Benedict and SlowPoke

[Hilde's quest continues...]

Before we make it out of the mines, my black naga managed to find YET ANOTHER polymorph trap, and turned into a baby purple worm. If he can get enough experience, he'll turn into an excellent pet, a purple worm. The great thing about purple worms is their attack is to swallow enemies whole. Unfortunately it's quite slow. I leave the mines and continue deeper with my Lich and my particularly slow baby purple worm. If I get too far from my pet worm, he loses track of me, and wanders off, so I have to stand a space away from him, and wait until he gets next to me then take another step and wait. I really need to find a magic whistle. We find the leprechaun hall, and collect so much gold that I'm becoming burdened. I decide I need to set up an outpost, and carry a large box from a few levels up down to a big room. Unfortunately, the room is pretty open, and doesn't have doors in every entrance, so I carve Elbereth using my wand of digging and put my large box on it. On the same level I find the entrance to the sokoban mazes, so I head back to my outpost and adjust my inventory for exploration.

In the sokoban mazes and I somehow manage not to kill my pets when they annoy me by getting in the way of me moving boulders. I find a few rings and an amulet which I toss on to see if there are any immediate effects. Nothing happens, but I leave them on in the hope that something will happen to reveal their effect. I make it to the third level, and accidentally fall down to the first level. I run back up to find my Arch-Lich eyeballing me menacingly. Oh shit. He teleports next to me and tries to freeze me, and attacks with a nasty spell! He's still listed as "tame", so I check his description, and see nothing wrong, I have no stethoscope, so I can't see if he has any abnormal statuses. He's pissed off or confused or something. He gives me three good hits as I try to make it to the stairs, and I've got about one hit left, and I'm frantically checking my inventory. The only thing I can find is my wand of polymorph, which doesn't work on Liches (if you'll recall), of course I didn't remember this as I was freaking out, and zapped him with it. He teleported away, and out of dagger range, but I still had two spaces to move. I took another step toward the stairs, and he teleported next to me, and hits me for the last time, and I watch my hit points drop to zero. Fuck.

But wait!

The unidentified amulet I was wearing began to glow! It was an amulet of life saving! It revived me to full health, and turned to dust. I ran downstairs to compose myself. I ran back to my outpost and checked to see if I had anything useful for taking on an arch-lich. Nothing. I was prepared to bypass sokoban until I either got strong enough to take on an arch-lich, or found a scroll of genocide. Unwilling to give up so easily, I stock up on healing potions and cautiously head back.

I appear on the level and wait till he teleports into view. He appears directly across from me, and I fired off three daggers, ready for battle. My lich just screamed at the attack, and began ambling around, like nothing happened. I waited a few more turns, and cautiously approached my questionable pet. He just wandered around. Oooookaaayyy... I guess he got confused or something, because he was fine after that. I decided he earned a name, Benedict. I found my baby purple worm and decided he deserved a name too, SlowPoke. I chuckle at the name, and then realize that SlowPoke is so slow, and Benedict is so fast that SlowPoke will likely never get a chance to make it to full grown purple worm. I decide to give him a chance at the last monster-filled room in sokoban, and if he doesn't get enough experience, I'll just polymorph him into something a bit faster.

I get to the last room, and wedge him in the doorway. SlowPoke goes to town, biting everything and doing rather well until he gets hit with a poison arrow. Apparently baby purple worms don't have poison resistance. SlowPoke is dead.

I grab the amulet of reflection (forgetting about my bag of holding), and (stupidly) decide to put it on the ground to make sure it's not cursed (of course it's not cursed, it's my prize). Benedict sees it, and puts it on. Well shit. Whatever. Damnit. I sift through the junk, and leave with Benedict (who, for some reason can still teleport in sokoban). We head a level down and find a sink, and a treasure zoo. Before we can make it there, we run into a pony, one carrot later I've got another pet pony to polymorph into something awesome. A few zaps of my wand of polymorph doesn't change the pony into anything that would make a great pet. I zap again, and find the wand to be empty. Guess I'm stuck with a pet orc shaman for now.

[to be continued...]