Our plan to release the dragons into the fortress in hopes that they would cover up our presence here was wildly successful, far more so than we had imagined. Cona informed us this morning that the two young wyrms were blamed for the escape of the dwarves, the deaths of the ogres and giants in the forge, and even the lammia. They were captured and killed with further served the purpose of leaving no witnesses to our presence in the caverns. Not only does no one know we are here, but there is no reason to even suspect it. We have bought ourselves more time and considerable freedom of movement.

But there is still Mokmurian. Alert to our presence or not, he is a dangerous foe and even more so surrounded by the beings with whom he has entered into service and they must be dealt with.

The first of these was an ancient hill giant which occupied a room on this very level. The battle with him was brutal and unexpectedly lengthy, for he could meld into the dirt to heal himself and we had no means (magic or otherwise) for affecting him in this state. The first time he did this we could do nothing but wait for him to return and we were interrupted by a pair of stone giants who had come wandering in for reasons unknown. We killed them and tied them up on posts that were in the room for this purpose to make it look like the hill giant had lost his temper and patience– something we were told was not unheard of– and thus set him up as responsible for their deaths. When he emerged from the dirt we were ready for him and took him down quickly, and we buried his remains save for his head which we took with us. In this manner we have used his reputation to our advantage, and once again we seem to have covered our tracks and bought ourselves more time.

The passage to the lower levels that house Mokmurian’s chambers and study are private, and no one dares enter there except at his order. With the hill giant dead there is not likely to be someone who will follow us there. As for the lower levels themselves, what we have seen so far is a single path through a series of chambers, some with traps, some occupied by allies. This does suggest that we will have to fight our way to Mokmurian, which I am sure is intentional, but it also means we will not have to watch our backs. Or so I hope.

Toilday, Erastus 1 … still

This has been a very full day. As I write this, I may finally say it is over, but the path here was dangerous and exhausting.

Conna, it turns out, had a map of this area that she was able to share with us, and this helped us immensely. She herself, she revealed, commands a small number of spells, including stone shape, stone tell, rock to mud, fly, blink, invisibility, scorching ray, charm person, identify, mage armor, obscuring mist, and shocking grasp. As we looked over the map, frequent questions were “what is here? what is this for?” And it was in that vein that we learned where Mokmurian’s feared assistant, Lokansir, held office, so to speak. He was responsible for “breaking in” new recruits.

She also mentioned that Mokmurian spent a lot of time downstairs in the library, and Lokansir was pretty much the only other one that was allowed down there. If we could take out Lokansir here, we wouldn’t have to worry about reinforcements coming (from this level anyway) when we finally attacked Mokmurian. Unfortunately, the group felt this was something we really needed to deal with now, while we had the element of surprise — and also before we could recharge any spells. I considered this risky and ill-advised, but was clearly in the minority. I just felt my options were so limited at that point in time, and for the first time in quite a while, I might need someone other than myself to protect me.

Or revive me.

When we arrived at the room that was Lokansir’s office, we were greeted by some massive stone doors. These looked hard to move, even for a giant, and we weren’t giants. Our plan was to enter thr room under cover of an obscuring mist. Additionally, Nolin and Avia were granted greater invisibility. I hasted everyone. Sabin cast heroism. And we heaved at the doors, and entered.

Invisible Avia entered first, and was greeted by an immense, carved hall. The walls were well worked, and sported what almost looked like giant ribs and placed as if they supported the ceiling overhead. Contrasting the stonework was a floor that appeared to be dirt, in which were 7 15′ tall tree trunks. Each had a set of manacles attached to them and smoldering coals and a branding iron with easy reach. There were runes all over. And Lokansir …

.. was staring at the door, waiting for us to come in. I didn’t believe he could see invisible, but he clearly had heared us opening the door and probably entering. And when the visible members entered, he did make some clever comment about puny humans. Y’know, every giant born thinks he’s the first one to think of that phrase but I’m getting kind of tired of it.

The plan worked pretty well. Within the first fifteen seconds of entering the room, Avia had gotten four solid blows on him. Nolin had gotten three, and Sabin had gotten one plus a good magic missile. I myself had attacked him twice with a ray of enfeeblement (from my wand) and there were arrows flying and muted cries of victory. And then something very unexpected happened. He started to sink into the earth. Not quite like quicksand, but also not quite like he had a secret hole in the ground. More like .. more like .. oh crap.

He was a hill giant, not a stone giant. The earthen floor was no coincidence. And I was willing to bet he was either escaping or regenerating by this action. Avia said the earth was evil, and we tried burning it and kicking it and lots of different types of attacks, but we just couldn’t damage him while he was in earth form. We did verify that the floor was stone beneath the earth, and the earth was something like 3 feet deep. Rarallo tried frying it with a fireball; no visible effect. Then again, how would we know if we managed to kill the earth??

We weren’t even sure what he could see or sense in his current form. Since we were paranoid about his suddenly rising up around us somehow, we nervously searched the room. Found no personal effects. Then things got worse.

The doors opened and two stone giants came in. There may have agaih been a tired remark about puny humans but in any case the battle was on. After all that had happened today already, having “only” two stone giants to mess with was almost a relief. I must say the eight of us have gotten it down to a science, and it took less than half a minute before they had gone to meet whatever deity they believed in. Nolin and Sabin took the brunt of their attack, but the healers made it so they barely felt it. In a stroke of genius, we decided to hang up the giants on the posts and anybody coming in would think they were not sentries that had discovered intruders, but rather miscreants who had needed punishment.

We weren’t sure how long our luck would hold, but so far almost nothing that had happened screamed that the hall had been breached. We were hoping to keep that streak going as long as possible! In the end, we decided to use a rope trick to rest and wait for Lokansir to reconstitute himself. We created a stone platform (15′ x 15′) in one corner of the room and put our rope trick there. (The thought was that the stone would stop him from rising underneath our rope and give us a decent chance of not simply jumping into his lap as we exited the rope.)

About 1pm, we entered the rope trick and tried to start some studying. But a mere half hour later, the ground rippled and the giant reappeared, rising from the earth. He looked at the giants manacled to the trunks, and he looked at the stone platform, and seemed to consider it all. He started heading for the doors and we suddenly realized that if he raised an alarm, our lives got a whole lot more coplicated. We dropped out of the trick, and attacked.

Although our magic was still diminished, we again mounted a successful and vicious attack. Not that he didn’t try the ‘sink-into-earth’ thing again, but this time we had enough people around him that that gave several of us a chance to get in one last blow, and we killed him before he could get back into the ground.

Now that he wasn’t trying to become one with the ground and we had more than fifteen seconds to interact with him, we noticed that the tattoos all over his body looked to be reminiscent of ancient runes … but they were not. Those of us who knew such things could see that they were wrong. It’s as if they were done from description rather than from knowledge.

As has become traditional in our group, I guess, the head was removed and Takkad added it to his collection. He was then dismembered and buried randomly throghout the room. We were a little worried that that might allow him to regenerate and revive, but we checked after about an hour and there seemed to be no healing happening.

He’d had a +3 great club, but no other magic on him.

At long last we returned to the rope trick and were able to rest and study. It took two rope tricks for everyone to get that benefit, but finally everyone had recovered their spells. By now it was late in the evening, so we retired to the ‘haven room’, again in a rope trick, to wait for Conna to show.

Wealday, Erastus 2

It was 2am before Conna came by, and she showed immediate relief when we told her the hill giant was dead. She mentioned it was safe for the moment. While security had been increased because of the recent events, nobody suspected it was the result of a human invasion. The rogue dragons had been found and killed, and the missing guards were replaced with new ones culled from the tribes above us.

Our luck still held. Now with the hill giant out of the way, we need not worry about a (serious) attack from the rear when we travelled to reach Mokmurian.

The last thing Conna revealed (almost in passing) was that she had a familiar, and it was a bat.

With that, we took off towards the library. As we headed south east, we discovered that the corridor was lined not by walls, but more by cloths and other cover behind which were three trolls, that poked hurtful things at us. They were fairly tough, but we put them down and moved on. Past them, the corridor went into a downward sprial, eventually losing about 800 feet in altitude before opening up into a junction for a east and south corridor.

We took the eastern corridor first and found the passage blocked just before a largish (10’x15′) room that didn’t yield anything valuable. Heading south, though, we ran into s strange room.

First, just looking around the room was very disorienting. The walls seemed to move … not the ones you looked at but those on the periphery of your vision. It made people feel ill.

Second, actually entering the room made some people shrink. Yes that’s right: Rigerl, Sabin and Takkad all shrank to Kane-size. I was able to enter the room without effect, but judging from my companions I guess I was lucky. I wonder if they will change back at some time.

Third, there was strange but dangeous looking giant here. His body was carved with scores of Thassilonian symbols and energy sprang between them. For some odd reason, he also appeared to have mo muscles than the average giant. Avia detected evil … and then the lights went out. A couple of our fighters have blind fighting, so they were standing by in case they could be of service.

It took several really good blows to take him out, and he gave as good as he took. But it cost us some spells, cost us some time, and I believe that was his real purpose.