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.