With the Rogues having full-cleared Act Three up to Travincal, it was now time to head into the temple city and brave its meteors and blizzards. Now the area is never easy, but on this occasion there were 3 different Priest champ packs in Travincal, all of which were running around healing each other. Uh oh. To our own surprise, however, the Rogues handled the situation quite well, managing to string out the enemies and kill the champs in isolation. We had improved so much from our origins, it was almost impossible to believe. 
There were tons of enemies in Travincal but few vampires, mostly Zealots and Hierophants. Fortunately the Zealots could be frozen (and that's basically what Erick and I were doing for much of the evening), but all other enemies were Cold Immune. Here's a picture of one of the Hierophant bosses that the Rogues took on:
The minions have of course all been killed by this point; this is yet another screenshot taken at the tail end of a battle (they are much more difficult to take when the situation is critical!) It took roughly an hour to clear Travincal, starting on the safe outer ledges (to which we could teleport when threatened by huge Zealot mobs - a common occurance) and then working our way into the buildings. After the area was clear, the Coucil Members were lured out one at a time and taken on. First up was Toorc:
Look out, there's a mugging taking place! Toorc was so fast and so immune to all of our regular Fire/Cold attacks, I think we just decided to lay the smack down on him at melee range. He was one fast bugger and dodged away from us a number of times, only to be cornered again and whacked around some more. The Rogues cleared out right before he exploded and moved on to the next opponent.
Now since Geleb is Extra Strong (and has a Holy Freeze aura to boot), it would have been foolish to close to melee range and so the Rogues are instead using their bows once again. Sirian had lured him up on that platform on then teleported to safety so that we could shoot at him with impunity. (By the way, check out ME0003 with the gigantic sword chilling Geleb with Ice Bolt for the rest of us. Interesting gear there!) Since Jaffa was not present at this point, those hydras are definitely not friendly and are taking a bead on the Rogues. Our tactics were obviously working, since Geleb is about to pop at this point and would indeed expire shortly thereafter.
Ismail has been similarly lured into a location where he can't reach us - at least, not with his melee attack. There was no need to take any chances against an opponent who had us all Cursed. I think the aura is Holy Shock; not 100% certain of that though. I recall from this battle that Ismail kept running around nonstop (with his Extra Fast speed) and it took forever to get kill him. He did finally expire after the Rogues put several thousand arrows into his carcass.
Our other goal for the night besides killing the Council was to get the Durance waypoint, so we skipped most of Durance 1 and spent the rest of the night clearing Durance 2. As luck would have it, we ended up clearing about 80% of that gigantic level before finding it, which combined with the fighting we would have to do in the next session would qualify for a full-clear of the area. Quite a few deaths down there, but we did managed to reach the goal.
We hoped that our next session would be the final one in Act Three, although that might be a tall order since there was still plenty of work to be done. The Rogues began by clearing Travincal out, while waiting for Hawkmoon to arrive (Hawk and Jaffa both still needed the Council quest). This proved to be much easier than the last session, since the Zealots ran away from us (because we had killed the Council in a previous game) and the 3 seperate packs of Hierophant champs from the previous evening were no longer there to be found. Once everything but the council had been cleared out, we traced our way back to Kurast Bazaar and ran the Ruined Temple to get the Sarina quest out of the way. Upon coming down the stairs, there was a minor stairs trap that sent everyone scattering. We were able to re-establish from a portal in one of the side rooms without waking up Sarina's mob, and I then got my first view of the boss:
Extra Strong corrupted rogue boss; we would have had quite the time if we had been dealing with this mob at the same time as Sarina! Anyway, the side rooms were both cleared out of enemies and then the Rogues moved deeper into the temple. Sure enough, Sarina and friends came charging out after us:
Hey, look at all those dead (evil) rogues on the floor from the first boss pack. Anyway, ME0003 (with big ol' sword again), Dathon (partly hidden at the bottom of the screen), and Cy (rushing towards the action with bow) are doing their best to hold the doorway against the incoming mob. Sirian had been holding the line but had to retreat to drink from his belt. Jaffa and I are shooting away from safer positions. Extra Fast Sarina is no joke, but we had a relatively easy time of this fight, mostly because we managed to take out her boss pack in isolation. We grabbed the Lam Esam tome, and simply held on to it without turning it in until Hawkmoon joined our game (thus completing the quest for all Rogues).
We went from the Ruined Temple down to Durance Level 2 and began trying to clear a path to either Level 3 or Level 1, but shortly thereafter Hawkmoon arrived and we went back to clean up the Council for her and Jaffa. I got a good picture of everyone beating down on Ismail to post here:
Firing Squad time once again for the monsters! (The difference of going from 6 Rogues in a game to 8 made a very noticeable difference in setting up a situation where the enemies could be stunlocked.) From right to left here we have ME0003, Jaffa, Svava, Erick (with a crossbow?!), Sirian, and Dathon. Hawk is in the corner where the picture is cropped and Cy's Energy Shield orb pokes up at the bottom of the screen. When we can get the battles set up like this, they are quite a bit of fun. As the picture suggests, the Council was taken out without much trouble and we moved on from there into the Durance.
Fortunately we weren't going to have to run too much of the (gigantic) Durance 2 level, since we had spent most of the previous session there, but we still hit a number of interesting bosses. Look at this fellow:
A teleporting Fanaticism pinhead isn't exactly a walk in the park, but the more important thing to note in this picture is the name, which I circled. The very next boss that we fought down in the Durance was shaing the same name:
Will the real Blight Fester the Unholy please stand up? D2 seems to experience this naming bug quite a bit; evidently yet another problem that wasn't deemed important enough to fix. Oh well. This vampire boss was more dangerous than the one above, being Cursed/Extra Strong (that's six times regular damage for those of you counting at home) as well as Mana Burn. Blue Rogues need not volunteer for this kind of mission. 
Of course, we only needed to clear about 20% of Durance 2 to get credit for a full-clear, so after making our way through a number of rooms Sirian and Erick began tele-searching for the stairs; Erick found them after a couple minutes and we went down to Durance 3. There we ran into one of the nastiest combination of boss traits I've ever seen on a monster:
Yes, that's right - Bremm is Extra Strong/Fanaticism Aura/Multi-Shot/Lightning Enchanted. It doesn't get any worse than this, folks! Using the short-hand lingo for boss traits, he would be an ESMSLEB with Fanaticism. 
You might theoretically get a worse combo on Kaa, but this was seriously bad news. To make matters worse, there was also a Blood Lord (vampires) boss pack that accompanied Bremm, and the Rogues had no alternative but to fight them both at the same time. In the midst of a hectic and desperate battle, the entire game suddenly crashed on us, dropping all the Rogues out of USWest. 
We regrouped (this was a handy time to have headsets that run on a seperate server!) and managed to get back into the game before it closed, although we had lost all our portals and everyone had been killed (ouchie on the experience loss!) Svava lost about 10 million experience.
Anyway, since the game had been preserved, we were still fighting the same monster draw when we got back down to Durance 3 (although the elapsed time meant that the monsters had all healed). Bremm was lured into the large central room, and from there the Rogues managed to teleport back into the initial room by the stairs to take out the Blood Lord pack. Once Bremm's minions had been killed, we went back for the big guy himself (which is when the above picture was actually taken). VERY thrilling battle, and the Rogues actually only had a couple of deaths for all of the chaos taking place. Truly well played by everyone.
Of course, Bremm wasn't the only boss down there on Durance 3. In addition to the Council Members, there were actually no fewer than 3 Blood Lord boss packs down there too (sheesh! sometimes the game doesn't know when to give you a break!) Wyand above isn't exactly "easy", but his boss abilities simply weren't anywhere near as tough as Bremm's had been. We also managed to get him in the corner, and from there the bows plus some liberal usage of Frozen Orb did him in.
Maffer was too dangerous to melee with (Cursed/Extra Strong/Extra Fast is pretty scary on one of the Council Members), so we shot him down from the other side of the lava pool. The Stone Skin made him Immune to Physical and so it took a while, but at least he wasn't immune to Cold or Fire. Either of those is very bad for the Rogues (if you've read this far, you know why...) Finally, having killed six boss packs already in the cramped environs of Durance 3 and survived a game crash, the Rogues moved on to the Big M:
Mephisto looks like he's preparing to fire his Cold Shot at someone off screen. I don't know where the poison was coming from in that picture; it may actually have been a trap on an opened treasure chest. Jaffa, ME0003, and I are firing away in the corner of the screen. Sirian had recently crafted a nasty javelin with Prevent Monster Heal on it, and you can see him creeping around on the right side of the screen, probably preparing to toss another Frozen Orb.
Mephisto is nearing death in this picture, as he shoots out a bunch of Charged Bolts at the Rogues. Dathon has meanwhile dumped a bunch of meteors onto his head, and Sirian is in the process of firing a Frozen Orb at the top of the screen. Pictured at the bottom firing away are Erick, Hawk, Jaffa, and (of course) Svava. Mephisto was on the ropes here, and it was just a matter of time until we finished him off. Aside from one or two deaths from Mephisto's nasty blizzard attack, the Rogues made it through the battle unscathed. Another victory! Now on to Act Four! 
...well, not for another minute or two. If you were reading closely, you might have noticed that the Rogues had not actually cleared Durance 1 to this point, having skipped it on both trips through the dungeon. Half the team had to leave for the night, but the other half finished up by clearing the (small) Durance 1 so that we could start in Act 4 next time. It had been a very good session overall, and now the Rogues were moving on to the next area. Only a matter of time now until the Rogues come knocking on Diablo's door...
