PoR: entry 11 (bird down, still flightless)

That blasted Wyvern is a goner!

It only took a couple of tries, but we finally killed the bird. It was a combination of weakening spells, blinding spells and noxious cloud spells, but we did it safely and efficiently. Give our regards to its family.

So now, we can safely rest in the large cave right? Wrong. Now that the beast has vacated the lair, the kobolds who roll boulders on anything that snuggles into a sleeping bag have taken up residence there. It just couldn't be that easy I guess.

I noticed that the two times I tried fetching the wyvern treasure, it actually changed. The first time I think there was a tw0-handed sword and something else, but this time (the time I actually saved the game) we got a composite long bow and a partisan. According to wikipedia, a partisan is a sort of spear with axe heads on it as well. Apparently, it didn't last long in history on account of being obsolete. We really should sell it. The composite bow came in pretty handy whilst fighting our way out, though.

There's an old kobold in the rocks that gives some meaningless information. I don't think the information is the reason it's in the game. I think he's in there as a sort of Milgram study to see if adventurers will kill it. I know that there are no consequences for poor ethics in Pool of Radiance, but I think that's just it. What are our actions when there are no consequences? Anyway, we killed it once and then restored and let it go just to see if it had any effect at all.

Upon leaving the cave to go rest at the weird pyramid, we came to another horrible conclusion. The screaming horde of kobolds that greeted my entrance into the cave also greet the exit out. The first time we exited the cave, the kobolds knocked everyone unconcious but Chlorine. She tried to flee the scene, but was informed that the "escape is blocked." After she was beaten to death I restored and we made a more valiant, triumphant stand and then crawled across the countryside to the safety of the weird pyramid that's totally evil and I have no idea why it's there.

Since we have no safe place to rest within the caves, we decided to cut our losses (although through a series of clever saving and restoring there really were no losses) and go home to the weird home association known as Phlan. Actually, a bigger part of that decision was my stumbling onto the Pool of Radiance page of Gamebanshee.com. I tried not to check out too many spoilers, but it did recommend not tackling the room in the cave with the trolls until we're able to cast a few fireballs about. Apparently, there are more beasts to worry about behind the trolls and 51 kobolds.

So, home was much nicer than usual! It was like a ticker-tape parade. They advanced Chlorine to a level 6 cleric, Rexbasior to a level 5 fighter, Derfindor to a level 3 thief and Pilgrim to a level three cleric. See Simeon? I never said you were disposable! What we really need is for our magic-users to level up so that we can clear bigger rooms of monsters. Rooms which are inevitable.

Anyway, the town hall totally gave us props for killing the big skeleton! One gem. At least we got the props. The town also rewarded us for chillin' with the nomads. Not bad. The most curious (and horrifying) news is that the undead are crossing the river and "killing or carrying off the settlers." At least we're calm enough about that to form some kind of committee.

We've decided to take a vacation from the cave. On the way out of town we took a boat to Sokal Keep (where we're assuming the undead are coming from) and unleashed some sweet clerical undead harmony. A level 6 cleric un-undeads in the blink of an eye! Pretty cool. Unfortunately, there seem to be some orcs and kobolds there as well. We'll try to pull this one off.