Anga follows up her fiery blast with a force missile into the same target.
The missile slams into the reeling giant with a meaty thud.
"Aaagh! Aaagh!" The Hill Giant screeches from blow after blow.
The big humanoid steps back and drops his club.
Leira attempts her voice to be heard "He is surrendering!"
While holding her bow still aiming at the giant she asks in Giant.
"Where is your chief? Whom else is defending him?"
"He says the chieftess is in his chamber guarded by big ugly orcs" comments Leira.
"How do you get there? Is she also the chief of the orcs? Or do you have a different one?"
"The chief is past that door he says. It is chief to all orcs and giants. Is there anything else you want to ask him?" asks Leira.
She moves to the door and checks it for sounds and traps.
"This is a poor wretched creature. We have to help him!" Silently stroking his hammer it is clear how exactly he wants to help him.
What does the party do next?
Leira does not find a trap on the door.
Ragnir lets out a harumph and looks at Ulfgard,
"He attacked Truanu. Killed friends. Helped to kill my mother. There is no mercy for this beasts. Justs kill him" points out Leira.
As soon as the giant is dead, Leira opens the door and goes beyond, preferably walking by the ceiling.
The party finishes off the Hill Giants quickly.
When Leira opens the door and enters the roon, she sees a huge iron cage filling most of this circular chamber, with several crates, chests, statues, paintings, and other art objects crammed between the cage and the walls of the room. Inside the cage, a large piece of furniture sits under a cloth drapery of some sort. Also in the cage, there are a pair of creatures with vaguely humanoid heads. Their body is like a lion, and with wings like a dragon. There tails ends in long, sharp spikes. There is another set of double doors on the opposite side of the room.
One of the creatures speaks, "Free us. We are prisoners of a crazed Hill Giantess."
And the Magical Beast are indeed Manticores.
"Well, bloke, you do not look like the most trustworthy. But then it is few us against many them. And it is sayd thy enemy of they enemy is thy friend!"
With that Ulfgard removes his shield with a flick of his wrist walks to the cage turns and shatters the lock using the momentum of his movement!"[/B]
Observing the dwarves are prone to save the prisoners Leira moves on and helps opening the locks "You will help us defeat the giants"
"Revenge against our captors sounds sweet. You will need to lift the cage to free us," the male Manticore explains.
There is no door. Instead, there is a chain attached to a pulley near the door that will lift the entire cage off the floor.
Who pulls on the chain to lift the cage?
Haskyll looks at the captives, and although worried, doesn't say a thing about freeing them.
He just gets ready in case they are attacked.
Leira checks the chain and the cages before helping to pull it up if the others think the prisoners are to be trust.
Ulfgard will lift the chain.
The party senses from the Manticores a truthful desire to be freed. The strong Ulfgard, pulls on the chain and lifts the cage. Once freed the Manticore's desires change.
The Manticores move quickly out from under the cage, and into the room with the two dead Hill Giants. The female looks at the male, "I am so hungry." And in a quick move that will startle the party, the female Manticore leaps onto the freshly dead second Hill Giant and begins to feed. The male, also feeling hunger pains, leaps onto the first Hill Giant and tears into the dead flesh.
Leira gets out of the way then helps Kaos to close the doors "Well, I guess that will hold any giant distracted"
She then registers very quickly the room and then moves to the next doors and checks them before opening and continuing upstairs.
Moving silently up the stairs some meters ahead of the group.
Ulfgard moves away and with a cruel smile just says."Bonne appetit!"
Ragnir follows, talking so that only his friends can hear "Aye, let's be movin' afore them beasties be thinkin' about dessert."
[ooc]Ragnir back to normal dwarf size now?[/b]
Ragnir follows, talking so that only his friends can hear "Aye, let's be movin' afore them beasties be thinkin' about dessert."
Ingrahild will be somewhat stunned by the turn of events, not the least, seeing two Manticores jump out from under the cage and begin devouring the two dead Hill Giants. Inside the cage room, Ingrahild looks to find something to secure the door, "Help me block up t'is here door. Lika Ragnir says, me donna wanna be dessert."
Kaos does not notice anything magical in the room, but he, Leira and everyone else do notice there is a horde of items in the room. The most stunning of which is a wedding dress, a giantsized, gem-encrusted silk gown, draped like a tablecloth over a large oaken desk inside the cage.
Scattered among the chests, crates, and loose piles of coins outside the cage, there is a book, a marble bust....
... a woven 25-footsquare carpet depicting two giants making love, a polished, giant-sized drinking horn made from a mammoth’s tusk, a macabre necklace made from petrified human and elf ears, a series of 12 framed drawings or proportion studies of different giants (cave giant, ogre, hill giant, marsh giant, stone giant, ettin, frost giant, tomb giant, fire giant, ash giant, cloud giant, and storm giant), a gem-encrusted scabbard for a Huge falcata, and a bronze statue of a fierce storm giant riding a dragon.
Leira takes the gown "Nice dress" she then checks if the objects have any value and also helps the dwarves take those worth before leaving for the stairs.
I see some of these things will be hard to move, however, this bust however, is of a stone giant god Minderhal.
When Leira takes the dress, which she estimates to be worth abot 500 pieces of gold, she uncovers under the gown a number of important documents. Several of the papers appear to be drafts of a formal letter addressed to “the Storm Tyrant Volstus”. Crumpled into a ball next to Grenseldek’s final draft is the Storm Tyrant’s response to her letter.
There is also a detailed inventory of Grenseldek’s dowry, and besides cataloging the items found in this room, the list includes several items from Uskroth’s tomb beneath Trunau as future additions to the dowry: most notably, Uskroth’s armor, Uskroth’s hammer, and something called “Uskroth’s rock.” This last item is accompanied by a detailed drawing of a geode half surrounded by scribbled notes hinting that the rock fragment forms half of a treasure map. You will look, but the depicted geode is not among the papers on the desk, and though it looks similar to the geode half that the party found in Uskroth’s tomb in “Battle of Bloodmarch Hill,” it is clearly a different stone. A final note mentions adding “the stuff in the giantkiller’s tomb” to the dowry. Lastly, a parchment map shows the location of a secluded valley in the Mindspin Mountains south of Belkzen. “My future with Volstus starts here” is scrawled on the back of the map in Giant.
Leira and the party will determine the book to be of love poems written in Giant (25gp), the bust of Minderhal to be worth 100gp, carpet depicting love making giants (125gp), drinking horn (150gp), the necklace (0), 12 giant drawings (50gp ea.), scabbard (200gp), bronze statue (150gp), 5pp, 147gp, 103sp, and 976cp.
Ragnir will help grab up what he can, keeping a wary eye on the Manticores. If they start to look at the group hungrily, Ragnir will step up to talk to them.
"Seems we are party poopers for some Giant wedding. Anyone has some universal glue for the dress?"
"The Storm Tyrant? What is that supposed to be? Shall we worry?" asks Leira a bit confused.
As for the geode Leira studies the note "So, the geode is some kind of map but we need to find that other piece to see where it points to... And this note points to the Mindspin Mountains, perhaps there is that part of the geode, or there is were this Vosltus lives. Does any of you know anything about the Mindspin Mountains?"
When Kaos proposes the visit to console the giant, she cannot do other thing but smile "I could not agree more about it". Leira readies her bow as the group prepares the visit.
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Leira will not have any knowledge concerning the "Storm Tyrant."
Ingrahild will speak up, "The Mindpin are a stretch of bumps in grrround. We be on the Orc infested side. The other side has all those tattooed dancin' humans. Some of my kin is said to live in the Mindspin, along with all otha kinds o' horror."
Leira will not find any traps on the other double doors. Beyond is a flight of stairs heading up. Leira will not find any traps on the stairs. There is a door at the top.
Anga looks at the love poetry
ugh! Giant poetry leaves a lot to be desired. Still, might be worth something
"There is someone sobbing at the other side of the door. She talks in Giant. I guess she is the chieftain. Do you want to try get some information from her before we end up this?" asks Leira "Perhaps we can try to convince her to depose her tribe without a fight now that the Tyrant wants to go against her"
Leira spends an arcanist point to prepare shield instead of disguise self, then she casts shield before entering the next room. "I can also enlarge one of you if you wish to"