Against the Giants, part III
The Druid turns into a bear and herds the aurochs together. With extreme diplomacy he convinces each of them to bear a corpse of their former owners. They trudge back to Kek to collect their reward; the mummy guards open the gates and get out of the way, as the aurochs are becoming unmanageable due to lack of water. They charge over to the canal, and while they are drinking, the cranes and golems begin unloading the cargo.
The party follows a mummy guard inside to engage in sharp negotiations with a creature not entirely sane. The Ranger's goal is to borrow the undead giants to help attack the giant's castle, but Kek explains they can't control that many. However, the Wizard can cast Command Undead, so Kek offers him one free giant zombie as an experiment, if the Wizard will give a report of how the creature performed.
When they come to negotiate the value of the aurochs, Kek confesses his troops have already slaughtered the beasts. The Ranger is compelled to accept the purchase of some magic items at list price as compensation. (The DM will later come to regret approving the Druid's purchase.)
Again they return to giant territory, searching for the hidden stone giant castle in the mountains. Because they have a high-level Ranger, they skip over all the tedious searching and straight to the action.
The castle is built into the side of a hill, with a 40' tall curtain wall out in front. The Ranger sneaks up to the gate, but it is barred, and his attempt to climb the wall fails. The Bard uses his new spider-boots to walk up the wall, attracting the attention of the entire herd of aurochs as he does so. While they stare dumbly up at him, the party spends half an hour discussing the best way to start a stampede. Eventually they settle on the Bard casting an image of dragon, causing the aurochs to swirl around the courtyard in a rumbling thunder.
After fifteen minutes or so, the beasts calm down, exhausted. The party has conclusively proven that there are no stone giants hiding in the courtyard, which was apparently a concern for them. The Druid melts a hole in the stone gate, the Barbarian goes through an unbars the door, and then pushes open the heavy sliding gate while the Druid-Bear holds the aurochs at bay. As soon as the Druid returns to human form, the aurochs trundle out of the gate, looking for food and water.
The party advances to the gate built into the side of the hill. Again the Druid melts a hole, and again the Barbarian steps through and lifts the bar. But this time he is rewarded with a hail of boulders from the line of giants conveniently 150' away and thus out of sight until they move.
Three of the boulders hit, doing a staggering amount of damage, but not enough to bring down such a stalwart hero (that comes later). He darts back outside, and the party spends half an hour debating the best way to enter the castle without getting pasted by boulders. Eventually they settle on the Bard turning the Druid invisible and the Druid casting Sleet Storm in the middle of the hall. Now the party has 11 rounds to enter and prepare for the battle, under cover of snow.
They arrange themselves in a line, casting all their best buffs; and when the storm finally winds down, they win the initiative role and open fire. However, the fading snow reveals more than it concealed: another line of soldier giants and bears are in front of the rock-throwing peasants, including a giant chief.
The Wizard gets great value for money by casting Wall of Fire on the entire line of peasant giants, doing only moderate damage but hitting all of them. The Druid, as usual, casts Stone Spikes, making the battlefield in front of the giants both damaging and crippling.The Ranger shoots a bear, the Cleric starts dispelling buffs off of the giant chief, and the Bard drains the giant chief of four levels, and the Barbarian hides behind his tower shield. A great opening round! Oh, also, the Wizard's giant zombie throws a rock or something.
The front line rushes forward through the spikes, not quite able to reach the party thanks to their crippling affect. But the peasants step forward out of the fire and hurl rocks to good effect, pounding the Barbarian anyway.
The next round, the Druid casts a line of fire in front of the peasants - a particularly strong one, due to his heightened caster level item he bought from the unsuspecting and obviously swindled Kek (the DM now has to revise Kek's character sheet to give him a String of Prayer beads too). Now they are taking light but consistent damage from both behind and in front. The Cleric keeps dispelling (curse him!) and the Wizard tries a Fireball.
The giants decide to ignore the walls of fire on either side, meaning they are taking light but consistent damage every turn. This time their boulders target the Ranger, hitting him hard enough to drive him into retreat. The soldiers still can't quite reach the party, but they will next round. Some of the bears make it close enough to start biting at the Bard and the Wizard's zombie.
On the next round, somebody points out that the walls of flame are opaque, meaning the peasants will have to walk through the front one to continue throwing boulders. Armed with this knowledge, the Cleric puts up a Wall of Blades. The Ranger shoots another bear, while the Bard decides to fight the giant chief, a soldier giant, and three bears on his own. The Barbarian, finally able to melee, takes the other flank to help the zombie with several soldiers and bears.
The peasants now have to walk forward through the line of fire, into the wall of blades and the spiky floor. This is too much, and all of them die. Ten giants with four spells! A record of efficiency to be entered into the annals of history.
However, the peasants were always only fire support. The real weight of the giants has now reached the party, and they lay into them with a will. The Bard finds all of his vaunted defenses stripped, his mirrored images smashed through and his displacement overwhelmed, from a flurry of attacks by multiple opponents. After only two rounds, he takes so much damage that another single hit from one of the soldier's massive hammers will spell certain death.
We can tell things are dire because the Druid turns into a Dire Bear. He starts eliminating the wounded giant soldiers, one per round, but taking huge hits in return. At least his Stoneskin spell is in the way. The Wizard tries a Magic Missile, but Shield is the one defense the Cleric failed to dispel off of the chief. The Barbarian does a whirlwind attacking, dishing out massive damage to bears and giants alike. The soldiers respond by pounding him into negative hit points; only his lingering rage keeps his heart pumping. The Bard feints at the chief with his halberd, allowing him to invoke his Combat Expertise and pump his defense. He then dashes out to spell-casting range, trusting to his Mobility feat to let him avoid the chief's attack of opportunity.
But it fails. The giant tags him, through Displacement and everything. Fortunately the chief does not hit as hard as the soldiers, so the Bard is still alive - but only barely. He joins the Barbarian on the ground.
However, this has opened room for the Wizard and Cleric to hit the chief with Fireball and Flamestrike, and in his enervated state, the chief succumbs to the flames.
The situation is still perilous, though, as one soldier makes it to the Ranger and promptly clubs him into unconsciousness too. Also, at some point, the Wizard's zombie was reduced to rubble.
This is worst state the party has ever been: three members on the ground at once! If not for the Druid-Bear, things would be grim; but the bear engages the last two remaining (and severely burnt) giants while the Cleric utilizes his new rank to heal all of his allies scattered throughout the room. Once they stand up again, the fight is over; the last giant doesn't last long.
The party is so intimidated by this beating that they immediately retreat from the castle, hiding in the mountains in the Wizard's trans-dimensional space (good thing the zombie was already destroyed, as it never would have fit in there).
When they return the next day, the castle is eerily quiet. There are three doors at the back of the hall; one leads to an empty suite of living quarters, where the Druid pries all the lightstones from the walls; one leads to an empty workshop and kitchen; and one leads to an empty armory, with piles of stones and a few old broken weapons.
The armory, however, has a spiral staircase in the center of the room. The party gathers at its feet and gazes up, realizing it leads to a secret back entrance they didn't even bother to look for. Whilst they are pondering, the Cleric alone realizes that half the alcoves in the room actually contain a perfectly motionless stone giant. He attempts to conceal his reaction to this discovery, but has no Perform or Bluff skill, because everyone relies on the Bard for that.
He fails. The giants know he knows; and they charge out, catching the party by surprise. The Cleric has one round to act before the giant soldiers are in melee range and administer a surprise-round beating, most likely killing the Wizard out-right and potentially killing the Bard (who has no magic defenses up!) or even the Druid (who is not a giant bear). What spell will he cast to save himself and his friends? Tune in next month to find out!
