Session 63 - Three Stones Falls and Aftermath

27 Ambyrmont 1010 - 2 Sviftmont 1010

General Summary

The party searches the corpses and the tents, seeking interesting loot and information about how the giants knew to attack the meeting place. Stavos begins sewing one of Waldhexe's coins into the mouth of the King's bear and another into the mouth of an ogre. In the search they find a letter, in giant text on a giant piece of paper. Leo casts Comprehend Languages and sees the message is asking (in Giant) how progress is going on finding something, but the specific object is not described in the note. Further searching of the King's belongings finds a strange gear-like component. Leo casts Detect Magic and it is in fact magical, but not of a type he is familiar with. He then casts Identify, and is able to determine that it has some sort of Reaction-type function, and an Action-type function, but beyond that he still can't tell what it does. He decides to attune to the item, dropping his attunement to the dagger.
The party sleeps through the night and heads back to the meeting place the next morning, arriving early that day. They had taken the King's head as a trophy, for use in taunting the Giants when they return to the compound, and bring it to the camp using Leo's Floating Disk. The party shares their concerns with the tribes - about the Kuurn Kopan's unexpected delays in arrival and the timing of the giants' attack.
In addition to bringing this risk to folks' attention, Tork starts actively trying to get Koblu to shift her attention to Bert. This includes getting Bert to take a more active role in the upcoming meeting.
The Kuurn Kopan arrive as evening approaches, just before the meeting is scheduled to begin, basically meeting their obligation in the absolute minimal way possible. Their presence at the event dampens the discussion, as they continue playing down the risk of the giants, if they weren't provoked. There is a growing mistrust among the remaining clans for the Kuurn Kopan, but with their recent losses their thoughts are on safety before aggression.
As the meeting breaks up, with the decision being that no, the tribes will not unite to attack the giant stronghold, Tork and the party once again go to each tribe individually, and explain that the party will still deal with this, but they would like to have volunteers from each tribe. There is also a secondary activity happening - the Jadaran Clerr, Dhauwurd Wurrung, and the Warrud Boll are in discussion of unifying in the face of the scale of the Kuurn Kopan, and the perceived risk of attack from them. In the face of this danger, the party is only able to get 1-2 volunteers from each tribe, and none from the Kuurn Kopan (except for Zarm, of course).
The volunteer unit is made up of: Bert - Dhauwurd Wurrung Haish - Dhauwurd Wurrung Zarm - Dhauwurd Wurrung (former Kuurn Kopan) Cosdat - Warrud Boll Desilav - Jadaran Clerr Akri - Jadaran Clerr
With that, the party departs the next morning for the giants' encampment, hauling the King's head on the Floating Disk once again. They continue to improve their regional map in the course of their travels; this area is becoming quite familiar to the party. Once again, they don't encounter any problems en route to the camp.
Once they are in sight of the Giants camp, they set the King's head on a stake as a display, hoping to draw out some Giants, but no such luck. When it becomes clear that the Giants are intent on staying put, they go to their main plan. They sneak around to the north side, and begin tunneling with Elincia's Cave Badger form. She creates a tunnel large enough for everyone to move through, and manages to find her way back to the storage room.
The room has lots of barrels of different kinds of ale/wine/unknown fluids. Moving through the door out of this room they find themselves in a hallway and begin to explore attached rooms. Following one branch, they ascend a small staircase upward, which leads to a strange pool of water. In the water they see some albino tadpoles, but nothing too unusual, and decide to ignore this for now - except for badger-Elincia, who eats some of the tadpoles. Heading back down the other direction (south), they get to a larger room with various doorways in different directions. They start by heading west through an open door down a hallway. They eventually come to a room with an open door, within which are two giants of a different type from Hill Giants.
These giants are sitting and reading books. Tork attempts friendly communication, but seems unable to find a language in common with them. They shrug and speak in Giant, but no connection is made and they return to their reading. Eventually the party departs; the Giants seemed relatively peaceful, so it was decided it was unnecessary to make an attack.
Backtracking to the room with the various doorways, they decide to work their way around the room. Seraphina returns to the role of door tester, and opens the first door. Inside they find an ugly Hill Giant, with two Apes. All three respond aggressively to their arrival. The party responds in their default get-things-done manner. Leo tests out the function of the new "gear" mechanism they had found in the giant king's tent. It makes him FAST for one round with one function, and the other function enables him to react to Seraphina being attacked and extends to her an ability to strike back! The giant and the two Apes were no contest for the party though, and combat was over almost as fast as it started. After the battle, Stavos sews the eighth gold coin into the mouth of one of the Apes.
The next room they try contains mining tools and baskets, presumably used to remove the material after digging. The party ignores this room and moves to the next door.
This door opens to a hallway with five cells, and two Bugbears who seem to be guards. The Bugbears go on the offensive but, once they see the size of the party, they surrender immediately. They have been instructed to guard "magical skeletons" in the fourth cell from would-be thieves. The party begins questioning them, and they seem to be cooperative. They look over the five cells, some of which contain living prisoners. The fourth cell does, in fact, contain skeletal remains.

Report Date

15 May 2022