Arcade’s Journal -- Giant Hunt ...dropped off Erilyn at home. Her parents were overjoyed to see her. They had naturally feared the worst when she disappeared near Elzid’s tower.... ...returned to the ruin. Tao believes that many goblins have been coming and going through the area. In fact, some were still there. Grundo was overjoyed. He does so love killing goblins. As the giant must already be some distance away, we decided to return to Rampart and get supplies for the trip. I still need some salve for my eyebrows, as they were burned off by an explosive rune trap on the map scroll. We believe that the giant is headed towards the Sunken Dell located on the map.... ...returned to the Flaxen Manticore to find our headquarters being rifled by an incompetent group of thieves, headed by one Tephis Birdhouse. It appears that they were given a map to our headquarters by one "Arcade Deepleaf", and then Charmed into going to ransack it! Nolin turned the tables by Charming them again himself. Tephis has been attached temporarily to Glimmer as a lackey. Cadrienne has decided to return to her temple and face the music. She keeps sneaking out to join us on these adventures, even though she is still only a Postulate of Morphat.... ...traveled down the South Passage Road, following the giant’s tracks. Even Tao wasn’t incompetent enough at tracking to miss them. The tracks then moved west into the mountains. Found a campfire with the bones of a cooked horse. There were signs of a fight, and two sets of tracks. It seems the giant may have had a disagreement with the demi-human, and the giant was wounded mildly. The terrain has become hilly. Ever-resourceful Nyquil spotted signs that a large lizard (possibly a pet) is now with the giant. Have passed several elevated sites with stacked boulders for throwing, and have altered my memorized spells accordingly.... ...came to a river below a hill with rough steps leading upwards. Grundo, Nolin, Tom-Tom and Tao climbed the stairs, while Alix, Glimmer and myself moved quietly around the hill. The climbers reached the top, and immediately were greeted by a hail of boulders from the opposite hill. The climbers charged the black-eyepatch wearing giant while we approached from the right. I sent a few Magic Missiles slamming into the giant, and managed to cast Mirror Image just in time. (A boulder passed through one of the images and the giant yelled something in broken Common about hating wizards.) Then the lead party reached the giant, and the melee began. The giant swung his tree-club, sweeping Grundo’s new spiked helmet off. Then Tao closed in and severed the giant’s ankle tendon as Grundo hamstrung his other leg. This led to a massacre. Tao seemed to be enjoying herself rather too much. Rather than stay to watch, I located the giant’s cave.... ...giant was definitely a man-killer. He wore a necklace of human and demi-human ears. We found his gigantic pet lizard inside the cave, and dispatched him with Color Spray and sword. Found a green dragonskin bag within a stone pillar. It contained a large number of coins, many of which appear to be a type of foreign currency. The giant’s eyepatch is magical. Wearing it revealed a trapped secret door in the rear of the cave, which led to a small box canyon. We have found the Sunken Dell.... ...as the map indicated, the entrance is a trapdoor beneath a moss-covered stone near a blasted oak. The trapdoor contained a Sleep gas pressure-plate trap. We were on high alert, as the map hinted at a "guardian most maleficient." The stone was easily removed after I cast Grease beneath it. After descending down ropes to the lower level we faced off against a huge metallic figure in a 3-4 foot-wide corridor. It seemed programmed to come after and attack us, but not to climb after us. We decided to return to Rampart, train, and then return with the tools to bypass this killer construct. We disguised the cave entrance and departed.... |
AnnotationsOriginally posted by madriel So did somebody identify the eye patch or was one of the players just playing around with it and discovered its powers by accident? I belive Nolin tried it on. It was called the Eyepatch of Yondor (god of hidden ways). It showed hidden doors and such, and also allowed a person with one eye to see as if they had two. Nolin carried it for a while, and then gave it to Nyquil, for reasons we'll hear about later. Ok, Bandeeto's post left out the really good nasty sharp pointy DM bit (naturally, since he was writting from Arcade's point of view). We found the scroll, and Piratecat handed it to Bandeeto--a handwritten note on a parchmenty paper stock. Bandeeto read it, and then looked at it carefully, and noticed a peculiar sigil scribed on the reverse. "What's this?" he said. "Here, hand it back to me," Piratecat said, as if he needed to examine the mark again to see what Bandeeto was pointing at. Bandeeto obediently handed it over. And then he rolled some dice, which we expected, and lit the scroll on fire, which we did not. "You take X points of damage from the explosive runes," he said."And your eyebrows are vaporized." Well, more or less, that's what he said. We still have what's left of the original note, scorchmarks and all. It really was a thing of beauty. Highly painful. Luckily the map was still quite readable despite the burn marks from P'Cat's gas stove. Elzid loved Fire Traps, and we got nailed by many of them. It got to where we'd expect them, but we had no way to defuse them. So it was just a question of who was going to take the damage this time. - Bandeeto |