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Posted on September 21, 2012
The Acts of the Lords of Rannick, LXXVII
Christ.
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I’m not going to say that I’m going to refrain from drinking all my Steel Reserve on Thursday nights, but can someone tell me to make some tea as they leave. Please? I feel like shit today and I probably wouldn’t if I’d just had something else to drink that wasn’t SR.
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After the fight in the overgrown pagoda tower, Halvard still wasn’t being all that he could be, what with the altitude fatigue kicking in. Ron Lesser Restored him which got him back up to speed.
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After a little discussion, the group went out into the city, leaving the glaciated parts and moving towards the Golden Road. There they spied a troop of Stone Giants, marching away from them, led by two brand new kind of giants. The party had seen one of them before, outside the entrance to Barl Breakbones’ Hook Mountain Lair, but assumed that it was a statue of monumental proport-… that’s redundant isn’t it? You guys thought it was a statue because in every way it seemed to be a statue. Anyway, here were two of them, walking along the Golden Road on some business with a bunch of other Giants.
Well, now you know.
After the giants had receded from view, the party progressed in the direction of the dome in which the Yeti lived, but they did so in a sphere of invisibility that Dagfinn created and then messed up somehow.
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Maybe he walked through a snow drift, maybe he couldn’t resist peeing his name in the snow, but whatever it was, it blew their cover and alerted the Yeti inside the dome that there was an invisible something coming down the street. The Yeti broke their cover and rushed out from the snow drifts in which they’d been hiding.
Dagfinn cast Tongues and attempted a parlay in Yettish, but they were having none of it and after glaring at the space the party occupied with their scary eyes, they ran out and engaged the party, sniffing them out.
Yettish is the language of the fearsome Abominable Snowmen, but also several really great Delis in Magnimar, so it is well worth knowing.
Upon freeing the giant, he introduced himself as the leader of what amounted to a Stone Giant resistance against Karzoug’s rule. He realises that giants are being enslaved and wants no part of that. He had heard of the people who had destroyed Mokmurian’s fledgling army at Jorgenfist, but hadn’t put two and two together that the newcomers to Xin-Shalast might be the same people. He had been trying to contact the party, ranging out of the giant camp in the Lower city when he’d been ambushed by Yeti and taken prisoner.
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The giant camp that he describes sounds like a gathering place  for all the giants that are drawn to Xin-Shalast. They stop at the camp, acclimatize to the altitude and are then gathered up by the Rune Giants, taken to the Upper City where they join the ranks of Karzoug’s army. So far only a small number of giants have been able to resist the authority that the Rune Giants appear to have over giant-kin and they’ve laid low in the camp, the resistance growing slowly but steadily. At some point, the resistance wants to leave the city to go warn giant tribes. But at the moment such a large movement in completely the wrong direction would provoke Karzoug’s minions into action. The resistance needs a big distraction.
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Upon learning that the Spared had been freed and that the party intended to go to the Spire, the resistance’s plans are going to have to change. At the insistence of the party the resistance will seek out contact with the Spared, who would make very good spies and messengers. Going to the spire will be harder; it will certainly provide the kind of distraction the resistance needs, but it isn’t possible unless you are bearing a Sihedron Medallion (like Arradin has) or one of the rings like the one you took from the Decapus. Only those will get you through the Occlusion field that protects Karzoug’s towers.
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The freed Stone Giant knows of two others who have rings like the Decapus; Ghlorofaex, a blue dragon that acts as Karzoug’s enforcer and Gamigin, some kind of Outsider with a lair in the seven sided arena building in the Entertainment District. He thought neither would be easy fights.
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We kind of left it there… I think… with the party heading back to the Spared and shelter/rest but with the intention of visiting the arena and getting a ring off Gamigin.
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Albedon didn’t tell anyone in the group this, but he really wants to get his hands on some blue dragon scales. Thunderstruck!