On the road to Nightstone from Waterdeep, heading to complete a contract to clear out goblins. Head off the main road, towards Nightstone. Ten miles on, see the place. Nightstone is fuuuuucked. Boulders everywhere, buildings destroyed, etc.
Wargs eating a dog in the middle of town square. Kill the wargs, head to the temple, whose bell is ringing non-stop. Inside, find goblins ringing the bell. One dies, the other gets chased off.
On to the town's inn. A goblin is busy looting the kitchens, but we kill it, then head upstairs. There's a person hiding up there who lies to us, but is obviously suuuuper evil. We run her out of town, too. Lastly, we clear out the lone goblin in the stables.
On to the various farm houses and watchtowers. Deal with more goblins, some chasing chickens, some looting things, etc. Finally, we clear out the windmill, before sealing up the home of an Asmodeus priest, to use as a safe place to take a short rest.
Once the goblins are all cleared out, we tie ropes so we can cross the boulder-smashed section of the bridge. Shimmying people across, we get to the keep on the other island, head through the gatehouse, and then find people alive in the keep. The town's ruler is dead, some guards are alive, and they want to get her body to Waterdeep. Also, the whole thing was caused by a bunch of fucking giants in a floating castle, who stole the town's eponymous Nightstone.
We stay in the keep for the night, with the ropes removed. LEVEL UP!
In the morning, head back to town. Bunch of people there, including the woman from the inn. They're fucking Zhents, trying to take over after the crisis. We fuck 'em up, take some as prisoners.
While getting horses sorted, the town is attacked by orcs. Without enough time to get out ahead of them, we choose to blockade at the gate and bridge into town, instead. Two guards come with, and we start fighting off the orcs while getting the bridge raised.
Fight gets rough. The Eye of Gruumsh is annoying us with a spiritual weapon despite his goons being between us all. But, the bridge gets raised enough to block out the orcs, so the two leaders wander off, looking for another way in.
With the death of the rest of the orcs that got inside, we finally hitch up horses, and ride off, smashing up the bridge controls enough that the orcs can't close off the town after we're gone. As we escape town, elves show up and finish off the orcs we left behind.
Outside town, on the road/in the woods, we rest up a bit (LEVEL UP!) and split ways with the guards. They're heading to Waterdeep with the surviving Zhents and the lady's body. We're heading towards the nearby caves, where any survivors may have gone after the giants' attack.
Arriving at the caves, there's evidence of humans, as well as both larger and smaller creatures. Poking around, we see three different entrances. Testing the first, it leads to a spot with goblins and an ogre. The ogre's being lazy, but the goblins are distinctly on watch.
Looping around to another entrance, we clear out a black pudding, then find that the path leads to the same damn big room with goblin guards and an ogre. Having no reason to think the third entrance will be any different, we charge.
Goblins and ogres in cave. We kill through 'em all, and start exploring the caves more.
Enter a large room, missing villagers being kept there. There's a hole in the ground, and whispering with the villagers, they explain that there's bats down there that'll swarm out and kill anyone who makes noise. We get everyone out of the cave, then resume exploring to find any more people/stuff.
While traversing corridors, we run into a goblin guard named Snigbat. She explains that she wants to kill the chief goblin, Hark. And she (correctly) guesses that we do, too, so she asks to help us. We head off to kill Hark together.
Hark is in a room with more goblins, and rats eating the body of a villager. We kill him, he kills Snigbat in the process.
Looting the rest of the place, we find another surviving villager and a lot of the villagers' belongings. We also find, and kick out, non-combatant goblins. With that done, we head back to Nightstone, where Morak the innkeeper gives us a reward, and a new quest.
We get quests! Also, a cloud giant shows up with a flying tower. Prophecy led him to us, and he flew over to give us a ride.
While heading to Goldenfields to deliver a flying cat, run into some goons who apparently work for Yan-ci Bin. They act like a bunch of bullying morons, and we easily convince Zephyros to kick 'em out.
Arriving at Goldenfields, we land outside, and come in through the main gates. Place is big, with heavy fucking walls. Guard at the entrance was a dick, but we get into town, get some shopping done, then go to inform the dude of his family's passing. He lets us keep the Tressym, and we spend a night in town.
Early morning, we're woken up by an attack. Goblins, bugbears, and ogres roaming the city, looting and pillaging. Sorrel sends off his homunculus to warn the guards on the walls, and we help organize locals. Once things look okay at the inn, we head off into town, getting into a fight with a big group.
After a rough fight, we clear the raiders, then get to the abbey. The abbot gets the bell ringing, which is the town's main alarm. We then get some more people to the barricades being set up around the inn, and head back there ourselves to plan.
Sorrel's homunculus returns, and we learn of the goblins' movements. In short, they're retreating now that the alarm has been sounded, and there were only three groups anyway, each about the size of what we already fought. We head off in search of another group, hoping to harass them as they try to get back to the spot where they first broke through the wall. Tracking them, we get to the wall, and start yet another fight.
The fight on the wall is rough, since two Hill Giants come over the wall while we're cleaning up the ogres and goblinfolk trying to leave. At the top, we can see over the wall to the outside, where ogres with goblin huckers are sieging the wall, and even more forces are arrayed against us. Sorrel cast Sanctuary on himself, taunted the hill giants, and thereby managed to stymie their attacks for quite a while
With the hill giants rendered ineffectual, we quickly cleaned up the fighting on the walls. To get the enemy to back off entirely, we threw the hill giants' corpses down, taunted the goblinfolk, and thus convinced them to retreat. With all this done, we took a break for the rest of the day, not leaving town until the following morning.
Before heading out, we were asked for help by various people in Goldenfields, and agreed to most of the tasks. The first was in Amphail, along the way back to Waterdeep; Miros wanted us to "give his regards" to someone there, which is exactly what the party did, receiving a ring that we could use to summon a ghost to assist us. From there, we finished the trip to Waterdeep and cleared the second minor quest, giving a pendant from Zi Liang to the head butler of House Thann. He gave us some of Zi's old belongings - a Handy Haversack and Potion of Gaseous Form.
From there, we headed to the lead that Naxene had given us - a "dragon expert" named Chazlauth Yarghorn, who would hopefully be able to direct us to a good-aligned dragon, in the hope that we could get dragon assistance against the giants. He didn't have any such leads, being only able to direct us towards a green dragon named "Old Gnawbone". He also helped out by giving us information on the various types of giants.
From there, the party were able to put out contacts with the Lords' Alliance, Harpers, Emerald Enclave, and anyone else we though might be useful. We told each group about the problem (Annam having ended the Ordning), and asked if any of them could find any leads, given the earlier prophecy stuff. While they tried to figure things out, we continued on the sidequests, heading to Daggerford to deliver a letter on behalf of Oren.
Arriving in Daggerford, we found a town almost entirely taken over by the Zhentarim. The duchess had hired them as extra security in the face of the giant threat, but the whole situation smelled of the usual Zhentarim protection racket. Using Mikhto's ability to take spider form, we got some intel on the Zhents' leader, a corrupt loan shark. With that intel, Rick staged a heist, and we stole documentation of his usury, of the contract hiring the Zhentarim mercenaries, and of his collusion with the duchess.
Fleeing the town immediately after the heist, the party quickly got to Waterdeep, and provided the evidence to the Lords' Alliance. They told us to come back in the morning, and we had to deal with a Zhentarim assassin squad overnight. The next morning, the Lords' Alliance sent an inspector and a couple of guards alongside the party to return to Daggerford and check out the situation.
In daggerford, we talked to the gate guards, and the Zhent among them clearly scampered off to warn their boss that we were here. Ignoring that, we headed to the keep, and Inspector Nielsen put Lady Daggerford under a Zone of Truth and we all started asking pointed questions. Partway through, Elnar had a hunch, and checked if Lady Daggerford wasn't what she appeared. Turned out, she was actually a Succubus in disguise.
We fought the succubus, interrogated the Zhentarim, and figured out that the Zhents were morons, who didn't even realize the duchess had been replaced, let alone where she was. Investigating the loan shark's records, and the succubus's, we found out that there was at least some connection involving Crommhold, so went to investigate there. Arriving at Crommhold, we started interrogating the baroness, up until she decided to have her guards attack us.
The fight with Baroness Cromm's goons went well, and we quickly manacled her, and started heading out. On the way out of the keep, one goon tried to make a break for it, but Elnar quickly convinced him that, whatever he was doing, it was a bad idea. He led us to a prisoner in the dungeons, who turned out to be the real Lady Morwen Daggerford. We were able to get her out, and head back to Daggerford.
Before heading back to Waterdeep, we were approached by a half-elf, who thanked us for helping her get out from beneath the Zhent moneylender. Suspecting that something was up, and with her having mentioned being from Waterdeep, Elnar checked for outsiders (nope!), and we offered to escort her to Waterdeep, knowing that a dragon would need to refuse. She accepted, but after a couple days' travel, had to drop the charade and admit to being a dragon, as we approached the gates.
After a brief but fruitless chat, we proceeded into the city, got paid, got not-very-useful info from our contacts, and then met an armoured frost giant named Harshnag. Harshnag explained the existence of a Giant Oracle up north - the Eye of the All-Father. It would be a long trip, with the last leg being a hike up into the Spine of the World, but shouldn't be too arduous. Knowing what was ahead, the party purchased some additional supplies, then set out on the Long Road.
Along the road, we met another traveler (TODO: Name!), who decided to join us on the trip as far as Mirabar, the last town before we would be heading off-road. Thereafter, we encountered a tower with a hill giant sitting in it. She was one of the many giants who'd been raiding the area, and we put an end to the problem.
After a quick overnight stop in Triboar, we kept going, encountering little of note until Longsaddle, where the party learned of a valuable bounty out on a notorious criminal in the area. While pressing onwards, we made plans to track this person down once we got to Mirabar. Unfortunately, our trip to Mirabar wasn't quite able to get as far that day as we hoped - Xantharl's Keep was under siege from a band of grost giants and goblinfolk.
Alongside Harshnag, we cleaned up the larger threats, while the keep's own defending force cleaned up the wave of goblins. Unfortunately, that's when the party learned (via Sorrel's homunculus) that more forces were inside the town, having attacked from the other side. The frost giants had been looking for the criminal that the party had learned of earlier, and once the party headed into the town to help clear out bugbears, they found him being attacked by several. The party cleaned up the whole battlefield, taking the criminal alive to return him for the bounty.
Tie up goon. Foil his escape attempt. Get to Mirabar. Turn in goon. Get paid. Shopping!
Head to Oracle. Cave. Cave bear. Stone giants attack. Rough fight, Elnar goes down. Victory. Loot! Find Eye of the Allfather. Head in. Ceiling Traps.
Exploring the place. Large hall. Alcoves, side hall, levers. Portcullis. Goons down main hall.
Pull the lever, Uthgardts move. We ambush, they go splat.
Find strange archway. Giant races on it - Hill, Sky, Fire, Storm, Stone, Ice. Check out side areas. Staids up, guest quarters, etc. TRAP!
Past the boulder trap. Nothing there. Heal up. Split up and search for clues, gang!
Check out a statue, then head south. Run into a Remorhaz. Take it out, then retreat to the place's dining room to rest up.
Spot magic in the unlit sconces of the main room, try to figure out the archway thing. Head upstairs. More empty guest rooms, collapse before the trap.
Head back to the archway. Figure out the portal. Dead giant inside. Oracle is the entire room we just teleported to. Imparts info:
Head off after the relics. First is in Great Worm Cavern nearby. Harshnag stays behind, and we leave him a Sending Stone. Meet an orc family on the way.
At cavern, Uthgardts all get scared by us already having their leader's axe. Makes it easy to get the relic off them - a giant gong. Also we all get charms of restoration.
Heading to Mirabar, find Cloud Giants along the way, people-watching from the skies.
Get to mirabar, hire out a saferoom to stash the gong and other stuff in future, then head off to Raven Rock.
Get there, and start negotiating with the Uthgardts. Two tribes, one group are dicks. End up with an honour duel, our barbarian versus theirs. Win the relics. Get dishonourably ambushed that night. Kill 'em. Take the relics and go.
I.D. the relics. Club of Fuck Dragons, Ring of Fire Stuff.
Head off to Morgur's Mound. Meet the orc homesteaders on the way again. Then run into more stone giants. We ambush them, easy time.
Get to Morgur's Mound, it's a barrow. Scan around with magic, find some minor magic items. Spend a day swapping spells, then Locate Object finds us the tooth we're looking for. Undead brontosaurs attack, then we head back to Mirabar, and add the new relics to the stash.
Head to Shining White. Area has a tribe of cannibal Uthgardts. Avoid ever entering their town.
Up at the actual place, it's another barrow - chalk hills, various rings, marble menhirs, etc. Search around, find the relic - a mask, split in half. Get ambushed by griffons, who try to eat the horses.
After, some of us have been cursed. Use three of the charms from earlier to clear it, then take an uneventful trip to Flint Rock.
This one's an Elk mound. Excavate the relic carefully, then make an easy escape. Ran into a knight from the Order of the Gauntlet on the way to Everlund, but got there easy enough to do some shopping.
Head off to Grandfather Tree, easy job negotiating to get the relic - a giant Nose Ring. We completely ignored the cursed centaurs.
Onwards to Stone Stand. Got attacked by ghosts, and one killed Thadrish. May he rest in peace.
Ghosts get banished, so we start a loooooong dig. Find the relic - a skull. Head back to Everlund, hire the new guy, and stash relics here for safekeeping.
Head off to One Stone, take the Stone. Deal with Cultists.
Off to Beorunna's Well. Ambushed by Uthgardts, then head down the Big Hole. Trees growing in the light in the cave. Fire nearby. Uthgardts, and a manticore.
Mikhto-Elk uses a potion to really bulk up, shoves aside the altar, revealing the last relic is a big horn. We snag it, get out of the well, and head back to Everlund. Load up the cart with the relics from there, then back to Mirabar. Sorrel helps out some travelers on the road, then we get to Mirabar and load up with the last of the relics.
Hire up some hirelings, get everything together, and head out to the Oracle again. Deal with some Crag Cats along the way, but otherwise get there without issue. Harshnag opens the door and lets us in.
Oracle is impressed, gives a Tablet of Reawakening. INFO DUMP. Locations of five Conches!
Iymrith attacks, we run for our lives. Harshnag is ready to sacrifice himself, but we send zombies to the door levers, and manage to shut the place closed just as he leaves, 'trapping' the dragon. She can obviously get out, but it's enough that we all get out alive, Harshnag included.
Dragon cultists arrive with an airship!
Head to Mirabar. More shopping. Zephyros shows up, can help us with transport since Harshnag is too big for the airship.
Head off to the evil Frost Giant's place. Land. Talk. Fight. They get to a big horn, sound the alarm.
Enter the nearest longhouse. It's empty. Explore around, find some beds. Get ambushed. Giants with humans. Harshnag injured a bit. Heal him up.
Head to the biggest longhouse. First floor is a big feast hall. Upstairs, find some offices or the like.
Head into the main room upstairs. More enemies. Human caster among them. Kill 'em all.
Got the conch, so we immediately evac with the loot. Head Frost Giant dude is coming back, and we choose not to bother with him.
Back to Waterdeep. Load up with supplies before we head for the other four conches.
Head on out to Grudd Haug. Hill Giants. Sorrel comes up with an idea- feed Chief Guh a pig full of Alchemist's Fire. Guh goes boom. Surprise! Start the fight.
Finish the fight. Explore the area. Halfling prisoner. Clear out back rooms. Find a basement. Pigs! Also Ettins and Bugbears. The bugbears flee, and we release the prisoners.
Check out the nearby tower; it's empty. Free more people. Get more loot. Get the slaves to civilization.
Off to the Stone Giants.
Arrive at Deadstone Cleft. Fight a Roc guard dog, kill it. Cook and eat the thing for lunch. Cave Bears attack. Enter the cave complex.
Series of rooms. Stone slab. Altar? Probably. Tables with gemstones. A room full of bedrolls which are suspiciously human-sized.
Find a goat pen with access outside. Rick scouts. Uthgardts are roaming in the cleft. Head back in, just as the party is ambushed by Stone Giants.
Finish off the ambush, then keep exploring. Find a large room with strange mud and Thane Kayalithica. We ambush her, and she casts
TIME STOP
, then animates some stone golems, and calls for reinforcements. Fuuuuuuuuuuuck.
Miserable battle, people get petrified, but some of the stone giants are obviously not happy with the Thane. We kill her, get people unpetrified, and head out. Drop off a prisoner in safety, then head towards the Cloud Giants' castle.
Zephyros helps with intel on the Countess - she's hunting obelisks. We head in peacefully, try to negotiate. It breaks down. We back off, and start planning a tactical strike.
ODST drop. Break in quietly, cause a diversion. Absolutely fucking wreck the Countess.
We get her conch, safely get to Silverymoon, and shop for a bit.
Head off for the fire giants' place. Sansuri catches up, very angry. Zephyros talks her into getting off his lawn.
Arrive at Ironslag. There's a yakfolk village above, which we head to first. Meet with their chief, he seems nice up until he poisons us. We kill him for it, then loot the guy. His slaves help us out, and we scout a bit, and ambush his wives as they return.
From there, we go full Metal Gear Solid on the place, moving from building to building, killing all the yakfolk and freeing large numbers of slaves. Harshnag stays in the central hut with the slaves, who we're arming up as we rescue them.
We finish off the Yakfolk and free all the prisoners. The next morning, they leave, heading back to where they were kidnapped from. We head down the elevator to Duke Zalto's place. Salamanders ambush us on the elevator, and then run away when we're winning the fight, but we manage to kill 'em before they can raise an alarm.
On the bottom floor, we bluff our way past some goblin kitchen staff, make our way to the bedrooms, loot the place, and get Zalto's stuff, including his conch. On the way out, however, the Duke's daughter spots us, but ultimately asks us to help her escape her dad, rather than rat us out. We do just that, bluffing our way back past the kitchen staff, and freeing more slaves as we leave.
We make it back to Zephyros, and head off for Silverymoon once again.
We arrive at Silverymoon, help the Duke's daughter get settled a bit, gear up, and fire off the conches. On arriving at Hecaton's court, we meet some storm giants, Nym and Mirian, who send us to guest quarters and inform us we'll be called when they're ready to see us. We take a break, enjoy some food, and then a guard comes to fetch us.
They try a ruse to get us labelled 'assassins' and get us killed, but we defuse the situation, and everything calms down when the Princess Sarissa shows up, and sends us back to our quarters - we'll have a proper audience the next day. The next day, we head to the audience chamber to be heard.
In the audience chamber, we're introduced to Sarissa, who is ruling while her dad's missing and her mom's dead, as well as Nym/Mirian, her sisters, Uthor, her head advisor, and her other main advisor - Iymrith. Apparently the damn dragon's so arrogant as to use her own name. We explain the whole Oracle/Dragon thing, and mention that we have a Gavel of the Venn Rune, which can make an area impossible to lie inside of. With the rune, Sarissa could just ask each member of the court if they're a dragon, and they wouldn't be able to lie.
Sarissa dismissed us, came to talk in private. We revealed that we knew who the dragon was, and she agreed to let us use the rune. The next morning, Nym and Iymrith have both already fled. We scry them - fails on Iymrith, but Nym turns out to just be fleeing. It's obvious she and Mirian were involved, and Mirian confesses, though apparently they didn't know Iymrith was a dragon. We get a tenuous lead on trying to find Hecaton (a coin found where he vanished), which we'll chase down while the giants try to find Iymrith's lair.
Heading to Waterdeep, we investigate the coin, and find out it's from a riverboat casino near Yartar. We head there, go aboard, gamble a bit, and start investigating. Quickly, we're able to learn that there's some sort of cult with an octopus symbol poking around.
We learn that the cult was the Kraken Society. Most of our leads peter out, but Elnar's able to interrogate the local lord dude. She learns a little, but then he gets nosebled to death via psychic kraken bullshit. However, we now have a name - Hecaton's aboard a ship, named the Morkoth, which we can track down.
We head off to the sea where the Morkoth is, track it down, and Mikhto turns into a whale, so we can approach semi-stealthily. That doesn't work properly, since the ship has several merrow with it, so we end up just boarding and attacking. The ship has an archmage aboard, which starts seriously complicating things.
The folks aboard the ship cause us a lot of problems, but we're able to deal with them, and break the chains holding Hecaton in place. He awakens, and we're able to sink the ship, and then conch back out to Hecaton's court, where he grants us an audience.
While the giants work on finding Iymrith's lair, we're gonna go take down the rest of the evil giants in Hecaton's court who we didn't actually kill previously. He's apparently in a mood to clean up problems.
First, we head back to Svardborg. No stealth this time - instead, Elnar challenges Jarl Storvald to a duel, disparaging his honour, etc. until he agrees. The fight goes well enough for Elnar until Storvald invokes some troll god and starts regenerating. The other frost giants clearly aren't happy to see this, and once Elnar gets a lit torch going, the fight continues to be a stomp. Elnar is now Jarl of the frost giants of Svardborg.
After dealing with some local politics (the frost giants had captive dragons!), we level up, and head on to Duke Zalto.
We teleport to the base of the cliffs one evening, rest up, and climb to the elevator in the morning. A chimera attacks us during the climb, but doesn't do much to slow us down. Entering the former yakfolk village, it's largely deserted, with a few fire giant guards trying to do the job that the dead yakfolk can't. We hit the guards hard, take 'em out, and head down the elevator into Ironslag.
We head through the dining area, into the bedrooms, hoping Zalto might be there. Only his son is, so we backtrack to keep looking. Unfortunately, as we're exiting the dining area, a guard spots us and is able to raise the alarm.
Guards swarm us, resulting in a big fight. The duchess herself gets involved, but the battle comes out on our side. The duchess retreats with a single wounded guard, and we're not enthused with the idea of chasing them into a trap. Instead, we set up our own killbox on the way into the dining room, and lure them into it as best we can.
Most of the fire giants come in through the killbox, which works as expected, but the duke himself takes another route and flanks us. It's a rough fight at times, but we manage to kill everyone except the duchess, who just runs away. From what we can tell, she's just gonna grab her son and get out - we don't care about either one enough to chase 'em down.
With Zalto dead, we loot everything, and find an Iron Flask. Examining the forge, it turns out Zalto has fucking Magaera the Dawn Titan, stolen from Gauntlgrym, fuelling the rebuilding of the Vonindod. We slam her back into the Flask, then conch our way out to avoid further surprises.
We teleport to Mirabar, make the trek to Gauntlgrym, and hand over Magaera, getting a favor from Bruenor Battlehammer himself in exchange. Then, returning to waterdeep, we gear up better, and scry Countess Sansuri - she's the last on our hitlist, and likely to be the most paranoid after our earlier attack. The scry info tells us she's no longer sleeping in her old bedroom, so we'll need a new attack plan this time. Once again, we teleport to her home relatively late, but this time we infiltrate her castle at night, hoping to find her asleep wherever she's sleeping now.
The infiltration goes smooth enough, and we find ourselves outside a well-guarded room that we're suspicious Sansuri is sleeping in. After we cause a diversion, the guard knocks on the door to warn Sansuri. She cracks the door open, but that's enough for us to use Arcane Gate to teleport into the room with her, and kill her as fast as possible.
Almost as soon as she goes down, we use a conch to get out, returning to the safety of Hecaton's place. On arriving, the storm giants inform us that they've located Iymrith's lair. We level up, do some final shopping in Waterdeep, then return to the storm giants to plan the assault.
We approach Iymrith's lair, deal with some gargoyles on the surface, then find the way underground. There, we find a bunch of Yuan-Ti cultists. They apparently don't care much for Iymrith, as we're able to easily intimidate them into abandoning the area temporarily, and telling us where she's hiding.
The final fight begins. Unfortunately for Iymrith, we're loaded down with lighting resistance, the giants gave us all potions of giant size, and we have Sarissa with us, as well as several of her royal guards. The dragon puts a lot of damage on us, but we're easily able to take it all, and give as good as we get. The dragon thus falls, and we're able to return to Hecaton's court victorious, before using our still-unspent Tablet of Reawakening to ressurect the queen.