The following update is from our game session on 11/9
VALLEY OF THE BLACK TOWER
Xanesha was flying unseen over Sandpoint, heading for the Hellfire Flume on the far side, per Mokmurian’s instructions, when she saw Longtooth fall. Up until that point she had been only peripherally aware of the pathetic attempts of the town’s defenders. What was it to her if a few giants died? They were only a meant to be a distraction, after all. Her true mission lay within the ancient Thassilonian ruins. Then the dragon had gone down, and the lamia had been compelled to give her full attention to the defenders. It was only at that point that recognition had dawned on her as she saw the rogue, the dark-skinned mage and the orc-blooded monk. The interlopers who had spoiled her plans in Magnimar. The ones who had turned her into a glorified errand-runner for Mokmurian. The ones responsible for the death of her sister. In that instant, Xanesha knew hate, pure and unadulterated. All thoughts of her original mission flew away, and she wheeled in mid-air and headed back towards the escalating assault.
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Cruemann drew and fired as he darted among the rooftops of the town, peppering the giants across the millpond with arrows while trying desperately to avoid their return barrage of boulders.
“Cruemann!” Dexter called from where he hovered above the brewery. “Leave them for now! Those below are already within the town! We need to take them down quickly!”
The archer nodded and quickly followed after the rogue.
Sinclair flew casually above the streets, mapping out his targets in his head as he prepared his next fireball. He was caught completely unprepared when the snake-bodied woman appeared directly in front of him, her face hidden behind a serpentine mask, a wickedly-barbed spear gripped in her hands. Before the gnome could react, Xanesha thrust her weapon forward, driving it deep into his abdomen. Sinclair’s face paled as blood came into his throat. All he could think to do was to get away. Panic beating at his head like dark wings, he fled, erratic and jerky in his flight, desperate to reach Duerten.
Wesh couldn’t believe what he was seeing. The mage had alighted on the roof of the Rusty Dragon to get his bearings, and thus he had an unobstructed view of Sinclair’s ambush. It was Xanesha. There could be no doubt. Fear filled him as he remembered their last meeting with the lamia, and how they barely escaped with their lives.
“Dexter!” he cried.
The rogue looked over his shoulder and saw the wizard gesturing frantically. Wondering what could have gone wrong now, Dex nearly fell out of the sky when he saw the unmistakable form of the lamia matriarch hovering in the sky. Unlike Wesh, however, it wasn’t fear that filled Dexter…it was anger, and an overwhelming desire for vengeance upon Skud’s murderer.
The soulless gaze of Xanesha’s mask raked over the beleaguered town and fell upon Dexter as he raced towards her, a confused Cruemann following in his wake. Wesh saw the lamia ready herself, and he knew that the rogue would stand no chance against her. Desperately, he hurled arcane bolts towards her, trying to distract her, if only for a moment. The air in front of Xanesha shimmered as an invisible shield caught the missiles, but to her surprise, the mage’s magic proved stronger than her own, and the bolts punched through, rocking her with the impact. Wesh’s plan worked too well. Xanesha forgot about Dexter completely. She turned towards where the wizard still stood upon the rooftop, gripped her spear and charged. Wesh panicked. As the lamia closed with frightening speed, he reacted instinctively, throwing up a dispelling field between himself and Xanesha. To his utter amazement, as she passed through it, the air around her crackled and sparked as her protective spells were ripped from her. Slowly, she sank towards the ground as even her power of flight was nullified.
Xanesha was furious. It had taken her a long time to prepare her defenses and she would not have to the opportunity to replace them. Already the buffoon of an orc was closing rapidly with her. Stupidly, the monk leaped for her, attempting to restrain her of all things! In disdain, she slapped him aside with a flick of her tail, but as she turned to finish him off, he was already back on his feet. She raised her spear over her head and brought it down violently. Impossibly, at the last moment, the monk darted aside and the head of her weapon hit the ground and stuck solidly. Snarling, she struggled to rip it free, but before she could, the rogue hit her from behind, his blade ripping into her like a hot iron. She screamed involuntarily, but as she turned, the monk was on her again, kicking and punching, mostly ineffectively, but still managing to divide her attention. Xanesha reached towards both of her assailants, intending to turn their minds to mush with the touch of her bare hands. Instead, she felt a moment of intense pain in her back, followed by a blessed, calming numbness.
“I don’t know who or what ye are, lady,” said the dwarf who stood over her as she slumped to the ground, a dripping axe in his hands, “but me friends say ye’re bad news, an’ that’s enough fer me. Vengeance is best served cold, as me ole’ pap used’ta say.”
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Xanesha’s death, on the heels of Longtooth’s, was enough for the remaining stone giants. They sounded a general retreat and escaped into the surrounding swampland. Over two-dozen of Sandpoint’s citizens lay dead in the aftermath of the attack, but many more surely would have had it not been for the new incarnation of the Sandpoint Seven. In addition, no townsfolk were taken hostage by the giants, and the Scarnetti manor, which had been put to the torch by the giants, was extinguished without extensive damage, resulting in a grudging display of gratitude on the part of Lord Scarnetti to Wesh and his comrades. As an aside, Sheriff Hemlock discretely, politely, but emphatically requested that Reaper take his new bodyguard outside the town walls, as its presence was upsetting the onlookers.
Unfortunately, no giant prisoners were taken either, thus keeping the reason for their sudden attack a mystery. This posed no great problem for Reaper. Once the townspeople had recovered from their shock enough to go about the tasks of putting out fires, digging out loved ones, and salvaging their homes, the heroes slipped away to examine one of the giant corpses. More specifically, Reaper wanted to talk to it. Gripping its massive head in his hands, he began to chant, channeling necromantic power into the body.
“Can you hear me?” he asked at length, removing his hands.
“Yes…I can hear you,” the giant replied, its mouth moving, but its eyes remaining blank and dead.
“Why did you come so far just to attack a town as small as Sandpoint?” the necromancer asked.
“We were sent to gather intelligence in preparation for our invasion,” the corpse answered.
“How many battle groups such as yours have been dispatched?” Reaper prodded.
“I do not know,” the giant answered. “Many parties were sent. Mine was but one.”
“But why attack Sandpoint if you were only sent to gather information?” asked Reaper.
“The lamia commanded it,” said the corpse.
“Xanesha was your commander? Mokmurian answers to the lamias?”
“Hah!” the giant laughed. “No one commands Mokmurian. The lamias serve him, as do we all.”
“When will the invasion come?” Reaper demanded.
“Mokmurian’s fury will come soon,” the giant said flatly. “Perhaps even by month’s end.”
“How many giants does Mokmurian command?”
“He has at least seven tribes of my brothers under his authority, each numbering in the dozens. The number of lesser kin he’s conscripted…ogres, hill giants, ettins, trolls…is not insignificant either. I have already told you of the lamias…degenerate followers of the Mother of Monsters that they are.”
Reaper paused for a moment, then spoke again.
“Who is Mokmurian?”
“Our lord and leader,” the giant said. “He promised us glory and riches, and although our raid on your town didn’t go so well, that’s because Xanesha was a fool. When Lord Mokmurian marches down from the Storval Plateau, he will take from you everything.”
“What is he?” Reaper ignored the threat.
“I have only heard him speak from afar,” the corpse replied, “and have only heard from others of the power of his magic. He is the rarest of us all, a child of the stones who has mastered the magic of the Ancient Lords. They say he can turn the living into immobile stone and can turn his own flesh into granite armor. I’ve even heard he can cause the very stones of the world to reject those who stand upon them and cast them into the sky. And I’m sure he can do much more than that.”
“You mentioned the Storval Plateau,” Reaper said. “Is that where Mokmurian’s fortress lies?”
“Mokmurian has claimed a place taboo to my people, the Valley of the Black Tower in the Iron Peaks. He calls his fortress Jorgenfist, after the name of the fortress that guards the entrance to the afterlife. Our elders found the name blasphemous, but Mokmurian is powerful enough not to fear blasphemy. Jorgenfist overlooks the waters of the Muschkal River.”
“One final question,” Reaper nodded, “and then I will release you to seek Jorgenfist yourself. Why do you and your brothers all bear the Sihedron Rune?”
“Mokmurian’s mark, you mean,” the giant replied. “We wear it with pride as a symbol of our undying loyalty to Mokmurian.”
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Duerten sat alone in the mess hall of Fort Rannick, a large tankard of dwarven ale sitting untouched before him. The company had returned to the fort in order to use it as a staging ground for their sojourn into the Iron Peaks, but that was a journey for tomorrow, and the priest was contemplating the present. Specifically, he was looking at what lay beside his mug…Sarenrae’s symbol. It was the first time Duerten had removed it since taking his vows, and now, he was contemplating never putting it on again. The Dawnstar advocated forgiveness…a tenet the dwarf had always taken for granted…right up until the day he’d been expected to put it into practice with Barl Breakbones. And found that he couldn’t. He could not simply overlook mass murder, torture, the corruption of life. It went against everything he was coming to discover that he truly believed. Everything that he’d been taught as a boy among his clan, when his mother had schooled him in the teachings of the dwarven god Torag…
Across the hall, Cruemann also sat alone, though his thoughts did not go so deep as Duerten’s. He already knew that Sarenrae’s path was not for him, but the church paid well, and the gold bought a lot of ale. As if in answer to his prayers as he looked into his empty mug, the cook placed another tankard in front of him.
“From the gent in the corner,” the big man nodded.
Cruemann looked up and saw a smiling stranger he’d never seen at the fort before. The rakish-looking fellow raised his own tankard to the archer…and then he simply vanished. Cruemann’s mouth dropped open, and he glanced down at the mug in front of him. It was then that he saw the piece of parchment folded in its handle. He quickly unfurled it and read the short note scrawled there.
‘Cheers, and here’s to a bright and profitable future together!’ It was signed, Caiden Cailean…
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It took Wesh two days of overland flight, with return trips to Fort Rannick in the evening via teleportation before he finally located the Valley of the Black Tower. There the mountains gave way to a wide vale perched on the upper edge of a cliff overlooking the Muschkal River. At the near edge of the valley entrance, a lone watchtower stood upon a low hill, but that structure was overshadowed by the larger one that loomed in the valley proper. There stood a ring-shaped stone wall, fifty-feet high and surrounding several buildings, the most impressive of which was a looming black tower with blade-like crenellations that overlooked the river gorge. Within the ring, a one-hundred-fifty-foot-tall stone spire rose, surrounded by three low buildings. Apart from the black tower, five smaller ones were built into the fortress wall…one of them was wider than the others, and seemed to be the only gateway into the courtyard within. Yet the fortress was not the only sign of life, for surrounding it were seven large camps of towering tents, yurts, and stone shelters. Smoke rose from campfires and the sound of grating laughter and the clash of weapon training filled the air, competing with the periodic trumpeting of large and angry-sounding animals from somewhere within the fortress itself.
Wesh memorized the layout, imprinting the image firmly in his mind, then teleported back to Fort Rannick. The following morning, the mage returned, this time bearing Reaper in-tow. The necromancer gazed upon the valley, forming his own memory, and then the pair returned to Rannick a final time to fetch their comrades. When all seven stood at the valley’s mouth again, it was time to find a way to infiltrate Jorgenfist. The first obstacle, however, was the nearby watchtower. Even from a distance of almost a quarter-mile, they could see the unmistakable shape of a large giant patrolling its roof.
“Are you ready?” Wesh asked Sinclair.
The little gnome nodded firmly. He joined hands with Cruemann, Adso and Duerten, while Wesh did the same with Dexter and Reaper. Both mages spoke the words to their spells, and the two groups vanished in a flash of light, only to reappear moments later atop the large watchtower. The giant turned, startled, but no more so than the seven companions, for the creature was like none they’d ever seen before. To begin with, the giant was female, and she was huge, standing nearly twenty-feet tall. Stark white scars and tribal patterns tattooed her dusky skin, and skulls, stone fetishes and crude but deadly wooden weapons marked her as a deadly warrior. The Sandpoint warriors, however, where deadlier still. Between Duerten’s axe, Adso’s fists, coupled with Cruemann’s powerful arrows, the towering warrior-woman toppled like a great oak. She never had a chance to raise her voice in alarm, much less her weapons.
“Ah, I was beginning to miss my last companion,” Reaper said as he went to the dead giantess and placed his hands gently upon her still-warm flesh. As he uttered his spell, the warrior rose again, only this time as a hulking, skeletal revenant. She placed her club upon the ground and bent clumsily upon one knee to her new master. Reaper commanded her to rise and pull open the massive, iron trapdoor that led to the tower’s interior. The room below seemed to be a common room, and three very-surprised ettins gazed back up at them, the looks on their six faces almost comical. At Reaper’s bidding, the undead giant leaped among them like a demonic titan. The ettins fell back before her brutal assault, falling beneath her tree-sized maul blow-by-bone-breaking-blow. The companions descended into the tower, pulling the door closed behind them, leaving no one at Jorgenfist the wiser…
At the table, it can be frustrating for the less ethically-challenged PCs to sit around and wait for the paladin or lg cleric resolve their moral issues. ![:]](http://www.enworld.org/forum/images/smilies/devious.png "Devious :]")
