Session 48

Most of the party, except Zandro and Vaan, are on their way to the ruins of the goliath stronghold and encountered Lehroth's essence in Night Twist Tree form. The tree is surrounded by Keyleth's animals who are enchanted by it. Raui starts by summoning a storm in the sky and two bolts of lightning streak down from the sky and strikes it. Wi Po casts a spell that corrupts the earth the tree is on and it takes even more damage. Pippy is panicking about the tree knowing that it is essentially Leroth's essence, she doesn't want to attack it for fear it'll hurt him and prevent him from ever being brought back. She holds the necklace that Lehroth gave her and casts command and orders it to back up 30 feet and hold. She tells the party that Lehorth's soul is in that tree and she can't bring herself to hurt it. Everyone holds their actions and Wi Po casts a spell to talk to the tree. He speaks with Lehorth who explains he can't control the urge to hurt us and that he wishes for us to destroy him. Wi Po tells Pippy this and casts a spell to hurt the tree some more. Pippy, is distraught at this news. She holds the necklace once more and says "I'm so sorry old friend that this must be your end that we must hurt you again." And she summons her grief from the past fwe days, a dark energy emmits out from her surrounding the tree as she casts blight on it. The spell surrounds the tree, disintegrating it from the outside in. As it disintigrates the tree starts to lean towards her, getting closer and closer, until a single leaf that remains floats down and touches her lips and before disintegrating and the last bit of Lehroth leaves the world. She immidetely collapses in grief again, sobbing and reliving her loss, and Thydrom picks her up and places her into her backpack and carries her again. Keyleth comes out and asks what's going on. Thydrom and Wi Po fill him in on the tree in very simplistic terms. They ask him if he knows anything about the Goliath castle and he explains that bad things are happening there. Raui crouches where the tree was and is saying a prayer to Lehroth. Snow is confused and asks why she is praying to the enemy and states that she didn't know Lehroth and she just laughs at that. Ra comes over to Pippy and asks if she is ok and says that he is there to talk with whenever she is ready as he knows what it is like to lose someone close to you. She cries some more in the backpack but her little arm shoots out of the bag and pats him on the trunk as a sign of thanks. Raui takes the front, leading the group to the ruins.
Walking towards the castle, Raui is in front and feels an odd chill as we arrive at the door to the castle. Raui goes to open the door and she hears in her head "Raui, do not open that door right now." Baoth is speaking to her and decides to listen to the god "Listening", Baoth replies "there is something very bad behind that door and that is not where you need to go, take the side entrance. There is a window over there 30 paces to the left." She gives a thumbs up and then realizes no one understands and she explains that Baoth warned her about the door. Snow is disturbed that Raui is now also hearing the voice from Baoth. Pippy pipes up from the bag, still in tears, and says that we should trust him. Thydrom pats her and pushes her back into the bag and tells her to rest. Snow continues to share their disdain at listening to the god as does Wi Po but theyu eventually decide to listen. The window Raui was speaking of is 15 feet in the air. Raui jumps up into the air, casting mage armor on herself and floats up to the window. Snow is confused on how to get up there. Thydrom casts a spell and is instantly up in the window with Pippy in tow. Raui pulls out some rope and secures it so the rest of the group can climb up. Ra goes to climb up using his good arm and trunk and forgets about his missing arm and falls off the rope. Wi Po tries to catch Ra but his legs buckle under the immense weight. Ra is embarrased that he fell and hurt Wi Po. The rope has snapped in half and Raui pulls more rope from her pack and resecures it. Thydrom asks if Pippy can shrink everyone and she's trying to pull herself together when Ra says "can everyone back away from up there, I wanted to save this for later but I guess now is the time". Ra takes a running jump and uses his Ki and jumps straight to the window, landing on the window seal. Raui fists bump him for sticking the landing. Snow is still down below trying to figure out how to get up along with Wi Po.
Snow turns around and notices a cloaked figure walking toawrds him, it is Vaan. Snow asks her where she was last night and she says it is none of his business. Snow then hypothesizes what she was up to and Vaan shows off her outfit to him, still wearing Tedd's date clothes. Snow fills her in on the plan to get up the window. Wi Po transforms into a griffin, allowing folks to climb up on his back and flies them up to the window. Xerrik takes advantage of the ride. She climbs up the rope but she falls off. She gets frustrated and tries to climb again and falls off yet again. Snow just sits down and watches this, amused. Eventually Wi Po flies back down and screetches for them to get on his back so he can fly them up. As Snow is being flown up Vaan uses mage hand to flick Snow in the middle of his face. Raui notices that Vaan's suit is slightly dirty and casts a spell to clean it up.
Meanwhile Zandro is walking through the pathway, following the blue flames. The flames around him are cold and shed no warmth. It feels unnatural the deeper he goes in. He sees a light at the end of the tunnel he's walking through. As he aproaches he notices that he can go either left or right and there is a door at either end. He listens to each door, on the left side it sounds like a furnace and the right side sounds empty. He decides to go left and is inside the castle. He walks through a kitchen area and notices a large furnace burning and spots two undead goliaths picking up coal and throwing it into the furnace. They pay him no mind and haven't even noticed him there. He continues his way left towards another door and opens it, and its the inside of a pantry. it's pretty gross and everything is molded. He turns back around and sneaks past the goliaths and they don't notice him. He quietly opens the door and glances down the hallway and notices another door and pulls it open but it doesn't budge. He takes his dagger and carves into the wall a symbol to remind him that he needs stregth to open that door. He turns and goes down the hallway instead. He is now back in the original area we were in when we went there the first time. He's near where we fought the armor. As he moves into that hallway he hears some clanging, like a bucket smacking against a wall to the left, near the room with the green sword and the room that had the ritual.
Back up in the window we realize we're near the entrance and we notice some green glowing stuff behind the door, like it is stuck to the door and is a trap of some sort. It's glowing on and off. Wi Po lets out a disgruntled screetch. We recognize this area as the begining of the dungeon that we were in once before. Thydrom and Vaan haven't been here before. Vaan mentions she is here to find Tedd. Raui mentions how Tedd has a punchable face and Vaan makes a fuss about it. Raui then says she is'nt going to punch him cause she isn't a ferral animal. Wi Po shoots Raui a look at that. In the moment Snow realizes that Zandro isn't with us and a discussion about sprinkling Vaan's arrows with holy water so they shoot radiant arrows happens. Raui offers to go first but Snow mentions that she is squishy (to which Raui says "only on the inside"). Wi Po transforms back into himself and tries to detect traps. Wi Po senses something on the ground, like some wires on the ground that look like they are meant to trip us up in some shape or form. Wi po points them out. Snow then pulls out a tool kit, specifically a thieves kit, and asks us not to judge him. He gets on the floor and starts looking around and he bumps into one of the wires. A small explosion comes out next to him, hitting him slightly. Xerrik notices that this is exactly how the poitions that Bimp Knoton had made acted when they were dropped. Wi Po cures Snow and he warns everyone to stay back as he goes back to try to find these traps. He realizes the explosives are underneath the tiles.
We make our way through the room and into the next and there are piles of skeleton parts all over. Raui investigates the piles of bones and takes a skull from one. Pippy summons an undead creature, a skeleton, from the piles of bones and instructs it to walk ahead of them to test the path ahead. Vaan and Snow is distraught by this. The skeleton senses something and runs ahead.
Meanwhile Zandro sees a skeleton running at him and he locks an arrow and shoots it causing it to collapse. The party sees this but doesn't see Zandro. Pippy turns to Vaan and says "see that could have been us!" Raui summons an elemental and Zandro walks around the corner. Pippy yells at him for killing her skeleton (which she named Vaan). Zandro then fills us in on the undead Goliaths and the mysterious door and his journey into this area. Vaan asks if Zandro has seen someone wearing a white and green cloak with a symbol on it. Pippy hears this and wonders if it the same as the robes from Baoth's followers, it is and Pippy smirks. Vaan explains that her friend Ted was kidnapped by someone wearing that cloak. Pippy then says "I hear that there is usually a reason for everything" and sinks back into the backpack. Zandro fills us in that Bimp Knoton is part goliath and part gnome and that this is the last remaining decendant of this bloodline of the eight that were burried here. He then shows us the paper/diagram that was in Bimp's room. Pippy looks at the diagram and she sees the family rests and the more she looks at it the more she notices that there are names on each of the tombstones. One looks to be circled in a red ink, the 3rd at the top is the one that is circled. The party discusses if we should go back to the door that Zandro found or if we should investigate the graves. Zandro is sad that we aren't going to the door but he asks that we hold off on attacking Bimp so he can get answers fro her. Pippy is hell bent on attacking but agrees to hold off unless she attacks first and if she doesn't she says she'll give him a few minutes.
As we enter the room with the tombs it is very cold and we can see our breath. The air smells of rust. (side note - out of game we thought Wolf said "titty" thus a joke about the air smelling faintly of titty happened). Zandro is still first and makes his way towards the tomb that was marked. The closer he gets the stronger the scent of rust becomes. Thydrom is keeping an eye out for Q. Pippy realizes the scent isn't iron its blood, and a lot of blood. She tells teh group that she thinks Bimp may be trying to ressurect the Goliaths here in a way that goes beyond just reanimating them. Wi Po investigates the tomb, peering inside it. The scent of rust fills his nostrils and all he sees is that the inside is filled with liquid, a red liquid, blood, and an eye opens up in the blood. A hand comes up and pushes the top to the side and almost effortlessly knocks the cover off. It's furry and has a lot of hair and very big claws.