I found the mage room today. I tried to avoid it but it was basically blocking the stairs. Once I found the stairs and was ready to teleport over to them, someone teleported my +8 valpurium Mjolak out of my hands. This was too prized a possession to give up, so I broke my last wand of teleport and went across the level to safety. All I had left for tele at this point was scrolls, which I wasn't happy about, but had to deal with. I used detect material to find my mojo, and it was dangerously close to the mages, who were beginning to leave the room and walk around. Seeing no other choices, I let my slow wear off and hasted myself, read a scroll to get over to mojo, picked it up, and read another scroll to get to the stairs. Nothing horrible happened while I was in mage range, thankfully.
On the next level I saw Golgor Dhan by the portal to Oree's lair, and while working my way over to them I somehow missed sherry, who I noticed once she was adjacent to me in a hallway, with zombies blocking my backside. This was a bad situation to be in, but I was lucky enough to be able to read another tele scroll before she could hit me. I must've still been hasted. I took the tele to the portal and entered. To my dismay, Golgor Dhan followed me, and I was surrounded by the dark knights and golems, and Golgor Dhan. Another bad situation I thought, my only option was to fight. I managed to chop off Golgor's sapphire scimitar arm in two actions, and he was cake from there. I only had one scroll of tele left, so I wasn't sure how to handle the mages. I used detect material on golden eagle feather to find oree and used the scroll to teleport near him. Oree is such a wimp, I killed him in one attack action. I grabbed the shirt and got out of there before I had any mage trouble.
Phew!
On my way back to town I gathered up a bunch of gauntlet/boot pairs to change to valpurium and golden eagle feather so I could become the champion of Valpurus. I figured that being able to change two items at once would get me more bang for my buck, can anyone confirm whether two valpurium gauntlets would give more favor than a valpurium plate mail? I went to town, became the champion, tamed the mystic light frogs, and threw a holy banana at Petrus (I was lucky enough to have one drop on GC1 when I went back down to find gloves/boots). That wasn't enough so I finished him off in melee. I tele'd to the throne (at this point I found another tele wand and cloned it) and sat in it, but I didn't realize attacking Petrus would make Valpurus very angry and strip me of my champion status. No worries, I had plenty of valpurium/golden eagle feather stuff left from before. I sacced a bunch more stuff, along with the justifier, became the champion, and went back to sit on the throne. Beat the game and got the high priest ending. Score.
I think it's time for me to try out one of the ivan variants. LIVAN seems popular here, are any others worth trying or should I check that out first?