Expedition 84: The Best Idea I've Ever Had

We travelled through the Blessed Savannah to the Grey Desert to meet with Enkidar, and concluded a plan to save the people of Kiore and Enkidar from their attacks.

### Detailed Write-Up

It began with a minimum of fuss: we set out early on the 13th, seeking to meet Enkidar in the distant Grey Desert, to earn his trust and strike upon the plan, the masterstroke, that would let us overcome the hatred of the Frostone Giants without turning to vicious genocide. We knew that much hinged on this mission: if we could not come up with a plan, Kiore would face slaughter or Enkidar imprisonment in two short weeks.

Our early journey was peaceful and swift. The Felwood yielded no difficulties, and the Find Steed spell ate up the miles. We entered the Blessed Savannah, where peace seemed to reign. We encountered no resistance, though we did note a ruined tower far to the northern end of the Savannah. We also witnessed the majestic Questing Beasts, creatures long thought to be extinct! With their long necks and spotted hides, it was wondrous to see them munching leaves from the small trees of the Savannah. Truly, it will delight naturalists the world over to see that they endure.

While on our way to the Grey Desert, we took the opportunity for some limited reconnaissance on the Tower of Nexus. Indeed, we could hardly miss some of its features: it must be a mile high and a quarter-mile in diameter, even buried into the sand somewhat. Upon its top were other, smaller spires, each as tall as Clarity’s mage tower. It had windows of black glass, Sorin the owl confirmed, that shifted slightly in color, and it cast some spell on Sorin when he arrived. It looked like only one point of ingress existed, at the very bottom of the Tower.

We encountered mild problems while finding Enkidar; there were almost no landmarks, and we decided to head for the only one we could see, a thick spire of rock close to the center-north of the Desert. As we approached it, the desert unsettled us: we saw our footprints disappear, the sand flowing back into place behind us. The desert could have buried us and left no record of our passage.

Soon, we faced more violent threats from the sands. A pair of massive scorpions, the size of horses, erupted in an ambush that Ark and Damian thankfully foresaw. The scorpions had stunted, malformed legs; they teleported to move. The Blink Scorpions proved a nuisance; they ripped Valorie and Clarity from their horse and dealt mild injuries, but were quickly dispatched by our powerful offensive kit. Ark and Damian got the honor of the kills; Nexrin and Clarity extracted the creature’s venom glands for sale.

We Sent to Enkidar to try to arrange our meeting. He replied that Xovreme was holding him in lessons; he promised to come soon. We decided to head to the rocky spire we saw earlier, to gain a vantage point to await him from. The spire was carved; made up of large spirals of rock that tightly wound around themselves. The stone was clearly worked, and much more of it was buried underground.

Upon the stone, we found as we investigated it, was writing, in Stonetongue. The message was artfully concealed, and only my masterful investigative abilities revealed it: an ancient message from the Stonetongue Empire:

“Beryl Longiron was here, his dick is huge.”

Having exhausted that line of inquiry, we camped under the spire until Enkidar arrived. No, but seriously, we also discovered other inscriptions suggesting that the spire was a ruin from the Druidaica, conquered by the Empire, which viewed them as barbarians.

It took hours for Enkidar to appear, but he arrived, and we moved to greet him. As we called out to gain his attention, however, the desert again assailed us. A sandstorm, clearly unnatural, whipped up in the distance, and rushed towards us. Inside, we saw figures, obscured by the choking dust.

Ever the diplomat, I tried, through Tongues, to demand parley, and managed to momentarily throw the elementals for a loop but they were intent on violence. They moved to encircle and annihilate us, and proved to be dangerous and numerous foes: Anubian sandstormers, of a sort not seen in Windhome since its founding. Those sort move fluidly through the sand and strike with deadly precision, and their choking sandstorm slices and slows. We were, as you know, a bunch of Weak Nerds, and lacked the strength to escape.

However, Anubians have a weakness: thunder damage. Which I happened to be able to provide in spades. With me fracturing them, Clarity transforming into a towering ape, and Ark and Damian fighting with incredible ferocity, our victory was assured. We rapidly annihilated the horde, continuing to demand surrender. Anubians are uncaring automatons, able to reform themselves from the desert sand repeatedly, and thus are indifferent to their own death. They expent themselves futilely, but determinedly. The fight was bloody, but in the end, Enkidar’s timely arrival, with Dimension Door, won us a shattering (heh) victory.

The fight won, we returned to the ruined spire to converse and heal. Enkidar demonstrated that he was a fledgling Bard, the result, no doubt, of my incredible tutelage. We all patched ourselves neatly up, and brought out our fine repast for Enkidar, rare foods of a sort he hadn’t tasted before. At first we circled around the great issue, merely getting familiar with each other.

Eventually, of course, we had to face the problem head on. And things turned out to be worse than we thought. So, for some reason, we had taken Ur’Hamish at his word when he said Enkidar was Gilgamesh’s reincarnation. Turns out, Ur’Hamish merely *thought* Enkidar was Gilgamesh’s reincarnation due to his arcane power and his being a fire giant. Because he was only 90% sure, he also is still murdering every fire giant his clan produces. Enkidar may well be totally unrelated to the Last Titan.

Further, the Froststone Giants were *absolutely* not going to delay attacking Kiore if we violated our deal. Their honor and honesty precluded it. We had got two weeks to solve this problem, or Kiore would face an attack while it’s people were eating gingersnaps and hope to get through the winter. Enkidar, though he’d accept peace, was quite convinced that only maiming or killing the Froststone Giants had any chance of ending the problem. However, that solution had international diplomatic implications even if the Compact could bring themselves to consider it.

It was hours of debating, back and forth, considering angles, before the key details began to emerge. I’ll spare you. The end result was what mattered. The end result was, I daresay, the Best Idea I’ve Ever Had.

So, giants. Creatures of honor, creatures weirdly obsessed with height, creatures bound very much to their social structures. Turns out the ruling giant of a clan is the one who defeats or kills the previous ruler in honorable combat. To challenge, you need to be taller than the current ruler. For a giant, this is a problem you can only solve by growing, typically. For a wizard, this is a problem of knowing the spell Enlarge/Reduce. Shockingly, not a problem for the most magically proficient organization on the continent.

Now, in order to win an honorable duel with giants, the rules are that you and you alone need to clobber the current clan ruler. No one else can be smashing him. Except, rudely, there’s no rule against other giants smashing you. So if, as you can probably guess was coming, Enkidar duelled Ur’Hamish, he’d also need to survive getting clobbered by a horde of Ur’Hamish’s flunkies.

Except, Ur’Hamish was planning to imprison Enkidar, and he wanted us to deliver him. Never really told us how to get Enkidar from point A to point B. And, I mean, Ur’Hamish lives on a mountain. Really, he should probably have expected us to need some help carting Enkidar’s bulk up steep cliffs. So he should have been expecting to have to head out and pick him up.

So, it wouldn’t really be out of the ordinary for him to receive a message asking for a time and a place for pickup, one on some even, solid ground like the Nestle Valley. Nor would it be untoward for us to request he not send a big squad of guys, as that would likely cause the Council to have a fit and give us an earful, and we get too much of that as is. Nor would it be irregular for us to request he come in person. After all, we’ve got ethics. We’d want him to show that he wasn’t planning on killing Enkidar by showing up to take charge of him himself.

Long and short, we had an ironclad excuse to get Ur’Hamish to come down to the Nestle with only a few guards. Few enough that the Compact could viably run interference on them while Enkidar belted out a formal challenge and used Ur’Hamish’s as a test subject for evocation spells.

Now, getting Enkidar up there without Xovreme finding out would be a trick and a half, but Clarity was teleporting people across continents already by this point, so it was a trick we’d already got down pat. There’s an old Teleportation Circle under the Inkwells near Tolyr’s extraction equipment. Explaining our plan to him was fun, but in the end he okayed it.

Of course, the plan still had a chance for murder in it. I don’t know if we were all sure it was the best way. But it was a heck of a  way. Marvelously unexpected. The sort of plan that Orinson himself would chuckle uncontrollably at, that the great bard Zamak would look upon with pride. We crossed our fingers that Ur’Hamish would read the writing on the walls and yield after Enkidar thrashed him, and we hammered out the details as the sky darkened. We all knew our parts by the time we broke camp as the sun was touching the horizon.

Getting back to Vrall in darkness wasn’t my favorite activity, but thankfully nobody got seriously hurt. Well, Ark walked into a giant venus flytrap, but they were fine. Wizard robes are all made from stainless cloth these days, necessary for the job. We actually hit a line of good fortune. Found an ancient Druidaica bow in the Savannah, close to an old silvered highway marker that I blew up and looted. Don’t look at me like that, I had expenses! Honestly. Made it out of there with two scorpion stingers full of venom, twenty five silver pieces worth of shiny rubble, a magical bow, and some enchanted armor Enkidar gave us in gratitude. And a truly marvelous plan.

How did that marvelous plan go? Well, that is a whole *different* tale. Tell you what, I’m not disinclined to stay here longer, if you’re paying for my room. I’ll tell you tomorrow what happened at the Duel of the Titans…

-- A tale told in an inn, many years after the Founding of Kiore.

**Expedition Result: We Made Friends and We Made Schemes! Success!**

**Expedition Level:** 8

**Expedition Loot:** 25 silver in shiny rubble, two scorpion stingers, Druidaica Warbow, Deep Guard Suit