After the fall of Thistletop

[Mike]

The only way to defend Sandpoint from this kind of attack is for us to never leave. Alternately we invest months and yuge amounts of money to turn it into a fortress and then spend more or staffing and training. A true defense that doesn't include our full force is not feasible. The best they can do is hide and hope the raiders find what they want and leave.

I think your suggestion of better watchtowers and a good early warning system combined with an evacuation plan to a safe anti-giant hidey hole is the best we can do with the (maybe) two or three weeks we have. And maybe we are best off if we help them develop these and and then leave them to implement them while we get on with rooting out evil.

Leave someone here with a Sending scroll. In case of emergency, Anna can theoretically teleport us all back in two trips.

[Elle]

[Eliahad]

Um...what if we move the population of Sandpoint to the Fort? No? Okay.

[Tahlvin]

I thought Dothan indicated Gunrus said if we kill M, the rest of the giants will disband. Dwyn, if your plan is to wait at Sandpoint and face the giants as they come to attack, whether in little or large groups, we'll eventually end up facing hundreds of giants (I believe he mentioned there were a few hundred giants at Jorgenfist). M himself probably won't come until the end, with the largest group. Or we head to Jorgenfirst ourselves, sneak in and kill M, and end the threat to Sandpoint without any more giants threatening the town. And the longer we wait to do that, the more likely it is that Sandpoint ends up being threatened. If you really want to protect Sandpoint, spend a day or two helping them plan where to hide and where to put watchtowers, and then let's head to Jorgenfirst to eliminate the threat itself.

That's just my take on what needs to be done. And metagaming a little bit, I'm sure the designers of the adventure intended for us to confront the giants and M rather than trying to build siege fortifications around a town or handle large-scale, army-sized combats. But I could be wrong.

Keep in mind, we outstripped Sheriff Hemlock and Father Zantus in terms of level and power about 5-6 levels ago. If we're lucky, a few of the town guards are level 1 fighters or equivalent, but most are 0-level town guards with more experience handling drunk and disorderly calls than fighting town-level threats. Any defensive approach that relies on them, without us being present, will not be successful unless it is run and hide as quickly as possible. Also, if you ask them to take time to build significant defensive fortifications, you're asking them to give up their livelihoods for the few weeks it takes to build them. That's asking a lot from these people.

[Elle]

Two considerations about this:
One is that, again, a smaller portion of their raiding party almost took one or more of us out. So we're likely outmatched by a bigger and more powerful group of these giants, at whatever their home base is. We go into its heart, die, and Sandpoint falls eventually too.

Two is that we already know we are sitting on the thing M wants, which is the key to all this problem. If we can find it and get it out of here, letting him know it's now hidden with us or destroyed, presumably Sandpoint is saved. If it's the lighthouse itself he wants, then maybe we figure out how it functions and suddenly the town becomes capable of defending itself.

Or M comes to retrieve the thing and that's our best chance to kill him, out in the open rather than in his own defended lair.

[Tahlvin]

What information can we get from Gunrus regarding the layout of Jorgenfist, where M is located, and how we might get to him without having to go through all of the other giants?

[Zen]

If we could somehow get the ability to teleport into his bedchamber that would be peachy... But that seems a bit like an assassination...

[bralbovsky]

So, unless we want Sandpoint to resemble Thistletop, we need to interrupt M. This is priority one. We ought ourselves a little time by erasing his sortie, dragon and all (btw, the sending or scrying or whatever that might be most interesting would be figuring out whether the thing had a now abandoned lair, just saying). We have a location, we have character and number intel. We have to figure out what kind of, ya, assassination we can manage.

M pushes the needle of the otherwise legitimate giants toward evil. He has to go. And for those who figure that this sort of thing might be antithetical to the whole Paladin ethos, imagine which is more evil: playing fair with M (for example, say, 'president' Assad) and creating an irreversible humanitarian crisis, OR getting rid of an evil guy, and maybe his bodyguards, and allowing the world to pendulum back into balance.

Maybe I'm just slow, but I can't entirely wrap my head around the whole Sihedron physics model. Unless...there were seven bad impulses balanced by seven good impulses, and that balance made the world go round, until it didn't, and the bad guys made provisions and plans for their legacy to be resurrected (which seems to be going on now). Either the good guys didn't make any such plans, or we can't find them, or I have the existential history wrong. At any rate we seem to be running from evil tenet to evil tenet, as they get nastier and more powerful, going around this circle of seven points.
I can't puzzle out three things:
What the impulse was for this ancient power to reemerge (I expect that will be at the end of our road.)
Where the balancing forces/artifacts/rituals/places of power are that should give us insight and advantage (No idea why we're either missing or coming up dry on this. Hal has a life goal of finding and killing that octopus thing that got away (Black Magga), but wasn't that someone's job in some ancient ecosystem?) and last,
Why does it seem to matter that our opponents die with their jerseys on? They're all marked or tattood or carved with this symbol, and it's not just some sick serial killer "Ha Ha Coppers!" signal. It means something that Hal (and I) can't piece together.

I digress. Hal moves we gear up and go as soon as possible to find a way into M's base and wreck him. Some anti magic seems to be in order, and perhaps some (sorry Dothan) 'silence' arrows or a sticky rock that has silence or dispel on it, because from all accounts, he can cast some bad scat.

[Mike]

Dothan is of the opinion that we help Sandpoint with basic emergency planning, but that we do what we need to do to take the fight directly to Mokmurian as quickly as possible. That may well be a death wish, but in Dothan's mind, when all of us stand together, we are invincible. Intellectually, she understands the danger of what we do, but emotionally, she doesn't believe the danger is real. She has absolute faith that we will overcome any obstacle, regardless of the odds. It would require nothing less than the death of one of our own to shake this belief.

Also, Dothan always prefers playing offense to playing defense. I get that Dwyn is absolutely right that if we could figure out what Mokmurian is looking for in Sandpoint, we could remove it from play somehow and ensure that Sandpoint is no longer a target. But she's been trying that, and we keep getting more information without any way of tying it all together. The Gordian knot just keeps getting more tangled as we add new layers to it. She's willing to go down that road to a point, but then she's frustrated and wants to just drop the blade on the thing. She quickly reached that point already. She has no patience for the long game.

From Dothan's point of view, we can keep searching for the target and going around and around it for ages and there's a good chance we'll never find a solution and then we're just fighting off yet another raiding party and the problem remains exactly the same as the problem now. Better to move and do something we KNOW. We know where Mokmurian is supposed to be, and we know that killing him will probably put an end to the danger to Sandpoint. So let's do that. The fact that it's likely a suicide mission is merely a temporary inconvenience.

[Tahlvin]

Also, we got lucky last time in that the giants/dragon attack on Sandpoint wasn't well coordinated. The attacks came at multiple locations, but they were asynchronous, so it was easy for us to move from one attack to another and fight them off. Eventually, one of the raiding parties is going to figure out that they either attack in force from a single direction and overwhelm us, or they attack simultaneously at different locations and we will be unable to repel all of them.

My point being: trying to defend Sandpoint is not feasible in the long run, we have to eliminate the threat. That means either finding and eliminating what M wants, which as Dothan has pointed out is just a guessing game (and not guaranteed to not bring down retributive attacks anyways), or eliminate M himself. With some helpful intelligence from Gunrus, and some thorough scouting similar to what we did at Hook Mountain, we can hopefully eliminate him without taking on too many of the giants. And Eldthor would consider it perfectly acceptable to teleport into his bedchamber and assassinate him.

[Elle]

I'm sure Dwyn has no moral issue with assassinating M - he was trying to wipe out our town and we're seeking prevention, not revenge! How does anyone teleport into his bedchamber, however? We haven't seen that place, he's a powerful magic user by all reports, and there are lots of us with heavy gear. I do think it's a terrific idea to try to use his dragon to spy on him or wherever the dragon might have come from. Can we do that?

The last two times we tried something like an invasion (Fort Rannick, The Stone Giants and lamia within the mountain), we had some element of stealth initially, but then reached a post-stealth point where we went in guns a-blazin' to mow everyone down. We are not a stealth outfit. We cannot mow down that many giants. So how do people propose we realistically take on something like this? It does sound like a suicide mission! How many giants? In the hospitable retreat of "Jorgenfist"? I am really not eager to take this on.

The main thing is, I don't understand why we have to. If we try other options and fail, then okay, let's focus on M as our target. However, here we sit in the very place where we have been told he wants something specific! We have just now learned about ancient stones right here, and maybe something's up with the lighthouse. We've barely attempted to investigate all this. I get that Dothan is impatient but it makes no sense to run off and leave all these mysteries behind in hopes that the brute force approach, making ourselves cannon fodder for a whole army of giants, is more effective.

Anyway, are all of you proposing we immediately set off to die in Jorgenfist? Or can we take at least a week's time to visit Magnimar, release Gunrus somewhere out in the countryside, and make a more detailed investigation of the stones and lighthouse or other possibilities in Sandpoint? Dwyn is not your brainy investigator, so she can put that time into working on better defenses for Sandpoint. At least we can get them started and hire some people to help. I am willing to pay for this, didn't I mention that? Dwyn's relatives live here! Is this an unreasonable plan?

Does anyone have other ideas about how we might help the town prepare, btw? I know they can't defeat a raiding party. Like I said, the goal is to help them buy time so that they can get people to hiding places, and hopefully alert us so that we can teleport back. But all of that takes time. Isn't it worth bolstering defenses in such a way that they can't simply be overrun in a few minutes?

[Tahlvin]

It's a game of trade-offs. If we hurry, we get to Jorgenfist before M knows his previous raiding party was defeated, so we have a better chance of surprise. The longer we wait, and the longer the return of his prior raiding party is overdue, our chances of surprise decrease. So each week spent not heading to Jorgenfist is one more week for M to find out something is wrong and lock things down on his end.

I'm all for taking one week or so. We definitely need a trip to Magnimar to sell loot and stock up on more giant bane arrows, etc. And if we're not splitting up, spending a few days telling Sheriff Hemlock what needs to be done to prepare Sandpoint for another possible invasion is a good idea. And Eldthor does want to find Gogmurt, if possible, so we can possibly send him to the Fort Rannick area to help out there. But much more than a week total spent doing this sort of stuff, and I'm worried we'll end up being backed into a corner and losing our initiative.

[Elle]

[Mike]

One week is good.

But as far as Mokmurian figuring things out... if we assume that the raiding party was sent overland, then they would have taken a week(?) to get here. Maybe a little longer if they weren't trying to attract attention, or if the trail is a little longer than I think. I mean, they have to cut through mountains no matter which way they go, but I think they'd be good at that.

So that means, that if we assume that Mokmurian is not relying on magic communication to hear back from his people, then we have MAYBE ten days before he figures out that they're not coming back, and then another ten days for him to organize a response and get it to us, because even if travel time really is just a week, he still needs prep time to get everyone together.

BUT... maybe he wasn't going to rely on waiting for them to return to find out what's going on. Maybe the plan was to send messenger animals. Maybe the plan was to have the dragon fly on ahead of the ground forces. Maybe they were using magic to communicate. As far as we can tell, no one on the raiding party was capable of casting Sending or whatever, and we found no items on them that would have allowed them to communicate back. But there's nothing to say that Mokmurian wasn't casting a daily Sending to check in on them.

Best case scenario... we have 3 weeks or more before a proper response arrives (IF a proper response is inevitable).
Worst case... M has been checking in daily. He's known since the day after the raid that it was a failure. He's already organized his response. His forces will be here in a week.
Worst worst case... M knew the moment the battle failed. He's already en route and leading his forces personally. We head to Jorgenfist to face him. Our two teams miss each other along the way. He obliterates Sandpoint AND gets what he wants, and we made a trip to the mountains for nothing. (Don't tell Dwyn about this one.)

I just realized what we need to do:

Dothan puts a little more Diplomacy on Gunrus. "So how long will it take Mokmurian to figure out that the raid failed? Do you know if he was communicating with Teraktinus by magic or something? What do you think Mokmurian will do in response if he finds out his raiding party was lost? How long did it take your group to travel here from Jorgenfist? Oh by the way, I think our team is planning on letting you go. We just need to wait til we head out of town to Magnimar, and then we'll let you go along the way. Better to ask forgiveness than permission in this particular case, I say."

[Mike]

[Elle]

It's okay, we can all see what you're going to say next: strap Brodert Quink into the lighthouse until its magical laser turns on. I know it's an obvious next step, but it's not ethical and we will have to try something else.

[Mike]

Dammit! Okay fine. How about more ethical options:

Let's assume that this DOES have something to do with the Old Light.

What use does Mokmurian have for a death ray located on almost the farthest coast of a nation that is mostly wild lands? Not much. The Old Light would have been great for defending this particular harbor from attack by sea, but otherwise, it doesn't do much. So why would the ancients even locate it here? Because it's not the only one, that's why. It may be the only one still standing in a form we recognize, but there had to be others. Had to be. This one all by itself makes no sense. So what if Mokmurian has found one in a much more prime location? What if he found one that's portable? But the one he has isn't as well preserved as the Old Light. The Old Light still has its 'triggering mechanism' intact, for lack of a better word. His raiding party, Teraktinus in particular, was looking for a piece of the Old Light that can be used to make a similar super-weapon in some other area functional again. My gut wants to say it's the Standing Stones. The seven pointed configuration would have made a perfect receptacle (like the ones at the dam) to capture some summoned extraplanar creature that would power the death ray. The flaw in this is that I'm not even getting the faintest whiff of magic off those stones, and I'd hope for some kind of residue of something. But who knows, maybe it's been inactive for so long that we won't detect any magic at all until someone turns it on again. Or maybe it's something that our magic doesn't recognize as magic. Or its proper aura has been hidden from us.

OR... assuming that my "Mokmurian needs something from here to activate a death ray somewhere else" theory is correct, maybe it's not the Standing Stones. Maybe it's that meteorite (doubt it). Maybe it's something from the tunnels from earlier (I can't even remember what mysteries were never fully resolved under there). Maybe it's something that Nualia owned, which is now lost in those tunnels or still in the possession of Father Zantus from when he inherited the job from Nualia's father. Something in the abandoned glassworks. Maybe it's something in or on the Old Light itself. But, the Old Light is on the edge of town, practically in the water. If the giants and the dragon wanted anything from there, they could have started there with far less fuss. But they didn't. They charged into town directly.

I don't have an answer, but that opened up new channels of thought for me. We can do research if someone thinks of what questions to ask and to whom.

[Bluedevyl]

In thinking about this, it occurred to me that maybe Mokmurian's interest in The Great Light deals more with the age of the Light, rather than the weapon itself.

I really seem to remember Gunrus making mention, when we asked him about Mokmurian, that M was "a giant like those from the ancient times" or something to that effect... am I totally imagining that? We didn't interrogate any of the giants when we did this live, so I'm pretty sure I'm not mixing the times I've played this AP.

That made me think that it was at least possible that, as Quink said, the Great Light being one of the only remaining Thassilonian ruins around was the reason for their interest, rather than in its capacity as a weapon.

I'd love to ask Gunrus what Mokmurian's overall plans are. I dont remember what he said if we asked him previously. It seems that, while Sandpoint is important to us, I'm not sure what value it has to him overall. I would think that if it was THAT important, he would have come himself.

I tend to agree with the idea that we should take the fight to him, rather than waiting here for 2 weeks for another raiding party to maybe show up.

Dothan knows where he is massing his forces. How long of a walk is it from Sandpoint?

[Elle]

Have we tried sort of sketching out a map of where all the known ancient sites are? Could they all be connected?
Despite my obsession with caves and pools of water, I'll only include evidence of civilization:

Cave drawings in Thistletop, which appears to be built on ancient structure beneath (depicts fancy city; giant helm found here)
Lighthouse in Sandpoint (and connection to possible structures in cave network below town)
Irespan in Magnimar (for very big people, like helm-wearers)
Dam at Skull's Crossing near Fort Rannick (wizard made it run on soul-batteries, ick!)
Giant Statue inside the mountain near Fort Rannick
Bizarre pirate ship, not sure when that showed up, in a swamp near Fort Rannick (not giant sized, maybe totally unrelated)

A few of these have something to do with Very Big People. Is M one of these Very Big People or is he a regular Stone Giant? Are the Stone Giants we have seen large enough to use things like the giant helm or the irespan? My impression was that they were NOT that big, and that the Very Big People are Even Bigger than regular giants like these.

What else do we know about Stone Giants? Well, for one thing, a lot of the artifacts we have discovered are made of Stone. And we just found some fancy stones, so maybe this is weighing heavily on my mind, but maybe M is collecting fancy stones. (I am also the kind of person who displays random rocks and fossils all over my house the way some people put out flowers or knickknacks, so, take theories with grain of salt.) Is there any other fancy stone located at the lighthouse? Does the lighthouse need a fancy stone to make it go? (This was theory we were toying with last time, right? But the meteorite we found didn't seem like the thing?) Have we searched all up in and under that lighthouse for fancy stones? While we're clearing out the caves beneath Sandpoint to make way for people fleeing bands of marauding bears and giants, can we look for big fancy stones?

Were there any fancy stones on or around that giant statue inside the mountain in Fort Rannick? We did find a fancy stone inside the dam, but it was small.

Ok, that brings me to Mike's theory that M wants to power some other lighthouse/weapon like the Sandpoint one. Like he's taking batteries from one flashlight to power up the other? I like that theory. The group we fought before out in Fort Rannick (and Xanesha/Ironbriar cult) was all about gathering souls and, in the ancient dam, souls as power sources. But this group of giants doesn't seem interested in gathering souls, so maybe they get their power source from the stones instead? Dude I have no idea.

[bralbovsky]

One last thing to try by the old light: create water. The giant raiding party had a create water item that may have been for unearthing the object, or it may have been part of a 'just add water' formula. (This may be connected loosely to the pools.) I'm presuming the place has been rained on for years, but maybe an aerial view would show a pattern or target (Function for Dragon?) The water stone is a weird item that must signal something.