ADVENTURE 62 - BODYSWAPPERS
PC Roster:
A Guild page walked into the Wing Three common area and announced that a letter had arrived for Cal, passed on by a merchant caravan. He handed it over to the eager cleric, nodded his head in acknowledgement, and departed.
Cal opened up the letter, which was sealed with a blob of wax. It read:
- - -
The trip to Trip's was uneventful. As the five adventurers headed up the path to Trip's goat farm, the goatherder must have seen them from his window, for he exited the front door and walked out to greet them. He shook each of the heroes' hands in turn, taking a noticeable longer time with Delphyne's. Then he slapped his brother Cal on the back, and said, "I reckon you'd all like to see that goat I found." Trip ushered the group around the house to the goat pen out back. "I decided to name him 'Scribe,' since he spends most of his day scratching around in the ground like he's writing. Hey, you know of any circuses around here what might like to buy an educated goat?"
Trip's goat pen easily held two dozen goats, but one in particular was standing apart from the others, scratching furiously into the ground. Trip led the group into the pen, closing the gate behind them, and they walked over to look at Scribe's scratchings. "Oh dear," said Delphyne, looking down at the markings in the dirt. "That's the Giant language." She didn't like accessing the memories implanted in her head by Hagatha, but stored there was a full understanding of the Giant language.
"What's it say?" asked Cal.
Delphyne translated, word for word. Scribe had written:
"Who are you?" asked Delphyne, again in the same language.
The goat trotted over to a blank patch of dirt and started scratching out letters with his hoof. "'Bjorn Gundarson,'" read Delphyne.
The interrogation continued. Over time, Delphyne learned the following: Bjorn was a frost giant, whose body was swapped with that of the goat by a trio of wizards - "little guys," so presumably halflings or gnomes - who lived in a stone giant lair up in the mountains. They did that to make the frost giant body easier to control, so that one of them in turn could bodyswap into the frost giant's body, leaving his own body with the intellect of a goat. (They found that a goat can get into much less trouble than a frost giant - or a stone giant, for that matter.) Their original plan was to slay Bjorn once he was in the goat's body, but Bjorn was having none of that and he escaped before they could catch him. He wandered around the mountain looking for someone who could possibly reverse the transformation, but then he was captured by the oafish Trip, who seemed to treat Bjorn as some sort of novelty trick animal rather than seeing the situation for what it really was. Bjorn volunteered to lead the group back to the stone giant lair where the three wizards were currently located. Hopefully, they'd be able to defeat the wizards and restore Bjorn to his rightful body. Bjorn just wanted his own body and gear back – and the wizards responsible for his current predicament dead. The group was more than welcome to any treasure the wizards might have accumulated.
"Time out," called Chalkan. "Why are we helping a frost giant, again?"
"These wizards aren't up to any good," pointed out Delphyne. "We can assume they wanted the giant bodies so that they'd have more powerful forms, and the whole body-stealing business sounds pretty evil. I think we need to put a stop to them."
"Agreed," said Cal.
"Normally, I'd say we should go ask the Council for help," added Trip. "This valley is nominally ruled by the Council of Four, a bunch of wizards and druids who pretty much act as our leaders. Only, nobody's seen them for a couple of weeks. So I guess we're it. And by 'we,' I mean 'you,'" admitted the goatherder sheepishly. "I leave all that hero stuff to you folks. Let me know how it goes, though."
Bjorn had another warning to give out before they left. There was a large, three-headed monster who acted as a guard-beast for the wizards; they'd have to be on the watch for it as they approached the stone giant den. Then he was eager to be off, to fetch his original body back. Trip let him out of the pen, and the group followed the goat as he headed unerringly for the nearby mountains.
About halfway up the mountain, Chalkan spotted a winged creature streaking down from the sky above. At first it looked to be a bluish-green dragon with a wingspan of about 40 feet; then he noticed the beast's other two heads – one that of a lion, the other that of a goat, each larger than it had any right to be – and the elven arcane archer recognized that the group was up against some sort of monstrous chimera. The fact that this was no ordinary chimera was driven home not only by the creature's enormous size, but also by the fact that its tail seemed to be an enormous serpent of some type.
Chalkan notched an arrow into Rilisivae Athelgala and called out a warning to the others. His arrow struck true, driving deep into the space between the throats of the lion and goat, and then the dire chimera landed before the group, breathing out a cloud of poisonous gas. Bjorn instantly keeled over, while the heroes scattered out of the edges of the cloud of vapors. Delphyne leaped upon her broom of flying and flew straight up, out of the creature's reach - at least, unless it decided to take flight again. Chalkan continued peppering it with arrows, while Cal cast a flame strike down from the heavens. Telgrane popped open his tinder box and allowed Infernia to join the fray; she happily scampered off to the dire chimera's rear end, secure in the knowledge that no matter how poisonous the serpent's venom might be, she was immune to it. Thunderwolf stepped up to attack the goat's head with his longsword, deeming it the least powerful of the creature's flanks.
The battle was furious, and each side inflicted a considerable amount of damage upon the other before the dire chimera decided it had had enough; after all, it had accomplished its main objective, slaying the goat that had escaped from its masters. Now its duty was clear: since it was having a tough time killing off these adventurers, it had to report back to its wizardly masters, so they could prepare themselves for a battle against these powerful foes who were obviously on their way to the stone giant den. The dire chimera once again took wing...
...but it had tallied too long, and it was taken down by a combined blast of offensive spells by Delphyne, Telgrane, and Cal before it could fly out of range. It crashed back down to the ground in a bone-jarring thud and landed in a heap. Cal called for a rest and delivered healing spells to those who needed them, while Thunderwolf confirmed that Bjorn was indeed dead.
"Well, good!" commented Chalkan. "I didn't really want to give a frost giant his body back, anyway. That's just asking for trouble."
The group continued up the mountain. Lacking Bjorn's lead, they deemed it best to continue in the direction they'd been heading and hope that the stone giant den became obvious when they got there.
It didn't, but for a good reason: the once enormous cave opening had been reshaped by the wizards who took over the lair, covering it with a wall of natural-looking stone in the front, so that from head-on it looked like there was no opening at all; the twin openings were at the side, hidden from view. The group had no indication that they were practically on top of the stone giant den - until a hill giant seemed to step out of the very rock to urinate against a boulder.
The adventurers stopped in their tracks and stared in shock at the hill giant. The hill giant, for his part, showed no less surprise at the sudden appearance of a quintet of heavily-armed heroes climbing up the mountainside, and quickly refocused his attention from his breech-cloth to the heavy club he gripped in one meaty fist. He turned his head and called over his shoulder in a language none of the heroes recognized, and then charged down the slope at them, grinning evilly.
Cal and Thunderwolf ran up to meet the hill giant's charge, while the others held back. Delphyne remained on her broom, and Telgrane cast a Rary's telepathic bond spell to ensure the heroes would remain in contact with each other, when a troll popped into view from the mountain ahead of them. This troll was an odd-looking one, with what looked like a wide variety of swords and daggers tied to its fingers. It loped down the slope at the heroes as well.
Thunderwolf gulped down his fear - this was the first troll he'd ever faced, and he'd heard they were powerful foes. Then a voice suddenly called in his head: "Thunderwolf, you must save me from this brute!" The young hero looked around, but saw nobody who could have called out to him. "I'm here, in the troll's hand!" replied the voice in response to Thunderwolf's apparent confusion.
The two forces met with a clash of weapons. The hill giant bashed at Cal with his oversized club, but the cleric dodged to the side and brought his mace crashing up into the creature's temple, bloodying it and causing it to stagger to the side. Cal noticed a falchion strapped to the belt of its breech-cloth, sized for use by a human, and mentally shrugged - maybe the hill giant used it as Cal would a hunting knife, who knew? Telgrane, meanwhile, estimated that casting a fireball at the troll would likely get Thunderwolf as well, and opted to summon a Huge fire elemental instead. As the creature of flames manifested and started swiping at the green-bodied monster, Thunderwolf flanked the troll and attacked it with a flurry of sword-thrusts. Infernia raced up to attack the troll as well, realizing her fiery body would be useful against the troll's regenerative powers. Delphyne shot a few magic missiles into the hill giant for good measure, and between her spells and Cal's mace, the hill giant soon fell over, dead. Cal then turned to face the troll, and Delphyne, seeing that the others should have the troll easily handled, flew her broom into the cavern's side-facing entrance. Telgrane followed.
Doing so, she missed it as the slain hill giant's body ripped open in a sluice of blood and gore, and out stepped a furious-looking orc. "You sonsabitches!" it cried aloud in the Common tongue. "I liked that body!" And with that, it picked up the falchion and raced over to attack Cal.
Thunderwolf, Infernia, and the Huge fire elemental had by this time finished off the troll. The two fire elementals followed Telgrane into the cave, the light from their flames providing illumination within. Thunderwolf, heeding the voice in his head, scrambled to untie the blades from the troll's fingers, focusing on one particular sword: the one who had been calling to him telepathically. "Excellent!" it cried as Thunderwolf grasped the longsword in his hand. "I was sullied by the touch of that upright beast! But together, you and I will do mighty things! I am called Xanthros."
Thunderwolf, awestruck at the thought of possessing an intelligent blade, almost didn't notice when the troll's body split open and a hobgoblin stepped out from its remains. But at Xanthros's warning, the young fighter leapt back in the nick of time, and he found himself in furious battle with the hobgoblin, who had picked up a longsword from one of the troll's fingers. "You'll pay for that, human!" the hobgoblin snarled.
Inside the cave, Delphyne and Telgrane heard a babble of voices, simultaneously calling for rescue, escape, and to be put out of their misery. The cacophony came from a side cavern which was penned off with a metal fence; behind it stood a dire goat, upon whose side had been grafted the heads of three humans and a half-elf.
"Kill me!" pleaded Travolleon Trackfinder. "Free me from this abomination!"
"Lead us away from here!" commanded Sambiollus, the second head from the front. "Quickly, before the giants get hungry and eat us!"
"Do not be so hasty!" Cambrux chided the first head. "With magic, all things are possible! I'm sure there must be a way to restore us to our proper forms, given time."
"You three have it easy," complained Girant Fisherking. "I'm the one closest to the goat's hindquarters, and its flatulence is truly horrid to behold!"
"Baa," bleated the dire goat, irritated at the constant bickering of the four heads grafted onto its side.
"Bleah," grimaced Delphyne, looking at the abomination standing before her.
"We'll have to come back for you," promised Telgrane, noticing that Thunderwolf was in deadly combat with some hobgoblin - just where had he come from? But he seemed to be holding his own, and the conjurer could see Cal finishing off an orc, only to have a halfling climb out of the orc's split-open body. "This is getting ridiculous!" Cal called out, as he slammed the little halfling with his mace, just as the little fellow was loading up a sling. Thunderwolf stood above the slain hobgoblin with Xanthros raised, and sure enough, its body split open as well, revealing another halfling fighter. Thunderwolf cut him to ribbons before he could do much more than stand up.
There were two other passageways leading deeper in the mountain from the entrance chamber; one led to a pair of rough beds, apparently the dwelling of the two nested halfling fighters, while another - scouted out by Infernia, at her master's bidding - led to a natural pool of water and a bunch of supplies in a cavern beyond that. There were no other enemies to be seen. Infernia returned to the entrance cavern.
"They're up there," pointed out one of the dire goat's extra heads, looking up at the ceiling of the central chamber. "Be careful; there are three of them, a frost giant and two stone giants, but they're really all halfling wizards." The group looked up, and saw a series of giant-sized handholds carved into the sides of the cavern wall, forming a ladder of sorts - but one more suited to the form of a stone giant.
"I can carry one other on my broom," suggested Delphyne.
"The clock's ticking on my Huge fire elemental," pointed out Telgrane. "We'll head on up, and meet you guys there." And with that, he cast a dimension door on himself and the two fire elementals.
"The rest of us are still going to need to get up there somehow," remarked Cal, looking up the shaft leading to the upper level. "I'm going to get better-suited to use that ladder." And with a quick enlarge person spell, his muscular form took on giant proportions.
Telgrane and the elementals found themselves in a large cavern, with several tunnels leading elsewhere on the upper level. Standing just around the corner of the entry shaft from the lower level was a stone giant with its greatclub raised, ready to crash down upon the head of the first hero to climb up the shaft. Behind him stood another, eagerly anticipating clobbering the intruders as they approached the upper level. The Huge fire elemental attacked the first stone giant, who whipped around to face this sudden threat. Telgrane and Infernia focused their attention on the second one, and neither giant seemed to appreciate the tables being turned on them in this fashion. In fact, the first one had had enough of the Huge fire elemental's attacks, and cast a dimension door to the presumed safety of the lower level.
That turned out to not have been as safe as he had planned. Cal was about a third of the way up the shaft when he heard Delphyne's surprised scream as the stone giant suddenly appeared in her midst and took a swipe at her with its club. At his size, Cal was sure he could handle the fall, so he leaped off the wall of the shaft and landed behind the stone giant as it threatened Delphyne, Chalkan, and Thunderwolf. The stone giant wasn't particularly pleased to have escaped a Huge fire elemental only to find himself embroiled in a fight against four seasoned adventurers - one of them as big as he was - but it did what it could against them.
Meanwhile, the remaining stone giant on the upper level wasn't enjoying getting battered by a Huge fire elemental any more than the first one did. Fortunately for him, reinforcements were at hand. A frost giant entered the chamber from another one of the side passages. This was likely Bjorn's original body, but Telgrane knew its original owner no longer had any use for it, and blasted away with a fireball straight at its chest. The frost giant roared in pain. Upon Telgrane's command, he and the Huge fire elemental changed foes; Telgrane focused his attention on the stone giant, while the Huge fire elemental and Infernia took on the frost giant - whose body, the conjurer well knew, was particularly vulnerable to fire-based attacks.
Down below, the stone giant - in reality, a halfling wizard by the name of Cubbert Bumblebuskin - was quickly coming to the realization that he had bitten off more than he could chew. When he tried using the massive strength of his powerful stone giant body, he was outclassed against a cleric of Kord his own relative size. When he tried backing off and casting spells - as he would be forced to do were he in his normal halfling body - he was peppered with arrows by the half-elf and spells by the human woman. And the fighter kept rushing up and attacking him with the familiar-looking sword, no matter what he did. It was frustrating! Maybe he was better off taking his chances with the Huge fire elemental up above - at least there, he had allies! He stepped back and cast his last dimension door, escaping back to the relative safety of the upper caverns.
Cal cast a couple of quick healing spells on those who needed them, then resumed his climb up the vertical shaft. Delphyne waved Thunderwolf over to her and had him jump on the broom behind her, ready to transport him up to the upper level where all of the action was currently taking place. Chalkan opted not to wait and stowed his bow over his shoulder and started climbing the giant-spaced handholds, having a fairly difficult time of it but determined to make it nonetheless.
At about the same time that Cubbert had decided he'd be better off on the upper level, the frost giant - whose actions were currently controlled by a halfling wizard named Dobie Smoketallow - had come to the opposite conclusion. The Huge fire elemental had been taking quite a toll on him, and he needed some time to recuperate if he was going to make it through this battle alive. He cast a dimension door on himself, and was suddenly down at the bottom of the vertical shaft, about eye level with Delphyne, who had just started piloting her broom of flying up the shaft. Dobie swatted the broom, sending Thunderwolf toppling down to the stone floor and bouncing Delphyne off a wall to follow suit. Chalkan, halfway up the shaft, saw that his friends were in trouble below; unable to use his bow with only one hand free, he jumped down at the frost giant, pulling out his longsword during his descent. He landed on the frost giant's shoulder and got a fairly deep stab in with his sword before toppling off himself. Cal was nearly at the top of the shaft by that time, so he climbed up and into the upper level's main chamber.
The Huge fire elemental had lost his frost giant combatant and turned to see who else was available. "Oh, no!" cried Cubbert, seeing that he was apparently "it" again. He dashed to a smaller side chamber to the south, the Huge fire elemental in hot pursuit. Telgrane and Infernia were holding their own against the second stone giant - this one controlled by a halfling wizard named Billibew Inkwell - and the sudden addition of an extra-large Cal did nothing to help Billibew's odds.
For several minutes, the sounds of battle echoed from both levels of the stone giant den. Above, Cal, Telgrane and Infernia fought Billibew while the Huge fire elemental and Cubbert battled it out one chamber over; below, Chalkan, Delphyne, and Thunderwolf sparred with Dobie in Bjorn's old body. Each of the halflings-in-giant-bodies started fearing that they might not personally survive the fight, but that only spurred them on to greater efforts.
Dobie was the first to fall. The frost giant's massive form fell to the stone floor with a massive thud, and the heroes readied themselves in case another form would crawl out of Bjorn's body, as the halfling fighters had done outside. But one of the dire goat's extra heads informed the group that while the halfling fighters had each been "nested" into two other, increasingly-larger combat forms, the stone giant and frost giant bodies were merely the result of the swapping of their minds with those of one of the halfling wizard trio. So it looked like the danger was over down here; time to try getting up that shaft to the upper level again.
Chalkan started his slow climb yet again, only to have another stone giant suddenly appear on the lower level. Billibew had had enough of being up against three opponents, and dimension doored his way back to the lower level. Seeing the frost giant's unmoving form on the ground before him, he nearly lost his nerve - If they can do that to Dobie, what are they going to do to me?, he thought - but battled on nonetheless; after all, it wasn't like this was his body. "Not again!" called Chalkan to himself, as he slowly reversed direction one more time and climbed back down the vertical shaft.
Billibew didn't last much longer against the combined might of Chalkan, Delphyne, and Thunderwolf, especially now that he had depleted all of his most powerful spells. He fell to a heap besides Bjorn's slain form, and Chalkan sighed sadly to himself at the thought that now he'd have to try climbing back up that wretched shaft yet again.
Delphyne and Thunderwolf passed him going up the shaft, but doing so turned out not to have been to their advantage. They were about two-thirds of the way up when Cubbert, the last of the halfling wizards, decided that enough was enough. This stupid giant body was on its last legs anyway; he saw the two humans rising up the shaft on a flying broom and came up with a desperate, last-minute ploy. Stepping back, he got a running start and pitched himself forward into the shaft, arms spread wide. As he fell, his giant eyes rolled back into his head as he released mental control of the giant and his mind snapped back to his original body. The stone giant gave a frightened "Baaa!" as the goat's mind reverted to the stone giant's body, and Delphyne did some furious piloting to avoid being hit by the plummeting form of a goat in a stone giant's body. She flew her broom into the side of the wall, and Thunderwolf grabbed onto her shoulders to avoid falling off, but they both avoided the giant - as did Chalkan, by pressing up against the wall of the shaft as the giant plummeted on by. It landed with a heavy thud and didn't move again.
Two of the chambers on the upper level had intricate runes inscribed on overlapping circles etched into their floors; one had two circles (the bodyswapping chamber) and one had three (the nested amalgamations chamber). Another, as-yet-unexplored passageway led to a small chamber, in which three halflings were climbing out of a cage. These were Dobie, Cubbert, and Billibew, back in their original bodies; they caged the bodies when "bodyswapping" with the giants, so the goat minds (goats had been "bodyswapped" with the giants weeks before, then the goats-with-giants'-minds devoured, so that the giants' bodies were easier to manage when the halfling wizards weren't using them) would keep the halfling bodies out of trouble. They were low on spells, but threw a couple of feeble magic missiles at the heroes on the upper level. Telgrane responded with a cloudkill spell that encompassed their small chamber. Furthermore, as the chamber was slightly downhill from the main chamber, the cloudkill had nowhere else to drift, so it remained in the room with the halflings. None of them made it out alive.
After that, it was just a matter of cleanup. A smaller room beyond the bodyswapping chamber had been made into a bedchamber for the halflings when they were in their original bodies, and a small room just beyond that one contained their spellbooks and notes on the bodyswapping and nested amalgamation processes. Telgrane knew that the Guild would be interested in these, and gathered them all up. The room of supplies on the level below looked to have been taken from various caravans; doubtless the halfling wizard trio had engaged in some banditry while wearing their larger bodies. The heroes gathered up the valuables they could find from that storage chamber, then readied themselves for the trek back to Trip's goat farm. They took the dire goat with them, promising the four spellcasters' heads - all that remained of the Council of Four at this point - that the Guild would do what it could to restore them to their proper forms.
Cambrux was ecstatic, and opined that wizardry would soon put everything to rights. Travolleon and Sambiollus were less optimistic, but thanked the adventurers for saving them from being eaten by the giants.
Girant, not surprisingly, spent the entire trip back complaining about the dire goat's flatulence. It was a long trip home.
PC Roster:
Cal Trop, human cleric of Kord
Chalkan, half-elf ranger/cleric of Corellon Larethian/sorcerer/arcane archer
Delphyne Babelberi, human witch (wizard)
Telgrane, human conjurer
Thunderwolf, human fighter
Chalkan, half-elf ranger/cleric of Corellon Larethian/sorcerer/arcane archer
Delphyne Babelberi, human witch (wizard)
Telgrane, human conjurer
Thunderwolf, human fighter
A Guild page walked into the Wing Three common area and announced that a letter had arrived for Cal, passed on by a merchant caravan. He handed it over to the eager cleric, nodded his head in acknowledgement, and departed.
Cal opened up the letter, which was sealed with a blob of wax. It read:
"Gear up!" called Cal to the others. "We're off to go visit my brother Trip!"Cal,
I caught me the most amazing goat the other day! He was out back, wandering just outside of the goat pens, and he fought me something fierce, but I wrestled him into the pens with all the other goats. He walks funny, kind of like he's unsure of his footing (which itself is pretty weird for a goat), and he spends most of the day pacing back and forth, back and forth. He sometimes makes funny marks in the ground with his hoof, kind of like he's writing, but it’s like no writing I ever seen before. Maybe you should come on down here the next time you're in the area and see for yourself. (If you do come, try and bring that Delfine chick with you – she was pretty hot! She isn’t attached to anybody yet, is she?)
Anyway, hope to see you soon. I'm thinking I'm gonna name the new goat "Pacer." Or maybe "Hobbles."
Your Brother,
Trip
- - -
The trip to Trip's was uneventful. As the five adventurers headed up the path to Trip's goat farm, the goatherder must have seen them from his window, for he exited the front door and walked out to greet them. He shook each of the heroes' hands in turn, taking a noticeable longer time with Delphyne's. Then he slapped his brother Cal on the back, and said, "I reckon you'd all like to see that goat I found." Trip ushered the group around the house to the goat pen out back. "I decided to name him 'Scribe,' since he spends most of his day scratching around in the ground like he's writing. Hey, you know of any circuses around here what might like to buy an educated goat?"
Trip's goat pen easily held two dozen goats, but one in particular was standing apart from the others, scratching furiously into the ground. Trip led the group into the pen, closing the gate behind them, and they walked over to look at Scribe's scratchings. "Oh dear," said Delphyne, looking down at the markings in the dirt. "That's the Giant language." She didn't like accessing the memories implanted in her head by Hagatha, but stored there was a full understanding of the Giant language.
"What's it say?" asked Cal.
Delphyne translated, word for word. Scribe had written:
As Delphyne read the goat's message aloud, its author looked up and bleated excitedly. "...So, you're not in your original body?" asked Delphyne in the Giant tongue. The goat shook his head vigorously from side to side.YOU CRETINOUS OAF! IF I WERE IN MY ORIGINAL BODY I WOULD RIP YOUR ARM OUT OF ITS SOCKET AND SLAP YOUR STUPID FACE SILLY WITH YOUR OWN FLOPPING HAND! THERE ARE OTHER LANGUAGES THAN YOUR OWN HUMAN SCRIPT – AT LEAST RECOGNIZE THIS AS ANOTHER LANGUAGE AND SEND FOR HELP FROM THOSE MORE LIKELY TO UNDERSTAND, YOU IGNORANT BUMPKIN!
"Who are you?" asked Delphyne, again in the same language.
The goat trotted over to a blank patch of dirt and started scratching out letters with his hoof. "'Bjorn Gundarson,'" read Delphyne.
The interrogation continued. Over time, Delphyne learned the following: Bjorn was a frost giant, whose body was swapped with that of the goat by a trio of wizards - "little guys," so presumably halflings or gnomes - who lived in a stone giant lair up in the mountains. They did that to make the frost giant body easier to control, so that one of them in turn could bodyswap into the frost giant's body, leaving his own body with the intellect of a goat. (They found that a goat can get into much less trouble than a frost giant - or a stone giant, for that matter.) Their original plan was to slay Bjorn once he was in the goat's body, but Bjorn was having none of that and he escaped before they could catch him. He wandered around the mountain looking for someone who could possibly reverse the transformation, but then he was captured by the oafish Trip, who seemed to treat Bjorn as some sort of novelty trick animal rather than seeing the situation for what it really was. Bjorn volunteered to lead the group back to the stone giant lair where the three wizards were currently located. Hopefully, they'd be able to defeat the wizards and restore Bjorn to his rightful body. Bjorn just wanted his own body and gear back – and the wizards responsible for his current predicament dead. The group was more than welcome to any treasure the wizards might have accumulated.
"Time out," called Chalkan. "Why are we helping a frost giant, again?"
"These wizards aren't up to any good," pointed out Delphyne. "We can assume they wanted the giant bodies so that they'd have more powerful forms, and the whole body-stealing business sounds pretty evil. I think we need to put a stop to them."
"Agreed," said Cal.
"Normally, I'd say we should go ask the Council for help," added Trip. "This valley is nominally ruled by the Council of Four, a bunch of wizards and druids who pretty much act as our leaders. Only, nobody's seen them for a couple of weeks. So I guess we're it. And by 'we,' I mean 'you,'" admitted the goatherder sheepishly. "I leave all that hero stuff to you folks. Let me know how it goes, though."
Bjorn had another warning to give out before they left. There was a large, three-headed monster who acted as a guard-beast for the wizards; they'd have to be on the watch for it as they approached the stone giant den. Then he was eager to be off, to fetch his original body back. Trip let him out of the pen, and the group followed the goat as he headed unerringly for the nearby mountains.
About halfway up the mountain, Chalkan spotted a winged creature streaking down from the sky above. At first it looked to be a bluish-green dragon with a wingspan of about 40 feet; then he noticed the beast's other two heads – one that of a lion, the other that of a goat, each larger than it had any right to be – and the elven arcane archer recognized that the group was up against some sort of monstrous chimera. The fact that this was no ordinary chimera was driven home not only by the creature's enormous size, but also by the fact that its tail seemed to be an enormous serpent of some type.
Chalkan notched an arrow into Rilisivae Athelgala and called out a warning to the others. His arrow struck true, driving deep into the space between the throats of the lion and goat, and then the dire chimera landed before the group, breathing out a cloud of poisonous gas. Bjorn instantly keeled over, while the heroes scattered out of the edges of the cloud of vapors. Delphyne leaped upon her broom of flying and flew straight up, out of the creature's reach - at least, unless it decided to take flight again. Chalkan continued peppering it with arrows, while Cal cast a flame strike down from the heavens. Telgrane popped open his tinder box and allowed Infernia to join the fray; she happily scampered off to the dire chimera's rear end, secure in the knowledge that no matter how poisonous the serpent's venom might be, she was immune to it. Thunderwolf stepped up to attack the goat's head with his longsword, deeming it the least powerful of the creature's flanks.
The battle was furious, and each side inflicted a considerable amount of damage upon the other before the dire chimera decided it had had enough; after all, it had accomplished its main objective, slaying the goat that had escaped from its masters. Now its duty was clear: since it was having a tough time killing off these adventurers, it had to report back to its wizardly masters, so they could prepare themselves for a battle against these powerful foes who were obviously on their way to the stone giant den. The dire chimera once again took wing...
...but it had tallied too long, and it was taken down by a combined blast of offensive spells by Delphyne, Telgrane, and Cal before it could fly out of range. It crashed back down to the ground in a bone-jarring thud and landed in a heap. Cal called for a rest and delivered healing spells to those who needed them, while Thunderwolf confirmed that Bjorn was indeed dead.
"Well, good!" commented Chalkan. "I didn't really want to give a frost giant his body back, anyway. That's just asking for trouble."
The group continued up the mountain. Lacking Bjorn's lead, they deemed it best to continue in the direction they'd been heading and hope that the stone giant den became obvious when they got there.
It didn't, but for a good reason: the once enormous cave opening had been reshaped by the wizards who took over the lair, covering it with a wall of natural-looking stone in the front, so that from head-on it looked like there was no opening at all; the twin openings were at the side, hidden from view. The group had no indication that they were practically on top of the stone giant den - until a hill giant seemed to step out of the very rock to urinate against a boulder.
The adventurers stopped in their tracks and stared in shock at the hill giant. The hill giant, for his part, showed no less surprise at the sudden appearance of a quintet of heavily-armed heroes climbing up the mountainside, and quickly refocused his attention from his breech-cloth to the heavy club he gripped in one meaty fist. He turned his head and called over his shoulder in a language none of the heroes recognized, and then charged down the slope at them, grinning evilly.
Cal and Thunderwolf ran up to meet the hill giant's charge, while the others held back. Delphyne remained on her broom, and Telgrane cast a Rary's telepathic bond spell to ensure the heroes would remain in contact with each other, when a troll popped into view from the mountain ahead of them. This troll was an odd-looking one, with what looked like a wide variety of swords and daggers tied to its fingers. It loped down the slope at the heroes as well.
Thunderwolf gulped down his fear - this was the first troll he'd ever faced, and he'd heard they were powerful foes. Then a voice suddenly called in his head: "Thunderwolf, you must save me from this brute!" The young hero looked around, but saw nobody who could have called out to him. "I'm here, in the troll's hand!" replied the voice in response to Thunderwolf's apparent confusion.
The two forces met with a clash of weapons. The hill giant bashed at Cal with his oversized club, but the cleric dodged to the side and brought his mace crashing up into the creature's temple, bloodying it and causing it to stagger to the side. Cal noticed a falchion strapped to the belt of its breech-cloth, sized for use by a human, and mentally shrugged - maybe the hill giant used it as Cal would a hunting knife, who knew? Telgrane, meanwhile, estimated that casting a fireball at the troll would likely get Thunderwolf as well, and opted to summon a Huge fire elemental instead. As the creature of flames manifested and started swiping at the green-bodied monster, Thunderwolf flanked the troll and attacked it with a flurry of sword-thrusts. Infernia raced up to attack the troll as well, realizing her fiery body would be useful against the troll's regenerative powers. Delphyne shot a few magic missiles into the hill giant for good measure, and between her spells and Cal's mace, the hill giant soon fell over, dead. Cal then turned to face the troll, and Delphyne, seeing that the others should have the troll easily handled, flew her broom into the cavern's side-facing entrance. Telgrane followed.
Doing so, she missed it as the slain hill giant's body ripped open in a sluice of blood and gore, and out stepped a furious-looking orc. "You sonsabitches!" it cried aloud in the Common tongue. "I liked that body!" And with that, it picked up the falchion and raced over to attack Cal.
Thunderwolf, Infernia, and the Huge fire elemental had by this time finished off the troll. The two fire elementals followed Telgrane into the cave, the light from their flames providing illumination within. Thunderwolf, heeding the voice in his head, scrambled to untie the blades from the troll's fingers, focusing on one particular sword: the one who had been calling to him telepathically. "Excellent!" it cried as Thunderwolf grasped the longsword in his hand. "I was sullied by the touch of that upright beast! But together, you and I will do mighty things! I am called Xanthros."
Thunderwolf, awestruck at the thought of possessing an intelligent blade, almost didn't notice when the troll's body split open and a hobgoblin stepped out from its remains. But at Xanthros's warning, the young fighter leapt back in the nick of time, and he found himself in furious battle with the hobgoblin, who had picked up a longsword from one of the troll's fingers. "You'll pay for that, human!" the hobgoblin snarled.
Inside the cave, Delphyne and Telgrane heard a babble of voices, simultaneously calling for rescue, escape, and to be put out of their misery. The cacophony came from a side cavern which was penned off with a metal fence; behind it stood a dire goat, upon whose side had been grafted the heads of three humans and a half-elf.
"Kill me!" pleaded Travolleon Trackfinder. "Free me from this abomination!"
"Lead us away from here!" commanded Sambiollus, the second head from the front. "Quickly, before the giants get hungry and eat us!"
"Do not be so hasty!" Cambrux chided the first head. "With magic, all things are possible! I'm sure there must be a way to restore us to our proper forms, given time."
"You three have it easy," complained Girant Fisherking. "I'm the one closest to the goat's hindquarters, and its flatulence is truly horrid to behold!"
"Baa," bleated the dire goat, irritated at the constant bickering of the four heads grafted onto its side.
"Bleah," grimaced Delphyne, looking at the abomination standing before her.
"We'll have to come back for you," promised Telgrane, noticing that Thunderwolf was in deadly combat with some hobgoblin - just where had he come from? But he seemed to be holding his own, and the conjurer could see Cal finishing off an orc, only to have a halfling climb out of the orc's split-open body. "This is getting ridiculous!" Cal called out, as he slammed the little halfling with his mace, just as the little fellow was loading up a sling. Thunderwolf stood above the slain hobgoblin with Xanthros raised, and sure enough, its body split open as well, revealing another halfling fighter. Thunderwolf cut him to ribbons before he could do much more than stand up.
There were two other passageways leading deeper in the mountain from the entrance chamber; one led to a pair of rough beds, apparently the dwelling of the two nested halfling fighters, while another - scouted out by Infernia, at her master's bidding - led to a natural pool of water and a bunch of supplies in a cavern beyond that. There were no other enemies to be seen. Infernia returned to the entrance cavern.
"They're up there," pointed out one of the dire goat's extra heads, looking up at the ceiling of the central chamber. "Be careful; there are three of them, a frost giant and two stone giants, but they're really all halfling wizards." The group looked up, and saw a series of giant-sized handholds carved into the sides of the cavern wall, forming a ladder of sorts - but one more suited to the form of a stone giant.
"I can carry one other on my broom," suggested Delphyne.
"The clock's ticking on my Huge fire elemental," pointed out Telgrane. "We'll head on up, and meet you guys there." And with that, he cast a dimension door on himself and the two fire elementals.
"The rest of us are still going to need to get up there somehow," remarked Cal, looking up the shaft leading to the upper level. "I'm going to get better-suited to use that ladder." And with a quick enlarge person spell, his muscular form took on giant proportions.
Telgrane and the elementals found themselves in a large cavern, with several tunnels leading elsewhere on the upper level. Standing just around the corner of the entry shaft from the lower level was a stone giant with its greatclub raised, ready to crash down upon the head of the first hero to climb up the shaft. Behind him stood another, eagerly anticipating clobbering the intruders as they approached the upper level. The Huge fire elemental attacked the first stone giant, who whipped around to face this sudden threat. Telgrane and Infernia focused their attention on the second one, and neither giant seemed to appreciate the tables being turned on them in this fashion. In fact, the first one had had enough of the Huge fire elemental's attacks, and cast a dimension door to the presumed safety of the lower level.
That turned out to not have been as safe as he had planned. Cal was about a third of the way up the shaft when he heard Delphyne's surprised scream as the stone giant suddenly appeared in her midst and took a swipe at her with its club. At his size, Cal was sure he could handle the fall, so he leaped off the wall of the shaft and landed behind the stone giant as it threatened Delphyne, Chalkan, and Thunderwolf. The stone giant wasn't particularly pleased to have escaped a Huge fire elemental only to find himself embroiled in a fight against four seasoned adventurers - one of them as big as he was - but it did what it could against them.
Meanwhile, the remaining stone giant on the upper level wasn't enjoying getting battered by a Huge fire elemental any more than the first one did. Fortunately for him, reinforcements were at hand. A frost giant entered the chamber from another one of the side passages. This was likely Bjorn's original body, but Telgrane knew its original owner no longer had any use for it, and blasted away with a fireball straight at its chest. The frost giant roared in pain. Upon Telgrane's command, he and the Huge fire elemental changed foes; Telgrane focused his attention on the stone giant, while the Huge fire elemental and Infernia took on the frost giant - whose body, the conjurer well knew, was particularly vulnerable to fire-based attacks.
Down below, the stone giant - in reality, a halfling wizard by the name of Cubbert Bumblebuskin - was quickly coming to the realization that he had bitten off more than he could chew. When he tried using the massive strength of his powerful stone giant body, he was outclassed against a cleric of Kord his own relative size. When he tried backing off and casting spells - as he would be forced to do were he in his normal halfling body - he was peppered with arrows by the half-elf and spells by the human woman. And the fighter kept rushing up and attacking him with the familiar-looking sword, no matter what he did. It was frustrating! Maybe he was better off taking his chances with the Huge fire elemental up above - at least there, he had allies! He stepped back and cast his last dimension door, escaping back to the relative safety of the upper caverns.
Cal cast a couple of quick healing spells on those who needed them, then resumed his climb up the vertical shaft. Delphyne waved Thunderwolf over to her and had him jump on the broom behind her, ready to transport him up to the upper level where all of the action was currently taking place. Chalkan opted not to wait and stowed his bow over his shoulder and started climbing the giant-spaced handholds, having a fairly difficult time of it but determined to make it nonetheless.
At about the same time that Cubbert had decided he'd be better off on the upper level, the frost giant - whose actions were currently controlled by a halfling wizard named Dobie Smoketallow - had come to the opposite conclusion. The Huge fire elemental had been taking quite a toll on him, and he needed some time to recuperate if he was going to make it through this battle alive. He cast a dimension door on himself, and was suddenly down at the bottom of the vertical shaft, about eye level with Delphyne, who had just started piloting her broom of flying up the shaft. Dobie swatted the broom, sending Thunderwolf toppling down to the stone floor and bouncing Delphyne off a wall to follow suit. Chalkan, halfway up the shaft, saw that his friends were in trouble below; unable to use his bow with only one hand free, he jumped down at the frost giant, pulling out his longsword during his descent. He landed on the frost giant's shoulder and got a fairly deep stab in with his sword before toppling off himself. Cal was nearly at the top of the shaft by that time, so he climbed up and into the upper level's main chamber.
The Huge fire elemental had lost his frost giant combatant and turned to see who else was available. "Oh, no!" cried Cubbert, seeing that he was apparently "it" again. He dashed to a smaller side chamber to the south, the Huge fire elemental in hot pursuit. Telgrane and Infernia were holding their own against the second stone giant - this one controlled by a halfling wizard named Billibew Inkwell - and the sudden addition of an extra-large Cal did nothing to help Billibew's odds.
For several minutes, the sounds of battle echoed from both levels of the stone giant den. Above, Cal, Telgrane and Infernia fought Billibew while the Huge fire elemental and Cubbert battled it out one chamber over; below, Chalkan, Delphyne, and Thunderwolf sparred with Dobie in Bjorn's old body. Each of the halflings-in-giant-bodies started fearing that they might not personally survive the fight, but that only spurred them on to greater efforts.
Dobie was the first to fall. The frost giant's massive form fell to the stone floor with a massive thud, and the heroes readied themselves in case another form would crawl out of Bjorn's body, as the halfling fighters had done outside. But one of the dire goat's extra heads informed the group that while the halfling fighters had each been "nested" into two other, increasingly-larger combat forms, the stone giant and frost giant bodies were merely the result of the swapping of their minds with those of one of the halfling wizard trio. So it looked like the danger was over down here; time to try getting up that shaft to the upper level again.
Chalkan started his slow climb yet again, only to have another stone giant suddenly appear on the lower level. Billibew had had enough of being up against three opponents, and dimension doored his way back to the lower level. Seeing the frost giant's unmoving form on the ground before him, he nearly lost his nerve - If they can do that to Dobie, what are they going to do to me?, he thought - but battled on nonetheless; after all, it wasn't like this was his body. "Not again!" called Chalkan to himself, as he slowly reversed direction one more time and climbed back down the vertical shaft.
Billibew didn't last much longer against the combined might of Chalkan, Delphyne, and Thunderwolf, especially now that he had depleted all of his most powerful spells. He fell to a heap besides Bjorn's slain form, and Chalkan sighed sadly to himself at the thought that now he'd have to try climbing back up that wretched shaft yet again.
Delphyne and Thunderwolf passed him going up the shaft, but doing so turned out not to have been to their advantage. They were about two-thirds of the way up when Cubbert, the last of the halfling wizards, decided that enough was enough. This stupid giant body was on its last legs anyway; he saw the two humans rising up the shaft on a flying broom and came up with a desperate, last-minute ploy. Stepping back, he got a running start and pitched himself forward into the shaft, arms spread wide. As he fell, his giant eyes rolled back into his head as he released mental control of the giant and his mind snapped back to his original body. The stone giant gave a frightened "Baaa!" as the goat's mind reverted to the stone giant's body, and Delphyne did some furious piloting to avoid being hit by the plummeting form of a goat in a stone giant's body. She flew her broom into the side of the wall, and Thunderwolf grabbed onto her shoulders to avoid falling off, but they both avoided the giant - as did Chalkan, by pressing up against the wall of the shaft as the giant plummeted on by. It landed with a heavy thud and didn't move again.
Two of the chambers on the upper level had intricate runes inscribed on overlapping circles etched into their floors; one had two circles (the bodyswapping chamber) and one had three (the nested amalgamations chamber). Another, as-yet-unexplored passageway led to a small chamber, in which three halflings were climbing out of a cage. These were Dobie, Cubbert, and Billibew, back in their original bodies; they caged the bodies when "bodyswapping" with the giants, so the goat minds (goats had been "bodyswapped" with the giants weeks before, then the goats-with-giants'-minds devoured, so that the giants' bodies were easier to manage when the halfling wizards weren't using them) would keep the halfling bodies out of trouble. They were low on spells, but threw a couple of feeble magic missiles at the heroes on the upper level. Telgrane responded with a cloudkill spell that encompassed their small chamber. Furthermore, as the chamber was slightly downhill from the main chamber, the cloudkill had nowhere else to drift, so it remained in the room with the halflings. None of them made it out alive.
After that, it was just a matter of cleanup. A smaller room beyond the bodyswapping chamber had been made into a bedchamber for the halflings when they were in their original bodies, and a small room just beyond that one contained their spellbooks and notes on the bodyswapping and nested amalgamation processes. Telgrane knew that the Guild would be interested in these, and gathered them all up. The room of supplies on the level below looked to have been taken from various caravans; doubtless the halfling wizard trio had engaged in some banditry while wearing their larger bodies. The heroes gathered up the valuables they could find from that storage chamber, then readied themselves for the trek back to Trip's goat farm. They took the dire goat with them, promising the four spellcasters' heads - all that remained of the Council of Four at this point - that the Guild would do what it could to restore them to their proper forms.
Cambrux was ecstatic, and opined that wizardry would soon put everything to rights. Travolleon and Sambiollus were less optimistic, but thanked the adventurers for saving them from being eaten by the giants.
Girant, not surprisingly, spent the entire trip back complaining about the dire goat's flatulence. It was a long trip home.