Two minor pieces of housekeeping before we begin: first, I am a wizard now, because of several reasons, but mainly because its what I wanted (and, as if to reinforce the wisdom of this decision, I’m pretty sure that making the change saved us from a TPK this week), and second, I have officially shattered the theory that my character will die every fifth session, because this week, spoilers, I did not die. This does not disprove the theory that I will die every fifth session per character, since this was only my third session as Zero, but at least we are making progress.
Our giant prisoner afforded us no useful information, and after a bout of failed interrogation, including a moment where I polymorphed him into a mouse (planting seeds for later ideas – just wait), Harshnag decapitated him. Harshnag is a frost giant who spurned his people’s evil ways and now goes around hunting evil giants. As an agent of the Whispers, and a friend of mine, he is to be our backup muscle and all-around ass-saver while we deal with the giants.
After the interrogation, Butcher came to us and informed us that Mister Speaker wanted to speak to us. She fed us a mysterious blue liquid that whooshed us away, teleporting us straight to Speaker’s presence in the town of Highmoon, to the northwest of Pelor’s Blessing. Harshnag did not come with us in this manner, but instead started making his way there overland.
Speaker explained a little about what our next move needed to be. Our goal was to find the village of Gruddhaug, home of the hill giants and their chief, Guh, a female that had kicked out all the other females and claimed all the males as her husbands (and, reportedly, is so big she cannot move). Between Speaker’s information and my expertise, we could figure out a general area of where Gruddhaug could be found, but being relatively a new settlement, we had no location. Speaker suggested we find a female whose desire to return might be strong enough to lead us there, and mentioned reports of a giant to the east.
Speaker also told us of reports of a wyvern being spotted to the northeast. Wyverns were known to be used as mounts by soldiers from Mallakarth, and if there was a contingent of them this far north, the Talmar army needed to know about it. He requested that we look into it, to see what we might find, and after some deliberation, we decided to go there first, since it was a little closer.
After a couple of days of travel Hector spotted the wyvern in the sky, and we tracked it to a ravine, where we found a small encampment of Mallakarth soldiers. Surrounded on three sides by the rock walls of the ravine and blocked in front by disguised palisades, we discovered a handful of hobgoblins, the wyvern, and a hill giant within. We decided to wait until nightfall before sneaking in to deal with them. We got into position without being seen, and prepared ourselves to strike.
I went first. I flew up so I could see the full camp over the palisades, and blasted it with a fireball. Five or six hobgoblins were killed outright, leaving only the giant and a hobgoblin captain still alive within the blast radius. The fact that they went down so easy clued me onto the worrying possibility that we weren’t seeing everything.
The others each took their actions, Kaly popping her wings and flying up, Leo firing eldritch blasts at one of the sentries, knocking him off his perch and down twenty feet into the camp, and Hector charging in through the gate, headfirst and swinging.
Before our enemies could react, I flew towards the centre of the camp and cast Polymorph on the giant, and as a divination wizard (which are awesome, by the way) I used a portent to ensure that he failed his save, guaranteeing he shrunk down to the form of a tiny little mouse.
That’s when the battle proper started. Out from the various tents sprang a veritable horde of enemies. A handful of regular hobgoblins with longbows, a pair of hobgoblin monk chicks that went straight for Hector and started beating on him, a hobgoblin spellcaster, and a hobgoblin warlord, who called the wyvern to himself, hopped on, and came straight for me. He only managed to hit me once, but that single hit wiped out nearly half my hit points. Leo tried to help me by blasting the dude off his flying mount, which worked on his second attempt, but after the first failed I noped out of there and Thunder Stepped ninety feet directly up, flying my full speed as well to end up 150 feet above the battlefield.
Leo kept blasting away at the regular hobgoblins, taking out a couple and using one’s death to summon a spectre to assist us, but then the riderless wyvern came after him and he and his spectre had their hands full with that. Kaly, similarly, kept blasting away, managing to keep out of danger for a while.
Hector was surrounded. He had the two monks, plus the warlord came over to join in against him, plus the spellcaster was blasting him with magic, including hitting him with a fireball that also clipped the mouse, reverting it back to a giant. Thoroughly confused and very angry, he also got a good hit in on Hector.
Hector managed to take out one of the monks and badly wound the other. I dropped a little lower and nullified that monk and the giant with a Hypnotic Pattern, shutting them out of the fight. Unfortunately, despite both those swings in a positive direction, numbers won out and Hector was eventually brought low. Kaly managed to get him back on his feet, but he was quickly cut down again, and before she was able to heal him a second time the warlord was coming after her. He got a few solid hits in and managed to take her down as well.
Leo was still fending off the wyvern, while occasionally taking potshots at the other hobgoblins, but now, with their other targets either unconscious or too far away, the spellcaster turned their attention to him. Luckily, Leo now had the ring of spell storing, and the couple of Shield spells I’d filled it with kept him alive.
With my concentration occupied by the Hypnotic Pattern and my spell slots running low, all I had left at my disposal were firebolts. I finished off the wyvern with a single bolt, freeing Leo of his most immediate trouble. The reprieve didn’t last, however, as the warlord went over to the giant and smacked him, injuring him but snapping him out of his stupor. They both went for Leo, but only the giant managed to reach him. His two solid hits managed to cut through Leo’s Tomb of Levistus, but not quite enough to take him down.
However, at this moment, when things were looking really bad, the tides changed. Without realising how injured they were, a single firebolt each finished off both the giant and the spellcaster. At the same time, Kaly came to on her own, and she healed up Hector as well. He went and dealt with the final hobgoblin archer, while she finished off the still-stunned monk.
That left all of us thoroughly injured but conscious against the lone warlord. I cast Levitate on him, lifting him up into the air, nullifying the worst of his attacks. He still managed to hit both Leo and I with a single javelin each, bringing us both dangerously low on hp. But I kept lifting him higher while Kaly hit him with lightning, and several blasts from Leo finally ended him. It was a hard fought fight, and I honestly don’t know if we could have gotten through it had I still been a monk and unable to shut down the giant like I did.
Our search of the camp uncovered that these soldiers had formed an alliance with the giants and it was at their request that Pelor’s Blessing had been attacked, as they were hoping it would disrupt the Talmar army’s supply of food. We also found a map detailing the precise location of Gruddhaug. I used my walkie talkie (read: sending stone) to inform Mister Speaker of our findings, and that we would bring the intel back to Highmoon, since we were supposed to rendezvous with Harshnag there.
About a day away from Highmoon, we met Mister Speaker on the road. We gave him the intel along with a letter from Leo to Commander Vyle, and then he led us to Harshnag, who was waiting a short distance away. When we reached him, we found he was accompanied by a female hill giant.
Moog was the giant of whom the sightings that Speaker told us of had been reported. Harshnag went to find her while we dealt with the hobgoblins. She wanted to retrieve her husband, Hruk, from Gruddhaug, and had agreed to lead us to the town. Between her and the hobgoblins’ map, we found our way there.
Gruddhaug was a fortified, giant-sized hall, built on a dam on the river. Aside from giants, whose exact number we couldn’t be certain of, we spotted numerous ogres as well as a handful of Mallakarthians. The structure had been built well, and between the wide expanse of land surrounding it and the tall guard tower on one side, we knew it was going to be near-impossible to get close without being seen, for Harshnag and Moog especially.
Deciding we needed to do a closer reconnaissance, Leo turned himself and I invisible and we snuck up to the outside. There was a small tunnel in the rocks to the far right of the building, and within we found a pair of sleeping giants. I had a particularly cunning idea, but we shelved it until we had scouted out the rest of the area. We got a better idea of the general layout of Gruddhaug and the numbers we might be looking at, and then we went back to the sleepers.
Coordinating so that we wouldn’t be visible for long, I polymorphed one of the sleeping giants into a mouse and, with a surprising amount of trouble, Umbra managed to catch it. She flew up into the sky while Leo and I, invisible again, fled as quickly as we could. Umbra only made it about 250 feet up before the mouse’s incessant biting forced her to let go, and when the giant hit the ground, it hurt but did not kill him, unfortunately. My plan was perfect in every other way, but I may have already devised a way to improve it, so perhaps next time we’ll be able to try again with better results.
That’s where we ended, with our plan for our assault on Gruddhaug next session yet to be determined. Speaking of next session, we are going to play again this Thursday, rather than the weekend, because of scheduling conflicts. So, come back Friday-ish to see how our attack on Gruddhaug goes and whether I can finally manage to drop a giant from the upper atmosphere.