Bleeko the Human Valkyrie
2009-11-28: Ascended in 34590 turns
DevNull tournament server
version 3.4.3

After ascending the archaeologist, I though that I was pretty much
done for the 2009 tournament, but I wanted to beat the Grue challenge.
I started trying with Gnomish Wizards (for the light spell), but was
just having trouble keeping them in one piece.  Switching to a Valk
make things much easier.  After beating the challenge, I still had a
few days and a pretty good character, so I kept playing.  

The end of the month was rapidly approaching and we were traveling for
Thanksgiving, so I changed my normally slow and cautious to playing
style to cut out anything that wasn't absolutely necessary.  It worked
out well, and I finished a full 10k turns faster than ever before, and
a full 20k turns faster than my average time.

I got some good breaks, including finding gauntlets of power and a bag
of holding, but had one rough spot while mapping my way up from bottom
level.  I had found a new potion and suspected it might be polymorph,
so I dipped a dozen blessed blank scrolls to see.  I got a message
that "Nothing Happens" so I figured it was something else and dipped
my unicorn horn ... suddenly I had a blessed bag of tricks!  Doh!  The
next level up was Juibilex, so I retreated back down and wrested my
last wish for a new horn :-)

In the end, this was the third ascention in the tournament, with the
female neutral valkyrie combining with the male lawful archaeologist,
and chaotic female barbarian to cover all genders and alignments and
get a "Double Top" recognition trophy.  I also beat the new DigDug
challenge as well as the PacMan and Grue challenges.