A Return to Nightstone

I don't think we have ever made the ride to Nightstone faster than we did this morning. When we arrived, boulders had been used to destroy the buildings. The large obelisk in the middle of town was gone. Hill Giants were still tearing pieces off our houses. I think I counted six giants. Bug Bears, Orcs and Goblins wandered around trying to collect the animals that were left.

We didn't wait. We attacked. After the battle, some of us were bleeding and bruised, but all the Hill Giants and Orcs and Goblins and anything else destroying our town were dead.

Good riddance.

We found Montgomery and four survivors in the basement of the Inn. They told us giants had dropped the rocks down from a cloud passing over the town. They tore out the obelisk and carried it up cloud steps to a castle sitting on top of the cloud. They also took a staff, or stick, or something from the hole the obelisk left.

When we investigated the hole, all that was left was a few broken pieces of wood. They resonated with Enchantment magic, but that was all we could discern.

We did leave one goblin alive to question him. He didn't know much, just that they were here collecting food for Chieftess Gu. "She is the strongest of the Hill Giants. She commands them all and she needs food so she can grow even bigger and stronger." Or something to that effect, his Common wasn't very good. He did say she has a table in a fort for eating and that the fort was 3 days travel to the northeast.

Stellara did go over some history with Azeredge. It bears writing down here so we remember: The only obelisk he knows of is here in Nightstone. There must be something like an obelisk in Waterdeep, but he doesn't know where. The one in Waterdeep was put there by the wizard who built modern Waterdeep, Ahghairon. Ahghairon is the wizard who created Azeredge. He also created the staff that controls dragons we left with our dragon friend, Arenex - talented guy. Even though he was human, he lived for 300 years and died around 200 years ago. I think Azeredge was curious though: if the giants wanted the Obelisk, why did they crack it getting it out of the ground?

A question for another day.

Right now we are bedding down for the night. In the morning we are going to message Ilandra and see if she found the townspeople who were taken away.

They weren't killed. Either this Chieftess likes her food fresh, or this might be a trap . . .