59--So does he go to Hell or the Abyss?
59—“And in the blood-red corner, wearing a really pissed-off expression, weighing in at three thousand six hundred and fifty four pounds . . .”
Taran leaves the building, intending to scout the city before the group makes another move. He moves unseen through the wreckage, and observes several of the giants’ bivouacs. He observes the city’s keep at some length, and takes notes on the multitude of camps surrounding it. As he nears the far end of the city, he spies a distinctive oval-shaped building—it is the largest building in town, and as he nears it he hears a multitude of goblinoid voices raised in a bloodthirsty cheer. Intrigued, he flies up and onto the lip of the stadium to observe the fighting.
In the center of the stadium, three tentative ogres armed with long-spears are holding back a rare monstrosity; a massive elephant that towers over the ogres and bellows menacingly. The creature exhibits several demonic traits, including a reptilian skin and tendrils of thick smoke that expel from both its fore and aft-- it is decked head to toe in spiked fighting armor, and charges toward the ogres with an enraged bloodlust; a fiendish dire war elephant.
A fiendish dire war elephant?
But before Taran can ponder the strange battle too closely, he notices a huge figure sitting in the seat of honor—a fire giant to be sure, although an unusually large and tough-looking fire giant with glowing eyes, and massive leathery bat-wings protruding from its back. The giant’s skin gives off a faint acrid stench that brings tears to the eyes of his retinue. The giant is flanked by four other red-eyed fire-giant bodyguards and a retinue of heavily armed ogres, some of which chew on their own flesh in a symbiotic rapport with their battling bretheren.
“Kurgath the Abyssal,” Taran says to himself, before he flies back to his friends, almost forgetting to hide in his giddy schoolboy excitement.
“Ky, Thel, let’s go!” he says. “I found Kurgath, and we’ve got to kill him.”
His companions look at Taran dubiously, but his description of the events convinces them. Kurgoth is at his leisure, enjoying his cruel sport and apparently giving no thought to the siege.
The group prepares itself in a manner similar to their first entry into the city, and Thelbar imbues Sarte with spell ability. Thus armed and readied, the group moves invisibly toward the coliseum on foot, using spider climbing and Taran’s prodigious strength to climb to the lip of the coliseum, directly above Kurgoth Hellspawn, and his vile entourage.
Once in position, the heroes observe that the scenario is almost exactly like Taran had described it. One of the gladiator ogres is dead, another severely wounded, and the third is running like a deva’s nose in Hell.
Kyreel begins the assault without any further ado. She calls forth a holy recitation that impacts Kurgoth and his retinue with a physical wave of discomfort, judging from their reactions. She creates a magic circle versus evil and invokes her Family domain granted power (gifting everyone standing within ten feet of her with a dodge bonus to AC). Taran unleashes a pair of slow spells from a wand, and mires the assorted giants and ogres in an insubstantial etheric bog, reducing their ability to respond. Thelbar uses his improved invisibility to maneuver unseen into an advantageous position, then feebleminds Kurgoth. The hateful giant champion shows no signs of mental enfeeblement, however, so Thelbar follows his spell with a limited wish that invokes the same effect, but with better results.
The fiendish giant’s frothy spittle slows to a trickling drool, and abandoning all but the most base hostility, Kurgoth turns to face his foes with an unintelligible bellow. Sartre, for his part, flies above the general chaos, and levels an imbued confusion spell into their midst, sending the assembled ogres and giants into a bloodthirsty frenzy of wandering off.
Then things get ugly.
Kurgoth Hellspawn leaps to his feet and proves the old adage that there’s no “quit” in, “I’m going to rip your intestines out with my bare hands”. He charges Kyreel, punching her in her entire upper half with one meaty hand, knocking her from her perch atop the coliseum wall, and sending her spiraling to the ground eighty feet below.
There goes the dodge bonus.
A quartet of unusually aggressive ogres charge the two remaining characters and lay into Taran with barbaric screams. Fortunately, Taran’s mirror images fend off the worst of the assault, but several of the phantom Tarans take enough of a phantom beating that they cease to exist. What had been a small gathering of images around the thick-necked ranger swiftly becomes first a ménage-trois, and then a tête-à-tête. It’s lonely fighting giants, after all.
Taran lays into one of the ogres, and slices below the waist, cutting in rhythmic strokes up the length of its torso. The giant screams and reels backwards, kept alive only by its barbaric rage.
As if answering some unspoken command, the fiendish dire elephant abandons its battle on the coliseum floor and trumpets a gravelly challenge, charging toward the larger melee. The beast plows through the barricade separating the stands from the sand, and tears into the assembled goblins seated there—themselves the lucky survivors of a furious melee to get the “good seats”. Whether the elephant intends to protect its master, or is simply jealous that it might be missing out on the larger carnage, only Orcus can say for sure.
The fire giants attending Kurgoth move into the melee as well, although the slow spells leveled on them prevent them from doing much more than that. One particularly willful giant leans over the lip of the coliseum wall, and tears a chunk of the rock free, flinging it down onto Kyreel just as she starts to stand up and clear her head.
Thelbar, still unseen by his foes, strikes Kurgoth with a hold monster, and the infantile brute is suddenly frozen in place, only the continual stream of really evil saliva running from his mouth giving notice to an observer that he is no titanic sculpture. Thelbar finishes by arcing a lighning bolt through the ranks of assembled giants, who have cued up for a chance to smash Taran into a well-equipped smear.
Sartre fires a magic missile spell at the ogre so recently deprived of most of its blood, and that proves more than the creature can bear. It falls to the ground at Taran’s feet, hoping no doubt to help his fellows gain traction within the rapidly-expanding pool of its own blood. Its friends stomp on its body without hesitation.
One of the ogres plants his boot square on the neck of his fallen friend and levels a blow that bypasses Taran’s protections, and knocks him back into the coliseum wall with crushing force.
Meanwhile, Kyreel has regained her feet, and without any flying magic at her disposal, she charges on foot into the coliseum through a nearby entrance, wading past the smartest goblins in the audience—the ones who decided to leave the fights a little early to avoid traffic.
Fortunately, she enters the stands only a few feet beneath where her companions are battling giants, but unfortunately, she finds herself directly in the path of the charging elephant! The tusked titan lowers its head, leveling a the spikes on its barding, and attempts to trample her. Kyreel scrambles out of the way, and manages to avoid the worst, then draws her sword and calls upon the divine might of Ishlok.
Taran places his back against the wall and digs in, weathering a series of giant attacks, then responding in kind. Another ogre falls, joining its companion beneath the feet of the giant horde.
Thelbar color sprays the group of them, stunning a pair of the giants attacking Taran, then sends a prismatic spray through the other half of the fight. One of the giants is killed outright, another is banished from the material plane, and several others are burned by acid. The dire fiendish elephant is momentarily obscured by arcing bolts of electricity, and trumpets its displeasure, its beady red eyes indicating that it believes that Kyreel is somehow responsible for its pain.
Of course, Kyreel isn’t, but the distinction quickly becomes moot, as she cuts into the beast with her flaming holy sword before it can retaliate. The elephant (“I think I’ll call him Jumborcus, mommy!”) rises up on its hind legs, and smashes its fore-legs into the darting cleric. Kyreel is knocked backwards, and only barely escapes being crushed beneath its massive feet.
Taran moves forward into the mass of slowed, stunned giants, and singles out the lone brute still able to do him much harm. Competence is negatively rewarded when you’re Evil. Taran cuts the creature several times, opening the arteries along the inside of its legs, and sending the giant reeling backwards, left to wonder how such a small being could hit . . . so . . . hard.
Sartre has flown to the aid of Kyreel, and magic missiles the elephant. Kyreel takes advantage of the distraction to slip inside the lashing trunk and drive her sword deep into the fiendish creature’s skull. Elephants never forget, but when you stab them in the brain, they do tend to die.
Thelbar drops a pair of fireballs on the remaining giants, and as they fall, Taran darts amongst them, delivering the coup de grace to any survivors, and finishing Kurgoth Hellspawn.
By this time, the goblinoid spectators have gone from bloodthirsty voyeurs to surprised voyeurs to terrified potential combatants. Reasoning wisely that if Kurgoth and his minions cannot stand up to the heroes, they have better chances of living to someday breed if they run far, far away. What had been a trickle of goblins becomes a flood, as the coliseum does its best impression of a vomitorium, and empties itself of its contents in a sudden flood.
From the city comes sounds of war-horns, and shouting giantish voices. Taran climbs up to the lip of the coliseum and spots several groups of giants gathering together, and starting to move against the flow of goblins toward the scene of the disturbance.
“Thel, we need to get out of here, now!” Taran shouts, and before the group can even catch their breath, Thelbar places his hands on his companion’s shoulders and teleports them back to their hiding-place amongst the ruined buildings of fair Maermydra.
-----
After Kyreel tends to their wounds, the group is lying low and attempting to project a solid plan of action against the remaining giants, and then against Irae T’ssarion at the center of the siege. A rough list is drawn up, with the demon of fire and pain in the sky at the top of it.
But the group does not need to kill anyone else to prove their might to the shadowy members of the Hidden. A few hours into their rest, as the commotion in the surrounding city finally dies down, a familiar drow voice emerges from the shadows, this time accompanied by a face.
“It seems you are what you say you are,” the drow says, as he steps into the light of the party’s small fire. “I am Hanadah, leader of the Hidden. You seek entry into the castle? I can give it to you. Irae T’sarrion has set a ward of forbiddance upon the place, but the ward can be bypassed by those who possess the proper word.”
“And that word is?” Thelbar asks, with a slightly self-satisfied tone.
“Umdra, great one,” the drow says. And may the White Death fare no better against you than did Kurgoth Hellspawn.”
“Hey, don’t look so down,” Taran says, grinning ear to ear. “We’re going to kill the balor anyway. We’re pretty much going to kill everything.”
== WOW. BEST. POST. EVER.)
