Hard to say at this point, Creeping Death ;).
So let it be written,....
Elgan does his usual pre-battle ritual. (Bulls Str, Bears End, BArkskin, Syoneskin, etc.) He saves his conjures for later, when they can SEE what their facing!
right on.
I'm gonna crash; see you guys (maybe much later) tomorrow....working real late, that'll give everybody a chance to buff if they want to.
Anybody else wanna do anything? At this point,....Altai's summoned his elementals (what size)? and they'll now be gliding through the stone to knock over the barrels...
<Stig looks around at all the preparing and decides to pop an enlarge person potion. Stigwold looms. The bridge groans.>
Ogay.
The three elementals scoot off on their sneaky mission. One round.....two rounds......three rounds...four rounds....they return to give report.
"we did as you willed, pink meat creatures with much magic," they address Altai and Pip.
"We dumped the contents of them big guys' big metal drums. We dumped it in the lime. The contents spilled in the lime, but did not make any sort of a reaction. No explosion, pink meat creatures with much magic. The two of them big guys....they just stand there, don't do anything. Just stand there, maybe shift around a little bit. Don't do anything though."
...fascinating...
back in about 3-4 hours; kids have a Xmas show.
<Stig kills everyone with a stern look.>
"Hmmm. Not what I was hoping would happen. Should we have our earthen friends remove the runestone barring the door? Just to see what happens?"
"Shuwah. Bettah dem den me chere'. Ah don' knows whut dat rune sez, but ah bets it aint guud!" Elgan chimes in his 2 cp.
“Sounds like a plan … and stop looking at me like that Stig, it’s creepy.”
Do they do it?
"You did well, stone brothers. Do one more task for me, and you can return home. Push away the stone that bars the great door and let the creature confined there out. Once you have done this, your tasks here will be discharged and you can travel back to the unending earth and rock of Terra."
Altai grins at the other party members as the elementals take off. "This'll be interesting, don't you think? Now, let's see what happens..."
They surge forth, appear around the stone. They push it to one side.
Multiple lightningbolts fire off at them, and at the two earlier.....humanoid things that shamble forth.
Then the massive door flies across the room, slams into the wall, taking one of the two things with it.
"MWAHAHAHA!!! I'M FREE!!! IT'S BEEN SOOOOOO LONG!!!"
You can feel the thuds as the 50 foot tall ebon barrelchested giant thing lurches out of the portal. Feel the thuds as his warhammer comes down on the two room guardians over and over again.
He melees with them two rounds, utterly destroying them. They puke breathweapons on him, but his hammer comes down again and again thunderously.
And he bellows like King Kong.
Your move.....
"This guy looks a bit beyond our capabilities. Let's hide out and let him leave..."
He rambles on a while; something about.....finally free to finish what I started blabla....then weird uncomprehensible s@@%; he might be a little bent psychologically from decades of solitary confinement.....
then he heads precariously up the staircase, which leads to the troll's valley.
And you hear thunder. Thunder in the snowy sky. The burbling that usually promises a summer thunderstorm.
And in Ysgard, the weather can literally portend things.
"Excellent. Let's give him, say, half an hour before we head after him. Um, and if the thunder is an indicator of anything, you might want to keep your head down, Gjetost."
Knowledge check results:
long ago, I mean eons or millenia long,....some forgotten battle.....some titans ended up in the lower planes. Hell Gigas.....Abyssal Gigas, they came to be known as.....with massive castles in hell or whichever of the 600 threscore and whatever layer of the Abyss that exist at any given time......
massive castles, dedicated to warring on other members of the gigas race. The ultimate War Pigs. Feudal lords whose larder is supplied by bent back serfs in a bondage eternal...
These Gigas usually adopt weaponry in homage to whichever Infernal or Abyssal Lord they pay some modicum of fealty to.....in this one's case, the massive hammer might infer that Kostchtchie (sp?) is the abyssal patron in question.
About 5 minutes after the gigantomorph heads into the valley, you hear bellowing.
With a 20 perception check you can make it out; spoiler hides the result
otherwise it is as indecipherable as most modern metal lyrics.
And the thunder rolls. Gjetost begins trembling. You've never seen him tremble before. Like micro earthquakes tiny fissures open in the skin of his forehead and cheeks.
"Oh, s+$&. We've just awakened the dreaded Brent Hinds from his eternal slumber..."
Elgan owlishly looks at Vilya, to Gjetost, to Altai.
"Um,... Dat's bad,... idn't it?"
"Hehe... Depends on your definition of bad. He's calling up the local trolls - that, or they'll face dire consequences. Having said that, I think outside forces might have an objection to having the big fella wandering around unbound..."
Altai gives Gjetost a comforting pat on his shoulder. "Relax, big man. We'll be just fine as long as we're out here. You know, once the Thunderer arrives and pounds that whole valley flat."
Elgan owlishly looks at Vilya, to Gjetost, to Altai.
"Um,... Dat's bad,... idn't it?"
Beldan listens to the bellowing, shivers, then looks nervously up at the sky. “So … what, we just wait? What if that thing gets a troll army together and comes looking for us? What if whatever locked it away in there in the first place does smite it from above … won’t they be pissed with us for letting it out too?”
Perception:
Pip shivers
"Beldan has a point. I don't really want to be on the bad side of the Hammerer when he gets wind that somehow we let some Elder Evil out of jail. Should we mebbe go try and make it right?"
“I mean, it’s just a giant right? … a really, really huge frikking giant …”
"...With a big freakin' hammer. And an army of douchey whiny unwashed OCD minions ready to tell us how great they are while soaking up massive damage."
"The big lug is an abyssal titan, a creature born to fight never-ending planar wars. We should stay as far away from it as, ahem, humanly possible. Once it conscripts the trolls, it'll be aiming for all-encompassing conquest, godhood and that sort of things. It will keep the trolls far too busy to worry about us, too."
Altai.....something strange happens to your clairvoyance spell in the waterfall.....it starts moving.
An....otter face appears in the visual pickup. It winks at you.
Then the spell inexplicably starts moving up the waterfall.
It bobbles there in the river above, held aloft one or two feet.
From your new vantagepoint you can see the Gigas; he stands in the middle of the Circle of Cysquatch. The trolls fly to his attendance from a cave to the north.
Then, there is some massive gesticulation from the Gigas. The trolls nod. They start somatic gestures;......
three minutes later the Gigas disappears in a massive cloud of brimstone.
And the trolls fly back toward the north.
"Hmmm.... Let's wait to see if the thunder subsides. Then we go in and end the damned trolls."
There's three trolls....
The thunder continues for fifteen minutes, with no end in sight.
What now?....
"Bah! To the Abyss with the waiting. Let's go burn some trolls!"
"I'm bored, and I want to kill something."
I know, right?
Blame it on "yet again, the dungeonmaster can't predict the players' actions...."
You head forward to the chamber; nothing much but some steaming green acid on the floor, and a big assed rune stone, covered in runes.
"I like your attitude, Vilya. Someone remind me to give the runestone a thorough look-over when we leave. No time for that now, though. Beldan, lead the way up to the ledge. Yell if you see anything untoward."
There's a good 10 vials worth of acid there.
You reach the stairway, climb it.
At the top there's a big ass door; it opens onto a platform above the steaming river, with another bridge to the firmament of the valley.
Reaching the mouth of the bridge, you see off in the distance, now at 200 feet, coming from the wooden palisaded houses, a group of large sized humanoids, wrapped head to toe in tatters; hide armor peaks out here and there from their garb, and not a one of them is without his massive greataxe.
They number thirteen warriors.
So far, for map...
A-V top, 1-30 side...the bridge touches earth at u22-25; it runs at 20 foot wide straight east and off the map; v1-30 is the river; it also runs off the map.
The 13 advancing giant humanoids aren't even on the map yet. They're 200 feet to the northeast of where the bridge touches ground.
"I'm bored, and I want to kill something."
Do I deliver or wha?
"I'm bored, and I want to kill something."Do I deliver or wha?
Let me....peruse the literature. I think it's possible as well; not sure tho.
Yep. Giants are humanoids now. I reckon enlarge works on them.
heh heh....they're not mummies.....that's all I'll say....
They're advancing at a "run" paced trot.
Everybody gets one round worth of stuff to do, then I'll need initiative and positions; everybody's starting at the aforementioned edge of the bridge.
"Hold the bridge, Gjetost!" Altai casts a spell, and suddenly the giant grows even bigger...
It's way back there; off the map I described.
The bridge goes 50 feet east, then 50 feet south to the platform.
The platform is sized 40 foot east to west and 20 foot north to south; the door is twenty feet wide, opening on the south wall of the platform, which is sheer cliff. The river rushes down a waterfall about 30 feet south, around the cliff the door emerges from.
edited this to make more sense.