"A magician? Hmm..." The hound eyes everyone in the room as Alwyn speaks. Its gaze falls upon Sefayll. "Is that... a hellknight?"
"Sefayll Valerian is an ex-Hellknight. She has let that overly-regimented life behind. Look around; a Varisian gypsy, a forest elf, a halfling burglar and two Shoanti disciples of Gorum. We would never allow an Asmodean diabolist to travel with us."
Sefayll bows, "Sefayll Valerian, mighty Hound of Havoc."
"I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say that a stone giant wizard trying to revive the tradition of the Runelords and organize a regimented army of giantkind might pique your interest? It certainly has ours. We aim to kill that Rune Lord loving wizard and put an end to his plans."
"Hmmmm.... Imprerial pretensions of a Thassilonian pretender. I should like to grind his bones between my teeth..." The hound makes up his mind, and barks, "Very well! Alwyn Agnarsson, this battle sounds worthy. Onwards to slaughter!"
Camlo looks terrified.
“Fearsome,” murmurs Elisile, putting a hand on Camlo’s shoulder. “Be glad it’s on our side.”
“Huh. Big,” states Enga, looking part impressed, part wary and part like she wants to fight the massive beast. “Well – are we going?” Throwing a last glance at the Gorumite hound, she leads the way forward.
"Onward indeed!" Alwyn slams his skull mask back in place; he then reaches out and tears his hand open on the great beast's spiked armour. Bleeding freely, he draws Gorum's sword-and-stone symbol on his breastplate before smearing a huge, bloody handprint on the faceplate of his sinister-looking helmet. "To slaughter!"
Sefayll spares a glance at Elisile and Camlo indicating much the same sentiment before she slips her eyeless mask into place once more.
Demiarchos steps out of the troll cave in which he was summoned and sniffs the air. "Alwyn Agnarsson, I smell blood and chaos. Ha! I'm beginning to like you!" He then howls, the sound echoing off the cavern walls, before turning and padding towards the spiral ramp.
With the demented hound in front, the group descend the twisting tunnel. The walls begin to show evidence of having been worked and shaped by hand, until after several hundred feet the workmanship becomes obvious.
The gradual change from natural cavern to worked stone is finally complete after the long spiraling descent into the depths. The walls here are regular but strangely rounded—hard angles have been polished away to smooth corners, rendering the entire area somewhat disorienting to look upon. With no hard lines defining edges of rooms, the place seems subtly alien.
The path splits. In one direction, the entire corridor appears to be blocked by an ancient collapse, but the other way is clear.
“Well – stealth and subtlety are not options going forward,” Elisile whispers to Camlo as they follow the others forward.
At the junction, the clear passage looks like the obvious way forward , but as the group passes the blocked passage, Elisile calls for a brief halt while she quickly searches the ancient cave-in for any hidden ways forward or things of interest, asking Camlo to keep an eye out for traps.
"Oh no, this lot making racket just make it easier for little old me to go unnoticed until I get a good position."
Camlo grins, keeping quiet as much as he can, but looking out for traps.
"I assume the cave-in is impassable? Collapses shouldn't surprise anyone - this place is ancient, after all."
Camlo detects no traps. The cave-in looks impassable, so they turn the other way. They can see a pair of double doors stands in the opposite wall of a larger room as they approach along the corridor. The floor is made of glossy, polished black and gray marble. To the left, what might have once been another exit has long since caved in. Yet nothing in the room compares to the curious effect that its walls have — looking into the room, it’s bizarrely impossible to judge the chamber’s exact dimensions. Any wall looked at directly remains stable, but everywhere else through peripheral vision the walls seem to stretch away into impossibly infinite gulfs, as if the room itself were somehow “unhooked” from its own physicality.
However, most pertinent is the obese giant, its skin carved with sihedron runes, which jerks into life when it catches sight of the adventurers and approaches, club raised.
"Bizarre. Let the giant come to us - that room looks too weird to not be magical somehow. Illusions, traps, that sort of thing."
Sefayll pauses to examine the stonework. "Ancient, indeed. This is the style of Ancient Thassilonian work. Amazing that it has survived so long, to an extent. Our foe did not choose this location on accident, I'm sure."
“It doesn’t look as if this one will be open to negotiations,” suggests Elisile, as she begins the gestures to a spell.
Elisile casts Gravity Bow.
Enga is reluctant to squeeze past Demiarchos (and have the hound at her back) so she delays until after the big dog.
The armoured hound pads forward. Eying the lone giant contemptuously, he spits a gout of flame at it.
"C'mon, Enga! Let's cut this guy up even further." Alwyn rushes forward, sword held high.
Enga, then the giant.
Enga rages (free action), then moves to F9 (a single move with her speed of 35 should get her there), and attacks the giant with her spear.
;
;
Demiarchos and Enga bound into the room after the giant. but as they enter they seem to diminish in size, as if they are slipping away into the distance while standing in the same place.
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Enga and Alwyn charge into the room. Its space-bending properties don't seem to bother them too much, focussed as they are on the giant. But Demiarchos is very bothered. Rather than vomiting flame, the hound simply vomits and gives a very un-warlike squeak as he shrinks in size from the size of a buffalo to the size of a wolfhound.
"Well ... that was unexpected," mutters Elisile.
Camlo moves forward carefully with his crossbow in hand.
“There’s some sort of extra-planar effect on this room,” says Elisile as she nocks an arrow to her bow, “though I’m uncertain of its exact nature. See how the walls seem to stretch away in the peripheral? It has something to do with what happened to Alwyn’s companion – he has become smaller because he is both close to us and much further away, perhaps. It likely takes a strong will to resist the effect. I would guess that the giant’s runic tattoos protect it.”
Camlo's shot takes the giant in the eye, but it seems surprisingly reluctant to die. It sways but stays upright, red gore streaming down its face.
Sefayll considers her options. "Physical combat seems the best method. I suspect the runes on his skin also protect him from magic. They don't appear to help him from arrows."
As she says this, she readies and loads her crossbow.
"Stay out of the room for now." Alwyn eyes the tottering giant speculatively. "I think we can deal with this one."