Giants' Museum

After the last of the group was pulled from the avalanche into the still dark of the Greypeaks, the Fellowship of the Key found themselves harried and exhausted. The experience was harrowing. The Greypeaks were proving to be a harsh environ indeed. The closest shelter were those three caves they had noticed exposed just below the bowl’s headwall. As the group looked up to them, they heard a strange cry, somewhere between the screech of a hawk and a throaty, reptilian roar. They couldn't see anything, but whatever was making the noise sounded anguished. It was freezing out, the wind began to blow, and the only light was from the cloud-obscured moon.

They decided to head for the caves. 

Travel was easier on the hard-packed, post-avalanche, snow, and they made good time hiking up the bowl toward the caves--always with one eye toward the sky and whatever kept sounding that terrible cry. 

Slothrop was the first to notice. Two dark shapes appeared over the rim of the bowl. From his distance they looked like faint blurs, but it wasn't long before he could see them more clearly. Two large, winged creatures had crested the rim and were tucked into a dive, hurtling toward the party. Zireael got a bead on them as well, while the others heard the commotion from their more eagle-eyed companions and hastened toward the caves, which were around 300 feet away by this time. 

Slothrop used his Drow magic to try to distract the approaching creatures with dancing lights but their focus was too intent. Instead, he pulled another trick from his reserve and muttered the ancient words to conjure faerie fire, outlining the things in shimmering color. Now the rest of the party could see them clear as day, and Zireael saw them for what they were: a pair of wyverns--monstrous, low-intelligence members of the dragon family who prey indiscriminately on the countryside. Ironica tried an illusion spell but they kept flying at the group of exposed humanoids on the snowy slope.

Zireael pulled back his longbow and exhaled, sighting the front wyvern by the faerie fire. He released--a hit! But the beast didn't even flinch as it came pummeling at him, rearing up with a powerful flap of its wings at the last minute. The wyvern clamped its maw on Zireael's shoulder and then used its body as a pendulum to swing its barbed venom tail at Zireael's gut. The pain was excruciating as the stinger pierced Zireael's leather armor and found flesh--it felt like all the veins emanating from the wound were on fire and dissolving. He didn't look well either, with a bubbly, hissing pus frothing out of the hole in his armor. 

Dala'gse had positioned himself between the fleeing party and the second wyvern, and knew nothing of the terror these creatures inspired in country folk. All he heard were those anguished cries of a creature in pain, and he saw that this one had clutched in its talons a tiny whelp. Dala'gse ceremoniously knelt and laid down his warhammer. The beast cried out once more before swerving and avoiding the island dwarf. Encouraged, Dala'gse called for the others to do the same. The near-death Zireael held a different opinion, but the party laid down its weapons...just in time for the first wyvern to recover its altitude and dive at Zireael once more--this time the bite missed but the venom sting found his torso and knocked Zireael unconscious. 

The party quickly picked up their weapons. Slothrop headed for the caves. Nancy hopped on Golun-dal's back and urged him to do the same after uttering a healing word on her downed companion. Zireael stirred. The goblins and Ironica let loose heir bows. Dunny raced around frantically. Safad and Rya positioned themselves to use magic. 

The second wyvern turned toward Dala'gse, who still knelt before the creature, and swooped in for a flyby bite/sting attack. The sting stuck, and Dala'gse's felt his veins explode in fiery pain. Now he picked up his warhammer and entered into a rage. 

Zireael cast his healing spirit spell and soaked in the aura's energy. He loosed another two arrows at the first wyvern. Nancy uttered her shatter spell from the back of Golun-dal. Safad whipped out his pointer fingers and took aim at the monster. The party watched as a small orange glow grew into an angry ball of flame that roared toward the wyvern. Safad then tossed what looked like a burning ember to Rook, who caught it in his beak, and was now able to breath fire at the wyvern. Dala'gse readied his attack.

The first wyvern was nearly upon Zireael for a third time, when a companion's arrow finished it off and it fell, broken and charred, into the snow. 

The second wyvern had dropped its whelp and cried out again. Rya loosed a powerful bolt of lightning from her outstretched palms. Safad took aim with another fireball, but when he cast it, he disappeared. Huh. The wyvern wheeled, injured, as it came for Dala'gse. Just as the creature was upon Dala'gse, the dwarf swung his mighty hammer, connecting solidly. It crumpled to the ground, dead.

Safad found himself in an odd sea of purple-swirling grey chaos. Rook recognized the Astral Plane. He saw a large rock structure float by and then was back in the snow on the mountain. 

By this point, Slothrop had arrived at the entrance to the cave and was astounded at what he saw. He called over to his companions. 

Dala'gse and Zireael were busy getting healed from the healing spirit while Rya and Ironica flayed the creature for parts. Rya attempted to milk venom from the downed wyvern's stinger, but she was unfamiliar with the anatomy and ended up puncturing a venom sack which spilled on her hands, burning them. 

Zireael and Dala'gse took teeth and stingers as trophies, and Dala'gse was able to capture a vial of venom. Ironica skinned the whelp and took the carcass with her, slung over her back. 

The group then made for the cave, as another high-pitched, anguished cry pierced the night air. 

They noticed the cave entrance must have been covered with a thick sheen of ice that was torn away with the avalanche. The opening Slothrop had gone through was around 9 feet high but only 5 feet wide and irregularly shaped. For the first 10 feet in or so it looked like a rough, natural, ordinary cave, but further back it was anything but ordinary.

The cave opened up to a 40 foot high hallway, 20 feet wide and carved with beautiful stonework from floor to ceiling. Mock pillars were carved into the sides of the walls with intricate patterns detailed into the stone; rounded crown molding and water droplets designs were shaped into the ceiling to give it the look of liquid stone dripping from the ceiling. The floor was carved with geometric patterns. Orange torchlight from a source further down the hall played off the stone carvings, in some places creating shadows that look vaguely humanoid, as if the placement were purposeful. The hallway was beautiful.

Further in they saw a circular chamber with a large flame at the center, burning in a stone dais, illuminating even more artwork. Two other halls lead back toward the other cave openings and one led deeper into darkness of the mountain. In the large chamber, the geometric shapes and natural carvings of the hallways gave way to humanoid forms: every inch was made up with 20 ft tall smooth skinned humanoid forms in various poses; some large than others. Some were holding sculpting and carving tools, others large stone cudgels, others polishing smooth stones. The craftsmanship was peerless.

In the center of each of the four sections of wall, were concave, bowl-like shelves sticking out from the wall. In each of those bowls was balanced a large stone cylinder, inlaid with finely detailed and neatly carved spiral symbols up and down the surface, curving around the stone. They looked like larger versions of the stone spindle the group had seen in the Lady of the Glen's cabin.

While looking around in wonder at the majestry before them, they suddenly heard a loud thud and a scraping rolling noise coming from deeper in the mountain. From the corridor, they saw a smooth boulder the size of a large pumpkin rolled slowly to their feet. In the gloom of the hall leading into the mountain they could make out two pairs of large eyes blinking at them. They looked like regular eyes except they were around twenty feet off the ground.

"Van dverg ubuden in steinjotun heim! Maat er dod helsingen!?"

Two smooth-skinned giants, the same color as their mountain abode, stepped into the light, one hefting a stone cudgel the other gripping a throwing boulder, both looking very angry. 

They asked again, in Common, what the party's business was in their lands. The group fumbled with ill-received responses. The giants closed in, their movements almost works of art themselves, such was their grace, and now they looked angrier. Nancy's music was on the verge of impressing them when Ironica dropped the flayed baby wyvern on the floor and the giants nearly lost it. They demanded to know why they thought they would be allowed to live having desecrated their most important site of art, their prized museum? Ironica looked around her at the artwork, looked to the sveldinstones, and told Zireael and Safad to do something cool. 

They obliged. Zireael reached out his hand and touched the polished granite boulder, crafting it into an intricate sword. The giants were taken aback. They couldn't believe what they saw. One introduced himself as Harbunpil and said he must take them to his Master, Maatvind. Safad asked absently about the curious stone spindles letting on that they had seen one before. Harbunpil and his companion looked incredulous, and then told the group to follow them into the mountain. 

"Careful, small dwarves, sometimes stone giants do not see little creatures...in our warren, watch where you step. And do not embarrass me. Do not make noise. Except you, girl-dwarf with the singing wood." 

With that, the group followed Harbunpil into the Stone Giant warren. As they walked down the massive corridors, the party learned that this was the home Graniskold Clan, and they saw its members engaged in various tasks. They passed through what must have been concentric rings radiating out to where they entered, and eventually they found themselves in a massive circular cavern, with various civically-oriented stations set up around the perimeter: ovens; firepits; water fountains; tailors; a boulder-polisher; etc. The art of the museum was singularly spectacular, but carvings still adorned the walls and ceilings of the warren, and art in general was ubiquitous. The lighting was beautiful as well, coming from glass globes wherein large orange-red glowing beetles of some kind had been placed. 

Harbunpil led the group through the central cavern and down a hallway that radiated off, pausing outside a sliding stone door as larger than many churches. He took a deep breath and slid open the door, revealing a workshop, where an older stone giant with a very crooked nose was bent over a table, working on one of those stone spindles. Harbunpil introduced the party to his master, Maatvind, who he claimed was the greatest artist in the warren. He told the group to do their stonework magic again. Zireael smiled and said it was taxing to perform and he was spent, but showed Maatvind the sword. Maatvind looked curiously at the band assembled before him and tapped the sveldinstone gently on Zireael's finger, "This is wonderful, powerful, magic indeed. You are honored to wear it."

A conversation ensued where Zireael and Dala'gse pointed out their pussing abdomens and asked for healing. Harbunpil went to get a healer. The group described the doors they were looking for and Maatvind did not seem to know what they were talking about. They told him about their journey and how they killed a mind flayer. Maatvind's face darkened at the mention of the creature and he told them stone giants were no friends of those diabolical creatures. He asked if they were the reason the purple worms had awoken. They had been slumbering for many years but something had disturbed them, and they were on the move again. They were attracted to vibrations so as long as the stone giants kept a low profile in their warren they could hope to avoid the worst of the creatures. 

The group then described the small stone spindle they had seen in the Lady of the Glen's home. Maatvind's eyes widened at this and told them about the speaking stones, and how to read them, spinning the cylinder one way to read top to bottom and then the other to read bottom to top. Speaking stones were the culmination of stone giant art and a master artist could fit an entire story on one stone if he was cunning and artful enough. They must be mistaken about the size of the speaking stone they were remembering, because none of that size were in existence, Maatvind explained. 

The group confirmed the stone was quite small, with runes inlaid more closely than the one in his hand. Just then, Harbunpil and the healer, who called herself Laksmee, entered the room and asked Maatvind what he was so agitated about. He spoke rapidly in Giant, and then translated. If what they said was true, this stone could be Mevvensettlan, the first of their histories that was lost to the ages, said to be the pinnacle of steinjotun art. 

Zireael, dripping pus, asked if Laksmee might heal him. She knelt down and muttered something rumbling that seemed to come from her chest, and soon Zireael felt a warm vibration on his abdomen, as the wound closed. Zireael liked it. While she was here, he wondered, did she knew any magic for lycanthropy...shape shifting. She shrugged. 

Safad asked if she knew how to heal sfos addiction. She was confused, but Harbunpil figured it out: it must be he was addicted to a narcotic. He called them mushrooms. Habrunpil and Laksmee chided him, and said there was a way. Stay with the stone giants and have no access to his mushrooms for a week. Safad started sweating. 

Maatvind was growing tired of this and kept saying a bunch of words in Giant along with Mevvensettlan until the group agreed to follow him to meet the clan leader, Yelloch. They found him in the central cavern, and by this point other giants had begun to take an interest in the small folk. Yelloch had a large scar from his neck down across his clavicle. He listened patiently as Maatvind explained what the group had told him, and then spoke:

"You must get Mevvensettlan for us. Bring it back here." 

The group hemmed and hawed--they did not want to go back down the mountain, to get some piece of stone while the doors lay forward and Old Weir was in peril. They tried to convince Yelloch that he should help them defend Old Weir and stamp out the cause of the purple worm disturbance. By killing the mind flayers, they would stop the vibrations in the Underdark. Yelloch claimed it was too late, once they were awakened, they remained active for years at a time. All they could do was wait, quietly, and hope. 

Yelloch sent the group to Harbunpil's spartan chamber while he conferred with the others. In the chamber, Harbunpil became quite interested in Ironica's athletic prowess, and encouraged her to show him some acrobatics. Nancy almost got jealous, and then decided instead to advise her friend, halfling to halfling, and explain something about the birds and the bees. Nancy said that while she had never been with a Stone Giant, she figured men were all the same. The two chatted as Harbunpil told Safad he needed to give up all his mushrooms. He could stay on the stone bed in the room if he wanted. Safad preferred to talk of other things.

After a time, Maatvind and Yelloch returned.

"Get us Mevvensettlan and the Graniskold Clan will help you."

The party agreed.