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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(contact)" data-source="post: 480471" data-attributes="member: 41">Flocktime 7, CY 59338:  The Bleeding Stone.The group leaves through another opening in Festering’s workroom, and has a brief moment of worry when they discover several completed giant and human patchwork creatures, propped into alcoves along the passages’ length.  Fortunately, whatever motive power the things must have had is gone, as they silently watch the group’s passage and do not stir.As they travel down the passage, the party becomes aware of a soft humming—a vibration that seems to fill the air, and whispers in their minds with a sound like rustling leaves.  The sound is altogether unpleasant, and the group shares a sense of dread.The passage connects to the base of the excavation.  A series of rough-cut concentric circles widen as they rise in height, and the chamber is exposed to the frigid, thin air.  The group stands on the largest circle—a ledge some forty feet in width, running around a circumference of several hundred feet.   In the center of the chamber, a support structure of posts, pillars and cross-beams is built into the ice and stone.  Ropes and pulleys dangle from the construction, and three frost giants stand upon it, pulling up huge loads of stone and ice, or hacking into the mountain with pick-axes.  Another giant supervises the work, hands on his hips.  This supervisor is heavily tattooed, but the giant is too far away for the party to make the designs out.At the center of the bowl-shaped tier excavation, a massive obelisk rises half-exposed.  The obelisk is composed of a material so dark as to absorb the light, dimming the scene around it.  The thing is covered with fine traceries that glow like pulsing phosphorescent veins along its length.  When examined, the thing seems to shunt the viewer’s gaze off to one side, and directly looking at the obelisk causes the vibratory sensation to grow in strength.  Elijah is sure for a moment that the traceries are not veins, but rivulets of blood, innocent blood—children’s blood, enough blood to . . . she averts her gaze before her morale degenerates any further.Just at that moment, all of the giants in the room raise their heads in unison and stare directly at Elijah.Elijah, meet the Bleeding Stone.As the supervisor giant comes screaming into the party’s torch-light, the group notices that his tattoos are actually cut-marks—hundreds of them, covering his mostly naked body from head to toe.  The cut-marks duplicate the twisted traceries of the Bleeding Stone, and appear to be self-inflicted.  The giant bellows forward and literally runs over Thrommel before coming to a stop in the midst of the spellcasters.  Where he stops, a thick, noxious mist rises from the ground, obscuring all sight, rising to the height of his chest.The worker giants in the depression also charge toward the group, drawing attacks from Elenthal, Elijah and Thrommel.  Jespo mass hastes the group, and flees from the mist, but in doing so, he is struck with a backhanded axe blow from the tattooed giant!  Jespo rolls out of the cloud, tears streaming from his eyes, and levels his thin fingers at the beast.  “Take this, you fiend!” he cries, but whatever spell he had intended for his foe fails to take affect, and the giant rolls his eyes back in his head, raising his axe for another strike.Jespo falls to the ground, reflexively curling into a ball, and lets out a thin whimper.“Damn you Crim, FIGHT!” comes a voice as clear as day from within Fräs’ bag. Elenthal, Elijah and Thrommel gang up on one of the worker giants, beating it back away from the ledge, and causing it to tumble into a pool of viscous liquid slowly forming around the base of the Bleeding Stone.Dabus calls on Tritherion and grows to giant-size himself, then attacks one of the other workers with his spear.Meanwhile, Fräs’ warning seems to spur Jespo’s courage, but the reluctant summoner takes another blow from the carved giant’s axe before he can make himself invisible.  Elenthal proves once again why he has earned the name Giant Bane, as he slices into first one of the giants, then another, shredding their flesh and tearing the muscles of their legs.  Dabus and Elijah assist him, and the giants’ cause looks lost.Then suddenly, Elenthal drops to his knees, as long-suppressed memories of his childhood lived deep within the bowels of the earth rise unbidden to his mind.  Elenthal trembles, an anguished primal scream emerging from his throat.The giant battling Dabus attacks Elenthal at this juncture, knocking him to the ground.  Dabus quickly realizes that the giants are the least of their foes, and disengages from his melee in order to strike the Bleeding Stone twice with rays from his wand of searing light.The last worker looks ready to reach the fray, but stops suddenly and begins to cackle, then chortle, then finally breaks down into peals of booming laughter.  Jespo’s voice emerges from thin air and says “That’s right, Fräs, who’s laughing now?”C’min creeps directly into the mist obscuring the carved giant, and unseen, strikes the beast several times, bringing it to its knees, then to the ground.Elenthal’s tribulations at the hands of the Bleeding Stone are not over, however, as he is lifted from his feet by unseen tentacles of force, and is shaken like a rag doll.  Worse yet, his armor and exposed skin begin to smoke and boil as a powerful acid etches marks into his hide.Thrommel pauses to regard Elenthal just before he is also grasped by the ephemeral coils, and begins to burn.  Unlike the ranger, however, Thrommel is not made of stern enough stuff, and the Prince of Furyondy, bleeding from several wounds and mortally burned, drops to the ground, lifeless.“Oh for the love of . . .” Jespo says.  “Somebody kill that Stone!”“I’m working on it!” Dabus yells, as he empties charge after charge from his wand into the terrifying obelisk.  With each spell, the viscous liquid forming around the Stone’s base grows in volume, and begins to give off a noxious smoke that stings the eyes and lungs of the Liberators fighting on the ledge.  Dabus calls for a retreat, just as Elijah kills the last of the fighting giants.  The party is forced to flee back into the passage from which they entered the excavation site, and have a moment of fear as Dabus realizes that the automatons there may be keyed to attack any strangers emerging from that direction!Fortunately for the Liberators, the golems were controlled by a magic item in the possession of Festering that was reduced to ash along with his jaundiced body when he was destroyed by Dabus, just minutes earlier.  They remain, now as for evermore, silent and still.After a few tense moments, the noxious cloud dissipates out through the exposed ceiling, and when it clears, only the bodies of the giants are left in the site.  The Bleeding Stone is gone, nowhere to be seen.“Did we kill it?” Jespo asks, but his question remains unanswered, with only the icy wind for a reply.-----Next:  The Liberators commit mail fraud!</blockquote>

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