Moonday, 27 Lamashan (still)

We were still facing, potentially, six more cloud giants. This room was highly defensible and the walls of force and fire helped break the opposing group into nice digestible chunks. (Odd turn of phrase considering the blade barrier we had going next door.)

Avia, as we’ve come to expect, headed up to find a cloud giant largely by touch. One swung at her, revealing itself, and she responded in kind. She took some damage, but not as much as she gave.

Kane dispelled the fog cloud and put an end to that sort of adventure. The giants might still be flying but they were no longer invisible. (Rigel silently went invisible and we were all pretty sure we knew what she was trying to do.) For my part, I picked out a cloud giant and threw three scorching rays at him.

Now with visible targets, Avia went to town on the giant nearest her. Giant blood dribbled down to the floor below. Nolin technically got the killing blow on Avia’s target, but was staggering a bit himself. Takkad set him up with a powerful heal spell and he looked MUCH re-energized. I took advantage of all this to get a mage sword started on one of the giants. While I am unlikely to draw as much blood as the fighters, every little bit helps! Sedgewick tried a bit of tomfoolery by mimicking a giant’s voice and calling out, “It’s all clear in here now”. But since we weren’t exactly invisible and some others could see clearly into our room, it evoked derision more than anything.

As Avia continued her bloody attack, I tried another scorching ray. Only one of the three got through this time. But Sedgewick started an image of another blade barrier around a small group of them, and that did cause them to pause. There was ample evidence around them that one did not mess with a blade barrier, and it gave them pause.

Sabin told them to drop their weapons and surrender to their betters. They seemed inclined to do the first, but then the second seemed to reinforce their backbones. Then we invoked the desires of the Champion of Greed and gestured towards Nolin, who revealed his rune. This cowed the giants, and they left weaponless to go to the city.

We retrieved two more sihedron rings from the corpses, but left the huge morningstars and armor we’d never be able to adequately lift or wear. We inspected the arch and markings in this room and determined that Karzoug was pretty full of himself, and that the archway led to Karzoug’s personal lab and harem. Certainly something to check out in the end – the ladies would no doubt be thankful – but we need to seal the deal first and put down Karzoug.

About this time we heard a voice say in Thassilonian, “The champion ordered WHAT?” There was a mumbled reply and then an order to go get Khalib.

We looked at each other. It seems we were not yet done making this place safe for us. A door was pushed open and a glyph of warding that Kane had established blew up in a giant’s face. Takkad looked at the giant, which was one we’d sent off earlier, and dressed him down for not obeying the Champion of Greed. This caused a few things to transpire.

Rigel went invisible.
I cast greater invisibility on myself to better attack anonymously, because it was pretty obvious this was not going to be a diplomatic mission.
Sabin cast heroism on himself.
Avia and Nolin positioned themselves optimally.

The look on the giant’s face told us all we wanted to know. He was not here of his own volition. Another giant shoved past him and a voice from behind compelled them: “Go on, go kill them!”

Takkad bluffed once more — “You dare defy the champion of Greed? What will Karzoug do to you?” They paused but then came in followed by a rune giant right behind them. Behind them, through the doorway a human came as well.

Avia provided a flurry of blows on one of the cloud giants. Sabin cast haste on all. Nolin ganged up on Avia’s giant and made it bleed worse. But one of the giants attacked Takkad, who is not normally front-line material. Another attacked Avia, Nolin, and Sabin, while Sedgewick began a song of courage even as he attempted to dominate a cloud giant.

Rigel saw her opportunity and got a sneak attack in on Avia’s giant, killing it. Avia simply aimed her sword at another giant and began systematically dismantling it. I got a mage sword going against the rune giant, and got some satisfying cuts into it. Sabin tried a feeblemind on Khalid, but it failed. It did, however, invoke a response of magic missile back at him – contingency spell, I suspect, that fired whenever he was attacked – and then tried to disintegrate him. But his weapon absorbed the spell harmlessly, frustrating Khalib greatly. The rune giant was a powerful foe, hammering hard on Nolin, Avia, and poor Takkad.

But then Rigel got a sneak attack on the rune giant, and Avia inflicted some serious wounds as well. I hit him and Khalib with chain lightning (Khalib looked like he might have ducked) and Sabin and Nolin also attacked him. All of us at once was a lot for the rune giant to take, but both he and Khalib still had some fight left in them.

Strangely, though, Khalib didn’t have much. He had the disadvantage of being a magic user, and perhaps more importantly NOT being giant. He threw some more magic missiles at Sabin, but attacks by first Avia and then Sabin sent his soul to Karzoug.

It was Avia who finally dealt the killing blow to the rune giant, and my mage sword continued to beat on other giants. The clerics kept a steady stream of channels and cure critical, mass going and although we did at times get close to death, never did we knock at death’s door.

Khalib’s corpse granted us

[1684] Staff of size alteration (10 charges)
[1685] Amulet of natural armor +2
[1686] sihedron ring
[1687] robes (like arch magi, but +4 IN rather than resist)
[1688] gold ivory statue of himself
[1689] spellbook of all known spells but for enchantment and illusion
[1690] container of gem dust (~5000gp)

We held a quick strategic discussion. Although it seemed we were wearing down Karzoug and that he might be low on magic, the same was true of us. Our healers were nearing the end of what they could do to help us, and as tempting as it might be to strike at Karzoug while he was weakened, the same penalty would apply to us and we rely too much on the constant healing available to us. The decision was made to stop for the night and rest, to recover spells.

We set up the usual rope trick, with the usual guard duty, and began to rest.

Toilday, Lamashan 28

We awoke rested, refreshed, and restocked on our spells.

No doubt, so did Karzoug.

We began exploring. We quickly found a room with a 20 ft gold statue of Karzoug, with a smokeless fire. There was a green lens about 2.5′ across over the brazier, in an iron frame. It was decidedly magic with a transmutation aura.

This all looked interesting but we thought we probably ought to be able to inspect this without interruption .. which meant a bit more exploration yet to ensure we were alone. We found a series of small cells, less prisoner cells than simply meager accommodations, perhaps something similar to what a monk may use. We found what we think may have been Khalib’s “room” and noted there were books in there that might be of interest. But about this time, another rune giant challenged us.

“What are you doing here?”
“I am the champion of Greed.” replied Nolin.

And apparently that’s all it takes to start a fight with a rune giant. No pleasantries about one’s mother or heritage, hygiene or appearance. Just, boom.

With a bit of a sigh, I cast haste on all. Another rune giant appeared, and seemed to smirk as he announced, “I got this.” I’ve heard that before. Looking around, I didn’t see Rigel – no doubt invisible by now. Sabin made many images of himself and Nolin challenged the first rune giant. Kane shrewdly cast create water and thus created an ice patch right where the 2nd rune giant was about to step, and he slid gracefully into the blade barrier Takkad had just created. Such teamwork.

I magic missiled the first even as the second hit the ice and went into a skid. The bigger they are … Takkad cast prayer on us all, and Sabin moved to hit the second rune giant. Meanwhile, Nolin and Avia were beating hard on the first one.

My trusty mage sword came out against the second rune giant, but missed. Sabin and, of all people, Kane and Rigel became the objects of his wrath. Rigel tried hard to sneak attack the rune giant but just couldn’t quite make it work., The fighters kept beating on the rune giants, though, and finally my mage sword took down the last one with a final triumphant swing.

We collected [1691, 1692] sihedron rings, but left the rest of the giant-sized paraphenalia where it had landed. We studied Khalib’s diaries and discovered an important fact. Karzoug was trapped on another plane he’d created to survive the fall of his kingdom. To return, though, needed power – power he was collecting through souls sent his way by Mokmurian and his agents. But if he didn’t get enough power that way, he’d be trapped there.

He was nearly there, but not quite yet.

Takkad suddenly got that look in his eye which proclaims, “I’m about to be impulsive and illogical” and strode down to the room with the green lens and shot at it with is crossbow. The bolt bounced off. But when he asked for Sabin’s help, Sabin obliged by striking with his adamantine axe and a strange thing happened.

There was a wavering in the air, and beyond appeared a chamber that looked easily 200′ in depth, across white walls, looking like a shaft. At the bottom there appeared to be water.

I am apprehensive about this. Some in the group want to enter, but how do we get back? If Karzoug can’t get out, how will we? If we enter to destroy Karzoug, are we also consigning ourselves to the same eternal fate?

== Moonday, Lamashan 27, 4708; Spires of Xin Shalast; afternoon ==

The nearby giants were hiding up in the clouds near the ceiling, and so Avia flew up and bumped into one. It punched her in surprise, and she sliced it open.

Kane then dispelled the fog cloud and we could see the three storm giants hovering on their side of the room (one now bleeding messily onto the floor below).

We knew additional cloud giants were nearby, but fear of the blade barrier room appeared to be enough (for now) to hold them at bay.

Sabin and Nolin both flew up to join Avia and began the systematic battle of attrition with the giants, which is a good strategy for us because typically we have healing support and our foes do not.

And indeed I was quite busy keeping our three fighters well enough to stand toe to toe with three very large giants wielding ludicrously huge morningstars.

Sedjewick thought to trick the cloud giants into remaining where they were by calling out “All clear!” imitating one of the storm giants.

“All clear where? I see one standing right there.”

Unfortunately several of us were quite visible from the other room.

“It’ll be clear in a minute — I am just swatting some flies,” one of the storm giants called in answer.

As usual with giants, they cannot for the life of them imagine that they could ever be defeated by anyone smaller than themselves. This worked to our advantage, because they never fled even when it was clear they were having their asses handed to them.

In short order the three storm giants were dead.

Sedjewick then placed an image of a blade barrier surrounding the four cloud giants. All three blanched at this, and one soiled himself.

Sabin yelled out, “Drop your weapons and surrender to your betters and we will let you live!” They dropped their weapons.

I glared at them and said, “Now leave this place and go to the city.”

They seemed reluctant to do so until I gestured toward Nolin and said, “The Champion of Greed wills it!”

Nolin stepped forward and said, “Indeed I do, but first, where is Karzoug?”

“Oh, you are now the champion of greed. We didn’t know the old one had been replaced. I’m sorry, sir, but we do not know where Karzoug is, but his apprentice is in the giant cells.”

And with that the foursome left, with many a bowing and fumbling about.

Two of the dead were wearing sihedron rings (which we took) plus magical armor and various weapons (which we did not).

[1682] sihedron ring
[1683] sihedron ring

We stripped the giant corpses and piled the armor before the doors, and then turned our attention to the room.

Furs were piled about on the floor (some scorched by various fire effects, and most sodden from all of the fog and mist), a pair of double doors was in the far wall, and to our right was an arch.

It was a golden arch marked with thousands of runes, and beyond that a large alcove. Mostly the runes made boasts about Karzoug, but some were about transmutation magic, and one set said, “All who pass this arch are his.”

Well that certainly put a damper on any thoughts on passing through to the alcove.

Sedjewick stared at the archway with that look he sometimes gets, and said that it was a portal to Karzoug’s private chambers.

Interesting, and something to think about…

== Moonday, Lamashan 27, 4708; Spires of Xin Shalast; evening ==

The sound of heavy foot steps pulled us away from the arch, and someone was yelling (and clearly annoyed), “What do you mean the champion ordered you to the city? Why did she…”

We heard a giant mumbling something, followed by…

“He? What do you mean, ‘he’? Never mind — you go get Khalib. We need the Ceoptra, but she is unavailable.”

This was followed by more shouting and a great deal of thumping about and slamming of doors.

“Where was this imposter?”

“He wasn’t an imposter: he had the rune!”

And with that the door was pushed open and a giant was met with a blast from a Glyph of Warding, courtesy of Kane.

Oh dear, it was one of the giants we had sent on his way earlier. I stared at him angrily and said, “How dare you disobey the champion of Greed?”

He looked sheepishly about and clearly did not want to enter, but was shoved aside by another giant.

Behind them someone ordered, “Go on, kill them!”

I replied, “You dare attack the champion of Greed? Think of what Karzoug will do to you!”

They paused, clearly conflicted, but the fear of whoever was behind them now overcame their fear of whatever Karzoug might or might not do to them later.

In came the giants, and a rune giant close behind. Behind them, through the doorway Sabin could see a human stalking toward us, most likely Khalib, and Sabin attempted Feeblemind on him.

Meanwhile the giants engaged our fighters, and we fell into our usual hack, slash and heal routine, but with an eye out for the human. The rune giant made the fighting more difficult, but it also afforded Trask a chance to use Chain Lightening to zap it (to no affect) and Khalib behind (to good affect, if his cry of pain was any indication).

One of the giants fell by the time Khalib entered to face us, but if he thought to stay safely away from melee and hit us with ranged spells, Avia cleared up that misconception, as she ran over and cut into him deeply with her sword.

Trask fireballed two giants, and Sabin lunged at Khalib, slaying him.

We continued to hack away at the giants, with spells and weapons, until at last they were all killed.

Khalib, while seemingly a pushover, had quite a few interesting possessions.

[1684] staff of size alteration and magic weapon (10 charges)
[1685] amulet of +2 natural armor
[1686] sihedron ring
[1687] robes (like arch magi, but +4 INT rather than resists)
[1688] gold ivory statue of himself
[1689] speel book of all known spells (except enchantment and illusion)
[1690] container full of gem dust

By now we were tired and low on spells, and so we returned to the small room where we hid from the hound, and then using Rope Trick we set up camp.

== Toilday, Lamashan 28, 4708; Spires of Xin Shalast; morning ==

Nothing had changed when we left our Rope Trick refuge in the morning and made our way through the throne room into the main entry hall (a new area for us, but devoid of anything interesting). We then passed through another set of double doors into the arch room, which had been the scene of our yesterday’s battles.

We once again looked at the portal beneath the archway and then passed through the double doors to our left.

These led to a vast chamber which occupied nearly half of this level of the spire. The outer wall and several interior hallways with many doors arced around to the southeast.

Right before us was a huge golden pagoda-style structure. A gigantic twenty foot tall gold statue of Karzoug stood to the south, facing away from the entrance towards a brazier burning with a smokeless fire.

The statue held a large iron frame, and set in the frame was a large green crystal, sparling and glittering in the light of the brazier.

The crystal was blindingly magical.

Within the pagoda, against the far wall, a pair of statues stood guard over a ten foot long sarcophagus.

We decided to save this promising bit of architecture until after we explored the more mundane area to the south.

The arching hallways with many doors were cells for the inhabitants and servants who lived in the spire. Each was relatively small (for giants) and spartan. A handful showed signs of recent occupation, but most were empty, for which we were thankful. Had the spire been fully occupied we might not have survived this long.

Halfway along the center row of cells we found something more interesting: a large triangular room with more elaborate furnishings than the others, plus a bookshelf filled with interesting tomes.

Sedjewick and I scanned the book titles and found a long series that made up the diary of Khalib. We leafed through the more recent entries and discovered that he had been Karzoug’s right hand man, but there had been a falling out of sorts.

It was Khalib who was to have awakened Karzoug from his stasis after the fall of the ancient kingdoms, but Khalib’s own apprentices had turned on him, trapping him in a long sleep of his own.

Mokmurian had recently discovered Xin Shalast, and was fumbling around the spire looking for loot knowledge when he encountered the same projections of Karzoug that had menaced us. Karzoug quickly took control of Mokmurian, and so it was he, and not Khalib, who set the in motion the revival of Karzoug.

Karzoug does not tolerate failure, and so he left Khalib in his prison of sleep until we began to cause problems for him and he needed all the allies at his disposal.

Khalib was none to happy to discover all of this after he awoke, and his resentment and bitterness had been boiling over ever since.

We were interrupted from our research by a loud, “Whoa, who is this?”

A pair of giants had stumbled upon us.

The other said, “I got this” and moved around the cells to try and flank us, and so I put up a Blade Barrier behind to make his approach a little more interesting.

Meanwhile Nolin stepped forward and demanded to know why the giants were disturbing the champion of greed. The giant insisted that, “You and your lot belong back in your own area!”

Trask blasted the giant with a set of Magic Missiles and yelled, “He said back off!”

The other giant was now running towards us from behind, and so Kane created a patch of ice before the blade barrier, causing the giant to slip directly into the wall of whirling blades.

Sedjewick goaded, “So you really got this?”

“Yes, I do,” the giant retorted angrily, as Rigel deftly stabbed it with her rapier.

I cast Prayer and Kane gave the rear giant a bit of bad luck, which was further embellished by Sabin hacking into it viciously.

Nolin and Avia set themselves against the other giant, who was dealing as much damage as he took.

As usual this became an extremely uneven exchange because Kane and I kept our fighters healthy while the giants eventually succumbed to their ever deepening wounds.

Each giant wore a ring.

[1691] sihedron ring
[1692] sihedron ring

We returned to the pagoda and prepared for the worse while Nolin and Sabin lifted the lid from the sarcophagus. It was empty. In fact the whole pagoda was empty.

Puzzled, we returned to perusing Khalib’s diary to see if it contained anything helpful. It did indeed!

Karzoug had created a plain on which he could hide during the fall of his kingdomm, and he had taken his runewell with him. The green gem served as a nexus between other plains and Karzoug’s plain of refuge, and it focused the souls of those who died while bearing the mark of greed into the runewell. This in turn increased Karzoug’s power. It seems that Karzoug’s refuge also served as his prison while he lacked sufficient power to escape.

Mokmurian had been used to find and mark as many victims as he could to feed the runewell, and now Karzoug was nearly powerful enough to escape.

I now know what needs to be done.

== Toilday, Lamashan 28, 4708; Spires of Xin Shalast; morning ==

I took aim at the green crystal with my domineering crossbow and hit it, but the bolt bounced harmlessly off.

I turned to Sabin and said, “We need to destroy the gem.”

Sabin strode forward and smote it with his domineering adamantine ax, and something unexpected happened.

Rather than shatter, or deflect the blow, the space before the green gem puckered and warped as a portal opened up. Beyond was a vast space, easily a couple hundred feet across, with smoky white walls and a well of water.

Clearly this portal leads to Karzoug. I am sure of it: the gem acts as a nexus to his plain, and we must enter it to face Karzoug and finish what we started so long ago.

We have taken a few moments to prepare and form a basic plan, and I have finished casting True Seeing and am about to peer through the void to see what lies in wait.

We made good progress today. As expected everything is trying to kill us and there are a lot of them. Luckily we have slaughtered a lot of Karzougs guards, at least we hope we have. After getting my normal 2 hours of sleep I feel refreshed and I am able to do more. Today while the other slept I was able to learn the new spell “spell turning”. I had my GreatAxe ready to grab just in case. We have to wait until morning for Kane and Takkad to get spells again so I have some time.

This is likely the day we actually meet Karzoug. This is going to be very tough and a little bad luck could spell the end of all of us. I have prepared myself for the toughest battle of my life. He knows that we are coming and I have a feeling that he has been watching us to determine a strategy to get the upper hand, at least that is what I would do. With the knowledge that he may have been spying on us since we defeated “Carl Breakbones” it doesn’t seem like we have many secrets from Karzoug. Since runeforge I have been studying all of the high level spells that he might possess searching for ways to minimize the effectiveness of his spells. For the most part I simply can’t guard against them and he likely knows other spells that I have never heard of before. This all comes down to how do you defeat a historically powerful wizard? Physically get in his face and hit him with weapons. Stop him from casting spells.

I am betting that he is prepared for spells that attack him so I will instead focus on spells for personal buffs, a couple of hastes for the party and different spells to breakdown possible barrier or create them. I have a couple of just in case combat spells that I don’t expect to use. If it we me I would try to debuff the party, buff myself, and place barriers to control the situation.

We have found a lot of interesting places, the legendary xin-shalast, runeforge, and the library. I find it funny that the place with all of the books is somewhere that Sedjwick can’t get into without help. Ok if he knew the location of the complex and which direction to dig he could get back into the area with the library but it is going to take awhile. I had orignally just planned to add another 10 ft of thickness to the stone wall Takkad put up but then I thought it should be a little bit thicker. But then a passwall still made the wall useless and that was just not right. It turned into being something interesting to do after spending the day enchanting weapons and armor. Everybody wanted either a weapon or armor enchant so I continued to build on my wall, which took over a month to complete. We weren’t adventuring and I wasn’t getting into trouble, that should have been a clue that something was up. No one goes down past the reduce person field so I don’t think anyone knows about it, besides I made the library more secure so they should be happy. Trask and I routinely teleport people in and out of that place all the time so this does not effect our ability to use the library.

If I die and the rest of you are reading this you should know that it was indeed me that did it.