I had all but given up on ever owning a cassette from Lost Armor Records. After many half-assed attempts and late openings of email notices that always resulted in sold out endings, I just quit. Cassettes are released in very small editions and there is a dedicated fan base that follow the label closely and buy releases very quickly. I am not that fanatic or dedicated to the cause and therefore eternally late to the release party. I like Myst’s work but had relegated myself to never actually owning a physical copy. C’est la vie.
So the other day I checked the junk folder in my junk email account and there’s a notice from Bandcamp that Lost Armor has a new release.
Now at this point, after almost 2 years of fruitless attempts at nabbing one of these, I would typically delete the email without bothering to open it, there hasn’t really been a point to make the effort. But this time, out of curiosity I took a look. It had been sent the evening prior and by the time I had opened it almost 14 hours had passed so, I wasn’t expecting anything when I clicked on the ‘check it out here’ link. I was completely shocked to not see the ‘Sold Out‘ header which I’m normally greeted with and it took another minute to realize what was happening, a fortunate moment was in front of me, an opportunity to at last own a Lost Armor.
West along a short downward slopping corridor Ēlin steps into a long hall, his torch light revealing a large grey patch of mushrooms secured to the cobbled floor. They look, odd, to his eyes. To the south he notices a small pile of papers ‘?‘, a far more interesting thing to look at then fungi ‘,‘.
Five sheets of vellum lay upon the floor each have the same short phrase penned upon them, ‘Indemeor co me‘. He senses magic in those words. Stowing them in his ruck he looks back at the mushroom patch and notices what appears to be an apple ‘,‘.
Not being a picky eater and it only being slightly wrinkled, he stows it away in the ruck as well. A strange place to find an apple laying about.
Now, for those mushrooms. Ēlin moves to get a better look, maybe they’re of the edible sort? As he moves closer he sees that the patch looks very unappetizing, in fact they look down right poisonous. Unnaturally large, glistening grey with large purple spots, they looked to him of bruised dead flesh.
He leans forward to take a closer look and is met with a discharged cloud of spores, the fine cloud hangs close to his person and is inhaled.
His eyes water and burn, vision blurs and his head aches as he stumbles about the patch. He fumbles for his dagger and swings wildly at the grey and misses, stumbling again unable to control his movements.
Another cloud of acrid spores fills his lungs, his mind is stricken with confusion.
He can feel his body weaken with each burst from the patch, his thoughts and actions betray him. He attempts to step away from the un-moving patch but ends up beside it and into a fresh cloud of spores.
Concentrating all his will upon escape…
he manages to take a step away from the threat.
And then, another.
The spores cease to explode from the mushroom enemy and he collapses to the ground, weakened but alive. He briefly passes out.
Resting for 10 turns clears the confusion.
He awakens. Lazy torchlight flickers from the floor. Blurry eyes make out the mushrooms in front of him, a twitchy spasm ripples through the patch. The room is silent. His head throbs with pain. He recovers himself and slides back toward the corridor defeated and takes several more moments to gain his wits.
Sitting, back against the wall the youth reaches inside his ruck and produces one of the sheets of vellum recovered from the floor. In his still addled mind he reads the words to himself. Indemeor co me…Indemeor co me.
‘Indemeor Ço mɛ‘!
The words so easily slipped from his mouth. The room disappears.
He finds himself sitting back inside the burial mound, the sheet of vellum gone.
He stands up, a little taken aback by the abruptness of the trip but not perplexed by it, as though he had always recognized the words and their arcane affect.
Very useful items, he keeps the remaining sheets close at hand.
Walking back to the hall and looking at the exits, a closed door ‘+‘ begs his attention. He will return later to explore the others and perhaps rid the room of fungi as well. For now he carefully avoids the patch and moves to the south eastern door.
The door pushes in, mostly opening with a little persuading, the air is mildewed and damp beyond. It feels different in here, reminding him of a root cellar perhaps. The walls roughly shaped and the floor sparsely cobbled with large stones grouted with dirt and patchy, grey mosses. He follows the snaking corridor as it leads steeply down until he comes to a leveled intersection.
To the west, an open hallway.
To the east, a broken door ‘,‘ askew on its hinges…
East it is.
Still sloping down he reaches a second leveled intersection.
A short few steps north and the hall abruptly ends. He turns to the south and sees what appears to be an entrance to a larger chamber.
As Ēlin draws near the entrance torchlight dances across a small collection of neatly arranged vials upon the floor, a reddish liquid can be seen inside ‘!‘.
By mid morning the next day Ēlin had removed enough rock and soil from the mound and reached the top of the tomb. He smashed upon the exposed slab for hours with stones until it finally gave way, a jagged hole into blackness just large enough to squeeze through.
He sparked his only torch to life and gave it to the black. It fell briefly then abruptly stopped. A short drop, eight feet…maybe ten.
The youth did not hesitate and wormed himself into the hole, feet first working himself down until he hung on the edge. As soon as his full weight was supported by his fingers he smoothly released and followed the torch to its resting place below. He struck the ground with a little impact, absorbed the shock and rolled off to his side. Detritus from the mound showered down around him.
Now self entombed, Ēlin recovers the torch from the floor reveling his confined surroundings.
Moving to the north west along an angular hall he sees fast, erratic movement, a Fruit Bat ‘b‘, the common pest had noticed him before he noticed it. He steps forward to dispatch it.
Ēlin slashes at the blur with his dagger hitting it, the bat flits to the north west in retreat. A short chase and another hit from his blade and the first encounter is over. The rookie is unscathed.
Ēlin moves west following the hall then squeezes between a gap in the walls and spots a discarded torch’~‘ on the cobbled floor. A much needed piece of equipment.
As he secures the torch, a stretch of corridor is illuminated to the west. In the gloom Ēlin eyes an odd grey patch on the ground ‘,‘. The corridor appears to open to a larger room but for now he decides to investigate his immediate area and moves off southeasterly.
As he completes the circuit and the interior of the mound revealed, Ēlin concentrates his attention on the two doors along the inner walls. Would the tyrant be interred within.
He moves to the south door, it opens readily to a small empty room. Tucked in a small alcove he notices a vial, liquid can be seen through the dusty glass. He enters the and approaches the alcove, lifts the vial and swirls it around. It appears ordinary to his eyes. He removes the tight stopper and wafts it beneath his nose. Oil ‘!‘…common lamp oil. A useful item but certainly not entombed wealth.
As he places the oil inside his ruck he notices on the north wall, close to the ground a slightly larger block of stone with an outline of what appears to be a concealed entry. Passage to the next chamber.
Pushing upon the low stone block it begrudgingly slides, then tumbles to the floor of the northern chamber. He thrusts the torch through the entrance and peers into the room. Only stale air and dust thank him for the effort in this long empty room.
He wriggles through and briefly collects himself. This was no tomb. He exits agitated, moving impatiently to the door in the outer hall and swings it wide…
More dust, a false room empty.
He returns to the hall and stares into the gloom wondering. Were the old tales wrong about the burial mound, it did not feel like a tomb, where was the body? Perhaps the old fiend arose and simply walked away down the hallway the red headed bastard now stared down. Was this a way into Angband as the stories claimed or was that false as well. Perhaps.
Certainly though the impatient Ēlin had spent enough time pondering such things. He moved forward into the hall to investigate the strange grey shape ‘,‘ on the ground.
The brash and overbold youth Ēlin sat atop the rocky mound, a shock of red hair stuck to his still perspiring brow. He had made the mound in good time, the sun was just now midway in the sky.
The mound, sparsely covered in patchy tufts of stiff brown grasses wind blown up the mountain side from unknown plains, squat upon a level ledge of slope. It looked like a hairy, broken fist, a lumpy collection of granite stones that formed grotesque knuckles and clenched, meaty digits.
Stories of the mound arose generations ago and were passed down the line, ghost stories and folklore of the superstitious. Ēlin had heard them all. It was said that the mound was the resting place of a wicked pagan tyrant, a cruel man of dark, aberrant powers. Ultimately he met his fate at the hands of the people he terrorized, murdered as he slept. He was sepulchered close to the Iron Prison by his faithful cadre within a rough hune tomb upon the mountain. Some time after the townspeople of Ēlin’s home returned to the tomb and hastily covered it in stone and boulders in fear that he may again rise to avenge himself upon them. It was whispered that through his tomb ingress to the ancient stronghold Angband could be had and that the old tyrant still stalked the deep dungeon.
The old tales swam through Ēlin’s head as he dug and removed stones from the mound.
Gygax: [00:03:13] OK, now, let’s – I’ll pick it up as if you were actually in a dungeon, and I’ll relay to you, because I have to be your eyes and ears and everything, and you’re going to tell me what kind of information you need. So we’ll assume that you are in a four-way passageway underground and you can choose any direction you want to go. Ten foot wide stone corridors deep beneath the earth. Now, you have a choice of any of the four directions, you tell me where you go to.
Snyder: [00:03:38] OK, let’s go to the left.
Gygax: [00:03:39] OK, you go to the left and we’ll say you were going north, so you’re going to head off to the west.
Snyder: [00:03:43] OK.
Gygax: [00:03:44] OK, you go west and I tell you how many feet, you’ve gone a hundred feet west – and suddenly there’s a huge bronze door before you, with a big doorknocker on it, a big ring that obviously opens the door and serves as a knocker also. Do you want to turn around and go back the other way? Open the door? Knock first? What would you like to do?
Snyder: [00:04:04] I think I’ll knock first.
Gygax: [00:04:05] OK. Now, without having all of this written down, of course, there could be, the – perhaps the knocker will trigger a stone block that drops on your head.
This morning in Angband…
Dain the Ranger finds himself at a 4-way intersection on lvl 6.
It’s been a few months since I last played Angband, 9 to be exact, so today I rolled up a new Ranger and went back into the dungeon. A bit rusty with the controls after being away for awhile so I took it slow.
I don’t know, there’s something very exciting about starting a new character.
I don’t know, there’s something very exciting about starting a new character. Cautiously entering the beginning levels taking your time with your actions, it’s a delicate time in the development of your character, your own education in the game and learning the class you’ve selected. Slowly building up your inventory with low end drops and random items left on the dungeon floor, possibly from previous adventurers or maybe something else…my mind wanders.
Torchlight dimly illuminating your path forward, rounding a corner and…@!
