RGR009 - Raid on Baramos' Castle

As promised, we first stopped at the Great Pit of Giaga, whence all misfortunes are said to emanate. Well, that's what that one skeleton said anyway. The pit has full-time guards and a nice big wall that surrounds it completely, but I think anything that might have the power to get through the wall would have no trouble with the guards, so there's some redundancy there. I guess it's not time to do anything here, though, so we hopped over to Baramos' castle to... well, to see how long we could survive, really.

Baramos' castle looks to have belonged to some other king in the past, as we found a corpse still sitting in the original throne. Paths through the castle tend to weave among three floors, and the only way to get to Baramos' lair is a convoluted path that changes floors nine times. The enemy encounter rate seems lower here than elsewhere, but with free-roaming Stone Hulks and Evil Mages, it was still a challenge.

Thanks for the vote of confidence.

Well, there's also this giant wall.

Everyone put on your brave faces...

So he died on the throne?

Baramos' lair was an open room underground, with nothing but an altar on which Baramos himself stood, surrounded by damage floors. We had Theron cast StepGuard to protect us from the floor, and valiantly rushed forth to face the Archfiend, who had plenty to say before the fight started.

But I'm rather attached to my innards.

This won't end well.

As tends to be the case with fights like this, we got whooped. Baramos is able to cast Explodet, which does around 80 damage to each of us, has flaming breath which is just about as powerful, and gets two attacks per turn. We did all we could, but it wasn't nearly enough. We gave it another try shortly thereafter, and didn't fare much better.

Since my map of the castle was still incomplete, and we knew there was treasure left to be had, we decided to spend more time exploring the castle, and eventually gained access to Baramos' treasure room, where we found the Demon Axe, another Wizard's Ring, and the Unlucky Helmet. Those Wizard's Rings are sure to come in handy, but I'm afraid of the other items; they're most likely cursed.

Ooh, I like the sound of the first two!

He breathes anti-fire.

All we can do now is continue leveling up, and keep trying to defeat Baramos. We'll get him one of these days.