skt recap - chrisman/skookums-and-dragons GitHub Wiki

Part I: The Nightstone Saga

1. Welcome to Nightstone (The Nightstone Saga)
2. Friendquest (The Nightstone Saga)
3. Ear Takers (The Nightstone Saga)
4. Black Ooze (The Nightstone Saga)
5. Fishy Cult (The Nightstone Saga)
6. The Rescue (The Nightstone Saga)
7. Mushroom Foraging

Part II: The Goldenfields Saga

8. On The Road (The Goldenfields Saga)
9. Snail Fail (The Goldenfields Saga)
10. Oscar del Pinto's Lonesome Bow Boys (The Goldenfields Saga)
11. Shopping Simulator 9000 (The Goldenfields Saga)
12. Attack on Goldenfields! (The Goldenfields Saga)
13. Attack on Goldenfields! Part Deaux (The Goldenfields Saga)
14. Attack on Goldenfields! Here Be Giants (The Goldenfields Saga)
15. Attack on Goldenfields! Siege (The Goldenfields Saga)

Part III: The Savage Frontier

16. Tower of Zephyros (The Savage Frontier)
17. Womford Bat I (The Savage Frontier)
18. Womford Bat II (The Savage Frontier)
19. Womford Bat III (The Savage Frontier)
20. Womford Bat IV (The Savage Frontier)
21. Comings and Goings (The Savage Frontier)
22. The Fall of Zephyros (The Savage Frontier)
23. Emotional Lightning (The Savage Frontier)
24. Amphail (The Savage Frontier)
25. Amphail: Giants! (The Savage Frontier)
26. Hot Topic (The Savage Frontier)
27. Grudd Haug I (The Savage Frontier)
28. Grudd Haug II (The Savage Frontier)
29. Canyon of the Stone Giants I (The Savage Frontier)
30. Canyon of the Stone Giants II (The Savage Frontier)
31. Canyon of the Stone Giants III (The Savage Frontier)
32. Bigly's Birthright (The Savage Frontier)
33. Waterdeep I (The Savage Frontier)
34. Waterdeep II (The Savage Frontier)

tldr: Arrive in Nightstone to find the aftermath of a giant attack, and a current goblin infestation.

• date: 2020-04-02

Our heroes accept a summons from Lady Nandar to help mediate a seemingly irreconcilable dispute between the settlement of Nightstone and their neighbors to the north, the wild wood elves of Ardeep Forest.

Upon arriving at Nightstone, however, they find the town laid to waste, destroyed by large boulders dropped from above. The town is furthermore currently being ransacked by the Pinback Goblins, a mischievous clan named for their distinctive way of pinning their ears back behind their heads.

The gang impressively dispatches a pair of monstrous wolf-like creatures with bald, intelligent faces and shortened snouts. And then capture and interrogate an unlucky trio of goblins in the nearby temple. (Rest in peace, Nosering, One-eye, and Broketooth.)

They learn that they town had been laid siege to by some cloud giants, who then stole away with the town's namesake, the Nightstone, a mysterious obsidian megalith with unknown magical properties.

The villagers fled the town to seek refuge in the network of bat caves to the north known to locals as the Drip Drop Caves, which is where they were captured and imprisoned by the cannibalistic Pinbacks.

After the interrogation, Bigly goes on a solo adventure to the Nightstone Keep where he discovers the body of the team's benefactor, Lady Nandar, laid out in the great hall being watched over by four guards.

Agent Cooper discovers that the Pinbacks are not quite so harmless when not outnumbered as he is ambushed by five of them, filled him with arrows, and knocked right out. Chef works to stabilize him before he succumbs to his wounds while Coruthu, Bull, and Milkboy provide cover.

tldr: Meeting lots of NPCs

• date: 2020-04-09?

Our heroes finally rid Nightstone of the Pinback incursion. Along the way, they pick up some loot and befriend Skrillex the winged cat.

At the Nightstone Inn they capture Kella Darkhope, a spy working for the Black Network, and also Mister Wiggles the flying snake. (Bigly struggles mightily to shove the snake into his bag.) Yum-yum the goblin chef apprentices herself to Chef.

New Friend Roll Call!

1. Yum Yum: Chef's mentee

2. Mister Wiggles: Bigly's buddy

3. Skrillex: Coruthu's companion

4. Kella: Cooper's object of suspicion

tldr: a tribe of orcs decends on Nightstone

• date: 2020-04-16

The gang wakes up the next morning at the Nightstone Inn and graciously decides not to kill Kella. To celebrate, they all enjoy a smashing eggs benedict breakfast prepared by Chef and Yum Yum.

A bunch of Kella's Zhentarim teammates show up, lead by Xolkin Alassander. They aim to restore the town in the wake of the giant attack and establish Nightstone as a Zhentarim base of operations.

Before the gang can proceed to Drip Drop Caves to rescue the villagers, they hear war drums in the distance. The Ear Takers--a clan of orcs named for their gruesome tradition of wearing elf ear medallions around their necks--have been displaced from their usual territory by encroaching hill giants. They approach Nightstone and try to take the town.

Bigly flies out into the fray and teams up with Mister Wiggles to punch out some orcs. Milk Boy and the Zhents pick orcs off from atop the wall. Coruthu, Chef, Bull, and Cooper defend the breach in the wall after the orcs discover it and start slowly pouring into the town.

The orcs lose over half their number without gaining a foothold in the city and flee into the surrounding hills.

tldr: Finally head to the Drip Drop Caves. Encounter a black ooze and a lack of goblins.

date: 2020-04-30

The gang finally leaves Nightstone and heads toward the Drip Drop Caves to rescue the villagers.

They approach the cave with Yum Yum who is ecstatic to pass on some cookin knowledge to her goblin family. Yum Yum tells them about a side entrance to the cave before leaving and heading through the main entrance herself.

The team sneaks around to the side of the hill and finds a side entrance. They head in and confront a black pudding ooze. It sucks, but they defeat it.

Continuing through the network of tunnels, they find the main cavern which--surprise!--is not, as expected, overrun by goblins, but instead teeming with kuo-toa who are in the process of disposing of goblin bodies.

tldr: Wage battle with cultists and fish people

• date: 2020-05-07

So some little Danny DeVito looking fishy boys are being ordered around by some spooky hooded figures, clearing the cave of dead goblins.

The gang sees one squad of bad guys bring a captured Yum Yum in from the south entrance, lead her off into one of the tunnels branching off the main cavern, and then leave without her.

Bigly decides they've waited for action long enough and tries to sneak up on one of the cultists. His plan is pull its hood back so they can see what is hidden beneath the cloak.

Unfortunately, one of the kuo-toa spots him mid-sneak and does a burble gurble glub glub and alerts everybody. So a big fight commences between the gang, a couple of cultists, some small fish boys with nets and spears and shields, and two magical big fish boys with pincer staffs.

Some of the kuo-toa manage to net Bull and start to drag him away while poking him with spears. But Bull manages to do some crazy lightning and thunder stuff even while fully restrained, and obliterates a bunch of them, and then frees himself like no big deal.

Bigly goes toe to toe with the Big Fishes and gets beat up a little bit, but also holds his own and stands his ground.

Cooper goes and hides amongst some dead cultists and pops up now and then to shoot a fire arrow and do some sneak attacks.

Chef throws his cleaver and does some truly vicious mockery of one of the big fish who seems to suddenly question his life choices.

Coruthu moves across the battlefield and ultimately captures the one remaining cultist through an impressive and fortuitious display of intimidation. He sprouts wavering tentacles and roars at the hooded figure, who immediately starts to grovel and beg, and then calls off the remaining kuo-toa.

tldr: Rescue the villagers. The Big Bad escapes.

• date: 2020-05-14
• present: Bigly, Milk Boy, Chef, Cooper, Coruthu

Our heroes entreat the cultist Shure to take them to the holding pen where the Nightstone villagers are. He eagerly complies and leads them to and through the northeast tunnel.

He cautions them to stay quiet because of the bats as he leads them into a holding area guarded by one lone, nervous looking kuo-toa, who jumps at the sight of them, and then holds one long finger to its wide lips and shushes at them.

There's a large conical hole in the center of the room receding deep down into the ground, farther than the eye can see. Around the edges of the room are three 10 foot high ledges atop which huddle small groups of terrified villagers. They are not restrained or enclosed in any way. It seems the natural features of the room are sufficient to hold them in place.

Bigly approaches the hole and bellows down into it, "Hello, bats!" The villagers immediately drop to the ground and curl up and cover their heads and the backs of their necks with their arms and hands.

A wall of air rushes up hits Bigly as hundreds of thousands of bats are startled into action. They beat their leathery wings and start screeching, and then fly up into the cave. Visibility is reduced to less than an arm's length. Everybody is cut and scratched by wings, teeth, and claws as the bats whirlwind in a panicked fury.

Coruthu uses his animal sense to try to plead and reason with them, but they are too many and too crazed. Milk Boy flails about with a dagger and kills a couple bats but makes no dent in the swarm.

Eventually the bats calm down on their own and start receding back into the hole.

As they do, Cooper takes advantage of the situation to rush the kuo-toa, who is still cowering from the attack, and kick him into the big ball of bats, which, as a single mass, somehow manages to support his weight for a brief second before descending with him down into the depths.

Our heroes help the villagers down from their ledges. Among them is the stout dwarf Morak ur Gray, proprietor of the Nightstone Inn and acting leader of the townsfolk in the absence of Lady Nandar.

He tells them that the cultists had just recently taken Teela, a beloved neighbor. And that if they hurry, they might be able to rescue her from whatever dark fate they have in store for her.

Also among the captives is Yum Yum, who fears that the cultists may have captured and killed her children. She runs off to the sleeping caves to look for them.

Shure, still enthralled by Coruthu and mistaking him for a high level operative of his own cult, tells him nearly everything he knows about nearly everything, including the caves and the cult. He calls his lord The Lurker in the Deep, and The Bringer of Storms. The gang decides he's been just about as useful as he's ever going to be (and also he's kind of creepy) so Bigly kicks him into the hole, and everybody runs away as the bats go into another frenzy.

In the main cavern, Morak leads the townsfolk out of the cave and back to Nightstone. One somewhat competent but ultimately expendable town guard remains behind with the heroes to guide them through the cave network. (He doesn't even get a name besides "Guardsman #2," and in about 3 seconds the players and the DM will all forget he's even there.)

Milk Boy and Cooper find some kuo-toa tracks exiting the holding cave and heading into tunnel to the north, and the gang ventures forth to find the cultists and rescue Teela.

The tunnel is much longer than any they've been in yet, and recedes steadily down into the earth. Eventually it opens up to reveal an enormous underground lake. The shore stretches out to either side farther than can be seen, and the water stretches away in the same way. No walls or features can be seen beyond it. With no tides or waves acting on the water, the surface is eerily still.

Just past the shore, waist deep in the water, four cultists are supporting what appears to be a human form wrapped in thick cloth and bound with thick cords at the ankles, knees, hips, shoulders, and neck.

On the shore are three more such bundles in a heap, soaking wet, carelessly discarded. They don't move.

Our heroes interrupt the ritual and catch the cultists by surprise. Their ranged attacks make quick work of three of them, and the final remaining one throws back their hood to reveal the corpse-like face of the High Priestess.

Her skin is translucent and pale, blue veins clearly visible beneath, spider-webbing across her face and throat. Her eyes are dark orbs of swirling, inky blackness. Her hair is long dark braids which writhe like tentacles.

She channels some unknown power and a booming voice emerges from her, from the water, from the walls of the cave. It thunders in some unknown language, and half the group halts in fear.

Cooper starts raining down arrows on the priestess, while Chef takes turns inspiring his teammates and mocking their opponents, driving one of the cultists mad with the discordant whispers in its head, and at one point--perhaps inspired by the recent encounter with the bats--engulfing the cultists in a horrifying cloud of swirling cleavers and slashing chefs knives.

Bull holds back and focuses his efforts on sending a spectral, glowing greataxe around the battlefield, hacking and slashing as it goes.

Coruthu uses illusion magic to brand himself with the mark of his patron, a mass of tentacles reaching out from a black cloud--the same mark the cultists wear--and wades out into the water admonishing and berating them like an angry dad on behalf of their shared patron. The priestess talks to Coruthu out in the water, calling him "little brother" and assuring him that her fight is not with him.

While all this is going on, Milk Boy fires his prized blink arrow into the water near the floating body which had started to sink below the surface. Once the arrow hits the bottom of the lake, he is instantly pulled through a small planar rift and is immediately ejected again at the arrow's location. Snatching the arrow with one hand, he pushes off the lake bottom, swims upward, and hauls the bound form back up to the surface, and then back to the shore. He cuts open the cords and unwraps the bundle to reveal a mostly dead--but slightly alive!--Teela.

Out gunned and outclassed, the priestess summons forth a writing mass of tentacles much like Coruthu's and uses it as cover to retreat further back into the water and disappear under its still surface.

This one got away. But the heroes saved Teela from becoming a human sacrifice, and they freed all the villagers who were lucky enough to survive the combined efforts of the giants, the goblins, and the cultists.

Back in the village, the Zhentarim make good on their promise to help rebuild. They supply food, aide, and medicine to the Nightstonians, who start the long, slow process of putting their town and their lives back together.

Most of the town is living and operating out of the Nightstone Inn at this point. The rooms inside are reserved for Morak and our heroes, now hailed as Heroes of the Town, and a few select others. Many tents and temporary structures surround the inn and fill the town square.

Our heroes spend about two weeks in the town helping with repairs while resting and recovering themselves.

They finally put together all the pieces of the tragedy of Nightstone: unknown to anybody here, a clan of hill giants started rampaging through the hills past the Ardeep Forest, displacing the Pinback goblins and the Ear-Taker orcs. By the time the cloud giants attacked the town, the Pinbacks had already settled in the Drip Drop caves. The Ear-Takers were severly depleted after fighting back against the giants and then clashing with the elves of Ardeep Forest.

With all that in place, when the townspeople fled the cloud giant attack, the gobins and orcs just happened to be in position to hold the cave and converge on the town.

The part of the story that continues to be mysterious is the role of the cult of the deep: where they came from and what their goal is. How they managed to sieze control of the cave from the Pinbacks. One consequence of their appearance is that Coruthu can now be seen for the first time without his steadfast hook at his side.

Eventually Morak gathers our heroes and tells them that the townsfolk now have the resources and the resolve to finish restoring Nightstone on their own. Heroes of their might and skill must be of more use elsewhere. News has arrived of giant attacks in other places, on other towns. They will always be welcome as saviors of the town whenever they come back, but they should feel free to leave now and continue their adventure.

Finally, he mentions one last way they might help Nightstone. The elderly couple who owned Skrillex and who perished in the giant attack had a grown son named Markham who is the sheriff of Bryn Shander, far to the north. Morak asks that the heroes travel to Icewind Dale and deliver Skrillex safely to Markham, and tell him the sad news of his parents' passing.

tldr: Our heroes go mushroom foraging and encounter giant toads, a basilisk, and some owlbears

• date: 2020-05-28
• present: Bull, Coruthu, Bigly, Milk Boy

Our heroes venture out into the Ardeep Forest to gather some mushrooms that Chef wants for a recipe they're working on. When they got to the clearing where the mushrooms grow in the shade of a giant toadstool, they encountered two giant toads sitting half buried in a mud nest.

As they drew near, they drew the toads out of their nest, revealing a large egg with a large crack in the top.

As our heroes engaged with the toads, Milk Boy positioned himself by the egg so that whatever hatched would imprint on him as its mother. What eventually hatched was a small eight legged lizard with spine frills and a small eggtooth. Recalling that the villagers said this part of the forest was full of "strange statues" and also drawing on his own knowledge of exotic beasts, Milk Boy guessed that this was a basilisk, and started trying to lead an organized retreat.

Bull, never one to back down from a fight, directly engaged the toads and the basilisk, getting near petrified and half eaten in the process.

At this point, a curious owlbear cub stumbled into the clearing, soon followed by its two protective owl parents, blocking our heroes' retreat.

Coruthu laid down some most excellent crowd control, spawning some tentacles of the deep, hurling repelling blasts at the basilisk to knock it away from Bull, and conjuring a thick fog cloud to bamboozle the owl bears.

Bigly successfully used some food from his pack to lure the basilisk into the fog cloud with the owlbears, and with the toads already dispatched, this provided the opportunity the heroes needed to flee the battle.

Back in the village, our heroes make final preparations, planning to leave by High Harvesttide, traditionally the last day that one can embark on a journey and still hope to avoid the harshest parts of winter.

Milk Boy achieves new unheard of levels of efficiency while milking cows by using his blink arrow to zip around from place to place. He once again meets the widow of the halfling whose locket he found upon first arriving in Nightstone, and she gifts him her dead husband's well worn archery bracers, which seem to hum with some kind of magic energy.

Bigly discovers some new properties of the stein he took with him when he left the monastary. By concentrating on it, the mug produces large quantities of almost any kind of liquid. He proceeds to deepen his bond with the owlbear cub (which they took with them when they fled the basilisk) by producing large amounts of honey on demand.

Bull notices that the "Frosthoof" rune, the emblem of his clan, has started to fade from his totem. One evening while performing a ritualistic axe dance, a bolt of lightning strikes the earth near him and he discovers a javelin crackling with lightning energy.

Coruthu dreams of an encroaching doom in the depths of the sea and is transported to the elemental plane of water where he meets the sentient aspect of the ocean itself. The titan asks Coruthu to pledge himself to its service with the goal of defeating Coruthu's former patron, the Lurker in the Depths. And to also stick it to the Lord of Fire whenever they can. Coruthu accepts, feels his bonds to the Bringer of Storms break and feels the protection of Istishia envelop him. He wakes and finds his battle hook has been altered: a deep crack in the hilt runs through the symbol of the Lurker in the Deep, and embedded in the blade of the hook is a glowing opalescent Pearl of Power.

tldr: Strike out on the road toward Goldenfields. Encounter some displacer beasts.

• date: 2020-06-11
• present: Bull, Coruthu, Cooper, Chef, Milkboy

Chef is relentlessly running a chef brigade back at the tavern, trying to achieve the breakthrough in food preservation and nutrition needed to revolutionize the emergency food ration. This will be a game changer for survivalists and for disaster relief efforts.

Supplied with dried mushroom flakes from their foray into the Ardeep Forest, Chef succeeds in motivating and inspiring their brigade, and they succeed in perfecting the process.

Chef gains the ability to use all the charges of their spice pouch to cast Goodberry.

1. Cooper discovers that they accidentally recorded the High Priestess of the mysterious cult in the Drip Drop Caves when they cried out in an unknown, inhuman tongue. Perhaps now there might be a way to decode the message somehow.

2. Morak presents Cooper with half ownership of the Nightstone Costco, and a list of supplies, and asks them to to stop by Goldenfields "as long as your on your way" and have the local Costco send the needed items to Nightstone.

3. Cooper finds a Bracer of Flying Daggers

Our heroes decide to stick to the road instead of venturing into the Ardeep Forest.

It takes two days to get back to Waterdeep. On the third day, they turn up the Northfurrow road toward Goldenfields. Toward the end of the 3rd day, they are ambushed by two displacer beasts.

Cooper throws flaming ball bearings and flaming arrows. Chef and Coruthu deal psychic damage. Bull hurls a lightning javelin and flails with his axe. Coruthu and Bull conjure spiritual weapons and tentacles of the deep. Bigly uses his pincer staff to pin one of the beasts to the ground as Milk Boy finishes it off with a well placed arrow.

They defeat the one and recover its pelt. The other runs away.

tldr: Milkboy heals a frog person, and the gang beats up a snail.

• date: 2020-06-25
• present: Bull, Coruthu, Cooper, Bigly, Milkboy

Still on the road, the gang makes camp for the night. Milkboy takes first watch, and encounters a lone bullywug who beckons him away from the fire. When he follows, the bullywug takes him to an injured companion of his. Milkboy makes a leaf compress and stabilizes the injured frog person. As a gesture of gratitude, the bullywug gives Milkboy a bloodstone.

The next day, they Cooper and Bigly spot the telltale signs of a flail snail having recently crossed the path. They follow the trail and find the snail. Bigly immediately jumps up on the thing and rides it, and the snail promptly whomps him real good. Bigly subsequently hops down and runs away. The gang whiddles away at the snail until it dies, and they collect the shell.

They continue their trek and make it to the outter walls of Goldenfields by sundown.

tldr: The gang heads into town, meets some locals, and does some shopping at Costco.

• date: 2020-07-02
• present: Bull, Coruthu, Cooper, Chef, Milkboy

Milkboy and Cooper investigate the bloodstones given to him by the Bullywugs who came in the night, and discover that they have magical properties and are in fact Sending Stones.

The rest of the gang wakes up and everybody heads toward the gates of Goldenfields. After a cursory search, during which Coruthu magicks Bull's battle axe to look like a large candy cane and Milkboy passes his bow off as a one-string guitar / lute / plucked instrument, they are ushered inside through the gatehouse, despite the fact that Bigly looks comically suspicious / dangerous at 8 feet tall and 300 pounds, armed with a wicked pincer staff and a second "snake staff", carrying a huge psychedelic, iridescent snail shell, and accompanied by a young owlbear.

Inside the gates, they meet a couple locals:

• Zi Liang, a young acolyte from the local abbey who is incredibly underwhelmed by the town's security and preparedness after recent hill giant attacks on the town walls.

• Strog Thunderblade, the aloof and dismissive captain of the guard

• Shalvus, an excited and curious shepherd who also happens to bear the mark of the Black Network

• Lifferlas, a great awakened tree who likes playing with and telling stories to the town children. Many hundreds of years old. He told a story of a primordial fire elemental trapped in the mines beneath Gauntlgrym.

• Miros "The Yeti" Xelbrin, barkeep and tavern owner. Covered head to foot in thick, curly, white hair. His sister died in Nightstone.

• Oren, a hard drinking, lute playing halfing who plays at the inn.

They head into Fantasy Costco to complete their business.

Cooper, partial owner of a Costco franchise himself, easily fulfills the shopping list for Nightstone.

The gang heads to the back of the store and meets Ecks Varn, a small red kobold artificer who is astonished at the sight of the shell and the pelt. He pays them handsomely in gold, and also promises them the first artifact he makes from each thing, stipulating that he gets to keep and use the remaining material as he sees fit.

Their pockets lined and their purses heavy, the heroes do a little shopping, and then head back to the inn.

Chef heads into the kitchen and meets a young pinback goblin who bears a striking resemblance to somebody they know. She introduces herself as Gum Gum, daughter of Yum Yum. She got separated from her clan when the hill giants attacked, and she asks Chef for any news.

tldr: The gang goes shopping. Goldenfields is under attack?

• date: 2020-07-09
• present: eric, trips, elizabeth, linda, chris
• party: 🐮 Bull, 🧜‍♂️ Coruthu, ☕️ Cooper, 👨‍🍳 Chef, 🧘‍♂️ Bigly

The gang spends some time at Costco picking up supplies:

• A bandolier of friggin bombs (Cooper)

• A cloack of displacement (Coruthu)

• A Snail Flail Shield (Bull)

• Some studded leather armor (Chef, Cooper, Milkboy?)

Then they headed back through town to Northfurrow’s End, the inn where they are staying.

Bull has a talk with the gang about revivification and end of life preparations.

Chef has a reluctant heart-to-heart with Gum Gum, daughter of Yum Yum, who reveals that her siblings--Dum Dum, Bum Bum, and Sara--are all still out there somewhere.

Coruthu dunks his head into his Bag of Holding full of water--which is holding almost 500 gallons of water by the way--to commune with Istishia, who tells him that revivification is A-OK!

Bigly snuggles up with Cutie and everybody has settled in for the night, when Oren comes crashing back in to the inn, screaming, "They're here! We're under attack!"

tldr: A bunch of goblinoids and giants sneak into Goldenfields

• date: 2020-07-16
• present: eric, chris, linda, alex
• party: 🐮 Bull, 🧜‍♂️ Coruthu, ☕️ Cooper, 🏹 Milkboy

"What is Costco's return policy on grenades?" Cooper

After Oren alerts them about the invasion, the gang teams up with some villagers to head to the town center and fight off the attackers, and to save the children that were camping out with Lifferlas.

They find some bugbears leading the attack, loading Eye Stabber goblins into some shoulder mounted trebuchets called "Goblin Huckers" being worn by some Ogres. One of the bugbears told a couple Eye Stabbers to "go fetch the Moon Biters!" and then instructed the others to steal the kids because they would "make such tender meat for Chief Guh!"

The gang decimated most of the goblins and picked away at the bugbears and the ogres, but then the Moon Biters arrived and started to pour into the town center, bolstering their numbers.

Zi took off for the abbey to sound the alarm while Chef ran support, alternating between inspiring his teammates and vicously mocking his enemies.

Bull ordered Oren to keep up with her and protect her, but he was way too slow and instead just kind of ran around and drank from his hip flask. Bull stromed around the battlefield, calling lightning down, swinging his totem around, and at one point brutally, ruthlessly beat down an ogre who was trying to escape.

Bigly waded straight into battle going toe to toe with some ogres and bugbears while Lifferlas slowly made his way across the battlefield, battering the monsters with his branches. At one point, one of the bugbears managed to snatch a child, and Bigly went after him and pinned the bugbear so Milkboy could skewer him.

Naxene cast Fly on Milkboy and then went and corralled the kids, getting them out of danger. Milkboy flew around the battle doing obscene amounts of damage with his arrows.

Cooper laid down massive amounts of damage with his newly bought explosives and delighted in the carnage. Meanwhile Miros went toe to toe with an Ogre and even successfully wrapped one up in a crushing bear hug for a while!

Coruthu laid out huge amounts of crowd control with a big wall of water and a huge mass of tentacles, and then set to blasting people all over the place. He teamed up with Shalvus, who made a couple ace shots with his crossbow.

Zi eventually made it to the abbey, roused the Abbott, and sounded the bell. When they heard it, the invaders knew they couldn't take on the heroes, the town guard, and the whole city, so one of the bugbears ordered a retreat, shouting, "Back to the wall! Hopefully the Hill Howlers have found enough food for satisfy Guh the Insatiable!"

A couple bugbears and an ogre escaped. They captured one bugbear.

The last thing that happened was they all felt an earth shaking rumble, and Bull noticed that part of the rune of the Frosthoof clan on his totem started glowing.

tldr: We learn a little more about the attack on Goldenfields

• date: 2020-07-23
• present: eric, chris, linda, elizabeth, alex, trips
• party: 🐮 Bull, 🧜‍♂️ Coruthu, ☕️ Cooper, 👨‍🍳 Chef, 🏹 Milkboy, 🧘‍♂️ Bigly

The gang interrogates a captured bugbear.

He tells them that they are from Grudd Haug, the den of Chief Guh the Insatiable and her hill giant brood. She sent two of her brood, Lob and Ogg, to lead a raiding party of bugbears, ogres, and goblins to forage for food. But the two giants were so dumb and incompetent that they got the party lost for days until the bugbears took over and lead them to Goldenfields to loot and ransack it for food for Guh.

The gang disposes of the bugbear and pursues the fleeing monsters to the abbey.

They arrive and dispatch a few more GOB.

Bigly does this totally insane thing where he tries to lift Lifferlas and throw him like a javelin. But then he remembers that Lifferlas weighs two tons and even though Bigly is huge and can lift almost a thousand pounds, even he cannot lift 4,000 pounds of living hardwood.

So instead, Lifferlas picks up Bigly and hurls him like a javelin straight into the face of an ogre with devastating results.

The rest of the monsters continue to flee past the abbey, through the grains, toward the wall. The gang follows in hot pursuit and makes it to the wall where the see a bunch of GOB clambering over the wall and also, more interestingly, two huge hill giants just inside the city walls.

tldr: The gang kills some big dumb crying babies

• date: 2020-07-30
• present: eric, chris, linda, elizabeth, alex, trips
• party: 🐮 Bull, 🧜‍♂️ Coruthu, ☕️ Cooper, 👨‍🍳 Chef, 🏹 Milkboy, 🧘‍♂️ Bigly

"I'm not staying for cheese puberty" - @tripstripstrips

Lob and Ogg are two big Lennys who are wandering around inside the town wall babbling to one another about finding lots of food for Chief Guh while the GOB continue their retreat over the wall and out of the town.

Bull paints his face with blood and wages straight into battle with the giants, summoning a dark cloud, calling down lightning, and brandishing his axe and spiritual weapon, and surviving a Squash! attack from Lob.

Milkboy, still flying, quickly circles around behind the giants thanks to an impressive misty step straight through the center of them. From atop the wall he lays down some spikey spike growth, and starts skewering them with planar arrows.

Bigly fills up his alchemy jug with oil, and Lifferlas hurls him at Lob like a football. The plan is to douse him with oil and set him on fire. Unfortunately, Lifferlas's throwing arm snaps off and Bigly lands at the feet of Lob, who goes T-POSE! TIPPY TOES! DOWN HE GOES! and squashes Bigly flat dead 👻👻👻

Bigly arrives on the ethereal plane and sees a gossamer, translucent version of the battle continuing around him. He also briefly sees some ghostly faceless figures who blink away as soon as they notice him looking at them. Finally, he sees what looks like another version of himself right before Bull finally heals him back to life.

Coruthu and Shalvus lay down some eldritch blasts and crossbow bolts, Coruthu successfully shoving the prone giant through the spike growth while simultaneously battering him with his tentacular specatular.

Cooper and Miros repeatedly blast the giants with fiery crossbolts from the cover of a nearby tree, catching Ogg on fire. Cooper crit on a sneak attack which was ridiculous. Cooper also catches Ogg with one of his flashbang grenades, which is kind of the beginning of the end for Ogg, and results in him wandering around aimlessly, blinded and deafened (and on fire) for most of the fight.

Chef does some motivating and inspiring, and also lays down a volley of crossbow bolts from the safety of another tree.

Battered, torn, skewered, and, in one case, on fire, the giants reach their mental and physical limits and surrender. They sit down and start crying, drop their weapons, and beg for the fighting to stop.

And then Naxene jumps in with a lightning bolt and a magic missile and pew pew pews them both dead.

Naxene! Giant Slayer and War Criminal!

The giants are dead, and all the GOB have fully retreated. The battlefield is clear, and in the sudden quiet, our heroes hear drumming and the clash of weapons banging against shields shields outside the town walls by the main gates.

Cooper loots the giants and finds a lot of gems and things, and a particularly, exceptionally stinky wheel of cheese. It's just going through some changes right now that it can't really control.

tldr: The gang negotiates the release of some kids held hostage by the giant army

• date: 2020-08-06
• present: eric, chris, linda, elizabeth, alex
• party: 🐮 Bull, 🧜‍♂️ Coruthu, ☕️ Cooper, 👨‍🍳 Chef, 🏹 Milkboy

"Why is Milkboy so thic?" - @linda

In the aftermath of the assault on Goldenfields, Captain Strog Thunderblade informs our heroes that there is a large giant hoard outside the front gates of the city, and they appear to have captured some town children!

The group takes a minute to collect themselves and lick their wounds. Chef uses his magic spice pouch to produce some really good berries while Bull hacks off the heads of Lob and Ogg. He hands the heads to Thunderblade and orders him to carry the heads back to the gatehouse. Zi drags Bigly off to the inn to recover.

Eventually everybody gets together and heads to the gatehouse. Except for the NPCs, who are not heroes, and are beyond exhausted, and head home to sleep it off.

From atop the gatehouse, they see three more giants, several ogres and bugbears, and dozens of goblins.

A goblin is hucked up on top of the town wall with a note attached:

gib us da fud
oar we et da child
u hab til son doun

Bull grabs the severed heads of the giants, mounts them on spear points, and brandishes them at the hoard. He also rubs some of the hill giant blood into his totem, which flashes brightly and then absorbs the blood like a sponge, and then the frosthoof rune stops glowing. Bull's blood ritual spooks everybody out.

Sizing up how much time they have, the gang heads back to Northfurrow's End to plan and rest.

On the way, they see Strongblade's men rounding up the dozen or so goblins they managed to capture and leading them to the executioner's block.

Coruthu chats up one of the guards about giants and learns a few pieces of lore:

• Giants until recently were so rare that many people thought they were legends. The stories tell of a great war between giants and dragons, after which few of either were ever seen again.

• Nightstone has a mythical reputation of being dragon-proof. In the days of dragons, surrounding areas on all sides were ravaged by the great wyrms, but never Nightstone itself.

Bull has a dream interrupted by Grozdan, shaman of his tribe, who admonishes him for being late to sleep, tells him the frost giants are running amok in the north, and implores him to seek out the Grim of the Gray.

Coruthu's bag full of water twitches in agitation, so he dunks his head inside and is greeted by a small avatar of Istishia, who chides him for carrying around a bag of holding full of water, and instead gives him a decanter of endless water if he "wants to carry around lots of water," and tells him to use his bag of holding for better purposes. Istishia is very proud of Coruthu's performance but doesn't know much about the giants.

Cooper is hanging out with Miros at the bar. Having gnomish gin and tonics with a twist of star orange. Cooper grabs a pigeon and fills out a pingestacart order for some bombs from Costco and then passes out at the bar.

The next morning! Everybody wakes up. Miros pours everybody coffee and serves omelets and potatoes.

A pingestacart delivery person in a grey and yellow uniform shows up with an order for Cooper. He hands over the 3 bombs he ordered, and also a grenade launcher, which Cooper did not ask for. He informs Cooper that the total is 950 gold pieces, and that he has 30 days to pay before the contract is enforced by the "modrans of mechanus," but nobody is sure exactly what that means.

Then Cooper goes to tip the man, and has a total crisis after realizing the plight of the working man and his own priviledge and vast personal wealth. He ends up tipping 58 gold pieces and a frying pan, much to the elation of the delivery man, who may or may not have gone on to build an entire criminal arms delivery enterprise. We don't know.

The gang finishes up breakfast and heads to the wall! Strongblade is there acting as though he saved the town himself. He gives our heroes an update: the hoard still has the children and is demanding food. Also, an empty caravan is heading this way from Waterdeep to fill up with food, and will be here in a matter of hours. The giants will surely destroy the caravan.

Coruthu pins a note to Skrillex and sends him off to warn the caravan to halt and wait.

Bull asks Naxene about the phrase "Grim of the Gray" and learns some lore:

That can only refer to the Gray Hand, a "last resort" team of operatives reporting directly to the Blackstaff of Waterdeep. One of their number used to be the notorious Harshnag the Grim, a heroic frost giant. Of course, nobody has seen him in a generation.

The abbot is summoned and easily persuaded to tap into the reserves and give the giants the food they are requesting. Even though it may mean a hungry winter for some more remote establishments.

They pile up a flat wagon with a couple hundred pounds of grains, gourds, fruits and vegetables, and Bull hauls it out. They negotiate an exchange with the bugbear, and the children are released. Bull questions them over the entire haul being solely for their chief, and not to them. The bugbear resolutely confirms that all the food must go to Chief Guh the Insatiable, and that they will be happy with the scraps they get. The giants hoist up the wagon, and the hoard retreats.

The gang heads back once more to Northfurrow's End. On the way, Strongblade is giving a press conference about how he personally saved the town. Back at the tavern, everybody who bonded with a citizen during the fight is asked by that citizen to perform a small task for them.

In the end, Coruthu distributes his bag of holding full of water between several ponds in the area. Milkboy ponders this new responsibility and choice. Chef ponders the implications of a new relationship. And Cooper joins Bull in his meditations and asks him how he can be a better person, further suggesting a change of character.

Achievement get: Level Six! 🎉🎉🎉

tldr: The gang hitches a ride in a flying castle to Bargewright Inn

• date: 2020-08-20
• present: eric, chris, linda, elizabeth, alex
• party: 🐮 Bull, 🧜‍♂️ Coruthu, ☕️ Cooper, 👨‍🍳 Chef, 🏹 Milkboy

Some Orville Pecks on Turkeys are here to talk the German man in the sky

Our heroes spend a week in Goldenfields.

Milkboy and Coruthu spend their time training and inspiring the town guard, showing them how to improve the defenses. Their morale improves and they start taking initiative, and Strog Thunderblade's political influence diminishes.

Cooper shops around at Costco a little bit, and takes a failed water breathing potion from Naxene, which turns out to be an effective Potion of Fish Unconsciousness.

The team, through their heroics, has started to attract the attention of some powerful organizations:

• Cooper is contacted by the Harpers and is told to investigate Bargewright Inn. There is something nefarious going on beyond the typical Zhentarim plots.

• Chef is tapped to join the Golden Chefs Brigade via Gum Gum acting as a proxy.

• Coruthu accepts an offer to join the Order of the Gauntlet in their mission to protect the weak and the innocent.

• Milkboy chooses to align with the Planar Circle, part of the Enclave responsible for protecting the world from extraplanar incursions.

As the calendar turns and the month of The Rotting begins, the team and Shalvus pack up and start trekking up the Dessarin River toward Bargewright Inn.

Barely a day's march from Goldenfields an enormous dark cloud, initially spotted on the horizon behind them, overtakes them and descends from the sky, ultimately touching down ahead of them. The cloud falls away into a thick fog, revealing an enormous tower.

Zephyros the cloud mage emerges from the tower and greets them enthusiastically, exclaims that their meeting had been foretold, and welcomes them all into his tower for, "we have much to discuss!"

The heroes hitch a ride in a flying castle, and over the next day they talk at length with Zephyros, a cloud giant whose brain is addled from constant attempts to contact the entities of the outer planes. He tells them much about giantkind, about the shattering of the Ordning. He tells them that Countess Sansuri is collecting magical artifacts from the Dragon/Giant War thousands of years ago. Perhaps this is what became of the Night Stone.

He tells them the outer planes have told him that they will be the ones to restore the Ordning, and that his role is to intervene only enough to offer to take them somewhere, and to answer their questions as best he can. The rest is up to them.

He tells Bull that the Frosthoof rune on his totem is an ancient giant rune named haugise which means Hillfrost. And that Thrym has been missing for many years.

Later, some cultists show up wearing the garb of the Lurker in the Deep. Coruthu hides behind a statue, and the cultists, one wearing a satchel with an upturned smile stitched on it, and the other wearing a 10 gallon tank of water strapped to his back, approach Zephyros (mind still reeling from a recent contact with the outer planes) and they offer a good faith boon to him and ask him to join their cause.

Zephyros accepts the boon, a bag of pixie dust, and retreats to his room to consider the offer. Milkboy uses his blink arrow to portal up there to counsel him, and advises him not to accept. Zephyros consults the outer planes again and decides that the cult's motives do not align with his own, and declines the offer. The cultists leave. Zephyros feels guilty for keeping the pixie dust after refusing their offer, and gives it to the party.

Then a regal stone giantess, an emissary from Maelstrom, portals into the tower. She is wearing the bottom jaw bone of an ancient blue dragon as a headpiece, and a fine crack across her face, under her eyes and across the bridge of her nose. She tells Zephyros that King Hekaton has gone missing while looking for Queen Neri. Message delivered, she blows a mighty conch shell and disappears again.

Zephyros is distraught at this news and believes that with the shattering of the Ordning there is no order in heaven, and now with the King and Queen of the storm giants missing, there is no order on earth, and there is no telling the effect this will have on the giants.

The tower arrives at Bargewright Inn. Zephyros gives Cooper a swirling smoky potion in case they ever need him again, and cautions him that he must never unstopper the potion, that the bottle must only ever be smashed without being unstoppered.

Shalvus leads the team to Bargewright Inn, a walled town that has an economic stranglehold on the impoverished Womford. The wildlife nearby takes on a sinister and corrupted affect.

Inside Bargewright Inn, they are warned by the locals of the Womford Bat which preys on travelers and strangers and, in their absence, easy targets among the residents of Womford.

They buy a room and stay the night.

tldr: The gang searches for the Womford Bat

• date: 2020-09-17
• present: eric, chris, linda,, alex
• party: 🐮 Bull, 🧜‍♂️ Coruthu, ☕️ Cooper, 🏹 Milkboy

Warning: Time travel shenanigans ensue

The suli lili wake up in an alley next to the dead body of Gus Chiggins, the crazy old coot from the bar. They have no memory of what happened, how they got there, or how much time has passed.

Cooper thoroughly inspects everybody and finds the following:

1. Bull is in a weakened state and upon inspection has some small puncture marks on his neck. The same kind that riddle Gus's corpse.

2. Milk Boy has a strange mole he should get checked out, and due to his flatulence should maybe lay off the dairy.

3. Coruthu's skin looks a little dry and flaky. He should probably hydrate more and see a dermatologist if it doesn't improve.

Bull searches his memories and reels from the psychic damage.

Bull feels like there is a clear threat presented by the Womford Bat and that they should go looking for it. He leads the gang out of the common bedroom and back down to the bar.

Cooper grabs Gus from the bar. He is initially reluctant, but then agrees to join their group.

He repeats what he knows about the bat: it usually preys on visitors, travelers, and strangers. And when there are none of those, it preys on the poor and destitute of Womford. It only strikes at night. And two or three nights after the victim goes missing, the body always appears in some alley in Womford.

He tells them that the attacks started around the time Nalaskur showed up with Arik and Margot and the rest of his zhenetarim gang.

The gang decides to sneak back upstairs and figure out which room belongs to Arik and Margot. Bull recognizes that he is not built for sneaking, and stands post at the top of the stairs with Gus, who is covered in pots and pans and tin cups, also not built for sneaking.

Milkboy sneaks around and finds a room with two pair of boots outside: a worn pair of shepherds boots obviously belonging to Shalvus, and another fancy, unscuffed, high heeled pair of boots beside it.

Coruthu finds a door with some covered dishes outside it.

And Cooper finds a door behind which he hears Margot and Arik.

They use the bullywug bloodstones (a.k.a rocky talkies) to communicate with each other and Cooper, Milkboy, and Coruthu place a twig in the doorframe, so that if they come back and find it has fallen, the will know the door had been opened.

DM's note: Alex and Linda kicked off a fantastic group use of props when they both, independently of each other, grabbed a geode off their desk to speak into.

Satisfied, the leave and let Gus lead them around Womford as they look for the Bat.

Bull has scooped up Gus's body and the Little Giants are preparing to leave the alley when Cooper's memories come flooding back and he too reels from the psychic damage.

Some time after returning from Womford, Cooper goes to check on Margot's door and finds that the door has been opened and the room is empty.

He searches around the room and doesn't find anything. In desperation and frustration, he completely tosses the room, eventually finding a false ceiling in the armoire.

He gathers up the rest of the team and they stealthily climb up into what turns out to be a small crawlspace of an attack. There are piles of wooden palettes and boxes, and support pillars cast looming shadows in the dim light.

They fan out and start exploring the darkness. Cooper turns one corner and sees what appears to be two coffins in the distance. As he comes closer, the shadows start to move and writhe. A huge roiling swarm of rats comes teeming toward him!

tldr: The gang misty steps away from some vampires

• date: 2020-10-01
• present: chris, linda, alex, zigs
• party: 🧜‍♂️ Coruthu, ☕️ Cooper, 🏹 Milkboy, Klak

Note: This is the first appearance of Klak Crakbak!

Note: Klak's first two rolls, an attack roll and a perception check, were nat 20s! 🎲🎲

Back in the alley, the Little Giants are preparing to move Gus's body when Klak Crakbak comes rushing into the alley, calling them by name, alerting them that they need to get the move on now before something happens. Nobody recognizes him, but he convinces them that they know each other and have fought alongside each other during their memory lapse.

He conjures a floating disk to help them move Gus's body. They drape a cloth over him and they carry him over to the Womford cemetary where they give him a quick burial. Cooper says a few words. "Sorry you died, Gus!"

Klak explains to them that their paths crossed when his investigation of the Stillmarsh family intersected with their pursuit of the Womford Bat. (Or as Cooper has taken to calling it, The Wombat.)

After hearing the name Stillmarsh, Coruthu reels as he remembers.

Back in the attic, the rats swarm over Cooper, scratching and biting. Cooper hurls the awkward teenaged wheel of cheese at the rats, distracting a number of them.

Milkboy skewers a huge number of rats making a satisfying rat kabob. Coruthu summons a gust of wind and some writhing tentacles to blow the remaining rats (and the cheese) off Cooper and into the corner. Cooper runs around them over to the coffins, and kicks them open. They are empty except that the bottoms are covered with piles of earth.

Meanwhile, below, Klak's pursuit of Margot Stillmarsh has lead him to the Bargewright Inn, and he's following the Little Giants' trail throughout the second floor. He finally catches up to them in the attic and meets them for the first time. He quickly assesses the situation and impatiently blasts some rats as he looks around for Margot.

Unseen by anybody, Margot sneaks around a corner and grabs Gus from behind and drags him away. From the corner of his eye, Milkboy sees Arik clinging to the ceiling like a spider right before he drops to the groud, grabs Milkboy by the throat, bites him, and drags him off into the dark as well.

Cooper is still messing with the coffins and Coruthu is concentrating on wind gusts and tentacles, so neither of them see any of this.

Klak backs up around the corner and sees Arik and Margot with arms full of Gus and Milkboy. Seeing Gus as the more vulnerable, he calls out to Milkboy, You got this! And he blasts Margot. Milkboy casts Misty Step and appears on the other side of the room as Arik suddenly grasps nothing but air.

Misty Steps: 1

Margot angrily drops Gus, who slides to the ground, dazed, and she runs forward and grabs Klak and bites into him. They struggle for a bit until Klak also misty steps out her grasp and appears somewhere else in the room.

Misty Steps: 2

Coruthu has noticed what is going on now and sends his tentacular specatular and some eldritch blasts after Margot. He's also noticed by now that the new guy is also hurling eldritch blasts, so he's like, Sup, Brolock?

Margot now grapples and bites on Coruthu and manages to hold on to him for a bit, draining some extra life from him.

Cooper realizes what's up now having just returned from messing around with the coffins, and fires a flaming arrow right over Coruthu's shoulder into Margot. She does not like this.

Coruthu in desperation draws on the boon of his patron, the pearl of power, summons some extra strength, and misty steps away from Margot.

Misty Steps: 3

Arik manages to get a hold of Klak again, bites him and starts to drag him behind a crate, but--you guessed it!--boom, misty step.

Misty Steps: 4

Arik and Margot both hate Misty Step at this point.

Arik slips around a corner behind a pile of crates and disappears. Klak blasts Margot one final time and the last known member of the House of Stillmarsh goes down.

In the aftermath, Margot and Gus lie dead. Klak searches Margot and finds a heavy wrought iron key with intricate scrolling.

Klak and the Little Giants actually meet for the first time, now that they're not fighting off swarms of rats and bitey vampires. He tells them he's investigating the Stillmarsh family and initially assumes they're pest exterminators of some sort. They ultimately agree to team up and apply their collective resouces to their mutual interests: find the Wombat and find out what the Stillmarshes were up to.

Weakened and depleted, as the sun comes up the gang retreats to their room and spends most of the day resting.

Coruthu's flashback ends.

Back in the Womford cemetary, Cooper questions Klak's ability to speak directly into their minds (which he has done frequently this whole time). He matter-of-factly explains, "Oh, I'm a warlock. That ability is a gift from the Old One. He's helping me make friends. Would you like to meet him?"

Klak notices that the design and the scrolling of the key that he found on Margot matches that of the gates around the cemetary.

tldr: The gang investigates the Stillmarsh family crypt and finds wolves, ghosts, riddles, and vampires!

• date: 2020-10-08
• present: linda, alex, zigs, trips
• party: ☕️ Cooper, 🏹 Milkboy, 🔮 Klak, 🧘‍♂️ Bigly

Bigly decides that Klak is straight up a magician (unlike Bull, who channels his god; and unlike Chef, who is just really good at cooking; and unlike Coruthu, who is a fishman?) and this freaks Bigly out. "NO. No, magic bad. You stop magic."

The gang all heads deeper into the graveyard past the plain headstones and into the center where the mausoleums, crypts, and other above ground tombs are. The wealthy part of the graveyard.

They soon find their way to the Stillmarsh family crypt, which is being guarded by some Zhentarim thugs.

Klak does his best impression of Nalaskur, leader of the local Zhentarim, and speaks directly into their brains, ordering them to go guard some other building to the south. Bewildered, but accommodating, the guards leave.

Just as they do, Bigly notices a rustling in the bushes as a hungry pack of wolves leaps out! Milkboy lays down some spikey plant growth around them as Cooper lassos one and feeds it a ration to appease it. Bigly throws a dart at one of the wolves, but his fingers are dusty from eating crackers, and he misses. He wipes his hands on Cutie and tries again, this time spearing a wolf with his dart. Klak does some blasty blasts, and the remaining wolves perish in the spikes. But just then another three wolves creep around the back of the mausoleum and circle around behind Milkboy and Klak. Milkboy skewers them to pieces with his arrows.

Approaching the crypt door, Klak considers the heavy chain and padlock holding it shut. The design matches his key perfectly. He conjures a mage hand (Bigly: "NO, BAD!") and unlocks the door from a distance. He hands the heavy iron chain to Cooper and they all head inside.

Inside is a stone sarcophagus surrounded by heaps of gold, wooden chests, and urns of precious oil. All of which the gang starts pillaging and pilfering.

Cooper finds a sweet punk rock black denim vest with large pockets safety pinned on the front, and pins and badges stuck on the back. And also a stick roughly the size of half a broom stick.

Bigly takes the vest and fastens it around Cutie, who looks cool as hell wearing it. When Bigly places a handful of gold inside one of Cutie's pockets, he is instantly transported inside of a small wardrobe. There are some plain clothes inside, and when he opens one of the slatted wooden doors, he is instantly standing next to Cutie again. He does this a couple more times, and eventually comes back with the contents of the wardrobe, "FREE CLOTHES!", keeping a comfy looking pair of pants for himself. Because he apparently has not been wearing pants beneath his robes this whole time.

Klak decides he wants to see what's in the sarcophagus, and convinces everybody to help him open it up. When they start to, the lights flicker, and a faint ghostly wail can be heard on a sudden chill breeze that seems to come from nowhere. Bigly nopes out at that. But Klak and Cooper continue to open the coffin, releasing the ghost of a woman with a slit across her throat so deep that she is nearly decapitated.

As the ghost reaches out to Cooper, Klak calls out to the spectre's mind and implores it to stop. She turns to him, but resists his pleas until Klak magically mends the rend in the corpse's throat, thus also healing the slash in the ghost's form.

She considers this a kindness and warns them that the last remaining Stillmarsh lurks below, and that although she has laid here dead for hundreds of years, he is not her descendant, but her forebear. Satisfied and finally at rest, the ghost fades away.

Klak wrests a gold locket from the folded hands of the corpse. Inside is an old picture of a man bouncing a baby girl on his knee, and an inscription, "Annabelle".

Cooper finds a scroll, written in Elvish.

Bigly excitedly announces that he can read Elvish, and snatches up the scroll, which reads:

Use your head to paint me red
Inside of thee resides your key
What you spurn shall be returned

He struggles to translate this back to Common, but everybody is very supportive, and then Cooper and Klak, the half-elves, just read the scroll themselves once he's done with it. Good job, Bigly.

The scroll directs them to the back of the room where a trapdoor is magically sealed shut and resists all attempts to open it.

Klak goes outside to collect some wolf blood and gives it to Cooper, who clenches a brush between his teeth and literally uses his head to paint the trapdoor red with the blood. The latch springs open and then suddenly the meaning of What you spurn shall be returned is clear as a zombie wolf leaps out and attacks them!

They make short order of the wolf, but Bigly is thoroughly spooked at this point and leaves to go hang out in Cutie's wardrobe by himself.

Klak pockets the lock and latch, which seem to be made of pure silver.

Everybody heads down below into the catacombs.

They are down there but for a couple minutes when they hear footsteps above, and soon Gus Chiggins lowers himself down through the trapdoor and joins them! "Dagnabbit, you young whippersnappers, you forgot your old pal, Gus!"

Milkboy notices that fresh earth still clings to Gus's clothes. Then his eyes flash red, his fangs extend, and risen vampire Gus lunges for Milkboy, "I'm gonna eat ya all up and drink all yer dang blood!"

Milkboy dodges, and wrestles Gus like a fish, and flings him off the stairs landing. Gus falls below, prone, and lies on his belly. Cooper darts in for a stab, allowing Gus to get close enough to grapple him and bite him and start to drag him away. Klak gives him some solid blasts. Cooper manages to counter-grapple Gus and drag him back up onto a raised altar, and then eventually sets Gus on fire, because that's what Cooper does. Klak then dramatically uses thaumatergy to cause the flames to rise and burn bright purple, while Milkboy finally finishes him off with a couple well aimed arrows.

The gang gathers around the burned, skewered corpse of their one time friend. They ask Cooper to say a few words. Again. But Cooper refuses on the grounds that you can't eulogize the same person more than once. That's some kind of double jeopardy.

So they decide to continue exploring the catacombs. Cooper notices some footprints in the dust leading off to the west, which leads them into some earthen tunnels. Each path they take seems to lead to a different room full of coffins. They decide to more closely investigate the room to the south. As the enter, Arik Stillmarsh emerges from the shadows and greets them warmly, "Welcome! Come, we have much to discuss!"

tldr: The gang makes a business deal with a vampire. Cooper has a traumatizing out of body experience.

• date: 2020-10-15
• present: linda, zigs, trips
• party: ☕️ Cooper, 🧠 Klak, 🧘‍♂️ Bigly

Arik Stillmarsh welcomes the Cooper, Bigly, and Klak into his lair.

He commends them on their strength and skills, and offers a truce. "You don't get to live for millennia as I have without learning to pick your battles!"

He confesses to being the Womford Bat, "Ugh, what a horrid moniker! I would never choose such a distasteful name for myself! But, yes, I am the Womford Bat." It was a temporary arrangement between him and Nalaskur's gang, made when their paths happened to align as each party made their way to Bargewright Inn. He admits that he has grown weary of the Zhentarim though and will soon be rid of them.

When asked, he tells how he used to live in the Far North beyond the Spine of the World, but was recently displaced by a usurper he called the Bone Witch, whose growing domain swallowed his own land. She tolerates no living dead in her lands who don't submit to her. And Arik cannot and will not abide subjugating himself to anyone. So he fled his home for the ancestral Stillmarsh house in Old Ironford.

He in turn interrogated el gigantes pequeños about their experience with giants. "Everywhere you go, there seems to be giant activity. Is this coincidence? Do you have a way of anticipating their movements? Should we expect an incursion here in Womford?"

Arik suggested a business arrangement: if they would collect giant blood, a vampire delicacy, for him on their travels, he would be indebted to them, and would make introductions for them in the north. Klak agreed to the arrangement on behalf of the team, in exchange for additional payment of six ice shards of the kind used to supernaturally chill the six blood bladders Arik gave them in a small roll-up bag. (Six bladders for six types of giant! Also in the bag is a thin summoning tube to be broken upon completing their task: a thin, liquid filled tube suspended inside a second liquid tube filled. When the tubes are snapped and the liquids mix, Arik will be alerted.)

They asked if he could give them anything else to help them on their adventures, and he produced a Cloak of the Bat for Klak, a Bag of Holding for Cooper, and some dope ass +1 knuckle dusters for bigly.

Cooper starts giddily transferring stuff from his oily bag into this new bag of holding. Bigly jostles him, forcing him to drop and shatter the glass flask that Zephyros gave him.

As the glass scatters across the floor, Cooper's consciousness is ripped from his body and hurtled through the cosmos. He awakes in a vast hall. Statues and pillars line the wall. Sitting on a throne before him is a giant of mythic proportions. Hundreds of feet tall. As he speaks to Cooper, madness creeps in around the edges of his mind and he feels the pressure of a hundred oceans pressing down on him, and simultaneously he feels the void of space pulling at him. Cooper tells the giant that he was looking for Zephyros, and the giant leans forward and plucks Cooper up off the ground, pinching him between thumb and forefinger. "Then I will tell Zephyros you are looking for him. And when you see him, tell him you have seen Annam." And Annam flicks Cooper away, once again rocketing through the cosmos, and ultimately back into his body, which had collapsed to the floor.

The gang awkwardly gathers up their things and heads back to Bargewright Inn. Cooper remains in a near comatose state for the rest of the evening, pondering the infinite and the bubbles in the foam of his beer. Bigly and Cutie spend the evening enjoying the music of Jimbly Chaffindish, the Parrotkocra bard. Klak spends some time burning incense and stuff and summons a great horned owl to be his familiar.

tldr: Goodbye to Milkboy, hello to the Marvelous Dr. Mise, off to Waterdeep!

• date: 2020-10-22
• present: linda, hood, trips, alex
• party: ☕️ Cooper, 🧜‍♀️ Coruthu, 🧘‍♂️ Bigly, 🏹 Milkboy, 👻 Mise

The gang is hanging out in the Bargewright Inn tavern. Cooper is still somewhat traumatized by their mind altering trip through the cosmos, and sitting despondently at the bar. Coruthu and Milkboy attempt to comfort him while Bigly and Cutie head up to bed.

Suddenly Chef bursts in through the door of the inn, looks around frantically, sees Milkboy, and rushes over. "There you are! I've been tracking you for days! Listen, I met a knight from Summit Hall who seems to think it is imperative that he find and talk to you. He's right behind me..." and then they all see the tip of a ten foot lance come in through the door, followed by a knight in full head-to-foot armor, gripping said lance. He and his lance awkwardly navigate the crowded room.

Knight: Oscar del Pinto, you cur! You have been neglecting your duties! You must return with me to Summit Hall at once!

Milkboy: Oh! Okay!

Milkboy (to his friends): Well, guys, looks like I gotta go!

Milkboy (to the knight): Um, how are the cows?

Knight (shouting): In need of your attention!

Coruthu, seeing that the knight is a self-important buffoon in need of being knocked down a few pegs, gets up to some hijinks at his expense. He conjures up a small mass of tentacles to tap him on the shoulder and bamboozle him, and also conjures the illusion of a full mug of ale balancing on the tip of his lance. The knight suffers a little humiliation, and then without too much ado or fanfare, Milkboy leaves with the knight to go become an NPC.

Meanwhile the usually astute Cooper has been charmed at the bar by the loud tall tales and wild claims of the braggadocios flim-flam man and self proclaimed ghost hunter, The Marvelous Dr. Mise!

Cooper eagerly starts going deftly and nimbly through his pockets for reasons I can't really remember, and is crestfallen to find nothing but bits of fluff and lint. It is a terrible thing to discover your hero is a phony.

The next morning, the lot of them gather around the continental breakfast, the main feature of which, to everybody's disappoint (especially Mise's), seems to be the distinct lack of a waffle station.

Tense, waffleless negotiations ensue, mostly between the hesitant Bigly ("Bigly father now," gesturing to Cutie, "Must think of family.") and the emboldened Cooper, about where to go and what to do next. To which whimsy shall they tie their fate? By which stars shall they set their course? What is even the deal with Dr. Mise? Is he just part of the team now? Are we just letting anybody join? Is there even an application or approval process?

They eventually all agree to head to Waterdeep to cash in on Zi's and Naxene's connections there and get some dragon allies with whom to fight the giants!

• date: 2020-11-12
• present: Zigs, Hood, Alex
• party: 🧠 Klak, 🧜‍♀️ Coruthu, 👻 Mise

tldr: the gang befriends a terrifying earth demon named Caddyshack. Zephyros dies in a crash after his castle comes under attack and is destroyed by a mob of stone gargoyles.

Our heroes agree to take the safest option, which is to travel the Cairn Road up to Red Larch, from where they can then take the Long Road down through Amphail and Rassalantar to Waterdeep, where they plan to learn more about dragons from Chazlauth Yarghorn, and also to claim Zi's inheritance from her family friend, Cauldar.

They strike out on foot mid-morning.

The first day's march is uneventful. As the sun lowers, they set up camp a ways off the path. Klak casts a spell of protection around the campsite, and everybody starts settling down for the evening.

Suddenly, Klak's alarms start going off! Everybody jumps to their feet as the ground opens up before them and deposits a stout earthen creature with three arms and three legs, and instead of a head, just a huge gaping maw with rows of sharp teeth atop atop its shoulders.

It approaches Coruthu, gesturing and speaking in a strange tongue nobody can understand.

Klak calms and soothes the beast, and determines that it means no harm. It is merely hungry.

Mise tries to float some breakfast sausages, pocketed from that morning's meal, over to the stone creature, but it bats them away in frustration. Coruthu gives it a couple ball bearings, and it eats them, but looks kind of sad about it.

Finally, Coruthu offers it a handful of gold coins, which it greedily slurps from the palm of his hand, and sits down begging for more.

Klak tosses gold coins at it until its hunger seems satisfied. The creature lays down by the fire and tucks all its limbs underneath itself like a cat. Completely indistinguishable from a boulder now, it sleeps and snoozes peacefully.

Mise authoritatively describes the thing's physical appearance while Klak and Coruthu listen indulgently. They eventually interrupt him to tell him that the creature is in fact a xorn, an earth elemental that swims through the ground and eats gems and precious stones.

The team takes turns keeping watch, and keeping an eye on the hungry rock creature which they still don't quite fully trust, and the night passes without incident.

In the morning, they break camp. The xorn, which they have tentatively taken to calling Caddyshack, wakes up, stretches, poops out a small diamond, and dives into the ground and burrows away.

The Little Giants continue down the road. They notice ash falling, and soon see smoke rising over a nearby hill.

When they go investigate, they find the smoldering ruins of a huge tower which Coruthu recognizes as Zephyros's cloud castle.

It looks to have hit the ground at a tremendous speed, shattering into pieces. Bits of ruin and rubble lay scattered all around, and scraps of paper and parchment, and bits of book float in the updrafts of the fire among the bits of ash. Several dead gryphons, which Zephyros kept as pets, lay on the ground. And several stone gargoyles stand among the wreckage.

Of the three of them, only Coruthu knows Zephyros and recognizes the tower. He runs toward the base of the tower to find his giant friend.

As he does, Klak sends a tremor of energy through the earth to settle an unstable stone that may be in Coruthu's path. As he does so, one of the gargoyles topples and rolls a couple feet toward Coruthu, and Klak and Mise see another gargoyle turn its head toward Coruthu, and a third one suddenly seems to take a couple steps to intercept him.

Coruthu eventually notices this as well, and is able to dodge the stone creatures and enter the base of the tower, where he finds Zephyros lying lifeless on the ground, his staff at his side.

Two gargoyles block the entrance to the tower; two unfurl their stone wings, take to the air, and descend on Klak; and one more flies straight down to Mise, who is struggling to keep up with his two companions.

Klak dodges the two gargoyles before him and takes a swing with his staff before retreating.

Mise, "inks himself" and envelops himself in a cloud of magical, impenetrable darkness. From within the dark cloud, he hurls his magic rock, the peltergeist, at one of the creatures. It bounces off the gargoyle's chest, and it looks slightly miffed.

Coruthu starts blasting gargoyles from within the tower, and Klak, still surrounded by gargoyles, dives into the inky black with Mise.

Mise claps him on the shoulder with a meaty hand that smells faintly of sausages. "It's me. I can see in the dark."

"Then point me toward a gargoyle!" cries Klak, who starts blasting in the direction Mise turns him.

Suddenly, Caddyshack erupts from the ground in front of two of the gargoyles and rips them to absolute shreds! I mean, just tears them to pieces!

Mise says, "Watch your eyes," drops the darkness, and then weaves a haunting, hypnotic pattern in the air before the remaining gargoyles. Two of them are utterly entranced and stop what they're doing.

Coruthu, still within the tower, blasts one of them from long range and pins it against some rocks, and then Klak steps forward and swings his staff like a baseball bat, shattering the thing.

The ground beneath the second one opens up as Caddyshack pulls him down into the earth, never to be seen again.

And the third and last one, seeing all its companions quickly obliterated, turns and flies away, and Klak blasts it from behind as it flees.

The danger passed, everybody reconvenes in the tower before Zephyros's body.

Coruthu tells them the story of who he was and how he helped them.

Klak fills on of Arik Stillmarsh's blood blatters with Zephyros's blood: one down, five to go!

Coruthu and Mise gather a giant amount of wood to form a giant funeral pyre on which to burn Zephyros's giant body. In the meantime, Klak has been studying and communing with Zephyros's staff, and has discovered it to be a profoundly powerful magical artifact. Wielding it, he shrinks Zephyros's body down to the size of an average human man.

"Well now we have way too much wood," laments Mise.

They light the pyre, and wait for it to burn down.

In the aftermath, Klak gathers up a bunch of scraps of paper and casts mending on them to recreate a page from Zephyros's journals, which mention him seeking answers in "the Temple of Annman in the North" (which is the name of the god giant from Cooper's vision), and which also mentions the possibility that "that old blue dragon" may be orchestrating something. The page concludes by saying he is being pursued, and he may not have time to warn his small friends before his pursuers catch up to him.

Our heroes finally leave the crash site and continue down the road, arriving in the town of Red Larch in time to spend the night.

• date: 2020-11-19
• present: Zigs, Hood, Alex, Linda, Trips
• party: 🧠 Klak, 🧜‍♀️ Coruthu, 👻 Mise, ☕️ Cooper, 🐊 Fiona, 🧘‍♂️ Bigly

tldr: Our heroes arrive in Red Larch in the aftermath of a Fire Giant incursion. Klak and Coruthu put out a house fire. A traumatized Cooper decides to take an extended rest, and Fiona Derwin, a "crocodile hunter" and conservationist joins up with the group to hunt some exotic animals. Then they fight a whole bunch of wild zombies in the woods as they continue on their way to Waterdeep.

The Little Giants arrive in Red Larch, which is currently suffering from having had a bunch of fire giants stomp through the center of town.

Klak and Coruthu rush over to help put out a house that is on fire, while everybody else heads over to the Dran & Courtier for some food and drink.

Klak awakened minds into the minds of the bucket brigade and also waves around his giant staff to double the size of the buckets they're carrying. The combination of telepathy and transmutation scares half the villagers off. But the other half remains, and now struggles to hand off huge buckets of water instead of normal sized buckets of water. Klak and Coruthu douse themselves with water, take a deep breath of fresh air, and plunge into the burning building.

They start to run up the stairs to the top floor, where most of the blaze is, but the stairs collapse beneath them. Klak leaps clear of the broken step, but Coruthu starts to fall. Klak waves his staff again and telekinetically hoists Coruthu back up and onto the second floor where he is. Coruthu takes out his endless decanter, shakes it up, and starts spraying a geyser into the room while Klak floats him around and also doubles the amount of water pouring from the flask.

They douse the flames, and the townsfolk rejoice, and they all head over to the Dran & Courtier for drinks and food and celebration.

On the way, the townsfolk tell them all about how a bunch of fire giants came stomping through the town, heading north, taking no notice or heed of any small folk or buildings they trampled under foot on their way.

In the tavern, Bigly is immediately smitten with Prophetess Dran, owner and operator of the Dran & Courtier. He is flustered, unfamiliar with such feelings, and inadvertently flips his crumblecake up onto the ceiling where it sticks. Cooper stares at the cake in slack jawed wonder, his mind a million miles away, still reliving the trauma of his trip through the cosmos. Mise promptly refuses to eat any of his crumblecake, citing the fact that crumblecakes should crumble. Not stick to the ceiling. Entirely the wrong consistency.

Bigly overhears a lizardfolk at the bar telling a story about trying to rescue bats in womford, only to find out that several of the bats she captured were in fact vampires, and they would not fit in her bat bag.

Cooper wakes from his reverie as the crumblecake falls from the ceiling, and he catches most of it in his mouth and chews and swallows before standing up and approaching Fiona Derwin, the lizardfolk, and giving her his bag of holding. "You'll be able to fit a lot of vampires in this! I won't be needing it anymore."

He announces to his friends that he has decided to take a mini-retirement here in Red Larch to rest and work on his mental health.

Fiona joins the group at their table and they all get to talking excitedly about vampires, giants, and dragons.

As the tavern is winding down for the night, Bigly stays behind after everyone else has left to help Propha with cleaning up the place. He carries entire tables full of dishes and glasses, and then even entire tables, back to the kitchen to wash and wipe down. Propha likes this, and knows that he is trying to impress her and flirt with her, and she tells him that she might be into it if she wasn't already married. She promises to introduce him to her wife later, and he's happy with this and goes off to bed.

The next morning, everybody wakes up to a big continental breakfast featuring a disappointing lack of a waffle station, and they agree to all continue to Waterdeep together to get some info on getting some dragon allies before going to take on the giants.

Out on the road, they hike for two days, and on the second night they are ambushed in the wee hours of the morning by a hoard of zombies! Fiona was the only one up at the time and she tore into the first wave with a terrible smite from her warhammer. She yelled and woke everybody else up and more zombies continued to poor in from the trees and bushes.

Klak and Coruthu, warlock twins, did a punch of pew pew pews and smashed up some zombies. Coruthu's repelling blast laid down some convenient crowd control, blasting a couple zombies off Fiona.

Bigly and Cutie teamed up wreck one particular zombie, only for it to jump back up after they thought they had killed it to scratch Cutie. Bigly did not like this. He grappled the thing with his pincer staff, dragged it over to the campfire, and pinned it down in the flames until it was burnt to a crisp.

A couple zombies swarmed around Coruthu, but were really ineffective because of how hard he was to pin down because of his displacer cloak. He then hurled an enormous lightning bolt, managing to sear several zombies to a crisp, and also lighting several tents on fire in the process. He then dutifully put the tents out with his endless decanter.

Mise did some spooky stuff. He threw his spooky stick over into the bushes, which was promptly brought back to him by his loyal hell hound, which occupied one of the zombies long enough for it to be easily taken out. Mise through his peltergeist at another zombie, blowing it to pieces. And then he hurled a couple of chaos bolts, freezing and shattering one of the thing's legs.

Finally, Fiona in a totally epic move calls upon the wrath of nature to bind one of the last zombies in a tangle of vines and branches, and then walks over to it and finished it off with a mighty smite bite. After which she started diligently flossing her teeth.

The gang dragged all the zombies into the campfire to get rid of them, slept the rest of the night, and the next day continued on their way to Amphail where they are to meet a friend of Miros's before continuing to Waterdeep.

• date: 2020-12-03
• present: Zigs, Alex, Linda, Trips
• party: 🧠 Klak, 👻 Mise, ☕️ Cooper, 🐊 Fiona, 🧘‍♂️ Bigly

Fiona suffers an infection in the aftermath of a zombie attack. The gang arrives in Amphail to find a bunch of kids throwing rocks at birds, in response to which Fiona hulks out and Klak embiggens her, and she charges the kids as an angry 14' tall croc person with gnashing teeth. When the kids run away/cry inconsolably, Klak turns her invisible. She starts petting their hair, further traumatizing them.

Bigly follows the smell of guacamole salsa to the Stag Horned Flagon. Everybody follows and meet up with Arleosa Starhenge, who regales them with stories of past adventures, and gives Bigly a magic toe ring that reportedly will conjure aid for the wearer if they whisper the words "Keltar Dardragon" to it.

Fiona's infection worsens, and the gang goes to the local temple of Pelor to get her help. Father Syundai agrees to perform a restoration ritual for them for 300 gold pieces to be paid on an installment plan of 50 gold per month.

The gang heads back to the inn and spends the night. When they awaken, Klak's staff and three of Mize's sausages have gone missing. They each find an effusive and flowery note on their person apologizing for the inconvenience signed "Cordially, Old Snarl."

They all head down to the main hall for a continental breakfast with no waffle station, and agree to stick around for Lord Tylandar's 63rd Birthday Celebration.

• date: 2021-01-07
• present: Zigs, Jen, Hood, Linda
• party: 🧠 Klak, 🏹 JJ, 🧜‍♀️ Coruthu, 🐊 Fiona

tldr: JJ and Fiona win a potato sack race, everybody beats up some hill giants, one giant swipes a bunch of food and runs away, and then everybody decides to track him down!

The gang heads right on outside for the birthday celebration.

Fiona heads over to bob for apples. She shoves herself to the front of the line of kids and then basically chomps the hell out of the whole tub. The kids all start crying and complaining, so she lowers herself down and opens her maw and dares the kids to reach into her mouth to retrieve an apple. None of them do.

Fiona's destructive tendencies attract the attention of JJ who's like, LET'S BE FRIENDS. And she invites Fiona to come do a potato sack race with her. Fiona's like, Okay we are friends now. And they head over to the lawn where the race is happening. Klak and Coruthu follow them over because they want to do some potato sack racing too.

When they get there, they meet Tabitha and Sandy, two terrible 12 year old mean girls and their main competition in the race.

They have an epic potato sack race in which the tweens seem like they're totally about to dominate but then Fiona causes some gnarly plant growth to rise up and ensnare Tabitha. She is livid, and says a cuss. This gives JJ and Klak an edge and they pull ahead and give their sacks to Fiona and Coruthu. Tabitha eventually breaks free of the plants and hands her sack off to Sandy. Everybody ferociously hops away, and in the end, Fiona extends her crocodile snoot and crosses the finish line first, winning the race!

The young dwarf who is running the game rushes over to congratulate JJ and Fiona while Tabitha and Sandy fume and glare. He presents them with the prize, which is a twenty pound sack of actual potatoes.

Klak sends Barney the owl up and away to survey the area, and he comes back to tell them that a bunch of hill giants are lumbering toward town!

Tabitha and Sandy are still heckling and bullying the Gigantes Pequeños, so Klak does some prestidigitation and soils their clothing. They are mighty embarrassed, and they run away.

Coruthu casts a huge fog cloud, and as the giants enter the town, he collapses the cloud into the form of a giant kraken, which startles and confuses the giants. Anything bigger than themselves, they respect, so they falter and hesitate.

JJ summons a lightning drake, which is cool as hell, and which helps out a lot in the fight.

Not to be outdone, Fiona does a little summoning of her own: she whips on her hoodie, pulls the hood up and then tugs on the strings so that the hood completely closes around her face. This, for some reason, attracts the attention of her giant mama kangaroo, who hops on over. Fiona climbs into the kangaroo's pouch, where she remains for the rest of the fight.

Fiona rushes forward in the kangaroo pouch with her hammer and her jaws and beats the ever loving heck out of the big one with the belly tattoo. He rises up onto his tippy toes and belly flops onto her, squashing her beneath his considerable bulk. Everybody rushes forward and manages to shove the huge thing out of the way and free Fiona, who goes into a rage and continues to beat the giant to death.

Everybody then focuses on the one with the dent in his dome, while No Nose starts shoving food into his bag and runs away.

Klak and Coruthu start blasting, and Klak gets the final blow on Dome Dent. He runs forward and collects some giant blood for Arik Stillmarsh.

Coruthu recognizes the rune tattooed on the first giant's belly as part of the compound symbol on Bull's totem. He slices off the bit of skin with the tattoo and rolls it up into his bag to show Bull later.

Everybody agrees to track the giant who escaped and hunt him down. Giants are JJ's favored enemy after all.

Tabitha and Sandy begrudgingly applaud the heroes for their accomplishments while plotting their eventual demise.

• date: 2021-01-14
• present: Zigs, Jen, Hood, Linda
• party: 🧠 Klak, 🏹 JJ, 🧜‍♀️ Coruthu, 🐊 Fiona

tldr: JJ throws a potato at a giant and then shoots him to death. The gang heads to Hot Topic where JJ steals a necklace. Then they decide to use Moog, whose husband has been stolen by Chief Guh, to lead them to Grudd Haug, lair of the hill giants.

The Little Giants pursue No Nose out of Amphail. The catch up to him in a forest clearing where JJ throws a potato at him and screams at him to stop.

He stoops down to pick it up and says, "Thanks for potato!"

JJ demands that he return all the food he took, and he says no, "I am take food for Guh. She big and hungry." So JJ is basically like, "Then prepare to die!" Because JJ does not fuck around.

No Nose tries to smash and club Klak but he wiggles out of the way. Coruthu grounds him in place with a tentacle and delivers a brutal mind spike. JJ skewers him and he goes down.

They recover the stolen food and all his belongings. And while Klak and Coruthu are working out the logistics of moving everything via floating disc and/or bag of holding, JJ hears a low keening wail carried from afar on the wind, which they decide to investigate later.

So everybody heads back to Amphail to spend the night. In the morning, everybody heads over to the mall because Klak wants to see if there are any magic scrolls he can buy.

Maureen, Tabitha's older sister, is working the counter at Hot Topic, the mall's magic shop, and leads everybody past the keychains, magnets, and t-shirts back to the scrolls section. Coruthu doesn't make it past the keychains though. He stays, flipping through the gewgaws.

Klak flips through the scrolls and decides he doesn't want any. He spots a necklace he likes (which holds a small vial of Potion of Giant Strength) but decides not to get it either.

JJ decides she likes it though! She causes a distraction at the front of the store with a clever prestidigitation and thuamaturgy combo. Maureen runs to the front of the store to investigate and calls for security. Fiona shows up with a cinnabon. And then Blart Smart, a large overweight dragonborn mall cop, also shows up, slightly out of breath.

JJ pockets the necklace. Coruthu is entirely distracted by the novelty licence plate keychains. JJ tries to leave the shop and two magic mouths sprout from the wall and wail, "SOMETHING WAS NOT PAID FOR!"

Fiona threatens to blackmail Blart Smart for eating babies or something if he doesn't let them go, and that shakes him to his core, which I guess means he is a baby eater, and he lets them go but tells them to leave the mall immediately.

So they do.

Then everybody goes back to the scene of the fight from yesterday to investigate the wailing sound. They scout the area and find an old crumbling tower in a small vale between two hills. Then entrance is blocked by a huge boulder, and coming from inside is the saddest song of loss and morning that a hill giantess could possibly muster.

They fight off a couple blood hawks to get closer to the tower. JJ fastens a length of rope to a large hole in the side of the wall and everybody climbs up. (Fiona tries to free climb up and falls, and then tries to climb the rope and falls, but then manages to join everybody at the top.)

Inside the tower is a sad hill giantess named Moog who is sad because Chief Guh stole her husband, Hruk, and kicked her out of the steading.

The gang decides to help Moog and stick it to Guh for being a husband stealer and basically causing, directly or indirectly, all the hill giant trouble they've encountered so far at Nightstone, Goldenfields, and Amphail.

They set out to gather up as many sad giantess exiles as they can and march on Grudd Haug, the hill giant steading.

• date: 2021-01-21
• present: Zigs, Jen, Hood, Linda, Trips
• party: 🧠 Klak, 🏹 JJ, 🧜‍♀️ Coruthu, 🐊 Fiona, 🧘‍♂️ Bigly

tldr: The gang begins their seige on Grudd Haug

The gang arrives at Grudd Haug with Moog, Gobbo, and Sloobi, three hill giantesses they met on the way. They successfully sneak up on the guard tower, silence the gong, and get rid of the guards.

They sneak in the kitchen and rescue a halfling from being cooked up by some goblins, and vanquish The Watermaster. The halfling, Roderick Hilltopple, insists on joining them until he can recover his sheep.

They enter the feast hall, where they meet Chief Guh the Insatiable, and also the cult priestess from the Drip Drop Caves. Coruthu blasts Guh's cart and sends it careening into the priestess, who seems to be able to shout out a spell and also send tendrils of inky, tentacle-like smoke into Guh before collapsing into a heap.

Guh tumbles off the wagon onto the floor, spilling a small pinback goblin from somewhere in her folds. Her eyes turn inky black, and when Coruthu blasts her, her skin splits, revealing a gaping mouth, out of which lashes a tentacle-like tongue. The force of Coruthu's blast pushes her back onto a grate, which collapses beneath her weight and she falls through the hole.

• date: 2021-02-04
• present: Zigs, Jen, Hood, Trips, Alex
• party: 🧠 Klak, 🏹 JJ, 🧜‍♀️ Coruthu, 🧘‍♂️ Bigly, 👻 Mise

Everybody whoops ass in Grudd Haug. Mise uses his spooky stick and his peltergeist, and also summons up some spooky darkness to bamboozle some orcs. Coruthu traps an ogre and some worgs in a wall of water. Kind of like when you build a ring of plastic cups around a dog and they think they're trapped? JJ kills a giant, and then she kills 2.5 orcs with a single shot.

Bigly gets out there in the middle of it all, like Bigly does, and gets clubbed to the ground. Luckily, Fiona is able to get to him and revive him before things got too messy. He also at one point taunted a giant so hard that the giant flipped out and tripped over JD, Cutie, and Mise's Hell Hound and fell down the trash hole. Pet team-up!

They find a bunch of neat treasure on Guh's "throne" and Coruthu finds a cryptic note and a coin in the priestess's robes.

Bigly toots on a magic conch (after Klak mends a big crack in it with a magic touch) and then everybody teleports to a barren stony mountainscape that Bigly and JJ think might be the Graypeak Mountains.

• date: 2021-02-18
• present: Zigs, Jen, Hood, Alex
• party: 🧠 Klak, 🏹 JJ, 🧜‍♀️ Coruthu, 👻 Mise

tldr: The gang finds themselves in the Graypeak Mountains, far to the east, on the border of the Anauroch desert, after a teleportation mishap when Bigly tooted on Guh's magical conch shell. They come across the town of Bjork, which has been systematically dismantled and reassembled into heaps of rubble that contain haunting secret beauty. They head straight north into the Loagrann River Canyon, where JJ suspects they will find the stone giants responsible for the destruction.

The gang finds themselves in the Graypeak Mountains, far to the east, on the border of the Anauroch desert, after a teleportation mishap when Bigly tooted on Guh's magical conch shell. A tiny pinback goblin has teleported with them. She introduces herself as Dum-Dum. When they ask, she tells them her story, and Coruthu recognizes her as the daughter of Yum-Yum. Her clan are the same pinback goblins who took up shelter in the Drip Drop Caves outside of Nightstone after being run out of their homes in the Dessarin Valley by the mauradering hill giants.

After they spend a little time scouting the immediate area, JJ leads everybody down off the cliff face to a small mountain pass road, and toward the town of Bjork.

When they get there, they encounter a distinct lack of Bjork. A total absence of town. It has been carefully disassembled, and the resulting rubble swept to the side like a jumbled bunch of lego pieces.

One part of the rubble catches JJ's eye because it is heaped up and stacked in such a way that it resembles the curve of a swan's neck. Having spotted this, the subtle order of the rest of the rubble leaps out at her, and she can see the meticulous, masterful artistry hidden just beneath the apparent chaos: an entire nature scene unfolds before her, and she sees a graceful swan swimming across the surface of a lake while large goldfish swim just beneath the surface. It's so detailed she can even see the ripples on the surface of the water.

Combining what she knows of the history and geography of the area with her knowledge of the artistry and the dangerous unpredictable nature of stone giants who are "dreaming" (their term for walking the surface world, which from their perspective is a surreal dreamscape where their actions have no consequences), JJ concludes that this must the work of some stone giants who have for some reason ventured forth from their homes beneath the mountains.

They make camp in the remains of Bjork, and in the morning Dum-Dum makes everybody an incredible meal with some of the potatoes that JJ and Fiona won from the potato sack race, and all kinds of great herbs, berries, and roots from foraging nearby. She grinds up some acorns to make some flour and makes pancakes and introduces Mise to the wonder of pigs in a blanket.

So, everybody literally decides to go raid the stone giants' home and try to steal some stone giant babies? So after eating and breaking camp, they all head straight north from town, following the Loagrann River into a narrow canyon where JJ believes they will find the entrance to the stone giant steading. JJ continues to feel the faintest presence of undead and of elementals from somewhere nearby. More pressingly, she finds evidence of a passing tribe of barbarians, at least one giant roc (immediately named Dwayne "The Roc" Johnson), and of course, some stone giants.

Coruthu dunks his head into the water and meets a polite young crawfish named Sebastian. They have a nice little chat.

• date: 2021-03-11
• present: Zigs, Jen, Hood, Alex
• party: 🧠 Klak, 🏹 JJ, 🧜‍♀️ Coruthu, 👻 Mise

tldr: The gang storms Deadstone Cleft. JJ takes a joyride on a roc. Coruthu fucking dies.

The gang heads up into Loagrann River Canyon, where the wind rushes over the faces of calcified stone giant corpses set into the sides of the stone canyon walls. The visual is creepy enough on its own, but the wind also makes haunting whistling sounds as it blows across their mouths, like blowing on a glass bottle, and the notes all come together in a creepy discordant melody. JJ moderately desecrates one of the petrified giants by breathing mouth air on it. She is happy to disturb the final resting place of a giant because of how the giants caused her childhood trauma.

They spot a roc's nest up on a pillar shaped earthen hill at the mouth of a crevice in the canyon wall. JJ decides it is her life's dream to ride a roc. So she channels her inner Shia Labeouf and refuses to let her dreams be dreams. She sneakily sneaks up there and climbs up on the roc's back. After it screeches and takes off into the air, she realizes she's stuck on the back of a bird the size of an ancient dragon, and she's not really sure what to do. But you know what? She's riding a roc. How cool is that.

Klak sneaks into the roc nest after JJ and the roc leave and loots some treasure.

Coruthu and Mise are still on the far side of the river from the nest when some critters start emerging from some cave entrances to investigate the roc screech. There are some barbarians and bears, and one stone giant just kind of emerges from canyon wall, walking out of the bare stone.

Coruthu runs and dives into the water. He pops up and waves at the bears and says, "Hi, bears!" The bears stop short and then answer, "Hi, fish!" And then Coruthu dives back under the water and attempts to hide near the bottom of the river.

Mise inks himself, shrouding himself in a cloud of darkness. Then he dimension doors out of there right up into the roc nest over a hundred feet away. Klak, who's still up there looting, sees a door open up in the side of a crate, and Mise walks out and is like, "Uh, yeah." And then he hides under a crate like Solid Snake.

The barbarians waste a bunch of time spearing the empty darkness where they think Mise is.

JJ starts sniping at the bears from the back of the roc, which is pretty dope. But then the giant bird decides to go salmon fishing, and swoops down to where it just saw Coruthu dive into the water, and scoops him up in its giant talons. He gets gored on the talons, and them bamfs 30 feet away into midair, and dives into the water again and desperately tries to swim away downstream.

The roc flies back to its nest and starts trying to root out Klak and Mise who are still hiding there. Klak casts darkness on the thing's head, and it starts flying around in a furious panic while they flee the nest.

Then the stone giant, who so far has just been standing there watching, decides to be interested in the small folk who escaped the roc. He literally stops time and leisurely searches the riverbed downstream from where Coruthu dove in until he finds the triton. Time starts back up again, and Coruthu finds himself in the grasp of the stone giant who seems to have appeared out of nowhere.

JJ fires on the giant trying to save her friend, but tragically fumbles and shoots Coruthu in the side.

Coruthu bamfs again and misty steps out of the giant's grasp onto the river bank and scrambles away, but the giant easily closes the distance, walks up to him and clubs him repeatedly with his greatclub.

Mise gets just close enough to fling a Dr. Strange cat's cradle hypnotic pattern at the giant, incapacitating it. It sits down on the ground, releases its greatclub, and looks dreamily into the swirling pattern. Klak starts slinging minor illusions here and there to distract the barbarians, who have crossed the river at this point and are starting to close in on them. JJ starts sniping on the barbarians and takes one out.

But they're all still so far from Coruthu, who is lying on the ground dying at the feet of a mesmerized stone giant.

Coruthu has a vision. He's at home, deep in the ocean. And the water around him coalesces into the familiar form of his patron, Istishia, the elemental lord of water. Istishia comforts him and encourages him to wake up and get back into the fight. "Get back in there, kid. I've still got big plans for you." Coruthu eagerly tries, but can't quite muster the strength. "Aw, kid. It's okay. C'mon, you get to come with me now. You'll like it where we're going." Coruthu actually tries to comfort Istishia! "It's okay! I got to see land!"

As Istishia and Coruthu float away into the distance, the water darkens and the vision fades, and Coruthu is dead.

• date: 2021-03-19
• present: Zigs, Jen, Hood, Alex, Trips
• party: 🧠 Klak, 🏹 JJ, 🧪 Revi, 👻 Mise, 🧘‍♂️ Bigly

tldr: Revi arrives and helps everybody flee Deadstone Cleft

Mise runs over to get coruthu's body, but gets flung super far away by the giant.

Revi shows up and pew pew pews the stone giant, waking it from its hypnotic pattern. It stands up and clubs on Revi, and then bowls him over with Coruthu's body. Rude!

But this does put Coruthu's body back over by Mise, who runs over and starts doing CPR, using shocking grasp to try to get his heart started again.

Bigly goes up to Bear Mama and shows her his Cutie. She grabs two spears from her back and brandishes one in each hand. In the distance, Mise thinks to himself, "Whoa. She must be ambidextrous". She throws them at Bigly, and both miss. Mise concludes, "Huh. Guess not. She's barely even dextrous!". Bigly then gets chomped on by the bears.

Bigly beats himself about the head and shoulders with the Stick Of Tough Love, after which he looks rather refreshed. And then he pulls out his sweet denim vest and vanishes into his pocket dimension. This confuses Mama and the bears. She snatches the denim vest and searches it, and accidentally joins Bigly in the magic wardrobe, where he gives her a one-two punch, stuns her, exits the wardrobe, folds and rolls up the vest trapping her inside, and walks off, pretty as you please.

JJ crits (yay!) and fumbles (boo!) on her next attack, skewering the giant and breaking her bow. Klak runs over and mends it and she gets back to shooting.

After getting skewered by JJ, the giant thrusts his fists into the earth, and his skin suddenly appears hard as stone!

The roc shakes off the darkness that Klak cast on it, and then dives at JJ and Klak. JJ envelopes the two of them in a fog cloud. The roc dive bombs them and flies back up to its nest, dispersing the cloud. Then dives at them and snatches up JJ. Mise does another hypnotic pattern on the bird and it goes limp and falls. JJ flies away.

Mise flings a few chaos bolts and a cloud of darkness at the giant.

The others methodically pick off the remaining barbarians, and the bears, sans Bear Mama, flee back across the river.

Suddenly the darkness drops and the giant is missing!

Klak loots Coruthu's body and finds, among other things, a bag of holding and, thinking quickly, just stuffs Coruthu on in there for quick and easy transportation. Now you're thinking with portals 😉

Everybody runs away and Revi leads them to Loudwater in search of some empenadas and a priest.

• date: 2021-04-01
• present: Zigs, Jen, Hood, Alex, Trips, Linda
• party: 🧠 Klak, 🏹 JJ, 🧪 Revi , 👻 Mise, 🧘‍♂️ Bigly, 🐊 Fiona

tldr: The wreckage of Owlbear reveals some answers about the Stone Giants, and leads to the Temple of Har'dees where Bigly defeats his brother and claims his birthright. In Loudwater, the local priest can't help, and Fiona discovers the secret of the Portal Tortle.

On the way to Loudwater, the gang passes through the ruins of Owlbear, disassembled similarly to the town of Bjork.

They find a lone stone giant who is sculpting stone. Klak shows him his own sculpting skills, and they kind of bond over that. The giant tells them that Thane Kayalithica, leader of the stone giants, believes that the works of the small folk are tainting the Dreaming and poisoning the subconsciousness of the stone giants, and so is leading them in erasing all the works of the small folk from the surface world.

They learn that some of the stone giants still find beauty in the dream world, and are secretly resisting Kayalithica's orders.

Bigly finds "Carl's butt stick", a family heirloom in the wreckage of Owlbear, and reveals that Carl is his father's father. Carl being his father. Mise communes with the dead and announces that he thinks Carl wants his stick back. Bigly nods, snaps the stick over his knee, tosses the two halves aside, and marches into the mountains toward the Temple of Har'dees. Klak picks up the halves, quickly mends them, and tosses them into his bag of holding.

In the mountain, they find that the temple has been destroyed. JJ spots a lone goliath seemingly single-handedly trying to rebuild the monastery.

When the goliath turns out to be Carl III, Bigly's younger brother, Bigly charges at him and the two brutally fight each other while the others look on. In the end, Bigly and Cutie overpower Carl III with the power of familial love, but mostly with fists and claws, and leave him unconscious in the ruins of the monastery. "Let nature take care of him," is all Bigly will say. Bigly has earned the birthright of the name Carl, once denied him and now refused: he doesn't bear the name, but nor can anybody else claim it without challenging him.

Bigly doesn't elaborate further, and everybody heads to Loudwater.

A bit of lore: now mostly a human town, Loudwater was once home to elves. One of the only remaining original structures is the Flying Fish Bridge, built by dwarves in a rare act of friendship and honor toward the elves. A piece of expert dwarven craftsmanship, it spans with river with no supports. Ancient wards placed on the bridge have the curious side effect of causing any river trout attempting to swim under the bridge to instead fly over it and land on the other side. Or, occasionally, straight smack into a passerby.

Crossing the bridge, Klak and Fiona are struck in the face by flying trout. A couple youngsters gather and congratulate them: getting hit by the fish is considered good luck! They cheer as they hoist the fish over the side of the bridge back into the water.

They find the city temple, a multi-denominational temple to Lathander and Mielikki with iconography of suns and of unicorns all over. It's straight up Lisa Frank in here. The temple priestess offers to bring Coruthu back from the dead, but then reveals that she can only revivify somebody who has been dead for no longer than 60 seconds. She refers them to High Priest Gerald in Waterdeep who is much more powerful than she is. They make a charitable donation to the temple and leave.

Next, at Enrique's Empenada Emporium, everybody is having Ricky's trademark empanadas and Terrapin Pale Ale. Fiona notices several people walk in and order the "Blackbird Pie" and then disappear with Enrique into the back. Enrique always comes back alone.

So Fiona orders the blackbird pie, and Enrique takes her back into the kitchen where a staff of goblins are tossing dough into the air. He grabs one of the large doughs and leads her further into a back room, a large round space with runes and circles of protection carved into the floor.

Enrique tosses the dough a few times so it's nice and big, and then lays it out on the floor, and then lies down on his back and rolls around on it, pressing the runes etched into his shell into the dough. He stands and arranges the dough on the floor so that the runes on the floor line up with the runes in the dough. The runes activeate and glow, and a column of blue white arcane energy shoots from the floor up to the ceiling. Enrique looks at Fiona with sleepy, hooded turtle eyes and asks, "So, where to?"

• date: 2021-04-08
• present: Zigs, Jen, Hood, Alex
• party: 🧠 Klak, 🏹 JJ, 🧪 Revi , 👻 Mise

tldr: The gang gets some stuff done in Waterdeep

Everybody steps through the portal and ends up in another Enrique's Empenada Emporium in Waterdeep, standing before another Enrique.

Then everybody heads over to the home of Chazlauth Yarghorn, dragon expert, in the north ward. Mize knocks on the front door with such confidence and bravado that the scholar leaps up in his study and rushes to answer the door himself in order to personally greet and welcome whatever inspiring figure of impressive stature is capable of producing such a knock.

They chat for a while in the library, and Chazlauth Yarghorn tells them that if they wish to enlist the aid of the dragons in their fight against the giants, their best bet is to seek audience with Old Gnawbone in the Kryptgarden Forests. She's a crafty old dragon and uses her magical crystal balls to spy on most of the sword coast. Very little happens without her knowing it, and she could probably be easily convinced to assist in plotting against the giants. "Probably won't poison or eat a single one of you! Probably!"

Chazlauth arms our heroes with potions of poison resistance and copies of relevant pages from his life's work, Chazlauth Yarghorn's Big Book Of Dragons.

They briefly meet Aerosol, a young silver dragon wyrmling who lives with Chazlauth. He makes only a short appearance before flying off to terrorize the house cats. Mize communes with the dead and finds two disgruntled cat spirits hanging about.

Our heroes take their leave and stop by a wood shop so Revi can buy some raw materials to make carving hopefully impressive enough to be worthy of Gnawbone's hoard, thinking she would be more inclined to help if they make an offering.

Then they head over to Zi's house, where everybody gets some potions, and Klak makes a trade for a small bronze figurine in the shape of a Griffon.

Finally they head over to the Temple of Lathander to see if they can resurrect their fallen companion. Father Gerald is in the greenhouses and tells them that he can perform the ritual for 2,000 gold pieces.

Mize makes a very valiant effort to try to negotiate the price down by offering to accept half-souls, or half-reanimation, or even animating the corpses of dozens of squirrels which would all share Coruthu's soul as a swarm.

Father Gerald is horrified by this idea, and leaves the group to decide what to do. It is a big decision and lots of money after all.

They decide to put off the decision for now, and decide to stay in Waterdeep for a couple days to prepare for leaving to go find the ancient green dragon, Old Gnawbone.

• date: 2021-05-06
• present: Zigs, Jen, Hood
• party: 🧠 Klak, 🏹 JJ, 🧪 Revi

tldr: The gang visits a fortune teller, sends message to Harshnag, and tortle portals to Yartar

The gang continues to enjoy their downtime activities in Waterdeep. JJ gains some notoriety around town as an exceptional curler out on the ice.

Their stay happens to coincide with Moonfeast, the festival of the dead. People all over town are erecting shrines and altars for their lost loved ones, and are making little offerings and celebrating their lives. Enrique has been churning out Dead Bread, a special pastry he makes special for the occasion. People purchase the small loaves and leave them on tombstones and altars.

Revi works with Klak and JJ to build a little memorial and effigy for Coruthu.

Speaking of Coruthu, Klak is still carrying his body around in his bag of holding, and any time he ceases to cast Prestidigitation to mask the smell, it reeks of rot and decay.

So they head on down to the Plague Doctors Boutique and buy a whole bunch of dried flowers and oils and spices and herbs. The plague doctor also sells them a few masks, and a small hatchet that releases a small mist of strong fragrance whenever you hit something with it.

He calls it "Axe Body Spray."

Then they all go visit a fortune teller who is in town special for Moonfeast. She performs a séance for them, and they all get to ask Coruthu one question. Revi asks him how he's doing and he says good. JJ asks what he wants them to do with his body, and he answers, "I'm at home in the sea." Klak asks him how they might gain an advantage over the giants, and Coruthu gives a cryptic answer that points them toward Harshnag, the legendary "good" frost giant and member of the Gray Hand, Waterdeep's last line of defense when things go bad.

The fortune teller reads JJ's fortune, and then invites JJ to join her in her quest to conquer death. JJ accepts, they form a pact, the fortune teller "erases her death debt" and burns a symbol into her hand. Now she will allegedly be able to avoid death a single time.

Then they head over to Blackstaff Tower to meet with Khelben Arunsun, one of the lords of Waterdeep, and the sole person who can assemble the Gray Hand. He allows them to accompany him as he hurries from one appointment to the other, and agrees to think about summoning Harshnag for them.

Much later, he notifies Revi via a sending spell that he will send a non-urgent message to Harshnag on their behalf. He will not be following up, and Harshnag is free to respond or ignore the summons as he sees fit.

So they get ready to go find the ancient green dragon. They head to Enrque's and tortle portal to Yartar. En route, Klak is contacted again by the Great Old One who chastises him for not doing better at collecting friends.

Revi steals a napkin and adds it to his collection of memorabilia that he has stolen from Empenada Emporiums across the lands.

At Enrique's, a naked man with see-through skin barges in, demands some water, and then dumps the pitcher over his head.