Maldar, the Magnificent

[MongoJerry]

Then it was time to drop into the Flayer Dungeon. Everything started smoothly as I passed a few blind flayer packs. I ran past a boss flayer shaman and cast a Bone Prison on him by rote after I passed him. Big mistake. Flayers came in from the next room and pinned me in while the shaman blew his inferno at me. No need to panic, I thought. I cast Terror on the little flayers, but they kept running into each other and then back at me to stab me. I still couldn't get out. I kept casting Terror and tried to get the flayers in the back to flee so that they would let the ones in front to flee. But just then, I heard an all too familiar high-pitched cry.

Ghosts. I thought I was ghost-free until Act V. I forgot about the ghosts here. A ghost boss pack bore down on me, and I quickly cast Terror to disperse the minions while I tried desperately to free myself. It wasn't happening, so I cast a TP and luckily was able to click on it and go to town.



I took the Flayer Jungle waypoint back and ran the long way around to the Flayer Dungeon entrance. After Dim Visioning all the regular monsters, I led the ghost boss back to the entrance and used the old Bone Prison/tp trick and booked it out of there. I found the stairs to the second level pretty quickly and jumped down them. I didn't want to wait to see if any ghosts were chasing me.



Luckily, levels 2 and 3 were comparatively uneventful. I lucked out in finding the stairs to level 3 pretty quickly, and level 3 rarely has many monsters in it. It seems to be designed as a benign maze for non-sorceresses, who have to run through winding passages extending through most of the level to get to the gold chest. The Witch Doctor was fanat aura enchanted, and the orange on his mass of flayer minions looked scary, but since I could blind the whole lot of them and then bone prison everyone after I raced passed them, I had no trouble getting to the chest and snatching the brain.



Maldar managed to navigate through and complete all of his tasks in the Kurast jungle areas. He had retrieved two components of the flail, Khalim's Eye and Brain, as well as the Gidbinn and he only had to kill one being to do it all. Maldar promptly gave the Gidbinn to Ormus who used it to strengthen the ward protecting the dockside. Both Ormus and Cain warned Maldar to continue on quickly for Diablo was surely close to reaching the famous temple in Travincal. Can Maldar collect the remaining pieces of the flail and get to Mephisto before it was too late?