Against the Giants, part II
The party contemplates their options.
1. Advance deeper into the mountains, forcing a confrontation with the giant king's army. The party will have three rounds to prepare spells, gain initiative for the battle, and choose the engagement distance.
2. Conduct a fighting withdrawal through the forest. The giant's army will attack in four successive waves, each stronger than the last, at an initial encounter range of 100'. In addition, the party gets to camp and renew spells once during the campaign.
3. Retreat to Kek and hire help. The party can get one of Kek's work gangs as mercenaries and fight the giant army in the desert, at an encounter range of 500'. But not for free; Kek will claim half the booty from the battle.
4. Flee home. The giant army will eventually find them, but now they can choose the encounter distance from 100' to 300' and use their household troops in the battle, or even choose to fight from their castle. Their vassals will contribute two troops of knights, two lancers, and four longbowmen as well.
After considerable discussion, the party opts for #2. (This was the GM's way of abstracting out tactical advances and retreats in some manageable way.)
The first wave is a charging herd of aurochs. The Druid uses stone spikes to slow the herd and then hides from animals, while the Cleric uses a powerful command spell to tell the herd to flee. While this cannot redirect the herd (as the spell only lasts one round) it does mean that the initial charge is mostly entirely negated as the beasts attempt to avoid the party. Mostly but not entirely; the Bard is almost trampled to death by two aurochs that didn't get the memo.
The Cleric retreats to air walking to escape the beasts. However, after three charges slowed by entangles and constant arrow fire, half the herd is dead and the rest flee.
The second wave consists of six dire bears. The Druid makes everyone invisible to animals, thus granting the party a full round of initiative against the poor bears. Despite their strength, the bears soon fall to the Barbarian's sword and the Druid-Bear.
The third wave is fifteen giant peasants. Again the Druid slows them with spikes. However, these foes can throw rocks, and they chuck them hard. The Ranger is almost pasted and has to be healed. One entire squad of giants is trapped by a wall of blades and a wall of fire. For several rounds they ignore the fire, simply throwing rocks; but as the Bard and Barbarian begin to employ various tricks to make themselves hard targets, the giants finally force their way through the barrier, suffering considerable damage. Still, there are a lot of giants, and both the Barbarian and the Ranger are knocked into negatives before the fight is over.
After this the party takes their rest option, renewing all their spells and health. The previous encounters were not actually quite sufficient to weaken them into the next day. Still, they are wary, as the giants almost killed several of them.
The fourth and final wave is Chieftain Hodux and eight giant warriors. This time the Cleric blocks the giants between a wall of blades and the Druid's spike field. Several rounds go by in uncharacteristic passivity as the Chieftain tries in vain to dispel the blades. Finally he gives up and orders his soldiers to march through it, causing the Cleric to roll absolute fistfuls of dice.
The giants are advancing in a line, their Chieftain behind, when the Druid causes a sleet storm. Again the action pauses, taking on a bit of a comical aspect when the Druid realizes he can't un-cast the sleet storm at will. But the Chieftain can undo this magic, and soon his troops are advancing and hurtling rocks again.
These warriors are tough. The Cleric and Druid are throwing around pillars of fire, the Ranger is firing like a machine gun, and the Bard bravely flanks the giant line with a summoned lion and his trusty halberd. This is, ironically, the Bard's fight; between his mirror images and displacement effect, the smashing power of the giants is almost negated. It doesn't matter that they never miss if all they are hitting is illusions or air.
The Barbarian and Ranger, on the other hand, are taking consistent and heavy damage. The party is genuinely concerned as the giants are slow to fall. Both Barbarian and Ranger have to be healed to remain in the fight, while the Druid flanks the giant line and attempts to dispel the powerful enchantments on the Chieftain. For once he fails to utterly strip the foe of all their best defenses, and is forced to turn into a bear and join the Bard in melee combat.
The Cleric goes down from one too many thrown rocks, and waits for an opportune time to heal himself. The Barbarian and Bard are now standing back to back, surrounded by giants, when the Bard's luck runs out and he goes down. The Cleric, back on his feet, cures the Ranger, who starts shooting again; the Druid-Bear battles to save the unconscious Bard. The Chieftain clobbers the Ranger, knocking him out again.
Slowly the battle tilts to the party, though many of them are periously close to death, having been healed and brought back into battle several times. Finally the Druid-Bear gets lucky and cuts through the Chieftain's spells and rends the monster to death. The last four giants try to get revenge, but are slowly cut down.
When only two giants remain, one deploys a secret weapon. He prays loudly to the gods for aid, begging them to bypass the Bard's many magical defenses. Much to everyone's surprise, it works! (The Bard gets unlucky and fails both his displacement and image check!) And now the Bard is down, literally a single hit point from final death.
As if to cement this late development, the other giant knocks the Barbarian into next week with a critical blow. Now the Cleric must race against the clock to save him before he bleeds out. The Ranger kills one giant, and the bear claws, bites, and grapples the other to death. Victory at last!
This has been the hardest fight of the party's career. But it was against a truly puissant foe, a contender for the title of Domain Lord. The skin of the Chieftain will provide a truly epic Belt of +8 Strength, and the tael from the army will level another member of the party.
Now they are deciding how many corpses to return to Kek, desirous of the reward but also concerned about providing the mummy lord with such powerful frames for animated dead. They are also deciding whether to attack the remaining giants in their castle and end the giant threat for good, or simply parade the dead Chieftain's head in front of the gates and extort a ransom for not attacking.
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