Tairn

1532.3.20
By 10 bells, everyone is gathered and heading north. Traver drives everyone hard headed towards the abandoned hobgoblin outpost. Banic uses Moradin’s power to heal people when they tire.
 

1532.3.21
Continue travel
 

1532.4.1
Continue travel. Arrive at Outpost mid-morning. A brief look at the area (not inside), and everyone heads further into the hills.
 

1532.4.2
About an hour after lunch, a large massive figure is seen 220 feet away. It appears to be a stone giant. He starts approaching at a casual pace. Everyone readies weapons. Keddick disappears. Then he makes himself fast. Then he prepares to haste the group and does. When the giant closes past 150 feet, Varende lets fly with an hour that sticks in the giants shoulder. Traver fires but the arrow bounces off the giant. As he approaches, he begins speaking and Jack responds. Jack asks everyone to relax repeatedly as he speaks with the giant named Crenic. Crenic reveals himself to be a traveler from the far north. He says he has seen or fought off orcs, bugbears, trolls, hill giants, and ogres while in these southern mountains. He seems friendly enough, but he is upset he was attacked. He plucks the arrow out. The dwarves continue to grumble about not killing the giant. Jack continues talking to him as the giant tries to light a fire. Jack whips out a tindertwig and lights the tinder for him. He pulls out a haunch of meat to cook. Jack and Keddick both eat a small piece of the wild pork. Jack tries to convince Crenic to travel with them, but Crenic says the hobgoblins are not his concern. After more parlay, the group moves on.
 

1532.4.3
At night, just before full dark when Keddick planned to cast the rope trick, eight bugbears sneak up on the group and throw javelins. The bugbears get in some good blows, but eventually they are no real match for your mighty band. Banic heals everyone that is hurt, and everyone retreats to the rope trick.
 

1532.4.4
The day is uneventful.
 

1532.4.5
Early morning: Everyone piles out of the rope trick. Traver says bugbears were there in the night. Traver leads people further west along the river. Mid-morning, a giant is spotted fishing at the river’s edge one hundred yards away. The hill giant doesn’t seem to see or hear the group, and everyone sneaks away. The remainder of the day passes uneventfully.
 

Everyone enters the rope trick at 7pm except Jack who sits idly by the river enjoying the surroundings and slightly crisp air. A few hours later, a large rock lands next to him. Jack runs for the rope trick and shouts for the rope to be let down jarring all but Varende from sleep. Malperder starts armoring and yelling for someone else to let Jack up. Varende lets Jack climb up just as a large rock whistles past below jerking the rope hard as it passes. Jack took another near miss. Everyone sees a large pair of muscular giant legs moving around the area searching. After a few minutes they move off.
 

1532.4.6
Keddick dismisses the rope trick. Everyone falls five feet to the ground. Almost everyone sees a large rock whistling towards them. It strikes Banic on the shield and might have knocked him down were it not for his steady Dwarven feet. Even so, his arm and shoulder are wrenched terribly and aching with pain. A hill giant stands by a pile of rocks 100 feet away. Everyone advances. After a tremendous effort from Malperder with his axe and a critical and an additional strike, Jack with his rapier and a critical strike, Banic with a hammer blow, Keddick with a fireball, and Varende and Traver with their bows, the hill giant withdraws. Perhaps he wanted to parlay? He runs, and everyone stops. Del goes winging after him, but returns a few minutes later. He says the giant kept moving. Everyone notices two huge sacks that he abandoned near the pile of stones. One is filled with a large quantity of fish that although a little ripe, Banic says he can magically purify to eat. There is also half of deer carcass. The other sack weighs about 25 pounds. It contains 92 tarnished Dwarven gold rods (ingots each worth 5 crowns by weight), 193 tarnished Dwarven silver rods (ingots each worth 5 princes), a tarnished brass tube that looks similar to the Dwarven gold rods but bigger, and a very dirty cloak of human size. Banic casts detect magic to look at the plunder. The rods are non-magical as expected, and the brass tube contains an aura as well as the cloak. Keddick casts detect magic and observes the cloak to have a faint illusion aura beneath the crusted dirt and snot of a hill giant. The brass tube has mixed auras, but the strongest is necromantic. Varende checks the tube for traps casually (take a 10) and finds none. Keddick opens it to find a scroll with three spells within (separate):
                Hypnotism                            (1^st level arcane)
                Reduce Person                     (1^st level arcane)
                Ghoul touch                          (2^nd level arcane)
Keddick thinks he could sell the scroll for 200 crowns or so. The ghoul touch is the most expensive spell at 150 crowns (others are 25 crowns). The Dwarven rods total 66.5 crowns in silver (weighing 13.3 pounds) and 460 crowns in gold (weighing 9.2 pounds). The snotty cloak weighs one pound. It is currently early morning. Traver estimates 3 more days to his base camp.

As Banic and Malperder are packing up the goods to carry them for the group, Keddick tries slipping some of the Dwarven money into his pouch of coins.  The rods seem to fill the pouch as if it had a normal volume, piling on top of the coins already in it and filling it with only a handful of the heavy rods. Clearly the pouch doesn’t understand Dwarven rods as coins. Banic holds the cloak at arm’s length as he walks down to the river to rinse the worst of the filth from the cloth. Keddick notices him heading to the river and follows. Banic starts rinsing the cloth several times and wringing it out. Keddick tells him to hold it up, mumbles words of power, and the last of the filth and water is magically push away leaving a gray cloth cloak with a hood. Banic whirls it around his shoulders. The hem touches the ground as it sits about his wide frame with the hood lolling down his back. He doesn’t feel any different, look any different (other than wearing a gray cloak that it), or detect a subtle power urging him to kill his comrades.