Doom - The Place for Artifact Hunters

cBykar met Tucker, who lived in the house next to him, right before his house. His neighbor was about to go to the Dungeon Doom. McBykar knew that doom was the favorite dungeon of many adventurers, a place of danger and horror. As he had never been there before, he asked Tucker if he could join him. Tucker agreed.

Tucker wanted to proceed to the "fun part" of Doom, the Gauntlet Area. On an underground beach at the southern end of the Dungeon a ferryboat waited to transport the adventurers across the lake. However, first a Skeletal Dragon and some undead had to be slain. Once this task was finished, the large bell was rung to summon Chyloth the Ferryman. He said that only the dead may cross. But Tucker had taken along a golden skull, and once he gave it to the ferryman, Tucker and all members of his party were allowed to cross.

This golden skull can be acquired in two ways: You can collect 1000 daemon bones from all kinds of monsters in Doom. When you hand them over to the ancient sorceress by the name of Victoria, who is doomed to wander the unholy halls southeast of the Doom entrance for all eternity, she will summon a powerful Bone Daemon. If you manage to slay the Daemon, you will find golden skull in its corpse, which will be your ticket across the lake.
Tucker bought his golden skull for a couple of 100,000 gold pieces from a vendor. These skulls are sold for insane amounts of money to those who want to proceed to the Gauntlet without going through all the daemon bone trouble.

At the other side of the lake McBykar left the ferryboat. They now had reached the Gauntlet of Doom, a place where those famous artifacts were to be found.

The Gauntlet is made of a five rooms, each with some very powerful creatures in them. McBykar learned that the rooms had to be cleared of monsters in a clockwise direction from the entrance. You enter the room through a teleporter and can only leave it if you die or if the monsters in the room have been defeated. First they engaged the Darknight Creepers, ugly spider-like monsters with six legs.

While some monsters could be slain with the help of magic and Energy Vortices, others were resistant to magic and could only be harmed by melee damage or summoned Earth Elementals. Fortunately the Shadow Knights could be held at safe distance by the use of powerful spells.

However, McBykar noticed that hunting monsters down here was far from fun. Once a monster appeared, everybody acted by himself. Each adventurerer tried to deal as much damage as possible to earn looting rights. The search of the wanted artifacts had begun, parties were disbanded to ensure maximum personal profit. Once the monsters entered the room, the team spirit left.

Finally they encountered the creature everybody seemed to be looking for: The Dark Father. Not only was this the most powerful creature in doom. It also summoned large numbers of undead monsters to its aid, making the Gauntlet room a large battlefield. Many fighers were slain and fortunately resurrected again by fellow adventurers.

The long and exhausting battle was finally won. The sound of spells and weapons abated and the floor was cluttered with monster corpses and bodies of unlucky adventurers.

McBykar had given up bothering about the monsters during the course of battle. He considered the battle a little mindless and boring, so he scanned the bodies of dead creatures for loot. He noticed that nobody actually cared about loot or gold. The corpses remained untouched. He gathered about 15,000 gold pieces - as much as he could carry - and some useful magic jewelry and armor pieces. However, the loot was not really worth all the effort of getting down here (considering the price of a golden skull). He wondered, why artifacts meant so much to the people.

The two companions finally decided to leave. A moongate close to the ferryboat transported McBykar and Tucker safely back to the Doom entrance.

McBykar thanked Tucker for taking him along to this dangerous dungeon and providing access by bringing his golden skull. Although people acted strange down there in the Gauntlet, it had been an exciting and interesting experience. At least McBykar now knew that he would never pay 300,000 gold pieces for a golden skull. Sosoria offered more challenging and exciting places than Doom, without charging a fee. Most of them were still to be explored...

01/2008

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