Skeg, the Ogre Gladiator
Diary of Skeg, Ogre Gladiator (Crawl 0.5)
Intro: The Boring Start
I was a little bewildered at first, running down the stairs to the Dungeon of legend. I'd been saving rations, eating the flesh of my fellows, for weeks before I broke out of the arena, yet I only had one left when I finally reached the place. The city would have recovered in the meantime; their riders would be after me; I couldn't afford to stick around for long, whatever horrors might be in the Dungeon, so I swallowed, gripped my shield and club, and ran down...
My first thought was confusion. Why was there a castle with a moat down here, reached by going downstairs? Then I opened a door and saw a hobgoblin, and groaned; such scrawny wimps would have been my food back in the pit, I could have strangled them with my bare hands. Somehow, there were only hobbos, gobbos, and some giant vermin on the first floor - although I picked up a couple of strange scrolls, and (bizarrely) felt stronger than ever before after squashing all the enemies I could find. Maybe the myth of how this dungeon turned wimps into heroes was true, maybe my real ogre blood was finally surfacing after years in a cage, I didn't know, but it felt great!
Part of me was thanking my lucky stars that I'd had it so easy. I'd heard of people who were slaughtered long before their time down here.
DL2 & 3: The Premature Finish
Going downstairs I met with little opposition at first, a goblin, an oversized newt, then similar. The layout seemed to be a bunch of big rooms connected by narrow corridors, which was fine by me - I could slay enemies one at a time if they came from there. I saw a big red worm, and thought this was it, this would be my first worthy challenge... a few bashes later, not only was it dead, but another wave of strength had suffused me, some kind of reward for killing more individuals in a short time than ever before. I hadn't eaten yet... well, OK, the raw flesh of my fallen foes, but no real food. I blundered into a trap that teleported me... somewhere, but again I had only weaklings in my way, weaklings who were easily killed. I found this weird wand, and decided to test it on a giant newt... to literally no effect - not even the telltale feel of an empty wand. I'd find out what it was later; for now, time to kill. Again, nothing interesting came for me, although a few jackals tried to make me dinner when I went down the next set of steps.
Then I took a worm on in melee combat, got sloppy, missed a few times, let him enter my guard too much, and I died.
And I hadn't done anything exciting yet.
I had no excuse to not retreat. Guess I should have at least had another coffee before beginning play while a little sleepy. Remind me to make Skeg the Ogre Chaos Knight of Lugonu, for story reasons.
