Session 51

=April 23rd, 2020 - Fly My Pretties, Fly!=

Giant Preparations
The session began the day after the party's encounter with Iymrith in the storm giant’s throne room. After they had rested and Rachen sent a message with their status to the Lady Silverhand, the group decided to use a teleportation circle to return to Elturiel. Queen Serissa was unsure of how long it would take for her diviners to locate Iymrith, but with their new small-folk sized conch shells she would summon them when ready. Back in the paladin-protected city, Thia spent the next few days with her dragons while the rest of the party rested.

It was just over a week when Queen Serissa contacted them once again. Before the group bid farewell the the Dominion monks, Thia thanked them again for caring for her whelplings. She decided to leave her old breastplate for their comfort, and determined it was time to swap out Elysian. This time, she took the smaller female Kiruna. Once their preparations were made, the group gathered in the monasteries park, and each blew on their new smaller conchs of teleportation.

In the Queen’s throne room, Serissa told what they had found. Iymrith had been hiding deep in her lair since leaving Maelstrom, near the edge of the Sorcian Desert in the pass between the Storm Coast and Heart Vale. She has already ordered a set of giants led by Imperator Uthor to meet them there, and asked the party once again if they would take up the hunt with them. The party eagerly agreed, but were wary about confronting an ancient blue, even with the help of the storm giants. Queen Serissa had some gifts to help with that.

First, she bestowed upon the party an ancient relic they had used in ages past against dragons, it was an enchanted dragon claw covered in silver and etched with giant runes - specifically the ‘wyrm’ rune. She said it had many powers that would aid the holder against one dragon target, after evaluating who may need it the most and their current equipment, the group gave it to Rachen. Secondly, she gave each party member a single potion, glowing bright blue, that she called a Potion of Giant Size. It would temporarily cause the imbiber and their equipment to grow to giant size to help even the odds. Then the Queen talked about transportation.

Serissa and her retinue would head out on the backs of their killer whale pets, from the bottom of the ocean a few hundred miles to one of the nearby islands of the Wyrm Isles. There, they cultivated and bred giant Rocs, whom the giants would then fly across the Storm Sea and the Storm Coast to reach the desert. The party discussed their options, with the easiest being to teleportation circle back to Ironbay to retrieve their wyvern mounts. However, after looking through their bag of holding, they found their scroll of water breathing. It was the perfect time for it, and so Alburt took the time (and used the ink) to inscribe the scroll into his spellbook.

When they were ready, Alburt prepared the ritual, and with all six of them standing within the circle he cast the spell - giving all water breathing (and immunity to the immense sea pressure) for twenty four hours. The group then split up with Serissa and her two storm giant guards, two smallfolk on the back of each killer whale, hanging on for dear life, as the whales took them from the ocean floor. After a few hours, the group reached the island of rocs, and the party was in shock at how large they were. Each bird had a wingspan over two hundred feet, and there were only a handful on the island. They took a short rest, and then took to the skies.

Fly My Pretties, Fly!
The rocs flew at least twice as fast their wyvern mounts, but the trip still took an agonizing entire day clinging to the back of a giant saddle to reach the outskirts of the Sorcian Desert. The sky was filled with dark thunder clouds for miles around, and the three Rocs circled down to a small outcropping just before the expanse of dunes. There, the group could see three giants waiting. When they landed, the party was surprised and happy to see a slightly gaunt looking Harshnag! The frost giant hailed them and told of his rescue by Imperator Uthor.

Harshnag was able to dive through the Oracle portal as the temple came crashing down, and survived inside for just about a month stretching his rations and drinking melted ice from the chamber. The lanterns from the statues helped him melt ice and provided little warmth, but if he wasn’t a frost giant he surely would have frozen to death. Uthor had visited the Oracle many times in his life, and he and his guards reached the temple a few days back. At finding the temple truly collapsed (corroborating the parties story), the Imperator successfully teleported into the Oracle chamber from his memory.

Instead of going back to Maelstrom, Harshnag was insistent on taking Uthor’s place to help his smallfolk friends get vengeance on Iymrith. Thus, the Imperator teleported home and Harshnag took his roc, escorted by the other two storm giants they reached the meeting point and waited. Now reunited, the group descended the outcropping and began trekking across the sands towards the amphitheater in the distance that was the dragon’s lair. A few other remnant portions of buildings were scattered around the half ruined and buried amphitheater, but any other sign of the city that stood there was lost under the desert. The dark storm clouds overhead shadowed the entire scene, even as lighting arced across the sky in violent bursts.

They briefly discussed having the giants engage the dozens of gargoyle guardians perched all over the amphitheater as a distraction while they quietly found a way beneath, but it was agreed they needed to engage the ancient blue dragon together. Thus, the party stayed behind the line of storm giants as they all broke out into a run, and the giant’s pulled ahead. Then it started, once the giants were about a thousand feet away from the theater two trebuchets on the edges of the structure began hurling boulders at them. Half way closing the distance the giants began hurling lightning bolts at the trebuchets and gargoyles - knowing they would be ineffective against the blue, they would use them now. Thunder cracks went off, stone exploded, and the party ran as fast as they could to catch up.

Once the party got closer to the amphitheater they were able to take some cover behind one of the building remnants, but it was all about the ranged characters. The gargoyles all across the structure rose into the sky and circled down to swarm them. At one point, Rufus was surrounded by gargoyles, and Rachen was able to help fend them off. The entire time, they could hear the laughter and taunting of Iymrith through the gargoyles - but the blue did not rise up out of the sands.

After defeating all of the gargoyles, the group took stock of the multiple entrances into the structure, and Rufus explored one of the descending staircases that was in the ruined building he and Rachen were swarmed in. Just beneath the building was a cavern, with a large pit filled with purple worms, and it appeared as if the ceiling was a weak sinkhole trap. If they hadn’t been hugging the wall they had, Rufus and Rachen may have fallen in.

And that is where the session ended, as the combined group of smallfolk and giants prepared to descend to the depths of Iymrith’s lair. It was the middle of the two hundred and thirty first day since the raid on Greenest.

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