Diary of Captain Nomed Oppenheimer - Entry Number 18

To Vali Forever

Sunday, November 16th, 907 TA
Part 1

Giants. I really hate giants. I’m pretty sure everyone hates giants by this point. But not only are we trapped on a floating giant keep, we have to now worry about vampires and a fleet of pirates out for our blood, pun intended.

After Chironomous escaped the trap that was laid for him over at his sermon, Wrane chopped open the trap door to the chute down and I threw a couple of grenades down, which landed with a sufficient thud. Knowing that we must have alerted everyone in Dragonsford by this point, we decided to get out of dodge as quickly as possible. We started back towards where the Wanton Wench was docked until we were stopped by the local dockhand. He informed us that we were superstars in the eyes of the citizens. They were calling us the Stormslayers and that our past transgressions in town had been forgotten. In the middle of him raving about us, he turned blank, as if in a glamour, and told us that there was a message waiting for us at the Wicked Lady Pub nearby.

We headed into the pub and were greeted by more fans who gave us food and drink in exchange for details of our exploits. We regaled them with our courageous story and as we drank, we asked the innkeep for our message. He too suddenly had the same glamoured look in his eye, handed us a blank note. We tried several means of deciphering its meaning and only later discovered that it was encoded by Mr. Dourmoor. He informed us that we had drawn the attention of the vampires chasing him, and that a vampire had been dispatched to take care of us. With this knowledge in tow, we left the pub and were almost immediately accosted by some of the town guard.

The guard were led by a Sir Roland Withers, who did not like us, having killed the former captain of the guard. He informed us that Morgan wished to see us and would not take no for an answer. Most of us went with him, save for Chironomous and Finn, and we went to the castle where we were greeted by the elder Morgan.

Morgan wished to thank us for stopping the storm. After his thanks though, he offered us a job. He had knowledge on the whereabouts of the Sea Barons, and in exchange for this information, he wanted us to take care of some giants. Apparently, a part of the storm was still alive and was heading straight for Dragonsford. Reports said that in this storm was a floating keep, and that from this keep giants would come out and destroy everything in sight. Morgan told us that if this keep reached Dragonsford, many people would die, and so tasked us with stopping it. He gave us a Mithral rod that had come from a similar keep and told us that this was the key to bringing the castle down. With this knowledge and after bartering for several items to power the ship, we made our way towards the impending storm.

The Wench was skillfully crewed, and we were able to fly into the storm without much trouble. We also enabled the invisibility, which was good, as the floating castle was surrounded by giant creatures that we realized were thunder wyrms, and not something we wanted to mess with. We snuck up to the castle, and hovered next to the top floor of three long enough for the party to step down onto what looked like a flight deck. The room had an adjacent nest area with a Roc sleeping and the room itself had saddling gear as well as giant lances for combat. As we were preparing to enter the main chamber, a cloud giant walked in and spoke at a ring on his finger, raising the alarm. We quickly dispatched him, and when 3 more giants came running, we hid inside Java’s sphere of invisibility until they were surrounded and dispatched them quickly, mostly due to a couple of new tricks I had picked up along the way. We took the rings from each giant and I was able to decipher the dwarvish on them in order to silence the alarm. In fact, the entire keep seemed dwarvish in design, and as I was the only one who could speak it, I became our interpreter for this dungeon.

The rest of the floor had similar flight rooms, so we grabbed the lances which shot lightning from their tips, and headed down to the second level, which held the barracks. We searched through them quickly and found nothing of note, and so continued down the hall, killing another guard, to what turned into the head Storm Giant’s chambers. She was not there, but in her bedroom was a magical lock on the wall, which when solved, gave us a rod like the one that Morgan had given us. We took the rod, continued into the last room, and discovered that it was the chambers for a young storm giant. The room held very little of value so we prepared to move out and then move to the final floor when we heard commotion outside. Three more cloud giants were in the hallway with lances ready, and the Strom giant matriarch had teleported into her room, ready to ambush us.

It was at this point I brought out the big guns and focused the power of a star at each of them, blinding them and crippling each of them with damage. The smaller giants were disoriented and rendered useless, but the matriarch was only angry. She took her anger out on the bear Kodiak first, and C.J. second. She was capable of killing the entire party quickly, and so I did the only thing I could think of and threw the summoning stone we had taken from the Overlord’s men behind her. The summoning brought forth two men; the captain of the Overlord’s scouts and the grand wizard who brought them there. The Giant turned their attention to the new threat, and a great battle took place while we were looking our wounds. The giant ripped the captain to shreds but the wizard countered by casting a mass hold person spell across the keep. Only a few of us broke free of the spell’s grasp, and the matriarch was held in place. With her pinned down, the wizard fled down the hallway, probably very confused on how he got to a floating castle. With her held, we put everything into the storm giant, breaking through her armor and crippling her. She was to the point of dying when a smaller storm giant blinked in front of us and joined the fray. She was a much easier target, and when she knew she was overmatched, she reached for her mother and they both disappeared.

We need to find them quickly and finish them off before they regroup. They can’t have much left in the tank, as gods know we don’t.