Giant in a Tower, I know, I know, It’s Serious….* (Storm King’s Thunder #7)
We started our time in Mirabar by chatting with our dwarf portal keeper, Zasbar. He let us know that Mirabar is actually two towns. The humans/elves/visitors live above ground, where a lot of business is done and the humans benefit greatly from the what the nearby mines produce. Below ground is a dwarven city that is pretty much “dwarves only”. We secured new horses in town, but didn’t stick around too long, since we’re due to meet Harshnag in a couple days and we didn’t really want to deal with awkward questions about our abrupt arrival via portal (the Harpers don’t exactly have permission to be operating like this here, and Mirabar is a Lord’s Alliance kind of town).
So we headed out east along the river, and discovered that there’s nothing around. No settlements, no villages. Which is fine. We camped one night and met Harshnag the following day. Together, we continued along the river track, heading toward the Valley of Khedrun, which is the best way to get to the Eye of the All-Father. However, Bardalph spotted a peculiar shape in the sky, and yep, it’s a dragon.
Harshnag howled “DRAAAAAAAGON!!!” up at it, which I guess is polite-talk up here in the north. The dragon flew down to us, and since Harshnag looked chill about it, we also tried to look chill. In front of a dragon.
The dragon (a coppery-hued fellow named Vexilanthus) was very nice and greeted us without roasting us. Yay! He mentioned that if we wanted to do a favor for him, we could go to an old keep that’s only a little way off our route, in order to deal with a recalcitrant giant who’s holed up in a tower there and refuses to leave. (I think the noise irritates Vex). We agreed to help our new dragon friend out, and took about a day to get to this keep.
The keep is essentially a ruin, with an old tower that’s mostly intact. The ground level entrance is blocked, so Redfang levitates up to the top to get in that way. But his action attracts the attention of a few giant hawks circling around and they dive to attack.
Not a great move on the hawks’ part. Redfang whips one into a pile of feathers. Svela managed to shoot one with an arrow and turned it into an ex-hawk. Rolfe and Bardalph take care of the others. Take THAT, birds!
Our counter-attack did get the notice of the moaning giant hidden in the tower though. It starts hurling rocks out toward us, and it’s a good hurler. Redfang tries to talk some sense into it in Giant-speak, but it doesn’t seem to want to chat. Harshnag speculates that the giant might be ill.
Redfang tied a rope off so the rest of us little folk can climb up. Harshnag might want to deal with that boulder blocking the entrance, eh? We end with Svela just getting to the top of the tower roof, where she discovers Redfang has made himself invisible to avoid getting hit by rocks. Bardalph and Rolfe are climbing up now, and we find ourselves facing a very bad-tempered hill giant who does not look amenable to chatting.
sung to the tune of Girlfriend in a Coma