It’s the side-quest to the side-quest to the side-quest… (Storm King’s Thunder #8)

We figured diplomacy is better than clobbering, so Redfang and Harshnag spoke to the hill giant in her language and learned that she is upset because another hill giant chief captured her husband and dragged him off to some hill fort south of here. Harshnag is moved, and says that although we’re super close to the Eye of the All-Father, he feels compelled to help Moog and possibly build some useful giant alliances. We express sympathy and tell her that if she’s willing to come out of the tower and lead us to the place where her husband is being held, we’ll rescue him (even though we are very small). Amazingly, she agrees.

So we head south once again, this time through Lurkwood. The forest has a bad reputation, but we have two giants, and we have no difficulty on the way. In the Subrin Hills the next day, Harshnag spotted a giant and we hunkered down. Svela snuck to the top of the ridge to get a better look, and saw: 20 goblin diggers, 6 hobgoblins…FIVE GO-OOO-OLD RINNNNNNGs, 2 orgres pulling a huge artifact out of the pit…and 1 fire giant. (Note: we did not see any rings).

It sure looks like the fire giants are continuing to discover old bits of something important (the fire giant is holding a metal rod like the one we saw before in Triboar). Harshnag thinks they’re digging up parts of an ancient construct back from the days of the giant/dragon wars. It’s built of adamantite, it’s called the Vonindod, and it would be bad if it got remade. We resolve to fight the whole group and prevent the fire giant from removing the artifact. Moog watches the horses while we super-sneakily get into attack positions, aiming to surprise the enemy.

Which we do. We focus pretty much all our attention on the fire giant and do some serious damage right away. Redfang also webbed a group of hobgoblins and an orge, which loosened a pulling rope and made the artifact fall over and crush some goblins….it was a whole big thing.

Anyway, our surprise appearance had the intended effect, which was that we won that battle handily. We killed the fire giant and the ogres, chased the hobgoblins away, and let the poor miserable regular goblins leave the pit of their own accord (they did not particulate in the fighting at all, being nearly starved to death). Happily, the fire giant had the equivalent of 130 gold in his pockets, plus a large kettle, so that’ll pay for lunch.

We rigged up a sled from the fire giant’s breastplate, and hauled the artifact to Triboar with our drafthorses, since we did NOT want to leave it to be discovered by another group of giants. Before we even reached Triboar, the two entrepenural folks who wanted to buy the Triboar artifact also offered to pay for this one. (Apparently, adamantite is really rare and great for making armor and weapons). We agreed to sell it to them for 10,000 gold, which is a shit ton of gold. We emphasized the need for them to break it/melt it down for scrap as soon as possible, and left it in a barn west of town. They paid us the equivalent of 10,000 gold in a number of precious gems. Which ish niiiishe.

So we’re a lot richer returning to Triboar, where we’ll probably spend the night before continuing on to rescue Moog’s life partner and work toward furthering inter-species peace and understanding in the Realms.