Sap Considered Harmful
Knifey and friends head up to Caer Darrow to visit the Scholomance, worried that the occupants are probably going a little stir-crazy with no one coming to visit. If anything could enliven an otherwise normal day of summoning undead it would be a visit by armoured heroes with pointy weapons and freezing spells.
We have to move slowly through what has now become crypts, as only one or two of us have been here before, and a couple of members in the group only being strong enough for the Temple of Atal'Hakkar normally. With the rest of us returning from the Outlands for this adventure, having picked some enchanced gear whilst out there, we are confident we are strong enough to survive if we are careful.
It takes a bit of work to make our way from room to room, but we have a good tactic. Sending the warrior down the stairs as bait brings the attention of a few casters, who like an easy fight. The warrior runs back upstairs, pretending to be trying to escape the building, but instead turning around to fight when he is surrounded by the rest of us. By that point, the casters run in to our ambush and are too startled, or stun-locked, to call for help.
It's surprising how this tactic can be used to clear an entire room without arousing suspicion. At the very least, we expect the final group to wonder where everyone else has gone without them, but maybe they simply enjoy the peace of an empty room for a change. Let's hope they like the peace of the dead just as much.
I suppose ignoring an emptying room is not quite as peculiar when compared to each inhabitant simply not caring for the next. Our priest, Damacy, comes up with a neat solution to the problem the dark summoners pose, where they quickly call up a small legion of skeletons to fight for them. Instead, Damacy uses her mind control spell on the summoner and starts a fight with the summoner's companions, which the rest of us join in with. We then kill the summoner at the end.
Apparently, even this ruckus, as well as the inevitable looting of the corpses, is not enough to call attention to ourselves from the other groups of summoners and apprentices in the room, some only a few feet away. I swear I see one of them look over afterwards, tut, and mumble something like, 'They got Frank. I always knew he was an amateur.'
The lack of compassion is a little unsettling, but nothing I haven't seen before from the evil hordes of Azeroth and beyond. What disturbs me more is the effect of my sap on a fellow gnome. Whilst being sapped normally results in severe disorientation, and perhaps a mild concussion at worst, the sapped victim generally recovers to the point of quickly spotting and trying to beat the crap out of me. I have come to expect this. But we gnomes have a head the size of a pumpkin, it takes a hefty swing to get through that huge skull.
To make a fight easier I mark the gnome in a group of three enemies to be sapped—his head is easiest to reach of the bunch, after all. We kill his colleagues first, whilst a passing nerubian overseer smirks at the fate of the puny humanoids before returning to its patrol route. The corpses are pulled out of sight and we wait for the gnome to recover from his sapping, hiding behind a doorway to disguise our numbers.
I must have really whacked the gnome hard, though, as when his dazed condition wears off he has a really strange, cross-eyed stare and rather than running to attack he stays where he is. I could be convinced he is under the impression his colleagues have gone for a coffee break if it weren't for the fact that he is continuing his previous conversation with them, to thin air, hand gestures and all.
Poor little fellow, we see it as a kindness to end his state of agonising oblivion by stabbing him repeatedly in the spleen. From now on I will only be sapping creatures whose heads are smaller than a Tauren's arse. No more gnomes.