Session 29

=January 31st, 2019 - Temple of Giants=

Elemental Elimination
The session began as the four earth elementals charged at the party gathered around the glowing archway. Harshnag kept one busy as Cadmus, Thia, and Rhogar each attracted too much attention and found themselves in close quarters. Cadmus conjured a thunderous storm cloud high in the cavernous statue chamber, and began calling down lightning bolts. To his surprise, the first bolt came thundering down with a blinding point that ripped through the front of an elemental. Embedded into the stone where the bolt hit, was a glowing white hot metal javelin - Cadmus spoke a quick prayer in thanks to Sobek for sending him aid.

The battle raged around, with Lachlan’s blade singing as it spun through the air chipping away at the rock hard elementals. Rufus and Alburt stayed away and used their magical attacks to great effect as the others held out the best they could. Thia and Rhogar both soon found themselves smashed unconscious by swinging rock arms. The group realized thunderous damage was breaking the elementals much easier, and it was with a massive Shatter spell that Cadmus tipped the balance. Harshnag finally had chopped his foe into unusable pieces, and when the last elemental fell the group found Thia barely alive while Rhogar had perished.

The party decided to pause and recover from their wounds, bury their warlock, and discuss how to get through this archway. Alburt summoned another Leomund’s Tiny Hut, and the group rested the remainder of the day. Lachlan did put Rhogar’s shadowy book in his bag, unwilling to leave such a source of knowledge. Talking about how to next approach this magical archway, their best thought was to have Harshnag touch the runes instead of a smallfolk, as this was a giant temple after all. To be safe, they knew the first rune of the hill giants rendered a harmless effect, so they tested that first. Unfortunately, even with Harshnag touching the rune they still blacked out for fifteen seconds.

Next, they thought Harshnag should try the third rune - his frost rune. When the giant did as they asked, it glowed brighter momentarily as the hill rune had. Then, a magical storm cloud materialized ahead, and a short but intense Ice Storm hailed down upon them. No one was seriously wounded, but all except the frost giant were battered and bleeding. Thinking of a different approach, the group decided to focus on the all-metal weapons in the giant statue’s hands.

The frost giant weapon was missing, so first Harshnag tried to put his own greataxe into the statue's grasp. When the frost giant dropped his axe into the slot nothing happened - it was quite smaller than the other metal weapons in the statues. The group then decided to once again test the hill giant rune with its harmless effect. Agreeing it was a good thing to try, Harshnag removed the enormous metal hill giant club from it’s statue and took it to the archway. The frost giant then touched the metal club to the hill giant rune. The rune glowed brighter as before and everyone in the party once again lost time.

Exhausted of options for the time being, the group thought it was time to search the rest of the temple to find the missing frost giant weapon. First, they had Harshnag push open one of the tall stone doors to the north. Then Alburt sent his owl, the Breeze, as he telepathically controlled it through. On the other side of the doors was an open chamber with a stone statue facing down a long hallway. The floor slopped upward slightly going up the hall, and the owl flew down the hallway filled with open doorways each housing a sized bedroom. Everything was giant sized.

Temple of Giants
When the Breeze reached halfway through the hallway, stone erupted from the ground and closed off all the rooms and the exit doors. At the same moment, an enormous stone sphere emerged from the wall at the top of the hallway. It dropped and began rolling down the hallway, and Alburt was able to avoid it by flying near the ceiling. At the base of the hallway, the stone statue came to life and stopped the sphere. It then began to slowly roll the ball back up the slopped hall and pushed it into the wall.

Only after the golem had walked all the way back and returned to his pedestal did the stone walls fall back into the ground. At least one of the party members questioned their quest at this time, but Harshnag and the rest encouraged them to press on. The frost giant then pushed opened one of the doors to the south of the central chamber, and the Breeze scouted again. This room was warm and bright thanks to a large fire from a central brazier in this giant sized eating hall. There were four huge stone tables with benches on either side in this room, and leaned against one on the far side was the missing enormous frost giant metal battleaxe.

Against the east wall of the chamber was also a half circle alcove. In this alcove lay a curled up red serpent larger than Alburt had ever seen. It looked like a massive fire centipede with hundreds of legs, but each was probably larger than their swashbuckling halfling. The Breeze quickly circled back and out of the chamber. After Alburt told the group what saw, the party discussed how to approach retrieving the weapon and get it away from the very deadly Remorhaz. Lachlan had come up with a great plan, but it required their most stealthy to risk his little halfling life. Rufus begrudgingly agreed.

Lachlan stood with Rufus as he expended his pouch of dust of disappearance covering the two. Cadmus stood near the open door into the feast hall and signaled he couldn’t see them anymore. The high elf and halfling as quietly as possible hurried into the room and got within thirty feet of the massive metal greataxe. When Lachlan cast Reduce on the weapon causing it to shrink, Cadmus conjured a Fog Cloud between them and the Remorhaz. Rufus had continued on to the weapon with his rope and hurriedly tied it on, just as Lachlan cast Levitate on it.

Then, Rufus and Lachlan were running as fast as they could, pulling along the metal weapon floating in the air behind them. In moments the giant fire centipede was upon them, running them down with its hundreds of feet. Harshnag was already pulling the stone door closed as the two of them barley ran through with the axe trailing. The Remorhaz rammed into the door helping slam it shut as everyone stood breathless, and then erupted in cheer. Not waiting around, Harshnag took the now regrown greataxe and carried it to the frost giant statue.

The frost giant returned the weapon to the statue, but sadly nothing happened. Finally, the group suggested and then watched as Harshnag carried the weapon to the archway, and touched it to the frost giant rune. This time, when the frost rune glowed bright an ice storm did not appear, instead the roiling clouds within the archway erupted in lightning. The central area of the clouds parted and showed another chamber beyond. They had done it, figured out how to access the inner chamber of the shrine.

Looking in the chamber they could see another set of six statues each facing a central circle. These statues each held in an outstretched arm a brightly lit lantern, whose light shone upon a frost covered giant corpse on the floor in the circle. The rest of the chamber from their perspective looked empty. Alburt once again took control of the Breeze and flew him into the chamber, and as soon as the owl crossed the threshold of the clouds the wizard snapped back to his own body. The other chamber was either further than one hundred feet away, or not even on this plane of existence.

And that is where the session ended, now well into the night of the one hundred and forty third day since the raid on Greenest.

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