Catching Up

I know this is behind, but I've been caught up in the holidays and other activities, lately. You need to totally check out my poli-blog for current events, too. We did have one neat out of character conversation about what beer would go good with cheesecake. Speaking of which: this is a thing. And you know there are people who don't bother with the crust and just eat it out of the tub (I totally would!) Also, check out Alec's new prog rock album! And this awesome podcast about geek stuff hosted by women, one of whom happens to be my super awesome girlfriend!

To sum up: we climbed the cloud, met a cloud giant that was a combination crazy cat person AND crazy bird person, in the form of griffons: half-lion, half-eagle creatures. We fought some members of the Cult of Evil Elemental Air (yay, cross-adventure timeline references!), and reached our destination.

Wandering around completing sidequests, we learned about scheming nobles and murder plots, connections to Infernal cults, poisoned some people, found an awesome ax at one point, and generally got our loot and murder hobo on, like any good D&D game. Eventually, we learned more about what the fire giants might be up to. They have a fortress in the north called Ironslag Forge. We started looking for it.

We met up with Harshnag, a good frost giant and member of the Waterdeep City Watch. Naturally, myself and Temerity cottoned on to him. He was also on a quest: he told us that the Ordning, the natural hierarchy of giants, had been broken. He needed to find an oracle to learn how to restore it.

We traveled with Harshnag and got more of our murder hobo on, collecting debts and tracking criminals, occasionally making ourselves out to be huge assholes. You know, stuff PCs do in RPGs.

On the way, we stumbled across some Uthgardt sacred mounds. And looted them. We even got tasked by the guardian spirit of one tribe to help defeat an usurping chieftain. We did.

That happened to coincide with us finding the entrance to the temple where the giants' oracle lived. We fought a dragon! A wyrmling white dragon, so it wasn't as much of a challenge. But go us!

We explored the temple of the oracle. We even fought a remorhaz, a polar-dwelling monster that exudes heat. Somehow. Game designers don't always make sense. I think weed might be involved. Or beer. Or caffeine. Possibly all three and cocaine. D&D was originally developed in the 70s and 80s, after all. We also had to deal with a boulder rolling down a corridor. Doesn't resemble anything from the 80s at all.

Then we found a room of statues holding stuff. And, despite the, I'm gonna go with over 10,000 hours of Zelda games represented by the combined players at the table, it still took us 2 hours to puzzle it out.

Then the oracle gave us another quest: find items from the Uthgardt mounds. They're stolen giant relics. The more you find, the more choices of giant stronghold it would be able to teleport us to.

We did that for a session, before deciding we were tired of sidequests and went back to the oracle. Fortunately, one of the 3 out of 12 possible relics we found could show us how to get to Ironslag Forge. But before we could, a blue dragon attacked. An ancient blue dragon. Harshnag told us to run, so we did, before he brought the temple crashing down around him and the dragon.

Heroic sacrifice? I don't know. There's no corpses, so it's possible both are still alive.

Anyway, cultists working for a red dragon called Klauth showed up with an elemental-powered airship. Friggin' sweet! Still, why is Klauth, a dragon, helping us restore the Ordning? Especially since per D&D and FR lore, dragons and giants are ancient enemies? Who knows.

But we're at Ironslag Forge. We failed to rescue as many hostages from a village of yakfolk on the same mountain as the forge as we could have. Why? I was tired of letting the sneaky people sneak while the tanky people sat and watched. So I kinda barged in with Maveith and Grom, and we totally murdered us some yakfolk. Later, we learned that yakfolk can possess humanoids, and some even possessed a group of dwarf scouts before heading back to their home city in a plot to assassinate the king.

Big clue? Future side quest?

We started exploring the mines. We have met an unusually helpful gnome slave that we rescued from salamanders, naga-esque monsters that are on fire. We even killed a fat, young fire giant and some ogre minions. Too bad we couldn't save the dwarf he was dangling over a crucible of molten iron. From what the gnome told us, there's a pit of hellhounds, dogs that are on fire, coming up.

Did we miss a big clue with that dwarf? Or did we just prove ourselves to be jackasses? We'll find out next time!

Whew. We're all caught up!

Also, this post is not brought to you by The Thrush Law Group. They've never given me money. But one of our former players is a practicing attorney there, and I happen to know D&D geeks make the best lawyers.