We enter the cave through the little crevasse and can hear the voices of the giants booming off towards the main entrance. It sounds to me like Jorik is trying to explain that an elephant appeared and who can explain it? There’s another giant, unknown to me, who sounds contemptuous. However, their conversation ends without any conflict and it sounds like the other giant went away, so we’re free to explore. Explore the enormous, dark caves filled with ten-legged dragons and maniacal cultists. Hooray.
I’m happy to let Oz go ahead and check for traps ahead of us. We hit a fork and decide to turn towards the door, where hopefully we can get behind the cultists who are waiting to ambush us, and ambush them instead.
Along the way, we see a small opening through the rock that leads to a larger cavern where a behir sleeps surrounded by eggs. Fun fact about behir eggs: they vary in size, with the smaller eggs generally resulting in smaller offspring! I read all about these when I was trying to get a trade in exotic pets going in my emporium. (That didn’t work out; not enough repeat customers.)
Anyway, there’s no reason why we need to go in there, so for once we leave it and move on. Oz stops so suddenly we almost bump into him, then he turns around and tells us in a flurry of whispers that there’s a giant doing some sort of “wiggly fingers” to the eggs, which I assume means magic. Or omelets, suggests Vondal. But probably magic. We all try to back up in a line like idiot dominoes and my armor clunks against something. Sorry!!!
Vondal throws the portable hole onto the wall and Vondal pulls me in with him. Meanwhile, Freki tosses some small rock or something in the vicinity of the giant. From the hole, I hear some angry giant gibberish. Vondal plays the part of a screwup guard who abandoned his post to go eat omelets. The (real) giant leaves, so I guess that worked!
In its lair, the behir starts snuffling around, trying to find out what’s disturbing its nap. It’s getting distressingly close to us. Vondal convinces Freki to carry us, plus Bec, in the hole. It’s dark in here, but it would probably also be dark in the behir’s colon, so I’m fine with it.
“Psst! What are you doing?” comes a whisper from behind Freki.
Bec, who is halfway into the hole, climbs out. I poke my head out and look for the owner of the mystery voice. It’s Kavaki, our old friend with the cool tattoos! We hustle over (quietly) to talk to her.
While we go to talk to Kavaki, Freki tries Speak with Animals to see if he can calm the behir down. “We’re your friends,” he says.
“Small morsel, come through the rock,” says the behir.
“I am not your food,” Freki tells it.
“All small things are food.”
“I am not small,” Freki objects. He’s probably spent too much time with me and the halflings, to be honest.
The behir makes a laughing sound.
Freki offers to free it, if it doesn’t eat us.
“I am not trapped. But I will eat you, so I can get stronger. Tricky morsel. Lying morsel!”
Vondal, who still has Tongues, tries to help this negotiation. Unfortunately, his words are pretty complex for this thing. He gets through to it when he tells it to count its eggs and see that the giant took one.
The behir does see that an egg is missing. “Friendly morsel! Loyal morsel! I will have my revenge!” Excellent, Vondal and Freki have established a Good Morsel/Bad Morsel situation with the behir. Freki observes that although the creature is enraged, it does calm itself down so it can bide its time. Revenge is a dish best served cold, as they say.
Oz drags Freki and Vondal over (quietly) to where Kavaki is. She leads us all into another cavern, away from the behir. “Have a seat,” she suggests, sounding tired.
“What are you doing here?” Bec asks.
“This is my secret place,” she explains.
“How did you come upon it? It seems like not in your normal range…?” Bec asks.
“What do you know of my normal range!” Kavaki says. Sheesh, crabby. “Why are you here? Were you sent by Hyperion?”
She explains that the former court vizier, Rhyzophus, is trying to establish a new order among the giants. Right now, the smaller giants are simply considered lesser. For obvious reasons, a lot of giants aren’t happy with that. She was asked to join, so she came, because being dead won’t do anybody any good. However, she thinks Rhyzophus’s real goal is just his own power. So are we here to gain more power?
“We seek to return to equilibrium that we knew before,” says Freki. This strikes us all as very profound. We all go quiet for a moment.
In any case, Kavaki needs to know whose side we’re on. Did Hyperion send us, or not?
We try to explain that we weren’t sent by Hyperion, as such, but we did a Sending on behalf of our colleague…um…small guy. Stabby. Oz? No, not him. Anyway, Bec explains that we’re here to eliminate some evil giants. She says she’ll join us. She’s been here, trusting no one, trying to figure out her next move.
Freki and Vondal offer her some food, and she takes it. Again, it strikes me that she seems tired. Tired, but maybe a tiny bit relieved to have some allies. This little cavern is her secret place; the stable as a whole is where she works. Only a few other goliaths know about her secret break room, but mostly nobody comes here. So this could be a decent base of operations, as long as we don’t go towards the behir nest.
Freki asks her what she’s discovered. She doesn’t know Rhyzophus’s scheme, but he takes certain eggs “down below,” where there’s a hot spring. “There are ancient runes carved into the walls. The whole place feels electric. That may be why the behir like it.”
Oz starts fiddling with his daggers. Kavaki grins a little and Oz showboats more. If she could plant one of the daggers on Rhyzophus, then Oz could teleport himself to it. Or Kavaki could bring us, in the portable hole, over to Rhyzophus.
It seems like a good idea to Kavaki, but Freki has trust issues. He doesn’t wanna go in the hole, no way no how. “What if we pretended you captured me?” Freki suggests.
Good idea, but Kavaki thinks it should be one of the giants, for better plausibility.
“JORIK!” says Bec.
“You must not trust him; he’s been ensorcelled,” says Kavaki.
That’s fine! We took care of that! Kavaki is impressed that we broke the spell. Now, how do we find Rhyzophus? Oz tells her about the giant he saw taking the egg, and she confirms that it was Rhyzophus. Dang, just missed him. Apparently he doesn’t come up to get the eggs on a regular schedule.
Kavaki explains that all the other giants are there because they want to be. I point out that’s not true; Jorik and Magna were ensorcelled. Maybe if we kill Rhyzophus, his spell will break? Kavaki thinks Rhyzophus did some kind of control spell, and the ones that weren’t affected were killed – maybe those were the exploded ones near the entrance.
“We’re gonna kill the leader with murder,” says Oz. Then anyone who still comes at us are presumably there of their free will, so we can free(will)ly kill them.
Oz and Bec discuss whether killing the charmer will break the charm. It depends on the exact spell that was cast, is the thing. Though Kavaki is convinced that everyone here deserves to die. If we don’t do it, then Hyperion will. Freki is also concerned about the fate of the behir, but they’ll probably be fine if Rhyzophus isn’t stealing their eggs. Probably.