Session 08: Giant Problems

The cold glow of the Darklake mirrored hidden embers beneath its black waters as the folding boat slipped between towering stone pillars. Elora sensed the fresh tang of minerals on the air long before Gracklstugh’s carmine lanterns revealed themselves, gleaming like fiery scales upon the cavern wall. After days fleeing the horrors of Sloobloodop, the companions savored the bustling noises that drifted across the docks—clacking wagon wheels, shouted barter, the slap of ropes on wet planks. Yet beneath the commotion lay a wary edge: duergar stevedores watched newcomers with flinty eyes, and a squat gatehouse loomed, sealing the waterfront from the deeper city beyond.

Hemeth guided the vessel to a narrow pier. A grim-visaged guard accosted them in brusque Dwarvish, unmoved by Hemeth’s account of the monstrous abomination stalking the Underdark. When Maledurk spoke of a titan that scraped the cavern roof, the guard only scoffed, bidding them spend coin—but not trouble—and gesturing toward a crooked stalagmite-inn known as the Shattered Spire. Sent away as fanciful storytellers, the party strode along the quays, passing gnome merchants hawking gleaming crystals, and pale-haired deep-folk huddled over burlap sacks. The stone city thrummed beyond barred gates, but its heart remained forbidden.

A timber bridge led to the Shattered Spire, its lanterns casting restless ripples across the black lake. Yet before boots reached the threshold, thunder rent the cavern. Masonry shrieked as a wall inside the gateburst outward, and a two-headed stone giant—one skull twisted and malformed—lurched into the district. It bellowed in fractured tongues, crushing duergar guards beneath an ironshod club. Panic surged through the market; crates shattered, and merchants scattered like startled minnows.

Elora reacted first, weaving nature’s wrath into a lance of emerald light. The spell struck the giant’s flank, searing rock-like flesh to dust and halting its stride. Thorn unleashed a roaring sphere of flame that blossomed against the brute’s chest, while Tempest’s fiery bolt traced an arc across the gloom to burst against its hide. Even wounded, the creature flailed, its cudgel whistling toward a fleeing elder dwarf.

Maledurk vaulted forward, primal fury boiling in his blood. With a dragonborn’s snarling courage he intercepted the blow, taloned hands braced against the colossal club. Sinew and will prevailed; the dwarf beneath him opened one fearful eye and beheld a living bulwark where death had stood a heartbeat before. In the stunned moment that followed, Thorn’s magic raked the giant with another burst of searing heat, and Elora intoned an ancient charm, bidding stone answer stone. A gray crust crept along the monster’s limbs, locking muscles in brittle rigidity.

Seeing the foe teetering, Maledurk hefted his war-pick. The weapon’s spike glinted crimson in lanternlight as he drove it into the giant’s ankle with a crack of splintering bone. The titanic shape toppled—an avalanche of flesh and stone that rattled shutters and sent echoes racing into distant tunnels—before lying still upon the quay.

Duergar reinforcements poured in mere breaths too late. Though grudgingly thankful, their commanders eyed the companions with distrust, dismissing tales of greater horrors. Only the gray-bearded dwarf saved by Maledurk spoke up. “Come,” he urged in a tremulous voice, “share ale with Werz Saltbaron, and let honest ears judge truth.” He beckoned them across the bridge and vanished into the Shattered Spire.

Inside the tavern, the air thrummed with hushed wonder. Glimmergloom lamps revealed mostly outsiders—gnomes, surface folk, and furtive traders—while tankards already waited on a rough-hewn table. Werz Saltbaron, cheeks still pale, offered heartfelt thanks and drank deep to their valor. He alone believed the warning of the pursuing monstrosity, yet confessed the city’s stubborn blindness. “Stone breeds pride,” he sighed. “Duergar trust their walls, fearing naught but what writhes beneath their own feet.”

Werz’s gratitude, however, was tangled in darker threads. A shadowed guild—the Gray Ghosts—claimed endless “interest” on an old debt, threatening to scatter his bones across the market if payment lapsed. He could whitewash his ledger only if the companions lent their formidable reputation in barter. In return, he would open paths beyond the guarded wall and arrange audience with Hragg Stoneshoulder, chieftain of the stone-giant refugees whose people now languished under suspicion in the inner city.

The proposition weighed heavily. A criminal syndicate promised illicit passage; a clan of giants might sway Gracklstugh’s aloof rulers; and somewhere beyond the lantern haze, a deeper darkness surged toward them all. Yet resolve glinted in every eye around the ale-stained table. The companions had carved their names upon the docks in blood and fire; now they would gamble that renown against the Gray Ghosts’ schemes.

Beneath the cavern’s vaulted silence, plans took shape. Hemeth traced a route to a warehouse by the water where the Ghosts nested like spiders amid stolen wares. Thorn’s keen mind already probed strategies of negotiation—or intimidation—while Tempest’s grin hinted at the eager chaos riding her spellcraft. Elora listened to the low murmur of the Darklake lapping the stilts and felt the restless stone beneath, as though the Underdark itself waited to judge their courage. Maledurk clutched the war-pick still slick with giant’s ichor and vowed that no phantom debt-collector would sunder his friend’s kneecaps—nor bar their path to the city’s heart.

Thus, amid flickering lanterns and ale-foamed vows, the fellowship set its course: first to confront the Gray Ghosts in their lair, then to stride beyond Gracklstugh’s iron gates, and finally—if fortune favored—to rally stone-giant and duergar alike against the nameless doom that stalked every shadowed shore of the Darklake.