We find ourselves surrounded by four giants, who have just been directed to kill us by Princess Mirren, who perches on the steps to watch the fun. Now I’m no fancy big-city lawyer, but this seems like a bad situation for us small folk. Svela makes a plea for calm, but only half the giants seem amenable. The stone giant is the first to join the fray, so we defended ourselves against him. Redfang pulled off some tricky psychic damage, Rolfe did ax-based diplomacy, and Bardalph hacked away with his sword. Meanwhile, Svela dashed into cover and queued up an arrow toward Mirren. That shot actually made Mirren yelp and hightail it out of there, so when we called for “Parley!” the now-beat-up stone giant agreed.

Warily, we all came out and talked like grown-ups. The giants explain that they are the heads of their respective clans, and that they’re ALSO waiting for audiences with Serissa, but they’ve been put off by Mirren and Nyx (?), the sisters. We all agree that a united front will be our best bet to actually get through to the throne room. We all march up together. Hill giant guards refuse to let the giants in because Rules, but they’re dumb, so we were able to trick them into opening the doors for small-folk. We told our giant allies that we would tell Serissa to meet with them, and then proceeded into the next room...

...Which is the throne room! Serissa sits in a big floating chair in the middle, flanked by two storm giant advisors, one of whom seems sketchy. We present ourselves, explain that the All-Father’s oracle sent us here, and tell Serissa that we’re willing to help find the missing Hekaton to help prevent a war. Her advisor warns against trusting us (but also maybe dropped that she knows Hekaton was abducted, rather than simply missing….sketchy!!!). Anyway, Serissa is actually impressed by our offer. She comes down to speak with us quietly, and tells us that she found a strange coin by her mother’s body, just after Hekaton went MIA. She gives us the coin, which has a golden goose on it. We in turn warn her to be wary of her sisters and her advisor, who might not have her best interests at heart.

We leave the throne room through another door, and a guard takes us to a mediation room that is also helpfully a teleportation room. We ask to go to Waterdeep, and moments later, that’s exactly where we and up.

Now, to hunt the golden goose!

RECAP: A Conch-us Decision (Storm King’s Thunder #13)

After leaving the shrine of The Eye of the All-Father, we quickly headed back to Mirabar. Harshnag left us then, saying that he had to go speak with some of his giant kin to try to stop the escalation of hostilities with either the dragons or the small-folk. He wished us luck, and then strode away into the icy north, taking very big steps. We then portalled ourselves back to Everlund to report to our wizard pal on everything we discovered, including the fact that there’s a looming giant/dragon war on the way. And then, because apparently we can’t get enough of teleportation, we fiddled with the conch shell etched with the giant rune until we activated it, and then hopped through to….

….somewhere wet? We seem to be underwater, in maybe a cave or cavern. It’s bit drippy an pretty quiet. We investigate the various rooms, and eventually hear some music coming from somewhere above. We head up the stairs and basically walk right into a giant nightclub? There are tables and giants sitting at them, listening to a performance by two lady giants. And behind them is a very large crystal window showing the ocean beyond. Wild!

Unfortunately, our appearance stops the performance, in that comically Western, piano-player-stops-plinking-and-everyone-stares sort of way. Redfang announces that we’re emissaries the eleven kingdoms and that we’re here to talk to Serissa. The lady giant who was singing sort of laughs and then says, yeah sure, but you have to go wait in the waiting room for awhile. We’re escorted to a waiting room. We wait (it’s aptly named.) The door opens again, but it’s not Serissa who enters. It’s a bunch of mean giant guards with orders to kill us.

Oops. The one time we DON’T sneak. Damn.

Having defeated the dragonling-led group of berserkers who were trying to loot the shrine known as the Eye of the All-Father, we looted them (a-HA!) and then proceeded through the massive, ice-encrusted doors to the next part of the shrine. It looks like it’s been decades since the last visitor—everything is all quiet and cold, like Lambeau Field on a Tuesday night. We enter a chamber that contains a statue of the All-Father in the middle, with six statues flanking it, representing each kind of giant, all holding weapons…except…the frost giant statue is missing its ax! Huh.

On the far wall of the room is an archway filled with some sort of misty….mist. None of us, even Harshnag, can pass through it. So evidently we need to figure out how to open this door. There are runes for each kind of giant on the archway, but no other writing.

We go through the side doors and search the rooms to the north. They appear to be dormitories and contain nothing particularly interesting. In an old sack, we find some random stuff and one pretty cool object that looks like a dagger made of ice. Svela took it, since she enjoys stabbing things with daggers sometimes. (And let’s face it, everyone else has swords and axes and magical whips and stuff).

We then figured out that there are a couple secret rooms that hide the mechanisms for the shrine’s defenses (portcullises, giant blocks of stone, etc.). Why does a shrine need defenses? We don’t know. Sometimes religion is a bit stabby.

We explored the southern wing next. It looks like a banquet hall/eating area/kitchen. There are huge, huge stone tables and benches. A large fire burns in the center of the room, seemingly fueled by natural gas coming up from the floor. And oh, hey, we’re not alone! As soon as we get sort of close to the center of the room, a gigantic centipede/cobra/on-fire-but-also-with-ice-spikes thing comes charging at us!

Luckily, the room is so stupidly big that we’ve got a chance to array ourselves before it reaches us. Svela shot at it with arrows, with minor effect. Bardalph, Rothe, and Harshnag all lined up to hack away at it, and some got scorched for their trouble. Redfang flung a bunch of magic missiles from a distance, and Svela nearly got bitten but then Harshnag basically went to town and the evil hot/cold, too-many-legs thing finally died. Yay! Even better, we found a large ax where the thing was nesting. Seems we found out statue weapon thief!

We returned to the center room and replaced the ax in the frost giant statue’s hands. Nothing happened. We talked to the archway in Common and Giant. Nothing happened. We tried reciting the runes. Nothing happened. Harshnag tried asking the All-Father for answers. He tried using the newly-found ax to hack through the mist. The frost rune flickered! Inspired, Bardalph told Harshnag to touch the ax to the frost rune. A storm explodes above us and knocks some of us off our feet. Yikes. We all dash through the open door to another, non-stormy room. This one looks like a hexagon, with six statues (yep, all different giants) in a circle, holding lit lanterns. And in the middle….a frozen body!

Before we can figure out how to deal with this, a ghostly form rises out of the body. It tells us that it’s the ghost of Eigeior, who came here with his father Blegothkus to ask questions of the All-Father. Unfortunately, his dad killed him when he didn’t like one of the answers. He asks us if we could avenge his death, if we get a minute. Then he sort of fades away.

We (respectfully!) chip the icy corpse out of the way and then Harshnag steps into the revealed circle to ask his questions. Each time he asks, a lantern goes out — so we get six answers, tops.

Harshnag asks what’s going on to have shattered the Ordening, and we learn that the disappearance of Hekaton (aka. the top Giant guy) has thrown everything into disarray and that giants are trying to find glory in the best ways they can so that they can rise in the new ordening, or possibly take over, depending on how high up they are. The oracle also revealed that we need to go to the Court of the Storm King and find Serissa, who might help us find out where Hekaton is and how to get him back. It warned us that a blue dragon disguised as a giant is also there in the court, fucking shit up all quiet-like. To get to the court, we need a special conch shell engraved with a rune….which we have! (It was among the loots from Gruud Haug).

As the chamber lights go out, we resolve to tell the Harpers what we’ve learned, and also to tell that copper dragon (who owes us!) what’s up so he can hopefully tell the other dragons not to get dragoned-in to a war. Then we’ll conch ourselves to the Storm King’s Court! Easy peasy.

(*This is a Frozen joke, and thus is fitting for the setting.)

Since we’ve got a bit of time in Waterdeep, we went shopping for necessary stuff. Rothe got a suit of armor for way less effort than Bardalph is putting in, Svela picked up some decent healing potions, and Redfang decided to check out the floating castle…like you do. Despite having very little idea of what’s going on, and no invitation, Redfang confidently levitated right on up to the front cloud-gate and knocked. AND then got an audience with the owner! Whaaaaaat.

The owner turns out to be (ok, I wasn’t taking notes. I have no idea what her name was. She was a giant duchess or something). She was polite to Redfang, but clearly didn’t value an elf-giant alliance. She also was very coy about what the castle was doing floating above the city. We suspect it has more to do with the giant war than anything with the small-folk. Redfang got teleported back down to the ground and reported all this to us. Honestly, we were all a bit surprised to see him alive again.

After Bardalph returned from his own armor retrieval mission, we decided to portal directly to Mirabar and meet Harshnag outside town. We didn’t want to make a fuss in Mirabar, where Harpers (and Harper-adjacent people like us) are not exactly beloved. Harshnag arrived on time so we headed into the mountains toward the Eye of the All-Father, the secret giant shrine/oracle place. This time we made it all the way there without getting sidetracked by a side quest. Great job, us!

We reached the outside of the shrine, which is huge and ice-encrusted and generally pretty impressive. But oh, no! There are fresh tracks of humanoids, and we hear voices coming from the interior! Harshnag is very upset — non-giants are not supposed to be here without a giant escort. It seems this group may be up to something nefarious.

Svela offered to sneak into the long hallway of the shrine to see what’s up (Redfang cast invisibility on Svela for extra sneakiness). She goes to the end of the long hallway, to the base of a big staircase. At the top, she sees a number of barbarians or berserkers trying to break open a large, LARGE set of doors which are covered in a thick layer of ice. The workers are being directed by a boss, his shaman/witch sidekick and oh, yeah, a WHITE DRAGON.

Scuse me, what. No one said anything about more dragons. Svela silently left the scene to report this development. We’re all quite convinced that the barbarians and the dragon can not possibly have a legit reason to be here. Harshnag says he’ll take care of the dragon. We’ll all focus on the barbarians.

We move down the hall and then we storm up the stairs. Harshnag begins wailing on the dragon. Svela shoots some berserkers in the face with arrows. Redfang gets all magic-y, and Bardalph and Rothe slash away at whoever is in range. We are also #blessed, which seems to help, since we manage to kill some of the berserkers and scare away the few survivors after we kill the boss and the shaman lady. Also, Harshnag took only about three seconds to kill the dragon, which suggests it was a crappy dragon or Harshnag is not someone to fuck with, or both.

Having defeated the gang of would-be thieves, we looted what was there (not much aside from an amulet that might be interesting). Harshnag then pushed open the big, frozen-shut doors with little effort. The space beyond is dark, but this is where our path leads…

We rested for the night, and in the morning, we swept through the rest of Grudd Haug to find out if there was anything left to kill or loot. In the lower level, we found a lot of sheep and pigs, along with some prisoners locked in cages. It seems very likely that these prisoners were destined to be dinner at some point (based on the fully-roasted halfling we found in the kitchen). So it felt good to free them all. We made sure they had food and water and some loot. There is a farm family from Goldenfields, a half-elf named Galvin Dragonsomething who’s also from there, and a barbarian fighter who we couldn’t communicate with but seemed like he’d be ok on his own. Also, it turns out that when we introduced ourselves as the heroes of Triboar, people got sort of excited. Which is cool.

After looting Guh’s treasure pile thoroughly, we got some more non-magical but possibly valuable random things, and also a very large conch shell with the rune for “storm” inscribed on it. Harshnag said it was a very rare thing used to teleport in some way — but that’s all he knows about it now.

Along with Harshnag, we escorted the folks back to Goldenfields. Galvin said he’ll tell the Abbot about the defeat of Grudd Haug, so that the locals can send some forces to either occupy or destroy the site (and seize all the sheeps and piggies). Goldenfields is very nice, but we pressed on towards Waterdeep. Our plan is to update the Harpers there as to what we’ve been doing lately (we should really get a “Gaints Killed” scoreboard, except it would be insensitive with Harshnag around). Then we’ll use the Secret Harper Portal Network to get back to Mirabar really fast so we can rejoin Harshnag (who’s going by giant-foot) and complete this journey to the Eye of the All-Father.

As if to mock us for making any plans at all, the same day we walked into Waterdeep, a HUGE FLOATING CASTLE zoomed in overhead, freaking everyone out until the city herald told people not to panic. Apparently, the castle is there with the knowledge of the Open Lord of Waterdeep? Sounds potentially dangerous. Redfang did chat with (and bribe) the watch to get the name of the city watch commander, so that he could put on his diplomat hat and perhaps see what this floating castle thing is all about.

In short, we’re in the big city for a few days, with a number of smallish errands to carry out. If we don’t get ourselves killed, we’ll soon be back in Mirabar to continue the larger quest!

We continued south from Triboar, traveling the main road on horseback (with giants walking alongside). Funnily enough, absolutely no one messed with us and we saw several hastily made tracks from other travelers hiding out in the forest as we went. We reached Bargewright Inn (which, seriously?) on the fourth day of travel. Old Bargewright is a very nice inn, but we stayed only one night. The next day we advanced south east/west/ish to find the location of the giant fort where Moog’s husband is being held captive.

After not too long, we sighted a large structure straddling the river, known as Grudd Haug. As we approached, we got a few clues that this is the place. A) it’s way oversized for humans. B) hobgoblins man the watchtower. C) giants are coming and going. Svela snuck a bit closer to try to scout out the exact numbers and type of enemies. She saw some orcs outside, and a giant that kept popping out of the big house to survey the scene. She snuck in while the giant’s back was turned and it’s really quite a place. There’s a guard room at the front and what sounds like a larger room with some large voices beyond the big curtain. Svela snuck back to report all this and we formulated a plan, which was only slightly more nuanced than “go smash”.

Moog is afraid to fight, but told us that Hruk wears a necklace of bones. We all learned to say “Hruk! Moog sent us!” in giant. Then we waited for nightfall to attack. Harshnag is going to come up from the south and create a distraction, while we pick off any creatures coming out of the big house before we work our way inside.

Our plan worked pretty dang well. Harshnag created a great disraction by hurling a boulder that took off the top third of the watchtower. Guess no one’s watching now, and anyway we’ve made our presence known. Bardalph cast a spell that summoned a ghostly spirit guardian right in front of the boulder-door, and that guardian took care of 3 of the 5 orcs who came rushing out to respond to Harshnag’s greeting. Svela picked off another with an arrow and Rothe axed the last if we could come in. That orc didn’t answer, so we took it as a yes. We squeezed in the gap and ran into the guard room. Empty!

So we charged down the hallway, pulled the big curtain aside, and started the show. Inside the huge feasting hall beyond, we saw the giant chief/queen Guh sitting upon a broken cart throne.

She is very, very, very large in the sideways sense. She looks like the personification of gluttony (and there are bones and meal remains to prove it). Five hill giants are with her, along with four orcs and half a dozen goblin archers using the internal ramparts wrapping the perimeter of the room. Guh is so fat she can’t move, but she orders two giants and the four orcs to attack us, while the others line up to defend her. We yelled out for Hruk, who heard our “Moog sent us!” call. He looked surprised and stayed out of the fight.

Now, look. We’re heroes and whatnot, but this was a real fight. Hill giants are cranky when you attack their fat queen/wife/captor! They pound on Rothe and Bardalph a lot. Redfang takes plenty of hits too, while he’s dancing around with his magical whip that unleashes poison and lightning bolts and whatever else he dreams up. At this point, dropping a hail storm on Guh isn’t even surprising. Svela took up a position in the corner by the wolf kennel (oh, hey did we mention there’s a WOLF KENNEL?) and loosed a lot of arrows into the giants, who to be fair are really big targets.

The giants fought back hard, and without the many, many blessings of Tyr, delivered via Bardalph’s Spectral Icy Hot spell, we’d probably all be toast. However, we persisted and took out out enemies, big and small. (Actually, the goblins shot so badly that we mostly ignored them).

We whittled down the opposition until we could deliver Guh her last supper. After getting very, very, very, very bruised, she fell down dead at last and the few remaining orcs and giant fled the building (the big ones through the door and the goblins through some second story window). Hruk stayed close to us, and Svela led him to Moog. Meanwhile, Bardalph, Rothe, and Redfang examined the loot pile. We found: magic boots (which Svela took to match her cloak), a magic sapphire that summons an air elemental, and scroll with a spell that Redfang can use, and a mithril chestpiece of armor that Rothe will probably just sell.

Cool! We get outside and find Harshnag, surrounded by a crap-ton of dead creatures. He’s pleased that we were able to take out the enemies of Grudd Haug. We’ll rest, and then do a quick check of the place to make sure we’re not missing anything (like more loot or prisoners to be freed or sheep to make into dinner.)

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.

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

We then advanced to Nesmé, which turned out to be a whole lot less populated than we expected, because it’s a ruin (this is why you always ask about the next town in the last town. Whoops). But Nesmé was not totally unpopulated: a party of a couple dozen mercenaries were gathered there, and they spoke of hunting fire giants (Svela snuck in and overheard them). Since we thought the mercs would not be too discerning in their choice of giants, and we didn’t want Harshnag to have to fight unnecessarily, we carved a wide berth around the town (riding ON the river, thanks to a cork-spell by Bardalph).

The next town on the path is Morbryn’s Shield, and this place has a weird vibe. Leaving Harshnag safely in cover, we got to the provisions place, where the owner, Farnath, seemed nervous and a little scared. He explained that a few weeks ago, a band of mercenaries led by a guy named Orbath showed up to “clean up the giant problem”, but instead they sort of took over and are low-key jackbooting around. They apparently do intend to go into the Evermoors and hunt some giants, but they haven’t gone yet. Now normally, we’d be pretty interested in righting wrongs and putting the smack down on some jerks who are taking over towns without asking first. BUT, we’ve got bigger fish to fry and we don’t want to be distracted from our purpose. We got out of town before encountering any of Orbath’s guards. We made it safely to Yartar the next day.

Nestra Rutharall, the Waterbaron of Yartar (like a mayor), was a little snooty and didn’t seem to care much that we brought news of wandering mercenaries. We got rooms at the same inn we stayed at before (Harshnag is camping outside town), and asked around for Harthal, the son of Harthos Zymorven who stole the giant-killing axe, who maybe lives in Yartar. However, no one had heard of him for free, and we didn’t care 500 gold to learn from the halfling Yeep (a thieves guild member in good standing) where Harthal might be. We decided that it made more sense to move forward with our quest. We told Harshnag to travel directly to Mirabar, where we would meet him just east of town. We intend to use the portals to go directly there. We purchased cold-weather gear and some rations, so we’re good to go.

Thus, we made our way to the villa where the mage Kobals manages the portal. Having sold our horses (who can’t use the portal), we gathered in the circle and were magically transported to a stable loft in Miramar. A dwarf named Zasbar met us there and told us to come on down….welcome to Mirabar!

We head out again to begin tracking the giants. On Harthos’s advice, we leave the road and head north toward the Saubrin River, because there are several little hamlets and communities which might have sighted a giant. Folk were pretty friendly, and though they’d heard rumors, they had no encounters to report. We finally reached a fishing village on the banks of the river, and that was the first place we met someone who actually saw a giant. Conrad and his daughter both said they saw a giant walking by on the other side of the water two days ago—but the giant did not seem to notice or care about the village.

We camped for the night pretty close to the village, and had FISH FRYYYYYYYY, which was great. It was a quiet night, but in the early, foggy dawn Bardalph saw the shape of a giant through the mist! He woke everyone up and we watched the creature pass by. Svela saddled her horse to follow the giant further, hoping to learn where it was headed.

Along the banks of the river, Svela tracked the giant until the fog lifted and he saw her and was all like “Yo, you a stalker?” Svela said she was just curious, and was heartened by the fact of having an actual conversation with a giant, instead of a fight. The giant strolled on his way, and Svela circled back to the group. We decided to catch up to the giant so Redfang could converse with him in Giant, and hopefully learn something more useful.

After a little while, we approached the giant again (very. very. carefully.) Redfang introduced himself (in giant) as an emissary of his elven people, and the giant revealed his name is Harshnag. Hey, we’ve heard of him! He’s good and is an ally of the little folk. We sat down with Harshnag, who gave us a run-down on how giant society works. Most importantly, there’s a hierarchy called the Ordening. (Fun fact: Chickens have a similar structure, called the Peckening). The Ordening sorts different types of giants into castes, so hill giants are pretty low, and storm giants are the highest. Not coincidentally, it helps to be taller/bigger.

Harshnag explained that the main ruler of the giants, King Hackitin, has gone missing, and that has caused a lot of confusion and dissension among the race of giants. With the Ordening no longer working, many giants have tried to figure out new ways of establishing dominance, like Who’s Sacked the Most Villages, or Who Found the Most Artifacts, or Who Beat the Most Shit Out of Other Giants in Single Combat, etc.

Harshnag is worried that this mess will lead to war with the little folk of Faerun, so he’s off to consult an oracle called the Eye of the All-Father, which is in a cave in the mountains known as the spine of the world. Redfang proposes that we travel with Harshnag, and that together we might find a workable answer that we can carry back to our respective people. Somewhat surprisingly, Harshnag digs this notion. Together we head to the Moonwood as we begin the journey north.

But for now, we load a very sleepy and bandaged Bardalph into the cart (hey, good we hid it), and Boris trotted eastward once again. We reach Noer’s Hold and deliver the harnesses to the customer, then go to the inn. We meet 3 brothers there, who are peak White Human Privilege. They think they’re going to win fame and fortune by becoming giant hunters, but their biggest prize so far was a black bear. Good luck, boys.

We traveled in the morning. About midday, we sighted two EXTREMELY giant-y giants walking west with big steps. They’re way bigger than the giants we’ve seen so far. We skedaddled off the road to hide, but Redfang went invisible and tagged along with them for a little while to try to catch a hint of what they’re after. He gleaned only that they defeated a hill giant recently, and that they were talking about some thing or event (but the name didn’t mean anything to Redfang). He circled back to us and we went on.

At nightfall, we met a merchant who’s happy to share a camp in exchange for protection. Just before we were going to turn in for the night, Lezerik and Marthon, 2 of the 3 brash brothers who fancied themselves gianthunters stumbled into camp. The third brother is evidently dead. Bardalph (now feeling much better) healed the really injured brother (Marthon), while Svela and Redfang asked Lezerik about what happened and got pretty suspicious by the tale. We both think he’s hiding something, but it’s not really our job to suss it out. The brothers stay the night, but leave early in the morning. They’re still heading east, so with our luck, we’ll run into them again.

We got to Everlund in the evening, and quickly found the inn run by Drall, the one-eyed half-orc. We flash the Triboar badge and slide over Lady Shendrall’s letter. In response, Drall brings us to the kitchen to talk secretly. There, he offers us all a drink of wine. We drink…..and are literally transported somewhere else.

If you’ve ever wondered whether it’s disorienting to suddenly find yourself in a room full of winged cats and a wizard…yes, it’s disorienting. But the wizard, Krowen Valharrow, is very friendly and explains that Drall simply sent us here to see if we can handle teleportation, because that’s how the Harpers travel sometimes. Yes, it seems we are now working with the Harpers on this giant issue. The wizard tells us that if we can gather information and help defeat the giant threat, the Harpers will reward us for our efforts. In exchange, we get some material support at Harper Hideouts, as well as access to the teleportation network if we need it.

And then we pushed on to Silverymoon, an extremely pretty city with an elven vibe. We did some shopping, mostly for healing potions, and Bardalph also put in an order for plate armor. We sold Boris as part of a deal to get four riding horses so we’ll be able to skulk about the area faster. Our intention is to ride to Zymorven’s Keep and see whether Z will lend us his giant-killing axe.

*Coast Guard?

We went back to the NorthShield Inn to get dinner and talk to Urgala about giants. She shared that she used to adventure with a guy named Harthos Zymorven, who now lives near Silverymoon. He’s got an axe that is known to be particularly good against giants. She suggests that if we want to continue fighting giants, we could look him up and tell him Urgala sent us.

Meanwhile, Narth (who works at the Lion’s Shield Coster provisions place) helped us resupply our basic items at no charge, and offered a job transporting some equipment to a little town called Noanar’s Hold, which is east of here, on the Evermoor Road toward Silverymoon.

Meanmeanwhile, we learn that Lady Shendrall is a member of a group called the Harpers (which is involved with protecting the Realms against threats). She asks if we’d be so kind as to carry a letter to Everlund, if we’re going that way. It needs to be delivered to a half-orc named Drall, who is also a Harper.

Meanmeanmeanwhile, Dars lets us know that while he can’t repay our efforts in cash, he’s got a potential reward opportunity. He knows of a fugitive dwarf named Weevil (GREAT name), who has a price on his head of 5000pg (what did he DO to get that?!) if he’s brought back alive to the town of Mirabar, which is quite a ways due north of here. Just something to think about.

We camped out near the dug-out giant pit, in case the fire giants return for the rest of the metal. Happily, they don’t , and it’s a peaceful night. In the morning, we collected the letter from Lady Shendrall, and advised her to have some folks hook up a team of oxen to the metal and drag it out of town, in order to minimize the risk of the giants wrecking the place again. (Assuming they come back at all. Who knows?!). At the campground, we picked up our delivery horse and cart, and 100gp advance payment (Nice!). We saw a couple of enterprising folks bickering over the metal, perhaps hoping to sell it? We didn’t get too involved because we’ve got places to be (one of the people was Narth’s girlfriend, fwiw).

Heading out of town on the east Evermoor Road, we got past Yartar and Calling Horns when we saw a hill giant and some attendant creatures coming across the moors toward the road. We decided to ambush them, bc we’re the heroes of Triboar. So we hid the horse and cart and took up positions and we’re all super sneaky. And then the giant and his orcs come bustling up….and Rolfe goes CLANG to the ground.

So much for the ambush. Let the fight begin!

Bolstered by our success, we hurried to Evermoor Way, where some of the weird fire demons were chasing after more orcs, and lighting up houses on the way. We dispatched them fairly quickly, and rushed onward to get to the orcs in the town square. PEW PEW PEW!!!! This is an approximation of the thrill onlookers felt on seeing a crap ton of arrows fly from the top of the provisions shop while the main party continued to engage the big orcs.

We lost a couple town guards but finally took care of the orcs, leaving only the fire giants, who had gone ahead to the north campground and were apparently digging…something…up from the ground there. (Seems the orcs and fire guys were mostly a distraction move, albeit a hugely destructive one). Anyhoo, we snuck up to the fence surrounding the campground, and the ranged folks let loose a few arrows/bolts/new singles to the shock of the fire giant who got hit by all that shit. He was not expecting it! The fight was joined in earnest as most of the party charged into melee (except Redfang, who hangs back ten feet in a sort of aloof way and lets his whip do the talking. It’s social distancing, but still ends in death. Giants are generally confident, but our band was surprisingly effective, and the fighting giant took a beating. (Note: Urgala HATES giants, but she LOVES whomping on them).

He called to his wounded but still digging friend, who grabbed something rod-shaped from the hole. Then they both took off in the direction they came from. We tried to pursue them, but it’s really hard to beat a giant in a footrace (I mean, think about it). They eventually got away from even the very tenacious Rolfe, and we all made our weary way back to the center of town, where Lady Shendrall directed the beginning of the recovery.

What were the giants after? What do the other rumors mean, if we now know that SOME of them must be true? And most importantly, is there money in it for us?

[Due to Life Things and scheduling difficulties, our D&D group is putting the homebrew Alcanse campaign on hold and starting up the official Storm King’s Thunder adventure for a while. Our characters are the smae, except that Nick whipped up a bladesinger for a change of pace.]

Our group received a tip from Ryland that we might find more information about the last jewel in the town of Triboar across the Sea of Swords. Leaving Quigley & Zyro behind in Alcanse, the group sailed to Neverwinter and met up with an elven traveler who goes by Redfang — we hope his skill with magic will help in the work to come. In the bustling, prosperous, peaceful market town of Triboar, we asked several of the merchants and locals about rumors of the jewel. We heard instead about rumors of giants, which have been reportedly showing up in random cities and towns all through the Savage Frontier. Even Waterdeep was supposedly attacked. Whoa.

Some folks we met include Urgala, the owner of the NorthShield, the nicest/only inn in town. Janel, the owner of the horse ranch. Tim(e), a leather merchant. Dars, the guy who manages the campgrounds. And Lady Shendrell, the lord protector of the town. Still, we didn’t discover much to help us in our own quest. But before we could make any hard decision about when to leave town, someone yelled “Giiiiiiiiaaaaaaaants!”

Sure enough, boulders started to fall from the sky, hitting buildings and causing chaos. We saw soldiers running to the south, where the boulders maybe came from. But then we saw more groups of attackers coming from the Northeast.

Looks like two giants, a number of orcs (some mounted on weird running birds), and these weird fire demon-looking things.

We yelled to Lady Shendrall that our group would head that way to help. We reached the inn, where Urgala was already outside, weapon in hand. A few more people ran and joined our party (Dars, Urgala, someone else? And a young man who came from the provisions store). We made a hasty plan: herd any residents we see into the safety of the inn, and fight any small groups of attackers we see so we can protect the town from getting ravaged/torched.

Swords up!

We are in the house of the murdered Elston Harslo. The town watch is there, along with the CID cleric who’s investigating. We search the house more thoroughly. Svela broke open a hidden safe in Harslo’s office and found a nice looking diamond, which she pocketed, just in case it might be useful later. And Quigley discovered a hidden passage in the library, which leads to the kitchen….JUST LIKE THE CLUE BOARD.

We investigated the passageway and opened the hidden door in the kitchen. So this is likely how the murderer moved around unseen. At this point, Svela noticed that the butler keeps eyeing the kitchen door, like he really wants to get back in there where the body and the axe are. After some more questioning and shenanigans, the butler can’t resist any more and tries to get into the kitchen. We shouted alarm, and the town guards inside the kitchen stopped the butler before he could grab the ax.

The cleric cast a spell and made the butler tell the truth at last. He was told that Harslo was leaving town and he’d be let go. He was taken with blind fury, and grabbed the ax, then used the secret passage to escape before announcing the murder. The cleric deduced that the ax was cursed in some way, and cast another spell which released both Rolfe and the butler from its influence. We left the house and returned to Ryland’s shop to report everything that happened. He was sad to hear about Harslo’s death, and felt the search for the jewel might be seriously disrupted. Svela then mentioned that she found a jewel at the house and Ryland might want to check it out. And, LO, it turns out this is the jewel in question! Harslo already had the Diamond and he was just messing around with all of us to keep us off the trail of the final jewel. Well, dang!

So we’ve solved a murder and found the fourth jewel just by going to dinner. All quests should be so pleasant.