Yaaaaawn! That was a good nap. You feel like you've been asleep for months, although in truth only about 3 days. Well, you'd better get on with this, then! As planned, you decide to visit each of the 5 outer tombs in turn, challenging the tombs' opponents in individual battles.
Mummies: 20hp, +1 Combat Skill, 1 damage on hit.
Dragon: 3hp, 1 armour, Mass Combat Melee +4 (3 damage), Ranged +3 (3 damage).
3, 7, 6, 10!
2
You tear off the casket lids from each of the sarcophagi in the first tomb, opening with a blaze of flame, but your aim is completely off - you set a couple of the mummies alight, but they don't burn strongly enough to go down. Twenty or so mummies arise, and in tight quarters like these you can't get enough range to use your firebreath effectively after the initial blast - but that's fine. Close quarters are to your advantage with your tough muscles and steel claws. You rend the mummies apart, but the battle takes a minute of furious slashing and makes enough noise that you hear sarcophagus lids in the nearby tombs begin to slide away. It looks like you'll be fighting two more of the outer tombs this time.
Mummies: 40hp, +2 Combat Skill, 2 damage on hit.
Dragon: 3hp, 1 armour, Mass Combat Melee +4 (3 damage), Ranged +3 (3 damage).
4, 9, 4, 8, 5, 5, 8
2
You catch a handful of the ophidian mummies with your firebreath before the two hordes of undead flank you. There are just under forty this time, and they are armed with ancient bronze knives and what look like swords, long-tarnished to uselessness and now being wielded like clubs. You feel your ancestral memories begin to kick in, guiding your claw strokes, as you tear asunder whole swathes of your assailants with each blow. Dry flesh cracks and crumbles under your claws, though the numbers begin to pile up on you quickly enough - it is all you can do to keep them at bay. Your inner pride surges as they crawl all over you and your limbs and wings explode outward, hurling these wretched creatures away! Several break upon the tomb's stone walls, others shattered by your forceful limbs. The mummies attack again, pressing in with renewed vigour amongst those that survive, heedless of the numbers you claw down. Yet their numbers are too thin, and it is a simple matter of perseverance to whittle them down.
Alas, your battle carried on once more. The inhabitants of the two remaining outer tombs have already emerged from their coffins and are charging your position!
4
Mummies: 40hp, +2 Combat Skill, 2 damage on hit.
Dragon: 3hp, 1 armour, Mass Combat Melee +4 (3 damage), Ranged +3 (3 damage).
5, 3, 8, 3, 4
You open again with a gout of flame and start charging in, but this time your strokes feel foolish and overconfident rather than as glorious as you might have hoped. The mummies, wielding simple and half-rotted spears, adopt a defensive posture and although you pick away at them, clawing down perhaps a third of their number, they are able to delay you long enough for the stone door of the inner tomb to roll aside.
Twenty more serpentine mummies emerge, wielding ancient curved blades, but behind them slithers a far better preserved corpse wearing a silver death mask and wielding a well-preserved shortbow. This favoured mummy stays back behind the advancing phalanx and nocks an arrow, aiming for your heart.
Mummies: 65hp, +3 Combat Skill, 3 damage on hit.
Guardian Mummy: 3hp, Armour 1, Personal Combat Ranged +2 (1 damage, Range 2), Melee +2 (1 damage).
Dragon: 3hp, Armour 1, Mass Combat Melee +4 (3 damage), Ranged +3 (3 damage, Range 1); Personal Combat Melee +4 (6 damage), Ranged +3 (1 damage).
You breathe a gout of flame at the far band of mummies, roasting half a dozen, but they join up with the rest. You come to a distressing realisation - with the tomb's low ceilings you cannot fly, and with so many bodies in your way you cannot actually reach the archer mummy with your firebreath, while she can still fire upon you with the advantage of range. You will need to kill your way through the press to reach her.
The question now is how to fight.
A) Tactically. Conserve your strength and don't take risks, just focus on getting through.
B) Gloriously. Hurl yourself through the press without concern for your own wellbeing, as a dragon should.
!C) Unusually. Suggest a tactic.
D) Not at all. Pull back from these odds and fight another day.
!
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Topic: SPAMDRAGON: Swamp Baron (Read 39528 times)