Thursday 27 February 2014

Smooth Jazz (3): The Mite (Part 1)

Be sure to read from the first post, you can find it here.



There's a lot of work involved when raising undead armies. Bloody work. Any experienced necromancer can tell you this, but Smooth Jazz is not an experienced necromancer. He never had the chance to learn from one either. And his new-found god, Yredelemnul, gave no advice on leading undead armies. Smooth Jazz had only raised a few corpses before, but he knew raising an entire army would be more rewarding than anything else he had accomplished in his life. And despite his moronic zombie roach he felt elated at the ease of his first three encounters.
If every creature in this dungeon is as trivial as the goblin, gecko, and cockroach, then this will be much easier than I expected.

His thoughts were interrupted when he spied a scroll of paper sitting innocently on the floor in a large room.

Paper? I wonder if someone left a note here.
Smooth Jazz took a tentative step towards the scroll and noticed another creature approaching from beyond it. A giant mite.
Something in this dungeon must be causing mundane creatures to grow to incredible sizes, or perhaps someone is growing overlarge creatures for some reason.

Smooth Jazz took a step into the room, noticing a movement to his left. Another giant gecko in a hallway he had not seen moments before. He looked back over to see the mite coming closer. A small, black phial sat on its side behind the mite. It appeared to be filled with a dark liquid.

That looks like a magical potion. If it is, then the scroll might be of a magical nature too.

He stepped closer to the mite, hoping his cockroach would distract the nearing gecko. The mite sprang forwards, its mandibles working furiously before biting into his leg. Smooth Jazz grimaced as drops of blood fell to the floor. The bite hurt his leg more than it should have.

Crap, its bite is poisonous!
He swung his sword in a wide arc, making an opening in the mite's thick exoskeleton. A few drops of green goo lazily dripped down the body of the mite. The goo looked similar to the cockroach's goo.
I'll worry about the poison once this thing is dead.

Smooth Jazz's next swing bounced off the mite's natural armor. It retaliated by biting his other leg.

Unholy hell, that hurt! I need to get out of here.
He looked to his side to see the undead roach fighting the gecko. He backed away from the mite, hoping to hide behind the roach. The gecko noticed him and bit onto his scales. Thankfully it couldn't get a firm grip and slid off. The gecko then turned back to his roach, probably deciding the smooth brown scales were too thick.

Smooth Jazz continued backing away, watching as both the mite and the gecko took turns to bite into his poor cockroach.

At least the undead can't be poisoned.

I think I could get a good strike in on the gecko while it's fighting. He thought to himself.

'Clink!'
His sword dug into the stone floor next to the gecko.
How did I miss that?!
The gecko recognised the threat and bit him again. This time its sharp teeth managed to get a good grip and pierce his scales.
He yanked his sword from the floor and looked up to see the mite biting into his cockroach. It reared up and slowly disintegrated, dead roach dust drifted carelessly away.




DCSS Version 0.14 trunk. Smooth Jazz began as a Draconian Death Knight.

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