cold that even tundra titans back away from.


My companions have been surprisingly competent. The spearwoman got pretty tore up in a village taken over by a legion of bandits. She would've done alright if she'd drawn her spear but I insisted on brawling until they escalated, and it took a long time for them to start suffocating on their collapsed windpipes. The axewoman managed to steal the first megabeast kill, a hydra, and has dealt crippling damage on yetis and a minotaur. I somewhat suspect she's a vampire. As for the poet, he's as much as I expect from a poet and a goblin, temperamental and worse when he's drunk. But I put a masterwork crossbow in his hand, and he has the accuracy with it to puncture vital organs even using wooden bolts.

Went through the villages searching for a new guide, and out of five villages, only two had someone who knew their way around, and both of them were ladies of their keeps. In one keep the lady was so clueless she couldn't even give me directions to surrounding locations. Each time I got a location from her I had to consult a scout who had been tailing me but refused to join, even after I saved his life in an attack on another keep.

At the sixth village was a keep full of poets, with their books and teeth scattered all over the floor. But they were all well traveled, so I checked them out and picked out the one who had been a ranger some 8 centuries ago before he gave his life over to the arts of verse and knocking the teeth out of rival poets. At least he had some survival ability.

Good to see you back, Uzu. Your posts were greatly missed. I remember your last adventure log ended with a reluctance to ferry around these NPC helpers. Still running human outsiders as your go to?

Oh, thanks! I think my last adventure was actually ended by an inescapable bug that prevented me from doing anything but CTD. This time I'm from a backwater human civ with shoddy leather and so little work ethic that they have to import their food from the goblins at war with them.

One east of the Dark Fortress is a Dark Pits that is the actual site the mothers claim their children are, so I tried that again. Last time here I'd led the full party for indiscriminate slaughter, and found no clue any children were here. As small as the population was it wasn't difficult to murder most of them one-by-one including, surprisingly, the lord of another dark fortress and the master of the entire civ. The only other human there was a recruit, but still too old to be any of the children I was looking for.

Back at the camp, the swordsmother informed me the thief who abducted her child was dead, whereas before she claimed she could be anywhere. I searched histories for which one of us could have killed her and found that she had been murdered a few years before worldgen ended. So this whole trip has been all kinds of pointless errand!