4th day of Brewfest, CY 580 - Trapped beneath the hill giant fortress

The party rested in the dungeon below the hill giant's stronghold. Sarril had a rough night, being haunted by strange dreams of purple and green mists, tentacles and the feelings of insanity. In the morning, both Sarril and Luapan discovered that their connections to their respective gods is more difficult and prayers for spells took twice as long. Additionally, clerical healing spells seemed to be weakened (possibly other divine magics as well).

Once rested and healed up, the party decided to search the dungeons thoroughly, hoping to find another way out. In a previously unsearched room, they found a secret door leading to a hallway full of levers. Another secret door at the end of that hallway led to a large room with portcullis gates, which they assumed the levers controlled. Behind one of the portcullis gates were a pair of insane manticores which attacked the party with their spikes. Although the spikes don't do a lot of damage each, the two manticores were throwing 16 spikes per round, most of which were hitting Cadwin.

Pontus began carving the beast up for a trophy as the rest of the party searched the room beyond. Another room to the north appeared to have some chests within, guarded by two more manticores, calling for another brief fight. Once the maticores were dispatched, Pontus opened the chests, taking on the traps with his superior poison save. Dalron managed to recover some of the spikes and throw them right back at one of the manticores, killing it. As easy as that was, for some reason the party thought the best course of action to kill the other manticore would be to open the gate, causing the large beast to leap on top of Dalron and claw and bite at him. Fortunately, Dalron's superior armor class prevented the manticore from doing any damage and he was able to finish it off as well.

Sarril had earlier cast "Detect Traps," showing that two of the chests were trapped. Not having a thief who could disable traps, however, the party chose to have Pontus open the trapped chests, using his superior hit points and poison saves. The first trap was a blade on a spring that nearly severed a limb, but a lucky roll of the die meant he only took damage. The nest trap was a poison needle, which, thanks to his barbarian constitution, didn't manage to kill him. There were seven chests in all, filled with platinum, gold, electrum and silver coins as well as jewelry. All seven chests went into the portable hole.

Continuing to explore the area, and using Sarril's Find Traps spell to avoid several traps, the party was able to find another set of secret doors leading to another treasure room. This was turning out to be quite the lucrative adventure. In this other room, they found a map and a magical chain, with instructions written in the giant tongue. Since Dalron could read the giant's language, he was able to determine that the chain would transport up to 6 people to the Glacial Rift of the Frost Giant Jarl. Based on earlier documents found, it seems these frost giants were co-conspirators in the attacks on Sterich and Geoff. The party discussed this and decided not to immediately make the trip, but to finish searching the dungeon, specifically an area where the hallway had been intentionally blocked off. They first spoke to the orc slaves they previously freed, asking if they knew what was beyond the blocked off area and if they knew what the giants were searching for with all of the digging. Although the orcs could not say what the giants were looking for, they did say that a strange temple was uncovered on the other side of the wall and that troglodytes had been attacking and harassing them, hence why the tunnel was blocked. The party asked the orcs to help unseal the tunnel while they explore the other side, which the orcs only agreed to do if they could seal the tunnel behind them.

And so the party began exploring another area of the dungeon. They didn't get very far before they found the temple that was alluded to. Cadwin began feeling his way around and was immediately chilled by the cold walls. Pontus could see to the far side of the temple, behind an altar was a wall with shifting, amorphous/swirling purple and green hues that induced nausea to look at. Remembering a similar wall in a temple the party had found in some caves between Hommlet and the Temple of Elemental Evil, which nearly drove the barbarian insane, Pontus decided to leave the room rather than deal with anything inside. Cadwin, who became overwhelmed with nausea just by touching the walls, also decided it was best to leave. And so the party left, not even exploring the rest of the dungeon area, but clearing the blocked hallway and returning to safety on the other side.

It is worth mentioning at this time that the day was nearly over, and we had a new player in the group whose character was not yet introduced. The group was fairly confident that this player's character would be found somewhere in the dungeon and the player, who had grown impatient, blurted out a clue that led the party back to explore a cistern that they previously only partially investigated.

In the cave that held the cistern was an opening in the south and north wall. Water from a stream flowed from the north, into the cistern, which then overflowed to another stream that went out the south end of the cave. Cadwin had previously explored the south tunnel and part of the north tunnel, but this time decided to explore the north tunnel further, finding that it opened up into a large natural cavern with an underground river flowing through it. The stream that filled the cistern flowed from the larger river. The party decided to all crawl through the tunnel and explore the cavern beyond. The river flowed from the northeast, where another chamber of the cavern could be seen, but there was no way to walk there. Using a combination of levitate spells and spider climb spells, however, the party was able to make their way over the river and through.

On the other side, they saw a carrion crawler with a drow elf in its tentacles, about to eat it for dinner.

The party sprung into action, doing what they do best and killing the giant bug, freeing the paralyzed drow. Before they were safe, two more of the things popped up out of the ground, paralyzing Pontus before themselves being killed. The party decided to disarm and tie-up the elf before making camp to rest.

That night, the elf awoke during Sarril's watch. Sarril questioned him and he explained that his name was Bukro Shrazino from the hidden drow city of Ust Natha. He explained that he serves the wizards of Ust Natha, who do not worship Lolth, and was sent to spy on the noble houses of Erelhei-Cinlu - specifically House Eilservs, who seem to have tapped into some great unknown power. Unfortunately, Bukro was discovered, and inadvertently revealed (due to ESP) the location of Ust Natha, which was destroyed by magma a few months ago in what seemed like a natural disaster, but with suspicious timing. And Bukro was not the only one suspicious. There was one lone survivor from Ust Natha, a human sage who lived among the drow wizards who went by the name of Lucas. Lucas told Bukro that he suspects House Eilservs was behind the disaster, and that it was more important than ever that someone discover the secret to their power, which threatens both the underdark and the surface world. Lucas told Bukro that House Eilservs is orchestrating giants to attack the surface world as part of a larger unknown scheme. If he could find out the purpose of the giant attacks, it may lead him to some much needed answers. And so, Bukro came up from the underdark seeking the hill giant chief's stronghold when he was attacked by a carrion crawler.

The story was interesting, but it wasn't until Cadwin cast Detect Alignment to confirm that Bukro was not evil that the party decided to trust him. They invited him to join them as they share a quest to investigate the giant menace. Not wanting to travel into the underdark, and not wanting to explore the rest of the caves beyond the uncovered temple, the party decided it would be best to dig their way to the surface. Since another day had passed, the raging inferno upstairs was little more than smoldering ash. Using the Dig spell, Sarril was able to remove the collapsed rubble at the top of the stairs and make a path back to the surface. It was the first time that Bukro had ever seen sunlight, and it blinded him and burned his skin. Cadwin gave him a cloak and helped protect his exposed skin and his eyes eventually adjusted (for the most part).

It is the morning of the 5th Day of Brewfest and the Badass Motherfuckers are now a party of 6, standing in the foothills of the Jotens where the Steading of the Hill Giant Chief Nosnra once stood.

2nd Day of Brewfest, CY 580 - Round 2 with the hill giants

The party ran through the double doors from the hill giant's hall and into the courtyard, shutting the wizard-locked door behind them. They decided to run up into the watch tower to take a break and discuss their next steps. While up there, Cadwin and Sarril were able to cast a few healing spells on the fighters, giving the party a fighting chance. Feeling strong now, they decided to rush back in and finish the job they started, before the giants could heal up and regroup.

Dalron took a peek behind the double doors to look down the hall and he saw two hill giants in armor, carrying swords and talking to a third hill giant in much nicer armor, carrying an even nicer sword. This giant was fairly handsome, especially for a hill giant, and not at all out of shape like the others. This giant spotted Dalron peeking through the doors and decided to call him out. "Are you your party's champion!? Come face me alone, one on one." Dalron shut the door as the giant called out that he was a coward. The party decided to make a hasty retreat.

Unfortunately, the time spent in the tower was long enough that four remaining ogre guards, led by two hill giants, were able to leave through a side door and come around to the front. They were intending to chase the party down the road, but were able to determine they were in the courtyard and approached the entrance. As Pontus opened the door to escape, he was met with two of the ogres who immediately attacked. The ogres were easy, but the two hill giants behind them took longer to bring down, giving the three hill giants inside time to go around the wizard-locked door and approach them at the rear. While the party struggled to finish off the last giant in front of them, they sustained a volley of boulders being thrown from behind. They were able to finally bring the last one down and break into a full run (with Cadwin, of course, turning into a bat). Sarril stopped just outside of the doors, however, balancing on some of the rocks beside the road. When the two giants emerged and prepared to throw more boulders at him, he started to prepare the Meld to Stone spell. One rock crashed nearby - miss. Then another rock crashed nearby - second miss. Then Sarril flipped the birds and disappeared into the stone. The two confused giants stared at the rocks, trying to figure out where Sarril went as the rest of the party ran as fast as they could down the road. Shortly thereafter, the handsome giant emerged and yelled at the other two "Nevermind him! Kill the others!" At which point, they threw some more rocks at the party, but the rest of the party was soon out of range and disappearing into the wilderness.

Having a druid, a barbarian and a ranger pretty much guarantees the party will have an easy time out of doors. They easily found a small cave where they could safely hide while they heal up and figure out their next move. They decided to spend two days resting before heading back. The first day was to maximize healing and the second day to prepare their next assault. They decided on return to approach the compound under the protection of an Invisibility 10 ft Radius spell, bringing a summoned fire elemental and earth elemental in tow. They sent both elementals at the front door, while they all headed to a side door. Although the remaining giants were now fully armed and armored and keeping watch, they still weren't quite prepared for this. Boulders were useless against the elementals that require magical weapons. They did see the handsome hill giant and several more come out another side door and head over to confront the elementals, guessing that it is possible he might be able to handle them, but even so, it will be a distraction long enough for them to get inside and explore the place. For the most part, they had unfettered access.

The first thing they discovered was a kennel full of 14 dire wolves. Cadwin cast animal friendship on one of them and tried in vain to have it convince the others to join the party (the selected wolf was, unfortunately, not the alpha). They decided to keep the dire wolves locked away and come back later after exploring the rest of the fortress. As they made their way in, looking into empty storage rooms, dining rooms with some raid maps and other papers (which they collected) and a kitchen where some hill giants were cooking a meal, they started to smell smoke. After a few more turns of searching, the smoke was getting stronger. It was clear that the fortress was now on fire.

As they continued to explore, looking for the chief's bedroom, they came across some stairs going down and decided to take them. This led, unexpectedly, to a lower level dungeon with many passages. Following one of the passages east led to a hall full of dungeon cell doors, with bugbear guards keeping watch. Still under the invisibility spell, the party slipped past, following the sounds of hammers on metal coming from the end of another hall. There they saw six dwarves chained to forges making giant sized weapons. Directing these dwarves was another dwarf in plate armor wielding a vicious battleaxe. Guarding the room were two fire giants with flaming swords. The party decided this is where they would drop the invisibility and get into a fight. While still invisible, the party moved into a semi-circle around the dwarven task master. With Cadwin facing north and Sarril facing west, they both unleashed a lightning bolt at the same time, one at each giant, criss-crossing in the middle to get a double hit on the dwarf. The dwarf failed both saving throws and the damage was devastating. As the dwarf stood, clinging to his last breath, he swung twice at Sarril, making him feel the full force of his axe before Pontus appeared and finished him off. Now the party only had the two giants to worry about.

The good news about the fire giants is that they only attacked once per round. The bad news is that they never missed, and they did about 25 points of damage per hit. They also had 80 hit points a piece, so even with all of Dalron's giant-killing bonuses, it took a few rounds to bring them down, during which Pontus took a lot of damage. After killing the giants, the party started to heal themselves up and free the chained dwarves, at which time four bugbears appeared at the end of the hallway. Sarril immediately threw a fireball, killing three of them as the fourth started to run away. Dalron threw a dagger into its back, dropping it before it reached the intersection and alerted more guards.

The party learned from the dwarves that this dungeon houses orc slaves that the giants use as labor. There were another three rooms down this hallway that contained 48 orc slaves that were ready to turn on their masters. The party decided to give them the bugbear's weapons and send them on their way. After opening a few more cell doors and adding to their numbers, the orcs charged ahead to the bugbear guard quarters where a massive fight broke out. The party used the distraction as an opportunity to explore some more of the underground passages.

One hallway led to a passage that was walled off by boulders, which the dwarves said the giants walled it off for some reason. The dwarves stated they had seen troglodytes at one time, so the wall was most likely something erected to keep them at bay. Another hallway led to smaller 10x10 jail cells, one of which held a crazy man and another of which held an elf who claimed to be part of an adventuring party that came after the giants but got captured instead. The rest of his group now dead, he would be very happy to join the heroes if they would have him. Dalron decided he could not be trusted, and sent him to hang out of the freed dwarves.

One room opened up into the quarters of what the party assumed is the hill giant torturer, based on a torture chamber they had come across earlier. As Pontus opened the door, he was immediately jumped by two carnivorous apes who started tearing into his flesh. The apes were brought down soon enough, but their master, a wicked old hill giant, hunched over with only one eye, followed right up. He carried an especially sharp axe that he was able to do a lot of damage with. Pontus stood toe to toe with him in the doorway to protect the rest of the party while Dalron did his thing with throwing daggers. The fight was over soon, but the party was starting to feel a bit rough and decided to go back upstairs and out so they can rest up.

Heading upstairs, they quickly became overcome by smoke from the fire. The fortress was fully engulfed at this point. They had to turn back downstairs and look for another way out. Aside from the blocked passage, there were still two more unexplored passages to check. The first led to a cistern which the party decided was best not to investigate. The second had several branches, each of which led to a dead end where it looks like laborers had been recently digging - for what wasn't quite clear. A few of the dead ends widened out into large rooms and in one of the rooms was the giants from the kitchen taking refuge from the fire. The party left them alone and moved on.

This is where we left off. It is the 4th day of Brewfest, CY 580, and the party has to decide whether to find a way past the blocked passage, or wait things out down here until the fire burns out upstairs. 

28th Day of Harvester, CY 580 - A Party Defeated

Today it happened. What may have been the party's first significant defeat, and the first time they have been forced to retreat outside of the Temple of Elemental Evil. This time it was giants - and lots of them. So many, in fact, that we were unable to get all of the oversized miniatures on the board. This Sunday was mostly one very long, dragged out fight, and thus a short blog entry.

On the morning of the 28th Day of Harvester, the party departed Istivin and booked passage south along the Davish River, through Mittleberg, down to the town of Headwater nestled in the foothills of the Jotens. By staying on the boat, the group was able to avoid random encounters and getting sidetracked. On the morning of the 2nd Day of Brewfest, the party departed Headwater and began to trek into the foothills in search of the Steading of the Hill Giant Chief.

With a ranger, barbarian and druid in the party, finding the steading was easy. Hill giants don't cover

tracks very well, and through a combination of aerial scouting and tracking, the party was able to see exactly where hill giant forces have been marching from. By late afternoon, the fortress was in sight.

Though there were signs of much activity at one time, the place was relatively quite right now. Sarril cast Invisibility in a 10 foot radius to cloak the party as they investigated the outside. There was a watch tower rising up from the building and although they couldn't see inside it, they could hear the sounds of snoring. The party decided to walk in the front doors, using their invisibility to gain surprise.

Inside the front entryway were two sleeping hill giants - sentries who appears to be passed out drunk. Dalron used his exceptional giant-slaying skills to kill them both quickly without making any sounds. He then headed up the stairs into the watch tower and found one more sleeping giant and did the same. So far, this was looking like an easy mission.

The party decided to take one of the small (by giant standards) doors in the southwest corner which opened into a hallway. Going forward into the first room, they found themselves in an armory full of helmets, shields and bits of armor pieces. All forged metal and sized for hill giants. Dalron, who has some expertise when it comes to giants and giant-kin, noted that this was highly unusual, as hill giants don't have the skills to forge weapons and armor. Someone must have supplied this. And there was not only a lot of it, it was clear there was once a lot more - likely outfitting the raiding parties currently attacking Gorna.

The party then moved forward into an adjacent room and found a large weapons stash. Similar to the armor, these swords and axes were forged by someone and supplied to the giants. A set of double doors connected this room to a large hallway. Cadwin cracked the double-doors open in order to listen. The sounds of singing and revelry were coming from down the hall and cracking open the door attracted the attention of some ogre guards, who came rushing into the room. The party hid behind weapons racks and attacked as soon as the ogres came in, killing them both in a single round before they could raise an alarm. Sarril invisibly stepped out into the hall to get a better look and saw a large gathering of giants in a great hall, feasting and reveling. There were at least 20 hill giants, 8 ogres (standing guard), a hill giant chief and his wife, a cave bear, a cloud giant and 3 stone giants. Sarril relayed this information to the party and they began making plans.

The plan consisted of Cadwin summoning a fire elemental to rush into the room and cause a lot of damage. The party would then take advantage of the resulting chaos to launch a surprise attack that would include a lot of mass damage spells from Sarril. The only difficulty being that summoning the fire elemental takes six rounds, and Cadwin wanted to summon it as close to giants as possible. This required keeping the door open for line-of-sight with the wall sconce being used as a conduit, and waiting six rounds as the fire began to grow into an elemental. The first couple of rounds went unnoticed, but about half-way through the summoning, the cloud giant noticed what was going on and attempted to cast a Dispel Magic (which failed) while the chief alerted all of the giants into action. The remaining 6 ogres charged down the hallway and into the room, where they were quickly killed, but now the giants were aware of the party (except for Sarril, who was still invisible, waiting for the right moment to unleash a fireball).

The fire elemental soon came to form, but Cadwin realized it would not be enough and quickly followed-up by summoning an earth elemental. Because elementals require magic weapons to hit, the ogres and hill giants could not damage them, but the stone giants and the giant chief were high enough hit dice to overcome that resistance and they focused their efforts on the elementals. The three stone giants went to work on the earth elemental as the chief used a large ballista to shoot at the fire elemental (doing only moderate damage). Sarril unleashed his first fireball on the stone giants, which was fairly devastating, but not enough to kill them before they took down the earth elemental.

Recognizing there was a spellcaster at the end of the hallway, the chief began barking orders and focusing his attention on Sarril. Overall, the hill giants, which are normally pretty dumb, were using some decent tactics thanks to having a leader present. Luckily for the party, none of them was a shaman that could heal or cast other spells. Only the cloud giant was a spellcaster, and even he was a 6th level caster with a limited number of spells.

Sarril kept himself alive by casting mirror image while continuing to unleash a barrage of spells - lightning bolts, Boccob's Rolling Thunder and fireballs. Cadwin joined in with lightning bolts of his own for devastating affect. Dalron used his thrown daggers and giant-killing bonuses to kill at least one giant every single round while Pontus drew the focus on the fight to himself and Luapan healed the party as needed. Overall, the teamwork the party showed was excellent, with each member playing to their strengths and helping each other for maximum effect. But in the end, the enemy's numbers were too great. Once both elementals were killed, all damage was focused on the party, and it added up very quickly. Soon, the spellcasters were out of spells and the party was dipping into healing potions. Sarril started to burn charges on his staff out of desperation, and it wasn't enough. The party needed to retreat.

Dalron held the door open on the far end of the hallway and cleared a path for escape. The party began slipping through the doors one at a time. The last to go was Sarril, who expended one last charge from his staff to cast a Cone of Cold at the hill giant chief. It was enough to knock him unconscious, but not outright kill him. There were, in total, four hill giants and the chief's wife remaining as Sarril ran out the doors. The wife ran to attend to her husband rather than give chase, allowing for what looks to be a clean escape (for now).

It is the afternoon of the 2nd Day of Brewfest, CY 580. The party has dealt a severe blow to the hill giant chief, but were unable to finish the job. They now must find a safe place to tend to their wounds and regroup so they can come up with a new plan. You can be sure the chief is doing the same.