"The smell I can handle. I'm just not willing to bury myself beneath a pile." Balmir grumbles. "Tam, how long will that invisibility last?"
"Up to nine minutes, if we don't screw anything up," replies the gnome. "So we'll have to hustle, but we will be able to see each other. Everyone will need to stay fairly close to me, but at least we won't trip over one another's feet."
"Everyone ready or do we need some last-minute preparations before I cast the spell?" asks Tam.
Great plan, but 9 minutes won't get you far.
So the distance is such that even 2 castings won't do it. But, if you use that to make some ground each day, and then you can use the cart to get a little ways and find hiding spots along the way. Will probably take a week, but it should work.
Somer sighs and shakes his head at Mouser.
"The poop it is then I guess. Unfortunate but if it helps to save our people form this army we must do it. At least it is a simple matter to clean us afterwards."
Somer will find some cloth they can use to cover there faces and try to use prestigidation to make them smell strongly minty. Hoping to cover the poop smell.
Balmir looks as if he's about to object again but the looks from the others, especially Mouser, make it clear that if he didn't climb in with everyone else, he'd be left alone. "I don't like this. Not one bit. But I will keep telling myself it is the means to the end."
You make your way to the cart, and it is absolutely awful. But at this point, you jump in or risk being discovered.
Please make 2 fort saves for each of you.
Balmir does his best to not think about what he's doing.
Even knowing getting clean is not difficult Somer is unhappy to be doing this. He considers his hair but knows it cannot be helped.
Mouser explores a little as the others suffer in the refuse cart.
In this end of the valley, those giants who have survived the fighting pits have haphazardly pitched massive hide tents across the valley floor and along the canyon walls. As giants generate a lot of waste, the sprawling campsites are filthy. Every so often, they attempt to reduce their refuse by incinerating it in huge garbage pits dug between the tents. When not burning, the pits quickly become infested with rats. One of the most popular entertainments in the recruit encampments is betting on the rats as they fight over food scraps tossed into the pits. Along the western wall of the valley gapes a large cave opening.
A variety of giants tromp about the encampments, though the majority of them consist of cave giants, hill giants, and ettins. A typical tent houses two to six giants and double that number of noncombatant spouses and children.
A great stone cathedral sits atop a wide plateau carved into the side of the mountain overlooking the valley. From the grounds below, a flight of huge stairs staggers up the mountain slope. The two-foot rise of each step is carved directly into the mountain face, and tall poles decorated with beast skulls, bones, severed limbs, and similarly macabre decorations are driven into the stone at each corner where the stairs change direction.
At the top of the plateau, an immense palisade of trees and slab concrete surrounds the temple. Beyond the battlements rise the cathedral’s cold gray walls, carved from the ancient stone of the mountain itself. Above the monumental structure, three colossal towers climb hundreds of feet into the air. The central spire is tallest, flanked by two smaller towers offset to either side. The spire’s apex is crowned with a carved stone symbol of a huge anvil. Although heavily weathered, the cathedral appears to have mostly withstood the passage of time, though some walls bear the evidence of crude repair work where holes have been filled with ugly patches of concrete or sloppily braced with boulders and tree trunks.
Four stone giants guard the palisade’s gate at all times. They question any giants seeking entrance to the cathedral, with the exception of the ogre dungsweeps. Everyone except Mouser is carted right inside.
Balmir feels the cart come to a stop. After waiting about a minute, he shuffles around and tries to get a peek to see if they are alone.
Toboyn senses the movement, and glances at Balmir. Tapping his shoulder, he whispers "Are we inside? In the cathedral?"
A flight of giant-sized steps climbs up to a pair of towering doors fashioned from whole tree trunks bound together with rusty iron bands. The doors hang beneath a flat stone lintel resting upon two roughly hewn stone columns carved with runes. A collection of bleached skulls harvested from various creatures sits atop the lintel, positioned around a large, rust-specked anvil. A triangular carving resembling a mountain is sculpted into the wall behind and above the anvil. (Z3)
The doors look heavy.
As you peek out of the dung cart, you see occasional giant walk by, and of course the large ugly ogre that has been pushing the cart. But you think you can stealth your way out. Tam can cast one more invisibility spell on the group to help, but you should decide where you are headed first.
"I think we should look into those tents first." Balmir speaks in a low voice to his companions. He hopes they can hear him while they are all still buried in the cart. "I think we can get out of here and sneak over there. Especially with Tam's magic."
"If you want," says Tam.
Somer is quietly cleaning himself off as the others talk. He shrugs at checking the tents whispering.
"I think it best to get into the cathedral. We cannot fight anything out here so this cart did provide the means needed. Once he checks the tents I suggest we get inside."
Z1. The earth around the huge, patchwork animal-hide tent is stained nearly black with blood. A bloodstained table fashioned from a thick wooden block supported by sturdy iron legs stands in the center of the longhouse. Wooden buckets filled with blood and offal surround the table. Along the edges of the tent run lengths of iron bar set atop large wooden posts driven into the ground. From the bars hang the butchered carcasses of cows, horses, mastodons, and even humans.
The cathedral’s butcher, a noticeably pregnant hill giant with flecks of dried blood that speckle her body, gleefully hacks apart meat for the cathedral’s groghall in this tent. She is currently working up a sweat sawing off the head of a butchered mastodon. She has already flensed the beast’s woolly hide, which lies in a bloody heap nearby. The giant is engrossed in her work and doesn’t notice you.
Z2. A huge, horseshoe-shaped table laid with curious metal tools, pincers, prongs, and other strange items sits in the center of this tent. Glass bottles and jars filled with milky fluid, each containing a bloated and waterlogged eyeball, balance upon haphazardly arranged wooden shelves. A sizable collection of birds, including crows, hawks, and owls, hang lifelessly from the tent’s roof, strung upside down by their feet.
Inside the horseshoe is a giant sized witch of some sort.
"Thanks for checking that out Mouser. Now let's get in there and find some giants to smash."
"Agreed, as tempting as it is to clear out the tents here it could draw too much attention."
Toboyn glances worriedly at the witch's stall, "Careful of that one; that 'butcher' is more than she seems."
He wonders if they're in above their heads, in something that'll make this cart look like rose petals.
These doors are too big and heavy for Mouser to open alone.
Balmir watches Mouser struggle with the door for a bit then steps up to help. "Here, let me." He pushes on the door.
"Hard to do this quiet."
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Toboyn realizes he's in for a pound. He rolls from the wagon, quaffs half his suddenly-present mug of ale, and puts his shoulder to the door. He pauses, turns to Mouser, "Hold my beer", he suggests, then turns back to the task at hand:
Humpf. Perhaps he'll try it on the dwarf next.
Surprising everyone, Toboyn comes and just manages to push the door open. It isn't widely opened, but enough for you all to sneak in.
The nave of the cathedral opens into a huge amphitheater. Three tiers of curved stone benches are arranged in immense horseshoes around the chamber’s centerpiece, a great pit filled with cold black slag. From the middle of the slag pit rises a wide, round platform of black basalt. A great forge, its fire gone cold, sits in the center of the platform, along with a massive iron anvil the size of a cow. The soot-stained ceiling arches far above the chamber floor. A bridge of stone connects the platform to a dais at the rear of the hall, where a towering statue of a stone giant ominously overlooks the entire cathedral.
Balmir's jaw drops and his heart races at the awe inspiring sight before him. "Now that's a forge! And that anvil!" Distant memories, flash in his mind as he imagines a forge aflame. The radiating heat in sweltering waves, the ringing clang of hammers striking anvils, the pungent smell of molten ore, all revive memories of his home. The same home destroyed by these giants. Blood boils in his veins and he grabs his hammer. The instant his fist wraps around the shaft he feels that something has changed in the hammer. The hammer itself pulls towards the forge on the platform. There's a connection there. Balmir looks quizzically at the hammer then at the forge. Is it possible that this hammer was forged here. The hammer urges. It wants to touch the forge.
"My friends, this may sound strange, but this hammer of mine, it seems to be connected to that forge somehow. I can feel it. It's pulling me there."
"Quite a site actually, lets do what the hammer is telling but carefully."
Balmir looks at the others and seeing no one trying to stop him, he moves cautiously towards the dais at the rear of the room.
The vaulted ceiling of this immense hall climbs high overhead, above great stone benches that stand taller than a human. To the west, the room widens, opening into some sort of amphitheater. On the walls, long strands of runes divide panels set with bas-reliefs depicting a stone giant with a tremendous hammer in various stages of assembling the world and forging its creatures from fire and metal.
Two ogre barbarians stand on the benches, their chests puffed with pride as they display bloody wounds and bruises. A hulking two-headed troll is apparently swearing them into "the Storm Tyrant’s army". The giants cut short the swearing-in ceremony as you march in.
"Well, these guys look unpleasant. Lets pick up the pace some."
Somer whispers a bit and casts haste on the party.
These shouldn't be too much effort alone, but Toboyn is concerned they'll raise an alarm. Putting a finger before his lips, he says "shhhh..." (these being the verbal and somatic components), and casts Silence upon the troll.
The ogres stop and turn, and, seeing the intruders, look to the troll for orders. The troll points at the part and brandishes 2 swords. That's enough for the ogres to want to prove themselves worthy one more time.
They double time it over towards you, not noticing Mouser hiding by the pews.
Balmir's eyes turn red in anger as the ogres move towards him. He grabs Agrimmosh by the haft and steps forward and swings the hammer.
The hammer connects solidly into the ogre's midsection, knocking much of the bravado out of him.