16.3.3.6 Drakewatch

Dog Watch. 10 fire drakes being chase by spire drake. spire kills 4 fires, they become wraiths. we kill spire/wraiths.   pause to catch breath.. Fire drakes thank us and tell us 3 more spires are coming. in less then a minute. we kill spires. fires are happy/sad.

About six miles later we came to a fork in the river. Checking for tracks on all three shores we found that a giant had come from the north, swam across and than joined the three we had been tracking for three-fourths a day at this point. Just what we need.. four bloody giants in oversized metal boots so we don't even know what kind lay ahead of us. We pushed on, after all what else could we do.. return to Shinnerman's Fortune and tell them we couldn't find their young captured or worse yet return to Trunau and pretent we couldn't have stopped the Storm Tyrant..   A couple of hours before nightfall we came to a Rift, a canyon into the cliffside that the river flowed from. We found a giant scarecrow fashioned out of flipping trees. Historically they have been used by giants to warn off other giantkind of dangerous situations or to stay away. Seeing as the four giants we were tracking didn't seem to care we sailed on. Judging by my maps we should be roughly halfway through the valley. We set camp for the night admits some boulders. Yamiel and Grumog awoke us a bit after midwatch started..   They both saw a swarm of ten fire drakes desperately trying to out fly a spire drake! Its breath destroying one and transforming it into a wight! Dark Evil magic must have created these spire drakes for I've never read of a natural creature being able to create undead with its freaking breath. The battle was fierce but lasted less that twenty seconds. The drakes were grateful and told us that another three spire drakes were but moments behind. We took shelter behind a bubble of invisibility Clarke had created. Unloading everything that we could we managed to destroy two of them in a dozen seconds. The third.. Jooose surprised all of us transforming from his aquan bear form into that of a huge flipping eagle. Huge enough to swoop in out of the night and grab the third one charge high into the sky, tear its wing off and hurl the drake to the ground. It seemed for a moment that it hung suspended in the air as Yamiel's arrows sunk into its chest.. if it was the fall or arrows that killed it I couldn't see for the swarm of fire drakes that were in the air. We tried to go back to sleep after that.. hopefully the night will pass in peace.   Unfortunately that dream of peaceful rest was broken a couple of hours later.. Yamiel and Zaxel were both on watch and heard something swimming across the water, it was trying to be stealthy but just being too large and clumsy to be successful. They woke up Varros and Luna, the three of them taking position near some rocks. Varros deployed his tower and Luna prepared to pounce on anything that came around it. The three take aim into the darkness. Yamiel lets forth some of his inner light upon one of the arrows and fires at the moving blob in the darkness. It was revealed to be not one but four Marsh Giant Wights! Yamiel hits the one on the right with a light arrow, Zaxel misses, Varros hits the one on the left. Yamiel yells focus fire, As does Varros. Yamiel and Zaxel hit the one on the right and breaks his pepperbox, varros continues to hit the one he ordered the focus fire upon. Next round more confusion about who gives the battle orders. Yamiel hits right, zaxel makes whole on his gun, Varros shoots left and orders dont shoot the one with the light so we can see them coming, as they are beyond our dark vision sight. Yamiel, Zaxel hit the right one again (does nobody listen to Orders?) Varros splits his shots, two left and one right. dropping the right one and plunging the wights into darknes. They scatter along the shoreline, trying again to sneak but two fail horibly but think they are sneaking.. the third disapears into the darkness.   Yamiel again fires a light arrow into the right one, and says shoot the light i can make more light constantly. Varros sighs and again orders focus fire on the left, as it was 3/4 destroyed as opposed to the fresh one with the light in it. Zaxel surprises us all with an ability his had for many months but never been able to use as everyone in the party tends to charge into battle, He creates a field of invisible spike stones covering the entire area from the rocks to the shoreline (10 x 20x20 squares). Yamiel fires again at the right one to Varros is orders focus fire on the left. in the end it did not matter as next thing to happen was the Wights moved full speed forwards into the spike stone area (suffering 8d8 damage as they double moved hoping to get through it) and killing themselves. We thought the other had fled, but we were wrong. Out of the darkness a disgusting maw reach out and critically slams into Varros's face, thankfully varros's willpower was strong enough to withstand the secondary effect. Yamiel swings his acidic blade into the wight. Zaxel stands tall, holding up The Gears of Brigh he invokes a prayer hoping to turn the Wight, Success the wight runs thru the stones destroying itself from the spikes damage.   We look over at the others who just stood by and watched the combat. Tell them they are on watch and go back to sleep. Zaxel was careful to explain that the stone spikes are invisible but they real. Do not go out there for the next 10 hours or the stones will bite you. Five hours later they are on watch and see a trio of dreadfall scorpions that charge the camp.. The stones worked and did their jobs, the scorpions were crushed into a goo by the stones.