== Moonday, Lamashan 27, 4708; Spires of Xin Shalast; late morning ==

We left the gateway device to crackle and sputter on its own, and passed by the image of Karzough, which was still in the antechamber glaring at us. He made some snarky comment about how we had done him a favor by killing off the workers from within, but obviously his goon force of followers could have easily done the same long before now if that was his desire.

I guess Karzough likes his grapes sour.

In the hallway we paused to discuss our next move: the small door directly ahead looked appealing, as did the the larger doors we passed on the way from the throne room.

A moment later our course was decided for us as an unearthly howl echoed out from Karzough’s direction. Sedjewick said, “That’s a large extra-planar hound of some sort, and it sounds really pissed off!”

We ran to the door ahead and quickly stepped inside the oddly shaped room beyond. We were obviously on the outer rim of the spire, as was evident by the curving wall and window looking out to Mhar Massif. Other than a handful of discarded items the room was empty.

More howls came from the hallway, along with the shouts and clatter of alarm and combat.

Wait, combat? Why would Karzough’s forces want to fight something he summoned to chase after us? Unless…

The sounds and yelling moved off to the left and so we peeked out the door to see a sticky black vapor clinging near the floor and a lot of blood.

We could hear a group of harridans fighting something in the throne room, and so we took the opportunity to pass through the nearby set of double doors.

Karzough was there in another square antechamber, and he looked seriously unhappy.

“What did you fools release into my realm?”

Ah, so he did not summon whatever it was… but then where did it come from? Was the gateway device now randomly pulling in creatures from other planes?

We had intended to ignore these images of Karzough, but Trask couldn’t resist and quipped, “Have you met your new champion?” as he pointed at Nolin.

It took Karzough less than a second to realize that the Rune of Greed was on the cheek of the same person who also boasted the Rune of Wrath, and his face turned a very bright red as he ranted, “Why… what? This is an outrage! You, you are not worthy to bear the symbol of Greed!”

To which Nolin calmly replied, “I’m collecting all seven.”

That was too much for Karzough, who cast Baleful Polymorph on Nolin, but he simply shrugged it off. It was encouraging to see him waste a spell for which we had Rune-forged weapons to counter.

Large rooms on either side looked like barracks for the harridans, who had clearly left in a hurry. A door at the opposite side led to a hallway and an empty lab, plus a lot of interconnected and unused storage rooms.

While Sabin and I searched these rooms, Sedjewick had occupied Karzough by asking about how the runelords managed to overthrow the emperor, and Trask had crept over to the throne room and saw the scattered remains of ten harridans. The double doors from this room, which were closed when we left, were open.

We left Karzough to reminisce over old times on his own while we moved through the throne room.

We saw the hound at the same moment it saw us, and it came bounding in toward us. I cast Prayer, Sedjewick sang, and Kane exclaimed something not polite as his attempt to Banish the creature failed.

Trask used his own form of banishment by hitting it with a fireball, and we all attacked it using whatever means we could. It had already been wounded by its encounter with Karzough’s minions, and so we were able to slay it quickly.

Sabin cut its head off, which Nolin then took and tossed into the room where Karzough was waiting, and said, “I am going to send you the bill for this.”

== Moonday, Lamashan 27, 4708; Spires of Xin Shalast; mid day ==

Presently we opened the small door on the north side of the throne room and entered a small room with a set of double doors at the far end. Beyond these doors was a huge chamber with massive furs (from mammoths) organized in mounds upon the floor. A golden arch was on an adjacent wall at the far side of the room, but of more immediate interest were the eight storm giants that stood at attention, with either piles of large rocks at their sides or large bows in their hands.

Trask put up a Wall of Force, dividing the room in two and isolating the two nearest giants from their allies.

A giant shot me with an oversized arrow, which hurt a lot, but the wall of force protected us from the giants shooting at us from the far side.

Sabin created Black Tentacles on the far side to try and ensnare some giants, but they were simply too large and strong for this tactic to work.

One of the nearby giants bellowed, “I have had enough of this nonsense, die!” as he charged Nolin. Once again we all took a hand at combat (even me) while Kane kept an eye and ear open to the throne room to prevent us from being flanked.

Nolin, Avia and Sabin traded mighty blows with our two giants, while Kane and I made sure all of us were in good health. The giants had no such support.

A giant on the far side banged heavily on a pair of double doors and yelled, “Assist, assist!”

Trask set a wall of flame against that wall, making it unpleasantly hot for anyone to come through that way.

Sedjewick sang a song of discord, and some of the giants on the far side began to fight one another with good results.

Avia killed the first giant and Sabin quickly followed suit with the second when Kane announced that cloud giants were in the throne room. I sealed off that doorway with a Wall of Stone.

We found each of our giants wore a ring with a star on it, which were similar in nature to our sihedron rings.

[1680] +3 deflection bonus, +3 resistance, endure elements, change the appearance of armor
[1681] another star ring

They also wore magic plate mail, but it was large and heavy, and we left them for later.

By now the cloud giants had broken through the wall of stone, and so I placed a circular Blade Barrier in the adjacent room in such a way that anyone trying to get at us had to pass through it twice. Trask added to the challenge with another wall of flame.

One giant tried to pass the gauntlet, but emerged as a fine spray of charred giant flesh.

Another two bravely entered the blade barrier room, but seemed reluctant to push through to the other side until a loud voice shouted, “You are the Wardens of Wind, go forward!”

One of them “went forward” and was turned into warm liquid goo, after which the other giant wet himself and then whimpered with fright and indecision. It eventually worked up enough courage to charge at us, and might have made it too had Nolin not been there to great it with his great sword.

A third managed to get into the side room, and prepared itself to charge past the second set of barriers.

Meanwhile, the storm giants on the far side of the room had managed to kill one another off in a nonsensical frenzy of violence that transcended the original effect of Sedjewick’s song. One storm giant remained, and he flashed us a large (mostly) toothless grin.

Having been denied easy access to us via the throne room, the remaining cloud giants burst through the wall of flame into the main room, but the wall of force stood between them and us.

I lobbed a couple of fireballs (via a necklace we had collected some time before) at the giants, and Trask created a Mage’s Sword and began to hack at them as well.

I created a cloud of mist around the giants (not a great choice, given that these were cloud giants), who returned the favor by floating up and casting a fog bank around us around us.

Trask used a staff to blow the mists away and then killed the remaining storm giant with his magical sword.

The remaining cloud giant behind us finally charged through the blade barrier and wall of flame, but Sabin had braced a spear in its path, and it impaled itself and perished.

We still have a handful of cloud giants on the other side of the wall of force, floating above and in the mists, but I am taking a quick moment to update my journal with these events.

Moonday, 27 Lamashan (still)

Catching my breath. We’ve a quick break between things attempting to kill us. Perhaps the fact that we’re still alive will annoy Karzoug.

He certainly annoys me.

Fearing that there might be an explosion soon, we left the “projection room” while it still seemed to be producing some sort of weak image but seemed mostly disabled. We went a ways down the hall and paused in what seemed like a defensible spot.

Sabin wanted to memorize a spell so we were going to wait 20 min while he did that. But it was less than a minute before we heard a loud and other-worldly type howl.

Sedgewick looked startled, and said it reminded him of an obscure legend about a very large hound .. a beast from beyond time.

Since that didn’t sound friendly at all, we quickly went into a room to our south, on the theory that whatever it was would have to either break down the door or fight through the doorway, which would limit exposure to our fighters while the healers and magic users did their thing. We had arranged ourselves when …

From behind the door there were shouts from the left. A howl from the right, continuing up to and then past the door. There were sounds of battle from the left now, perhaps in the throne room. We carefully exited our hidey hole, and much to my surprise the party chose to explore the rooms we’d just passed instead of checking out the fight in the room practically next door. Really? Seemed a little risky to me.

We found what appeared to be the guard’s living area, or at least staging area. Opening another door we found .. Karzoug! Again! But at least this time he was less smug.

“What did you release into my realm?”

Now, witty banter is my strong suit and had it not been for the fact that we were discussing something that apparently could worry Karzoug, I’d have been all over this. But we’d also discussed earlier that these apparitions seemed designed to make us burn spells more than anything, and we’d decided to largely ignore them. But I couldn’t resist just one reply.

“We’re not worried. We have the champion of Greed to defend us,” and I pointed at Nolin, who whipped off his bandana to display the Rune of Greed. I thought the Karzoug image was going to explode into little Greedy parts. “This is an outrage!” said Karzoug, visibly upset.

“I’m collecting all seven,” said Nolin.

And then we went to leave, except that Angry Karzoug tried to polymorph Nolin. Which failed, because of his Runeforge-enhanced weapon. Nolin raised his eyebrows and I thought he was going to say something droll, but he just let the spell failure speak for itself.

Takkad kept looking in rooms that did not contain a hideous hound, and most people joined him. Sedgewick said he was going to see if Karzoug would give him any interesting information, and went back to chat with him. And they call me headstrong.

We were slowly searching the (fortunately) empty rooms but I was getting impatient. The Horrible Hound could be stalking us for all we know. There were no sounds anymore from the Throne Room and finally I announced I was going to go check it out because, well, SOMEBODY should.

So using my stealth, I approached the room and looked in. There were 10 harridan bodies there (I think; they were not whole so it was a bit difficult to tell in a glance) and nothing else in the room. Unless it was invisible, it had moved on. And defeated 10 harridans in short order, I thought as I returned to the group.

Sedgewick returned about the same time, looking satisfied so I guess he must have learned stuff from Karzoug. The group as a whole went to view the carnage in the Throne Room. Or perhaps I should call it the Thrown Room, because it looked more like a puppy had tossed ten dolls around like toys, after chewing each of them to a frayed mess.

And, uh, then it came back. It entered the room thru the door to the northeast, and saw us at the same time we saw it. It bounded towards us like a happy puppy, if a happy puppy were slavering, ugly, and insane.

It looked shadowy so I threw a fireball at it before it got too close. Looked unhappy, so probably a good choice. (Although to be honest, I’m not sure it brought a happy face with it to this plane.) Kane attempted to banish it and Takkad started praying even as Sedgewick urged us on with a song of courage. I managed to haste everyone before we resumed the usual fight positions, and the battle was on.

But the battle was not long. The harridans had apparently taken their toll, and it took Nolin, Avia, and Sabin only seconds to dispatch it. Nolin took its head into the room with Karzoug, pausing only long enough to say, “I’ll send you a bill for this later.”

We left before Karzoug could muster up a retort.

We returned to the Thrown Room and decided to examine the room to the north. This has proven to be a questionable decision. Inside the room were some very large giants with some large piles of rocks and very large bows, paired with very large arrows. Eight of them.

I divided the enemy with a wall of force, per usual, leaving two on the side nearest us and six on the other. Then I hasted folks, another pretty standard action. I managed to fireball the two close ones, before the fighters closed. They hammered hard on our fighters, but our healers kept them healthy. One of the distant giants banged on a door and yelled for help, so I put up a wall of flame against that wall, facing the door. And another wall of flame that burned the butts of a couple of those other ones. Then Sedgewick changed from a song of courage to a song of dischord, which caused some of the giants on the other side of the wall to disagree with each other. Physically. Violently.

This proved surprisingly effective. Avia, and then Sabin killed the two close giants and then we watched in amazement as the others just beat each other up. Even those not affected by the song were forced to defend themselves against the ones who were, because they didn’t simply fight each other. They hit anything near them that they disagreed with.

While this was going on, Kane announced storm giants were coming from the Thrown Room. Apparently they’d figured out the fire thing and decided to circle around back. Takkad created a wall of stone to block them temporarily, but we expected that storm giants would likely be able to hack at the stone and eventually remove it.

As they came close to doing this, he put in a circular blade barrier, positioned such that to reach the door leading to our room, they’d need to cross the barrier twice. For good measure, I added another wall of fire too. The results were remarkably effective.

The first who tried came through as a chopped, burnt, corpse-like shape. Dead. Two more entered the blade barrier circle, but after experiencing it once were reluctant to complete the journey and close with us. One was challenged to go through and also emerged dead.

The remaining cloud giants abandoned their effort to attack us through the blade barrier, and circled back around to the door on the north end of the storm giant room. There was only one weakened, injured “champion” storm giant left to rendezvous with the fresh cloud giants. I responded with a mage sword to add to the battle. It turns out there was at least one mage among them, so we traded minor spells: they made fog, and I cast fly on myself and used a staff to create a wind to blow it away.

This battle is sorely depleting our magic. While we have depleted Karzoug’s as well, we may both yet get a chance to recharge.