The first time I ever saw the Alex Cox film and Emilio Estevez vehicle, “Repo Man”, I was probably eleven years old. I didn’t make it past the first scene. My friend Jonathan and his mother Ann, who had access to the cable movie channels we lacked, imbued my family with culture by showing to us and/or referring a number of films that one or more of us were occasionally not ready for at the time. Ann and Jonathan both had an abiding love for Repo Man, but as an unsophisticated youth with a (temporarily) healthy respect for authority, I couldn’t handle the highway patrolman being disintegrated at the beginning of the film.

By the time I made it to college, I had established the correct frame of mind to truly appreciate Repo Man, and it was one of the few VHS tapes I owned when I lived in the dorms. My first attempt at college was a spectacular failure, due in no small part to the sudden appearance of psychedelics in the landscape of my life.

And so it was, one fateful day, the first (and only) time I ever took the correct dosage of LSD for my wiry frame (folks, don’t do psychedelics without the supervision of a medical professional), I eventually made my way down to the dark media room in the dorms and put on Repo Man. I peaked during the scene at the end in which the Chevy Malibu hurls a lightning bolt at a frightened Priest, setting fire to his Bible and eliciting a chagrinned, “Holy Sheep Shit!”, followed by the swell of Reel Ten by The Plugz, and the power shot of Tracey Walter striding majestically through the yard to run his fingers over the roof of the Malibu. It was a religious experience.

As a result, it has never been a question that when it finally came time for me to ascend a Priest, that Priest would be miller. miller is my first 3..7(-dev) and my first successful vegetarian. Every would-be vegetarian I’ve ever ascended has accidentally forgotten about black pudding and messed up the conduct. This, then, represents my first new conduct in three ascensions, as I ate the wrong pudding in both my Monk and Tourist runs..

miller’s dog was Otto, the erstwhile hero of Repo Man, and beneficiary of miller’s guidance and blessing. You would have every reason to expect that fruittype be “plate of shrimp”, for potions that taste like “plate of shrimp” juice, but there was a literal fruit early in the film, a stack of cans of which a future Napoleon Dynamite would be cast into by our hero. Thus, potions of see invisible would taste like “yellow sliced peach” juice. Replacement pets might be “Kevin”, “Reggie”, or “Duke”. Certainly, any horses could have been “Repo Car” but more often ended up “’69 Chevy Malibu”. Nurses would be named for the other Repo Men, such as “Bud”, “Oly”, “Lite”, “Plettchner”, and “J. Frank Parnell” (though I totally forgot to N)ame any nurses during my final game), while succubi would be “Debbi”, “Marlene”, “Agent Rogersz”, “Mrs. Magrudar”, “Leila”, and “Repo Wife” #s 1-4, nearly all of whom would ultimately appear in the Quest.

Despite understanding the beatitude of items, I had a lot of trouble with Priests, though admittedly a lot of it came from attempting the vegetarian conduct, which created a food problem in the early game that mandated reliance on melee combat rather than spellcasting. Between the lack of expertise in most missile weapons, limited melee weapon selection, and miller’s Elven nature making him likey to receive Orcrist as a first sacrifice, it was often quite a trick to survive. The November tournament saw many promising games lost to pits bearing poisoned spikes, and though miller completed the Mines a couple of times, until he ascended, he had never completed the Quest. In Junethack, however, everything came together. For the first time in any tournament, I completed an ascension on my first try and in 11 days.

The millers I had been running over the last few months hadn’t found many chests early on, but this game was thick with them, including one unlocked chest he was able to park at the mines branch on level 2. With the mines so easily in reach, miller quickly picked up an alkys, making the rest of the game much easier. The big break, however, came from a decent-sized armor shop on level 4. Because a priest can see what’s not cursed, they have a unique freedom to identify armor by trying it on. This shop had both gauntlets of power and speed boots, and once plied with a tripe ration, Otto snagged them both. Given the aforementioned focus on melee for this Priest, the gauntlets and boots solved the “killing stuff fast enough” problem miller had previously been facing.

Quickly, miller became expert in both mace and club. Sokoban was thus much more survivable than usual, particularly since the high strength bagged miller a unicorn horn prior to the assault on the treasure zoo at the top. Somehow Otto was still alive for that fight and even survived it. Normally he would have been lost by this point and miller would have to tame a ’69 Chevy Malibu to take some of the heat off. The treasure at the end was a bag of holding.

Fortunately due to the close proximity of Sokoban stairs on 7 to miller’s stash on 2, and now a the bag, it was easy to shuttle used armor/weapons to the shop on level 4 and generate cash for Oracle consults and shopping. The armory on level 4 included an oilskin cloak and a second pair of speed boots. The Mines yielded a second bag of holding (ultimately the go-bag in a chest parked next to the stairs on level 1, packed with gems, non-critical artifact weapons, and planes-specific ascension kit items like wands of teleport). The hardware store in the mines had the first of many of cans of grease miller would eventually discover, and Izchak had plenty of candles.

Unfortunately, what the RNG provideth the RNG also taketh away, and both reflection and magic resistance didn’t come along for a while. An early polymorph trap would destroy miller’s oilskin cloak as he was transformed into a crocodile. A level teleport trap would separate miller and Otto for a time, during which miller would acquire poison resistance from a small glob of gray ooze. Otto would make it to Mine’s End and the luckstone, but would be lost to a pit trap not long after. Flush with cash from the mines, miller would acquire the best picks of the armor shop as well a general store on level 8. This would net him banded mail, a stethoscope, and a 91 charge magic marker.

Another rough part of this game was a dearth of consequence-free convertible altars. They would not appear until the level just before Medusa, though miller did discover Demonbane just sitting on the floor in a room of the dungeon on the way to the Quest portal. It blasted miller when he picked it up, but fortunately he was high enough level at this point that it didn’t kill him.

Since the way to the quest was barred, miller descended further into the Dungeons of Doom. He received a speed boost from a wand. The discovery of a ring of slow digestion solved the food problem and allowed him to start reading spellbooks. A ring of free action, an amulet of magical breathing, invisibility courtesy of another wand, and a ring of levitation would make Medusa a solvable problem, and her level would yield a shield of reflection.. A level below her was an attended altar, which allowed Miller to finish acquiring protection without having to go back to the mines.

Still not yet level 14, miller built up experience any way he could before going on the quest, though the lengths to which it would be required were somewhat extreme. Mars wasn’t really interested in providing Stormbringer to miller this early. He provided Orcrist, Dragonbane, and Ogresmasher before miller got the point and gave up. This was going to make prosecuting further offensives complicated, but there were scrolls of enchant weapon available, so the alkys he had been carrying around was pumped up to +6, and thanks to a horn to work out the passtune and a suspicious lack of Liches (though miller WAS still only level 12), miller somehow managed to take out most of the Castle garrison using the portcullis and the combination of his alkys and gauntlets. Though this ultimately yielded the wand of wishing, I’ve been going wishless so long now that miller just took it as a trophy. The Castle fortunately also contained a blue dragon which was kind enough to leave scales behind, so he was able to drop his AC sufficiently to withstand most challenges.

At this point miller was still only level 13, and things were starting to get a little grim. He REALLY didn’t want to go into Gehennom to try and become high enough level to go on the quest…especially without magic resistance. So miller went about trying to find Ft Ludios in a bid to acquire enough experience to make it to 14th level, a problem complicated bythe number of level drain attacks he had suffered by this point. miller finally found the fort on level 14, 2 levels below the quest gate. While cleaning out Ludios, he discovered a spellbook of identify, an amulet of flying (3.7 is weird), 2 potions of gain level, and coaxed Trollsbane out of Mars (No. You CAN’T have Stormbringer yet).

Finally replacing his lost oilskin cloak with a cloak of protection, and coaxing cold resistance out of a gelatinous cube corpse, miller depopulated the Quest levels with his +6 aklys. But would he be able to survive Nalzok? With an akys, which had an alarming habit of not returning? He would need a backup plan. He looked before him, weapons spread out. Sting, Orcrist, Ogrebane, Trollsbane, Dragonbane…none of these really screamed “bump me up to +6”. Finally, his eyes fell on Demonbane. Well, Nalzok is a Demon, right? Could a weapon miller was unskilled in work? In the end, it wasn’t much of a fight. With free action and plenty of potions of paralyzation by this point (as well as being up to level 19 thanks to so many succibi in the Quest that I exhausted the pool of names), it was as simple as hitting Nalzok with a potion and then whacking him with the +6 Demonbane. Nalzok would fall in 3 hits, and miller would complete the Quest for the first time ever.