At this point the entire Rogue team had completed all of the Act Five Quests up to and including rescuing Anya in the Frozen River, as well as having all the waypoints up to the Frozen Tundra. We therefore had a debate at the start of the next session over whether to press forward in the tundra or attempt Nihlathak's Temple. Well, we "tried" the Temple, but the slaughter in the initial room was horrible. Take a look:
Sirian is going down as this picture was snapped, and there Rogues are clearly about to run out of firing ground. There simply was not enough space to deal with the charging skeletons, and since they are all Cold Immune, there's no way to slow them down either. The entrance to Nihlathak's Temple (the area with Pindelskin) was attempted several times on different nights, but we never even got close to establishing any kind of safe ground. For an underpowered group without mercenaries, there simply was not enough room to deal with the enemies. Eventually, the Rogues gave up and headed back to the Frozen Tundra. There were tons of boss packs at the portal on the Tundra; I think we counted a total of seven in the immediate vicinity. Here's one of those customers:
No one boss was all that bad, but with so many packed into a small area it was tough going. Sometimes the game just goes too far, you know? Many more Rogue deaths before we could get the situation under any kind of control. The Rogues then found the Ancient's Way and pressed on to the waypoint, which was found without TOO much trouble (Quill Rats in the area made things difficult). From there, it was back to the Frozen Tundra, where we ran the Infernal Pit sub-dungeon and cleared that out as well. It featured an interesting mix of witches/imps/blowdart fetishes that featured a LOT of missiles flying back and forth on both sides. Shield setup was very helpful there! The game actually crashed right at the end of the Infernal Pit, but since it was over 90% cleared (the chest had even been opened!) we stopped for the night. All in all, a successful session outside of the (impossible) Temple entrance.
The goal the next time was to go after Nihlathak's Temple - only to skip the opening area with Pindelskin. Sirian teleported through the mobs of enemies and got us a portal in the Halls of Anguish, and we went to work from there. Halls of Anguish had a pretty friendly monster draw, with lots of skeletons and beetles (in other words, nothing that was Fire or Cold Immune). As always, friendly didn't mean it was a cakewalk:
Dathon helps out the Rogue team with some Weaken charges there as we fight a mob of beetles. This is actually not as dangerous as it might appear, with the beetles firmly under control thanks to the Rogue freezing power. It took over an hour to full-clear the Halls of Anguish, and we fought through some pretty impressive mobs at times, but the overall threat level was low and the area was secured without too much trouble. The Halls of Pain were a much tougher place, as we drew a jungle bunnies/blowdart flayers/maggots draw. The bunnies were easy, but the flayers were literally everywhere and all Fire Immune. Then there were the maggots...
Chain Lightning, Meteor, and Hydras make for a nice shot there and were providing invaluable assistance against the maggot swarms. Frozen Orb was also extremely useful. These enemies weren't dangerous so much as extremely time consuming, as the Rogues were forced to wade through them to make any progress. The Halls of Pain are a pretty big level too, which meant tons and tons of little buggers to kill. The game also threw some interesting bosses at the Rogues on the night:
Mana Burn boss with some extra elemental damage; not the worst, but an entertaining fight nonetheless. We cleared over 3/4 of the Halls of Pain before finding the waypoint, and then decided to stop since it was 11:00pm. The remainder of the level to qualify for a full-clear would be covered when searching for the stairs down in the next session.
As expected, the Rogues started the following night from the Halls of Pain waypoint. Sirian very quickly led us to the stairs down to the Halls of Vaught; he can somehow look at a tiny portion of the map script and determine where the stairs will be located. Pretty impressive. 
There was a minotaur Extra Strong/Cursed/Might Aura that we parked along the way - MUCH too dangerous to deal with if we didn't have to fight! Unfortunately, there was a stairs trap on Halls of Vaught, with poison-spitting Vipers mixed in with charging skeletons and archers. Much dying ensued, until we concluded that the draw was not playable. Unfortunately, I was not able to get a screenshot from down there; if someone has one, please let me know.
So the Rogues rerolled a new map, and decided to take one final shot at Pindelskin. Well... it didn't happen. Valiant effort, but without mercenaries to tank for the team the entrance to Nihlathak's Temple was basically undoable. Simply not enough space. This would prove to be the only area in the entire game that the Rogues were unable to full-clear. 
So after more deaths ensued, the Rogues regrouped and headed back down to the Halls of Pain waypoint. This time, lots of Quill Rats and Festishes were part of the monster draw, but we fought through them to the stairs (I have no clue how Sirian can find the stairs so easily!) Down again to the Halls of Vaught, and this time there was no stairs trap down there (it was still the same dangerous monster types, however). The Rogues carefully cleared out some space and gained a foothold, although the area was still extremely insecure. The combination of Viper poison, charging skeletons, and archers required some careful handling. The team cleared out the first wing (and finally got a safe foothold to work from), then Nihlathak was in the second.
Sirian chucks a Frozen Orb while ME0003 and I fire away. Nihlathak's Corpse Explosion was apparently fixed in 1.10 - or at the very least, I was getting hit by it here in Hell and NOT dying, which was a shocker. We had to kill a LOT of minions, but the battle was readily doable. Did Blizzard actually get something right?! 
Anyway, the Rogues cleared out the rest of the Halls of Vaught and decided to try and run the Ancients Way. The game had other ideas though, as the team ran into a brutal Mana Burn rogue boss at the waypoint that killed everyone, and since the bodies were unrecoverable, we called it there for the night. Our end-of-sessions sometimes were not always valiant...
The next evening began by heading back to the Ancient's Way waypoint and clearing the area. This time there was no fiendish Mana Burn boss camping the waypoint, to our relief, and although several bosses were encountered there was nothing too noteworthy. The Icy Cellar sub-dungeon was soon found and the Rogues immediately headed down into it. That place... proved to be a problem. First up was a champ pack of Undead Stygian Dolls:
These speedy little guys were extremely dangerous in the cramped environs of the Icy Cellar; the Rogues couldn't afford to move much at all out of fear of waking up more monsters. They were eventually shot down over the icy river, but getting them into the position shown was not an easy task. The second monster type in the Icy Cellar was another fearful foe seen previously in the Frozen River: more Gloams.
Can you see the Gloam in that picture? Neither can I; the darn things are almost invisible when moving, but this boss was a very dangerous Cursed/Extra Fast/Lightning Enchanted foe. His boss pack was zipping everywhere, tossing out Curse-inducing lightning on the Rogue team. If it had just been these two monster types, the area would have been difficult enough, but the third monster was actually the worst - Witches.
Here's one Cursed/Extra Strong witch boss in this picture. I could have chosen several others, since there were FOUR different witch boss packs and TWO witch champ packs in this area! 
And three of those bosses were Mana Burn on top of that! Brutal stuff, just absolutely brutal conditions. It's not like the Icy Cellar is a particularly big area either:
That's it, you can see the whole level on that minimap (as well as quite a few bodies; I think Cy didn't even bother picking them up after a while). By my count, there were six boss packs and three champ packs cramped into that small area. It should be clear that this was nothing less than absurd; not that the fighting wasn't fun in a way, but it took MORE THAN AN HOUR to clear an area that a Rogue could run across in a matter of seconds. It's a miracle that the Rogues managed to clear the level at all without losing it. The preset boss by the chest at the end was by far the easiest one of the dungeon:
Can you say "anti-climactic?" Snapchip Shatter was a total joke; D2 is completely out of whack as far as providing a steadily increasing scale of challenge. This wouldn't be the last time the Rogues experienced a completely anti-climactic moment either...
Having put that difficult experience behind them, the Rogues then cleared out most of the Ancient's Way before finding the stairs up. We determined we had cleared out enough of the area to constitute a full-clear, so it was on to the battle with the Ancients. The Rogues prepared the scene by bringing some extra potions (and arrows!) then set the statues loose.
Madawc here is up in the northeast corner of the fighting area. He was target-locked onto me as I snapped this picture early in the fight. We tried to separate the three Ancients in order to coordinate attacks on one of them, but they kept sticking unusually close together. Finally, I managed to get Talic locked on me and retreated back to the northeast corner while the rest of the team beat Madawc to death:
Svava is running in endless circles around that pillar while Talic whirlwinds himself around behind her in chase. We danced like this for several minutes until Madawc was down, then Cy took over the distraction duty and I was able to take part in the fight against Korlic.
Like all the Ancients he had a bazillion hit points, but went down eventually. The boss abilities on both Madawc and Korlic had been nothing too special or particularly dangerous. Talic... Talic was Stone Skin/Fanaticism Aura - and he's also Immune to Fire in Hell. Yikes!
So to sum up Talic: Fanaticism, Immune to Fire, and 95% Immune to Physical. Does anyone else see the problem brewing here? The Rogues quickly discovered that against Talic their weapons and skills literally were doing NO damage to him. We fought Talic for close to twenty minutes and barely took away a third of his life. It was absolutely ridiculous. Sirian finally quit the game, went back to Act I Normal (!) and bought a Short Staff of the Apprentice with Static Field charges on it. Two zaps with Static Field did more damage than we had done in the last fifteen straight minutes of fighting! Is there any more proof needed that D2 is a broken game?! 
*sigh* We still had to do the rest of the damage to Talic, so the Rogues slogged through the rest of the battle and finally took him down. This was at the very tail end of the fight:
Several team members kept doing suicide charges to do more damage and lock Talic in place so that the arrows from the other Rogues would hit him. Why not? They had no more experience to lose! I'm not sure exactly how long was spent fighting the Ancients, but it was at least 30 minutes. After finally finishing the battle, the Rogues tried to enter the Worldstone Keep, but Level 1 was hopelessly lost within seconds after starting, so we called the night there. Svava gained what would surely be her last levelup ever from the quest reward, up to 86. Oh, and here's the weapon that felled Talic:
Behold the mighty Talic's Bane! The Rogues would be moving on into the Worldstone Keep and yet another step closer to Baal.
