Prologue

...and so it came to pass that the Sect of the Extremely Sharp Teeth had lost its first two champions. Smiles the valiant and Dentor the cruel had each fallen to their deaths before earning their place in the Council of Necromancy. The Extremely Sharp Teeth fell into a deep silence. None would rise to take the challenge, and the time of the quest was quickly vanishing; soon, a candidate from the Cult of Highly Dangerous Curses, the Domain of the Infernal Zookeepers, or the Dreaded Establishment of Bone Spirit Necromancers would claim the title, and the Extremely Sharp Teeth would fall from grace, never to gain their voice on the council. The silence persisted. None would stand up for their kind. They would lose all face in the council, and perhaps would be banished from the Universal Guild of the Necromantic Arts forever. Finally, one spoke. He was a younger of the Sect, but a talent, and one who, if he was only slightly older, could undertake the quest himself. He spoke. "I will use the Puppeteer Curse." There was silence again. The council had explicitly banned the use of Mind Control curses. This was a dangerous option indeed. "What choice have we? If we send another failure, we shall lose all. If we send no one, we shall again lose all. Allow me to use the Curse on a prisoner, and I shall earn us our place on the council." They could not disagree. Not one of them was willing to undertake so dangerous a quest, and there were none among the youngers who was skilled enough. "Very well," spoke the elder. "You may have your slave, for we have no choice. But be warned! Your head shall be the first to rot when the council discovers our treachery!" And so a prisoner was selected, a deviant necromancer by the name of Tleith. "Arakbar Nyacthan Brius Etayiopa Itkhi Baroq!" Tleith was now a slave, controlled by the Puppeteer curse. He would be forever doomed to obey the command of his master, who would watch over him from a 45 degree angle. His every move would be controlled. Walk there. Kill that. Drink this. His name was changed to a proper necromancer's name. That name was Tleithezaxializ. Pronounced T'-leeth-uh-zacks-ee-ah-liz

Chapter One: Tleith eats Andariel for breakfast

So now I'm in control. Perfect. Move your arm. Good. Walk over there. Good. Talk to Akara. Wonderful. All is going to plan. Den of evil? Check.

I left the town to seek out the den of evil. Tleith was like any necromancer so early in the quest. He used his wand to beat things into the ground. Simple. I earned my second level, and armed myself with the Sacred Teeth of Sharp Sharpness.

The den of evil was a joke. A combination of teeth and straight up beatdown made quick work of everyone there. I found plenty of mana and mana regeneration shrines, which allowed me to concentrate mostly on teeth, and save the melee for more difficult opponents. The cold plains proved equally easy; Teeth eats through corrupted rogues like good pork sausage.

In the cave, level one, I found my first useful item: a Triumphant ring of the Apprentice! Excellent. Fast cast is all too helpful when all you can do is spam Teeth at people.I also found a Deadly Dirk of Frost. This was to be my weapon of choice until I found a good wand. It did great damage, (4-10), beautiful attack speed, and froze enemies. Perfect.

Blood Raven was a joke. Her minions didn't last three seconds against my Teeth, and she herself didn't do much better. I cleaned her out, and moved on.

The crypt and mausoleum were entertaining diversions, nothing more. At this point in the game, teeth is sweet. It kills things in one or two hits, and is almost an area effect spell in that it hits such a broad arc.

Akara told me about some "Deckard Cain" guy. I didn't really care much about him, but I figured it would be an entertaining diversion. The underground passage fell to my toothy might, as did Treehead Woodfist. The brute didn't stand a chance.

Someone around this time dropped an amulet of the apprentice! Two fast cast items make for a happy necromancer!

Tristram was easy, although Griswold required a couple of town portals to kill. He's got so many hitpoints, and teeth is uniquely awful at taking out individual, powerful monsters. Give me a group of monsters, and THEN we shall see the true power of the Sacred Teeth of Sharp Sharpness!

While clearing out the dark wood, I found an Infernal Cranium. This was a nice find; the vulpine ability is sweet, and the resistances can't hurt. In the Hole level 2, I found, for the third game in a row, my favorite armour: the Arctic Furs. Both Smiles and Dentor used this armour. I hope Tleithezaxializ has better luck with it. He will, for this time, I control him, not some incompetent fool.

The countess was surprisingly easy. The only thing I had to watch out for was her exploding death. Smiles died from an FEB explosion, and I wasn't eager to repeat the experience.

The tamoe highland and outer cloister went by without incident. The Smith was a little more difficult, but I wasted him eventually. Tleith's teeth was getting quite powerful, and, with the help of a well, I hardly even had to go back to town. (Jester's Note: If you want a fun challenge, try beating the smith with just punches. Now THERE'S a long process. It took Juggles over 15 minutes!)

The Jail bowed to my superior might, and I think I set a personal record for "fastest clear of the inner cloister spike fiend trap". Teeth just rips those guys apart. It wasn't even funny. Here, I found the rare sash I'd be using for most of the game, the Ghoul Lock. with 17% lighning resist, 12% poison resist, Fastest hit recovery, +12 to mana and +2 to life, this was nearly my ideal sash. In the catacombs, I came across the best Andariel killing item in the game, the Death's hand. She isn't going to be doing very much to me with 62% poison resist and -75% duration...

Andariel was weak. Because of my Death's Hand, her poison was worthless; because of my Teeth, I didn't even need to aim very accurately. She fell before my barrage faster than you can say...

Okay, she just fell really quickly.

She didn't drop anything useful, which was dissapointing. I was so hoping to get a head start on that 3D tower shield I'll need for Nightmare... she dropped a topaz. Yuck. I didn't even have a single diamond. In my misery at not having a diamond, I agreed to do something stupid; I agreed to cross a whole desert with a complete stranger, some weirdo named Warriv...

Chapter Two: Sunburns, Sewers and Summoners

When I look upon Lut Gholein, I can only think of the suffering Tleithezaxializ must be enduring. Being the whitest of white, Necromancers burn easily. However, Tleith is unable to protest, and my quest must continue. At the request of an irritating barkeep, Atma, I delved the depths of the sewers. At their heart lay the foul Radament.

This was a worthy fight, by nature of Radament's massive life bar. It took more than five town portals just to get enough Teeth off to finally silence him. Aside from the time involved, though, the sewers were no threat. The burning dead archers all had a tendency to cluster, which made my job easy. I would just walk into a room, throw some teeth, and pick up the treasure.

The desert areas were even simpler. Spear cats, vultures and leapers were all easy, because of their low life. There's an interesting thing that happens when you use teeth against a leaper. The teeth cause him to fly back, but the tooth pierces, and often one single tooth can hit a leaper twice. Thus, they posed very little threat.

I cleared out the stony tomb, which was easy. The only difficulties I had involved running out of mana against zombie-type creatures, who take a huge number of teeth to kill. Creeping feature buckled pretty quickly, and I was on my way.

Because of the piercing ability of teeth, the maggot lair was easy. Most of my teeth hit the walls immediately, which was irritating, but a couple moved on to hit multiple opponents, like little bone spears. Coldworm's room was a joke; I cleaned it out in seconds, because I could hit everyone in the room simultaneously.

Dark Elder in the Lost City took forever to kill. Magic resistant zombie bosses really irked me, because they were so tactically useless, yet took so long to kill. Eventually, though, he died like all the rest.

The claw viper temple was easy for all the same reasons that the rocky waste was easy. The enemies all had high offense, but no life. They also tended to move in packs. Since, with teeth, a crowd is just as easy as a single monster, I chopped them down pretty fast.

Tleith took some punishment with fangskin, but he beat him fairly easily. LEBs aren't much of an issue with Teeth. I'm not quite sure why, but they just don't seem to matter much. FEBs and CEBs are much more potentially lethal, because of their explosion upon death.

All this was just a lead up, though, to my proudest achievement. A full clear of the Harem, level one. It took guts and perseverance, but I eventually cleared out the hordes of monsters, savouring the sweet smell of victory...

The arcane sanctuary marked a rennaisance for Teeth. The whole level was a series of barrels, with ducks all around. So I shot them. It was like the Maggot Lair, only without walls. All the advantages of opponents lining up to be slaughtered, combined with the ability to hit from across chasms, made the arcane little more than free experience. The summoner died before I even saw him; Teeth is almost as good as guided arrow for getting rid of him.

The Canyon of the Magi was a real blast for me. The Crushers were so freindly, they just loved to give hugs. Aww, me too. They had so much life they could take six or seven teeth to kill, each. The only efficient way to kill them was to arrange for a group hug, then spam teeth. I did that probably eight times, with huge mobs of them.

In the tombs, all of the bosses fell easily, although Ancient Kaa was a bit of a spoiler. The combination of huge life, magic resistant, and lightning enchanted meant I was constantly moving, trying to find the sweet spots where I wouldn't get hit, and going back to town for more mana some ten times. That's the one weakness of Tleith; he's not an economy model, mana wise.

In order to defeat Duriel, of course, I bought a pincushion to take the damage for me.

He served his purpose well, and died valiantly. Well, him and his 6 or so freinds, anyways. Duriel wasn't much of a threat. Teeth, teeth, teeth, TP, teeth, teeth, TP, etc... Death.

Chapter Three: Flayers + Teeth = Death

Tactical note: Every act, I find that teeth is having a rennaisance. I had assumed that teeth would be brutal in act one, and reduce in effectiveness at a linear rate. This just isn't true. Every act, it comes into its own all over again. In act two, it could clear out ressurecting creatures very quickly, and was THE spell for the arcane sanctuary. Here, in act three, it became the flayer swatter. Who cares if you can't see them, when you can just fire a couple teeth into the bushes and appreciate the "bleah!" sound that results.

Tleith sighed. The buildup of dust in his body was nearly critical. Lut Gholein had been hard on him. I will have to consider his endurance more carefully. This territory should be more favorable for my little slave. His fragile, now sunburned skin will last much longer in the shade and damp of the jungle.

Ignoring Hratli's irritating plea, I left Kurast immediately. No sooner had Tleith dispatched the obligatory dark wanderer/foreshadowing device than he found his first unique flayer, Pulse Grumble the Unclean.

Having gone through the bureaucracy surrounding the golden bird (is it just me, or is this just Blizzard being lazy and inserting a gimme quest?), I proceeded to the Spider Caverns. This may be the first and only time I've found the Caverns before the Arachnid Lair. Not to jinx my luck, I proceeded down, and dispatched Sszark and his minions. It wasn't a challenge, although the odd design made teeth less than effective. I think this may be the first place where teeth has been at a disadvantage.

The Arachnid Lair and the remainder of the whole Jungle complex was fairly simple. The enemies were either slow or weak, and neither posed a threat. I ate through them like teeth through warm cinnamon buns.

I'd been looking for a new wand to increase my Toothin' power for awhile. Dentor had used a Wand, + 3 to teeth all game, so I was looking for more of the same here. What I found was even better.

A Ruby Yew Wand of the Magus. Beautiful. Fire resists and fastest cast. No + to teeth, which is unfortunate, but this more than makes up for it. Now loaded with +4 to fast cast, I'm getting into the domain of the tweaker!

After finding the Gidbinn and delivering it to Ormus, I gained two things: another fast cast ring, which I promptly used to replace my Triumphant ring of the apprentice. I also gained Devak, my Lightning sorceror. Another slave, in other words. His contribution to the team was mostly in detecting enemies, whom I would then beat down with teeth.

The kurasts weren't too difficult. I did have the pleasure of encountering some amusing unique names, though. Sin Bang the Slayer (sinbad the sailor?),Wind Break the unholy, Grey Wight the destroyer... it was a barrel of laughs. Battlemaid Sarina didn't stair trap me, for once. Her mob was placed further inside the Ruined Temple, and posed no threat to a barrage of teeth.

Finally, I arrived at the high council. I doubted at this point that there would ever be a greater challenge for a teeth necro than to beat a huge, regenerating creature three times over. I needed tactics. I needed a plan.

I found one. I lured them out one by one to a sweet spot on the north (right-diagonal top) end of Travincal, where I could get them on one end of the divider, and myself on the other. Then I spammed teeth, and town portaled whenever necessary. Toorc and Geleb fell easily. Not even a scratch on me.

Ismail was another matter. I almost lured him into the sweet spot. Then, things went drastically wrong. He found his way up to my level. I tried to evade him by doing an end run in the corner, and luring him back into the sweet spot. Then, things went wrong. My curse began to fade, owing to some unknown "CD Error". I was no longer in control. Tleith was babbling like an insane fool. I lost vision. I could hear Tleith getting beaten to death by a horrible foe! I ordered him to drink potions. Lots of them. He still obeyed. I tried using the Escape spell, to return some other day. I couldn't get it to work. Finally, I invoked the enchantment of Alt-Tab; upon reestablishing control, my sight contact was restored. Ismail had nearly killed me.

I wanted revenge. So I lured him back to the sweet spot, and humiliated him like the other two. This time, it was even sweeter.

The quest would not wait for my rejoicing, and Tleith was beginning to get malaria from the swamp mosquitos, so I moved on. The compelling orb was my most difficult challenge yet: I must have swung at it 14 times before I finally destoyed it. (Does anyone know why these inanimate objects are so hard to hit?) The way to Mephisto's durance was opened.

The durance itself was no problem. Trivia: apparently, durance means "place of confinement". All the monsters on levels one and two were cleared easily. Level three was another matter entirely. The previous three council members hadn't used much healing at all. This did not remain the case. I walked down to the third level, fully expecting to lose my character. I almost lost Dentor on a number of occasions here. I mutilated the blood lords, and walked in to the main chamber. Wyand Voidbringer and Bremm Sparkfist were both trapped in the "sweet" spot.

I must have pummeled them for a good ten minutes. They simply healed too fast. My teeth couldn't keep up with them. For Dentor, they fell eventually. The same tactic utterly failed now, for no reason I can understand. I gave up. I couldn't beat them.

Then I got a second wind. If I did it before, I can do it again. Surely there must be some way to get them to stop healing. Well, the obvious method would be to give them something more tempting to do than heal. Well, minions would do a good job... I could hire a schmoe, but they tend to act from a distance, and Bremm tends to eat them alive. No, I had only one option. I had to use Tleith as a decoy. So I lured Bremm Sparkfist out, and began pummeling him with teeth. This wasn't pretty. As the lightning poured out, Tleith took a shocking amount of damage, repeatedly.

More importantly, though, Bremm thought it would be a great idea to try to go for the finisher, rather than heal himself. He buckled.

Wyand was not so easy. He teleports AND heals, and, while you can disable the "heal" AI by using yourself as a decoy, teleport is more automatic. So, I tried whenever possible to just spam teeth until he croaked. Finally, I managed, through use of the fraction of a second of autotargeting that remains when he teleports, to pummel him with enough teeth to kill him before he managed to teleport again. Thank god. This was, by far, the longest fight ever.

I was expecting a brutal, dangerous fight when I went after Maffer Dragonhand. Extra strong extra fast? Against a mere necromancer with weak defense and only his teeth and convictions to defend him? Should be a slaughter. It was. I killed him with only 1 town portal for mana. He never healed once, and never got me below half life.

Mephisto was a challenge for Dentor. He almost killed him about five times with that crazy frost orb thing. Not for Tleithezaxializ. After a couple minutes of easy exchange, with me dodging the frozen orbs easily, he fell into the glitchy spot. That's right, he couldn't attack anymore. I think that just about sums up that story. Mopped up the floor with him. He even dropped some nice new armour, Cobalt plate of the Mammoth. I decided to put it on, just in case. After some brief, token farewells, I left Kurast and all its wretchedness to a place far more to my liking: hell.

Chapter Four: Tleithezaxializ kicks butt. (apologies to Lucasarts)

I couldn't wait. Tleith was obviously suffering from the extreme heat and scent of brimstone, but, thankfully, I wasn't him. Instead, this was the perfect opportunity to gaze upon the boundless reaches of pandemonia, the plains of hell.

First stop: outer steppes!

Cleaned. No problems. I drew venom lords, corpse spitters and those infernal vile mothers. None of them posed even the slightest challenge. You'd think that by the time you encounter venom lords, teeth would have lost its proverbial bite. Nope. Four per venom lord, and they're gone. This was turning out better than I'd hoped.

I was nearly cornered several times. Here's a tip for all the monsters of hell: Don't try to corner someone who has a conical area of attack. It's just not worth the effort.

The next Unique in my list of funny names appeared here, by the name of "Flame Maim". (try saying that ten times fast) Ironically, he was an LEB.

Izual was... well, long. Not hard, not interesting, not even the slightest bit nasty. Just very long. He buckled after nearly half an hour of toothing. If anyone ever tells you that in Diablo more monster life equals more difficulty, give a deep belly laugh, and say nothing. It just isn't true. I spent the points on more prerequisites for Lower Resist, my nightmare-planned saving grace.

The City of the Damned wasn't hard. Pit lords, stranglers, maw fiends. Ho hum. Stranglers were irritating, in that they drained valuable mana, but all that meant was more trips back to town.

Brushing aside some obvious resistance from Tleith at having to immerse himself in 500 degree weather, not 3 feet from endless pits of lava, I barreled down to the depths of the abyss; the river of flame itself.

Then I froze. What's that? An abyss knight?

(Backstory: Dentor, my second try at a tooth necro, died a horrible and instantaneous death at the hands of a boss pack of abyss knights brutally executing him from across the screen, when I couldn't even see the buggers. I lost the most beautiful item I've ever drawn naturally in SP, the Havoc Talisman, a prismatic, fire-resistant, lightning-resistant, plus-to-life rare amulet. I'm now scarred for life.)

Being bitter, cynical, and having heard the screams of Dentor as he joined the ranks of the Grand Dental Records, I opted for the better part of valour.

I rerolled the map. It wasn't honourable, but, after losing Dentor not 15 feet from diablo, I wasn't in it for honour anymore. I was in it to win.

My reroll landed stranglers, urdars and maw fiends. Beautiful. No hassle, just a nice easy river clear. The oblivion knights would be challenge enough.

Eventually, Hephasto (I still think it should be Hephæsto, but that's another day's topic...) came a knockin'. I'd drawn the map formation I like to call the "Hephasto trap". I got him on one side of an impenetrable barrier, and wasted him. Simple.

Of course, no cheap trick goes unpunished. Never have I seen so sad a drop from the Hellforge. A perfect Amethyst. Two flawless Amethysts. And a whopping topaz. Great.

Not to be discouraged by the fact that I'm NEVER going to get a 3D at this rate, I press on to the Chaos Sanctuary. I step in.

So far, so good.

Then, the ambush starts. Right off the bat, a boss pack of oblivion knights. Great. Oh, well. Time honoured tactics prevailed. I lured them out one by one, and killed them. Oblivion knights only took five teeth, which was encouraging. The rest of the Chaos Sanctuary was more of the same. Step, hop, hop, step, hop, hop. Oh, wait, that's the butterfly. Whatever. It's all the same in the end.

I hit the seal for the Grand Visier of Chaos, thinking that he'd be the easiest to deal with. I did the classic town portal escape trick. I was right. He was the easiest. The Infector of souls tried really hard for the title, though. He couldn't touch me.

Lord de Seis was much harder. I had to use a great deal of luring, using myself as bait far more often than I would have liked. Still, they came, obedient then dead. De Seis himself was no problem without his mob of loyal followers. I dispatched him with ease.

I then moved to the last seal. This was the moment. Lay waste or be laid waste to. Beat or be beaten. Whack or be whacked. Maul or be mauled. Etc, or be Etc'd. And so forth.

I tripped it. The world went red. Finally, some power in this podunk hamlet they called Hell. Diablo made his appearance, charging right in to greet me. I nimbly dodged out of the way; no chance that some hillbilly devil-wannabe was going to mess with me like that. He tried his fancy moves. They didn't work. I had enough -md items that his Lightning Breath of Death (tm) was little more than a hot shower, and his fire was a joke. This was decidedly anti-climactic.

I kicked him once or twice for good measure. This was all it took? A place on the council was this easy to obtain? Psht. I could have done it myself. And the so called "Uberdrop"? Steeldriver. A useless piece of barbarian nonsense. I shall claim my victory and rid my hands of it. My triumph will exonerate me from using the Puppeteer curse, and I shall rise to heights no teeth necromancer has yet seen. I sit on the council of necromancers now, as a Count. One day, I shall rule it as king!

- Jester

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