The Quest For the King

We're finally in the damn dungeon

Dearest beloved:

It has been five minutes since my intrepid party began our descent into this nameless dungeon to rescue our King, also unnamed (seriously, I need to ask him about this if we make it to him in time).  We also have to retrieve his rainbow orb of power, without which our fair kingdom’s next disco may be unbearably drab.

I have time to write you this letter because, though this dungeon be ancient and full of eldritch horrors from the evil lands beyond, it’s also apparently being dug as we wait to get in?  Seriously, this is awkward.  It’s like getting to the drive-thru five minutes before they start serving breakfast.  Do you just sit there and wait?  They leave the speaker on sometimes and you can hear them yelling and dropping pans and stuff.  Do you, like, clear your throat to get their attention, or –

Oh, okay, floor 10 has been dug and stocked.  We can go in.  More later!

Wait.  Actually, the computer crashed on floor ten.  Fantastic.  We’ll try again with a six-floor dungeon and see if that works.

Okay, we’re finally ready to outfit the party.  I got named Jocko for some reason, because we weren’t sure if we had to enter each party member’s full name every time we got them something, so everyone got short names that started with different letters.  I got a sword and some ring mail, and so did Kadavar, the other fighter.  Lothar, the wizard, didn’t have much to choose from at the trading post, and we’re not sure what Mauve, the rogue, is even doing here.

We descended from the trading post to the first floor of the dungeon, and found ourselves in a cavern of rooms connected by hallways.  Opening the doors to these rooms revealed spiders, gremlins, and oozes (yeah, I don’t know what they are either), all of which have been pretty easy to kill.

I gotta be honest, so far it seems like me and Kadavar have been doing a pret-ty big chunk of the heavy lifting. Mauve has a bow and some arrows, which have come in handy here and there.  I’m guessing Lothar will heal us up or do some dazzling wizard shit later, or at least he’d better if he wants a cut of this money.

We’re finding a good bit of gold!  There have been two vaults so far, with pretty easy-to-solve combinations, and in some of the rooms treasure is just there for the taking.  We found a couple fountains, which you’d think would heal you if you drank from them, but you’d have thought wrong, at least if you were me.  Kadavar drank from the same fountain right after it made me sick.  I called him a dumbass, but then it healed him, so what do I know?

The way we have to move around here is goofy – apparently nobody in this kingdom has heard of diagonals, so we have to square-dance around in the cardinal directions only.  And the movement keys do one thing inside a room, and another out in the hallways, so that takes a bit of getting used to.  We’re finding stuff I don’t really know the purpose of yet – we have some lanterns, but there’s plenty of light?  I tried to use one and it increased the amount of time between when we had to eat our rations, so I guess they’re magic items after all.

Oh, this is neat – we found our first scroll, and Lothar had to read it to see what it did.  He asked if he could direct it at me, and I said sure, why not.  All the sudden my armor protection increased!  I guess having a wizard around might be useful after all.

We’ve just about cleared all the creepy-crawlies out of floor one of this place, and we’ve found the map, which means we can descend to the next level.  There’s a room on the map with no hallways leading to it, and I’m pretty sure we’ll have business there at some point sooner than later, but for now I’m just glad we’re all in one piece and most of these cellar dwellers have been cream puffs.

More later – hopefully I can find a mailbox somewhere in this labyrinth before we get any deeper and I have to add more stamps to this letter.  I gotta admit, as clunky as this place is, and as long as it took us to finally get down here, I’m having a good time in the dungeon (and this is gonna look great on my resume if we end up moving to Apshai like we talked about). I’ll admit it, you were right. This was a lot better idea than buying that sports chariot and getting hair plugs.

Love you like a giant rat loves trying to bite through Mauve’s leather armor,

Jocko