I think I may be the keyboard player for Dio. That cheesey synth-horn riff is something I would play.
Team Spode woke up from its week long slumber and met up in the bar in Meridia. As Ulan wiped the gunk from her eyes and Ophiga put on some drow deodorant, Spode was singing Dio to us.
(whoa Dio and Deodorant . . . after Dio they should have called it Diodorant. Dio was a game changer band like that.)
In fact, I remember Ophiga saying, "so what are we doing tonight?" And after I dropped my "can't resist not saying it" line from animaniacs (what we do every night, Pinky; try to take over the world!), Spode spoke clearly and resolutely, "just follow me." You see, Spode has spent a good amount of time on his off hours just running around the area of the Vale of Twilight. He can't stand seeing his kill count numbers hanging there, haunting him with thier "550 of 700" or what-have-you. No, Spode must hit that 700 number . . . and then the number beyond . . . and then the number beyond. I say it's a good quality.
Spode led us up the mountain peaks to a little place known as the Den of Obscurity aka Rainbow in the Dark (cue Dio from video above).
As we soon discovered, the deal with the Den of Obscurity is that you can't see two feet in front of you unless someone is holding a really nifty archmagi one-hander with a glowing lightsource equipped to it, so you could instead see about ten paces in front of you instead of zero paces in front of you. Everyone agreed that GLEEK would be the best one to hold that staff. OH SURE! Put the Halfling sorcerer up front leading the crew. Yeah, that'll work out great . . .
Actually, it wasn't that bad . . . until.
POKEYS!
The really nasty trick that Turbine played on adventurers in this dungeon was that they couldn't just make a straight path with all that foreboding darkness. NOOOOO, they needed to make you climb and fall and walk pathways with mazelike qualities. The whole purpose was to make you carry that lightsource with you the entire dungeon.
This worked well for Team Spode for the first 3/4ths of the dungeon, and then tragedy struck! We call it the curse of the Super Mario World. There's a spot where you have to jump over a series of pedestals surrounded by said pokeys. Let's just say that there are a couple of people in Team Spode that aren't so good with the curse of the Super Mario World *cough* Spode *cough* Ulan.
Anyway, I was convinced to press forward into a tunnel alone and just kind of scout ahead past this area cursed with Super Mario Rot. What I found ahead was a room with a button on the floor. Being the Halfling that I am, I can't leave any button un-pressed. yeah, a room full of fire elementals did me in. Even worse, I was carrying the light source. Luckily the trapped walls dropped and my ghost form was able to run back close enough to the group to catch a rez from the clerics. A few chain lightnings later, I had my lightsource again and informed Team Spode that they would in fact have to face the curse of Super Mario World.
We all jumped over after a few minutes of painful pokeys in the toes, arms, and eye sockets.
Next, and unfortunately, we experienced a TPK (that's geek-speek for "total party kill" . . . meaning we all wiped and died) shortly after that when some Gnoll casters started kicking the crap out of us. I don't know what happened, really . . . they just caught us off guard and started using a combination of Ice Storm and some wicked knock down that just, sucked. Everyone but Spode released, even knowing that now our lightsource was now dropped on the ground and located beyond a maze of a dungeon and a wall of Super Mario Pokeys.
After a few racks of ribs at the bar in Meridia, we went back to see if we couldn't somehow make it back to Spode and win this dungeon. We were too far invested in the adventure to simply give up at this point.
At first I tried Firewall. This *kind of* worked to see where walls and obstacles were, but not good enough. Then it came to Spode and myself simultaneously like a giant disco ball from space beaming genius into our minds: Otto's Sphere of Dancing!
Yup, I lit that place up like a Brazilian Discotheque.
It took A LOT of mana, but it was effective enough that we were able to even navigate our way through the super mario world spikes and rescue Spode. WE UNLEASHED HOLY HECK UPON THOSE FREAKING GNOLLS. You know there was some retribution to be meted out.
Finally after traversing spike world a fourth or fifth time, we were at the Rainbow puzzle at the end of the dungeon.
And with a quick two-step from Ophiga dancing on the color pads . . .
The puzzle was solved and we were fighting off Turun-Palo, the fire elemental disco master. Turun-Palo is apparently Finnish for The Great Fire of Turku, which also appears to be an old TV show from 1982 and what looks like a Finnish Punk Band Record Label? Holy esoterica, Turbine!
Either way, Dio approves, as does Team Spode! We had a great time salvaging the Rainbow in the Dark adventure since we were so close to defeat. Good times! Here's the exp report:
Happy dueling!
p.s. you all excited about the Druid Class?!?!?
Now that is a great read!! You even had me *grin* at certain parts because i remember them just as you discribed! Moving like a glued-together group because it's too dark to zerg off. Falling into the spiked pit over and over and over and....over again. Stepping (or watching others) on the floor-buttons. Yes, i too have good memories of my first times in this quest ;-)
ReplyDeleteAnd what a good call of both of you to use disco-balls to light up the place, it's what my guildleader did at the spiked pits to help us through. It really makes the difference!
keep going strong, and i can't wait to see the stories about the other Vale quests, they are just as fun and may or may not require more Mario skills ;-)