GM Bigrin's Giantslayer (Inactive)

Game Master bigrin42

"Maybe you should stand in the stupid water a bit longer. Help with some of the dirt and smell" he calls over to Storn with a smile of friendly teasing. "Im good on the healing. Ill help the elf look for a place to make camp then scout some to make sure we are clear

Survival: 1d20 + 2 ⇒ (4) + 2 = 6
Perception: 1d20 + 15 ⇒ (16) + 15 = 31
stealth: 1d20 + 20 ⇒ (15) + 20 = 35

Sander lands with a wince, clearly still in need of some healing 13 hp down.

He looks around -- taking advantage of his extract of flight -- to try to figure out how much farther this canyon goes. Not sure if we're at the end of it; also no reason to rest unless it's nighttime again.

"I wonder if the trolls' being here means the giants never came this far? I think we're just moving farther away from the camp now ... "

Nope, not night. Mid-afternoon or so.

Sander decides to make use of his flight extract to scout ahead a bit. From his high vantage, he can see that the canyon goes a ways back, with the watery bog giving way to dry ground right at the end. Perched on the dry land is an ancient brick building. A shallow stone channel runs from the building to the muddy waters of the bog, filled with thickly flowing mud. A broad stone patio surrounds the channel with double doors leading into the building.

”You say it’s made of brick? Like kiln-baked brick?” Quill asks incredulously. ”Well, I guess we should check it out. Was it giant sized? Or normal-people sized, like for an elf?” Quill queries the shortling.

Quill will follow others there, keeping an eye out for danger.

Storn just continues slogging on, grateful at the thought there'll be some sort of building at the end of this stupid swamp.

"That's a good question, Quill," Sander replies, wracking his memory to try to recall the answer.

Well, it was hard to tell with some buildings. Maybe they were giant-sized, or maybe they were simply grandiose constructions. Still, Sander was pretty sure that it was built by giants.

Sander sighs and once he's healed two hits from wand of CLW begins approaching the buildings along with the others. On his way, he drinks his potion of barkskin, just to be safe.

2d8 + 2 ⇒ (1, 7) + 2 = 10

I've reduced my wand charges accordingly.

Molly trails after the otbers, calling out to the local wildlife for information with her Feral Speech Hex.

Oddly enough, none of the local wildlife (if any are about) answer Molly about the big building. As you slog through the mud and quiet water, you see the building Sander mentioned. From the ground, it is definitely giant-sized, with large paving stone and bricks made far larger than most human-sized creatures would be comfortable with. Moss covers half of the walls, giving the stone building a more natural look than it should sport.

Here's the mp so you can see what you are looking at

Storn takes a while to dry himself off and wring out swamp water from his beard. His perfume is intense.

"Right, so here's the plan. Kick the door down, slaughter all who remain within, bathe in their blood in the holy name of Gorum, and then have dinner."

Storn looks to the others. "Sound good?" He shoves Kipa over to the door. "Make sure it won't fall on me first."

Using Kipa as a track-detection device. Maybe he has opinions on this idk.

"Alternative plan," Molly says. "You and the rest of the clanking brigade keep quiet while the expert checks what we're dealing with, then we decide what to do, then we do it, then we heal up after everything inevitably blows up in our faces, then we eat. All in favour?"

Pointing over at Molly [b]"I think the lass has the right idea on this one. If Sander can whip up some invisibility juice for us, a few of us can get in & out quick an dget a better idea of what we will be facing. Maybe even a way to get them to do the hard work for us.[b]

Quill follows the party up, feeling that the swampy land will make it hard to determine if there were giants afoot or nearby.

Do we want to find a spot to rest before we go in? I'm totally unclear how many combats we've had 'today'.

"Storn!" Sander objects. "That's horrible. No one is bathing in blood! Or slaughtering anyone who doesn't try to kill us first!"

He nods at Molly's idea, pleased that there's another voice of reason. He could eat too, for that matter. That fight with the water trolls took a lot out of him. We've had one fight.

"It will take me a couple minutes to mix up some extracts, but I could make three of us invisible, as long as no one minds ... um, sharing a potion. I guess I could do a fourth too, actually."

I have one potion of invisibility. If you give me two minutes, I can whip up another extract of invisibility and alchemical allocation (to go with one already prepared), which would let four of us be invisible.

Storn sighs miserably. "FINE. I'm going to stand here like a gleaming monument to my God of battle while you lot prance about and see if you can eavesdrop on some poodles gossiping about doilies."

"Gleaming?" Molly looks the Warpriest up and down and raises a scornful eyebrow. "Gleaming? There's a better shine on my boots, and we've been slogging through swamp mud! Try sandpapering and oiling this mess for a couple of days! If we were a proper army, you'd get flogged for neglecting your equipment."

Quill keeps an eye out for trouble while others decide if Storn is gleaming or gleaning or just grimacing in the sun.

”Yeah, who wants to go in? I’m happy to stay out here where it’s safe,” Quill says, scanning the sky and land around the building.

1d20 + 16 ⇒ (6) + 16 = 22 Perception

Quill kept guard while the rest of you prepared yourselves and gave Sander time to work up some invisibility potions. Despite his cautious vigilance, he saw nothing around or above the building that might pose a danger to you.

So, what's the plan? Go invisible and kick the doors in, murdering all the baby giants you can find?

"Kipa and I are probably the stealthiest here," Molly says. "Vote Sander brews us up some potions, then the rest of you set up out here while we scout inside; if we come running out in a hurry, you guys want to be ready to put whatever's following us through a murder alley. Quill stand ready to shoot stuff, Sander stand ready to throw bombs. Storn stand ready to Storn out once the ranged folks have done their thing. If we don't find anything hostile, we'll come out easy-like and call you in. All in favour?"

”All in favor?”

”Aye,” Quill replies with a head nod, sharply moving to take up a good place to watch the front door and shoot if things go sideways.

Sander gives a sigh of relief that sanity has prevailed for the moment and then begins chopping up ingredients and mixing various things together.

Finally, he holds out two extracts, one of clear liquid, the other an effervescent blue.

That plan works for me.

"OK, one of you has to drink this blue one, then drink the second one and spit it back out. The second of you drinks that, and then you'll both be invisible!" he says proudly.

Molly immediately snatches the two potions and chugs them down, only to spit the second one right back up into the bottle.

"I've got practice, what with the spiders and all," she says in a vague tone, without looking Kipa in the eye.

Storn fixes a stare at Molly. "I'm going to pretend Gorum's not looking and I'll let the insult slide. Yes I'm in favour. Get invisible before I use you as bait."

No judgment here, lass. Taking the 2nd vial that is being handed to him an does as he was told to do. "We all have a history in one thing or another. Ready when you are. Quill, try and find us a nice place to bed down if this takes longer then we expect. Storn... give your god a hello for me." With that he moves out to start the planned actions

Kipa grabbed the vials and proceeded to sneak up to the building. He covered the outside completely and returned to tell the others that there were no windows into the interior of the building, not even under all those vines and moss. The only way to know what was inside was to go through the doors.

The doors themselves were not locked, but they were heavy and blocked with the detritus of decades. Storn had to help pull them open, as they required far more strength than Kipa had. The halfling made sure that nothing on the other side of the doors was going to attack, then slipped in.

The interior of the building was dark, other than the light streaming in through the partially open door. The structure is a single large room. Both the walls and the floor, fashioned from tremendous mud bricks, are badly cracked, though the north wall still bears the faded image of a crescent moon overlaying a jagged mountain peak. A large mechanism stands near the center of the room, consisting of a stone pipe that disgorges muddy water onto a great stone slab. The water spills from the slab into a wide catch pool before draining out through a channel in the floor.

A worn workbench runs the length of the western wall and wraps around the northwest corner of the room. A large stone mortar and pestle sit next to a smaller table to the north. Three huge clay statues stand along the eastern wall, while a tall, black-lacquered cabinet with ornately carved doors and iron handles sits in the southeast corner.

Quill rocks on his heels waiting for the scout to return. He wonders if he’ll even see them when they do return, because invisibility. Heck, they might be right here right now, but probably not. Quill doesn’t know. He never knows.

Im going to do my best to ask questions IC but I will also add another OOC at the end to make sure what I am asking is clear

Kipa looks around the room and takes it all in. He starts to look for signs of use and the last time something alive may have been in here. He also looks for places that he can help some of the loader members of the party get in with little issue.

Skirting around the furniture, he moves uo to the black cabinet and tries to see if he can figure out whats inside of it. Seeing as this room seems to be a kitchen of some sort or at least a room where things are made, he wants to make sure that any thing that can be a weapon is either accounted for or taken care of.

He takes a moment to look at the three statues to . see if he recognizes anything about them

Once he does all of this, Kipa looks for any other ways out of the room besides the one he came through.

After gathering this info, Kipa makes his way back to the door he came in to update the party on what he has found so far.

Looking for: a door the leads to other paths. What is the black cabinet full of? what are the 3 statues of? IF there is signs of something coming back soon to use the room? Is there a place to hid larger/not so sneaky people?

please use dice rolls from ealier for any info gathering needed. If more rolls are needed please let me know & I will roll them asap. Not sure on rolls needed for statues

"Maybe whatever was here has gone away," Sander whispers hopefully as he waits.

A vision of resting without worrying about getting killed passes before his eyes for a moment.

Kipa does not find any further exits from this room. If he had to guess, he'd say it was a shrine of sort, but for what? He didn't recognize the iconography on the walls. And the only thing in the center of the room was mud coming our of a pipe. Some sort of mud shrine?

Of course it was the locked cabinet that interested the thief the most, and his lockpicks made quick work of the simple tumbler lock. He opened the door of the cabinet, eager to see the treasure inside...

...mud bricks. Well, clay actually. The black cabinet was filled from top to bottom with clay bricks about the size of Storn's head. A closer look showed a clay tablet wedged between two stacks. It hard arcane writing on it that he was sure Sander could make sense of. Behind that were two darker bricks of clay that he recognized as blackfire clay.

Sander identifies it as a clay tablet version of a scroll of transmute mud to rock

"Oh, that clay can be very useful!" Sander says excitedly. "Especially if we have to go back to the army."

He looks around curiously.

"Do you know what this might have been a shrine to?" he asks Quill and Storn, curious. "It might make a good place to rest, but I think we might need to start going back now. We don't know when the army is going to move..."

Quill continues to wait for instructions, maintaining his guard on the outside.

I wonder what Marigold Pottersmoot is doing right now. Probably not missing me at all.

"So, does this stuff go boom?" Molly asks, fluttering her hand at the blackfire clay. "Because if it don't, I'm not seein' a whole lot of usefulness. We needta start thinkin' of what we wanna do 'bout the army an' its king. Tha bugger needs ta go down, sharpish, an' we're spinnin' our wheels in the mud, feels like."

Storn starts popping his lips as he looks out into the mountains.

"So... who's your least favorite God? One you should probably like. Nobody likes Rovagug, he doesn't count. I always found Calistrians to be an obnoxious bunch. Just stab someone in the face, y'know?"

"Why risk some armoured slab of pork stabbing you right back? Just go for the back of the neck and skull, hit the flanks in a pinch. Or just cast at 'em."

"It doesn't explode, but it can keep us warm while we're camping, even if it doesn't give off any light!" Sander says excitedly.

He thinks a bit at Storn's question.

"Oh, Urgathoa! She's just as bad as Rovagug, but much more subtle. People don't realize how many people can die because of plagues and other diseases!"

Quill scratches his neck, thinking about where the party had come and gone. He’s somewhat disappointed by the lack of finding anything of interest in the brick house, save for the magic clay.

”Well, there was that one area, up and that way,” Quill points in a direction, then to another direction. ”Maybe we should try there...and then maybe hit the gates again if nothing comes of it. I mean, there has to be a way.”

From the map on the discussion page, going up and to the right. Looks like there are two branches that are unexplored.

Sander nods, agreeing with Quill.

"Ugh, yeah. Let's move on. Probably get a rest in. Long day of swamp."

"Lads, I think we need ta up our intel," Molly says. "Anyone spot a likely-looking bird, don't shoot at it, but let me know. Might as be, I can talk 'em inta being our spies, have 'em do a fly-over of the Giants an' come back ta tell me what they know."

"Im with the lass here guys. The more info the better. Lets give her a hand to find a birdy. Ill keep looking around a head as well."

@Kipa - The spell will wear off LONG before you get to the new area. It will take several hours, if not a full day of traveling stealthily to get back out of the bogs and up that new area.

Seeing nothing else of particular interest to do here, you decide to leave the swamps and backtrack to the canyons to the northeast. Hopefully something there will provide you with insight as to how to approach the giant encampment. It was a long slog back out of the bogs, and even longer to the new area. The sun was setting as you neared the entrance to the canyon, and you decided to make a cold camp in a shallow depression in one wall, sheltered from the wind and morning frost, and out of sight of any casual observers.

The morning dawned with frost on the ground, as many of the mornings in these mountains. After you prepared yourselves for the day, You set out, Kipa scouting ahead. The canyon went on for five miles or so before you saw your first sign of danger.

A giant scarecrow, nearly 20 feet tall, crudely formed from tree trunks lashed together, stands at the entrance to this forested vale. Carved into the central trunk are some symbols that resemble the giantish alphabet, but aren't words. On either side, steep, rocky escarpments climb sharply toward the sky. Clinging boulders jut from the slopes, entwined by the thick roots of twisted ash trees determined to hold themselves fast. A cold breeze whisks through the rift, sending a blizzard of silvery ash leaves scattering through the air.

Linguistics 1d20 + 8 ⇒ (5) + 8 = 13

"Huh. Here's a scarecrow, but where's the crops? Remember, if anyone sees a bird, you let me know."

Survival: 1d20 + 5 ⇒ (4) + 5 = 9
Knowledge (local): 1d20 + 4 ⇒ (9) + 4 = 13

Sander admires the leaves, taking them as a hopeful sign of the turn of the seasons and not some ominous symbol. The scarecrow is enough for that.

"I hope it's not a guard of some sort. Some giant scarecrow that will animate and kill us all..." he worries.

”What the heck is the scarecrow meant to drive away?” Quill wonders, while also scanning the sky to see if the scarecrow is doing its job. ”Maybe we should make Storn big and ugly like a Giant to keep whatever’s flying about away. I guess he just needs the big part.”

Quill will keep his eyes open for danger, like always because he likes not-dying.

1d20 + 16 ⇒ (1) + 16 = 17 Perception

survival: 1d20 + 2 ⇒ (13) + 2 = 15
lingusrics: 1d20 + 14 ⇒ (3) + 14 = 17
know. local: 1d20 + 12 ⇒ (8) + 12 = 20

Moving closer to the taller people in the party "Well, lets try to keep out of the open as much as we can

Survival: 1d20 + 9 ⇒ (19) + 9 = 28

Storn stares in awe at the giant scarecrow. "Ingenious, they've discovered a way to keep away birds away without having a shouter. I spent a season as a youth in the Ríki Mammúts Lávarða shouting at birds. Honest work. Someone is out of a job because of this thing." He shakes his head miserably. "Anyways this is pretty new, few months if that."

Realizing there may be something very large the scarecrow is keeping away, he looks briefly at the long-neglected light crossbow strapped to his pack. Then he looks at his fifteen foot spear and he grins, realizing he has no need to use ranged weapons like a wimpy elf.

Heeding Kipa's warning, he heads for cover as he advances.

Onwards!

Sander agrees, and hunches down even lower to the ground, trying to make sure he's not an easy target for any birds.

Unless they're looking for worms or bugs crawling on the ground ...

He stands up a little bit taller, after a moment.

Stealth: 1d20 + 11 ⇒ (10) + 11 = 21
Perception: 1d20 + 16 ⇒ (11) + 16 = 27

You moved on, trying to be a little more stealthy than usual. It wasn't far, maybe a half mile or so, when Kipa and Sander heard something crashing through the underbrush off to one side of the void.

I need perception checks from everyone but Kipa and Sander to avoid being surprised.