Chwaer continues to rock and talk, watching Etena through slitted eyes. Either when the giant decides it's safe or after roughly a minute, she bolts upright, turning to yell at Storn, "gods be damned man! What did you eat?" Chwaer stands up, watching Etena carefully but not saying anything about her trying to steal the hammer. She nudges Sander with her foot, "wake up. you have any digestives in that pack?"
Throwing caution to the winds, Etena reaches out and snatches at the hammer, yanking Storn sideways as she snapped the thongs holding the hammer to Storn's pack. In her hands, the hammer shifted size, becoming a giant-sized maul as she held it aloft, cackling in glee.
"After all these years, Agrimmosh is in the hands of the giant clans once more!"
"Hey!" Sander cries out, climbing to his feet. "That's ours! Give it back!"
Storn blinks and roars to his feet, looking around blearily with his face that is basically entirely hair. He groans. "Don't make me beat up a blind giant. There's no sport in it."
Molly doesn't bother to threaten; she starts chanting in a low, hurried tone of voice.
"Shut your mouth, girl, or I'll cave it in! This hammer belongs to the giants. I have wanted to find it all my life. Spent years searching for it when I was younger. Now that it is bag in the Temple of Minderhal with the Forge, I can work to ensure Minderhal's glory returns to these mountains. There is nothing on this world more important than that to me, nothing!
As Molly concludes her incantation and leaps to her feet, a celestial ape appears behind the blind giantess.
While Molly unleashes the power of her Evil Eye on the blind priestess, the ape hoots angrily, slams its fists against the floor, then attacks!
Sander moans. He really doesn't want to kill the giantess, but they can't just let her take the hammer.
"But we need the hammer!" he shouts, one last desperate appeal for peace. "What if we promise to give it back to you after we've made sure our home is safe?!"
Chwaer gets in position to swing away if Etena attacks, but holds until that's necessary.
Molly makes a HALT!-gesture at the ape and hoots at it in Simian, causing it to stop before attacking... for now.
"You humans can't possibly understand the loss of honor, of dignity, that happened to the entire giant race when this hammer was lost, along with Uskroth. It...changed the giants. Left us broken and separated. Minderhal's influence of law and grafting left us slowly to be replaced by chaos and war. It was the single event that led to the Storm Tyrant's rise and this confluence of giants. Replacing law with ancestor worship. This hammer can reignite Minderhal's Forge and bring the giant clans back to their gods!"
"Yyyyeah, 'cept we still need it ta smack down yon Storm Tyrant," Molly says. "Look, lady, hard words 'ere. Ye're nae gonna fix all'a that, no' e'en wit' yon hammer. Yer of uh, advanced years. An' yer blind. E'en wit' the Unmaker's favourite tool, most Giants ain't gonna respect ye none, so ye might as well no' have it."
Even as she speaks, the Witch is making frantic gestures at her teammates.
"And don't the giant gods want the rest of us dead?" Sander says, a sinking feeling in his gut. "I know it's important to you, but we all need to live together!"
Chwaer's eyebrows creep up as Molly flails about. Understanding finally dawns on her and she begins to creep forward. IF she's able to get close enough, she will swing at the handle of the hammer and try to knock it loose.
Although the precepts of his God are to NEVER avoid the chance for a fight, this is also a blind old woman. Storn remains kind of frozen in indecision with his hand on his spear. Finally he just loses his temper but his voice breaks while trying to threaten her.
"I've killed a lot of giants already. One more won't make a difference."
Etena bellowed out a challenge in Minderhal's name...and was promptly dispatched by a group of experienced fighters well set for a challenge. Even without Sander's bombs, the combat didn't take long, and the bruises you received from the oracle didn't merit much more than a few moments of healing.
Now, though, you had a problem. The leaders of this giant camp were dead and chaos was sure to set in soon. Someone would get the thought to start looking for the killers, and the only place you knew was even relatively safe was here in this dark chamber, with the corpse beside you smelling of voided bowels and soon to be worse things. Your rest had been interrupted, and you had vital information about the Storm Tyrant's plans in your packs. You had the knowledge to re-ignite Minderhal's Forge, but to what purpose? as you sit back and try and get some rest, each of you has one thought in common. What now?
Storn dispatches the giantess with the others and he nods approvingly down at her. "She fought."
He looks around at the others. "Uh, so we saved Trunau now, right?"
Storn was pretty sure he hadn't saved Trunau.
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"Uh, so we saved Trunau now, right?"
"Uh..." Quill's mind tries to quantify Storn's query. His eyes glaze over and he thinks about his beloved, Marigold Pottersmoot. "No, Storn, that's not how it works. Uh, we need to continue on...to you know, fight for the things we love, like, uh...beer...and the love of battle and s##!," Quill disambiguates like a pro, worried about Marigold.
Quill tries to pull out the arrow that he had lodged in Etena's forehead, hoping that it might be salvaged. He tosses that arrow down as he realizes it was the killing blow.
"Well, I can't say that that wasn't unexpected. I knew she would do that," Quill says though he probably had no idea it would happen.
"Quill's right," Sander agrees. "We have to find the Storm Tyrant and stop his flying castle!"
He shakes his head and mutters, mostly to himself.
"Flying castle? Who thinks of things like these? It's like we're in some sick children's tale that's just designed to punish us for some ... some cosmic amusement..."
Diversion aside, he starts speaking again more loudly.
"We don't know where he is, but there's this Skirkatla in Skirgaard who it sounds like is helping him, and maybe might know where he is. and we could also still light this forge, maybe."
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"I dunno about going to Skirgaard. Sounds cold," Quill dithers, uncertain. "Seems like maybe we should light the forge first? But I dunno about that either, because I don't want the giants to get it. But then again, as long as we have the hammer, it should be fine. But also, that means we have keep Storn storning all the time, you know?"
Quill ponders.
Chawer listens to the others discuss the options, nodding her head along with all the good ideas. "My only concern with the forge is that doesn't sound like an on or off thing. I get the sense that once we relight it, it's up and running. Would we then need to stay and defend it? Or could we fire it up, get Storn a new weapon and then scuttle it? Either way, I'm good with whatever we decide."
Unfortunately, the person who could best answer your questions about the forge is sloowly cooling on the ground a few feet away.
Searching the room, Quill finds nothing of true interest. You are at an impasse. Either your memories are complete enough to follow the giantess' cryptic instructions, or this was something you just couldn't accomplish at this time.
"So I guess we need to find the mural Etena told us about," Sander says. "Hopefully that can tell us where the other things we need are."
He thinks for a moment and then warns, "We should also probably keep an eye out for Ferin. She's probably not going to be happy that we killed Etena."
Chware finishes sharpening her axe and stands. "Sounds like a solid plan. Where is Ferin anyway?" She looks around anxiously.
Storn nods once. "You don't find a super amazing ancient forge and -not- light it. Our problem si that there'll be an angry giant army going into chaos very soon. But let's find the mural."
You made the decision to try and find the mural. Given Chwaer's description of the areas in the cave she remembered, and your own recollections of the path you traveled, you were sure that the mural had to be down one of the side passages you didn't explore. Getting there might be a bit of a struggle, though.
"Hold up. If the forge does keep running once we light it up, won't every giant and his granny come here to get armed and armoured up? I wouldn't expect the Storm Tyrant to not capitalize on something like this."
"I think they'll need Agrimmosh, won't they?" Sander says, unsure . "Plus, it doesn't really seem like most of the giants even realize it's here."
Storn shrugs. "Or maybe we can turn it off. We don't know anything about this. I just know that if there's an ancient forge that can do neat stuff, I want to use it. One moment though, I'll pick a spell to ask Gorum what he thinks."
When Storn prays in the morning for his spells, he takes a second at the end to cast augury and ask the following question:
"Will lighting Minderhal's Forge aid us in our quest to stopping the Storm Tyrant?"
Storn gets back a strong feeling of both weal and woe.
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You make your way carefully out of the statue of Minderhal, sneaking across the amphitheater. There are hardly any giants in sight, and you wonder whether Urathash has been found yet. You were sneaking through the main groghall and into the chamber leading up to Urathash's tower when you heard giants speaking. Well, shouting, actually. Several giants were standing at the foot of the stairs, each with its own set of goons. Three of the biggest ones were shouting about how they should be the new leader until the Storm Tyrant appointed a new camp commander. It sounded like things were going to come to blows at any minute. That probably wasn't the best way out of here.
Backing up and going through the amphitheater was hardly better. There were three giants there, but all three were asleep. It should be relatively easy to sneak past without waking them, as long as no other giant came in while you were sneaking. And as long as Storn didn't storn.
The flight back to the caves was as uneventful as the flight out had been, and within a couple of hours, you were retracing your steps through the caves and Chwaer was describing the side passages that she had seen. Finally, you came to a bran ch she had not explored before. In your first passage through here you missed it, but the turnoff was wider and smother than most you have come across.
The passage opens into a wide cave with a high ceiling and smooth walls webbed with cracks. A thick crust of cave sediment covers the floor, along with a scattering of broken bones and other refuse. The walls are smooth (aside from the cracks), and are painted with stylized primitive images in faded colors. The most striking of these paintings are four huge pictographic murals depicting enormous stone buildings in a variety of settings. An arch of painted runes frames each mural.
The paintings are ancient, but some have been changed or altered of the centuries. Some are mere touchups, but some are more extensive.
THe runes accompanying the paintings are an ancient form of giantish. Some have been changed over the centuries.
The ancient runes seem to spell out four names, each associated with one of the murals: duromi, the Priestess of Crystals; Jogrothir the Hunter; Mymrith the Maker; and Rosag, Preserver of the Forge. These names are immediately recognizable from Etana's litany of heroes.
From the center of the room, lines radiate outward, intersecting the murals. Notched lines in each of the radial lines seem to indicate distance of some sort. One line points to a painting of a large stone temple in the middle of a lake. According to the compass, this temple lies approximately 10 miles southsouthwest of where you are. You recognize this as the lake that you camped beside a week or so back.
Pulling out your map, you manage to find all the sites shown in the murals. The second line points to the drawing of a small chapel overlooking a canyon. This area is about 20 miles to the north-northeast. The third line indicates a small cave in the mountains around 24 miles eastnortheast of here. The fourth and final line leads to a stone temple in a swamp. This temple is to the east-southeast, approximately 25 miles from these caves.
Chwaer points to the runes, "these are in giantish, but far older than the modern markings I learned."
Sander looks at the mural, but can't make out too much, though he does realize there are a few sites they could likely get to quickly.
"I don't think my spells will last long enough to let us fly to these places," he says. "But at least now we know where we need to go!"
You have the horn from the drake's nest and the fire geodes. Looking at the map and the murals, you recognize the shrine you found where you recall Kipa talking about a cabinet full of clay. And the temple in the lake is likely the sunken ruins you camped beside your first week in these mountains. It might take weeks to retrace your footsteps, especially if you have to dodge bands of giants either looking for their commander's killer, or simply breaking off from the mustering army now that the leadership is gone.