Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.
Rocket your D&D 5E and Level Up: Advanced 5E games into space! Alpha Star Magazine Is Launching... Right Now!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="(contact)" data-source="post: 480468" data-attributes="member: 41">Planting 28, CY 59335:  Some massacres are called ‘a battle’, but others are more properly termed ‘adventuring’.Flush with their victory, the Liberators of Tenh use a pass without trace spell to ensure that they won’t be followed, and Elijah scouts out a suitable campsite.  Long into the night, they discuss their tactics, and determine to return immediately the next morning, in order to retain the initiative.While the other Liberators plan and sleep, Elijah keeps a watch over the giant compound, in case the creatures send out a reprisal in the night.  They do not, but during her watch, Elijah is intrigued by a steady sound—a thwock, thwock, thwock, like some pulpy mass falling from a great height onto stone.In the morning, C’min and Elijah return to the fort, this time climbing over the wall and carefully scouting the entire compound.There is another orcish sentry, they report, standing on the bloodstain that used to be his companion—he is joined on watch by a single giant guard at the gate.  The longhouses in the lower compound are empty, and the remainder of the giant clan must be inside the single larger structure that occupies the upper compound.When they listened at that door, however, they heard no sounds of life.  They did hear a strange whistling and rattling noise—altogether too delicate a sound to be coming from the home of a hill giant.More disturbingly, the bodies from yesterday’s battle have not been removed.  Rather, they have been hacked apart at the scene, and their parts carefully loaded into several un-hitched carts, looking for all the world like bloody, shredded firewood.  Two of the giants have been completely dismembered, another three have lost only body parts, while the two most badly burned by Dabus’ flame strike have been unmolested.The scouts return to the group with their news, and all agree that the remainder of the giants certainly must be laying in wait for them inside the longhouse.  They make adjustments to their plan, then begin to prepare spells.Individual casters prepare their combat retinue—Jespo casts mass haste and invisibility 10’ radius, while Dabus places the group under a wind walk spell.  The group wind walks invisibly toward the orcish sniper’s position, and rushes onto his watchtower.  The sniper hears their approach however, and demonstrating a grasp of magical tactics, fires arrows into the two most heavily armored (and loudest) Liberators—Thrommel and Dabus.But the arrows are not enough to hold back the heroes’ advance, and suddenly C’min, Elijah, Thrommel and Dabus all appear in front of the orc, their blades whistling into the creature, wounding him deeply.  The orc leaps backward off of the watchtower in a spray of his own blood, firing arrows as he goes, and crashes onto his back fifteen feet below on the roof of a longhouse.As this happens, Jespo Crim also appears, and he points his finger at the hill giant on watch, holding it.  C’min leaps from the watchtower, and runs toward the giant, intending to take its life before it can shake off Jespo’s spell.The orc starts to move, but is stopped by its wounds, paralyzed from the waist down from damage taken during its fall.  The creature casts its bow aside, and stares into the eyes of its foes, who are readying bows of their own, and aiming at him.  The orc lifts a hunting-horn to his lips and blows a single, clear note that is cut off when Thrommel sinks an arrow into the orc’s throat.“The alarm!” Thrommel cries.  “They will be upon us!  I will charge yonder longhouse, and with Fragarach in my hand,”“My lord,” Jespo coos toward Thromel, even as he meets eyes with Dabus.  “Your prowess with Fragarach is already known to these filthy beasts.  Would it not be grand to teach them that the Scion of Furyondy is also to be feared at any range?  Perhaps an archery demonstration is in order.”“Yes, you’re right, Crim.” Thrommel says.  “I am quite a fine shot.”“And I will provide you with an acid fog to assist your shooting, as soon as they emerge,” Jespo says reassuringly.“And I will provide you with a blade barrier once they are trapped within Crim’s acid fog, as we discussed last night, my lord,” Dabus states.“Very well, you know what you are to do.  Let us make ourselves ready!” Thrommel exclaims.After a few moments, the doors to the greathouse burst open, and a most fearsome giant emerges—a hill giant, to be sure, but dressed entirely in the ceremonial regalia of a Stonefister chieftan.  The creature’s spit flecks in his thin, patchy beard, and he howls a cry of rage and fear as he charges through the opening.  Directly behind him is the remainder of his clan, filling the doorway, and the building beyond.None of them get more than ten feet from the door, as Jespo’s acid fog slows, then stops their movement altogether.  Dabus’ blade barrier appears within the fog cloud, but its steady chopping sound is rapidly drowned out by the anguished screams of the giants trapped within.  Inside a burning acidic fog, they are cut hundreds of times until they bleed out and die.The Liberators watch in a fascinated horror from their position on the watchtower as the giants struggle against the solid fog, and die slow, painful deaths.“That.  Was . . .” Dabus begins.“Their due.  Nothing more.” Elijah finishes.  “Now let us get in there and finish any survivors before they can regroup.”  In a flash, she has leapt from the tower, and is running toward the greathouse.But there are no survivors.  The giants at the rear of the group were the weakest, and the first to die.  Their acid-scarred and shredded corpses clog the opening to a tunnel that leads beneath the greathouse—apparently the only escape route.The remaining giants could not bolt for their underground lair, and lie in various states of painful disfigurement, some twelve giants in all.  The rest of the group stares at the mangled corpses, but Elijah is scanning the interior of the greathouse.  The majority of the place is badly damaged by the acid fog, but one corner remains untouched.“That’s it,” Elijah says under her breath.  In the area untouched by acid, several humanoid skulls dangle at the ends of ropes suspended from the ceiling.  They are carved and fluted, marked with strange runes and symbols.  A breeze from the open window (and the massive holes torn into the structure by the blade barrier) causes the skulls to rattle lightly against one another as the wind whistles through them.The group clears the giant corpses from the opening, and after listening carefully, C’min slips into the caverns beneath the hill giant’s fortress, and disappears from sight.  A few minutes later she reemerges.She reports that a trail of blood from the opening leads deeper within a series of caverns, indicating the presence of surviving giants.  The blood leads into a curious cave that is dominated by a wooden frame surrounding a well—a chaotic patchwork of beams and ropes set into the floor, walls and ceiling of the cave.  The whole structure creaks ominously, although there is no wind, and the back of it is obscured in darkness.The Liberators approach cautiously, but as they near the contraption, a volley of arrows flies forth, striking Dabus and Thrommel.Dabus and Thrommel respond by charging into the cavern, where they are met by a half-score of orcish elites—four heavy skirmishers with pole-arms, and five archers perched among the beams of the well-frame.Jespo Crim (who is hasted) summons a pair of celestial lions, and a second later, has cast animal growth upon them.  The lions rocket out to ten feet in length and leap into the melee, pouncing and overbearing one of the orcish fighters.Dabus calls Tritherion’s righteous might into himself and wades forward, crushing bones with each blow.  Elijah and C’min move from hiding place to hiding place, taking cover where they can, and trading arrow fire with the orcish archers.To the back of the room, a voice can be heard chanting arcane phrases, and Thrommel determines to do something heroic.  On the back of a phantom steed (summoned by Jespo), Thrommel charges through the melee toward the chanting, his lance at the ready.  Around a corner and down a short hallway, he spies the source of the spell-casting—a lion with the upper body of a human woman, and an entirely wicked expression on her beautiful face.But it is not the Lamia that frightens Thrommel, it is the three surviving hill giants who lurk next to her.  The giants spot the Prince and leap forward, smashing him repeatedly with their clubs.  Within seconds, his armor is a twisted scrap containing bits of pulped flesh,the metal unable to contain the leaking blood.  For the second time in as many months, Prince Thrommel lies dead at the feet of Iuz’ servitors.“My Prince!” Jespo cries in frustration, as the Lamia steps forth from the shadows, and attempts to hold Dabus, to no avail.Dabus finishes off the orc in front of him, and flame strikes one of the wounded giants standing over Thrommel’s bleeding corpse, as C’min and Elijah sink arrows into another one.  Neither giant can take any further punishment, and fall across Thrommel’s body, no longer a threat.Jespo Crim clutches his precious gem to his chest and invokes his magic jar.  Once settled into the body of the Lamia, Jespo orders the remaining giant to turn on the orcish archers in the rafters.  The stupid brute is as clumsy as he is gullible, and while he can’t hit the orcs, he does a fine job of smashing the lattice-work all to pieces.That settled, the Lamia charges forward and throws herself head-first into the well.Dabus and Elijah gang up on the surviving giant, while C’min harries the retreating orcs, who by now have had enough.After the last blow sinks into giant flesh the room has grown quiet.  The remaining Liberators are gathered around Prince Thrommel, gingerly removing the body from its armor when Jespo sits up.“Well, I don’t think I’ve ever fallen in a well before.” Jespo says.  “So that’s what Lucius felt like.”-----Next:  The Liberators knee-deep in snow and gore!</blockquote>

Verification