Time now for the second (seventeenth) part.
With Gromnir dead, I had left Saradush in Melissan's care, aiming to find and kill Yaga- Shura, the bhaalspawn supposedly responsible for the whole war. Before I left, however, I went to the scroll merchant and bought scrolls of Improved Haste and Invisibility. Back in my pocket plane, I dug up the old Cloak of Protection +2 I had gotten way back in the Sahuagin City, and had Cespenar work on it. The Improved Cloak of Protection enables the wearer to cast Improved Haste and Improved Invisibility once per day, both with their regular spell durations, which is a whopping 23 rounds in my case!
With the cloak safely stashed in my backpack, I was teleported to some location on the way to Yaga-Shuras home. Up north a huge pack of his soldiers were harassing some merchant, but I was spared a replay of the Saradush soldier barracks sequence, since these were evil enough, and easily fell to a couple of Holy Smites. Back south, and to the east, I came across a bridge. Oh, uh, a Fire Giant was among the guards. The regular guards couldn't pierce my AC, try as they might, so I was free to summon a pair of servants to protect me. That Fire Giant wasn't as tough as he looked, and was killed by the two servants alone. Past the bridge, I encountered a slightly larger guard force with two Fire Giants. Again, summons did the most damage and took the biggest hit.
On my way to the home of Yaga-Shura, I passed the Forest of Mir, where I met the ghost of Gorion, or so it seemed at first glance. I didn't trust his tone, and in the end, he turned out to be nothing but an impostor wraith. Sigh, will these undead never learn?
I decided to explore the rest of the place, and made contact with a mad witch who claimed to be Yaga-Shuras mother, whatever. She did say she'd help me remove his invulnerability, so I agreed to fetch her his heart. Thus, I was once again off to the giant's lair. Got there before dusk and began exploring the surrounding area. I soon met "the mighty Chinchilla" and his followers. Unfortunately, for them, they were all Skeleton Warriors, which soon turned the party into a splatter fest instead.
Didn't encounter much else from there on, and soon reached the entrance to the giant home. Rested here to be able to make use of my new cloak in there. Come next morning, I activated what buffs I had memorized, and then applied the Imp Haste and Imp Invisibility on top of it. With an Aura of Flaming Death to top it off, I went in. There were
a lot of Fire Giants just by the entrance, but the -21 AC my Imp Invisibility and AoFD had granted me, kept me relatively safe from harm. Meanwhile, I was making good use of my 8 attacks per round and dropped a giant every other round on average, only having to drink two healing potions.
I don't rightly know where, but I am in there somewhere.
With most of my buffs still active, I quickly moved up the stairs and started to collect the four ward stones. The guardians of these four stones didn't cause much trouble, though the cloak effects wore off after the first one, so I had kill the Flaming Skulls, Burning Men, and the various Golems with a standard summons+blades procedure. Once through, I used them all in that big machine in the middle, and the way to the upper level was clear. I tanked the two Fire Giants standing guard at the top of the stairs by myself, and could fairly comfortably kill them with a few short bursts of Imp Haste from the Ring of Gaxx. Ventured forth into the main chamber, where I threw on pretty much all the prebuffers I had used before entering the lair, including the two cloak effects. The number of giants in this place was about the same as before, though there were a few more Elite ones, and a general was also present, so taking hits on a slightly more regular basis was inevitable. Still, they fell with relative ease, and after taking Yaga-Shuras heart and looting the place, I travelled back to the witch.
"Whaddaya mean you want TWO hearts? You aint got one either?! Well how come you didn't notify me of that before I climbed up a bloody mountain?!!"
"I did, stupid elf brat!"
"Oh yeah? Well we'll just see what little mr. Notebook has to say about that!"
*Checks journal*
Dismayed, I had to acknowledge my mistake, and left the place without another word, to make my way back to the great hall where I found the first heart. Luckily, the place was as empty as I had left it. What was she on about? There was no other heart here, there was nothing here. I started to circulate the room, hugging the walls, to make sure I hadn't missed anything. Sure enough, I had somehow managed to miss an open double door that was easily ten times the size of a regular gate. Went through, only to find a perfectly identical hall. The place was pretty much empty, but then I located a huge raised platform in the center, what could that be if not Yaga-Shuras bed? Found the witch's heart inside, and was just about to leave when I spotted a fire elemental in the corner. Went to have a closer look, and within moments, I had been assaulted by the fire elemental prince Imhix himself. I already had Prot from Fire up however, and my Deva was equally unconcerned with burns. A few sets of Energy Blades later, the prince, and all his minions, were gone, and I left the place for good.
The witch was initially pleased when I brought her the two hearts, but then went nuts when she had completed the ritual and realized I was going to kill her boy, what was your first clue? She summoned a few Shambling mounds and Nymphs. The latter fell easily to blades, but the sturdiness of the former kind of had me surprised, I had no standard weapons that could harm them, and simply didn't have enough energy blades to kill them. I reloaded and rested. Each one ate more than than one set of blades before they went down, but the witch herself proved far more fragile.
Yaga-Shura's invulnerability was supposed to have come to an end now, so I went to confront him in the siege encampment. Rushed past his weakling guards, and at once proceeded to load him with blades. Terrified to learn that he was actually taking damage, he quickly fled the battlefield. I saw no reason to stay and fight an infinitly replenishing host of low level soldiers, so I also left and had a rest in a nearby glade. Went back to the encampment in the morning, and there I saw Yaga-Shura, with some pretty heavy reinforcements. My first plan was to release a pair of Fire Storms to clear out some of the less powerful soldiers, but even after I, after much hassle with running away far enough to give me a round of peace and quiet, had cast my second Fire Storm, and more than a dozen soldiers, priests, and mages lay scorched and dead on the ground, more of them just kept coming. I focused on Yaga-Shura instead, figuring this stream of soldiers would continue as long as he lived. What followed was a long chain of Hit'n'Run assaults against Yaga-Shura with Energy Blades.
Navigating through his small army of elementals, djinnis, giants, and regular soldiers of various types, became more and more difficult as the fight went on. Not only because there were so damn many of them, but I also got some pretty major slowdown when the spellcasters started to play around with their own Fire Storms and Teleport Fields. He finally died when I was on my fourth set of blades, though I had just barely pulled through in the latter part of the fight. Finally seeing him go down head first was relieving.
As soon as he hit the ground, I was once more ripped away, and shortly afterwards found myself in my Pocket Plane.
Status Check: After killing Yaga-Shura, I had about 14 300 000 XP, and was thus close to the 47th level. My equipment is as listed below:
Helm of Balduran
Shuruppak's Plate
Shield of the Order +4 (usually dual-wield though)
Gauntlets of Weapon Expertise
Amulet of Power
Holy Symbol of Helm
Ring of Gaxx
Belt of Inertial Barrier
Cloak of Balduran
Crom Faeyr (main hand)
Defender of Easthaven (off hand)
Sling of Everard (currently in bag)
And my base stats haven't changed much yet
STR 18
DEX 17
CON 17
INT 11
WIS 19
CHA 12
Part two ends here. Next one should be up tomorrow, but may have to wait till Thursday.