Maintaining the advantage created by their blitzkrieg assault, the party moves onward, examining an abandoned barracks (probably the home of the now deceased bodyguards) and moving to open a set of double doors. The doors reveal a hallway, the end of which has been retrofitted to accommodate a party of hill giants and their pet bears. Dalliance softens them up with a lightning bolt and Demming hurls a missile from a necklace of missiles and burns the rest. The monks scale the barricades, and a few moments later the fight is over. The bears do some gnawing upon Feaster and Ron’j! is struck unconscious – but the party quickly recovers and moves to another door off the long hall. Locked and barred – knocked and opened,
Inside the party faces off against the matriarch of the fire giant clan, the lumpy and horrific queen Frupy. She commands the intruders to kneel before her and pay homage. Ron’j! asks “Does that ever work?” before they attack and kill her. Well, it isn’t quite as simple as that. The queen is heavily armored and her pair of pet giant weasels pose an additional threat – but the threats are eventually neutralized and the party does a quick round of smash and grab, opening coffers with a set of keys lifted from beneath the dead queen’s sweaty jugs.
Some coffers are empty, others are full – coins, jewelry and snakes. The party takes what they can and plots. What to do? Flee, stay or third option? In the end, the decision is made to re-lock and bar the door and to try and hole up in the queen’s chambers. That plan only lasts a few more minutes, as the relief force is apparently loose in the complex now – reinforcements coming from wherever to deal with the intruders. Giants are a whole lot less scary when Dalliance has a full spell complement, so when the giants start knocking on their queen’s door -the party swiftly deploys a rope-trick spell and ascends into the extra-dimensional space to hide.
Twelve hours later, they exit and begin to creep around the complex, spotting and annihilating a quartet of fire giants standing guard at an intersection before ducking into what appears to be a council chamber, replete with maps and tables and such. Further investigation reveals the presence of a concealed room with spyholes into the chambers. Apparently occupied until recently by someone rather short, the room bears signs of a hurried departure. Some prying reveals a secret ledger – showing that the giants were indeed collecting tribute from villagers, and paying it on…to the Drow.
Hmm. Drow again? Those suckers are everywhere it seems…
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