I was one shotted by Kavlax. What just happened?

[Timo Pietilä]

Well, don't!
They still don't tell you everything, but at least something which would make you careful.
In general, the game has some mechanics you can't know about whithout experiencing dangerous situations or death. Nothing tells you about how much damage certain spells or breaths can do and how resistances work.

One of the "gotchas" in angband is stunning. Nothing in game warns you that after "heavily stunned" follows "knocked out" which is basically paralyzation without saving throw to recover. Free Action doesn't help, only pStun prevents that, and since that is rather rare (only crowns of serenity and few rare artifacts are guaranteed to give it) players usually don't have it when they meet monsters that can stun you. Pack of gravity or plasma hounds are deadly. Well, big pack of gravity hounds can kill you in single turn even with pStun so that's another gotcha.

Grand master mystic can KO you in two turns. One, if you are slower than it is.

[Amnekian]

But I got the idea that I was faster than Huan but he could do 2 moves. Or is Huan faster than speed +44?

[Timo Pietilä]

But I got the idea that I was faster than Huan but he could do 2 moves. Or is Huan faster than speed +44?

No, nothing is, but you might have been slowed and Huan hasted. Or something like accidental double-tap on keyboard. We would need an character dump to analyze what happened, and even then it might be mystery.

Was there a shrieker of some sort nearby? Like shrieker mushroom or Crebain?