Wizardry 8 Retrospective, Continued

Yet another entry has been added to the Wizardry 8 Retrospective on Tales of the Rampant Coyote.
Flush with more experience points from some travelling around and my discovery of the location of the Dark Savant's ship, I figured I'd take a crack at the Bayjin Shallows around Nessie and another rescue operation in Bayjin. I didn't get too far. This time, the water caves below Mount Gigas were filled with "Death Rays" - Manta-Ray looking creatures that, true to their namesake, had insta-death attacks that would sometimes land even through my magical defenses. And, since they are virtually immune to water spells and mental attacks, and fire spells don't work underwater, my biggest area-effect attacks were largely useless against them.

Those fights sucked.

Eventually, after being clobbered in the same fight four times in a row, I gave up and teleported back to Arnika. There was, I remembered, another possible enterance to Bayjin, guarded by Rayjin, in the swamp. I have a teleport location back at Arnika, so I keep returning to the city. Most of the times I leave, I get met by a large group of Rattkin who issue me advice or dire warnings. This time, after teleporting back from the water caves, the Rattkin leader tipped his hand, and said there was a price on my head, and he would be coming to collect the next time we met.