Lordie Lordie!

I didn't mean what I said when I said Team Spode wouldn't be able to play together this week. Let's just say I made good time on the road, and the hotel had a good Internet connection. ;)

Team Spode met back in the Twelve on Sunday to finish off the final two quests of the Reign of Madness Adventure Pack. I like these small adventure packs that are packed full of goodness. Sure you're not getting the real estate value behind an adventure pack like Three-Barrel Cove, but that's just a lot of lawn to mow, right? I definitely don't want to mow an entire island like that when the exp and rewards aren't all that fancy. ;) Reign of Madness on the other hand . . . it's totally urban. Four quests packed in tightly to a neat little package just like the Lord of Eyes, gift wrapped and ready to kill, at the end of his self-named quest.

Oh yeah! He's a sexy one.

First up for the night was the Lord of Stone quest. Just to catch up on the story from last week, basically you've set the Lord of Eyes free upon the world from his prison in Khyber and handed him his massive sceptre of awesomeness in one of your more confused states. Way to go, kids. In order to take the Lord of Eyes down a notch and put him back into his right place, you need the help of someone almost as crazy as the Lord of Eyes, and that would be the Lord of Stone.

The Lord of Stone is in a happy plane of existance known as Khyber. WAIT A SECOND! DIDN'T TEAM SPODE JUST GO INTO KHYBER TO TANGLE WITH LOLTH'S BUDDIES? Yes! Yes we did! That's ok though, Khyber is awesome because therein are the loots and the experience points; therefore, to Khyber we did hie!

Our decent into Kyber and particularly the Lord of Stone's dungeon in Khyber was full of stoney types: Gargoyles, Golems, Giant Stone Guardians, a Medusa who likes to play with stone, a lion guy made out of gems, a couple of molten-stone magma guys, a couple of fire elementals who were melting the magma guys . . . you get the gist.

ALSO, EVIL EYES OF EVILNESS! Yup, the Lord of Eyes had his crop of disembodied eyes hanging out in the dungeon and they were totally spying on us.



Actually, the song that Spode was singing all night was another 80's hit: Lies by the Thompson Twins.



Only he'd switch out the word "lies" with "eyes". Yeah, we're bad like that.

The objective of this dungeon is to basically gather up a bunch of green gems and present them to the Lord of Stone as a gift while hacking and slashing your way through a host of stone baddies.

When you finally get to the Lord of Stone, he kind of giggles over your gift because, well, he can make anything out of stone and giving 20 gems to him is about the funniest thing he's ever seen.

He instead wants to test your internal metal and see if you can smash up a bunch of his animated rocks for sheer entertainment sake. Firewall, Blade Barrier, Otto's sphere, and Spode and Ophiga's blades did the trick for every wave of nasty he could throw at us . . . even this guy.

By the end of it all, the Lord of Stone was pleased enough he said he'd help us by sending a bunch of his rock buddies as an army to help you out because, heck, if he's stuck in Khyber, ain't no way no HOW he's going to let the Lord of Eyes escape. Misery loves company, and Team Spode loves exp:

Next up was the MAJOR FINAL BATTLE OF THE ADVENTURE PACK! DUN DUN DUN! The Lord of Eyes be upon us!

We were a little unsure of what we were going to be up against (we went in blind -- get it, went in blind to an instance called the Lord of Eyes???? *clears throat* sorry, bad joke), and knowing that the end boss of the Harbinger of Madness was a complete nightmare, we were a little extra precautious. Yeah, that was unnecessary. Although we did come super close to a TPK vs. a group of elementals when we pulled them all at once.

Let me back up a bit here. The way this instance works is that The Lord of Eyes has made his home down in the locked up depths of the Tower of the Twelve. Usually this place is off limits to common halflings like me, but given your awesome feats with the Lord of Stone, the Twelve hesitantly agreed to let you go into their nastier parts to poke around and hopefully poke out the eyes of Belashyrra (aka the Lord of Eyes). To do this, you have to bust through a wall separating you from Belashyrra. Busting through the wall involves powering up a giant Magefire cannon with five of the bound souls of each of four different and conveniently located elementals (fire, earth, water, and air).

We quickly found out the hard way that pulling one elemental at a time instead of three was best. *gulp* Let's not talk particulars.

Unfortunately for Spode, this instance required quite a bit of Super Mario skills as you had to jump around on portals constructed to levitate you great distances. If you had forgotten to put on your feather fall item *cough* spode *cough*, then you'd stand a great chance of plummeting to the bottom of the tower and have to bound your way back up to the top again. All the while facing against beholders and evil eyes.

From what I'm reading on the wiki, it appears that the Lord of Eyes gets harder and harder as you fight him because he spawns more and more evil eyes to assist him. I wouldn't know. I just mana dumped the damage spells as fast and furious as I could and held on to Ulan's healing skills for dear life. Thankfully he died quickly and we went on with the small matter of claiming our rewards.

Ophiga wasn't too impressed with the offering that were laid out before her, and I wasn't really either. I did get a cool Fleshshaper's Brigandine out of the adventure, but I really don't feel like dealing with the spell fizzles associated with a 10% fizzle rate from wearing it. Not my cup of tea. Out of the whole adventure line, my real desires are for Belashyrra's Scepter (didn't drop for us) and the two trinkets from the Sane Asylum's loot table. OH YEAH, and I'm interested in finishing up the Melodic Guard augment for my Infused Chaos Robe too. I still need about 30 adhesive slimes, SIGH! If only there was a way I could trade some of these other items in at the Alter of Insanity for more adhesive slimes. *rings the idea bell of Turbine*

I'm unsure what next week will bring, but I'm sure Team Spode will be there bringing its "A" game! Or "B" game . . . "C" would be fine too.

SEE YOU THEN!

Happy dueling