PoR: entry 10 (stuck in the griddle of nowhere)

I cannot stand getting stuck.

I'm pretty stuck. One thing I remember about these old video games is that in many ways, the reason they're so much funner than current video games is because they're so downright frustrating. The joy of actually making progress is galvanized by the ridiculous contrast from the grind and despair of being stuck in the game for so long.

We have managed to find one friendly face in the kobold cave. Her name is Princess Fatima. Fatima is a horrible name isn't it? I feel sorry for all women named Fatima. What woman would actually want the word "Fat" in their name? Not only is fat in Fatima, but it's the first syllable. That means, if you casually know a girl named Fatima and you want to get her attention, you automatically say "Hey, Fat!"

At least this chick is a fighter. We can take down like 50 kobolds especially with her in the ranks. The problem is the room we haven't conquered yet with 51 kobolds and four nearly invincible trolls. I would like to exit back to the city, get some more supplies, maybe level up a bit; but when we leave the cave, Fat decides to go her own way. I need her to get past all this stuff.

Turns out, before getting Fat, we shoulda just gone to the big cave instead of the small one (see last entry). I mapped out the whole cave situation and the two caves connect. There's a wyvern in the big cave. A wyvern is not a dragon, but the dang thing could've fooled me. Anyway, even though the creature resides in the big part of the cave, I can camp out in it and not get bugged by kobolds rolling boulders at me while I sleep. The only problem is the presence of this huge dragon-like thing in the same sleeping quarters.

But it is still possible. So here's the new plan. Go into the large cave and rest up after facing the obligatory "screaming horde of kobolds" at the entrance. Kill the wyvern. Go to small cave. Get Fat. Kill everything else. Then we can use the big cave to recoup.

We haven't had the best success at the times I've killed the wyvern in the past. Sometimes she kills me. Sometimes we kill her, but she takes two or three of us with her. That's just too expensive. That would mean we'd have to go back to Phlan and spend 8000-12,000 gp that we don't have to resurrect the fallen and then come all the way back to the cave to clean up. And that's after facing off with the screaming horde that greets us at the entrance every time we try.

One thing about the wyvern (and many other beasts I've come across actually) is its ability to poison. It seems that whenever it hits one of us and takes off only a few hit points, the person he hit gets poisoned and then immediately dies. May as well call "poisoned" "getting hit with the killing curse." There is a clerical spell called slow poison that staves off infection for one hour, but that's not nearly enough time to get to a sanctuary to halt death. Yep, I imagine it's gonna take a few tries to bring the beast down with no death involved. I've found that she's quite susceptible to arrows. That means she has to be distracted by a melee-wielding character for the time-being. This tends to fall on Miss-I'm-Too-Good-for-Ranged-Weapons Chlorine. Good thing she's tough.

What is the Wyvern carrying in the picture? Is it some freaky giant rat?