The Acts of the Lords of Rannick, XXX

Okay, so…

…last session, the party had woken a Frost Giant. I realised that in game time, it was about 7.30 in the morning, maybe a little later but not to late. The party’s disavowal of tactics or discussion last week and hearty embrace of running willy-nilly into the courtyard of Jorgenfist meant things ticked along. Anyway, my point being, everyone in the courtyard was asleep, because I would be asleep. 7.30 in the morning? Barbaric! I suspect that even in early autumn people would actually be up and about by 7.30, but when I first thought of the time, I thought, hell, that’s sleeping time.

It all worked out though, because two of the encounters make sense to be sleeping late.

The Courtyard of Jorgenfist.

The Frost Giant, already seared by two of Albedon’s Scorching Rays, leapt to his feet, hoisted his Greataxe and bellowed, spitting flecks of frost and diacritics “I åm Isvig Fjørdersön, I will split yøu from hjeäd to hjöle! I will ushjer yøu into the glöriøus äfterlijfe!”. Only Albedon and Torgor understood this, everyone else just heard “Puut da chicky een da pot, bork bork abork.”

Kerplak tossed a smoke grenade at the foot of the giant and Arradin charged in, trading blows. She started to look as though that wasn’t the hottest idea, but Don ran in and healed her and Tersplink cast Displacement on her once he had the safety of a Spectral Hand’s distance between him and the giant. Fjørdersön cursed the back row as cowards as they sent in missile and magic at him, but it was a Flamestrike spell from frontline Don that took him down. The kerfuffle and bellowing had, however, cause the carrion birds feasting at the bottom of the pit to take to flight and they erupted from the hole and began circling the spire, waiting to see the outcome of more carnage.

Corwin, meanwhile, had fainted; a childhood memory of a particularly scary dream about snowmen being vividly realised and Dagfinn attended to him while everyone else started searching/gamboling merrily across the courtyard.

Arradin searched the bear-skull lodge and found three bags that the giant had tucked under the bear pelt rug, containing coins, gems and some rather nice objets d’art. Elves love objets d’art. And pretty much all the bear skulls she could ever want.

Tersplink, still invisible, moved onto the ledge that ringed the pit and began descending. Albedon and Don were keeping separate weather eyes on the circling carrion-eaters, noticing that the birds were avoiding flying too close to one part of the spire. Albedon informed Don of this, which Don found adorable.

Fleeing the oppressive known of the bear-skull lodge, Kerplak ran between the pit and the spire to investigate the unknown of the wooden hall. It was killing him inside not knowing what was in there. Torgor joined him, eyeing the elk-fur laden bird-lime at the base of the spire with caution. Torgor opened the door and peered inside the well made wooden hall. Inside was dark, but the ranger saw that there was stacked high all manner of provisions and foodstuffs. Cured hams hung from the ceiling, barrels of ale and boxes of hard tack cluttered the floor. There were provisions in this hall to feed a substantial number of giants. Kerplak and Torgor slipped in, moving silently through the stored food. Don joined them, but his Druid-senses tingling, detected the low rumble of a snoring bear. Not just a bear but a big bear. Not just a big bear, but a big dire bear. It was about then that the bear woke up.

And the Roc appeared.

Spiralling down from the sky, sending panicked birds in all directions, the Roc swept down to rake the party members still out in the open space with its scythe-like talons. Tersplink, from the cover of the pit, cast Bestow Curse, but that didn’t immediately effect it as it landed on the roof of the food-packed hall and tried to peck at Kerplak who was fleeing the awakened Dire Bear.

The fourteen foot tall Dire Bear, vast even for one of its kind and striped black and orange like a tiger, charged forward through a Wall of Acid that Albedon cast around it. It was hit by a few more spells, but it wasn’t until Arradin and Don really got stuck in did it start to rack up some dreadful injuries. Don thrust his scimitar in to the hilt, the blade wrenched from his grasp as the animal bucked. Arradin meanwhile opened up a gash that began leaking blood and then another that began fountaining blood. (10 points of bleed damage per round… hideous).

The Roc, meanwhile was pecking at Kerplak while the Curse began to take hold, rendering it useless half of the time. Tersplink left the relative safety of the pit and sorcerered up a relatively minor damage spell that went completely and horribly right. Channeling magic at the Roc, he was aware that in addition to the damage he’d just inflicted, the spell was imbued with an unexpected amount of Charm magic, causing his target to regard him as a friend. Never one to miss an opportunity like that, Tersplink instructed the Roc to set about the giants on the other side of the wall. It dutifully flew off to do its new friend’s bidding.

There was some commotion from the other side of the wall as the Roc set upon a camp of unsuspecting ogres. The gargantuan raptor snatched up two surprised ogres in its beak and talons and hauled them aloft, dropping them from a great height above the food-store. The two ogres smashed into the well-constructed roof with a resounding, bone-crunching thud.*

Inside, the dire bear was brought down, burdened by the many heinous wounds and magical damage inflicted on it, Torgor putting it out of its misery with one last, well placed arrow. While Don got to healing people in the storeroom and everyone looked around for any salami that wasn’t drenched in bear gore. The Roc, meanwhile saw the emerging non-giants as prey, other than Tersplink who it still thought of as its good buddy. The feeling was mostly mutual, as the party seized on the Roc with vigour. Which was fine when it was flying over empty ground but kind of a hilariously bad when it was flying over them… which is when it lost consciousness. The massive bird folded up and dropped on them… only Arradin of those standing beneath it managed to get out of the way of the bird’s crashing body.

Putting the Roc out of its misery was how we left everyone.

The Compleat Adventurer went to Noe this week for turning the food hall into a bloodbath. Embers, the Dire Bear had easily the most hp of any creature you had faced so far, over 200. Rolling a 10 on a d10 for bleed damage on top of regular damage was a great moment. That would have killed some 3rd level characters just with the incidental damage. Nice stuff.

*The dreadful fate of Burrrt the Ogre was later immortalized in the tragic ogrish lay, Suff’rin’ Burrrt. Have you heard?**

**Uh-well-uh, evrybudy’s hurrd about da burrrd. Burrd bit Burrt, bit-Burrt was hurrt. Uh-well-uh, bad-burrd bit Burrt, bit-Burrt was hurrt. Uh-well-uh durrn’t you hurrd about da burrd? Well evrybudy’s hurrd that the bad-burrd bit Burrt. Etc etc.