01/09/2020 - Descending into Darkness, Insidious Ice and Unavoidable Undead

## TL;DR

* The party are led by Cobb and Kayalith, two giant friends, into the caverns below the city of Fellburg, where the Fire Giants used to live
* A really big door proves to be a challenging puzzle
* The Ice Sprites let the dogs out
* There is another fight Your Narrator was not there for

## Discovering the Depths

Leo and Ves wake up and discuss the white dragon below the island, an icy being, not a fiery one. Leo theorises that the island became icy after the dragon was captured. The party is told by the Giants that Fredericko is tunnelling through the mountains today and so they need to be quick. They are led out of their stalagmite home and down towards the fortified stalagmites at the base of the city-cavern.

They follow a blue glow towards a wall, guarded by Stone Giants, into a no man's land of pits and rocks, and a 80ft wide chasm. A bridge is vertical on the other side with a massive lever on the wall. Leo attempts to ask the Giants if they can lower the bridge, but there is no response. He asks Cobb and Kayalith how far things can be thrown, and suggests they throw Narko. Unfortunately (or fortunately depending on who you are), Narko is too heavy to be thrown.

Azurial has a look around the platform the party is on. There is no lever on the walls above them, but over the edge, 5ft down, there is something. He draws Cobb's attention, and Cobb reaches down to yank the lever. As he does so, the one on the far wall lowers as well, and the bridge starts to descend.

Kayalith is first across the bridge and gets across fine. Assured, everyone else follows. Ves sees a blue glow at the far bottom of the cavern, and a surface intertwined with black shifting rock. She surmises this used to be a substantial lava moat.

## Open-sesame?

On the other side, the party are confronted by a large iron door with lots of spikes, which is locked and barred from the inside. However, it also has a 6 inch gap underneath, so Ves turns into a lizard and crawls through. When she emerges on the other side, she is in a misty, expansive cavern with a statue rising out of the mist. The bar is 15ft off the ground, and Ves cannot reach it.

Cobb and Kayalith try to unsuccessfully pull the door off its hinges. Leo tries to Heat Metal on the door but only a small part of it gets hot, though he does make a small hole. Kayalith then tries to use a grappling hook to grab on the spikes but is unable. Cobb manages it.

Azurial asks Ves if she could not Wild Shape into something tall and strong and open the door that way. Ves could, but she doesn't really want to waste her second Wild Shape. She instead looks around and finds a gate tower, and 12ft off the ground a lever. With some trial and error and Mold Earth, she is able to hook her rope over the lever and use her body weight to pull it down, opening the door.

## What May or May Not Be Compensation

The party joins Ves in the misty cavern, and Leo goes to investigate the statue. There are four hellhound statues placed at the cardinal points around the statue, one of which breathes a puff of smoke at the party. The statue is of The Iron Baron, the last known rule of the Fire Giant kingdom. There are lots of bones on the floor in multiple sizes.

Kayalith, Ves, Leo and Rocky investigate the bones. They find some are obviously fire giants, but others are humanoid, probably orcs. They follow the trail of skeletons around a corner, through a door with claw marks gouged into it. Leo notices that some of the skeletons have ballista bolts sticking out of them.

Around the corner, Rocky finds a Giant weaponry; racks of weapons, hastily flung up palisades and ballistas pointing at the entrance. He heads straight for the weapon racks and finds a 10ft warhammer which he proceeds to claim for himself. Azurial examines the axes and finds them to be fairly bog-standard, if Giant-sized. Cobb and Kayalith decline Leo's offer to have the weapons.

There is a large flat of ice along the left wall. Leo investigates the ritual circle on the ground, written in runic and Giant, but is unable to determine what it does. It is fairly incoherent. Rocky is unable to lift his Giant warhammer and, feels sorry for him, Ves Cures his hangover. After some time, Narko is able to decipher that the ritual circle was probably a teleportation circle once.

## Who let the dogs out?

As they gather around the circle, a low moaning attracts the party's attention. Suddenly, the torso of a Fire Giant pulls itself out of the mist, reaching towards Rocky and dealing a lot of damage. Azurial runs forward to smite it but as he does so, Ves notices an Ice Sprite crawl out of the wall to pull a lever. The bars on the other side of the room start descending into the floor.

Ves Calls Lightning to hit the Ice Sprite and Rocky Dissonantly Whispers to the Undead Giant. Cobb finishes it off and heads towards the Sprite. However, before he gets there, snarling from the cliff grabs his attention. There are now hellhounds stood there, which jump out and sprint towards the party.

## Amy Summarises the Fight Instead of Narrating It

The party fight the Ice Sprites and the Hellhounds, but each time they destroy one Sprite another seems to take its place. At one point, Leo Channels Divinity to Turn the Undead dogs, which works on like half of them. Ves' Poison Spray does nothing at all. Kayalith and Cobb throw lots of rocks and crush the hellhounds beneath them. Azurial smites stuff with Righteous Fury. Narko hits hellhounds with his glaive. Rocky freaks out a Sprite and gets it to retreat.

After the fight is over and all the Ice Sprites and Hellhounds have bene taken care of, Leo comments that it is odd that Cobb and Kayalith come from such a mysterious civilisation but only throw rocks. Kayalith points out it is hard to dodge a massive rock, which is a fair point.

The party debate having a short rest, and Your Narrator goes to bed. Josh kindly takes over.

## Josh Actually Narrates the Next Bit

Decide to rest after fight – another ice creature appears out of the ice wall, attacks Kayalith but misses, she yeets a rock and kills it. The party decides to move back to the non-ice walled room to rest, but Rocky is too slow because he’s dragging a massive hammer, and stays, another creature appears and attacks him.

Rocky eventually gets to the others dragging the weapon, the giants are like, you’re too weak. Cobb takes it off him, Rocky is sad, Cobb says he’ll look after it for him.

During the short rest, Leo is concerned about Rocky’s exposed boobies and suggests he needs some armour. Rocky is confused. Leo offers to turn Rocky’s massive un-carryable hammer into armour.

Azurial and Leo investigate door on the left. It is solid metal, with no obvious opening mechanism. Kayalith and Cobb use brute strength to break it down.

The party get to a new room, smaller, another door at the top with runic markings/buttons for each of the main giant types, with writing above that says: The true ordaining. The Giants realise that this is the power/size ranking according to the Gods of the various giant types.

Azurial suggests putting the fire giants at the top, then the rest in the correct order. Azurial suggests Kayalith presses the button, she agrees after throwing Azurial some sass about him being small and scared. She does it, the door opens half a foot, then on the other side of the room a large opening appears, and a large thundering rolling noise is heard.

Rocky, still in the other room, asks what the heck is that noise.

Kayalith pushes open the door she just opened half a foot and gets in out of the way of the oncoming boulder. Narko, Cobb, Azurial dashes in the gap too. Leo is too slow and gets smashed horribly by the rocks. Rocky runs over and joins the others in the new room.

Kayalith tells Cobb to pick up the large boulders. Through the door, the party can see weird shambling figures (zombie orcs) lining the corridor.

Kayalith immediately charges forward and rolls a massive boulder into two of them, killing both instantly.

Rocky dashes closer. Azurial holds an action for if in melee range. Cobb moves forward and holds his boulder roll until they are in range.

Leo hurls some sacred flame at one, almost killing it.

The orc zombies and one ice wraith attack. The ice wraith attacks Cobb and the zombies attack Cobb, Kayalith, Azurial. Cobb kills two with his held boulder, Aurial hurts one with his held melee attack. Azurial and Cobb take damage, the other one misses Kayalith.

A massive one-armed zombie giant appears at the end of the room, stares at Azurial with angry red eyes, Azurial feels a wave of cold wash through him, takes 35 cold and peels over dead. Narko kills one zombie, then gets a healing potion out of the bag for Azurial.

Kayalith kills another one with her great club. Rocky runs forward to heal Azurial. Wild Magic surges, and he suddenly shrinks by 9 inches to the height of 6'5". Perturbed, he then lobs Rosie at the nearest guy.

Azurial comes back, but his kneecap is broken (half movement, can’t jump or dash without a con save, or fall prone). It will take 4 days to heal. He retreats and cures his wounds.

Cobb kills a zombie then runs forward.

Leo second winds himself then kills another zombie. Ice thing and one remaining zombie attacks Leo First misses, but second hits. Big bad giant hits Cobb for 35 cold damage. Narko fires two longbows at it but misses. Kayalith lobs a boulder at him, dealing some hefty damage. Then moves forward towards it, but does take some damage from the last zombies opp. attack. Rocky heals Azurial with a third level spell, fixing his broken knee. Rocky then kills the final zombie.

Azurial gets onto his horse, gallops forward and attempts to attack, but misses.

Leo attacks the icy boy, almost killing it. It attacks Leo in return, but misses. Narko does a mighty charge attack on the big giant, dealing many damages, but misses his second hit.

Kayalith is furious seeing Cobb get hurt, and critically hits the big giant, then brutally hits him. (64 damage turn!!).

Rocky dissonant whispers the main giant, but it shrugs off the effect. He inspires Azurial with a little ditty.

Azurial is very inspired and hits the ice guy, mugs him off with some mighty bludgeoning damage, eviscerating it. Cobb gets hit with more ice things, making him miss his attacks.

Leo tries to hit the big giant with a radiant bolt, but misses. The Giant attacks Cobb again.

Narko finally kills the big giant with a giant might imbued glaive attack.

Everyone is now very tired and decide to once again go and rest back in the first room.

But first, Kayalith checks out a few corridors, finding some old collapsed staircase and a living quarters (behind a 15ft pile of skeletons and furniture) with two large chests. She breaks the chest, lots of giant paraphernalia inside. Azurial looks in and finds a massive gong (he takes it for Rocky) and a key, which he puts on his belt.

There is another chest at the other end which opens with Azurial's key. Inside, they find an obsidian statue of a fire giant god, couple of feet high; some dragon scales, deep crimson red, well preserved and hard to the touch; and 1876 GP. Azurial gets the bag of holding off Narko (who does not want to climb over the skeleton pile to get into this room) and puts the statue and gold in.

They have a short rest in the main room.