Legacies of Exera: Session 17

 

After wiping off the troll blood from the parties faces, the party once against continues up the mountain. after sometime Clarence notices large nests on the rocky outcroppings of the mountains up above the party. Claren whispers the party about moving carefully and how everyone should make as little noise as possible. Despite the best efforts, enough noise is made that alerts the winged humanoid creatures that were not noticed previously. A group of nesting harpies fly down to greet the party but the harpies quickly finds themselves outmatches and eventually all of the harpies fall to the blades and magics of the Firetop Crusaders. 

Dusting themselves off, the party continues their journey up the mountain and the trail quickly becomes steeper and steeper. As the party struggles with the incline. Shadowgrumble grumbles and informs A’anri about dragon ants just in time to warn the party before reaching the top of the mountain where a large cave is located. As the party sets foot into the clearing before the cave, they are met with a horde of these dragons ants spewing acid and trying to make the party their lunch. Gareth yells to the party to stay back as Gareth charges into the mass of the Dragon ants, takes some acid to the face, and creates a killing field of psychic energy that decimates the fire ants colony. The rest of the party is quickly jumps to the aid of Gareth to make sure Gareth does not become lunch for the remaining dragon ants. The party enjoys a moments of calm as the last dragon ants falls and a discussion is held to how they are going to deal with the cave and more importantly, what is probably lurking in the cave.

Vladimir sneaks into the cave and notices three cave bears and a sleeping giant moments before the cave bears notice Vladimir and the cave bears roars wake the sleeping giant who bellows in frustration and rage. The rest of the party hears the growls and the giant and instantly rush into the cave mouth to come to the aid of Vladimir who finds himself cornered by the save bears moments before the giant launches Vladimir across the cave with one mighty blow. As the party deals with the charging cave bears the giant starts hurling boulders at them which quickly makes the party realize everyone needs to spread out as the party continues to focus on down the cave bears first. 

During the melee, the giant causes a massive rockslide that buries Vladimir and A’anri which in turn takes them out of the fight. Harl realizes that the giant is smarter the average giant as the giant continues to duck behind some stone outcropping to use as cover after throwing stones at the party and calls out we need to get closer to get rid of giant’s advantage. Gareth takes the initiative and employs dimension swap to remove the stone the giant was hiding behind as the giant takes out Gareth with a blow from the giant’s club. Before the giant can lift this giant’s club for another attack Enama charges the gaint as Helestina casts a spell that increases Enama’s size moments before her fists smash into the giants face.

The giant reacts with exploding gemstones that only leave Helestina and Harl standing in the dust. Helestina finds some cover as Harl draws the giant’s attention so Helestina can safely put the giant to sleep. As the giant falls to the floor, Harl delivers the final blow with a point blank eldritch blast ending the giants existence.

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PLAYER NOTES: Oh wow, this session was filled with back to back major encounters definitely designed to reduce everyone’s resources before the big battle at the end. We defiantly got lucky with harpies as everyone made their saves against the harpies songs and the death field destroyed the horde of dragons ants that saved everyone some serious attrition. The Dice Gods were not Vladimir’s friend as the stealth roll was completed fumbled which caused a rush to action before a plan could be created or even the thought of an attempt to parley with the giant. The DM used some good tactics with the giant they kept us at bay and the giant was able to use his own attacks as well as lair triggers to pick us apart. There were also some critical hits that made the situation worse and I was almost sure there was going to be a total party kill. When all of the dust settled, it was me and Helestina were left but we were hanging on by a thread and ended up with some lucky rolls of our own. After the giant was downed, time was spent reviving the other party members and searching the rest of the cave until the treasure was found.