Caves of Qud

Amazing rogue like, very unique theme and mechanics, lots of interesting things to discover.

♥♥♥♥ you, and I'll see you tomorrow.

tl;dr take STD's into account before cloning yourself 40+ times Played a winged chimera with a stupid amount of AOE, "death from above" kind of build + a mutation that allowed me to summon 6 clones for a limited number of turns. Then I figured that the only thing better than having 6 temporary clones of myself… is to have multiple *permanent* clones of myself, each with an access to the said ability to summon 6 clones. I created 7 clones, 7x6+1(me)=43 of us on the same square when we all used Temporal fugue. A rather delighted mayhem ensued. Deaths to AOE were plenty, but so were our victories, and the artifacts we secured together and subsequently traded for valuable goods. And though we all looked the same which might have been a tad offputting, our little brotherhood felt like a real family. We grew close. Came up with new recipes together, laughed together, cloned Ichor merchants together, completed story quest lines together. And then… I began to notice. I became sick more often. Always itchy. Always a new disease popping up. Okay, weird, but whatever - I would always cure it, and carry on. Didn't think much of it. I figured - surely my companions couldn't catch diseases like I could, right? Wrong. WRONG. They were all disease ridden, head to toe. The worst of the infections, by far, was Waxflab. I don't know which of us contracted it first. Could have been me, could have been one of the 7, or perhaps one of our Temporal fugue clones, even. Waxflab does a bunch of things. Looks nasty, for starters. Shifts your stats around a little bit. But the most noticeable effect is.. the constant oozing. Of wax. Everywhere we went. All 8 of us. Sometimes 20+ or us, or even 40+ of us. The more of us contracted it, the worse it got. Joppa, the friendly village which we frequently recoiled back to? Completely covered in the disgusting, putrid ooze of our waxy disease. I didn't realize just how bad it was, until it was too late. I somehow assumed that the liquid was just whatever mess we were covered in by the time we recoiled back. But no. It was all us. It was all me. All 8 of disgusting, diseased me. It was absolutely everywhere, every place we frequented. The villages we recoiled to the most; the stores of our favourite merchants. Those ichor merchants we cloned together? Their tent full of the nasty wax that dripped from our orifices. And what's even worse - all of my clones had between 3-6 diseases each. Infections which removed their armor, weapons and tools and replaced them with putrid oozing flesh and fungi. This couldn't continue. Struck by shame and guilt, I decided to get rid of my sentient, living, breathing,... diseased clones, once and for all. The only problem was - they were pretty damn strong and at a high level, and I didn't know where to take them to have them killed in battle.. while I myself survived. I didn't wanna just leave them in the middle of the desert, either. Figured that would have been pretty anticlimactic. That's when I remembered Golgotha. Yes, the map with deadly conveyor belts that will inevitably drag you to your doom, if you don't step off - something companions aren't smart enough to do. I set my plan in motion. "Just another small mission" for them. We jumped in, and there we were, between the crustatians, the eels, and the conveyor belts with long deadly shafts leading straight down at the very end. I commenced the fight with Clarvoyance, and then I hid and waited while they fought atop the conveyor belts. 1 turn. 5 turns. 10 turns "Your companion, an oozing salty sludgy clone of Mr. Wings, has fallen down the slimy shaft to the southwest!" More waiting "Your companion, an oozing salty sludgy clone of Mr. Wings, has fallen down the slimy shaft to the southwest!" "Your companion, an oozing salty sludgy clone of Mr. Wings, has fallen down the slimy shaft to the southwest!" "Your companion, an oozing salty sludgy clone of Mr. Wings, has fallen down the slimy shaft to the southwest!" Even more waiting "Your companion, an oozing salty sludgy clone of Mr. Wings, has fallen down the slimy shaft to the southwest!" "Your companion, an oozing salty sludgy clone of Mr. Wings, has fallen down the slimy shaft to the southwest!" "Your companion, an oozing salty sludgy clone of Mr. Wings, has fallen down the slimy shaft to the southwest!" And just like that, it was over. I exited my hideout. They were gone. I peered into the shaft, but only darkness stared back at me. My hands were trembling, I felt sick. I realized.. maybe the Templars weren't so bad after all. Maybe beings like me deserved to be persecuted, punished for their very existence. Anyway.. I went back to Joppa, alone, pretending like nothing happened and with my bare hands and began scooping the ooze and filling as many waterskins with it as possible, so I could try to sell it. To my dissapointment, our ooze proved to be essentially worthless. It was all for nothing. Then my legs began to weaken and I got sick with Fickle gill which I had managed to contract from one of my clones, before they departed this mortal plane. A lovely parting gift. One which I will cure tomorrow by devouring a fresh corpse of a large worm. 10/10