We catch up with our heroes as they strike out into the Dead Valley! Here's last time.
The characters had handily taken on some zombies and animated armor and so on, and decide to continue on, carefully, east into the valley. They let Dara take lead, as she can see through the murk easily, and keep to the valley walls to avoid getting jumped or surrounded. As they progress, Dara sees two figures in the distance. As she gets closer, she realizes that they're two-headed giants, locking horns and fighting. She can smell them, too - they have, shall we say, a strong, musky odor.
Dara recognizes these things as ettins, evil giant-like creatures that will eat basically anything organic. Aisling recognizes the behavior. These are rutting males, vying for the attention of a female. That probably means there's one nearby, and Dara remembers the females of the species being bigger and more dangerous. The heroes hang back and rest, letting the two males fight for a while, and eventually one of them sniffs the air and catches the characters' scent. He points down the valley and spots them - "THERE! SOMETHING MEATY FOR THE MAIN COURSE!"
The other one scrabbles to his feet. "No! I'll get them all for you! I'M SO FULL OF LOVE! I CAN BARELY EAT!"
Aisling wastes no time; she throws a hypnotic spell at them and stuns them both. Zook follows that up with a fireball and cooks them; this shocks them out of the spell, but now they're crispy round the edges. One of them grabs an ax and charges in, slashing at Dara, the other tries to rally and get moving, but Zook fills it full of magic missiles. Clara punches the other one and knocks its heads together, and they both fall dead.
The heroes take a breath, but then hear a huffing and scraping from a cave near where the ettins were fighting. A much larger ettin pulls itself from the cave, looks the heroes over, and licks her chops...and produces an ax.
Zook casts at her, and she closes in on the gnome hungrily (and maybe smart enough to know to kill the casters first). Dara throws a moonbeam on her, and Aisling beats on her little drum and casts bane, which wound up having a pretty good impact on things. Clara dives between her legs to distract her, giving others a chance to strike, and while she dishes out some punishment (she winds up felling Dara at one point), Clara runs up her arm and kicks her heads in.
The heroes investigate the cave, and rather wish they hadn't - it smells moist and biological. There's a shaft in the back that the ettin has apparently been using as a latrine, and it's not remotely deep enough. Also, skeletons and hides of cows (she apparently just rips the skin off and uses it for clothes or bedding), and the occasional human skeleton. Clara finds a few gold pieces amongst the offal, but otherwise there's nothing here but stink.
The heroes move along, and eventually come to what looks like a watchtower that has slid down the side of the valley to the ground. It's still on its stilts, but they're cracked and clearly unsteady. The adventurers consider that someone could theoretically still be in there, and Clara grabs a rope and climbs up. Inside, she finds a suit of plate armor and a greatsword lying in a corner, covered in dust and dirt. She also spots a human skull, but ignores that as evidence that whatever happened here, she missed it.
She touches the helm of the armor to see if there's a body in it, and it jumps up, grabs its sword, and slashes at her! The skull, meanwhile, hovers up to the edge of the tower and throws green fire from its eyes at the other three!
Zook, however, is on his game and counters that spell (which is good, because fireballs are painful). Aisling fires an arrow at it, and Dara changes into a hawk and flies up to help Clara. Clara, however, isn't going to try and fight these foes in such close quarters, and jumps out, rolling expertly to the ground. Dara-hawk grabs the skull and flies off, perhaps thinking to drop it and smash it, but it cackles insanely and belches fire - which loops right around and strikes the hawk. This blasts Dara back into elf-form and she and the skull plummet to the ground. (Rather, she plummets and the skull hovers harmlessly.)
The suit of armor leaps from the tower and lands, slashing at Clara. Clara backs up - beating armor with her fists doesn't seem like it's going to work very well. Zook throws magic missiles at the skull, but they just disappear in a green flash before they hit ("dammit, it's got a shield spell!"). Dara throws up a moonbeam and it burns the skull, and the skull screams out "Garbhán, kill the elf!"
The armor - Garbhán, apparently - charges straight through the moonbeam without so much as a crackle and drops Dara with one strike of its sword. Aisling yells a healing word to revive her, and puts up a cloud of daggers to clip the creature. Zook throws magic missiles, but they don't penetrate ("DOES EVERYONE HAVE A SHIELD?!"), so he switches to a witch-bolt and strikes the skull with lightning.
The skull laughs maniacally, and a ball of green fire explodes into being behind Aisling and Zook. Zook intensifies the witch-bolt, and the skull cracks and screams: "Now that the end's in sight!" It disintegrates, the flaming sphere vanishes, and the adventurers hope for one second that the armor will fall as well.
No dice. Garbhán presses the attack, slashing at all of the heroes as he can, dodging out of the cloud of daggers. Aisling body-checks him back into the daggers, and he slashes at her and the cloud falls. Clara rallies and focuses her ki, and leaps up, kicking the helmet and spinning it around. This manages to stun the creature for just a moment, enough for Dara to strike with a shillelagh and Clara to land a follow-up blow. The helmet flies off and the armor collapses, a pile of metal near the pile of bone-fragments where the skull crumbled.
The adventurers regroup, and decide they'd better take shelter and rest. They talk briefly about trying to shore up the watchtower, but decide that would be more risk and work than they want to put in (they're all pretty badly injured and out of magic), so they fall back to the smelly cave to sleep.
Next time, we'll see what other horrors await them!
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