The Age of Worms - Morrus' Campaign - Finished 6th August!!
Inconsequenti-AL
Breaks Games
Thanks for the writeup Nik - came out well as usual!
And there we were hoping for a nice mystic vision and drinking some knowledge. Not anticipating a crazy fight to the death against legions of horrors.
Some mechanical bits:
That boneyard is another to add to the long list of overly terrifying things we've met lately. IIRC, you had to make a relatively high fort save or take 2D4 Str, Dex and Con damage when it hit you.
And the Kyuss skeletons were throwing 14D6 negative energy explosions around...
Abciximab - that's exactly what we thought as well!
The penalties were really racking up on Endos bluff - Fez's +0 sense motive check was closing in on the +58 bluff score.
And from earlier - Endo did kill the Efreeti with a Finger of Death - which rocked.
And there we were hoping for a nice mystic vision and drinking some knowledge. Not anticipating a crazy fight to the death against legions of horrors.
Some mechanical bits:
That boneyard is another to add to the long list of overly terrifying things we've met lately. IIRC, you had to make a relatively high fort save or take 2D4 Str, Dex and Con damage when it hit you.
And the Kyuss skeletons were throwing 14D6 negative energy explosions around...
Abciximab - that's exactly what we thought as well!
The penalties were really racking up on Endos bluff - Fez's +0 sense motive check was closing in on the +58 bluff score.
And from earlier - Endo did kill the Efreeti with a Finger of Death - which rocked.
Last edited:
Darmanicus
I'm Ray...of Enfeeblement
3V1L_N3CR0 said:
Yeah I FoD'd that SoaB
![:]](http://www.enworld.org/forum/images/smilies/devious.png "Devious :]")
3V1L_N3CR0
First Post
nice
"Phear the Finger" lol
"Phear the Finger" lol
Eccles
Ragged idiot in a trilby.
After a few days spent in the Free City, we teleported back to Mage Point, where we learned that Manzorian was returned from his extraplanar sojourn – we immediately left a note with one of his secretaries asking if we might meet with him once again.
Two days later, we were ensconced in his richly appointed study once again. We began by asking if would mind looking after the Hand of Vecna. He indicated that he had a suitably secure vault in which he could place the limb, and we were more than happy to pass off the dangerous arm to him before we started to explain what else we’d been up to.
I took the lead in this discussion, telling the story to the best of my ability, and writhing the tale in with a sequence of illusions. As my tale went on, the burning cities and battlefield could be see out of the windows of his study, whilst many of the Spawn of Kyuss began to lurch their way through the walls of the room. I gestured, and the room faded away to be replaced with a replica of ourselves back on the mesa-top, where we could be seen to speak to the druids and then, wincing, I replayed the terrible fight with the Boneyard of Kyuss.
When the illusion was over, Manzorian sat back and clicked his fingers. Immediately a stack of scrolls and books materialised on one corner of his desk.
“I have noticed,” he announced, “that since you returned, there has been a change in the world at large. Somehow, despite being untouched within my library, all of these books have been … altered. Whole texts have been added, sometimes stretching to several pages which I simply know were not there previously.
“The battle which you described is detailed in this scroll particularly,” he continued as he unrolled a large piece of parchment. “And this etching replicated on the scroll speaks of the very battle of which you speak – the battle of Rift Canyon.”
As he unrolled the scroll, he paused and squinted at the image. He took a few moments to snatch a bejewelled magnifying glass from the desk and look closely before he straightened, and spun the scroll on the desk so that we could look at it.
“I don’t believe it,” he exclaimed. “It’s you!”
We looked down at where he was pointing, and could see tiny figures atop a mesa, involved in a desperate fight with a huge dragon-skulled skeletal worm. Indisputably, each of us was replicated in miniature on the flaking etching we were staring at, which Manzorian swore was more than one thousand years old.
Unfurling a map, Manzorian swept his hand across the realms to the north. “Kongen-Thulnir lies within the Rift Canyon, some 150 miles to the north of here. The city’s exact location is not known, as it is the ancestral homeland of a race of giants. Visitors are… shall we say simply that they are not welcome?
“One of the recently updated texts in my library has references to the Rift Canyon, and seems to suggest the Order of the Storms was involved in its construction and then entrusted to the giants; perhaps to guard something?”
He left this question hanging in the air as we looked at the map. It was clear that the Rift Canyon was almost 180 miles in length, stretching through the Bandit Canyons and was known as a sanctuary for beasts and thugs of all kinds. Picking on a likely looking village which lay on a river some 50 miles from the canyon, we turned to Janga as he started his prayer of teleportation.
.oOo.
Within the tiny hamlet of ‘Gullet’, we encountered an elderly fishwife, whose husband had disappeared when he had gone ‘investigating the giant town 20 miles to the south’. Whilst she was distracted by the handful of gold Flynne passed her in thanks, she barely noticed as Janga invoked Fahrlanghan’s name once more and we flew from the settlement in the form of a few clouds on the wind. As we hurtled away, we could hear the old woman proclaiming herself ‘Queen of Gullet’, as she wove herself a tiara of old fish bones.
.oOo.
Following trails found by Fez, we swept low to the edge of the crevasse, where the wind made a dreadful hollow moaning sound as it rushed across the lip of the canyon. 100 feet down over the edge of the sheer drop stood a ruined city of stone, which was made up from hundreds of multi-levelled buildings housed in caverns and protruding from the cliff walls. Massive spires rose from the depths of the canyon, and atop two of this hulking masses of stone were castle-like structures.
The whole colossal city was alight. Smoke rose from the spires, and buildings were damaged, clearly by the dozens of dragons which swooped and breathed fire, acid and ice down onto the stone roofs and defenders below.
The defenders were giants, sparsely spaced out and barely equal to the task of fending off the dragons, which they did with thrown boulders and gigantic war machines to match acidic breath, and reaching up with tremendous spears to try and bring down the flying beasts above them.
As we watched, a massive dragon swooped in, but one of its wings was caught on a thin steel chain, which had been painted to match the stone of the cavern’s wall. The bones of the dragon’s wing crumpled around the taught chain, and the creature tumbled into the deep rift below.
At the same instant, Endo began to look worried and started chanting under his breath. “There’s a green above us. A big one. Invisible.”
Straining our ears to hear what spells the dragon might be casting, we started to cast our own, Janga Endo and I all working together to improve us all as quickly as possible. As I was just in the process of turning Flynne invisible, the many eyeballs of Endo’s Robe of Eyes all abruptly turned upwards to point at the same target, and he flung a spell at the dragon only he could see.
His spell took effect, reaving away several magical effects on the dragon above – immediately the huge form of the green dragon materialised in the sky a hundred feet over our heads. An instant later, a fiery arrow appeared in its flank from Flynne’s arrow – he was clearly flying in the sky alongside the creature. The long sinuous neck turned to look to one side and inhaled before blasting a tremendous gout of acid through the sky. I could see the acid spattering around where Flynne was clearly flying.
The dragon then swooped through the sky, and when its massive jaws snapped shut a cry of pain and a gout of fresh blood dropped from the air.
A few feet above the dragon, a slash appeared in the air, and Janga walked through the dimensional portal, taking Fez with him. Both were flying – the gnome through the effects of his winged boots, and Fez under the powers of the potion he had just consumed.
My spell failed to take effect, and the dragon’s last few spells stayed in effect. Endo, clutching his Rod of Quickening, called up a jet black flaming steed, which he rode up into the sky towards the dragon. Once on a level with the dragon, he cast a second spell; launching a powerful black ray at the dragon. When the spell connected, the vast dragon sagged in the air as its muscles withered and faded under Endo’s assault.
I could not see Flynne flying away, but was certain that he had done so as his arrows slammed once more into the dragon’s flank, and whilst the dragon failed to remove the enfeebling effect of Endo’s spell with a word of power of its own, it then flailed up towards Fez; biting and slapping with wings and claws, the weakened dragon’s blows largely bounced off his shield drawing little blood on the tough barbarian.
Janga cast a protective spell upon himself, as Fez whacked downwards with his scythe again and again. In the same time, my next spell failed as well, as did Endo’s, before Flynne (appearing as he did so), flew straight in under the creature, stabbing a new dark-bladed shortsword up into the dragon’s belly.
The dragon’s sides flexed as it breathed a hurricane force winds and acid over Fez and Janga, before lashing out a massively accurate series of blows against Janga. Heavily wounded, the cleric backed away from the dragon once more and then cast a powerful spell to heal himself of all his injuries.
Screaming, Fez attacked madly – the scythe slashed and crashed into the dragon, biting deeply into the beast’s neck over and over. The dragon crashed to the floor, and we hacked a claw off one of its claws before dashing away down a path.
“Wait up,” came a call from behind us.
.oOo.
Only as tall as our waists, the waddling form of the Ominous Fabler approached us. We stared at one another in disbelief as we looked at him getting closer and closer. Fez bowed at the tiny man, and he smiled wryly.
“You don’t have to do that any more,” he told the barbarian. “I thought that I’d come and help you.”
As we stared at him, Endo began to look uncomfortable; I therefore began to stare more closely at the figure, and whilst my clair de lunettes showed only a series of protective spells, I could sense a powerful necromantic magic emanating from the figure – too powerful to be any mere spell. Acting on a hunch, I pulled a flask from one of my magical bags, and proffered it to him.
“We’re going to fly down to the giants,” I told him. You’ll need to drink this if you’re coming with us. It’s a flight potion.”
As he smiled and quaffed the thick paste down, I grinned broadly.
“Actually,” I continued, “It’s something I like to call wormbane paste. Completely harmless to any normal person, but…” I paused as the Fabler collapsed to his knees in agony, clutching at his throat. “If you’ve got any worms inside you, it’s probably quite fatal.”
.oOo.
“I worked for Ilthane,” he croaked out. “And I was caught by Dragotha. He sent me to spy on Zeech. I was a spy on him although he was already one of Dragotha’s servants. I got the distinct impression that Zeech had his own relationship with Dragotha, and I have now fled there, and have come to join you.”
“What?” We looked at one another, aghast. “Why on earth should we let you join us?”
“I can help you. I am a chronicler, and teller of tales. I can record your adventures…”
I cut him off, practically grinding my teeth together in irritation. “Got one. Don’t need another one.”
“Well then I can bring knowledge. I don’t know much, but the stone giants have gone from the city beneath us. Now, there are three factions, and they are fighting; the fight is still going now that the dragons have arrived. One of the factions has a king – but be is said to be on his deathbed.”
“I like him,” said Fez. “Can we keep him?”
Frowning at the barbarian, I shushed him whilst reaching for the flask of wormbane paste. Flynne held my wrist.
“Hold on,” he interrupted. “Let’s talk about this a minute.”
There then started a long discussion between us.
“How can we trust him?”
“He’s funny.”
“You only think he’s funny because you’re taller than he is now.”
“But he can do everything you can…”
“So what? You don’t need me now? You’d rather have the undead midget who admits he works for Dragotha?”
“Worked. He only worked for him.”
“Yeah? You believe a word he says?”
“So you mean he might not’ve worked for Dragotha?”
“Aaargh! No, that’s not what I meant at all, and you know it!”
“So you should let him free and let him join you.”
We paused, and looked down at the tiny man who had worked his way into our huddle. To my view, his eyeballs were two long twisting worms writhing between the eyeslits of a helmet disguised by an illusion.
“Who invited you to this discussion?”
“Well, you were deciding whether to kill me or not, I figured I should at least give you the benefits of my expert opinion.”
“Let me guess,” I responded. “Your expert opinion is that we should let you live?”
“Of course.”
Over his diminutive head, I could see my comrades grinning.
“Look, stand over there, and let us talk. I don’t trust you, and I don’t want you involved in this talk.”
“Fair enough. I still think you should let me live, though.”
Seeing him safely away from us, the conversation continued, until a decision was reached. As one, we all turned on the tiny form of the Ominous Fabler with weapons drawn.
“Bugger,” he said – and then vanished.
.oOo.
We dashed down the pathway which led down into the canyon, and found ourselves facing massive bronzed wooden gates, to one side of which stood a colossal tower, fully 60 feet in height. Near the 20 foot tall door lay the corpse of a giant – charred and burned by fire and acid almost beyond all recognition.
“Ahoy the castle!”
Within moments, the door to the tower flew open, and within stood a towering giant; easily 17 feet in height it had a tremendous club in one hand, and bounced a boulder easily in his left hand.
“Go away,” he boomed down to us.
“But we’re dragon slayers, here to assist you and raise the siege!”
As we spoke, in the far distance a dragon swooped low over a stone bridge; fire and flames wreathed a giant below before the massive red claws gripped the giant by the shoulders and threw him, tumbling and burning into the rift canyon below.
“Urr – how long have the dragons been here?” I was carefully levitating upwards as I spoke to close on the giant’s face.
“2 days,” he boomed into my face. “It is as though they are looking for something.”
“We have travelled long,” I told him before launching into the tale of our adventures to reach the Canyon. When I had concluded, I wove all my knowledge into a powerful suggestion. “And thus, you should let us in.”
I could sense the power in my words, but also I could sense it as they flew straight into the teeth of an older, and much more powerful magic. My words flew apart in the face of the geas, woven by phenomenally powerful beings millennia ago.
I looked back to explain to my comrades, and could see that they were already looking back in consternation at an incoming flight of 5 dragons; four smaller black dragons flying wingtip to wingtip with a somewhat larger green.
Panicking, I turned back to the towering hill giant.
“We’re all giants – we were changed from our true forms by a most powerful evil sorcerer – now for all that is holy and true, let us in!”
“Why you not say this earlier,” asked the giant looking suddenly confused as he stepped out of the doorway to let us all into the tower.
.oOo.
As we slammed the door shut and looked around, we saw an even dozen giants clustered in the chamber. It was obvious by the dirt and the stench that they had been there for several days. The giant who had let us in shuffled his feet in embarrassment and explained, “There were 30 of us, and we tried to fight the dragons, we only 12 of us now,” he grunted.
Flynne started to fire arrows through the cracks around the door as the whole tower shuddered – the dragons were clearly bathing the whole of the tower with acid.
As I turned to yell at the giants and encourage them to rise up against their attackers, and Endo cast a spell (“I wish that my next spell strike true and bite hard”), we caught flickering sight of the dragons through the tower’s arrow slits. They formed a long line as they circled across the chasm before plummeting down like a series of arrows at the tower.
Boom! Boom! Boom! – cracks appeared as the first dragons slammed home.
BOOM! Stones began to fall from the roof before
BOOM! the last and heaviest of the dragons slammed into the acid-weakened tower, and the entire massive building collapsed down upon us. I leapt into the lee of a giant, whose heavy body shielded me from the falling rubble, and then as it rose I cast a spell of hastening to imbue us all with speed and encouragement.
Standing out of the rubble, Endo’s cadaverous form was caked in dust and his hand crackled with eldritch power. Briefly I could see through the skin of his hand to the skeletal fingers beneath as he launched a terrible ray straight at the larger green dragon, but the spell sputtered and failed on its protective scales.
Flynne followed up by peppering a smaller beast with arrows, and its wings collapsed back on it as it dropped into the canyon.
Quaffing a potion, Fez hurtled up into the air, and caught it under the wings. His muscles strained as he trapped the wing fast with the staff of his scythe. Standing on the beast’s back he yelled in excitement as he rode the falling dragon into the ground some 50 feet from the shattered tower.
Like vengeful dust-wreathed demons, the 12 wounded giants rose from the rubble. Each of them was enthused, and vengeful lights burned in their eyes. As one, they dashed towards the fallen dragon, and 12 massive wooden clubs rose and fell repeatedly. The dragon’s bones were crushed and its entrails spilled instantly across the plateau.
Janga’s spell of healing cured much of the damage the giants and we had taken from the collapse of the tower, and then the giants scattered as the surviving dragons breathed; they swooped down on Fez and sprayed caustic acid down on him. The rock he was standing on dissolved under the acids, but Fez stood unmoved as the brown banner draped over his shoulders glowed, nullifying practically all of the lethal liquids.
The dragons swooped lower still, snapping at him with barbed teeth, but their mouths closed only on empty air.
As they took to the air once more, Endo gestured, and lightning arced from black to green, and Flynne’s arrows began to slam home into the green dragon. Fex lept into the sky once again, and his scythe slashed across the green’s belly sending a spray of blood into the air as it cut through the thick scales.
“Fall,” yelled Janga, “in the name of Fahrlanghan!”
Both of the black dragons simply dropped out of the air, to be immediately leapt upon by vengeful giants. Almost immediately, one of them was reduced to a thick paste under the assault of the heavy clubs. The other snarled out a spell, and disappeared within a 50 foot wide globe of darkness.
Overhead, as the green’s frenzied attack caused barely any damage to Fez, whilst I concentrated and willed away the globe of darkness. Endo’s spell sent hundreds of siny wailing spirits towards the green dragon. They faded into its flesh, which somehow shrivelled and dried up under the assault which drained it of blood and moisture. Terribly wounded, the dragon wailed in fear, and Flynne silenced it forever with a rapid series of arrows.
As the green fell from the sky, the last black was again utterly slaughtered by the angry giants.
Two days later, we were ensconced in his richly appointed study once again. We began by asking if would mind looking after the Hand of Vecna. He indicated that he had a suitably secure vault in which he could place the limb, and we were more than happy to pass off the dangerous arm to him before we started to explain what else we’d been up to.
I took the lead in this discussion, telling the story to the best of my ability, and writhing the tale in with a sequence of illusions. As my tale went on, the burning cities and battlefield could be see out of the windows of his study, whilst many of the Spawn of Kyuss began to lurch their way through the walls of the room. I gestured, and the room faded away to be replaced with a replica of ourselves back on the mesa-top, where we could be seen to speak to the druids and then, wincing, I replayed the terrible fight with the Boneyard of Kyuss.
When the illusion was over, Manzorian sat back and clicked his fingers. Immediately a stack of scrolls and books materialised on one corner of his desk.
“I have noticed,” he announced, “that since you returned, there has been a change in the world at large. Somehow, despite being untouched within my library, all of these books have been … altered. Whole texts have been added, sometimes stretching to several pages which I simply know were not there previously.
“The battle which you described is detailed in this scroll particularly,” he continued as he unrolled a large piece of parchment. “And this etching replicated on the scroll speaks of the very battle of which you speak – the battle of Rift Canyon.”
As he unrolled the scroll, he paused and squinted at the image. He took a few moments to snatch a bejewelled magnifying glass from the desk and look closely before he straightened, and spun the scroll on the desk so that we could look at it.
“I don’t believe it,” he exclaimed. “It’s you!”
We looked down at where he was pointing, and could see tiny figures atop a mesa, involved in a desperate fight with a huge dragon-skulled skeletal worm. Indisputably, each of us was replicated in miniature on the flaking etching we were staring at, which Manzorian swore was more than one thousand years old.
Unfurling a map, Manzorian swept his hand across the realms to the north. “Kongen-Thulnir lies within the Rift Canyon, some 150 miles to the north of here. The city’s exact location is not known, as it is the ancestral homeland of a race of giants. Visitors are… shall we say simply that they are not welcome?
“One of the recently updated texts in my library has references to the Rift Canyon, and seems to suggest the Order of the Storms was involved in its construction and then entrusted to the giants; perhaps to guard something?”
He left this question hanging in the air as we looked at the map. It was clear that the Rift Canyon was almost 180 miles in length, stretching through the Bandit Canyons and was known as a sanctuary for beasts and thugs of all kinds. Picking on a likely looking village which lay on a river some 50 miles from the canyon, we turned to Janga as he started his prayer of teleportation.
.oOo.
Within the tiny hamlet of ‘Gullet’, we encountered an elderly fishwife, whose husband had disappeared when he had gone ‘investigating the giant town 20 miles to the south’. Whilst she was distracted by the handful of gold Flynne passed her in thanks, she barely noticed as Janga invoked Fahrlanghan’s name once more and we flew from the settlement in the form of a few clouds on the wind. As we hurtled away, we could hear the old woman proclaiming herself ‘Queen of Gullet’, as she wove herself a tiara of old fish bones.
.oOo.
Following trails found by Fez, we swept low to the edge of the crevasse, where the wind made a dreadful hollow moaning sound as it rushed across the lip of the canyon. 100 feet down over the edge of the sheer drop stood a ruined city of stone, which was made up from hundreds of multi-levelled buildings housed in caverns and protruding from the cliff walls. Massive spires rose from the depths of the canyon, and atop two of this hulking masses of stone were castle-like structures.
The whole colossal city was alight. Smoke rose from the spires, and buildings were damaged, clearly by the dozens of dragons which swooped and breathed fire, acid and ice down onto the stone roofs and defenders below.
The defenders were giants, sparsely spaced out and barely equal to the task of fending off the dragons, which they did with thrown boulders and gigantic war machines to match acidic breath, and reaching up with tremendous spears to try and bring down the flying beasts above them.
As we watched, a massive dragon swooped in, but one of its wings was caught on a thin steel chain, which had been painted to match the stone of the cavern’s wall. The bones of the dragon’s wing crumpled around the taught chain, and the creature tumbled into the deep rift below.
At the same instant, Endo began to look worried and started chanting under his breath. “There’s a green above us. A big one. Invisible.”
Straining our ears to hear what spells the dragon might be casting, we started to cast our own, Janga Endo and I all working together to improve us all as quickly as possible. As I was just in the process of turning Flynne invisible, the many eyeballs of Endo’s Robe of Eyes all abruptly turned upwards to point at the same target, and he flung a spell at the dragon only he could see.
His spell took effect, reaving away several magical effects on the dragon above – immediately the huge form of the green dragon materialised in the sky a hundred feet over our heads. An instant later, a fiery arrow appeared in its flank from Flynne’s arrow – he was clearly flying in the sky alongside the creature. The long sinuous neck turned to look to one side and inhaled before blasting a tremendous gout of acid through the sky. I could see the acid spattering around where Flynne was clearly flying.
The dragon then swooped through the sky, and when its massive jaws snapped shut a cry of pain and a gout of fresh blood dropped from the air.
A few feet above the dragon, a slash appeared in the air, and Janga walked through the dimensional portal, taking Fez with him. Both were flying – the gnome through the effects of his winged boots, and Fez under the powers of the potion he had just consumed.
My spell failed to take effect, and the dragon’s last few spells stayed in effect. Endo, clutching his Rod of Quickening, called up a jet black flaming steed, which he rode up into the sky towards the dragon. Once on a level with the dragon, he cast a second spell; launching a powerful black ray at the dragon. When the spell connected, the vast dragon sagged in the air as its muscles withered and faded under Endo’s assault.
I could not see Flynne flying away, but was certain that he had done so as his arrows slammed once more into the dragon’s flank, and whilst the dragon failed to remove the enfeebling effect of Endo’s spell with a word of power of its own, it then flailed up towards Fez; biting and slapping with wings and claws, the weakened dragon’s blows largely bounced off his shield drawing little blood on the tough barbarian.
Janga cast a protective spell upon himself, as Fez whacked downwards with his scythe again and again. In the same time, my next spell failed as well, as did Endo’s, before Flynne (appearing as he did so), flew straight in under the creature, stabbing a new dark-bladed shortsword up into the dragon’s belly.
The dragon’s sides flexed as it breathed a hurricane force winds and acid over Fez and Janga, before lashing out a massively accurate series of blows against Janga. Heavily wounded, the cleric backed away from the dragon once more and then cast a powerful spell to heal himself of all his injuries.
Screaming, Fez attacked madly – the scythe slashed and crashed into the dragon, biting deeply into the beast’s neck over and over. The dragon crashed to the floor, and we hacked a claw off one of its claws before dashing away down a path.
“Wait up,” came a call from behind us.
.oOo.
Only as tall as our waists, the waddling form of the Ominous Fabler approached us. We stared at one another in disbelief as we looked at him getting closer and closer. Fez bowed at the tiny man, and he smiled wryly.
“You don’t have to do that any more,” he told the barbarian. “I thought that I’d come and help you.”
As we stared at him, Endo began to look uncomfortable; I therefore began to stare more closely at the figure, and whilst my clair de lunettes showed only a series of protective spells, I could sense a powerful necromantic magic emanating from the figure – too powerful to be any mere spell. Acting on a hunch, I pulled a flask from one of my magical bags, and proffered it to him.
“We’re going to fly down to the giants,” I told him. You’ll need to drink this if you’re coming with us. It’s a flight potion.”
As he smiled and quaffed the thick paste down, I grinned broadly.
“Actually,” I continued, “It’s something I like to call wormbane paste. Completely harmless to any normal person, but…” I paused as the Fabler collapsed to his knees in agony, clutching at his throat. “If you’ve got any worms inside you, it’s probably quite fatal.”
.oOo.
“I worked for Ilthane,” he croaked out. “And I was caught by Dragotha. He sent me to spy on Zeech. I was a spy on him although he was already one of Dragotha’s servants. I got the distinct impression that Zeech had his own relationship with Dragotha, and I have now fled there, and have come to join you.”
“What?” We looked at one another, aghast. “Why on earth should we let you join us?”
“I can help you. I am a chronicler, and teller of tales. I can record your adventures…”
I cut him off, practically grinding my teeth together in irritation. “Got one. Don’t need another one.”
“Well then I can bring knowledge. I don’t know much, but the stone giants have gone from the city beneath us. Now, there are three factions, and they are fighting; the fight is still going now that the dragons have arrived. One of the factions has a king – but be is said to be on his deathbed.”
“I like him,” said Fez. “Can we keep him?”
Frowning at the barbarian, I shushed him whilst reaching for the flask of wormbane paste. Flynne held my wrist.
“Hold on,” he interrupted. “Let’s talk about this a minute.”
There then started a long discussion between us.
“How can we trust him?”
“He’s funny.”
“You only think he’s funny because you’re taller than he is now.”
“But he can do everything you can…”
“So what? You don’t need me now? You’d rather have the undead midget who admits he works for Dragotha?”
“Worked. He only worked for him.”
“Yeah? You believe a word he says?”
“So you mean he might not’ve worked for Dragotha?”
“Aaargh! No, that’s not what I meant at all, and you know it!”
“So you should let him free and let him join you.”
We paused, and looked down at the tiny man who had worked his way into our huddle. To my view, his eyeballs were two long twisting worms writhing between the eyeslits of a helmet disguised by an illusion.
“Who invited you to this discussion?”
“Well, you were deciding whether to kill me or not, I figured I should at least give you the benefits of my expert opinion.”
“Let me guess,” I responded. “Your expert opinion is that we should let you live?”
“Of course.”
Over his diminutive head, I could see my comrades grinning.
“Look, stand over there, and let us talk. I don’t trust you, and I don’t want you involved in this talk.”
“Fair enough. I still think you should let me live, though.”
Seeing him safely away from us, the conversation continued, until a decision was reached. As one, we all turned on the tiny form of the Ominous Fabler with weapons drawn.
“Bugger,” he said – and then vanished.
.oOo.
We dashed down the pathway which led down into the canyon, and found ourselves facing massive bronzed wooden gates, to one side of which stood a colossal tower, fully 60 feet in height. Near the 20 foot tall door lay the corpse of a giant – charred and burned by fire and acid almost beyond all recognition.
“Ahoy the castle!”
Within moments, the door to the tower flew open, and within stood a towering giant; easily 17 feet in height it had a tremendous club in one hand, and bounced a boulder easily in his left hand.
“Go away,” he boomed down to us.
“But we’re dragon slayers, here to assist you and raise the siege!”
As we spoke, in the far distance a dragon swooped low over a stone bridge; fire and flames wreathed a giant below before the massive red claws gripped the giant by the shoulders and threw him, tumbling and burning into the rift canyon below.
“Urr – how long have the dragons been here?” I was carefully levitating upwards as I spoke to close on the giant’s face.
“2 days,” he boomed into my face. “It is as though they are looking for something.”
“We have travelled long,” I told him before launching into the tale of our adventures to reach the Canyon. When I had concluded, I wove all my knowledge into a powerful suggestion. “And thus, you should let us in.”
I could sense the power in my words, but also I could sense it as they flew straight into the teeth of an older, and much more powerful magic. My words flew apart in the face of the geas, woven by phenomenally powerful beings millennia ago.
I looked back to explain to my comrades, and could see that they were already looking back in consternation at an incoming flight of 5 dragons; four smaller black dragons flying wingtip to wingtip with a somewhat larger green.
Panicking, I turned back to the towering hill giant.
“We’re all giants – we were changed from our true forms by a most powerful evil sorcerer – now for all that is holy and true, let us in!”
“Why you not say this earlier,” asked the giant looking suddenly confused as he stepped out of the doorway to let us all into the tower.
.oOo.
As we slammed the door shut and looked around, we saw an even dozen giants clustered in the chamber. It was obvious by the dirt and the stench that they had been there for several days. The giant who had let us in shuffled his feet in embarrassment and explained, “There were 30 of us, and we tried to fight the dragons, we only 12 of us now,” he grunted.
Flynne started to fire arrows through the cracks around the door as the whole tower shuddered – the dragons were clearly bathing the whole of the tower with acid.
As I turned to yell at the giants and encourage them to rise up against their attackers, and Endo cast a spell (“I wish that my next spell strike true and bite hard”), we caught flickering sight of the dragons through the tower’s arrow slits. They formed a long line as they circled across the chasm before plummeting down like a series of arrows at the tower.
Boom! Boom! Boom! – cracks appeared as the first dragons slammed home.
BOOM! Stones began to fall from the roof before
BOOM! the last and heaviest of the dragons slammed into the acid-weakened tower, and the entire massive building collapsed down upon us. I leapt into the lee of a giant, whose heavy body shielded me from the falling rubble, and then as it rose I cast a spell of hastening to imbue us all with speed and encouragement.
Standing out of the rubble, Endo’s cadaverous form was caked in dust and his hand crackled with eldritch power. Briefly I could see through the skin of his hand to the skeletal fingers beneath as he launched a terrible ray straight at the larger green dragon, but the spell sputtered and failed on its protective scales.
Flynne followed up by peppering a smaller beast with arrows, and its wings collapsed back on it as it dropped into the canyon.
Quaffing a potion, Fez hurtled up into the air, and caught it under the wings. His muscles strained as he trapped the wing fast with the staff of his scythe. Standing on the beast’s back he yelled in excitement as he rode the falling dragon into the ground some 50 feet from the shattered tower.
Like vengeful dust-wreathed demons, the 12 wounded giants rose from the rubble. Each of them was enthused, and vengeful lights burned in their eyes. As one, they dashed towards the fallen dragon, and 12 massive wooden clubs rose and fell repeatedly. The dragon’s bones were crushed and its entrails spilled instantly across the plateau.
Janga’s spell of healing cured much of the damage the giants and we had taken from the collapse of the tower, and then the giants scattered as the surviving dragons breathed; they swooped down on Fez and sprayed caustic acid down on him. The rock he was standing on dissolved under the acids, but Fez stood unmoved as the brown banner draped over his shoulders glowed, nullifying practically all of the lethal liquids.
The dragons swooped lower still, snapping at him with barbed teeth, but their mouths closed only on empty air.
As they took to the air once more, Endo gestured, and lightning arced from black to green, and Flynne’s arrows began to slam home into the green dragon. Fex lept into the sky once again, and his scythe slashed across the green’s belly sending a spray of blood into the air as it cut through the thick scales.
“Fall,” yelled Janga, “in the name of Fahrlanghan!”
Both of the black dragons simply dropped out of the air, to be immediately leapt upon by vengeful giants. Almost immediately, one of them was reduced to a thick paste under the assault of the heavy clubs. The other snarled out a spell, and disappeared within a 50 foot wide globe of darkness.
Overhead, as the green’s frenzied attack caused barely any damage to Fez, whilst I concentrated and willed away the globe of darkness. Endo’s spell sent hundreds of siny wailing spirits towards the green dragon. They faded into its flesh, which somehow shrivelled and dried up under the assault which drained it of blood and moisture. Terribly wounded, the dragon wailed in fear, and Flynne silenced it forever with a rapid series of arrows.
As the green fell from the sky, the last black was again utterly slaughtered by the angry giants.
Last edited:
The_Warlock
Explorer
Eccles said:
Global Replace is pain in the butt sometimes, ain't it?
Though, I must admit, I'm curious what sort of elven/orcish undead half-breed produces a caflynnerous corpse...chuckle
Great fight, by the by, and that was an Epic bluff check..
Mathew_Freeman
First Post
Eccles said:
Uh oh. That can't be good - and it does make me wonder if anyone else dies, too...
Fantastic write up, though!
Dpulse303
Meat head
Tallarn said:Uh oh. That can't be good - and it does make me wonder if anyone else dies, too...
hehehe ....you wonder?
I loved the whole encounter with the ominous fabler and Eccles write up had me in stitches when i read it!!
The giants were a real pain in the A but also usefull when it came to making
black dragon foi gras
What an encounter!!
cant wait for the next session , last one before christmass !!
Eccles are you going to write up the next bit or use being dead as an excuse not to ? technically there is only one logical choice for doing a write up ...but tbh do you think he is capable??
Merry Christmass to those that celebrate it!!!
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