Post by Dead Greyhawk on Jan 21, 2007 21:48:42 GMT -5
The glacier is weird and cold. A strange greenish glow ekes up through the glacial ice, providing a limning of objects on its surface. Cracks and boulders embedded in the ice are backlit and visible as shooting white lines or great voids in the ice. The wind blows constantly across the glacier, sucking the heat from the fur-clad figures struggling across it. Each night, Winthrop summons his magical house. The furnishings within, while solid enough, are made of ice-like crystal, and are not flammable. Only some small belongings, mainly blankets, are combustible. The wood and brush comes in very handy each night, keeping the cold away. The warriors stand watch outside the house, Diego especially remembering how easy it is to be surprised when sitting cozily within. The snow blows through the air, and, occasionally, strange hunks of hail, freezing rain, and sleet pound down on the Company. Absent Winthrop’s house, travel across the glacier would be practically impossible.
When the air is still, and vision artificially lengthened on the glacier, a strange twinkling is visible to the northeast. After peering at it for a few nights, Raven thinks it may be the abode of the snow fairies, far off in the distance. The lights rise up into the sky, reflected and refracted by ice crystals between the Company and the abode, creating an eerie image.
The glacier seems unending, and the weather seems to be getting worse. Thunderclouds form a dark line extending across the glacier in front of them. The clouds come towards them, lightning arcing downwards. The storm definitely is powerful, and the Company doesn’t want to be caught within it. The path formed by the sled tracks seems to extend to one side of a low rise ahead on the glacier. Jasper, roaming ahead as is his wont, reports back that beyond the rise is a great crevasse. The path splits before the rise and forks, each fork leading to an opposing side of the crevasse and from there down its side.
As the Company conventionally does, they confer and argue about what to do as the storm steadily approaches. The mages enchant the warriors with magical strength, as they expect the end of their journey is before them. Without further ado, the Company chooses the right-hand path and charges forward, spending no time scouting the crevasse or even estimating its size. Instead, they bull down the snow-covered ramp, past the rise, and into the glacial rift. The wind whips by them as they do so, an impressive gale that only slightly diminishes in speed as they reach the rift itself. Snow flies through the air, causing bursts of whiteout amidst the clear vision. The ice, rising up on their right side, glows with eerie green luminescence, lighting their way, but all in false color.
The crevasse broadens out ahead of them, starting a mere hundred feet across, but quickly spreads. Peaks and spires of ice and rock jut up out of the crevasse floor, far below. As the Company gingerly advances down the snow-covered ramp, the far side of the glacial rift quickly is lost in the swirling snow. The packed ice is mostly smooth, but Otto, probing before him with his bastard sword, finds some large, broad steps carved into the ice, smoothed by the treading of many feet.
Almost immediately, after a descent of only ten or so feet, a large cave mouth, twenty feet in diameter, looms in the wall of the crevasse. The ghostly green light shows snow and other whiteness lumped within, and a passageway extends into the ice wall, branching perhaps twenty feet in. The Company carefully walks within, uncertain as to what they face. Veering from their previous habit, they follow the right wall, hiking down the right passageway into a long ice cavern. The cavern stretches away to the left, connecting with the other passageway and extending past it. The ceiling is surprisingly smooth, with very small icicles hanging from it at irregular intervals. A large mound of snow sits in an alcove to the right, its height odd for a space protected from the wind.
The Company edges forward into the room, Otto striding towards the mound of snow. He pokes at the snow, feeling something hard and somewhat yielding lying within. A sudden roar distracts him, as huge creatures appear from the snow-swept walls, as if from within them. White-furred and as tall as an ogre, the creatures bellow with rage, their sounds almost like speech. Their long talons reach for the Company, bringing them close to be rent by their sharp fangs. Worse still, one of the creatures, bigger and faster then the others, wields a broadsword that is on fire! The ceiling above melts and quickly refreezes as it waves the broadsword wildly.
The sudden appearance of the creatures takes the Company by surprise, and many painful blows are landed. None are fatal though, and the creatures quickly learn that the Company is not to be trifled with. Adrienne and Cedrus bless and pray for might from their goddesses while Hugh wades into battle to heal the worst injured. Diego and Raven spread their arrows through the creatures, while Naboth and Gitmo send errant arrows ricocheting off the walls and ceilings. The mages let lose a barrage of magical bolts, and Jasper, Al, and Otto begin their gruesome work.
The creatures are as tough as ogres, but no tougher. Once surprise is lost, they are no match for the Company and quickly fall. As the largest of the creatures collapses, the one carrying the flaming broadsword, the broadsword lands on the floor and is quenched. Those telling blows struck during the Company’s moment of shock drain the Company’s priests of many healing prayers though. Otto and Al uncover the objects below the piled snow, a collection of great tusks, while Hugh collects the once-flaming broadsword.
Dell, who has watched the cave mouth and the ramp behind them, has heard no hue and cry, though the occasional deep voice has echoed back to him. No alarm has been raised; instead it sounds like the rift is inhabited, and the occupants are at home. The sound of thunder above drowns out much of what might be heard, a blessing and a curse to the Company.
The Company sidles back out onto the ledge, working their way down the ramp and stairs. After another fifty or so feet, the Company is faced with yet more choices. A narrower cave, only ten feet wide, burrows off to the right. The ledge continues on, with a second cave visible burrowing off perhaps thirty feet ahead. To the left though is a great ramp leading down at a sharper angle into the crevasse. The ramp appears worn and used to Otto, easily as worn and used as this ledge, but with the swirling wind, the increasing snow, and the strange green glow, Otto’s abilities are sorely limited.
The leaders of the Company consult and decide to stay on the ledge and to deal with the caves one after another. “Don’t want creatures between us and the exit,” comments Dell. The narrow cave leads back into the wall of the crevasse. The air is filled with a damp, cold fog: an unnatural occurrence. Otto carefully walks forward over the slick floor, watching where he puts his feet. Never a dextrous man, Otto wishes to not take a sudden tumble.
The center of the cave contains a long, narrow crack, through which the fog spews. Naboth gets down on his stomach and slithers forward, looking down into the crack. The crack wends downwards a long way, deep into the ice, well past what Naboth can see. “Anything that falls in here is lost forever,” he informs the others.
Otto and Naboth slowly extricate themselves from the cave and rejoin the others in the incipient blizzard. The next cave mouth, not quite as tall, but still as wide, as the first cave, looms ahead. Again, Otto takes the lead and enters. A smaller cave is before him, and his keen eye picks out what appears to be tracks in the snow lining its floor. He squats down to look at them and identifies them as a great cat, either a lynx or a leopard. Turning to the others, he conveys his findings. “Snow cats around here...ooomph!” says Otto, as a four-foot long, white cat springs from a ledge over the entryway onto Otto’s head.
Otto swings and sways as the cat rends and tears at Otto. Its mate jumps as well, missing landing on Otto, but attacking him nonetheless. Otto, attacked and gnawed once by giant rats, is attacked and gnawed now by giant cats. The Company comes to his rescue, hacking down his feline opponents. Hugh heals the warrior of the worst of his wounds. The foul felines flayed and soon to be frozen, Otto is able to take a better look at the cave. Tufts of white fur, likely from the other creatures fought earlier, are interspersed among the cat hair. “Pets of the big white things, I wager,” says Otto. “No giants here though.”
Frustrated at the lack of giants or creatures that speak rather than swing flaming broadswords, the Company pushes on through the snow along the ledge. Another cave looms off to the right, this one twenty-five feet high and twenty feet wide. Otto pokes his head into the cave mouth and sees a huge, fifteen-foot tall, pale giant with light blue hair standing guard at an intersection thirty feet away. The giant stares at Otto as Otto stares at the giant. With a leap and a bound, Otto closes the gap to the giant, striking with his bastardsword. The giant staggers from the mighty blows, falling to one knee and letting out a loud cry as he tumbles to the ground.
The intersection extends to the left and the right. To the right, the passageway is short, seeming to end in a cave with several other pale giants, all of which stir as their comrade falls. To the left, the passageway is long, traveling fifty or more feet before branching. As the giants close with Otto, Diego and Raven slide to a halt beside him, arrows flying from their bows. A great battle takes place, these giants more able to withstand the archers’ damage than their smaller hill giant brethren.
As the Company is locked in combat with the first group of giants, boulder-sized chunks of ice start crashing in among them, flying in from the rear. A quartet of pale giants stands at the far end of the left branch, throwing ice into the Company’s exposed flank. “We’ll hold here. You get them!” shouts Raven at Otto and Al, as the priests, done with their prayers and blessings, step up to the line of battle.
Otto and Al charge the ice throwing giants, Otto quickly outpacing the gimpy dwarf. Otto slides through their grasp into the room beyond, a large barracks-like cave with broad slabs of ice raised up off the ground. The giants turn away from the Company, unwilling to allow Otto to attack from the back side.
Unfortunately for Otto and Al, these pale giants are not the only ones in this area. Thundering up to the intersection from the right come another band of six huge, pale giants. They fall upon Otto and Al, swinging great maces and axes at them. Al uses all of his dwarven training to avoid the blows, sliding, rolling, and dodging between the legs of the huge creatures around him, and it is barely enough to keep him from being crushed like an overripe berry. Otto swings his bastard sword around him, carving out an area of death, but it is too much for him. After slaying three more of the giants, he goes down in a heap, caught alongside the neck by a giant mace.
Winthrop and Dell enter the fray, using their magics to great effect, while the thieves, Naboth and Gitmo, shoot arrows over and around them. A burst of lightning fills the air above Al, emanating outwards from Winthrop, felling some of the injured giants and injuring those that are hale. A pale cloud fills the room over Otto’s corpse, causing the towering giants to flail and retch with nausea, cascades of vomit sailing about the room. Al stops rolling and dodging.
Another four giants run up to support the initial guards, and the Company is beset on all sides. The Company rises to the challenge. Even tiny Pfiffwin pitches in, his dagger slashing at the heels of the behemoths around him. It seems that Al is doomed, surrounded by seven of the great giants, but he bobs and weaves with the best of them, methodically hewing at the knees and ankles of his opponents until they fall to his axe. Diego shifts down the corridor, shooting arrows into the nauseous giants, impaling them with shafts as they are overcome by Dell’s conjuration. Naboth and Gitmo join him, and the arrows fall like rain.
Winthrop, Dell, and Oaklock turn their attentions back to the entryway, where the priests and Jasper fight valiantly to hold off their four giant attackers. Bolts of magical energy streak out from the mages, pummeling the giants fighting the three priests and driving them back. Raven and Jasper concentrate on the fourth giant, Jasper hacking mightily with the misshapen hill giant’s halberd, and Raven puncturing the giant’s body with arrows.
The battle, so recently thought to be a defeat, is quickly turned into a victory. As the giants begin to fall like cordwood, one of those only mildly nauseated by Dell’s enchantment makes a break for it. He runs up the left hand fork by where Otto’s body lies bloody, broken, and vomit-covered. Raven, fearing that an exit from that corridor leads back to the crevasse and giantish allies, shouts for Diego and chases after the giant. The giant leads them a short chase, only seventy feet or so, into a large room piled high with large and small haunches of meat. Human torsos and legs are stacked in the cold, frost and ice covering them. A frightful chorus of dwarven heads stares at the two archers from on top of a pile of humanity, likely arranged by some wit of a giant.
The fleeing giant pushes at a large boulder that appears frozen into the icy wall. In fact, the boulder is not so tightly bound, and it moves under the pressure placed on it by the giant’s form. Diego and Raven send arrow after arrow into the back of the giant, but it is a mighty creature. It succeeds in rolling the boulder aside and staggering onto the ledge outside before being finally felled by another barrage of sharp, pointed sticks. Raven and Diego try to pull it back into the room, but the creature is too massive. Fearing for the others, they leave it lying prone through the doorway for now.
The two archers run back to the others to find the battle ended. The priests are busy healing, and cleaning, Otto’s prone form. Otto’s life force, trapped in his body by Myrick’s ring, has not fled, and Cedrus and Adrienne are able to coax his flesh back to a semblance of health. Hugh is busy healing the wounds of Jasper and Al, who suffered at the hands of the giants. The three of them, along with Diego and Raven, are able to drag the giant corpse back into the room, the frozen eyes of the dwarves feeding their rage and their strength.
Cedrus calls on his goddess to question the giant, with Winthrop’s magics translating the giant’s speech. The ice giant is crafty in his replies. He calls himself Craggar and claims to be a mighty raider of humans. The elves are the giants’ slaves, doing their bidding and menial tasks. The mighty Jarl Grugnir, leader of the ice giants, ruler of the glacier, lives below. The great Jarl’s hall can be reached through the steaming entrance at the bottom of the rift.
The Company searches through the connected caves where the giants lived. No other exits are found, nor are there any signs of fire or its use. Four rooms are connected by a circle of tunnels, and each room has a variety of icy furniture, in some cases covered by a poorly tanned fur or a hide. A handful of giant-sized weapons, maces, axes, and greatswords, are scattered in the caverns, apparently spare weaponry for those who have already fallen.
In the rear-most cave, a large pool of liquid water fills one section. It is not particularly deep, about three feet or so, but strange crystals lie in the pool, looking like ice chunks, but actually found to be made of stone when one is fished out by Naboth. Raven has never seen the like, but imagines that it must be worth a few gold coins, since it appears similar to quartz. Naboth and Gitmo are excited by the find and begin working out how to collect more of the crystals. While the rest of the Company searches futilely for gold coins or jewelry, they slowly and carefully scoop individual rock crystals out of the pool. Adrienne calls upon her inner vision to determine if any of the giants’ belongings are enchanted, but none are and neither are the rock crystals. Not unsurprisingly, the formerly-flaming broadsword radiates a heavy enchantment.
Gitmo and Naboth, Naboth especially, look quite pleased with themselves when the others say its time to move on. Naboth has collected a good double handful of the rock crystals, while Gitmo has a mere dozen. Another hundred or more sit at the bottom of the pool, ready to be collected. The Company has found no other valuable items on the giants, something of a surprise, but has noticed a few items of interest. One is that the giants’ equipment is of fine quality, at least as good as that of the ogres at the Davish headwaters. The other is that the giants wear an insignia on their clothing, a white axe against a dark background. The insignia is not cut like that of the ogre mage, but it is very similar.
When the air is still, and vision artificially lengthened on the glacier, a strange twinkling is visible to the northeast. After peering at it for a few nights, Raven thinks it may be the abode of the snow fairies, far off in the distance. The lights rise up into the sky, reflected and refracted by ice crystals between the Company and the abode, creating an eerie image.
The glacier seems unending, and the weather seems to be getting worse. Thunderclouds form a dark line extending across the glacier in front of them. The clouds come towards them, lightning arcing downwards. The storm definitely is powerful, and the Company doesn’t want to be caught within it. The path formed by the sled tracks seems to extend to one side of a low rise ahead on the glacier. Jasper, roaming ahead as is his wont, reports back that beyond the rise is a great crevasse. The path splits before the rise and forks, each fork leading to an opposing side of the crevasse and from there down its side.
As the Company conventionally does, they confer and argue about what to do as the storm steadily approaches. The mages enchant the warriors with magical strength, as they expect the end of their journey is before them. Without further ado, the Company chooses the right-hand path and charges forward, spending no time scouting the crevasse or even estimating its size. Instead, they bull down the snow-covered ramp, past the rise, and into the glacial rift. The wind whips by them as they do so, an impressive gale that only slightly diminishes in speed as they reach the rift itself. Snow flies through the air, causing bursts of whiteout amidst the clear vision. The ice, rising up on their right side, glows with eerie green luminescence, lighting their way, but all in false color.
The crevasse broadens out ahead of them, starting a mere hundred feet across, but quickly spreads. Peaks and spires of ice and rock jut up out of the crevasse floor, far below. As the Company gingerly advances down the snow-covered ramp, the far side of the glacial rift quickly is lost in the swirling snow. The packed ice is mostly smooth, but Otto, probing before him with his bastard sword, finds some large, broad steps carved into the ice, smoothed by the treading of many feet.
Almost immediately, after a descent of only ten or so feet, a large cave mouth, twenty feet in diameter, looms in the wall of the crevasse. The ghostly green light shows snow and other whiteness lumped within, and a passageway extends into the ice wall, branching perhaps twenty feet in. The Company carefully walks within, uncertain as to what they face. Veering from their previous habit, they follow the right wall, hiking down the right passageway into a long ice cavern. The cavern stretches away to the left, connecting with the other passageway and extending past it. The ceiling is surprisingly smooth, with very small icicles hanging from it at irregular intervals. A large mound of snow sits in an alcove to the right, its height odd for a space protected from the wind.
The Company edges forward into the room, Otto striding towards the mound of snow. He pokes at the snow, feeling something hard and somewhat yielding lying within. A sudden roar distracts him, as huge creatures appear from the snow-swept walls, as if from within them. White-furred and as tall as an ogre, the creatures bellow with rage, their sounds almost like speech. Their long talons reach for the Company, bringing them close to be rent by their sharp fangs. Worse still, one of the creatures, bigger and faster then the others, wields a broadsword that is on fire! The ceiling above melts and quickly refreezes as it waves the broadsword wildly.
The sudden appearance of the creatures takes the Company by surprise, and many painful blows are landed. None are fatal though, and the creatures quickly learn that the Company is not to be trifled with. Adrienne and Cedrus bless and pray for might from their goddesses while Hugh wades into battle to heal the worst injured. Diego and Raven spread their arrows through the creatures, while Naboth and Gitmo send errant arrows ricocheting off the walls and ceilings. The mages let lose a barrage of magical bolts, and Jasper, Al, and Otto begin their gruesome work.
The creatures are as tough as ogres, but no tougher. Once surprise is lost, they are no match for the Company and quickly fall. As the largest of the creatures collapses, the one carrying the flaming broadsword, the broadsword lands on the floor and is quenched. Those telling blows struck during the Company’s moment of shock drain the Company’s priests of many healing prayers though. Otto and Al uncover the objects below the piled snow, a collection of great tusks, while Hugh collects the once-flaming broadsword.
Dell, who has watched the cave mouth and the ramp behind them, has heard no hue and cry, though the occasional deep voice has echoed back to him. No alarm has been raised; instead it sounds like the rift is inhabited, and the occupants are at home. The sound of thunder above drowns out much of what might be heard, a blessing and a curse to the Company.
The Company sidles back out onto the ledge, working their way down the ramp and stairs. After another fifty or so feet, the Company is faced with yet more choices. A narrower cave, only ten feet wide, burrows off to the right. The ledge continues on, with a second cave visible burrowing off perhaps thirty feet ahead. To the left though is a great ramp leading down at a sharper angle into the crevasse. The ramp appears worn and used to Otto, easily as worn and used as this ledge, but with the swirling wind, the increasing snow, and the strange green glow, Otto’s abilities are sorely limited.
The leaders of the Company consult and decide to stay on the ledge and to deal with the caves one after another. “Don’t want creatures between us and the exit,” comments Dell. The narrow cave leads back into the wall of the crevasse. The air is filled with a damp, cold fog: an unnatural occurrence. Otto carefully walks forward over the slick floor, watching where he puts his feet. Never a dextrous man, Otto wishes to not take a sudden tumble.
The center of the cave contains a long, narrow crack, through which the fog spews. Naboth gets down on his stomach and slithers forward, looking down into the crack. The crack wends downwards a long way, deep into the ice, well past what Naboth can see. “Anything that falls in here is lost forever,” he informs the others.
Otto and Naboth slowly extricate themselves from the cave and rejoin the others in the incipient blizzard. The next cave mouth, not quite as tall, but still as wide, as the first cave, looms ahead. Again, Otto takes the lead and enters. A smaller cave is before him, and his keen eye picks out what appears to be tracks in the snow lining its floor. He squats down to look at them and identifies them as a great cat, either a lynx or a leopard. Turning to the others, he conveys his findings. “Snow cats around here...ooomph!” says Otto, as a four-foot long, white cat springs from a ledge over the entryway onto Otto’s head.
Otto swings and sways as the cat rends and tears at Otto. Its mate jumps as well, missing landing on Otto, but attacking him nonetheless. Otto, attacked and gnawed once by giant rats, is attacked and gnawed now by giant cats. The Company comes to his rescue, hacking down his feline opponents. Hugh heals the warrior of the worst of his wounds. The foul felines flayed and soon to be frozen, Otto is able to take a better look at the cave. Tufts of white fur, likely from the other creatures fought earlier, are interspersed among the cat hair. “Pets of the big white things, I wager,” says Otto. “No giants here though.”
Frustrated at the lack of giants or creatures that speak rather than swing flaming broadswords, the Company pushes on through the snow along the ledge. Another cave looms off to the right, this one twenty-five feet high and twenty feet wide. Otto pokes his head into the cave mouth and sees a huge, fifteen-foot tall, pale giant with light blue hair standing guard at an intersection thirty feet away. The giant stares at Otto as Otto stares at the giant. With a leap and a bound, Otto closes the gap to the giant, striking with his bastardsword. The giant staggers from the mighty blows, falling to one knee and letting out a loud cry as he tumbles to the ground.
The intersection extends to the left and the right. To the right, the passageway is short, seeming to end in a cave with several other pale giants, all of which stir as their comrade falls. To the left, the passageway is long, traveling fifty or more feet before branching. As the giants close with Otto, Diego and Raven slide to a halt beside him, arrows flying from their bows. A great battle takes place, these giants more able to withstand the archers’ damage than their smaller hill giant brethren.
As the Company is locked in combat with the first group of giants, boulder-sized chunks of ice start crashing in among them, flying in from the rear. A quartet of pale giants stands at the far end of the left branch, throwing ice into the Company’s exposed flank. “We’ll hold here. You get them!” shouts Raven at Otto and Al, as the priests, done with their prayers and blessings, step up to the line of battle.
Otto and Al charge the ice throwing giants, Otto quickly outpacing the gimpy dwarf. Otto slides through their grasp into the room beyond, a large barracks-like cave with broad slabs of ice raised up off the ground. The giants turn away from the Company, unwilling to allow Otto to attack from the back side.
Unfortunately for Otto and Al, these pale giants are not the only ones in this area. Thundering up to the intersection from the right come another band of six huge, pale giants. They fall upon Otto and Al, swinging great maces and axes at them. Al uses all of his dwarven training to avoid the blows, sliding, rolling, and dodging between the legs of the huge creatures around him, and it is barely enough to keep him from being crushed like an overripe berry. Otto swings his bastard sword around him, carving out an area of death, but it is too much for him. After slaying three more of the giants, he goes down in a heap, caught alongside the neck by a giant mace.
Winthrop and Dell enter the fray, using their magics to great effect, while the thieves, Naboth and Gitmo, shoot arrows over and around them. A burst of lightning fills the air above Al, emanating outwards from Winthrop, felling some of the injured giants and injuring those that are hale. A pale cloud fills the room over Otto’s corpse, causing the towering giants to flail and retch with nausea, cascades of vomit sailing about the room. Al stops rolling and dodging.
Another four giants run up to support the initial guards, and the Company is beset on all sides. The Company rises to the challenge. Even tiny Pfiffwin pitches in, his dagger slashing at the heels of the behemoths around him. It seems that Al is doomed, surrounded by seven of the great giants, but he bobs and weaves with the best of them, methodically hewing at the knees and ankles of his opponents until they fall to his axe. Diego shifts down the corridor, shooting arrows into the nauseous giants, impaling them with shafts as they are overcome by Dell’s conjuration. Naboth and Gitmo join him, and the arrows fall like rain.
Winthrop, Dell, and Oaklock turn their attentions back to the entryway, where the priests and Jasper fight valiantly to hold off their four giant attackers. Bolts of magical energy streak out from the mages, pummeling the giants fighting the three priests and driving them back. Raven and Jasper concentrate on the fourth giant, Jasper hacking mightily with the misshapen hill giant’s halberd, and Raven puncturing the giant’s body with arrows.
The battle, so recently thought to be a defeat, is quickly turned into a victory. As the giants begin to fall like cordwood, one of those only mildly nauseated by Dell’s enchantment makes a break for it. He runs up the left hand fork by where Otto’s body lies bloody, broken, and vomit-covered. Raven, fearing that an exit from that corridor leads back to the crevasse and giantish allies, shouts for Diego and chases after the giant. The giant leads them a short chase, only seventy feet or so, into a large room piled high with large and small haunches of meat. Human torsos and legs are stacked in the cold, frost and ice covering them. A frightful chorus of dwarven heads stares at the two archers from on top of a pile of humanity, likely arranged by some wit of a giant.
The fleeing giant pushes at a large boulder that appears frozen into the icy wall. In fact, the boulder is not so tightly bound, and it moves under the pressure placed on it by the giant’s form. Diego and Raven send arrow after arrow into the back of the giant, but it is a mighty creature. It succeeds in rolling the boulder aside and staggering onto the ledge outside before being finally felled by another barrage of sharp, pointed sticks. Raven and Diego try to pull it back into the room, but the creature is too massive. Fearing for the others, they leave it lying prone through the doorway for now.
The two archers run back to the others to find the battle ended. The priests are busy healing, and cleaning, Otto’s prone form. Otto’s life force, trapped in his body by Myrick’s ring, has not fled, and Cedrus and Adrienne are able to coax his flesh back to a semblance of health. Hugh is busy healing the wounds of Jasper and Al, who suffered at the hands of the giants. The three of them, along with Diego and Raven, are able to drag the giant corpse back into the room, the frozen eyes of the dwarves feeding their rage and their strength.
Cedrus calls on his goddess to question the giant, with Winthrop’s magics translating the giant’s speech. The ice giant is crafty in his replies. He calls himself Craggar and claims to be a mighty raider of humans. The elves are the giants’ slaves, doing their bidding and menial tasks. The mighty Jarl Grugnir, leader of the ice giants, ruler of the glacier, lives below. The great Jarl’s hall can be reached through the steaming entrance at the bottom of the rift.
The Company searches through the connected caves where the giants lived. No other exits are found, nor are there any signs of fire or its use. Four rooms are connected by a circle of tunnels, and each room has a variety of icy furniture, in some cases covered by a poorly tanned fur or a hide. A handful of giant-sized weapons, maces, axes, and greatswords, are scattered in the caverns, apparently spare weaponry for those who have already fallen.
In the rear-most cave, a large pool of liquid water fills one section. It is not particularly deep, about three feet or so, but strange crystals lie in the pool, looking like ice chunks, but actually found to be made of stone when one is fished out by Naboth. Raven has never seen the like, but imagines that it must be worth a few gold coins, since it appears similar to quartz. Naboth and Gitmo are excited by the find and begin working out how to collect more of the crystals. While the rest of the Company searches futilely for gold coins or jewelry, they slowly and carefully scoop individual rock crystals out of the pool. Adrienne calls upon her inner vision to determine if any of the giants’ belongings are enchanted, but none are and neither are the rock crystals. Not unsurprisingly, the formerly-flaming broadsword radiates a heavy enchantment.
Gitmo and Naboth, Naboth especially, look quite pleased with themselves when the others say its time to move on. Naboth has collected a good double handful of the rock crystals, while Gitmo has a mere dozen. Another hundred or more sit at the bottom of the pool, ready to be collected. The Company has found no other valuable items on the giants, something of a surprise, but has noticed a few items of interest. One is that the giants’ equipment is of fine quality, at least as good as that of the ogres at the Davish headwaters. The other is that the giants wear an insignia on their clothing, a white axe against a dark background. The insignia is not cut like that of the ogre mage, but it is very similar.