Pun intended. It’ll make sense.
We arrived at Pelor’s Blessing, the agricultural town run by halflings and firbolg, which had been attacked by giants about two weeks before and was our first lead in researching the troubles in the north, and were met by Abbott Newtree, the spiritual leader of the town. He welcomed us warmly and invited us to the sermon that he was to lead later that day. He also requested we spare the time and effort to help out around the town if we could, as many travellers passing through were wont to do. Later on, Hector and I did, he (despite his immense strength) failing to uproot a tree stump and ending up being dragged face first through the dirt by an ox, and I becoming good friends with a halfling called Spencer and assisting him in the orchard by picking the highest apples in the trees (thank you, wings). We also met Litholas, the sentient tree that lives in the town square.
Abbott Newtree directed us to the Northborough’s End, the inn where we found our contact, Butcher, a bugbear. The proprietor, she provided us with free rooms and filled us in on what few details she knew about the giants and their recent activities. She also explained that certain parts of the town wall were in disarray, but Neville Underbarrel, Captain of the town’s Harvest Guard, was unconvinced that there was a chance the giants that had attacked them would return, and thus was delaying repairs. We made our way to him for a chat and Leo, through a cunning guise as an agent of Commander Vyle, persuaded him to get off his lazy ass and get it fixed.
Later that night, after the sermon (which was really more of a party), we were awoken by loud noises. As we rushed out of the inn, we saw Spencer come running around the corner and collapse. I was instantly at his side, but he wasn’t hurt, just panicked, and he told us the town was under attack. I told him to get inside the inn before we rushed off toward the town square.
When we arrived, we found Litholas, Captain Underbarrel and Abbott Newtree, along with a handful of Harvest Guard, firbolg druids, and a large number of civilians, under attack from a group of ogres. We rushed in to assist, and despite several extra waves of ogres arriving, we defeated them all and got most of the civilians safely away. What minor wounds we had received during the fight were healed up by the abbott (as it turned out, he was a level 18 druid!) before we learned that there were more enemies attacking from the south, at the section of the wall that was in disrepair. We quickly headed in that direction, with Litholas, Captain Underbarrel, Abbott Newtree, and the remaining Harvest Guard and druids that weren’t remaining behind to protect the civilians in our wake.
When we arrived, me flying overhead and the others racing through the streets, we discovered a handful of Harvest Guard and druids on the wall, battling a pair of hill giants – one wearing armour and the other uncharacteristically skinny. High up in the air as I was, I could see a veritable horde of ogres along with several more, more normal-looking hill giants approaching the wall and preparing to climb it.
Conveniently, not only was I the quickest to react, but I was in possession of a ring of spell storing that we had recently acquired from Brimscythe’s ashen remains, and in that ring was the spell Synaptic Static. I blasted it into the ogre horde, catching seven ogres and one giant in the radius. Every single one failed their save, and in one fell swoop, I had virtually nullified their entire right flank.
It was barely a third of their force, though, and not nearly the toughest. Before the others could act, the two giants on the wall charged them, pinning Hector between them and catching Leo and Aelin within their radius of attack as well. Luckily, they both failed to hit Hector with their first attacks, attacks that, combined, probably would have dropped the pre-raging barbarian. However, their presence on the ground within the wall seriously hindered our forces there. Hector, Leo and Litholas’ attacks were entirely focused on them through the fight, and the rest of the folks on the ground were distracted by them by at least some degree.
Not that those forces lasted long. There were probably close to thirty combined Harvest Guard and druids between the force with us and the force on the wall, but that was rapidly cut down to a Harvest Guard and a druid on the wall, and a single Harvest Guard on the ground. The latter managed to deal the finishing blow to a giant, so he’ll be the toast of the town, but they were all that was left when the fighting was done. Even Captain Underbarrel was flattened.
As for our other allies, though they both survived, their effect on the fight differed enormously. Litholas, being a tree, was slow, arrived late, took no damage, and landed a hit on the giants maybe once. Abbott Newtree, being ridiculously powerful compared to anyone else in the encounter, firestormed the top of the wall once it was devoid of living Harvest Guard and wiped out six or seven ogres. Between him and our newest ally, a certain skull-helmeted giant called Harshnag (who just so happens to be my friend, an agent of the Whispers, and the person we were in Pelor’s Blessing to meet), who came charging in halfway through the fight to hack his way through two giants and a couple of ogres, the fight went much better than it might have.
There was definitely a degree of luck involved. The skinny, crazy hill giant spent at least one round within reach of Kaly, and the entire fight within reach of Leo, but his randomised attacks only hit Leo once (which tomb of levistus negated) and were otherwise always going on Hector (except the one time he killed an ogre that got too close). Hector did go down a couple of times as a result of being pinned between the two giants, but Kaly was able to heal him back up each time and by the end, when he was out of rages and starting to be in serious peril, the fight was practically over.
All in all, it was a bit of a strange fight, or, at least, in the aftermath, it feels that way. Maybe it’s just because I spent the bulk of the encounter flying overhead, raining down arrows and not taking even a point of damage (not for lack of trying – thank you, Synaptic Static) but it felt rather easy, and yet, not only was Hector was brought to two death saving throw failures in one instant, but almost all of our allies during the fight were squashed into paste. So on the one hand, it went well for our party, but on the other hand, it did not go well at all for anyone else. The only good thing to come out of it was that we stopped the giants at the wall, preventing any harm to the civilians.
That’s where we finished, with the end of a massive, two-part battle against giants – or a giant battle, if you will (I told you it’d make sense). Next week, we’ll get to interrogate a hill giant, learn more about our new, frost giant friend, and after that… we’ll see.