Lym waits, invisible, and watches.
As soon as she believes a maximum number of Giants has come within reach, she launches Chain lightning to dance among them!
Two more cloud giants rush out onto the ledge. Ignoring, or not seeing, Rexil and Thordak they slam their massive shoulders into Harcane and Chaurik, knocking the elementals back over the ledge!
The weakened giant makes a feeble attempt to retreat back into the cave, where more giants are emerging.
Praxim teleported up to the ledge with Tomaru.
Rexil will take his free swing at one of the giants between himself and Thordak.
He'll then take whatever 5-foot step is necessary to get the flank back if the giant has moved on.
Praxim targets the other giant with some arrows.
Tomaru gives Bit of Luck to Praxim while trying to put a little distance between himself and the giants.
"That one's going for more."
The two elementals, Harcane and Chaurik make their way back to the top.
Quorthane continues to pound into the giants.
Slam: earth mastery, power attack
Slam: earth mastery, power attack
As the giants near, Thordak's calm demeanor vanishes in a heartbeat and his fury instantly takes over.
Thordak takes a swing at one giant as he enters...
...before unloading a barrage of attacks upon it or its ally.
Everon floats out of reach of the giants, but his spectral hand flies down to touch the first one coming out of the tunnel. "Chikohk mamiss!"
Rexil and Thordak hit each giant as they emerge from the cave. They continue their assault on their respective targets, weapons flashing red with the carnage. Quorthane adds to the fight, while Praxim's arrows fly.
Both giants fall dead from many wounds.
A third storm giant charges out, along with a much shorter, but much stockier, frost giant. The storm giant catches Everon's spell fully, its face turning a sickly hue.
The frost giant, spotting Thordak, swings his magical greataxe, catching the dwarf in the ribs!
His fury increasing to a raging storm as he gets sliced quite nastily, Thordak holds nothing back as he attacks the frost giant with reckless abandon.
Praxim will aid Thordak in taking down the frost giant, inflicting a modicum of damage.
Rexil will take on the sickly storm giant.
Everon makes the bones of one of the storm giants rattle!
Lym takes aim, and directs a Fireball down the tunnel, to take out the fleeing Giant.
The frost giant, devastated by the combined attacks of Thordak and Praxim, falls when Lym's fireball washes over him.
The weakened storm giants are defeated by the combined efforts of Everon, Rexil, and Lym.
The cave is only just big enough to house these giants. It is some sort of guard post, and each giant is carrying a horn to sound an alarm. Why none of these did so is unknown...
The cloud giants carry nothing of value, but the their leader the frost giant does: +3 greataxe, pot of cure serious, +2 breastplate, ring of feather falling.
"If these poor sods were enslaved," Lym muses, "maybe we should have tried to disenchant, rather than dessicate them... Oh, dear."
"But they started it."
Tomaru sends the elementals to stand guard while the team recuperates and explores.
"Many greater giants enslave their lesser cousins. The benevolent ones refuse, often giving their lives to do so. They may have been enslaved, but there is no innocence in them that deserves our remorse." Even while saying this the smell of burning giant flesh reached Everon's nose and he turned, eyes watering.
With the giants dead, Thordak's fury subsides. "Wouldn't've mattered regardless. They're giants. Whether enslaved or not, they would've tried ta kill us either way. But it is odd they didn't sound the alarm. That one has me curious." The dwarf stares at the dead giants and the horns a moment before turning back to the others. "Okay. Where to next? Just point me in the right direction and I'll lead the way."
The gilded road continues through the narrow gorge for a mile or so. The walls of the gorge soar 300' on either side. A sharp wind whistles high along the gorge walls. Moss and lichen grows along the sides of the road where it meets the cliffside, the lack of sunlight at the bottom creating a perfect environment.
The road climbs a slight rise, a gradual upturn that plays out in a smooth curve. When you reach the crest, your breathe is taken away. Before you a great valley stretches for several miles. You are at the narrow opening of the valley, and the road leads down and into it. From here you can see the great city of Xin-Shalast filling the valley from side to side and end to end. No less than six active volcanoes line the vally, three on each side.
The far end of the valley is capped by the Mhar Massif, home of Karzoug the Claimer. In a sign of his great power, the entire mountain face has been carved in his likeness. It stares down upon the city, grim and foreboding.
The golden road bisects the valley, passing through a massive fortress not far from where you stand. The dark forms of giant guards walk the walls, and flights of some winged creatures wheel overhead, keeping watch.
Beyond the fortress, the city crawls with activity. The western side is filled with structures of all shapes. The ones closest to the fortress are sized for humanoid-type creatures, but as your eye moves closer to the Mhar, the scale of the buildings grows to giant-sized proportions. The eastern side of the city is mostly covered by deep lava flows from some ancient disaster. Even from here you can see that a significant part of the city was buried in that catastrophe. Far off in the distance, nearest the mountain, a couple of huge edifices can be seen dominating the skyline.
Xin-Shalast bustles with activity. All over the city, shapes move and work, drilling in formations barely seen. Dragons wheel over head in lazy circles. Smoke pours from forges and workshops all over the city, and the stench of mine activity fills your nostrils. There can be no mistake:
Xin-Shalast is preparing for war.
”All right. We need some way to blend in to all that. These lieutenants we need to find are probably living in some of the nicer areas, or somewhere close to all these military preparations. Figuring out a way to disguise ourselves as locals is probably the easiest. A bit of sabotage on some of these military efforts might also be good, but it would give away our presence. Good for a bit of distraction though when it’s time to hit the mountain.”
Tomaru looks out over the vista. "That's rather imposing. Anyone want to turn back, now would probably be your last chance to do so." He begins marking the nearby rock with his glyph- an homage to Desna and a sign to any in the know that his travels brought him here. Once finished, he reaches for Lym's hand.
Thordak's mouth stands agape at the sight before him. "By Torag's hammer," he murmurs, shocked by it all. He then sits down a moment to try to mentally take it all in. "There's no stoppin' that. We canno' stop all that! How in the blasted of all Golarion are we suppose ta stop that?! I mean, I could kill several hundred of 'em by meself but what about the other hundred THOUSAND that are left? Do ya see those dragons?!" he asks, pointing demonstratively. "There's no way... there's just no way." Thordak shakes his head at how badly they're outnumbered and finds himself quite dejected.
He then looks over at the elf curiously. "'Blend in', elf? What are ya daft?! Please explain ta me how a dwarf, a gnome, a couple of elves, a human and a half-orc are goin' ta 'blend in' with a bunch of blasted giants? Go ahead, I'm listenin," he tells him, crossing his arms and waiting for a surefire explanation.
”Well, as a first step, maybe don’t shout so loudly that all the dragons hear us.”
"Look at the buildings. Not everyone down there are giants. And we only need to kill the leader. The rest of them will fall into infighting and soon cease to be problem." Or so Tomaru hopes.
"Presumably they have slaves," Lym notes. "And possibly some Orc thugs. Also, most of us have some sihedron-marked gewgaws. Fitting in might be easier than you think - especially if Rexil acts like he's in charge of us."
”So long as he knows it’s only an act…”
Rexil smacks Praxim on the back of the head and sends him sprawling. ”Shut your mouth, slave scum!” he commands.
Then he realizes he may have gone too far and becomes all meek. ”Oops, uh, sorry.”
"Try it on the dwarf next," Lym suggests with a pokerface. "His skull is thicker, you can fine-tune your slapping technique. If he hollers, just flick his ear to calm him down."
Looking down at the dwarf, and his axe, for a long time, Rexil then turns back to Lym and says, ”I think you’ve been summoning too many devils. It’s worn off.”
"I only ever summoned the one demon... spider... thing," Lym mildly protests. "The other things I called that should have been evil were lamias, and they turned out to be strangely heroic and noble."
"Don't those sihedron thing allow the big ugly to control us or see through our eyes or something? Let's not use them if we don't have to."
Tomaru gets Thordak's attention. "If we get into a fight.... when we get into a fight, escape needs to be foremost in our minds. A prolonged battle will only get us killed."
"But standing around here will only get us caught by the next patrol that comes by. Let's carefully make our way down there and see if we can get some revenge for Aurora."
"Carefully, huh? Well... okay I guess. As long as 'carefully' doesn't mean 'quietly'. We aren't 'Team Quiet' I can tell ya that. But I guess we can give it a shot if that's what ya want." Thordak then begins to head that way, attempting to remain as quiet as possible if that remains the plan and no one decides on another.
Praxim follows, trying to make it naturally look like Rexil is herding them along.
"Right. Subterfuge. By the way, Thordak, it's this way." Let's keep as far from the keep as we can.
Everon floats silently behind the others, face reserved, ready for this all to blow up in their face.
As you crest the rise that leads into the valley, the entirety of the city opens up before you.
This tableau defies belief. A narrow mountain pass opens into a glacial valley extending north and then turning to the west at the base of the vast mountain at the far end. Filling this valley is an ice-capped city of enormous proportions. The near end is mostly blocked by a huge fortress of smooth black stone, with multiple towers rising from its high walls. Exiting the bailey of this fortress is a massive causeway of gold that dominates the city
as it travels down the center of the vale. Enormous towers and spires of many-colored stone pack both sides of the central thoroughfare, rising to prodigious heights and giving the illusion that the road itself is a valley.
The eastern slope of the valley has been partially subsumed by an ancient volcanic flow—nearly a quarter of the city appears to have been so buried. That section is now little more than a great mass of ice, with the jagged angles and peaks of ruined structures poking through its topmost layer here and there.
Where the valley curves slightly to the west, the structures, if anything, grow even larger, becoming truly gigantic as they climb up and over the rocky spur.
At the far end of the valley, the city abuts the lower slope of a truly massive peak. Yet the city builders appear to have taken no heed of this change in slope, for the great causeway merely elevates at a steep angle and continues to climb the incline in a nearly straight line, transforming into an immense stairway. Additional buildings cling precariously to the mountain face alongside the causeway, growing even larger and more impressive as they ascend. The gigantic buildings finally give way a few thousand feet above, but the mighty road continues to wend its treacherous way to just below the mountain’s peak. There, a spired citadel looms, its size and proportions truly magnificent. It, too, fails to summit the mountain—instead, its topmost spires end just below the dominant face of a stern man, carved into the peak of the mountain and surveying the city below. The otherworldly quality of this strange panorama is further reinforced by the sound of the cold winds slicing across the high peaks, making strange cries and shrieks in the thin mountain air
The ruined road branches here, a narrower route leading around to the west while the main thoroughfare passes through a looming stone wall flanked by glossy black towers. It seems to be some sort of ancient gateway to the city proper. A dark mass of gritty, rocky ice presses up against the fortress’s northern face, the ancient lava flow apparently stopped (but only just) by the stone walls.
You start down the road, doing your level best to be quiet and sneaky.
Suddenly, the cccrrrack of a thunderstone sounds high above in one of the towers above you. Within seconds, four creatures swoop down from the height to hover above you. The creatures are vaguely humanoid, with a vulture's head and wings for arms. Each holds a great bow drawn and taut in it's taloned feet.
The lead creature croaks at you in broken Common.
"Who are you? What is your business in the city?"
Thordak holds his position, waiting for one of the others to answer the question. I don't think: "Ta kill your leader" is probably the right answer so I'll just wait and let one of the others respond ta that one.
"Oh hells." Tomaru casts Summon Monster as a standard action.
A monadic deva appears.
The angelic being flies up at the guards. "Feel the force of the Hierarch of Bells." She swings at one.
Hierarch of Bells (+3 Morningstar): Power Attack
Rexil works up the courage to try a line about having found these trespassers and bringing them in as prisoners, but Tomaru panics and attacks before he has the chance, so instead he just grabs some boulders and hurls them up at a creature not battling a deva.
Praxim is happy to do something he’s good at (sneaking not being one of them) and, after activating his haste boots, unleashes on a different creature. If at any point his target goes down, he smoothly adjusts his aim to the next creature.
Two of the creatures go down under the sudden assault. The remaining two flap their wings furiously, gaining altitude rapidly. They both pull brass horns from their belts, blowing as they retreat.
From high up on the towers, all around the black fortress, horns ring out in answer...
Shaking his head in annoyance and with a look of absolute fury, "I thought the plan was NOT TO BE NOTICED!!! What in the Nine Hells are you lot doin'?! Does a city full of giants and dragons mean nothin' to ya?! We're only outnumbered by TEN THOUSAND or so! I don't deny I want ta kill the lot of 'em; but by Torag's hammer I at least know I'm not capable of that!" Extremely ticked off at the foolishness of it all, Thordak allows his rage to take over and he retreats back the way they came at a rapid pace, unconcerned with what the others are gonna do.
Tomaru gives Praxim a Bit of Luck. "Finish them quickly an we'll go one way while the deva goes the other."
Adeba casts Holy Aura and closes with the things.
School abjuration [good]; Level cleric 8, oracle 8
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Casting
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Casting Time 1 standard action
Components V, S, F (a tiny reliquary worth 500 gp)
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Effect
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Range 20 ft.
Targets one creature/level in a 20-ft.-radius burst centered on you
Duration 1 round/level (D)
Saving Throw see text; Spell Resistance yes (harmless)
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Description
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A brilliant divine radiance surrounds the subjects, protecting them from attacks, granting them resistance to spells cast by evil creatures, and causing evil creatures to become blinded when they strike the subjects. This abjuration has four effects.
First, each warded creature gains a +4 deflection bonus to AC and a +4 resistance bonus on saves. Unlike protection from evil, this benefit applies against all attacks, not just against attacks by evil creatures.
Second, each warded creature gains spell resistance 25 against evil spells and spells cast by evil creatures.
Third, the abjuration protects the recipient from possession and mental influence, just as protection from evil does.
Finally, if an evil creature succeeds on a melee attack against a creature warded by a holy aura, the offending attacker is blinded (Fortitude 22 save negates, as blindness/deafness).