Attendees:
I'd quote Randy Newman, but short people generally DO have reason to live; And that of course is meat shieldery.
We welcome back for a short visit, Paul, and we celebrate by bashing his dwarf into oblivion. Rest at final peace, Guzgern.
This game begins with the return to the place of our last ass-whoopin', the Lodge in the forest. I wanted extra hand-to-hand firepower so I brought along my swashbuckler as well, who is essentially an HP battery, because she does very little damage. We go below and explore what little there is left to check out. Soon we are beset by yetti, and make with the bashy-bashy. A surprisingly easy fight given the chaos we encountered last time.
A search yields two more heads to the hydra. We head up top, to the room with the tiger skins, and gather the heads. Our research (via sage) tells us that if we set the heads out and say a blessing, complete with holy water sprinklage, the hydra will reappear; where then are to destroy the heads and when the hydra is defeated, he will vanish forever back to Hydra Heaven, where each head will receive 77 virgins, or somesuch, making for an awfully crowded heaven.
Upon putting our heads together, they stir and fly about the room, attacking us. The hydra appears. Our pet behold simulacrum uses anti-magic shield to make the hydra phase out. When it drops the shell and/or the creature moves out of range, the fight begins again, this time with us busting heads while Vernal holds the hydra in place with his priestly might. However, a fear effect from the heads has caused at least three participants to jump out the building and flee (Roseblood, Etrin, and one other... Murk maybe?) The heads are dispatched quickly and those who remain gather to do the beatening. At least the others can hit (As krayden misses two shots and the other misses the 50/50), and the beast is defeated by brutality and spellishness. (Have I hit my quota of made up words yet?) All at once, the beast is consumed in a ray of godly might, most likely by Vernal's deity.
We then nuke the site from orbit. It was the only way to be sure. The lodge is destroyed. We collect our toad/reward from the primitives and then give it to somebody for all the ressurections.
Upon return to the keep, a handful of dwarves have appeared. These are Guzgern's friends from elsewhere, come to say that they have come to dispatch a group of giants who have holed up in the mountains. We agree (for some reason) to go do this.
The sneaky bastage crew (Etrin & Murk) go find the giant hidey-hole. After a brief and furious discussion of engaging the giants in some sort of philosophical debate over the merits of, I dunno... springy clothespins versus the other kind, we instead decide to go medieval. (Though I suppose that's more like we decided to remain medieval.) We send the murderers in to the hall of the mountain king to do the assassinatin'. Etrin clears two giants in their sleep. The group uses trickery to engage a couple of ogres and disposes of them as another giant and more ogres show up. In all, a pretty easy job for us, even with the 4 winter wolves that come rushing in to assist our foes.
Further exploration yields a cavern down which a hydra stands. Yep. ANOTHER hydra. This one is chained to a wall and regards us with disgust, but does not try any breathy badness on us, so we continued up the hall past that chamber. In here is the giant king/leader. He demands to know why we are here; Ashen tries to engage him in conversation but Vernal decides less chat, more smack. Krayden moves into range but it seems he too is a king: King of blowing tumble rolls. All three attempts during this combat to pass badguys yield attacks of opportunties. Upon his entry, Krayden gets a glimpse of others coming up the corridor and shouts a warning.
The full scale combat breaks out and there are 5 giants coming up the hall while we fight the giant king. Dwarves try to make with the dwarven wall across the entry into the room, but are no match for the giant who overruns them, and they fall like the mines of Moria. Vernal puts up a wall of stone in a clever bisecting manner, so that the giants can only enter the room by either climbing over the thick wall or scooting under it, either of which limit them to one at a time and cause attacks of opportunity.
Note Etrin does call for retreat (as usual) but no one listens (also as usual), but in this case it was to be expected; I doubt there's any enemy we would run from before we've taken damage (which we really hadn't at that point).
Other good things we have going for us:
All this causes a couple of giants to go down and the leader to move toward the exit, where the hydra is, presumably to unleash it. Attempts to interpose between him and the exit generally result in sever bodily harm, like driving over a sever tire damage strip and having your tires somehow damage the spikes. He makes roadkill of Krayden, who is brought within 2pts of final negative-CON death (And being the type who would not desire resurrection, it would be final). He then fights atop the body until the giant moves on the round just before the final point bleeds out and vernal brings him back to consciousness.
There are quite a few folks popping up and down like jacks-in-the-box, their hit points seemingly bestowed by the gods with velcro. Finally the group decides to pull back. A dwarven helper falls to dust while another is brought back by potion. Ashen moves up the corridor, followed by Krayden and Roseblood, but no one wants to move too far beyond the group. The giant frees the hydra. A thunderclap by Krayden does almost nothing to the hydra, who uses cones of cold on Ashen. Ashen webs him in to try and allow more people past, but that only slows him a moment.
At this point we have the giant leader (who is up the tunnel out of sight, beyond the hydra), one giant who ran away after never getting past the stone wall barricade, and the hydra, who is eventually brought down by spells & smackering. We exit as fast as possible, taking with us anything we find on the way out.
So a few giants remain, including their leader, plus maybe some more
staff/ogres. We shall see.