Callie’s Journal
Bec and Freki escort Ulgrim to the hot spring and explains how to will yourself down through it into the secret magic chamber. She demonstrates how to float down through the column of water, when suddenly her feet bang against something. An underwater glub-glub sounding voice yells out from underneath. It’s Vondal! That guy shows up in the weirdest places, I swear.
Eventually, they all make it down through the column of water and into the magical chamber of horrors. The giants that we killed and de-souled down here are all shriveled and dessicated, like mummies.
“What foulness is this?” says Ulgrim.
Bec explains this is probably because of Rhyzophus, dancing around the soul larva thing we did earlier. Ulgrim is incredulous that he didn’t sense this kind of necromancer-adjacent evil even while Rhyzophus was alive.
A direbear spirit manifests around Ulgrim. “Their souls have departed,” says Ulgrim. “This does not feel like necromancy, but it does not feel like natural evil, either. Did you use this magic to destroy them?”
Bec tries to tell him no, but he is skeptical. They end up having to explain the soul larvae. He doesn’t much like it, but the bear likes us, so that’s a point in our favor.
They discuss the ancient origins of the chamber and what we found Rhyzophus doing with the eggs.
Ulgrim then wants to know more about the soul larva. Bec admits that this is not Hyperion’s judgement, but an extracirricular task. Ulgrim says he didn’t know most of these mummified giants. He knew Verthandi from a past encounter, but didn’t know she was here.
Freki wonders how this is even possible. How could there be anyone Ulgrim didn’t know in this small (relatively) place? Ulgrim says these people were kept separated. Vondal reassures him that this is a harsh punishment, but it is reserved for harsh, bad a-holes. Which is true!
Elsewhere, in the barracks, Oz goes to check on the rounded-up giants. He asks them how they would escape, but they answer that escaping would be dishonorable. Then there’s a yell from somewhere else and the thudding sound of running giant. There are some huge crashing sounds and then a giant makes it to the doorway. “Run! Run! She up here!”
Ohhhh, her.
Oz yells, “Follow me, you cowards!” and takes off to find out what’s going on.
None of the giants follow him.
“Go get your master, Tons of Fun!” Oz snaps.
As he passes by, a goliath in another barracks room steps forward and quietly closes her door.
“My lord, my lord! The broodmother is free!” says the giant who was tearassing around before. Oz sees this is true: she has curled herself all the way around a hill giant and is chomping down on it like a stick of beef jerky. A giant starts to stir from where he was unconscious on the ground. The broodmother stops eating long enough to barf lightning and disintegrate his head clean off.
“She’s enraged! I’ve never seen her like this!” says a giant.
Another behir enters the barracks, sniffing around, looking agitated, then slithers away toward the broodmother’s pen.
“It must smell blood from the broodmother’s massacre,” says Kureth.
Cal asks Kavaki whether we could get it back into its own pen. Kavaki thinks maybe, so we head out toward the broodmother’s pen. The rock that appeared to be keeping her in before has been shattered.
Grulthorn says he’s too big to get through the cave opening, but Cal yells him into doing it anyway. So we all get through, and there’s a tunnel that seems to have been bored out of the rock just for the broodmother. Can she…do this?
Ahead, there’s a room where a behir is fighting several hill giants at once. Grulthorn whimpers and says he’s not going in there. Cal and Kavaki confer. Her opinion is that this is “a kind of justice” and she doubts she can calm the behir down before they finish feeding. I try casting Calm Emotions (level 3 because I have no level 2 spell slots left).
It calms down two of the behir, Chargefeet and Barocco, and Kavaki is able to calm him further with animal handling. She lets them finish off the corpses of the giants they were eating, since they’re still hungry. Then she coaxes them back down the tunnel toward their pen. When she gets there, the doors to the pens are smashed. Listen all y’all, it’s a sabotage!
Downstairs in the evil ascension atelier, Ulgrim agrees with Bec’s assessment. They hear Kavaki talking softly to the behir and come to join us. Yay, the party is reunited! Cal nudges me and says Oz must messing with the giants or stealing shit, which do seem to be the most likely possibilities.
Anyway, we all head off to talk the broodmother down. Well, Vondal will do the talking. Along the way, we find Oz, whose hands have emerged from the shadows to make obscene gestures from a number of different cultures.
Vondal talks to the broodmother, telling her that we have achieved justice for her. She says, “I am aware. Thank you, my morsel.” She nuzzles him. Wow! “Now that this place is mine, all is well. We will feast for some time on our enemies, my morsel. All who worked and took my eggs will suffer and be eaten.”
“Was that…all the giants? I thought we killed the ones that took the eggs,” says Vondal.
“All were aware,” says the broodmother.
Vondal suggests that she eat the corrupted corpses we left in the magic chamber. The chamber that Rhyzophus was planning to use to ascend to godhood. I don’t know about this plan, man! Dead guy jerky doesn’t sound great to the broodmother anyway, especially with all the nice, fresh meat running around. Then Vondal tells her that Cal is the leader of the giants now and it’s his job to mete out punishment.
She slithers over to Cal and asks what he plans to do. With Vondal translating, Cal says he will give them a punishment in line with their crimes. The broodmother is fine with that, but meanwhile, she’s going to enjoy the buffet.
Ulgrim disapprovingly says, “You cannot feed our people to this creature.”
Cal doesn’t plan to; he has an idea to send them on a quest that could restore their honor (if they live). We gather up everybody who’s still standing. Everybody is here except Mira Frostveins, Rhyzophus’s food bearer. She asks if it’s safe, and…like…we think so?
Ulgrim tells the giants that he knows Rhyzophus was committing crimes against nature, and generally tries to convince them to get back on the path of honor. Our merciful lord Callisto has a plan!
“As you all know, the undead have long been foes of our kind. So I task thee to go on a quest to destroy the food source of the undead vampires.”
Some of the giants gasp.
“The vampires use a halfling farm as a food source. These are controlled by another evil creature. I task you with destroying the Beholder that controls this food source, thus destroying it for the vampires.”
The giants are into it! “A worthy quest, my lord! But how shall we find this Beholder?”
Uhhhhhhh great question. We discuss among ourselves. Oz throws out some ideas, but honestly, all the magic users are kind of tapped out at the moment.
One of the giants, Moldak, challenges the rest of them as cowards. Are they going to get eaten by a behir, or go on this glorious quest with honorable battle?! Oz echoes him. “Yeah! And you can fuck up some vampires! Moldak is the bravest of all y’all!”
Most of the giants join up willingly, if ambivalently. They go off to prepare, and Ulgrim uses his shaman power to summon his spirit bear again. He asks them all to swear allegience to Callisto, which they do. Cal can feel that they are now bound to him. It’s that time, time to give them the official order. Cal orders them to find the vampire’s food source and destroy it by freeing the halflings and dealing with the Beholders.
Oz suggests we use his scrying orb to scry any of the many people we know are down there. “Like Bilbo’s body,” Vondal interjects. SHH BILBO IS FINE. Oz scrys Bilbo. It seems to work until suddenly Oz hits some kind of mental wall. So he doesn’t quite manage to scry Bilbo, but our old pal is probably fine. Or at least alive.
How about Sophie Steelboots? That’s basically a meet cute! But no, Oz wants to scry Orlok, who he liked better. Sure, why not? The crystal ball fills with BLOOD. What. Oz feels the greatest charisma he’s ever felt, and it reaches out to embrace him. Two little gouts of blood spurt from Oz’s neck. A voice says, “MY CHILD.”
Oz tries to let go of the crystal ball, sensing that it’s the only way to break the connection. Freki grows into the wolf and grabs the crystal ball that Oz is trying to let go of. Freki fetches the ball and then……….BITES OZ TO SAVE HIM.