S06E01: The Gang Has A Giant Problem

## Background

We found and rescued Qualish !

The group is remembering to level up and upgrade their Drakeguard bracer.

## Retcon

We’re going to undo the phone call with the Director as it happened last time.

Now that we've restored him to his original body, Qualish has agreed to come back with us to meet the director, and hopefully join us in the Drakeguard .

Nissa goes back to collect the Medusa’s skull and make a sweet helmet. Kanye was going to do this, but they’re coming to an arrangement because of their working relationship. And also because Kanye is still wearing the power armor, which he’s contractually bound to, so it's not like he can wear it directly.

Kanye is now trying to modify the suit to support the Medusa skull. Averlyth recommends tweaking the snakes so they are positioned like a stand for sheet music for Nissa.

When we return to Neverwinter , the field office has been totally leveled. The place is smoking, yet it’s evident the destruction had happened some time ago.

Seconds after appearing in the crater, we are teleported again.

Being teleported is never a pleasant experience, but this time the movement is particularly rough - we can feel ourselves being pulled at, thrown bodily around before practically crash landing into an unexpected destination.

We find ourselves in the infirmary of the floating island , formerly occupied by the Drakeguard through our efforts. Across us, we see the Director in another bed in the hospital, looking exhausted from what appeared to be the effort of teleporting us. There are no other patients in the infirmary, and she's surrounded by what doctors that look visibly annoyed at our presence.

Seeing us, she wheezes, “Find… Bosley” and then falls unconscious.

The doctors hustle around to heal her. Nissa asks a passing doctor who’s in charge, and they echo the Director's command, telling us to go find Bosley.

We leave the infirmary and find the island is much more populated since we were last here - the former cult haven is now covered with tents, with crowds of seemingly busy Drakeguard members and operatives bustling around.

Strangely, no one looks familiar. No one looks surprised by our presence, but no one is really trying to talk to us either.

We make our way to the control tower to look for Bosley. At the entrance, a security guard asks us to state our business.

Nissa points majestically to her waist (belt bracer) and states that we are level 6 Drakeguard agents who were personally instructed by the Director to find Bosley. The security guard lets us pass without occasion.

**Aside:** Apparently Kanye has put Aviator glasses onto the power suit. It’s a little unsettling.

Walking in, we see the control tower is significantly more active than the last time we were here; more of the surrounding rooms have been opened and cleared, and there are rooms of people standing around desks and looking at maps.

We go upstairs and find our Modron buddy perfectly happy, still plugged into the back of the tower. Next to him, a tall Elf in a fine suit catchs our eye and nods to herself as if she was expecting us.

It is obvious to Nissa and Averlyth that this woman is radiating magic, and is probably very ancient, given the lifetimes of study it would take to accumulate that much wisdom and power.

She introduces herself as Bosley, the current Deputy Director of the Drakeguard, and then invites us through a door that looks suspiciously similar to the door to our pocket meeting room.

We enter a pocket meeting room.

Using the whiteboard, Bosley begins to explain what transpired in the month that we were away, looking for Qualish.

Despite having last disappeared into limbo, the four horsemen had reappeared to attack the field office of Neverwinter specifically - almost as if out of spite.

This time they were able to open a portal to He Who Sleeps. The Director was able to fight them off at great personal cost; it was only through her intervention that He Who Sleeps was pushed back.

Everyone else formerly stationed at the Neverwinter Field Office was a casualty of the clash between titans.

**Nissa**: ….. Everyone is dead?!
**Bosley**: Yes.
**Nissa**: We’re never going to get our fucking flamethrower then?!
We learn that Bosley was formerly the director of the Baldur’s Gate Field Office, but was promoted to Deputy Director upon the attack. We can treat her orders as the orders of the Director’s.

The Drakeguard fully intends to fight back.

Bosley informs us that our group’s personal next step will be to take some downtime as intel is being gathered about the four horsemen's operations. In addition, the Director has chosen to invest all of her remaining power and resources in us - all of the other field operatives are no longer to use the spells in their bracer or teleport for their missions.

We are effectively the Drakeguard's last hope. Bosley seems to politely resist rolling her eyes about this.

She pauses to let us ask questions. Nissa confirms that no one survived the Neverwinter site.

Kanye asks Woodhouse to pull out his locket of an ugly person and gives it to Bosley as a token of our commitment to getting to the bottom of the situation. Bosley does not appear to be offended, but also does not appear to be pleased - she takes the locket and says thank you and then gives nothing. (It's possible that she heard Kanye specifically ask for the "lock of an ugly person")

**Aside**: It’s now canon that Woodhouse has had a bracer this whole time, as he was secretly a Drakeguard operative long before we joined the group, and that’s why he can teleport alongside us for our quests.

Remembering to finish up our last mission, we send Qualish in to talk to Bosley. He has now agreed to work as a Drakeguard operative, and would be granted the necessary resources for both his research and to fulfill his promise to build us a vehicle capable of navigating through the realm of limbo.

Kanye points out that despite the attack and new information, our ultimate goal hasn’t actually changed - we still need to go into limbo to end the fight there, and that'll still involve waiting for intel and supporting Qualish as necessary. The Deputy Director agrees, pointing out that we now additionally know that the four horsemen are still a huge threat, and may be in our world.

**Kanye**: Oh sweet, we can go and do some… CSI! And gather… forensic… evidence???
Before we have a chance to dismiss Bosley, someone knocks on the door asking for her. She promptly excuses herself, stating her door is always open if we need anything, and instructing us to rest and recuperate before we are needed once more.

Most of the group takes the same downtime we stated last time. Averlyth begins converting the Kenku from last time, Um checks on the status of the sight rot cure distribution, Sorith is brewing beer and hanging out (after retrieving his beer brewing necessities from the Apparatus of Qualish. Nissa is working on the new lute with Kanye, which they have still labeled "READ OR DIE" because of course they did.

Additionally, Nissa and Kanye ask Qualish if they can configure the power armor to react to Nissa’s lute, so that she can play a tune and have it issue a low level instruction to the suit in the event that Kanye is somehow incapacitated. Qualish agrees since musical keywords are apparently pretty straightforward, so Nissa immediately programs Epona’s Song into the suit, to summon the suit to her when needed.

## Session

We have rested up from our adventures at Doin Gloin and are now making our way back to the floating island for our next mission.

Upon entering Bosley's office, Averlyth notices a rather long nameplate on the desk, noting “Bosworth Lucien Alhambra Pendragon”. The group briefly contemplates if it's insensitive to assume everyone with the word "dragon" in their name must be a literal shapeshifting dragon. The group does not ask her about it because that feels confrontational.

Bosley gestures for us to sit down, and empathizes with how hard it must have been for us to just sit around and do nothing after we lost friends in the seemingly personal Neverwinter attack.

She tells us about 2 new leads.

1. **The Dwarven Frostbite Platoon** - freelance operatives that have worked with the Drakeguards in the past.

They were sent into the Ice Spire mountains to a location known as the birthright stones to recover an ancient tablet containing knowledge of an ancient rune magic that has since been lost to history. The Drakeguard have recently received word that they have been pinned down by ogres and giants, and need backup for extraction.

With the Director out of commission, they can also no longer teleport home. We don’t know for sure if this particular tablet was a target of the horsemen, but we do know they need powerful tablets to attempt another summoning of He Who Sleeps, and we suspect their involvement here.
2. **A trio of agents deployed to the Seven Stones** - a group of ancient meditating stone giants, who meditate so long they appear to be statues.

At any point, one of them is awake. Given their age, they are repositories of information, and we believe they may remember the location of a lost temple containing three powerful master runes.

The agents were dispatched to ask them for the knowledge of the location of the runes of power. One of them teleported back prior to the Neverwinter attack, reporting having spoken to one of the Seven Stones, but there has been no word of the others since.

The group goes into their own meeting room to discuss which mission to get involved with.

**Sorith (a dwarf)**: Of course the dwarves need help, they’re dwarves.
Averlyth notes that “Ice Spire” mountains might be nice after all the fire we usually deal with. Kanye gets a quick check to see how many of our group members can speak Dwarven or Ogre (enough of us), and then the group checks to see who got the “Titanic Growth” bracer spell (also enough of us).

The group decides to go save the Frostbite Platoon.

*-- quick break --*

The group decides to name the floating island the “Mulmaster County Station Nine-Nine”, despite being nowhere near Mulmaster County.

We suspect the Drakeguard will use “The Barrier Peaks Valley Office ” for official communications.

**Kanye**: Mulmaster County is a state of mind
*-- resuming session --*

Bosley takes us to a private room - not in the infirmary - to meet Amelia, a member of the Frostbite Platoon. As we approach, we can smell the tangy scent of medicinal herbs.

We see an exhausted and injured female dwarf resting in a bed, eager to tell us what she knows.

She informs us the platoon is comprise of 24 - now 23 - dwarves, and that they were sent to the Ice Spire to recover an ancient tablet at the birthright stones. When they arrived, however, they were immediately attacked by a group of 30 or 40 ogres. They were very well equipped, and the Frostbite Platoon was pinned in a gorge.

After a few days, when it became clear their Drakeguard bracers weren’t working and the supplies were running low, Amelia and another member volunteered to sneak past the ogres in the dead of night. They were discovered, and her comrade, Peril triggered an avalanche at the crest of a hill, sacrificing himself to stop the ogres from pursuing. It took another day of traveling to arrive at a town to hitch a ride to a Drakeguard operative.

The platoon is exhausted, but that’s not the reason they decided to sneak out - "If it were just ogres, we could've toughed it out".

It turns out, one night the ogres got drunk, walked over to the gorge and bragged about calling reinforcements from giants.

Nissa questioned if the ogres seemed normal, or if they were mind controlled. Amelia says they sounded like they were just taking orders.

After quickly assessing all the information we know about ogres and giants, the group leaves the room.

In the hallway, Bosley gravely reminds us that our top priority is to prevent the tablets from entering the hands of the four horsemen - even if that means breaking them - and that saving them, or the platoon, is a bonus. Nissa makes a face.

After finishing up preparations and intel, the group gets ready to teleport. Bosley warns us that the Director isn’t doing so hot, so it’s possible the teleportation spell might not be fully dialed in, and we may not appear exactly where we expect.

The group spends the next 10 minutes terrified of teleportation and overprepare for the worst.

We are not teleported into the dwarves camp, but we’re not teleported into the ogre’s camp either, so we’ll take it as a win.

We are on a crest facing the gorge. Even at a distance, we see giant, solemn monuments outside the ancient site. We see a large path with a trail of ogre bodies, and a dozen or so erected camps, with dozens of ogres lumbering around.

Kanye apparently chose to teleport while flying in his ironman suit, so he appears in midair.

The group spends about 20 minutes brainstorming whether or not an avalanche is a viable solution before realizing that the environment won’t really allow us to do a controlled avalanche that attacks the ogres without also burying the dwarves.

The group decides to wait til dark before trying to sneak up the sides of the gorge, in an attempt to reach the dwarven camp.

At nightfall, Um takes a look out and notices a predictable Ogre patrol, some sentries, and various groups of ogres coming and going. Best guess is some of them are foraging, some gathering firewood, and one appears to have been gather rocks and boulders.

Sorith casts stealthy fuckers to bless everyone. Nissa casts enhance ability on Kanye to counter the stealth disadvantage, Averlyth casts Blessing of the Trickster on Nissa to counter her stealth disadvantage.

Despite some surprisingly loud noises from the cleric, the group is able to sneak past the ogres into the gorge.

The group 100% descends a rather steep hill *perfectly*.

**Kanye**: Why we don’t descend hills more often?
We approach the birthright stones, tight clusters of extremely impressive stones. The shortest stones stand at 20 feet tall at the east, growing progressively to the west where they tower at 50 feet. Two of the largest stones are partially buried in the evidence of an avalanche that must’ve happened some time ago. There are also four other stones that appear buried by a more recent avalanche.

There are multiple sarcophagi around the site, and the center contains a razed firepit of giant sized proportions. Huge steps for giant feet head below ground, to a channel below the circle.

Huddled beneath are the Frostbite Platoon.

The dwarves look at us warily, but begin to introduce themselves upon seeing we’re not ogres.

Kanye introduces himself, and his sexy compadres.

The dwarf that introduced himself first turns out to be Amelia’s father, and we break the news about her escape, and Peril's fall during the avalanche.

The captain dwarf asks if there are more reinforcements. Kanye gestures to himself and the dwarf’s face falls.

Nissa asks if the tablets were recovered, and he says yes, leading us to them. A younger dwarf next to the tablets totally geeks out with Nissa for a little bit.

As we chat, the ground begins to rumble with vigorous regularity. We run out and see 2 ginormous figures charging towards the ogre camps, wearing animal clothes, and stomping to the cheering of the ogres before them.

The giants have arrived.