Session 28

# January 17th, 2019 - Enemy at the Gates

## Enemy at the Gates

The session began right where it last left off, as the party surveyed the corpses of the yeti family that had ambushed them. Night had fallen, and snow was coming down heavily. Still in the high mountain pass with no obvious shelter around, the party decided to sleep for the night within Alburt’s magical *Leomund’s Tiny Hut*. The wizard prepared his ritual and the group crammed in and slept within the sphere of magical force. All except Harshnag, who pitched his own large tent to shelter from the wind.

Eight hours later, just past dawn of the next day, the group continued up the mountain path. After about an hour into the journey the giant pointed to the sixth marker carved high onto one of the looming ice walls. The group drew this sixth rune from the face of the marker, and continued on. By midday, the path wound through a number of crevices that Harshnag could barely fit through, and then opened up into the largest ravine any had ever seen. It was as if they were inside the very peak of a mountain, with the crest split down the middle into a pit hundreds of feet into darkness.

In front of them, across this enormous pit, was a snow covered land bridge about forty feet across. It was large enough for the entire party to walk across shoulder to shoulder, and at the opposite end stood a half-dome jutting out from the ice wall. This dome was supported by six huge pillars, each one carved with bas-reliefs of one of the six types of giants. They had found the entrance to the giant temple.

Snow still fell lightly, and around halfway across the bridge it was clear there were a number of humanoid sized footprints going across into the temple. The group cautiously followed and entered the temple, which began with a very long and tall hallway going deep into the mountain. At the very end of the hallway, a single flickering light source could be seen at the top of a flight of stairs. On either side of this hallway were ledges about twenty feet off the ground, and the party spent a little bit of time exploring this area before venturing to the end towards the stairs and light. While the rest of the group waited in the darkness out of the torch light, Rhogar stepped forward and approached the group of eight humans.

Calling out to them, the warlock found the mountain barbarians jumpy and not very talkative. Four of them were pushing on the two thirty foot tall stone doors marking the real entrance to the temple, and their apparent leader stood next to a female holding the torch. Two other barbarians next to them slowly crept down the stairs on either side of Rhogar, who sighed as they attacked him with axes. The group jumped into action, with Rhogar casting *spider climb* on himself and crawling up the wall out of reach of the axes. Alburt cast *fireballs*, Harshnag, Rachen, and Cadmus charged into melee, and it wasn’t long until most of the barbarians lay dead on the floor.

## The Archway

The party tried to speak with the last survivor to figure out what they were doing here. All they got in response was ‘*looking for leader woman*’. They slit his throat as well. With the threat out of the way, the party examined the very large and frozen stone doors. Harshnag threw his weight against one of the doors a few times, and eventually the ice cracked and he slowly pushed it inward. The party entered the cavernous square stone room. The ceiling was maybe a hundred feet above in darkness, left and right from the entrance were two other sets of thirty foot tall doors. Everything was covered in a thick layer of frost.

The room was taken up by seven enormous statues, the largest in the center was maybe eighty feet tall and represented the hooded All-Father looking across the room at a glowing archway. Encircled around this central statue were six statues kneeling and facing the central one. Each of these represented one of the six types of giants, and each held within their outstretched arms a giant metal weapon that type would use. All except for the frost giant statue, whose hands were empty. The group quickly gravitated to the glowing archway opposite the door they entered, as it was the only light source in the room.

Around the archway, were six giant runes, the same they had seen on the markers along the path to the temple, but in a different sequence. Each seemed to be made of mithril and glowed an unnatural light. In the middle of the archway, where stone should be was swirling grey clouds. One of the party members tried to go through the clouds but immediately touched the expected stone wall behind it. Knowing this was obviously the way forward, and thinking this was perhaps a combination lock of some sort, Rhogar stepped forward and touched the glowing rune that matched the first marker they found along the path. Perhaps they had to be touched in the order they were found?

Nothing seemed to happen to Rhogar, but everyone else in the party seemed to black out for fifteen seconds. Most stood still for the entire time, but after the fifteen seconds Rachen came to and found he had turned around and walked back almost to the open entrance door. Undeterred, and before anyone could really protest, Rhogar continued and touched the rune that matched the second marker from the path. Nothing happened to the party members, but in each quadrant of the cavernous room the floor seemed to rise and transformed into an earth elemental. The four earth elementals pulled their legs free and looked towards the group with their eyeless faces.

The session ended there as the elementals charged towards the party members in defense of their temple. It was the middle of the one hundred and forty third day since the raid on Greenest.

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