The Road to Phandalin

Session 1

Five adventurers travel along the Triboar Trail, having been hired by dwarf Gundren Rockseeker and human Sildar Hallwinter to escort a cart of supplies to the town of Phandalin. The caravan is ambushed by goblins, all but one of whom are promptly dispatched. The survivor flees into the forest, pursued by the party into a cave filled with goblins and wolves.

Session 2

A battle is had between the band of adventurers and bugbear Klarrg, leader of the goblin and dire wolf rabble. Surprisingly, a group of the goblins stage a coup against Klarrg, driving him out of the cave. The party bargains with the victors for the release of Sildar Hallwinter, learning in the process that Gundren Rockseeker has been taken elsewhere. They are informed that by order of the "Black Spider", the dwarf has been taken to "Cragmaw Castle". The adventurers depart the cave and get back to the road toward Phandalin to deliver their cargo. A large group of scarlet-clad bandits demands payment for passage, and rather than get into another battle the adventurers pay the toll. At long last, the cart is delivered to Barthen's Provisions. Noting that the town has a somewhat tense atmosphere, the party pay a visit to the mayor of Phandalin, one Harbin Wester. After some questioning, he admits that the Redbrand bandits have taken over the town through sheer force of numbers. The party agrees to try and help oust the bandits, and takes refuge for the night in the Stonehill Inn. The next morning, investigations swiftly go awry and several altercations are had with the Redbrand bandits, though it is discovered that their main hideout is inside the ruined Tresendar Manor. The druid Lia makes friends with an unlucky orphan boy, Tinier Tim, who informs her that there is a secret side entrance into the manor from the south forest. After regrouping, the party of adventurers find the secret entrance that leads to a large set of rooms beneath the manor, dominated by an enormous body-filled trench. It is here that the group is ambushed by a nothic, who gives the appearance of surrender after a brief battle and offers up a treasure chest as reward. The "reward" turns out to be a mimic, which nearly devours Lagrande.

Session 3

Several difficult battles are had with the Redbrand bandits beneath Tresendar Manor, but the adventurers manage to scrape through with a hard-won victory. Valuable notes and letters are recovered concerning the Black Spider's operations, both in Phandalin and well beyond it. One of the bandits killed by the group, "Glassstaff", is revealed to have been a false friend of Sildar, one he had been seeking out in town. Three prisoners are rescued from the depths of the manor, a woman and her two children, who inform the group of buried heirlooms in the destroyed town of Thundertree that they might recover as thanks. The party returns to town to tell the mayor that the Redbrands of Tresendar Manor have been taken care of.

The Spider’s Web

Session 4

During breakfast, the party overheard a half-elf inquiring about Gundren's brother Nundro and a nordic bard complaining about a corpse in an upstairs room. members of the group investigated the corpse, noting the brutality of the scene. The clawed man's belongings were missing, including his apparel, and Sildar was the room's previous tenant, but Sildar had already checked out earlier that morning. The nordic bard went on to sing tales of the frozen north to everyone. Lagrande spoke with the half-elf and learned that his name is Elros. Elros joined the party in search of the Rockseeker brothers and Callie accepted a large, mysterious book from the nordic bard for being one of the only ones to politely listen to all of his tales. Selene and Liora spoke with the mayor and informed him of the Redbrand's demise. Sildar mentioned that there had been disapperances around Thundertree and that a druid may be involved in them, suggesting that Tharden or Nundro could plausably be found there. Everyone stopped by Barthen's Provisions to resupply before heading out to Thundertree. Thundertree turned out to be an old, ruined town infested with zombies and giant spiders. The adventurers soon came across a young green dragon sitting atop a tower that seemed amused by their presense. The paty briefly questioned the dragon on the druid and the rockseekers, but the dragon hadn't seen the Rockseeker brothers, but he was aware of a druid residing in the ruins. The dragon and the druid didn't get along as both wished ownership of the land. The dragon requested the party kill druid. The hidden heirlooms were discovered and the druid, a halfling, soon after. Lagrande and Elros cornered and spoke with him. It didn'tt appear to them that the druid was causing any disappearances, but it was the druid that the dragon wanted to be rid of. Callie tried to kill the druid while Lia tried to save the druid. Lia ran into an unexplored structure while carrying the halfling druid and she was quickly surrounded by spriggans that Legrande and Elros soon set on fire, inadvertently incinerating the druid and almost killing Lia. The dragon, satisfied with the druid's charred skull as proof of his demise, granted both treasure and sanctuary within its tower.

Session 5

The six adventeurers were finishing exploring the east side of Thundertree when they came across a band of dragon cultists. The cultists were holding a tiefling hostage, planning to offer her as a sacrifice to the green dragon. After a bit of back and forth and some cunning persuasion by Callie that resulted in one of the cultists being unwittingly sacrificed to the dragon himself, Elros ultimately bought the tiefling's freedom for 50g. With that, Arata joined the party. The party soon left Thundertree on the northern path in search of another possible druid that could may better fit the description that Sildar mentioned. Instead, the group happened onto a hoard of zombies along the thinning forest trail. A red robed necromancer eventually surfaced, calling off his minions as the party attempted to reason with him. Elros managed to befriend the necromancer as the two delighted in a moist hug. Seeing the chance at mutual gain, the necromancer offered up a source the party could use for information in exchange for a task. A banshee far to the south is capable of divining information at the cost of valuable items; however, the banshee refuses to assist the necromancer. The necromancer offers the general whereabouts of the banshee for the adventurers to ask questions to in exchange for asking a question for the necromancer while the party is there. The party agrees and the necromancer provides them with an offering for his question. The party turned around and headed back to Phandalin to seek more information about the banshee. There, in Phandalin, they meet Sister Grealie by the shrine of luck. From her they learned that this banshee, Agatha, resided in a magical hut along the wooded edge north of Conyberry; however, the banshee did not take kindly to non-elves and despised men just the same. Upon meeting with Agatha, Lia asked the necromancer's question. Deciding to hold off on any additonal offerings for questions of their own, the party turned around and left to tell the necromancer his answer. To which he provided the party with a generous reward as they assisted him with a major piece of his task near Phandalin. The party of seven then proceeded to get all sorts of lost, used an augury scroll, and managed to travel back to Agatha to finally learn the precise location of Cragmaw Castle. The party quickly proceeded to Phandalin to begin their preperations.

Session 6

The party finished their preperations, ventured into the woods, and easily found Cragmaw Castle precisely where Agatha said it would be. There the adventuers discussed on how to proceed. It was eventually decided that Lia would scout the castle out as an innocuous spider. Meanwhile, Elros took the initiative and fashioned himself an all natural ghillie suit and began the arduous task of crawling his way towards the castle. Lia's scouting endevours lead her deeper and deeper into the castle until she found herself in peril by being dangerously isolated from her companions as a grick hunted her spider form. Hours passed and Elros, finally making it to the castle and having a bad feeling for his druid ally, motioned for the remainder of the party to storm the castle. The party did so, running across open ground in sight of the enemy, but the group found themselves to be too late. Lia had already been killed and partially consumed by the grick. The party finished off the creature and mourned their fallen friend. Soon goblins and hobgoblins poured forth from the castle rooms, having been alerted to introders earlier from the party's hasty approch. A lengthy battle ensued across multiple rooms. An owlbear broke free from its confines. Selene feared the owlbear and collapsed a portion of the crumbling castle, leaving the owlbear safely sealed away. The battle finally ended and the group continued to explore. The party quickly happend upon King Grol who held a terribly injured Gundren Rockseeker as hostage. The party refused to yield, choosing to assult the old, battlehardeed bugbear instead. King Grol brutally murdered Gundren in front of the party as he promised he would had they not surendered. Selene, having been off exploing on her own, ran into a pair of familiar faces: Klarrg escourting a weaponless Sildar. Selene attacked Klarrg and tossed Sildar a knife. With her guard down, Sildar stabed Selene with her own knife and buried a monstrous pair of grey claws into her stomach. Selene's vision blackened and Sildar fled the scene. The battle concluded in the adventuerer's favor. Selene came to, explained the occurance, and the party grew wary of whatever took Sildar's place. In King Grol's possession, the party found Gundren's stolen map. It depicted the detailed location of a mine called "Wave Echo Cave". In some final exploration, Selene and Lagrande captured a goblin priest, who eventually managed to communicate through pictionary, as an attempt to gain some answers.

The Lost Mine of Phandelver

Session 7

On their way back to Phandalin, the party ran into the necromancer they barterd with north of Thundertree. While making his way to Old Owl Well, the necromancer had found a desperate, injured dwarf half unconcious on the road. Due to getting along so well with the party and the party specifically mentioning looking for a lost dwarf, the necromancer sought the party out on the edge of Phandalin with the dwarf in tow. After finding the party, the necromancer formally introduced himself as Hamun and, after a handy charm person spell on Liora, the party's motherly cleric, struck a deal. The party traded their fallen companion's body, Lia, to the necromancer in exchange or the dying dwarf. In a panicked state, the dwarf claimed himself to be Tharden Rockseer and said that his brother Nundro had been taken by the Black Spider in Wave Echo cave. The party spent the night at the Stonehill Inn, tending to and watching over Tharden as he recovered. Downstairs, Lagrande met a tiefling rogue in the tavern named Rieta. Together they spent the night drinking and socializing. In the middle of the night, a grey shapeshifter posing as the Innkeeper made an attempt on Tharden's life. Liora awoke and tackled it as combat broke out. The creature morphed into a distant image of Zander, Liora's dead husband. In the morning, Tharden explains to the party of the Phandelver pact and the history of Wave Echo Cave. A tale of violence culmilating in a massive spell war between orcs and dwarves that eventually caused a disastrous cave in, killing everyone involved and forever shifting the landscape where the mine and its magical forge entered legend as it became lost to the world those 500 years ago. Gundren Rockseeker, after discovering his loose family ties to the legendary mine, spent decades searching for it. Unfortunatley, his progress attracted attention over the years. A drow under the alias of "The Black Spider" tracked Gundren's progress and plotted to sieze the mine after its discovery. the that his brother Nundro was taken to Wave Echo Cave. The drow Black Spider attacked Nundro and Tharden when they were trying to explore the cave. He also explained that it is called Wave Echo Cave due to its unique noise that sounds like waves being echoed throughout the cave. Tharden said there was another figure near the Black Spider which had the ability to shapeshift into others (such as someone shifting into the innkeeper or even Tharden himself). Elros shrinks 3 inches from wild magic and turns orange from a gelatinous enemy. We continue through the cave and eventually find ourselves in combat with a drow and many spiders. Elros is turned into a potted plant, disappears into an astral plane of existence, and is severely confused. Elros is immune to being affected by alcohol for 15 days. The Black Spider escapes, but his lair has been captured.

Session 8

After resting in the statue chamber where we defeated the doppleganger Black Spider and their goons Elros and Selene rummaged through the desk where Elros discovered a half completed map of the cavern marking a few choice locations of investigation along with a few jewels and trnkets. While Selene gathered up the remainder of the notes that Elros had discarded, Lagrande attemepted to remove the eyes from the statue of the dwarf, unknowingly causing a cave in due to the holy significance of the statue. After managing to dig everyone out of the rubble the group ventured deeper into the cave a little more worse for ware than intended. Locating the last of the Rockseeker brothers in a side room nearby. Liora and Elros attempted to mend his injuries while Lagrande unchained him from the bed he was in. The group gave Nundro a Potion of Invisibility and told him to return to Thandolin where his brother Tharden would be waiting for him. Leaving the side hall and entering into a large cavern where a waterfall flowed down into a stream at the bottom the group had to make their way across. With some effort and a few falls everyone managed to get across and enter into a reservour where Elros was swept away by a water elemental. Arata jumped into the water to help Elros but the two were swept up in the current making it a difficult rescue. Once the elemental was slain however Elros found a staff which he thinks may have created the elemental in the first place. The Rod of Wild Magic proved useless against the next group of enemies however, a flaming skull and its entourage of zombies. Elros attempting to sear the flesh off of an already fleshless creature. Fortunately Callie fried the skull with witch bolt and the zombie hordes were dropped by Selene's Shatter and the rest of the parties efforts. Heading south the group was feeling a bit weary of conflict, opting out of fighting the next battle with an undead ogre before a short reprieve so they backtracked and rested up before coming back to battle it out with the ogre menace. Arata and Liora fought valiantly, holding the three great beasts back while the other members pelted them from the back lines. Lagrande made off with a pair of dwarven gauntlets arms, later to be revealed to be Gauntlets of Ogre Power. These were given to Liora. After a small scuffle with some smelly green creature we used one of the bonfire rooms for a long rest to recuperate and head off to where we thought would be the final chamber. We instead found ourselves under the gaze of an undead beholder. A few close calls and some popcorn later we managed to beat down the beholder.

Session 9

We run into 2 ghosts. We beat one with the help of the other, and the human ghost gives us a quest to kill the beholder we left alive. We run up to do so, when the apparition begins to speak with Elros. We start to be friendly and the conversation continues, when Legrande touches a breastplate and enraged the creature. We begin fighting when Elros suddenly grows deer antlers on his head. Permanently. We kill the creature, collect a dragon breastplate and lightbringer mace, and collect 3 scrolls of fireball from the ghost as a reward. In a battle with a minotaur, which began due to some sweet dance moves by Elros, Elros also grew blue bunny ears. He becomes more and more disturbing as things progress. We fight a mimic, paper golem, and some ghouls before finally clearing out the cave and heading back to town. On our way out, we run into the black spider and several of his henchmen. We manage to kill them all but the spider escapes again. On our way out of the cave, at the outside entrance to the mountain, we are ambushed by the black spider, Favoric, a goblin leader, and several orcs. We do well to fend them all off until the green dragon shows up and nearly kills many of us. We manage to kill everything except the dragon, and we have a nice chat afterwards. However, during the chat we make the dragon angry and a harrowing battle ensues. Elros's wild magic conjures a unicorn that is not happy to be there. We greatly wound the dragon, forcing it flee. Elros finds the Black Spider’s magical staff and two sealed letters on the black spider’s corpse.

A Great Upheaval

Session 10

Back at the town we see the remaining Rockseeker brothers. They tearfully mourn their brother, thank the party, and reward them with a bank note for Triboar. We shop and rest overnight before heading out to Triboar. After reading the 2 sealed letters on the black spider’s corpse, we see they are addressed to Wyrmspeaker Dedriss in Luskin up North and the second is addressed to both Velethuil Valcan (Elvish) and mentions Wyrmspeaker Ythe in Misty Forest. We travel to Triboar, spend the night, and the town is attacked in this middle of the night by Orcs, goblins, giant birds, and Fire Giants who are trying to summon a giant sand storm? As it turns out, A giant metal plate appears from the storm and the giants attach huge chains to it. Huge fire dragons then come down and the other end of the chains are attached to them. We try to take out as many of the enemies as possible, but only manage to eliminate the smaller ones. Elros loses his eye and almost his life in the fight. We killed several enemies, but the giants and dragons got away with the metal plate.

Session 11

After the battle, Darathra takes the bank note and gives a chest with: 1042g and 24s. She also tells us of the bounty that exists on giants’ heads at 100g ea. We also got 25g each as payment in helping the town put out fires and clearing bodies. Elros’ staff explodes, leaving his hands volatile now. Traveling south we run into a nobleman, Lord Artan Rossolio, who asks us to guide him home to Yartar. We do so, receive a carriage and horses as a reward, and leave after shopping. We head further south on our carriage and run into a strange cow, who guides us to a small village. We see a floating giant in monk's clothing and we attempt to talk to him, but he turns Elros into an Otter instead and a battle ensues. We defeat him narrowly, and we turn ourselves and the villagers back to normal. Looting the giant, Elros finds a magical headband, attunes to it, and discovers that it is a headband of intellect. We get new horses, fix the wagon, take the giants head, and take a long rest before heading further south.

Session 12

We travel back to Triboar to turn in the bounty for the giant head and to pick up our two companions Selene and Rieta. We then travel south through Red Larch and enter Amphail, which is in the middle of a large festival of some sort. Liora parks the carriage, and Elros and Rieta enter a pie eating contest because reasons. Callie and Arata watch the pie eating contest. Selene chases the goblin through the crowd. Rieta, Selene, and Liora enter an archery contest as well. After light shopping, hill giants attack the town and eat a bunch of pies. During the fight, Elros’ boots are affected by wild magic and now bray like a donkey whenever Elros kicks someone. We receive 400g for the bounty on the giants’ heads after the battle. In asking about where the hill giants normally are since they usually do not come this far, we are pointed towards the High Forest in the North East. We move further south, go through Waterdeep and leave Selene after buying items, then continue on. We also pass Nightstone which was burning similar to Triboar. We also pass Daggerford, which is flattened, and all stones removed from from the buildings. After spending the night outside the Misty Forest, we wake up to see a giant castle floating on clouds that was heading north. We finally make it to the Misty Forest, when we come across a village in the forest. The village has been attacked it seems, and the bodies seemed to have been dead for about a week. As we look around the ruined village, we come across a shining, green individual. As she turns, Elros’ eye grows wide in recognition of his adoptive, fey guardian (also with antlers).

The Misty Forest

Session 13

Speaking with Elwing in the middle of Yvequa, the small village, she gives Elros her heart in the midst of the conversation. She also tells us “he is back” referring to the fact there is a loose end and not all the orcs were killed years prior. She cries, saying “he” has her name. As we were trying to investigate this sudden and distressing situation, rusting in the trees above reveal an adult green dragon heading towards us. Despite just finding Elwing, Elros chooses to run per her instructions and come back for her. We make it back to the wagon and attempt to ride off, when drakes swarm towards us (but cannot immediately find us). We manage to lose the drakes through a scroll of darkness, but the dragon continues on closer. After a perception check, Elros notices a green figure riding the dragon. We manage to drive the carriage into the large roots of one of the trees to escape the dragon. In the back of this hole n the roots, we see a cave area going down into the earth. We follow the cave down and come out into a large, open area with a blue lake. Callie and Lagrande dive into the lake, and do not come up, and eventually the others follow in an attempt to try and rescue them. We all end up at the bottom of the lake, almost in a magical area, where we can breathe and speak. We are presented to a stone statue/shrine, which Elros recognizes as one of the forest keepers’ names Sarula. Elwing was also one of those 7 keepers who guarded the shrine of Oberon. These 7 keepers represent the 7 fey deities. These deities are jealous and easily angered, so it is best not to cross them. Sarula is looking for a sacrifice from one of our party members, and Arata volunteers her horns and her left eye in exchange for her blessing. Sarula mentions to Elros that a new king rules over the forest. After Arata receives the blessing, a huge roar pierces the black abyss from above, the nixies scatter, and we find ourselves in a different lake somewhere in the forest. We travel to Imrenlume the Elven Kingdom, hoping to find some clues as to what is going on. The city, similar to the other we found, is destroyed and no one around. We then work our way to Oberon’s shrine, and find a man kneeling before it. The man, Ara Elessar, speaks with the group and explains how Elwing actually caused much of what is going on and many of the elves have gone into hiding. He fully trusts us once Elros gains the blessing of Oberon. Ara takes us back to the hideout of the remaining elves and introduces us to the king’s granddaughter (Tinelia sp?). We find out Elwing murdered the king and the rest of the city about 6 months ago. Apparently, there is a figure who is attempting to take the elven throne. It would appear that Elwing and many of the other parts of the forest and deities have joined him. We decide to go to the shrine of the Midnight King to gain information from him. We go there at midnight and are met with a large, batlike creature. We ask him which of the keepers we can trust, he tells us Larou, keeper of the Beastial Queen, would likely help us. Lagrande sacrifices a memory of his sister in exchange for the blessing. We walk to the shrine of the Beastial Queen but do not see the keeper. Liora sacrifices 20 years from her life and the memory of her dad in exchange for the blessing. FUCK CHARLES!!!

Session 14

We begin again in the presence of Charles the unicorn, keeper of the Beastial Queen. Forest shrines/gods/keepers - The Forest Lord (Oberon - Elros), Sarula (Nixie Queen - Arata), Treefolk God, Summer Queen, Enchantress Princess, Beastial Queen (Argrios - Liora), and Midnight King (Lagrande). After speaking with Charles to try and get information, he sets up a magical table and chairs for tea…Charles tells us of Verenestra (Enchantress Princess deity) trying to take over the feywild realm and used (the nameless king and half-elf half-orc) as a champion to help her. This Nameless King is likely the child of Drikdarok, the orc chief that Elros had hunted down before. All creatures with white eyes are likely controlled by the Nameless King. 3 important notes from Charles: 1) followers of Verenestra are immune to magic 2) The Nameless King has the true name of Elwing and perhaps others 3) two ways to get a true name (a deity going through great lengths in their own realm or you have connections to the 9 hells and have to make a sacrifice with the devils there). We are also told that Verenestra has engraved runes to the Nameless King's body which allows him to charm those who see him as well as immunity to elemental magics. We leave and head towards the Summer Queen’s shrine for Callie’s blessing. Vicki the pixie tells Callie she has to play a game and win before receiving the blessing. After playing wheel of torture, and going through several changes, Callie chooses to keep 11 of the changes as her “sacrifice” in exchange for the blessing. We then get Lagrande and teleport to the elven hideout. The elven hideout is in ruins and there are corpses everywhere. The princess and Ara are missing, and Elros locates them with the use of his blessing.

Session 15

Elros teleports everyone to the princess’ location. After failing saving throws, Eros, Arata, and Callie start to be affected by something strange (Charm). A battle immediately begins with The Nameless King, the dragon, Velethuil Valcan and our group. We fight very intensely with them but manage to be victorious and kill the Nameless King. We rescue the princess and teleport with Elros back to the elven city. After stories are shared, and Elros catches everyone up on their history since their memories were erased, he states that he must remain in the forest and carry on Elwing’s legacy. With a bittersweet goodbye, Elros escorts everyone back to their carriage as they leave the forest. Before they leave, however, Elros (now keeper of Oberon and the forest) tasks Ara with watching after the group and protecting them.

A Gambler’s Debt

Session 16

Ara knows that Wyrmspeakers are somehow able to control dragons and drakes. The group travels back to Waterdeep from the Misty Forest in order to charter a boat ride to Luskan on the ship The Grand Dame. While waiting the 2 days for the ship to arrive, we spend time gambling in a local tavern (Arata makes some locals angry for being too amazing at it). Callie, Liora, and Arata get real spiffy with some custom made fine clothing. We stay on the ship and gamble quite a bit (Callie loses 1750g worth of tokens…). After gambling a lot, Lagrande recieves an "invite" to a private gambling room and the party follows. Lagrande and the group come face to face with a person from Lagrande’s past, a notable baron and powerful crime lord that he tried to rob once (Dovacious Estigu).

Session 17

Estigu mentions Captain Dryland, the owner of the boat, and how there is something the Captain is doing to make him richer than he should be. It must be a magic item, an enchanted necklace Estigu says, which of course the Baron wants. The Baron gives us one week, before he arrives in Neverwinter, to obtain the necklace and give it to him. He also gives us permission to speak with Lady Atalia, who works with the captain on the Grand Dame, for more information to aid us. Lady Atalia tells us the vault is on the 3rd floor which needs a key to open. The key is in the captain’s room. The captain’s room is on the upper decks on the ship. First, we attempt to get the key by turning Lagrande invisible and getting him into the room to get the key. Lagrande gets into the room, finds the key inside an aquarium tank, and teleports back out all while invisible. Lagrande meets back up with the group and lets everyone know he got the key. Liora and Lagrande meet up with Atalia to let her know we go the key and to get more information. Ara exits at this time to scout out the 3rd floor and investigate further. He starts a commotion and yelling at the guards to distract everyone, and in doing so leads most of them around the hallway of vaults. This leaves Lagrande an opportunity to get into the vault. Lagrande, Callie, Arata enter the vault and solve a series of puzzles to get to a large chest. In the chest is a rapier, necklace, and 600g. Everyone manages to get out safely, the group springs Ara from the jail, and we go about our business (gambling).

Session 18

The group wakes up, gets ready, and meets Baron Estigu. We turn in the quest and obtain a…hefty sack… of coins. Callie sings Lion King songs as Ara carries her away with the reward. Going back to Ara’s room to count the reward, the group finds 1318g. Lagrande gets 118g and the rest evenly split the remaining 1200g for 300g each (sorry not sorry). The group also gains level 8 upon quest completion. We end up in Neverwinter, shop for a bit to purchase items, and waste time until the evening. We get back onto the boat and begin traveling to Luskan. On the way, Liora sends a message to her husband Zander, and discovers that he is still alive, albeit frightened and in pain. He is being held in some kind of void by a monster who tells Liora: "Servant of Pelor, this is not your domain" before knocking her unconscious with psychic damage. Selene summons a green, terrible mist from her cursed book.

Dark Ritual

Session 19

The green mist filled with magical wolves begin attacking the whole ship. Lagrande and Ara go up to investigate and get attacked by the wolves when they reach the top deck. They turn around and run away, being attacked as they run back to their rooms. They make it back downstairs and fight back against the mist as it closes in. The group is then forced into one of the rooms, close and lock the door, and then Lagrande and Ara push against the door to prevent the mist from breaking in. After 6 minutes go by, the noises stop, and the mist is gone. The group moves throughout the ship and they attempt to find survivors and determine what is going on. Everyone is abandoning the ship and getting into lifeboats to head back to shore. Lagrande and Liora take one of the lifeboats and everyone jumps in to try and head back and find Selene. After a long time searching, we fail to find her. We spend the day rowing to shore and spent the night. We then travel north to hopefully find Luskan. Upon reaching the town, we immediately try to find an inn and rest, but we do notice a lot of damage done to the walls of the city. After speaking with the innkeeper of The Worthless Bear, he tells of the White Death. There are white dragons terrorizing the north, and after so many adventurers and champions trying to stop it all, they have been either taken or killed. We go around the town and purchase winter clothes and finding transportation before setting out toward Fireshear and Ice Peak in the frozen sea.

The White Death

Session 20

After looking for a ship to take us north to Fireshear, the group actually decides to walk there instead and brave the cold and potential frost giant threat. Liora and Ara head to a library after finding someone to give them directions, and they arrive to a dreary and small building with a halfling at a desk. After a conversation and inquiry with the halfling, Liora tracks some potential leads to her missing husband to 3 books which she purchases from the library. Liora and Ara make their way back to the inn and meet up with everyone. Liora shares the books with Callie to see if she recognizes any of the wording, and Callie tells Liora that much of the runes look the same as what they saw in the vault on the ship they stole the necklace from (along with some dwarvish, elvish, and other languages). The group makes the journey to Fireshear on foot. On the way, Ara and Arata are both consumed by a massive centipede like creature before being saved by Liora and Callie's magical efforts. Arriving in Fireshear, the town has been utterly ravaged by frost giants five days prior. The group pays a retired mercenary named Jahler who agrees to take the adventurers to Aurilsbarg and wait for them until their return. The party takes their individual roles as part of the ship's crew and set forth into the dragon infested sea.

Session 21

As we continue to travel north towards Ice Peak, the boat is attacked by white dragons. We fend them off and many get away, and we continue on our journey. After finally arriving to Aurilsbarg, we make our way to the inn to find a place to rest and to obtain information. After speaking with the innkeeper to get info about Dedriss in an attempt of pretending to deliver a letter to him, the innkeeper points us to “the chief” (Jinroth) in a bigger house nearby. We go to see the chief and he welcomes us in gladly. After a conversation with the chief, he says we have permission to go forward to speak with Sayaxx and he gives us a special necklace. We show the necklace to Sayaxx, and he nods and shows us through a dark opening which leads down into a dark area. We head down a winding corridor of icy walls and stairs. At the bottom of the stairs we find ourselves in a giant cave system made of ice, which we explore a little until we run into an open area with a large figure with a blue, icy beard. As it turns out, the frost giant was already dead and frozen into the icy wall of the cave. Kobolds attack and we murder them all, and we continue on exploring the cave. Ara and Callie murder a bunch of weird monster yak creatures while the rest of the group fights giant, frozen insect creatures. We barely managed to kill them all, when suddenly we hear a loud roar echo throughout, the ice begins to crack, and the glacier's caves begin to fill with icy water.

Session 22

We see a person trapped behind bars next to where we fought. He introduces himself as Irraes and mentions that he and his group came here to kill the Wyrmspeaker Dedriss. We break him out of his prison cell, and he thanks us, and then immediately recognizes Callie. Apparently in the past he taught Callie how to use some of her spells as a sorcerer. We cut the conversation short so we can get out of the cave. We continue on and see a giant ice sculpture in a room, but we pass it by. We go into the next room which has a desk and another big ice sculpture, and while Ara investigates the items on the icy desk, Zug pokes the closest ice statue and it comes alive. A fight begins, and the statue in the previous room wakes up and enters the battle as well. We defeat the two big ice giant statues with little damage taken, found a Tome of Clear Thought and a key, and continued onward. The next room contains a lot of books on shelves and a large pit leading down. After investigating, it did not appear like there was anything useful in the room or among the books. Ara and Liora toss a lit book down the pit which attracted the attention of several white dragons. As they began clawing their way out of the pit, the group runs away and has Irraes cast Wall of Ice to block to hallway and bar the way from the dragons. We continue to run and go down further into the cave, and eventually come across a room with a ship. Looking over the ship Lagrande finds a chest, which has 1000g in it. We continue back to where we came to find the second large hole we passed. In looking into it, Arata falls into the chasm and Ara jumps after her in attempt to save her. They both land on an ice pillar with a lot of creatures around them, and the others tie rope off to be able to repel downwards. We find ourselves in a massive, icy cavern filled with ice, water, and enemies (mostly dragons). Thanks mostly to Callie, the horde of dragons is quickly dispatched before we begin exploring the cave area. As we go further into the cavern, we find Wyrmspeaker Dedriss torturing and interrogating a massive frost giant. We interrupt this as it happens and begin a battle after a brief discussion with Dedriss. After battling Dedriss and the two adult white dragons he summons, the group manages to barely escape and achieve victory. During the fight with Dedriss, trying to get information out of him, he tells Ara that there are many Wyrmspeakers (as many are necessary for the job at hand). He tells Ara the 5 dragon masks have already been located and sent, and that her majesty will return. We get the sense that the occurrences around the world with dragons and giants are actually connected to the Wyrmspeakers. Dedriss tells Ara in the middle of the battle that we cannot stop the rise of Tiamat. The DM gives a sweet narration of past memories from each party member. Ara loots from a cloak made from white dragon scales that is magical from Dedriss’ corpse. After the battle, the frost giant takes the group onto his shoulders and swims under the cave, into the ocean, to escape the sinking glacier.

Eye of the All-Father

Session 23

The frost giant brings us to land and we camp overnight before moving back to the town. After speaking with Irrais, he tells us that he and his group are in the Orari (sp?) – pack of silver dragon knights. He also tells us that the giants all seem to be doing different things and that none of them are on the same page. The frost giant speaks with Callie out of respect and introduces himself as Harshnag. Irrais also invites Callie to join his dragon knight order to which she accepts. Harshnag also explains that the ordening has been broken, which is the things which keeps all giants in order and under control. He also recommends that we visit the Eye of the Allfather to help answer more questions, which can be found far east along the Spine of the World. After questioning Irrais about the High Forest and the dragons/giants heading that direction, he mentions he remembers that there were rumors of stone giants destroying things around that forest and dragons flying around to the northeast. Irrais is taking the group’s chartered boat back to the mainland and says he will inform us if he finds anything about the dragon cult, the giants, or the stone slab we found. We set off with Harshnag as the lead and he guides us on our 3-week journey east along the Spine of the World mountain range. We see some red dragons flying east with another huge, metal object. We also see a large, floating castle hovering over a forest, to which Harshnag says is The Lurkwood forest. The giant also explains that the “ice that never melts” is also called The Ring of Winter. The Ring of Winter was described as having the ability to create winter wherever it is and control the weather. It would appear that the giants are looking for the ring and that they should be stopped, or they will make it winter everywhere. Harshnag says that along the Spine of the World, thousands of years ago there was a kingdom called Astoria (sp?), before the time of smallfolk, when giants ruled the world. The Eye of the Allfather is an ancient place buried within the Spine of the world that few know about and is sacred to giants. People visit this place to obtain a blessing from the Oracle and gain its help. The giant runestone we have is also a relic of Astoria, and magic smiths used to make those powerful objects. Upon arriving at the temple of the Eye of the Allfather, we see footprints. When we enter, we spot a group of barbarians which appear to be looting the temple. We battle them on the giant’s request to stop their attempts at looting. We beat the raiders and move forward to find a massive statue surrounded 6 other statues (1 for each race of giant). We beat a weird insect, collect a massive stone axe it was guarding, and place it in the arms of the frost giant statue, causing one of 6 runes to glow. Realizing we have a puzzle to solve, we take another axe to touch to an unknown rune, but guess wrong and releasing a trap, severely damaging the group. We rest shortly and continue onward. We see a stone giant statue, investigate its run, and look around the hallway near it. Suddenly Ara trips a trap, unleashing a giant boulder, flattening Ara and Liora. We heal, and Zug and the giant keep the boulder from killing the others on its way back down by catching it, when Lagrande runs into a large group of ice spiders in a side tunnel. After looking through a large leather sack we found, we see several useless items including used shields, skulls, and broken furniture. Frozen dwarf heads were also in the sack. We use all the information we have gathered with the symbols to solve the puzzle of the statues, which unlocks the archway. Before heading through, we take a long rest.

Session 24

"The group goes into the Oracle’s room and finds 6 giant statues surrounding a corpse. Upon investigation of the corpse, a ghost of the giant rises out of it and speaks with the group. The ghost, Eigeron, says he was betrayed by his father, Blagothkus. The oracle told the giant and his father that the father would never rise above his station and the son needed to step outside his father’s shadow. The father, in a rage, killed the son and he has been here ever since. The ghost says if we find and kill his father it would set him free. We also ask the ghost what the symbol on the slab says, and he said he thinks it says dragon but is not sure. The ghost does say that the cloud giant countess Sansary(sp) or a fire giant named Volgyr may know more. In order to ask the oracle our questions, they require an offering of a giant relic. Harshnag says we can find one in a barbarian village nearby, and on our way out of the temple to head out to the village Callie’s necklace begins vibrating. Irraes appears outside with ships and gives us one of them. He also says that he contacted his order and found out the following items: 1) There are three major camps of giants (hill giants in the south near Triboar, frost giants near the spine of the world, and fire giants forming large raiding parties towards the far east near Silver Marchins?) 2) no location yet for this cult overall 3) He gives the party a letter for Liora as well. Irraes also says there is a storm titan roaming around the spine of the world and tells us to be careful as we explore here. Moving forward, we go on to the Great Worm Cavern to find a giant relic. We enter the cavern filled barbarians and ogres, we clean them all out, and investigate a shrine here. The ghost of a giant, winged serpent appears and speaks with us. He thanks us for removing everyone from his shrine and allows us to take the gong (really a giant shield) with us. We bring the shield back to the oracle as an offering, which allows us to ask them 6 questions. The 6 questions:
1. Where can we find the living Wyrmspeakers trying to bring about the rise of Tiamat? High above the feet of the vanquished steel colossus.
2. Where will the ritual to raise Tiamat be taking place? At the edge of Avernus, the new beginning of Faerun and the newly opened gape of the nine hells. Surrounded by wyrmspeakers.
3. What path must I take to bring about the freedom of Zander Aroway? To free him you, Liora, must decide whether to vanquish him to save the Sword Coast or free his spirit by joining him and bringing about the Sword Coast’s demise.
4. Where will we find the six giant lords? ""Travel south over tree, hill, and vale. Let the great river be your guide. There, on one of its eastern arms, you'll find Grudd Haug-the den of the hill giant. Travel southeast, o'er lands high and low. Cross the great forest to the gray peaks, and search for Deadstone Cleft, canyon of the stone giant thane. Travel west, o'er mountains, to the Sea of Moving Ice. There, among the glaciers, you'll find Svardborg-the berg of the frost giant jarl. Travel east, o'er mountains and snow, to distant spires. There, on a cold mountainside, you'll find a village of yakfolk and below that, lronslag-the forge of the fire giant duke. Travel southeast to the untamed moors and look to the sky - there you will find the castle of the cloud giant countess. Choose your path and find the conch. Perform it true and there you will find the palm of the storm."
5. How do we get to the vanquished steel colossus? To get to the vanquished steel colossus you must travel through Faerun. Seek out the traitorous giants, find your way into the storm. Seek the guidance and aid of the daughter of storms. Raise your shields and face yourselves; the decisions that you've made. On your own, vanquish the steel colossus.
6. Where will we find Zander Aroway? Far into the trackless sea, along the purple rocks, deep beneath the king of storms."

The Forlorn Hills

Session 25

The group travels by airship south towards the Forlorn Hills, to the hill giant encampment. We scout the area, and stealthily check some of the interior, and Lagrande spot 14 large direwolves in the northern entrance. To avoid alerting the group, we then check the east entrance to determine the best way to breach the encampment. Upon trying to stealth through the east entrance, the check fails and the direwolves are alerted to our presence. We back out of the gate and attempt to funnel the wolves one at a time through the partially opened doors as we continue our fight with them. We kill all the wolves and explore. We find an area filled with beds and chests, and upon looting through them we find boots on a dwarven skeleton. Upon trying them on, the group finds striding boots and gives them to Zug. We enter another empty room and find three chests, which we open, and find nothing of value. Hanging on the wall are some large boots, and Zug climbs in to find a sack filled with coins and 2 gleaming gems. On a table near the boots is another sack filled with old helmets. We move into another room in the northwest of the fort and find a room filled with female giants and a male giant, who we attack in a surprise round. We kill them all (it’s a slaughter) and loot the room. We find a life size dwarf stone statue, a big bag of salt, and a small pouch of bronze dragon scales. We cut all the heads off the giants because reasons and pile them up at the door to continue on. We move to the kitchen and fight a bunch of ogres, kill them, and move to the room the ogres came from. The room contains a chest with quite a bit of coins. We go down to the basement and get into a scrap with a couple of giants and many bugbears. We get attacked by a large group of everything downstairs, and manage to barely win, but are now left in the middle of the enemy territory with the party looking worse for wear.

Session 26

We begin this session in the basement of the hill giants’ encampment, where we left off previously after fighting off a couple of giants and many bugbears. We take a short rest and start opening the surrounding doors to let the orcs loose. We continue on and ask the orcs to guard our rear route of escape while we continue searching. We run into a group of chained dwarves and two large fire giants. We defeat the giants, set the living dwarves free, and continue on to find the orc rebellion. We find a hidden room with creepy artwork and a cloak with snakes all over it, and we quickly leave the room to avoid its creepiness. We gather a massive army of orcs and some dwarves to fight the giants upstairs, but then encounter a couple more giants downstairs by accident. After fighting the giants, Lagrande loots their room and finds some gold along with a belt of stone giant. Arata, Zug, and Lagrande find an underwater cave filled with weird poisonous serpents and kill them before swimming back to the rest of the group. Ara, Callie, and Liora find a hidden room filled with coffers. Lagrande finds the coffers to be trapped and manticores behind a couple of cages. We kill the manticores and find a room filled with 7 chests beyond. In all the chests we find a lot of various coins and other items to sell. 13 giants’ heads in total so far. We send the orc army upstairs to begin a huge battle against all the hill giants and we take a short rest before heading up ourselves.

Session 27

We send most of the orcs upstairs to start chaos above, and our group goes with the second wave upwards. We come across the main hall, which we pass by due to the chaotic fighting and number of giants and fight the smaller groups of giants isolated elsewhere. Lagrande finds a fancy robe on a dead orc. Ara finds a belt with a gold buckle and gems on it. Liora finds a large silver comb with four gems, a gold hairpin with a pearl, and a copper mirror. 980c 320s 400g found in a chest. We slaughter an entire room filled with baby hill giants because reasons. We continue on murdering giants that are battling the orcs. We find a potion of healing, superior healing, 800g, 3 valuable looking bracelets made from platinum. Lagrande also finds 29 gems in a leather pouch found in a bed. We also find a bag of holding. 10 more giant heads this week, 23 total. We leave and immediately fly back to Waterdeep. We sell the giant heads for 2300g and then look for a way to sell the other random items we have. We find our way to a new place called the Yawning Portal, where the bartender gives us a magical monocle. We walk across the street where Lagrande uses the monocle to see an invisible portal in the building next door. We all walk in and find ourselves in a large shop with books and other items all over it, and several animated skeletons that appears to be only keeping the shop and do not notice us. We walk up to a large wooden counter and a tall person in a red robe welcomes us into the shop. It is the necromancer which the group met in Phandalin, and he allows the group to reach in his sack at random to obtain a free item. After everyone gets their unique items, we then sell all our random treasure for 13769g in total. The group then spends time with the necromancer by purchasing items and learning skills/languages/etc. We buy a lot of shit, rest and relax a bit, and get back on the boat headed towards the Misty Forest. Liora also received a letter from her sister Holly, detailing some ideas as to where she may find more information about her husband. The main lead seems to be surrounding Lord Khaspere Drylund, owner of the Golden Goose.

Return to Neighture

Session 28

We begin the session with the group arriving at the Misty Forest via airship. Liora, on the way to the forest, send Elros a message to check up on him: Liora - “Elros, this is Liora. We will be returning to the Misty Forest shortly, and wanted to ask how things are going. Do you need help?” Elros - "Liora! It's horrible! Please send help! They're everywhere! I can't speak now though. I must maintain the spell! Please go to the shrine of Oberon!" As we enter the forest in the airship, surrounded by mist heading towards Oberon’s Shrine, Ara sees in the distance a horse standing on a tree. With rage in his heart and fire in his eyes, Ara immediately and without warning fires the harpoon to kill the horse. Suddenly we see dozens of horses in the trees along the way to the shrine. Ara kills some more before stopping so the group doesn’t get lost. Eventually we come across the elf princess and we land to speak with her and Elros. She informs us that someone who is attuned to the forest and has a deep hatred for horses has summoned murderous horses to the forest. They have been killing and rampaging, and the pixies and water nymphs fed their magic into the wellspring to cause mischief. However, they fed it for too long and it went out of control, eventually taking the pixies and most of the shrine deities with them. The princess asks that we find Elros at the old shrine and do what we can to help solve this terrible problem. We head to the shrine to backup Elros and find him in terrible shape, as he has been maintaining a huge barrier of magic on top of a large ziggurat around 5 huge elemental horses. We slowly but surely kill one horse after another, with the help of Elros’ magical blessings until they have all been vanquished. The forest returns to normal and all horses seems to be gone from the forest. We find Elros in the hold of the ship and take him back to the ruined city and shrine. There Elros gives us his blessing of Oberon in return for a very wet hug from each person. Everyone thoroughly loves and enjoys all of this. No one hates this. The individual blessings affect one another in different ways depending on the person (feats). We board the ship again and head off to Grudd Haug to slay the Hill Giant Lord.

Grudd Haug

Session 29

We begin the session arriving over Grudd Haug, floating in our ship 2 miles away from the fortress which appears to be damming up a large river. Much of the forest has been chopped down. We park our air boat on the eastern side of the fortress, hidden in the forest, and make our approach to a small cave on the underside of the encampment as we sneak past a number of giants traveling along the road. #swordrape2019 happened and we attack several sleeping hill giants in the basement of the fortress. With surprise on our side, we kill all the giants and collect their 6 heads. We head further into the basement of the fortress and find a massive pig farm with three large holes in the ceiling leading to an upper level. Bugbears, an ogre, and an Ettin maintain the area. We kill all of the enemies (and most of the pigs thanks to Liora). We rescue several prisoners that we find locked in cages. We then move into the next section and see a giant butchering pigs to eat, and a weird tentacle creature eating the raw scraps. We kill them both and take the giants head. We climb a ladder in the room which leads up into a large room with meat hooks. We find ourselves in a huge kitchen with a group of gobblins attempiing to cook a halfling. We quickly free the halfling. In the next, massive room we find the hill giant lord and many of her hill giant followers. The leader of the Forlorn Hills is in the room with a crate of treasures secured from the remains of the hill giant fort we previously assaulted. An enchanting looking giant is seen floating beside the hill giant lord. We are unsure if she is a cloud giant or a storm giant. She seems to be the only one concerned about the details of the assault on the Forlorn Hills. She aggressivly advising the hill giant lord, but the lord does not take her or the situation seriously. We prepare ourselves and then engage in a massive battle with many hill giants. The floating giant inspects us thoroughly before disappering in a gust of clouds. Using a portable pit from the cloak of many things and an effective choke point, we win the battle and slay the hill giant lord "Chief Guh". Beneath the hill giant lord's broken wagon throne, we find a wooden rocking horse with silver and blue quartz eyes, 6 vials of holy water, a wooden halfling statue, a crushed hat with precious stones, a gold flute, a jade flowerpot, and a golden wooden puppet theatre. In the wooden crate from the Forlon Hills, we find jewelry boxes with a total of 7 pieces of fine jewelry, several chests of gemstones (17 significant ones), 8000g total, 1000p total, 17 +1 arrows, a very nice long bow with the name Vark on it, and bracers of defense. We find an old coffer hidden in a water barrel with 80s, 45g, and a small elven platinum ring. We take the 32 total giant heads back to the ship and prepare to head back to Waterdeep to visit the Abracadaver.

The Forlorn Hills

Session 30

We begin this session with shopping and preparing for the next leg of our journey, the stone giant lord in the Deadstone Cleft. On our way to Waterdeep to shop at the Abracadaver, Liora attempts to remove curse on the dwarf and halfling statues we found at the Hill Giant forts. The halfling statue remained as wood, but the stone dwarf statue turned back into flesh. The dwarf, Thuveck, last recalled locking eyes with a beautiful woman with bright blue eyes in Deadstone Cleft before waking up on our air ship. He said that he was there to rescue his friend Elister, a gnome that attempted to negotiate with the Stone Giants to save their home town of Loudwater. We didn't tell him we were going to Deadstone Cleft and decided to drop him off at Waterdeep. The dwarf rewarded us with a pouch containing a peculiar stone (stone of good luck) and went his own way into Waterdeep. We drop off the 32 giant heads for 3200g. 12525g was split between us after selling the miscellaneous items from Grudd Haug. Once we finish shopping at the Abracadaver, we take our airship eastward towards our destination. We fly to the Deadstone cleft, see several Rocs (extremely large birds), and decide to set off on foot to avoid destroying the ship after using Lagrande's spyglass to scout out the valley. After a two mile walk, we are spotted by a roc nesting on a hill outside Deadstone Cleft. Lagrande frees Zug from the bird's talons, but the bird manages to grab Liora as well and attempts to flee with her. We manage to kill the bird before it escapes entrely, but Liora falls nearly to her death in the process. After recuperating, we enter a cave leading further into the cleft and immediately find ourselves embattled with four of stone giants. We kill the giants and stack their heads near the cave's entrance. One of the giants also had a very large gauntlet similar to a falconer’s glove, probably the owner of the roc outside. We push into the cave to find a room with statues and a huge tomb. Ara tries to push the tomb open and instead gets sucked inside. The entity tells Ara he has 3 questions: “1) Where is the stone giant lord? - North within the temple 2) Are we powerful enough to defeat the Stone Giant Lord? - Not alone, but anything is possible with the power of friendship. Teamwork makes the dreamwork. (Ara: Fuck Friendship!) 3) Is there a location where there is something highly valuable/powerful within Deadstone Cleft that we would find worth going after? Yes. Within the temple to the north rests the key and horn. Withing the Thane's Tomb to the east rests The Deadstone. We head to the eastern entrance of the cave instead of heading north, to first find the deadstone. As we enter the east caves, we enter combat with large metal bulls and earth elementals. The bulls breath green fumes that end up petrifying Zug. We kill them all and Liora frees Zug from his petrification. We briefly explore the area and discover a massive keg of beer that seems quite full despite how much has been spilled. We also find seven other petrified individuals tucked away in the cave. Zug, briefly going on his own, encounters a veiled woman with bright blue eyes. She confronts Zug, but Zug stands his own and intimidates her into allowing the group to pass this once. She leaves, for now, and the party prepares to advance deeper into Deadstone Cleft.

Session 31

We begin on the eastern side of Deadstone Cleft, trying to find the Deadstone before venturing further towards the stone giant lord. We climb an embankment to see more stone giant statues and a large pool of water. In a room adjacent to the eastern side we see a large rowboat, and after investigating it we find a massive, heavy shield made from stone. This turns out to be the Deadstone we were searching for, and Ara equips this huge shield. We continue searching the surrounding rooms and we all get attacked by a group of stone giants. We kill the four stone giants and take their heads. After further investigation, Ara and Zug enter a room filled with goats and go about slaughtering them all. In doing so, 2 stone giants awaken and attack (10 so far from this dungeon). After healing up we continue on, and we climb a cliff to find ourselves in combat with 5 additional giants (15 so far), two of which are shamans that petrify most of the party. After killing the shaman giants by Lagrande, the group turns back to flesh. We go further into the cave and encounter a small gnome in chains (Elister), and a few stone statues that attack the group. After a long battle, we also get attacked by an unknown stone giant that came from the walls. We take the giants head (16) and search its body for anything useful. We find 3 large pouches filled with 500p, a conch (horn), and a dwarven stone slab (key). We continue on and kill another giant (17), then see a weird insect creature in a cage. Ara sets the creature free and it starts to eat his armor, so Zug throws it away. We also get attacked by a tentacle monster group. We make our way to the top of the cleft to a huge statue guarded by two giants. They did not attack us and instead said they hated the stone giant lord. We find a hole to put the “key” we found and do so, and the giants said they did not expect us to come to their aid. We apparently fucked up and awakened the Tyrant of Fear, Dodkong.

Session 32

We begin this week with Zug asking for a reward from Dodkong. During a conversation with the Death King, we find out that he is no friend of Tiamat. He gets angry at his stone giants below and melts their skin off. The Tyrant gives us his “blessing” by breathing black mist towards us, which shows us terrible alternate past events, and allows us to each choose a feat before he departs with a small army of reanimated giants. With no one left around, we gather all the heads back on the boat and Callie investigates the questions in the larger, previous room (temple). We don’t find much but the stalactite seems to be magical. Liora brings the seven statues back to flesh and uses Shape Stone to dig near the magical pillar. We spend the night in the temple, and in the morning the magical etchings in the stone disappeared, and instead we see “destroy the works of the surface dwellers”. Liora rescues the other halflings trapped in stone and we go back to our ship. While flying, we drop some of the saved people off at their towns. Ara and Callie find out that the conch is a Conch of Teleportation, which teleports up to 8 people to a specific location (unknown for now). We travel to Yartar to unload the 17 giant heads and shop around/get information. During which time Ara is killed and revived after his routine of fist bumping Kost's blacksmith and failing the constitution save (Nat 1). After Liora and Lagrande gather info on the whereabouts of Dryland, we gather the group together and search for him and gambling in the sewers. We gamble for a while, and find out that Dryland is having some get together at 9pm tomorrow.

Maelstrom

Session 33

Since we needed to spend time until 9pm to see Dryland, we spent the day shopping for a few extra items to prepare ourselves for the future raid on the fire giant encampment. Ara says, “Fuck it” and blows the Conch Horn. Callie and Ara get teleported to some weird, underwater dungeon with moss, algae, and starfish covering the walls. After Ara and Callie look around and find a door with “SU” written on it from a piece of an old ship. We see a couple of large statues with a male and female storm giant on them. We head upstairs to where we heard music coming from. We find ourselves surrounded by storm giants, two unique ones playing the giant clam organ. Ara drops his shield from a crit fail stealth roll and alerts all the giants to their presence. At this point Liora and Lagrande decide to blow the conch that Ara left behind and joined them as the giants turned around to face Ara. We find several normal storm giants, the two special ones, and one each of cloud, stone, fire, and hill giants. Ara tries to speak with the two storm giants that appear to be in control, and asks to speak with Serissa, Queen of the storm giants. They are not happy but send us to a room to wait to see the queen. We wait about 30 minutes and one of the storm giants starts to lead us out to see the queen, and in the hallway a group of the other upset giants ambush us. Ara attempts to reason with the giants, but it fails, and a battle ensues with the group. We kill them all and take their 4 heads. After looting their corpses, we find they were emissaries and we find a total of: diamond studded platinum earing, platinum embroidery/jewelry from the cloud giant, another conch of teleportation, potion of water breathing, necklace of gilded dragons teeth, another conch of teleportation in an iron box, another conch of teleportation, cloak of white dragon scales, 15 gem stones from stone giant, and a 4th conch. We head upstairs to meet with Serissa the storm giant queen. We speak with her, and we inform her on everything that has occurred with the ambush and external issues with the giants and lords. The queen tells us the lords are making things difficult for her and she is unsure as to why the ordning has shattered. She plans to rebuild the storm giant kingdom and explains that she is new to the throne and she did not choose to be there. Queen Neri, her mother, went to meet some small folk and was assassinated by what they believe were from Neverwinter (but they don’t know who). She asked us to help find out who and find her father who has been missing ever since he went to look for the late queen. The only clue Serissa has to go on concerning her father was that someone left behind an insignia on a small medallion. This turns out to be a Golden Goose, same on the Grand Dame that Dryland owned. Serissa tells us that the runes we have of ancient giant language can be translated into the following: Dragon, Hill Giant, Blood, and Journey runes. She suggests taking the runes to Volgir and they can be used to enhance or create magic items. She also says not to hurt Volgir. Serissa gives us the Golden Goose medallion to take with us. We get teleported back to the ship in Yartar and head to Kost. We sell all the items and Callie negotiates for the price of the extra conchs, and Kost gives us 64250g in total, or 10708g each. We prepare ourselves to go after Dryland.

Beneath Yartar

Session 34

We begin the session by going back into the sewers where we were previously gambling to try and find Dryland. However, there is no more gambling happening, and instead we see a long line of people waiting to get a long, green robe and masks before entering a door. We decide to get in line, accept the robes and mask, and try to blend in with the crowd while we try to find Dryland. The party chats among themselves for a bit, until finally Dryland makes his entrance with an octopus on his shoulder. He starts to talk, and says he welcomes everyone to the path to glory. Dryland offers everyone in the room a goblet of something to drink, which turns out to be a thick, mucousy liquid. Liora casts detect poison, and she learns that the liquid is diseased and that we shouldn’t drink it. Lagrande dumps his drink out, Zug drinks his anyway, Ara gives Zug his drink, Callie dumps hers out, but some people notice, and Liora dumps hers out as well. Dryland and some of his followers then lead the initiates and us through a dark, damp corridor and down another ladder to a lower level. In this new cavern we find ourselves near the edge of some murky sewer water, and many of the people begin to dive into the water never to be seen again. Zug is about to jump in as well, but instead he and Ara jump up and restrain Dryland by force and the rest of the group fends off the other of Dryland’s followers. After a huge ice ball from Callie and nat 20 from Zug, the fight briefly ends. Ara casts Zone of Truth and we begin to interrogate Dryland. After questioning Dryland, Liora hears that her husband has already been initiated. Ara asks him about the storm giant queen and shows him the golden goose necklace, Dryland tells us King Hecton is held prisoner aboard the Morkoth which is circling the purple rocks. Dryland also admits to killing the storm giant queen and Liora and Ara immediately kill him in response. Upon killing Dryland, a giant weird tentacle/teeth monster appears from his body and several more appear around us all. A battle ensues and we manage to kill the big guy, but we use the conch to escape to the maelstrom. We go back to queen Serissa and begin updating her on the situation. Ara gets suspicious of one of the queen’s advisors because she would avoid the group and was upset that we brought back the previous queen’s murderer. Ara casts Zone of Truth on the giant and questions her, and after a couple of attempts and the queen’s backing, Ara forces the giant to reveal her true self – a large, ancient dragon, the same dragon that fought Harshnag. The dragon escaped in a fit of rage.

The Nether Mountains

Session 35

We begin this session with shopping and preparing for the next leg of our journey, the stone giant lord in the Deadstone Cleft. On our way to Waterdeep to shop at the Abracadaver, Liora attempts to remove curse on the dwarf and halfling statues we found at the Hill Giant forts. The halfling statue remained as wood, but the stone dwarf statue turned back into flesh. The dwarf, Thuveck, last recalled locking eyes with a beautiful woman with bright blue eyes in Deadstone Cleft before waking up on our air ship. He said that he was there to rescue his friend Elister, a gnome that attempted to negotiate with the Stone Giants to save their home town of Loudwater. We didn't tell him we were going to Deadstone Cleft and decided to drop him off at Waterdeep. The dwarf rewarded us with a pouch containing a peculiar stone (stone of good luck) and went his own way into Waterdeep. We drop off the 32 giant heads for 3200g. 12525g was split between us after selling the miscellaneous items from Grudd Haug. Once we finish shopping at the Abracadaver, we take our airship eastward towards our destination. We fly to the Deadstone cleft, see several Rocs (extremely large birds), and decide to set off on foot to avoid destroying the ship after using Lagrande's spyglass to scout out the valley. After a two mile walk, we are spotted by a roc nesting on a hill outside Deadstone Cleft. Lagrande frees Zug from the bird's talons, but the bird manages to grab Liora as well and attempts to flee with her. We manage to kill the bird before it escapes entrely, but Liora falls nearly to her death in the process. After recuperating, we enter a cave leading further into the cleft and immediately find ourselves embattled with four of stone giants. We kill the giants and stack their heads near the cave's entrance. One of the giants also had a very large gauntlet similar to a falconer’s glove, probably the owner of the roc outside. We push into the cave to find a room with statues and a huge tomb. Ara tries to push the tomb open and instead gets sucked inside. The entity tells Ara he has 3 questions: “1) Where is the stone giant lord? - North within the temple 2) Are we powerful enough to defeat the Stone Giant Lord? - Not alone, but anything is possible with the power of friendship. Teamwork makes the dreamwork. (Ara: Fuck Friendship!) 3) Is there a location where there is something highly valuable/powerful within Deadstone Cleft that we would find worth going after? Yes. Within the temple to the north rests the key and horn. Withing the Thane's Tomb to the east rests The Deadstone. We head to the eastern entrance of the cave instead of heading north, to first find the deadstone. As we enter the east caves, we enter combat with large metal bulls and earth elementals. The bulls breath green fumes that end up petrifying Zug. We kill them all and Liora frees Zug from his petrification. We briefly explore the area and discover a massive keg of beer that seems quite full despite how much has been spilled. We also find seven other petrified individuals tucked away in the cave. Zug, briefly going on his own, encounters a veiled woman with bright blue eyes. She confronts Zug, but Zug stands his own and intimidates her into allowing the group to pass this once. She leaves, for now, and the party prepares to advance deeper into Deadstone Cleft.

Session 36

We begin on the eastern side of Deadstone Cleft, trying to find the Deadstone before venturing further towards the stone giant lord. We climb an embankment to see more stone giant statues and a large pool of water. In a room adjacent to the eastern side we see a large rowboat, and after investigating it we find a massive, heavy shield made from stone. This turns out to be the Deadstone we were searching for, and Ara equips this huge shield. We continue searching the surrounding rooms and we all get attacked by a group of stone giants. We kill the four stone giants and take their heads. After further investigation, Ara and Zug enter a room filled with goats and go about slaughtering them all. In doing so, 2 stone giants awaken and attack (10 so far from this dungeon). After healing up we continue on, and we climb a cliff to find ourselves in combat with 5 additional giants (15 so far), two of which are shamans that petrify most of the party. After killing the shaman giants by Lagrande, the group turns back to flesh. We go further into the cave and encounter a small gnome in chains (Elister), and a few stone statues that attack the group. After a long battle, we also get attacked by an unknown stone giant that came from the walls. We take the giants head (16) and search its body for anything useful. We find 3 large pouches filled with 500p, a conch (horn), and a dwarven stone slab (key). We continue on and kill another giant (17), then see a weird insect creature in a cage. Ara sets the creature free and it starts to eat his armor, so Zug throws it away. We also get attacked by a tentacle monster group. We make our way to the top of the cleft to a huge statue guarded by two giants. They did not attack us and instead said they hated the stone giant lord. We find a hole to put the “key” we found and do so, and the giants said they did not expect us to come to their aid. We apparently fucked up and awakened the Tyrant of Fear, Dodkong.

Session 37

We begin this week with Zug asking for a reward from Dodkong. During a conversation with the Death King, we find out that he is no friend of Tiamat. He gets angry at his stone giants below and melts their skin off. The Tyrant gives us his “blessing” by breathing black mist towards us, which shows us terrible alternate past events, and allows us to each choose a feat before he departs with a small army of reanimated giants. With no one left around, we gather all the heads back on the boat and Callie investigates the questions in the larger, previous room (temple). We don’t find much but the stalactite seems to be magical. Liora brings the seven statues back to flesh and uses Shape Stone to dig near the magical pillar. We spend the night in the temple, and in the morning the magical etchings in the stone disappeared, and instead we see “destroy the works of the surface dwellers”. Liora rescues the other halflings trapped in stone and we go back to our ship. While flying, we drop some of the saved people off at their towns. Ara and Callie find out that the conch is a Conch of Teleportation, which teleports up to 8 people to a specific location (unknown for now). We travel to Yartar to unload the 17 giant heads and shop around/get information. During which time Ara is killed and revived after his routine of fist bumping Kost's blacksmith and failing the constitution save (Nat 1). After Liora and Lagrande gather info on the whereabouts of Dryland, we gather the group together and search for him and gambling in the sewers. We gamble for a while, and find out that Dryland is having some get together at 9pm tomorrow.

Session 38

We again find ourselves in the middle of a large battle against several giants and other enemies. We finish off the 9 giants (37 heads in total) and look around for anything of use. We don’t find much in the boxes, but Lagrande finds 500g on the dead giants. Zug finds another 100g. Nothing else of note is found. We run into a troll in a hallway and engage him in battle, when we also find a fire giant and another troll (38 heads). During the fights, Zug gets yeeted through an invisible wall and gets into a fight with a weird fiery person. We kill her, but not before she sacrifices Zug to Tiamat. We revive him and we look around to see a temple. We find an Orb of Destruction. After we finish in the temple, we loot the smith’s shop we killed earlier. Lagrande finds a magic sword in the smith’s shop and we continue down the hallway. We bump into a giant coming up the stairway, Ara deceives him, and he points us in the direction of the path downstairs towards the priests. We head downstairs and follow the path in the cave and suddenly find ourselves in front of the fire giant king, 2 red dragons, and 2 other fire giants (41 heads). From the fire giant king, Zug picks up his magical axe, a cloak of cold resistance, and Snurre’s girdle and crown covered in jewels. We find another huge treasure room.

Session 39

We begin this week by looting all the shit in the giant treasure horde being stock piled by the fire giant king. 69830c, 34600s, 9240g, 200p in a malachite box, 23 loose gems, 5 gold chaste silver eggs – each with two halves and a large gem inside, 12 pieces of ass. Jewelry, 5 jeweled weapons, two silver mirrors, 10 piece gold service set, 10 ivory statues with gems and metals, idol of bloodstone, 4 jade carvings and figures in a chest, 8 jars of rare perfumes n shit, 666 gems on the dragons’ stomachs, crystal casket with 7 spell scrolls (all fireball), and 4 potions of fire resist. After looting everything, we continue to explore the underground area, all the while running into enemies and having to fight them. We get into a few tricky situations. A wizad explodes from summoning a horse demon. Ara throws his Elros doll at it as we vanquish it and the demon drags Ara's doll into the Nine Hells. Zug finds a Staff of Fire in a pool and gives it to Callie. Callie finds 23 gems and 200p on a drow. We kill all enemies in the area and attempt to leave through a long tunnel we believe might be an exit. In an effort not to die, we abandon the 41 heads and only take 7. After having raided the Nether Mountains and leaving on our ship, we look back and see one of the mountains moving. With arms and legs outstretched, the creature’s size dwarfs even the Dodkong, and it is headed straight south. The thing appears to be a large, metallic colossus and is the largest creature we have ever seen. We head back to Yartar to sell our items to Kost and gear up before our next quest. Lagrande and Ara eat some Muk Bong and Lagrande gets the shits. We sell everything and receive 500g, 1000g, 5000g, 900g, 800g, 1500g, 1500g, 1500g, 100g, 4000g, 2000g, 500g, 300g = 19,600g for treasure horde 1. 100g, 230g, 1000g, 1200g, 1000g, 100g, 1500g, 2000g, 2000g, 200g, 800g, 1332g, 500g = 12363g for horde 2. Snurre’s crow sells for 7000g, the fire angels necklace sells for 1000g, the girdle sold for 660g, 10,200g for the gems on the throne. 50,823g total for everything from the fire giant’s encampment. After selling everything, we stock up on all our items we needs before heading to the Purple Rocks.

The Hunt for Hekaton

Session 40

We begin this session finishing up with Kost before we continue to the Purple Rocks. Kost informs us before we leave that we can find a portal to the 9 Hells by finds a shrine and offering up a substantial magical sacrifice (2 x rare items or 1 x very rare). On the way out to the Purple Rocks (a 1.5-month journey) we stop by Liora’s old hometown so she can stop in on her old house. We spend the next month role playing and heading to the rocks, and as we approach Lagrande spots a muddy colored ship. On the ship he spots a storm giant tied up by 12 humanoids, which we believe to be the father of Serissa. Liora sends a telepathic message to Serissa informing her of the situation and asking her to join the fight.

Session 41

Serissa tells Liora that she will send backup, but please save her father as soon as possible. We jump off our ship and drop towards the big boat. We immediately enter the fight and split our group, some fight above deck to clear out some of the enemies, and another group to head straight towards the giant to set him free. Liora and Lagrande head below deck to unchain the giant; Ara, Arata, and Callie try and keep all the enemies above deck occupied while they do so. Ara finds a pouch with 24g and a weird dagger on an enemy doing blood magic. We kill all the enemies and some storm giants show up as backup from Serissa. The giants tell us to hurry and untie the king and they are on the lookout for an enemy approaching the boat. We manage to set the king free, but just as we do so 3 massive ships appear from beneath the sea all Davey Jones and shit. These ships are filled with humanoid, barnacle covered enemies, and the giant king says that his magic is being blocked by Slarkrethel. We fight a very long, drawn out battle against the many enemies and sea creatures, and eventually 3 giant tentacles come out of the water and grab the giant king. We kill all the priests and the aura preventing magic disappears, but the kraken dives down with the king. We decide to drink potions, grab a tentacle, and follow the kraken down to rescue the king.

Session 42

We begin on Slarkrethel’s tentacle, trying to make our way down towards the giant king. For the entire session the group makes skill check after skill check to try and get to the king, but along the way Liora’s husband’s ghost drags her away to some illusion and traps her there for a while as she tries to escape. Eventually we come to a depth in the ocean where the pressure would crush us, and we are forced to use the conch the teleport us back to the queen having failed to save the king. We tell the queen everything that has happened, and she says she understands that we were unable to save them. She then asks us to take her revenge on the one responsible for all of this, her sisters and the ancient blue dragon Ymrith. Anaruoch, the ruined temple to the east, is where they should be. The queen also rewards us for everything we have done thus far with the following: her father’s hammer, 10000g, vestments (belt of storm giant strength), liora now has a ring which allows her to regain a spell slot once a day. At the end of the session, everyone gains level 13. It has now been 3.5 years since the journey began.

Ironslag

Session 43

It takes us a month to travel to Ironslag, on our way to slay the Fire Giant Lord. We enter the frozen mountains, and we begin to see enormous iron doors, larger than even giants would need. On the way, we also see a destroyed village. Coming from this village we see several dangerous looking steps leading downward. As we approach the village, we can see humanoid creatures in the village, and below the village is where we see the massive doors (Ironslag). We leave the ship behind with Zug, and take our mounts down towards the village, and Lagrande takes another gaze through his spyglass. He finds minotaurs throughout the village and tries to hide this from Ara. After succeeding an insight roll, Ara dives straight towards the village in an attempt to kill them (#hooves) but fails after Liora is able to hold him back. After some struggling, Ara breaks loose and attacks one of the creatures (turns our they’re actually Yakfolk), and all hell breaks loose. A battle ensues and all yaks are slaughtered. The yaks murdered the slaves they had as well, which made Liora and the rest very upset. We spend some time healing, digging graves, and browsing the huts for valuables. Liora finds a golden censure. We kill a few more yaks that came by, and found a door leading to a large chasm. Before we can get to the chasm, there are several iron bars blocking our way. We fly around the other side, through a waterfall, and find a large elevator contraption leading downward. We also see stairs, but choose to take the elevator, and go down into a large, cavernous area filled with darkness and heat. On the way down, we pass many floors filled with mining slaves and fire nagas, and after a longer ride downward, we come to a large metallic room. We step out to explore a bit, and step over a grating and look below. Below we see adult dragons and heavily armored giants (including the lord) working with huge pieces of metal. Lagrande attempts to stealth and scout out the area, but fails the roll, and gets spotted by a fire giant. A battle ensues with a bunch of rowdy orcs and a fire giant. We kill them all but not before one of the orcs starts yelling down to the large room of giants and the lord. We are not sure if the giants heard him.

Session 44

We return to the loud forge area having killed all the enemies. We take the giant’s head from last week (1). We decide to use the bucket/pulley system to float across the large room below and make our way to a large room with ogres and slaves turning a giant wheel. We set the slaves free and enter combat with the giants and ogres in the area. We take two more giant head after combat is over (3 so far). We explore a little further after setting more slaves free and get ambushed by several ogres from a closed door. Callie kills a young fire giant (4 heads) and we enter battle with other giants. Downstairs we find four other giants who seem ready for battle. We kill them and move forward (7 heads). We manage to find Volgir in the forge area. After talking with Volgir for a bit and showing him the rune stone tablets, he agrees to speak seriously and says we can strike a deal.

Session 45

We begin with Volgir telling us the meaning of the runes but mentions that they can’t be used unless we find a magic forge. We mention the magic forge in Phandelver, and ask him to come, and he said if we free him of his debt to the Duke (fire giant lord) then he will help us. He also tells us what each rune does if used to enchant gear. Volgir’s favorite color is somewhere between red and orange. After chatting with Volgir, our goal becomes clear and we head out to find the fire giant lord. We run into a group of steam imps, a giant, and some ogres who seem to be forcing a bunch of goblins to work. We kill the giant cook and ogres and take her head (8 heads). We find a huge giant, golden fan. We move upstairs and find giants arm wrestling and we kill them all and take their heads (10 heads). After looking below and finding ourselves above the giant lord and dragons again, we decide to descend in an attempt to stop him from killing the slaves that he was throwing into a furnace. We enter battle and find ourselves surrounded by dragons, giants, and fire dogs. A long fight ensues with both sides taking a lot of damage. We manage to kill the Duke and his guards/dragons, but 3 of the giants (his blessed warriors) did not attack us and in fact finished off the last shield giant for us. Volgir seems happy and we go back to the ship, leaving the three unique giants behind. Callie finds out from the female of the three unique giants talked about Cinder, the daughter of the Duke we killed. She said she is now the heir of the fire giants and the current red Wymspeaker. We defeated the Ironslag and gained level 14.

Igniting the Forge

Session 46

We are travelling to the mines near Phandalin, with Volgir, to see the dwarves and magic forge. It has been 4 years since we began our journey. On our way, we notice that Neverwinter forest and up is all frozen, which is not normal for this time of year. Phandalin appears to have been built up due to the operations in the mine and seems to be thriving. Ara, Arata, and Callie enter the mines while Lagrande and Liora head to the town to find the mayor. The group that entered the cave finds Nundro and takes a minute to recognize Callie. The group makes introductions between Ara, Volgir, and Nundro. Nundro takes the group down a winding corridor and expansive paths. The mines appear to have been expanded quite far, as even Volgir has no issues walking through the mines. Lagrande causes a panic with the mayor; it goes over well… Tiniest Tim’s legs get shattered in the door by the way, poor sap. Liora and Lagrande find out where Tharden is and go to visit him instead. They inform him of our intentions and then decide to head back to the mines. Before they leave, Tharden gives Liora and Lagrande a ticket to a bank account. At the bank they find a chest which they take with them. We leave the runes with Volgir and he says it will take 3 weeks to a month to fix the forge. During that time, we will head to Neverwinter to supply ourselves before heading to the frost giant encampment. On the way, the steel box from the bank is opened and contains scattered gems and jewelry and gold, equating to 10,000g total. On the way to Neverwinter, we pass by a large fort called Helm’s Hold. We finish shopping with Kost, Ara dies there again, and leave towards the north. We find a group of frost giants walking up a large crevasse headed into the northern mountains. We follow them on foot, and find ourselves in a large, open area with dire wolves. We attempt stealthing, but Strider hisses and flies towards the doggos. And we kill them all. We also find a frost giant who asks if we have passage. After a failed deception check, we are forced to fight and kill him (1 head). We find another down a corridor and kill him (2 heads). Liora one shots and crits on a giant. Callie finds magical quiver of arrows, and Ara finds 3 human skulls on a giant. Roaming around the area, Lagrande finds a silver crown in a pile of furs. We explore further, find and kill 5 more giants, and loot around (7 heads). Lagrande finds another rune slab and 26 glowing crystal rocks. We run into a sleeping giant and kill him (8 heads). Lagrande 244g. We chase another giant down a long hallway and run into a side room that contained a cloak of protection.

The Frozen Vale

Session 47

We begin by fighting a weird ice salamander thing and kill him. Below, in a room filled with boxes, we look around and find: 1300c, a collection of ears, 1000s, 150g, 78 skulls, an armband with gold and shaped like a bear, and a bunch of living supplies. Strider mauls an unsuspecting frost giant when he fails against a deception roll made by Ara. We kill him (9 heads) and take his head. We kill another giant nearby for another head (10heads). We find 4 more giant runes. We kill another giant for his head (11 heads). Lagrande gets into trouble with weird snow slimes with Liora and Arata. Callie finds a large table with a sack that has 500g and a large piece of paper. The paper was a letter requesting aid from the jarl from king Snurre and said he was in danger. Ara and Zug fly over a chasm and find themselves surrounded by several ice frogs, which we kill. Lagrande finds a giant amethyst frog figurine. We venture further down to the lower level of the dungeon down a path we found. Callie walks through a wall while exploring and runs into a giant (12 heads). Ara finds a giant smoking pipe on a giant. Lagrande runs into two ogres and Ara runs into 2 young dragons in a separate room. The dragons are sitting on top of a large golden area. Before we can loot the treasure horde after killing the dragons, Ara tries to chase down some escaping ogres and runs into a weird blue icy guy. We kill another giant (13 heads). We find gold plates and bowls and such in a room on a table and take them. Lagrande finds fine clothes, a pouch with…don’t know, he got suddenly attacked by a cloud giant. We kill him and take his head (14 heads). We find an ivory belt and lots of gold. We find 15000s and 12000g, 8 boxes filled with ivory at 20lb ea, alabaster statue with a winged woman at 450lb, 350 gems, 11 pewter serving pieces, 7 white marbled statues, and 27 urns. We make our way south and run into a massive room filled with bears and giants, and Ara throws the nuke for 246 dmg, which murders every enemy at once and Zug and Callie. We find a room filled with ash, as all giants were killed. We loot around and find 15 gems in the throne of the giant king, lots of ash from the explosion, a fancy looking javelin of lightning, a staff of frost. We run across a very old frost giant smoking a pipe with guard wolves. We speak with him and make a deal to spare his life in exchange for giving us the fortress (Vale). In the room he was in, we find skull of a dwarf wearing an iron crown, 11 +1 arrows, 11 tusks – horns of Valhalla, dragon skull, 3 nice tapestries, a chest filled with 700p, 3200g, potion of speed, superior healing, philter of love, coffer with jewelry, coffer with 198 gems, scroll of protection, gold flagon set, a nice drinking horn, a wand of lightning bolt, and metal ring box with a ring of protection. We gain level 15.

Svardborg

Session 48

We begin by making our way to Neverwinter to sell the spoils from our previous adventure and to stock up on any items from Kost’s shop. We sell all our stuff, buy some more stuff and upgrade our mounts, and then move on to the magic forge in Phandalin. We arrive at the mines and find large wooden gates guarding the path to the entrance. It appears the security of the mine has been fortified. Upon walking to the forge, we see the forge working and set up as Volgir appears to have been busy. We give him the remaining runes we found, and Volgir begins working with the green flames from the forge and the runes to help enchant our equipment. After the visit to Volgir, we begin our journey northward which takes approximately 1 month and a half to get to Svardborg. While flying over the sea of moving ice, parts of the ship begin to frost over. Ara uses detect magic and determines that the frost/fog is magical (transmutation magic) and it tasted like hickory and hazelnut. On the way, Callie hears a distant, deep horn which is followed by the screeching of dragons. We see a massive fortress built into an iceberg, and many different longboats with frost giants leading up to the structure. We fly down, find a safe place to land, and begin moving into one of the structures on the iceberg. We open the doors and find 3 frost giants in the middle of a drinking contest. We murder them and take their heads (3 heads). In rifling around the room we were in, Lagrande finds 6g and other random, worthless items. Arata finds a giant curtain covering a hallway. Further exploration yields a discovery of rooms with hammocks where the giants were sleeping. We see mounted heads of animals everywhere along the walls. We head upstairs into the building and fine a large horn (alarm) and a couple of rooms. We find a large golden platter. We run into a large cave area filled with giants and their henchmen. We begin to fight them and kill them all (10 heads total), but 1 of them gets away to find backup. Out of combat, we explore around a bit to see if we can find anything of value. We find 640g among the giant bodies. A slip of paper of a map of where we are (sea of moving ice). We continue on and explore the buildings to try and find the frost giant lord. We appear to be in a ruined temple, surrounded by religious statues and an altar. We are attacked by a white dragon and 2 frost giant guards (12 heads). We kill the giants, but the dragon runs away.

Session 49

Before continuing through some doors, we explore the open area of the temple a bit more first to make sure we didn’t miss anything. After Callie melts a big sheet of ice, we find 166g plus 188g and a chest with treasure of Silbar Snakeeyes (a pirate captain). The treasure contains 500 wooden coins, 30 pieces of costume jewelry, and a pouch of silvered slingstones and silver tinderbox. There is also a scroll tube with a map. We then make our way to the only remaining building that we have not yet checked out. We go inside, and find a bloody giant sitting at a table, three other giants, and 2 dire wolves. We fight them all off, kill them, and take their heads (16 heads). After the fight we look around and find a few other doors to visit. We hear a loud horn in the distance and look out to se several huge ships making their way to where we are. While we wait for those to arrive, we head upstairs to look around a bit more. We find a room with a large table that has several notes and plans for a large control weather spell. We see the old frost giant smoking a pipe again sitting in a room with wolves. This is the same one we let go from the encampment. He seems to be against the Jarl of the Frost Giants and does not seem to disagree with us killing the Jarl. The Jarl sent Droofi to the Jungles of Chult as a last-ditch effort to find the ring of winter. As the Jarl arrives in his ship with all the other giants, we head down to face them all. We see a huge ship, with 25 giants including the jarl, and a tiefling mage that has glowing blue runes around him. We immediately enter battle by flying over to the ship. A huge fight ensues with injuries to several individuals, but in the end, we find ourselves victorious. We gather all the heads (41) and loot the bodies after the battle. We find 3125g on the bodies, a stone box with runes, gold harp, 2 gold drums, 6 gold flutes. We gain level 16 and leave the intense winter.

Lyn Armaal

Session 50

We trade in our giant heads (41) for 4100g and sell our items at Kost before shopping. Ara fits Frost Brand to Strider’s claws. We add the runes we got to our equipment as well with Volgir in Phandalin. After finishing all of our business, we head to the Evermoors to find the Cloud Giant Lord. When we arrive, we find a huge castle in the clouds, with other smaller castles being built. In an attempt to find a place to enter, we look around and find many cloud giants manning ballistas and spyglasses. In an effort to reach the castle, Callie teleports the group but then gets a poor roll, which ends up teleporting us to an unfortunate location. Coming to, Ara awakens to find himself looking at...himself…on a bed… Trying to get up, he looks at his paws? Realizing he and strider somehow switched bodies, he attempts to communicate with Strider in Ara’s body. A speak with animals spell was cast so that they can speak with each other, and they move around trying to find the others. After looking at a couple of rooms, the story switches to Liora, surrounded by darkness and apples, realizes she is in a pantry. Liora persuades two ogres that she is there to eat some muffins. Lagrande finds himself looking at another him and two Auroras. They talk a bit and then begin looking around, not really sure what is going on. Arata finds herself in what appears to be a child’s bedroom, which giant tending to a greenhouse outside. Callie finds herself in a large room with a glowing blue orb, a green field with giants around her, and a wooden floor. Nevermind, she’s in a room with a scorched floor and soot with a large blue sphere with the sky rune pattern all over it. Ara meets up with Liora, Strider (in Ara’s body) begins to tell Liora what has happened so far, and they begin looking for the rest of their friends. The pair open one door and see many many birds and a few cloud giants manning the ballistas. Liora and Ara immediately close the door, but one of the giants notice them and gives chase, so the two run into another room to get away. Lagrande loses rock-paper-scissors with his doppelganger running out to check the surroundings. Arata spends a lot of time to open a door and finds a nice-looking room and moves around (takes some stuff) and manages to find both Lagrandes. Callie make sure the blue-sky orb stays locked in place and proceed to try and get out of the room from the locked door. Ara and Liora find a giant in a room and kill him. Opening another door which leads outside, Ara and Liora find themselves in the presence of several cloud giants before the story switches to Arata and Lagrande. who after moving around and going upstairs from where they were, seems to be in the same area as Callie. Callie sees Lagrande and Lagrande tries to camouflage to avoid detection of a giant nearby. Soon after a battle ensues and the group emerges victorious, and they then adventure forth to try and find Ara and Liora. Ara and Liora, facing several giants alone, immediately turn around and try to escape. Flying over several other enemies, Ara and Liora manage to make it to the second floor. We find nothing but giants and enemies, so we move up to the third floor and continue running at top speed in an effort to find the others. Ara and Liora finally meet up with the others.

Session 51

We head up into a tower. Find a fancy bedroom. Shortly after we hear heavy footsteps and noises outside. Going downstairs we find a bunch of giants. Strider (in Ara’s body) attempts diplomacy until Ara (in Strider’s body) dies. We fight, then the cloud giant queen appears, and a large battle ensues. After a very long, arduous battle we manage to achieve victory and we take the queen’s 13 masks and spear. We see a huge gold dragon and more giants on the way, so we decide to run instead of fight since we are too low on health. We run upstairs and attempt to teleport out using the conch. We barely make it in time as the dragon let out an attack during teleportation. We teleport to the storm giant stronghold and gain level 17.

Doom of the Desert

Session 52

We visit Queen Serissa and inform her that we killed all giant lords and destroyed all encampments. Serissa is headed south to the Sunset mountains in an effort to track down the HQ of the dragon cult. Serissa gives us two giant slabs to help us along, which we will take back to Volgir to enchant gear. Serissa mentions that Ymrith, which we are on our way to fight, is extremely cunning and capable of shape shifting, immune to lightning, weather can change on her mood, and she is even more powerful than a normal ancient dragon. Blue dragons are capable of burrowing into the earth and rule earth. Serissa warns us to be on the lookout on our way down south when we intend to meet her in the sunset mountains, as there are a lot of dragons and a big lich traveling south as well. We travel to Everlund (the nearest city) to visit Kost and his shop to sell stuff and buy items to prepare for the assault on Anauroch. Zug buys a few hundred pineapples because reasons. We approach a large amphitheater under a big storm and dark clouds, protected by statues and trebuchets. We approach from the north (rear of the building) and see several of the statues moving around. We enter battle with them, and after some time several smaller dragonoid creatures join the fight and surprise us as well. Mia, a figure from Lagrande and Zug’s past, enters the battle in a black cloak and begins shooting arrows at everyone. Lagrande kills his sister? We kill all enemies, Liora prolongs the longevity of Lagrande’s sister’s corpse to revive later, and the corpse is teleported to our ship. We go down a huge hole in the earth and find an underground temple/cavern. It is filled with gold and treasure, and we find more dragonoid creatures and Lord Estigue standing on a statue. We roll initiative, and prepare for battle.

Session 53

We begin where we left last week, being greeted by dragonoid creatures and Estigue. We enter combat immediately. During the fight, we kill everyone, and then suddenly Yimrith appears out of the ground and attacks the group. We fight a long battle, with several near-death experiences, until Callie casts her most powerful spell – Wish. The ancient blue dragon has 1 health left, when Zug finishes it off with a crit axe swing and cuts off the tail. We take a cloak and shiny necklace from Estigue and the ivory horn from the dragon. Estigue has a note from someone called master Severin. We take the dragon’s ivory horn which ways 340lb. We adventure on into the cavern, and find a singing guy in a cage, and we find Harshnag in cages. The singing guy turns out to be Arata’s father. We dig around a giant pile of gold: we find a skull of a gold dragon wyrmling filled with gems, pile of ivory, mithril help looks like a blue dragon, gold dragon comb with garnets, eye patch with moonstones and sapphire, jade dragon chessboard, and 92,000g. We all head back to the boat, with Harshnag, Arata’s father, and Lagrande’s sister, and begin traveling back to a major town. On the way, Liora resurrects Lagrande’s sister. In an attempt to do so, Liora in taken to a place of fire and destruction as she touches Mia. Mia sheds her skin, grows claws, and becomes a dragonoid figure with her carcass just lays before Liora. After Liora’s long vision of death and destruction and dragonoid creatures, Liora’s attempt to raise Mia had failed. It appears Mia’s soul has already been claimed. We gain level 18! We make plans on where to go from here and sell items at Kost’s shop.

The Voinindod

Session 54

We venture to Neverwinter so Liora can see Holly. They have a little bit of a family reunion since it has been at least a year since they saw each other. Liora finds out that many people are gone from the city and the church because they have headed south with many others. Apparently, many have gone south for the war that is occurring there. Liora confesses to Holly about releasing the Dodkong. Holly is concerned, but understanding and shares flaws of her own pertaining to the aid she provided Severin in obtaining the legendary dragon masks and cloaks. Holly also reveals that the church of Pelor is aware of Selene's old cursed tome. A group of individuals refering to themselves as "The Council of Whispers" claims some great and terrible threat is on the horizon. The council has seperated and is individually seeking their own solution to this threat. Holly suspects that this council may have somehow enabled Severin's plans of summoning Tiamat into the world. Lagrande, Ara, and Arata visit Lagrande’s old stomping grounds and a gay bar for some reason? After a long RP cutscene with Liora and Holly, the group heads back to the boat after stocking up and then travels southward. We approach Scornubel, the city at the very end of the Trade Way road, as we head towards the Sunset Mountains. On our way we see the DodKong fighting the huge colossus we saw before. Airships firing lightning with storm giants, and camps of people everywhere. One of the airships heads towards and on it we find the silver dragon members and Serissa. They tell us that the colossus needs to be brought down as soon as possible so that they can advance forward toward the dragon cult. We prepare for battle, and then Callie teleports the group inside the colossus using the circles set up on its interior. Teleporting inside, we find ourselves surrounded by fire giants and the edges wreathed in flames, along with a miniature sun in the center of the room. The battle lasts a very long time, as red dragons and Cinder (fire giant queen) also appear. After a long fight and getting rid of the teleportation circles which allow for their backup to arrive, we manage to defeat all our enemies and cut loose the large fiery orb from the heart of the colossus. Looting around Cinder we find a red dragon cloak and a 330lb flail. We manage to escape the dying colossus and we take the giant sun-like orb. On our way out, we meet the Dod Kong’s gaze, he smiles, and then he takes the giant orb from us. Ara’s gets upset at the Lich stealing from the group, attempts to talk back to him, and the Lich takes his blessing back. In an attempt to speak with the Lich further, and a clutch persuasion roll, Ara gets the blessing back and the Lich leaves. We go back to the town of Scornubel and rest up and take the time to develop a plan to move forward. We gain level 19!

The Well of Dragons

Session 55

We begin the session by finalizing some purchases and finding Serissa to speak with her. There are frost and storm giants everywhere also preparing, and we speak with Serissa to find out the plans moving forward. We find Serissa at a table with a large map of the surrounding area, along with many other people from our past adventures, such as the King of Neverwinter, frost giant jarl, Charles the unicorn and Greg the stuffed badger on his head, and other elven and giant individuals. Serissa describes the surrounding area of the Far Hills, including a large source of unnatural magic under the Well of Dragons. In addition, two huge gates through which giants can be seen entering and leaving. We plan to have the army attack the towers surrounding the well of dragons and the enemies outside the gates, while our party ventures through the gates in an attempt to locate and disrupt the source of magic. An old man takes a look at Lagrande’s flask and says that after some magical buffing we might be able to use it to banish Tiamat. Serissa says to rest well and to prepare for one final battle against the dragon god. Morning arrives and we start off with a Heroes’ Feast. During the feast, the DM shares a story with the group which outlines the blessings/feats each of us have received built based on the tales of our adventures thus far. Liora received: Devoted Daughter of the Sun Father, Arata: Validated Wanderer from Ashes of Old, Ara: Guardian of the Mist, Callie: Destined for Grandeur, Lagrande: Dashing Hero of Lost Destiny. We ready ourselves, and a large group of mages around a circle teleport our group towards the Far Hills with lava and dragon bones everywhere. We make our way to the gate, which is heavily guarded by two ancient red dragons. We begin to fight them and finally are able to defeat the dragons. Before moving into the gates, we take a brief respite to heal up and rest before moving through.

Session 56

We begin by entering through the gates, and find ourselves in front of dragonoids, a cloud giant, and hundreds of cultists. In the distance we also see a huge 6-headed dragon with flames pouring from its mouth. We enter battle immediately and start fending off the huge army in front of us. We fight the entire army of Tiamat worshippers and manage to win. We pick up the mace from the cloud giant lord. The cloud giant turned out to be Blagothkus, the evil cloud giant that murdered his son, Eigeron, at the Eye of the All-Father. Zug delivered the hydra dragon's corpse to Mr. Kost, who Zug appears to now be working for. Mercy for us all on what that results in. We heal up and continue onward into the molten underground beneath the Well of Dragons.

Session 57

We move on into the next cavern and find ourselves before a huge underground castle guarded by fiery fiends, dragons, ogres, and HORSES!!!!!!! We kill all of our enemies, especially the horses, and scout out the area. We see a large, ruined castle gate and no apparent enemies. We see foot tracks leading up to the gate but none beyond it, which makes us suspicious and think there may be a portal of some sort on the other side. We walk forward and disappear into darkness, and hear a voice saying “welcome”.

Session 58

We begin where we left off previously, in a dark room with a disembodied voice taunting us. The voice announces himself as grand master Severin. He is surrounded by many ancient red dragons, dragonoid figures, and several other servants. We enter battle with them all and soon realize that some of these are actually the transformed wyrmspeakers that we fought before. Over the course of the battle Severin and another individual flying over the battlefield outside begin to cast a powerful spell. When they finish, a fiery portal opens up under the well of dragons. We manage to narrowly win and defeat Severin, and we hear a huge explosion coming from outside. We loot the corpses around us and have Callie teleport us back to our ship, where we rest and gain level 20.

Tiamat’s Return

Session 59

We begin aboard our ship in the previous city of Scornubel. We look to the mountains and see huge clouds in the shape of dragon wings. We immediately head towards the clouds and find ourselves over a huge battlefield. We see the Dod Kong fighting dragons, which are flying everywhere. We also see a temple, which was not previously there, in the middle of the well of dragons. We see Serissa and some of our other allies, and we fly over to them to speak with them. We prepare ourselves with spells and potions, and then follow Harshnag as we move into these heavy, beaten down gates to the temple. We see Harshnag and a massive ally army heading in, and before us lies the most massive pile of treasure we have seen. Surrounding the treasure are four, red cloaked, pale skinned wizards. We charge in and roll initiative. We finally kill all of the wizards, but we all feel a sudden shaking in the earth below us. Callie notices the gold begin to move and shake down the pile of treasure, until finally a large figure emerges from the center of the horde. TIAMAT!!! Tiamat is summoned through the blood magic of the dying mages and rises from the massive pile of gold. We enter battle immediately, and many of them are killed outright. Throughout a very long, arduous battle, many of our allies fall and many are wounded. After several attempts at the flask to trap Tiamat, Callie finally casts the Wish spell which removes all of Tiamat’s auras/resistances. In addition to healing the party to full, we are bolstered to the point of gaining our second wind. We fight further until Tiamat’s ability to resist the flask is gone, and finally the dragon god loses her battle with the flask’s magic with a wisdom save of 1, and gets sucked in. To avoid anyone finding out that we sealed away Tiamat in a flask, we ask Serissa to teleport us to the Maelstrom.

A Journey’s End

Session 60

We arrive in the Maelstrom with Serissa giving us a rest and medical attention from our battle. We are then brought to the throne room for a discussion with the queen, Harshnag, and the frost giant lord. We see a glowing man with 7 canaries flying around him, who is smiling and tells us how proud he is of us. He calls himself Zaimor, and Serissa tells us we need to decide what to do with the flask. The group comes together, and after much debate, Liora presents the idea of banishing her to a demiplane and leaving the flask there. Ara banishes her with a scoll, where Liora finds herself in a plane surrounded by nothing but yellow flowers everywhere. Liora hides the flask amongst the flowers, the spell ends, and she reappears with her friends. The party then says their goodbyes, with Zug venturing forth to work for Kost, aiming to someday become so filthy rich that he may become the mayor of Neverwinter and rename it after himself. Callie and Lagrande choose to venture into the Nine Hells to find Lagrande’s sisters and maybe a way to save her. Ara, Arata, and Liora align with Serissa to find and defeat Slarkrathel, the kraken god. Afterwards, Ara and Arata will make their way back to the Misty Forest together.