Citadel of the Fated Ord-ning

Discovery, Exploration

Myska's Menagerie discover a double conspiracy of gigantic proportions.  A troup of giants have taken over the Citadel of the Fated Order and seem to be planning to rule the entire Ulgoine Valley.  Despite that, the path forward isn't straight forward.  A childhood friend of Chupta's is found within the fortress, the leader's goals aren't what he says, and the Menagerie are put between a Rock and a Heart place.

In the morning, Myska's Menagerie determined to keep Temren Kut and the airship safe from boulders outside of the mountains. The party would voyage into the Orods by another means. Chupta welcomed Astrid and Fozz in his ring for the first time tactically. From there, Crush transformed into a raven. In doing so, all his held equipment merged into this form, bringing the ring close to his rapidly thrumming heart. The raven flew the minuscule party across mountain and valley to get to the large mountainside keep. Crush made out the keep to be large, but not originally giant. Pulling on his research, the giants were using the lost keep of the Fated Order and slowly renovating it to fit their needs.   Crush in raven form saw the stone giants building, the hill giants foraging outside, a fire giant working in a smithy and a overly well dress hill giant walking around with a clipboard. The smithy must have been what Astrid saw twinkling the night before. Entering the keep, Crush saw a frost giant within a chilled great hall making his battle plans upon a drawn diagram. Continuing inward, the stone walls of the corridors and rooms were morphed, pushed outward like clay.   The corridors eventually ended in a huge set of doubled metal doors. However, in the nearest room, a female stone giant rumbled as she continued her work of molding the stone outward. Crush retreated to another room, returned to his tortle-self, and the party stepped back out of the ring. Astrid pulled out the Shade Crystal and used her magic to try to locate another one deeper, knowing the incantation would gain the attention of the stone molding giantess. Rather than deeper, her spell point back towards the outer keep. At this moment, the rest of the party hiding in the side room, Chupta stepped out into the hall to stare down the stone molder, a giantess he remembered from his childhood.   Chupta's chance taken on stepping out before the stone molder Cheyrita won out in the moment. The giantess was surprised to see him but not aggressive. Their reunion was cut short by the rumblings of other giants back in the main hall and approaching. Chupta heard a voice in the giant tongue berating another that he was told to never touch “that”. A drowsy giantish response came that the accused hadn't touched anything. The Accuser continued the verbal assault claiming to have felt it. The stalemate of what one “knew” and the other denied led to the giants coming through the halls towards the party. In doing so, Astrid felt the directional pull of the Located Temperance Shard shift as it was incoming.   Chupta prodded his friend of the danger of being caught here and she took to action. Pulling open the stone of a closed off room like stretching our rubber, the smuggler found himself in cramped quarters, himself the smuggled. With many of the rooms and halls being expanded, the space had to come from somewhere. In this case, it was smashing in and closing off other rooms. After Cheyrita had stowed Chupta out of sight, she stepped into the doorway across the way to get out of the way of the incoming bosses. This was the room the rest of the party was in. While the party had taken efforts to hug tight to the walls and used magical enhancement to decrease their foot print, that did nothing for a giant standing partially in the room with nothing directly blocking line of sight. Fozz's eyes pleaded as he gestured for quiet and relation to Chupta.   Coming down the hall was first the armored Frost giant Kimmalog followed by the overly dressed hill giant, berating and pushing from behind. Despite Cheyrita's loyalty to Chupta, she tried to stop the Hill giant Jibrom to report in. However, Jibrom's ire was immediately shifted to the Stone giant as he ordered her to stay in her place and not worry about anything more than her job of restructuring the fortress. Cheyrita stopped any further communication until Jibrom and Kimmalog had moved beyond the vault-like metal doors. The Giantess looked to those in the room with her. Astrid held up Chupta's ring to build connection. When Cheyrita saw it, however, she got aggressive. Grabbing Astrid's arm at the elbow, the giantess denied that it was Chupta's ring claiming it to by Jibrom's. Her other hand fumbled with Astrid's much smaller grasp and Astrid made signs that she would remove the ring for the giant. It was a good thing too considering a failure of Cheyrita to dextrously remove the ring would have led to crushed fingers and palm in the process.   The Giantess returned to the hall to remove Chupta from his cubby. The smuggler managed to convince Cheyrita to talk in private with the party by closing off the wall to the room they were already in. In the process, Chupta also managed to get his ring back. After Cheyrita had molded the doorway closed, the party learned more of the overall giant plan. Jibrom led the group in an effort to create a new kingdom of giants where all were equal. To do so, the giants would have to take land that was not associated with any of the Ordning already. To help with this, they would take the ancient lands of the human kingdom that existed out where the Dream Walks occurred. Chupta explained to his companions that all things outside of the firm rock and mountain was the land of dreams for stone giants. Cheyrita pressed that it would be among the Dreamlands of kings that the Ordning change could occur. Jibrom had contacted some of Kimmalog's kinsmen that were coming for what was supposed to be a two-sided raid on “Tersule”. Two-sided, that is, until Miska's Menagerie had pushed the forward party at the goblin village back with a single survivor.   Conversations of size and right among giants led Chupta to press why a hill giant like Jibrom could push around a Frost like Kimmalog. Cheyrita could only respond with the fact that Jibrom gave orders and other listened. With his “Purple” (his ring), people obeyed. Enemies who heard him when he wielded the Purple simply fell dead.   Astrid felt the movement of the Temperance Shard again and the thumping movement could be heard outside. Crush identified it is a single giant's vibrations and Chupta used his stationed bat familiar to witness Kimmalog return on his own. Chupta pushed for a safe place to continue speaking but the giantess denied any safety within the fortress. The mountainside would be the safest. The party planned to meet there. Chupta called Rachit from the Plane of Shadow using the Shadoweave tack they had taken from the Dullahan's nightmare. He and Astrid would ride Rachit, Crush would fly out in bird form, and Fozz would stealth his way with a shadowy blessing of Chupta to move unseen no matter the strain. Astrid recast her Location divination while holding the Shade Crystal to make sure they would have Temperance Shard tracking on the way out. Cheyrita reopened the wall and strode out with Chupta's bat Jafi on her cloak. Chupta cast his greater invisibility on Fozz to give him time to get ahead before he and Astrid would charge like the wind on Rachit. At that moment, Astrid's divination of the Temperance Shard shifted from out towards Kimmalog's war hall to beneath and back towards the iron doors. Chupta then heard additional giant voices from the great hall's direction saying that Jibrom called them and to be ready.   With knowledge that the environment was changing and the invisibility would be short, Fozz booked it out. Astrid felt the pull of the second presence closing in and wanted to stay to claim it but knew that with the others already planning to flee, her staying would be folly. Chupta kicked up Rachit to haul him and Astrid away. Crush hesitated to distract and delay Jibrom. As the iron doors chunked and creaked open, Crush saw the bloated politician. He cast out a microboom that jiggled across the giant knocking him a few steps back down the stairs. Recovering though, Jibrom paced back up the stairs and down the hall, raising his ring as it flared with light. A beam of psionic energy blared into Crush and he managed to resist the worst of it but took it as his cue to break line of sight. He rounded the corner, wildshaping into a raven, and flew through the halls.   Out in the great hall, Fozz saw that two stone giants had joined Kimmalog. He navigated to the far side. As Rachit galloped into the room, he hurled a knife at one of the stone giants to distract it. It returned fire with a crate but missed entirely, guessing that the invisible elf was actually taking cover behind a table. The second stone giant hurled a chair at the mounted duo but Astrid deflected the projectile into the ceiling. Kimmalog took up his Axe to intercept two different exiting directions but was baited into swinging early as Chupta conjured an illusory image of himself next to the frost giant. The pair galloped through the room, abandoning Rachit at the outer landing to dimension door away. With Fozz a stealthful ninja and Crush on the wing, the party put two miles between them and the keep before meeting up with Cheyrita within the mountains.   The conversation that followed was one of pushing and pulling, desires and realities. Posited plans of having Cheyrita lie to Kimmalog and Jibrom to stir mistrust brought an aggressive retort from the giantess that she would not fall into “small person tricks”. However, Astrid conjuring her pactflail in a flash of purple light did not spark the same response. Cheyrita no longer was protective of “the Purple” as she had been earlier. With time separated from Jibrom and in the presence of Myska's Menagerie, Cheyrita found more of herself present. She realized that the press for “Tersule” was not for the good of the giants but all in his pursuit for the Purple. Even with Jibrom's own giants killed, the larger force of Frost Giant Raiders would still be coming. Despite not being under Jibrom's influence yet, the promises of loot that brought the raiders was still available to them.   Opposite of the threat to what is now Harfolk Sanctuary and the mixed monstrous folk that call it home was the threat the Menagerie had just left. The giant keep had two known Temperance Shard Presences. The group's follow-through of their predetermined plan to exit the citadel had lost them the surprise. Astrid very personally was witness to the phantom experience of having the Temperance Shards slip through her fingers. Cheyrita saw it differently though. A mind of rock with the past as permanent as the mountain and future as clear as a mountain stream's path, Cheyrita laid it plain as she could with a metaphor that circumvented the direct. “While a turtle that knows of danger is harder to get to because it can close itself up, a closed up turtle can do nothing else. You know what it is doing and where.”   Trying to find their leads and plans, the party spoke of shards in the jungle. Cheyrita knew if there were some that close, Jibrom would have claimed them already. Further conversation led to newly revealed revelations. Jibrom had had mutated giantedkin captured and brought into the dungeons for experimentation. One had been discarded from the mountains into the jungle and a second body had been burned. As far as Cheyrita knew, there were still five more down in Jibroms laboratory. Klark's creature had been the troll experimentation that had been discarded into the jungles as a failure.   With the citadel no longer (or never) safe for Cheyrita, the party sent here back up the mountains to try to save any more over her people from falling under Jibrom's influence. The party marched back through the mountains to reach a readied Temren Kut by nightfall. The party took to the air in a holding pattern. Miska's Menagerie now had a decision before them. To the East, there is a civilization of goblinoids and beastfolk trying to live peaceful lives. A band of frost giants with stone giant supporting artillery was heading for them to arrive in one to three days. To the West was the presence of two Temperance Shards in a fortress ready to defend itself. To save the civilians would just give Jibrom more time to prepare. To go for the mastermind and their own goals would mean sacrificing many monstrous lives for a much better chance at rebuilding the Shade Crystal.