ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

Came back to Derth after finishing the Maze and the Old Forest (with a brief stint to Daikata, after annihilating a bunch of Drakes I decided I needed to sell shit) so I went back to Derth. Experienced some lag going in, namely, a half second or so (not every time) I moved. Went to the shop southwest of the Scryer to sell my stuff.

I was going through my inventory and I noticed I had a light green cloak (cashmire, I think it gave cold resistance) so I wore that. Then, my game started to experience some pretty bad lag, and after about a few minutes, I was able to move again. Then, I went to go sell the linen cloak that I had on beforehand, and right after the menu with "Sell" or "Cancel" appeared (for the linen cloak), my game froze. The music was still playing.

Since then, I've tried loading up my character, only to have the game shut down roughly fifteen seconds after clicking on my character from the load character list. I've had this happen before on my other characters, but, after a few more tries loading it, it would eventually load. This was not the case for my most recent (and most successful) character.

Character is a Cornac(spelling) Alchemist, level 19. Running Windows 7. I have the latest version.

Is the character lost? Is there a way to prevent this from happening in the future? Can I provide additional information regardless to help prevent this from happening in the future to others?

Thanks.

No Storm going on?

If there is a storm, expect huge lag, weird that you didn't get attacked, and made it to the shop. But the storm creates lag...

Oh, no, I cleared out the town one time. I've returned to it several times since then, with the storm going on and all. But due to the other guy's post, I was able to fiddle around and fix it, and now it is time for Jesus to be off to kill drakes, and probably get crushed x amount of times by sand.

Thanks.