Post by Dead Greyhawk on May 25, 2007 6:51:07 GMT -5
The Company searches in vain. The rest of the giants’ stronghold has been evacuated. Large caverns used as great halls for the warriors and their families honeycomb the area. One seems to have relatively little space per warrior, while the another is more spacious and contains better quality furs and carved goods. Pegs devoid of bags and cloaks line the walls while chests sit empty by the piles of hides and skins. Even the huge lockers, hampers, and wardrobes are devoid of any belongings.
Regrouping by the warmth of the fire pit, the Company debates searching further. The area where the ogres attacked from and the great cloud giant was seen still are unexplored, but the Company is weary and worn. Finally, they opt to search on, not wishing to have anything surprise them while they rest and recover.
From the turn in the icy cavern, the cloud giant had thrown boulders at the Company, and a series of narrower passages lead away into the ice. They wend and wind back upon each other, leaving tall columns of ice to support the ceiling. A thick boulder blocks one of the passages, deep gouges in the floor and walls showing that the boulder acts as a door of sorts. Jasper and Dell both press their ear to the cold stone, listening for any noise. They are rewarded with the slinking sound of metal on metal, like a chain.
“Lever it open,” directs Dell. Raven and Hugh jam one of the giant spears into where the boulder meets the ice wall and pries it aside. The cavern inside shows a strange view. Several large glowing beetles scurry about, free to roam, while a hulking woman, twice the size of a hill giant, with purple hair lies slackly against the far wall, her hands bound to the wall with thick metal chains and manacles. The rest of the cavern is oddly appointed for a jail cell though. A fur rug warms the floor, and a table and two chairs, each opposite the other sit on the fur rug. Upon the table are six golden platters and three silver bowls all heaped with food. Beside them are two huge gem-studded ivory flagons.
Dell takes the scene in, measuring the distances with his eye. The chains on the woman are short enough to prevent her from reaching the food on the table, the rug on the floor, or even to fully extend her arms. The food seems a temptation, placed by others, rather than a privilege earned. “Johtua jotta ahdistaa we enemmän?” booms the giantess at the Company, not bothering to look up. When no one replies, she looks up and takes in the Company, somewhat in surprise. “Hello smalluns. Free me from these, would you?” she thunders, shaking her wrists and making the chains jingle.
“Shall I shoot her?” mutters Raven.
“No, we’ll deal with her later. Let’s finish looking around first,” replies Dell, carefully shading his lips as he does so. The Company backs up out of sight, leaving the boulder door open, but not freeing the giantess.
The winding tunnels lead on to another cavern, this one comfortable and almost warm. A large coal-brazier, similar to the one found up above, heats the space and tapestries, skins, and hides cover the floor and walls, shielding the room from the icy cold. An actual bed, heaped with pelts, sits in the middle of the room, sharing it with other furniture, on which several large bags are piled. It seems as if someone might have been packing the room, as the chests and cabinets are still open or ajar.
The last of the tunnels leads to a round cavern that contains a number of strange pieces of equipment. Large wicker baskets with straps woven from hair sit next to neatly stacked pads of rolled bamboo. Propped against the wall is a single polearm, shaped with an odd sickle head, like those that the ogre magi used to strike down the Company in the tunnels above. Like the rooms found before, this one is empty as well. Knowing the shape-changing abilities of the magi all too well, a careful count of the wicker baskets and pads. To the best of the Company’s collective memory, exactly one for each of the slain ogre magi is present. The Company is much relieved.
The last remaining passage, the one from which the ogres sallied forth to attack at the original barricade, is broached. The cavern that lays beyond is dank and squalid, replete with the odor of the ogres and their style of living. From the piles of bags and bedding, many more ogres were quartered in this space than giants were in the pair of much large caverns. Equally obvious is that the ogres did not retreat in good order and with preparation, like the giants and their kin, but instead were used to delay and weaken the Company. Personal items, bags of goods, spare weapons and armor all are stacked and piled throughout the cavern. Al and Raven prowl the cavern while the others watch, but nothing but the occasional small vermin flee from the bedding.
It appears the Company is safe, the glacial rift under their control.
"We go back and rest, and then deal with the giantess after we are more healthy," says Raven. "Right now she can kill us like gnats."
"It is wrong to leave someone so obviously an enemy of the frost giants bound into servitude," declares Hugh. "Trithereon dictates that all be free and none serve but of their own volition. We should not leave her bound in such a manner."
The debate continues for some time, but it becomes clear that the two sides are intransigent. Hugh and Winthrop clamor for her release. Raven and Al mistrust her, even though she is a prisoner. Dell holds the decision in his hands. If he sides with Raven and Al, the Company will be deadlocked. If he sides with the priests and mage, they will have the weight of the Company behind them.
"Let's go get her out," he grumbles, much to the others surprise. He leads the Company back to the jail, where the giantess occasionally calls out for aid. "I hear you, I hear you," chides Dell, walking into the room. "Don't crush my head like a grape, you hear?" Dell strides up to the giantess and pulls out a dagger, but rather than plunging it into her eye, begins work on the oversized lock in the manacles. "I really need to invest in better tools," he mutters as he works.
The giantess is quickly freed and thanks the Company for their aid. She calls herself Olganni, a giantess of the sky and storm, and declares that she has been a prisoner of Jarl Grunir for far too long. Olganni asks for food and some warmth, disdaining that on the table, and agrees to share her story with the Company in exchange.
The return of the others with Olganni sends the freed prisoners, and the other members of the Company, into a sudden panic that is only slowly resolved. With sufficient scrounging through the giants' stores, a suitable meal, a warm meal, is made for all those not on guard duty. Olganni, with her great size and strength, is somewhat dangerous to be around, and while respectful of the Company, she also is somewhat parochial, as if the Company were very young children.
Olganni consumes a vast quantity of stores, as if her enormous frame were parched or starving. She explains that to tell her story will require a great deal of time, and that "the smalluns" will have to listen very carefully. The Company settles in for a long night.
Olganni tells of how the forefathers of the giants, the eldest titans, raised up the mountains and spread the seas. After eons of building and discovery, the titans created the giants, the first of beings, to help and serve them. The titans were creative and tried many forms and shapes when making the giants. The true giants, those of greatest stature, kept most of the titans might and mien. They are the reflections of the titans through a slightly diminishing lens. The giants, those of lesser stature, are less like the titans, having baser concerns and wishes. Eventually, the smalluns, those of least stature, were made, mainly out of the tailings of raw giantkind.
For eons the giants lived under the titans guidance and wisdom, until the eldest of the titans left this plane for others. With the greater and lesser titans remaining, giantkind was given more responsibilities to care for themselves and for others. The greater watched over the smaller. As more and more of the titans moved on, the lesser and least of their creations grew further and further from the way the titans had made them. The true giants grieved, but saw that this was the titans' way, to allow the smalluns to grow as great as they might, given their small stature, so that they could emulate the titans in words and thoughts, if not in actions.
The true giants have always guided their lesser brethren, many of whom have lost the titans' way. The steadings and holts of the lesser giants are open to the true giants, who travel among them. The great city of the titans became the home of giantkind, where the giants could meet and discuss together the world and consult with those titans still remaining.
The duty of the true giants is somewhat burdensome, and it is not uncommon for decades to pass before one of the true giants might visit a particular steading or holt. Olganni admits that perhaps she and her brothers had slacked in their duty, as the tedium of talking to their lessers is onerous at least.
Dell snorts and whispers to Winthrop in a low tone, drawing a guffaw from him. Olganni fixes them both with one of her luminescent eyes. Like children before the schoolmistress, they quickly quiet.
Olganni had approached the steading of Nosnra, a chieftain of the Jotens, and was denied entry. Such an affront had never happened to her before! All of the lesser giants learn from the true giants; they do not turn them away. After many hours of talking, Nosnra finally relented to speak with Olganni, but he was rude, abusive, and treated her not as a guest, but as an outsider. Olganni cut her visit short and returned home.
Olganni meditated on the situation and thought that perhaps her approach had been wrong. Perhaps she, as she sometimes did, spoke too forcefully and without respect for the leaders of others. In thinking of how to rectify the matter, she thought of the frost giants, lesser giantkind almost of true giant stature, but base enough to understand the other lesser giants. Their Jarl, Grugnir, was of great stature and so would understand Olganni's dilemma, but also hopefully be able to connect with Nosnra.
Seizing the idea, she immediately struck out for Grugnir's glacial rift to speak with him about the closing of Nosnra's steading. Grugnir welcomed her with open arms, but all was not as it seemed. Again, rather than be treated as a guest at the welcome banquet, she was mocked by Grugnir's wife, a horrible woman named Amgroz, and then wooed by Grugnir himself. Olganni took great offense to this, but when she stood to chastise their behavior, the room swayed and spun. Her food or wine, a thick, heady drink, had been tainted.
She awoke to find herself a prisoner in the very room the Company rescued her from. Grugnir continually cajoled her to join with him and his wife, but quickly showed that this was not merely some love triangle. Instead, Grugnir began to rant and rave to her about the power that would be his, and how he, and they, would rule over the smalluns and their land. Grugnir seemed not himself, easily distracted and prone to rambling. By appearing as if she was slowly being convinced, she drew out more and more of the events that led to this.
Olganni became convinced that an ancient evil thought to be destroyed in the time of the titans had resurfaced. The Banished One, the Destroyer of All, was an ancient threat to the titans and to the giantkind they created. The Banished One was a deceitful power that preyed on the weak and gullible, causing them to believe in its ends, even though it planned only to consume all things living. The foolish smalluns worshiped it and gave it more power until it was a true threat to the combined power of the eldest titans, and a great war was fought. The titans and the true giants threw back the Banished One's minions and bottled the Banished One beyond time and space, where it would sit and be unable to think or move.
Rumors that the Banished One still had smalluns worshipers that worked to free it led to the creation of the Clanfast, the meeting of the giants at Giantheim, but no giantish worshipers were ever found. Grugnir's ramblings showed this to no longer be true. He screamed to her how he would be one of the few loved by the Destroyer of All and rule over the Banished One's domain. A fortnight ago, Olganni had greatly feared that her delaying tactics were about to cease their effectiveness, when Caplings Cloudrider appeared.
Olganni first thought to be saved when Caplings, a true giant of the clouds, arrived before her, but it was quickly made plain that Caplings was a giant of malevolent skill and wit. He suddenly became Grugnir's closest advisor and Olganni's chief tormentor. No longer was Olganni fed or provided for. Instead, she was chained and comforts placed just out of reach in opulent containers. Olganni suggests burning the food and drink in her cell, as she is certain it is tainted to have some ill effect. Caplings had become well-steeped in foul arcana, showing his adoption of the Banished One's tenets, and his torments seemed endless.
Cedrus, who has been listening carefully, chimes in to tell Olganni about the decline of the evil human gods and the usurpation of the Nerullites' power. He speaks of the Dead God worshiped among the Company's enemies. The similarities seem too great to him to be coincidence, and Cedrus presses for what information Olganni might have of the titans battle against the Banished One.
Olganni tells of the dark days of the Oerth, when the giants and dragons roamed, before the rise of the smallun known as humankind. The elves and dwarves were primitives and even the giants themselves, newly made by their titan brethren, struggled with their untrained consciousness. The lesser giants were lured into weakness by a dark creature claiming to be a path to power. Its dark words etched the souls of those who heard them, and the believers became like the fingers of its hand, moving in concert and striking like a fist. The Titans were initially at a loss, as the giants succumbed to the insidious words. War broke out among giantkind, and only by the utmost efforts was it ended and unity found to push the dark god beyond the Oerth. The effort was too much for the ancients, who traveled beyond the pale, leaving their greater and lesser brethren behind.
Caplings has been swayed by the Banished One, who has some how swung back from beyond. Caplings, trying to lure her to his and Grugnir’s side, boasted of the fire giants, under the braggart warrior Snurre, whose constitution is so great he is called the Iron Belly, that have flocked to ally with Grugnir and how the stone giants, initially inclined to remain aloof, have joined following the depredations of humans against the stone giant clans. “Even the wise among the giants of the cloud have joined us,” quoth Caplings, insinuating that his allies among the true giants may be numerous as well.
Olganni says that once she has regained her strength, she plans to hike to Giantheim, deep in the Crystalmist Mountains, and call the Clanfast, to inform giantkind that the Banished One has indeed returns. Until then though, she plans on taking advantage of the dead Jarl’s hospitality.
The Company agrees that the dead Jarl’s hospitality should sustain all of them for some time. After setting a strong watch, the clerics and mages bed down to get some rest, comfortable for once near the warmth of the fire pit. The glacial hall is silent, except for the dripping of water, and the Company rests undisturbed. The spell casters rise and pray, and even Otto stirs, Myrick’s ring restoring him to life, though not to strength. The prayers of the priests are quickly used to heal and rejuvenate the battered Company, Otto especially. After a full meal in relative safety, the four former prisoners appear in better straits, though not very mobile. Three of them are quite chatty and name themselves as Elias Roarke, Odano Fiora, and Maeve Immerlee. The fourth seems more traumatized and still rocks back and forth, moaning.
The Company basks in the warmth of the kitchen heat. While not balmy, the constant warmth is marvelous to those surviving on poorly supplied coal braziers for over a day. The Company discusses their next step and focuses on collecting the treasures strewn about the glacier. Once that is done, further exploration of, or flight from, the glacier can occur. With the frost giants having abandoned their stronghold, the possibility of reinforcements or ambush presses on them all, but they calculate that a window of time exists before a second attack can be mounted, a window of time they need to use well.
Regrouping by the warmth of the fire pit, the Company debates searching further. The area where the ogres attacked from and the great cloud giant was seen still are unexplored, but the Company is weary and worn. Finally, they opt to search on, not wishing to have anything surprise them while they rest and recover.
From the turn in the icy cavern, the cloud giant had thrown boulders at the Company, and a series of narrower passages lead away into the ice. They wend and wind back upon each other, leaving tall columns of ice to support the ceiling. A thick boulder blocks one of the passages, deep gouges in the floor and walls showing that the boulder acts as a door of sorts. Jasper and Dell both press their ear to the cold stone, listening for any noise. They are rewarded with the slinking sound of metal on metal, like a chain.
“Lever it open,” directs Dell. Raven and Hugh jam one of the giant spears into where the boulder meets the ice wall and pries it aside. The cavern inside shows a strange view. Several large glowing beetles scurry about, free to roam, while a hulking woman, twice the size of a hill giant, with purple hair lies slackly against the far wall, her hands bound to the wall with thick metal chains and manacles. The rest of the cavern is oddly appointed for a jail cell though. A fur rug warms the floor, and a table and two chairs, each opposite the other sit on the fur rug. Upon the table are six golden platters and three silver bowls all heaped with food. Beside them are two huge gem-studded ivory flagons.
Dell takes the scene in, measuring the distances with his eye. The chains on the woman are short enough to prevent her from reaching the food on the table, the rug on the floor, or even to fully extend her arms. The food seems a temptation, placed by others, rather than a privilege earned. “Johtua jotta ahdistaa we enemmän?” booms the giantess at the Company, not bothering to look up. When no one replies, she looks up and takes in the Company, somewhat in surprise. “Hello smalluns. Free me from these, would you?” she thunders, shaking her wrists and making the chains jingle.
“Shall I shoot her?” mutters Raven.
“No, we’ll deal with her later. Let’s finish looking around first,” replies Dell, carefully shading his lips as he does so. The Company backs up out of sight, leaving the boulder door open, but not freeing the giantess.
The winding tunnels lead on to another cavern, this one comfortable and almost warm. A large coal-brazier, similar to the one found up above, heats the space and tapestries, skins, and hides cover the floor and walls, shielding the room from the icy cold. An actual bed, heaped with pelts, sits in the middle of the room, sharing it with other furniture, on which several large bags are piled. It seems as if someone might have been packing the room, as the chests and cabinets are still open or ajar.
The last of the tunnels leads to a round cavern that contains a number of strange pieces of equipment. Large wicker baskets with straps woven from hair sit next to neatly stacked pads of rolled bamboo. Propped against the wall is a single polearm, shaped with an odd sickle head, like those that the ogre magi used to strike down the Company in the tunnels above. Like the rooms found before, this one is empty as well. Knowing the shape-changing abilities of the magi all too well, a careful count of the wicker baskets and pads. To the best of the Company’s collective memory, exactly one for each of the slain ogre magi is present. The Company is much relieved.
The last remaining passage, the one from which the ogres sallied forth to attack at the original barricade, is broached. The cavern that lays beyond is dank and squalid, replete with the odor of the ogres and their style of living. From the piles of bags and bedding, many more ogres were quartered in this space than giants were in the pair of much large caverns. Equally obvious is that the ogres did not retreat in good order and with preparation, like the giants and their kin, but instead were used to delay and weaken the Company. Personal items, bags of goods, spare weapons and armor all are stacked and piled throughout the cavern. Al and Raven prowl the cavern while the others watch, but nothing but the occasional small vermin flee from the bedding.
It appears the Company is safe, the glacial rift under their control.
"We go back and rest, and then deal with the giantess after we are more healthy," says Raven. "Right now she can kill us like gnats."
"It is wrong to leave someone so obviously an enemy of the frost giants bound into servitude," declares Hugh. "Trithereon dictates that all be free and none serve but of their own volition. We should not leave her bound in such a manner."
The debate continues for some time, but it becomes clear that the two sides are intransigent. Hugh and Winthrop clamor for her release. Raven and Al mistrust her, even though she is a prisoner. Dell holds the decision in his hands. If he sides with Raven and Al, the Company will be deadlocked. If he sides with the priests and mage, they will have the weight of the Company behind them.
"Let's go get her out," he grumbles, much to the others surprise. He leads the Company back to the jail, where the giantess occasionally calls out for aid. "I hear you, I hear you," chides Dell, walking into the room. "Don't crush my head like a grape, you hear?" Dell strides up to the giantess and pulls out a dagger, but rather than plunging it into her eye, begins work on the oversized lock in the manacles. "I really need to invest in better tools," he mutters as he works.
The giantess is quickly freed and thanks the Company for their aid. She calls herself Olganni, a giantess of the sky and storm, and declares that she has been a prisoner of Jarl Grunir for far too long. Olganni asks for food and some warmth, disdaining that on the table, and agrees to share her story with the Company in exchange.
The return of the others with Olganni sends the freed prisoners, and the other members of the Company, into a sudden panic that is only slowly resolved. With sufficient scrounging through the giants' stores, a suitable meal, a warm meal, is made for all those not on guard duty. Olganni, with her great size and strength, is somewhat dangerous to be around, and while respectful of the Company, she also is somewhat parochial, as if the Company were very young children.
Olganni consumes a vast quantity of stores, as if her enormous frame were parched or starving. She explains that to tell her story will require a great deal of time, and that "the smalluns" will have to listen very carefully. The Company settles in for a long night.
Olganni tells of how the forefathers of the giants, the eldest titans, raised up the mountains and spread the seas. After eons of building and discovery, the titans created the giants, the first of beings, to help and serve them. The titans were creative and tried many forms and shapes when making the giants. The true giants, those of greatest stature, kept most of the titans might and mien. They are the reflections of the titans through a slightly diminishing lens. The giants, those of lesser stature, are less like the titans, having baser concerns and wishes. Eventually, the smalluns, those of least stature, were made, mainly out of the tailings of raw giantkind.
For eons the giants lived under the titans guidance and wisdom, until the eldest of the titans left this plane for others. With the greater and lesser titans remaining, giantkind was given more responsibilities to care for themselves and for others. The greater watched over the smaller. As more and more of the titans moved on, the lesser and least of their creations grew further and further from the way the titans had made them. The true giants grieved, but saw that this was the titans' way, to allow the smalluns to grow as great as they might, given their small stature, so that they could emulate the titans in words and thoughts, if not in actions.
The true giants have always guided their lesser brethren, many of whom have lost the titans' way. The steadings and holts of the lesser giants are open to the true giants, who travel among them. The great city of the titans became the home of giantkind, where the giants could meet and discuss together the world and consult with those titans still remaining.
The duty of the true giants is somewhat burdensome, and it is not uncommon for decades to pass before one of the true giants might visit a particular steading or holt. Olganni admits that perhaps she and her brothers had slacked in their duty, as the tedium of talking to their lessers is onerous at least.
Dell snorts and whispers to Winthrop in a low tone, drawing a guffaw from him. Olganni fixes them both with one of her luminescent eyes. Like children before the schoolmistress, they quickly quiet.
Olganni had approached the steading of Nosnra, a chieftain of the Jotens, and was denied entry. Such an affront had never happened to her before! All of the lesser giants learn from the true giants; they do not turn them away. After many hours of talking, Nosnra finally relented to speak with Olganni, but he was rude, abusive, and treated her not as a guest, but as an outsider. Olganni cut her visit short and returned home.
Olganni meditated on the situation and thought that perhaps her approach had been wrong. Perhaps she, as she sometimes did, spoke too forcefully and without respect for the leaders of others. In thinking of how to rectify the matter, she thought of the frost giants, lesser giantkind almost of true giant stature, but base enough to understand the other lesser giants. Their Jarl, Grugnir, was of great stature and so would understand Olganni's dilemma, but also hopefully be able to connect with Nosnra.
Seizing the idea, she immediately struck out for Grugnir's glacial rift to speak with him about the closing of Nosnra's steading. Grugnir welcomed her with open arms, but all was not as it seemed. Again, rather than be treated as a guest at the welcome banquet, she was mocked by Grugnir's wife, a horrible woman named Amgroz, and then wooed by Grugnir himself. Olganni took great offense to this, but when she stood to chastise their behavior, the room swayed and spun. Her food or wine, a thick, heady drink, had been tainted.
She awoke to find herself a prisoner in the very room the Company rescued her from. Grugnir continually cajoled her to join with him and his wife, but quickly showed that this was not merely some love triangle. Instead, Grugnir began to rant and rave to her about the power that would be his, and how he, and they, would rule over the smalluns and their land. Grugnir seemed not himself, easily distracted and prone to rambling. By appearing as if she was slowly being convinced, she drew out more and more of the events that led to this.
Olganni became convinced that an ancient evil thought to be destroyed in the time of the titans had resurfaced. The Banished One, the Destroyer of All, was an ancient threat to the titans and to the giantkind they created. The Banished One was a deceitful power that preyed on the weak and gullible, causing them to believe in its ends, even though it planned only to consume all things living. The foolish smalluns worshiped it and gave it more power until it was a true threat to the combined power of the eldest titans, and a great war was fought. The titans and the true giants threw back the Banished One's minions and bottled the Banished One beyond time and space, where it would sit and be unable to think or move.
Rumors that the Banished One still had smalluns worshipers that worked to free it led to the creation of the Clanfast, the meeting of the giants at Giantheim, but no giantish worshipers were ever found. Grugnir's ramblings showed this to no longer be true. He screamed to her how he would be one of the few loved by the Destroyer of All and rule over the Banished One's domain. A fortnight ago, Olganni had greatly feared that her delaying tactics were about to cease their effectiveness, when Caplings Cloudrider appeared.
Olganni first thought to be saved when Caplings, a true giant of the clouds, arrived before her, but it was quickly made plain that Caplings was a giant of malevolent skill and wit. He suddenly became Grugnir's closest advisor and Olganni's chief tormentor. No longer was Olganni fed or provided for. Instead, she was chained and comforts placed just out of reach in opulent containers. Olganni suggests burning the food and drink in her cell, as she is certain it is tainted to have some ill effect. Caplings had become well-steeped in foul arcana, showing his adoption of the Banished One's tenets, and his torments seemed endless.
Cedrus, who has been listening carefully, chimes in to tell Olganni about the decline of the evil human gods and the usurpation of the Nerullites' power. He speaks of the Dead God worshiped among the Company's enemies. The similarities seem too great to him to be coincidence, and Cedrus presses for what information Olganni might have of the titans battle against the Banished One.
Olganni tells of the dark days of the Oerth, when the giants and dragons roamed, before the rise of the smallun known as humankind. The elves and dwarves were primitives and even the giants themselves, newly made by their titan brethren, struggled with their untrained consciousness. The lesser giants were lured into weakness by a dark creature claiming to be a path to power. Its dark words etched the souls of those who heard them, and the believers became like the fingers of its hand, moving in concert and striking like a fist. The Titans were initially at a loss, as the giants succumbed to the insidious words. War broke out among giantkind, and only by the utmost efforts was it ended and unity found to push the dark god beyond the Oerth. The effort was too much for the ancients, who traveled beyond the pale, leaving their greater and lesser brethren behind.
Caplings has been swayed by the Banished One, who has some how swung back from beyond. Caplings, trying to lure her to his and Grugnir’s side, boasted of the fire giants, under the braggart warrior Snurre, whose constitution is so great he is called the Iron Belly, that have flocked to ally with Grugnir and how the stone giants, initially inclined to remain aloof, have joined following the depredations of humans against the stone giant clans. “Even the wise among the giants of the cloud have joined us,” quoth Caplings, insinuating that his allies among the true giants may be numerous as well.
Olganni says that once she has regained her strength, she plans to hike to Giantheim, deep in the Crystalmist Mountains, and call the Clanfast, to inform giantkind that the Banished One has indeed returns. Until then though, she plans on taking advantage of the dead Jarl’s hospitality.
The Company agrees that the dead Jarl’s hospitality should sustain all of them for some time. After setting a strong watch, the clerics and mages bed down to get some rest, comfortable for once near the warmth of the fire pit. The glacial hall is silent, except for the dripping of water, and the Company rests undisturbed. The spell casters rise and pray, and even Otto stirs, Myrick’s ring restoring him to life, though not to strength. The prayers of the priests are quickly used to heal and rejuvenate the battered Company, Otto especially. After a full meal in relative safety, the four former prisoners appear in better straits, though not very mobile. Three of them are quite chatty and name themselves as Elias Roarke, Odano Fiora, and Maeve Immerlee. The fourth seems more traumatized and still rocks back and forth, moaning.
The Company basks in the warmth of the kitchen heat. While not balmy, the constant warmth is marvelous to those surviving on poorly supplied coal braziers for over a day. The Company discusses their next step and focuses on collecting the treasures strewn about the glacier. Once that is done, further exploration of, or flight from, the glacier can occur. With the frost giants having abandoned their stronghold, the possibility of reinforcements or ambush presses on them all, but they calculate that a window of time exists before a second attack can be mounted, a window of time they need to use well.
