Journey to Jorgenfist, Part 1 (Sunday, Abadius (I) 5th-12th, 4708 AR)

The heroes made the journey on horseback from Sandpoint, up the Lost Coast Road, over to Ember Lake, then up to Galduria, Wolf's Ear, Ravenmoor, and finally the Storval Stairs. Up through Ravenmoor, this journey traveled along roads and tracks and trails, but beyond Ravenmoor it was open country.

Ember Lake. Presumably fed by hot springs as well as the Lampblack and the Malgorian rivers, the waters of Ember Lake rise up warm from the rolling plains, and certain spots along the shore steam in colder months. The lake is also home to strange aquatic creatures that dart like fireflies in massive schools beneath the surface. Not quite fish, these tiny creatures called "charigs" resemble salamanders, their transparent skin phosphorescing in the clear waters. Although the creatures appear harmless, locals avoid eating them, claiming that on certain nights of the year the schools assemble in flickering patterns miles wide, moving with purpose and intelligence, as if creating visible signals visible only form the sky.

Galduria. While the town of Galduria survives primarily by ferrying grain and lumber along the Lampblack River and Ember Lake, its true claim to fame is its college. By far the oldest structure in town, the Twilight Academy is one of the premier schools of magic in Varisia, rivaled only by the Stone of the Seers in Magnimar and the notorious Acadamae in Korvosa, both of which consider it an upstart devoid of their own rich heritages. Founded in Galduria specifically to avoid the political pressure and intrigues of those two cities, the Twilight Academy has a reputation for being experimental and unconventional in many of its practices, but frequent donations to public works keeps locals from probing too deeply into the occasional haywire spell or necromantic accident.

Wolf's Ear. At one time, Wolf's Ear was the lycanthrope version of a leper colony, where werewolves and other such persecuted humanoids could live together in relative safety and comfort. When the town was annexed by Magnimar, however, the Lord-Mayor decided that such things were indecent and bankrolled a pogrom by the Church of Erastil to "cleanse" the town. In the ensuing bloody fracas, the lycanthropes were driven underground, where the Magnimarian leaders, unprepared for such passionate resistance, were content to let them stay. The official Magnimarian position is that any rumors of lycanthropy are just that, and those pointing out the townsfolks' unusual habits are quickly coerced into silence.

Ravenmoor. Quaint and isolated, the residents of Ravenmoor are happy to trade with those passing through along the Lampblack River, but travelers seeking to spend the night find that none of the empty-looking inns accept boarders. Additionally, while apparently extremely pious, the residents are loath to discuss their religious beliefs with outsiders.

The Storval Stairs. Although sized for a colossus, the Storval Stairs are still the most expedient route form Varisia's western lowlands onto the plateau. Here, where the Storval Rise shrinks to only a few hundred feet of vertical cliff face, great stairs have been cut form the cliff, flanked on either side by enormous statues. In the thousands of years since the stairs' sculpting, lesser engineers have cut more convenient, human-sized steps and ramps into their sides, routes capable of handling entire platoons of explorers and adventurers.

Ogre Cattle Rustlers

The heroes encountered three ogre fighters after a raid. The group noticed the sound of the approaching ogres and their panicked, mooing catch. Once the ogres noticed the heroes, they put down their captured cows and loot, took up their weapons, and attacked.

The ogres waded into battle without much care for anything except getting to melee as quickly as they could. Once in the thick of it, they went all out to destroy Thurden. They ganged up on him, but were eventually defeated. The ogres had accumulated a few bits of treasure from their raid apart from the cattle: a chest filled with 6,000 sp and three barrels of fine brandy worth 400 gp each (each barrel weighed 300 pounds).

Signs of Giants

As the heroes headed toward the Storval Plateau, things foreshadowed the giants they'd be fighting soon. The giant parties that had plagued the Varisian lowlands over the past several weeks had left their mark everywhere.

Battle Site: Although the giant parties avoided direct confrontations with settlements, they did attack many caravans and lone hunters they encountered along the road. These battle sites bespoke a terrible fury, littered with shattered stones and pulped bodies left for the scavengers after every bit of valuable loot had been stripped away.

Campsite: The heroes came across an enormous campsite. At the center, a campfire made of tree trunks sat in a ring of boulders, the mostly eaten carcass of a roasted 14-foot-long aurochs in the ashes.

Dead Giants: Although the giants were strong, there were monsters that could cause even these enormous creatures problems. The heroes came across a cairn of stones under which the body of a slain giant had been laid to rest.

Rumors: When they stopped at the towns along the way, the heroes heard all manner of horror stories. Every third person seemed to have either sighted a giant in the last few days or knew someone who had, and of these, at least half could tell stories of a friend or acquaintance who'd gone missing. In almost every case, the missing folks were merchants, soldiers, hunters, or travelers, and it was feared they'd been caught and killed by the giants.

The Storval Stairs

The Storval Rise was one of the most unique and infamous landmarks in Varisia; the change in terrain from the fertile lowlands to the rugged and stony scrublands of the plateau above marked the lands of giants and barbarians with an unmistakable boundary. The rise itself often reached dizzying heights of 1,000 feet or more, but at the location known as the Storval Stairs, the cliffs were only 400 feet high, and featured an ancient Thassilonian monument.

The Storval Stairs rose in 2-foot steps, and were flanked on either side by immense statues (although the southern statue had finally begun to crumble and erode, the northern statue was of Runelord Karzoug) and walls of ancient towers, buildings, and dwellings. The place was all but abandoned, with a tribe of six hill giants as sentinels to keep undesirables from the stairs.

The six hill giants who stood guard had moved into one of the buildings at the top of the stairs. One of the six watched from a post atop the shoulder of the northern statue of Karzoug - when he spotted the heroes approaching the stairs, he alerted his kin by throwing a boulder onto the roof of their building. All six giants then arranged themselves at the top of the stairs, where large piles of throwing boulders had been stacked. When Shalelu attempted to climb the stairs, the giants abandoned rock throwing in favor of a controlled landslide - they kicked and pushed and dropped boulders down the stairs at an alarming rate.