Session 33 Player Notes — Into the Fire Giant’s Hall

These are the players’ own session notes, preserved from the party’s game document. They capture the table’s perspective — what the players saw, did, and said.

Key Events

• Lux’s celestial guardian angel appeared — showed him and Kaial visions of their mothers
• Kaial saw his mother during the vision but forgot it after; only Lux and Alora Amathur remembered
• The party split: Guts fought lava beetles and a hellhound with a frying pan, while Lyra and Arawn encountered wererats
• Met Wawwen the wererat, who became their guide through the fortress
• Discovered the fire giants’ fortress devastated — the throne room warped into fleshy horror, the king flayed
• Descended to a lookout overlooking the Star Forge and saw Durrak Stoneforge chained at the forge, and the enslaved ancient white dragon

Session Notes

The Guardian Angel

We are looking into a fortress and Arawn has seen wonders of nature. He has a connection with nature and he understands the gravity of what its beauty can be. In this fortress, even though it is made by hand, it is so old that he feels like the fortress is almost like nature — it’s that old. Amazing architecture.

As we go to walk in, Lux feels a pull on his shoulder. As he turns to examine it, there is an enormous angel hovering in front of him. Throughout his life he has these moments where his celestial guide gives him advice about good and bad decisions. He has never before seen his celestial guide. Celestial angels are called solars (sol-ahs). One of these solars through their connection to Lux is able to break out and give him a warning that we are about to break into a nest, and to beware. To the left and right of the solar, he sees a male and female step forward. Right then, Lux feels a connection to his parents.

No one else can see what’s happening. One of the solars opens his arms wide and there is a shimmer. It seems like a window or a vision to Mount Celestia. It is something that Lux has never seen before, but it feels like the message is “At least if you die, you should have seen your parents before it happens.” Lux feels as though necromancy is always being put in his path. Now he feels like he is standing in front of the celestials being judged on the results of recent actions (necromancy has led him to this situation).

Sidebar — The Vecna Effect

When Lyra was in the chamber with Vecna, she felt an immense guilt of releasing him. (Lyra questions that she felt guilt. DM is probably wrong.) She felt like there were swelling emotions that she was not in control of. Since that moment it’s like she has a small anxiety inside her. This is what Vecna does. Since that moment, there is a Vecna effect on everyone because Vecna has been released. He has changed the world.

Lux’s Absolution

As Lux feels this emotion, the solar shrinks a little. He places a hand on Lux’s chest, and the anxiety or emotion disappears. “You are good. Find the path through.” He has the feeling that necromancy isn’t going to be a thing that corrupts Lux. It will be a thing that Lux can wield for goodness, and that it might be a key to destroy the evil version of necromancy. At that point he feels as though that connection he has with Azir means he knows Azir feels like that, but Lux knows Azir isn’t truly on a path for good.

Kaial Sees His Mother

Alora Amathur with her passive perception sees that Kaial is staring at what is happening as though he can see it and is in awe. Alora’s halo is incredibly bright right now. While Lux is looking around, Kaial is looking at one specific space. Alora walks over and asks what is happening. He replies: “I don’t understand. I can see my mother. I haven’t seen her since I was young and had to go away. I’m staring at her. She is hovering over the cliff face. I can’t not remember her face.”

As the solar invokes the emotional change on Lux, he leaves him with one final message (feeling) that “Where you are going there is no protection. Beware and be safe.” Then there is blinding light and a flash of light for everyone and then we are back to normal. It’s almost like it didn’t happen.

Alora notices that everyone is normal and appears about to waltz in. Alora asks the group to stop and asks what happened. She asks Kaial what happened but he has no recollection. Lux states that he saw his mother, and Alora mentions that Kaial said he saw that too. Lux asks what Kaial’s mother looked like. His description was no help whatsoever. “The last time he dreamed of her she was shackled and chained and I’ve been trying to find her.” Lux realises the description that Kaial is giving matches the description of his own mother.

Scouting the Entrance

We think we need to scan the area to find another way to go in. Lyra goes about looking for traps and Arawn is looking for pathways and commonly used paths. Kaial recommends looking for steam coming out of the ground. Lyra rolled a 30. She did not find any traps.

Lyra checks for traps and disarms the giant mouse traps. She attempts to deal with the fleshy wheel of cheese, which has been set out for the giant fucking rats.

The Wererats (Lyra & Arawn)

Both Lyra and Arawn roll initiative. It’s a massive fucking rat that starts to grow and swell. Lyra rolled such a high initiative that she notices there isn’t one but two rats. It runs at Lyra and as it moves towards her, it turns into a human rat.

Looking down, Lyra realises that what she had tried to move was actually not cheese. It was a fleshy bag of human remains — human cheese. Lyra cringes, wiping her hands on her pants.

Lyra lunges towards the rat, her rapier raised. She cuts through its mouth, green fire erupting along its length for 26 damage. As she rips through the flesh, the fire flicks out and hits the second rat for 9 damage.

The Beetles and the Hellhound (The Rest of the Party)

Meanwhile, in the cave where Guts is cooking pancakes and the group is working on pushups, a giant beetle flies in who has an afterburner — he’s super-fast. Fire beetle. An F-1-11 beetle. Guts, pissed that it interrupted the pancakes, throws his frying pan at the beetle and hits for 20. As the pan hits the beetle it explodes in a bright spray of lava. It’s like a bug on a bug screen. Guts annihilating it.

They hear more sounds — there are more beetles.

Guts spins his pan, ready to play fuckin’ ping pong.

“Fucking fire-ball, cunt!” Guts roars, pan in hand.

Finishing the Fights

Arawn hits the man-rat for 12/19 damage. The man-rat lunges at Lyra, trying to have a nibble, he fails — Lyra spinning away. “Get away from me, flesh-wheel.”

Alora Amathur casts Insect Plague at the front entrance of the cave — a little blender of fluttering diamonds. On our side of the plague it’s like the inside of a glow stick and remains are flying at us. We take 12 points of damage (6 if saved), similar to acid damage. The bugs receive 26 damage each round. It leaves a couple of bugs remaining but Alora has minced them to a pulp.

It is at this point we start to hear a guttural barking sound. Chasing the swarm out the front is a huge dog with three heads. The heads are twisted and contorted. They have tentacles, and where their tongue should be is a collection of maggots. The diamond plague still stands between the dog and the group. We can see in the mouth of the dog is a fire, and it looks like it’s growing another head, and a fourth or fifth eye. We have never heard of anything that looks this grotesque. As it enters the plague it is getting minced up, but is still moving forward. Guts puts the frying pan down and grabs his greatsword. He hacks it apart and kills it. The beetles remaining run away.

Meeting Wawwen

Lyra and Arawn are still with the giant rat. We get the feeling that he is living off the scraps of giants. Lyra realises that there are people who have been bitten by wererats who then become wererats. Lyra demands information about how to get in. Lyra rolls an intimidation check.

“Do you think I like being a man who was turned into a rat? I don’t give a shit that much that I’m actually going to help you. I’m just so fucking bored. I’ve been stuck in this corridor, trying to make a life as a fucking wererat, you’ve killed my brother, I was emotional but now I’ve had a full feed. What do you want to know? How do you get in? You walk. What to expect when you get in there? Well, finally a decent question. It’s been a little disrupted lately. I don’t know what the details are. There are giants. They’re fiery. What can I say? This time yesterday — I don’t know, do I look like I got the sun on my wrist? — something happened and a fight broke out. What was the question again? It went straight by me.”

Arawn mentioned: “You said you saw a fight?”

The rat indicates the fight was between aberrant-type creatures. “I saw a frog bigger than me, standing on its legs. I don’t know — this place has some fucking shit in it. I was just living my life, and then you guys turn up and kill my nephew—”

“Don’t you mean your brother?”

“It can be your nephew and your brother. In short, don’t get bit by us. Since you’re in a hurry, come follow me.” He then walks up, steps on a trap, gets flung in the air and snacks on the bait in the trap. He clearly knows his way around the place.

“What’s your name?”

“Wawwen.”

“Sorry?”

“Wawwen.”

“Warren? Do you have rhoticism?”

“It’s the teeth. I used to be able to say my name.”

Lyra throws him the flesh wheel. “Wait here. Have a west and wait for me to weturn.”

Lyra dashes off to get the rest of the group.

“How long are you going to be? I’ve got another thing… never.” He looks at his empty wrist as he does this.

Into the Fortress

Lyra returns to the group and guides us over to the wererat and Arawn. There is a giant rat hole going into the rock. Arawn as the fire giant can’t fit, but he is able to reduce himself.

We crawl through the tunnel. The rat has a treasure box/crate. It is covered in writing but we can’t read it. It’s a kind of old primordial language. Lux casts Comprehend Languages as a ritual. It says “press the third stone on the wall down from the roof in the top left hand corner.”

We do this and the box becomes full of loot.

Wawwen offers to show us to the king’s showroom. But only after he describes a prison that resembles the inside of an ass. “I know cats usually chase rats, but there is also a really weird dog running around here.”

Alora shrugs. “I don’t think it’s running around any more.”

The Guards’ Quarters

Wawwen opens a secret door in the wall. We are in the guardsroom quarters near a jail cell. Wawwen explains that the fire giants normally hang out here. There are some kegs in the floor and the candle has burnt out. There are some pegs in the wall, the keys to the cell and a t-shirt: “I went to fire giant mountain and all I got was this lousy t-shirt.”

Lux — as the fire giant — decides to shave his beard and cut his hair into a different style. Wawwen requests that Alora removes the curse from him. Reaghl offers that if he proves a worthy ally and helps us succeed and we are alive on the way out, she would remove the curse from him. Wawwen offers that for someone as far gone as him it might take more than Remove Curse.

Wawwen also identifies that the scroll of protection is cursed and turns people into wererats. He also says that the group here murdered an elf in a ritual. He says he isn’t knowledgeable in this area, but something has gone down recently with the fire giants. There has been a lot of movement, and since something happened yesterday things have gone really bad. Yesterday was a significant tipping point.

The Cells and the Temple

He starts walking down the hallway, walking past a line of cells, pointing out the different races that had been in each of them. “Dead, dead, dead, dead, dead.”

He shows us a temple room, 120 feet long and super wide. It is pyres burning on each side, but the pyres have burned down and are starting to die. It seems as though when we took the magic rod, we took the magic from the place.

Lux looks at the mirage at the back of the room. His hand disappears but there is no pain. He senses an illusionary spell on the entire back wall. It shifts and moves, purple and lavender rays on the area he is touching. Lux walks through it. When he walks through he can see about a foot of distance until the back wall of the temple. Something was there that they were concealing, but whatever it is, it is no longer there.

Guts touches a pillar, and the illusionary spell drops. The entire wall now shows a scene of various creatures submitting to squid-based creatures. It is covered and traced in the blood of all of the sacrifices they have made in the temple. The blood makes a big red moon across the mural.

We also see glyphs and sigils on the pillars. Lux can see that they are magic-enabling glyphs. The entire room is like abjuration. The glyphs are conjuration. Lux counts 24 glyphs. There are ten pillars. There are two specific glyphs. Lux is starting to find the fingerprint of magic. There are two kinds of glyphs that seem shared. While most glyphs are triggered by something, these are more like if something triggers them they match, or perhaps trigger each other.

The Throne Room

We head off and step down into a large throne room. Lux recognises it as the room he was standing in when he left. It’s hard for him to imagine it as the same room as it is empty. He remembers when he was in it, it was guarded by a bunch of fire giants with shields. He had his entire entourage of highest-ranking commanders with him.

As we walk in, Lux sees a contorted and twisted mess of fire giants. The walls here start to get a bit fleshy. Wawwen lets him know this is where he starts to get a bit itchy. Even though we are walking forward, the room seems to stretch out further in front of us. When we look at each other our faces seem stretched. The feeling that we are getting is nauseous and sick in the guts.

It’s at this point that it is so quiet. We are in a fire giant’s fortress in the king’s throne room and all we can see in the distance as the room is shifting — what we have already seen as a beautiful throne room is becoming a fleshy mix of dead bodies or fleshy bodies.

Guts can see in the middle of the room a head on a pike, except it is more grotesque. It is the crown of King Snurre and his limbs broken and shredded, completely torn. If there wasn’t a throne there we mightn’t think it was him. It seems like the giants are being attacked and forced to work for someone. Guts feels nauseous vertigo. “I feel so wobbly.” He can feel the floor almost breathing, pulsating. He can hear the grinding of bone and he feels like he is inside of a stomach.

We back our way out, trying to find the forge.

“Like I said — hard to describe. I haven’t seen the king for a while, and I think he’s been necked.” Wawwen’s observations come out of the darkness. The king of a powerful race has been killed, and Lux fears that by removing the rod we have caused the giants to fail in their duty to their captors.

Descent Towards the Forge

Wawwen takes us down another set of stairs into a room with more of a cavern-style architecture. He points out that we came out on the second level down, and now we are heading down into the mountain towards the forge. “I haven’t been down here for a while. If there is a way we can be sneakier that would be good.” Lux reduces his size.

Intellect Devourers

There are four intellect devourers heading towards us. They are little brains that detect wisdom.

Lux casts Scorching Ray at three of the devourers. 24 damage to the green one — it dies. 10 damage to the blue one. 27 damage to the blue one. It is now dead as well.

Lyra walks up the wall, stands on the ceiling, points her crossbow at light blue and aims and shoots. 24 to hit (it hits). 50 damage. It’s dead.

The red one attacks Arawn. Saving throw. It tries to get in his brain, but Arawn shakes it off.

Guts runs over to the red devourer. He smashes it off Arawn’s head before it can get into his brain.

The Star Forge — First Sight

Wawwen navigates us through a series of corridors. We come out into a space where we can start to see a bit of daylight coming through. The corridor opens up into a massive volcanic chamber. We can see the sky coming through the crater and there is a path from the sky to where we are.

Built into the side of the volcanic chamber is the Star Forge. We come into it six or seven stories high where we have a view of where everything is. Standing on the stone walkway, we look around and see a walkway that leads into the middle of the chamber, and a little island that is caught in a river of lava. There are cauldrons set into the side of the mountain and the face of King Snurre is engraved into the side of the volcanic walls, Mount Rushmore style. It could be Snurre. It could be an ancient relative.

In the middle of the platform there is a slow-moving Duergar blacksmith who is hammering and working on a lump of metal. We see an ancient white dragon that is chained and used as a beast of burden. Under the floating forge area is a lava pit. The dragon keeps picking up lava and carrying it back up to the forge where the Duergar is working.

We notice the chains limit it to a certain distance. The more we look at it we realise that they are tentacles. The volcano has a living tentacle tree growing out of it, muzzling and chaining the dragon.

We see the army of fire giants at work on this machine. Each one has been twisted and mutated. There are some hill giants infected by the aberrant. Now all the intellect devourers and frog dudes are there. The machine is at work and they are just missing one final piece.

The last thing we see is the white dragon, its beautiful blue eyes locking on to us as it descends towards the lava, and we know that this creature has been enslaved and tortured into submission.

Items & Loot

• Ring of Shooting Stars — One charge casts Faerie Fire (1st level spell)
• Pipes of the Sewers
• Scroll of Resurrection
• 4 Potions of Diminution
• 1 Potion of Resistance
• Cursed Scroll of Protection (turns people into wererats — identified by Wawwen)
• Keys to the jail cell
• Fire Giant souvenir t-shirt (questionable value)

NPCs Encountered

• Lux’s Celestial Guardian (Solar) — Appeared in full angelic form for the first time, warned of danger, showed Lux a vision of Mount Celestia and his parents
• Wawwen (real name Warren) — Wererat guide; Cockney personality, compulsive liar, checks non-existent watch, killed his brother/nephew/cousin (story changes). Knows the fortress inside and out.
• King Snurre Iron Belly — Found dead in the throne room, flayed and displayed grotesquely on his throne. Head on a pike.
• Durrak Stoneforge — Duergar blacksmith seen working at the Star Forge, chained and forced to labour
• The Ancient White Dragon — Father of the twin dragons killed in session 32. Enslaved as a beast of burden, bound by fleshy Far Realm tentacles, eyes locked on the party as they watched

Notable Quotes

• Guts: “Fucking fire-ball, cunt!” (pan in hand, fighting beetles)
• Lyra (to the wererat): “Get away from me, flesh-wheel.”
• Wawwen: “Do you think I like being a man who was turned into a rat? I don’t give a shit that much that I’m actually going to help you. I’m just so fucking bored.”
• Wawwen: “It can be your nephew and your brother.”
• Lyra (to Wawwen): “Wait here. Have a west and wait for me to weturn.”
• Wawwen: “How long are you going to be? I’ve got another thing… never.” (looks at empty wrist)
• Alora Amathur (about the hellhound): “I don’t think it’s running around any more.”
• Wawwen (about the cells): “Dead, dead, dead, dead, dead.”
• Wawwen (about King Snurre): “Like I said — hard to describe. I haven’t seen the king for a while, and I think he’s been necked.”
• Guts (in the throne room): “I feel so wobbly.”
• Kaial’s mother vision: “I don’t understand. I can see my mother. I haven’t seen her since I was young and had to go away. I’m staring at her. She is hovering over the cliff face. I can’t not remember her face.”