Road to Kebnegard, Chapter Twenty-Eight

Running Away... I Mean, Regrouping and a New Body for Reynaldo
Friday, May 11th, 988 AD

After running from the Pillar of Flame, we try looking for Orm, but run into some kind of flying Mage Ogre. The Mage Ogre shoots Nicolae with a Cone of Cold, knocking him out, but Reynaldo quickly throws a Wall of Fire around the Mage Ogre to cover everyone's escape.

We all run away and Reynaldo and Jean-Claude throw up two Rope Tricks. Everyone scrambles up, except for Reynaldo, who keeps the two message boxes and the box with Trevor. Reynaldo makes some tracks leading away from the Rope Trick and then hides under the snow directly under the Rope Tricks. The Mage Ogre and and ogress come by and the Mage Ogre immediately knows the fake tracks are, well, fake. The Mage Ogre calls over some friends and Reynaldo curses under his breath and succesfully Magic Jars the Mage Ogre. When two Frost Giants come by, Ogre-Rey tells them the party has gone the way of the tracks. The Frost Giants, the ogress, and Ogre-Rey travel a bit in that direction, but then Ogre-Rey makes up some excuse to go back to the party (I think he said he dropped something). He tells the giants and the ogress to keep going in the direction of the tracks. He motions for the party to come down from the Rope Tricks, but they are hesitant at first. This does not look like Reynaldo, after all. But they do come down, and Ogre-Rey picks up Reynaldo's body from the snow, and then they all head to where Orm had his camp before this ill-fated expedition. They are not there, so Shara sends Orm a Message about where to meet up. Orm Messages back that they are about two miles east.

We trudge over to the new, temporary Kebnegard and Orm yells at us.

Orm: What do you mean you didn't get in!?
Jean-Claude: We tried but--
Orm: We lost nine people! Including Arnor! That's about a quarter of our forces!
Jean-Claude: There was a Pillar of Flame--
Orm: I should never have listened to Thorbjorn!
Jean-Claude: Well, not about the frontal assualt, but--
Orm: That's it, we're moving out. This was a wash.
Reynaldo: That's it? One fucking setback and you're giving up?
Orm: It's not one setback, boy, we've been getting our asses handed to us for a couple of months now while you all were taking your sweet time to get up here.
Reynaldo: Sweet time? Sweet fucking time!? You goddamn jackass, we've been busy, asshole! Yours is not the only kingdom in danger!
Jean-Claude: What he meant to say, your highness, is that saving Novgorod took longer than expected, and Prince Vselov's treachery was suspected back then, if not outright known, so we had to handle that somewhat delicately, and there was the innumerable dangers we had to face, as well.
Orm (sighing): I don't honestly care. We have to pull out.
Reynaldo: Okay, listen. You go to Everbloom. Maybe those giants'll help you, maybe they won't. Maybe you won't even need them by the time you get back. We're staying here, and we're blowing up that goddamn mountain. All we ask is time to plan our entrance.
Orm (sighing again): Fine, you've got until tomorrow, then we're leaving.

Raheesh then comes over and angrily points at Ogre-Rey. Raheesh tells him to follow and Ogre-Rey does so. Raheesh uncovers the body of an elven female.

Reynaldo: Oh, so you killed another one, did you? Another notch on your belt, is it?
Raheesh: No, Namnatur, you killed her. You and your friends. I know what you're planning. I know your heart holds treachery.
Reynlado: Is that right? Did we do this before or after getting our asses handed to us by a Pillar of Flame, because last I checked, you were closer to her than we were.
Raheesh: I know what your planning.
Reynaldo: Care to clue me in then?
Raheesh: Her blood is on your hands!

Raheesh stalks off angrily. He seemed genuinely angry about the death of this elven women, as if he cared about her. Is Reynaldo lying about their hatred of elves? Certainly, they did slaughter his village; they've admitted as much during one of their heated arguments. But what were they doing with an elven women on their side?

We talked to Orm and Thorbjorn about going in the Shit Hole entrance that Thorbjorn's party used a couple of years ago, and Orm mentioned that the giants were currently using as an outhouse. Also of note, one of Orm's early tactics against the giants was to mess with their food supplies, thereby giving them dysentery, so there's that to look forward to as well.

The party decides to attempt to interrogate the Mage Ogre that Reynaldo has inhabited. Anna stoneshapes a prison around Ogre-Rey, but then Thorbjorn tells us two Frost Giants areon their way to camp, so they all have to move. Wong thinks a giant body is better than an ogre body and Reynaldo concurs, so Jean-Claude quickly slices the ogre's neck, transferring Reynaldo's essence back into the gem. Wong, carrying Reynaldo's gem, and Ivan lie in wait for the two giants while everyone else moves with Orm's people. When the giants come near enough, Reynaldo tries to take over their bodies, but succeeds only in disorienting them. Then, an invisible voice tells the giants where Ivan and Wong are hiding, and they both take off. One of the giants manages to hit Wong with a big rock, knocking her unconscious and almost crushing the gem holding Reynaldo's essence (Ivan later recounted the event as "Almost killing two birds with one stone," thereby coining the phrase), but Reynaldo was regardless able to take over the invisible voice's body and tell the giants to not follow the running dwarf holding the unconscious Chinese woman. Large idiots that they are, they listened, and Inviso-Rey followed Ivan back to the party.

Once in the relative safety of camp, Reynaldo notices that this body feels exactly the same as the body he had just left (which, if you remember, was killed). In fact, its getting better by the minute. Through trials and tribulations, we figure out that this particular ogre can Regenerate, apparently from death even, as well as cast Invisibilty, Gaseous Form, Flying, and Cone of Cold once every twenty-four hours. The Invisibility, Gaseous Form, and Flying last two hours each. So, in exchange for the almost deaths of three of our strongest, we got a pretty strong body for Reynaldo to inhabit. The downside is that Reynaldo is inhabiting it.

Reynaldo quickly puts the body to good use by scouting the Outhouse Entrance (a friendlier term than Shit Hole). He flies over while invisible and sees that the Outhouse Entrance is nothing more than a hole in the ground with a board over it. The hole is about thirty feet away from the tree line and there is snow covering the ground. Ogre-Rey flies, then walks back to camp. Once there, the camp rests the night.

Resting and Planning
Thursday, May 12th, 988 AD

Orm and his crew, including the Moors, strike our for Everbloom. We bid them farewell and good luck. Thorbjorn rushes over to us while Orm is otherwise occupied and asks to not tell Lady Thora where he is, in case she comes back. We tell him we'll probably kill her or she'll kill us, so he's got very little to worry about. Although we're getting the sneaking suspicion that Orm knows nothing about Lady Thora or Thorbjorn's connection to her.

We start planning our approach to the Outhouse Entrance. We decide to do it in the middle of the night with a combination of Water Breathing and Free Action spells, as well as Reynaldo's Axe. Anna decides that we should Stone Shape some helmets for all of us and fill them with snow, in case we're stuck head deep in poop. The plan is for one of us to be Free Actioned and another person to take the Axe. When the Axe person gets to the hole, they drop in, helmet on, and the Free Actioned person takes the Axe back to the next person. A Wraithformed Nicolae and an Invisible Ogre-Rey would keep watch while everyone else jumped in. We agree this is a good plan and we get ready to move camp, but then a murder of crows passes overhead, all cawing something strange. Surely a bad omen.

We move camp and Anna gets to Stone Shaping some helmets. Meanwhile, Ogre-Rey goes to scout the Outhouse Entrance again. He sees that the giants seem to be lightly celebrating. They're all drinking grog and kind of just hanging out. There are a few tents and lean-tos that Ogre-Rey can see, and they're all over a hundred feet away. Every once in awhile a giant will come over and drop the kids off at the pool, but mostly they all stay away. Ogre-Rey looks near the area and finds a thicket about twenty feet away from the tree line, fifty feet away from the Outhouse Entrance, that will serve as good cover before the actual approach. Ogre-Rey heads back in time to listen in on Anna's Divination. God tells her we'll probably get in pretty easily, but once inside, there will be a laundry list of things we're gonna have to worry about:

    [Something to do with] tentacles,
    Worms within the family jewels,
    Parkers [?] in a large room,
    A wailing Elf Queen in her tomb,
    The red-green girl that passes through floors,
    Mushrooms grown from tainted spores,
    Ghosts of men whose blood's run cold,
    Things hatched from eggs eons old,
    Whatever Jotens have sent inside,
    And on the rock blood side,
    Red men from the Land of Flame,

and then, of course, good old Cain.

Immediately after God's predictions of doom, a crow with a broken wing, saying "Topido Tahuna" or some such, comes hopping over. Shara casts Speak With Animals and the bird says it was told to fly to the river while continually saying those words by a giant. Shara tells it to stop repeating those words and say "Caw" a lot instead. Stepanova heals its wing and Shara tells it to catch up with the other crows and convince them all to say "Caw" instead too. We think "Topido Tahuna" is some kind of codeword for an ally of the giants and we'd rather they not get that. We rest and heal all the rest of the day.

Outhouse Conquered and Dungeon Entered
Friday, May 13th, 988 AD

to be continued...

End Chapter Twenty-Eight