Session 16 (139) - Part One: THE GLACIAL RIFT OF THE FROST GIANT KHANGITCHE
The rest of the unit stole forward from the tower and crept within sight and sound of giant, preparing to strike at him while he stood by the precipice. Before they did so, the giant sniffed the air and spoke in Drakren:
“Fee, fie, fo, fum, I smell the sweat of a Drakren woman!”
They froze. Was he talking to them?
“Are you in there, little lady? Come out and see the surprise I have for you.”
A smaller voice, all but inaudible from this distance, issued from the igloo: “Oh, go away. Must you time your visits to catch me in here every night? My robes are stained with yellow snow.”
The giant laughed, turned and aimed his last few splashes of piss right in front of the igloo entrance.
“It is good for you. Make it into a sorbet and use it in one of your experiments. The prisoners will find it invigorating!”
“Be off with you,” said the woman in the igloo. “Or I will inform Odan Chuval.”
“I have no fear of the Khangitche. He is my uncle on my mother’s side and favours me.”
“I have no interest in your family tree. Begone.”
The giant laughed again and turned back towards the crossroads, but by now the unit had withdrawn just out of sight. The moment he rounded the bend they struck, using the tried and tested formula that had already felled two giants: Leon led with curse of mouthless muttering and the others felled the guard in relative silence.
They watched as the occupant of the igloo picked her way across the yellow ice, filthy furs raised about her shins. She then waddled towards them, an unsavoury figure, and more concerned about her footing than what lay ahead of her. When Leon greeted her from the darkness she cried out in alarm. The unit revealed themselves.
A halting conversation ensued in which the woman tried to establish who they were, and if they were ‘one of us’. Leon was tempted to use his Ob ring to maintain a pretence, but decided against it. Instead, when she asked them more questions (Who are you? What do you want?), he showed her the giant’s dead body and said that they would ask the questions from now on. Xambria flashed her RHC badge, but the woman stared at it blankly.
The woman told them that she and her partner were the last two of a group of arcanoscientists who had been working here for ‘an organisation based in Trekhom’. At the behest of this organisation, they had been studying, inter alia, the effects of various planar oils extracted from meteors mined by the giants and their slaves. She admitted that she was fed up of her posting and hoped to be released soon. Xambria offered to help her escape, but she did not seem eager to follow complete strangers.
What about the lich?
She said it lay ‘beneath the mines behind the waterfall’. When asked what they wanted with the lich she answered that they wanted nothing to do with it and avoided it, though she admitted that she had gone to look at the creature when it was first revealed. It was fearsome enough, but its condition was pathetic: How powerful could it be if it couldn’t escape the ice?
They conferred quickly about what to do with this woman. Speed was of the essence and Uru was tired of talking so he bound the woman with a web and they shoved her unceremoniously into the absurdist web.
They headed south and found a large chamber that contained a snowman and a sled. On the sled were four large clay vessels. Stones shoved into the icy walls spelled out ‘METEOR STORAGE’ in Drakren. Inside the pots they found a collection of tiny meteors. Korrigan felt an instant connection to them, and Leon was able to identify them as extraplanar in origin. They pocketed a few and moved on, following the tracks of the sled down a steeply curving slope that brought them out onto the floor of the rift, where the roar of two waterfalls suppressed all other noise.
A number of pumpkin-sized lamps hung from sconces that had been driven into the walls of the rift, and it was from these lamps that the blue glow emanated. At once, Leon realised that they were wayfarer lanterns and that they also radiated a pacifying enchantment. He issues a sharp warning to the others, some of whom were already succumbing to the effect. Thus fortified, they were able to resist it, and quickly made their way towards the waterfall, lest more giants appear. (A tunnel opposite led to the sleeping chamber Uru had discovered previously, and the two ice bridges above them gave a commanding view of the entire rift floor.)
Before the waterfall there was a deep, wide pool of very cold water. They were wet with spray before they even began to discuss how to cross it. Uru took a close look for any danger and spotted faint runes carved into the ice around the pool. It was discovered that they would strip cold resistance from anyone who entered the pool. They quickly defaced and erased them, then plunged into the water, protected by endure elements. Uru walked through shadow to arrive behind the waterfall ahead of the others, but there were no immediate threats.
Beyond the waterfall, steps in the ice led to a high gallery that looked down on a huge chamber where the Khangitche, Odan Chuval, sat with his retinue: a shaman and three guards. Sounds of hard labour could be heard echoing from a mine shaft; a deep pool took up the central portion of the chamber. Uru saw all this from a shadowy vantage point on the gallery, while keeping out of sight of the guard who dozed against a pillar of ice on this level, keeping ‘watch’ on five cells where many dwarf and human prisoners reclined. The whole chamber was lit by wayfarer lanterns, which here issued an invigorating, pink light.
Leon opened a dimension door out of sight of the main chamber. Uru stepped through, behind the ice pillar and silently assassinated the giant. They took a risk here, but the giant simply slumped where he stood. So far so good. The movement had attracted the attention of some of the prisoners, though they could not make out exactly what had happened. Before their excitement could draw unwanted attention, Gupta stepped through the portal and silenced them with an urgent gesture. Then they realised that one of the prisoners was none other than Kvarti Gorbatiy, who was very pleased to see them.
Leon teleported him out of his cell and Gupta reunited him with Reason. The dwarf seemed strangely sceptical of the gesture, then gripped the rifle with renewed determination.
Together they took on Odan Chuval and his guards – an exhausting fight that, thanks to the element of surprise, went well for the unit. Despite Odan Chuval’s magical armour – which allowed him to cover himself in plates of ice and grow to an even greater size – and the arrival of reinforcements from the mines below (another shaman driving prisoners ahead of him - prisoners the ruthless Khangitche used as doomed missiles), the unit nonetheless prevailed. When Odan Chuval fell, he toppled backwards on to Rumdoom and Korrigan. Korrigan was able to step calmly to one side, but Rumdoom was crushed beneath his foe. The others helped him out and Rumdoom claimed the giant’s magical armor. Kvarti then handed Reason back to Gupta! The dwarf explained that he had had enough of this place, and the runes carved in to the demon bone stock of his old rifle were too terrible a reminder of his two-year imprisonment. He would make a new gun, and call it Freedom!
Kvarti said he had travelled north pursuing Grandis Kamanov and her cult. The trail had led him here, where some of her followers (and perhaps even Kamanov herself) had come in search of the Khum-Ruk Nazar. Kvarti learned this from a captured cultist shortly before he was captured himself. The giants had nothing to do with Kamanov, but that didn’t make his imprisonment any easier.