Tollday, Erastus 1

“… the lightning seemed to hit someone or something, but then a screech and the more vulgar version of “What the heck?” was screamed in ogre. Hee hee.

But this initiated the battle of the ogres.”

Or so I had hastily written when I had a moment. But it may as well have been called the battle of the giants. Or the battle of the sisters. Or the prelude to the commencement of the beginning of the adventures leading to the beginning of the battle with Mokmurian.

It was a whole darn lot of fighting, and for the first time that I can remember, I find myself having exhausted almost all my offensive spells. I’ve a couple of flaming spheres in me if needed, I suppose, and I did save one 4th level spell for an emergency, but when I consider how many spells I normally am able to cast, I must say we have been through a lot.

As the ogre screamed, the battle truly began. Although ogres were a challenge for us a mere few weeks ago, battle experience is worth its weight in gold and we find them to be more of a dangerous annoyance these days than a serious threat. That’s not to say they couldn’t hurt us dearly if one of us were, say, held, or fell asleep, or attacked by three simultaneously. But in general, they are well within our capability to triumph.

In this room and the room beyond, we encountered ten ogres altogether, and several of my fireballs were used to weaken or kill them outright. These were not heavily armored or armed, and that helped considerably.

However, we also found giants, which are a bit more problematic. Again, none seemed heavily armored or armed (the basement of the tower would be an odd place to find a provisioned army) but giants are, in general, a bit heftier than ogres.

I cast greater invisibility on myself early, and while this made it a bit difficult for my party members to guess where I was, it made the resulting fireballs all the more mysterious as well.

I fireballed at least four ogres with my first one, killing them all outright.

My next one smacked three giants, much to their surprise.

As one tried to leave and (I presume) bring reinforcements, I tried to trip him (being invisible). I discovered that tripping a giant is a good way to simply get a nasty bruise on the shin. Humans just don’t trip giants very easily.

So I threw up a wall of fire to discourage him from going farther. And darned if more giants didn’t show up to the party anyway.

This time I gave Nolin some extra strength, and hasted everyone. I used more magic missiles than fireballs because I had a hunch that this wasn’t the end of it. And in conjunction with our healers, our hasted fighters were more than up to the task of dispatching the remaining giants. My magic missiles number five now, and more than once seemed particularly effective for a first level spell.

Upon defeating the six giants, Rigel discovered they had enslaved some dwarves to help run the forges, and felt compelled – I don’t know why, perhaps there was magic involved – to be their liberator. I don’t mean just, “hey, let’s cut those guys loose.” I mean crowing like a rooster that it was WRONG for these people to have been enslaved and we must RIGHT this wrong for these are a PROUD PEOPLE. I don’t speak Dwarvish so I don’t know how fluent she was in speaking with them, but judging from the looks they threw at each other I don’t think she had quite the necessary vocabulary. They seemed more amused than offended so I guess it all worked out.

But she made up for it in gestures and enthusiasm.

Takkad had seen a flash of Lamashtu priestess through the wall of flame (no, she didn’t “flash” him THAT way) so we knew more battle lay before us. We took a moment to see to the dwarves needs and catch our breath, however. We also asked the dwarves to “guard our backs” which was a little like telling a rescued castaway to climb a crow’s nest and keep an eye out. They were so weak that they probably couldn’t have truly held anything back but goblins, but they nodded gamely and we supplied them with a few excess weapons we’d picked up. Kane created some food and water for them, which they were MOST thankful for.

But she made up for it in gestures and enthusiasm.

A hasty search of the corpses yielded

a vine rope
[731] a small bag with 3 gems – one looked to be worth at least 1000gp and the others several hundred
a bag of giant teeth (don’t ask, don’t tell)
4 polished stones (giants are worse than blue jays in what they pick up)
[732] a potion of bull strength

We concluded that while the giant room had been a forge, the ogre room had been a tannery. And it was time to move on.

Moving through the northern corridor we quickly smelled burning incense. We heard faint music. I did a mirror image, because it all seemed like impending battle to me.

And sure enough. We walked into a room with visible smoke. There was a metallic tang from the lute music. Soft voices seemed strangely soothing. The room was painted on all sides, and there was images of 3-eyed jackals on one wall. And there appeared to be three of Lemashtu’s faithful here, although since they did not have snake bodies they did not seem to be matriarchs (thank goodness.)

“Sister, maybe they’re not here to convert to Lamashtu after all,” said one of the creatures.

Rarallo started the festivities with a lightning ball — like a fireball but with lightning instead of fire. I’d never seen anything like it. I again hasted everyone, since we were all too close together for a safe fireball. One of the creatures said “Blind” to Sabin and he suddenly cried he couldn’t see.

A dire lion appeared. I magic missiled one of the creatures. The fighters, even Sabin, engaged the creatures (having been hasted). But these creatures had six arms or legs and could attack with them all. Sabin took some damage but Avia lost some wisdom. She responded by making it bleed a lot. One suggested to Nolin that he should fight the greater threat – the dire lion – but his only comment was “Right, then” and he commenced to attack that creature.

Sabin suddenly felt less wise. I threw out a flaming sphere but they easily dodged. Even blind and less wise, Sabin managed to connect soundly and dispatched one. Gravely injured, one of the creatures touched her barely living sister, causing the sister to succumb while she herself looked more vital.

She drained her sister to save herself.

Rarallo was throwing lightning pretty consistently. I tried to recreate an image of the dire lion, but the creature ignored it. Instead it uttered some spell and then looked incredibly quiet and serene. And startled, when Nolin smacked it anyway.

Examining their bodies, we found that each had a +2 flail [733, 736, 737], a +2 ring of protection [735,740,741], and a +2 headband of inspired wisdom. These were quickly divided up among needy party members.

Kane then thought he heard a gravelly voice. He thought it resembled the voice of Longtooth. Someone who understood Draconic said the speakers were complaining of their servitude to Mokmurian. It seems we may be near the captured dragons Longtooth spoke of. If so, these were extremely young dragons. It might be possible to bluff or intimidate them.

We decided the person best suited for that was the half orc, Sabin. It didn’t hurt that he knew Draconic as well. After a brief session of shouting and posturing, the dragons agreed that having their scales “harvested” and used for who knows what was demeaning. When Sabin told them Longtooth said they’d passed the test and they no longer needed to stay with the giants, they seemed both surprised and relieved. We pointed at the ogre and giant corpses and offered them fresh food, which they graciously accepted.

In a completely impetuous action, I exhaled a cone of fire in a harmless direction as the dragons were ready to leave the room. They looked a little surprised, and one of them breathed a bigger and longer cone of fire and said (according to Sabin) “not bad, but here’s how it’s done.”

I really need to study Draconic I think.

Back in the room with the dead sisters, we realized the braziers that had occupied space near the altar were actually quite valuable in their own right due to the workmanship. So we grabbed them [742, 743]. Rigel noticed the altar had been pushed across the ground at some point, so with some help from the stronger members of the team, we found that the altar was hiding a small niche of interesting documents. While there was a [745] scroll of remove curse (divine), there was also a collection of beautifully illustrated tomes … on how to torture nearly every living creature you could think of.

Having finished munching on the sisters, the dragons had moved on to some of the giant bodies. It appears they hadn’t been well fed during their term of service .. or maybe they were just pleased to have an all-you-can-eat buffet service. The beauty of this is that all the mayhem we’ve created will be blamed on the dragons.

As we prepared to follow fresh air to the south, a subtle noise gained our attention. A stone giant … apparently an older one from her looks … was quietly trying to get our attention. How odd.

Conna, as she is called, gestured to follow her into a nearby room. When we did, a little uneasily, we were treated with an interesting story that confirmed some of our thinking.

It turns out that, as we suspected, Mokmurian was creating his forces mostly of disenchanted younger giants. They were headstrong rebels, more than anything, but their numbers were strong. The older giants would just prefer to return to “the old ways” and not engage the other people in the valley, nor expand into “their birthright territory” as Mokmurian had called it. Mokmurian was power hungry and she wasn’t quite sure what was driving him. The sisters, for instance (she was glad to hear we’d killed them) may have been masters as much as they were partners.

She knew all of this because she was in his clan. Mokmurian had killed the clan leader, her husband, when he objected to what Mokmurian was doing. She wished to avenge the death of her husband, even if (especially if) that meant the death of Mokmurian. She did not express this openly to other giants, of course, but she knew there were some who were sympathetic, and she would aid us as much as she could without revealing herself.

Mokmurian was cast out. His growing army includes no elders; only hot-headed youngsters. Yes, it was true he could work magic and that’s one reason he has a following. Some considered it a sign. Her husband’s spirit haunts this room, this place, which makes it something of a place of safety. This room was a shrine to him, so it was not considered unusual for her to be seen going to or from this room. Others rarely visit.

Mokmurian worships Karzub, not Lemashtu. Conna has seen Lucretia and Xaneesha both during her time here. She can provide maps of the levels and although she cannot battle Mokmurian directly, she can provide us aid in finding him and getting past or bypassing his defenses. She hinted she may have access to spells or potions that could help us too.

Note: I failed to note earlier that we had discovered more things in the area of the spiders and the wyverns. We’d also found a chest [729] which contained 1935 gold pieces and 2987 silver pieces, and a spell rod [730] which could be used to cast spells by expending charges. It has 7 charges left and can be used to cast

airwalk [cost: 2 charges]
control winds [cost: 2 charges]
gust of wind [cost: 1 charge]
spike stones [cost: 2 charges]
shape stone [cost: 1 charge]