Junar waves you forward and takes you through the large cave subsystem.  He explains: "Before giants come and take caves from gnomes, we have more...how do you say?...tunnels.  They collapse many.  Giants afraid of small things, they say.  But some they keep.  Two air tunnels remain.  Connect this higher level with lower level where giants now stay.  You see."

He takes you to a 5 foot round tunnel dug straight into the ground and leading down.  The ladder there is ancient and rusty as it leads down into darkness.



He begins climbing down, and you follow.  It leads at least a 100 feet down and then opens onto a small ledge carved out of the rock.  Junar waves at you to keep still and quiet.

He whispers as he points around.

What you find is that the giants have relocated to the lower level.  Junar points to the southwest area and tells you that is the main tunnel the giants now use to go back up and patrol the upper level.  Directly below you, a number of giants are milling around.  They appear to be the warriors, and there are at least 50 of them.  They are not paying much attention but would be dangerous foes.  The ledge itself is about 50 feet off the ground.

Looking out to the east/southeast, you see a number of tents and structures erected to serve the daily life of the giants, and beyond them you see an underground lake with a slowly flowing tide to the northeast.  Around the tents and structures are a number of women and children giants, cooking and playing near the water's shore.

"I take you to other ladder," Junar says, and he climbs back up.  You wander around the caves to the northern end, and Junar takes you down another similarly worn ladder.

This time, when you look out, you see you are closer to the shore of the lake, slightly upstream.  There are three giantish boats that appear like giant canoes.  They are sitting on the shore, and 5 giants are using tools and rocks to repair another of the canoes not far below you.  There is a narrow walkway along the rocks, which you could use to climb down over to the northeastern part of the cavern near the shore, but it would require some skill not to fall.  Or you could lower yourself from where you are at using a rope, but it would put you slightly farther from shore and closer to the 5 giants, though you could hide behind the large boulder (see map below).

About 300 feet past the shore, you see a small island with a stone building erected there.  A number of giants are posted as guards atop the ramparts and others are milling around.  There are four canoe-like boats on the western shore of the island.

One thing catches your eye on the island.  There is a mast-like pole erected there, and tied to it is one of the dark elves -- a drow like the one who came to you and warned you to go back to Tienna and adjust the Time Ark.  This Drow is wounded, and his head is bowed, obviously a prisoner of the giants.  Two giants constantly guard the Drow.

Junar says, "That island where they take prisoners for play and for eating.  Maybe more prisoners inside building.  That where I escape from.  Giants take it from gnoes, knock down walls and use as their own."


This message was last edited by the GM at 19:54, Fri 17 Jan 2014.

Hatchman whispers to the others, "I am a knight of honor, and my Code tells me we need to rescue any prisoners on that island.  They may even have information about where to go when we get out of here.  Junar, where does that lake river flow?  Does it go to the outside?"

Borimer glances about the area with a furrowed brow...

how far are the nearest giants from the island? borimer is trying to decide whether fighting on the island will alert others off-island.

A little more than 300 feet (1 football field).  So fighting and noise is likely to arouse attention unless it can be done behind the very large boulder, which is about 20 feet tall and 100 feet long, plus tapered edges.

Each square of the map is about 50 feet to a side.

"Please wait" Shapfren spoke "Does your code demand you putting others in danger?  you and Borimer, and a few of the others may be true warriors, but not all of us are, we are refugees, we fled to escape our dying world and to keep the memories of it alive. I admire your courage, but I'm not that brave, I'm tired, scared, and just keeping up with you is taxing. Facing danger I could do, going straight into it, I just can't I'm already over my own limits here, and I think the others aren't too far from reaching their own."

"I agree with Hatchman that we need to get to that island and free those prisoners.  Who knows who or what information we might find and I would not be able to sit with myself by turning my back on the plight of others.   But how?  I am out of fly spells.  I do have one dimension door so I could get there, I unfortunately can only cast that spell on myself, but I would be pummeled if I tried to fight two giants at once."

"I do have a couple of invisibility spells left so two people could try to steal a boat, but I'm sure the other five giants would notice a boat floating away.  And that's assuming two people could pilot a boat designed for Giants which I doubt highly."

Tahldar scratches his chin and thinks.  "Firstly I will need to be at full strength for his plan.  We split up into two groups.  An attack group on the island and a diversion group.  Somehow the diversion group creates a diversion that will draw the Giants attention away to the south and west.  Then I cast invisibility on Borimer, Lukas, Kahan and Hatchman.  I then cast fly on Borimer and Hatchman.  Borimer then carries Kahan, or at least Kahan rides on his back, and Hatchman carries Lukas over to the island.  Perhaps Lukas and Hatchman attack the two guards on the drow and Borimer and Kahan attack the other guards along the wall.  Once the fight starts I will dimension door over to the island to help.  As this goes on the diversion group continues to divert the attention of the giants."

"Of course this plan is risky and I'm not married to it.  Too I think the division of labor is debatable.  I have to be in the attack group and I think Borimer and Kahan need to in this group as well but the rest I'm unsure of.  Another problem is I'll have to recover for at least a day to get my spells back and the Giants are going to be looking all over for us once the patrol doesn't return.  Which will be soon.  However this actually might help thin their numbers at the camp so we should time any attack to be when they go out searching for us."

"Does anyone else have any other ideas?"

"Our whole group was barely able to take down three giants, how are we supposed to stand any sort of a chance if we split up? I agree that every attempt should be made to rescue those prisoners, but we need to be smart about it. We need to use their size against them; if we can find an area to lure them to where only one giant can get through at a time, we can bottleneck them and kill them without much danger to ourselves. Junar, do you know any passages around here that we could use for such a task?" the priest asks.

Shapfren was caught in thought "Is it necessary to fight them? I didn't intend to sound selfish before, but since it is obvious you won't listen to me on leaving it alone, at least lets focus on doing it right." she paused for breath.
"We don't have unlimited time for this, and killing the giants is not only suicidal, it would be wrong too, by killing these two giants we will enrage the rest to take retaliaton on the towns the captives come from, only if we killed all the giants they would be completely safe, and even if we had the strength to do that, it would have to be all of the giants, including the children, and that is too much, they have the right to live too" she then made a pause trying not to get too sidelined
"I have a four illussions left, two invisibilities, a sound phantasm and a visual one, I could try to cast the sound illusion to distract the two giants long enough for Thaldar and other of us to go and release the chained prisoner, then Thaldar could make him invisible and the three then rejoin with us, meanwhile I could use the last one tho project an illusion of the prisoner still there, then escaping and fleeing the guards, at that point when they are distracted chasing the phantasm we could release the rest of them"

"We could always use some kind of deception to distract the giants and while they are dealing with the distraction we could free the prisoners."

Borimer keeps vigil while the others formulate a plan, his eyes darting around the area and his ears alert.

Lukas peered out and started counting the boats, "How about this for a diversion, what if we caught all of the boats on fire, causing enough damage to make them unusable, except for one that we could use get away from the island with any prisoners. Then we would only need to come up with a way to deal with the giants on the island? 
This message was last edited by the player at 18:39, Mon 20 Jan 2014.

I can fire at them with my bow from up on the ledge as part of a distraction as well, but I think it's suicide to attack them at all.  The only chance we would have of getting them out of their is by trickery or stealth.  These bold plans will get us all killed, judging by how things went last time.

"I agree, we should be leaving this place, not launching a rescue mission,"  Borimer shrugs *edit* with two shoulders and one arm.  "I will go where the group decides."
This message was last edited by the player at 10:38, Tue 21 Jan 2014.

Considering his options, Tahldar ask Junar "Is there a way around these Giants?  How do we leave this cave?  Is the way out through them?"

Junar says, "I know no passage around, but on far side of island is footpath.  It take you to waterfall.  Bridge cross to next cliff there.  Bridge is small--wood and rope.  It used by gnomes many years back.  Too weak for giants to use.  You get across bridge, giants cannot follow.  You save prisoners, their people be very grateful.  Easy job for wielder of Godslayer and killer of giants."

He looks at Borimer as though Borimer has just walked out of a legendary scroll.  "Xren Codex speak of one armed warrior.  Speak of how he get his arm back too."