240717 Bumping into an old friend
General Summary
We, at the Bugle, are very aware of climate change and rest assured dearest reader that we are doing our part to limit the number of potions poured into wells and to restrict the ash and brimstone from daemon summoning. It has been almost not proven that these things are in fact maybe, partially somewhat to potentially blame for haemorrhoids. Solidarity. Now where were we? Yes, yes, my beauties, let us delve back into the never-ending series of fighting, bravery and in some cases, the downright insane.
“Bugger!” said Drogon as the party sorted through the piles of amazing magical and valuable items dropped by the giant priest. They were all obviously too large for the party to make use of. They did convince themselves that a dagger would make a hearty sword with Kurog swishing it around. Thorg was caught laughing at him, so the dagger/sword was subsequently dropped and Griff picked it up and stored it in his seemingly bottomless, portable hole. Jude sniggered at the thought.
The group set to debating what to do next. Should they proceed down one of the ramps? Should they explore the forge? Should they play Orc Football and drink wine? Everyone ignored Jude’s suggestion and decided to head west back towards the forge. Their first thought was to take a short rest to recuperate some health.
Team Stealth did their thing and explored the corridors looking for fresh spawns of Ettins, Giants or Hell Hounds, oh my. The corridors, whilst noisy, were blessedly free from vermin. No doubt the ever-watchful gods would fix that in a jiffy when the worst possible moment came. It was decided to
use the cell that once housed the dwarvern prisoner. The only problem was to get Team Heavy Metal past both the forge and the down-ramp that Team Stealth had determined was Ettin infested.
Whilst Team Stealth were being sneaky and quiet, they saw two giant Dreadnaughts leave the forge and head furth west, down the ramp towards the Ettins. Those bad-boys were trouble for sure and it seemed like there were now two less to deal with on this level.
A plan was hatched, as they all were, by the more stable members of the team screaming reason into Jude’s slightly drunk mind. Silence was cast and everyone did their best impression of ironic sneaking.
Everything was going well until Kurog had a moment. He tripped over his own armoured feet, promptly smashed his head into the floor with a crash, then managed to flail about like a beached whale. He hit every part of the tunnel wall possible with every metal part of his armour. Just to
make sure everything knew he had fallen, he tried to stabilise his fall with his sword, but managed to hit Jude’s shield making a sound like a massive, giant-sized gong. Everyone went still. Dust settled.
Kurog winced. Thorg rolled his eyes. Sentinel tutted. Drogon grinned. Jude sighed. Griff looked up from his personal-use parchment quizzically. “What was that?” he whispered.
Luckily the silence spell had blocked the sound and the party was able to move on to the allotted cell for some well earnt R&R. During the rest time the group decided that the Forge was the next point of call. So, Team Stealth went out again to face the possibility of certain death whilst daintily tip-toeing in their black leather booties. Like silent ballerina mice, or perhaps like weird two-legged cats. They peeked inside the forge to find a giant smith hard at his labours, being watched by two Flame Elementals. Some of the room was obscured, but they felt confident of their chances. It was
then that Sentinel caught sight of a Dreadnaught tucked into an alcove of the natural rock-formed cavern. A river of molten magma flowed through the south part, with the smith’s tools stored neatly around a giant (obviously) anvil.
It was almost like the whole Giant Priest episode had been wiped from their minds and the near-death experiences had happened to someone else. “What can possibly go wrong?” One of the team muttered. I think it was Sentinel ironically copying a certain drunk priestesses catch phrase. She
then cast her spell, forcing the dreadnaught to attack the Smith. Which he duly did with gusto and with a certain pride in his work. As the smith turned around, Thorg recognised him to be the same giant smith he’d contracted to enhance his sword to make it flamed.
“Cooooeeeee, Vulcan!” he shouted just as Griff managed to get a very dirty piece of cloth over his mouth to silence him. A piece of cloth that subsequently turned out to be an old pair of Kurog’s underwear. Luckily the giant didn’t notice the noise, as he was being pummelled six ways since
Tuesday by the charmed dual-shield wielding monstrosity. The rest of the party were all staring at Griff for some reason and Kurog realised now why things were a little chilly.
Eventually the Dreadnaught shook his head and his eyes cleared, Vulcan took the opportunity to hit him one more time cursing him for a fool. The Dreadnaught turned towards the party and ran, team heavy metal stood their ground, gritting their teeth and digging their heels in to meet the one tonne charging metal-clad giant. At the last second, they neatly stepped aside letting Sentinel take the full brunt and she got squished up against the wall. “Look, look! It’s a Sentinel Sandwich,” said Drogon, marvelling at the myriad of strange noises coming from the elf, as she wriggled like a musical fly in a metal fire-shielded web.
That’s when the fight got into its rhythm. Kurog and Thorg did their thing, and by their thing I mean hit everything in sight and shout a lot. It was enough to get the attention of the Giants. Too many, as another appeared from down the corridor to the east. Jude promptly banished it to another
plane of existence. A problem for ten minutes time. The team despatched one Dreadnaught and piled into the room, only to find that Vulcan had picked up two shields and had dreadnaughted himself. Yes, dreadnaughted. I am the writer and can define verbs and adjectives as I see fit. Deal
with it.
Whilst he looked strong and giantish, it turned out that he died just like every other giant scum they’d encountered. As Vulcan fell, he looked to Thorg and muttered “Ungrateful bastard!”
Thorg looked pleased that someone had remembered him and said so publicly. He looked around his friends with pride and tapped his chest. “That’s me,” he nodded to them and then set to beating the living-flame from the elementals. The fight was done, so Jude broke her concentration and the
banished Dreadnaught reappeared and was summarily despatched before it could accuse Thorg of anything.
It was noted that Griff ran away at the first sight of trouble and didn’t appear until the last sight. He brushed his robes and told everyone that they were welcome seeing as he’d saved the day. Jude and Kurog looked confused as they discussed how the fight had gone and failed to find the moment as described by Griff. In the end they decided to thank him, just in case.
Whilst cut and bruised, the band had actually come through the fight ok, even the ever so slightly slimmer Sentinel. They decided to press on and explore some more of the doors. The team discovered a crypt of sorts filled with some twenty sarcophagi. Sentinel decided that this was work for the muscle bound Thorg and Jude, as Kurog needed rest, so she slipped off to explore.
Jude read the names of the sarcophagi finding them to be mostly Giant royalty, including Frupy, the recently deceased wife of Snurre, the Giant King. All agreed this might be interesting as the manner of her death had been reportedly suspicious. When I say all agreed, it was basically Jude’s curiosity as the others yawned and really didn’t care one way or the other. Sentinel pointed out that it really wasn’t their problem through her mental connection, but Jude smelt a puzzle. Upon opening the lid, they saw that the corpse looked odd. Using her extensive medical knowledge, Jude determined that Frupy had been poisoned. “Oooh!” she exclaimed to absolutely no one as all the other were either darning socks, picking toe nails or jabbing their own eyeballs to avoid Jude.
Nothing was found in the crypt, but Sentinel had a different experience during her solo adventure. She had found a series of lava-made tunnels and a large cavern, lit by lava flows. She kept to the shadows, moving from tunnel to tunnel. Mapping every route for her fellows, she darted from
alcove to nook. Until she passed a pillar that decided to reach out and grab her, pulling her backwards towards a huge, tooth filled open maw...
Yes, you guessed it. You’ll just have to wait until next week to find out what happened to Sentinel and whether Jude managed to get anyone to entertain her giant conspiracy theories. Until then, sleep well my gorgeous readers and snuggle close to each other in the safe knowledge that your
loved one isn’t actually a vampire or succubus. Or are they?
Report Date
17 Jul 2024
Primary Location
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