more fortress of the stone giants notes

We camped up in the nearby hills, and Devron used his magic to invisibly fly around the valley scouting it out, We saw the red dragon flying out of the mountains opposite the valley from where we entered. Examination of the valley showed that there were 7 camps of stone giants, stone giants, and ogres around the city. There were caves in the cliffs overlooking the river. Devron explored them a bit, and found that one of them had a musty sound, and sounds of slithering, while the other was crawling with bugs… He noticed that there was a quarry in the center and after discussion it was thought that the caves may well connect to the quarry so we decided to try to use spells to get the party into the cave with the slithering cave with the reptilian sides. Our stealthier members first entered the cave, they tossed a sunrod to see what was in the cave, and they immediately noticed a large fire opal in the cave on a mound of sand positioned so that it would capture the first rays of the sun. Suddenly wyverns sprung out from several sections of the cave and attacked. Kish immediately took a wyvern sting, and the poison debilitated him greatly. The rest of the battle went fairly well, with us taking little damage. After the battle we searched the cave and found a fair amount of silver and gold as well as an ancient staff topped with a cloudy stone and wrapped with black iron filigree. It had a strong aura of magic, but we were unable to figure out its powers. We waited for the next morning watching the fire opal and found that it did produce an interesting color show, but nothing else. We rested a day and using our magic, we restored Kish, and identified the staff of the Staff of Heaven and Earth, a Thasalonian Artifact with the following powers. 2 charges — Air walk, spike stones, control winds 1 charge — Gust of Wind, Stone Shape We rested up, and then flew over to the other cave. We kept the bugs at bay using alchemical fire, and Devron’s Fire abilities. Searching the cave we found a narrow tunnel leading farther into the mountain. The narrow crack lead into a network of cave, ranging from 3 to 5 feet across, and DT lead us through leading out to a small cave with several piles of carefully sorted objects. There was also a net hammock hanging from some stalagmites. Immediately a small reptilian humanoid began screaming at us and frothing at the mouth. She screamed about humans being worth much to Mokmurian, and charged Kish hitting him with his spear. Due to the tight quarters, it took us a moment to get into combat, but Brock was able to teleport behind the kobold and strike it, and then Kish attacked, and opened a path for DT to come in who then killed the Kobold in one hit almost cutting him in half. Searching the Kobold we found several magic items including a magic necklace, spear, buckler and breast plate. We quickly began hearing sounds from the 2 exits in the cave, sounds of merriment from one, sounds of working and grunts from the other. We decided to interrupt the sounds of merriment, and Kish went first trying to see what was going on. Moving down the cave we saw a cave off to the right, and the was fur cloak covering the entrance. Peaking inside, we saw a giant with his back to us. We dropped caltrops to trip him up if he followed and continued down the hall, and it opened up into an immense cavern. The cavern was illuminated by a large fire to the south, and many bones were scattered around the cave, and a large platform with a throne on it. We found 4 stone giants relaxing in the cave eating and socializing. We created a plan to buff the group, and run in to the room and surprise them. The plan went very well as we were able to take out 2 of them before they were even able to respond. They countered, but were quickly overcome, but not before a large she giant with a ladle ran into the room, but she was no match for the group. Looking to where the cook came from revealed a large kitchen with many giant sized items in it and a door in the back leading into a pantry full of mostly meat, but other foods, as well as barrel labeled “candy” full of eyeballs in brine. Thinking that the other giant we saw earlier we would be easy picking proved us wrong when DT, Kish, and Devron tried to attack him, and after taking a little damage he took out DT in one round, and Devron ran to the rest of the party. The battle got a little better in the narrow confines of the hallway, but he was able to almost kill Brock and was about to kill Inara before we finally took him out. We found in his room beards of dwarves held together held together with rings, a preserved frost giant head, many many shields one of them belonged to Anston Jejere, it was magical +1 arrow catching heavy steel shield. And several trophies from people he had killed. We also found many plans as he was obviously a tactician, and was planning for several contingencies. There was a pit in the tacticians’ room, and it looked to be a garbage pit, and we disposed of the giant bodies in the pit, and discovered they had the sahedrin symbol branded on them.