Raen utters a staccato warning in [u]Dwarven[/u]. "She seeks to escape at once! Stop her! She must not warn her comrades!"
Reaching for a bit of butter, Raen conjures a slippery footing beneath the giant.
"DWARF TONGUE!" The giant slips and falls with an awful crash!
Round 1:
Raen: Grease
Ushyle: Go
Whistle Pig: Go
Vael: Go
Hamilton: Go
Doxon: Go
Taiga giant: TBD
Indeed, Ushyle says in Dwarven, his voice cold and hard. And it shall be the last sound you ever hear.
He spurs his phantom steed over the obstacles and activates his bane against giants, bringing Milani's Thorn to bear.
Vael flies forward, drawing from his connection to the Heavens has he does so. With a gesture he causes stardust to materialize around the giant.
Doxon follows after Ushyle, riding his phantom steed up to the giant and swings Thunderbolt down onto it.
Ushyle closes quickly, seizing on the advantage. This giant is ready for combat though, and jabs her massive spear at him: for . He pays her back in kind, although he almost missed!
Vael quickly dazzles her vision, trying to quell the powerful attacks which are sure to come.
Doxon rushes in, finding that her reflexes aren't particularly honed. He scores another hit!
Round 1:
Raen: Grease
Ushyle: Hit
Whistle Pig: Go
Vael: Razzle
Hamilton: Go
Doxon: Hit
Taiga giant: TBD
Cirdassa: 85
Ham and Sammi kick-off in a charge that arcs above and back down into a dive, Ham bringing Heartspit down like a bolt of lightning from on high.
Charge, power attack:, damage on hit:
Only a pair of Whistle Pig's stones strike the giant. Hamilton's charge is devastating, as he drives the Heartspit deep into her side.
She gives a fearsome battlecry and begins to fight back for all she's worth, focusing on the roughrider from the prone position with her own spear, thrusting over and over again.
for
for
MISS
MISS
Round 2:
Raen: Go
Ushyle: Go
Whistle Pig: Go
Vael: Go
Hamilton: Go
Doxon: Go
Taiga giant: TBD (prone)
Cirdassa: 237
Ushyle grits his teeth, studying the giant a moment before swinging with Milani's Thorn.
Ushyle's quick work is bloody. A force of destruction capable of leveling a town on her own, this giant has no hope against the might of the Heroes of Trunau!
Raen looks her over, and she is extremely well equipped.
+4 hide armor, +2 spear, belt of fallen heroes, bracelet of second chances, cloak of arachnida, camouflage body paint (enough for 4 Medium creatures; grants +2 bonus on Stealth checks on first floor of Ironcloud Keep), jewelry worth 1,000 gp. she also has a chunk of raw black diamond that Raen can't automatically identify
Wounds begin to open up on Vael's body as he slowly begins absorbing those delivered to Hamilton.
Round 2
The shaman retrieves a wand and flies over to the roughrider
- Hamilton: 64/129
- Vael: 132/139
Round 3
The shaman draws curative magic from the wand to heal Hamilton
Meanwhile, Tulia uses another of Vael's wands to heal the shaman
- Hamilton: 81/129
- Vael: 133/139
Round 4
The shaman continues to draw curative magic from the wand to heal Hamilton
Meanwhile, Tulia uses another of Vael's wands to heal the shaman
- Hamilton: 129/129
- Vael: 133/139
Raen concludes that the rough diamond is the expended husk of a legendary artifact, the black comet heart. It was fabled to have been able to bring down meteors of such strength that it could smash a city or route an entire army. There is very little of it in the ken of Avistan. It's clearly expended, but not destroyed. She surmises that it likely contains power still.
The thought is confirmed as Renfal's ghost appears, "Volstus assaulted us with the power of the stone, smashing our towers and walls. Once he had breached the castle, he took us like a storm. While his minions labored to repair the flying fortress, the Storm Tyrant used the black comet heart to animate several of the dead cloud giants as giant mohrgs before opening a gate to summon a plethora of oversized cosmic horrors to his side, including a troop of gug savants and a pair of Leng spiders. It is a hateful item."
"A lesser ruin than the aboleths wrought upon Azlant, perhaps, but a great terror nonetheless. A hateful item indeed," Raen replies, a sadness in her voice. After a moment, she continues. "We slew four mohrgs before liberating you from your confinement. I suppose there may be further such abominations elsewhere about the castle. Four gug savants reside on this level, to the southeast. The Leng spiders we have yet to encounter."
Raen considers what she knows of Leng spiders.
She turns slowly to Vael, considering. "I hesitate to magnify your burdens, Vael, but I advise that you be the one to carry this stone until such a time as we devise a means to destroy it."
Raen recalls that they can hurl webs, but even fashion them into masterwork bolas and nets. She knows that in addition to low-light vision, they possess tremorsense, arcane sight, and darkvision. Leng spiders have a complex society and are readily able to wage war on those who infringe on their territory. Unless in their homes, they rarely fight to the death and will retreat if severely wounded.
Raen shares what she knows of the the spiders of Leng, then moves to investigate the rest of the room.
Raen, not quite willing to let the the drained artifact go, studies it some more. She's convinced that there's still something to it. As Whistle Pig searches the room, she spends more time trying to ferret out its secrets.
Raen determines that as an artifact, it's dead, but there are still ambient energies within that could stand on their own in smaller chunks. Perhaps a solid strike from AGRIMMOSH?
Meanwhile, Whistle Pig doesn't find anything of note.
Raen shakes out her floating lotus position. "I believe I may have ascertained a means of aiding our cause. Doxon, would you be so kind as to strike this terrible stone with the Hammer of Unmaking?"
Sure, no problem. Just hold it out there, and I'll give it a good swing.
Raen gives Doxon the look. Chagrinned, he takes the stone and places it on the ground. He then takes Agrimmosh in hand and swings the mighty hammer down on the foul rock.
Doxon winds up and shatters the 70 pound stone with a single swing! The outer pieces fragment into mostly useless rock, but the core breaks up into ten incredible gems. Seven of them look like unworked black diamond, and a gemcutter could likely turn each into a fortune. There are also three colored stones, a dark blue rhomboid, a pale green prism, and a vibrant purple prism!
Raen dispassionately considers the shattered remnants.
Each stone would be worth 2,000 GP. The others are ioun stones
"These gems hold significant powers. This rhomboid," she says, identifying the dark blue one, "confers an alertness to one's faculties of discernment. This one," and now the pale green one, "grants a degree of competence in a wide array of domains . And finally, this one," and the vibrant purple one last, "acts as a minor ring of spell storing."
Ham lets out a low whistle in appreciation.
"I'm just glad Doxon made the stone that much easier for me to carry," Vael says with a chuckle.
Whistle Pig eventually reports that the shelves hold little more than curios. The party takes a breath to look around and plot their next move.
After a discussion of the stones' various powers, Doxon picks up with pale green prism, and Whistle Pig the dark blue rhomboid. Raen takes the vibrant purple prism and sends it circling alongside the pink and green sphere that already orbits her head.
"If I may suggest we proceed east? The gugs are stationed in that heading, though most immediately is a barren room with an inscribed dais that I would much like to investigate."
This square room is bare, with the exception of a low, circular dais in the middle. A stone building block with inscriptions etched on it sits atop the dais.
An inscription in Giant is engraved on each of the block’s four vertical faces: “Like the fire of a star’s birth” on the eastern side, “Like the air, water, or earth” on the southern face, “Like a rock by magic hurled” on the western side, and “Like a mountain or the world” on the northern face.
"The doors to the north and south are well-sealed," Raen informs the others in a low voice. "The east leads to a bath house, and the gugs." She cautiously approaches the stone block and scans it for magical auras. "Renfal, am I correct in surmising that this device has significance to the functioning of Zephyr Hall?"
Raen finds nothing, even with her extra range of perception. The only thing of note.... is that Renfal refuses to manifest, only exuding an intangible pall of sadness.
Raen brushes her fingers lightly on the southern face, feeling out the etchings, listening to the rough scrape of skin on stone. She settles quietly into a sitting position and lets the ghost's raw feelings flow into her. She takes several long, slow breaths, taking her time to process the emotions.
At length, she looks back on them, and tries to make sense of them.
Raen doesn't get much, just the feeling that this room and it's contents are important, though it's likely an importance of sentimentality rather than power.
"Hmm," is all Raen offers, returning to the air. "Let us proceed east. The bath house first, then to engage the gugs."
The party heads to the bath without incident. This room, tiled with fine ceramic, contains a large showering area, with an enlarged porcelain shower basin equipped with two silver faucets. The faucets radiate a minor conjuration magic.
Raen casually inspects the faucets to confirm her suspicion that their enchantment is create water.
Whistle Pig doesn't find anything, but Raen figures out that the faucets deliver water at the chosen temperature with a voice command in Giantish.
"Let us venture to the southwestern tower. Four gugs inhabit the darkered chamber therein; I suggest we prepare accordingly. Note that the creatures are not susceptible to poison, nor diseases."
ushyle has been stewing a bit about something, and finally asks, Is...how difficult might it be to lure the gugs to the chamber with the opening and, ah, shall we say, deposit them outside the castle approaching the surface very, very quickly?
Raen ponders the proposal for a moment, fiddling with a stray hair that had fallen onto her robe. "An intriguing suggestion. Given each gug's prodigious size, I postulate that successfully luring one to a precariously vulnerable vantage over the bombing shaft would prove inefficient relative to simple stratagem of steel and spell. Further, I counted a quartet. Should we succeed in maneuvering one unwitting horror into position, we must needs still battle the other three." She pauses for a moment. "Finally, we must contemplate the possibility that a gug should survive their precipitous descent. Are we prepared to countenance depositing such a danger onto the unsuspecting citizenry of Korvosa below?"
Ushyle focuses hard on Raen's words.
Finally: I think that was a no...?
The party enters the antechamber. A weapon rack stands against the western wall of this room, along with a table to the south and a pair of stools in the corners. The weapon rack holds a dozen Gargantuan wooden practice morningstars and an equal number of Huge wooden tower shields. The rack also holds a few more elaborate wooden practice weapons, such as a dire f lail, a greataxe, and a guisarme, all Gargantuan in size. Each morningstar has the name of a cloud giant engraved on the handle, and one bears the name “Renfal.”
Raen flicks the hair away and nods. "In short: quite difficult."
Raen fetches her journal and jots down each name engraved on the handles. She also casts about for magical auras , and for anything hidden in the weapon rack or the table.
None of the weapons radiate magic, but Renfal's spirit gives off waves of regret....
"I think she's saying that we should keep it simple, Ushyle. It seems to work for us. Regardless, I am ready."
On Vael's confirmation, the party breeches the gug room!
Unaware, but not unready, they fall to action!
(Extra +4 Mountains/Hills, +2 Subterranean )
Round 1:
Whistle Pig: Go
Vael: Go
Raen: Go
Doxon: Go
Ushyle: Go
Gugs: TBD
Hamilton TBD