Session 43

=October 10th, 2019 - Castle of the Cloud Giants=

The Plan
The session began after the iceberg cloud castle of Count Blagothkus arrived and picked up the party from the mountaintop near the giant Oracle temple. For the two days since Harshnag sacrificed himself so they could escape, no activity had been seen from the buried entrance. The Count agreed to take the group to the yakfolk village hundreds of miles north in the Worldspine mountains so they could assault the fire giant stronghold of Ironslag, but first he had need of their skills in exchange. And so, the party along with Blagothkus gathered in his personal tower around a crystal ball and he laid out his plan. His goal was to have his chief rival in the cloud giant power structure - Countess Sansuri - submit to his rule.

The giant explained what he had been doing in the month since he and the party separated: he had been visiting castles of lesser cloud giant families and pleading his case as to why he was working for the dragon cult. His ‘treachery’ had become widely known among their kind, but each of them understood once Blagothkus explained it was due to the abduction of his only child, and how the Count turned against them once he discovered his murder. The Count also used his half of the recovered cult treasure to gift portions to each of these families, re-obtaining their pledge of fealty. However, those families that were vassals to Sansuri out of tradition could not submit to him, but he gained much information on her activities. Blagothkus had even sent multiple envoys to the Countess’ castle whom were all rebuked, but provided more intelligence.

The Countess had been ignoring her duties to her people, and since the shattering of the Ordning was apparently obsessed with finding a legendary cache of dragon-magic from the long fallen dragon empire believed to be hidden somewhere in the Storm Coast. This obsession, the other giant families and his envoys reported, seemed to have driven her mad. She believes with this dragon-magic at her disposal she could rule over all giants, not just the clouds, but toppling the power of the storm giants as well. While Count Blagothkus believes he should rule the cloud giants, he remained a firm believer in the structure of the Ordning brought on by their All-Father - sure of its eventual return. Since cloud giants do not kill other cloud giants, Blagothkus had devised a plan to suggest a high-risk/high-reward wager that the Countess would not be able to ignore.

Blagothkus would first try to appeal to her love for her two small children, explaining why he had been working for the Cult of the Dragon. Certain she would hear nothing of it and cast him as a traitor, he would offer her his own fealty (resulting in her ruling all cloud giants) if she won his bet. If she lost, she would have to submit to him instead. His wager to the Countess was that she could not protect her own castle, even from a band of smallfolk, and therefore should not be fit to protect all of cloud giant kind. And this is where the party came into Blagothkus’ plan.

During his travels over the last month, he had additionally come into possession of a magical black cloth, that the party could use to drape over her castle’s magical navigation orb, disabling it. So that was his ask of the party, to sneak into her castle while he went to see her. Out of tradition the Countess would have to meet with him and parley, while the party got into position near her castle’s orb. Once the Count made this wager and she accepted, he was certain she would raise the castle’s magical alarm. That would be their signal to drop the cloth over the orb disabling the castle’s controls.

The Count was partially worried that the Countess would not yield to him even after losing the wager, and so he was placing his trust in her younger, more reasonable brother, the castle’s castellan. In the event she broke her word after having failed to secure her castle, Blagothkus was betting the brother would take over, seeing his sister was truly unfit to lead. The party thought this was not the best of beliefs, but the Count himself like all cloud giants could not resist such high-risk/high-reward gambles. The Count reiterated the most important point, the group could not kill any cloud giants, but any other guardians of the castle were fair game. He also forbid the use of the Countess’ children as any sort of bargaining chip.

Castle of the Cloud Giants
The party agreed to participate in the plan, and coordinated that they should execute the plan at midnight. Under the cover of night, and with Blagothkus’ castle creating fog and storm clouds they would insert themselves by jumping off his castle and using Rachen’s ring of feather falling to land on the uppermost courtyard of the castle, where the Count believed the navigation orb was stored in a domed tower with no windows. The Count’s castle took six days to travel to meet Sansuri’s, ensuring to arrive in the middle of the night. During this time the party finalized their plans, and prepared the best they could.

The party waited on the battlement of one of the lower courtyard walls for the iceberg castle to fly over the Countess’ castle, when they would jump down. Even with the castle creating a storm cloud, with rain and wind making lots of noise, a few miles away from Sansuri’s castle the party could hear the painful screams of a dragon. The closer they got the more certain they were this dragon was within the Countess’ castle, and the more certain Alburt was that it was the voice of his bronze dragon friend Felgolos. Agreeing that this did not change their plan at the moment (once the Countess was overthrown they could see to the dragon’s release), the party prepared their HALO jump by polymorphing Rachen into a cloud giant. The rest of the group got into the giant sack Blagothkus had given them, and Rachen watched below readying for when to jump.

When the time looked right as Blagothkus’ castle flew over the Countess’, Rachen walked off the wall, and with his now giant-size ring of feather falling he slowly descended and landed mostly where he wanted, in the grassy area of the uppermost castle courtyard. It was storming and thundering from Blagothkus’ castle, and so while their approach was concealed, they could not see the guardians of this courtyard. Instead of cloud giants, there were stoic aarakocra (eagle men) perched on the walls spread out around the perimeter. Rachen landed almost right in front of one of them, and it seemed only slightly surprised at a cloud giant falling from the sky. Rachen wasted no time, dropped his sack, and grabbed this birdman by the head and slammed it into the grass. To his surprise, instead of an explosion of gore, the creature shattered into snow and ice.

The group had seen this type of magic before, and knew these birdmen were not real, but magical simulacrums. The party got out of the sack and Thia cast detect magic, and as they expected, the only giant-sized door to this central domed tower was indeed magically locked. Knowing a knock spell would be very loud and alert any giants even through the sound of the storm, Cadmus first cast a sphere of silence on the door. Lachlan then knocked the arcane lock and Rachen was able to slowly open the door. Peering inside expecting guards, he found nothing but the glowing navigation orb floating in the center of the space. The party quickly got into the room and closed the door behind them, all while Blagothkus’ castle was moving downward and rotating to line up the two castle’s entrance gates.

Inside the party anxiously waited for their signal, and to keep them apprised of the situation Alburt was controlling the mind of his familiar The Breeze 4. The owl was flying around the castle watching as Count Blagothkus exited his castle and walked through the entry gate of Sansuri’s, being met by her castellan, and escorted into the castle itself. Rachen still in the form of a storm giant, waited with the black magic cloth in hand ready to drape it over the navigation orb, which hung ten feet above the ground. About fifteen minutes later, now halfway through Rachen’s polymorph spell, the castle alarm was sounded. Just before he threw the cloth over the orb, Rachen touched the orb.

The orb glowed and threw up magical navigation runes in the space around it, and just like Blagothkus’ castle the entire room they were in began to turn transparent. For a few moments as the entire castle seemed to turn invisible, the party could peer through the floors and rooms and get a general layout of the interior of the castle. They verified where Felgolos was chain up, where giant guards were stationed, where the giant children had been sleeping, and where Blaghothkus was. He was in castle audience chamber (next to the dungeon) with the Countess, her castellan brother, and a few other cloud giant guards. Rachen then threw the cloth over the orb, and immediately the room snapped back to its solid appearance and the magical alarm ceased.

The party waited, with Rachen still in his cloud giant form near the orb, and the rest of the party lined up along the wall. Just before the guards arrived, Alburt polymorphed Rufus into a night owl and Lachlan cast invisibility on him. When the five cloud giants came into the room, they were surprised to see another cloud giant already guarding the smallfolk. Rachen quickly played into being one of the guards from the opposite shift, who happened to be nearby and arrived first. He was ‘watching’ the smallfolk, who were not being aggressive, and wanted others to see the device they had used to disable the orb.

The guards bought his story, took the weapons from the party, removed the cloth from the orb, and escorted the group down into the castle. While the door was open, the invisible Rufus flew out into the sky and circled the castle trying his best looking through windows to follow his companions. As he expected, the guards took the party into the dungeon where Felgolos was chained. Rufus watched as they were led into the windowless room. Just before this dungeon, the party passed by the open audience chamber and saw the Countess arguing with her brother as Blagothkus sat on his knees in front of an open hole in the floor, with two cloud giant guards behind him with their weapons leveled. As the Count had feared, it looked like Sansuri was not submitting even after losing the bet, but it did not appear as if her brother was taking action.

And that is where the session ended, with the party locked in individual metal human-sized cages in the dungeon with Felgolos, who was surprised to see his friend Alburt enter the space. Rachen convinced the other guards to let him be the one to stand guard of the dungeon, as he listened to Countess Sansuri and her brother argue over whether or not to throw Count Blagothkus out the hole to his death and forcefully try to take over those families that pledged loyalty to him. The owl Rufus perched in the window of the room where Rachen stood guard.

It was the night of the two hundred and second day since the raid on Greenest.

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