When I was ten my family moved from the San Francisco Bay Area to a small town in Southeastern Idaho. The culture shock was significant, and I became extremely isolated. TV in the eighties being what it was, one of the only things I looked forward to during that time was the airing of “Remington Steele”, a detective series starring Stephanie Zimbalist and Pierce Brosnan. Whether because it was set in California, featured characters with some degree of depth, or was based on what at the time was a counter-cultural concept, it was a refuge from life in a farm town of two hundred people.

I honestly hadn’t planned to use Laura Holt as the thematic basis for this run. My only plan when I started out was a female orcish rogue. Initially I thought about using Gwen Raiden from “Angel”, whose orcishness is predicated on her self-identification as ‘a freak’, but she shows up in only two episodes, there aren’t enough characters between them for a very robust set of nurse/incubus names.

I scoured my knowledge of film (which sadly, petered out in the mid-nineties after I left my video store job for tech). “A Fish Called Wanda” might have fit the bill, but I don’t love the movie. Allison in “The Breakfast Club” makes a great orcish rogue, but I had the weird experience of previewing it ahead of this run and realizing that in my late 40s, the film fails to hold up for me. I was sorely tempted to use Bunny from “The Big Lebowski”, as her demonstration of toxic femininity definitely screams “orc”, but by the end of the film it’s clear that she doesn’t really qualify as a rogue.

I know there are other films out there with characters who might fit, but I didn’t have much of a connection with any of them. And so it was, scanning the DVDs on my shelf that my eyes fell on Remington Steele and I realized that Laura Holt fit the bill. The woman-in-a-man’s-world trope may seem tired to contemporary eyes, but in the 80’s the idea was still disruptive enough that it manifested symbolic orcishness. Her career as a private detective certainly qualifies her as a rogue, particularly since she is frequently seen sneaking into places, occasionally picking locks, demonstrating knowledge of poisons — even using them against her foes in “Your Steele The One For Me”, and disabling traps in “Elegy in Steele”. I balked a bit at the idea that Laura might be Chaotic, but given the lust for theft she develops after a successful art heist in “A Steele At Any Price” and her chocolate addiction revealed in “Steele Sweet On You”, it’s clear that while Laura acts Lawful, she’s really just masking her true nature.

I wouldn’t go so far as to say that Remington Steele stands up over the years. Its comic relief can be heavy handed (particularly in the first two seasons), and the centering of the will-they-or-won’t-they relationship is at odds with the depiction of a strong, independent woman who can hold her own in a world not made for her. But though ten year old me appreciated the Breakfast Club for its insight into the way we simplify other people, he appreciated Remington Steele for its depiction of intelligent characters in possession of a moral compass. And of course, the Star Trek fan in me appreciates the crossover of character actors like Armin “Quark” Shimmerman in “Lofty Steele” and Ian “Mr. Atoz” Wolfe (you know, Original Series - “All our Yesterdays”…’Wait! You have not been prepared!’) in “My Fair Steele”.

Laura’s fruit was ‘cocoa bean’ in deference to her addiction, and with the revelation in “Red Holt Steele” that Laura owned a cat named Nero, those became her starting pettype and catname. Dogs and cats tamed later were named for animals who appeared in the show (Gome, Sidney, Renny, Lucan, Happy, and Doolittle, among others), or various permutations of Remington Steele (Remington, Mr. Steele, etc). Horses were named after the various vehicles which starred in the program (Rabbit, Limo, Rolls Royce, and last but definitely not least, 1936 Supercharged Auburn Speedster). Nurses were named after Laura’s permanent or temporary allies (Fred, Mildred, Murphy, Bernice, Daniel, Abigail, Frances, and Felicia). Until her last game, incubi were named for the various aliases used by Remington Steele, starting with the Humphrey Bogart characters he went by most frequently (Benjamin Pearson, Michael O’Leary, Richard Blaine, etc).

Playing a rogue was easier having already ascended a ranger, and knowing they become expert in dagger made the starting strategy simple - ready the stack, keep throwing, save one for melee. The extremely light armor was tricky, and the need to keep picking up daggers made running away a challenge. Orcishness coming with poison resistance solved a number of otherwise problematic early game challenges.

Before laura’s ascension, the best game she had was one I started in the last few days of the November Hardfought tournament. I have been less active in that tournament lately since the minimum trophy qualification is two ascensions, which requires more ambition than I currently possess. I finally got a good game going, finishing the rogue quest for the first time and on track to ascend…but I took too long. December 7 rolled around, and despite my attempts to move the game forward, Hardfought’s tournament menu was disabled at the cutoff time.

It took some time to get over that, and good rogue starts had been few and far between. But about two months later, laura’s ship finally came in. Early cold resistance from a brown mold was a drop in the bucket compared to a large armory on level 3, which netted her Gauntlets of Power. The first two levels of the Gnomish Mines featured a magic whistle and a dwarvish mithril-coat. Not long afterward, Nero stepped on a polymorph trap and became a red dragon.

By this point the early game was astonishingly survivable. Nero basically ate all of the fauna, leaving all of the flora to laura. Unfortunately due to a brain fart I failed to keep laura vegan, as she was disqualified by eating the royal jelly from a beehive. I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised, it took me something like three ascensions to figure vegetarianism out, so it was a stretch that veganism would be achievable on the first try.

Minetown’s hardware store furnished a free bag of holding, as Nero had by this point developed a taste for shopkeeper. I prudently locked Izchak’s to keep Nero from committing a karmic blunder. Things got tricky pretty fast though. I want to say it was a magic trap that did it, but both laura and Nero came up invisible. Without see invisible, moving between levels and keeping Nero with her was a cautious exercise.

This became a problem at the point that it was time to solve Sokoban. Nero refused to move down the corridor at the start of the second Sokoban level, so it was not possible to advance. I had already cleaned out Mines’ End, so the only recourse was to bless laura’s scrolls of identify and see if she had the right potion in her stash. She got lucky and identified a potion of see invisible before running out of newly blessed identify scrolls, and used her last holy water to bless her single potion of see invisible in order to permanently gain the intrinsic. She could finally see her red^H^H^Hgray dragon! (Nero had apparently stepped on another polymorph trap while invisible)

Historically I lose my pet in Sokoban’s Treasure Zoo, but go figure, it didn’t happen this time. The prize was an amulet of reflection. The identify session had also revealed a ring of levitation and a cloak of protection. She was still only level 11 at this point, so there was nothing for it but to keep going down and look for Medusa and/or Ft. Ludios.

Medusa was on 24 and three levels above that was an altar to Issek, easily converted. It was next to that altar that laura established a basecamp. On the trip back up to collect the items in the upper stash, laura obtained shock resistance from a gelatinous cube corpse. On level 23 the discovery of a most astonishing bones file changed the course of the game once again..

A monk named DragonSideD had apparently reached this level before being accosted by a group of soldiers and tagged by a death ray while frozen by a potion of paralysis. DragonSideD’s bones were an ascension kit ready to go - a greased +5 helm of brilliance, a greased +3 robe, a +3 Hawaiian shirt, a blessed spellbook of identify, 3 magic markers, 2 cans of grease, and a bag of holding, complete with its own cache of less cursed items. By the end of the uncursing and identification laura had discovered a ring of slow digestion, gauntlets of dexterity, water walking boots, and a ring of conflict, among other goodies. Last but not least, the soldiers had apparently picked Stormbringer off of DragonSideD’s body.

Still trying to grind enough experience to go on the quest, laura tracked down Ft. Ludios, and here things went a little sideways. Stormbringer and pets never mix, and this game was no exception. On the upside, Nero dropped scales. This might be considered a tad disrespectful, but some people do taxonomy on their departed pets, so making gray dragon scale mail out of Nero seemed like it might be on the up and up. Laura did get enough experience from the Ludios fight to get to level 12, and an encounter with a succubus brought laura to 13.

Yeah. A succubus. Somewhere on the way down to 23 an encounter with a Genetic Engineer turned laura male. I had recorded 37 Remington Steele aliases before this ascension to use for #name’ing incubi, and suddenly they were all useless. The heteronormativity of foocubi in nethack was suddenly an ironic counterpoint to that of the television program I was immersing myself in. I am relatively unsophisticated in these matters, I’m basically a cis-het dude, and playing female characters in video games is as close as I regularly come to exploring an alternative gender identity, but for the first time I had the unexpected feeling of being upset that my character was the wrong gender. I never ended up remediating the situation, and it seems somewhat wrong that I didn’t seek out an amulet of change and restore laura’s femininity.

On 05.03.2023 00:21, friend@vortex4.net wrote:
>
> Playing a rogue was easier having already ascended a ranger, and
> knowing they become expert in dagger made the starting strategy
> simple - ready the stack, keep throwing, save one for melee. The
> extremely light armor was tricky, and the need to keep picking up
> daggers made running away a challenge. [...]

Doesn't the version you play support the auto-pickup option for
projectiles?

>
> A bugle stripped from the soldiers who had killed the hapless
> DragonSideD served to work out the passtune, and fortunately laura
> was still low enough level at this point that there weren’t any
> liches in the Castle. [...]

I thought (unless genocided/extinct) you'd always get a couple
of 'L' there; maybe not the tougher master liches or arch-liches,
but the lesser ones, liches (or demiliches, depending on level).

> The
> Valley of the Dead held a wand of speed monster, which was good
> timing as for some reason laura never found speed boots. [...]

You made it to the Castle without speed? Well done!

>
> [...] A trip back to basecamp to see if Kos was ready to
> grant any fancier weaponry yielded…Grimtooth. The first and only
> sacrifice gift. Kos is a bastard.

:-)

>
> You ascend to the status of Demigod...

Congrats!

Janis

On Saturday, March 4, 2023 at 5:25:29 PM UTC-8, Janis Papanagnou wrote:
> On 05.03.2023 00:21, fri...@vortex4.net wrote:
> >
> > Playing a rogue was easier having already ascended a ranger, and
> > knowing they become expert in dagger made the starting strategy
> > simple - ready the stack, keep throwing, save one for melee. The
> > extremely light armor was tricky, and the need to keep picking up
> > daggers made running away a challenge. [...]
>
> Doesn't the version you play support the auto-pickup option for
> projectiles?

It probably does, but I haven't fiddled around with the auto-pickup options very much, normally I just keep it off for the most part. I will reconsider that though, as the idea of fewer keystrokes is beginning to appeal :>

> >
> > A bugle stripped from the soldiers who had killed the hapless
> > DragonSideD served to work out the passtune, and fortunately laura
> > was still low enough level at this point that there weren’t any
> > liches in the Castle. [...]
>
> I thought (unless genocided/extinct) you'd always get a couple
> of 'L' there; maybe not the tougher master liches or arch-liches,
> but the lesser ones, liches (or demiliches, depending on level).

It may be that there were some that just didn't come out to play for the frontal assault...I'm used to there being three who come after me in the front room once I open the drawbridge, but that just didn't happen this time. I did find one lich in the south end of the castle on a repeat visit, I guess it might have been there the whole time, just didn't join the initial combat. The wiki seems to imply that the throne room is populated by an assortment of creatures in specific categories including L, but the language doesn't seem to guaruntee all of them. I may just be wrong :)

> > The
> > Valley of the Dead held a wand of speed monster, which was good
> > timing as for some reason laura never found speed boots. [...]
>
> You made it to the Castle without speed? Well done!
>

Thanks! Honestly the help of a pet Gray Dragon made a lot of the normal precautions less necessary, but I was pretty astounded that I got away with as much as I did.

> >
> > [...] A trip back to basecamp to see if Kos was ready to
> > grant any fancier weaponry yielded…Grimtooth. The first and only
> > sacrifice gift. Kos is a bastard.
> :-)
> >
> > You ascend to the status of Demigod...
> Congrats!
>

I appreciate it!

> Janis

On 05.03.2023 02:32, friend@vortex4.net wrote:
> On Saturday, March 4, 2023 at 5:25:29 PM UTC-8, Janis Papanagnou
> wrote:
>> On 05.03.2023 00:21, fri...@vortex4.net wrote:
>>>
>>> Playing a rogue was easier having already ascended a ranger, and
>>> knowing they become expert in dagger made the starting strategy
>>> simple - ready the stack, keep throwing, save one for melee. The
>>> extremely light armor was tricky, and the need to keep picking
>>> up daggers made running away a challenge. [...]
>>
>> Doesn't the version you play support the auto-pickup option for
>> projectiles?
>
> It probably does, but I haven't fiddled around with the auto-pickup
> options very much, normally I just keep it off for the most part. I
> will reconsider that though, as the idea of fewer keystrokes is
> beginning to appeal :>

Off the top of my head I don't know how it was called, but I think
it was one of (or a combination of) auto-pickup, pickup-thrown, or
auto-quiver. (Adjust spelling appropriately.) It was just a single
thing that made live a lot easier (and saves the necessary turns).
The auto-pickup-exceptions was also quite handy to avoid mishaps
with load-stones, "scrolls of dust", etc.

>
>>>
>>> A bugle stripped from the soldiers who had killed the hapless
>>> DragonSideD served to work out the passtune, and fortunately
>>> laura was still low enough level at this point that there weren’t
>>> any liches in the Castle. [...]
>>
>> I thought (unless genocided/extinct) you'd always get a couple of
>> 'L' there; maybe not the tougher master liches or arch-liches, but
>> the lesser ones, liches (or demiliches, depending on level).
>
> It may be that there were some that just didn't come out to play for
> the frontal assault...I'm used to there being three who come after me
> in the front room once I open the drawbridge, but that just didn't
> happen this time. I did find one lich in the south end of the castle
> on a repeat visit, I guess it might have been there the whole time,
> just didn't join the initial combat. The wiki seems to imply that
> the throne room is populated by an assortment of creatures in
> specific categories including L, but the language doesn't seem to
> guaruntee all of them. I may just be wrong :)

Only the two major lich species (the purple ones) have the ability
to teleport adjacent to you.

Janis