The session began with the party debating whether or not to strive out during the storm. At a guess that they’d have the better part of the day before it hit, they decided to get walking. They called it correctly, and ended up striding across the ice floes of the deeper part of the Sea of Frozen Souls and making it to almost dusk before it struck. However, it wasn’t the only thing that struck.
Right as the storm began to kick up, the party spied two figures on the horizon. As they got closer, they discovered them to be quite large figures, wearing thick furs and carrying large axes. And one of them had two heads.
So, the two frost giants, when they got close enough, appeared to be quite aggressive, with their ire focused on Brakken and his hammer in particular. They attacked immediately, so the party responded in kind.
Brakken and Monk quickly discovered that the two-headed giant, the apparent leader of the duo, had regenerative abilities not dissimilar to the ice trolls they had recently faced. It was focused on Brakken, and slashed at him over and over with its axe, while he and Monk fought it back, slowly bringing its health down.
In doing so, Brakken was helped by the storm. He was struck by a bolt of magical lightning, which, to be fair, did damage to him, but it also charged him up, much like before. In practical terms, it effectively cast Haste on him, making him faster and slightly harder to hit, and giving him an extra attack.
But the real game changer was Poppy. Her first move, specifically. While she did hit the two-headed giant with fire, shutting its regeneration down enough for the others to bring it to the point where Brakken was able to wallop off its heads with his hammer and proceed to smash it to complete pulp, it was what she did to the other one that significantly impacted the fight.
On her first turn, Poppy cast Confusion, hitting both giants, but only the single-headed one failed its save. It then proceeded to spend the rest of the fight not doing anything, before wandering off, nearly falling into the water, and then continuing on its way, taking itself completely out of the fight. By the time the two-header was dead, it was well away, significantly changing the fight – the prospect of fighting one giant is significantly different to the prospect of fighting two, after all.
Once the fight was over, the party made the most of Brakken’s charged up energy, with the other two clinging onto his back while he raced across the Sea. Once the storm had ended, however, Poppy signalled for Monk to knock him out, and they set up a small camp on an ice floe to take a long rest.
The following morning, Poppy used a recently found item to turn everyone into fart clouds so they could cover more ground. By the afternoon, they spotted two dark shapes in the distance, one closer, one further away. They made for the closer one, and as they landed and reverted to their normal forms they discovered it was some kind of mast-less ship.
Upon cautiously investigating the first couple of decks, they eventually reached the captain’s cabin and discovered two key details. The first was that, while the rest of the ship was completely devoid of any creatures, living, dead, or in-between, the captain’s cabin contained a frozen solid body in its bed, that of a well-dressed dragonborn or lizardfolk (it was hard to tell). Presumably, this was the captain or at least one of the officers. Curiously, they had an amulet around their neck that, when touched, caused an incredible amount of damage. Poppy’s investigation later determined this to be an Amulet of Ultimate Evil, raising more questions than it answered, really.
The other interesting thing that they found was in the bookshelf. Alongside a collection of elvish smut and some typical books one would expect to find on a ship was a tome called “Wind Currents in the Upper Atmosphere”. After spotting this, the party went down to the cargo hold, and indeed found a large, arcanite-powered contraption that, though dormant, appeared to be an apparatus designed to let the ship… fly?
Cue a clever (though dangerous) use of the Call Lightning spell and Brakken’s inherent arcanity-ness, and the party managed to recharge the ship and get her airborne. Brakken was able to figure out the controls with shocking ease (thank you, natural 20) and they were on their way.
However, the ship was slower than fart-form, so they didn’t reach the other shape they had seen earlier – now clearly the stone structure they had been informed of before – until well after dark. Given the dangers they had encountered so far in the Sea, they decided to wait aboard their shiny new airship and begin their delve in the morning. And we ended the session there.
So, the party now has an airship. Just as well, considering the next shard they’re likely to be hunting for (assuming they manage to collect the first one without, you know, dying) is somewhere in the Floating Mountains. But they have to get the first one and escape the Sea of Frozen Souls first. Will they manage it? Tune in next week to find out.